So, Forrest Black and I just went for coffee. Well, it was Starbucks, so he went for coffee and I went for ice water and conversation. I was just reading a thing about how Warren Buffet built his business and wanted to talk about some of the interesting ways he approached things. So we are talking about how insurance companies invest with your premiums and that is where most of their profits come from, and how Warren Buffet’s primary holding company Berkshire Hathaway actually failed at its primary business and no longer actually produces anything to do with what the original brand was about, and various other factoids which are intriguing, if you find business structures interesting.

At a certain point, I noticed some security guards hovering kind of close to me out of the corner of my eye and wondered if Starbucks had any special rules against people with purple and green hair discussing high finance. I couldn’t think of anything particularly awful I was doing, so I went back to my conversation, but there was still this sense of bad energy. The security guards went away, but people started shouting. As some of the people shouting were Starbucks employees, I assume security fled so they would not be witnesses to the people who worked at the shopping center braining someone with a coffee pot, if that was about to ensue. These security guys know where their paychecks come from and it is not making coffee-drinkers happy.

So apparently there was a customer there who wanted foam on his coffee or crema on his espresso or something like that. The chick who took the order didn’t really understand his question, so she answered kind of noncommittally on whether or not he could get what he wanted. When he got his order, it was not what he wanted. The barista said their machine could not do that. (This sort of thing is why I get my coffee at Intelligentsia and not Starbucks.) Instead of just apologizing to the guy and giving him his money back with a coupon, as Starbucks used to do when they were a better stock to own, the chick who took the order started screaming at the guy that he should have listened to her when he placed his order. So this dude who was behind the counter but seemed too young and clueless to be a manager came over to try to help, but, by this time, the customer was yelling about his “shitty” service and making a huge scene, while the line got really backed up with people waiting to order. The Starbucks dude, who was hopefully not a manager, took a stab at trying to calm things down, but he had this kinda rude grin on his face the whole time and seemed like he was laughing at the customer. He may have just been nervous, but it really did not help. The Starbucks at Western and Hollywood used to have a really awesome cool manager who we liked enough to give free gifts when we ran into him at a convention Blue Blood was exhibiting at, but Starbucks moved him to Vermont and Hollywood. I don’t even know if the Western and Hollywood Starbucks has a manager any more.

I know Forrest Black was pretty close to handing the customer five bucks himself and just asking the yelling guy to please leave. Instead, once the customer told the cashier, “you can kiss my ass” and she shrieked back, “you can kiss your own ass”, we decided to just leave that classy establishment. This is one of those moments where someone doesn’t realize how much accuracy is in what they were saying. When the Starbucks customer told the cashier to kiss his ass, on some level, what he really wanted was for her to treat him like a customer, rather than belittling him. I would have been opposed to another customer paying the angry customer to leave because I feel like that would just be paying off a terrorist and reinforcing that guy’s behavior where his yelling and expression of rage got in the way of everyone else’s coffee drinking ambiance and even coffee ordering. I thought the Starbucks employees could have handled things much more smoothly to stop the unpleasantness, but I also don’t think people should be rewarding for publicly crying like spoiled children in the cereal aisle and ruining other people’s experience.

People pay five bucks for a coffee because they want to relax. The thing I actually found kind of surprising was that the people behind the counter really did not seem to take any pride in their work or care if they did it well. I mean, Forrest Black didn’t have any problem with his order and I had not problem with mine, so it is not like they messed everything up or anything, but the folks who used to work there always seemed to want to excel.

Now I’ve worked at some pretty terrible jobs. Heck, there are days I come to work and just wish I still worked retail. Even when I have to work on something I do not enjoy, I do try to do it well though. I take pride in a job well done and try to do my best. Sometimes my best is nowhere near good enough, but I strive for excellence and take pride in putting in a good effort. Do you take pride in doing what you do well or at least putting forth a good effort to achieve the tasks at hand?

Los Angeles can be a difficult city to make deep connections with others in. I know literally hundreds of people who I genuinely like and enjoy in Southern California, but I can’t say most of them know me particularly in-depth or vice-versa. Sometimes I find it difficult to escape the feeling that every interaction is somehow tainted with business. And not in a cool getting-neat-creative-projects accomplished sort of way. A lot of people get a certain kind of bone marrow level lonely in Los Angeles and turn to drink, drugs, or specific religion.

I’ve said for years that, if I stayed in Los Angeles for long enough, I would need to end up either in AA or the Church of Scientology. I live walking distance from the Church of Scientology Celebrity Center and this may mean I am required to become a Scientologist because I have a few problems with Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous.

