3/31/2004

This monkey on my back's twelve steps to heaven :  The house on 45th Street is two doors down from the church. This affords the residents ample parking. A large white sign on a pole announces that the church hosts a twelve step recovery programme. "How convenient," I thought when I moved in, but have been studiously otherwise engaged throughout the sessions. Apparently such meetings are a great way to meet the best alcoholics with the best stories who fall from the wagon in the most spectacular binges. Good people to know.

We had a barbecue party on Friday at our house. Guests were advised to use the church parking lot. We had some raucous fun with margaritas, rum and a splash or two of trouble. Saturday, I rekindled the meat burner, and some more larks were had around town. Waking up in the afternoon on Sunday, I crossed the church parking lot on the way to the gym, there to work some stupor from my brain.

"Are you coming in?" asked a wizened old lady.
I looked at my watch and saw that it was one minute before the start of the twelve step programme.
"I don't think so."
The lady gazed knowingly into my eyes as I wavered, caught off my guard. Perhaps this is why she patrols the parking lot - looking for drunken sailors to Shanghai into service at the meetings. Fresh blood to add vitality and new stories to the group.
"Really?"
"I'm busy right now. Going to the gym."
She looked at me silently and intensely.
"But maybe you could tell me something about your meetings?" I ventured.
"Well, we have three separate groups meeting this evening. Then we have a session with all of the groups at the end. We drink coffee by the trough-full as we humorously recount tales of black-outs, tattoos, and waking up married to Icelandic squirrels. We eat candy bars as fast as we can peel them to appease our oral fixations and our need for a fix. Of something. Of anything. Anything to fill the void, to shore up the tear in the fabric of our remembered and forgotten lives before the group. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Sign up for a life of managing, and an almost life of almost coping..."

I cut her off at this point, with a tyre iron that my car handed to me. Well, that's not strictly true. She said that she was new to the group and didn't really know the mechanics. I said I might pop by another time, and strode off to sweat out my demons.
posted by Garreth at 5:22 PM

Hot date :  We went to the drive-thru bank yesterday. My baby turned heads.
"Excuse me sir, is that a Saab?"
"Why yes it is."
"My associate thought it was a Saab. Very durable I hear."
"Nineteen years old, and still going strong. I love it."

I glanced at the teller's associate who blushed as she eyed up my date. I glanced in my mirror at a man in the drive-thru lane without a car. As I pulled away, my banking complete, I saw the teller look at the man puzzled as he walked up to the window. I reflected. Just a month ago, I turned up at the teller's window without a date. I was picking up the money to buy my date. No longer will tellers look at me strange as I walked up to the drive-thru window.

I left my date outside when I went to boxing training, but then I took her for a burger. I was puzzled by the sign that said curb-side service. I ordered, and a man walked out to us with my meal. He walked about 15 yards. I looked at the other customers, parked in their vans and Corvettes. They all looked capable of walking 15 yards to pick up their own meals.
posted by Garreth at 10:07 AM

3/30/2004

Painting :  Now that I've started painting after an abstinence of maybe two decades, I'm kind of in the groove again. (I don't count painting walls or fences as real painting)

So maybe the cowboy boots do look kind of spiffy after a few licks of silver, purple, yellow and green. But should I convert my Saab into a Dodge Charger with the Duke's of Hazzard paint scheme?
posted by Garreth at 1:23 AM

There was only one thing I could do :  Was ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long. So spaketh Ministry, in their song, Jesus Built My Hotrod. It's a song which talks about a love affair.

I know of love and affairs of the heart. Of jaunts in spring fields, and silent smiles and shared hours in comfort. So today I cleaned the Automatic Idle Control valve of my Saab, and the throttle butterfly valve. Oh how my beauty idles now, whether hot or cold. She's pretty hot when we're together. What a dream that we have found each other. That I can luxuriate inside her at length, or tinker under her bonnet for hours. Ahem. Moving on.

