by Ricardo Acevedo

My dinner with ennui, or more whine with your past...ah?

Class. Lack of it, being a slave to your strata or just being judged by it, has always plagued me. Whether I'm carousing with some of my funky art geek cronies or falling pray to some of sort official climb, I always find my self consumed with social class idioms.

Also, I've moved around a lot. Up and down the west coast, the southwest, with forays into NY and Mexico why did I end up in Austin? Good question.

Try this for a mantra, now is good.

I listen. which is to say at night around 6th st and the warehouse district, i have a tendency to eavesdrop. And well not just there but say at Flips or at an ArtPlex soiree or across at the Dog & Duck, sometimes down at the Continental or at an opening at Laughing at the Sun. Well, I guess everywhere I go I'm consumed with conversation about the longing for the Old Austin. Hmmm. Well, let's see, I guess there's another point I'm trying to make and that's that as I move about like a cultural ghost the same people that I hear bemoaning a bygone era I never see at any venue like the new Mercury or the 710 or stomping around Stubbs or maybe even the Atomic, but hey, people sit and bitch there too. Social regionalism, point in time fascism...oh excuse me, I mean nostalgia is really just whining dressed up as camaraderie. Just once I like to see some folks that I'm stirring up conversational stew with at the D&D or down at say, the Ritz (upstairs) waxing drunk and chagrined about never taking the time to support new Austin. And I just don't mean my 40-something peers, but the 30-year-old teenagers already getting crotchety and corpulent about the passing of the Liberty Lunch while never going to let's say...some gig at the Merc, groovin' to Hairy Apes or mind and body melding with a Laura Scarborough show. Maybe its a romantic southern thing to dwell in the past, but me, I prefer promise to quasi-memories addled by drugs and liquor. Don't get me wrong, I was there in 1992 during a Phish show running on into 4 hours at the Lunch or to change geography a bit in my hometown of San Bernardino Ca, stomping ground for Frank Zappa and Sammy Hagar hangin out at the Swing Auditorium while the Winter Bros & Darringer jammed till 3am or in the '80s rubbing elbows and blows with the Dead Kenndys, Wall of Voodoo, Faith No More...yadda, yadda. But now I look back on that shit (Zappa the exception here) and yawn. Ah, if only pop culture where as important as it claims in the moment.

Security in a world as velocity inclined as ours breeds body fat. If you're comfortable with comfort zones defined by romantic backsliding, that's cool, (for you) but as a whole I see these dreamy backward glances part in parcel anathema to the death of soul.

OK, OK, yes the past has wonderful lessons to impart but I still contest that the hybrid should be the goal.

You with that acoustic guitar, have you ever watched the finesse of a succinct DJ?

You with the tablas, your knowledge of time would create intricate programmed time signatures moving your rhythms into melody.

(And to counter), Have you ever heard Zappa's music freed of electronics? I hear Jazz in everything, but i don't count on it.

How many Austinites does it take to screw in a light bulb? 7: one to actually do it, and 6 to sit around and complain about how good the old light bulb was.

The tool of time strips out the screw holding up the knocker...anyone home?