Month: April 2022

Texas Burlesque Festival 2010

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April 21, 2010

ND Austin

OK, here’s the deal: Burlesque involves stripping … but not that skanky, donkey show, picking-up-pingpong-balls-with-your-vajajay kind of stripping. No, modern burlesque is more about the dress than the undress. Sure, you can show up in your trucker cap and sleeveless camo T-shirt, flicking your tongue between your peace fingers and yelling, “Show us yer ta-tas, baby!” But mostly what you’ll get is the judgmental, raised eyebrows of your fellow audience – the same sort of look you get at a little league soccer game when you scream, “Either you nut up and take that goalie out or you’re hitchhiking home!” to your 6-year-old from the sideline. Unfortunately, the fact that he recoils into a defensive fetal position every time the ball comes near him doesn’t excuse your boorish, anachronistic behavior. Crazy as it sounds, burlesque fans can be a little stuck up too. Why? Because burlesque, much like parenting and society itself, has evolved. It’s now an art form. Stripping, on the other hand, involves the coarseness of overt monetary exchange. Merely by walking in the door of a tittie bar, a strip club, or a Hooters, you are opening yourself up to being called a chauvinist pig. Fair or not, this does have its advantages. For one thing, your standard of acceptable behavior drops to somewhere between that of Rush Limbaugh and a homeless man who just crapped his trousers. Essentially, all bets are off … at least until the bouncer pile drives you into the asphalt in the parking lot for dry-humping your cocktail waitress. For the exorbitantly high price of a rubbery surf and turf combo, you buy the right to unleash all manner of misogynistic, foul-mouthed commentary; obscene gestures; and lascivious leers. If you have the foresight to bring a roll of one-dollar bills, you can actually break the fourth wall and let your fingers brush against the skin beneath the G-string when tipping. Whoa! Cleanup on Aisle 9. Burlesque, on the other hand, while hardly the model for genteel sensibility, nonetheless has a certain level of decorum and, more importantly, an overtly post-feminist mindset. If you just took off your trucker hat to scratch your head, think of it this way: chicks on top. The progressive political orientation of the neo-burlesque movement leans strongly toward female empowerment and celebration of the female form – lofty phrases that have no doubt been appropriated by every low-rent, skeevy porn director on the planet when recruiting for lipstick lesbian scenes. Nonetheless, if a woman says she is celebrating empowerment by performing a bump-and-grind routine to Tom Waits’ “Shiver Me Timbers” in 6-inch heels and a dangerously tight corset, you have to take her for her word – at least until she invites you into the men’s room for a quick $5 HJ. The preceding scenario however, is extremely unlikely at modern burlesque gatherings, where adjectives like “artistic,” “inventive,” and “classy” abound. There is still plenty of skin, but fewer black eyes, pimp bruises, and cheap, lopsided Mexican breast implants. More importantly, the stigma of being labeled a creepy, lecherous voyeur is almost nonexistent. As a fan of burlesque, your lechery is repackaged as a healthy appreciation of camp, fashion, and artistry – sort of like going to the Roller Derby, only the chicks are hotter and don’t wear knee pads. Don’t let that slow you down however, because burlesque will certainly add to the richness of your fantasies, even if it doesn’t necessarily fulfill them. This weekend you can fill out the cast of your fantasies by attending the Texas Burlesque Festival, which is being held Thursday-Saturday at the Independent. The Texas Burlesque Fest showcases more than 60 of the best burlesque performers from across the country and is hosting workshops to help performers hone their craft and polish their art. And really, wouldn’t you rather spend that roll of ones empowering women?

