You Know What I Don't Like? SXSW.

So, it's that time of year again. The time of year when I gripe and grumble about how much I don't like South By Southwest. For those that don't know, I am a casual musician. While I'd love to make at least a partial living off music, I have absolutely zero ambition to play any arena tours or judge anyone's singing ability on TV. In case you're thinking this is a case of sour grapes because they've never selected any band I've been in to play their awful festival, let me make it clear that I've never submitted to their awful festival, and I have no plans to in the future. I'm also not the type of cynical prick who simply hates anything popular. I mean, well, I am a cynical prick, but I'm not that type of cynical prick.
I'm not saying the festival is 100% pure evil, and I'm not demanding anyone with a conscience boycott it or occupy it or any dumb shit like that. I'm just saying I really, really don't like it. Also, I know nothing of the film/interactive/comedy/gaming aspects of it. I assume that stuff is just as much of an exploitative corporate behemoth as the music end, but who knows, maybe all that's great.
It's only fair to point out that even if this whole thing was just as awesome as everyone says it was back in the late 80's, I still probably wouldn't like it. Standing out in the sun all day with thousands of other members of the general public (who I, as a rule, try to avoid whenever possible), drinking shitty beer and listening to so many bands in a week that they all blur together and I don't even remember which ones were great and which ones sucked with a vigorous fury does not sound like a good time to me. Clearly, there's an awful goddamn lot of people who disagree, and let's be honest, they're probably not the assholes here, but it is what it is.
So, you ask, what then elevates this from something you'd just as soon not engage in to something you feel the need to piss and moan about every year?

HEY, LOOK DOWN HERE IF YOU'D LIKE TO SKIP ME RAMBLING LARGELY ABOUT MYSELF AND GET TO THE MEAT OF THIS.

SXSW makes giant piles of cash off of the independent artist community I love and doesn't offer much in return. Now, I'm no communist. The people who thought up this idea and put a lot of work into it every year certainly deserve to make some money off of it, and of course it costs a lot to put this thing together, but this has gotten a little out of hand.
For starters, every band that wants to be considered for the festival pays $30-40 to apply. The purpose of this is to discourage the bands who have absolutely no chance of getting in from clogging up the works by submitting for the hell of it, and to pay whatever poor bastard has to sift through all of them. Still, thousands upon thousands of bands submit every year, and those $40 do add up to a lot of money.
There's also merch. All your SXSW t-shirts and coozies and mouse pads and ball caps and duffel bags and whatever else you can silk screen a logo onto.
Then there are the corporate sponsorships. SXSW is sponsored by companies like Chevy, Monster Energy Drinks, Pepsi, Doritos, American Airlines, Miller Lite, etc. I don't know how much money they pour into it, but I wouldn't be surprised if Scrooge McDuck could swim around in it.
Actually, none of that would be all that bad if they didn't then gouge the ever loving fuck out of you for the price of admission. The absolute least you could pay for a badge for just the music portion of the festival was $625. That's if you planned waaaay ahead and bought it in early September. Today, a music badge will cost you $795, and an all access platinum badge will cost a completely insane $1595.
I can't find figures on how much of a profit SXSW makes (to be honest, I didn't really look all that hard.) According to Wikipedia, though, "SXSW is the highest revenue-producing event for the Austin economy, with an estimated economic impact of $167 million in 2011."
Of course, that money being injected into our economy is good for Austin as a whole, and particularly the music venues who do a huge amount of business during the week in question. They're not seeing any of that $1600 badge money, though. I suspect Most of that $167 million has to do with people coming in from out of town and spending their money at bars, restaurants, and hotels, and they'd probably make even more money if more people came to town because the badges were actually affordable.
The 2500 or so independent bands who this festival would be absolutely nothing without? They mostly play for free. They have the option to get $250 (really $210, if you consider the $40 you spent to submit) or get wristbands that get them into the official events for free. Being music fans themselves, I suspect a strong majority of them take the wristbands, and I suspect the organizers count on this, as it costs them nothing at all. If you're an Austin based band, $250 isn't bad for one gig. If you're from out of state, or better yet, another country, you're probably taking a loss, maybe a really big one, to help make these people lots and lots of money. Fuck that.
But what about the enormous exposure opportunity? You can't put a price on that, right? Yeah, here's the thing.... In the last 10 years, how many bands who were complete unknowns do you think got signed to a major label because of a SXSW performance? The answer (and even this is probably debatable) is 3. They were Hanson, John Mayer, and James Blunt. Think your quirky, original band is going to get spotted by some record executive? Good luck with that.
Really, if you're just 3-5 guys in a van booking gigs yourselves, you're better off booking a bunch of unofficial shows during the week, especially since scoring an official showcase means agreeing not to play any other night time shows all week. Even then, though, you may play to 100 people or 5 at any given gig, and those people just saw 40 bands yesterday, and they're going to see 200 more in the next few days, probably while pounding beers the whole time. If you don't light yourself on fire on stage, odds are that they won't remember you, even if they really liked you at the time. I did mention I'm a cynical prick, right?
Anyway, look, if you think it's the most fun you have all year, go for it. It's a good thing for Austin overall, and there's plenty of stuff to do that doesn't require a $1600 badge. I just find the idea of a festival that depends entirely on independent artists to make a huge profit, but then doesn't pay most of those artists anything at all unsavory at best. Plus, I prefer my beloved Red River district sans giant throngs of L.A. douchebags, but that's just me.