Today, I also learnt that you can't easily start a barbecue with carb cleaner, and if you could, the food wouldn't taste very nice. I also learnt that there is a shop called Hobby Lobby. In it, you can buy hobbies. I'm up in the air about hobbies. I've managed pretty well in life so far with no real hobbies. I mean, you can't buy alcohol at Hobby Lobby, so drinking and travelling to new countries to get drinks can't be a hobby. I think hobbies are a bit like museums. There's no good reason why you should enjoy either of them.

I didn't buy a hobby. I bought paint. And Austin being Austin, someone offered to help me paint my cowboy boots this evening. My boots were lovely. Now they are silver and lovely. I plan to wear them to Fool's Soup this weekend as part of my costume. Or maybe as all of my costume, save for a grin and some sun-block.
posted by Garreth at 1:03 AM

3/29/2004

Fancy that :  Dildo sales are prohibited in Texas. Apparently something to do with Texas Penal Code chapter 43 (public indecency) under the subchapter for obscenity.

posted by Garreth at 11:51 AM

3/28/2004

All he sees is his motor :  I have a Saab. It is a thing of beauty. I have washed it more times in the last month we've had together than all of the other cars I've had put together. It has "turbo 16 valve" written on the back. I think it still has 16 valves or maybe 15, but the turbo is more an item of ballast than at item of power boosting these days.

One of the reasons I wash it so much is that the American birds find the beauty of a silver Saab somewhat unsettling. They fear it. It has a laxative effect on the birds. They sit above the Saab in terror on low branches while they empty their bowels of fear. Bastards.

The Saab is equipped with a tremendous sound system. With my Saab plugged into my iPod, we eat up miles of tarmac, getting lost without really worrying about it. My Saab and I wait in anticipation for the rising bass whoops of the Aphex Twin's "Milk Man". The reproduction of these sounds is a testiment to the quality of the Saab's set up. We often find our way to our destination after enjoyable detours. It's Texas, so we like to drive in the afternoon. The only way to drive a car in the hot weather is to have the windows open and the sun roof back. Which is why I don't care that my air-con button is more decorative than functional.

I like the times we have together. There is a serene peace that can be attained behind three of the five wheels of a Saab.

So I was driving to get some results of a check for sexually transmitted diseases on a hot Thursday afternoon. People seem to be quite open to talking about such things over here. Someone brought it up at a barbecue the very next day. Their test results, not mine. While I was on my way to get the results, I found myself making some modest preparations for finding out that I had something treatable but not curable. I thought to myself that if I found out I had a sooner-than-average rendezvous with a bald man with a scythe, I would live out my remaining days differently.

I got my results, and my Saab and I were together again. I had thought that in case of illness I would run out and buy myself a really fast Porsche. One of the 911s with the twin turbos and all-wheel drive, so that I could get from the drive-through order point to the collection point in record time. What was I thinking? Firstly, I should be savouring every day I have, no matter what the circumstances. Secondly, driving fast cars is dumb. Thirdly, driving fast cars is fun, so it doesn't matter how dumb it is. And finally, I already have a beautiful car. With a little love and attention, the turbo might be more than just a badge on the back - it might rise like a phoenix from the glowing metal embers of the broken turbo under the bonnet. That's the bit I haven't figured out yet, but it'll come.

My results were fine.

posted by Garreth at 11:55 PM

Youth anti-everything league :  The Texas Rollergirls is a league of women who skate in a circle and wear flimsy clothing and score points every few weeks in Austin. There is another league of women who skate in a circle and wear flimsy clothing every few weeks in Austin. I imagine every good sized town should have several such leagues. So that all of the women who like spending their time orbitting anti-clockwise with their tattoos showing can get a chance to do so.

I went to see the other league today. The Lonestar Rollergirls. This is only my second visit to a roller derby so I'd be hard pushed to comment with any authority on the skills on display, and how the two leagues compare in terms of technique and sportsmanship. What I can tell you is that this league appears to have different clothing restrictions. All of the girls are forced to wear underwear that might have fitted them at the start of puberty. They are allowed a few bolstering bits of flimsy cloth to try to retain an air of modesty despite being shoehorned into bras that are less about pushing up, and more about throwing out. Their website photos don't really do their indecency justice.

