Andy Flemming’s SXSW 2015 Diary – day one: Queues, plugs and the wanker next door

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FLEMMING-SXSW-IN-SITU.jpgM&C Saatchi, Sydney creative director Andy Flemming is covering SXSW exclusively for Campaign Brief from today until the 17th March. He hopes.

1:20pm. I’ve realised with absolute horror that my flies are widely undone. I start to mentally work backwards to work out how embarrassed I should be. Fucking it seems. I’d spent a good five minutes sounding all ‘businessy’ and professional when I checked in because I apparently that’s the best way to get an upgrade. I’d even wore glasses to complete ‘the look.’ I didn’t get an upgrade. That’s presumably because people who have their boxer shorts sticking out of their trousers rarely do.

5.00pm. After nineteen hours I’ve finally arrived in Austin. The airport is filled with tattooed men with well-groomed beards furiously tapping away at various devices and everything is sponsored by a website I’ve never heard of. As I’m waiting at the baggage carousel (sponsored by esurance.com) there’s a frisson of excitement as apparently Aubrey Plaza was on our plane. I have no idea who the fuck he/she/it is. It might very well have been the person I blanked on the plane.

FLEMMING-SXSW-1.jpg5.13pm. The queue for the taxi is, by far, the longest I have ever seen. Everyone’s trying to get WiFi to kill time so I create a mobile hotspot and call it ‘WhereAreAllTheCabs’ in the hope that someone will cheerily respond with a hotspot reply and we can get into some sort of geeky conversation. This doesn’t happen.

6.20pm. A man at the hotel stifles a giggle as I refer to SXSW as ‘SexWoo’ rather than ‘SouthBy.’ I’ve been using the letters for years. I’m off to a bad start.

FLEMMING-SXSW-2.jpg6:30pm. Beelzebub has a devil put aside for whoever decided to wrap their travel plugs with unbreakable plastic. I’ve sliced my finger open trying to open the fucking thing. I manage to slide a tiny slit I’ve made onto the metal door handle and violently kick the packet until it finally splits open.

6.37pm. I can hear the sound of vigorous shaking coming from the room next door. I rather innocently assume it’s someone making a cocktail but it goes on and on. I immediately tweet ‘If the guy next door doesn’t stop masturbating I’ll tweet his room number #SXSW.’ I immediately realise this is a bad idea as there are thousands of geeks here with the ‘skillz’ to pinpoint my location through, you know, metadata or something and name him. Not wanting to start ‘wankgate’ I delete it to the sound of climax.

8:30pm. Looking at a map, it seems that my hotel is very far from SexWoo, and by far I’m talking Homebush far. I (honestly) wanted to go full Hunter. S Thompson this time and stay in one of those nasty motels that play endless country music and have bikes lined up outside. You know, like in ‘Road House.’ I thought it’d make great material but I now realise that I wouldn’t have made it out alive. The hotel I’m in is quite nice actually. It has botanical shampoo.

See the full SXSW On Streaming Schedule here.