First Friday Frolic

January 5, 2011

Club de Ville CLOSED

It’s scary out there. Birds are dropping from the sky. Fish are washing up dead. Crazy shit is happening. The good news is that it’s mostly in Arkansas, and Arkansas is always scary and crazy. Then again, God may just be pissed about the new Walmart logo, which is surely by now universally acknowledged as a line-art replica of a puckered anus. Hey Waltons, times are bad, but do we need to be reminded of it by the old red-eye (well, technically it’s yellow, which may be a nod – wink? – at Walmart’s largest trading partner)? More likely it’s symbolic of how the average Walmart customer feels when shopping there. It’s like a little, yellow warning sign that says if you want low, low prices, you’re going to have to bend over. As for the birds and fish, it seems unlikely that God would take his Wal-wrath out on them, but God always seems to throw curveballs when it comes to moral logic. For instance: The Haitian earthquake. Dude, WTF? Sure, the Haitians are big pot smokers and dabble in voodoo – hell, some of them probably even occasionally engage in acts of sodomy – but that shit seems a little much, especially when there are so many other more deserving assholes. Maybe God hasn’t yet invented smart-wrath technology. Maybe that earthquake in Haiti was supposed to smite Osama bin Laden and God missed by a few thousand miles. Hey, it’s a big universe, so it’s probably a miracle He was within a few light years, right? By that measure the floods in Pakistan were nearly a bull’s-eye. Who knows? It’s possible God actually did smite Osama with the Pakistani floods. Osama can’t be much of a swimmer with that bum kidney and hipster beard. Glub glub. If he’s still alive, well, he’s going to catch hell when he gets to hell, that’s for sure. Then again, maybe Satan will go easy on him for being such a massive dickhead. If hell has a VIP section, you have to think Osama has earned a spot in it. Walmart, on the other hand, may be evil, but it hasn’t yet busted its homicidal cherry. If there was money in it, maybe, but Walmart would prefer to keep you around to enjoy its shitty, plastic-tasting food and cheaply made, ill-fitting clothing until you die from cadmium poisoning. Hey, if you want to live longer, don’t suck on your Chinese-made plastic jewelry. In fact, you should probably ask yourself why you’re buying Chinese-made plastic jewelry in the first place. Maybe God actually does have smart-wrath technology, but it only works on stupid people. That doesn’t help explain the dead birds in Arkansas however. Yes, birds are stupid, but they’re intelligently designed to be stupid. You can’t fault them for that. They are, by nature, bird-brained. They are also blessed with the undeniable innocence of the simpleminded. So really, the best explanation must be that those birds in Arkansas were the beginning of the Rapture. Yep, it’s the end of times, and apparently those nitwitted critters scored first-class seats on the flight to eternal bliss. Either that or they made first contact with some really hostile aliens. Either scenario doesn’t bode well, so it’s time to seriously ramp up the partying. Good thing it’s Free Week down on Red River. No cover charge means you can spend more money on booze – booze that kills brain cells, ideally the ones that are stressing about the dead birds. Get your party started at Club de Ville, a laid-back bar with reasonably priced drinks and skilled bartenders. This Friday, the free weekend kicks off with First Friday Frolic, a gratis lineup of local acts including BK & Mr. E, Eagle Eye Williamson, Erin Ivey, Monarchs, Stereo Is a Lie, One Hundred Flowers, DJ I Wanna Be Her, and DJ uLOVEi. Rest assured the beats will carry you away before the Rapture does.

