Art Critic

One of my joys in traveling is to visit museums. I enjoy the art, of course, but also the other people enjoying the art (or by turns being puzzled or even repulsed by it). When we were in NYC, FFP and I handed the camera back and forth and shot pictures while at MOMA. One thing I like about that museum is that except for some special exhibits you can take photos there. Here I think this viewer has unintentionally become part of the exhibiting of this Pollock.

Yesterday was my walkie/talkie (and lunch) with a dear friend. Given the searing temps in Austin we didn't go too far for lunch (Chez Nous on Neches) although that ten blocks or so was enough to feel a bit hot and sweaty. Afterward we decided to go to AMOA where an exhibit about memory has been mounted. FFP and I went to the opening but, honestly, it's hard to enjoy a show at the opening. After that we stopped at Arthouse at Jones Center where the New American Talent is up. My friend is a playwright and he is working on a play that involves the art world. We had a rambling discussion of what is and is not art, what is 'good' or 'bad' and so forth. That's a discussion that never ends, of course. One of the best things about museums and galleries and movies and plays and performances and reading and writing is the way we don't just consume it...we are all critics. Sure, we listen to the 'real' critics and, in the visual art world, are very influenced by them. My friends says that putting something in a gallery, putting a seven figure price on it attracts some people.

Personally I love learning what I like, what I love, what merely puzzles me. Given our discussion we pronounced on the art we saw yesterday. It was interesting how our opinions differed and how quickly they were formed.

Here's a photo I edited that FFP took at MOMA of a girl knelling before the art with a tattoo.

My Bellwethers

Bellwether is such an interesting word. I think I always thought, hearing it, that it had something to do with weather. Maybe the bell part was the bell on a buoy or something else that rang wildly when the weather was changing. But no. Wether is a castrated male sheep. Such an animal might lead the flock. With a bell around its neck. Hence the secondary usage we have come to know: "a person or thing that shows the existence or direction of a trend."

The picture above is a reflection in the window of Lambert's touting Barbecue and Cold Beer and reflecting the new downtown AMLI construction. Lambert's shows a trend toward adaptive reuse among the new construction, one also reflected in the Ballet Austin building and the Long Center. My bellwether on the whether high rises will win over little two-story former stores with historic limestone walls will be whether, in fact, that strip of stores housing Las Manitas and such becomes a Marriott. My bellwether for when the boom in building skyscrapers was over in Austin (and in spite of those under construction I think it is over for this cycle) was the announcement of the Four Seasons project. The bellmen are still parking cars on the ground where it might be one day. Note that the W hotel complex has a fancy sales center but no sign of construction. (I do think it will get built in the nearer term but perhaps that is wishful thinking because I want a fancy hotel/condo complex near my new home, the 360 condos, with the Austin City Limits studio instead of a vacant lot.)

My bellwether for whether I will like movies, plays, music and lots of other things is whether FFP likes them. (Apologies for implying that there is anything like the original meaning for this word here!)

There are many people in my life who are reverse bellwethers. I have one friend who I know if she likes a piece of music then I will hate it. This is in spite of our very complementary feelings about food and wine. I have several friends who, if they would wear a piece of clothing, then you can be sure I would not. There are in fact lots of people that serve as reverse bellwethers for me. If they are buying, I should sell. If they are riding a trend, I should get off. This is very handy. One should be careful not to ignore people and media sources than can be uncanny guides if only reversed.

Well, that's me today, signing out, carefully avoiding the topics mentioned yesterday.

So...How Did That Go?

I'm feeling less anxious about everything. And, in spite of the Wall Street Journal's assertions, Austin is still not so full of itself about designer dresses as you might think. The swells in this picture are having a fine time, though. That's us in the middle. My outfit is thrift store and hand-me-downs but some found it clever. (Most expensive item by far was the Cole Haan tuxedo pumps.) FFP consulted his fashion gurus and they said in sultry Austin a white dinner jacket on September 6th was fine. And the good news about not owning a bunch of designer dresses? I won't have to figure out what to do with them when I move to the condo. My dozen pairs of Levis are another matter.

Fashion Emergency

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal had a front page story about high-end stores and brands infiltrating (for want of a better word) smaller markets. Date line? Austin, Texas. This has certainly happened in the Domain center. (See fancy shop window here.) Anyway, in this article they quoted some women I know about how they had all these new designer gowns for the upcoming black tie season. Um. OK. They say the season will start tomorrow night at a gala for Ballet Austin. Um. Yeah. I was just planning on flipping through my various excuses for finery, none from designers of note. And going to that event.

I really envy men. A couple of tuxes, some suspenders, ties, cummerbunds, tasteful black pumps, maybe a white dinner jacket. The tuxedo look for women pops up now and then. I embraced the simplicity. I got a real tux tailored for me. Paired it with tuxedo shirts or a silver shiny turtle neck. I even have a white dinner jacket. I think I got it at a secondhand store for twenty bucks. This party is so early in the season, that FFP plans to wear his dinner jacket.

I have worn gowns. But designer gowns. Nope. I got married in a dress I bought for $35.

So tomorrow night, among the designer gowns, I'm be the one in some dowdy black velvet pants and some top I find in the back of the closet. It said in this column that the reporters ask women now what they are wearing. In other words, who designed it. Something tells me, though, that they won't be asking me!

By the way, the photo was taken Monday of the window of the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store on South Congress. I love the way the mannequin has tossed aside those uncomfortable-looking red high heels and adopted a bored sprawl more suited to a pair of old jeans. You can see yours truly (in a polo and jeans) snapping the picture. Oh, and speaking of those heels. Did I mention that I have a pair of flat tuxedo pumps and, whatever outfit I have, that's what I'll be wearing to festively inaugurate Ballet Austin's new home tomorrow night?

Us At the Mansion

We have gotten to go to a few events in the last year or so at The Pease Mansion. (Scroll down a bit on this link to find some info on it.) At one of these events our friend Vickie Roan (owner of an elegant gift shop, The Menagerie) took our picture and the other night she found it on her computer and sent it to us. I think I'll put this on on our putative 'home' page. Not that we really update that much any more what with the blogs.

