1. Adventures in Awesome, Part 1

    It is so much better to be a visitor to California than it is to live in California full-time. At least, for me it is.

    We arrived in Los Angeles last Thursday night to an admittedly beautiful evening.

    “Isn’t it so hella nice here,” said our friends from California.

    “Yes,” we said.

    “Cooler than Texas,” they said.

    “Much,” we said.

    “So you’re going to move back then?”

    And then we laughed and laughed and laughed at their bankrupt state, high income tax, and traffic jams.

    Our bestie Dana let us stay at her sexy new downtown loft, and in honor of how awesome she thinks we are, presented us with an amazing portrait of the Super Brownces riding through the sky on magical bikes. Then, she plied us with drugs (NOT REALLY, MOMS!) and forced us to do Bikram Yoga, where I picked up Foot-in-Stench disease from all the other-people-sweat that was spraying everywhere and all over. Did I not enjoy it? Yes!

    On Friday morning, we headed up to MaxFunCon, a weekend retreat from reality into the world of semi-pro podcasting, stand-up comedy, and drunken revelry with minor celebrities including but not limited to Jonathan Coulton (the OTHER internet rockstar), Matt Haughey, Josh Allen, Merlin Mann and his lovely wife and child, Derek Powazek and Heather Champ (together, the Powazachamphuahuas), Adam Lisagor, Scott Simpson, Jesse Thorn and Jordan Morris, Maria Bamford and yes, yes oh god yes, John Hodgman, king of nerds. Wow, I haven’t written a list of minor celebrities like that since 2001!

    But it wasn’t just about hanging out with cool people. I don’t want to give the wrong impression. It was also about the cool people hanging out with me and Katie!

    Here is the best way for me to describe how maxfun this con actually was: We shared our little condo with a dude who had accidently stumbled into getting a ticket at the last minute. He didn’t really know what it was all about. So, to make sure that he went down in history as a REALLY FUN DUDE, he brought with him his collection of 30 or 40 bottles of scotch, and invited everyone at the event into our room on Saturday night for a scotch tasting and AFTER PARTY PIZZA PARTY. What a hero!

    Normal people, meaning people weaker than Katie and I, they would end their vacation after an experience as good as that or risk developing a dependency on awesome. Us? We planned another FULL WEEK OF AWESOME!

    STAY TUNED FOR PART 2.

    posted 2 years ago on Jun 23, 2009 | Permalink | 4 notes

  2. Tumblr Notes

    1. benbrown posted this

Liked on Tumblr

Recently on Flickr

Recently on Twitter

This is Ben Brown's blog about technology, community, and life in Austin, TX.

I run XOXCO, a boutique product development firm. We mostly make websites for Finland.

Right now, I am working on a pixel drawing app for the iPad called Make Pixel Art, hence I am posting tons of pixel drawings! I also contribute to Bitnauts. Prepare yourself for the low rez revolution.

I have been posting to my personal website since 1995!

View the archives.

Subscribe

Search

More Ben Brown

Links