April 14, 2010

Auditorium Shores

Living in Austin can be crazy stressful: All the noise, traffic, congestion, and smug hipsterism can really take a toll on your zen. Add to that several hundred milligrams of caffeine, general angst about the tanking economy, and the imminent onset of swimsuit season, and you’re marginally postal about 90% of the time. Sure you could start a citrus cleanse or begin a vigorous colonic irrigation regimen, but you will still not have plumbed the root of it all: You care too much. Remember Austin? This is not the city you come to in order to feed your voracious ambition. This is the city you come to in order to polish your Frisbee golf skills. This is the city that motivated you to test how long you could sleep on your college friend’s couch before he kicked you out (two and a half weeks) in a screaming fit of rage for eating the remainder of his quart of Blue Bell Caramel Turtle Fudge (you were wicked baked) and then putting it back in the freezer empty. Yes, he was just looking for a reason ever since he found that merkin of pubic hair you left in the shower drain, but you took the high road, persevered and lived off Central Market samples and art opening crudités until you finally had to break down and get a job. Now that you’re all respectable with a day gig, a Smart Car, and an East Austin rent house with a five-way split, you’re feeling like maybe Austin has lost a bit of its luster. Wrong! The problem is that you’ve just given up on giving up. Somewhere along the way you quit quitting. There is still a lot of time to be wasted in Austin, even if you’re not wasted all the time. Hey, when was the last time you called in sick and spent the whole day at Barton Springs working on that dark, luxurious tan that’s the envy of your cubicle farm? How many Monday afternoons have you devoted entirely to practicing the sport of beer pong? How often do you blow off work for a box-wine picnic at the top of Mount Bonnell? Don’t you have at least one friend who will let your borrow his ski boat on a Thursday? Coming up with inventive ways to waste time can be pretty taxing, but when you run out of ideas, there is always the old standby: sitting on the couch with a skull bong listening to reggae. The cool thing about getting stoned and listening to reggae is that it’s something you can do without even bathing or changing your boxers. How awesome is that? All you need is a ratty old couch with one leg replaced by a telephone book, a coffee table made of cinder blocks and plywood, and a window tray you “borrowed” from Sonic in order to cull your seeds and stems … oh, and ideally a big bag of Funyuns. If you start to smell a little gamey after a few days, you can just blame it on the skunkweed. You barely even need to move. Just put Bob Marley’s Legend on repeat and chillax. Don’t worry, when he starts saying “get up, stand up,” he’s just speaking metaphorically. Of course, if you want to take that literally, you might want to bus it down to this weekend’s Austin Reggae Festival, where Friday, Saturday, and Sunday you can groove and sway with acts such as the Easy Star All-Stars, the Mighty Diamonds, and the Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars. If you haven’t listened to a lot of reggae or smoked a lot of ganja, relax. It’s a proven fact that pretty much anyone can dance to reggae as long as they’re not too stoned to stand up.