leftovers

Today was our Community Brief-Back for the Homeless Registry. It was at the Brain Lobby of the Los Angeles Film School, on Sunset Blvd. near Amoeba Records, so I just walked up from my office, and talked to Dylan on the phone while I walked. There were a lot of people there, including many of us volunteers who had done the registry. After briefly explaining what the registry was, and what we hope to accomplish, they played a movie of clips from interviews with the volunteers. Then, they showed a slideshow of the most vulnerable homeless individuals and they asked for $1,000 donations towards move-in costs for each person, and for housing subsides from the various agencies and organizations in the room. I had the two $1,000 checks I got from my stakeholders (Circus Disco and Hollywood Vaults) so I stood up when they showed a photo of Viper, who is a good acquaintance of mine. It was really awesome because in the end we raised money and found housing for the 61 most vulnerable home...

A few years ago after my grandma Irene had a stroke and was moved to a care facility, my aunt Sharon called me to say she had found a cassette tape in my grandma's belongings of a song that I had recorded for her when I was younger. She didn't know much about the song, but said that my grandma loved when she played it for her, and she wondered if I could put it on a CD if she mailed it to me. I decided to take it one step further, and re-record the song, since the original version was something I had done in high school with a cheesy keyboard, using one of it's pre-set beats. I wanted to do a classier version with the new technology that I had obtained and the skills I had honed since high school. After reworking the song, which may or may not have been originally written by my grandma (I'm sure she wrote the words but I don't know who composed the music), I had intended to record a whole set of songs based off of my grandma's poems. Unfortunately, although ...

Today was my first "normal" day at work now that the homeless count is over. It was pretty non-eventful and I was able to get caught up on a few things. After work, we went out to eat at El Coyote. It was some thing where all these restaurants donate 20% of the income towards a charity (Eating Out for Life), but I don't remember exactly what it was for as Dylan had all the information. Anyway, Brandon and Angie came and picked us up and then Adro met us there later. We had margaritas with our dinner that were very good. When we got home, I wanted to watch my shows (Thursday night!) but Dylan wanted to listen to records. I asked if he could go listen to records in the bedroom and this began something of some tension which lead to some comments which eventually escalated into a fight, and the rest of the night was not good. That's all I care to say about it. In other news, Brandon took the Saturn in to a junk yard to have her retired. She was a pretty good car. ...

After Karaoke for Tristan last night, I came home and watched TV since I only had a couple hours until I had to get up for our last day of the Homeless Registry. This was the roughest morning out of them all, not just because I had gone out last night and didn't get any sleep. First, it was sprinkling/on the verge of raining so it was moist out and probably meant that the folks on the street took longer to get situated and sleeping than usual, so they were really grumpy when we tried to wake them up. Secondly, we had gone back to all the people who had previously told us they didn't want to do it when we first met them, but that they might do it later. Apparently, they were most likely just saying that to get us to leave them alone, and didn't actually expect that we would be coming back and waking them up again. In all, we only got three surveys done this morning. A lady that I had talked to on Monday named Stanley had said the other day that she didn't want to do...

This morning I got up at 3am and then my team and I headed out to do our second day of homeless surveys. This time, I wanted to get down to the southern half of our area, which included a lot of the Media District BID area. The first people we came across were in a parking lot on Vine Street, and out of the three of them, only two wanted to participate. The third, a lady, was very upset with us for waking her up and she even told the other two people not to talk to us, and that the questions on the survey were "none of our business." Then we proceeded to Santa Monica Blvd. and throughout the entire BID area, we actually only found one homeless person and it was a guy I've known for a long time, named Lewis. I've had many run-in's with Lewis through my job, as at one point I was asked to circulate a petition to ask Lewis to 'stay away' from the businesses in the BID as he was known for harassing people. However, I had talked to him a couple times when...

