Awkward and Awesomes!

So, you know.

It's kind of been one of those weeks. The ones where by Thursday you just want to lay down on the floor next to a used kleenex and have someone throw their dirty t-shirt on you.

Awkward
-Having to explain to people that the reason I am not on Spring Break is because I am in fact, not a student. Yes, I work at a university. Yes, full time. Yes, I graduated. Yes, I am older than 21. Again, not a student.

-I very rarely get up the courage to play my Glee Pandora station at work, as there seem to be pockets of quiet that extend all the way down the hallway into everyone else's office, and though I want Darren Criss's cover of 'Teenage Dream' to be a part of my work day, I'm not so sure they do. However, this past week my office has been a wasteland, so when I found myself alone at the front yesterday, I decided to go for it. I made it through one particularly long rendition of 'Defying Gravity' (Rachel & Kurt's version) before a professor walked in and started asking me a bunch of questions. He did his best to ignore the underscore of a 'A Whole New World', but did let me know that his toddler 'loves that movie' when he left. I am the most grown up of all the grown ups.

-The past two episodes of Once Upon a Time. Ok, all of Once Upon a Time. I love this show. I really do- and not just because I am its target audience so I have been culturally conditioned to love this show from a young age. But, the dialogue. THE DIALOGUE.

Teetering on the brink between Awkward and Awesome:
 -Craigslist, now and forever. I found a listing yesterday for a woman selling a "SASSY red table", which turned out to be a very broken picnic table she had spray painted red and wants you to put in your child's bedroom. Sassy!? Seriously? Broken shards of wood should never be used synonymously with sassy. Unless of course you are discussing Lolita, in which case-- sure.

Another favorite listing this week was for a "Beautiful Vintage 80's Chair", which was in fact an oversized pink floral patterned arm chair with lots of stains and tears, and a big cat plopped down in the middle of the seat. Ok, listen: I'm not sure anything from the 80's counts as vintage. Or beautiful for that matter. And of all the adjectives you could use to describe an oversized pink floral patterened arm chair, did 'comfy' or 'large' not enter your mind? Even 'sassy' would have worked better here.

Awesome
-Mexican Martini's from Trudy's. I am usually a wine and beer type girl, but goodness gracious those things are incredible. Word to the wise: Do not go to Mexico and order a Mexican Martini. They will just bring you a regular martini. Mexican Martini's are a Tex Mex Austin creation. Or at least, that what we claim... so it's probably true.

-The Walking Dead. I have not had mind blowing television in my life since Lost, and sometimes I think Lost just blew your mind by stockpiling secret mystery intrique plot lines and then revealing them so very very slowly that your mind had no choice to be blown. But slow moving farmer Zombies? Apocalyptic discourses on the nature of man? Unhinged regular joe's trying to kill other regular joe's in cold blood? I can't get enough of it.
 
-Speaking of Zombies (and I usually am), I need this t-shirt in my wardrobe. I am not generally an ironic T-shirt wearer, but I could change (change in this context meaning 'change my mind' and not 'change into a Zombie').

-I enjoyed a 13 minute commute to work this morning instead of a 35 minute one thanks to the grand departure of 50,000 students from the UT Campus. Thank you, Spring Break.

-The absolutely heavenly bouquet of lillies that has been sitting on my desk for over two weeks now. I can smell them the minute I walk in the building.

2011 Part Three: Another year older.

 In July, I celebrated my 24th birthday by taking a trip to the Wimberly Markets (it was hot) and going to a wine tasting at the Duchman Family Winery (it was a lot of wine). This fabulous winery in located in Driftwood... Spicewood Springs. Somewhere close to Wimberly. 

Cheers! 

After eating two (three??) baskets of free crackers at the tasting, we decided our tummy's needed a little more sustenance and headed to the Mandola's next door for some delicious pizza- cheese-prosciutto-olives-bread-oil-Italian yumminess.  

