Daily - The Austin Chronicle (2024)

What kind of person would use candles made from people? Witches? Cannibals? Oil executives?

Seemingly, oil execs. Last Thursday, attendees at an oil-industry convention were fooled into thinking that the solution to peak oil is processing people into premium unleaded.

For those of you that have never come across the work of Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, aka the Yes Men, these arch-pranksters have made a reputation exposing the psyche of the corporate world. They call their technique "identity correction": They pose as representatives of business and government, get invited to big conferences, and then propose schemes that are so obviously insane, oppressive, or just flat-out immoral that no one would take them seriously. They then watch as the business community nods sagely and thinks how they can turn a profit on this – not, as most sane people would do, throw up in their own mouths a little bit.

In this case, the Yes Men pretended to be from ExxonMobil and the National Petroleum Council and got themselves invited to Gas & Oil Exposition, Canada's biggest oil-industry conference. They were there to promote a "new product" that would revolutionize energy production – Vivoleum, an oil substitute made out of dead people. The photos of the event reveal oil-industry execs blithely burning candles they think are made from the rendered remains of a dead Exxon janitor.

(Please note, no janitors were harmed in the making of this situationist art prank.)

As we celebrate gay Pride in June here in Texas, New Orleans mourns one of her own. Once Southern Decadence Grand Marshall (1998), beloved community activist, and French Quarter hair-salon owner Robin Malta was found beaten to death in his Faubourg Marigny home earlier this week.

According to a report by NOLA TV station WWLTV, friends are shocked at the news:

"'He loved everyone,' said Malta’s sister, Monica Thurmond. 'He didn’t have an enemy anywhere.'

"Friends said the fact that Malta was so well-liked makes it hard to understand who could commit such a crime.

According to NOLA Against Crime, "Robin will be laid to rest on Saturday [June] 16th at Tharp-Sonheimer, 1600 N. Causeway. Mass will be at 2:30 PM, afterwards there will be a celebration of his life – location to be announced at the services."

TODAY'S EVENTS

Snow Tha Product at Emo's

I Am Love at Paramount Theatre

MUSIC | MOVIES | ARTS | COMMUNITY

Marvin Gaye’s tears, like Levi Stubbs’, endure as a natural phenomenon, no less than a magnolia tree or Tammi Terrell. Every drop was precious and each succeeding one only brought the end nearer. “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” we all did.

Hip-OSelect.com, home of the awe-inspiring and ongoing The Complete Motown Singles series, a new Love fest, and plenty more mouth-watering Internet-only boutiquery, expands yet again. In Our Lifetime?, Gaye’s final album for Motown, finds new life in a deluxe, 2-CD makeover. 1981 wasn’t a good year for the tortured singer, but then the point of In Our Lifetime? isn’t how good or overlooked it might be. Rather it’s how astonishing it is despite the blessed mess.

By 1984, when Gaye was shot and killed by his father during an argument, the singer had been drowning in bad marriages and drugs for the better part of a decade. His final run of albums were all open addresses to his partners, beginning with last master class Let’s Get It On, 1973, and dwindling in classicism through ’76’s I Want You, ’78's Here, My Dear, and finally the “Sexual Healing” of last supplication Midnight Love (1982). Penultimate LP In Our Lifetime? boogies toward oblivion with Gaye writhing between conjugal withdrawl and religious salvation. While the eye-popping cover art pits God vs. Satan, the music itself, the grooves and sexual come-ons, matches God against Pan.

PBS's weekly news magazine NOW is taking a trip to Austin this week. The topic is The Unforseen, Laura Dunn's lyrical, dreamlike doc about Gary Bradley's plans to develop over Barton Springs Aquifer. Featuring extensive interviews with Bradley and his cabal, and footage from the legendary 1991 all-night uprising at City Hall which birthed the Save Our Springs movement, the film's an intriguing document of the swirling, coalescing forces behind development and environmentalism (if frustratingly noncommittal – Dunn tries her best to present Bradley as some venture-funded Icarus who flew too close to the sun, a move which doesn't entirely succeed).

NOW host David Brancaccio will interview Dunn and show clips from the film, no doubt extrapolating questions about what the rest of the nation can glean from Austin's environmental movement – a question we still haven't answered here definitively. NOW airs locally at 7:30pm on Channel 18/cable Channel 9; the entire episode will also be available for streaming after tonight's broadcast.

The fallout from Brewster McCracken spilling the refried beans on the Congress Avenue Business Retention and Enhancement Fund, aka the Migas Slush Bucket, continues, with Sarah Coppola's reporting in today's Statesman. Reading it, and having caught a replay of last week's council meeting last night while Chronic cooked his frozen pizza in the oven (yes, it's really as sad as it sounds), Will Wynn definitely, albeit obliquely, referred to the alley vacation. It was kind of swallowed up whole on our first listen, buried in descriptors of the merits of the project, but here's the relevant passage:

"But the project would not happen without the cooperation of adjacent property owners, in part because there’s going to be an alley vacation. Alley vacations require the consent of adjacent property owners. Las Manitas at their new location, the corner of Third and Congress, will be consenting to that cooperation to allow this product to even be built. So had we done nothing, more than likely, this project doesn’t happen."

The first 50 folks who e-mail us at:

[emailprotected]

will be entered for a chance at either a single ticket or pair of tickets to the 2007 Pride Texas Women's Dance, which is happening tomorrow, Friday, June 15, 8pm at Fiesta Gardens.

Those first 50 should send us an e-mail with their name, phone number, and one clever sentence stating what they wish to accomplish at the dance ASAP. We will be selecting randomly tomorrow, and winners will be notified by 2pm, Friday.

The dance benefits Equality Texas and is but one event that Kate and/or K8 will be heading to this weekend. Come find us. We are giving away some major prizes.