Luv Doc Writings

Artly Fest

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July 1, 2011

Here’s something the Austin Chamber of Commerce fliers fail to mention: Usually when some hoary old beer-bellied coot starts blathering on about the good old days when Austin was cheaper, cooler, friendlier, more relaxed, and less pretentious, he’s not fucking around. It’s true. Back in the days of the Armadillo World Headquarters, Lone Star was a nickel a pitcher, pot was a dollar an ounce, and condoms were as rare as the Hope Diamond. In fact, you needed to be at least that hard to put one on. No one ever wore them mind you, because the CIA hadn’t even invented AIDS yet. That’s why pretty much every house party or beer bust devolved into a roiling clusterfuck reminiscent of the tangle of earthworms at the bottom of a bait can. When people weren’t sunbathing nude down at Barton Springs, they walked around shoeless and commando. The only fashion (other than freeballing) was daisy duke cutoffs and worn out “Keep on Truckin'” tank tops, and you really only needed a car if you had to drive some place way out on the edge of town like Oltorf or North Loop. Sadly, there weren’t any smart cars back then … only art cars. There was nothing smart about art cars, but they were wicked clever. For instance, art cars didn’t come with amenities like windshield wipers, door handles, or brake lights, but then again Detroit never offered a car that was completely covered in plastic army men, Lone Star bottle caps, or snow globes. In Austin, art was a pretty big deal back in the day. Everybody did art all the time, even if they were smoking pot, dropping acid, or making huge submarine sandwiches. The best way to make really good art is to not have a job, and back then you didn’t need one. Everybody shared everything: clothes, food, transportation, housing …. Instead of dropping major coin on an expensive Downtown condo, you could just crash on the sofa of Willie’s tour bus, park your Good Times van down by the river, or pass out in a bathroom stall at some dive bar down on Sixth Street. Yes, dive bar. It’s nearly impossible to imagine now, but Sixth Street used to be skeevy for very different reasons than it is now. Instead of teeming with crowds of binge-drinking tourists and douche bags with gelled hair and Ed Hardy shirts, Sixth Street used to be a dark, lonely place with just a smattering of bars, restaurants, and porno joints. In 1974, local artist Jim Franklin and his friend Bill Livingood got the Sixth Street ball rolling when they opened up the Ritz Theatre as a live music venue. Two months later, the Uranium Savages played their first show there. Thus began a colorful 36-year-and-counting career. Yes, these days the Savages all qualify for AARP discounts and abdominal trusses, but they’re still cranking out music that defines the Austin aesthetic: daring, derivative, irreverent, sloppy, fun, funny, and thought-provoking. Plus, they do it in freaky costumes with zany props. Artistically and stylistically the Uranium Savages are all over the map, which is just the way Austin likes it. This Saturday, they will be at the corner of Barton Springs Road and Riverside Drive at Threadgill’s World Headquarters (owned by a beer-bellied old coot from the Armadillo days named Eddie Wilson) for Artly Fest, a benefit for one of the Savages’ own, Artly Snuff, who was injured in a car accident back in December 2010. Bands on the bill include Extreme Heat, Cornell Hurd, Rick Broussard, Larry Lange & His Lonely Knights, and of course, the Uranium Savages themselves. Not surprisingly, Artly Fest also coincides with International Eddy Day, the Savages’ annual celebration of the Patron Saint of 709. If all this sounds strange and confusing, welcome to Austin. Just remember, it’s not as fun as it used to be.

