| September 14, 2006 | More Maria Sansone Than You Can Click a Mouse at... |
|
I do a weekly radio interview about Yahoo! Buzz on KMOX in St. Louis, Missouri with the hosts of the late night Two Johns No Waiting show. One of the Johns (I believe it's John Carney) admitted to me that he has a mild crush on Maria Sansone who hosts Yahoo!s daily video show The 9. Today at the office, my colleague Eric IM'd me the URL for a blog called What Is Maria Wearing. It's pretty funny. Almost every day from July 14 to August 31 the blog's writer posted screenshots of Maria's outfits along with snarky commentary. If that's not enough Maria for you, you can check out her Flickr photos. Labels: buzz, mariasansone, radio, yahoo posted by Jess Barron @ 9:24 PM 
|
| June 1, 2006 | Relax. Look into the Camera and Smile. |
|
I think I've mentioned the weekly radio interviews I've been doing for the Yahoo! Buzz team to discuss what's popular based on the searches people are conducting on Yahoo!. The interviews are usually pretty fun. Some of my favorite radio shows of the past 2 weeks are The John Carney Show on KMOX-AM in St. Louis and The Morning Buzz on WHEB-FM in Manchester. We talk about everything from Florence Henderson to 3-armed babies. It's a blast, except sometimes waking up at 4 or 5 a.m. is a bit rough. And now we've added video to the repertoire. Heather and I worked with the awesome folks at ABC News NOW to pitch a weekly online video interview about the top Yahoo! searches. It's happening every Friday, and it's cool stuff. You should check it out. As if that wasn't enough, last Monday I ended up on MSNBC's "The Most" being interviewed by Alison Stewart about the summer's hottest concert tours as decided by the searches being condcted on Yahoo!. They had a professional at the station to put on my make-up. "How do you like to have your make-up done?" she asked me. "I don't know. What do people usually ask for?" I said, perplexed. My idea of applying make-up is a tube of bright red lipstick, and I realize that might be a bit too dramatic and high contrast for an on-camera interview about internet searches. "They usally say anything from 'natural' to 'glamorous.'" "Hmmm. Can I stay more to the natural side..." I said. "but maybe slightly glamorous?" I figured I might as well see what magic she could work. I was trying to watch what she was doing so I could learn some make-up tricks. "You look like an actress, but I can't think of her name." "Who?" No one's ever told me I look like anyone. "I'll think of it..... Marcia Cross from 'Desperate Housewives.' She has such great skin." "Hmmm." I said, wondering if this meant I also had great skin, but thinking it was probably just the red hair. Fifteen minutes later she was finished. The faux eyelashes were very glam, but I kept worrying they'd fall off when I blinked. Being interviewed for TV from a remote studio is pretty weird. You have an ear piece in your ear, and a microphone clipped to your shirt, and you usually don't see the host/journalist who is interviewing you. Instead of seeing their face, you hear their voice in your ear and you look into a big TV camera as if you are talking to another person. You smile, but it's hard to know if the other person is smiling back. The camera lens is dark and blank. I sometimes wonder if I'm keeping my shoulders back and my hair out of my eyes or if I have something caught in my teeth. Talking to the radio DJs I can wear my pajamas and sprawl out with my laptop on the couch or the floor. It's nice not to hafta worry about the faux eyelashes or if I look weird when I'm laughing. Labels: buzz, camera, make-up, msnbc, radio, tv, yahoo posted by Jess Barron @ 11:15 PM
|
| October 31, 2005 | Can You Distinguish Substance from Fluff? |
