Spicing it up (or dumbing it down, depending on perspective) a bit, this week, with a video. I normally don’t like to clutter this page up, too much with videos (unless they are of Piper or Reagan), but I’m making an exception this time. Since Labor Day, has already thrown everything off kilter this week (including this post, which is a day late), I may as well throw in a video, too. The major reason for the exception, is that this is one of my favorite music videos, ever.

The song is “Star Guitar,” by Chemical Brothers. Chemical Brothers is/are one of my favorite electronica groups, ever. Even though I’m not a huge fan of their latest album, “We are the night,” I am extremely big, on a lot of the stuff that they have produced over the years. “Star Guitar” is up there, on the favorites list, but the video has a lot to do with it.

The reason that I’m sharing this today, is because I was having a conversation with some friends last night about Spike Jonze, and the stuff that he has directed. For some reason, I was thinking that Jonze, had directed this video. He didn’t. It was actually directed by Michel Gondry. Although, the video for “Elektrobank” was directed by Jonze (I like that video too). If you don’t feel like watching the video, but still would like to hear the track. Here is the audio, only.

Piper wanted to make sure that she wasn’t going to be left out of any Labor Day plans. She did this by giving us another scare. When Reagan was visiting her on Friday, she hadn’t been feeling well all day. Her doctor was debating on whether or not to send her to the ER, all day. By the time the Reagan was headed home, Piper seemed like she had improved a bit.

After our visitors arrived on Friday night, and headed to Queens for the US Open, we got a call from Piper’s Dr., saying that her condition has worsened, and that they were sending her to the ER at Westchester Medical as a precaution, because they weren’t sure how quickly they would be able to schedule a transport for her, later that night, if it became more emergent. We weren’t exactly sure what to do, since Reagan’s sister and friend were going to be coming back from Tennis, we couldn’t really just head up to Westchester.

I was going to go by myself, but Reagan got sad and really wanted to go. But I didn’t want her driving up there, doing the admission and all of that by herself. So, Reagan called one of her friends who very graciously accompanied Reagan during the entire ordeal on Friday night. By the time Reagan had arrived, Piper was already doing a little better, and they were able to have a very enjoyable visit with her, even though she slept most of the time.

Piper is now in the PICU, still at Westchester. But she is doing a lot better. Today, she is still very congested, but she is breathing at a normal rate, and her heart rate is back to normal. She never really had a fever, thank goodness. So, we expect that she will be going back to Blythedale, tomorrow.

Piper had a great time playing with Aunt Jody, even though she wasn’t feeling too hot. Piper of course loves being spoiled with new toys, books and clothes, which aunt Jody always does, when she comes to visit.

Click here for the rest of the photos from the weekend.

We had a pretty eventful holiday weekend. Reagan’s sister Jody and her friend Chrissy came to visit Piper (and us). During our activities, we went to the flea market (above), saw the last showing of “9-5″ on Broadway, and had some really great visits with Piper.

^–Throwing back some grub at Shake Shack

^—Reagan and Jody in a cab (I always get stuck riding in the front seat, when there are 4 of us).

^–Near Sheep’s Meadow, in CP

Much love to the b-berry cam. They always come out gritty and distorted, just the way I like ‘em.

My metrocard is a 30-day ride, that starts counting days, from the first swipe. They come to me in the mail. So, when I get a new one, I just put it in my wallet, so that I am prepared for the morning that the turnstile tells me “insufficient fare.” Then I just throw out the old one, and start using the new one. As luck would have it, my card ran out this morning. So I’m using my new one, for the first time, on a Friday, right before a 3 day weekend, when I probably won’t use it once. I know it isn’t a big deal, but for some reason, that kind of stuff makes me crazy.

Now for some really good news, if you are a nerd, and you like long and boring. If you aren’t a nerd, and/or don’t like long and boring, skip to “[Unboring].” I’m always battling for more disc space on our home comp. In the past, I would always just drop a new hard drive into the tower and call it good. The problem is, that it would rarely ever be that simple (Exhibit A). I have thought about just going the external drive, route. But USB 2.0 writes too slow and firewire is too expensive. So I have had this idea in my mind for a while, that I would just build an extra tower out of an old motherboard I have, and a couple of enormous hard drives. I could then just save everything on there via network. Well, yesterday I was on Craigslist, looking for someone giving away an old cpu case, and I struck gold. I found a place that was unloading all of their old workstations, sans hard drives. Exactly what I wanted. So I grabbed two boxes with Pentium 4s and DVD drives already in them. Now I just need to pick up a couple of hard drives, and install Linux on there (which I am also excited to do [it will me my first experience with Linux]).

Which brings me to my second point, I now have an extra pentium 4 machine, sans hard drives, if anyone is interested. It only has 512k of memory, but depending on what you want to use it for, it could workout great. Let me know if you are interested.

[Unboring] Continuing with the the positivity theme, it is a 3 day weekend. It is going to be especially fun, since Reagan’s sister will be in town. She and her friend will be attending the Open, for part of the time, but hanging with us, for the remainder (to visit Piper, etc.). Taking a slightly less positive tone: I have been chatting all morning with Reagan, who has been visiting Piper. Apparently Piper has not been feeling too hot. She has a fever and seems very subdued. Hopefully it is nothing serious. Fingers crossed.

Veering back toward positivity:  Last night, the Univ. of Utah football team convincingly won their season opener. I hope that everyone has a fantastic holiday weekend.

I cracked up when I saw this twist on the infamous Shepard Fairey Andre the Giant stencil. It comes from PAtriX Flickr Album. It is part of her “Berlin” set. So I’m assuming that is where she shot it. The artist appears to be Elio Varuna. I thought it was kind of clever.

I have been keeping a photblog at photos.jakesnewblog.com for a couple of months. At first I really liked it. I liked making the photos show up 1000px wide, and all that jazz. But I really haven’t been feeling it lately. So I have decided to totally abandon the daily photoblog, for a quick and dirty alternative on tumblr, instead. I had never used the tumblr platform before starting the new page (which incidentally is found at shotbyjake.com). I like the simplicity of it. For those who have never used tumblr, it is sort of like Twitter, w/o all of the hype, and spam. I like it because it is very conducive to just dropping some photos on there, when ever I feel like it. Posts link to the larger images, etc.. So that’s that.

Chico Science & Nação Zumbi, is a Brazilian rock/funk/hip-hop-outfit. Chico Science was the point man of Nação Zumbi until he was killed in the late 90′s by a drunk driver. He was the creative force behind the music. Even the album artwork was heavily influence by Chico. The image of a crap appears on almost all of CSNZ’s albums. The significance of the crustacean, is that as a boy, Chico subsisted from the sales of crabs that he harvested from the mangroves near his home in northern Brazil.

During the time that I spent living in Brazil, I didn’t have many occasions to really take in the music, the way I would have liked to. I had a pretty strict list of do’s and dont’s while I lived there. So, the majority of the exposure that I had to music, was just by hearing it in the streets. When I heard something that I thought was hot, I would try to figure out where it was coming from and ask whoever was playing it, what it was called, who the artist was, etc., then try to track down a copy in the record store.

With Chico Science, I bought up pretty much everything that I saw, including rarities (to the extent that they existed). Some of them turned out to just be crappy bootlegs from someone’s mono channel cassette recorded sneaked into a show. Others, like the one that I’m sharing today, are golden (in my opinion). The song that I’m sharing is a remix of a song called “Corpo de Lama,” which means “body of mud.” It comes from one of Chico’s post-mortem releases, a self-titled double disc. Both discs are full of live tracks and remixes by the likes of Mario Caldato (B. Boys keys), Apollo 9, David Byrne, and others. Anyway, I am still a big fan, and I will frequently still include some of these tracks on workout playlists, etc.. Here is “Corpo de Lama.” Escutem.