redshifter.org

OK, so I finally have this thing up, so what the heck do I do with it now? I'm going to think about that for a while.

Well, I thought about it for a while, and I still don't really know exactly what the heck I'd like to say with this here blog - in fact up until now I was basically just quite interested in the phenomenon and the technology that Pyra built. Which is pretty impressive, I must say.

I put together this quick page design. It'll do for now, I suppose. I'll think about it some more.

Oh, hmm... Well for now I'll spare you my personal details, as I don't really feel like going into the story right now. But I ain't the chick in that image. That's my girlfriend.

Hi folks. Lucky for me, I get to work today! And tomorrow! And Sunday! Monday! Tuesday! And beyond! Ah yes, the joys of the startup life. At least I'm not alone... I get to work with Jon, my fellow web jockey, and listen to Guided By Voices while we labor. Could be worse.

Could be better, too.

Gold Star For Robot Boy.

So, the people who do such things measure the clarity of Lake Tahoe by submersing a white disc into the water, and they basically lower it down until it's out of sight. I recently read that in the 1940s, the disc could drop down like 130 feet before it vanished. These days, it's like, half that depth. Chew on that.

My pal Craig saw the TV show the other night that had to do with the supposed government conspiracy invloving the moon landings. Now, I don't know about all THAT, but Craig is convinced. We were driving home from Tahoe last night, and out of the blue Craig says, "I know a guy who is saving up a bunch of money so he can buy a moon rock. What a shame, he's getting ripped off!"

The early riser springs out of bed bright and early and enjoys a nice, hot shower. He throws on some clothes, does the grooming thing, packs up his laptop and strides confidently out the door, knowing that he has all the time in the world to make it to work. He doesn't sweat it when the bus is late; he's early, right? He leisurely grabs a bagel and arrives at his workplace at the crisp hour of 8:50AM. He casually unpacks his laptop, and that's when the cold mitts of reality grab him by the package: YOU FORGOT YOUR DAMN POWER ADAPTER, IDIOT!

Yeah, I'm cool.

I had some serious tattooin' applied to me today. I'm going to go chill for a while...

It kicks ass, by the way...

Well, I'm sitting here at work, feeling like a side of beef, gingerly applying ointment to my newly-inked arm. Juice's "Blur the Line" opening is tonight; should be sweet! There's some seriously kick-ass artists showing their work up in there. Buddyhead ran a short announcement about the show in one of their email updates, so I'm expecting it to be super-crowded. I'll take some pics and put them up here for y'all to see.

I'm getting a tax refund this year, for the first time in a while. All I have to say is, "Visa, kiss my ass." How liberating!

In other news, I worked till 1AM last night, and the jackhammers started going off outside my apartment around 7AM. Cool!

My friend Chris has a bunch of photos from Juice's "Blur The Line" opening last week. Word! Visit his company threatmedia* to check 'em out. I'm going to post my own photos any day now!

Right about now I want one of two things:

1. A device that would stop time, allowing me to keep working without worrying about deadlines or other obstructive pains in the ass.
2. A semi-autonomous robot clone of myself that could take care of my busywork.

Is that too much to ask? Interested time/space engineers and/or cybernetic cloning experts, drop me a line!

Ah, Bank of America. They've shut down my ATM card because they feel "its security has been compromised," but they can't--or won't--give me any specific information why. I'm feeling a bit Big Brother-ized right now.

So, here's the funny thing about the whole ATM card scandal. I go to the bank the next day, and tell them what the issue is: my card was shut down due to a suspected "security compromise." Seems that BofA noticed some "suspect activity" on the card, and they called me to make sure that my charges were legit, and that no one had stolen my card number. But, since I wasn't home, they suspended my ATM card just to be on the safe side.

So what the heck was the so "suspect?" Let's take a look at my recent ATM activity...

$4 on PayPal for Biosfear
$30 at Walgreen's
$60 cash withdrawal
$13 to Punk Planet

Perfectly normal activity, for me! Could it be that BofA has a beef for Punk Planet? Naw--could it?

Anyway, back at the bank, the BofA representative says he just needs to order me a new card, and he snaps my photo (again, for security) and puts in a request for a new ATM card. But here's the thing: the number on the new card IS THE SAME as the number on my old, "suspect" card! What gives?!?

Saturday already? It's been one of those weeks.

Hooray! Shiner is coming to SF!

These days, life for me is a very steady pattern of working, broken up by intermittent periods of sleeping and/or weekends. Not necessarily in a bad way, however--I feel very busy, which is invigorating. Sometimes I wish it were my own fortune I were making instead of that of others, but for now the steady gig is working out pretty well nonetheless...

And I finally went out and bought a few CDs for a change. I've been listening to so much music online lately, due to my work, that I really haven't gone out and picked up new CDs in some time. Tortoise, Rocket From the Crypt, The Sea and Cake, The Posies and Spoon were my recent purchases. Rather post-rocky and power-poppy, eh? Four Hundred Years is next on my list.

Oh yeah, and Tony Hawk 2 is kickass. But you knew that.

Hello once again, fair readers.

So, I've got a question I'd like to pose to y'all: do my occasional short, two-sentence posts annoy or delight you? Or is it more of a passing feeling of ennui? I'm not too sure that Jamie Anne is too solidly impressed with my short-post steez, but hey - at least she gave me the mention. It's tough, you know?

Want some cheese with that whine, Bob?

Alright, it's time for me to wrench myself away from my Inspiron 8000 just long enough for Szechuan brocolli with fried tofu from Hunan Garden, the best dang Chinese food in San Francisco. OK, the best dang delivered Chinese food in SF. I love you all.

So what exactly is it about sarcasm that implies humor? Case in point: this morning I called my realtor.

Me: "Hi, I'm wondering if you can fax me a copy of my lease..."
Friendly Realtor Woman: "Uh, nope."
Me: "Uh, OK ... really?"
FRW: "Not really."
Me: "What?"
FRW: "What's your fax number?"

What's up with that?

Coming up this weekend, a trip to ... a spa? That's right, kids - a spa. Some swanky joint, courtesy of Deirdre, wherein maybe - just maybe - I'll relax for about five minutes. Here's hoping.

In the meantime, my work is still quite all-encompassing. I'll let y'all take a look when she's ready.

Skies of Arcadia is my most recent brain-sucker.

Whew, sorry for venting like that yesterday, folks. A few of the plates that I have spinning started wobbling madly. Actually, several of those plates...

But today I joined the Army. I even shaved my head.

Yeah, I'm bald as a bean. Deirdre saw my skull and actually screamed. Not really in a good way, either.

I didn't mean to join the Army. I wasn't really prepared at all! See, I told Kraig to "cut it short." Next thing I knew, I was getting a #2-length head shave. I mean, it's not the first time I've sported such a cut, but it's been a while. Spring has sprung, MFers!

The dotcom demon reared its ugly head today. I escaped -- others did not.

A few things to note:

1. About the "ACTION TIME" thing. Maybe I overstated that. Everyone's like, "Bob, what's going on?" -- I'm not becoming a hermit or a monk or anything. I just need to move to some cheaper housing, for starters.
2. PC users, I fixed the weird JavaScript bug in the cam window. Sorry 'bout that. I need to pick up a cheap-ass PC for compatibility testing's sake.
3. I changed the linking function at the end of each post, so it doesn't read "link" anymore - that was confusing. Now you can right-click the timestamp of any of my posts to which you'd like to link, copy the location, and paste it into the appropriate HREF.

Yours in geekiness and usability tweaks,
Bob

Blogger, stop eating my posts!!!

A big fat redshifter "fuck off" goes out to McDonalds and their deceptive, weak-ass ways. Thanks to Chris for spreading the word.

Whew - San Francisco is broiling, and my office is even hotter.

Sorry about my use of the "F" word the other day, family members. I just get mad when I find out there's beef in my french fries.

"This is my weekend. I'm going to find the perfect apartment THIS weekend." Come on, everybody, chant it with me!

If the San Francisco rental market could be compared to the Death Star, right about now I'm feeling like friggin' Red Leader. "Almost there..."

And we all know how HE ended up.

I believe I have come to realize my number one pet peeve: someone interrupting someone/me mid-sentence. I've been noticing it a lot lately. I hope I don't do it too much.

Oh yeah, and I found an apartment. I'm keeping quiet, as the lease will not be signed until tomorrow, so I don't want to jinx anything... But it's looking good.

"I'm busy."

People are always saying how busy they are. Like you run into someone you haven't seen in a while, and you ask how they've been, they say, "really busy..."

Well, I'm friggin busy, folks. Extra busy. Too busy.

You see, I have this new apartment, right? So that means I have to move, of course. But I also am up to my armpits in this huge project at work, which has a pretty major deadline coming up REAL fast.

Yeah OK, I'm venting. Sorry. Low's "Things We Lost in the Fire" is coming in real handy.

Is everybody having a nice holiday weekend? Can someone just videotape the cool special-effects scenes in Pearl Harbor and just send me the tape? I don't feel like sitting through the rest of it.

Has everyone seen the new Lord of the Rings trailer?

Whew. Finally got everything to the new apartment. Took many hours and burned many calories. Millions of thanks to homies Brett, Craig and Ryan for helping me lug my crap across town.

Fun fact: Bob packed his dirty dishes in a box and moved them to his new house so they could meet his new dishwasher. Yeah.

As a rule, I generally avoid discussing personal topics on my site, preferring to keep this forum more focussed on my broad life observations and what-not. Today, I break that rule.

So, my girlfriend Deirdre has moved back to the East Coast, since that's where all her type of work is. In the wake of her move, things haven't exactly been peachy between us, but they could be much worse. But NOW, I see on her [elegantly designed] site that she's destined to date a member of a boy band. I don't want it that way – so quit playing games with my heart.

OK, a few of you have pointed out that my attempt at quoting the Backstreet Boys was off-base. It's actually "Let me show you the shape of my heart," not "quit playing games with my heart." As if it really matters.

Well, looks like I was right, after all. From my man Rico Suave:

I must alert you to your correctness in quoting the Kings of Backstreet. Those who have shafted the redshifter on his BB prowess have merely come from a point of relative knowledge, and in turn have obviously proven their bandwagonesque approach to teen pop. By correcting you, they are both correct yet unproven in their devotion to Nick, Howie and company - the exquisite "Shape of My Heart" is from the lads most recent release, 2000's "Black & Blue," but you are not incorrect in quoting from a song titled "Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)" from their insanely good self-titled debut from '96 (in fact, the clear cut honesty of the latter is a much more apropos choice). Merely, the other denizens who so monitor your verbiage have clearly illustrated that they came late to the Backstreet party.

OK, my new apartment is really nice, but my property management company bites big ones... I still don't have keys to my front door, nor have they fixed the broken blinds in the kitchen, nor have they gotten back to me about tinting my windows so passers-by don't see me sitting around in my underwear. I mean, what gives?

Lash yourselves to your respective masts, ladies and germs. At LONG last, I finally have my I.V. back - DSL right up into my bedroom, and by golly it's fast. Screw that dialup business.

Speaking of I.V., there's a teeny track on my right arm after a little visit to the doctor yesterday. See, Sunday night during the enthralling repeat of the premiere of Fear Factor, my vision sorta stopped working. Yeah, you read that right - I couldn't see. I blinked, I rubbed my eyes, I shook my head, but right smack dab in the center of my field of vision there was a big, shimmery blob that just hung out there for about 45 minutes.

Needless to say, that episode was rather disturbing, and it made paying for my Chinese food delivery rather difficult, so the next day I took my ass down to Dr. Bryson for ye olde checkup. "Scintillating Scotoma" is how he diagnosed it - a very common precursor to migraines. Only I didn't get a headache, so it looks like I'm a sufferer of the totally strange "ocular migraine," which affects the vision, but doesn't cause the crushing headaches that some people get. I suppose I'm lucky, in that case.

Either way, I got my share of a little poking and prodding that day, but lemme tell ya - after having sat through so many hours of tattooing, giving blood ain't so terrifying anymore.

Ouch, I'm sore. Work had a nice team-building excursion this weekend: whitewater rafting on the American River. It was pretty fun, although I prefer sports in which you have a bit more control over what's going on. Basically, we just got tossed around and bounced off rocks. A couple times we had some close calls - the boat filling up with water, Scott getting thrown out of the boat, but luckily landing on a dry rock where we could yank him back in the raft... That type of thing. I think maybe our guide Melissa, while very pleasant, wasn't the most experienced in town.

Also, I'm jonesing BAD for a new motorcyle. I'd take any of the following: a Ducati Superbike 916, a Ducati Supersport 900, a Yamaha YZF R1, a Triumph Daytona 955i, or a Honda CBR929RR.

It was a movie weekend for me, mainly because Friday night's celebrations with San Fran's prodigal son Riz left me so depleted that I pretty much could do nothing but sit still and allow my liver to knit itself back together.

Saturday night was Pootie Tang. Yeah, there were some pretty hilarious moments, and as Chris Rock says, "Pootie one bad brutha," but two hours of what is usually a 5-minute skit on Sir Rock's talk show got to be ... well, sorta one trick pony-ish.

Tonight was Life is Beautiful, which I never got around to seeing until just now. Damn. I've been a fan of Roberto's since I saw him kick it in black and white with John and Tom, but Roberto just freakin' nailed it with this one.

Now, is it me, or does Roberto Benigni look exactly like Jeff Mueller? I keep expecting him to drop the slapstick and start rocking some "Sharks and Sailors."

In other news, on my way to CompUSA today to pick up the recently-released Diablo II expansion pack, I walked by the San Francisco Virgin Megastore. And what Top 40 smash were they blasting over their outdoor speakers? J.Lo? No. O-Town? Heck no. Linkin Park? As if... Kiddies, it was none other than the Bud Light-soaked verses of "Glad Girls" by Guided by Voices. You made it, Bob.

Sa da tay.

Whoa, I just got back from a day of motocross riding in the Central Valley of beautiful California. It was super hot and scary, but fun anyway. I'd never been on a full-blown MX bike before, and that thing had some sack. Not to mention that Craig had it totally tricked out with gold rims and chain, a crazy-ass muffler and custom gearing. It's a lot of bike.

And, I saw Juno play at the Great American Music Hall a few days ago. All in all, a solid showing but maybe not the tightest I've seen them. No complaints, though. I wasn't feeling so well so I didn't stick around for Rainer Maria or Unwound. Shame on me.

Alas, here I sit in the exit row of a 757, headed back to San Francisco after visiting Deirdre and her family for a wedding. Looks like things are actually back on track between us, which is a real relief. We came pretty close to blowing it.

The trip itself was a real frenzy. Between the teary making up and bored ceremony-attending, I didn't even have enough time to stop in and see either of my parents. Shame on me. I especially wanted to take my Old Man's Harley for a spin, too... Next time, for sure.

Non-relationship items of note:

Q and Not U at the Black Cat in DC
OK, I've heard countless times about how lame the scene is back in Washington these days, but at least the kids at this particular rock show got up and shook their asses! Plenty of hand-clapping and fists in the air. D-O-W-N, and that's the way they got down! We San Franciscans could take a lesson or two...

Smoking
Man, you East Coasters get your SMOKE on. I always flip out when I see ashtrays on tables in restaurants. See what California will do to you?

Fireflies
a.k.a Lightning Bugs. They sure are cool.

The PA and MD landscape
I guess I didn't pay it enough attention when I grew up there, but I gotta admit that Pennsylvania and Maryland's lush hills are truly beautiful, especially this time of year.

Putting 500 miles on a rented Daewoo
I love driving, but lemme tell ya that Daewoo makes one crappy automobile -- with the possible exception that the thing was REAL good on the gas. Eleven bucks to fill the tank, too. Ridiculous. In San Fran it used to cost almost that much to top off my motorcycle tank.

My ink
It's funny how living in tattoo-saturated San Francisco can make a guy forget how out-of-the-ordinary a huge full-color piece is to the non-initiate. [Got enough hyphens in that last sentence? -ed.] Seriously, though. EVERYBODY wanted to check it out: the kid at the gas station, the girl at Taco Bell, the couple behind me in line at Denny's, the hostess at the Olive Garden... It made me wonder how people will treat me when my sleeves are done. Yeah, I ate a lot of crappy food, too - in case you didn't already realize that.

Well, that's it. My laptop is running out of juice. Peace to my Chicago homies -- I'm flying over you right this second.

Also, I'm entertaining the notion of picking up a few freelance web projects, so if anyone needs any help, hit me at hirebob@redshifter.org.

As of this moment, I am no longer employed. Anyone need any work done? Hit me. I'll be posting my resume and other goodies up here post haste.

Right now I should be working on my résumé.

So what to do now? Well, as I've alluded to a few times recently, I'm a-looking for some freelance work. Shall I get out of Dodge and head back to NYC?

It's kinda nice not having to be anywhere, but that's about where the fun stops. I'll be back in NYC for this weekend and some of next week, thanks to good old Priceline.com.

As for the decision about moving back east, today my spirits were dampened when I realized that there is no "Early Release" clause in my lease, which basically means that if I try to get out of my lease I'm responsible for paying off all the remaining rent for the year. In my case that amounts to ... a lot. Some landlords are cool about renegotiating, some ain't. Something tells me my landlord (or propert management company, more accurately) falls into the "ain't" category.

Any of you young'uns who may be reading this web site, heed this advice:
Before you sign an apartment lease, look for the "Early Release" clause. If there isn't one, try to negotiate for one.

BK's pet peeve of the day: clueless adolescent salespeople at huge chain stores.

I'm back in SF, living on the cheap and playing lots of Coolboarders 2001 on PS2. Woo hoo!

In 1997 and 1998 I worked at Atomic Vision, one of the early successful Web design agencies. It was a time when many such shops were springing up in San Francisco and beyond, and I'm proud to have been down with that boom and eventual bust.

During my navigation of that perfect storm, believe me when I tell you that I've seen some characters when it comes to CEOs. And Atomic Vision's honcho was certainly one of them. But of all the big-talkers with whom I've interacted, Matthew had the most game--probably because he can drop science.

Show report:
Tonight I caught the Vagrant America Tour at the Great American Music Hall here in SF. The throngs of high schoolers made me feel rather ancient, but the show itself was decent. Actually I was really there to catch Hey Mercedes, who really did an excellent job of rocking my ass. Tight, excellent songwriting, highly proficient musicianship. Listen to 11 to your 7 and tell me you think differently.

I also picked up a sassy Hey Mercedes tee shirt which my Chicago homeskillet Gregg designed. Props.

* * *

Story time:
I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, miles outside a teeny town with the unfortunate moniker of Dillsburg. My stepmom Bonnie and her then husband bought the house in the 60s, and the place played host to many a wandering longhair.

One such vagabond was none other than Bob Dylan. In his early days, as I'm sure many of you know, he was quite the traveling bard, and one day he knocked on our door and asked to crash on the couch, which my folks and their partying kin happily obliged. The next morning he was gone.

Well, that legendary night became immortalized in the very fabric of the couch he slept upon. The ratty piece of furniture was thereafter known as "the Bobby Zimmerman couch," referring to Dylan's given name which my folks were hip enough to know at the time. For the next few years that couch was the envy of every biker, hippie, and soul brother who passed through our doors.

Years passed. Many other vagabonds came and went. Some just stayed the night; others crashed out for longer periods. One such long-term resident was some guy--I don't know his name--but he had a full grown male lion for a pet. That's right - he had a LION. I've seen pictures.

Anyway, one day Bonnie returned home to find that the lion had been let inside and had decided to EAT the Bobby Zimmerman couch! The stuff of legends was reduced to mere stuffing, and boy was Bonnie pissed. She grabbed the lion by the mane and gave him the boot, and did the same to the great cat's owner. The couch, however, was unable to be saved. She swept up the remains and sadly, that was the end of the famous Bobby Zimmerman couch.

True story, I swear.

Yeah, it's been a while. With the exception of my dwindling funds and the total dearth of Web jobs nationwide, all's well here--in case you've been worried. I was dissin' that $300 kickback from the Fed before, but now I'm checking my mail every half hour.

In non-job related news, I witnessed a horrendous scene last Saturday eve. A few of my friends tend bar at a SUPER cheesy nightclub in SF called Polly Esther's. I don't know why they work there... the money must be alright. Anyway, Kevin's birthday was last Saturday, so a bunch of us swung down to wish him well.

Wow, what a scene. Total, unabashed 100% cheese: 80s music, blacklights, super-drunk folks getting their Abercrombie and Fitch on, and a bouncer that didn't want to let Brett or me in due to their dress code. Wow. Maybe a little dose of that every now and again is a good kick in the pants for us counterculture dorks.

I must have some vampiric genes somewhere in my sequence. Since I haven't really had any cause to be an early riser in the past five weeks, I've somehow slid into a very nocturnal lifestyle. I'm usually good for about a 3AM bedtime, give or take an hour or so. This, of course, means that I'm rising and shining at noon, or later.

I suppose that's not really anything to complain about, but as I'm on an EXTREME budget, I've been doing some serious bonding with ye olde television. I'd like to make a few observations:

Videogames:
95% of all new videogames just plain SUCK. I don't know about y'all, but I'm SICK of 3D! It just makes every game "feel" the same. Be it SSX, Gran Turismo, MX2002, or Twisted Metal: Black, there's just no variety! Go fast, find the apex of the turn, etc. etc. etc. I'm speaking specifically about the PS2 here, by the way.

I've been playing Extermination a bit, which is at least a decent diversion from the overabundance of vehicular entertainment, and legitimately scary at times, but all in all somewhat of a letdown.

I want gameplay! Good old white-knuckled, simple concepts worked just fine back in the day, so why not now? And where are the good shooters for the PS2?

Late-night TV:
There's some weird stuff going on out there.

Back in '95 or so, I spent many an evening on the porch at 811 West College Avenue, drinking Yuenglings, smoking Luckies and heralding Bob Mould with my friend James and his bandmates in Samuel. Good times.

Well, in the six years that have passed, the broke-down house that was 811 is no more, taking with it the ghosts of the bands that called it home: T4, Donora, Glendale, Samuel... Now the land is held down by the nastiest cinderblock apartments you'd ever want to see. Gone are the bottlerocket battles between 811 and its next-door neighbor 817, set to the blasting chords of "The Ride of the Valkyries" that Jesse'd play while he lit up gross upon gross of Black Cats.

Everyone's moved our separate ways, and I've pretty much lost track of where people are these days. But, I found evidence that James is still doing his thing. I did a search on the Web for him and found that he's playing (or was playing) with a band called The Braille Drivers back in his hometown of Morgantown, WV. I even appropriated an MP3 from Insound. It's good to hear him do his Alex Chilton/Replacements/Husker thing again. Listen for yourself.