ew Year’s Eve With the Diamond Smugglers and Pong

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December 29, 2010

Continental Club

Good to finally put a fork in 2010. The prepubescence of the 21st century has been hell so far, but maybe things will turn around in 2011. After all, it’s a brand-new year, right? Anything can happen, and that’s sort of the problem. We’re currently overwhelmed by ominous signs of an impending apocalypse, and God may not be merciful enough to smite us with a huge asteroid or crush us with a black hole. It might be much uglier than that. The world financial system might collapse. The ice caps might melt. Justin Bieber might get married. You don’t have to be Nostradamus to get the sneaking suspicion that God is just one more dumbass mortal fuckup away from shaking the creationary Etch A Sketch. In fact, at this point the Mayan calendar would seem like a pretty good bet if it weren’t for the fact that the Mayans were into human sacrifice and worshiped a corn god (they call it maize). The end of days may indeed be upon us, but before you start burying gold in your backyard or learning how to tread water indefinitely, consider that there may still be a way out of this mess: Learning from our mistakes. Yes, we can keep fighting the same stupid wars, filling our engines with dinosaur juice, and buying mountains of useless plastic crap, but it doesn’t mean we have to. As the saying goes, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” Thus, in the spirit of evolutionary progression, here is a short laundry list of the mistakes of 2010 that we should avoid repeating: 1) Hipster beards. Just fucking quit it. You look ridiculous. An overabundance of facial hair is perfectly fine for lumberjacks, Hasidic Jews, hermits, and fat old Mexican ladies, but on a 23-year-old bartender wearing a Hot Topic Misfits T-shirt and skinny jeans, it just looks stupid. That shit is over – just like full-sleeve tattoos and cock-ring-sized ear gauges. Hint: If you think you look like David Cross or Iron & Wine (fuck you, we know his name is Sam Beam), you probably actually look like the Lucky Charms leprechaun or Al from Home Improvement – and no, that doesn’t make you ironic; it makes you a douche. Shave that shit off, and let your girlfriend use it as a merkin. 2) Clothing with tattoo designs. Call it Ed Hardy or Christian Audigier or Rue 21 – just call it over. Anytime your shirt looks like the one being worn by the chubby singer from Rascal Flatts, it’s time for a wardrobe rethink. Plus, if you’re too much of a pussy to actually get a crucifix tattooed on your skin, having a BeDazzled one on your clothing doesn’t make up for it. 3) Fedoras. No. If you want to look like your grandfather, start drinking Old Crow and chain-smoking Pall Malls. A fedora just makes you look like a Josh Groban wannabe … or worse yet, Kid Rock. 4) Scarves/kaffiyeh/whatever. If it has tassels and looks like you stole it from a dead Taliban, it doesn’t belong on you, much less your Labrador. Scarves are never appropriate in Austin. Ever. Not even if you have a neck wattle like Andy Griffith. 5) Vibram Five Fingers. This is an evolutionary shoe design in that it attempts to prove you descended from monkeys by making you look like one. Either that, or it’s proof that the Italians hate us. Either way, the only appropriate time for wearing these shoes is if you’re getting shrimped by a South African prostitute. 6) Snarky comments about meaningless fashion trends. There are bigger, more important fish to fry, aren’t there? Yes, of course there are, but no one wants to read about BP oil spills, global warming, or dying whale otters (Seriously? Did you just try to iPhone that?), much less do something about them. It’s a brand-new year. Time to party! If you’re one of those people who like making fun of what other people take seriously, then you are going to love New Year’s Eve at the Continental Club, where cherished Neil Diamond tribute band The Diamond Smugglers will be holding forth along with local space groovers Pong. No one skewers the Diamond like the Smugglers, and Pong is the perfect antidote for the smirking arm folders who will surely attend. At least if 2011 swirls further into the shitter, you’ll be able to say you finished 2010 on a high note.

