Author: The Luv Doc

A Resurgence of Quality Programming

The Luv Doc

February 3, 2012

Dear Doc: In these exciting times, I often wonder: Why haven’t we seen a resurgence of quality programming like Battle of the Network Stars. Wouldn’t that be just great? (Your attention to this matter should include a clear addressing of the most up-to-date whereabouts of one Miss Joyce DeWitt.) – Kris

In the words of Thomas Wolfe, “You can’t go home again.” Touché, Tommy. Really, who wouldn’t want to see a reanimated Howard Cosell hosting a star-studded physical competition featuring swarthy, athletic folks like Gary Burghoff, Gabe Kaplan, Dick Van Patten, Loretta Swit, Vicki Lawrence, and Delta Burke? In fact, you may want to pleasure yourself just envisioning that pasty B-list ménage 20-plus years after they reached their physical prime. Ideally you find liver spots, stretch marks, and dense, abrasive tufts of gray back hair a turn-on because you know you’re going to have to do Loretta Swit first. She’s a wildcat! I would wish that for you Kris, but sadly, the future happened. Sometime back in the Nineties, the major networks were challenged by hundreds of tiny upstart cable channels that barely had two dimes to rub together. Lacking the production funds to even come up with shows as embarrassingly fatuous as Harry and the Hendersons and Alf, the smaller cable channels mined a previously underdeveloped vein of stupidity: reality television. Turns out all you really need to create fascinating television is to strap a camcorder to a cocker spaniel’s head and turn it loose in a double-wide full of toothless, meth-snorting hillbillies – or the East Coast equivalent, a rooftop hot tub in Seaside Heights, N.J. That’s it: no high-priced actors, sound stages, lighting, costumes, or craft services, just poorly shot video of knuckle-dragging half-wits on the prowl for unprotected sex. That’s all you need to sell boatloads of pimple cream, tampons, Hot Pockets, and Axe body spray. Plus, 30 minutes watching Snooki wet-hump a Jacuzzi full of mooks and you’ll forget Joyce DeWitt ever existed. However, if you still want to rub up against some Wood (as in Janet Wood, aka the brunette/the smart one/the real pants-wearer of the cutely implied threesome on Three’s Company) she’s busy as a one-legged woman in an ass-kicking contest. Most recently, she starred in the film The Great Fight with superstars Robert Loggia and Charles Durning, and in 2011, she also starred in the off-Broadway hit Miss Abigail’s Guide To Dating, Mating, and Marriage – yet another threesome that probably leads frustratingly to nowhere. You may want to check out Jersey Shore instead.

It’s Called Priapism

The Luv Doc

January 27, 2012

What does the doctor do to you if you have a hard-on for more than four hours after taking Viagra? And why is a four-hour hard-on a bad thing? – Chuck

It’s called priapism, named after Priapus, the Greek god of fertility who had an absurdly large and permanently erect penis. As exciting as it sounds, priapism doesn’t make your dick absurdly large. Bummer, right? Seriously – how awesome would it be to have someone look at your johnson and say, “Dude, that thing is absurdly large. You may need to consult a physician.” That is the point at which you say “Right?” and then bump knuckles and blow it up (the knuckles, not your penis). You’ll be feeling swell all right … well, until you develop gangrene and your pecker falls off. OK, here’s an important disclaimer: Even though I am a fake doctor, I have to admit I have never seen a gangrenous dick fall off. That was hyperbole. In fact, I have never even seen a gangrenous dick. Color me blessed. To answer your question, however, if I were a real doctor and I were treating someone for priapism, I might give them and ice pack and a pep talk, or perhaps I would inject the affected corpus cavernosum with alpha-agonists … or, if necessary, surgically insert a shunt, which sounds really nasty (did the doctor just say the “sh” word?) but it’s really just an artificial plastic hole to keep your fluids flowing. Yep, that still sounds pretty nasty. If things took a really desperate turn, I might aspirate the penis. Though it sounds pleasant, “aspirate” is actually a tricky doctor term for the process of sucking fluid out with a bigass syringe. If you’ve ever had a tennis elbow or a trick knee aspirated by a doctor, you know enough to first request a tea glass full of strong whiskey and a leather strap to bite down on. Sounds bad, eh? Well, Chuck, it is. Even if you’re having trouble putting together a mental image, rest assured nothing positive comes from any association of the words “needle” and “dick,” even and especially if it’s what your partner is muttering during sex. Truth is, most people outside the porn industry hadn’t even dreamed of a four-hour erection until they heard the disclaimer at the end of erectile dysfunction commercials. They probably hadn’t heard the term “anal leakage” either – at least until the advent of fat-free potato chips. The modern world is a scary place, Chuck. Try to keep your dick in your pants.