There are a few traits AA and NA folks tend to pick up, which I would really be disappointed to find in myself. AA people are always simultaneously telling you that they are more virtuous and goody two shoes than you and more wild with fuller and more exciting lives than yours. This is rude, but a potentially unavoidable side-effect of working the program.

Secondly, AA and NA people always make their struggle with addiction the whole narrative they hang their existence on. I know some amazingly accomplished Hollywood artists who believe the story of their lives is how they got addicted to something and then dealt with being addicts. The books they have written, music they have performed, and people whose lives they have made better are all footnotes; the real story for AA folks is the road to and from addiction. Even though most addicts relapse at least occasionally, so this self-view does not even really work from a literary narrative structure perspective.

My largest obstacle to joining AA or NA is that I don’t have a particularly addictive personality. I mean, I’ve been enjoying my iced soy lattes made with gourmet, fair trade, artisan-roasted coffee bean espresso, but it wouldn’t kill me not to have them. I love beer, but, most of the time, a beer looks too much like twenty soul-sucking minutes on the elliptical to me and I’d rather spend the calories on something else. Maybe if cocaine and heroin came in tasty beverage form, I’d look into getting addicted to one of those, but I can’t imagine the bother involved with getting into an actual habit of reverse picking my nose or sticking pins in myself. I have enough trouble getting into the habit of working out. I mean, I feel good after I exercise and picking up heavy objects and putting them down again is much less annoying than most of the modes of ingesting addictive drugs.

But I digress. The important thing is that goofy sign generators are fun. Now you can each make your own Church of Scientology sign, hit the upload option, and be sure to use one of the “Hotlink for forums” code copy/paste snippets to share your sign here.

I’ve always thought that the scent of certain foods should be packaged as cologne. Who wouldn’t want to lick someone who smelled like fresh doughnuts in the morning? Baked goods in general can provoke this sense. I find Mrs. Fields cookies uninteresting as a food, but they smell so damn alluring in the mall; I just want to get close to them. Even certain frozen foods, like Stouffer’s mashed potatoes, smell like the sort of thing that could make a prospective partner’s mouth water. I’d love to have a really good coffee body spray. Heck, I want to roll around naked in a two person tub full of Intelligentsia Black Cat espresso beans.

Taking this concept one step too far, Burger King (aka the people who brought you a pervert Subservient Chicken in garters), have introduced Flame body spray for (I think) men.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and admit that, although I did used to enjoy Burger King chicken tenders, I haven’t eaten them in many many years and I never ever liked the Whopper. On school field trips as a child, I did always vote for Burger King where they sort of had food and didn’t object to leaving off the disgusting fast food spreads. BK, where I could have it my way, was clearly superior to McDonald’s where pretty much nothing, except the french fries, was remotely food. Some of my classmates would want to go to a place called Micky D’s and it took me ages to figure out this was a hip (if you are like eight-years-old) way to refer to McDonald’s.

Genius demented ad copy for the body spray scent like working in fast food:

“The WHOPPER sandwich is America’s favorite burger. FLAME by BK captures the essence of that love and gives it to you. Behold the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat.“

My favorite burger is one I cook myself, pan fried well done, with goat cheddar on top, and no bun, and no spread, and no rancid pickles. If we are taking all of the Americas into account, the best burger meat I’ve ever had was in Brazil. My next favorite burger is the Kobe beef burger from Lucky Devils on Hollywood Blvd, well done, with bacon and cheddar on top, bun and aioli and broccoli on the side. And, yes, I know they don’t have it that way precisely on the menu. I’m not sure I’d want to smell like it, even made precisely the way I love most, but so it goes.

Flame Burger King cologne is available for online purchase from Ricky’s Halloween Costume Superstore, the site for which explains that it is “The hottest, funkiest, craziest costume shop in New York City!” At the very least, it is your go-to spot if you want to get that BK burger funk all over your bod.

So I just got back from voting. I went to the polling place where I voted in the primaries and I wasn’t on the roster. They gave me a provisional ballot, but I find those things alarming. They also gave me a slip of paper with a list of phone numbers to call to find out what was up with my voter registration. I thought that perhaps my polling place had been changed to my work address from my home address or something like that. Basically, I did not want to submit a provisional ballot, if I could drive across town to another polling place and do a normal one.