The action is more violent. Ruby Sioux put someone or others' head into the railings until she didn't move any more. Someone went flying through the wooden railings at one point, into the motorcycle parked by the rink. The motorcycle was started up and revved heartily whenever the Rhinestone Cowgirls were doing well, in case you wondered why there was a motorcycle at the side of the rink. The necks of the crowd might not have been as red as those at the Texas Rollergirls, but it was still a pretty white affair crowd-wise. I arrived late and tried to catch up.

"How did you enjoy the first half?"
"Er. Pretty good."
"Who won?"
"Er. I don't know. I spent most of it outside."
"Is it good outside?"

I looked into the saucer-sized pupils of someone having an interesting time, as he deliberated the answer to this one.

"Yeah, it's pretty good. I've drunk about a bottle of R------------n."
"The cough medicine?"
"Yeah. It's pretty trippy. Somewhere between acid and mushrooms."
"Tastes pretty good too, I bet."
posted by Garreth at 11:14 PM

3/25/2004

Love on the rocks with no ice :  The strangest thing keeps happening to me. When I meet new people, I categorise them into combinations of people I already know. I guess my perception gland is wearing out, and I have gathered basic models of behaviour in my head and I associate them with people. That part is fine - just me being lazy and narrow minded. Well, it's not exactly fine, but it's better than the other thing. That is that I start breaking people's faces into faces I already know, and mainly faces that I knew in secondary school. Which is fine, but I went to a single sex secondary school. It's quite unnerving to start thinking of a girl's face as being a bit like Jonny Sizer's, or a bit like Simon Coulson's.
posted by Garreth at 1:36 AM

Live Hippity Hop :  The dressing gown is so passee. I am all about saying "all about" now, and also all about cowboy boots. As soon as I bought my boots, I saddled up the barbecue we found by the road and rode a steak into the crematorium with it. Wearing my boots (and shorts better to show them off), shouting at the traffic, and waving my fist at the sky. The thunder, lightning and torrential rain were all distracting my steak from getting cooked on the potent brew of lighter fluid and soaking charcoal. For the sky, it was all about beseiging the barbecue with a plague of raindrops of biblical proportions. Yes, bible-sized raindrops, and I'm not talking about the abridged bible in 24 hours for dummies version - the full on written by monks called King James bible is the one I'm talking about.

Then there was a play - Blue Surge. Its content ratified half of my theory about Austin entertainment involving nudity and french dialogue, and I didn't miss the french dialogue. Then it was live hip-hop. And rum. The best thing about the Hole in the Wall is that it's so dark and dingy, that you don't notice how much rum is in each drink. Well not until you try to leave, and attempt to regain mastery of the old leg one-two. Just imagine, 12 hours before I had managed to punch Bruce (of Bruce's KO Boxing fame) in the face by simultaneously surprising both us with my fancy footwork. Now I can scarcely walk.
posted by Garreth at 1:31 AM

3/24/2004

M and N :  Margaritas. Hard to spell, easy to swallow. Nasty's. Easy to get into, hard to leave. Purple People Eater Margaritas please. Hard to enunciate.
posted by Garreth at 1:33 AM

3/23/2004

The argument against sitting about in your dressing gown :  Wearing more clothes means more laundry. Laundry now includes breakdancing. It also involves driving around town during the wash-cycle looking for abandoned furniture. Yesterday we got a barbecue and a dangerously broken wooden chair. The barbecue is all about Texas. First it's an oil barrel. Second, it's the size of an oil barrow. Having seen a very large bull being dismembered by Herculean Spaniards with giant cleavers after a bull fight, I would say we could fit a fair few steaks in our barrel.
posted by Garreth at 1:48 PM

3/20/2004

Don't mess with Texas :  "Party? Sure. Where is it?"

