Filed under: Music
It was a great show; you can read about it here. I recorded a video on my digital camera of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and put it up on YouTube so that I could post it here. And then I found a much better recording of the same thing, also on YouTube. So here’s the better one, which includes banter with his mother:
Filed under: Television
Keep me employed, people. Watch Pushing Daisies; tell everyone you know to watch it. Especially if they have a Nielsen Box.
Thursday night Arcade Fire played at the Hollywood Bowl. You all know how much I love the Arcade Fire. And how much I love the Hollywood Bowl. So of course it was a glorious show.
LCD Soundsystem opened. And it was a ballsy move by The Arcade Fire to have them on the tour because they created an instant dance party. As my friend Holly said, they were playing like it was their show. It’s a good thing AF was able to measure up, because they left the stage having made a dancing, giddy, excited monster out of the crowd. And made me ready to go buy their album.
I brought my new GorillaPod, which is essentially a tiny tripod with bendable legs, to test it out. And as long as no one was standing up in front of us (which was for a total of about 30 minutes), it worked brilliantly. We were sitting in one of the boxes so I simply wrapped the legs around the front railing. The result was not blurry photos of LCD Soundsystem:
Once Arcade Fire took the stage everyone was on their feet for the whole performance which meant I was back to the regular hand held blurriness. This one isn’t too bad:
The clouds were really beautiful so I took a few shots exposed for the clouds and then a few exposed for the stage and comped them together in Photoshop. I’m a complete amateur when it comes to using Photoshop, but this one turned out vaguely okay:
All in all a fantastic show. I love both Arcade Fire albums and I’m eager to hear what the band comes up with next. They’re really great at making a wonderful sounding noise that also has something to say lyrically.
On Sunday I’m headed back to the Bowl for what I’m calling “The Gayest Show in the History of Shows”. Which isn’t a jab, it’s simply the truth. And I can’t wait because I know it’s gonna be fantastic.
Filed under: Computer
I don’t know much about this meme thing, but apparently it’s not unlike a game of tag that travels through the blogosphere. And so I’ve been tagged by Wess to “show my computer desktop”. So here it is:
About the design:
I downloaded all my backgrounds and icons at PixelGirl. Be prepared to spend a good amount of time on that site, it’s great (and admittedly girly). These people created my current back ground, and the icons I’m using are created by Ben Schlitter (the two heads), Lorenza Manfredi & Caterina Pinto (the flower, uh daisy), and Khanh Nguyen (the chicken).
About the menu bar:
I use Adium to run all my chat programs as one.
Amnesty keeps my widgets on the desktop.
I’ve become completely reliant on iClip.
I’ll admit to having spent a fair amount of time customizing my desktop. It’s fun to switch it up every few months – kinda like rearranging the furniture.
Tag – you’re it:
Iestyn, Erik. Ummm….I think that’s it for friends who blog about most anything.
Working in offices with kitchens can often turn people who are generally quite friendly into raving lunatics. Someone who usually gets along with everyone will turn into a suspicious, shifty, angry person should they believe that someone stole (and ate) their yogurt. Some strange instinct kicks in when food is in question.
So when you share a kitchen with the editing crew of “The Sarah Connor Chronicles”, a mid-season replacement for FOX that takes place in the universe of the Terminator movies, these kitchen wars can go to a whole new level: cyborg-ian death threats.
We here at “Pushing Dasies” editorial thought we’d hit ‘em back with death threats from our own show’s mythology:
Eh, doesn’t have quite the same impact, does it.
I sure would hate to work at Law and Order: SVU. Do you think they have signs around that say things like “If you touch this food we’ll rape and murder you”?
I’ve recently been trying to be better about donating money and time to charities and thought I’d share a few cool organizations I’ve discovered.
First off, the kids in Zambia need your money. If you’re in the LA area and want some unbelievable food on Sunday, Sept. 16th (that’s this Sunday) get your butts down to Koda in Silver Lake for a great fundraiser. It’s being put together by a guy I know named Kelly and he’s an unbelievable chef (Koda’s just providing the location, not the food). It’ll be worth every penny, and it all goes to a great cause; be sure to sign up while there’s still room. Info can be found here.
An online organization that I think is really neat is called Kiva. Kiva pairs donors with people in developing countries in need of small business loans – sometimes as little as $25. You can get updates on the business you’ve donated to and, as the loans are repaid, you get your money back. You can put it back into another loan or put it back in your pocket. Either way, you’ve helped.
Lastly, I’ve been volunteering at the Catholic Workers soup kitchen (better know as the Hippie Kitchen) on Saturdays. All you LA peeps, if you wanna come down sometime you should. It’s a really amazing group of revolutionary people who are an inspiration to be around. And it’s also a good time.
Filed under: Television
Within the past several weeks advertising for “Pushing Daisies“, the TV series I started working on last week, has popped up all over the place. And when I say all over the place, I mean ALL over the place. I’ve seen ads in movie theaters, on TV, on 2/3 of the buses in LA, and of course billboards. All of this makes me quite happy because if the show should fail (and I be out of a job), it won’t be for lack of promotion. The last 4 TV series I’ve worked on were all canceled after we made the first 13 episodes, and only one of those four shows saw all 13 episodes even make it to air. Some of the shows weren’t so great, but others were great (read: Wonderfalls) and had no promotional support.
[As a side note to Wonderfalls fans, not only is Pushing Daisies created by Bryan Fuller, one of the Wonderfalls creators, but it stars Lee Pace who was Jaye's brother Aaron on Wonderfalls. It's all in the family.]
Anyhow, here’s hoping all the “Pushing Daisies” promotion pays off and you and all your friends (and the rest of America) watch it and I have a job for the next few years. For those of you who are outside of LA, have you seen the same amount of advertising for the show?
Filed under: Randomness
It’s just too darn hot.
My cats have been spending their days lying in the bathtub. Coolest surface in the house, I guess. When it’s 103 degrees, who can argue with them?
