We all attended Sofia and David’s Odd Friday yesterday evening, my first. A good time was had by all. Be sure to check out the short video clip of David with the accordian that he got for his birthday and Henry accompanying him on harmonica.
You’ll notice that the links to stuff that I’m watching, reading, listening to, playing have changed. Amazon is now making it easier so that you don’t have to host their product images yourself, but they also add in that annoying button and privacy policy link. I tried editing it out of the HTML that they generate, but it must all be coming from their server. I’ll give up the aesthetics in favor not having to ftp to my server every time I want to change these things. I was subtly whoring for Amazon, now it’s much more blatant. Whee!
My mother sent a bunch of pictures from the Maui trip last month. I posted them in their own album. Enjoy. There should also be some new Baby Chaos photos soon as they all got together yesterday afternoon.
Henry finished his first week of his second round of swim lessons this summer. According to Mary, he’s really improving. He was very excited to tell me that he dove off of the diving board yesterday. Apparently, “diving” consists of putting your arms out over your head, leaning your head forward and then jumping in feet first, but we’ll take what we can get. I’m interested to see him in action for myself this weekend if we can find the time. We’re planning on taking advantage of the sales tax holiday tomorrow to get some clothes for school and whatnot. I really hate shopping at malls, so we’re going as early as possible.
I ran into my high school/middle school art teacher last weekend, Mr. Mungia. He was at the opening of a new exhibit at the Austin Children’s Museum that we attended on Sunday. Apparently, he’s good friends with Ms. Garza on whose art the exhibit is based. I immediately recognized him, but he didn’t recognize me (probably due to the fact that I now have shaved head and the last time he saw me 14.5 years ago, I was sporting a mullet). We talked briefly and he got to meet Mary and the kids. The museum has added a cool area for toddlers, much better than what was available when Henry was a toddler. Lily was walking around and enjoying herself. We’ll definitely have to go back.
Cat Schwartz, a host on TechTV’s Call for Help, posted a few pictures on her weblog. Apparently, there’s a bug/feature in Photoshop that will retain an original preview image of an image that you crop and save again under the same name. This allowed everyone to see a topless picture of Cat that she hadn’t intended. Gotta love the Internet. (Thanks to Austin-based sex blog, DazeReader for the Monday morning laugh)
It seems that everyone we know is reproducing this year. I’ve got two co-workers expecting or recently “parented”, one guy is going to have his fourth early next year and another just had his first. In addition to that, an old co-worker from NYC is about to have her first, a grad school classmate is going to have his third, some UT classmates just had their second, and one IQ couple is having their first while some other former IQ’ers just had twins. Several Cistercian classmates are also weighing in with the Shackelfords adding twins to their family and Adrian and Amy are expecting their first.
Speaking of Cistercian, I ran into James Lanyan at the gym yesterday. He was in the class behind me and left after 8th grade, meaning that the last time I saw him was probably 1986. He recognized me thanks to the Tip-Off Classic shirt that I was wearing (which, incidentally is also from 1986, go polyester). Neither of us remembered each other’s names, I made a guess and got it wrong. Apparently, he’s been in Austin for 4 years and recently started going to my gym. Oddly enough, that’s two people from my grade school past who are members of my gym, the other being Chance Carlin from St. Paul’s who actually works there. Small world, yadda, yadda.
Lastly, if you haven’t watched this show yet, get on it. It’s absolutely hilarious. There’s nothing funnier than five catty gay men ripping apart every aspect of a slob straight guy’s life (except maybe the Daily Show). Carson, the fashion maven, is by far the most amusing. For those of you that don’t have Bravo, NBC (the parent of Bravo) is re-running a half-hour version of the series premiere (it’s usually a one hour show) after Will and Grace tomorrow night at 8:30 central time. I guess they’re trying to ease in most of America by placing it with another gay-friendly show. There’s also a Heather Havrilesky article on it on Salon. I’m not sure if it’s premium content or not.
I recently finished a website for my parents’ rental condo on Maui. There are photos on the site and you can also see some pictures from that area in our Honeymoon album. It’s a great place to stay if you’re headed for Maui.
The chaos moves to a house with a pool.
Editor’s note: I’ve been misspelling Sofia’s name in past posts. I went back and corrected it. My apologies, Sofia
Another oldster, 86, hits the wrong pedal and kills 9 people. I’ve ranted about this before, but with all of the baby boomers getting older, us younger folk need to protect ourselves and get laws passed for annual mandatory driving tests over a certain age. I’ll start with 65 because it’s an easy number, but am willing to alter that based on scientific evidence as to when your reflexes really start going downhill. Of course, we know that oldsters are a huge voting block and will never go for this, fat chance of getting it passed in Florida. Yes, I’m willing to subject myself to the same law in 35 years.
