SXSW Diary, Day Two

Posted on March 10, 2012 by wellsdc

Today began with great anticipation and mild disappointment, with a bit of admiration of the inherent goodness of humanity thrown into the mix. Upon my arrival at the Convention Center this morning, I had hoped to attend “A Conversation with Joss Whedon” (#SXjosswhedon on Twitter), featuring the man himself. If you are unfamiliar with Joss Whedon, I first have to wonder how you even found this blog and why you’ve read this far. Joss Whedon is responsible for making “shiny” a culturally-relevant adjective. He brought us the long-running television classic (in some circles) “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and the ahead-of-its-time science fiction western “Firefly.” He has perhaps the most devoted fan base in all of American entertainment, so I was quite excited.

But I got there too late.

Not actually late, mind you. His talk began at 11:00 a.m., and I arrived at the Convention Center at around 10:20 a.m. I stopped to buy coffee, which might have been my big mistake. By the time I made it to the fourth floor, where he would be talking in the imposingly-titled Room 18abcd, the line snaked back around on itself. At around 10:50, a SXSW volunteer inserted himself into the line, about forty people ahead of me, and announced that everyone standing behind him wasn’t going to get in.

So, like Malcolm Reynolds at Serenity Valley (seriously, you need to watch “Firefly”), I withdrew from the line and took a seat along the wall. A volunteer then informed us that a live feed of the talk would be available at a “hearable” volume. 11:00 arrived, and something remarkable happened. The throngs of people denied the opportunity to see Joss Whedon in the flesh sat down on the floor to watch the video screen, allowing everyone there a relatively unimpeded view.

Joss Whedon

I tweeted a bit of what was discussed. As is common with filmmaker conversations at conferences, it was mostly thoughts on film, the creative process, and maddeningly vague hints and references to current and future projects.

He mostly talked about “Cabin in the Woods,” a recent horror-esque project, with a bit of commentary on “The Avengers.” Of course, the question of when “Firefly” will be coming back was raised, to which Joss said he’s waiting for a call from a network and he is “not ruling it out.” I tweeted some of my favorite bits from his talk, which I now attempt to reproduce here:

“My favorite thing is going into a movie not knowing what to expect.”
He spoke very highly of Danny Boyle’s “Sunshine,” which is a good way to endear oneself to me.
Of the “Evil Dead” films, he believes part 1 is “the real classic,” because it established the various tropes of the genre. Bold words, sir.
He often prefers working with a lower budget. Budget restrictions, he says, make it easier for “things to feel lived in.”
The genre of torture porn is not really horror, because it mostly consists of people the audience hates getting killed in inventive ways for about 90 minutes. In other words, it’s not actually scary.
Numerous studio executives asked him if “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was a working title. The network apparently wanted to change it to “Slayer” for years. I guess, had that happened, “Buffy” could have joined “and a Pizza Place.”
“I dislike revision, and I’ll tell you why. It’s more work.”
The first question from the audience was simply a request for a high-five. Joss gave the guy one. It was awesome.
Best question from the audience: “Why do the networks keep fucking with you?”
Joss’ answer to the best question, in brief: Networks have their own agenda and a business model to follow. Great content, by itself, will not sway them.
“Dollhouse” was about sex on a fundamental level (duh.) The network apparently asked him to take out the sex and replace it with shooting.

That was pretty much it. Then they quickly cleared people off of the hallway floor so that the multitudes of people coming out of the presentation room wouldn’t trample them.

Weather

It’s cold and rainy and generally nasty. I only mention that so I have an excuse to use this Willy Wonka meme picture.

Remixes

I wandered a bit and came back to the same room (after concluding it would take too long to stand in line for coffee or food) for a talk called “Everything is a Remix, so Steal Like an Artist” (#SXREMIX on Twitter) with Austin Kleon and Kirby Ferguson. I had not heard of either of these guys before, but the subject sounded interesting, and it was.

