Saket Vora

First, let me get the requisite origin story of the way: following a bad breakup and failed promises of a band, Justin Vernon retreated back to his father’s cabin in the woods of Wisconsin, bringing with him a guitar and basic recording equipment. He emerged several months later with what became the album For Emma, Forever Ago whose raw, emotional, and haunting sounds propelled his new music project – Bon Iver – to prominence among the indie music scene.

Last week saw the release of his self-titled second LP, and it’s an extraordinary album. We are no longer in a secluded cabin in the woods, left alone with our thoughts. Vernon has emerged, expanding the core of his sound (with that signature falsetto) with more lush instrumentation and textures. Some of the tracks themselves are named after places; some real like Calgary or Perth, and some not like Michicant, or Hinnom, TX.

My favorite song so far is Holocene, a devastatingly beautiful track.

…and at once I knew I was not magnificent
strayed above the highway aisle
(jagged vacance, thick with ice)
I could see for miles, miles, miles

As a fellow Bon Iver fan I recently met so perfectly described, “the line that ends with ‘magnificent’ makes my stomach turn every time, but in the best possible way.”

Bon Iver – Holocene
(song removed by request)

I’ve listened to this album dozens of times over the past few weeks, and still find it difficult to find a second song to showcase this album. You’ll undoubtedly hear Calgary, the first single, so I’ll offer another track:

Bon Iver – Minnesota, WI
(song removed by request)

The summer tour kicks off in late July, so check the schedule for dates. Chicago 7/24 (sold out), Atlanta 7/28, Raleigh 7/29, Berkeley 9/22.

After spending the afternoon in Dolores Park with Karla and the crew, I stopped by home to freshen up then headed out towards SOMA. Next up for the evening: dinner & a concert by Seryn. Having gone up to Oregon and Washington after their show the previous weekend in Berkeley, they were going to play one more show in San Francisco before heading back home to Texas. As some have inferred by now, I tend to be rather — shall we say — evangelical when it comes to certain new bands I find, and for the show tonight I was able to convince ten people to go, half of them had never heard Seryn before. Woohoo! Gotta show the band some love.

Chrissy, Chad, Troy, and I grabbed a quick dinner of Indian food a few blocks from the venue, the Hotel Utah Saloon. This was my first show here, and it reminded me of the Hemlock Tavern — a bar with a small room attached with a stage. The Hotel Utah has a split level though and is only about nine strides deep, so there were only maybe 35 people in attendance. Our group took over half the balcony, overlooking the band. Also in attendance: Gregg and Sarah (they had been listening to the album all week), Christophe and his friend Paul (who I saw The Low Anthem with a few weeks back), Sean, John Shen, and then Sam, Praveen, and Justin from Karla’s birthday party (they swung by on their way to the Caltrain).

The band put on another terrific live show — loved the extra flourishes and jams they added to their album songs.

Everyone really enjoyed the show. After the show we went downstairs and practically everyone brought some merch. We ran into some of the bandmates outside (it’s hard not to, the venue is so small that Praveen ended up helping them get their drum out the door), and said we couldn’t wait for them to come back and play at a bigger venue. Their sound is so big.

Here is them playing the instrumental second half of On My Knees– watch for the short but sweet jam at 4:10 minute mark.

I can’t wait for this band to blow up. So good.

Well, just because.

1 minute

5 minutes

9 minutes

Mid-day run through Golden Gate Park on Saturday:

Miles 6 and 7 are mostly on trails, and with a slight incline. Gotta work on the hills! That’s the hardest part of the run.

Pretty convenient route — I just take the 24 bus to Oak, walk two blocks to the Panhandle and start there. Run to the ocean and back.

We celebrated Karla’s birthday last Sunday afternoon, and San Francisco was kind enough to gift us a warm, sunny, undeniably summer day. We started out at Elixir in the Mission, where they have a do-it-yourself Bloody Mary. There was apparently someone from an in-flight magazine shooting a story on this, and the bartender took one look at our rather stereotypical twenty-something, well-dressed, ethnically diverse group and asked if we wouldn’t mind if our photos were taken. Hehe.

