Quickie

I'm only here to touch base with you guys about the fact that The Cookie Lounge was everything I hoped it would be, and more. I went there with Lauren, John, Robert, and Michael. Yo Gabba Gabba was playing on a TV, and I saw Mark Mothersbaugh draw a fish! And they had free wi-fi! We played a game full of trick questions - I got a bunch right! The cookie itself was fantastic - it was made with chocolate dough, dried cherries, and 55% dark chocolate chips. Think about that. It came out deliciously hot and perfectly melty. God, it was good. It was...(wait for it)...the Platonic Ideal of cookies.

I land in Houston tomorrow at 2:30, so...hold on to your butts, I guess. I'm going to tear the town a new asshole so it won't miss me when I'm in class next week, learning about the Holy Scriptures (according to the Catholics) and/or Astronomy. Ugh. I guess the good thing is that when I eventually, inevitably puke out of sheer desperation, I'll get to see my cookie again.

That's disgusting. I'm sorry.

Twice in one night! Can you handle it?

So John, Robert, Lauren and I went to play trivia at the Flying Saucer tonight. We did pretty poorly because the first two rounds had stupid fucking themes (Breakfast and Current Events [which mostly centered on sports tonight]). But then we did awesomely on the third round, the theme for which was Apes. I even contributed a correct answer! It was Jane Goodall. Haha! Suck on that, everyone.

Tomorrow we're going to get sushi for lunch - or I heard rumors that we were going to, anyway - and then we're going to The Cookie Lounge at some point tomorrow night. The Cookie Lounge is this bakery kind of place where you go and you get to order cookies. Like ice cream, you know? You get to choose your own add-ins and whatever else. You even choose what kind of milk you'd like to drink with your special cookies and they pour you a glass of it. Then they cook your cookies right in front of you, and give them to you piping hot from the oven. BONUS (check this the fuck out): delivery is also an option. That's right, they fucking deliver CUSTOM MADE cookies to your fucking house if you want them to. Jesus Christ. When Robert told me about that, I made a split-second decision. That decision was: AUSTIN IS STONER VALHALLA.
LA has better weed; I can admit that much. But everything else there fucking sucks compared to Austin. Oh, you'd like to speak up on behalf of LA? Well, you can go jump off a fucking bridge if it doesn't have delivery cookies, alright? Just...don't even bother. Show me some delivery cookies and then I'll talk to you.

I had some other stuff to talk about, but all of existence pales in comparison to the concept of The Cookie Lounge right now. So I'll save whatever else for tomorrow. Goodnight.

Working, Working, Working...Worked

So I owe you all a post from Friday. I'm sorry I fell down on the job, you guys, but I was...having kind of an insane weekend.

I just tried to type out a little synopsis of what I did on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, but I kept mixing up things that happened on various days. It was kind of a blur. I guess we can just suffice it to say that I hung out with Marion, Amanda, Amanda's boyfriend Chris, Kris, Matt Kic, and various other (un)savory characters on and off for three days. For a further example of how far overboard I went, on Saturday I got out of bed at 5pm (I know! Sinful) and was out the front door by 7. It got pretty ridiculous there for a bit. But I'm done with that now. Until next Thursday.

As some of you know, I am in Austin this week, visiting Lauren, John, and Robert. I'm here to work a little bit on writing with John, and to detox, and to get away from my parents for a bit. It's a mental health vacation. About the work: John and I went on our first hour today (which is showbiz lingo for "turned off our cell phones and internet and worked for one solid hour") and I think it actually went really well. I'm really happy with what we did. I hope to get enough writing done in the next few days that I can continue to build on it when I'm not in Austin. I'm kind of toying with the idea of coming back for a weekend every once in a while over the summer to continue the process, but I haven't really run it by Lauren and John yet. and I don't know what my class workload (I'm taking a theology and an astronomy in Summer I, and a philosophy in Summer II) will be like. So I guess we will all have to wait and see. Because you care. Heh.

John and I are going to try to do another hour at some time tonight. Tomorrow, Lauren, John, Robert, and I plan on going to play trivia at the Flying Saucer here. Should be a good time - they do this pretty often and are still really enthusiastic about it so it must be fun, right? I'll let you know.

Burgers and Fries

There's a restaurant in Austin called Five Guys (Caroline just told me that they actually have over 400 locations - it's a national chain!). That reminds me of when we were in town for SXSW and every time we drove by it we would make fun of the name. I loved coming up with things to yell. Here is a picture of their signage:



And here is a poll. Which is your favourite hilarious slogan?

SXSW Dos and Don'ts!

Hey guys, here are a few videos and advice from SXSW 2K9!

Here's a video of Robert, who was a volunteer at SXSW this year. He quite enjoyed it. He also enjoyed getting married to John this summer!

OH JOHN from Priya on Vimeo.

DO!

Bring sneakers! Wear them!

Take the bus in Austin if at all possible. It's super cheap, and the day pass lasts for 24 hours from the time of purchase - it doesn't run out at 3AM like the ones in LA do.