Austin Reggae Fest

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April 14, 2010

Auditorium Shores

Living in Austin can be crazy stressful: All the noise, traffic, congestion, and smug hipsterism can really take a toll on your zen. Add to that several hundred milligrams of caffeine, general angst about the tanking economy, and the imminent onset of swimsuit season, and you’re marginally postal about 90% of the time. Sure you could start a citrus cleanse or begin a vigorous colonic irrigation regimen, but you will still not have plumbed the root of it all: You care too much. Remember Austin? This is not the city you come to in order to feed your voracious ambition. This is the city you come to in order to polish your Frisbee golf skills. This is the city that motivated you to test how long you could sleep on your college friend’s couch before he kicked you out (two and a half weeks) in a screaming fit of rage for eating the remainder of his quart of Blue Bell Caramel Turtle Fudge (you were wicked baked) and then putting it back in the freezer empty. Yes, he was just looking for a reason ever since he found that merkin of pubic hair you left in the shower drain, but you took the high road, persevered and lived off Central Market samples and art opening crudités until you finally had to break down and get a job. Now that you’re all respectable with a day gig, a Smart Car, and an East Austin rent house with a five-way split, you’re feeling like maybe Austin has lost a bit of its luster. Wrong! The problem is that you’ve just given up on giving up. Somewhere along the way you quit quitting. There is still a lot of time to be wasted in Austin, even if you’re not wasted all the time. Hey, when was the last time you called in sick and spent the whole day at Barton Springs working on that dark, luxurious tan that’s the envy of your cubicle farm? How many Monday afternoons have you devoted entirely to practicing the sport of beer pong? How often do you blow off work for a box-wine picnic at the top of Mount Bonnell? Don’t you have at least one friend who will let your borrow his ski boat on a Thursday? Coming up with inventive ways to waste time can be pretty taxing, but when you run out of ideas, there is always the old standby: sitting on the couch with a skull bong listening to reggae. The cool thing about getting stoned and listening to reggae is that it’s something you can do without even bathing or changing your boxers. How awesome is that? All you need is a ratty old couch with one leg replaced by a telephone book, a coffee table made of cinder blocks and plywood, and a window tray you “borrowed” from Sonic in order to cull your seeds and stems … oh, and ideally a big bag of Funyuns. If you start to smell a little gamey after a few days, you can just blame it on the skunkweed. You barely even need to move. Just put Bob Marley’s Legend on repeat and chillax. Don’t worry, when he starts saying “get up, stand up,” he’s just speaking metaphorically. Of course, if you want to take that literally, you might want to bus it down to this weekend’s Austin Reggae Festival, where Friday, Saturday, and Sunday you can groove and sway with acts such as the Easy Star All-Stars, the Mighty Diamonds, and the Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars. If you haven’t listened to a lot of reggae or smoked a lot of ganja, relax. It’s a proven fact that pretty much anyone can dance to reggae as long as they’re not too stoned to stand up.

