Luv Doc Writings

Red Hot 2010

The Luv Doc Recommends

July 14, 2010

Oilcan’s

The oil business has been getting an especially bad rap recently, especially since the Deepwater Horizon blowout. As with all preventable catastrophes, there has been plenty of finger-pointing but no truly satisfying scapegoat. In fact, saddling an actual goat with the symbolic transgressions of the various parties involved might ultimately prove easier to watch than B-roll of tarred pelicans, sludged sea turtles, and, perhaps most disturbing of all, beach cleanup workers in orange reflective vests, rubber dishwashing gloves, and frumpy lesbian-style cargo shorts. So it is. Oil spills are ugly business. People want blood, even if they have to burn through a few million barrels of oil to get it. They want answers too – not complicated, technically dense, ethically vague, lawyer-assisted depositions to congressional subcommittees, but flashy, shameless, simplistic confessions (ideally pointing toward a Machiavellian conspiracy by Big Oil), followed by public disembowelments by corporate executives. That would maybe do the trick. The Joe Six Packs don’t want to hear that average workers like themselves might have ignored safety precautions – perhaps in response to upper-management pressure to get the job done, or maybe they were just high as a bat’s ass, staring at their fingers. It’s hard to imagine that a couple of bad decisions by reckless individuals possibly could have caused one of the world’s worst environmental catastrophes, isn’t it? There must be larger forces at work here … some sort of systemic, conspiratorial evil. As much as the foil hat people would like that to be, it just isn’t so. The ugly bottom line is that Big Oil might have fucked us, but Americans helped them by buying the lube. While we were riding to work in our SUVs we were also riding on the back of the crocodile. We still are. BP, like any other business, is driven by profit, not safety – occupational, environmental, or otherwise. It was only a matter of time before a big spill happened again. Yes, again. Back in 1979 the Pemex Ixtoc I oil spill infused the Gulf of Mexico with more than 3 million barrels of crude. For years afterward, Texas beaches were speckled with tar. Beach lovers sported not only tan lines but tar-ball splotches. Pemex, Mexico’s government-owned oil company, didn’t take nearly the heat BP has drawn. In fact, it wrapped up the whole cleanup operation for around $100 million, claiming sovereign immunity against liability claims. Not surprisingly, Pemex is still in business, still pumping oil out of the Gulf. During the first Gulf War, Iraqis tried to preempt a U.S. invasion by dumping as much as 6 million barrels into the Persian Gulf. Didn’t work. Here’s something that might surprise you: The worst oil spill ever happened on land … in California no less. The 1909 Lakeview Gusher Number One in Kern County spewed 9 million barrels of oil into a desert valley near Bakersfield. That’s nearly three times the amount of oil floating around in the Gulf. Yes, it sucks big, stinky tar balls that the latest spill happened on America’s watch … in American waters, but just because BP had the largest stake in the profits doesn’t necessarily mean BP should entirely shoulder the blame. Hell, the rig itself was actually owned by a Swiss company (Transocean) flying a Marshallese flag (looking to start a corporation? Try the Marshall Islands!) and employed workers from several different subcontractors (including the nefarious-by-association Halliburton). If you’re mad enough to shoot somebody, you’re going to need a lot of bullets, including one for yourself. Perhaps the most productive thing to do might be to start weaning yourself from the oil tit – not just by buying a brand-new Prius but by turning off the goddamn lights every now and then, caulking your windows, or maybe walking or taking the bus or voting for un-American public transit. Maybe oil won’t be such an ugly word if we can reduce all those oil barrels to something smaller … like oil cans. Speaking of, this Friday, Project Transitions 19th annual Red Hot fundraiser is happening at Oilcan Harry’s. This year’s party includes performers from Cabernet Cabaret, cast members from City Theatre’s Into the Woods and Zach Theatre’s The Drowsy Chaperone, the Austin Babtist Women, Larissa Ness, the Austin City Showgirls, and the cast of Las Vegas’ La Cage. This blowout won’t be nearly as epic as the Deepwater Horizon, but it should be more fun!

