What a somber day at work, for obvious and non-obvious reasons. My coping mechanism may be shot today due too many sudden overwhelming variables at once, but never underestimate the awesome uplifting power of the people you love and the music you love. I’ve been playing “Stupid Girl” and “Drive Back” a lot today off of Neil Young & Crazy Horse’s Zuma album and it’s temporarily breathing some much needed life back into me before the start of a busy weekend of social obligations. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to him, but today I remembered how much I appreciate the sharp contrast between Neil Young’s solo releases and his stuff with Crazy Horse. On the solo albums, a majority of the songs are understated and lo-key and his voice is vulnerable sounding — so much at times that it sounds like it is hopelessly mired in turmoil. But by contrast on the Neil Young & Crazy Horse albums, he sounds strong and alive and the music is more plugged-in, blown out loud & proud and has this great dirty guitar sound. He’s got a deep range of emotion and expression and this is only the tip of the iceberg of many reasons why I think he rules.

Hearing “Drive Back” again today made me curious about its meaning. A few years ago, I used to think this song was about two lonely people being conflicted about an unexpected impression of love from a one night stand, which is completely retarded now that I think about it. I guess I’m constantly learning that I think it’s possible that I can find myself thinking that 5 minutes ago me is really stupid. So…maybe not about a one nite stand, but maybe it could be about a one night stand-off? Or an ashamed fugitive who can never go home again. Or in more general terms, a desperate person who tried to escape problems and driven by a strong desire for a clean slate. Or a last ditch 11th hour intervention before an inevitable final goodbye. OR! a mix-n-match combination of any of those scenarios and so on. Neil is a lot of things and that’s why I love him. In addition, “Barstool Blues” was the first, and really to the this day, one of the few complete songs I learned to play on guitar. And just like remembering how to ride a bike, I don’t think I can ever forget how to play it because I could always relate, even in my happiest moments. For sentimentality alone, he will always have a special place in my heart.

Anyway, for the many reasons I listed above, listening to songs like “Drive Back” goes beyond the oversimplistic saying “There’s two sides to every story” and makes me think there could be infinite sides. His lyrics can be not-so direct, but also not-so ambiguous puzzles that I enjoy paying attention to and trying to solve because they are poignant and not esoteric at all. If you can get past the long-winded guitar wankery outro, which could understandably ruin it for some (I have a high-tolerance for wankery), this song is satisfyingly dynamic while Neil’s vocals smolder intensely and are so, so resolute sounding that there is a je ne sais quoi quality about it that is somewhat empowering to me. I am absolutely enamored by its soulfulness. While technically his voice isn’t stellar, I really believe the honest & expressive tones in his vocals are so distinctive that it’s special and unequivocally worthy of admiration. But that’s just one side to Neil I felt compelled to highlight and I can go on and on about him. Case in point, “Ohio” about the Kent State shootings reminds me of Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo who was a freshman on campus when it happened. To me personally, it’s a fascinating cross-cultural pollination of my interests and 3 of my most major obsessions: history, American pop culture/Americana & music. And on another human nature level, but completely different note, this particular quote from “On the Beach” kills me:

“I need a crowd of people, but I can’t face them day to day.”

I could chew on every line from his catalogue.

“Drive Back” from the album Zuma

WTF is he talking about?

Whatever gets you through the night
That’s all right with me
When it’s time to say goodbye
I have to make you see

You won’t know me
I won’t call you
I won’t be there
To remind you
What you told me
When I showed you
In the morning
Let me know you’ll
Drive back to your old town

I wanna wake up with no one around

If somebody is haunting your mind
Look in my eyes
Let me hide you
From yourself and all your old friends
Every good thing comes to an end.

my 2nd plate

I went to this mac & cheese competition last Sunday where 2 of my friends were competing and am paying for it in the gym this week. There were 20 competitors and I ate about 18 of them. I am still thinking about the duck one that Jesse from Beer & Nosh put together:

Jesse Friedman of Team Beer & Nosh used confit’d duck legs, duck skin crackling, a duck demi-glace, and Parmesan–duck fat croutons in his mac. So bad for me, yet so so good

sorry i’ve been sleeping with the posts updates… past few weeks have been busy busy.
here are some random pics from recently

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

I love this cake almost as much as I hate whales.

disregard the overzealous friendzig post, was letting the cat out of the bag way too soon

I’m officially going to kick of summer by camping in Sequoia National Forest with 18 other people. I’ve never camped with that many people in my life –I hope there will be enough food for everyone. And by everyone, I mean me.

