Miami In Heat

The twelfth annual Ultra Musical Festival was held in Miami, Florida this past weekend. Billed as one of the biggest electronic music festivals in North America, the two-day event completely sold out and featured a monster line-up of the world's biggest DJs and electronic acts. Tiesto, Armin van Buuren, Groove Armada, Benny Benassi, Deadmau5, and more were all rocking Bicentennial Park, where a crowd of some 70,000 fans turned the place into a kinetic wonderland.

Figge, one of my closest friends, was working the show, serving as the VJ for Swedish supergroup Swedish House Mafia. Comprised of three of Sweden's biggest DJs -- Sebastian Ingrosso, Axwell, and Steve Angello -- the group was playing the second night of Ultra, just before headliner Deadmau5. Roy and I were on site to provide production support for Figge. Here he is with Roy and Christian, who, asides from being SHM's manager, has also been getting a lot of calls lately for his work as the editor for Lady Gaga's Telephone music video.

Working the show means all-access wristbands.

This is the second time we've worked with Fig at a concert, the first being the Blink-182 show at MSG this past winter, and it was again an amazing experience. It's truly remarkable to see all of the behind-the-scenes work it takes for one of these events to come together, and when the crowd is as passionate as the Ultra crowd was, the whole show is that much more rewarding. But what made the show special for me was finding out that there were a handful of non-electronic acts performing, acts that I was actually excited to see.

As much fun as the electronic DJs turned to be (Armin van Buuren in particular), I was stoked to find out that Passion Pit was performing at the show. One of my favorite bands right now, Passion Pit is a tremendously catchy mix of electronic and pop. You might recognize their song Sleepyhead from the Palm Pixi commercial, or their current single Little Secrets, but for the really transcendental stuff, check out Moth's Wings or Eyes As Candles. They performed in the afternoon on Friday, and were the first act to draw a really big crowd.

They put on an excellent, if all too short, show. The guys had great energy, and when we ran into them earlier in the day, they seemed genuinely surprised and pleased that we recognized them. I loved that. I'll definitely be going to see them live again.

As night fell, the crowd really began to grow, until it looked like this during Groove Armada's set.



We skipped out partway through Tiesto's set to get some rest for the next day. While it was rainy and muggy on Friday, Saturday was beautiful, with the sun providing some much needed color to my pasty behind. We showed up at the venue just in time to catch Damian Marley & Nas' set. Needless to say, the two of them put on one hell of a show, and the sudden influx of marijuana smog was a testament to the crowd's enthusiasm. It ain't everyday you get to hear God's Son and Bong Jr. perform One Love.

The afternoon wore on and by nightfall, the place was packed. Here's a look at the video content during Armin van Buuren's set.

The crowd loved the pyrotechnics. Hands up!

And then it was time for SHM to go up. As a side note, Florence from Florence & the Machine (another one of my favorite bands at the moment) was supposed to perform with them, but for whatever reason, the arrangement fell through and she never took the stage. Huge bummer? Oh yeah. Anyway, it was Figge's first time working with them, and despite weeks of hard work and two days of prep, the show wasn't without its hiccups. That's the nature of live events like this, though, and everything that went wrong this time will no doubt be a learning experience that will make next time that much better. It wasn't perfect, but congrats on a helluva job, Fig.

We closed off the night by catching Ghostland Observatory on one of the side stages. I only knew a couple of songs by the Austin duo beforehand, but they put on a spastic and energetic show. Great fun.

Sunday was our only day to really enjoy Miami, but unfortunately the weather got muggy again and Fig had to spend the bulk of the day catching up on some work. We finally managed to get out of the hotel around 9 PM, and we promptly headed to South Beach for some good Cuban eats at Puerta Sagua.

After that we hit the beach just to check it out, despite the fact that it was dark and mostly deserted. We took a moment to just stand on the sand and bask in the warm wind blowing in from the Atlantic.

And then we messed around with long exposures.

