oh yeah, i almost forgot -- chance (a.k.a. MC Onigiri of Crack Heist) finally uploaded the video to "Rag Rhyme", their tribute to redwings. the credits say "produced by tiny animals", but all the music was done by none other than Montana & McDeviltoast.
taavy (one of the excellent employees of baba budan's) had her 21st birthday at midnight monday night, so a few of us went out. an echo of the previous tuesday, the weather was way shitty. didn't stop us though. check some pics here. my battery died halfway through, so i had to use my old, not as good digital camera.
so i made it to work tuesday (though the roads kind of sucked), but i could see by the early afternoon that it wasn't getting better, so i left early. good thing, since it became an ice storm. (search flickr for "cincinnati ice storm" or something if you want to see pics; i didn't take any.) it got so bad that wednesday morning when i got up, i could see that the roads were not drivable, so i called in and stayed home.
thursday after work i met sarah and thea at amol for some indian food. good times. we planned on heading to baba's for the open mic, but it was still too early, so we headed to my place, where i played recods and we hung out. i threw on a couple 12" records i forgot i'd had -- they were remixes of 2/5 BZ (note: ugly myspace page with cool music), the performance name of turkey's Serhat Koksal. he'd sent them to me in a package with a couple cd's, and i was so eager to play the cds that i forgot about the records. man, are they good! i'm mad i didn't listen to them before. i'm probably going to rip them, so i'll put them up if i do. the open mic afterward was cool (see a few pics here), bu somewhat unremarkable, especially after playing that 2/5 BZ stuff.
on friday, i came back down to baba's and hung out again with sarah, and a couple of her friends. we just chatted and chilled -- very cool. saturday, too, since sarah, taavy, and i went to northside tavern to hang out.
sunday was fairly uneventful, though i did go with Rob to see Pan's Labyrinth. add me to the list of people who recommend it. for serious.
tuesday (the 6th) was snow. that shit was brutal: 3.5 hours in the car on the way home from work (roughly 7 times the usual drive). not cool.
so my friend Shannon had her birthday party on friday, and i attended the first couple hours of it. pictures are here, though flickr.com is "getting a massage" right now and is unavailable. try later if you're curious. (there are some good ones in there, IMO).
i left early to head to baba budan's for the twice-monthly dj night called BANG!. it was great, with local guy Henneke and the great Sassmouth coming down from chicago. mad pictures here.
the toast left monday morning, and things went back to the way they were before. it was weird, though -- as soon as he set foot in the apartment, it was like he never left. and now he's gone again, and i'm surprised at how quickly my brain went back where it was, after having switched gears so quickly when he arrived.
an old friend of mine, jen, called. i haven't seen her in literally years. we used to hang out all the time, and were pretty good friends, so it was good to hear from her. we chatted for a while, and then she said she'd come down to my dj night at boca.
on thursday, i went to the pizza night ("Boca Block Party", as i suppose it's called). the vibe was weird, and immediately bawe (the maitre d) pulled me aside and suggested that this might be the last pizza night. not because of me, but because it just wasnt bringing in the revenue to sustain it. kind of a bummer, but it wasn't surprising; as i've mentioned before, business had been slow. i set up, and i could tell almost immediately that, at best, bawe's "might be" was wishful thinking -- his was the last one.
so, i cut loose. my usual "mostly mainstream hip-hop" became whatever i felt like. instead of pussycat dolls, jay-z, and snoop dog, i played justice, mr. oizo, and does it offend you yeah?. and naturally, on a night that i'm cuting loose, people were coming up to me and complimenting me on my music. take that, mainstream hip-hop. :)
jen showed up, and, just as i do, she looks pretty much the same as she did when last i saw her. we hung out a bit, but of course i was busy playing records. a few of my other friends were there too, celeste and hideki among them.
on friday, after work, it was time for the southern rock tribute show. i forgo to mention that last saturday, while the toast was in town but hanging with his parents, i had gone over to sean's studio and worked out the basic framework of the allman brothers track "whippin' post". he worked on it all this week, and goddamn was it good.
there were about 16 bands there, and many of them did fairly faithful renditions. of course, there were a few that were out of the ordinary too. good times.
we did fairly well, and got a great reaction. jimmy d, a respected local musician, told us that he'd seen probably 35 bands do that song, including a band featuring a guy named greg, and ours was the best. compliments don't come much better than that. we hit camp washington after that.
upon my return home, i discovered/remembered that the heat had gone out. i'd called the landlord (tony) before i went to the show, but i'd forgotten about it. boo hiss.
his guy ryan came over in the morning to work on it, and tony came over himself a couple hours afterward, and they fixed it. i hung out at baba's while they were doing that; it was friggin cold.
that night, i set up my tables and celeste and jen came over and hung out. i spun for a while, but then abandoned them in favor of mr. show and grey goose.
sunday morning jen took off, but celeste made breakfast. we ate while we watched rize, a david lachapelle documentary on clowning and krumping.
i had to get up early the next morning for work, so i went to bed a little early.