I'm truly awful at this frequent updating thing, aren't I? There are a number of reasons (some of) you'd believe for my lapse, but I'm not going to waste my time (which is so, so indispensable considering what I do all day...) theorizing/lying. What's been going on, you ask. Nothing and everything all at once...or is it everything and nothing? Aside from finding stupid ways to incorporate Green Day lyrics into my first post on this blog in something like three weeks, I've been doing alright.

Since the last time we spoke, I spent another post-hurricane week in Houston painting my parents' house, helping a neighbor putting her blown-over fence back up, and, well, not much else. I had intended to do some major hangouttery with Danny, among others, but when large swaths of a large city are without power sometimes driving halfway across town is more of a nuisance than is worth the trouble. Not to say that I didn't want to hang out, but rather that navigating a network of busy streets when all the stoplights are out poses danger as well as inconvenience. Granted, the rule is to obey the signal as if it were a 4-way stop, but that doesn't always sink into the consciousness of every driver on the road. Lots of screeching tires and tedious waits to get through intersections were mostly to blame for my house-painting hermitry. Oh, and for the better part of the week after Ike there was a 9pm-6am curfew, so it's not like I'd have had anywhere to go other than friends' places. That, and driving at night with no stoplights OR streelights just isn't safe.

I spent quite a while painting the house, and upon completion I came back to Austin for a bunch of concerts and to help my aunt's friend move. Stereolab played at La Zona Rosa last Wednesday, and predictably, they were awesome. For a long time I didn't pay them too much attention but lately they've really converted me to quite the fan. I can listen to them over and over for hours upon hours without getting bored, which is quite a feat given my limited attention span. Anyway, most of their set was Chemical Chords stuff, fine by me. One guy at the bar gave me kind of a hard time about my out-of-state ID since Austin (and College Station) cops/TABC are hardasses about 0-o-s fakes, but he just sent me across the venue to the other bar where the guy had the book he could check to make sure mine wasn't fake (I'm fucking 24 years old...why is this an issue?) but he didn't even check and just gave me a beer. This is the same place that denied my friend a beer when he presented his 22-year old Texas ID a few years ago, and based on principal he's boycotting the venue. I'd take the same stance if I didn't really like the bands that play there. What can I say, I'm a huge whore for bands I like.

The next day Kate came into town for ACL and we settled into a bar called "Cheers" which is a shitty douchebag shot bar, but it has a great patio out back and very cheap drinks and the d-bags don't show up until 10 or 10:30 anyway so it's a decent place to go if you're out on 6th street early. We didn't get utterly shitfaced, which is good because of ACL the next three days.

Speaking of ACL, I'll give a quick run-down since I'm not in the mood for a full report. Bands I saw that I don't have to look in the book to remember: Hot Chip, Spiritualized, Okkervil River, the Old 97's, the Kills, Beck, Stars, Neko Case, Gnarls Barkley, Yeasayer, Vampire Weekend, the Delta Spirit, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, CSS, Conor Oberst, and snippets of the sets of N.E.R.D., Del tha Funky Homosapien, the Swell Season, The Fratellis, Silversun Pickups. Decent festival, but exhausting and expensive with an overall mediocre lineup. I enjoyed both Stereolab preceding and Cut Copy after the festival more than any set in Zilker Park. Oh well, I still had a lot of fun and Beck was really cool.

Post-festival recovery was nice, but finding out it's going to cost $300 to get my car door fixed so that I can lock it again was not. The door lock on the driver's side front door is stuck in the up/unlocked position, and as such I can't really drive anywhere because I don't want my car to get stolen. That's ok since it'll be fixed on monday and I can use the bus if I have to.

That picture above is from the Cut Copy show. More of those are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keepmusicevil/

So in the next few weeks let's see if I can't land a job or something. Regardless of job situation I'm headed to my cousin's wedding in Huntington Beach later this month, which will be a lot of fun with family in SoCal. Maybe I'll even include another update before then!

Who likes Ike?

I came in to Houston earlier this week to paint my parents' house, and thanks to a.) the painting process taking longer than expected - don't volunteer to paint a house; it sucks! - and b.) Hurricane Ike setting in to pound on the Texas Gulf coast and pass right over my neighborhood, I haven't been able to return to Austin as expected. This isn't cool, especially since Mogwai is playing in Austin tonight and I kind of really wanted to see that show. I guess the likely widespread and catastrophic destruction probably also isn't good, so I'm just selfish for hoping the power doesn't go out so I can still sleep in air-conditioned comfort and watch dvds until this thing blows over (literally - ha!).

