Snow in Downtown Austin

Central Texans + snow + highways = freakshow

Yup, it snows in the Austin area. Not often, just about once every two years, and usually a dusting. Today we got hit with some real snow. The kind that accumulates. On highways. I commute about 30 miles each way to Taylor, TX most days. The last 8 miles or so is on Highway 79, a four lane, undivided state highway with a 65 mph speed limit and no real estate between opposite sides of the highway. I drove in this morning at 8 and split before it got bad, but still got to see the spot a mile from our office where an accident happened right after I passed by, shut traffic down on both sides of the road, and caused many of my coworkers to be late, plus a fresher accident a few miles later that, from the look of the work crew, must have involved a utility pole or two. The other highways aren't as bad, but there was one empty car on the divider of MoPac. You could see the skid marks on the road and follow them from the straight line that the poor driver had originally been on to the initial swerves to the bigger jerks and finally onto the grassy median. There appeared to be another wreck a bit further down the road from where I exited. Which I was glad to do. Because snow, Austinites and steering wheels just don't mix.

Fun Fun Fun 2009: Pictures

Okay, now that I finally got the Fun Fun Fun write-up out of the way -- and only a couple of months late -- I can move on to my pictures. Here's a bunch of shots from Saturday, the first day of the festival. Let me know what you think!

Times New Viking

FUN FUN FUN

Shonen Knife rocks! From top: Etsuko Nakanishi, Ritsuko Taneda, Naoko Yamano

Melissa, Rachel and Chris rock, too!


























James Husband

Stylin' footwear. Why not DIY?

Melissa and I having our shirts custom-silkscreened

Bro and Sis with freshly-made t-shirts

Sexy cowboy






Dean Allen Spunt and Randy Randall, No Age












Spunt

Spraypaint artist doing Danzig



FUN FUN FUN

Death takes the stage

Bobby Hackney, Death

Bobbie Duncan

Dannis Hackney

Poster of late Death guitarist David Hackney

FUN FUN FUN

Festival folk

Yeasayer finishing up our great day of sights & sounds

Fun Fun Fun and Eat Eat Eat 2009

Last year in early November, my sister Melissa and her husband Chris visited for a weekend. We ate a lot and went to the Fun Fun Fun Festival in Waterloo Park. Blogged it. Highlights were the double-BBQ lunch in Lockhart and some good live music highlighted by The National, Bishop Allen, Centro-Matic and Dengue Fever. Sound familiar, or does it just blend in with the rest of our posts about eating high-protein grub and attending music-related events?

They picked that weekend because of a four-day weekend where my sister works. She got the same break this year, so they came down again. Sure enough, the festival was going on again. And of course, we ate a lot this time, too. Straight from the airport more or less, we hit Green Mesquite to satisfy whatever barbecue cravings there were. We also chowed down at La Cocina de Consuelo, where we got our Mexican on, including some queso; had excellent banh mi at Tam Deli & Cafe; very good burgers at neighborhood hangout Billy's on Burnet after the festival on Saturday; and a hefty brunch at Hoover's Cooking where we had biscuits, sausage and gravy, a hoe cake, a sweet potato pancake, eggs, migas, bacon, cheddar-garlic grits, and -- just to make it "balanced" -- fruit salad on the table.

Of course, we didn't just eat. We strolled some of the lower part of South Congress, hitting up a few of the area's newer shops, plus some old ones. Blackmail, I think a pretty new one, has some funky duds and other items, mainly in black. Neighbor Creatures Boutique is a bit more conventional (but no less funky). Click on that link and shop online. Parts & Labour, which used to be further up the hill where the more established shopping area is, has some great, quirky t-shirts and other things. Melissa bought a handbag. And since we were walking right by, we couldn't skip coffee at Jo's.

We also hit up the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, featuring the works of UT faculty member and famous sculptor Charles Umlauf. Here's the museum's website description of Umlauf:

Charles Umlauf, a prolific and internationally known sculptor, created works ranging in style from realistic and abstract expressionism to lyrical abstraction during his career. In 1985 he and his wife, Angeline Allen Umlauf, gave their home and studio with sculptures, drawings and paintings to the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum.

Learn more about the museum here. If you're in town and walking around the University of Texas campus, keep your eye out for Umlauf's sculptures there. Here's one.

And, of course, there was the Fun Fun Fun Festival. We made our way down there on a lovely Saturday afternoon. After checking out the grounds and the scene -- people-watching at Fun Fun Fun is top shelf, better than ACL even -- we made our way over to the center of the four stages.

As planned, the first set we caught was Times New Viking's lo-fi hard rock. The guitar-drums-keys trio was good for 45 solid minutes of short, loud, hooky tunes. Not much more than that. The band seemed like they were going through the motions at times. Maybe for a band like that a later slot in a club is a better milieu? But the show was still fun if you like that sort of thing. Rachel and I just recently heard them for the first time and were quickly drawn in. We'll be seeing them again in a few weeks.

Next up was the classic Japanese power pop of Shonen Knife. Been rocking the act since 1981 and they're still adorable (actually, only one of the three members is an original, but still). Can you imagine a cuter rendition of the heavy metal salute than these three? Musically, Shonen Knife's set was full of winks to late 70s punk like the Clash, Ramones and Buzzcocks, who they evoked during the peppy "Devil House." Songs from old and new albums all blended together well. Hard to leave that set without a smile on.

After a short walk to buy some cool freshly-screened t-shirts and check out things like the graffiti exhibit and the mechanical bull, where we got to watch a poor chubby guy pay like ten bucks for the privilege of being jerked around and tossed off a machine while his friends laughed at him and took pictures, we roamed over to a small stage and caught the end of James Husband's set. Better known as Of Montreal's multi-instrumentalist James Huggins, although the twangy material we heard he and his band play didn't sound all that much like Of Montreal.

