My fingers aren't working properly yet, my head is still sleepy and the coffee hasn't come yet, so I'm becoming very familiar with the backspace key.

The show thursday night was pretty fun, things sounded really, really good onstage, even though the Stork tends to sound hollow and tinny out in the audience. We played some pool in the dark back room of the club before we went onstage, and I drank shots of Jack chased with Bud, something I haven't done since I was 21. Felt good by the time we went onstage, but crashed in the van out front afterwards waiting to load out and go home to get some sleep.

So we played with this band from Portland called Monkey to the Monster, who were pretty good, and then yesterday I got a huge box of new review material for Rocket-Fuel and their CD was sitting right there on top of the box. I was startled briefly by the strange coincidence.

Went to dinner at the yuppies-in-the-mission restaurant last night, had a great time talking once we got our seat by the front window, a cloud of dockers and blue button down shirts hovering over us the entire time. The food was great, steak frites again for me, succulent and a tad bit garlicky and 100% tasty. Slept well aftewards, ready for a lazy Saturday made for cleaning and reading and making a mix tape for my brother's birthday. Going to make a second attempt at learning how to make MP3s from minidiscs today, this shouldn't be so difficult. Email your tips.

I'm pouty today. Work sucks, it's one of those days that I'm tired tired tired of all the people here. I don't necessarily hate them, but, well, go away people. Go away. I am looking forward to rock show #2 for the week, and we're playing tonight right down the street from my house in pretty downtown Oakland. Should be fun.

I made tremendously potent garlic bread last night, and I can still taste the garlic. It's kinda icky.

So the show went really well, I was amazed at how good things can sound onstage with good monitors and a decent soundcheck. I chilled on the dancing-while-playing tip a bit tonight as to concentrate on the sound, and was happy how it turned out. There were quite alot of people in attendance as well, and many wanted t-shirts. I ran into a friend of a friend who I drove to my hometown once, and he was there to see my band even though he didn't know that I was playing with them. Charmed. We loaded up the new van with all our gear and drove it to the show, perfectly parked out front, looking clean and friendly.

This holiday week is making things weird, so I'm taking my work drive up in Sonoma county tomorrow instead of Wednesday. I'm still tempted to swim in the Russian River.

When I fall to earth, I hear applause.
I love to hear applause.

Tonight's our big show, and I'm showing a surprising lack of nervousness. I'm actually quite excited, it will be good to have a decent sound system and monitors and such, luxuries I'm not prone to getting when playing shows around here. I just hope my Moog is working tonight, it's been on the fritz lately.

Went and saw the Red House Painters last night, their first show in San Francisco in over 4 years. I had been forwarned that they were both crappy and boring, but have come to the conclusion that they are neither. In fact, I found them to be quite good *and* entertaing, although my sleepiness and raging headache caused me to leave early. They did play Make Like Paper, a song I thought I would *never* hear live, but there it was, tight and loud and twenty minutes long.

The only bad thing about them is that their drummer looked like a cross between Will Oldham and Beetlejuice. This scared me. Talk about ick.

MP3 of the week: is late again. I know what it is going to be though, and it's a treat this time. Not like Islands In The Stream isn't a treat...