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January 2005
‘Try the “Hotel Rwanda” bread?”
We had a flu panic here the other day. One of my co-workers had a sick kid at home with a preternaturally high temperature and full-blown flu symptoms, the kind of situation where someone like me goes home at the day and hug his cats extra hard for not carrying child-borne viruses.
Almost surely by suggestion, I drove home that evening feeling achy and run-down, never mind that I’d stayed up late the night before and was cruising on a handful of sleep hours. “This is it!” my brain told my body: “batten down the, uh… what is that, a hatch down there? I don’t care what that thing is, just batten it down! We’ve got flu coming!” I went home and drank a tall glass of orange juice. My wife told me I should see a doctor immediately and get one of those 48-hour morning-after-flu-exposure treatments to kick the illness into nothing while it was still a viral tadpole. I made some noise about what my Tuesdays are like, and the topic was forgotten.
It’s not the end of the week, and while I still feel tired and achy (still no sleep here), it’s not from the flu. It’s from self-care negligence, a condition I’m more than used to.
Since buying my car in late November, I’ve put close to 5,000 miles on it. I feel that I should have at least been able to squeeze a beach-party trip in there somewhere (to the southern hemisphere, perhaps) and at least come out of all that traveling with a commemorative T-shirt.
I really want to care about the Oscars this year. Really, I do. I complain about the awards show every time, but I secretly love it; it’s almost exactly like Hollywood’s yearbook — they vote for Most Popular, Most Likely to Succeed and Funniest (usually, they don’t get this one right when they make that person the host), but they also include Best Foreign Language Kid and two awards for Best Writer, which I was always sore my high school yearbook never included.
The truth is, I’ve only seen one of the Best Picture nominees (“Finding Neverland,” which I caught in San Antonio), and I’m not sure that I’ll get a chance to see many more of them before Oscar night.
This is the first year in a while that I won’t be working that evening, so I’m debating whether I should throw a party, something I always swore I’d do if I were to escape my entertainment editing duties someday. It’s not as fun when you can’t serve “Lord of the Rings”-themed food (our former editor Anne Smith won my heart forever when she brought us Funyuns to represent the One Ring. If it were really Funyuns that were to rule us all, I’d gladly give in to that regime.), but there are still plenty of ways I’d get some goofy food items on the Oscar menu.
“Sideways” gives you an excuse to pile on the wine at least. For the kiddies, I suppose you could pass off glasses of milk for “The Aviator” — just don’t tell them why.
You can serve Saran Wrap pellets filled with Pixie Stix powder to commemorate Catalina Sandina Moreno’s Best Actress nomination or snacky Ho-Hos to get at least half of a “Heeeey! Hooooo!” Ray Charles call-out going. Need chocolate? Try the “Million Dollar Baby” Ruths. Celebrate “The Motorcycle Diaries” with some Che-etos. “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?” Easy: Sunny Delight. “Lemony Snicket?” Lemony snack treats.
When it comes to foods relating to “Vera Drake,” “Kinsey” and “Hotel Rwanda,” though, you’re on your own.
Permalink | | Categories: By Omar Gallaga
Paige, we hardly knew ye
“Ray”?
“RAY”?
Best picture?
Oh, come on.
Honestly.
Humph.
You know what “Ray” needed?
(And you know what I’m going to say.)
Zombies.
Think about it: “Ray of the Dead.”
(Confession: I stole that from a friend, but I’m still more creative than Taylor Hackford.)
Remember “Trading Spaces”? Yeah, I had to think for a minute there, too. But I bet you used to watch it a lot, and talk about it perhaps even more.
I have a feeling that things probably went pretty badly when the show ditched perky host Paige Davis this week. If there was anything I learned from reading “Paige by Paige” it’s that Paige Davis loves “Trading Spaces” with every ounce of her being and regards the show, and her role in it, with a reverence that would make even the Apostles seem a little lax about their job.
When we ponder Paige’s contributions to TV, we must also consider the somewhat notorious episode of TLC’s “A Wedding Story” in which she got hitched in Vegas to fellow musical-theater lover Patrick Page. Yes, that does make her Paige Page, but, as they used to remind us on Television Without Pity her full name is Mindy Paige Davis Page.
Canning Paige isn’t going to save the show. Not much could. Its moment passed a long time ago — such cable trifles aren’t meant for longevity. (Are you listening, “Queer Eye”?)
They won’t make it without you, Paige. Take comfort in that. They’re over. You — with your mighty winged hair, your tact even when faced with Crying Pam, your maudlin husband — YOU will prevail. And I for one will pause to honor you when the Paige Cam goes dark for the last time.
I haven’t seen “We Don’t Live Here” but I’m pretty sure that the couples in it could not be more dysfunctional than the late and unlamented Jonathan and Victoria who terrorized “The Amazing Race.”
The two of them were not reality “characters” viewers loved to hate. They were . . . well, just hated. A measure of how evil they are: They provoked my beloved Phil Keoghan, normally a man of few words, but of deeply meaningful disapproving glares, to utter this:
“We all know that it doesn’t matter whether it’s reality or drama, at the end of the day it’s about character development and human emotion. That’s what makes good TV. Otherwise you end up with vanilla TV. You end up with blandness. We want rum raisin. We want the mint flavor and the other thing with the shmookie cookie things.”
The schmookie cookie things? This hurts me, Phil.
When I was a kid, I used to record world events in my journal, I guess just in case it was the only surviving document of the Challenger disaster and the rise of Madonna. I’ve gotten a lot more self-centered over the years, but Sunday night I felt moved to write down that Johnny Carson had died.
Diane is spot-on when she praises Carson’s graceful, modest handling of his fame.
I adore “Strange Love” as much as the next girl, but I’m also sad for the mystery, the glamour that fame has lost. I don’t want celebrities to have sponsors for their weddings. I want them to be swank and swell, a little naughty and never self-important. Carson nailed that mix.
Now just because I disapprove of celebs with sponsored weddings doesn’t mean I didn’t pore over the new In Style with the infamous Star Jones nuptials and plenty more. Outside of Star, everything was pretty tasteful, except for the entire concept of Billy Joel marrying a 23-year-old. The wedding issue used to offer absolutely awe-inspiring displays of tackiness, like Ian and Nikki Ziering’s wedding cake that told the story of their courtship. (I’m still shocked that things didn’t work out for those kids. Shocked.)
Instead, there was Ziering’s old “90210” classmate Tori Spelling looking all classy and sweet. No wonder she got almost everything she wanted at Williams-Sonoma. (And many thanks to the friend who turned me on to the vice of searching celebrity wedding registries online.)
Weeks without a shoe-related injury: one.
Permalink | | Categories: By Sarah Lindner
One-wheeled woes and Sinus shows
I almost took out a guy on a unicycle today. This, apparently, is one of the hazards of driving in South Austin. Lakeway has deer, North Austin has endless mazes of construction, and South Austin, so it seems, has kamikaze unicyclists. I find that upsetting.
First of all, unicycles are silly, and not just because I would do considerable damage to myself and others if I ever tried riding one. If I designated as silly all modes of transportation that resulted in frequent and impressive self-injury, then unicycles would be in fine company with many escalators, all bicycles, and an Indian elephant named Uma.
Also, unicycles are not particularly safe.
I come from Swedish stock. That means two things: 1) I get inordinately excited around herring and 2) I am genetically predisposed to driving giant, boxy cars. My Volvo may have all the sleek modern lines of a hot dog cart, but at least if I got into an accident I’d have several hundred pounds of solid Scandinavian steel to protect me. Not so when you’re driving what looks like a gerbil wheel on steroids. What sort of built-in safety features come on a unicycle? What does the owner’s manual for these one-wheeled wonders look like? I’m imagining a line drawing of some guy’s forehead with an arrow pointing to it under the heading “Crumple Zone.”
I’ll stick to my Volvo, thanks.
