Scenes From the Eagle Rock Music Festival

The Oinkster. I had a burger, fries and root beer. I craved an ube shake, but since I had a halo halo earlier, I resisted the urge.



A punk band called Get Out singing a song about Asian girls.



Teddy's Cheer Club. They were quite good.



Jessica Fichot singing songs in French (and Russian and Chinese and English). I picked up her CD. It's delightful!



Random scenes at the festival.

It was a great event--and free! Unfortunately my camera's batteries died on me during Fichot's set, so I have no pictures to show of other great bands like Bodies of Water and Dengue Fever. I left two songs into Under the Influence of Giant's set. They just weren't rocking my world. I highly recommend the festival, though. It's well-organized and the music, atmosphere and participants are awesome.

You rock, Eagle Rock!

The Chicago Marathon Sucked This Year

[Associated Press photo]

The Chicago Marathon is one of the races that I'm eager to do, but thankfully I didn't do it this year. What is usually a fast course run in pleasant and ideal weather, turned into an agonizing march through the Second City as the heat and humidity led to cutting the race short. One runner died, a 35 year old police officer. It was the hottest Chicago Marathon ever, eclipsing the record heat of 1979. Hopefully this means that if I run the race next year, the chance of another heatwave occurring is nil.

Check John's blog for his firsthand account of the race. It looks like John finished the race but I know it was much slower than he usually does.

New York Times Wedding Announcement of the Week

Keith Lockhart, the boyishly-handsome conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, is off the market. Awwww...

Emiley Zalesky and Keith Lockhart

First off, I find it hard to believe that Lockhart is 47. So those with baby faces, don't fret. While everyone else see themselves wrinkling into old age, you'll still look as handsome as ever. Put up with getting carded for years, you'll be glad when you're 47 and looking like Mr. Lockhart.

Let's give credit to Ms. Zalesky, too, for being brave enough to come up to him while he was having dinner. I never approach celebrities. Who knows who I might have hooked up with now if I did.

It's the third marriage for Mr. Lockhart, and the fact that he exchanged numbers with a woman who's out on a date renders him a bit of a cad. Still, he's handsome, talented, and rich. You have to take advantage, right?

New York Times Wedding Announcement of the Week

Mariah Carey once sang that love takes time, and if Mariah sang it, it must be true.

Meghan Harris and Kevin Feehan

Ms. Harris and Mr. Feehan met fourteen years earlier at Harbor Hills Day Camp. Both performed in the camp production of South Pacific, but they didn't know each other or fall in love until they met at a party years later.

How cute is that? They spent the rest of that night drinking and singing songs from the show. Some enchanted evening, indeed!

Birthday Chips

At the end of each month our department celebrates all those whose birthday landed in the last thirty days with a nice sugary cake and a self-conscious rendition of "Happy Birthday." September was extremely crowded with birthdays--me included--a result of clumsy fumblings on New Year's Eve by our parents.

This month, though, rather than collect $2 for the birthday cake fund, the Powers That Be decided on another carbolicious party favorite. Tortilla chips. Instead of birthday cake, we had birthday chips. Thankfully we didn't have to sing "Happy Birthday" because if we did I doubt I could have stopped from laughing.

This Week in Running

Last week was not the busiest week for running. Too many events conspiring to keep me busy, so I looked at it as a much-needed rest week. I ran once on Tuesday then did 10 miles with FJ and Andy on Sunday morning. We were joined for a bit by Rachel and Sean.

This week has been more active, but the rest didn't do my legs any good. I woke up today with very sore legs after last night's run in Beverly Hills.

Here's the week in running.

09/17 - Four miles. I ran in the median along San Vicente from Ocean Park to 26th Street. It's not as easy as it looks. The ground in the median isn't all that even, so my muscles were tense a lot of the time. Add to that the slight incline towards Brentwood. I think if I run it a few more times I can get the rhythm of the course down and be more relaxed.

