Posted by Joel
Sat, 07 Oct 2006 23:25:00 GMT
This week I had two exciting misadventures. In one, I thought my car was towed, and went to the auto return, and waited around for a while until realizing I had parked one block away. In the second, I spaced out and overshot the exit to get to work, getting all the way to San Jose, and had to wait in the terrible northbound 280 traffic, adding considerable time and frustration to my commute.
Things were not all bad, though. Thursday I saw Billy Bragg with Jeremy at the Great American. It was a great show, the man has a lot of charisma and is very captivating.
There are jets flying overhead today due to this jet racing thing I just found out about and probably missed. There's also the Bluegrass Festival which is going on today and tomorrow but I missed today because I got up too late. I don't feel too bad about missing Billy Bragg's performance since I just saw him, though.
Work has been reasonably productive, with the main feature I'm working on taking a touch longer than I expected, but a lot of that is due to the little things which tend to pop up every day; so really we did clean up a lot of smaller problems on the site this week.
I haven't played WoW all week but last night I played all of my characters and had a good time on each. Will and I played our horde characters first. We're in our early 30s which means we're in Stranglethorn Vale, the most notoriously PvP-focused zone in the game, and we just wipe the floor with all sorts of alliance questing there without mercy.
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Posted by Joel
Tue, 26 Sep 2006 01:12:43 GMT
Saturday I went to see Rob DJ a show at Club 222. I'd never been to Club 222 before but it is a bar in the Tenderloin at Hyde and Turk. Their shady location is kind of their gimmick. They sell pizza, the flavors named "Hyde" and "Turk."
It's a great place though. Very hip crowd. Rob was DJing so I went up and shook his hand. I knew I'd be by myself anyway. So I went to the bar and drank some PBRs and ordered their Hyde pizza, which has goat cheese. It was really good!
I mainly just sat there and drank and listened and ate. Occasionally someone would chat with me a short bit. Eventually I went down to the dance area and stood and watched.
Rob finished DJing and then a band played called Uphonic. It was two guys singing over electronic music. I thought Rob would be done then but he was doing technical stuff for them for their show. However I'd had a few drinks and I enjoyed their music. It reminded me of Vitalic somewhat.
Afterwards I bought their CD and introduced myself to them. I spent some time with Rob and his friends before deciding to leave, since it had been a couple hours.
I ended up walking home because I couldn't catch a taxi on the way but it was a nice walk. I had a euphoric buzz of sorts going and felt genuinely happy.
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Posted by Joel
Wed, 20 Sep 2006 04:50:00 GMT
I just missed Ratatat! Coming soon: I miss Massive Attack & DJ Shadow, despite having planned to go far in advance!
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Posted by Joel
Sat, 19 Aug 2006 23:06:53 GMT
So I'm using upcoming.org again. Go to my list of stuff here:
http://upcoming.org/user/14848/
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Posted by Joel
Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:32:00 GMT
I went to Rock the Bells and I regret it. Oh, sure, it gave me lots of names to drop... Del tha Funkee Homosapien, De la Soul, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Immortal Technique. Even Dave Chappelle made a cameo. But in general it was what I really don't like about hip hop. I thought it would be interesting to see a show a bit out of my general category, but I didn't realize it would be an all-day affair. That and lots of artists I didn't like so much -- such as Wu Tang, the headlining act -- made me feel sorely out of place.
It was in Concord, again. I had hoped to never return to the horrible Sleep Train Pavilion, but I rationalized the event by bringing my book and saying "If I don't like it, I can always get drunk." Little did I know that unlike the rock show I had been to previously in Concord, hip hop shows were evidently refused alcohol at their all-day summer events. Sure, alcohol advertisements adorned the refreshments area and seats, but a sign displaying "NO ALCOHOL TODAY" made their feelings on the genre clear. The rappers were surprised at the level of inhibitions at the predominantly white audience, and encouraged us to drink more, evidently oblivious to the discrimination taking place. Well, that and a lot of their performances just sucked, so I can't say audience reaction is that surprising. So I was sober as a judge while I learned that cash rules everything around me. Did I mention Rza wasn't even there? Not that I really care. Aside for a brief appearance in Coffee and Cigarettes bumping his cred, to me he is most memorable as the unfortunate stain on the first Kill Bill soundtrack.
The best acts were Immortal Technique, Del, and Mos Def, in that order.
The cops were out in force afterwards, guarding random things. They'd shut off a local Chevron "on request of the owners". Can't have darkies buying gasoline!
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