This past Super Bowl I was confronted with the difficulty of being surrounded by a group of friends unmotivated to drink beer and watch football. Considering that I didn’t have enough time to report these communists to homeland security agents, I had to motivate them. Some I was able to convince with promises of miniature Kegs of Coors Light, borracho nachos, and football shaped cakes. Others I had give up on as David-Beckham-loving-soccer-fan-bastards. And still others required something more, a themed Super Bowl party.

I realized I was helping throw such a Super Bowl party when none of my graduate student friends had any plans for the game. They were all too busy pretending to study to waste their Sunday night watching football.

Any party in which guests are expected to participate generally requires at least three weeks warning. I had three days. I had to make my theme simple. After several rejected theme ideas (Bring your own hooker themed was a close second), I settled on a tried and true idea: A Pants-Less Super Bowl Blowout.

True, no-pants may not be directly related to football, but just imagine how much more entertaining the sport would be if the cheerleaders, and perhaps coaches, couldn’t wear leggings.

This theme has several advantages. First off, it implies no children. Secondly, it guarantees that a large percentage of guests will arrive already well on their way to inebriation. And, it also gives you an excuse to check out various female legs that don’t belong to your fiancée, provided girls actually show up. It helps when said fiancée and her friends take pole dancing lessons as an aerobic class.

If you wanted to add a little flavor to your party, possibly see what street crazies you can lure in, post a poster to your street corner advertising, P.Diddy and Nick Lachey’s No-Pants Super Bowl Extravaganza.

Expect at least one awkward older guy to come thirty minutes early in a trench coat with nothing underneath. Accept him. He always comes baring expensive liquor. Then you’ll have your token Asian friend who is cool enough to have his hair spiked like a Japanimation ninja, but who pretends he didn’t understand the theme. Pity him. He is used to an oppressive government with constrictive trouser laws. You’ll also get a few girls in extra large jersey with butt hugging shorts beneath that read: Juicy.

If your friends are still not excited about the game, improvise a football drinking game. Drink every time there is an ass slap. Drink for as long as the cheerleaders appear on screen. Every time your token Asian friend pretends like he doesn’t know what’s going on. Chug a beer during the halftime show when the Boss sings “Put your hands on my engine.”

If that is still not enough to rally the troops, take a group photo on the bed of your absent roommate. Instigate a pillow fight. Accidentally grab a boob. Get creative.

Most importantly, remember that although the Super Bowl comes but once a year, No-Pants parties can be a year round occurrence. Think pants-less Groundhog Day. Think Commando Flag Day.

Email Alfie at shawn.alff@creativeloafing.com

I did not make this resolution after waking from a long night of drinking to find that my bed was spinning like a merry-go-round. No, this was a sober decision brought on by another choice to finally end my equally expensive relationship with my shitty Korean car. Sure it was cheap in the beginning and reasonable with gas, but the time and money I’ve wasted on repairs inevitably drove me to end the relationship. I should have walked away from it the first time it gave up on me at a rest stop in the New Mexico desert, but I thought I could work it out. I thought that if I showed the car enough attention, it would give me the same kind of respect. I was wrong. What I’ve learned is that a shitty car will always be a shitty car.

In its place, I bought a ‘94 Ford Ranger to cart my ass across the bay every day. You may be wondering why I’d buy a truck if I was hurting for money. I thought the same thing until I realized the possibilities of the truck’s camper. Why commute back and forth across the bay when I can spend some nights on a futon mattress in my truck bed? The Ford also gives me a mobile place to crash when I get wasted in Tampa thinking that the Hyde Park girl I’d been buying drinks for all night would invite me over. And let’s not forget that if a lovely girl would rather go to my place than back to the apartment she shares with her boyfriend, we need only walk a block or two to the sketchy park I’ve parked my truck across from. I know that it may not be the easiest trick convincing ladies to accompany me into the bed of an aquamarine-shit-green pleasure palace, but I just need to concentrate on the type of girls who’d be in to that sort of thing: the desperate, the crazy, and the drunk.

The problem was that in acquiring this mobile love machine, I knew I’d have to give up a few amenities to pay it off. My choices were either food or alcohol. To solidify my decision, after the awards ceremony I polished off a 32oz bottle of Mickey’s and rode my six speed iron-stallion Huffy to the State Theater for the latest installment of CL in Concert.     