Ladies sitting on the fountain. Fun fact: Holly, Carmen and I all have birthdays within 2 1/2 weeks of each other.

Footloose came to the Zilker Hillside in July, and so did we, large blanket and picnic basket in hand. Being the picnic n00bs that we are, Carmen, Adam, Tanya & I packed a bottle of wine, some teddy grahams and a box of mike and ikes.... a combination strangely reminiscent of what I took with me when I tried to run away from home at five (minus the wine of course). Oh, and we didn't eat dinner before hand. Very smart when you are sitting outside for three + hours on a typical hundred degree Austin summer evening. Thankfully, Melanie brought a boxed red and white wine (duh, no glass bottles at the park!), some fancy cheese and crackers, an assortment of Godiva chocolates, two bags of gluten free chips, and a container of grapes.  I love the two girls photo bombing in the back in contrast with the father/son duo trying so hard NOT to photo bomb in the front.

After the show, this stunning southern belle let us snap a picture with her! Meg, that wig is strangely reminiscent of the young Evita monstrosity of your high school days...

 
 Moving along: Adam drank wine out a shoe and then installed our ceiling fan. Well, perhaps not in that order (if this was a highlights magazine, you could circle his curly head in the right hand photo).  Please note the demolished Justin Beiber pinata on the broken futon, it speaks of good times gone by.

The end of July also marked our 1 year anniversary in the apartment. We started to get all spring cleany (except in the summer time) and that led to a huge closet purge, which in turn led to selling a good lot of our furniture (remember the broken futon?) on Craigslist... which of course then led to buying a heck of a lot of new stuff for our apartment, including a dryer, some curtains, and a matching couch and love seat. Being an adult is v. exciting.

Well this doesn't quite look right, does it? So, let's just say we had a little couch buying mishap... let's just also say never buy anything from a furniture store that rhymes with Blooms to Grow... and Craigslist is awesome. Anyway, somehow the stars aligned one evening and we found ourselves with three love seats (one not pictured because Tanya is standing on it to take this picture) and two full size couches. Not girls to let an opportunity like this pass us by, we staged a moving photo jumping from couch to couch, and when that wasn't enough, we took a video. Here is that video:

Epic, no?

Oh, and don't forget Nigel's still cute.

ACL, Day 3

The Line Up
Baby Cuddling  AWOL Nation  Broken Social Scene
Elbow      Fleet Foxes     Empire of the Sun     Arcade Fire

No, baby cuddling is not some weird indie band-- we stopped by Grace's before the festival to see the beautiful new mama and sweet, sleepy little JD. He is a good seven pounds now, and wearing tiny pants and everything!

I particularly love these pictures of Carmen and Tanya holding him because they look soooo interested and he looks soooo ... well, not.

We learned our lesson for the final day of the festival: meet your friends outside the gates before the masses descend and the cell reception goes missing. An unsent text is no one's friend!

The AWOL Nation crowd was a persnickety bunch, and I include myself in that number. The unspoken rules of navigating the crowd during a show are thus: 1. Choose the path of least resistance 2. Watch out for the people in chairs, they are pre- mad about all the people who are going to trip over their chair, and they only get madder when you actually do it. 3. Choose the path of least resistance.
Even though I was standing next to a guy in a chair, and there was an obvious path to my left, about fifty people decided that the best way to go was making me move out of the way so they could slip by chair guy. I got annoyed, but chair guy took it to the next level-- he sat in his chair, texting mind you, with his legs straight out in front of him so that people would have climb over to get past us. I kind of wanted to be him.

I thought at first that I didn't know who AWOL Nation was... and then they started playing that Sail song. That's about all I have to say about them.

Next was Broken Social Scene, who I know I think were really good-- it was just so beepin hot, we looked like this for most of the show:

Next was Elbow. Yep, you heard that correctly. Elbow. Tanya had been raving about them for weeks, but I was a bit skeptical-- surely this band cannot possibly be named after a body part, right? According to Wikipedia, their name was once "Mr Soft", so I guess Elbow is an improvement? Hard call to make.

