TX Day 2 - Mammoths, Mexican Art, and Museums of Weird

Today started out in the infamous town of Waco with a very murder-cult free cup of coffee from a place called Pinewood Coffee, which lived up to both parts of its name with excellent coffee and beautiful wood furnishings inside and out.

After properly caffeinating, I went to what was almost the most famous place in Waco, the Waco Mammoth National Monument. In 1978, this beautiful state park became the site of the largest group of mammoths found in a single location. The discover actually started as a happy accident as some folks searching the park for arrowheads happened to notice a gigantic bone sticking out of the ground, and thought, “Huh, that’s odd”. So they took the bone to the Baylor University Archeology department and a group scientists discovered a herd of 16 mammoths who all apparently died in the same event, likely a flash flood. Over the years 8 more mammoths were discovered in the area making for a grand total of 24! The main group of mammoths is thought to be about 68, 000 years old, and the cool thing about the way they died is that within the herd you could tell that the adult females encircled and protected the children for as long as they could not unlike what modern elephants do.

While the mammoths were the big draw, the area turned out to also be home to a prehistoric camel, some more recent american crocodiles, and the thing that I found to be the most fascinating, a single juvenile saber tooth tiger fang. How did that get there?

And in case you were having a tough time visualizing just how big these guys would have been in their prime, here’s a human femur next to a mammoth femur:

After all the mammoths, I did decided to go to the sight of the famous shoot out, but if you wanted to tour the Branch Davidian camp, it was cash only so I felt fine keeping my distance. It was super creepy though even from a distance.

From Waco, I went to Austin which I had been told was the best and coolest and weirdest city in Texas by a lot of comics and regular people alike. What I had completely not planned on though was that SXSW would be happening in Austin while I was there, so Austin wasn’t totally Austin it was really totally consumed by the festival. This had pros and cons. The most immediate con was that parking was IMPOSSIBLE.

When I eventually did find a parking spot, I got to check out some of the pros of SXSW by just stumbling around (I wasn’t drunk that’s just my standard form of locomotion) and seeing what free cool stuff I could get into. I went to the JW Marriott Hotel, because I figured my best bet for free stuff would be the art installations. I also (correctly I might add) assumed that there wouldn’t be huge lines for those like there might be for all the shows, talks, and movie screenings. I was so right about this in fact that when I asked the SXSW people at the front desk what floor the art was on, they didn’t even know that there were art installations in the building or if I would be allowed to see them. Luckily they did exist, and I was able to see them.

The first installation was called Feast by Caitlin Pickall and featured a lavishly arranged fake dinner table but with seemingly random video footage projected onto all the plates that would change depending on how many people were sitting at the table and what seats they were on. It was very trippy, and I liked whenever the imagery would go from being pretty abstract to all of sudden something like a projection of a painting or a photograph. I actually stayed there for a fairly long while because I was really into it so I got to see different people come in and sit at the table and watching other people experience the piece was a treat in its own right.

The other installation was called Life Underground by Heve Cohen and I liked it much more as a conceptual piece of art than as an aesthetic one. It was a room filled with videos taken at some of the busiest subway stations in the world with different people being interviewed about their experiences with public transit and life in general. Aesthetically it was just a bunch of rushing trains an talking heads, but the interviews were really wonderful in that they captured this kind of odd weird shared experience around the world of people having crazy stories about transit from the positive like seeing talented musicians or beautiful family moments to the creepy like just having some guy stare at you the whole ride. To hear these different yet similar stories in a ton of different languages really did make for a cool overall experience.

After the art, I got some more coffee at a place called Houndstooth Coffee. They had something I hadn’t seen before that was like an espresso Arnold Palmer with cold brew mixed with lemonade. It sounded very strange, but the barista highly recommended it. The gamble paid off and the odd combination was oddly tasty and refreshing, which was much appreciated since I was finally far enough south that the weather had gotten very hot and I had not dressed to prepare for that.

After cooling down with the coffee/lemonade, I decided to get some lunch at a famous Austin Hot Dog joint called Frank's. I liked the place right away because they had weird art all over the walls. I particularly liked a vintage photo of an old model with sausage links draped all over her.

I got a special custom dog called the Notorious P.I.G. which featured their custom-made Smoked Bacon, Jalapeño, Sage, and Pork sausage dressed with Mac n’ Cheee and Texas BBQ sauce on a Butter Toasted Bun with a tall boy of the Texas staple Lone Star Lager. The hot dog was an amazing mess of flavors that all complimented each other beautifully. The Frank was great, the mac was cheesy, the bacon unreal, and the bread was perfectly toasted even if struggled to contain everything on top of it. I was totally happy with my choice, even if I'm pretty sure nearly three months later its all still somewhere in my arteries.

After lunch, I went to the small but excellent Mexi-Arte Museum, a little gallery showcasing an impressive collection of contemporary art by Mexican and Mexican-American artists.

The theme of the selections from the permanent collection was photographs and new media of Latinx and Latin American resistance. This gallery started with some very cool archival photos from Latin American street parades and protests. I love just how intense the woman on the right looks, which makes for both a wonderfully dynamic photo but also a nice nod to the importance of women in resistance movements both now and historically.

The next little section focused on photographic portraits subjects ranged from every day people to legends like Caesar Chavez, but every photo really beautifully captured the strength and humanity of its subject with real style and sense of composition.

My favorite portrait though was of this Mexican wrestler dressed as a clown because it was such a wildly serious subject handled with deathly seriousness. I just love tonal inconsistency.

After the portraits, I took a little break from the permanent collection to take a look at the special exhibit: the Desert Triangle Print Carpeta. This exhibit collected prints from Latin American artists from all over the southwest. The styles and influences were wildly varied ranging from classical fine art to traditional Mexican art to more modern Tattoo art and street art, all jumbled up together. I loved it. It's exactly my kind of weird, and there's also something so neat and sleek about art prints even when the imagery isa big old surreal mess.

My favorite prints were: one of headless bodies dancing around an abstract blocks of ice containing their missing limbs because it felt very much like a beautifully colored David Lynch Dream; a sleek geometric print of a bull god holding a smaller golden calf; an amazingly detailed woodcut portrait of an immigrant family; a spooky pen and ink drawing of Rasputin surrounded by imagery from old horror and sci movies (I feel like whenever I list my favorites it's clear I'm always drawn to the weirdest shit); a perspective bending woodcut of a man with a face for a torso getting bossed around by a skeleton (case in point); and a really psychedlic portrait of a guy in the desert after maybe taking a little too much peyote and meeting a tee-shirt wearing dog man. I like the idea in that last one that the vision guide is just keeping things casual. Also all my photos came out just a little bit blurrier than I intended so I couldn't make out the artists' names otherwise I would have really liked to give them shoutouts so you (and I) can see more of their great work.

After the special exhibit, it was onto the more contemporary wing of the photography collection. The first section here was all about gender identity issues. Some of these were really powerful like this photograph by Leandra Blei of a young girl in a quincenera dress spending her big day protesting racist anti-immigrant laws outside the state capitol. Imagine being that bad ass at only sixteen. Others were more light-hearted like this elaborately staged photograph by Santiago Forero of an a housewife running away from a desolate and ominous suburb in a fun send up of gender stereotypes.

The photographs that to me found the perfect balance of powerful and fun looks at a gender roles were part of series by Jeanette Neverez called Into the Wild. This series consisted of portraits of lavishly made up drag queens in the middle of a forrest. The photographs were meant to evoke the ideas of what is "natural" since trans and gender non-comforming people are so frequently and hurtfully labeled as unnatural, which couldn't be further from the truth. It's a strong and important message, but having the performers all dressed up is such a fun juxtaposition of images that it also pays homage to all the campy transgressive humor that is such an important staple of the drag community.

Some of the contemporary pieces were a bit more experimental ike this one of a tv playing beach vacation home videos in a custom made clear plastic box covered in small seashells. I don't totally get it, but it was pretty neat to look at.

