The fabled trip up and down I-35 was peaceful and easy, remarkably free of any Eagles tunes or moronic motorists. Usually the house erupts into chaos prior our road trips - sniping at my special man friend as we pack and load up the truck, getting the dog ready for the doggie motel, and making sure the bird's sorted with plenty of seed and water - and despite high hopes of a noon departure, this time my new credo dictated that the Dude would
never rush, not even to get to league practice on time or to make the handoff with the Nihilists. So with this in mind, off we went, headed south to Austin to take part in the first Lebowski Fest to ever make its way to the Lone Star State. All those emails begging for a Texas fest paid off most generously in the end. Thank you, Will and Scott. You are truly far out.
Securing suitable lodging had not been as easy as I'd hoped, due to my own procrastination and not even thinking that Lebowski Fest might be falling on graduation weekend at UT, and every reasonably-priced room within the vicinity of downtown or the university had probably been gobbled up since September. Luckily, the northwest Austin hotel we ended up staying in didn't suck and was a 5-minute drive from Highland Lanes, where the second night's festivities would take place. How's that for planning? By the way, northwest Austin is well on its way to becoming the new North Dallas, only with scenery. Would that make Round Rock the Plano of Austin?
Anyway, following a massive seafood pig-out at Captain Benny's, full of yummy Gulf oysters and Tecate, we made our way on down to Maggie Mae's. The White Russians were already flowing and special guest Big Lew Abernathy - former L.A. private detective now living in the DFW area and one of the inspirations for Walter Sobchak - introduced the first band of the evening, The Recliners, who delighted the crowd of Achievers with their loony lounge takes on 80's & 90's pop hits -
Cum on Feel The Noize,
White Wedding,
You've Gotta Fight For Your Right (To Party),
When Doves Cry,
Creep; you name it, they butchered it better than the first go-round. They even brought out a special song for the blessed Lebowski occasion,
Don't Pee On My Rug. This bit of hilair was followed by the electro-techno (ugh!) sounds of Autobahn, dissonance personified, and by the time the Bjorn Borg-meets-Black-Flag-inspired Yuppie Pricks came on, we were comfortably seated at a table upstairs near the rooftop bar and feeling no pain. I looked around, seeing a few familiar faces in the crowd -
The Dude,
Walter Sobchak, and
the only Jesus I'd see all weekend. No Donnies, either, which was disconcerting, because the multitudes of Walters lurking around didn't have anyone they could bark "shut the fuck up" at all night. Another damper on the evening was the big technical glitch with the DVD equipment, making a mess of the screening, although the wisdom of Walter managed to provide all the comfort we needed:
Nothing is fucked here, Dude.
All in all, a good night. One word of caution regarding 6th Street, however: DO find a cash machine before venturing down. That $3.85 fee is ass-buggery at its best.
Saturday afternoon, in between the Lebowski festivities and slightly tweaky from Friday's vodka-and-Kahlua onslaught, we took in a late breakfast and made our way to the newly-opened
Blanton Museum on the UT campus. Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Michener. Thank you, Santa Claus. Thank you, Easter Bunny. Happy birthday, dear Blanton. Happy birthday to you. Austin has a brand new baby, one I hope they'll nurse to robust health so it can take advantage of its jump start to balls-on glory. We're talking world class institution here, and it's only been open since April 30th. Yeah, OK, so maybe that's a little premature. Ask me if I give a shit. But for those who get kinda
meh when it comes to art - perhaps because of your allergy to art snob assholes, or maybe those old masters just creep you out the way their eyes follow you around the room - this might make you believe in magic once again. The Blanton is an inviting, unpretentious and easy stroll through the world of creative genius (and not-so-genius) through the ages, offering solid proof that everything you've ever seen in a goddamned museum or gallery - regardless of banality or intensity - was inspired by and ends up inspiring something else, and it all fuses together very nicely at the end of the day. It's the first museum to integrate every genre you can think of, nailing the aforementioned la-dih-dah theory right to the tree. One of the maiden exhibitions, Paul Chan's
Present Tense, kind of a freaky-ass multi-media siren song for the apocalypse, features in-the-flesh nods to William Blake, Jonathan Martin's, Dürer, and Chris Burden's
Atomic Alphabet on a separate wall, really tying the show together, man.