Dear fans of math and logic puzzles,  I have some questions for you to ponder. If Jess Barron was in New York City for 4 nights and slept no more than 3 hours-per-night (for a grand total of 12 hours of sleep in 3 days):1. How many fellow journalists did she exchange business cards with during the ONA conference? 2. How many cocktails did she consume? 3. How many hours did she spend in the post-midnight pre-dawn hours running around the city with co-workers and friends? 4. How many seconds was her face in lights on the enormous Reuters billboard in Times Square? I've been pondering these questions for several hours myself on the plane ride back to the West Coast, and the only answer I can determine is A LOT. If you can provide more specific or accurate answers, perhaps you should consider applying to Mensa. Or perhaps you should stop stalking me. Contrary to the popular belief of my co-workers (Dave Carpenter, for example), I do usually like to get 6-8 hours of sleep per night under normal circumstances. My body wants that much sleep, and on some greedy nights my brain would probably be happiest with 9-10 hours of sleep. But the problem I run into again and again is that there is generally so much I want to do and sleep merely gets in the way of my ability to get it all done. There are so many people love spending time with, there is so much work I want to accomplish, and there are also numerous personal projects. As a certain boy famously told me back in February 2002 "You have -- as we say in the office -- 'a tendency to overcommit.'" It's become ever-increasingly true, and it seems like I'll never stop trying to stretch the space-time continuum. My professional work-type duties while in New York included:
My dad's advice when I told him on the phone about the podcasting panel, "Just don't drink too much the night before." In addition to these professional obligations, I had planned to see my longtime friends Jeff and Lee and also possibly meet Jeremy Abbate who wrote a song called "I Wanna Be as Cool as Jessica Barron" after reading my blog without having ever met me. Of course, there were other friends and people I wanted to meet (including Brooklynite Ted Gesing who created the infamous and much-loved Nutria documentary), but I figured it might be prudent if I focused only on these three. Even though neither one of them has yet to compose a single song in my honor, I gave my scheduling priority to Jeff and Lee since they've been my dear friends for 16 and 10 years, respectively. (I met Jeff when we ran against each other for a student government position in 1989. I met Lee while traveling in Turkey in 1995.) After they've put up with me for so long, it's the least I can do. I arrived at JFK at 5p.m. on Wednesday, and called Jeff and Lee during my cabride to the hotel (the Hilton on 6th Ave). Jeff took the subway to my hotel and we hungout in my room and raided my mini bar, concocting what seemed to be some really strong gin and tonics. Though you will actually be charged on your bill for the snacks and liquor you take out of your hotel room mini fridge, breaking the plastic seal on the door still feels more like "raiding" to me. It brings me back to hotel stays during barely-chaperoned junior high and high school class trips when we would physically break the cheap locks on the mini bars and spend the evenings getting drunk on the little nip-bottles we didn't quite understand how to combine and mix. Jeff suggested the idea of eating at The Odeon in the East Village which he (and Citysearch) described as a place that had "a decadent heyday during the hard-partying '80s." Since I can hardly resist anything that's decadent, hard-partying, or from the 1980s, I announced that I was game. Lee called to say that he and his girlfriend Brett would meet us there for dinner. The food was decent. I had an heirloom tomato and goat cheese salad (my two absolute favorites) followed by an entree of broiled scallops. Jeff had a steak. We debated and discussed San Francisco versus New York City versus Los Angeles. After dinner Jeff and I went to the Stone Rose Lounge, a big airy bar inside the Time Warner Center with high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows. We drank $17 martinis until about 2 in the morning. When arrived back to my hotel room, I couldn't sleep. Throughout the evening I kept calling the West-Coast-to-East-Coast time difference the "West Coast Advantage" to my friends, because it enabled me to easily party until dawn, but as I sat propped up on pillows in bed checking email on my laptop until 4 in the morning, it was clear that it wasn't quite an advantage. Especially since I needed to be at the Associated Press office by 8:45 a.m. for an all-day Flash class to learn how to build automated slideshows with audio soundtracks. Wednesday night (umm, that'd be Thursday morning) I slept from 4:30 a.m. - 7:30 a.m., and I was still 10 minutes late for the class. Though I generally have a strong aptitude for picking up computer applications, it was