Last night I got to see Concrete Blonde one of my favorite LA bands of all time. (aside: so is the entire world converting to Exploder as the browser of choice? -- I'm finding more and more often that I have to launch that thing to get a decent look at certain sites.) There's another good site at: http://blonde.vox.org/.

What can I say? It made me really happy to see them. They looked great. They sounded great. The new stuff sounded great. It was all good and the timing perfect for middle aged working people. We were home and in bed by 11:15pm.

Why are my comments all about the crowd? First, is bald the hair statement of the 00's? From where I was standing I could count 7 bald guys. Not that this is a bad thing -- just curious to see so many shiny heads in one place on one night. Next, what was up with the guy standing next to me? Mr. Chain-Smoker with the ski-gloves on. He wore a white t-shirt and would take a glove off to smoke but he had these goofy gloves on. It's not that I'm smoking intolerant but a chainsmoker guy standing next to you in close quarters for a couple hours is kind of a drag. I hate that ashtray smell in my hair when I crawl into bed. There was also this redhead chick who seemed to think she was 14 and at an N'Sync concert. Even the Dalai Lama would have wanted to club her and throw her outside. Also, I was a major fan of this band, I never picked up on the goth thing. I never considered myself goth but thinking back at my outfits and hair color choices maybe I lurked on the fringes. When they played the vampire song the crowd took the roof off.

Overall it gets my highest recommendation. They played almost all of my favorite songs. I would have liked to hear "True" which is my all time favorite but a small wank for an otherwise fabulous show. I don't have the new disc yet but plan to fix that situation very, very soon.

This afternoon I thought I'd throw up a few photos from our weekend in San Francisco. Now it's almost 10:30pm and I've just barely finished some pages that I think are pretty sloppy. If you want to see the story of Erin carrying the Olympic torch. PamPage has the news.

In other news ... we finally saw Vanilla Sky last night. We went to the closed caption showing at the Kiggins. For the first 2/3 rds of the movie I was sure I didn't like it, but I liked it okay by the end. Didn't love it. But I woke up still thinking about it and I think it's a movie to be better appreciated on a second viewing. And I loved the music.

I've had stuff to add all week and I just can never get my act together. What can I say?

First -- here's an entertaining link to bizarre Asian snack foods.

In other news, I got my manuscript back from Cherry this week. I don't have a link about it on my site -- for some reason I thought I did -- amnesia at its best. She wrote a very nice, non-form note which basically said she thought my writing was fine but she couldn't connect with the story or characters and since fiction is hard to sell, she couldn't take on something she wasn't 100% excited about -- completely valid. For those of you just coming in on this story -- it's about the 80' rock scene in Hollywood and it's hilarious.

Of course, I'm disappointed, but also, I'd already junked the thing to a drawer and just by pure luck several people asked to see it in the last year so I suppose I should allow myself some small joy for that. I have a couple of ideas for non-conventional approaches for publishing which I will check out this weekend.

In the meantime, I'm trying to get some momentum going on a couple of other ideas I have. I'm going to be okay on this stuff. It doesn't feel like it right now -- but my day will come, I know it.

We got back yesterday. We already have photos but I don't think I'll have time to scan and get it all organized and posted until next weekend at the earliest. Right now I'm trying to figure out the minimum food run I can do that will tide us over until we do the main shopping later in the week. There is also a bale of dirty clothes.

It was a great trip. We couldn't have invented better weather -- sunny and clear. Other than trying to drive around San Francisco and getting lost a number of times, everything went perfectly smoothly and we all had a fabulous time.

More details to come.

We're going to San Fran tonight to play. Erin runs with the torch Saturday 7:23am at Crissy Field -- we'll be the ones holding the Karuk Flag. See you there. The temps have been in the 30's-40's and how pathetic is it when I see it's in the 50's in SF and I'm excited about that? I remember when I lived in LA and went to SF and I was always cold there.

Yesterday there was a high speed chase on Interstate 5 during rush hour. The traffic reporter was narrating the chase -- I thought it was completely exciting. Today I didn't even see anything in the paper about it. I don't even know who the guy was or why he was running away.

You know when I heard this story about the President choking on a pretzel and fainting it sounded pretty fishy but too ridiculous to make up. Then I saw that picture in the paper which makes the story more suspect. I like this story refuting any rumors of domestic violence in the Whitehouse from Whitehouse.org.

Billy brought a bunch of salmon back from Alaska and we each got one smoked so there is a lot of smoked salmon floating around here. So far we've had smoked salmon fettucine, smoked salmon quesadillas and smoked salmon chowder. I've been looking at other smoked salmon recipes -- I want to make a pizza. But in my travels I found this goofy recipe for salmon cooked in the dishwasher. Seems like a pretty egregious use of resources.

I try to read a few new blogs per week. This is no organized process or anything like that -- I just try to randomly drop in and check in on what other people are doing and a lot of times I find myself wondering why. Some people are so randomly honest I can't stand it. PamBlog is a way edited and restrained blog and only marginally honest. Who knows where this blog has been?

Yesterday was the trek to Tacoma and I did, indeed, start the Chabon book and so far can highly recommend it. It's a tome -- I knew I'd need some time to get into it and it was nice to have 2 hrs. each way to dive in. I got about 1/4 the way in and I like the characters. Next weekend we're going to San Fran and I'll have another long chunk of airplane time to get into it. I like uninterupted reading time. A nice gift.

I have not been in the mood to blog lately. Every morning I think about logging in and then I don't want to -- it seems like too much hassle. I'm not into communication at the moment.

This week I have been having the most bizarre dreams and every morning I wake up and I remember these crazy images and sometimes two or more different dreams. Also I can't seem to get enough sleep. Is this a hibernation instinct? Last night I could barely keep my eyes open until 10pm and I didn't get out of bed until almost 7:30am.

Tomorrow I'm going to Tacoma again. And on the train again. I'm going to start reading my new book: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.

I just logged on and learned that I've been blogging in my sleep again, ahem. So I've been deleting and fixing a bunch of stuff. I have not been in the mood to be near the computer this weekend. That probably is a good thing.

Today we went to Meier & Frank downtown to check out the sales. I have said it a million times and I'll say it again: I do not like that store and I'm never going back. Bob found some stuff. I wanted to get a new raincoat but do you think they even had 1 single sale raincoat in my size, much less something that I liked? Well, they did have one single sale raincoat in my size but I didn't like it and who cares how much money you can save if you don't like the coat?

After that we went to the Art Musuem because the European Masters show is ending this weekend and we never managed to get over to see it yet. Word to the wise: do not go go the Art Musuem on the last weekend of a show. I mean, unless you enjoy viewing art in the same room with 10,000 other people.

Life doesn't seem to suck at this time except some small details which we won't discuss at this moment. I did notice that the world's cheapest staples which I didn't think would make that big of difference in the world do indeed make a difference. I mean, how can your world not be affected when you can't staple more than 3 sheets at a time?