LAN Airlines (Chile) Airbus A318-121 CC-CVB (msn 3030) (80 Anos) SCL, originally uploaded by Airliners Gallery.

Copyright Photo: Alvaro Romero.

Please click on photo or link below for a full view, information, prints for sale and other photos:

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Darwin Prentiss, Vampire
#2 in 30 Characters in 30 days
11.2.09

I was listening to Touch the Dark by Karen Chance and the audiobook reader was going on from the author about how preternaturally gorgeous and sexy vampires are.

Darwin Prentiss isn’t that vampire. He has only been dead since 1999. He was a skinny, geeky klutz in life. He’s a skinny, geeky klutz in death. Think about that for a moment. He has the preternatural strength and speed. But he’s still a klutz.

in LA . . . tomorrow will be super busy with the video shoot, so I thought I’d add two songs for today AND tomorrow (click on song title to be sent to MySpace player):

song day 2: “little man burns”

a song that I wrote just after Burning Man, thus “little man burns” . . . the particular experience involved dancing my brains out on a 10′ high platform literally until the sun came up and the experience of watching so many people’s faces through such an incredible moment as a sunrise in a desert when beats match the pounding in your chest.

I mostly like this song – which is to say I’ll keep the verses . . . the chorus was pulled from another fragment of another song and it isn’t authentic, so I don’t like it. Elizabeth and I have been re-working it so we can add it to the repertoire.

song day 3: “as I get older”

for a while I worked on a project with the Mental Health Department in Alameda County (across the Bay from SF) where we ran 30+ focus groups in 30 days (with Thanksgiving in the middle there). one of the overriding issues for many folks dealing with mental illness is a fear that it will never go away. this song plays on that theme. “will it get better as I get older? or am I stuck here?” who knows what will become of this song. it was fun to play with the doublestop idea using the voice and the guitar against each other. obviously this was recorded on my bed with the computer’s internal mic.

Velvet Nuthatch
#1 for 30 Characters in 30 Days
11.1.09

When I was a kid, my tendency for characters was to create characters as equal romantic partners to other characters. I’d doodle them in a notebook in pencil then ink in ballpoint pen. I figured my first 30/30 was behooved to revive that old trend.

Velvet Nuthatch is a fan character, inspired by the Music Meister from Batman The Brave and the Bold “Mayhem of the Music Meister”. She’s immune to his hypnotic music, but has a bit of musical meta talent herself, which she discovered thanks to MM’s criminal rampage. Up until then, Harmony Starling was just a chorus girl who wanted to be the big time but who didn’t sing with enough projection. To support her mediocre music career, she worked as a waitress. She was on her way to work when the Meister Segwayed by singing “He Drives Us Bats”. She was the only one not hypnotized by his song, but fascinated by his talents and his ability to project. It was love at first sight. But she didn’t overcome her shyness quickly enough, and watched as he fell for Black Canary, then was rejected by her.

By the time The Meister sang “The World Is Mine!” she’d rushed home and rummaged through her costumes and come up with an outfit of her own. Still shy, though, she prefers to be a sidekick/partner. Which means she’ll have to break the Meister out of jail so they can make sweet music together.

She can sing in multiple voices so as to give MM proper backup, along with the subharmonics allowing her to do solid sound constructs.

She hates Black Canary for breaking his heart. In keeping with TB &TB thematics, she’s got a punny real name: Harmony Starling.

as posted on MySpace blog:

apparently – according to MySpace’s new (beta) Dashboard feature – I do quite well with Men (64% of both visitors and friends) who are between the ages of 25-34.

it’s also the age/assigned gender group I tend to date – though I think that % is a bit higher than 64%. and I’m not currently dating nor do I plan to be dating again.

go figure.

the Dashboard also tells me that those men typically assume that I am a Female between the ages of 18-21. what does that mean about my listeners?

just kidding.
there’s no data about people’s assumptions. because that would make an ass out of u and mptions. (mptions = myspace?)

I actually rather enjoy the feature, as I have mentioned (before), these little things are good baby steps along a big, long, (sometimes) treacherous road.

the most interesting piece of news was that a TON of you came to the page to listen to the new song I posted . . . which makes me want to post more new songs to keep you coming back. in FACT maybe I’ll do another one of my 30-songs in 30-days type things where its a different “new” song every day for 30 days – they may have been songs you’ve heard before or maybe not. I will pull out some difficult ones from the trenches, ones that have never made it past the “first sing through ever” recording phase. just for fun.

