On a misting early-spring night in March 2010, a bar-room in Austin, Texas sat mesmerized as a good-natured necromancer spun and levitated the cherry of a burning cigarette inches from faces and the lips of beer steins, crawling across the floor following the grail-vision of tobacco to its conclusion, then racing out into the night, ghosts at shoulders.



That was just in the first twenty minutes of the Fiction Circus show at the Parlor last night in Austin, the first show played with the original "FC" lineup of MIRACLE JONES, S. FUTURE, and TEAM OMEGA AWESOME since 2007, also at the Parlor, in Austin. A drawing contest of dreams was managed, blindfolds and cigarettes were distributed to lucky volunteers, dark powers were invoked by the aforementioned good-natured magus, JACK DARLING, and the marital problems of the husband-and-wife Gallic lounge duo LE SEXY were on display as they performed scandalous renditions of American favorites and stole the hearts and virginities of the laughing audience.

Two short stories were read to no small applause, and the evening closed with a sermon about the importance of loving the devil coupled with an occult working by Darling, and Le Sexy singing Rihanna's "Umbrella."

During the break before Randall Holt went on to blow minds and circuitry with electronic cello loops in a performance that rose above the technical limits of the PA and the engines of the motorcycle jerks outside — basically what one would hear in a raining bar during the interregnum between ecological collapse and the breakdown of the social order when everyone was gathering to remind one another about what it had once meant to be a human being — I ordered a beer.

"So did you like the show?" I asked the man behind the counter. "Did you like my story?"

He frowned, considered as he pulled a draught of Lone Star.

"I liked aspects of the show," he said. "I liked aspects of your story."

And the Fiction Circus/Le Sexy/Jack Darling/Randall Holt media conglomerate is about nothing if not giving the people what they like.



Posted by future on Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:59:24 -0500 -- permanent link