Wedding Cake Building

FFP and I went to the dedication of the Norwood Tower on 7th Street as a Texas Historic Place last evening. This wedding cake building was once the tallest building downtown.

We have been busy with activities for our charities, volunteer work, exercise and with the continuing downsizing effort. I'm getting ready to take off after the holiday weekend to Colorado. If all goes well, I'll give away another van load of stuff to my relatives up there and come home with a bunch of digital pictures of squirmy kids who will never look that way again. I bought a new digital camera. If I could have, I would have purchased a Nikon Coolpix 5900 identical to the one I have. And I could have purchased one on ebay I suppose. But I went to the camera store and got as close as I could by buying a Nikon Coolpix P4. Same batteries, same USB cable, lot of the same operation and the same type of memory (SD). Sadly, no viewfinder. My 5900 still works great but we sometimes find both of us want to have the camera. Particularly if I go on a trip without him as I plan to do this time, taking my Dad to see relatives.

If You Can See Me...

The Armstrong-Connelly studio at the new Ballet Austin Butler Dance Education Center has a glass wall to the outside. You can see the balcony of what will one day be the Preece-Ball home. And yes we named something in the new building. The Ballerina's Locker Room I think it is.

FFP was asking me why there wasn't a Austin Daily Photo site like Paris and London and many cities have. So I decided that I would just make one. I have decided, see, that if I have three blogs then I can pretend that I'm keeping up with them. Ha. However, I will be just prowling the archives for the photo site sometimes showing things that don't exist anymore. And, in general, I'm not going to say anything about the photos over there.
Things are business as usual here. Throwing things away. Lots of memories in some of these things.

Imagine Me and You

Well, me and FFP anyway. See that glass? That will be my glass! That will be the glass in the living area. Beyond the columns left and right will be a bit more glass in each bedroom only one will be an office. There will be a guard rail making the balcony less scary.

But the whole thing is starting to frighten me as I deal with the downsizing thing.

Right now there are sacks and boxes on my office floor that are either destined for Freecycle or the landfill or maybe my nieces.

I know I don't need a lot of this stuff. I just wish I didn't feel compelled to look through it. To touch it, to try to figure out if there is any reason to keep it.

I found a diary from 1995. You know the old kind where you put pen to paper in a book with dates in it. It was intended as an appointment book, but I tried to write briefly about each day. It was so depressing. One person appeared multiple times but I could only barely remember anything about her. And the bit I combed from memory only came after I read that she brought over a laser disk of the movie "Sirens." That depressed me, too. Laser disks. Remember those big platters? Big as LPs but thicker? We still have some. And a player that, as far as I know, works. This diary contained mentions of other people I remember perfectly well but no longer see. Also people that I do keep up with, of course. Some things haven't changed in seventeen years, some things have.

People come and go. Technology comes and goes. It's sadly easier to shed people than technology. Technology leaves all these artifacts behind.

Maybe Frequent, Short Posts is the Answer

Maybe I should just pop in whenever I have a picture or a thought to share and post something.

We took a trip down to South Congress to visit our CPA and then we stopped downtown to look at the Ballet Austin building which is getting close to being renovated. I walked down the street west to the corner to look up at 'our' building. There is glass on our floor now. Wow.

The sun was blinding and it felt hot and it almost gave me a headache. And it's only May 8.

Dreaming Some Place Else

When you are planning a move, a job change (or retirement) or a vacation, you visualize yourself somewhere else. You imagine what you'll do, the things you'll have around you, how each day will shape up.

Reality is always somewhat different. To say the least.

This photo was taken on a bit of the hike and bike trail in downtown Austin, looking east at some of the flock of cranes that are ubiquitous in the Austin skyline at the moment. For those keeping score at home the building in the foreground is the 360 which will one day be 44 stories and will contain our small home. The eighteen-story building next in line is the new AMLI rental units.

With hundreds of units actually being built at the moment in downtown Austin and others on the drawing board, there are lots of people visualizing a new lifestyle.

My own vision is having a lot less stuff. I'm a bit puzzled about how I'm ever going to accomplish this but I know that I just have to keep asking myself: Will I use it? Will it look good? Could I just get something like it later if needed? It seems like we've been getting rid of stuff at a good pace for years especially since we started remodeling the house. But we've acquired stuff, too. And maybe the getting outpaced the getting rid of. The pendulum has swung around here, but it's not going fast enough to suit me. I have to look at every little thing and ask myself "do I see it being useful and having a place in my new digs?"

We are thinking about a trip we are going to take soon. Going on a trip is like moving in a way. You take with you what you think you need for a short period instead of the rest of your life. One finds that a lot of things can be left at home and not missed when you pack up for a car or plane trip. Of course, you might eventually miss your souvenirs and book collection and miscellaneous gadgets. And, of course, the coffee machine. Other than the stuff I take on a trip (clothes, toiletries, camera, laptop) I guess the things I most want to keep are books and things with sentimental value. We faced the fact long ago that books took up a lot of space around here. The paring down of those continues but a kernel of the collection is going to surround us in that condo, I think. Making it a warm and welcoming place to sit and read. While drinking coffee. When I visualize myself elsewhere I'm always reading (or writing in my notebook) and sipping coffee. Or maybe enjoying a walk on a trail or sitting on a lawn. Many people say when confronted with our yard "you must spend a lot of time out here." It isn't true, though. I'd visualize that, too, if I were them. But what time I spend out there is usually doing something like chopping bamboo back that escapes from my neighbor's yard.

Can you tell that the downsizing is weighing me down again? I keep finding more stuff and it gets harder and harder to decide what to do with it. But meanwhile...let me pack for a trip and forget about it for a little while. Just taking along things I really might need.

The Gala Fete Ball Performance Dinner

This picture is a couple of years old. But it is an example of one of the many 'events' we attend in the course of a year. They are intended to (a) raise money for good causes; (b) focus attention on the work of various organizations; and (c) jolly up the patrons of said groups.

