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fight sports, breaking, weapon

making' pozole

I thought about food at work a lot today, which means things like making the bed and doing laundry and working are in trouble when I get home. I tend to choose recipes on a whim, as long as they don't seem too difficult or too involved, and tonight I am attempting to make red pozole, which may be a stretch because I've never even EATEN pozole before much less cooked it.

I guess that means I am not quite certain how it's supposed to taste, but I hope that if it tastes good that means I succeeded.

I have been in a big iPod on random kick lately, and tonight it's working out rather well. of Montreal, R.E.M., Fugazi, Waylon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs etc etc. Rock on.

This is what my afternoon looked like, between holding baby Io, multi-frisbee catch, wine chugging, baggo, salami eating, brie nomming, and chat chat chatting. What a glorious day in the Easy Bay.

My trip to Los Angeles on Wednesday was actually pretty fun, educational, and I was able to get around town a bunch and be social. The tasting was on the 4th floor of the big mall that surrounds the Kodak theater right smack dab at Hollywood & Highland. Tourist central for sure. If you've seen the movie Confessions Of A Superhero that's right where I was. All those people out front dressed up as all sorts of crazy characters. It was kind of sad, really, 'cause there weren't that many tourists around.

Raining again, makes me sort of miss the 68 degrees and sunshine of LA, but at the same time all this water is going to end up in Lake Shasta which means the summertime should be super awesome.

So, I am taking a last minute trip to Los Angeles tomorrow to taste 2007 Bordeaux for work. I love these jetsetting adventures, and although the last minute plane ticket is costing me a bit, it's worth it for me to bop around California doing the things I love. I am also greatly looking forward to dinner with my brother and his wife as he just got back from the Sundance film festival and has stories to share.

It's kind of crazy for me to think my brother is doing music for movies and is getting things like full page credits on feature length films that are shown to thousands of people at film festivals. And by crazy, I mean crazy awesome. I am super ridiculously proud of him.

Today I was pretty low at work, so I spent all the money I wasn't making selling wine on lots of concert tickets. Justin Townes Earle, Drive-By Truckers, & The National are all coming to down, not to mention Pavement in Berkeley. I now have at least ones how a month through June, so it feels good to be back on track.

I also bought tickets to a movie about Drive-By Truckers called The Secret To A Happy Ending at Noisepop 2010. It is weird that I doubt if I am going to any Noisepop shows this year (I've been attending, or playing at, off and on since 1997) but I am going to a movie. A movie about a band. Instead of seeing a band. That is just fucked up.

And I close with again how awesome it is to see the few tour dates the National are doing spread out all over the world, and my town, OAKLAND CALIFORNIA is one of the cities. Not San Francisco. Love.

NEW READING. Time to turn off the computer and sit with a book.

sonoma county.

Off for a weekend in Sonoma county, driving around in the cool weather looking at all the greenery, eating, drinking, and spending the night in Petaluma.

I leave you with a new MP3 of the week a day early, a new track from Drive-By Truckers! NEW RECORD SOON YAY!

Highlights!

Saturday: Dinner with MRA at Jon's Street Eats. Mac n' cheese, salad, white bean bruschetta. All nomtaculous.

Sunday: Sitting on the side of a big mountain in the snow with Mitch & Simon, syncing up the new Hot Chip record on our iPods, taking shots of cognac, and then snowboarding down the mountain while dancing. Hot times.

Monday: Went and saw Crazy Heart and was impressed and re-chilled by Waylon's "Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way." Song gives me the crazy chills.

Tuesday-Thursday: Eating cuties. You know what I mean.

Labels: citrus, crazy heart, cuties, good times, movies, snowboarding, weekends

Labels: 1997, ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space, las vegas, lyrics, rad shit, spirituazlied

Spent the afternoon shopping with some dudes for new snowboard gear. It is weird for me to think that, here I am at 33 years old still wearing the same overall style snow pants that my dad handed down to me when I was like, 16. That shit is just ridiculous, so I bought me some BRAND NEW PANTS today. Also some new snowboarding boots so I don't have to deal with the rental shop anymore. And a snowboarding belt (did you know these existed? I did not, but I figured since the pants had belt loops...) to go with my new pants. Then I got some new socks too for the hell of it.

