Broketronica

I'm not sure if I've announced this one, but this promises to be catchy.

http://www.broketronica.com

I managed to sell the idea of a monthly progressive computer music event to Adam of The Sidecar Bar & Grill. We get started with our first monthly this Thursday, May 4th @ 10pm. All the info is on the site.

Leafblower will of course be hosting the event. We'll be collaborating with Phil and Jason from my jazz trio on a few Leafblower tunes. That should be interesting. Jason also wants to do some of his own stuff. On top of that, Janic and I met this guy at the Jimmy Edgar/Jamie Lidell show last Thursday (which by the way was off the hook), and we'll be inviting him to come play a set.

Hosteria

This is the storefront sign of a hosteria in Rome. My brother David just came back from a trip to Italy, and this hosteria was around the corner from where he and his wife were staying. According to David, a "hosteria is a restaurant where the owners (hosts) are the cooks."

"da Cesare" is a permutated spelling of my last name, but the meaning is the same. Literally translated, "of Caesar". It's fascinating to me to know that my Italian ancestry has both contemporary roots in the "old country" as well as historical. Below is a scan of a certificate my 2nd cousin Art DeCheser sent to me. It looks like he got this from a place called the Historical Research Center. Art is the cousin of my dad, who passed away in 1979.

(Click the pics to enlarge in a new window)



Speaking of Art, he actually found ME through the internet by searching Google for the last name "DeCheser", and he found my design porfolio. Interesting story behind that one. He invited me up to his farm in Northeastern PA near Bangor. Here are a couple pics from that visit in the winter of 2002/03.



Art owns the whole lane. :)



Art and I, Christmas 2002.



Art's guitars and piano. That's a Gibson SG on the right, a Martin acoustic guitar in the middle, and a Gretsch semi hollow body on the right. Nice.



Me with the DeCheser twins. My twin 3rd cousins (Artie and Allen) were child actors. Twins run in my family! :)

I have a few more photos from that trip, including a 360 panoramic photo of Art's farmland property and some other gadgets. I need to get up there again sometime. It would be great to bring my mom up there to visit also. She's on the mend from having a painful knee replacement procedure, so maybe we do this in the not too distant future.

Time to get ready for my jazz house gig! Over and out! Arrivederci!!

Slacker

I've been slacking on the blog posts lately. Between the massive job search, my mom recuperating from having her knee replaced last week, and me planning my move into Philadelphia, I have been preoccupied. I managed to pick some nasty intestinal bug which lasted with me for at least a week while I was forced to troubleshoot some of Dell's freshly shipped "refurbished" systems (won't even get into that disaster :) ). I haven't had time to jog at all, although the weather is starting to get nicer so maybe I can jog outside in the late evenings.

Remember, this *is* the blog of slack.

Speaking of being a slacker. I picked this up at http://people.freenet.de/crossroads/tetka.swf. The original background is white, but I messed with it a little bit. Girl in bikini falling through bubbles on a purple background is pretty neat. Try to click/drag her to throw her around or even offscreen and watch her go flying. :) I spaced on this for at least a half hour today. Enjoy!