AUSTIN, Texas, Mar. 19, 2005 — It's the last day of the festival. We feel obligated to see some movies. Also to go downtown to take some pictures of the SXSW folks and the Coexistence Exhibit.

Of course, having eschewed the gym yesterday, it calls out today. I intend to take a stack of old magazines for reading material. But the phone rings a strangled ring as I'm headed out. (The service picked up.) I stop and listen to the message. It's our handyman, FFP's cousin. He says he told FFP's parents he couldn't come until Monday and see about a leaky roof but now

he's decided to come because of a rainy forecast. But he can't get them on the phone. I drive over there (meanwhile forgetting the magazines). My mother-in-law is in the yard. I inspect the problem. My father-in-law was trying to repair the dropped ceiling when the new moisture appeared. He'd constructed a T-support for the tiles and was having trouble driving the thin nails. He is, after all, legally blind and ninety-four. Geez. I'm glad the handyman is coming.

At the club I realize I didn't get the magazines so I draw on the stack of unread newspapers in the back seat. They are everywhere! So I read about Rioja wine, people who live to be very old, and various art, movies, plays in my old newspapers and ride the bike for fifty-one minutes. I do seven sets of weight things and go home. (Must get more serious about my weight program and also do some different cardio machines.) FFP is finishing up some planting when I get home. He loves to buy and put out a few new things this time of year. I like to get out and tidy things up...trim, pick up dead limbs, stuff like that. But I haven't gotten around to it this year. Maybe next week.

Instead I shower up. We are going downtown. We don't know what to expect, parking-wise.

Downtown we find a place on the street near the post office. We set off and walk through the Farmer's Market. I buy an iced coffee and we drift toward Town Lake. We decide it's too early to go to Auditorium Shores. We joke...what about we go to the Cafe at the Four Seasons and have a snack. Well, why not? So we can't get on the patio but we do sit among the SXSW elite (lots of musician types) and eat some great food. (I have sashimi tuna, samosas and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice. And I finish FFP's portobello enchiladas which are delicious.

We walk behind the hotel, down the trail, under the Congress Ave. Bridge and over to the S. First bridge and over to Auditorium Shores. It's a bit of a different atmosphere at the free concert. Joe McDermott is entertaining children who dance to his instructions. We take a bunch of pictures and go over to the trail so I can get a good look at the whole art exhibit and read some of the quotes on the bottom of the billboards. I recommend going to see this art exhibit on the trailside of Auditorium Shores. Food for thought, interesting art.

We wander back to the Alamo downtown. On the way we see a rally for peace at City Hall with rock music. (Well, it is SXSW after all.) We queue up for the movie and they let us in nice and early. We get some drinks and right before the movie Jette hustles in. She finds a seat in front of us, though. We watch Reel Paradise about a family that moves to Fiji and operates a free movie theater for a year. It is part family crisis (think the Loud family except that the family weathers the usual family stuff), part coming of age for the kids, part travelog of life in Fiji. I like it and the Piersons and their son are there. (The family moved to Austin.) It is a brave movie in addressing the culture clash and the generation gap. I'd seen a pan somewhere but I recommend it. One thing that was really interesting was the film of Fijiian (?) faces during the movies. Movies don't affect all of us the same way. We see so many images and we can gravitate to more cerebreal things, but this just shows an extreme view of the varying affects of moving images.

We went outside. We noticed that it looked like it had rained pretty hard. We were lucky to be inside. We queued for the next film, Stephen Tobolowsky Birthday Party. When we got in for this film, Jette sat by us. We discussed issues like the repetitiveness of clip reels at Alamos (they were finally showing one I hadn't seen before), getting bored with festival promo reels, light for reading in theaters before the performance and how the Piersons had gotten married at the Angelika in Manhattan. We discussed the possibility of a wedding at an Alamo. No, I don't think Jette is considering a wedding, we were just talking. I said we got married in FFP's house and had a pre-wedding breakfast at Cisco's Bakery in East Austin. Jette was telling us about a Cajun place in East Austin which led us to weddings and the Piersons wedding. Oh, and we talked about first dates Hers: there at the Alamo, maybe, if it was a date. She's written about that. And us: Armadillo World Headquarters or Hunt's Barbeque or maybe some other place (old Matt's El Rancho on 1st) depending on when you count it really a date. Anyway, we had a nice conversation while ordering food and waiting for the feature.

The movie was interesting. Stephen Tobolowsky is a character actor. He has been in tons of movies and TV shows and plays. But he doesn't look familiar. In the movie, they pretend it's his birthday and he tells some fantastic stories, all purportedly true. I got a little bored with it, like you were at a party and one guy had great stories but you just want to hear from someone else. If they could have gotten right to intersperse brief scenes from his appearances or had more stories about him, it would have worked better. (A couple of people talked about him but they weren't good stories, really.) Still the subject of character actors and their ability to disappear and be anonymous was interesting. Stephen is a Texan, too, and he and I probably lived close to each other when he was at SMU and I was working in Dallas. I wouldn't not recommend this film just because of what it reveals about acting as a career.

We walk out of the theater. It's been raining again and we missed it. We elbow through crowds going to Antone's and such for SXSW music, find our car and head home. We read and watch a bit of TV and then bed.

That article in The Wall Street Journal about people who live to be very old indicates that 115 is a real barrier. Almost no one who is 114 lives to be 115. (Yeah, the sample has to be small but they did say that a dozen people had died at 114 since 2001.) What do these old people have in common? They eschewed doctors, were never fat but didn't avoid certain foods nor smoking or drinking. And their relatives lived a long time. Most are deaf, blind and even losing sense of smell and taste. So it ain't all joy. And they do die. And 115 is almost unreachable.