So, I didn't sleep last night. I got back from Erotic City around 1:30am and just had a couple hours to kill before having to head in to Hollywood City Hall for our first morning of the Homeless Registry. The area my team and I are covering extends from Romaine Street up to Sunset Blvd., and from Seward Street over to Vine Street, so it includes a chunk of the Media District - they were nice enough to assign me that area as I requested. This morning, we started by going up to Sunset Blvd. and we found the highest concentration of people sleeping on Cahuenga Blvd. just south of Amoeba Records, and near the Staples parking lot on Wilcox. I only ended up doing one interview, a guy named Chad, who had been homeless for a couple years. My team members all did at least a couple of surveys each so we were pretty happy. Several people told us they didn't want to take the survey today but that maybe they would do it if we came back tomorrow. We had a reported and photographer from ...

I got up before Dylan for a change, started a pot of coffee (I only drink coffee on Sunday, usually) and made some breakfast burritos with eggs, cheese, and bell peppers - orange, yellow and red. I had a training session at 2pm at the Hollywood City Hall for the Hollywood Homeless Registry, also known as 100,000 Homes - Hollywood. At the training, we got into our teams and the folks from Common Ground walked us through the registry process we'll be doing the next few mornings out on the streets of Hollywood, surveying homeless people on their health and housing needs. My team members are Amanda, Jake and Jenna, and I am the team leader. I'm really looking forward to working with them. After the training, I went home and made dinner, which was Mandarin (fake/veggie) chicken sandwiches. I've been doing pretty good still following my pescetarian diet; no slip ups for quite some time now. After dinner, I tried to go get some sleep, but it just didn't happen. The reason...

I woke up as early as I could because I had to load up the car and get to Loyola Marymount University, where Shitting Glitter was going to perform at a Marriage Equality Rally. I had to get there early though because the opening act, two high school girls from Santa Monica, needed to borrow my keyboard. The campus is beautiful and it was a perfect day, but I was slightly disappointed with the turnout - I thought there would be way more people on a college campus, especially considering that there had been a good deal of controversy around the event as it is a Jesuit College and the administration had threatened to cancel the event, sparking accusations of homophobia which turned out to be false (suposedly) as the concern revolved more around the volume level than the purpose of the event. The rally got off to a very late start and there were quite a few bands and speakers, so before we even played our set was already cut down to 15 minutes, and Red texted that she wouldn't be able...

I had quite a bit of work to do today, including a meeting at the Taft Building for Hollywood 4WRD and our upcoming Homeless Registry, which you will be reading about in the coming days. After that, I drove up to Susan's office to cut checks and stopped by the Dollar Tree on my way home, although they didn't have any new outfits for Spike. Angie came over and we got ready to go to Hollywood Park to see Joan Jett, picking Marc up on the way. It was very cool because Hollywood Park is where Dylan and I first met Marc many years ago when we had gone to see Bow Wow Wow. Every summer, Hollywood Park has Fantastic Fridays, where they have night racing (it's a horse racing track and casino) and a concert series which usually features 80's bands. I remember when Dylan and I went to see Bow Wow Wow, I really didn't know too much about them but I had always heard about them and their legacy and thought of them as a really cool band with a neat story. I was blown away by ...

This morning I talked to quite a few people who had heard about Tristan passing away, as Ben and I had spread the news on Facebook. Ben made plans for a memorial at C Frenz next Tuesday at Karaoke night, as he and Tristan went there to sing often. Ben had invited me to join them before and I never got around to it, which of course I regret horribly now. We had a board meeting at 3pm today at Red Studios and only half the board showed up, or rather one person more than half, which is what we need for a quorum, so we were able to have the meeting but it went rather quickly. After the meeting, I went to Smart and Final because I had to get refreshments for the LAPD Townhall Meeting. Usually, I host a Business Watch meeting every month with our LAPD senior lead officers, but they were hosting this Town Hall this month so they asked me to do this instead. The townhall was at Blessed Sacrament, a catholic school on Sunset Blvd. which I have known of for awhile but never been inside. It...

Today was a sad day. While watching TV this evening, my cell phone rang. We had just finished dinner earlier and I had left my phone on the dining table and I didn't feel like getting up to answer it. But then Dylan's phone rang and he saw it was Ben calling so he answered the phone. Ben said that our friend, Tristan, had just passed away; Tristan's aunt had called to let Ben know. I had known Tristan for a couple years or more, having met him through Ben. He was a fellow LA transplant from Kansas - he was from Wichita, and didn't seem to have many fond memories of or any desire to ever move back to our home state. He seemed perfectly happy in LA. He was quite a character, as he was always prone to break out in (very loud!) song, usually one of Tina Turner's, who he idolized. He was opinionated and outspoken, but never pushy or judgmental. My fondest memory of Tristan is from one night when we were hanging out at The Palms in West Hollywood, it was either hi...

