| May 22, 2009 | Get Back to Where You Once Belonged |
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I'm back in LA, after spending last week in NYC for some Yoostar press demos and meetings. Yoostar was written up in Forbes, Good Housekeeping, NY Daily News, and several other places. Follow our Yoostar twitter feed to stay up-to-date. We've updated Yoostar.com with a new intro video and, and we updated the Roles page to show some of the movie clips you can act in with the Yoostar system. Also, you may have noticed that this blog looks pretty different (and also that I'm posting to it after over two years of absence). While I was in NYC, my friend Lee pointed out that poprocks.com looked "so 1999." He was basically telling me that my online presence was wearing mom jeans. Ouch. I suppose, it's good to have friends who will be bluntly honest. It's like the time Andy told me that I needed an RSS feed for my blog, or the time JP told me I should not ever -- under any circumstances -- leave the house without wearing a bra. Funny, though, no one ever said there was anything wrong those times when I dyed my hair blue or apricot. I've seen the photos, and I'm surprised I didn't receive more critical feedback. Labels: andy, blog, haircolor, jp, la, lee, nyc, press, twitter, yoostar posted by Jess Barron @ 12:57 PM 
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| November 12, 2005 | Sake Bombs Over Beverly Hills |
Andy is in town visiting from SF, and he met me and the Santa Monica Yahoo! crew at Ariake in Beverly Hills for  sushi dinner and many, many bottles of sake, including sake bombs with gold flakes in them (to keep hangovers away!)You really need to look at Chris' flickr photoset to understand just how the Yahoo! Santa Monica posse rolls. We can't even eat sushi without going completely cray-cray. I put my bright red lipstick on Peter and Yun, everyone wore my cream leather coat, and Andy declared that it was all very different than the Yahoo! get-togethers up in Sunnyvale. Afterward, around midnight when we all got back to my house in Venice. Kim and Mary Jo brought 30 people over dressed in wigs and flamboyant clothes for a Dance Dance Revolution / Karoke Revolution party. They were their friends, and my Venice-area neighbors who had been drinking all night at The Whaler. This went on until 6a.m. when the beer (and everyone's energy) ran out. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), Chris' camera's battery died around when the party started, though there is this one random pic. Labels: andy, chris, ddr, karaoke, la, party, sake, santamonica, sushi, venice posted by Jess Barron @ 1:55 PM
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| August 3, 2005 | I'm very worried about dragons... |
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"Sleeping is giving in, no matter what the time is. Sleeping is giving in, so lift those heavy eyelids. People say that you'll die, faster than without water, but we know it's just a lie, scare your son, scare your daughter. People say that your dreams are the only things that save ya. Come on baby in our dreams, we can live on misbehavior." -The Arcade Fire, "Rebellion (Lies)"  August, Bocce and I road-tripped with Andy in his Element that was filled to the top with camping gear, food and supplies from San Francisco up to Klickitat, Washington. We left my house in SF at 7a.m. and after an entire day of driving, arrived at Esther and Jason's camp around 10p.m. that night.We promptly unpacked the Nutria Republic flag I had brought and hung it up. Then we opened some beers. Or maybe we opened the beers first. I can't remember now. "Oh my god, Jessica! There's giant bugs everywhere!" Esther said. "And we keep seeing them in the tents!" "Aggh! What kind of bugs?" I squealed. "I've never really camped where there are bugs before!" (Plus, I'm scared of bugs.) "Giant beetles and these things that look like giant roaches!" Esther said. "Also, ants! Part of the shade structure is on an enormous ant hill. We didn't realize that until after we had picked this spot. Also, when we were building it, we realized that we are on a lava flow and it was impossible to pound in the rebar." The terrain was definitely more apocalyptic than the sites of the 2 past Phoenix festivals I had been to. Though we couldn't see it too well in the dark, the land had been burned in a forest fire about 10 years earlier. There were dead trees with knarled branches like the fingers of the world's oldest woman all around. I decided immediately that the Black Rock Desert in Nevada (where Burning Man is held each year) was a much more hospitable place to camp. Our friends Phil and Lori who helped organize the festival stopped by to say hi. "We were talking to the fire crew," Phil said. "And if one person drops a cigarette on the ground -- all this dry straw grass will go up in flames and we're all gonna die. Seriously. There is only one road in and out of this place. And they said the fire moves