Austin: Sufjan, Okkervil, Etc.

9/15

After getting bitched out for coming into lab at the same time I had frequently been coming in for the past few months (the boss doesn't care what time you come in unless he wants to talk to you and you happen to not be there), I still managed to sneak out early and meet Cindy at my place to take off for Austin.

We arrived and immediately met Becca and Ali at East-side taqueria El Chilito. Apparently we should have gone to sister establishment El Chile as, on the eve of former Texas Governor Anne Richards' funeral, former President William Jefferson Clinton was, we later heard, supping there. Damn would I have liked to have bought that man a beer.

But if ifs and buts were candy and nuts... and you know the rest. El Chilito made a good, authentic taco (on corn tortillas, even), and served up a big, cheap Lonestar.

I dropped my car off at Ali's and they dropped Cindy and I off downtown within spitting distance of the Paramount, where folkie troubador Sufjan Stevens was performing. On arriving, we found scalpers selling tickets for less than we had paid for them, but the fact that was had tickets was really enough at that point. You may remember Sufjan as the auteur of my favorite album of last year, and Cindy is a big fan as well (probably bigger than me, actually). As such, we were both excited to see such a loved and talented musician perform...

...And, at such a beautiful venue. This is how these semi-serious artistic concerts should be presented. Not in some soulless arena, or a converted warehouse with shit sound, but in a beautiful theater that complements the grandeur of the music. We arrived, grabbed some beers, browsed the merchandise, and grabbed our seats.

We caught the end of the opening set by My Brightest Diamond, which had sort of a PJ Harvey-meets-Bjork kind of thing going on. Nice enough, but nothing that's inspired me to hunt down her album or anything.

At intermission (my, this is a serious show, isn't it?), we met up with Dan, who, in typically lucky fashion, had scored tickets by giving a ride to Houston chanteuse, Devendra Banhart-associate, and "freak folkie" Jana Hunter. He introduced us, everyone but me had cigarettes, and a cute-but-maybe-a-little-crazy redhead that works with Becca introduced herself to me after recognizing my "Music + Science = Sexy" t-shirt.

Intermission ended and it was time for the main event to begin. Sufjan's ~20 piece band came out, adorned with butterfly wings, and then the man himself, in bird wings, which caused him to have to move sideways and not turn to the right or left to much in an effor to avoid knocking over equipment.

The set was absolutely beautiful. "Chicago" was great. "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." was chilling. "Casimir Pulaski Day" was devastating. "Detroit, Lift Up Your Weary Head! (Rebuild! Restore! Reconsider!)" was starkly beautiful. Material from Seven Swans was good as was other material from Michigan and Illinois. Material from the Illinois outakes compilation The Avalanche was merely servicable, for the most part.

Overall, a stunningly great show from an extremely talented musician in a beautiful venue with sound that didn't suck. It was completely worth all the time Cindy spent tracking down tickets.

After turning down free treats from Austin's own Ice Cream Man (if I had known who he was and why he was giving away ice cream, I probably would have taken it, in retrospect), Cindy, Dan and I walked over to good ol' Lovejoy's to meet with some of Cindy's high school friends. I enjoyed their espresso stout while she caught up with her friends.

After that, Dan went to catch up with Toni and we regrettably moved on to 6th street. The flaming Dr. Peppers that resulted from that move were quite a pleasant side effect, particularly given the impressive show the bartender put on, lining up beer glasses in a U shape, stacking 151/amaretto shots between them on their rims, using 151 to breathe fire to light them, and then knocking the shots into the drinks, domino-style.

But after that it was on to some crappy dance club or another. More beer was consumed; Dan (who rejoined us) and I bitched about the place, and pretty soon after that we called it a night. Dan balked at taking Cindy out southwest to Sara's place ("That's way the fuck out there!" even though it's no farther than half the bars we go to in Houston), he dropped us off at my car, I dropped Cindy off, and then returned to Becca's place, put some vinyl on, and went to bed.

9/16

The next afternoon, Becca and I went to Magnolia Cafe south, and after a brief wait due to Austin City Limits traffic, we had some of their sweet, sweet magmud queso and split an order of breakfast tacos.