The Austin Outhouse Reunion

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April 7, 2010

Giddy Ups

You’ve probably heard the old folk tales about the days when Austin was dirt cheap, scruffy, and unpretentious. They’re mostly lies. Yes, it’s true that back in the day you used to be able to buy a six-pack of Texas Pride for $1.25 at the H-E-B … and yes, the Whip In convenience store on Burton Drive used to sell packages of nitrous oxide … and it’s true that hookers – real, skanky, foul-mouthed hookers – used to troll SoCo nightly. However, unless you like beer that tastes like it’s been left out in the sun all week (Texas Pride should have been called “Texas Perseverance”), and unless you like waking up with a menagerie of inexplicable bruises (no, you can’t run through brick walls, even if you’ve been huffing), and unless you’ve been accosted by a female prostitute who looks like a dude who let a 4-year-old apply his/her lipstick, then even in the softest lens of retrospect, it would be hard to call the old days better times. Cheaper times, yes. If you go back far enough, you can probably find a time when you could buy a pound of skunk weed for fitty cent, a bottle of Coke for a penny, or maybe even a paint pony for an eagle feather, but there are down sides to everything. You would probably have had to get the skunk weed from an old hippie who smelled like patchouli and dried urine and had brown teeth and a case of toenail fungus that belonged in a science exhibit. The paint pony would probably come complete with a smallpox laden saddle blanket, and the Coke, while refreshing, would be spiked with actual cocaine, which everyone knows is a gateway drug to being a huge asshole. Old Austin however (that being the Austin you weren’t around for) had its pluses. For instance, back in the day there were no douches. This is not to say there weren’t self-important, nugget jewelry wearing, beauty salon mullet rocking, T-top Camaro driving douche bags. Yes, there were. But mostly they were called pricks, dickheads, and assholes, and they mostly hung out at places like Confettis or the Roxy on East Riverside. Really, every town needs a disco – if only to act as flypaper for all the fronters trying to work their game. Otherwise, their impact would be more immediately felt. It’s bad enough to have a couple of Hummers (the modern-day equivalent of the T-top Firebird) parked across two spaces at the H-E-B, but imagine a whole parking lot full of them. How about a few tables of obnoxious cigar smokers at your local coffeehouse? You get the picture. Fortunately, back in the old days there were plenty of places holding down the other end of the scale – places where pretense got checked at the door. Perhaps the least pretentious of all was the Austin Outhouse. As you can imagine, a bar named after a shitter probably isn’t too concerned with the social status of its clientele. That’s what made the Austin Outhouse such a special place. It took all comers, not only regarding its clientele but its booking policy as well. On any given night you could see anything from youthful avant punk to leather-skinned Texas songwriters, and through it all, the scenery never changed: wood paneling festooned with old license plates, band stickers and assorted memorabilia, a few neon beer signs, wooden tables, a motley assortment of questionably homeless looking people permanently installed at the bar, a few dogs, and a genuinely wonderful guy named Ed running the place who would occasionally get up on stage and play a mean harmonica. Was it better than anything we have these days? Maybe not, but it was pretty damned good back then – reason enough for a celebration too. This weekend at a similarly unpretentious bar out on Manchaca Road called Giddy Ups, they’re hosting a star-studded Austin Outhouse Reunion with a whole bunch of old-timers and a few new ones thrown in as well. People like: Calvin Russell, the Rhythm Rats, Lost John Casner, Gurf Morlix, Lloyd Maines, Ted Roddy, Shelley King, Terri Hendrix, Herman the German, Leti de la Vega, and many others. Proceeds benefit the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians and Save the Cactus Cafe. Think about it this way: You may never have a better reason to go to Manchaca Road.

Open Screen Night

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March 31, 2010

Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz

Hey everybody, it’s Easter! Put your hands together for the Easter Bunny! Well, not you Jesus. You get a pass. Let’s just say you’re in the VIP section. Tell you what, why don’t you hang out with Dismas and Gestas while the rest of us collect colored eggs filled with chocolate candy and chump change? Super. Hey, what’s this? A boiled egg? Blasphemy! That’s a shitty prank to play on someone celebrating the horrifying torture and crucifixion of the son of God. Is this some sort of yolk? Is this some sort of subtle attempt at promoting a pro-choice agenda? No, God will not show mercy, even if this egg was boiled in the first trimester. Boiled eggs are murder, plain and simple. God does not condone baby-killing! Yes, He may occasionally turn a blind eye to the slaughter of innocents … and He definitely seems to be fairly zen about death and suffering in general, but just because He is the omnipotent creator of the universe doesn’t mean you can pin the rap on Him as an accessory to murder. Besides, if God believed in killing babies, don’t you think He would have just crucified Jesus right there in the manger? He could have left the Jews completely out of it. He could have done the trick with a couple of oriental kings and a box of trim nails, but no, baby-killing is wrong. You can’t just go around hammering messianic newborns to 1-by-4s. God don’t make no junk babies. You have to wait until the baby grows up, learns a trade – maybe becomes a carpenter (how ironic is that?) – and then starts a whole peace movement. Now you’ve got someone you can kill: a peace-preaching, sandal-wearing, long-haired do-gooder who won’t even fight back. Plus, not only is he of killing age, he’s an insolent blasphemer who refuses to get with the program. As the old saying goes: “Opinions are like assholes. They all stink, and people should keep them to themselves.” But ol’ Jesus comes trotting into Jerusalem on an ass (which in all likelihood was the AD33 equivalent of an Escalade with spinning rims), running his mouth about love and forgiveness and not necessarily saying he’s the son of God, but you know he’s just oozing attitude: “Go on and crucify me, bitch. I’ll still be seated at the right hand of the Father, and I will return to judge the living and the dead … aka you motherfuckers.” Really, Jesus is lucky the Jews (and God, their accessory) didn’t crucify his whole posse. In fact, entire genocides have been carried out with less justification, presumably while God was washing His hair. Clearly the message here is to keep your nose to the ground and your big ideas to yourself. You might not change the world, but you might find a few more Easter eggs. If you feel like you absolutely have to witness the lurid depravity of original thought, there’s no better place to do so than at Open Screen Night at the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz on Easter night. A $100 prize is awarded to the best short film/home movie/video clip brought in by an audience member. Really bad videos get the gong after two minutes – which is about how long it takes for the boos to reach a crescendo. Hey, it’s planet Earth. Mob rules.