What Next: Truck Taint?

The Luv Doc

January 20, 2012

Dear Luvdoc,
My husband recently got himself a pair of metallic truck nuts and hung them on the back of his Silverado.
I have to say a line’s been crossed.
How do I break it to him gently, Luvdoc, that I don’t want to be driving around in any vehicle that’s got a pair of chrome-plated faux bull testicles attached to it?

Sincerely yours,
Teabagged in Tarrytown

Two words, Teabagged: truck twat. The time has come. It’s what Fox News would call “fair and balanced” (which, by the way, are the names of Rupert Murdoch’s testicles). If your husband has the temerity to tool around River City (or even Buda, for that matter) with a bovine scrote swinging from his hitch, there’s a good chance that whining about his insensitivity won’t put the kibosh on his freeballing. You need to hit him where he’s sensitive … and believe me … people with big cajones are more sensitive than you might think. Once he sees your bitch hitch has wizard sleeves, he might just castrate his Silverado without even being asked. Remember, just like balls: the bigger the better. Make sure your truck twat is massive enough to intimidate even the most confident bull. That should to the trick, but be prepared to up the ante. With a couple of quarts of pig blood, some polyethylene tubing, an IV bag, and a modified fuel pump, you can design a truck twat that hits all phases of the menstrual cycle. Don’t cut him any slack. If you do it right, he will be out there at least three days of every month scrubbing the red stains off the driveway. You might also want to drive a little crazier during those times as well: Cut people off; stop short and get rear-ended; run some reds. He may not get the brilliant symbolism, but rest assured that after a few months’ worth of dealing with a bovine-sized red tide, he’ll be looking for a way to compensate for his small penis that doesn’t involve chrome-plated mountain oysters.

A Mind-Boggling Variety of Sensory Input

The Luv Doc

January 13, 2012

Dear Luvdoc, Why is the sky blue? – Gerald.

Wow Gerald. Maybe you should instead ask yourself why you don’t have access to Google. Whatevs, Google is for chumps anyway. Sure, you can find answers on Google, but if you’re looking for the real truth, you’re going to have to search a little deeper than the collected knowledge of mankind. Besides, you probably already know that the sky is blue because of Rayleigh scattering, a process in which shorter wavelength light (the blue part of the spectrum, which is represented nicely on the cover of Pink Floyd’s 1973 classic Dark Side of the Moon) is absorbed by atmospheric gases – principally nitrogen and oxygen. Fun fact: Lord Rayleigh and the members of Pink Floyd are both from Britain … where light is much scarcer than it is in Texas. In fact, their sky is mostly gray – like their teeth. It’s a total Debbie Downer of a sky. Really, by asking why the sky is blue, you’re asking why the color blue even exists. That’s a tough one. Why does blue even appear on the cosmic design palette? And, even if it does, why isn’t the higher end of the spectrum represented by reds or greens or perhaps some more spectacular colors our eyes are too low-tech to register? More importantly, who or what is in charge of doing the decorating around here, and why can’t we see a completely different set of color swatches … well … without dropping acid? Of course, nobody wants to seem ungrateful for the mind-boggling variety of sensory input the universe already offers, but wouldn’t it be cool if we had some other options? That’s where we drop down the wormhole. We actually do have other options. Those options exist in our imagination. Think Wizard of Oz … Avatar … Willy Wonka (Oompa Loompas, seriously, who did the color swatches on those dudes? Timothy Leary?). We may be hopelessly mired in the physical world, but we are able to invent concepts that exist outside it – or so it seems. Our mental wheels keep spinning long after our train of thought leaves the tracks. Maybe that’s why we can’t easily accept that this color palette is the only one available, pretty as it may be. So why is the sky blue? Perhaps it’s blue simply to imply that there may be a sky that isn’t.