After that, Becca took me to Art House to catch an exhibit there, a guy who did true multimedia art, incorporating video, sculpture, photography, and painting.

After that, on to the Donkey Show to see a screening of someone's crappy, overacted video art, which quickly drove me to the backyard in search of beer. We hung out there for a while until I heard from Kristin, who had been at ACL and was going to stay at Becca's. I met her there, gave her a chance to shower, and then we took off for downtown in Becca's car (which had parking priveleges), parked, and headed for the Parish. We caught up with Cindy, Sara, and co., where I attempted to score some "approval from the best friend" points with Sara by repeatedely hauling her bag from Jazz (the restaurant downstairs) to the the Parish (the venue upstairs, where I had previously seen Built to Spill's Doug Martsch play) after they ate, and then backstairs when they decided to have cigarettes and Kristin and I decided to have dinner.

Jazz makes a good blackened chicken alfredeaux (add some andouille!), which Kristin and I each had a half order of (ordered at different times; ordering a full order to split probably would have made more sense), and Cindy ordered some benets.

Then, finally, back up to the Parish, where we waited through the opening act. Thankfully, the Parish had nice, cheap drinks (and God bless them for that). Lonestar was in abundance, and Cindy joined me in a shot of whiskey to help me get my buzz on. It was, of course, the cheap stuff, and she recoiled a bit; I took the opportunity to give her a nice big kiss, grossing Kristin out in the process. At some point, I used their facilities, was proselytized to about how great this new band Gnarls Barkley was, and lightly burned my hands under the faucets that only worked on hot.

Anyway, Okervil River eventually came on and put on a spectacular show. They're at their best in their hometown, apparently, and, though you might never think it possible, Will Sheff's performance was even more impassioned and insane. Cindy's friends got a bit tired and took off, not sufficiently impressed, but of course I thoroughly enjoyed the show. A hihglight was my first chance to hear "Love to a Monster", a song of their recent Australian tour EP, and my new favorite Okkervil River song.

So yeah, great show. Really high quality all around. I think afterwards we called it a night. The power was out in the parking garage, but thankfully as we figured out we were trapped, security showed up and let us out. Back to Becca's place for some sleep.

9/17

Kristin took off, and I met Becca over on the East Side at Cajun-influenced soul food joint Hoover's. The two of us enjoyed some bloody marys and chatted with the over-the-hill bartender who had attended ACL the previous day. I enjoyed their "breakfast mufaletta" which wasn't particularly mufaletta-like, and their cheese grits.

Becca took me by her new house to show it to me, and then we made the mistake of going into Art Palace, where I found some art that I really liked, would agonize over for the next few days, and eventually decided to purchase for a largish sum of money. More on that later. I took Becca record shopping at Backspin Records, where I had some credit after helping Zach out with some web stuff, as a late graduation present. Then I dropped her off at home, went way down south to pick up Cindy from a friend's house, back up north to give Becca her key, and then finally on out of town...

Practice, Amy's; Double Dave's, Best Buy; Benjy's, Gnarls Barkley

I'm in Waco for Christmas vacation. One might think this would give me a chance to catch up on blogging, but old friends and new toys are both around. Still, I'll see what I can do.

9/12

I'd been craving Amy's Ice Cream for quite a while, so post-band practice, I rang Cindy up and asked her to join me.

I was excited because I had read on their web site that Amy's had a "call list"; that is you could sign up to be notified whenever your favorite flavors were available. Shiner and Guiness ice cream, here I come. Sadly, upon arriving at the establishment, they couldn't even find the list, which gives a pretty good indication of how dedicated they are to keeping their customers informed.

Still, good ice cream is good ice cream. My favorite ice creams there are the ones that contain alcohol, as they only further prove my theory that alcohol makes just about any food better. This time around I opted for "tequila sunrise", an orangy ice cream with a nice touch of that sweet, sweet agave-based liquor. Cindy had something chocolatey...

9/13

Will gave me a ride and we made a comic store run before grabbing some dinner. He and I seem to be on a Double Dave's kick, as we hit up the buffet there. Not the best pizza in the world, but always enjoyable.

The price had dropped $150 or so on my TV, so I made a trip up to Best Buy to get the difference taken off the balance I owed them. Sadly, they evaluated the price after my $100 cable service discount, as opposed to before, so I only got $50, but fifty bucks is fifty bucks.