(Michael can’t stand Bloody Marys)

By the time we left Elixir, our numbers had grown and so we made our way a few blocks over to Dolores Park. On a warm sunny day, Dolores Park is jam packed with people hipsters (and yupsters! hey, that’s us) spread out on blankets, enjoying picnics, drinks, and other — shall we say — recreational indulgences.

Van and Matt secured a spot near the hula hoopers and the soccer players, and we soon broke out the food.

Karla

Laura and Mihalia

Van

Sam

Mylon and Jeff

Some weird guy that just showed up recently.

Matt spotted the Frisbee I packed in my bag and we got up to throw the disc around. As is typical in Dolores Park, we were throwing it back and forth amidst some guys throwing a football 30 yards to one another, people playing catch with their dogs, the soccer players, people walking by, etc. Matt recently joined up a San Francisco based ultimate league. My flicks were super accurate (!) for once, so it was fun to make some really long pulls weaving through traffic. Some other folks jumped into the action later on and we soon had multiple discs flying around.

A long afternoon spent in the park just kicking it with friends in the warm sun with food, drink, and a frisbee. Summer, thank  you for being here.

My friends Sean and Joey observed a certain lacking in the lives of our social circle — people are doing creative things all the time, but sometimes those efforts don’t reach their full potential. So they decided to start Second Fridays, a gallery style art exhibition for friends to showcase things they have been working on. The first Second Fridays event took place last Friday, which indeed is actually the third Friday of June….(it was moved to avoid conflicts with WWDC week.)

Joey attempted to class up the event wearing a tux and serving fresh mozzarella, tomato, and basil hors d’oeuvre on a slate. He and Sean mounted the art people brought on the walls. I wanted to cut together a video of the whitewater rafting trip to music, but just didn’t have time to get it done before the event. So I juxtaposed two photos I’ve taken:

I could try to go meta with these photos…about how one is showing the beauty of electricity and energy at night, while the other shows the stark cost of providing this essence of modern life. I also liked how the angle of the Chicago sign and the tower matched up. Chrissy brought a canvas painting (note: the paint was still moist) of a stick figure, a bold artistic impression of Nevin. Joey and Sean had some great abstract art they had painted over the past few months. Rishabh put a photo mosaic together of shots around San Francisco into the shape of the City itself. Christophe showed two photos he had taken that were nice. Gregg demolished a old iMac he found junked, spray painted it, and chewed up all the innards. Dustin bought a painting for $5 at a thrift store of a mountain lake, then proceeded to paint a goofy octopus sticking out of the water. He also was rocking the accordion in the early evening, and switched to the Korg later in the evening for some beats. Rishabh strummed the guitar, while Sean goofed around on the ukelele.

After dropping Sean and Chrissy off from Jay’s BBQ down in Santa Cruz, I made a pit stop at home and found Troy vegging out on the coach. “Hey T-Bone, you up for doing something tonight?” Twenty minutes later, we were heading across the Bay Bridge to the Starry Plough pub in Berkeley. The occasion: Seryn, the new band I learned about a few weeks ago would be playing their first Bay Area show there. As we rolled up to the pub, I saw the lead singer Trenton outside helping getting their gear. Wished him good luck for the show, and Troy and I headed next door to get a quick bite before the show.

What made the evening even better was that Brock and Heather were going to join us! They met us inside the pub, we got drinks, and had a great time. The opening solo act was a very strange concoction…I’m trying to think of how to describe it but I’ve got nothing now. Anyway:

Being an idiot, I brought my DSLR with the 50mm f/1.8, but forgot the memory card in my computer. D’oh, so all I’ve got is this iPhone photo. There was probably 35 people in attendance, very small and intimate. But Seryn just blew us away. They put on an incredible live show with a sound that can fill much bigger venues. We were amazed at the drummer, who at times also played the xylophone, accordion, and banjo. They aren’t afraid to experiment either — the lead singer at one point hunched over and started singing (yelling?) into the pickups of his ukelele, creating a haunting sound. It kinda looked like he was making out with the ukelele, hehe. At one time the bassist was using a cello bow on his bass guitar but also the xylophone, and at the finale song whipped out a trumpet!