Carpool Etiquette

The Luv Doc

January 5, 2012

Luvdoc,
Ever since my boss learned we live on the same side of town, he keeps asking to ride home with me. How do I tell him no without getting fired? Help!

Uneasy Rider

This is a tough-love approach, but desperate times call for desperate measures: Vomit in your car. Trust me. You can live with the smell of your vomit far longer than someone else can. It’s a fact of nature. However, here’s one important point: Even if you’re one of those people who absolutely detests the idea of blowing beads, make sure you do it yourself. Having a friend or a pet vomit in your car to save yourself the trouble will only cause you to suffer worse in the long run. If you’ve ever had a ferret regurgitate a dead hamster in your backseat, you would totally know what I mean. Plus, if you do the ralphing yourself, you can vividly describe the incident so he’ll associate you with the (ideally) nauseating olfactory sensation. For instance, “I should have known that the layer of fur on my egg salad probably meant that it had gone bad, but I ate it anyway, and then later I puked so hard on your seat that I could feel my anus in the back of my throat.” Yeah, something like that. It also doesn’t hurt if whatever you ingest makes a nice stain … chili is good, spaghetti has some decent staying power, but nothing endures like mustard. Mustard stains linger long after the smell is gone. Maybe knock back a glass of mustard and then tickle the back of your tongue with a toothbrush and see what comes up. If you have the time, let it bake in full sun over the weekend before you make any attempt at cleaning up. Here’s the most important tip: When your boss gets in the car, insist that you can’t smell anything. Keep the windows rolled up and the air on “recirculate.” Not too cool though. You want the car to feel stuffy. If you really want to put a flourish on it, try to let out a long, wet fart sometime during the ride. You can excuse it with a statement like, “I’ve been shitting a river for days.” I know this all seems horrifyingly drastic, but it sure beats being honest with your boss and telling him it makes you uncomfortable to spend so much time with him outside of the office. That would be fucking crazy.

