The Happy Birthday Ana Tour – Orlando

Sweet Bronco and Inkpen met up with this guy named Zach, Tim of PlainsBasic and Sweet Bronco’s long-time friend Ryan and his crew for an evening of music at Stardust Video & Coffee in Orlando. We also met a nice guy named Eric, who studies under the same UF piano teacher that Sweet Bronco used to study under.

Sweet Bronco in the background. Framboise beer in the foreground.

Front to back: Sweet Bronco, Ryan and Bob (?)

Below is a thumb nail gallery from the Orlando Stardust show.

Jacksonville Tom Petty Jam – Jacksonville and Orlando Happy Birthday Ana Tour Pics On The Way

This is a fun video we took of Sweet Bronco, Eric and Ana jamming out some Tom Petty songs at the pre-party for Ana’s 30th birthday party!! Yay!!

Go Heat Lightning! Low quality video of a lightning show on Fort Lauderdale Beach!

Inkpen hung out with her mom, The Little One, two weeks ago and they enjoyed the following natural fireworks show. The video is very low quality, but the conversation is just delightful. A short time after we took this video, the storm was upon us, a loud thunder clap rang right overhead and we had to run inside.

The Happy Birthday Ana Tour – Gainesville First Stop

Welcome to Gainesville!

(Below) That’s a hella fine view from where Inkpen’s sitting. Two great looking guys, Sweet Bronco (on the left) and Chad (on the right)! Old friends are the coolest friends, esp. when they’re keeping the dream alive like Chad.

Inkpen and Sweet Bronco hung around with some Spanish moss and young rock ‘n’ rollers at a house party/show with Ancient River, Zech’s Marquis and Scum of the Earth in Gainesville, Florida on June 19, 2008. We drove up from Fort Lauderdale that day, and we were pretty tired by the time we arrived. But, there are few things as refreshing as encountering a working keg and some nice people who saw fit to hide a bottle of Captain Morgans in the bushes — booya! Yes, Inkpen sometimes, though very rarely, says, “Booya!”

Spanish moss and ghost orb over head. Inkpen, tighten up that little tum tum! Work it out! Twist and shout. You’ve still got it, girl! Maintain.

Sweet Bronco plays a set in the living room at the house party. Zech’s Marquis sets up in the background. SB played a great set!

At least that’s what Chad thought! He looks impressed, doesn’t he? Chad is Sweet Bronco and Inkpen’s long-time friend and former Gainesville roommate. He’s an insanely talented drummer and an all-around upstanding guy! He’s the drummer for Ancient River, who performed a few songs at the house party, but we’ll have to wait a little while to see them play a longer set. The only thing as great as catching up with old friends like Chad (foreground) is meeting new people like the fox behind him, named Diane, and her great friend in the background there, Gliff.

This is a photo Ancient River rocking the room. Sweet Bronco describes them as Southern rock shoegaze, which is as awesome as it sounds. They’ve got a huge sound and they are really on the cusp of pleasing a lot of music lovers. Chad, Zach and Jaime are awesome guys too! Chad’s on the drums. Zach’s on the left, playing bass, and Jaime is on the right, playing guitar.

There’s a hazy shot of Zech’s Marquis rocking the room. They’re from El Paso and they’re on a national tour, rocking peoples’ faces the hell off. They’re awesome!

There’s Zech’s Marquis again, just jamming on those sticks.

As for what was going on in the yard, it looked a lot like this! The thumbnail gallery below features shots from the various shows and party events that filled our little evening in Gainesville.

Fun YouTube Video – I’m Voting Republican – Check It Before You Wreck It

Inkpen saw this up on The Huffington Post today and thought that it was worth posting right here on Moodvane. Enjoy!

Friday the 13th – TIMB, Freakin’ Hott and Sweet Bronco at Atmosphere Lounge in Riverfront

“It’s like I told you, this is a juice and coffee bar, man!” — Hudsucker Proxy

After a long night of running from one establishment to another, Inkpen went to see Sweet Bronco play with The Freakin’ Hott and Timb — Timb was supposed to perform his new wave project called The Craven, but had to do an acoustic set b/c of technical difficulties — at the Atmosphere Lounge. All in all, a pretty cool crowd gathered in that little coffee shop. Inkpen got to hang out with Ed Malone and meet Brent Indeed, so that was super duper fun. Unfortunately her camera battery died before The Freakin’ Hott played, which was before Timb played.

That’s the Atmosphere Lounge.

Gear shot!

That’s TIMB chatting with Aaron from The Freakin’ Hott.

That’s Freakin’ Hott Maggie. Inkpen would pay any amount of money to not be on the other end of that glare.

Boys in plaid. Aaron and Chris prep the stage. That’s pretty much when Inkpen’s camera died. It ran out of power because, after she’d had a few, she wandered off through Riverfront snapping photos of some randoms, including the monstrosity that goes by the name Briny’s Irish Pub. Wowee, now that’s a pretty surprising thing to see on the New River bank for a girl who’s been gone for two years. The rest of the city is one abandoned dirt lot after another, and then there’s the Disney of Irish bars.

