love me some james brown funky christmas.
i can't even remember the last time i blogged. i feel like everytime something blogworthy happens, i wait until something else coming up passes so i can blog about that too.
but i keep waiting and not blogging.
i think my last blog was about emrys. that was just the beginning of my san diego comic con adventure with dagmar and davidson and bewl, all of whom i met for the first time. i had even more fun than i could've imagined, and i'm gonna make a comic con video sometime. hopefully before the 09 one in july. i met some amazing friends that i fell in love with long before meeting them, and they turned out to be even more awesome than i could've imagined.
so i've been having an awesome time turning into a bosco's barfly. bosco's is my Cheers, and it's walking distance from my house. AND on my walk home from work. it's always full of great people and great microbrews. and i met one of my soon-to-be best friends there. so life is pretty friggin' sweet right now.
well, a little rain must fall.
my mom called sunday to tell me that my grandma [her mom] passed away.
i think the hardest part was hearing her cry...i've prolly only heard her cry about 5 times in my life. and we were BAWLING.
it was totally unexpected; she had all the christmas decorations out, and the counter was covered with cornbread so she could make stuffing. my cousin had to break in the house, and he found her asleep on the couch in her rollers...still in her pajamas.
so she didn't suffer. i mean...couch nap is my way of choice for sure.
the funeral was yesterday. my uncle and his family, the closest to my grandma, were too choked up to speak. so my mom said some awesome words, and i sang my grandma's favorite song, O Holy Night. she would ask me to sing that year round, and eventually i'd roll my eyes and make up and excuse why i couldn't. but of course i always caved and sang it at christmas. her favorite preacher gave the eulogy, and it was perfect.
my grandma pinned her hair with bobby pins almost every night, and my mom had gotten her this magnetic bobby pin holder for christmas. so she put it in the casket.
my grandma and i used to play uno every summer when my mom would leave me up there for a couple of weeks.
so i put an uno card in her casket.
the Draw Four card.
that one would always tickle her to death and make her teasingly accuse me of cheating.
she would say "goat head." and i'd say "excUUUUSE ME?" and she'd say,
"i said 'go ahead.' "
my mom was like "don't you wanna put the wild card in there?"; something a little nicer? but i told her that the draw four was the one that made her laugh.
i also put the Old Maid card in her casket.

http://www.legacy.com/OnlineAthens/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=121739736

hello gang.  iris tagged me to talk about my first car, so here goes.
my mom surprised me with it my sophomore year...spring of 95.
it was an '86 mazda rx-7.  the color was "driftwood", and the inside was merlot.
a little bit browner than the one seen here:


it had power everything, and no back seats.


the previous owner had installed some anti-theft thing that would act up...meaning sometimes my car wouldn't start.  it got very annoying.
so my mom ended up selling it to a different friend a couple of years later for the same price she bought it for.  score.

my next car actually seems more like my first car....it was a 97 escort that i got in 96 because, at that time, it was only $1200 more to get a brand new one.  it was the year that ford revamped the escort, so it was much sleeker.  i got a green 5-speed.  they didn't have a green one on the lot that was ready/inspected, so i left in a red one, and dealer guy drove 3 hours to my college to switch with me...buy that man a coke!  i was freaking out because he was extremely late...turns out he didn't drive it over 55mph.
i had that car for 11 years until sept. of last year.  it never gave me any trouble, but it was just started to get to the replacement age. 

mkay. in other news, i wrote and recorded a christmas song over the weekend.  in my closet.  that is just gay times gay.  to the gayth power.  i didn't really try to write a christmas song; i was just sitting in traffic and humming mindlessly. i started to think about how lonely the holidays can be if you're single.  then i thought that having someone but not being able to be with them might be worse...
anyhoo, feel free to add it to your page.
*for those that added it yesterday, i uploaded a "better" version...so that the vocals don't sound like i'm in the closet.

CLICK!

it was a thousand degrees yesterday.
ok...97.
but the HUMIDITY!
right now, it's at 74%.  that's disgusting.  imagine a nice, hot steamy shower.  and how you get out and IMMEDIATELY wanna crack a window/open the door.
well imagine being TRAPPED IN IT.  oh, and add 20 degrees to that.

you can't even walk to your car without getting a sweat stache.  i thought a bug was in my shirt yesterday because i felt something crawling down my back.
it was just a sweat bead.
my hair is frizztastic.  i look like dianna ross after her 6th costume change at a super bowl half-time.

