Monthly Archives: March 2007

SXSW 2007 – Day 1 – Wednesday


Posted by avoque

As expected, I woke up late on the first day of sxsw. I got a text msg from Amanda asking when I was going to be downtown, but as I couldn’t even remember where I was (common problem for me in the morning) I didn’t have a good handle on the situation. I knew I had to pick up Kat’s car, so I was sure it would be a while.

I finally met up with Amanda and Mike at Casino el Camino and had a hotdog, since there was no way I was waiting over an hour for a burger, no matter how good it was. I hogged down a footlong hotdog and we headed over to Emo’s just in time to catch the last song by some band I didn’t put in my notes.

After our brief stay at Emo’s we went to Red Eye Fly in hopes of getting in on some free beer action. No luck, but the jukebox was good. Pela was playing outside, so this marks the third time I’ve “seen” them and every time has been in the same situation, they played while I was drinking in another other room. Some day I’ll catch them and be upset with myself for missing it the first three times. At some point Brian msg’ed and tried to meet us, but the door had started checking for RSVPs and he was denied entry. The whole RSVP thing sucks, I ran into it a million times at CMJ and it sucks to see that sxsw is going the same way now too.

Eventually the Octopus Project started and we went outside to watch. Any time Red Eye Fly is at capacity it sucks to watch shows there; you can’t see anything and there is no room. I still liked at least hearing them. I can’t believe how many times I passed on watching them when I lived in Austin.

After the Octopus Project, we went to Room 710 to see the Woggles. They have a Galaga machine at Room 710, so I bummed a quarter and played a round. That was the best part of the show. I’m not a fan, though they were entertaining for the first five minutes.

Now we hit the lull between day shows and night showcases. With nothing to do, we hit Mugshots for the first of many visits. I love that place.

After getting a number of drinks in me, we headed to Hoak’s for a slice before hitting our first night show – the Comas at beauty bar. They were pretty boring though when they brought the rock I thought it was acceptable. Amanda and Mike left early to get in to Blond Redhead, Brian and I stayed a little longer then left to catch Best Fwends inside. Best Fwends were just, themselves. My best decription of watching their show would be like watching a youtube video while it happened. They crack me up.

Unfortunately though, watching their show completely fucked my chances of seeing Blond Redhead because the line was atrociously long. I eventually gave up when Beruit started. Brian, Amanda and Mike left the show, though they were already in and came with me back to Mugshots for a round of shots and some drinks.

From there, Amanda and Mike went home (another unfortunate theme for the weekend) and Brian and I went to Mowhawk to catch Rob Crow, othwise known as the singer from Pinback. The Twighlight Sad was playing before them and their singer was doing his best Jim Morrison impression, never facing the stage. The rest of the band was equally unlively and I wanted to go to sleep.

Rob Crow finally started and I was glad we got to catch it. Some guy in front of us kept requesting Pinback songs throughout the entire set, which I found humerous. Rob Crow is great.

It was 1am by the time Rob Crow was finished and with no other plans I decided to part ways with Brian and catch up with Thomas, who I hadn’t yet seen, though I was staying at his house all week. He was stage managing at Red7 so I stopped in to hang out. There was some kind of Australian record label showcase going on and the last band playing was pretty good (the band was The Mint Chicks – bad name, decent show). Thomas said that all of the bands were pretty good so I’m going to have to check them out. You know, during all that free time that I have. Right.


broccoli


Posted by avoque

I hate broccoli. I consider it to be one of the most disgusting food items. Unfortunately I have bad broccoli karma.

When my boss told me I was going to be moving desks to be closer to my group, I was excited. I would have left the company on the spot if he would have told me that the guy sitting next to me would be eating steamed broccoli at his desk multiple times a day. I secretly hoped the guy would be fired. And when I say ‘secretly’ I mean I loudly complained that it should be legal to fire people for having smelly food. Luckily for me, everything worked itself out when my group moved to its permanent home on the 20th floor.