"Do you know a good liquor store?"
"There's one I use over there. It's okay."

"Why is Smirnoff so cheap? How do you septics make a B52?"
"Kahlua first. Then Grand Marnier. And then with the nozzle, you slowly pour in the Baileys. It'll settle between the other two layers. What part of Texas are you from?"
"Well, I'm not from Austin."
"I figured that. East Texas?"
"Very East."

Ride of the Valkyrie.

"Want to go check out the band? They're really good."
"What, in that garage that smells of humid human urine?"
"That's the one."
"OK."

"I always used to wait until half way through the set before joining in the mosh pit. That way the other guys are normally starting to tire. Hmm. This boxing is starting to pay off."

"Want some booze?"
"Hell, yes."

"Hey, do you mind? We're pissing over here."
"I don't mind. I'm not looking. If you're going to squat in the garden, you're going to get people weeing by you. I like weeing."
"We like weeing too."
"That's why we drink so much."
"Sure is."
"Me too."

"Why are they fighting?"
"Some guy has been grabbing ass all evening. Bunch of people from out of town. I warned him three times."
"It's kind of funny. Hey, looks like I'm third in line for the good guys."
"Yep, I'm second in line. And I've just got me a bottle."
"That twunt has just stepped on my bag of booze."

"Yeah, I was, like, trying to break up the fight, and all I can hear is some guy with an English voice making wise ass comments. I'm surprised they didn't start on him."

"Notice how all of the women have left now that there's been a fight."
"And the police are here."

"Oh, yeah by the way, there's a band staying at our house tonight."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, the bass player took a razor to his forehead to get some blood. Like they do on wrestling. Only he was drunk and he cut himself too deep. Emergency room, 40 stitches. And the people they were supposed to stay with kind of disappeared after that."
"Great. Who are they?"
"They played the party - Black Lips."

Blackout.

"Hey Jesus. Want to come to the gun show?"
"Urrrrrrggh. What time is it?"
"Eight thirty. You coming?"
"I don't think I'll be moving for a bit. Thanks Guy. Is there still a band in the lounge?"
"There's bodies all over the place."

Blackout.

"Jesus! Come to the gun show!"
"Urrrrrrggh. What time is it?"
"Ten twenty. Come on."
"OK. Is that band still in the lounge?"
"Sure are."

"I like the sign that says 'If in doubt empty the magazine'. Why do these shotgun cartridges cost three dollars each?"
"They have a slug, and pellets. They pretty much stop a rhino."

"Can you mind the band for a while - I've got to go downtown."
"Mind them?"
"Yeah, you know. Make sure they don't steal anything. Keep them away from sharp objects."
"No problem."
posted by Garreth at 3:42 PM

3/19/2004

Why Austin is a Good Place volume two :  You can drive around late at night with your windows down, a big sky hovering above your sunroof. You can listen to 'Ride of the Valkyrie' at astonishing volumes in the clear darkness. As you hoof your Saab around the tarmac, road signs appear. A diversion is in the works. Only they aren't regular road signs, the ones that you might see in Europe. They are road signs from the 'US of A', most often seen by the grinning European Saab-pilot in the movies and video games. This further steals any sense of reality from the situation as the pilot steers around the orange and white striped obstacles. He bears on towards his destination, a party, "with a blue light, a DJ, and an illuminated gnome," scoring imaginary points in this fantasy land.

posted by Garreth at 12:05 AM

3/18/2004

Home on the range :  Marco is Guy's friend. Marco has the number of pistols, shotguns, automatic rifles, machine guns and bullets that Guy would have if he had the money. I met the two lead pumpers at the rifle range today. I helped Marco carry in a box of his guns. I spent a lovely hour of charming and witty conversation with Beretta, Smith and Wesson, Glock, Remington, and the pea-shooter like sound of a silenced machine gun in the next lane. My tutors marvelled at the machine gun. The owner let them have a go. Lead was flying thick and fast. Fast because of Marco's insistence on "very explosive powders" in his bullets. Thick when we unleashed a single huge metal slug from the shotgun rather than the normal lead pellets. That thing blew huge holes in the target.


