Airlines are dumb, with one exception – Southwest Airlines. I grew up with Southwest because they’ve always had the cheapest flights to the places I wanted to go (different cities in Texas and Oklahoma) and now I’m just too used to it. I woke up late for my flight this morning, hauled ass all the way to the airport, ran up to the Southwest gate 10 minutes before departure and the woman working the desk didn’t bat an eye. She rushed all of my paperwork, took my checked bag and got me on the plane. Flash back to my trip to Canada, when I got to the Delta desk 15 minutes before departure the woman immediately told me I wasn’t going to get on the plane and I had to argue with her before she reluctantly looked up the flight and realized it was delayed 45 minutes. And it was still a fight to get on the plane. I’m not saying that SWA is perfect, but they are a hell of a lot more willing to work with you to get you on your flight.

As for the people at airports, I haven’t determined if people area really dumber in airports or if I just notice it more then. Airports are places where people are in a hurry. No matter how much time you have to kill at the airport, the people behind you in line don’t have any time for you to figure out what you want to eat. I can’t even begin to list the number of times that I’ve been trying to get something to eat during a layover only to have some dumbass hold up the line for 5 minutes trying to decide amongst the complex McDonald’s menu. And the clothes people wear at airports. Seriously: spandex is not attractive. It can only vary from disgusting to mildly nasty, depending on how ugly you are. Really thin white material is see thru when your fat ass is buldging out of it, so pay attention to whose face your ass is in when you lean over to pick something up (especially when I’m trying to eat). A guy standing in front of me in the boarding line had a Big Dogs t-shirt on. If you don’t know what the Big Dogs corporation is, then you’re lucky. But to give you an idea, this t-shirt had a cartoon dog dressed up like a cowboy on the back with a caption that read “Garth Barks”. Get it? Not Garth Brooks (because that would be *cool*), but Garth Barks (because dogs are *funny*). When he said goodbye to his kids I was waiting for him to say “Git ‘er done!” That seemed appropriate.

I went to Detroit to attend the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) World Congress. We stayed in downtown Detroit, which is about as glamorous and you’d think it is. Someone told me that there are 51,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit. I think that might be an underestimate. I saw so many condemned buildings, where I expect a number of crimes occur every day. For the most part, any time I saw a nice car parked in the parking lot of an abandoned building, I made it a point to walk away as fast as I could and pay as little attention as possible. I don’t want to be involved with whatever crime they have going on. I’ve seen The Client.

On the other hand, my hotel (the Omni) was the nicest hotel I’ve stayed at in a long time. They have bathrobes for everyone. My room had 15″ ceilings with floor to ceiling drapes. Free shuttle service to anything worth seeing in Detroit. A friendly staff that was willing to bend over backwards to help me with any problems I had. And to top it all off: a phone in the bathroom right next to the toilet, because I’m an important business professional who takes care of business while I take care of business.

Overall, the trip was good. I learned more about automotive engineering than I ever though I would. I partied with a bunch of marketing people, and proved to myself that my I’m not too old to pull all-nighters playing poker outside of Vegas. To Detroit’s credit, the casinos there were nice. I mean, much nicer than the Lake Charles, LA ones. But it was still no Vegas.

Detroit Gambling

There are a few places to play poker in the Detroit area, but the only place I played was Greektown, because it was next door to the number of the restaurants where we had dinner, but also because it was a $6 cab ride from the hotel and I was frankly terrified to be wandering around that city on my own. There are two times in my life that I have ever put money in my sock because I was afraid I was going to get robbed; one of those was while I was in Detroit. The first night there, after winning $150, I looked out to the desolate, poorly lit city and determined that there was a good chance I might get mugged on my way home. The other time, incidentally, was when I was living in St. Louis and I walked out of the downtown riverfront casino there (not the Casino Queen which is on the East St. Louis bank of the Mississippi, I value my life).

Poker In Detroit
The first night I was at the casino, I was getting complete junk cards for the most part. I was there for two hours and I only won one hand. Yet I left the poker table up $50 (it was a really big hand). After watching top pair hands get killed by people playing hands like 3-7o and the like, I called a raise from a maniac when I am in the big blind with Q-8s. The flop came K-Q-4 with two hearts and I called, figuring I might be up against a pair of fours. Turn card was a 8 of hearts, making two pair for me and I called two bets. Last card was a glorious 8 of diamonds making my full house and with three players we capped the river. What did I destroy with runner-runner 8′s? K-Q offsuit for top two-pair on the flop and A-J hearts for the nut flush. These people were raising with the most absurd stuff previously, so I couldn’t respect their hands. But I won a huge pot and after another orbit, decided it was time to get the hell out of there. That’s right. I won one hand.

