HAPPY BIRTHDAY ZACH!!!

sony bravia colours - play doh tv advert

bachelorette party. in vegas.

jill organized a bachelorette party! i probably would have chosen a different ending to the night, but i guess vomitting is proof of a successful party. after dinner at kona grill, a chilled bottle of champagne was presented to me that i was asked to finish before reaching our destination at the strip, mmm. about 15 minutes away. we arrived at the wynn. iris got us into tryst. no waiting. no cover. the only way to go. being forced to wear a veil, etc i got many opinions on marriage being an insistution in which you are institutionalized yada yada yada . . .

TRYST at the WYNN photos:




we then went to foundation room. liz got us in there. then somehow we got into a swank VIP room with a curtain door. how? we said our feet hurt and we needed a place to sit. the foundation room on the top of mandalay bay was really cool. amazing decor. what wasn't cool is that i left my camera there. the really nice one zach got me for christmas. i didn't spend a penny and was fed drinks all night . . . . like i said the night could have ended more pleasantly. but it was awesome. glad i got my yearly vegas club scene visit taken care of.

FOUNDATION ROOM at MANDALAY BAY:

our president of the U.S.

"As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured," he said.

Feist - 1 2 3 4

exciting events at the palms sunday

so, yesterday OJ simpson got arrested at the palms.

what also happened at the palms yesterday was a really fun concert! it was a beautiful night and the flaming lips played outside at the palms pool. kinda for free. probably the coolest venue i have seen a show at the base of the palms towers. some people sat in the wading pools in chairs - we just stood in the sand.

it was an energy-filled, politically-infused show as most of them are. i had never had an opportunity to see the flaming lips before, so it was great. i remember my roomate angie coming home from a show in college once and there was confetti in our house for weeks. that wayne. he likes to entertain. he also likes to talk to fans. a very very kind gentleman. he even took a photo of me and zach.

believe it or not this was not the only musical adventure of the weekend.

friday night we saw matt & kim at a place called jillians on freemont street. apparently i had a skinny sharpie pen in my purse which the doorman found and confiscated. it was an all ages show. enough said. other than all the kids it was a pretty fun show.

saturday night was modest mouse at the joint at the hard rock. pretty good show, although i was really distracted by this transvestite in front of me. she kept shaking her head in the dramatic way a woman would do in a hair commercial and her long blonde locks would sweep across my face. she also had this way of dancing in which her elbow managed to keep coming uncomfortably close to injuring me. her legs were tattooed as if ribbon was criss-crossing up the whole way and her skin tight mini dress was barely staying on. upon leaving the show we proceeded to sit in such a log jam in the parking garage that we left our vehicles, went inside, ate dinner at pink taco and then went back to the garage. silliness.

but the biggest event of the weekend was handmaking my very last wedding invitation. no more! no more!!!

http://marryourdaughter.net/

wow.

my dad

music in vegas

this is how sad the music scene is here. they are BEGGING people to go to the flaming lips show tomorrow night. yes, that is right a band i actually like is coming to vegas. all i had to do was go buy an 18 pack of miller light, take the sticker off the side and go to the palms on my lunch break and give them the sticker. in return they handed me 2 tickets to see the flaming lips. in any other city those tickets would be on sale for a bundle and still disappear in minutes. they are playing outside tomorrow night. pool at the palms.

we are experiencing a very strange flow of music here. the veils recently came though. we saw matt & kim last night. tonight modest mouse, tomorrow night flaming lips, wednesday the rentals, oh and zach just saw built to spill last week. it almost feels like we live in a real city. when it rains it pours. i am sure the desert will return to its normal drought very soon.

bye bye sushi

my body has decided after 29 years that it is going to be allergic to sushi. why? i love sushi. especially fire crunch at virago. the past few times i have had it the inside of my mouth has swollen up. i have never had an allergy to anything. doc says no more sushi. i say i should do some experimenting and see which sushi is giving me the problem.

Blur Are Back On Texting Terms, Set To Reunite

Has every band that ever broke up or opted to go on "hiatus" decided to get back into the ring? Even Led Zep appear to be getting in the act. (And we await silently Fugazi's return.) Well, as if Damon Albarn and his cheeky cohorts weren't busy enough, looks like Blur went and caught themselves a case of reunion fever! Yessir, Damon, Alex, Graham, and David (ah, first-name basis) are gonna dive deep into those Brit pop waters, recording as a quartet for the first time since 2002.

