Recon report from Section B (Terragon Sector)—this is our account of a two-week trip to sow seeds of rebellion, revolution, insurrection, and insubordination across the power grid (posted in reverse order for your administrative perusal):

KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD



After a smooth plane ride into town, we may appear doughy and complacent, but rest assured, under our camouflage there are FANGS and CLAWS and POISON GLANDS. Juli in particular has the look of death in her eye.

This is an authority figure. Although he was initially confused by Juli’s snapshot, she sweetly waved at him and he put away his gun.



This is a denizen of Austin.



There are many denizens in Austin, some of whom have battle bikes equipped with a horned skull and some of whom do not. This pic was taken at Guero’s, where I had fish tacos and many beers and Juli had a quesadilla and many beers. This was a profoundly bad idea in hindsight when you consider all the Bonine we took for the plane ride. We decided to take a half-hour nap at the Motel 8 before going to Emo’s to see the Electric Six and ended up rousing ourselves from death-like slumber at 1am wondering what the hell happened. More on the Electric Six later…

This is an awful shot of the Whole Foods Super Duper Supermarket Extravaganza downtown.



Apparently, Whole Foods started in Austin, and this is corporate headquarters combined with a grocery store about the size of FIVE Sam’s Clubs put together. They had an entire AISLE of mushrooms, including fiddlehead ferns, which are allegedly edible (who knew?). You could also cut your own natural soap from a block the size of a filing cabinet. I want to live there, thank you very much.

After the first uneventful night at the Motel 8, we relocated our base of subversive activities to the Austin Motel.



This freak haven is directly off of South Congress, where we basically spent the remainder of our time in Austin goofing off, having an interview or two, and then goofing off some more. Our room was great and the entire place was quite funky.







Juli hit some shops as she is wont to do, while I took a nap, as I am wont to do. She came back to tell me that she found an antique shop right up my alley. Holy shit, was she ever right:



This place was CHOCK FULL o’ Freemasonry. All this weird paraphernalia is Oddfellows stuff from the early 1900’s. They also had books about pyramids and flying saucers, but everything was close to $100, which is about $96 more than I am willing to spend on things like that.









This was one of the houses directly behind the hotel.



Apparently, this fellow has traveled to the future, stolen my future truck, future house, and future occupation (we think he actually makes signs like the one next to his/my truck). I need to remember that I may have to fight this guy to the death in the future in order to reclaim the future as my own.

Gardening is odd here, though—I’m not sure if Beth would approve of rusty boxes for a lawn:



I continued to go crazy and find shamanic spirals in the walls of a coffee shop called the Green Muse (an obvious grail reference—check the poster):




We also decided that seeing as how we’re in the Live Music Capital of the World and I am quite a fan of the Live Music, we should actually go see some of the Live Music in the Live Music Capital of the World. The Continental Club was right across the street from our hotel, and we saw James Hand, who is a straight lunatic:



He says, “Thank you a lot” after every song. Go ahead and say that out loud: “Thank you a lot.” It’s just not right. Here is a sample of a James Hand song intro:

[Johnny Cash voice]“Well, thank you a lot, thank you a lot. Y’know, I don’t know why anyone would even want to come out and see me, I’m just a guy up on a stage. But back when no one knew me at all…”*face crumples up in teary emotion*“…these people here gave me a chance, and I thank them for that.”*deep breath*“Anyhoo, this is a song about a parakeet. 1, 2, 3, 4!”

And then the band would go right into it along with the best pedal steel guitar player I have ever heard and/or seen. I know it’s TX and all, but this guy was really outta sight.

This was our server, R.J. She stood about 6’4” in her boots, and is also a roller derby girl. She can beat up the rest of the planet simultaneously.



I walked into the bathroom and saw the typical punched-out mirror, feeling right at home.



So I go pee and check out the local stall graffiti, expecting to find stuff like “Kinky Friedman sucks a fat one” or “TX cops can go to Hell” or “Don’t look here for a joke, the joke’s in your hand”. Instead I find this:



These people seriously love their town.

The next morning, we did the hangover breakfast at Magnolia Café, which has an incredible dish called Love Migas. Migas is apparently a Mexican thing where you take your scrambled eggs, add a bunch of garlic along with other omelet-type ingredients, and then either add chopped tortillas or wrap the entire mess in said tortilla. I know that sounds just like a breakfast burrito, but it’s not, because it’s Mexican. Or maybe Tex-Mex. Or something.
Magnolia Café also has extremely cool artwork.



Here is a squinty-eyed impersonation of Clint Eastwood, just to let y’all know I’m keepin’ it real:



Also, we climbed Mount Bonnell (all of 99 steps) to catch a view of the city. Big effing whoop:



But we did still manage to look cute together.



Me like tree.



Me take bookjacket picture with tree.



So that was Austin. Weird, funky, and comfortable enough to let dudes wear dresses in the middle of Texas.

STOCKTON AND BIG TREES

While in the Austin airport waiting to fly to CA, we saw a bunch of people lined up at the window. We smiled at each other, pitying these cowboy simpletons so mystified by human flight. But more people kept looking, so we moseyed over and took a gander and a look-see (I’m pretty sure that’s how cowboys talk).



