At the first of the year this year, my roommates Mike and Amanda informed me that they were moving up north to Pflugerville. I think they secretly hoped I would move up there with them (it's only about 20 minutes north and almost still a part of Austin) but I just don't want to move from where I am. I have lived in Austin almost six years now and I've always stayed in the same apartment complex. First I lived alone (in an apartment dubbed Lodgeyland Ranch). While there, I met my neighbors Mike and his girlfriend Amanda. We moved into a two bedroom townhome together (dubbed LodgAngeles) and were roomies for almost three years. We talked about renting a house together and I would have liked that but it never panned out. Now I am in a one bedroom townhome that is just awesome. The upstairs is a open loft type area where the bedroom is and it opens onto a cool balcony. So far the only thing I don't like about it is that when my neighbor goes out and smokes on his balcony, it wafts into my bedroom. I have named my new space Lodgopolis.

Anyway, on Friday, the first day of SXSW, I planned on getting my badge at the Austin Convention Center at around 5:30 and then going to see "cl.one" at 6 at the ACC screening room. At nine it was going to be "The Wendell Baker Story," the new Wilson (Luke, Owen and big brother) at the Paramount and at midnight the Sundance comedy doc "The Aristocrats" at the Alamo Downtown.

I goofed around all day organizing my CD's and at 3:30 or so decided to dye my hair. I thought I could get it done, shower and be at ACC by 5:30. But, of course, I ran late and I didn't leave Lodgopolis until about 5:35. This might still have been enough time to get my badge and see the first film but forces conspired against me. Traffic was horrible (more horrible than usual) and there was absolutely no parking by ACC. I think there's supposed to be a garage for the convention center but I'll be Goddamned if I could find it. I had to park on a side street all the way down by I-35 and walk about three blocks

Then when I got in the Convention Center, I, of course, got the runaround from a couple of volunteers who didn't know where to send me for my press pass. Instead of finding out, they pretended like they knew and sent me on a couple of wild goose chases. Finally a nice and intelligent girl at an information booth walked with me and helped me get set up. She wasn't sure what to do but she made sure she helped me until we found out. I got my badge and my bag of stuff pretty quickly but by this time it was well after 6pm. (The volunteer girl told me I was wise to come later in the day because the computers had went down for an hour at about 2 o'clock and everyone just sort of stood around dumbfounded.)

When I got my badge, they took my picture as they print it on your ID. I fixed my hair and the guy counted one, two, three. I stopped smiling on three and said something about how nobody probably smiles and everyone wants to look cool on their picture. He said, "Well, if you were trying to look smug, that's what I got." What an ass. I decided to go back to Lodgopolis and head to the Paramount a little after 8pm. But I have had a sore throat since yesterday and felt a little sick so I decided to go to Sonic and get a slushie. There's a DQ by my house but they don't have the green lemon-lime slushies anymore and that's what I was craving.

It took a while to get to Sonic with traffic so snarled and guess what: They don't have damn lemon-lime slushies either. You can get lemon or lime but only made with fresh fruit. Fuck that! I want the good old thick, goopey, florescent green, sugary, syrupy, artificial lemon-lime kind! Damn fast food people. They have cherry, grape, orange and raspberry flavored goop. What happened to good old lemon- lime?

Anyway, I got a Route 44 Cherry Limeaid and headed back to my pad. I went through my bag and found a DVD for a movie called "A Killer Within" starring C. Thomas Howell and Sean Young; my SXSW 2005 Film Guide (don't lose it, it's 30 dollars to replace the bag girl told me); party invites; a bunch of advertisements, copies of Creative Pulse, Mother Jones, P3 Production Update, American Cinematographer, Paste, Paper, and Scr(i)pt magazines; an Austin Chronicle, some empty CD shells from a company called cshellsdirect and a "Production Tour" computer disk from Avid that was in one of the worst CD holders I've ever dealt with. It had a little device that was supposed to kick the disc out to you but it doesn't quite work and you end up fingering the disc all over trying to get it out. It was more complicated than a teenage girl's bra to get open.

While I was writing the above here on Day One in Lodgopolis, a somewhat cute piece of rough trade knocked on my open door (startling me as I had Bowie's "Heroes" playing at a moderate level). He was holding a can of corn and apologetically introduced himself as a neighbor in need of a can opener. I got him one and he stood in my entry-way opening his can while describing his frustration about buying some groceries and not realizing he didn't have a can opener. He got his veggies open, thanked me and left. I love my new place. There seems to be almost nothing but hot guys in my courtyard area all day long.

