Super Happy Fun Land; iPhone; Wedding in Austin

I'm just barely squeaking this one in under the 1-year mark. Going to have to work on that...

7/16/07

Our then-recently-acquired new friends Katie (from genetics) and boyfriend Neil had their first gig as Lazy Horse at Super Happy Fun Land (which I believe sold their location and moved). So, notably, I guess the last time I was there.

Anyway, SHFL is awesomely BYOB, so we loaded up a cooler and enjoyed its contents while we sat through the first few bands. Lazy Horse had a good first show, we thought; they play rock but I can't quite figure out how to describe them.

We hadn't had dinner yet, so Cindy and I went to check out Heights establishment Spanish Flower, which Cindy had some sort of history with. I wasn't overly impressed with the food, but any late-night Mexican establishment is a good time.

7/18

I finally got up the nerve to spend 600 freakin' dollars on an iPhone. After picking it up from the galleria, I couldn't get the automated setup process to transfer my T-mobile number, so I then spent a couple hours fighting with AT&T to get them to do it for me after hours. And with that, I had my iPhone.

7/19

Cindy's friend Matt (well, one of them, anyway), was getting married in Austin, and the ceremony was to involve grilling, picknicking, and swimming, so I picked up a swimsuit and Cindy and I hit the grocery store to pick up some items to grill and/or picnic. Ended up with the makings of a salad and a nicely marinated pork tenderloin. Then watched some TV.

7/20

Eventually, we grabbed some Jimmy John's and made our way out of town, getting in late to Cindy's friend Sarah's place in South Austin. We hung out for a while, had a few beers before calling it a night. Tried to catch up with Becca but Austin people have weird conceptions of distance...

7/21

The wedding was outside at Krause Springs (couldn't find a web site) in Spicewood, TX, about half an hour west of Austin. After taking the Mazda over a low water crossing, We showed up, nattily attired in our swimsuits. The ceremony was short, sweet, and a bit hippy-ish/new-agey, which was apparently appropriate to the couple. Also ran in to a professor I knew from school, whose fiancé was apparently a college friend of the bride.

Afterwards, it was lunch time. Cindy and I had smartly grabbed some cans of Shiner Bock (no glass in the park, of course). I ended up helping out with the grilling, and Cindy and I enjoyed our pork and salad.

We went for a swim after lunch, violating my rule about swimming in non-chlorinated bodies of water. The water was nice and cool and the scenery was beautiful, however. And as hippy-ish as the wedding came off, I have to admit I admired the couple's commitment to a small, informal, and relatively inexpensive event.

I finally got to catch up with Becca for dinner. We went to a sort of Italian-ish fusiony-gourmet place on Congress that turned out to be quite good and reasonably priced for the quality. Sat on their nice back yard-ish patio. Can't remember what I had for the life of me.

Cindy & co. were across the street at Guero's, so I rejoined them and bid Becca adieu.

Cindy, Tisen, Sara F., and I had gotten tickets for the conveniently-scheduled Wrens show at Emo's. It happened to be the last show of their tour for The Meadowlands, which was released all the way back in '03. They seemed thrilled to be playing Austin and Emo's for the occasion and

7/22

We drove up from Sarah's place the next day to catch lunch with Rebecca and my parents at the new Ward favorite, South Congress Café. Finally sampled their carrot cake french toast and... wow.

Austin; More Ben Folds

Real-time interlude: I started this entry, well, a couple weeks back, and just haven't gotten back to it. I realize everyone is tired of being three months behind on my life. I'm trying. Really.

It's a nice Sunday afternoon, and Dan's on his way over to teach me to drive stick. I'm pretty sure this is an experience I should have had about 8 years ago, involving my dad yelling at me, but I suppose Dan can be the surrogate for that.

11/3

Cindy and I got a slightly late start on our trip to Austin, but not too bad. My primary purpose in going was to catch Ben Folds doing a proper rock show at Stubb's; Cindy was going to celebrate her friend Sarah's birthday. Cindy had considered picking up an iPod shuffle for Sarah's birthday; I insisted that we get the sexy new clip-on one, and this just happened to be its first day on sale. We took a slight detour to Best Buy, and walked out with the player with minimal fuss.

