| November 3, 2008 | Dia de Los Muertos 2008 |
 Selena, Carlos, Declan, Chris and I painted our faces and went to Hollywood Forever Cemetery for Dia de Los Muertos a.k.a. Day of the Dead on Saturday, Nov 1, 2008.After we spent 30 minutes or so painting up our faces and Declan's, Carlos looked at the paint box, and saw that it was made in China, and we immediately worried about all the toxic chemicals we had caked on our faces... We washed the face paint off of Declan, but decided to keep it on ourselves. After walking around at Hollywood Forever, we had a delicious Mexican meal (and spicy chili pepper margaritias!) at Loteria Grill in Hollywood Check out my photoset on flickr. Labels: holidays, la, losangeles, selena posted by Jess Barron @ 11:10 AM 
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| September 22, 2005 | Off to Vail |
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Here are some photos from Selena's wedding up in Portland last weekend. Right now, I'm headed to SFO to fly to Vail for Ellen's wedding. Well, I'm flying to Denver, renting a car and driving up to Vail, but that's just too many words. This time, I'm a bridesmaid. (It's my first stint at this, so wish me luck.) Labels: bridesmaid, ellen, photos, selena, travel, vail, wedding posted by Jess Barron @ 9:43 AM
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| September 13, 2000 | Dour Day for Scour |
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The evening I returned from Burning Man (I arrived in Los Angeles at 11:30 PM after unpacking my campmates' trucks in Sacramento and then driving for 7 or so hours), I had a full tape of messages on my answering machine. Among them was a message from my boss, Lawrence. He said, "Jess, it's really important that you call me. I have some news, and it isn't good. You can call me at any time." Well, I thought to myself, they obviously layed off the web production department, and my friends Selena, John, Steve, Lawrence, Arlene, Tim, and Michele and I no longer have jobs. Before I allowed myself to get too upset, I decided to call Lawrence. It was around midnight, but he said it was all right to call, so I did. As it turned out, Scour had not only layed off the production department, they had layed off *everyone*. Engineering team, business development, ad sales, everyone. Only the 12 founders will be staying onboard to try to keep the company afloat through the lawsuit over peer-to-peer file-sharing. Apparently, some big investors they were expecting to receive funding from, pulled out due to the lawsuit. (I guess they didn't want to invest millions of their dollars in a company that might be shut down in the near future due to a federal ruling. Go figure.) So, on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, Scour's founders realized that they had completely run out of money and needed to let everyone go. I had missed the emotional "suprise" company meeting on Friday afternoon where everyone learned that they were being let go with only one week's severance pay because I was out braving the dust storms at Burning Man. The weird thing is, I didn't freak out too much about hearing this. I suppose I'm getting used to my start-up jobs just disappearing overnight without much warning. CollegeBeat went under in the fall of 1998. WildWeb went under in the fall of 1999. So, I guess I'm just embracing the fly-by-night "anything can happen" mentality. Labels: scour, selena, startup, web, wildweb posted by Jess Barron @ 10:23 PM
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| July 11, 2000 | 4th of July South of the Border |
 Out of a desire for spontaneous travel to someplace we had never been, Selena, John and I went to Mexico City for the 4th of July weekend. We experienced the Mexican elections and the ensuing celebration first-hand. Vicente Fox won, overthrowing the PRI party which has ruled Mexico for over 70 years. When the results were being announced, a large crowd gathered at the Angel of the Revolution statue, waving flags and singing. Cars driving down Paseo de la Reform were beeping out little tunes with their horns, and the drivers were waving flags out the windows and giving the two-fingered "V" for victory sign. There wasn't any violence, just people cheering and celebrating. It ended up being quite an inspirational experience; we had never seen a whole city so excited over politics. Remember, we live in Los Angeles where violent riots break out when the Lakers win a basketball game. We also spent a day climbing the pre-Aztec pyramids at Teotihuacan -- which I am proud to say I climbed all the way up despite my fear of heights and my impractical (but-ever stylish) platform sandals. Check out the photoset. Labels: la, losangeles, selena, travel posted by Jess Barron @ 7:18 PM
