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.
I spent a soggy yet awesome weekend camping at Dawn & Drew‘s farm in Wisconsin last weekend for their first ever Dawnapadrewza (aka a nice excuse for Dawn to gets lots of birthday presents). They’re awesome as were all the people I met from around the country. On the last morning, after my keys were securely extracted from the trunk of my rental car, I shot this short video of my last moments. Featured are their four dogs Spec (smallest dog, biggest cock), Zoe (the retarded mom), Hercules and Raisin (the kids) and a nice egg & maple sausage breakfast that the enchanting Rinne cooked up. Good times indeed. I hope to see many of you new friends at the Podcast Expo next month.
My insanely energetic friend Irene McGee shot a pilot episode of Microsoft’s On10 show at my place some weeks back. She brought her pal Jimmy Wales over to talk about Stephen Colbert, Wikipedia, video gaming and Wikia. What you won’t see is Irene kicking Jimmy’s ass in boxing on the Wii. For some reason, Microsoft didn’t seem to want the Wii mentioned in the piece. Hmm, I wonder why?
Chicken John, who is running for Mayor of San Francisco on an art and innovation platform, officially got himself on the ballot last Friday. On the way to turn in his paperwork and after scoping out his future office, Chicken ran into the current mayor himself, Gavin Newsom. Jeremy shot some video which I helped Chicken edit down into this nice piece.
That is the question I asked a cross-section of freaks at the Laughing Squid Paradise Lost party. Knowing Scott Beale and the communities that he has tracked over the past 10 years, I thought it’d be fun to find out how people first crossed paths with the entity known as Laughing Squid. Some people first knew of the Squid from what was originally called the Alpha Squids mailing list, some people know it as the generous web host, some from Burning Man, others from Scott’s event photography and even some newbies only from recent parties. The answers are as varied as the people brave enough to offer them up.
Scott Beale does it again, throwing the only party that matters in this town. Ritual Roasters which is embedded at Flora Grubb Gardens where the party was held, were serving some interesting liquor packed coffee drinks and shots. Here’s a quick video of Miss Rachel Amazonia along with Ritual’s Eileen giving a demonstration on how the KGB shot is constructed and consumed. Shot on the awesome waterproof Sanyo Xacti E1 that Japanese videoblogger superstar Tajee hooked me up with.
photo by George Kelly
My pals Liane and Kevin tipped me off to a special “citizen media” night at the San Francisco Symphony last week that Kevin organized. Now I don’t normally clock up a lot of ear time with classical music generally, but l can throw down to some Tchaikovsky and Strauss now and again. As luck would have it, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo & Juliet and Strauss’ Don Juan were on the bill this evening.
I invite Audra and we show up at the appointed time outside the side entrance to the Davies Symphony Hall. There’s maybe a couple dozen of us milling about until we are escorted into the famed Green Room where Pepperidge Farm cookies and wine await. Yes, this is a high class affair. The carpet is green but not much else, thankfully. After an introduction from the Symphony’s Communication Department, we get our complimentary tickets and head up to our seats in the orchestra section.
Good seats, beautiful hall, the band, I mean orchestra is already seated and ready for the conductor to enter. He does and we get under way with Tchaikovsky’s Fantasy-Overture. I’m digging it but I can’t seem to stop my mind from wandering. I keep thinking about work related crap and repeatedly try and eject such thoughts from my mind so I can fully take in the romance emanating from the stage.
I look down and notice a brass plaque on my seat with David Packard‘s name engraved on it. I ponder if the famous HP co-founder had ever plopped his cheeks in the very seat in which my cheeks now sat snug. Just as I think that might be a weird thought, the first piece seems to quickly end.
After Don Juan, it’s intermission and we hurry back to the Green Room for a meet and greet with the short, young conductor James Gaffigan. The polished communicator from the Communications Department does a lot of communicating, leaving only a enough time for a couple of questions before Mr. Gaffigan has to hurry back upstairs to prepare for the second half of the program. There’s also a horn player from the orchestra present, who’s name I missed. He sticks around a bit longer and takes on a few more questions, some regarding the influence of online communication on the orchestral fraternity. No, he doesn’t have a Myspace page but his 13 year old daughter does.
The second half of the program is a long and often energetic piano concerto by Rachmaninoff entitled Piano Concerto No. 3. The pianist is a young and beautiful Venezuelan graduate from Juilliard named Gabriela Martinez. (She has one of the cleanest, easiest to read Myspace pages I just discovered). While the accompanying orchestra are all glued to their sheet music, Ms. Martinez nails the highly technical concerto from memory. A brilliant performance, easily deserving of the four rounds of applause she garners.
We stick around for the open Q&A with the conductor and Ms. Martinez and then a few of us head off to Sauce for a late night dessert. This was the first time I’ve experienced the SF Symphony in her home and I am dully impressed. I think I could really get into this.