Armadillo Christmas Bazaar

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December 22, 2010

Palmer Events Center

There are probably a few money shots left to be fired in your annual orgy of excess. Sure, the economy is deep in the shitter and the red Chinese have us by the shorthairs, but that isn’t conclusive evidence that you need to rein in your consumerism. Who knows? America may only be a few hundred million maxed-out credit cards away from economic salvation. One thing is for certain: You’re not going to kick-start an economic recovery by sitting home singing Christmas carols, drinking eggnog, and stringing together popcorn garlands. That’s exactly the kind of tedious sweatshop work we used to pawn off on Third World orphans. Think about it: If stringing popcorn garlands is so fun, why isn’t there a Nintendo Wii game based on it? Even golf has a Wii game, and golf is just slightly more exciting than an afternoon nap … or maybe death itself – which may explain why so many old people play it. All golf requires is that you move slightly faster than the grass growing beneath your feet. If you can’t do that, just rent a golf cart – or buy a Wii. Wiis might be made by the Japanese, but they’re as American as apple pie. After all, this country was founded on the idea that if you work hard enough, eventually you can afford something or someone that will do the work for you. Remember when Tom Sawyer had to paint his Aunt Polly’s fence? He conned the neighborhood kids into doing it for him. Tom Sawyer is an American hero – just like the young men and women in our armed forces who pilot attack drones. Drone piloting surely lacks the glamour of humping it through the Helmand River Valley with 100-plus pounds of assorted gear and weaponry, but it definitely gets the job done, proving yet again that with enough money nearly anything is possible. Stringing popcorn garlands and singing Christmas carols doesn’t pay for attack drones or swarms of poison-injecting assassin nanobots. Buying a Nintendo Wii does, however. It also provides good training for the war of the future. Sharpened sticks are out; joysticks are in. Someday, if Americans can just cough up the cash, the roughly 1.4 million active U.S. military personnel in the world will all be equipped with their own predator drone and pocketful of poison-injecting assassin nanobots. That way they can sit safely in some underground bunker and unleash unmitigated hell on whichever unfortunate meat puppet has the audacity to challenge truth, justice, and the American way. As always, the tricky part to making this happen is coming up with the money. We can’t just ask the red Chinese to fork over trillions of dollars for us to build an unstoppable remote-controlled robot army. The red Chinese are not chumps. We have to backdoor this deal by mindlessly running up our credit-card debt. That will put the economy on hyperdrive and allow for some really lavish defense spending. Yes, at some point the red Chinese will try to collect their money, but all our military might rest assured that the knock on America’s door will be a very polite, timid tap. Of course, if you’re going to spend money to preserve America’s military world dominance, there’s no better place to do it than at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar, which runs daily from 11am to 11pm through Christmas Eve at the Palmer Events Center. The Armadillo Christmas Bazaar is an Austin institution and a great place to purchase unique and interesting gifts made by Austin-area artists. You’ll also get to hear live music performed by some of Austin’s most beloved bands. Who knows? Something this fun might eventually end up on a Nintendo Wii … or maybe some things are just too much fun for a joystick.

Randy Willis 15th Annual Pickin’ on Christmas and Birthday Party

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December 13, 2010

Dallas Nightclub

Dec. 25 is just around the corner, and the war on Christmas is really heating up. Not only is Christmas under heavy assault from the politically correct left, who for years have been insidiously leaving the “Christ” out of Christmas or nixing the entire name in favor of the more generic and inclusive “holidays,” it is also taking a huge hammering from corporate greedmongers with multimillion-dollar marketing budgets who quite wisely have appropriated the symbols of Christmas if maybe not the actual name. Big business is all over Christmas like a wet Santa suit, and why wouldn’t it be? After all, appropriating other peoples’ holidays is a tradition that dates all the way back to Adam – yeah, that Adam. Christmas itself has been a big holiday ever since it was Saturnalia. That Roman gift-giving holiday was a stroke of genius, and the early Christians knew it. Of course, they had to gloss over the fact that Jesus wasn’t much of a shopper. Far from it. Jesus was actually a bit of a hippie (or maybe his beard was just ironic, and he rocked a pair of jorts under that tunic). He was also a peace creep and an unrepentant (imagine that) inclusionist. He was down with the lepers, the hos, the paralytics, the blind (which probably translates as “visually impaired” in Nazarean), the mentally ill, the sick, the dead, and, most importantly, the poor. Back in the first century, the poor people smelled nearly as bad as the dead ones, so caring for the poor was really taking one for Team Yahweh, so to speak. Really, the only thing that really got under Jesus’ skin (besides a crown of thorns, some 9-inch nails, and a centurion’s lance) was when he saw that moneychangers had set up shop in the temple of Jerusalem. Jesus went Billy Jack and started turning over tables, setting doves and livestock free … all that shit. It’s fairly safe to say that Jesus wasn’t much of a materialist. If anything, he was hostile to materialism. Jesus didn’t ride into Jerusalem on a chariot with spinny rims; he rode in on an ass. That’s a statement. That’s like Obama rolling up to the White House on a shitty moped. Jesus didn’t wear bling or nice clothes. He didn’t dine at fancy restaurants or go clubbing with his posse. Instead, he walked around with a growling stomach and dropped mindbombs on his disciples – stuff like, “Sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor.” Boooom! Given that sentiment, it seems rather obvious that these days Christmas itself is a war on Christianity. Best Buy isn’t having a “Give to the Poor” sale. That Mercedes with a bow tied around it isn’t waiting outside a homeless camp. Those Zales holiday charm bracelets won’t end up on the arms of war orphans. If Jesus were alive today (at least in a materialistic sense), he’d be waging his own war on Christmas. He’d probably be lobbying to have his name taken out of Christmas entirely. What would Christmas be without the Christ? Just “mas,” which means “more” in Spanish and pretty much nails the spirit of the season. At least then no one would have to fret over the war on Christmas and everyone could continue buying mas shit they don’t need without the nagging guilt of Christian morality. Sounds like a win-win, doesn’t it? Until then we’ll just have to settle for rampant materialism slowed by occasional attempts at Christian charity. One of those is happening this Saturday at Dallas Nightclub, where local music impresario Randy Willis is hosting his 15th annual Pickin’ on Christmas and Birthday Party, a live music concert benefiting the Travis County Brown Santa Toy Drive. For the price of one toy, you can see a lineup that includes Johnny Rodriguez, Vallejo, LC Rocks, Jeff Gallagher, the Cheyenne Band, Steven Franks, and Lucas Cook. That’s a lot of music for only one toy. Maybe you can bring mas.

