Category: Life and living

Radiohead totally rocked the Outside Lands festival last night and the thousands and thousands of people who were there were into it.  At least that was our perspective from 100 yards back.  They played for the 2 hours that they were allotted and managed to get in a ton of songs and put on a great show.

The festival made for an exciting scene but it definitely showed some flaws in design.  First off, there are way too many choke points in the grounds.  The crowds are funnelled into these smaller spaces throughout the grounds.  This was bad enough between acts but at the end of the night it was a pain in the ass at best and close to suffocating at its worst.  There were many places where the crowds just trampled over fences in order to move around.  Second the lines for drink IDs, bathrooms and food were crazy.  Hopefully this will be better on the weekend and perhaps its just because everyone got to Friday’s show later.  Finally, who decides to put a stage down in a hollow so that it’s impossible to see the act?  We were really disapointed that we were completely unable to see Beck even though we were pretty close to the stage.

But I think the most frustrating thing about the whole show was the constant “Wall of tall.”  Since when have I been short?  I was amazed at the amount of big and talls at this show.  Is the younger generation taller than mine?  Is there something in thoses growth hormones we’ve been injecting into their food supply all these years?I found myself constantly straining my neck around some Amazon just in front of me.  I’m gonna have to invest in some risers if I’m gonna keep going to these shows..

Not too long ago, I read a great book that’s part of an intriguing series.  The book was The Pixies’ Doolittle (33 1/3) by Ben Sisario.  I’m a big fan of the Pixies and Doolittle is right up there with my all time favorite albums (though I do like the earlier Pixies albums a little better).  But this is not just about the Pixies. This book is part of a series that deconstructs well known albums from the past several decades.  This was my first foray into the series, and it will not be the last.

It’s really interesting to get behind the scenes and see how the musicians put the album together, one song at a time.  I found the book to be really inspiring as any good documentation about an artistic process is bound to get the creative juices flowing.  In this book, primarily through interviews with Black Francis, the reader is brought into the world of late-80s Boston when the Pixies were young and starving and at the peak of their creative abilities.  It’s also oddly compelling to listen to the story as told by Frank Black so many years later, driving around Oregon in a very different life.

Each song on the album is deconstructed – the thoughts behind the lyrics, the decisions about the instruments, the sound and the recording sessions that captured it all.  It’s also a good look into the recording industry at a high-level and can give outsiders like me an appreciation for the role of the record producer.  I especially enjoyed reading the book alongside my iPod, so that I could listen to the track, read about it, and then listen a few more times picking up the newly discovered little gems that I’d read about.

I have had an interest in music for most of my life, and lately I’ve been interested into the mechanics behind the albums that I’ve grown up with.  I’ve watched documentaries about tours and bands and the making of albums like Nirvana’s Nevermind or Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (both of these documentaries I found in the used DVD section of Amoeba records). The 33 1/3 series provides an excellent read for so many albums that are of interest to me – and at such a small size, and easy-to-digest chapters (organized around the tracks) these books are no brainers for short commutes or moments that would otherwise be spent wasted.

With all of this free time on my hands I’m finally getting to all of those random small tasks that I hated doing on my precious weekends.

Today I finally replaced the plastic underbody protector on my car (ripped off earlier this year while in the snow) which of course required not only pulling the car out of my parking space, crawling underneath and figuring out which socket would be needed – but of course, a trip to the store to pick up a few bolts… and of course the first TWO stores I tried didn’t have them (and how is it that I keep going back to Kragen?).  It’s crap like this that I just don’t want to spend my time doing when I’ve got a full time job going.

Well, after helping Meghan move, our consolidated coin piles ended up on my list of things to get rid of.  I poked around a little online and lo and behold – Coinstar (at select locations) will let you trade in your coins without the normal 8% (or greater) skim off the top.  The catch?  You need to trade it in for a gift certificate rather than cold hard cash.  But, the list of vendors is pretty reasonable and after 15 minutes at the machine I found myself with a $63 redemption code for Amazon.com.  Not too bad..

Yesterday Meghan and I got up early and hauled down through the fog and cold weather to Monterrey to watch the Moto GP race at Laguna Seca.

Now I am not a big fan of racing.. I can’t imagine going to a Nascar race, I’ve never bothered to check out the San Jose Grand Prix race but I do enjoy the Tour De France and I loved the San Francisco Grand Prix and attended the few of those that there were.

But the Moto GP race is something to be seen.  The way these guys control these motorcycles on this track is incredible.

We arrived as some qualifying races were going on and spent the next few hours wandering around the grounds, checking out the vendors’ booths, and watching some other motorcycle races as they occured.  The main event started at 2:00 and we hiked up the hill to see the warm-up lap and race start before heading to the back side to check out the best view in the house – the corkscrew.  This section of the track is hugely popular with the crowds and this weekend’s race showed why – there were several exciting events including an incredible pass from the two bikes fighting for the lead (Casey Stoner and Valentino Rossi).

We continued along the track, watching the race from different vantage points until Rossi finally took the checkered flag.

I look forward to next year’s race already.  And at some point I’ll post more photos, but first I have to get through the Africa photos!

Returning from Africa I was faced with a pretty typical situation for me – a massive pile of photographs to sort through.  I have always tended to take a lot of photos while on trips, and Africa proved the rule – and was definitely not the exception.

Last year I discovered Adobe’s Lightroom product and I’ve been very happy with it.  I use this program to organize, filter, tag, caption, and even “develop” (modify for better screen presentation) all of the photos that I take.

The problem is, even with this great tool it still takes me a while to get through the whole process.

I guess all of this is to say, I’m working on my photos from Africa and I expect to upload them pretty soon.  I’ve already filtered through most of them, tagged all of them, and set up captions etc.,  The only tasks that I have left are the minor edits to the photo developments and then export smaller versions for web presentation.  I will tackle these tasks once I’m back in the Bay Area sitting in front of my desk monitor – I don’t trust my laptop screen as a judge for exposure or color.

So hopefully I’ll have some photos next week.

And now that I’m returning to California I’m expecting to make more regular updates to each of the web sites that I’m keeping these days.