The Secret to Life

Great post by A Softer World today.

Belloni on Polanski

My buddy Matt Belloni was on NPR talking about the Roman Polanski arrest.

Goodman on Mad Men

I watched last night's episode of Mad Men with my new next door neighbor, Lauren, and we found it disjointed and hard to follow. We were trying to figure out if that was how it was designed. After reading Goodman's critique, I understand what was going on much better. What a great show.

P.S. Here is Lisanti's Mad Men Power Rankings.

Painted Turtle Benefit 2009

Ken Ebbitt & Seth Miller, among others, will be hosting the annual Painted Turtle Benefit at Bimbos on November 14, 2009. I hope you'll join me there. It's always a great time and Tainted Love will be playing as usual. It's black tie so you get to get all gussied up. You buy tickets through Firefly here. Tickets always sell out far in advance so buy them now. I just bought mine.

For those who don't know, I volunteered at Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Camp back in the day. It's a camp for kids with cancer and their siblings who are often unintentionally neglected and feel guilt. I worked "sibs" week and it's one of my most precious life experiences. I worked at Camp Okizu, another wonderful camp out of Stanford with the same mission, the next year cause it was much closer. However, a few years ago Newman's Gang formed The Painted Turtle in Southern California and Ken & Seth have been supporting it ever since with this benefit.

It's an awesome night for a very special charity. I hope you'll be there.

Where the Wild Things - Spike Jonze

I throughly enjoyed this New York Times profile of Spike Jonze. I cannot wait for Where the Wild Things. I had no idea it's taken the better part of this decade for him to make the film.

Last Night Alex Bain Pointed this sign out to me at Betelnut

When the Moons Returns

Colleen, a member of the LivingWithAtaxia patient to patient support network I help run, posted a beautiful poem that I wanted to share with you. For more information on Ataxia, checkout Wikipedia. It will help you appreciate the poem even more.

When the moons return

When the moons return in summer I know I will be free,
When the moons return in summer I know I will be me.
For when they left they took a part of me that has no name.
A feeling,a need,a growing a presence, something I can't explain.

Like the sun upon your skin, the wind blowing in your hair
I know by it's very absence that part of me's not there.
The tears they fall so often sometimes soft upon my cheek.
Sometimes harsh and sometimes silent sometimes even in my sleep.

I cannot make my body obey my mind's commands
I cannot feel the water as it runs across my hands
but I feel oh much to strongly this saddness in my heart ,
and all the anger in the world when my body fails to start


Though most things I take within my stride fustration tends to grow ,
when I cannot do the simple tasks my brain should really know.
Unsteady in my walking I plan each step with care ,
but the crulest blow in all of this is when I hold you your'e not there.

I watch my arms around you I feel as they connect,
I see the smile upon your face the sound that your'e content.
My darling I can't feel you there is nobody there,
for in my mind despite what I see I am holding fizzing air.

I pray it will get better that the fog will go away.
That I will just remember how to run and jump someday.
When the moods return in summer I know I will be free
for when the moons are back not blue but white I know they will bring me.


When I asked for Colleen's permission to post this, she filled me in on a little deeper meaning.


"The poem has a deeper meaning. I was disg., with b12 deff ( with neuro complications) in which the moons on your finger nails disapear, the hope was that with treatment they would return and I would recoverI They did not still you never know what tommorow may bring."

Friday Chill Music (September 25, 2009)

Saw the epic Bon Iver concert at the Fillmore with Katie from I'm All Ears on Tuesday. Scroll down a bit on her blog to find a quick commentary on the night. Here is the Luvvbugg from that night (note: Katie's a friend, and although she's super cute and i'd be lucky to date her, this was just a LuvvBugg test run)

scottorn's LuvvBugg date with Katie

Going to Bon Iver concert. Should be fantastic!

View >>

My favorite song of the night was The Wolves. We were encouraged to sing a long and by the end, everyone was belting it out. "What might have been lost..."

A truly great concert moment.



Here's Blood Bank, probably my favorite Bon Iver song right now.

They closed the song with this sing-a-long with Megafaun. Great night.



On another note, here is a great song by The XX called VCR. This band has been in my cd player since John Hamilton gave it to me.

Here's a great mix by John Hamilton. I hope you it as cool as I do.

Finally, here's the version of RE: Stacks

Sydney Dust Storm

Epic pictures from a post linked to by Signal & Noise on the Sydney Dust Storm. I've been in many of these exact spots. Wow.

