Turn up the Bass and let the Trunk Rattle

Whew, a fairly busy day. Missed my usual shuttle back to the city because of some operational inefficiencies. It was actually the first time I missed the shuttle because the shuttle to the shuttle (don't ask) was late and didn't get me to the shuttle in time. I guess I shouldn't complain. It just means I will have to leave the extra 10 minutes early to ensure I have a big fat buffer.
Busy today but I had some time with my headphones on and I have been listening to a bunch of indiefeed podcasts that I haven't heard yet. Indiefeed is where it is at. I have been turned on to quite a few artists from those feeds. I have been listening to the alternative channel lately and there are some good bands sprinkled in there (there is some garbage too).
A few things to update:

Wifey and I are moving about a mile from our current house. We are in the application stage on an apartment in Laurel Heights which is north and a little west from our place now. Its bigger, not huge, but a nicer building and quieter area. Should be legit. Lets just hope those car-jacking charges don't come back to bite me.

Google released street view in Anchorage - w00t! Mom was pumped about this. If you search for her house you can see her house, and her car, parked the wrong way, on the street in front. Pretty rad, they covered almost the entire city which is quite impressive.

Kia is going to Hong Kong and China in about 3 weeks. She is headed to Asia for work to check out some of the production sites and make sure things are cool. She's going to do an extra day or two in Hong Kong at the end of the trip to tour around a bit. Should be fun. Mmmm dim sum.

We booked tickets this weekend to go to Germany in September with Kia's grandparents. Going to Bavaria. Apparently there is like a huge rivalry between Bavarians and people who rep Berlin. For my money I am going with the Bavarians. Not only because their name rhymes with barbarians but also because this is how I imagine most Berliners.


We are looking for another vacation spot for late May, somewhere beachy, maybe the Caribbean. We were looking at islands this weekend and it looks pretty much awesome.

Its both Christopher Walken and Kia's grandfather's birthday today. Two of my favorite older dudes.

Man Trip camping trip upcoming the weekend after next. Going to Big Sur with some of the usual knuckleheaded suspects. Should be fun.

That's that. About to get off the shuttle in the city. It turns out that if I commute during slightly off peak times I can make the trip much more quickly. This shuttle left MV at 6:40ish and is arriving in SF at 7:15ish. A 35 min commute is unthinkable between 5 and 6. Perhaps I will adjust my schedule....
Stay on your grizzly.

Dilla Interviews

I made some updates to the blog today. I was pretty jealous of Albert's image backed header until I found out that it was just a new feature of the Blogger customization modules. So I updated. I may play around with it so get pretty pumped for that. I threw in the last.fm widget so you can all keep up with my listening to's.
Work is busy but good. Highlights include my being last in the company NCAA tournament pool. I am losing to a team who made their picks based on ranking and then how "cool" the mascots are. Actually that team is first. Jesus.
So, I am going to post a couple more of the Dilla interviews because they are awesome. The first one features J-Rocc talking about how awesome it is to have cassettes. The second one is about the Ruff Draft album. Its pretty cool to hear what the musicians have to say about the album. Rhettmatic is in there. I included a picture of Rhettmatic and my boy Mike that I took a couple years ago on my camera phone. Actually the show I took this at was a Dilla tribute. See? Full circle.







Throw your dubs up.

The Marina sucks, but at least its not LA

On the shuttle northbound on the 101 about to go apeshit and bark (bark like a dog, kind of a DMX type of thing) at the very undeserving people sitting around me. I am on a shuttle which stops at civic center, then Sacramento and Gough and then Cow Hollow. For those of you who don't know, Cow Hollow basically means Marina which basically means pretentious. My unnatural and unhealthy obsession with distrusting all things associated with the Marina has few exceptions. One is Chrissy Field, which if we are splitting hairs could be associated with the Presidio, the other is Judy's Cafe (oh wait, I don't go there anymore because their service sucks and the crowd is overwhelmingly full of buttholes), so officially I am over the Marina. I have had this discussion with other San Francisco residents and they point to the fact that the Marina contains very few people who are non-white. This is kind of true, but the whiteness of the Marina is less obnoxious to me than the "who the F are you" looks I get when I am dressed like a homeless person on the weekend (mind you I am likely rocking a crispy new era cap, but still, the bumminess is hard to ignore). Yargh!
OK, that's enough of that.
Kia and I are headed to look at an apartment which is showing. On the way out of the office Evan said that I shouldn't move to the Richmond because its basically the suburbs of San Francisco. This from a guy who lives in Cupertino.... Either way, looking for a little bigger spot so if people have leads let me know.
Lots of people are out on vacation next week. The reasons I heard were that it was around spring break. I don't know about that. Maybe all the people who are on vacation next week are actually meeting up in Cancun. I will keep an eye out for people in the background on the MTV spring break shows. Speaking of MTV, I have gotten busted numerous times over the last week or two at work for watching and keeping up with MTV and VH1 reality shows. I blame my wife very publicly for this, but I have to admit, I get sucked in pretty quickly. At least I don't watch Craig Ferguson - yeah I said it Sara - that guy stinks.
Feeling much more centered now. Keep it crackin'.

