leftovers

Sixteen days into the new year and I have = just returned from a trip to my parents home in Johnson County, Kansas. Some meaningful things have happened, which have put me in a state of mind to consider destiny and direction. While in Olathe, I dug deeper than ever before, excavating long forgotten memories resuscitated by sentimental artifacts from my youth. I perused letters from ex lovers, examined my collection of nametags from various places of employment during high school and college, and watched hours of home videos. Quickly my visit was coming to an end, but with only a couple of hours left before my departure, my mom told me about a box of my grandmother's poetry which she had saved when my grandma had to be moved to a nursing home last summer. I had always felt a special connection with my grandma Irene, and when I was young we used to wrote poetry together and she was always eager to read my work. In recent years, I have felt guilty for not staying in correspondenc...

With the new year came three new (and two fairly new and rediscovered) CD's that I obtained that I have been extremely fond of lately. Belinda Carlisle - "Voila" - her new album (released next month, suckas!) is a collection of classic french pop songs (yes, sung in french) from the 40's - '60's. It is really an amazing album, her first in over a decade, and the arrangements and production are very full and rich. Some have described it as being similar to Massive Attack and Portishead, which isn't exactly accurate but does give sort of an idea as to the overall sound. CSS (Cansei de ser Sexy) - This is a young band from Sao Paola Brazil who are signed to Sub-Pop here in the states. Apparently they gained notoriety in South America primarily from photos of themselves on various photologs and eventually got around to recording an album. The album is actually tons of fun and the broken-english lyrics are extremely fun to sing along with. "Meeting P...

So here it is, the beginning of a new year, and it happens to be the year I turn 30! (Yikes!) I rung in the new year at Hamburger Mary's in Newport Beach because my band had just finished playing three sets there. I will now briefly discuss that experience. We were very happy before the show. First, our hotel room was much bigger and nicer than the hotels we usually get to stay in. It even had a separate bedroom in addition to the bed in the main room. The venue was great. The stage was big and we got our own backstage dressing room. We got to eat for free before the soundcheck. After soundcheck, we got ready in our room and finally came out to play our first set around 9:15pm. There were not as many people there as I would have expected, but I was told by two different waiters that they were expecting a full house. We started with "Mustache Rides Five Cents" and went through the entire set, only dropping one song ("Calendar Girl") so we played 8 songs...