By Jacob Calle:  I’ve participated in Dim Mak events at SXSW and have always had a great time, but I’ve never seen Steve Aoki in a large club like setting. I can say that it was nothing that I expected. The dude loves food. The 1,300 person filled venue was pulling out there week end warrior face for this Thursday event. Half naked women who decided to just walk out the door in their bras and panties while men decided to wear P.E. clothes.  Now when I went to GIRL TALK early this year I realized many guys mimicked Gregg from Girl Talk’s look. Ya know, the look that you look when you are about to go exercise. Well that trend is hella strong in the electronic scene because if it were my guess these guys ran to Verizon Wireless in down town Houston according to their attire.

Everything went according to plan yesterday, except for just one thing. Steve was late due to a tire blow out on his trailer. But that didn’t stop him from having a damn good time. The tour that he is on is called “Dead Meat”. I’m not sure if that had anything to do with being a vegetarian because a PETA group is following them on tour and he did dedicate a song to all the vegetarians in the house while tossing a huge bowl of what looked like chips into the crowd. Like I said, the dude loves food.

But can you blame the dude for loving food? His father is the founder of Benihana’s for cryin’ out loud! Steve AKA Kid Millionaire took large bottles of juice and stage dove a couple times into the crowd while spewing juice on to everyone. He then proceeded to shake a champagne bottle and volcanoed the liquid on to sweaty kids screaming “Aoki”. Unlike other DJs who just mix their music at the table, he was all over the place. Yeh, he in some cases just pressed play and turned some knobs, but you weren’t there to watch him perform as a DJ and just mix the tunes in front of you. That’s boring. Aoki is a very shot gun to the face kinda go. He was ready to explode at any given time and had the crowd eating chips right out of his hand, literally.

Steve Aoki’s high energy crowd was willing to take every responsibility that Steve had them do. Including one young female wearing a wolf Spirit Hood. As Aoki had her be lifted up above the crowd the music was his fuel. He grabbed a cake topped with white icing and pied her right in the face. While some people wear floppy shoes and a red rubber nose and get pied in the face for a living this girl had no problem with it dressed as a wild carnivore and getting pied for free. It was quite the impressive aim as well. Steve Aoki brought you the raddest food fight dance party that Houston has ever witnessed and the weekend has not even started.

Resting for Steve Aoki? Na, he's prolly justa first timer pill taker.

Products of failed parents perhaps? Eeesh!

www.dimmakrecs.com

@steveaoki

Steve Aoki is found of Los Angeles based record label, Dim Mak. Every year the label sets up these amazing parties at SXSW with many celebrity sightings. They’re free and a lot of fun. They’re not your regular SXSW party. It’s a damn circus, so keep your ears to the floor on the haps of this event. SXSW is just around the corner!

Dim Mak party at SXSW: Steve Aoki on his bull riding machine. Why not? It's Texas.

Danny Masteron AKA DJ Mom Jeans AKA Hyde from That 70's Show. Yes, I have black eyes. Yes, it was a stunt.

Chronicle makes waves due to really good special effects (CGI) and lead characters who come from a dark place. Three high school students find strange formations in a cave that give them weird telepathic powers.

The lead kid is constantly being bullied by his classmates, another is a popular jock and the third the bland yet sensible cousin of the first. The entire film uses the point of view of video camcorders with the action being switched off between students. In the last act that is abandoned with Chronicle still adhering to an objective stance of its characters.

The effects unfold in a super hero sci-fi mode such as flying through the air and using psychokinesis to crush and rip. Naturally the battle is a mind contest where the trio debates whether to use their newfound powers for good or bad. You just know the kid who’s been hazed his entire life is going to get some form of revenge. The climax highlights Seattle locations including the space needle.

Chronicle should be of interest to sci-fiers and youngsters who can finally give their oppression a face.

