Like you didn’t already know that.  This is my much overdue, much not anticipated review of ACL Fest, which I attended two days of this weekend.  Anna, Sean, Tim and I, intrepid music lovers that we are, ventured to Zilker in the baking heat Saturday afternoon about 1:30.  Tim and I started off the day with Mike Doughty and his band.  Mike is the former lead singer for Soul Coughing, and he got me moving despite the heat.  I really enjoyed his set and plan to add him to the wishlist.  There was still a nice breeze and I was optimistic for not melting.  Then I went and bought a bandana to use as my own personal cooler (you know, wet it and place on neck).  This helped immensely because it also came in handy as a bandito covering for protection from the dust later on.  And it was camoflauged, so no one could see me.  Because of all the greenery.  Right.  Anyway, we went onto Buddy Guy because there was no one else we cared about on at that time and we figured he was a living legend.  We wound up sitting in the shade, but it did sound like the man could play a mean guitar.  But it wasn’t really our type of music so I think I respected him more than enjoyed him.  Saw Bill wandering around and chatted for a couple of minutes.  Then we caught the Frames, who put on one of the top shows of the festival.  They were amazingly great, really rocking and will also go on my wishlist.  I was once again moving, dancing to their beat despite the heat.  Then we went back to the other side of the park for The Robert Randolph Band.  It turns out that the Robert Randolph Band is TOTALLY not Tim and I’s cup of tea.   They are a jam band with a lot of funk.  But the kind of funk that overweight, middle-aged white people like to dance to.  We sat in the shade again and waited for Anna and Sean, who loved the band, despite being neither overweight nor middle-aged.  But Mr. Larson loves the funk, as anyone who’s seen his music collection knows.  We waited, and the band never ended, so finally we abandoned the Larsons and went over to the Fiery Furnaces, who sucked, unfortunately.  We should have checked out the Walkmen.  One of those so difficult decisions we made several times over the course of two days.  I was starving by this point (it was close to 6), so we decided to get food.  I went from starving to dizzy and about to pass out, which was fun, but eventually I got a beef barbecue sandwich and kneeled on the ground to eat it with dirty hands.  Gross, I know, but I was ravenous.  Then someone gave me their chips, which I ate, then I got a pretzel.  What can I say, I’ve got a tapeworm that is about the size of a grapefruit growing in my belly.  Okay, more gross.  Anyway, miracle of miracles, we ran back into the Flarsons, who had also stopped to eat when Anna started to swoon and we just stayed there shooting the shit and drinking lemonade for an hour or so.  We could hear Jet in the distance and all decided they probably sucked.  Then we headed over to Bloc Party, who put on a fantastic show, although not as great as SXSW.  But the dust was so horrible by this point that whenever someone lit up a cigarette, the smoke would just hang in the air and both Anna and I were having trouble breathing.  I moved again and again, but as soon as I moved, the person next to me lit up.  I could not understand how they could both smoke and inhale the amount of dust we were all breathing.  We made it through Bloc Party, stuck around for about 2 Oasis songs, and then it was time to go home before we passed out.  Tim and I were so tired that we ordered a pizza and then realized we were too tired to eat it.  But we still had to wait for it to be delivered.  We were in bed by 11pm.  On a Saturday night!

