We ran from our very last SXSW event - the It Takes a Nation of Millions to Make this Panel panel - and straight to the airport to return to Los Angeles. Mena Suvari was on the plane and we wanted badly to chat her up but didn't; we got caught up in traffic on the 101 (no shock) because of a Sherman Oaks lockdown while the police searched for a bank robbery suspect (again, no shock) and, now, we see there is a week of rain in our future. Wait, are we sure LAist hasn't turned into Seattlest?

SXSW soldiers on, though. Yesterday we got to see Robert Plant receive his lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy and hear him then give a lively discussion about his relationship with music, fame, Elvis Presley, and his new music (which sounds pretty spectacular). Bill Flanagan, once again, brought up "The Killer" Jerry Lee Lewis and now we can't get his songs out of our head. ITunes is going to have a field day with our wallet this weekend.

If you are still in Austin, KCRW and The Hotel Cafe are both in town now. If you've got some time, check out the Shooting Stars: The Golden Age of Hollywood Portraiture, 1925-1950 at the Ransom Center Galleries on the UT campus and, if you see our boy Mel spinning at different venues tonight, give him a pound, he won an Austin Music Award this week as the city's best DJ. We're so proud of him.

And, damnit, we miss Austin.

After a week in which LAist sat on a panel, enjoyed immensely the panels of others, partied with our publisher, our co-conspirator from the north and the brand new baby of the family, caught Asobi Seksu with Neal Pollack, and ate ourselves into oblivion, it is finally time for us to head home.

But not without a little music first. An interview with Elvis Costello turned unexpectedly into an expose about "The Killer" Jerry Lee Lewis and we loved every minute of it. The first night of music featured a few LA based bands and we saw none of them (although we did hear Billy Idol rocking the crowd at Stubbs as we made our way to see Sleater-Kinney). No, we caught Robyn Hitchcock, The Talk, After the Fall, Mike Doughty (of Soul Coughing), The Thermals, Asobi Seksu, and Sleater-Kinney.

Gothamist's interview of Asobi Seksu is what caught our attention. They didn't dissapoint at all. Mike Doughty loves us but he's chosen darkness...and a solo set that is crowd pleasing to say the least. The stars of the night for us, though, were Sleater-Kinney. We could watch Janet Weiss drum forever. Wayne Coyne watched from the side of the stage as Carrie, Corin, and Janet wowed the crowd. The new songs sound spectacular and we can't wait for their new release in May.

Check out SFist's review of the Monday night parties. Check out cruftbox for a small part of the tuesday night shenanigans and check out both flickr and buzznet for all your sxsw photo goodness.

photo by George Kelly.

Are we allowed to confess that while we are loving SXSW, we are a little homesick? Notebook Los Angeles talks about their weekend and, yeah, we didn't do any of that.

We did have some quality sushi at the hotel restaurant, though. Who knew they could make good sushi in Austin, Texas? They informed us that the fish was procured daily. From where? How expensive must it be to get all that fresh fish delivered to the middle of the lone star state?

Yesterday was spent meeting some LA bloggers like Sean Bonner of blogging.la and metroblogging and Michael of Cruftbox who gave us some cool swag: A cruftbox bottle opener. LAist needs some logo gear. We came up with some cool ideas for the future of LAist that we will be implementing soon. We also hung out at the Film conference as well learning about music documentary from some of the best in the business and from one of the best documentary subjects: The Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne.

It made us a little less sad that we weren't in Los Angeles for KCRW's Sounds Eclectic Evening. The first time in 3 years we've missed it. A SXSW attendee was walking around with a Rilo Kiley bag and that made us feel better too.

Today is the panel we'll be on and the bloggies where we'll hopefully get to accept an award as proxy for our friends at Go Fug Yourself.

Maybe Austin is just like LA, after all. Much like how we do when we're home, we missed the premiere of a film but didn't miss the after party. Hooligans, a film about, well, soccer hooligans is probably very good and a lot of fun but we didn't see it. Instead we saw the star of the film, Elijah Wood, do an iPod DJ set at the end of the night at Maggie Mae's after our friend, DJ Mel, had already moved the crowd. Locals and film festival attendees alike kept coming on stage to get autographs and photos with the wee actor. We didn't dance much to his set but we did approve of his use of A Tribe Called Quest, Too $hort and Nina Simone.

We also appreciated, sort of, the attention being afforded us by one of the producers of new horror film, Reeker. She wanted to learn the ways of dancing from us and then ended the night with a kiss and a promise to attend the premiere of her film tonight.

Elijah, could you play a slow jam? It's time for couple skate.