– Michael Bergeron

This Week’s Featured Show

Saturday, February 4

Buxton (record release)
with
Marmalakes
Featherface
@ Fitzgerald’s

This is a big week for local releases.  You’ve got Houston bands Co-Pilot, Bang Bangz and Machina TX also doing releases this week but this is the big Big BIG release of the week. That’s no disrespect to the other bands but Buxton is one of those bands that has captured a lot of people’s imagination and slowly built up a strong local following through their energetic and captivating shows, a string of strong releases, admirable musicianship, and lovingly crafted songs.  What’s crazy is how long we’ve had to wait for new music from these cats.  Their last release was the Feathers 7-inch back in 2009!  Wild huh?!!!  Yeah it’s really been that long! Well, the wait is over.  Actually the wait was over last week when the band played a packed pre-release show at Cactus last week but we’ll not quibble over the details.  I  for one just downloaded the new album on E-music and I can tell my fellow Buxton fans that there is some solid stuff here worth the wait - Down in the Valle has some lovely swooping guitar lines that forced me to hit repeat and Oh My Boy has a lovely grandeur about it to name a few that stand out on a cold first listen.  Anyhow, Congratulations to the Buxtons.  See you guys Saturday (my first Buxton live show in a while) and please, don’t keep us waiting another three years for the next release, OK?

Thursday, February 2

First Thursday, Groundhog Day, featuring Blaggards, Beetle, Nick Gaitan & the Umbrella Man, Polka? I hardly knew her Band, Reverberation DJs, & Carlos Hernandez’s “Print Invasion” @ The Continental Club/The Big Top/Natachee’s/Sig’s Lagoon - a big hullabaloo for the day celebrating our favorite weather predicting mammal.

Bob Schneider @ McGonigel’s Mucky Duck - I thought Schneider was from Austin but I stand corrected he’s from Bee Cave, Texas which is a pretty cool name for a town.

Steve Aoki, Datsik @ Verizon Wireless Theater - AKA Kid Millionaire.  You know the guy who did that really annoying “I’m the House” song with that guy from the Black Eyed Peas.

G. Love & Special Sauce, Kristy Lee @ House of Blues – Not my kind of thing but I’m sure the subset of college kids who dig Dave Matthews will be at this show.

D.R.U.G.S., Hit The Lights, Like Moths to Flames, Sparks the Rescue @ Fitzgerald’s - FUCK, THIS IS AWFUL!  DID SOMEONE JUST CRAP IN MY EAR?!!!!  What the fuck is this D.R.U.G.S. crap.  Bunch of tattooed auto-tuned, overproduced sacks of crap playing for 13 year old boys who are too musically illiterate from years of Disney bands to realize they are being served a plate of shit?  Are people really buying this con job?  God, I hate the Buzz!

Friday, February 3

The Tontons (tour kickoff), The Wild Moccasins, A SEA ES @ Fitzgerald’s - Finally, something good!  The Tontons kick off another tour joined by fellow heavyweights Wild Moccasins.  Should be an excellent night!

The Wheel Workers, Winter Wallace, listenlisten, England in 1819 @ Mango’s – OK so the last band fucked up the whole alliteration thing but don’t let that steer you away from a solid bill.

Final Exam, Young Girls, Poor Pilate @ Walter’s (1120 Naylor) – Austin Indie rock kids drop in on the new Walters with the soon to be Austin based as well Young Girls

The Adicts, World Inferno Friendship Society, Dead to the World @ House of Blues - English punk band from as far back as 1975 with a shtick involving bowler hats and the lead singer wearing Joker makeup.

Poetic Mental Aggression, The Illegal Wiretaps, Devil Killing Moth @ Fitzgerald’s - Maybe it’s having to suffer through that over-produced  D.R.U.G.S. earlier but PMA’s shoddily recorded low-fi tracks on their reverb nation is kind of refreshing.

Johnny Winter, Damon Fowler, Richard Cagle and the Voodoo Choir @ Warehouse Live - That albino blues dude from Beaumont, Texas

Los Lobos @ Dow Academic Center (Brazosport College campus; Lake Jackson) - This classic East LA band may be worth the small jog out to Lake Jackson.

Saturday, February 4

Avant Garden Sixteenth Anniversary Party with Free Radicals, Chase Hamblin, Mantis, Michael Perkins, The Trimms, Shotgun Funeral, Low Society, The Dead C Scales @ Avant Garden – Happy Birthday to Mariana and all the cool cats at Avant Garden.  We hope to see many of these.

Co-Pilot, My Education, Harold Borup @ Walter’s (1120 Naylor) – Saturday seems to be record release Day in Houston because Co-pilot has a new split with ALASKAN that is 20 minutes of sweet post rock goodness.

Bang Bangz (EP release), GRRRL Parts, Hello Chief, New York City Queens @ Fitzgerald’s (Downstairs) – There is still more in the world of music releases this week.  Bang Bang – the dreamy electronics and guitar fueled band – drops an EP too.

Machina TX (album release), Eyes of a Dreamer, Last Ones Left, Foster @ Warehouse Live (Studio) – Umm here is another album release but all I can say about this one is how really tedious the video on their webpage is. Doing an interview with a garbage bag as a backdrop, a bare lamp as a prop, and someone shakily moving a camera about while you yak on and on about the record like it’s a VH1 behind the music, is really not doing you any favors. Just sayin’.

Ensane, Jon Black, Twenty Eleven, Square and Compass @ Super Happy Fun Land – Tonight it’s Super Happy Hip Hop land

Angel of Owl & Lordslady Birthday Bash, featuring Cruxiter, Owl Witch, Shaman, Epic Death, Axis In Collapse, & Pagan Sword @ The White Swan - OK Cruxiter gets some points on their page where they list their influences.  Lead singer Joe Gonzales’ first person named as an influence – Denis DeYoung!!!  You know how much fucking balls it takes to be a metal band and admit that you’re into STYX?  That’s pretty awesome! 

John Egan (3PM) Rich Hopkins (1PM) @ Cactus Music - Music and St. Arnold’s, ya can’t go wrong there!

Possessed by Paul James, Westbound @ Rudyard’s – The Austin Folkie multi-instrumentalist Konrad Wert returns to Houston

Benefit for the Dulles Middle School Orchestra Program, featuring Holy Fiction with The Dulles Middle School Symphony Orchestra @ Roger Auditorium (500 Dulles Ave., Sugarland; 7PM) - Easily the coolest benefit show I’ve seen in a while.

Blood, Sweat & Tears, The Guess Who, Fondue Monks @ Nutty Jerry’s (Winnie) - Jeez some of the suggested videos when you pull up Blood, Sweat and Tears on YouTube are really really just umm something.. man the 70’s were weird!

Sunday, February 5

Jacuzzi Boys, Psychic Palms, Mikey & The Drags @ Mango’s - The Miami based silly, fun, and jangly indie pop trio return to Houston with a really nice three band bill.

No Idea Festival
featuring
Andrea Neumann, Bonnie Jones & Bryan Eubanks, Greg Kelley @ Art Palace (3913 Main; 3-5PM)
Jason Lescalleet, Andrea Neumann, Bhob Rainey, Chris Cogburn, Vic Rawlings, & Gill Arnò @ 14 Pews (800 Aurora St.; 8PM) - This festival of musicians and inter-media artists is from January 30 through February 6 and runs from Austin, to Houston to San Antonio.  The talent they’ve brought in from around the world is surely going to strike a chord with fans of the Binarium Sound Series, They Who Sound, and Nameless Sound.

Wednesday, February 8

Doomtree, Nosaprise @ Fitzgerald’s (downstairs) - Minnesota hip hop collective will try to cram themselves into the smaller stage.

I.P.V., Christ Malformation, Synapse Defect, Funeral Rites, G.O.D.S., Human Chunks @ The White Swan – Relaxing and soothing power-violence/ metal for your humpday.

Kinky Friedman @ Dosey Doe Coffee Company (The Woodlands) – We interviewed Kinky for this month’s issue.  if you missed the interview here it is (link).

–For more listings check out Space City Rock - Houston’s best local calendar–

The Innkeepers starts with a montage that merges images of a 19^th century hotel with its 20^th century renovation. As writer/director Ti West’s film begins in earnest we already have a creepy feeling intensified by the progression of the building from a grand palace to an archaic structure wedged between refurbished buttresses.

