Lizzeh’s Neighborhood

First, I want to state that I have this lofty goal to eliminate my credit card dependency. However, my compulsion to support certain 'why-are-these-people-still-under-the-radar?' musicians @ established music venues makes it quite difficult.

Tuesday night when I saw Ari Hest play at the Hotel Cafe I knew the online ticket purchase was worth it-- as are all my purchases, of course. The opener from Ireland, Declan O'Rourke, told the audience that this was his first time playing (or first tour playing?) in America. He had a great sound and one novelty song stands out. It's about an old black crow and it was highly entertaining because there was a fun song introduction and then part of the chorus was him cawing. Not counting that particular song, to me, live, his style was like an Irish version of Ari's so it shouldn't be too surprising if he gains a large following here fairly quickly.

"I can make you move against your will. Don’t it make you sad to lose control?" Broken Voices by Ari Hest

Ari was fantastic with his band, and played a bunch of songs from his early material and CD The Break In, plus newer songs from his project, 52, which included my favorite song, Broken Voices. At some point Amy Kuney came up to sing Cranberry Lake which she co-wrote and sang in a duet with Ari. That was great because I've been wanting to see her live for a while now too.

Ari's vocal ability is amazing. His tone ranges in his songs from baritone to falsetto with impressively flawless lung control. It bowls me over me every time I see him live.

I ran into @KristinJuel during the evening which is always refreshing. Sitting with her I discovered my new favorite bass player, Rob Calder, who has an interesting way of dancing to the beat while he plays.  Very entertaining to watch!

The only downer of the night is that there's a rule that non-flash photography is allowed in Hotel Cafe, but video recording is not. Kristin got busted for taking video with her digi cam at some point. That was too bad but at least they didn't confiscate her camera. She had also taken a bunch of still photos. Overall, it was a good night for live music.

"You're the song that I sing that I don't need to practice." from In the Creases by Amber Rubarth.
Tomorrow is Amber Rubarth's show @ The Mint-- http://themintla.com is their site. I refuse to hyperlink to it because it has music that auto-plays and defaults to the loudest volume setting. Way to facilitate an obnoxious user experience.

I love Amber's lyrical ambition and like Ari, she is now based in NY so I try to see her whenever she's playing here. Can't wait to hear her new songs and old ones again that I like. A lot.

Go forth and fill your libraries with media.

Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.

~daisy

I received an invite this morning for Google Wave and with no idea what to do with it. So, I'm watching a Google video on what the intended use for Google Wave is. The video is an hour and twenty minutes long. *smh*

At first glance it seems like a glorified e-mail account, which is what I thought G-Mail was.

I don't know if I like the 'view text while typing' feature being a default setting. I'm a bit of a messy typist. I also wonder about the implications of data mining for users of this service. I am mostly concerned about how Google is planning to use, archive, catalog, and ultimately monetize this potential goldmine of user generated content (UGC) with a EULA (by using this product you consent to *anything the company wants to do*) agreement. I'm going to give it a chance and see what happens.

G-Wave users, what are your initial thoughts?

I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.

I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.

Cheers,

daisy

Nano '09 participant

begin
stop
get behind
assess

begin
catch up
stop
get behind

begin again
stop
get really behind
begin again

begin
once more
don't give up
end.

If you're doing National Novel Writing Month in November, feel free to add me to your buddy list! I'm KwaS on the nanowrimo site.

Bad news. As many of you have probably noticed, the Amazon Conduit was not fixed in the last week's release. Unfortunately, there was an undetected bug that is preventing the conduit from working.

We are working on this bug fix and hope to have the Conduit back up and running this week.

I will keep you posted.

Thank you for being so patient.

~daisy

mmm... Chocolate. Last Sunday was the 3rd Annual LA Chocolate Salon in Pasadena. I've finally come out of the sugar shock enough to share my experience but my hands are still too shaky to type it all out, figuratively speaking. So I'm going to do the next best thing.

Here's A Salon of Indulgence, Luxury and Chocolate, an article from the Occidental paper, Oxyweekly, which details the event in a way that was fairly close to my experience.

