Suzanna Choffel – The Pleasurecraft

January 26, 2010

Antone’s CLOSED

That breathtaking pinkish sunrise is not a good sign. Yes, it’s pretty – the kind of daybreak that appears in all your better Southwestern tourist brochures – but it also can be the harbinger of an ugly day for allergy sufferers. Cedar pollen is a sure sign that Adam and Eve really screwed the pooch with the whole forbidden fruit incident. The realization that they were naked was only a very small portion of the package of affliction and misery the Old Testament God had in store. There is so much bewilderingly evil and nasty shit in nature it can only be explained by a malevolent and vengeful God. No doubt cedar pollen is solidly on the list, but there are plenty of other menacing phenomena that top it by far. For instance: porcupines. Jesus, what the fucking fuck? A varmint entirely covered in needles. It’s like an animal designed by prank-store employees. Really, God? Is that some sort of sick payback for the apple? Then of course you have skunks, which look exactly like something you might want to pet … right up to the point when they lift their cute bushy tails. Piranha? Piranhas would maybe make a little sense if Eve had been caught strangling puppies or gerbiling or something, but even still, piranhas seem like a gross over-reaction. At most, an apple is worth an earwig or some bot flies or maybe an ugly case of herpes. Yes, it could be argued that the Lord was acting on principal when he cast A&E out of the garden. In fact, the real punishment for eating from the tree of knowledge is knowing that your God thought it was OK to create a menagerie of other creatures that can eat you, maul you, sting you, strangle you, clobber you, maim you, and hurt you in ways too bizarre for any mentally healthy person to imagine. Crocodiles? Why? Imaginative, yes, but couldn’t all those fish, varmints, waterbucks, zebras, and the like just have died of old age? Must baby fawns be torn to pieces by packs of wolves? Is that really necessary? A world with so much violence and treachery makes a strong argument for either a maniacally sadistic micromanager or a scatterbrained absentee landlord – somebody who drunkenly jizzed in a tide pool then flew off to another galaxy in his silver spaceship. Neither of these models is entirely satisfying, but the latter is much more comforting. Knowing that God was actually pulling the levers when more than 150,000 Haitians were crushed in an earthquake two weeks ago doesn’t really bode well for the afterlife. Would you want to eat at the same Taco Bell where a bunch of people died from E. coli the week before? Even though it’s on a comically smaller scale, the whole cedar pollen problem raises similar questions. Isn’t there a less obnoxious way for trees to mate? Do we have to be covered in a monthlong toxic pink pollen money shot? Do we even need cedar (aka mountain cedar, Juniperus Mexicana)? All it’s ever brought us is nasty pollen, brush fires (proof of a benevolent God?), and shitty bases for glass-topped coffee tables. If you stay awake trying to answer these questions, you probably can’t sleep because your head is pounding with sinus pressure – either that or you’re going insane. Same difference. Trying to understand why cedar trees exist is a pointless exercise – sort of like trying to understand why Taco Bell chose the Beefy 5-Layer Burrito for its 89-cent special. You will never understand that type of insanity unless you’re insane yourself, and the juice probably isn’t worth the squeeze. All you can really do is react to it in a way that seems sane and responsible. That’s exactly what some generous musicians will be doing this Sunday at Antone’s when they perform for the Hope for Haiti Benefit, a fundraiser for victims of the Haitian earthquake. $15 gets you a night of music from Love at War, Johnny Goudie, Suzanna Choffel, Nina Singh, Kathy Valentine, and Savannah Welch, and it might at least help ease someone else’s misery.

January 6, 2009

Damn, maybe you shouldn’t have voted for Obama. Think of all the great benefit concerts that won’t ever happen if he somehow manages to pull a universal health-care rabbit out of his hat. You really screwed the pooch on that vote, didn’t you? Imagine if the next time an Austin musician gets leukemia, hep C, or hit by a car, all he or she has to do is just go to the doctor. Weird. Besides, the current system is clearly working: The ailing musician hopes that their friend or manager calls a benevolent club owner, a publicist, and some really kickass musicians and begs them all to donate time and services to put on a free concert to defray medical expenses. Hey! Health care in Austin rocks! Imagine if we blew the $200 million a day we’re spending to foment Iraqi hatred on keeping Americans healthy? Yeah, it does seem a little shortsighted and simplistic, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, getting Congress to vote against their insurance lobby constituency would be a Jesus-sized miracle, to say the least. You can’t fly to the French Riviera on the gratitude of voters. Really, the best we can possibly hope for is some sort of taxpayer funded überinsurance, very likely underwritten by a subsidiary of a shadow corporation owned by Dick Cheney. Lest you recoil in horror, remember that, regardless of how recent indiscretions in the financial sector have torpedoed the economy, America still runs on money. If we can’t make enough of it here, we just borrow it from China or Japan or Germany or some other chump B-list country that doesn’t have the guns to collect. You can’t expect the U.S. government to run on the power of love either. This isn’t Cuba or France or even Canada. It’s nearly impossible to get a doctor to roll out of bed for less than a hundred large a year. If it’s a surgeon … fahgeddaboutit. Surgeons drop about half that per annum just paying malpractice insurance, and if you think you can get an insurance executive (other than Warren Buffett, aka the Mother Theresa of insurance and investment) to roll out of bed for less than a million a year, you need to get back on your meds. Seriously. With the recent shakedown of the investment and insurance industries, the best way to keep the economy strong is to keep taking drugs. We can’t have Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Abbott Labs taking a nosedive. Think of how that would affect Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew. What to do? What to do? For now, you can continue to prop up the status quo and support musicians by going to benefit concerts until Obama ruins it all with his progressive agenda. You can get started this Sunday by attending the benefit for Eldridge Goins at Antone’s. Eldridge is a truly phenomenal drummer who just underwent expensive surgery to remove a tumor in his chest. Fortunately he’s got an all-star cast to help him out. This Sunday’s performers include Carolyn Wonderland, Guy Forsyth, Drew Smith’s Lonely Choir, and Suzanna Choffel as well as other surprise guests. Cover is only $10 and won’t cancel out your vote for Obama, but it sure will do Eldridge and Austin music a solid.