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07.28.04 i was talking with kevin tonight about how bummed i to not get tickets to see pj harvey play the great american music hall next month, and he reminded me that i might be able to find a video of her letterman performance somewhere online. and indeed i did! courtesy of pollysize, here is a 6MB real video of her amazing performance. check it out. # 07.26.04 if you've been visiting regularly, then you're probably wondering how you managed to miss all those posts over the last week. no, you're not crazy. i posted the last 5 entries tonight, but in the interest of keeping my electronic life in sync with my physical one, i've retro-posted them to the appropriate days. it means nothing to you now, but 10 years from now, when we're all browsing the internet directly from our brains, it'll help me remember that neko case played two fridays ago and not one, a piece of information that might well play a crucial role in the salvation of the world. because 10 years from now, who the hell knows what's going to be important to us anymore. certainly not j-lo and marc anthony and the question of whether or not their children will look like wet weasels with big asses. # 07.25.04 last night we bid a fond farewell to sparky and stephen at one of my favorite hidden restaurants. or at least it always was hidden to me. if you've ever walked east on post street towards union square, you know what i mean. it looks so tiny, but it's really so big! it was a lot of fun to have those two around, even if i didn't get much of a chance myself to see them. look for their summer tour to come to your town soon — it's well worth the price of admission! # i had one of those really cool fresh air weekends, when you meet not just one new person, but a lot of new people, who really seem to spark your interest. this usually comes from drinking, desperation or divine intervention. luckily (i suppose), mine was the result of the first and third and not (this time) the second. friday night, i met david for dinner, followed shortly by drinks at the pilsner. but what kind of bizarro land had we stepped into? the pilsner was overrun with hot guys! i saw bobby, a former coworker of mine, and his tall, rather striking friend. bobby and i had never had the chance to get to know each other when we still worked in the same building, and we had a great time with it now. (truth be told, we pretty much spent the whole night checking out guys.) i also managed to force an introduction with a new coworker who i had seen around the office for the past month or so. much to my surprise, that one seemed to work. after a while of it, my beer-saddled brain started to realize that i hadn't been paying much attention to poor david, fed by my introduction-energy-lust. i have a big problem with new people, in that i tend to fixate on that moment of first contact, when the still embryonic relationship seems to hold almost limitless potential. that potential, in retrospect, is usually pretty severely limited, and pretty obviously too, but try telling that to me when i'm in the moment and you're likely to draw back a nub. the following night, i joined matt, matt and matt's friend kevin to attend a housewarming party for ryan. first of all, ryan's adorable. you likely had already surmised this, but i stand here before you now to confirm it. but i also got a chance to get to know kevin, of whom i had heard so much but knew so little. first of all, this guy is adorable. and so sweet! i really enjoyed having the chance to talk to him, even he held out until the end to warm up. or maybe that was me. regardless, it was another great night of meeting people. my head is still spinning from all of it. # 07.22.04 LA was crazy! i mean, what a hellaciously wild, bizarre, adrenaline-fueled trip! i lie, of course. i went down on tuesday, for work, (see my jury duty rant for the preshow) traveling with my boss. it was a good trip, very relaxed and informative. an opportunity presented itself, and i was able to play excited (if not somewhat exhausted) guest to brian and company for a very relaxed evening out. the work was pretty easy, and the people i was working with were wonderful; knowledgeable, kind and helpful, i enjoyed working with them and really had a chance to learn a lot from them. i didn't even mind being bumped from the next trip (the following week) because i felt so confident coming away from this press check. i had my 90-day review on my return to the office, and my feedback was so positive, and my own confidence so high that i was granted clearance to manage my own presschecks. so now, after three years tapping my toes, i'm able to fully manage my own projects. i don't want to say that it's overdue, so i wont. # 07.20.04 this time last week, i got the chance to see the magnetic fields at a mostly-short acoustic show in the palace of fine arts. jen came across an extra ticket and courteously thought of me; how could i refuse? can i just say that i never went to art-school? and i have nothing against the institution of art school, nor against the