Brad Barrish

Don't Call It A Comeback

Currently playing: Silversun Pickups "Kissing Families" - It's the 15th song on my Rocktober 2005 mix and it's fucking incredible. I can't get enough of this song (or the album). Two minutes and fifty seconds into the song is my favorite part.

Current location: It's hard to say. I'm on my way home, on an airplane.

The truth is, I've been missing the writing. I've had plenty to say. As Audrey would say, "I've been having all these conversations in my head." So much has been going on and I never know where to begin again. I guess the present is as good as any. I have this tendency to want to catch everyone up on everything, and really, who fucking cares. I'm kidding myself when I think about people reading this stuff. And this isn't some self-depreciating bullshit rant. I just don't care who reads this anymore. I write it for me. It's easier to type on my PowerBook than it is to sit down with one of those big hard-bound notebooks from Borders. Who needs em? I go through spurts. I think I can write every day, but I don't. Invariably, I throw my hands up in the air and wonder why I even have a web site. I used to have the time, and I just don't. Or rather, I don't make time. Between work, being a home owner, trying to get out more and spend as much time as I can with Audrey. A lot of times, that means including her in work-related stuff, like shows. I'm not complaining. It has been one of the most incredible years of my life. My job is a dream from which I hope I never wake. I'm in love and have the most amazing relationship with Audrey. I'm living virtually free of the fears that haunted me less than a year ago.

Sometimes letting go is easier / Dead friends can't come back / They're gone and life goes on / If you try, you'll be alright / If you try, you'll be alright.
(From Turin Brakes "Red Moon")

Death has been on my mind a lot lately. On Tuesday, September 20, I found out my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Actually, he wasn't officially diagnosed until some days later. He was having some severe pain from a kidney stone. When he went to the doctor, they took some scans and found a sizable tumor on his pancreas. Two weeks prior, I was home celebrating his 60th birthday. Pancreatic cancer generally has a very high mortality rate (90-95%) because by the time most people start to show symptoms, it's too late. Before I knew as much as I know now, I thought that perhaps the kidney stone saved his life.At this point, it may have helped prolong it, but only time will tell.

He had his first chemo session this afternoon and now we just wait. Wait to see if he reacts negatively to the treatment. Wait to see if he gets weak from the chemo. Wait to see him fight. He's fighting. Fighting for his life. And I am fighting right next to him, even from Venice, California.

My friends have been my saving grace. They are all so supportive in their own ways. It's amazing, and I am so grateful. My Buddhist friends have gathered at my house (and elsewhere) to chant for my father's health and my family's strength and protection. Initially, I went through an intense several days of utter sadness. The saddest sadness I have ever felt. Lately, I have been doing alright. I have moments, most of which are alone, in the car or while I am chanting in the morning. All I want to do it be there for my family. Come home as often as I can (while trying to maintain a balance), lift my family's spirits, go back to my home to recharge and do it again.

It's extremely difficult to be so far away from everything. I feel left out and sometimes I even feel guilty. I try to think about what my dad would want. Even before he got cancer, I would often think about what advice he would give me in a situation, what he might think of my approach, etc. We are very close and I have a special connection with him. I'm so afraid of losing him. Fuck. So afraid.

Work and home stuff is taking up all of my time. I even forgot to snap photos throughotu some of the process, which sucks. This weekend was the first weekend in the new house. We moved in last weekend, so I guess that was the official first one, but I’m trying to erase it from memory. Yes, it was that bad. We did finally get hot water last week after cold showers. The fridge came on Thursday, which means we can actually keep leftovers from the never-ending take out that we keep doing. All of the other appliances arrived on Friday, but we still have to hook things up. I’m looking forward to the washing machine and dryer more than anything else. I’m really scraping the bottom of the wardrobe at this point.

The bamboo floors are gorgeous. I’m amazed at how incredible they look. We still have the master bedroom left to do, which should be done on Tuesday. Trim will have to be installed after that, which could take another few days.

I spent Saturday with Audrey’s mum (Oona), who spent the night in the guest room. She just moved to Los Angeles from Temecula and is selling real estate in Venice. She lives with a friend of Audrey’s who had a boy visiting and felt weird with Oona in the apartment, so she asked her to leave. How rude. It’s not like Oona hasn’t heard sex noises before. Anyway, she helped a lot on Saturday. We moved boxes and unpacked as much as we could, put up the bracket for the plasma (which Audrey and I will put up later), went to Home Depot and Fry’s and was very supportive. I spent almost $300 on cables for the TV, TiVo and DVD player. One of the things we didn’t find while unpacking was the cable box. It’s not a problem right now, but it will be soon. I guess I can ask Comcast to bring another one.

