My Luck Could Change

Cheap Ass MP3s and Hometown Musik!

Thanks be to Frank, the rockin' exchange rate, and the fall of communism.  For without a mysterious synergy of all three I never would have discovered this site which, once you click in the right-hand corner to switch it off Russian, lets you legally download full albums for, sometimes, under a dollar.  I just got the old Shins album for 95 centavos.  Очень хорошо !!

And for free tonight, Subpop shared new Low tracks with me, a band I grew up in the same dinky city with but never got to touch.  I don't think they played all-ages shows and if they did, I was completely oblivious and now I'm pissed.  Something came out of Duluth that was worthwhile?  That real magazines are talking about?  Something's that's getting TV coverage that doesn't involve a cat getting frozen to a sidewalk (etc) and being cryogenically reactivated?  Now, after opening for Radiohead, etc etc, they've signed with Subpop.  And I'm still a nobody and, even though I'll be in Duluth this weekend, I won't get to see them play.  They're gigging Europe.  And I'll be hanging with gramma.

This may be my last post before I venture to the tundra and back, so I hope the 10-cent downloads and frozen cat stories keep you warm these cold(ish) winter nights until I return.

SDAM is so damn good.

Last night was supposed to be all about breakfast for dinner and watching In-Demand TV with Frank. But then Chris called with tickets to the San Diego Area Music preparty to the awards, so I, being the great friend that I am, so totally ditched Frank to schmooze with some of San Diego's finest. We got there late, but beyond some acoustic guy, some spoken word, and some random awards not fit enough for the ceremony tonight (ie. 'best rock hair'), there really wasn't that much more than the schmoozing. So I made up for that with the copious amounts of whiskey I drank ensuring that I didn't remember the name of anyone new. But thanks to my new camera phone, I've got pictures to prove some of it:

Jose Sinatra and I in a passionate embrace:

Nate, FrankT and I before we stalked them all the way to Landlord Jim's downtown:

I forget these peoples' names, but they seem nice enough ;)

And, my beautiful date:

After Landlord Jim's we made our way back to Scolari's for open jam night and, lord help me, we played Warehouse. When we could barely walk a straight line we thought it was a good idea to get up on stage. It wasn't.

After Jack-in-the-Box and a gallon of water and a lil' rest on Chris' couch, I finally made it home after 4. Today isn't going to be as fun as I would like it to be. Blech.

Oh, and I met some peeps from the Buzzkill Romantics. Even though I was drunk, annoying, kissing her ass and trying to hook up a show with them, the guitarist seemed really nice and was appreciative that I post their music. I LOVE this song:

Listening to: The Buzzkill Romantics - Pretty Girls Need Friends Not Lovers

Punk Rock Mom!

You're a punk rock mommy! DIY is probably your
motto, because you're a punk mama at heart.
Your kids are getting your independent spirit
and guts, and learning to solve problems
themselves. You love it when they show their
independence, even when it's breaking your
heart.


What kind of a freaky mother are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Listening to:Youth Brigade - Punk Rock Mom

Guilty About Guilty Pleasures.

Why do I feel so guilty being lazy? It's such a rare thing, you'd think I'd treasure it. God damn Catholic guilt. I haven't gone to church since I was 15. I don't even remember the 'Our Father' (In my head it goes something like, "Our Father, 'Tis of Thee...") Yet this Catholic guilt/ProtestantAmerican worth ethic FORBIDS ME watching TV without some pangs of regret. I should be doing something better with my life. Well, tonight I should be at the Walkmen show, but I don't want to talk about it. Besides that, there's really nothing else I NEED to be doing. But I can't finish my movie until I've accomplished something. So I'm writing this scattered post to prove myself worthy of the last hour of "The Last Picture Show."

I'm loving this summer, as you may have read. I don't have school to worry about, and my band is no stress. As long as I keep the house clean, dinner on the table, son healthy, I've got no restrictions, no stress. Jeremy's been staying up late, which means I can too without having to sacrifice any sleep since he's been sleeping til at least 8. It's been nearly 90 here every day for a week so every afternoon Jeremy and I have spent at least an hour in the pool. Well slept, tan, I haven't been this relaxed in a while.

Which is sad considering I can't watch a movie at 10 o'clock at night without feeling like I'm stealing the time from something more meaningful. I guess part of my brain thinks I should be working on my Great American Novel right now. F it. I'm watching TV.

Listening to:
The Walkmen - The Rat right click to open in a new window. And then tell me how tonight's show was.

Extraneous links brought to you by:
Angelfire's slow ass server's taking a half hour to upload an MP3.

M.S. Anyone have some server space to lend? I get more room on free gmail than I do for my paid storage space.

I'm Your Number Twenty One Fan!

Crazy as it might seem, I'm number twenty one if you google (with the quotes), "I love America." Not bad considering there's at least, what, a couple hundred other websites out there besides mine?