people who attend it. so when someone says "god, that's so art school" (meaning, i presume, pretentious, overly-ironic, or grossly self-important) i usually scoff and wonder what sad happenstance made that person such a bitter pill of a human being. so, that said, my reaction to the magnetic fields, performing in an intimate, appreciative, acoustic environment: god, how completely art school. i wasn't alone, so i don't feel so guilty. jen used the word "precious" over and over again, and she was pretty much spot on. what else could one call the pretty, over-acted intelligencia banter of lo-fi crooners stephen and claudia? it's a pathetically simple schtick, too, which makes it all the more unbearable. she, the chatty, friendly, idealistic vessel for our sympathies; he, the wise-beyond-his-years, jaded, weary, way-of-the-world scholar, lobbing droll, deflating insults at her perkiness, while she rolls her eyes and gives the adoring audience a what are you going to do with him? shrug. i like their music, and they're really quite fine musicians. it's just the show that i couldn't stand. # 07.19.04 neko case is tiny. and how amazing, that voice can come from such a tiny speaker. i mean, she's not loud. she's booming. she opens her mouth and all available space is suddenly filled with the sound of her. we went to the filmore, jessie and i with kate and jen, travis and cj, to see neko play with calexico. it's hard to call her an opening act, really, and i was quick to confess with whom my allegiances lay. but when the played (and they played, all night in fact, serving as neko's band, only to wander back on stage a few minutes later to perform their own set) calexico changed my mind. convict pool, a gut-wrenching favorite b-side, opened the very long set, and alone again or, a perfectly shaped sing-along cover ended the night, with neko back up on stage singing with them, trumpeting her velvet-smooth whiskey sound out over the electrified audience. if you have a chance to see either band, do yourself the favor. this was easily one of the best concerts i've ever been to. # 07.18.04 according to this entry, apple (actually audible, but apple is carrying this) has made most if not all of the 9/11 commission's hearings available for download (here if you have itunes). the tapes (it somehow seems appropriate to refer to something like this as "tapes") are available for download for free from the itunes music store or from audible.com. no doubt they're a real snooze-fest, but still very important to make widely and easily accessible. i'm going to download them and burn a few cd's for interested friends, though i can't imagine actually listening to the whole thing myself. # 07.14.04 i'm an album man. in this era of 1-track-ness, (thanks, mp3!) i tend to listen to music not in mixes but as entire albums, start to finish. these are my newest and greatest current obsessions. most of them indicate how late i really am to various and sundry parties, and most (save one) come to me thanks to other, wiser music lovers. 1. the wrens - the meadowlands 2. les savy fav - inches 3. sebadoh - harmacy 4. pinback - blue screen life 5. go-betweens - bright orange bright yellow 6. mission of burma - signals, calls and marches # 07.13.04 i hit my elbow yesterday at work. my funny bone, actually. it was one of those comical moments, when you do something really stupid in front of a group of people and have to try to laugh it off? you know what i'm talking about. except, well, it was my funny bone. and i hit it hard. really, really hard. my entire hand went completely numb and stayed that way for another 5 minutes or so. now my elbow hurts whenever i bend it at strange angles. and i can't rest it on the table. i didn't realize how much i put my elbows on the table. when i was little, my grandma used to sing this school-girl's song whenever we'd put our elbows on the table, only she would sing it to herself. clapping along: "get your elbows off the table, bonnie sue (clap, clap) get your elbows off the table, bonnie sue (clap, clap)..." and so on, because i don't remember how the rest of the song went. i asked her how the song worked, like, how would she sing it to me, since my name is christopher lauren, but she just said it didn't work for my name. then: "just get them off the table." # i've got jury duty today. in fact, i'm sitting in the waiting room right now. hoping i don't get called. keep your fingers crossed for me. i'm particularly anxious because, well, for one, i'm an anxious kinda guy. and the idea of sitting in that little box listening to some crazy people (excuse me, my peers) problems for days on end is pleasantly excruciating. but more than that, i'm anxious because if i get called on a jury, or rather don't get dismissed before thursday, i will have to miss a business trip that i really want to take. right now, my manager has asked that i attend two press checks with her before she lets me manage my own. i'm not bothered by this because we're talking about high-value color (i.e. people, products, lots of flesh-tones) and large format printing (six