Fun Fun Fun Fest Flashback: Dust Mask City

It's the "I'm mortal" (thus not there this year) Fan Fun Fun Fest flashback #2

Fun Fun Fun Fest Flashback: D.O.A.

 It turns out that I'm mortal. (Trust me, it's news to me.) I really don't think that my body can take one more festival right now....

So here's one of my favorite Fun Fun Fun Fest pictures, peeking out over the old school punk band D.O.A.






My only regret, it was a lot of camera ago.

CLOUD ATLAS at Fantastic Fest

Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas in September 2012. 

You all know that the movie CLOUD ATLAS opens today, yes? It's all about time and souls and spirits who find their way into your life in one way or another.
  
After a surprise screening of the movie at found its way into my life during Fantastic Fest, I couldn't help thinking that in my own life, many of the people who seem like they should be in your life have a fairly unique way of introducing themselves.

Oftentimes such people enter your life by first catching you up on the major details of their story so far--sort of like filling you in on the details of a movie where you stopped in the middle.

As for the movie, go see it!

My only regret about that screening--being too shy to talk to Lana Wachowski when I saw her sitting in the Highball after the screening.  If I hadn't been so shy, I would have told her that she has great pink hair!

Macitajs on Acid, Positivus 2012

This summer in Latvia I saw my pal Kristeps play with his Latvian-American band Macitajs on Acid.




Coming out in masks, then playing in face paint at the I Love You stage, I was amazed to see a packed tent full of people singing along with the band in Latvian. (I have no clue what they were singing about!)

Then again, it was the band's first show in Latvia in years, so it was kind of a big deal.



You can see the rest of my pictures here, or if you click the link below, you can watch a Macitajs on Acid performance from 2007.

I'm kind of conflicted that this picture of Dave Chappelle has 13,000 views

Dear Mr. Chappelle:

When you signed this autograph for my friend Rachel--who is a big fan of your show--I just took the picture because I thought that it might be nice for her to have a picture of it. I posted it with the rest of the set from the Cupcake Smackdown.

Was a little surprised this morning to find out that said picture had over 13,000 views on Flickr. 



I'm generally against asking famous people to pose for pictures, etc, when they aren't making an official public appearance. (I've seen what it's like not to be able to walk down a street in peace because of people saying hello to you. Frankly, it seems like that part of being famous totally sucks.)


So just to let you know Mr. Chappelle, I'm a little conflicted about this. I think you were also a little bit conflicted when you walked away from your popular television show. So I guess we can be conflicted together.

The Vaccines at Positivus 2012!

While I take a lot of pictures, I'll admit that I'm not great at sharing them. Here's a few of the perky group The Vaccines at Latvia's Positivus Music Festival that I'm really pleased with.







You can find more of that photo set here.

I miss the ocean

Austin, Texas has a lot of things. What it does not have is an ocean.

Given that I grew up fairly close to the Gulf of Mexico, near Galveston, Texas, I thought that I could never live as far inland as I do now.

Much to my surprise I can live inland, I just miss the ocean. Sometimes I think he misses me, too.

Giant fake cupcake, FTW!

Going through my iPhoto library, I found this picture of a giant fake cupcake. It's from the Louis Vuitton window display last spring.




It must be all the time playing "house" as a child, because there is nothing in life that I love so much as perfect fake food.

Is this a good time to confess that, in college (when I had zero interest in cooking) I really thought about buying myself some plastic play food to put in my empty kitchen?

I thought this would be better than leaving the kitchen totally empty!

Fantastic ALIENS baby cake!

 I'm still recovering from Fantastic Fest. But today I wanted to share this picture of the cake that my friends (known as "The Charlie's") made for their own baby shower cake. Because every single time I look at a picture of this cake, I think how awesome it is.



It was also tasty!

The alien was hand-sculpted, not some store-bought plastic prop.

Fantastic Fest: The Seventh Inning Stretch

With the major craziness of the weekend of Fantastic Fest behind us, it's time to look at what films you can--and should--still catch at the festival as of Tuesday afternoon.

