As some of you know, I’ve been enduring one of the worst work stretches since the time I was a first year associate in New Orleans. Now, whenever my work is at its worst, its still pretty cush. There’s plenty of people to help me take care of things, I get to work inside in the air conditioning, and I don’t come home every day with cuts and bruises. So “worst” is sort of relative. It could always be worse. I could be a mechanic. Or a prison body cavity searcher. Or a broker.
But its been quite stressful for me, and finally the opportunity to get out of town and spread my wings showed up at my door, so I answered and said, “hell yeah I’m ready, let’s get freaky!” Which in my world means setting to work making reservations at four-star hotels and booking premium car rentals (at 46, getting wild for me involves making sure the sheets have the right thread count). But, where to go? For some time, the South has been calling my name. Its saying “Chris, I want you back.” Normally, I’m great at resisting that line, but the chance to hit the road and see the South during Fall proved too great to resist. And what does Fall in the South mean? Southeast Conference football. Wild animal killing season too, but that’s not my bag, man. SEC football is like a religion. These people thrive on it, and team allegiances rival family loyalty. Texas had an off day this Saturday, so it was time to pick a game that would have me located somewhere near something worth seeing. LSU vs. Florida. Done. I’d only seen an SEC game at LSU, though we went to the Sugar Bowl last year to watch Florida vs. Cincinnati (who got crushed, but whose fans out-traveled Florida by a big margin). This trip afforded a chance to see my adopted “Team 1B” LSU play a game in the infamous “Swamp” (its proper name is Ben Griffin Stadium, though I’m not sure anyone really knows that), to check out the tailgating and the University of Florida campus, and then a chance to drive up the coast to see two places I’ve long wanted to explore—Savannah and Charleston. These cities exude Southern gentility—mint juleps or iced tea (for me) in the afternoon on the porch, wrought iron, Spanish moss, magnolia trees, saying bad things about the Democrats. All the truly great things in life. Places that feature the best things about Southern culture. At least, the Southern culture that doesn’t involve keeping slaves, marrying cousins, or running a meth lab. I mean the Ashley Wilkes South. Where everyone’s happy. Not the “starring each week on Cops” South.
So after a frenzied couple of days researching the area, trying to get a game ticket and making travel plans, off I went to the airport. I took Jet Blue because they have a nonstop to Orlando, avoiding the necessity to spend all day traveling just because you have to route through Houston or DFW (aka, the worst place in the world). Clad in my LSU polo shirt and khakis, my appearance caused the ticket counter guy asked me if I was a college recruiter. Turns out he was a recruiter for the Texas State women’s soccer team. Guess there’s one job worse than being an airline ticket seller. Jet Blue not only has non stops out of Austin to places like New York and LA, it also has XM radio and Direct TV. On the other hand, its planes are smaller, so I got stuck having to purchase a “premium seat” because my reservations were so late. All these airline nickel and dime schemes are getting really old. Price discrimination makes lots of sense, as does offering premium service. These airline schemes are so offensive because they’re just taking their existing service levels and breaking them up into a la carte offerings, then charging you more for the overall package. I sympathize with charging what the market will bear, and ordinarily would approve if these clowns didn’t show up on Congress’ doorstep every year or two asking for taxpayer money because they can’t run profitable businesses on their own. Southwest Airlines is able to do it, so its not like its economically impossible to run a profitable airline. Most US airlines get their management from the same place as the Post Office and the auto industry.
The flight to Orlando was totally full. The couple next to me on the flight was interesting. She was obviously about 10 years older than him, and was watching some TLC show apparently about fat brides. Throughout, the plane was teeming people either in their 70s, or screaming, whining, crying kids and their “covered with mysterious sticky layer of filth” parents. Ordinarily that sort of thing doesn’t bother me. I can handle one screaming kid, not a plane full. Hmmm, who would have thought a Friday flight to Orlando would have that problem? It’s a mystery. Anyway, its not like staying in Austin this weekend would have resolved the “surrounded by the annoying” problem. No, for this is one of the most hallowed weekends on the official “Keep Austin Weird” calendar. The immensely profitable, Chamber of Commerce-hawking, $180/ticket Austin City Limits music festival. I’ve never been personally. I don’t recognize the names of most of the bands, and usually its about 120 degrees out. Nature usually turns the thing into some sort of endurance test. The thing caught fire a couple of years ago, and last year the rains made it like Woodstock. I scratch my music festival urge by going to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Great music of many different varieties, not to mention regional arts and culture, and incredible Louisiana food. Oh yeah. ACL, however, is world famous, no doubt due to the A, and the difficult to conceive Austin reputation throughout the world as the new mecca of all things cool. It was the mecca of all things cool about 15 years ago. Then developers and Californians came, bought up all the houses, turned all the clubs into mini-Dallas clones, and starting building loft homes. Then the City Council tried its best to kill off the vibe with its ridiculous sound ordinance (most of the “help I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” alarms that the people complaining about the noise wear cause more noise than the clubs), and ticketing musicians whose trucks double park when trying to load their equipment into local clubs. Austin is famous for great music places like Liberty Lunch and Steamboat, which no longer exist. All this is just sort of static, except that the ACL festival draws “Festival Guy” into town by the thousands, choking off downtown and making it impossible to get around my Barton Hills neighborhood. I’ve written about this guy before. He’s in his 30s or 40s, walks around somewhat aimlessly carrying a knapsack and lawn chair, and wearing a pork pie hat, sandals and socks, and a reproduction Cars “Candy-O” tour t-shirt (which is meant to be ironic, but really just completes their “Hipster Dufus” look). Generally these guys have, well, extremely large calves. Its not immediately clear where these people come from or if they have actual lives when there’s not a festival. Are they insurance agents? Night security guards? Day security (or some other dreary day job so they can jam with their Journey cover band, “Wheels in the Sky” at night)? They’re probably mortgage brokers. Or derivatives traders. Or lawyers. I do know that every year, even before the actual festival begins, these people fill the town and look dirty.
