Octoberween
So, this has been a super-busy month events-wise. First weekend - there was my band playing. Then, Bonnie's mom Annie was in town that weekend - went to Bucci's for Saturday dinner. Shelley and Jodi had their baby shower on Sunday, excellent seeing them and other friends I've met thru Bonnie. Also, both days, Tom Proctor was shooting for his short - a neat twist on typical horror expectations, plus it's great someone's doing a project. (It's got me inspired to get my short going - more on that later).
The next weekend (after making a sidetrip during the week to drop off the demon to Ed's place) was Friday night at the 1-year anniversary of the new deYoung museum, and their special exhibits about the Chicano movement, and one about the quilt-making heritage in the small, isolated Alabama town Gee's Bend. Saturday, went out the Castro Theatre for a special 3D presentation of "Creature from the Black Lagoon", with a live appearance afterwards by the stars Julie Adams and Ben Chapman ( the creature on land). It was really neat and charming to see a couple of octogenarians reminisce about the golden days of H-wood. Had an adventure on public transit to get home, then it was a chill evening. Skipped on Gamelan Sekar Jaya at Zellerbach (I know, it's rare for me to not catch their appearance), and also Dynamite 8, went to see '49 Up', which was interesting to see the aging process and life unfold. It did get long after a while, I admit I dozed, and missed some of the most interesting story - the guy with schizophrenia, and some of the reunions of friends. Sunday was dinner with Rev. Steve, who's in town for a stint.
Now comes the most packed week - monday Jam w/ the Colossal Inertia crew. Wednesday 18th was Matmos at Great American Music Hall - a rare concert tour, it was fantastic, or at least fantastically interesting. Some wacky instrumentation included : roses as drumsticks, balloons, microphones on dry ice, someone getting a haircut, and buttcheeks (don't ask). Lot of improv, too, and a whole other electronic artist (Walter Kitundu, whom I learned from Pete, was briefly in Crown City Rockers), I was surprised at how much piano MC Schmidt played. Thursday no event, but we got our gutters installed, in the morning! Friday 19th I took the day off, helped Proctor on some shoots during the day (at leatherman shop in SF..., and at his home), did some biz in the afternoon, then made my way on public transit to SF again, for the Decemberists show at Warfield (ran into Dave Eberle from work). The show, sorry to say, didn't blow me away - less energy than the one we saw last year at Bimbos. Strange song selection - it consisted mostly of tracks I often skip over when listening to the albums, and new material, which I was familiar with, I got the 'Crane Wife' album the week before, but with their subdued and stripped down arrangements, translate into being quite looooong onstage. The highlight of the evening was an excluded 'Crane Wife' track, "Culling the Fold", whereupon they danced wildly. The closer was a 'bonus' CD track from the new album, "After the Bombs", which I thought was very dry and slow to cap the night, and rather unsubtle in its lyrics. Sunday the 21st DID blow my mind - Crispin Hellion Glover, presenting his movie 'What is it?", a quite surreal and disturbing trek through a man's psyche, made even more 'uncomfortable' (a favorite buzzword for Crispin) by the near-entirety of the cast being Down's syndrome kids adults. A very unique event - he's not distributing it, nor releasing on video, so this is the only opportunity to see it. This is a movie Ron's been pushing me to see since he caught it at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2003 (where it won, inexplicably for 'Best Narrative' movie). Crispin did a Q&A afterward, which was highly fascinating and ultimately interminable, and did clear up a lot of mystery regarding how much of his mannerisms are an act, or an Andy Kaufman-like trip on being weird. After answering questions for over an hour, he got into a mano-y-mano debate with one dude, and spent 15 minutes talking to him. That was almost midnight on a Sunday, and we had to catch BART, so that closed the eve. Oh, before that on Sunday I put in a few hours assistance on Proctor's movie, shooting at the Berkeley Rose Garden Inn.
The next week had 2 evening jam sessions at work, M & W. Also, spent several evenings this week tied into the baseball broadcasts - the Detroit Tigers were in the World Series! Hard to believe, they've been losing for so long, but so great to see them do well ( they lost in 5 to the St. Louis Cards. Oh well, they went far, and no New York team was in the finals, so harhar!) . Thursday 26th was nice - got invited to (old friend from childhood) Jody's company's Halloween extravaganza, and quite a party it was. At Nimby Art Space in west Oakland, they had several fire installations - including "Dance Dance Imolation", a DDR game where a misstep will get you a blast of fire in the face (behind a firesuit, of course). One of the team behind DDI was my pal Matt Blackwell, from ILM, whom I run into at many a show. It was great catching up with Jody and Micki, who are expecting a son in February! Also, caught up with Kevin Wilson, a neighbor, and a whose brother and sister I was good friends with back in the day. I didn't recognize him until introduced, and I realized I've never really known him as an adult. He's the only one of his family to have uprooted and come to Cali (after years of chasing his bro to do the same), so good on him.
