BalloonMan profile picture

BalloonMan

I am here for Friends and Networking

About Me

I can see clearly what you're all about, but I'm not who I want to be. Still in a daze from the hazy day meadows, shared with the love of my girl. I can't stray too far from big city ghettos, I'm cursed with the weight of the world. If you could see what I see, you wouldn't want to be me. I could fly far away but I'll never escape from just being me.

My Interests

Making music (play a few instruments and I'm into live-looping), technology that makes our lives "simpler", grilling kick ass concoctions, skateboarding (when I'm not injured), jujitsu, watching movies and then complaining about how much better I could've done, swimming in large bodies of water, sailing/fishing on larger bodies of water, drinking well made libations, making great drinks to go with good food that I've made, great wines, stand up comics.

I'd like to meet:

I am a saint in the age of romance, perfect in every way. But you'll never know 'cause I can't get a chance for the me that's not far away. If you look past the shell of the man that you see, there's people inside you should know. But shallow unsighted grifters decide who I am and where I should go.

Music:

Elvis Costello, Tenacious D, Widespread Panic, Tom Waits, Medeski Martin and Wood, The Flaming Lips, G Love and Special Sauce, Midlake, The Beatles, James Brown, Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Police, Otis Redding, The Beastie Boys, Digable Planets, Foo Fighters, Jurassic 5, The Velvet Underground, The Rolling Stones, Radiohead, Pensativa, Greyboy All Stars, Calexico, Beck, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Ben Folds Five, Spinal Tap, The Pixies, Trey Anastasio, Phish, Keller Williams, Grateful Dead.I love blues and jazz, trying to combine blues and jazz with a hip hop beat like everybody else...but mine's better and I will someday rule the world!!!

Movies:

Top 3 - The Shawshank Redemption, The Big Lebowski, Stranger Than Fiction. Other than that, there's just too many movies to list, so I'll list people I like. Will Farrel & Christopher Walken...that's about it. Everyone else can go suck a lemon. Except Bill Murray, he's cool too. Oh, and Christopher Guest. My favorite directors are the Coen Brothers, P.T. Anderson, Martin Scorcese and Ron Howard.

Television:

Rescue Me is the best show on TV. Also like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Austin City Limits, Mythbusters, Survivorman and really anything on Discsovery Channel(s), FOOTBALL

Books:

Searching for the Sound [Phil Lesh], Jitterbug Perfume [Tom Robbins}, Iowa Baseball Confederacy [Kinsella], Catcher in the Rye [Salinger], Foucault's Pendulum [Umberto Eco], The Celestine Prophecy [James Redfield], Awaken the Giant Within [Robbins], How to Win Friends and Influence People [Carnegie], The Warren Buffett Way [Hagstrom], The Gift of Fear [de Becker]

Heroes:

My mom (for getting a degree with a 4.0GPA at the age of 55) and dad (for taking care of everyone & everything), my sister and her husband (for taking care of their family the way they do), Bill Hicks (for pissing people off and making them laugh at once), Richard Clarke (for telling Bush to eat it), Wayne Coyne (for always being creative), G Love (for being smooth), and my cousin Evan who is getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan where he will show them an example of a truly great and noble American soldier.

My Blog

Caribbean cruise

Well, we just returned from our cruise of the Caribbean. What can I say? It was beautiful, fun and I was thoroughly entertained the entire time. The pictures should tell the tale better than I can....
Posted by BalloonMan on Wed, 23 Apr 2008 11:28:00 PST

Drunken History vol. 1 - The Duel of Burr and Hamilton

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Posted by BalloonMan on Thu, 07 Feb 2008 08:06:00 PST

Drunken History vol. 2- Ben Franklin

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Posted by BalloonMan on Thu, 07 Feb 2008 08:07:00 PST

Bums are funny

The other day a bum staggars up to me on the street. He's clearly hammered drunk, swaggering back and forth as he limps and holds his arm. As he approaches me, he starts mumbling something, but he's...
Posted by BalloonMan on Thu, 07 Feb 2008 07:51:00 PST

Sundance wrap up

Well, Sundance is still going on, but I'm back in LA as if it never happened.  It was a blast though.  Lots of parties, lots of booze, met lots of people and had lots of fun.  I'm still...
Posted by BalloonMan on Wed, 23 Jan 2008 11:11:00 PST

Newsflash: Waterboarding is torture. And terrorists are bad

My friend Carl just linked to a thread on a blog about a guy that waterboarded himself so he could decide if it was torture (link below). Needless to say, he thought it was. It simulates drowing wit...
Posted by BalloonMan on Sun, 13 Jan 2008 03:53:00 PST

Christmas needs kids

Christmas with kids makes Christmas feel like Christmas. Without them it feels like a Hallmark Holiday, contrived and forced on us to consume along with candy, cured cuisine, crappy cookies and a del...
Posted by BalloonMan on Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:51:00 PST

Just got back from Panama

I just returned from a 12 day trip to Panama where I spent most of the living and fishing aboard a pair of boats you'll see in my pictures. Steadfast is a 130' "superyacht" (not my term, although ver...
Posted by BalloonMan on Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:56:00 PST

My cousin shipped out to Afghanistan

If you look at my Top 8 friends, one of them is my cousin, Evan.  Evan just shipped out to Afghansitan in March, an event that has our entire family on edge.  He's the smartest, noblest, most talented...
Posted by BalloonMan on Tue, 06 Feb 2007 11:39:00 PST

Safe at home

I made it home today. We travelled by boat, bus, train and plane to get back here from Koh Phi Phi. I've been travelling since 9AM yesterday, with 8 hour layovers in Bangkok and Tokyo. Now, it's al...
Posted by BalloonMan on Tue, 09 Jan 2007 02:06:00 PST