quickly apparent that I was the worst student in the Flash class. I had to ask the teacher to explain everything and show me everything personally one more time. I was pathetic. And, sadly I can't honestly blame my remedial status on the lack of sleep and amount of drinking. Between timeliness, layers, keyframes and tweening, Flash is a complicated program, and it can easily explode your head. Or, at least it can easily explode my head. I wasn't familiar with being the slowest student in the class, and consequently it was a very difficult day. When I got back to my hotel room a little after 6 p.m., Lee called and told me he made 8:30 reservations at Bread Tribeca. "I made reservations for 4 of us," he said, "So you can bring one of your friends." I was starving, and I wanted to make the phone calls to see if Sam or Dave had arrived in New York yet and extend an invitation to dinner, but first I needed to close my eyes and attempt to extend myself an invitation to an hour-long nap. I set the alarm on my cell phone, took off my clothes, put on a t-shirt and curled up under the covers. As exhausted and drained as I was from a day spent inserting keyframes and creating tweens in Flash class, I closed my eyes but could not sleep. Still, I was determined to keep my head on the pillow. At 6:45 p.m. my phone rang, and I jumped out of bed to answer the call. It was my friend Sam who works on content programming for yahoo.com. He had arrived at the hotel and asked if I wanted to go grab some food. I invited him to dinner and quickly got back into bed to try to catch that elusive nap before it was too late. Twenty minutes later my phone rang again. It was Dave from the Toronto office. He had already arrived and headed out to dinner by himself, but suggested that we meet up later for drinks. I tried for a third time to nap, but quickly gave up and turned on the TV and started changing back into my clothes. Sam, Lee, Brett, and I had dinner at Bread Tribeca. The food was decent. I had cauliflower puree soup as a starter followed by linguine with clams. We also shared a few bottles of red wine. After dinner Dave called and said, "I'm at a really fun karaoke bar in the East Village called Second on Second, you should come over here." It was approaching midnight, and as much as I love karaoke -- I wanted to head back closer to the hotel. I honestly every intention of getting to bed at a sober and decent hour. With that in mind, I asked Dave to meet Sam and me at the W hotel bar because it was the only thing I could think of. During our cab ride to the W, Bill and Chris called. Bill was out with colleagues and asked me if I had talked to JB yet. I told him I hadn't but that I had left a message. I also told him that Sam and I were heading over to the W. Chris and the Yahoo! News team had just finished dinner and were wandering around Times Square near our hotel. I told them we were in a cab headed for the W. They said they might meet us there. Dave found Sam and I at the W, but by y 1:30 or 2, we hadn't seen Bill nor the Yahoo! News folks. We were wondering what to do when Bill phoned to say that he and JB were at a bar called Faces and Names near the Rihga hotel. We left the W to walk over to Faces and Names and phoned Chris and Ron on Yahoo! News to let them know. By 2:30 we were all hanging out together at Faces and Names. By 3a.m. there was talk of heading back to the hotel. JB, Chris, Sam, Dave and I started the walk back, but were immediately seduced by the bright white lights of a neighborhood pizza place. JB ordered us a pie to go, then he and Dave went into the bodega nextdoor to pick up some beer while we waited for the pizza to be ready. We carried brown bags of pizza and beer back to the hotel and decided to continue the party in JB's room. I headed to my room to get Bocce since she had been cooped up in the hotel all day. We ate pizza and drank beer until around 4 a.m. when we were kidnapped and gagged by guerilla marketers for Yahoo! News' Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone. Bocce liked the pizza, but didn't necessarily enjoy her time as a walking Hot Zone advertisement. At 4:30a.m. Sam and Dave headed to bed. JB, Chris, and I took the dog outside for a walk, and Chris snapped action photos of me picking up Bocce's poop. Can you say poop-arazzi? I thought you could. After all that excitement, Bocce and I decided it was