a March 21st Party (that's equinox & fullmoon at the SAME TIME)

soooooo,
looks like the speakeasy will be host to a sexy sexy little lingerie dance party on friday, march 21st.
(the date is only 80% certain... but i'd say it's pretty freakin likely)


the reasons for this fabulous ghettogether are many, and here are a few of them:

we like to see all our sexy friends in one place, clad in hot finery
we like to DANCE!
we have friends that make awesome music that you should dance to!
we wanna set a sexy precedent for springtime, so that the season knows EXACTLY what to expect from us.

we are also hoping to raise some funds for a project that has been in the planning stages for what seems like aeons. now that we are progressing, there are some unavoidable expenses that must be met that are a bit daunting. Mary, Kurt and I are creating an interactive sculpture to play with. help defray our costs by participating in the raffle!
we will have a few things to raffle off, including a flame thrower construction tutorial, courtesy of ian baker (thanks ian!), a chunk of time in a recording studio (a real one, not your friend's closet), jewlery, brownies, and maaaaaaybe* even Absynthe. and more!

so we look forward to turning over to spring while dancing in our undersexies with you at the speakeasy! this party will probably not start or end very early.

lemme know if you have any questions, or any things that you'd like to donate for raffle, or any random ideas that may or may not be relevant. actually, scratch that. relevant stuff only, please.



*=included for legal reasons, seing as how that particular item may or may not be legal. i guess it's not really an issue though, now is it, since we won't really be having any...

a game i'd actually play

ok.. so you may or may not know that group games (card games, board games, monopoly-type games, etc.) usually make me bleed violently from my eyes whenever they are pulled into the light of day in a crowded room (balderdash excepted).
HOWEVER
today boinboing posted a link to this site:

playthisthing.com/gloom-gam...nsequences

which contains a review of a game that i would actually play. now, i'm not asking for this game. in fact, PLEASE don't get me this game. i still shudder in fear at having games too close to me, probably a result of too many traumatic deathmatches of monopoly where members of the family were not allowed to leave until they knew EXACTLY how screwed they were by the arbitrary economic microcosm that we all foolishly agreed to participate in.

all i'm saying, is that if SOMEONE happened to have this game in their house, and i HAPPENED to be at a gathering where this was whipped out, well... maybe my eyes would just turn kindof dry and red instead of bleeding hideously. in fact, i think i might even like it.

suggestions for getting a laptop... by whatever means necessary.

ok.
can anyone tell me a great way to get a really good laptop without a huge loss of dough? unfortunately i would like a relatively decent laptop. here's my situation:
i'm working a pretty chill position in a studio where my responsibilities are sporadically intense, but on the average pretty low.
i get to sit for hours on the internet and do whatev. here's where the pain comes. the computer that i have access to is mind-numbingly retarded, and gets easily confused when more than 3 tabs are open in firefox. i'd be suffering less frustration and agony if i had bits of ground glass being tossed in my eyeballs every 5 minutes.

at any rate, i'm having a really hard time looking up circuit schematics and info on electronics. my boss happens to be an electrical engineer, so i'm trying to find schematics and whatnot so that he can help me design a project that has been mostly theoretical for a year now.

how the hell can i get a decent laptop, which i can use to run some good audio software, maxMSP, and browse the internets wirelessly? i have no money. should i throw a benefit party? can i sell my body? should i make toe-socks and sell them on the internet? egad! help me out people, what can i do in my deliriously boring and frustrating time here in order to get a good laptop (a mac would be great)?
i tried posting for a sugar momma on craigslist, and no takers so far.
ach.
any ideas?

thank god i'm alive

ok. so, i work in a recording studio, and that makes no money at all. essentially, i need to make dough on the side in order to work this job.

so, some of my philanthropic friends decided to pay me to drive up north to his place deep in the northern california mountains and pick up a bunch of stuff of the farm, and come back. he can't drive, his license is suspended on multiple counts. so, i being the fabulous (broke) friend that i am, agreed.

well, the cabin is about 2 1/2 hours from the nearest stop sign and paved road. it was raining lightly. the road was mud. at the last 15 minutes of the drive, the road degenerates even further than just mountain road. it is a private road, and therefore not maintained by the county, and therefore extremely sketchy when wet. Soooo, we drove/slid the last bit to the cabin, and arrived a little scared, but safe.

Organized most of the evening, went to sleep in the most beautiful of areas known as 'the palm of god,' woke up, finished organizing/packing, and stepped in the car to leave. then came the rains, on cue. put tire chains on the car. drove 50 feet from the house. jeep slid off the road into a ditch. my friend rode around on a quad for about 1 1/2 hours, trying to reach neighbors for help and/or call a tow truck.

well now, should you ever be far out in the mountains, know that a tow truck will cost you about $600, and crossing locked gates and fences to get to a neighbor's house to ask for help could potentially be a very bad idea. you have no idea who people are, and what they're up to out there. aside from a few threats, nothing came of house visits, and it got dark quickly. being completely unprepared for thick mud and heavy rain, my friend returned soaked and near sick, and we retired to the house to warm up to the fire and sleep.

