some quick hits from the last week.
thursday was my actual bday. happy bday to me. the festivities started at 1AM that morning when scott and i went out and drank till 4. then i looked up stuff on google till 5. thursday marco came down and we ahd dinner together, then went and saw a show that scott was working on. scott’s work was very good, but i found the rest of the show somewhat boring and at times painful to listen to. i highly recommend going…
thursday after the show, marco took off and i had a few drinks with lyandra and some of her friends from law school, who seem nice enough, except for the 3 of them who didn’t speak. they just seem boring.
friday i went out to queens to see etzel’s play. i agree with the reviews in that the work ryan was doing as a director was very good, but the play was written with all the subtlety of a chainsaw. etz is really becoming an accomplished director though, even in the predictable crap, i was feeling something…
saturday we had our halloween party. i am fully over throwing parties at my house. i’m done with it. the cleanup nonwithstanding, having that many people in your place is never fun, and by 2AM everyone i knew was pretty much gone. which is fine, they should all leave. i dunno… i’m just over hosting parties.
and now i’m back at work, after spending all day yesterday watching Lost. i’m now almost caught up to realtime…
if i may take a moment for a public service announcement:
this evening, while walking home from the gym, i had a very odd thing happen to me. as i was crossing Adelphi st, a few blocks away from my apartment, i felt a strange sensation around my posterior. sort of a pushing sensation, very strong. it took a split second to realize that i was being hit by a car. i’m not entirely sure what happened, but i remember ending up on the hood of the car before it screeched to a stop, at which point i fell off. i’m not hurt, i didn’t even drop my groceries, or scrape anything. i can’t actually figure out where or how i landed. i think i landed on my feet, and put my left hand down to brace my fall. the driver was a very scared old man (more scared after i intially screamed at him), who i thought was going to have a heart attack. i took down his information, calmed him down a bit, and went on my way. we were both VERY lucky.
things i did wrong in this situation:
1. it was night in the rain, and i was wearing all black, no reflective material
2. while i’m pretty sure i looked both ways before crossing, i can’t remember the image of the car coming down the street, so it’s possible i did not, or i only glanced. i’m fairly sure he ran the stop sign, but i don’t know for sure.
3. i was carrying an umbrella and too many other things in my hands, and my hood was up over my head, obscuring my peripheral vision
the point is, with the shitty weather we’ve been having in NY lately, PLEASE be careful and remember what your parents hopefully taught you as a child. the rules still apply. and if at al possible, find clothing with some reflective material, especially if you walk around dimly lit streets at night.
so, in order to prevent competition between my party and halloween, this year i had my bday party a week early. dinner first, followed by drinkin at cellar bar. i had a great time, hope everyone else did as well. sort of an early night, i guess that’s what you get when you start at 9PM on a friday, but thanks to everyone who came out.
also, and this is sort of odd… i looked around at dinner. the last time i had a bday dinner was 2003. with one or two exceptions, there was a 100% turnover from then to now. it’s nice that i’ve made lots of new friends, but it’s a little weird… just thinking about how stuff slowly creeps up and changes on you, regardless of how you plan it. anyway, photos are below:
why is it such a pain in the ass to organize and schedule birthday activities? gotta find a restaurant, gotta find a good bar, gotta figure out who gets invited to dinner and who just gets the party invite, gotta worry about the dinner people inviting other people along… arg…
i just want to have dinner at whitecastle and then get drunk in an alley
this past saturday was briehan’s engagement party, which was a throwback to old school penn theatre art parties, including beirut (beer pong) and cold duck champagne.
megan gaffney and I made it to the 2nd round of the beirut tournament, where we were outclassed by some people who could actually play. but our team dance was by far the best.
late night mike and i hit up some house party on st. marks where everyone was playing some odd game like apples to apples or some shit. called it an early night, home by 1:30
saturday afternoon my brother and I took a trip uptown to hit the Penn v. Columbia football game. i had never been to a penn game before, it was quite entertaining. some highlights:
2 missed extra points, a fake punt, an onside kick returned for a TD, and a missed snap on 3rd down
lowlights included it raining, and marco getting shit on by a bird. luckily he was wearing his hat.