We are taking the sleepy/party bus up to Sugarbowl tomorrow, which should be Good Times except it leaves at 5AM, so I have to try and put myself to bed early tonight. Of course, it's already 7 and I have dinner and a cocktail party to attend to tonight, so good luck doing that.

Next Stop, TahBro.

Labels: activities, shopping, shredding, snowboarding, tahbro, tahoe

Striking out on all the new music I got yesterday. Thee Silver Mt. Zion Ensemble Orchestra etc etc etc? DELETE. The Submarine's Honeysuckle Weeks? Nope, not for me.

Take three.

Kronenbourg 1664 for dinner.

When I first started getting Backstreets, the Springsteen fanzine, I was perplexed at how someone could like The Wild, The Innocent, & The E Street Shuffle so much. Now it's one of my favorites, and although I can admit that the cheesiness of "Sandy" or the weirdness of "Wild Billy's Circus Story" would make people question my taste, I think most of this album is sold and light-years different than anything else on this record. If you don't believe me, there's only one thing to do. And that's listen.

Labels: albums, bruce springsteen, ranking stuff, the boss

I can measure good days since 1997 as the days I get to hear a new record from Spoon. They're one of those solid bands who always put out great music and who do it with a sense of regularity that makes you feel as if they'll always be around. I am enjoying Transference so far.

Having MRA's coworker and her husband over for dinner tonight, and our new mattress got delivered today, so the house is in clean working order and will soon smell of mac n' cheese, roasted kale, and Pinot Noir. See ya' later weekend. Monday is up next.

Labels: ALF, dinner, new recfords, spoon, wine

chorizo y papas sope @ tacubaya *stock photo

Woke up today with a date with Miss Rodeo America to buy a mattress. So, we went to one mattress place, laid on one mattress, and purchased said mattress. It might not be the best thing we could have found, but it is worlds better than our current sleeping situation and we really are no fuss no muss shoppers. The only bummer is that it is not getting delivered until tomorrow so we have one last night on the old bed we found on Craigslist in like 2004. Excitement!

Afterward we went to 4th street to get brunch at Tacubaya and to pick up our yearly Mexican calendar. Their chorizo sope always makes my day and it had been awhile, so it was good to get back on board. I think the whole thing has given us a hankering for pupusas, so I think tonight we're going to head to SF to fill the pupusa hole. Nom nom nom nomnomnom.

Labels: berkeley, food, mattresses, shopping, sopes, tacubaya

Now, I'm not one to watch a lot of live performances online 'cause they usually sound like subpar versions of the live songs and lack anything fun to watch. This is different. THEY KILL IT LIVE ON LETTERMAN. Vampire Weekend blitz through "Cousins" and I love the added animal noises at the beginning. Makes me sad I'll be missing their show here in Oakland later this year.

Now I guess by posting this I'm part of the internet hype leading to the release of Contra, but at least this time they deserve it. Wow.

Labels: live music, vampire weekend, videos

LOOK I AM A BIG BOY! Finally got to extend my desktop so that my home setup matches my work setup. I can actually kind of surprised that something actually worked between me and computers.

Thinking about maybe blogging but perhaps I will just go to sleep and instead DREAM about blogging.

So, I had my first cup of regular coffee yesterday in over a year and a half. I was very excited, so I went back to the old neighborhood and had a small drip cup of Timor Organic from Cole coffee. As I watched the coffee drip drip drip into the cup I got even more excited, that is until some random hipster guy (this is the place we DID used to call the "cool kids cafe") walks up and says to the girl behind the counter "Can you actually brew it twice and pour it back through the grounds?" So she does.

The problem was, she did that with MY cup of coffee. When he realized what he'd done (hmmm...I had the SMALL Timor Organic, you had the LARGE Celebes or something or other, don't you think you could have noted that difference?) he sheepishly apologized and they had to make me a new cup.

The coffee was good, but not OH MY GOD HOW HAVE I BEEN MISSING THIS GOOD, and I actually really enjoyed the high buzz and jitters it gave me. Espresso is definitely much mellower, but I was pretty into the feeling this gave me. So, today I had a second cup. So far so good.

lake berryessa.

