Sunday, October 30, 2005

Go see Capote

Jacki and I saw Capote Sunday afternoon. We left the theater speechless. Philip Seymour Hoffman did an amazing job as Tuman Capote.

My friends at the Potato

Jacki and I made it to The Baked Potato to see the Mike Keneally Band. I think it had been about 5 years since I had last seen Mike's band play. Of course Bryan Beller was on bass as always. For this incarnation included Rick Musallam on guitar and Nick D'Virgilio on drums. We arrived a little after 7pm. Once the band finished sound check doors opened and the group came outside. Mike made the observation that his name was misspelled and was "Kenealy" with one "L" instead of "Keneally" with 2 "L"s. Bryan made the comment that Mike has to first earn the 2nd "L" before he can use it. This got a laugh from a few of us outside.



They played two full sets the first starting at 9:30 and the second around 11:30. I think in total we heard about 2 1/2 hours of live music.

One of the nights highlights was when the came out for the second set. Mike moved to bass, Bryan to drums and Nick front and center on guitars and vocals. They proceeded to play Hash Pipe, by Weezer, in its entirety. Completely unexpected.



They played quite a few tunes from Dancing, my favorite Keneally album, including Live in Japan, Ankle Bracelet, Ragged Ass, and We'll Be Right Back.

After the first set we went out back talked with Chris Opperman and bought a Dog shirt and a Nonkertomph cd. This was the only Keneally cd in print that they had for sale that I didn't already have a copy of. Jacki got Bryan Bellar's cd and got a picture with Bryan below. At the end of the night Jacki got a picture of Mike and I.

I mentioned to Mike that we were the ones that took him to Salt Lick in Austin Texas many years ago with Jacki's brother. Someone in Mike's camp made a comment that he had recently talked about that place. If you look close, a hat he bought when he was with us made it onto the cover of the Wooden Smoke special edition disc. Pretty cool that he remembered the experience, although not necessarily us.

It was a fun night, good music, good food and a good night out on the town in Los Angeles.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Time to lose some weight

Well, after several years of basically maintaining my weight I've decided it is time to lose it. I lost about 15 pounds last year when I was trying to get in shape for the band through tons of exercise and although I'm no longer in a band I'm hoping to one up myself.

Jacki and I joined the same program. Sadly it took fat celebrities on VH1 to motivate us. The program we joined was featured on Celebrity Fit Club. If Phil Magera can lose weight, then so can I, no offense Phil. Speaking of Phil I'm pretty sure I saw him walk across Wilshire Blvd in Westwood last week.

The program we joined is Nutrisystem. It basically consists of a full meal plan, although you have to supplement with vegetables, fruits and breads. So far the food has been suprisngly ok. The breakfast cereals take a bite or two to get use to, lunch entrees have been good, and the dinner entrees are probably better than most dinners I normally have. Very tasty dinners.

Yesterday was my first full day on the program. For dessert I decided I needed to have a good first day so I had the Chocolate Shake that was part of the program. Not a good idea. I thought I was going to throw that up. Powdered chocalate in water just doesn't work for me. Other than that one mishap everything has been good so far.

Jacki received her food yesterday and today was her first full day on the program.

By combining some exercise and extreme focus on food portions I think we may actually have a good chance. I set my target goal loss at 60 pounds. If I hit that target then I'll be at my weight as a senior in high school some 15 years ago. If I hit that goal then I'll see about getting rock star skinny so I can join a new band out here in LA :-)

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Shakin

We felt our first earthquake as residents of California last night. It was Jacki's and Darian's first earthquake experience.

Magnitude:
3.0 - local magnitude (Ml)

Time:
Saturday, October 22, 2005 at 08:42:16 PM (PDT)
Sunday, October 23, 2005 at 03:42:16 (UTC)

Distance from Santa Monica:
4 km (2 miles) ESE (102 degrees)

Map:
http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/118-34.htm

http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/ci10149481.htm

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

fixing the blog

RSS Site feed, the recently listened to iTunes page, and link on the Seti page is back up and working.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Life of a tourist

Last night my mom and her beau, Marvin, got into town. Today was an all day adventure kicking off around 9:30am this morning and just now finishing at around 11pm.

We ended up doing a little bit of everything.

First breakfast at Wacky Waffle on Sunset. This was also the first time we got to really talk to Marvin. He has his hands full with my mom but so far we approve.

After a quick breakfast we did a run by the Hollywood sign with a great view from Gower, then headed to the Hollywood and Highland shopping area.
This was a chance for Darian, mom & Marvin to see the Hollywood walk of stars. Fairly low key but we did get to see quite a few stars and the Chinese Theater. Darian took most of the pictures at the Chinese Theater.

While walking around we heard people pitching, come and see a taping of a tv show. We listened to the pitch and decicided to see Real Time with Bill Maher of Politically Incorrect fame. The other choice was Jimmy Kimmel so we clearly chose Bill even though our family doesn't lean as radically to the left as Bill and Bill's agenda seems to promote. But hey, its free and should be entertaining. We also got to see an on location movie shooting. Couldn't tell the lead actors but we did get to see one of the scenes being taped.

Darian wanted to go into Ripley's museum so we split off from Mom and Marv. We met up again about an hour later and relaxed in front of Bread Papa's, a cream puff store that mom somehow found. At this point we didn't have enough time to go anywhere but too much time to hang out in a line for Bill Maher.

After about half an hour we went to CBS Studios and saw Bill. Turns out he wasn't taping tonight but was practicing the show from beginning to end for tomorrow's live broadcast. It was pretty neat seeing a tv studio in action. They actually had us sitting in the Price Is Right Studio. Extremely small and very tacky. The tacky I expected but the size of the studio was probably half of what I was expecting.

After the pre-taping we picked up Jacki from work and headed to the King Tut exhibit. A worthwhile hour and a half with some pretty cool artifacts from Egypt and the various tombs.

For dinner we went to the Grove. The group saw David Spade. Unfortunately I missed the celebrity sighting but this continues to confirm the close encounters I have personally had with David Spade. I think this makes number 3 in a period of about two months.

Hopefully tomorrow is only half as busy as today. Off to sleep now.

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Friday, October 07, 2005

Aren't 60 hour work weeks fun...

Nothing quite like life in a start up.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Travel

Last week was a full week of travel. First San Francisco to attend CTIA and then to Overland Park to meet the new number 3 carrier.

Flying back from San Francisco Wednesday night I was able to see an amazing view of the Chatsworth, later named Topanga, fire. I could not have imagined such a large fire. It appeared as though an entire mountain range was blazing away.

Friday night when returning from Kansas I was able to see the fires once again. I was much farther away, probably 40-50 miles but you could see the fire glow in the mountains to the north as we approached for landing.

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