Elbow (ok, now that I have typed that word three times in a row, it has lost all possible meaning and does in fact sound like a great band name) turned out to be one of my favorite acts of the festival-- and they brought a glorious light rain shower to cool everything down!

If we are talking possible renames, I would say that either 'Supplication' or 'Handout' would fit; the singer always looked like he was asking us to give him something:

See?
We flitted from Elbow to Fleet Foxes, who sounded just like they always sound (amazing) and dressed just like they always dress (in flannel). I would like to say that I am fantastic at taking group pictures with my left hand, but trying to fit four people in was kind of stretching it...

... so some kind lady offered to help me out. There are a few things I love about this picture: 1. That guy in the red hat's face behind me. 2. That guy in the grey shirt's face sitting next to him 3. The fact that I didn't think now the was time to assume a more ladylike position.

After Fleet Foxes, we watched Empire of the Sun as the sun set over the final day of the festival, grabbed a quick bite from the fancy food stands (P.Terry's) and then took our places in the field for Arcade Fire.

I know that indie music as a genre is not broadly appealing or well known (for further clarification, see the meaning of the term 'indie') and that the ACL headliners are generally both of these things. But, whatever. I loved it. And you know what, this is Austin Music Festival! Austin! Home to Leslie and those cows and the Longhorn Network. We do what we want and sometimes it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

So: ACL 2011, in Conclusion:

1. Ray LaMontagne is amazing in any setting, may he be shoeless, mic-less or in a crushed red velvet suit.
2. Christian Bale will eventually show up if you look for him everywhere, every day for your whole life.

3. Make plans like you don't have a cell phone more often. As in, use concrete details and include contingencies for if something falls through or someone gets lost. Kind of like 'dance like no one's watching', except with more practical applications.

4. Don't judge a band by their name. Judge a band by their crappy songs that play on the radio all the time.

5. Try naming more things (children, bands, activities) after abstract things (fruit, body parts, activities). If celebrities can do it, I can too. I wanted to name my daughter Chevrolet until I was ten years old... maybe it is time to resurrect that dream.

6. I need to listen to more music-- there is so much good stuff out there to be heard!
Until next year...

ACL, Day 2

The Line Up
Fitz and the Tantrums  Cee Lo   Tv On the Radio  Stevie Wonder

Celebrating the first rain fall in months... we were a little wet and frizzy, but definitely not complaining!

Fitz and the Tantrums, baby! 

Really glad I have a picture of 'Blow up cactus wearing shorts' flag as well as 'Googly eyed friend with lei', because they were hidden gems of the festival flags, to say the least. 

Oh you know, just minding my own business, enjoying the show and then guess who shows up? Christian Bale, love of my whole life, looking so serious and aloof just the way I like him. I pretty much lost my luggage when I spotted him and tried the 'frantic waving in a crowd of thousands of people tactic', but he was too focused on some distant horizon to notice me. Perhaps it was the cameras in his face, we'll never know. Anyway, he was there and I was there, and that random guy in a bandana was there, and that's all that matters.

TV On the Radio

I spent most of Cee Lo in line for the port- a- potties, texting back and forth with my sister and Tanya and Carmen in hopes of finding my way back to them in the crowd. Thankfully, the TV on the Radio fans were pretty obliging...

Success!

 

Unfortunately, Stevie Wonder was really quiet (due to a blown speaker or something)... and also just generally kind of weird. At one point he wanted us to do this audience participation thing, which you can't blame him for as there were about 50,000 people there, way too tempting...but he kept saying something along the lines of 'errrrrrbody layout except Steeevie, errrbody layout... errrbody layout 'cept Errol, errrbody layout.' 

Vagaries are not your friend when instructing the masses, Stevie. 

On the upside, we finally met up with Hillary and Erin after two days of texting back and forth! Thumbs up indeed. I cannot even begin to imagine what people did before cell phones at things like this... 

