intellectual properties

11/13-11/16

well, it’s wednesday and it’s been over a week since my last autobiographical post and i haven’t written about last weekend yet so i better get to it before i’m a week behind.

thursday 11/13:  obi-j played transportedSF along with nanda. it was a warm clear night with a full moon and it was absolutely gorgeous. first we went to ocean beach, where the moonlight on the water created weird optical illusions on the horizon, and danced to nanda’s set, which i really enjoyed. and then to crystal springs reservoir, where it looked a lot like this. jay was playing and the moonlight on the water and in the forest was magical and the whole thing seemed like a moment out of time. i live for those moments.

friday night 11/14 we went to the INdependent to see justin’s counsin’s band Ezra Furman & The Harpoons, who were opening up for Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. i really liked the energy of ezra furman and the sort of bob dylan-ish prose style to his songwriting. the band was tight but not too tight; definitely still had that raw opening-band feeling and really played their hearts out.

then grace potter came out, and the fancy lights came on, and everyone got quiet. grace plays the organ and sings songs about love and loss and drinkin’ and dancin’ in a very smoky-bar voice, and sort of the vermont version of southern rock – but without the boots. they were very polished and outside of the fact that somehow someone let this otherwise very fine-looking 30-something woman on stage in MOM JEANS (or, more specifically, the newer, fresher version of mom jeans: high-waisted, slim fit, tapered ankles that hipsters and other fashionistas victims are wearing, usually with ballet flats or with knee high boots over the top. i’m sorry, but unless you are built like olive oyl, the fit looks like MOM JEANS), there was obviously a lot of style/production value. the kind of style difference 10 years makes between that raw opening-band feeling and the slick mainstage act. which, to be quite honest, i thought detracted a bit from the kind of music they were trying to put on up there. grace was good, the band was good, and they were playing one of my most favorite styles of music, but we kept waiting for them to really loosen up, to really rip into it. it kept getting really. close. they would delve into a sort of deep psychedelic, rootsy grind, but there was no led-zeppelin-esque moment where after the organ swirls around in the smoke for a bit, the bassline drops and the drummer goes nuts and the room goes wild. it would just sort of ….. maintain. and stay dreamy. there was no primal scream. it just never happened. maybe they used to be that way and somewhere along the line someone told them to keep it all a bit more refined for commercial reasons, or maybe they really don’t know how to take to the next level, i don’t know, but even though the band conjured up the spirits of everyone from tori amos to lynyrd skynyrd to mahalia jackson, because they never really let it go, it sort of seemed cheesy to me, like a lounge act, and a gutsy bluesy rock and roll band. all the other ladies in mom jeans in the crowd really seemed to like it though. i told ezra, who was sitting next to me for much of the rest of the show, that i liked his band better.

then saturday morning 11/15 after not enough sleep i got up and went to do a photoshoot with miranda caroligne and LEC photo that took NINE HOURS. not kidding. it was all fun and games and a full day of playing dress up until about the last hour, when one of the other models had too much to drink and started getting really distracted and whiny and bitchy, and while we were all laying on the floor for the last long posed shot with her head DIRECTLY NEXT TO MINE, she suddenly started this incessant chatter and wouldn’t shut up about how long everything was taking and she had 2 kids at home and she needed to get out of there and WHY IS THIS TAKING SO LONG and i sort of got into it with her in a bit of a catfight moment, which i am not proud of. if her mouth wouldn’t have been directly next to my ear during her little bitchfest, i probably wouldn’t have said anything, but i just couldn’t take it any more. anyway, then i made the mistake of looking at my raw photos when we were done, comparing myself to the 20-something models, and left the shoot exhausted, cranky, and feeling old. i had meant to go out that night but was honestly exhausted and my body hurt from holding all the long poses. playing dress up is hard.

sunday morning 11/16 we got up and went down the peninsula to belmont, where jay and zach went mountain biking and i went hiking for about 2 hours near waterdog lake. i was still sore and tired from the day before, but it was an unbelievably gorgeous day (80+ degrees and sunny in november!) and so i pushed myself and hiked the full canyon. it was great. afterward we hung out in SF and had dinner at @ magnolia, which, since they remodeled themselves from a haight street pub into a much more “upscale” bar is not NEARLY as good to just hang out at (beers still good; menu now mostly inedible for me with mostly oysters etc. ). then we went out to the inner richmond to the buckshot bar @ geary and 3rd ave to meet up for our friend sam’s birthday, played some pool and skeeball (no one ordered the Ike Turner Special), and finally called it a weekend around 11pm.

next up:  MMW @ the fillmore tomorrow night, and the Black Rock Arts Foundation benefit on Saturday, for which i’ll be doing a bit of “fashion sculpture performance art”, whatever that turns out to be, wearing things from miranda similar to what we wore at the YBCA fashion event.

and then, probably, esctatic dance sunday morning.

and….i’m already tired.

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