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Austin

20-Something, Austin, Hipstercrite Life, Writing

Occupy WallStreet Occupy Austin

Photo from ABC News

On our last night filming in New York City we were burglarized.

Our two lead actresses and female DP had their computers, camera, and tax paperwork stolen from the apartment they were staying in. The apartment is located in a co-op in Brooklyn that has a locked main entrance and individual locked doors for the apartments. This particular apartment door was left unlocked for a few hours and within this time, someone stole the items mentioned above.

When the three individuals discovered that their belongings had been stolen, they immediately called the police. The dispatcher told them that a police officer would not be sent to the apartment and that they needed to go to the police station to file a report. The three women all headed on foot to the police station. A male crew member called 911 not knowing that the DP had called the police and they dispatched a police officer to the (more…)

October 4, 2011 by
Austin

Things They Lost In the Fire

photo by Keye TV of Bastrop, TX
Right now, surrounding Austin is on fire.

Small pockets in Austin are on fire.

Yesterday, I was having drinkings with a friend at the Black Star Co-Op (the world’s first co-operatively owned and worker self-managed brewpub) and noticed a plume of black smoke behind her shoulder. The smoke cloud could not be more than a few miles away in Central Austin and we both got concerned. The entire city is combusting, I thought to myself. We scrambled to Twitter to see what was going on (both our first go-to for news) and didn’t see anything. Later we learned that a fire started about a mile away but was quickly extinguished. Over 40 counties are on fire in Texas and local news reports new fires in Austin daily.

Everyone is on edge right now and heartbroken over the destruction the fires have caused, most notably the Bastrop fires. Over 550 homes have been damaged in Bastrop.

It’s eerie how this complete annihilation can be occurring so (more…)

September 7, 2011 by
Austin, Film

Slacker 2011

Austin, Texas is a film city. It is not always easy to find film work in, but it’s an excellent place to write your script or make your movie (see why here).

Moviemaker Magazine named Austin, Texas the #5 place to Live, Work, and Make Movies In.
We host arguably the #3 film festival in the U.S. (SXSW) and a respectable up-and-coming festival that features big Hollywood movies and players (Austin Film Festival). We have studio directors who got their start in Austin and continue to shoot their productions in here (Richard Linklater, Mike Judge, and Robert Rodriguez) and we have a plethora of indie filmmakers whose work has been seen at every festival on the planet, literally.

So needless to say, some pretty interesting and creative stuff comes out of Austin.

A perfect example of this is the “reimagining” of Richard Linklater’s perennial indie classic Slacker, which will be premiering tonight at the historic Paramount Theater on Congress Avenue. If you went to film school, you (more…)

August 31, 2011 by
Austin

Culture Map Austin

Culture Map Austin launched today!

What is Culture Map you ask?

Well, it’s going to be THE source for news, entertainment, culture, food, sports, style and events in Austin, Texas.

After the success of Culture Map Houston, the gang decided to take the site on the road to the capital city. What better fit than real-time news and opinion in the #8 most socially networked city in America?

I’m very excited about today’s launch because I am also a contributor! I hope you will take the time to puruse the site today. I think you will like what you see. In the meantime, here is a snippet of my first post. You can click on the link below to read more…

______________________

“I have a N.Y. driver’s license, L.A. mailing address and Austin physical address.

Please don’t hold the N.Y. and L.A. parts against me. I roll my eyes just as much as you do when somebody in Austin tells me they moved here from either place.

And if you’re a cop, please don’t arrest me. I don’t want (more…)

July 18, 2011 by
Austin, Pop Culture

Bobofication

source

I’m currently reading David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries– a 30 year hodge-podge of his observations, diary entries, and blog posts about urbanization, gentrification and transportation taken from the perspective of a bicycle. Byrne often has a child-like approach to observing the world. Everything about us fascinates him. One can see this curiosity in his songs, “Once in a Lifetime“, “The Big Country“, “Neighborhood“, and “Strange Overtones“, or his 1986 cinematic love letter to Texas, True Stories. Though he’s by no means an expert on anything other than dancing like a mentally challenged person, I’ve always valued Byrne’s commentary. He looks for the deeper meaning behind the obvious and makes us think differently about how we view the mundane and the taken for granted.