After that, we returned to where we started, where we remained for the next few bands. No Age, an L.A. duo consisting of guitarist Randy Randall and drummer Dean Allen Spunt, performed with some of the energy that Times New Viking only flashed. They thrashed through a high-octane punk set. "You're a Target" was about as good as anything we saw that day (scroll down and see for yourself).

No Age performing "You're a Target" at the 2009 Fun Fun Fun Festival

Next up was the band behind one of the great music stories of the year, Death. This band -- three brothers from Detroit in the mid-70s -- were punk before punk was punk. They made a few singles, almost broke out, then were forgotten for decades. The brothers moved to rural Vermont and started a reggae band called Lambsbread. I actually saw them play at a reggae festival in the late 80s. But as far as their previous incarnation, before the first death of Death, that was a moment in time that seemed destined to be lost forever. One brother, David, died of cancer in 2000. But you can't kill Death. Some 30 years after they pressed a few hundred copies of their handful of singles, one of the brothers' sons, himself a musician, recognized one of his dad's long-lost band's songs being played at a party in San Francisco. When son told pops that the people at the party went crazy over the song and that the record was a collector's item due to its scarcity, pops dug the master tapes out of storage. The music made its way to Drag City Records, who reissued the songs. The resulting raw music caught on. Think Hendrix-esque vocals over raw, guitar-driven hard rock like the Stooges or sometimes even Thin Lizzy, but with more of a punk accent, foreshadowing bands like Bad Brains. The reissue even made some "best of" lists at the end of the year.

So the idea of seeing Death play live is itself pretty cool. Because of that, I was willing to give them a pass for coming out a bit late. Once they emerged in their Robes of Death and got warmed up, I thought they sounded pretty good for a band that had until recently been on mothballs. It doesn't hurt that the trio -- two remaining brothers Dannis and Bobby and guitarist Bobbie Duncan -- all play in Lambsbread together. But the songs were new to them. At times it showed, but that didn't stop them from putting on a raw, energetic show, right up to the closing, anthemic "Politicians In My Eyes."

Yaktoberfest: Beerdrinking as fundraising (Part 2 of 2)

So, my two contributions came out pretty good. Steve sent out an email with word of the Yaktoberfest celebration to be held at the cul de sac the weekend after ACL. Not only would several homebrewers be contributing DIY concoctions, we'd also be raising money for Heifer International - hence the moniker. Can't beat drinking beer for a good cause! That's my kind of fundraiser.

The day came, and it wasn't the nicest weather, but the brewers all came out in force. In addition to my bottles of Nut Brown Ale and Baltic Porter, five different homebrews were on tap. Steve contributed an Imperial Ale and a Dunkelweizen, Sammy pitched in with a Brown Ale, and Nick had a nice Stout and a Pale Ale. Ben also chipped in with bottled beer -- his also was a Pale Ale.


The scene


Steve, the organizer


Choices!

It was great that most of the brews were on tap. People were able to try small amounts of many (or all) of the offerings. I couldn't resist using the small turtle device Nick brought to pour myself a haus bräu black & tan.


Black & Tan: stout atop ale

The party wound down around the start of the UT football game. The beer was great. I was also pretty stoked to hear from Steve that we were able to raise enough to buy a full water buffalo. So the party worked out for people in Austin and the Philippines as well. It didn't take long to start to hear talk that Yaktoberfest should be an annual happening. Sounds good to me.

Yaktoberfest: Ever bought a water buffalo? (Part 1 of 2)

About seven or eight years ago, Rachel and I had been feeling like we were following a boring and repetitive routine and mentioned that a new hobby might not be a bad thing. Around then I started making wine at home. I had been doing it for a few years when we moved to Austin. After we arrived, I was researching the area and saw mention of a highly regarded homebrewing store near where we moved. I knew that brewing beer was a similar process, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I've now been making beer since last Spring. It turns out a friend of mine from work, Steve, also started brewing around the same time. He knew a few other people who brewed. Most live in his neighborhood, just a mile or so from our place. It got Steve thinking, and he came up with the idea to get a bunch of the local homebrewers together to brew several batches of beer and throw a small Octoberfest-like event. Steve's house is in a perfect location, at the corner of a short road that abruptly dead-ends. After canvassing his fellow brewers, we decided to brew in September and have the party in early October.

To launch stage one, Steve had several of us over to his house to brew batches in his backyard. I followed that up the next week with what became my Baltic Porter. Making this beer involved a highly-concentrated fermentable liquid (wort), resulting in a rich, dark, high alcohol sipper.

You start out bringing 2 1/2 gallons of water to 160 degrees.


Next, toss in a mesh bag filled with with about 6 lbs of grain. Let it steep for 45 minutes or so, then pull out the bag, rinse it over the pot, and bring the liquid to a boil

Once the liquid is boiling, take it off the heat temporarily and add 8 lbs of malt extract (basically high-sugar syrups extracted from malted grains). Get it boiling again.

Most beers are triple-hopped. Your wort will boil for an hour. Start by adding hops at the start of the hour for bittering. 45 minutes in, add a second dose for flavor. Finally, five minutes before the end, add a final dose for aroma. In this case, we only added hops up front for bittering and at the second stop for flavor.

Hop pellets and the packets they come in. Nugget hops for bittering, Saaz for flavor.

Once the hour is over, put your pot in a big tub of ice and bring the temperature down, then add some water to bring it to a total of 5 1/4 gallons, throw your yeast in, and stop up the top with a fermentation lock that lets gas out but not in. A week or two later, you're ready to bottle.

Check back in later for a wrap-up of the party. Find out why it involves yaks and water buffalo. Doesn't that provide sufficient temptation?