I just went to Frenchman to see a friend playing with fire with a couple of her friends. And by that I mean like fire-eaters and fire-dancers and stuff like that. While walking around waiting for them to start, I saw someone else I know playing at another bar. And a little further down the street, Andrew Duhon was playing at dba. Yeah. I’ll miss that. Being able to go anywhere and see someone I know. Having whole streets of places to go see good live music. The big consolation of course being that I’ll finally be living in the same city with my wife. 😛

If you somehow haven’t heard, yeah, Rose got a residency, and it’s in Gainesville, so she’ll be moving there in July. I’ll be moving there probably in the fall if I can find a job, and in January if I don’t…I’ve set that limit for myself. I’ll be leaving my comfort zone and living outside of the NOLA metropolitan area for the first time in my life. But hey, like I said at least I’ll be with Rose, and at least I’ll be 2 hours from Disney World, and at least we’ll be able to get cheap resident annual passes, and at least we’re getting a really nice place (pictures here) for a really good price.

I was just thinking about this recently. While I am comfortable here, and making money, and all of my jobs pretty much come from knowing people (hey, that’s how it works), I am kinda sorta up for the adventure this year. Several years ago when I used to do a lot of road-tripping with (ok, following) certain bands, i’d meet lots of people…other fans, tech people, crew people, venue people…I loved it. But now some of those bands don’t tour as much (or at all), and I don’t have the time, or money, or inclination, or any combination of the three, to road trip as much any more. So maybe this will be my chance to just go out there and start trying to be social like I used to sometimes do. We’ll see how that goes.

One final note, I’m not sure of my jazz fest status this year. You see, my main connection at Munck Mix, the guys who do the live recording, as I found out last week, is no longer with them. And the other people who would be in such a position to maybe give me a position, well, I just don’t have their contact info. I got in touch with one guy who works with them, who’s the one who told me that guy is no longer with them, and he told me someone to email. Which I did, and almost a week later, I still haven’t heard back. So, could last year have been my last year? Maybe. I don’t want to sound snobby, but if I’m not working, I’m not going. And it’s not just a money thing. I can’t go from super awesome everywhere access doing what I love to being just in the crowd. Cuz honestly, I don’t care to be “just in the crowd” anymore. I’ll try a little bit harder this week to get in touch with someone, but we’re kinda getting down to the wire, so we’ll see what happens. I am working just about every night at the Station, so at least there’s that.

Anyway, yeah. I’m sure I have more to say, but I guess that’s enough for a Sunday night. Have a hoppy Easter.

…but I’ll spare you from any April Fool’s Day jokes or pranks. There will be none of that from me! Hm. 😉

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since this thing was updated! Ok, yes I can. There was Mardi Gras, and St. Patrick’s Day, and St. Joseph’s Day….the parades kept going 2 weeks after Mardi Gras was over. Gotta love it!

Rose and I had a great time hanging out during Mardi Gras with our families. Sure the weather sucked for Endymion, but we partied anyway, that’s to Gwen and Dennis, my parents’ neighbors, and Martin Insurance, as well as Johnny and Abbey Sanchez, and our Bikeus friends, who even made it on the news for having a party even tho there was no parade. You can watch that here. And Sunday we got a good spot for Bacchus and Endymion even though we didn’t get out there til about 3pm, so that was most excellent as well.

You can read more about Mardi Gras Day and the Krewe of Bikeus 2011 here. Be sure to go to the pictures page and click on 2011. You can find more of our mardi gras pictures in our photobucket.

Rose was supposed to leave on Wednesday, but because of weather delays she would’ve missed her connecting flight, so she got to stay an extra day. Woohoo! So instead of flying out of Gulfport, she flew out of Baton Rouge. 😛

Of course that weekend I went to both the Irish Channel parade on Saturday and the Metairie Road parade on Sunday, and even made the Irish-Italian parade the following Sunday. Then I crashed. 🙂

This past Wednesday, I worked with Carrollton Station and The Susan Cowsill Band for a scene on Treme.

So, what i ended up doing was basically about 20 minutes of work, setting up the stage, getting susan’s guitar set up, and telling the guys doing the actual mixing what to give them as far as monitors goes. Which, basically, was pretty limited.

We used our stands, mics, and cables. Ran them into Treme’s snake, which went directly into their board. They gave me one channel to send to all the monitors, which meant everyone had all the same stuff in their monitors. Then they sent their “main mix” back to our main board, which we played through the house, for their boom mic, which you’ll see in the pictures on photobucket, to pick up.

