Newton

Vacation is sweet, but the east cost is freaking hot and humid. I try and combat this by sleeping in as late as possible. I really enjoy the night time though, strolling around comfortably in shorts and sandals. My parents are clearly feeling mostly recovered, cause the sniping never ceases. I've been yelled at at least once a day. My crowning achievement was when I accidentally tipped over a long florescent bulb that deftly exploded into a million little glass bits all over the kitchen.

Last night we took Josh out for a bacheloresque party around the town. We re-labeled all of our childhood establishments to their former and proper name. We played suicide at our grammar school, threw a Frisbee in the park, went on a w-a-l-k in the woods, peed in the Rudden's backyard (they were gracious enough to offer us a beverage afterwards), tried to get a hack between five people, and circled the ping pong table for quite a while. We visited store 2-4, and a woman told Josh that his hat was "slammin" (he was wearing a pirate hat all night). She then told the cashier that he should wash his hands cause she was probably covered in Poison Ivy.

He's now officially ready to get married.

Herbie to Hornsby, Coast to Coast

I've had a very culturally fulfilling weekend. On Thursday I saw Bruce Hornsby with Christian McBride on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums at the Palace of Fine Arts. The concert blew me away. I'm already in awe of Hornsby. He's got ridiculous piano skills, really a cut above almost anyone I can think of. To top it off he's got his voice, which he could base his career on alone.

I've come to believe that its essential that an artist of that caliber stretch his musical wings to stay happy. He assembled a band of monster jazz players, and they knocked it out of the park. He sang only two songs. The rest were all instrumental, and were both freaking stellar and extraordinarily playful. They played some material that they had composed and a bunch of standards/covers that I hadn't heard of. Its clear that Bruce is a true scholar of music. I had been looking forward to this show all summer, and it didn't disappoint. He even brought out Bonnie Rait for the encore. Good times.

The next morning I flew to Boston. On Saturday, my bro and I met up in Boston for some pool and mohitos. He took me to Match for dinner, which is a fancy mini-burger and martini bar. The food was unbelievable. I actually ordered more food (lobster burger) after I ate my dinner, which is unheard of for me. It was that good. I also had a martini, which turned out to be two martinis since they give you a small shaker with the leftover drink in it. This means I was freaking smashed when we left and stumbled the two blocks to the Berkelee Auditorium, where we saw Herbie Hancock with his latest assembled band.

Let me take a moment to rant here. I went across the street to Sto' 2-4 to get some water (a necessity at this point) and munchies for the show. I walked into the theater and a security duder rips through my bag, finds the food and starts berating me. WTF? In SF, when you go to a fancy expensive jazz show, they do not search your bag. I can understand doing this in a club, but this totally shocked me, and the security guards was a getting in my face about it. I far prefer the SF laid back attitude.

Anywho, the Herbie show was very avante guard. It was a quartet this time (the drummer seriously blew me away), but it wasn't the high energy groove fest that my sloshed brain needed to stay engaged. It was all over the map, some times extremely quiet. The saving grace is that I think Herbie did far too much acid in the 60's. He really liked to talk before they played every single song. He talked for like 3-4 minutes every time, and the monologues often got very rambling and awkward. This pretty surprising for someone who's been in the performing business for like 40 years. Anyhow, it gave me ample opportunity to hit the water fountain after every song, and not miss a single note.

Its good times being back home though. I've really missed my folks. They've gone through all sorts of negative medical shit this summer, and it sucks being 3000 miles away. Its good to hang with my bro, see my in-laws, and catch up with friends.

Image Resizing

Geeky, but amazingly clever technology

Boneless Children

Biggie ups to Dave Siegel and the Boneless Children's Foundation on their CD release show last night at the Bottom of the Hill. Some random Stanford people whom I haven't seen in about a decade came out of the woodwork for this show. They all celebrated Dave's unfaltering commitment to his special brand of art rock. Zappa would be proud. Well, at least I am, and for intensive purposes I'm Zappa re-incarnated. At least for this blog post.

Overheard: "I'm starting to understand the secret to a long term relationship: to give in. Whenever we get into a tense heated argument, I ignore my stubborn instincts and take the blame and apologize. The funny thing is that I later realize that I really was at fault."

Back on track

Every once in while you have a life affirming moment. This one was delivered through the internet.

Blog Slacking

• We attended Zack and Amanda's beautiful nuptials. I was blessed to be in charge of the thing I care the most about - sound. Zack pointed me towards the unassembled PA and his laptop, which he suggested we engage shuffle for the dance portion of the evening. I did not jive with that. I put together a fly playlist (with some dynamic updates) that seemed to resonate positively with the dance floor. The staff and crew were in truly in awe that you could DJ with a computer.