some quick hits:
after my rant on how i don’t have much i nthe way of formal bass training or gear, i’ve decided that i’m going to buy a new bass guitar, i’m going to check out an american jazz bass tomorrow. $500, should be pretty sweet. although now i’m having 2nd thoughts about selling pinky.
i am also going to buy guitar rig 2 when it finally comes out, cause version 1 is pretty sweet, and i can’t wait to get it out live
the show that i’m planning for january has taken a bit of a backseat to my doing nothing
new portfolio is almost up and ready, except now i’m thinking of changing all the fonts to “handwritten”. i have to remember to save a version before i do that.
ableton live 5 is amazing, the operator instrument plugin alone is good for hours of fun and tweaking.
yesterday at LW we had no internet, which reinforced how little i do at this job besides surf the web. we all know i need a new job.
go patriots, go penn, boo everyone else
hopefully pictures from brie’s engagement party (beirut and cold duck) will be online after it happens on saturday
i need some new shoes
and i need to get crackin on my cobra commander costume for halloween.
so as you may (or may not) know, i’ve recently been working with my good friend Katie Sawicki on her upcoming folk album. and by “working with”, i mean playing bass. last night we laid down most of my tracks, and overall i feel pretty good about it, though i suspect that Dawn the engineer will have to cut and paste a lot of my stuff, cause i’m not sure how consistent i was from part to part. in my defense, i only got a bass 10 years ago to record bass tracks for my own stuff. i dont’ write music on a bass, i never “practice” the bass (this used to drive jesse from bellevue fucking crazy) i have taken maybe 2 bass lessons in my entire life, and my actual bass is the cheapest piece of musical gear i own (although, to pinky’s credit, she outclassed a fender jazz bass last night by not buzzing loudly into the monitors). frankly i’m surprised i was even competent enough to tune the damn thing.
but i think it went well, and there was one amazing moment where katie described a really complex part to me (katie’s songs tend to be tricky cause she starts with 5-6 chords and uses them in every possible order and combination over the course of 4 minutes) as i was recording, and i managed to nail it… good times. good times.
oh, and today i’m feeling like no grad school. this is a change from sunday, when i was feeling grad school, which was an update from last week, which was no grad school, and so on…
Because i’m a huge audio music geek, i spent sunday at the Audio Engineering Society convention at the javits center here in NY. I was on the lookout for a software based guitar effects unit for recording, similar to what i currently use the POD for, but a little more flexible.
Guitar Rig from Native Instruments is currently the leader in the field, and version 2.0 comes with a nice little pedal setup, that rumor has it is having manufacturing problems in China.
Amplitube is the new kid on the block. word has it that the software app is as good as guitar rig, if not a little better, and the foot controller is a little sturdier, though without an expression pedal built in, which seems like a critical oversight.
Waves GTR was the third entry that i checked out at AES. Seems like sort of a light version, doesn’t have amp modeling, and doesn’t come with a floorboard controller. But Waves has some great plugins for protools, and the sound was definitely up to their standards.
As it stands now, i’m leaning towards guitar rig, for the expression pedal and the built in looper function that emulates a Boss RC-20 setup. But guitar on guitar looping is my main focus, so i’m biased towards tools that will help with that. All three look like great entrants.
so last night I went with mike, alba, and their friend sascha to the beck show at hammerstein. before the show we had dinner at highline, which was absolutely fantastic. granted, i can’t afford food like that every week, but it was a nice little reward for getting through a week of work ;). the show was amazing. Beck started with his old hit “loser”, and plowed through a 1.5 hour set, which included most of his old and new hits, a 20 minute acoustic set, and a great moment where he had his band doing percussion with a standard dinner set (banging on glasses, plates, etc…). as some of you may or may not know, most of the time when concerts are about to wrap up, i’m glad that they’re over, and this time was the same, but i also felt like i could go back and see him again tomorrow night. The visuals were also pretty amazing, done by some people that eric things worked at eyebeam.