Sunday started out with the weather saying that it was already 101 at noon.  Whoo boy.  We headed to Zilker and were already sweating like pigs by the time we walked from the car to the gate.  Tim and I checked out about two or 3 songs by M83, who were really good and much more energetic and danceable in person than on record.  Although we did no dancing, it was too freakin’ hot.  We ran into Rommel and Elizabeth and then we headed over to the Doves where I planted myself in my chair with my hat and umbrella.  I love the Doves, but it was just too hot to move.  I’ll have to check them out again in normal temperatures.  They put on a wonderful show and I tapped my feet to conserve energy.  After a brief stop by the a/c tent, it was over to the Kaiser Chiefs where I started feeling like I was going to die or burst into flames and I went and sat down in the shade for the rest of their set.  Tim says they were awesome.  Then we met Anna at the Arcade Fire, who I’d REALLY wanted to see, but my hunger won out and Tim and I went and ate.  Then Tim went and waited for water forever while I sat in the shade and tried to ignore the people spontaenously combusting around me.  We eventually hooked back up with the Seanna and Tim, Anna and I caught the Decemberists.  On the way, an announcer in the Gospel tent said that it had gotten up to a new record, 108 degrees that day and it was still 102!  This is at 5:30, mind you.  I think Tim no longer gave me a hard time about being a wimp in the shade after we heard that.  The Decemberists put on a really awesome show, much more lively than their records.  Why do they take all the excitement out of these bands when they record them?  102 felt positively cool at this point, so I did a little dancin’ and moving.  But then it was time for another highlight of the festival:  FRANZ FERDINAND!  Tim and I ran into Rommel and Elizabeth again by some miracle and we all enjoyed the Ferdinand together.  They were absolutely wonderful!  It was cool enough to dance like a maniac, so I did, although the dust was getting bad again, so I was a bandito dancer with a bandana around my mouth and nose.  Or as Rommel called, me, a Zapitista.  I just adored the Ferdinand, they were great and they filmed their concert in black and white.  AND they had a giant banner they unfurled at the back of the stage that had their logo.  SO COOL! 

Then it was time to wait.  And wait.  And wait for Coldplay.  We didn’t want to lose our great spot.  But as the sun set, the dust got worse, and the people got worse, and eventually you couldn’t see more than about 10 feet in front of you.  When it came time to meet the Larsons, Tim and I decided we’d pack it in instead of coming back to our great viewing point.  We bid adieu to Rommel and Elizabeth, I cautioned them to “leave if they couldn’t breathe” and we headed to our meeting point.  Where, remarkably, it was much less dusty.  Yay!  So we wound up staying for Coldplay, who I really enjoyed despite their drunken middle-aged fan base.  They really filled a huge space with their music beautifully.  A wonderful finish to the festival!

Then it was time to fight the hordes to return to our car.  I finally stopped coughing and blowing up dust, so I think that’s a good thing!  ACL 2005 goodbye!

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Comments

Tim

2005-09-28T22:31:57.000Z

to mention that our Hats (that we all bought specifically for the festival) were given an extra dose of character, when a very drunk woman fell over and pulled her friend with her, tumbling on top of our chairs and crushing our hats. This is why they shouldn’t serve wine in excercise water bottles. I offered them a hand to help them back up, but they looked at me like I was an alien. Looking back, I realize I had a bandana over my face, so perhaps they though I was trying to hold them up. Who knows. In any case, I didn’t enjoy Coldplay that much although I do have to give them props for actually going and seeing the other bands throughout the day. Chris looked as grimy on stage as we did.

On the subject of the crazy drunk people. Have you ever seen 3 guys, who are all exactly the same height. One of whom is dating a woman a little bit shorter than him, and 2 of whom are dating women over a foot taller than themselves. The second part was odd. I like tall women, but it looked like some sort of akward blind/double date.

I have horrible luck with cars.  Terrible.  Actually Tim and I both do.  He gets in accidents perpetually which are totally not his fault, and all my cars suck up incredible amounts of money.  I thought it was just because I had used cars, but I bought my VW Cabrio 4 years ago brand new.  It had bizarre problems before I paid it off:  a leak in the roof, the door handle fell off, but once I paid it off in March, the problems began in earnest.  Tim told me to sell it when the A/C compressor needing replacing at $1500, but did I listen?  No, I loved my car and didn’t want the little crap bucket that was the only thing we could afford at this point.  Then there was a problem with the coolant system leaking and it was another $400-$500 to fix.  Then it was two new tires that was $250 (that’s a maintenance item, but still).  And there was some other miscellaneous something that cost $400, I think.  Oh, the ignition switch.  Now the penultimate insult.  The ABS Control Module is shot.  This little crappy asshole part that controls the brake system and is therefore mandatory costs $795.  Then it costs $176 in labor to replace.  Then they have to “flush the brake system”.  So I get to spend $1233.44.  That brings my total of car costs SINCE MARCH to about $4000.  Whoo-hoo!  And I was so excited about SAVING money because I didn’t have a car payment.  I’ve been paying my old car payment PLUS approximately $71.33 a month in car repairs!  Argh!  And I can’t even get that much out of it.  $10k if I sell it myself and $8k if I trade-in.  Sigh, this is so frustrating.  I really wish I’d listened to Tim.  He’s right, you need to always have a car payment, otherwise your car goes south immediately.  Now I just have to sell my beloved Allison and get a crap bucket (the Scion xA is the crap bucket I’m looking at because it’s cheap and a Toyota, so maybe it’ll last a little while).

