Writing

Let’s Take a Moment For Local Natives


We’ve all been complaining about the lackluster line-up at this year’s Austin City Limits festival, but one band that is still wowing audiences with their impressive record debut, is the Los Angeles’ band Local Natives. Hopefully if you’re at ACL today, you will check out Local Natives at 4:45PM on the Austin Ventures Stage. Not only will their freshman album, Gorilla Manor, knock your socks off but their live performances are just as capitivating.

It is difficult to describe Local Natives’ music. It would be just as easy to say, “Oh, it sounds like dreamy rock music”, but it’s so much more than that. Every single song instantly takes you to someplace in your head. Someplace you’re nostalgic for. Someplace long ago. Every song paints an etheral landscape that you just can’t wait to travel down. It would be fair to say that they are an inspiring band, one that reminds you of the wonderful talent that exists in the world. I have no doubt that they won’t become one of the biggest bands next (more…)

October 9, 2010 by
Writing

Austin City Limits: What To See In The Finer Print Pt. 2

Yesterday, I started a post reviewing the lesser known acts at this year’s ACL line-up. Today, I’m exhausted because I didn’t realize how many freakin’ bands were playing and I only touched the tip of the iceberg here. Please find a continuation of the “finer print” bands below…the rest you’re just going to have to check out for yourself..

Ponderosa– The ACL website compares these guys to an earlier Kings of Leon. They even have the look down. They only have two songs on their Myspace page, but it appears that ACL is right. Unfortunately, the spark that early Kings of Leon had seems to be missing from these guys.
Friday 12:40PM BMI Stage

The Kicks– These guys picked the worst band name because as I discovered while trying to Google them, there are 400 other “The Kicks” playing music out there in the world. They’re also a little too hipster looking for their own good, buuutttt…their harmonies and use of Moog mixed with some hard rock guitar chords and raspy vocals makes for this band an (more…)

October 8, 2010 by
Writing

Austin City Limits: What To See In the Finer Print

Oh, Austin City Limits Festival is this weekend.

I’m not going.

The line-up is, let’s say, a little lackluster. Not that there aren’t wonderful and talented acts playing in Zilker Park this year. It’s just that, well, it’s about the same 15 bands who’ve been rotating the circuit for the past year (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Yeasayer, The XX) playing alongside their parents (Flaming Lips, Phish) and their grandparents (The Eagles, Sonic Youth). The advantage and disadvantage to living in the “Live Music Capital of the Universe” is that we get to see a lot of wonderful acts before they’re big. Then we see them again. And again.

I can’t count how many bands on the ACL line-up were just here for SXSW in March and a million times in between.

So, in a desperate attempt to see what the heck else if playing at ACL, I checked out the music of the bands that appear, like the bottom row of an eye chart, in the finer print on the ACL line-up page. You know, the bands that play at 11AM on (more…)

October 7, 2010 by
Writing

My Fake Diana

Still not acclimated to being back in Austin, so while I get up to speed in Bloggy World, please view my already out-dated love for the Hipstmatic iPhone app (a.k.a. no longer liked by the hipsters, but too new to be liked again in the retro sense).
It just makes everything look so shiny and pretty. I even brought my Diana on this trip, but was too lazy to use her.
My apologies if you’ve already seen these photos on my Twitter.
Doorway in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Back window of gas station in Lone Butte, New Mexico

View from top of Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico

Outside house in Cerrillos, New Mexico

Off of Interstate 25 somewhere between Madrid and Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

Route 90 to Marfa, Texas
Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Cafe Paris in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Pecos, Texas

Abandoned Main Street in Pecos, Texas


Marfa, Texas

Route 285 somewhere between Roswell and Santa Fe, New Mexico

Hotel Paisano, Marfa, Texas

Hotel Paisano, Marfa, Texas
Prada Marfa, Marfa, Texas
October 5, 2010 by
Writing

What I Learned on My Journey Through West Texas and New Mexico

Vacation are always an excellent way to discover more about yourself, the people that you love, and the people of America. In fact, sometimes you learn a little too much when you’re crammed into a compact car with your mother and driving through mile after mile of barren New Mexico landscape- like what your tolerance threshold is for taking a crap and whether or not you can listen to your mother gush on and on about Jason Mraz for hours.
Here are a few lessons I learned on this wonderful trip with my mother through West Texas and most of New Mexico.
Lessons I Learned: West Texas and New Mexico Trip with Mother
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1.) That My Father Used to Wear Make-Up– I’m not even sure how this came up.

Ext. Car- Day

Mother and Daughter are driving on an endless stretch of New Mexico freeway with nothing but desert and big sky in the background.