09/19 - Four miles with the Frontrunners. I didn't time the run, but I think I made my dash up the final hill to early because I almost pooped out--literally--near the end. I also had to miss the potluck because I had to meet my family for dinner in Pasadena. All in all a good run.

09/20 - Five miles with Club Run LA in Beverly Hills. We were fast. I didn't time it but I could feel it. It's the same course as the training runs for Run Hit Remix and many of the same people, but it was a smaller group. I'll join them in future runs. After Thursday's run I took part in the Niketown sale and bought a long sleeve dri-fit shirt and matching shorts. Can't wait to wear them

Tomorrow morning I'm meeting with FJ and Andy. I'm not sure how far we'll go. We'll see how it goes.

Concerts, I've Got Concerts!

It seems to work out that I go to concerts in a mad rush for a period of time--at least once a week, maybe twice. Then follows a period of no concert-going. Earlier this week I made a list of concerts I plan on checking out, and by the looks of it I will be quite busy till the end of the year.

On my calendar:

10/25/07 - Josh Ritter @ the El Rey
10/26/07 - Final Fantasy @ the Glass House*
11/10/07 - Jens Lekman @ the Troubadour
11/11/07 - The Walkmen @ the Troubadour
11/26/07 - Band of Horses @ the Glass House*
11/29/07 - Sea Wolf @ the Troubadour
12/7/07 - Andrew Bird @ the Orpheum Theatre

*Tentative

That's not to mention shows by Rogue Wave, Two Gallants, Feist and Sunset Rubdown that I really want to see. I had to hold off on buying tix to make sure I can really afford to go. Concerts are great fun, but they are also expensive.

See you all at the shows!

From the LA Times

From the LA Times:

CORONADO, Calif., -- The U.S. Navy has decided to spend as much as $600,000 for landscaping and architectural modifications to obscure the fact that one its building complexes looks like a swastika from the air.

The four L-shaped buildings, constructed in the late 1960s, are part of the amphibious base at Coronado and serve as barracks for Seabees.

From the ground and from inside nearby buildings, the controversial shape cannot be seen. Nor are there any civilian or military landing patterns that provide such a view to airline passengers.

But once people began looking at satellite images from Google Earth, they started commenting about on blogs and websites about how much the buildings resembled the symbol used by the Nazis.

My Three and a Half Hour Lunch

As I walked out of the building to go to lunch at noon, the LAPD began closing off the section of Wilshire Blvd. in front of us. I thought it might be a protest of some sort or a bomb threat across the street. I called upstairs and warned everyone. I was right, but the threat was actually in our building. A suspicious package was left downstairs and when I came back from lunch they wouldn't let us back in. If only I had my car keys I would have headed home and there I would be now. No, instead I'm back here not really getting anything done.

At least it wasn't a real bomb, but boy it wreaked havoc on street traffic. I would hate to have been stuck on Wilshire at that time.

New York Times Wedding Announcement of the Week

This week's Announcement isn't quite a workplace romance, but the seed was planted there.

Daisy Wademan and Luc Dowling

I went on recruiting dinners when I worked at an accounting firm, but I really only went for the free meals. The conversation was always dull and rote.

My favorite part of this announcement is their shared love for Paris and the spontaneous weekend getaway they go on, which basically was their second date. I'm not terribly spontaneous, but if someone asked me to go on a long weekend trip, I would probably say "yes" after the initial doubts about the prudence of packing up on short notice. I've done it before. I just need the right motivation.

The announcement also points out that Ms. Wademan is a descendant of Miles Standish and of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. I have no idea who these people are or if we're supposed to be impressed by it. I see this a lot in the NY Times announcements. Often it's a prominent, recognizable ancestor. Still, regardless of their prominence, if you're 200 years removed from that ancestor, it's not all that pertinent to know. It's interesting trivia. I'd be more interested in knowing about the couple's interests than where they descended from.

In any event, congratulations to the happy couple.