The first confirmations are coming in for the tour I’m doing with Manishevitz in November / December… please to be viewing and clicking on the sidebar to your right for more info. More dates will be coming soonish. First person to ask me why I’m not playing in their town is a rotten egg! :-P
I couldn’t get ahold of my Holler Sister today but I hope she had a good birthday. Yeah I know what day it is… it’s a day of remembrance of the victims of 9/11. But it’s also Deborito’s birthday, a much happier anniversary to be sure. Daddy’s birthday was the other day (on the 9th) and I couldn’t get ahold of him either. But then, he can’t stand holidays and probably didn’t want to be gotten ahold of, knowing him. My little sister Lilly’s birthday was right before mine, on Aug. 11th, wasn’t that the day I quit smoking? SHE was in Mexico when I called her but I spoke to her a few days later. Then my little brother John’s was on Sept. 5th. I DID get to speak to him, I guess that was the one successful birthday-call I’ve made lately. :-)
So I didn’t really have time to explain all this yesterday, but when the guy came over to sell me the hard drive, it turned out he had two of ‘em — the one I’d spoken to him about was a 40-gig but he also had an 80-gigger for twenty bucks more. I took that one. And after he took off, he called me back and said "oh by the way, that drive is completely full of movies and stuff… if you want ‘em, you should copy them off before you format the drive." I was all… uh, okay! Thanks dude!
My big PC’s hard drive finally died completely; it’s been threatening to do so for quite some time. I got it in 2001 and the warranty just expired in May (of course). I decided to try Craigslist since I don’t want to pay a lot for that muffler! Well, I found an almost-brand-new one for cheap-cheap-cheap, and the guy’s on his way over here to deliver it to me. I’ve never installed a hard drive before but I’m pretty sure I can handle it fine… my worst fear is opening up the case and finding a whole family of racoons, and/or kicking a bunch of dust up and suffering through even more sneezing fits than I’m having already (I’ve had a bit of a head cold the past few days). Of course I’ll have to reinstall WinXP as well but that’s no biggie. I didn’t have anything of any importance stored on there so I’m cool in that regard.
Wired News: Facing the Copyright Rap
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that rap artists should pay for every musical sample included in their work — even minor, unrecognizable snippets of music.
That goes a helluva lot further beyond just rap music! Whew, glad I’m "just" a singer-songwriter. Bad enough I’m writing songs in 3/4 and 4/4, and using the chords A, C and E so much; clearly there is prior art on all that.
Yesterday me and Sarah Pop-Tart went to see the Cubs play against the Montreal Expos. They lost but we had SOOOO much fun anyway. This was Lucie’s present to me for my 40th birthday… the people in front of us said I only look 30, tee hee.
Here’s where we were sitting up until the 10th inning or so. Don’t worry, we could totally see the pitcher since he was standing on the forward side of the mound.
We moved closer and closer after that, until we were almost in the very front section. They wouldn’t let us get any closer than that.
Cubs games sure are great for people-watching. I kinda fell in love with this geeky-looking tall blonde guy who was sitting to our right. But oh well, I never got his name or even said hi. I’m way too shy to talk to guys I don’t know and he looked like the same kinda person, oh well. He did give us a little goodbye wave as he was leaving though, which makes me think I was probably staring at him a little too much. Eeek!! :-o
I keep seeing tv reports about the school massacre in Russia this past week. When was the last time I actually busted out crying over something I saw on the news? This is doing that to me. It’s complete madness, those were CHILDREN, it goes so far beyond any kind of "eye for an eye" political tit-for-tat logic. So I guess that’s what terrorists do, slaughter hundreds of little kids. CHILDREN, who can’t defend themselves, who are completely innocent… is it even possible to act any more insane and cowardly than that? I want to kill all those madmen myself, I really do.
Other than that, I’ve had a great long weekend. The most lazy-ass, selfish, good-for-nothin’ weekend ever, it’s been awesome as long as I wasn’t watching the news. :-(
I’ve been meaning to put up a sort of a FAQ for quite awhile, so instead of putting it on one page I turned into a whole category. If y’all can think of any good questions to use, post a comment here and maybe I’ll include ‘em.