They said that their goal for the presentation was to “demystify creativity.” Kirby says that “all artists spend their formative years doing derivative work.” After copying for some time, we create art through transformation. Edison, as but one example, didn’t invent the light bulb. He improved on it & made it commercially viable.

They outlined the three basic elements of creativity: Copy, transform, combine.

If you only “combine” things, then you are not really putting your own voice into it. Kirby compares what that process creates to Frankenstein’s monster.

In a video presentation on influences in “Star Wars,” Kirby showed the influence of Joseph Campbell, Kurosawa, “The Searchers,” World War II films, and more.

“Creativity is not magic, Kirby says. Does it ruin “Star Wars” to see how much material George Lucas “stole?” In a sense, it may not make “Star Wars” itself more interesting, but it turns the film into a film history lesson.

“Nothing is completely original” – this just means we need to redefine “original.” “Original” could mean “new & exciting” as opposed to “unprecedented.”

“Halo effect” – people want to make something wholly new, but they shouldn’t have to. This could be viewed as empowering. Don’t worry too much about being derivative, just create.

Mythical idea of the “lone genius”: Film is a collaboration requiring collaboration. Terry Gilliam calls himself a filter for the ideas. God used to get all the credit for creativity. The Romantics (Lord Byron, et al) changed it to themselves alone, & we still have that idea. The lone genius idea tends to excuse bad behavior and frequently destroys young talent. It is more important, Austin said, to be a good human being than a good artist (Kirby sort of disagreed).

Most of us have no problem with copying as long as we’re the ones doing it.

On the difference between a “remix” and a “ripoff”: Remixes acknowledge the source material. Ripoffs pretend to be original. Austin says plagiarism and forgery are two sides of the same coin.

A final quote from Austin: “Imitation is only flattery if it’s any good.”

A Blogging Interlude

I had a bit of free time, so I headed back over to the Samsung Bloggers’ Lounge, where they unfortunately did not have any free food or coffee. Still, it offered a good, albeit crowded, place to sit down and write for a little while. It’s also a good place to strike up conversations with random people. Let me throw a little SEO love to the people I met today: there was a Chicago marketing consultant (Lon Taylor), a Los Angeles online live chat service provider (Ben Congleton), and a Houston mobile technology provider (the awesomely-named Paul Steel). I also finally got to meet Jen Wojcik in person. That was awesome. I forgot to mention that yesterday I finally met The Q in person too! It’s great to actually meet the Tweeters you follow.

Story Wars

Next up was “Winning the Story Wars” (@SXstorywars on Twitter), a reading by Jonah Sachs from his forthcoming book of the same name. It was very marketing-oriented, but offered some excellent pointers for storytelling in general, I think.

He first talked about how we began telling stories through oral tradition. This eventually led to the Broadcast Era, which in turn led to the “Digitoral” Era (don’t you just love marketing neologisms?)

There was discussion of Joseph Campbell, the second time I’d heard about him today! The ingredients of myth are explanation, meaning, story, and ritual. Religion, science, & entertainment can’t offer all four at the same time, but marketing can. (At this point I was a bit skeptical, but keep reading). He gave the example of the Marlboro Man: the Marlboro Man made it okay for men to smoke filtered cigarettes, which was an issue back in the day, and then became a major cultural icon. In other words, the myth and storytelling is not always a good thing for society, but I digress.

He then talked about the model of “freaks, cheats, and familiars,” and this was pretty interesting. People, by which he meant the human race, have existed in our current biological state for at least 70,000 years. Understanding how people thought 70,000 years ago, when times were presumably less complicated, helps us understand how people think today. Back then, people lived in small tribes, and they evolved to react to unfamiliar people, viewing them as either a threat or an opportunity. “Freaks” in a story grab people’s attention and draw them in.

Next, he addressed the “problem of altruism”: people have to both compete and cooperate to survive. Stories of “cheats” uphold cultural norms, because people want to see them punished. “Cheats” could also be used in a story to defy a cultural norm we hate.

As for “familiars,” stories are told in “tribes” that the marketer can’t control, so the story is encoded in a language or setting the audience will accept. This is sort of like the “everyman” character.