Crapless Craps
Michael Shackleford has a very strong warning about playing crapless craps and other gimmick games. He’s a really smart guy and I trust his opinions, but he doesn’t account for the fact that Detroit is the unluckiest city ever. After leaving the poker table I headed out for some craps only to lose a significant amount of money in a very short thirty minutes because people were crapping out like crazy. Then to make matters worse, my table was closed for the night and they instructed me to go down to the other craps tables. They didn’t mention that the tables were crapless, but I was anxious to play a bit more craps so I gave it a shot. I made all my money back and more because the guy with the dice couldn’t roll anything but 2, 3, or 12. It was insane.

Latenite Poker in Detroit
The last night I was in Detroit, I developed a brilliant plan to make sure I would be awake for my 7:20am airport shuttle, it was simple. Have dinner and go out drinking with the rest of the marketing peoples until 2am, drink enough to sustain a buzz until 6:45am, catch a cab back to the hotel, shower, pack, and get to hotel lobby by 7:20am. Perfect. The night started out well, we did dinner at the MGM, played some blackjack (yuck!), went to a silly teenybopper dance club, and by 2am I cabbed it back to Greektown to play some poker until my flight. Frustrated by the 3-6 poker play, I decided to try my luck at 5-10. My buzz was still working strong and for some reason people kept letting me into hands without a raise when I had J-x hands and I seemed to flop a jack every time and many times two pair. Feeling a little buzzed, I kept making up names for my hand relating to the Jackson Family. So (of course) there is J-5 (“The Jackson 5″, which incidentally is called “Motown” for real), J-4 (“no Tito”), and J-6 (“Featuring Latoya”). For the rest of the names, I would babble off really long names:

Player: “What do you have?”
Me: “The Jackson five, with latoya, janet, macaulay culkin, and that monkey. J-9.”

Yes it was obnoxious, but damn was it funny and it was putting people on tilt like you wouldn’t believe. In the end, I didn’t win much at poker and overall I lost $50 on the trip after adding in blackjack and craps losses, but I can’t complain. I got up from the poker table at 6:42am and managed to get showered, packed and was in the lobby right on time. Perfect – but damn did I have a horrible hangover. Isn’t that how all good plans end?

Ahhh, Airplane!. Daniel just sent me a link to the dialectizer, which did an awesome job turning my last post to jive-speak.

“High Crime Area
Afta’ spendin’ some week in Mo-town, ah’ had da damn pleasho’ man uh returnin’ t’a new cubicle at wo’k (we reo’ganized our cubicles t’fit our growin’ numba’ of developuh’s). As if it’s not enough uh a pain in de ass t’move cubicles (even if it’s no mo’e dan 10 feet), at some point durin’ de week ah’ wuz gone, some sucka swapped out mah’ decent chair fo’ some chair wid some bugger’d armrest. Man! It’s been dree days and I’m still annoyed. Bunch uh savages in dis town. ‘S coo’, bro.

posted by gus at da damn metroplaza @ 4:57 PM puh’malink 1 comments”

My favorite is that it changed “gus at the metroplaza” to “gus at da damn metroplaza”.

After spending a week in Detroit, I had the pleasure of returning to a new cubicle at work (we reorganized our cubicles to fit our growing number of developers). As if it’s not enough of a pain in the ass to move cubicles (even if it’s no more than 10 feet), at some point during the week I was gone, someone swapped out my decent chair for a chair with a broken armrest. It’s been three days and I’m still annoyed. Bunch of savages in this town.