Peer Pressure: Indie Presses Unite!

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March 24, 2010

Club de Ville CLOSED

After last weekend’s molasses-lubed traffic clusterfuck, it’s a good bet that any Austinite within a three-mile radius of Downtown was sufficiently motivated to grab a shovel and help dig an entire subway system. Smart growth accomplished. There is, however, one little hitch in our get-along: traffic. Regardless of how it probably looked on the scale model 3-D renderings, all those tiny dog-walking condopolitans haven’t decided to ditch their Lexus SUVs for Segways and Mellow Johnny’s fixies (Sorry Lance, regardless of the tiny carbon footprint, you definitely have to LiveStrong to have the confidence to walk around in biking shorts – especially the padded kind that make it look like you’ve just dropped a whopping load). It turns out that just because someone owns a half-million-dollar Downtown Austin condo doesn’t mean they don’t occasionally like to take their Yukon Denali down to the dove lease for a little Dick Cheney-style Russian roulette. Who would have thought rich people (and, for that matter, tiny dogs) were so hard to train? Downtown planners really stepped in it – both figuratively and literally it would seem. Well, the good news this week is that even if you can’t train rich folks and tiny, genetically dwarfed dogs, you can train middle-class suburban commuters – all the way Downtown. The fat part of the economic bell curve that occupies Austin’s outer reaches may not have the intelligence, inspiration, or motivation to carve themselves out anything more than a modest slice of the American dream, but they are at least smart enough to know (if only by years of Pavlovian conditioning) that those precious hours spent logjammed on the upper deck are gone forever – like the dodo bird and basic grammar. In fact, they are probably ecstatic to be able to sit down, surf the interwebs, listen to their iPods, and take a few hits off the whiskey flask on their air-conditioned ride back to Cedar Park. After such an embarrassingly long wait, it feels like a true miracle that Austin finally has a commuter train. Yes, it may primarily benefit a tax base that hasn’t chipped in its fair share of the ante, but at least it is an earnest step forward in solving Austin’s transportation issues. It will reduce emissions, reduce stress, and keep cars off the roads (ideally, particularly the Ford Flex). There are also intriguing cultural exchange possibilities. Sixth Street will surely attract some of the more adventurous, gullible suburban teens, and on the other end, all those pristine privacy fences out in the burbs are just begging for some artful graffiti. It’s a situation people too lazy or simple to use the phrase “mutually beneficial” refer to as “win-win.” In the end, however, with mass transit everybody really does win, even the tiny-dog people (as long as they don’t let go of the leash when the trains go by) and the culturally benighted suburbanites. If you’re one of those, here’s a quick cure: Hop on the train in Leander Saturday afternoon and head into town to the Convention Center station. From there, it’s just a short walk down to Club de Ville to the Peer Pressure event, sponsored by Effing Press, Dalton Publishing, Monofonus Press, and American Short Fiction in celebration of Small Press Month. Hear readings from all four presses, see live bands, and spend the night in a nice hotel because the trains don’t run after 7:42pm. What? You expected the Downtown hotels not to win?

