Month: December 2020

Who Is Your Daddy? Little Lounge Lizards’ June Dance Party

The Luv Doc Recommends

June 2, 2009

Every once in a while you come across an event that is so fucking crazy that you just have to go check it out, if only to make sure you didn’t dream it. Austin has more than its share of them: Chiggerfest, Spamarama, Eeyore’s Birthday, Harry Knowles’ Butt-Numb-a-Thon, O. Henry Pun-Off. Austinites aren’t particularly scared of weirdness, but sometimes “keepin’ it weird” can turn a little creepy – especially when honest, decent, earnest people with good intentions are involved. In fact, some of the most heinous atrocities in human history were committed by people who were utterly convinced they were doing the right thing. The folks loading up the boxcars for Nazi death camps or the ones poisoning the punchbowl in Jonestown weren’t doing it just to be assholes – well, at least not all of them – no, they drank the punch metaphorically long before they did so literally. Unfortunately, they lacked the types of sociological/psychological checks and balances most people take for granted. One of these is humor, chiefly propagated by the wiseass. When everyone seems to be marching in lockstep (reason enough to start feeling skittish), there is always one heroic individual (or sleazy and self-aggrandizing dickhead) who will pop off with a bitingly sarcastic bon mot like, “Wow, can’t the Swiss steal their own gold teeth?” or, “Sorry, punch makes me gassy.” In most heavy situations, the wiseass gets stomped into a grease stain by the brownshirts or their equivalent, and the machinery of evil grinds on, but in certain instances, a subversive idea takes hold and festers long enough to spoil the party, be it Nazi, Commie, or Tupperware. After all, crazy ideas, like food, stay freshest when sealed in a vacuum. Pop the seal, and they just might rot…or flourish. Regardless, it’s always best to air them out and see what happens. For instance, having a dance party at Qua for “for cool kids ages 10 and under and their groovy grownups” sounds like a Bad Idea jeans commercial, especially considering the music is being provided by DJ Sicko, but hold your judgment. You may not know the whole story. Maybe somewhere in Austin there is an 8-year-old who will roll out of bed Saturday morning and say: “Hey, Pops, what do you say we blow off the swimming pool today and throw some Axe body spray, Ed Hardy togs, and nugget jewelry, and head over to Qua and dance our asses off! Who knows? You might even meet a hot single mom!” Maybe there is even more than one. More likely there are plenty of parents who aren’t averse to using their kids as an excuse to troll for strange on a Saturday afternoon. No shame in that game, as long as you and your kid are on the same page. If that’s the case, Saturday’s Who’s Your Daddy? dance party at Qua may be just your thing: live shark tank dance floor, disco lights, aquarium, and complimentary Clif Bar snacks. Here’s the catch: All adults must be accompanied by a child, so if you’re a nonbreeder looking to score, you’re going to have to borrow a nephew or something.

Pachanga Latino Music Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 27, 2009

Good move Pachanga! What better place to have a Latin-party music festival than in a place called Fiesta Gardens? Waterloo Park is nice and all, but it’s a little Limey sounding and ultimately doesn’t have the zest of “fiesta,” does it? The “gardens” thing is also a bit confusing. What’s with the pidgin? Would it really have been that challenging for the city to just go whole hog (swine?) and call it “Fiesta Jardines?” Yes, it’s exhausting reading that much Spanish strung together, but Austin is a fairly open-minded city. We’ve been spitting out Auditorium Shores for years now – same number of syllables plus two extra letters. That may not seem important in the big picture, but when you need your sorority sisters to come rescue you from a Porta-Potty disaster, Auditorium Shores is an egregious amount to text. It’s really difficult to tap in “I HV SHT MYSLF N PP @ AS. HLP ME” on your Razor and have people actually understand what you mean – especially when it’s dark, you’re literally shitfaced, and there’s a decent chance they’ll read the first half of your text and decide to pretend not to understand it even though they did. Wouldn’t you? Of course you would. After all, Auditorium Shores is a big place that affords a certain amount of anonymity. At most it’s only a 200-yard dash to Lady Bird Lake. Even with the wind in your face and wearing flip-flops, you should be able to make it to the water in less than 30 seconds – faster if you’re barefoot and buck naked, plus you’ll get extra cool points for keeping it weird. You could do the same at Fiesta Gardens in less than 20 seconds, but there are a few more obstacles. Most importantly, you’ll need enough hops to clear the reeds and flotsam at the water’s edge, because that’s where the snakes and flushed pet alligators hang out. Or do they? Don’t sweat it. Chances are if you avoid the refritos con chorizo and really low-rent tequilas, you won’t have any Porta-Potty emergencies. After all, you may be at a Pachanga Festival, but it’s not like you’re actually en Mexico. Musically, however, you should be pretty close. Headlining the bill are Tejano star Michael Salgado and Mexican Institute of Sound, aka “the Mexican Moby,” aka Instituto Mexicano del Sonido – which is infinitely more poetic than its American counterpart. Salgado and Instituto are miles apart musically, but will be only a few hundred yards from each other geographically this Saturday. The same is true of the rest of the festival, which offers a diverse array of artists sharing their unique take on Latin music: Los Bad Apples, Chris Perez, Brownout, Charanga Cakewalk, and David Garza, among others. And if you can’t get your Latin fix without seeing musicians in matching costumes, Mariachi Altenas, Texas’ all-female mariachi band, are scheduled for the Pavillion Stage at 7:30pm. This might just be the event that changes the gardens into jardines. Regardless, it will definitely be a fiesta.