Then he read a story about Robert Oppenheimer and the Trinity test, which was interesting. That’s all I have in my notes.

A Carlin Home Companion

I stuck around in the same room because I was intrigued by the next presentation. Kelly Carlin, daughter of George Carlin, presented a one-woman show about her father, “A Carlin Home Companion” (#SXcarlin on Twitter). It was amazing. George Carlin, in my humble opinion, was and remains one of the greatest comics of our era, and he was simply a great wit and intellect to boot. She tells a deeply personal and moving story of growing up in his home, watching the course of his career, from standard “Tonight Show” comic, to countercultural icon, to drug addict, to stand-up hero, and more. It is too personal a story for me to possibly do it justice as a summary here. I’ll leave it at a paraphrase of how she ended the show, saying of her father:

He had to give up who he thought he was supposed to be to become who he was meant to be.

Photo credits: ‘Madness!’ by imtheq on instagram; ‘Everything at SXSW involves waiting in line’, ‘Joss Whedon speaks! (via live feed)’, and ‘Kelly Carlin in “A Carlin Home Companion”‘ by wondermutt, on Flickr; Willy Wonka meme obtained here.

SXSWi Diary, Day One

Posted on March 9, 2012 by wellsdc

Some thoughts on my first day of SXSW Interactive (or SXSWi, as the cool kids say).

This is an overwhelming clusterfuck of humanity. I’ve never ridden on an escalator so jammed with people that a second’s hesitation by one person in getting off at the bottom could almost cause a rather catastrophic dogpile. Fortunately, you might have noticed I said “almost.” I doubt whoever it was even realized the extent of the chaos they almost caused.

I should probably note at this point, in case you’re looking at the photos (not stock photos, I might add) that if you plan on uploading pictures from your mobile phone to Flickr and have them come out looking right, you need to hold your phone sideways when taking the picture. There’s nothing you can do to fix that once it’s online, short of downloading it, rotating it in a program like Paint Shop, and uploading it again. Here endeth the lesson.

Registration was, I thought at the time, a long and difficult process of waiting in line. In all, I must have spent half an hour in that line! I would later realize that arriving at the Convention Center at 8:30 a.m. was wise (thank you, girlfriend with an actual day job, for the ride!) for the line stretched all the way around the Convention Center by mid-day, and it seemed to only grow longer. I suspect people were getting their badges for all the festivals (film, music, etc.) and not just Interactive. Should you ever find yourself in attendance here, I highly recommend not sleeping late the first day.

Having obtained my badge by 9:30 a.m., I noticed that panels did not start until 2:00 p.m. Actualy, I already knew that, but it sounds more dramatic this way. I spent a bit of time trying to do actual work, to no avail, wandered a bit, soaked in the all-encompassing hugeness of the event, and then mooched free food off the aforementioned girlfriend.

By around 1:00, it was time to make a decision. I opted to brave the elements and make my way from the Convention Center to the Driskill Hotel, a hike of only a few blocks, but one involving a steady spray of nature’s ball sweat from the sky. The presentation at the Driskill was the intriguingly-titled “Sex on the Web: The Sabotage of Relationships?” (#SXWebSex on Twitter). It was originally going to be a solo presentation by someone who was probably going to take a staunchly anti-porn position. The substitute presenters, Julie Gillis, Mia Martina, Rosie Q, and Sadie Smythe, all of whom are producers of the local stage show “Bedpost Confessions,” assured us they were not anti-porn.