EMRYS!

So I kinda took off for California without telling most of you, but that's how I roll.  I was visiting friends, in San Francisco and LA.  I visited Joshua in San Fran, and I went to Comic Con in San Diego with Davidson, Dagmar, and Bewll.  I had an unbelievably awesome time, and that blog is forth-coming, but I think it's only right that I first blog about a key highlight of the trip:  Emrys.

 I met Emrys on my flight from San Francisco to LA.  I flew Southwest, so you know how you're supposed to line-up according to the number on your ticket.  Well as I got to the ticket-taker, there's this cute/goofy guy with a guitar on his back, and he's just standing at the front of the line.  With a big cheese grin, he said "Go ahead…I'm in the wrong line!"  And I handed my ticket to the ticket dude. He didn't get in the right line, he just stood there and continued to tell people that he's in the wrong line.

 Ok…either he's an idiot for not getting in the correct line, or he just needs the attention from telling everyone he's in the wrong line?  I think it's a little of both.  Who does that??!  I boarded the plane with the last group of folks, so there weren't many available seats.  But I luckily found a seat with a tiny posh LA couple, so I was stoked about having some extra elbow room. 

 She was an average sized girl with expensive sun glasses and a nice tan, and her boyfriend was quite skinny, had on a scarf and flip flops, and had a samurai ponytail on top of his head because he's hip and "edgy".  Sighhh.  As soon as I'm comfortable, guitar-douche from The Wrong Line smugly walks up and asks if I mind finding another seat so that he can sit with his friends.  I should've known.

 So I got up and gave him my seat while carefully making sure I remained expressionless.  Because I wasn't so much pissed as I was bummed that I lost my elbow room.  Not to mention I'm giving it up for a douchebag-attention whore-moron.  He was very nice about it and thanked me immensely.  Moments after I'm in my new, more cramped seat, he walks up to me and thanks me again while handing me a cd of himself:  Emrys. 

 So I say thanks, and then the lady across from him asks him what kind of music he plays because her son plays flamenco.  He did that whole pondering thing, where he doesn't know how to define his style, and he said, shit you not, "it's kind of like loooove music.  My friends call me cupid."  Then the California girl said "it's like love."   GAG!!!

 So Jeff, Dagmar, and Bebet picked me up from the airport (with party favors in tow!), and I immediately told them about Emrys.  So we open the cd, which says on the back how it's printed on hippie paper with hippie ink and how he hugged eleventeen trees afterwards, and we gave it a listen.

 It's typical C+ singer/songwriter crap with lots of pro-tools loops and a goddamned egg shaker on every track.  Full of weak guitar solos that he had to get someone else to play.  And it's not the cheesiness that gets me as much as the confusion at HOW the hell he thinks these songs mean "looooove".  It's the kind of music you can listen to 10 seconds of each track and think "I don't hate it.", but a whole song in its entirety is just too much.  They lyrics are hilariously trite:  "meet me at the oxygen BAR we can get real FAR you have to have a CAR if you wanna get around," et ceteRAR.

So for the rest of the trip we were Emrys this and Emrys that.  Emrys is now synonymous with all things Emrys.  It is also the antithesis of all things Emrys.

 The best part:  the cd insert has a picture of him with llamas, and he's not even trying to be ironic.  And I know that because I don't think he has the brain cells to be quite so Shellonius and have llama pics.  [I'm secretly jealous that he beat me to the llamas.]

 

 I tried to play the cd in two different hotel rooms and it wouldn't even budge.  Those clock radios weren't having it.

As soon as we got home, we stalked his myspace.  He has like 46 friends and no photo comments.  Which is a travesty.  But today, much to my dismay, [holy shit I just made a better rhyme than Emrys!] I discovered that he has another myspace page with friends and stuff.  Which is actually a blessing because now we can hear our favorite song, Carpe Diem.  Or as we like to sing, "carpe diuuuuuuhm, carpe diuuuuuuuuuhuuum."  Oh, also, I googled him to find his myspace, and I saw something about emryshanley.com

Um…ready?  Emryshanley.com takes you straight to his myspace!!!