We attended one night before last. I don't have any pictures. It wasn't black tie. As this one clearly wasn't either. (If it had been, FFP would certainly have been tuxedoed.) This most recent one was at the Driskill Hotel. As was the one where we took this picture.

And lest the suspense be killing you...yes that is Carol Channing with FFP. The event was a fundraiser for Austin Cabaret Theater and she performed.

I remember when we were younger and poorer. When we finally had some money to invest in charity and its requisite gala/fete/ball/fundraiser/performance/dinner events, I remember having some joy in going to them and even in helping plan one called Black Tie and Tennis Shoes to benefit Women's Athletics at UT. And it's not that I never have fun at these events. I do. And money is raised. All good.

However, there are a number of things that I guess I've become a little jaded about over the years. I'm too demanding or something. So this is a bit of a rant, but not really. That's why I didn't put it over in the Journal of Unintended Consequences. Although there are consequences. And some unintended.

All these gala/fete/ball/performance/dinner fundraisers have some elements from the following list:

• formal attire
• silent and/or live auctions of goods to raise more money
• food
• drink
• entertainment
• presentations of awards and acknowledgements
  
• decorations
• souvenir gifts
  

Now formal attire does take things up a notch. There are lots of dresses to look at (not on me, of course) and the guys look elegant in tuxedos (or dinner jackets when it's appropriate or sometimes even when it's not). You sort of feel like there is a certain amount of elegance that you can co-opt. I get weary of coming up with appropriate outfits, though.

We went to an event two nights ago that was just 'business/cocktail' which let some of the mucky-mucks where fancy dresses but allowed FFP and I to slide with business suits.

Then there are the auctions. The way it works is that a committee forms and then people and businesses are talked into donating everything from wine and jewelry and gift certificates to trips, clothing, signed memorabilia, etc. Bids are either taken on sign up sheets or by live auction. Our event of two nights ago didn't have an auction. (Although they were selling off the beautiful art glass centerpieces at the 'after' party.) It was into the entertainment/presentation mode. The tickets for those who paid to eat the dinner and share in the festivities were, I believe, $500 a piece. So not so necessary to raise extra money, I guess. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago we were at an event that had a large silent and a live auction. It does give people something to do, walking around looking at the stuff on offer. FFP had helped gather donations for that one. He mostly got restaurant certificates. We bid briefly on some wine in that silent auction but didn't get anything. We ended up not getting something in the live auction but donating some money for one. Complicated, 'nuf said. I can't tell you how much we have donated by buying items in these auctions. I never try to write off the donation either. Unlike the tix to some of the events (which have a stated value of services less than the ticket price, natch) usually these items are pretty much worth what you pay for them or a little less. But the charity gets a donation and, I guess, some of the donors get a write-off. Anyway, yeah we have bought a lot of these things in the past. Just a brief look around our house uncovers a number of items we got at these auctions: several pieces of framed art, a 48-inch round table, a Chinese-looking vase, a Christophle vase with snakes on it, a beautiful wooden painted chair, an oak coffee table, some yard art, wine, glassware and an antique silver party purse. There is a large photographic portrait of us, too, that we bought the sitting for in an auction. Innumerable gift certificates for restaurants and stores and entertainments were purchased, too. And most of them used.

My biggest objection to these auctions? Long checkout lines for the silent ones. Confusion about who is bidding what in the live ones. But they do raise money. And, I'm convinced you could furnish your house with the stuff you could buy if you went to enough of them. And I have solved the silent auction thing a few times by walking out and contacting them and paying up later. They always know where to find us and we are good for it.

Ah, food. The most formal and expensive of these have a sit-down dinner. (Although dessert is often offered buffet-style.) Sometimes the food is quite good and innovative. But I'm a little tired of the beef and fish plates meant to (half) satisfy people. You shouldn't go to one of these things expecting to be dazzled by the food. Or expecting a good cup of coffee. Cheaper stand up affairs may have restaurant-sponsored little 'stands' or hors d'oeuvres buffets. It's funny how you perch at a table and gossip with strangers about where to find the best offerings.

The expensive events have open bars. Some have cash bars. In order to avoid crowding at the bars the venues put waiters out there with trays with, usually, white wine, red wine and water. Occasionally champagne. I usually take one of these offerings as a line of least resistance. But I'm usually happier standing in line for an actual cocktail before dinner rather than an indifferent wine. The cheaper stand up affairs (tix $100 or less) often have liquor sponsors which can lead to dazzling specialty martinis but no Jack Daniels. You can get very, very drunk at many of these events. Which is, of course, a bad idea. The worst ones for me as far as curtailing the amount of drink to allow feeling fresh in the morning are wine dinners where excellent wines are poured. It's all too easy to drink every glass offered. Which would be too much. Think tasting.

Entertainment at these events can be bands, dancing, performances, etc. I can't stand the really loud bands. (Especially on the mezzanine of the Driskill hotel, the loudest room on earth. The sound drifts into the ballroom and side rooms to make even conversation there impossible for those of us with any difficulty hearing.) When there has already been ample entertainment (sometimes a performance/presentation occurs at the Paramount and then an after party at the Driskill), any music should be quiet and allow patrons to talk about what they just experienced.

Presentations and entertainments where everyone needs to be focused must be done at an actual theater or at a time in the dinner when people are sort of captive at their tables. [Presentation and entertainment at the Paramount for the one the other night had the most fidgety audience I've ever seen. There were cell phones ringing, people talking, people going in and out and in and out.] What seem like great lines when one is forming a script can get very tedious when one is sitting there in an after five outfit with a few drinks needing a bathroom break and things go on and on. Have your entertainment choreographed and precise. When you are presenting awards to people who are going to be allowed to speak, try to keep them from making a speech as if they are in Oslo. Especially if they are in their dotage. They won't mind being taken off the hook. I promise.

The decorations at some of these things are so darned elaborate that you really question the sanity of it all. Towering candelabras, hundreds of colored votives on tables (so many napkins were burned that night), etc. I sort of like the ones where they have some centerpiece they can sell off. Makes me feel better about it all.