Red, White ‘n Buda

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June 28, 2011

Fourth of July without fireworks? What kind of America is it when people can’t blow shit up and recklessly endanger themselves and their neighbors? How can we have special memories of the birth of our nation if we can’t marry them with the memory of a cousin running into the house with a charred eyeball hanging out of its socket? Such graphic and disturbing mental images remind us of the sacrifices Americans made in the defense of freedom. Freedom always comes at a cost, so it only makes sense that celebrating freedom would involve some collateral damage as well. Remember how old Uncle Jumpy used to freak out and duck for cover whenever you lit a string of Black Cats at a family Fourth of July celebration? Hilarious! Well, at least until you got older and found out he spent most of the spring of ’68 at Khe Sanh dodging mortar rounds. Until then you just thought he was a crazy, pissed-off old alcoholic who chain-smoked Marlboros and wore a huge folding knife in a camo pouch on his belt. To him, the rockets’ red glare and the bombs bursting in air were more than just pretty poetic imagery in the National Anthem. Of course, that still didn’t keep you from having bottle-rocket fights with the neighbors across the street or Roman candle duels with your cousins in the backyard. In retrospect, that shit seems pretty stupid, but maybe on a larger scale stupidity is every bit as important as intelligence. Any dinosaur could tell you (were its brain not the size of a walnut) that Darwinism is a painfully slow process. Design changes take millions of years. Things that seem brutish and imbecilic in their current context (like bottle-rocket fights) may be essential to the evolution of mankind. Sure, you would have to be one dumbass giant ground sloth to just wade into the La Brea Tar Pits, but at least if you did you could be comforted by the thought that thousands of other dumbasses got mired in the same muck. In fact, you can safely bet that if the tar pits weren’t fenced off, the city of Los Angeles would still be fishing tarred (‘tarded?) dumbasses out of them every day. No doubt the fencing is good for public safety, but it’s also undermining the process of natural selection and putting a serious gap in the fossil record of dumbasses. Perhaps the irony of L.A. being home to one of the largest, smelliest, oozing monuments to stupidity in the world was not lost on city leaders. Fencing it off might have seemed like the smartest thing to do, but in the end, they’re only further slowing the glacial progress of evolution. Fireworks bans work much the same way, but don’t get impatient. Wars have been going on for thousands of years, and humans haven’t evolved much toward peace. Rather, we’ve evolved toward more efficient ways to kill one another. Case in point: gunpowder. You won’t smell much of it on Monday – at least in Austin – but you’ll be safer for it. Sadly, not only is the fireworks display canceled; you won’t even get a chance to heckle the Austin Symphony. Apparently the 1812 Overture just doesn’t work without live ordnance. So, it seems we won’t be celebrating freedom at all here in Austin. Thank God then for Red, White ‘n Buda, which takes place July 4 in the “Outdoor Capital of Texas,” just a few minutes down the interstate. All day at Buda City Park, they’re soldiering on with festivities that don’t involve incendiaries. Drive down early for the children’s parade at 10am, or wait until it cools off at 6pm and enjoy a musical lineup that includes Keith Kelso, Kevin Smith, and the Trishas. Is this as good as it gets? Don’t be stupid. It is, however, as good as we’ve got.

Shipe Pool Opening Party and Rally

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June 22, 2011

Shipe Park isn’t Austin’s nicest use of green space – nor is it particularly spacious, well-designed, or attractively landscaped. It is, however, regularly used – not just by homeless people, dirty-faced toddlers, and anxious dogs looking to make a deposit, but by the sick freaks who insist on undermining evolution by experiencing life through something other than an LCD display. Weird, right? Instead of letting themselves mutate into wholly inert, amorphous blobs of gelatin like God clearly intended, some people choose to engage in subversive, antiquated activities like walking, running, playing sports, swimming, and other useless kinetic endeavors. While Shipe Park isn’t particularly ideal for these sorts of activities, it is convenient and serviceable. It has a small playscape, some swing sets, a tiny basketball court, tennis courts, and a small pool. All of these amenities make Shipe Park a literal playground for these pig-headed subversives. Who pays for this nonsense? You do! That’s right – your hard-earned tax dollars are being wasted on people who refuse to spend money on PlayStations Xboxes, or even Wiis. It’s a travesty, no doubt, but one that’s soon to be corrected. The city of Austin, long a shrewd custodian of municipal funds, has proposed closing the Shipe Park pool in order to save money – presumably money that can be used to fund vital shit like unnecessary traffic lights. Duval Street and 51st? Really? Perhaps there is a secret Office of Public Irony at City Hall that handles such things. If so, it is operating at peak efficiency. How about that? Government that works! Don’t go getting your Glenn Beck panties is a wad. Government, like any large organization, has its share of fuckups, but that doesn’t mean we should ditch it entirely. Big government like big business needs vigilant oversight, and vigilant oversight costs money. These days it seems, especially in conservative camps, spending money on social services and infrastructure (some call it government) is the equivalent of throwing it down a hole. The reigning wisdom these days, it seems, is to starve government of the money it needs to actually do its job. This perpetuates the image of government as being ineffectual, which acts as a disincentive to give government the money it needs. Genius. This way the working man can spend that extra 40% (that being the average amount an American citizen pays for income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, sin taxes, Social Security, and Medicare) of his income making his own smart choices about accessing quality health care, educating his children, saving for retirement, defending his country, policing his community, and building roads, reservoirs, public utilities, and other useless shit like playgrounds, parks, and … yes … even pools. Pools? Really? Why doesn’t the government just buy everybody a pony too? The crazy idea that Americans should elect people smarter than themselves to make wise decisions about improving society for everyone is a ridiculously outdated notion. We’re much better off letting Joe the Plumber figure that shit out on his own. Who knows? We might be amazed by what someone with a GED and a cosmetology license can do on her own with space exploration, brain surgery, or electrical engineering. Regardless of how helplessly the American people spiral into poverty and stupidity, the answer will never be more government. We tried that, and it didn’t work. We now know that private corporations can run things like prisons, tolls roads, and schools, and we all know that private corporations have our backs, 100%. So, will closing down Shipe Park’s swimming pool save us money? Hell yes it will! And if those subversives in Hyde Park still want a pool, surely the city can find some private pool-maintenance company willing to step in and keep it open – for a price. If you’re one of those subversives and want to have a say in the future of Shipe Park’s pool, show up at the park this Saturday at 4pm for the Shipe Pool Opening Party and Rally. Not only can you rally and voice your concerns about the pool’s future; you can also join the potluck party afterward for live music, burgers, and swimming! That’s a lot of activity, but that’s what parks are all about, right?