time for bed. The next day I attended some panels and prepared for my own. It went fairly well (you can listen to a portion of my talk), though afterward I wished I had talked more about content for podcasts than mostly just focusing on the how-tos. After the ONA-sponsored cocktail hour where I met Mark Fiore, some folks from CBS News, Anj from Yahoo!s Toronto office and many others, we all headed back to our rooms to freshen up and then bundle up and agreed to meet up at 8:30 at South's in Tribeca where we would have some more drinks before our 9:45 dinner reservation at 66. While back in my hotel room, I decided to don my Jackie Kennedy outfit which I had packed in case an inkling of Halloween spirit hit me. Post-cocktail-hour I felt it was a great idea to wear a bright pink suit and pillbox hat even though none of my other compatriots were dressed in costume. This is how I roll. Lee and Brett met Sam, Dave, Anj and I at South's. Then Bill showed up carrying an unopened container of marshmallow Fluff that he said he had brought for me. "I hope you're not implying that our Yahoo! Broadband Portal content is fluff!" I said giggling and grabbing the container of Fluff. After a while, the Yahoo! News crew (Neil, Ron, Oren, Chris, Sarah, and Peter) arrived at South's, and we all walked down the block to 66. Jeff and his boyfriend Daniel were sitting in the lounge drinking cocktails when we arrived. Sam -- who was just meeting Jeff for the first time -- commented: "It was obvious that Jeff had known you for years because when you walked into this chichi restaurant dressed as Jackie Kennedy and carrying a giant container of Fluff, he wasn't the slightest bit surprised." At 10p.m., we found out the hard way that NYC reservations for big groups rarely start on time. At 10:30 p.m. we were drinking ginger margaritas in the lounge area and noshing on appetizers as we waited for our back room to be ready. By 11 p.m. (I think) we were seated for dinner at three tables in our own room. I was seated at the end of a table surrounded by my NYC friends. Daniel and Jeff were on my left, Lee and Brett on my right. Before any of the food started arriving on the tables, Bill instigated the idea that he and I would open the container of Fluff and offer it around to the other tables. "Would you care for some fluff?" I said as I did my best 1960s stewardess impression. Our hard work and dedication paid off. We were triumphant. We managed to get nearly every person to try a spoonful of Fluff -- and several brave souls plunged their fingers right into the container. Others used chopsticks. The barbarous and uncouth "Fluff course" of the meal mortified my black-clad NYC friends. Living in San Francisco for five years (and going to Burning Man five times) definitely enhanced my already overactive capacity for absurdity. If a group of twenty of my co-workers are giggling and sticking their fingers into their mouths -- in my mind it was a great ice-breaker. It was the least I could do. Dinner ended sometime after midnight. Lee, Brett, and Daniel headed home and many of my co-workers decided to call it a night, but Jeff, Anj, Dave, Oren, Sarah, Ron, Chris, Mic, Peter and I ventured to Second on Second. We arrived, got ourselves some drinks and put our name in for karaoke to do Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me." Unfortunately the stack of song requests on the KJ's podium was enormous and we left to head back to the hotel before our name was called. This time the late night after-party was in Ron and Chris' rooms. We drank beers from the mini bars and chatted as music played from Chris' laptop. He played Echo and the Bunnymen and The Smiths at my request. The TV was on playing an endless loop of Larry King interviewing commentators about the Libby indictment with the volume turned all the way down. It seemed certain that Chris and I will become fast friends. And Anj and me too. Even though we just met -- she and I were having a great time hanging out together. Sam, Dave and I are already pretty tight after working together for over 2 years. (Dave and I have even partied in London together on a work trip...) On Saturday I attended a bunch more panels. My favorite was Digital Visual Storytelling, though the Saturday afternoon panel "Journalism 2010: Who's leading the way?" (which our own Neil Budde sat as a panelist on) was also quite interesting