“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Oh man, it’s been quite a while since I’ve done a ‘Wednesday Watercooler’ piece but as they say – there’s no time like the present, and the present has some ridiculous things going down! First things first though, since we always do an entertaining manifest destiny through these here interwebz I thought it would be a nice little change to turn things inwards and do some self exploration for a bit!
A few weeks ago, one of my good friends posted a survey on Facebook about discovering your ‘Philosophical Archetype‘ – after I breezed through the 40 or so questions, I got my answer and it’s so perfectly fitting. I scored as the ‘Absurd Hero’, a throwback to Albert Camus’ ‘Myth of Sisyphus‘ and the idea of Absurdism, which by the way I totally ascribe to: it’s the dichomatic idea that as humans we ascribe to searching for a greater meaning of life though we cannot find it. The Absurd Hero, in turn, finds humor and happiness in the absurd situations that life throws at them. Me in a nutshell? You best believe it! Another fun one to get your eyes on is the Myers-Briggs Personality Test, commonly abbreviated by MBPT. I scored as an ENFP – Extrovert/iNtuitive/Feeling/Percieving, I took it again to double check and yup – still as true as ever! Some of our personality traits include, but are definitely not limited to: outgoing, easily talked into doing silly things, spontaneous, pleasure seeking, irresponsible, physically affectionate, likely to have or want a tattoo, adventurous, unprepared, prone to losing things, seductive, easily distracted, open, revealing, comfortable in unfamiliar situations, attracted to strange things, unconventional, energetic, impulsive, empathetic, loving. Head on over and take your Myers Briggs / Jung Personality test here; and now, on to the good stuff!
In case you were hiding under a rock yesterday when Mashable broke the news before my own company did, Disney and Pixar are pairing up one mo’gain to bring you the long anticipated, highly awaited sequel to Finding Nemo – Finding Dory!
Scheduled to hit theaters in November of 2015, the movie will feature role reprisals by our friends in the tank, Merlin, Nemo and how could you think of having this sequel without the lovely Ellen DeGeneres!
Even though some humans have two left feet, almost all of us can inherently find the rhythm; birds, too, can bob their beaks to the beat – well now there’s a new species to add to this animal party. A study out of UC Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Laboratory with a sea lion has proven for the first time that a non-human mammalcan keep the rhythmic beat of a tune. After teaching Ronan to bounce to the beat with click training, the scientists introduced new jams into the mix to test their theory and voila – welcome to the get down, Ronan! Check her out jammin’ to the Backstreet Boys and Earth, Wind and Fire! And the final verdict – we now have proof that vocal mimicry isn’t necessary in order for one to keep the beat; comparative psychology, eat your heart out.
Don’t get me wrong, I love science, astronomy and the spectacle that is the universe – but it’s also good to know that I’m not the only one who wants to shift the focus from our surroundings to what’s going on inside those beautiful, big brains of ours. Yesterday in an announcement at the White House, President Obama announced a brand spankin’ new scientific campaign set at understanding and analyzing the human brain. With a $100 million proposed budget in hand, he’ll be reaching out to some of the top research institutes in the country, as well as private labs and non-profit efforts. The goal of the study is to discover how interactions between neurons form the human psyche; the results would have a global benefit.
Feeding the Black Holes
Now that my brain has been satiated with news for the day, let’s look to the galaxy and beyond – there’s something absolutely nutty happening with black holes right now. In one universe, Galaxy NGC 4845 – a black hole is currently devouring a planet. NBD. And finally, that little antimatter detector at the International Space Station is getting some interesting data: it’s tasted its first bit of dark matter; exciting!
Stop Motion Chalk Tetris
I’m not a huge fan of stop motion, but even I have to admit that this is rad! H/T to The Colossal:
At this point, I both think and hope y’all understand that I have this ridiculous love for all things technology and photography related; when I discovered Pixlr-o-matic I went a little crazy and started editing the shit out of my favorite pictures. Well, seems life has come relatively full circle because now I have a new admiration for an Android application – this one is called ‘Globe Photo‘. I know there are a few out there for you iPhone obsessives as well, but hey – that sounds like a personal problem 😉
Essentially, what the application does is take the left and right edges of your image and stitch it together to make a circular, planet-esque, image. After a few hours of playing around with horizons, lines and fun edges in my old pictures I have a nice little album going of my own images – enjoy
“And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with love like that.