The poll workers told me that I did not need to call because my vote would absolutely, definitely, no-question be counted. I called the registrar election day number anyway. A nice woman named Karen went over everything and told me that actually she couldn’t find me in the voter rolls. She gave me a more official State of California Registrar of Voters number to call and told me I should definitely call next week to get it all straight, but that it was doubtful I’d get through calling today.

I was literally shaking at the idea that my vote might not count, so I was going to be sitting in front of the polling place, with one eye on my ballot inside and the other on my finger hitting redial on my Blackberry, until I got through. There was no cell phone reception inside the polling place and it is illegal to remove the ballot from the polling location. Happily, the voice prompts and wait time for the California number were user-friendly and pretty prompt, given that it is election day.

Another nice woman named Whitney helped me this time and she told me that actually I was not currently active in the voter rolls because my registration was flagged for lack of birth location. I had changed something minor on my registration before the primaries, so there was a recent registration form, even though I’ve been voting in the same district for approximately eight years. I actually voted at the same polling place in the primary, but, at that time, they had not processed the new info on my new registration. Of course, I did fill out my birthplace when I registered again, but I was born overseas to American parents, so it is probably that whoever was doing the data entry just did not feel like looking up how to enter a European birth. At any rate, Whitney updated my information and activated my voter registration.

The significant thing here is that, because my registration had been flagged, my vote would not have been counted, if I had not gotten through to the registrar. So, for those of you with the polls still open, please call your local voting registrar, if there is anything off about the way you are or are not listed in the voter rolls. The poll workers will assure you that your vote will be counted, but it may take a little extra effort on your part for that to be true. Please make it.

As a bonus, lots of American businesses are offering presents for those who vote. Here are a few links to free stuff for Americans who perform their civic responsibility:

Ben & Jerry’s will give voters a free scoop of ice cream today between 5pm and 8pm. Krispy Kreme will give those with I Voted stickers a free star-shaped doughnut today. And from now until November 11, Babeland will give those with proof of having voted a free sex toy. Starbucks is giving away a free brewed coffee to anyone who tells them they voted. I don’t think they are requiring proof, like the other vendors, so I guess you can just claim to have voted there, but you really should vote and they do have a kind of inspirational commercial.

I’m going to be honest and say I love coffee, but I love an iced latte with organic non-dairy milk and artisan-roasted gourmet beans. The ice cream site has a nifty store locator feature right on the election promo page, but the nearest location is in the Valley and I’m in Hollywood. Also, I remember when everyone was excited that they opened one of those ice cream shoppes near my college and I found their ice cream overly sweet. One of my neighbors owns a doughnut shop across the street from where I live, so, if I feel like eating high carb and high glycemic index, I think I’ll just give him the few cents a doughnut costs. A sex toy seems like a better gift, but I get tons of cool sex toys free for product placements and reviews as is. So none of the free stuff is really jumping out at me.

I voted because it matters to me as a patriotic American to vote, because it is my responsibility as a citizen. And I did the follow-up necessary to make sure my vote would be counted for the same reason. I voted.

Last week, the Dead Kennedys announced an indefinite hiatus from touring, due to health issues suffered by bassist Klaus Flouride and drummer D.H. Peligro. Although I was fangirl-thrilled to meet East Bay Ray at a coffee shop a couple years back, I personally find it depressing when bands tour without key original members. A Jello Biafra-less DK would just bum me out.

Sometimes a group of people come together to make a great creative team, but only small portions of the group are really driving forces. The DK thing is not really one of those disputes. Drummers sometimes spontaneously combust and that never makes it seems like a band should hang it up. I think the thing which bothers me the most about Jello Biafra not exactly being in the Dead Kennedys any more is that you know there was a hot moment in time when they must have felt like a galvanized special unit in the war against conformity and oppression. There must have been a time when the Dead Kennedys felt like they could take on the world . . . together.

For anyone who is unaware of the legal squabble, the Dead Kennedys had a falling-out partly over whether or not their songs should be licensed to sell various things. Most notably Levi’s wanted to use “Holiday in Cambodia” in a Dockers commercial and Jello Biafra rejected their advances without consulting the rest of the band. Lawsuitarity ensued. Levi’s did not get the song, but Alternative Tentacles is no longer allowed to sell full length DK products. I am torn on how I feel about that. I have lived in not one, but two, punk rock group houses named after the “Holiday in Cambodia” song. Not like thirteen punks living in a townhouse had to get a license to call the place Cambodia, so maybe we only helped by buying cassette tapes and T-shirts, but we would not have considered Levi’s to be, ya know, punk.

