austin: March 2005 Archives

I check the Texas Sex Offender database every few months, more out of morbid curiosity than any kind of fear. The thing with Jessica in Florida gives me the creeps, sure, but like most parents I feel like I've trained my kids pretty well, and we haven't ever had any offenders who lived closer than a half-mile away, so I never worried too much.

So this morning I check the database again, and we've got a new neighbor. Less than a block away, a guy who was convicted in 1997 of indecent exposure to a 17 year old. When he was in his 20's. Now this shouldn't worry me, right? I mean, 17. Fuck, he probably just didn't check id, he fucked up, he served his time, no biggy.

Except that this was his second conviction.

One offense of this sort of tame nature says to me "mistake". Two offenses says, ok, this guy has a problem and it seems to be capable of overpowering his common sense and morals.

And this right when Cass is old enough that we're routinely giving her permission to walk up to Quack's or the grocery store with a friend.

So what do you do? Do you tell her "don't go near this house on Duval!" Do you show her the guys picture? Or do you just reinforce the usual stuff about self-defense and talking to strangers and all that and hope that she gets the message?

I know, I know, don't fall into the hysteria that the media likes to generate. Don't blow things all out of proportion.

But these are my kids here, and the gut reaction to want to protect them is pretty powerful.

Sometimes I want my toddlers back, when we could protect them just by locking medicine up high and putting covers on all the electrical outlets.

This first song is called "You Fuck Like My Dad."

With that, we are introduced to the lead singer of the duo Giant Drag...a deeply-disturbed little waif from LA who manages to channel both PJ Harvey and the ghost of Jeffrey Lee Pierce...bluesy growl, smack, and all. Reviews I've read keep mentioning My Bloody Valentine or Mazzy Star, neither of which do justice to the seriously fucked-up bad attitude this girl has. I love 'em.

The Morning After Girls, from Melbourne, work backwards via Spacemen 3 to the Velvets & MC5. They were splendiferous. They also look fabulous. They're also really nice...I ran into a few of them down on 6th Street the night after the show and they gave me a CD just for saying they rock. Sadly, the hot keyboard player wasn't around or I would have had her autograph my boob. (Lots of songs and videos on their web site, check 'em out.)

Tegan & Sara were even shorter than I imagined. They were plagued by bad sound, like everybody else who played at Eternal, but rocked hard all the same. I picked up a t-shirt for Cass, which she wore to the mall the next day. I am such a good daddy.

Titan Go Kings are this cute-as-fuck goofy girl-pop-punk band from Tokyo.

Noodles are another all-girl Japanese band who sound a whole hell of a lot like the Breeders, in a good way. Plus they have the good sense to play Buzzcocks covers.

And Radio Nationals do the Uncle Tupelo thing as good as Uncle Tupelo ever did. Yeah, they probably get tired of hearing that, but hell, alt-country isn't loved for being original, just for being right. There's something about listening to this kind of music outside in a tent on a starry night that makes Austin feel a whole lot more like Austin than it usually does these days.

Those were the highlights. I saw a lot more bands that I either don't remember or didn't like. Missed ten times as many that were either too far to walk to or too crowded to get into. And the flu finally took over halfway through last night and after failing to get into the Continental Club, I decided to call an end and came home and watched Carnivale reruns while the Nyquil kicked in. Ahhhh...high on Nyquil. As high as I ever get any more.

Returning to clubland has brought back something that I'd almost forgotten: my horrendous, pathological, near-crippling stagefright.

I cannot pee if somebody is watching. It just doesn't happen. I'm standing at the urinal and hear somebody walk in behind me and some valve somewhere just slams shut.

It's always made clubbing quite an exercise in tactical urination. I know the clubs that have lousy bathrooms. Bathrooms with no stalls, or no doors on the stalls. Bathrooms where there's always a line, and thus always somebody staring at the back of your head waiting for you to finish so they can have a turn. Emo's, for instance, even made it into The Onion, their bathroom is so awful.

And I know the clubs that have nice bathrooms. Stalls with doors. Privacy. Low traffic.

If I was in a club with a lousy bathroom, I usually could figure out the nearest place that had a better one where I could go pee if I had to. Many's the time I made the trek from Liberty Lunch (one long trough...what a nightmare!) up to Waterloo Brewing Co. where I could take a nice leak in the dark in the back stall.