It lights up the sky.”
― Rumi
One of the unfortunately side effects of a stellar weekend – or in my case, past week – is something I like to call “Hot Mess Mondays”: your brain might be functioning, you might’ve had enough sleep; but chances are that it’s not, you didn’t and you’re currently paying for it handsomely. Though the weather wasn’t as stellar as we would like, we realize that living in LA beggars certainly can’t be choosers; and spoiled weather brats can’t expect it to be sunny all the time! There’s a great quote that says that you can’t get a rainbow without a little rain and I more than ascribe to that train of thought. This past weekend turned into a typical, friend fueled, debauchery filled weekend for me and just for y’all, I’ll let the kitten out of the bag – I’m definitely having one of those days!
On Tuesday night I cruised down to Orange County to hang with my good friends and Beatnet co-founders and hit up some Dusky action at Focus.
For a Tuesday night in the OC that little place can get pretty rockin’!
Apparently Dusky is two guys? The more you know! Lol.
Dusky’s Essential Mix:
The best thing about the Dusky show was that I took Wednesday off so I could enjoy the show in it’s entirety – and a week later found out that one of my closest and dearest friends and her home crew from Portland were flying into San Diego that same week and had a few days free; serendipity, indeed! Every time I kick it with these kids I have the absolute time of my life, and Wednesday was no different. We drank, frolicked, caught up and got weird: success!
My bitch =)
Breakfast of champions 😉
A-Team.
And that was just the mid-week festivities: over the weekend, there was definitely some bottomless brunching and boozing going down during the day, Blond:ish that night and Culrpit’s Season Opener at the Standard yesterday with Miguel Campbell. So yeah, I’m wiped out!
#SweatbandSaturday We don’t fuck around.
The lovely Blond:ish
Blond:ish from Playa Del Carmen:
And yesterday, we braved some rain at the Standard to kick off the Culprit Pool Parties – the weather was beyond lame but we tried to make the best of it! Popped some bottles, caught up with some friendly and familiar faces and made some new cabana friends!
A little mix from the main man of the day, Miguel Campbell:
Making it rain > rain.
Even though my taste in music is pretty diverse, over the past month I’ve had more than my share of Deep, Tech and Minimal house shows – which are great for enjoying the atmosphere and breathing in the music, but going out to Exchange to see Ferry Corsten and Dim Mak studios for some Drum & Bass Hospital Records style I realized how much I miss the thumping bass, sick drops and the electric energy coming from the dance floor.
What do you get when you put three of the top Trance DJs and Producers in the world in one room? You get Markus Schulz and Ferry Corsten, New World Punx at Armin van Buuren’s ASOT 600 in Madison Square Garden. Their name, which is a play on Schulz’s “New World” and Corsten’s “Punk’d” is like a 3 on the scale of 1 to awesome DJ names but that’s besides the point; I watched a bit of the live stream and was hooked immediately.
SubFocus rocking the stage at Ultra:
This new track from Boys Noise is hauntingly gorgeous:
Swedish House Mafia might be done for* but that doesn’t mean they’re done individually; Steve Angello graced the BBC Radio 1 decks this past week with an epic essential mix:
Duke Dumont is one of my favorite new Deep House producers (yeah, I tried being over the genre but some stuff it just stays with you…) and his last two hits “The Giver” and “Need U 100%” are phenomenally produced and expertly mastered. This remix is no different:
Above & Beyond’s Group Therapy Radio is a surefire way to get me through my Fridays, and this past week they had the House legend Sasha as their guest:
Though the neighborhood I live in doesn’t have a catchy name like my old stomping grounds, ‘Korea Town‘ or ‘Miracle Mile‘, the conveniently named ‘Fairfax District‘ is home to a plethora of graffiti artists and connoisseurs alike; one of the best things is that the graffiti gets reworked, repurposed and enhanced on a weekly basis. A lot of the street art that I’ve coveted for the last year is on the outs, and a lot of this stuff has gone up in it’s place – enjoy!
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
― Albert Camus
The Bouncy Kitty 
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