I'll never forget the last time we hung out, at a blowout basement party at J's house, where at 3AM on a snowy night we clutched our beers and sang a verse to a Palace song that was kicking all our asses at the time:

"Where are my friends?
And where is my family?
They've all gone away -
No, it's I who have left them."

Yesterday was quite the rollercoaster. Early in the day I checked my bank account and affirmed my fears: my balance was $11.00. On that news I pretty much laid around in a sweaty fetal position for most of the day, wondering how long I could live on water alone.

But then, like a shining light from above, an email arrived from my former employer, saying that they finally had the money to pay that one last paycheck that they owe me. They're cutting the check today. Talk about a close shave! At least I'll be able to pay rent next month, not to mention eat in the meantime.

Right now the one thing I miss most about having income is the ability to buy music. Just for the sake of fantasy, if I actually did have the cash, here's what I would get:

Ah, grocery day. In months-gone-by when I was slightly more employed, I was a total scavenger, kicking down five bucks here for a burrito, ten bucks there for the veggie sandwich and chips, etc. Now, I'm all about the Rainbow/FoodsCo two-fer.

Lucky for me, I live about a block and a half from a famously kick-ass organic/vegetarian co-op, the aforementioned Rainbow Grocery. Now, don't get me wrong--Rainbow is huge, has a massive selection, and is generally about the coolest place around to buy food, but the joint is none too cheap. So, I limit my spending there to the stuff that's just hard to find anywhere else, at least without having to destroy an ecosystem or local economy to get it. I'm talking the not-dogs, the spinach lasagna "organic TV dinners," the Boca Chicken-style patties, the organic juice...

Then, with my backpack full of Rainbow bounty, I jaunt across the street to complete the rest of my shopping at the Yin to Rainbow's Yang, FoodsCo. It's a huge, cement-floored lo-fi supermarket, with a meat section that probably has its own ZIP code. Not being a carnivore, I dodge that scene and pick up the rest of my non-organic victuals: the frozen veggies, the microwave popcorn, the cartons of orange juice, the 2-liter of Coke...

It's all about finding that balance, right?

Wow, a record four posts today to redshifter.org.

I have a huge tattoo on my left arm that depicts a robot with a woman in his arms. He's carrying her out of an otherworldly scene of destruction, complete with explosions and rubble. It's meant to be an homage to the old-school science fiction, making you wonder whether the robot is kidnapping or saving the girl. Despite the fact that the tattoo's landscape is decidedly alien and not any place on this planet, I'm having a hard time getting past the depiction of flames and rubble at the moment. I'm feeling like I wanna go Scott Bourne on it and blacken the entire thing. I think I'm just freaking out a little bit.

Personally, yesterday was the toughest day for me so far in this crisis. The images of destruction and death just really got under my skin, so to speak. Let it be a lesson to turn off CNN every once in a while and take a breather -- they're pretty much saying the same things over and over at this point anyway, not that that makes the messages any less meaningful or important.

I'm fine with my tattoo, though. Thanks for the emails and comments. Yes, it does depict destruction, but the message and intentions are entirely different from NYC and Washington. It's actually supposed to be a lighthearted and positive tattoo that gives you a little something to think about. I guess I forgot about the lightheartedness and got caught up with thinking too much, which I am sometimes wont to do.

Anyway, I'm thinking about going camping with some friends this weekend. I'm not sure if I want to be away from TV or phones if the shit hits the fan (again), but maybe some time away from the tube and with some homies would do me well.

So much to report...

Camping
The camping trip did indeed materialize. Me and about 8 other knuckleheads went up to this place called "South Cow" near Ukiah, CA. We camped, rode motorcycles, drank Budweiser, burned things, politely tried to dissuade jingoist locals from bringing us all down with war talk, and otherwise did some good old bonding 'round ye fire. For me the high point was discovering a spot along a beautiful lake where we could just pull to the side of the road and jump in the beautiful, clear water. There was a rope swing there, which kinda scared the crap out of me, but I was just stoked to be in there hanging out with some Nature, for a change.

Rival Schools
OK, they have a pedigree, no doubt about it. Burn and GB were fundamental. Quicksand was straight-up, flat-out amazing. I even used to love Iceburn, especially the three-piece prog/hardcore record Hephaestus. But I must admit that Rival Schools did not live up to my own personal hype, and I think a lot of my opinion was founded by their seemingly unneccessary use of multiple roadies and a huge-ass tour bus. They are on Island Records, after all. I still have yet to hear their record, so I'll hold off on further judgement.

Burning Airlines
Now that's what I call Rock 'n' Freakin' Roll, ladies and germs. J and company represented DC in one of the tightest, most precise sets I've seen from any band in my show-going career. The painful irony of their name hung in the air, and we all felt it -- including the band. J almost slunk off the stage with a battered humility, but all in all I think their show was a perfect finale for a theraputic weekend.

Tech BS
I'm pleased that people are making use of the comments system that I put in, although I'm now noticing that the page loads slower, thanks to calls to the CGI script that counts the number of comments per post. My hosting company is also warning me that I'm on a pace to exceed the number of CGI resources that I'm allotted per month. So, I've shortened the number of posts that I list per page to four days' worth. If you want to peep older days, you can always hit ye olde archive. Bear with my experiments, folks.

I have this weird, probably semi-neurotic quirk with my clothing: I find what I like, and I stick to it. Case in point: I've been wearing white on black Adidas Campus sneakers for about five years now, buying pair after pair when they wear out. Well, after last weekend's camping trip, the final nail in my last pair's coffin was firmly nailed in, so just now I went out and bought yet another pair.

Also, I've made up my mind about the hosting thing. Thanks for all the suggestions. With any luck there won't be an interruption in the site, but you know how transferring DNS settings is. Or maybe you don't, in which case, suffice it to say that it can be flaky.

By the way, have any of y'all been watching Band of Brothers on HBO? Burly.

Hot Water Music, Cave-In, Pretty Girls Make Graves and others tonight at the Music Hall. Nice.

Monday, Monday. It's finally raining here in SF—let's hope it washes down the streets and sidewalks a bit.

Worked on the resume for a while today; it's weird to do something on paper for a change.

I'm feeling the "no budget for CDs" pain again today. There's a new Superchunk record out there just taunting me. New releases from Fugazi, The Dismemberment Plan, Hey Mercedes and Shiner right around the corner, too. Drat.

Oh, and here's a genius Lego animation.

Headed all the way out to 47th Ave. last night to hit my friend Paul's birthday party. Saw a bunch of folks I hadn't seen in a while, so that was nice.

I was talking with Angel, and I was making a joke and she exclaimed, "there's an intern at work who reminds me so much of you!"

(I don't really know why, but I get that a lot. I've never met a single soul who reminds me so much of me, so this really leaves me at a loss.)

So anyway, back to Angel. She was going on about how much this mystery twin of mine was similar to me: "Same height, same voice, same humor, same attitude, same bald..."

I didn't really know how to react to that one. I should have just laughed and made some funny self-deprecating remark, but I'm still early enough in my stages of pattern baldness that I could not quite react with sufficient wit. Awkward, silent moment ensued.

In other news, today I went out with Craig to a motocross track in the East Bay called Club Moto, where our friend Timmy and I cheered Craig on in his very first race as an MX enthusiast. He came in 3rd! He also came in last, since there were only three racers in his class. But, hey... We were stoked.

Back in the city, after a three-day jaunt down San Diego way.

Surfing and Nintendo GameCube. That is exactly the activity that spanned my 72 hours down there, and I ain't complainin' one bit.

Surfing: Very fun. I can barely lift my arms to type, which is why I'm keeping this short.

Nintendo GameCube: Screw PS2. I played a Japanese GameCube all weekend and it rocks. All console videogamers should prepare to have their asses kicked — smoother graphics, better loading time and hands-down the best controller design in videogame history. Oh, and two words: Rogue Leader.

Luckily, the work situation appears to be in the early phases of resolving itself. However, I'm starting to realize that I might have to wade through some serious deep dookie before I sign on somebody's dotted line. See, right now freelancing is the most viable option for a techie of my ilk. And, well ﾑ people in this economy don't hire someone until the last possible second, and as an old boss of mine once put it, being a freelancer is basically akin to getting paid for making someone else's problem your problem.

So, it looks like there might be some kind of light at the end of the tunnel, but the last thing I need right now is more problems.

Yesterday I helped Brett and Lisa move into their new apartment, way out by the beach. They just signed the lease on a two-bedroom, with a huge living room with a working fireplace, a dining room, a kitchen that's like the size of a school bus, a back deck, a yard, and a garage. Oh, it's dog-friendly, too.

Kinda makes a guy get a little sick of his street-level flat one block from the gnarliest gang/drug corner this side of Compton. Oh well. At least I have a dishwasher.

Woo hoo! I have a couple of observations to make:

1. Hollow Man - What a piece of crap! I'm watching it on HBO right this minute. Throughout the whole first act the characters use these infrared goggles to see the invisible test animals in their lab. But when Kevin Bacon goes see-through and subsequently homicidal, everyone seems to forget that all they need to do to catch the damn guy is strap on the stupid goggles and shoot his ass. And what's up with the final scene? Escaping through the elevator shaft while a huge fire rages below them?!? HELLO, has anyone ever heard of a CHIMNEY? Heat rises, dumbasses! They'd be toasted like marshmallows!

I've been watching too much TV, in case you can't tell.

2. Halloween - Probably my favorite holiday, but I fear that I'll have to miss the 2nd annual Digipop Halloween blowout, which is tonight, due to a lack of costume. Other than going as aluminum foil guy, I just can't figure out a guise that makes use of common (i.e. 'free') household items. This sucks!!

I have been properly chided for not attending the big Halloween party this past weekend. I need to get over myself.

Like many of my fellow music/technology dorks, I've been bubbly about Apple's new iPod, which they announced last week. Sleek design, 5GB of storage, synchronization and battery charging via FireWire... All in all a nice package, if a teensy bit expensive.

As it turns out, though, the device has been hobbled in a serious way, due to good old copyright and piracy issues. This is from today's Macintouch:

"Synchronization only occurs in one direction, from your Mac to your iPod. This means you cannot transfer music, automatically or manually, from your iPod to a computer, and you cannot use iPod to copy a music library from one computer to another."
- Daniel Smith

Keeping it short today. Here's whay I've been up to in the last 24 hours:
1. ActionScript
2. Taking quizzes
3. Having fraudulent adult charges taken off my credit card. YEAH! Buck the system for porn, whoever you are! I LOVE sitting on hold! Go ahead, have your fun! I didn't really need to use my credit card for the next 7-10 business days...
4. Realizing that simply having the searchable string 'porn' appear on my site will probably cause my traffic to jump by a factor of 10, wondering if I should go back and delete it, saying 'screw it' which results in my typing it again just now.
5. Writing silly stream-of-consciousness weblog filler.

Alright! Glad you could stop by. I'm 'bout ready to swap out that photo over on the right. Any day now.

This salad rocks like Bill Bailey:
1 head romaine lettuce
1/3 red onion
2 green onions
1 cucumber (peeled)
2 roma tomatoes
Feta cheese crumbles

The key to the success of this salad lies in everything being cold — even the bowl — get thee to a fridge! Chop the stuff, crumble on the feta (I get organic sheep feta from Rainbow), and toss it up, yo. Absolutely essential finishing touches are salt and fresh-ground pepper, and Newman's Own Olive Oil & Vinegar dressing.

That's the stuff.

Wow, feels like it's been forever since my last update. And so much to report ...

Firstly, the Vietnamese restaurant Sunflower's vegetarian hot and sour soup is truly, truly magnificent. It's all about the pineapple chunks.

Nextly, I need to rant for a second: the single thing that annoys me the most about the West Coast is chronic flakiness. Super, duper annoying, I tells ya.

And lastly — make sure you're sitting down — BK got a job!!!

If you're here because I spent $20 promoting my site with a mini-ad on Blogger, welcome. If you're an old-skool fan, well then you're doubly boom-bastic. Seriously, though — are these mini-ads the Next Big Thing to hit personal publishing? MeFi introduced it, Blogger copied it, and who knows what the future holds? $20 for 6,666 impressions is pretty badass, but given Blogger's heavy traffic, I'll probably burn through the impressions by this weekend.

Speaking of this weekend, make some coffee on Saturday night, because Mama Nature is treating us to a show: the annual Leonid Meteor Shower is gonna hit us Saturday (OK, Sunday, to be exact) from midnight until dawn. The nerds are predicting the best au naturel show in many a year. Hopefully I'm going to be camping out somewhere where the lights won't interfere with the fireworks.

Speaking of fireworks, Hey Mercedes' new LP, Everynight Fire Works is kicking my ass up, down, backwards and sideways right now. I'm a sucker for the clever, straight-ahead post-post-post-hardcore with a twist, and I'm here to tell ya: these fellas deliver the Rock.

Speaking of delivering the Rock, in an ecstatic shopping spree today I came this close to slapping an iPod onto my Visa, but I gathered my wits and decided that maybe I should collect a few paychecks first. Oh, well. Certainly are a sexy little toy, the iPod.

Today I felt the urge to do my part in nurturing our ailing economy, and I went shopping.

Rasputin Music opened a store in San Francisco a few months back, but today was the first I've visited it. Their selection is not nearly as complete as their Berkeley store, but they're located right in the center of the downtown shopping frenzy, so they have the luxury of foot traffic out the wazoo.

I picked up CDs from the likes of Tomahawk, Death Cab for Cutie, Superchunk, The Pattern, Jay Farrar and Le Tigre. Brett and I have a theory that CD buying binges such as this are too much at once, and you always end up ignoring one or two of your purchases, but I figured I had some catching up to do.

Stop number two on my spree was the cell phone store. I'm sticking to my story that I had to get it for work, but secretly I was wanting one anyway. "Factory Refurbished," people — a refurbished, warranteed Nokia 8260 was $45, and it came with about $100 of rebate vouchers to send in! Obviously AT&T cares more about getting you to sign that contract; phone sales are just gravy.

By the way, Thanksgiving dinner was really, really incredible. Two chefs among our circle of friends is a good thing.

And, we discovered a new gem of a bar, replete with darts, pool tables, a pinball machine, and a kickass jukebox full of The Stooges, The Stones, Soundgarden and other great barroom hits. I'm just giddy over it.

Right about now I really should be coming home from Tahoe, due to all the recent storming that's been going on here in SF. Alas, my days of late have been spent settling into the new job (challenging and kick-ass), editing Lisa's very first Super 8mm film (felt like old times), representing with my homies (Riz comes correct as Grand Champion of Monster Bash pinball on his first night of playing that machine), getting tattooed (my entire left inner arm, and boombastic indeed), doing a lot of Muni-ing to the outskirts of town (and liking it), and feeling pretty lucky, actually.

Craig Kilborn, your late-night indie rock HQ, plays host tonight to Saves the Day, and Damon Atkinson'll be on the drums. Probably not very timely of me to be posting this — I think it already played on the East Coast.

Been, like, extra busy and stuff. I might actually "tape" tonight's show on my "VCR." Ain't used that piece in months.

The launch of Megway is definitely worthy of note. Pret-ty sneaky, sis.

Also, to continue my recently-developed fragmented writing style (I'll get over it)... I wish I were back in DC for the Dec. 28 Strike Anywhere/Dismemberment Plan show at the new Black Cat in DC. Boy, howdy.

And as I bid you adieu, here's a question for y'all: what car would be the right car for BK, if BK were to... get a car?

Well, then.

I thank everyone for their valuable opinions regarding the car thing, and let it be known that I have come to a decision. Not only have I come to a decision, I have acted on that decision, and I am the proud owner of one 2002 VW GTI. Picked it up tonight. I've actually been wanting one for the better part of a year, and there wasn't really any competition — the GTI is pretty much the only new car that meets my needs of affordability, looks and performance. I wanted to hear what y'all had to say first, though. Hopefully I won't have the electrical problems that Matt pointed out; I hear that it's the luck of the draw with the VWs. Oh, and as for leg room, Lemmy - no prob. Fits like a glove.

In non-automotive news, life is BUSY. This work stuff is, well... work! I've had what is easily the hugest, most complex Web project of my career thrown at me, and there's no ducking it; I just have to let it slam into me like that old movie footage of the goggle-wearing bald dude taking the cannonball in the gut. Nothing I can't handle, though — but I probably won't be having too much relaxation time in the next few months.

And finally, a good old-fashioned redshifter.org show report: Hey Mercedes/Saves the Day at Bottom of the Hill, SF... Here's what I have to say about it: put simply, Hey Mercedes needs to stop touring with Saves the Day, or as I like to call them, "The Partridge Family." Basically, the crowd was mainly comprised of squealing teenagers, many of whom could have cared less about the vastly more original Hey Mercedes. HM needs to get on the road with a like-minded band and play to those of us who remember Jawbox, not to a bunch of kids from Hayward who heard of Saves the Day on MTV2 and think the singer is cute. I'm not trying to sound elitist or pissy here; I'm just calling it as I see it, and it bums me out to watch a band with HM's potential play to a bunch of stone-faced teens who just plain don't give a shit.

Starting about one day after xmas, my mom began a daily routine of emailing me with the question, "did you get it?" "Did you get it yet?" "Has it arrived?"

Of course, that makes the imagination begin to wander, and the secret wisher inside me thought maybe, just maybe , she and my stepdad went apeshit and bought me the iPod that was sitting on my Amazon wishlist.

The days ticked by, and each day her emails came in, and no package was to be found. Every day I'd ask Jennifer, our receptionist at work, if the package had arrived, to the point where she'd pretty much just give me a sad stare and a shake of the head every time I'd walk by the desk.

Finally, the anticipation got to the point where both my mom and I couldn't take it any longer and she asked if I knew what it was. At that point I ventured the iPod guess, half in jest, only to find that it was indeed the 'Pod! Stoked!!!

SUPER stoked -- that's way above and beyond the call. Definitely a great, great gift.

A great, great gift that was vapor! Where the heck was it? Finally mom contacted Amazon, and to my utter dismay I realized that I'd forgotten to update my shipping address on Amazon. UPS was busy trying to deliver it to my old apartment downtown.

We put in the request with UPS to route it to work, and I was expecting it today. After a grueling, 8-hour content management system class in Sunnyvale, I returned to the office and sprinted to the desk. Jennifer was there, doing the sad stare, head shaking thing. My heart sunk.

Now I was PISSED. I bolted to my desk and tracked the package on UPS.com. DELIVERED. To my old address! Someone signed my last name and accepted the delivery! Oooh, the blood boils.

I hopped in my car ready to go kick a little iPod stealin' ass, parked in the bus stop in front of my old apartment, and rang 036, my old bell code.

Lo and behold, the new tenant answered!

Me: "Hi, this is Bob Kissinger -- I used to live in that apartment and UPS goofed and delivered a package there last Friday..."

Voice: "They sure did! Come on up and grab it!"

My jaw dropped. I thought for sure someone had taken me for a free iPod.

The gate buzzed and I was greeted with the (somewhat sickeningly) familiar entryway to my old building. I jaunted up the stairs, rang my old doorbell, and was met by a kid not dissimilar to myself, who presented me with the fabled Amazon box.

He apologized for opening the outer packing, saying that he was expecting an Amazon package as well, and didn't realize that it wasn't his until after he cut the tape. With that, I thanked him yet again and sped home to get my rock on. And rocking on I am.

Now playing on the iPod: Jawbreaker, "Jet Black"

Faith in humanity: Restored, partially.

Hey BK! How about you bust your ass for your job so you can scrape by in the super-expensive City By The Bay! And for all your expertise, hard work, long hours and stress, you get to sport a nice fat cold sore!

Hey girls! Check me out!

Cold sores can suck it. No better way to feel fucking disgusting.

Living in San Francisco, home to the turmoil caused by the dotcom explosion and subsequent implosion, has its ups and downs. Yeah, the Bay Area is notoriously progressive and free-thinking — I don't need to tell you that — and like an indie music snob, its population has a tendency to be scathingly, sometimes brutally critical.

The single example of this that pisses me off the most is people's tendency to knee-jerkingly dis those who may have formerly worked at dotcoms.

Before I launch this off, let me establish one point: I acknowledge that the influx of money, greed, and human bodies into the city of San Francisco has changed the city, possibly forever, and in many ways that really sucks.

It really was a gold rush: tons of people descended upon the world's Internet development capital and tried to figure out how they could make a lot of money with this brand-new medium for communication. Many people got rich; even more people got richer than they already were. Still more of us just had a job and made a decent wage for a few years.

Now, the well's dried up, and only the only companies that remain are either the very good ideas, or the decent ideas that sold themselves to existing, already successful corporations. [I guess porn and offshore gambling also remain, but they don't really apply to this argument. –bk] In the aftermath of the collapse, there are plenty of formerly quasi-successful, intelligent people with social conscience who are out of work. There are also plenty of jobless butthead yuppies.

Notice the distinction.

Throughout the city, I frequently see the work of a particular street artist who has made a poster and wheat-pasted it to buildings, bridge supports, electric boxes, and the like. The poster depicts a line of carcasses hanging in a meat locker. Superimposed on this image is the phrase, "LAID OFF."

It can be argued that this poster is critical of the greedy, fatty Internet industry that was forced to cut costs and terminate workers. It can also be argued that this poster states that dotcom workers got what they deserved for fucking up San Francisco's scene. I've certainly heard my share of both arguments, and it is the latter that really gets under my skin.

Here's my point: let's take SF's loft housing situation, for example. For about the last five years, when new residential buildings needed to be built, instead of sticking to the modest multi-family small apartment buildings that used to be the norm in SF, everybody started building "lofts." Many of these lofts, otherwise known as live-work spaces, are architecturally butt-nasty. Typically, they only house a fraction of the number of people that could easily live in a regular apartment building of the same size. They're also incredibly expensive. These factors, plus the fact that the average salary had risen in the city, meant that the only folks who could live in these lofts were yuppies: rich, usually white, and willing to overlook their ever-more-significant role in the rapid gentrification of this fine city.

Yup, these people (usually) deserve my contempt. I'll give you that.

But what about the people who built these lofts? I'm talking about the laborers: the carpenters, the electricians, the cement pourers, the painters, etc. These people are regular Joes and Janes, and most likely were aware of the irony of the situation, and frequently resented the people who were about to move into these spaces. But you know what? The construction workers were gainfully employed in their trade. They were putting food on their tables, as it were.

Do they deserve people's contempt too? Should they have been conscientious objectors and moved to another town or something? Then why dis the white-collar workers? I'm talking the database architects, the Perl developers, the marketing managers, the graphic designers, etc. who were, in some ways, in much the same situation.

You might be saying to yourself, "yeah, but the laborers didn't have stock option money lust in their eyes; they didn't plan on cashing in and retiring in four years, like the dotcommers did." You know what? Stock options were, for the most part, worthless, and most of us who have had them at one point or another knew it. Only at the tips of the corporate pyramids did you find folks who really cashed in, and most (but certainly not all) of those folks are the yuppies that people love to hate. But not all of them, let me reiterate.

