South by Southwest is running in Austin right now. It’s an “everyone into the pool” kinda event. If you live here, you can’t avoid being touched by it in some way.

So, The Dude got this invitation to a reception being thrown by The Center for American History at The University of Texas as part of the SXSW festivities. He’s been working with CAH to establish an archive for video games. (Stop sniggering, you over there. Ten years from now this archive will be the shit – and I’ll have all that stuff out of my house.)

Anyway, we got an invitation to this reception for Tom Wright, whose collection of 500,000 photos was acquired by UT in 1990.

Tom Wright was the official photographer for The Who starting in 1967. I didn’t know this right off, as I know bupkis about photography and photographers. However, I do know what I like. And I like Tom Wright’s stuff. A lot.

His photography is documentary and fluid. He doesn’t take static pictures. They’re full of motion and action. You can almost hear the crashing of Keith’s drums, Daltry’s wail, and Townshend’s riffing. The only person who doesn’t seem to be in motion is John Entwistle. (And that’s as it should be.) He also took loads of photos of, well, everyone. From the Stones, to Ike and Tina Turner, to Rod Stewart, to Elvis Costello, Tom Wright has been at the epicenter of coolness and music for forty years.

So, we get to the reception and start milling about, talking to the people we know, checking out the other guests who we don’t know. At one of the reserved tables, I see a young guy asking a middle-aged guy if he’ll take a picture with him. The young guy’s buddy takes the photo as the older guy looks mildly amused and just a smidge put out. I’m thinking to myself, “Who is that guy? Dammit, he looks so familiar.” Later, I realize it’s Joe Walsh.

We mill around some more, looking at enlargements of Wright’s terrific pictures and the slide show they’ve got running on monitors scattered about the club. The Dude and I grab a seat and nibble some of the appetizers. We’re trying to act cool because we’re both insanely excited about seeing SXSW’s keynote speaker, who is also going to be at this reception: Pete Townshend.

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She Who Is Awesome just called to let me know that she woke up at about nine this morning to the sound and sight of Ninja, the pregnant cat belonging to one of her suite-mates, giving birth next to her in bed. She got to see #2 through #4 greet the new day.

Two of the kittens are orange and have markings much like those of Texas, who is Rachael’s cat. He was fixed, so it theoretically can’t be his offspring, but, as we learned in ‘Jurassic Park’ — Nature Finds a Way.

According to her, the one who is tucked under mamma-cat’s chin in the pic, is already showing signs of being extremely feisty. Rach is urging me to adopt. I’m thinkin’ about it.

Here’s a pic of Tex when he was little. Rach and I both instantly fell in love with him, tiny T-Rex kitty that he was:

I’m hoping I’ll be able to drive up to Austin in time to see if the kitten is as irresistible as I fear, before it gets adopted out to somebody else. It may be a moot point, as Rach is threatening to keep it for herself.

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Pic credits to Rachael Harper, unsurprisingly.