Boots

The British are on to something….

Every music festival I’ve ever been to has seen me returning home with enough mud in my shoes to plant a garden. The obvious solution was so pervasive at this summers batch of festivals in the UK, I felt like a moron that it’d never occurred to me.

Goodbye Keds….

CREDO

by Jack London

I WOULD RATHER BE ASHES THAN DUST!

I WOULD RATHER THAT MY SPARK SHOULD BURN OUT IN A BRILLIANT BLAZE THAN IT SHOULD BE STIFLED BY DRY-ROT.

I WOULD RATHER BE A SUPERB METEOR, EVERY ATOM OF ME IN MAGNIFICENT GLOW, THAN A SLEEPY AND PERMANENT PLANET.

THE FUNCTION OF MAN IS TO LIVE, NOT TO EXIST.

I SHALL NOT WASTE MY DAYS TRYING TO PROLONG THEM.

I SHALL USE MY TIME.

A, you gave so much just by doing what you love. I miss you already.

(H, thank you for the poem)

(photos by Allisyn and her loving husband, Nicola Martinez)

I directed a music video.

Which for me is kind of a big deal. It wasn’t my intention at the start. But it’s what happened. And I thank my friends for allowing me the experience. It was awesome.

I’d been holding off on writing about this, I think a part of me is embarrassed to talk about doing something creative that isn’t drumming. Currently the video has 7,426 views on YouTube. Which means if you’re reading this you might’ve seen it already. I guess there’s no real mystery at this point.

The whole thing took four days to shoot, the talent, generosity, hardwork and time, of 8 friends, and $100 for snacks. Post work probably added another five days. It proved to me that you don’t need a grant to see your ideas realized. 

Each step of the process of putting it together required calling on a friend and asking for their interest and talents. Surprisingly the answer was always yes. How did I get so lucky? It is true that it would not be what it is without everyone’s involvement. So THANK YOU - Eric, Darwin, Josh, Mishay, Michelle, Char, Garrett, Cordelia, Angelina, Matt, and Matt’s grandmother Shirley who was very kind to make her pool available to us.  

Here are some photos taken by Eric.

Everything was shot on this camera…

…except the underwater sequence which was shot on my G9.

Josh teaching us the choreography in my apartment, minutes before we did it for camera out on the street.

Cordelia at the make-up chair.

Josh and Mishay at the park.

The picture that would end up on the fridge.

We re-appropriated one of the bags from Cordelia’s delicious bacon truffle caramel popcorn. 

Editing hand-claps.

A few stills.

Thanks guys!

I know it's hopelessly un-cool. But I'm such a fan of all these bands we get to play with.

The Floor, improv night at KING KING

As mentioned in my list, this is one of my favorite places to dance in Los Angeles. The third Monday of every month, The Floor improv night brings dancers and musicians of all forms out to play.

It is a bit of a scene, albeit a very friendly and inviting one. There is a heavy community vibe. An evening originated by two friends and dancers, Sascha Escandon and Carolina Cerisola. “We wanted a night for us.” Which is exactly what they’ve created. A space were salsa, swing, burlesque, hip-hop, flamenco, tap, tango, and other forms of dance co-exist with live and DJ’d music. Pretty good deal for $12.

For as many insanely talented dancers* and musicians who pack in to the loft-like space, no one is made to feel intimidated. All are welcome here.

Last time I went I took a couple of pics with my phone’s camera….

A tap duet, accompanied by saxaphone.

Breakers taking to the floor.

Craig Robinson sitting in on vibes!

So, yeah…

(Floor Improv promo video)

* last time I went, Beat Freaks were there, Jon Boogz, and that kid from Glee.

"LA's hottest wine is: Bitch."

-CJD

This is a running joke inspired by a sketch and character, created by Bill Hader on SNL, that has become a favorite:

And more recently…

My exposure to this clip also coincided with the release of this summer’s hottest movie:

It still makes me laugh every time I see one of the billboards.

Brian Keane - Anywhere I Lay My Head 2006 (get it)

Brian Keane and I played in the same band a few years back. The band had a regular tuesday night gig, once a month at a small bar in the West Village, with sawdust on the floor and peanuts at the tables, called The Back Fence. It was a three hour slot. Bluegrass, blues, and country-folk. This was right around the time people started calling it “Americana”. I think. Brian played bass, banjo, and organ for the band, as well as singing harmonies.

After we’d finished our set, Brian would stay on the stage and play for another hour and a half. Just him and a guitar. Mostly covers, with a few of his beautiful originals thrown in. He’d play everything from Prince to Ryan Adams.

This Tom Waits cover always got me, though.

Blood Oil (Nigeria) →

via claytoncubitt:

“This is why oil is so valuable: one tank of gas from a typical S.U.V. has the energy equivalent of more than 60,000 man-hours of work-roughly 100 men working around the clock for nearly a month. That is the power that the American consumer can access for about $60 at the gasoline pump. If gasoline were a person, we would be paying 10 cents an hour for his labor. Easily accessible reserves are running dry, though, which means that the industry must develop increasingly ingenious-and costly-techniques for getting at the oil. Deepwater drilling, for example, now happens so far offshore that rigs can no longer be anchored to the seabed; they must be held in place by an array of propellers, each the size of a two-car garage. The cost of deepwater drilling is close to twice that in shallow water.

As a result, oil is one of the few commodities with virtually no surplus production; just about every drop of oil that gets pumped gets used. The world currently goes through 84 million barrels a day, a figure that is expected to rise to almost 120 million barrels in the next 25 years. As that happens, oil will become more and more expensive to extract. When oil was first exploited, in 1859, the energy equivalent of one barrel of oil was required to pump 50 barrels of oil out of the ground. Now that ratio is one-to-five. Thus far, nearly half of the proven, exploitable oil reserves in the world have been used up. Barring the discovery of new reserves or new drilling technology, some experts predict the world will run out of oil by 2040.

Added to these technological problems is the fact that-as if by some divine prank-most of the world’s oil reserves happen to be in politically unstable parts of the world. (The alternative theory is that oil exploitation tends to de-stabilize underdeveloped countries.) Because of the financial risks involved, oil reserves in politically stable countries have more value, per barrel, than oil in politically unstable countries. As we speak, the value of Nigerian oil-as a function of the capital investment that must be risked to produce it-is in steady decline.

That is MEND’s trump card. It has several times threatened to shut down all Nigerian oil production, but it’s possible MEND doesn’t quite dare, because of the chance it will provoke a military retaliation it wouldn’t survive. By the same token, the Nigerian military has threatened to sweep the delta with overwhelming force, but it doesn’t know whether that might force MEND to carry out one devastating counterstrike-taking out the Bonny Island Liquefied Natural Gas facility with a shoulder-fired rocket, for example. An act of sabotage on this scale could drive Shell and the other oil companies from Nigeria for good, completely wiping out the national economy. One major company, Willbros, has already discontinued operations in Nigeria because of the security threat.” -Sebastian Junger, Vanity Fair, 2007

See also: More oil spilled in Nigeria “every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico”