Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wave Magazine VIPs and More!

Wow, what a week I've had - several brushes with local and international celebrities. Today, Sun Microsystems hosted a townhall for Arnold Schwarzenegger on our Menlo Park campus, in the courtyard. It was *very* hot out today, but it was pretty cool to get to meet Govenor Schwarzenegger in person and get to shake his hand. I certainly do not agree with all of his politics, but that was the cool thing: attendees were not chosen by political affiliation, but just by business unit.

This past Saturday, I was lucky enough to get invited to a Wave Magazine VIP party at the Buddha Lounge in downtown Mountain View, to celebrate the birthday of Wave editor-in-chief, John Newlin. While there, I got to not only meet Mr. Newlin, but also Bill Hargreaves, VP of something cool, and feature writer Seanbaby. (OK, so I already knew Bill and that's how I got into the party, but still, it's the first time I've seen him since he was promoted to VP). The Wave really knows how to throw a party!

And next week ... I get to meet Levi Leipheimer! Oh, and my production of Godspell! opens in Sunnyvale. Please come see it if you are in the San Francisco Bay Area! Rehearsals have been a bear, but the show is totally coming together.

Oasis - and what's wrong with Liam?!?!

I know - I keep promising to blog more often, but Update 1 is keeping me INCREDIBLY busy! What a release - this will really be phenomenal when it comes out, if I do say so myself :-)

I ventured to Mountain View's Shoreline Ampitheater again last Sunday, Sept 11th, to catch Kasabian, Jet & Oasis. The one strange thing about the entire concert was the complete lack of mention by any of the performers that it was such a solemn anniversary. In fact, the only mention of the US by any of the performers was an insult by Noel of Oasis.

Kasabian had a *lot* more energy this time, and their stage presence was greatly improved since the last time I saw them. Still, they have room to grow, but there was a lot more connection to the audience.

Jet's psychedelic "thinly disguised phallic symbol" backdrop was interesting, to say the least. Their lighting and high energy made for a really fun set. We were up dancing for more than just a bit :-)

Now the headliner, Oasis. I've just recently started getting into their music, and Liam claims that not only are they bigger than the Beatles, but now they are even more important than Elvis. Huh?!?! Their lighting consisted of what looked like Christmas lights strewn over their various amplifiers and hanging from the flies, flashing red & blue lights with white spotlights that were reminiscent of being pulled over by a police officer, and some pale muted amber lights. Liam stood in one position (which looked incredibly uncomfortable - legs straight, bent at the waist towards the too low microphone with his head crooked up, thumbs through his beltloops) the ENTIRE set, only moving when it was his brothers turn to sing (when he left the stage entirely). The music was great, but there was zero interaction with the audience or even with each other, leaving much to be desired.

Well, I'd better run back to my never ending inbox.

Coldplay was incredible!

Ok, so I've been out of town almost this entire summer, but... I did make it back to Mountain View to catch Coldplay on Friday.

The show was supposed to start at 7PM, but Janet & I sat in the cold until the opening act, Black Mountain, came on about 7:40PM. They were ok, getting better as they went on, but surprisingly went on for almost a full hour. Ok - we were ready to see Coldplay... waiting... waiting.... waiting ... more than an hour later, the band finally came on!

Coldplay was incredible - doing all of my favorite songs from each album, spicing up the lyrics with references to San Francisco and our major landmarks. Their rendition of the "Scientist" was amazing - Chris Martin sped up the ending to seemingly impossible speeds. He even managed to work in lyrics from Depeche Mode's "Somebody" later in another song. At one point, he came out to the middle of the audience to sing just a *bit* closer to us all.

All we could say as we walked away was "Wow." It was a phenomenal show - they really are better live than they are recorded.

Sorry it's been so long since my last update - I did a lot of traveling (favorite city just visited is a tie between Amsterdam, Holland and Bruges, Belgium). I even managed to make it to DefCon in Las Vegas for about 12 hours - it was intense, as always.

So much has happened since my last post! OpenSolaris - now that's very cool. More on that later!