One of my favorite pieces was a large series of photographic collages by Paul Valadez called Selections from The Great Mexican-American Songbook which humorously cut up vintage photographs from old movies and television shows, repurposing frequently stereotyped or white washed portrayals of Mexicans for satirical song titles such as my personal favorite "Serenade for a Pendejo!" If you're not familiar with the wonderful Spanish expletive "pendejo", the Engish translation is pubic hair which is just such an absolutely hilarious and cutting thing to call anyone.

Lastly as I was leaving the museum, there was a pretty amazing collection of luchador masks along the main storefront window. I found this to be both a great way of honoring a proud cultural tradition and also enticing tourists into checking out contemporary art.

As I was walking back to my car to move it before the one parking meter I could find in the midst of this crazy festival expired, I walked by a few of these cool looking metal towers. Upon looking up what the heck they were exactly, I happened to stumble into a crazy piece of Austin history. In 1885, the fledgling city was still lit only by lantern light and also currently being plagued by a series of grisly murders by a killer the press had given the insane moniker "The Servant Girl Annihilator" If that isn't the name of a Texas heavy metal band somewhere, then you are really dropping the ball, Austin. To combat these murders, the town bought 31 of these 165 Moonlight towers so they would be to electrically light up the streets at night and hopefully prevent more annihilations. The towers didn't actually go up until 1895, almost a full ten years after the last murder had occurred so instead of being used to prevent murders they were just lit up as part of a big gala celebration which is a lot more sweet. Now only 17 of the original towers still remain, but they have become beloved city landmarks and they still get lit up every night. What a roller coaster of a story.

After moving my car, I decided to recaffeinate and get a little writing done at a place called Halcyon coffee. The interior was very sleek and retro-futuristic and the place had a big bar area that was definitely more popular at that moment (which happened to be right around happy hour) than the coffee section. The beer and cocktail selection definitely looked pretty impressive, but I was very content with my coffee and it was a cool space to get a little work done.

After a nice little break, I went to one of those destinations that just feels like it was made for me: The Museum of the Weird. Not one foot through the door, and I was already greeted by a big Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors which is naturally my favorite musical. I don't know what why Alan Menken looked at both a cheesy Roger Corman horror movie and Greek mythology (he did the songs in Hercules too!) and thought "You know what these need? Black female gospel choirs!" but I'm so glad he did it. I watched the Rick Moranis Little Shop movie far too much growing up and I think it explains a lot. Basically what I'm trying to say is this museum sold me from the get go.

The museum starts with a nod towards the history of dime museums, freak shows, and curiosity cabinets that very popular around the turn of the 20th century and popularized by such big names as P.T. Barnum. This curious collection was a mix of genuine marvels and oddities such as two headed calves and one eyed pigs next to complete hoaxes like jackalopes, wooly fish, and fiji mermaids with a wonderful lack of effort in separating the fact from the fiction. Other items include a real mummy, a freakishly long necked turtle, voodoo dolls, animal fetuses, and cast from suspected Bigfoot tracks. My personal favorites included a photograph of an old New Hampshire football team where every member (including the coach!) had six fingers on one of their hands. the supposedly preserved trigger finger of the famous revolutionary Pancho Villa, and archival photos of Joseph Merrick aka The Elephant Man alongside a slightly terrible wax replica of him.

Up next was the museum's prize piece, that unfortunately was not allowed to be photographed, The Ice Man. The legend goes that this prehistoric man preserved in ice was the curiosity that started it all. The Ice Man had been part of a traveling side show going town to town as part of fairs, and as a boy the future owner of the Museum, Steve Busti, saw this side show and became transfixed. It started in him a lifelong obsession with all things odd, creepy, and out there. In a wild bit of serendipity, years later as an adult he was attending a storage locker auction and what did he happen upon but the Ice Man long forgotten and discarded. This would not stand with Steve, and he bought the Ice Man out right, with the intention of displaying it in his gift shop and hopefuly inspiring other young weirdos as he had once been inspired. This fantastic (and I have no idea how true) story was relaid to me with panache by a museum employee in full sideshow performer regalia, and at the end of the story he asked me if I wanted him to read my fortune so obviously I said yes. I drew a high priestess Tarot Card, which I was told meant that I should trust my intuition. Duly noted.

