I don't speak Latin

Nor can I spell it, apparently. I grabbed my blog title from one page, and discovered just a couple of days ago that I had the spelling wrong...by one letter. As it turns out, "with" is "cum" rather than "com", which is great in its own way, but also made me rethink a tattoo I had planned with the phrase. I'm just not so sure I want the word "cum" permanently inked on my person. Anyway, the name has been updated, but the linkage remains the same. And I call myself an editor...sigh.

What a world! What a world!

Well, that wasn't such a nice way to start off after nearly 8 months of no posting. I hope to have some interesting things to put up pretty soon here. I've had a chance to travel around a bit and always like to share tidbits on good places to eat and check out vistas. (Also of note: places where you can get drunk all day and do nothing.) What's been on the agenda? How about: South Lake Tahoe (for some gambling on 07/07/07!), Booneville, Chicago, and El Salvador. Plus, a brief--and surprisingly enjoyable--jaunt to Vegas. Now how many gory details will I be able to recall???

A bit of sad news to note: Vino Venue--that happiest of happy hour locales (and the unnamed wine bar I mentioned in earlier posts...that's right: unnamed because I wanted it all to myself!!!)--has given up the ghost, thanks to some thoughtless new owners who ran the place into the ground by not paying the lease for 8 friggin' months! Thanks a lot, stupid faceless corporation in Anaheim. I hate you.

Clusterfuck

Sometimes, working in media is a real shit storm. What I am referring to, of course, is the recent Gamespot/Jeff Gerstmann/ads-vs-eds scandal. I swear, it's taken an almost political tone on 2nd Street, what with the White House Administration-like "press conferences" around here. And by that, I mean purely internal meetings that involve a bunch of in-house journalist who are prohibited to make any real statements about the issue. As you might imagine, gagged journalists do not a happy bunch make--especially those whose reputations are being dragged through the mud by an unsubstantiated rumor. Unfortunately, the parent company was too slow off the starting blocks, and can't hope to save face now. Regardless, it would be nice if the general blogosphere and commentors would understand that the corporation in question will not discuss specifics for termination for both legal reasons and out of respect for said employee. Sheesh.

Monterey sure is chilly this time of year

One of my vendor contacts was kind enough to shuttle me and a friend down to the Sea Otter Classic last Saturday. I was really looking forward to the trip: after all, they had advertised the presence of mimosas in the invite flyer. Plus, the event takes place at Laguna Seca in Monterey and I hadn't been to that track since I was a little girl (ah, fond memories of early hearing damage). Well, Saturday dawned cold and rainy--rather miserable, actually--and to top it off, I was battling a cold. But I am a trooper, so I loaded up on tissue and cough drops, grabbed some green tea to go, and stopped off at Walgreen's for an umbrella--my last one lost its life in a battle with SF winds...I don't care what anyone says: San Francisco is the Windy City. Chicago only got the name because of long-winded politicians anyway. But I digress.


As it turns out, I'm alone in my trooper-ness when it comes to press: I was the only one to show up. So it was me, my friend, and three PR reps. Awesome--more mimosas for me then. After a bumpy two-hour ride, we pulled up at the track and....dude, there are hot biker guys swarming all over the place. As it turns out, I should have done my research. Here I was thinking the Sea Otter Classic was just street racing--you know, spandex and all that. But no. It is all types of biking: street, mountain, and BMX. Well now, this is my kind of event. Sadly, it was far too cold and wet for me to hang out outside, so I sequestered myself to the Harman Kardon/Volkswagen/Trek garage where they fed me tri-tip sandwiches, brought me bottles of red wine, and generally gave me the star treatment as I was the only member of the press there. I could do worse.

Drunky McDrunkertons

As I've mentioned, there's a wine bar down the street from my work that causes me endless headaches, but it is so good on the wallet that I can't resist being a regular. It turns out, there's no corkage because it's considered a "store," which is why you can get reasonably-priced bottles of good wine and enjoy it in a nice, laid-back setting (without freezing your ass off at a city park or something of the like). Some of my girlfriends from work and I really needed to take the edge off last Friday and--although we tried to mix it up a bit and go to a new happy hour locale (we were foiled)--we ended up back at Vino Venue. And, well, I'll let the pictures do the talking...

This was after bottle #5

Note the pressence of wine glasses in each and every shot

At least we had some cheese to soak it up.

Peace out...it's way past time to go home

Therein lies the rub

See, now, I knew this was going to happen: I haven't had time to blog anything in my personal space all week due to a hectic work schedule and a second job editing a book. Frankly, the last thing I feel like doing is writing more (bitch, bitch, bitch; moan, moan, moan). Anyway, a couple of my friends and colleagues were in Orlando this week for CTIA, and they called to harass me and make me jealous about this private Samsung party where Ludacris was performing. Well, my nice friend Bonnie was just wishing I was there (as she knows of my hidden love for Luda); Wil (of G4's Attack of the Show) called to harass me. Wil is a special kind of person. To get an idea of what I mean by that, please refer to the below transcript of our text correspondence:

Me: Having fun?
Wil: Luda, you whore.
Me: Cunt. I hate you so much right now.

Wil shares this special kind of relationship with anyone who is not a complete ass like him. Allow me to share another string of texts, this one including another one of my coworkers who had the distinct pleasure of reporting to Wil once upon a time at CNET:

Wil: Kent just called me a pig.
Me: Shocking.
Kent: Wil is such a pig.
Me: As he is pleased to admit.

You get the idea. I was bummed not to be at the show, but happy to be included in some way. And to Wil's credit, he did hold up the phone during the chorus of "Get Back"...for that, I shall be eternally grateful. Well, for a couple weeks at least. If they took any pics at the show, I'll be sure to post them here.

California knows how to party

As mentioned in a previous blog, I visited Austin for the first time during SXSW (not recommended) for work (extremely not recommended). In fact, I had more fun during the Interactive portion of the festival/conference/tradeshow/whatever than at the Music segment and here's why:

1. Less crowded (less traffic, too)
2. More open bar parties (can't go wrong there)
3. No fighting skinny hipster boys for hair product at Walgreens (seriously?)

But all in all, I can't complain. After all, I don't have to pay for a dime of it, and I saw two really great shows (Peaches and Holy Fuck). I also got to hang out with some really cool people throughout the week. Check it:

My photographer friend Corinne is always fun to drink with. She even let me take this "self-photo" and taught me how not to give myself a prominent double chin (as is the case with any other self-shoot I've tried).

Veronica and I cohost a podcast at "the place of business", but I rarely get to hang out with her outside of work (she's usually too busy playing WoW...I'm not kidding). We both know how to enjoy a good free drink.

I ran into my friend/ex-college-roommate outside of Beauty Bar. She lives in L.A. and works "in the music industry," but she's still cool.

Safety in numbers: the techy girls flock together at a LifeHacker party.

RJD2 is fucking rad: he's super nice and ultra modest.

OK, so I didn't actually hang out with What Would Jesus DJ (and that's not really his name), but he was a sick mofo of a DJ.

Sadly, I also did not get to spend any quality time with the "clitter" (again, not the real name). The reason this shot looks blurry is because that thing is actually vibrating like mad. Find out more about TwitterDildonics at Slashdong (oh, how I wish I'd made that one up).

Die, champagne. DIE!

Here's the thing: there's a wine bar mere blocks from my office that sells bottles of Cava, a Spanish sparkler, for just $10. That's right, a whole bottle of booze--to drink in a San Francisco establishment, no less--for just ten bucks. You can see the problem here. That's just downright irresistable after a very stressful work day and just before pay day. Goddamn sparkling wine is responsible for my three-star hangover today. That's right: I take absolutely no responsibility for my actions. Fuck it.

A video game can hurt you

Of course, if you follow Wii news, you already know this. But I'm talking about something more old school. A little less...hip. And also the reason that I started this blog. That's right folks: DDR. Yeah, yeah...I'm a bit of a geek (not my fault, by the way...it's inherent to my job), but really I asked for the game for Christmas so I could have a way to workout at home. You know, for those times I just can't bear to face (er, smell) that collection of musclebound meatheads that seem to live at my gym. A couple of weeks ago, I was dancing around on the pad, put my foot down, and OW! No twisting, no slipping, no falling. And yet I managed to badly sprain a muscle and pinch a nerve in my foot. In just the right spot to make me walk with a ridiculously gimpy limp. As if I needed another way to be completely graceless. In any event, it's enough to convince me that my tootsies aren't up to the task when it comes to DDR--anyone want to buy a dance pad?


So you may at this point be wondering--and rightly so--why this (rather embarassing) event became the kindling for this blog. It's a little convoluted, but I'll try to make it as concise as possible. I was sent to SXSW in Austin for the first time this year right around the time I realized I should probably see a doctor for my foot. But as I left early Monday morning, there was little I could do at that point but slap on an Ace bandage and try to avoid the emergency room all week. And of course, I was still walking with a limp--had to, in fact, for the duration of SXSW--so this naturally garnered ceaseless questions about what I did to injure myself. I'm not a very good liar, so I told the truth. I don't think I've ever been laughed at so much in my life. One photographer laughed, then whipped out his camera and took 17 pictures of my bandaged foot. (The medical assistant who took down my doctor's appointment back in SF laughed so hard she had tears in her eyes...or at least that's what I pictured over the phone.)

Anyway, since the first portion of SXSW is Interactive, there were a lot of techy people about, so I got some geek cred for my DDR damage. I was also told in several instances that I should blog about it, to which I replied "I don't have a personal blog. I write for a living, so that just seems like more work to me." But then it struck me that I'm limited to writing about gadgety things if I stick to that strategy and, frankly, I'd like to avoid becoming a complete geek...although spending four days surrounded be greasy-haired skinny jeans-wearing hipsters certainly made me appreciate my relative dorkiness.

Live With It

So I have a motto, and it is, put simply: Live. It's a rather new motto for me, brought forth by too many death-related incidents with which I have had close contact over the past nine months. I bitch and moan a lot, and that rather put things in perspective for me. I think it's a good motto to have, and that you should all abide by it as well: we only have one shot to live, so you better damn well take advantage of it. We'll start out with that. More shortly on why I've decided to start this blog anyway.