apocalypsenerd

Stellaluna is playing a show in a little over a week at WOMEN. I'll be playing solo (or probably with Ryan) along with Freddy, Chris, and Jon. Freddy is Former Ghosts-- he's awesome and sometimes Jamie from Xiu Xiu is in the band with him. Chris and Jon are Whitman and Nicole Kidman respectively. Should be a fun night!

 Apparently my dog has separation anxiety. I have always known that he can be fussy sometimes because of the fact that he's a rescue, but I guess his sense of abandonment has grown since the move. It is not uncommon for an animal to need some time to adjust to a new surrounding. You would think that neighbors in one of Hollywood's most dog-populated neighborhoods would understand that. However, upon walking home from the market last night, our landlady called me telling me that the dog situation needs to be taken care of immediately.Situation? What situation? We were unaware of how loudly the dog had been barking yesterday and I was pretty shocked that several neighbors had already complained in the 8-hour block in which we had been coming in and out of the apartment. 

So now I have to dump my dog over at my mom's for a few days until I can figure out what the best course of action will be. Am I angry? A little bit. Am I upset? Very much so. I love this mutt and he's already been through so much. Some people suck. 

Other than that, I had a mostly fantastic weekend. On Saturday we ran errands and then went to Chinatown for a delicious four-course dinner. After that we went to the Walt Disney Concert Hall to see the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Dirty Projectors. The show was nothing short of amazing. The Phil sounded just as great as ever and the program that Dave had curated for them greatly foreshadowed the arrangements for The Getty Address, which the band performed in full along with Alarm Will Sound. I had heard Alarm Will Sound in various landscapes, but this one had to have been one of their more innovative performances. The show ended with DP hashing out a handful of songs off of Bitte Orca on their own; stripped down with only vocals, acoustic guitar, and Nat on upright. Super, super, super great night. 

We had the best seats too. Third row!




Sunday was pretty eventful as well. We woke up early and walked down to the Farmer's Market. The Hollywood Farmer's Market has always been one of the bigger ones in the state, but I feel like ever since I left, it has only gotten bigger. Name ANYTHING that you would need in your kitchen and they will mostly likely have it. We made a killing on this week's groceries and we had super cheap pupusas there for breakfast. I really wished that Naomi was around to drool at everything with me. Also, Cafecito Organico...their iced toddy was insanely good. I am thinking this coffee beats out Cartel. Not THAT is something. 



After the Farmer's Market we finished our other errands and I made dinner at home. Panko crusted pork cutlets,Swiss Chard w/ bacon, and roasted heirloom gold and blue potatoes. Mmm.

 It was warm all day and night yesterday, which is why I was taken aback when it randomly started pouring cats and dogs outside my window this morning. The rain has been pretty consistent; scattered showers making the winter air feel heavy. I probably shouldn't complain about the cold, seeing as though half of the Northeast is covered in white. I can't help but feel a little gloomy though. I never was one to enjoy a frozen nose and chilly toes. 

Yesterday was productive and a whole lot of fun. We got our errands done,had lunch at L.A's best-kept Indian food lunch special, assembled some furniture, then took the subway downtown to get some last-minute tacos on Olvera Street before going to a show at the Smell. Anyone who knows anything about noise should know who the Haters are. They've been at it for over 30 years and it's kind of nice to see them still truckin'. We mostly went to see Sissy Spacek though, being the weirdo John Wiese fangirl that I am. I had a really good conversation with him about record labels and moving around. He just moved back to L.A last month and we discussed how sometimes this place just sucks you back in. The highlight of my night however, was when he sold me his super limited (4 copies were for sale out of 10) acetate 10" split with GX Jupiter-Larssen...for half of what he was selling it to others. This was mainly bought it as a present to James Fella to make up for not being able to get dinner and hang out with him before I moved.

You know what's more satisfying than buying things for yourself? Buying things for other people that you know they will love. I got so giddy, I've already told him about it. Now to resist the temptation of listening to it before I mail it out. I'm afraid of damaging it somehow though,so I definitely won't. 

There was a good crowd last night, too. Saw some old pals from Phoenix (Francis and Hunter) and got caught up a little bit about art and drama and life; also saw Kyle for a hot minute and spent some time playing catch-up with Jim about booking woes and various food places he insists I should try. If he's right about this entirely vegan Ruben sammich around the corner from my house, then I won't know night from day. 