And then there are the souvenir gifts. The phrase 'swag the rich' comes to mind. It isn't like Hollywood with companies giving gift baskets worth tens of thousands to famous influencers. No. It's perfume samples, key chains, memo pads, corkscrews, T-Shirts. A lot of the stuff just adds to the clutter, I think. But the gift bag to take home has become a standard at some of these things. Maybe sponsors insist on it. Anyone want two AT&T key chains made in China? I'm just saying.

Yeah, we keep going to these events. But I have to tell you. When there is an evening, like this the one tonight, when our calendar is blank after 2PM, I breathe a sigh of relief.

Feed the Rich...Desserts

I was torn about where to post this entry. Here in my regular journal (which my husband says makes our lives an open book but I don't really think so)? Or in the Journal of Unintended Consequences, my other blog, which is intended to capture the chaotic results from well-intentioned (or not) actions? I decided to put it here because somehow I thought that would be less controversial. I'm not really raising an objection to feeding the rich. Everybody's got to eat, you know, to sustain life.

The photo is of a sausage-shaped big cheese (I think) at Mandola's Market, posing with some of its sausage friends.

Now, I consider myself rich. I don't have any debt, I can budget for things like 'gifts' and 'donations' and 'eating out.' I don't work. Yeah. The idle rich even. Hasn't always been so, but I was never as poor as my parents or grandparents once were.

I've noticed that, when you donate money to things or you entertain friends or do them favors or people think you are going to do them a favor or donate money, people give you free food and booze.

I have often wondered if you could just live off this free stuff. For weeks at a time. I'm not really trying to do that and, besides, it would probably require lining your pockets with zip lock bags as my friend SuRu points out. But yesterday when I got up I realized that for that one day I could probably get by on what was free. So I decided to try it.

Now first off, I'm not a 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day' person. When I get up in the morning, I'm not usually hungry at all. I want coffee. Black coffee. And lots of it. So in my experiment I decided that I would allow myself unlimited coffee made in my very own Jura-Capresso E8. (See this entry also.) Of course, there are no calories in black coffee. Just a buzz.

During the morning, I went to my club and rode the recumbent bike for thirty minutes. The bike claimed I'd burned 200 calories. Just before I showered I weighed on the fancy-looking digital scales from Sharper Image that we bought when we decorated our remodeled bathroom. (See photo of bathroom in my old journal...the scales fit in with that decor. Hmmm...maybe FFP is right about the open book thing!) My weight was 163.6. Seems like the scale said just over 160 a few days ago. But it fluctuates. Who knows?

Around 12:20 we headed downtown. We got into a huge traffic jam at 5th and Lamar caused by the city's urge to close a couple of lanes of W. 5th every weekend. Still we found a parking place and found a bus that was taking the media around for a tour of markets as part of the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival. I figured...free food! While we waited for the bus to depart I took a quick swing through the Saturday Downtown Farmer's Market. (I imagined when we were living downtown how I would stroll through the market and buy some vegies and greens and goat cheese for the week.) I got a free taste of some delicious Hibiscus Tea. I saw that the goat cheese and honey people had those tiny plastic tasting spoons. But I figured a small taste would just send my juices up too high.

The bus headed out to Mandola's Italian Market near our house. For some reason they used the surface streets. As we drove by the University I saw some homeless guys digging in a trash can. I was feeling a little hungry myself. Several eateries on Guadalupe (Milto's, Ruby's Barbecue, Zen, NeWorlDeli) suddenly seemed very attractive. As we filed into the market to get a talk from one of the owners we walked by outside tables where people were scarfing late lunches (it was 1:15 by now) of pizza and salad and anti-pastas and all manner of stuff that was looking increasingly delicious. But there were no samples! The best I could do was to grab a little bit of cranberry walnut bread out for sampling by the general public. I listened to the owner talk about the operation (their own winery, imported Italian groceries, baking almost all their own stuff, very interesting actually, etc.) and tried not to feel too hungry. We were given a goody bag. It contained a jar of artichokes and olives and stuff in a tomato sauce, a pack of three or four baked crackers and some biscoti and cookies along with one of those napkin/cutlery packets you get with takeout. On the way out I looked at the bread sample basket...but all the samples were gone. Darn! In the bus, I ate one of the crackers and a little cookie of some sort. That took the edge off.

We drove back toward downtown and over to South Congress and were soon at Cissi's Market. This was feed the rich nirvana! I took a glass of the offered white wine but fortified myself before drinking much with chips on sample. They had some Austin Slow Burn Salsa Verde out, too. Then they started circulating with platters containing tiny bite-size hors d'oeuvre. Ah, heaven. Vanilla-poached lobster with Shiraz grits. Little pulled pork sandwiches on cornbread the size of pill boxes. They had a lot, too, so we were encouraged to have multiples. I began to think I'd survive on my free food diet. I sipped a little wine. I had one bite of lemon bar dessert. I'm not much of a dessert person. That would be my downfall on this regimen. A peek inside our goodie bag from Cissi's revealed a sack of coffee beans, giant home-style cookies and chocolate!

Next we went to Farm To Market Grocery. It's been there on South Congress for a while. A tiny space stocking a lot of food and a few gift items, it has 30% local products including flowers out front that are from the Hill Country. The people there were really nice and were passing out goat milk ice cream, sodas and water. And they gave us goody bags with a private label chocolate bar and a Butters Brownie. Now, as I said, I'm not much on sweets. I actually had eaten a Butters Brownie a few nights ago. (There was a sample in the media bag we got.) The goat milk part tempted me on the ice cream but I just ask others how it tasted.

We headed west of W. Mary and located the P&K Grocery. This place was ultra funky and hip at the same time. They had taken an old building, used antique fixtures where possible and had some antique glassware and china and collectibles for sale. They had a deli counter with hot sandwiches and other stuff. They make their own pimento cheese and hummus and hot dog condiments. They sell goat cheese on a stick (lolipops!). That made my stomach rumble. But they weren't giving them away. They were giving away little square pimento cheese sandwich samples and freshly made lemonade. Also deviled eggs but for some reason I didn't get one before we got on the bus. I'd regret that. That 1.5 inch square sandwich wasn't going to hold me long. And their goodie bag had samples of their hot dog condiments. Which would have been great if someone was giving away hot dogs!

