heart is in the right place, brain is in the dirt.

austin city limits day two

so in my haste and uncertainty of meeting up with sarah on friday, i didn't really bring a whole lot of things with me for the weekend. i didn't really want to bring a huge bag of clothes and then just leave it in the car...so i brought the bare minimum when i headed down yesterday. i really regretted not bringing a swimsuit top to wear to beat the mid-afternoon heat, and i saw a ton of people with regular wristbands who brought their DSLRs, so i thought hell - i might as well drive back up to cedar park.

it kind of defeated the purpose of staying down with sarah, which was intended to prevent me from getting up early and going back and forth between north austin and downtown, but it wasn't that bad. i grabbed breakfast and then picked up a few things from my house. i also took another shower because i still felt really grimy. stopped by randalls, saw kevin, and then headed back downtown. my chest was so congested and i felt like my lungs were starving for air from all of the dirt inhalation.

so what other phenomena occured this weekend? ut game against arkansas that was rescheduled after gustav. so little did i know that i should have accounted for all of the extra traffic heading south...so my drive back too way longer than i expected. met up with sarah and jimmy, who only had a saturday pass, and got our things together to head out - late again.

we were hoping to see the fratellis, but again, we were just a bit too late. one of jimmy's friends works a couple of blocks away from zilker, so we had a special pass to park in their garage and got to bypass the whole shuttle/public transportation thing today. driving down to zilker, we could see this horrible haze hanging all around the city.

apparently, between the acl traffic and the ut traffic, the ozone level was bumped up to orange overnight. crazy. i felt like i was in birmingham, or sulphur, or some other industrial or perpetually hazy town. i can't imagine what the traffic would be like without public transportation. for all of you who do not believe in global warming, i don't have to believe one way or another to physically see the damage that one day of heavy transportation can do in a concentrated area - nonetheless over time.

apparently kaitlin got coffee before work and saw kevin, and gave me words of encouragement. despite forming my own opinions about kevin, it is nice for other people to see the nicer side of him. it is funny how my friends are becoming more supportive and i myself am finding a growing distance...i guess it happens.

when we got there, we stopped by the bar and the merch tent, where i got a sweet festival shirt. we caught the end of sharon jones and the dap-kings' set at amd waiting for css to perform over at at&t blue room. i got hassled a bit about my camera - the security guard even asked me if it was a removable lense, but i lied, said it wasn't, and she let me go with a suspicious look but without any further investigation. i was worried there for a bit.

css was really cool, but the singer felt the need to scream unnecessarily between songs and was wearing a very strange outfit. i would venture to say that she could only look up to flea for fashion advice. who else wears a spandex onesie with an over the top print?

robert earl keen was up next at amd, and sara caught up with sarah, jimmy, and myself. we smoked, got some food from the salt lick, and decided to head up for mgmt to actually be in the crowd. there were already a good deal of people camping out, so we tried to find zoe.

it was impossible to track down colin's blanket, however, so we just headed up into the front of the crowd instead. we sat for a bit, and who did i see? ryan hoff and sara of all people. since when does ryan listen to mgmt or come to acl? weird.

eventually, when we stood back up, sara started to feel ill. so, before the set even started, we headed back out of the crowd. we ended up in the back to the left. sara bummed a water bottle off some stranger, and after sitting down she started to feel better. turns out she was really dehydrated, hence the sudden change in her vision when she stood up, leading to the nausea and light-headedness. smoking probably did not help the cause, but not being hydrated was the big issue..

i was really frustrated...because i really, really wanted to be surrounded by people for mgmt, but we ended up next to a cool couple in the end and all was good. i got wayyyyy too carried away, and by the end of the set i was barely standing.

but, mgmt did not disappoint, and i was glad that i finally got the chance to see them live after missing them in memphis and at bonnaroo. sara ended up bailing at the end of their set. i can't imagine not sticking around all day...you miss so much! but she had to do what was best for her.

next, i headed over to iron and wine and caught the last couple of songs from conor oberst and the mystic valley band's set over at at&t. i will tell you what, when you are almost out of your mind, barely standing, and then have to walk all the way across the site to the other main stage...while dodging people left and right, some of whom are more messed up than you are...it is quite the experience. iron and wine was great and chill...exactly what i needed to finally come down.

love and some verses you hear
say what you can say
love to say this in your ear
i'll love you that way
from your changing contentments
what will you choose for to share?
someday drawing you different,
may i be weaved in your hair?

hundred years, hundred more
someday we may see
a woman king
wristwatch time
slowin' as she goes to sleep

wolves by the road
and a bike wheel spinning on a pawn shop wall
she’ll wring out her colored hair
like a butterfly beaten in a summer rainfall. .
she’ll wave to the butcher’s boy
with the parking lot music everybody believes
and then dive like a dying bird

got some more sweet tea and listened to the rest of the black keys while we walked back and found a spot for robert plant & alison krauss. unfortunately, the acoustics over on the amd stage were god awful. i don't know what the deal was, but you could barely hear a thing despite the crowd being unusually quiet. jimmy's theory was that the wind was messing with the equipment and the sound projection, but it was still a conundrum.