The collections are divided among European Paintings, American and Contemporary, Latin American, and Prints and Drawings. Turns out the Latin American collection was the one to knock me on my ever-lovin' marshmallow. Great stuff. There's Chilean artist Eugenio Dittmor's super-eeky 1983 airmail painting,
No Tracks, paying stark homage to women who went missing during Pinochet's reign; also, Argentinean Feliciano Centurion's carefully-executed and poignantly pillows, stitched during his final days as he succumbed to HIV-related illnesses. Other Mascorrolandia fave raves include David Alfaro Siqueiros's
Cuauhtémoc (1940); 2001's
Painter and Loid Struggle for Soul Control by Houston assemblage master
Trenton Doyle Hancock, which brings to mind a demented candyland; Bill Viola's freaky video triptych (no,
not Knox Harrington. Don't be fatuous); and Peter Dean's psycho-tronko re-telling of the fateful Jack Ruby-Lee Harvey Oswald encounter in the DPD garage -
Dallas Chaos II. OK, I'm already having an art-wank, fantasizing about it being loaned out to the DMA. Yeah, like that's ever gonna to happen. By the way, does anybody out there know where the
Dallas Chaos I might be available for viewing? Maude Lebowski would wholeheartedly approve.
After a rest and limbering up back at the hotel after dinner, we got to Highland Lanes around 8, where there was already a line snaking toward the back. These were obviously the serious Achievers, fully cognizant of the fact that if they didn't get there early, they'd be waiting all night for a lane and shoes. I'm sad to say I didn't do as good as I'd hoped on the trivia contest, but I scored at the merchandise table and was wowed by the parade of costumed characters that passed before my eyes: one
Nihilist,
one willowy blonde Dance Quintet,
one Brant,
more than a few Walters,
several Maudes in all shapes and sizes,
a bevy of Dudes (including one Dudette),
one 'I've Come to Fix Deine Cable' Dream Dude, and
a couple of Jackie Treehorns. Honorable Mentions go to
Buddies Face Down in The Muck,
The Queen in Her Damned Undies, the
Nine-Toed Woman, one
Micturated-Upon Rug, and
Frame of Reference. As I'd mentioned earlier, Jesus (as in
nobody fucks with the...) made his one and only appearance at the Maggie Mae's Kick-Off Night party on Friday, and while I was a bit disappointed at first, it soon dawned on me that pulling off the pederast look can't possibly be easy, physically or mentally, especially not with people coming up to you all night and muttering in your ear, "Eight-year-olds, Dude."
Soundtrack for a Lebowski Weekend:The Big Lebowski Soundtrack - But of course.
Drive-By Truckers - Outfit. Just seemed to fit the mood somehow.
T-Bone Burnett - Anything from this Fort Worth native and Big Lebowski music archivist's new
Twenty-Twenty 2-CD anthology will make your I-35 sojourn a mellow one.
The Monks - I Hate You. The song that didn't make it to the soundtrack, used in the scene where Walter warns Smokey that he'll be entering a world of pain if he marks it 8 after accidentally going over the line. And hey, speaking of Smokey, where the hell was Jimmie Dale Gilmore this weekend? Enquiring minds want to know, because that would have been a match made in Achiever Heaven. Maybe next time.
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Fortunate Son. I'm holding out hope for the Creedence on this one. What would the Dude have to say about our current situation with not just that camel fucker in Iraq, but that clueless yahoo in D.C. (who wasn't born in Texas, mind you, but in New Haven, Connecticut. Why do people have such a hard time remembering that?)? I'd sure love to hear Walter's take, too. God, where is Walter when we need him?
Fiery Furnaces - Straight Street. If Maude had an iPod, this would most certainly be on it. Shuffled between the Herb Alpert and Autobahn.
Bonzo Dog Band - Sofa Head. Being a Captain Beefheart fan and all, here's one The Dude could probably appreciate.
Kenny Rogers - Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town. Why does this just scream
Walter Sobchak Top Five Favorite to me? At any rate, it works great as a follow-up to "I Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)."
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Haven't figured out this Flickr thing, because I'm a dil-head, but once I do, we'll get those Lebowski pics up and running.***
Note to T: Sorry, but Austin's just not the same when you're not there.