I've just heard too many blanket statements made by critical people. People who, otherwise, would probably shriek with fury if anyone made such a statement about women, ethnic or cultural groups, gays/lesbians/bisexual/transgendered people, people with disabilities, or any other non-majority group. Yet, usually based on limited information, the critics themselves become the stereotyper, and that just ain't right, yo.

Today marked my six-year anniversary of moving to San Francisco. And what am I doing to celebrate? Working.

Jeez, a whole week sans posts. For shame.

Shame, shame, shame.

I'm going to fall back on the old "busy" excuse once again: I have a big-ass deadline bearing down on me like a runaway truck, I'm still working on the Juice site, my shower needed re-caulking, and I'm attempting to maintain some semblance of a social life. Which all adds up to a lack of Web site maintenance.

But I digress. There is nothing so lame as a post apologizing for not posting. Here's what the hotshots have to say.

And on to more interesting news: it's Noise Pop time, and I got a badge, yo. I'll be getting my DC on tomorrow night with The Plan. Rock 'n' freakin' roll.

jan·ky /'ja[ng]-kE/
slang: markedly inferior in quality
- jank·i·ness noun

What a great word.

Cool: The new Star Wars trailer is out.

Not cool: I haven't snowboarded a single time this season, and it's looking like I won't be making it up to Tahoe at all.

Very cool: New tattoo work March 29.

With the exception of the occasional guilty jaunt into Taco Bell, I don't really do the fast food thing anymore. Not that there's a whole lot for a lacto-ovo vegetarian to eat at such an establishment. Until now, that is: BK launches a veggie burger. Why didn't some fast food joint do this sooner?

Addendum: A&W has had a veggie burger for some time now.

1. It's been over 90 days since I bought my car, but I'm still rockin' the no-license plate style. I should have received the stuff by now, and every day when I get home from work, I expect to find my package from California DMV waiting for me, with license plates and registration enclosed. No such luck. Finally, when the 90-day mark came (that's the window they give you for them to mail you your goods), I started to worry a bit. Lo and behold, the other day I got a letter from the US Postal Service, with a big stamp on the front, "CONTENTS FOUND LOOSE IN THE MAIL." It was my registration and stickers, but no plates. Looks like my package got torn apart in the mail, and somewhere out there is my license plates. Now I have to go to the DMV to straighten things out, and everybody knows how fun that's going to be.

2. I got an official-looking piece of mail from Volkswagen credit the other day, telling me that they've received notification from my insurance company that my account had been cancelled, and that if I'm uninsured I'm in violation of my loan terms. Of course my account has not been cancelled, at least as far as I knew, and after about 20 minutes on hold with Progressive, I finally talk to a human and we figure out that VW has had the wrong account number this whole time. Progressive cheerfully faxes off proof of insurance, and when I call VW to try to straighten things out, I get the following message: "We are currently experiencing an emergency, and are unable to take your call. Please call back at another time." What, is the building on fire, or something?

3. I check my bank account balances this morning to see if my tax refund has been credited yet. Not only has it not been credited (it was supposed to be deposited by yesterday), but my paycheck that was direct-deposited yesterday is also not showing up. It was there yesterday when I checked my balances, so what's the story? I call my bank, and after like 45 minutes of listening to canned on-hold advertisements for credit cards and IRA accounts, I finally get a representative on the line, who tells me that "they've had a system-wide failure, and all direct deposit transactions have been wiped out." No estimation on when that's getting straightened out.

What's the deal?

In more exciting news, Flash MX has been released, and it is a fine application indeed.

Just now I realized that I totally forgot to go to Bottom of the Hill tonight to see Engine Down. Obviously, in my advancing age my memory is beginning to fail, so I decided to resurrect my list of upcoming shows of note; it's over there on the right.

Top search strings, part two:
1. "scintillating scotoma"
2. "refurbished"
3. "refurbished nokia san francisco"
4. "sexy cartoon on pool table"

I have no idea about that last one.

As was once pointed out by the dearly departed Upright Citizens Brigade, everybody needs to just cooooool out — especially me. Just when I thought work was starting to mellow, it's getting crazy again. I ground the hell out of one of my car's rims on a curb last night. I bit my tongue really hard today while eating lunch, opening up a disturbingly deep wound. I have not yet gotten my tax refund from the Feds, and it was supposed to be here by March 15. Anxiety abounds. Someone get me a bucket.

Reading Stupid White Men doesn't help my mood, either. Michael Moore has been criticized in the past for altering the facts in the name of "a good story" and using social change to further his own career, but that's capitalism for ya. Fact is, he's making himself rich — but he's also fighting the good fight against a USofA that is becoming startlingly more and more fucked.

Ouch. I've had a headache since last night that just is not giving in to Advil. Sleep last night was fitful, then when I did finally slip away, I dreamt that someone from work woke me up at 6AM asking me incredibly technical questions about HTML. While I was on the "phone," one of the senior business development guys from work showed up at my house and began to root through all of my belongings. Anxiety dream, anyone?

I do, however, remember dreaming that I discovered an entire other room in my apartment that I hadn't previously known about. I remember thinking, "this would be a good spot to put my computer, so I wouldn't have it piled up in my bedroom." Then I woke up.

This daylight-savings time thing was obviously invented by the same person who quipped "early to bed, early to rise..." My proposal is that we ignore the "spring forward," and every six months we just "fall back," thereby giving us all an extra hour of sleep. Sure, after 12 years it'd be dark all day and light all night, but at least we'd all be well-rested.

And, there's a bootleg video of the next Lord of the Rings trailer: The Two Towers. Boo-ya.

Today was not a good day for my waning faith in humanity.

1. I got jacked on eBay. I mistakenly bid $21.00 on an auction that was at $0.15. That's right: fifteen cents. There were only a few minutes left in the auction, and of course I knew I'd won it, so I emailed the seller and said I'd most likely be the winner since I'd accidentally bid so high. Silly me. Thing is, I wouldn't actually have to pay the full bid, since the price was still down around $1.00 after my bid was placed (remember, on eBay you bid by stating the maximum that you're willing to pay, and it bids automatically for you up to that amount). This morning when I checked the final status of the auction, someone with no eBay history (a brand new membername) had come in and put in a $20 bid, thereby assuring that I'd be obligated to pay my maximum bid of $21.00. I suspect that mystery bidder to be the seller, since there's no reason that anyone would bid so high considering the other auctions for the sime item were down around two or three bucks. The seller screwed me, basically.

2. My friend Craig and his dog Jersey were nearly beaten down by some thugs in the Lower Haight, after one of the hoods startled Jersey by reaching out to pet him. When Jersey began to bark, the group took swings and kicks at Jersey and sent out for their own pit bulls, which I suspect to be the earless, trained-to-kill variety. Luckily Craig and Jersey managed to high-tail it out of there before it could get any worse.

3. I just got back from the screening of a documentary called Señiorita Extraviada, which tells the utterly horrific story of how more than 200 young women have been disappearing in Juarez, Mexico over the last ten years. The cops and government are powerless and corrupt, and virtually nothing is being done to stop it. The whole situation is really, really messed up.

Depressing, indeed. People suck.

More top search engine queries leading people to redshifter.org:
1. california tricked out bugs
2. touring with saves the day
3. matt skiba

More depressing news:
Dad is back in the hospital for some more gut-related problems. He sounds like his spirits are good, though.

More optimistic news:
Uh... hmm. Little help here? Things are up and down lately. There are lots of apartment vacancies in San Francisco right now; that's pretty decent news, I suppose.

Ask most San Francisco dwellers about living in the Outer Sunset and they'll shoot you a look as if you're talking about Western Mongolia or the Lower Nile; as if that part of town may as well be that far from city center. Fine with me. Truth be told, one of the major reasons why I'm considering a move to that part of town is the utter and total lack of any type of "scene."

Except, that is, at Pittsburgh's Pub, the local watering hole. First off, it's a bar that's owned by a 'Burgh native, and many of you readers know all about that "yinzer" action. For those of you that don't, just picture in your mind lots of wood paneling, Budweiser neon, Penguins paraphernalia, and drunk locals.

Emphasis on the word "drunk." There was one girl there who may have once been cute had she not spiraled into a wasteland of alcoholic promiscuity. At one point, while I was getting a drink, she sauntered up to the bar, sat down next to me on a barstool, and literally threw herself on me. I sort of gingerly retracted.

"Oh, sorry," she said, "did I hurt your tattoos?" [ed. note: what?!?]

I was like, "uh, no..."

She held out her hand and introduced herself as Wendy. I politely introduced myself and shook her hand. What followed was positively creepy: she stared me down with this wasted, bleary attempt at seduction and gripped my hand with a truly metacarpal-crushing force. I mean, she shook hands like a lumberjack.

I just withdrew and hid, and for the rest of the night Wendy was getting all nasty with this total burnt-out rocker dude who looked alarmingly similar to GBV bassist Tim Tobias.

Rad.

Well, another weekend, come and gone. Another Six Feet Under, another few nights of hanging with friends, another few days of poor nutrition due to my inability to maintain a stock of groceries at my house.

Speaking of houses, I've been hunting for new digs out by the beach, as promised. My quandary is that there are basically two varieties of one-bedroom apartments out there:

1. The "in-law": Essentially, this is a ground-level apartment which used to be laundry rooms and workshops in single-family houses. I've pretty much had my fill with the ground-level thing. My current apartment is ground-level and I feel like I have to keep my shades drawn at all times so people don't see me lounging around in my skivvies.

2. The generic box: The other type of one-bedroom in the Sunset is the regular apartment building. That wouldn't be so bad, but most of the apartment buildings in that part of town were built in the 1970s and are the gnarliest, most slipshod, wall-to-wall-carpeted pieces of junk with electric stoves. That's not going to work.

What to do?

By the way, if anyone is wondering, the chord progression to that "Sunday" song that HBO plays over its promo commercials is B-C-G-D.

As things go, it's shaping up to be a pretty kick-ass week, culturally speaking. I'm going to rock one of my lists:

1. Superchunk and Kinugasa: A Page of Madness: How cool is that? Superchunk is performing their live score to Kinusaga's 1926 film, at the Castro Theatre, no less. Jon Wurster won't be playing with them tonight, as he's already touring with Caitlin Cary, but Polvo's Ash Bowie will be filling in on percussion.

2. Les Savy Fav at Bottom of the Hill: Dude, The Fav is easily my favorite band as of right this second. Really. I can't get enough of 'em. Needless to say I'm stoked that they're in town. Listen to The Slip and Tragic Monsters.

3. GRUPO at Juice: My esteemed ex-business is returning to the world of art exhibitions with a night of work by lots of good people: Dave Fenton, Robert Guiterrez, Harrison Haynes, Amanda Hughen, Craig Melchiano, Andy Mueller, Claire Rojas, Scooter, Matt Smialek, Bill Swanson and Paul Urich. Good stuff.

4. Cowboy Bebop: I'm pretty much an anime n00b; I mean, I've seen Akira and Ghost in the Shell and some of the other biggies, but I'm pretty green to the real shit. Sooooo rad.

See you, Space Cowboy!

Well, the film was eight ways to kookytown, but Superchunk's deft scoring was pretty on-point. They didn't really develop themes for characters or other advanced types of scoring tricks, but they did a darn good job of counterpointing the film with some good jammin'. And there ain't nothing wrong with that.

The FAV tonight. Boy howdy, I'm jazzed on that. Their vocalist Tim is a friggin' maniac, so who knows what shenanigans will ensue?

Grupo went off swimmingly. Saw lots of good, good people, and good, good art. Makes me happy. I took a few photos: [1] [2] [3]

Bummer about Lisa Lopes . I've never been ashamed to admit my love of TLC.

Oh, Christ.

Blogger users, whatever you do, don't accidentally delete your blog. Luckily I have my pages backed up, but the in-Blogger database of all my prior posts (every single one since November 2000) is kaput. You can still read them all, but this month is gonna be a bit screwy. If you want to read May 2002's earlier posts, including the epic indie-rock discussion, you can find them here, or in the '05.2002' link in the archives sidebar. Everything else on the site will work normally.

::smashes head on desk::

It all happened because I tried to delete this weblog, which I was using to chronicle my (failed) efforts to prove that I didn't owe the IRS $1200. I was so mad at getting screwed by the Man that I didn't realize that I was deleting the wrong weblog until too late.

Like I said, I'm going to go cry in my beer.

Kill whitey.

In light of my recent indie-bitching, I point thee to a well-constructed and deservedly self-righteous rant by Mr. Morrison of The Dismemberment Plan.

Miscellaneous updates: Still ain't seen Episode Two. Hopefully this weekend if I get a sec and can deal with the crowds. More tattooin' tomorrow, despite my IRS-imposed lack of disposable finances. Craig, on the other hand, got a job and will soon be pulling down that bank. Dollar-dollar bill, y'all.

Caught Episode II last night at the olde Coronet here in SF. Despite occasional passages of flat acting, wordy exposition and those super cheesy romance scenes (at which audiences are laughing), I thought the movie was pretty decent on the whole. It's all about the action scenes. Bottom line is, the battle scenes are on point, especially when the Clone Wars start up in earnest. I'm going to have to see the movie again just so I can digest everything that's going on. I also want to catch it on digital projection (the Coronet is old-fashioned celluloid).

Although Lucas is obviously a bit soft around the middle as a director, I really think Episode II was miles better than Episode I, and you really have to tip your hat to Lucas and his cadre of storywriters' ability to retrofit a story. It's all coming together.

It's also nice to see Christopher Lee getting his props with gigantic roles like Saruman and Dooku. He's been doing movies (mostly British B-movie horror for Hammer Films) since 1947.

BK highlights of Episode II:
1. Samuel L. Jackson specifically requested a purple light saber. Pimp.
2. The shot of Mace Windu running with his light saber held very still, horizontally out from his body. Total Samurai style. Love it.

I tell you this: I am all over FUBAR when it comes out. Give'r!

In other news, I just noticed that my old colleague Raphy has created a weblog. Not only can that guy can get his proper design on, but he's an ex-Marine, so he can also kick your ass.

I was bitten by a black cat this morning as I was petting it. Is that bad luck? Should I be worried?

If you have a car, and you ever care to bring it back to a showroom-quality shine, do yourself a favor and pick up a clay bar kit (link for illustrative purposes only; I got mine for $14 at Kragen). See, I had little brown stains all over my car from parking outside. Wax wouldn't remove 'em, but that clay bar did it right, and after about 4 hours my car was gleaming. Smooth as glass, too. Pretty amazing.

Other than that, I'm trying to save up again so's I can resume the old apartment hunt. I simply must get the hell out of my apartment ASAP. Reason #1245: my Phish-loving upstairs neighbors have decided to buy a bus. An old, diesel-huffing, gigantic, beat-up bus which, when parked on the alley outside my windows, completely blocks out what little natural light I already had. Grrr.

Reason #1246: Did I mention that my day of auto-detailing was spent in the Sunset? Not only was I able to work outside without having to deal with cracked-out folks hovering around, I was able to lay down on the sidewalk while I worked underneath my car, without fear of stabbing myself with somebody's hypodermic needle or plopping down in somebody's dookie. Get me to the 'burbs.

Drawback: the singles scene in the Outer Sunset is about as active as a couch potato on quaaludes.

Well, the time is nigh for me to return the digital camera that I've been borrowing, so until I can save the bucks for this bad boy, I'll be updating the pics on my site with this piece of junk. But hey – at least it works, unlike that L'Espion crap that I returned.

In apartment news, the landlord of the apartment that I viewed yesterday offered me the place, but I'm not going to pay the rent that she's asking. I offered her a (very reasonable) lower rent, and she sorta got grumpy with me. It's not the end of the world if she doesn't bite, but it is the nicest place that I've seen so far. We shall see.

I'm experiencing some fine weather-inspired wanderlust. Reno, anyone?

Alas, as I explained, no Reno this past weekend. Soon, though. I got the bug to get out of Dodge.

When I was a younger lad, I always used to wonder how air bubbles in liquid would behave in zero gravity. Like, how would they know what to do? Finally my young mind realized that the physics behind rising bubbles isn't a function of the air's desparate need to get back to its safety zone, it's a simple function of water falling and displacing the air back to the surface. Thus, in zero G, the bubbles just hang out inside the water, nowhere to go, not a care in the world. Oh, if I only lived in zero G. Here's an interesting page with movies of researchers examining bubble behavior in low-gravity. (link via MeFi)

Two pet peeves that I'd like to share:

1. Eating loudly. You know, smacking your chops while you chew. Reeeeal gross.
2. Using the term "retarded" to mean something is messed up. Not cool.

Well, the sickness turned into some kind of full-on bacterial thing with the cherry on top being a nice case of conjunctivitis, which is what I'd prefer to call my little illness rather than its euphemism of pinkeye, which is just so 2nd grade. Yeah, that's right — pinkeye. Go ahead and laugh. Doctor Dollar-sign* prescribed me some wicked antibiotics that leave me feeling rather more ill than I did otherwise, but at least they're keeping my skin nice and clear.

Finally just saw Vanilla Sky, which on the whole I though was kind of a letdown. I came out of it rather depressed, but once or twice I found myself wrapped up in it. Cameron Crowe sure does like his rock n' roll. Can't blame him for that.

* I still maintain that my doctor's office is the biggest insurance scammer ever. I think 99% of their practice is giving shots to travellers, and when some "normal" patient comes in with an actual illness, they try to get you to come back in over and over so that they can continue to milk your insurance for loot. Let's hear it for privatized medicine.

Didn't make it to the Shins show, once again. It's been a whirlwind week and I'm pooped.

Add this to my list of pet peeves: people who are too cool to use turn signals. I came about this close to t-boning someone last night who wasn't signalling their turn. That would have sucked.

I'm in serious need of a trip to Amoeba. It's funny how hundreds of CDs and several days' worth of MP3s can grow old on you. Actually, it's not that funny. It's a downright shame. I need new music.

Other than that, things are hunky dory. Joe's futurist weblog entry is pretty amusing.

The 6th annual Webby Awards were handed out last night. Nothing too drastically noteworthy, with the exception of the Health category that was awarded to Teenwire. Teenwire was an Atomic Vision project that was given to us right as I was leaving to do Juice. That was back in 1998. It's kinda crazy that Teenwire — obviously dated in appearance, but a great resource — is just winning the Webby now. But maybe the Webby nomination panels are wary of doling out awards to dotcoms that might be declaring Chapter 11 any day now.

Also, my freshly-shorn hellraisin' homie Paul Urich's new site is live, and I say "word" to that. His art is great, and his skateboards are fun as hell.

Back on the OSX tip, Microsoft unveiled Internet Explorer 5.2 earlier this week, which takes advantage of OSX's "Quartz" graphics optimization technologies. For the layman, that means that fonts are smoothed to look like this now. I don't know if I'm just being stodgy and resisting change, but I really think screen fonts are more readable when they're not anti-aliased. But what do I know?

Man, sometimes I can be a real space cadet. Especially with dates. Anyway, apologies to anyone that I told I would see at the "Four on the Floor" opening at Upper Playground last night. I sorta had it in my head that the opening was tonight. I'm a knucklehead. Not that I would have been able to attend if I had gotten the date right, as last night saw the celebration of a few birthdays. Riz got hooked up with a Neo-Geo, so needless to say he's stoked.

This weekend might see a foray into the world of Indian Casinos. Be afraid.

If I ever can muster the resources, both financial and emotional, to replace my horribly crooked, confidence-shattering set of choppers, I'm going to install one of these bad boys.

You may know that Snow Crash is required reading for the l33t set, but there's a wacky Swedish company who must have liked the name so much that they adopted it as their own. Purveyors of fine wares such as the Netsurfer. I think it's safe to say that I'll never own one of those, either.

Had my first little wipeout this morning, courtesy of my new Paul-crafted skate. Now I have a little scrape on the heel of my hand. Feel sorry for me.

In far less wussy news, Cornbread Compton, drummer for Engine Down, has released his new single, "Lose My Head". Be warned.

Ugh. Adding insult to injury, I dropped my camera today and broke it. It fell out of my pocket and the CF door smashed off, right as I was getting in the car to make the half-hour drive to Riz's place. Needless to say the entire ride was full of much exasperated cursing, and I probably came about this close to doing the Falling Down. I guess I'll keep you posted about Canon's repair department's effectiveness... Ain't life grand?

I've also made the jump to a non-cable TV lifestyle, if only until I move (whenever that is). Fifty bucks per month is a lot of loot for a single guy who watches about three hours' worth of TV per week. I think I can just do without.

Onward.

Someone in my hood must have a stash of M80s or cherry bombs or something. They're very, very loud. About every 15 minutes or so, they light one off, I leap out of my skin, and every car alarm on the block begins to wail. Beneath the din, I can hear people cheering. Maybe it's some kind of contest to see who can place the explosive to trigger the most car alarms. Or not.

Someone recently happened upon redshifter.org via the Google search: "I don't have proof of insurance, I'm fucked!" Don't ask me how that came about.

San Francisco has been positively broiling lately. High 80s every day. For those of you that don't know, that's pretty irregular for this time of year — usually it's in the 70s until 3PM, when it gets chilly and foggy. Not that I'm complaining. I propose a road trip. Maybe this time it will actually happen.

Finally, you regular readers may have noticed that I've tweaked the appearance of my links a bit. In an effort to be a better practioner of what I preach — that is, accessibility — I've added an underline. That made the red liks stand out a bit too much for my liking, so now they're blue. Such is the way. As you were!

Well, the weather has cooled out. Now SF's back into the normal climate zone. Nice little run we had there.

Tonight marks a foray into the Oakland dive bar scene. It's a whole other world over there.

Oakland bars are cool. DJs that spin Sinatra and Jawbreaker are cool. Tattooed rocker girls are cool. Funny how things work.

Fecal Face, the fine SF-based skate/art/graff/etc site (which incidentally, seriously needs to resolve their 'back button' issue -- this means you, Trippe), is sponsoring blind dates. They'll set up a nice young fellow with a nice young filly and we all get to watch the sparks fly. Nice idea. If you want to get in on the fun, email 'em at contact@fecalface.com.

For some marginally work-safe, probably offensive, but incredibly hilarious Friday fun, peep The Big Book of Sign Language. (link via Neckdeep.)

Someone, somewhere, invent a new type of food for me. Try to keep it cheap and delicious, but don't mangle some DNA strand or destroy some culture's ecosystem to do it. I tell you this: burritos aren't that mind-blowing after you've eaten 13,000 of them. Haven't I been on this tip before?

7, 17, and 1973... all prime numbers.

This is cool: fellow PSU-alum Jonathan Frakes, better known as #1, is set to direct a live-action feature of Thunderbirds. I sorta wish they'd just stick to the old-school supermarionation style, but hey.

