Weekend Brunch – SXSW edition

Holy cow, Zoners, yesterday was some serious craziness. My Twitter followers got a glimpse, but I really want to share some of the fun and exciting details of the day. Let me sit down with my banana and my big glass of orange juice and my apricot and cream cheese kolache from the legendary Czech Shop in West, Texas, and tell you all about it! This is going to be a long one – you might want to grab a cup of coffee.

First of all, two things. Until Thursday night, I didn’t realize that there would be a ‘Colbert Report’ writer at this year’s South by Southwest Interactive festival. Secondly, I had no idea I would be lucky enough to get to go.

One of the people from the lovely PR firm of Porter Novelli contacted me on Thursday asking about Meredith Scardino’s appearance in the festival. While I wasn’t able to answer their question, I didn’t pass up the opportunity to see if there might be a chance for me to get some kind of press pass to cover the event for the site. And God Bless them, they actually hooked me up with one. So on Thursday night, I got the official word that I had tickets, right in the middle of the NFZ Bump hubbub. No rest for the wicked, I suppose.

The original plan was to drive in early Saturday morning, and go home Saturday night – make a day trip of it. But after I did a little research to see who all was going to be there on Saturday, I saw that Jonathan Zittrain was going to be giving a panel at 10a on Saturday morning. Small confession – I’ve had a serious nerd crush on Mr. Zittrain ever since his ‘Colbert Report’ interview. I had to try to make it to this panel. Friday I called my good friend (and lovely web host) Jen, and she said we could crash at her place for the night before the show. That way, we could get into the festival early and make this panel. So I threw some clothes in my overnight bag, and after work on Friday, made a frantic dash to Austin from Dallas (about a 3.5 hour drive, plus bathroom stops and the mandatory Czech Stop break for kolaches and other Polish cooking goodness). When we got there, which was at quite the late hour, I might add, Jacob was still up, and he proudly showed me The Sweater, which Jacob and I examined together with reverent amazement. Jen and I watched the uncut Cramer TDS interviews, and proceeded to stay up way too late talking about it. Another sleepless night, totally worth it.

My sweet husband, who loves me so much he lets me drag him around to things like this, and I got up early on Saturday morning, and after a most excellent breakfast taco at Taco Cabana, we were on our way to SXSW. After checking my Twitter feed, I realized my buddy who used to write at the Huffington Post, Rachel Sklar, was going to be there, too. We were planning on meeting up during my New York trip last fall, but she ended up having to be out of town. I really wanted to make sure to be able to talk to here a bit while we were both in the same town. So I set three goals for myself. Goal #1: Meet Jonathan Zittrain. Goal #2: Finally get to meet Rachel in person. Goal #3: Shake the hand of Meredith Scardino, writer for the ‘Colbert Report’.

Unfortunately, there was a really bad wreck on I-35 on the way in, and between that and our not getting up quite as early as we’d hoped, we missed Jonathan Zittrain’s panel. Shoot. We were able to get into a second panel, but there were no chairs, so my husband and I sat on the floor. Note to self: you are entirely too old to be sitting on bare floors. Parts of our lower bodies began to fall asleep in the most painful of ways, so we ended up bailing on the panel after about 30 minutes.

We decided instead to head into the Trade Show. Free keychains, pens, and stickers – Whoo hoo! At the book signing table, there was a sign for Jonathan Zittrain, but apparently I had missed his book signing by mere moments. Foiled again! My favorite booth at the show was the Zombie social networking site, who are also working on a zombie movie. We had been invited to go to a press lunch, so as we were heading out, we walked around the parameter of the show floor. And there, in the interview booth, was Paul Effing Rudd. I just about fell over. However, about that same time, we were being crushed by the mob of people who were also noticing that Paul Rudd, along with Rashida Jones and Jason Segel from Paul’s new movie ‘I Love You Man‘, were about 10 feet away from us. We decided to head out to the lunch, hoping it was a little less populated.