SIMS Benefit Bash

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December 8, 2010

Austin Music Hall

Mental health is a bit of a sticky wicket – especially where musicians are concerned. It’s no wonder. The constant vacillation between unbridled egomania and soul-crushing self-doubt is bound to leave a few frayed ends. It’s difficult enough for the average person to cobble together a sense of identity and self-worth. Musicians tend to compound the difficulty by pressuring themselves to be much more interesting than they really are – to be larger than life. The type of wacky, harebrained behavior that would land the average person in the loony bin (if such bins still existed) is actually tolerated and even encouraged in musicians. After all, normal isn’t very entertaining is it? The result is a whole slew of aberrant dress and bizarre behavior. Consider the questionably pedophiliac, body-mutilating, androgynous insanity of Michael Jackson (arguably one of the greatest entertainers of all time), or the karate chopping, UFO-sighting, rhinestone jumpsuit-wearing (also questionably pedophiliac) Elvis, who may or may not have been involved with the FBI, CIA, and extraterrestrials. Throw in a goat, a monkey, and a 50-gallon drum of Vaseline, and you have one seriously bizarre clusterfuck. Unfortunately, in the music world that’s the kind of thing it takes to get noticed. Liberace was probably at one time a fairly unremarkable Polish kid from Wisconsin; Madonna was just a high school cheerleader from Pontiac, Mich.; the members of Kiss were just hardworking metal musicians from the boroughs; and GG Allin was just a boy from Vermont who was born with the name Jesus Christ Allin, cross-dressed for the last three years of high school, did a stint at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, and made a career(?) out of urinating, defecating, flinging feces, bleeding, and vomiting onstage. OK, so maybe Jesus was crazier than a shit-house rat from start to finish, but he still managed to get gigs, and that’s the point really. In the music business, there is always someone willing to encourage and reward insanity. Lady Gaga is a pretty good singer and all, but could she make it without the meat dress? Or the bubble dress? Or the Kermit the Frog dress? At some point her career will slow down and she’ll end up paying Franc Fernandez to design her a dress out of dalmatian puppy hides, human placentas, or maybe circumcised foreskins. At some point you either decide to wear the hamster carcass earrings or end up doing matinee shows in Branson, Mo. In music, you’re either on your way up or on your way down. In one night you can go from windmilling power chords in front of a club full of screaming fans to washing your underwear in a gas station restroom on the interstate. One month your album is at the top of the charts; the next month it’s not even on the charts. One night you’re on Leno, the next night you’re on Leno. It’s no surprise that many musicians try to even out the peaks and valleys with drugs and alcohol, which are always easily available. Often as not, they only amp up the insanity, and bartenders and drug dealers aren’t necessarily predisposed or trained to deal with complex emotional and psychological issues – especially if they’re not getting paid. Thankfully Austin has an organization that offers musicians opportunities to seek help from people who are trained to deal with psychological and substance abuse issues. It’s called the SIMS Foundation, and this Saturday it’s hosting the SIMS Benefit Bash at the Austin Music Hall, a fundraising concert featuring a who’s who of Austin Musicians: Eliza Gilkyson, Ian McLagan, Will Sexton, David Garza, Graham Reynolds, Kat Edmonson, Don Harvey, Brownout, Lauren Larson, Ruby Jane Smith, Amy Cook, Mark Andes, and Scrappy Jud Newcomb, among others. For less than the price of a round of Jäger shots, you can show some musicians how much you appreciate them in a way that actually does them some good.