 The films are listed in the order of the effort that you should spend on getting to see them:

I should totally call these "Half-Dead Reviews." They aren't proper reviews, just a guide to where you should park yourself during the rest of the festival.

I Declare War: this low budget film with child actors is amazing. Well paced and tight, it feels far fresher than anything else at Fantastic Fest this year! See it now, as it doesn't have distribution. Doubt you'll see it on another big screen in America with the children swearing like they do.

Berberian Sound Studio: Sure, being released onto the Internet  in a couple of weeks, but trust me, if you are into eye candy and atmosphere you want to catch this one on the big screen. This beautifully shot film isn't about the the plot, it's about the creepy sounds and visuals. (If you are a fan of 70's Italian cinema, this should be at the top of your list.) 

The American Scream: A great solid documentary focusing on three families in New England who create their own "Haunted Houses." It's airing on the Chiller network in late October, if you have the Chiller network.

Looking forward to the DIY Wackiness at Fantastic Fest!

Never mind the hella-awful Austin allergy forecast (which features the four icky horsemen of the achoopocalypse riding into town on their microscopic horses) ...but today is the first day of Fantastic Fest, 2012. It's a good thing.

While I'm most certainly looking forward to the films--and maybe even having a Heathers moment with Winona Ryder in the ladies' after Frankenweenie -- I'm super stoked about seeing my friends and seeing the DIY weirdness that always comes out at the festival!

True confession: I'm all about the costumes and the fun to be had at a horror movie festival.

A couple of years ago, the Fantastic Fest opening film was the wee-vampire film Let Me In (2010) the American remake of the amazing Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In (2009).

Yet the opening night craziness featured not only a children's choir, but dudes dancing in Viking horns, and an oath sworn while drinking a green vial of liquid. This was all nonsense tied to Let Me In in the most tangential ways.

Tim League as a Viking.

Summer Sound is coming up...and I can't help thinking of last year...

This weekend in Liepaja, Latvia is the second Summer Sound festival. I was there last year.

While I've only been to Liepaja twice--once for the Baltic Beach Party and once for Summer Sound-- my impression is that it feels a lot like New Orleans- a port city with a constant party.

Both times I've been to Liepaja, I've stayed at the Fontaine Hotel, which seems lovely overall, but decorated with a rather unique eye for what goes together. (It's also one of the hotels in the world that gives you a feeling that you are in a certain place, rather than swimming around in a world dominated by corporate interests.)

Dude lives at the Fontaine hotel!

While I won't be at the festival this weekend, you can catch acts like Ewert and The Two Dragons, whom I stood in the rain to hear play a set at Summer Sound last year. If you know me, you know that I don't stand in the rain by choice very often!

Since the festival is right on the beach, some of the events are on grass and some are on sand. The beach at Liepaja has some of the nicest sand in the world!

Since I don't enjoy standing outside in the rain, I didn't have a fantastic time at Summer Sound last year.  I can only hope the festival has better weather this year than it did last year!


Below are a selection of pictures from Summer Sound 2011.

In Liepaja, on the way to the festival.

I seem to be taking my husband to the Positivus Festival.

One of the things that surprises me about my life is that I've been to the Positivus music festival in Salacgriva, Latvia more than once. I've written extensively about the festival. I've seen American and European acts there, I've slept (briefly) backstage and I've been out way past the time when the sun came up. (Then again, since the sun comes up around 4 a.m. during the festival, it isn't too hard to stay up past dawn.)

This year my husband Paul Sicard said he wanted to come with me to the festival. I was a bit surprised to hear this.

While @psicard has met plenty of Latvians--and we've had plenty of Latvian houseguests--I'm curious what he may see this year that will strike him as unusual.

While a lot of Americans have passed through the festival as acts, I only know one other American who has gone to Positivus as a plain ol' guest without any official ties to the festival.