In Bicycle Diaries, Byrne takes us on his adventures through major international cities such as Istanbul, Manila, Buenos Aires and American cities like San Francisco, New Orleans, and his current (more…)

June 9, 2011 by
Austin, Hipstercrite Life

Memorial Day Crime Spree

“This is how people become alcoholics,” I said to my boyfriend as he handed me a bottle of the only liquor he had in the house. The liquor I so hastily requested as we sat listening to the helicopters circling our neighborhood. Even though it tasted like cough syrup that had been sitting in someone’s medicine chest for decades and had begun the fermentation process, I couldn’t drink what was left of that Barcardi Razz fast enough. It was 3AM and I needed to drown out all the thoughts of whatever manhunt was currently going down on the eastside, the reports of gunshots downtown, and the fact that once again my car was broken into less than 24 hours prior.

I can’t find any data that confirms this, but I feel that Memorial Day is a day particularly saved for criminal activity. It’s the gateway into the summer- the time when temperatures rise and so does crime. Evil-doers are giving us just a little taste of what’s to come. Sticky and sweaty lawlessness.

Some of you know, my car had (more…)

May 31, 2011 by
Austin

Can’t I Go to Both Hell AND Texas?

Yesterday my mother emailed me the above picture with the caption, “Remember this picture? I call it “Future Texan”.

I’d like to call it, “Future Toddlers and Tiaras Reject”, but “Future Texan” will suffice.

I’m a Northerner. A Yankee. I come from land where for six months of the year social interaction and entertainment is hunted for it’s rare and delicious meat. My ass had never seen the sun nor had my virgin taste buds made love to anything spicier than vanilla bean. Vanilla bean is not spicy, you say? You’re right. The word “vanilla” just seemed appropriate in this paragraph. Growing up in central New York makes you vanilla. I was vanilla. Diverse culture and cuisine are not prevalent in central New York. That’s not true. Diverse culture and cuisine outside of all the white people from Old Country is not prevalent. I had never even seen a Mexican restaurant until I moved to California. Sushi? Indian? Ethiopian? These things did not exist where I was from. I once heard there (more…)

May 20, 2011 by
Austin, Hipstercrite Life

I’ve Become Scared of My Own Shadow

Lately I’ve had this growing illogical fear that every single evening someone is trying to break into my house.

Every single night.

Typically around 4AM.

I guess that would make it morning then? 4AM is that ungodly time that really deserves it’s own time of day. It’s the gateway from night into morning. It’s dark and ominous and you most likely won’t hear a soul except for the psychopath hiding outside your window. My window. He likes to hang out there and tap melodies on the pane and dance on dead leaves. He’s a pretty bad dancer from what I can tell, but are psychopaths ever really good dancers?

This fear has begun effecting my life greatly. My sleeping patterns have become distressed and I often wake up to my heart pounding through my chest. Recently I even found myself standing on the street corner in my silk robe dialing 911 in one hand and brandishing an Ikea paring knife and Swiffer mop in the other. That evening I was absolutely convinced someone was in my house and (more…)

March 23, 2011 by
Austin, Film, Music, Pop Culture

The Characters of SXSW

Austin-based company Software Advice sent me an AWESOME sketch breakdown they did of the different archetypes one would see at SXSW. They’re pretty spot-on. Here is a little snippet below, but you can check out the rest of their hilarious drawings here, or follow them on Twitter here, or ‘like’ their Facebook fan page here.

(Interactive) Aspiring Entrepreneur

“We’re Twitter meets Zynga with an API that transforms the social graph.”

He’s an alpha male in a beta body, rockin’ the hoodie and flip flops – just like Zuck. SXSW Interactive attracts a swarm of these php-smokin’, eager beavers. You’ll find him at “Business Model 101: How To Actually Make Money?,” but he wishes he was at the Android Developer Meetup. You’ll often find the PR Chick and the Venture Capitalist in hot pursuit – a stunning reversal of the social order that was in place during college, last year. At least one of these aspiring entrepreneurs will join the digital elite within a year. And OMG, you totally ordered (more…)

March 18, 2011 by
Austin, Film, Music

The Best Part of SXSW Is…

My friend from college, Joe Nicolosi, is a super talented filmmaker. Everyone in Austin knows it, but now it looks like the world does too! Joe is the filmmaker behind the SXSW “film bumpers” you see before a screening. Truth be told, Joe’s various bumpers are better than many of the movies this year. This guy has real talent and you should check out the video below. Within two days, his short video, Mario, went from 300 Youtube hits to over 300,000 and climbing! I have a feeling you’ll be seeing more of this guy soon…

March 17, 2011 by