June 10, 2008

This weekend both the ROT Biker Rally and Pride Texas are knocking knees Downtown. Talk about a summer blockbuster. It’s like Jerry Bruckheimer, Judd Apatow, and the Cohen Brothers had a business lunch at Hooters, smoked a fatty, and dreamed up this weekend. Bikers … gays … lesbians … if the Convention and Visitors Bureau was really on the ball they would have booked a mime festival this weekend too … or better yet, the Southern Baptist Convention (same amount of make-up really, just different technique). Regardless, you can expect about 40,000 bikers, 15,000 gays, 100,000 or so wide-eyed onlookers, and roughly 1.5 million Mexican free-tail bats buzzing around Downtown this weekend. That’s a goldmine in guano alone, but the ROT claims to rev up the local economy by nearly $40 million – the bulk of which surely ends up folded into the g-strings of local tittie dancers. Basic trickle-down theory states that the surplus tittie-dancer cash will make its way into the pockets of meth dealers and all-night day-care centers, which will in turn blow its respective wads on Sudafed and disposable diapers, thereby feeding the vicious cycle of corporate consumerism through which the bikers define their freedom and individuality. Ronald Reagan couldn’t have sketched it up any better … right down to the self-fulfilling prophecy of overinflated economic impact. Bitch about their flatulent, lumbering, gas-sucking anachronisms of modern engineering all you want, Harley riders are superior in at least one way: Brand loyalty. That’s a state of economic Zen that’s hard to achieve in modern society. You really have to ignore a lot of facts and statistics and just go with your gut, which, if Harley riders are any indication, is one of the most lovingly developed parts of the human anatomy. You should be seeing plenty of spectacular ones this weekend – usually stretching out a T-shirt that says, “If you can read this, the bitch fell off” on the back. Of course, fetish leather, chaps, and biker outfits aren’t the sole domain of motorcyclists. Remember that on Saturday Auditorium Shores will be teeming with Pride, Austin’s annual celebration of lesbianity/gayness/bisexuality/transgenderdom that loosely coincides with NYC’s Stonewall Uprising (Google it) of June 1969, aka the summer of reciprocal oral gratification. Pride may not have the shock and awe of ROT (maybe because the parade’s participant waiver form expressly forbids anything racy, or for that matter, gay), but at least you know that the participants are parading ostensibly for LGBT rights and not because they want a venue for their AARP qualifying bitches to show off their boob jobs. Subtle difference but worth noting. In other cities you can see plenty of tit in the Pride Parade (even if you didn’t necessarily want to), but the smart gays here in Austin decided that assless chaps, banana hammocks, and cosmetically unenhanced boobage are not the best way to sell gay rights to the breeders. Thus, the kibosh was put on the exhibitionists, and Pride took on a fam friendlier tone. This is not to say there aren’t still some occasional flashes of freakiness, but don’t expect the parade route be littered with empty amyl nitrate vials, spit-soaked dental dams, and spent condoms. Selling the idea that gays should have the same rights and freedoms as the model citizens out at the Expo Center takes a certain amount of decorum and restraint. If they can just keep it buttoned down long enough to get some gay rights to the hets – maybe someday the LGBT crowd can be as obnoxious as their ROT Rally rivals. Imagine 50,000 gay exhibitionists on Congress Avenue gunning their pastel Vespas and showing off their hairy-legged, braless bitches. That’s worth popping for the $15 entrance fee for Pride, isn’t it? You bet it is. Plus, you get Meshell Ndegeocello and Pansy Division as a reach-around. Could this weekend get any better or what?