9/14

Dan was wonderful enough to point out to me weeks ago that the hot new R&B/gospel/hip hop sensation that is Gnarls Barkely (which would be Cee Lo and DJ Dangermouse, with their powers combined Captain Planet-style) were being featured in a free show sponsored by Scion. Now I'm not the biggest Scion fan, seeing as how Toyota's idea of a "youth brand" is to make underpowered cheap cars rather than reasonably-priced fun-to-drive cars (well, the xA and xB fit into the former category, although the tC is more the latter, and I shouldn't fault it just because I didn't fit comfortably in it). But far be it from me to complain about a company that, in their quest for the young demographic, hires a hot new R&B/gospel/hip hop sensation to play a free show.

The only minor catch was online registration, which I had done for Cindy and I weeks before. Although Dan and Kristin decided not to use their registration, Char and Angela had both registered and were joining us for the show.

There was a bit of a panic in that registration had closed, and that they had registered more people than could actually attend. They were handing out tickets starting at 4:00, which would guarantee entry, so we managed to slip out of our respective labs early and Char picked us up in his souped-up Volvo. It was hot outside, but the Scion people had free water for us, which was nice, while we waited for 4:00 to come to collect our tickets.

After that, Char dropped us off at Cindy's car, we dropped by our respective apartments for quick showers and changes of clothes, and then met up at Benjy's (well, actually the Lounge at Benjoy's which for some reason is listed sepparately on Citysearch) for some happy-hour-priced appetizers and drinks, which is the only way we could really afford to go there anyway (unless Zaina was workiing and hooked us up, which is something we should probably investigate).

Gin was a featured liquor, so I opted for a gimlet, and I believe we had crab cakes and a barbacoa-over-polenta-over-salad sort of thing. Good, but still fairly expensive. Still, nice place, good time.

After that, on to the Warehouse for the show. A hip hop act opened up; apparently the guy had collaborated with Kanye West in some fashion. I enjoyed it; despite my tendency to find hip hop a little samey after a song or two, the live setting seems to offer enough stimulation to prevent "hip hop fatigue".

Eventually, Gnarls Barkley came out in their jammies. In addition to the soulful Cee Lo and "white-friendly" (thanks, Pithcfork) Danger Mouse, there was a full complement of strings, backup singers, guitars, and keyboards. The show was great, hitting every song from the album. We were far enough up front that the Warehouse's shitty acoustics didn't cause problems. The full band was exactly the treatment a live veresion of Danger Mouse's tracks deserved.

What a great show. Thanks, Toyota.

HD & Hans'; Poison Girl, Cecil's, & Beba's; Game and Hans'

9/6/06

I went into work a bit late so that I would have time to swing by Time Warner and swap my cable box out for one with HD capability. The swap was free, the service was free; it was nice all around. Got the box home, hooked it up, and had beautiful, glorious HD.

Met up with Char that night at Hans'. Cindy and/or Will may have also been there. Cigars of some kind might have been smoked.

9/8/06

Met up with Dan, Kristin, etc. at Poison Girl for drinks. I believe this is the night that their special combination of ginger beer and whiskey caught my eye, and it was pretty tasty. Afterwards, to Cecil's for more beer, and then food at Beba's to round out the evening. I need to find something else to get there; the gyros just aren't that good.

9/9/06

Char hosted a viewing of the UT/Ohio State rematch, complete with food, drink, and a projector. Good times. Another visit to Hans' after that, probably including bocce ball

9/10/06

Disturbingly, the HDMI (digital video) cable I had used to hook up my cable box to my TV stopped working over night, and I couldn't and still haven't gotten it to work. Even trying a different cable and various combinations of powering up the various pieces of electronics don't seem to make a difference. I've been making do with a component video connection, which is serviceable, but the problem has continued to vex me.

I also wanted to finalize my TV setup. The TV moved to the back of the TV stand, first tried on cinder bocks (too high), then one cement paver (too low), then two (close). It's not ideal, but it allows the TV to clear the center channel speaker when it's placed at the front of the stand. I'm not convinced it sounds quite as good there as it did on top of the old TV, but hey, sacrifices, am I right?