like 10 feet per second. There's no way we could outrun it. And we'd never get these cars out in time on that road." It seemed true. The road in to the campsite wasn't paved and was too bumpy and rocky to drive more than 5 miles per hour, even in the sporty Element. I was glad we hadn't driven my lowriding Volkswagen Beetle. It was too late to pitch tents, and too rocky anyway, and also we were too tired, so we all drank until we fell asleep on the floor of the shade structure. I didn't sleep well, because I was too worried about the giant bugs we had seen crawling through the shade structure while we were drinking, and then in the middle of the night it started pouring rain and thundering. The shade structure kept most of us dry, except Wink who was sleeping underneath the connection between the two tarps. The next day Esther set up the Nutria Interpretive Center (which I called the "Nutria Re-Education Camp"), and I distracted myself by reading about nutria and then asking everyone to contemplate the many mysteries of their species, for example, "Just how frenzied *is* their copulation, I ask you?" For the next two days we played music, played more music, played more music, and played even more music, danced to music, ran around in the rocky hills and field, and got very, very worried when we encountered a pair of sneaky blacklight dragons lurking near what we thought was a cool-looking stage. "This stage looks really cool!" said Andy, as we approached a place with flowy colorful lights. When we got closer -- they popped up outta nowhere: a pair of day-glow painted dragons, making the moment at once completely dorky and completely hysterical. Thankfully, we didn't encounter many fabric batiks or blacklight posters of bare breasted alien women. As anyone that's ever been to an all-night trance party knows, this is a serious concern. But in this case, we were able to focus our worry on the dragons. We became Dragon Worriers (inspired by an Amber chatlog). And we laughed so hard that we cried. "Do you worry a lot?" "Dragons are a very real worry in this day and age!" "Too many people are concerned about dragons." "California is very dangerous." etc. etc. We realized that everyone knows that dragons *love* rainbows, and that nutria do not. Also, we vowed to avoid typing in the dark. We didn't sleep much at all, except sometimes on the floor of the shade structure in the afternoon. The other main psytrance stage didn't have any dragons (nor fabric batiks or blacklight alien posters, thankfully), but at 2a.m. it looked and felt exactly like a setting from the Sony Playstation game Karaoke Revolution. The purple and pink colors felt like they were straight from a video game. The crowd around the stage and the lights felt like they were straight from a video game. But, perhaps most of all, the speaker dancers (or "speaker bitches," as we called them) were 100% straight from a video game. They were not real; they were made out of pixels. That could be the *only* explanation for how they looked. How else could her nipples have been quite so perky? How else could his jaw -- and scowl -- have been quite so chisled? There really was no other explanation. In addition to our ongoing -- and increasingly frenzied -- worries about dragons, we learned about the Free Cascadia movement, where Oregon and Washington want to succeed from the United States and bring Northern California with them. Man, the people of the Pacific Northwest have some crazy stuff going on... Like dragons and nutria. It's like the freakin' "land before time" up there or somethin' with all these mythical creatures roaming around. You don't need to be worried about nutria; just worry about dragons and everything else will be OK, I promise. Labels: andy, august, california, dragons, esther, nutria, oregon, party, phoenixfestival, photos, worries posted by Jess Barron @ 10:42 PM
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| July 20, 2005 | The Phoenix from the Flames... |
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I'm about to take off to drive up to Portland with Andy and August to go to the Phoenix Festival up in Washington. We're gonna meet Esther and Jason up there and camp in the ambient chill area. On Friday night, it's all gals on the decks -- Ladies Only DJ night. Bocce's coming too. It's her 3rd Phoenix Festival. She's not a huge fan of camping, because she gets a little bit cold at night. But she loves it during the daytime when she can lay around in the sun or inside the tent. Here are my photos from the Phoenix Fest in 2002 and here are some photos from 2004. Labels: andy, august, bocce, phoenix festival, photos, washington posted by Jess Barron @ 11:56 PM
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| June 30, 2005 | "Something I've been Meaning to Tell You..." |