Jon Blondell CD Release

The Luv Doc Recommends

July 7, 2010

Elephant Room

Yes, you can dance to jazz, sort of in the same sense you can milk anything with nipples. At some point, however, perhaps when you have a double-fisted death grip on the teats of a stampeding mother rhinoceros, you’re going to find yourself asking, “Was it worth it?” Yes, jazz dancing has its pluses. The biggest of course is that you get carte blanche to do the Bob Fosse “jazz hands.” Nowhere else outside the realm of street mime performance can you get away with such overt hamminess without inspiring a gangland style beatdown. If you’re going to swing for that fence, you might want to put on a pair of white gloves first – really makes it pop. Then there’s the footwear issue. Jazz dance traditionally requires jazz shoes, but those are for formal jazz dance – the kind you learn in a real dance school. Dancing to jazz music only requires the shoes of a questionably crazy person, and here the styles of footwear are as diverse as the variations of insanity itself. To be sure, actual jazz dance shoes are pretty nutty looking outside of an actual dance studio, but don’t discount Crocs and socks, woven huaraches, or Vibram FiveFingers, those creepy looking glove shoes. Wearing FiveFingers is pretty much an outright admission that you never want to get laid again for the rest of your life. If the Vatican ever finds out about FiveFingers, they will become standard issue footwear in monasteries across the globe. Not even an altar boy would allow himself to be molested by someone wearing FiveFingers. “Forgive me Father, but you and Vibram have committed a mortal sin.” Really, the only place FiveFingers are apropro are Leftover Salmon/String Cheese Incident mosh pits and … well … jazz clubs, where ruthlessly innovative footwear has an actual chance of gaining a toehold, especially among people for whom nerdiness is a badge of honor. Make no mistake, jazz is cool. There is even an actual genre called “cool jazz,” but jazz is the absolute nerdiest of music forms, edging out even classical and polka. If music were math (and essentially, it is), jazz would be calculus, and jazz musicians would be mathletes. When someone has the chops to reach the level of a music mathlete, they usually turn to jazz. It is at this point that their nerdiness reaches such a density that it actually folds in on itself like a collapsing star and creates an alternate universe of cool. Aside from some obvious anomalies like axe murdering and scrapbooking, nothing is cooler than being exceptionally accomplished. Great jazz musicians are exactly that. They may be broke, alcoholic, homeless, marginally or even fully insane, but at the very least, they are exceptionally accomplished, and that is cool. Knowing that you can do/have done something that few people in the world ever will is surely liberating in many ways. If, for instance, you forget to bathe or shave or pull on some clean clothes in the morning, it’s probably no big deal. At least you can still do some amazing improvisational runs that might get you some free drinks and maybe even a roll in the hay with some moon-eyed jazz lover. Life is good in 5/4 time. This Friday at the Elephant Room you can find out how good when the Jon Blondell Quintet celebrates the release of its new CD, Bone-Nanza. The band features David Bowen and JJ Johnson on drums, John Fremgen on bass, Carter Arrington III on guitar, Jeff Helmer on piano, and Jon Blondell himself on trombone. Even if you don’t know Blondell, you’ve surely heard him. If not on his signature trombone solo on Sublime’s “The Wrong Way,” then surely as a bassist or trombonist on cuts by Willie Nelson, Ani DiFranco, B.B. King, Pat Green, Doug Sahm, James McMurtry, Dale Watson, or Ray Benson, just to name a few. Point of fact: Jon Blondell is huge, not only in stature but also in talent, and even if you aren’t brave enough to dance to his music, you will appreciate and enjoy it nonetheless.