I used to love Christmas.  It used to be my favorite holiday.  I used to love to go shopping and pick the perfect gift for people, I loved to buy the perfect wrapping paper and then wrap everyone’s presents beautifully and carefully while sipping apple cider or mulled wine and watching Christmas movies or listening to Christmas music.  Seriously, I loved to look at the Christmas lights, and listen to carolers, and watch the excitement on children’s faces as they sat on Santa Claus’ lap.  Then I got married into a family that starts talking about Christmas earlier every year.  At first they held off until October.  But now it has gotten ridiculous.  Labor Day weekend, we got an email from my sister-in-law asking about what we wanted for Christmas.  They were going to get their Christmas shopping done early, so they wanted to know now.  COME ON, LABOR DAY!  They just put out the Halloween Candy for pete’s sake!  This turns me into a total grinch.  I do not even want to SEE the word Christmas until Thanksgiving!  I’ve always believed that holidays should not be jumped in favor of other holidays.  Right now I am still basking in the glow of summer.  In October, I will revel in Halloween (my new favorite holiday), November is for fall and Thanksgiving, and then, after the turkey has been eaten and UT has (hopefully) beat A&M’s butt at football, I will drag out the tree and the decorations and listen to Christmas music and get the house all decked out for the season.  That’s THANKSGIVING, FOLKS!  November 24th this year.  Until then, I don’t want to hear the word “Christmas”, I don’t want to see a single light strand or hear a damn Christmas carol, got it?  I am going to be selfish and childish and enjoy my last Christmas where the presents are for me, got it?  I will not be turned into a Grinch, we are putting Christmas back to bed for another 2 and a half months, okay folks?  Thanks for your understanding, see you November 25th when I’ll be humming carols and decking the halls!

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Comments

K.T.S.

2005-09-12T01:58:22.000Z

Amen, sister!  Heck, I just spent a pile of money buying school supplies.  School supplies!

I have been unable to tear myself away from the images of Katrina.  I keep going back to CNN and reading and watching the videos.  It’s started seeping into my dreams and the images and stories go through my head every night in those moments between waking and sleeping.  But now I’m just outraged.  Outraged that our country has abandoned thousands of people, left them to starve and dehydrate and get heat stroke in “shelters”.  Outraged that they have let people die in the street, in the parking lot of these shelters and not even bothered to pick up the bodies.  Outraged that spokespeople are having the nerve to blame the victims of this tragedy for the situation they are in.  I read that 125,000 people in New Orleans did not have transportation.  125,000 people!  How were they supposed to evacuate?  They couldn’t, and now our country, the strongest super-power in the world has abandoned them.  Apparently the rest of the world just can’t believe that the US can’t take care of this.  I think the citizens of this country believe the same thing.  They have abandoned airlifts out of hospitals because of snipers.  While it is horrible and unbelievable that citizens have become snipers, these are national guard troops.  Aren’t National Guard troops trained to deal with landing helicopters amid gunfire?  Aren’t they trained to go into war?  Because make no mistake, this is war.  They need to stop saying, “Help is coming” and start getting those people out of there, one at a time if necessary.  We need to start picking people up helicopter by helicopter, busload by busload.  If we have to get every school bus in the country out there and make them pick up people, then hell, let’s do it.  I don’t understand how we can’t get this done!  Apparently there are a bunch of people trapped on a pier near New Orleans and there is a ferry waiting to take them to safety but no captain.  No captain!  Find someone who can drive a boat and get them!  This is ridiculous and sadly comes down to racism and classism.  Our leaders do not care because it is poor black people that are stranded.  If this were white people screaming for help, they’d all have been gotten to safety by now, snipers and flood waters be damned.  Because that’s the horrible racial divide that exists in this country.  I am disgusted by the fact that is becoming all too clear now:  these people are going to be abandoned.  Many more of them are going to die because they are poor and black and our president does not give a shit.  And this is the sad, awful, horrible truth.