Clack Clack Clack!

What a day. A long day at work today, started at 8 ended at 5:30, I guess that's not so bad really, but I was only in SF last night for 9 hours after getting back to the city at 9pm. Fine, I will stop bitching. Riding the shuttle towards San Francisco right now watching an idiot hold one hand with a cigarette out of the window while talking on the phone with her other hand driving 70 miles an hour through traffic. At least she's not reading. From the elevated vantage point of the shuttle seat you can see all sorts of idiot behavior. Reading is by far the worst violation.
Today probably felt long because of the volume of meetings. All day in fact. By the end of the day I was babbling incoherently. That said, I felt like I had some meaningful discussions, so it was useful in that sense.
Lots kind of going on right now. My three year anniversary at el Goog is coming up in a few days, which is weird. Two days before that is the 10 year, yes, 10 year anniversary of Kia and I dating. We have been thinking about something epic to do... more to come, perhaps.
I started an account on last.fm which has been pretty interesting to play with. Limited information there so far, but I am interested to see what comes of it. Maybe I will embed my playlist on the blog, maybe not. Check out my profile here.
Laundry tonight. Partaaay. OK hopping off the shuttle, that was a fast commute.
Byeeeee.

Stonesthrow Videos of the Day

So this is the second post today, so what? Yeah, I should probably be doing some NCAA tournament research so that I don't pick Kent State to win it all but then again, I don't know the first thing about college basketball, so who cares?
Youtubing on the shuttle home (late shuttle that is, so I am less motivated to work). The shuttle wifi is slow but I gleamed out a few gems. Both are Stonesthrow posts, the first is a Madvillain video that I hadn't seen before and its pretty awesome.



The second is the first installment of the J-Dilla interviews. Now keep in mind here that I make no claims to not be a bandwagon fan of J-Dilla's. Now mind you, I was hip to his Pharcyde and A Tribe Called Quest collaborations, even his Common collaborations were on major rotation on the ipod but this was before I knew what the score was. That said, this video is pretty awesome in kind of a heart breaking kind of way.



Other people were complaining today that they were sore too so that made me feel better.
Enjoy the videos, don't get too crazy with the boozapalooza tonight.

Mmmmm Monday

Monday morning, hurtling towards Mountain View on the 101. Getting a little bit of a late start today but its on purpose. I have a vc with India at 7:30pm and an 8am meeting tomorrow morning. Basically, I should just sleep at work. Had a decent weekend, lots of hanging out and recuperating from my trampoline experience on Friday. For those of you who weren't there, I spent Friday afternoon bouncing around like a rabid monkey at a trampoline room warehouse. My initial concerns about cracking my head in were not realized but I managed to rack my body fairly well from flailing around and wiping out quite badly and regularly at my attempts to bounce like a Gummy Bear. I kind of thought of myself as the big one with the hat, you know what I'm talking about.


Anyway, I was limping around like an old man for most of Saturday and Sunday but feeling better now. Went out to Citrus Club last night and had some coconut chicken which is now my favorite dish at that restaurant. Mmmmm. Started watching the Simpsons movie last night and had to go to bed right when they arrive in Alaska. The part where they handed Homer $1000 for crossing the border was pretty hilarious.
OK at work.
Have a good week. Oh and Happy St. Patrick's Day.

Scrapers and 2pac Shoes

OK, I need to diversify my posting a little but whatever, here are some more awesome hip-hop related items.
I mentioned a few posts ago that I am obsessed with scrapers, Kia knows, its likely an obsession that I will never indulge (very likely) although if I do it might be much later in life so I would be like a weird old guy with the dumbed out scraper. What is a scraper? Thanks for asking dad. A scraper is a large American car, usually from the 70s, 80s or 90s although I have seen some recent models scraped out. Cars from the 50s and 60s are usually not turned into scrapers as much as straight out low riders. So, you get a big ol' American car, you put some candy colored paint on it, and you slap some 20-24 inch rims on it (bigger has been done, but its tough). Imagine Escalade rims on an '89 Impala, heck why imagine?

