cts travel report: austin

this weekend, i headed down to austin, T to see these things three (yeah i rhymed. what of it?):

-my former (and now defunct band) play their first and final show

-the screening of an early cut of a short film i was in last summer

-my wife

the first leg of my flight was from JFK to minneapolis. I woke up at 7:30 (after having two more drinks than i said i was gonna have the night before) in order to have enough time to get ready, take the hour and a half subway ride (seven bucks beats fifty any day) and be at the airport about an hour and a half before the flight. Point is, i was tired. so i immediately went to sleep. i was arisen from a possible openmouth slumber (that i always try to play off on the plane but what's the point) by horrid screeching and squawking; the demon sounds of two young girls...laughing. through the course of the three hour flight, into slumber and ripped out again like a fucking dementor was sucking my soul, i gathered enough information to piece together what was going on. believe you me, the first two or three times, i seriously jolted awake like 'whathafuh?!'

The source of hell's banshees was located directly behind me, emanating from twin 8-year old girls watching tom & jerry, a treat that was only reserved for plane journeys. and judging by the pure primal screech laughter coming from those girls, they really looked forward to their plane journeys. this was not the child's laughter that people claim as their favorite sound or noise. it was a laugh that made me want to stick shards of glass in my ears and chew on the spare pieces. and it was constant throughout the entire flight. luckily, the second leg to austin kind of made up for it when i had no seatmate and could move into my little loveseat.

Anyway, the actual slutfire show was amazing and not just in a hilarious way. i want to buy the cd and the tshirt and its not just because i wrote one of the songs and was on the tshirts. a rough cut of kazoo was screened and aside from not being able to stop thinking about how fat i looked in it, i was pleased with the outcome. that same night, there were two other acts on the bill that were also pretty enjoyable.

the rest of the weekend was also a blast, and not just because people kept telling me i was pretty...or because we went to a coffee shop that i immediately noticed was the setting used for the Day Game episode of the pick up artist. there's something about hanging out at houses and driving to and fro in a car (and compliments) that i really look forward to whenever i leave the city. also, the ol' ball and chain really cracks me up. we wrote a couple new lines for some songs to more accurately reflect the state of the world ("whatta man whatta man whatta man whatta mediocre man. Say it again now!") and how top model contestants should really lower their expectations ("Wanna be in a car show? Na na na na na na"). also, this exchange happened:

martinez-dawes: I just want to be as cool as you are.
dawes-martinez: but you ARE as cool as me am.

austin, texas rating: four golden jabbas