Christmas is coming. There was an eclipse last night. The portents are all around us! Surely, the fat man in RED COMETH!
I Love Christmas. We might even get a white one this year. I’m looking forward to my Christmas traditions, but some of them are just not going to fit. I’ve got to go to Ellicott City, but there’s no way I’ll manage to ride a train (not counting the Metro or light rail or something). We got a tree, but for the first time ever I got it from a lot rather than a farm. Presents are purchased, but there are still some outstanding, and I have NO clue. The lights are beautiful, but they are all LEDs and have a strange actinic glare to them that flickers on the edge of my vision to the rhythm of alternating current. My brother has a son and I have purchased my first onesie.
ilyAIMY will sort of be on a break for a little bit. Friday’s Christmas Eve… it’s hard to gig on Christmas Eve. Saturday’s Christmas Day. It’s hard to gig on Christmas Day. I’m glad for these days, sort of annoyed that they don’t fall during the week, so we are bound to go a couple of weeks without a big show. After the letdown of this weekend’s Teavolve show there’s all the more hunger to get out there and rock out. I’ll have to excrete all the more ferver into my open mics for a little while.
The Java Mammas themselves pop out to perform some tunes at the Java Mammas open mic. With the Reisterstown Patch eagerly filming the results. Transcendent Third performing at Java Mammas. They were incredible and heartbreaking…. some of the best pop writing in existence. With an art degree under my belt and a decade of being an independent music performer rapidly becoming my entire Life, often “pop music” is used as a derogatory term – but here I simply mean that they write some of the most emotionally accessible music I’ve ever heard.
It’s interesting to be working retail in an instrument shop right now. People are either buying really low-end stuff for other people, or buying really high-end stuff for themselves. It’s very rare that a person knows their experienced musician friend well enough to buy REAL items for them. The few who’ve come in with money to spend and a clear vision of their friend’s or families’ musical proclivities have either headed for CDs or long-admired and desired guitars or mandolins. Everything else is just too personal. I really enjoyed the guy who came in looking for exotic strings for his bluegrass buddy. Apparently they do stocking stuffers of the weirdest strings they can find each year. He bought a bunch of gut and silver strings and contemplated some fun copper-wounds.
Well, I hope everyone’s got good holidays coming up for them. I’ve got interesting familial complications this year, but now that I think about it, I’ve probably had familial complications EVERY year. I just didn’t bother showing up.
I hope everyone is safe and warm and well-fed. And if you’re not, maybe you should drop on in to my place.
O After family Christmas, we went over to Sharif’s house where we gathered with lots of OTHER post-familial Christmasers. It was a great night with a little gift exchange, some tequila and general merriment. Maui, Sharif’s parrot, probably had the best time of all, cavorting from shoulder to shoulder and crapping on my new Christmas Wampa shirt. He did a lot of attack of poor Peter, who also came out the winner of the gift exchange, finding himself the proud owner of a Star Wars lunchbox. Peter’s Christmas win is short-Lived as everyone else wanted the lunchbox too. Joanna put on her best pouty face and I think Sharif might’ve threatened a little bit with his Benchmade and the lunchbox changed hands.
I bought a new speaker from my friend Brennan at Bill’s Music Warehouse and it has been added to my Gear Stack. It’s obviously getting dangerous. If the cats ever get to the top of my Monolith of Noise we will all be in danger. Christmas continues!
New Year’s Eve also = Party Pants. Pleather really is the way to welcome a new year. Happy 2011! I don’t drink screwdrivers. However, if someone made a drink called a SONIC screwdriver, I’d probably get really excited. And try to shove it up Kristen’s nose. Dan Zimmerman and Sharif making up the song and ocaccionally the chords – welcoming the new year with a questionable rendition of Auld Lang Syne. VERY questionable. Things are winding down. 2010 is dead, 2011 has been well and truly rung in. Sharif places his tongue within Heather’s bubble. Jade is glum because Heather’s getting all the action. She would rethink this if she’d actually been the object of Sharif’s moist affections.
