Hey, welcome to Part 2 of my catching up before I take off for Sweden (!!). With any luck Part 3 - ski season recap! - should be up over the weekend (what, you missed Part 1? But that what's Mom's 60th bday!) Anyway, so let's finally get this SXSW recap out of the way (er, from first week in March!)

So, SXSW = South by Southwest, the interactive + film + music conference festival that's held down in Austin, TX every Spring. Alex and I went down on the Google dime in 2006 and it was amazing (esp since dodgeball was the Next Big Thing at the time). We went down again in 2007, though that was when me + Alex were brawling with Google over their neglect of dodgeball (all while Twitter was blowing up as the Next Big Thing). So 2008... I wasn't really too hot on the idea of going down. I'm kind of in-between-jobs and in-between-projects and just wasn't really that fired up for it. Then again, everyone in the world was headed to Austin... Alex, Karen, Kevin.K, Harry.H, Danny Denver and just about everyone I know from ITP whose now out in SF.

With about 2 days before the conference, Alex and Kevin start giving me for shit for not planning on coming. I did't have a plane ticket, I did't have a hotel (er, impossible to find even 2 months before the festival) and I didn't have a badge ($500!). I started IMing with Karen about maaaayyybbbee coming down - secret surprise style, which is when Karen said I could crash in their hotel for a night. And then Danny Denver turned out to have an extra place to crash. And then I started looking at plane tix and realized I had a Jet Blue voucher. And then heard that my buddy Ryan who was running a panel on Location Aware Gaming had a open spot to fill (poor Slavin had pneumonia) which would score me a freebee speaker's badge. So, early Friday afternoon - while everyone was already en route to Austin - I scrapped together my five-days-in-Austin itinerary, packed my lil' green backpack and headed to JFK. I text'ed Karen to tell her know that I managed to scam my way down and to try to keep all the ITP kids out late enough so I could make a secret surprise entrance... masterplan was to get in around 10:30p, roll into downtown Austin around 11p. Woo-hooo!



... and they I get to JFK and realize that Jet Blue has crushed my dreams yet again. My 8:45 flight delayed 2+ hours - pushing my 12am arrival time, back to around 3am.



Long story short, I told KB to keep everyone out till midnight. She knew I was super delayed and kept people out as late as possible. By the time I rolled up to the SXSW's opening night after-party (er, 3:55am) there were no more beers, no more good times, and Alex and Ron and Manlio and Danny and KB (good bless them) were all Slurry McCrunkedaLot. Still a successful late night reunion!



... just enough time for one of these...



... before making the trek over the bridge...



... to crash with Alex and Karen in their loooovveee suite. And goodnight!



Hello Saturday! The panel I fandangled myself onto ("You Are Here, Gaming and Geolocation") was one of the very first panels of the conference. Bad because the panel isn't as crowded as it would be if it was in the afternoon, good because at least you get it out of the way, leaving you stress free for the rest of the festival.

and ps: "In Between Jobs" is the best job of all jobs!

Three weeks late! So what!? Hi! My birthday = Tues 6/19, party was on Wednesday. Original invite called for a dance party on the upstairs terrace at Professor Thoms, but due to a technical error in the reservation process (er, I never called to confirm - oops) and the factthat Prof Thom's was hosting some Wednesday night BINGO, we dragged everyone a few blocks east over to Heathers.

Hey, and thanks to everyone who came out as bday #31 was pretty slamming. For the sake of comparison (and procrastination) I offer you recaps of bday #30, #29, #28, #27 on this lazy Friday afternoon. ps: No real narrative here, but please enjoy these randomly strung together images.



Looks dirty. Blindfold came from K2's Pin The Tail on the Donkey party kit...



Which is kind of like Pin the Tail on the Oil Painting of JJ.



Are you really going to argue?

Why hello! I'm 100 years behind on teendrama, so let's try to catch up with some G-Unit Ski Trip action. Rewind yourself, um, two weeks for this one (Feb 8-9) and brush up on the recap of last's year ski trip before I blow your mind with the tale of how my employer shuttles every employee east of CA up to Stratton, VT for two days of skiing, all the free meals you can eat and big ol' dance party.

Busses that leave early Thursday morning are for suckers, so we motivated on Wednesday night and crashed at Mount Snow. Special thanks to Mosh for the ride up (I left the Hoverpod in NYC so Will + crew could mke it up for the wkd - foreshadowing!). Around midnight I met up w/ Alex + Karen at Mt. Snow, crashed for a bit and then the three of us made the trek to Stratton around 10am. Waiting for me at the front desk? Two lift tix, keys to our condo, food voucher and a Nastar (ski race) badge.