Other than that, it was a bunch of shoots of just believe it, then dialogue with steve and lucia, (apparently “annie” had written a song and susan wants annie to play it but it wasn’t “ready yet”) and so they go into crescent city snow. Which was always cut right during the line “singing joanie at the Carrollton Station.” not sure why.

Anyway, there were extras there as an audience, but not very many for most of the shoots, b/c the camera track was set up even with where the wall ends to go over to that side corner, so whatever could fit in front of that, including a very bobble-headed Paul, was the crowd. There was that camera and one hand-held, which shot mostly from the carrollton side, and a handful of times from the monitor board side, and once or twice from behind the monitor board. Then they later did a longer-range shot, so they brought in more “crowd,” and tiffany the bartender got to be a “waitress,” carrying burgers around. We didn’t get to see those shots cuz of where the cameras were.

The band consisted of susan, russ, mary, jack craft on keyboard, sam craft on violin, steve earle on acoustic, and lucia micarelli on violin. Yes, a 7-piece.

When dressing the set in the morning, they had originally put amber twinkle lights all over the place (b/c “every bar in new orleans has amber twinkle lights” in treme), but later changed them to blue b/c it looks better blue. they also put a clip light on the monitor board. i was up there when they did it, and the guy doing it said, yeah, this guy’s important, he gets a clip light….but wait (grabs another one and puts it on)… he’s REALLY important. he gets TWO clip lights.” knowing “that guy” was basically gonna be me, and without him knowing that, i said, “aw c’mon, nobody’s THAT important.” “oh no. this guy is.” 🙂

Tim, who is a “decorator” on treme, who got me the job with chess, whose main job is to decorate but also to un-decorate…take all the 2011 out…said that they had been filming a bunch of “bounce” scenes, and even when they go to the most ghetto of places, they still use their systems, b/c they want it to be “real.”

And aaron, who got me the union pay for chess, also does sound stuff for treme, so it was good to see him again.

Before they did the long-range shot, someone came up to me and asked if i worked there, and if i wanted to be an extra. i said well i’m already kinda doing something, and he asked don’t we have a bartender here, yes, and if she wanted to. So i brought him to tiffany, and that’s how she got set up with the waitress gig. So i asked him who i had to talk to about signing paperwork and getting paid and all that. He referred me to one person, who asked me what i was doing, and i said basically i’m with the band (b/c really, i didn’t know what to tell her, since this was only arranged the day before, over text, with russ), so she said talk to so and so, who eventually said talk to so and so, and then i found and asked russ, who said talk to so and so or so and so, so i found so and so number 2 first, talked to her, figured out that i was the band’s tech, then she talked to so and so number 1 that russ had been coordinating with all week, he said yes, then she gave me the paperwork to fill out, and russ got all their paperwork to fill out, and everything was set. Then they did the long range shot a couple of times and by 630 or so they started to pack up and go to their next location.

We all hung out at the bar waiting for bartender lillian to get it all set up so we could have a drink. because the drinks the extras had were non-alcoholic beers in real beer bottles… so by 730 or so eric bought us all (the band, minus steve and lucia, and plus jack’s fiance lindsey and sam’s girlfriend alexis, plus me) a drink.

The “kids” left soon after. russ, susan, mary and i went to basil leaf for dinner, where they ran into 2 couples that they knew, who didnt even come out for the shoot…random. Mary ordered a malbec, and susan told her that she’s “jim and franning.” lol. And susan called her mix of soy sauce and a ton of wasabi “pudding,” and i said it looked like the fairgrounds during jazz fest on a rainy day. yeah. it was like that.

Then i left, took the dogs out, and immediately crashed. fun day, but i couldnt make a career out of it.

Don’t worry. These next few weeks will have more blogs. I’m not gonna leave you hanging that long again. 😉

Had fun with Daisy at Barkus yesterday. I think she was very overwhelmed and a little confused, but after a while she started to warm up. She absolutely hated the bands, and jumped in my lap and shivered every time they passed by. But she had fun meeting lots of people and dogs and getting all kinds of treats that she shared with Samantha once she calmed down a bit. 🙂

Pictures here.

I know, two blogs in one week?! But I just had to share this.

It’s fun going into the statistics of your web site and finding out what search terms lead to it. Below are the top terms. Some of them are expected, some of them are unexpected, and a couple of them are off the wall. I post that I’m going to see, or saw, a band, and suddenly searches for those bands link to the site. Crazy search robots.

Click on the thumbnail for the full size.

