this and that and turkey (deep fried of course)

This week­end was the second anual Deep Fried Trash Thank­giv­ing. Jenny hosted the shin dig (and there was a lot to dig). Pic­tures, as always are up on ofoto. I wish I could say the Turkey was the hit of the event, but even it’s juicy good­ness was upstaged by a pug named Oscar. Jenny and Aaron’s pooch is already a minor celebity (at least with all of us).

Of course, this is just the pre­cur­sor to the annual thanks­giv­ing fry at casa de Bernius. I head home to LI tomorrow.

About a month ago, Rolling Stone pub­lised a Women in “Rock” issue. I include the quotes because Rolling Stone seems to have for­got­ten what Rock is. I don’t know about you, but Brit­ney, Christina, Pink, Cher and Little Kim have noth­ing to do with Rock in my world. Anyway, here’s a well writ­ten letter to Rolling Stone (that was never pub­lished) taken from Joan Jett’s web­site. It makes for some enjoy­able and insight­ful reading:

An Open Letter to Rolling Stone

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This letter was writ­ten to rolling stone after their “women in “rock” issue was pub­lished, but was not printed by their edi­tors. Please for­ward it to all the rock­ing people you know!!!!!

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I tried to find some clev­erly worded way to express my dis­gust with your “Women in Rock” issue, but what i have to say is really quite simple: You guys are com­pletely retarded.

By RS stan­dards, Rock is no longer a style of music but a trendy cos­tume to be whipped up by expen­sive styl­ists and slapped onto the latest pop tart barbie doll. Give a girl some tight pants and a spiky bracelet and POOF! She ROCKS!

Your poor choice of cover girls and fea­tured artists brings to mind the Sports Illus­trated swim­suit edi­tions. There is noth­ing nec­es­sar­ily wrong with the breast-​baring models inside..but we all under­stand that they have NOTH­ING TO DO WITH SPORTS–Which just might be offen­sive to women who are inter­ested in sports or who might even be (gasp) real athletes.

Yes, Brit­ney has a tal­ented styl­ist and yes, some­body gave Shakira a Guns & Roses t-shirt to wear..but they ARE NOT NOW NOR WILL THEY EVER BE ROCK.

Maybe it’s naive of me to expect any glim­mer of rock’n'roll cred­i­bil­ity OR respect for women from a mag­a­zine whose cover shot is reg­u­larly a naked under­weight actress. The thing is, I AM a woman musi­cian with a rock band, and as we all are I am STARVED for any little crumb of recog­ni­tion that real women rock­ers might be thrown. So like a sucker I find myself short another five bucks ..and pissed enough to write my first letter to an editor. Avril Lav­i­gne gets some stud­ded acces­sories from Hot Topic so now she’s “upholding the brazen tra­di­tion of teenage outrage”???!! Are you SERI­OUS? And could some­one please explain to me why people keep insist­ing on refer­ring to PINK as rock? Wasn’t she doing the white girl hip hop thing a minute ago? Yeah, she per­formed on the Aero­smith trib­ute show –big deal..she was on the Janet Jack­son trib­ute show just before that–Whatever’s trendy. WHO CARES. She’s a Spice Girl reject…but I digress.

Jewel and Mandy friggin’ Moore have full page fea­tures as Rock Icons…Meanwhile Joan Jett gets one line. ONE LINE. Joan Jett & the Black­hearts, who have never stopped tour­ing, recently did 10 days in the Middle East play­ing for the troops sta­tioned in Afghanistan. In AFGHANISTAN, Joan would come onstage wear­ing a birkha, which she ripped off and stomped on before blaz­ing through the purest and nas­ti­est rock show ANY­WHERE. But even in the RS WOMEN IN ROCK issue, a story like that gets ONE SEN­TENCE on the bottom of the last page of Random Notes.

Britney’s Rock cre­den­tials? Well, she butch­ers the song “I Love Rock’n'Roll” on her latest record, and when asked about it the genius replies “Well, I’ve always loved Pat Benatar.” And SHE is your Rock issue cover girl?? You should be REALLY embarrassed.

Sleater Kinney was the only rock group listed on the cover..and they got only half a page. Ashanti, the r&b back up singer who can’t seem to do any­thing with­out “featuring Jah Rule,” has two pages.

What about the Donnas? The Yeah Yeah Yeahs? The Dis­tillers? A mag like RS has the power to shine impor­tant light on groups like these–instead they are after­thoughts, and that valu­able spot­light is wasted on the same over­ex­posed pop princesses WHO HAVE NOTH­ING TO DO WITH ROCK.