Well, today is 4-20 which is known as the "pot smokers holiday" and since this is a public blog I'll just say that this is a holiday I have been known to celebrate with friends. I had intended to go to this art gallery after work that was showing cannabis as art, at the Antebellum Gallery in Hollywood where I had been once before with Dylan. We had sort of made a plan for Dylan and I to go with Marc and Robert, but Dylan was still feeling worn out from his Coachella trip so I just went by myself to meet them. When I got there, Marc had gone to pick up some papers from the Roosevelt Hotel because he is going to be working a film festival there, so I went to go in without them, but it turned out that you had to RSVP or else pay $10 to enter. Well, I hadn't read the e-mail well enough and failed to RSVP and I didn't have ten bucks on me nor did I want to spend it on getting in to a tiny art gallery. I don't think I've ever paid to get into an art show - u...

Dylan finally came home today! I was so happy to see him. He told me all about his trip to Coachella. He got to see MGMT, and Devo, so I was jealous of that as those were the only two bands I really would have wanted to see there. He seemed like he had a really good time but that he was happy to be home. I made us dinner and we had a nice quiet evening at home together, he was pretty tired so we just relaxed and we watched some shows that I had already watched over the weekend but thought he would like, including a new cartoon on Comedy Central called "Ugly Americans." Oh, and happy anniversary to my parents who have been married 36 years today! Luckily my sister Adrienne called to remind me to call home. Hello 2010, goodbye junk! NEW YEARS RESOLUTION LOG ENTRY 107 "I Want Candy" by Bow Wow Wow, cassette tape. This is obviously a tape I bought fairly recently, as before I saw them perform at the Hollywood Park (when Dylan and I met Marc) I had never owned anyth...

Today I slept in pretty late and then talked to Dylan on the phone; he decided to stay one more night, which I was sad about, but glad he is having a better time out there. He was going to go pick Von up and they were headed to some party at a mansion, called Indioasis. He said he didn't think they were going to go back to the actually Coachella festival today, though. I went grocery shopping at Ralph's and left my phone at home, and when I got back I had several texts including one from Angie that her and Brandon had made it to Rosarita, Mexico, so I called to talk to them. It's funny how their phones ring differently when you call them because they are in Mexico. Instead of the regular ring, it's like a long, low tone. I decided to bake some bread (I had gotten the ingredients while I was out shopping) but it wasn't the best bread ever. I used a recipe in my 4 Ingredient Cookbook, but I think for good bread you need more than 4 things. Hello 2010, goodbye jun...

Today I had sort of planned to hang out with my friend Ryan and through Facebook we had discussed going on a hike. Luckily we both sort of pretended we had never discussed that and instead just hung out at my apartment for a little while (I played him some clips from SNL with Tina Fey hosting, including the Sarah Palin Network spoof and the Justin Beiber sketch) and then we went and met some of his friends at Hamburger Mary's. He dropped me off at home later (after playing some songs by a singer, Gabriella Cilmi, who is really good) and I watched TV for awhile before walking down the blvd. to meet Marc. Marc and I went to Mickey's to meet up with Brad, Alf, Ryan and Tommy. We got a table on the patio and hung out there for most of the night; it was fun. Eventually, Marc and I left and we thought we might stop by Fubar or Los Tacos but we just ended up each going home. I drunkenly watched "Romy & Michele's High School Reunion" which is one of my favorite mov...