So, back on the road. Saw the very sexy Cadillac XLR on the way to Austin for the first time; it's a nice combination of sports car sleekness and interesting angularity—shame it's made by GM.

We got into town, hitting a little traffic on the way in due to a wreck, and consequently we were running a bit late. I had to get Cindy dropped off in Southwest Austin, which, as I've probably mentioned, isn't that far away, but it was a bit of a pain. Then I had to go by Becca's place to pick up her friend Ali because, hey, Ali doesn't like to drive (I don't get those people). Then downtown, to find Becca, who didn't answer her phone the first 57 times we called. Then, finally, parked, and we started the walk to Stubbs, stopping off at Mug Shots for a drink so the girls could use the bathroom (a little counter-productive, I suppose), before reaching the venue, getting more drinks, and finding a spot in the crowd. We caught the end of opener Corn Mo's set; I had previously enjoyed his Meatloaf-They Might Be Giants-Freddie Mercury-Weird Al shennanigans, I wished we had caught more of the set, but he at least won over the girls.

Ben came out and played a good show. He kept going on about an expensive new red keyboard he had bought and worked very hard to incorporate it into the songs to prove its usefulness. The backing band was sufficient but barely notable. A highlight was hearing him cover "Such Great Heights", which I had previously only seen via YouTube.

The show was good, and, though it couldn't match the earlier Houston show, it was hardly a disappointment.

Afterwards, we crossed the street to Club DeVille, whose cool back patio bounded on the back side by a rock cliff gave it a nice atmosphere, and it was a good place to be on such a crisp night. Drinks were had, etc. It struck me as a good place to see a small show, potentially (SxSW?)

We stopped by Jimmy John's on 6th and got some food (and here I shall note that, thank God, Houston has a Jimmy John's that opened up this very week), enjoying the theater of the drunk people trying to use the restroom without purchase, or with bribe. I remarked that seemed like a pretty good deal to the cashier, who reminded me that he had to clean up after the drunkards. Point taken.

Back to Becca's, where there was some wrestling with an uncooperative futon before going to sleep. Becca doesn't turn her heat on, which is just how I like it.

11/4

After a leisurely morning, thoughts turned to food, and Becca and I debated between eating in or going out, finally compromising on a light snack at her apartment and then a walk down the street to Azul. Like so many great places, it was in an old house, very homey. But we weren't inside long; just enough to order some kind of egg muffin sandwich to split and two Shiner 97s before we went out to their wonderful patio. Old, rusted furniture and tables presented themselves for our use; our food was brought out on an antique tray, and the friendliness of the place, the interesting landscaping which just barely cut off the outside world, and the warm fire conspired to make me want to stay there for the rest of the afternoon.

We didn't, though, and decided to go music shopping and then to get beer. Cindy wanted to join us, so once again we went out to Sarah's place to pick her up, and then back to down town to do some shopping at Waterloo records. Apparently our timing was perfect, as Waterloo was having a spectacularly good anniversary sale. I stocked up on a number of CDs I'd been meaning to pick up, and notably the DVD of Ben's first orechestral performence with the Western Australia Symphony Orchestra, which featured a number of the same songs/arrangements from the show earlier in the week (though it omitted some material that, well, wasn't written back when the show took place).

I wanted to swing by Lovejoy's for some bizeer, but it was getting late and the littlest Ward was getting hungry, so we went to the barbecue joint she had picked out, Artz Rib House.

Let me first point out that Rebecca taking me to a barbecue place would have, up until a year or so ago, been a minor miracle. Becca came back from a trip to France in high school a vegetarian, and remained that way. I have Taco Cabana to thank for providing Becca's meat gateway drug: bacon.

So anyway, barbecue it was. Beers were ordered, and most of us settled on some variation of... (wait for it)... ribs. Their specialty was "country-style" ribs, that is, the biggest damned ribs you could imagine, which really had a lot in common with pork chops, at least in terms of size. I lobbied for combining that with an order of baby back ribs, but Cindy wanted her own order (which I knew she couldn't finish), so Becca and I split an order of the country-style ribs and a sausage wrap. The sides left a bit to be desired, and our service was... iffy, but there's no denying that those ribs were a nice cut of meat.

It continued getting late. We made for HEB to pick up some beverages and the necessary supplies with which to wrap Sarah's gift. They had gift bags, sure, but you know what was even better? Red & white striped popcorn bags! Yep. It was inspired.

I also learned that HEB will not sell beer to you if you have only a passport and not a driver's license. Who the fuck came up with that one? If anything a passport is even more valid identification than a driver's license? And isn't it even better to be buying beer if you don't have a driver's license, because that means you're less likely to be driving drunk? Suck it, HEB. And also, can I have more of your awesome fresh salsa? Thanks.

So we made for Sarah's friend's place over in Austin, which was in reasonably familiar territory.

We got there and Rebecca and I, at least, felt a little bit out of place. Most people there had kids. I think Sarah knew a lot of them from some kind of single parents' group. But after a beer or so, the conversation shifted to Built to Spill and I suddently felt not so out of place.

Courtney returned my earlier call and invited us to her place, so Becca and I took our temporary leave and headed south to Courtney's, which, it turns out, is just a couple blocks back from Becca's.

We walked to the corner store for some beer and Courtney's very well-behaved dog (who didn't even give a sidelong glance when a very angry and scary dog behind a fence along the route barked very loudly and charged the fence). And then we hung out, drinking beer. That's it. It was nice.

Courtney had to be up early for a bike ride the next morning, so we left, I dropped Becca off, and I rejoined the party. And then Cindy and I went and spent the night at Becca's.

11/5

We got up for lunch at Hoover's, as it was Becca's friend's last day working there. We were a ways back on the list, and probably wouldn't have made it in time for breakfast, so Becca's friend suggested we comandeer the table she had just cleared. This was blamed on us, for her sake, and we got a dirty look from the host, but hey, it worked.

I had the honey-drizzled chicken tenders and biscuits, which were quite good.

Anyway, after that it was time to make our way back to Houston. Which we did.

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...

Austin: Donkey Show; Art House; Art Palace; Father's Day

6/15

Rebecca had pieces in two separate gallery openings on this particular weekend, so I decided it was a good time to work in a trip to Austin, especially since I had never seen any of her recent (duct tape-based) art in person.

So, not even a month after my last visit, I took Thursday off and traveled I10 and and 71, arriving in Austin around 5:00, just in time to partake of some Texadelphia and change at the gallery, the Donkey Show.

Apparently the thing to do in Austin now is to rent a house, live in one room of it, and dedicate the rest of the rooms to a gallery. This was the first such gallery of the weekend. It was a great house; it seemed a bit of a shame not to actually be able to use the whole thing as living space.

So I got to see Rebecca's piece. It was made entirely of off-white duct tape, run in vertical parallel lines up the wall, along the lines of the ceiling, stopping or continuing based on the intersections of other lines in the architecture. More tape ran diagonally through the air from the ceiling to the wall to form an obtuse triangle, adding some dimensionality. Due to slight variations in light levels, various regions appeared to be made out of slightly varying shades of duct tape, but it was all the same kind. The off-white worked well with the wood floors, white walls, and the superimposed lines made some nifty moiré patterns.




There was another piece on the floor that was mean to be a landscape of wall texture marked with whisps of spray paint, but to me it really wasn't that interesting.

Lots of people showed up for the opening, and we made our way through the available Tecate and wine. People started to leave, too. Some of Becca's art teachers came by, one of whom was young and cute. She had some of her stop motion animation on her iPod video that was pretty nifty (but maybe slightly disturbing). I tried to get her perspective on the place of stop motion animation (and its photorealistic effects) in the face of computer animation, but I think I lost her somewhere along the way.

Once things had cleared out some and night had fallen, we trekked to a nearby gas station to pick up some beer, forties, cigarettes, and so forth. I'll note that I only ever seem to go to gas stations for beer in Austin (or at least with Becca). These elements were communally consumed lying in the grass in front of the house, and has the hours got later and everyvody else left, Rebecca and I were left with her friends Ali and Kaitlin, sitting on the front porch, while I tried to say intelligent things about art to Kaitlin, who is much more educated than me in such matters. I like to think that I didn't make a complete ass of myself.