I actually took notes at this panel, something I do not do often. The overall theme was the effect that the easy availability of sex-type stuff on the internet has on relationships. It goes beyond just surreptitious porn watching. The internet is full of erotic blogs, chat rooms, and so on. They brought up quite a few points that merit far greater discussion in society. This is paraphrased from my notes. If I know for a fact I am quoting someone directly, I used quotes. Everything else is ased off my recollection of what was said:

The internet has allowed people to discover kinks they didn’t know they had.
It also allows isolated people to find others like them (e.g. gay teenagers)
The decrease in marriage rates over the past few decades, along with the rise in cohabitation, might compel people to start talking to each other about what they really want in their relationship (lack of communication being one of the greatest problems in relationships).
As many as 3/4 of divorces cite Facebook in some way. Lack of communication beforehand is what really caused the divorce, most likely. The internet is a symptom of lack of connection in your real life.
The internet lets us discover new parts of ourselves, and we may find we want different things. Divorce doesn’t mean a marriage failed, just that people change.
“Our web history is the new porn stash.”
More straight people need to “come out” as allies to LGBTQ people, and as sex-positives.
Raise the stakes on talking about sex (treat it with respect) and lower the stakes at the same time.

Someone asked a question about Ashley Madison, the affair-based dating site. Rosie Q stressed that “none of us are pro-cheating; we’re pro-communication.” They noted that a site like that could be an example of how the web could be destructive to relationships. It gives people a save haven to get laid, but not to communicate in their marriages. Also, they asked rather rhetorically, what does it really mean to “save” a marriage?

I braved the elements to return to the Convention Center, and decided to check out the Samsung Bloggers’ Lounge. Lots of tables, but not much in the way of real “lounging.” Which was a shame, because I was tired, dammit. The major high point of that part of the day was the announcement, with a remarkable amount of fanfare, of the impending release of “Angry Birds: Space” from whomever makes “Angry Birds.” I had the choice between waiting in a line for a free Angry Birds t-shirt or sitting and finishing my blog post on Leslie Cochran. I’m sure the t-shirt I could have gotten will make someone else very happy.

For the last panel of the day, I went to “Iranian Outlaws: Satire vs. Censorship” (#SXOutlaws on Twitter). This was by an Iranian filmmaker who uses humor to fight the regime. His show is called “Parazit,” and it has been compared to “The Daily Show,” I hear. They use pictures sent in by Iranian kids and Photoshop them to make them funny. I missed a lot of the presentation, in part because I was late and in additional part because I was really freaking tired by then. He says that traffic dies out in Tehran on Fridays when their show is on. They became so popular that the Iranian government sent commandos to rooftops via helicopter to smash satellite dishes (he showed us pictures). They’ve developed a bigger project that looks pretty phenomenal, called Weapons of Mouse Destruction. There was apparently also a t-shirt involved in this presentation.

At this point, it was 6:00 p.m., and I had been downtown for almost 10 hours. But it was only two hours until TechKaraoke! I have been singularly unexcited about most nighttime SXSW activities, except this one. I just needed to kill some time.

I attempted to go to some tech-lawyer-themed party that ran from 5 to 7. After walking 6 blocks in frogod drizzle, I arrived at the bar at 6:30 to learn that, rather than ending in 30 minutes, the event ended 30 minutes earlier. I did not receive that memo.

And that is how I came to be standing in a doorway on 6th Street to shelter myself from the rain while eating a bratwurst.

But my tale does not end there. Finding myself momentarily without shelter or much of anything to do, I opted to show up to the bar hosting TechKaraoke early. They were busy. So I continued down the street. The good people of El Sol y la Luna were kind enough to take me in, let me sit at the bar, type most of this blog post, and sell me food at full price. I salute your Tex-Mex awesomeness.

After that, I went to TechKaraoke. After listening to two songs, I realized I was very tired and my back hurt from carrying a backpack around all day, so I went home. See all you geeks and hipsters tomorrow.

Austin gets less weird

Posted on March 9, 2012 by wellsdc

Those who have spent any amount of time in Austin have probably heard of Leslie. An Austin institution, he may be the only homeless transvestite to finish second in a mayoral election for a major American city. If I recall correctly, he received 8% of the vote in 2000, losing to incumbent mayor Kirk Watson. There were two other candidates that year, but I don’t remember much about them.

When Cochran ran for mayor in 2000, incumbent Kirk Watson expressed concern about the match-up: “My fear is that this will not be an issue-oriented campaign but (about) who has the best legs, and then I know I’m a dead man,” Watson said.

