SXSW Followup/Death of Beardfest 2KX

OK, so as I write this I'm enjoying a huge black cup of coffee with a donut that looks alot like this:

I haven't had a besprinkled (if it wasn't a word before it is now) donut since forever ago. I feel I've become less adventurous as I age because 10 years ago I would've bolted straight for all this colourful goodness without being forced into it (they were out of sprinkle-less chocolate). In my professional opinion, sprinkles have doubled my enjoyment of this donut.

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Alright, back on track. I'm following up on my Spring Break post where I talked about SXSW. Of my listed goals while I was in Austin I would say I accomplished about two out of the seven things I stated I was gonna do. Austin was experiencing some turrible weather the day I decided to visit. Temperatures in the 40s, lotsa rain, lotsa wind. This weather factored into where I ended up going. I didn't wanna have to wait by myself for very long in that kinda weather so I broke down and met Sara and Ashley (Arlington friends) at the Rachel Ray SXSW party. Before I go any further I wanna say that these two are absolutely adorable humans and made my day so so awesome.

So anyways, I was gonna be seeing the Black Keys/Broken Bells/She & Him. What I ended up seeing was a show by Andrew W.K. (man knows how to party), Dr. Dog (so so good, I accosted the bassist at the end of the show and I think we bonded), Jakob (I swear, my dad's famous, guys) Dylan, and She & Him! Zooey Deschanel was as captivating as ever and M. Ward managed to throw some creeptastic vibes in from the side of the stage.

Long story short, it's not what I planned but I had an absolute blast (thanks SarAshley!).

To close of SXSW here are some pictures courtesy of Sara!

Rachael Ray and Matthew McConaughey

Andrew W.K.

Dr. Dog

M. Ward without creeptastic facial hair

Zooey Deschanel

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As for Beardfest2KX... Towards the end I was getting comments like "Dude, could you be any manlier" and "can I touch it?" but I don't think I'm quite enough of a man to grow a beard yet. It ended up lasting about a week (due to un-forseen formal circumstances) and I'm calling this year a failure. But I have high hopes for 2K11... Very high hopes.

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Additional benefits of sprinkled donuts that I just now realized: if you get lucky you'll end up finding a rogue sprinkle or two in the bottom of your coffee cup.

I just found three.

Beardfest 2KX

Title pretty much says it all.

Ever since I can remember I wanted to grow a beard. And since my freshman year of college I've held annually an event that I like to call "Beardfest". During Beardfest I go as long as I possibly can without shaving to see if I've become enough of a man to grow a beard. Usually it takes 1-2 weeks to know for sure if my facial hair has what it takes to grow a full, beautiful beard.

Beardfest 2K7 was a miserable failure.

Beardfest 2K8 showed more promise but ultimately ended the same as the year before.

Beardfest 2K9 was cut short due to a series of unfortunate circumstances.

That brings us to Beardfest 2KX, which began on Sunday, March 21st. So far things are sparse, to say the least, but it has only been 3 days so far and it's way too early to tell. I'll keep y'all updated as to how things go.

I don't mean to be pessimistic but I don't have real high hopes for 2KX. Maybe it'll happen but probably not. I'm looking forward to 2K11 and 2K12 to be my years of real growth.

I'll leave you with some of my beard inspiration.

Unfortunately I can't find a single photo of Evan Kirkendall's beard but he's also a huge inspiration for me.

Seacrest out.

On the temporality of human ability.

I remember my last basketball game in high school. We were in the lowest class of a sports conference that meant little to nothing in terms of real athletic competition but those days playing ball in high school meant everything to me.

The very last game of competitive basketball I played was right after I'd been in the hospital for two weeks. I was weak and probably shouldn't have played but that didn't matter at the time. You could have told me I was going to die 5 minutes after the game and I would have played still knowing it was the last thing I'd do on earth. Evan, Kenny, Sam and Jacob probably remember every moment of that game more than I do. One of two things I remember from that game is a shot I missed. Sam gave me a perfect behind-the-back pass for an easy bucket and I just flat out missed because I was too weak from being sick and underestimated it. I'll never forget that miss for the rest of my life.

The only other part of that game I'll ever remember is right after in the locker room. I cried because I knew I'd lost something. When we lost that game we lost the opportunity to play basketball in an arena that mattered. No more win-loss record, no more practice, no more fans. It was all over.