Speechless

this post by Emotive on LookAtThisFuckingHipster left me speechless, then laughing. :)

Health's Golden Ticket

The band Health is a hot indie group and my buddy Andrew Miller's brother plays drums. This band ROCKS but it's not for the faint of heart. I caught them at South By Southwest 18 months ago and was blown away by their performance. The drums power the band so I was especially happy for Andrew. I was exchanging some emails with Andrew and he told me about Health's Willie Wonka promotion with their new album. It's a really cool idea. Great job guys.

Stereogum covers it well here:

"The quartet's also running a playfully self-absorbed Willy Wonka-inspired promotional campaign. The idea: HEALTH made 66 tickets and hid them in the first shipment of Get Color CDs. Each includes a unique code that corresponds to a specific prize. One "Golden Ticket" (aka Grand Prize) earns you a 3-night trip to LA. We're told if you win this, your "every whim will be attended to," but I assume there are limits. For now: "Details include accommodation at a band members homestead, as well as various meticulously planned activities culminating in a trip to Six Flags amusement park."


Here are a couple samples of Health:


Die Slow


Crimewave

Pearl Jam's Answer to the CD Book

Along with the release of Backspacer, Pearl Jam's latest album, the band released a really cool multimedia feature through that is kind of like a webpage for listening to the album. I don't even have a good name for this because I've never seen something like this before. 

The first screen is the navigation page, complete with the kind of artwork you would normally find included in the CD packaging. But even better, these are live links. You click on them and go to different parts of the interactive package.

The page below is for quick sampling of the songs. No need to click on the tracks in iTunes. You can click through in a much more GU with neat artwork. You click and play right here.

PJ lyrics are always a mystery and they don't always include them. Now you can click on the song in the enhanced multimedia view and see all the lyrics. We can all sing along with Eddie now!

This screenshot demonstrates the ability to click through to the bands first video, "The Fixer," and the 9 minute documentary that they released to promote the album. Again, all of this is done in iTunes by clicking on "webpage" like links.

Finally, there is the equivalent to DVD extras. I loved the Brendan O'Brien interview.

Pearl Jam has broken new ground again. Very cool stuff.

Montana & Clark in the house!

Visualing Healthcare Reform

Ryan Kaiser sent in a great article from the Washington Post explaining how the Healthcare Reform Bills stack up. The best part of the article is the interactive graphic that let's you pick bills and run scenario analysis on them. I played with this for 15 minutes. Here is a sample portion.

Health's Cool Song

This remix of one of Health's songs is really cool.

Great Beat Writers

Baseball is a looong season, so having a great beat writer is important. They summarize what happened in the game, but more importantly what's happening with the team. Henry Schulman of the Chronicle is one of the best and I never miss his articles on the Giants. I loved this lead in:

"The Giants are the inebriate at the bar who cannot recognize that you and your sweetie want to be alone. They are bill collectors. They are street-sweeping trucks on the Nimitz, Birkenstocks and "Survivor."

They will not go away."

Bonobos on Today

Pretty cool.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Obama & Healthcare

reblogging from the Himmelsblog

Friday Chill Music (September 18, 2009)

A spicier than usual Friday Chill Music today. It begins with Sleater Kinney (song reminds me of Webster Hall in NYC, 2006) to Bon Iver's Brackett and then old school Live. We cool it down on the back four so you'll still be chilled out by the time you finish. :)

Gizmo San Francisco

My buddy Greg Shukov is expanding his custom technology systems design and implementation business, Gizmo, to the San Francisco Bay Area. Here is Greg's quick description of Gizmo SF:


Gizmo Custom Systems designs and installs cutting edge technologies in homes and non-residential properties.  We offer a wide range of services ranging from home theaters to solar electric systems to lighting control, and much more.  On the fancier side, we offer features like being able to turn off your entire house from your iPhone.  To get the full run-down check out www.gizmo-sf.com.  There isn’t much technology-wise that we don’t do - and we’re very good - if I do say so myself;)

If you mention this blog, Kenny Kellogg, you'll get 10% off your labor costs!

MA Men

via Mark Lisanti

MA Men from Joey McIntyre

Moving to Russian Hill

I'm moving to Russian Hill today so posting will be lite for a few days. As I was packing today, I rememebered two moves ago when I was leaving Chicago and coming back to California. This song kept popping into my head.

