I Put A Spell On You

Hex Rally 2010

Every so often I have one of those moments where I think "Am I really here?" One of those moments was today at Hex Rally 2010.

You heard me right.

Every year, before the UT-A&M football game (which my lovely sister is taking me to on Thursday), there is a rally in West Campus that aims to curse the A&M team by lighting red candles and singing the UT anthem 3 times.

THESE ARE PEOPLE HEXING

And then this banner fell off the building. Bad sign.

Muahahahaha!


And then the World's Largest Texas Flag got caught in a balcony on its way down.
Did we curse the wrong team?

Here is football player Foswhitt Whittaker and some people I don't know. Pseudo-celebrity moment!

As cynical as I can be, I am actually very excited about the game! It is so crazy to think about where I was a year ago and where I am now. Being in a place with so many out-of-place occurrences, I often stop myself to reflect on this point in my life and where I'm going.

On another topic, look! My cabinet is full of FOOD!

Thanks, Mom and Dad! It feels good not going to bed hungry.

Sunday Reading

This article on hipsters made me laugh out loud:

"When we announced a public debate on hipsterism, I received e-mail messages both furious and plaintive. Normally inquisitive people protested that there could be no answer and no definition. Maybe hipsters didn’t exist! The responses were more impassioned than those we’d had in our discussions on health care, young conservatives and feminism. And perfectly blameless individuals began flagellating themselves: “Am I a hipster?”

So Many Things

Seeing how I've neglected this blog for over a month, let me give a brief update of my life during that month.

School

I have more projects due than weeks left. 8 hours of sleep is no longer an option.

I am running for Co-Director of the student chapter of the American Library Association. There are 8 nominees for 4 positions and the election is next week. I need to start on my smear campaigns once the nominees are announced.

Holiday breaks

Katie is coming in 11 days! Eep!

I will be back home on the 14th.

Halloween

There was Jack-O-Lantern carving

Rocky Horror
Lounging at the Spider House
Austin Film Festival
Feels like I just went to SIFF, but now it's Austin's turn. I made it obvious which ones I recommend so you don't have to indulge me in my film critic fantasies and read my amateur reviews:

Lunafest- short films "by, about and for women", which means they're hit or miss. Sadly, when some filmmakers "celebrate" women, they can't resist putting a vomit-inducing level of sentimentality in there. Shorts worth doing a YouTube search for: Getting A Grip about the first female cable car operator in San Francisco; Irene, about the director's grandmother's struggle with keeping her independence while suffering from Alzheimer's; Miracle Lady, a stop-animation about a widow and her immortal neighbor.

Blue Valentine- The first half was better than the second. It sort of just kept going. And going. Anyway, now I sort of understand why it got the NC-17 rating (not that I side with the FCC).

Under the Boardwalk- ADD THIS TO YOUR NETFLIX. This is a documentary about Monopoly. Yes, the game Mom calls Monotony. When the film started with the usual corporate product praise, I thought I had made a mistake. But after following the National and International Monopoly Championships, I got pulled in. I love freaks who own being freaks and the people who compete in Monopoly championships are so entertaining.

S&M Lawn Care- A low-budget film about a local lawn care company (that has nothing to do with S&M) that is faced with some stiff competition when a sexier lawn care company comes to town. I liked it, but I think it caters to a certain sense of humor, so I will not order you to add it to your Netflix.

Hello Lonesome- At first I didn't think I liked this film, but I keep thinking about it. It's about 6 pairs of lonely individuals who pair up in friendship, love and ambiguous-territory. I think what made me cold to it at first was that these people probably shouldn't have "normally" interacted in the ways that they did. That might have been the feeling the filmmakers were looking for.

Bloodworth- ADD THIS TO YOUR NETFLIX. Don't question me. And don't let the fact that Hilary Duff is in the film stop you.

Wasteland- ADD THIS TO YOUR NETFLIX. I missed this at SIFF last year and it got all kinds of praise. An artist visits the world's largest landfill to take portraits of the workers there and eventually collaborates with them on their own self-portraits.

Austin Beer Week
An unintentional complement to AFF was Austin Beer Week, happening during the same time. I sampled the home brews at Lovejoy's and there was unanimous agreement (between me, Emilia and Carin) that the Orange Wheat was the best. There was also a Pinot Gringo, which was a beer made with a wine grape. It wasn't bad. It was just weird.

Haircut

Bye!

Look at this

I hope to post another update sometime soon, but it's not going to happen today.
Watch this instead.

New Rule

Never have I taken seriously love advice from a women's fashion magazine, but my November issue of Glamour had a nugget of sound guidance on men:

"He has to know who Toni Morrison is. If I tell a guy she's my favorite author and he asks, 'Who's he?' he'll never hear from me again."

Thank you for the tip, Andrea from Baltimore.

This week's adventures

Littlefield Home, University of Texas

WTF is that doing on campus? Read about it here.

I'm pretty tired right now, so I probably won't write much, but I wanted to share some pictures.

Elizabet Ney musuem

Got a chance to visit with some fellow ISchoolers and it was as beautiful as it looks. Our guide was a bit of a Chatty Cathy, so in order to actually look at the museum, we had to sneak away in the middle of his talk. But he did have a lot of interesting things to say. One of the most memorable being that Ney's house has a door that goes out onto a flat roof because she liked to sleep outside in a tent every night. You have to go up a skinny little spiral staircase to get to the bedroom and the door looks like a bookcase.

The Vaselines at Emo's

OMG! I got to see The Vaselines again! Here is my flashless photo (which I think looks pretty cool here). They were amazing, no need to say more there.
One of the openers, Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard put on a good show, complete with short films. Although, their sound check was RIDICULOUS. They are obviously perfectionists because the audience was audibly groaning at hearing "can I get some more _____ in this monitor?" for the thirtieth time. There was a bit of residual annoyance when they finally started playing, but they won me over in the end, especially with the song Don't Get Upset, which was awkwardly relatable.

Ingrid Betancourt at the Texas Book Festival

I spent Saturday volunteering for the Book Festival and went on Sunday. I'm really excited to read Betancourt's book once I get my hands on it. She only spoke for 45 minutes and it was difficult to keep a dry eye.

The Austin Film Festival starts on Thursday and I bought a pass (no, I couldn't really afford it, but oh well), so I'll fill you in on that when it's over. Blue Valentine is playing on Friday, so I don't have to wait until December to see if it's worth the NC-17 rating.

October Update

First day of October at the Counter Cafe

I don't mean to rub it in any faces, but I'm finally experiencing my kind of weather!

And since I just finished my 5-week Intro class, Friday was the perfect day to spend some quality time with Heather in a canoe.

Turtles! I was surprised at all the fauna of the Colorado River.

But, life hasn't been all play. My lab class put up an exhibit on preserving collections.

And I learned how to dry-clean paper. Not as exciting as it sounds, but look at these results!

The lab instructor has a friend who does these drawings and then she dirties them up for us. When I walked into class last week, she was sitting at a table with her dirt and her paper. Apparently for one she had to go outside and rub it on a rusty pipe.

I think I can say I feel adjusted. Now that papers are coming back graded and I'm not completely failing everything, the grad school jitters have gone away. But I definitely prefer the boring days to the newsworthy ones.

I was also able to finish a couple of projects this week.

More deets on the craft blog, of course.
I guess that's it. Later!