Give him a listen.  Check out the llamas. I dare you to Top 8 him.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna friend request him from my music page.

 

Carpe Diem.

 

 

Clicky!

 

 

 

 

i decided to use this profile pic today because it was taken on my 6th birthday at Showbiz Pizza. [and today is my birfday.]
i haven't really given a shit about a birthday in years, but 30 seems like a cool one. and i'm very stoked. i hope the following sentiment doesn't offend anyone, but i'm so excited about being 30 and not being married or having kids or feeling old or hating life. i know some of you are those things, but i say it mainly because i called my best friend in the world...who is also turning 30 in a few weeks, and she is not looking forward to "getting old". she is married, has expressed regrets about it even though she loves him dearly, but she is also the youngest of 3 girls...all of whom are married with kids. i'm scared she isn't going to age well if she already considers herself old.
i'm typing this at work, and my building has been under renovation all summer. susan called me down to the second floor because the workers wanted to sing me happy birthday. it was very sweet. they could not believe i was 30. then one of the movers, a short, cute little lady who looks like she's in her 50s, asked me to guess her age. in fear of over-shooting though, i guessed 51. she floored me when she said she was 67!!!
THAT is the kind of 67 i wanna be.

so it's a good thing that this is a mile-stone birthday [is it?] because it's turning out to almost a week-long celebration. it kicked of yesterday when i got my new roller skates!!!! i went home and skated in the parking lot of the shoe store [in my back yard] for about 20 minutes. my ipod has shit the fan, so that's a really long time consider i had no tunes.
then i came inside and checked the mail. and i had a package:
colter got me a sawyer LOST Action Figure!!! my boss insists i bring him to work. she's a LOST junkie too. he's so neat, and he says 4 phrases, AND he came with a FULL SCALE replica of The Letter [to mr. sawyer].

i woke up this morning and my sweet roommate [justin] had baked me a fritatta....nothing like waking up to the smell of bacon on your birthday!
my mom is coming into town thursday and leaving saturday before my party [because she can't hang].
if you're local, come to my bithday party saturday. 9pm at the brentwood skate center [skatecenter.com/brentwood]. pre-party at my house at 7pm. short shorts & tube socks encouraged. or any other ridiculousness.

this past weekend my friend daniel came into town. he's moving to baton rouge soon, and he thought we should record before he gets too far away. we did 3 of my songs...two of them with justin on drums...and i'm excited to see what he does with them. he also let me join him for a tuesday In The Covers With Diel. that is not a euphemism. every tuesday daniel posts a video of himself performing a cover song, and this week i joined him on some ray lamontagne. i strongly urge you to subscribe to his blog because there are always neat videos that are quintessential daniel, be it words, pics, movies, or covers.

on my walk in today my brother called me from germany. AND he's gonna have my niecelings call back this afternoon. this day is sweet already!

love y'all.





oh, and thanks for the well-wishes...i haven't commented back yet, but y'all are sweet and much appreciated.

Hola, Spacers.  I just got back from DMV, and it only took me 45 minutes!!! It would've been less, but dude messed up my zip code, and we had to do it all over again.  This was an express DMV; just for renewals and stuff.  But still….and I didn't even have to pay to park! Woot!

I wanted to blog about last Friday because it was the most fun I've had in quite some time.  I knew a few nights beforehand that it was gonna be "ladies night" for Michelle and Chloe and I.  They are both single mamas, so when they rock out, they rock out right.
I called Chloe [my awesome hair dresser…she used to cut Jack White's hair] about what to wear, cuz I had on a swanky black dress.  But then she informed me that I should rock my denim mini and my wife-beater.  That was my first indication that we were going balls out.

Rachel texted me Friday that there was a Michael Jackson tribute band [Who's Bad] playing at the Mercy Lounge!  I knew Michelle and Chloe would be game, so I was stoked.  We met at Chloe's for some pre-game drinks, hula hooping, etc.  Then we went to Rhumba for mo' dranks and some vittles.  Chloe and I weren't driving, so of course we were in rare form.  