A Gil Scott-Heron Tribute & Juneteenth Celebration!

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June 15, 2011

Gil Scott-Heron, the self-titled “bluesologist” who is considered by many to be the progenitor of rap, was most famous for his spoken word poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” a blistering diatribe about war, racism, commercialism, and the media backed up by a conga percussion section. Most of the references in the poem are somewhat dated now, but the sentiments are no less true. The title itself seems a bit ironic, especially in these days when the ubiquity of digital video recording devices and the convenience of YouTube ensure than damn near everything is televised. The interwebs offer everything from sick, revolting snuff videos like “3 Guys 1 Hammer” to disturbing videos of U.S. soldiers killing Iraqi journalists to nasty, nauseating videos like “2 Girls 1 Cup,” or that fascinating night-vision video of a hyena eating an elephant’s ass. Some things are best done in the dark, right? There is also a mind-numbing array of highly popular, horribly insipid home videos like “Charlie Bit My Finger” (Really world? 330 million views? Really?), “Sittin on tha Toilet” (25 million), and “Leave Britney Alone!” (39 Million) – real cerebral shit that you would never get to see in real life unless maybe you work at a day care, clean restrooms at a bus station, or chaperone a drama club field trip. There are also plenty of big budget videos that get a lot of attention. For instance, Justin Bieber’s “Baby” video featuring Ludacris to date has raked in more than half a billion views. Yes … that was half a billion. Are there even that many preteen girls and pedophiles in the English-speaking world? If you’re tired of your obnoxious co-worker/friend tagging you in embarrassing, inebriated videos on Facebook, imagine how Justin (Justine?) feels about the paparazzi? Imagine not even being able to cop a roadside squat without hearing the whir of a few dozen autofocus telephoto lenses. Still, despite the exhaustive supply of useless dreck, there is plenty of intriguing, inspiring, and informative video being shown on the Internet – and not just on Infowars.com. Real, actual revolutions are being televised. The uprisings of the Arab Spring have been documented exhaustively – live-streamed in many cases – and to dramatic effect. Nothing like a heart-wrenching video of schoolkids with shrapnel wounds or protesters being massacred to drum up sympathy and support from the Western world. Given the events of the last few months, it could be argued that not only is the revolution televised, television is the revolution itself, but that erroneous title wasn’t really the gist of Gil Scott-Heron’s message. His assertion was that real revolutions aren’t something that can be filmed because real revolutions are revolutions of thought … in how we perceive the world. When Gen. Gordon Granger read the contents of the Emancipation Proclamation from the balcony of the Ashton Villa in Galveston on June 19, 1865 – more than a month after the end of the Civil War and more than two years after the proclamation was to have gone into effect – many slaves in Texas still considered themselves just that: slaves. That revolution of thought was the impetus for Juneteenth celebrations in Texas and around the nation – one of which is happening this Saturday at the Gypsy Lounge when StrangeTribe Productions and Soul of the Boot Entertainment present A Gil Scott-Heron Tribute & Juneteenth Celebration, featuring DJ sets by DJ Sun, el John Selector (Thievery Corporation), and Felix Pacheco. Gil Scott-Heron (who died on May 27 of this year) deserves a tribute, and this certainly won’t be the first or last, but it might be worth checking out. Bring your camera. You never know when the revolution is going to happen.

