Ah, my first post on the new-old SDMB. And it’s a helluva story, too.
The reason for my not being around when the board got back up and running is that I was on vacation in Austin, TX for the South by Southwest (SXSW) music conference. This was my first real vacation in the sense that I was getting paid while I was taking it. Based on what I did last week, I’ve set the bar rather high for future holidays.
Readers of past threads I’ve started no doubt know that I have a dear friend, Jen, who I once dated and continued to pine after for many months. In fact, I thought I could win her back when she visited me for New Year’s but the fates wouldn’t allow it. I bring this up because Jen lives in Austin and I stayed with her for the entire week. Also, my best college friend flew down from Michigan to join us. He’s an even bigger music geek than I am.
Most of the first two days were spent with just Jen. And they were great. This was the first time with her where I wasn’t dating her or didn’t really want to date her. (I felt this way for two reasons; she has a new boyfriend – emotions aside, I play by the rules – and I knew that it would just be impractical and self-destructive for me to try again even if she was single.) We ate dinner outside, watched the sunset, played Scrabble, watched a chick flick, ate the best Mexican food of my life, and other wholesome activities. Good times.
Then my friend got into town and the debauchery got into full swing. Wednesday focused on a showcase of up-and-coming bands from my hometown, Detroit. The first and last bands were the best. The first band, The Brothers Groove, was really good and capped off their set with a bitchin’ harmonica solo from a VERY-slimmed-down Jon Popper, of Blues Traveler fame. The last band, Lovehammer, was actually from Chicago, but good music is good music, so I didn’t care.
Thursday’s highlight was actually a trip to San Antonio the three of us made. The Alamo is a lot smaller than I expected, but the Riverwalk is simply gorgeous. We deviated significantly from our schedule, but ended up seeing a cool Jazz combo and trip-hop group featuring Kid Koala.
Then we come to… Friday. If I could repeat any day of my life for the rest of my life, Friday would be toward the top of the list. It started out fairly normal, getting breakfast and whatnot. Then, at 5:30 or so, we’ve got nothing else to do, so Jen drops me and Chad off and we just go to look for a place to get a couple beers. The Hard Rock Cafe is hopping, so we go there. There’s a guy there checking people in based on a list he has, but it doesn’t seem too well controlled. So, combining our SXSW badges (which you pay big money for, instead of the more standard wristband), the inability of the doormen to be mean to a guy in a wheelchair (Chad’s legs are basically paralyzed), and the ignorant looks on our faces, we got in.
Inside was paradise. Free beer, a free buffet and stunningly attractive women everywhere. I was knoshing on some food at the buffet, with 2 free beers in me already, when Chad calls me over.
Chad: “I figured out what’s going on.”
Me: “What?”
Chad: “This is a private party for vivid.com!”
Me: “What’s vivid.com?”
Chad: “It’s a porn site!!”
So, here I was, surrounded by free food, free beer, and porn stars (Vivid makes movies, too, so these girls do qualify as actual porn stars). The sheer magnitude was something I could not grasp, and Chad and I started calling people to brag. Basically, we felt invincible. After all, we had achieved the ideal heterosexual male situation. Unfortunately, the free beer part ended at 7 p.m., so we left. But still, we had partied with porn stars.
After that we went and saw band after band, including this high-energy NYC group called The Mooney Suzuki. Chad and I parted ways briefly as I went to a club down the street to see a band called the Waxwings. I really liked them, so I was especially pissed to hear they had cancelled. Going back to where Chad was, I passed a tattoo parlor. I went inside and looked at some of the designs and this thought went through my head:
“The Waxwings cancelled. Well, screw them, I’m gonna get a tattoo tomorrow. That’ll show them!”
Logic? Who needs logic when you’ve got booze?
But, unlike most other drunken proclamations, I stuck to this one. The next day, while Chad was listening to Courtney Love speak, Jen took me out and got me a tattoo. It’s an Asian-themed design of some interlocking loops. Hard to describe, really, but I got praise for it from everyone who saw it, even Jen’s new boyfriend (who I got along really well with, even though he’s a corn-fed former football playin’ Texas boy and I’m a skinny Midwest geek-boy… her taste in men is hard to pin down sometimes). The only bad part is it’s starting to scab now, and kinda itches. But that will go away soon enough.
We were all kinda burnt out the rest of Saturday, but we saw some great musical comedy and a couple bands. Our magic ran out when we tried to crash the Spin Magazine party. Oh well… however, I did eat at a genuine Texas barbeque joint, and all I can say is we need to find a way to get those north of the Mason-Dixon line. So simple, yet so, so good.
I come out of this trip feeling refeshed, optimistic, and finally ready to turn over a new leaf in my life. Sorry for the long read, but it truly was something I must share. 