 

 We moved this week. It's been exhausting,exciting, and emotional. For the most part, I am still a jumbled up mess, but happy as a clam nonetheless. The night of our move our good friends came over to help us load up the U-Haul. Ben and Corinne, Mike and Naomi, and Chase were there to laugh it up, pack it up, and move us on out of there. After we finally got things squared off, we all went back to the Horowitz residence for some comfort food and home-made beer. I am pretty sure that Ben is a Renaissance Man. Our intentions were to stay at their place and head out West in the morning, but upon further consideration, we opted to leave at around midnight as to avoid the morning rush hour traffic and secure a parking spot for the truck. Eight highly delusional hours later, we were finally at our new home. We lucked out with the unload because there were some workers who were there to fix up our parking spot (custom made, hell yes) and they were bored and wanted to help us move. It took one hour to get all of our stuff out. Amazing. 

The past couple of days have been busy with unpacking and buying things and waiting for this service man to come and that bathroom guy to come. However, everything seems to be falling into place. Putting the pieces together is a challenge, but the picture is clear now. Ryan had his first interview and I go to my training for 826 in one week or so. I also have two other job interviews lined up, which if I am lucky enough to get one of those jobs, then I'll hopefully be making as much as I am used to with the magazine. They wanted to try and get me to stay, but as cool of a job as it is, I need to do something a little more fulfilling. While the salary is great, I am doing so much work and only a fraction of it feels good. I want to be able to have time to learn new things and help people. If my internships and such don't pay for a while then having a different job outside of what I do now will at least give me more time to focus on what is more important to me. 

Another thing that has made me feel good this week is that strangers have already taken note of my move and have been asking me to play shows. I wasn't thinking of playing any shows out here for a while just because I want to get settled in, but there were people who messaged me from random places like Riverside and Santa Monica who I have never met before who wanted to me to play. It's kind of refreshing to have people who aren't friends with me support what I do; just so that it doesn't just feel like my friends are humoring my attempt at making music or anything. My friends are amazing, but sometimes an outsider's opinion means something completely different. 

Surprisingly, I am 100% adjusted to living in Los Angeles again. I guess 18 years of living here does that. I haven't completely forgotten what Phoenix feels like, but there is definitely something magical going on in my apartment right now and I rather like it. 

I'm probably being silly even making a new journal seeing as though I was hardly updating the other one, but I thought I'd do so anyway. Things are changing and they're changing quickly. I was going through a period where I was constantly checking back on journal entries from various years past, and I decided that if I was truly going to throw myself into a new, more pro-active lifestyle then I shouldn't dwell on the things I cannot change and I should just move on. I guess this was my way of moving on. As I said, I wasn't really writing in this thing anymore, but I'm going to give it another try. It's pretty relaxing sometimes to just jot down thoughts and bullshit. The only real reason why I am adding a few friends on here is to have a tool to keep in touch because sometimes I'm bad at doing that, too. 

The apartment is a mess, Ryan is packing the TV into a giant box, and it's nearly 1a.m. We embark on the drive to L.A tomorrow to drop off the van, fly back to Phoenix, pick up the U-Haul, and head on back West. After four and a half years, I'm finally going home. It's a weird feeling to go somewhere called home, but to not have the family and closest friends that I associate with home. Everyone has moved away, and I mean everyone. I know people, I like a lot of people, and there are a bunch of friends, but it's not what I think of when I think of This is not so much a home-coming at all, as it is a new start in a familiar setting, where I can finally do work that makes me feel good. If you thought the job market was tough in Phoenix in this economy, you're even more screwed when you're a journalist. There weren't even good internships for me out here. Internships! That's FREE work, dudes. And the internships that I was offered? The devil's work. So no thanks. 

I'm going to miss people, miss a few places, miss my coffee joints, dive-bars, and my list of a dozen or so favorite places, but I don't really think my move is a big deal. To be honest, I don't really feel like some of the people that I took the time to care about care about me at all anymore. Time and distance does that. You get busy, you're not around as much as you used to, you get replaced. It's a shame, really. 

For now I'm just going to let sleeping dogs lie. Like this one. Snickerdoodle, my little rescue pup who's going to be expanding his territory all around southern California soon. 

 Test post!