The pair got to chatting to the machine gun guy. As I listened to their banter for about an hour, it transpired that they were all incredibly knowledgeable about three things. The first was guns and bullets. The second was the letter of the law in various states as it pertained to being allowed to carry weapons, and whether or not you can blow away a potential thief in daylight. The third was loopholes in the law, and whether getting a licence in one state allowed you to transport guns on your person on an indefinite basis in another state.

They talked in detail about various bans - the dates of manufacture of machine guns that made them legal to own, and the parts of a weapon that could be replaced and still allow you to carry it under the same licence. They dealt in arms - buy an Uzi at 2850 dollars when a ban was coming into effect, and sell it for 4000 dollars a year later. They all had strong opinions about living in various states, and the right to bear arms - but only Guy moved to Texas specifically to have more guns on his person all the time.

My favourite Guy quote of the evening has to be, "This is what's going to keep us safe in our home. Here's Mr. Beretta."
posted by Garreth at 11:37 PM

Ramp :  Last night saw a leprecon - a leprechaun rampage filled the streets of Austin on St. Patrick's day. It was also a 21st birthday for Bliss. She proudly presented bouncers with her ID, and the bars would present her with free drinks to celebrate her coming of (legal) drinking age. Bliss would shortly afterwards present the pavement with multicoloured cocktails that were shaken, stirred, and partially digested. I took some photos.
posted by Garreth at 3:56 PM

3/14/2004

Guns + Cars + Too much makeup + Entertainment = Texas :  This kind of sums up my first month in Texas. Here's the photographic evidence.
posted by Garreth at 9:00 PM

Fashion :  Guy stumbles from his room, resplendant in shorts and a straggle of chest hair. He rubs the prozac from his eyes as he weaves his way around the storage boxes in the living room. He is solely motivated to get a sugar rush the kitchen. He looks up and sees Ron covered in blood, with his clothes ripped. Ron looks like death - his clothes covered in a mix of blood and dirt, the right side of his face furrowed with a deep gash. Guy's eyes widen and he focuses on the blood encrusted gouge that runs from Ron's eye to the bottom of his cheek.

"What the hell happened to you?"
"I got kicked in by a bunch of dominatrixes."
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, fine. I got punched in the head, and kicked in the chest quite hard. But mostly fine."
"You look awful. Your face...."
"Yeah, they kind of laid into me while I was on the ground. It's pretty hard to fight back effectively when you're a zombie. No hand speed."
"What?"
"I'm a zombie. I've just been in a show."

And what a show. Apparently it is a First Amendment right to burn the american flag. I know this because a towering woman of 6'4" told me so as the Poon Girls tore off the flags that had served as their bras and burned them. Bait and Switch (the stage name of the towering woman) also told me that it is illegal to burn US currency. Something to do with money being more important than the nation.

The show was allegedly a fashion show. From the amount of broad daylight, outdoor nudity involved, I can only assume that the fashion houses are really pushing nipple tape. It is also illegal to show (female) nipples in public events. The Poon Girls sported hammer and sickle emblazoned nipple tape. A real hit for this season - what everyone will be wearing.
posted by Garreth at 4:37 PM

3/12/2004

Look at me :  I went to some Alps in france. Here are some photos.
posted by Garreth at 12:41 PM

3/11/2004

Why helping in a play is good :  It is clearly a springboard for other things, a vehicle to get my talent noticed. Someone will need help with french pronunciation, or a star will need some cockney rhyming slang help, and I'll be catapaulted into the stratosphere. I got my first lines in the play a few weeks back, and today someone asked me to be a zombie. It's the second time in as many weeks that someone has asked me to play a zombie in a film or show. Perhaps I look like a natural. But this time, I have to be a zombie in a burlesque show. Whatever that is. I keep my feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars. Until the restraining order kicks in.
posted by Garreth at 11:21 PM

3/09/2004

Animal farm :  We were filming our movie outside all day in the blistering, bleaching, burning sun of southern Texas. It was also the day one of the stars was only three years old, and another was a dog. The dog got binned early on, but the three year old girl was integral to the story and her scenes could not be cut.