My birthday present to myself was a new guitar amp: the Marshall MG 30DFX. See, my Russian-made Sovtek MIG100 amp sounds absolutely great, but it is so damn loud that casual jamming in my bedroom is just out of the question. Even at the lowest possible volume setting, its 100 watts of volume are enough to piss off even the most tolerant of neighbors. It's simply not made to played quietly.

So my solution was to pick up something cheap that I can coax into putting out a decent tone, and I think I found it in the Marshall. $250 certainly doesn't get you tube distortion, but the tone is OK and the single 10" speaker actually sounds pretty decent, all things considered. My Les Paul is happy to be back in action.

The best rock amp of all time, for my money, is the Marshall 100-Watt JCM800. Like my Sovtek, it's stripped to the bare bones. Crank up the gain, heat up the tubes and you get ripping distorted tone that won't get muddy, no matter what. This amp has been out of production since around 1990 or so, but now Marshall has gotten their shiz together and you can get a brand new one. For only $1400.

Been busy being busy, and now I'm all sick. Tonsils the size of grapefruits. OK, that's an exaggeration. Bing cherries, maybe.

Saturday night I was introduced to Sonny Smith. He stood solo on the teeny Hemlock stage and shuffled out wine-soaked songs that fell somewhere between Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. The recorded stuff on his Web site gives it a much more generic feel than the live experience: heavy tremolo from an antique Gibson amp, contorted sideways delivery and an endearing lisp. I like.

I'm movin' out like The Boom, sucka. In a scant few weeks I'll be taking up residence with my friend Craig, which will be interesting, but cheap. Like, real cheap. So, sunset plans are on hold for now while I save cash and figure out if I can deal with having a roommate for the first time in around 5 years, ex-girlfriend notwithstanding.

Strep throat is cooling out, thanks to heavy antibiotics. I swear I felt fine until I went on the meds; now I'm super lethargic and dazed. Not the easiest way to spend a day at work, but I'm fresh out of sick days, so away I toil...

Henry Rollins has a special on Comedy Central. That is all.

I tell you what: M. Night surely knows how to get his nuance on. I took in his new flick last night (digitally projected, no less), and on the whole I thought it was pretty tight. Best thing about the movie for me? The exact same film could have been made in, say, 1954 – and it would have been just as good. That's worth a little something these days.

Signs definitely has an old-school pacing. It reminded me a little bit of the original version of The Thing, in which the monster lurks around each corner, but you never really see it. (John Carpenter's remake also kicks ass.) The other best thing about Signs for me? It's not a movie about alien invasion.

I think of the three M. Night flicks that I've seen, Unbreakable is my personal fave. Much like Signs, M. refuses to give the audience the payoff that they expect.

NOTE: There's spoilers in them there comments, so if you haven't seen the movie yet, be warned.

To either Henry or this band.

Know ye this:
1. Aloha's Sugar sounds good on my system.
2. Wes Anderson is my fucking hero.
3. Lots of saki with dinner + Amazon 1-Click® = oopsie!

Double-dated up to Larkspur this weekend, to an all-raw vegetarian gourmet restaurant. The food was extremely expensive, utterly delicious, super eco-conscious, and later made Lisa sick. She had the pizza-style appetizer, so in the off-chance that you go there, watch out. The joint is called Roxanne's and they are in sore need of some expert consultation in regards to their Web site. Otherwise, very noteworthy.

Way back over here on my end of the spectrum, Boca now makes pizzas.

Other bummer: lots of people boycott Calistoga water because they're owned by Nestlé, who is accused of agressively marketing infant formula in developing nations, thereby depriving babies of breast-fed nutrition. Should that boycott extend to Calistoga as well?

I'm so in transition right now. No DSL at home anymore (boy does that suck), slammed with work, haven't packed yet, moving Saturday... Apologies for poor response time to emails, and infrequent Web site updating. I promise come next week it'll all be sorted out. At least that's what I keep telling myself.

One thing that's nice about this move is that I'm taking the opportunity to clear out the crap. Today I'll be donating a mind-boggling five (5) gigantic garbage bags full of clothing to Goodwill. Coincidentally, that's where I originally got some of this soon-to-be-discarded gear, so I guess it's appropriate. Either way, I'm proud to say that I have much less extra baggage.

Otherwise, I'm rather sore from all this lifting, packing, stacking, pacing and head-scratching. Can't wait to get the hell out of my janky-ass apartment, though — out from the oppressive weight of the coffee shop that cares not for its neighbor.

Damn, that was a weekend? Seemed more like a blink of an eye to me. Got moved in, though. Not 100% organized, mind you, but moved in. My jaw was killing me this morning when I woke up, so I must have been grinding away as I slept, dreaming about where to hang this picture or where to put that Spawn figure, or if my bed matches the carpet.

Next up: upgrade my machine to OSX v.10.2. Can't wait. Macs sure have come a long way.

By the way, I'm selling my stereo: it's a Denon mini-component system, Dolby Surround, all five speakers, 3-disc CD changer. It's pretty small, sounds great and it's $100. Gimme a shout if yer interested.

Another reason why the weblogging phenomenon is ever more significant and important: www.bob-williams.org.

So far OS X v10.2 is pretty rad in all respects. Significantly more responsive than its predecessor, with a gaggle of enhancements, all on top of what was already a phenomenally stable operating system. Makes a guy happy, I say.

Likewise, the new apartment is shaping up, slowly but surely. Working and moving/unpacking are all that I've been up to. Well, those things plus eating dinners, hanging with Jersey (the half-breed Pit) and drinking the occasional Budweiser. But seriously — that's it. Work, unpack, setup, sleep, repeat. Feels good to make progress, and the new apartment is a vast improvement over the old, but I need me a break! Three-day weekend, baby.

I just got another summons to jury duty, too... I was dismissed last time. Wonder what this episode will have in store?

I should have listened to that little voice inside my head. A few weeks ago, I suddenly wondered if I should go ahead and purchase redshifter.com and redshifter.net, just to secure the namespace. Being the occasional cheap bastard that I am, I decided to save the bucks and stick with good old .org.

Witness: redshifter.com. I just want to point out to all of you out there that I have absolutely nothing to do with that site, its creators or anything else that you can vaguely associate with that domain. Good luck, whoever you are.

To celebrate Jen's birthday last night, we went to this crazy old-school restaurant in Daly City called Joe's of Westlake. It's a total understatement to say that our motley bunch got the 20-second stare when we entered; it was more like the two hour stare. We were easily twenty years junior of anyone else there, and when we rolled to the bar before sitting down, the tension was palpable; our styles were straight-up rookie in the presence of these barflys. Matt's gauche cell-phone action didn't help, either. Some super-drunk old dude told Matt to "get the fuck out of the way" as our friend obliviously chatted away. My vegetarianism probably didn't help us, either.

But, hey. It ended up being a pretty decent meal (an iceberg lettuce salad and a whopping plate of pasta alfredo for me, slabs of cattle for the rest of the crew), and I think the staff may have taken a slight liking to us by the end of our dinner, considering our hefty order and generous tipping. If you're looking for an interesting Bay Area dining experience, you should definitely hit Joe's. Will I return? Maybe next year.

"We will not be beaten down" - Fugazi
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." - Ghandi

<Insert obligatory apology for not posting anything new for a while>

Yeah, I haven't had the prose flowin' freely over the last few days, but I promise to be a good boy, to buckle down, give 110%, dig deep, etc. I blame having a roommate for my lack of updates – which is not entirely a horrible thing.

Further evidence of my recent slack is the fact that I haven't been to a live show in at least two months, which is very unlike me. I'll be away next weekend, which means that I'll miss both Q and Not U and Aloha. But we have The Fav, The Plan, and The Jets comin' up. Not too shabby.

How about those Sopranos? The dookie's gonna hit the fan, methinks.

Well, I get to enjoy a few days off work, so I can head back to Pennsylvania to see Stoopid get linked. It'll be the standard whirlwind of familial visitation, driving, more familial visitation, wedding, getting drunk, more driving (not after drinking of course), and flying home. Just in time to go back to work!

I'll try to snap some new photos, too -- that Ocean Beach shot over there is starting to get crusty. Haven't been good about toting my digicam around lately.

Upcoming events: Reno, baby. I finally get to step on my recent gambling bug.

Once again, a whirlwind East Coast trip draws to a close. Transportation provided by Boeing, Nissan and Harley Davidson, the latter being the most fun by far (courtesy of my dad's '99 Dyna Super Glide). Pretty hot. Makes me re-think my desire for a new sport bike. Now I want a Sportster 883 or even a 1200. Woof.

A German co-worker takes issue with my newfound Harley appreciation, dissing the American steel in favor of BMW's refined engineering. All I have to say is, in the 48 hours I had possession of that Harley, one girl showed me her boobs and another hung out the window and made appreciative sexual gestures at me. Screw your Beemer -- I'm getting a Harley.

And of course, many congrats to Dick Diesel and Sheena Benz, who tied the knot in style. Good stuff.

Some SVT technician at a Ford dealer in San Antonio was stupid enough to take a customer's car on a 140mph joyride, then post his experience on a public message board. Next thing you know, the owner reads the tech's post and the dookie begins to flow. The tech ends up getting fired and the owner is pursuing legal action.

The cool thing about this huge thread, which got linked from just about every single car enthusiast site on the Net, is how everybody — drivers of Hondas, VWs, Subarus, Corvettes, Acuras, BMWs, etc... — put their differences aside and rallied behind the car's owner.

Whenever I have to bring my car to the dealer, I worry about the techs bringing it out for "spirited drives." I know for a fact that my dealer does this, because my friends used to live on the alley behind my dealer, and we'd frequently see the techs hitting 60mph in people's S4s and GTIs. Not too cool.

What was incredibly cool was The Muffs last night at Slim's. Read their weblog!

And finally, I feel compelled to note that the East Bay has way cooler bathroom graffiti than San Francisco. Much, much better. We need to work on that.

So, I still have not received my security deposit refund from my previous property management company, which will remain unnamed for now. Nor have I ever received a check for the interest accrued on my deposit.

California state law requires that security deposits are to be refunded within three weeks, and it's been longer than that. Technically, I'm eligible for an extra $600 in damages since they're now late, but in order to get that loot I'd have to take them to small claims court, which I am not incredibly interested in doing. I just want my money!

Tonight is another opening at Juice. The "Black and White" exhibit showcases work by Christa Assad, Tiffany Bozic, Manny Caro, Lenny Gonzalez, Lisa Solomon, Martin Sprouse and Demetrie Tyler, with music by Sonny Smith. 6-9PM. Good stuff!

I find myself at a rather cathartic moment in my career. Maybe it's a phase, but I am growing quite sick of the day-in/day-out nature of my work. Even though I am good at being a "Design Technologist," the sitting-in-a-chair-and-coding, making-sure-projects-don't-spiral-out-of-control aspect of my job just gets plain old! Where's the dynamic stuff? And no, I don't mean dynamic HTML -- I mean a life of freedom. Freedom from wage-slavery and counting vacation hours. The time to work on my own schedule. Or at least something that doesn't require sitting my ass in an Aeron chair and staring at monitors day in and day out. Dreaming in HTML. Stressing about why the hell Netscape 6 is ignoring a certain style and if that's going to make me have to work on Saturday or not.

I really believe that the only way I'm ever going to achieve financial independence, or at least a higher level of security, is to abandon the ladder-climbing structure in which I currently find myself. Let's face it: I have never been all that great at operating within the confines of institutional environments, but there's a nagging Puritan work-ethic side of me, saying that it's incredibly irresponsible to abandon a steady-paying 9 to 5, and that relying on freelance work and something social and service-related (like tending bar) to pay the bills is just stupid.

But either way, I'm never going to really "make it" in this city as a wage slave. San Francisco is quite expensive, and even with my cheap rent, modest car payments and slightly lavish leisure spending, I'm just scraping by on my salary. I feel like I need to be at the helm of something to make a better living. And where does that leave me? Trudging through my job, wishing that I had some more variety, or at least more social interaction in my job. Fearing the unknown of freelancing in this economy. Looking at taking a night bartending class. Figuring out how much money I need to make per month to get by. Wanting to break out.

Busy as a bee. Fielding a question or two from co-workers who happen to read my site. Fear not, hombres -- I ain't checkin' out yet. Just venting and trying to get a handle on the big picture.

Finally got my glasses back in action. Amazing how clear everything is again. Trees have leaves? Like, individual leaves, not just a big green mass? Who'd a thunk? The Israeli IT guy at work says I look like a rock 'n' roll bandleader. Not such a bad thing. Specs plus my big-ass studio monitors make for a head-heavy experience. Burning Airlines sure make it worth it, though.

Me and Craig took it to a pretty fun warehouse party in Oakland last night, where they were playing lots of old punk rock and had table games set up. The dealers (hired from some party company in San Ramon) weren't the sharpest tacks in the drawer — once the blackjack dealer failed to pay me my $5 win, and the roulette croupier had to be constantly reminded to pay people their winnings. But dumb (shady?) dealers aside, it was fun losing 50 bucks, watching Tommy G throw down $100 black chips on blackjack, admiring a bevy of stunning rock and roll beauties, and generally basking in the hedonism. Good stuff.

Since I was driving and therefore on the teetotaller wagon, letting the GTI sprint a little bit on the 3AM drive home wasn't so bad, either. Heh.

Allow me to wax list-worthy:

1. Spoon at Slim's: Saw 'em last night. Packed house. Now, I love the way Britt Daniel plays guitar: thick, mildly dissonant, simple chords -- much like the way I play, but he's a lot better. Aside from that, the show left me a bit dry in the mouth. Mainly, I think, due to our less-than-optimal location on the floor: right in the middle of everyone's path to going outside for a cigarette. I also missed whomever used to play bass for them. But in the end, Joe's right: Spoon's a hell of a band. Here's a decent interview.

2. Jury duty: Kinda sucks. I'll spare you my bitching about how difficult it's making my schedule, simply because if I ever, for some crazy reason, am accused of some crime, I'd want someone like me on my jury. Highlight of the day? One of my fellow prospective jurors is named "Rose Royce." Step to that.

3. Gold Chains video #2 is up in this piece. Thanks to Chris for shedding the light.

I'm quite guilty of this, but weblogs often become moan sessions for how busy their creator is. And that stinks. To wit:

I'm so damn busy lately with work and extracurricular work that I worry for my sanity. Thus, I've been engaging what little non-work time I have with bouts of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It's a damn good game: the city is way bigger, you can now hijack motorcycles, boats and other vehicles instead of just cars, the missions are fun, and the presentation is really tight on the whole. It's certainly not a sequel to GTA3, however. It's more of the same, on the same engine, with some fun tweaks. Let's hope Rockstar comes up with some worthwhile evolution to the franchise before it ends up like Tomb Raider, with "sequel" after "sequel" featuring miniscule game engine tweaks and little else.

On that note, I have not yet picked up Tony Hawk 4, although I hear very good things. Also on my radar: Burnout 2.

My roommate Craig is on a whirlwind three-week trek that takes him to Boston, Paris, Geneva, Amsterdam and a lot of places in between, any of which would be fine by me. I guess that's one of the big differences between an Art Director and a Design Technologist. He gets to go to Europe for free and/or cheap while I sit in front of a Trinitron. Jealousy.

I am, however, going to Vegas this weekend with my friend Angel. I didn't even feel like divulging this fact to my posse of friends, since Angel is my friend Matt's ex, and with my crew the rumors are going to start to fly. So, I state for the record: 'tis a straight-up platonic adventure, mes amis.

My wallet hurts.

Vegas could have been a bit friendlier to me on the gambling tip. Usually I can gamble for a while, riding runs of winning and losing. Not this time -- I just had to resign myself to the fact that gambling just wasn't going to be in the cards for me (as it were) on this trip, and decided to have fun in other ways.

Items of note:

» There's a club at the top of the Rio called the Voodoo Lounge. The club itself is positively vile, but it does feature an open-air deck on the 51st story that looks out over the strip. Pretty cool. I had to wonder how frequently empty Coors Light bottles get chucked over the side, though. That'd pack a real punch. You know it has to happen.

» The buffet at the Bellagio is actually pretty darn good.

» The Hard Rock Las Vegas Hotel was its usual meat-market playground for SoCal kids. AC/DSHE (not to be confused with Helle's Belles) played the Joint.

» Mandalay Bay's Shark Reef is kinda neat.

» We never made it to the Double Down Saloon, but it's said to be the best rock & roll bar in Vegas. Maybe next time.

I haven't really delved into much Sopranos commentary so far this season, mainly because this batch of episodes has been a little less compelling on the whole -- at least to me.

I mean, the episodes are OK: Ralphy's big finale was an all-time great one; Adriana's FBI problems are rife with potential; Pauly smothering his mom's friend with a pillow was just ... crazy. But in general I guess I'm getting more of a soap opera feel from the show these days, instead of the tightly-wound almost-real-world crime drama that it used to be.

I have to wonder how the writers are going to wrap up all the chaos from this season with next week's 75-minute finale. Or, maybe they won't -- maybe they'll leave lots of loose ends dangling for the rumored 5th and final season of the show. One can only wonder...

Joe's observation is right: there are wildly varying opinions about how good (or not so good) last night's Soprano's finale was. Among my crew I heard comparisions to after-school specials and laments that there should have been "more killing."

Personally, I'm with Joe -- Edie Falco's performance was chilling. Yeah, this season did put the "soap" in "Sopranos," but I think last night gave us a fitting, powerfully real-world endcap to an emotional season.

Free stickers! Want one/some? Send me a stamp and they're yours for the stickin'. Get in touch and I'll tell ya how.

UPDATE: A few of y'all have wondered how big they are. They're pretty small: 4" x 1" or so.

The city is quiet, and I'm home alone trying to ignore two very rambunctious canines. The new LP from Sigur Ros provides the soundtrack. Here are a few quickies:

» Stephen Colbert is one of the funniest people out there. My channel-surfing landed me on Comedy Central just as Stephen was taking the podium at the Friars Club roast of Chevy Chase. Pure comedic genius, that guy.

» In a fit of boredom, I rented Reign of Fire, the tale of dragons run amok in the future and the humans who kill them with tanks and helicopters. Yes, it is ridiculous and so completely implausible, but you know what? I sorta liked it. The "archangels" -- soldiers who leap from helicopters and snare flying dragons with nets just before deploying their chutes -- were my favorite. Maybe I need to go for a walk or something.

» I recently picked up the Ramones Rocket to Russia reissue but my G4 just won't recognize it so I can burn MP3s. What's up with that? What, do they expect me to actually listen to a CD or something? Sheesh!

Back in front of a computer after two weeks of relatively non-digital time. A good break, I'd say. Judging by my recently skimpy traffic logs, many of you enjoy your Web log reading on your employer's dime, which ain't such a bad thing. And on that note, welcome back.

What did I do over my holiday vacation? Lots of NOT thinking about work, for once. I'd hoped to catch up a bit on some freelance work that I have up in the air, but I'd been suffering some major employment burnout late last year, so I figured it was in my better interests to kick back for once and just use my computer to check email and surf the Web like normal people do.

New Year's was fun. Caught the Ipecac bash at the Great American Music Hall. Dillinger Escape Plan with Mike Patton were insane, although they played too long and ran right over the New Year. Instead we counted down to 12:12 AM and drank a cheap shot of champagne. I didn't stay around for the Melvins with Jello Biafra, as I had another engagement to attend. Later I learned that Isis had played the night before, and I'm bummed to have missed them.

Volkswagen recently released an ad for the Convertible New Beetle that was shot in San Francisco's Cole Valley. It's an ok concept for a spot, but the performances seem so incredibly fake to me. It's like everybody is very aware of the film crew and is trying their damndest not to look at the camera.

VW's earlier "Bubble" ad, on the other hand, is one of the greatest commercials in recent years, as far as I'm concerned.

Normally I avoid posting links to funny email memes, but this one cracked me up so hard, I just couldn't resist.

Witness classic G.I. Joe cartoon PSAs with hilarious audio overdubs. I'm dying over here.

... some marathon tattooing, that is. Mr. Giant is going away in June-ish, so I have two sleeves to complete before then. And what does that mean? Starting Valentine's Day, tattoo sessions about every 5 days or so. Here we go!

Just received my laptop sleeve from good old San Francisco-based messenger bag maker Timbuk2 Designs. It's a pretty swanky little unit, perfectly tailored to the contours of my TiBook, and the whole padded package fits nicely into my Dickies messenger bag. No big, dorky, black laptop case == more incognito toting of a rather expensive little piece of hardware.

Aside from the DIY ethic and general coolness I associate with Timbuk2, the one thing I really love about them is their Web site's "Build Your Own Bag" function. A pretty sassy little database-driven Flash interface allows you to pick your bag size, fabric, custom colors, and accessories. Within a few days they'll be manufacturing your bag right here in their SF factory, and soon thereafter it'll be in your hands. Or over your shoulder. Neat.

Conversely, my big gripe about their site is their use of illustration rather than photographs to display product imagery. The illustrations are nice, but they don't really give you quite enough feel for what the finished product will look like.

I was surprised when I first heard the real story behind diamonds: they're not really all that valuable, and their status in our culture as "precious" is purely the product of marketing. Weblogger Anil Dash makes some salient commentary on diamonds in our culture. Not a new story by any means, but interesting nonetheless.

» Season one of Six Feet Under is out on DVD. Seventy-five bucks, though. Pretty salty. Worth it for nutty fans like me, though.

» "Texan Unable To Trick NASA Into Hauling Old Washing Machine Off Lawn" -- The Onion's 'Other News' sidebar is my favorite part.

» The Noise Pop 2003 schedule is (finally) announced. Not as kick-ass as previous years, but there are one or two decent shows in there.

» Still can't get enough of ISIS. Makes driving to four-hour meetings that much less agonizing. I only wish I'd discovered them a few months earlier; I missed 'em play here a couple of times. Now they're in Europe for a while.

» Tattoo oddyssey commences on Friday. Here goes ...

Valentine's Day came and went; more importantly, I marked my seven-year anniversary of living in San Francisco. Rather a long time, don't you think?

I now sport one shaved, tattooed arm and one natural, slightly fuzzy arm. All is well.

» COPS

» Kieran Healy's Public Service Announcement (a ready.gov parody)

» Miller High Life

» Fernet Branca

» "I Feel So," Boxcar Racer

» "Heaven," Bryan Adams

RIP, Mr. Rogers. You done a lot of good.

I prefer to update with a bit more frequency than I have this week, but indeed I have been toiling away behind the scenes on old redshifter.org. I'm continuing to convert all my old posts to Movable Type, which I need to do by hand since the old posts are no longer in any database. (see also "I Just Deleted My $#%@# Weblog").