Austin Symphony July 4th Concert & Fireworks

The Luv Doc Recommends

June 30 2010

Auditorium Shores

In America, we celebrate freedom by making a lot of noise … as opposed to say, meditating quietly on the blessings of liberty. No slam against meditating, mind you, but sitting calmly with your thoughts lacks the ostentatiousness (no, dudebro, it isn’t spelled “Austintatiousness”) of colorful, ear-shattering explosions that make dogs spontaneously urinate on expensive carpets and whine nervously into the wee hours – no pun intended. Here in God’s country (that being the USA and not the 180-plus other God’s countries) we get fired up about freedom. Our freedom is an awesome freedom, much better than the sucky freedom in countries like Somalia, Haiti, or Afghanistan. In America, a group of drunken teenagers can throw a string of lit Black Cats out the window of their parents’ Ford Explorer at 3am in a quiet subdivision and the most that will happen is a few bedroom lights will turn on. If they were to try the same thing in Somalia (and perhaps certain parts of Idaho), they could expect their Explorer to be riddled with small arms fire or blown up by a rocket-propelled grenade. As any Somalian will tell you, sometimes it’s a fine line between freedom and anarchy. Freedom seems to work best when guided by a system of laws that ideally keeps the dickheads from spoiling the fun. Of course, different places have different definitions for being a dickhead, so a certain amount of tweaking is involved. For instance, here in Texas there aren’t many places you can’t spit legally. You can pretty much cut loose with a huge roping arc of Copenhagen juice anywhere you please, as long as you don’t hit a cop in the face. In Singapore, if the tiniest bit of drool drips out of your mouth and hits a sidewalk, you get burned at the stake, waterboarded, and thrown in a tank of piranha – or at least heavily fined. You can’t chew gum either. No, seriously. You can’t chew gum. It’s illegal. Compare that to California where you can do just about anything except drive a car that burns gasoline. In California you can do naked bong hits while no-handing a unicycle along the beach in broad daylight. In fact, you can probably legally kill someone in California as long as you dispose of the corpse in an environmentally responsible way. The same is true of Louisiana, except that in Louisiana you can burn the corpse in a trash can in your backyard. What law there is in Louisiana derives from the Napoleonic Code, which is statutory, meaning that if some transgression isn’t actually prohibited in writing, it’s fair game – which just about everything is in Louisiana. If it moves, you can kill it, sauté it in butter, and eat it. That includes manatees, government bears, Bigfoot, and the lost Dauphin. Menacing oil slick notwithstanding, Louisiana isn’t as bad as it sounds. In fact, Bigfoot and the lost Dauphin are probably alive and well and living in Alaska, where the only written laws have to do with milking Exxon for every last red cent. Other than that, Alaska = freedom. It’s a magical place where a 46-year-old ex-cheerleader can hunt Bull Moose with an AK-47 in her red, white, and blue bikini; where polar bears can drive snowmobiles; and where the drinking age is 9 – whiskey included. Alaska makes California look like a gulag. The only place freer than Alaska is death itself … or maybe West Texas … it’s hard to tell the difference. Regardless, they’re both in America, the Land of the Free. Make no mistake, American freedom is something worth celebrating loudly, even if it means dogs pissing on expensive carpets. Why? Because American freedom was dreamed up by wicked-smart rich dudes and paid for by the blood of patriots. It’s precious and delicate and frickin’ awesome all at the same time – easily in the Top 10 freedoms worldwide, and that’s reason enough to get out there and make some noise … or you could just relax, lay back on a picnic blanket, and have someone else do it for you. This Sunday at Auditorium Shores, the Austin Symphony and the city of Austin will be putting on their annual Fourth of July concert and fireworks display. Mission accomplished. The hardest thing you’ll have to do to celebrate freedom is to load up your cooler and find a way down there. Easy enough, right?

Fan Fare Friday

The Luv Doc Recommends

June 21, 2010

Threadgill’s World HQ

Depending on your association with the beautiful sport of soccer, you may or may not have been in a bit of a huff last Friday. You might have been hunting up Mali on Google Earth trying to figure out the best place to lob a couple of cruise missiles, or you might have been chuckling to yourself thinking, “That’s soccer!” At this point it’s pretty much universally agreed that Malian referee Koman Coulibaly’s foul call in the 86th minute of the U.S. vs. Slovenia soccer game was horribly botched. Hindsight is 20/20 – especially when you have the luxury of half a minute of high-def video showing the “controversial” penalty kick where several Slovenian players decided to take piggyback rides on their U.S. opponents (and really, how could they resist draping themselves around those broad, muscular, world-cradling shoulders?) while American midfielder Maurice Edu slides through nearly untouched for an easy goal. That, of course, isn’t the way Coulibaly saw it. Forced by FIFA rules to make a split-second decision in what must have appeared on the field to be a roiling clusterfuck of rules violations, Coulibaly called a foul on Edu and waved off the goal. Fortunately, this egregious injustice occurred in a soccer game, so most Americans just went about their Friday afternoons blissfully ignorant instead of rioting, looting, turning over foreign-made cars, and flashing gang signs in the background of video news reports. Had such a call been made in game seven of the Lakers vs. Celtics series, whole swaths of Los Angeles or Boston would have been ablaze, the National Guard would have been called out, and a congressional committee would have been formed to decide if NBA Commissioner David Stern’s severed head should be mounted on a pike. This was just a soccer game, however, so the few viewers who weren’t secretly delighted foreign expatriates had to suppress their outrage and incredulity with things like serenity prayers, hair tearing, and pissy, jingoistic Web page comments. In the world soccer community, American outrage is a muffled cry in the wilderness, and probably with good reason. When a soccer player blatantly flops, feigns excruciating pain, and then pops up as if nothing happened, Americans are incredulous. They see flopping as an shameful, cowardly act of cheating, worthy of the harshest of penalties. The rest of the world simply sees it as part of the game. Similarly, bad officiating is seen in much the same light – as something that, like the weather, cannot be changed. This fundamental philosophical difference may be part of the reason soccer hasn’t reached the same popularity in America as it has in the rest of the world, even though millions of American kids actually play soccer. Americans are always trying to improve things, weather included. We’re not satisfied with a wistful sigh, a shoulder shrug, and an apologetic look of defeated resignation. Americans do not accept defeat and more importantly are not content with a tie. Americans want resolution – ideally a happy ending and not some morally confusing random moment of existence, beautiful though it may be. Maybe someday Americans will have enough influence to fix soccer. Ideally the fix won’t come from Vegas mobsters, but from a sincere urge to do what is right. If you’re one of those Americans who feel an urge to do what is right, think about skipping work this Friday and going down to Threadgill’s World Headquarters at 8am for KGSR’s Fan Fare Friday, a musical benefit for Family Eldercare. For the donation of a fan (not a soccer fan – something that generates breeze not noise) you can see sets by some truly amazing musicians: Quiet Company, Rocco DeLuca, BettySoo, Shinyribs, the Gourds, Kelly Willis, Mingo Fishtrap, Malford Milligan, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Jon Dee Graham, and an unannounced “special guest.” You may not be able to afford to buy a referee, but you can probably afford to buy a fan, right?