Last year at Positivus, I met Tama Carouthers, 25, from New Orleans, who was traveling around Europe when she decided to come to the Positivus Festival.We met just as she was finishing painting her Royksopp fan flag, and was waving it in the air trying to dry the paint.

"It's unique. I love the Latvians, the blond men. It's a beautiful festival, a beautiful vibe, "  Carouthers said.

"This place, it's pretty, its so pretty." Carouthers told me, as I followed her to her tent last summer to stash her newly made Royksopp flag. Along the way we attracted a bit of notice by speaking English with American accents, accents that are still unusual in that part of the world.

Of course, my Kansas-bred, Tallinn-based journalism-professor friend Scott Abel came to the Positivus festival in 2009. Yet since he ended up conducting Moby's Latvian press conference on the fly, I don't think that he counts as a typical festival guest.  Still, I have a vivid memory of walking down to the beach at Positivus with Scott, and drawing a crowd  just because we were speaking American English. We soon went and hid backstage, because it wasn't much fun to be a festival attraction because of our accents.

Praha (Prague) Aug 2, 2011

My brother-in-law is going to Prague for the first time later this month, to do a bit of work for his company. It's his first trip to Eastern Europe. This post is for him.



In August 2011, I had a travel layover in Prague. While the layover has mostly gone the way of the telegraph, the hatbox and the white cotton glove, it still exists, especially when you are trying to get from one out-of-the-way place to another out-of-the-way place. Trying to get to/from the US to Riga, Latvia, one often encounters a layover.

Since I was spending a long afternoon in Prague, my Latvian pal Marija (aka @Swiluma) who used to live in Prague, told me where to go eat in the city.

Knowing that I hadn't been in Prague in over a decade, she sent me on a bus from the airport to the Dejvická metro station (metro line A - green line). Then told me to go 4 stops until Můstek. This is what the stop looks like:




At the metro station, she told me to look for the exit mentioning Stavovské divadlo.

"This will directly lead you to the street, called Provaznická. Just after the exit slightly on right there is a pub Restaurace U Provaznice."

Alas, the Můstek station is HUGE to someone from Austin, Texas who doesn't take the subway very often. I got so very lost looking for the proper exit.* Once I gave up looking for the right exit and just left the station, I got even more lost.

Luckily, it was a beautiful day and I ended up walking around for hours and taking lots of pictures of people taking pictures in this very pretty area of Prague.







Walking around Prague that afternoon, I took pictures of the Prague tourist attractions, and noted that things seem to have cleaned up in a big way since I was there in 2001.**

At the racetrack

Kind of shocked to be spending Friday night at the racetrack, even if it's for a screening of ROAD WARRIOR.

Update: Pictures!

Alamo Drafthouse inflatable screen in the middle of the racetrack!

More about Asheville

Being that I've spent so much time in Asheville over the years, I tend to forget that other people don't have the same visual references that I do for the city. So here's a selection of scenes from (greater) Old Asheville and New Asheville.

To start us off, here's a photo of "Old Asheville vs. New Asheville"

When I got out of the truck to to take this picture, the woman who was leaving the house behind the trashed TV told me I was the third person to stop and take a picture. "Why do you all do that" she then asked me.

I told her that, for me, it was symbolic of the changes taking place in Asheville right now. She then told me about her mother, who had lived in the same spot for 26 years and whose rent was now going up. Don't forget that Gentrification has its drawbacks.

Old Asheville vs. New Asheville in one shot.

 I find it interesting that several times when I was in Asheville, people make remarks to me about "the tourists." I guess that means I'm nearly a local.

Old Time Asheville: 

I don't know when this was painted, but this is the sort of street-side  art that I've seen in Asheville since the 80's.

Pink Dogwood tree blooming on Easter Sunday, at the Pisgah View Ranch

Asheville, NC Has Gotten All Hipped-Up

Dogwood tree in Bloom, April 2012

For the last 200 or so years, my family has been living in the hills around Asheville, N.C. This means I've been going to Asheville ever since I was a baby. While there, I've visited my family, driven through downtown, then visited some more family.