This time next week I’ll be picking up Rose at the Gulfport, MS airport cuz it was just too dang expensive to fly into NOLA this time. We shall immediately begin our Mardi Gras fun. I’m not sure how, but we will. 🙂 I’m actually picking Peter (her brother) up from the airport next Wednesday night.

Thursday we’ll definitely do the uptown parades, because Muses is one of our favorites. Friday we will also do the uptown parades, because Krewe d’Etat is one of my favorites. We’ll probably be near Napoleon and Prytania somewhere, so if you’re around there, come find us!

Saturday, Endymion, I’m assuming the same place we’ve gone on Orleans for the past few years. I never have plans for Sunday, but I’m sure we’ll figure something out.

Monday will be interesting. I think we will stage it as optional bike fix-up time for our Bikeus Krewe, as well as the time I go down to St. Charles and Polymnia to receive our Bikeus Portapotty and try to claim a spot for Tuesday. Wish me luck.

Tuesday…king and queen of Bikeus, baby! Lots of planning and finaglement has gone into it. We’re still in the works a little bit, but I’m relatively satisfied with what we’ve got. Hopefully it’s the most awesomest weather ever.

This weekend I’m planning on going to the Metairie parades Friday night, maybe some uptown parades Saturday day, at Carrollton Station Saturday night, and Barkus and possibly Centurions on Sunday. I think I’ll be near Dauphine and Dumaine for Barkus, definitely with Daisy, and maybe with Samantha. Come see us!

Happy Carnival, everyone!

I don’t really know what encouraged me to do so. Whenever artists offer full stems of their songs, or even partial stems, or just a capellas, I’ll usually jump on it and download it, thinking that one day maybe I’ll play with it and see if I can come up with anything creative. I did it a few years ago for a song Barenaked Ladies released the bass, drums, guitars, and vocals tracks for, and still haven’t done anything with it. So a few months back (Septemeber, maybe?) when Minus the Bear released the full stems for “My Time” for a remix contest they were doing, I downloaded it. Not with any intention of entering the contest, but just to mess around with it. Recently, Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino released a few a capellas off of his Culdesac album, I snatched those up too. One day…

Well, I decided to see if I could make one of the Culdesac songs work with My Time. Not in a million years imagining that I would spend so much time on it, and not in two million years imagining that I would actually create something. Cuz I’m not a dj. Or a producer. I’m just a guy who loves music and has some software and 2 ears. So, this ain’t perfect. But I’m finally satisfied enough with it to let other people hear it. If you want the original versions of either of these songs, “My Time” is on OMNI, and “Let Me Dope You” is on Culdesac. Follow the links above, or any google search, and you shouldn’t have a problem finding them. And, as always, the disclaimer, if you don’t like cursing, yada yada yada, don’t click. 😛

To go along with the audio mashup, I made this visual mashup while catching up on stuff on DVR (as well as the great Twin Peaks re-watch now that I’m old enough to even try to “get it”).

Oh yeah. There are two versions. The “b” version is pretty much the same, I just included a little bit of the “My Time” chorus into it. Didn’t spend very much time on that. It was pretty much just an afterthought. Don’t hold it against me.

So, with that, and my apologies to Minus the Bear and Childish Gambino fans everywhere, I give you,

Dope Time

Dope Time “b”

This time last week, I was roaming around sunny Lake Buena Vista while Rose was in Gainesville. Today I’m back in cold New Orleans (huh?!) and Rose is in snowy Vienna (less huh). Can’t believe it’s been a whole week. Anyway, the rest of the pictures I’m putting up are up over at photobucket. Included the link there in case you’re lazy. 😉

I’d like to thank the Catholics for not making Easter in February. Mardi Gras would really suck if it had to be this time of year…. And, also, I’d like to thank January for living up to its reputation as my least favorite month (except for Jan1-Jan9 this year of course).

So what did we do? Well, when Rose was at UF, I went to Downtown Disney, and the Carribbean Beach and Saratoga Springs resorts. I headed back to Pop Century at 5pm to rest and watch tv, and Rose drove back through the rain to pick me up around 7. We brought the car back to the airport, got on the Disney Magical Express (say: airport shuttle) and headed back to the hotel. We then went to dinner at Planet Hollywood.

Thursday we got up early and got to Hollywood Studios right as it was opening, and got our FastPass for Tower of Terror, then went on Rock and Roller Coaster twice in a row. Then off to Tower. Spent the whole day at the Studios doing lots I haven’t done in a while (Indy stunt show, Backlot Tour, etc). Had dinner at Mama Melrose’s, followed by Fantasmic, and back to the hotel. Perfectly timed, Rea called 15 minutes after we got back to the hotel, to “concert call” us from Chickie Wah Wah for the announcement of this year’s Krewe of Bikeus Royalty. This year’s royalty is

US! Holy crap.