Leslie passed away yesterday. He had been ill for a while, but kept hanging on. It seemed difficult to imagine an Austin without Leslie in it.

Leslie Cochran — the city’s flesh-flashing, cross-dressing, attention-loving, frequently homeless mascot, unofficial ambassador and sometimes mayoral candidate — died about 12:30 a.m. at Christopher House, an inpatient hospice, his sister Alice Masterson said. He was 60.

Of course, there was a parade in his honor last night. I didn’t hear about it until afterwards. I’m ensconced in SXSW stuff, but I still can’t shake off the feeling that my city is a bit too….normal today.

Usually dressed in ankle-snapping ladies’ heels and a thong, Cochran was a fixture in Austin, particularly downtown, the Sixth St. entertainment district and South Austin. He became known around the world as a key example of the city’s populace embracing and celebrating its freaks. Albert Leslie Cochran eventually ascended to the highest rank of celebrity, joining the few known by one name only.

In a city that prides itself on uniqueness, there was perhaps no better icon of uniqueness than Leslie. He could often be seen riding a bike on South Congress Avenue in fishnets, heels, and a thong (and nothing else). He was pretty weird, which I guess was the whole idea, but everyone loved him in their own way.

Friends describe him as funny, intelligent and charming. They also describe him as an alcoholic, stubborn and unreliable. And since a 2009 head injury, he had been in decline.

I recall how, several years ago, some rich guy in Westlake asked Leslie to house-sit for him for a few weeks while he was out of town. The word on the srtreet afterwards was that the IRS was trying to collect tax from Leslie on the value of his time spent in the big, fancy house, the food and other sundries he got to use, etc., I assume under the theory that it constituted “payment” for house-sitting services. I don’t know how the situation was resolved, but it only added to Leslie’s legend.

Mayor Lee Leffingwell was expected to proclaim Thursday and every March 8 forward Leslie Day in Austin.

This morning, 101X played an interview they did with Leslie in 2008. I suspect that more than a few people just assumed he was “crazy.” The interview certainly presented him as well-spoken and even eloquent, if quite weird. He had one hell of an unusual life, and he did more than his fair share to make this city weird. I see other unusual characters on the side of the road–the guy who stands on the side of Red River just south of 45th Street all day blowing bubbles comes to mind–but we’ll never replace Leslie. Why the hell would we want to?

Photo credit: By Johannamcshan (Johanna McShan Photography) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

The Night Before SXSW

Posted on March 8, 2012 by wellsdc

As I ease into slumber
My mind starts to lumber
Towards the realization
That an amalgamation
Of seething humanity
Descends on my town.

Because it is time for a chuckle, dangit

Posted on March 8, 2012 by wellsdc

Pete Reynolds at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency takes a look at Republican exit polls, and the results are quite revealing. Excerpts follow. Prepare to be shocked, appalled, dazzled, and pwned:

Nearly 60% of those who have nicknamed a body part voted for Newt Gingrich.

Ron Paul was the choice of 72% of voters who have fired a crossbow at a ferret.

People who hired Peter Cetera to sing at their wedding overwhelmingly supported Mitt Romney.

Ron Paul was backed by three-quarters of the voters who purchase their meat from the trunk of a car.

Romney won among people who blog about board games.

Gingrich won a majority of voters who regularly send back hash browns.

Ron Paul won 63% of voters who have accidentally baked their car keys into a pie.

Romney took 88% of the votes among people whose primary issue was yacht parking.

Of those who thought President Obama was not humanity’s largest threat, 96% were just passing by the polling place on their way to Whole Foods.

It is worth reading the whole piece. Unless you are someone who actually takes this field of Republican presidential contenders seriously as anything besides a threat to our nation’s reputation as a nation not full of idiots. If this is the case, please move along quietly, and try not to touch anything.

My racist high school – UPDATED

Posted on March 6, 2012 by wellsdc

I am part of the Alamo Heights High School Class of 1993. It’s a relatively small school in its own little school district a few miles north of downtown San Antonio, Texas. I got a great education there and had some amazing friends. Overall, I am very glad to have gone to school there, and to be from there. It opened up countless doors to opportunities many others have not had.