After this fun presentation, the fortune teller gave me the secret password to get the next part of the museum. I gave the password to the next employee and I was led to Sfanthor's Chamber of Horrors which contained some pretty impressive wax figures of famous movie monsters. The big photo opportunity here is naturally with the King himself.

Other monsters on display were Nosferatu, an old timey fortune teller, an Alien (or xenomorph if you wanna be a big nerd about it), a critter from the Gremlins-knockoff Critters, a real deal Gremlin (which made me very happy, both Gremlins movies were real big for me as a kid and I even got a VHS copy of the first one from Santa one year), and the Creature of the Black Lagoon (the original not that sexy fishman from the Shape of Water). This was a real fun section of the museum for a monster movie geek like me, and the tour guide had some really good fun facts that I hadn't heard before. My favorites were that the king of the monsters, Lon Cheney, in the days before CGI frequently put himself in harm's way morphing his face into a spooky visage including putting fish hooks in his nose and once literally gluing his eyes shut, and that in the Spanish language version of the original Dracula, the script called for rodents not rats specifically so Dracula's castle was just filled with armadillos which is hilariously less creepy.

As I was heading out of the museum, I noticed one last display that really caught my eye: a big glass case of various metal objects that had been in cows' stomachs. Nature is truly filled with mysteries.

Because this was the Museum of the Weird, it should go without saying that the gift shop was much better than most with lots of funny trinkets and gag gifts, as well as cool local handmade figurines and art having to do with all kinds of the macabre. I'd say a big highlight wasthe teenage zombie sweethearts, putting a slightly darker twist on the Archie Comics aesthetic of teen romance.

All that wonderful weirdness, got my appetite going, so I went to what I read was a good spot for a good cheap meal: Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken. I figured if it was good enough for the world it was good enough for me. I was still mostly full from the monstrous hot dog earlier, so I opted for the snack size meal of two pieces of white meat and some Texas-sized white bread. It really did make for a perfect snack with fall off the bone tender white meat and great mix of seasoning that gave it little bit of heat but mostly just a nice array of flavor. My two pieces were a breast and wing, and while I liked the wing I definitely liked the heftier meat to bone ratio of the breast a bit more.

While the chicken was very good, I was even happier with where I ended up enjoying it. One of Austin's most famous attractions is the Congress Avenue Bridge at sundown. I say specifically at sundown because that is when the estimated 1.5 million bats that live in a colony under the bridge start flying out to eat. I was a little early but right in the neighborhood of sundown when I got my chicken, so I got it to go and had a really lovely (though maybe slightly depressing) picnic for one on the grass by the bridge while I waited for the bats. Eventually they did start to fly out, I saw a few dozen fly out from under the bridge and then there weren't any for a while so I thought it was done. I was a little underwhelmed because I wanted to see a big black cloud of bats, but I was also pretty happy because I still saw quite a few. As I was walking back over the bridge toward downtown, that's when the real explosion of bats came out. I had been a little too hasty, but now the bats were coming out by at least the hundred and I finally got the big black cloud I was hoping for. Because the bats were always in motion, I'm not sure how good any of my photos are of them but the view of the sunsetting from the bridge would be pretty great even with out the weird flying things.

The other cool view from the bridge was of the Frost Bank Tower, a really impressive glass building that some locals call the Owl Building because if you look at it just right it does look alarmingly like one of those wise old birds with their fancy knowledge of how to get to the center of a tootsie pop.

After appreciating the Austin skyline, I set out for the night's open mic. It was at a really hip location called Cherrywood Coffeehouse. It was another chill coffeehouse that also doubled as pretty cool bar, so I decided to have a coffee while I was waiting to sign up and then a beer once the show started. I got a really solid local beer called 7 Spanish Angels Brown Ale from Brazos Valley Brewing. Just a really solid and flavorful malty dark beer.

