Art and literature

I've finally gotten around to tinkering with my blog a bit. The color changes are not final and neither is the title. The URL will definitely be staying the same though. Even though it no longer reflects the content of the blog (that is to say, if it ever did), I like having all my posts in one place, so I just can't see changing it any time soon.

Faraway from Astoria, it was a really lovely weekend here in Austin. On Friday, Sam and I went to the Blanton Museum of Art. Once a month, they have an after hours party in the museum called B Scene. It reminded me of an event they have at the Brooklyn Museum, that was always fun, so it seemed worth checking out. As hundreds of gallery openings the world over have proven, there's something about drinking and art that just go well together. Better still, this month's theme for the party was somewhat Halloween related: Exquisite Corpse. The name comes from a French parlor game where different people complete a sentence or picture through connected lines on a folded piece of paper. I remember doing something similar as a child, creating new chimeras through random animal heads, bodies, and legs on a trifold.

In addition to the drawing activity, there were also some great bands, theme cocktails, and free lavender macarons and the galleries were all open to walk around (although naturally you had to put your drink down first). I had never been to the Blanton before, but it had some great exhibits and the permanent collection seemed to have some nice stuff too. I'm also quite a fan of the building itself, which goes a long way in my book. The only reason I ever kept going back to P.S. 1 (other than because it was free and in my neighborhood) was because of the building, as the art itself was never my cup of tea.

One of the bands playing at the museum. You can't really tell, but they were all dressed like zombies. They were called the Dead Capital Band...and I'm not sure if they dressed up to fit the theme or if they were chosen because they just always look like that. 

Another one of the bands. I don't remember their name, but they had a cool sound. 

I forgot what this art piece was supposed to represent, but it was 600 cattle bones hanging over 60,000 pennies. 

Sam attempting an Exquisite Corpse drawing and having trouble with the ink pot. If you were the last person to finish one, you were allowed to keep it.

They had a free photo booth, so we were finally able to get a non-selfie together!

We had a really good time at the museum, so we decided to become members. This means we can get into these monthly parties for free (and really if we just go to two more, it will pay for itself). As part of the membership, they also gave us a very bland mug, so there's that.

Another excitement of the weekend was that the Texas Book Festival was in town. It's a free event that brings together a bunch of authors and publishers and shuts down a number of streets around the Capitol. We didn't go to the festival itself on Saturday, but we did go to the "Lit Crawl" that evening--a literary themed bar crawl on East 6th St organized for the festival. There were a number of really cool events happening at different bars in the area, but in the end we could only go to three. For Phase 1, we chose to go to a cocktail lounge for Sexist Bingo. Authors would read sexist quotes from famous writers throughout history from Plato to Jonathan Franzen and people would shout out the answers for prizes, while also recording them on their bingo cards. I was only Laura Ingalls Wilder away from bingo-ing and getting a free tote bag, but I like her, so I'm also glad to not hear what sexist things she had to say.

For Phase 2, we went to a reading series hosted by Austin Bat Cave, the nonprofit that organizes writing workshops for kids that I've been volunteering at since we moved here. There were some great stories, my favorite was from Bret Johnson, the writer of Corpus Christie Stories, describing trying to convince Joyce Carol Oates that he'd actually written his most well-known book while she was staunchly convinced it was written by someone else.

For Phase 3, we went to another bar for a Literary Death Match--a sort of read-off from new authors that culminated in a round of bar-wide literary charades. It was also a lot of fun, and I found a few new authors whose books I'd like to look up. Leaving that bar, we ran into someone I went to high school with, which when deciding to move to Austin was one of my fears. Luckily, it was one of the people I was happy to see again, so a happy and relatively not-awkward end to a lovely evening.

On Sunday, we went to the festival itself. We only stayed for one reading (by the author of this book), but we walked around for a while checking out all the exhibitors. Sam even ended up wining opera tickets to the Austin Opera. (Not sure how good they are since until Sunday I didn't know Austin has an opera...but hey, it's free!).
 

Sam at the festival. You can't really tell, but he's wearing the shirt he won at Sexist Bingo. It has Walt Whitman lounging in a bath on it. 

A group called the Typewriter Rodeo was there. They improv type up poems on vintage typewriters based on whatever word or phrase you want. We now have a lovely little poem called "Austin Re-Transplants"

That about wraps up this weekend. Will keep working on the blog to tone down the garish pink in the sidebar. Thanks for reading!

Zen and the art of the tailgate

Things are pretty busy at work this week, so this will have to be a short post. This weekend Sam and I joined in on a little Austin culture: the tailgate. A friend in town from New York invited us to one organized by her friend's family (one of whom I think works for the city which accounted for us having a good spot) While not a fan of football especially, I have always been a fan of eating and drinking outside, so it seemed like something I would enjoy. On Saturday it was also a perfectly lovely day, if a little on the warm side. There were beers, chips, and dips aplenty (we arrived sadly too late for the bulk of the BBQ). All in all, lovely way to spend a Saturday.

I don't have too much else to say about it. We only stayed for half the game, and honestly I didn't care enough to even look it up to see if UT won or lost, but I did take a few pictures:

Our assigned tailgate area was actually behind a church. Less traditional perhaps than in a parking lot, but still a nice shady place to have some beers. 

A view of the festivities from the parking garage where they must make a killing on game days. 

Clark. Our faithful tailgate mascot. 

I think Sam took this on our drive home. 

Will hopefully have more time for a proper update next week!

Shakespeare on the farm

On Saturday, Sam and I went to check out Shakespeare on the Farm's production of The Tempest. Shakespeare on the Farm is the work of a nonprofit theater company (The Present Company) that puts on donation-based shows on a small farm in Austin. Since it combines three of my favorite things: outdoor theater, Shakespeare, and free (well okay, I donated, but it was potentially free)...I couldn't resist checking it out.

We took a few pictures of the farm ambience. This looks like something out of the new season of American Horror Story.

 As expected, it was a lovely setting. The set designs were particularly fun, although I think this play lends itself to that. We got there an hour or so early to picnic and enjoy some of the theme cocktails (I think I had Prospero's punch?). They had cranked up some opera tunes out of an air stream trailer and you could watch the chickens run around. You know, you're basic Saturday night farm/theater experience. We were also really lucky weather wise, as it's finally getting some fall crispness in the air.

The sets were quite possibly the coolest part. They built castles out of wood pallets!

The play itself made good use of children running around as fairies (another reason this play lends itself well to community theater); however, overall I think my expectations were a little too high for the acting. I may have gotten a bit spoiled by the million dollar productions over in Central Park and come to expect that all free outdoor theater should have huge Shakespearean talents in it. It also doesn't help that the last time I saw The Tempest performed was one of the single coolest productions I've ever seen. Now that was a phenomenal use of community talent.  This is not to say that the Shakespeare on the Farm production was bad, just that there were neither professional actors in it nor a troop of hip hop artists and taiko drummers, which again, is probably asking too much.

This was part of a huge display maybe out of 20-30 bicycle wheels. 

 Still, it's always fun to spend a night under the stars (and that's one way that outdoor theater on an Austin farm has Central Park really beat) and see a little Shakespeare. I'm actually taking a Shakespeare class (for free as part of FutureLearn) right now to brush up a bit and feel like less of an impostor when interacting with Shakespeare bloggers. Seeing a production after spending the morning reading a different play really reminded me of how preferable the former is. The language is just so much easier to follow when read allowed and with its proper scansion and intonation.

The cast and crew.

Anyway, thanks to the lurkers for your comments and emails last week :). I do appreciate knowing you're out there. Gives me more of a reason to remember to take photos of things and (crucially) to actually download them from my phone.

Enchanted weekend

I'm still working at remembering how to change the design on my blog, so one day that lovely mural of Astoria that I stole without crediting the artist (I should really find out who the artist is...) will be replaced by some Austinian icon. Until then, you can just keep enjoying this slight disconnect as I continue to "live the Astorian dream" from parts Southwest.

It was gorgeous this weekend, and Sam and I decided to go for a hike at Enchanted Rock. It's an enormous pink granite rock formation about an hour and a half outside of Austin. This huge bit is actually only a small part of the whole rock, which underground is apparently four times the size of Manhattan. I thought the name for the rock came from a Mark Twain quote from when he spent time there, or at least I swear I read that on the park's signage, but I can't find that information on the Internet, so who's to say what's real?

This is just one smaller, but equally enchanted, bit of rock on top of the larger one.

We were a bit stressed out getting to the Rock because the park website insisted the parking lot for the natural area could fill up as early as 11 in the morning and I figured that issue would be compounded by the fact that it was perfect weather. Nevertheless, despite the best intentions of leaving early, we rolled up at about 12:30, and there were no issues of overcrowding at all. I guess the Enchanted Rock Natural Area people have inflated their importance a bit, or else people in Texas hill country are just over the novelty of beautiful weather.

The rock is covered by little patches of trees, flowers, and cacti, that manage to grow in eroded bits of the rock. Ah, the power of nature.

We took perhaps too many pictures, but it's such a cool environment.

Anyway, after a nice drive through the wine country of Texas, we arrived at our destination. We climbed to the summit and walked around enjoying the views. Growing up in Houston, I never really thought of Texas as particularly beautiful. Flat, yes. Hot and unbearably humid, sure. But in terms of beautiful landscapes, Houston is not your target city. Consequently it's been really enjoyable to explore Texas hill country, which definitely has an attractive quality with its rolling hills, wildflowers, and patches of cacti.

The view from the top!

Sam at the start of the Summit Trail

Since we drove all the way out to Enchanted Rock, we figured it would be silly to go back to Austin without checking out Fredrickburg, a few miles south. Fredricksburg is a small tourist town with winery tasting rooms and galleries. It was settled by Germans, and that's still an important facet of its culture, so we weren't surprised to find and Oktoberfest festival going on. Unfortunately, it did make parking rather difficult. We wandered around for a few hours, at least 20 minutes of which was spent in this awesome store that gives you samples of all their salsas and sauces. I ate enough sample crackers that we didn't even really need lunch.

This was at the Pioneer Museum and Visitor Center. The docent woman was pretty aggressive and strongly encouraged us to sign the guest book in exchange for using the public bathrooms and receiving a map of main street. 

Sam takes close up pictures of signs he likes the graphic design of. Sometimes I post them. 

This final photo is not from our Saturday jaunt at all. On Sunday, Sam had been talking about wanting to go to the LBJ Library. I hadn't been since I was 12 or 13, and remembered it being rather boring (as most presidential libraries are when you're 12 or 13, I suppose). What I have no memory of from when I went before was this animatronic LBJ. You can't get the real creepiness from this photo, but he's moving, and also, for some reason, telling jokes.

Apparently there's a (possibly now defunct) rock band in New York called "The Animatronic LBJ"

Anyway, I know two of my most loyal readers are likely not reading this week, so I feel a little bit like I'm writing this for myself. (But then when am I not?). If you're out there, readers, hope you're doing well! 'Til next week...