They added to their album songs with flourishes and mini jam sessions that were a delight to hear. This band is going to be big, I just know it. Their sound is just too good!

Two weekends ago, my colleague Jay threw a Saturday cookout at his home down in Santa Cruz. Some of our colleagues from China — a few engineers from the contract manufacturer that Jay has worked with the last several years — were in town and they came along too. Jay designed and built his new home (about a year old), and it’s nestled in a large beautiful tract of land nestled right into the mountains. It’s just stunning. Sean, Chrissy, and I headed down from the City in the late morning. I made paneer and veggie tikka masala skewers (hat tip Rishabh), and Chrissy made guacamole. There were tons of delicious food.

It was nice to see folks from work in a casual setting — Carlos, Jose, Brian, Brian, Leland, Loren, Jackson, etc. Joseph brought little Henry, who was just adorable. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of him! Later in the afternoon, Jay led us on a short hike up the hills behind his house to the ridge, where you could see all the way to the Santa Cruz boardwalk. I couldn’t believe all the land was his.

We also had live music! Jay’s daughter’s friend plays sax and vocals in a reggae band, and they wanted to come play in the backyard. And then the friend’s dad is in a bluegrass band, and so they came and played too. It was pretty rad.

Pretty chill way to spend a Saturday afternoon. We headed back up to the City by around 5:30pm….for the day wasn’t over for me yet.

Also, maybe this is a good time to disclose the new look on this website — I recently ditched the glasses and the goatee (which I grew out the summer of junior year). Some of the NC folks might remember what I looked like without it, but I’ve lost a bit of weight since then too.

It’s been kinda amusing seeing folks out here doing double-takes, or sometimes not even recognizing me at all! Hehe.

Back in March, I hosted an iron chef brainstorming dinner and we came up with a pretty out-of-the-box idea for an Iron Chef style culinary challenge: Battle Quiché! Note the accent on the e. This isn’t a challenge where everyone makes quiches, but rather, the goal was to make a dish that embodies a cliché, a pun, a jingle, or a saying. Hat tip to Joey for coming up with a clever name for the event. Rather than everyone make their dish in-person, we did it potluck style, and people have over a week to ponder what they were going to make. Finally held it a few weekends ago on June 5th.

Realizing that the house wasn’t prepared to handled the ballooning guest list, I went shopping on Saturday, made a big grocery trip Sunday morning, and then spent the rest of the day getting the house ready. After all, had to make my own dish too! By around 6:30pm, the contestants started to arrive. The turnout was great, the largest gathering I’ve had at the house: Mozzi, Alex, Jonathan and a friend, Mary and Matt, Joey, Sean, Stephanie, Luke and Dora (who hosted their own Iron Chef last year), Jess (sadly Simon couldn’t make it), Mia and her friend Dorothy, Paul and his friend Tess, Michael and Karla, and Dan and Wendy.

A quick rundown of the creative dishes people made:

- Mary and Matt did a ‘toe jam’ and a head cheese. The jam was made out of bacon and the head cheese was…a ball of cheese shaped like a head, hehe.

- Mia had a chicken fried rice dish with eggs, artfully plated so you couldn’t tell which came first, the chicken or the egg.

- Michael and Karla had two ambitious entries: they found a whole rabbit somewhere in the Mission (where else), served with Spanish style flatbread called tortas, so you had the tortas and the rabbit = the tortoise and the hare. Alongside they had chunky (wholly!) guacamole. They also had an amusing plating of cake pieces arranged on red solo cups…..cupcakes. Loved it.