NYE 1977

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December 26, 2011

Saturday night begins the year of the Mayan apocalypse. Time to get your ducks in a row … just in case. It’s true the Mayans did’t invent the wheel or gunpowder or the Internet, but they did come up with the concept of zero and they estimated the solar year to be just slightly longer than 365 days. Chronologically, they deserve at least as much respect as Pope Gregory XIII. Human sacrifice? OK, yeah … mistakes were made. So the Mayans tossed a few slaves into the city water supply every now and then to bring in a good maize crop. Don’t judge. Can you say with absolute certainty that your Whopper doesn’t contain the tip of some Mexican immigrant’s index finger? For all you know, your Whopper isn’t just made by immigrants; it’s made of them. How’s that for transubstantiation? Body of Jesus indeed. Really, how were the ancient Mayans supposed to know that the corn gods wouldn’t be appeased by the blood of innocents? Judging by stone carvings and a few surviving maize scrolls (you call it corn), it would appear that Mayan gods had a serious blood fetish, and they were particularly fond of piercing – tongues … ears … genitalia. That makes sense. There’s a lot of blood down there … at least on warm days and during full moons. And, if you’re cursed with immortality, you’re bound to resort to a little kinkiness after a while. Imagine if Louis XIV had lived a few extra centuries. Rest assured that in that amount of time he would have dreamed up a kink that would have rivaled the Turducken in hedonistic depravity. All the Mayan gods were asking for was an occasional drowned slave and blood drippings from ritualistic piercings. Is that so wrong? Fortunately, like drunken sailors on shore leave, the Mayans were allowed to be seriously F’d up before they got their Prince Alberts (which the Mayans just called “Ouch!”). They smoked wild tobacco and ate mushrooms and peyote (which they also soaked up through enemas because it’s quicker, and after all, what’s an enema when you’re about to spear your foreskin with a stingray spine?). They also licked toads, but before you get on your high horse, make a short list of things you wouldn’t lick if you knew they would deaden the pain of an impending dick piercing. If you’re like most people, you probably wrote down “baboon’s ass” and then scratched it out. Yeah, it’s that short. As long as you’re making lists, now might be a good time to put together a Mayan Apocalypse Bucket List. For instance, if you always wanted a Prince Albert but have been procrastinating, 2012 could be your year. However, you might want to put that on the list right after “morphine enema.” Just sayin’. Whether 2012 is the end of days or just 365 more in an endless succession of days that stretches through the eons, the new year is a good time to reflect, take stock, and plan for the future. Right now though, it’s still the old year, and it’s time to party like the world is about to end. A good place to do that on New Year’s Eve is at the 29th Street Ballroom, where an interesting assortment of local bands will be re-creating the musical magic of the year 1977 by performing songs from bands of the era. Here’s a brief rundown: Party Lines with Johnny Walker will be the Talking Heads, Jason McNeely and members of Flesh Lights will be Cheap Trick, members of Gospel Truth will be Suicide, members of Lola Cola will be the Runaways, Bobby Jealousy will be Blondie, Roky Moon & Bolt will be David Bowie, the Bad Lovers will be the Dead Boys, and the Shivery Shakes will be Television. Wow. That lineup just might be the hallucinogenic cultural enema that precedes the Prince Albert of the Mayan Apocalypse.

Africa Night With Zoumountchi

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December 21, 2011

This year the Lord’s Day is on the Lord’s Day – that being Lord Jr. and Lord Sr., respectively, who just happen to be one and the same. Mazel tov! Regardless of the rationalistic quagmire the birth of the Son of God (or for that matter the Holy Trinity) presents, a day of rest isn’t such a bad idea. Truly, everybody can probably use some down time after the insane mosh pit of materialism leading up to Christmas. Somehow, in less than a century we’ve gone from peppermint to pepper spray, from wassailing to retailing, from Christmas cheer to Christmas fear. Celebrating the birth of Jesus is an expensive affair. It can bankrupt you if you’re not careful … which is what Jesus would have wanted anyway, so whip out that credit card and go berserk. At this time of year everyone spends money like they just won the lottery. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re crazy; it just means they have Christmas spirit – which may be the result of a spiritually enlightened beneficence toward family, friends, and neighbors, or it may be the result of an ingeniously incessant barrage of Pavlovian conditioning concocted by Machiavellian Madison Avenue marketers. Admit it: Every time you hear sleigh bells jingling, you instinctively reach for your credit card. Why not reach for your ankles instead and eliminate the middlemen? Don’t worry, you won’t have to hold that position long. During the Christmas season there is no shortage of bankers walking around with raging hard-ons. It’s the most wonderful time of the year – an invigorating shot of Viagra for the sagging pillars of capitalism. Thank Jesus! Yes, he’s been the reason for the season for nearly the last three millennia – at least since the Romans got on the post-Saturnalia J train. Of course, the three wise men deserve a little credit too, and not just for throwing down with a trifecta of sweet swag for the newborn Jesus – gold (babies love bling!), frankincense (babies like to burn one!), and myrrh (babies love ointment!) – but also for taking the long way home to throw Herod off baby Jesus’ scent (which, one can assume, was fairly pungent after the wise men’s visit). Herod, it turns out, had a hard-on for Jesus (fed by power and greed – sort of like a banker) because folks (wise men included) were claiming that the baby Jesus was the King of the Jews, which would cut in on Herod’s turf. Herod was going to have the wise men rat out baby Jesus, but, as they will in these situations, an angel of the Lord appeared and gave the wise men the 411. Hooray wise men! Hooray angel of the Lord! Except that as a result Herod had every male child in Bethlehem under the age of 2 massacred. “Stormin'” Norman Schwarzkopf would have called that “collateral damage.” Oops. So really, the origins of Christian gift-giving are soaked in the blood of infants and toddlers. At least that explains the red color scheme. The green is just too obvious, and chances are you’ve been coughing it up liberally for a few months now, filling up the empty space beneath your Christmas tree, which may or may not be a metaphor for your soul. The good news is that you’re in the home stretch. There’s daylight on the other side of that Star of Bethlehem, and it’s called January … aka the month of atonement, that meditative time when you figure out it’s who you are not what you have. That’s why the gyms are so crowded. There are other ways to stay in shape that are a bit less narcissistic – dancing for instance, plus with dancing you stand a chance of meeting interesting people. You can do both this Saturday at Africa Night at the Sahara Lounge. That’s when the Sahara’s owner/proprietor Ibrahim Aminou and his band Zoumountchi play a night of high-energy West African dance music. Dance yourself dizzy, meet some fun people, and remind yourself of the roughly 4.6 billion people on Earth who don’t have any Christmas spirit.

