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.

Dudley & Bob’s Pleasure Fest

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February 8, 2010

Aces Lounge

It’s still not too late to break up with your significant other in order to avoid dropping a lot of coin on a Valentine’s present. In these tough economic times, buying lavish gifts that symbolize your love seems a bit irresponsible when you could just write a haiku or maybe shave off your ironic Rip Van Winkle beard. Yes, your girlfriend may say you look like Devendra Banhart, but that’s just love putting lipstick on a pig. Deep in her heart she’d like to wrestle you to the ground and shear you like a cashmere goat. Think of it this way: Would you like it if her cooch looked like Moses? And no, it wouldn’t help if she paired it with skinny jeans, a dirty canvas messenger bag, and some really thin-soled shoes. If you absolutely insist on walking around with a ZZ Top soundtrack playing in your head, you might want to consider upping the ante on the Valentine’s gift. At the very least, you should ditch the haiku for something more epic: perhaps a love sonnet or a Damien Rice/Ray LaMontagne/Michael Buble/James Blunt mix CD. Even if she despises them as much as you do, she will at least give you props for suffering through the selection process, although in the end you might feel less emasculated by shaving the beard. If you’re really broke and need to hit a home run, you could go for the grand gesture. Of course the key to the grand gesture is to think big. Standing under the window holding a jam box blaring Peter Gabriel is a bit cliché, but if you’re a paint-by-numbers type, it’s not a bad way to go. Merely the fact that you’re willing to piss off all her neighbors with such an embarrassingly unoriginal stunt has to be worth something. Plus, she will surely be intrigued by whether or not you had to strangle a homeless person to score a jam box. If you’re an adrenaline junkie, nothing says love like spray paint on the side of a water tower. Ideally, you’ll want to save time by painting a heart symbol with an apostrophe “S” rather than spelling out the actual verb. The apostrophe will let her know that even though you’re an idiot, you’re not stupid. If you’re feeling a lot of anxiety about what to get your boyfriend/husband for Valentine’s Day, don’t. The greatest gift you can give him is an outright denial that Valentine’s Day is a valid holiday to begin with. If you can’t muster that kind of resolve, there is always plan B, which involves an act of selflessness and a five-minute time slot on your day planner. If you want to throw in some candy hearts, that’s sweet, but otherwise, Valentine’s Day accomplished. This isn’t rocket science. It’s easy enough to figure out how to handle the dude side of the Valentine’s equation, but it can be maddeningly frustrating to figure out what a girl wants. What you might see as thoughtfully sexy underwear, she might see as an implication that she is a low-rent whore. On the other hand, you would be foolish to assume you can buy her something practical for V-Day … like a vacuum cleaner or a 36-piece ratchet set. She’ll just point at you and say she already has a tool. If you’re going to be wrong (and there’s about a 50% chance you will be), you might as well be wrong in a way that might turn out right. To help you in this awkward endeavor, the KLBJ Dudley & Bob Morning Show is hosting Pleasure Fest, an evening of adult-themed activities and products that will surely offer a variety of ideas on how to either make or ruin your Valentine’s Day. Besides, if you’re dumb enough to buy her a tool, it might as well be something she can use.

