The Oracle of Apollo
Snippets from the life of Apollo Lee

Happy birthday to me. The big 29. Yay. Didn’t have to work, though.

Planned: Go to dentist, go to music store and see about fixing my 2-octave chromatic harmonica, buy a CD or two, have an incredibly good dinner, see a movie.

Accomplished: Went to music store (they didn’t know anything), ate a Togo’s sandwich, shopped for a bed, hung out on IRC.

Got a card from Grandma, an email from Lakshmana, and some email from Kai. Fuck my birthday. Henceforth, I will no longer celebrate them. I mean, why bother?

I was supposed to meet someone in the city at a jazz thing. I appeared there at 7:40, didn’t see my would-be host until 9:30. I am way too patient.

As soon as I saw him, I split. I headed home to Mountain View, hoping to get into Lime Light (I just wanted to get the fuck out of the city), but I had to resort to Molly’s Top 40 shlock.

I have never experienced a DJ that sucked so badly as that one. Homeboy watches too much MTV and consumes too much Top 40 radio. Pathetic.

Thought I’d check out StopSpot, which happens to inhabit the same space as staple. For some reason, I had very little energy and was actually considering not going.

It wasn’t too bad, actually. I had a good time, though not as fun a time as I had at Staple. I think I was too tired to get too crazy on the dancefloor. I stayed until close, drove home, and just slept.

Happy Birthday, Lee

I saw it on sfraves, and just had to check it out. Staple was insanely cool.

First, the cover was four bucks, as opposed to the fifteen they charge at other venues. The DJ was spinning some seriously cool house. It was a beautiful time. The dancefloor was much less annoying, in terms of size and lubrication, than the one at Il Pirata.

There was only one thing about the entire evening that left a foul taste in my mouth — the mounted animals all along the wall near the bar. I could expect to see them in Idaho, but not in San Francisco.

I ended up dancing with this really cool group of people who harangued me about the fact that I don’t have an album out (okay, I like to sing while I’m dancing, and I sing well), and why I’m not on a stage. I took it as a serious compliment. I danced with too many deliciously naughty San Franciscans.

I picked up a shitload of flyers. They look like interesting events. Why pay fifteen dollars to get into 1015, when I can go to very cool events, like the Staple thing, for four?

Happy Birthday, Brittany.

I went to Il Pirata again. This time, CloudFactory put on “Deluge”, a monthly shindig.

The natives were very very friendly at Deluge. I didn’t think I could dance so much to drum & bass. It started out with some progressive house/trance, meandered through hours of drum & bass / jungle, and ended up downtempo. It was very cool.

I danced so hard, my knees are going to be bruised in the morning. I didn’t dry out until Sunnyvale, I was so soaked. It wasn’t as packed tonight as it was for RhythMethod, which was nice.

Why don’t I live in San Francisco? It would sure beat an hour drive home after jumping around on dancefloors. Maybe, I’ll have to party down in San Jose next weekend.

Damn. Lime Light was a blast. The DJ needs a little help, but other than that, it was a seriously sweaty evening. The twelve or thirteen women I danced with (they came up to me—imagine that!) never attempted, individually or collectively, to take me home and steal my renewed virtue. They were spectacular, though, and kept tossing me into the middle of some circle or dragging me up on stage. It was giddily fun.

My feet will definitely be sore tomorrow. Luckily, I have nothing to do but laundry. I might go to the office later and rip the new CDs I got today. Overall, a nice day. Got up at one, watched some tube, got a couple of CDs, ate Ethiopian food (!), and danced myself into such soreness that it will probably take me two hours to move well when I get up.

Now that is how you do Saturdays.

The Usual reminded me tonight of why I hated the soulless pathetic pansy-boy bullshit they urinated into mainstream music in the mid-80s—new wave. Why I paid five bucks to get in, I have no idea.

I spent fifteen minutes there (I had a blast last time on funk/house/disco night). I headed across the street to the agenda.

“What music is playing in the cellar tonight?” I asked the doorman.

“Top 40 house,” came the gruff reply.

I hesitated, grimacing. Top 40 house? What is the world coming to? Ah, well. I went downstairs. There were better tunes to dance to than at The Usual, but it was a strange bastille prison-cell sort of venue, another place that had twice or three times as many patrons as would normally be allowed. Most of them were at the bar. I ended up dancing near three cute women, who started grinding on me. By the time the lights came on, I was quite tired of them. I left without any other words than “thanks for the dance.”

Remind me to not go to clubs with cute women anymore. They make me question my resolve.

Company post-holiday party. Since I am officially an employee of my company, I felt obligated to go. Chinese buffet, nothing edible (except steamed rice) for überveg boy.

