Smooth.

So I simply cannot wait to go to South by Southwest this year! It's my most favorite thing to do ever as it's all movies, music, beer and BBQ. Basically it's my bible camp. Last year I was equally psyched and then somehow misread my flight info and missed my flight by a day. It was like someone stole all my Christmas presents I was so upset. I just went home and crawled into bed and waited for Saturday so I could fly out.

So today I've been stressed as my wife and child have the flu and I can feel it coming on. Plus, I have a review to write and a big article for Film Threat....plus packing and tying up loose ends at work. So I look at my flight info and come to find out, I leave tomorrow (Thursday) not Friday. It was almost a crappy deja vu!! Luckily, I caught the error on my part.

Still, what a moron I am. Who doesn't check their flight infoWHile I'm not too bummed because I'll get to be in Austin a day early, I now have less time to do all the stuff I gotta do. And what am I doing? Writing a blog. Genius.

The other good thing is my Austin buddy Kelly alerted me that STYX is playing the RODEO tomorrow night so that's a MUST SEE EVENT.

Viva Austin!!!

Rookie move.

The other day my doc partner John asked me to help him shoot second camera on this new web-series he's doing called "Soundcheck." He takes a local band that's playing that upcoming weekend and goes to their practice and learns about the band. He did a GREAT one for five a.m. here:
http://pop.pressdemocrat.com/default.asp?item=738568&mode=blog

Since I haven't been shooting much, I jumped at the chance to help him do this weeks Soundcheck with local bluegrass nutjobs Stiff Dead Cat.

We headed over to their studio with our gear and got all set-up. The band is super cool and HILLARIOUS...and I really dig their music. So I started thinking of cool shots and angles and then I turned my camera on. Immediately the battery light starts flashing...and the battery in there is like, good for 400 minutes. Oops. No worries though, I have a back up. I shoot for about 90 seconds on the dying battery then switch them out.

Battery #2 is so dead it won't even power the camera on. I didn't mention this to John or the band as I was too mortified at my stupidity.

I felt (and still feel like) a total rookie moron. I have NEVER done that before. The best part was when I told the band I stupidly didn't charge my batteries and SDC's singer Wiley goes, "Don't feel bad man, at least you don't have TWO dead batteries." The video still came out pretty good, but I don't think any of my three minutes of footage made it in:
http://pop.pressdemocrat.com/default.asp?item=771025&mode=