It's remix time...
So, Greg Tung sent me
this link a couple of weeks ago, which I had a good laugh at and then promptly forgot about. Then today I see that our old friend Disco D has taken a crack at it (pun intended), remixing it into a brilliant tribute to
ass, Brazil, and gubernatorial lechery. Is good, huh? (via
Catchdubs)
Here's the
link to the torrent of Panzah Zandahz's Radiohead remix
Me and This Army. I'm having multiples listening to this thing. Getit. (via
Boingboing)
Moovin' on up
Not much time for posting, but I figured I should pop in here and explain my absence as well. We just moved our office a couple weekends ago, and I was in charge of the move. All I have to say about that is, if your office ever moves, don't get put in charge of it. Especially if your title is "Marketing Coordinator." Much stress & way too much work.
The upside of it is I'm now working in the Embarcadero Center (EC1, the one farthest from the water), which puts me closer to more of my downtown lunch buddies, and closer to more parks & such where I can eat outside in the sun. That is, once the sun returns to SF (I'm guessing March). It also puts me close to the Kristi Yamaguchi ice skating rink, where I swear I'm going to go ice skating this year, finally. Who's with me?!
We need all the help we can get to get into the Christmas spirit in this area, what with the lack of snow and the overabundance of rain. And if I squint my eyes just right to block out the unbridled consumerism of the Embarcadero Center (where you literally have to walk through a mall to get to and from your office), I have to admit that it helps get me feeling Christmas-y, what with all the lights and the ice skaters and the shoppers bustling around.
Yes, we're still here.
Ah, Thanksgiving in San Francisco. The turduken was nice and juicy and the white trash casserole had just the right hint of.... salt. As usual, Stefbot got too merry with the Bushmills and woke up with the word TAINT scrawled (and misspelled) on her forehead. Good times.
Anyway, now that I'm unemployed I don't have time to surf the internet all day. I got stuff to do. And things. But we got so much shit this weekend for letting this blog go that I swore that the next link anyone sent me was getting posted. No matter how lame. Luckily for you guys the first email in my inbox this morning was from Otto.
So, in the interest of prodding this bitch back to life...
my cat is a DJ.
By the way, this one is really for Chip and Amy, who continue to check the blog even when it sucks. Plus, Amy has promised me a "My Cat is a DJ" t-shirt, which I am still waiting for, hint hint.
PS- I will to try to update more often. Can't speak for Stefbot, tho. She's still sore about the taynt debacle.
It's times like these that try squirrels' souls...
They say troubles come in threes. I prefer to think that Mondays just suck.
I woke up yesterday feeling like twelve pounds of crap in a ten pound sack. Bad, in other words. I think it has something to do with an old blind man in a dark room in Koreatown and the toxins that he released into my body through an ancient method of torture know as "Shiatsu Massage." I don't speak Korean, but I'm pretty sure whatever it was that he said to me in greeting could be loosely translated as "we have ways of making gai jin cry like little baby. You lie down, surrender hope."
Now, let's just say that I've gathered quite the collection of toxins throughout the years. You might call me a "toxin connoisseur" of sorts. Well, now those little fuckers are loose in my body, and are wreaking havoc. I know that you have to get worse to get better, so I'm working on drinking lots of water, yada yada yada, in order to flush them out. Well, Corona is practically water. And I'm sure the lime is good for me, too.
Moving on. I woke up yesterday feeling less than spunky. Around noon I started feeling like maybe I should lie down, but I was close to finishing my shift so I decided to push on through. No need. The phone rang, and it was our company VP. I am being "let go." Sounds like some sort of catch and release wildlife rehabilitation program, doesn't it? Like the time has come for me to rejoin my lost tribe of CS Techs that roam the forests of Silicon Valley, cavorting freely.
Former employees of Oracle in a meadow outside of San Jose
Ok, deep breath. This is probably for the best, I tell myself. Now I can finally pursue my dream of being a professional baby animal cuddler. Righteous.
But I have already made a plan for the afternoon: to go buy, of all things, a desk from someone on Craigslist. I live for these ironies, so I decide to keep my appointment. The desk's owner lives in Laurel Canyon, near Mulholland. Lil Dub and I have never been up into these hills before, so we look at it as a new adventure. Well, I think it's an adventure. Lil Dub is, apparently, not as enthusiastic. As soon as we get close to her house his oil light comes on, and he starts furiously beeping at me. "What is it, boy? Is Timmy trapped in a well?" No such luck. We are just pulling up to the house when smoke starts billowing from beneath his cute little hood. He has decided to take a leak all over Laurel Canyon Place, and all of his precious bodily fluids are slowly draining from the undercarriage. Not so cute. Poor Lil Dub. I hardly knew ye.