There were a bunch of speeches, followed by a “say-something-that-will-earn-you-suckup-points” speechfest, where one guy would give the whole “I can’t believe I’m working in such a spectacular team” spiel, except each one in turn pointed to another person, who told some heart-warming anecdote or story about what everything means to them.

I got up, stood for two seconds amid a chorus of boos (fuck all of you that did) and said, simply, “I broke my server again.” CEO guy was not very satisfied with the brevity of my speechlet. I didn’t get back up.

After dinner, everyone headed to a bar. I hung out until 10:30, until I realized that I have to spend all day, every day, with all of these same people. I split without saying a word. Nobody noticed.

On the way home, I analyzed my role in the big team. Every person on it is a necessary gear in the machinery. I am simply a very cheap and easily replaceable gear. My absence would not affect my company negatively, nor does my presence make the company more likely to succeed. I am a monkey - a janitor with a computer.

I don’t think I should go to anymore ‘optional’ company parties. They only serve to make me feel like more of a schmuck than I already am.

I didn’t do anything today, except ponder upgrading Netscape and getting it to run under Mac OS 9. Downloaded a bunch of nifty software and did some housekeeping - computer wise.

I just noticed something. How the hell did I go to the MacWorld Expo and not get a single T-shirt? I must be a lamer. I didn’t even see Opcode there. Heh. Ah, well.

I’m thinking about registering a domain name for my house, so I don’t have to play around on IRC as adsl-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.dsl.snfcxx.pacbell.net. Any ideas?

I still haven’t decided what to put on mt-olympus, but I hope to soon.

I’m also giving thought to redesigning the Oracle, since it’s no longer 19xx, but, rather, the future. I guess the whole 2000 year hasn’t sunk in yet.

Incidentally, I’m scheduled for a brain implant on Thursday. It should triple my intelligence and make me a really wonderful person®. Maybe I’ll expense it.

I drink way too much lousy coffee.

Woke up sore—very sore—from pulling every muscle in my body and sweating off about a thousand pounds. Planned to go to MacWorld again today, but figured out that I can’t buy ReBirth on special because I’m broke.

Decided to check out Lime Light again (it being close and me being broke), but I messed up permissions on my computer to the extent that I didn’t get out until 11:30. Line at the entrance, a ten dollar cover, and the fact that I was wearing an ensemble that included a T-shirt under my corduroy induced me to cross the street to Molly Magee’s. Danced too hard again. I am a glutton for punishment.

Found out that Lime Light is free before ten. Maybe I’ll check it out on Saturday.

After looking at SF Raves, I found this RhythMethod party at Il Pirata. Three bucks to get in — can’t beat that. So, I went, meeting my friend, Kai, there. The DJs spun house and trance until 3 (the ad said 2) and they were on! The crowd was young (early 20s to early 30s), pretty, and just out to have a blast. The floor didn’t slide much until it started to sweat (or maybe someone poured twenty gallons of Astroglide on it), because it got slick.

It was rambunctiously fun. When I drove home, I was so wet with sweat that I didn’t dry out until I was pulling off the 101 in Mountain View. Mental note: remember to put a dry shirt in the car. More stuff going on next week. I’m definitely going.

Oh, yeah. Ian showed up. That surprised the shit out of me. He just materialized in the middle of the crowd, almost ran into me, and danced on, unphased. I have got to find out where that boy shops, cuz, like, damn. He’s always stylin’.

Let’s see how things bounce next weekend.

Went to MacWorld Expo. Jesus, it was incredible. My jaw particularly dropped at the steinberg booth, when I was watching the rep demonstrate how seamlessly Cubase VST and ReBirth cooperate. He mentioned that I could use Cubase as a sound editor / software synthesizer and control it via a MIDI instrument, importing sound resources from almost anything.

If I had known shit like that, I’d have ten albums out by now, instead of wrestling with the cludgy multi-timbral capabilities of the Roland JV-80 and the mundane general midi instrument set of the Roland SC-155 Sound Canvas. I miss my music gear. I need to figure out a way to get it all from Idaho soon.

Lime Light (downtown Mountain View) isn’t bad. Cover was free, they have no signs, and their hardwood floor slides pretty well. They opened on the 30th. Promising venue, if they can get a better light system and a DJ (the one spinning was playing a very mainstream club set). Sparse crowd, but fun anyway.

Planet New Year kinda sucked. Definitely not worth the $43. There wasn’t even an official countdown. You can’t have a fucking New Year’s Eve bash with no countdown. The entire event held the ambience that it had been put together an hour before the customers/guests appeared. What a tragic waste of a night. The music was too loud and all five venues played basically the same stuff. The crowd was extremely young, very dumb, and the venues were poorly lit and dirty.

Nonetheless, I danced hard enough to wake up quite sore, which shall officially count for my Jan. 1 workout.