Austin Chronicle Music Awards

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March 16, 2010

Austin Music Hall

Walk outside. Inhale deeply. Smell that? That’s the smell of fresh meat: thousands upon thousands of fame whores, sycophants, big shots, losers, and a few real, honest to goodness normal people who somehow got sucked into the roiling clusterfuck that is South by Southwest. The air Downtown is thick with the scent of desperation and disappointment – not just because of the maddeningly intermittent cab service and ubiquitous sub-par catered barbecue, but because of the collective realization that the city of hope is built on a mountain of crushed dreams. Somewhere between the last windmill armed power chord of their 8pm showcase and the hungover, stale-farted van ride back to Nowheresville, legions of starry-eyed hopefuls will experience the painful epiphany that they just don’t have what it takes. The hardest lesson to learn is that a dream is not enough. It’s not enough to want it really badly. You have to want it really badly and be really, really good – exceptionally good … or at the very least exceptionally good-looking. Even more sobering than the overwhelming number of truly great bands showcasing at SXSW is the thought that each year fewer and fewer of them will become superstars in the classic sense. They might occasionally experience a few golden God moments – a bed full of naked groupies, a TV defenestration, their names spelled out in coke on the hotel coffee table – but most of the humping they will be doing will involve carrying their equipment on and off stages in a never-ending succession of forgettable towns. Of course, touring musicians are the lucky ones. The music business is a pyramid with a very fat bottom. As a percentage, anyone sharing a smelly van ride back from SXSW is probably at the top of his or her game, careerwise. Even still, it’s no real consolation that the fall from such a low pinnacle is much less painful than some loftier achievement. The artistic ego is fragile. The hurt is real. At least SXSW sweetens the pot by offering an ocean of free booze so the sad sacks can drown in something other than their own self-pity. Moments of weakness and self-doubt were made for refreshing American pilsners. Don’t think for a minute that if the Medellín cartel had a chance to sponsor SXSW it wouldn’t. You can’t really make a drug abuser until you make a drug user. Drink up all you Johnny B. Goodes, the dream is gone. The music, however, remains. So maybe it can’t feed your children or pay your mortgage, but it can feed your soul and maybe buy you a little happiness and mental health. In a city as crazy as Austin, that shit is priceless. Success in music comes in many forms, and not all of them pay for the Presidential Suite at the Four Seasons. This Saturday at the Austin Music Hall, Austin celebrates some of this year’s musical successes at the 28th annual Austin Music Awards. See some of Austin’s brightest stars get their due and watch performances by outstanding musicians like the Texas Sheiks, the Explosives, Peter Lewis of Moby Grape, Stu Cook of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Sarah Jarosz, and Mother Falcon. Not a bad way to finish the largest music festival in the world.

SXSW Film Festival Screening of ‘Tucker and Dale vs. Evil’