Go to panels, if you paid for it. I know you have to get up in the morning, but, even if you're not an industry professional, you can learn LOTS of really neat stuff.

Wear something with protected pockets.

Write down your schedule (include the address of each venue).

Double- or triple-book yourself, and list your plans in order of how much you want to see each act/panel/exhibition.

Take walking distance between venues into account. Yes, they're all close together, but not THAT close.

Research bands that you don't know yet - even if it's just by genre. The whole point is to make discoveries!

RSVP to parties and make note of when and where they are. They're good for free food and drinks, and clean(ish) bathrooms.

Document your trip in as much detail as possible! I tweeted, journaled, filmed and blogged (in my Blackberry - that's actually where this list is coming from).

Mingle with strangers: you will get helpful tips, entertainment, and commiseration.

Get a pedicure when you get home. It will be WORTH IT.

Here's a video of Kyle, Lauren, Marion and I eating lunch at the Mellow Mushroom last Tuesday.

At the Mellow Mushroom from Priya on Vimeo.

DON'T!

Bring a purse. Marion did and she seemed to get on okay, but I was glad to have one less thing to worry about.

Have more than a few important things on your person at a time. It'll give you less to think about during a show so you can be in the moment and enjoy your surroundings. My important things were: phone, video camera, ID and money. And sunglasses.

Be a fashion victim! Be realistic about weather changes throughout the day and - this bears repeating - WEAR SENSIBLE SHOES!

Get a manicure before you go. That is so not rock n' roll at all, and it will make you like those girls you'll inevitably see staggering around in short skirts and 5 inch heels, looking puffy and thinking they're quite impressive.

Get uppity with volunteers. They have the power to do you major favors if you are polite.

Here's a parade of Assholes in downtown Austin.

OH JOHN from Priya on Vimeo.

HAHA! Just kidding. That was an accident; here are the Assholes!

Segway Segue from Priya on Vimeo.

What do you think, guys? Did I miss anything?

Watchmen, because I said I would.

By now you've all heard everything there is to hear about the movie, and the book, and you've all formed your own opinion on it. All that's left is what I think about it, especially since I built up to it all last month. Basically it was good, but I was pretty distracted by the fact that I was compelled to use the movie to remind me of what was in the book. It was hard for me to separate the two, so my suggestion - if you haven't done so already - is for you to read the book first, and watch the movie later as a kind of fun supplemental material. I'm excited to see what they do with the Black Freighter bit, though - I heard they're coming out with an animated DVD or something.

One comment I have to make is about the gratuitousness of the violence and the sex in this movie. This is especially apparent to me in context of reports that they changed the ending in part as a reaction to 9/11 and their reluctance to show what the book did (I can't really say anything more about that here without going all Spoilery).
I feel like not enough attention was paid to the fact that Rorschach was a complete lunatic - okay, this is getting hard for me to articulate. I'll give you an example of what I mean: when he was filming Jaws, Stephen Spielberg made the decision to not include the colour red in any context other than when the shark made an appearance and killed someone: it made (and still makes) the red blood seem more shocking, and creates an obvious, elemental association between blood and the shark. I would have preferred to see Snyder indulge his little-boy tendencies only when Rorschach was responsible for the actions they depicted, since Rorschach had a deserved reputation for being savagely brutal. The way Snyder did it made the violence feel spotty and pointless.

The sex scenes (I'm counting the non-starter) were awkwardly long and strangely graphic. They were explicit not in terms of the actors' physical exposure - there wasn't anything visible that I haven't seen in a million other movies - but in terms of the actual processes of sex. I wish they hadn't done that...it made it seem pornographic, when, in the graphic novel, it was a significant event that revealed a lot about Dan's character, and about his relationship with Laurie. The character development in the novel was one of the things that made it as artistically competent as it was (besides the social and political commentaries), and to diminish that at all for the sake of a "One Night at McCool's" style wank-fest rubbed me the wrong way.

The best thing about the movie BY FAR was the fact that we went to the Alamo Drafthouse and I got to have a $5 milkshake and chocolate chip cookies for dinner. Because I'm seven.

Spring Broken

Whoa! It's been 10 days since I last posted! I can't believe I did that.
Since then I've been pretty busy - I crammed for midterms and then went to Austin for SXSW on my Spring Break. It was all fantastic, and almost exactly how I imagined it would be (certain particulars, of course, didn't work out exactly as planned, but the overall effect was very pleasing).
I can't write too much about it right now - I have a Chaucer midterm today at 5 and I didn't read as much as I wanted to, so I need to go do that - but I will be back shortly with videos (!!), a day-by-day breakdown of what we did and who we saw, and I guess I can tell you right now that I'm working on a "SXSW Dos and Don'ts" list for an upcoming post. In the meantime, check out my Twitter, and look at this video. It's of Bedouin Soundclash - my favourite "discovery" from last week.