tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-172099672012-01-30T15:46:06.724-08:00http://www.ultraversemusic.comJ-Mnoreply@blogger.comBlogger251100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-1908381825879915052011-01-30T17:10:00.000-08:002011-01-30T17:10:09.117-08:00

As you can see, we're right in the middle of a major update, so please bear with us as we transition to our new look.

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-75084102418567705482010-11-21T23:47:00.000-08:002010-11-21T23:55:51.485-08:00

Just got back from the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, where we saw The Social Network for the second time.  David Fincher's film about Facebook is better upon re-watching, which came as a surprise.  The cast is great and the music by Trent Reznor adds a darker edge to the proceedings.  The film was followed by a Q&A with Aaron Sorkin, Alex Garfield, Armie Hammer, and Justin Timberlake. We have

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-32357232520797229842010-10-24T22:03:00.000-07:002010-10-24T22:56:11.230-07:00

And yet we've been pretty busy... Jona had a great summer, which included time with the family clan in Spokane, reading and relaxation, followed by a hurricane of activity when she returned to work a month ago. JM plugged away at work during the summer and has been keeping busy with music and travel (New York, Hong Kong and Mainland China).  Btw, photos are finally up from our East Coast trip in

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-79711666844165906592010-07-01T00:11:00.000-07:002010-07-01T00:22:35.247-07:00

With barely any posts in the past few months, we're trying to catch up with the blog and the site, which we've sorely neglected.In the last two weeks alone, we've had a marathon movie streak: "Alien" and "Blade Runner" with a discussion with Ridley Scott in-between; "The Killers" with Burt Lancaster; "Toy Story 3"; an evening with Sylvester Stallone at the LA Film Festival (which was actually

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-19737614794575656392010-06-17T23:04:00.000-07:002010-06-17T23:16:03.946-07:00

Well, it was an action-packed evening in Downtown Los Angeles tonight, with the E3 Electronics Conference running at the same time as the opening night of the Los Angeles Film Festival, a concert at LA Live and of course the Lakers/Celtics playoffs--all within a two-block radius. The Lakers won narrowly and mayhem ensued. After the riots last year that left the neighborhood worse for wear, the

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-44552038262859952432010-02-11T16:56:00.000-08:002010-02-11T17:02:05.428-08:00

It's still in progress, but the website is slowly coming back up online. All but a few mixes and the Influences section, which we may not keep. The next step will be to re-vamp the site and simplify, as we're going to be celebrating our 7th anniversary on the web this summer. Time for a bit of spring-cleaning.The weather in Los Angeles has been chilly and rainy, but the air is clear and the

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-61369185254576978942010-02-01T12:28:00.000-08:002010-02-01T23:18:20.130-08:00

January seems to have disappeared in a blur. We went to the Los Angeles Public Library last week to see TC Boyle, as we're big fans of his novel, "Tortilla Curtain". He didn't disappoint, wearing a bright red suit, sneakers and his usual shock of red hair. We also met up with David and Ellen again at the RedCat (not even a five-minute walk from home) to see the Machine Orchestra. Most of the

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-6555279834371442312010-01-03T19:49:00.000-08:002010-01-03T20:01:52.976-08:00

Albuquerque was a lot of fun, with its Old Town, reviving new Downtown, and hipster Knob Hill. We spent a few hours visiting places like the KiMo Theater, a record store, and a converted gas station that now serves as a diner. Then we headed across the state line, back to Arizona and to Flagstaff, which we visited earlier in 2009. We spent a pretty calm New Year's Eve at a Himalayan restaurant

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-25592319746390041022009-12-31T08:09:00.000-08:002009-12-31T08:15:35.941-08:00

So we left Roswell a couple of days ago after seeing about as much alien memorabilia as humanly possible. We then headed to Santa Fe, which was nice but a bit of a disappointment, compounded with a bad night at the decidedly outdated Holiday Inn. We walked around town at night and in the morning, but we never connected with the place, despite the beautiful architecture and incredible light. We

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-8293961474427501852009-12-28T21:11:00.000-08:002009-12-28T21:56:50.408-08:00

Well, we're in Roswell, New Mexico, home of the aliens and their mothership... Allegedly...The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of activity: we went to see Zero 7 at the Orpheum Downtown (OK, but not as good as with Sia and Jose Gonzalez) on JM's birthday, then we went to the premiere of Werner Herzog's new film ("My Son, My Son, What have ye done?"), which had some great moments but

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-5215258735637951382009-12-06T21:23:00.000-08:002009-12-07T11:54:17.291-08:00

And so, here we are in the last month of a pretty bad decade... 2010 is looking promising and I hope it brings better times for everyone than the past few years.Having said that, there have been good (even great) events along the way. I'm very pleased to say that Jamie and Victoria have joined the ranks of the newly married, Jamie to Yuri and Victoria to Mhairi, and both of them are truly

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-64020826326418979632009-11-24T13:28:00.000-08:002009-11-24T16:23:23.318-08:00

November is nearly come and gone, and no posts so far. Jona spent a couple of weeks with family and friends in Spokane, Washington, and JM joined her for a long weekend. We had lots of fun, meeting up with people and discovering new places. Spokane is the biggest little city we know of.Back in Los Angeles, we've both been busy at work, with Jona processing the very last papers for her teaching

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-24720299326291525862009-10-29T12:21:00.000-07:002009-10-29T12:42:28.338-07:00