Jeff Hughes & Chaparral

The Luv Doc Recommends

December 14, 2011

If you’re too cool to dance country, you’re living in the wrong burg. Pull that stick out and relax, Slick. If you’re that uptight, nobody thinks you’re cool anyway, so you might as well access your inner dork. Yes, Austin may have bottle service, guest lists, and douchey dudes with gelled faux-hawks and tattoos on their shirts, but thank fucking God we’re still in Texas. It’s truly our ace in the hole. Being smack dab in the middle of Texas has its disadvantages, sure, but it keeps our pretentiousness in check. There are still small pockets of authenticity in Austin, even if the authenticity is sometimes so overhyped it makes them seem artificial. The Broken Spoke is one of those pockets. Yes, it’s been called “The Best Honky-Tonk in Texas,” “The Best Country Dance Hall in the Nation,” and a “must-see place when visiting Texas,” which might lead you to believe that Roy Spence is personally handling the Spoke’s publicity, but he’s not. Actually the wizard behind the curtain is none other than owner James White, who, along with his wife, Annetta, has been running the show at the Spoke since the couple built it back in 1964. That’s not a typo; it’s a miracle. Anyone who has dipped a toe in the club business for more than a few weeks knows that it takes a superhuman amount of compassion, love, and patience – the type of God-like qualities that club owners often seek in the bottom of a whiskey bottle or a vial of cocaine. Selling booze certainly invites a hornet’s nest of associated troubles, but it’s a rare breed that has the fortitude and management skills to deal with musicians on a daily basis, much less for 47 years. Imagine if instead of pushing a boulder up a hill, Sisyphus had to herd cats – alcoholic, meth-snorting, pill-popping cats with women problems and car problems and drummer problems and ego problems. In comparison, pushing a rock for eternity is like Zen meditation. To their credit, James and Annetta are Zen enough to keep it simple. They book country dance bands – good ones too. Over the years they’ve had some true legends grace the stage: Bob Wills, Ernest Tubbs, Roy Acuff, Hank Thompson, Tex Ritter, Ray Price, Kitty Wells, Kris Kristofferson, George Strait, and, of course, Willie Nelson. But the Spoke isn’t beloved because it’s a great place for star-watching; it’s beloved because it’s a great place for dancing. Five nights a week, Tuesday through Saturday, the dance floor at the Spoke is generally hopping with all types of dancers: wide-eyed European tourists, adventurous hipsters, starched Wrangler-wearing urban cowboys, blue-collar rednecks, even blue-haired septuagenarians who still like to cut a rug. The skill levels are diverse too, so if you’re not a John Travolta (Bud not Tony), you won’t feel out of place. If you’re polite about it, you can generally find someone to take at least a few spins around the floor. And if you don’t know how to country dance or you’re convinced you just suck at it, show up at 8pm and James and Annetta’s daughter Terri will show you how it’s done … at least enough to give you some training wheels. If you’re still feeling skeptical, carve this Wednesday night out of your schedule and spend it at the Spoke. Get there early, and eat a chicken-fried steak dinner while listening to happy hour regular TJ Bonta. Afterward, head into the big room for dance lessons at 8pm with Terri, so you’ll be ready to roll when Jeff Hughes & Chaparral hit the stage at 9:30pm. Jeff Hughes and his band Chaparral have been country dance favorites in Austin for more than 20 years – and with good reason. They know how to keep the dance floor hopping with a set list that’s as diverse as the city itself: great originals mixed in with cover songs that range from George Jones to Guns & Roses and Conway Twitty to the Cure … yes, that Cure. You’d be surprised at how some songs sound even better with just a little country twang. The same is true of people. Maybe you’re one.