If you missed this event, the next Chocolate Salon is in San Francisco. Chocolate lovers planning to be in the Bay Area in March, don't miss that one. There will be as many as 50 chocolatiers in attendance to LA's 35-- which had one more sample table than this chocolate fan could handle.

Blog Action Day

6 comments

Blog Action Day is every October 15th, when blogger are asked to post something about a single issue to show our strength and conviction as an online community. It's a great way to feel connected to the greater good, and the participation of so many bloggers to support the world's leading non-profit organizations is something you can do to help, right now. By blogging today, you're supporting some of the world's leading non-profits and sharing your voice for change.

This year's topic is climate change, and we'd love to read your thoughts on the topic. If you participate, leave us a link to your post in the comments, so we know to check out your post!

Go to www.blogactionday.org to learn more, get a badge for your blog showing your participation, and see some ideas for your post on climate change.

Can't wait to read your posts!

~ daisy

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Barbara Ehrenreich

Read a book in a week or less. Read at least two books this month.
That will be twice as many as I read last month.
It is an attainable goal.

This weekend I finally had a chance to replace my (stolen) library card from summer. All my cash was spent at the previous stop-- wait for it-- the cleaners, and this library doesn't take credit cards. I didn't have enough pocket change to pay for the new card, but the clerk said I could take my replacement card now and pay next time, which was a pleasant surprise.
I stopped at the reference desk and inquired if the book, Nickel and Dimed, was available. The library's two copies had already been checked out. An extra copy will be sent to the branch so I can check it out by next weekend. This works out nicely because I have another book (a YA novel) to read while I'm waiting. Also, I found out that they take magazine donations. I have a few dozen that would be better off donated than chucked into the recycle bin.

We can do it!

I'm heading over to Venice Beach for the Annual Coastal Cleanup Day, but first I'm going to talk about picking up others' trash.

I started going to these beach clean up events back in elementary school when I was a girl scout; The big takeaway from my particular troop was always leave a place cleaner than I've found it.

This means, on a hike pick up little bits of trash on the trail that I can see and safely reach. At the beach, dispose of all my trash and look around for some extra that I didn't leave. As a guest in someone's home, I should offer to help the host clean up. A gracious host takes responsibility for cleaning up after me, their guest, and a big part of being a good guest is being a tidy guest.  And so on. As a result I've learned to dislike lounging in trashy environments, but having a low tolerance for trash is a bit of a two-edged sword.

It bothers me when eating at a public place and the only table available is covered with napkins and straw paper from the last diners. If I choose to sit there to eat, then I essentially inherit their trash and I will feel like a jerk if I get up at the end of my meal and leave their trash behind.

I also worked in a movie theatre when I was a teen and I can tell you that there are likely rats in every theatre that serves food. Though ushers don't actually get paid specifically to clean up trash after attendees they end up having to do damage control lest the rats go on a brazen binge amongst the drink cups and half-eaten snack bags left on the floor and in the seats when the show is over. Most people don't think anything of leaving their trash around when they leave. Without any intervention from ushers it wouldn't be a shock for rodents to eventually start to crawl along the seats during the show.  So props to ushers for picking up others' trash and keeping the rats at bay (thus preserving the environment).  Think about that next time you put your popcorn bucket on the floor.

I get that it's not a big deal leaving just one bucket on the floor, but perhaps the person in your seat before you left nachos under their seat and the person before that left some sticky candy under the seat in front of you. Multiply this by 300 seats and it all adds up to giving rodents an incentive to enjoy the trashy feast all around you and who really desires to enjoy that quality of life? [/rant]

Back to the beach
All of us are ushers of our environment. Whether we accept that role or not is the key to upping our standard of living. Though it takes a little bit of extra effort, the end result is that once a year we get this opportunity to help preserve the environment and bond with others who are doing the same.

The clean up is from 9-noon all over LA. The official event page is http://www.healthebay.org/ccd and there is the
CCD event page on Facebook.