Just a quick post today to inform you, my lovely readers, that there is new media on my site for your visual and aural (dis)pleasure. Enjoy!

Another week and more practice of the piano brings me to the song Cafe Vienna. Find it on my [music page](http://baudburn.com/music).

In other news, this weekend is going to be totally insane. The 404 crew is having a reunion and everyone will be there. I look forward to hanging out with McCall, Kerry, Compton, Billy, Kaiser, and all the other people that I partied with back in the Nashville days. Cheers to you guys!

To top things off, Monday night I’ll be going to see my favorite Swedish melodic death metal band, In Flames. Their new album “Come Clarity” is great! I’ve been listening to it at work a lot. Hopefully my co-workers don’t notice/mind me sitting at my desk headbanging. They probably think I’m weird anyway.

1. Took Jeff & McCall to the airport (at like 5:30 am *yawn*) so they could fly up for Ryan and Marci’s wedding. Congrats to R&M on tying the knot! I know they will have their happily ever after.

2. Chilled with Dan at the Frothy Monkey on Friday night. Dropped him at the airport (at like 7 am (Damn these people and their early flights)).

3. My buddy James drove up from Atlanta to hang out. We did the following
* I introduced him to real chinese food at the China Chef. None of that american stuff they call “chinese food” Read: General Tso’s chicken. (Note: I love American “Chinese” food, but it can’t compare.)
* Showed him around Vanderbilt
* Swung by the Great Escape. I picked up a few DVD’s and James bought some CDs.
* Bought the new [Lyrics Born](http://www.lyricsborn.com/) CD at Tower Records. This guy rules. It was in the indie section and was well worth it. It makes me feel good to buy albums from indie labels.
* Came back to the house and prepared for a night with the nerds.

4. James and I went to [Hypericon](http://hypericon.info/) to see how the [SE 2600](http://www.phreaknic.info) kids were doing. Hung out, had a few drinks, had a great time. Thanks to Sara (AKA Dementia) for mixing the drinks and all the other SE kids for the good times. Things of note that I can think of:
* Hung out with Josh Harper some. That guy cracks me up.
* Met some fun people, both new friends and old acquaintances.
* Saw Claire and Paul. Paul was dressed as a character from Resident Evil. I don’t know exactly how the guy is supposed to look, but Paul’s costume was pretty good. Props to you, paul!

5. Lazy day today. Got some work done, had some Pho with James.

That’s it. Good night!

This was the final day of the event for us. It started around 10:00 am when I woke up dry, comfortable and rested. Nothing of note happened until 12:00 when [ozomatli](http://www.ozomatli.com/) came out to play. They were absolutely outstanding. I can’t recommend them enough. After giving us a good hour and a half show which included one member of the band crowd surfing while rapping, the band ended in a unique fashion. They one by one jumped down off of the stage and into the crowd, forming a circle in the middle. Each one carried an instrument with and began to play. After doing that for a while, they started parading around forming a sort of impromptu conga line. It’s hard to convey how much fun it was to see them perform live.

The majority of the afternoon was lazy. We saw a few random acts, [Mouse on Mars](http://www.mouseonmars.de/) being the most interesting. On the way back we also heard a bit of a band called Particle, and the Black Crows.

This is where things went totally crazy. Rick and Tom (Kerry’s dad) were holding a party at the RV starting at 8:00. As people started to show up, everyone started to have a few drinks while eating the large array of food Rick had to give out. Next thing I know, Rick (who mind you, is probably something like 55 years old) has pulled out something like 100 glow-stick necklaces from somewhere in his RV. We all started to play with the things and put them on. It’s a funny scene because I’m the youngest person there by far with the average age probably lying somewhere near 40. Next thing I know, someone has the bright idea to toss the ring frisbee style at someone else to try to land it on them. This was the beginning of a 2 hour diversion that became lovingly known as “Hippie Horseshoes”. This catches on in a matter of minutes we all have handfuls of glowing rings that we are tossing at anyone walking by while screaming “Put your hands up, it’s hippie horseshoes! Everyone’s a winner!” The highlight of this event was when ziggy threw about 30 rings at the staff guy who was riding by on a golf cart with both hands up in the air and landed at least three of them. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.

I can’t believe that people who are probably twice my age would do such ridiculous things and laugh so hard about it. It makes me think that as I get older, I can choose to keep having fun and acting like a kid, or I can act more “grown up” and boring. It was good for the soul to hang out with some older people who just don’t care about the norms.

After we finally ran out of glow ropes, we headed over to see [RJD2](http://www.rjd2site.com/) who rocked the house despite the lame crowed standing around not dancing. Finally, we headed back to the VIP site, packed the car and headed out that night to make sure we could avoid the traffic and the mud that will be inevitable as people try to leave sunday and monday.

Thanks to Rick, Tom, and Kerry for the ticket, the company, and the great times. I owe you one.

Another sweet day. It is once again 3:00 am and I feel the need to blog about the days events. It started at about 8 am when the guy next to our tent decided to crank his tunes and rock out. I was not terribly pleased by this action as I was still tired as hell. Being in a good mood from the night before, I just got up and headed over to the RV. We all chilled and had a little breakfast. Much relaxing and snoozing was had till around 12:30 when we grabbed some food in the VIP tent and then headed to see Joss Stone play. She has quite the voice.