I spent a whole weekend gorging myself unto busting with cinematic cultural enrichment and this is what I’ve learned:
1) Given the opportunity, your gentleman caller will conk you on the head, push you into the lake and steal your life savings (actually, I’d already suspected that).
2) Britney Spears’ hair smells like waffle batter.
The first I gathered from Fellini’s “hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold” picture “The Nights of Cabiria,” one of several films by the Italian director screened at the Paramount during aptly named “Fellini Week.” The latter I learned from The Sinus Show’s performance of Britney Spears’ cinematic ode to lipgloss, “Crossroads.” It was quite possibly the worst movie I’ve ever enjoyed.
In the four and a half years Owen Edgerton, John Erler and Jerm Pollet have been together, The Sinus Show; a more-or-less monthly production where three guys drink beer and make fun of bad movies; has become an Austin institution and for one reason.
The Sinus Boys put out.
There is no joke too dirty, reference too obscure, or pratfall too painful for them, as long as it keeps their audience laughing and drinking. I have personally seen Owen cut his head open jumping off the stage during “Pretty In Pink.” He went to the emergency room, but not before finishing the show. That’s a pro, a pro with the distinction of being the only person in history to need stitches after being hit by a picture of a train, but a pro none the less. Sinus will bleed for their art, and for that their audience, especially women, love them.
Boy, do they love them.
There is a certain je ne sais whut, in the Sinus appeal. I think it’s because there is a bit of classic sitcom casting to the Sinus boys, a little something for everyone. There’s the sassy redhead, the sultry brunette and the ….um…bald one who’s well versed in Latin literature and does inappropriately deep knee bends while dressing in drag. It’s like “Petticoat Junction” gone horribly, horribly wrong, and it drives the ladies wild.
Standing in line outside The Alamo Drafthouse before a Sinus Show is an entertaining precursor to the show itself, mostly because those “cool girls”, the ones wearing Elvis Costello glasses and ironic haircuts, giggle like cheerleaders when discussing their favorite Sinus boy.
I’ve been fortunate enough to hear, and by “hear” I think we all know I mean “eavesdrop on,” many of those conversations, some of which go into mortifying, almost clinical detail. I will not inflict them on you; this is a family paper and my readers’ sensibilities are far too delicate for that sort of thing — besides, the girls mumbled. Yet, because my desire to serve is exceeded only by my lack of shame, I persevered. Eventually I gathered, much to my relief that the girls finally came to an agreement. While each had their favorite they admitted that John, Owen and Jerm all have individual charms, and from what I could understand (the conversation got a bit confusing here) none of them, apparently, would be severely punished “for eating crackers.”
Permalink | | Categories: By Rhiannon Gammill
Phlegm-flam
Allergies in Austin are so awful, they can trick you into thinking you have a bad cold. This week and last, I was tricked by a cold into thinking I had bad allergies. It was a valiant attempt at cold denial, and a vain one, ruined when I started coughing up clumps of globbedy-goop that resembled brain matter. (You can cough up brain matter, right?) My virally versed friends, wagging fingers, assured me I had a cold. Allergy drippings, they went on, do not come in shades of vomit and puppy leavings.
My mornings, therefore, have been marvelous. I begin them with rib-cracking exertions surpassed only by those of my dear, late grandpa. He smoked about 15 packs of Marlboro Reds a day and died of emphysema. (My first memory of him was his vein-popping hacking fits that caused dishes to fall off shelves; my last memory was him lying in a hospital bed tethered to oxygen tanks, inhaling the last fumes of life.)
You should hear it. With the snorts and the hacks, the sniffs and the spit, I could compose a dark but exhilarating avant-garde symphony. Birds flap away in flocks and small villages begin evacuation procedures upon my approach. My friends wear rain slickers in my presence. Even then, they are not safe.
Adding insult to drippery, my recently crowned molar feels like it’s still being drilled on. Two weeks it’s been since I paid good money for that fine new addition to my mouth. Crowns aren’t supposed to hurt, and the sharp, stinging pain shoots up my cheek and down my neck. It has waken me in the night many times; I have yelped. I have tooth cancer, I know it.
Scrambling to find the generic Advil for the tooth the other evening, I got distracted by the tweezers in my medicine cabinet. I am a fastidious and anal personality and I knew, just knew, there was a project awaiting the tweezers. I grabbed them in haste, they flew out of my grip and plop-splashed into the toilet. In the scheme of things, this was becoming roughly the fifth lamest week of my life.
More? You need more details blognificent enough to include here? This one’s for you: The toilet, in whose gaping mouth the tweezers now rested (they looked so calm, resigned to their fate), was in need of a good flush. I will abandon this saga right about . . . now.
People have noticed I have a new head. Being a cartoon is hard sometimes, embarrassing here, really weird there. I refer to the new caricature of me above. The old one, whose preternatural lashes and kissy lips led some readers to believe I was actually a 14-year-old girl, had become outdated, our XL design chief said, and I had to agree.
The new one — which like any two-dimensional representation of me, be it sketch or photo, freaks me out — retains a boyish femininity and some swooshy hair that can easily be achieved in 1 percent humidity. I look like me, but I also look like a Roman statue, missing only the laurel crown and toga. My gaze is blank, sedated, deceptively innocent, like that of a forest-dwelling creature. A friend noted that instead of 12 I now look 19, which is odd, because I still feel a sprightly and snotty 12.
Permalink | | Categories: By Chris Garcia
Mixing it up, ‘02-style
About two weeks ago, I started working on a mix CD to send out to friends as a sort of late holiday gift because I was so lax this year on cards and gifts given the flurry of moving we went through in December.
I know what you’re thinking: “A mix CD as a gift? How very 2002 of you.”
Yep, that was the year that just about every new computer sold included the means of burning your own music CDs and boy did people take advantage of that for like 20 minutes two years ago. I remember getting CD-Rs for Christmas, CD-Rs from blogs my friends were writing, CD-Rs from dudes wanting to sell me insurance. They would all have the HP-Inkjet-printed folded-paper label with Microsoft Word Clip-Art and some cheerful personalization: “Monster Janie’s 2002 Arbor Day Mix!” for instance.
I still have a stack of them on my CD shelf. I’ve extracted all the songs I really liked off those discs and the discs jewel boxes themselves remain encased and undisturbed husks, like old fruitcakes tins you keep around in case your aunt were to visit.
Still, it occurred to me about two weeks after Christmas that I should do a mix collecting a song each from my favorite albums of 2004. It would be an eclectic collection — rap and rock, Spanish and English, funky songs next to a mainstream hit or two, the kind of legendary CD mix that would turn all my friends and associates into fans of all the people I’ve been listening to for the past 12 months. I’d get friends asking me, “Hey, what’s up with that Lila Downs lady? She’s AWESOME!” or telling me how hearing PJ Harvey’s “The Letter” changed their life and made them give up booze and dope. I was ready for greatness.
Can you think of anything so self-centered?
Really, I think since the advent of CD-Rs and iPods, the fantasy of being Coolest DJ on the Planet — the person who turns everyone in your Friendster chain on to the artists only you are cool enough to listen to — has officially supplanted the one where you’re the star of your own 24-hour, seven-day-a-week TV show.
Did I let that stop me? Hell to the naw.
The now-interminably delayed CD has gone through several revisions. I asked my brother for some backup when I realized I couldn’t fill up an 80-minute CD without duplicating artists. He shot me some Talib Kweli, Modest Mouse, Unicorns and Death Cab for Cutie (I’m really on the fence still about that last one). I re-ordered songs, creating neat pairings of song themes, genres (maybe two rap songs followed by two mid-tempo alt-rock numbers) and, in one flash of short-lived pride, song titles. (You’d think I won some sort of sweepstakes when I drag-and-dropped Green Day’s “Jesus of Suburbia” next to Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks.”)
