End of Silence

I like St. Arnold’s beer. I’ve liked it for quite some time, particularly the Amber. I’ve been known to grab a Lawnmower or an Elissa on occasion, but Amber is definitely my favorite. I’ve run into the St. Arnold people at Gingerman a few times and they’re always very cool and personable. I’ve always dug their marketing, perhaps it’s the lapsed Catholic in me.

The St. Arnold people have started a blog and a campaign to get some of the Texas laws governing microbreweries changed. Essentially, they want to be able to sell their product on the premises. They can’t do that now. If you take a tour of St. Arnold in Houston or Live Oak or Independence here in Austin or Real Ale in Blanco or Rahr & Sons in Ft. Worth and find a beer you like in their tasting room, you can’t buy it there. You have to find a store that sells the beer and get it there. Stupid, eh? No reason you shouldn’t be able to buy a six pack or a keg from the source.

Texas wineries successfully lobbied to be able to do this a few years ago. The microbreweries say that laws like this are the reason that Texas only has 5 microbreweries. Just 5! When we typically rank near the top in state beer consumption! What’s up with that? Greg Koch, CEO of Stone Brewing in California, and home of my absolute favorite beers, agrees with them.

Much of the commentary points out that this should really be a non-issue and passed with relative ease. I hope so. I’m looking at you, Eddie. Now somebody needs to start a lobby to get Real Ale to brew more Lost Gold IPA. I’m just sayin’.

Ballet Austin is having its 50th Anniversary this year. Their 44th annual production of the The Nutcracker starts tomorrow evening. Some local bloggers, including yours truly and my daughter, attended the tech rehearsal last night at Bass Concert Hall. In my rush to make the rehearsal, I forgot my tripod, so you’ll have to forgive the photo quality. We also only made it through the first act; bringing your four-year-old daughter to a 7pm weeknight performance probably isn’t the best idea. Still, she must’ve enjoyed it as my wife reports that she spent most of the day spinning around and crashed for an out-of-character nap at 3pm today. I have a feeling that won’t be the last performance I attend in the near future.

Enough about my home life, how was it, you say? It was good. I attended two or three performances of the Nutcracker as a kid in Dallas. Reading a review on the Ballet Austin site from last year, I’d agree with Patti Hadad. The two dolls brought in by Herr Drosselmeyer had the most impressive performances. I was a little disappointed in the sword fight between the nutcracker prince and the mouse king. I remember it being much more impressive. I’ve always preferred the first act to the second, so maybe I’m a bit biased.

The Statesman had a story yesterday on tryouts for the Nutcracker in its Life and Arts section. Ballet Austin is comprised of the main company and Ballet Austin II or the apprentice company. It also runs the Ballet Austin Academy. The main company has 20 dancers and the rest of the Nutcracker production is filled in with dancers from the apprentice program and the academy, totaling somewhere near 100 dancers to stage the production.

I honestly haven’t paid much attention to Ballet Austin in the 15 years that I’ve lived here, but it’s apparently really coming into its own. It’ll move to the Long Center when it opens in May 2008. Apparently the addition of Stephen Mills in 2000 has really put the company on the national map and they’re a fund raising machine, sharing the generosity that they receive with other non-profits in the city. For instance, tonight’s dress rehearsal is attended mostly by people served by other non-profits, who wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to attend. It’s all an encouraging sign that Austin is growing into a city large enough to support a wider range of arts than those that make it the “Live Music Capital of the World”.

There’s another photo in the extended entry after the jump.
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I scored a couple of free tickets to Fun Fun Fun Fest on Friday from Austinist (thanks, guys!). I got there around 6:30 or 7 in enough time to see Riverboat Gamblers. I’d seen them at the X / Rollins Band show at Stubb’s earlier this year. They put on a good show. We shuffled over to check out Peaches at the Indie Stage. I can appreciate what she’s trying to do, but the music wasn’t all that interesting to me. Next up was Negative Approach. I’d never seen them or heard any of their music. I can definitely hear their influence on current bands though. Solid Stuff. The band I came to see, however, was up next. The Circle Jerks have retained 3 of the 4 members that were around when I first heard them in 1984 or 1985. Keith Morris has been sporting some massive dreadlocks for the past 15 years or so. Like Henry Rollins and a few others, he’s become sort of a punk rock elder statesman. They blasted through several older songs, including “Deny Everything”, “Beverly Hills”, “World Up My Ass”, “I & I”, “When the Shit Hits the Fan” and “I Just Want Some Skank”.

The Chronicle had some info on the organizing of the festival. I like that Graham Williams mentioned ACL and how it doesn’t really represent the sort of bands that he had at Fun Fun Fun Fest. The crowds weren’t too large as to make it impossible to see the bands. I would recommend that they double the number of port-a-potties next time though. It was at least a 20 minute wait for the bathrooms the whole time I was there. Lines for the food and drinks were reasonable. I realize it was all kind of last minute and that Texas weather can be unpredictable anyway, but if they have it again, I’d pick a month other than December, January or February.

Joe Gross of the Statesman Blogs posted a favorable review yesterday.

I got a few shots of Negative Approach and Circle Jerks. There’s some crappy video after the jump to go with the crappy photos. I probably should bring a tripod next time although I’m not sure they would’ve allowed it.

Update (12.106.2006 – 13:43 CST) – Steve Hopson has some much better shots from the festival.
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I present to you, Austin’s fifth gift to the world: Gaming.

Austin was home to two well known gaming franchises in the early 1980’s. Richard Garriott, aka Lord British, founded Origin Systems here in Austin and produced the Ultima titles and the Wing Commander series. Origin was bought by Electronic Arts in 1992, one of many local gaming companies to be acquired in the last 10 years. Digital Anvil, an Origin spinoff, was acquired by Microsoft in 2000. The Austin Chronicle’s Marc Savlov wrote a great round-up article on the Austin game development scene in November of 2004.

Steve Jackson Games was founded in Austin in 1980. They’re famous for their role playing and strategy games like Car Wars and current hit, Munchkin. The company started a support BBS (that’s Bulletin Board Service for all you kids out there) for their games in 1986, which eventually morphed into one of Austin’s early internet service providers. A secret service raid on the aforementioned service in 1990 was a catalyst for the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Those buying modern gaming systems from Alienware now have a connection to Austin since Dell acquired them. You might have heard of Dell. They’re in a neck-and-neck battle with HP for bragging rights as the largest computer vendor in the world. They’ve cooled off a bit in the last several years, but they were on fire on the 90’s. AMD, the computer chip maker, also has a major presence here in Austin.

Lastly, an IBM processor design team here in Austin played a major role in designing the cell processor that’s currently shipping in the new Playstation 3 console that’s so desirable, people are willing to shoot each other for the privilege of paying $600 for it.

Austin’s also home to the Austin Game Conference, which was recently acquired by CMP Media.

When you unwrap that new game this holiday season, there’s a pretty good chance that it somehow has ties to Austin’s gaming and technology industry.

4th Gift: SXSW
3rd Gift: Alamo Drafthouse
2nd Gift: Whole Foods
1st Gift: Slacker

Tags: Metblogs7Gifts 7Gifts Metroblogging7Gifts