An improbable =w= story

So on Wednesday I get a call from Flash that said, essentially: I'm shooting a private event this weekend and Weezer is playing. Not to twist your arm, but in the off chance that you could come...

Do I have the best aunt or what?

Booking a Friday flight two days beforehand is a little pricey but she assured me she would be able to cover it. Rock and roll time!! Except... the US Air flight to PIT from LGA had to land in Harrisburg to refuel due to bad weather. It was ultimately two hours late; we boarded, but then were told we had missed LGA's curfew window as one of their runways was closed to weather. Flight canceled, go home, we can't really help you because it's weather-related. I had a brief wavering of resolve - maybe I wasn't meant to go on this crazy trip? - but banded together with a few other twentysomething flight refugees and tried to get on a Continental flight to EWR. Surprise! It canceled too. My only option to be in NYC on time was a 6am Delta flight to JFK, and it was now just past midnight.

There was no way I'd get back to the airport in time on the bus, but I really didn't want to sleep in an airport. After being told that all the area hotels were booked (of course!) I finally found one that wasn't; amazingly enough, two of my compatriots, both post-university ladies my age, thought splitting a room would be just fine - yay low price point! Even better, they had CARS, and we set off. Well, first we had to take two noisy, yo-we-gotta-play-dis "gangsta" boys at the very nearby Sunoco for some cigarettes ("Any of you smoke?" // "No, actually I work in air quality, so I know exactly how bad that is for you..." // "Oh.") and then back to the airport so we didn't cause any harm to their shiny kicks (really). But whatever. We got to the Holiday Inn, travel-loopy, and the employees must have taken pity on us because they threw in a cot for free, and then reduced the rate to $59 when they heard we'd only be in the room for three hours tops. $20 for a shower and an hour and change of sleep was so, so worth it. Although it was the first time I've seen that side of 4am in a long time, ouch.


After a wonderfully uneventful flight and saying goodbye to Lauren and Kari (we exchanged business cards, fun!), I finally got to NYC and was at Sue's place by 9:30am. After a briefing on the event (lucky, wealthy guy's 50th bday), family, and the cameras (I ended up bringing her G12 and my G9, for maximum familiarity and minimum intrusiveness on my end), we met up with Ophelia and ate at Leña's again (yay!). A quick change and gear-grab and then we were in the car ride up to Greenwich, CT. A few more minutes of sleep for me, woo hooo! But once we arrived...



I don't think I have seen or will ever again see a private event like this. The decorations were straight out of a magazine. They had entire arms of four plantains, fruit and blooms and all. They had two tents and an outdoor area, each with a different theme. Two stages. Fancy trailored and air-conditioned port-a-johns. Ten people doing valet parking. Artifacts and mini exhibits from the birthday boy's childhood. Exotic-looking flowers galore. Even once people arrived, it seemed like there were more staff (roadies, chefs, waiters, runners, us, etc) than attendees, and there was a 500+ guest list! The food was awesome but it was hot hot hot out. I must have had at least 7 glasses of water and never really needed to pee. But it sure made for good land/skyscape shooting, which is what I tried to bring to the table.


The Outlaws played first; Cracker went on right after. David Blayne was wandering around doing magic. These are not unpopular acts! I would have been impressed with just that. But, of course, then I saw Scott Shriner standing with a beer - just in the tent! No one around! Like he's a real person and not a tiny speck from a crappy venue seat behind beefy event staff! Okay, so my brain short-circuited a bit. Sought out Sue to regroup, but she was just like "oh look, the family is over there with them, let's go take some photos." That was exactly the opposite direction I was thinking! I am, in retrospect, awfully thankful for that response, because I might never have gone over there otherwise. And I would have missed serious awesome. I came prepared with an old "if it's too loud, turn it down" tshirt and a sharpie, and was able to get it signed then by Brian, Scott and Josh Freese, their touring drummer. I then had a really nice chat with Brian about how smart it was that I was wearing earplugs, and how he didn't have any with him, which ended in me giving him a spare pair that he said he'd use later. It was probably only five seconds long but he was SO kind and really, my day had already been made. Even if a giant fireball crashed into the stage and they didn't play, I would have not minded one bit.


