Mitch Hedberg died today, and I am sad about it. I had seen him on Letterman lots of times when I used to stay up. I usually don't think stand up is very funny... but this guy... brilliant. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

"I got an ant farm. Them fellas didn't grow shit."

"I used to do drugs. I still do drugs. But I used to, too."

"I think Pringles initial intention was to make tennis balls. But on the day that the rubber was supposed to show up, a big truckload of potatoes arrived. But Pringles is a laid back company. They said "Fuck it. Cut em up."

"I saw a human pyramid once. It was totally unnecessary."

"I wish I could play little league now. I'd be way better than before."

"You know they call corn-on-the-cob, "corn-on-the-cob", but that's how it comes out of the ground. They should just call it corn, and every other type of corn, corn-off-the-cob. It's not like if someone cut off my arm they would call it "Mitch", and then re-attached it, and call it "Mitch-all-together"."

"You really need to get that cat to stay off the booze!"

-K

Tonight I went to Randalls to get Kettle Corn and make fun of the little cans of Big Red (is the red still big?) and ran into Dave Skinner who has not aged a day, he actually looks like he is getting younger. Thanks Dave for letting me make you lose your place in line!

I had no flippin clue that Stacy from Kids Incorporated, one of my favorite cable TV shows as a child was the same person as Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas.

Real World Austin crosses my real world again:

It was back to work this morning... and I waved goodbye to the international band who had been staying with me this week on the way to my car. I thought it would be hard to have so many people staying in our little apartment, but it was actually fun, and a little sad when they weren't here this afternoon. I will be visiting Antwerp for a couple of days this summer, so that will be wonderful!

This morning I woke up early and walked down to Waterloo to see the Doves:



Then on the way back the most rain I have ever seen and then the most beautiful rainbow.



At night we saw the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players who played some old songs, and a couple of new ones. My favorite new one was called Beautiful Dandelion, and was just kind of a stream of random slides. We also got to see the George W. Bush Singers perform, which was their second performance ever, and was awesome. It looked pretty new to most of the audience, but I've been a fan for a while.

Today I also found out that a band that was playing in a store I went to buy a bedroll from the other day was actually Bloc Party, a band that I wanted to see. I am seeing great bands on accident. Huzzah!

The best band I saw tonight was Morningwood from New York, they were again dirty, not very cute, very hot. Glad I gave some shows a miss, my friend Melissa called me to come see the Goldie Lookin' Chain show, and then five minutes later to tell me that she no longer liked Goldie Lookin' Chain.

Also tonight I got to see (and meet!) Stuart Maconie. I record his shows weekly on Mini Disc to listen to in my car to and from Del Valle, and he influences my musical choices more than anyone lately... so this made my day, and my music festival. He's such a great guy in radio, and in real life.

Mystery Viewmaster slides off ebay - Knight Rider. Score.

One of my favorite things - people getting big checks:



In the past week I have seen two big checks presented to people. I love that they make them big. I wish we presented more things to people real big like that, and I like that they always seem to sneak up on people with those big checks.

My car made it into the pictures of the Radio 1 busking event - the boring grey one. Hey, I was really proud of that parking space, it was one of those miraculous ones that was open and people were driving past because they couldn't believe it was actually legal. I mean, look how close I got! I have good parking lot luck sometimes.
I'm glad all the guys I was talking to got their pictures on the webpage too. The guy in the funny hat was really nice.

During the day I got to show my houseguests around Austin a little bit, which is my favorite thing.

At night more SXSW madness. Thank goodness for getting wristbands this year. At some of the shows I went to, even badges were queueing up at the door behind us, lordy.

Badges, we don't need no stinking badges...

First band, Electrocute, starting out the evening well - cute and dirty.




Then it was on to VHS or Beta, Graham Coxon, and Fatboy Slim. Wish I had more energy left for LCD Soundsysterm, but what do you do when all the bands you want to see are playing at the same time. Plus, Fatboy Slims rhythms at 1:00 in the morning have a sedating effect and... zzz...

First day of SXSW, and a crazy busy one. The band staying at my house are very low maintenance. I just wish I had a giant house here and a huge car to take them around in. Unfortunately, however, it's futons and air mattresses all around.

Today I got to see perform live: Pine Top Perkins, John Cale, Alejandro Escovedo, the Crickets, Nancy Griffith, a guy who was really good at beat box (he won an award for it!), and Daniel Johnston(!!!), one of my new favorite people. Also got to see Roky Erickson. Tonight I saw a few men who look like Kenny Rogers.

Went to the BBC Radio 1 busking event today. It was pretty interesting. Mostly people from the UK there. I ended up only talking to guys from Canada and San Fransisco however because British people don't really talk to each other, especially abroad. I bought one guy some tea because he couldn't figure out American money. Another guy got tea, and complained they didn't have cream, only milk. Hey buddy, I didn't complain about American stuff in your country (OK, maybe a little). He tipped a quarter, which is pretty customary in the UK, but not great in the US (works out to about 12p). So I put down another dollar for the sexy waitress.

I was the lead story on the news today besides the new "life without parole" law. I was walking to get my wristbands for the SXSW music festival, when I was approached by news anchors and cameramen. Brother. They asked me if I wanted to be on TV, and I replied "No thanks". I had my 15 minutes as a child when I was on Double Dare...
To cut the story short, in the end I was on the news for about a minute of just me as a "Generous Austin Local"... and drummed up some support for my band. In Nigel's words:
"Before she knew it they had wired her for sound, removed her FUCK WAR lapel badge and asked her what the diddly-iddly-doo she was doing letting a bunch of them there fur'ners into her home"


I won't put up pictures with me actually in them, as I had walked to the convention center and was looking scrubby. I know they picked me to be on the news though because I'm so hot. Kidding, of course.

Today I decided to be fit and ride my bike down to the kite festival stopping at Daily Juice for my favorite smoothie (15% off for cyclists). What a gorgeous day, a little too hot, but lovely. I got to use my new bike bell. Yay.



A friendly stranger shows off her kite to a smiling Stacey.



My favorite kite.

When I sat down to take these pictures I realized that I had on me, including my Sidekick, two digital cameras, internet capabilities including email, and my phone. Way too connected for an afternoon bike ride, but it's good.

I am now a Texas certified teacher. For reals boo. Please raise your hand if you want to congratulate me. Do your best job, show your work, number two pencils only please.

Orange Juice gone bad! I mentioned in an earlier post that I was impressed with the choices of OJ here, but now I am decidedly disappointed. I picked up Tropicana Light n' Healthy the other day thinking it would taste pretty much like the others. Nasty. It doesn't even taste like orange juice. Wish I had picked up Tang. I am now unwilling to experiment with orange juice options.




Damn you Tropicana!

Real World Austin cameras cross my real world today. They looked miserable.

My friend Dan's band in Leeds - Sepialife. I liked all Dans previous bands, looking forward to listening to the EP, which you can buy if you live in Leeds!

Skip Elsheimer. He rocks. Wish I was him.

listning to: Daft Punk - Human After All
reading: magazines and phonics primers, boy am I looking forward to summer!