Completely unrelated, I’m hoping that threatening people with smothering makes a comeback.

Young: oh, nevermind. i just read his email again. he just said that it’s a 6 person campsite and that we’ll have to hide you under a blanket when we go through the gate
Audrey: haha
Young: but seriously, we have to hide one of you
Young: since patrick makes 7
Audrey: did you tell brian patrick was coming
Young: yeah. he knows. that’s why he suggested putting you under some blankets
Audrey: i’ll put you under some pillows, if you know what i mean
Audrey: like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Young: what do you mean?
Audrey: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/176/433975265_1b1c32da91.jpg

Snaps of Dolores Park during movie night Thurs and AT&T Park for Giants vs Mets Fri








exit jam


palms @ at&t park

I love San Francisco.

Here are my pics from favorite cities London and Barcelona. Hit the right arrow on the keyboard to advance to the next pic if you hate mouse clicking

Here are my pics from Paris/ Normandy/Loire Valley finally. I’ll post London & Barcelona later. Hit the right arrow on the keyboard to advance to the next pic if you hate mouse clicking

5/14/09 update: The date was changed to 4th Fridays starting in June. Stay tuned!

Here’s the teaser vid I made for me and marco’s anything goes DJ monthly. Since people aren’t going out as much these days do to recession & regression, I thought reversing this old timey footage of Market St in the 1900s around the infamous earthquake would be appropriate. Let’s start mining for gold again!

opening night fireworks at at&t park

Due to being out of the country in Soccerland, I was sort of sad that I missed this season’s opening day & night because it’s been a personal tradition of mine. Yesterday, however, I saw something so rare that it was like seeing aurora borealis.

Well today was kinda miserable. First day back at work after vacation and i had hundreds of emails waiting for me. I came home wanting to take a nap badly due to residual jetlag and realize my neighborhood was 20 degrees hotter and heat wavier than the rest of the city. My flat is top floor and the sun beats down on the roof all day, not to mention the large windows transforms it into a greenhouse nightmare. The best thing about these heatwaves…Dolores Park at night! The park is so crowded on freakishly hot nights and it was great running into random people i hadn’t seen in a while. I’ve lived here over 10 years and going to the park during these very rare warm San Francisco nights is one of my favorite things ever.

Wow, so those data recovery guys in the small Mission spot called TechCollective managed to rescue about 80% of the stuff on my camera. And they were so kind and thoughtful (stay away from Best Buy). I’ll save the photo summary for another day. Here’s video I took of some random band from Liverpool called Bodies of Work. They were really good and I think really young. The bassist looked like he could be on that show Freaks and Geeks.

Despite the dismal weather, being really expensive and not having as many pretty buildings as Paris, I really loved my time in London on a human and personable level. it was an entertainment mecca for me much like the reasons why people love NYC. There were tons of great museums that were free. The British Museum with its collection of artifacts was mind blowing, like here’s 24 rooms of cool stuff we stole from other countries in the past centuries. Really incredible stuff I have not seen before like ancient mummy housecats from Egypt wrapped in bandages with the same care as pharoahs and what not. it was hard for me to remember that a country with people so well mannered and pleasant in nature have had a long history of pillaging and a forceful proclivity for imperialism. Also there were vintage clothing shops that were amazing, much better than I expected food thanks to recommendations (Borough Market is where I had the best pot pie that made my knees buckle & indian food is a no brainer), quality non-corny/not-so-hipsterfied night entertainment and the people were so helpful. My luggage weighed over 50lbs (I swear I didn’t leave SF with that much but records are heavy) and random strangers in the tube station would offer to help me up the stairs. Not only that, but I would ask parked cab drivers for guidance when I was lost and they took the time to give me detailed instructions. You know how when you ask people for directions in the US, they kinda halfass and want to go on their way most of the time? I was floored. Even in the age of GPS, the cab drivers complete 2 years minimum “knowledge”, what they call it when they study the streets by heart before being active. Respect due! Cab drivers here are hit or miss with ultra specific location requests. I’m plotting a longer visit coupled with a Berlin trip.