But of course they played. For the first time in my life, I could touch the stage. I was seeing the band at 1:1 scale. The few hundred giddy rich white people and I enjoyed the CRAP out of their show, that's for sure. I gave the birthday boy's daughter my last pair of earplugs (lesson: spares are handy!), watched his son grab the cast-off guitar, and saw the videofeed cameraman jump with the crowd, his child-weighted camera above his head. They played the Lady Gaga pokerface // MGMT Kids mashup. Rivers jumped on someone's shoulders and was taken around the tent, high-fiving and looking like he was finally enjoying shows. I was definitely surprised by that, in comparison to the other times I've seen the band. Everyone looked like they were having a really good time. Maybe the whole wife/kid/meditation thing is working after all. At that point you could have told me anything and I would have believed it. I do think theirs was unequivocally the best set of the night.




I had known they were going to take a band-with-the-family photo afterwards and though they didn't let me past as a photographer, I did queue up to get Rivers' autograph. I was kind of floored by some of the people in front of me, though - "What house were you at Harvard? Let me give you my card in case you're ever in New Orleans"... are you serious, dude, there is no way he cares about that. By the time it was my turn I just wanted to get his signature, express gratitude ("I'mahugefansohappyyouplayedheretonight"), and make sure everyone else had time to do the same. That is the logical part of me typing because the other part would just go EEEEEEEE. I couldn't get the sharpie back in the pencap, my hands were shaking so much, so I decided I would take a rest, partake in some "soft desserts" (that was actually the term used; mostly tiny cheesecakes and stuff) and lay off the camera for a while. Everclear was a good show to watch too, although I felt bad for them as the crowd had thinned out considerably by then...


By the time the night was over, seven hours after we'd arrived, my body had about had it with life. I guess running on less than two hours of sleep might do that. I am 23 and my back felt like knives and I had lost feeling on the side of my left pinkie toe - though I was happy to trade that nerve ending for the whole experience, I was completely in awe of my aunt, who was still hopping around making sure she had good shots of all the attendees. This is not easy work she does. But eventually we packed up, finagled ownership of one of the plantain branches (really couldn't pass that up. as sue said, "what a great corsage!" -- but, surprisingly freaking heavy!), collected our parting personalized soccer ball and got in a car home. Oof. After a little unwinding time - and some MUCH needed showertime, even if it was in a totally bizarre one next door because her water didn't have enough power - we watched the Empire State Building go out at 2:01am (!), a perfect ending to a crazy, crazy day.

I slept in, but not too long - hard to justify in NYC when there's so much else that you could do. Sunday was a pretty laid-back day anyway, though, just because we really didn't need to move too much after the previous day. I FINALLY learned how to use Lightroom, which we'd been planning on doing forever. What a fun tool! (I would later come back and buy my own, and had enough amazon credit to knock it from $69 to $0.79!) Once we set DVDs of the RAW and processed files a'burning, we headed over to Cornelia St. Cafe for lunch and to see Peanut's art installation. They are SO COOL! The food - indian black bean soup and the farmer's breakfast (poached egg on salad) - was perfect and I might even need to recreate them someday... Just to further the total craziness of the weekend, GROM - the super awesome gelato place Peter and I visted in Florence - is RIGHT around the corner from the Cafe. It's expensive but I had to stop in. The gelato was just as delicious as I had remembered. I got siciliana (orange and almond), extranoir, and tiramisu, and loved each one. Sue got mint and pistachio which were also very good.


We got back with a perfect amount of time to pack and get on the shuttle to the airport. Considering the trouble I had getting to the city, you'd think going out would have been fine...but the 8:30pm plane was delayed an hour. Of course! But my seat was such that I got to listen to attendant chatter, which was very funny. We arrived a few minutes after the US Air 9:30pm flight, which I remembered my newfound friend Lauren from Friday night was supposed to be on. I called her (business card WIN) and since she also lives in Shadyside, I hitched a ride and didn't even have to take the bus. SO GOOD.

Seriously. I may have used up all my summer awesome-things credit. But I wouldn't change a single part of the weekend, it was all an amazing adventure. =)

Design Science Lab and other life

Welcome to Part III of June Backdated Material. What can I say, June was nuts.

After driving a million hours to NYC and back, I headed east AGAIN on the 18th in preparation for Father's Day. Just kidding, that was kind of unintentional, although we did go to Ken's pool to celebrate. Actually I celebrated Father's Day by proving that I love my dad the most ever, the best way possible: by running over a traffic cone and cracking off part of my bumper valance. The cone was between my freakishly-segregated-for-no-reason lane and my highway exit, and I thought that since the cone had already been obviously run over, it would be safer. Clearly I was not thinking. But finding a replacement sure gave dad something to do, and I hear he really likes being busy, so there's that. Good thing I got him Malin's and Pep Boy's gift certificates also, perhaps....