The State Theater was loaded from the front sidewalk to the back alley with scruffy band members and severely underage rockers sharing Red Bulls and cigarettes with multiple friends.

As I walked in, Joran bought me a beer to aid my appreciation of win win Winter. The band was blasting through what sounded like Death Cab for Cutie songs on uppers: more energy and less pretense. 

Tides of Man were next with songs that flipped between slow and fast rhythms before the crowd had a chance to catch their breath. The intricate changes and wailing vocals brought to mind The Mars Volta and Tool, though the band was noticeably missing a significantly deranged singer to set the crowd on edge.

Fresh off the Warped Tour, Automatic Loveletter hit the stage with two members from win win Winter. They had all the ingredients to be the next big thing, most important of which was an attractive, heroin-thin she-singer backed by an impressive sound. In a Harley Davidson shirt ripped down the sides, a bikini top, grungy accessories dangling from every limb, tight pants, and motorcycle boots, the singer jumped off the amps and emoted to the crowd with the sound and look that Ashley Simpson was trying for when she first came out.    

I emptied my wallet ordering the cheapest beers in St. Pete, which was still too pricey for me. I saw my happy, golden reflections looking up at me from the suds swishing gently in the plastic cup. Drinking that last beer was like leaving a girlfriend for an extended period. Sure, beer has let me down plenty of times, but ultimately we have had more good times than bad. I told my beer it was not her it was me. I told her not to take it personally. I told her I just needed to take a break. I couldn’t afford to treat her like I wanted to, taking her to fancy places and sharing long nights alone in my apartment. 

When the beer was empty, I got on my Huffy and rode the long way home. Along the road around Mirror Lake, I saw two homeless men sitting on a bench with nothing but 32oz bottles gift-wrapped in brown paper bags. Maybe I didn’t need to give up alcohol after all. When the going got rough, these men did not give up on alcohol. I just needed to trade my apartment for a bench overlooking a midnight view of the water where I could share endless romantic evenings with my true love. But alas, until that day, alcohol, I must say goodbye.

Email Alfie at shawn.alff@creativeloafing.com 

You could say that being a rock star is in my blood. So why the hell am I not on TRL or dating Miley Cyrus. The problem is that though performing maybe in my blood, musical talent isn’t. I was born with an impaired sense of rhythm. Five separate times I attempted to teach myself the guitar and failed. When I was older, I attempted the bass thinking it would be easier to learn considering it only has four strings. My highlight from this venture was being asked to play bass on an intentionally horrendous, mock hard-rock song called “Sewer of Ass Piss.” Since playing an instrument was out of the question, I did what any talentless performer does: I decided to become a singer. I did in fact write and record a few songs with my sexually explicit boy band, 2 Sr. Real, but hearing my recorded voice was painful even for someone as self-obsessed as me.

The fact that I will never be a rock star has been particularly difficult to accept considering that I have so many other attributes that make me overqualified: I can switch leotards within a matter of seconds, play air guitar against the carefully formed bulge in my tight pants, and underage women eat me up. Unfortunately the world will never know my talents, and I will never seduce as many women as the grungiest of rock stars.  I am reminded of this sad fact every time I go to a rock show. I will never be a rock star and so my only hope is to try and sleep with one.  

For a show titled, “In the Raw,” one would think that I might at least get to see a few rockers naked, if not find a way to hide in the greenroom in wait. Despite my perverse suspicions, the show’s title referred to the rock musicians stripping down their songs to the essentials. In most cases, this meant that acts performed without the benefit of electric frills or the heart-reviving pulse of amplified drums. There were no wardrobe changes or flamboyant dance moves. In most cases, a lone songwriter sat on stage with an acoustic and a microphone. The intent was to see how well these local songwriters’ material held up without the distractions of light and noise that often overwhelms the senses at concerts. Imagine MTV’s Unplugged without the commercials, elaborate stages, camera tricks, or bated audiences. The likes of Ronny Elliot, Will Quinlan of the Diviners, Katherine Kelly, Mikey Bostinto of Tres Bien, Shawn Kyle of The Beauvilles, Geri X, and Hat Trick Heroes took part in this experiment beneath the stark red light of The State Theater. 

