Food Pr0n

Clockwise from upper left:
Dried cantaloupe, Unie Kaas Robusto cheese (it's an aged Gouda), dried figs and Mitica Marcona almonds.
Credz to Jessica Grindstaff (link at right), who inspired this basic combination.

Whole Foods pwnz me.
Yes yes, they're killing local small shops and producers, blah blah blah corporate behemoth etc etc and so forth but it's NOT MY FAULT. I'm sick of people whining about this- I feel as bad about it as anyone, but WF offers something that's hard to compete with: A gigantic selection of Really Good Stuff™ under one roof, so take it up with them, not me. There, I said it.

Frankfurt

....was good. Great venue and crew, good sellout crowd. The concert was simulcast on Frankfurt radio, apparently in Dolby surround. Also, I got a chance to see the Gaudi Unseen show at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, which is quite a good document of the ongoing construction of the Sagrada Familia. In an unrelated note, I was totally smitten by these awesome Saab ethanol concept station wagons that the company (being one of the Jazz Festival's corporate sponsors this year) lent to the festival for shuttling the artists to and from the venue. Absolutely fantastic, and maddeningly unavailable in North America. Anyway, a few video stills:

From top: Rick and Jamie at soundcheck, the hall- (Hessischen Rundfunk) and the audience view of soundcheck.

Might be time for another one of these...

About ten years ago, I bought a NeXT Color Turbostation and it became my main machine at home for about five years thereafter. Performance-wise, it was basically the equivalent of a Mac Quadra 650 (also a good machine for its time) but with a futuristic, beautiful and rock-solid Unix-based OS. I only sold it because I was moving to LA and needed to lighten the load, but I never lost admiration for the NeXT design aesthetic and elegant user experience. I think it may be time to get another one of these...NeXTstep has an enduring brilliance, and is in some ways more elegant than its descendant, Mac OS X. If you're into computers (particularly if you're a Mac enthusiast) and are not familiar with the NeXT story, check out the above link. The machine was another example of Steve Jobs's vision and taste, qualities all too rare in the computer business. Also, it seems someone's managed to get OpenStep running on an Intel MacBook Pro. Gotta love Parallels Desktop. Considering how zippy OpenStep was on a PII/300 PC, I'd imagine this scenario would perform quite well, even with the virtualization overhead...

Back To Work...

It's the usual combo platter of TV/film with Charlie (Las Vegas and Numb3rs are back) and some JH group stuff at the moment.
JH, Jamie Muhoberac and I rehearsed today for the upcoming Frankfurt concert (jonhassell.com for details) in my front room, as evidenced by the poorly-lit vidcap.
Gonna be fun though...