Would she stand still while we reversed a car into her for the accident scene? Not even remotely. She would act all sweet as pie until the director shouted, "Action!" and then turn to the other actors and start telling them not to say their lines, and wander off in the wrong direction. By the seventh take of the scene, I wanted to suggest that we just drugged her, covered her in pig's blood and dumped her by the back wheel of the car for a kind of "fait accompli road accident" shot. Everyone else still thought she was cute though, so I held my tongue for a few more takes.

Everyone kept telling her how good she was, and that she was going to get presents after she did the scene. While the crew frazzled to a crisp in the midday sun. What she really needed was for someone to give her a good kicking. Or maybe for someone to give her mother a good kicking for exploiting her recalcitrant daughter.
posted by Garreth at 8:18 PM

3/07/2004

War is Peace :  Guy is an interesting room-mate. Some Americans will ask you questions about The Beatles or The Clash when discovering you are an English chap. Guy was different. The first thing he ever said to me was, "So you're from England, huh? Are you a Whitehouse fan?" Bizarrely enough, and believe me, Whitehouse are pretty bizarre, I had been to a Whitehouse gig in London once. I said as much and befriended Guy, whose musical tastes encompass a diverse medley of almost unlistenable music.

I hadn't met Guy before I signed the lease to this house - the previous fleeing tenent made sure of that. It was with some intrigue that I went into Guy's room to get to know him. The other tenents seemed shocked that I could communicate on some level with the guy. When you look at someone's earthly possessions, things register in the corner of your eyes, and give you some mental picture of their lifestyle and character. The things that built my initial impressions of Guy included legions of pills and medication bottles, thousands of albums of industrial, techno, and extreme experimental music, pornography in a variety of formats. He showed me some photos of his trip to Japan, which centred around seeing the band Genocide Organ ("the heroes of german electronic chocktreatment" - whatever that means) and taking photos up skirts of unsuspecting Japanese women. The next thing I saw behind the porn and music was shotgun ammo.

The whole Guy experience was undertaken to an excrutiatingly loud soundtrack of industrial music. He complained about the leaving tenent, saying that he had told her that he like to listen to extremely loud music when he moved in, but that she hadn't really been all that understanding. I changed the subject to guns, and Guy's eyes lit up. He had moved from New York because it was illegal in NYC to protect yourself, and in Texas you can carry concealed handguns. He showed me his 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol.

"Fifteen rounds in the magazine, one in the chamber."
"Oh. Is the safety on?"
"The safety? What would I want to put the safety on for?"
"Er. For safety?" I was going to add that the clue is in the name, but didn't want to push my luck. Guy looked puzzled by this.
"Hell no. If someone breaks in here, I want to be able to fill them with lead as fast as possible. You know, in Texas, if someone is on your property you're allowed to shoot them. By law. And if someone threatens you in the street, you can shoot them dead. No questions asked."

Guy explained the types of hollow-point ammo he used, and the assault rifle in his car. And then dug out his knife and stun-gun collection to show me. It was like a scene from Bowling for Columbine.

I've lived here for three weeks now, and Guy is actually a really interesting person. Sure, when the landlord's son came around to fix a tap I had to put out a note for Guy telling him not to shoot any strangers he saw in the house, but otherwise he's fine. Guy is most likely to say things like:

"Man, I've been having so much sex lately. Do you want a do-nut?"
"See, that's why you've got to protect yourself. You should get a gun. Criminals have guns. They don't care."
"That's such a pain in the ass." This covers all situations from utilities being cut off, to car accidents, to running out of cerial.
"These chocolate-covered strawberries are fucking disgusting." As if they could be anything else.

