On the eve of your birthday, how’s this to celebrate your entrance into your late 20s? Good-priced sushi with massive portions in the greatest city on the Peninsula? Check. Post-dinner dessert at a late-night Chinese dessert restaurant? Check. Laughing all the way back to the apartment & watching old bachelor party videos & eating Hawaiian snacks? Check.
Happy birthday, Clay! Also, happy Groundhog’s Day.
One of the souvenirs we took back from Cindy’s Google party were these photo booth pictures. They set up the Academy of Sciences with those small black photo booths, equipped with random head props. We went nuts, as we should.
A totally automated photo booth for me? Someday.
They made it official with a gorgeous ceremony in Mountain View, & ended the night with a banquet in Santa Clara. For those who don’t know this about me, me & my buddies from church are a part of an a capella group we called Bound by Faith. My cousin & bride, Myra, is one of our diehard fans, so she came to us & asked if we could perform. Because the venue lacked the amount of microphones we needed, we did the next best thing & presented this music video with a soundtrack we created ourselves. With our voices. Pretty impressive, right? Sorry, it’s the best we can do.
Okay, no more stalling. Here’s the video:
Congratulations, Myra & Jay! Welcome to the club!
You know Google does it big! This year, Cindy brought me along to tear it up at their annual party (Google is huge, so they split the parties up by departments/buildings). This year, her team was invited to celebrate at the California Academy of Sciences at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.
I finally got to meet Cindy’s team; a lovely bunch, as demonstrated by their choice of accessories for the party (above).
What makes the Jabbawockeez so great are their unified choreographed movement & their iconic white masks. Well, French dancing duo Laurent & Larry Bourgeois, famously known as Les Twins, are kicking it up a notch—dual ‘fros are the new white masks.
The story started on Twitter with a tweet about dancers in Oakland, which linked to a YouTube video with Oakland’s Turf Feinz, shot by this local group called YAK Films. Their production value was pretty top-notch, so I browsed around their collection & found this gem:
Before you know it, the fanaticism begins. I start scouring YouTube for more videos. My excitement goes through the roof when I hear they’re performing at Mezzanine up in the City! I was totally bummed when the weather prevented us from seeing the show, though.
These days, I’ve been finding myself busy working with my friends at the 3rd Floor Collective & Honorable Mention in maintaining a photo booth at different events in the Bay. When our buddy Jayvee booked us to be vendors at the World of Dance in Vallejo, not only was I excited because not only did I know YAK Films was going to cover the event, Les Twins were slated to perform!
Jayvee even did me one better. He promised that he would bring Les Twins to my photobooth so I can meet them (& to add them to my portfolio, of course). The first photo I took with them was, well…
…yeah, it’s really Les Twins, not just two random tall guys with ‘fros.
Rondo, Mr. Man-of-many-languages, got to talk to them in their native French. From what he understood, they’re from a family of nine siblings, & they all are dancers. Incredible, they’re the Jackson family of dancing.
As expected, their Vallejo performance was surreal:
I worked a total of ten straight hours that day & walked away with a smile. I hope we get a chance to see them again next year (if they’re not gonna be mega superstars by then).