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| June 11, 2000 | Dying to Disco |
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Barry's Boot camp is killing me. My entire body was in pain all weekend from Barry's "Disco Friday." Eighty push-ups, hundreds of squats, and almost a thousand crunches -- and let's not even talk about the running. Barry can tell if you're doing less than the required speed during the sprints. I know what it is like to die to disco music. There are muscles in my hands and wrists that are crying out as I type this. On Saturday Jeff and I got to Santa Monica by 9:30 a.m. and then we rollerbladed north of the pier to the end of the bike path. Then we went back south through Venice. Afterwards Jeff incited me to jump in the ocean, so we changed into our bathing suits on the middle of the beach (by holding up towels around each other while we were changing). We went up to our chests in the water and played in the waves, which were huge and kept knocking me down. We were giggling the whole time. Jeff got a bit of a sunburn. He's been away in New York for the past three months, and in comparison to me and Paul he looks very pale. (Jeff and I have both always been extremely pale with our freckle-y Irish skin, but now when I look at myself I am shocked to see that I am tan. I am no longer officially a goth girl. Sorry folks.)  Last Wednesday night, Jeff and Hillary and I went to the El Rey to see Sleater-Kinney and Bratmobile. Selena and Steve were there too. The show kicked ass. Bratmobile opened, and they started with "Love Thing" off of their 1993 album 'Pottymouth.' It begins with the singer Allison Wolfe screaming in a Valley girl accent, "Admit it, innocent little girls turn you on, don't they?" JP put that song on a mix tape he made me back in our Vassar days. That song rocks.Sleater-Kinney were incredible. The crowd was bouncing around completely ecstatic. They played "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone," and "You're No Rock'n'Roll Fun" and they did an inspired cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's song "Fortunate Son" (you know, the song that goes:  "It ain't me. It ain't me. I ain't no Senator's son./ It ain't me. It ain't me. I ain't no fortunate one.") The one song I really wanted them to play was "Good Things" off of 'Call the Doctor.' I didn't think they would play it, and they didn't give it to us in the first encore, but I was thrilled when they came back for a second encore and started it with "Good Things." I was pretty close to the stage, so I took some photos of Corin and Carrie. Labels: jeff, la, losangeles, music, selena posted by Jess Barron @ 6:47 PM
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| June 4, 2000 | The Busier the Better |
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If you were wondering and waiting in antipication of why my car went "Boom!" last weekend, here is the official answer: It turned out that my pretty blue Beetle's battery exploded. Alas, it wasn't covered under the warranty, because as the mechanic guy eloquently and existentially put it: "sometimes you get a bad battery." But, it's all fixed now -- and I suppose my experience with the explosion could've been a lot worse. Like if I had driven to Tijuana for Memorial Day weekend. I will just file the whole car incident under "How to lose $400 without really trying." Grrr! I really need to remember to sign up for AAA. Selena tells me that membership includes a bail bond. Apparently, in the event that you are ever thrown into the clinker, those Triple A peeps will front your bail. That's pretty sweet.) The last few days have been some of my favorite since I've moved to Los Angeles. I've been feeling so good, and doing things that I'm enjoying so deeply. I guess it began with Tai Chi on Thursday morning. I knew I needed to try lots of new activities to help myself to not focus on Lee and to also get me to start trying all the things I wished I could learn. And that very morning Selena came in to work with a book of all kinds of courses. We started looking through it together and decided we wanted to take: belly dancing, bartending, tai chi, yoga, self-hypnosis, drum lessons, conversational Japanese, and DHTML. We had to narrow it down a bit, so that we could focus properly and so that we'd have *some* free-time left. We decided to save belly dancing and conversational Japanese for later. But then we decided that we're going to join Barry's Bootcamp too. We're starting that tomorrow, and