with its now-seemingly-obligatory and impassioned blogger versus "dinosaur" bashing. Afterward we went to the Reuters-sponsored cocktail party. Then we headed to a bar in the East Village, where we smoked flavoured tobacco out of a giant hookah. For dinner we went to Il Bagatto (on Jeff's excellent suggestion). I ate with Daniel and Jeff while unfortunately my starving co-workers (Sam, Ron, Anj and Chris) and their entourage of young journalism students were kept waiting at the bar for almost an hour (unacceptable!). Luckily, they made lemonaide from lemons and befriended the perky bartender (she gave Jeff and Daniel three olives each in their martinis!) After dinner we wandered around the East Village spotting (and accosting) folks in Halloween costumes. There were even more Ali G's this year than last year (this Yahoo! one was my favorite). Then we went to KGB for some drinks amid Soviet paraphernalia. We got back to the hotel around 2:30 and I took Bocce for a walk and then went to bed. I seriously needed some sleep. On Sunday morning I packed and checked out of the hotel, and took a cab to Park Slope Brooklyn to visit Jeff and Daniel at their apartment and meet their Great Dane puppy Ace. Ace is beautiful. He's sleek and gray. He's also HUGE! He weighs 125-pounds and is still growing. Jeff and Daniel say he will soon be 50 pounds larger. Unfortunately it was difficult-if-not-impossible for 12-pound middle-aged Bocce to play with a teenage dog who was ten times(!) her size. Jeff and Daniel made us brunch of pumpkin pancakes, eggs, bacon, and Daniel's homemade (from scratch!) pumpkin pie. It was awesome. And then I got in a car to head back to JFK to fly home. I'm sorry I didn't meet my personal songwriter Jeremy Abbate, but I'm psyched that I ended up getting my photo displayed in lights on the huge Reuters screen in Times Square (thanks Sarah!) P.S. Almost all photos I'm linking to in this post were taken by Chris Sarah, Ron, and Jeff as I left my camera behind this time... Labels: bocce, chris, costume, dog, jeff, karaoke, lee, nyc, ona, photos, radio, slang, travel, yahoo posted by Jess Barron @ 11:20 AM
|
| September 16, 2005 | We Get Dicky in the Studio |
|
Oh yeah, as a postscript to that last post -- I forgot to mention that tonight at 7p.m. PST Dicky (of Burning Man 2005's The DICKY Box)will be joining us in the studio for an interview on She Said, She Said. You should tune in on 87.9 FM in SF or on the internets at: http://www.piratecatradio.com/site/listen.html We already have a few questions in mind, do you have any more suggestions? Labels: burningman, radio posted by Jess Barron @ 4:35 PM
|
| September 13, 2005 | Gavin Admits He Likes Us |
|
Check this out: Our cute, hot mayor and #1 fan Gavin Newsom was caught on camera, and he admitted he liked the idea of having a pirate TV station in SF (Pirate Cat TV 13, of which I'm a founding member along with Monkey and Junglebook). Watch this quick video clip (shot by Junglebook on Saturday at the Fulton Street Fair) where Gavin comes out of the closet as a Pirate Cat fan. As if that's not enough magical multimedia surprise for you -- you should download this mash-up made by Pirate Cat Radio DJ The Rat. It's called "Bang On," and it mixes together "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" by Nancy Sinatra (which you may remember from the 'Kill Bill' soundtrack) with "Dream On" by Aerosmith and "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans. I think it's hauntingly beautiful. Labels: gavinnewsom, mashup, piratecatradio, pirateradio, radio, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 11:29 PM
|
| June 24, 2005 | We're in a pickle, a Podcastpickle |
|
Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm completely obsessed with pickles. So, it brings me great pleasure and salty goodness to announce that our fine pirate radio show She Said, She Said is now listed in Podcastpickle. Their site makes it easy to listen to our shows, so go over there and take a bite of our pickle. Labels: pickle, pirate radio, podcast, radio posted by Jess Barron @ 5:24 PM
|
| November 24, 2004 | As C(r)ool as Jessica Barron |
|