After getting back from my week-long trip to Dee-Troit, I was ready for some much needed relaxation. Unfortunately, yesterday was Burnet Road Day (an annual pubcrawl event) and I couldn’t pass it up. Though bowling wasn’t on the official agenda (only the Highland Lanes bar), my group wanted to do some bowling and I can never pass up an opportunity. I had recently been bowling at Showplace more, so I didn’t really remember how easy the shot is out at Highland, especially with the power of an intense inferno. I bowled a new high game with my new ball: 224 with no open frames (go figure). I’ve been concentrating on using the arrows more and I think it has really been paying off in my game. Things went downhill about halfway through the second game though, when “Cosmic Bowling” started. If there’s one thing I can say for using the arrows, is that it makes it a lot harder to bowl in the dark. Halfway through the second game, they turned off all the lights, causing me to throw my first open frame. I was able to eventually recover once my eyes got used to the lighting, but I still wasn’t bowling as well as I did the first game. My final score on the second game was a 188, but the interesting thing here was that I left a 3-6-7-10 in the tenth frame. Actually, the interesting part isn’t that I left it, but that I picked it up by slamming the three off the back wall and out to trip the seven from behind. You need more than the strength of an inferno to pull out that spare, you need an intense inferno. (alright, I’m finished coming up with stupid tag lines for the intense inferno).

The last game I really started to struggle either because it was dark, my lack of sleep was catching up to me, or possibly that I was working to hard on finishing my bowling pin beers to complete the rack of pins on our table. No matter what caused it, I closed out with a 158. So though it ended poorly, overall I had a 570 series as well as a new high game – 224 (with this ball). I brought my average up to somewhere around a 173.

As a result of forcing everyone to bowl an entire set, we missed most of the later stops on Burnet Road Day buy we did manage to make the last stop, the Canary Hut Pub to watch the kareoke action. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they didn’t have the usual “mopey country” songs. The highlight of the night was a guy who sang “The Three Little Pigs” by Green Jell-o. Classic. More on the Detroit trip later.

South by Southwest, Day 4

Day:
hungover

Night:
Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players (SXSW link)
Timonium (SXSW link)
+/- (SXSW link)
Say Hi To Your Mom (SXSW link)
Wolfmother (SXSW link)
Cut Copy (SXSW link)

What I probably failed to mention about SXSW Day 3 was that Kat and I had a lot to drink. So Saturday morning (afternoon really) came a little too soon. That combined with the fact that we weren’t terribly interested in the day shows meant we weren’t leaving the house early. That’s alright though. We headed downtown in the early evening for some sushi at Silhouette Sushi (The old Pango without hidden cameras in the women’s restroom!) and then started on our evening.

First stop was the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players (SXSW link). I was disappointed, but I’m still not sure what I was expecting. They are a band that consists of a husband (guitar player/singer), wife (slideshow operator/backup singer), and a pre-teen daughter (drummer/backup singer). They go to estate sales, buy up random photo slides and write songs about them. It’s an awesome idea. But it was a little more Electric Company than I would have hoped. I guess I should have expected it. I mean, if you’re a bunch of hippies in a family band, you’re probably going to sound somewhat like the Brady Bunch singing group. It was even worse because the sound was terrible and we could barely see the slides from where we were standing. Not a good recipe. Two songs in, we headed over to the Ritz to see +/- (SXSW link).

The line wasn’t long to get into the Ritz at this point (it had be ridiculous on previous nights) and we quickly ran into Abdiel and Brian who had already staked out their spots for +/-. Timonium (SXSW link) was on and while I had to say one thing for their live show, their drummer is one of the most interesting drummers I’ve see play live in a long time. Brutal. The anger he directs to his drums is so intense, I think he could fit in just as well with a death metal band as with these guys. Not so good vocally. When I talked to Brian and Abdiel they mentioned that the Real World Austin characters were in the club, which explained the guy sitting next to me with a ton of wireless microphones. They quickly headed out after filiming their “content” and the club was back to normal. The +/- set was good. In fact, I liked it so much I bought their cd, since I figured if I didn’t buy it I was going to pirate it and insist that I’d buy it next time I saw them live. When we were walking out of the club after the show, the line was all the way around the corner. I was thankful that we left the Trachtenburg show early so I could actually get into the show.

We didn’t have any specific plans for the next time slot, so I made the executive decision that we should see Say Hi To Your Mom (SXSW link) first because I liked their song on the SXSW website, but also because I think the name is really funny. And it worked out with Toof, right? This show was even better than the +/- set. I was 5 drinks farther into my drunkness, so that might have played a part in it, but I thought the live show was awesome. So I bought another cd, since they were from NY which made it doubtful that I was going to see them anytime soon. After listening to the cd, I’ve determined that the singer isn’t as good as I thought (or maybe he’s gotten better since the album was recorded), but I have a strange attraction to the album. There are even some weak lyrics, but I’m unfazed. I can’t explain it, but I like it.