To celebrate, The Cure - Killing an Arab

You're Right - I Have No Shame

Put up a couple pix from last night in my 'parties, etc' photo album. There's a bunch more on mixermixer. In fact, my butt now adorns their main page! Not quite as embarassing as the other photo, however. I don't wanna talk about it.

Last night was really fun. I got blitzed and sang 'Hash Pipe' and 'Warning' really, really poorly. There were a bunch of people there, Chris and her new interest (?), mixer people, Frank, James, and my new friend Matt! I've known Matt for a year and have hung out with him countless times, but last night we finally made it official. We've stepped beyond being acquaintances and are now, officially, friends. Not speed-dial worthy friends yet, but maybe someday.

I've got to run and get ready for tonight...I'm going to comedy night at 4th and B, then on to the Ken Club to see Campaign For Quiet, San Diego's sexxiest rocker boys.

Listening to: The Secret Machines. Right click to open Nowhere Again in a new window. One of the better new songs I've heard in a while.

Witty Title

Ana ditched me for tomorrow night so now I've got to figure out how I'm going to kill the 2 hours between practice and an acceptable time for going to the bar. I need more friends. Looks like I'm going to have to bug Frank, who will be going to Soma on Saturday to buy me my ticket to the Hives! He's the coolest! They're the coolest!!

Here I was slightly worried about my history final - I needed 42/100 to get an A in the class. Got to love the high standards at community college. But tonight my prof told us that 21 of the questions are "c" and that all 20 of the true/false are true. So now I need to study hard enough to be able to get ONE question right on my own. Done sweat.

So now all I've got left is 3 kinda easy papers for philosophy and 8 hours of stats to gaurante a 55% on the final. So Sunday's going to suck, spent inside on what will inevitably be a perfect beach day, but then, just a few more hours in class and I'm done with the semester. I'M NEVER GOING TO DO MATH AGAIN. EVER! You can't make me.

Today was good. I've been feeling really guilty lately about not being as super of a Super Mom as I would like to be (<5 hours of sleep for days will do that), so I dedicated the whole of my morning and afternoon to Jeremy - trains and more trains, playdough, sandbox, library, park, tacos like he wanted for dinner, retucked him twice tonight since I got home from class. I feel better now. Sleeps does wonders to patience and virtue.

Just to warn you guys, my history professor, who is a complete ass and only in extreme cases has something nice to say about anyone, says that I'm brilliant and going to be famous soon. Enjoy your time with me now, cuz once I've got hordes of fans, it's all over for you proles.

These guys played with the Pawnshop Cowboys last week and now this is like the 5th time I've listened to this song tonight. Slowly but surely I will learn local music here. It was so much easier to do in Duluth where I knew literally everyone in the 'scene.' Now I just feel like a geek.

The Buzzkill Romantics - Pretty Girls Need Friends Link to band here.

Little Less Conversation

Took rattie to the doc today and he says that it's a tumor, probably cancer, then handed me an $80 bill for the exam and a $500 estimate for the surgery. So now I'm left with a heartbreaking decision I can't make yet: let it eat her alive in hopes that she miraculously recovers or put a hit out for her. Or start doing internet porn, but it's my rat, not my first-born we're talking about here. $500 is the difference between making rent or not. Personally, I'd rather keep my apartment without my rat than keep my rat and be on the streets, where there's plenty of damn rats anyway.

But anyway, that's where I seem to be a lot lately. Stuck between choices that are either impossible or unwanted. Hard to take action either way when neither thing is anything you really want, or can want. Yeah, you.

Today was crazy, this week will be much the same. Woke up with Jeremy at 6:30 (waaaay too early. We were both tired and cranky the whole day), cleaned my whole apartment, took a couple loads to the laundry, built the coolest train tracks I've ever built, did my statistics take-home exam, practiced bass, paid the bills, took my rat to the vet, played t-ball with Jeremy, made dinner, went to a study group at Denny's for my stats class, gave Jeremy his bath and put him to bed, and SAT DOWN WITH NOTHING TO DO for the first time since before 6:30 this morning.

But the good news is, ladies and gentleman, Mrs. Magee is dead. Serious this time, I swear.

And I'm about to be if I don't hit the hay. It's finals next week, so please excuse the potential lack of posting/emails/phone calls. Nuh-night.

Elvis vs. JXL - A Little Less Conversation

I'll Be There to Meet You Lazy Bones

A deep sadness pervades today. I've only once, I think, slipped in to anything truly personal here, so I'm biting my tongue tonight.

So, instead, I'll ramble about my night last night. I desperately needed a drink or five so James and I headed to the Alibi. I hereby nominate myself for Token Drunk Dancing Girl of the 2004...I hadn't even finished my first drink, but The Attatchments played a damn fine 6-song set. Once again I'm totally blown away by what passes for an opening band at a dive bar here in San Diego. I don't think this town will ever succeed in jading me. I wish I were a better reviewer, but I find it so hard to categorize music and when I'm at a show I'm way too busy enjoying myself to be taking mental notes of catchy riffs.