Even the State Theatre had to clean up its act to accommodate the unplugged show. The place looked like a shadow of the theater it once was. Rows of chairs lined the floor that is usually covered in beer and roughnecks slam dancing. Cocktail tables flickered with candles in red glass holders. It felt like a beat poetry reading or a swanky variety show from the early-’60s with a ventriloquist, jugglers, dry comics and a classy audience lingering over cigarettes and cocktails.Rock shows are known for the energy reverberating off the crowd, which at points can reach the levels of a sweaty religious experience. In general, the wilder crowds are, the better the music sounds. At first it seems like a risky move introducing chairs to this type of concert, but in practice it worked. The introduction of chairs eliminated the problem of the audience lining the sides and back of the venue, standing clear of the dance floor’s no-man’s land. The audience had no problem getting close to the stage with chairs available up front.  Also, with the quick turnaround time of an acoustic show, more acts were fit on the bill, and audience members stayed seated for performers they hadn’t planned to hear. 

Rock revivalists and prodigy musicians Hat Trick Heroes headlined the event. While most of the acts shed band members for the acoustic sets, all three band members sat on stage with Led Zeppelin hair pumping out songs reminiscent of Alice in Chains.  

As is her tendency, Geri X stole the show. She had a leg up on fellow acts as many of her songs were written to be performed with just her acoustic and a microphone. Of course it didn’t hurt that she has the full rock star package: subtly green hair, tattoos wrapping around thin limbs, giving an excuse to stare, and songs that outshined the polished and produced sound of her recordings. I am always amazed with the range and clarity with which her voice swells to fill any space with how much she smokes, drinks and talks shit between sets. A capo chocked-up on the neck of her guitar gave her songs a ukulele sound.  Her performance did not go unnoticed. She was petitioned for an encore and played a foot stomping version of “Kiss on Both Eyelids.”  The crowd started to clap along and so did I. My enthusiasm was soon checked when a friend clasped my hands against my chest for fear that I would throw Geri X off. This is the power of good music. It makes the rhythm-less think they’ve found the beat, it gives the voiceless a voice, it makes the uninspired see the world through a poet’s eyes, and it makes the untalented forget, if only for a moment, that they are not the rock stars, nor do they have the talent to sleep with any.  

E-mail Alfie at shawn.alff@creativeloafing.com

After a week of training, one thing was certain: I needed a disguise. Something that would make me look tough. Naturally my mind wandered to actors, whose job it is to obscure their perverse lifestyles in order to appear tough on screen; maybe I needed a six-shooter or one of those mean-looking bandolier belts strapped across my chest. Or maybe I should be a little more subtle.  From experience I know I look particularly threatening in a wig and a fake mustache that would put Charles Bronson to shame.

I thought over these foolproof schemes to appear as a respectable member of society as I drank heavily at Limey’s Friday during this month’s beer club.

I was stationed at the check-in table checking off members while repeatedly downing samples of this month’s beer: Michelob’s Pale Ale, Late Harvest Autumn Ale, Red Hook, and Dunkel Weisse. After the Limey’s regulars saw the first handful of Beer Clubbers snagging free brews, people were lined up at my table, wanting to join in. Although they tried, the strays could not trick me into thinking they were beer-club regulars.  When the newbies got to the head of the line they just kind of stared at me with an expression that said, “Hey, I’ve uh, never done this sort of thing before, and well, I’m not sure how to even say this, or how much this will cost, but…” I always let them be confused for a few moments, once even asking for a password, before pointing them to the clipboard where all they had to do was write their e-mail in order to become an official beer club member (a process that is surprisingly similar to the credentials required to teach writing at a University).

