Mess With Texas Festival Messes With SXSW

The Austin Decider site reports this year’s Mess With Texas festival is happening at Waterloo Park on Saturday March 21 right in the heart of what is usually SXSW. The Free All-Ages All-Day Multiple-Stages Fest is a miniature Austin City Limits with cooler bands in cooler weather, if you know who they are. Unlike SXSW, you don’t have to spend money to find out whether you like them or not.

We took the kid last year and he laughed his 3 year old butt off during Monotonix’s dust-covered, trashcan-wearing, tree-climbing performance. The Israeli punk band is like molotov-cocktail from an energy drink bottle. Remember when you couldn’t imagine the Rolling Stones playing live when they get old? And then you couldn’t imagine KISS playing live when they get old? Well, really. Monotonix can’t do this when they get old.

The Lone Ranger is Dead. And buried in Austin.

The Decider has a great new article on eight spots in Austin that make it particularly… weird. Looking for something other than another trip to the Texas State History Museum when the extended family arrives in town for the holidays? The article has some great suggestions.

One of my favorite suggestions is the Texas State Cemetary, just East of 35 and North of 6th Street. Who hasn’t found grave visiting a morbidly fascinating experience? The State of Texas has a pretty lackluster list of graves worth visiting (”Dimebag” Darrell Abbott’s (of Pantera and Damageplan) in Arlington is probably the exception that proves the rule) but The Decider did miss out on mentioning the biggest famous dead guy buried in Austin city limits.

The Lone Ranger. Yeah, I know. I thought he was just a story too. But he’s actually a true-life superhero who was given a spit shine for the books and movies. No, he didn’t wear a mask and he didn’t have a good buddy named Tonto, at least that we can tell, but he did hunt down bad guys on a regular basis.

The dude did himself in at the age of 92 because the quack kids he was shacked up with were driving him nuts. Imagine that. The real life Lone Ranger is living in your house and you drive him so batty he had lead for breakfast. Unforgivable.

So, Kemosabe. Hunt down The Lone Ranger’s grave at the Texas State Cemetary. It just might creep your family out enough they’ll leave you alone for the rest of the holidays.