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farrah and I went to see Imogen Heap at the Warfield this past Sunday, December 3rd.  We hadn’t been to a concert in quite sometime.  I think the last concert we saw was Esthero at the Filmore back in July.

We got a late start to the Warfield, not really having a desire to see the only listed opening act who, Kid Beyond.  I had never heard of him, but then again I have never heard of some of the opening acts I had seen at the Warfield before.  I never heard of Cheryl Crow when she opened for Crowded House.  I never heard of Jewel when she opened for Liz Phair.  And I never heard of Tricky when he opened for PJ Harvey.  I’m not saying Kid Beyond is in the same league as these opening acts, but he was very entertaining.

We caught the tail end of Levi Weaver’s performance.  He had the crowd going on and made me interested in hearing how his studio work would be.

Kid Beyond in Toronto

Imogen Heap came briefly on stage to introduce Kid Beyond.  The dude beat boxes and so much more.  He did a little Nine Inch Nails, some Portishead, and some of his own stuff.  You can catch some clips, such as this, on YouTube.  All the performers used a machine that Imogen Heap called a parrot.  I’m not sure if that is the correct reference, but basically the performer records a vocal or sound that they layer upon until they have the affect they are trying to achieve. Anyway, it was a very good performance.

Imogen then came out twenty minutes later. She started by walking through the general admission crowd on the floor.  farrah and I were located in very good seats, first row lodge, so we could see her milling about there in the dark, singing the vocals to her first song.  I had never seen Imogen Heap perform, or never seen a video by her, so I was quite surprised to by her stage presence and performance.

She put on a strong performance considering she had a nasty cold she caught from Levi Weaver.  From her stage look and keyboard talent, all I could think of was that she may be the lost love child of Cyndi Lauper and Thomas Dolby. You can see photos of her on Flickr here.  I didn’t realize she is the girl in the red coat you see on Flickr’s home page from time to time.

She danced around stage with reckless abandon and played her keyboards and other instruments with (mostly) perfect precision. Her parrot failed her on one of her songs, but her cold never slowed her down.  She talks and responds to the crowd in her cute voice.  Very cool interaction.

Hopefully she’ll come around again in a couple of years after working on her next album.

farrah and I took a trip down south to visit friends. We haven't visited Yen and Heidi since they moved there last year. My friend Tage has lived in San Diego for several years and I have never visited him there.

We caught an evening flight out of SJO, arriving to unexpected warm weather in San Diego around 9:30 pm. Farrah and I didn't eat dinner before leaving San Jose, so Yen and Heidi - who picked us up at the airport - treated us to Extraordinary Desserts. We entered the eatery a little before eleven and the place closed at midnight. But the place was extrememly busy for 70 minutes we were there.

Our waitress seemed distracted. I'm guessing she was thinking about the end of the day more then about how to provide decent service for her customers. Everyone at our table ordered a type of panini, but I can't remember what kind I had. For dessert I ended up with Chocolate Short Bread which tasted like an overbaked cookie. I know that doesn't sound appealing to some, but I enjoyed it. I would have been better with a big glass of milk. Farrah, in her quest to find the perfect bread pudding, had their warmed bread pudding a la mode. Yum!

On Saturday morning we tried eating at Hash House A Go Go before splitting up for the weekend. Farrah was going to hang out with Yen and Heidi while I hung out with Tage for the rest of he weekend. The plan was to have breakfast, then split up. Unfortunately, the Hash House A Go Go was a little too busy when we did a drive by. We decided to go to a local Starbucks, then went our separate ways.

Shopping was on the agenda for the girls, while I had a hankering to go to the zoo and take photos. I haven't been to a zoo since I was a teenager, so I thought the San Diego Zoo would be the touristy thing to do. Plus I've been uninspired lately in taking photos.

I planned to take a lot of photos while in San Diego with the NIkon D70s. But while unpacking the night before, I found that I left a 1GB memory card back home. This meant I was down to only one 1GB card. I shoot in RAW, so that only afforded me 138 photos. But I thought, no worries, because I brought my portable hard drive, right? I even charged the hard drive two nights ago to ensure it was ready for the trip. But yes, you guessed it, I filled my memory card half way through the trip through the zoo, and then then took out the hard drive to dump the photos but (queue the wah wah wahhhh sound effect) the hard drive didn't work! Damn!!!

My photo shooting experience at the zoo and surrounding area felt a little truncated due to the memory card shortage. But oh well. I figured we could stop by a Best Buy or other store to pick up a card for the next day. After the zoo, Tage and I walked around Balboa Park. I must have seen at least five wedding parties taking photos in the surrounding area. I'll need to explore Balboa Park a little more on another visit.

We tried to meet up for dinner with the girls, but time and distance was against us. So Tage and I ending up eating at Fleming, a very nice steak house. The girls ended up at the Rei DO Gado Churrascaria, a Brazilian place I heard about and wanted to try, and which Farrah enjoyed.

Boy, my blogging stamina ain't what it used to be. I'll have need to blog about what happened on Sunday at a later time. I should work on the rest of the photos from the trip as well.