the rest of SXSW round-up

DAY THREE [Saturday]

Where we stayed: Paul's apartment, on an air mattress - but feeling unwelcome because his roommate - who, it turns out, had crashed for a year on his couch - was pissed at the number of people staying with them. There was Lauren and I, and another couple who had left on Friday...
What the weather was like when we woke up: painfully grey
Place of breakfast: ihop! My first ihop experience. It was... interesting. A very strange mixture of locals and people that were very obviously in town for South By.
First show we headed to: the Alt.Press show at Emos.
Who we we ran into outside Emos: Shawn, Gurj, Deewall, Omri & Steve.
Who we ran into inside Emos: Alex [Stolen Transmission], Evan Steel Train, Arielle.2
Number of people who could have been runners up in the MySpace Stupid Haircut awards: I lost count
Number of horrendous tattoos: I also lost count
One of the worst: a kid with an under-21 stamp on his hand that had big tatts on his left upper arm of portraits of Frankenstein, Dracula and a Werewolf. I'm telling ya, once he grows out of his Goosebumps and Point Horror books, he's gonna regret those...
How far away the evening show was: miiiiiles. It felt like it, anyway. Way up by the UT campus.
Free drinks nabbed: Strangely, none I don't think. We did get cherry ices [slush puppies/slurpees/whatever you want to call them] though, and top them up with whisky from my hipflask , which was actually surprisingly nice.
How many people were at the show in the parking lot behind Cream Vintage: not that many considering the lineup.
What happened after that show: hopped on a random bus hoping it'd take us downtown [it did], ran into Casey and Ryan-Nightmare of You on 6th who were talking about finding some beer, left them and went and met up with Jenne, Joe and Sammy-NOY plus their Tour Mgr and Sammy's friend at a roof terrace bar somewhere, went for sushi with Jenne, wandered down to La Zona Rosa then realised we actually needed to be a block further down at the Austin Music Hall for the Say Anything/Saves The Day/Dashboard show - but it was badges-n-wristbands only. Arielle.2 offered to help us get in once Say Anything had finished their set but we bailed, leaving Jenne & Joe and Tour Mgr Sean to go see the show while we headed over to Beauty Bar to see Lauren's friend Nicole. We walked past BKB on the way in.
Bands encountered: Say Anything [acoustic set], Circa Survive, Head Automatica [amusing how many people wandered off once they'd played Beating Hearts Baby], Diamond Knights, Oxford Collapse, We Are Scientists [yay!] - and of course the usual hundreds we walked past in the street. And BKB at Beauty Bar.

DAYS FOUR & FIVE [Sunday & Monday]

SXSW: now officially over
Order of the day: cab it to where NOY are finishing up brunch - say goodbye as they take off on tour, leaving Jenne and Casey with us. We hunt for bagels, try on stupid hats in a toy store, head downtown where we get beer, nachos and a shot of Jameson [it's not even 3:30pm]. We sing Nada Surf and My Chem and Fall Out Boy songs [with the Andrew Mathas lyrics] very loudly on the interstate as Casey drives us back to the hotel, where we check emails and myspace and 911 conspiracy theory websites ["La Quinta: Spanish for free wireless"] and all but pass out watching Dodgeball. Casey comes back, we send him out again to pick up a *lot* of beer. We drink aforementioned beer, go out in the midst of a horrendous tropical storm to see Omri, decide the weather's too crappy to stay out so go back and have a lock-in in the hotel room till the very wee hours - when we still can't sleep because the birds outside are making such a racket.
So long Austin: another ihop breakfast, as we're right opposite one and the other restaurant we check out looks like a cafeteria in an old peoples' home [the cashier seemed genuinely shocked when we turned round and walked out: "Y'all don't wanna eat heeyah?"], Casey drops us at the airport before carrying on back to Dallas. It's 80 degrees, clear blue sky, sunny - we sunbathe outside for a while, reading, dozing, head inside eventually to horribly delayed flights [ugh], lots of band people [including the Blackbuds who we're sat near on the ground, who, however cute they may be, are hogging all the sockets so we can't plug in phone chargers or laptops] and young Steven Rojas. We also finally affirm our NY Princess status by hollering across the check line with Steve about DJ sets and Myspace. Oops. More band people on the plane, and a rocky landing at LaGuardia where I genuinely think we're about to touch down on water, and we finally arrive back to freezing NY temperatures and a wonderful welcoming committee, who, it would seem, are actually there to pick up Nas, but settle for us instead.