When we got home, I had some coffee and water. I was actually a little hungry. The only free thing that wasn't sweet was some of those plain crackers and that artichoke concoction Mandola's gave us. So I opened it up and had a little of that with the crackers. Later a bag of caramel corn Cissi's gave us (a private label product with a light hand on the coating, not at all like Crackerjacks) called to me. As I always do with such products...I checked the calories in the entire bag...about seven hundred and eighty! They were pretty good, sort of salty and sweet, but I stopped eating after only a couple of hundred calories.

A few hours later, we dressed up and went to a house over near Lake Austin. The party was free. Well, if you don't count the hefty annual donation that had yielded the invitation. When I saw plates of food, I found the dining room and filled a plate with tender beef, roll and butter, green beans, roasted root vegies, roasted purple and white fingerling potatoes and rice. The offerings seemed a bit odd...no chicken or fish and a lot of starch but I wasn't complaining. I took some of everything and polished off all the carbs and a few ounces of the beef with a glass of free red wine. (I had finished a glass of white I'd gotten coming in.) Later I had a coffee and three mini madeleines.

At home Forrest ate some of the caramel corn and so I finished the bag. I was tempted to grab a cheese snack from the fridge, but true to my word, I stuck to coffee and what the world fed the rich today. Which seemed a little heavy on the sweet side. Let 'em eat cake, I guess.

As I finish this entry I'm waiting for FFP to come home. We might go to the Texas Hill Country Wine and Food Festival Fair. There would be lots of free food. And we have press passes. But jockeying for free food with thousands of other people and drinking wine outdoors on a hot day sounds less and less fun now that I think about it. I haven't eaten so far today. I've had my coffee, a bottle of water and a walk around the neighborhood. I'm feeling a little hungry. But not hungry enough to go for the chocolate and cookies left over from the free stuff from yesterday.

I'm Still Here

Somehow I decide to have some sort of party. And then it begins. The decisions on food, decorations, rearranging the furniture, drinks to serve, etc. The preparation. Tidying up things and tossing the excess in my office and the spare room. Then there are guests surging in, drifting out and finally the cleanup and moving our real life back in. And I wonder why I do it, but I also know. I like entertaining people even though sometimes I don't like going to parties at other people's homes.

I put up signs for some parties to help people find their way around the house. I invited fifty people over for a Christmas party once. I made signs to distinguish trash from recycling and hoped to have the folks help keep things tidy and the cartoon is one illustration from that. I also have a 'dog jail' sign I reuse and I put my dog and all the junk that would otherwise be cluttering the rest of the house in my office and hang that up. By the end of the party people always want the dog to be released. She, of course, wants to scour the floor for dropped food.

Anyway, I'm not blogging because I'm dealing with all the little details of letting a friend give a play in our media room tomorrow night. It's his guest list but I know a lot of the people, of course. And it's time to get busy and get the evidence of our messy life out of sight, lay in supplies of stuff and prepare to move the furniture around to 'set the stage.'

A day before like this I'm always a little tense. There are so many little things to do. I have help, of course. Already FFP has tidied up the yard and put out some flowers and plants to add to it's spring look. A caterer is bringing hors d'oeuvre tomorrow. The playwright and his friends will help move stuff around. But there are things I feel I must do. And I better get cracking.

When we downsize, we can't entertain this many people. That's either good or bad. I'm not sure. Of course, we can rent a hall so to speak. Entertain in the club room of the condo or at our club. It's not the same as moving your real life out of the way and turning your house into a party venue.

I read that Austin now requires parties in retail stores and such to have a permit for 'changed use.' SXSW got the police to shut down private parties during their event. All for people's own good, of course. The article said that parties in private homes didn't require the permits which would require a visit from the fire inspection people. Most homes wouldn't qualify! No sprinklers or fire exits. Ah, regulation. Good they saw not to apply it to private homes although I'm sure someone will use it to their own devices somehow. But at least that isn't on my list: get permit.

My SXSW Movies, Part 7

It's over. The actual film screenings continue into the wee hours of Sunday. But we resigned after seeing one last documentary this morning at 11.

Yesterday I constructed a plan to get some of our real life under control (yeah, right) and still see two movies. Oh, and stay away from downtown, too!

Someone had pressed a little trinket on us when we were standing in line at the Paramount one night. It was a washer with a heart punched through and the words "Love.Blessing Ring" on one side and "Always in my Heart" on the other. The packaging was a promo for the documentary Lost In Woonsocket. That had made me look up the film again and it looked really interesting. The film was born from a reality TV show called Random 1 that picked people at random and tried to match them with donated help. The film focused on two alcoholics and their journey on and off the street. The film is powerful. Heck, the TV series was powerful but I apparently missed it while watching stupid crime shows a couple of years ago. I must admit four things: One: I think people should get direct help when they need it. Food, shelter, detox, substance abuse programs. Two: I never give money to people on the street. (Never is too strong. Very rarely then.) Three: I don't like dealing directly with such people. They frighten me. This does not mean I don't see their humanity. Four: I know that some people will always exist in the margins, begging for money for the fuel of their addiction. This movie reinforced all these things I just admitted. A program that succeeds with even twenty percent is worth the money. Money given to the people in this film would not go for food. Know that it will go for booze or drugs for these guys. If you understand that and still give, I'm OK with it. I'll give money to Mobile Loaves and Fishes or some other group that is really giving out food. I was glad to see this movie and get to know these guys at the safe distance of the movie theater, drinking my glass of Guinness a bit guiltily. So sue me. And when one of the guys slid back it didn't surprise me. The success is what surprised me. Beating an addiction is hard to do.