Eric Does Hendrix

The Luv Doc Recommends

June 16, 2010

Antone’s CLOSED

Having fun can be a real bitch. There is almost always a certain amount of effort involved. Sure, you can attempt to minimize it to a certain extent. You can position your recliner within arm’s reach of your Red Bull and Snickers stocked minifridge, get your joystick optimally situated so that you barely have to move your wrist, strap on a urinary condom and a collection bag so that you rarely have to even go to the bathroom, but what kind of life is that? Sitting around all day basting in the funk of your own nervous sweat worrying that you might get ganked by a hostile World of Warcraft mob? Fuh-hun! A few years of that and your Jabba the Hut-looking ass will have exactly zero chance of getting laid by anything other mail-order sex toys. Scary as it sounds, there is something to be said for getting out and about – not just making vampirish runs to the grocery store at 3:30 in the morning to pick up more Red Bull and Snickers, but actually going out and engaging in activities that bring you into contact with real people, not just the automated checkout machine. Such risky activity does require a modicum of social skills and a wardrobe with slightly more depth than a cat-fur-coated bathrobe, sagging tube socks, and torn house slippers. For instance, let’s say you start slow. Maybe you rent a kayak on Lake Ladybird. Since it’s June, you clearly haven’t done your homework, but hey, credit for taking a stab, right? Nothing like kayaking in June to bring home the valuable epiphany that being on the water is not the same as being in the water. Anyway, you will at least have to interact with the cashier at the boat rental stand: a few unintelligible mumbles, a quickly scrawled signature on the credit card slip, and you’re off. That wasn’t too painful, and is this fun or what? Slowly floating down the Bird in a plastic log, body bent into an excruciating right angle, blanketed in sweat from the 100% humidity. Enjoy yourself. Soon enough you’re going to have to paddle back up river to claim your deposit. OK, so maybe that hypothetical was a bust, but surely there is some sort of fun activity that doesn’t involve a slave galley ship re-enactment. How about Frisbee golf? Bam! There you go! Frisbee golf is just like real golf, only no one cares if you’re actually good at it. Genius! You could scream “I am the number one rated Frisbee golfer in America!” at a crowded cocktail party, and conversational din would go on uninterrupted. Similar results could be achieved with the phrase “I am really good at masturbating!” Yawn. Everybody thinks they’re the Tiger Woods of masturbation, and, ultimately, that’s true. It’s just nothing to write home about. Of course, masturbation, like Frisbee golf, is fun that can be had with a relatively low risk of injury and limited arm/wrist movement. It’s probably best not to do it in public parks though. Having fun isn’t always easy. Managing to endure the hellish drudgery of day-to-day existence requires a Herculean amount of imagination, creativity, and courage. Blessed are the entertained, for they shall inherit the stuff suicidal people leave behind. Staying entertained can be exhausting. It’s no wonder why so many people try to spice things up by turning to drugs and alcohol. Unfortunately, some end up believing that drugs and alcohol are the fun itself. That’s often the point at which the fun ends, when an exciting choice turns into the grim necessity of chemical dependency. Being chemically dependent is ugly at any age, but especially so for teenagers, who haven’t yet been exposed to the wide array of possibilities life has to offer without drugs and alcohol. Fortunately there are programs like the Palmer Drug Abuse Program that help teenagers deal with chemical abuse issues and life in general through peer counseling and support. As the song goes, it’s easier “to get by with a little help from [your] friends.” And PDAP is doing just that this Thursday night at Antone’s when Eric Johnson, Chris Layton, and Scott Nelson perform a fundraiser called “Eric Does Hendrix” – a night of Jimi Hendrix music performed by Grammy-winning Austin guitar god Johnson, along with ex-Stevie Ray Vaughan drummer Layton and bassist Nelson. If you’re into Hendrix, Eric Johnson, or just helping kids make it safe through troubled times, this show should be big, easy fun.