Holiday Hat Party 2010

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December 1, 2010

Speakeasy

P.J. O’Rourke once wrote: “A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.” When you have a fat Irish head the size of P.J. O’Rourke’s, those are definitely words to live by. There is also a strong case against hats being made by the resurgence of straw fedoras – especially those worn in conjunction with clothing featuring tattoo designs. Wearing a straw hat with a Christian Audigier knockoff shirt doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a douche; it just means you probably shop where they shop. Is that so wrong? Not everyone can rock a chapeau like Justin Timberlake, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try. It seems to be working for Jason Mraz and Kid Rock (and really, as long as you’re going to rip off other people’s music …). There’s nothing inherently wrong with wearing an interesting old hat that you found in a thrift store or your grandfather’s attic. However, if you’re wearing a hat you found in the accessories aisle at Walmart, you just might be a douche. Don’t worry though; the mere fact that you found it at Walmart means that there are thousands, if not millions, of other people who did exactly the same thing, so you’re not alone. Plus you probably saved the job of some 8-year-old Chinese orphan. Here’s the thing: Straw fedoras aren’t inherently douchey, they just end up on the heads of a lot of douches. Straw fedoras don’t make douches in the same sense that guns don’t kill people. It’s a symbiotic relationship at best. The crazy thing is that hats are every bit as utilitarian as any other piece of haberdashery. Baseball caps keep the sun out of your eyes, stocking caps keep your head warm, hard hats prevent head injuries, and cowboy hats attract drunk blond chicks. Not surprisingly, hat types are myriad and vary in relation to functionality. There are some hats, however, that seem to serve no purpose other than to just look fucking ridiculous. You might be tempted to lump Kid Rock’s fedora into this group, but that might be a mistake. Think about the big, foam cowboy hats you see at football games (really, any hat made of foam is ridiculous – be it a leprechaun, pimp, cheese, or pirate). Top hats and bowlers are pretty F’d up too (well, except for the one Lena Olin wore in The Unbearable Lightness of Being), so are beer caps, fezzes, yarmulkes, huge sombreros, and pretty much anything worn at Churchill Downs on Derby Day. Keep in mind: There is no shame in wearing a truly ridiculous hat. The mere fact you’re wearing it means you’re comfortable with sacrificing your dignity and ego, and nothing is cooler than a willingness to be a complete dork. If you want to get in on some serious dork action this weekend, you need look no further than Speakeasy. Friday night it’s hosting Holiday Hat Party 2010, a fundraiser for Florence’s Comfort House featuring music by Dysfunkshun Junkshun, Aquadrums, and Tyler Guthrie. There will also be drink specials and a tequila tasting – as if holiday hats aren’t fun enough.

