CrowdFire / Blog / Contests / WIN FREE TICKETS TO OUTSIDE LANDS!

Get in there! o

It’s good weather week!

Taken on the dream vacation in Florida. That we paid for ourselves. That we hold dear and will remember for years, but likely cherish most dearly in about 3 months, when snow is falling.

I need to thank all y’all. Thank you for reading. Even if you hate me. THANK YOU. Your support has changed my life in ways I am only beginning to be able to verbalize. Thanks for the links, the discussion and the mind expansion. I’ll never be able to repay you, but wanted to thank you, just the same. o

After my Bonnaroo experience in 2007 (posts here, photos here), I passed this year because not enough of the bands I like were playing. And our lives were chaos. And it was in the middle of our Florida trip. However, I learned about Outside Lands, a similar festival in San Francisco put on by the same group that does Bonnaroo and a bunch of other festivals. Outside Lands is also produced by Another Planet.

If you haven’t seen the lineup for Outside Lands, it’s stellar.

Heather and I are going. And we are stoked. That doesn’t even describe it. We are beyond stoked. We never went to Coachella when we lived in LA (Heather did in 2001, but we were on luxury lockdown in 2002) and so we haven’t done a big event like this together. I feel like I’ve got a small grasp based on my time at Bonnaroo, but I’m guessing the San Francisco element will make it a little less shorts and chill and a lot more polar fleece and hipster fundamentalism.

In 2007, the Bonnaroo site didn’t really have a community aspect to it, aside from being able to submit photos after the fact. This year, they built out a bunch of stuff, including their own space as well as a presence on Facebook, Myspace and imeem. Outside Lands has partnered with Microsoft to do a community site called Crowdfire. I’ll be cross-posting stuff there, here and on flickr. Crowdfire asked for my mobile number. Hopefully I can upload photos from my iPhone. Not sure that’s going to happen as the iPhone doesn’t support MMS and as of yet, I can’t see a way to email photos to Crowdfire.

I haven’t seen Beck live in twelve years. It’s been 5 years since we last saw Radiohead. I’ve never seen Stars, Bon Iver, Broken Social Scene, The Walkmen, Devendra Banhart, M. Ward, Black Mountain or Manu Chao (sadly I missed this set at Bonnaroo ‘07).

We probably won’t get to see all of these bands, but I’m pretty sure that we’ll see enough to have a musical cleanse and recharge.

Now, if only San Francisco MUNI cooperates. HAHAHAHAHAHA. Bleah. o

SPOILER ALERT: IMAGES FROM OLYMPIC OPENING CEREMONIES ARE AT THE LINK BELOW:

2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony - The Big Picture - Boston.com

I thought we’d have to wait a day or two for these. Incredible shots. Absolutely incredible opening ceremony captured in great ways to show the scope and humanity. Must see. o

I’m wondering if the air is safe to breathe after looking at this picture. I used all my tin foil to protect myself from the aliens and CIA yesterday, so I’ll have to dig out my N100 rated respirator.

Even though that ceiling is in Florida. o

I’ve been super reluctant to post about our recent San Francisco trip and the BlogHer 08 conference. Writing about a women’s conference is so laden with explosives that even with my HAZMAT training, I’ve been worried about touching a nerve or saying something that would be misconstrued as chauvinistic or misogynistic. But I really feel like a male perspective adds to the conversation about the difference in how the genders process things.

As my life has become more public, I haven’t regretted or resented what it means. I do not regard myself as famous. But some do. And when those some get concentrated together, reality seems to warp. The energy changes and things that I would never give more than .05 of a second thought, become front and center and the resulting processing grinds me to a halt. Especially socially. I’m not whining. I have a hard time processing the level that people are fans of my wife. The intensity of emotion directed toward Heather is astounding. On both good and bad sides. Being with her at BlogHer was a huge eye opener for me in terms of admiration that people have as well as the level at which they dislike Heather. I understand what happens when someone becomes famous, regardless of scale. Local bands, popular politicians, actors, musicians, et al are all subject to these same kinds of emotions. Humans react in strange, paradoxical ways when other humans gain attention. I’ve been a part of that on a much much smaller scale than Heather. Much smaller. But the dynamics are the same. Press, fans, detractors and outsiders all weigh in. It can be hard to navigate. I still have a huge admiration for how Heather has handled the attention from all corners and how she continues to be creative, every single day. Her strength has been and is inspirational to me. I simply don’t know how she does it in the grinder. But she does it. Well.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not sure why shots like this always remind me of childhood. Sure, I’ve tried to evoke a mood and all, but there is something about sprinklers that takes me back.

The sprinkler is spraying the tree and tons of drops are falling, even as the sprinkler rotates away from the tree.

I’m holding on to these shots. We’ve got one more month, month and a half before the dark times. o

The Most Awesome Shoes EVER | dooce ®

By ME, motha effahs. o

Taken by Heather on our trip to Vancouver in May, 2008. I was too overcome with joy and other complex, dare I say, foreign emotions to take a decent shot of this place. I’ve been looking for ages for men’s size 13 Birkenstock rubber clogs. I love my Crocs, but I needed something waterproof and sturdy. The shoes shown in this photo (and it’s accompanying blasphemous verbiage) is the answer to that search, purchased at the shop shown above.

Even with the exchange rate, I couldn’t resist the purchase. I’m thinking about hijacking the Daily Style and demonstrating the true beauty of these shoes. I owe Mrs. Kennedy a huge thanks for opening my clog world up.

And haters: SUCK IT. o

Dances With Coyotes

This was sent in by a reader (thanks Jenny!). Blown away by the quality and the story (read the set description).

I showed this to Heather and she mentioned the awesome Daily Coyote. My dogs clearly have coyote in them. o