• I caught guitarmeggedon @ the Independent, which was a wanking good time. The local jam band guitar heros covered much of claptons career with the help of a kicking band and the guitarmeggedon-ettes (3 strong female singers). Definitely worth a download.
  
• On a walk through GG Park I discovered a band setup on a flat bed truck, and an audience of maybe 500. There were many celebratory flag wavers and dancers, but no banners indicating what it was all about. I asked a lady if she knew what was going on, and thats when my day took an abrupt left turn. Apparently, it was the final day of "the cause." Once I opened the door, many people wanted to talk to me in succession. All of them wanted to pray for me (which involved touching me and saying an off the cuff prayer, whatever they felt moved to say). It was a surreal half hour to the least. Some even won CDs for their troubles.
• We saw Avenue Q last night at the Orpheum theater. It was freaking hysterical. You haven't lived until you've seen broadway actors create explicit puppet sex while "Gary Colman" sings about his approval of loud sex. I had "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" stuck in my head this morning.
• Stina had her first cortizone shot in her spine today. She spent the day in a haze, but seems to be doing ok. Hopefully this will do her some good. Fingers crossed.
  

Freedom

We've been blessed with having Tom in San Francisco for the last week or so. Although he hasn't been the constant presence on our couch that I wish he could of been, we've seen a fair bit of him in different contexts. We finally had him to ourselves on Sunday afternoon, so we dragged him to Jerry Day, a free concert at Jerry Garicia amphitheater (a small open amphitheater nested in the hill of a park in South SF) featuring the JGB. They even played my favorite song - "Walking in the Mission". We enjoyed ourselves thorougly along with all our hippie brethren. Well, Stiners, Rachel, Brian and I did. Tom mostly looked bemused.

On Tuesday, I took Tom to 12 Galaxies for the premere of "The Smiling Man". It was a free event featuring a full 7 piece jazz band in (fronted by my friend Ann on vocals) between screenings of the movie. We arrived in the middle of one of the screenings, so we ducked into "Doc's Clock", where we monopolized the free shuffle puck table until the band started up. The Jazz Band = solid. There were only like 25 people there. Only one homeless dude took advantage of the lack of cover. He was real enthusiastic.

Today, I went to check out the Creative Commons Salon at Shine. Taking a page out of the book of Stina, I showed up a wee bit early. This enabled me to meet the hosts, who were able to direct me to people of interest. That, and aquire some free drink tickets. I had a good time, talked to some cool folks, and learned a thing or two about whats going on in the open source community.

Notice the theme of these events? They all cost me nothing, and yet entertained me greatly. I suppose this is the advantage of living in a major city.

How to Write a Concert Review

This is the best concert review I've ever read. For Hall and Oates even. Hans gets a free ride on my garlic press for pointing it out to me.

Yogalicious

Our summer seems to have really tapered off all the sudden. We've opted out of certain activities due to Stiner's back - like Stacey and Crow's camp out wedding last weekend. I hope it was magical, and was sad not to join in the festivities. Our trip to celebrate her dad's 60th in Colorado has also been canceled for other reasons. So it's both strange and welcome to have a mellow patch in our typically frenzied summer.

One of things I've been focusing on is my body/back. I need to step it up around the house, do most of the lifting, and such. I've had re-occurring back issues for the last decade or so, and now the activities that I usually avoid are the ones that I need to take charge of. Thus, I've decided to start doing Yoga twice a week to supplement my bi-weekly work outs. Its something I've had in mind to do for a while anyways - our current situation has spurred me to take action.

I've now been to a total of 3 classes at Bija yoga. I went to an intro class last week prior to Galactic, and decided to commit to 10 classes at the studio. My experience so far:

• All the level 1 classes are sparsely attended. I think this is fantastic.
• I've not seen another single male student yet.
• I'm terribly unflexible.
• Somehow I never correlated pain with Yoga before. I know better now.
  
• The white folding chair is a fun prop.
  
• I've a different teacher for each class. The teacher makes a big difference.
  
• Never wear boxers under your sweats.
  
• Every class starts with a chant. I have no idea in what language or why we're doing it.
  
• An hour and a half yoga session goes by surprisingly fast.

I did a morning class today, and for the first time, I could feel my body thank me for going to class. That was most encouraging.

At the end of class, we do a silent meditation pose for a couple minutes. We are supposed to let our minds focus on our bodies and not dwell upon thoughts. At one class, the instructor kept telling us to let the [something in yoga] wash over us. For some reason, I kept substituting the [yoga phrase] with "tuna melt". This led to a fit of silent giggles during our meditation. I think I failed the lesson.