new
i've been yearning to update at least once more before the big "end of the year survey" entry, which is very, very imminent.
general stuff: love is good, work sucks. christmas was decent, thanksgiving good; successfully avoided mingling with blood kin in favor of soul kin through this holiday season. not sleeping much lately, but when do i ever? money troubles ahead, but i have resolve. and it's been a cold-ass winter, hard to get dressed lately. i live in LA. my entire wardrobe is spring-fall.
so THIS was a success. it was a total blast. we got paid in free drinks, which is even more compensation than what i was expecting. i really thought they were just gonna politely let us play unpopular, dated music in a mostly-empty bar occupied by our friends. what luck, the bar ended up packed elbow-to-elbow, apparently uncharacteristic for the place on a sunday. some dude even bought me a drink for playing "at your funeral" by saves the day.
our guy followed up with the place a few days after, and turns out we did well enough for the bar that they decided to give us another night. so we really wanna knock this one out of the park and see if they'll give us a friday or saturday -- if not, monthly sundays would be great, too.
i'm gettin' busy spreadin' the word, tryna get this DJ hustle thing going. i'm learning a lot, hopefully making some connections and picking up potential leads. who knows what this avenue has in store for me and my favorite "bar friend" dylan1. perhaps 2013 is the year i actually try something completely different.
actually, yes, i'm fully intending for 2013 to be full of new and exciting things. tasting new foods, discovering new places, meeting new people, learning new skill sets and (hopefully painless) life lessons. i've been struggling in an art/productivity slump for years, coupled with (and perhaps partially caused by) a general entertainment slump. i've found myself retreating to the comforts of familiarity, daunted by challenge or put off by the current flavor2. in 2012 i finally got a bug up my ass about it, a revived desire for the great feeling one gets from conquering something new.
of course, finances have all to do with it, and i can't promise i'll ever have it perfect in the money department, but i've learned/feared plenty this year. more on this-that-and-the-other in the ensuing survey entry, promise.
the year 2012 had a sprinkling, an inkling, of newness in it, and now that the craving is piqued it must be slaked. i'm gonna smack 2013 like a piñata until the good times and inspiring new experiences fall out like fuckin' candy.
speaking of all this newness -- and i know i'm late to the party on this -- i also recently started watching American Horror Story. they put up the first season on netflix3 streaming, so why not? good stuff so far. it's actually a complex kind of scary. outside of the over-arcing "ghost, demon, murderer, monster" thing, the show does a great job of subtly appealing to lots of non-deathy common fears -- fear of losing one's mental faculties, fear of temptation and/or infidelity, fear of having flawed children. i love a good macabre back-story, and that's something this series does wonderfully. so i'm totally obsessed. i'm happy to have something new to dive into while waiting for the final chapter of Breaking Bad (S'GONNA BE SICK).
1i don't mean like we're friends because we're regulars at the same bar; i mean it more like he's my favorite of my friends who go to bars.
2can i just say how bored i am with mainstream rock45 right now? i've been listening to more throwback shit than ever lately because of how boring rock music is right now. the anthem-y choral vox and folksy instrumentation, the bland and trite cross-genre attempts. i'm like "wtf, stop letting 'ipad commercial' be a genre of music."
3i don't have netflix (or a reasonable means for using it at the moment), but my friends do!
4this is coming from someone who isn't bothered by the concept of "mainstream" -- i still listen to radio, IDGAF. IMO after a point it's lame and immature to whine about "sheep" and "media brainwashing" re: pop culture. the complaint i'm lodging isn't that mainstream is bad, it's that right now pop-rock is in a doldrums worse than mine.
5lol, footnotes in footnotes