03/06/2023

GGB Greater Austin – A Tale of 2 Winter Brunches

The newly-relaunched Greater Austin GGB chapter has held two brunches over the past couple of months. In December, we had our first (hopefully annual) “Geeky White Elephant Brunch.” For January, we held an “Enchanted Brunch” where we discussed all things magical!

Over our White Elephant brunch, we met at the swanky and fascinating Eberly restaurant. After intros, we talked about our favorite winter-holiday-themed movies and other media. Katie insists that The Muppets Christmas Carol is the very best Christmas movie ever, but insists that the unedited version reigns supreme. Officer Jen is particularly fond of Home Alone 2, even more than the first one! Eliza loves the holiday staple A Charlie Brown Christmas, along with the album. And while officer Vanessa has had the same favorite Christmas movie since childhood – Gremlins – Bev’s pick for her fave was the 2022 surprise hit Spirited with Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell. She highly recommended it to everyone! Somewhere in there we also had fantastically unexpected but lively discussions about public transportation, the sadly discontinued GISHWHES (“The Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen”), and where to find the best Christmas light decorations in Austin – 37^th street is apparently the place to be!

The white elephant game was full of geeky goodies, including a Pop! figure, Disney’s Haunted Mansion board game, a gorgeous hobbit door necklace, and even an etch-a-sketch!

Fast forward to January! We met up at the trendy Maie Day for some brunch enchantment. We talked about the magic of our favorite movies, shows, books, characters, and fandoms, and everyone answered our theme question – How do you define magic? Officer Jen defined magic as something you “feel” but can’t explain, later suggesting that “magic can’t be measured.” She offered Sailor Moon as her favorite magical fandom. Newcomer Aditi shared a similar definition, calling magic “something powerful you feel” but is “not seen.” And while Harry Potter is probably her biggest magical fandom (even wearing a time turner to brunch, and declaring her allegiance to Ravenclaw House), she did want to give a shout out to the Netflix show Wednesday. Katie, as a big fan of fantasy novels, fairy tales, and folklore, had a very thorough and thoughtful definition of magic, calling it a “supernatural force that has rules, but only certain people can access it”. Officer Vanessa subscribes to the definition of magic as “science that we can’t yet explain.” New brunchette Claire also loves many things magical, including The Lord of the Rings, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Star Wars. And speaking of Star Wars, we enjoyed a tangent about how much we loved the Disney+ show Andor, which, ironically, is the only part of the Star Wars franchise that DOESN’T feature its trademark magic – the force!