I went back downtown around 8pm. Parking was a bitch. I wanted to find a place halfway between the Alamo and the Paramount as I would be going to both places for movies, but couldn't find an open space and ended up parking in this somewhat secret little open lot that my friend Johnny Oh! showed my on 10th street near the Governor's mansion.

I walked down to the seventh block of Congress and the street in front of the Paramount was packed. There was a big silver Airstream trailer parked in front and a ton of news vans. Since the Wilson Brothers (Luke, Owen and elder brother Andrew) were going to be here for the premiere of the film, I expected a lot of press. There was a red carpet out and I made my way around looking for the badge line (the line for people with badges as opposed to the lower echelon film geeks who have film "passes" and the even more low tiered spectator, the dreaded "single ticket" buyer).

I walked around a bit only to find out that the badges people had already come in, so I made my way onto the red carpet and went inside. On my way inside I saw Matt Dentler, the SXSW "Conference and Festival Producer" (he was the Assistant Film Programmer when I first met him) and we said a quick hello to one and other. Matt always seems calm, cool and collected which is exactly what you want during a film festival.

An older usher (all of the ushers at the Paramount seem to be senior citizens) tried to get me to go up into the balcony but I went ahead and walked down to the front. I looked at my bag and noticed that it had a frog drawing for the logo which was signed by Daniel Johnston. I got my camera out and was checking to make sure everything was okay with it. It was acting weird but I finally got it to work.

I was looking at my list of films I was planning to see because I wanted to see if there was something Johnny Oh! might like that he could buy a single ticket to. The screenings during the week are usually a little easier to get into. I was looking at my papers and a woman's voice behind me asked me, "Is that a list of films you are going to see?"

I turned around and saw a beautiful, blonde, thin young woman with a t-shirt that said "I LOVE NERDS" smiling at me. I told her it was and she asked me if I was going to see "Waterborne." I told her that I didn't think I was going to be able to and she told me I should see it. I asked her if she was connected to the film and she told me she was in it and then she pointed to a man sitting next to her and told me he had made the film.

The man was Ben Rekhi and the girl was Mageina Tovah. We began to talk and the Mageina was so engaging and so easy- going that the conversation just seemed to flow. Ben asked me if I recognized Mageina and I said I didn't think so. He told me she was in "Spiderman 2" and brought Tobey Maguire some cake. I discovered that she did more than that. Actually, she played Peter Parker's dorky female neighbor, a somewhat major role in the film. I was awed. But Mageina was so sweet, warm and unpretentious that it was still quite easy to talk to her.

We talked about "Waterborne" and a film Ben had produced about graffiti artists starring Mark Webber (of Todd Solondz's "Storytelling") called "Bomb the System" that has been picked up by Palm Pictures.

Soon some other people sat down beside me and they were quite nice as well. They joined into our conversation and we all began to talk about films and the festival. The girl from this new couple, I think her name was Dana, was going up to get some drinks and asked if she could get me anything. I though this was about the sweetest thing that had ever happened to me at a film festival and thanked her but said no. While she was gone I sort of pissed off her boyfriend/mate by challenging him on the fact that SXSW had had screenings at Austin Community College in the past. They have always had them at the Austin Convention Center and labeled them ACC in the schedule which is somewhat misleading. He was thinking of the Millennium Youth Complex and I was such an ass about telling him he was wrong that I'm sure I pissed him off. I didn't mean to be an ass but it sure came out that way.

Mageina and Ben said that there film was screening at the Dobie and this guy said he worked in the mall at Ticket City. I didn't even think about it but if I hadn't been such an asshole to him I might have made a good friend to have from ticket hook-ups. Oh well.

It was getting close to 9pm, the showtime for the film and we finally saw some luminaries, like Owen Wilson and Harry Dean Stanton being seated in the center section of the downstairs area, which had been roped off. There were lots of hangers-on and picture takers and press people and a ton of people who thought they were somebody holding up the screening. It made me feel like I was in Park City but without the snow. I saw Luke, who has grown his hair fairly long and Andrew moving towards the backstage entrance and knew the film would be starting soon. Matt Dentler soon came on stage and introduced the brothers and they did a quick introduction to the film. There was no mention of a Q&A. The lights dimmed and the SXSW 2005 trailer came on. It was a clever little film about a guy who buys a map to the stars homes from a street vendor who also sells him the "keys" to a star's home for ten dollars. The guy goes to a house and opens the door and finds a sign that says, "We're downstairs."

He goes down and there is a secret society meeting with black robes and hoods on and a film is playing. Text on the screen says something like: "Filmmaking. It's a secret club. But you can join" or something like that. One of the guys in the hoods turns out to be Jeff Goldblum who makes some goody eyes and says something like, "Yes. You can come in." Or something like that. It's done very well even utilizing some 8mm stock and some quirky camera work and editing. It's also quite funny.

After the film, I said goodbye to the people sitting next to me. I wanted to go to the Alamo and get in line for "The Aristocrats." ) I noticed that Ben and Mageina weren't behind us anymore. I don't know if they made it through the entire film or not.

I went outside and took a couple pictures of the Airstream trailer as it is important to the film. Then I hightailed it down to the Alamo, about a 3 or 4 block walk. I saw my friend Jan waiting in what I thought was the badges line but they had flip-flopped them from how they were last year, so I got in the badges' line which was actually shorter. There was a young man (seemingly of Indian descent) and a chubby young girl in line ahead of me and I struck up a conversation with them asking them if they had seen "The Wendell Baker Story." They had and seemed as unimpressed with it as I had been. We talked a bit more and I discovered that they helped to program a 380 seat theater at a University in Tallahassee, Florida. They said that the usually played films for a couple of nights, programming every night of the week but Sunday.

We talked for quite a while and were also discussing how cool Austin was and how neat the Alamo Drafthouse could be. I told them about seeing Crispin Glover when he showed his film "What Is It" a couple weeks ago and they told me that they had thought about booking him but he wanted too much money. I told them he was worth every penny.

We soon went inside and I sat towards the front as usual. A couple older guys sat down beside me and when a skateboarding video came on the started talking about "Lords of Dogtown." This is the fictionalized account of the "Dogtown and Z-Boys" documentary. The biggest selling point, besides its hot cast of young guys who will surely be shirtless for much of the film (including Heath Ledger, Emile Hirsch, John Robinson of Gus Van Sant's "Elephant," and Victor Rasuk of "Raising Victor Vargas"), is that it is also written by Stacy Peralta, the original Z-Boy himself who also made the documentary. I tried to strike up a conversation about it with these two guys but they acted like they knew who I was and barely acknowledged me. (Oh, it's that bothersome Lodger fellow. If we talk to him, he'll write about us on his website). I was going to mention that Fox also has a 70's skater movie coming out this summer called "Roll Bounce" starring (L'il) Bow Wow but decided against trying to talk to them further.

The Alamo weird video pre-show was particularly odd and smoking at this screening. They usually have one or two things but tonight, in addition to the 70's skateboarding set to rock music, there was a James Brown wannabee segment from "Soul Train," a "Dukes of Hazzard" TV show commercial, a Bollywood musical number, an old (almost racist) cartoon about a black cat, a Hawaiian Hula dance, and an extended clip of Godzilla fighting King Kong. Someone named John Rodriguez got up and introduced Paul Provenza, the comedian and filmmaker behind the documentary "The Aristocrats" and after a quick introduction by him, the film was screened. Well, first there was the SXSW trailer, which, again, was about the guy getting a key to the star's homes only this time when he got into the basement, the secret society person was Ron Livingston (of "Office Space" fame). I noticed during the end credits that Bob Odenkirk (who is working on a film with Jeff Goldblum). The only two name actors on the end credits were Goldblum and Livingston, so I am assuming we are going to have to watch these same two SXSW trailers for nine fucking days. Ugh!

At the end of the screening, Provenza, a producer and editor Emery Emery did a Q&A that went on for about 30 minutes. Provenza was in heaven, having the time of his life. He told us that we were the first group of people to see the film that wasn't in the industry and that he was delighted that we liked and "got" the film. It was probably one of the best Q&A's that I have attended.

I wanted to take a picture but needed to use a flash and since no one else was taking pictures, I waited until the end of the Q&A to snap one. My digital camera has been acting up all day and it took the flash forever to charge. After I took one pic, the damn thing died on me. I only got one picture and Provenza has his arm up over his face.

Day one is history. Two films down, about 25 or so to go.

Lodger at SXSW 2005