leftovers

As many of you readers know, I am a huge fan of Tiffany. Yes, that Tiffany, the red-haired teen singer from the 80's who hit big with her covers of "I Think We're Alone Now" and "I Saw Him Standing There," as well as her own song "Could've Been." I fell in love with her way back at the tender age of 10 (yes, she will be featured in my "How I Fell in Love With:" blog series eventually) and I have followed her career through the ups and downs. In 2000, she released an amazing and critically-acclaimed album called "The Color of Silence" which revitalized many of her life-long fans (many of us belong to the "True To Tiffany" Yahoo Group) and won many new ones. She began touring constantly and I have been lucky enough to see her live many times now. Following that album and the many hurdles that came with it, she released a dance album most recently called "Dust Off and Dance" and is now set to release two alb...

It was an exciting and productive weekend, and I think I made the most of the extra day (President's Day was Monday). On Friday night, Brandon, Marc and Ben came over and walked down to the $3 theatre with Dylan and I to see Borat. Everyone but Brandon had already seen it once before but we were all excited to see it again. Afterwards, everyone was pretty tired but I wanted something to eat so I walked to 7-11. While I was walking, I called my friend Myles who told me he was going to the Palms because Keoki was DJ'ing there. Even though it was already after 1am I decided to walk down and meeting him, and I'm glad I did cause I actually had a great time, and it was the first chance I'd gotten to hear Keoki spin. (Most people know how obsessed I was with the book and movie "Party Monster" which Keoki was a big part of). The next day, Dylan and I met Brandon out in Malibu at Hoagie's home, aka Seamonster Sounds, to begin work on Food Drinks Music, the third a...

This is a photo of the "Ranch House" (see previous blog) that was sent in to me by my cousin Travis. This photo was taken right after the second floor bedroom addition was completed. ( correction: it was actually taken after the flood, hence the overgrown weeds and lack of cars in the driveway. Thanks, Travis for the info!) You can see parts of the original house behind the addition. This is the South side of the house, and technically this would be considered the "back" side. Around front, facing north, is a porch that spans the entire width of the house and a more "formal" looking door which leads into the foyer which, on the left, has a staircase going up to the second floor hallway, and on the right opens into the formal living room. Of course, back in rural Kansas, folks rarely utilize the front door of a house, opting instead to enter through the backdoor. I don't know what it is that has created this phemonemon. I know the house I grew up in w...

I am working on taking two poems my Grandma Irene wrote, which I have set to my own music, and recording it. The song is called "Recurring Dreams" and it's an eerie coincidence that I have been having a recurring dream of my own lately. The dream doesn't actually repeat itself completely, but the situation is always the same and there are similar elements in each one, with one part of it always occurring in each dream. The situation is that I am living in the "ranch house" which is the house my mom's sister's family lived in for a short time right before she (Sharon) and my uncle Gene divorced. It's a huge, turn-of-the century home that had been in Gene's family since it was built. It is a giant cube, with a basement, a main floor, upstairs, and a very large attic on top. There was also a more recent addition on one side of the house that included a large family room, bathroom and utility room. Later, a bedroom was added on top of that...

My college years were not a time where I discovered a lot of new music. With the internet going from a strange mystery to a daily addiction all within my freshman year, I was spending a lot of time researching the bands and artists I had been listening to since childhood, discovering new facts about them and even some unknown albums. I remember sitting in the computer lab in Tomanek Hall at Fort Hays State University and discovering that Tiffany had an album released in Asia called "Dreams Never Die" that I knew nothing about, and that the Thompson Twins had gone on to form a new band called Babble which had put out an album called "The Stone." So, with all this excitement and the fact that I was pretty much completely busy with school and work during this time, it's no wonder that I mainly stuck with what I knew throughout this period. A few notable exceptions of bands that I discovered while in college include Garbage, Whale, and the band that I'm going t...

I have been shamed into blogging today, since both my brother and sister have already done so. I realize I have written considerably less lately than I had been doing previously; I guess I was "on a roll" so to speak for a short while and now I'm back to my usual sporadic ways. This weekend was full of ups and downs, the biggest down being that I attended the memorial service of my coworker who died tragically in a motorcycle accident on January 25. I had only known him for a few months but I got along with him very well, and I was with him just before it happened. The service was very emotional and difficult for everyone involved. He was only 34 and by all accounts was a very carefree, gentle, happy and optimistic person. We need more people like him in the world, not less. Since moving to Los Angeles, I've known five people close to me who have passed on. Both my fathers parents, my friend Rex, Robert (who was Dylan's mom's boyfriend), and now Alex. ...

This past weekend was a busy one, and was capped off by a Sunday trip to Malibu's Seamonster Studios, where my band Shitting Glitter is putting the finishing touches on some b-sides for our forthcoming single and preparing our plans for recording "Food Drinks Music" - our third full length album. The recording this day mainly involved Brandon's guitar parts for the b-side entitled "Delay" which was an old demo that had been kicking around for a couple of years. I thought it would make a nice addition to the "Slut Buffet" remix single so we dusted it off and are finishing it to sound pretty great. While Brandon spent hours perfecting his guitar riffs, I spent my time shovelling dirt from the hillside driveway that leads down to the home/studio of Hoagie, our friend and co-producer. Over the past few years, dirt has slid down the side of the hill and covered a foot or two of the inside edge of the drive and I wanted to help out since Hoagie always...