It's 1979, Merseyside, Liverpool, UK. Margaret Thatcher's recently entered No. 10 Downing Street yet England's precipitous slide into economic and cultural stagnation continues unabated. The post-punk clatter and yowl of Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, and Cabaret Voltaire vie for the hearts and minds of the kids on these blighted streets.

Look at yourself good.

Middle of March, Austin, and fucking look at yourself: Drizzling down the rain like God's postnasal drip, temperatures low enough to stiffen the nipples of somebody's girlfriend in a coma, people are gonna think they've wound up in Seattle instead of the putative Live Music Capitol of the World while they work the Interactive schmoozathon.

Haven't been precisely working that, myself, the schmoozathon. Been prowling the convention center's concourse, schlepping the swag-heavy Interactive & Film bags around, pausing to chat and clot the walkways with local homies before hoofing it to the next panel, the next presentation, the next lack of an epiphany.

But no one's at SXSW for an epiphany. The information profferred by its army of talking heads, that newsy data's already in the last article they threw into the Net or will anyway be published there mere hours after the festival's closed. No one needs to cross the globe or even just the street to consume Dan Willis's opinion about why current webdesign is, basically, wrong. No one needs to leave their favorite surfing chair to ken the carny savvy of social-engineering jackanapes Brian Brushwood.

Even if some of us (the more entrepreneurial and less cultural, say) do wind up heeding a few of the many panel-driven instructions on How To Sell More Shit To More People, that is not, ultimately, why we're here.

We're not here for the content.

After spending an hour talking with Heather Gold I feel certain about one thing, life is going to get better. How else to describe a conversation that left me high and uplifted? I say conversation, because, although it was scheduled as an interview, it's what we did. We conversed. Plus, my notes were lacking, so I am going to attempt to recreate her vibe rather that futz around with "quotes." Also, we are going to catch her Interactive panel today at 3:30pm and hope to come away from that with a vlog we'll post tomorrow. If you don't know Heather Gold's name then you should, whether you're queer or not. She's been described as "the turkey baster love child of Sarah Silverman and Rachel Maddow," but honestly, I'd add that there's a little bit of Bob Ross in there, too: Happy Trees! (she's supportive of your art!). Austinites may be familiar with her, she birthed her one-woman show I Look Like an Egg, but I Identify as a Cookie partially in Austin. This was a performance in which she baked cookies for the audience while carrying on a variety of improvisational conversations. Yummers. Gold also hosted Austin Gay Pride events a few years back, and has lectured extensively. These days, she's developing a new show, I Didn't Know How Much I Loved You Until Ken Starr Filed to Divorce Us, about her recent marriage to her wife and the likely invalidation of said union. I've never met a performer like her.

Surprisingly, Billy Bob Thornton may have been the most proud of his Texas roots of any of the group inducted into the Texas Film Hall of Fame on Thursday. Surprising because he's actually from Arkansas. But he took a bit of offense to the repeated questions about his foreigner status while walking the red carpet and chatting up the media. “It’s an artistic place, a creative place,” Thornton said. “When they say Texas is bigger, Texas is better, I think they’re right.” Meanwhile, Larry Hagman, who was born in Texas but mainly raised elsewhere before rediscovering the Lone Star State (and cowboy hats) during the run of television's Dallas, was revealed as the Texas tour guide by his TV wife Linda Gray. Gray said that n the winter of 1978, Larry Hagman drove the cast of the then-new show around Big D in a converted bread truck introducing them to dive bars and other local color.

"Conan! What is best in life? "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women."

Political campaigns have long been at the forefront of advertising psychology and brand construction. As this morning's SXSW Interactive panel What your Startup Can Learn from Barack Obama and Howard Dean proved, they're basically quick-fire start-ups, with contributions standing in for venture capitol, and a very focused end-game. It's an arcane art. The Obama campaign, Sunlight Labs Director and former Dean campaign op Clay Johnson said, got so fine-tuned on what did and did not work that they knew what font and font-size was most effective in fund-raising emails. Even self-professed token Republican Mary Katharine Ham of the Weekly Standard admitted that they did a good job, noting that John Kerry didn't pay attention to Dean's developments and lost.

With so many forms of pleasure, education and delight available at SXSW, how does anyone cut through the chatter and get people to their booth/movie/product? And how do attendees sprinting for that all-important panel avoid that stressed-out intern desperately trying to stuff a flier in their sweaty paw? As one company proved this morning, the quickest way to get people to read your bumpf is attach it to a free breakfast taco. But there must be a simpler (and cheaper) way, right? Magician/social theoretician Brian Brushwood of Scam School fulfilled the civic service component of SXSW Interactive with yesterday's talk Social Engineering: Scam Your Way Into Anything or From Anybody, a user's guide to avoid simple but effective tricks that induce the Pavlovian "Buy! Buy! Buy!" instinct in us all. So what's his opinion of other professionals working in the nether world between hucksterism and psychology? John Edwards of Crossing Over infamy? South Park nailed him.

Is it really SXSW without hordes of interns, actors and CEOs of start-ups wearing silly costumes in the hope of getting some attention for their product? This year's first sighting? A pink gorilla, courtesy of online storage firms Jungle Disk. Don't worry, by the end of the festival, even two dinosaurs buying smoothies and a pack of rogue Napoleons on a cigarette break will scarcely stand out of the crowd.

Word up: Pontypool is one of the most original and freakily disturbing films of Canadian origin we've seen since David Crononeberg first sent Shivers up our spines. The less you know about it going in, the more you're likely to sleep with the lights on later, so we'll be circumspect regarding plot details. Suffice it to say, Pontypool leaves you feeling as though you've seen Night of the Living Dead re-conceptualized by William S. Burroughs and J.G. Ballard while all three of you were on bad, scary LSD at a semiotics seminar whose keynote speaker turned out to be a zombie-Hunter S. Thompson.

Hi homo fwends, I've been busy living up to my Virgo nature by meticulously scheduling out my time for SXSW and getting so excited in the process. So I wanted to let you in on screenings and film events that queers might really love… now, of course, this list is by no means comprehensive and represents only my own tastes and proclivities. This year there are precious fewer than last, but the selections are sweet. Pasted below is my own SXSW must-see list and when I plan to see them (many of these films will be relatively easy to see, given that you arrive early to the venue and bring $10 with you, or obviously if you have a film pass or badge). Please check the SXSW pages of each film (I've link them to their titles) for additional screen times.