On the one hand, I feel like there should be more benefit to artists who create important seminal works. On the other hand, I am uncomfortable with certain types of mainstream corporate interests co-opting and diluting counterculture. It seems like there have to be ways to monetize art without giving it to a company who would demean its original purpose. The Dead Kennedys MySpace page announced this spring that Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death had managed to go gold in both the USA and the UK, without major label support. Keeping in mind that Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death came out in 1987, I’m guessing it hasn’t been buying mansions in the meantime.

So maybe nothing pure can last without pain, but here is a video shot at a 1981 Dead Kennedys (with Jello Biafra) performance of “Too Drunk to Fuck” in Finland. And, as you probably got from Blue Blood board members Buster Friendly and Mr. Karl’s posts, if you did not know it already, the Buckcherry “Too Drunk to Fuck” is not a cover of the DK song, any more than the Katy Perry “I Kissed a Girl” is a cover of the Jill Sobule tune. The Finnish video may be amateur, but it is complete with punk rock snogging.

(Thanks to our beloved advertiser Busted Tees for the photos in the graphic. Please do not blame them for the lewd linguistics lesson which follows.)

Will Judy: Coffee had better be the answer right now, because there’s nothing else going.

Considering initialized knuckle tattoos. Right hand: ROFL, Left hand: TLDR

Amelia G: I am not sure you are jovial enough for an ROFL knuckle set. What is TLDR?

Will Judy: “Too Long; Didn’t Read”

Shittiest, most smugly dismissive response to a post possible, worse than “Id hit it” or “tranny?”

Amelia G: It is probably good for the world that I didn’t know what that stood for and, perhaps solely as a result of this, had not noticed it before.

This conversation reminds me that I need to start a “Would you hit it?” thread somewhere.

As a linguistically informed individual, how would you deconstruct (deconstruct is my word of the week) the hit it expression. What is one hitting? Is the usage that one will smack one’s privates against another’s? Is it a more general colliding of human beings in a sexual context? Is hitting it something one does *with* someone else or *to* someone else? Is the usage supposed to apply only to men hitting women (e.g. tap that ass) or also to women hitting men (as it certainly is used in common parlance)?

Will Judy: Etymologically speaking: One of the many theories explaining the word “fuck” traces it back to the Olde Englishe verb “fokken”, “to strike”. Fokken in the sense “to strike” is still in use in German, although there is a separate word, fichen, for “to fuck”.

I think the current usage of “hit that” traces back to “hitting skins”, late 80s slang conflating beating drums (drumskins) with having the vigorous sex. “I’d hit skins with that fine thing” boiled down to “I’d hit that”.

There’s also the whole thing of shouting “Hit it!” to get something started, which goes back to time immemorial.

Amelia G: You have no idea how much pleasure and relief I am currently receiving from your explanation. Can I repost this? (with credit/blame of course)

Will Judy: You have my freely given permission.

How do you hack a hangover? Apparently this is one of the most viewed recent YouTube videos in the how-to section. Well, if you don’t count all the ones related to achieving erection, orgasm, or conception. I haven’t watched any of their social relations vids, but, if the advice is as terrible as this hangover advice, I’d recommend steering clear.

Personally, I’ve found that the most effective way to avoid feeling awful in the morning is to sleep late after a night of not drinking to excess. Then start the day with a delicious iced soy latte, a little sunshine, and a well-balanced, high-protein, low-carb, low-glycemic-index breakfast.

Failing that, I never remember to take those RU-21 pills when starting the night, but they are moderately effective. I am a very big fan of alternating beer with sparkling water during the evening and drinking the Function brand Urban Detox beverages before bed.

How do you like to start your day?

As this year’s Comic Con looms near, it is time to take a look back at last year’s event. Looking at the gallery of snapshots from the Blue Blood crew’s Thursday at the show reminded me of some of the fun we had.

I was excited to pick up entertaining stuff from Shannon Wheeler of Too Much Coffee Man fame. I loved all the crazy Lego, including Lego Batman and Lego robots. Actually, all robots are cool, not just those made out of plastic bricks for kids. BlueBlood.com hottie Yolanda was in the house as well. The lovely blonde, Em, is almost my namesake and is a real mail order Russian bride. Special thanks to The Brotherhood for sponsoring the megabooth and making sure it came complete with a beautiful and personable mail order bride.

