Spider House Rules
I have mentioned it before for different events, but I thought I’d finally write a post dedicated to the awesomeness that is Spider House. It was originally just a coffee joint, but they now have food and a full bar, and they took over an old Blockbuster Video and turned it into a ballroom. That’s where the Austin Poetry Slam was held, as well as BedPost Confessions, which I attended recently.
This place is just awesome. It’s covered in antiques, art work, and this one hot guy:
This is part of the mural on the back of the ballroom, what used to be Blockbuster. It is made up of all kinds of movie scenes, and I can identify all but one (I think). The Jaws shark is going after a swimmer, right above one of the characters from Labyrinth, and the poster from Evil Dead 2.
Ash from Army of Darkness, with the hill from Nightmare before Christmas in the background. You can tell Bruce Campbell is pretty popular around here.
I just thought this statue was cool. My Gram has an intact version of the little girl in her yard, and has always had it since we were little. I love how rather than trashing two broken statues they attached them to each other to make some kind of awesome chimera.
Spider House has great food, beverages, and prices, and there are always interesting events occurring, often for free. I just noticed that I Luv Video runs CineMondays, free movies every Monday night at 10pm at Spide House. Check out their homepage for a calendar, and maybe we’ll run into each other at some weird Austin event.
– That Clever Chick
Austin Poetry Slam
My friend Jessica is in the know on EVERYTHING. She has introduced me to so many cool things, I can barely keep up. But I did show her Back to the Future and Doctor Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog, so maybe we’re even. The other day she invited me to a poetry slam. I had never been to one, so I thought I’d try it out.
Turns out, this was the semi-finals of the Austin Poetry Slam. These poets are competing to get on a team, and go to nationals somewhere, representing Austin. Generally, they have a poetry slam every Tuesday at Spiderhouse, and it’s a $5 cover. It’s in the 29th street ballroom, which is either a new addition to the building, or I just never noticed it before. You enter from the 29th street side, and they have a separate bar inside. A Lone Star (my beer of choice) was only $2, just like all over town (you can see why it’s my beer of choice), and a diet coke was $3 with free refills.
The. Slam. Was. Amazing.
I never thought this is something I would really get into. A couple of the people were kind of pretentious, but some of them were funny, and most of them were awsome. There were a couple I was kind of “meh” on, but for the most part, I cheered so much I was still hoarse the next day. It was a lot of fun, and you could tell the audience enjoyed the whole thing.
Next week on Tuesday, the 19th is the Finals. It’s at the same place at Spiderhouse, but it’s $12 cover. These are guaranteed to be all new poems also, because they are not allowed to repeat, so even if you’ve been before it will be worth it to go again.
Also, I got hit on because I was wearing my Batman t-shirt, which made me laugh. Nerd girls are a hot commodity! Jessica also recognized the shirt from the blog, because she’s my number one stalker fan!
Art can be Fun…and Frightening
When I was at Spider House for the Cathedral of Junk benefit as mentioned previously, I happened to grab a flyer. If you are at a place or event your enjoy, this is a good place to look for flyers for other activities.
The one I saw said “Shaun of the Dead” and “Escape from New York” really big, so I grabbed it. It turned out to be a benefit for “Flipside”, which I learned is apparently a local version of the Burning Man festival.
We ended up out at “the Warehouse” on Springdale, watching movies on a sheet hanging from the ceiling of a, yep, warehouse. I had actually been there before for an art opening. This time, for a $5 donation (and free parking), we got to watch two post-apocalyptic movies, and a burlesque show! There was also dollar beer, and my favorite part, CHOCOLATE COVERED BACON. That’s right. It sounds weird, but believe me, it was glorious.
People watching was also fantastic. There was the super-elegant goth chick, the guy wearing a bright purple and blue (what appeared to be) muppet fur cloak, the guy in the American Eagle yuppie sports coat, the burlesque dancer who walked around in pasties the rest of the night, and the guy dressed as Snake Plissken. I can’t explain what an odd mixture of people shows up to things like this. It’s just priceless.
“Shaun of the Dead” was of course fantastic and hilarious, even with the running commentary from the drunken, middle-aged, still trying-to-be-cool people behind us. “Escape from New York” was pretty boring, especially having seen it before. I prefer “Escape from L.A.” because it has that dream-boat Bruce Campbell, and it is much funnier.
I checked IMDB.com for the spelling of Plissken, and apparently there is a remake of “Escape from New York” in the works, set to come out in 2011. No word on casting yet, but I doubt it will be good. When will Hollywood stop cannibalizing itself?
They also had a raffle, and I won a comic book by a local artist. I would have preferred the last prize offered: the girl in pasties would come to your house and make dinner, wearing either lingerie or nothing, and then do the dishes! I would have let her wear a bathrobe and slippers if she did the dishes! But, we didn’t win that one. All in all, fun night, spent around $15 on entrance, beer and bacon combined.
My Quest to be More Interesting
I have dozens of friends that are always out doing things. They have tons of stories to tell at parties, whereas mine are more along the lines of, “Remember that episode of Friends?”….*Crickets*
Partially due to budgetary constraints, and partially due to laziness, I tend to stay home. Lately I’ve decided to suck it up, and just go try stuff.
A week or so ago there was a benefit for the Cathedral of Junk here in Austin. The cathedral is basically a giant sculpture someone built in their own yard out of scraps and junk. The Cathedral is in trouble with the city for some reason I can’t fathom. Austin is generally pretty smart about preserving anything that keeps our city weird. I have never been, but I want to at some point, so it’s important to me to save it.
There was a benefit concert, junk donation, and junk making benefit at Spider House, and I dragged my sister-in-law and another friend of ours along to it.
Spider House is an awesome coffee shop I’ve been to a couple times. They have a yard full of mismatched lawn furniture, and tables inside where you can sit and chill for hours. It’s one of those spectacular places you can talk to friends from dusk ’til dawn, read books, play board games, or meet all the interesting characters of our delightfully quirky city.
These are a couple of the junk sculptures on the mini cathedral of junk. I made a junk flag that may be hanging at the cathedral right now.
My junk flag, made from fabric and pipe cleaners (I’m also wearing a necklace I made myself). It was a great day to be outside, and there were awesome bands playing while we crafted.
After the benefit we walked over to Toy Joy and looked at all the awesome hard-to-find, and weird toys. I was fascinated by this key chain of a see-through woman’s torso with a baby in the belly that moves around in glitter water.
I didn’t pay attention to which building it was on the back of, unfortunately, but I think it was I Luv Video, an Austin institution.
That’s Deckard from Blade Runner (not Han Solo, as I was corrected). I got confused since he’s next to a TIE bomber from Star Wars. It was a fun day, and a great start to my adventuring. And everything was free except dinner! I can afford fun!