Lately he has taken up the war on cockroaches as the weather turns warmer. Naturally, Guy is terrified of dead insects - he admitted today that he thinks that they could turn into zombie brain-eating insects after you kill them, so doesn't like to go near their carcasses when he executes them. I haven't seen his shotgun yet, but it could come into play if the roaches turn up in force.
posted by Garreth at 4:53 PM

Accent still hanging on by a thread :  I still speak the Queen's English despite numerous hostile bids from local dialects. Although someone thought I was Russian a few days ago, I am still getting the odd, "I like your accent." and I have not succumbed to using the word "like" in any sentence more than once. I clocked one of my room-mates at five "likes" per sentence yesterday, so I still have a long way to plummet.
posted by Garreth at 12:25 PM

Slatten :  Congratulations to Britney Spears. In her latest popular music video, she has managed to transform herself. She now looks like the red-haired chick from the UK chart-trotting songstrel quintet, "Girls Aloud". The red-haired one that the video directors always cut out of camera, or hide in the background.
posted by Garreth at 11:45 AM

Ain't nothing to life but drugs and booty :  The Carl Lewis 10k (without Carl Lewis) was started off with an address on the PA by Carol Lewis. Perhaps the organisers had just looked up "Lewis, C" in the phone book and bunged Carol Lewis 50 bones to show up. Adding an extra "o" to the event fliers was probably cheaper than making new fliers without Carl Lewis on them at all. As we all know, Carl Lewis retired from the event when he heard I was running.

I was surprised to find myself at the race start line by 8am. The surprise was due to my hideous debillitating illness which had almost led me to pass out on the ascent to the tech booth at the Hyde Park Theatre the previous evening. My head swam and my neck swelled. I felt like a turd floating around in a whirlpool of industrial waste - something you might see by the beach of many British coastal towns. But this is America goddamnit, and you can't feel like that for long. Not in the land of opportunity. Not in the land of the drive through pharmacy. The land of petrol stations that sell booze. The drugs I got from Walgreens made me feel like a rhino on crack when I woke up in the morning. An unstoppable force searching for some immovable objects to obliterate.

I started the race feeling invincible. I ran faster than I had ever run before, and found myself overtaking people so that I could follow better looking asses. The inability to feel my crunching joints, bleeding lungs and splitting connective tissues allowed me to stay focussed on the jiggling buns of a superior class of athlete. Hurrah for acetaminophen. Though the comedown is a bit shitty.
posted by Garreth at 11:36 AM

Vitamins and theatre types :  Eric: I feel awful. And I've got a 16 hour shift tomorrow. I have a major cold.
Me: Hang on, I think I have some vitamin C in my bag.
Eric: Is it water or fat soluble?
Me: It's fat soluble, so it should help your cold. It's called "Ester C"
Passing cast member 1: You've got some ecstacy?
Passing cast member 2: Whose got ecstacy? With you now?
posted by Garreth at 9:55 AM

Theatre types :  Me: It would be fun to come over and see how you edit the video of the play. Where do you live?
Rocky: Near 51st and Rowena.
Me: Is it easy to find?
Rocky: Yeah, from about a block away you can see the pair of giant plastic praying mantises in my garden.
posted by Garreth at 9:52 AM

3/05/2004

Themes in Austin film and theatre productions I have noticed : 

• lascivious content - my play has two nekked women and three lap-dancers, and in my film there is a whore and full frontal nudity on the rooftop scenes. Which freaks the neighbours out a bit, but not as much as the nekked actress was freaked out when a state trooper pulled up in his pig-mobile when she was flashing. Of course the state trooper was just an actor, and the car just a prop, but the poor actress didn't know that. Oh, the potential for mischief with a fake police car.
• use of the french language. Presumably this is thought to add class and culture to the proceedings, even if it is delivered with such dire pronunciation that even I squirm. The "Markey Day Sard" represents sadism in our play with the odd french line. The whore in the film wants to go to Paris, while the american actor playing a russian man delivers a few french lines in a frussican accent. Presumably being this far from france and french people leaves Texans in some misplaced awe of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys
• violence - several beatings in the play, and so many guns in the film that the assistant director has to keep broadcasting to the crew that guns are out. The crew then has to keep their eyes peeled so as to avoid heroic passing citizens pulling out their glocks and turning the actors into mush when they see a hold up in a convenience store. I think there's going to be a car crash on Tuesday in the film too. This is realistic. Texans can't drive in the rain - they don't know what it is. My room mate for example was in a wreck while delivering deli food due to bad judgement on a wet road. Lots of free food for our household.

