Will it ever end?

13th hospital visit and 4th MRI of 2008

07/22/08

C'mon kids, laugh with me, not at me. ;)

Jazz is in the house

Last night my friend Jwan brought his mixing skills to the club. He played an awesome set of house and techno music as usual. This time around, however, we tried something new. We had two guys play live trumpet and saxophone along with him, at times, to see how it sounded. Jwan would break his set down and play some minimal tracks that the guys could riff over. The result was really freeform and jazzy and the crowd loved it. When the horns were finished, Jwan would ramp up the music back into something more complex and full bodied. Below is about a minute of last night that I caught on my camera ...



*I realize the video is very dark but at least you can hear the horns to get an idea of what it was like.

** we usually have a live bongo player who comes every week and plays along with the DJ but this week he was a no show.

We're going to try it all again next week anyway ... trumpet, horns, DJ, etc.

Pool Party 08

It's 90 degrees and humid again this week. Who wants to go swimming?

Wine Label Pics

Better resolution pics of the actual labels:

My Wine

My labels are finished for the 4 types of wine I made this year; Burgundy, Valdapena, Chardonnay and Cabernet. Last year's wine was named 'Son et Lumiere' (where ever did I get that from?) This year's wine is titled, 'Testa Della Zucci' which roughly translates to 'Head of Pumpkin (Gourd)'. My Italian Grandmother (Nonna) called me 'Punkinhead' while growing up. Yes, it was 'Punkin' and not 'Pumpkin' ... the pittsburgh/italian accent cut out the 'ump'. She also used to shorten and mash together words to make up new ones like 'immakillyou' when she felt like it ... 'immakillyou punkinhead' she used to say.

but anyway ...

In honor of her, I bring you 'Pumpkinhead Wine' courtesy of Casa di Carfagna.

Last night I got together with 'Clover', 'Schaf' and 'Litl' for a short wine tasting. We made it though a bottle each of the Burgundy, Cabernet and Chardonnay.

Chardonnay is still everyone's favorite. The others still taste like alcoholic grape juice. ;)

4th of July weekend pt. 2

Other stuff that happened over the three day weekend:

I hung out and drank too much with 'Clover', 'Schaf', 'Litl', 'JimmyAndrewForest' and a bunch of others. Everyone ended up at 'The Castle' for afterhours but I wussed out and went home.

On a whim I went and saw 'Wall-E' with my friend 'Torque Smackey'. Clever film but not as good as 'The Incredibles'.

I spent a good amount of the weekend trying to load the music sequencer and recording software Pro Tools M-Powered onto my computer. A bitch of a time but I finally got it working properly.

And last but not least, I took advantage of my museum membership and went to the Carnegie Museum with 'Evil Genius' and 'Litl' for an afternoon. I finally checked out the new Dinosaur exhibit and the impressive Carnegie International 'Life on Mars' exhibit.

4th of July Weekend

Very eventful but not in the usual way.

Every year my family and some close family friends make our own wine. We buy the juice of different grapes and then 'rack' the wine every 7 weeks to extract the impurities. We make all types of reds and white; (Cabernet, Valdepena, White Zinf, Chardonnay, Chianti, Burgundy, etc). We started this year's batch back in October of 2007 and this last Saturday, July the 5th, the wine was finally ready to bottle. We spent the entire day cleaning and bottling the wine; a production of about 963 bottles give or take a few.

I couldn't fit all of the cases in the pic ... but those shown are piled two high making it about 750 bottles of wine in this pic.

Anyway ... it took close to 9 hours for the nine of us involved to bottle everything. Of course, this was partly due to the fact that there were at least 30 other people in attendance to watch us work making it more of a fun gathering than actual labor. AND of course we were drinking the entire time; sampling the vino and doing shots of Pelinkovac. AND of course as with every Italian family event of mine, the food spread for the day was most impressive; hot sausage, meatballs, BBQ ribs, brochette, fried chicken, hamburgers, hot dogs, sausage patties, kielbasa and sauerkraut, sushi, grape leaves, homemade pizza bread, cakes, brownies, tons of fruit ...

I was drunk, stuffed and tired by the end of the day but I still managed to meet up with my old high school friend 'Evil Genius' for dinner before heading home.