A friend of mine, Zach Braiker, started a fun and cool semi-regular dinner club called the Rubber Chicken Social Club. At a recent meet up, I met three gals who Twitter like crazy and write for a cool blog called Our American Shelf Life. Amanda, bless her heart, pulled out one of those Flip Video Cameras and they insisted on interviewing me about the Apple iPhone and mobile user experience. How cool is that!
Hey! I listed InfoTart on the Blog Catalog, if you follow that site:
Neil Gaiman spoke at MIT last night, the first in a new Julius Schwartz lecture series from the MIT Comparative Media Studies program. My friend, JP, is an avid reader of quite a number of different genres, including comics and fantasy, and was lucky enough to score tickets. The lecture sold out way in advance and had somewhere around 1300 attendees!
Mr. Gaiman was a brilliant speaker. It was my first time seeing him speak, and one is never sure whether good authors are also going to be good speakers, but Mr. Gaiman was fantastic. He was funny, charming, witty, and incredibly comfortable in front of such a large audience. He spoke a little about a few of his books, but the main part of his lecture was on the connection between hardcore pornography and musicals, which was then extended to define genre fiction in general, including westerns and fantasy.
Read more about Mr. Gaiman’s MIT visit in his own words at his blog: http://journal.neilgaiman.com
My friend, Chris, is going to a “No Pants Part” tonight, so we stopped at the Garment District in Kendall Square to see what kinds of fun costumes they might have. And as anyone who’s ever been to the Garment District know, there’s more fun to be had wandering around the giant store seeing what kinds of crazy old (and some new) clothing they randomly have in stock than anything else.
Along the way, we happened upon a stash of these great hats and Chris tried one out. Awesome! He can totally pull off that look. 
In the end, Chris settled on a gladiator costume for a pretty reasonable price. Let’s hope the party turns out well. And if he’s lucky, a pretty girl may ask him the kilt question.
Ryan Landry is up to his theatrical mania again. This time, the crazy Landry ride is called “Whizzin’” and is based on The Wizard of Oz. Needless to say, this is an 18 and over crowd only.
There’s a good review of it over at The Edge Boston, so I’ll spare y’all my feeble attempts. Suffice it to say that the show was a lot of fun. I went in there not knowing what to expect, except that I would laugh my ass off and gasp multiple times at the outrageous humor. Happily, Landry and the Gold Dust Orphans didn’t disappoint.
After the show, a few of the cast hung out with a giant Vagina Dentata, letting audience members get their picture taken in it with Glenda for a donation of $10. I took a snapshot on my Nokia E65 camera phone of some random guy posing for his picture. Hilarious! (And honestly, I have no idea who this guy is…)
So if you haven’t seen it yet and you have an appreciation for Landry’s peculiar brand of gender-twisting, culture lampooning, outrageous humor, get your tickets today! And don’t forget that extra $10…
After dinner at the Harvard landmark, Mr. Bartley’s (which was excellent), my boyfriend, Bruce, and I headed to Toad’s in Porter Sq. to see one of our favorite local bands, One Happy Island. (Go to the band’s MySpace page to download a handful of excellent tracks.)
One Happy Island were, of course, great! Unfortunately, the drummer was sick and couldn’t make the show last night. But the band still managed to show the crowd a fun time, as always.
It ws also gratifying that the band members remembered Bruce and me and said hello when we showed up at Toad’s. It was Bruce’s 4th OHI show (I think), and my 3rd. I missed the previous show at the Lizard Lounge in February because I’d gone to NYC for the weekend. NYC was fun, but Bruce said I did miss a good show!
After OHI, a fun indiepop band called The Smittens came on. The Smittens are 6 cool, upbeat folks from Burlington, VT. Their songs are fun, upbeat, and well done. They had a great positive vibe. Towards the end of their show, I found myself wishing I lived in Burlington so I could see them more often!
Check out The Smittens’ MySpace page to download a few tracks (and hopefully buy a few!). Bruce and I enjoyed them so much that we bought two CDs last night. Next up this morning: putting them on my iPod!
I took a few snapshots with my Nokia E65 in the bar last night. The pics aren’t great, but at least the sets were! Click on a picture to view it full size…
One Happy Isand’s “Mookelele.” They have another name for it (I forget what the instrument’s real name is.) But how often do you see such a cute little instrument decorated like a Holstein?
Brad (lead singer) and Clint from One Happy Island
Max and Dana from The Smittens
David, Holly, and Max from The Smittens
My new employer’s office is down on Boyston Street in the Back Bay — just steps away from the Finish Line for the Boston Marathon. It’s been fun watching workers dive into preparations for the marathon all week. The days are counting down — the marathon is next Monday, April 21!
Tonight I finally went to the Kowloon on Route 1 in Saugus for dinner. With its big tiki tacky, I’ve been wanting to go for years, but never actually got off my tush to go.
This afternoon I met up with my friends Tim & Joanna to hang out and get dinner. They live in Melrose a hop, skip, and a jump from Rte. 1, so instead of the same old place we love (Turner’s Seafood), I suggested something different. Something cornier. Something tiki-er — the Kowloon!
Well, I skipped the Scorpion Bowl because I wanted to be able to drive home tonight, but otherwise it was a fun visit. That place really is over the top, even on the inside!
At some point during dinner, Joanna grabbed Tim’s Nokia N95 and took this great picture of us. Isn’t she adorable?
The Mobile Mondays Boston chapter sponsored an Apple iPhone SDK launch party at the Apple Store in Cambridgeside Galleria tonight. I had fun!
There were probably at least 200 people crammed into the store for a keynote chat by , a prominent iPhone hacker from New Hampshire. Jonathan also just happened to write a book on programming for the iPhone called iPhone Open Application Development.
A handful of companies gave demos of products targeted for iPhones. Most were web-based, including a fantastic Urban Interactive social mobile adventuring demo. A gentleman from 1st Works demoed their Files2Phones product running on an iPhone as a web-based application.The F2P product works shockingly well!
Below are two pictures I captured with my Sony Ericsson w960i. Shhh! Fortunately, no one seemed to notice it wasn’t an iPhone! (Or, this being New England, they probably just politely ignored such an indiscretion…) 
Jonathan Zdziarski Gives His Keynote at the Apple iPhone SDK Launch Party
Apple iPhone SDK Launch Party Crowd (March 24, 2008)
Avenue Q has finally come to Boston, and what a great production it is!
Last night, my boyfriend, Bruce, and I caught the Boston show at the Colonial Theatre. He was blown away by it. I thought the Broadway product was still slightly better (and the stage was larger), but nonetheless, the Boston show was brilliant. We both laughed all the way through. And exchanged plenty of glances each time the Boston Blue Hair and suburbanite sets broke out in laughter and/or applause for such risque numbers like “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” and “The Internet Is For Porn.” Needless to say, the cast did a fantastic job and earned that standing ovation. Plus the show is just brilliant to start with!
I was fortunate enough to have caught it last month on Broadway in New York City. It was truly an amazing performance. (And if they’re going to charge an arm & a leg for admission, it had better be!) This show is now one of my favorite musicals of all time.
I bought the CD last night on the way out. I’d have bought the DVD, too — except that they don’t have a DVD of the show yet! Now that Avenue Q has just started its national tour, I bet they’re holding off on a DVD until afterwards. 
But the good news is — at least they have lots of freebies on their web site, including a screensaver, desktop wallpaper, and banners for your web site.
And since I bought the CD, I ripped it with iTunes already. And will be putting the entire album on my Walkman phone in a few minutes. I’m still trying to decide which track I should use for the ringtone…