More YYY's

Big weekend at a bachelor party so I didn't have time to read much this weekend. Thought I would link to two more Yeah Yeah Yeah's songs and include a picture I snapped at the concert. The building looks like it's on fire in the picture, apropos of the scorching performance the YYY's delivered.

Here is Maps, the song that first made me love the group. Unfortunately the record label disabled the embedding. Karen O is pretty mellow in the video. I think she's turned into one of the best performers in rock and roll.

Gold Lion is a great song to run to. I remember jogging up and down the West Side Highway in NYC during the Summer of 06' to this song.

Have a great Monday.

This Is Cool

via Anne Hubert


Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Sign Above the Urinal at a Tech Company I Visited Recently

Friday Chill Music (September 11, 2009)

Awesome Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert last night at the Fox in Oakland. This week's mix has a heavy does of the YYY's, Karen O, and some Pearl Jam. Have a great weekend.



Bonus: Epic new song by Pearl Jam

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs at the Fox Theatre

Amazon Reccomends = Get Rid of Inventory

I had to chuckle this morning when I saw an email from Amazon reccommending the Flip Video Camera. Let me get this straight Amazon, the day after Apple announces an iPod Nano with a video camera at a very accessible price point, you are reccomending I buy a Flip?

This is how brands and great features, like Amazon Reccomendations, get diluted by panicky General Managers. Dump the inventory into eBay or another clearance channel and take the hit. Don't dump it on your customers and squander the lifetime value of a customer. Very shortsighted.

Rules for My Unborn Kitten

My buddy, Alex Bain, is often referenced on Kenny K. He's "Internet Creative", meaning he's always working on new sites and ideas that I find fascinating. His cat's blog, Furio, has more traffic than his blog (hey, people love cats on the Internet). Alex & Furio have collaborated on a new site for cat lovers called "Rules For My Unborn Kitten," a play on this site. I think it's really funny, but it's also a testament to Alex's ability to build a community on the Internet, no small feat. Congrats on the new site Alex.

Here's my favorite Rule so far. As a stocky man, I can relate.

Also, if you check out Furio's site, you'll see that I finally met the author in person. Furio is a real cowboy, he wears a monogrammed bandanna around his neck. I would NOT want to meet that cat in a dark alley.

Clout by Seth Godin

Awesome post by Seth Godin

Clout:

The web knows something, but it's not telling us, at least not yet.

The web knows how many followers you have on Twitter, how many friends you have on Facebook, how many people read your blog.

It also knows how often those people retweet, amplify and spread your ideas.

It also knows how many followers your followers have...

So, what if, Google-style, someone took all this data and figured out who has clout. Which of your readers is the one capable of making an idea break through the noise and spread? Bloggers don't have impact because they have a lot of readers, they have a lot of impact because of who their readers are (my readers, of course, are the most sophisticated and cloutful on the entire web).

If you knew which of your followers had clout, you could invest more time and energy in personal attention. If we knew where big ideas were starting, that would be neat, and even more useful would be understanding who the key people were in bringing those new ideas to the rest of the world.

Back in the old days, we had no idea, so we defaulted to big newspapers, or magazines or the TV networks. But now we know. We just need to surface the data in a way that is useful.

Goodman's Mad Men Recap

Tim Goodman writes incredible Mad Men recaps and this week's version was amazing. I loved the episode's exploration of generational shifts and Goodman enlightened me on a bunch of stuff that I didn't see. Before you read on, there is a minimal spoiler, not something big at all, but just giving you fair warning.

My favorite part of the episode was the scene where Peggy tells her mom she's moving to Manhattan and her mom is anything but supportive. This scene reminded me of the story my grandparents told me about their move to Fremont from Oakland. My grandmother is 100% Italian and the extended family was everything in her life growing up. About 40 -50 family members lived within a few blocks of each other in Oakland and would get together every sunday for a Italian feast. My grandparents moved to Fremont because they could own a house. Land was cheap amongst the orchards and they bought in a small sub-division where they have lived ever since. My grandmother told me that the family threatened to dis-own her at the time but she felt like it was the right thing to do.

Everything worked out and to this day, the family orbits around her. But it was a difficult time for the rest of the family, and a sign of greater change to come. Watching the episode felt like I was listening in on a conversation between my grandmother and my late great grandmother and great-great grandmother. They were tough women and like Peggy, it couldn't have been easy for my grandmother.

