That Time I Went to Sundance and Hobnobbed With the Rich and Famous
plus an update on the dahlia wars
Hi, it's me. I’m writing this on Monday, which turned out to be a glorious sunny and 50 degree day – a rarity in Seattle, and perfect for getting some outdoor chores done. A few months ago we had a flagstone patio installed in our backyard, which required moving a small dahlia patch. The moving of this dahlia patch involved some ✌️friendly banter✌️ between Bryan and I during our Thursday Fire Nights. He acted like it was no big deal to dig up the dahlia tubers willy nilly so we could get this project started, but he was WRONG about everything related to dahlia care, which I pointed out to him on a regular basis (in front of everyone around the fire1).
In November I finally dug up the tubers and stored them in boxes of shredded paper. In our climate I’ve never had to dig them up before – I just cut them back every year and they show up again in the spring. After watching 42 YouTube videos regarding how to dig up, clean, divide, and store dahlias, I still have no idea if I did it right or if they’ll survive in storage. The last video I watched was of a woman who is clearly a kindred spirit because all she does is toss them into a box in her garage without any fussing or fanfare. I wish this had been the first video I watched because I’d already fussed over the shredded paper method, and I’m not normally a person who fusses.
Anyway, today I marked out where the new dahlia garden will go using the sheet mulching method of laying down cardboard.
Next weekend I’ll cover it with compost and wood chips. By the time the dahlias get planted in the spring, this corner of soil should be broken down enough and ready to plant.
Be sure to check out the News + Notes section below where I share some exciting news about a guest essay I wrote!
The Sundance Film Festival starts this week, which always makes me reminisce about the time Bryan and I were there for work. The year was 2010, and we were hired to live stream celebrity interviews at the Tweet House. At that time, live streaming was still in its infancy. YouTube wasn’t offering it yet, and we were pioneering our setup with a new streaming service called Ustream.
I walked around with an iPhone 3G mounted on a monopod and streamed live as TV and Internet personality Shira Lazar interviewed celebrities as they entered the Tweet House. Here’s a video of her interviewing Bob Saget as he arrived, and you can see her point to me/the camera and say to him, “We’re right here on an iPhone!”
(Watch to the end for a cameo of LeVar Burton.)
You can also hear me bantering with Bob Saget from behind the camera at the very beginning, which I’m sure broke all kinds of unspoken cameraperson rules.
It was a little bonkers, but so fun to watch my husband in his element of prototyping new technology. Celebrities that we streamed that day included Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Beau Bridges, Adrian Granier, Joseph Gordon Levitt, and LeVar Burton. I would later drink too many glow-in-the-dark tequila shots at the afterparty and have a hangover for our flight home.
But it was the day before all this excitement that we flew into Salt Lake City with all of our gear. At this point Bryan and I were seasoned travelers used to hauling stuff around with us, whether it was video gear or toddler paraphernalia. The way it worked is that I would stand out of the crowd with the luggage (and the kids, if they were with us) while he ferried all the bags from the conveyor belt to where I was waiting.
On one of his return trips to me and the pile of gear, Bryan casually mentions, “Hey, there’s Ted from How I Met Your Mother.”
Ted was FIVE FEET AWAY.
I watched a few people ask for his autograph, grin sloppily at him while he signed it, then walk away without really saying anything. Amateurs, all of them. I was at Sundance on business, and I was not about to play around in the Fan Girl sandbox.
I was more interested in his musical taste, anyway.
Josh Radnor (that’s Ted’s Real Person name) had recently appeared on KCRW’s Guest DJ Project in which he featured my favorite band, Cloud Cult, whom no one had heard of at that point. This is a band that supports my mental health and whose live shows are a spiritual experience. Bryan and I never miss a Seattle show.
When Bryan disappeared again to find more luggage, I leaned toward Josh Radnor and the small group he was with.
“I heard your Guest DJ Project on KCRW,” I said. “Cloud Cult is one of my favorite bands.”
“IS IT REALLY?” he responded.
I don’t recall if he said IS IT REALLY? exactly, but the sentiment was there. He was excited – the kind of excited you get when you love something totally obscure and you find out someone else not only knows what you’re talking about, but THEY GET IT.
To Josh Radnor, THAT SOMEONE ELSE WAS ME.
We talked about how awesome Cloud Cult is, how weird it was that KCRW’s Chris Douridas had never heard of them, and how PHENOMENAL their live shows are.
“I put one of their songs in my movie, Happythankyoumoreplease!” he said. This was the movie he came to Sundance to screen and promote.
Here’s what Josh Radnor had to say about Cloud Cult in his KCRW interview:
“The lead singer is a guy named Craig Minowa, and he and his wife lost their child, a baby, when the kid was about one or two, and most of their records have been a response to this grief. When I listen to Arcade Fire, I feel like the world is ending, and Cloud Cult makes me feel like the world’s already ended and, like, now where do we go? Everything’s in shards and pieces on the ground and they’re building something new.
It’s really like this transformative experience listening to them.”
Yes, like the world already ended – now what? I feel that way most of the time, which is probably why I love the band.
But I digress. Back to happy topics: I once had a conversation with Josh Radnor at Sundance!
Until next time,
Jen
News + Notes 🌼
I wrote a guest post! In all the years that I’ve been writing personal essays, I’ve never been published outside of my own blog. This year I’m determined to changed that. I’m excited to announce that my first ever guest post is over on Rocco Pendola’s Substack, Never Retire!
In the essay I share about one aspect of our retirement plan: owning rental property. Here’s an excerpt:
We don’t have a huge pot of money waiting for us at retirement. An early career in startups and owning small service businesses meant we didn’t spend those years earning enterprise stock options or contributing to employer-based retirement accounts. We’re catching up on that now, but real estate is one of our retirement strategies.
Go read it, and please subscribe to Never Retire for advice and insights on planning for retirement even when you don’t have a huge pot of money waiting for you in retirement.
🌼 🌼 🌼
I mentioned that Cloud Cult puts on a great live show. Here’s a video of a live show we were at in Seattle in 2014:
Bryan added this FOR CONTEXT!!!
And now I’m going to check out Cloud Cult! (And probably binge-read more Substacks that I’ve missed in the last three weeks of insanity that I cal life)
Bob Saget? KCRW? Sundance? Connecting with Ted from “how I met your mother” on a cultural kernel of obscure music. And having a snapshot memorialized of this moment in time. What’s not to love about this? Thanks for sharing. Also is KCRW still a big deal? I kinda hope they are but admittedly stopped following them after 2010