I had the pleasure of sitting down to dinner with my esteemed pals Oscar, Tanja and Barb who run the excellent food and sustainability vlog Freshtopia, along with videoblogging pals Ryanne & Jay. Tanja made a mean celery root soup that complimented Ryanne & Jay’s spiced squash soup made from organic veggies they picked from their garden. I had the easy job of bringing the organic chardonnay, so I could do my bad Gary Vaynerchuk impression. Good times!
This weekend there are two fundraiser events for two amazing friends of mine who’ve each had their more than fair share of hard times the past few months. The first event is Friday evening for Amy Woloszyn, who was nearly killed by a drunk driver while riding home on her bicycle in San Francisco. She sustained a lot of injuries and has no health insurance which means insane medical bills. To make matters worse, this is the second time this has happened to her on San Francisco’s streets. She’s a safe rider, an amazing artist, a passionate beautiful human being and doesn’t deserve the ugliness that the mean streets have foisted on her. She has a blog chronicling her ordeal which she is able to update regularly. Amy’s event is at Balazo Gallery, Friday the 30th starting at 6pm.
Todd Blair is a friend whom I met in 1999 while working on an SRL show in Tokyo. He’s one of the nicest and most giving human beings in the world and it is utterly heartbreaking the trauma he’s going through. He sustained massive head injuries while loading out the most recent SRL show in Amsterdam (I wasn’t there for that one). He is still in an Amsterdam hospital two months later slowly recovering as he battle complications. His love Alex is there by his side and constantly updating his blog with the daily ups and downs he’s had two endure since the accident. Todd’s fundraiser will be an amazing show of love and support from friends and artists at Somarts Gallery on Saturday, November 1st beginning at 8pm. I’m really bummed that I’ll be out of town and not be able to make either of these.
The tryptophan’s keeping you lazy anyway, so why bother going out? You’ve got tons of turkey leftovers to chomp on and that pumpkin pie isn’t going to eat itself. Do yourself a favor, stay in and celebrate Buy Nothing Day today.
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.
