THE LIST

I have no idea to start, so we'll go with something overwhelmingly obvious and beloved...

-The whole 'fucking eating things that aren't in tortillas' scene - love it.

-Watching myself be transformed into a heat-loving coldaphobe - I will be whining like a grade-A beach in MT for Xmas.

-The bats - clearly an obvious shoutout, but seeing them with a friend who was visiting recently made me remember how incredible it is to see them hit the sky en masse - when I 'accidentally' saw them before, I kind of fled the scene (I was trying to wait for the hottest day of the year so it'd be extra crazy) - I didn't realize they just keep on coming and coming until it looks like there's a tower of winged smoke in the sky.

-The ease with which I have made friends here. I've lived in some of the world's most notorious snob-haunts (Seattle, Paris, London) and felt ragingly embittered toward the human race afterwards - yet here, I almost feel a twinge of...dare I say...optimism?

-The interminable juxtaposition of big city and small town - I run into people I know on the regular, but still get lost on labrynthine highways or trying to find some new hotspot.

-Live music, obviously! Some of the highlights over the course of this year: Iron and Wine, Man Man, Fiona Apple, Islands, Art Brut, and Kings of Leon.

-East Austin Studio Tour - it became one of the early Austin highlights last November. I drove around with my then-not-yet-my-roommate and basically went into different studios and houses and looked at the work there - the kicker was having the artist hang around all day and engaging in active, thoughtful and non-pretentious discussion. Can't wait to go again this year!

-This might have been the single best night of my Austin life - I wish I could re-live it every week. Weird that I wasn't more gushing or vivid in the blog, but it was a really magical night.

-The mothafucking Alamo Drafthouse. Even though I don't get there nearly enough, knowing that it exists is enough for me. To the uninitiated - this joint is a movie theater where you can order meals and beers and sheet. They show weird cult movies, music docs, new releases, TV on the big screen...ALL kinds of shit. It rocks.

-The way this town can look after it rains - the overabundance of green and gray makes me feel like I'm in Hawaii or Japan once in a great while.

-Whataburger. I guess it's not just Austin but Tex-wide, but still - holy fucking crap.

-The utter coincidencia of this town. Some examples?
1.) Meeting new friends at SXSW - then, after a good month or two of not seeing them or communicating, they appear at a small party attended by about a dozen.
2.) The Friendtor busting out a deck of tarot cards a few days after meeting me - the exact deck I purchased in New Orleans ten years ago.
3.) My friend Renae being told by me to look out for 'IN the City of Shy Hunters' at a book sale - and it being the first book she saw.

-Whole Foods. Seriously, I haven't been that overwhelmed by beauty (human and food) since grocery shopping in France.

-The fact that when it rains here, it can just go on and on and get stormy as fuck - no dribble, dribble like Montana rain - twas more like the drips from a faucet.

-Heroic local bands like Ghostland Observatory, Black Angels, The IV Thieves, Wax Museum Pandemonium, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness and so many more - and all the ones being born right now. Y'all make us proud!

-Saying y'all. It just feels so right!

-Jenn Daly's kitchen. Seriously (y'all).

-This is the city of fucking festivals - everything from hamburgers to hot sauce to music to art to hippies is festivalized - it kind of rocks, though everything being festival-worthy sort of diminishes the magic of such celebrations.

-The freakish coincidence of this: my friend I drove to Austin with originally (Kurt Wikel by name) showing up on this, the very one year mark of my move. Yay for kismet!

letting consistency consistently slip away

Hard to believe I relapsed into extended non-blogging all over again. And by 'hard to believe,' I of course mean 'obviously.' Things have not surprisingly been whirlwindish. My friend Lydia came to visit for the drag king conference here in Austin, which I happened to catch some of. It kind of blew the lid off the pagaentry of masculine gender identity - seeing something like that reproduced in a kitschy way really seems to bring a lot of the truth to the surface.

Obviously, that doesn't really make sense. But it's still before noon and I am not yet required to be coherent.

I'm moving out of my weird little house. Hard to believe I will have been there for nine months. It was by turns awesome, disgusting, alarming and charming. I will miss it, but I guess it's time to move it along. I finally found a place as of yesterday - I'll be living with a cool lesbian partygirl, her girlfriend and four cats and two dogs. Which is kind of a lot. But the price is right, the location is good and she's going to let me paint my room RED, which rules. It's been a dream of mine sooo long I can't believe it's finally going to happen! Yaaaaaaaaaaay!

And today is my one year anniversary in Austin. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! Many magical things are happening in response: the reappearance of Kurt Wikel in Austin, Broken Social Scene and the promise that I do not have to go to work until noon tomorrow. Hello, my old certainty that I will vommit tonight!

Later today, my long-awaited 'I Love Austin' list.

recent developments

Oops. Ten days betwixt this and my last entry. I thought I had finally come around the bend on this irregular blogging thing, but it looks like old habits die hard. That or I haven't really done anything comparably sweet since meeting Alison Bechdel and going to her reading. Is that sad? I dunno, that was a badass affair, it was, it was.

Once more, days are running into weeks and I find it shocking that we are already so far into October - I'm an absolute fawking blank on what to do for my Halloween costume. Ideally, I would like to rock two or three different costumes, since there is a veritable alcoholic cornucopia of goings-on on the pre-Halloween weekend front. I just signed on to work the box office on 'actual' Halloween night for the Trey Anastasio show at Stubb's. And BOY am I excited. There is surely still time to develop a 'I hate hippies' themed costume. At least there will be arseloads of good times to be had leading up to that.

One exciting recent development, however - I was asked to manage a band, 2/3 comprised of my old neighbs on Lynnwood. Which was really freaking flattering and I'm already feeling like I'm not doing a spectacular enough job but I have a fracking full time job already! What am I doing, piling on responsibility?! But coming at me from a flattery-centered angle is usually a guarantee I will do whatever you want. Plus, the promise of free drinks and building up my 'music industry career portfolio' might have helped things along as well.

My one year anniversaire in Austin approacheth. I really can't believe it. This year has been uncomfortably blurry, but I guess that's how I know I've been having fun? Or rather, that's how I know I've been abusing brain and body to the point of non-functionality. The old standby.

Speaking of abusing my body, I noticed that eatting absolute shit finally caught up with me - I was mysteriously maintaining my weight loss level in spite of bad habits for an unnaturally long amount of time, but I did put on a good 5-10 over the last few weeks in the midst of my lull-y, pointless depression. Must now be aware of this and eat like a normal human being and also...maybe...shuddergasp...excercise? I want to go into my 25th year looking and feeling better than ever. No time like the present to start?

Josh and Jared are participating in a diet that involves eating only yams and chicken breasts (unseasoned). Yum! I'm going to watch and wait to see if I want to involve myself in something so serious.

Finally, I can't not mention The Science of Sleep, which I saw last weekend. It could be one of the best performances by Gael Garcia Bernal's beautiful mouth I've ever seen! Seriously though, it was really great. And also seriously, he is FUCKING HOT even if he is short. I like watching movies where it seems slightly impossible to figure out what is going on - whether what is happening is real or a dream or some combination of the two. Petite Charlotte Gainsbourg was wonderful as well. Basically, cute farners speaking Ingles is awesome. The multi-linguality of the film definitely had me extra-sold on it, being eurotrashy as the day is long. If you want to be engages, amused, dazzled and more than vaguely aroused, I definitely recommend this one.

Hopefully next time I will do some mini-reviews on CDs I have recently got, since I've been music-shopping like a madman. And with Gawd as my witness, I will blog some kind of comprehensive 'What I love about living here'/'what I miss' list before the date of my move-versary.