Entries this day: Ed_festival KTRU

Ed festival

late Saturday 5 May 2001

Today on skates I visited the Westheimer Street Festival, (held on Allen Parkway of course) and hung out a bit with YRUU kids from Northwoods who just happened to be there!

It was very cool - we arrived at exactly the same time. I was hauling down the hill from Taft to Allen Parkway, and just as I hopped over the median, I heard Hethre behind me. 'That's Rob!!' Wow!!!!

I skated with them a bit, but mostly we were not together except in spirit.

At the festival, most captivating for me was the skate park setup. A quarterpipe on each end and a table top thing in the middle. Aggressive skaters doing some mad tricks - fakkies, 360s, 540s, and one guy almost pulled a 900. He tried about 4 times. (This was their third show of the day and they were tired as shit). AND!! dudes on bikes doing 360s! So amazing. One dude got off his bike in the air and got back on before he landed. He looked like the ewok on Star Wars who stole one of the floating speeder things. Except he was more like standing in the air while the bike was pushed forward. Anyway, it was completely sweet.

My main man Ed Veiseh did a back flip on skates over the table top ramp thing. Three times. Maybe four.. Wow wow wow wow. Gymnastics on skates.

How great to see Ed at the festival! Even more amazing and incredibly great is the apparent success in his life. He's the leader/host/MC of a skate group that tours the country going to schools and showing youth responsible choices and all kinds of great stuff. So fabulous to see Ed completely doing what he loves for a living!

This is Ed who I've know for a pretty long time as an incredible skater. I met him downtown during my days of Wild Skating Adventures. He saw me bust my head open at Jones Hall.

Today I was wearing his kneepads that he made while he worked for Pro Design several years ago. He wore them until he cracked one of the plastic front protectors and gave them to me. I've totally loved them since. These are 2+ inch thick pads, and completely substantial for any kind of falls I've made, even with a broken plastic front.

Anyway, so so great to see Ed and I must say a lot of envy and almost shame that he is making a living doing what he loves to do, and I'm not. Of course, I'm assuming he is making a comfortable living, but I 100% sure he loves skating, so at least that.

So awesome for him!

We talked a while and he introduced me to his peeps. I met Seth who broke 10 spokes landing hard on his back wheel. Wow. I didn't see this; it was from the previous show. And he still did 360s (and a 540??) on his bike! wow.

At around 6pm I headed home to shower and be a DJ at KTRU tonight!

KTRU

May 2001

9:05 pm Saturday 5 May 2001

I'm at KTRU now, and have had a pretty quiet first hour, but apparently have some listeners now. Some good requests. No theme tonight, but just playing random stuff that I've never heard of. Often this results in a great show, and occassionally this results in me (or a listener) going 'oh my gosh I love this song!!!!'

(written after KTRU)

Erin came in about 9:50pm for her 10pm to 1am shift. She's a cutie! She's been a DJ for two years, but I had never preiously met her.

KTRU computer stuff: though Erin has been a DJ for two years, she had never reviewed a CD because she didn't know how to use the library CD-checkout computer. I only know this because I was logging in two CDs when she arrived. She was all, 'great! can you show me how to use it?'

We now do our set lists online. You can pretty much see what DJs are playing in realtime. It's a bit tricky when the songs are short for me to keep up with typing them up, but certainly doable if I don't have a million short songs in a row, or if I had a partner, which I'm not asking for, I'm just saying.

ANYWAY, I logged myself off the computer and logged Erin on, but I erroneously put 10am to 1am as her shift time, so it thought she had to play 60 playlist and 30 alternative tracks!!

"HAHAHAHA good luck!" I laughed. But I fixed it. I must say I found myself taking care of her computer stuff after learning that she hadn't learned the library computer process.

This is ironic (?) because she described a story about how the rugby team she plays with buy her meals when they go out because 'she's a college student.' 'They seem to think of me as their pet,' she explained.

KTRU legal stuff:

I forgot to sign out on the log thing, and I forgot to log the 'KTRU Houston' legal ID that I did say at 10pm. Erin logged them both for me, and for that I am quite thankful! I remembered that I had forgotten as I was in my car, so I called her and she said she had taken care of it. Yay!!

- - - -

got home and Wende had prepared the most incredible meal for me! She heated 4 fake chicken (*) nuggets and some creamed corn for me. So so yummy, and exactly what I wanted to munch when I finished KTRU.

(*) fake chicken = some veggie something that tastes like chicken like everything else.