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Kevbo show this weekend

I’m pretty excited — we’re roadtripping up the coast to Ventura on Saturday to see Kevbo’s band, Kevin Costner and Modern West, play a free show after the premiere of his new flick called “Swing Vote”.  (Look at the comments on his myspace page — Bubs pointed out that they’re, in general, from the dustiest old broads eva.)

There’s a chance that this will be one of my favorite things I’ll ever do in my life.  I doubt we’re going to make it into the premiere, but the show is a couple hours long and it’s a street show, which always seem to be more fun to me than most other venues.

Here’s a rough question for you:  which Kevbo DVD would you want him to autograph if you had the chance to get just one of his DVDs autographed?

=hot dog the rapper

Is this a sign of becoming old?

booze.JPG

I’ve never had half this many bottles of booze in my place, and any time I’ve had any significant number, they were mostly gone in less than 12 hours (and were there specifically for a party).

If getting older means that you continually collect booze faster than you drink it, I’m completely game!  Or maybe this doesn’t mean I’m getting older, maybe it just means I’m getting balla.  This is where I should post the letter that I sent to a potential financial adviser today, but in fear of some of you thinking I’m completely crazy, I’ll refrain.

=hot dog the rapper.

More on the new job…

This week is the first week since I’ve been out here that I haven’t been committed to working from home for an extra couple hours a night.  And what do I find myself doing?  Working.

Well, not technically.  But all the time I haven’t had to spend researching a lot of the ins and outs of my industry have gotten to me, and tonight I’ve actually spent — fully out of desire to do so in my own time — a couple hours reading some stuff that’s piqued my interest and checking some things out that I’ve been meaning to check out.  And it’s all tip-of-the-iceberg.

I think I’ve known this without thinking about it too much, but it hit pretty hard today.  I had my “employee evaluation” with the director of my department.  I wasn’t up for a raise or anything, but they do bi-annual reviews, and after you’ve been there for six months, you essentially get a raise every six months.  So, this was just a review without a raise.

It’s the type of review where you review yourself, then give it to your boss and he reviews you.  So, for the “expectations for myself” part or whatever it’s called, one of the items that I put was “Become an authority on [insert job title] at [insert my company name]”.

When he filled out his comments, he altered it to: “Become an industry authority on SEO”.  So, essentially, in the next six months, he’s expecting me to rise to the absolute top of my food chain — not within the company, but within the industry as a whole.  And he’s a pretty sharp dude with a ton of experince at this.  My response was, “well, hmmm. Do you consider yourself an industry authority?”  And he replied, “in some things, yes, in others no”.  So essentially he made it a goal of mine to be better than him — in six months.  We laughed about it a little, and we both know there’s obviously no way I’m going to soak in enough information and have enough time to do R&D myself in six months to actually become a leading SEO — especially with all of the client deliverables that I’m going to be working on which will prevent me from spending large sums of time learning all the odds and ends I’d need to learn to propel myself to such a position.

But it’s nice to know that I’m not the only person who thinks I have the ability to kick a lot of ass.  Or maybe everyone gets that thrown into their reviews to keep the standards set pretty high.

Either way, this stuff is fun.  It’s way more of a competition – with the potential for big wins and huge losses – than programming or training or anything of the sort that I’ve done in the past.  And I hate losing.  So it’s time to beef up the defense and swing for the fences.  And to keep my fingers crossed that I don’t get pulled in too many directions to be able to spend the time I want to getting good at this shit.

=hot dog the rapper

PS.  I really hate the saying, “Another day, another dollar”.  It should be, at a minimum, “Another day, another thousand dollars”.  That’s a better goal.  I can make a dollar a day checking vending machines for orphaned nickels.

Home Team + Bubz Reunion 2008

dosrug.pngIt’s not very often that Home Team + Bubz gets together at the same time. And it can be pretty dangerous for the area we congregate.

I think the last time we were all in the same place together was for the Bubbard reception almost a year and a half ago.  (That was a wicked few months of HT+B, as we all met in Phoenix for Bub’s bachelor part, road tripped to Vegas for the wedding, and after a short recovery period we reconvened in St. Louis on Mardi Gras/March Madness weekend for the reception).

Luckily (for me) I managed to get everything taken care of work/life-wise that I needed to, and I still got to hang out with everyone each night.  And I’m glad that poops and Dos were able to get out and have fun during the days.  I don’t have a pic of Dos’ tat or poops’ neck piercing, but those dudes definitely took home souvenirs from the trip.