After that we waited around till the beginning of Jurassic 5. I love those guys. This is the third time I’ve seen them and by far the best. They were doing such a good job that I didn’t want to leave, but I really wanted to see Madeline Peyroux play as well. I checked out about three of her songs before heading back to see the end of Jurassic 5. After that it was once again back to the RV to crash out.

In the evening I checked out some Dave Mathews Band for a while and then headed over to see the Brazillian Girls. They were amazing. It’s hard to say if I liked them or J5 more. The lead singer was so sexy. She had on a very short flowing white cotton dress thing with sleeves that draped well past her hands. It was great. We stayed and danced for that whole show before going to check out Mars Volta, which I must say I wasn’t terribly impressed with. Apparently, the CD is great, but the music didn’t carry over to a live performance too well. Finished the night with a little STS9 (Sound Tribe Sector 9) and then back to the RV where I will sleep tonight. It’s raining outside tonight, so being inside is a great great thing.

Tommorow it’s all about Ozomatli and RJD2. Peace.

A few weekends back I had an interesting experience involving decomposing snakes and scorpions that I will record here for posterity.

Sean, a relatively new friend of mine and regular world traveler, recently took a trip to Vietnam and the Philippines. He brought back Vietnamese snake wine. An apparently rather common drink in some parts of China and Vietnam, it is basically moonshine with snakes (and sometimes salamanders, frogs, scorpions, and other creatures) soaking it it.

This is the bottle we actually drank. It was somewhat smaller and less dramatic, but trust me, it was no less fun.

From what I can tell, the people who drink it think it serves medicinal purposes, but to me it was really all about novelty value. What you can’t see (and probably don’t want to see) in the picture above is the little pieces of what I can only assume are decomposing snake flesh.

The brave (or stupid) gearing up. (There’s no turning back now):

Surprisingly, everyone that said they were up for the challenge stuck with it. No one backed out after smelling the stuff (which smelled exactly like what you might think a decaying snake in moonshine would smell like). Here’s the proof:

Actually, the alcohol was so strong that you didn’t have time to notice how bad the snake/scorpion tasted. That would have been fine, but that stuff made us all burp a few times, giving us the opportunity to fully taste the snake we just consumed. That was the worst part by far.

Last night I partied in Houston with some friends of mine from the Austin days. Kjohn picked me up from the airport, and after an unsuccessful search for PS1 memory cards, we came back to his apartment. We chilled here playing some games with Catherine and Tim till everyone was getting hungry. Sushi was the name of the game, so we met up with even more friends at this local sushi place. The food was good, the conversation was great, and I had a fabulous time. On the way out the door, I noticed that I could scale the walls by making a wedge. I proceeded to climb to the second floor in this fashion. The results are as shown:

Kjohn then hosted an excellent party at his apartment. We had some drinks, we played some great games. I had a chance to talk to Tony, Karthik, and Charlie as well as meeting some new people who were very cool. I realized at some point in the night that Tony and I were the whitest people there… and with our powers combined we made a whole white person! Weee!! A good time was had by all, as is the standard case whenever I party with my Hou-crew.

I went to see GWAR last night.. It was totally hilarious. You might know Gwar from the cameo they made in the movie Empire Records. “You’re pretty good on that guitar Mark, it’s too bad you have to die!”

Anyway, for those who don’t know, they wear lots of latex battle gear and kill famous person after famous person on stage. The severed limbs of those people spray gallons of blood and multi-colored goo onto the crowds much to the amusement of everyone. Last night I bathed in the blood of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton, your friend and mine, Dubya, and Osama Bin Laden. Needless to say, it was a weird night.

[Dan](http://bastardface.blogspot.com/) made a great comic strip that mostly explains everything you need to know about Gwar.

And then there was the aftermath.. Kinda reminds me of a certain movie..

Last night Christy, Dan, Emily and Lea came over to my place to get some Vietnamese food for dinner. We all got together and made a dash for the restaurant, only to find out that it was closed. So Emily had the most excellent idea of going for Sushi at Rue Sans. This place was most excellent. Pumping electronic music, crazy japanese people, and decent sushi. I had a great time. Then towards the end, the staff came over and sung happy birthday in classic jap-english style, and followed it up with a rousing chorus of “The happy japanese song” to which I was forced to stand up and dance to.

We topped the evening off with a round of sake bombs. As we were ordering, the table next to us decided to get in on that action and ordered a round too. As they brought the drinks over, the crazy Japanese host got on the microphone and made a big deal telling everyone that it was “tonight’s main event”! It was a new experience for me, but despite the fact that I’m not much of a beer drinker, it was actually pretty good.

We all came back to my place and watched Shaolin Soccer. They were, as usual, skeptical at first, but after watching it, decided it was an awesome comedy. Dan and Emily hung out aftewards and we all talked some. End of successful birthday. Thank you guys for sharing it with me!

Saturday night I went to a great little party hosted by my office-mate Philippe. I met a lot of people from all over the world (Including but not necessarily limited to Spain, France, Belgium, Japan, Italy, and Colombia). I drank some wine, danced to some great salsa and techno music (actually it was a battle for the stereo between Philippe and his techno and the latin crew changing it to salsa and merengue), and had a fabulous time. I also tried a yellow licorice flavored drink called pastis which is supposedly a local favorite in Montpellier (where I will be next year). I managed to forget my camera so I will not be posting many pictures of the event. Philippe did send me the picture below which is appropriately blurry considering the amount of alcohol everyone there had consumed.