A few of my fellow teachers in training arrived to discuss our collective identity crisis.  Several ideas for appearing more authoritarian and knowledgeable emerged.  One could wear a single glove or come dressed in a nun’s habit.  We could wear whistles and bright orange floatation devices, then run in with the Baywatch theme song blaring. I liked the idea of wearing a utility belt with handcuffs, mace, and a retractable baton, but I was afraid the weight would cause my pants to drop. There was also the issue of how our students would address us (Mr., Mrs., Dr., Professor, M.C. Apostrophe). After my fourth full beer bottle sample, and after enough people approached the sign-in table pretending to be Beer Club members, I became certain that I couldn’t pretend to be something I wasn’t. The best thing to do was embrace the identity I had forged with CL. So what if I was arrested for wearing a Bandelier to school and taxidermied squirrel in my pants. I could still teach an online course or at least blog about it from jail.

E-mail Alfie at shawn.alff@creativeloafing.com

Emma and I were trying to hand out the last few tickets to the show. We kept running into people who acted offended that we assumed they were interested in a pot friendly show, or those, like the vacationing couple, who thought 420 was the name of a hip-hopper who their children might enjoy.

We quickly decided if someone had to ask what 420 meant, they weren’t interested in comedy dedicated to extended monologues about how pot should be the U.S’s weapon against subduing terrorism, as well as spats about the perfection of Doritos.

The problem was that Emma and I were trying to be politically correct, targeting everyone who passed with the free tickets. This only resulted in us having to explain to people our parents’ age what 420 meant. For any of you naïve readers, namely my parents, 420 is a police code for pot use that since become a celebrated time and date for stoners to do what they do best — continue to smoke.

We had to start profiling. We targeted anyone wearing the tell tale signs of chronic use: dreadlocks, tie-dye, or a fine layer of Cheeto dust in their facial hair. We also hit up anyone wearing sandals, any gathering of scruffy looking guys playing with the zippers on their hoodies, and any dudes whose pot bellies stretched out t-shirts featuring Batman or Harry Potter (Potheads are predisposed to believe they have special powers, like the ability to make bongs out of household items and develop revolutionary political strategies based on the legalization of pot).

I was skeptical that the kind of people interested in a 420 show would remember the correct time and day of the comedy show, or they’d get lost somewhere between their apartments (undoubtedly cluttered with fast food wrappers and black-light posters of Bob Marley) and the fuzzy neon lights of Ybor City. Many of the patrons seemed to be that other kind of stoner: the one freshly out of college with a job (perhaps even a good job), but who still had the freedom to let loose after a long day at work. A surprising majority didn’t even know that Theo Von was headlining. They just knew that if the Improv was sponsoring a 420 show, it would be at least as entertaining as a night watching these same comics on Comedy Central while contemplating foreign policy and packing a bong with the shake at the bottom of a Doritos bag, just to see what happens. Perhaps these pro-weed comics were cleverer than I was giving them credit for. Based on the marketing appeal of 420, they packed a theater with people who could be entertained for hours by children’s cartoons and a bowl of Frosted Flakes.     

Email Alfie at shawn.alff@creativeloafing.com

I was in the middle of working “The Best Garage Sale Ever,” at Vitale Studios. Considering the number of art pieces sold, and the fact that John Vitale was as excited as a young artist drawing his first live nude, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more art sales gallivanting as garage sales.

Art was just one of many commodities cleaned out of these hipsters’ studios and put on sale. This was the crème de la crème of trendy second-hand goods. Thrift store hunters didn’t have to search through racks of Christmas sweaters that smelled of nursing homes and mothballs to find the perfectly ironically hip shirt. Cool stuff was everywhere: a bamboo furniture set, shelves of high-fashion high heels in supermodel sizes, art supplies, treasure trolls, designs and shirts by Blue Lucy, rhinestone belts, lighting equipment, Japanese lanterns, long coats with fake fur collars, knitted scarves and, of course, my luscious silver pants.

I didn’t ask permission before taking the pants in the bathroom and getting naked.

Hovering 3 inches above my ankles, the leggings were just my size. I tried out multiple positions I would have never attempted with lesser pants, and the flexible material knew just how to accommodate my moves. Under normal circumstances, I’d have worn the pants without any undergarments, but as I was working at a garage sale, I felt it a bit distasteful to have a fruit basket protruding around the front seam, so I braved the horrid underwear lines and bunching in the name of civility.

