http://rcrdlbl.com/artists/Sun_Airway/track/Oh_Naoko_Houses_Remix?sms_ss=google&at_xt=4cf5505bde29a775,0
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Travel!
THE TRAVEL POST
Part 1 - Los Angeles 11/11 - 11/17
My first order of business in LA (other than eating at Dinah's with my mom. Winner winner, chicken dinner) was to see Nosaj Thing and Toro y Moi in concert at the El Ray. I hate to say it, but Nosaj is starting to lose me; he needs to be more prolific because every show is starting to sound the same. I have seen him a few times now, and there hasn't really been any sort of new creative direction at all. Don't get me wrong, Drift was a great album. But it was a great album in the ancient history of music that is a year ago. Get pumping sir, or I will blog negatively about you. That being said, it was still awesome because I got to go with Sara and Dylan, a single night with whom has yet to be dull.
The next night began the wedding festivities for Jamie and Michelle, the real reason I came out to the best coast. The rehearsal dinner was held at BJ's (you can try making a joke here, but I've already made them all so don't tell me) and consisted of seeing people I hadn't seen in years and eating tons of deep dish pizza. I know right? Awesome. Here is the lucky couple:
Sup.
Hoorj!
I don't have many pictures of the next day, because I was too damn drunk to remember to take them, but I do have one shot from early on in the night that is incontrovertible proof that The only way an asian jew can exist is from an alien race
The fake Michelle is beamed into place.
Sorry Jamie, your wife is a body-snatcher.
Really, the wedding was awesome. So many of the Strowbridges have been a mystery to me as of late because I never really get a chance to hang out at those huge family gatherings we once had. Hopefully I can be mature enough to keep up the re-established contact that I got to make. And Mike is still the funniest guy I know.
The following days I just spent hanging around LA with Mom and Sara and wondering what my life would have been like in high school if I had gotten out more and decided to see the downtown area. There is so much to do that I have only recently discovered in the last few years, and it makes me pine for a time portal so I could relive that whole period with this new perspective. If that isn't the single most wished for thing in all of history...
Anyways, that brings me to my time with Dave. For all of you (all five of my readers) that don't know, Dave is getting his masters in ceramics at UCLA. Because Dave was so gracious as to visit me in ATL on his road trip (see earlier post), I figured I would return the favor and wear down his hospitality in Culver City. Say hello, Dave:
Nice wood.
My stay with Dave was awesome. We checked out a few coffee shops and had delicious Orochan ramen, which is basically my favorite thing, second to Tito's tacos, which we also had. I was actually kinda worried that Tito's would be a thing that I loved as a kid that didn't really stack up, especially because I pumped it up to Dave so much. This did not happen. Tito's is still awesome. But back to adventures. First, I wanted to comment on Dave's work, which has an Escher's Drawing Hands feel to it:
Hands.
At least this piece feels that way. The rest of it is different, but also still in the works. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next. Dave's style is appealing to me... I'm an admirer of installation pieces and large studio art. We have often talked about a collaboration where I do some technical stuff, perhaps a moving piece, and I would like that very much. I like to think I have an artistic streak, if mecha turkeys count.
One of the first things I saw when I went to Dave's art space wasn't his art, however. It was a crazy building with an ugly facade, a scaffold where cacti grew while suspended in air, and this mountain with tons of steps:
A metaphor for self-realization.
It needed climbing. Badly. There is actually this pretty rad little exhibit at the top talking about the Baldwin hill conservation project and some such, but really it's just an elaborate place for bums to sleep. A really nicely designed place for bums to sleep. I forgot to get a picture (which is actually a common thread of this trip. Oops).
I have to say that my three favorite parts of the stay with Dave, however, had to be meeting with his Dad, The quest for Drambouie, and the Jameson event. Let us proceed.
Part 1(a) - Father's Office
Dave and I met up with John at this awesome bar called Father's Office, which is an expensive place to get beers and burgers and exotic tapas. The saving grace is that you get what you pay for. They had a truly impressive selection of beers on tap, including Russian River's Pliny the Elder and the infamous Lagunitas Gnarlywine. There was the looming threat of Vertical Epic, but we decided to have some from Dave's bombers of it at home instead. Rumor has it that this is the spot for the best burger in LA, and I have to say that it was pretty damn good. It was no Holman and Finch, but it really hit the spot and was worth all the money we payed for it. We also tried the bone marrow, which seems to be one of my new personal favorites, and it was truly top notch. Where some like to really make the marrow into something other than meat butter, Father's office kept it simple and the result was fucking incredible. I give Father's Office and A for sure and and A+ for the company.