So we celebrated with this

which I had delivered to the room on Tuesday while we were out. It was meant to celebrate our “anniversary” (of 7 months…), but we added Bikeus to the celebration.

Friday we picked up our race stuff and headed to Animal Kingdom until 4. Then we went and had dinner in the UK in Epcot at the Rose and Crown Pub, and spent the rest of the night there. Even though the extended magic hours kept Epcot open til midnight, we left after the fireworks at 9 so we could get some sleep before waking up for the half marathon.

We woke up at 2:45 and headed down to the bus around 3:30. Yes, a.m. As you can see in my tweet it was quite congested getting from the drop off point to the corral. Initially I was in G and Rose was in F (out of a total of H), but she decided not to run, and walked with me, so she snuck into G. By the time we started it was about 6:15, 6:20. We walked most of the way, with a little jogging. Mile 2 was the hardest to get through, which is normally the way with me. Once I get past the first few miles, I’m good. Mile 1 was pretty easy, but mile 2 I had to slow down. I was a little worried about making it the whole way. But I know myself, and I know if I push through miles 2 and 3, I can go an undetermined distance. And, as of Saturday, that distance is just about 13 miles. I must admit, it was fun to actually have people cheering us on…high school bands, random people, characters, fake Epcot (an Epcot hot air balloon that from a distance looked like Epcot just when I was thinking we were gonna be on Interstate 4 all the way and that the “going through the parks” part was a lie and said oh there’s Epcot but it really wasn’t…) I tell ya, going through the parks really saved me. It made it feel like I wasn’t doing a marathon at all. 🙂 What also saved me was that there were SO MANY people who were doing our pace. Sure, there were those people who were making their way to the finish line when we were still on mile 3 or so, but there were also over 1,000 people who finished behind us. Our final time was 3:27:28, an average of 15.92 minutes per mile. (I know the clock in the pictures says 4:06:00, but that’s because we don’t start with everyone else.) We were wearing our Saints jerseys, so every now and then along the course we’d hear “WHO DAT!” And, when we crossed the starting line, the m.c. saw us and said, “Who Dat! Who Dat! Who Dat gonna run 13.1 miles!” 😀 We walked most of the way and would jog for a minute or two every now and then. After around mile 9 or 10 I was done with the running every now and then, but we still made it in time. But we did run the last few yards or so, as you can see in the video below. We come into frame around 4:06:00.

After we finished I was looking for the beer and nachos tent, but apparently that only happens in New Orleans races? Hm. 😉 We got our snacks and sat down to eat them. I was fine until the point that I had to get up. If I hadn’t sat down, I coulda kept going. But once I stopped, it was REALLY hard to get going again. And I knew that would happen, which is why I didn’t go to the restroom on the course. 🙂 But we started moving again, and walked from where we were, the Epcot parking lot, to Epcot to catch the monorail to the Magic Kingdom, where we got some ibuprofen and some lunch and went on a few attractions. As per tradition, we finished the park-day off at the Haunted Mansion, where the ride stopped for like 10 minutes (AWESOME!!). We were gonna go on Pirates next, but the line was too long and I didn’t feel like waiting, cuz by that point I was done with the crowds and didn’t really need to go on anything else. Just wanted to get our Dole Whip, head to the ESPN complex to see if they had the “I DID IT” shirt that I wanted (they didn’t…didn’t get it the day before cuz I didn’t wanna jinx myself, not finish the race, and feel like a liar), and then headed to Narcoossee’s for dinner. Awesome dinner. Expensive “thank you for the Disney dining plan” dinner. Headed home and crashed.

Oh yeah. The Disney parks for the past few years have had an “I’m Celebrating” theme, where you can get (free!) buttons based on what you’re celebrating. When we went to Disneyland in 09, we got the “just engaged” buttons, and i got a “happy birthday” one. This time we got “happy anniversary,” and after finding out about bikeus, we went to the Magic Kingdom and got these write-in buttons:

There are more pictures that I snagged from the official race site here.

We wandered around Downtown Disney and went on a water mouse boat ride on Sunday, stopped off at the Polynesian, and then headed back to the hotel to catch our ride to the airport. Even though on different flights, we ended up leaving out of the same gate, right after having dinner (sorta) right by the gate. Then I got on my bumpy flight home to 40 degree weather and rain, and Rose went back to VA where she had to dig her car out of snow. Or something gross like that.