Friday 27th (after winning our PSC league soccer game!) was a production meeting with Gilx and Garth, about a short idea I had thrown out in hopes of stirring up some interest to get it done for the PDI Lo-Tech Cinema, 3-minute film fest. Gilx really jumped on it, starting popping up ideas, and I handed it over for him to direct, which I'm excited about, and so is he! Looking forward to doing this. Saturday was the company screening of 'Flushed Away', the Aardman-coproduction (Pete came along as the guest, good to catch up with him). Neat, funny, charming, and I really like most of the claymation effect, a la Wallace & Gromit. But don't take my word for it, go see it at the theaters! (opens Nov 3)! Also, while I'm shilling, the DVD of 'Over the Hedge' is out this week, so buy buy buy! Back to our regularly scheduled program... we wandered around Mission St for a bit, stopped in at Bonnie's office, chilled in Yerba Buena Gardens for a short time, then took the bus a few blocks & walked some more (following behind a protest march), to the SomArts Center. There, we saw the newest Shadowlight production - "Monkey King at Spider Cave", adapted from a few chapters of "Journey to the West", a Chinese epic folktale. Love that stuff, seen a few that were lo-quality production values, but overall shadow plays are magical and enthralling works (especially accompanied by gamelan, this one wasn't - it was Taiwanese music, but still outstanding.
Wrapping up as I write, listening to the new The Fiery Furnaces album, "Bitter Tea", which I am highly impressed with; also some of 'Metalmorphosis' on KUCI out of UC Irvine (let me re-iterate once again how super-awesome I find it, to be able to stream audio from any number of college/public/non-comm radio stations across the world. Even commercial stations, as I switch over to KSL for OTR.) I am a huge fan of radio and all it represents, especially as a community form of local and regional broadcasting. I have much to say about this, perhaps when I have some time, I'll give it a separate entry. HA! It is now the 'magic hour' - the death of 2006 daylight savings (which apparently has snafu'ed the ability to publish my blog, have to save a draft and publish later), and I get an extra hour of 'Metalmorphosis'. Hail the Lord of Dark Metal! So, tomorrow we are hosting a brunch for Rev. Steve Leyba, as he is leaving the Bay Area once again. Always nice to have guests...
The next weekend (after making a sidetrip during the week to drop off the demon to Ed's place) was Friday night at the 1-year anniversary of the new deYoung museum, and their special exhibits about the Chicano movement, and one about the quilt-making heritage in the small, isolated Alabama town Gee's Bend. Saturday, went out the Castro Theatre for a special 3D presentation of "Creature from the Black Lagoon", with a live appearance afterwards by the stars Julie Adams and Ben Chapman ( the creature on land). It was really neat and charming to see a couple of octogenarians reminisce about the golden days of H-wood. Had an adventure on public transit to get home, then it was a chill evening. Skipped on Gamelan Sekar Jaya at Zellerbach (I know, it's rare for me to not catch their appearance), and also Dynamite 8, went to see '49 Up', which was interesting to see the aging process and life unfold. It did get long after a while, I admit I dozed, and missed some of the most interesting story - the guy with schizophrenia, and some of the reunions of friends. Sunday was dinner with Rev. Steve, who's in town for a stint.