ROT Rally Parade

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June 8 2011

Time to break out the halter top. By Thursday there should be 40,000-plus motorcycle enthusiasts rumbling into Austin. If you go a little extra slutty, maybe you can unseat one of their bitches. Kat Von D bounced sweet Sandy Bullock out of the saddle with some low-cut leather, cleavage, and roughly 14 square feet of body art. Her epidermal illustrations might be breathtaking, but don’t discount the possibility that Jesse James is turned on by a girl who is into pain – if for no other reason than that she has to share nightly dinner conversations with him. Kat’s prize for enduring that agony is that she gets to regularly press her taint against some of the biggest, loudest, gas-powered vibrators in the world. Sounds like a rollicking good time, but is the juice really worth the squeeze? Only Sandy Bullock knows for sure, and if we can trust TMZ‘s vigilance, she’s not out cruising biker bars. Besides, there aren’t really any biker bars in Austin. Pretty much any place divey enough to serve as a biker bar in Austin is overrun with hipsters. Sure, there may be a few Vespas parked out front. You might even see some ironic “Mustache Rides” T-shirts, shitty tattoos, and a chinchilla farm of facial hair, but everyone will be under the age of 35 and surprisingly well-versed in post-feminist thought. Real biker bars have actual bikers … old, sweaty, hairy dudes with huge distended beer guts, plumbers cracks, and moobs … which may explain bikers’ adolescent obsession with female breasts. Rest assured that by high noon this Thursday, all the choice stage side seats at Sugar’s will be commandeered by retired accountants from Fort Worth dressed in leather fetish wear that would embarrass the biker from the Village People. The same scene will be repeated in similar establishments all over town: Exposé, the Pink Monkey, the Landing Strip, the Roses (both Yellow and Red), Twin Peaks, Bikinis and, of course, Hooters. These will be the de facto biker bars in Austin this weekend – along with the roiling trailer trash clusterfuck out at the Travis County Expo Center. So, if you’re jonesing for Hooters’ chicken strips, you may want to order takeout … or perhaps throw caution to the wind and explore more exotic culinary offerings not found on the Hooters menu: strange foods like pizza, tacos, and egg rolls. Regardless, you can be sure that just about any restaurant in Austin serving anything that could even be loosely construed as American food will be full of bikers. If you’re looking for a peaceful dining experience, go for the freakiest cuisine you can imagine. Ethiopian is a pretty safe bet … maybe Vietnamese … or Indian food … dot not feathers. In fact, if you don’t like bikers – or if you find the Kid Rock aesthetic particularly obnoxious – you may want to avoid Austin altogether. However, if you don’t mind seeing dirty denim; leather (and prematurely aged skin that looks like leather); T-shirts with racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive messages; the smell of gas and exhaust; and the sound of tens of thousands of motorcycles farting and rattling through the glass canyon of Congress Avenue, then you should strap on your halter and make your way Downtown Friday evening for the annual Republic of Texas Biker Rally parade. It’s quite a spectacle, and if nothing else, you will find out whether the juice is indeed worth the squeeze.