I am listening to my old band's first EP for the first time since, probably 2004. When I got my new iPod and dumped my entire MP3 collection there, it showed up.

Hey, this is still pretty good.

YO.

the columbia hotel, london

Slowish day at work today, so I've been poking around on Google Maps UK looking at places I went 5 years ago, thinking about how fast the time has flown, and sort of missing out on the excitement of 2004 and 2005. I traveled a lot in those years, and honestly, I really miss it. I love my house, the kitties, MRA, being married, my wine job, softball, and all my friends, but there comes a time every day where I find I'm either looking at my computer screen at work again and feeling like I was just here, or when I'm waking up in the morning feeling as if I just woke up yesterday morning. Glory days syndrome I guess? Anyways. Softball game tonight, but I'm sitting out and will focus my efforts on coaching third base. Saturday we're going to Santa Cruz for the day and I'm really looking forward to taking some backroads to avoid the traffic that will probably descend on the beaches from San Jose. Another thing worth mentioning, I'm been super into last.fm for the past six months or so. I'm at almost 20,000 plays, which doesn't include anything listened to before November or so. That's a lot of songs!

...and we're back.

Last friday I went to update the 7" Recording Project, and the domain was gone. I couldn't connect to the FTP site, and the pages were all gone. In their place were spammy placeholders, so I contacted Register.com to see what was going on.

Turned out, my domain had expired. The one I've had for over ten years, and instead of notifying me so I could renew it, they let it expire and put it straight up for auction.

$119 later and some back and forth with Register.com and Snapnames, we're back up!

That was really annoying, I swear I won't let it happen again. I'll get back to the music soon.

(This is the first in a series of posts where I digitize my 7" collection and talk about those records. Some of them rule, some suck. We'll deal with it together. Okay?)

One Man Running Stress 7" Kirbdog Records #006 01. Here By The Shore 02. Albegra 03. Windfall 04. Johnny Come Lately 05. Trustfund Junkie 06. Termaline

I really don't remember where I got this record, but I know I paid $3.50 for it. One Man Running were a pretty rad Lookout! records era pop-punk band from Arcata, and they may or may not have members of Fifteen in them. I may have picked up this record in Orange County, either in Laguna or Huntington Beach the year afer I graduated from High School when I went down there for a couple weeks to hang out with my ex-girlfriend, watch people play volleyball, be punk, and sell chocolate dipped strawberries on the side from the store she worked at to fund trips up to Los Angeles.

Purchased: 1994? Maybe in Orange County, but not at Amoeba in Berkeley
Cost: $3.50
Notable because: These songs are so short, they were great to put in the last couple minutes on mixtapes.
Like it now?: You know, it's OK. This is a great snapshot of early 1990's California pop-punk, that tie that runs from Berkeley to Santa Rosa and then up to Arcata and Eureka. There were zillion bands who sounded just like this, and a zillion Very Small Records compilations you could har them on. You know, even Billie Joe met his wife in Arcata...

I bought this portable USB turntable on Woot, and it arrived today! Now all I want to do is go home in the rain and digitize my 7" collection. This is exciting.

I'm going to start posting MP3s of my collection here. Stay tuned!

Jump on over to pizza.saur.us for a series on current American music.

I'm trying to do an MP3 a week, and so far it's working!

What an awesome, amazing day. I still remember clearly in 2000 when MRA watched the election results come in at McNally's in Oakland. Now, eight years later, I'm married and got to watch Obama get inaugurated on a little TV with my coworkers.

Everything feels right today. This Is Nice.

Weekend Update!

Spent Friday night going to dinner at one of my favorite Vietnamese spots, Binh Minh Quan. I had frogs with lemongrass, it was tasty although labor insensive as each part of the frog you had to pick up and eat with your fingers to get the meat off. I love this restaurant for their full menu, Vietnamese beers, and great service. YUM.

