South by southwest

10 things worth sharing this week

Hidden Valley, Joshua Tree National Park

Hey y’all,

It’s the 10th anniversary of Show Your Work! I’m so delighted that people are still discovering this book. If you hate self-promotion and putting yourself out there, I think it can really help. (See the P.S. at the end of this letter.)

Here are 10 things I wanted to share this week:

1. From the desert to the ocean: Meg and I started our leap day with a sunrise in Joshua Tree National Park and finished it with a sunset view on Malibu Pier. In between, we hiked Hidden Valley, took in the panorama at Keys View, and strolled the Cholla Cactus Garden. We drank a shake at Shields Date Garden and had a heavenly pastrami reuben at Sherman’s Deli in Palm Springs. We put an end to 3 hours of LA traffic with a beautiful drive down Malibu Canyon Road. Exhausting, but exhilarating.
   
   

2. Desert reading: I spent a full post-gig afternoon poolside at the Ace Hotel, reading Desert Oracle, a handsome paperback collection of the Joshua Tree-based zine. I found Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire a little misanthropic at first, but after driving I-10 for a bit I was in the right mood. (I picked up Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries at the wonderful Malibu Village Books, which has one of the best selections I’ve ever browsed in a shop that size.)
   
   

3. Desert power: As part of our whirlwind vacation recovery plan, we I saw Dune: Part Two at the Alamo Drafthouse. It ruled. (I read the book last August when Texas felt like Arrakis.) One little detail I noticed: composer Hans Zimmer obviously loves Ennio Morricone.
   
   

4. Desert listening: I’m enjoying this spooky reverb-drenched mix and this Dune-meets-Kraftwerk concept album.
   
   

5. Back home in Austin, Texas, the trees and the bluebonnets are blooming and everybody’s gearing up for the invasion of SXSW. I’m not doing anything official this year, but I plan to occasionally bike around and soak up the madness. People often ask me for recommendations when they come here. If you’re downtown, I will say: use the hike and bike trail as much as possible, get tacos at Veracruz, and venture at least as far as Terry Black’s for BBQ.
   
   

6. Walk the hike and bike a mile west from the convention center and you’ll arrive at our civic cathedral, The Austin Public Library. Take in the view on the roof and check out the Recycled Reads gift shop downstairs for souvenirs. If you’re tired, you can get queso and chips at Torchy’s, a smoothie at the JuiceLand, or a picnic at the Trader Joe’s nearby. If you have a bit more energy, you can either walk south on the pedestrian bridge across the river and hit Terry Black’s BBQ, or you can head north on what I call the Shoal Creek Book Walk and get to the corner of 6th and Lamar, where you can shop at the flagship Whole Foods, buy my books signed at Bookpeople, and possibly catch a free day show at Waterloo Records.
   
   

7. Another nice walk from the convention center is north along the Waller Creek Greenbelt and up to the brand-new Waterloo Greenway. Go a bit further north and you can hit Scholz Garden, where our best radio station, KUTX 98.9, is throwing a series of morning shows open to the public. A few blocks north of that and you can take in the Blanton Museum’s wonderful show of Anni Albers’ thread and paper work. A few blocks west is The Harry Ransom Center, the gem of The University of Texas. If you aren’t dead of heatstroke by then, you can walk back downtown through the Texas Capitol grounds (take a selfie with The Ten Commandments!) and down Congress Avenue.
   
   

8. Radio: We have great stations here. In addition to KUTX 98.9 FM, there’s classical KMFA 89.5 FM and our community KOOP 91.7 FM. I’d add those as favorites to the Radio Garden app before I came down. (You can stream all those stations online, of course. Just this week I discovered The Joystick Jukebox: a one-hour show of video game music I’ve started listening to with my kids.)
   
   

9. Film: I saw Don Hertzfeld’s new short film last night with Mike Judge in attendance, and I’m looking forward to Richard Linklater’s episode of God Save Texas. There are a lot of movies I wouldn’t mind seeing at SXSW, but two in particular caught my eye: Faders Up: The John Aielli Experience and the new flick by the Ross Brothers, Gasoline Rainbow. (It was fifteen years ago at SXSW 2009 that I drew their breakout documentary, 45365. They wound up using the drawing as the poster, of which the late great Roger Ebert said, “Now this is a great movie poster.”)
   
   

10. Finally, to make up for our lost Flaco and the owls that have disappeared in my backyard: Athena, the resident great horned owl at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center south of town, now has her own 24/7 Cornell Nest Cam. She’s sitting on two eggs right now, so tune in!

Thanks for reading. This newsletter is a hand-rolled, algorithm-free, completely reader-supported publication. If you’d like to support my work, buy my books, hire me to speak, or become a paid subscriber:

xoxo,

Austin

P.S. “This book changed my life.” That’s Ali Abdaal on how Show Your Work! became the guiding philosophy of his YouTube channel with over 5 million subscribers. (Ali has his own bestselling book out now: Feel Good Productivity: How To Do More of What Matters to You.)