Oh So Summer

It's summer. God, it's fuckin summer.

The sunlight came like a thunderclap a couple of days ago, jolting me out of bed. Most years I wait eagerly for the summer sun to come so I'm anticipating it each week, each day, but this year I was completely blindsided, enveloped in rosy gold before I even started to yearn for it. The sweat that's now perpetually on my brow is equally annoying and rejuvenating, like plum juice on my chin while I'm lying on my stomach, feet swaying up in the air, reading you a passage from the book I'm reading.

It's funny that I'm so pumped about it this year, since I now live in a place that has very little difference between spring and summer (and fall, for that matter). But I am; I couldn't be more excited about the semi-arbitrary freedom that a summer mindset lends, warm night bike rides, summer fruit, more tomfoolery than debauchery, and sun. I don't always like the warmth, but god, do I drink up the sun. I'm too pale to tan but I love to burn. I can't wait for the freckles, the farmer's tan, the tops of my feet red and stinging in the shower. I'm going to bike to Santa Monica every week until I see dolphins. I'm going to have a picnic in Griffith Park. I'm going to visit the Aquarium in Long Beach. I'm going to as many outdoor concerts as I possibly can. I'm going to drink white wine even though I usually prefer red. I'm going to go rollerskating and chew gum and drink rootbeer floats. I'm going to have flowers at the apartment, the only living things as fueled by the sun as I will be in the next three months. I will find a way to make it far enough away from the city to look at stars. I will stay up too late. I will ride too far by myself. I will actually go out of my apartment. I will meet people. I will ignore those people and lie on grass by myself anyway. I will ride my bike with no hands, no helmet, and no health insurance. This one is entirely my own.

General Update; Low on introspection.

As I was getting ready to leave my apartment for yet another derby event, I realized that there was no way in hell I'd fit everything I needed in my shoulder bag. I needed a laptop for some last-minute editing of backup audio material, the audio interface for that, some microphone cables from my personal stash, an extra microphone, blah blah blah, the brownies I baked for the skaters, and my whiskey flask. So I put the fixed-gear away and lowered my blue touring bike down from the hoist on the ceiling. I loaded all my bags onto the rack and put all of my necessary effects in there and rolled out. Since I hadn't ridden that bike in several months, it was immediately striking how differently it handled than my other bike, especially with a fair amount of gear attached. It's such a heavier ride and the center of mass is so much further back that the turns and even straightaways when standing up feel more... substantial. It's a slower ride, for sure, than my yellow bike, but also somewhat smoother. At any rate, I started thinking about bike tours and I think I'm going to try to go back to France this summer for a couple of weeks, or maybe to Spain. I think my Spanish is at a point where I could use a little immersion to help it along. Sometimes when I'm on the metro and I have forgotten my book, I play a little Scrabble mini-game on my phone (it's not really Scrabble, unfortunately; it's more like Boggle) and I regularly see words in French and Spanish that I of course can't use. It's a small reminder that I need to put my language skills to use more often than I do.

As the readership knows, I do a lot of media work for LADD I am most proud of the latest highlight video. I get more and more comments from skaters and fans that these really help get everyone pumped and ready for the game. Last night a skater even told me that sometimes when watching the videos she starts to tear up! This one is a collaboration between Vince (the media clip montage) and myself (the music portion):


There were some skaters from the local flat-track league, Angel City Derby Girls who saw our media presentation and were impressed, so they asked about the possibility of us cutting together a promo reel to get some press attention. I'm going to talk to them this week about it.

After much unnecessary nervousness and anticipation, I did a test edit for American Gladiators and showed it to the mixer and he liked it. It's a higher profile show and the mixer is very particular about the edit. So I had to sort of prove myself to him, and now I'm editing dialog for that show this season, and I might still be doing the same graphic sound effects placement that I did last season as well. I started the dialog today and I'll be working on that first episode for the next couple of days. It's going to be as busy as ever.