the next day was a bit drier, and upon inspection it was decided that we could dig the car out. so, after about four hours of digging and placing boards and plywood, filling the ditch and unbottoming-out the car, we physically pushed the jeep back onto the road, only to discover that the brake line had been broken in the process.
yeesh. thanks to the fabulosity of modern cars, if you lose fluid in one set of breaks (rear or front), you still retain a bit of fluid in the other pair. so, with crippled break system on a hairy mountain road, we set out.

i was way overdue at work, and we made it to the one cell phone reception-capable spot for hours just in time for me to call in and say "i'm screwed in the mountains, and if i survive i'll be back in to work on thursday" while hoping it wasn't the end of my job.

so. we drove approximately 39 miles on sketchy ass roads, VERY slowly, and now here i am to tell you the tale of my muddy adventures in the backlands of california. hoo-ray. and i am even writing you from my job that i luckily still have, where i get to spend oodles of time on the internet writing things just like this.

hoo-ray!

party spam!

ok ok, i never do a damned thing on tribe. i swear, though i'll start one of these days. really!
see? i'm doing it right now, by posting this awesome advertisement for a retarded (as in retarded crunk) party.
here it is:

you know it. your highschool sucked. it probably still does. thank god you're not there anymore.

at the speakeasy, we don't give a isht about your dmaned football team, your fckuing uniforms, or your full-contact remedial ballet team national championship medals, dig? we just plan the party, and you come to override all horrible memories of formals, dances, proms, or whatever the hlel your sorry high school had. (people coming for other reasons will have to fill out a questionnaire)

therefore:
the Speakeasy is proud to present:

the Winter Formal

@ the Speakeasy (surprise)

Saturday December 15th

there will be dancing in fancy (or pseudo fancy) attire, cocktails & champaign, live musical entertainment, and absolutely NO jocks. maybe there will be a yule log.

The emotional soundtrack of your idyllic high school years will be ruined by:
Build 128 & The Reverend Micah
Disparition
& Others


come shake it like you've evolved past your awkward adolescent foibles!



i'll even post a new blog with photos of my woods adventure from the last month if you promise to come. no really, these pics are THAT cool that you want to do it. yep. yeah you do! oh yeah!

YO MAMA! eeeevvveeent

Yo' M.A.M.A. !!! (Muni Action Musical Adventure)

dig these here facts, my refined and exclusively chosen homies:

on august 17th friday, there will be a bus show.
the deal is, you get on the muthafukin bus. the bus is huge, and will have bands playing whilst in transit. the bus will be making three stops. at these stops there will be more bands than you can shake your gansta cane at, plenty of space for you to strut yo gansta lean, and some funky sheit to make your bum gyrate in a fashion approved by even the most republican of americans.

bus leaves from genoa & arlington street, oakland at about 3:30 pm. just walk to that intersection, you'll see a whole host of people that you obviously want to hang with. approach with wild abandon and throw yourself on that bus. you won't regret it.

after several stops, the bus will end up that night at the speakeasy. as if you hadn't had enough already, there will be more bands, because we've decided that it's what's good for you, dig? you need this like pigeons have to poop all over everything. it's inevitable.



FRIDAY 8/17 4:30 PM-???

3 bus stops of music!

catch a free ride 3:30 to stop 1 @ Genoa st/Arlington st. in N. Oakland

1
4:30 ALBANY LANDFILL (the end of Buchanan St./highway 580 in Albany/Berkeley)
Andy from Maleficia
Daniel Flores
Typhoon

2
7:00 Ashby Bart Station @Ashby and Adeline st. (Berkeley/Oakland)
Loyd Family Players
The Unit Breed
The Last Slice of Butter

3
9pm-late....SPEAK EASY house/ bus show @604 56th st./shattuck in N. Oakland <------ THATS MY HOUSE PEEPS!
The Why Because
heliotrope menagerie
Beat Beat Whisper
The Switch
Scabies the Musical Puppet show
Shayne Keator
Clar Mooncalf
and more!!!!!

FREE FREE FREE
donations for gas encouraged....
COME and ENJOY the ride!!!

RECORDING SESSION!!!

ok, so i have been recording capoeiristas from the capoeira arts cafe in berkeley, and on saturday april 28th i'll be in the studio doing a little bit of editing... the upshot of this whole thing is, i could just check out 3 hours and sit there for 1 hour actually doing any work,
OR
i could check out 8 hours (which i've done) and randomly bother people to come in and record some shit!
thus, this post.
do you want to record some music on highly sexy (read: expensive) equipment? eh? anyone?
c'mon, you'll be in a pro recording environment, you'll get to hang out with ME, and we could go get a beer in the afternoon. or maybe wine.
so, the only catch is this:
we'd have to do the session from about 8 am until noon or 1pm... if i could put this in fine print, i would...
i know, 8 am saturday morning is hellish.
but really, it's not so bad considering how much you really want to come in and record your hottest new single that was inspired by britney spears, right?
oh yeah!
hit me up if yer innarested

shuttlecock!

what better way to spend sunday than to play shuttlecock and consume burritos in a fabulous artspace?
if there's a better way, i don't want to know.

maxMSP and my brain

oh. my. fucking. god.
someone take my computer away.

anyway, i've been twiddling with maxMSP recently, and it's caused an upwelling of goodness in the form of addiction in my brain. the only problem so far is that i'm an obsessed beginner who is frustrated at hitting walls. i know, it's just because i haven't learned to think around problems instead of barging through them.
but damN! i'm totally addicted.