Ah yes, the age old question. It’s answered in this video that I was hired to shoot and edit with my pal Veronica for her new videoblog called Mahalo Daily. The show is a Mahalo production, the people powered search startup founded by Jason Calacanis that aims to give Google a bit of competition. This was a fun one and for those who’ve been to the Hat Factory, you’ll recognize the set. Be sure to stay through the end for the fun tasty outtake.
I’m putting together a new monthly event in San Francisco focused on video creators. Co-produced with Michael O’Rourke of Dimension 7, the first one happens this Thursday. I know kind of last minute, but this only the first. The model for this is Dorkbot (thanks karen!) where there are a few presentations and then an open time for anyone to announce or show something followed by mingling, schmoozing and drinking. The idea is to create a space where video creators of all walks of life can present their latest works and absorb what others are doing. The full deets are here on Upcoming. Hope you can make it.
A container ship hit the San Francisco Bay Bridge last week and released 58,000 gallons of crude bunker oil into the bay. I took a walk along Ocean Beach, which is on the Pacific Ocean side of San Francisco, to see if I could find anything amiss. If anyone knows why the jelly fish are washing up, I’d love to hear about it. This was shot with the amazing and resilient Sanyo Xacti E1, which I love.
With my friends Susie, Kim, Ori and Dan, I shot this video question for our presidential hopefuls that have agreed to answer video questions from the unwashed masses of the Internet. We went to the ATT office in San Francisco (611 Folsom Street) where the well documented “secret” room controlled by NSA is located. All of ATT’s internet traffic (ie your email, web surfing habits, etc) goes through a fiber optic splitter where the NSA has equipment that presumably fishes for whatever they like to fish for.
Our video was submitted to 10 Questions, a site that allows you to vote for the top 10 questions that will be submitted to the candidates. We are currently in fifth place, so please vote for us. The leading questions on net neutrality, religion, and medical marijuana are great as well so I can’t say don’t vote for them. You don’t have to register or anything to vote on the videos, so please take a few minutes to watch and vote on a few videos. The deadline is November 14th, then the top 10 questions go to the candidates whose answers will also be posted. Pretty cool idea.
It seems as though the Double L gyroscopic undead attractor was activated last night which led to countless zombies converging on the San Francisco library where a debate among mayoral candidates was taking place. One mayoral candidate didn’t make it out alive. Chicken John Rinaldi was captured and turned into a zombie as this footage indicates. Best to stay away from the west coast of the US at all costs.
I’m making the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows on the tubes. Well, ok, just one show, and it was Wednesday last week on Cranky Geeks, John Dvorak’s weekly talking head geek show thing. I guested with Keith Teare, CEO of Edgeio, which does something with distributed classified ads. Josh Wolf was also a guest recently on a show dedicated to the subject of citizen journalism. Definitely recommend that one.
This very untypical recruitment video I did for Xobni is finally live. Xobni is a Y Combinator startup focused on making email more useful. Matt Brezina at Xobni wrote the script and came up with the scenarios. I shot and edited the piece. I’m paid by StandoutJobs, a startup out of Montreal, that’s focused on making recruitment more relevant. Here’s Valleywag’s take.
Today was one of those karmically awesome days where good things happen, just because! I was lucky enough to see Perry Farrell and Satellite Party rock out today. Twice! For free! Thanks to Corey’s tweet, I stumbled across this scene outside the Virgin Megastore in SF today. Perry and the band were doing a little street gig, complete with little mini portable amps and snare drums. I only caught the last couple of songs, Porno for Pyro’s Tahitian Moon and Jane’s Been Caught Stealing with Perry being all whimsical grabbing people’s hats and one dude’s mega iced Starbucks drink. There couldn’t have been more than 30 people not including the band.
After the awesomeness went quiet, I walked up to Perry’s beautiful wife Etty and it went something like this: Do you know if the show tonight is sold out? It isn’t, would you like to go? I’d love to go! I can put you on the guest list? That would be awesome, are you serious? I love you!!
It’s weird, over the years I’ve had several random occasions to bump into Perry and I’d always tell my pal Carlton about them. So I called him and put Perry on the line. It went something like: Hey this is Perry Farrell and I’m standing on Market street with your friend… what’s your name? Eddie… who looks like a nice enough guy. Hi!
Sure enough, Etty didn’t disappoint and neither did Jane’s Addiction, I mean Satellite Party. Third song in was Mountain Song and before the night was out they had ripped through most of my Jane’s faves: Stop!, Been Caught Stealing, Jane Says and a couple from 2003 Jane: Just Because and Superhero. Porno for Pyro’s stuff too, Tahitian Moon and the happy singalong Pets. Whatever was left, which wasn’t much, must of been Satellite songs.
Perry was beaming love to the crowd and the crowd was bouncing it right back. Lots of high fives and hugging and thoughtful sentiments, even the pit was all love, mostly. At one moment, Perry stopped to take a nice fat hit off a fan’s pipe. The crowd exploded. During the encore, Perry brought out a bottle of wine and poured the sacrament in many waiting open mouths. He then pulled a couple of cuties from the crowd up on stage and then more and more. Etty did the same filling the stage. One cutie was doing some nice sexy dance thing with Etty which the house manager or whomever didn’t like much. She was kicking people off the stage as Perry was pulling people up.
The message of the night was celebration, love, hope and a brighter future. Or was it sex, drugs and rock n roll? Same thing really.
While on the playa this year, I came across Ranger Sasquatch who was quoted in the SF Chronicle’s coverage of the early burning of the man, “I think, frankly, an attention whore has made a plea for attention.” Pava finds out that Sasquatch has another label for Addis.