Austin Chronicle Adult Spelling Bee

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 20, 2009

Last week a pun-off and this week a spelling bee? Good Lord, Austin really is Nerdvana. All those years you spent woodshedding with your Oxford English Dictionary are finally starting to pay off – both for you and your optometrist. Who knows? Someday you might even get paid for all those two-dollar words you’ve been collecting. You know, those anachronistic, multisyllabic vocabulary bombs you accidentally let drop at the auto parts store, the dry cleaner’s, or the cash register at Dairy Queen: “I’ll have a Cappuccino MooLatte, and by the way, young fellow, your company really sets the bar when it comes to ingenious culinary portmanteaus!” Careful there, word nerd: You’re just a couple of syllables away from a brand-new hairstyle via the men’s room toilet bowl. You think you’re smarter than everybody else? You think you’re something special? OK, maybe not. You just possess a vocabulary that allows you the luxury of being either painstakingly precise or obnoxiously verbose – perhaps both. It doesn’t necessarily make you the pretentious dick the kid behind the counter thinks you are; it just makes you seem like one, which is why you can find it in your heart to forgive his withering look of floccinaucinihilipilification. Sadly, he’s mostly right. Although impressive to a twisted few, an exhaustive vocabulary is pretty much worthless for the mundanity of everyday life. Language is mostly about communicating and not so much about making people Google shit on their iPhones. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to dumb things down to an idiotic extreme. It just means that in order to avoid getting hung up by your tighty whiteys, you have to be able to switch lexicological gears every now and then. You have to be sensitive to your environment and keep that shit buttoned down … unless you’re at a Mensa meeting, a renaissance fair, or a Star Trek screening – and not the cool, sexy, new Star Trek either. The point is, you made your bed, and now you have to lie in it – most likely alone. Why? Because when it comes to attracting members of the opposite sex, a huge vocabulary operates as a figurative force field for all but a select few. Therefore, when you’re mackin’, it’s best to throttle it down to two syllables or fewer, unless you’re whipping out one of those embarrassingly idiotic, woo-pitching portmanteaus like, “Baby, I’m sexilicious!” Nonsensical hormone-infused prattle like that shows that even though you’re mentally well endowed, you’re not stuck up about it. The truth is, no one really minds if you’re a nerd as long as you don’t let it go to your head. In fact, Austin is chock-full of nerds, geeks, and eggheads who by some aberration of nature or nurture aren’t laboring under the misconception that their defecation isn’t odiferous. It’s one of those intangibles that makes Austin such a charming place. Tonight you can experience some of that charm at the Chronicle’s Adult Spelling Bee – a boozy, informal competition to crown Austin’s next spelling genius. You don’t have to be a word nerd to be entertained. A good part of the fun is watching the geniuses try to hold it together like normal people. Winner takes home a spectacular trophy and certificate good for a beer a day for a year at Threadgill’s. A brain that big could probably stand to lose a few cells anyway, right?