Harbin

Stiners and I headed up for a mid week retreat to Harbin Hot Springs for a bit of r'n'r. I had totally forgotten that it was a clothing optional community until we arrived. I gleefully tore my clothes off upon setting down our bags in our room, but Stina gently reminded me that it was only clothing optional at the actual meditation pools. Right.

After settling in, we headed uphill for an evening soak. It is simply gorgeous up there. I was a little surprised to see so many people (maybe 30) in the meditation pools on a Wednesday evening. After soaking for a couple minutes, a lady enters the pool to say that they are about to begin the harvest full moon ceremony. She saunters around with some lit sage, and then instructs us all to make a circle and join hands. Then starts the giant "ohm" circle, which I was pretty psyched on, what with the yoga I've been doing. Then the leader wants people to start sharing positive thoughts that they will send out to the universe. That's the precise moment where it got a little too new age for Jimmy, so I quietly retreated to the side of the pool to continue my soak. People would say things like "kindness", and then everyone else would ohm in appreciation. After ten long minutes of this, they moved on to honoring the five directions (north, east, south, west, and up). They started by looking south, which means that they were all staring directly at Stina and I, who were looking right back at them.

For like 5 minutes.

Awkward.

Anyhow, after a day at Harbin we felt fully in tune with universe. Well, maybe less so then some of the other folks.

Mute Math

Holy shit. Never have I ever been so satisfied by a scant one hour set. That it was a Tuesday probably helped a lot. These guys just fucking tore up the Fillmore, which was far less then 3/4th full. The sound was terrible, which is sad considering the juicy potential of the Fillmore room. I'm in love with their album, and their live show does it apt justice. The do exactly what a great band does - stretch out the songs, demonstrate strong musical chops, then go totally batshit. Lots of extreme catapulting over instruments and thrashing about. You don't get a sense of from the album how absolutely crazy the drummer is.

Anywho, the show totally lived up to my expectations. They are currently in strong contention for JimmyK's album of the year.

Color me Impressed

Check out this new service for making stuff: ponoko

Yom Kippur

I believe I've already waxed poetic about my Yom Kippur traditions here. I charged into Yom Kippur by going to see the Arcade Fire @ Shoreline, which was fine.

The motivation factor was the chance to catch up with Sharon, an old friend of mine who now happens to run the soundboard for the Arcade Fire. LCD Soundsystem opened up and were a real good time. Anywho, I checked my web stats app right before going to bed and saw the review which tore me a new asshole.

Needless to say, I was spun into a bad head space. I purposefully got up early the next morning with Stina (who needed to go to work where Services were being held) so that I would have time to reflect upon my year before heading off to Angel's 30th birthday bbq extravaganza. Unfortunately I spent the first hour or so trippin on the shitty review. Man, if you ever want to fuck with me, shit on my music. I was eventually able to recognize that it was simply mean spirited, and I needed to move on past it. Stina later put it in better perspective - if that review was about one of my friends projects, would I have taken it seriously? I kinda pulled myself out of it, and began walking through the calendar.

It was quite a year, especially with g-fuzz, what with the new CD, playing some big gigs, and getting more exposure. There were some stellar moments of joy and hilarity, coupled with some low moments with spousal and parental health. Yet in many ways, it was simply a linear projection of the last year - more shows, more general fuzz, and more health drama across the board. I guess the best way to derail that train is to have a child, which seems to be a concept that is looming on the horizon. I found that I spent less time reflecting on shows/events, and more on friendships. I'm starting to swallow the concept of moving to Boston, though mostly in the abstract.

I volunteered to run the grill at Angels party, which was epic with the 4 delicious kegs, customized celebratory cups, and her amazing (AMAZING) autobiographical zine. Many a sausage was blessed by my tongs of atonement.



Oh, and then we went to Phil and Friends the next day at the Greek. Summer has come to a close.



Somehow I squeezed in working on music, which needed to be prepared for tonights visit by Michele and her magical violin. I think Stina is feeling a little displaced right now. Tommorows SF Beta + Mute Math (I'm fired up over that one!) isn't gonna help.

Ouch

Well, I guess if I put myself out there for reviews, some of them are not going to be so positive. This one definitely took the wind out of my sails. . . .

80's Party

At this point, it should be pretty clear to everyone why Stina's an event planner. I think she should put this party on her resume. First you entered a long hallway that was plastered with 30 facts about Stina, to be greeted by someone taking a polariod of you in full costume. Wandering around through the various rooms, you would find a space dedicated to an 80's and Stina trivia contest, a custom fashioned arcade machine setup next to the full bar (with our amazing friends volunteering to bartend all night), a plush couch filled chill room projecting an hour long photo slide show, and an off the hook dance space complete with mirror ball and stripper poll (DJed by yours truly). 80's decorations and phrases permeated everywhere that wasn't already occupied by Anon Salon' insane art. Everyone brought their A game in terms of costume and attitude. It was an honor to be part of it. It even rekindled some fondness for the 80's, which I had really stopped enjoying a couple years back.




It was five kinds of kick ass to have KJ and AJ in town to help make it happen.

We really miss those guys.