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A few months back, my friend Andy took me aside one night when we were hanging out with friends. I could tell he was gathering up the courage to say something important. "Jess, there's something I've been meaning to tell you." he said. I was immediately nervous. Ever since JP took me aside that morning in 2000 and gave me a frank talk about the necessity of wearing a bra, I get a bit anxious out when my friends have something the've been meaning to tell me. My mind was scanning through possible manners faux pas, misbehaviors or misdeeds I might have committed. Was I being mean to someone? Was I dressing slutty? Did I have really bad B.O.? "Don't take this the wrong way..." he continued and then paused. You probably already know this but "Don't take this the wrong way" is a good indicator that you really don't want to hear what's going to be said next. Andy looked at me -- I swear almost pityingly. "Some of your other friends and I were talking and we all agree that..." he trailed off again, trying to make sure through careful wording, perhaps, that what he was about to reveal would not excessively hurt my feelings. I tried to appear as calmly curious possible, so that I could entice him to come out with it and end my painful suspense. "Yes? What is it? You can tell me. Don't worry." I felt like I was encouraging him to stab me or something. "Well, it's just that..." he almost paused again, but thankfully continued after a moment. "You really, really need to get an RSS feed for your blog." I could tell he was embarassed for me. It was true that my personal website had remained stuck in 1997 or 1998 -- I still handcoded the HTML, I didn't have a way for readers to add comments, and I didn't have an RSS feed. Yes, I felt a little bit sad when Andy hit me with the harsh reality of the sad, outdated state of my long neglected but much-loved website. But I was sure glad I didn't have really bad B.O. that all my friends were talking about. Andy, this RSS feed is dedicated to you and our brave, frank chat a few months back. You can now easily add my blog to your My Yahoo! page (or your favorite RSS reader). Anyone else -- if there's some flaw with my real-life person or my website that you need to bring to my attention, there's always email. And now, comments. You can thank Andy (and Allyson and others) for bringing that to my attention too. Labels: allyson, andy, blog, rss, web posted by Jess Barron @ 12:25 PM
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| December 22, 2003 | Jeff's 30th Birthday in LA |
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"I wanna be your Thurston Moore wrestle on the bedroom floor." -- Sleater-Kinney "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone"  I just got back to SF from Los Angeles around 1a.m. this morning, completely drained. Earlier that afternoon I had dropped Jeff off on his flight from LAX back to JFK, and then hopped back onto the 405 heading north. If you subtract the total 14 hours spent driving up and down California -- I spent 19 hours this weekend in Los Angeles, and somehow 15 of those were spent awake. I think Jeff enjoyed the celebration. He kept trying to keep it low-key, and then I would announce loudly, "It's Jeff's 30th birthday -- aren't we gonna kick it 'till dawn? Who's in on this?!?" Doesn't he understand that "low-key" isn't even a remote possibility when I'm around? After dinner with Paul, Anne, and Raj at The Galley in Santa Monica, I kidnapped Jeff and Andy and fed them Sparks and other stimulants and drove them up on Mulholland Drive at 4a.m in my rented convertible with the top down and heat on full-blast. Sleater Kinney's "Call the Doctor" was blaring from the speakers as Jeff and I screamed along with the lyrics. As we drove down Beverly Glen, we came down the hill to Belle & Sebastian. Then I drove east on Sunset Blvd through Beverly Hills and into Hollywood so that Andy could take a photo of the neon Yahoo sign. Jeff, Andy and me (and Bocce!) slept on one inflatable mattress on Hillary's living room floor. We slept across the mattress the wrong way so we could all fit, but our heads and feet were hanging off. They're both over 6 feet tall, so I don't think it was very comfortable for them. I went into the fetal position in the middle, so I was perfectly fine. I had a dream that night that we were sleeping in a rowboat out in the middle of a lake. Labels: andy, birthday, bocce, dream, jeff, la posted by Jess Barron @ 5:52 PM
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| December 12, 2003 | The P-Dawg is Not for Pussies |
