Kinky Friedman – The Pleasurecraft

JULY 17, 2007

Really, the question is, who wouldn’t want to live in $500,000 condo in a 44-story high rise on the breathtaking shores of Shoal Creek? Imagine leaning over your balcony railing on the 42nd floor and squinting downward at that tiny fissure of green space below and knowing that, just a few miles upstream under a bridge in Pease Park, a homeless man just dropped trow and is squeezing out a three-coiler on the dry creekbed – a pungent pâté of digested pizza rinds and cinnamon sticks from the Mr. Gattis Dumpster. Don’t worry, there’s not enough line in your Pocket Fisherman to get your lure below the 20th floor anyway, much less hit top water, so you don’t have to worry about reeling in a big batch of E. coli. Besides, it’s not like you really want to fish, it’s the idea that you could fish if you wanted to. You like to be close to the water, even if that water is a fetid drainage ditch for Downtown developers. Sign here … and here … and here. After all, you didn’t just spend half a mil on a condo, you bought a lifestyle. You wanted to be able to roll out of bed at 10am, take a quick four minute elevator ride to the ground floor and hire a pedicab to pump you up to Starbuck’s for a Vende Latteccino and a copy of The New York Times. Maybe afterward you could strap on your heavy hands and take your (circle one) Shih Tzu/Pomeranian/Chihuahua/Pekingese for a brisk power walk around Town Lake … but wait … some asshole put a 26-story condo right in the middle of the hike and bike trail. Worse yet, the City Council signed off on the deal. Now, just like the rest of Austin, you’re getting the runaround. Enraged, you shake your fist at the cranes and construction workers and without a trace of irony yell, “Damn you, developers! Damn you!” What kind of livable city is it when you can only enjoy Town Lake from behind the plate glass of an expensive condo? Well sure, it’s livable all right. So is the riverwalk in San Antonio. C’mon, they turned their drainage ditch into a tourism gold mine. With some knee-jerk urban planning and lack of foresight, Austin can turn Town Lake into a similar cement moat – maybe even with flatboats full of fat Midwestern conventioneers. Dare we dream? Maybe. If you want to have a voice in whether Austin will go from River City to Moat Metropolis, show up down at Stubb’s (nestled on the beautiful shores of Waller Creek) for the Concert to Save Town Lake, a fundraiser for Austinites for the Responsible Development of the Town Lake Corridor, an organization with a tough job and even tougher name from which to draw an anagram. Local musicians Bob Schneider, Dale Watson, Stephen Bruton, Jimmy Lafave, and Kinky Friedman will join forces to rock block the potential riverwalk.

SAT., NOV. 8, 2003

Writers by circumstance are a quiet and reclusive lot, given to long stretches of solitude and introspection and therefore prey to a variety of antisocial quirks and ills that can either make them seem eclectic and charming or boorish and overbearing. After long stretches holed up creating the next great masterwork, a self-imposed cabin fever sets in and the red-eyed writer descends to unload the built-up mental slag on friends, relatives, and an unsuspecting public. The result is often entertaining, but as monologue gives way to sermon then soliloquy, even the most captivating chatty Cathy can become a dull, droning windbag. As with any sweeping generality, there are exceptions, but by and large, when the pen is put to rest, writers can barely keep their yaps shut long enough for a normal person to get a word in edgewise. That’s OK however, because if normal people had something important to say, they too would be writers. Like nothing else (with the possible exceptions of politics and prizefighting), writing requires a bigger ego than intellect. Big egos require a lot of space, so it’s a good thing this weekend’s Texas Book Festival is spread all over the Capitol grounds. Texas is a big state with a big pink phallus of a Capitol building – a place that houses an impressive collection of egos most of the year anyway, so it seems the perfect locus for a gathering of authors. You might think the Convention Center was booked, but as First Lady Laura Bush (Honorary Chairperson of the Festival) will tell you, nothing was going on at the Capitol anyway, so why pay rent? The good news is that most of the book festival is free and you can hear readings/discussions by a jaw-dropping list of authors – huge names like Barbara Bush, Dan Rather, Rod McKuen, Ann Richards, and Joe Bob Briggs as well as writers like Neal Pollack, Steven Saylor, Calvin Trillin, and Herman Wouk. As with any Austin event, there will be plenty of music. During the day on Saturday and Sunday the Entertainment Tent at 11th and Colorado will feature free shows by local and not-so-local musicians including Kinky Friedman, Patricia Vonne, Slim Richey, Ed Miller, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Jon Dee Graham, and Colin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Saturday night features a huge concert by the Rock Bottom Remainders, a cover band featuring writers Dave Barry, Amy Tan, Roy Blount Jr., Ridley Pearson, and Scott Turow. For $40 you can see them butcher classic rock tunes and provide special guest Roger McGuinn (formerly – waaay formerly – of the Byrds), with an entertaining anecdote for his memoirs. It’s pricey for the Music Hall, but proceeds benefit Texas Libraries and if you’ve always wanted to throw underwear at Roy Blount Jr., you may not get another chance.