Marmalakes, the Frontier Brothers, Mother Falcon

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November 23, 2010

Parish – Closed

Simmer down, Aggies, simmer down. Yes, the rotting corpse smell of the Longhorn football season has you deranged and howling like a pack of starved coyotes, but remember: Like Jesus, the Longhorns will rise again. Texas may be 5-6, but they’re still sick with talent. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Dixie Chicken, the Bush Library, and the Animal Husbandry Barn aren’t the highlights of the Longhorns’ recruiting trip. Down on the Forty Acres, recruiting is a bit more of a slam dunk. All Texas has to do to land a Top 10 recruit is to take him to 50-cent wings night at Sugar’s. College Station doesn’t even have a Sugar’s … or even a Yellow Rose or a Landing Strip … unless maybe you count the Animal Husbandry Barn, which is sort of like the Chain Drive only much bigger, smellier, and freakier. Needless to say, College Station’s quaint charms don’t appeal to everyone, so when the Ags have a respectable season, you have to give them props. It’s not easy to Shanghai decent athletes to College Station – certainly not intelligent ones, so big ups to Mike Sherman and crew for cobbling together a winning Aggie team this year. Other than former A&M legend Jackie Sherrill – a true innovator with the insane brilliance to use livestock castration as a motivational tool – few heirs to the Aggie coaching throne have shown as much promise as Sherman, whose competence and sacrifice is rewarded with a paltry $1.8 million a year contract (the kind of chump change that Mack Brown keeps next to his toilet). For such a meager sum, it’s amazing Sherman even crawls out of bed in the morning, but somehow this year he and the Aggies have put together an 8-3 record. That’s a complete turnaround from the Aggies 4-8 season in 2008 when he began his sentence. Fortunately Sherman’s stint as head coach at Green Bay was good training for his return to Aggieland. He now knows that the bitchiness and petulance of a highly recruited college athlete are nothing compared to that of an NFL player making 10 times the coaches’ salary. At least you can bully a college kid with curfews, extra laps, and harsh, withering looks. If it gets really ugly, you can even tell the boosters to stop leaving envelopes full of cash in his locker (remember, this is A&M) or, worst-case scenario, cut off his supply of steroids. Whatever Sherman is doing, even if he’s hacking the nuts off a bull before every game, it seems to be having a positive effect. Mack Brown, on the other hand, seems to have spent the last nine months tooling around town in his bling’d out Mercedes, snorting rails of coke off the bare asses of coeds, and breaking mirrors with his maniacal, high-pitched Appalachian cackle. While it’s true that kind of playa lifestyle never hurts recruiting, it can cut into the actual coaching. After a humiliating six-loss season, it’s safe to assume that Brown is now back on task. He may have grown a little soft in the middle – possibly even the prefrontal, but Brown is smart enough to understand that last Saturday’s smackdown of Division I-A powerhouse Florida Atlantic won’t satisfy even the most soft-headed of Longhorn fans. He also knows that if he loses to A&M, DeLoss Dodds will be after his balls with a rusty pair of pruning shears. Even still, there will be joy in Mudville. Why? Because we’re the goddamned live music capital of the known universe. An average Saturday night in Austin rocks the shit out of College Station on New Year’s Eve. This weekend is no different. Saturday you can (and should) catch an awesome bill at the Parish featuring a homegrown trifecta of musical badasses: folk-pop funsters Marmalakes, party punkers the Frontier Brothers, and orchestral tour de force Mother Falcon. A set by any one of these acts will put a smile on your face that not even a gloating Aggie can wipe off.