After Say Hi To Your Mom, we walked all the way across downtown to Club Deville to see Cut Copy (SXSW link). The wristband line was about 20 people deep, but Kat with the badge, was able to get in almost immediately. She attempted to wait in line with me, but I insisted that she just go in and I’d wait out the line. Not but one minute later, the next guy behind me in line had the same situation and conversation with his badge-bearing friend. Waiting in line for a while, we strike up a conversation. The usual: are you from Austin? Who did you just see? etc. He mentions that he made the (long!) drive out here from Atlanta with some friends who were at another club. I thought it was strange that someone would make that long a drive and only get a wristband and he explained that he played with some bands during day shows, but hadn’t really planned on making it out. Then he mentioned that he was in another band. “Yeah, I’m in another band that isn’t playing here this year. Have you heard of I am the World Trade Center?” Internally I start thinking to myself “holy shit, you’re the guy from I am the World Trade Center. I have all of your albums. I’ve seen you guys every time you’ve been in Austin for the past two years. etc.etc.etc.” But then I decided that might be a little too creepy….right after I said it. He (Dan) was really cool about it though. We talked a bit about the band and other stuff that he had going on. He’s actually working on a PhD in Biological Engineering, which is crazy to me that he could do that and have this whole touring band thing going on. He told me about Amy’s cancer (which explains why I hadn’t heard anything from them in the past year). All in all, he was a really cool guy. I look forward to seeing them when they start touring again. I even joined their mailing list to make sure I don’t miss them when they come to town.

Eventually we got inside the club, just before Wolfmother (SXSW link) finished their set. They were alright. Not spectacular, just alright. I wandered around until I found Kat and we waited for the show. Club Deville is a shitty place to see a popular band (hence the reason I was stuck waiting in line for so long). I think it’s an awesome place to lounge around and listen to music, but if you really want to see someone play it’s a pain in the ass because there is no stage, and the layout of the place means that at full capacity probably 25% of the people in the club would have no visibility to the “stage area”. That was alright though. The place thinned out a bit and Cut Copy (SXSW link) put on a kick ass show. I’d put them in the same category with VHS or Beta, but their singer doesn’t sound like the guy from Oingo Boingo. High energy show. A great finale to the SXSW week. After getting home, I headed on over to the Dan/Brian house once again for after-party drinks and sing-a-longs until 5 or 6am. Good times, good times.

All in all, this was a spectacular SXSW and I learned an important lesson: take vacation from work. In addition to getting all the free shit during the day, you can see the same bands you would see at night for free, with less people around. It’s hard to beat. Plus then you won’t have to suffer being hungover at work for three days in a row. Next year though, I really think I’m going to splurge and buy the badge. It’s about double the cost of a wristband if you get it early enough and the idea of not having to wait in line is EXTREMELY enticing. We’ll see how I feel about it in October.

South by Southwest, Day 3
Day:
Calexico (SXSW link)
Adult Swim Party: M.I.A. (SXSW link), Ratatat (SXSW link)

Night:
No Luck Club (SXSW link)
Bloc Party (SXSW link)
Kasabian (SXSW link)
Fisherspooner never happened.
Gram Rabbit (SXSW link)
Rainer Maria (SXSW link)

Kat went to the eye doctor in the morning and he found a speck of metal in her eye. OUCH! After getting ourselves up and around we headed to Emo’s to check out Calexico (SXSW link). Though they had been labeled as a “Latin Rock” band, they most definitely were not. I mean, the only latino they had was playing the trumpet. And they only had one song that sounded latin at all. But they were still good. Pleasantly surprised. We had to leave early though, because we wanted to see if we could get into the Adult Swim day party.