I was not always so happy, of course, while I actually went to school there. Alamo Heights is something of a bubble of wealth and privilege, where residents frequently appear in newspaper and magazine “Society” pages, and nearly everyone got a car on their 16th birthday. It is full of good people but it can brim with white racist bullcrap in a predominantly-Hispanic city.

There is very little overt racism, but anyone who actually understands racism knows that you do not have to physically harass or assault members of a different race to be racist. Racism is also not simply a matter of not liking members of another race. I have come to be a strong believer in the “privilege + power” definition, which holds that racism consists of both disdain for another race and the power to do something about it. I did not always understand that, but I am also a white male, so I have no experience whatsoever of what it is to be on the receiving end of racism, sexism, or pretty much any other kind of systemic oppression. All I can say for certain is that I get that I do not get it.

I had planned a more in-depth post to further explore issues like this. Really, the bottom line is that I do not have much of value to say about race, because I have no lived experience of it (same goes for gender, sexual orientation, even religion for most of my life). All I can really do is listen to others as they share their experiences, and reflect on what I may have done in the past and what I can do differently.

That is really all there is to say (by me) on the matter.

Of course, my high school had to go and spur me to action, so I’m writing this post off the cuff, without great deal of preparation. But this is not about my inconvenience. This is me confronting the racism of my hometown.

I’m a fairweather fan of Alamo Heights sports, in that I only tend to pay attention when they do well, and that’s only because hey cool! My high school won something!

I was excited to learn that the Mules (yes, that’s our mascot) basketball team has made it to the state finals tournament. That’s the first time this has happened since 1991 (when I was a sophomore and recent basketball team dropout). Also, the new coach is a guy I went to high school with. It’s the way the fans reacted to the latest big win that is (or should be) embarrassing to all of us.

Edison High School is only a few miles away from Alamo Heights, but it could be on a different planet. It is in a much less affluent part of town (although it does include one very well-to-do area), and the students are mostly Hispanic. When the Mules beat them the other night, securing a place in the state tournament, well, here’s what happened:

A local school district is apologizing after an apparent incident of racism at a boys high school basketball game this past weekend.

When the final whistle blew Saturday, Alamo Heights celebrated a convincing victory over San Antonio Edison.

Alamo Heights Head Coach Andrew Brewer said he was proud of his team.

“Tremendously proud,” Brewer said. “Tremendously. It’s the best group of kids.”

But it was just after the trophy presentation when the coach was not proud of the chant coming from Alamo Heights fans.

“USA, USA, USA,” they chanted.

San Antonio Independent School District officials took the chant as a racial insult to a school with all minority players from a school with mostly white ones.

I can already anticipate the reactions from Alamo Heights students and parents: something to the effect that the kids didn’t mean anything racist by it, that they were just celebrating, that it never occurred to them that this would be offensive, and that Edison’s players and others are being too sensitive. I feel fairly confident that the response (i.e. excuses) will fall into one of those areas.

The first thing to understand, drawing from the racism definition above, is that white people don’t get to decide when someone else should be offended. Second, if it did not occur to people that a predominantly-Hispanic group would be offended by predominantly white, affluent, mostly-Republican students chanting “USA,” then there is a problem, but the problem is not occurring in the Edison neighborhood. Alamo Heights has an image problem, and it has since long before I was a student there. This is Exhibit “A” as to why.

According to KSAT News, the students who have been identified as participating in the chant have to apologize to Edison and are banned from the remaining playoff games. If that seems harsh, keep in mind that kids in Alamo Heights tend to get whatever they want. Call it tough love.

UPDATE, March 6, 2012: Edison’s school district administration has filed a complaint with the University Interscholastic League:

The San Antonio Independent School District filed a complaint with the UIL on Tuesday regarding a chant by Alamo Heights students after a boys basketball game against Edison High School on Saturday.