Bob Marley Birthday Party

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February 3, 2010

Flamingo Cantina

Last Thursday Willie Nelson canceled his show in Kenansville, N.C., because of pain in his hand. Shortly before the announcement, six members of Nelson’s band and crew were charged with possession of moonshine and possession of marijuana by local law enforcement officers. The rest of the world understands implicitly that the pain in Willie’s hand was really in his ass, metaphorically speaking, much in the same way the rest of the world knows that if you search one of Willie’s buses, you’re going to find pot, maybe even some corn squeezins. The real question is why law enforcement officers were on the bus in the first place. As insane as it sounds, there are a few possible explanations: Rip Torn might have left his hat and boots outside Willie’s bus door. That would be a red flag for sure. Apparently Torn has been tooling around lately with a loaded .22 caliber revolver in his pocket. Doesn’t sound too lethal until you consider the fact that he once hit Norman Mailer in the head with a hammer for being a shitty director. A hammer. Yes, Mailer probably had it coming, if only for sheer hubris, but even still we don’t want to risk Torn getting ripped on white lightning and emptying his clip on Willie, who everyone knows is a pacifist, despite his duets with Toby Keith. You might also have to call out the Barney Fife Brigade if Osama bin Laden were rumored to be on Willie’s bus. Yes, he would have to be a complete moron to hide out on what has essentially become a rolling lightning rod for every frustrated ex hall monitor-turned-assistant deputy, but it still has the allure of being one of the last places a reasonable person might look. Besides, lose the turban and Osama pretty much looks like any other dude at Mohawk or Liberty … especially if he could fit into some skinny jeans and master the facial memes of middle-class irony. Then again, there could have actually been a fire on the bus. That might explain why North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement officers rushed to the scene. Maybe they were first responders. Maybe they saw a plume of smoke rising from Willie’s bus door and saw an opportunity for heroism. Could you blame them if their hopes were crushed when all they found were a bunch of stoned geezers drinking moonshine – a geriatric analog of Spicoli’s van? Nothing is more depressing than finding out that old people are having more fun than you are – especially when they’re making several times your salary doing it. Why do you think Tommy Chong ended up doing time? You can’t just walk around all the time with a shit-eating grin and not expect to get hassled by the Man. You can, however, ease your anxiety about getting hassled by staying constantly baked. That probably explains why when Bee and the crew were asked to turn over the drugs they did so immediately and without protest. Maybe they even invited the A.L.E. agents to burn one. You never know. Regardless, you can’t bust Willie and his acolytes for smoking pot. It’s un-American. Even Toby Keith would say so. Busting Willie’s people for pot is like sending undercover narcs to a Bob Marley festival: fish in a barrel. There’s no honor in that … barely even any sport. Speaking of, the Flamingo Cantina is celebrating Bob’s birthday this Saturday starting at 9pm with the Mau Mau Chaplains, Don Chani, Subrosa Union, and Winston’s Caribbean Kitchen. You should go down and celebrate with them, but maybe, just to be safe, leave your moonshine at home.

Hope for Haiti Benefit

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January 26, 2010

Antone’s CLOSED

That breathtaking pinkish sunrise is not a good sign. Yes, it’s pretty – the kind of daybreak that appears in all your better Southwestern tourist brochures – but it also can be the harbinger of an ugly day for allergy sufferers. Cedar pollen is a sure sign that Adam and Eve really screwed the pooch with the whole forbidden fruit incident. The realization that they were naked was only a very small portion of the package of affliction and misery the Old Testament God had in store. There is so much bewilderingly evil and nasty shit in nature it can only be explained by a malevolent and vengeful God. No doubt cedar pollen is solidly on the list, but there are plenty of other menacing phenomena that top it by far. For instance: porcupines. Jesus, what the fucking fuck? A varmint entirely covered in needles. It’s like an animal designed by prank-store employees. Really, God? Is that some sort of sick payback for the apple? Then of course you have skunks, which look exactly like something you might want to pet … right up to the point when they lift their cute bushy tails. Piranha? Piranhas would maybe make a little sense if Eve had been caught strangling puppies or gerbiling or something, but even still, piranhas seem like a gross over-reaction. At most, an apple is worth an earwig or some bot flies or maybe an ugly case of herpes. Yes, it could be argued that the Lord was acting on principal when he cast A&E out of the garden. In fact, the real punishment for eating from the tree of knowledge is knowing that your God thought it was OK to create a menagerie of other creatures that can eat you, maul you, sting you, strangle you, clobber you, maim you, and hurt you in ways too bizarre for any mentally healthy person to imagine. Crocodiles? Why? Imaginative, yes, but couldn’t all those fish, varmints, waterbucks, zebras, and the like just have died of old age? Must baby fawns be torn to pieces by packs of wolves? Is that really necessary? A world with so much violence and treachery makes a strong argument for either a maniacally sadistic micromanager or a scatterbrained absentee landlord – somebody who drunkenly jizzed in a tide pool then flew off to another galaxy in his silver spaceship. Neither of these models is entirely satisfying, but the latter is much more comforting. Knowing that God was actually pulling the levers when more than 150,000 Haitians were crushed in an earthquake two weeks ago doesn’t really bode well for the afterlife. Would you want to eat at the same Taco Bell where a bunch of people died from E. coli the week before? Even though it’s on a comically smaller scale, the whole cedar pollen problem raises similar questions. Isn’t there a less obnoxious way for trees to mate? Do we have to be covered in a monthlong toxic pink pollen money shot? Do we even need cedar (aka mountain cedar, Juniperus Mexicana)? All it’s ever brought us is nasty pollen, brush fires (proof of a benevolent God?), and shitty bases for glass-topped coffee tables. If you stay awake trying to answer these questions, you probably can’t sleep because your head is pounding with sinus pressure – either that or you’re going insane. Same difference. Trying to understand why cedar trees exist is a pointless exercise – sort of like trying to understand why Taco Bell chose the Beefy 5-Layer Burrito for its 89-cent special. You will never understand that type of insanity unless you’re insane yourself, and the juice probably isn’t worth the squeeze. All you can really do is react to it in a way that seems sane and responsible. That’s exactly what some generous musicians will be doing this Sunday at Antone’s when they perform for the Hope for Haiti Benefit, a fundraiser for victims of the Haitian earthquake. $15 gets you a night of music from Love at War, Johnny Goudie, Suzanna Choffel, Nina Singh, Kathy Valentine, and Savannah Welch, and it might at least help ease someone else’s misery.