For booking-related questions please contact my agent Derek Becker at Satellite Booking.
For press, publicity, radio or any other business-related question, please contact someone at Drag City.
When are you ever going to tour (my town)! There’s a lot of people who would love to see you in (my town)! Please!
I don’t tour all that often, but when I do, I don’t do my own booking; I employ the services of a booking agent who, in turn, works with promoters or talent buyers in the cities where I play. I don’t choose those cities; I simply let the agent know when I’ll be available to tour, how long I’ll be available, and more or less which direction I’d like to travel. The agent takes it from there, sending e-mails and making lots of phone calls, and ultimately piecing together a tour based on the best offers he or she can scare up. As soon as I get confirmation on a show, I post the news here on my website.
I really appreciate your enthusiasm but it’s not quite as simple as you saying "please" and me saying "okay, why not?" and hopping in my car…!
Don’t be alarmed if things keep flipping around in here… I finally figured out how to get the upcoming-shows entries to only appear in the shows section so they’re no longer cluttering up the front page and confusing everyone. Do let me know if anything really weird happens (broken links, etc) — I’m just fixing stuff as I run across these funkinesses but I’m sure there are lots I haven’t seen yet. God, this site is such a beast!!! I love it but I hate it, ha ha.
I dreamed I was in a big loft-space apartment, it was mine (but not one I recognized) and there were some other people around including a boyfriend (who didn’t "match up" with any boyfriend I’ve had in real life). I was getting annoyed because the place was so full of clutter; there were piles of big rolled-up posters on the bed and shit all over the coffee table. I was looking for a cassette of John Lee Hooker’s Jealous so I could play it; I knew it was on the table but there was so much junk on there I couldn’t locate it. Then I got a phone call from an old friend (who I pictured in my mind but don’t recognize in real life). He told me my old pal Robbie Jacks had died — I got all confused because I knew he’d already died in 2001. But apparently he died again. The friend explained that they weren’t sure how it happened, but that there were some weird rumors floating around about it, and if I heard them, I shouldn’t believe ‘em. I hung up and started crying and feeling the same shock and grief I’d felt before. I looked up and Jolie Holland was sitting on a chair in front of the couch, talking to some of her friends who were sitting next to me. I apologized for crying about my friend dying, she said not to worry about it. She told me about another friend of hers she’d just seen who’d also been crying ‘cuz his mom had just died like a week earlier. She said the friend had said "just ignore me!" And I said… "Yeah… ignore me too." Jolie: "Don’t worry about it!" Me: "Okay… ::sob::"
(I dreamed about Robbie a few years back too; betcha a million bucks I’m not the only one who keeps having dreams about that guy!!)
My pal Carol turned me on to this site called Television Without Pity and now I’m so hooked. It has recaps on a whole buttload of shows but the best part is the forums. The posters are almost uniformly really smart and really really obsessed with their chosen shows. I’m following the All My Children forum and it’s like they invented their own language to describe everything! Different combinations of people have one blend-a-name, i.e. Greenlee + Ryan = Gryan. And some of the posters have latched onto the idea that the two sisters Kendall and Bianca have the hots for each other. Bianca’s nickname is Binks, so that imaginary coupling is called "Kinks", and they’re referred to as "girlfisters". Ha!! I’m also checking in on their Big Brother forum but since that’s such a 24/7 phenomenon, what with the live feeds, multiple episodes per week etc., it’s really hard for me to follow those maniacs.
My sister Lucie is away from the internet until Tuesday but I talked to her on the phone about my search for the perfect avatar for her. I have her permission to post the ones I’ve gotten so far, and turn it into some kinda contest. So if anyone else wants to submit more, please do, and when she gets back she’ll pick her favorite. She says "Lil Sis" is fine, and also consents to some sort of usage of one of her old nicknames, "Lucifer". Teehee!! Or, if you have any other bright ideas, go for it! Post a comment if you have one to submit, and I’ll e-mail you back with my address if you don’t have it already. It needs to be a 50×50 image, there are no other rules. Multiple submissions are fine, and Lucie’s decision will be final. :-)
Avatar authors L-R: Sarah Pop-Tart; Matthew; Sarah again