The movie could have been exploitative. Maybe it even was. It's hard to intervene in other people's lives while filming it without exploiting the people. Still it's a thought-provoking movie. It reminded me of one of the many projects I never did. (See admission three.) I was going to offer people a notebook and tell them I would come back and if they had written their life story in it then I would pay them $20 for it if they would sign something that I could publish their story on the WEB. (And yes I knew that the money would go for a substance to abuse, most likely.) After I thought of that idea I would never implement, I heard about some singer songwriter who paid beggars for their cardboard signs. One refused to part with his work for $20! But I digress. This is a great movie. And apparently you can watch a lot of the TV show on the WEB now which I plan to do. We saw the last screening of this world Premiere. But John and Andre were there to answer questions. One of the guys they'd helped had been at a previous screening.

To follow that up, we saw Fay Grim. It was our third narrative. And we liked it so two outta three isn't bad. It ran a bit long, but otherwise it was a delight. It is a total send up of all the thrillers you have ever been subjected to. It is a follow-up to a movie from 1998 by Hal Hartley. I was still earning a living then instead of being a dilettante blogger and film watcher and such. So I never heard of Henry Fool. It sounds like it was a send-up of the literary world, however. I just added it at the top of my Netflix list. I kept wanting to laugh out loud during this one when no one else was even laughing.

So. We drug home around midnight. FFP flipped through the Texas basketball game off the DVR. I thought Texas had lost since I thought that I saw the top of the tower decidedly un-orange on the way home. But they won.

This morning we drug out of bed all tousle-haired and sleepy. We got to the Alamo South way too early and wandered on down South Lamar. We discovered an amazing Mexican restaurant (imagine that? on South Lamar?!) called Sazon (season?). I had a Tavo's breakfast taco and coffee. This is an amazing place. The dishes being delivered all around looked great. They had linen napkins and put those little paper doilies on the coffee cup saucers. I must go back and try some other things. Anyway, we made it to the theater to see the lightly-attended last showing of 638 Ways to Kill Castro. In order to make the movie move, they used old random movie or TV footage that was not of Castro or his potential assassins. But it is a very interesting and informative show. I remember once thinking that Castro would be overthrown. This was long ago before the fall of the Soviet Union and the crumbling of the Berlin Wall and the rise of a that peculiar Chinese openness. And still he stands. Amazing. This movie was made by a Brit and this was the North American premier. It doesn't strike me as something that is going to get a wide distribution. In fact, most of the docs we saw don't strike me as ones that will get the reach of a Supersize Me or a Michael Moore or Al Gore piece. But you never know. One we saw at a fest (Maxed Out) has now reached theaters, as they say, near you. And it didn't think it had the legs for that when I saw it.

Well, it was quite a festival. Now it's back to 'real' life instead of 'reel' life. I think we saw 18 feature length films, fifteen of them docs. We saw one short. I wish I could have seen the short reels and I probably missed a couple of movies I would have liked to have seen. We are back to spring chores, the business of serious downsizing and our usual tasks of entertaining friends and chasing around for this charity or that. I managed a little exercise and tennis while immersed in film, but it wouldn't hurt to step that up and get rid of some of the girth from movie beers and pizza and popcorn.

And that, my friends, was my SXSW.

My SXSW Movies, Part 6

Our idea was to see a movie about Roller Derby at 4:30 (yes, another doc.) and then go straight to the Paramount for a narrative feature.

Parking wasn't that easy. We decided to pay $10 for a place two blocks from where we will live some day.

So while things were blooming in my backyard (see picture) only the dog was enjoying it. She was banished to the outdoors so we could stay downtown a long time.

We were in plenty of time to queue for the movie Hell on Wheels. Our friend Jette and locally famous film dude Bryan Poyser sat by us. Actually, maybe Jette is locally famous and Bryan is nationally famous. Anyway, it was interesting hearing about their festival. Jette is writing for Cinematical and so has to scribble notes while eating her pizza. The movie is about the resurgence of Roller Derby in Austin. It was a pretty good film. There were lots of tattoos, lots of fake violence, lots of ego and then a suppression of ego. And the movie contains one of those moments when you see an injury on the screen that makes your stomach do flips. (Nothing fake about that injury.) I didn't lose my Asian chicken salad, though. We slipped out before the Q&A and got to the Paramount to queue up for the next movie.

FFP chose a narrative feature called Bella and he made an excellent choice. The acting, cinematography and set dressing was wonderful. The story was a little sappy but the other things were so good that all was forgiven. Basically the premise is that two damaged people can make something complete.

We decided to have a snack afterward and we slid into 219 West for some decent wine and apps. Not an SXSW venue they weren't terribly crowded. A strange little trio called Accoustic Jungle played innocuous instrumentals.

My SXSW Movies, Part 4

We are getting to be experts at the logistics of SXSW. Last night we headed downtown in the rain. So far, we have completely avoided parties. We got a whole envelope full of notices about parties we were entitled to attend with our badges. What a laugh. We don't do crowded bars well. We'd rather pay for food and drink and have it in comfort at our convenience.

But this party was for a movie we were going to see and our friends were involved...one as the PR firm and one as an investor.

It was raining when we got downtown but not too hard. We captured a parking spot roughly between where the party was and where the movie was to be shown.

At first we thought the party was a bust. It was in a small bar that was supposedly reserved for the party at 8:30 but was full of a happy hour crowd listening to a band called the Jitterbug Vipers. Sure enough they managed to displace these folks and move in the movie party. We found a couple of seats at the bar, had a free drink and talked to our friend in charge of PR. We learned that the movie's producers and directors had been able to sell tickets in advance that pre-empted badge holders. Hmmm. The director kindly gave us a couple of these so we could jump the badge line. We eschewed a second free drink and FFP bought a CD from the band. (They are good. Happy Hour every Tuesday at Lambert's. Catch their act.) We headed out for the theater. We knew it would be crowded. But, of course, we jumped the line and got the seats no one realizes are the best in the house. (I'm not saying where they are. Figure out the Paramount for yourself.) We sat with a Canadian lawyer who actually says 'eh' every sentence or two. We met her at another film. The movie was about lawyers and the bar exam.

