Manlio Rules

on wednesday, we rented ourselves a little room at a place called Do Re Mi in koreatown and decided to be rock stars. and somehow some of it got caught on video. i don’t know how this happened.

and if anyone wants to know why i’m not on this, there are 2 reasons:

1. someone has to shoot the video, cause i don’t see YOU doing it.
2. i shot my vocal chords within 10 minutes. a little thing i like to call “18 and life”

so, as some of you may or may not remember, there was an attempt last year at throwing me a surprise going away party when i left New York. from what i heard, most of my friends from various walks of life got together, argued a bunch about what the best way to throw me a party was, and then eventually settled on going to dinner on thursday and drinks.

and then i went out to SF to look for apartments and my once and future roommate micah ruined it by asking me how it was a good week before it happened. this was of course not his fault, because he wasn’t going to the party so he only looked at the email once.

but, because i rule (see title), i decided that i would throw HIM a surprise going away party because he’s going back to NY, and i wouldnt’ even give alex and karen the chance to ruin it by telling them about it. though i will admit that the idea occurred to me and i giggled about it for a few hours at work one day.

so with Ali and Tricia’s (and everyone else’s) help, we did this last thursday. All these photos are Aubreys, but i’m stealing them anyways:

you can see the rest of the photos on Aubs flickr set

Originally uploaded by mloco.

so, because it’s 2000, i went to the Paul Oakenfold show last wednesday. a few notable things about the show:

1. it was on a wednesday night
2. it started at 9PM but no one showed up till 11.
3. you had to literally slide down a tunnel to get to the bar
4. the place was packed
5. the restrooms weren’t near each other, so i went towards what looked like both restrooms and ended up being only the ladies room. then i had to work my way back to the other side of the bar. well planned.

other than that the show was fun. seriously, it was. I love that he’s still using the same synth keyboard sound he used back in tranceport. it’s nice to see that someone sticks to their principles.

hi sports fans. so, here’s what’s been going on in my life since the start of the month.

1. Snowboarding. i went up to our cabin for the first time last weekend. the house is great, the snowboarding is great, i will be going back up there this weekend to get a few days in, though the conditions aren’t awesome, they’re much better than what i’m used to back east. my goal remains to get 25 days up this season. right now i’m at 2, but it still seems like it’s achievable. i hope. i might be making that up.

2. CES. i spent sunday-wednesday of this week at the Consumer Electronics Show, doing demo’s for the products that i built last year, and generally wandering around, gawking at huge tv’s. my main takeaway from CES is that everyone seems to be hawking HD camcorders, to let more of us make video blogs. maybe i’ll start doing a video blog on manlio rules, though i think i would lose almost 100% of the eloquence y’all have come to expect from me. but at least i could always have def leppard playing in the background.

3. Football. the pats are in the playoffs! go playoffs! i’m nervous about the SD game this sunday, but if anyone can stop LDT, it’s the Pats. I hope.

4. Trivia. Trivia nights have been pretty much my only social outlet since the start of the year. we keep winning, so that’s good. last week we somehow rolled with like 12 people. Lyandra and Amy were there as well, so my SF friends got to meet some of my NY friends, and vice versa.

and that’s pretty much it. seems awfully boring. i’ve got some shots of trivia 2 weeks ago that you can peruse, if you so desire. i’ll make sure to take ski cabin shots this weekend so everyone can drool at the awesomeness of wintering in Tahoe. wintering!

Penn station around christmas time is a terrible way to arrive in New York City, especially when you’ve got lots of luggage, and i did.

on the plus side, there were plenty of cabs (are you listening San Francisco? cabs are useful! i hope you asked santa for some).

(more…)

i think the best thing about the holiday season is the week before everyone leaves on vacation. There’s less people at work, everyone has checked out at least a little bit, and you’re going to tons of “last event before holiday” type stuff. which usually ends up meaning we all drink a lot.

Accordingly, i attended Sean and Aubrey’s “White Elephant Xmas” party on Monday night. For those of you who don’t know what a White Elephant is, basically everyone brings a wrapped gift, then draws numbers out of a hat, and you pick gifts one at a time. except, you can choose to “steal” a gift from someone who has chosen before you. So, if i have number 5, i can either take a new gift, or steal one of the gifts from 1-4. Then they get to choose if they want to steal a gift or pick a new one. And so on.

The first problem i had is we were supposed to “re-gift” something and bring it to the party as our gift. Now, i have a lot of crap. A lot. but i couldn’t really figure out what to give away, so I decided to do a charcoal sketch of something xmas related and bring that. here’s what i ended up with:

i know, not my best work, but not bad for an hour or two on a sunday afternoon. The problem was that as the party approached, i got nervous that no one would actually want this sketch, except for me. So i quickly scoured my junk box for something else to give away. i ended up taking micah’s snow globe, because he opted out of the party. and something else, but i can’t say what that was, because someone who reads this blog gave it to me last year and i feel a little guilty at giving it away. Suffice to say, the person who ended up getting these things was very very excited, so i think it all worked out.

oh, and i got a little meditation fountain that has water and LED’s. which is pretty sweet. Other presents included:

- a purse made out of jean pants
- a sex book (3 guesses as to who brought that)
- a nice piece of art
- a talking homer simpson (i almost stole this, but Kevin seemed so happy with it that i couldn’t do it)
- a hula girl (no, not a real one.)
- a series of plastic hats

and that’s all i remember. i was pretty drunk at this point, thanks to Eris’s egg nog, which was both delicious and somewhat addictive. and i probably didn’t need to have 3 cups of it on a monday night.