- Paul and Tess also had a delightfully ambitious dish. They had an entire chicken stuffed, presented lying down face up. A small bowl of homemade soup was used to create a face, and scattered around were pan-fried zucchini rounds with $ signs branded into them (Paul used a shaped clothes hanger), and a syringe used for basting was left on the plate. So you had the message of what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

- Joey whipped out his ice cream maker and presented cool as a cucumber ice cream. It was delicious.

- Luke and Dora made cheese enchiladas, half the tray made with homemade mole sauce (looked practically black) and the other half with homemade guajillo suace (orange colored). The many small enchiladas added up to make one Giant dish, and those colors are that of the San Francisco Giants!

- Dan and Wendy made brownies with the Brown University logo in frosting on it (Dan’s brother Jono went to Brown).

- Sean made a tray of spicy meatballs that were a big hit (hey! it’s a spicy meatball! in your worst italian accent)

- I used Pillsbury breadsticks dough and made a lattice network, formed into a woven basket after slightly baking. I then prepared egg in a variety of ways — single serving spinach and mushroom fritattas made in a cupcake tin, scrambled eggs, soft boiled, hard boiled, fried, and poached. Much to the horror of the guests assembled, they learned that I had never fried or poached an egg before, so there was definitely a tutorial for me. I then served the scrambled eggs in the basket, and arranged the other dishes around it. Hence, don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

I even had prepared some homemade pasta sauce for pasta and a big appetizer plate of fresh fruit (hat tip to Heather and Brock for the simple yet delightful presentation of sliced oranges with a sprinkling of cinnamon) in case there wasn’t enough food, but there was plenty. Mozzi and Alex brought special dumplings, Stephanie made a big bowl of salad, and Jess brought these jaw-dropping amazing homemade chocolate croissants. She’s in culinary school now and has been cranking out some pretty incredible edible delights lately.

What a fun night — I was very happy that so many of my different friends could make it! Now onto the next challenge….

Hat tip to John for this one. The Antlers, a three piece indie rock band out of Brooklyn, have been around for a few years but recently released their second album, Burst Apart. Their first album, Hospice, gained attention for its emotionally charged songs and unusual setup — it told a story using the analogy of a hospice worker and a terminally-ill patient.

The first thing I thought of when listening through Burst Apart is “wow, this sounds a lot like Radiohead back during Ok Computer and Kid A“. The composition, the shimmery slightly off-kilter effects that round out some of the sounds, the songs that verge into formless structure during the middle of the album, etc. One immediately thinks of the fantastically disquieting “Climbing Up the Walls” when listening to the Antler’s song Parentheses.

It’s definitely an album that deserves a few listens, and some songs in particular definitely start to stick in your ear. Two tracks that did this to me:

The Antlers – I Don’t Want Love

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The Antlers – Putting the Dog to Sleep

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Also worth checking out French Exit.

Here’s a bit of electro-pop fun before diving back into more heady tunes: The Naked and Famous, out of New Zealand. Their recent album is called Passive Me, Aggressive You. Go figure that this band opened for the Freelance Whales show that I did with friends, but we missed the entire opener because we were getting dinner before the show (and we were starving). Electro-pop is a fairly apt way of describing them, and you’ll hear electronic beats and heavy on the synths. I’m sure there are more similar sounding bands out there, but maybe in the vein of a Passion Pit (but without the interested falsetto and newness of sound).

Here are two songs that I liked:

The Naked and Famous – Young Blood

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The Naked and Famous – Punching in a Dream

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Spent most of the Monday of Memorial Day recovering from the rafting and Yosemite trips. In the afternoon, I started work on making spanakopita for the first time, and a big bowl of pasta salad. Melih was throwing a surprise BBQ for Micky at Crissy Field, a wide open park in the Presidio in front of Golden Gate Bridge. If it’s Memorial Day, there better be a cookout going on! The other occasion? The birth of their first child was just a few days away.

The weather was perfect, and the grill going full on when I arrived. Matt was there, as was Melih’s brother Doruk who had flown in from North Carolina, and Micky’s sister Lisa who had flown in from England.

