My brother hipped me to The Killers' new single, pointing out that it's in the same general style as our new single. Good stuff, check out the video for "Somebody Told Me" (.wm / real) to check out the synth/dance tunes. With all those synths going on, why do they only show 2 guys playing guitar? Who's playing all 'dem keys?

Anyways, you can catch them on the road with two other bands I dig, Stellastarr* and San Francisco's Evening. Should be some good shows.

Time go wash the blood/ink off my arm. Yum.

Ouch. I just got tattooed for the first time in 3 1/2 years, and my arm is all burning and sore. It's actually making it hard to type! My reward for being brave is a beer at 2:00 in the afternoon, but after this is done I'm off to try and fix our toilet. Fun! I would like to say that I got a "new" tattoo, which I did, but it covered up an old tattoo, so I haven't really upped the numbers at all.

Oh, and we leave on a short tour of California (and Phoenix) in 8 days. We're playing with some bigger bands this time around, so the venues should be nice and I might actually get my own monitor onstage. Lucky me!

Los Angeles was great, the show was great, the people were nice, and I ate a lot of good food, including a "Bearded Mr. Frenchy" for breakfast on Tuesday. Boo-ya, french toast covered in corn flakes and slapped on the griddle that way. Yummy.

A crazy homeless lady wouldn't leave me alone while I was drinking my coffee, she was convinced I was an actor and wouldn't go away, even after I told her I was a musician. She proceeded to tell me how her nephew was in a band called Tonic that sold a million records but he wouldn't give her any money. She really wanted to read my palms, but I faked a call on my mobile phone and took off.

I did, however, see Larry Miller reading a paper at the newstand next to my brother's house, and I could only describe him as "that guy from Best In Show who tried to get his son off the roof by yelling 'I’ll gouge your right eye with my thumb! I’m gonna punch you in the eye till it turns to jelly! I’ll stab you with forks till you bleed, how bout that?!'" That was pretty cool.

I'm gonna go watch some hockey playoffs now.

Phew, lots to cover today.

I'm leaving this afternoon for Los Angeles for a special Communiqué show tomorrow night at Spaceland in Silverlake. If you're of the Southern California persuasion come on down, it should be a lot of fun, and I know the whole band are looking forward to playing new songs outside of the Bay Area.

Saturday night we went to see The Twilight Singers, Greg Dulli of the Afghan Whigs' new(ish) band. The band sounded fabulous, and having heard all the rumours about Dulli's stage act, I can definitely say that they're all (probably) true. He is a fine performer as well as an excellent songwriter. They played for what seemed like an eternity (over two hours with very little time between encores), and closed out the night with 5 Whig's songs ("Somethin' Hot," "Crazy," "Uptown Again," "66," and "Faded"). Which I guess are the first 4 songs from 1965 and the last song from Black Love. Damn, putting on "Faded" again right now on iTunes makes me realize just how fucking good that show was. If you live in Portland you should definitely go see them tonight, and Seattle-ites should hit up their show tomorrow.

Dulli had some great one-liners ("Baby, get your fingers out of your ears or get some toilet paper, I can't look at that shit") and played up the campy-showmanship for the camera (they were filming the show for something or other), including popping open a bottle of champagne at the piano and playing a tinkling cover of "Dancing Queen." Actually, the night was full of covers or semi-covers done during vamp breakdowns in their songs, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "All You Need Is Love," "Something," Outkast's "Roses" and a full version of Björk's "Hyper-ballad" all peeked their lyrical heads in at some point in time.

The only real down time in the set was the first encore, during which Dulli talked at the piano and did his Abba bit, then invited Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees) out onstage to play a couple songs, including Holiday's "Strange Fruit" and the last song from Blackberry Belle, "Number Nine." Things started to drag and the songs' languid pace caused a lot of people to leave (the place was only half full by this time, I felt kinda sorry for the band seeing how much energy they were putting into the set). Everything else was quite excellent, and I'll definitely go back another time.

It rained yesterday, but that didn't stop the 30(!) or so indie-rock kids from heading down to the park in Oakland for a game of baseball, or softball, or whatever you call it when you have a large orange batting cages ball and about 9 people in the outfield. Good times though, even though I only got to bat once. I'll be back again in a couple of weeks, and I'm really counting on the weather being friendlier.

New MP3 of the week, I'm back to putting them up on Sunday, and have dutifully patted myself on the back. Off to Southern California!