After dinner we headed over to Merchant's, which is in the fruit packing district of Oakland. If memory serves, it's the oldest bar in Oakland, just a bit older than The First and Last Chance Saloon down at Jack London square. They've really added some nice, new touches to Merchant's including a big projection TV above a set of tables and chairs in what used to be a weird, dark corner with a pinball machine. Talked to some random guy (of course, this bar seems to attract these characters), drank a PBR, and watched a sports highlight countdown. Came back home and played some Baggo in the parking lot before watching some episodes of Three Sheets and some music videos. Finally went to bed around 2 AM? Maybe? I don't really remember, we were drinking many bottles of Czechvar.

Saturday I got woken up by my Dad who wanted to bring my my new mini wine fridge that he gave as a Christmas present. Went over to a friend's house and lifted weights for a bit (my arms and legs are sore sore sore sore sore still), came home, met my Dad, got in the car and drove out to Treasure Island to see some Rugby for awhile. Drank some Chablis and enjoyed the sunshine, headed all the way into SF, went to a couple bars, made homemade dominoes out of coasters, went to a gay bar for the rugby social, drove home, and then went and saw American Steel at the Uptown in Oakland.

Today we relaxed in the morning before heading to Mosswood for some Baggo, horseshoes, beer in the sun, and softball batting practice.

Yeah, I guess it was a long weekend...and it's not even over yet!

SFGate has a new article out on the damage from last night's riots. Pretty much sums up a lot of my feelings on the issue how how to express your frustrations and anger.

downtown oakland, california

My friend Tim snapped this photo last night of the assembled BART police and Oakland PD assembled to quell some smallish riots over the shooting death of an unarmed man at the Fruitvale BART station on New Years. This story is now national news and probably isn't new to you, but the protests and riots sure were close to home for me last night.

I stopped in at The Trappist last night with some coworkers for an after work beer. As I got on the freeway heading North from work I noticed lots of helicopters in the sky over downtown. I should have thought something was up, but just figured it was for a traffic accident or something. I parked downtown, right across from the OPD headquarters, had a drink, chatted a bit with my coworkers, and relaxed.

The next thing we know there are some people running by outside, so look out the windows to see cop cars, news vans, riot police, and a small group of protesters heading down the street. I got out of there fast, mostly for fear my car windows would get smashed. As I headed around the corner the riot police turned and were heading straight towards me. I jogged and hopped into my car and flipped a U-turn to get out before it was too late, and succeeded in driving around a small group blocking a news fan yelling "Fuck the police! Fuck the police!"

I drove home, called MRA to make sure she was OK, and turned on the news just in time to see the riot police walk in a long line right in front of the Trappist where I was 15 minutes earlier.

I felt weird the rest of the night. The shooting death is a complete and total tragedy, but I felt a sadness that my town, My City, a place I've lived since I was 19 years old was acting up violently. I don't really see how torching people's cars, breaking their windows, and breaking store windows is really gonna stick it to the man. It only fucks with those people who love this city, those businesses that are strong enough to keep going downtown. I also felt sad that I knew lots of people, both around the bay and around the country would have the reaction that "Oh, that's how Oakland is. I told you so."

But it's not, and that's why this whole incident has me bummed out. After celebrating in the streets a couple months ago, dancing with Obama supporters outside of Everett & Jones BBQ a few blocks from where these riots took place last night, I was hoping all was well.

I guess it's not. And that's had me feeling a little...empty.

Happy New Year!

I guess there has been a lot going on, really, there always is. I had a grand plan the week before New Year's Eve to post a Top Ten Songs of 2008, but it never materialized. So, instead, I was just going to make a Top Songs Of 2008 Playlist on last.fm, but so many of the songs I wanted to put up there didn't exist as a full track.

So, I didn't do anything except post the merits of recors from The Hold Steady, Dr. Dog, The War On Drugs, CSS, Annie, Justin Townes Earle, and British Sea Power on a messageboard or two. Maybe I'll repost that here, but recors by all of these bands and artists impressed me to some degree.

At work, I've been transferred/promoted again, and now I'm going to be *selling* wine instead of just moving it around a warehouse. I'm excited about this new prospect as it's a great opportunity for me to learn, expand my wine knowledge, and meet some good people in the business. I've gotten a lot of great congratulations from people, so I am thankful for that.

