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NOTES FROM MARCH - MAY |  | As I arrived back into Austin from a two month sabbatical of rest and relaxation, I slowly got back to the Austin pace of life and even found some time to update my website here or there. Here's some
of those little things I got done during those months: |
ONE OF MY ARCH ENEMIES EXPOSED
As most everyone by this point knows, I have a rather love/hate relationship with movies. I've never been one to want to just
sit down and watch a movie, let alone the latest Hollywood blockbuster. Over the years , my disdain for the uncreative schlock that gets made has focused on all the little bits - I fill up with a nervous energy mentally rewriting the script, changing characters, trying to fill plot holes and worst of all - I spend the movie grimacing when all those sounds created by foley artists.
For the uninitiated, foley artists are the pretentious sounds guys who record all the sounds you hear in a movie. Locked away in a studio, they reach into
a grapefruit to simulate crushing a skull, bang trash cans for swords, etc.
Sure its an art form in its own right, but the sounds sound so fake it tears me up all the time. And then I found this video one late night, and the profession got a just treatment for all to see. (If you have a job, the video may not jive with the workplace) |
R.I.P. DOS XX MAY 5, 1997 - MARCH 19, 2008
On May 5th, 1997, I celebrated Cinco de Mayo with my friends Donnie and Donetta at Kansas City's venerable
Mexican Restaurant Ponak's. Sometime during our experience, we all received Dos XX bottle openers as part of the festivities, along with cheap pitchers and plates of dollar tacos. For eleven years of surprisingly reliable and steady service, my bottle opener finally succumbed to the laws of nature and broke at approximately 11:30. It was perhaps the most amazing piece of cheap molded plastic I have ever come into possession of in my life. |
DATING WHEEL
While on the phone with a good friend catching up on all the sordid details of my life, I tried to defend recent dating patterns and interests
when a perfect analogy rolled off my tongue. Dating in your thirties is like spinning the wheel at the end of the Price is Right. When it starts slowing down, your heart starts to beat faster and harder, and every spot on the wheel becomes magnified - 85 - 25 - 45 - and as it slows down more and more, you start hoping and praying there's enough spin left in the wheel to move it past the 35 cent space and at least catch 60 cents. Of course, there's always that $1.00 space out there too... |
CHANGE DOES YOU GOOD
I spent the day driving through town with a friend I hadn't seen since December. We poked through the active film sets at Austin
Studios, drove around the new Mueller developments expecting to see Jim Carey from the Truman Show, and joked about incorporating a tap dancing Young Frankenstein to the shark-laden dance floors of newly minted downtown clubs.
The conversation switched to a more serious tone when we started talking about the past few months and our situations and changes we've
made. He was particularly impressed I cured myself of the OCD curse that plagued me the past few years: whenever I would get my hands covered in dry, dusty dirt, I would compulsively need to wash them clean immediately or else the wiring in my brain would start to freeze up and I would be tortured. It's now three months without a reoccurrence, and I think it's beaten. |
A MOMENT WITH IAN - CULINARY DELIGHTS!
(editor's note: knowing Ian is a joy, living with him has brought us closer than we'd ever thought possible.
Late nights fused with alcohol bring the following visions to light, I hope you enjoy)
"Venom was talking to me the other day and he actually asked me to go to a pig roast, but I had just gotten up and I had already eaten at Denny's. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon when he called. He told me he's been waking up around 4:30 in the morning lately, because he's been getting wasted a lot lately and passing out drunk around 9 or 10 at night.
So my wife and I both ordered the two egg breakfast, but we both wanted more so
we split a side of pancakes and a side of bacon. My wife was upset because I ordered her an orange juice and, apparently, she doesn't like orange juice anymore. So she was upset and wasn't getting water fast enough. On top of that, we hardly ate any of the food, and she was really parched as we were trying to leave the restaurant's parking lot. We ended up going out the wrong way and couldn't get out the right exit from the parking lot onto I-35. From then on, I was silent.
My second meal of the day was brought on by extreme hunger, because it was 7-8 hours since I last ate, but I was almost out of gas so I had to stop at McDonalds because it was the closest top home. I ordered some nuggets and when I got home I started eating them. A nugget into them I realized just how pale the nuggets were and the next nugget I bit into wasn't fully cooked so I had to tear apart each nugget so I could find out which nugget were cooked or not, and as it turned out, only half were good, but
there were plenty of fries.
I thought about complaining, but really, who cares?" |
SXSW COMES FULL CIRCLE
While I tried my hardest to avoid Austin's annual circus of hipster freakdom this year (and largely succeeded!), I wasn't strong
enough nor anti-social enough to pass up the opportunity to see Tragedy, a Bee Gees metal cover band during the waning hours of the four or five day drunken festival. While I only made the final five songs, it was the sort of experience that could only be described by repeatedly muttering expletives under your breath. As the beers and shots flowed to soothe my soul after the performance, I was able to complete sentences once again and return to the realm of living,
breathing human beings and was soothed by my good friend who reveled in my newfound love of all things pop culture.
Of course, during the performance I couldn't help but think about the first SXSW I experienced, culminating with a live performance on the same stage at Emo's by the Diamond Smugglers, an equally abrasive yet lovable aborted Neil Diamond cover band. Oh, where exactly have the last six years of my life gone? |
A GREAT FRIEND LOVES THIS VIDEO
So in the spirit of humanity, I'll pass it along free of cynical comments.
Watch it for yourself. |
THINGS THAT MAKE ME CRINGE
After immersing myself in pop culture in the vast frozen north, some of those bad habits have been reinforced by my current
living situation. So in no particular order, here's some stuff that my life has been exposed to recently that really tears my soul into pieces: Millionaire Matchmaker, 4:30 AM with Ian Shults, watching VH1's Best Week Ever and following it with the Soup, reality competitions on MTV, and the word 'fierce'. |
THINGS I LOVE THAT MAKE MY FRIENDS CRINGE
My secret love of all things Alton Brown has raised plenty of eyebrows among my good friends, who also asked when
me if I was 60 years old for my unbridled enjoyment of Prairie Home Companion, my addiction to nutella, and inexplicable reasons for never drinking enough water. |
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ONGOING AND UPCOMING SHOWS
2009
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FEBRUARY 21, 2009 | Friends of Bearded Lady
Bearded Lady
East Austin | Group Art Exhibition
Fourteen artists show off their talents with the boys of Bearded Lady |
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APRIL 10-12, 2009 | A Show of Biblical Proportions
Bearded Lady & Blue Genie
East Austin | A Bible Themed Group Show
Brought to you by Ian Shults, Michael Schliefke, Bearded Lady and Blue Genie |
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SPRING 2009 | Tales of the Really White Vigilante
Volume Three
East Austin | Comic Book Release Party
General Malaise helps our young hero past some pitfalls as new developments hit East Austin. | |
FALL 2009 | Tales of the Really White Vigilante
Volume Four
East Austin | Comic Book Release Party
Does the final volume of the tale of the White Vigilante bring about the end of gentrification? |
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