Thumb nail gallery from 06-13-08 Atmosphere Lounge show.

33rd Street Winebar Anniversary Party Pics

After shifting to weekend gear at the Undgergrounds Coffeehaus on Friday Evening, Inkpen headed straight to the 33rd Street Wine Bar to check out the anniversary party. This is where Inkpen goes to chill with the classy bar’s gang of insiders for the best conversation in town. Much of the crowd has two generations on Inkpen, so they give her plenty of advice and constructive criticism. Fun!

The main attraction. Inkpen tries not to stare for too long as she makes her way to the bathroom.

What’s this?!!! Inkpen opens the bathroom door to find….

…the friendly proprietor Candace backstage in wardrobe. It was all so shocking that Inkpen forgot to hit the red eye button on her camera.

Then, Candace said, “Relax and try one of these.” And things were all good after that. Congrats on one year!

Undergrounds Coffeehaus — Coffee Flashback

Inkpen doesn’t like to say this out loud because she is a die hard Brew Urban Cafe devotee, but she found a coffee shop on Oakland Park Blvd near Bayview that takes her mind back to the day when local coffee shops were more about letting your mind wander than finding a spot to get your work done. It’s called Undergrounds Coffeehaus, and it’s fantastic. She didn’t even know that she was longing for the java lounges that used to burn incense and have comfortable couches until she found this place. She thought they were a relic of the ’90s. Book-lined walls, movie nights.

View from the back of the shop. Inkpen feels smarter just looking at all of these books.  Of course, they have an open mic too, so Inkpen popped in on Sunday evening with Sweet Bronco in tow. Here are some of the photos of this chill hangout.

Social Networking — your bedroom window is open

Inkpen can’t stop thinking about the topic touched on in a recent, thought-provoking Sun-Sentinel article that her mother, the little one, read to her. The story reports on Palm Beach County teachers who posted or had others post potentially questionable content on their Facebook pages. The story turned Inkpen’s full attention back to a topic that she has been thinking about on and off for some time.

While it is certainly understandable that school systems would be concerned about teachers posting questionable personal content in the public realm, the issue goes much deeper. Younger generations of web users — or anyone who engages in social networking — are opening their personal lives, interests and preferences to the world. Mainstream discourse labels activities that most young, middle class Americans consider fairly normal — such as drinking alcohol, cursing, wearing flirtatious clothing and partying really really hard in your 20s — as shocking, prurient and character defining.

If such prudish standards of character are taken seriously, what young liver of life in the digital camera-social networking age, from Miss USA to presidential assistants with a past, doesn’t have a “questionable” stamp on some behavior that he or she once engaged in? More than that, who really cares anymore? Given the number of videos out there, probably half of the female population under 30 has appeared on Girls Gone Wild.

Is it a good time for young-internet savvy people to start defining what’s offensive and what’s not for themselves? Inkpen is very interested to know how other people really feel about this. Like, have you ever edited a profile or switched it to private for fear of some kind of exposure? Do you feel like that curtailed your self-expression? Do you care?

One of the things that Inkpen thinks is so great about social networking sites is that they publicize the inner worlds of many people, bringing to social reality formerly inexpressible personal dimensions. Before such sites existed, it was probably only writers, journal keepers and perhaps artists in other disciplines who lived with that other dimension of self, the one that could be put on a page or canvas.

Social networking sites and blogs leave many people who are unschooled in the art of self revelation vulnerable to criticism and overexposure. Inkpen thinks that maybe it’s time we all started making room for our fuller, more obviously flawed selves. Thoughts?

Inspiring Message From Inkpen’s Old CEO

Inspiring blog post from Calacanis.com

While Inkpen was living in Los Angeles she had the great good fortune to work for a major internet startup company called Mahalo. It was an environment in which everyone worked in close proximity to the CEO, Jason Calacanis, and shared responsibility for the direction of the company — pretty intense and very rewarding. One of Inkpen’s favorite things about the many hours that she spent inside of the Mahalo workspace was the times when Jason would deliver long speeches on the direction of every aspect of the company and general internet developments and engage his employees/co-workers in a socratic style. Inkpen thought it was really cool to have her own personal CEO.

What Mr. Calacanis is made of and whatever his over-the-top personality characteristics may be, he is an incredibly inspiring person. Inkpen likes to check in on his blog sometimes for insights and ideas about cool new ways to explore the internet. One of Calacanis’ recent posts on “just starting” (whatever it is that you want to do) really hit home with Inkpen because it touches upon a topic that decides the fate of many peoples’ lives.

Will you do what you want or will you feel like your life passed you by while suppressing the feeling that you never really did what you wanted to do? It’s an important question.

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