Went to Day 2 of the Treasure Island Music Festival, didn’t bring my main camera but posted a few on the Tumblog from my phone. Flaming Lips headlined and their set was so much fun in an eternal pizza party sort of way: a cosmic vagina on the huge LCD backdrop literally gave birth to the band as the entrance, lots of gospel dancing Yetis on the sidelines, Wayne crowd surfing inside a giant beachball/hamster ball, lots of robots and George Lucas looking creatures, lots of confetti and balloons and then confetti in balloons exploding every 4 bars…. I’m really digging the new album Embryonic which is a little dirtier sounding, way psychedelic, more percussion oriented, sparse with instrumentation but not with the spacyness or fuzz. Some of the songs sound like more thought out Silver Apples tracks off of the Contact LP with a hard driving low-end pulse. My kinda sound

Here’s some pics I found from doing a search on flickr:

and here’s some video:

The photos I’ve seen from this Sydney dust storm are amazing. They remind me of this science-fiction short story I read as a young teen where Earth became inhabitable and people had to live on Mars.

Pics via Flickr

My dear fat frienemy created a blog where he posts photos of everything he ate right from his phone as it is happening. So blah blah I’m-a-sheep-when-it-comes-to-technology blah and I started a cameraphone one myself. It’s easy since I can just send an MMS from my phone to Tumblr and it publishes it automatically. I’m such a sucker for this kinda stuff.

It was foggy and misty last night which is a favorite time to go on aimless walks and take photos. My friend Mark and I covered huge stretches of Noe Valley to the border where Twin Peaks begins and nobody was out. It felt like a ghost town (and I’m not mad at that). Saw some beautiful houses and amazing views of city lights and it reminded me that I really need to get out of the Mission more and familiarize myself with areas I wouldn’t normally hang out in.

best sign ever

right-wing store front

realtor sign


firehouse


east of Twin Peaks

and back to my neck of the woods

I went to LA for 4th of July weekend and it was fun. Before I even set foot in LA though I experienced a rock nerd miracle – Bob and Mark Mothersbaugh were on my flight sitting in the row in front of me! and I freaked out bigtime. Like I gasped and was frozen when I spotted them. Guitar tech saw my reaction and knew right away that I knew who they were, and humored me when I asked him about recent gigs such as when they headlined the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival in May and gave me Bob guitar picks when we got off the plane. I wanted a picture so bad and felt lame for not asking considering that I knew that Mark enjoys dorking out for pics with fans. For a little background on why Mark is a personal hero of mine you can read my review of their SXSW showcase here.

Anyway, I was able to enjoy myself in LA and here are the photos to prove it, but at the airport on the flight back, my plane got delayed 2 hours and after de-boarding the plane, I had to wait forever at the bar where they played “Freedom of Choice” over the speakers. WTF? LA, why do you have to be such a motherfucker?

Finally uploaded my camping photos from Sequoia National Park. Some of these came from my friend Brian and also my cell phone. As usual, you can hit the right arrow on your keyboard to advance to the next photo.

A chance recording by astronauts on the International Space Station has captured the moment a volcano explosively erupted, sending massive shockwaves through the atmosphere.

Fortuitously, the International Space Station was flying overhead at the time, and managed to capture this spectacular image of the ash-cloud tearing through the atmosphere, sending clouds scattering in its wake in a perfect circle.

The Sleeveface photo pool on Flickr is an endless stream of record nerd fun. Covers with giant faces on them are so much fun to use this way.

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

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.

We had a gathering of food and drink at my friend Elias’s house to welcome Corey to San Francisco. Serg got a pork shoulder from that La Gallinita butcher shop in the Mission (the one with the pigs cooking pigs artwork painted outside) He smoked it for 7+ hours for pulled pork sliders and it was delicious. I was put in charge of decorations so I printed cutouts of those joyous cannibal pigs and stuck up where ever there was blank space on walls. Sorry to my vegetarian readers for the offensive imagery, but cannibal pigs artwork on butcher shops is just too absurd and amusing to me. I also hit up the mission dollar stores and got random flags of mexico, puerto rico and argentina as well as party balloons/streamers. Good times, you can read Serg’s recap on Grocery Eats

After an afternoon full of drinking, food and rock band dorkery the evening reached new levels of retardation as it usually does when Elias hosts a food & drink party at his house. I don’t know whose idea it was, I think maybe Lydia, but it was decided that The Many Facets of Roger album cover needed to be recreated and I was put in charge of photo and art direction. Too bad we forgot to take the sheet down for the back cover.

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.

My 2008 is now archived in whirlwind ADHD form. Damn, I really effed up by picking a 2 minute song to try to cram all those photos into, and sadly ended up using only a fraction of all the ones i picked out. I forgot a bunch of important stuff like election funnery too. Maybe i will do a part 2.