"Before we take this ride and let it slide Into the cracks where fall and winter collide. I surrender all my gall in a song of modern love. Remember you're the one who summoned me above any other kind." --The Shins, "Girl on the Wing" "Your blog is pretty much becoming a commercial for your radio show," Jeff teased me on Saturday night. "Well, my radio show doesn't make my wrists ache and my fingers go numb," I said, although Jeff knew that Friday night I had been talking on-air even I was getting over a cold and my sore throat felt raw. *whine* The radio show is just a sparkly new medium for me, so for a little while it will consume more attention. Filling two hours each week is not easy, so I think about the show a lot. And it also seems like it's working out that the 2 hours during the show is one of the only time-slots I have available (i.e. non-working) to talk on the phone to my friends and family. On the October 29 show, I was dressed-up like Jackie Kennedy and I interviewed my dad on-air about what early voting was like in Florida for the U.S. Presidential Election. And then I spoke with Lana and Mary from Houston, Texas where they (well mostly Lana) voiced the opinion that Theresa Heinz-Kerry would be a sexier first lady than Jackie was. I wasn't buying it. I talked about Laura's bush, and wondered aloud if she gets it waxed. And -- more importantly -- does she get it Brazilian-style? In 2004, America wants a well-waxed, well-behaved Stepford First-Wife more than ever. The election was difficult to swallow, and for me it was work -- covering the news for Yahoo's broadband portals. The 4a.m.-midnight shift killed me this time, and Allyson steered the ship until we put it to rest at 2a.m. Then I woke up in the Sunnyvale Sheraton (across the street from Yahoo! HQ) to hear that Kerry was conceding. I went online to find that Allyson was already setting up our live video coverage of the concession speech. Speaking of Allyson -- she is having a very, very rough month. First, Noah, one of her beloved cats fell suddenly very ill and she needed to make the decision to put him to sleep on Election Day morning, as if pulling an almost-all-nighter covering the news wasn't stressful and horrific enough. When we were travelling in London a few days after the election to hold an Editorial Conference with our British and Canadian co-editors, Allyson found out that her grandmother is dying. This week she has flown home to help her mom keep a vigil at the bedside. And on top of those two awful events, when we were in London we went out to see Jerry Springer: The Opera which was not a win with Allyson, driving her to the point of exclaiming (in a sing-song musical voice in a restaurant) "What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fucky, fucky, fuck?" And that is exactly the question I'm asking to myself (in sing-song musical voice in my head) right now. It's like 4a.m. and I'm on my laptop in my bed at The Standard in Hollywood. I have the door to my balcony open, and I'm watching the cars zoom by below on Sunset Blvd. But completely foreign thing is happening to me -- I can't sleep. And this is happening to a girl who famously fell asleep during an Anthrax and Ozzy Osbourne show at the Worcester Centrum in 1988. The same girl who has fallen asleep at meetings in front of CEOs. Yes, *ahem* that would be me. This sleepless thing started in London two weeks ago when we flew across 8 hours' worth of time zones. In London, I realized that that foggy "Lost in Translation" feeling doesn't require a language barrier -- just a mood of complete displacement, detachment. And I've got that, if you're looking for it. It felt like I was falling into the cracks where fall and winter collide. Or maybe it was the time warp of travelling across so many hours of international fate lines. Whatever caused it, I had trouble getting to sleep, even with Ambien and the Ativan. And when I finally fell asleep I couldn't wake up. Ask Allyson. She was sweet enough to give me additional wake up calls, which was the only way I managed to get up because I would hang-up on the automated calls sent to me from the front desk. This is what I felt like. And I was too busy thinking and looking at things and taking pictures to sleep. Now it feels that way too. It's overwhelming. There's just too much going on in the world. All these people saying all this stuff and doing so many things. And so so so much to look at. I drove down here yesterday from SF to tend to a crop of my friends. There's Jeff, who flew into SF on Saturday (to see me) from NYC and then down to LA on Sunday (to see Hillary, Chris, Paul). There's