A Lawyer Walks into A Bar... is about the bar exam in California. It follows six people taking the exam and intersperses lawyer jokes, interviews with lawyers and laymen about lawyers. Although it was disjointed here and there it really had a lot of great information and the people we were following were interesting. Warning: Spoilers follow. One went to a sort of alternative law school and was finally not allowed to take the exam on some technicality. One person was taking the exam for the 42nd time. One person you were certain wouldn't pass, but she did. One you hoped would fail and she did. One guy was on his third try. One woman had a small child she left to her artist companion while she studied and you weren't surprised she passed. The companion's art was interesting. They had some footage of old time Texas lawyers at work (in spite of the CA bar exam they interviewed lawyers everywhere) and that was hilarious. They also talked to Joe Jamail. Can you say old time Texas power brokers?

One of the lawyers interviewed said that when she took the bar exam that a guy lost his breakfast just as the proctor said 'begin.' And she said everyone just ignored it and kept writing.

And so I dreamed that people were running around asking if you could find a person's DNA in their vomit.

If you are a lawyer or if you talk about going 'back to law school' you should see the movie. Others will enjoy it, too.

Well, today we may see two movies. And one of them is not a documentary. I sort of hate to break the record (12 full length docs, 1 doc short) but everyone needs to branch out. Besides this one has Eric Stoltz in it. Isn't he like the chief actor you know you've seen before of the Indie world?

My SXSW Movies, Part 2

The thing about SXSW is that everyone really has a very different experience. We met someone who drove from Canada, bought a Platinum badge, got a hotel on South Congress and planned to see movies and music. We meet other locals who are just dabbling. Last night FFP met someone he was in college with who hadn't been back to Austin in a while. He runs the Avignon (yeah, France) Film Festival and was visiting his sister in Dripping Springs. Nevermind that everyone sees different films (or music or whatever interactive participants see). Everyone comes from a different place and interacts with different people.

One of my impromptu goals for the festival is to make each of the venues. We've seen something on every screen but the Alamo South 2 so we have been to each location. My other goal is to meet interesting people. (See above.) Lastly, I want to 'be a tourist' along the way. After our first movie of today I shot some shop window pictures in the strip center where Alamo South is located. I love the Salvation Army store window because it provides a lens on downtown Austin.

And, yes, we saw some movies. So far today we saw the short documentary "Scenic Highway" and the documentary "Fish Kill Flea." So far a perfect record: narry a narrative feature.

As is usually the case (unless you are associated with the short film in question) we aimed for Alamo South today to see the longer film. "Scenic Highway" was therefore a delicious surprise. And it followed the delicious surprise of the selection of pre-program clips today. Early Elvis musical presentations, wonderful Eastern European animated films that were like Saul Steinberg come to life and a clip showing some Japanese game played like soccer but with shuttlecocks (they looked like hacky sacks with feathers). After that the longish short "Scenic Highway" about Baton Rouge ran and it was delicious in its protrayal of the director's home town. You can watch it yourself, in its entirety, here. The movie says at one point that a city is known by its shopping malls or something like that. So it was a perfect segue to "Fish Kill Flea." This careful protrayal of a dead mall with some parts housing a flea market with nods to the history of the place including its 'live mall' stage included a wonderful portrait of people passing their time peddling things. The camera lingered on the people and the personal revelations were everywhere. This was the flip side of the consumption protrayed in last night's "What Would Jesus Buy?" At the Fish Kill Flea (before it gave way to the bulldozers) merchandise was far less fresh and new. Still the desire was there for hash pipes and knives and thirteen dollar sneakers. But mostly it was about the people and the derelict mall with its lost dreams. The wares had become incidental almost.

I've cooked up a plan for the afternoon and evening that only requires the approval of FFP and that he finish a little rush project for the neighborhood paper he writes for. So, perhaps, more to come in "My SXSW."

My SXSW Movies, Part 1

We are gorging on movies. So far all are documentaries. Seven movies since Friday evening.

We've got our routine down. We know how to pace ourselves, how to navigate the venues and how to enjoy the interludes.

Here's a little roundup of what we've seen with a tiny bit of amateur film criticism.

"Running with Arnold" There is some interesting stuff here. They went to Austria to get some early Arnold insight. They have footage from "Pumping Iron" that is very cool. However, archival Nazi footage puzzled most everyone. And remained puzzling even after the director explained in Q&A that it 'stood for the fascism of corporations.' (He said something like that. His exact words I'm not so sure of.) They wanted to hoist Arnold on the Republican petard. To show that Arnold is a Republican and therefore evil. Hence, footage of Katrina and Jeb Bush. They also wanted to show Arnold's lust for power and success. I think they should have stuck to that message and done less Bush bashing. It's just too easy, folks, and he can't get elected again. They showed some stuff about a constitutional amendment to allow Arnold to run for president. (OK, any naturalized citizen, I suppose.) This will never get passed. Constitutional amendments are quite difficult. And it would spoil my joke when talking to people one-on-one. I say: "Are you, me and Arnold the only ones not running for president?"

"Unforeseen" First let me say that the cinematography on this one is easily the best I've seen in a while in any documentary. Worthy of many big features really. But it is a mess as to message and focus. Ostensibly about Gary Bradley, the developer of Circle C who was pounded by the Save Our Springs folks and went bankrupt. No, wait. It's really about the evil of any development in sensitive areas. No, wait. It's about the decline of the family farm. No, wait, it's about sprawl and building where there is no water. (But, hence, no sensitive recharge zone.) No, wait, it's about cancer. (I'm serious there is a multiple minute segment of a doctor telling us about normal human physiology and cancer. It's meant to be a metaphor for sprawl. I got that. But geez.) No, wait. It's about the evils of skyscrapers. Wait, wait, wait. If we can't have sprawl and we can't have dense then maybe we are meant to: (1) Build a fence around the city. (Ann Richards appears in the film suggesting this, but she was kidding. Also, the SXSW person introducing the film mentioned that she had only been here a couple of years.) and (2) Stop procreating. (But the SXSW person who introduced the director was praising the director for producing this wonderful film and being a mother!) and (3) Live in less space. Robert Redford sitting by the springs and talking about saving them doesn't give us a plan. (How much space do you think he lives in?) The visionaries with the fancy camera work don't really propose a solution.

