a-ha

This morning I had meant to get up early, but ended up sleeping in pretty late. I'm never sure if my sleeping in late means that I was really tired and needed the sleep, or if it's just the fact that I've allowed myself to sleep and sleep whenever it's not imperative that I wake up.
We got up and walked a couple blocks up Laurel to our friend Joe and Sunny's place because they were having a garage sale. Marc was also there, selling some of his stuff, and Dylan's co-worked Nicki was too because she lives in the same building as Joe and Sunny. It was fun but we didn't buy anything. There was a lot of crazy costume stuff since Joe and his partner Cindy have an act called the Boofont Sisters and they were both selling some of their old costumes. But since Dylan hasn't really been dancing as Coco Ono much lately, he wasn't really looking for dress-up stuff.
We walked down the street looking for a place to have brunch after that. Joey's was too busy, so we kept walking until finally we were down by Palihouse so we decided to drop in and see if Red was working. It turned out that she was, and they were serving brunch there too, so we just ended up eating there. It was a gorgeous day and their patio is so beautiful, and the food was delicious. We played foosball afterwards and talked about how we wanted to bring a group of friends here to hang out some night since they have so many games to play and such a cool atmosphere. As we were leaving we told Red we were going to see a-ha at Club Nokia, and she said she didn't know who a-ha was. I tried to explain it to her, and told her about the video for "Take On Me" but she just said she was born in the 80's so she didn't know what I was talking about!
Later, Marc and Luther came over so we could go to the show together. We decided to take the subway downtown since it would be easier than driving and parking. When we got to 7th/Metro station, they said the Blue Line was down for repair and we had to take a shuttle bus, which was annoying, especially since it drove south, then went a block west, then back a block east, for no apparent reason. We still got there in plenty of time and were among the front of the crowd.
Our tickets were general admission, which meant we were standing behind the section where people were sitting. Marc said most of those people got their tickets through the fan club or something. It's a pretty small venue, so we had a decent view anyway, and the sound there was amazing! The show started just around 8:30 and they opened with a song off their new album, and for the first part of the concert, they worked their way backwards through their discography with singles from their most recent albums. Then they got back to their 80's heyday period and just started playing all the hits, no longer in any sort of order. I knew every song they played because most of them were the CD "Headlines and Deadlines: The Best of a-ha" which was one of the first a-ha CD's I bought, after I had moved to LA and discovered they were still around and had just put out "Minor Earth | Major Sky," which was a brilliant album.
At one point I had to go to the restroom, and on my way back I accidentally bumped in to this blond girl, spilling part of her drink. I tried to be nice and apologize but she looked really angry so I offered to buy her another drink. When I brought her the replacement drink, she was much nicer and said she really hadn't spilled that much anyway.
Eventually they left the stage and came back for the encore, the last song of which was of course "Take On Me" during which I started crying! I couldn't help but remember back in 1985 when my dad had won a satellite dish in some contest and we first got MTV. This dish hadn't come with the electric motor to turn the dish to the various satellites orbiting around earth, so my dad would have to go outside and hand-crank the dish until my mom would yell out to him that the picture was coming in. Back then, each satellite had 24 channels and then you would have to crank it to another satellite to get more channels. We though it was pretty cool even if my dad had to go outside everytime we wanted a different set of channels. Anyway, I remember one night my cousins were over and we were watching MTV, our eyes glued to the screen, as the video for "Take On Me" aired and we all thought it was the coolest thing ever. I can honestly pretty much trace my interest in music videos, and pop music in general, back to that moment. So being there at their farewell tour - the first time they had played in the US in over 2 decades, and the one and only time I would ever see them perform live -was a very powerful moment for me.
After it was over, we were all completely thrilled with how the concert had gone and we were all still in sort of a daze. We decided to just walk back up to 7th/Metro to catch the Red Line since we realized it was only a few blocks and would be easier than trying to catch the shuttle bus. When we got back to the Santa Monica/Vermont station though, we quickly got tired of waiting for the bus and decided to get a cab back to WeHo. Viktor and Jason came over and met us at our apartment for a few drinks before we all went to WeHo.
I saw a couple people I knew including Tony from Boot Camp, and my old roommate, Dudley, who told me he had just bought a house in Toluca Woods, so I am very happy for him and can't wait to visit.
I had snuck out for a little bit to call Kevin and see when he was planning to come visit since he had said he might be down for LA Pride weekend. When I went back in, Dylan was ready to go home so we called it a night.

Hello 2010, goodbye junk!
NEW YEARS RESOLUTION LOG ENTRY 134
"Letters To Cleo" self titled cassette tape album. I picked this up cheap somewhere but never really got into it. I think I saw their video on MTV once in high school. I can't remember much about the band or the song/video except for that she sings really fast in it.