Today Tim and I had to go close another one of the bank accounts, this one at Bank of America. After that, we had an Advocacy Committee meeting that lasted until the end of the work day. I went home and got ready for Shitting Glitter rehearsal. Dylan was already gone as he had went straight from work to get on the road to Coachella. He got a free ticket from our friend Von, and he was really excited to go. I picked Prudence up and we went to Satellite Studios in Silverlake. I was a little confused because I thought Satellite was closing, but it turns out it got bought by another company so it has a new name, but it's still a rehearsal studio and George still works there, so that's all good. Rehearsal was good, the three hour rehearsals seem exceedingly long to me now that I'm used to Invisible Material's 2 hour rehearsal, not to mention that I've been rehearsing with Shitting Glitter for almost 1o years now and it feels like I've been playing some of the sam...

At work, Carol and I had to go to US Bank in Hollywood to close one of our accounts. Back when the financial crisis happened, we decided to split our money up and deposit it in different account to make sure it was safe. Now that the FDIC limit has gone back up to $250,000 we are trying to consolidate the accounts again so we went to go close this one. It was actually very easy. Prudence called me when I was on my lunch break. She is back in LA and wanted to know if I would make dinner for her tonight and I said yes, come on over! So I had to get a few supplies on the way home. I ended up making fish sticks again with the leftover stuff I had from the Megapiranha party and a fish I had in the freezer. I also made spaghetti squash, and a salad. I got a big bottle of wine, too. When she called me to say she was running a little late, she asked if she could bring her friend Nora and I told her I thought we'd have enough food. When they got there, we were all happy to see each...

We had Invisible Material rehearsal at Cascade today after work, and I couldn't find my drumsticks so I had to buy new ones when I got there. I had also stopped at Rite-Aid on the way and got a bottle of Jim Beam (it was on sale) and a bottle of water. Rehearsal went pretty well, we are trying to get a set tightened up for our show in Las Vegas in July, but we have plenty of time for that. When I got home from rehearsal we watched Modern Family. Hello 2010, goodbye junk! NEW YEARS RESOLUTION LOG ENTRY 102 "Everything" by The Bangles, cassette tape. This was a cassette I did buy at the time it was released. I loved the song "In Your Room" and so I bought the cassette album, the first Bangles I bought. I also loved the song "Eternal Flame" and it was released as a single shortly after I bought the tape. I associate this album with Super Mario Bros. 2, because I used to play it on Nintendo in my brother's room for countless hours after school wh...

Shitting Glitter has been trying to get a real video made for ages now, and a few months ago I had asked everyone in the band if they knew anyone that might be able to do one. Red had asked her friend who said she was too busy at the moment to do anything for us. Then, on Facebook a fan that I had met a couple years ago when we played at Girl Bar wrote to us to say he wanted to make a video for us. Well it turns out that he goes to school with Red's friend who she had asked before. So, it looks like they will be collaborating on a video for us soon, which I'm very excited about. Meanwhile, I'm excited to announce that I will be putting on my DJ headphones once again! I am going to be one of three DJ's at CPRR's She-Raw event which is organized by Annie, formerly of Ask Alice. It's a queer superhero-themed dance party at the Que Sera in Long Beach next month with a female-rock vibe. Dylan and I are thinking we'll dress up as Hit Girl and Red Mist from ...

I was very tired and worn out today after the party last night, but it was worth it. Very late last night I realized I hadn't moved my car yet, as I had parked it a block away in case anyone needed a parking spot. However, I parked on the street cleaning side so I had to go out after midnight and move my car to the only spot I could find, which was 3 blocks away on Crescent Heights. Dylan's mom came over in the morning as she was meeting with her social worker, so she was on the couch in the living room when I got up and went to work. I thought we were having a meeting about Connect Day today, but when I got to the Taft building, Joe told me they had canceled the meeting. Kerry asked me to stay, though, because they were meeting about the Homeless Registry, which will be three days later in the month where we go out and interview homeless people to create a database. Sy from Naked Highway sent me a more final version of his remix of "The Apple Falls" which is sound...

The big day of my MegaPiranha party had arrived! To make sure we had enough energy for the day, I made a really good brunch - Breakfast Burritos filled with eggs, cheese, soyrizo, and veggies; plus homemade hash browns. After brunch, I went out to BevMo to get the liquor for the party since I hadn't had time to do it yesterday. I got Skyy Ginger vodka and Pink Grapefruit liqueur to make my 'flaming redhead' cocktails. Once I got home, I finished cleaning and getting the apartment ready, and the started preparing the food. I was making Panko Breaded Fish Sticks out of the Bon Appetit magazine so I breaded them ahead of time and put them in the freezer. I had used Halibut, which the recipe called for, but it was really kind of expensive so I also got some Swai and Catfish. Guests started arriving around 7pm so I started setting out the appetizers; I had made steamed artichokes, and put out oysters, shrimp cocktail, chips and salsa. Then I started frying up the fish stic...