Cherrywood Art Fair 10th Anniversary

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December 7, 2011

No matter what Jesus said, Christmas is no time to jump off the materialism bandwagon. You may think you’re doing good by feeding the hungry or clothing the homeless, but you’re really just perpetuating the recession by spending money on people who can’t reciprocate. That’s just bad math. Jesus might have been a pretty decent carpenter, but he wasn’t much of an economist. “Sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor.” WTF JC? If poor people knew how to manage money they wouldn’t be poor, would they? They would all be fund managers, loan officers, and stock brokers – the kind of criminals it takes hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out – not the toothless meth heads or crack-smoking welfare mommas you can bail out with obtuse promises of sexual favors or a well-laundered pimp roll of fives and ones with a Benjamin wrapped around the outside. Yes, meth and crack generate income, but drug dealers spend almost as little on taxes as 1 Percenters. At least drug dealers have to keep up appearances. So if you’re planning on dropping some coin during the holiday season, do it on the up and up – ideally on a big-bank credit card with an unconscionably usurious interest rate that has an irresistible cash-back incentive. Cash back? Why would you not want to spend money? You would have to be a complete idiot. Speaking of, make sure you’re blowing your credit-card money on someone who will hit you back with an equally exorbitant gift purchased on an equally usurious credit card. This is how we grow the economy – not by volunteering in soup kitchens or clothing drives or by building houses with Habitat for Humanity but by fully embracing the spirit of giving – even if we have to borrow money to do it. After all, didn’t Jesus say, “It’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven?” The good news is that even if you have a Hummer with gold spinny rims, a Rolex Presidential, and a luxury high-rise condo Downtown, as long as you’re over your head in debt, you’re technically poor. You might think you have too much personal integrity to get into heaven on a technicality, but really … if it came down to it … of course you would. Think of those times you got into the VIP section just because you were with a friend. Did you enjoy the top shelf and hors d’oeuvres any less? Did you wish you were slumming it down in the proletarian scrum of the Unimportant People Section? Hardly. A rose by any other pretext still smells as sweet, doesn’t it? Do you think God will know or care if you only buy gifts for people you know will feel obligated to give you something back? Doesn’t it seem a bit arrogant to assume God is checking in on you personally? Doesn’t He have bigger fish to fry? For instance: You gotta figure Kim Kardashian is getting more heavenly attention than you, if only because of media saturation. In fact, she might be sucking up all the creator’s time – just like she does CNN’s. There is a very good chance – in a spiritual sense at least – that you’re flying way under the radar. That’s a liberating thought, isn’t it? Maybe all you have to do to punch your ticket to paradise is make sure your moral compass doesn’t point to hard toward Jersey Shore. Or maybe there’s no paradise at all. Maybe the terrestrial plane is the only plane you get to board and it’s up to you and the rest of the passengers to tidy up the aisles. That last scenario makes a pretty strong argument against buying more shit, but damn it all, it’s the season of giving, and the easiest way to show you’re giving is to actually give something tangible – something you can wrap in paper or at least drop into one of those gift bags that show you’ve had it with gift wrapping. As much as you would like to stimulate the national economy, you might want to reign in your ambition and start local. Selfish as it seems, local stimulation feels pretty good. Try it and see for yourself this weekend at the 10th anniversary of the Cherrywood Art Fair, an annual event that showcases original art from lots of local artists as well as food from local food trucks and live music. This year’s lineup includes Troy Campbell, the Boxcar Preachers, Colin Gilmore, Jeremy Steding, the Coffee Sergeants, and Eric Blakely, among others. That ought to stimulate you well enough.