i’m back on US soil and did a gloriously stupid thing with my camera which resulted in me frying my memory card and erasing 560 pics and video I took in Paris and London. Will take it to a data recovery spot later today and see if those dudes can perform a belated Easter miracle for me. Two things, this Obits album is really good. Best new rock album I’ve heard in quite some time.

secondly, Thomas Bayrle has knocked my longest running #1 art crush Ed Ruscha from the throne. I can’t remember that last exhibition that really really impressed me, maybe when the SFMOMA did the Bill Viola retrospective, but his work is amazing. He is a serious badass.

Also, me and Marco are thinking about starting an “anything goes” monthly, more on that later. Don’t count on me playing hip hop though! Those days are long gone. I’m thinking about adopting the name Snake Scarf because somebody put a python on my friend Kyle in Austin during SXSW and I told him he should be DJ Snake Scarf from now on, which he sadly did not embrace. Or maybe I will continue with Awww Damn.

I bought a lot of random records overseas and am excited about them.

I’m leaving for Europe in the middle of the night for 3 weeks and even though I will be online intermittently, I doubt I will have time to update the site. I’ll be visiting Paris, London and Barcelona, the first 2 places I’ve never been before. Here are some pics I took with my Holga in Barcelona the last time I was there 8 years ago. I promise I will come back with better photos this tour.

//photo by grebo guru

This deserves a separate post because the Devo panel and show at the Austin Music Hall will go down as one of my most fond and epicly entertaining memories, not just of South By Southwest, but as someone who has had a lifelong obsession with music and the stories behind it. I’ve admired Mark Mothersbaugh for a long time and think of him as a visionary, not to mention one of the most endearing and interesting oddballs in pop culture history.

When I was in high school, there was one issue of Mean Magazine that had a feature on him and it came with an insert of about 100 miniature stickers of his comical visual art. I had no idea at the time that he was actually a pretty gifted visual artist. Check out his amusing website of his works. My appreciation for him continued to grow through the years. For instance recently, I read that he is legally blind without his glasses. The story is that when he went to the optometrist as a 7 year old and received his first pair of glasses, he saw for the very first time “smoke from chimneys and birds.” After truly seeing and “experiencing” the world for the first time, he was inspired to illustrate. That same night he had dreamed of being a famous artist. That anecdote is so profoundly touching to me and adds another fascinating dimension to his already inherently interesting personality (How the f*** did this music come out of Akron, Ohio?). Strangely enough, Jerry Casale and Mothersbaugh met at Kent State around the time the government was shooting students and snuck around making music and films together when the campus shut down and curfews were in order.

Aside from the arty stuff, he’s a really damn good composer and did the theme for Pee Wee’s Playhouse and a gang of scores for movies, including the Wes Anderson movies like Rushmore, Royal Tennenbaums, etc etc. Anyway, blah blah blah so there’s a little background information on why I adore this spazzy renaissance man so much.