Selena who's newly-engaged and looking to buy a house in La-la land. And there's Kim who has left Hawaii to open a hipster nail salon on Melrose that already had a write-up in Daily Candy. And August is flying down tomorrow. I mean today. And Andy has invited us to his parents' house in San Marino. And I'm only here for 3 more days, I think. And, if that's not enough -- there's a guy who's written and recorded a song called "I Wanna Be as Cool as Jessica Barron." I am not even kidding. Someone emailed me the mp3. The song is actually not too bad, and the lyrics are pretty smart, semi-disdainful but not as scathing as they probably could be. You know that I'm totally gonna play it on my radio show... How could I resist? According to the info attached to the mp3 it was written/performed by Jeremy Abbate (who may be the same guy who wrote this piece for McSweeney's). I love how Googling makes anyone an amateur detective. Kinda like how the internet and computers and digital tools enable all of us to be publishers, editors, writers, DJs, photographers, videographers, and musicians distributing our songs around the world. Seriously, check it out for yourself. posted by Jess Barron @ 4:45 AM
|
| October 14, 2004 | The Good Times Are Killing Me |
|
"The good times are killing me. Jaws clenched tight we talked all night, oh but what the hell did we say?" --Modest Mouse, "The Good Times Are Killing Me" Tonight, Friday (Oct 14) from 6-8p.m. Pacific Time I will begin my radio show called "She Said, She Said" (which Allyson might later be joining me in co-hosting -- I have my fingers crossed) on Pirate Cat radio. Tune in tonight on 87.9 FM in San Francisco. You can listen on the web at: http://www.piratecatradio.com/site/listen.html. My show is mostly a talk show about sex, pop culture, and news events, but I will also play some music. Tonight August will be joining me and we'll be playing songs by I Am The World Trade Center (who I started blathering online about back in 2001), the decemberists, Bright Eyes, The Dears, belle & sebastian (of course) and others. Feel free to email me your music/talk topic requests. Also, I will be giving away free tickets to see SoCal devil punks Deep Eynde at El Rio on Sunday Oct 16. Two weekends ago, on October 2nd August and I joined Pirate Cat DJs Monkey Man and Flood Damage, broadcasting live from SF's first-ever Love Parade. Here's a pic of us standing in front of the DJ table. Flood Damage and I interviewed the revellers, and pondered on-air why SF couldn't just have a "Hate Parade"? Here's a pic Mici took of me interviewing a guy on stilts. We asked people to tell us what they hated, and most people just said "George Bush." (We were all wearing t-shirts made by Mici and Monkey that said "I hate George Bush.") A few brave folks gave a bit more colorful answers like "e-tards" and "anti-drug laws." It's funny how when you offer a microphone to people and tell them they can say anything on the air, they will mostly shy away. Here's my photoset from the event. By the way, this Saturday (Oct. 16) from 4-6p.m. PT you should listen to Punkture, hosted by Flood Damage. This week Flood will be interviewing President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (and former-SF-mayorial-candidate and resident hottie), Matt Gonzalez. If you're looking for some uncensored underground political commentary, I recommend you tune in to 87.9 FM in SF. (I will be tuning in online from Boston.) To tune in online, go to http://www.piratecatradio.com/site/listen.html. To see a schedule of all the shows on Pirate Cat radio, go to: http://www.piratecatradio.com/site/dj.html. So, where the hell have I been? Sadly, I had to take a 5-month break from blogging due to tendonitis/repetitive stress injury in my wrists which was really bad due to my crazy work schedule. I did several months of physical therapy on my hands and wrists, and learned that I need to cut-down my daily hours spent at a computer: 14-hours per day just isn't healthy. I remember years ago, reading Justin Hall's post about the dangers of repetitive stress due to coding HTML, but despite blogging and working on the web heavily since 1996, I had honestly never had a problem with my hands until last year. My mom, who is a waitress and florist, had surgery for carpal tunnel on her right hand last December -- and she said it hasn't made her hand 100% better. So, because