So, in the end we made the most of standing in a field listening to what sounded like a recording of a person who sounded like Stevie Wonder by starting a full-fledged booty shaking dance party- it was the perfect way to spend way a Saturday night in Austin!  Perhaps Zilker Park should look into expanding into the club scene.

ACL, Day 1

The Line Up:

Brandi Carlile     Ray LaMontagne     Foster the People     Coldplay

Tanya and I camped out for a good view of Ray LaMontagne-- and it definitely paid off!
The girl who took this picture declared us 'adorable' and then followed up with 'I'm so sorry guys, I'm 6 foot 2. My view is going to be AWESOME.'

 I would just like to say that even though ACL festival goers freely embrace near nudity in the 100 degree weather, it is understood that the performers will garb themselves in the hottest, sweatiest, least breathable fabrics for their hour onstage.

Exhibit A: Crushed red velvet pants and vest, matching hat.  

I always love being close enough to the stage to get a good view of the interpreter--- this woman was a rock star with her air guitar! My ASL is pretty rusty, but I did catch her interpretation of  Ray's 'she gives me love and affection' as 'I have a girlfriend- she loves me, WOW, I have a girlfriend, I like it.'

Oh, Foster the People is playing right now? Much of this show was spent trying to navigate this crowd-- rookie ACL mistake. 

Corinna & Carmen found us! Obligatory Friday crowd shot #1.  

And #2-- Look at that skyline! 

So. many. people. 

Obviously I don't know how to use my camera, or I would have fixed the flash...  but this weird glowy light is oddly appropriate for two girls standing in line to use a porty-a- potty while holding a wad of toilet paper they brought from home. 

To cap off the evening, we sat and watched while Chris Martin somersaulted around the stage and sweated onto his keyboard. I'm not sure this performance is going to go down as Coldplay's best, but in my mind, they can do no wrong.

On an unrelated note, I once asked my sister if Apple (Gywneth Paltrow & Chris Martin's first child) was a girl or a boy, and she looked at me like that was a stupid question. Do fruit namesakes really have obvious gender?


One day down, two to go...

The Age of Aquarius

Last Sunday, I went to see my friend Meg in her final performance of Hair at The City Theatre, an adorable local theater in East Austin. She was fantastic as always, and the show was beautifully crafted and executed by an amazing cast of local Austinites.  

I have seen a lot of great theatre in Austin over the years-- and I'm not just talking shows, but good theatre with the -re, performances that encompass every aspect of the world of performance. Austin boasts a large artist community as well as a large community that supports the arts, but what we have is so much more than people who like to perform and people who like to watch others perform.

We're experimental, and sometimes those experiments fail. We work on limited budgets, limited time, and limited resources--- so sometimes our costumes choices don't make sense, our sound cues aren't as loud as they should be, and our theaters aren't as nice as they could be. But, it's the 'we' that sets us apart from many other cities that also boast a thriving theatre scene.

We love our local Austin playwrights, and our annual musicals in the park, and our sometimes hair brained takes on classical literature (see: The Grapes of Wrath, The Musical). Oh, and most of all, we love our performers-- the leasing agent at my apartment complex, my co worker's daughter, this one guy I met in the Radisson parking lot who talked my ear off about Hamlet for twenty minutes, and of course, my former acting buddies.

Meg & the girls at Red House after the show, toasting her fabulous performance with a Pimms Cup. There were, of course, some protestations when the camera came out... 

.... but then they got into the spirit!*

*Hillary is holding my drink. 

Pictured in the hazy darkness behind us is a slew of my coworkers. I wonder what they thought about our photo shoot, which extended way beyond these few pictures after all of our drinks were drank and food was eaten and Meg's camera came out to play. 

The star herself! Good show, Meg Bear. 

So thank you Austin, once again, for being a cool place to life. I will try to hold these sentiments close next time you grace us with a 105 degree day.