Not to get all Nick Hornsby about it, but there’s something very powerful about putting together something you think people might actually listen to. I think about the time I spent in my car with music, the hours locked to the iPod while writing — to know that the songs you choose might be in someone else’s, even for one listen, makes you feel like you’ve got the weight of the world’s taste in music on your shoulders. The mix stops being about you and more about your perception of what your friends and family might enjoy.
Then it does come back to being about you — your biases and misperceptions about the musical tastes of those closest to you.
Still. I think we can agree: Loretta Lynn and Jack White on “Portland Oregon”?? That should totally be the first track.
I’ve had some late work nights, so I’m woefully behind on TV, which sounds like a really good thing probably to everyone except me.
I missed “American Idol” this week when seemingly everyone in the country and their foreign-born cousins were watching.
I’m not really sure what’s going on in politics because even though I work at a newspaper, I get all my real news from “The Daily Show”, which I haven’t caught this week.
And it pains me to say that after catching the first episode of VH1’s “Strange Love” last week, I missed Sunday’s episode, so now I don’t know if Flavor Flav and Brigitte Nielsen are officially a couple yet. What will I do!?
The side effects of my week without TV seem to be improved motor skills, better memory retention and improved night vision. But who needs all that junk? I want my Flavor Flav!
What? A track listing for the CD-R?
(Deep breath.) All right. But it’s a little embarrassing. Promise you won’t giggle at me, all right?
Here goes:
- Loretta Lynn (+ Jack White) — “Portland Oregon”
- Lila Downs — “Dignificada”
- Bjork — “Oceania”
- Bebel Gilberto — “Aganju (Latin Project Remix. Yes, I used a remix)”
- Franz Ferdinand — “Michael”
- Modest Mouse — “Float On”
- Green Day — “Jesus of Suburbia”
- Kanye West — “Jesus Walks”
- DJ Danger Mouse (+ Jay-Z + The Beatles) — “What More Can I Say?”
- PJ Harvey — “The Letter”
- Pixies — “Bam Thwok”
- Death Cab for Cutie — “Tiny Vessels”
- U2 — “Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your Own”
- Courtney Love — “Mono”
- Unicorns — “Jellybones”
- Talib Kweli — “Beautiful Struggle”
- Brandy — “Should I Go”
Bonus tracks (not released in 2004) 18. Davíd Garza — “La Malagueña Curreña” 19. White Stripes — “One More Cup of Coffee”
All right, fine. You can giggle now if you want.
Permalink | | Categories: By Omar Gallaga
To Saks, with love
OK, I’m just going to say this once. I found a gray hair. In my head.
And it was attached.
Because my shallowness knows no depths, I called an emergency summit of my girlfriends at Wanfu Tooto discuss the startling fact that I am aging and see if anyone knew where in the Austin metropolitan area I could get someone to paint my portrait, Dorian Gray-style.
After 15 minutes of railing against unrealistic ideals of beauty and cursing of Helen Gurley Brown, we commenced to examining the offending follicle. I had brought it in an appropriately labeled envelope, after my original plan (impaling it on a spike as a warning to all other gray hairs thinking of making my head their home) fell through.
My apartment, disappointingly, turned out to be entirely devoid of any suitable spikes; all I had was one slightly rusty fondue fork, and let’s face it, unless you’re trying to terrorize a cube of poundcake, there is only so much fear one can inspire with a fondue fork. As per usual, I was going for Vlad the Impaler and wound up with Laura Petrie.
At the restaurant, we bemoaned my fate. Eventually one of my friends looked up from her vegetable delight, pointed a chopstick at me and told me not to worry; she wouldn’t have ever noticed a gray hair… besides, shouldn’t I be more concerned about the bags under my eyes? I suppressed my first reaction (which was, naturally, to sneeze on her tofu when she was in the bathroom) and listened to her advice.
It was decided that the only sensible choice was to hie myself to Saks Fifth Avenue and pick up some Crème de la Mer beauty cream.
I balked.
At over $100 an ounce, even the tiniest jar of Crème de la Mer would devour the money I had squirreled away to buy a boxed set of John Wayne DVDs. I explained this to a girlfriend who then reasonably reminded me that while I might adore Rooster Cogburn, I probably don’t actually want to look like him. I shoved the hateful envelope in my coat pocket and set off for Saks Fifth Avenue.
Technically, I have never actually heard a choir of angels singing exultations from on high, but if I ever do, I wouldn’t be surprised if they sounded just exactly like the sound made in my head when I passed through those sparkling glass doors. When Jacquelyn found me I was standing glassy-eyed in the middle of Cosmetics, possibly drooling, holding my credit card like a chimpanzee with a gun.
She guided me gently around the floor while talking in soothing, reassuring tones as if I was a beloved yet slightly demented horse, good natured but prone to spooking. I tried a half dozen different creams and potions, all with their own specific instructions, including one I had to rub between my fingers to “activate the miracle broth” before pressing, not rubbing, onto my skin.
An hour later I left Saks, happy if a little stunned, armed with a bottle of Chanel lift serum and a tidy little bag filled to the brim with samples of a product line called Sisley. Sisley, I was advised, was a little bit “more of an investment” than Crème de la Mer, so much of an investment, apparently, that the price isn’t even listed on their Web site.
Unfortunately, it works. My skin is firmer and my tone more even and best of all I’m no longer in immediate danger of being confused with Winston Churchill. I say unfortunately, because I’m afraid that a sizable “investment” is in my future. So next week I’ll trek back to North Austin, say a silent goodbye to “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” and trade a week’s paycheck for a small jar of blue chip face cream.
I hope she’ll give me some samples, too; after all, a certain tofu-eating friend of mine has been looking a little haggard recently.
Permalink | | Categories: By Rhiannon Gammill
Walk a mile in my shoes, but be careful
Friday night, I was a judge for videoke at the Alamo Village. I was cheered, I was booed, I saw a guy getting spanked. Good times.
Videoke is free, and you should go sometime. It’s like karaoke but with movie scenes, and, I can tell you just from observing it once, it’s not as easy as you’d think. Here’s some advice: When you select a scene to perform, remind yourself that there are likely many, many more words in it than you remember. A couple of teams learned this the hard way about the part at the beginning of “Pulp Fiction” where Jules menaces those kids who were messing with Marsellus Wallace. There’s a reason Samuel L. Jackson is Samuel L. Jackson and you and I are not.
The winners were a couple of girls who did “the scene” from “Monster’s Ball” and were indeed excellent. But my favorite part of the night came when a guy doing “Scarface” started to lose the crowd and offered five bucks to any heckler who could do the scene better. In the back of the theater, a skinny guy in a black shirt, who’d been tepid in his own performance earlier, shot out of his seat, flailing, screaming, hissing, spitting. Pacino would be lucky to give such a performance. The crowd, as they say, went wild. I think I witnessed the start of a promising career.
Concerned reader Patrick writes in to ask “How did you cut yourself on your shoe? I did not think it is possible to do that.”
My reply, in case anyone else was wondering:
Dear Patrick,
It was quite baffling even to me, but I will try to re-create the circumstances.
First, let me describe the shoes. I had purchased them in part because of their large, square heel. They look something like the bat shoe at this Web site, but not so extreme in style. I had never noticed, though, that the edges of the heel were rather sharp.
The accident occurred when I was walking into the living room of my apartment. Somehow, I tripped. The cause of this is not clear. It takes a solid obstruction to trip most people, but sometimes I will trip for no reason at all. Realizing that I was about to fall, I reached out to grab my lamp to steady myself. Trying to regain my footing, I brought my left foot down on my right foot in such a way that the edge of the left heel sliced my right foot.
Adding indignity to the injury is the fact that grabbing the lamp wrenched my right shoulder, which I had dislocated several years ago by falling off a treadmill. As you can see, it’s quite dangerous being me, and it’s a wonder that I’ve survived into my 30s.
I hope that this clears up the confusion. Thanks for reading XL Blog!
Sarah
I think it might be time to trade in those shoes: I was wearing them at Alamo Village on Friday and took a tumble going into the theater. It was even worse than the shoe cut, but not as bad as the treadmill fall.