ROT Rally Parade

The Luv Doc Recommends

June9, 2010

Congress Avenue

If you’re into beef jerky, this weekend your meat market is going to get a whole lot bigger. The incessant rumble of Harleys should have told you something is up, and that something is the Republic of Texas Biker Rally, aka the ROT Rally, the annual gathering of 50,000 or so motorcycle enthusiasts that takes place in Austin each June – mainly out at the Travis County Expo Center but also at swank places like Bikinis Sports Bar & Grill, Twin Peaks, Hooters, and Coyote Ugly. For most Austinites, the locus is a little harder to pin down. If you’re anywhere inside the loop, the incessant cacophony of blurts and pops rattling every sash in your home might lead you to believe there’s a hawg rally right in your backyard. If you’re feeling a little smug about living in the suburbs or exurbs, don’t gloat. There’s nothing like having your REM sleep shattered at three in the morning by the farting exhaust of some bewildered biker tooling through your quiet subdivision to remind you that the ROT Rally isn’t just that thing they have at that place out past the dump. No, ROT is all up in our chili, parading down Congress, tearing around the Hill Country, clogging up Sixth Street, and scaring away nearly as many hipsters as the Texas Relays. The difference with ROT is that nobody is going to be closing down clubs for this crowd. Sure, there are still some scary biker gangs – leathery old dudes with meth-rotted grills and biker bitches who look like the granny from the Playboy cartoons (especially topless) – but a huge swath of the ROT demo are suburban professionals: lawyers, accountants, and middle-management types who had a deferred midlife crisis and dropped 20 large on a steel show pony thinking they could recapture the wild youth they never had. In a way, they have … as long as their wild youth fantasies involved hanging out with a bunch of trussed up, rheumatoid old dudes in mechanic-themed bars listening to Van Halen and hitting on saddle-bagged, butter-faced 35-year-old women in leather halter tops. Careful, even though you might feel compelled to pop off audibly to your skinny-jeaned buddies about some potbellied, do-ragged sexagenarian who is wearing a T-shirt that says, “Yeah, I’m hitting that!,” don’t discount the possibility that the shirt’s meaning is literal. With bikers, you just never know. You should also consider the possibility that anyone willing to spend their recreational hours straddling a 600 pound suicycle/legchopper/murdercycle probably has a bit of a death wish – and really, wouldn’t you if you were tapping that? The best policy for most people is to just lay low until the whole thing blows over – ideally with a bottle of Demerol and some really expensive noise-canceling headphones. On the other hand, if you’re one of those hellions like Sandy Bullock who gets turned on by a guy who gets turned on by a huge vibrator with wheels, you’ll want to make sure to get down to Congress Avenue this Friday night for the “Longest Parade of Motorcycles Known to Mankind.” At around 8pm, nearly all the cyclists from the Expo Center will rumble through a waiting throng of willing voyeurs. Yes, you can bring dogs and children, but it’s about as smart as taking them to Mardi Gras. It’s pretty safe bet that both animal and child will surely be debauched at some point during the evening. Yes, there is beauty – some of the finest, most lovingly cared for machines you will every see – but there is also plenty of ugliness as well, both figurative and literal. Regardless, it’s all riveting entertainment … and afterward you get your fun tank topped off with a concert by Vallejo, Grady featuring Dee Snider, and the L.A. Guns. If you’ve never been to the ROT Rally, Friday night will give you a good taste: tough and salty, but ultimately satisfying – sort of like beef jerky.