I was pretty pleasantly surprised that the mic was happening at all with SXSW going on, because a lot of the other mics that usually happen were cancelled. A good amount of comics showed up which was nice, and they really fun to hang out and chat with before the mic. This proved to be fortunate because the mic was already a late mic slated to start at 9:30 but the poetry open mic that was happening before us ended up going long and we didn't start until after 10. I think that says a lot about Austin, that there was just too much interest in local amateur poetry. It was a little frustrating that they made us start late, but also very endearing.

I was also glad that I got to hang out with the comics, because I'd heard a lot of good things about Austin's comedy scene, but between the late start and dealing with the festival all day, the other comics all seemed as exhausted as I was so they tended to leave after their sets so I wouldn't have gotten to talk to them much otherwise.

The mic itself was solid, with a few good audience members giving some support early on before it eventually got to late for them. The first comic of the night who wasn't the host taught a very valuable lesson by example though. He was fairly new to comedy and asked if he could go on earlier than he signed up for because he had to work in the morning (this might seem like a valid excuse but 90% of the other comics have to work in the morning too, so it's actually pretty rude to try to get yourself bumped up). The host and the guy he ended up trading spots with were very nice about it and let him go up. He then proceeded to deliver one of the most surreally bad sets I've seen in a while, stealing one joke from Dave Chapelle and telling one of his own "jokes" twice without seeming to have realized. The set was so bad that it actually walked about half the audience only one comic in which was deeply frustrating. The lesson here is that if you're gonna ask for special treatment, you better back it up because otherwise you're just going to upset every other comic there and it's not good to start out in a scene with people already mad at you.

Minus the rough start the mic was pretty solid. I think my favorite set of the night was actually the host Hunter's about the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles, Nick Foles (some context the super bowl had only happened about a month ago at this point) and a recent article about how he had gained a reputation in the locker for being particularly well endowed (I looked it up later and this is not just part of the joke, that really did run in some news stories). The joke though was that Nick Foles went to the same high school as him, and used to date his sister. "And that's just way more information than I ever needed to know. I'm not going to ask her anything about it, but thinking back she did have scoliosis before they dated and not afterwards."

Other Highlights:

Jared McCorkle- "My boyfriend and I really complete each other. I'm confident on stage in a way that inspires him to be more confident in life and he's... young."

Taylor Dowdy- An extended bit about a crazy true story of bricks falling on his car and fighting with insurance over it. I can't do it justice, but it was a wild saga.

A comic who's name I missed- Geography in Texas public schools was just learning how many times different countries could fit in Texas.

My own set went solidly middle of the road. I was fairly low on the list so the crowd had dwindled considerably and I was also pretty tired myself. My opener fell a little flat, but after that most of the punchlines landed. I've said it before and I'll say it again though, unless it's a real cozy venue, you can make all three people in a place laugh but three people laughing still sounds like you're bombing on stage. All in all, not a bad first day in Austin though.

Favorite Random Sightings: Steak Fingers; Mr. Greek; A tip jar that said "Tipping ain't snitching"; Beaver Nuggets; Pecker Heads Bar; Moose Knuckles

Regional Observation: Keep Austin Weird signs are all over the place, and I'd say going by generally more concentrated Hippie, hipster, and punk aesthetics they're doing a pretty decent job.

Albums Listened To: Quintessence (Vols. 1 and 2) by the Stan Getz Quarted with Chet Baker (some smooth smooth jazz); The R in R&B Collection by R. Kelly (Just Ignition (remix), i honestly think that song being so good is the only reason he isn't in jail right now for being a generally terrible person); The Radio by the Slackers (a really fun album of all covers); Radio City by Big Star; Radium Death by William Elliott Whitmore ( very soulful country); Raechel Mix by various artists (a mix cd one of my sister's friends made her); Rage Against the Machine by Rage Against the Machine

People's Favorite Jokes:

What do you call a cow masturbating? Beef Stroganoff (strokin' off, I was definitely more amused that a barista just went for that than by the joke on its own)

Songs of the day:

really great recording but their outfits do sort of scream “white jazz”

I wonder how Glenn Danzig feels about this

this is 93, the album came out in 73, and this sounds so perfectly in synch with 90s punk. It just shows how sadly ahead of their time they were

i am a big fan of his co-pilot on this one