Originally, the pants cost $4, but Carrie, the previous owner, agreed to come down a buck considering I was already strapped into the pants and wasn’t willing to give them up without a fight. She knew just how agile they would make me. $3 was a steal considering the pants were worn by a real live woman. Carrie was even gracious enough to give me the pants’ history and handling instructions so that I could pass the knowledge along when it came time for my children to wear these warrior garments.

“I bought them at Rave, for a superhero party.” she said.

“Fittingly enough,” I said. “I’m a superhero.”

“Really? What’s your power?”

“I can wear the shit out of shiny girls’ clothes.”

Nobody wanted to fuck with me after that. Like Clark Kent dressed in tights, they could tell something had irrevocably changed about me.

“Three dollars!” exclaimed Kaylee, a member of the Vitale design syndicate, after examining the quality of the stitching. “You could melt those down and sell them for a fortune. Shit. I should have invested in silver pants.”

I didn’t dare take the pants off for the rest of the event. I could see how others kept eyeing them, wanting to feel their healing power and to be comforted by the silky metal material.

“How much?” one overwhelmed shopper asked, holding a bundle of bills to me as if sucked in by the magnetic material. I told her she didn’t have to pay to touch my pants. It turned out she just wanted to buy a flashy purse and assumed I was the person to talk to. Still, it’s irrefutable that the silver pants convinced her that I was the person in charge.

The power of the pants was proven when I asked if I could take a picture of a nicely tanned, tattooed and trim woman named Chrissy, and she asked if I would also like her phone number. I’m not making this up. This shit happened. Listen, I understand that I have more power over women than a blowout shoe sale, but my Macauley Culkin looks can’t take all the credit. When women say they like a guy with confidence, what they really mean is they like a guy who can pull off silver pants in the midday summer heat. And even though the tight pants shrink wrapped my junk from a full-grown Christmas fruit basket down to a bag of trail mix, the silver acted as a solar panel, energizing me for the rest of the day like some kind of topical Viagra.

E-mail Alfie at shawn.alff@creativeloafing.com or friend us up on MySpace

“Um,” I said, sipping my beer. “I drink a lot?”

“That seems to be a reoccurring trend with Creative Loafing.”

Alright, so maybe CL was sponsoring the Craft Beer Expo on Saturday, starting a new wine club and gearing up for our annual Beer Fest, but it couldn’t be such a bad thing for a company to be synonymous with drinking.

“When I’m bartending, I remember most of my customers by what they drink, not their name,” said Crystal, one of the volunteers pouring Michelob’s Porter, Fire Rock Pale Ale, Longboard Island Lager and Longhammer IPA at Beer Club.

Apparently my name was also becoming associated with drinking, as more than a few beer club members told the pourers that I said they could have extra drinks. CL’s staff writer, Wade Tatangelo tried this tactic but quickly reverted to swindling free drinks by using his standard go-to line, “I write Bar Tab.” This was the kind of fringe benefit I have always craved as a writer. Like a food critic getting free meals or a travel writer getting free vacations, I want to be admitted into various forums where women appear nude in groups by simply saying, “It’s alright. I’m doing research for my novel, Panty Raid.”

The beer club meeting doubled as the launch party for CLs Flugtag team, The Breadwinners, and the night was graced (however briefly) by another company closely associated with drinking — Red Bull. At around 8 p.m., a fleet of tiny silver, blue and red cars blocked Davis Boulevard and out poured a slew of girls with backpacks (full of complimentary Red Bull) sporting tube socks and ass shorts they had obviously received training on wearing. As much as I hate to admit it, Red Bull is the leader in guerilla marketing. As street team manager, I have toyed with the idea of adopting Red Bull’s marketing strategy, simply escorting a flamboyant car full of pretty girls around town. To be fair, Red Bull’s genius goes far beyond beautiful promo girls. Consider Flugtag: an event that bears the company’s logo on every major television station and newspaper, including viral internet videos, without paying a cent for ad space.

In German, Flugtag means “plane day,” but in America, it stands for something much more. America, the birthplace of flight, was founded by people willing to risk everything by voyaging on unsound vessels over hazardous waters. As a result, the country is a breeding ground for people wild enough to launch themselves over a 30-foot drop in homemade, manpowered machines. But flight is only one aspect of Flugtag. Mainly it is about the glory of having your spectacular crash, or death, memorialized on blooper reels.