My top moments (keep in mind that I was DJing most of the night, so they're from the dance floor):
1. Watching Jonny, the guy who was in charge of the space while the party went on, go absolutely ape shit on the dance poll then spasm on the floor. He later told me it was a true 80's party since he found a bag of cocaine on the roof.
2. Dancing to "Runaway" by Bon Jovi with Matty (and no one else). We've had a lot of history with that song.

3. Seeing Kate, Lars, and Hans utterly rock the stripper pole. Yes, indeed. Unh!
4. Being totally shocked that Salt'n'Pepper was what that party was craving. Who knew? Good call by Alison.
5. Rafi's spot on Morris Day dance impersonation.
6. Dancing with KJ to "I Feel For You" by Chaka Chan, and declaring it as our song.
7. Announcing that Jordan had won the Sports contest, but since I knew he left the party to play a gig, I said he didn't win shit. This satisfaction that Jordan didn't win a sports related trophy (he's rather passionate about his sports) was short lived, as he returned to the party as I made that announcement. Timing is everything.
8. Joegh's (the owner of Anon Salon) girlfriend went up to KJ, slammed down her champagne bottle, looked her in the eyes and declared "done." She then proceeded to join Heather on the raised stripper pole platform and licked her face. Repeatedly.
9. Slow dancing with Stina to "Every Rose has its Thorn", which was the first song at our wedding.
10. Anthony's big entrance to the party. It was pretty clear who was going to win the best costume prize.


Our heartfelt thanks go out to all our friends who helped make it happen. It was definitely a group effort.

A Reasonable Distraction

Lately, I've become a bit of a google fanboy. I've discovered all sorts of useful google web applications like calendar, reader, and docs (not to mention gmail, blogger, youtube and whatever other useful company they gobble up). I'm even starting to mess around a little bit with some of their nifty programming APIs. When I prepared Stina's computer, I installed google download pack, which installed all sorts of practical applications. Fuck Microsoft Office - I'm all about Open Office these days.

I stumbled upon google docs when I uploaded a doc file and it asked if I wanted to open it in reader. Fuckin'a right I did. Thus I ended up wring Stina's birthday story using reader, since I wanted to work on it from multiple computers. Now I can share the fruits of that labor with a single click of a button. While its littered with lots of inside references that'll make little or no sense to you, it might be an amusing work distraction or something. So, if you want, enjoy my four part love letter to Stina.

Oh right, blogging

Rachel kindly had some folks over to celebrate her birthday at her folks house in the sunny East Bay. I had no idea that Rachel had a sweet pool slide to accompany the sweet pool. Add Haber and Lars to the equation, and many a pool game will follow. I did not enjoy Lars version of lob the orange ball at Jimmy's nuts as he tries to catch the other ball coming off the slide. Payback is a bitch, Lars.

I attended a fantastic Electronic Music Meetup this week. Erik, our fearless organizer, had folks meet at a bar downtown in the base of the building that he works at. Once we reached critical mass, we headed upstairs so that we could use the conference room to demonstrate how were using our computers to compose music. We had a long demonstration from Chris Huelsbeck about the his composition process and ideas. Chris is a fascinating fellow - he's famous for producing the music soundtracks from Commodore 64 games, and he still makes a living producing video game music.



We also saw some serious visual badassery from Alessandro and some of his visualization plugins. There may be more on that front later.

Kerry Jo has swept into town and we've made a reasonable dent on our new bottle of Scotch. Its so good to have her in town. I eagerly anticipate Krusty's arrival tommorow. Stina is rather preoccupied with her upcoming birthday bash so its good to have KJ around to help maintain sanity. This is gonna be one sweet party.

I even saw a fabulous band called "On The One" tonight at 12 Galaxies, and danced my ass off. A quartet of pocket players, they know how to push a groove down your pants. My personal highlight was a ripping version of "Pass the Peas"

Righto. Hope to see most of my 5 faithful readers tommorow night!

Clinton Foundation Video

Made by Paul Lynch

Vacation

I had envisioned that once vacation kicked in, I was going to be seriously laid back and even get my tech learn on. This turned out not to be the case. Between setting up and executing the "bachelor party", wedding stuff, helping Ducey move, working on Stiner's b-day present, and prepping for her party, I had far less downtime then I had anticipated.

I had figured I'd take JW out mini-golfing or something for a night off, and it turned into a much more elaborate and satisfying send off. I figured I do my wedding toast off the cuff and then realized I wanted to put some thought into it. I wanted to write Stina a birthday story - I ended up composing a four part story (delivered over four days), surely the longest story I've ever written. Although I was pretty worn out by the time we left, I'm actually rather proud of what I accomplished during my time in Newton.

On the other hand, I wasn't the one who was given less then 48 hours notice that she would be the point person for the wedding. Holy smoke did Stina rise to the challenge.

The wedding was seriously rocking. Very upscale. Tasty kosher food. I strategically stood next to the door the caterers would enter the hall so I could mow on the very popular "pigs in a blanket". They even had a 9 piece band that could groove pretty good on some funk and disco covers. The bass player was simply bad ass. I spent as much time on the dance floor as I possibly could.



Congrads to the newly wedded couple.