All of this explains why I actually believed Jason the ne’er-do-well Saturday night when he told me — KNOWING FULL WELL that I have a fear of irrational injuries — that not only did I have something in my eye, I was also bleeding. Luckily, he had brought over “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” DVDs, which made me forgiving.
I had never been to the Longbranch Inn or seen Chrissy Flatt before last week, but my friend Richard educated me on both accounts. With the pink and blue lights guiding the way to the facilities, the Longbranch ties with Mean-Eyed Cat for the best restrooms in Austin.
And I loved Chrissy’s version of “I’m Not Like Everybody Else” so much that I would want it to be the theme of my own TV show. I’m not sure what that show would be about, except that it would probably involve a lot of falling and, if at all possible, Phil Keoghan.
Even with all the cuts and falls, I have never been as much of an embarrassment as Robin Williams was at the Golden Globes on Sunday. Accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award for outstanding contribution to entertainment (“Patch Adams” must have clinched it for him), he let loose with the same “wacky” spiel he’s been doing since, oh, 1985. The foreign accents might have been marginally funny back then, but imitating a deaf person or a “special” person never was. And he’s still doing it. Some people talk differently — oh, what biting social commentary. Look, offend me with your humor, jolt me, surprise me — hey, you can even make jokes about Old 97’s (although do that very, very carefully). But don’t get up and subject me to your stunning laziness.
Because we never want to end on an ugly note here, I will tell you that I wish the all-around incredible Ellen well as she moves from Austin to Colorado. Ellen and I had just started running around together, but we totally got each other in so many areas: boys, life, “The Amazing Race.” She taught me how to order a cheeseburger at Casino El Camino (don’t laugh — it’s intimidating!), and for that and many other reasons, I’m so grateful we crossed paths.
I will tell you, though, that moves, my own or other people’s, are getting where they just kill me. I want all of the rest of you to stay put for a while. If I can have that and a new pair of shoes, I think we’re in business.
Permalink | | Categories: By Sarah Lindner
Mac announcements are random
We don’t have a lot of celebrities in the world of consumer technology, so when Steve Jobs does his twice-annual MacWorld speech, it’s the equivalent of checking out what Pearl Jam is up to every now and then for most tech geeks like me. This week’s announcement about the iPod shuffle (“Lowercase that ‘Shuffle!’” says Apple. We, weakly, do.) and about the new sub-$500 Mac mini (“Didn’t you hear us the first time? Lowercase the ‘Mini,’ too! Just call us e. e. apple, inc.!) were interesting in that:
On the iPod front: It seems that Apple is determined to create an iPod for every price point and function. You have iPod photo for wealthy digital shutterbugs and now a $99 iPod with no screen for those who just want to take some music with them and don’t care if they can see what track is playing. (How novel. We used to call those “cassettes.”) The $99 price point is the sweet sweet spot of consumer electronics, the point at which a luxury item like an iPod goes from a “would like to have” to a “will definitely have and won’t even mind lending it out” purchase. The future of iPod, as I can see it, includes iPods that clean kitty litter, iPod answering machines and the “iTunes snooze,” the one meant to replace your alarm clock.
My brother, who should be paid many dollars for his keen insight into the 20-year-old mind (it’s not that hard; he carries one around in his skull every day), likes the switch in the back that lets you toggle between playlist and random play. He also likes the accessories available — a lanyard to carry it around on your neck for that “Baywatch” slo-mo jog, the sports armband and even the water-resistant sports case. If Apple had made one in the shape of a lipstick tube, I think we’d have a full scale run on their retail stores.
But back to Steve Jobs as a celebrity — when he announced this product, he was asked by the tech press whether the device’s ad campaign (“Life is random”) had anything to do with his being diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in the last year. That’s the tech press for you. We’re so desperate to make a story about technology carry even the shadow of a human element that he gets asked a stupid question like that. Jobs’ response, which I’ll paraphrase: “Huh. Sure. Why not,” was gracious, to say the least. I’d have taken one of those snazzy new iPod shuffle lanyards and throttled the reporter with it.
The Mac mini: Apple discovers, four years too late, the sub-$500 computer. People love cheap computers and this one is not only cheap, but it’s puny in terms of computing power. If all you’re doing is Web surfing or writing angry letters about bike trails to the Austin Chronicle, then this is the computer for you. The computer, like “America’s Top Model”, is meant to get by on looks alone, and in that respect it works fantastically. It looks like something you’d put your martini glass on at a metrosexual’s dinner party.
Usually you have to watch an entire season of reality TV to get the number of sheer “Ohmygod!” moments as you got on this week’s premiere of VH1’s “The Surreal Life.” Where to begin? The highlights: lady-looks-like-a-dude ex-wrestler Chyna Doll (trying hard, with the bikini and fur coat, to look like a rap video extra), the former Peter Brady (Christopher Knight) as the voice of reason (you know you’ve got reality gold when the voice of reason on your show is Peter Brady), former rapper (at least I think that’s what she did) Da Brat, who is so above all this, and Verne Troyer (they shall call him “Mini-Me” forever) doing, well, anything. Verne fights with Chyna, gets drunk and rides his tiny vehicle naked. Naked, people.
This isn’t just Must-See TV. It’s “Must TiVo This Until My Dying Days” TV.
Green Day is back at #1 on the album charts, and their nine-minute epic “Jesus of Suburbia” from “America Idiot” certainly deserves TV airplay, but couldn’t they do better than “Last Call with Carson Daly?” I know it’s a long song, but these guys have seven Grammy nominations and the top album in the U.S. Was Letterman overbooked? Does Conan hate Bay-area punks? Hasn’t Leno — nevermind, forget I said “Leno.”
Still, what is the deal? To be fair, “Tool Time” Carson devoted a huge chunk of his show to the group (although “Wasn’t she in that one movie…?” actress Kyra Sedgwick got top billing. Ouch.), and their performance in front of a close-up live audience was awe-inspiring. But where I live, at least, it was on at about 2 a.m.
TiVo, folks. If you don’t have it, you’re missing a lot of the good stuff.
Permalink | | Categories: By Omar Gallaga
What you missed in 2004
We may be though with the past, but the past is not through with us.
2004 may be over and done with, but music from that year is only a couple of months old, and frankly, about 30,000 albums came out last year, I’m pretty sure neither you nor I have heard even 1/10th of them, and as some TV network once said while running summer reruns, “it’s new to you.”
With all of this in mind, here are five great albums that didn’t make my top 10 for 2004, but nonetheless baked my cookies, glazed my ham, or otherwise made me hit repeat over and over again.
M.I.A./Diplo- “Piracy Funds Terrorism” (Fader) - M.I.A. is also pronounced “Maya,” and refers to Sri Lankan/British M.C. Maya Arulpragasam. Her upcoming album “Arular” is already poised to be one of the most critically acclaimed pop music acts in the Western world (and possibly the East, what with the Sri Lankan connection). It really is that good. While “Arular” straps her voice to the chunky, jerky, very British beat-clang some critics have taken to calling “grime,” this mixtape blended her vocals over more traditional (read: American) hip-hop breaks. It’s just fantastic.
Coachwhips - “Bangers vs. [Expletive]” (Naranck): Garage rock that actually sounds like a garage: drums like backfires and guitars like screeching tires, keyboards like dashboard fires.
No Doctors - “Hunting Season” (Go Johnny Go) - Nasty noise rock, totally lo-fi, and not unlike the sound of a bunch of 8-year-olds jacked up on Fruity Pebbles covering AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” in their parents’ wood-paneled rec room.
Hound Dog Taylor - ”Release the Hound” (Alligator) - Still more live music from this seminal 70’s Chicago blues/boogie man that would be excessive if his fanbase wasn’t always primed for whatever Alligator will give us. Two fuzzy guitars, maybe one is tuned, no bass, drums to dance to, everyone’s amplifiers pushed way past their tiny limits. Taylor clearly had more fun doing this than anyone should ever have.