In your own letter from the editor you have the hyp­o­crit­i­cal balls to say “rock radio won’t touch female artists, while the pop fac­tory keeps churn­ing out sounda­like clones, and ambi­tious musi­cians with some­thing to say find them­selves left out in the cold.”

The pages that follow those words are a bla­tant dis­play that Rolling Stone mag­a­zine is hap­pily work­ing for the fac­tory now too.

If the issue had been called “Women in Music”..or maybe “Some Cute Girls with Top 10 Records out Right Now”..I would have no beef with it. Corny as it may sound, ROCK is some­thing which is still mean­ing­ful and even sacred to some of us. Use the word “rock” in bold let­ters next to a pic­ture of Brit­ney Fuck­ing Spears, and you’re turn­ing your whole pub­li­ca­tion into a joke…and an offen­sive joke at that.

- Maya Price

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While Maya loses points for gram­mer (I can’t believe I’m grad­ing anyone on that) she makes a number of valid points. FYI, Rolling Stone replaced its editor with the former editor of FHM mag­a­zine. The gen­eral trend is that they will be moving fur­ther away from the long format arti­cles towards quick and main­stream con­tent. Here’s to the rapid decline of literacy.

spe­cial quote of the day

“I don’t know how he breaths, his nos­trils are so small…. Like Meg Ryan nostrils” – Jenny on Oscar the Pug

hap­pi­ness is

I have a couple addi­tions to the Char­lie Brown’s list of “hap­pi­ness.” Hap­pi­ness is also:

• Having heated car seats on a cold day (rock on subaru!)

• A big slice of Mon­tana Mills Pep­per­oni Cheese Bread

I can also firmly say that hap­pi­ness IS NOT

• Strug­gling to decom­pose web pages into XML

tough decisions

We’ve deci­ced to not pro­duce a play this winter. It was a really tough deci­sion. But we were faced with the choice of doing another show with­out the infra­struc­ture to sup­port it, or cre­at­ing that infra­struc­ture. There really was only one choice. Still, I can’t help but be a little disapointed.

Hah-​li Poh-​teh

Harry Potter meet’s Gan­dalf over tea?! Harry and Hermione get it on??!! Those ever crazy Chi­nese have writ­ten three fake install­ments to the series. Check out this awsome prose from the bogus “Harry Potter and the Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon”:

“Harry is won­der­ing in his bath how long it will take to wash away the mud from his face. To a grown-​up, hand­some young man, it is dis­gust­ing to be dirty. Lying in a lux­u­ri­ous bath­tub and scrub­bing his face with his hands, he thinks about Dudley’s face, which is as fat as Aunt Petunia’s bottom.”

read about it here.

ps. check it out, I actu­ally pub­lished some­thing ontime to the blog!

Spe­cial Quote of the Day

“No, I think it sucks monkey-butt!” - Tina, Use­abil­ity Expert

user test­ing update

User test­ing ses­sions where wine is pro­vided are, not sur­pris­ing, easier to get through…

behind the 1 way glass

Tina and I are cur­rently sit­ting at a test­ing facil­ity in Atlanta, GA. We’re here to test some of the con­tent being cre­ated for kodak.com. So far so good. Tina’s in heaven because there is a Jamba Juice right down the street. She’s already snuck off once to get us all some (and a couple extra just in case). Tina’s admit­ted she has a problem… and that’s a good first step :-)…

BTW, my goal is to update the blog three times a week (Mon – Weds- Friday) at a minimum… by Wednes­day there will be a new MP3 and survey question…

really…

I’m not kidding!!!

Stop giving me that look!

quick notes

I’m sit­ting at my desk on a Sunday (which isn’t too bad). I’m prep­ping for a busi­ness trip to Atlanta tomor­row and trying to catch up on some back work. Yes­ter­day I started to learn the Chi­nese Broadsword (which rocks). I also just got a key to the new school and I can’t say how excited I am about that. Basi­cally I can go and train when­ever! I keep coming back to how impor­tant the Mar­tial Arts are for me. It really struck me while work­ing slow spar­ring with Sifu Mark that they are such a total expres­sion of body, mind and soul. Some­times it really feels like I’m play­ing chess (with the excep­tion that I’m both the con­rolling force and the peice itself).

Pic­tures!

For those of you inter­ested in seeing the process of build­ing out the school, check the three pages of pic­tures that are up at ren​Mar​tialArts.com. It shows the entire process of refur­bish­ing our new school.

spent

I feel really tired. Guess the title sug­gestest that, huh? I didn’t sleep too well last night. A lot has been on my mind. This year has been busier than I can say and I feel like I’m drift­ing out of touch with every­one in my life. Bleh. And I just don’t know the best way for cor­rect­ing that. I hate not being able to be counted on and I just feel that way a lot of the time.