Austin Wine & Music Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 26, 2010

The Domain

Unlike modern epicureans – who all seem to look like Paul Prudhomme (aka Dom DeLuise) - Epicurus himself was all about moderation, temperance, and the avoidance of suffering. In essence: Don't overdo it. Odds are he was smitten with that philosophical epiphany after a hard night of Dionysian excess. It's the exact same epiphany that countless millions of drunks experience while driving the porcelain Buick, but Epicurus actually stuck with the program. Imagine if he had access to a crack pipe or some Extra Strength Excedrin. Would it have somehow saved humanity from having to use the term "foodie"? You might want to put that on your time machine wish list.
What better place in Texas to hold a wine festival than Austin … at the Domain no less? Classy. You can spend Saturday morning saving money at high-end retail outlets and then blow it all that afternoon buying samples of vino. Double devil fingers up, yo! No better way to strap on your woozy helmet than to go on an eight-hour wine binge with your besties. Why not? Wine tastes good. It also comes in a bunch of different flavors, but mainly grape. Sure there are subtle nuances that people literally spend their lifetime learning to discern, but no matter how thoroughly you try to scrub your palate with cheeses and crackers, after about 15 sample glasses of wine they’re all going to taste like Thunderbird – at which point you might as well go ahead an buy a bottle … either Advil or Excedrin will do, it really doesn’t matter. The next morning your head is still going to be clanging like a church bell. Maybe it’s just the Lord getting some payback for all that time you spent with the devil. Regardless, a really bad wine hangover can be ugly enough to make you want to start smoking crack. In fact, it’s very likely that wine hangovers created a whole system of philosophy: Epicureanism. Unlike modern epicureans – who all seem to look like Paul Prudhomme (aka Dom DeLuise) – Epicurus himself was all about moderation, temperance, and the avoidance of suffering. In essence: Don’t overdo it. Odds are he was smitten with that philosophical epiphany after a hard night of Dionysian excess. It’s the exact same epiphany that countless millions of drunks experience while driving the porcelain Buick, but Epicurus actually stuck with the program. Imagine if he had access to a crack pipe or some Extra Strength Excedrin. Would it have somehow saved humanity from having to use the term “foodie”? You might want to put that on your time machine wish list. These days however, Epicureanism seems to be more about the pleasure-seeking than the moderation. That’s easy to understand. Pleasure-seeking is as American as baseball, apple pie, and a fruity, robust Chardonnay. In fact, among our unalienable rights is the pursuit of happiness, which is pretty much a synonym for pleasure-seeking, isn’t it? Exactly. There is no mention of a right of moderation in the Declaration of Independence. Who would want it? Americans were born to live fast, love hard, and die young, which is why KFC invented the Double Down – either that or they were creating a low-calorie alternative to the Big Mac, neither of which will be available at the 2010 Austin Wine & Music Festival. Don’t worry though; there will be plenty opportunities for excess, bacchanalian and otherwise. Start with samples from more than 20 Hill Country wineries, food from local vendors such as Freebirds and Kerbey Lane Cafe, and a “Manctuary” with seven varieties of locally produced brews – apparently targeted at dudes whose masculinity is threatened by anything fruity. The Manctuary also includes a “Man Cave.” No, that’s not fruity in the least. Still, if your estrus starts to blossom, you can butch back up with a two-day lineup of nearly chick-free Texas country music. Acts scheduled to play include Autumn (the girl) and lots of dudes: Texas Renegade, Micky & the Motorcars, Mike Mancy, Walt Wilkins & the Mystiqueros, Josh Grider, and Radney Foster among others. Like the variety of wines, there is something for just about everyone at this festival, which should make it a fun time. Just remember to occasionally knock back some water and, if you have it, wear something purple … you know, to match the stains on your teeth.