After a few minutes at the press lunch where we failed to actually eat anything, we decided to head back to the trade show for a few minutes before the 3:30p sessions. My husband decided to see if he could find the blogger from of his favorite blogs, BikeHugger.com, who was scheduled to be at the book signing table any minute, and I decided to see if I could find a soft place to sit for a few minutes because my plantar fasciitis was killing my foot. Did I mention I’m really too old for this type of thing? As I’m walking around, I look over, and I see him – Jonathan Zittrain! Score! But I recognized who he was standing next to as well – LAWRENCE LESSIG! Nerdgasm! So I went and gushed and probably scared them both a little, and I got a pic of them on my iPhone. Then they had someone take a picture of the three of us, and I got to be the meaty center of a very tasty nerd sandwich. Goal #1 accomplished.

The phone service in the Austin Convention Center was very hit and miss, so it was about this time that my husband was finally able to get a call to come through and was wondering where exactly I was. I started to explain where I was, when in mid-sentence I looked up and realized I saw MC Frontalot! I had to say Hi! So I did. The husband found me, and after spending a few minutes at a panel, I realized I had no juice in my iPhone and not much juice in my netbook. I wanted to take copious notes in Meredith’s panel, so again we slipped out and we found a quiet table where we plugged in and charged for a few. I was 0 for 3 on panels at this point, but I had to keep my eyes on the prize.

Rachel and I had been e-mailing and DMing on Twitter all day, but we kept missing each other. I got into Meredith’s panel about 30 minutes before the start, and found a most excellent spot to bust out the netbook and set up camp. As we waited, I caught Rachel walking by out of the corner of my eye. I grabbed her and we exchanged hugs and greetings and introductions all around. Then she went and sat down, and I waited on the panel. Goal #2 accomplished.

The panel, “Comedy on Television and the Web” was most excellent, and not only featured Meredith, but also B.J. Novak (“The Office”), Keith Richman (CEO of Break Media), Ricky Van Veen (Co-Founder/Editor-in-Chief, CollegeHumor.com), and Avner Ronen (CEO, BOXEE). I took lots of notes and will do a write-up here in a few, but it was very interesting to hear this panel’s views about comedy. It was also one of the greatest moments in the festival to hear a “That’s what she said” out of Novak’s mouth.

After the panel, I saw Meredith hanging back behind the stage, taking pictures and chatting with some media people. I managed to sneak in and say Hi, but her handlers quickly whisked her away to go to a party sponsored by the people on the panel. The party was at one of the local beverage establishments, and they had invited all of the panel-goers to attend. Well, I wasn’t going to miss that opportunity, so we hopped into a pedicab (those things ROCK, by the way), and were whisked down the street to the Cedar Something-a-rather bar, a lovely patio setting establishment.

We got to the party and I again met up with Meredith. She was already engaged in quite a few different conversations, so I waited patiently as my husband grabbed us a couple of beers (can I just give a high-five for SXSW parties and their free beer?) and we hung out five feet from B.J. Novak. I’m sure that he thought we were stalking him, but I swear we weren’t. Then Meredith and I went and grabbed a beer, and finally got to chat for a bit. We talked about the show, and about writing, and about No Fact Zone, and all kinds of fun and exciting things that I wish I could remember better but I was going on no sleep, no food, and beer. Not the best of combinations, but most definitely nice. I also got to talk to Meredith’s boyfriend for a while, who is actually a really nice guy. I gave out lots and lots of No Fact Zone business cards, and my husband got to talk to the Boxee panelist, and we all generally had a very lovely time. In case anyone is wondering, Meredith is sweet and smart and funny and adorable and just a really wonderful person. I’m glad I was able to meet her and talk with her. Goal #3 accomplished with a bullet.

As we headed home, I decided the best thing for me was a big huge slice of beef, so we had dinner at Texas Roadhouse and I had the perfect amount of steak and loaded baked potato. Perfect ending for a fantastic day. We stayed awake on the long drive home by listening to the “Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me” audiobook, and finally crashed about 2a.

Long story short, if someone offers you a free pass to South by Southwest, TAKE IT!

And how was *your* weekend, Zoners?