Tuesday, April 27, 2010

just for you, mom – how to comment

I’m taking a break from writing Coachella posts to do something that my mom has been asking me to do – a guide to blog commenting for the not-so-computer-savvy.

This how-to only applies to Internet Explorer.

So here it is – complete with screen shots.
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Step 1: Click to comment.Picture2Picture3

Step 2: Select profile… Picture4 Picture5

Step 3: Enter name. Picture6 Picture7 Picture8

Step 4: Make comment.Picture9

Step 5: Word verification. Picture10 Picture11 Picture12

Step 6: Publish. Picture13

Step 7: View comment. Picture14

Mom (and all your friends with whom you’ve shared this) – I hope this helps.  I’m also going to put a permanent link up at top right so you can always find it.

Happy now, Mom?  ;-)

Sunday, April 25, 2010

day 2 – MGMT, muse, z-trip

Thankfully, we’d finally adjusted to West Coast time and recovered from our trip to Palm Springs so we were able to get up and enjoy the day before heading out.  We started with fabulous breakfast at the hands of Vic and Ruben – though we did have to teach Ruben to make “al dente” bacon since he likes really crispy bacon.

Afterward everyone spent some time enjoying the pool.
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Will and Ruben and Jocelyn in the pool.  Vic and Ruben started goofing around off the side of the spa.  Ravi is responsible for the photography as I missed most of the action.
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We headed out a bit later than the previous day and ended up defying the parking lot watchers and moved the behemoth from its original spot for better positioning to leave.
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Here’s the whole gang (minus the long-haired dude on the left and Ruben cuz he’s taking the picture) walking in.

We started the day with the whole group at Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.  This was another band that we hadn’t really considered but they were awesome.  Definitely one of my new favorites.  Very hippie and seemingly predictably baked.  I commented that we were lucky that Edward Sharpe had pants on.

This was the the awesome part though:
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That girl on the left plays Catherine on Greek!  Singing back up, playing the keyboard and the accordion with the Magnetic Zeros is a steady gig for her apparently.IMG_1200

We didn’t have a whole lot that we were set on seeing on the second day so we took a few recommendations from others so next up was The XX

But the exciting thing to happen during the show was that there IMG_1203was pyrotechnics on the Coachella Main Stage.  For a few minutes, it really looked like the Main Stage was on fire.  My first thought was “Oh, this will be bad.  Most of these people are high.” Then the smoke stopped and it was obvious that it was an effect by Coheed and Cambria.  Since the entire crowd was staring over at the “fire,” the lead singer for The XX felt compelled to comment on it.

There wasn’t anything on the schedule we were super interested in for quite a while so we more thoroughly wandered the grounds stopping by Dirty Projectors for a bit.
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Afterward we decided to check out the Ferris wheel.  I’ve actually never been on a Ferris wheel and it was so much fun.
IMG_1231 IMG_1246 View of the origami crane on the grounds. (more on the art later)

Next up MGMT.  We were excited to see them and they were good but they played a lot of things from their new album which had just come out the Tuesday before Coachella. 

We’d decided while on the Ferris wheel that we would watch Muse from the “comfort” of the beer garden – Ruben and Jocelyn wanted root beer floats that we’d spotted while on the wheel.
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Because we were in the beer garden, we could hear well but couldn’t see much.  We were kind of sad to have missed the laser show.  Here’s one of Ravi’s pictures.
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We didn’t wait out the whole show and headed over to Sahara to catch some Z-Trip.  I don’t think I’ve ever really seen a DJ spin and it was by far the best part of the day.  He was just this kind of doofy balding white dude but it was sooooooo much fun!
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The fact that we didn’t stay to the bitter end made the trip home much better.  And into the spa we all went.  Another good day.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

day 1 – she & him, vampire weekend, jay-z

A little after 1 o’clock, we all piled in the behemoth Suburban and headed out for Indio and the festival grounds which is, even under good circumstances, about an hour away.
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Getting there wasn’t too bad but getting in… holy cow!  fence hopping

There was a small problem with getting out of the parking lot wherein most of us hopped the fence before that guy in the yellow shirt came over to put an end to that. (and yes, because of his allergies, Ravi sports a ninja-like face mask while at Coachella, particularly in dusty areas.)

Then we waited in the craziness (shown below) for like 45 minutes to get our bags checked and get wristbanded.  IMG_1092
Apparently the wristbands are new this year because of 2 things:
1. you had to buy 3-day pass just to attend.
2. because of the new car camping, they were allowing “ins and outs” (you could actually leave the venue and then come back in throughout the day).

Once we made it through that mess, we figured “ok, we’re all checked out and wristbanded; we’re good.”  Not so much.  As it turned out we had to go through a second entrance where they checked our wristbands (they had RF ids in them for authentication) and a more thorough bag check. 