An Evening With Chastity and Alan Jr.

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January 20, 2010

Salvage Vanguard Theater

If it hasn’t happened already, there will come a time in your life when you have to show your ass in public. If you’re lucky, you’ll be really wasted and your face will be blurred when the video shows up on YouTube. The more likely scenario is that you will show your ass in a more metaphorical sense: Expose yourself publicly to the withering criticism and derision of others. Some people like to call this type of vulnerability life. They tend to suck it up and get on with it. Others will try to forestall this eventuality by ducking below the radar. After all, as the saying goes, the tallest blade of grass gets cut first. So, to avoid embarrassment, they bury themselves in remote corner cubicles of sprawling government bureaucracies, spend their days filing mimeographed (that’s right, this is the government we’re talking about here) triplicate copies of mimeographed triplicate copies. Others go entirely off the grid, toiling away on some sustainable organic farm, spending their days plowing, weeding, watering, and milking things like goats, cows, and father time. Then there are those who go underground – hole themselves up for years in the windowless basements of their mothers’ houses, day trading, surfing porn, and playing World of Warcraft. These are all fairly low-risk strategies. Yes, it is risky … brave even … to offer yourself up as a meatshield for your fellow Blood Elves in your skirmish with Skullsplitter trolls in Stranglethorn Vale, but even if you do get gloriously ganked in WoW, you’ll still be alive (although nearly invisible) in the real world. You might even think you’re safe, but it’s just an illusion. Often an uglier fate awaits those who try to avoid fate altogether. As it says in the book of Matthew, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Sounds like a halfhearted pep talk for all the suckers getting left behind in the rapture. Awesome. You definitely get some nice real estate in that deal, but you also get places like Mogadishu, Peshawar, and Port Arthur. Thanks for nothing, J-Dawg. Or, maybe the “inheritance” thing is meant to be a confidence builder. People who own a lot of stuff seem to have a limitless supply of confidence and self-worth. Look at Jerry Jones … Mark Cuban … The Donald. Those guys don’t seem to be embarrassed about anything. Imagine the type of arrogant dickhead you would have to be if you owned the earth. You would probably end up walking around like a 2-year-old saying: “Mine! Mine! Mine!” In reality, whether you believe it or not, you do own the earth … at least as much as anyone else does. The big question is whether or not you choose to be a selfish dickhead or a generous caretaker. Ideally you’ll want to peacefully share yourself and the world with others, thereby enriching their experiences and yours. To do so you will have to show your ass on occasion, expose yourself to injury, take some risks. It’s really not so bad, and you may learn along the way that your ass isn’t all that special anyway. Throughout January, Fronterafest plays host to a whole bunch of people hell-bent on showing their asses as it hosts its 17th annual fringe festival, five weeks of fringe theatre from all types of performers from all over the country. At 7:15pm this Saturday, Jan. 23, at the Salvage Vanguard Theater, Chicago comedians Alan Metoskie (Texas expat) and Zoe Schwartz bring you An Evening With Chastity and Alan Jr., a country and western musical comedy revue. Chicagoans doing a country and western comedy revue in Texas is risky, but that’s what fringe theatre … and life … is about, isn’t it?

