Summer in LA
It's July, and it's been far too long since I've updated here, due to my procrastination and writers' block. Now it's so hot here in LA, it drains the life out of me. I don't do well with things like heat and bright sunlight.
The past few months have been eventful, as usual. My mom and sister came out to visit in May, during the last week of boot camp (they even came with us one morning for our hike up Runyon Canyon). While they were here, the California Supreme Court announced that they would not be overturning Prop 8, and that they found it to be valid, although they did also find that the 18,000+ same-gender couples married before Prop 8 would still be legally married. Hearing the news at the breakfast table with my mom was slightly more comforting than if she hadn't been there, but it also felt worse in some ways because I know that it would mean more to my mom than myself if I ever were to get married. It was a sad day, and driving through Hollywood that evening, taking detours to avoid the route of the march, I was almost glad that I couldn't go out and join the protest as I wanted to spend time with my mom and sister on their last night in LA.
In June, my band played at the LA TransUnity Pride, as well as at LA Gay Pride (in the Erotic City Pavilion) which was a real hassle. Overall, Pride weekend was fun, but getting in and out of the festival with all our equipment (and dignity) proved to be next to impossible. Loading in was made pretty difficult by the fact that the entrance we used last year was nonexistent this year, and when I finally found the correct (?) entrance, the people there were less than friendly, did not really want to let us in, and certainly were not about to help us figure out how to load in from our vehicle. But getting out proved even more difficult, as the main headliner was performing when we were ready to load out, thereby almost completely blocking any routes from our stage to the exit. With no help from anyone involved with the festival, we made several trips and lugged our entire PA and setup out through the same gate we entered, only to be yelled at on our last trip out that "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT" and we were not allowed to go that way. Ha! I screamed back at the "helpful volunteer" that we had, in fact, been exiting this way for the past several trips and this being our last trip we WERE going to exit that way. Thankfully, we played on Saturday, so Sunday was ours to just enjoy the parade and the festivities, which included performances from Expose, Blake Lewis, and Berlin.
My birthday came and went without much fanfare, which was the way I wanted it. The longer I live in LA, the less I can be arsed about anyone's birthday, let alone mine. Everyday is someone's birthday out here, so I've gotten to the point where unless it ends in a 0 or a 5, I really don't care. I did get an awesome new recording microphone from my family which I am so excited about!
Connect Day, the annual event that I volunteer for, was also the week of my birthday. This was my second year as part of the logistics team, and we did so much better this year. Everything went fairly smoothly, and we had a new system this year which kept things much more orderly. We were able to track all of the clients that we helped this year, which was once again over 500 individuals.
July came in with a heat wave and it's still hot! We spend 4th of July at Dylan's co-worker's barbeque in the Valley, it was nice to relax in the pool and the food was great. I'm not a huge fan of celebrating anything overtly patriotic. I am not a huge fan of patriotism. Much like religion, it has been bastardized into something wholly perverse; while racism is generally still frowned upon, nationalism (what patriotism has become for the most part) seems to get a green light from most Americans, especially those in the midwest. Don't get me wrong, I love my country. But I can't get on board with all the "we're the greatest nation in the world" and all that mumbo jumbo. Isn't that just kind of like racism, thinking that we are better than everyone else because we happened to be born in a certain country? And isn't that a really subjective statement? There are actually surveys and studies that show that, in many aspects, the USA is not the greatest nation. But who cares, really? We live here, and we love it. That is something to celebrate. I just think some people take it too far. Especially people who have not been to another country or don't have friends around the globe. The "love it or leave it" mentality often creates a witch-hunt scenario where people try to prove how much more patriotic they are than other "groups", be they people of other nationalities or even gay people. Regardless of all that, I do love barbeque and fireworks so please don't think I'm complaining. I just long for the day when people think more globally.
Now we get to this past weekend, which was a lot of fun. It was Marc's birthday weekend, so we started out with happy hour at a (fairly) new place called Mexico which is just down the street. It was a good happy hour even if it was pricier than most. I had three margaritas, wood fired duck taquitos, and loads of chips and salsa. After that, I quickly made my way up to Universal City, where Tiffany was about to perform a free show on CityWalk. I had fun, but I think I was too close to the stage because it just wasn't loud enough for me. It was just her, which I was hoping she would have a band behind her, but it was good anyway. Afterwards, Ben and I went to have some drinks and Jillians and waited for Dylan, then when he got there we went to see Brüno. I will reserve commenting on the movie since a lot of people haven't seen it yet, but I will just say it was very funny but not as good as Borat (not really a surprise there).
Saturday we drove through hellish traffic up to Santa Barbara. Tiffany performed there too, and we performed right after her! Her set was great and she closed with "I Think We're Alone Now" backed by an 80's cover band called Lone Star who all dressed in karate outfits! It was super, and I wish she would have just done the whole set with them! That would have been outstanding.
Our set went very well, we had Barry and Alexa as our rhythm section and then just me and Amy with Dylan as Coco (he danced and played bells). We did 6 songs and Marc said it sounded amazing. The mix was weird on stage so I'll take his word for it. We did get a lot of compliments and sold some CD's so that makes it all worthwhile, and it was fun to play with Barry and Alexa again; our last show with them was Coming Out Day in Las Vegas last October.