When we got to Mercy Lounge, it was packed with all kinds of people, and I immediately saw Rachel and Brittany.  Brittany's got a broken foot, so she had to sit [near the bar!], but I managed to push through all the people to an empty spot beside the stage.  It was perfect; we had our own dance floor!   And Rachel was decked out in her 80s high heel boots and her Smooth Criminal hat!

THE BAND WAS AWESOME!  I'd had so many drinks, I was positive that it was really Michael himself.  He even had the fan blowing his shirt, the tape on his fingers, a juicy jeri curl; everything.  The band was so tight.  The horn section doubled as back ground vocals AND dancers.  They even choreographed the fight scene in "Bad".  We danced FULL BLAST for the entire show…even joining the dancers for a few 8 counts of the Thriller Dance from the side of the stage.

Then we closed the bar down at Alley Cat, and I was so sore the next day.

My birthday is this Tuesday….the Dirty Thirty!  I wanna have a roller skating party.  Short shorts and tube socks encouraged.  I think it'll have to be on Saturday since the rinks close early during the week.  I even ordered me some roller skates on Amazon, and I couldn't be more excited!!  I even added a portable disco ball to my Wish List cuz that's how I roll. (er skate?)

Enjoy some pics.  Chloe is the blonde, Michelle is in the glasses.  Rachel has the beige hat [and the stellar rack].













..







wait for it...

Gang. I've JUST now got enough brain cells back to blog about my awesome weekend.  My roommate Justin and I went with my ole roomie Liz to her boyfriend Paul's lake house in the mountains.  His friend Farley was also there.  It was about a 2-hour drive from here, and we went Saturday night and left Monday morning.  The house was practically on the water…you can scale the hill down and get to the water, but you have to drive the boat around the corner. 

There was all kinds of booze and all kinds of things to throw on the grill.  I made a killer bloody mary mix that sat overnight and rocked my brefiss.  Justin made awesome eggs over medium and bacon just how I like it….crispy; no clear pieces.

We boozed on the boat all day, and one of the highlights was when Farley was trying to get cell phone reception so he could call Paul at the cabin…you know where this is going…and he fell off the boat.  While falling, he had the brilliant idea of throwing his cell phone back into the boat….but he over threw it.  Across the boat and into the water.  We couldn't stop laughing.  He was a little concerned that it was his work phone, and there were contacts in there.  I told him the good news: at least it was his work phone.

We found a tiny turtle in the middle of the lake.  Smaller than a sand dollar.  I named him Templeton.  He freaked out in our boat for a few, then I put him back.

Monday I went canoeing with Rachel and her friends Chris and Joe.  It was only a 25 minute drive to the place yet it seemed like another world.  It was gorgeous!  We went down the Harpeth river.  When we got there, there was a rain delay, so we had to wait until it let up a bit before we could go.  Which meant drinking beers in the car. 

When we finally got in the van to get dropped off, the [possibly teenage] driver gets in the van that is hauling the 4 of us, 5 canoes, and 5 other people [who brought a stainless steel cooler…they weren't fucking around!]
and says "there's another 30 minute rain delay.  JUST FUCKING WITH YA!" and peels out of the parking lot.  He's hauling ass on curving muddy roads, and at one point we were fish tailing.  THEN the trailer comes unhitched!  (We made pals with the other 5 folks in the van…it's funny how a near-death experience can bring you closer.)

My canoe was the last to take off, and before he sent us off, I said "WAIT! Hand me a beer?" so he handed me a beer from our cooler and said, "ok…but I didn't see anything ;) ."  and I said, "um…yeah…I didn't see anything either." Referring to the time he almost killed us.  He said "yeah…thanks…sorry about that!" and we were off.

It drizzled at one point, so we pulled off into some canopy and drank another beer.  I wandered away and found a secluded place to pee.  I looked behind me and made sure no one could see.  After I was done, I heard a distant whistling, and when I squatted down ass-level, I realized that our buddies from the van had a full-moon view of me the whole time.  Note:  next time you're squatting in the woods, make sure you squat ass-level when scoping for privacy.