This is one of the beauty's of Mad Men, it gives us a peak at the past. The world has changed so much that's it hard for us to imagine Peggy even worried about moving to Manhattan. I made a similar move from the East Bay to San Francisco after college, and never gave it a second thought. But in Mad Men, there is the conflict on film, corroborating the stories of generations past.

Outside Lands Recap

Awesome recap of Outside Lands by "I Am Fuel, You Are Friends" blog. She included a lot of song links so check them out. My favorites were of course Pearl Jam, which rocked through a setlist of mostly greatest hits. Why Go Home, Black and Mike McCready's behind the head guitar solos in Even Flow were my favorites. I highly recommend you watch this clip.




Here's Black. McCready's solo was awesome here too as was the crowd singing along to the "do do do do do..." for a few minutes.



The National and Silversun Pickups were really great too. The Pickups closed with Lazy Eye, I think. The sun (and beer) has tanned my memory.




The National played Mr. November, my favorite song from their set. Hope to see you here next year, Dear Reader!

Tucker's birthday party and a fantasy football draft killed my calorie budget this week. Thx for lose it app rec Alex bain!

Vegas

I read this article by Bill Simmons and immediately bought a ticket to Vegas. True story. My favorite excerpt (that is printable on Kenny Kellogg)

"10:50: Slow start. Sloooooooooow start. I will confess: Up to this point in my life, I found slots to be perplexing. So, you sit in a chair and sadly press a button over and over and over again? And this is fun … why?

"Great idea, Mahades," I heckle. "I can't think of anything more fun than watching somebody else hit a button a whole bunch of times."

"Just wait," he says. "Just wait."

10:55: I can't even describe how fast I just flipped on slots. Working six of the eight machines, we just hit $400 (Hopper) and, astonishingly, the big $1,000 (Bish). Each time it happened? Chaos. We went crazy. Now every time someone gets to spin, five other guys race over to cheer them on. Even if you rarely end up hitting a big number on the wheel, every "Come on, come on, WHOAAAAAAAA-ohhhhhhhhhhhhh" moments is worth it. This is … gasp … fun?

11:10: All hell has broken loose. We have all eight machines, we're up two grand as a group, and we're making so much noise that a crowd of people is now cheering us on. I'm not kidding -- our group might have been the Jackie Robinson of Fun Slots Experiences. I don't think anyone ever considered the concept before. Wait, you can have fun playing slots as a group? Really? Now Bish is hitting every "SPIN" with his elbow. Hopper is hitting every "SPIN" with his forehead. Even the formerly cheap Stoner has turned into the Mark Madsen of gambling. Who knew? Slots! Slots? Slots!

11:30: In less than an hour, we just turned $1,100 into $2,850. We're all stunned. That was way too much fun. We can't believe it. Quite possibly the best gambling experience I've had in years."

Friday Chill Music (September 4, 2009)

It's a holiday weekend and the Bay Bridge is closed so I need to skee-dattle out of here. Enjoy this mix. It's made up of my favorite songs right now.

Sugar Paper's New Look

My friend Chelsea founded Sugar Paper, the best Letterpress company in the world. The new look reflects Chelseas design aesthetic - clean, pure and sharp. Click on through and enjoy the site. It's amazing.

Btw, it's so amazing, I gave it a Hollrr.

Welcome to the Majors, Mr. Posey

Buster Posey's call up reminded me of my favorite scene from the Natural...

Hollrr in Southwest's Spirit Magazine

David Hegarty's startup, Hollrr, was featured in Southwest Magazine's Spirit this month. The service makes it easy to aggregate and share your favorite products. Here's a great explanation of one of the hidden perks of Hollrr.


"lots of companies offer affiliate programs, and Hollrr ties in with them. We collect money on behalf of the “tribe” that spreads the word about a product and then pay out rewards based on how the recommendations do. If you’re one of the first to recognize a great new product, you’ll get a larger share of the reward."


Congrats Dave!

Dyatlov

Hegarty linked to a Mark Morford article about a really creepy story of Russian Hikers in the 50's who experienced severe trauma in the middle of nowhere. Holy cow. 

"Why did they rush out, unable to even grab a coat or blanket? What came at them? The three-month investigation revealed that five of the trekkers died from simple hypothermia, with no apparent trauma at all, no signs of attack, struggle, no outward injuries of any kind. However, two of the other four apparently suffered massive internal traumas to the chest, like you would if you were hit by a car. One's skull was crushed. All four of these were found far from the other five. But still, no signs of external injuries."