We met up with a bunch of the G kids over the course of the day - always hard since everyone was 100% bundled up due to the cold. Man, it was freezing (super windy!) and the visibility was extra low that first day. Here's Anna + Peter + Jigglypuff riding the triple.



Rewind to last year again for a second. During the afterparty, Craig.NM got on the mic and announced the winners of the "fastest skiier" contest. I was all up in arms as I didn't even know about the race and hence did not get a chance to claim the Fastest Google Snowboarder title which is rightfully mine. So this year, I made sure to sign up as soon as I got there (and even going as far as "guaranteeing victory" - which worked great for me when I "guaranteed victory" at last year sink or skim @ Mt. Snow).

So I'm making this race out to be a big deal when it's really just 15 ski gates in a race that prob 20 people entered. But me + Craig + Mosh + Sean braved the course (er, a few times) until we felt as if we appropriately slayed it.



Okay, with the race of out of the way, we went to grab lunch. Actually, we went to grab lunch *before* the race until Jamie reminded us that we needed to get our times in before 2p (!!). So in then out, then two runs up and then lunchtime. I was anxious to make more runs so I ate some discarded buffalo burger I found laying around. Harry.H on the right, Jamie mid-soup in the bg.



After lunch everyone got kind of sleeeeeepy, but I dragged myself out for a few more runs. Good thing, as right after 2p the winds died down, the sun came out and the afternoon offered up some of the better runs I've taken all season (Stratton had tons of little pockets of untracked snow). I made a bunch of runs w/ this crew (from the left): um, don't remember your name, um, don't remember your name either, Scott.T (superstar skier) and Jenny from Denver.

I think we skied right till 4p (or maybe a little earlier - I think they closed the gondola due to wind).

Friday afternoons sure are good for puttin' together some teendrama recaps!

Monday. Happy Repeal Day. LVHRD celebrated with a anti-prohibition casino night / dance party at the Player's Club near Grammercy Park (awesome, btw - check out their recap). A few poker tables upstairs, burlesque show downstairs and lots of people trying to cheat their way through cards and invent ways to scamming chips off people (push up contests, chips-for-nips trades - ha!). I arm wrestled Jake.D all the way to victory. Random bit of trivia from Matt Spangler: The Player's Club used to be the apartment of John Wilkes Booth's brother. (A few mins ago I had accused Spangler of being a LIAR after I confused Booth's brother w/ Aaron Burr's ficticious brother. Ha. I am sm.dumb sometimes.)



Checked my chips on the way out of LVHRD and headed down to meet KK + Lock + crew at Villedge Public House Stanton Public. We dressed Courtney up real nice in this ninja scarf. (Rumor has it we may start dj'ing here???)



Wednesday. Anyone remember the Guitar Hero fundraiser from last year? Held last year at Barcade, Joel from Gizmodo invited a whole bunch of people to some try out Guitar Hero for (brand new!!!) and donate some money to the Children's Hospital of Montefiore. Maybe 50 people showed up? It was much fun (and yes, I did end getting Guitar Hero for Xmas that year).

Anyway, they did it again this year and it was *packed*. Like 200 people? There was even a tournament (read: nerds. decked. out.) Started at 8p, I got there around 9 and it seemed like the place was at capacity. Rumor has the sign up sheet to play was all filled by 8:10p. Huh.



Thursday. Man, it was freezing last night (like 25 degrees!) and stoopid me only wore a hoodie to work (it was like 50 degrees that morning!). Anyway, I met Dianne at UCB and then Kevin.K at Bleecker Bar and then Courtney at One and One before trekking in the cold over to 2A to meet up w/ Everyone Else in the World. On the agenda was Lawrence's karaoke bday party @ The Annex and I was ttthhhiiiisss close to skipping cause it was just so so so cold. But we walked over anyway. And, it. was. amazing.



First of all, starting today everyone should be wearing a tux on your birthday. It's just makes sense. By the way, I took this about 3 mins after we walked in. The two guys in the background are the emcees (Karaoke Killed the Cat) [video]



Battjer is to karaoke what Ted Williams is to baseball. 40 years from now I'll be bragging to my grandkids about how I saw the legend once perform on a crappy little stage in the Lower East Side. If you don't watch the whole thing, at least watch until the guy in the red shirt starts benchpressing the mic stand. Hahahahahahah. [video]

A few days late here, but whatever. I spent most of last week shuttling myself back and forth between San Francisco (Clift Hotel) and Mountain View (Google). Buckets and buckets of meetings, but the trip was broken up nicely thanks to such distractions as Wednesday's "Welcome to San Francisco, Harry!" party @ Lazlo. (trivia: did you know Harry is working out of Mt. View for the month?).

After showing up two hours late (thanks to the sushi waitress that forgot about us and the 800 miles trek through the sketchiest neighborhood of all time - think: old Detroit City in RoboCop), we met up with a crowd chock full of SXSW alumns and dodgeball superusers including such special guests as: ValleyWag Nick, Ms. Aubrey, Danny Denver, Eris Free.



