*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors

Usually at this time of year I’m hunting down the best afterparties related to ACL, stocking up on Emergen-C, and whispering sweet nothings to my liver like a good liver-beater does. But for some reason, this year the whole shebang-e-bang has taken me by surprise. Totally slipped my mind. I blame our recent spate of off-kilter weather. Because it simply hasn’t been hot enough, for long enough, to already be time for throngs of festmonkies to go make like food for a billion Lady Bird mosquitoes, while totally destroying Zilker with flip-flopped feet and a billion half-crushed Heineken cans.

But here we are. It’s ACL week already, damnit, and I feel completely unprepared for the fun!

You might feel unprepared too. Even though you’ve been bragging to everyone about how you bought those tickets back in December or whatever. Somehow, you’ve managed to fail in preparing yourself for the rigors associated with this particular festival. And preparation will be key to any possibility of your possibly enjoying all that the weekend will have to offer you!

Because I’ve been to my fair share of ACL festivals, and have some practice in braving/avoiding the brutality of the thing, I feel I might have some helpful advice to impart. So, here goes some partial imparting.

Just like most festivals, ACL is a large, somewhat dirty, outdoor event full of opportunities for various gymnastic routines associated with the use of portable toilets, along with a collective attempt at record-breaking heat exhaustion. Oh, and just like at every other god-fearin’ state fair out there, Ham and Brie Paninis will be available for purchase for a mere six American dollars.

Mmmm, just like the rodeo brie from my childhood…

Speaking of the festival’s food, it just gets more and more interesting as the years pass. This ain’t no fried-Twinkie-funnel-cake festival, yo. I’m going to kick dust on a tangent trail here and point out a couple of the more fascinating cuisine selections from this year’s Food Court (they’re calling it that, not me) menu.

Food.

Word On The Street will be selling this interesting collection of nouns for four of those sweaty American dollars you’ll be holding hostage in that sweet fanny pack adorning your hip: Vanilla Bean Sake Pineapple. I’m sure someone out there knows exactly what this combination of words is supposed to mean in terms of creating a single food item, but I feel that the mystery it creates is its most potent marketing element. It could be a drink. It could also be a vanilla-pineapple hybrid that’s been soaked in rice wine. Though that might be hard to eat under festival conditions, and the pineapple rinds would surely end up as weapons in the swayers vs chair-people battle that’s sure to erupt at the front of the Dylan show. Perhaps it’s an anagram? Or a Mensa word/consonant scramble with “two cold boiled eggs in a paper bag” as its answer.

Children of the Kettle Corn. Awesome. The irony that this ironic band name is not actually applied to a band but instead to a beloved summer camp treat, is not at all lost on me. And I fucking LOVE kettle corn. Even if it is inherently evil in that barefoot-rural/Menudo-age-policy sort of way.

Royer’s Round Top Café is the only vendor with a couple of strategic change-making selections: $3.50 for a “Cutie Pie” and $5.50 for a “Choice Beef Filet Wrap”. I have no clue what kind of pie filling “Cutie” might be, or what “Choice” is referring to for the “Wrap”, but the price points are pretty keen. This is quite clever considering everyone else has their items at even-dollar prices to cut down on the silver factor. I expect ol’ Royer’s will have that tip jar front and center, expectant to receive those bitterly unwanted quarters. No self-respecting sweatfester wants a bunch of festival change to bring an unwanted sag to their fanny pack.

I think Thistle should be applauded strictly for their attempt at a helpful display of combo-mathematics. A “Wrap” is listed as $6, as is their “Melt”, and a cookie is $1. Then, just in case the comprehension of those three listings completely tapped out your ability to comprehend… anything, there’s a separate menu listing for “Wrap or Melt with a Cookie $7”. You just don’t see this type of consideration for the arithmetically-disinclined on any of the other vendors’ menu listings.

Heat.

Pray that a hurricane whips up in the gulf to provide you some shade. Failing that, you’re allowed to bring non-beach-type umbrellas. I recommend you bring seven of them, clustered around your person like a Death Blossom. It’s your only hope to avoid getting full-blown melanoma before Bjork hits the stage and scares the shit out of little children for miles around.

Port-o-lets.

I recommend adult diapers, and an awareness of where large, adult-diaper-sized trash receptacles are on the festgrounds in order to save yourself from all guaranteed port-o-let anxiety.

Otherwise, don’t act like you’re going to be able to pound down sixteen Heinekens and a pint of smuggled vodka without having to darken one of these disaster-boxes at least once per festival day. I recommend that you hold off for as long as possible, preferably until after it’s dark, but while your eyes are still sun-blinded, and try your damnedest to be swaying-drunk. Best that you not actually see the facilities that you’ll be attempting to utilize. Otherwise, you’ll be fully aware and honestly afraid of touching any of the Lake LBJ-like surfaces in there. And besides, if you're properly inebriated, you won’t have to feel any guilt about adding to that nastiness after you degrade the entire interior of the thing due to failed attempts at avoiding that ever-building lake of sewage that will inevitably cover the portable’s floor.

It would not surprise me to learn that some fest-goers will simply opt to soil themselves rather than take a full hour to bravely navigate the sea of chairs and Soviet bread lines between them and the portables, just to maintain their dignity (whatever that means). Some things simply aren’t worth the hassle.

Actually Experiencing The Bands That “Justify” The Admission Cost.

Unless you are willing to set up a fortified chair-camp in front of the stage where your preferred musician(s) will be playing, a full seven hours before they start, and then successfully defend this position against a constant assault by other chair-camping marauders and leach-like non-chair ne’er-do-wells (perhaps invoking the umbrella Death Blossom to this end), prepare yourself for some awesome-but-confusing song-echoing, and the incessant drunken banter of the other thirty-thousand dirty people you’re touching toes with, a super-sweet half-mile from the stage.

It’s kinda like buying a boombox from a garage sale, putting used batteries in there, tuning it to an A.M. station, throwing it into the deep end of a pool, and then trying to watch/listen to it from the high dive, pretending “it’s like I’m RIGHT THERE with the band!”

But in all seriousness, Dylan’s mustache will still look fucking sweet, even from the opposite stage (from which I feel confident it WILL be visible).