So I wanted to hear him talk as part of the Devo panel for SXSW. Surprisingly, he was soft spoken — almost shy– while Jerry did most of the promo talking (and trash talking). I’ve seen photos of Mothersbaugh present day during Devo shows as a 58 year old man in full hazmat get up and energy dome hat and couldn’t help but shake my head. Before going to this show at the Austin Music Hall I didn’t know what to expect. I was excited but I also was a little worried that I might feel embarrassed for these old dudes not being able to pull off this foolishness that they were known for as young ones. Not to mention they were playing at midnight (way too late for old guys to be rocking out) and after Tricky too, how weird is that? I knew this show would be surreal, but I was hoping it would be the kind of surreal that was intended.

crowd at Austin Music Hall anticipating old dudes in hazmat suits

After Tricky nearly puts me to sleep, gyrating and trying to rock-out to unfortunately mid-tempo repetitious tracks with a pseudo-Martina on vocals, It’s finally time for Devo to come out at midnight. The set begins with a huge screen in the backdrop scrolling absurd and amusing visuals of Devo’s long history and the audience is getting hyped. They come out in the worksuits to a new song called Don’t Shoot with a hilarious animated video highlighting the song’s theme (the outro of the song is “Don’t tase me, bro!” over and over). It’s at that point I realize the entire concert is going to have these amazing visuals synced with the live music and I knew it was going to be highly entertaining and nothing like I’ve ever seen before. So brilliant! Mothersbaugh’s vocals were perfect all night, and they all performed and did routines with the energy and theatrics of men in their 20s… for one and a half hours. For the encore Mothersbaugh came out as Booji Boy, sang Beautiful World in falsetto, and played this custom circuit bent synth instrument that was molded onto a tennis racket and had a toy duck head sticking out at the end of the neck. At the very end, he pulls down his pants and all these super balls come spilling out. He grabs hand fulls and bounces them into the audience. Remember those rubber balls you got for a quarter in the grocery store machine? In no time, these super balls are bouncing all over within the audience and the music hall. The audience was going CRAZY.

Mothersbaugh as Booji Boy //photo by grebo guru

When the show was over I was filled with a kind of satisfaction i can only describe as childlike joy. Devo’s amusing antics were contagious and convincing and still makes me smile when I think about it. What makes me even more happy is that now that they have a full time drummer (Josh Freese) they will tour instead of playing these intermittent shows in places I will never be. The new songs they debuted were great, and I’ll show a video of one they played down below. There are a lot of current bands obviously inspired by that sound, but they lack the absurdity/ fun in subversive commentary and satire. Now with the poor state of things and infrastructures crumbling left and right, Devo’s idea of “De-Evolution” is more relevant than ever and I am grateful they are still doing their thing. Mothersbaugh and Co’s live show is the equivalent of attending an eternal pizza party when the rest of the world is on the brink of apocalypse and you have no choice but to feel joy and laugh in the face of tragedy. The day he stops being awesome is a day I hope I never see. He gives me hope and optimism in growing old.

two videos from the show. sorry, these clips aren’t high fidelity – loud drums and bass are impossible to capture with a point and shoot camera.

Long story short, my friend Lauren the Saint hooked me up with a music badge for SXSW and I was in Austin, TX from Wed to Sunday for music bliss. I saw Freeway, Bun B, Janelle Monae, Diplo, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Black Lips, Jadakiss, Devo, and a whole bunch of bands I don’t know the name of and my friends Djing. I left the Fader Fort before Kanye because the portapotty situation was dire when all these people came for him. Overall though, It was a great experience.

Here’s a slide show because as usual, I hate scrolling and have too many pictures. Click right arrow on your keyboard to advance to the next picture.

Here’s some video
Serg mocking the ravers at Fader Fort

Echo and the Bunnymen doing one of my favorite songs

I had more videos but they were disabled because Youtube is a hater ass hater.

time for a camera purge, blah blah right arrow to advance pic yadda yadda i love my life.

i hardly ever click on youtube vids other people post, but i’m glad i did for this one. this kid is too awesome

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Camera purge! Kristy’s b-day at the Fairmont Hotel, Cal Academy of Sciences, Serg’s Warehouse Party and misc crud. Not pictured is all the awesome comedy I saw this month because of SF Sketchfest. Do you know how much i love this city? Yeah…you do.

Here are some photos from my Christmas in the Sonoma cuts. And more evidence my nephew Julian and I are kindred spirits.

(right arrow to advance to next pic)