Just another date night. She'd rather be watching Late Night...

While Jon and I were watching Conan O'Brien we heard him mention something about a DYI video contest. Well, I gave it a shot. I wrote some lyrics and Jon turned it into a song, recorded it and had an MP3 in my hands in record time. While he was recording the song, I was working on the little 30 second spot.

Here it is. Enjoy!

Dumbing down... coffee?

I'm somewhat disturbed by this new advertising campaign McDonald's has launched trying to promote their new Lattes and otherwise fancy coffee drinks. Until today I had only ever seen the television ads where there are two attractive people sitting in a cute European looking cafe enjoying coffee, listening to music, and reading books.
Then, when one of them asks the other, "Have you heard that McDonald's is now serving Lattes?" they both get positively gleeful.
They toss their books aside and start excitedly going on about reality television and gossip magazines. They start confessing to not really liking classical music, or understanding languages, or reading poetry. You can actually see the IQ points fall away with every confession. They seem elated by the idea that they no longer have to make an effort to think for themselves and that they can finally put aside intellectual pursuits to join the ranks of TMZ watchers and OK Magazine readers!

This morning I heard the radio spot. I've only heard it once, so this isn't verbatim, but the gist is, there was a very happy woman's voice talking about how she could finally forget about her Russian Lit degree and now be free to take on the exciting task of catching up on gossip magazines and reality television! (What is it with reality television?)


So basically, what these ads are trying to say is, "McDonald's is now selling McStupid juice and they are so proud of it!"

Know when to walk away.

I like Zach Braff. He is my "friend" on Myspace and I read his blog. So when he threw down the challenge to make a music video, I decided to go for it. What is the worst that could happen? I could look silly and maybe make a few people laugh? It is a win win situation! (Laughter = good)
The contest rules are that you had to *lip-sync to this song and somehow incorporate places specific to where you are. I tried to use every music video cliche' I could come up with, with such limited time and resources. (I had two days to get it done and I only had my little point and shoot to do it on. Darian was a HUGE help. She was the button pusher for the whole thing!) So, it ended up with loads of "Music video face" :-)
I used the Lakeview cemetery in a lot of this because it is close to my apartment and has many historical Seattle people buried there. It is also one of my personal favorite places to visit in the summer, it is quite pretty and peaceful. I was sticking to the rules, that is why it is how it is. If I was just making a video for this song I would have taken it another direction. It was, however, a very fun & funny challenge.


I searched around Youtube to see what other people did. So far this one is my favorite. (I'm a sucker for adorable tots playing air guitar.)




*When I uploaded the video to youtube, the compression knocked the sync a little out of whack. The original is better.

She's a (wo)Maneater...

The look on her face says it all.


Oh-oh here she comes
Watch out boy she'll chew you up
Oh-oh here she comes
She's a maneater

Comparing scars.

Every year June 16th creeps up on me. When I start to see all of the Father's Day commercials all over the television and the newspapers, I immediately start to feel sad. I love my dad, he is one of my most favorite people. The Father's Day sadness has nothing to do with him.

In 1996 I woke up on Father's Day (Which was June 16 that year) to my phone ringing way too early in the morning. My friend, Jamie was on the line. She was crying. In between gasps of air she informed me that JD, George and Carrie were all killed in a car wreck at about 3AM. (A car wreck that I had been dreaming about over and over again every night for alomst a month before, which made it that much worst. It was the moment my nightmare literally came true. Which also brings up about 100 other issues that refuse to open to public discussion.)
I don't think I have ever really been the same person again after that phone call. When a small group of your friends get all wiped out in the same evening when you and they are that young, you really don't have the tools to comprehend what just happened. It is bad enough when you lose one person, but to lose three young people all at the same time. It just makes you look at life differently.

I was closest to JD, so it is his loss I feel the most, still, every day, but I remember them all. I talk about them all. I keep thinking that if I talk about them as often as possible, I am somehow keeping them alive. I keep thinking if I tell people their story and stop even one person from driving drunk, their deaths meant something. They died for a reason, no matter how small that reason might seem.

I loved JD very much, he was my friend, and he believed in me at a time where I really needed someone to believe in me. He supported me and was a great friend during one of the hardest years of my life. He helped bring music into my life, he backed me up the first time I stepped foot on a stage and always made sure I could see him whenever I played shows because he knew how much I hated being on stage, and now he is dead. (My desire to perform on a stage died along with him.)

Now three people will never know what it was like to be over the age of 23, or get married, or have babies, or grow old... It is all so fucking meaningless. Getting drunk at that party was not worth what it ended up costing everyone that night. (The drivers of the two cars in the accident that killed them were both drunk. They both lived.)

I remember at JD's funeral, the funeral director was trying to console me. He told me that it may not seem like it now, but every death makes sense at some point. I'm still waiting for the day for these deaths to "make sense". I'm still looking for answers to all of the questions that phone call left me with. Every day I'm still looking for signs that he is somewhere nearby no matter how silly that may sound.

When I was riding in the passanger seat of the car this weekend staring out the window, thinking of them, feeling pretty hopeless, this car passed us. I just happened to have my camera:


That's all I have right now.