The scene in Laurel Canyon , 4:35 PM on Monday, November 14
So now I'm just sitting here, waiting for the doctor, I mean mechanic, to call with the diagnosis. Since I am (cue trumpets) A BLOGGER who reaches literally 10s of people every day, I shall suspend judgment on Carmax (that's C-A-R-M-A-X) until I find out exactly what they plan to do to remedy this situation. If it doesn't involve a rental car and a foot massage I will use my considerable power and, more realistically, abundance of free time to make their lives a living... well... annoyance.
But I am looking on the bright side. There are actually tons of
worthwhile projects down here on which to spend my time. Trust me, I'll be fine.
Altered states
Maybe it's because I've been enjoying far fewer of these nowadays that I was able to get such a contact buzz from
Ecstasy: In and About Altered States, the show currently featured at the MOCA. Ranu had taken a group of her students from CCAC down to see the show (and believe me, this one puts the "trip" in field trip) and had raved about it, so Babs and I knew we had to make it out for this one.
Most of the installations here are straight off the playa- pure interactive trip toys. Pete Hudson's swimmers would have been right at home. Unfortunately, with stern-faced docents at every turn they were strictly no touch. Kind of surreal. Like a toy museum, or a sacred cow- something put on display and treasured for it's fuctionality, but then preserved in such a way that it's function is stripped from it completely. Not that I didn't enjoy the show, but it felt kind of strange to enter a room in which a strobe light illuminates a rainshower, or a whole space filled with LED lights at carefully placed intervals, without being able to strip naked and run through them while coated in playa dust. Guess I'm spoiled that way.
The first pieces we saw were from an artist whose work I had seen previously in SF, Takeshi Murakami. I'm not sure why I love the Japanese artists so much, but there's something about how they embrace pop culture instead of looking down their noses at it. Some Western artists credited with "pop art" seem to be more than a bit condescending towards their subjects- like they were condemning them to this hot pink, garish existence- their ultimate aim being to expose them for the fatally flawed beings they were. But artists like Murakami obviously fall in love with their subjects. They live with one foot in the world of these mythical cartoon characters, and you definitely get the feeling that these beings are alive...somewhere... and that they are having way more fun than you are. You leave feeling indebted to the artist for letting you visit.
Even more so with
Chiho Aoshima, an artist I previously fell in love with when I saw pictures of her exhibit titled
Asleep, dreaming of reptilian glory. We were almost to the end of the show (which we later found out was the beginning, since we went backwards) when we wandered into a darkened room precisely at the beginning of her video installation "City Glow." The short animated piece begins with the artist's rendering of a Tokyoesque city skyline where the phallic skyscrapers are transformed into gently smiling female obelisks that stare at the viewer with a calm, curious gaze that frankly reminded us of Sadie Mae (my cat). The "camera," as it were, slowly pans out to reveal jewel- toned alternate worlds which morph in mood from delight to terror with such mellow flow that you completely lose your attachment to such feelings as delight and terror.
I won't say too much about the other pieces, only that there were enough giant mushrooms and rainbow colored pills to keep even the most jaded raver giggling. Come see for yourself- the show runs until late February and is a great excuse to come down to LA. Do it. I know some hot chicks that'll put you up for the weekend.
M. C. Ren, will you please give your testimony to the jury about this fucked up incident.
Last night I was riding my bike home from BART after work, and right on the corner where the relatively good-natured crackheads always hang out (along with some goofy old people and bored teenagers), there were like 4 news vans with their bright-ass spotlights, and about 50-60 people, including at least a dozen news people and an equal number of police, milling around. I just rode on through, because a throng like that is not something whitey is encouraged to get up in.
Finally caught the news at 9pm, and it turns out that earlier in the afternoon, there was a drug bust, and a 34-year-old man was apparently brutally beaten by the police, in front of about 30 witnesses, including his mother. Then he died while in police custody. Now that is one fucked-up
incident.
It just doesn't add up. Most of the incidents I've witnessed in West Oakland that involve police have been pretty much by the book. The cops seem to be as racially diverse as the rest of Oakland. And I'm sure that being a cop in West O, you've got to have some amount of street sense, from knowing when to let someone slide to being able to subdue a potentially armed, possibly drugged-up, certainly amped-up crack dealer.