The Ex - Turn (Touch and Go): A double CD from these Dutch lefto punk/avant-garde lifers. Scraping, sputtering, filled with rage, covers of African tunes, and a recipe for sweet potato pie designed to make the pie higher. The band turned 25 in ‘04, and sound more blissfully alive than ever.
Permalink | | Categories: By Joe Gross
Wes-land
Wes Anderson is missing his calling.
While seeing “The Life Aquatic” with my friend Dalee (a rare and good combo of zen and glam) the other night, I kept thinking that it was an all-right movie, but that it would be a totally great theme-park ride. I lived in Orlando, Fla., for a couple of years, and so I have thoughts like this. And conveniently, the film was released by Touchstone, which is owned by Disney.
Picture it: The ride attendants (or, as Disney insists you call them, “cast members”) wear the sky-blue Team Zissou uniforms and red caps. Those nifty faux videos of the team in action play in the queue area. An animatronic Bill Murray delivers a performance that’s actually slightly more lifelike than the real Bill Murray’s. Mark Mothersbaugh’s music bops in the background as your “research vessel” passes through groovy seascapes and weathers a pirate attack. At the end, you come face to face with the mighty jaguar shark and, possibly, shed a tear.
“Aquatic” does have a few laughs and a couple of tugs at the heart, but it’s mostly just its own beautiful alternate world. I was happy to cruise through and enjoy the scenery, but it would have been nice if there’d been a single character there I cared about. That might not be such a flaw on a theme park ride. Imagineering, Wes. I’m just saying.
The post-holiday reveling continues. Jason, a prominent local ne’er-do-well, and I shut down both Thistle and Opal’s on a school night but not before polishing off a basket of Opal’s fries. Better than Hyde Park fries? Discuss.
My intra-blog summit with Rhiannon at Curra’s South fortuitously occurred on the day we had winter last week, so I could eat caldo tlalpeno and feel all cozy. The next night, Angela — whom I will always refer to as “my friend who jumped out of a plane” and I meandered through the Warehouse District. The kind, kind folk at Apple Bar made my Bloody Mary Martinis so deliciously extra-spicy my eyes rolled back in my head. We ogled the cute boys at Rain and then decamped to Light, which has those neato massaging recliners (because barhopping can be so stressful). A girl could get used to that. Actually, a girl could get used to a water wall and full bar, too . . .
Next was Brown Bar, where the long wait to hear “99 Problems” did us in, and we headed home. I fell into bed, and the next thing you know it was 8 in the morning and the cat needed feeding. My voice-mail told me Angela had called the night before. Uh-oh. Maybe I had her keys. Maybe she’d lost her wallet. I shouldn’t have turned the ringer on the phone off.
I listened to the message.
“Sarah,” she said urgently. “Brad and Jennifer broke up! I can’t believe it.”
My spicy drinks made me feel a kinship, undeserved though it was, with Rebecca on “Amazing Race.” In one triumphant episode, she slurped down the spicy soup that the other teams couldn’t handle at the Roadblock and decided that she needed something healthier than her relationship with Adam. Although, really, what wouldn’t be healthier than a relationship with Adam? Smart, cute and culturally aware Kris is still my pretend best friend on “Amazing Race,” but it seems like perfection just comes naturally to her. Rebecca has grown a lot — the alleged reason everyone goes on reality shows in the first place. I haven’t seen this week’s “Race” yet, so if it all went terribly wrong and she got confused about diesel again just don’t tell me.
Once, I found a bridesmaid dress at Nordstrom in about 10 minutes flat. But the search for any other kind of clothing there baffles me. Normally, stores are the only place I have a keen sense of direction. I could be your wily native scout in Retail Land any day. But in Nordstrom, I wander disoriented. Anything I am drawn to is so expensive I’m immediately sorry I touched it. Like, do you know what a little Zac Posen dress — the kind of thing Natalie Portman throws on to go to 7-Eleven — costs? I can’t even tell you in polite company.
I crossed paths with a flock of tweens who were so over the whole thing. One announced to her friends, with a world-weariness that makes Courtney Love seem daisy-fresh, “my most expensive jeans cost like $108 and I don’t even like them that much.” Life’s hard, baby girl. Save the money for a massaging chair.
Permalink | | Categories: By Sarah Lindner
A night at the opera
Avocado margaritas. Who knew?
If bananas are “quite possibly the world’s most perfect food” then Curra’s avocado margarita is quite possibly the world’s most perfect drink. It represents all of the four basic tastes; sweet, sour, salty and bitter; tastes like a high-octane smoothie, and as if that wasn’t an embarrassment of salt-rimmed riches already, it also has tequila.
I had never been to Curra’s Grill, despite living shamefully near its Oltorf Street location, but had heard of its reputation as an Austin Mexican-food mecca from people who weigh the merits of borracho beans with a gravity rarely found outside Ivy League college acceptance boards. When Sarah invited me for margaritas, I jumped at the chance.
As if the opportunity to toss back the state’s favorite slushy cocktail wasn’t enough, a visit to Curra’s fit swimmingly into my two New Year’s resolutions, namely to do something new every day and to become a more convincing Austinite.
The “something new” part was easy; until a few years ago I lived a life so sheltered I was in constant danger of turning into one of those creepy cave fish with that see-through skin and healed-over eyes. Becoming a more convincing Austinite requires harder, more subtle work.
I think I’ve got it in broad strokes. I no longer foolishly pronounce road names the way they’re actually spelled, nor do I still think that Loop 1 was named for the MoPac Indians; a tribe that ostensibly liked to move very slowly in tight bunches twice a day.
My real no-foolin’ cowboy boots, picked out from Cavenders as my birthday present to me, no longer look shiny and new, even better, and it’s been months since I’ve suffered from a vintage belt buckle related injury. Good thing, too, as puncture wounds from accidentally stepping on an upturned belt buckle are painful, embarrassing and slow to heal. In fact, I might be so bold as to say that I am almost fully a real Austinite, except for one setback.
The University of Texas campus fills me with dread.
UT, as many have said before, is a Big Honkin’ School. My small eastern university was not a Big Honkin’ School. I did not need a compass, canteen and trail of breadcrumbs to find my way from one building to another. To get across campus I did not have to maneuver a Volvo around marauding herds of apparently suicidal pedestrians who only get cell phone reception while standing directly under traffic lights. This stuff gives me black swimmy nightmares for weeks. Terrible nightmares, sometimes with eels.
Thankfully I was able to recruit a gentleman friend who graduated from those confusing but hallowed halls to not only accompany me to Austin Lyric Opera’s Monday night performance of “Elektra”, but to drive as well.
I love opera. No, seriously, I do.
It’s showy and loud, and occasionally large Teutonic women in impressive headgear show up and threaten you in German. Plus, operas often rack up a sizable body count, which you can then thoroughly enjoy in the name of high art without being called gruesome or suffering disapproving looks from your puritanical grandmother.
“Elektra” tells the story of the eldest daughter of King Agamemnon, who had been murdered by his wife, Klytämnestra, and her no-good lover. Elektra, understandably, does not take this well, and in something we’ve all done from time to time (typically in traffic), vows that “the blood from a thousand throats will flow down on his grave.” She then proceeds to go mad as a stork, developing a lustful vengeance rarely seen outside Uma Thurman’s yellow jumpsuit.
See? What’s not to love?
With “Elektra” you get body count galore, and while there was a little more talk of dancing on graves and slaughtering of livestock than I typically enjoy on a Monday night, the evening proved thoroughly enjoyable. Parking wasn’t difficult, our upper balcony seats were upgraded to the much more desirable orchestra section, and for the first time, the guy behind me didn’t “accidentally” knee me in the head while trying to get out of his seat. I’d say it was a perfect evening, or would have been … if only they had served avocado margaritas.
