Saturday, St. Patrick’s Day, I went to Rachel Ray’s “Feedback.” It was a free event at SxSW that had shows from 10:30 – 4:15. Every band we saw (but one, more on that later) was great. What’s more: free food, and free booze.
This should either delight or concern you. In hindsight, for me, it does both.
I went with Rainbow Speak, Airplanes, E$ and a desire to drink. Airplanes and E$ decided not to drink that day, so Rainbow Speak and I drank for four.
We got there at 1030 or so and started drinking pretty early. Maybe around 11. When we went up to get our drinks we realized we could each take two cups. This was delightful news. Later, when I went up for more rounds and I realized they would not be cutting me off, this was scary news. I counted on the venue to be cheapskates and say “sorry dude, no more” but instead the opposite happened. At one point Rainbow Speak and I went up and the bartender thought RS had said “water.” She responded, pretty disgruntled, “WATER!??”
There was a lot to see and do that day, so I sobered up through the course of the day. Around 8 pm that night, at Frank (where we saw Fallulah and Charlene Soraia), I heard some stories about myself.
I was pretty surprised by what I didn’t remember.
This guy (seen here with anonymous tall girl) was apparently having himself a ball.
Story 1
I got a text from my mom. She asked how we were doing. I took a picture of the other three and began texting her back. Ruh roh. “Oh God, I’m already drunk.” Bad news. It was 12:25 pm.
Story 2 (as told by Airplanes to me)
At some point, while walking through the crowd, I got in to the habit of tapping random people on their far shoulder. I know I loved doing this in fourth grade … and apparently I still love it.
Story 3
Last time I got posters (as I talked about here). At some point E$ suggested we go look at their posters to get a picture to see who all was playing. They are big posters.
Instead I ripped two off the wall. Realizing I took two, I handed one to E$. Then I ran away.
When I got up to Airplanes she asked where E$ was, I happily stated I’d ditched her. When E$ found her way back to us she informed us that a number of people made her stand and hold the poster out so they could take a picture of all the artists. Sucker.
Story 4
Like I said before, all the bands but one were good.
The one bad one was Rachel Ray’s husband’s band (sorry, Rach). It makes sense. He wanted to play music, she’s famous so she made it happen.
Apparently, this upset me? I don’t know. After their set ended I yelled out, “RACHEL RAY YOU’RE AN ASS HOLE!” I giggled a little after this, then realized that what I had done was wrong, and looked down.
Strangers around us stared at me some. Probably jealous at the amount of confidence I had in my opinion.
What was funnier about this was how funny E$ found this. Occasionally, through the rest of the day, she’d laugh and quote me.
Story 5
In the Johnny on the Spots there was a lot of graffiti. One of the bits of graffiti said something along the lines of,
“(So and so), the lead singer of Keane, has such a small d**k that he could f**k a cheerio”
I must have found this funny, because I came back and told everyone. I had even come up with a clever hand motion involving my pointer finger, and two other fingers forming an o.
My phrase of the day, which may have started around then, was, “Because I’m a GENTLEMAN!” I also liked to say, “A gentleman to the last!”
And now a picture of the two stages we saw awesome music on all afternoon.
DumbFunnery 