My friends all think I have the tiniest bladder in the world. Granted, I do, but it's worse than that. I'll head off to the men's and they'll say "Dang, Ray, you just went!"...but what they don't know is that the last time I went, some asshole was standing behind me waiting his turn and unknowingly giving me The Fear, and so the whole operation was a bust. I'm still full. I'm going back to try again.

And as it turns out, sobriety has not saved me from my tiny bladder the way I wished it had. Coffee, energy drinks, water, and near-beer all tend to go through you.

So, for your reading pleasure, and future reference: where to pee and where not to pee at SXSW if you aren't capable of just whipping it out anywhere.

Blender Bar @ The Ritz: Fuggetaboutit.

Emo's: You have got to be kidding me. If you're at Emo's and have to pee, zip on over to Lovejoy's and cross your fingers, you might hit the bathrooms at a lucky moment.

Latitude 30: Easily the most lovely bathrooms on 6th Street. Two stalls, one urinal, and clean clean clean. I went twice. Kristi reports that the women's was equally spectacular.

Momo's: Just OK. There's one stall, one urinal, kinda gross, but it's close to the stage, so if you're one of those people who can stand to be seen but not heard, you can go in while the band is on and it'll be loud as fuck so nobody can hear you tinkle.

Opal Divines: Really a great pee. Two stalls, one urinal in the men's inside. The nice thing about this one is that there are port-o-potties outside during SXSW, and so since most of the less-inhibited guys just use those, there's little competition for a stall in the indoor facilities. Only downside is if you're really unlucky and end up at the urinal, every time the door opens all the girls in line for the women's room can see you, and if you think you've got stagefright now, just wait til you've got the ladies watching you too. Not a fucking drop, I'm telling you, and if you try too hard, you risk letting loose a fart, which is not a good way to pick up chicks. Or so I'm told.

Buffalo Billiards: This is really the big secret pee palace on 6th Street. Downstairs here is not part of SXSW, so there's no line to get in and no cover. The downstairs bathroom is huge, but the upstairs people can't use it since they'll have to get back in the wristband line to get in to where the bands are. Three stalls and a bazillion urinals, so plenty of elbow room. Sure, it's kind of a disgusting dump, but you're just taking a piss, you're not there to hang out. I'm not, anyway.

So, that's all the peeing I did all weekend. Hope this helps somebody.

And in between potty breaks, I did manage to hear a little music this weekend too. If I can think of anything to say about that aspect of the festival that's as interesting as my journal of pee, I'll post it tomorrow.

SXSW. Just the very letters fill me with exhaustion. OK, so it's really just a blur of cold medicine and Red Bull that propels me, so don't expect any bats, but cut me some slack, OK?

This is the first time in about eight years that I've bothered to get a wristband, even though in the early days I used to come in from out of town just for this event. Early on I would be here as a non-commercial radio geek, get a badge, do the panels, the whole bit. My friends were radio geeks and did the same. But as time went on, my friends either stopped going (they grew up, you might say), or went into the music biz in a more professional capacity. And I discovered something about the music industry and SXSW, which is that during that week, people who I drank beer with and hung out with all the time would suddenly turn into music industry assholes. And I, the no-longer-involved-with-signing-bands-or-playing-bands Average Useless Schmoe, became a non-person. I got tired of hanging around them when they were like that, so SXSW became my favorite week of the year to stay as far away from downtown and those people as I possibly could.

But last year I went to see Mission of Burma during SXSW. It was my first time seeing a band in a club since getting sober, and even though I went by myself, I had a fucking great time. Met some people. Met a Rollergirl even. So I figured this year I was ready to try the whole wristband, no-sleep, sore-feet for four days thing again and see how it goes.

Last night I rode the Triumph downtown, saw a lot of great music, hung out with my college-buddy K. and her ex-boyfriend. She was charming as usual. He was, well, how he usually is, but mostly kept his mouth shut.

I also ran into one of my old pals who does band PR part time, and in the two minutes I was in her presence she managed to prove my theory about how music industry friends are best avoided in March. Feh. Fuck 'em. Her husband, on the other hand, was his usual affable self. He's a fellow software geek. Go figure.

Later I'll post more about who I saw, who rocked, who sucked, and where I peed.

Tonight is Japanese girl-punk night. Wish me luck.

The new Whole Foods rocks. In a word.

Last night I made my first visit, and thankfully the opening week hordes had thinned out. See, I didn't want to just wander through like a tourist, I wanted my first visit to put it to a test. After all, if you can't successfully shop for dinner there and feel good about it afterwards, then no amount of sushi bars and walk-in beer coolers and cheese-tasting islands is going to make up for it.

