Well, trip to LA went well, more or less — a mild exchange with my Dad on Sunday notwithstanding. It was good to see family and a couple friends and what not. (In addition Made it back easily on BART, and overheard a guy called Dennis who is the promoter/manager for KaliFam talk to some other guy about the music business. I learned two things of note:
1) AndrŽ 3000 of Outkast fame is currently shooting a movie where he is playing Jimi Hendrix.
2) There’s a huge private and exclusive music industry party in Sept. 2004 (29th annual) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They rent out an entire hotel and have major artists perform for a couple days and there are crazy parties that go on all day and night. In addition, the hotel hires Puerto Rican women (about 2,000 of them) to parade around topless to keep the men “happy.” It gets so crazy, says Dennis, that he went to a party last year there and along with the invitation were: “Two condoms, a 50 cent blunt, and an ecstasy tab.” Huh.
Today, Owen (Thanks Owen!) promised me that I could abuse my press powers and attend WWDC this morning — my first ever Steve Jobs keynote. I rushed out of B2 at about 9:35, forgetting my notepad (I had to buy one en route), and when I wanted to take pictures of Steve Jobs, my digicam was dead, so that sucked. Other than that, it was a lot of fun, and I was about 50 ft or so from Steve Jobs, and yes, he did wear a black top, jeans, and sneakers. (I love California.) If you care about this sort of stuff, Apple announced some neat toys, hardware and software, including a 30Ó LCD, which costs $3300 not to mention the $600 that is required to power the thing. ItÕs a damn sexy monitor (I got a life-sized poster of it), but IÕll never be able to afford it. IÕm pretty content with my 12Ó Powerbook for the time being (although I am jealous that Rachel is getting a free upgrade given the hardware problems that sheÕs had.) Maybe IÕll get a new laptop next summer, once I have a job (knock on wood.)
Work has been very busy, involving lots of calls to Europe (wonÕt I be glad when this is all over).
Rachel R. comes to the Bay Area on Wednesday! Yay!