Permalink | | Categories: By Rhiannon Gammill
The molar express
The sound and sensation of a tooth cracking in your mouth is something like biting on a rock. I eat rocks, so I know this.
Yet on this day I was eating plain pizza, that least hard of all foodstuffs after soup and marshmallows. Crack! the tooth went. I bounded to the bathroom to gaze at the wreckage and play with it with my tongue. A full quarter of a molar had snapped itself free from its homeland, like a section of glacier falling into the sea. It was still attached to the gum and I wiggled it in place, pulling it away from the tooth, then placing it back. I did this until I got nauseous.
It’s all fun and games until the dentists sticks you with a $431 estimate to fix the broken molar. That’s the price after insurance. Within 48 hours the dentist, a cheery, athletic guy who climbs mountains and considers me an absurdity, was jabbing a needle into my cheek, numbing the entire left side of my face until I couldn’t pronounce “stop” or “help.” I wasn’t comfortably numb, but I was psychologically ready for the doctor to chisel the broken molar to a bony nub, then cement a crown over it.
“You keep calling it a nub,” the mountain-scaling mouth magician clucked. “It’s not a nub. It’s just a smaller version of your tooth.”
Like I said, a nub.
The moment he detached the broken sliver from the gum — he used that tiny pirate hook thingy — I slobbered that I wanted to see it (“Caa ah see et?”). The assistant regretted to inform me that she had just sucked it away with her handy vacuum. I slobbered a bad word.
“Did you want to make a necklace out of it?” the doc asked. I hadn’t until he mentioned it. This guy’s a genius. (I’m reading Jim Harrison’s novella “Revenge,” and in it an old Indian woman gives the hero a coyote-tooth necklace to ward off evil. I wonder if my teeth are magical.)
Back at work, half my face drained of feeling, I tested out the long-lasting novocaine with a thumb tack. I pricked my lip and chin. I felt nothing, unless you count the thrill of grossing out co-workers, which I certainly do.
Has anyone else put Emer’gen-C, the fizzy vitamin C energy booster, in a beer or cocktail? Be careful. Unless you pour a beer very, very slowly over the powder, it turns the beverage into a foaming mad scientist’s experiment. But it sure has a fruity tang.
The cleanest bathrooms in a would-be dive bar shine and sparkle at the cool new Mean-Eyed Cat, near MoPac on West Fifth Street. Named after the twangy Johnny Cash song, Mean-Eyed Cat is a cozy, shacklike joint with a pool table, juke box and amazingly cheap beer. It wears its Cash theme overtly and with weathered style. The usual pictures and memorabilia are joined by small, unexpected gestures to the late black-garbed deity.
Friendly-eyed owner Chris Marsh opened the place five months ago, and it appears already to have regulars whom Marsh greets when they step inside the battered-wood main room. There’s a small food menu, but no hard alcohol. That’s the only particular Cash might’ve frowned at.
Last week an older gent called me at work and asked point-blank who starred in the film “The Rose Tattoo” with Burt Lancaster. He thought it was a Hollywood starlet, but I promptly corrected him. Loud, zaftig Italian actress Anna Magnani played the passionate widow in the 1955 screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ play. I was the caller’s new hero.
Almost on cue, I surfed upon “The Rose Tattoo” on Turner Classic Movies a day after the call. I loved the film the first time I saw it in 1992 and fell into its lusty, outsized energy as I watched it again. Magnani and Lancaster are like dual sunbursts, gesticulating and laughing and chasing each other for practically the entire movie. Lancaster hams it up magnificently as Magnani’s suitor, mouth open and teeth gleaming. His physical performance is about 70 percent throaty guffaws. He’s simply mad.
I wish I laughed like a maniac that much. But you need a fortress of teeth as formidable as Lancaster’s to pull it off. I can assure you his molars never cracked.
Permalink | | Categories: By Chris Garcia
Rhiannon Gammill
Name: Rhiannon Gammill
Hometown: Some place not even in Texas, through no fault of my own
Last Known Address: Scenic South Austin
Known Hideouts: Red River clubs, Let’s Dish, Half Price Books, in the kitchen (covered in flour, beating out flames).
In The Company of: people who ought to know better.
Favorite Classic Movies (cult or otherwise): “8 ½”, “Duck Soup,” “The Philadelphia Story,” “All About Eve,” “Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!”
Favorite Soundtracks: “Trainspotting,” “High Fidelity,” “Velvet Goldmine,” “Little Voice,” “Magnolia”
Favorite Books: “The Great Divorce,” “The Sun Also Rises,” “East of Eden,” “Notes from Underground,” “The Joy of Cooking.”
First Rock ‘n’ Roll Injury: Climbing my father’s hi-fi system when I was 6 years old, a 45 of Buddy Holly’s “Rave On” in my hand. Subsequently falling off my father’s hi-fi system after successfully putting the album on and hearing something that didn’t sound at all like the Beethoven I was used to, thus knocking out one of my baby teeth.
Most Recent Traumatic Tippi Hedren-esque Experience: Being chased and assaulted by a marauding band of emus during an ill-advised drive-through “Wilderness Safari” somewhere in Oklahoma. They go for your eyes, you know.
(Has also written for: Hatch Magazine, kids who would pay me in elementary school)
Permalink | | Categories: By Rhiannon Gammill
Will Eisner: 1917-2005
It’s not that Will Eisner quite invented the American comic book the way that, say, Bill Monroe invented bluegrass. It’s that after it was invented, he just picked up the ball and kept running for more than five decades, seeing potential for art where few saw naught but junk. Eisner died Jan. 3 following quadruple bypass surgery. He was 87.
Very few mediums have enjoyed innovators with quite the impact that Will Eisner had on comics. He was a pioneer in the truest sense; his every panel had the potential to be ground-breaking because the forest was there for him to clear. From the medium’s formal aspects to the most abstract theories, Eisner was probably there first.
His newspaper strip “The Spirit” ran from 1940 to 1952. About a flagrantly un-superpowered, sometimes none-too-bright detective named Denny Colt who the public at large thought was dead, “The Spirit” was packaged as a comic-book shaped supplement in the Sunday paper.
Aimed at an older crowd than the “10-year-old cretins” that Eisner thought comics were aimed at, “The Spirit” locked in most of its tropes early, including the mighty unfortunate Ebony White, an African American character whose look has, to put it mildly, aged poorly, and could be upsetting to modern readers, in spite of the fact that White was often the most together character in the strip.
Then Eisner went off to war, drawing instruction manuals for the Pentagon. His “shop” — uncredited assistants — produced the strip in his absence. He was lucky to have some of the greats ghosting for him, and the strips that writers and draftsmen such as Jack Cole, William Wolkfolk and Lou Fine, are as good or better as any American comics being produced at the time.
Eisner’s talent blossomed after he returned from the war. From 1945 to 1952, “The Spirit” earned its reputation as the “Citizen Kane” of comics. Fourth-wall shattering narratives, wild panel design, confident, mature line work, both more “cartoony” and more sophisticated than it had been in the past. Every week, Eisner seemed to find a new way to make the page sing a smart, funny, ductile song. DC Comics, which has been collecting the complete run of “The Spirit” as a series of $50 hardcovers, has recently started on the post-war years. They. Are. Amazing. (One of the industry’s major awards is called the “Eisner,” and he handed them out every year.)
In 1978, Eisner published “A Contract with God,” which is generally (though arguably in some nerdy circles) considered to have invented the graphic novel. “Contract” drew upon a topics that Eisner would come back to again and again: the Jewish American experience and the early 20th century communities formed by urban tenement life. One of his most recent books was “Fagin the Jew,” a reimagining of the Charles Dickens character.
Bottom line: Everyone who draws comics, who reads comics, who loves comics pulp-opera or fine art owes Eisner. Period. We’d miss him, but his work is still dazzlingly alive.
Permalink | | Categories: By Joe Gross
Crimson vs. orange vs. blue at the rose
I’ve got one of those marriages that’s defied all the odds: She’s a Longhorn. I graduated a Sooner.