On Saturday morning, outside the Tampa Convention Center, contestants literally signed their lives away, yet none seemed worried about the prospect of crashing into the polluted bay crowded with watercrafts and submerged wreckage. They all believed they would fly safely to the other side. This is what makes America great. There’s never a shortage of people willing to believe in, and celebrate, absurdity. And nothing is more absurd than a parade of citizens, dressed up in every deviation of maniac-chic gear, destroying their floats by launching them off a ledge.

I prepared for the day by chugging half a flask of raspberry Vodka that had been warming in my car since the night before. I wiped up the spillage with an American flag neck-scarf then sprinted a mile and a half in my patented, jewel-encrusted flight suit with a CL cape flapping behind. When I reached the event, I had sweat out all my breakfast vodka and was on the verge of vomiting, buy luckily CL videographer Zach was waiting for me with a bottle of water and a microphone and we got started.

“I think this might be the one time you’re out-dressed,” Zach said, referring to all the outlandishly decorated flight teams and what we thought was a Furries support-group meeting inside the convention center. It turned out that Tampa’s annual Metrocon Convention (a sci-fi/anime tradeshow) was taking place at the same time. (Furries are people who dress up in animal suits and have sex with each other.)

The Austrians hold the Flugtag flight record at 195 feet, but I feel confident that Americans hold the record from the number of people ready to stand up and say, “Yes I will jump off a bridge if all my friends do it. Just give me some sort of spandex costume and an unsound structure to sit in.”

I began asking some of the waiting crews if anyone needed me to step in as pilot, but no one was intimidated by the repeated splashdowns. “We’ve watched a few episodes of Dancing with the Stars, so we’re ready to rock,” said the team captain of the Thunder Bees, demonstrating a few moves of his choreographed flight-dance while wearing a skin-tight black suit and a gold thong.

Party Fowl trained for the event the same way they came up with the idea for trying to fly a giant keg — by sitting around drinking. After all it was at such a time, with minds heightened by drink that they realized: an empty keg floats.

CL’s “Breadwinner” design consisted of an expertly engineered cart built from two-by-fours and papier-mâché. Atop the cart sat a giant deflated Cuban sandwich, in which the pilot, CL’s office manager London, was pressed inside as the cheese. The plan was to have the Cuban go down as a submarine, while the cheese floated above on a hang glider made from PVC piping and trash-bag-plastic.

“Do you have any last words?” I asked team captain, Chris Madalena.

“How can we be expected to fly without alcohol? They keep giving us Red Bulls, but what good are they without vodka?”

I too was a bit distressed about having to mix the two drinks a good half-hour apart.

Despite the lack of alcohol, the team still managed to fly a respectable 30 feet. Unfortunately, the majority of that distance was straight down. I suppose in a company known for drinking, it’s not how high our team ranked in the competition that matters but how much we drank afterwards in celebration that counts. We’re still waiting for our gold medal on that one.

E-mail Alfie at shawn.alff@creativeloafing.com

To see more photos, visit our Flickr page or our myspace

I have never actually been in a three-way, but I’m fairly positive that the only major difference between Tekila Rocks’ dance floor and the sex act is that you couldn’t get pregnant on the dance floor. Then again, I’ve been wrong before.

The doormen kept things classy by turning away scrubs in ball caps and shorts, while admitting classy players in sleek black shirts, gold chains, and perpetual shades. Luckily for me, they also allowed dudes with man purses and rolls of duct tape.

Smooth dance lights slid over the polished cement floors and the corrugated metal paneling, which made the place feel like a cross between a beachfront cantina and a posh night club. The bar was fully stocked with girls wearing cowboy hats and low cut tops, dishing free beers for guys and free wells for gals.

Hard-hitting club hits assaulted the floor. Tina, the Philippine club promoter, was dancing like she was trying to hurt someone. Guys took turns trying to keep up while she took her moves so low you’d think she was practicing for an international limbo tournament.

If I performed moves some of the guys were attempting on the floor, people would think I was having a seizure. That’s why I stick to the standard side-to-side bob, dancing with my beer over my head for a maximum of five seconds and dry humping strangers’ thighs while trying to think nonsexual thoughts — like Dr. Ruth naked. I save my more exotic moves for a sweat-friendly environment where there is some kind of landing pad, like a bed.