We walked all the way to the east side to go to Victory Grill, a restaurant/club that I had never heard of. When we finally got within sight, you could see a huge line formed around the end of the building. It wasn’t looking too promising. But we also spotted the Aqua Teen Hunger Force characters walking around the side of the building. We took some pictures with them (see above) which was pretty awesome. We had seen the characters walking around sixth street at night during the showcases, but they were mobbed with people. It was awesome to get the chance to take pictures with them when no one else was around. After taking our pictures, we headed back into the line to get into the party. After waiting a few minutes we ran into my roommate and her boyfriend and they got in line with us. Since the place was packed, we were starting to doubt that we were ever going to get into the club. The sun was shining and the line wasn’t moving, so we just about gave up. Then all the sudden people in front of us started leaving the line and people started leaving, so the line started moving at a decent pace. When I got in, I picked up my free stuff at the door (ATHF t-shirt, adult swim buttons, ATHF promo dvd, zorak air freshener) and headed into the club. It was fucking packed in there. There was almost no lighting, except a projector on the back of the stage. The person singing on stage had no other place to stand, so she spent most of her time in front of the projector. I later found out that it was M.I.A. (SXSW link) on stage. At the time though, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. This girl was on stage jumping around, singing in a language that didn’t sound like english to me, but most of the audience was singing along with every single song. People were crazy into her and the show was extremely high energy.

In addition to the free giveaways at the front door, the party had free beer and Tito’s Vodka. This was by far the best free party I went to. Since the vodka was free, my half and half vodka sevens pretty much knocked me on my ass at four in the afternoon. After M.I.A. finished people started clearing out a bit and we had some more room to breathe. Ratatat (SXSW link) came on next. They were completely instrumental, with a guitarist, a bassist, and a sync/drum machine for the background music. They somewhat reminded me of the wyld stallyns, but with updated drums and keyboards. I’d like to check out their album.

Since I was ripped after the Adult Swim party, we headed over to Hickory Street Bar & Grill to get some truckstop chili action. mmmmm…truckstop chiliiiiiiiii…. I had some drunk conversations with other drunks that I had planned on meeting up earlier, since our meeting up wasn’t going to happen and then we headed out to start the night time showcases. The first act we saw was No Luck Club (SXSW link), some DJs from Canada, eh. This shit was awesome, but once again, they were cursed with having the 8:30pm slot. I really think SXSW should have DJs do late night showcases rather than starting at 8pm. I believe at various festivals they don’t even have the DJs start playing until one or two in the morning. That would be awesome for SXSW. You could go to all of your regular showcases and then there would be another two or three hours worth of DJs afterward. It could work. Really.

After No Luck Club finished we headed back to Stubbs to see Bloc Party Bloc Party (SXSW link) and Kasabian (SXSW link). Both were alright, but once again, I spent most of my time hanging out with Abdiel and Brian, so I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. We had originally planned on staying at Stubbs to see Fisherspooner, but that never happened and right as the New York Dolls were coming on stage we left, frustrated by the fact that there were no signs to tell us that Fisherspooner wasn’t going to happen, since we waited for them for nearly an hour. Now we had to struggle to figure out where we were going to go. I had a toss up between Pretty Girls Mave Graves and Rainer Maria, but the gigantor line outside of the Pretty Girls Make Graves show made the decision easy for me and I dragged Brian on to see Rainer Maria at some weird club (Pecan Street Ale House) that only has an alley entrance.

I had never been in the Pecan Street Ale House before. I’ve seen it a thousand times before, but as a rule, I prefer to stay away from bars that only have alleyway entrances. I’ve seen enough suspense movies to know that dark alleyway shortcuts are always bad ideas, no matter how much travel time they save. Pecan Street Ale House was this tiny ass club that apparently had no air conditioning. It was like a fucking sauna in there and it hit you immediately upon entering. Right as we got in Gram Rabbit (SXSW link) was finishing their set. I can’t remember what it was like at all, but I remember noting to myself that I wanted to check out some of their stuff because it might be interesting. The cool thing about this club was that it had a huge balcony that looked down directly at the stage, so pretty much no matter where you were, you could easily see the stage. I like that; I like it a lot. After 15 minutes of mic checks and requests for more of everything in the monitors (see Brian’s blog for more complaints about needing more vocals in the monitor), they finally started their set. I was absolutely blown away. I’ve been listening to their albums for a while now, but seeing them live really put it all together for me. Now I have copies of their cds available in my car which I’ll listen to about a thousand times until I’m absolutely sick of them. Or at least until some other new album that I really like comes along. After the show I wanted to ask the Rainer Maria peoples if they had any albums for sale. I waited patiently to speak with the singer (Caithlin), since she was the only one that was outside. The girl in front of me told some ridiculously long story about how she came to be at the show and how long she’s loved Rainer Maria, etc, etc, etc. I quickly lost interest, saw the guitar player loading equipment and interrupted him to ask about the cds. No such luck. He said they’d be back soon though, so I’m keeping up with the Emo’s website.