Truesday: SxSW 2006 Day Three Pt. One
*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors
To all the people that met up with us Austinists at the parties: thank you a billion times over! Especially to those who tolerated me when I was absolutely fall-down drunk! I probably made lots of inappropriate comments (typical topics may have included: goats, sex with family members, racism, back fat, Dadaism) and perhaps even flashed my genitals around without proper regard for mixed company.
Call it a gift.
It really does our minds well when we get to meet the people who read what our wandering fingers tap out. We operate in a vacuum of sorts, where we don’t really know who is reading, if anyone. But last week, during the parties, was a reminder that people do indeed check this site for goings-ons and whatnot. A couple of people even have writers they enjoy reading. Not being one of those writers, I won’t get all haterade, but you all just like Bre because she’s got pretty hair or whatever.
Man, my coffee is really bitter tasting all of a sudden. Huh.
There’s something strange that happens to a person when they meet their compromised self. That is to say, when they find out who they are amidst a stressful and compromised situation. In a foxhole under heavy fire. Aboard a downing plane. Tied up in the trunk of a stranger's Lincoln Towncar with an explosive case of diarrhea.
You know, the usual.
My story doesn’t exactly follow those lines in terms of nobility or thrust-of-situation, but I figure I’ll tell it anyway. Just because.
SxSW 2006 Experience: Day Three (the first two days are documented elsewhere)
I had to work my real job for the first part of the day, waiting for five to hit so I could foot over to Red 7 for our day party. When I got there, I believe it was Levy who was still playing, but I really didn’t catch much of their stuff. I’ve heard good things about them though. Asobi Seksu was the total shit. Their front woman is this pocket-sized ball of frantic energy. She plays into three categories of typical man-fetish: petite, Asian, and playing an instrument. Killing me over here.
Ghostland Observatory, as expected, flipped the shit. They had to play a shortened set due to weather issues, but they killed it anyway. The only disappointment I have about the day show was that the sound people ran into much trouble when Controller.Controller hit the stage. Mic problems of some sort. So I didn’t get to hear them.
But I did get to talk with them quite a bit, and I have to say that I was very impressed with them as people. It’s probably a given that bands really just want to play to crowds, and somehow make a positive impact on those who listen. But it becomes crystal when you talk with them amidst technical difficulties, and you actually hear them say it over and over. And that makes it even more upsetting when it comes to pass that they aren’t allowed to do what they love. What the crowd came to hear. Fucking heart breaking.
Off to Austin Design Center to kill my liver at the Awesome, Inc party, hosted by Austinist and friends.
At the afterparty, I got a bit faded. I knew I had bypassed “pleasurably buzzed” when the whole super-repetition shit started. Telling the same story repeatedly is understandable, if not lame. But repeating the same sentence because I couldn’t concentrate is just ridiculous. I talked to the guys from Forward Russia! for a couple of minutes, and all I could do was tell them how much I liked them, and that I did a brief review for them here on Austinist. Those two sentences. I told them both of those little tidbits repeatedly, over a five minute period.
And then the ass disaster that was my Sparks over-consumption became all-too scarily apparent.
I’ve never been a fan of fad booze. And Sparks is fad booze. An evil, evil iteration of fad booze that I apparently should never drink. They co-sponsored our party, which is always appreciated, and the following is just one opinion of one man.
All night long I was double-fisting with cans of the stuff, and kinda enjoying the flavor of it. Really, I was just tired of drinking beer, and I figured hard liquor would absolutely destroy me, so I chose to drink cans of marketing campaign. This was quite possibly the worst decision I’ve ever made in my drinking career.
And I’ve made some doozies in my day. Trust that.
After downing a few cans of that antifreeze stuff, I noticed that I was having to piss every ten minutes. And it was not comfortable in any way. When the feeling hit, it needed to happen immediately. The urgency was overwhelming. My body REALLY didn’t appreciate having to house that crap for more than a few moments. So I decided to stop drinking it and went on to water instead.
But that didn’t stop the flow. Not at all. The seal was not only broken, it was ripped entirely off. I was a pissing machine. As potentially disastrous as that was, I gave it no real regard because being a dude, I can piss just about anywhere (not legally, but physically), which is both a convenience and a curse. Because really, there are some places where you really don’t want to pee with flagrance (on the witness stand during a murder trial, in line for groceries at Central Market, or in a hot tub). But the convenience factor cancels out a-lot of the sense for propriety. And that’s when the mistakes get made.