Now comes the most packed week - monday Jam w/ the Colossal Inertia crew. Wednesday 18th was Matmos at Great American Music Hall - a rare concert tour, it was fantastic, or at least fantastically interesting. Some wacky instrumentation included : roses as drumsticks, balloons, microphones on dry ice, someone getting a haircut, and buttcheeks (don't ask). Lot of improv, too, and a whole other electronic artist (Walter Kitundu, whom I learned from Pete, was briefly in Crown City Rockers), I was surprised at how much piano MC Schmidt played. Thursday no event, but we got our gutters installed, in the morning! Friday 19th I took the day off, helped Proctor on some shoots during the day (at leatherman shop in SF..., and at his home), did some biz in the afternoon, then made my way on public transit to SF again, for the Decemberists show at Warfield (ran into Dave Eberle from work). The show, sorry to say, didn't blow me away - less energy than the one we saw last year at Bimbos. Strange song selection - it consisted mostly of tracks I often skip over when listening to the albums, and new material, which I was familiar with, I got the 'Crane Wife' album the week before, but with their subdued and stripped down arrangements, translate into being quite looooong onstage. The highlight of the evening was an excluded 'Crane Wife' track, "Culling the Fold", whereupon they danced wildly. The closer was a 'bonus' CD track from the new album, "After the Bombs", which I thought was very dry and slow to cap the night, and rather unsubtle in its lyrics. Sunday the 21st DID blow my mind - Crispin Hellion Glover, presenting his movie 'What is it?", a quite surreal and disturbing trek through a man's psyche, made even more 'uncomfortable' (a favorite buzzword for Crispin) by the near-entirety of the cast being Down's syndrome kids adults. A very unique event - he's not distributing it, nor releasing on video, so this is the only opportunity to see it. This is a movie Ron's been pushing me to see since he caught it at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 2003 (where it won, inexplicably for 'Best Narrative' movie). Crispin did a Q&A afterward, which was highly fascinating and ultimately interminable, and did clear up a lot of mystery regarding how much of his mannerisms are an act, or an Andy Kaufman-like trip on being weird. After answering questions for over an hour, he got into a mano-y-mano debate with one dude, and spent 15 minutes talking to him. That was almost midnight on a Sunday, and we had to catch BART, so that closed the eve. Oh, before that on Sunday I put in a few hours assistance on Proctor's movie, shooting at the Berkeley Rose Garden Inn.
The next week had 2 evening jam sessions at work, M & W. Also, spent several evenings this week tied into the baseball broadcasts - the Detroit Tigers were in the World Series! Hard to believe, they've been losing for so long, but so great to see them do well ( they lost in 5 to the St. Louis Cards. Oh well, they went far, and no New York team was in the finals, so harhar!) . Thursday 26th was nice - got invited to (old friend from childhood) Jody's company's Halloween extravaganza, and quite a party it was. At Nimby Art Space in west Oakland, they had several fire installations - including "Dance Dance Imolation", a DDR game where a misstep will get you a blast of fire in the face (behind a firesuit, of course). One of the team behind DDI was my pal Matt Blackwell, from ILM, whom I run into at many a show. It was great catching up with Jody and Micki, who are expecting a son in February! Also, caught up with Kevin Wilson, a neighbor, and a whose brother and sister I was good friends with back in the day. I didn't recognize him until introduced, and I realized I've never really known him as an adult. He's the only one of his family to have uprooted and come to Cali (after years of chasing his bro to do the same), so good on him.
Friday 27th (after winning our PSC league soccer game!) was a production meeting with Gilx and Garth, about a short idea I had thrown out in hopes of stirring up some interest to get it done for the PDI Lo-Tech Cinema, 3-minute film fest. Gilx really jumped on it, starting popping up ideas, and I handed it over for him to direct, which I'm excited about, and so is he! Looking forward to doing this. Saturday was the company screening of 'Flushed Away', the Aardman-coproduction (Pete came along as the guest, good to catch up with him). Neat, funny, charming, and I really like most of the claymation effect, a la Wallace & Gromit. But don't take my word for it, go see it at the theaters! (opens Nov 3)! Also, while I'm shilling, the DVD of 'Over the Hedge' is out this week, so buy buy buy! Back to our regularly scheduled program... we wandered around Mission St for a bit, stopped in at Bonnie's office, chilled in Yerba Buena Gardens for a short time, then took the bus a few blocks & walked some more (following behind a protest march), to the SomArts Center. There, we saw the newest Shadowlight production - "Monkey King at Spider Cave", adapted from a few chapters of "Journey to the West", a Chinese epic folktale. Love that stuff, seen a few that were lo-quality production values, but overall shadow plays are magical and enthralling works (especially accompanied by gamelan, this one wasn't - it was Taiwanese music, but still outstanding.
Wrapping up as I write, listening to the new The Fiery Furnaces album, "Bitter Tea", which I am highly impressed with; also some of 'Metalmorphosis' on KUCI out of UC Irvine (let me re-iterate once again how super-awesome I find it, to be able to stream audio from any number of college/public/non-comm radio stations across the world. Even commercial stations, as I switch over to KSL for OTR.) I am a huge fan of radio and all it represents, especially as a community form of local and regional broadcasting. I have much to say about this, perhaps when I have some time, I'll give it a separate entry. HA! It is now the 'magic hour' - the death of 2006 daylight savings (which apparently has snafu'ed the ability to publish my blog, have to save a draft and publish later), and I get an extra hour of 'Metalmorphosis'. Hail the Lord of Dark Metal! So, tomorrow we are hosting a brunch for Rev. Steve Leyba, as he is leaving the Bay Area once again. Always nice to have guests...
posted by pegasusgiraffe at 11:41 PM
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