All in all, it was a spectacular weekend, certainly a lot more fun than I expected it to be. I'll have to come back to actually enjoy the beaches in the daytime, but until then, I'll have house music pulsating pleasantly in my head everytime I think of Miami.

Dusk

The grass was still damp below my head, its musky redolence draped around us like a cool wind. It was the end of summer but the recent rain had brought a slight reprieve from the maddening heat. I was seventeen that year, soaking in the brisk ambivalence of youth, not especially concerned with my last year in school or what lay beyond it. I did not know then that my days in Oklahoma were rapidly drawing to a close; that home would soon mean something different and everything it had been before would resolve into memory. That day, under a blue and orange wash of sky, I only knew the rich presence of a girl named Sandy. She lay next to me not saying a word, her shoulder a gentle reminder against mine. Her breathing was light, almost inaudible above the buzzing and chirps that droned somewhere out in the vastness of elsewhere. It was easy to imagine her disappearing into her own silence. The quietness of her being, it somehow affirmed her presence and I felt it like a weight, pulling me and the grass and the sky toward her. She was long-limbed but full, curvy in the way many girls her age had yet to become. Her face was sprinkled with freckles but you never noticed them at first because her eyes were what drew you in. And she was here, with me, in the middle of a field at the end of summer.

Sunsets lasted longer than they had any business to in those days, and we bathed in its effusive glow in silence. Despite being neighbors and having gone to school together since the second grade, we had only become real friends at the beginning of that summer. Her father had been in an accident at the steel mill where he worked, and because her mom spent most of that summer with him in the hospital, our family took her in. She slept at home but came over for meals, and it was this circumstance that led us to, for the first time in our lives, actually spend time together. We had different friends at school, but that summer that didn’t seem to matter. For those few short months, we were each all the other cared to know. The fields and forest that fenced our yards became our playground, and though neither of us had taken the time to explore the land before, we found ourselves constantly hiking through the woods and tromping through the meadows. We talked, mostly, sharing stories and insights that neither of us knew we had. Other times we just walked in silence. Something about the presence of someone who was new but also an old acquaintance opened up a kind of easy intimacy between us. We spent almost every day together, abandoning the local movie theater and strip malls we had frequented in summers before in favor of rambling jaunts through the woods behind our houses. Even in those days, I suspected she sought some kind of escape, but whether she actually was or if she really found it, I never knew. I never asked.

It would be the last summer I would spend with Sandy. When school started that fall we would go back to our own friends, sharing smiles and waves when we saw each other across the halls but never saying more than a few words to each other. At the end of our senior year her family would move to California, where her dad had gotten a new job behind a desk. I would leave home for school in Connecticut, and not long after my family would move out East to join me. Our homes in Oklahoma would eventually be bought up by a developer and, along with the fields and forest behind them, be turned into a housing subdivision, though I would never see any of it happen.

But on that day, lying in the fading light next to her, our shoulders just touching, me straining to tune in to the steady cadence of her breath because it seemed like the most important thing I could know, all I felt was the immenseness of her. She was pulling me toward her and I fell willingly, giddy to be lost in the embrace of her aura. The future was still unknowable then, the present enough to leave me content with its whispers of bliss. With her body so close to mine, both of us breathing in the last breaths of our youth, I felt full. I did not know if we would be friends when the school year started, or if our next summer would be the same. But it did not matter. There, in the field, next to her, anything was possible as dusk crept closer, and that was enough.

Really, Just She

...with my sincerest respects to M. Ward, of course.

It's ridiculous how utterly adorable Zooey Deschanel is.
Not to even mention her talent.

music by She & Him, from their upcoming album Volume 2; video directed by Peyton Reed (Bring It On, Yes Man)

On the Up and Up

It's getting warmer in the city. Beautiful days followed by mild evenings. Lovely.

And on this particular one, this is what I'm looking forward to:

 

Tomorrow morning holds so much promise. In moments like these, I don't need anything else.