30-songs in 30-days to commence: NOVEMBER 1ST, 2009

Look for the “30/30″ track on my MySpace music player . . . .

Chicago modern dance fans are spending this week gearing up for their Lollapalooza: Links Hall celebrates their 30th anniversary with 30 hours of dance in 3030.  With the who’s who of modern dance slated to perform, you better believe we’re getting to sleep early and buying stock in Intelligentsia.

Get your tickets for Links Hall’s 3030 NOW!

And don’t forget to get warmed up by dancing with us: First Dance v. 2.0.

 On this date in 1987, Darryl Strawberry and Howard Johnson of the New York Mets became the first ever teammates to both join the ‘30/30′ club in the same season.

The ‘30/30′ club is pretty exclusive.  And the members have to be a very specific kind of player.  Powerful enough to hit bomb after bomb into the outfield seats, yet graceful and quick enough to swipe base after base in a frenzied rush to outrun a catcher’s throw.

It’s an amazing accomplishment to become a member of the ‘30/30′ club.  But when 2 players on the same team reach that goal, it is baseball history!!!

By the end of the ‘87 season, Darryl Strawberry finished the season with 39 home runs and 36 stolen bases.  With him was teammate Howard Johnson who crushed 36 homers and swiped 32 bases.

Congrats to Straw & HOJO!!!

In what was a rain-soaked game that only lasted 7 innings, it was Hanley Ramirez that came through again for the Florida Marlins.  This time he collected 4 RBI for the team and helped them overcome a 5-1 deficit to beat the Nationals 7-5 in 7 innings.

Ramirez has been on fire as of late.  Last week’s co-player of the week, Hanley has collected at least 1 RBI in 9 consecutive games and 22 total RBI in that stretch.  In those games, the Marlins are 6-3 and Ramirez is a very large reason for their success!!!

If Hanley is able to maintain this pace and the team starts to battle with the Phillies for the division title, I wonder how soon the ‘Hanley for MVP’ talk will start.  I am certainly biased since I get to see him play on a daily basis, but it would be very easy to argue that his is a Top 3 candidate for that award right now.

Keep up the great work Hanley!!!

While Dan the Automator may not be a household name, he certainly should be. There’s not many DJ/Producers that can helm 4 well-regarded projects, make numerous advances in cross-genre mixing and matching, and still remain under the radar. Ask a majority of radio listeners who Dan the Automator is, and my guess is you’ll get 70% blank stares. On the other hand, ask those same listeners if they know who the Gorillaz are, and 95% will know and relate their memory to “Clint Eastwood” or “Tomorrow Comes Today.” It’s the nature of the music industry and the “listen to this new pop” radio society that fans love a group but can have absolutely no clue who makes up that group. So for those 5% and 25% groups respectively, Dan the Automator was behind the Gorillaz.

But that’s not all. He was a driving force behind Handsome Boy Modeling School, a hip-hop collaboration with Prince Paul that included guests such as Sean Lennon, Mike D of the Beastie Boys and Miho Hatori of Cibo Matto. He served as the producer for Kool Keith (Dr. Octagon) and DJ Qbert’s well-known album, Dr. Octagonecologyst. Add to that his credit as the main man behind Lovage, a collaboration between Kid Koala, Mike Patton of Faith No More and Jennifer Charles of Elysian Fields, and his full on production of Del the Funky Homosapien’s revolutionary concept album Deltron 3030 and you have one well established producer who has worked with some very big names.

Feeling left out because you haven’t gotten to collaborate with Dan the Automator? Fret not. For all you musicians and aspiring musicians, Dan the Automator has launched a remix contest for his 2009 remake of the Sugar Hill Gang’s hip-hop classic “Rapper’s Delight.” The new version features Domino and Casual (Hieroglyphics) and Charli 2Na from Jurassic 5. Simple to use from MixMatchMusic’s Remix Wizard, just download the stems to your computer and mix away. If you don’t have spiffy mixing software, worry not, as the Wizard allows you to remix on any computer through the web. The catch? The contest ends on Sunday the 14th, so you better get scratching!

Dan the Automator’s song here.

Remix Wizard for the contest here.