The Innkeepers is a charming ghost story,” West tells Free Press Houston in a phone interview. “You have to make a film not scary in order for the scares to work,” West adds about the rhythm and timing he uses in building up the scenes. The main characters are two hipster twentysomethings who occasionally study, sometimes drink beer but more often pontificate about the possible ghost that occupies the soon-to-be-closed hotel during their regular nightshift.

Sara Paxton and Pat Healy posses the right amount of nerdy charm and goofy innocence to give the film what West describes as a “goofball quality to the serious proceedings.”

West had the world premiere of Innkeepers at last year’s SXSW. “At first I was full of trepidation because it was a key Saturday night screening at the Paramount, the largest venue. The movie had no big stars, which is what the festival usually uses that slot for,” says West. “Now I think of SXSW as a second home,” such was the success of that premiere.

West considers his trajectory through filmmaking as “an indie film lifestyle more than a career.” West was one of six directors of the omnibus V/H/S that played at Sundance this year and which West promises to bring to SXSW. “All I want from Hollywood is $20-million versus the $60-thousand that I normally spend. But if you go that route you have to do the test screenings, the endless marketing meetings and the headaches,” allows West. Whatever his method West has made a film that pays off in its chosen genre.

The Innkeepers will open Friday, February 3 at the Alamo Drafthouse West Oaks unwinding until Monday, February 6 when it moves to the Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park location for a three-day run ending Thursday, February 9.

– Michael Bergeron

Big Miracle is a film with a big heart. BM almost seems like a documentary, so absolute is director Ken Kwapis’ focus on the actual events surrounding a family of whales who’re trapped in ice. The trio quickly named Fred, Wilma and Bam Bam, five miles from the ocean and blocked by solid ice, are existing by grabbing oxygen from a small hole in the ice.

The whales cannot make the five-mile trip underwater and meanwhile the nearby town (more of a settlement) of Barrow Alaska tries to save the large aquatic mammals. By the way, I realize that Bam Bam was Barney and Betty’s son and Pebbles was the progeny of Fred and Wilma but all that’s explained in Big Miracle. It’s also revealed how a Mexican restaurant above the Arctic Circle acquires avocados.

In 1988 the actual international whale rescue effort was referred to as Operation Breakthrough. The magic of the movie results from over a dozen disparate characters being introduced and played to the hilt with little regards for their political leanings. Sure, some of the characters are tree huggers like Greenpeace advocate Drew Barrymore, and some are conservative to a fault like National Guard officer/pilot Dermot Mulroney yet by the endless progression of plot and character development all motivations become a level playing field of altruistic feeling for animals and ecology.

A veritable Shakespearean roll call of characters includes Tim Blake Nelson, John Krasinski, Ted Danson, Kathy Baker, Stephen Root, Vinessa Shaw and Kristen Bell. Imagine my surprise when revealed in the end credit roll two of my favorite characters turn out to be James LeGros and Rob Riggle as a couple of do-gooders with the strongest Minnesota accents north of Fargo.

All the events depicted in Big Miracle really happened and it’s a tribute to the time and era that the seemingly impossible was accomplished. Big Miracle is the first film I’ve seen this year that I can’t wait to see again.

– Michael Bergeron

By Jacob Calle: We all know that Fun Fun Fun Fest is the bees knees for music festivals in Austin, yeh? For films, SXSW, which is just around the corner, but what about for comedy? Austin’s got that covered too. Paramount Theatre presents Moontower Comedy & Oddity Fest! Tickets went on sale today so grab out your credit card and punch in those numbers for your chance to laugh at some of the best comedy acts on planet Earth!

Seth Meyers, Aziz Ansari, Steven Wright, The Amazing Johnathan, Maria Bamford, Hannibal Buress, Matt Bearden, John Ramsey and many more.

The festival will play host to over 60 comedians that range from stand-up to magic. 10 venues will play part in this event in a stretch of 4 days.

