Retrospect/Recommends

I'm moving down to Austin right after South By Southwest, just in time for the city's collective hangover. It's sort of a bummer, as SXSW was one of my favorite events of last year. The city is completely saturated in music. Every block has at least five bands in tiny venues and six more outside, with their tubas and turntables set up on the corner. Last year I wandered into a parade with the Flaming Lips.



By the end of the festival, we had ditched the idea of seeing the bands we thought we wanted to see (besides the Drive-By Truckers, who were completely worthwhile with Kris Kristofferson) because people like the security volunteers at Animal Collective would not let us in without tickets or badges. But very tall security guard danced with me and Naomi after I complained that we were being treated like second-class citizens. "I never want you to feel that way," he told us.

My favorite band of the festival was the United States of Electronica, featuring this pink-and-sweat drenched wonderboy:



Unfortunately, they're only good live.

I keep telling myself that I'll be there next year, plus I'll be able to rent out my apartment for a little cash on the side, like everyone else on Craigslist. But such promises feel empty and the pain remains hidden in my heart. To solace myself I overdose on free downloads at the showcasing artists' website, and then lie in a pile of my own self-loathing.

Otherwise, I'm excited to move!!!!! If you want any of my stuff, let me know. I have a variety of "gently-used" to "missing essential parts" furniture, plus a sweet bike.

I finished my job and watched two good movies within the past two days, both of which I highly recommend. The first was C.R.A.Z.Y., a French-Canadian film about a boy growing up in Montreal during the seventies/early eighties. He goes through a glam phase, which is pretty awesome, and a self-discovery phase in Jerusalem which I think was kind of spiritually overwrought, but he gets a great tan nonetheless.

Naomi and I went to Tinseltown, the local megaplex, last night, to see Pan's Labyrinth. Tinseltown was out of control. There were legions of high schoolers milling about, some in togas. It wasn't like there were a lot of kids in togas, and it also wasn't like there was a movie involving togas coming out last night, so I was confused by what seemed like big changes in high school socializing since I've graduated. Is it like the cult of celebrity has so permeated our culture that the high schools have to nominate their own and put them up on some kind of toga-clad pedestal to imitate American values? They should make a movie about that. Following Julius Ceasar. So that someone gets stabbed in the back at the end. Kind of like what happened in Pan's Labyrinth. It was scary and bloody and I had to cover my eyes and ears for certain parts, because I'm sensitive to that kind of thing. But it was beautiful and sad and invoked an entire range of human emotion leaning towards the infinite-abyss-of-sorrow-and-human-pain side. I should be like, a movie reviewer. Or a movie maker, a movie maker that studies high school, and just make Mean Girls over and over again.