South Austin Pitch and Pooch Celebrity Golf Tournament and Canine Extravaganza

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May 31, 2011

Anyone who is really paying attention knows that the world is full of miracles and wonders: Labrador puppies, the Interwebs, night vision, pot vaporizers, those Coke Freestyle machines at Jack in the Box (c’mon, 100 flavors is just fucking sick! All that’s missing is a “vodka” selection). We have a few right here in Austin – not just the Coke Freestyles, but miracles and wonders too. We have Barton Springs, the nightly exodus of 1.5 million Mexican free-tailed bats, Leslie Cochran, Hippie Hollow, food trailers, moon towers … but there is one huge miracle/wonder that goes largely unnoticed, and that is the Butler Park Pitch & Putt Golf Course behind the Jack in the Box on Barton Springs Road. Why is it a miracle? Because it hasn’t been sold and converted to expensive high-rise condos. That’s nearly impossible to comprehend, isn’t it? How could such a large parcel of expensive Austin real estate remain untainted by the hot crotch of greed? How could it maintain its innocence? Well, it never has, really. As bucolic as the name sounds, Butler Park Pitch & Putt has a fascinating and sordid history. It may not look like it today, but the course was built on the remains of the old Butler Brick clay mine. When the clay played out in the late 1940s, the property sat undeveloped for several years until a golf pro named John Douglas Kinser petitioned the city to build a nine-hole, par 3 golf course on the site. His plan became a reality, and on June 1, 1950, the Butler Park Pitch & Putt opened to the public. Less than two years later, Kinser was murdered in broad daylight by a fellow named Malcolm Wallace who, along with Kinser, was rumored to be having an affair with then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson’s sister, Josepha. Intrigued, right? Maybe somebody should have kept his putter in the bag …. On Oct. 22, 1951, Wallace drove to the Pitch & Putt and shot Kinser five times in broad daylight with a .25 caliber pistol, then drove away in his station wagon. Both the car and Wallace were identified by witnesses, and the police arrested Wallace shortly thereafter. Interestingly, Wallace had worked for LBJ before being appointed as an economist to the Department of Agriculture, and when he went to trial in February of the following year, he was represented by LBJ’s attorney, John Cofer. Because of the overwhelming evidence (murder weapon, shell casings, blood stains, eye witnesses), Wallace was convicted of first-degree murder. Eleven of the 12 jurors voted for the death penalty, with one holding out for life in prison, but the judge overruled the jury and announced a five-year prison sentence, which he then suspended. Wallace was immediately freed. If you believe the conspiracy theorists (or historians as they like to be called), Wallace went on to murder several more people, including John F. Kennedy, on LBJ’s behalf. If that’s actually true, then the perpetrator (or one of the perpetrators) of the most famous assassinations of the 20th century got his start right here in Austin … at the little ol’ Pitch & Putt behind the Jack in the Box on Barton Springs Road. In America, anything is possible. For instance, this Friday at the Butler Park Pitch & Putt the Dream Come True Foundation is hosting the South Austin Pitch and Pooch Celebrity Golf Tournament and Canine Extravaganza – the “World’s Smallest Golf Tournament” that includes its own Jimmy Buffett-costumed dog parade. Participants can compete for prizes, get pictures with their dogs in Buffett attire, and bask in the glow of celebrities like Cedric Benson. Yes, in America, anything is possible, and that’s what the Dream Come True Foundation is all about: helping young people transition out of poverty. Anytime that happens it’s a miracle.