I had a lot of stuff going on today. First, I got up and around so that Dylan and I could go get his bike from my office since he had left it there when we went to Tiger's show on Thursday. Rick and Melodie were working on some cut-away shots for the Invisible Material video and they needed my bass drum so we went there first, as Brandon was already there with his guitar and amp. They were up on the roof filming the shots. When they finished, they invited us down to their apartment to see a rough cut of the video. It was amazing! I can't wait until it's finished and we can show everyone. Then we went to my office and I got his bike, riding it down the sidewalk to where Dylan was waiting with my car. I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've ever ridden it. It was pretty fun, actually. From there, he biked home and I went to Guitar Center on Sunset. They were supposed to be having a big grand re-opening of their drum shop, and I desperately need a ride cy...

I had an appointment at the Genius Bar, at the Apple Store, in the Grove, on my lunch break. Damn that's a lot of prepositions! Anyway, the appointment was at noon so I went home and got my computer and went to the Grove and the guy at the Genius Bar looked at my computer and pretty quickly determined that the hard drive had gone bad, so I would need a new one. He said that they could give me a new one there, but that they do not recover data and I wouldn't get my old hard drive back. He advised me to go to a third party place and have the data recovered and the drive replaced, which he said should cost around $200-250. I left and went to go take my computer to a repair shop on Santa Monica and LaCienega which the guy had recommended. The only problem was, I didn't remember there being any repair shop in that area. I called Marc, and he didn't know of any either, so I called Brandon to have him google it. He gave me a couple addresses but neither one of them seem...

Tiger had a new show opening at Grey Tone photo, which is right down the street from my office, so Dylan and Brandon both came over after they got off work since they haven't seen my "new" office since it's been recarpeted and refurnished. I was happy to show off my new digs to them. Then we walked down the street to Grey Tone. We were the first people there besides Tiger, Don (the owner, who used to be one of my Board Members at the Media District) and the bartender. People started trickling in soon, though. He was showing his Action Figure series, which are photos of little plastic toy dolls shot really close up and then blown up really big. He started a decade ago or so, with these army guy action figures, zooming in on their faces to show what image we are giving to children as what "masculine" means, and then he began collecting all different types of little action figure toys and taking portraits of them all. There was a wide variety, from female...

I forgot to mention that when I got home on Sunday night after the gig, I checked my e-mail on Dylan's phone and saw that our tickets to Winnipeg came in! So, now I am finally believing that we are going to Canada - I never believe anything until it's absolutely official, and having plane tickets bought is pretty official. So I put together a bunch of press kits to mail up to Canada, and I was going to mail them yesterday but I realized I didn't have any more CD's! So today I went and picked up 2 boxes from Amy and then went to the post office and had to fill out all the damned customs forms, which are new and more complicated then the old ones I was used to. Also, yesterday before I went to Runyon, I stopped at Beauty is Pain/Ad Nauseam Records and dropped off some CD's and records of Shitting Glitter for them to stock. I was going to go to the TV Academy after work for the Community event, because as my blog readers know, Community is one of my new favorite show...

Boot Camp started yesterday, but I had made a deal with Robin that I would do boot camp on my own in the evenings after work because I just couldn't hack getting up that early in the morning this time around with the crazy schedule I've got lately. But since we had the late night show on Sunday and the acoustic gig on Monday, I was too beat to do anything last night. So today after work, I went to Runyon Canyon and went up the hard way, all the way to the very top. I was afraid that I wouldn't make it back down before sunset, but I did. Dylan texted while I was on the way down cause he didn't know where I was! When I got home I made steamed artichokes and roasted butternut squash, so it was a healthy dinner. Then we watched TV while I played the Sims on the laptop, which I had dug out to try and get online but couldn't remember the password for our wifi. And as usual, I made Dylan play with my hair while I sat on the floor by the couch. Hello 2010, goodbye jun...