Both of those dudes took off yesterday; and magically, I’m somehow completely free for a weekend.  I get to do whatever I want.  Today I layed in bed until 3:00 and read, went for sushi, stopped at Smart and Final, and I’m going to clean up a bit around the place and relax.  I haven’t had this luxury more than a couple times this year.  Being on the run all the time makes not being on the run pretty awesome.  I could definitely use some more Saturdays like this.

FRANK went home for the weekend, which means I have the place to myself until sometime tomorrow afternoon.  That should give me plenty of time to make piles of shit to throw away.  Before you know it, I’ll be settled in and ready to start throwing parties.

Time to clean.

=hot dog the rapper

Upsidedown Couches site launch.

We launched a very primitive version of the rap band website for Upsidedown Couches today.  We just wanted to get Freedom (Part III) out there for people to download on .mp3.  Check it out, and get your booze and get your weed on.

=hot dog the rapper

Almost back to normal

Among the peanuts of life lately, I somehow managed to sleep until after 4:30pm this afternoon.  It was the most hidden of blessings.

Home Team is congregated in Los Angeles right now.  I can’t think of a better way to wrap up 4 weeks of insanity besides gettin’ manic and retarded, which is the only thing that will happen this week.  I need Bubz to have my back and I’m scared that he doesn’t.

Tomorrow I’m going to work for the first time in several days, and I’m afraid I’m going to hate it and want to quit.  I really needed a huge break between jobs and I’m starting to regret the fact that I didn’t take one.

Either way, I guess I’m about to pass out in my own bed in my own bedroom in Santa Monica.  So life, it ain’t be that bad.

=hot dog the rapper

Rock Eight pix

Spurge, Nails and Sky got stuck in the mud on the way in. We pushed them outz! we!!!

Bear’s new awesome fuckin’ bench

Me being interviewed by Bubz while Dos talks on his sunglass case.

This is the 3rd time in 2 months. I guess I like sleeping on kitchen floors. I may have peed a bedroom carpet after this. Don’t mix xanax and rock-start-boosin’.

The Tradition.

After a little bartering, we brought America back to the A-Frame to set it on fi-yah.

=hot dog the rapper

FREEDOM - NEW UPSIDEDOWN COUCHES RAP SONG!!!

FRANK turned it out!

=hot dog the rapper

hot dog the burfday

In terms of birthdays, at least until about 9:30pm tonight, I’ve had WAAAAY better.

I went to bed last night after 2am — I was working until the last few minutes before I passed out.

I woke up today, got to the office a tad after 9:00, and worked (minus a 45 minute lunch) until after 6pm.  Then I worked from home until late.  I’ve probably worked 22-25 hours already this week, and it’s Tuesday.  And they knew I was supposed to be off the rest of the week after today (even though I’m going to end up working tomorrow and a half day Thursday).  At about three o’clock this afternoon, my brain wasn’t functioning much anymore.

And all day long, knowing it was my birthday and I didn’t really want to be caught in a “hurry up and get way too much shit done” trap, I was in a fairly uncelebratory mood.

But luckily, I got one email at about mid-day that — and I didn’t think about it too much at the time — ended up leading to one of the coolest birthdays I’ve ever had.  From my producer:

Hey Hot Dog,

For your birthday I tried to think of what to get you…but you pretty much buy anything you want.  So I made you a beat.  And we’re making a song tonight - which will become the theme song for the lake trip.  I think it would be tight if we could get Dorsey to record some shit and send it to us too.  But anyways, still working on the song, it is attached.

Frank

I can’t wait until I get to post this to the blog tomorrow night.  It’ll be the first new rap song I post to the blog.  And it’s pretty fucking good, too.  Easily my favorite original beat I’ve ever rapped over.

FRANK bought a firewire input kit an a mic; we rigged up a pretty fantastic four-doored studio.  And we rapped about Freedom all night.  The Bubbards even came by to lend a hand.

I don’t know how I could possibly ever spend a birthday not rapping again.  This was more fun than fireworks.  (Almost.)

Wait ’til tomorrow.

=hot dog the rapper

Los Mustacheos

This is the song that Dos and Flex wrote for Nails for her wedding.  It’s not the final version, but I can’t help but put it online.  I’ll replace it with any updates and let you guys know when it’s safe for download/distribution.

=hot dog the rapper