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March 9, 2010

Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz

This weekend thousands of edgy, creative, cosmopolitan types from all over the globe will descend on Austin for the South by Southwest Film and Interactive festivals. By the time they leave, most of them will gush openly about their love of Austin’s laid-back, eclectic lifestyle (Oops! Where’d that go?); awesome barbecue and Mexican food; and skanky dive bars. Some will even declare outright their intention to relocate here permanently. Awesome. Austin is always in need of a few thousand more pasty-skinned Urban Outfitter hipsters willing to pay $5 for a Lone Star and half a mil for a Lilliputian Downtown condo. Why wouldn’t they be? Living in Austin is like being on spring break year round. It’s always a balmy 75 degrees. The trees and lawns are perpetually verdant with the first fresh growth of spring. There are always lots of cool parking lot/backyard day parties with bands and free beer. At night there are hundreds of more live music clubs to go to – both real and improvised. Austin is creative like that, yo. Living here, knowing better, you might feel the urge to scream, “The emperor has no clothes!” Resist it. Why crush the fantasy? If they move here, Austin will crush it soon enough – just about the time they walk outside in August wearing an authentic poly-blend black Misfits T-shirt from Hot Topic and vampire eye makeup. The result invariably looks like the Wicked Witch of the West death scene from The Wizard of Oz: “I’m melting! I’m melting!” The thing that will really take the shine off Austin’s penny is when they figure out Austin’s dirty little secret: You can make all the art/film/music you want here; you just can’t get paid for it. Creativity might be a precious and rare commodity in other burgs, but here in River City we’re up to our necks in it, which means, in three words, art is cheapo. You just finished a new film/painting/song/literary opus? Y-A-W-N. So did your waitress, your landscaper, the guy who changes your oil at Jiffy Lube, and the really stoned dude who makes your sandwiches at ThunderCloud. It might be less depressing too if they sucked, but they don’t. They’re creative badasses willing to endure what would be a shameful amount of poverty anywhere else in order to perfect their craft – plus at least one of them can make a fucking majestic corned beef on rye. Yes, in that respect, Austin is like SXSW all year round, but why let the cat out of the bag? You’ll only sound like a crazy, bitter, homeless person (no use trying to convince out-of-towners that what you’re wearing is actually Austin fashion and not a symbol of your destitution). Your best strategy with these starry-eyed interlopers is to give them what they’re expecting. Sprinkle your Austin hipster patois with and extra dash of hillbilly: y’alls and ma’ams and fixin’s and whatnots. And really, would it kill you to wear a cowboy hat and some cutoff overalls? That way they’ll feel like they’re really getting over on the locals, and you’ll have your sweet revenge in August. If you want to see what this will look like on film, check out SXSW Film’s Friday night screening of Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, a wicked, hilarious send-up of slasher-in-the-woods movies that explores what happens when a group of college kids on spring break encounter what they believe to be a couple of deranged backwoods killers. Could there be a better metaphor for Austin during SXSW?

82nd Zilker Park Kite Festival

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March 2, 2010

Zilker Park

Sometimes a really cool kite can be almost as effective as a Labrador puppy in a bandana for attracting members of the opposite sex. It really depends on how you work it. Either one can set up the shot, but it’s up to you to actually score. If you don’t watch your puppy, there isn’t much danger involved. It might gnaw on a toddler’s leg, crap on a picnic blanket, or possibly be snatched up and carried away by a mastiff, but your liability index is still fairly low. Kites, however, can nosedive unexpectedly out of the clear blue and put out someone’s eye. In a park full of children staring up at the heavens in wide-eyed wonderment, you don’t want to be the asshole who was too busy trolling for strange to play out some kite string. Kids just ruin everything, don’t they? You could almost forgive them if they could just hold their liquor and stop cock-blocking the MILFs, but they always seem to be underfoot, staring up at you with pleading eyes, dirty cheeks, and green-tinged rivulets of snot running out of their noses. Yes, puppies may have wicked bad sour-milk breath, razor sharp canines, and a penchant for ralphing in your car right after you get it detailed, but at least they don’t dirt their drawers and then follow you around in an unholy cloud of funk screaming at the top of their lungs expecting you to clean it up. Talk about a mood killer. A pair of pendulous pampers will shrivel the average dude’s johnson in no time – perhaps even send him into the priesthood, but a screaming child is every bit as much of a libido extinguisher. Regardless of what you see on the interwebs, most MILFs become completely uninterested in sex once a screaming child sends their mams into milk mode. (Bad news for all you lactophiliacs out there cruising the Craigslist for milking moms. That’s a dry well … metaphorically speaking). To a single man on the make, a crying child is more of an annoying setback – especially since he’s never completely sure how to alleviate his suffering other than put on a pair of noise-canceling headphones or maybe give the child a shiny object to play with … say a pocketknife or a cigarette lighter. The latter is a great way to find out who the child’s mother is (if only to separate her from potential mates), but it can also make you a bit of a pariah. You might as well nosedive your kite into a toddler’s eyeball. Puppies, on the other hand, attract the opposite sex better than really cool kites, but goddamnit if they don’t attract children as well, which makes puppies a bit of a double-bladed sword. Unlike kites, puppies will also follow you home … sometimes even if you let go of their leash. If you let go of a kite, it will find its own home … often in the branches of a tree or wrapped around a power line, but at least it won’t bleed you dry financially (dog chow, chew toys, linoleum, carpet, vet bills) and emotionally (screen-door whining, table-scrap eyes, Old Yeller reruns). Like a long-term relationship, a puppy is a lot of work. You don’t need that kind of hassle – especially on a Sunday at the park. Maybe you should just build a really cool kite (still cheaper than a puppy) and head over to Zilker Park this weekend for the 82nd Zilker Park Kite Festival. You might not win a booby prize, but you could win categories like Steadiest Kite, Strongest Pulling Kite, Smallest Kite, Most Unusual Kite, or Largest Kite. Just remember, if you decide to go for Largest Kite, make sure your insurance policy covers collateral damage.