Stool Pigeon Featuring the Stories of Charlie Hodge and Becca Peterson

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January 13, 2010

ColdTowne Theater

Austin spends a lot of time staring lovingly at itself in the mirror, masturbating. Why not? It’s relatively young, good-looking, and well endowed. It’s full of parks, greenbelts, watering holes (both kinds), and lots of exciting live entertainment. Hey, not every city can be pretty and popular. There are also lots of shiny new buildings popping up everywhere. Austin just keeps getting prettier and prettier. For instance, you’d be hard-pressed to find an actual warehouse in the Warehouse District – especially the type of bombed-out, broken-window-paned, graffiti-scrawled anachronisms for which it was named. The only thing industrial going on in Downtown Austin these days is the occasional Ministry song on the Saturday night playlist at Elysium. It’s cool. This isn’t the rust belt; it’s idea city. Amazingly, out-of-town venture capitalists, rich retirees, and fun-loving rubes of all types have bought into the idea of Austin like few other cities in America. Maybe it has something to do with Austin’s incessant shitstorm of hype: Austin is creative. Austin is open-minded. Austin is fun. Austin is friendly. Austin is entertaining. Whether motivated by cunning self-interest or monumental hubris, we Austinites have been pimping our city with evangelical fervor for decades – so much so that people in other parts of the state and country are now doing it for us, gratis. Mission accomplished. Austin is truly one bangin’ burg. The big question now is whether or not the people buying into all those shiny new buildings will buy into the Austin aesthetic as well. Will they go out and get their nails dirty in the grungier side of Austin culture, or will they stick to the places that are cleaner, less cluttered, and culturally homogeneous? If anything, the Austin aesthetic is constantly being redefined, both in a physical sense by the type of businesses that are able to thrive in such a quickly changing cultural environment and by the people who contribute to that culture. Ultimately a lot of the funkiness (whether organic or contrived) of Downtown Austin has been squeezed out into less dense and less expensive areas not within an easy walk of high-rise residents. Those fun-loving condo buyers are slowly being hemmed in by the types of businesses and culture they were presumably trying to escape. Maybe it’s no big deal. Austin is still an excellent place for the rich to go slumming, if only for the fact that Central Austin has very few slums, just areas filled with middle-class suburban expatriates that look slummy. How’s that for a win-win? If you’re one of those fun-loving condo dwellers looking to do a little slumming this weekend, try ColdTowne Theater this Saturday for Stool Pigeon, a series of improv comedy sketches based on the stories of local guest celebs, in this case Geeks Who Drink quiz queen Becca Peterson and Charlie Hodge, the quick-witted quarterback of KLBJ’s Charlie Hodge Rock ‘n’ Roll Half-Time Show.

BCS National Championship at Alamo Ritz

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January 6, 2010

Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz

Austin is a pretty cool town. Thankfully, it’s not too cool for football. Austinites will dork out for a Longhorn game every bit as much as they will for a Buttnumbathon, a Makers Faire, or an Eeyore’s. Admittedly, Longhorn fans are by far a scarier brand of dork than you will find at most other Austin events. Not only are they usually amped up on adrenaline and testosterone, they’re often holding back some serious pent-up rage, mainly the residual effect of watching four hours of Greg Davis’ offensive coordinating. Dear, sweet, merciful Jesus, for once could you please tell Mr. Davis to just let the big dogs eat? This three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust shit may be taking its toll on the opposing defense, but it’s even more exhausting for the fans. Who knows how many aneurysms, broken TV screens, and cases of domestic violence were the result of the 2009 Big 12 Championship game? Sure, the final one second was exciting, but the rest of it was like spending an afternoon at the Department of Motor Vehicles. At least Nebraska fans got the vicarious thrill of watching Ndamukong Suh toss the Texas offensive line around like a bunch of rag dolls. The only thing missing was the eponymous Johnny Cash song as background music. Don’t worry, ABC will surely queue that up at some point in the BCS pregame show. Still, regardless of all the bitching (or perhaps in spite of it) big Greg’s offense put up just enough points to get the Longhorns to the dance once again. Years from now in the historically embellished retelling of the glorious 2009 season, it will be the golden toe of Hunter Lawrence that gets all the glory. And tiny Hunter slew the Goliath Ndamukong with the graceful sweep of his European-soccer-style kick, and the fans burst onto the field and did hoist him upon their shoulders and laud his name. The real story however, took place up in the lonely press box high above the field, where ol’ Greg Davis took off his headset, leaned back in his chair, and as is his custom, said a little prayer of thanks to the Lord for letting him feed off the entrails of Will Muschamp’s defense once again. So, what does all this have to do with you tapping some strange? Next to nothing. Regardless of how it’s portrayed on gay porn sites, football is mostly a sexless endeavor. Those well oiled, accidental, post-steam-bath, locker-room three-ways involving the tight end, punter, and fullback never really happen … unless they actually take place on a porn film set. This is not to say that you can’t get as lucky as Hunter Lawrence and the Longhorns at a football game. Au contraire. In Texas, football is as legitimate a foreplay technique as beaver slapping and tonsil hockey and, ultimately, equally successful. Plus, like sex, you don’t need to know much about football to enjoy it. You just need to be enthusiastic and get your game face on. If you’re one of those few remaining hermits or foreigners who hasn’t decided whether football is for you, a good way to test it out is at the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz, where Thursday night it will be shoring the BCS National Championship on the big screen … for free! The theatre should be full of Longhorn fans, but you can reserve a seat by purchasing a $5 food and drink voucher online. With so many people wearing such an ugly shade of orange, you should be able to talk someone out of their clothes. Hey, the Longhorns got lucky. Maybe you can too.