Coincidentally, the whole reason that I accidentally deleted my old Blogger database was that I was trying to delete another weblog I was using. I'd set up a private, personal quickie log to chronicle my efforts to prove that I didn't owe the IRS an additional $1200 of taxes for 2000. Sadly, in the end it turned out that I did owe them that $1200 due to a W2 that I never received in the mail. Well, this week I got another letter from the California Tax Board informing me that I owe an even greater sum of state taxes for that year. I swear I will never get ahead.

I've been trying to think of something to write about other than the war, but frankly there hasn't been much else that's been occupying my mind lately. In no way do I want my Web site to be a warblog or some forum for constant debate about current events, but I can only write about what is moving me at the moment, and at the moment that is the war.

Right now San Francisco is completely overwrought with protesters. The sound of helicopters and sirens is a constant backdrop as I sit here at work. On the way in, I passed one of those jail buses with barred-over windows that's used to transport prisoners. I presume that's going to be filled with arrested demonstrators later today (if not already). At many intersections, police forces are camped out with riot gear just in case some rogue demonstrators decide to try to shut down the street. Someone I know (who may or may not be my roommate) walked to work because the "fucking hippies have the city shut down." It's wacky.

My friends Mike and Avery run a little company called the SKULLZ Press. Mike is also known as Mike Giant and/or Giant One and is the fella who does my tattoos.

Over the last few months (several months, even), I've been getting the SKULLZ site together for them. It has been an interesting challenge since they need to be able to update the site without any heavy-duty HTML or Photoshop work. Thus, I went with regular HTML text styled with CSS for just about everything. It's pretty stripped-down, but that's the way the SKULLZ likes it.

Go support the SKULLZ Press. Buy posters and t-shirts. Decipher their obscene spoonerism zine titles. Shell out big bucks for Mike's rare Flash sheets (I want a set). Love it.

I'm moderately frazzled. I can't really think about any one thing for any particular length of time, so instead I'm gonna get ADD on your ass:

» Calistoga Lemon Essence (With Other Natural Flavors) Sparkling Mineral Water -- Since 1924. Deeeeeelicious. I can think of one East Coaster who's fuming in her Fendi's that she can't get any. "Ha," I say to her.

» Cory Doctorow is one smart summinabench. I watched most of the stream of his speech last night at The Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and holy crap if that dude don't know his shiz about wireless technology, freedom of speech, the FCC, and the bullshit that erupts when these three meet up in a dark alley. He's also had his first novel published by venerable sci-fi (that's 'SF' to the geeks) publisher Tor. Amazon's Jeff Bezos even gave it a glowing review. Cory's 31. Go ahead, feel useless now.

» Also, I apologize for feeling the need to shut down comments on the two war discussions that were going on a few days ago. A few people have asked me why I felt compelled to do so, so I'll explain it here for all to hear (or read, even). Basically, I feel like the 'debates' were turning more into 'arguments.' People were starting to attack each other more personally, rather than trying to poke holes in each other's arguments. People were feeling the need to defend themselves personally, rather than point to outside references to back up what they felt like they had to say. I told Raphy I don't want my site to turn into 'argument central,' since that doesn't very accurately represent who I am, really. I'm totally down with commenting on my posts. Have at it. But when it starts to get into a cyclical exchange of neverending attacks, defenses and counterattacks, well then just take it somewhere else.

What a weekend. Spring has certainly sprung here in San Francisco. The sun pounded us through clear skies, so I decided to cake up with SPF and actually go to the park for once. Lots of dogs. I have a bit of a neurosis involving grassy parks: I hate 'em. Public puppy toilets, I tells ya. Grody.

In accordance with my downward-looking, paranoid-driven mine-field strut, the park turned out to be pretty so-so. The dudes were out in full effect, getting their cruise on. Hippies banged drums. One girl had a tightrope stretched between two trees so she could work on her none-too-advanced moves. Many other less-distinct folks blended into the colorful homogeny. I took a lap and headed home.

After taking a little hiatus for a few weeks, the semi-weekly tattoo sessions have started up again. Now we're into the color. Suddenly I have a big, bright red (and swollen) planetary surface on my arm. It's very B-movie. I'm into it, although typing is a bit tender at the moment.

I hate mornings. Hate 'em hate 'em hate 'em. Always have. If I had my druthers, I'd go to bed at 4AM and get up at noon, but alas my so-called "9 to 5" stands in the way of such somnolent delights. Daylight savings time doesn't help, either. I stand by my call to eliminate the "spring forward" routine. Fall back or nothing!!!

I'm going to have to bathe in coffee tomorrow morning.

Last night my roommate and I were out to dinner with an extremely successful photographer friend of ours. No matter where you live, you've definitely seen his work in magazines, on billboards, on the Web and beyond. Big clients, big projects... he's loaded, and deservedly so.

We got to talking about work stuff—clients, corporate politics and the like—and he mentioned a former client of his, describing them as "one of those interactive agencies" while he did the old pantomimed jerk-off motion. It wasn't too hard to tell that he thought that whole field is bullshit.

See, that just sucks. Not only do I get to sit in front of a computer all day plowing through dorky, esoteric code, jealously wishing I could be traveling to Europe, expensing nice dinners at some photo shoot, actually meeting people instead of growing paler by the minute, but then I get to swallow any sort of creative pride I might still have when I hear the real ballers talk shit on the thing I'm good at. Lame.

Man, that was exhausting. Redeye flights are the devil. Between a sleepless Sunday and the time zone blues I've been out of it all week.

My return flight on jetBlue was both redeeming and scary. The redeeming part was due to an excellent customer experience provided by the flight attendants. The crew was obviously liking their job and were not pressured by their employer to act falsely stiff or conservative. They got loose. The lead attendant (the one on the mic) was actually really hilarious. Some Brit dude named Grant who could probably stand a chance at a decent career on the standup comedy circuit. But as it was, he was gay as a blade and was obviously under no pressure from his superiors to not be exactly himself, and he was damn funny. We passengers actually gave him an ovation at the end of the flight. Not too shabby. And my little LCD monitor worked properly this time, so I spent about three hours watching VH1 Classic. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Go jetBlue.

The scary part sucked though. I was resting with my head against the bulkhead when suddenly I was overcome with a wave of nausea. I seriously thought for a second that I was going to scramble for a barf bag for the first time in my life. Then I felt the blood drain from my head and I became incredibly lightheaded. I knew that I was about to go under. It's happened a few times in the past; once while riding a chair lift in Tahoe. That was probably the worst one. This time wasn't so bad since I was already sitting and no one freaked out because they probably just thought I was sleeping. But I sure wasn't. I was unconscious. Out cold. Feeling like I was falling down a well. Having some seriously insane, psychedelic, confusing and bizarre dreams while I was out. Figuring out that I was passed out and digging out of it, waking up confused, wondering if I'd pissed myself. I hadn't luckily. Going under again. The second one not so bad. Digging out of that one by force of will, and sitting on the rest of the flight, head aching, wondering if I should drive myself to the ER upon landing.

As it turned out, I didn't. I was feeling back to normal and didn't feel like the potential of having to miss work if they kept me there. So I just went home and hit the sack, feeling back to normal by then anyway. I suppose I should get myself looked at anyway though, especially since I had another scintillating scotoma/ocular migraine thing last Friday. Maybe my brain is trying to tell me something.

As I sit here wiping a horribly runny nose, trying to get over a sinus-busting head cold, I look down and assess some recent styling decisions on my part.

I'm all about the western-style shirts. Faux-mother of pearl snaps, accented stitching, even the occasional white-on-black cabling. I'm into it. Thrift store shirts, Mexican cowboy store shirts, semi-fancy fashion store shirts... if they're western, I'm trying 'em on. It's a good look for this tattooed, corn-fed Pennsylvania boy.

On my most recent clothing excursion I found myself trying on the finest-fitting western shirt to date. It didn't suffer from the classic western shirt foible of too-short arms, which force me to do the cool-guy sleeve roll. No, this one fit perfectly in torso and arms. It was a must-buy. Except this shirt is denim. A denim shirt?!? The stuff of gray-bearded bikers and Monday Night Football fans? Yes. I had to have it, and today I'm breaking it in.

My other questionable purchase is a pair of white sneakers. You see, for the longest time I've been faithfully rocking the black-on-white Adidas Campus kicks, but this past spree I felt the obligation to mix it up a bit, and while I didn't break brand loyalty, I ended up toting home some blue-on-white Adidas Top Tens. They're cool shoes, but between my denim western shirt and my gleaming white kicks I feel more like one of those guys from Best in Show than my normal self. But just when I thought all was lost, I'm pretty sure I busted a sassy fashionista stylist from the Gap lab down the street giving me a stare this morning. Maybe she thought I could give her breeding advice for her Pomeranian.

Life is short, people.

There's a little sushi boat restaurant around the corner from my house called something like "Wakanatabe." We go there so frequently that the staff knows us quite well -- so much so, that the polite hostess invariably keeps our sake bottle filled ("sake is... on the house") and we rarely leave anywhere near sober. Thus, I have dubbed the joint "Saketome" (pronounced 'sake to me'), because that's how they do.

Last night's Saketome session got me thinking about my career again. I'm mildly burnt on Web production and even holding leadership positions in this field. I'd love something that taps into my bigger brain: content development, engineering, communication, media, fixing things, rigging things, geekery in general... Where does that leave me? I can think of one place.

I was all ready to launch into a nice little essay about my recent musical loves, but since today is shaping up to be a nice little kick in the nuts, I'll just bitch for a while instead. Maybe tomorrow I'll be back with my chipper rock self.

But in the meantime:

1. I dumped a glass of water all over my laptop this morning. Last night I was working late on Skullz, and when I finally couldn't hold the eyes open any longer, I carefully set my PowerBook on the floor next to my bed and turned in. Cut to this morning, when the annoying screech of my alarm (easily my most hated sound) yanked me out of my slumber. I grabbed the alarm to shut it off, and in so doing I knocked over a big, thick pint glass full of water, which fell three feet right smack on top of my laptop. My first spoken word of the day was subsequently, "FUCK!" Luckily, only a little bit of water landed on my computer, which I grabbed in a microsecond, flipped onto its back and plopped down on my bed to absorb the spill. No liquid in the keyboard, speakers, CD/DVD slot or anywhere. Whew. The only scar is a little dent on the top of my machine. Nice little adrenaline rush in the early AM.

2. The digital drama didn't end there. You may have noticed that my site was down all morning, along with my email, my database, and all other services. Like a dunce, I last backed up my database about a month ago, so I sat around all morning worried that I'd have to do some painstaking hand-rebuilding of my site, which would take a while. Things got sorted out in the end, though, when my hosting company got their stuff together and worked out the problems.

3. And, it's the week of health problems. I get to be subjected to a nice battery of tests related to my fainting and scotoma issues. I'm actually not very worried about it all, but the worst part is that by law my neurologist has to report any issues of seizures or fainting to the DMV. If I have to endure any restrictions on my driving, I'll be one bummed fella.

And there you have it. All the bitching that's fit to print (or publish electronically). Wonderful! I hate Mondays.

Ever since Apple unleashed the iTunes Music Store, I've been getting reacquainted with my once-unhealthy obsession: downloading lots and lots of music. Luckily, I've managed to avoid spending too much at the iTunes store, and I've gotten with the gospel of eMusic and have been downloading like a madman. Thus, my collection has bloated by 2GB in the last week or so. New additions? The Dickies, Dead Moon, Sahara Hotnights, The MC5, Turbonegro, Converge, The Explosion, just to name a scant few...

I also had the pleasure of seeing Lungfish last week. Despite the über-cool Billy Childish-like use of definite articles, Thee Parkside may not be the city's greatest venue for live bands, but Lungfish's weird groove repetition and world-class tattooer/poet/crazy man Dan Higgs' vocal insanity proved to be pretty impressive, indeed.

Added treat: local openers The Enablers were also pretty damn good, and a welcome relief from the throngs of denim-clad Wayne Kramer wannabes that have taken over the scene. No dis on the garage rockers; I'm down for it too. I'm just saying a little bit of fancy, complex Jeff Mueller-like guitar stylings laid underneath some manic, well-versed and non-pretentious spoken-word vocals is a refreshing break from the well-crafted lo-fi that might be a bit too prevalent. Capiche?

It's time for me to get the hell out of Dodge for a week, thankfully. My new suit (a '61 sharkskin) is tailored and pressed, I found a tie of appropriate vintage, my laundry is done, the batteries are charged up, the itineraries are printed out... it'll be off to the East Coast for a change. Back to the land of curt exchanges and cynicism; the place where California flakiness is not the norm: people do as they say they and appreciate punctuality. Or only in my dreams...

I'm looking forward to some R&R, ISIS at the Irving Plaza, some real pizza, drinking until 4AM NYC-style, pimping my skills, crappy rental cars, a wedding, general debauchery... the list goes on.

To the many of you landing on my site from Deirdre's (and the referring NY Times article on blogging and relationships), welcome. There isn't much in the way of boyfriend-discussion or up-to-the-minute hair coloring, but variety makes the world go round, nay?

Stay tuned...

Alas, another adventure on the East Coast draws to a close. Things to think about when spending a night alone in a cheap(er) hotel:

1. First off, ISIS proved themselves to be a noteworthy force. Their live show was as tightly-wound as any band that I'd actually describe as a "noteworthy force" ought to have.

2. New York is, in general, a hell of a town, but you already knew that.

3. Is Dairy Queen still open at this hour?

4. At the wedding reception I attended yesterday, every table had to stand up at some point in the night, clink their glasses to signify that it was their turn, and sing to the bride and groom any song that has the word "love" in it. A terrifying proposition, I felt at first, but after much hemming and hawing, our group (of only six!) nervously rose to our feet, and with clinched fists did we belt out these immortal words:

We are strong
No one can tell us we're wrong
Searching our hearts for so long,
All the world knowing,
Love is a battlefield.

The Gateway Diner is quite a spot. If you're ever in Jeffersonville, PA, I suggest you pop in for some classic American roadside dining served up by shaky, chain-smoking old ladies.

The great-grandma who brought us our coffee veritably put herself in harm's way by making the twelve-foot walk from the counter to our booth, saucer and full cup in each hand. She was shaking so hard that the hot liquid was sloshing up over the cup's rim, spoons fell clattering to the floor, and Deirdre and I exchanged "oh shit" looks, thinking that the lady's parchment-thin skin was about to get a good scalding.

Thankfully, she made the caffeine hand-off without so much as a spilled drop. Amazing, really, considering her condition. A few minutes later we had our breakfast set in front of us and that was that.

For comparison:

Gateway Diner, Jeffersonville, PA:
Three eggs over medium, hash browns
The country sausage breakfast with three eggs and hash browns
A huge stack of white toast with about 35 slabs of butter
Two coffees
A large orange juice
TOTAL: $8.90

Rainbow Grocery, San Francisco, CA:
One mineral-enhanced water
Two organic bananas
One Odwalla Wellness juice with echincacea
TOTAL: $8.74

Welcome home, BK.

Positively amazing weather in San Francisco these days. Unfortunately I haven't been good about toting my camera around with me, so instead you can look at this photo from an overcast day in Philadelphia last week.

What have I been up to? Not a great deal. Being boring, actually. Broke as a joke, that's for damn sure. You'd think that with a steady income and some semblance of financial conscience, I'd be able to put money away. Nope. Not in the cards for this kid. One step away from financial ruin, that's how I like to do it! I blame San Francisco, because certainly I am not at fault.

Playing Splinter Cell takes my mind off things.

I'm also having an unfortunate Check Engine Light in my car, which is due to my hybrid blow-off valve. I need to pull it out and put in a proper diverter valve, but of course they are $135. And then there is my cell phone bill, my speeding ticket, my upcoming trip to Vegas... the list goes on. Ah, responsibility...

Where the hell have I been? Vegas! There's nothing quite so brutal as being in the middle of the desert on the longest days of the year (we're talking 100+ degrees, here), but I found such a cheap deal on airfare and lodging that I just couldn't refuse.

So how was it? Hot. Super duper hot. The Hard Rock may be a glorified frat house, but split up a $100 cabana with some friends, order up a bucket of Coronas and some strawberry margaritas, and by golly if it isn't fairly tolerable. Plus you can both drink and play blackjack in the pool.

I think I got more sun in the last 96 hours than I've gotten in the last five years. And for those of you that are wondering, yes: I slathered on plenty o' SPF, fo sheezy.

I think the hot, sunny, clear weather that San Francisco's currently enjoying is getting me down. Mainly because I'm stuck inside all the while. Gotta love those warm nights, though. Tee shirt weather at night in San Francisco is a rare event.

Or maybe what has me less-than-stoked is the COMPLETELY SHITE selection of music that my coworkers constantly play over the studio stereo. If it's not some synth crap from 1986, then it's some 12" remix of Miami Sound Machine's "Rhythm of the Night." "Conga."* What? That song was lame the first time around! Adding sequenced beats and some obscure 70s funk sample to the background doesn't make it suck any less, sheesh. It certainly doesn't help me concentrate on my work any more.

And that, fair readers, is why I slink away into headphone land, to the soothing sounds of Darkest Hour and Botch. Interesting. A spate of metal in my listening habits as of late. What could it all mean?

It's been a while since I've been really addicted to a videogame, but this past weekend was chock full of Ratchet & Clank. Sure, it's been out for a good while now, but it took me this long to get around to it, and it is a damn fine game, indeed. Really fun gameplay with all kinds of crazy cartoony weapons, a hilarious story, a cute little robot sidekick...

But here's the catch: my roommate had some business in New York City last week, and for some reason which is still a mystery to me, he decided to take with him our two PS2 memory cards, just in case he needed them or something. So when I came home with my freshly-rented weekend entertainment, I was greeted with the horror of discovering that I wouldn't be able to save my game progress.

No problem, I thought. I'll just leave the PS2 on all weekend until Craig gets home and then I'll save. Well, he gets home and the PS2 cards (that's right, both of them) are en route from NYC via FedEx. OK, I'll just leave the PS2 on another day, fine. I sure as hell ain't gonna lose the 15-ish hours of gameplay I've invested in finishing this sonofabitch.

Then, I remembered that tomorrow is the day when PG&E will be shutting off our gas and electric service while they work on the street outside. Can't a guy win? I mean, can't a guy leave a damn videogame system on for days without electrical interruption? I guess not. So, I gathered my wits and sped to Best Buy where I purchased the cheapest off-brand PS2-compatible memory card they have: $15.00. I ain't spendin' no $30 on a Sony card when we already have two.

And, to continue my ongoing stream of shite luck, I get the card home, pop it out of its theft-proof hermetic seal, and of course, discover that the card is so janky that it needs to be initialized with a special CD that comes in the package. Well of course, that won't work. If I pop out the Ratchet & Clank CD, I'll lose my progress.

What a joke. I had to go out and eat sushi and drink sake to take my mind off of it. And today, when I get home, if the little 12:00 is blinking on my VCR, I'll know that my weekend hours went to waste. And I'll probably fire up the PS2 and start it all over again. Sad, really.

I love it when 'hipsters' pretend to not be hipsters by pointing out all the hipster fashion standbys. Here's hipster bingo.

Full disclosure -- I, myself have at one point rocked or am currently rocking:

Too-small sweater
Pabst Blue Ribbon
Miller High Life (bless you, oh Champagne of Beers)
High school sports shirt
Hoodies
Old-school Chuck Taylors
Old-school Vans
As of today I guess I'm a grandpa, haha!
Star tattoos: I have 5 stars on me at various spots
Chunky plastic frame glasses
Blogger with digital camera, heh.
and Parliament cigarettes!

L.A. Man, the scene here is almost too much to handle. Everything is fake, everything is ostentatious, everybody is way too concerned with stuff that, in the end, doesn't make a shit of difference about anything, and, uh... the weather is really great.

I dunno, maybe it's just where I'm staying (the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills -- mooching my roommates expense account), but this place is for the birds.

Except for the weather. That's nice. And the well-paved roads. And the cool architecture that reminds me of "Chinatown" or a Charles Bukowski novel. Otherwise, this place is lame-ass.

Fighting burnout. Starting a retail business on the side -- more on that in due time. Lots of shows to attend. The Gossip. The Locust. Darkest Hour. These Arms are Snakes. Looking forward to some new LPs. Strike Anywhere. From Autumn to Ashes. These Arms are Snakes, again. Too much work. Not enough time. Need new tires soon. Glad to be back in SF. The song "The Flat End of the Earth" by The Life and Times is totally amazing. Getting over a cold. Wrist tendinitis acting up. Contemplating small business loan. Realizing more debt is bad. The plans look bright. All things considered, I'm optimistic, if overwhelmed.

Not a bad weekend for a car fan. For some reason, I've been seeing a lot of pretty kick-ass machines over the past few days.

On my Saturday morning drive down to New Dimensions to pick up my new intake, I drove behind one of these bad boys.

At the shop, there was a really beautiful Audi S4 with 18" BBS wheels, a full Oettinger body kit, and according to the guys in the shop it makes 450hp.

Then I got to help Bryan install the intake! Props to him. I don't quite have the confidence (or the tools, or the space) to rip apart my engine like that, but all in all the install was pretty simple. And now I'm making more power and sounding BADASS!

Finally, on the louder, faster drive back to SF, I was next to a Lotus Esprit. What gives?

I love Charles Bukowski's writing. Yeah, lots of people will say that he's sexist or too simple or too accessible or too cliché, but to them I say, "eat it." His style is the best. He never writes a word more than he needs to, but what he writes is so perfectly pure, and sad, and hilarious.

One thing that I always loved about his books was the way they were designed. They were published by Black Sparrow Press, who bound them in beautiful uncoated paper, with simple, boldly screened graphics. They just felt good, and looked great, and you could really tell that somebody gave a damn about them.

Sadly, last year Black Sparrow Press closed its doors and publisher Ecco acquired the publishing rights to most of Bukowski's work. Ecco's an imprint of HarperCollins, and they chose to save a buck by cutting the quality of the cover printing. Now they're shiny and smooth and look really mass-produced. It's a real shame.

Saturday, I went to the famous Laguna Seca Raceway to check out the historic car races. I don't think I've ever seen so many rare cars in one place in my entire life. Ferraris, Porsches, Bugattis, Cobras, Ford GT40s (which are SO badass), crazy souped-up Trans Am-era Camaros, you name it. If it goes real fast and isn't newer than about 1972, I saw it.

Highlights: the vintage Bugatti race (those rickety stinkers can move); seeing a crapload of Shelby Cobras (real ones, and man are the race models loud); the GT40s of course (and seeing one of the drool-worthy new Ford GTs in the flesh); and finally, the Trans Am race was one of the loudest, most balls-out displays of muscle that I've ever seen.

Lowlights: sunburn, a digital camera battery with no juice.

Can't front on the Bay Area.