After work today, we had a gig at Palihouse, which is a fancy-shmancy hotel in West Hollywood just up the street from Marc's place. So I loaded up my keyboard and drove over there, but there wasn't any easy parking so I just parked at Marc's and walked. When I got there, Red, Laura, Amy and AJ were already there so we got set up and did a quick sound check. This was our acoustic show because they have acoustic acts there on Monday nights. It was also Red's parent's 30th anniversary so they were there with some of their friends, and Red's brother Jeremy, and quite a few of Red's friends. Because of the family members, and the acoustic setting, Amy seemed a little uncomfortable and ended up dropping a lot of the lyrics out, most notably an entire section of Slut Buffet. We also didn't end up doing all the songs we rehearsed, but it was a good set anyway. I really like doing acoustic shows, although this wasn't truly acoustic since we were plugged...

When I was a kid, Easter meant going to church and talking about Jesus being reborn (sometimes we even had to go to the "sunrise service") and then we'd go home and get baskets full of candy. When I was really young, we'd go to the Paradise Park for an easter egg hunt put on by the 4-H club members who would hide plastic eggs full of candy and, if you were lucky enough to find them, money. As I got older, I was in the 4-H club so then I stuffed and hid the eggs. Full Circle. Nowadays, I'm an atheist and don't have any kids so Easter is the one holiday that I usually forget about until the day of, and therefore forget to even put up the decorations (yes, I do own Easter decorations). But this year we were invited to Dylan's Aunt Renee's house for Easter Sunday and we were excited since there would be kids there (and free food). It was really fun, we got to watch the kids color easter eggs and then the adults hid them and the kids had an easter egg ...

Dylan and I went down to AJ's house in Fullerton for brunch and a band rehearsal. We have two shows coming up - an electro gig at a new 80's club downtown tomorrow night called Erotic City, and an acoustic gig at Palihouse, where Red works, on Monday in West Hollywood. Red couldn't make it to rehearsal so it was just the four of us and we rehearsed the electro set first without Laura because initially she thought she might not be able to make it. Then, after we talked about it, Laura decided she could make it, so we rehearsed it again with her. Then, we rehearsed the acoustic set with Laura using brushes instead of sticks, and me using the piano sound instead of the electronic sounds on my keyboard. After rehearsal, Dylan and I drove up to Echo Park for Tiger's art show at pLAyLAnd, a new gallery/space that was having it's first event. It was really interesting. Quite a few artists had work there, and many of the pieces were conceptual/interactive, such as the...

I did some work and then I remembered that Dylan only had to work half a day because of Good Friday, so I called Susan to see if we were only working half a day. She said we were working a full day, but that she needed me to come up to her place to issue checks and that if I got done early I could go. So, I went up there and worked but I ended up only being able to leave about an hour early. It was nice anyway. When I got home, I had just enough time to finish cleaning and putting the drums back together before I had to leave for rehearsal. Actually, I ended up getting on the road later than I meant to and I was really worried that I would be really late getting to Ben's house. However, there was like no traffic because of the holiday so I made it to his place in a half hour, which is a record! It usually takes me an hour or more. We had a really good rehearsal. Brandon had brought Pabst Blue Ribbon which was nice, and I had my whole drum set since it was all now cleaned up a...

The day started on a very bizarre note. I had gotten a phone call while I was still asleep and heard the voice mail alert. So when I got up, I played the message. It was Amy, saying that AJ had gone in for a Doctor's appointment because she had stomach pains and that the office had called Amy and said it was serious and that they had to take AJ to the hospital and she would probably need to stay overnight. I was, of course, very worried about AJ but I was also pretty uncomfortable that I was probably going to have to call Ad Nauseam records and tell them we would not be able to play tonight. We had already rescheduled the gig once because Amy's shoulder surgery had been scheduled for the morning of the date we were supposed to play there the first time. Anyway, I got to work and called Amy back and she said she was about ready to go down to Orange County to be with AJ in the hospital and find out what was going on. But then, just a few minutes later, Amy IM'ed me to s...