Pachanga Latino Music Festival

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 19, 2010

Fiesta Gardens

There is no equivalent of Ellis Island anywhere along the Mexican border, no outstretched torch of Lady Liberty lighting the way for clandestine nighttime border crossings, no bronze plaque beckoning tired, poor, huddled masses and wretched refuse through the golden door. Really, would it have killed Panama to pop for a big copper statue as payback for helping them win independence from Columbia? (Yes, we gave them the military reach-around mainly so we could dig a huge ditch through the middle of their country, but hey, a favor’s a favor, right?) Just think of the warm feeling all those illegals would get (as if riding sardined in the back of a sweltering, windowless semi trailer through the desert wouldn’t do the trick) if they were welcomed by a reasonably svelte, feminine beacon of liberty, even (especially?) if she was wearing a poncho and a huge, touristy sombrero. Well, no such luck for our southern neighbors. Their entry into the land of the free is much too hasty to allow for standing around gazing at statues and waxing philosophical about the blessings of liberty. In Mexico, making a run for the border isn’t just a lighthearted euphemism for the late-night munchies; it’s an adrenaline-fueled gauntlet reminiscent of a jailbreak scene from Cool Hand Luke, except the bloodhounds are replaced by paranoia-crazed minutemen with night-vision goggles, assault rifles, and spine crushing 4-by-4s. Down on America’s tan line, immigration isn’t for the timid. It takes some cojones grandes to cross into the home of the brave. Those few who actually make it are awarded the prize of a shit job that pays below minimum wage, a breathtaking stay in a cheap motel room that’s packed tighter than the cargo hold of La Amistad, and, if things go exceptionally well, a shot at dying in a cloud of cocaine and gunfire like Tony Montana at the end of Scarface. For most immigrants, however, freedom really is just another word for nothing left to lose – especially since they probably just spent their life savings paying off a coyote. Yet, as brave, hardworking, and committed as illegal immigrants are to the American dream, as much as they love our country, they still have to leave it. They are, after all, illegal. Of course, that doesn’t mean we have to be dicks about it like Arizona. If Americans start pulling over and checking the papers of everyone who looks like they descended from immigrants just to make sure they’re legal, they won’t have any time left to run their casinos. F that S. Persecution is hardly un-American, but it doesn’t make it right or reasonable. This country was founded on the principle that all men were created equal. It has since spent more than 230 years falling short of that mark, but that doesn’t mean we should just give up. Hopefully, the rest of America is smarter or at least more optimistic than Arizona. Hopefully America understands that its strength is in its diversity, which means we have better food, better music, better parties, and we don’t bleed to death when we nick ourselves shaving. If you want to enjoy a great example of our awesome diversity with relatively little chance of being jacked up by immigration Nazis, check out this Saturday’s Pachanga Latino Music Festival at Fiesta Gardens. From noon to 11pm, four stages will host more than 20 Latino acts including such favorites as Grupo Fantasma, David Garza, Haydn Vitera, Vallejo, Amplified Heat, Roberto Pulido y los Clasicos, Hacienda, and Bomba Estéreo. Enjoy the music … and remember how much uglier it would be in Arizona.

35th Annual Deutschen Pfest

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 11, 2010

Pfluger Park

Nothing brings people together like a shared enemy – except maybe a shared enema. It’s one thing to share hatred with other people – even complete strangers. It’s quite another to share an enema tube – even with your bestie. It should come as no surprise then that statistically, at least, hatred tops enemas by a large margin. Regardless of President Clinton’s exhortation for Americans to expand the definition of “us” and shrink the definition of “them,” we’re still very comfortable with the hatred. We seem to like getting our panties in a wad. We especially like to hate on our neighbors to the north. Not Canadians. Hating Canadians is like hating Jesus or Santa Claus. Sure, they’re so sweet you get sick of them every now and then, but if you start posting Photoshopped pictures of them having sexual congress with assorted farm animals on your Facebook page – however hilarious they might be – you would, in the end, only be screwing yourself. Besides, people hate a mean drunk. That’s why Billy Joe Shaver could shoot one in the face and still get acquitted. Of course, if you decide to try that in the parking lot of your local shithole honky-tonk, make sure you have plenty of celebrity friends and Dick DeGuerin heading up your all-star, pro bono legal defense team. Canadians may have dangerous socialist tendencies, but it’s universally accepted fact that they’re happy drunks. Plus, you don’t have to travel that far north to hate, just cross the Red River. Okies are as easy to hate as Tim Tebow on a Vegas bachelor weekend. Why? Simple. Oklahoma’s football team has won more national championships than ours. Admit it. In terms of offensive behavior, they could just as well have gang-banged Bevo and broadcast it on the Godzillatron at the Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium. Being better than Texas at football is nearly unforgivable, but Okies somehow manage to up the ante by being equally loud and obnoxious drunks – superseded only by Alabamans, who are even louder, more obnoxious, and completely incomprehensible after a few Budweisers. Is it any wonder they have the most national football championships of all? Still, no matter how ugly a drubbing they gave us in the Rose Bowl, it seems a lot of trouble to cross two states to piss on the Crimson Tide when we have crimson and cream right upstairs. Fortunately, you don’t even have to go that far north to find someone to hate and ridicule – especially when you have Pflugerville just 10 minutes up the interstate. Yes, desirable, affordable Pflugerville. What’s not to hate? First, there’s the galling effrontery of sticking a “silent” P in front of a perfectly good F. F alone isn’t good enough for you Pflugerville? Well, F you with a P on top. Pflugerville also has good schools, huge sports fields, a lake, roomy houses, and the celebrity cachet of having been the filming location for Pfriday Night Lights. Hate you, Pflugerville. Adding insult to injury is its annual Deutschen Pfest, a three-day pfestival pfeaturing pfood, arts & crafts, music (yes, they scored Dale Watson and Bruce Robison), and even a 5K Pfun Run/Walk. You’re probably tasting vomit in the back of your mouth right now, but if you can somehow get over your Central Austin hipster haughtiness, you might find that you have a lot in common with your northern neighbors – if not genetically (really, who in America hasn’t been pfucked by a German?), then perhaps spiritually. After all, you probably come from the ‘burbs just like they do. “Them” really are “us.”