ANYWAY. The reason I had the opportunity to exhibit such remarkable driving prowess is because I was headed to Design Science Lab, which I had found during a googling rampage borne out of a what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here fit at work. Conveniently enough, since it was possibly going to teach me about the intersection of science and politics and that's vaguely relevant to my thesis, my advisor agreed to partially fund me. Woo hoo!

Except...it was a fairly bizarre program. I somehow had the impression that it would be larger, when in fact it appears to mostly be run by two men who are sweet and intelligent people but not terribly organized. Nonetheless, we teleconferenced with several people at the UN, which was very cool, and learned primarily about the design science process as proposed by Buckminster Fuller. The oft-repeated quote is that we were trying to "Make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” A pretty cool idea, if awfully far-reaching.

Some of the lectures tested my patience with respect to realism as an engineer, but once we got down to the group project it was like magically being transported back to undergrad. That sense of immediacy, scrambling to get everything done all right while also staying up late, stealing golf flags and talking about everything, was very cool to return to. Even if the food was amazingly bad and the windowless dorm bathrooms were a little reminiscent of prison. I met a ton of awesome people and had an inordinate amount of fun with the few hours we had free every day. For example, I dragged many of them to Sam's Club (a HILARIOUS event for ecologically-mindful Australians to which this practice is unknown) and Dark Horse (burgers and drinks are still awesome!) one night. Another day we went to a mall, hit up a gigantic Whole Foods and highjacked a merry-go-round for free. During the latter, boys ten years younger than me were catcalling by urging me to check out their facebook pages. Teen boys: is that actually a thing? I am pretty sure it is not. Also, I was with other dudes, what is wrong with you people? But I was too happy with my teacup ride to actually be angry. Another time we were walking outside and heard fireworks, then found a clear vantage point and watched them go off for twenty minutes. Amazing. And THEN I learned how an ice cream vending machine works, which just added to the fun!





The project, by the way, culminated in a presentation to actual players at the NYC United Nations HQ. Veeeeeery cool. I found yet another one of those cracked art globes (sister, I suppose, to those at the Vatican and in Dublin), plus saw parts of the Berlin wall, a lot of art, a very heart-wrenching exhibit on what the UN does, and walked in the security council room. It was a roller coaster kind of day, goofy and serious and professional and wide-eyed. Not sure I'd need to do the whole program again, but what I did achieve was pretty awesome. I never thought of the UN as a place to work, but now it doesn't seem that far out. As long as that construction finishes, of course.






After a long goodbye with everyone, I drove down to Lewes for beach week! It was kind of a shaky one this year for everyone but next year's will be better. It's the first time I've cut my beach week short, and it totally put me out of sync. Plus I had a lot of sleep to catch up on so I wasn't actually a coherent human being the first couple days, which certainly didn't help. It was still relaxing, though, and fun. Also hilarious was our fourth of july party, as much for the company as the fact that my friend Christine, with whom I had spent many hours during the Lab, was driving down to SC from Boston on the 4th and ended up crashing at my place. Except she totally got caught up in the worst post-fireworks traffic in a long time, perhaps partially because Wilmington cancelled theirs this year. It was NUTS. But so improbable that we played around with some glowsticks, ate some food, and it was fun!




Now time for the recent eating section:

We had two food failures lately. One involves making cheese kit mozzarella while drunk, which I can't recommend, and leaving beer in the freezer until it explodes, which I can't recommend either. Although the latter does remind you of that Gary Paulsen novel in middle school when you first learned that beer freezes in alaska. Anyway, yes, this was the same night. We also rented Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 1, which is a horribly slow movie. This explains our beverage inclination a bit, I think.

A little bit more successful has been SK's tomato and corn pie (AMAZING but hard to photograph) and vegan cupcakes from a while ago except with blueberry mash versus apple butter. In an effort to clean house of cucumbers, I discovered cucumber agua fresca, which is awesome in that it makes cukes disappear and tastes like a mojito. Peter also discovered the Two Fat Ladies program, which we devoured on youtube, and really wanted to make their shooter sandwich. I wasn't about to stop him, and it turned out pretty well! Also, with the loaf innards I made tiny bread puddings in my muffin tin, which was fun. We had to buy bourbon for the sauce - I know, tragic (bourbon is my new favorite).



Now the complicated part of summer is over! I think... =)