The White Party

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May 25, 2011

The White Party sounds like the political wing of the Aryan Brotherhood – sort of the same way Sinn Féin is to the IRA – but it’s not. Don’t get all creeped out. The White Party is simply a party where people dress in white clothing. It’s a party, not a rally. Here’s the difference: If you’re someplace where everyone is wearing white and there are cocktails, trays of hors d’oeuvres, and a DJ mixing house music, you can probably relax. On the other hand, if you’re gathered a bonfire in some remote field in the middle of the night with a bunch of people who are not only wearing white but actually are white, you might want to consider going back and finishing high school. It’s the patriotic thing to do. Historically, in America, when white people start putting on white clothing, some evil shit is about to go down. Crosses get burned, people get lynched, chickens get fried … with 11 delicious herbs and spices … it’s all fucked up. Throughout the centuries (maybe because the menstrual stain really pops?), white has always represented virtue, goodness, and purity. The purity part is especially ironic considering certain white folks, in their quest for purity (racial in this case), completely undermine their goodness and virtue. Purity may be a desirable quality when looking for diamonds, buying cocaine, or cooking up corn squeezins, but when it comes to genetics, it only causes trouble. Spend a day walking around in Ireland, and you get the sense that much of its populace is in dire need of some miscegenation – at the very least a few more holidays in Majorca … or better yet, a Moorish invasion (smart money is on the Somalis). Whatever the case, something needs to give, or in another couple of hundred years, everyone in Ireland will have a comically huge flaming noggin like Conan O’Brien … or his sister … or maybe Conan doesn’t have a sister and that chick in The Fighter was really just Conan in drag. As intriguing as that theory sounds, it doesn’t hold water because Conan is clearly Irish, which means he probably has bunches of siblings of both genders and they are all bleeders. Regardless, it’s safe to say that all of Ireland needs to tap some strange … and not just a second cousin. The same could be said of certain pockets of Appalachia (although it could be argued that without inbreeding, the rest of the world would have never experienced that fine banjo pickin’ scene in Deliverance), Mennonite and Amish communities, and, of course, the British royal family – which, in contrast, makes a holler in the backwoods of West Virginia seem like a Benetton commercial. The best thing Prince Willie could have done for the health and longevity of the royal family was to come down with a case of jungle fever. It may be that he actually did. Kate Middleton is the swarthiest royal in a long, long while. That’s why she really looked good in white. In general, dark-skinned people look good in white. Who can ever forget how sharp Don Cheadle looked in that doughnut shop in Boogie Nights? OK, maybe not a good selling point for white attire, but before the brains hit his suit, he was the epitome of sartorial panache. Sean “Puffy” Combs, generally considered to be one of the premier arbiters of male fashion, has a bit of a penchant for white himself, and it could be argued that it was P-Diddy who popularized the white party, at least the contemporary version thereof. In fact, Puffy’s annual whiteout in the Hamptons is listed by Forbes as one of the world’s hottest parties. The Austin version may not reach such heights, but Friday night’s White Party at the Long Center benefits LifeWorks, a local charity that provides services for homeless, at-risk, and troubled youth in Austin, so there’s plenty of goodness and virtue in that. If you’re into purity, just make sure you only drink top shelf and try to keep the wine stains off your clothes – they really pop.

Deutschen Pfest

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May 18, 2011

OK, so maybe Pflugerville isn’t technically Austin, but it is just up the road a piece. It’s nearly in Austin. In fact, if you scroll out far enough on a Google map, Austin and Pflugerville are indistinguishable. Of course, the same could be said of Texas, the Continental U.S., and, in a larger cosmic sense, the solar system, galaxy, and universe – all of which, of course, could easily fit into the head of a pin in some larger universe/dimension, which, in turn, is just an infinitesimal grain of sand in a huge cosmic desert that stretches to the edge of eternity … yeah, like eternity even as an edge … unless it’s the one on a Möbius strip … whoa! What was that? Did your head just explode? Hold it together, damn it. Things like Möbius strips, Escher paintings, abstract algebra, and the nature of the divine are not meant to be contemplated by people who aren’t baked on skunkweed. Pflugerville is similar in its own way – especially if you’re sitting in the backseat of a really enthusiastic real estate agent’s Lexus pimp-trolling through streets with theme names like “Petunia,” “Honeysuckle,” and “Poppy Pass.” Yes, there are fields and fields of “little boxes made of ticky-tacky,” but it ain’t called “Desirable Plugerville” for nothing. Well, actually it’s called “Desirable Pflugerville” because CenTex needed to move some real estate. Rest assured that if CenTex throws up a subdivision in Luling, it will get it’s own snazzy adjective – maybe “Loveable Luling.” If that happens, you can bet that “Marvelous Manchaca” and “Nifty Niederwald” will be kicking themselves. Regardless of CenTex’s questionable marketing campaign, Pflugerville isn’t exactly undesirable. First of all, you get a lot of house for your money. Yes, the house will be in a subdivision carved out of a treeless wheat field, and it will look vaguely similar to every other house on your street, but you will have plenty of room to move about the cabin: big kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, and walk-in closets large enough to sleep a vanload of undocumented aliens. There are also good schools (good enough for Friday Night Lights is good enough, right?), playgrounds, and parks, and if you want to go buck wild in Austin, it’s only 15 minutes away if the traffic is flowing. Those chumps out in Round Rock have to drive at least 20. Perhaps the most important thing about Pflugerville is its rich German history. Henry Pfluger, the town’s namesake, was a rich German – a farmer who lost all his property in the Prussian War. He moved to Texas and eventually bought a big spread out east of Pflugerville where he raised wheat, rye, beans, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, and eight sons and three daughters – 11 kids in all, not counting the one that died shortly after childbirth. Jesus. Henry Pfluger’s “P” may have been silent, but it certainly wasn’t shooting blanks. Eleven kids is plenty of progeny to warrant a festival, and Pflugerville has one. It’s called Deutschen Pfest, and it’s happening this weekend at Pfluger Park. Carnival? Yep. Parade? Yep. Bands? Of course. This year’s headliners include the Gourds, Brave Combo, Micky & the Motorcars, and German accordion/clarinet duo Lorelei und Schatzi, “The German, female version of the Smothers Brothers.” There is also a Pfun Run (don’t hate), paintball target practice, and a coloring contest, the winner of which gets to sit atop a float in the parade as Pflugerville’s “Mayor for a Day.” All of this of course, adds up to pfucking pfantastically pfun times. Here’s the best part: If you buy a festival T-shirt, you get in free for all three days. Yes, the T-shirt might get a little stanky by day three, but if you live in P-ville, you surely have a really nice washer and dryer. If you don’t, maybe you should.