We concluded our road trip, returning to Yosemite (which we weren't that impressed with, probably because of the hordes of tourists), then straight to San Francisco. By the time we reached the wind turbines at Altamont Pass, we decided we were ready for the city again. This trip through Mother Nature didn't pan out, but we figured our last trip (to Monument Valley, Bryce, Zion and Grand Canyons

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-50029294382617886922009-10-05T20:17:00.000-07:002009-10-29T12:21:33.855-07:00

We're on the road again, this time on home turf in California. We started off on a detour to Carpinteria, near Santa Barbara, for the Avocado Festival. We then cut over to the 395 via Ojai, the Los Padres National Forest and up to Bakersfield. We drove through Sequoia National Forest and spent a night in Ridgecrest, next to a huge naval weapons center in the Mojave Desert. The weather has

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-14054412520949767292009-09-28T20:18:00.000-07:002009-09-28T20:23:26.955-07:00

We've had a busy past month, with Jona's busiest teaching stretch and JM in Washington, DC for work. We just had a quiet weekend until last night, when we went to the Hollywood Bowl for Disco Fever night (Chic, Kool and the Gang, Village People, Thelma Houston, and others). It was hilarious seeing thousands of people dancing to the YMCA song!!! And Chic definitely stole the show. Kool and

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-4353548200832892452009-08-30T15:02:00.000-07:002009-08-30T15:13:01.435-07:00

It's that time of year again, when the world around Los Angeles is ablaze. From our window, we can see fire in the hills to the east of Downtown. It literally looks like the ski slope from hell, with fire instead of snow. The flames are clearly visible from here, about 20 or 30 miles away. This makes us grateful for the lack of green around here, although we feel for the firefighters who are

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-90631449164839673312009-08-17T23:44:00.000-07:002009-08-30T15:02:30.889-07:00

We just got back from seeing Depeche Mode at the Hollywood Bowl. Great show and inventive set design. The lights and neon kept the mood and a ball in the middle of the center screen made a lot of the video footage pop out of the screen. They played lots of songs from Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion, our two favorite albums, as well as lots of their 80s tunes and some from the new

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-13792588711642930382009-08-09T22:54:00.000-07:002009-08-11T14:55:10.664-07:00

Been a busy couple of weeks. JM was in Seattle on business and Jona's busy back at school enjoying the new academic year. We saw "Funny People" last week (very good, a drama about stand-up comedians) and "(500) Days of Summer" on Friday. The latter has some beautiful shots of Downtown Los Angeles, especially of our neighborhood, which appears in many films and most commercials nowadays. The

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-49483362740635138162009-07-31T15:25:00.000-07:002009-07-31T15:35:10.987-07:00

Well, we're back. The migration process from our web host has been pretty painful and slow (pretty much like their service in recent years, so avoid Apollo Hosting like the plague), but we are now back online.We are planning to re-do the site, since we're going through this transition anyway. We're actually going to switch to UltraverseProductions.com, although you shouldn't notice as

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-60318091511348027352009-07-28T11:24:00.000-07:002009-07-28T11:32:12.218-07:00

Well, how good was the Mel Brooks tribute at the Academy on Friday? It was fantastic. It was just so nice to see the best excerpts of his greatest films (from The Critic to The Producers to Blazing Saddles to Life Stinks) on a big screen. Many of his long-time collaborators were on hand, including the hilarious Carl Reiner (know to most as the old guy in Ocean's 11). Mel Brooks was also there

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-14042936681715955962009-07-24T11:26:00.000-07:002009-07-24T11:32:09.181-07:00

So, here's the big news: Apollo Hosting, where our website has been based since 2003, is changing management, so we're switching to FatCow.com, which looks very promising. Until tomorrow, the website will be down, as the site transfers, and then we'll have to rebuild the site from scratch. This might be that golden opportunity to finally switch over to DreamWeaver. The site will look

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-57326931076096789882009-07-22T21:58:00.000-07:002009-07-22T22:07:24.173-07:00

A while back, I read an interesting article in the New York Times about the home of the Caesar Salad. I was intrigued by the concept of it being created by an actual person, Caesar (originally Cesar) Cardini at the Restaurant Caesar in Tijuana, Mexico. I was even more intrigued by the fact that the restaurant is still around and still serving Caesar Salads, which most tourists are too scared to

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-59061329610736297492009-07-21T11:39:00.000-07:002009-07-21T13:26:37.706-07:00

Today there will be a total eclipse of the sun, which can be seen throughout Asia, but also online.We're having an eclipse of our own in California, with a horrible new budget for the state.On the good news front, Downtown Los Angeles will see its first new cinema opening in decades this November, so we'll be able to avoid reality far more easily and far more often.Speaking of films, the

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-56330834492282438962009-07-20T10:29:00.000-07:002009-07-20T10:38:45.908-07:00

Very sad about the news coming out of the Beastie Boys' camp this morning. We were looking forward to seeing them in concert at the Hollywood Bowl this September, but it turns out Adam Yauch (see title of this post for pronunciation) has a form of cancer in his throat and will go in for an operation next week. The good news is he's expected to make a full recovery; the bad: no new album or

J-Mnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17209967.post-12086461439000705802009-07-19T22:25:00.000-07:002009-07-19T22:38:42.599-07:00

I've wrestled with an easier way to update the News section since we started this site in 2003. I abandoned this third-party blog after a few months back in 2005, as we were still posting a lot of photos in the News section. We're still using old software to update the site for the moment, so it's been pretty difficult changing the pages on a regular basis. We're switching back to a

J-Mnoreply@blogger.com