I spent the day working on phone wiring, ethernet wiring and some outdoor activity with Patrick. I installed new jacks for voice and data in the front bedrooms, configured a second router in my office to expand wireless coverage in the house, which helped a lot. When I was at Home Depot I picked up a wall-mounted wiring box, which will be installed in Audrey’s office and will have the main router and cable modem. It’ll be nice not having a bunch of wires all over the place. I’m exausted. It’s so nice to sit on the sofa. Oh, and speaking of the sofa, I had to hire someone from Craigs List to move it from the garage into the house. It was a major pain in the ass. He picked up a Mexican at Home Depot on the way over. I probably overpaid the guys, but it was worth not having to do it myself. The sofa weighs at least 300 lbs. and is huge.

We're in the new place now. We moved all weekend into our house that has no hot water, barely any light, three rooms filled with more stuff than we have room for, a phone that doesn't work, paper "blinds," dry wall dust everywhere and did I mention all the stuff we have no room for? On the brighter side, we don't have three residences anymore, we have a bedroom set up as our oasis, no TV, painted walls and wireless internet connectivity.

Here's the quick recap of our weekend... Slept in until 7am, packed for a while, waited for the movers who were 4 hours late, didn't have enough boxes or tape, took 4 hours to move, lost Patrick for a while, went on a bike ride with a flat tire to find him, yelled his name like a crazy person, started panicking, looked all over for him some more, rode to the beach asking if anyone had seen a brown dog off-leash, found him in a parking garage, took him home, dropped the load off at the house, went to Audrey's, got another full truck, 15 hours later...dropped it off at the house and said they would be there the next morning at 8am. Woke up at 7am the next morning (at the new house), drove to my apartment to meet them there, waited for another 2.5 hours, loaded up the rest of the stuff, the cleaning lady showed up right on time, couldn't speak much English at all, but was so sweet, I nearly forgot, left her there to go help at Audrey's because they had to pick up more stuff there that they couldn't get with the first trip, picked up Celina and took her to Audrey's to clean, went to get food, stopped by Home Depot to get some spackle for the holes in the wall at my old apartment to insure that I get every penny of my security deposit, dropped Audrey off at the house, patched up the holes, got home, unloaded the car, tried to light the pilot light on the water heater but the gas was off, woke Audrey, upset Audrey, got Starbucks with Audrey, went back to Audrey's old apartment, picked up her iMac and the cleaning supplies, ate some dinner, came home, had a cold shower, set up a desk for Audrey, checked email, wrote this and...

I'm at the apartment relaxing for the first time this weekend and just uploaded a bunch of new photos from the week. Audrey and I have been waking up at 6 or 7am the entire weekend, going to the house (or going to work in Audrey's case) and watching the workers do their thing. The entire week is a bit of a blur, but here's what I remember...

There were some tears and yelling this weekend. From what everyone tells me, it's a normal thing when your renovating or building a house. Neither one of us stays angry for long. Audrey has been at the house every day, managing all of the workers. I got a hint of what she does every day during the week and I have no idea how she does it and then goes to the store to close. I think the biggest deal this week was the demolition debris. We had to have someone take it away for us. I remembered seeing those 1-800-GOT-JUNK trucks around town and read an article about them in a magazine or something, so we decided to give them a try. It was a nightmare. They showed up late, didn't take everything away and we still had to pay them. And it wasn't that they didn't have room to take the stuff, they just didn't want to finish the job. Oh, and that same day Comcast was supposed to come sometime between 9am and 1pm. They were running late, so we rescheduled for this weekend. Audrey waited around the house that day forever and was so pissed about it. What the fuck are normal working people supposed to do with a 9am-1pm installation window?? Who has the time (besides me on the weekend?). It ended up be a blessing of sorts. More on that later.

Audrey won her 36" range, mainly because she didn't call the Barrett's appliances in time to change the order. I don't think it's going to be that big of a deal, but I still think a 30" range was plenty. All of the appliances are on their way, but we won't have the delivered until the floors are done. That won't be for almost 2 weeks.

All weekend I did what Audrey does every day of the week. I went to home depot a few times, watched the workers dry wall the kitchen and living room and removed molding. The removal of molding isn't easy, but I knew it needed to get done for the tapers tomorrow, so I pitched in. The workers had more important things to worry about like getting the built-in where all the AV components will live completed. One of the guys came up with a great idea for the built-in. One of the problems was that I was going to have a hard time getting to the back of the components to connect everything. As it stands now (which you can see in the photos) is that the built-in is a closet that we opened up. We were going to just patch over the door because it's going to get in the way of a hanger bar in the walk-in closet. Instead, we're just going to make a panel that sits flush with the wall that you can remove if need be. Since I won't need to get back there often at all, it will work out well.

We ran into a couple of problems this weekend. The first one was that the electrician didn't finish the kitchen. We had to call his boss, who was nice enough to come out on a Sunday to clean up his employee's work. It was holing up the closing of the kitchen, so it's a good thing we got it done. The tapers were supposed to show up this afternoon as well, but they didn't and the general contractor that Audrey is working with wasn't around to make any calls. The good thing is that Audrey and I measured the kitchen a few times, made final decisions about the cabinetry and Audrey drove to Ikea in Burbank to work out the details and order the cabinetry. Very exciting. Too bad we won't be able to enjoy that when we move in at the end of the month.