We finally made it in to catch the end of The Avett Brothers on the Outdoor stage (yes, everything was outside but one of the stages was called “Outdoor Theater” go figure) with the entire group.
gang at avett bros 
They weren’t a band that I had originally wanted especially to see but others that we were with were really interested so we took their suggestion and they were really cool.  One of my new favs.

After they were finished, we headed IMG_1113off to find food and then to one of the 3 tents (all named for deserts – Gobi, Mojave, and Sahara – the latter of which specialized in more club, house, techno, electronica, DJ, etc.)  There we caught a bit of Yeasayer.  They were actually pretty cool and we wished that we would have been able to see more (this was a constant theme given how the schedule was working with 5 stages).

We ended up spending most of our time in a subset of the larger group that was Will and me, and his two friends Ruben and Jocelyn. subset crew We had some time to kill before we started our pursuit for good positioning back at the Outdoor Theater for She & Him so we took the opportunity to check out some of the vendor tents.  Most of them were offering free internet, free cell phone charging (either by leaving it in a locker or by virtue of having a ton of power strips to hook up to), a bit of respite from the heat, and some promotional something or other.

The Odwalla tent was having a magic show wherein the guy was using an optical illusion to either grow or shrink his head.  Kinda freaky.
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Then it was on to She & Him which we were really looking forward to even if it meant that we had to miss Ra Ra Riot – we had to choose and it came down to the reality that we’ve seen Ra Ra Riot before and She & Him doesn’t tour much what with Zooey Deschanel having a day job and all.IMG_1125
The show was great and she is super cute.  We also know their music fairly well because this was actually one of the few bands that we knew before we even considered going to Coachella.  They actually ended 10 min early and then came back for an “encore” once someone backstage told them they had 10 more minutes which was funny.  Afterward we couldn’t help but wonder if she was wearing cotton since she’s the new face for the cotton commercials.

By this point it was time for food again and we didn’t have anything that we in particular wanted to catch so while Ruben pushed ahead to Passion Pit, we enjoyed them from the comfort of the grass while we ate.  Once we got Ruben back, we took off wandering the grounds before Vampire Weekend.  In our travels we caught parts of Them Crooked Vultures (I like them but I’m not totally sold yet) and LCD Soundsystem (according to the rest of our crew who did go, they were fantastic but didn’t do the one song that we really know).

One of the things we found in our travels was a whole set up to generate power in different ways. 
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Bicycles (Ruben, Will, a random, and Jocelyn) or the human hamster wheel (which both Ruben and Jocelyn did)

But we’re pretty sure that if they powered anything – it was the DJ who was spinning there.

We made it back to get good positioning for Vampire Weekend which was AWESOME.  They were another band that we’re really familiar with – Will associates them with the week we got married and our honeymoon since he had just purchased their first CD before we left.
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just a clip from Vampire Weekend’s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”  The audio sucks because we were right close to the speakers.

They had quite the enthusiastic crowd.
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Afterward we just hung out until Jay-Z came out on the Coachella IMG_1184Main Stage to headline the day.  I wasn’t terribly jazzed about Jay-Z but I was curious.   I didn’t think he was all that good until he started in on the old stuff – I pretty much quit listening to rap and hip hop after I got out of school.  But the best was when BeyoncĂ© came out to sing “Forever Young.”


No, I did not take this video.

As it turned out the main “problem” with having Jay-Z as the headliner was that everyone stayed for the entire performance.  Once we got to the car, we didn’t get out of the parking lot for about an hour and a half.  I felt bad for Ravi because most of the car was passed out off and on the entire way back to the house.  At one point I fell asleep for about 45 min only to find we’d only moved about 5 feet.  Thankfully half of us were awake off and on so that he had someone to talk to. 

It was a tough first day for us East Coasters but we had a great time and made it through (though I went immediately to bed upon returning to the house while most folks got in the spa).

Saturday, April 17, 2010

day 1 – calm before the “storm”

The festival begins each day at noon but the bands get progressively better and more well-known as the day goes on so you decide who the first band is that you want to see and show up then.  The first band was going on at 3 so we left the house around 1.

Even given the late hour that most everyone went to bed (or felt like they went to bed), most folks were up by 8:30.  This then meant that we had time to kill before leaving.

Will and I went for a walk in search of a cache.  We only found one of the two we went in search of but I took some cool pictures along the way. DSC_0017
This is basically our view from the front of the house – desert DSC_0031straight up into mountains.

This one is a little further off but is gorgeously snow-capped.

 

 

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Cacti!
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Cache 1 found; cache 2 not so much. DSC_0026  I just really like these bushes.  They look like they have flowers but really it’s just the leaves of the bush.