I had booked a convertible, to enjoy the great weather during all my driving. Naturally, when I showed up at the counter they didn’t have one. They offered to give me a Corvette instead. But I didn’t want to drive a plastic car with no trunk for a week, or show up looking like a tremendous douche. So instead I exercised my backup option reservation at Avis. Which turned out to be a Camaro. Great. So instead of looking like some mid-level crack distributor, I’m going to look like an Aqua-Velva and gold chain wearing guido from Jersey Shore. Six of one, huh? Unfortunately, the “new” Camaro is about as cramped and uncomfortable as the old Camaro, which means you feel like one of those astronaut monkeys they used to test Mercury space capsules. Trying to see out of the windows is like peering out of a porthole. But the lady at the first of about a thousand toll booths liked it.
Yes, Rick Perry would love Florida. Everywhere you go, it’s a toll road. Every four or five miles, a toll plaza. Its like the government is incapable of building roads, or buildings, or running prisons, or funding schools, or doing much of anything anymore. But that’s another post. In this case, the toll roads took me to the heart of North Florida, via a couple of stops along the way. One stop was because I got lost. I’d have asked the 7-11 counter clerk for directions, but her 5 o’clock shadow scared me. Is that wrong? Each stop gave me a first-hand encounter with every cheesy, Jersey Shore, chain-wearing, neck tattoo-having stereotype. Guys in do’ rags and Ed Hardy shirts. Girls named Mysti smoking Salems and driving Chevy Malibus that Daddy bought as a high school graduation present two years ago (before they meet their meth-dealing boyfriend Brad). North Florida apparently has become Jersey South. With deeper tans. So when people say God looks after his children, I say, that’s why I wound up with a Camaro. To fit in. By a simple twist of fate, I resembled Ron Johnson, Pacific Stereo Audio Consultant from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. You know, the tool who Jennifer Jason Leigh waited on at the mall’s pizza place (“the best food stand at the mall”), who ordered “a meatball sandwich, a medium coke, and your phone number.” Yeah, I look like that guy. Oh, and did I mention that this Camaro has a glow-in-the dark stripe on the interior of each door? Yeah, it’s a like a mini-glow stick. Nice touch. I get to have my own rave inside my car every night.
So, let’s recap. South Florida is populated by cialis-popping, chocolate brown leather skin-having, Bronx refugees with names like Morty, who eat dinner every day before 5 p.m., and who drive cars the size of three city blocks. North Florida is full of the aforementioned rejects from the auditions for every Kevin Smith movie.
When I arrived, two hours later, at the Gainesville Quality Inn (the best of a bad lot of remaining hotels), I met two guys wearing LSU shirts trying to check out. They’d been booked into a room with one queen size bed and a Jacuzzi. They said they weren’t having that (it was actually a little more graphic than that). Meanwhile, my room had two beds and no jacuzzi. Talk about your bad timing.
When I finally got checked in, I headed over to campus to check out the “night before” scene. It was packed. Tailgaters in RVs had already arrived and were setting up tents. All the kids crammed bars along University Avenue, spilling out into the streets. It never ceases to amaze me how women, particularly younger women, will dress up and look really nice and at the same events, guys their same age look like they just got finished painting their house. All these girls were wearing nice cocktail dresses and the like and were fixed up. The guys looked like they were shipwrecked. Even in my day, 120 years ago, when very few women were even admitted to colleges, there was at least a “uniform” of sorts. It was the khaki shorts/izod shirt look. Guys looked ridiculous, but at least there was some effort, misguided as it was, to look somewhat better than normal. Apparently that’s old fashioned. These kids!
The night ended for me, very late, at the local Steak & Shake. Of which there’s about a million in Gainesville. At this particular 24-hour establishment, there were about 20 Florida kids and three very fat, very drunk LSU guys. And me. Tigers…we need to represent a little better than this.
Tomorrow-LSU vs. Florida.
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