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Comments

Travis

2005-09-02T21:06:03.000Z

As much of a retard as W. is (no offense to retards), you would think that he could have at least learned from his daddy’s mistake.  Bush Sr. was criticized heavily for his slow response to hurricane damage in Florida, and some analysts have stated that this may have been a part of his loss to Clinton.  I guess since W. doesn’t have an election any time real soon, hey, no worries!

I went to my 10 year high school reunion this weekend and had a lot of fun.  This is probably surprising to most people, particularly people who did not go to their own 10 year high school reunion, but I enjoyed high school, was neither homecoming queen or class dork, and thought it would be fun to see what people were up to.  It was.  Luckily two of the people I’d really wanted to see were there, my roommate from college, Christi, and my theatre friend, Lara.  We were in all the plays together in high school, kind of the ruling class of the theatre department (Lara more than me), but still we’d been really close and I’d wanted to see what she was up to.  Tim and I wound up closing down the reunion, we were having so much fun talking to Christi and some other friends.  I think we’d all forgotten how much we enjoyed each other’s company.  See Christi and I had a big fight and she moved out, and then we’d only seen each other once (where we made up) since then.  It was definitely nice and cathartic for both of us to hang out with that behind us.  I wish more people had shown, there were only about a quarter or so of my class there, but luckily most of the “honor class” kids were there so I had a lot of friends to hang out with, even if they weren’t my “best friends” in high school. Everyone has done well for themselves, and everyone was completely over any hang-ups they had in high school and was talking to everyone.  Of course, I was fortunate enough to have a school that was NOT straight out of a John Hughes movie, and I’d been friends with folks of all stripes, from homecoming queen to class burnout, in high school, so I was not expecting trauma drama.  But I enjoyed myself immensely and can say whole-hartedly I’m so glad I went!  If you have a reunion coming up, my advice is to go, you’ll probably enjoy yourself and you won’t have to worry about having any regrets!  As an added bonus, some folks from my reunion who live in Austin and San Antonio said they’d make the show this weekend (we’ll see if that actually happens).  And I got lots of compliments on my appearance, and who can’t use those from time to time!  (I’ve gone from having hair half way down my back in high school to having it quite short).

Just found out we only had 5 people yesterday at the show.  We only had 6 at Sunday’s show.  This is so depressing and disheartening when you work so hard on something, you get tons of press, 3 or 4 people a day tell me they heard our KUT spot, and still people do not come see the show.  It was great because two of the girls who work for the company across the call came to happy hour yesterday at my office and were talking about how they’re getting a group of people from their office together to see the show.  I was like, that’s great, don’t you feel guilty, coworkers, that you aren’t coming and they are?  And Laura from the office across the hall was like, “why aren’t you going?” to which coworkers mumbled lame excuses.  She was like, “you guys are losers.  you should be cool and come with us!”.  Now I should mention at this point that the women who work in the office across the hall are all very attractive and the guys in my office like to point out this fact.  So surely one of them saying that they were losers should affect their manhood in some way or something.  We’ll see.  But I just hope all this positive radio and press translates to ticket sales.  Because I just can’t bear to think the thought that LGT couldn’t afford to put shows on anymore.  Seriously, it just depresses me too much to think of.

