Living in the past: Day 1 revisited part II

I was lucky enough to catch all of Amy Sedaris and David Rakoff’s presentation at the "Cooking Tent." After watching the two together, I regretted not catching Rakoff’s solo presentation. Pretty freaking funny. Did you know that, according to Rakoff, "the gays" can differentiate between whisks? Awesome.

Shortly before the Sedaris/Rakoff show, a friend tipped me off to a semi-super-secret Book Festival author cocktail party. You better believe I crashed. The place was packed and the downtown digs were very posh. I had to keep it classy and I was reluctant to snap too many shots, but I spied many an author chowing down and gabbing. I'm sure she didn't care, but Gail Caldwell looks like she wants to kick my face in this shot:

It was amazing to see Gore Vidal. He was confined to a wheel chair, but he seemed so huge. Stationed at the periphery of the crowd, he constantly had circles of people crouched around him that were at times three bodies deep.

Most everyone was friendly, but the scene as a whole was pretty intimidating. Big ups to author Héctor Tobar. He rapped with me for some time about parking cars and raising kids in Mexico City. He was also kind enough to endure some of my pointless anecdotes. Also, your friends from the Austin Public Library are very kind.

Since I wasn’t tethered to any particular group or people I decided to photograph the bathrooms in this lavish downtown abode. Here, for your consideration are two out of four of this party’s bathrooms: