The CFY,K Travelogue: Austin, TX

• So, I was sitting on a plane bound for Jacksonville, Florida last night, crammed into a window seat next to a woman who looked, smelled, and sounded like a Jaguars game, when it occurred to me that I ought to update my blog.

• I'm kind of through with apologizing for the sporadic nature that CFY,K has taken on in the last while. Because, you know. I don't have one of those - admittedly way better and more entertaining - blogs like, say, Nah Right or Drawn, or whatever where each entry is just, like, one piece of news in a specialized cultural niche. I am not a specialized cultural niche, and have no interest in becoming one, and not that much shit happens to me.

• But then the other day I went to Austin, Texas on a reconnaissance mission because maybe I want to move there based solely on the notion that I have got to get out of where I'm at. A "kick in the ass," or a leap "into some cold water." Or that's what my old man says anyway. I am now in the process of pondering this.

{Editorial note: right here is where I would put one of those "Click to continue reading" links on this post. But I haven't yet figured out a really good way to do that. So. Until I do, the reader must take comfort in the idea that the author is in b4 tl;dr. - Ed.}

• And now, some highlights, in no particular order.

• On Sunday afternoon, a Good Old Timey Type Friend, with whom I had attended high school and who is now a lawyer, showed up and showed myself and a certain Mystery Lady around Austin. (He pulled up to the motel, by the way, in this awesome sports car that he had reportedly paid for with poker winnings, which completely rules.)

We all went to Matt's El Rancho and had the best shit ever. (By which I mean of course the best dip ever but whatever.)

Afterwards we ventured to the capitol building on Congress Avenue. There's an awful lot going on in that place. Like an age-old myth/debate finally dispelled/settled. And a kind of horrifying - because it catches you totally off-guard - portrait of a former Texas governor.

• It was my initial intention to visit the campus of The University of Texas at Austin in an effort to see what their MFA program was all about, but because I am - due to years of training - a Master Trip Planner, I arrived there on Martin Luther King Day. So it was closed. It was also like the only cold and rainy day in the history of Texas. Everybody I met on campus was super-nice, though, so that was cool. And I saw that tower where that one lunatic shot a bunch of people in '66. It's kind of weird to see, but I think there's a lot to be said for their unflinchingly maintaining that building as the symbol of the school, regardless of its tragic history.

• After hours of searching in the dark rain, we finally found the Stevie Ray Vaughn statue on Town Lake. It was seriously like a half mile from the motel. There was this workout drill instructor guy in the middle of the field making all these fitness freaks run laps with the aide of his loudass air raid siren. I felt compelled to extravagantly smoke cigarettes on my loping approach to the monument. So I did.