"Confessions of a Superhero" This one explored the lives of people who make their living posing as characters from movies on Hollywood Blvd. It was sensitive and touching. Looking at the ambitions and obsessions of these people and exploring where they came from was very insightful. I came away knowing some interesting, somewhat margalized people and appreciating how they look at the world.

"Cat Dancers" OK. Weird. What is that disease where you lose all your hair, even your eyebrows? OK, this guy had that, I think, although it's never mentioned directly. And is sort of incidental to the story. OK, real minor point. More importantly, he loved to dance. He fell in love with his childhood dance partner and they became famous dancers. When they were getting too old for ballet, they added cats. Tigers and jaguars and such. Then they added another person to the act. A handsome young man. A lot of what you might imagine would happen did. But still it was startling. The filmmakers seemed to just want us to appreciate the story of these people and the creatures they raised and lived with. They didn't want to lobby for cat rights or dancer's rights. And the movie worked.

"Manufacturing Dissent" Allegedly two Canadian film folks decided to make a straight up bio film of Michael Moore. But he dissed them and it turned into a table turning deal where his fierce-looking security kept escorting them off the premises. I'm not a big fan of Michael Moore's although I have seen all his stuff and wasn't sorry I did. This portrait of him was very unflattering. I'd say he came off looking like someone who manipulated his situation to get rich while appearing to try to make a difference. Oddly enough I was most disappointed that he came from this rich suburb and not Flint.

"Crazy Sexy Cancer" Cancer is such a sweeping word. Every kind is different. Not to mention every person's case. But Kris Carr has a weird type of cancer that has responded to a 'wait and see' attitude (with perhaps a bit of help from some healthy lifestyle changes). In spite of the interesting journey she took with that, the movie would have been flawed in addressing cancer if she hadn't sought out some people with other types of cancer and followed some of their journeys as well. It sounds like a cliche, but Kris takes us along for that ride that ends with the realization that we all die but not everyone lives fully. She and the other women in the movie bubble with the excitement of the projects they've chosen for their lives. Their cancers are just something they deal with in the process. This movie is humorous and uplifting. I could even forgive Kris for being drop dead gorgeous and even managing to get a cancer that did not require losing her hair or blowing up on steroids. Some of the other women she filmed were not so lucky but they all retained a beauty and grace that she captured.

"What Would Jesus Buy?" This world premiere was followed by a Q&A that brought more people to the stage than any other film I've ever seen at one of these things. Led by Morgan Spurlock (one of the producers) and Rob VanAlkemade (the director) the whole cast was up there I think. And that cast included the Reverend Billy Talen and his gospel choir of the Church of Stop Shopping. Perfect movie for me...someone who is in constant conversation with herself about what 'stuff' we really need. The Reverend takes his message rather agressively to WalMarts, Starbucks and even Disneyland. There is wonderful footage of excess. And Christmas excess at that which is the best excess of all. The church itself is somewhat excessive but the message rings true. The night before the festival began I stood around the new Neiman Marcus, eating and drinking and raising money for good causes. I'd like to see the Reverend Billy and his group mix with that crowd! Not that it would have been better than their Komikaze attacks on the Mall of America or Disneyland. Disneyland on Christmas Day. It doesn't get any better than that.

So, yeah, a lot of movies. We are going to try to see ten or twelve more in the next week. Yeah, I know. Crazy talk. Maybe we will even see some narrative features. But I do love documentaries.

It's Best to Have Rich Friends

Last night I was sitting at a table for eight with some of the 'lesser' donors for a nonprofit capital campaign we are involved in. I imagine all the couples at the table gave 'five figures' as they say but at other tables were the people for whom six and seven figures are not out of the question for multiple charities.


We were joking with some pals about being at the kid's table. Then one of the guys was wondering about the net worth 'in the room.'

"About a billion," I said. "With a 'b'. Even with us here."


I really think it was true. How do you really know though? But some of the people have given away my net worth several times over.


It's nice to have rich friends, of course. They have wine cellars with enough 1985 Cos d'Estournel (an esteemed Bordeaux) and old Montrachet to pour for forty people. And a bottle of champagne as big as a horse for the toasts and dessert. They have a domed room plenty large enough for forty or fifty people to dine. They have space to exhibit amazing weird art. The house was like a museum. Right after I arrived a woman who also has a house like a museum was commenting on a painting and said the stance of a hip hop guy in the painting reminded her of the stance of a Rubenesque naked woman in a painting her husband gave her. She was flustered because she couldn't remember the artist.


"Botero?" I offered.


"That's it! Of course." She said.


It's great to have rich friends. And if you can help them identify their holdings so much the better.


Honestly. It's better to have rich friends than to be rich. Being rich is such a responsibility.


It's all relative, of course. I know that most people consider me rich. I consider myself rich if only because I'm catching the glow of these friends.

I'm Still Here

I had a little setback over the weekend. It was supposed to be a weekend of catching up on things and enjoying the nice weather. You can read about the upset Saturday brought over on my Journal of Unintended Consequences.

We had a nice weekend nevertheless. Nothing was planned for Saturday. That turned out to be a good thing. Thursday's adventures on South Congress and downtown were fun. (I took the picture after dropping off my tax stuff to the CPA on Thursday in SoCo.) And we had a nice Friday. My dad and I made it to water aerobics (good for Dad) and I managed a pretty good workout after that. I had lunch with Dad and a friend and my friend and I went computer equipment shopping afterwards without buying anything. Always good. Friday night was a really pleasant event with fun people to talk to and good apps and good wine to taste.

And yesterday we were treated to hearing a world class string quartet play in someone's living room followed by a reception where we met some new and interesting people and had some nice apps. That was so old school elegant. It almost made me feel bad coming home to watch mindless television.

Today for the second week in a row I'm going to turn over a new leaf and be more productive. Only problem is that I've already wasted most of the morning and I haven't even gotten a workout.