There was quite a bit of press surrounding the announcement of Network LIVE. One of the more enjoyable pieces was from PaidContent.org.

As we reported first last night, the new AOL-AEG-XM venture is being announced today at a press conference by AOL Chairman & CEO Jon Miller...the venture is called "Network Live". Besides Kevin Wall, Andrew Thau, the former president and CEO of VOY, the Latino-focused media company, is the COO of the venture. Mike Bonifer, former creative head at iXL, is the VP of Creative at Network Live. Brad Barrish, who previously worked at Wherehouse Music, is the VP of content development.

They were reporting before the announcement was made and didn't do much in the way of fact checking. First of all, I'm not a VP, though content development is in my title. Second, they make it sound as though I worked in a Wherehouse Music store before joining up with Network LIVE, which reads kinda funny. That's quite a promotion. I did work for Wherehouse Entertainment (who owned Wherehouse Music stores) once upon a time, so they weren't way off.

The company was officially announced today. Now I don't have to be so elusive when people ask me what I'm doing.

Cameron Crowe’s new film now has a trailer. I can’t wait to see it!

Audrey and I bought our first house in Venice, CA. We bought it with the intention to fix it up and sell it in a couple of years. We have until the end of the month to at least finish the walls, flooring and painting. It's an odd-shaped house that has been added onto a couple of times. Our main goals with the first phase of renovation are to completely redo the kitchen to open it up, replace the windows, put in bamboo flooring and paint the inside.

Last weekend I started demolishing the kitchen, so the contractors could come in and start working on Monday. It saved us a lot of money and I got to spend some quality time with the house, which I can't do during the week. I don't know how Audrey does it. She's a total rock star. She has basically been playing general contractor since we started and continues to oversee everything.

There were a few of freakouts this week. I totally freaked about the kitchen walls and ceiling coming down. It was traumatic to see so much damage to this house we just spent a lot of money on already. The good news is, we're using the general contractor that worked on Audrey's first store. He wants her business for the next ones, so he's doing a favor. Needless to say, it's saving money.

The second freak out was about the size of the range Audrey got. We had previously agreed on a 30" because of the small size of the kitchen and the limited counter space. She ended up ordering a 36", which I made quite a stink about. After some yelling and screaming, I think we agreed that a 30" would be better. We hope it's not too late.

The third freak out was about a decision to put a 3/4 bathroom in the garage, which will be Audrey's office. Quite simply, it's not necessary. She got convinced by the plumber that because the additional cost wouldn't be much and would add value to the house, she should do it. First of all, it's not going to add much value to the house, the garage will be shown as an office and no one expects to see a 3/4 bathroom in the office and it's just going to take up additional space that she could use for storage. Screaming, crying, yelling and hugging ensued.

Today we got to see how the walls were shaping up. It was a dramatic improvement from yesterday. I called my dad tonight because I had emailed him the URL for the slide show and he said, "I'm glad I was sitting down when I looked at those photos!" Out of context, they do look pretty bad, but the work they got done today was great.

I'll be ripping out the carpet in the master bedroom this weekend, painting the samples on walls, getting ethernet cable so the electrician can install outlets in a few of the rooms and picking up some lighting.

Appliances were ordered this week:

• 36" Viking professional range
• KitchenAid Architect Series fridge and dishwasher
• Whirlpool Duet front-loading washer and dryer

Candice sent over some pretty amazing photos that she took during rehearsals in Hyde Park.

Our resident technical advisor, Christopher Levy is in Philadelphia for the Live 8 show. He snapped some pics of the backstage area as well as the front of the stage and recorded a bit of footage while he was surveying the grounds.

He was also kind enough to give me a moment of his time for a quick interview.

B: Hey Christopher. I just realized I have no idea what you're doing in Philadelphia. Explain.

C: I am a Technical Advisor to Kevin Wall's (Executive Producer and our CEO) Philly team working with John Rubey (CEO of AEG-Live) to provide coordination support to the Broadcast Services Team. We are overseeing all broadcast and transmission of the World Feed and all Global Feeds.

B: So you're doing a lot of sitting around.

C: Yes, I am telecommuting to the Live 8 site.

B: What has the atmosphere been like around there?

C: Hot, Hectic and Humongous. This is a gargantuan effort unseen in the history of music. The city is literally come to a halt.

B: How many people would you say are involved?

C: We have over 2000 people on site to make this show a reality. Verizon had to install a Company Office in the middle of a field to support all of our voice, data and video needs. Everyone from union workers to erect the stage to Verizon, XM, All Mobile Video, Show Power, Volvo, AOL, MTV, etc.

B: What about the technical stuff like equipment, bandwidth and stuff like that?

C: Without disclosing anything proprietary we have setup a platform that uses three different satellites, 16 fiber video feeds, and over 300 phone lines to operate the broadcast. It will be live on AOL.com and we expect to hit 20+ Gbps of sustained peak bandwidth.

B: Wow. That's a lot of internets!

C: Internets... yeah... umm, right... I have to work now.