Austin

Sports Thought: O.J. Mayo in the NBA All-Star H-O-R-S-E Game! Score. I think from a regular fan's view, the lineup is pretty weak (no Rasheed?), but maybe they were instead going for that lucrative market of Tennesseans and Southern California basketball fans. All I can say is, the last time I saw O.J. play in person, he spent the whole game shooting/dunking over the Lopez twins, so maybe he can embarrass Kevin Durant to some degree too.
Food Find: An important lesson I learned this weekend is that lying is often the right thing to do. I went to the Austin P.F. Chang's with my friend Shannon specifically to have this waiter, TJ, who she had for her birthday in November, since he was like a life changing experience (so much so that he gave her his card at the end of the meal). Although we had to wait about an extra half hour to get a table in his section, he was really excited to learn it was my birthday (it wasn't), and even said he remembered me from Shannon's birthday (impossible). But nevertheless, he brought us free lettuce wraps, upgraded our seafood entree to include THREE different dead things from the sea (scallops, shrimp, and calamari), and brought us a free dessert eggroll (banana in wrapper and fried) with ice cream, fruit, and candles at the end. Apart from the freeness, the food was about what I would expected from a mass producing mega chain. The spicy seafood was too hot to eat consistently (even for two hot-food-loving native Texans), the cucumber salad was tossed in virtually no dressing, and the secret ingredient in the lettuce wraps was an uncompromising amount of salt. The highlight, though, was the Peking duck, which TJ recommended, telling us he "didn't normally like duck," but this was some sort of hyperbolic experience. I don't normally like duck either, but the P.F. Chang's stuff was really well smoked and seasoned, and didn't have too much of that gamey taste you'd expect from non-chicken poultry.
Shaq Says: "Ok i admit it i at performance enhancing frosted flakes 2 yrs ago, lol"

So as I mentioned above, I spent most of the weekend in Austin, specifically at the UT campus. Most of what I did involved food, as usual, or Texan-y things.
-Before I left, got breakfast at La Bodega, a taqueria in town, with my dad. I was really impressed by this place's breakfast menu, since it was basically all your Tex Mex staples, but altered so they could be served in the AM. Dad got breakfast enchiladas, which were corn tortillas filled with eggs, black beans, and cheese, then topped with a "spicy tomato butter" and chorizo. I got some breakfast tacos, one with really good, citrusy crawfish and the other with spice rubbed salmon. The crawfish worked in the taco context, but the fish did not at all--the fish flavor just didn't mesh with eggs. Both came with potatoes and a refried black beans.

-A typical go to in Austin is the Whole Foods in the middle of town, so our lunch was no different. I had already eaten my big TexMexBrex, so I just confined myself to dessert. Unfortunately, Whole Foods has just added a dessert bar, and my major achilles heel is choice, so I ended up getting samples of eight or so. The highlights: a cinnamon roll bread pudding, which was basically a bread pudding with cinnamon and raisins, topped with a cream cheese frosting; Mexican chocolate bread pudding, which had cinnamon and chiles in it; breakfast bread pudding, which was made with challah, and had maple syrup and bacon in it; and mint brownies, which were...brownies with mint in them, and a mint frosting, and then brownies on top as well. There were other things I ate, but I can't recall them so they aren't worth recalling.

-We saw a show at this semi-famous bar in downtown called Stubb's. The band was called the Bridge, who had billed themself as a bluegrass funk jamband, and I think they satisfied all those criteria. I really like bands that have more instruments than the typical guitar-bass-drum combo, and these guys didn't disappoint, sporting a sax player, a guy on a mandolin (both acoustic and an electric, Les Paul mandolin) who also beatboxed, and a keyboardist (who also had an electric organ). They also traveled with a Scandanavian artist duo who "painted the show" and then sold it afterward. The show was really solid, really only limited by the fact that there were about thirteen people in the audience.

-Ate at this place called the Austin Cookie Lounge about two or so blocks from campus which lets you custom make your own cookies. They had six different batters (and two gluten free) which you select from and then about forty mix-ins, including various chocolates, dried fruits, nuts, and candy bars. Once you place your order, they go ahead and bake it for you. This is one of the smartest ideas I've seen, so the less I say the better. That way I can go open my Southern Californian ripoff, and nobody else will beat me to it.

-Sunday night we got to see the 10th anniversary screening of Office Space. The whole movie was filmed in Austin (except for two scenes in Dallas, which was brought up by a fan in the q&a), and Mike Judge, the writer/director, is affiliated with Austin, hence its showing there. I think this movie really proved that there are fanboys for basically every popular quirky film, with people dressing up and bringing props to the showing. We had seats in row V, upper balcony, which was the last central row in the entire theater. I was pretty glad I've seen this movie some fifteen times, since people were quoting along and laughing before jokes were told, and applauding for the first appearance of every character. Afterward, a decent number of cast members came out on stage (Samir, Michael Bolton, Lumbergh, Brian the waiter, Nina the receptionist, Lawrence, the Bobs (one being John C. McGinley, aka Dr. Cox of Scrubs), and Milton) and answered some really nerdy questions (whether the deleted scene with the security guard would be included on the Blue-Ray since it wasn't on regular edition, etc.).