Oh, Yes, There Will Be Ultraviolence Department: It's become increasingly difficult over the years to raise a brouhaha on Sixth Street; we live there, and generally the only people out and about before sundown are either (possibly) crazy, dentally challenged hobo-types or Austin Convention Centrists crossing to the other side of the street to avoid the same. That said, leave it up to the brand-spanking-old Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz to ramp up the neighborhood ballyhoo-quotient by turning the sidewalk into an abattoir. Promoting Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men, resident Alamo mad professor Edwin Wise (of DorkbotAustin.org) whipped up a functioning simulacrum of the murderous main character's weapon of choice: a hand-held, pneumatic cow-killer, that, as seen above, drove a steel bolt through a weekendlong series of suitably strawberry-and-banana-filled pumpkin "heads" at 4,000 feet per second. "The regular Sixth Street crowd was ecstatic," Alamo programmer Lars Nilson tells us. "It was like they had some sort of carnage receptor in their heads. We drew as big a crowd as if we had been punching an old man in the head." Of course, we only saw the demo exhibition, but still. As the wizened, possibly crazy, extremely toothless, and very hairy vagabond passerby exclaimed to us after witnessing the display of skull-pulverizing, hydraulic chutzpah, "Oh, wow, brains and stuff, right?" You bet your life, friend-o.