This river had plenty of places to pull over, and we would pull over with our van buddies every other shore.  At one point, dude goes "I feel like I was on a plane crash on a deserted island!" ….and I said "OCEANIC 815??!!!"  and we became instant pals.  By the way: if you're not watching LOST yet, kill yourself because you haven't lived.  They're all online now…all 4 seasons…in hd.  So no excuses.

There was a rope swing at one point, and eventually a torrential down pour that didn't seem to rain on our metaphorical parade since we drank a jillion beers.  We even flagged some new pals to join in our festivities.

When we got back to the car, Rachel and I were cold and wet but delerious and  optimistic.  At one point we were drying our skivvies in the gas station bathroom with the hand drier.  Once we got back to our cars…which were at the bar where she works, we parted ways with the boys that rode with us.  Then Rachel and I decided to look for warm/dry clothes in her trunk…so that we could go in and grab a drink.  Fast forward to the part where 2 of her gay guy friends from the bar were stuffing us into her 10^th grade prom dresses that we found in her trunk, fluffing my boobs into place, and yelling "DRAG SHOWWW!!"

So we bar-hopped in prom dresses and flip-flops like foxy, wet river rats.  Because we're fucking classy.

lovelove

 

 

 

sunday was awesome.  my roommate justin and i played yard golf a la LOST.  i made the balls out of styrofoam peanuts and white duck tape.  they were perfect.  the yard is a 6-hole course, and i actually held my own...winning a few holes.
i drank sangria out of my german stein with the lid.  take THAT, fruit flies!!!
this was all in between LOST episodes.  i'm a pusher, and i've got justin almost finished with season 2.

yesterday at work we had to move into the basement because they're renovating our office. so i'll be down here in the dungeon for 2 weeks.  but i LOVE it.  i have twice the leg room AND a window!  life is sweet.

i watched The Wire before bed last night but still dreamed about LOST instead.  i don't wanna say too much, cuz my dream contains season 4 spoilers.  but i remember making out with sawyer, swimming with kate, and jack sitting on my lap.
he wore a suit and was surprisingly heavy.

how was everyone's mother's dayseses?
i went to my grandma's in athens, ga, and so did my mama.  saturday i played nine holes of golf with my uncle and cousin, and my mama drove my cart and was in charge of the Looks-like-a-Purse Beer Cooler that my uncle keeps in the car.  i hadn't packed anything to golf in, so i was roasting in my dark tight pants.
and here's why i love my mama:
she changed pants with me in the woods.

i rolled hers up so they'd stay on, and she just left mine unbuttoned and pulled her shirt down.  it was a good look for her; went well with the beer can and the coozie she always keeps in her purse.  she's prepared like that.
we're fucking classy.

what'd y'all do?

Hey gang. I've been meaning to blog forever, but we all know I'm a lazy blogger. Things have been crazy, but they are awesome, and all is well, and life is good, and unicorns are neat, and I love bacon.
Let's see. My mom came up at the end of march to see me perform at The Bluebird. The Bluebird is a famous joint in Nashville that's often full of tourists and shh-nazis because some famous people "got their start there". It's the only place in town where you have to audition AND jump through 37 hoops just to play there a couple of times a year, but it's the most attentive audience in town, and I sold a bunch of cd's there once. So I keep going back. And it was awesome this time because I had 12 friends in the audience…which might be a record for me…
I sang a song I wrote about dumb crap I do like the time I went up to a friend to tell her how I LOOOOVE her and brad together, what a great couple they are, etc, and she said, "um, yeahh…we broke up…." And I felt douchetastic. So this song came to me a week or so later when I'd been up til 5am on a movie shoot for a friend, and I was delirious, and I kept singing the chorus over and over.
I forgot how I shouldn't perform in shiny clothes unless I want my guitar to fall off, but it only slipped a few times. This video is courtesy of my friend Daniel, who is a video-makin' junkie.



I got a traffic ticket reduced, so that's awesome, AND I moved into a new place. It's walking distance from work [and the bars], so I'm super stoked. I hate moving, but I love change. This is the 22nd time I've moved in my life. That I KNOW of at least….
When I find where I packed my camera, I will take video of the new crib.

What's new with you guys?