I still don't love the labor of traveling in airports and open seating.

I stepped off the plane at LaGuardia, hopped on some trains and saw Michael Showalter walk off the subway equally surprised and confused by the makeshift movie set that had taken over the Williamsburg street corner. I told you how I was a little bummed out about flying to New York a day earlier than I had hoped, but it turns out that stress and bummed feeling was all for nothing. I was stressing out over the Rhizome.org show at Monkeytown, which ended up being one two of the coolest shows I've played in a while. First off, the shows weren't like regular YACHT shows.. they started off with some prepared dialog and an introduction movie "I made 10 minutes before the show" that sort of tore apart the event and the crap-top performers. Then I faked a couple of crashes, showed a slideshow, and played a short set. The show was titled "Crap-tops vs Laptops" and it was a group of performers and videos that used awesome stuff like amazing handmade analog audio/visual synths Gameboys, Atari Video Music machines, etc., and then people like me that use plain old computers to make music, video, and performances. I didn't like that it was "vs," like a battle or something.. so I took it there on the deepest level:

Mike and Claire both get an executive producer credit and a big THANKS for their help with the crazy writing.

I took this sort of vibe all the way to the program where I talked huge shit on "crap-tops" and made myself out to be some crazy person that truly believed computers to be some sort of heaven-sent godly machines that allowed divine growth in humans and art. Of course I don't believe anything even close to this horse/dog shit, but it was really convincing to everyone involved in the show. When I got to Monkeytown the crap-toppers were treating me like I was George Bush and cracking jokes about my mental health. It felt amazing! even the Rhizome woman that booked the show and flew me out kept bumping me and saying "you know that's a crap-top" when I expressed joy and interest in the performances. COOL TRICK! I had an amazing time and I'm so stoked on making more performances akin to this in the future.

Here's a small Flickr set of the Crap-tops vs Laptops event. Stay tuned for video coverage and interviews on a site called Cool Hunting. I think it'll be up in the next week or so.

After the shows in New York I got up at 5:30 AM (EST) and hopped on a plane to Los Angeles. I guess I only roll in the biggest cities now. In these trips I was confronted with the fact that winter doesn't equal dark grey skies for every part of the world. New York was clear, bright and in the 60s! Los Angeles is like.. well what you imagine it to be like. ETERNAL SUMMER.

I flew to Los Angeles to spend a week with my BF/GF Claire and see some of my oldest/truest homies like Ritchey and Rob. Steve had planned to come down and hang out with those homies a while ago and it worked out that we'd get to have a couple days of MEGA hang outs together. Man, if we all lived in the sun like that.. it would be magic. Expensive and deeply smogged-out magic. I also got to hang out with some magical Blodorn dudes that were eating beets like they were goddamned apples. Dain has a cool MySpace, you should add him and then thank him for the add (coolest thing to do, ever).

I can't even go into how my mind was truly blown by this place. It's sort of screwed up how much I like it. Steve purchased something like $50 in rare and awesome sodas then got sick after drinking too many of them. Ok, the story isn't that cool.. he probably spent $20 and he was already sick. Anyway, the store is truly epic and you can order sodas online. They even have the original Dublin, Texas formula of Dr. Pepper! Los Angeles really does have everything.

The last full day I had in LA was spent shooting a new video for the Bobby Birdman song "Steal Yr Face" off of the EP "Giraffes and Jackals," which is being enhanced and rereleased on Compact Disc in early April (it was previously released on Not Not Fun and sold out). I used his song in the video in the last entry, remember? This record is hot and features some radical Enhanced CD content that makes it double worth the purchase. I am serious. You will see. If you don't have the brand-new Bobby Birdman Fryk Beat 12", you should fix that by buying it. I have a remix on the B side.

Here's a set of photos from the video shoot. Here's my little homie Annie O'Malley makin' a sweet whistle.

Lastly, since we're doing MySpace shout-outs, check out Claire and Steve's new band Juice Team and their MySpace Profile. God, am I really linking to MySpace profiles now? What has happened to this website once rich in class-n-content?

Truly,
Jona

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