Fleetwood Mac Hoot Night

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November 30, 2011

Like Joe Paterno jokes, Christmas is just … too soon. Yeah, yeah, broken record. Every year the schmaltz piles thicker and thicker. Maybe if it was somehow discovered that Santa was a child molester … wait a minute, that story is a broken record too. Santa has probably been busted for child molestation countless times. Good God … the elves alone point to some sort of sick, stunted development fetish, but you can bet that no matter how many times Santa ends up in a police lineup it’s never the real Santa. Of course, the same could be said of countless guys named Jesus who would love to be forgiven their transgressions too, but apparently, God doesn’t speak Spanish or post bail. There’s no telling how many legions of pedophiles over the course of history have donned Santa costumes. The thought is staggering … like googol (the number) … or the grains of sand in an hourglass … or the extras cast of Spartacus – the last scene of which, incidentally, was an excellent example of what used to happen when a large group of people claimed to be someone famous. These days the punishment is much less severe. Yes, identity theft is a crime, but it’s not like the mayor of Las Vegas is lining the Strip with crucified Elvises (yes, that’s the plural form, otherwise it would be Elvii, which could just as easily refer to Santa’s little white-knuckled “helpers”). Regardless of the suspiciously nocturnal ramblings of the red-suited, rosy-cheeked, right jolly old elf, no one seems to want to call him on the elves issue. He could probably leash his reindeer to a windowless van with clowns and ice cream painted on the side. It wouldn’t matter. Americans, and arguably the rest of the world, are still “all-in” when it comes to Christmas. There’s no turning back now. Overzealous Christians and profit-grubbing corporations have the largest part of the Western Hemisphere suckling intently on the tit of greed. Sound pessimistic? All right. Fair enough. Christmas is the season of giving, but guess what? By Christian standards, so is the rest of the year. It’s just that the rest of the year all you get out of the spirit of giving is a profound sense of compassion and humanity which inevitably leads to smug self-righteousness, superiority, and a car that doesn’t even have a gas tank. What it never leads to, however, is a Nintendo Wii under a garishly decorated conifer in your living room and stockings stuffed with sweets and swag. Christmas in July is called Meals on Wheels, and even though fat people may still deliver the goods, it’s a totally different vibe. When you give gifts expecting something back, it’s called Christmas. When you give gifts and expect nothing back, it’s called charity. Nobody wants charity, but everybody wants Christmas. Yes, even the Grinch. Remember when his heart grew to three times its size and busted out of its frame? You were there. Wahoo floray motherfucker. There are no charity carols (OK, maybe the theme song on that Sarah McLachlan Debbie Downer dog commercial), charity lights, or charity trees, but there are, thankfully, charity parties. Why? Well, with charity parties you get something back. Is that so wrong? This Friday a seriously fun charity party is happening over at Club de Ville. This party benefits the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians with a Fleetwood Mac Hoot Night. A whole slew of talented entertainers will be on the Mac like a moth on a flame. Plus, there’s a Fleetwood Mac costume contest with an Uchi gift certificate for a grand prize. Here’s the beauty of this deal: If for some reason you don’t feel cool enough to hang out at Club de Ville, relax. This is a Fleetwood Mac Hoot Night. Dork it up all you want. You’ll fit in nicely.