As I type this my bad broccoli karma is striking again. Since Kat is out of town once again, I’m on my way to AC for the day. Getting on the crowded bus, I spot a seat next to an old lady. She’s thin and sitting in the aisle seat, so I opt to sit next to her. Before the bus even leaves the terminal, she opens the lid on a homemade concoction whose primary ingredient is cooked broccoli. It is too late for me to move now. All the seats are taken so I get to practice holding my breath for the next thirty minutes.

Eventually she finishes her meal and falls asleep, with her arm hanging over the armrest. I hope she dies, not just because of the broccoli or even the armrest (though those are good enough reasons), but because I have yet to watch anyone die and I’ve been living in New York for almost a year. I’ve watched enough Law and Order to know this is uncommon. Plus I’m looking for an interesting story to talk about in my comedy routine.

I’ll take a window seat on the flight to hell please; and do you think there will be enough room in the overhead storage for my stuffed dog?


SXSW 2007 – Pre-Day 1


Posted by avoque

I was booked on the last Continental flight to Austin the night before the music festival started. Pulling my usual “get to the airport late then mad rush to get on the plane”, I poorly judged how ridiculous the line was going to be at the ticket counter and ended up having to carry-on my bag, which was full of liquids over 3oz. I tossed everything, except for the super-expensive hair product* that I was unwilling to part with. That I stuck in my back pocket as I walked through security. Genius. $30 saved. A good note for all you terrorists out there, keep your liquids on your person.

When I finally got on my overbooked flight, I immediately realized that every band was on my flight. At least all of the ones from New York and even some of the European bands. This would have been fine, but they all carried-on their guitars, which meant I had to check my bag anyway. Once we were about to take off, the pilot warned us that we were going to be ridiculously delayed, but somehow the kicked it into turbo once we got in the air and we arrived to Austin early.

Jason was kind enough to pick me up at midnight and in typical fashion we killed a couple pitchers at the Hideout before calling it a night at barclose. It’s just like me to drink heavily the night before a binge drinking week. 

By the way, I’m cross-posting everything over at Brian’s SXSW music blog.  You should go over there and read his summaries, because he saw some cooler shows than I did and he took much better notes.

* fuck yeah I said hair product.


Y2K+7 in AC


Posted by avoque

A couple weeks ago we went to AC for a blogger happy hour, and also Kat’s first trip. Everything about this trip started off on the wrong foot. Everything was running late. First I had to work the morning, then that dragged out into the middle of the afternoon, then we had to wait for a bus that was going close to Caesar’s, and worst of all – we had a terrible bus driver. This was the first time I’ve ever had a problem with the driver. He was driving really slow the whole way and to add insult to injury, he stopped the bus at one of the tolls so he could use the bathroom. I understand that busdrivers are humans too, but you’re either too sick to drive or you drive for two hours straight. I don’t think I’m asking too much here.

After finally getting to AC, we caught up with Heather at the Borgata. I have to say, the Borgata is gorgeous casino. I still haven’t played there, but I now know why Heather raves about it. There are some negatives though. Unless you eat in the foodcourt, it’s going to be steep to eat there. We’re talking $40 a plate expensive. It is also far from civilization. But so is most everything in AC. The cab ride from Caesar’s was $12. To give you an idea. After passing on the expensive food, Kat, Heather, and I ate at the foodcourt and discussed the finer points of craps, of which there are many. By the time we finished dinner, we easily made the call to go to the Taj and roll some craps before the blogger happy hour.

I really need to emphasize that Heather is the greatest craps roller that ever lived. Not only did she hit multiple points, she hit a ton of numbers along the way. In a single roll, heather paid for my trip to AC by hitting a four with my maxed odds and $10 on the hop (who bets the hop anyway??? THIS GUY, that’s who). Fuck poker, craps is where it’s at.

Somewhere between the craps sessions we caught up with the bloggers at the Showboat. It was good to see everyone again, since I’ve missed a lot of the IHO tournaments with travel and such. Drink service was light at the Taj, so I opted for the double jack and sprite when we got to the bar. Two drinks later I could barely feel my nose and I knew it was time to hit the tables again. We caught up with the blogger crew at a Showboat craps table and proceeded to piss everyone off and lose a little money along the way. Since we weren’t feeling the Showboat, Kat, Heather, Soxlover, and I headed back to the Taj to recreate the magic there. It didn’t work. So after losing for an hour or so, we all went back to Caesar’s to play $10 craps, which is a level I’m more comfortable with than the $15 minimums they were running at the Taj. Soxlover continued his unlucky streak and decided to go back to the Borgata cursing the gods of craps the whole time. The second he walked away from the table it got insanely hot and we once again won a boatload of money. Soxlover is officially off my list of people that can role craps with us.