Last night I went to the Astros game, and because of Hurricane Ike we were able to say "fuck you" to our upper deck free tickets we were given and shuffle down to the field level and squat in unoccupied seats down there like it seems almost everyone in the stadium did. It's funny when they do the "paid attendence" game/count in like the 8th inning and the number they show is over 31,000 (3/4 of stadium capacity) when it's pretty clear there are no more than ten or fifteen thousand people there. Thanks to those 20k that didn't show up, I turned my free ticket into a $50 seat! Add Roy Oswalt's complete game shutout 6-0 win against the Pirates, and the Brewers' and Cardinals' losses that shoved us up a notch to a mere 3 games behind the Brew Crew in the Wild Card, and we had a pretty damn good time.

Back to hurricane annoyances: lines at gas stations/stations being out of gas, line at Blockbuster, places being closed (but not Happy Lamp...go get some cheap Chinese Food!), moving lots of potted plants into the garage, boarding up a few windows, stocking up on non-perishables in crowded and sometimes food-empty grocery stores, and general bombardment from news stations (and your mom...) of the status of said storm, evacuation traffic (and related traffic in places people have evacuated to), etc.

Today is a complain-y kind of day. At least my iPod is charged and we've got plenty of booze in the house.

Ike's supposed to hit land maybe 12 or 15 hours from now and winds are expected to be anywhere from 70-100 mph in my neighborhood. Hurricane destruction pictures to follow in the next few days!

9/3/08 - A rock star kind of day

I've been slow on the updates, but I'll try to keep up a bit more often. Short one for today: I've walked around taking pictures quite a bit, here and in other cities, and no one's ever really questioned it. Likewise I would never question anyone who I saw out with a camera, snapping away at anything that could be interesting. Today, though, I got asked by strangers three separate times about what I was taking pictures of, and if I was taking them for a magazine or some other publication. Three times! What, do people not take pictures anymore? I got a picture of the first guy who asked me this since he's a self-proclaimed "rock star" and requested that I snap a shot:

Pictures

A few months ago I got a new camera, and the sound of the shutter clicking when a picture is taken is so awesome that I snap tons more shots than I used to just so I can hear that sound. If it helps me with my perspective, color, lighting, and all those other things you can manipulate, so be it. Here are a few photos I've taken since coming to Austin late last week. For any of the ones on here, click the image to make it appear larger. I'll also continually update my Flickr site with new photographs, so check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/keepmusicevil/for more of Austin (as of right now the 20-25 most recently uploaded are from Austin and the rest are from Madison, Seattle, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, etc)!

This is my favorite picture I've taken in Austin so far. I just like the yellow and the focus on the bicycle with the nonchalant bypasser walking past.


Yesterday I walked past Barton Creek where tons of people were playing in the area just outside of where the pool spring water hits the creek (the pool is closed on Thursdays until 7pm for cleaning, so this area was maybe more crowded than it would be on a typical day when more people would be inside the pool area). For the uninitiated, Barton Springs Pool is a spring-fed natural swimming pool with clear, cold water (around 68*F year-round) in Austin that's a lot of fun to swim at when it's over 100 degrees outside.


This is the sign that greets visitors to the creek area:

I guess technically no one was swimming since it's not really deep enough, but there were a lot of people in the area and I don't think that sign is much of a deterrent. (Not that it should be; let the people swim!)

Public Transportation Rules

I kind of knew this beforehand, but I, for one reason or another, never fully took advantage of Madison's bus system. Thinking back on it, it was totally because it was easy enough to walk downtown from where I lived that I couldn't fully justify that $2 cost for such a short ride. In Austin, however, where I'm staying way up on the northwest side of the city, the cost of such a ride is much easier to stomach. Not only is the ride long enough to justify the cost, but the cost of catching a bus to downtown is lower. In Madison any single ride was $2. In Austin, you can take the express bus which runs down the freeway from the far corners of town into the campus or downtown area for only a dollar, and all non-express intra-city buses are fifty cents! Commuter rail is slated to start running soon which is another non-driving option, and bike and walking trails appear to be plentiful. Fuck you, gasoline, I'm not paying for you as often as you thought I would.

For some reason the availability of this bus has eluded me for the first two days of the week but this morning I wizened up and checked out the schedule. I can walk approx 2 mins to the stop for the 982 express, which will take me to a wide range of stops along Guadalupe from the campus all the way to the river. I wanted to get the comprehensive bus system guide book from the Metro office on Congress between 3rd and 4th, so I got off around 5th and Guadalupe because I jumped the gun on the "Stop Request" button and the driver stopped before my intended exit at 4th and Guadalupe. Instead of heading straight to the Metro office, though, I headed south east to the Congress street bridge and went across the river to meander around the SoCo area (not THAT SoCo, though it would have been cool if the Flaming Lips were playing like they did at the SoCo fest in Madison last year), but I changed my mind and went west toward Zilker park on Barton Springs. Once I hit Lamar I went back across the river and walked along Cesar Chavez back to the Congress area where I hopped up to 6th and walked down to Red River and back to Congress then up to the State Capitol area and across to Guadalupe then up to Campus where I caught the bus back. The art museum I saw on the way looks cool, so maybe I'll head back tomorrow to check it out!