The Sandy Hook Hoax Part 1: For The Novice Conspiracy Nut

I've been meaning to start a blog for a while, and what finally got me off my ass? The bizarre prevalence of the "Sandy Hook was a hoax" conspiracy theory. What makes this particular crackpot idea special, you ask? Well, it's become so widely shared on social networks that people who don't generally pay attention to conspiracy theories are giving it consideration, simply because they're seeing it so much. Does this sound like you? Read on! For the already initiated Alex Jones devotees, I'll throw up an almost certainly pointless Part 2 for you later.

I don't feel the need to debunk the whole mess piece by piece. That's already been done thoroughly by lots of people with way more spare time on their hands than I. For example: Snopes has this one, and if you don't trust them, a quick Google search for "Sandy Hook hoax debunked" will provide you with 356,000 other results.
I'm not here to judge. I understand that the reason so many people are getting fitted for their tin foil hats these days is that the theories are compelling on the surface, and because there is some very real fuckery afoot with our government, but if this is your first conspiracy theory, allow me to point out a couple of things before you dive headlong into it.

I: Occam's Razor

Simply put, if your choices are "lone nut went on killing spree" or "evil fascist government hired 50 actors and got thousands of people in a small town to agree to carry out an elaborate hoax so they can steal your guns and enslave us all", the former is more likely to be true, you know, like, scientifically and shit.

II: People Make Shit Up On The Internet

Really, they do. Some people enjoy making up complete nonsense, perhaps even going so far as to fabricate evidence for it, just for the entertainment value of watching a bunch of rubes run around like beheaded chickens freaking out about it. These people are called trolls, and there are an awful lot of them out there. For example.

III: They Know You Won't Look It Up

Throughout the most popular video on the "hoax" the narrator tells you something is true, and says "look it up for yourself" when he could easily insert the alleged evidence into the video. People like this know that their invitation to check it out for yourself is almost as good as actual evidence. For example, Alex Jones frequently tells his listeners that the government admits to having Anwar Al Awlaki over for dinner at the Pentagon specifically to conspire together for more false flag terror attacks. They not only admit this, but it's even reported by CBS news! Look it up yourself! I did, and, um, not so much. I suspect very few of his listeners have looked it up, and I suspect he's very aware of that.

IV: Successful Conspiracies Are Small Conspiracies

The first question to ask yourself about any conspiracy theory is how many people had to be recruited and depended upon to keep their mouths shut. In the case of Sandy Hook, it would be half of the town, including cops, paramedics, hospital staff, school staff, and a whole buttload (technical term) of professional actors. This more or less leads us to:

V: When In Doubt, Ask HOW They Did It

A lot of conspiracies are quite compelling until you ask just how "They" pulled it off. Sandy Hook completely falls apart under this scrutiny. The primary theory seems to be that no one was actually killed, and the whole thing was faked. There's only one still pic of children at the school, and it's probably from some other event. So here's how this has to work:

• All the kids had to not be there on a school day, but none of their parents can be allowed to point out their kids had the day off. I'm sure that won't be a problem.
• A substantial number of professional actors had to be approached, hired, and depended upon to never speak of this. Sorry, you can never appear in movies or on TV, and we can't keep hiring you for further government hoaxes. Both would destroy the illusion.
• Most of the police in this small town had to be on board with this plan. Lucky that worked out.
• The guy that found six kids on his lawn? Actor. They totally had that guy buy that house and live there for years in preparation.
• Not one person in this fairly small town actually knows anybody that lost a child in this fake tragedy, but surely no one will notice. I'm sure they also won't notice that no one in their relatively small community seems to know these not-sad-enough parents who are all over TV. 

 

VI: With Every Major Disaster Comes Conflicting Reports

Unfortunately, our news media is driven by ratings, and therefore is not always (read: pretty much never) completely responsible in these situations. In the struggle to keep you watching their network, reporters will blurt out every new piece of information they get without properly vetting it. What you get is a bunch of reports that don't add up. Was there a second shooter, or just the one? Did he leave the AR-15 in the car, or was it the only weapon used? These inconsistencies are not evidence of conspiracy. They're evidence of our news media being a broken, ridiculous mess. 

VII: Finally, And Most Importantly, 

YOUTUBE VIDEOS MADE BY SOME RANDOM ASSHOLE ARE NOT RELIABLE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.

This shouldn't even need to be said, but clearly, it does. The kind of person that devotes their time to making a video like this is the kind of person that believes everything Alex Jones says. In case you're not aware, Alex thinks EVERYTHING is a government plot, including Hurricane Katrina and Fukushima. Whenever there is a tragic event, tune in to his show, and I guarantee you, he will be pondering the possibilities of a government plot. 

So much of the "evidence" for the hoax theory is simply bad research (such as Gene Rosen, the found-6-kids-on-his-lawn guy having the same name as a professional actor, but clearly not being the same person), or taken from seriously whack job sources, such as www.wellaware1.com (which I'm not linking to, because it keeps making by browser freeze. Copy and paste at your own risk), which, as Snopes says, is also trying to convince everyone that Hitler and Walt Disney were not real people, but rather Theodore Roosevelt's son playing both parts. Cool story, bro.

In Conclusion

Believe it or not, I watched the video in question with a completely open mind, as I do with any other theory. I found it to be the most laughably ridiculous crock of shit in recent memory, but if you still have your doubts, you're entitled to that, I suppose. Can I get you to consider one thing though? That if you're wrong, and the official story is 100% true, that the families who just had their friends, family, and 20 small children murdered probably don't need a horde of assholes on the internet accusing them of being actors to boot? If you just have some doubts, maybe keep them to yourself until some actual evidence comes out. That is all.