I make my living through typing and coding and copying and pasting, I need to take care of my damn hands. Of course, I was still working at the computer approximately 10 hours each day for my jobby-job, but in addition to ditching my blog I also cut down on personal emailing and IM-ing whenever I could. (This explains why you haven't heard from me via email or IM in months.) And honestly, there has been more stuff than ever to write about. I've been to a power tools drag race, The Phoenix Festival up in Washington, Simone and David's wedding at Fairytale Land in Oakland (August and I went dressed-up as Alice and the White Rabbit), and we went camping in Yosemite with Owen and Bethany, and much more. My friends have also all been impressing me with all the stuff they've been up to, for instance: * Mindy drove cross-country to move from SF to NYC and is currently spending 30 days travelling with her mom in Croatia. * JP contacted me (after a year spent out-of-touch) and he is living in Texas he sounded like he is doing well. * Esther rode her bike down the coast from Oregon to California, and when she arrived in San Francisco we all partied (a bit too heavily) down at the Zeitgeist. * Missy published a book that was in the Top 10 on Amazon.com for much of the summer. * Lana finished her two-year stint in Teach For America, and found herself a job at an HIV/AIDS outreach center in Houston, TX. * Allyson and Bryan met Dave Mathews (Bryan's all-time favorite musician) while they were working up in Seattle on the Farm Aid show. * Heather and Eugene decided to leave SF and pack-up and move to my favorite city on the East Coast: Providence, Rhode Island. (I loved living there back in 1998, and would seriously consider living there again.) All of their friends in SF were teary-eyed saying goodbye, but August an I might be seeing them this weekend in Providence. (We're flying to Boston on the red-eye tonight after the radio show to visit my mom.) * Jeff spent 2 weeks in France with Lance and Daniel * Andy took a new super-secret job on the Yahoo! Search team. (He can't tell you what it is!) * Jen left Yahoo! (and the financial glory of stock options) to attend a graduate prgram at Berkeley in Information Science. So far, she says it's pretty freakin tough. * Mici is studying like mad for her LSAT test to apply to Law Schools for next year. * Selena and Carlos got engaged * Ellen and Jarrod got engaged * Leanne and John got a kitten * Owen and Bethany decided to get an apartment and move in together. (This means Ric and I will sadly be losing our fabulous housemate, and are now looking for someone to live in our dilapidatad Victorian without any gingerbread. A replacement Owen: a "faux-en," if you will...) And by the way, I haven't eaten anything in three days! After hearing Bryan talk about the two three-day fasts he completed over the past few months, and noticing that he seems so incredibly healthy now -- both Allyson and I decided to try it, and we are both fasting RIGHT NOW. I'm on day 3 of my fast, and I can't believe I've gone three full days without any food or beverages other than water. (The only thing I'm consuming with calories in it is a drink of hot water mixed with two tablespoons of molasses and a fresh-squeezed lemon 3 times per day.) Allyson is on Day 1 of the fast. It's pretty crazy-sounding, but I think it will help us make positive changes in our lives/habits. The caffeine withdrawal was the hardest thing for me. It was terrible. I had a headache behind my eyes for 10 hours yesterday. I couldn't take any painkillers, because I was worried about upsetting my delicate and empty stomach, so I just rode through the pain. But it sure sucked. I'm now considering cutting caffeine out of my diet completely. That might be blasphemy since my workplace (Yahoo! in Sunnyvale) has coffee bars with free lattes and espresso all day long. The three days' of fasting fasting has had rough parts (the caffeine withdrawal, a bit of lightheadedness, and some nausea), but right now I feel FANTASTIC. I'll break my fast with a banana tomorrow morning at 7a.m. ET when I wake up from my red-eye flight from SF to Boston. That's right -- after we finish tonight's radio show, August and Bocce and I are heading to SFO to hop on a plane to Boston to visit my mom. Labels: photos, piratecatradio, radio, sanfrancisco, sf posted by Jess Barron @ 1:11 PM
|