Extravagasm Fantasy Ball IX: East of Hedon

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November 15, 2010

ND Austin

How about one last chance to party like a porn star before the wet blanket of holiday wholesomeness spoils all the fun? Sure, nothing makes you want to flick your tongue between your devil horns like the thought of a crisp, rosy-cheeked night of wassailing bundled up in cozy, androgynous winter layering, but somewhere in the deep, depraved recesses of your mind you’d rather be nearly naked, slathered in baby oil, and writhing around on a crowded, pulsating dance floor – or at least you would rather be watching something like that, perhaps through the unzipped mouth hole of a leather gimp suit. Remember, you’re only about a week away from the maddening boredom of Thanksgiving Day, your yearly ritual of binge-eating bland pilgrim food then slumping catatonically on the living room sofa and listening to your catnapping grandpa’s stale beer farts ricochet off his vinyl recliner. There’s a reason they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Ibiza – and it’s not because they can’t get the A&M game on satellite. Hot on the heels of Puritanfest is Christmas, which tops off the Turkey Day wholesomeness with a huge layer of cheese: shamelessly crass commercialism, frog-in-a-blender color scheme, Lawrence Welk soundtrack, garish, Vegas-style lighting displays. Of course, the cherry on top of Christmas is the children: snot-nosed, greedy little chumps who believe a fat man from the North Pole with an unironic hipster beard is going to drop down their chimneys and deposit Call of Duty: Black Ops in their stockings. Why? Because they’ve spent the last few months scrawling deranged, incomprehensible shopping lists for Santa, fucking up the lyrics to “Jingle Bells,” and leaving half-finished candy canes in either the crack in the sofa or their little sister’s hair. Yes, children have their place during the holidays, and that place is called “Grandma and Grandpa’s house.” That way, instead of spoiling your holiday party mojo with their incessant whining about being hungry, wanting to go to sleep, and needing to have their soiled pull-ups changed, they can instead while away prime time with the blue-hairs drinking eggnog, making popcorn garlands, and watching Jimmy Stewart stammer his way through It’s a Wonderful Life. After all, Christmas is for kids, isn’t it? For adults, it’s more about finding excuses to binge-drink in order to forget about all the credit card debt they’re piling up. So, before the boring pall of the holiday season descends, blow it out one last time this Friday, Nov. 19, at Extravagasm Fantasy Ball IX: East of Hedon. Friday’s ball is an exotic, erotic dance party featuring the Brass Ovaries Pole Dancers, Miss Sophie, the Jigglewatts, Sky Candy aerialist Miss Winnie, the Golden Go-Go Squad, Starlite with Shi Feticcio, and music by DJ Cauzeone and DJ Orion. Along with the erotic dancing there will be fantasy photos by Flash, chocolate body-painting, and spanking stations. If that’s not freaky enough for you, keep this in mind: If they’re willing to let a name like “East of Hedon” slide, it’s a pretty sure bet anything goes, so bring an open mind and maybe some wet naps.

Game On Austin

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November 10, 2010

Mohawk

If you’re looking to get laid, there’s probably an app for that, it just won’t be as good as the real thing. Building a program that simulates a pan flute isn’t exactly the same as building one that stimulates your skin flute. This may come as a shock, but there are already several masturbation apps for the iPhone – one allows you to shake an onscreen image of a fish until a milky liquid oozes out of its mouth. Another is a geolocation app that allows users to place penis icons on a map to show the most recent place they had sex or masturbated. Nice. Seems like a great way to avoid getting nailed by an errant money shot while innocently walking your dog through Pease Park. Speaking of, maybe someone will whip(?) up a map app for people who don’t scoop their dog’s poop … or how about one for people who vomit frequently? There is also iVibe, an app that turns your iPhone into a vibrator. You might want to get a waterproof case for that one … or maybe not. It is, after all, just an iPhone. If you’re one of those skeptical types who aren’t totally on Apple’s cock, you might be happier with the Android. The Android has an app store called MiKandi that carries actual porn apps: things like 3D Mobile Porn (you’re probably safer wearing some sort of eye protection anyway), a YouPorn app (because YouPorn is so hard to find on your Web browser), and Sincasso, a nasty photo-sharing app which, like YouPorn, has a shamefully derivative name and boasts a “super clean user interface” as one of its features. Hmmm … sounds hygienic. You might think that MiKandi’s cesspool of smut apps might give Apple the moral high ground over the Android filth mongers, but you’d sort of be wrong. iPhone users can still surf the same freaky porn that pervs, sexual deviants, and mimes leer at all day long in their mothers’ moldy basements. The difference with iPhone is that they don’t allow porn apps – well, except for soft porn apps like the Cosmo Sex Position of the Day app, which features flesh-colored silhouettes going at it in a variety of unrealistic, uncomfortable, and unstable ways. It’s surely a lot of fun to look at – especially if you have a Mattel-ish hostility toward nipples, but put into actual practice by real people, it has all the titillating allure of a farty Bikram yoga class. Successful as its app may be, Cosmo is unlikely to follow it up with a Oral Sex Tips app, and even if it did, it’s unlikely Apple would approve it. They’re not porn merchants … or even pimps for porn merchants. Apple has your back like that. You won’t fall into the pits of perdition on Apple’s watch – well, at least not yet. There may be a game-changing app just around the corner that’s so awesomely filthy/hilarious/shocking that Apple just won’t be able to refuse it – especially if everyone is buying Droids just to get it. Who knows what the future holds? Well, if you want an idea, show up at Mohawk Tuesday, Nov. 16, from 6 to 9pm for the Chronicle and South by Southwest ScreenBurn’s Game On Austin, a free event where local game developers will be on hand to show off their latest wares, some of which may actually be designed for the iPhone … or perhaps those filthy, filthy Droids.

