Austin: Keep It Weird
I had many little adventures on my way home from Fantastic Fest.
I spent the Friday after Fantastic Fest lazily, mostly just puttering around the city of Austin. I had breakfast with Wendy at Kirby Lane before taking her to the airport. I wandered around some of the wild little curio shops on South Congress, wishing I had some money left to spend on tschotchkes. I visited the Museum of the Weird (again). I toyed with the idea of seeing The Master at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in 70mm, but instead felt the need to escape downtown before rush hour hit.
In the evening, I met Jessica Cargill, Harry Knowles, and Patricia Knowles for dinner. It was great, as it’s been a long time since I’ve hung out with Harry and Patricia without a ton of other people around vying for their time. Best of all, though, I got to hear a story about how Harry once wound up painting a Shetland pony to look like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (specifically, Donatello).
After that, Jess and I headed to the airport to pick up Mr. Cargill, who was returning from part of his press junket on Sinister. I stayed up waaay too late listening to how Hollywood press tours work, which is fascinating stuff. Also, we had tacos at 3:00 AM. I love Austin.
The next day, I nabbed Halfastick and started driving back to Minnesota. Our first goal was the Action Figure Museum in Pauls Valley, OK, but we only made it there ten minutes before they closed, thanks to a gruelling drive through a 500-mile-wide Texas rainstorm. Well, that, and the fact that I locked us out of the car at a Whataburger somewhere in northern Texas:
This is Halfastick, wearing a Red Dawn remake shirt, which basically says anti-American stuff in Korean. Did I mention we were in northern Texas?
In related news, I am now a member of AAA.
As I said, we did eventually make it to Pauls Valley, where ZOMG YOU CAN TOTALLY BUY A COLOR TV!
We soldiered on through the evening and night, eventually escaping the massive rainstorm. Near Olathe, Kansas, Halfastick noticed that the moon had a massive rainbow ring around it, so we stopped in an attempt to capture it on camera. Unfortunately, I learned that one lens, my 28mm, was completely stuck on the locking mount on the camera. I couldn’t switch to a wide-angle to get a proper photo. Also, I’d yet to use this particular camera body in extremely low light, so with limited time to work, I wasn’t able to convince the camera to capture much subtlety in the photo. Still, here’s what I got. The ring is very faint, at the top of the photo:
We continued to drive through the night, arriving at the Minnesota border just before dawn. I won’t lie. I stopped and bought the Cabbage Dog that we saw on our outgoing trip:
By the time we hit the rural area around Halfastick’s hometown, the sun rose and we saw that autumn attacked the state while we were out-of-town. I can’t describe how gorgeous that morning was. I only have a couple of iPhone photos, which don’t do it justice. It was good to be home.
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