Go to www.moontowercomedyfestival.com for more info and to order your tickets. For you early birders a general admission badge will cost you 99 chickens while the VIP at 799.

MOONTOWER BADGES: $99

Moontower badges will grant you access to all four days of the festival at participating venues. The badge does not grant access to every festival performance at the Paramount Theatre, but purchasers will have access to pre-sale tickets for those shows. The badges also get you into the exclusive party for badge holders as well as into the Moontower Film Festival happening daily at Stateside at the Paramount.

VIP BADGES: $799

Festival VIP badges get you access to all performances and give you preferred seating at all of the venues including the Paramount. Other perks include drink tickets to use throughout the festival, along with access to special artist/VIP areas, pre-show happy hours, VIP concierge, the Moontower Film Festival and more.

Follow the fest @moontowercomedy

Facebook: HERE!

or visit the MoonTowerComedy site!

I’m a huge fan of Aziz and I support this amazing festival. I saw his stand up a while back in Houston and his stage presence is outstanding. For you guys that want to take a peek at this little freak grab your tickets. You wont regret!

WATCH AZIZ ON CRAIGSLIST SEXAD HERE!

Kinky and Mr. Magoo (Photo by Brian Kanof)

We’re very lucky to have Texas legend Kinky Friedman kick-off his Southern Discomfort Tour here at the Dosey Doe. Freidman describes the show as a solo concert where he’ll sing his classics, along with political commentary, jokes, a book reading, and a book signing. (“I’ll sign anything but bad legislation.”) Fans will also get a preview of his “Men In Black” Tequila. “We celebrate Zorro, Paladin (Have Gun, Will Travel), and Johnny Cash…and it’s the best Mexican mouth-wash in the world.” I spoke with the Kinky in January and, despite my being a little intimidated, I found Mr. Freidman horribly nice and thoughtful.

FPH: Tell us about the book you’ll be reading.

Kinky: “Heroes of a Texas Childhood” was written in my last campaign [after] Jim Hightower advised me, “Don’t tell them who your heroes are; that’s the best way of finding out who you are.” So I picked these 23 heroes. What made them heroes to me, from Sam Houston to Anne Richards, wasn’t that they won the battle but the obstacles they had to overcome to do it. Some of these are personal like my dad who was a navigator in World War II and flew a B24 Liberator. The story about him – which is probably the one I’ll read – is a little Mark Twain moment in the show. When I finished the book I showed it to some friends of mine, young college kids and graduates. They had never heard of Barbara Jordan; they’d never heard of Audie Murphy, Henry B Gonzalez, and on and on. In other words, they didn’t know on whose shoulders they stood. So I vowed right then and there that if I ever do become governor, this book will be mandatory reading in public schools.

Maybe it’s the internet where, like Billy Bob [Thornton] says, “the audience has become the show,” but the result is I don’t think we’re going to see any stars…we are going to see product, product like Justin Bieber or Lady Ga Ga but you won’t see another John Wayne and that’s too bad for all of us.

I’ve been working on this book with Billy Bob Thornton and he has a movie coming out I highly recommend called “Jayne Mansfield’s Car” and you won’t see any movies like this. The rest will be 300 million dollar video games aimed at 15-year-olds or the other story will be a chubby curly-headed kid who brings a goat to Las Vegas and screws all the chorus girls.

Look at Nashville where they have these corporate publishing whorehouses. Obviously this is making money, somebody’s recording them – Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, or somebody – but after two decades of this method, nobody has written “Me and Bobby McGee”, “Hello Walls”, or “King of the Road”. Those were written by three fucked-up guys in the same little town of Nashville, right there in the same place – Music Row. These guys were drunk, broke, worried and lonely…and look at what they were able to produce! If I could even hear ONE song like those this year or this decade that would be great, but you don’t.

We’ve changed as a culture; the whole culture has ADHD. Barry Manilow, who I have nothing against, writes songs that make people feel good for a short period of time and he’s made more money than God but look at Kristofferson or Haggard, they write songs that might make you think and stay with you a lifetime – that’s what I shoot for. Now, I haven’t written any new songs – these songs are a lot older than a lot of people in the audience – but these audiences have been great and they know every lyric.