Two quick things:

1. The Constantines are my current obsession.

2. If ever, for some strange reason, I am contracted to write an article about Iditarod, it shall be called "Inuit to Win It."

That is all.

This week has been chock full of trips to City Hall, forms to fill out, registration fees to pay, and other fun new business goodies. And you know, I have to say that all the city employees I've been dealing with have been nothing short of courteous, friendly and helpful. I was expecting a DMV-type experience with rude, brisk clerks who have to deal with belligerent jerks all day long, but in fact I met just the opposite. Heck, the SFWeekly girl who took my classified ad order was even flirty! If this is indicative of anything, I'm even more cautiously optimistic that I was before. Can you be more cautiously optimistic? If you can, then I am.

Crikey. My jacket was stolen from the bar on Saturday night. No big deal, really -- it was an easily replaceable $50 Dickies jacket. However, my cell phone was in the pocket at the time. After a bunch of unanswered calls to my cell number, I had to spend an hour in the pleasant environs of my local AT&T Wireless retail location. That's a real blast, I tell you.

What was even more of a blast was that I had to pay full price for my replacement, since I had only five months ago extended my contact and gotten a heavily-discounted phone. My advice to you, fair readers, is to do the math and see if your wireless provider's insurance plan is worth it to you. Mine is $4.99 per month, and I'm wishing that I'd decided to take advantage of that -- It would have saved me some loot.

Despite the financial hit, I did get a significantly better phone than my previous one. I got the Sony Ericsson T616, which is a sleek little number with a built-in digital camera. Granted, the photo quality is pretty crappy, but the phone is small, the interface is a vast improvement over my previous Sony Ericsson T68i, it's Bluetooth-enabled, and it will come in handy when my full-fledged Canon digicam is just too lunky.

I'm pretty excited about the possibilities of upcoming.org. It's a collaboratively-driven event calandar, so the content comes entirely from the site's users. Once you set up a (free) account and choose your city preferences, you can see all the upcoming events that other users have entered into the system, like concerts or speeches or Cirque du Soleil or whatever. And once you set up a network of friends with similar tastes in entertainment, you'll start receiving notices when there are new events of interest.

What is most fascinating to me about socially-driven applications like this is that it's 100% user-created content. So while there are only a few hundred users right now, the site hasn't quite found its legs -- but once it picks up momentum, it could be a pretty handy and interesting place to find out about stuff. And, the whole site was created by Andy Baio. Not too shabby, there. If you sign up, my upcoming.org username is 'redshifter.' Look me up.

Yeah, the cellphone's camera isn't so hot in the dark. That's ISIS at the Fillmore a few nights ago. They were good. Take my word for it?

Anyway, I hate apologizing for not posting, but my life has been damn busy. Business, work, freelance, budgeting, managing, contracting, sourcing... if I sound like I'm complaining, I'm really not. I sorta thrive on the buzz and fervor. But it takes its toll. Waking up in the morning is tough. I'm on super-budget too, so passing on a tasty $7.00 Budweiser at tonight's Giants vs. Dodgers game will be tough indeed.

What will not be tough is the Giants wiping up the field with the Dodgers' sorry asses. I don't know about all this shooting business, though. That's taking a rivalry a bit too far, kids.

A true testimony to CompUSA's utter failure in the customer service department is that you can't even get kicked out of the place for openly, repeatedly smoking pot directly in front of the service desk, like this man did for at least 15 minutes.

After standing there smoking his brass pipe, pausing every few minutes to refill it from the little dimebag in his pocket, it was finally his turn in line, and he picked up his newly-repaired laptop and was on his merry way.

Are fixed-gear bikes the hipster rage in your town like they are here? In the Bay Area, all the cool kids ride 'em. Here's the breakdown, in descending order of hipness:

1. Fixed-gear, no freewheel, no brakes. Just frame, cranks, chain and wheels. Matte black for maximum steez. Basically a track bike, but on the street.
2. Fixed-gear, as above but with a front brake for extra stopping power.
3. Freewheeled single-speed with straight bars and front/rear brakes.
4. The rest.

If nothing else, it's an interesting study of trends. I'm sure the bikes are fun to ride, but in a city as hilly as San Francisco, full of the pathetic drivers that inhabit this entire state, I'd opt at least for some reliable stopping power. Or maybe, like motorcycling and other activities deemed overly "dangerous" by the majority, it's all just a state of mind.

Now that there, my friends, is a shot from my office roof of the Blue Angels as they zoomed past. Really, it is. It was Fleet Week in San Francisco last week and all kinds of aircraft were zooming around.

As a casual fan of aviation (someday I will have a pilot's license), I admit that I get pretty psyched to see these feats of engineering zooming across the sky. But given the U.S.'s current miltary tenor, I couldn't help but feel a little freaked out by the WMD parade that it was.

Also, Did anyone see Joe Scarborough on The Daily Show? It was pretty good. Joe was making his point that the liberal-biased media only reports on bad things that happen in Iraq, like soldiers getting killed or schools being destroyed, and not good things like schools being built. He reinforced his point by pointing out a recent Gallup poll in Iraq, in which 65% of Baghdad residents said they were happy that the US military was there.

Jon Stewart then pointed out that 70% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the 9/11 attacks, "so we're all fucking retarded no matter what."

OK, no more political rants for a while. I'll go back to the usual agenda.

I have an arch-nemesis. She haunts me every single night at about 4AM, waking me from my sleep to frighten, pester and annoy me. I live in fear of her arrival. When she leaves, my wounds remind me of our battle.

She's a freakin' mosquito.

I don't know how it feels to suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, but I imagine it's a lot like waking up, terrified, with the high-pitched sound of a blood-sucking parasite hovering over your head. Knowing that every minute of lost sleep will only make you that much more useless the next day, you wait for the buzzing to stop, then spastically swat yourself in the head, hoping that just maybe you've killed your tormentor -- only to hear the hellish buzz just a few seconds later. Over and over again, you thrash about, thinking that just maybe you've destroyed your invisible tormentor. But that buzz just keeps coming back.

It really sucks. Literally, I guess.

Today's photo has absolutely nothing to do with anything.

Halloween in San Francisco is notoriously crazy, and this year was no exception. I was stuck at work until pretty late, and the 10:30pm drive home was nightmarish on several levels -- my block was the last block open to traffic before the fenced-off Castro, the epicenter of the annual celebration.

Despite my late arrival, total lack of nutrition, and the completely overlooked lack of costume, I managed to scrape something together and hit the town.

Highlights:
» The girl as Gogo from Kill Bill. Holy rip my heart out of my chest and toss it into the air and smack it into left center, little league coach-style. Complete with accurate ball-and-chain weapon copy. Her friend was a bloodied-up Uma in yellow jumpsuit. I think they even had all the battle wounds in the right places. (I have a feeling that "Kill Bill" costumes were to this year's Halloween what "Royal Tenenbaum" costumes were to last year's.)

» The dude as Ali G. He also nailed it. Spot-on. He had the right glasses, the right beard, the right accent...

» Craig revealing his true guido New Jersey roots in all-white puffy jacket/trackpants/Backstreet Boy ensemble. The funniest part about his costume was that it was entirely created from clothing that he already owned. Scary.

» My neighborhood bar staff dressed as olde tyme bartenders (à la Tapper) and St. Pauli Girl. Good stuff, there.

Lowlights:
» Trying to drive anywhere at 10:30pm on a Friday Halloween in San Francisco, having not eaten anything since noon.

» Whipping together a costume at 11:00pm and going out for the night, having not eaten anything since noon.

» The Saturday morning after a Friday Halloween in San Francisco, having not eaten anything since noon the day before. How about a couple hundred mg of Vitamin B, please?

» Oh, and... not having my camera with me.

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly

I've been spending the week at home, catching up with some commitments that have been dogging me, and enjoying some quality time off. Here's how it's been going.

Automotive Fun

Ratchet & Clank 2

Wresting With Macromedia Flash

Eight years of living in San Francisco and I never once made it to Treasure Island until yesterday. Odd. Haven't been to Alcatraz yet, either. Nor have I ridden a cable car. Pretty lame, eh? I have at least taken a few streetcars on occasion.

But yeah, Treasure Island has a good view. I wouldn't want to live there, though. Despite the cheap(er) rents and amazing vista, there are no services of any kind on the island, so if you want to make a run to the corner store, you're out of luck. I need my corner stores. And restaurants.

Good stuff:

» Les Savy Fav on Thanksgiving eve. A kickass show, once again. Great band.

» The Upright Citizens Bridage Season One DVD.

That's all I've been doing lately. Building things. I'm foolishly overcommitted but thanks to a breakthrough in my understanding of Actionscript, things are finally taking on some semblance of organization. Other announcements are ever on the horizon. You should be reading redshifter.org throughout January if you feel like you might have an extra $30 or so burning a hole in your pocket. Film at 11.

Oh, and I'm going to look at a live/work space today at 2:30. What, have I up and gone lame? A loft?!? Cookie-cutter breeding grounds of the yuppie knucklehead posse? Slipshod claptrap boxes thrown together to nab fistfuls of cash from soulless dotcom greedmongers? Yup. At the price I was quoted, you'd be looking too.

» Still more Flashin'. This is getting insane.
» The fantastically nerdy prog-core of Coheed and Cambria. There's even a song on their new LP called "2113."
» The fact that you can start out Need For Speed: Underground with a VW GTI. Reflex silver, even. If only the game didn't want me to put gnarly stormtrooper-looking body kits and nasty decals all over the car, I'd be even more psyched. But, this game is geared towards the Japanese imports, and people like to do some ugly-looking things to those cars.

Metafilter just pointed me to an article about San Francisco's Tamale Lady, a 50 year-old Mexican immigrant who makes delicious tamales and sells them from bar to bar in the Mission.

The Tamale Lady is a legend in our part of town, and when she arrives she invariably attracts a crowd of people who wait their turn for the $2 treats. Her life has been no walk in the park, and it warms my heart to see her get some much-deserved acknowledgment from her community.

OK, so it ain't a great photo, but we needed a little color 'round here. That's the GTI in the rain while I do laundry.

Been enjoying some much needed time off. My xmas gift to myself was a little bedroom recording studio, and I'm kicking myself repeatedly for not hooking myself up with one a long time ago. I've been spending the last few days crouched on the floor, headphones on, surrounded by my guitars and bass, frantically plugging and unplugging amps, tuning, programming drums, punching in, punching out... It's very nice. So far I've recorded two semi-cohesive "songs" and about four other fragmented ideas. I'll avoid the classic pitfall of publishing a recording before its time, but suffice it to say that after a long musical hiatus, I'm feeling it once again.

And to all a good night.

The West Coast is getting slammed with storms, which means a lot of rain and crap weather here in San Francisco, but Tahoe is a whole different ballgame. A few days after Christmas marked what was probably one of the top three powder days I've ever ridden. Deep, cold and fluffy -- and it was snowing so hard that most people didn't dare leave their cabin, so the mountain was virtually empty. We had fresh tracks all day long.

Other than that, I've been pretty much avoiding the Internet for the most part -- look for more frequent updates as I get back into the swing of things.

Pretty gol-darn slow this weekend. I'm on a budget.

So, I spend the days Garagebanding, with limited success. I'm learning that programming drums on longer songs really sorta takes forever.

Super Bowl? I forgot to watch. I later saw the news, though -- there was a "controversial" event in the half-time show! What scandal!

Well, I'm happy to say that I can finally (sort of) take the wraps off a longtime project I've had in the works. For the past nine months, my business partner Craig and I have been nurturing to life a little company called Infantile.

Infantile is a brand of clothing for babies and toddlers. For our first season, we're producing eight shirts featuring graphics by a really high-quality selection of illustrators. Scott Sylvia, Evan Hecox, Dave Kinsey, Tiffany Bozic, Phil Frost, Maya Hayuk, Jason Gnewikow and Jeremy Fish did graphics for season one, and let me say that they're pretty damn awesome shirts. And that's just for starters.

In my late nights over the next few weeks I'll be finishing up our Web site, and we hope to launch the online store in early March. It's very exciting and it's been a heck of a journey thus far; I can't wait to see where it goes.

Wicked, wicked busy these days -- learning an awful lot, that's for sure. Apologies for scant updating here. It'll be worth it.

I can't believe I'd never been to Portland, OR before, but I made it for an overnighter last weekend. Nice little town, and damn do they have a lot of live music going on there. Way better rock scene than SF, that's for sure.

The drive on I-5 from Portland to San Francisco is a long-ass haul, though. If you ever do it, take exit 86 to the Heaven on Earth truck stop in Azalea, Oregon. The cinnamon rolls, homemade bread and apple butter there are pretty damn kick-ass. Their salads suck, though.

The last mile is always the longest mile, ain't it? Things will continue to be slow around these parts as I concentrate my non-9-5 time in other arenas.

I can't stop listening to Remission ever since Mastodon's powerhouse set the other night. I think I'll have to rank it in the all-time top 20 shows for me. As a friend wrote to me in an SMS: "They PUNISH."

Oscar night.

I haven't watched an Academy Awards ceremony since Elliott Smith played it in '97, but this year I was really gunning for Bill Murray. There's just some sad, funny side of him that really resonates with me. With a lot of other people too, apparently.

Oh well. At least he lost to Sean Penn, who is another all-time favorite actor of mine (At Close Range -- love that flick).

» I haven't yet seen it, but there are photos of me in this year's Tattoo issue of Juxtapoz. Thanks to Mr. Giant for making my arms magazine-worthy.

» The site that sent me to the loony bin, Juice Design, is finally live after 10 months of cerebrum-frying labor. Worth it.

Alas, the time has come to liquidate my beloved GTI. Wanna buy it?

Apologies for the scant updates around here. It really is nuts these last few weeks: running from home to work, press checks at lunch, back to work, back to press after work, photo shoots, up all night site-building, running out to catch Strike Anywhere at Bottom of the Hill (so great), and then crashing to do it all again the next day.

Infantile.com will open for business this weekend; I guarantee it.

And away we go. Infantile is alive and kicking.

redshifter.org readers, you get a sneak peek of the site that we're officially announcing on Wednesday of this week. So hop on over! If you see any bugs or oddities, drop me an email and I'll fix it (the mailing list is one such oddity that I will try to get working tonight, but send what you find my way). Or start spending. That's always nice too.

Hi folks. Lucky for me, I get to work today! And tomorrow! And Sunday! Monday! Tuesday! And beyond! Ah yes, the joys of the startup life. At least I'm not alone... I get to work with Jon, my fellow web jockey, and listen to Guided By Voices while we labor. Could be worse.

Could be better, too.

Gold Star For Robot Boy.

Well, here it is, over four years later, and I'm still smashing my head against a wall with this HTML thing that I do. Only this time, it's not at a startup, the music is Denali and I'm all by my little lonesome. 11:38pm. Six more pages to finish. Deadline: the crack of dawn. I have a feeling I'll be greeting it head-on.

1. Vodka Gimlets.
2. Skid Row's Sebastian Bach wore an MC5 shirt on stage in the hair metal years. OK, that's pretty cool.
3. Canada, The UK, Australia and even The Philippines = on board. Get with it, US. Infantile is getting some legs. I write that while repeatedly pounding my fist on a hunk of wood.
4. Road trip to LA.

Intentional, in case you're wondering.

So L.A. was pretty fun. I got to know the Silverlake and Echo Park neighborhoods a little better. I also drove past (about 30 times) the wall in front of which Elliott Smith stood for the 'Figure 8' record cover. It's right on Sunset Blvd.

The stores were down with us. We were down with them. It was encouraging.

A word of advice, though: no matter how curious you might be about the level of obnoxiousness on the Sunset Strip at 11pm on a Friday night, don't put yourself through the agony. Seriously, don't. You might think it'd be fun in a cheesy way, but it's just not.

I was having a hard time finding my happy place last night until The Constantines gave me some religion, and I thank 'em for that. Genuinely nice folks, they are. Great, great show.

Then, I met some friends at a different club and was astonished to see the back bar blasted with lighting, video equipment scattered everywhere. People making out in front of the cameras, dancing, looking cool. There are tons of goth/punk tattooed freaks everywhere, Davey Havoc sulking on the side. Turns out the band Black Cat Music were shooting a video there. Next thing I know I'm being grabbed and asked to "stand in," and positioned in front of the camera. In my experience, "standing in" means "we need a warm body to take a light reading, can you go stand over there for us?"

So, I'm standing there -- literally just standing there looking at the camera -- thinking that they're tweaking some aperture settings or something, when I notice that Grady (a tall, heavily tattooed goth/rock dude in a black suit) is wildly dancing behind me. Um, am I like in this video or some shit? Yes you are, BK. You're in the fucking video. Standing there. Not dancing. Looking right into the camera, wondering why there isn't a PA with a light meter next to your face.

We're going to be seeing some more photos around here.

Sitting in traffic.

Good times.

I'm in New York City pimping Infantile and thanking my lucky stars that San Francisco doesn't keep its bars open until 4AM like this crazy-ass town does.

Also I would like to alert you to my next DJ gig: I am part of a night of rollickin' good times, called JET BLACK (tip of the cap to Jawbreaker there). The night begins with a set of classic alternative hits: The Smiths/Moz, Chapterhouse, Blur, Suede, New Order, et al; then I come on board to finish off the night with the straight-up rock: Quicksand, Les Savy Fav, Q and Not U, Mastodon, We Regazzi, The Constantines, The Stones, Wire, The Who...

JET BLACK: Tuesday, June 1 at the Casanova Lounge: Valencia @ 16th, San Francisco CA. There isn't even a cover charge.

I was in LA this weekend, helping and hanging out with my friend Chris as he tattooed rabid Morrissey fans at the 2004 Morrissey/Smiths convention. It was at the Henry Fonda theater on Hollywood Blvd.

Um, it was weird. I mean, it was fun to hang out with friends, but that neck of LA is not my favorite, and the convention itself was a bigger let-down than I thought it'd be. I knew it'd be dorky, but I thought it'd be more along the lines of booths, bootlegs, t-shirts, posters and the like. Instead, the whole thing revolved around These Charming Men, a Smiths/Moz cover band from Dublin. Granted, they were pretty good, and their singer guy did a spot-on Morrissey, in both voice and appearance. But man, what's with the straight-up imitation? Get some good bands to pay tribute to Smiths/Moz songs in their own way, or just nix the whole band thing and just let people dance to a DJ. Something about it just felt wrong. I expected someone to start speaking Klingon or some Elvis impersonators to show up.

Turned right around from LA and headed to Austin for a few days. Now that there is some sweltering heat, ladies and gentlemen. Cool town, though -- figuratively speaking. Cheap, too. All my co-workers there seem to own their houses and stuff. Meanwhile, I rent a teeny two-bedroom with a roommate. Because SF rocks like that? Sure it does.

Trip highlight: being served a Ketel One and soda (extra lime, please) that cost a mere four bucks. The bartender was Mr. Lifto.

Also, how about that SpaceShipOne, huh? Good stuff.

Via Gizmodo: The so-hipster-I-want-to-puke Retropod is a Sony Sports Walkman, gutted to house an iPod. I used to listen to The Queen is Dead on this exact Walkman. Full circle.

I am a devotee to the elliptical machine. I can't stop. I'm sure I look like a total chump -- a skinny tattooed guy sweating it out next to the yuppies and trophy wives -- but I don't care at all. I'd rather chump it up for an hour per day in the name of having a rockin' bod, yo. Notify the minions of Satan that their time is due, because I even have an iPod "workout mix." Here's a sample of what keeps me going when it just burns so bad:

Leatherface: "Patrick Kills Me"
Mastodon: "Where Strides The Behemoth"
Handsome: "Needles"
The Explosion: "Reactor"
The Donnas: "Take it Off"
Quicksand: "Thorn in My Side"

Let the heckling begin.

My friend Mike getting punched in the face. He asked for it. Happy Fourth of July +1.

Suffer Little Children was pretty successful. Lots of people showed up, including several friends. So that was good. The rest of the weekend found a lot of time spent plopped in front of a TV or movie screen, which was nice for a change. I finally caught Spider-Man 2, and I thought it was excellent. Seems like the studio let Sam Raimi do his thing a lot more than the first installment -- some of the scenes really reminded me of Evil Dead 2 or Army of Darkness, and that's never a bad thing.

I also spent some time hooking up my birthday gift to myself: the Apple AirPort Express. Sadly, I fear that this product is not quite ready for prime time. Setup was a nightmare (Apple's included setup application is really, really flaky) and once I finally did get it working, I found that can't play music to my stereo without an awful lot of audio drop-outs. Trolling around on message boards (for what that's worth) lead me to believe that either (a) it's caused by neighboring 2.4GHz cordless phone users, or (b) I can solve the problem by turning my AirPort network down to 802.11b. Either way, it's janky. I think this product has a lot of promise (and it'll be great for travelling), but my out-of-box experience was pretty mediocre. Yeah, yeah... I'm an early adopter. I'm just sayin'.

UPDATE: Now it's working fine. Zero dropouts. Weird.

UPDATE UPDATE: It's doing it again. Craig, however, is able to stream to the stereo no problem. I've deduced that it's a problem with my Powerbook's built-in 802.11b versus Craig's built-in, faster 802.11g. That's a hole in the boat. I guess AirTunes needs more bandwidth than 802.11b can offer (11Mbps). Why, I don't know. That ought to be plenty fast for streaming.

Rocking a major cold over here. Spent the better part of the weekend plastered to the couch thanks to some heavy-duty Robitussin and a "Dr. 90210" marathon. Yes, it's come to that.

I did venture forth to catch some matinées, though. I've been quite the moviegoer as of late. Straight Hollywood, though. Bourne was smart and interesting, if nauseatingly filmed. Great car chase. The Village was... OK, I guess. I think it's time for old M. Night to abandon the twist endings. Rather than suspending my disbelief, I spent the whole flick trying to outsmart it, and I think the explanation that I concocted was more interesting than the Twilight Zone-ish BS that he puked up.

These things:

• Work is nuts and I have a clothing company and I'm in a band and a social life and and and
• Sorry, had to get that out of my system. I'm listening to Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash by The Replacements, in an attempt to get my head around Tommy Stinson's bass-playing ethos, all the while fully aware that he was like 15 at the time of this recording in 1981. Which is a real kick in the ass. I guess that means that when I'm about 55, I'll be asked to play in Guns and Roses.
• My 1st-degree posse of weblog people is doing the herky jerky: Orangefuzz is a "No input file specified." Chris's Neckdeep has evolved into a visually-driven type of weblog, which is a pretty neat idea. Y'all should link up to Avery's Mock Orange -- she's hitting her stride over there.
• I hate music. It's got too many notes.

