End of Silence

Even though I work close-by, I made my first visit to The Domain at lunch today. The Wife called me to see if I wanted to get out of the office, so we headed over there. There’s still a lot of construction and the whole thing has a backlot / Disneyland feel to it. It’s attempting to be urban and mixed use, but since it’s stuck out in North Central Austin, it all seems forced and fake. We checked out the new Apple Store and I managed to resist buying anything there. We were nearly suffocated from the cologne smell coming out of Ruehl which is made to look like a miniature brownstone from the outside. I’m clearly too old and out of it, but it must be an Abercrombie & Fitch spin-off. The California Pizza Kitchen is now open along with Kona Grill and a Starbucks.

We had lunch at The Steeping Room. The Wife says it’s run by some former employees of Eastside Cafe, a former manager, in fact, according to this Austin 360 article. We had the Century Oaks Tea Service with Pork Tenderloin and Lapsang Souchong Chicken Salad sandwiches, a pinenut and plum scone and some Earl Grey Breakfast (boring, I know). The scone was good although I would’ve liked it warm and not room temperature. The pork tenderloin sandwiches were excellent. Unfortunately, they don’t have the tea menu on the web site. I guess it changes too often? The place was nearly filled to capacity. We’re big fans of Mad Hatters Tea House in San Antonio. If you’re familiar with that place, The Steeping Room is a little more upscale and less funky than Mad Hatters. The Steeping Room is hosting a Mother’s Day Brunch this Sunday if you’re looking for something new to do with mom.

I don’t have to tell you that this Saturday is Eeyore’s 44th Birthday Party in Pease Park from 11am until dusk.

I don’t have to tell you that the concessions benefit local charities or that the beer will flow courtesy of local brewers like Real Ale, Live Oak and Independence. I don’t have to tell you about the costume contest or that you’re likely to see a little more of some of your fellow Austinites than you’d like. I definitely won’t mention the drum circle, the lines for the port-a-potties or that parking will suck. And I won’t tell you that I’ll be somewhere over by the basketball court under a tree for most of the day until my wife makes us go home.

Austin author Lawrence Wright won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction with his book, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. Wright apparently also plays in a local blues band called WhoDo. He has a copy of an Austin-American Statesman article about the book from August 6th, 2006 on his web site.

Congratulations also to fellow Texan, Ornette Coleman (born in Ft. Worth), who won for his recent release, Sound Grammar.

I was introduced to Potbelly Sandwich Works on a business trip to Chicago four years ago. The franchise has been around for 30 years and mostly in the Great Lakes area of the country, but it looks like they’re undergoing an expansion.

There are two locations opening up in Austin this Spring, one at the new Arbor Walk shopping center at Braker and Mopac (where I took this picture this morning) and one at 2316 Guadalupe. It looks like it’ll be at least a week or two before the Arbor Walk location opens.

It’ll be a welcome relief for the lunch sandwich market around here. I’ve been sick of Thundercloud for years and I’ve never been a big fan of Quizno’s except for those crazy hamster commercials they ran a couple of years ago. Schlotzsky’s isn’t bad. I’ll hit Delaware and Texadelphia for the occasional cheesesteak. I’ve nearly gotten tired of Jersey Mike’s, but I still don’t mind going there. Subway isn’t really even worth mentioning.

My wife and I attended Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell, part of the Paramount Theatre’s Spoken Word Series, on Thursday night.

It’s been just over three years since Spalding Gray’s body was pulled from the East River in New York, an apparent suicide. He had last been seen by his family on January 10, 2004. It’s thought that he jumped off of the Staten Island Ferry. Gray made a career of writing and performing monologues about his life and his neuroses. I remember him first in a small part in The
Killing Fields. He also gave a memorable performance in the role of Mr. Mungo, the bachelor who commits suicide in Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill (it’s a travesty that it’s still not available on DVD). I lived in Manhattan in the mid-90’s and remember passing him on the street a few times. My wife and I saw him perform It’s
a Slippery Slope at the Paramount in January 1997 and, if I recall correctly, I saw Gray’s Anatomy at SXSW Film that same year.

Gray’s delivery was such a big part of the draw his stories that I wondered how well a group reading would translate. It started out kind of rough. I found myself imagining Gray’s voice and delivery over that of the performers on the Paramount stage. They eventually settled in though and I found myself enjoying the material even though I’d heard some of it before. Unlike Statesman reviewer, Brad Bucholz, I preferred the delivery of Carmelita Tropicana over several of the others. Shawn Colvin did a good job and
Jonathan Ames made a respectable stand-in reading journal entries at Gray’s trademark wooden table. At first, I thought they might leave the table and chair empty as a place for Gray, but perhaps that would’ve been a bit too morose. I did like the way that they used the lighting towards the end as Gray’s last journal entries were read. A father myself, I couldn’t help but think of Gray’s two sons and stepdaughter, who he had late in life and the effect his suicide must’ve had on them. None of us is perfect, but
I just can’t fathom leaving my family to deal with such a terrible situation, especially since Gray’s own mother committed suicide when he was in his mid-twenties. Gray’s writing seemed to enable him to deal with the demons that claimed his mother, but a terrible head on collision in 2001 while on vacation in Ireland seems to have pushed Gray over the edge. The reading captured the bittersweet ending to a life that seemed to touch and hopefully enrich the lives of many people. There were more than a few tears
in the audience when the lights came up.

The Statesman has an interview with Gray’s widow, Kathie Russo, a review of the show by the interviewer, Brad Bucholz, and a slideshow of photos from the performance.