New Digs

As I've mentioned in previously, I will be studying in Prague this summer. Originally I was going to stay in student housing, but I recently found out that those rooms are a 25 minute train ride from campus. That didn't really sound very awesome. Especially since the Metro stops running at midnight, and I'm pretty sure there will be occasions when I haven't quite left the pub by then.

Solution? Rent an apartment, which requires:
a) spending much time on internet trying to find a reasonably priced accomodation.
b) finding a place and communicating with the service in broken english over email.
c) sending money by Western Union.
d) crossing fingers that the guy on the other end of the email is not a scam artist.
e) feeling much better about that guy when students who were on the same program last year recommend him after the fact.

Without further ado, my new apartment:

The view from the window



Where the magic happens



Total Badass

Steve McQueen. Seriously. That dude was badass. Let's see, he raced cars, he raced motorcycles, and, on the side, he was moviestar. Short list, he was in The Magnificent Seven, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Great Escape, Bullitt, The Getaway, AND The Towering Inferno.
Sheeit. I can barely manage owning a car and a motorcycle, let alone being a total badass at the same time. Seems my only reasonable course of action is to start chain smoking, get a tattoo, join a motorcycle gang, and start running guns to South America. Then maybe, maybe I'll be as cool as Steve McQueen.

SXSW

Almost exactly one year ago the Girlfriend and I packed up my car and headed south-by-southwest to Austin, TX for the, uh, SouthBySouthWest music conference. For those of you who don't know, SXSW is something like 1300 bands over 4 nights. Plus a conference, etc. Basically it's any and every cool band you've always wanted to see, all in the same spot.
Well, this year spring break did not line up with awesome Texas band extravaganza, so I have to live vicariously through my more fortunate friends in the industry who get to go for "work."
Or so I thought. Turns out those hipsters at SXSW are pretty, um, hip, and you download the entire showcase artist catalog of tunes. It's something like 750 mp3s whistling at you at the speed of cable modem. So I'll still get to hear some good tunes (late night voicemails from the Austin affilliate notwithstanding).
I won't, however, get to go to the real conference sweet spot, Flatstock. It's a convention hall full of poster artists from across the country. And they have stuff to sell. And they can see me coming a mile away. Last year I only spent $120 because that's all the cash we could pool together. Dangerous. I'll have to make do by visiting the artists' websites, like The Bird Machine and Nokturnal Studio.
Oh well. At least I have a neverending stream of school work to keep me busy.

Also, Austin has the world's largest urban bat colony. You think it's creepy, but it's not.

Tunes

I finally got my ass in gear and set up a MySpace site for Marshall Cretin. We only have one song uploaded so far, but more are on the way. There are also a couple of upcoming live dates listed.