Our garage welcomed a new guest tonight: the illustrious “Liberace”, fabulously tassled playa-cruiser, legendary agent of dust-storm romance, esteemed pianist of the pearly gates. Liberace’s life in Black Rock City was fairly low-key last year, having been a handicap transit cart rather than a full-blown mutant vehicle. But that’s about to change…
A Sundance-snowboarding pilgrimage had been beckoning me for years, and I was super excited to finally be there. So excited that I scarcely noticed the vultures circling as I approached a wall of ice on Park City’s “Glory Hole” run. One completely unglorious wipe-out later and I’m showing off my 5 new collarbone fragments in the medical tent.
From then on it was me vs. the Sundance “10-step test-your-will ticket groveling system”, ice pack in my shoulder sling, screening schedule in my back pocket. Here’s a video clip of the director and lead actor speaking to the audience after a screening of Sugar: Continue reading »
Got some footage from Jay Riddlesberger’s self-DJ’ed bon voyage bash. I barely pulled out the camera that night, but happened to catch a bit of Riddles’ riffing on the mic – which you can almost hear if you ignore the pocket-cam bass distortion.
[clip]b0cYV76loks[/clip] Continue reading »
I’d already bought my ticket to the Anon Salon Sea of Dreams New Year’s bash when I got lassoed into “Vasty Rumpus”, the near-legendary off-Broadway jazz burlesque troupe billed to perform on the Cabaret stage just before midnight. Actually, they weren’t billed to perform there (yet), since the band didn’t even exist until early December… but a few rehearsals, a booking connection, and a promo video featuring leggy dancers (most of them old friends of mine – y’know, from my off-Broadway days) landed us the slot.
Here we are stumbling through Duke Ellington’s Night Train, though I suspect like most of the audience you won’t be too hung up on any missed key changes.
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Well whaddya know, Burning Man kicked ass again. About 30 of us, hailing mainly from SF and LA, pitched in to set up and run the Lorax Lounge. As you might expect, a bunch of crazy shit happened both at the Lounge and elsewhere. Here’s an infintesimal speck of it that I stitched together using iMovie HD:
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And part 2: Continue reading »
San Francisco gets high marks for its execution of citywide day-partying: Carnaval traverses the Mission, North Beach Jazz Fest invades 20+ bars, Love Parade takes over Market St and Civic Center, Blue Angels prompt bbqs on every rooftop, KFOG Kaboom is visible and audible from every vantage point and car stereo, Haight St Fair overflows into the panhandle and GG Park, Burning Man Decompression makes Dogpatch visible from the moon, etc. But Bay2Breakers is the one debaucherous day to rule them all, cutting literally and figuratively across the entire city’s topography and demography, creating the biggest, most-inclusive, and most definitive annual day-party in the city. If not the country.
The Ron Jeremy Explosion has tried to do its part to contribute…
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RJX loves Tahoe. Tahoe loves RJX. We played at Bar of America in Truckee close to 20 times between 2001-2004, but it’d been three years since we’d been there (on account of us not being a band anymore). Drummer Mike–visiting from NYC–provided the camera, and thanks to our friend Peter for lending his impromptu professional photography sensibilities.
For some reason these remind me of a mid-career “back to the studio” type video that some bands make (Steely Dan comes to mind), but it’s actually a live performance with really low lighting. And we seem strangely well-dressed and well-behaved. Okay maybe “old” is the word I’m looking for.
Seems appropriate the kick things off with the tune we wrote for the gig we’re playing, Truckee:
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