I was taken back to that moment in my life tonight. The Aggies lost their NCAA tournament game against Purdue today and some of us went to meet them at the arena as they arrived back in College Station. While we were waiting at the arena for them to arrive I thought of all the encouraging things I would say to them "You carried us all season, thank you", "There's only so much you can do before it's out of your hands", "you did everything you could". When they got there all I could think of was that moment in high school when it was all over. There were no words that could salvage that moment. Nothing changed what happened and what they lost when that game ended. I looked Bryan Davis and Donald Sloan in the eye and I shook their hands but I didn't try any of the encouraging phrases I'd come up with while we waited. They experienced today a thousand times the amount of pain I have in knowing their dream has died. They competed with the best on the biggest stage and fell short of their dreams. Nothing will change that.

That leads me to the point of this post. Everything in this world is limited based on time. Natural aging and other, more arbitrary, rules regarding time control how long we are able to pursue what we want and what we're good at. Tonight made me realize, in the same way as that last high school basketball game did, that nothing lasts forever. We need to do everything we can to the best of our ability while we can. That chance doesn't last forever.

Mid-break update!

OK, so I'm sitting in McDonald's in Georgetown, Texas because I thought I could catch the first half of the Aggie game before I hit my grandparents house. Turns out the game is at 3:45 (not 2:45 as I anticipated) so I've got some time to kill.

First things first, this is hands down the nicest McDonald's I've ever been in. The restrooms were clean, they have fancy floral upholstery in their booths and the floor looks like I could eat off of it (but I'm not gonna try). All this said, even though it's the nicest McDs I've ever been to, it's still a fast food restaurant in a tiny Texas town and I'd rather be somewhere else.

So, update of how my Spring Break is going: I've had a great time just relaxing, hanging with friends and watching basketball on my laptop (our TV ain't operational right now). I've been to downtown Houston (first picture from last post), now I'm in Georgetown (second photo) and barring any sort of catastrophe, tomorrow I will be in Austin, Texas (last photo)! I'm pretty excited about that.

I'm gonna get to see College Station friends, Austin friends, Arlington friends, Corsicana friends and then all the friends I'm gonna make over the course of the rest of the weekend. I'm totally psyched.

Bands I'm gonna see at SXSW shows:

I'm real ready to hit the ATX.

You follow one kid home, rip out his eyes and suddenly you're a "killer" squirrel

Afternoon folks. I have class in 30 minutes and a wicked mid-term exam set for 8:30 this evening. What does that mean? Right now is the perfect time to write a blog.

So far blogging's only fun for me when it's stealing time from something I should actually be doing.

Blogging is a time vampire and I'm the Twilight obsessed tween waiting for it to suck me dry.

This being said, I've been thinking a lot about spring break. Everybody has plans for what they're doing for the break but I'm not exactly that kinda guy. My plans are about as set as the jello I put in my fridge 5 minutes ago.

I've been having trouble accepting my limitations lately and I need to work on that.

How are you gonna do that Zach?!

Well, I'm glad you asked.

If I didn't have any limitations in my life with regards to where I could go and what I could do for Spring break (money, time, family, social obligations) I would go

here

here

here

Most definitely here

I imagine Barcelona would go something like this:

But part of understanding my limitations is accepting the truth. So for this Spring Break I will:

be here

probably go here

hopefully go here

...do everything in my power to end up here.

I may be confined to Texas for this break but I'm thinking about the positives:

Texas is a massive state with amazing countryside, full of new opportunities and wonderful people I haven't met yet. So if you see me this break and I don't seem like I'm having fun, here's what you can do: you can buy me a drink (hey, I did just turn 21) and remind me of all the fun I can have if I just open my eyes to the beauty around me and accept my limitations.

Your art... is the prettiest art... of all the art

When I was at the Tate Britain with my brother and sister last summer I happened to stumble across this piece by Jozef Pankiewicz. I can't comment too much on it's artistic value (I know next to nothing about painting) but I can tell you that I love it. I wrote about a page and a half of notes on it when I was there but you don't want to read those, they're boring!

Instead I'll just give you a song to go with it:

New Beginnings

I sat down in the coffee shop to write something epic for my first blog post.

Here's what I came up with:

I'm tired.

I should be studying.

My house has no electricity.

I'll do this later.