TFM Does SXSW

Rob Fox12 years ago

The next morning I woke up on a couch in the apartment that the three guys who run Atomic share, hungover as all hell, and an hour late for work. One of them walked out into the living room almost immediately and said, “Don’t worry I already texted your boss. We need you with us today, we have to film with Pauly Shore.” That was definitely one of the stranger sentences I’ve ever woken up to, right up there with, “Sir this is the women’s room, just because you tucked it up doesn’t mean you can sleep on the sofa in here.” Well Dillards, maybe you should put sofas in your men’s room then too. Never get drunk at a shopping mall California Pizza Kitchen before 2:00pm.

Fast forward to The Blind Pig on 6th Street a few hours later and there we were with The Weasel himself. You all might be thinking to yourselves, “Who gives a shit? Pauly Shore isn’t even famous anymore.” Well, first off, you know who he is, so that makes him famous, dumbass. Second, if you don’t think people give a shit about Pauly Shore anymore, then you should spend a day wandering SXSW with him because JESUS CHRIST. Whatever my role was prior to leaving The Blind Pig, it quickly became crowd control, as the dude was mobbed almost immediately, by 30 to 40 people at a time. In fact, even before that, when he first entered The Blind Pig, some drunk asshole screamed, “HOLY FUCK PAULY SHORE!” Then the guy grabbed Pauly’s arm and followed him upstairs like a puppy. It was an impressive display of pathetic.

Cameras + Pauly Shore = Shit Show. I was taken aback to be honest. The aforementioned aspiring rappers flocked to him in droves. I must have watched thirty different guys freestyle in the span of about fifteen minutes. Fortunately that’s what The Weaz wanted, because the whole point of the video was to hit 6th and film people acting like fucking idiots. Mission accomplished, and then some.

The most outstanding moment of the Pauly Shore circus happened when a mother abandoned her 11-year-old girl on 6th Street, which was extremely crowded with sketchy people, to sprint up to Pauly Shore and snap his picture. I was standing behind Pauly trying to hold back roughly nineteen dudes hoping to freestyle for him. Seriously guys, get a fucking job, it was a Friday afternoon. Anyway, I stopped the girl, not really paying attention, and she sweetly says, “I’m just trying to get to my mom.” I replied, “Sorry, your mom abandoned you for Pauly Shore. Just stay here, she’ll be done in a second hopefully.” Then the girl, obviously having no clue who Pauly Shore was, says, “I can’t believe this, my mom doesn’t even like Jersey Shore. UGH.” God bless you and your terrible mother little girl, that might have been my favorite interaction of the weekend.

The rest of Friday was pretty low key compared to Thursday. We went back to Buckshot, back to the MySpace stuff at Copper Tank, and drank lots again.

Saturday was supposed to be big, as Justin Timberlake had announced that he was playing the final night of the MySpace Secret Show at The Copper Tank Brewing Company. We knew it was going to be a bitch to get into, but we figured it was worth a shot. At the very least we were guaranteed to get into the Kendrick Lamar show at Viceland, thanks to our aforementioned press badges which are now totally legitimized by this column…totally.

The Justin Timberlake show was not as hard to get into as we thought. It was harder. Saturday afternoon saw an extra barrier of 8-foot high fencing erected around the Copper Tank and a tripling of the police force working security. I had to wonder if there were police anywhere in Austin other than the MySpace show. I mean, I know this is one of the safest cities in America and all, but damn. The venue security team could have put down a small uprising. If you ever want to steal shit or kill a hooker or whatever in Austin, do it the next time Justin Timberlake comes to town.

While one of the Atomic guys ended up getting in by sheer force of bullshitting and dumb luck, the rest of the group decided to say fuck it and go to Kendrick Lamar. I don’t know if I’ve made this clear yet, but I was there to drink. We got to Viceland and immediately started drinking. Nothing of note happened there, other than smelling a lot of terrible weed floating through the air.

Around midnight we decided to go back to the Copper Tank and see if we could get into the venue now that the crowds had almost assuredly died down around it. Despite the comparatively empty streets around Copper Tank the police were still determined to keep everyone who wasn’t supposed to be in, out. Being drunk and annoyed it took me roughly twelve minutes to make a police officer furious with me for the second time that weekend, but this time it was a lady cop, so that doesn’t really count. Finally exhausted from what I assume was my charm, she growled “If you don’t get out of here RIGHT NOW, I’m getting the APD to take you in. COMPRENDE?” I calmly informed her that I didn’t speak Spanish, because this is America, and then left her with a wave and an “Adios!”

Back to Buckshot, more drinking, and then finally, rest. Nope, wait, the next day was St. Patrick’s Day. I wonder how many years I took off my life this weekend? Whatever, that Kid Cudi show was great.

TL;DR? Just watch this instead then.