So I went with the vague idea that I wanted to pan-fry some fish, and have a vegetable and maybe another side. We ended up with red snapper, sliced portobello mushrooms sauted in butter and garlic, steamed broccoli, and French bread.

The fish counter is very much improved from the old Whole Foods. (Note, when I say "old Whole Foods" now, I'm talking about the previous Whole Foods, not the true old one that was up where Cheapo Discs is now. Man, it's confusing now that "old Whole Foods" is so ambiguous. Must be how the old timers feel when they say "the old Antone's".) Anyways, fish...the fish counter isn't as big as the one at Central Market, but all the product looked great, and it was cheaper than CM too. Everything was marked as either wild or farm-raised (with lots of it wild).

The produce section rocks. I would put it on a par with Central Market size-wise, but something about it was just more appealing than CM.

The bakery stomps Central Market. No question. Central Market's bakery has really gone downhill in the past year. It's come to resemble a standard HEB bakery now. But everything at Whole Foods had me drooling...the desserts, the pies (Central Market hasn't had pie in months!), the breads. The chocolate stand is fantastic. It never occurred to me til now...Central Market has a great selection of packaged chocolate from around the world, but why don't they have a real chocolates counter where you can get handmade stuff and assemble custom boxes of bon-bons?

The plain old French baguettes at Whole Foods are fantastic, by the way. They're a lot like New Orleans-style french bread now...very crispy crust but light inside with lots of big air bubbles. Not like your typical baguette, and better than either the baguette or the pain francais that Central Market has. Good po-boy bread, I 'm thinking. I picked up some Irish butter to saute the fish in, and between cooking the fish and cooking the mushrooms and devouring this lovely bread, we went through almost a half pound of butter.

(Irish butter is better than sex, by the way.)

The new meat counter also blows Central Market away. I'd guess it's twice as large. Granted, Gina's a veggie so I rarely get to cook meat at home, but damn.

I visited the cafe at the Whole Foods in mid-town Manhattan last summer, and I was astounded. It was unlike anything I had ever seen...vast salad bars, hot and cold buffets, pizza ovens. At the time I thought "geez, Whole Foods is based in Austin, how come New York gets all this and we don't?" Well, we've got that now, and more. Hell, the seafood section has its own cafe. CM has six soups in its prepared foods section, but WF has six soups JUST in the seafood section. Six seafood soups, and more of other kinds elsewhere in the store. There's even a sushi bar.

Central Market just finished a long and painful remodeling. They expanded the store, they re-arranged things, but it's still Central Market, just bigger.

Whole Foods has reinvented itself. They have taken the food-geek superstore concept to a whole new level. It is truly astounding. They've blown Central Market off the map.

So, the downsides...traffic and parking. 6th & Lamar has always been a pretty congested intersection, but now it's also a destination. The underground parking garage is also laid out weird, with lots of strange offshoots and one-ways and no-left turns, etc. Last night around 6 it wasn't so bad, but today at lunch, they had two cops and a bunch of employees directing traffic just to keep people from meandering around down there and causing gridlock. Hopefully it will get better as people learn their favorite ways into and out of it.

These are my first impressions. I need time to think more about what it all means. What it means in regard to foodieness, and corporateness, and traffic and congestion and new Austin vs. "Keep Austin Weird". But it definitely means a lot of something.

Sara W. hipped me to the Coachella festival happening in Indio, CA, at the end of April. Look at that list of bands. Gang of Four? Bauhaus? Cocteau Twins? New Order?

The Eighties are back, baby! And I never got a chance to see most of those bands the first time around. Bauhaus never came to Texas. Gang of Four didn't show up until they started sucking.

But we did make a pilgrimage from Houston to Austin to see New Order in 1985 at the City Coliseum. It was my second time coming to Austin, and I remember how awesome it was that even a bunch of total strangers like us could end up invited to the big post-show house party. Surrounded by people I worshipped from afar, like the Big Boys...and then New Order shows up at the party. I remember when we were leaving, seeing Peter Hook sitting in the grass on the front lawn drinking a Shiner. And once again, I said to myself, "Austin rocks. Some day I'm going to live here."

I'm working on talking Gina into going to Coachella, or at least letting me go, but the timing absolutely sucks. I have a big deadline at work that week, Cassidy's birthday is the following week, and our crawfish boil is supposed to happen right around that time. Plus money, etc., etc.

So Sara's going. Can Karl be talked into it? Anybody else?