When we arrived home yesterday around 5:30pm from our usual Sunday afternoon grocery shopping at Central Market, there was a message waiting for us on our answering machine. It was our babysitter. She works at Little City, a coffeehouse on Congress between 9th and 10th. Apparently, a group of customers came in around 4 and asked her if she knew anyone who would want wristbands that would gain them access to the world premiere screening and party for Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over that evening. The Babysitter, having endured multiple viewings of one or the other of the previous two Spy Kids movies and having played Carmen to The Boy’s Juni, knew just who to call. Her message told us that she had already left work, but the wristbands were behind the counter in our name if we got the message and could make it down there. Not wanting to pass up the chance and not knowing what we were going to be able to do with the wristbands or even when everything had started, we abandoned our original plans for dinner for a few quick PBJs, freshened up a bit and headed back out the door for downtown.
We managed to find a decent parking space just north of 10th on Brazos (a block east of Congress). The premiere was showing at the Paramount theater, which is just a few blocks down Congress from Little City. We stopped off to get the wristbands and then headed down Congress, my clean shirt already darkening with sweat from carrying The La in the July Texas heat. For this premiere, as with at least the last Spy Kids movie, they had blocked off Congress from 6th to 10th and turned it into a small carnival. There was a stage with a band playing (didn’t catch the name), several banquet tables, amusement rides and booths with things like face painting, balloon animals, cotton candy, and sno-cones. As we started to put on our white wristbands (there were several other colors as well, but I never did find out the differences), we passes Ann Richards with what I assume were her grandkids. A little farther down the street on the way to the Paramount, we passed Robert Rodriguez. Not sure what our wristbands got us, we found someone who looked official and asked them. It turns out that there were two screenings. One at 4pm, which had some of the cast in attendance along with the media, a red carpet, etc. and then one at 7. We had missed the chance at the 4pm screening, but could probably make it into the 7pm. It was first come-first seated for those with wristbands and there was already a considerable line. We didn’t think we’d have a chance to get in, so we let The Boy get a balloon sword and walked around a bit. When we got back near the theater, it was clear that the line was moving fast and that we would probably have a chance to get in. I walked over to get in line with The La while The Wife waited for The Boy to get his balloon. When The La and I got there, the line was moving so fast that we got into the theater before I could signal to The Wife that they really needed to hurry. It’s still not clear to me, but I think there was a whole other line of people with tickets waiting to see if they could get in once all of the people with wristbands were seated. We waited in the lobby and watched to make sure that The Wife and The Boy could get in. They managed to get in without too much trouble and we found seats about halfway up in the balcony. The Wife went to get drinks and popcorn which was being served by some friends and was free (sweet). We settled in for the movie.
The movie itself was decent. I liked the first two better. Almost the entire movie is set in a video game and the film mainly centers around Juni. Most of the rest of the cast from the previous films are limited to cameos or very brief appearances near the end of the film. They must’ve saved a lot of money not having to shoot locations or pay large salaries to people like Antonio Banderas. Stallone was amusing and seemed to have a good time with the role of the villain, The Toymaker. There were several jokes centered around Ricardo Montalban’s past film and commercial work.
After the movie, I saw Turk Pipkin leaving with what I assume was his son. Most people know him as Janice’s narcoleptic boyfriend in the Sopranos. We passed up an opportunity to get a picture of The Boy with Robert Rodriguez because we didn’t want to hassle him. He was standing near one of his sisters, Patricia Vonne, whom we had met at Mike and Meg’s wedding last year, but we couldn’t catch her eye to get a proper introduction. We also ran into Talitha Newman & Joseph Phillips, Steve Wertheimer & Gaby (Steve makes a small appearance in the movie that we missed), and Bliss & Will Sexton on our way to get some free BBQ and ride some of the carnival rides; once again confirming that you can’t go anywhere in Austin without running into someone you know. The BBQ was catered by County Line, which hosted our rehearsal dinner. Henry was too young to ride his first choice, the bumper cars, so he settled for the flying saucer ride instead. After we had our fill of rides, cotton candy, and ice cream sandwiches, we headed home around 10pm. Did I mention that everything was free? Let me say that again, free.
A huge thanks to The Babysitter for thinking of The Boy and allowing us all to go to the premiere. We owe her. Big. It really made The Boy’s weekend. The only thing that could’ve possibly made it better was if he had been able to meet Daryl Sabara, who I don’t think was in attendance. I also want to say how cool it is that they made the premiere a family affair for many of the kids in Austin instead of some snooty Hollywood thing. I have to assume that it’s Robert Rodriguez’s doing as he seems like a really down-to-earth guy who’s into family. He comes from a large one himself and is well on his way with his own kids. I still remember reading his Los Hooligans comic strip in the Daily Texan as he was a couple of years ahead of me at UT. I think I’ve still got a collection of the strips that he self-published, signed, and sold at one of the local comic shops back in the early 90’s.
Of course, we brought the camera with us, so check out some photos.