Total distance walked (not including to bus stop from apartment and back to apartment from bus stop: 5.5719 miles (http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2169061)
Distance to bus stop: 0.1231 miles
Distance to apt from bus stop: 0.5279 miles

Total walking distance: 6.2229 miles. Not bad, eh?

Some pictures from the walk, and where I'll continue to post more Austin pictures: http://flickr.com/photos/keepmusicevil/

Need a job to go to shows

The problem with living in Austin is that there are way too many fantastic shows to go to for me to have no income. Fuckin' A, I think this means I have to get a job. Some of these shows are worth risking homelessness, so I'll probably buy tickets regardless of what the employment situation looks like.

Stuff I want to see so far:

8/17 - A Place to Bury Strangers. It's $8, so fuck it I'll probably go.
8/20 - Xiu Xiu. Jared said they're really good and I'd like to go, but I'll probably have to catch them next time around.
8/24 - My Morning Jacket. I don't even think I'm going to look up the price since there's much chance at all of me going to this.
9/22 - Juan Maclean. I never really got into the DFA scene, but J-Mac was at least an artist I heard and did vaguely enjoy listening to a time or two.
9/13 - Wreckless Eric. This is the dude that wrote that song that Will Ferrell sang to Maggie Gyllenhaal in Stranger than Fiction. His other stuff is pretty good too. $10? Maybe.
9/24 - Stereolab. Even at $25 I have to go. Stereolab are so amazing that I'll abstain from eating for a week if I have to.
9/26-28 - Austin City Limits festival. I already bought a ticket and don't think it's possible for me to get my money's worth. Maybe I can scalp for crack money?
9/29 - Cut/Copy. A song and a half at Pitchfork Festival were not nearly enough so the bullet has been bitten and I've already gotten tickets.
10/10 - The Walkmen. At least if I go I know it won't be nine degrees below zero like it was after their January show in Madison, right?
10/14 - Magnetic Fields. It's expensive, but what's the point of living in Austin if I'm not going to go to shows, right?
10/20 - Girl Talk. I've seen him enough to know that I'll be missing a hell of a show, but at the same time I think I can easier live without seeing an artist for the fourth time than I can for the first time. This logic applies to the My Morning Jacket show above, too. I may also be in L.A. for my cousin's wedding, so I'm not counting on Girl Talk.
11/13 - Of Montreal. I've seen them a bunch of times but it's always a good show. I should seriously have found a job by this point, so we'll seeeee.

Thoughts, opinions?

Well then

It's 3:30 pm on the second day after moving to Austin last Friday (the weekend doesn't count here, since Danny also came down to Austin for the weekend so it's likely I would have been here anyway just to hang out) and I'm bored. It's kind of strange moving to a new city where you don't know too many people and when you don't have any plans. Counting my host, Jonathan, I know well a grand total of three people in Austin: Jonathan, my brother, and my aunt. These people are busy during the day (well, my brother is busy at night working as a bar back, so he's sleeping until mid-afternoon) which leaves me to my thoughts and devices.

Yesterday, for example, I carpe diemed the shit out of the day by going to Target, Randall's (a grocery store that's too expensive for me to be shopping there), a few thrift stores, and the movies. Add in a bunch of tv, and you'll begin to see what I'm up against here. Today I tried to look for a sketch pad at Hobby Lobby, but Hobby Lobby wasn't where Google Maps said it was, so I went thrifting and to a different grocery store to get Guacamole fixins. Let me tell you something about guacamole: make sure your avocado is ripe enough! The internet told me that there should be a little give when you squeeze it, but apparently I didn't allow enough give and I ended up with an unripe avocado that I could not mash with a fork so I tried cutting it into a bunch of little pieces to see if I could mash those, but that didn't work either so I guess I'll have to get another avocado. My cilantro, lime, salt, and roma tomato will just have to wait, I guess. I'm going to let it sit to see if it gets any softer before I give up.

After the guacamole mishap, I ate an orange in the dark. It's dark in here because if you open the blinds to allow in natural light it gets really hot. Cloud cover is also moderate to heavy so it's pretty dark. And that's the story of how my blog was named. More later, perhaps?