A Behanding in Spokane

The Luv Doc Recommends

May 11, 2011

People are strongly attached to their appendages, both literally and figuratively. In the literal sense, it’s not easy to sever most appendages. You can’t just go off half-cocked (unless you’re Lorena Bobbitt) and in a fit of passion hack off an appendage – especially when there’s (literally) bone involved. To get through bone you need some serious want-to or weaponry. Of course, the first thing you’ll want to ask yourself when attempting to dismember someone is, “Am I a psychopath?” Unless you’re a Civil War field doctor or Aron Ralston (the idiot James Franco played in 127 Hours), the answer is almost always, unequivocally, “Yes.” Keep in mind, Ralston only gets a pass because he was delirious from hubris, stupidity, and drinking his own urine. Point is, if you’re considering dismemberment for any reason other than to save someone’s life, put down the fucking hacksaw and check in to a mental hospital. Don’t wait on the jury to decide that you’re a dangerous nutjob. You have your answer. The first step in curing a psychosis is recognizing you have one. No matter how much your friends and family love you, it’s too late for an intervention when police start hauling decomposing body parts out of your crawl space. You would think it would be easy enough – statistically at least – to avoid dismembering someone. However, rather disturbingly, it’s not as uncommon as you might like to think. For instance: Drunks, while they may seem lovable, entertaining, and mostly harmless, are veritable merchants of death and dismemberment when operating motor vehicles. Letting a drunk drive is like handing him a machete to walk around with at a party. You will get all kinds of assurances that nothing bad is going to happen, but something in your gut tells you it’s a really bad idea. Probably the only craft an inebriate is even remotely qualified to pilot is an inner tube down the Guadalupe, and even that is questionable. Fortunately with tubing, the only real skills involved are staying in your tube and keeping your spliff and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos from getting soggy. Usually it’s an epic fail on all three counts but rarely does anyone kill or dismember someone while tubing – and, at least with tubing, everyone gets an airbag. Of course, along with drunks there are several other groups at high risk for causing and experiencing appendage loss. Sawmill workers … natch. You also have your roughnecks. Anyone who has ever been barhopping in Beaumont knows you don’t need 10 fingers to run a pool table. Then there are soldiers. It sort of goes without saying that persons engaged in combat are prone to appendage loss, but civilians in combat areas don’t fare too much better. Cancer patients lose a disturbing amount of limbs, too, but perhaps most surprisingly the greatest cause of amputations isn’t some wild-eyed serial killer with a chain saw. Rather, it’s something much more insidious: sugar. That’s right, go ahead and let out a blood-curdling scream, because the limb reaper is in your house right now! Sugar, or more specifically its minion, Type 2 diabetes, is the leading cause of amputations in America. Put down the doughnut and step away from the box before you can’t step away at all! That’s some scary shit, ain’t it? Even wonder why the H-E-Bs keep acquiring more and more shopping scooters? It’s not so high school kids on Ecstasy have something to do at 2 in the morning on a Saturday night. Yes, it’s difficult to imagine a Big Gulp cackling maniacally and chasing you around with an epidural syringe and a bone saw, but perhaps you should because that’s the most likely scenario in which you lose an appendage. Not like you imagined it, eh? Not nearly as fascinating a story as the one you made up in your mind. If you want that story … or at least an inventive and entertaining version thereof, head over to Hyde Park Theatre this Saturday for A Behanding in Spokane, an amputation-themed black comedy by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh about a man’s 40 year search for his missing left hand. You might not think you’re into black comedy, but it might be just the thing to help you get over your deadly addiction to sweetness.