That said, we had another round of layoffs this week. Three months ago during our first round of layoffs when I was transferred temporarily to Customer Service, we were told that would be the only round. Now our company has shrunk by 50%, and I had to watch some coworkers I enjoyed working with get laid off before my eyes. It was a scary time, but now a few days later I am excited for the new opportunities (and I secretly like being in a more empty office as I can listen to music aloud instead of on headphones).

Also, if you want to buy any wine, contact me. Please.

Our New Years Eve was fun but went by very quickly. We headed on over to Periscope Cellars for a party, then took a cab back to the Rock Block to go to another party. Everyone there was at a level of inebriation much higher than mine, so we decided to just go home and call it a night. New Years Day though was the real leisurely time. We had a couple friends over and watched Melrose Place episodes, the movie Victory in which Sylvester Stallone and Pele play soccer in a prison camp, played a bunch of baggo, watched more Melrose and 90210, and then watched the hilarious Devil's Advocate again. So nice.

I guess I should leave work now. Off to home, and the cats, and listening to music, and maybe laundry. Good times Wednesday style.

This was a pretty good Thanksgiving. It was mellow, and we stayed close to home, but MRA and I got to sleep in, and I ate some pizza for breakfast, fixed a couple lattes, cleaned the house, hung out with her Dad, went to a friend's house for food and conversation and a few rounds of Whoonu, and finally home to watch a Stephen Fry documentary about America and some amazing BBC documentary about The Galapagos.

Ok, so now that I read that, it doesn't sound as mellow as it was.

Anyways. I'm up in the way up, listening to Mojave 3 on headphones (right as I typed that Bunny jumped up on my desk to surprise me), and checking back with what I was doing on the past few Thanksgivings.

2001: MRA and I drive up to Eugene, then Portland and around to Boise. In Boise, we had an amazing time, ate some great food, took a few walks, did up the thrift stores, and then got stuck on a mountain in the snow, twice, before making it back home with a trunk full of Olympia beer stubbies. Wow.

2002: MRA must have been out of town, becaus this was the Thanksgiving I spent at a coworkers house in El Sobrante. Sometimes I read posts like this and think it's odd that I've been a fan of country music since around this time. Also, it's cool to see that six years ago I was taking pictures of the cats fighting, and then tonight when I came home from watching BBC documentaries at MCT's they were both sleeping on the couch. This is not meant to imply that they now magically like each other, but that they are still well and with us, granted, in their 3rd house together.

2003: Santa Cruz Thanksgiving. I think this was the first one, and I think we went to three, but now the couple whose house we used to go to has split up, but at least the weather is still good.

2004: Santa Cruz again. I don't think this was the year I was super sick, but it may have been. Anyways, notable because I had just started working at the high-end hair salon that I later became manager of, only to quit this January to follow a career in the wine business. MRA went do a Thanksgiving dinner a the owners of the salon's house this year mere weeks after I started working there. I still think of them often, thankful for the opportunities they gave me even though it didn't work out in the end. Also, I think this was the first amazing Friendsgiving at the 41st street house.

2005: A dark year for (!)BYB, hence no link to an archive. We probably went to Santa Cruz. I would have just left Communique, and MRA would have recently returned for a trip to Europe with the rest of JACT.

2006: Another dark year for (!)BYB. I didn't update at all for three months between September and December. Again, we probably went to Santa Cruz. I think, maybe.

2007: The entire wheel fell off my car on the way to take MRA to the airport at like, 5:30 in the morning. Shit was crazy, but at least we didn't get hurt. I ended up driving down to LA with my friend Emily, had Thanksgiving at Julia's place in the big white house on the hill, and saw my brother's new house for the first time. It was actually a great Thanksgiving, even though I missed MRA who was in Portland with her brother and her dad.

So that brings me back to 2008. It was good, nice, but I couldn't help but feel in the evening that it seemed sort of like Any Other Day. But a good day, yes.

It's funny. I came upstairs to post something meaningful to Blackyellowboack, only to get sidetracked by last.fm (of which I've seen a little obsessed with being exact about recently), only to find last.fm down for mainetenance...so I actually got something done.

Really, what I should do, is just shun regular social networking and go back to old school, just blogging here, keep all my thoughts in one place.

"Cause most kids give me credit for being down with it, when it was back in the day, back when things were real different."