i finally felt back to normal and we were talking to kristi about when we wanted to head over to beck when it dawned on me....wait! i wonder if janet is here....janet is a tri delta alum that i worked with at jubilee jam last year and who worked with josh groban and beck on tour doing their books. i still had her number in my phone, so i sent her a text telling her i was thinking of her since i was about to catch beck's set. lo and behold...she was at acl too! apparently she was still on tour with beck, and she told me she would let me backstage if i got over there. at this point, i was still at amd so i booked it all the way to the far end of the site to at&t, through the thousands of people who were already waiting for beck, and met up with her stage left.

she took me backstage, hooked me up with an artist sticky, and i proceeded to trip and almost rip off my toenail on some mulch. smooth brandi, smooth. luckily, she tripped as well and suffered the same fate. she brought me up on stage and i stood at the sound board for a couple songs. i met her boy of the moment, whose name escapes me, and was completely blown away by the fact that i was maybe 15 feet from beck...on stage in fronts of tens of thousands of people. i wasn't even with the rest of the VIPs who forked out lord knows how much money to sit on stage - they were up on the balcony above the stage on either side. i was actually on stage, on the level with all the performers. mind blowing.

stretched to the limit attention spans
snap back retract collapse into laugh tracks
noise response applause and hand claps
floodgates open to the sound of the rainbow
breaking points on the verge of pointless
fools anointed to the followers fanfare
look for the common not superficial
code red cola war conformity crisis
perfunctory idols rewriting their bibles
with magic markers running out of their ink
lives in white out
turn the lights out
fax machine anthems get your damn hands up
hell yes I'm movin this way I'm doin this thing

then, we headed back to the bus to chat, and i watched the food network while she wrote out cards for band members and settled out the runner. and who did the runner work for? c3. guys, let me tell you. i have very limited, very minimal connections in the music industry. and c3...is a god among men of production companies. completely on a different level, something i could only aspire to acheive. never in a million years would i have imagined i would be able to mingle backstage at a c3 event. i was in shock to say the least.
backstage at honda civic tour or on the list at emo's is not nearly the same as being personally brought on stage at austin city limits.

went with janet to go drop off some pizzas (let's keep in mind that i'm wearing my grey and white h&m skirt, a black spaghetti strap shirt, a bright blue bikini top and some cheap black flip flops) and waited for janet outside the bus. and who was i standing next to, besides beck's band? oh, just conor oberst. holy. fucking. shit. i was completely mortified to be but two feet away from this man i adore...in a bikini top. also, understand that i was not privy to vip treatment all day or the luxuries of an air-conditioned, temperature-controlled tour bus all day like everyone else around me - i had be slumming it, if you will, all day with the masses...and here i was surrounded by a handful of famous people who have not. i was so embarassed.

my phone service was still really sporadic, so by the time i got all of the messages sarah and jimmy tried to send me, they were already gone. and so was my ride. so i had to go wait for an hour and a half in line to get a taxi back to sarah's apartment. i was surrounded by lots of entertaining drunk people, however, which kept things interesting...when the woman behind me wasn't puking. i also encountered the hispanic equivalent of tiffany grimes, except with the most annoying laugh i have ever heard....and she found everything a lot funnier than it really was. i was about to ask her to just keep her mouth shut for the last five minutes, i was that fed up.

finally got a taxi, and then the driver didn't know where he was going. thank god i was sober and knew the way well enough to be able to find it in a reasonable amount of time. eileen and sarah were still at the apartment getting ready to go out, so they let me in, thank goodness.

then, i got a call from kevin - they were down at kasbah, so i changed and headed back downtown. stayed there for an hour and a half or so, but it was pretty lame. a bunch of guys, who were all deadset on getting drunk and with no means to get any alcohol. as much fun as the sausage fest was, i ended up leaving, exhausted, around 2.

i was still on cloud nine on the way over to kasbah, but it was really such a dull night for all of them, it kinda brought me down. i also hate being around people who feel the need to get drunk. i mean, you will live another day without a drink, and young people really do not realize when their seemingly innocent habits really will lead them down a very precarious road...toeing the line with alcoholism. drinking does not make you cool, so interacting socially without alcohol should not feel like some kind of horrible substitute. and saturday night does not necessitate getting shit faced. drinking is fun, but it has it's time and place, and it is infuriating to see people who feel like it is the end of the world because they aren't going to drink on one particular night.

my computer is dead, pictures will be added to these posts when i can access them again.