There’s always room for Jello

Cross another one off the list.

I got to hang out with an icon of my youth last night, Jello Biafra, former lead singer for The Dead Kennedys.

He was in town to perform his spoken word act at the Continental Club last night and I volunteered to pick him up at the airport and drive him around until show time.

I got him checked into his hotel and then we went by Sig’s Lagoon so he could browse the vinyl. Turns out Jello is a huge music buff and a rabid collector of obscure vinyl.

It was a fun enough time. I was in mild “fan-boy” mode but I think I played it pretty cool. Of course I had to get the obligatory “Look at me! I’m with a celebrity!” shot.

Jay Lee and Jello Biafra
Click for full size

His show ran about 4 hours with a brief intermission. He covered all the ground you would expect from the death of Jerry Falwell to the collapse of Enron and even touched on the Halliburton move to Dubai.

I would have expected the show to be attended by mostly old-timers like myself. As it turned out, it was mostly young people. And when I say young, I mean around, at and under 21. The club made it an all ages show.

Best line overheard at the back bar was from and older woman who was talking to a friend and said:

“I don’t like this spoken word crap. I’m a punk rocker, not a hippy!” I didn’t bother asking why she was even there..

Second runner up was when bar manager Trey came over to Sig’s before the intermission and said “I don’t think he’s going to take a break. He just keeps going. Oh, and I think I hate America now.”

Priceless!

The best picture of the night was taken during the sound check:

Jello Biafra
Click for full size

I was initially going to give him a ride back to the hotel but he decided to hang out at Sig’s for awhile looking through the rest of the vinyl and I was tired. Good thing I cut myself loose, he ended up keeping Sig’s open till around 5:00 am.

I don’t like staying up that late, I’m an old man….not a hippy!

Additional shots available in the gallery

Cindy Raschke

Cindy Raschke
Cindy “Crash” Raschke

Thomas over at Sig’s Lagoon had asked me about shooting some pictures at an event he was hosting at the shop. It was a Tiki themed art show featuring the works of Cindy Raschke from Austin, TX.

I’m always up for this type of thing so I agreed to come out early and be the designated photographer. Besides, The Flying Fish Sailors were already signed up to perform a short set opening for Clouseaux over at the CC later the same evening so it was no big deal to get down there early.

Cindy Raschke

It also didn’t hurt that there’s a chance my pics could be used in a story about Cindy in Tiki Magazine. Nothing wrong with getting my pictures in print, even if it is an obscure periodical that caters to an eclectic sub-culture.

Cindy’s artwork was really quite good. Her tiki themed pieces were unique and vibrant.

Tiki

Tiki

Cindy herself was outgoaing and personable and even came to catch a few songs while my band played over at the Continental.

She did have on rather unusual piece on exhibit. A child-sized mannequin that she had “transformed” into what can only be called a tattooed demon boy.

Demon Boy

Demon Boy

I was actually rather fascinated by the demon boy and briefly entertained the idea of purchasing it. I then fast forwarded the scenario in my brain and, knowing Cynthia, knew that this piece would not be allowed in our house.

As it turns out, the piece was already sold to a tattoo artist in Florida so that put an end to my dilemma.

The turn out was fantastic and many of her pieces were sold. There’s going to be another show in Austin on Thursday, Aug. 2nd at The Gallery (next door to the Austin Continental Club) and I may be the designated photographer for that event as well.

More pictures (including Demon Boy) in my gallery.

Travel planning – capturing the moment

In reviewing the pictures from our two previous trips one thing stands out and that’s the fact that there’s simply too few pictures of Cynthia and I together.

Sure, she has her camera and I have my camera so we’ve got some pictures of each other, but the thought of handing hundreds of dollars worth of technology to a complete stranger causes one to pause. For the sake of a romantic shot of the two of us in front of (insert cool landmark here) we are risking them dropping, or even worse, stealing the camera.

And holding a full SLR at arms length doesn’t work very well either.

Then I had a brainstorm.

I came up with the idea of purchasing a used and inexpensive point and shoot camera. The idea being that it’s something that can easily be held at arm’s length so we can get the self portraits of ourselves and it’s cheap enough so that if we do decide to let someone take our picture and they drop it or run away we’re not out that much.

It occurred to me that the secondary camera market must be huge and that by being willing to sacrifice a few mega-pixels and some features, a few year old used point and shoot digital camera should be pretty inexpensive and readily available.

We headed over to The Camera Exchange and I was able to pick up a used Nikon Coolpix 4100 with a 1 gig memory card for a song (as in well under a $100 song)!

I’m sure I could have gotten even cheaper on Ebay or from Craigslist or even the Chronicle Classifieds but this was better for me as I like to put my hands on technology before I buy it, even if it’s cheap cheap cheap.

The camera weighs next to nothing, runs on AA batteries so there’s no charger which makes it a breeze to transport. 4 mega-pixels, 3X zoom, super easy to use.

It’s PERFECT!

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