2010 Lone Star Vegetarian Chili Cook-Off

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November 3, 2010

Old Settlers Park

The world is teeming with all kinds of animals you can kill and cook and eat. A good number of them taste like chicken – at least that’s what the man at the fried-rat stand in Taipei is going to tell you. Of course, pretty near anything is going to taste like chicken if it’s battered and fried – even Homo sapiens. It’s doubtful that you would take a bite of deep-fried human flesh in a blind taste test and declare, “Hmmmmm … that tastes suspiciously like Homo.” You might, however, say it tastes like chicken, only gamier. Over the centuries, humans have whittled down the number of edible fauna to just a handful of species – generally the fat, slow, quiescent ones. These days – at least on this side of the pond – we’ve broiled it down to three basic meat groups, any or all of which might end up in a hot dog: chicken, pork, and beef. Someday, through a miracle of genetic engineering, we might even be able to graft them all into one animal: a chiporcow. Ideally the chiporcow would weigh a few thousand pounds; give milk; lay eggs; eat anything, including ground-up parts of other chiporcows; and spend its entire life confined in a cage designed to completely restrict its movement and maximize the tenderness of its flesh. Really, why even eat meat unless you can cut it with a cheap plastic spork? Even still, don’t throw away your steak knife in a fit of ecstatic optimism just yet. It might take another 20 or 30 years of genetic engineering to grow a chiporcow that is completely devoid of bones, tendons, and cartilage. Until then, all that stuff can still be pureed into a steroid infused, protein-rich paste that is sure to find its way to a nugget or patty at a fast food restaurant near you. Yum … well, with the right amount of sodium, sugar, and artificial flavoring. It’s hard to believe that there are still people out there who insist on killing, butchering, and eating their own meat – not just the crazy ones who are responsible for cats disappearing in your neighborhood, but normal people who wake up in the wee hours, strap on some camo and a fluorescent orange vest, and heroically try to control the mushrooming deer population. Hey, somebody has to do the dirty work – especially when joggers are out there Swiss-cheesing natural predators with laser-sight pistols. Hopefully Gov. Goodhair had the decency to mount his kill (pause for a moment to consider the nastiness of that unfinished sentence) on a cedar fencepost as a warning to all the other coyotes to back off the shih tzus, kittens, and Pomeranians and go back to killing sick cows and lost sheep. Deer? Killing those are a lot of work, unless you’re golfing at Lakeway or driving down U.S. 290 in the middle of the night, and coyotes, like just about any other intelligent animal including Homo sapiens, are likely to choose the easy way every time. It’s no wonder so many people are vegetarians these days. Meat is a lot of goddamned work – not just with your pastor or psychotherapist exploring the moral implications of offing other living things just to crap them out a few days later, but in a real physical sense, like cold, chewy street fajitas. Getting off the meat tit is getting more popular because it keeps getting easier. People are making plants into just about everything. Why not food? Some people have even figured out how to make great tasting fake-meat dishes. Don’t believe it? Head over to Old Settlers Park this Sunday for the 22nd Lone Star Vegetarian Chili Cook-Off and see for yourself. Taste veggie chilis made by 20 different teams from all around Texas, and decide if you’re lazy enough to stop eating meat for good. Love it or hate it, one thing’s for sure: It won’t taste like chicken.