The only bad thing I had to say about Tekila Rocks was that it was too loud to hit on anyone. But this may have been a good thing for some of the women in attendance, as well as my sense of dignity, as I have a disorder that makes me say things I regret the instant they leave my lips.

“You’re phat,” I said, enticing a potential dance partner with a little side-to-side bobbing and some over the head beer action.

“What,” she said, her face bunching into a knot of lines.

“I said ‘I think I’m having a seizure’,” I said while performing my patented side-to–side bob toward the door.

E-mail Alfie at shawn.alff@creativeloafing.com

To see more photos, visit our Flickr page

or friend us on MySpace

“I drink Bud Light as a matter of pride,” I said.  “It tastes like America.”

Obviously she was in need of a serious history refresher.  America was founded on cheap beer. What do you think George Washington was talking about when he penned the lyrics, “amber waves of grain” — the malt and barley used to make delicious golden beer!  Or why do you think the Sons of Liberty dressed up like Indians and dumped ship tons of tea in the harbor during the Boston Tea Party. This wasn’t something sober people would do. These patriots were a bunch of drunken smugglers with a lust for drinking cheap beer, dressing up and destroying shit. And who do you think led these hooligans? The patron saint of all cheap beer drinking Americans: Samuel Adams.

“Alfie!?” called a voice behind me, drawing me away from my lecture on the finer points of American history. I was confronted by two ladies named Hanna and Amy who I wished I had recognized. “We met you last night. You were wearing a cape?”

It was actually a Texas Flag, but yes I was wearing it as a cape along with a bejeweled flight suit with “Captain Commando” spelled in glitter on the back, and an American flag sweatband. In my defense, it was the fourth of July. What the hell else was I going to wear — a star-spangled vest? Please. I didn’t want to look like a freak.

“You talked to us at the bar,” Amy said. “You told us about your Huffy.”

“My Huffy?”

“Yeah. Then you asked if we wanted to take a ride on your bike.”

“Did y’all say yes?”

“No.”

The memory was starting to come back to me through the brine of drunken memories. I had overdosed on America the day before at the expense of my cognitive abilities. Maybe I needed to stop drinking and dressing up in public. Then again, maybe I needed to drink more and buy more capes if it meant I got to meet women like this, twice.

Although it was July 5th, Creative Loafing’s Independence Fest kicked off with a bang. The two members of The Future Process emitted a factory worth of industrial music. The thud of electronic drums and keyboard effects produced a dark, machine heart beat chopped up by metallic guitar riffs.

Military Junior followed with a sound termed Indie-math-rock for people like me struggling to come up with descriptions to capture this new rock sound.

Although it was Have Gun, Will Travel’s first time playing The State Theatre, their fans had no trouble finding the place. It also wasn’t difficult for new listeners to get into the swing of the fiddle and the slide guitar adding a lonesome twang to the lead acoustic’s trotting rhythm.

Mouse Fire provided more fuel for the fire of new mod-rock that will surely be the coming-of-age music for the generation to be. The bearded men in tight clothes hammered out songs from their debut album, Wooden Teeth, that were smart enough for older indie fans, while catchy enough for teens whose parents dropped them off at the show.

Car Bomb Driver closed the night with a tutorial on old-school punk. Lead singer Dave Reeder was dressed in a sport coat, slacks and Converse All-Stars (does he dress this nice for his day job?) and wielded the mic as if demonstrating how to slay a mythic beast. Although the band was older than the other acts, they had far more energy, as did their audience. A mosh pit took over the floor, instigated by a blonde bombshell enticing sweaty guys to ram into her. It’s easy to be a punk when you have nothing to lose but your youth, but you have to respect an aging band that still dresses up in suits to deliver simple, fast punk with choruses like “I drink beer” and other songs you can follow while drunk and consumed in a mosh pit. In fact, I dare say there is something patriotic about dressing up, getting drunk, and howling at the top of your lungs in a bar on any given Saturday night.

E-mail Alfie at shawn.alff@creativeloafing.com

To see more photos, visit our Flickr page or our myspace