Oh. Sorry that we made fun of you fine cowboy folk while you were watching one of our young citizens being loaded up in a pine box for political causes that no one can really adequately explain. Juli thought it was in poor taste to take a picture of this, but it seemed really resonant and important to me at the time. No disrespect intended.

So after that delightful interlude, we loaded up into our tin bullet. Just so you people know, the breaking point for the 6’1”/250lb weight class on an airplane averages around 3 hours. My own personal record is approximately half that, so we started a wonderful trip to CA by taking a flight that lasted approx. 57 hours.

The flight crew shoved us into the baggage storage compartment with a broom handle to make more room for the cadre of middle-aged, bleached, plasticked, almost-women on their way to “VEGAS, BABY!” for their collective 600th birthday. During the disembarking, the guy behind them finally lost it and tried to push through them. They attacked, and he parried with an under-the-breath “Bitch”. Their response? “Freako!” That’s right. “Freako.” Score one for the under-the-breath guy.

So we arrive in Oakland around 11pm to find that somehow, the rental car that I reserved wasn’t cleared for a Seattle drop-off. Big problem seeing as how we were flying out of Seattle 10 days later. So I frantically call Travelocity to see what the problem was (most likely my own fault) while Juli dug out some cleavage to talk to the guy at the Budget counter. After some tense negotiation with a machete, we got a rental from Budget for a decent price—decent being a relative term, of course. Relative to me saying, “Hey, I just bought a space shuttle for a decent price.”

At the tail end of our trip, I would try to drop the Budget car off at the Hertz parking lot in Seattle because I SWORE that we had rented a Hertz car—Reason #1,692 why I will undoubtedly end up in a jail cell or six feet under if Juli ever divorces me, as I have fundamentally become a non-functioning member of society. I do have a cute mad-scientist appeal to me, though, so no worries.

So we get to Stockton, where my teacher, Tanya, lives. The next few days were quite important and productive, but we don’t really have pictures of them. Suffice to say that Juli discovered she was a mermaid, I realized that I continually stab myself with ten swords, and Tanya was severely scolded for waking up her neighbors by pounding away on a drum. You can’t tell if I’m making this up or not, can you?
Here’s a shot of the University of the Pacific campus, where Tanya corrupts young minds now. These are her six sisters:



I don’t get it, either.

This is a shot of a house with a garden/yard that Juli took for Beth. I don’t know why, but maybe some of y’all like this kind of stuff:



This is the kind of stuff I like. These trees outside of Tanya’s apt. were incredible:





So after a few days, Tanya says (in Russian/Chinese/Italian/something-or-other accent): “You should take day-trip to Big Trees.” So we’re all, “OK. What are the Big Trees?” And she goes, “They are Big Trees.” I’m pretty used to this kind of roundabout talk, so we just get the road we’re supposed to follow and head out into nowhere, figuring there must be some big trees an hour or so outside of Stockton.

So we start driving and somehow end up in the middle of Ireland (possibly Scotland, I can’t be sure):




Absolutely beautiful area, and as soon as I figure out how to make money while living out in a place that looks like the Shire, we’re relocating to Copperopolis. You can’t tell if I made that name up or not, can you?

So then all of the sudden, I’m like, “Holy shit! Snow!” and I get all excited and keep trying to take pictures of it out of Juli’s window.



We figure we’ll see some snow on the side of the road, a few redwoods or something, and then head back to Stockton to drink wine and eat cheese like normal people.

Before we know it, we’re in Big Trees State Park (that’s what that blurry sign says).



There’s also signs everywhere screaming at us to put snow chains on the car, but the sunny Budget desk an hour or two away definitely didn’t give us those.

Needless to say, we weren’t dressed for snow.



A bunch of near-toddlers were smarter than us, though, and they bundled up appropriately so that they could take out their aggression on each other with hard water:



So we spent an hour basically peeing ourselves giddy over our little winter wonderland.







Like befuddled rainforest monkeys dropped off in Antarctica, Juli and Conor discover that snow is edible.






Brain freeze!

I am a sly trickster in the snow. And by “sly trickster” I mean “dumb ogre wearing a t-shirt under his coat, yet jovial about the basic physical properties of snow”.





So yeah, the trees are big.







It’s like we’ve never seen the color white before!




An opportunity like this doesn’t come along every day, so I do the prudent thing and make a snow angel. Be glad that I didn’t go w/ my first inclination of, “Hey, you know what would be REALLY cool? To do it NAKED!”





Then I split my pants. Seriously.



This is the Warming House. Allegedly, it is very warm. We never found out because it was locked. We did see burning embers through the window, though.



At this point, the crotch of my pants are ripped open, I’m bare under my suddenly inadequate jacket, and there’s an inch of snow in my Birks:




The temperature dropped over 20 degrees in ten minutes on the way to Big Trees. So to warm up, we went here and got drunk.



I walked out w/ two pints of beer in my stomach and around 100 paper towels in my shoes.

Juli fell in love with this place Angel’s Camp. It was quaint.




I fell in love with their Star Trek bathrooms. It was the future (check the upside down faucet).




These are my ladies.