Cocktail Confessions

This episode was a little fun to do. I started off of a script that I had written out which I thought was pretty good and witty, but upon reading back into a portable recording device, just sounded stiff and un-natural. After a few additional attempts and not liking any of them, I decided to throw the script out the window and record free style…in one take.

The result is something that sounds more real and fluid, although like most, I needs to work on my “um’s” and “uh’s”.

In this episode I start off by talking about a dinner party I was recently invited to by my friend Jon, and avoiding a piano bar party that my wife attended that resulted in chaos (people throwing up, getting thrown out, loosing articles of clothing) to a posh little place called Hush in Laguna Beach, CA. It’s a swank place with very good food (I’d give it a 4.25 stars on a scale of 5), great atmosphere for an intimate dinner party or romantic evening with your significant other. They have a very cool bar that is relaxing on the eyes and a mellow vibe with top shelf liquor.  Hush is a small place, but sometimes smaller is indeed better, and it’s hard to put into words, but the aesthetics is akin to a mash up of modern art meeting an episode of Miami Vice.

Next off we end up at the local chapter of Long Beach’s, “Club Bounce“, which none of us was really prepared for.  This Laguna iteration can be found in a subterranean bar on PCH that doubles as The Main Street Bar.  What I and most of our party didn’t know is that this location is a gay and lesbian watering hole, and needless to say it was quite the eye opener.  I loosened up with some liquid encouragement in the form of Manhattans and ended up dancing the night away, even if I was just a piece of meat in an all girl mechanic mosh pit.  I did learn a few things the next day however: 1) I need to work on my cardio as I was totally out of breath at various points in the evening, 2) my club shirt was the most feminine article of clothing in the joint clearly labeling me as a ‘metrosexual’, 3) cheap whisky and heavy handed sweet vermouth equate to a serious next morning headache.

 - gallery coming soon -

I also finally saw the movie juggernaut that is know as Avatar, but in 2D.  It was good and I enjoyed it, but because maybe I didn’t see it in 3D or IMAX I’m not sure what all the hype was about.  In my personal opinion it wasn’t as good as people made it out to be, and I also understand why some critics call it ‘Dances with Wolves’ in space.  I saw a lot of other, shall we say ‘borrowed’ elements and ideas from World of Warcraft and the Star Wars franchise, especially ‘Return of the Jedi’.

Finally a few tidbits on some of the science fictions shows I’m currently watching such as Lost and FlashForward.

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Part of me feels like I sold out to the Media Man.  I’m not exactly sure why, but I’ve been fairly proud to have gone thus far so long without jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.  There’s a couple of reasons why I never felt the need to jump on this trend, and I suppose on the technological front it was because I never had a smart phone prior to my Droid and there was no way in hell I was going to use my regular phone (sans QWERTY keyboard) to attempt and fumble through pecking out a tweet.  It didn’t help either that Verizon charges like $.10 for every text message as well if you don’t have a data plan.

The second reason was more of a social ego thing for me which of course goes both ways.  On my side of the coin, I’m not sure what I would ‘tweet’ or why I would in the first place.  I’m not of the generation where this technology is second hand nature to kids have my age.  It seems that ‘tweeting’ was the next step in evolution for teens who were already maturing beyond Myspace, and now had a mobile way to keep friends updated.  I’m pretty sure that if I were 16 again, I’d really be into Twitter.  On the flip-side of things, it seemed Twitter became all that when celebrity douche’s like Ashton Kutcher, Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton and John Mayer got on-board and felt the need to tweet about everything they came into contact with.  Soon, ‘entertainment’ news shows such as Access Hollywood and Extra started to report the often mundane and sometimes insane musings of so called celebrities and hung on every word as if the ability to tweet now turned them into wise old sages that we as a culture needed to hang onto every word.  It was no longer about what we could do or experience for ourselves, but we were more interested, (for whatever reason) in “What would Ashton do?” or “What does Brittany think?”, as if somehow we were actually no closer to them, understood them, and now could tell others we were friends.

So why did I succumb if I am so against it?  Well, like all things, even my opinions change over time.  I still think Ashton and John Mayer are douches, but I cam to realize that there are other people out there that actually do write about things that interest me.  There are people I am interested in following as it comes to discovering new technologies, new restaurants, new clubs and venues, and even news that affects my world.

So who the hell am I following then?    Funny you should ask.  For the first time, it seems I have the ability to ‘interview’ who I want to follow on a trial basis.  Some may come, some may go.  For example, I don’t think I could follow a John Mayer even if I like him because my phone would be chirping upwards of ten times a day on just him.  Now suppose I began to follow 10 people, or maybe 20, or even 30.  If they even just tweeted once a day, I’d be inundated with chirps that would drive me up the wall.

The current list I have is relatively small (10), and there wasn’t all that much thought put into it.  Some of them I added like Neil Patrick Harris, because he actually has something to say and it has content, not like Kim Kardashian who peppers here with just links and nonsensical crap like advertisements.  I looked at a few dozen random celebrities in different fields and here’s my list thus far:  Nikkie Jackson (fitness model), Catalina Cruz (Internet entrepreneur), Niel Patrick Harris (actor), Bobby Flay (celebrity chef), Denise Richards (actress, model, animal lover), Kevin Smith (director, comic buff, actor), Blair Herter (TV personality, comic geek, video games), Adam Sessler (TV personality, video gamer), Aziz Ansari (comedian, actor), Guy Fieri (celebrity chef, tv personality).

I also realize it’s a great self marketing tool.  I’d love to get more people to listen to my podcast and if I can even attract one person via Twitter over to CocktailConfessions, then by measurement, it worked.  I doubt I will be personally be ‘tweeting’ much, I mean what possibly do I have to say to the masses who don’t even know I exist?  If I’m lucky, maybe I’ll get a few followers, although I suspect they will be friends and I can share with them some new eats I’ve discovered, or inform them of a new podcast, or perhaps an occasional mobile picture….but isn’t that what we have Facebook for?

On my Droid phone I installed ‘Tweetcaster lite’, a freebie version of Tweetcaster Pro.  It seemed to get a lot of positive ratings 4.5/5 and seems failry intuitive to use.  Not sure if it is the best one out there as it seems a few people said it doesn’t have the ability to upload video’s to Twitter….but do I care about that?  Maybe it will come with an upcoming patch or release upgrade?

Anyway, now I’m looking for an appropriate and easy Twitter plug-in for WordPress.  I’ve already seen a few, but I need to decide which one will suit my needs here.  Don’t be surprised if you see one or two come and go over the weeks as I decide which one is for me.  However, in the meantime, if you so choose you can follow me on Twitter at ‘@alonedisciple’.

Finally, if you were to become a follower of me, what would you want me to tweet about?  Recipes?  Grilling?  Cocktails?  Funny crap?

Here’s the semi-official episode #2.  The guest that I had planned for the day had to reschedule so I took the time to put out a slightly longer solo episode today of me just burning off some rants and discussing Guinness Draft beer.  Think of this as an extended ‘test’ podcast as I continue to work out some kinks.  Just raw speech, sorry no music this time around.

Show notes:

:01 – Welcome and introduction to this episode.

1:23 – Guinness draft.

2:50 – History on Guinness.

4:15 – General ranting

4:40 – Grocery store parking in red.

5:19 – Texting or calls during movies.

6:35 – Work related calls.

12:02 – Rancho Santa Margarita trash receptacles

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Overflowing trashcans

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