San Diego - Yay

Last night I had a gig at Cosmos Coffeehouse in San Diego.  Richard and David came along . . . we got so excited about the road tip - stopped at the Mobil station and got like $20 in snack and soda even though we are probably way too old to get this nuts about driving for three or four hours in the car.  On the way down we laughed so hard and it had this great hippie adventure-feeling - I told the guys that I really want a van, but for now my Chevy Malibu will have to do . . . plus it gets way better gas mileage.  We also drove past the San Onofre power plant.  We've driven by it countless times, but David pointed out how it looked like two boobs sticking up out of the ground . . . see . . .

And at night - the lights at the top blink - it's something special!!!  This is also in one of the Naked Gun movies in case it looks familiar to you . . .

My show was in an area East of San Diego called La Mesa.  It kind of reminded me of Dyersville, Iowa - very clean and quiet and sort of growing but sort of not - plus it had a Good Neighbor Pharmacy, which you rarely see.  David saw this store called "All Things Bright and British" and because he has never been overseas decided that he wanted to go in there.  We walked by it once and then he went back in.  I guess he felt bad about bothering the shop owner, and also felt bad that there weren't any customers in there (though they did have some pretty wicked William and Kate coffee mugs) and so he bougt this bag of chocolates:

They were Cadbury Milk Chocolate Buttons - I'm not sure why they had a pig on the cover - except that maybe if you eat too many of them you will eventually look like that . . .

 Eventually, we ate dinner.  This is a picture of us at this cool restaurant.  I put my camera on the '70's setting so that it looked cool.  The shots were taken in a quick succession and I thought they looked sort of panoramic.  I made a panorama on Photoshop, but I fogot to save it and now I'm too lazy to go back and re-do it.

This is me looking at Richard.  I was having a Bo-Ho (not the oboe - but that's a different story for a different blog) day so I'm wearing this $6 thrift store dress, a $2 green bandana I bought at Hobby Lobby in Dubuque, Iowa and this wicked native-looking wooden necklace I bought at a store next to the Frog 'N Peach Pub in San Luis Obispo.  It really doesn't match that well, but I didn't really care.

 This is David looking at a pine tree and drinking iced tea.  He wasn't happy that there were pine needles everywhere on the ground.  He flirted with the waitreess and she thought he was very funny - he kept telling her he wasn't old enough to drink when she tried to upsell us on alcohol.  He was going to leave her the chocolate buttons, but thought better of it.  David was upset when Richard failed to get her number for him.  Richard and I ended up eating the Chocolate Buttons on the way home, though Richard ate more than I did . . .

This is Richard looking at David looking at the pine trees.  He is drinking Coke.  That Richard sure loves his Coke.  I like this picture because it has a very cinematagrophic feel to it.  It wasn't taken with an impressive camera at all- but my video camera does have that '70's setting that makes everything brown so I like how the brown of the Coke goes with the black of his shirt and the tan of his skin and the rocks on the fountain int he background.

Now . . . the service was slow at the restaurant and I was running late to the gig - shame on me.  I got there to find out that I was supposed to start an hour earlier!!! BOOO!!!! But when I got home and checked my records, I did have 8:00 on my schedule AND I looked back through e-mails and don't think I ever got notification of what time I actually was SUPPOSED to start because the guy who booked me was on vacation at the same time I was on tour.  8:00 is always the default time I put on a gig if I don't know the time.  I need to change this habit and leave it TBA so I know to check back in with the owner, but then again, this is why I am a struggling independent artist and not traveling on a tour bus - NOTE TO SELF . . .

So I plugged into the coffeeshop's P.A. and had a pretty good 50-minute set considering that my strings were as dead as a doornail and I didn't expect to get paid anything and there were maybe 4 people in the whole place when I started (it filled in).  It was a really small stage and a small venue so it was definitely better for a solo gig and not a band gig.  I ended up selling some CDs and making a little dough.

On the drive home, David and Richard spent a lot of time talking about the Beatles and nuclear energy.  I was getting really tired, and trying to stay awake so I worked on my rapping (note both P's) skills.  Earlier in the day I had been watching some stuff about Wheelchair Sports Camp and I thought, surely I can do that (someday). Turns out I can't - I don't have any flow - and Richard was really annoyed with me - he told me to stop.  I said, "how am I ever going to get better at my flow if you don't let me practice."  He said "I don't care.  Stop it."  So then he and David got in an argument about Weird Al Yankovic (I was sorry I brought it up).  David thinks he is a genius.  Richard said he would've faded into oblivion if it hadn't been for "Eat It."  While they were arguing, I missed the exit to the 101

so we had to take the 5 all the way to Los Feliz Blvd.  I think I may have missed it way eariler than I thought I needed to take it, but all the same it depressed me because I like to think I am a good L.A. driver . . . We got home relatively early owing to the fact that I had the time of my gig all messed up.  It was irritating that someone that doesn't live in our place but is just visiting had taken a parking space in the new safely secured gated driveway, but I was able to snag David's parking spot when he left and we all parted on good terms with a wonderful, great experience to San Diego.  YAY!!!