But my Sooner pride runs puddle deep, probably because during the years I spent at the University of Oklahoma, our football team was really, really good at losing. I mean, they were fantastic at it. We had a coach named Schnellenberger whom they called “The General” or “The Captain” or something that became laughably ironic as his time at the university ground on. Then he left and is now doing well as a coach in Florida, and the Sooners made it all the way to the national championship before blowing it big-time Tuesday night. (Ah, it was just like being back in college.) I blame Ashlee Simpson.
Since I was born in Texas and now live in Austin, I have an excuse to have adopted the Longhorns as my team, despite my crimson-‘n’-cream middle years. It also creates harmony at home. I’ve even stopped using my OU Sooners umbrella in town.
So when my wife asked, while we were in Los Angeles for a wedding recently, if we should try to go to the Rose Bowl, I saw no reason why not. The Longhorns were going to the Rose. The Sooners, ranked No. 2 in the nation, were about to trounce USC in the Orange Bowl. Life was good. Birds were singing somewhere.
We went, without tickets. Some friends of ours, also from Austin, also in town for the wedding, were headed that way, so we followed them on the subway and found a market flooded with cheap game tickets. One guy held eight of them aloft as he waited in a Pasadena shuttle bus line with us, looking for takers. He even offered to throw in the beer he was drinking. We got our tickets for $75, well below the $125 face value, and with the trade-in of our friends’ tickets we all got to sit together on the Michigan goal line side.
The stadium is absolutely gorgeous, especially on a heavily overcast day where the mountains and the fog made it look as if the game were being played somewhere near Mount Doom. We had jet fighter fly-overs (that B-1 stealth bomber snuck up on us from behind) and since I rarely go to football games, I was rarin’ to go with the outsider football humor. (On the Michigan marching band: “They look like yellow-breasted home pregnancy tests.” On the stadium announcer’s commentary, “Mike Heart the ball carrier”: “But more importantly, I heart the ball carrier.” We somehow concluded that all Michigan fans had the crazy Canadian accents from “South Park,” leading to such made-up Michigan-isms as, “We’re going to cast aboot for this sporting tournament, buddy!” and, “It’s a fine day for a pigskin round-about, what say you, buddy?”)
My wife and I had no idea we were going to the game, so we didn’t dress appropriately. In our blue and black clothing we could have either been Michigan fans or cheerleaders for some third-party, noncompeting team, the Salem State Goths.
We ate debilitatingly greasy food and sodas, we shivered as the temperatures dropped and we wore thin Texas clothing. We screamed a lot, but not as much as the Texas guy in front of us who tried to rattle the Michigan fans next to him with this nonsensical scream: “OU STILL SUCKS!” I tried not to take it personally.
We suffered through the spectacularly awful half-time show featuring not one, but two marching bands playing what they called Latin music. Maybe it sounded great down on the field, but to those of us up in the chilly stands, it made perfect sense why Latin American sports don’t do marching band music. If there was any shaking of bon-bons up there, it was merely for warmth.
The game went back and forth, back and forth. Quarterback Vince Young played as if he was made of some sort of as-yet-uninvented grease, something so un-viscous that if he were a Dungeons & Dragons character, he’d have a +5 Slippery.
Then it came down to that breathless last minute where everyone yelled, “Timeout. Call a timeout. TIMEOUT! TIMEOUT! CALL THE TIMEOUT!” But it didn’t matter. The kick, which sailed right toward us on our side of the stadium, was good and all the Michiganites scattered as the Longhorn faithful high-fived, hooted, hollered, hugged and began taking camera-phone photos of themselves with the trophy presentation or the JumboTron pronouncement behind them as evidence of this winning moment in time.
I was an ex-Sooner in that sea of orange, celebrating the best football game I’ve ever seen in person. And it was only the first day of an all-new year.
Permalink | | Categories: By Omar Gallaga
A,e, i, uh-oh
It speaks to how much I like hanging out with Moira that I abandoned “Amazing Race” midway through Tuesday to meet up with her at Dionysium down at the Ritz.
(Of course I taped “Race,” though — what kind of person do you think I am? But it was hard work, and as I struggled with the VCR I kept thinking that I have absolutely zero chance of ever using it to communicate with the dead. The dead are just going to have to e-mail if they need anything from me.)
Anyway, Dionysium is good fun and will alleviate some of the guilt you have about reading In Style. Cheryl Moran talked about the Great Vowel Shift, which, a long time ago, changed the way English is pronounced and eventually led to the development of “d’oh” and “aiight”. OK, I extrapolated that last part. But it makes you think.
In a most erudite smackdown, our own Michael Barnes debated Jason Neulander from Salvage Vanguard about public funding for the arts. Robert Faires read JFK’s inaugural address, which was lovely and utterly depressing when you consider just how much public discourse has gone to seed. The cool kids from Two Note Solo whipped up Ten Minute Stories, Jeff Johnston played the saw and Graham Reynolds accompanied all of the proceedings on piano.
I left feeling quite smart, although not that smart because I realized I had somehow burned myself in the course of the evening. (Note: There were no open flames at Dionysium.) I don’t know what happened, but there’s a little blister on my finger. However, it didn’t hurt as much as when I cut myself on my shoe earlier in the day. I tell you all of this to ask for your prayers.
I’m doing all my reveling this week. For New Year’s Eve itself, I declined other invitations and threw myself a pity party. There was some sulking I needed to have done by year’s end in order to claim it on my taxes. But I took a break from the malaise to catch up with my friend Steve, who called in from his new home in Charlotte.
Steve was one of my co-workers in my terrifying first job, and we’ve kept in touch through a decade of being newspaper nomads. But we hadn’t talked on the phone in a few years, and I have to say I learned something about him that upset me:
He hadn’t seen “The Office.”
You think you know someone . . .
In fairness, I hadn’t seen “The Office” myself until a couple of months ago. But I expect more from Steve, who’s a discerning sort. I was crazed at the thought of all the happiness he was missing out on. But I also envied him. There are so precious few episodes, and he has them all ahead of him. (I came to the end of the free-love freeway myself when I finally saw the Christmas special Sunday night, and I would have collapsed emotionally without the wine and good company.) I made Steve promise to watch, and he claims to have ordered it from Netflix. I’ve cleared a space on my desk for the flowers he’ll send me out of gratitude.
In turn, Steve nurtured my burgeoning interest in zombies (I could tell he was proud) by sending me this game where you have to stop a zombie outbreak. It runs kind of contrary to what I learned from the “Zombie Survival Guide,” but I figure having a variety of skills can’t hurt.
When I was at my parents’ for Christmas, I found a stash of my old journals, which I thought would be good for a laugh. Um, wrong. I might as well have watched a bunch of Todd Solondz movies.
My other find was better: cassettes with songs I’d taped off the radio. Laugh all you want. It made me strong. There is something to be said for working hard for a song — bounding across the room to hit “record,” willing the deejay to SHUT UP so you could get the opening chords — instead of just pulling it out of the Internet ether like the kids do now.
I got the tapes out during my New Year’s Rockin’ Pity Party and hit the mother lode of music right away: “Mickey,” “Billie Jean,” “Gloria.” Had radio really been that awesome? No wonder I hid out in my room, poised to tape.
Then, from a little bit of captured Casey Kasem patter, I realized why the tape was so good. I’d made it during the “American Top 40” countdown on New Year’s Eve 1982, back when I would sit by the radio and write down all of the songs for posterity. I promptly forgave ‘tween me for her shyness, her lack of confidence, her horrible ’80s hair. She’d made me those great tapes that I’d found right when I needed them to cheer me up. If I could communicate across time, I would thank her. And then I’d tell her to do something about that hair.