I was at a bar called the Hemlock Tavern the other night, on Polk Street, and Vincent Gallo walked by. He was wearing one of those brown leather jackets with the fringe, like Owen Wilson had in The Royal Tenenbaums. He considered coming in until he probably realized that the hipsters would converge on him, so he and his girl kept walking. We all played it cool, like we didn't care, but of course as soon as he walked by we all busted out our cellphones to tell all our friends. Sad, huh?

Never in my facial hair-growing days have I ever sported any kind of beard or moustache whatsoever. Never. So I decided last week that I'd try growing a beard. I let the stuff grow over the weekend and Monday before work I did the "under the chin" shave, thereby elevating my growth from the realm of "scruff" to that of "beard." Beta version.

It lasted about 8 hours. I just could not deal with it whatsoever. I think I'm destined to be forever smooth-faced.

After being psyched on the few tracks I heard on their web site, I ordered the CD from The Stella Link. I'm giving it its first spin right now, and I can already tell that I'm going to be listening to a lot of this record. It isn't sporting a terribly new sound in its atmospheric, dissonant, heavy melody -- tons of bands worked the same angle in the 90s, but heck, that was a good time for the indie rock, no?

I just bought the "Semper Fi b/w Sailor's Fate single from Shiner on the iTunes Music Store -- it was originally a 7", and you can hear the scratches and pops from the vinyl. Rock forever, Desoto Records.

Chinese Radio is cruising. Looks like we'll be embarking on a Pacific NW tour in the first half of November. Also, I'm learning that getting shows in San Francisco really, really sucks. Rock to Stars in a Straight Line.

Good: BBEdit 8.0 is out, and it's pretty durned swanky -- a noteworthy improvement in terms of user interface. Only minus that I've found so far: the built-in HTML Tidy caused a little bit of a ruckus on a file on which I tested it -- it crashed BBEdit and messed up the file's line endings. I'm sure that'll get patched up.

Bad: Joshua Kinberg was arrested in mid-interview with MSNBC's Ron Reagan. Joshua is a founder of Bikes Against Bush and made a really, REALLY nerd-tastic bicycle that could spray water-soluble chalk letters onto the sidewalk. Weak, NYPD. You're getting called out on this one.

Good: New iMac is tits. Install an Airport card and Bluetooth, and the only cable on your desk is the one plugging the machine into the electrical outlet. Still, I'm a Powerbook guy.

Bad: Infantile was supposed to be featured in the edition of BUST that just hit the stands, but it looks as though we ended up on the cutting room floor. No word from the people at the magazine, who were previously quite responsive to our emails. Boo.

OK, the Kryptonite U-lock fiasco has been all over the Web, but as an owner of said lock, I feel compelled to bitch about it here.

Yup, you can open a Kryptonite U-lock with a cheap Bic pen. I haven't tried it on my lock yet, as I don't have any Bics lying around, but I'm no less miffed at having spent $60 on a lock that can be defeated with a $0.49 disposable pen. Friggin' janky. I got a nice bike! I ain't lettin' no knucklehead with a Bic ride off on it.

So, now I have to buy a new lock? They're not cheap!

Bay Area folks: My band, Chinese Radio, is playing tomorrow night at Balazo Gallery with two other local bands, Inventing Edward and Coup de Grace. If you're not going to the Pixies show in Berkeley, then come on out:

Coup de Grace
Chinese Radio
Inventing Edward

at Balazo Gallery
2811 Mission St. @ 24th, San Francisco
8:00 PM, all ages
$5

Ahh, a weekend spent with the little lady in Santa Cruz. Man, did I need to get out of the city. We did all the touristy things: the Boardwalk, the Wharf, even the Mystery Spot.

While I'm on the subject: the Mystery Spot is definitely worth a visit if you're into goofy Americana stuff like that. I don't know if there's some crazy lodestone deposit underground there, or if some aliens landed there, but I can say that your brain starts to go a little batty when all horizontals and verticals are removed from your frame of reference. Not a bad way to spend five bucks. Just don't bring babies in baskets, like the throngs of Indian tourists who were in our group. I could barely stand up myself, let alone lug a kid along.

We also made it to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. While a bit smaller than I was expecting, they have some cool exhibits that are more locally-oriented than those of Baltimore's National Aquarium, which is my only real point of comparison (Baltimore is still better). Monterey does get bragging rights for its Great White, though. One look at that thing will send the shivers up your spine, even if she's only 4 feet long. That shape is unmistakable.

License plate, seen on Oak Street in San Francisco.

I'm frantically running around like a crazy maniac, doing all the last-minute preparations for my first tour with Chinese Radio. We leave in a few hours. All I can say is, I hope I play better than I did at our practice last night, because I sucked. I blame it on our not having practiced together for two weeks or so -- the 'second nature' aspect of my playing rusted out on me. Anyway, we load up our battle-tested 1983 VW Vanagon in a couple hours, and we make our way to Redding, CA, which is coincidentally my girlfriend's hometown. We're playing at some teen center called "The Space." I'm expecting a young scene, high-school aged, much like the VFW shows that went on when I was in college. A good portion of our shows are going to be basement shows and other Gilman-type, all-ages punk rock venues. It'll be interesting, that's for sure. And away we go.

I'm in a Starbucks right now, catching up with email and everything. I've posted below my first few days' worth of tour diaries... earliest at the bottom, of course.

It isn't tour without a broken-down van, and today was our day. The VW started throwing itself out of gear on the freeway. Pretty soon there was no 3rd or 4th gear whatsoever. We managed to hobble into a rest stop, and after some master sleuthery on the part of Chris, we discovered that we were about ten miles away from a primo old school VW workshop, Franklin's VW Werks. All hail Franklin and his posse. It wasn't cheap, but they called all around and located a matching transmission, and the van is already back on the road. Turnaround to new transmission: about 4 hours. Incredible. For a minute there it was looking like we were going to have to miss a show or two while the van was in the shop.

Crappy hotel, election results and cheap beer is the order for the evening. The tour picks up big steam tomorrow in Tacoma. See you there?

This is a tough tour. Thin crowds all around, which is to be expected for a no-name band like us, but still -- it's tough. Tacoma was probably our best-received show to date, but we had to play first which didn't help us. Last night's show at Punkin House was a trainwreck. The guys who put on the show were really nice and all, but for a house with that kind of DIY cred, things were unfortunately a bit sloppy. The neighbors were complaining, the cops were rumored to be coming, everybody split... We ended up playing to three people in a basement, which strikes me as a waste of valuable vacation leave.

We keep waiting for that one show where the crowd is into us, but the fates have not shined on us yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the last leg of tour in Arcata, Reno, Chico and Davis. We play podunk Bothell, WA today with like thirty-seven other bands.

This tour is so nuts. Here's how yesterday broke down:

2:30PM: We arrive at the campus, which is either the University of Washington at Bothell, or Cascadia Community College, depending on which sign you look at. The promoter is not yet there, and neither are any of the bands. Chinese Radio is nothing if not punctual. After a bit, some other bands start to roll in, and Greg, the promoter shows up.

3:00PM: The room that Greg rented out from the school is unlocked and we load in. The room is big: probably 2000 square feet or more. There's a stage at one end. High aluminum sheet ceilings and glass along three sides. This room is going to be an echo chamber. We stow our gear in a back room and set up our merch table. The other bands seem like mostly young punk rock bands, with the exception of Motorama, a bunch of 30-somethings from Vancouver. I notice that there is no PA system, and wonder when it will show up.

3:10PM: We learn from Greg that there was a snafu with the school and there is no PA system for the show. My heart sinks, thinking that this is going to be yet another bungled DIY effort. I long to play nothing but clubs for the rest of my life, never again dealing with the chaos. I stare around at the kids with their giant mohawks. There are a lot of Rancid fans in Bothell, I gather.

3:30PM: Supposedly one of the local bands is bringing over their PA. I say to myself, "there is no way that band's PA will be able to fill this huge room." But any PA is better than no PA.

4:00PM: The show is running late. There are something like 10 bands on the bill. We're set to play about 2/3 of the way through. There's a pretty good turnout of local kids.

4:30PM: The promoter Greg and the Vancouver band are curiously missing. We soon learn that they were arrested for drinking on campus. Greg has been hauled off, cited and banned from re-entering campus, so he's out of the picture. The Vancouver guys got off because the cops likely didn't want to deal with the paperwork of deporting them. There will be no PA at this show. I notice a few wireless access points in the room and wish I'd brought my laptop so I could blog this fiasco in real time. It would have been priceless.

4:45PM: We set up guitar amps as a PA and the bands begin. People in general seem to be excited to see Chinese Radio, probably due to the "ex-Less Than Jake" credit that the promoter gave us. We don't like promoting our band that way at all, since Chris and the LTJ fellows parted on bad terms, and because LTJ sucks anyway, but sometimes it leaks through.

7:00PM: The band that happened to bring the mic stands leaves and takes the stands with them. At this point I'm ready to throw in the towel and head back to our homebase in Seattle and drink myself stupid. Dan perseveres, though. To his credit, he pulled that show out of the gutter. We fashion a mic stand by duct-taping a broomstick to a cymbal stand. We find a second bent, beat up mic stand behind a pile of chairs in the back room. I am banging my head against the table out of frustration.

8:15PM: We're on. We kill it. The angst must have fueled us nicely, because we teach those kids how a fucking rock band does it. After our set I leave the breakdown to Chris and Dan and rush down to the merch table, and we sell a respectable quantity. Helloooo, gas money and dinner.

8:45PM: The band that followed us, Contra, is really fun -- all kids, probably 17 or 18, but they have great influences: Clash, Op Ivy, Buzzcocks. And they were really cool too. I liked those kids.

9:30PM: Topping off the perfect night, the cops show up and cancel the show, claiming they found some property damage somewhere. I'm relieved, frankly.

10:00PM: We're loading out and Dan catches wind from another band of a show at some bar in the University District of Seattle on Saturday night. Our Saturday show in Bellingham got cancelled at the last minute, so Dan smooth-talked us onto the Seattle bill. Excellent work, Dan. We'll teach those drunken frat dudes in the bar a thing or two.

The general Seattle area was not good to Chinese Radio. Despite having rocked the Cascadia show, we were plagued by transmission issues, crappy shows, gear failure and all manner of other problems. The only point of light was Chuck's generous hospitality -- thanks, Chuck.

On our way out of Seattle, driving to our show in Arcata, CA, our second transmission locked up on us. By the fates, we were in the same exact town in which it failed the first time: Kent, WA. We called up our saviors at Franklin's VW Werks and limped over there again. Unfortunately, the news was bad: our first replacement transmission was no good and we needed another. We put ourselves up in what was easily the rattiest, dirtiest hotel that any of us had ever seen and waited for Franklin, Bugly and the boys to get us back on the road.

The debacle meant we missed our Arcata show with Frog Eyes and Subtle, which sucked -- it was probably due to be one of the better shows of tour, but that's the way it goes. We hope to make it back up there in 2005.

Right now I'm sitting in some tucked-away corner of the Eldorado Casino in Reno, NV, where I found a trickle of a wifi signal. We played an awesome punk house last night, with some really really great bands -- Reno seems to have a tightly-knit, well-oiled DIY scene, which is a huge relief after the endless BS of Seattle. Tonight we play some bar called the Zephyr, and that's about all we know about that gig. No idea who we're playing with or anything.

Tomorrow we're off to Chico, then down to Davis, and then back to the cold embrace of San Francisco.

The general Seattle area was not good to Chinese Radio. Despite having rocked the Cascadia show, we were plagued by transmission issues, crappy shows, gear failure and all manner of other problems. The only point of light was Chuck's generous hospitality -- thanks, Chuck.

On our way out of Seattle, driving to our show in Arcata, CA, our second transmission locked up on us. By the fates, we were in the same exact town in which it failed the first time: Kent, WA. We called up our saviors at Franklin's VW Werks and limped over there again. Unfortunately, the news was bad: our first replacement transmission was no good and we needed another. We put ourselves up in what was easily the rattiest, dirtiest hotel that any of us had ever seen and waited for Franklin, Bugly and the boys to get us back on the road.

The debacle meant we missed our Arcata show with Frog Eyes and Subtle, which sucked -- it was probably due to be one of the better shows of tour, but that's the way it goes. We hope to make it back up there in 2005.

Right now I'm sitting in some tucked-away corner of the Eldorado Casino in Reno, NV, where I found a trickle of a wifi signal. We played an awesome punk house last night, with some really really great bands -- Reno seems to have a tightly-knit, well-oiled DIY scene, which is a huge relief after the endless BS of Seattle. Tonight we play some bar called the Zephyr, and that's about all we know about that gig. No idea who we're playing with or anything.

Tomorrow we're off to Chico, then down to Davis, and then back to the cold embrace of San Francisco.

Man, so much has gone down in the last few days, I haven't even had time to think about writing. Tour is finally over, I'm settling back into the routine, things are OK. I'm going to try not to miss anything:

Tour

San Francisco

Farewell, GBV

ISIS

So it goes. I'm working on posting some tour photos.

Not ready to drop the info here on the site yet, though. In the meantime, The Incredibles was so fun and great that I'm going to go see it again. For now, I'm off to the Auto Show.

Things have been a little quiet around here lately, mainly because I've been avoiding making the announcement that I'm quitting my job. But there it is. I'm resigning, after three years. I've never discussed my 9-5 here on redshifter.org, since I don't want to deal with the legal ramifications of such an action, but suffice it to say that the time has come, and I'm entering the world of freelancing. I have a few gigs lined up, but if you're looking for someone to write HTML -- preferably valid, standards-compliant XHTML and CSS with an eye on accessibility -- keep me in mind, will you?

So, there you have it.

Apart from that, I've had a nice long break, what with the Thanksgiving holiday. San Francisco was pleasantly empty, and my friends and I celebrated the season with too many expensive dinners. Chinese Radio played Saturday night at Thee Parkside and the show was a lot of fun. Good crowd, enthusiasm, good sound (shocking for Thee Parkside, but true, according to our audience), and best of all, a good "in" for us at a club that hosts lots of rock shows. Hopefully we'll be playing there again soon.

Oh, and my friend let me take his new SL 55 AMG for a spin. Almost 500 horsepower. $120,000. Insanity.

Um, what the hell is with wrapping paper that isn't opaque enough to properly hide its contents? What a waste! This has happened to me twice in the last two days: once with a nice gift to a friend, with expensive art store wrapping paper, and once again this morning with my $20 office party gift with Walgreen's paper. Sheesh.

All at once, I'm in a few publications of note:

Infantile is featured in the Jan/Feb 2005 issue of Juxtapoz, and I'm told that we're also in the new issue of Vice, but I have yet to see that one. The magazines have been sending us a lot of traffic, making for a hectic holiday season.

There are also photos of my sleeves in Mike Giant's new book, Manifestations. So now you can buy pictures of me on Amazon.

Chinese Radio will be playing Thee Parkside this Thursday, December 30, so if you're in town...

Speaking of town, it's nice over the holidays. Fewer people, easy parking, less congestion. I don't even mind the rain. Plenty of time to get things done, such as:

I picked up a cheap Toshiba laptop for $600 after rebate at CompUSA. Not a bad deal. Primarily I'll be using it for testing sites I work on from home, and for Infantile accounting duties. I have come to loathe all variety of financial software for the Macintosh. Quickbooks is entirely too complicated, far from "quick," and the business just needs its own dedicated computer anyway. Now that we're properly assimilated into the Windows business machine, we can even print out paid, addressed postage labels like big boys (shame on PayPal/USPS for not supporting Mac browsers for e-shipping; javascript window.open() isn't exactly nuclear physics, people).

I don't know if it's a new thing or not, as in I don't know if it's been implemented since FedEx started running the show, but you can submit jobs to Kinko's via the Internet now. Very, very handy. Just upload a PDF and away you go. One hundred copies on plain white paper please, and cut 'em in half. See you at noon? In, out, no fuss, no muss. Efficiency. Search and destroy. Hopefully. It is still Kinko's...

My 2004 music faves are forthcoming.

Back to the daily, here. Holiday Break 2004 wasn't much of a break, actually -- I was up to my armpits in work the whole time, between a mountain of bookkeeping crap and contract HTMLing. "Gotta Get My Stuff Done," indeed. Friggin' tedious.

Yeah, the 2004 best-of is still on the way. I feel guilty. I literally have not had the time to sit down and gank album art from Amazon -- too busy getting my Stuff Done.

Infantile was part of a front page post on MetaFilter last Friday. Who knew? I'm here to tell you that a link on MeFi == LOTS of freakin' hits to your site, people. Dang!!

Dear Suicide Girls,

Do you have to advertise everywhere?

Love, Bob.

Believe it or Not? -- Berkeley cops are forbidden by the city to use German Shepherds for their K9 units, because they look too fascist. Is that true?

I find myself quite busy these days. Funny how that's working out, considering most days I have no specific place I have to be. Mainly I've been hopping on the computer to accomplish whatever task lurks in front of me, and getting back to my real-world obligations.

Anyway, it's soon time to move again, so if any of y'all know of a 2-bedroom for rent in San Francisco, pipe up.

I just earned "amigo" status at my local taqueria.

For almost all of the nine years I've lived in San Francisco, I've lived within a ten-block radius of Church and Market. The only good taqueria in this neighborhood is Taqueria El Castillito, on Church Street. Probably my second favorite burrito in the city, next to Taqueria Cancun on Mission Street. Castillito's a pretty seedy but likable joint, with burritos that are dryer than usual. They throw shredded lettuce in the veggie burritos, their beans are delicious and their salsa verde is darn good. I've been going there for a long time, seeing the same few Mexican dudes working there, exchanging pleasantries and little else.

Just now I was getting dinner (the usual: $3.86 for a regular veggie burrito with guacamole), and while I was waiting in line, the register was unattended. This super drunk, red-faced, shaved-head dude who looked semi-homeless was swaying in front of the register, eating corn chips and spitting crumbs all over the floor. Obnoxious, but nothing I don't see in SF just about every day. Then, he quickly reached into the tip jar, pulled out a fistful of money, and headed for the door. I almost said something but didn't want to get into it with a huge meth head over less than ten bucks, no matter how much he was in the wrong.

The super beefy gay dude in the cowboy hat, who also saw the whole thing, was braver than I. "HEY!!!" he yelled as the bald guy bolted. Gay cowboy chased him to the door and grabbed him by the belt as he left, but drunk bald guy got away from his grasp. The kitchen erupted into a fury of Spanish, and the younger, tall dude who's been working there for a long time took off after drunk bald guy. I followed. So now it was our posse -- gay cowboy, taqueria guy and me -- chasing the guy down the block. We caught him, and gay cowboy and I had taqueria guy's back as he grabbed the guy and took his money back without incident. Drunk bald dude stood there and looked like he considered throwing punches, but even his drug- and drink-addled mind knew he had no chance. He turned and split. The three of us walked back to the taqueria in silence. I'm sure we were all coming down from the fight-or-flight adrenaline rush.

I got an extra good burrito tonight, make no mistake. Handed to me with an eye-to-eye nod and a sincere "thanks, amigo."

Looking for an apartment. Disinterested landlords who might return your call. I'm just another one of the many people looking for a good place to live.

Booking tour for my band. Disinterested bookers at big-name clubs who hang up on you as soon as you say who you are. We're just another one of the many bands looking for a good place to play.

I will not be beaten down.

I can't believe it, but I just signed a lease on what is probably the nicest place I've ever lived. I snapped a few photos today with my phone. The period of the building combined with the way my phone naturally vignettes a blur around the image, plus Robb Carr's Black and White photo technique, makes the photo look hecka old, yo.

In the last year or two, MUNI has implemented a trust-based policy called "Proof of Payment." The nutshell is that riders can hop on trains via any door, or enter the underground MUNI stations at will, so long as they have a valid transfer or FastPass. Occasionally station agents are seen checking people at random for their proof, and citing violators with a fine (of about $25, I think), basically to enforce the policy. Fine, that's cool.

Kelsey and I had valid passes and entered the Powell station last night via the swing-gate, which has a sign on it reading, "NO ENTRY WITHOUT VALID PROOF OF PURCHASE." I see people using that gate all the time. We got halfway down the stairs when the agent in the booth loudly called us out on the P.A. It was hard to understand what he was saying but it amounted to "you with the yellow bag, SFPD, yadda yadda yadda." Whatever, we could have been trying to sneak in, I guess. So we turned around, walked back and showed him our valid passes, at which point he got a little lecture-happy and told us "we had to to just like everybody else" and pass through the gates. I told him that I was "doing like everybody else" because I see people with valid passes passing through the swing gate all the time. After all, that's what the sign on the gate leads us to believe. He just looked at me deadpan, and slowly shook his head. Asshole! I shot back a look that was a mix of melodramatic, faux-confusion and "by the way, you're a prick," and went on my way.

This morning, via BoingBoing, I read a photographer's account of getting hassled by MUNI fare inspectors and the SFPD over taking pictures a MUNI station. Not only is photography in a MUNI station perfectly legal, but when the MUNI/cops could not find an applicable way to cite the guy, they threatened him with trespassing, mainly out of frustration with the photographer for actually having the nerve to ask which specific law he was accused of violating and not quietly acquiescing to them. This interchange perfectly sums up what I hate most about cops: wanton power-tripping and intimidation. It's a truism.

So today, I extend my middle finger to MUNI authority. And to my San Francisco brethren, I encourage you to bring your cameras along with you on your next MUNI ride, and snap away to your little heart's content. Snap photos of every little detail you can possibly fit in your viewfinder. Because it's your right, and you are perfectly allowed to do it. Just don't forget your proof of purchase.

Man, I'm slammed with work. Slammed. Working every day and I'm moving on Tuesday. Haven't so much as packed a sock yet. Might be a little slow 'round here on the words tip. I'll try to be diligent with the pics.

Almost out of the weeds here. The past two weeks have been some of the most trying days of my life:

I'm on an HTML project that is one of the all-time toughest, mainly by my own doing: I'm being super-strict with Standards and it's been hard as hell. Many times have I been tempted to drive up to Redmond, WA and kick the living shit out of the pricks are that programmed Internet Explorer, with all its bugs and rule-ignoring ways. A few times, I've panicked, thinking that I was out of my depth and failure was the only option. Luckily, it has not come to that, but my health and mental well-being have certainly suffered for it. The big deadline is this Tuesday, and I think I'll be right here in front of the screen the entire time until then. No tables. No spacer gifs. Using CSS to replace graphic text with live text. No javascript for mouseovers. No screwing around.

Mid-HTML freak-out, I had to move, which was a royal bitch. The staircase up to our apartment was a formidable foe, to be sure: long and steep, with a 90° bend. A couple of Mexican day laborers approached us on the street and offered to unload our truck for $40, and damn if they didn't bust their asses for us. I was nervous that they'd try to rip us off or pull some other sort of shenanigan, and I'm happy to say that they were on the level. The one dude carried my 4x12 speaker cabinet up the stairs on his shoulder. That thing weighs like 150 pounds. No joke.