Daughter
“Oh God, we’ve been driving through this desolate desert for hours and hours, through run-down town after another! (more…)
October 4, 2010 by
Writing

Kerouac Was a Crappy Writer, But He Sure Knew How to Take Road Trips

There is nothing quite like being on the road.

The romanticism of endless opportunities.
You may be behind the wheel, but you are purposely putting yourself out there for anything to happen.
You need it to.
Tomorrow I embark on another. Through Western Texas and all of New Mexico along with my traveling companion, my mother.
Below are some snippets from angsty journal entries I kept during hopeful self-discovery road trips where I needed answers to plop down on the road in front of me.
*Warning– I sound like a typical 24 year-old whiny little bitch.

-San Francisco to Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast Highway, April 2008–
I had left my job in LA and had become completely lost and disillusioned with the city, my age, and my goals. I thought that a spontaneous solo drive up the coast might give me some answers:
“With the 101 came assurance that I would get to my destination in a timely manner. But on the Pacific Coast Highway, after every stretch of nothingness came another stretch of nothingness, (more…)
September 24, 2010 by
Writing

Self-Promotion and The Blogger

Self-promotion is a quintessential aspect to being a popular blogger. There is no way around it. Most of us do not like promoting ourselves out of fear of looking like a giant narcissistic boob. However, the truth is, if you want anyone other than your parents to read your blog, you’re going to have to do it. Just because your blog is out on the Internet, doesn’t mean that people read it. It takes a lot of work to make others aware of your writing (…if you care about these sort of things….and don’t lie!….you know you do!)

Yesterday, CNN featured an article written by the creators of Stuff Hipsters Hate about online self-promotion etiquette. Though an interesting article, it was short as sh*t and only listed three ways to be humble Internet braggarts. I thought I would elaborate a little more, based off of my own personal experiences as a reluctant egomaniac.

Tips on Online Self Promotion

1.) No-no on Tweeting Song Lyrics– Don’t drink tequila and then tweet every single line to your favorite (more…)

September 23, 2010 by
Writing

Making the Homeless Visible

Many of my posts start with, “The other day I read on Huffingtonpost Post…”
It is one of my steadfast blogs, the second site I check in my morning routine. Though they spent a little too much of 2010 obsessing over The Gosselins, HuffPo continues to bring interesting and thought-provoking material to the masses. One of my favorite recent additions to the website is their Impact tab- news and stories about people making a difference.

Recently featured on HuffPost Impact was an article about the non-profit organization We Are Visible– a website that not only encourages, but also offers resources for the homeless to get connected online. According to the HuffPo article, creator Mark Horvath, who at one point was homeless himself, came up with the idea for We Are Visible after asking his Twitter friends to help a homeless friend in need. A follower donated $100 to the homeless man and it was then Horvath realized the importance of online social networking and the homeless (side note- Horvath (more…)

September 21, 2010 by
Pop Culture

What is Guerrilla Art?

“Guerrilla art” is a phrase used interchangeably with “street art”.

It may typically entail any of the various art forms: graffiti, wheatpasting, stenciling, stickering, performance, video, LED, or installation art and must take place in a public place anonymously. Basquiat (graffiti), Banksy (stencil, graffiti), Shepard Fairey (wheatpasting, stencil), Improv Everywhere (flash mob, performance art), Reverend Billy & The Church of Life After Shopping (performance art, culture jamming) are a few famous examples of guerrilla artists.

I f’ing love guerrilla art because it forces the creator and the viewer to think outside of the box. I especially dig it when the art taps over into the realm of culture jamming, and creates a whole new spin on how we view the norm. I daydream about changing my name to one word and stenciling pictures of David Byrne dancing with a lamp all the time…. that’s not really an example of culture jamming, but who doesn’t love David Byrne and lamps…dancing?

The (more…)

September 20, 2010 by
Writing

Blog Therapy Session Friday

Every once in awhile I get a bug to change my blog.

I post a questionnaire about it and you’re all like, “Don’t change anything!”
I like you for that.
However, I don’t change anything and then the cycle repeats.
And then we end up with another lame ass post like this.
I think it’s natural for a blogger to compare themselves to other blogs and get bored looking at the same template or material day-in-day-out. I mean, shit. I change my hair color, apartments, jobs, and cities about once a year (slight exaggeration on all except for the hair), so the itch for variety is always stirring in my bones.

So, this is where the therapy session part comes in…
(And don’t say, “Well, Lauren, the reason why you change your hair color so often is because that is how you deal with stress and major life changes and it falsely keeps you feeling like you’re moving forward”…. because I already know that.)

Hipstercrite has turned into something more than I could ever imagine.
And, you know, I kind of like her, but (more…)

September 17, 2010 by