FPH: Explain to me Rick Perry.

Freidman: His run for president has made me look really good. He’s made George Bush look like Thomas Fucking Jefferson! We got a situation now in Texas where all the Aggies and all the blondes are telling Rick Perry jokes.
When I go through airport I’ll have people say to me “I voted for you, Kinky.” Of course, if that many people voted for me, I would have won but now that Perry is running for president, people aren’t saying “I voted for you, Kinky”, they are grabbing me by the shoulder and saying “You should have won!”

Last month, as I came through the Austin airport, I had an unlit cigar and the lady cop there says “Is that thing lit?” and I said, “To which thing, madam, are you referring?” and, anyway, I passed through all the TSA stuff when this agent, big black guy, was following me and I thought he was gonna give me shit for an unlit cigar. Finally, he caught up with me and I turned to him and said, “Is there some kind of problemo, officer?” and he said, “No, I just want to shake a good man’s hand.” When he said that, I thought, you know, probably no one had ever said that to Rick Perry. Not to pick on Rick – he’s just a politician. That’s why I’m a musician first. It’s a giant step down from musician to politician. That’s why I say musicians could better run Texas or the country than politicians; we wouldn’t get a hell of a lot done in the morning but we’d work late and we’d be honest.

Bad people are being drawn to politics. They’re former hall monitors and they remain bad people. The good people, the best of our country, are definitely staying the hell away from politics. The Occupy folks were really onto something, but that revolution got hijacked and they didn’t get the point across. The point should have been that the greed and the money that has corrupted and destroyed our country is mainly manifested in the political system – which is a fundamentally dishonest field of endeavor – and that by flooding it with money, we’ve destroyed it where you and I can’t run for anything. If we wanted to run against Rick, he’d snap his fingers and he’d have 17 million bucks. America saw right through the guy but Texas didn’t.

FPH: But why?

Kinky: That guy stays in the shadows. He knows he can’t walk into a restaurant and get applause like I got; they’d boo him so he stays away from that. These guys are really the bullies of the playground and the two-party system is terrible. When you start electing the smartest guy in the room like Obama, you’re thinking of I.Q. That’s a mistake. You should be thinking of Inspirational Quotient because that may be all a president can really do. If Obama were to give a fireside chat, the fire would go out. We see in Obama a man who, whatever you think about him, he’s not a leader or a statesman. He’s not a strong force in the world. You look at the guys who were and you see their ability to inspire. I met a chick the other night in Houston who was inspired by Obama but that’s the only one I’ve met anyplace. Black people aren’t inspired; young people aren’t inspired; and you think of JFK who inspired millions of people – inspired a generation. That’s why I joined the Peace Corps and worked in the jungles of Borneo for 11 cents an hour – because of JFK. Reagan had it, FDR had it, and Anne Richards had it but I don’t see a Winston Churchill in sight. I’m reading about Churchill and, man, there was a guy who would go against public opinion all the time and he would stand by his guns. You don’t see that now. The guys who are the most devious, lying, complete rascals, hypocrites, and scoundrels are the ones who make the best politicians today. My definition is accurate- “poli” means more than one and “ticks” are blood sucking parasites.

FPH: Well, there are some like Ron Paul…

Kinky: Well you’re right. Ron Paul and Chris Christie are two I can think of who will take stands on the left and on the right. They don’t let the party tell them what to think. Everybody else lets the party tell them what to think.

FPH: Why do we get such poor candidates?

Kinky: Because we deserve what we get! When I ran for governor, 26% of the people voted. That killed me. Everybody else that was for me didn’t vote. All the people who didn’t vote decided “Kinky can’t win” and they didn’t vote; but if we had mandatory voting it would have been a landslide for Kinky.

FPH: What’s to be done?