Dodgeball on Ice

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February 23, 2010

Chaparral Ice (in Northcross Mall)

Being a grateful beneficiary of the finest health care system in the world, you probably have no fear when it comes to sports-related injuries. If you should sprain an ankle, dislocate a collarbone, or suffer serious head trauma, you can rest assured that the insurance company of your employer’s choosing will be right there to provide you with premium health care services … as long as the emergency room or doctor’s office you visit is “in network” (sometimes mistaken as a synonym for “incompetent” or “inexperienced”) and your injury isn’t the result of some pre-existing congenital condition excluded in the fine print of your policy. If you’re not sure, don’t worry; your doctor will run you through a barrage of expensive diagnostic tests – not because they were necessarily warranted by your condition but because your insurance covers them and they are probably required by the doctor’s malpractice insurance to protect against any potential lawsuits. As long as everyone has insurance, no harm, no foul, eh? It’s not like it’s real money. It’s just insurance. Of course, in the end you will have to pony up some real cash, but that $35 co-pay and $1,500 deductible is a small price to pay for the finest health care in the world. Plus, as a door prize, you’ll probably get several unnecessary prescriptions for addictive pain medications – or at the very least a baggie of sample meds provided to you gratis by your doctor. Consider it a gift from your friends in the American pharmaceutical industry, an industry so thoughtful it is willing to buy drugs for people who can’t afford brand-name prescriptions. Yes, that might seem like a transparent ploy to keep the outraged uninsured from rioting in the streets and Congress from enacting meaningful health care reform, but at least it’s something. Besides, even a broke junkie is worth more to an insurance company than a healthy straight edge. High cholesterol? Why give up fondue, bacon-wrapped shrimp, and chili-cheese fries when you can just pop a pill for it? Diabetes? There are pills for that too – as many as there are pharmaceutical companies – so don’t feel like you need to use common sense and willpower to manage your condition. You can also get drugs for depression, hypertension, insomnia, listlessness – you name it. If you can communicate it, you can medicate it. If you have good insurance but don’t have a living will, you might not even need to communicate it. Clearly, the keys to maintaining the finest health care system in the world are expensive insurance and a huge variety of brand-name drugs. That means Americans need to have the resolve to put the interests of huge corporations ahead of individual citizens, otherwise we might as well live in a communist state like France, Britain, or the red menace to the north, Canada. Health care? They can’t even make decent snow. If history has proven anything, it’s that governments are completely ineffectual – the less the better. We certainly can’t afford to let government run our health care system. After the colossal failure of Medicare (a completely ineffectual health care program Congress hasn’t found the courage to mercy kill over the past 45 years), who could trust Uncle Sam to step up his game? Certainly not Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, or Abbott Labs. You probably won’t get Aetna, Humana, or UnitedHealth to sign off on that either. Good thing, because government run health care would be like a death sentence … mainly for the aforementioned, but corporations are people too. The Supreme Court just said so. Really, insurance corporations and pharmaceutical companies are just people taking care of people. Don’t worry, they’ve got your back … even if it breaks trying to pay them. Feel free to go out and live a healthy, active life, and if that doesn’t work out, there will surely be a drug (or a cocktail thereof) to help you feel better. If you’re looking for a fun activity, how about dodgeball? On ice? Yes, it’s an awesome idea … especially for spectators. You’ve been looking for a way to burn up that deductible anyway, right? Here’s an exciting opportunity to decimate in one fell swoop … or one swooping fall. This Saturday at 9pm at Chaparral Ice on Anderson Lane, the folks from Hill Country Outdoors are hosting a dodgeball game on ice. Two sides pelt each other with balls until one person is left standing. That person’s name? Winner.