I didn’t plan on being up at midnight, but you can’t fall asleep after listening to “Gloria” 50 times. As the last bit of the year ticked away, I watched tsunami coverage, because I care a lot more about the victims than you do. Well, probably not — but I’m practicing up for when I’m an old Austin liberal scold. Actually, I needed the bracing dose of perspective more than I needed to be drunk and shooting off fireworks, although some of my neighbors chose differently, and I don’t begrudge them that.
At midnight, the pity party was over. I got rid of the leftover tongue sandwiches, Clamato, Mr Pibb and soy milk, took down the festive sackcloth-and-ashes decorations and told the band I wasn’t paying them another dime, even if they cried.
The next day, I got up determined to start acting right again, and to eat some black-eyed peas. My friend Suzanne in Georgia had reminded me about this Southern tradition, and since I hadn’t eaten any grapes at midnight the day before I decided I couldn’t afford to slack off on the peas. Whole Foods came to the rescue with their brunch bar, although hiding the peas under scrambled eggs and grits couldn’t convince me that I liked them. Good luck tastes bad. I did, though, like the roses the store was handing out to pleasantly surprised shoppers. You can say “smooth marketing” all you want, but I will take it as a good sign for the year. Don’t ruin this for me.
Permalink | | Categories: By Sarah Lindner
A Hard New Years Day’s Night
I’m not a bad sport. Really I’m not.
It’s not that I mind celebrating the New Year by being set on fire, thanks to a smoker at Beerland and his amazing flying matches. It’s just that I was wearing my favorite extra-fluffy black cardigan, a gem lovingly unearthed from the overstuffed racks of New Bohemia only days before, and now it’s ruined. Sure, my flesh will regenerate itself, and if it doesn’t, hey, scars are cool. Still, believe me when I say, try as you might, there is just no saving vintage angora.
Aside from some minor burns and smelling like Ed Wood’s ashtray for a good portion of the evening the first full night of 2005 was a success. A friend and I started at Headhunters, a small club on Red River Street, decorated like Elvis would have decorated a tiki lounge if he had been a cannibal and there was no available yellow Naugahyde. We were there to hear Chadd Thomas & the Crazy Kings. Playing million dollar rockabilly in $12 suits, the quartet tore up the postage-stamp stage, with the added bonus of performing the finest rendition of “Folsom Prison Blues” heard on Red River since Johnny Cash played Emo’s in 1994.
Of course, there was dancing too. Gorgeous pinup girls with red lips and blue tattoos were deftly thrown around the tiny dance floor by equally handsome men who would sell their souls for a jet black Cadillac, if only someone would make them the offer. Eventually one of the men evidently tired of dancing with people who actually had senses of rhythm, took a break, and swiping at his deflated pompadour, asked me to dance. I graciously declined, citing inappropriate footwear, and made my exit.
It was partially true. The kneehigh platform go-go boots I had bought months earlier at The Bazaar on East Riverside Drive were not made for dancing, walking or any sort of ambulatory activity other than, say, leaning up against a wall while looking alluring and trying not to fall down. In truth, I had to leave Headhunters anyway because for really big game, I had to go to Beerland.
If Chadd Thomas & The Crazy Kings rocked the blazes out Red River, and they did, The Flametrick Subs and The Satan’s Cheerleaders rocked it right back in, and then some. The Flametrick Subs know how to put on a show. They know to impress in the Music City you can’t just have a stand-up drummer, a rock ‘n’ roll Viking all the way from Norway and a lead singer that makes Gene Vincent sound like Brenda Lee. They know you also need a one handed upright bass player named Lefty and half dozen vinyl-clad cheerleaders who could kick you in the teeth, individually or as a group, without dropping a pom. What you need most, however, is an audience, and a good one at that; an audience who “gets it.” People who want to be there and aren’t afraid of a little audience participation, whether it’s shouting “Beer Run!” at opportune times, or singing along in garbled Norwegian to a song called “Drinking with Dad.”
The First Saturday gang is always a good audience, they always get it; but New Year’s Day brought out an even larger crowd, many new not only to Beerland but to Texas. Take for example the photographer from Seattle, who is traveling across the country with a 4-foot-long stuffed rainbow trout. Now a grown man traveling cross country with a giant stuffed fish probably doesn’t get much (other than strange looks), but even he got it.
The Flametrick Subs put on a two-hour set, but to their credit the crowd had thinned out only a little by last call. Eventually the lights came on and the bleary-eyed revelers scattered, leaving alone or in pairs in search of food and sleep. A few stragglers remained to pose with the stuffed trout and smoke the night’s last, or maybe the morning’s first cigarette. It was Jan. 2, New Year’s celebration was over and it was time to go home. I surveyed the damage on my sweater (bad), and on myself (not so bad) and stepped outside into the gently falling rain; tired, smelly and ready to start my new year.
Permalink | | Categories: By Rhiannon Gammill
The Austin conundrum
Austin is a little city that thinks it’s a big city, even though it holds dearest the things that make it a little city, many of which are precisely the things that pivot my head east and west and beyond for a city that really is big — big in density, people, flavors, style, sophistication — not just in attitude, that overcompensating pride endemic to vainglorious Texas.
Austin, face it, is 90 percent strip-mall suburbs half-enclosed by bumps that pass for hills and a heat that bears down for so much of the year so hard, you wish you were anywhere but here.
It is a conundrum, this town. At least for me. I detest the heat but relish the air-conditioned bliss of the Paramount Theatre during the summer film series. Downtown is a Shrinky-Dink version of an urban center, but at least you can find metered parking with relative ease. There are far too many charity runs and walks and marathons clogging the avenues, yet they show the community’s tight weave.
The clamoring Cult of the Longhorns will always be a scary and atavistic embarrassment to this wimp, who likens the grunting, chest-beating, open-mouth, fingers-in-your-face convulsions of fans to the noxious knee-jerk patriotism of misplaced military passion. But I will tell you: As much as I didn’t care about the outcome of the Rose Bowl (I secretly hoped “we” would lose), I shared the surge of excitement watching that ball clear the goal posts.
New Year’s Eve offered the good side of Austin’s small-city vibe — a clutch of arty, drinky people in a casually swank setting just blocks from my SoCo dwelling. Filmmakers, musicians and gallery types — “future someones,” my friend noted — cluttered the courtyard at the Hotel San José, which held a cover-charge party that was sold out.
For $30 you got two bands, a spread of empanadas and the privilege of standing inside the would-be exclusive San José, which thinks quite highly of itself and all its bare-concrete Zen-ishness. At midnight, as Li’l Cap’n Travis played their miraculous harmonic grooves, there was “complimentary” champagne and kisses, which were even more complimentary than the bubbly if you could wangle one or five.
A band of boys who want terribly to be rock stars called Sound Team played first, and they weren’t bad in that derivative-of-10-bands way (think Tears for Fears, Joy Division, etc.). The members toss around a willed raffish air, suggesting they aspire to be roguish girl-bait like the Strokes, the Hives or the Scabs (eeww).
The party was fine, a place to sip and stand. I was with friends, the weather was unbeatable and I threw Sativa’s glow necklace into the hotel’s pool. That was a good moment.
Earlier that day, I spent the last bright, T-shirty day of 2004 at Jo’s. I was reading until Dawn and Margaret showed up and ruined it. We saw a skinny puppy with ringworm and a dog that looked like a man in a dog suit.
I last read “The Sun Also Rises” in 1987, and that’s what I was reading over the weekend. It’s an evocative book. For about 12 minutes while lost in its pages, I reconsidered my Japanese vacation plans, gripped by the sudden passion to return to Paris or Spain, hang out in cafés, write and drink all day long. Then I remembered how much I like health insurance.
Hemingway, you know, has that way of whittling it to the concrete essentials, as in: “In the morning it was bright, and they were sprinkling the streets of the town, and we all had breakfast in a café. Bayonne is a nice town. It is like a very clean Spanish town and it is on a big river.”
Oddly, that sounds more than a little like Austin. Perhaps not a bulging metropolis, it too is a nice town, very clean, on a big river. Yes.
Permalink | | Categories: By Chris Garcia