Kinky: Well, the system is so broken and corrupt. We need political reform badly. It’s a shame that a man that doesn’t have millions of dollars can’t win. You’re seeing it right now. [Money] won’t guarantee that you’ll win but you have no chance [without it]. Huckabee best expressed that when he won the Iowa caucus [in 2008] and said “Man, we’re flying, now I really have to come up with ideas to give people.” and he flew right into a wall. The big money guys don’t care what your ideas are; they just want to know if you’re gonna win and the fix is in. It’s like Jesse Ventura is a good man but he’s a bad politician; he didn’t realize that wrestling is real and politics is fixed. That’s the truth! How can we un-fix it? I don’t know. We need a Churchill. We need somebody who doesn’t care about public opinion, doesn’t care about the parties, and cares about America.

It’s very much like Nashville or the Hollywood scene. It’s all part of the same thing. I think political correctness, as Barbara Jordan warned, has really drowned our country. We’re to a point where if a young Richard Pryor were to walk into the Dosey Doe stage at our show, we couldn’t make him a star. So we’ve taken a big cultural step backwards. Thank the Lord we still have “”They ain’t making Jews like Jesus anymore!”

FPH: You work with a dog shelter; can you tell us about that and which is better to deal with – dogs or politicians?

Kinky: Dogs are much better than politicians. They’re spontaneous, honest, loyal, forgiving, and they know how to have a good time. The way the world is now, politicians will say anything. Part of the problem is that the crowd always picks Barabbas. They say “Free Barabbas! Kill Jesus!” every fucking chance they get! Look at Barabbas… the guy doesn’t call, he doesn’t write, he’s never saved anybody’s soul, and he’s probably never even won a football game. So the crowd picks wrong, they pick the wrong guy, and they will probably do it again. That’s why Utopia Animal Ranch is a big thing to me. We started 14 years ago in Utopia, Texas. Cousin Nancy and her husband Tony ran the place. The neighbors came with pitchforks and chased us out so my dad gave us part of the ranch near Medina, TX and we’ve adopted thousands of dogs now. We’ll take any stray or abused animal, we’re a never kill sanctuary, open out-door pens with trees, and the dogs get walked by volunteers. It’s like a happy orphanage. Every time we find a home for a dog they turn their heads back as they leave; it’s that kind of place. You see, money can buy you a dog but only love can make it wag its tail.

FPH: What makes Texans so unique and special?

Kinky: Texas is fighting this country’s drive to be homogenized. Texans are a lot like me; I’m that last nail that can’t be nailed down.

Let me leave you with one bit of advice before I go – find what you love and let it kill you.

Wednesday February 8th Kinky Friedman @ Dosey Doe in the Woodlands
8pm $98/$78/$58 (dinner included)
For more information on Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch visit www.utopiarescue.com

This podcast will make you popular and pretty. This week we discuss police brutality, Devin and Shelby’s wild weekend, why Newt Gingrich is a sex-god, and some other rubbish. Musical guest is Sarah Van Buskirk.

Subscribe to FPH’s weekly podcast via iTunes or directly through any RSS reader, or download now.

By Jack Daniel Betz

Tonight I plan to schlep over to Stereo Live to watch Calvin Harris tonight knowing full well the crop of amazing fuckheads that I’ll run into. The drinks will be expensive: there will be no lone star to speak of (unless that’s changed). There will be throngs of jail bait most likely lured there in hopes of finding Rhianna since that’s the only exposure they have this young Scottish artist.

He provided a cheesy, bare bones, organ riff for that Rhianna song which has a name that escapes me. Some nonsense about yellow diamonds. But at least he didn’t fully throw down for the song. It would have almost been more disappointing to know that he broke a sweat offering something really good that would guild such a low-quality, top 40 turd. I’m imagining Harris plunking down the simple two chord riff on his laptop, emailing it to the producer, and getting a check for thousands of dollars. It’s one of the few times that mediocrity equals awesome.

I plan to jump up on stage before he goes, grab the mic, and bellow that Rhianna has left the building to see how many morons I can get to leave. Besides that though, the show should be pretty sweet. A lot of his music has been panned by critics most likely because the name of his first LP was “I created disco” which is kind of presumptuous. But as far as fun, electronic music goes, it’s way better than David Guetta or any of that dubstep bullshit.