constant narrator

I talked bug into riding the bus down to the festival even though he didn’t have a day pass and it was sold out. There were a lot of people; Barton Springs Road was closed off and the street was filled with people walking and on bikes. We saw no scalpers. Telling the universe we needed a ticket for bug to see the Pixies and we needed in the next five minutes, we walked through the crowd with the universal sign of ‘please give me a ticket!’: the lone finger in the air. I haven’t done that since the Dead were touring with Jerry. 30 seconds later a hurried transaction took place and bug had a three-day pass wristband on. We were in!

We found Samantha very quickly through the miracle of cell phones and headed toward the main stage. It was already very crowded. We got as far as the sound booth and were stuck*. The band came on very near their scheduled 8:45 time. The first few songs were plagued with sound troubles. We were just far enough back for it to be not quite loud enough. Bug reported the sound board guy was working hard to try to equalize everything. Eventually it seemed to settle down, I managed to weasel up a few more feet and get away from the evil talking group and could hear and see better.

Aaahhh, yes, there, the Pixies! Yum. The crowd was in love with Kim Deal. Everytime she sang alone or the super-screen featured a camera shot of her, the crowd roared. It seems the group high-school crush on Kim Deal still held some heat. Frank Black was in good form, his voice sounded great and he had energy and hollered appropriately. They played most of what you would expect them to play, ‘Wave of Mutilation’, ‘Monkey Gone to Heaven’, ‘Gigantic’ (especially good live), and ‘Here Comes Your Man’ along with some songs I recognized but couldn’t name and only a couple I didn’t remember at all. Granted I wasn’t the world’s biggest Pixies fan, but I think it would be hard coming of age listening to that genre without knowing most of the songs. It brought back some strange Iowa-River memories I didn’t know I had tucked away.

The group I had weaseled into were Fans and knew the words and were dancing, which is my favorite type of concert knot to be in, so I had a great time bouncing up and down and grinning at the folks around me. It was a good show. They finished and I felt very satiated.

When it was over we walked for what seemed like five hours to Samantha’s car in downtown Austin.

And now a diatribe about folding lawn chairs
Throughout the day folks had been camped out in the netherlands of the main stage in chairs and on blankets, far from the afternoon crowds who came to see the less-famous bands. Now, as the hungry 30-something horde moved in to get their chance to have Frank Black and Kim Deal sweat on them, these people were remaining in their chairs, giving everyone dirty looks as if the 40,000 people had come expressly to spoil their picnic. This is not the case. The 40,000 people actually came to see a band. A band that was 100-200 yards further away from them than need be because the folks with folding chairs refused to fold them up and stand. There were huge swaths of space completely taken by folding camp chairs. The chair people hated the newcomers and the Pixies fans hated the chair people. Had the chair people seemed to be die-hard Pixies fans who had camped out all day in order to be closer, it would have taken much of the pain away. But no: these were the people who talked through the entire set. Thus, they are evil.

A. and I, in search of Friday evening romantic-comedy brain candy, rented Along Came Polly with Jennifer Aniston and Ben Stiller. Now I think Ben Stiller is funny as all shit but Jennifer Aniston I can take or leave. A. wanted to watch the movie because it featured a blind ferret and she’s a sucker for that stuff. So, it was there, exactly as it should have been, solid, mediocre in its timing, with a few laugh-out-loud moments (not nearly as many as Zoolander) and one o the worst “I’m gonna impress my girl by learning to dance and then have a big latin dance number in a crowded club” montages I have ever seen. How many times can that schtick be done? Answer: too many. Waaayyy too many. Philip Seymour Hoffman saved more than one scene by just inhabiting his body in a way that stole the screen from anyone else around. Other than that, eh. You know.

Saturday, bug and S. called and we went and saw The Bourne Supremacy. I hadn’t seen The Bourne Identity simply because I had not yet forgiven Matt Damon for The Talented Mr. Ripley, which was the most painful piece of homophobic shit movie I have ever seen. I still haven’t forgiven Mr. Damon for that wasted 3.5 hours of my life but TBS helped ease my pain a little. Much like Keanu Reeves, Matt Damon is better when he shuts up and kicks some ass. It doesn’t hurt that he has two of my current favorite hotties supporting him: Franka Potente of Run Lola Run fame and Karl Urban, quite recently Eomer of Lord of the Rings. Hello, yum. So, solid action movie, a few surprises (not tons), enough onsite filming in exotic locales to give it a heady James Bond lavishness and a warning to sit further back than the fourth row: seasick camera work in the fight scenes, of which there are many.

Last weekend David Moses Fruchter hosted “Fruchtomania 2004″, which was his birthday party and talent show of all of his friends and family. It was a hoot! Hank knocked my socks off with a sexy-pants song with shockingly (SHOCKINGLY) homoerotic overtones about David, Johnny Blevins gave us some amputation humor while juggling, and Carlos and Steve stole the night with a terrifying sketch called “The Faces of David” where we all donned DMF masks and played DMF-John-Ashcroft and DMF-George-Bush and DMF- Polyamorous-Transvestite-Tax-Evaders looking to get married. It devolved into an all-DMF-all-the-time orgy with Marty (playing herself of course) walking in and saying “Oh Dave, not again!”.

Horrible. And wonderful! Later on the masks went to good use as we suggested that Marty sneak them into the bedroom and use one at the appropriate moment in bed. Yikes. The whole thing was awesome and David appeared to have a most excellent birthday. I haven’t laughed that much in ages.

The other fantastically creative shout-outs I wanna give are to dbauler who has been going to town on making and tweaking new instruments and boxes that shriek, and Kia who just had her Art School graduation show (which I’m sure was fabulous) and who has a guy from Sony after her to send him her portfolio. One word: ROCKSTAR. I got to talk to her this week and we goo’d on about her wedding this summer and I am happy happy that I will get to see her soon and stand up with her as she gets HOLY-MATRIMONIED to that sweet boy Michael.

Yay peeps, you all stoke my creative coals!

I recently read this amazing book that dbauler left me called Motoring with Mohammed by Eric Hansen. It’s about his shipwreck on a desert island/rescue by Eritrean goat smugglers/driving with sheep in the backseat/Qat chewing in Yemen adventures. This gave my already itchy travel bug new life – it’s spasming. I’m starting to work on a local freelance photographer’s web site and one of the reference sites she gave me was Ami Vitale’s site. Wow. Knock-out photographs from far flung countries. I want to go somewhere really weird, somewhere that I never get over the culture shock, no matter how long I’m there. I adore Austin, but like all places one loves, one must occasionally leave it to love it more upon return. Anyone happen to have a spare ticket to Vietnam handy?