Undie Run

The Luv Doc Recommends, Uncategorized

May 4, 2011

By now you’ve probably had quite a few Osama Bin Laden death video links posted on your Facebook wall. You know the one: It was censored by the Obama administration due to its level of violence? Well, curiosity might not have killed the cat but it certainly fueled a fairly successful Facebook scam, didn’t it? Now all your friends are going to think you’re some sort of sick freak who masturbates to snuff films. Ouch. That’s a bit unfair. You’re not a monster. You’re not even Michael Vick. Word on the street is that Michael Vick isn’t even Michael Vick. Who knows? People can change. It’s possible that last Saturday morning Osama had a huge epiphany. He might have rolled out of bed refreshed from a great night’s sleep and decided that those American infidels that he once thought of as evil oppressors were, in fact, a decent, peace-loving people worthy of respect and admiration. If he did, we’ll never know because later that evening he had his head and chest ventilated by a team of Navy SEALs. Sometimes when you think the black helicopters are after you, they really are. In this case it was for a very good reason. Osama may not have been evil incarnate, but he did plan and carry out terrorist attacks that caused the deaths of thousands of Americans. Barbaric as it seems, that kind of behavior earns you a free ventilation courtesy of the U.S. government. Sure, there are those who will say that killing doesn’t justify killing or that violence only begets more violence, and they are mostly right. It’s entirely possible that Hitler might have eventually been defeated by compassion, prayer, and peaceful meditation. After a while, he might have eventually been smitten by the love bug, but isn’t it wonderful that, thanks to the serious ass-kicking laid on him by the Allies, Hitler chose to check out early with a cyanide capsule and a Luger to his temple? Martin Luther King Jr. once said that you can kill the thinker but not the thought, and there are plenty of neo-Nazi Aryan supremacists still around to prove that point, but history has also shown that if you kill enough bad thinkers, bad thoughts tend to die out as well. The big, overriding question, then, is: Who determines what makes a thought bad? Tricky isn’t it? Was it morally justifiable to cause the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqis (that being roughly 33 times the number of casualties from 9/11) on the basis of specious intelligence about weapons of mass destruction? Was it OK because President Bush and Congress thought they were doing the right thing? Perhaps if Osama bin Laden had merely exclaimed, “Whoopsy! My bad! I thought I was doing the right thing!” after 9/11, we might have given him a pass. Probably not. And chances are black helicopters won’t swoop down out of the sky in the middle of the night and ventilate George Junior for being a monumental fuck-up, but rest assured there are thousands of people in Iraq and throughout the Middle East who probably wouldn’t mind taking a crack at it. In the end, the ugly truth is that they couldn’t do it even if they wanted to, which only proves that moral superiority isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit unless you have the power to back it up. America certainly has plenty of power, but we’re still a little shaky on moral superiority. The death of Osama bin Laden inspired a lot of fist-pumping and flag-waving, and rightfully so. It’s one of those rare occurrences in the past 10 years where America’s power and righteousness seem unquestionably in sync. Make no mistake: Killing Osama bin Laden was the right thing to do. He was a confessed mass murderer and a sworn enemy of the United States. Like Hitler, he surely knew he had it coming, but what Americans should be celebrating is not vengeance – America is surely due some of that itself – but the fact that because Osama bin Laden is dead, Americans can feel just a little bit safer, a little bit freer, a little bit closer to that invincibility we felt before we ever heard his name. We should probably get out and enjoy it before our chickens come home to roost. You can do just that in a very American way this Friday by joining in the 2011 Undie Run, a nearly naked fun run that collects clothes for local charities. The Undie Run starts at 7pm on Friday in the parking lot behind the University Co-op and includes a photo booth, prizes by Bettysport and Forbidden Fruit, as well as free body paint and glow sticks for the first 500 runners. Best of all, it’s free, just like America.