I was pleased to be able to literally buy a shirt off the back of the very kind Gwen from Sighco. Gwen and I are around the same size and she was wearing a shirt which read, “Guns don’t kill people. Supervillains kill people.” Everyone from our spooky ookie artistic folks megabooth was going on a Superhero and Supervillain-themed party bus that night. A bus complete with stripper pole, I might add. Oddly, the booth with the Simpsons costumes and various supergear was just displaying and was not renting or selling them at the convention. I kinda think they left some money on the table there. This meant I really did need that Supervillain shirt right away then and Sighco’s Gwen actually took her own shirt off, right on the Comic Con show floor, let me try it on, and then selected another shirt for herself. Yes, I do always have a +20 on any roll involving people around me getting naked.

Actually, we had more fun than you can see here because it was really freaking hot in San Diego. I mean hot in the sense of excessively high temperature, as opposed to merely exciting hot. So I was a little off and actually shot snaps of the first half of the day with nothing in the camera. Oops. The awesome purple superheroine with the secret identity actually fights crime with a blue-clad male partner, but, alas, I was not actually taking pictures of them, when I thought I was taking pictures of them. I’m a polar bear and the heat can be a tad difficult for me.

This feature was originally published May 18, 2005. With this year’s SXSW looming close, I thought it would be fun to bring it back.
–Amelia G

photography by Forrest Black

Every time I take a trip to some place which is not Manhattan or San Francisco, I start drooling at real estate. Property is at such a premium in Los Angeles that I can’t help it. On my recent jaunt to SXSW, the cab driver who picked me and Forrest Black up at the airport must have known this. He launched into the most amazing dissertation on the socioeconomics of the city of Austin. He told us that 120,000 of the city’s residents are students at any given time. The majority of cab drivers have at least a Bachelors. The city is the live music capitol of the U.S. and perhaps the world. Nightlife is hopping. Booze stops flowing at 2am, but some clubs stay open dry until 4am on weekends. Finding nightclubs which serve coffee should not be difficult. Panhandling is not totally uncommon. High speed wireless access is quite common. There was once a student at UT Austin who dropped out after his frosh year much to his doctor father and stockbroker mother’s dismay, but now he is one of the biggest employers in Austin and his name is Michael Dell, you might have heard of him. Forrest and I might even have gotten some tips on playing Texas Holdem as the cabbie was also a tournament poker player, but alas we arrived at the Hilton. I kicked myself for the rest of the week for not getting that first fascinating and wonderful cab driver’s phone number. Later on we kept getting this chick who must have bribed her way or something into being the main cab driver in front of the Hilton during the big SXSW convention and she was a total scammer who repeatedly claimed not to have change and snarfed an extra $20 from us when she dropped us off at the airport at the end. Regardless, being used to the cablessness of Los Angeles, it was kind of nice to be able to be driven places fairly easily.

The checkin guy at the Hilton was adorable and super friendly and nice and I headed upstairs to sack out. Due to loathsomeness on the part of American Airlines, which I will for the moment spare you all the details of, I sort of missed the first night of SXSW Interactive. It involved a talk about the success of Alien Hominid I think. My bed at the Hilton was tiny but the mattress was oh so very comfy and the sheets felt super nice to the touch. Apparently a prior guest had broken into my mini bar before I checked in. The Hilton folks were amazingly nice and friendly and told me that sometimes this happens with underage guests who they don’t give a bar key.

I ate at a place called The Boiling Pot my first night in town. Not only did they have crawfish which I expected, but they also served blue crabs which I had thought were something one could only get in the Chesapeake Bay area. The waitress was charming and friendly and discussed my beverage tastes with me. I couldn’t get sparkling water, but she recommended the local Shiner Blonde based on my preferences and totally steered me right. Shiner Bock by the same company is apparently more commonly consumed but is a bit darker craft beer.

I ate waffles and steak for breakfast the next day at the Hilton and the hostess was friendly and the waitress was so amazing she almost made me like morning. I kept waking up early and eating breakfast in Austin and then wanting to go back to sleep. Of course, I had panels and seminars and keynote speeches and such to go to most days, so I ended up a little sleep-deprived the whole time. I was not alone in this though. The panel I got up earliest for was the Blogging Software showdown which was totally worth losing a few zzzz for. It always makes me happy when something I enjoy is created by someone who is just as great as I would want them to be. Matthew Mullenweg, the founding developer of WordPress, came across so passionate and brilliant that it made me feel all warm and fuzzy about loving his creation.

The second day Halcyon and Tassy swept into town. They had just participated in a reality show in Jamaica. They basically got to the airport in San Diego, pulled some things out of their bags, threw some clean things in, and headed back to the airport to hit Texas. Despite all this air travel, they looked tanned and lovely and once they arrived, the party got going in earnest.