Anyway, I really wanna win the powerball so we can do that 52 weeks a year.

Next stop: Mardi Gras!!!

After getting to bed after midnight on Monday, we got up around 4am on Tuesday to drive to BWI and head to MCO. I had to go to the naked-death-ray scanner for the first time, so my streak ends at 3. Our straight-thru flight landed around 10, we got our bags, and our car, and headed to Pop Century. We had done online check-in, so checking in was quick and easy. We then headed to Epcot, and spent most of the day there. As some of you may have seen on bookface, after our first ride (which of course was Figment), we “exited through the gift shop please,” and while there I noticed someone wearing a SaintsForSinners medal. She actually lives in Metairie! We took her picture with Rose to send to Rob. We then went to the Magic Kingdom before heading to dinner at Chef Mickey’s. Rose went to bed, because she was headed to the University of Florida to talk to them about their residency program.

Today while she’s there I’m gonna go to Downtown Disney and maybe check out some hotels. Not sure how long she’ll be, but it’s a 2 hour drive back. She’s gonna come pick me up and drop off the car at the airport, then we’ll both take the Disney Express shuttle back.

Tomorrow and Friday will be park days, as will Saturday, after the half marathon. Sunday is up in the air, and our flights are around 7pm.

This may be the last full blog update until I get home, since you actually have to pay for internet access (24 hour access). Rose needed it last night, so I figured just pay for it for a day. I may update from my phone if I feel so inclined, and you can always watch the “twitface” box over there –> to see if I have anything witty to say. And that thing about the Lost numbers being played in the mega millions? It’s true! Actually 25,587 won 3+1, so they each get $150. Not sure how many of those were actually playing Hurley’s numbers…maybe that’s how Damon got the 9,078 number?

Anywho, if you want to see the rest of the pictures from yesterday, they’re at photobucket.

Now it’s time to take a shower and do Disneyish stuff. 🙂

Rose is still at work, so I’m just trying to kill some time. Go figure that her only day at work while I’m here takes her past 8pm… As you can see by the little counter down there, there’s just under 14 hours til our DISNEY WORLD vacation starts! Unless you want to count down until the time we get up to start our journey, which is about just under 8 hours away…

As usual the time so far has already passed too quickly, but at least I got here with no airport snow issues, and have had no snow since I’ve been here, just some leftover ice on the ground. Weird. It was good to see Matt and Carla for dinner on Thursday, and then to spend most of Friday, all of Saturday, and part of Sunday with Jake, Christina, Matt, Tina, Joy, Phil, Nicole, Rich, and Jen. We went roller skating for the first time in who-knows-how-long on Saturday. It was a little awkward at first, but besides the fact that my left leg refused to do any work and depended on my right leg, it was kinda like riding a bike. Except my legs got a lot more tired a lot faster than when I was doing this at skate country on chef menteur…

rose, jen, and joy's arms at Skate N Fun Zone

rose, joy, and jen at Skate N Fun Zone

It was a weekend of good food and good friends.

jake will have to id the first plate. the rest is matzo ball soup, bacon-crusted cornbread, and salad.

toys from our kinder eggs....mutating and misbehaving.

We went to 18th Amendment in DC to watch the Saints game. It’s a Saints bar. Tons of fans in Saints jerseys and gear. And, go figure, someone I know from NOLA, who’s now living up there, walked in, Brian Perry. Small world…. Anywho, the fact that Carolina played their role as suckiest team in the NFL made our loss easier to take. Either that, or the $15 bottomless mimosas…. Now guys, get healed up so we can watch you win while we’re recovering from our half marathon in disney world before our celebration dinner at Narcoossee’s!

Today I watched a lot of Twin Peaks while Rose was at work and did other random computer stuff. Now, send a bunch of good vibes our way so Rose can get out of work before our flight leaves tomorrow morning and we can go have some dinner! 😛

For those of you who may have missed it (and that would be most of you), this is the Christmas card I made back in 2007 from the picture taken at Jazz Fest that year, in the thick of Lost. I’ve been having Lost withdrawl this year, so I figured I’d bring this back. I can’t find the file on any computer, but luckily i still had a copy.

We didn’t make Christmas cards this year (except for a VERY select few), but if we had, you can see some of the ideas I was toying with under Photos…Christmas 2010. (And one that I wasn’t really toying with, but just had fun with. Alternate versions and such, just because the look on Santa’s face was so perfect.)

And, finally, you can check out my pictures from Christmas at my parents’ house here.