Plastic Constellations; Boys & Girls Club; TV w/ Will; Shopping & The Corpse Bride; TV, Beer; Little Miss Sunshine, Poison Girl; Prole

The blog's been competing with Zelda lately for leisure time. And, frankly, the blog doesn't have an immersive 3D world with sword play and clever puzzles. Sorry, blog.

8/28

And student #2 from our lab makes it out. Good for him. Light at the end of the tunnel and all that.

The Plastic Constellations, whose rock/half-rap Mazatlan I had liked, were scheduled to open for the Fatal Flying Guilloteens at the Proletariat. I guess a highly-rated local band outranks a low-rated national band, even if on the absolute scale the national band is probably better.

Of course, since it was a Guilloteens show, Chris B. was there, as was Colin, and it was good to get a chance to see them both. Chris parlayed it into an occasion to do his bar column for the Houston Press, but didn't parlay it into free drinks for the rest of us, sadly.

The Plastic Constellations' new material didn't seem quite up to their '04 album that I was rather fond of, which was a disappointment.

Still, a nice night out.

8/29

I had first heard of it from Matt B, who did it. Large LCD TVs, without built-in tuners, are, technically speaking, monitors. Monitors happen to be one of the things that I can apply my equipment budget towards. And I didn't have a monitor for my Mac mini (except for my TV), or a big screen flat panel TV. So certainly, it was something that filled a niche.

After spending some time poking around the internet previously, I had pretty much settled on one of Westinghouse's 1080P displays. They were cheap with a good feature set, and though the brand was a relative unknown, they had certainly developed a large following on the internet.

Labor day weekend seemed like a good time to buy. I spent a good deal of time researching my buying options...

8/30

Boys & Girls Club is a nice occasional divergence; a good thing to do if you're up for more partying after starting your Wednesday night out slow, but it's rarely a primary destination for me.

Occasional special events, though, change that, and one was the opportunity to see Andy Rourke of the Smiths DJ at anonymous strip-mall club A38. So Cindy and I took off. Dan and Kristin told us things hadn't really taken off yet, so we stuffed them in the back of Cindy's car and moved over to the Mink for a few rounds, before stuffing them and Levi back in and heading back to A38.

Seeing Rourke DJ wasn't really anything special, but it was somewhat interesting. I was surprised to hear him play a solo Morrisey song. Guess there's not that much bad blood there. We stuck around for a while, but a few Lonestars later, we took off.

8/31

Lab Dan was fed up with his laptop and wanted to go to Micro Center for some RAM, inviting me on the field trip to do so. He had ridden his bike, though, so we first rode that to his place to pick up his car before going to MC. The motorcycle ride was less initially scary, but the trip down Braeswood had a few bumps that made the whole lack-of-being-strapped-down thing a little jarring. Still, it reinforced my opinion that a bike would be a supremely fun, if dangerous, thing to own.

After getting back to lab, Will contacted me, wanting to watch some TV. We stopped by the store for some snacks, settling on some of the more bizarre kettle chips we saw: beer and cheddar, and spicey thai. The beer and cheddar were nice, good authentic cheese flavor with a little extra something. The thai were also pretty good; lots of ginger and a few other things I couldn't put my finger on.

We watched Justice League. It was good as usual. Bless you, Paul Dini.

9/1

Ah, the Friday before Labor Day and midnight madness sales. I had previously missed out on an opportunity to pick up a cheap Logitech Harmony remote. These aren't anything special in terms of hardware, but the software is what makes them "I should have thought of that" brilliant. They download device codes off the internet, and then, based on some Q&A with you on a web site, configure macros automatically for doing things like watching TV, listening to music, watching a movie, or playing a video game. As such, they're great at replacing a pile of remotes, and great at keeping SOs who aren't intimately acquainted with your setup happy.

CompUSA had one for $50 after rebates (which I still haven't gotten; assholes), which was a real bargain, considering it went for $120 or so at the time. After a brief debate as to whether or not to leave work early to pick one up, I decided to be safe, and it was a good thing I did. I got there about 5:45 for the sale that started at 6, and they were already handing them out. I grabbed one and then killed time until I could check out at 6. I also found a wireless router for $10 after rebates, so I picked one up with the intention of giving it to Cindy (who it turns out didn't know she already had one), although it's ended up at my parents' place.