OK, so now you have a visual. This has been a fairly common automotive trend in the bay area with the hyphy youngsters and makes me very jealous - seriously. Further illustration.







There are scraper bikes too apparently, but come on, that's just ridiculous.
On an entirely unrelated note, I am trying to get one of my coworkers to sport some 2pac shoes. They look like this:




So if you work with me and are dying to see Dan Chow sport these feel free to donate a few dollars to the fund and peer pressure him into rocking what very well might be the baddest sneakers of all time.
Word.

I Come Old Like Toe Fungus Mold

So I caught a little flak from Seth when I changed my blogspot profile pic to the ODB album cover. I wasn't sure if it was Seth's puritanical views on swearing or his utter lack of hip-hop where-with-all since US3 stopped making records but it prompted me to get my thoughts on ODB on paper.
In my mind, ODB is one of the greatest rappers of all time. Pac, great, Biggie, great, ODB was better than both of them because of his raw creativity and impeccable timing. Raw energy, not overly cerebral, punchy and willing to bust out on some soul singing when the time called for it.
Dirty has a special place in my heart. I played "Hippa to da Hoppa" as my senior song at graduation. His first solo album is by far, the best Wu-Tang album of all time and amongst my all time top five favorite albums.
If you don't know, now you know. Go pick up "Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version" have at least 6 beers and see what happens. I bet you end up dressed as Rick James, putting in some gold fang fronts or breaking something (actually, I bet its all three).
OK a couple of embedded files. First one is "Hippa to da Hoppa" which I couldn't find a video for so its like one of those lame youtube montages - oh well, second one is the "Brooklyn Zoo" video.






Go crazy.

'Tis the Luck of the Irish

Alright, doing the Dublin post. Seth said that I wasn't going to post on the topics that I listed. I'm not sure why he said that, perhaps because he is excited to read what I have to say on ODB. I spent some time on youtube this morning doing some ODB searches and was catching up on some Yo MTV Rap hey day videos. Man, Ed Lover in a Starter cap brings me back!
OK, some photos from my trip:

This is like the Guinness brewery or something in Dublin. j/k

Mo' Dublin.

Random church in Howth - outside of Dublin. Took the DART out there on a Saturday. DART = fake BART.

Random castle, everyone lived in a castle, it was like Shrek. There is a friendly leprechaun waving in the photo, I chased him but couldn't catch him. He was wiley.

Castle + fence = awesome photo.

Howth was on the coast.

Town.

Boats.
Good times were had. I didn't take the standard photo of the Guinness because that would have been silly and I forgot, mostly because its silly.
Things are good in the bay. Yesterday was pop's birthday, happy birthday dad! Try not to get too crazy with the birthday cake.
Hope things are kosher with everybody.

"I think I pulled my groin!"

Haven't posted in a little over a week. Lots going on out in the bay, lots to update on, but none of it terribly exciting. I have about three posts that are backlogged at this point.

Dublin photos
ODB
Why other people I work with are copying my blog
Pineapple Express trailer
etc.

I probably won't get to any of these. Actually, I am going to post the Pineapple Express trailer at the end of this post basically because it looks awesome. Credit goes to Dan for sending this out to me earlier today. The movie looks like a combination of The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, and Half Baked. Uh, can you say best movie of all time? Why wait, here it is:



What else? Hauling back to the city right now sitting in the back of the bus about to barf from spending the bus ride working and bouncing like mad because I am in the back. Why the back? Funny you ask, its one of the places where there is a table so that I can type and the tables in the front had people sitting at them who had their backpacks in the seats next to them and I wasn't in the mood to get one of the "There are plenty of open seats/I live in the Marina and deserve whatever I want" looks that accompanies that request.
Sara is in Iowa now and her blog has taken a turn towards optimistic. Its nice to see but she made a post the other day about how if she ends up being a positive person because of her leave that she risks losing friends she made during a period of high stress and pressure where she may have been more cynical. We can still be friends Sara.
Albert's blog is turning out pretty well in terms of being a public forum for his trip to China. Plus it features Yiteng and Kunan heavily which is fantastic. That's right Albert, you earned a link.
Got some new jamz yesterday on my way home. Finally picked up the new(ish) Wu-Tang - 8 Diagrams, Strong Arm Steady - Deep Hearted, Redman - Redman Gone Wild: Thee Album, Madlib - Beat Konducta vol. 3+4: Beat Konducta in India, J-Dilla - Welcome II Detroit, etc., etc..
OK. Getting closer to the city. Going to try to not stay at work late anymore this week. In fact, I might just bounce early once or twice this week, thats right, I said it, do something.