matt's pictures

odd salon explore

Three weeks ago, I had the pleasure and privilege of speaking at Odd Salon for the second time. The theme for the night was Explore, and there was an emphasis on non-white-western-male explorers, and different kinds of explorers. My talk was on the surface a classic sea-fairing tale, “40,000 miles and a century early: The treasure Voyages of Zheng He.” There’s a video online here which I refuse to watch on the grounds that I went through it once already. Someone tell me if it’s okay to look. The main thrust of the argument wasn’t just that he was a great admiral that went all that way, but that he also exercised this continual escalation, from one thing to the next in his life, to see how much he could do.

Posted by matt on 2018-09-24T06:12:32Z GMT

street photos on a tuesday

Nothing profound to say this time, except that I’m running on 4 hours of sleep and I’m going to bed right now. Good night.

Posted by matt on 2018-09-20T06:18:00Z GMT

brunch and the lockpicking gospel

So this was definitely also Labor day, I think; or maybe the day before. It was just before my odd salon talk. MaryAlice hit us up and asked if we wanted to brunch, and I happened to be awake and said yes, and got Sophie up, and away we went to Oakland Grill.

Posted by matt on 2018-09-18T05:45:38Z GMT

new baby fiadh flynn-curran

Last weekend? Last week sometime? no, I remember, it was labor day, and we went to the only open sushi joint in greater oakland to pick up a meal and take it to the folks with the weeks-old baby. They’re still in the thick of it, with the baby not sleeping through the night, or really for more than a couple hours at a stretch. Sounds miserable if you ask me.

Posted by matt on 2018-09-14T07:26:33Z GMT

andrew wk show at the fillmore

This was, as I said on the socials, an amazing show. For real one of the best live shows I’ve ever been to. The amazing part: I had a photo pass, so I was in the photo pit right by the stage for the first three songs; that’s why a lot of these are really close. The magic of the bird site, I suppose; I tweeted at him asking for a pass, and he (or more likely his social media person) replied within a few minutes in the partier direction.

One nice surprise is that his whole band is just as energetic as he was, and also all of them got some nice moments to shine too. Really nice touches.

We got home and I passed out, but I woke up at 4:30 and couldn’t sleep, so I got up to edit. My ears are still ringing, but I’m happy. A good way to spend a birthday.