Midday Jaunt

The NYU kids across the hall took over the apartment yesterday to film part of their short, so after spending the morning cooped up in my room, I ducked out for a bit with the roomies to get some fresh air. Casey brought over his Rebel XT when he moved in last week, just in time for me to start taking some pictures over this beautiful 50+ degree weekend.

I've been meaning to get more into photography lately, mostly because New York is such a photogenic and visually rich city. This has been somewhat complicated by the fact that the only camera I own is a 3.2 megapixel dinosaur my parents picked up for me on a family trip to Japan back in 2003. The Rebel XT's a step up, but hopefully I can save up for a nicer DSLR in the next few months.

Anyway, the sun was out in full force today, hanging splendidly in a cloudless sky. Plenty of folks took advantage of the warmer weather, catching a late brunch outdoors in the crisp air. There's a Brazilian diner right across the street from my apartment that always seems to attract a good crowd, but I have yet to scope it out for myself. Directly across the street in either direction of the diner are two community gardens. People in the neighborhood tend their own flowers and bushes, but I particularly enjoy them for the random pieces of art that get thrown up around their fences.

Further down the street is Tompkins Square Park, home of riots and demonstrations as far back as the late 1800s, but probably most remembered for the political activists, drug fiends, and homeless folk that populated the grounds between the '60s and early '90s. Police enforced clean-up efforts and the gentrification of the East Village and Alphabet City mean its most common visitors these days are families and dog park goers, though. Less character, but at least the drunks still get their lean on most nights.

 

 

 

One of the best parts of living in the city is, of course, the seemingly endless options for good grub. I met up with Casey and Laurie as they were finishing up a late lunch at Motorino, the latest pizza hub to be crowned "NY's Best Pizza." That title gets thrown around a lot here, but it always seems to matter more when it's the New York Times doing the crowning. Funnily enough, the idiosyncrasies of their rating system mean New York's best pizza still only warrants one star. I don't think anyone's complaining, though.

A pit stop for some fried and frozen treats at Led Zeppole later, we headed over to the East Village Tavern, our regular watering hole. A solid selection of microbrews, a great staff, and an alarmingly luxurious bathroom make it the spot to be at most nights (and days).

This city's got so much to do, but sometimes it's just nice to get out and walk around. Breathe in that vibrant New York air.

On beauty

Beauty is a funny thing, and not in the way that makes you laugh -- in the way that makes you smile, for no reason at all, three days later in the pouring rain on your way back home from the grocery store.

On blogging

Though never what you'd call a regular updater, I've blogged for the better part of the last decade. In all that time, I never wrote about anything beyond a simple recap of my day or a poorly executed and partially guarded transcript of my thoughts. True, for much of the last decade I was a teenager; and like many teenagers, I was great at exuberance, terrible at expression. The fact that my personal blog(s) was a wasteland of inconsequential musings and inarticulate ramblings shouldn't be much of a surprise.

As I get older, though, it'd be nice to have somewhere to write and, on occasion, receive some amount of feedback. Consider it Blog 2.0. Or, to better account for the number of personal blogs I've actually started and abandoned over the years, Blog 4.0. And this is its manifesto. It will be a better organized and properly filtered repository for my brain droppings. Be it reflections of the more quotidian variety, slightly more thoughtful insights, or small writing samples, this blog will have a place for all of them.

The nature of it being a blog means it's publicly accessible, so of course this is, in many ways, meant for you. But it will always firstly, and in many more diverse ways, be for me. It's a selfish declaration, but one we all implicitly make when publishing anything to the internet in the form of a blog. So hopefully what you read here will be of some merit to you, able to provide a laugh, a smirk, a scoff, a momentary distraction. But even if it doesn't, it does provide something for me -- a laugh, a smirk, a scoff, a momentary distraction.

A voice.

So please, listen for a little while.

Reset

Rebooting...