In the late 80's, I started insisting that I be taken to the occasional interesting event in Asheville while I was there. Sometimes it was a poetry reading, sometimes a pottery exhibition. Usually the "interesting thing" turned out not to be so interesting after all, which is good because I usually needed to take one of my great-aunts to the grocery store while I was in town.

A few years ago, I figured out that something was afoot in Asheville. Back in Austin, I was wearing a T-shirt from the Early Girl Eatery which has the words "Asheville, NC" on the reverse side, when I was stopped by a couple of women. They wanted to know what Asheville was really like, because they were thinking about moving there.

Then the couple who used to live across the street from me in Austin up and moved to Asheville, saying that it was a lot like Austin was 30 years ago.

Over this past Easter weekend, I went to Asheville for the first time in a couple of years. Since I've been gone, the city has hit hipster critical mass.

Damn Girl! playing at the Altamont Brewing Company, West Asheville

In less than a week in Asheville--and without disturbing my family activities--I did a lot of things that I never thought I'd do in Asheville. I ate at a Korean BBQ Taco Truck. I went to a Brewery Co-op. I even bought a tiny hat that's the sort of hat that passes for high fashion in the Burningman-ish community.

Time Travel Weekend Party

In many ways this past weekend in Austin has felt like a stop on the time travel train.

I'm convinced that sometime in the future, time travel is a functional thing, much the way air travel is today. However, in this future, all time travel trips must be meticulously planned: your clothing, money and vocabulary must all be perfectly synced to the time you are visiting. (You wouldn't want the people in the past to know that you were a time traveler, as then everyone would want stock tips and investment advice and other such self-serving nonsense.)

An exception to this planning rule is that there are a few "free" stops on the time-travel train. These are places where it doesn't matter much what you do, say, or wear. There is nothing you can get wrong, because there are no right or wrong answers. One of these free stops on your time travel tour package is the annual rite of spring, known as Eeyore's Birthday in Austin, Texas.

The backstory behind the party indicates that the event grew out of an attempt by the English department at the nearby University of Texas at Austin to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday, and give the students a chance to blow off some steam before finals. It has turned into something much more than that.

So, when you see someone at Eeyore's birthday in an outfit that seems far better suited to hunting elk in 19th century Germany--what you've probably found is a time-traveler returning home from a 19th century elk-hunting trip. Same with the Viking priestess you saw at Eeyore's, or the person with the perfect 80s hair. They were all on their way to/from their time-travel destination--they just decided to pop into Eeyore's birthday because they know a good party when they see one.

Sex and the Secret Service

I suspect that you've heard about the Secret Service sex scandal where President Obama's advance team in Cartagena, Colombia allegedly hired prostitutes, then failed to pay at least one of them.

While the investigation of the events in question grinds on, and the televised political discourse tries to blame the president for this, one big aspect of this story has been missing from the coverage.

If the Secret Service wasn't a total boys club, this wouldn't be an issue.

I am not in the Secret Service. I am far too lazy to even bother applying. As far as I know, my entire interaction with the Secret Service has been when I used to see Lady Bird Johnson's security team guarding her, back in the days when we used to share a manicurist at a small salon in Austin.

Looking at the Secret Service from the outside, one thing is clear.
You don't have multiple people allegedly hiring prostitutes on a work trip if your work culture is one where women are respected as people.

According to this NYT article, 25 percent of the people who work in the Secret Service are women. No data is given for what percentage of these women are field agents.

Then again, as parodied on Jon Stewart earlier this week, the idea that women are people is having a rough time right now.

Update: Another Jon Stewart clip

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Downtown Abbey and Cough Syrup

As I sit on my sofa, chilling with my post SXSW cold, while watching Downton Abbey, I'm really grateful for modern medicine.

I so would not want Lady Grantham in charge of my healthcare at the village hospital!