Apparently famous cyberpunk author and futurist Bruce Sterling used to always give a party at his house during SXSW Interactive. But now he has succumbed to the siren song of Los Angeles. So Wired sponsored him throwing a shindig at an American Legion Hall where he ran around in pajamas demonstrating how a still works. Actually most of the parties were just as educational as the seminars because of the intelligence and curiosity about the world of the people partying. Ben Brown, the self-proclaimed Internet Rockstar, gave a bash at his Home for Wayward Boys which includes a hot tub and which a biker-looking cabbie told us was in a shifty neighborhood. Whatever that means. Looked great to me, although I guess the host did say something about bodies being dumped in the area. Then again, some folks just need killin’. Blogger gave a party and we got groovy baseball caps. Gawker gave a party at a bar which is one of an apparent 211 nightlife locations in Austin which chose to be smoking establishments. What this means is that patrons can smoke in side, but everybody has to be over eighteen years of age. I guess so second-hand smoke won’t stunt their growth or something. This bar didn’t have Shiner Blonde, so I had a Lone Star to keep with the local theme, but it wasn’t totally my thing, so I switched to Amaretto sours. I appreciate Gawker buying me the drinks but kind of wish I hadn’t mixed alcohols.

Halcyon, among other things, is in the process of launching a site called Pinkgasm with Tassy. He says it is going to be “love-infused porn” and I believe him. Jonno D’Addario is the editor of my favorite sex news site Fleshbot. Halcyon and Jonno are collectively two of my favorite people who move in online naughtiness circles. When I told Halcyon, who is a SXSW vet, that I wanted to go to the convention this year, he set me up to speak on a panel called “The Business of Pleasure: Turning Pink Into Green.” For the record, he named it, not me. The convention quite reasonably thought we should have a third person on the panel. Halcyon asked me who I thought would be good and Jonno was the first person I thought of. We both loved the idea of having him speak with us and happily the convention organizer agreed. I was a little bit worried that the panel would be such a lovefest that we wouldn’t be interesting enough for the audience. But we actually got together beforehand and planned and stuff and, although we all like each other, our viewpoints and experiences are not identical, so I think the panel actually went super well.

I’ve spoken in front of a lot of different audiences over the years, but this one was very different. I try to pay careful attention to audience response and see which topics I should spend more time on, according to what they seem most interested in. This was a new experience for me because the audience was so techie that many of them were blogging about the panel while it was going on or talking in IRC about the panel. The conference takes place in a convention center with wireless access in every nook and cranny. I definitely came home thinking that I crave all sorts of new tech toys.

Returning to eating which is my favorite thing to do, the Blue Blood contingent all lunched in Austin with a bunch of cool interesting people at a place with Asian food of some sort called Mekong Somethingorother which was pretty nummy. There were whole shrimps with the tail still on sticking out of my sort of egg roll and the lemonade was delicious. In the middle of the night, the always-open Magnolia Cafe supplied me with a taste of gingerbread pancakes and other folks with all sorts of Tex-Mex breakfast fare. No bottled water though. We ate pizza at a place which played death metal. Loudly. We ate pizza at a bunch of other places nestled in between clubs with different sorts of music emanating. We ate at a place called Jazz which specializes in cajun food and we got to eat beignets made from mix shipped in from Cafe du Monde in New Orleans and fried oysters. It seems like every place in Austin features raw oysters, so I knew they had to have fresh ones, but I like mine cooked thanks and was overjoyed to find such especially excellent fried ones on my last day. Technically, I guess I also had cooked oysters at Finn & Porter, the Hilton’s higher end restaurant, but they had some creative wasabi thing going which would probably be done better where I live, although the service was great and the steak was perfect and, unlike most every other place in Austin, they had some damn sparkling water for me.

It is really easy to get booze and coffee in Austin, but it is kind of difficult to get anything actually thirst-quenching. Juice tends to be high quality when found but not too common and sparkling water is just a fantasy. Austin is right off a river so it is much less dry than Vegas, but I got way more dehydrated there. Forrest opined that perhaps this dearth of hydrating beverages is the reason cowboys look like raisins. I tend to think this must be an accurate observation.

But I could be a pruney mofo with some damn affordable real estate in a great walking neighborhood with friendly if sometimes a little disorganized denizens. Then again, Bruce Sterling is a smart guy and he left Austin for Southern Cali. More research in the field is clearly called for. Now where should I check out next . . .