But taking a dude down in front of 30 witnesses and beating him to death? That's like a formal invitation for people to riot, not to mention bringing massive criticism on your squad and probably a hell of a lot worse. It doesn't make sense. I'm curious to see how it all shakes out when more light is shed on the incident and the police start talking. Did the guy O.D., flip out on the cops, and just coincidentally die while in custody? Or did police really beat a man to death in front of his mother, right in the heart of West Oakland? And if so, why does it seem to be buried in the news?
Any way you cut it though, it's tragic. Someone put a big sheet up on a building where the incident occurred, for people to write tributes and such. The neighborhood was as quiet as usual last night, and this morning there were just the regulars sitting out in their lawn chairs on the corner of 8th & Campbell, where it all went down. If I hadn't caught the tail end of it, I wouldn't have known anything unusual happened at all.
Newsflash: George Bush
still doesn't care about black people.
11/14/05
Update
In my Element.
Hot on the heels of Jessperado's acquisition of Lil' Dub, as of last night I am now the proud owner of a shiny new red Honda Element. When these things first came out 2 years ago, my response was, "that is the ugliest car ever designed by man." Now I own one. How does that work? Well, when I started checking out the interior, and saw how insanely functional it is, and how perfect it is for wet snowboards, dirty doggies, sound equipment, and just about anything else I might want to put in there, the exterior really grew on me.
Now I think it's cute. One part toaster, one part fire truck, and one part Optimus Prime. My favorite detail of the Element? Four seats, five cupholders. You do the math.
Haven't come up with a name yet, altho suggestions are welcome. So far I'm just calling it my fire truck.
Now all I need is some snow in Tahoe...
Don't take your guns to town, son.
And don't leave your guns at home, either.
SF passed
Proposition H last night (not to be confused with Preparation H), making it illegal for city-dwellers to possess, buy, sell, or distribute handguns. Raver Gun Club members are welcome to drop their pieces off at my house in West O.
And California gave a big, fat "fuck you" to
Ahnold last night as well, defeating every last one of his crappy propositions. Go team!
A pirate says, "ARRR!"
Modern-day pirates attempted to
hijack a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia earlier this week. One passenger claimed to have heard the pirates exclaiming "Barbara! I'll find you!" and "We're partyin'!" as they circled the ship, but I can't find any evidence to corroborate that claim.
What I do know is, those pirates were ill-prepared. Apparently they didn't have any
lard, and on top of that, they didn't have nearly a loud enough sound system. What kind of pirates head out to pillage sans lard or a couple subwoofers? The cruise ship was able to fight them off with their own
sound system, conveniently mis-spelled "LRAD." An embarrassment for pirates everywhere. Arr.
Also, Brass Tax needs to get one a dem LARD's. Somebody sound teh rave alarm!!!
Introducing: Lil' Dub
A glimpse of my new baby. Cute as a button, innit? And plenty of junk in the trunk. He gets that from me.
I never really considered a veedub before, but this one surprised the hell out of me. Handles great, feels really roomy for a small car, and did I mention how cute he is? Seriously, though, being inside one of these- especially at night with the dashboard lights glowing an unearthly blueish green- feels like being in the cockpit of a space ship. Well, more like a space
pod, really, but still...
Ahhhhhh, the freedom of owning wheels again. Of course, with the traffic down here wheels don't necessarily equal freedom. It just took me over an hour to go twenty miles. Jesus these people need to learn how to drive. Ok, last rant about LA traffic. Promise.
Stay tuned for the future adventures of Hell Jess and Lil Dub as we battle Starbucks slurping silicone starlets and their Hummers from Hades.
My dad owns a dealership
Well, here I am. City of Angels and all that. Not much to report since I have hardly left the apartment yet, but when I did venture out briefly yesterday to do laundry, the first music I heard coming from a neighbor's window was LA Woman, followed by Welcome to the Jungle. I shit you not.
And while I hate to make this my first post as an LA blogger (seems like there should be more scandal or silicone or something), until something more exciting happens, this will just have to do.
Finally, something to
cover your meat curtains (read carefully). (via Boingboing)
In other news, Brass Tax renegade makes #2 on the Mix List from the SF Bay Guardian this week. #1 was Bauhaus at the Warfield. It's official. We're no longer underground. Looks like we're going to have to buy
this place to get our cred back (via Jeffro). BTW- renegade pics posted on
teh website. More to come.
That's all for now cuz I gotta go car shopping. Although I shouldn't bother. I'm totally buying
this one. Fueled by the blood of innocents. Of course, those are pretty rare down here.