Infantile went huge last week. We were written up by TrendCentral, a market forecasting company, and within hours we were entertaining inquiries from Target, label reps in LA, and stores all over the place. Not to mention a spate of orders placed on the web site.

And some horrible news yesterday: the passing of a friend. Stick together, people.

Whew, that was a marathon. I've launched the big project I had on my plate. More on that when I'm allowed to announce it. It turned out pretty well. Bug fixes and other clients now loom. LA trip next week.

Sorry for journaling here; I know that's a pretty boring read. Truth is, outside of the Slint show last night, things have been unfortunately work-related lately. I'm hoping to scale back a bit and concentrate on the clothes and the apartment, which is still a pile of boxes.

Speaking of which, lazyweb request: anyone have tips on finding nice sofas that don't cost an arm and a leg? I need both a love seat and a proper sofa. Regular cloth style, fluffy, sorta traditional couches are what I'm looking for. No leather stuff and all that rot. I've peeped IKEA, but their color selection leaves a bit to be desired. And it's IKEA. I haven't bought any grown-up furniture in a while. Suggestions?

Head above water. I've been a bit frantic lately with all these developments. Thanks for bearing with me. Flew to LA and back today. Deals made, rep acquired. We'll see where that takes us.

RIP: Judith Scott. Judith was a 55 year old sculptor who had Down's Syndrome. She was severely mentally disabled, deaf and had no concept of language, or that the work she did was considered "art" by others. She had no understanding of the concept of art, for that matter. Fascinating work. (I hate to bite BoingBoing's links, but I thought some of you may be interested)

Hope you all enjoyed my contributions to the 24in48 project. It was fun. You can see my photos on the 24in48 site here, or you can view them here on flickr, where you can leave comments and do all the other cool things that flickr does.

I'm still keeping my eyes out for a Jang and Associates ad. No luck yet.

And, we're leaving for a quick tour later this week. Los Angeles, San Diego, Tijuana and Las Vegas, heh.

Boooo. Somebody hit my car pretty hard last night. There was a police collision report under my windshield wiper this morning. Details are sketchy. Some photos in flickr.

Insurance guy says the friggin' car's totaled, so I'm SOL on the VW tip. I fear that whatever payoff I get will be pretty minimal after my outstanding loan balance is paid off. So, yeah. Screwed.

On the flipside, and completely unrelated to the whole insurance quagmire, I'm the proud owner of a 2005 Triumph Bonneville. Works for me.

Insurance worked out better than I thought. Things I've learned:

1. Aftermarket stuff: look into endorsements and additional coverage for them. Originally the insurance guy told me I shouldn't tell them about my mods, lest they think I'm racing the car and jack my rate way up. So I didn't divulge them, and I ended up taking a bath on them. Luckily they valued my car high enough that it worked out in the end.


2. Save your receipts. Glad I did that.


3. The happy, helpful front of the insurance company's sales team completely goes away when you start dealing with the claims force. Nothing shocking there, I guess. When they're talking about how they're going to get money from you, it's all "how can we help you?" and smiles and yuk-yuks; when it's about how they're going to get money to you, suddenly you find yourself feeling like the bad guy. Funny how that works.


4. Insurance will try to throw you on their assembly line once your car is wrecked. They'll send you to their own "approved" body shop (read: the body shop in their back pocket) who has an insurance rep on location full-time. This could be either a good thing or a bad thing, I suppose. On one hand, since they have a guy on location, you don't find yourself having to prove anything to the insurance company; however, they have a mole, which stacks the cards in their favor. Proceed with caution. It worked out for me, this time.

Chris over at the Neckdeep is going through the same thing as me with the totaled car. He, unlike myself, has a hefty commute to the South Bay, so gas mileage is important. As for me, my studio is five blocks from home, so I'm not feeling like I absolutely need a replacement car. I'll be relying on the motorcycle for most of my traveling.

But, I still need a car from time to time. Trips to the store, stormy weather, jaunts out of town, that type of thing. I'm considering the hassle-free convenience of City Car Share, but there's a little piece of me that wants a sweet little '73 double oh-two.

Also, stay tuned: Dr. Jang is going to be making an appearance here soon.

Two long days at Tiny Telephone was a lot of fun, but man, I'm pooped.

Having recently gone back to my motorcycling ways after a hiatus of a few years, I find myself re-amazed by two things:

First, I'm astounded by the sheer number of people I see (and smell -- more on that later) smoking weed while driving. TONS. Almost every time I take out the Bonneville, I notice people smoking pot. Granted, San Francisco loves to smoke out, what with our 44 "legal" prescription-only cannabis clubs (and let me tell you, there's an epidemic of "insomnia" and "muscle aches" in this city). I was at 14th and Mission the other day and there was a pimped-out Pontiac in front of me. I watched the driver and his female companion smoke nearly an entire blunt over the course of a few blocks. I could hardly believe the dude could keep it on the road, let alone above 15 miles per hour.

Second, I can't believe how easy it is to sniff out a hot-boxed car while riding down the street. In fact, I usually smell someone smoking weed before I see them. You'd think that a car rolling along and the wind rushing by my helmet would cover up their stoner deeds, but no -- I'm here to tell you that smoking weed in cars leaves a strong whiff of smoke in the air that's especially easy to detect by motorcyclists. Be warned, in case you're firing up and there's a bike cop in your vicinity. Not that he'd probably care in this town, but I'm just sayin'.

June 2, 2005 was a crazy day, for sure. DailyCandy ran a piece about Infantile's new shirts, which resulted in the most traffic I've ever seen on any site of mine. Pure insanity.

Then, of course, we had a show to play at The Hemlock, which was a good time -- the highlight being meeting David Cross and having him sign my poster.

So that was yesterday. Today, Preshrunk picked us up and king of blogs BoingBoing followed suit. Can't complain!

Basically, I've been working two full-time jobs lately, what with my freelance gig demanding lots of attention and Infantile chugging along at a nice head of steam. Lucky for my mental stability, the freelance thing has cooled down, leaving me some much-needed breathing room.

MUCH needed. The last two months have been totally nuts. I haven't even seen anything online worth writing about, nor have I taken in any live shows... not much to write about other than the grind, and what fun is that? But I do have this:

I found a kick-ass deal on what I consider to be the world's best bass amp, the Ampeg SVT-CL. Three hundred watts, all tubes, dripping with fat tone, and friggin' LOUD. When I first plugged this in and hit a big open E, the thing pushed so much air that it made my pants vibrate. I still need to find its matching companion, the massive 810E. Good stuff.

Also, Kelsey had to go under the knife and have her tonsils and adenoids removed, a fate I would not wish on any adult. Pretty much the only positive remark I can make about it, other than the obvious health benefit to her, is that the surgery is commonly referred to as a "T & A."

When you're in one of those "it's 6AM on Sunday morning, you can't sleep so you decide to surf the Internet" moods, MisterSF is good for the clickin'. Makes me wonder how Mister SF himself makes a living off of it, though. He seems to appreciate the high life. And phooey on those HTML frames, too. But hey -- it is what it is: interesting snippets about the little things that make SF... SF.

I've been working a gift show the last few days, and all I can say about it is... it's a weird scene. We're over in the children's division, and aside from us and the Dirty Laundry ladies, the place is chock full of poop. To make matters worse, the majority of buyers are the type of women that we've dubbed "Christmas Tree Sweaters." As in, women who wear said atrocity. Not exactly our clientele. We're doing pretty well though, Christmas Tree Sweaters notwithstanding.

At risk of further strengthening my role as poster child for Blog Depression...

I knew August was going to be a rough month, but I'm trudging through it. Long days, indeed. Let's just say that my World of Warcraft character isn't getting much action these days.

NYC was fun, but a whirlwind, and hotter than the ninth circle of Hell. Looks like Infantile will be featured on The Learning Channel, probably on September 9, 2005, on a show they're calling "Random Acts of Duff."

Running around in constant fire-putting-out mode has been a bit much. A freelance deadline fast approaches, which is always a crunch. I've started playing bass for a second band, io, which is a lot of fun, but rigorous in preparation for some shows in September. Orders continue to flow in for Infantile.

After a few more days of last-minute preparations, I'll be getting the hell out of dodge. Entirely. I'm signing off for two weeks and traveling to France and Switzerland. Updates may be sporadic at best. Bon Voyage!

Internet access has been spotty over the last ten days; usually I've just been hopping online at cybercafés to quickly check email and that's about it. Imagine my shock when I discovered that the quaint, tiny hotel where we're staying in Paris has free wifi in the lobby. This building is hundreds of years old, and it has 802.11b. Freaky.

A quick recap thus far:

• Our stay at Le Rayol Sur Mer, on the Mediterranean coast, was marred by torrential rain, but after the mayhem of my August, sitting and listening to the storm didn't seem so bad. And the times when the clouds cleared were beautiful indeed.


• The TGV is fast as hell. Not too expensive, either.


• Paris is hot like NYC, even in September, and other than the waiters at cafés, the people are extremely polite and kind. Everybody is gawking at our tattoos, though. Kelsey, Craig and I are feeling like the bearded ladies with all the blatant staring. So it goes.


• I surprised Kelsey with a descent into the Catacombs. She had no idea what to expect, and got quite a scare when she emerged into the “Empire of the Dead.” Definitely worth the five euros.


• The Paris Metro is frigging chaos.


• Racial tension? Hmm?


• I dislike the US Wal-Mart culture just a little more than I already did.


• What the hell is going on in New Orleans?

Back in the USA, getting my head together, getting ready to play a show with Io tonight, getting the affairs in order. More updates to come now that things are smoothing out schedule-wise.

Until then, have a peep at my 8 zillion photos from our trip.

But I love them so.

After hooking up with Io, cram-learning a set's worth of their songs in two weeks, then leaving for two weeks, then returning home to play a "headlining" show at midnight which to my severely jet-lagged body felt like 9am, my first gig with the band was a trial by fire, to say the least. Throw in the worst technical difficulties I've ever experienced onstage, and you can imagine my frustration.

Every musician, at least those of us who rely on electrical amplification, holds a deep-rooted fear of standing on stage in front of a waiting audience, frantically trying to figure out why the hell your rig is dead silent. You switch out to new cables -- nothing. You try new instruments -- nothing. Your bandmates stand there, impatient yet supportive of you in your plight. All eyes are on you as you flail and fumble to try to get your fucking thousands of dollars' worth of gear to make so much as a peep. That was me last night.

Except in my case, I even swapped an entire different setup -- a borrowed bass and amp from one of the opening bands, and still there was no sound. There was a ghost in the machine. My bass is primo-grade US-made Fender. My amp is 10 years old but was recently given a complete check-up and overhaul in the shop. My cabinet is nearly brand-new. I even bought brand-new instrument cables yesterday to ensure 100% reliability. Nope.

I still don't know what the hell was going on (my only theory is that the house power voltage was flaky), and even the replacement amp I ended up using was cutting out on me. It was inexplicable. It sucked.

Despite all that, we rocked it. People liked it, and it felt good.

The whole experience put the fear in me, though. I'm considering selling my all-vacuum-tube amp and replacing it with the more reliable SVT 3 Pro. The SVT-CL may boast the world's best tone, but I'm willing to sacrifice a smidge of that for the peace of mind in knowing that my shit is just going to work when I hit the switch.

Busy show schedule for me this week:

Tuesday, October 18, Bottom of the Hill
A benefit for people affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita
Chinese Radio with Cast of Thousands, Peskivino and David Dondero

Wednesday, October 19, Thee Parkside
Chinese Radio with Turn Me On Dead Man and Ovipositor

Friday, October 21, 330 Ritch St.
io with The Boticellis, Fine by Me and Push to Talk

I'm happy to be a part of raising some cash for the victims of the hurricanes, Thee Parkside is always a raucous, ear-shattering event and it'll be my first time playing 330 Ritch -- plus, we're (io, that is) playing with our pals Push to Talk, who are truly fantastic (see: Moz, Smoking Popes, XTC). Seriously, remember their name.

Last night as I was getting ready to go out to see Minus the Bear, something happened that's never happened to me before: I heard my band on the radio. I'm not talking college radio, where any band can get airtime, but big, mainstream radio in the form of Live 105. Of course, io is hardly "my" band as I've been with them for just a month, and I'm still not even technically "in" the band, but regardless, it was quite a feeling.

io is also one of the five local bands of the month (scroll to the bottom). Cool stuff.

Me as Antoine:

io at Rickshaw Stop with Push to Talk and Audrye Sessions.

io did some recording with over the weekend with Aaron Heckam at Castle Ultimate in Emeryville -- an awesome, small studio. It was a long fifteen-hour session that stretched until 6:00AM, but it was a lot of fun and the end product sounds great. Witness: "Trust." (photos here)

As I was with Dr. Jang, I'm surprised that I can't find any online discourse about the guy who sells snacks in the Metreon theaters. It seems to me that he'd have the type of cult following that other local freak celebs like Frank Chu enjoy.

See, there's this guy who works at the Metreon who has obviously studied the customer service three-ring binders in great detail. When he works at the concession counter, he's all about the weird eye contact, suggestive sales tactics, and "Happy Sunday and WELCOME to the Metreon!!!".

About a year ago, he stepped up to the task of walking into the theater just as it's filling up, pushing a big cart of snacks for sale. He actually has to get the audience's attention, then stand there and hawk the concessions while people either ignore or heckle him. For me, that job would be pure agony, but he actually made up a pretty elaborate routine which he delivers in this weird "I still live in my mom's basement" kind of way that's both hilarious and creepy.

Having a hard time keeping up here.

We had a great time at Great American Music Hall the other night, which represented a triumphant moment for me since I used to work there and once had to clean up a pile of dildos that someone had dumped outside the back door. So, yeah. Being onstage is better.

This fellow has too many strings on his bass.

This bass, however, is a steal. Are you reading, Santa?
Update: Looks like it was sold, alas. Someone scored a primo, black 2000 US Fender P-Bass for $700. Still had the tags on, even. Lucky.

Here we are in 2006. It's going to be a great year -- I can feel it.

The last few weeks of '05 were insane for me. Work plus shopping plus Infantile plus rocking left little time for anything else. I spent a fantastic holiday with Kelsey's family in Redding and then flew back to Chapel Hill, NC for a headlining gig at Cat's Cradle, which was a lot of fun.

Looking back on the year, it was certainly an eventful one. My kids' clothes company got some exposure and some legs, which proved to be a lot of work. I moved into a killer apartment with my girlfriend. I got even more serious about playing music, playing in two bands at one point. It was the first year of full-time self-employment. A lot to handle, to be sure. Too much to handle, actually.

This year will be the year of focus, of simplification. With mixed feelings, I'm in the process of shutting Infantile down. Toward the end of last year I quit Chinese Radio and focussed my efforts on io. I'm not going to overbook myself with work.

My resolve this year will be to chase the dream. It may sound pie-in-the-sky, but I don't care. I'm eliminating distractions and aligning myself with other people with clear vision. There is truly no time that I am happier than when I am making music, so I seek to do that as much as possible. Getting into the business end of musicianship is strange, for sure, but if that's what I gotta do, then so be it.

...good ones.

I'm going to make an effort to better chronicle the band goings-on here on the ol' dot org. If nothing else, it'll be a fun read for me when I'm combing my own archives in 20 years.

Last night we played at the Pound SF, supporting City on Film, which is Bob Nanna's new thing. He was previously in two bands that I absolutely loved, Braid and Hey Mercedes, so it was a real honor for us to open up for him.

I have a couple new basses in my posession -- actually they're not new; they're quite old. A '66 and a '73 P-Bass. I considered playing the '66 at the show, and actually did play it in sound check, but I wasn't sure how well it'd hold up to my abuse in the full-on live situation, so I opted to play my trusty '99. That thing's a tank. We had a good show -- high energy and a decent crowd, which is a feat considering that a lot of our fans are city-dwellers without cars and the Pound is in the middle of nowhere.

City on Film was good, smart acoustic solo stuff from Mr. Nanna. I don't know if he's planning on expanding to a full band or not. I'll ask him. I also am dying to know what bass setup Todd used in Braid and Hey Mercedes. Highlight of the eve: Bob closed his set with an acoustic rendition of Braid's "A Dozen Roses."

We found out that there's another friggin' band out there using the name "io" and they're holding on tight to their trademark. So now we have to come up with a new name, dammit. Minor setback, no big. More news to come...

So, after much hemming and hawing, a list of over 100 new name candidates, and an exercise in which the four of us individually eliminated candidates and then compared our results, we settled on a new name: Dear Static.

Dear Static is an old io song that we don't play anymore, and we just thought the name suits us very well.

Last night we played in Oakland as Dear Static, and it was pretty fun. Jamie got a little too fired up at the close of our set and repeatedly smashed his guitar into Eric's cymbals, destroying a ride cymbal and gouging his guitar to the point that the neck looks like he took a chainsaw to it. Doh. He'll have to get that fixed pronto. There were about 8 different record labels there checking out Street to Nowhere -- you could tell because amongst the sea of kids were older dudes in nice clothes.

So, yeah -- Dear Static. Turned out to be a one-show run for that name. We found out that there's some new major label LA glam band called Clear Static. Dammit. Back to the drawing board.

I've been heads down in recording mode lately. We're going to be recording an EP in late March and we're doing pre-production for all the songs now in my apartment. Basically that just means we're holed up in my back room recording demo versions of all the songs, trying out different parts, different arrangements, that type of thing. For a low-budget setup consisting of a Marshall practice amp, a Line 6 Bass PODxt, an M-Audio Ozone, my Powerbook, a borrowed Neumann and GarageBand, it actually sounds pretty damn good. Definitely the best home recordings I've done. More than sufficient to get the idea of the songs across.

In light of the recording, we're on a bit of a show hiatus. Well, for the month of March, at least. Our next show back will be opening for Wolfmother at Bottom of the Hill as part of this year's Noise Pop festival. Wolfmother is one of the biggest buzz bands in the rock world right now, and the show is already sold out, so we're happy to be part of the show. More importantly, I'm super-psyched to see my band name on the Noise Pop posters.

Oh, and on the topic of our band name: that name will be: dear kerosene.

About to head into the recording studio for three all-nighters, followed by a full day session on Friday, followed by our Saturday opening slot at probably the highest-profile show we've ever played. Big week.

Here is Noise Pop's (not super accurate) write-up on us.

Playing Noise Pop was cool, even if we were the odd band out in a classic/stoner rock setting. Wolfmother was pretty great -- not my bag, but they were incredibly good at what they do. They had that extra magic, indefinable "something" that takes an audience over the edge and gets critics panties in a bunch. They'll do well.

The show was one of the gems in the Noise Pop roster this year, and it was a madhouse. Not quite so much when we played early in the night, but by 10pm it was a zoo of fans, label people, and Lars Ulrich. Craziness.

Getting back into the swing of maintaining a weblog. I'm excited about it. The new design is taking shape and it shouldn't be too long until it's in place. Getting my readership going again is going to be a slow haul, though. I think I went from what was once several hundred per day to... well, nada. Just my real-life friends who've been wondering what the hell I've been up to.

So why the lapse? Well, the band was eating up a lot of my creative cycles for the early part of the year. I should have documented more of it but I ended up discovering that only about 5% of the band's existence is fit for public consumption, and that is basically the music and a little bit of PR. The rest is cards played close to the chest. Since dear kerosene was basically all I was doing for those few months, I had little else to talk about.

Other players in my temporary silence? The ever-increasing busyness of my freelance work, a cat (Klaus, the coolest cat in town), World of Warcraft (Metacarpal, my 60 undead mage), and just a general lack of things to say. Sometimes shutting up is good. Not my strong point, though.

Been working a contract on-site at a video game company on the Peninsula. Doing a lot of Zipcar driving, as my back doesn't take too well to lugging 20 pounds of computer gear for 45 minutes on the Triumph. Zipcars aren't super-cheap, but whatever. It's a write-off.

My usual ride is a four-door Mazda 3, which is a solid semi-econo ride. This week I switched to a Toyota Prius, which I don't love. The mileage is great, but that doesn't matter to me as gas is included in the daily fee. The car is pretty weird-looking, but any time you drive a car with a corporate logo on the side, you can pretty much leave your cool factor back home. I could pretty much be driving a 911 Turbo with a Zipcar logo on the side and still feel like a heel. Well, maybe not. If anyone has a logo-covered 911 Turbo that they'd like me to take for a spin, my contact info is over there in the half-finished sidebar.

My gripe about the Prius is that I just don't fit in it very well. It's roomy, but it's just not well-proportioned to someone of my height, which is strange. Most cars these days are pretty accommodating to tall guys like myself. The Prius seats are just too high and I can't look out the right side of the windshield without my view being blocked by the rearview mirror. Maybe the seats are so tall because there's a bunch of high-voltage batteries stuffed under them, or something.

I'm listening to Crooked Fingers while clipping NBA players out of photos, over and over.

I owned a Wii for about 48 hours... we bought one, thinking that it would be a hit at the Thanksgiving dinner we hosted at our place, but we just couldn't get into it. I really admire Nintendo's ability to innovate, and maybe in a few months the Wii will fill out its potential, but for now I'd rather have an XBox 360 or PS3. Luckily I was able to sell it on eBay for a small profit.

On the flipside of eBay experiences, I had a horrible time selling my old laptop. No need to get into the details here, but in the end I got negative feedback that I didn't deserve. I learned some valuable lessons, though:

1. Don't get into potentially hairy negotiations with people (a) fresh off a large cup of high-octane coffee, and (b) without taking the proper time to think the issue through.

2. As cold and impersonal as it may look, it's really not a bad idea to include some legal-ese in your eBay auction to cover your ass.

Well, it was a roller-coaster year. I started 2006 energized by music, flying coast-to-coast to play shows, and basically working whatever freelance gigs necessary to pay the bills while spending night after night in rehearsal and recording. We opened for Wolfmother at the mighty Noise Pop, we played the Shoreline Amphitheatre and rubbed tattooed elbows with the big shots. A few times, I turned on the radio and heard my band playing. Then, our drummer Eric quit the band and we slowly death-spiraled. It's ironic that a guy who literally never wears shoes left such large ones to fill. Just when the ball got rolling, no less. But so it goes. We're all pals.

And on the highest of points, Kelsey and I got engaged. It takes the most steadfast and strong woman to chip through my many emotional walls, and she's the one that was able to do it. We're in the process of planning the zillions of things that have to happen between now and August.

And, just as the ups and downs of the freelance life started to wear me out, I lucked out with a steady contract job at Electronic Arts that turned into employment. I'm doing more design and not sitting here looking at lines of arcane code all day, which is a huge plus. Also, the people here are great and hey -- we're sitting here looking at freakin' video games. Can't argue with that.