Part 1(b) - Rye Whiskey no es bueno
Later that same night we went in search of a new-ish bar that Dave was curious to try out. The inside was all wood decor and felt like a western version of the Tiki room at Disneyland. For the life of me I can't remember what it was called, but let's call it the Wood Bar. Haha, wood bar. They had a cocktail that had a silly name, was on special, and, having just finished off the required PBR, I figured it was worth a shot. Basically it was rye whiskey, some lemon zest, and a bit of magic. Too bad they used the shitty magic, because it tasted like fermented suck. Dave claimed it was good and further claimed that it tasted just like Drambuie, which I had never heard of. Neither had Dave's roommates Hank and other Dave, and we assumed Dave was just being drunk. That didn't stop us from going into every liquor store on the way home and belligerently insisting that not only did the drink exist, but they should have it. I'm pretty sure we almost got into a fight with the Romanian mafia, but we escaped with our lives. Lo and behold, it did exists, and we purchased some the next morning at Trader Joe's of all places. Dave was right, it was very similar (except they exchanged the shitty magic with good magic). We felt like the Hardy Boys after solving the case of the missing Drambuie.
case solved
Part 1(c) - Are those painted shirt boobs?
The final night I stayed with Dave we saw a giant inflatable bottle of Jameson at a bar as well as a huge crowd, so we marshaled the forces and checked it out. Sure enough, it was a corporate Jameson party for bartenders and we weren't on the list. After a few of us (you know who you are) lost motivation and retired for the night after a string of humiliating bar-entrance defeats, Dave and I managed to get our hands on some passes from exiting bartender patrons. Three things became apparent:
1. There were people walking around with painted jameson shirts on, which means they were walking around naked.
2. Free open bar jameson drinks.
3. Free tasting of top shelf jameson brands.
Now I'm not a big Jameson drinker, but for free I will drink anything they make with reckless abandon, and drink I did. The top shelf stuff was cool (and the lady who was serving us had a sweet irish accent), but the ginger and jameson did me the most good (bad?), and before I could begin to take pictures (again with the sucking at photographing) we were lights on, out of the bar, and back to Dave's place to solve all of the worlds problems through conversation on his roof top. Four hours of sleep and a hangover later, I was on a plane back to ATL.
That's it for the LA adventures, and I realize this is a huge post so I will talk about Thanksgiving in SF in part 2 coming later. But all good posts need a parting shot, and this one is the raddest of them all. If you can guess where this image came from, I'll mail you five dollars (some people are obviously excluded from this contest).
Don't be a nebbish.
Hahaha,
Dt.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Back once again with the renegade master
Looking back, my last post was August 20th, which is just about the time that I got serious studying for the PhD quals. Well, the good news is that I'm not dead, even though it seemed like it at times. The other good news is that I'll be updating regularly once more in the way that only a lazy ass with a camera can (photoblooooogs). The even better news is that this mother fucker passed his mother fucking quals.
Eat.
That.
Shit.
GT.
You can't haze me! I'm the king of this rap game (back to the ghetto mother fuckers, we gon' money it up, the king gon' turn it to smut). AHAHAHAHAHA.
Ok, I'm done.
I'm in LA right now and my brother Jamie just got married. Seems like I'm up next on the hit list, which is a thought that I refuse to have at this point in time. The wedding was exactly what weddings should be; it was a heartfelt celebration of two of the straight up best people I know promising to love each other forever. When you have such a pure core to the celebration, how can it not be fun? Hint: impossible.
I'll update with photographic evidence of this (science!) when I get all the pictures from the various living cameras at the festivities collected into one album. Needless to say, it's been a great weekend.
Oh, and Nosaj Thing is still rad live, but he needs a new album bad. SPEAKING OF NEW ALBUMS:
Get it.
One last thing, I plan to do a brief recap of all the crazy shit that happened during quals study blackout. It's just as much to reassure myself that I don't suck as anything else. When you sit around staring at books and tests all day, you lose perspective in a bad way. Time to reperspectivise.
Word.
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