Anyway hopefully now that I am caught up, I can start blogging regularly again. Here's to the summer of '09!
The past few months have been eventful, as usual. My mom and sister came out to visit in May, during the last week of boot camp (they even came with us one morning for our hike up Runyon Canyon). While they were here, the California Supreme Court announced that they would not be overturning Prop 8, and that they found it to be valid, although they did also find that the 18,000+ same-gender couples married before Prop 8 would still be legally married. Hearing the news at the breakfast table with my mom was slightly more comforting than if she hadn't been there, but it also felt worse in some ways because I know that it would mean more to my mom than myself if I ever were to get married. It was a sad day, and driving through Hollywood that evening, taking detours to avoid the route of the march, I was almost glad that I couldn't go out and join the protest as I wanted to spend time with my mom and sister on their last night in LA.
In June, my band played at the LA TransUnity Pride, as well as at LA Gay Pride (in the Erotic City Pavilion) which was a real hassle. Overall, Pride weekend was fun, but getting in and out of the festival with all our equipment (and dignity) proved to be next to impossible. Loading in was made pretty difficult by the fact that the entrance we used last year was nonexistent this year, and when I finally found the correct (?) entrance, the people there were less than friendly, did not really want to let us in, and certainly were not about to help us figure out how to load in from our vehicle. But getting out proved even more difficult, as the main headliner was performing when we were ready to load out, thereby almost completely blocking any routes from our stage to the exit. With no help from anyone involved with the festival, we made several trips and lugged our entire PA and setup out through the same gate we entered, only to be yelled at on our last trip out that "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT" and we were not allowed to go that way. Ha! I screamed back at the "helpful volunteer" that we had, in fact, been exiting this way for the past several trips and this being our last trip we WERE going to exit that way. Thankfully, we played on Saturday, so Sunday was ours to just enjoy the parade and the festivities, which included performances from Expose, Blake Lewis, and Berlin.
My birthday came and went without much fanfare, which was the way I wanted it. The longer I live in LA, the less I can be arsed about anyone's birthday, let alone mine. Everyday is someone's birthday out here, so I've gotten to the point where unless it ends in a 0 or a 5, I really don't care. I did get an awesome new recording microphone from my family which I am so excited about!
Connect Day, the annual event that I volunteer for, was also the week of my birthday. This was my second year as part of the logistics team, and we did so much better this year. Everything went fairly smoothly, and we had a new system this year which kept things much more orderly. We were able to track all of the clients that we helped this year, which was once again over 500 individuals.
July came in with a heat wave and it's still hot! We spend 4th of July at Dylan's co-worker's barbeque in the Valley, it was nice to relax in the pool and the food was great. I'm not a huge fan of celebrating anything overtly patriotic. I am not a huge fan of patriotism. Much like religion, it has been bastardized into something wholly perverse; while racism is generally still frowned upon, nationalism (what patriotism has become for the most part) seems to get a green light from most Americans, especially those in the midwest. Don't get me wrong, I love my country. But I can't get on board with all the "we're the greatest nation in the world" and all that mumbo jumbo. Isn't that just kind of like racism, thinking that we are better than everyone else because we happened to be born in a certain country? And isn't that a really subjective statement? There are actually surveys and studies that show that, in many aspects, the USA is not the greatest nation. But who cares, really? We live here, and we love it. That is something to celebrate. I just think some people take it too far. Especially people who have not been to another country or don't have friends around the globe. The "love it or leave it" mentality often creates a witch-hunt scenario where people try to prove how much more patriotic they are than other "groups", be they people of other nationalities or even gay people. Regardless of all that, I do love barbeque and fireworks so please don't think I'm complaining. I just long for the day when people think more globally.
Now we get to this past weekend, which was a lot of fun. It was Marc's birthday weekend, so we started out with happy hour at a (fairly) new place called Mexico which is just down the street. It was a good happy hour even if it was pricier than most. I had three margaritas, wood fired duck taquitos, and loads of chips and salsa. After that, I quickly made my way up to Universal City, where Tiffany was about to perform a free show on CityWalk. I had fun, but I think I was too close to the stage because it just wasn't loud enough for me. It was just her, which I was hoping she would have a band behind her, but it was good anyway. Afterwards, Ben and I went to have some drinks and Jillians and waited for Dylan, then when he got there we went to see Brüno. I will reserve commenting on the movie since a lot of people haven't seen it yet, but I will just say it was very funny but not as good as Borat (not really a surprise there).
Saturday we drove through hellish traffic up to Santa Barbara. Tiffany performed there too, and we performed right after her! Her set was great and she closed with "I Think We're Alone Now" backed by an 80's cover band called Lone Star who all dressed in karate outfits! It was super, and I wish she would have just done the whole set with them! That would have been outstanding.
Our set went very well, we had Barry and Alexa as our rhythm section and then just me and Amy with Dylan as Coco (he danced and played bells). We did 6 songs and Marc said it sounded amazing. The mix was weird on stage so I'll take his word for it. We did get a lot of compliments and sold some CD's so that makes it all worthwhile, and it was fun to play with Barry and Alexa again; our last show with them was Coming Out Day in Las Vegas last October.
Anyway hopefully now that I am caught up, I can start blogging regularly again. Here's to the summer of '09!
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