All night long we had been joking about Y2K+7, which if you aren’t familiar, was daylight savings this year. At the last minute, our trusted news organizations decided to make a big deal out of daylight savings moving up, because a number of computers were going to have to be updated manually. I was already alerted to the fact that it was a big deal because someone from my group actually had to be in the office on Sunday to make sure all of our applications started up properly after losing an hour. I’m glad that person wasn’t me, because I was much happier spending the evening drunk at a craps table proclaiming to everyone that the lights were going to go out and chaos would ensue once the clock struck 2am (or 3am? Eh, fuck who knows). But alas, just like Y2K, Y2K+7 proved to also be a letdown. Luckily for me, I won a lot more during Y2K+7 than I did during Y2K (which was my inagural trip to Vegas). Oh the joys of gambling.


SXSW – who do I want to see


Posted by avoque

Girl Talk – easily my most anticipated show. I am a sucker for remix/sample artists, and this guy is the best I’ve heard in a long time. I’m sold the moment he mixes Hum with M.I.A., I’m sold.
Fujiya & Miyagi – I’ve really been digging their album.

Most of the others I have seen before
The Saturday Knights – Their show is a sure thing. Go to the KEXP blog and download their single. Unless you think it’s bad to listen to other kinds of music.
Land of Talk – female singer/lead guitar player rocks out with a Les Paul SG. It’s crazy, I hate AC/DC, but I love the SG. I must warn you though, they are Canadian.
Tokyo Police Club – these guys look like all the hipsters I hate, but they bring the rock like there’s no tomorrow. They are also Canadian.
+/- – these guys have the best name because it accurately describes how I feel about them. They can go from awesome to terrible, sometimes even in the same song. Eternally frustrating, but I can’t say they didn’t warn me. I love half of their latest album; guess what I think of the other half.
120 days – I’m still trying to figure out if these guys are too douchebagish to really enjoy live. i’ll give them one more shot, but if they cry about their ridiculously complicated setup not working, they will be dead to me – even though their sound reminds me of the lamda lamda lamda’s carnival performance in Revenge of the Nerds.
Junior Senior - “Move Your Feet” still makes me smile.

Shows that will be too crowded to go to, but i’d like to see them anyway
Lily Allen – she’s playing at stubbs, so I could probably get in, but stubbs is one of my least favorite venues during sxsw.
Amon Tobin – he’s playing Elysium, which is always too crowded for non-badge holders.


It’s like ‘haha’ funny


Posted by avoque

For those of you that weren’t aware, Kat and I took a standup comedy class through Manhattan Comedy School, which ended with a graduation performance at Carolines (though in the middle of the afternoon). It was an amazing experience. Some of my classmates had a lot of friends so the house was totally packed (somewhere around 300-400 people). To make it even better, some of my co-workers came out too. I was nervous as fuck, but I think I held my own well enough. I will eventually get a dvd copy of the performance, so the few of you that are actually interested in seeing it will get the opportunity to heckle me from the comfort of your own home. Please send a self-addressed stamped envelope, a blank dvd, and $49.95 and you can have this stellar performance before it’s on the shelves!


Wisconsin


Posted by avoque

It’s cold there, dontcha know. Right at freezing in fact, with mixed snow/rain/sleet. And they’re overly chipper about it too. The weather actually wasn’t all that bad. It’s actually what the weather is supposed to be like in New York, I just lucked out this year. Something to look forward to for next year, I guess. It’s whiter up there, and I’m not refering to the weather. I was watching a comedian once who made a joke about how there were no black people up north because they were too smart to live somewhere that cold. I saw four black people in my two days in Madison. And one hispanic guy, who overcooked my burger (of course). With that, I’m pretty sure I saw the majority of the local color. But the cheese curds. The cheese curds made it all worthwhile.