3/02/2004

Yippee Ki-yay :  Think of Texas and if the first thing that springs to mind isn't Waco, George Bushes, Larry Hagman, Oil, Dell or steak, you're probably thinking of cowboys. It has taken me over three weeks in Texas to become a cowboy. Today I became a cable wrangler. One of my duties was to follow the camera crew who rode on a giant skateboard along a flattened rollercoaster track. I would hold the camera cables in a loop in one hand like a cowboy. My task was to try to ensnare any passing cows in the loop and wrestle them to the ground before they escaped from aisle two of the Kwicky-mart we were shooting in.

In the event that there weren't any cows, which there weren't, I had to avoid getting any of the cast and crew stuck in the cables. Quite why they need a person for this is beyond me. Oh, that's right, it's because production assistants are unpaid, whereas a piece of sticky tape would cost something. And buying a wireless camera would be too efficient. When I make my first film, things are going to be different, I can tell you.
posted by Garreth at 8:48 PM

Kid in a candy store :  13 hours in and out of a convenience store. That was the set for the day - helping out with filming of a local independent film. First impressions of the movie business for me were based on asking people what they did, and observing people that gave the air of being too important to be asked what they did.

The director's job in production is to say, "Action!". The director can only say this when everyone else has said their phrases, such as, "Speeding," or, "Frame". Seems a bit redundant to me. They could do away with the director and save time waiting for the action cue.

The director's assistant tells everyone what to do, and starts off the chain of phrases which results in the director saying, "Action." Sometimes the assistant director tells the director that the word, "action!" must be shouted as the cast can't hear. The assistant director seems to be the boss.

The talent. The people who act in front of the camera are called "talent". This seems a bit offensive to all of the other highly trained people who also have talents. The talent's talents are being able to remember dialogue and to face in the direction that the cameraman tells them to. The talent get to repeat themselves over and over again. They disappear to sit about in comfort elsewhere and harmonize their chakras so that people have to go looking for them. This holds up proceedings.

The grips. I've always wondered what key-grip meant in film credits. Grips seem to carry things around and push cameramen on trolleys when they are too lazy to walk. Coordination and communication between grips and people who want things done holds up proceedings.

The cameraman points the camera and tells the director what shots are going to be made and how they should be modified. It is the director's job to agree unconditionally with what the cameraman says. There are assistant cameramen and second assistant cameramen. But they don't have their own cameras. So that just makes them assistants in my book.

Sound people sit with headphones on so that they can't hear any instructions that are shouted at them. This helps them hold up progress.

Lighting people run around screening off the natural sunlight so that they can plug in enormous generator powered lights to resemble sunlight. This involves moving many coloured filters around and generally holding up proceedings. They also tape filters over fluorescent lights because they don't like fluorescent lights. They then put up other lights to resemble fluorescent lights, and then put up black screens to cut out the light from their fake fluorescent lights, because they don't like the way they make things look.

The production assistants, like me, work for free. Their job is to help wherever they can to actually get things produced. They have no artistic input, so find it hard to hold up proceedings as much as everyone else. Because they are free, they are many. There are few things to do while the artistic crowd are filling up the day with meaningless activity, so much of the time is spent sitting about. This gives time for thinking how things should be run properly, and imagining how the cost of productions must rise exponentially with a larger number of the above time-wasters.
posted by Garreth at 8:39 PM