After all, it would really suck to have no antibiotics at a time when heroin was the best cough medicine to be had.

Book Club: Why it's easy to fall in love via letters.

 

Late in January my book club at Southwestern University had possibility the most sprinted book club discussion I’ve ever witnessed.

The book we were discussing was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.

The action in the book is set just after World War II, and is focused on the recounting of events that occurred during the (real-life) Nazi occupation of the island of Guernsey. The island is located in the English Channel, and it’s so close to France that it was where a lot of exiles ended up during the French Revolution!

The novel is centered around Juliet, a journalist whose light articles made people laugh during the war, and whom I had a soft spot for. (The depiction of funny women in literature who read on a regular basis is awfully sparse, and it’s always good to have another one.) Thus, I identified with Juliet a little more than some people might.

Apparently several members of my book club had a hard time getting into the book, because it’s an epistolary novel, constructed entirely of letters. 

On the other hand, I was all excited when I first started reading the novel, because I was excited that, maybe, the epistolary novel was making a comeback.

When the novel turned out to be a somewhat unconventional love story, I wasn’t in the least surprised. That’s because I’ve found it easier to fall in love via letter than almost any other way.

The intimacy, the detail, and, often the confessional are all part of the appeal of a real-life epistolary romance.

Then again, in real life, there’s always the part where the letter never comes, the in-box never pings, and one ends up writing vague blog posts about the experience.

Your mileage may vary.

I’m against spoilers, but it won’t be much of a spoiler if I tell you that I saw the end of this book coming a mile away. No one else in my book club did.

The again, maybe Arcade Fire explained the magic of falling in love via letters way better than I'll ever be able to.

Pop Culture Remixing: Why it matters that we keep remaking familiar pop culture properties.

At 11 p.m. on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, my husband and I walked into the Chaparral Ice rink in North Austin. Despite the warm day, I was carrying my winter coat, hat and gloves. We were going to the theater!

Less a traditional theatrical experience and more of a chance to see a comedic trainwreck, we had tickets for Aliens on Ice by The Old Murder House Theatre.

Yes, we’d paid to see the movie “Aliens” recreated at an ice rink by a cast just slightly beyond being able to stand up on their ice skates.

That Saturday night was do-it-yourself (DIY) theater at its finest. One theatrical set was comprised of hand drawn illustrations on cardboard that were attached to a pink ironing board. You could clearly see the duct tape holding things together.

Costuming wasn’t much fancier. The mostly male cast changed characters by adding or removing wigs in full view of the audience. One alien picked up his headpiece as he skated by. It had fallen off during a dramatic fight scene. This show was a very long way from Broadway.

Despite the ludicrously low production values of “Aliens on Ice” the audience was mostly eating it up, laughing along at the comedy.

That night at the ice rink, we’d happened to sit next to our friends Charles and Charlene Smith, who’d left the kids home and who were out on their date night. Charlie Smith, 31-- whom I know from my own lower-rent theatrical collective/charity project of Scare For a Cure—had actually worn out the VHS tape of “Aliens” when he was younger. Later, Smith owned up to having played “Aliens” on the playground, much the way some kids played “Cowboys and Indians.”

Before that ice show, I’d never seen the movie “Aliens.” Yet I laughed so hard during the production that I managed to send myself into coughing fits.

I wasn’t surprised to see the rest of the audience also enjoying itself. During the show they were immersed in pop culture, something that’s as comfortable as a pair of much-loved flannel pajamas for many Americans.

“Aliens on Ice” it isn’t alone in allowing people to immerse themselves in pop culture.

Over the last few years I’ve noticed an increasing number of creative projects based around the idea of “remixing” fictional properties created by a different author.

I’m defining “remixing” as someone taking a fictional universe created by one person, then creating another project based on that universe.

Thus “remixing” might include what happens when the works of Jane Austen are updated to become “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” or when people revisit characters first found in L. Frank Baum‘s “Wizard of Oz” books resulting in the musical “Wicked.”