Studio 54klift: A Fundraiser for Forklift Danceworks

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 5, 2010

Spider House Ballroom

Dance will never die. As long as there are dudes willing to showcase their mooseknuckles in sheer spandex tights, as long as the tutu remains a staple of little girls’ dress-up boxes, as long as Gene Kelly and Fred & Ginger movies run on AMC, as long as Michael Jackson songs are played, as long as there is rhythm and people shamelessly willing to express themselves through movement, there will be dance. Get used to it. Want to know how pervasive dance is? Even people who can’t dance do … often on YouTube with a several pages of ruthless commentary. Here’s the thing about dance: Like poetry, there’s no wrong way to do it, just more or less hilarious ways. Serious dance is every bit as funny – maybe funnier – than goofy dance. Of course, that doesn’t mean that all dance is funny, just that most of it is … at least a little bit – certainly the stuff that happens in the fat part of the dance bell curve. On the other end, it can be awe inspiring and impressive. Regardless of your familiarity with the discipline, seeing a really good ballerina knock out a succession of flawless fouettés inspires the same kind of awe and respect as seeing Vince Carter throw down a 360-degree tomahawk dunk. If only the ballerina could put the exclamation point on it by saying, “In your face, bitch!” Sadly, most of the dancing the average person sees is of a much lower caliber. Nearly everyone has at least a few bad dance memories seared permanently into their consciousness. You may not be the one doing a drunken rendition of the broken-armed robot in your cousin’s wedding video, but chances are you have moonwalked, checked your watch, churned some butter, and thrown some dice in a similarly arrhythmic fashion. It’s all good, yo. You were probably having the time of your life – making memories for both yourself and all those snarky asshole wallflowers who posted it on their Facebook pages. In the words of the prophet McConaughey, “Just keep livin’.” Sure, the cops may show up at your door at 3am some morning to find you stoned to the bejesus belt, banging on bongos in your birthday suit, but that’s no reason to start acting like you’re too cool for drool. Trying to go through life without looking stupid is a most pernicious form of stupidity. Often times acting cool is only a shitty cover for being boring. Remember: Shame is for the morning after, not the night of. Yes, you may have all the fly dance moves of a 4H Club treasurer from suburban Wichita, but that doesn’t mean you have to wait around all night for the DJ to play “Y.M.C.A.” or the “Macarena” just so you can dance. Sometimes you have to freestyle it. All you have to do is feel the rhythm; you don’t necessarily have to stay on it. Sometimes, when you’re really working your stuff, you might feel the dance floor open up for you. It could be that people are forming a circle so that you can school everyone with your fly moves. Or, they might be laughing at you. Doesn’t matter. You’re doing the right thing: bringing joy into the world. That’s ultimately what dance is about, isn’t it? e.e. cummings said it best: “He sang his didn’t and danced his did.” This weekend you can dance your did at Studio 54klift, a disco dance party based on New York’s Studio 54 disco. No, you won’t get to relive the smell of cigarette smoke, sweat-cured polyester, and cocaine snorted off a men’s room toilet seat, but there will be lots of dancing to throbbing disco beats, plus performances, a cash bar, and a silent auction, ideally with enough time in between for you to work your stuff.