Emancipet – The Pleasurecraft

November 18, 2008

Hold it off one more week. Do it for us. We know you’re all ready to take that peppermint-flavored candy cane stick pony ride into the holiday season, but it’s not here yet. It’s not time. You just think it is because the Madison Avenue greed whores are already burning up prime time with yuletide schmaltz, no doubt shitting trou at the thought of millions of Americans staying home for the holidays this year making eggnog and wassailing instead of wearing out the magnetic strips on their MasterCards at the shopping mall. Pretty much everyone except Bill O’Reilly knows that the “X” in “X-mas” stands for mark next to the line on the credit card receipt where you sign your name, and the credit card season starts whenever the ads start airing and the chumps start charging. For now, it’s the day after Halloween, but in a few years the Neil Diamond Christmas Special will be bumping out a tedious, awkwardly uncomfortable hour of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon. Who loses? The kids. Well, not Jerry’s kids. They’ll at least get to see the Jewish Elvis belt out a soul-stirring rendition of “O Holy Night” instead of watching Gary Lewis phone in his millionth cruise-boat version of “Everybody Loves a Clown” while papa Lewis squeezes out a well-rehearsed teardrop of pride. No, kids all over America will lose because after they’ve whined for four months about Wiis and Game Boys and pee-squirting dolls, their parents will either a) attempt infanticide or b) actually turn to Jesus. Either scenario is a huge money saver for the parents but an even bigger bummer for the kids. Being dead is no walk in the park (unless you’re still haunting one), but being the spawn of a Jesus freak is a one-way ticket to Dullsville. It’s the difference between a white-knuckled car chase in Grand Theft Auto IV and freezing your ass off handing out sack lunches to the homeless. Both are skills that should be useful to children in the hard times ahead, but real homeless people are rarely as entertaining as video-game gangsters. Plus, all that do-gooding will send the wrong message to America’s youth. Capitalism works best when the money trickles upstream to the most wealthy. Turn it around, and the whole model goes to shit. It’s probably just as well for the time being. Philanthropy isn’t going to service all that Chinese debt any more than irresponsible consumerism, but if the economy is going to hell in a handbasket anyway, we might as well help out the home team, right? That’s not a very X-massy sentiment, but Creditmas may not come at all this year. If you want to give this altruism thing a try, you might want to start small, and what better place to do that than at the Tiniest Bar in Texas? This Friday at TBIT a group called Team Spiridon is hosting the “Night of the Moustache,” a benefit for Emancipet, an organization dedicated to preventing animal homelessness, and the Dick Beardsley Foundation, a nonprofit providing grants for people seeking treatment for chemical dependency. The event features a silent auction plus music by Eat a Peach, an Allman Brothers tribute band, and Girl Guitar, a group of up-and-coming female artists.

May 6, 2008

If you’re looking to get laid, it’s always best to have a reliable wingman. You can fly solo, but it amps up your creep factor considerably. Other than a handful of tight-lipped cinematic tough guys like John Wayne, Steve McQueen, and Clint Eastwood, mysterious loner types don’t have a good track record. They’re always stacking bodies down in the crawl space, cooking their victims up with fava beans, luring little kids into windowless vans, and perforating the skulls of innocents with stunbolt guns. Loner chicks don’t exactly inspire a vote of confidence, either. How about Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? Or Glenn Close in 101 Dalmatians? What is it with Glenn Close and small, defenseless animals? No doubt the casting director figured that if Glenn didn’t mind boiling a bunny, she probably wouldn’t have a problem with stitching up a puppy coat. And really, as crazy as that bitch was, you have to admit the coat was pimpin’, yo. This is not to say that groups of people don’t do some crazy shit on occasion (Bush … twice?), but generally the group dynamic includes a normalizing effect. Maybe if John Wayne Gacy had a few more friends, one of them might have chimed in with “Dude, you definitely have a dead animal in your crawl space” – or maybe one of them actually did and ended up there. Regardless, no matter how pure your intentions, no matter how mentally sound you are on paper, if you roll up to a party in a dented cargo van wearing a clown suit, most sane people will scatter like cockroaches. The only way you’re going to get anyone to come near you is to whip up a breathtaking menagerie of balloon animals. So, yes, at the very least a wingman is important – especially when trolling for strange. Ideally your wingman is a trusted friend and not some homeless person you lured along with the promise of a convenience-store rotisserie hot dog and a 40-ounce malt liquor. People judge you by who you hang out with, which is why your wingman should be cute, but not so hot that people will want to fuck him. He should also know when to keep his mouth shut. That story about the time you had freaky motel sex with that chick with huge hands and an Adam’s apple may be hilarious, but when it comes to impressing the ladies, you might as well be wearing a blood-stained clown suit. It’s hard enough to find good friends, but finding a good wingman is even harder. That’s why a lot of people choose to get a puppy, instead. Everybody loves puppies (with the exception of maybe Glenn Close, who loves them in a different way). Everybody wants to pet them, too. They’re like furry, little magnets for the opposite sex. It’s true that they eventually grow up, get fatter and lazier, and develop halitosis, but even the ugliest dog beats no dog at all – especially if you tie a DayGlo bandanna around its neck. Plus, getting a dog is much easier than making a friend. Finding friends takes a lot of time and effort, but all you have to do to find a dog is visit your local animal shelter. Sure, there’s also the many years of feeding, walking, washing, and following it around with a plastic bag, but if you’re friendless in the first place, it might help with your character development. This weekend you can get further instruction on the care and feeding of your wingman at Republic Square Park, where the Austin Parks Foundation and the Alamo’s Rolling Roadshow are screening Christopher Guest’s classic, Best in Show. This bring-your-wing event also includes dog training demos, dog agility demos, silly pet tricks, and giveaways from Emancipet, the city’s Scoop the Poop Program (huh?), Lofty Dog, and the Austin Parks Foundation. You could come solo, but if you do you might want to bring a pocketful of skinny balloons.