My friend Jodi Bart (who I get a ton of new restaurant recommendations from) asked me if I’d draw a food trailer for her upcoming Tasty Up Trailer Tour, so I doodled this. If you don’t live in Austin or you’ve never been there: yeah, there’s a lot of good food to be eaten out of trailers.

I headed over to KLRU’s studio 6A this afternoon to watch a Texas Monthly Talks taping of Evan Smith interviewing Billy Bob Thornton. Thornton was funny, smart, and down-to-earth.

He said that he spent most of his childhood on the road and playing in bands, and that although he grew up in Arkansas and lives in California, Austin is like a second home to him. “This is where my heart is. I mean, I know the street people here.”

He bristled at the idea that he was an actor dabbling in music: “I’m a musician who makes movies.”

He said that it’s easy to blame studios and producers in Hollywood for the quantity of bad movies out there, but we also “have to blame ourselves. If we buy crap, they’ll keep feeding it to us.”

And when it comes to making those movies? “Well, I gotta do one every once in a while to pay for the house, you know?”

He hasn’t directed a movie since All The Pretty Horses, a movie the studio demanded an hour be cut from and rescored. He expressed interest in showing the uncut 3-hour version with the original score by Daniel Lanois! (SXSW 2010?)

On his drunk scenes in Bad Santa: “When you do a movie like that you gotta go all the way. And being a method actor…”

At one point while discussing Sling Blade, he said, “Here let me show you something.” He put down his head, raised it slowly, and transformed into the character of Karl Childers for about 15 seconds. It was fantastic, and everyone cheered.

Here’s a sketch of a random dude from the audience who was fun to draw:

Big thanks to Sara Robertson, who gave me a little tour of the KLRU studios afterwards. Let me tell you: KLRU is a great station, and everybody I met there was super nice and if you live in Austin you should support them with as much dough as you can spare.

My wife, the green architecture student, sometimes drags me to lectures and events, so I bring my sketchbook and practice taking notes on topics I know nothing about. This lecture by UT professor Werner Lang, “Design With Climate: Building for a cooler planet,” turned out to be really great.

Crazy fact: In the Austin/Round Rock area we emit 1.5 metric tons of carbon per resident from highway transportation, compared to the 1.0 metric tons of carbon per resident we use from our buildings and homes. That means we use 1.5 times more energy driving in between buildings in Austin than we do actually operating those buildings.

Eddie Campbell’s “Honeybee” comics from his wonderful book, The Fate of the Artist:

James Kochalka gets away with a tribute to his wife that if I drew it of mine would get me killed:

David Heatley chronicles the seasons of love:

And Lynda Barry draws her family:

Sappy, I know, but sometimes I am.

UPDATE: Here’s the Daily Texan on the talk.

I like to draw while watching TV: I drew this while watching Ken Burns’ new documentary, which is quite good. The guy who told this story is a badass.