‘Misprint’ Magazine’s Fourth Annual Beard & Moustache Competition

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February 17, 2010

Mohawk

When you have failed at everything else in life, take heart. You may be succeeding in something you didn’t even know you were good at. Somewhere along the way you may have forgotten that you too are one of God’s infinite number of different yet perfect snowflakes, special in your own way even if you’re completely unremarkable in all others. Sadly, after kindergarten, being special has increasingly pejorative connotations. By the time you reach middle school, the only reward you get for being special is a ride on the short bus. From there the beatdown only increases in duration and ferocity. More than likely if you had a third nipple or an extra pinkie toe, by high school you had it discreetly removed. After all, it’s much safer to run with the herd than be trampled by it. Still, running with the herd has its costs: You might have to wax off your Wookie pelt; buy expensive contacts, huge silicone knockers; or get your teeth wired, capped, and bleached into flawless, sparkling symmetry. Beauty may be skin deep, but it ain’t cheap. You might have to go for the public option: being different. Not everyone has the financial wherewithal to mold themselves into aesthetic homogeneity. Even if you can afford the price of admission, you may not want to pay it. You might decide to go nonconformist, to nurture your lost specialness. Brave move, Sparky, but first you’re going to have to find it. Some people choose to devote a lifetime of intense meditation and introspection in this search. Others try to show their specialness in a variety of ingenious, yet ultimately superficial ways. That’s understandable. It is maddeningly difficult to get others to recognize your innate specialness, especially when it isn’t readily apparent … even to yourself. Not surprisingly, many people opt for some outward manifestation of their specialness: a flashy pull-target tattoo (that peeks seductively out of their muffin top), a ridonkulously large ear gauge that would make even an Ethiopian cringe, or maybe a cubic zirconium crusted grill from the jewelry store in the Fiesta Mart. Put on your mirror shades, bitches! Sparkles in the house! Here in Austin there are some really special people. That tribal armband tat that made you the rebel of your high school show choir doesn’t even raise an eyebrow around here. If you really want to stand out, you’re going to have to sport more ink than a Where’s Waldo? book and maybe tack on a few body mods like a bifurcated tongue, elf ears, genital beads, or maybe some subdermal devil-horn implants. Let your imagination run wild, but just remember that at some point your specialness may cross back into the short bus kind. If you get to obsessed with how you look, you may need to, in the words of Bomani Armah, “Read a muh’ fuckin’ book!” After all, specialness is mostly in your mind anyway. Fuck, it’s not even a word. Besides, as Joni Mitchell sings, “We are stardust. We are golden. We are billion year old carbon.” It’s true. We’re all pretty much the same, more or less, and sameness isn’t all that special. Really it’s what you love that makes you special. You might love big, epic tattoos or weiner dogs or raw food or the person you’ve been stalking for the last few years … doesn’t matter. It’s what makes you special. Everything else is just window dressing, a front. Take facial hair for instance. It takes either a lot of love or extreme apathy to grow the type of beards you’ll see in Misprint‘s fourth annual Beard & Moustache Competition this Friday at Mohawk. Either way, it’s fascinating – sort of like demolition derby or hot-oil wrestling, only vicariously a lot more itchy. This year’s competition is hosted by Matt Bearden and features music by DJ Andy and DJ Huge Cock, with live music (really Misprint?) by Diagonals. Do you have what it takes to win Best Groomed, Sweetest ‘Stache, Fiercest Chops, Gnarliest Beard, or Ladies? Who knows? Maybe you’re succeeding in something you didn’t even know you’re good at.