The Gourds New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball

The Luv Doc Recommends

December 29, 2009

When the big ball drops Thursday night, the Aughts will become the shoulda’s. You’re probably planning on spending the evening in quiet, contemplative thought, torturing over the mishaps and missed opportunities of the last decade. There are certainly lessons to be learned. For instance: Presidents of the United States should at least be able to maintain a B average … even at Yale … even if they’re cheerleaders. In retrospect that doesn’t seem to be too much to ask, but sometime in the last decade a lot of people went to the polls thinking that if below average was good enough to sell Amway, drive a semi, work a backhoe, or maintain a plumber’s crack, it should work fine for the Oval Office too. Turns out they were dead wrong. Sadly, a lot of their sons and daughters didn’t have the luxury of being wrong. They were just dead. George Bush and the extended Bush family didn’t contribute any of their bloodline to that corpse pile, nor did most of the rich people in America … nor will they ever. Happily, some rather major advances were made in robot technology in the last decade that are allowing more and more soldiers to pull joysticks instead of triggers. Increasingly, robots and robotic technology are being used on the front lines of the war on terror. The day may soon (perhaps already has?) come when the son of a drywall mudder from Round Rock will be able to fly a remote-control nanobot up Osama bin Laden’s nose which will burrow its way to his heart in a matter of minutes. So we have that to look forward to … as well as all of its terrifying potential abuses. We also learned that when it comes to being abusive, America is in the Top 10 with a bullet. We are, it would seem, some sadistic motherfuckers, given the right circumstances. Actually, we always have been. We just forgot. Vietnam was quite a while ago, and all the guys who beat the shit out of captured Nazis after World War II are mostly dead. We shouldn’t have been surprised about renditions or waterboarding or prisoner abuse though. It’s hard to find people who are willing to kill people, get shot at, and simultaneously maintain compassion, empathy, and understanding for their enemies. Maybe we can build a robot for that, or maybe we shouldn’t try. We also found out in the last decade that we can be blitheringly incompetent. We crashed a space shuttle, botched a hurricane relief effort, and most recently sent the world economy into a tailspin because we let the greedheads run amok in the world of finance. Now we’re 10% unemployed and in the hole for trillions of dollars – most likely to the Chinese. In 2000 we had a $230 billion surplus. Right now the deficit is $1.84 trillion. That’s a $2 trillion swing. Every man, woman, and child are roughly eight grand in the hole. Oh where are you now charming Billy? Leaving out those under the age of consent for rhetorical purposes, you’d be hard pressed to find many average Americans who wouldn’t Lewinski the prez for eight large … at least on the DL, and you have to figure by now Clinton has learned to keep his mouth shut. At least the Chinese are now making enough money to be the largest new-car market in the world. They also will be pumping out an unprecedented amount of greenhouse gases, so your Hyde Park bungalow might end up being beachfront property in the next 10 years. If only you could go in the sun for more than a few minutes without being riddled with basal cell carcinomas. Yes, all of this sounds pretty bleak, but there’s hope. It said so right there on the Obama campaign poster. In fact, the future’s so bright you might be blinded if you look directly into it. Starting on Jan. 1, America is going to begin building a new, green economy that will create millions of new jobs and lead to unprecedented prosperity. This new prosperity will foster social, physical, intellectual, and spiritual enlightenment that will end all war, conflict, and suffering throughout the world. That’s the thing about the future: You can’t say it won’t happen. One thing that will be happening (if it’s not already in the past when you read this) is the Gourds New Year’s Eve Masquerade Ball at the Independent. If history tell us anything, it’s that people really get their freak on when they feel anonymous, and unless you’re one of those people who dresses up in real life, this should be a great opportunity to experiment with being something you’re not. You might even get to do someone you’re not, too. Plus, you’ll be benefiting the brave new world, because the proceeds benefit the YMCA Partner of Youth Campaign, which provides financial assistance for programs and services to deserving Austin families.