foot press sheets and the like). i don't have much experience with either. but if i don't go on this press check with my manager, then i wont have the chance to do two checks with her before my projects start to hit the press in late july. which would really bug me. because then i can't go out and get really shit-faced while i'm in LA. and who wants that? update: well, i'm not on the jury, but i'm not off it either. the work trip is off for now, so that's that. jury people are crazy. just the idea of putting my fate in these people's hands would keep me from breaking the law. second update: jesus christ, this shit takes longer than it should. i'm officially not on the jury, but have to come back tomorrow so they can select alternates. so i'm not safe yet. help me. # engadget has a complete review of sony's vaio ultra-portable, the only pc i'll ever lust for. # 07.12.04 sexy vintage hi-fi equipment reimagined. # 07.11.04 It's hilarious that the Republicans are trying to paint their ticket as the more optimistic one. # completely hysterical editorial at the nytimes on the bush administrations marriage-obsession, from the gay-marriage-amendment to the bizarre fascination with marriage as a solution for poor single mothers. the best part? Ehrenrich attempts to calculate how many men (of her own social class, since poor single mother's don't tend to marry lawyers and doctors) a woman living in poverty would have to marry in order to pull her family from poverty: "The answer turns out to be approximately 2.3, which is, strangely enough, illegal." # 07.09.04 since when did nader switch parties? even camejo, his running mate (and an otherwise excusably good man) thinks he should return the GOP blood money. # kate and i were looking for information online about kevin f*derline, the trucker hat that britney spea*s is engaged to. we heard he was from the 'no. and he is! skeeeeeze! but in the process, i uncovered a wealth of blogs all about fresno! who knew? i sure as hell didn't. my personal favorite has to be fresyes, which appears to be run by a former-fresnan living in new york (good for them!). another great site that came up was fresno goth, which sports some rad 1996-era web skillz and includes a goth-slanted nightlife guide as well as a cemetery guide (ok, so i never hung out at the cemeteries, but my friends karen and keddy got in a pretty nasty car accident leaving one of the way-out cemeteries one night). so like, why didn't these sites exist when i was there? i mean, there's even a site that seems to be devoted to chronicling the fresno indie scene. i'm definitely going to check out some of the goth night life next time i'm visiting my parents. # 07.08.04 a new mp3 for you. check out the ravonettes, who totally rocked my birthday this year. # i tried something new with the moblog tonight. i used the recording feature of my phone to blog a little narrative to accompany the photo. it's no easy task, as i don't yet know if or how i might post the audio file on the go. for the time being, i had to drop the file onto my laptop, edit it (the phone saves 3gpp files, which quicktime can read, but i felt a little uncertain of) upload it and manually paste it into my blog. plus, the sound quality is shit. so don't expect much more of this. # it's like vietnam again, only this time i've been my parents. i feel so duped, my father said. what happened to our media? why didn't they tell us all these things? why wasn't this news? is what my mother wanted to know. my parents have proven me wrong. it's not heavy handed, my mom says, it's a slap in the face. it's not misdirected either — it's aimed at people like us. they saw Fahrenheit 9/11 last night and they are appalled. they have never been bush supporters, not by any stretch of the imagination, but they were never really anti-war. they thought that their government was doing the right thing, that their government must know something that they don't about saddam and what he was doing in iraq (how did they miss all of the hubbub over failed intelligence, richard clarke's various assertions and the damning nature of george tenent's resignation?). and they're pissed off that they feel for it, angry that their country and the process of law has been so hijaked. i'm glad that they see this now, but i'm also even more sad that they had to. so i was wrong about michael moore's latest documentary, and i'm glad that i was. if you haven't seen it yet, please go. # got the chance to meet jamison last night for the first time. why did i wait so long? who knows, but was i ever wrong! just look at that adorable face! who could resist! only you can't see the adorable face, because my moblog has gone all wacky on me and started spewing tags instead of photos. what the hell? # 07.06.04 see? go get it*. * unless you have a mac, then i guess you can keep using safari. # 07.01.04 you know, i don't think the hearts are all that interesting. in fact, i'd venture to say that i think they're stupid. # « June 2004 | archive index | August 2004 » built with movabletype |
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