Happy Birthday Ellie!!!

Ellie turned 3-years-old yesterday! Yay for Ellie!


To celebrate, I hopped on a plane and flew from London to New York, so that I could be a little bit closer to her (and also in a country where my cell phone worked) to call and wish her a happy birthday!

Before that, I'd been in London for two weeks, taking an intensive course on Global Music Management: a class in the music business department that looked at how music companies expand internationally. The course was interesting, and we got to meet (as guest lecturers) Alan Ridgeway, the CEO of International Business at LiveNation, Julia Jones, the woman who started the (now international) BritBus tour, and Keith Jopling, a music and media consultant, currently working with Guy Hughes, CEO of the EMI record label. We even went to a few required rock shows and were given $50 gift cards to HMV so that we could get international music!

I also had a fair amount of time to sightsee (check out the pics below)… it was a really fun time… a great way to start the new year… and enough to make me think about perhaps moving out there one day (although in London, I think I’d found one of a few cities in the world that was more expensive than New York).

Happy 2008 to you all!

xo

The Crave - the best band I saw while I was out there. Going to rock shows was part of class!!!

Tower Bridge

The Eye

Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery

Inside the Windsor Castle

Stonehenge!

Laughter

Oh no! I completely missed October! I had planned to write at least once a month… but, as my dad just wrote me (quoting from the movie U-Turn, I think): Nothing makes the Great Spirit laugh harder than men's plans.

Ain’t that the truth.

Anyway – the quick update is that things are busy but good. I just got back from a 6-day film shoot out in West Virginia (beautiful!), doing production sound mixing for an NYU Student Film. I’m hoping that I get a chance to work with the film in post-production as well. It was a lot of fun – really awesome people and a great experience. Doing sound for a movie, it turns out, is extremely different from doing studio music recording, but there were a lot of really experienced people on the set to help me figure stuff out. AND… turned out that one of the people on the shoot was from Portland… went to Lincoln High… and was in the same graduating class as Nick!!! He was like, “Nick Katagiri? Yeah, I know him. We used to party together. Football player. Really good too. And a great artist. We all loved him!” So that was a trip.

I’ll post some pics from the shoot.

Other than that, I’m just doing the school thing and trying to make the most of that. I had to miss some class to go to West Virginia, but I figured that opportunities like that were the reason I was in school in the first place.

I also got into a study abroad seminar that will take me to London for two weeks in January, before the Spring semester starts, looking at the music there in particular and thinking about international music management in general. Part of the curriculum involves going to concerts that the professor will set up for us. I’m pretty excited about that – sounded like she’s got a good track record of finding good up-and-coming bands.

And… I hesitate to write this because I realize it’s kind of cliché, but I’m in the process of writing a book. I’m half-hoping that this declaration will ensure that I don’t leave it on a back-burner. It’s been a lot of fun so far and I’m really enjoying the process, if nothing else. I hope I can finish it… but at the same time I can already hear the Great Spirit laughing.

I hope you are all well!!

Sound stuff…

Location at mid-day…

Scott, our director, talking with two of the principal actors…

At sundown…

The Old New Apartment

So I've had these pictures up on my desktop for a while now, but keep running out of time to post about my new apartment - and the apartment doesn't really seem "new" anymore. I've been here for almost a month now… and like it a lot. I keep telling people that it's probably the nicest place I'll EVER live, which probably just says more about the kind of lifestyle I expect to have as a starving musician. But maybe if I visualize hard enough I can live like this forever. ;)

Anyway - the place, as I said, is nice (at least for me). It's down on Wall Street, a couple blocks from the NY Stock Exchange, so I see a lot of suits and get to be part of a lot of reverse commutes, which is nice. There's a 24-hour doorman who knows all our faces and names, and there's got to be a lot of us since there are 15 or so rooms on each of 30+ floors. They have all these valet services that I'll likely never use, and there's a pretty new gym that I hope to use more than I'm sure I will. Anyway - here are a couple other perks…

The lounge, complete with couches, wireless internet, pool tables, card tables, private study rooms, board games, and a grand piano.

The roof-deck… would have a nicer view if ALL the buildings out here weren't so tall…

And the movie theater where they show movies every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday…

Anyway - so that's where I live. Other than that, school is going well… I'm only taking two classes, one on Digital Audio Processing and another on Music in Film. They are technically and theoretically over my head, respectively, but I'm enjoying the challenge, and meeting a lot of really interesting people, many of whom are older and already have a lot of the kinds of work experiences I would be stoked to have.

Aaaaaand, I'm still working at Grand Central, though we're hoping to be done-done by the end of October. I still think it's a good gig, but I've had just about enough of my windowless dungeon to last me for this life.