last weekend i decided that it would be fun to go to the Live 105 “not so silent night” featuring the Killers, Modest Mouse, the Shins, the Raconteurs, etc… I was incorrect. don’t get me wrong, the Killers played a really solid set for what you KNOW is a “phone it in” show for them. i would say they did like 40 minutes, no encores, goodnight Cleveland. Oh, and apparently i hate Modest Mouse. who knew? Also, that venue (the bill graham civic auditorium) is maybe the worst place i’ve ever been to see a show that wasn’t called “the Siren Festival”.

saturday was silly. if you’re ever debating between going to something (in this case my company’s holiday party) and sitting home on the couch eating pizza, and it’s even a little bit difficult to make the decision, then chances are the party must really suck. this is similar to when i was having trouble in philly making it to improv because i kept wanting to stay home and watch wrestling (to be fair, this was 2000, when wrestling was going through it’s Neo-Renaissance). and i decided that if i was having trouble getting to rehearsal because of wrestling, then maybe it was time to quit the group. and that guy Dennis from that group still owes me $600. I will take it from him in souls.

Sunday i was introduced to a great little beer tasting place, and bought myself some blueberry beer. Which is delicious.

oh, and if anyone knows why i can’t seem to get a clean mic signal into Live, that would be very helpful. anyone?

If there’s one thing i learned at Floyd, it’s that 4 whiskeys on an empty stomach is usually a recipe for a long, brilliant night.

Last night i put the same theory to the test, except i replaced whiskey with vodka, and Floyd with Mezzanine. the verdict? well, i’ll let you decide.

Forsaking dinner, I met up with a few people at 111 Minna, where they where having an opening for that new book on small scale sustainability of the environment (what kind of mint?), and how that can translate to larger scale sustainability for the world as a whole. At least i think that’s what the book is about. You can see it on Amazon.

After that we rocked on over to Mezzanine, where the Faint was playing with Ratatat. I’d never seen either band live (i skipped out on a Ratatat show a few years ago in NY), and i was very impressed by both bands. if you haven’t seen either of these bands live, do it. seriously, right now… i’m waiting… ok fine, do it later.

Now, i’m not one to tell stories about other people getting too drunk, but one of my friends got a little extra sauced at the show. In truth, it was probably my fault, because she kept saying: “i need to go home soon”, and i kept smiling and nodding, assuming that when she was ready to go, she’d go home. Then i noticed that she was having trouble standing, and i realized that i had casually ignored the “umm… i’m drunk” warning signs. No problem, i’ve had years of experience with this. I grab our coats, maneuver her out and into a cab, and head for Russian Hill, figuring that i’ll take the cab back to the Haight after i make sure she gets inside ok. She insists that we stop for Pizza, wherein the following things are said (in no particular order)

her: I’ll have a slice with lots of meatballs.
me: I’ll have a plain slice
her (to pizza guy): He’ll apparently have a pu**y slice.

her: we need one bottle of water
me: we should get two
her: one!
me: seriously, let’s get two
her (hitting me repeatedly in arm): ONE!

her: why are we still sitting here?
me: because we haven’t gotten our food yet.
her: we got food?
me: yes, we got pizza.
her: well, where is it? make them get it faster!

her: what are these?
me: this is the garlic bread you ordered.
her: i ordered garlic bread?
me: yes
her: well, you’ll have to eat most of it.

and i will just say that her slice of pizza, after she was through with it, looked as if it had been eaten by a bear with poor fine motor control.

I got home and decided that 1AM was the perfect time to lay down a solo to the song i’ve been working on. and you know what? it was!!

quick hits from the last week. the theme is “blah”

Last wednesday Sean, Micah, Jess, and myself went and won trivia at Tonic. To be fair, there wasn’t a ton of competition, and the score we ended up getting usually ends up a 3rd place victory, but hell, we all need a little 1989 world series now and then. If you don’t know what i mean by that, then don’t worry about it, it’s really not that interesting.

the post victory fun-fest:

Then we headed down to the Hemlock and met up with some people. i didn’t stay out too late, or at least i didn’t think that i did, but thursday was much tougher than i wanted it to be.

thursday was a pretty blah day all around. work was blah, i didn’t have bunches of fun at the bar that night. practically the definition of blah.

Friday I went home to watch my netflix, only to discover that the CD was cracked and broken. this is the 2nd time in 2 weeks that this has happened to me, and while i understand, it’s definitely a blah experience. oh, but i did go shopping on Friday and bought some new clothes. so that was good. better than blah.

Saturday i… hmm… i don’t know what i did saturday. certainly nothing exciting. blah.

and yesterday I worked on my music a little bit, wandered Haight St., and lounged. all of which was better than blah.

this week in the adventures of blah, our hero goes to a few shows, hopes to successfully defend his trivia throne, and debates till the last second whether to even to go his company xmas party.

So, this weekend was all about music. yay, music!

Friday I left work early and did the WFH thing in the afternoon. Micah and I were supposed to head down to mezzanine and check out Hot Chip, but he wasn’t feeling so well. I took his bank card to pick up the tickets (and drinks were on micah all night!!), and headed down to meet up with Ali, Willo, and Harry.

We tried to go somewhere for dinner that was closed, so willo coyly suggest Chevy’s.

Chevy’s has great margaritas. I had 2 of them.

Hot Chip was very good. I texted Mike back in NY and said: “i have a new band for you. Hot Chip”. he texted back: “yeah, check my fm playlist, i’ve been listening to them a ton lately”. you gotta wake up pretty early in the AM to find an electronica band before mike.

The show was great, afterwards we went to Ryan’s for a party. I had one drink and realized that i was just about to fall over, so i went home.

the next day i was supposed to get up and do things, but was so ridiculously out of it that all i could manage was a few phone calls (happy birthday mom!), and a few naps. I finally made it out for dinner in Cole Valley, then passed on the Laughing Squid party (lame of me), to go to bed early.

Sunday i watched football and worked a bunch. good times good times.