***

SAISD athletic director Gil Garza filed the complaint with the University Interscholastic League, the governing body for Texas public schools. It was the second year in a row that a complaint about racially motivated chants was filed after the Region IV-4A basketball tournament.

A similar incident occurred last year in a game between Cedar Park and Lanier high schools.

“A bunch of kids made a poor decision, but we can’t ignore it,” Garza said. “Our community is fed up.”

SXSW is nearly upon us! Some advice for the hipsters…

Posted on March 6, 2012 by wellsdc

For the first time in my 12 years, 6 months, and 15 days as an Austin resident (I wasn’t counting, I just remember the date I moved in), I have purchased a badge. It’s only for the Interactive festival, but dammit, I’m going to be one of those cool kidz strutting around downtown with that icon of cool, the SXSW badge.

Let me say up front, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve sashayed around the fringes of the ever-growing conference for over a decade, only now jumping partway in. My effort last year to watch the free Strokes show at Auditorium Shores without actually entering the park is a good representation of my level of commitment up to this point. I have mostly come to view SXSW as an invasion. A bunch of LA/NY types who espouse styles that have not yet reached Austin (and will never matter to me) descend on my city for two weeks and turn it into a sea of tight jeans, ironic sunglasses, and (largely) unearned self-importance.

This year, y’all are going to have to deal with me. And I will be saying “y’all” a lot, because it’s provincial, bitches.

I think the interactive festival is a bit different. There will still be a big hipster contingent, but we’re also all nerds (or geeks). There is a meetup session for Game of Thrones fans, for crying out loud!

I spent several hours yesterday creating a schedule on the SXSW website. Just doing that made me tired. I’m boarding my dog for a whole week (in luxury, fear not) and buying a bus pass so I can avoid parking and worrying about making it home at a certain time for feeding and peeing (the dog, not me). This will be an interesting week. When it is all said and done, there will still be five days of music. And I only slept four hours last night. I am in way over my head.

The bloggings of people I know and/or read and/or grudgingly respect have been invaluable. Here are two good primers:

Thomas Myer: SxSW Interactive Like a Boss
Aubrey Sabala: The Common Sense Guide to SXSW: It’s Really Not That Hard*

With no further ado, here is my unsolicited advice to those of you who will be gracing my fair city with your presence for the next few weeks. These are in no particular order.

1. Austin is not like the rest of Texas. All the stuff you read about in the news that’s so embarrassing for all Americans, nay, humans? Aside from shenanigans at the State Capitol, that all happens elsewhere in the state. The Capitol building is actually protected by a force field that keeps the crazy contained to a roughly three-block radius while the Legislature is in session.

2. Austin is not just like the West/East Coast. So stop trying to make it that way, please.

3. We get it. You’re cool. I’d really like to see you wear that wool hat, sweater, and skintight jeans ensemble here in August, though. One great thing about this town is that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re going to extend that same courtesy to you.

4. Pedestrians may have the legal right of way, but cars are still bigger than you. When you enter a crosswalk in downtown Austin at 5:00 in the afternoon, please try to remember that thousands of people work there, have no connection to SXSW, and are just trying to get home to their families in peace and without developing the nickname “Hipster Slayer.” If they have the green light, don’t try to cross in front of them.

5. If you’ve never used “Texas” phrases before in your life, do not start now. It hurts our ears. This includes “y’all,” “fixin’ to,” “might could,” and “that dog won’t hunt.”

5. Welcome to Austin. This town is fucking awesome, so enjoy it.

6. Chill the fuck out. The six hours you’re spending waiting in line for the Perez Hilton party? You could have spent that time doing things you couldn’t also do in Los Angeles. The organizers of SXSW work very, very hard to put on a kick-ass conference. The people of Austin work year-round to create a kick-ass city.

Photo credit: All photos by author.

Cryptic Philosopher

____ Days Since Our Last Industrial Accident!

Monthly Archives: March 2012

SXSW Diary, Day Two

Austin gets less weird

The Night Before SXSW

Because it is time for a chuckle, dangit

My racist high school – UPDATED