The Pawnshop Cowboys were up next and I was busy studying Drew, the bassist and breaking glasses the whole set. Drew is seriously one of the best bassists I've seen, locally anyway, so I tried to break it to the rest of the band as lightly as I could that there's NO WAY IN HELL I'm filling his shoes. They seem to be OK with that, though, and if I have half as much fun playing with them as I do seeing them live, I don't think I'll care much either.

Frank showed up somewhere in the mess and had to deal with the, by then, drunk flirty Anna. You know how I be. James told me yesterday that that's why people like me so damn much which made me realize that I've got about 10 more good years in me and then I'm going to have to come up with a new gimick. Hopefully by then I'll be fabulously rich so I can just buy pool boys at whim. Yes. That is now my new life plan.

I really, truly hate those paper toilet seat covers and even after at least a couple years of trying to get used to them, I just can't. Especially when I'm drunk. You have to so gingerly pluck those things out of the case lest you tear it where you most need it, then spend a minute of your life you'll never get back trying to rip the mid-section of the thing away from the rest of it without, again, tearing it where you'll most need it. So then, you place it on the seat, the midpart drips down into the toilet and starts sucking up the toilet water and pulling the rest of it into the toilet. So then it's a race to the finish. Pray you're not in some complicated-somehow pants that take you more than 5 seconds to get down or you might get the ol' 'PSYCH!' from the fucking thing as it slips into the toilet right when you sit your ass down, giving you those crabs you were trying to avoid, or, worse yet, 400 lb. girl ass germs. It's a love/hate relationship with those things. The covers, not the germs.

So, after 5 drunken attempts at getting the seat cover thing right, I finally rejoined the rest of the world. My original plan was a 2-drink max, drive myself home at midnight kind of thing. I've said that before, haven't I? Never happens. I looked down at my watch and magically 2 hours had passed, and instead of sobering up, as to my original plan when I saw it was nearly 11, I was as drunk as, well, as drunk as everyone expected me to be. So then I had to let James take me back to his place to sober up. He had a 80-pound veggie tray that I made very very quick work of. I know I've said this once before tonight already, but thank you James for always being there for me, including 2am on a Wednesday night.

And so now, just to get a bit of my overwhelming emotional dilema off my chest, I will share some Radiohead lyrics from a gorgeously sad song and be done with it:

Red wine and sleeping pills
Help me get back to your arms
Cheap sex and sad films
Help me get where I belong

- Motion Picture Soundtrack, Kid A

Mother is the Necessity of all Invention

I never thought that a night at the Moose Lodge would be such a potentially life-altering experience. I'm now the new bass player for the Pawn Shop Cowboys and a tentative member of the Moose Lodge.

The only problem is that well, for one, I don't play bass. I've played guitar for 10 years and they said that they'd teach me what I needed to know, but I've got 6 weeks to learn a new instrument. That, and my penance for not having to pay any membership dues to the royal order of the moose is to bartend one night. The only drinks I know how to make are whiskey cokes, the Code V (my invention - code red mtn dew and vodka. Even at half and half, you can barely taste the vodka through all the chemicals. It's great!). Those and a white russian. And here I am, supposed to bartend sometime in the next few weeks. And learn the bass. And finals in 2 weeks. And everything else. My life is gon' be crazy, but what else is new, right?

Last night was a great time. Frankeee met me here and we carpooled down to the band house. I helped them load up and we headed down to South Park for a wild night at the Moose Lodge. The Pawnshop Cowboys were on first, right around the time my buzz kicked in. I was in an out of the stageroom during their set, but not because they didn't rock. I remember thinking to myself as I sat in the luxurious Moose Lodge bathroom how great it was that I live in San Diego where a band like that is the opener, instead of Duluth, where they'd be closing the show. Really talented guys and since they've got horns I was totally sold. Which is why I ended up talking to Chris, the lead singer/guitarist, and, apparently, joining the band.

Next up was the UltraVires - a powerpop agglomeration of, what, 8 or 9 crazy cats from LA. Total cliche'd Iggy Popish lead singer, punk tambourine girls, etc. They were great. I danced so hard to their cover of "Rollin' on a River" I thought my head would explode.

Campaign for Quiet was headlining this, the first of many rock n' roll nights at the Mooselodge. And what can I say about the sexiest band alive? They sadly entrusted my photographic skills to try to capture them rocking beneath the mounted moose head, but I was so wasted by that point I couldn't look through the view finder of the f'n camera. So, in advance, I apologize for wasting the last of the film.

There wasn't much time between the end of the show and last call, but I made the most of it. Somehow, amazingly, someone started playing the Dead Kennedys, so when that guy offered to pay my way, I was so down for becoming a Moosette. Drinks so cheap I cry happy tears? Sign me up!

Left the show with Frank and his friend Ben to get some carne asada fries to quiet the beast. Driving around San Diego, at 3 am and 300 mph with the windows rolled down on a perfect summer night blasting:

The Darkness - I Believe in a Thing Called Love

The perfect ending to a night at the Moose Lodge. ROCK ON!

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