After that, on to Best Buy to check out the TV. I realized while there that it was only a couple hundred more to go from the 37" to the 42". I was still deliberating about that somewhat, and they didn't have either in stock, so I opted to wait until the next day and go by a place that did have it in stock.

Cindy and I went for dinner (Chinese?) and then ended up renting The Corpse Bride that night, which was an entertaining, pretty little fairy tail (and the last movie I watched on the old TV).

9/2

Robyn was in town with some of her Baylor folks for the Body Worlds exhibit and wanted to meet up for lunch. Sadly I didn't have the opportunity to steer them someplace good for lunch, so they ended up in the village, at Brian O'Neil's. The food's not so bad there, though, and I had a good roast beef sandwich, potato leek soup, and some beer. Plus the company was good. It was great to see Robyn, however briefly.

Then on to Susan and Jerry's for a visit, laundry, and dinner,

After that, I headed over to the I-10 Best Buy to buy my TV. Of course, nothing ever is perfect, and they wouldn't let me use my 12% off coupon because the TV was on sale. But I did get $100 off for agreeing to sign up for HD cable service, which was pretty much free for me anyway. So I got their last TV, loaded it up into the Mazda (perfect fit!) and headed back home.

Traffic was backed up quite a bit, and a look ahead showed why: a huge plume of smoke was coming up. Getting closer, a truck on the other side of the highway was on fire. As in, I could feel the heat from 50 feet away driving past it. Absolutely crazy.

Got home, Cindy helped me unpack the TV, and made a quick trip to lab to borrow a DVI cable for the Mac mini. Went up to Woodrow's for beer, then left to meet a very bored-sounding Kristin at Poison Girl.

9/3

Cindy and I put some breakfast together and then went to see Little Miss Sunshine at the River Oaks theater. The movie... well, it was OK, but didn't have the kind of richness that would lead to a purchase.

After I got home, I got a call from Dan, who was hanging out at Poison Girl with his daughter, so I joined them and had a drink or two, before returning to some quality time with my TV.

9/4

Spent the day enjoying the TV, and bet up with the usual crowd at the Prole later on for drinks.

The Proletariat; La Tapatia; GRAB; Angela's party, Poison Girl, and Late Nite Pie; Rudyard's, Whataburger, and Woodrow's

I'm in lab, late on a Sunday night, doing some work for my committee meeting on Tuesday, and taking advantage of the wait time to get some blogging in.

8/21

Another Monday at the Proletariat.

8/23

Having overspent, I was waiting out the clock until the new credit card billing cycle started. Consequently, there was not much going out this week. However, Cindy called me up Wednesday and asked if I wanted dinner. I agreed on the condition that it was cheap.

The always reliable La Tapatia certainly qualified, so we had some good Mexican food.

8/25

The credit card bill having rolled over, I was free to go out with reckless abandon. Dan was DJing at the GRAB once again. Beer, pool, good music, maybe even... dancing? Nah, couldn't have been. Or...

8/26

Angela, a lab tech, had recently begun hanging out with the crew from school, so we joined her for her birthday party. It was a wine and cheese affair, hosted at a swank downtown loft. After the always-pleasant experience of parking downtown, Cindy and I rolled into the lobby, ignored requests to sign in, and headed up to the party.

It was mostly people I didn't know, but... it turns out that our host was Amir, the guy whose name I couldn't remember from Graham's bachelor party. Somehow I had missed that he and Kevin were friends of Angela's (or maybe second degree). So I caught up with them a bit, enjoyed the swank surroundings, drank some good wine, was a little disappointed by the cheese selection, and enjoyed the (perhaps unsanitary) chocolate fountain.

The party was moving to Slainte; I'm not exactly a fan, so Cindy and I instead opted to catch up with Dan and Kristin at Poison Girl, before going with them to Late Nite Pie for a quality late dinner.

8/27

Dan & crew were at Rudyard's Sunday night, so I dropped by and joined the for a round or two of extra-cheap Lonestar. I ducked out and made a Whataburger run, catching up with Will at Woodrow's to eat my late dinner, play some darts, and drink some more beer.