6/16

Becca needed to swing by Art House, the gallery where the "New American Talent" exhibit that included her second piece was, to insure that her piece was, in fact, complete. That accomplished, we went to the nearby Athenian Grill for some great cafeteria-style Greek food. I had a nice greek salad with a creamy dressing, a good chicken and rice soup, some rice, and a gyro. It was really good stuff. Different from Niko's, but very good.

Next on the list was some shopping: Rebecca needed a dress and we both needed to get a Father's Day card.

We returned to Becca's for a bit, changed, and headed downtown to hit up a happy hour before the show. We settled on an overly hip bar/latin fusion place, Saba ordered a few appetizers that were... marginal, and a round of mexican martinis that were more martini than mexican. After our quasi-dinner we tabbed out, and discovered that we hadn't been charged for our drinks, which meant that we tipped generously.

Despite her high heels, I managed to talk Rebecca into a brief trek over to the Gingerman to get let her try some Lindeman's, which she liked quite a bit. The bartender bore an amazing resemblance to Nathan from school. I followed that up with a glass of Stone IPA, and the look on Becca's face after she tried it was worth her ensuing ire over not warning her of the bitterness of the beer.

From there we went on to Art House, and I made the rounds and checked out the art. Becca's new piece was quite different from her Donkey Show piece, incorporating much more color, using the large glass window to great effect, incorporating some white tape, and altering the angles of the through-the-air runs of tape.





A lot of the stuff I didn't care for, but there was cool stuff too did. There was one piece that was a chair, with an image of another chair projected onto it, but hard to see due to the negative space in the physical chair. Another piece was a sculpture constructed of broken umbrellas. I also liked the small "room" constructed of steel and pink plexiglass. And the two large looking panes of what appeared to be glass but was actually candy (sugar and water). One piece was made of car batteries suggestively connected to gasoline canisters. One that I didn't like was a small greenhouse of plants on "life support", which was overly dramatic and dominated the room. My favorite was a bush made out of broken umbrellas.




All the while I was sipping on beer, but never enough to really get anywhere. Mom and Dad showed up with flowers (which would become a bit of an albatross later on), and though a bit weirded out by the people and the art seemed to enjoy themselves. I also had some good conversations with people about exactly how awesome Becca's work was

Things wound down and we met up with some of Becca's non-art friends over at the hotel across the street for a couple of rounds before going to an East Austin loft to check out a party. It turned out to be a little lame, so we went across the street to the Peacock to continue the drinking, and I witnessed a very shamless hookup attempt.

We went back to Kaitlin and Ali's to hang out. I talked to Kaitlin a while and then noticed that her answers were getting less and less comprehensible until I realized she was asleep.

6/17

Rebecca and I did lunch at Whole Foods (I enjoyed an excellent barbecue wrap) before heading downtown so that Becca could attend a lecture at Art House. I went to a nearby coffee shop and got cozy with my laptop to do some editing that just had to be done on a paper that the boss still hasn't read. This is what happens when I try to be responsible and productive.

But the coffee house had lonestar tall boys. Fuck coffee. I had me some beer.

Becca and Kaitlin came down after the lecture was over. Becca and I took off for the Donkey Show, where Becca had to meet someone who wanted to see her piece. Again, I worked diligently...

I suppose there was some sort of dinner involved later on, but I'm having trouble remembering exactly what. That taken care of, though, we went to Art Palace (another house/gallery in East Austin) to see the show Ali had curated. There was a keg of beer, but the girls curating that were being both bitchy and stingy, and there was no way I was going to get drunk at that rate. Growing increasingly bored, I eventually talked Becca into walking down the street (again to a convenience store) and grabbed some beer, and things improved from there.

At one point, Becca arm-wrestled all challengers (once again, camera phone plus action shot equals bad idea):


The evening wore on and Arturo shut down Art Palace so we could head north a bit to hit up a pool party. There was swimming, mezcal (which tasted... carcinogenic), cheap beer, and chicken fighting. And then the rain came. Not too long after that we took off, and stopped off at Ali and Kaitlin's, only to hear them yelling at us from the balcony, so we went up and had some more beer with them and... looked at random words in the dictionary. Yep. It got quite late, so I finally talked Becca into leaving.

6/18

Mom & Dad stuck around town long enough to do brunch with us, once again at South Congress Café, which was solid as usual. Not too long after that, I left to make my way back to Houston...