Austin Breaks Character and Gets Weird About a Celebrity (Ryan Gosling)
Looks like Austin, America's warmest creative-classetropolis, has gone all Chloe Moretz and developed a little crush on Ryan Gosling, who's there to film Lawless with director Terrence Malick. As evidence, we submit Ryan Gosling at Fun Fun Fest: a collaborative photo-Tumblr inspired by our shy hero's attendance at one of the Texas city's nightly music festivals.
Austin-based writer and artist Austin Kleon, who created RGAFFF, calls it "[q]uite possibly the dumbest thing I've done on the internet. Definitely the most immediately popular." Unlike Ryan Gosling vs. Puppy, which asks the viewer to decide whether Gosling out-cutes a series of similarly posed babydogs, RGAFFF poses no pressing questions but simply invites people to upload and share their photos of Gosling hiding behind his sweater, breaking up more fights, posing with Flaming Lipses, or doing whatever else they catch him doing (mainly standing around).
As someone who lived in Austin for three too-short years during the 00's, I'm equal parts amused and bemused by the existence of this thing. In my Austin day (grabs corncob pipe, rearranges threadbare, Lone Star flag afghan on lap), the city's hip, cool vibe kept people in line whenever a star came to town to appear at SXSW or make a movie or play a show. People were too laid-back (or high) to get excited and take paparazzi-style pictures of celebrities. (Also, people didn't have smartphones yet, but this is a trifling detail.) Austin, what's gotten into you? Go have some dinner at Polvo's, take a long walk along South Lamar, and think about what you've become.
[Ryan Gosling at Fun Fun Fest. Image via @AbeRobledo. Thanks to Earfull for the tip!]