We brought the disc out and threw it around for a while too. I got to catch up with Heather, who I last saw at the wedding back in October, as well as Melih’s buddies Adam and Chris. What a lovely way to spend Memorial Day.

After the rafting trip, Paul and I headed southeast to Yosemite. Our friend Sam had a campsite there for the whole weekend, and we couldn’t pass up a chance to join them. We quickly ironed dinner plans while grocery shopping — fajitas, grilled corn, s’more ingredients (of course). We made fairly good time en route, but hit a wall upon entering Yosemite Valley. Not literally, just a wall of vehicles. I had never seen it so slow. It took us about an hour of crawling along to finally reach the campsite, with about 30 minutes of light left. Sam’s crew had the fire going already. The party included his friend Teresa, two of Teresa’s colleagues from Stanford Hospital and their respective husbands.

I broke out the new two-person tent I bought the previous weekend, but the tent already setup was a mammoth mansion of a tent, it could have slept a dozen people. So we decided to start dinner. Paul shares my keen eye for a good meal, so we raised eyebrows as we set to work getting fresh vegetables chopped and sauteed for fajitas, ears of corn on the firepit, avocados peeled and cut, tortillas warming on the grill. No MREs for us! The weather, unlike all my previous trips, was cold, cloudy, and moist. Raindrops started falling softly near the end, and Paul and I worked in the dark. But it was so worth it — the fajitas were delicious! As we got ready for bed, we discovered that the mansion wasn’t watertight…there were puddles all over the floor. The others went to their cars or other tent, but I looked at Paul and said — how about we setup my tent inside this tent? Inception tent! We got it setup and spent the night dry and warm.

The next morning, we geared up and headed to Yosemite Falls. We were going to do the same hike that Dustin, Dave and I had done last September, but now I’d actually see the waterfall. Back in September, there was zero water and it was hot. This time, it was cool (to very cold near the top) and wet with all the mist from the waterfall. The elevation change is so great at the top that there was snow on the ground too! I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:

Tendrils of clouds masked the tops of the granite cliff faces all throughout the day, making for stunning views of Half Dome and the Valley.

It’s impossible for me to convey the scale of the waterfall picture below:

We made it to the top and stopped for lunch. It was remarkable how cold everyone felt after stopping just for ten minutes! Here again Paul and I raised eyebrows when we brought out a brick of Tillamook extra sharp cheddar and Triscuit crackers. No string cheese, thanks!

The hike itself was fine. There was some portions where it felt like you hiking in the middle of a stream instead of a set of granite stairs hewn into the side of the mountain, there was so much precipitation. Regulating body temperature against the elements and energy expended while hiking was also a challenge, but overall I’m much more fit now than I was back in September and I could feel it. The plan was to head all the way along the ridge to North Dome then return along the backside, but the weather just wasn’t conducive to it.

We made it back to our campsite by around 4pm, and Teresa brewed up some hot chocolate for us (thanks Teresa!). We noshed one some more food, and Paul and I broke down our tent and packed up the car. We threw the frisbee around, and when the raindrops started we bid the crew adieu and started to head back to the Bay. We ended up stopping in Manteca for dinner, picking a local brewery-restaurant that had high ceilings, two levels, and lots of seating. It was pretty amusing — one of the waiters comes sprinting down the hall when we entered, and told us to sit anywhere. Later, he comes sprinting past, stops, wheels around and asks us what if we wanted something to drink. The poor guys were on a skeleton crew, then got slammed by local Little League teams. The amusing part was that only the one guy was operating in full sprint mode…everyone else was just normal. In the end, we just wanted to tip that guy.

Paul took a detour to SF and dropped me off before heading back down to Mountain View. What a great trip to Yosemite, and the whitewater rafting! Also enjoyed getting to spend some more time with Paul — he works just down the hall from me, but on a different iPod, so I haven’t gotten to interact with him as much I’d like.