well, well... that's a deep subject

There have been a lot of random things happening and unfortunately I haven't been good about blogging this year so let's play catch-up!

These photos are not at all in the right order but I'm too lazy to rearrange them so I'll just discuss the events out-of-0rder.

These first two pictures are from an afternoon at MEAT Clown Studios in North Hollywood.

This is me as the "Meat Magician."

This is Dylan as the British "Meat Clown."

MEAT Clown is sort of the mascot for The Stranger Page, a website and "outsider art" studio ran by my friend Shawn, who directed my music video for "Alien Nation." He and his team have been making these YouTube videos that parody local television commercials, for "discount meat products" featuring their spokesperson, Meat Clown. Several different people have participated now, portraying different Meat Clowns. They film them in front of a green screen and are, for the most part, improv. So Dylan came up with his British clown character and they gave him some cuts of meat and prices to work in and we all shouted out ideas of lines he could say. I was the Meat Magician so I had some lines of my own and then I wave my magic wand and through the magic of editing, Dylan will appear as a tiny Meat Clown in the finished commercial. Our friends Brad (who already stars in his own Meat Clown video) and Kristen were there, Kristen filmed her segment as the Meat Maven. I'm excited to see the final results.

Dylan and I were lucky because we were going to the TV Academy Stunt Performers' Emmy Nominee Reception later that evening in North Hollywood and the theme this year was the circus, so it worked out that we just wore our costumes all day to cover both things. I had gone to Hollywood Toy & Costume to complete my magician look and will no doubt be reprising it this October during the Halloween season. I've even bought a few magic tricks that hopefully I can learn by then to dazzle everyone with.

The reception was really fun and so was the presentation where they showed all the Emmy-nominated stunt coordinator's clips. I am rooting for Southland because that's the show that I watch most out of the ones that were nominated and I loved the sequence that the submitted for consideration.

Belinda Carlisle: thankfully her lips weren't sealed!

There's been a lot of Go-Go's excitement this year. Over Memorial Day weekend, you'll remember that we saw the gals perform in Las Vegas at Mandalay Beach for the kickoff of their "Ladies Gone Wild" tour, which is also celebrating the 30th anniversary of their debut album, "Beauty and the Beat." Well, this month, they were awarded with their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame which is of course dear to my heart and my day job! I got to attend the ceremony and took photos for my work's website. It was a really exciting event and great to see the ladies getting the attention they deserve. Then, a week later, they performed at the Greek Theatre. I didn't think I was going to be able to go because I had decided not to buy tickets since I had paid to see them in Vegas already. I have been trying to watch my money when it comes to concerts since they can really add up, and since Human League is touring the US in a couple weeks and I'm planning to go to multiple shows, that is putting a dent in my concert allowance! As luck would have it, the afternoon of the show I was walking down Hollywood Blvd. from a meeting back to my office and I snapped a photo of the Go-Go's star, since I hadn't been able to do it the day of the star ceremony due to the crowds. When I got back to the office, my boss told me someone had offered her two free tickets to the show and wanted to know if I'd like them! I told her YES YES YES and then went to the office of Discover Hollywood Magazine where I picked up the tickets from Mr. Arslanian who was so very nice to give them to me! So Dylan and I got to go to the concert that night after all and it was a great night. Our seats were closer to the stage than I've ever had before at the Greek and it was a gorgeous night. The Go-Go's were great, and to top it all off, it was Belinda's birthday so she was in especially high spirits.

The view of Los Angeles from Downtown Rehearsal,
Turbo Sunshine's lockout space "where the magic happens."

My brother and his girlfriend, Angela, have been working behind the scenes to get our new band Turbo Sunshine (which also includes Xin Xin aka Elene on keyboards) up and running. To that end, they've secured their own lockout studio space which is shared with two other bands made up of some of their friends. Turbo Sunshine now has a Tuesday night regular rehearsal and a place to keep our equipment which is great! My drums have a new home there, since Angela is playing them now in Turbo Sunshine. Just last night we had a rehearsal and we're finally starting to come together as a band. We have some great songs that were primarily written by Brandon, who is basically the lead singer of the band, but I did contribute some bits here and there.

Speaking of meat - my sausage pinwheel!

Another fun happening recently was my "Devin's Delicious Docs" brunch which I did a couple of Sundays ago. Awhile back, Brandon had gotten "Off The Charts," a documentary film about the song poem industry from NetFlix that we watched at my place and I made brunch for everyone. The was the impetus of my Delicious Docs series which I had only done maybe one other time, when we watched "I Think We're Alone Now," the documentary about Tiffany's "stalkers" (or "fans," depending on your point of view). I decided to go ahead and make the series a little more regular, a monthly thing, so I had planned and made Facebook invites for the next two installments for August and September. For August, we watched "Listen To London," which is a film I had heard about quite awhile ago and it was considered "lost." It featured some of the only footage in existence of the original 7-piece lineup of the Thompson Twins that recorded the debut album "A Product Of..." in 1981. It also features many other bands from that specific time and place, when bands were first using the term "indie" and starting to do their own thing without label support. Luckily, the filmmakers found their original footage and painstakingly digitized and re-edited it all and released it on DVD, and Dylan was kind enough to order it for me as a birthday gift.

To match the theme of the movie, I decided to make a full English Breakfast. When I went to the UK in 2003, this is the breakfast they serve you at hotels and bed-and-breakfasts and is what is considered the traditional English breakfast. It includes fried egg, fried bread, tomatoes, mushrooms, beans, bacon, sausage, and hashbrowns. I had around 9 or 10 guests and everyone said they really enjoyed the food and the film, so I was very happy with the results. And even though most of the bands in the film were pretty obscure, of course Marc knew about a few of them already!

After that Brandon and I went to Malibu to help Hoagie and his housemate Cliff install a humongous pane of glass into the wall of his new recording studio to serve as a window out of the control room. It was tough but we got it done very quickly and then enjoyed a BBQ outside on the patio overlooking the ocean.