So “The Grind” opened this weekend, and except for a few line boo-boos and one minor prop mishap, it went great!  I was so proud of everyone, they did a fantastic job, even yesterday when they were only playing to 8 people.  I hope audiences grow next weekend.  I bet they grow on the strength of our Arts Eclectic feature alone!  We sound so bad-ass and smart and like we know what we’re doing.  Mike Lee is a genius.  Seriously, I was surprised to find that my voice does not sound all nasally like it does when you record it and play it back.  Thank God!  That would have sucked.  I’m very happy with it and I’ve already heard from a couple of peeps that they heard it.  Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy:)

You ever wake up on the right side of the bed in the morning?  You don’t really have trouble getting up, and you’re all awake once you get up and you come to work, kind of humming as you make your breakfast.  And you’re really enjoying this good mood, which lasts until:  you open your email.  Yep.  That sucks.

So last night I was trying to fall asleep but I was worried about something.  I couldn’t sleep without an answer to my question, so I decided to get up and go consult the internet.  I went to the office, let out the dogs and fired up the old computer and within 2 minutes had my answer.  God Bless the Internet.  So I put the dogs back up, and headed back to bed, satisfied with my answer.  Just one small thing stood in my way:  a wall.  I exited the office into the darkness and ran smack dab into the corner of the wall of the little closet that houses our A/C.  It jammed my glasses into my face and caused extreme pain.  I momentarily thought I was blind and felt very much like little Ralphie in a Christmas Story after he thinks he’s shot his eye out.  I took my glasses off and commenced crying, laying down on the floor in the fetal position for good measure.  I could feel I’d created a nice dent in my left eyebrow and a cut below my eye.  Tim was like, “are you ok” and I tried to explain to him through my tears (and laughter at my own stupidity), what had happened.  As we got back to the bedroom he was like, “well it does hurt when you stub your toe.”  He didn’t realize I had taken out my eye, not my toe.  Wow, I’d be overreacting if it was just my toe!  So he got me ice, we made a little joke about it looking like he’d punched me and I went to bed.  This morning, of course, my eye looks a little wonky.  It’s swollen and a little purple below and above my eye.  But not a full-out black eye, thank God.  I’m going to the doctor tomorrow and didn’t want to have to say “I ran into a wall.  No really!”  while they eyed Tim with suspicion.  Sigh.

So we got a letter from our friendly homeowner’s association yesterday telling us to water our lawn because it was getting too brown!  It’s JULY IN TEXAS, for Pete’s sake!  We could water our lawn everyday and it would still turn brown because it’s JULY IN TEXAS!  And I don’t live in some fancy North Austin place, no sir, I live in Bubbaland, South Austin, and our neighborhood is full of folks who have higher priorities in life than meticulous lawn care.  We just got a new management company, so we figure they’re trying to show what they can do by driving around and looking for unperfect lawns and then sending out letters.  Jeez!  I don’t have enough to worry about with both Tim and I being gone from 8:30am to 10pm every day with work and rehearsals, now I have to go out at 10, and instead of eating dinner or relaxing, I’ve got to water my lawn.  Damn Lawn Nazis! 

And we are supposed to get our lawn un-browned in 30 days.  What then?  What if, simply due to the Texas heat, the fact that our lawn is in full sun all day, and the fact that it’s on a rake, we have brown spots?  Should I buy some spray paint and paint the grass green?  Or put in fake grass like the crazy woman across the street who has put in fake flowers and a red, white and blue water fountain display with a flood light trained on it so you can bask in its marvelous glory 24/7?  THERE ARE BIGGER PROBLEMS IN THIS WORLD PEOPLE THAN BROWN GRASS!  Like water shortages, and the environment going to shit, and a war that we should never have started that nobody can win!  (Take that “Red, White and Blue family”!) 

AARGH!

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Comments

Kate Thomas Simpson

2005-08-02T01:07:58.000Z

Julie,

I think you should go with your green spray paint idea!  It’s so stupid that they’re getting upset that your grass isn’t green in the middle of summer!

love, Kate