Could I be the next Jerry Springer? and other events from Live105's BFD

Last Friday was Live105's BFD music festival. What a phenomenal day! We got there a bit late after a late lunch, just catching the sounds of Tegan & Sara as we approached the ampitheater. We spent a long time in the Sun enjoying Ash, Hot Hot Heat, the Kaiser Chiefs and many other small bands on the True Music Stage. My most annoying and disappointing act was The Bravery. They have one "hit" on the radio which is a completely different sound than the rest of their music. Appearing again at a Live105 event was the incredible rap sensation Lyric's Born, this time with a full live band and a more appreciative live audience - the resulting effect was an incredible 30 minutes of bliss. I was also most impressed with Sleater Kinney, though disappointed at their lack of a bassist (as a sometimes bass player, I have a softspot for people who can master the instrument)

After wandering out of the True Music stage area, we were checking out some booths and found a few reps from the Jerry Springer show, apparently running a contest for "be Jerry for a day". After a couple of beers, it seemed like a good idea to audition and sign my life away on the FIVE pages of disclosures. The audition was relatively easy for me, as I've done so much theater, but I was not as quick on my feet as normal at making up lyrics to songs (which is what we were asked to do). So... I instead started singing Violent Femme's Add It Up... and my audition was stopped. All the same, snippets of my audition may appear in commercials for Jerry Springer, as I also made fun of people from Indiana (where I am from).

The main stage was even better, although I was disappointed with Kasabian's low energy start, Jimmy Eat World stepped up and put on a great show. Things just improved from there, with one of my all time favorite bands, Social Distortion coming out and rocking HARD. I've been fans of these guys for more than 10 years, and they are just amazing live now as they were years ago. Amazing rifs, guitar solos in all the right places and great lyrics. Wow!

I thought Social Distortion's performance would be hard to beat, but Dave Grohl & the Foo Fighter's took it up a notch and did not disappoint. Full energy, full throttle, all the way. These guys rock harder in person than they do on any of their radio edits. Incredible! Dave Grohl even did a "jam session" which took him wandering through the pavilion, drinking other people's beers. Later, Dave mentioned they were going to do something they'd never done before, then put their drummer on the microphone. I first suspected that they were going to just swap instruments, since it's well known Grohl is an amazing drummer, but again Foo Fighter's surprised us. They brought out a very good friend to be a guest drummer: Stuart Copeland of the Police! Wow! They did "Next to You" and it was incredible. Copelands beats rocked just as hard as any of the punk bands I'd watched that day, yet he did it in such a subtle manner. A small flick of the wrist, barely perceptible, and the beats were hard and fast paced. Impressive!
It will be hard for next year to top this. Wow!

Bike for Breath a huge success!

Wow! It's done! We started out bright and early leaving the hotel parking lot at 7:15 AM to register and pick up our jersey's and t-shirts. After a quick rendevous at the car, we were off by 7:40 AM to start our 65-mile ride! Here's me and Danek Duvall getting started.

It was a cool and incredibly windy day. I didn't see the sunlight until well after noon. This was the longest bike ride I've ever been on, and I'm quite happy with myself that I was able to finish in 6 hours and 8 minutes (including rest stops). It was an amazing ride in a beautiful part of California. My team, Team Salty Dawgs, were the number one fundraisers. I should've gotten a picture of us with the trophy, but after the ride I was a bit tired and just thinking about eating lunch.

Happily, I wasn't too sore or too tired, until I got out of the car after the long drive home. Then I discovered I had tendinitis in my knee *ouch*. But after only hobbling around for a couple of days, I'm already feeling much better. I'd like to get back in the saddle again, but will be passing on road bikes for awhile and get back to my mountain biking. :-)

More pictures can be found on my website.

Training continues!!!

I did 45 miles on Saturday and another 13 on Sunday. Not as much riding as I was hoping to get in this weekend, but it was hot and I got hungry :-) I'm going to have to do some serious climbing on Saturday as well as just sitting in the saddle a long time. I figure that the 65-mile bike ride will take me about 5.5 hours, perhaps more, depending on how hot it is. I will finish the ride - it means a lot to my mother, and a lot to me. The Bike4Breath group has been very supportive, too. It should be a ton of fun - the Salty Dawgs ride on Saturday! Argh, matey!

watch this space for ride photos...

Sun's employees are amazingly generous!

I am currently raising funds for the Bike4Breath's 2 Rock Ride (I'm doing 65-miles!) and I am just amazed at how incredibly generous Sun employees are. Even in these tight times, not one person I've asked for a donation has said no. And I've just been flabbergasted at just how giving each person is. Wow!!

I did two training rides this weekend. First was just starting from home, going to the Alpine Inn, down to Sun Menlo Park, and home again - *whew*. Yesterday, I went to Hecker Pass in Gilroy, started out at Fortino Winery, then road all around through that beautiful area, winding through
Morgan Hill and getting back to Fortino just in time to pick up a couple of bottles of their wonderful Zinfandel.

I did just about 60 miles this weekend. I have to somehow work this up to 65-miles in one ride in the next two weeks. Yikes!