we're going to be doing it every day at 6:45 AM. Yes, that's AM. Wish me luck. It may just be too hardcore for the likes of me. We'll see. So, Selena and I started going to a Tai Chi class last Thursday night, and it really helped me to get over the negative funk I was in. It takes so much concentration to learn the movements, that I was able to get completely out of my head for the three hours while we were in class. It's one of the only activities I've found that is completely relaxing for me. It eradicates all of my anxious feelings. Now every morning and night I keep practicing the postures we were taught, and I can't wait to learn more this week. I wonder if yoga will be this good. I can only hope. On Saturday, I had breakfast with Adam (who is the singer for Timonium, a darkly ethereal band I might go see play this Tuesday night at the Silver Lake Lounge, but I'm not sure because that's the night that Jeff comes back from NYC). And then we went to Rhino Records (which, as it turns out, is only about two blocks from my house). We spent a few hours there, hearing new music on the listening stations and also listening to older CDs in the used section. Adam told me that he thought I would like a British band called Broadcast, and when I listened to their CD "The Noise Made By People," I fell in love. I bought that CD and also Dimitri from Paris' mix CD "A Night at the Playboy Mansion." I also bought a few used CDs (Laika's "Sounds of the Satellites" and Shudder to Think's soundtrack to the film "First Love, Last Rites.") After Adam left, I went up onto the roof of my apartment building and listened to music on my discman for a few hours. I mostly focused on the Travis CD "The Man Who." It's a great album. My favorite song is the first track "Writing to Reach You" (yeah, it's probably not surprising that a web writing person would relate to that one, huh?) I just love the opening lyrics: Everyday I wake up and it's Sunday This morning I went bowling in the Valley with Ray and Selena. I learned how to bowl the real way, (as opposed to my old method of just rolling the ball with both hands in the between-the-legs stance). After bowling we had coffee at Buzz in West Hollywood. And then I went to visit JP, and we had a great time. After that I went to see Robert Mapplethorphe's controversial exhibit "The Perfect Moment" at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Labels: beetle, jp, la, losangeles, music, selena posted by Jess Barron @ 10:16 PM
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| May 19, 2000 | My Sudden Gwen Stefani Obsession |
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Let's get this straight, I have never been a huge fan of No Doubt's music. But the other night when I was out with Selena and JP to see Tsar play at a Hollywood club called Vinyl, those two pop junkies (Selena and JP) started talking about Gwen Stefani. "Why won't anyone marry poor Gwen Stefani?!" one of them said. I listened as they discussed things I knew nothing about, things I had maybe heard about but had allowed to fall under my radar as pop tidbits about things that I just wasn't interested in. They excitedly discussed No Doubt's video for "A Simple Kind of Life," and how everything in the video is about how Gwen wants to get married and have a baby, but that none of her boyfriends were at all down with that. The men in the video all run away from her and look at her like she has three heads. It's also weird because Gwen used to date Tony (the Indian guy in No Doubt), but they broke up and are still friends, but as JP pointed out -- you need to notice that the baby Gwen picks up at the end of the video looks like he is Indian.
Labels: camille, jp, music, selena, video, women posted by Jess Barron @ 5:44 PM
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| March 20, 2000 | My In-box's Loss Will Be Your Gain |
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On the orders of the IS guy at my work (Scour.com), I'm cleaning out my Microsoft Outlook in-box, because apparently I'm taking up way too much space on the company mail server. I hate to delete stuff; I save everything. It's a disease. I'm an electronic pack-rat. I guess I'm just afraid that for some reason I'm going to need that e-mail from December 16, 1999 telling me about cool myCaster online radio stations or the one from December 14, 1999 sending me to Chickenhead's Geriatric Erotica site. My In-Box's loss will be your gain. I will now post some of the zany URLs that my friends and co-workers have sent me over the past 4 months: posted by Jess Barron @ 5:55 PM
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