Thursday night. Grabbed dinner with Sean.S and headed to Boca to see some band called the Extra Action Marching Band. Aaaccccctually, the night before (@ Lazlo) everyone was chatting them up in a "Are you going? You gotta go!" type of way, so when Sean called me and was like "I'm heading to this. You want to go?" I was in.

Two opening bands: #1. a shirtless dude in a cowboy hat riding a pogo stick horse (huh.) and 2. Golem, some Yiddish band that made the place rock like some hipster bar mitzvah (apparently they're from NYC). Extra Action came on next - essentially a, er, hipster marching band complete with huge instruments (tuba, trumbone, drums, etc.) and flag-waving color guard girls in thongs (huh!).

And, so they don't play on stage... they just kind of wander around the venue playing wherever they want (after making a grand entrance from the back of the room). So, the whole place turned into one sweaty, drink-spilling, marching band dance party... which was pretty awesome.



And got more awesomer when they led people out into the streets - Pied Piper style - for another dance party. Girls on cars. People waving flags. Cars honking because they're blocking traffic. Pretty rad.

Anwyay, they're coming to the east coast soon, so check it out. (ps: I bought 2 tix for the Knitting Factory show)

Sat 8/12 @ Kitting Factory [tix]
Tue 8/15 @ Boston
Wed 8/19 @ Brooklyn
[calendar]



CheeseBikini himself, toasting up a round of the worst tasting liquor ever.

Not shown: Anthony Townsend and some other dude who was wearing a Dooker tee.

I know, I know, I know... SXSW was so two two-and-a-half weeks ago, but come'on, I'm busy! The quick recap is that Team Dodgeball (me + Alex + Harry) were down in Austin for five days, er, two weeks ago. SXSW = short for South by Southwest, a two week interactive + film + music festival. Being the dorks we are (or: SXSW rookies), we were only there for the interactive piece (we flew out when everyone else was flying in, but we'll fix that next year). Okay, so ready for this? (It's a long one.)

DAY 1



So, Day 1 = Saturday. I was on a panel called "Online in Offline Spaces" with Scott H. (MeetUp) + Mike.S (Socialight) + Molly.S (Yale) moderated by Heath.R (Squidoo). We were up against James Surowiecki (aka Johnny Wisdom of Crowds) in the room next door, so it was awesome to see that we still had a spill-over crowd. The panel went well and it was a lot of fun (I think panels are always better when you know the people beforehand - e.g I went to grad school with Mike, Molly acted as an informal advisor to my thesis, and I know Scott just from around NYC).

I brought a packback full of dodgeball t-shirts and gave them all out (all 50 of them!) in about 4 minutes flat after the panel.



Fast forward through a day's worth of keynotes + panels and we get to the official Opening Night Party thrown by Frog Design. Our first intro to the SXSW scene = we were swimming in free drinks.



Harry.H chatting up the nice girl he sat next to on the plane. Player = please!



When Frog's free drink tab ended, we headed in search of the next party. Our Brand New Best Friend Justin(tm) (aka Janelle's pal from back in the day) Dan.M's friend (with glasses - hi!) was nice enough to squeeze something-like eight of us in the back of his Jetta. I got stuck riding Alex's lap.

A few days late with the recap here, but I'm trying to see if i can stretch this into weekend recap, so shut up. Friday = Part II of Kevin.K's 30th bday blowout @ Loreley.

For extra credit, check out pics from Manlio + Grellan + Dianne + British Jess.



DJ duties split between Kevin + Alex + Gabe + Randeez (here) + me + Grellan (a.k.a. Worst. Set. Ever.)

ps: jk, Grell. er, not really.



Alex sporting our brand new dodgeball t-shirts (pow!). Super KB sporting, um, well, KB just hanging out.

I was planning on only staying out till 1am or so since I had to catch a train to Boston in the morning (more on that in a second), but that plan didn't work out so well...



... I ended up leaving around 3:30 and swunging by Harry's apt (Harry = dodgeball employee #3!) to see if his "It's 30 Degrees in November and I'm Having a Party on My Roof" party was still going on. After buzzing the wrong apt for like 10 minutes, me + Krucoff snuck our way upstairs to find a bunch of people making out and a crunked Harry nursing a 40oz bottle of the cheapest tequila that could be found in the LES. I was in bed by 4am.



Zzzzz. I got up at 7:30am, left my apt at 8am and caught the 9am train to Boston. Ravi and Sonia, the hosts of the hit in-car talkshow "DriveTime", picked me up from at around 1:30 and gave me a ride Harvard Business School.

[video of me on DriveTime coming soon, I promise]