As Alex James explained to NME.COM regarding the upcoming recording sessions (which will reportedly go down in October):

It's going to happen soon ... It's looking promising .... It's important for us emotionally not to leave Blur as an unfinished thing. It could be good musically as well.
I texted Graham this morning and got one back ... I saw Damon (Albarn) about a month ago and I spoke to Dave yesterday. We're all talking.

The inner-band love 'n' texting's sweet, but will the sounds be any good? Alex? "Good guitars would be good. But I mainly talk to Graham about mandolins and prog music."
As we get our heads around that step toward the Rush realm and good ol' mandolins, why not head over to the band's official site and take a peek at Alex's diary. Wonder if any of this this inspires Moz to take the plunge. For $76M, maybe?

Zach's favorite

1984 Apple's Macintosh Commercial

why?

why are so many good jeans ruined with the bleached whisker thing on the front? i don't get it. i don't get it at all.

bolan's bday

Marc Bolan's Birthday Celebrated With Reissues, More

September 16 will mark the 30th anniversary of the death of Marc Bolan, mastermind behind glam-rock titans T. Rex. Bolan died only a few weeks before what would've been his 30th birthday, and in remembrance of both anniversaries, a number of Bolan projects are underway in the next few weeks.

First up is "Souls We Miss", an exhibition of photographs of Bolan taken by the late Keith Morris. The photos will be exhibited at London's Redferns Music Picture Gallery for the seven weeks following September 14. On September 15, London's Shepherd's Bush Empire will host Marc Bolan: The Celebration, a concert featuring Marc's son Rolan, Marc Almond of Soft Cell, producer Tony Visconti, T. Rex tribute band T. Rextasy, Blondie's Clem Burke, and many more.

There are also several Bolan documentaries in the works, including a BBC 4 special, ITV's "20th Century Boy" airing September 8, and a BBC Radio 2 program on September 15. Apparently, the ITV special contains such revelations as the fact that Bolan lost his virginity at age nine. Whoa.

Then come the records, and there's a lot of 'em. Edsel Records will release a trio of T. Rex vinyl singles with previously unavailable tracks on each B-side. September 17 sees "Metal Guru" backed with an acoustic demo of "The Slider". The next Monday finds "Children of the Revolution" paired with a electric demo of "The Leopards". And October 1 finds "20th Century Boy" matches with "Teenager in Love", an acoustic duet between Marc and his longtime girlfriend, soul singer Gloria Jones.

Following on October 1, also on Edsel, is Live 1977 + In Conversation, a double-disc set consisting of live cuts and an interview. The first disc contains performances from the final T. Rex tour, with punk icons the Damned guesting on the encore of "Get It On". The In Conversation disc is culled from an interview conducted by Steve Wright with Bolan and Gloria Jones. It includes several acoustic on-air performances.

Finally, on October 15, Edsel will release Interstellar Soul, a three-CD set collecting exclusive tracks, home demos, and other rarities. The package will arrive in a numbered edition of 5000. A fantastic amount of tracklist information for these reissues is available after the jump.

20th Century Boy

dust devil

saturday night zach was kind enough to force me out of my home office (aka invitation making station) to see a movie. well, on the way we were confronted by a dust devil! i had never seen one of these in person but it was a little scary. it was moving across the desert field fairly close to our car carrying tons of debris way way way up high into the sky. it looked like pieces of metal, etc. it was moving across the street we were about to turn on, but it crossed the street before we got the arrow, so we didn't have to worry about a dangerous encounter. i just had visions of pieces of metal crashing through our windows and cutting us. it was pretty cool to see. it looked kindof like this:

A dust devil is a rotating updraft, ranging from small (half a meter wide and a few meters tall) to large (over 10 meters wide and over 1000 meters tall). In the southwestern United States, dust devils can be known as dancing devils. Navajo refer to them as chiindii, a ghost or spirit of a Navajo. If a chiindii spins clockwise it is said to be a good spirit; if it spins counterclockwise it is said to be a bad spirit. In Death Valley, California, they may be called a sand auger or dust whirl. [1]
In Australia, they are commonly known as a willy willy, from an Aboriginal word. [2] In Egypt, they are usually called "Fasset El 'Afreet" or the ghost's wind.
Dust devils are usually harmless, but rare ones can grow in size to threaten both people and property. They are comparable to tornadoes in that both are an unusual weather phenomenon of swirling air vortices. Tornadoes form as an updraft attached to a wall cloud at the back of a thunderstorm. Dust devils form as an updraft under sunny conditions during clear to fair weather, rarely coming close to the intensity of a tornado.
Dust devils form when hot air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler low pressure air above it. If conditions are just right, the air may begin to rotate. As the air rises suddenly, the column of hot air is stretched vertically causing intensification of the spinning effect by the scientific principle conservation of angular momentum. The spinning effect causes other hot air to speed horizontally inward to the bottom of the newly-forming vortex. As more hot air rushes in toward the developing vortex to replace the air that is rising, the spinning effect becomes further intensified and self-sustaining. A dust devil, fully formed, is a funnel-like chimney through which hot air moves both upwardly and circularly. Eventually the hot air will cool and descend back through the center of the vortex. This cool air returning acts as a balance against the spinning hot air outer wall and keeps the system stable.[3]
The spinning effect, along with surface friction, usually will produce a forward momentum. The dust devil is able to sustain itself longer by moving over nearby sources of hot surface air. Dust particles sucked into the air will create drag and act to slow the system down.
As available extreme hot air near the surface is channeled up the dust devil, eventually surrounding cooler air will be sucked in. Once this occurs, the effect is dramatic and the dust devil dissipates in seconds. Usually this occurs when a dust devil isn't moving fast enough (depletion) or begins to enter a terrain where the surface temperatures are cooler, causing unbalance.[1]
Certain conditions increase the likelihood of dust devil formation.
Flat barren terrain, desert or asphalt: Flat conditions increase the likelihood of the hot air "fuel" to be a near constant. Dusty or sandy conditions will cause particles to become caught up into the vortex, making the dust devil easily visible.
Clear skies or lightly cloudy conditions. The surface needs to absorb significant amounts of solar energy from the Sun to heat the air near the surface and create ideal dust devil conditions.
Light or no wind and cool atmospheric temperature. The underlying factor and sustainability of a dust devil is the extreme difference in temperature between the near surface air and atmosphere. Wind conditions will destabilize the spinning effect of a dust devil.
Electrical activities

Dust devils, even small ones (on Earth) can produce radio noise and electrical fields greater than 10,000 volts per meter.[4] A dust devil picks up small dirt and dust particles. As the particle whirl around they bump and scrape into each other and become electrically charged. The whirling charged particles also create a magnetic field that fluctuates between 3 and 30 times each second.[5]
These electrical fields assist the vortices in lifting materials off the ground and into the atmosphere. Field experiments indicate that a dust devil can lift 1 gram (0.03 oz) of dust per second from each square meter (10.8 ft²) of ground it passes over. A large dust devil measuring about 100 meters (328 ft) across at its base can lift about 15 metric tons (16.5 tons) of dust into the air in 30 minutes. Giant dust storms that sweep across the world's deserts contribute eight percent of the mineral dust in the atmosphere each year during the handful of storms that occur. In comparison, the significantly smaller dust devils that twist across the deserts during the summer lift about three times as much dust, thus having a greater combined impact on the dust content of the atmosphere.[6]
[edit]Martian dust devils
A dust devil on Mars, photographed by Mars Global Surveyor. The long dark streak is formed by a moving swirling column of Martian atmosphere. The dust devil itself (the black spot) is climbing the crater wall. The streaks on the right are sand dunes on the crater floor.
Dust devils also occur on Mars, and were first photographed by the Viking orbiters in the 1970s. In 1997, the Mars Pathfinder lander detected a dust devil passing over it. [7][8] Martian dust devils can be up to fifty times as wide and ten times as high as terrestrial dust devils, and large ones may pose a threat to terrestrial technology sent to Mars.[9]
Mission members monitoring the Spirit rover on Mars reported March 12, 2005 that a lucky encounter with a dust devil has cleaned the solar panels of that robot. Power levels dramatically increased and daily science work was anticipated to be expanded. [10] A similar phenomenon (solar panels mysteriously cleaned of accumulated dust) had previously been observed with the Opportunity rover, and dust devils had also been suspected as the cause. [11]
A large-scale cyclone has also been observed on Mars.

What a wonderful world - Shadow Puppets

you know you are a design geek when . . .

the kerning on your license plate really rubs you the wrong way. I really want to nudge that "J" more to the left. as if there are not more important things to worry about- such as resisting the mini packaged ben n jerry's ice cream at the grocery store. itty bitty cookie dough. not kidding. have you seen this? oh, if only there was not a wedding gown to think about and those would have TOTALLY been chillin in my cart.

It's Done!

The Four Seasons Ocean Residences Book is finally complete. I can't believe it. Blood, sweat and tears, people!
(not to mention many a night and weekends)