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"I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert but I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime. In a big country dreams stay with you like a lover's voice fires the mountainside. - Big Country "In a Big Country" When we woke up on Sunday, it was sunny. We went to the Ebb Tide for breakfast (I had a goat cheese and spinach omelette), and then drove to his house so he could change his shirt. We watched Trogdor and all the Radiskull episodes on his laptop, until the afternoon sun heated up his tiny room. Then we opened up the windows, I took off all my clothes, and the sunlight trickled in and made patterns across my legs and back. He read me Nietzsche's "Geneology of Morals" while we listened to the Velvet Underground. I watched his eyelashes skim across the pages and his mouth as his lips sculpted out the sentences, and somehow I still managed to follow some of the ideas. When the sun went down we headed to Zeitgeist where we sat outside in the back and shared a pitcher of Anchor Christmas Ale with Andy. After Zeitgeist we stopped at a corner store and picked up some cheese, Syrah, and unfiltered sake and headed to Andy's place where we proceeded to consume all of the liquor, and most of the cheese, but did not have enough combined attention span to finish "The Big Lebowski" or even a single episode of South Park. Andy told us stories about all-boys' boarding school, and when we got tired, we created a new drink by mixing Pernod with Red Bull. We called it the "P-Dawg," and it's not for pussies. Sometime after midnight we were back in my bed, and he read me some Rilke and then we fell asleep. It's cold today -- it was like 42 degrees outside this morning when I woke up. This is about as cold as San Francisco gets, and I can't really take it. Makes me want to move back to Los Angeles. I dunno how I'm gonna handle Christmas in Boston next week. I think it's in the twenties there and no doubt there will be snowstorms. I'm not physically or mentally prepared. I think the next season of "Survivor" should be held in a small, cold Massachusetts town in December or January. The frigidity would surely drive those contestants insane. Another version of "Survivor" I'd like to see would send twelve Mission hipsters to live for one month entirely in the Marina. Yes, that would be entertaining. Labels: andy, august, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 9:17 AM
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| November 19, 2003 | Broken Down Beetle Blues |
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I almost certainly would've died on the freeway this morning if my friend and co-worker Andy hadn't asked me to carpool with him down to Sunnyvale to the office this morning. About 5 minutes after picking Andy up at his house on Dolores St., we were driving at 35 miles per hour up the hill near Dolores Park and my car just went completely dead in the left lane. Luckily I was able to get it halfway over into the side lane before we lost all velocity. If I hadn't have driven across the Mission to pick Andy up and had just been driving by myself to work, I already would've been one the wily 101 freeway in the busy morning traffic going 70 miles per hour at that point. There is no way I would not have been hit. I guess I really shouldn't have been surprised. I mean, this is the same Beetle that exploded on me in Los Angeles right after the 2-year warranty ended. So, we turned on the hazard lights and we called a tow truck from the cell phones. They told us they'd be there in about an hour. And then we called our bosses. And then Andy got out of the car to go to Muddy Waters to go get us coffee. When he climbed out the passenger side of the car, he said, "There's a lot of liquid spilling out of your car." It was gas. "You should get out of the car," Andy said, "because if someone comes speeding up this hill and clips you from behind, it could be dangerous." I watched CHiPs when I was little. I'm afraid of exploding cars. So, I waited sitting on the sidewalk and people driving up Dolores glared at me for having a car that died halfway in the right lane. Then Andy returned with coffees and pastries and took pictures of me and the blue, blue Beetle with his cell phone camera. The tow truck guys thought we were on crack. Labels: andy, beetle, commute, sanfrancisco posted by Jess Barron @ 1:38 PM
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| October 31, 2003 | 'A Girl As Brave and Dangerous as Aeon Flux' |
He said, "I want a girl as brave and dangerous as Aeon Flux." I said, "I dressed up as Aeon Flux for Halloween one year." After that it was silence, and sometimes I think I just don't get it. Today Andy and I drove to work down the 101, and it was cold and there were enormous clouds everywhere all around us. It felt so strange -- like a completely foreign planet. It's been sunny and warm forever now, so when I saw the clouds they made me feel weird. There was even a patch of rain, and I realized I hadn't seen rain in months. Rain -- even 30 seconds of drizzle -- snapped me out of the amazing, sunny, warm and seemingly neverending California summer we had this year. (Unusual for San Francisco.) As you would imagine, rain is completely out of place in Sunnyvale. Up until today our daily weather was pretty much always this. Labels: andy, commute, costume, halloween, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 4:07 PM
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