Trash Rock and Twinkies.

Ryan and I have a show tomorrow night.

Naturally, I'm already nervous.

It's ridiculous. It's getting to the point where people laugh when I mention being nervous. "Lauren, haven't you done this a million times?" they say.

Yes, I've done the performing thing a few times and usually everything feels natural and under control when I'm on stage. But there's always that weird 48 hour period beforehand where I don't know what to do with myself. I freak out about my outfit for a couple of hours. I worry about the set list. I'm even infamous for coming down with a terrible sore throat before shows. It must be psychosomatic because it happens almost every time.

We've done a lot of practicing in the past few days. We know the songs inside and out. We're ready. And I am fairly confident that we will rock it. But there is still this freaky cloud of nervousness lurking around my brain. What if our music goes horribly wrong somehow?

Then there's my own little wardrobe issue. I'm going out on a limb and wearing a strapless dress. It's the kind of dress I tried on for fun and knew immediately that it was made for me. I'm really excited about it, but I don't typically wear strapless dresses and am paranoid about having some sort of wardrobe malfunction onstage.

I'm so paranoid that I've been practicing in the dress. That's probably not the type of thing you should admit on a public blog, but it's true. I've been putting on my dress and heels before band practice these days. I've also spent way too much time practicing my keytar stance in front of my mirror when I'm alone. Don't judge.

But aside from being awkwardly nervous, I'm just plain excited. It's been way too long since Ryan and I have done a show at a decent venue. I know we're going to have a blast.

I also know that the crowd will be full of my friends and neighbors from the commune. The Poet is organizing a massive field trip. Nobody here drives, so it sounds like there's going to be twenty people taking a Trimet bus across town to cheer me on as I pretend to be a rock star.

I know I've probably said it before, but I'll say it again: The people I live with are absolutely wonderful.

Sometimes I feel like we're the brats that have refused to grow up and that's why we all get along so well. If you don't believe me, check out these pictures from Sunday night's art installation:

Yes, those are Twinkies. Yes, they are wearing loin cloths/thongs and hanging from the ceiling.

It all started on the kitchen whiteboard with a weird cartoon war between The Fonz and The Chef. It escalated to The Poet buying two boxes of Twinkies at the store and handing them to The Fonz, Purple Hair, and myself to decorate. We hung them all from the ceiling in the middle of the night. It was glorious.

I think we all missed the memo that we aren't in college anymore. But right now, that's okay. I'm having more fun than I ever did in college anyway. I'm definitely making a lot more music, which is what I need to be doing.

And with that, I'm off to go make more tea. I've got to make this stupid sore throat go away by tomorrow night, even if it is just psychosomatic.

Peace out, amigos.

Unorganized Brain Nuggets (Now With Even More Cholesterol!)

Hot water is still out of commission.  It's been almost two weeks now.  Today I caught myself microwaving a water in a bowl so that I could wash my hair.  What is my life coming to?

In other news, Original Sound Trash has a show on the calendar.  And here I thought the band was slowly dying.  Apparently we're not.  Cool.  

The show is over a month away, but I think I just spent a good half an hour discussing wardrobe options with my neighbors in the kitchen.  I guess that means I'm really comfortable here - usually I just save that whole "what-do-I-WEAR???" conversation for my mother.  But it's a legitimate thing to think about.  I don't want to bore you guys, but there are really a lot of roads I could go down as far as rock show attire is concerned.  

Okay, so maybe there are only three main roads to take:

a) sequins

b) fur

c) black leather

Combinations of any or all of the above are also acceptable but may be considered over the top.  I'm leaning towards leather, but if anyone has any profound input I would love to hear it.

I feel like this is one of those posts that probably doesn't need to exist but I will hit "PUBLISH" anyway.    I mean, look at me - I'm talking about clothing and hair and my mundane plumbing problems.  Snore.

Been working on "Goat Man" a lot but I never seem to get as much work done as I think I should be doing.  Lately, Goat Man has been sticking his little hooves into the ground and refusing to move forward.  He's a stubborn little guy.

I did manage to write a new song.  And record it.  As a duet with myself, because I couldn't find a singer.  I edited the pitch on my voice to sound like a dude.  Then I took it down way too low and I sounded like Darth Vadar.  I think it was at that point I got frustrated and put that song on the back burner.  But not after sharing the Darth Vadar track with a couple of friends down the hall, of course.  

Maybe someday, a documentarian will refer to this phase of my life as "the early years leading up to Lauren's big debut as a writer/rock star/freelance hippy."  But right now, I feel a little more insane all the time.

Did I mention that it's the best kind of insanity?

On that note, I should probably sleep or something.  

Goodnight, comrades.  

Holy Wardrobe Malfunction, Batman!

My dress almost fell off onstage Friday night.

It started with one shoulder of the dress slipping down my arm as I pounded on the keyboard. I tried to pass it off as a bad ass rock star thing, but then the other shoulder started slipping. I continued to belt out the song, unable to stop because it was during a solo set. The dress sunk lower, threatening to dip into dangerous territory. I began making my infamous Nervous Lauren face. I made eye contact with a few friends in the audience and could see that they were beginning to get nervous for me as well. I felt like I was living in that bad dream that I sometimes have - that dream where I'm onstage and my clothes fall off. Except this time, it wasn't a dream at all.

I stopped the song and comedically fixed my dress, then resumed the song where I left off and changed some of the lyrics to be about my near-wardrobe malfunction. So it turned out alright. And other than that, the show wasn't so bad.

Well, except for the part where I got up the nerve to do a song I had written two days prior and ended up mumbling half of the words because I forgot them.

Or the part where Magic Butter Guy opened for me and
1) started 45 minutes late because he had to change the tubes in his amp before his set.
2) came into the audience, stood right in front of where I was sitting, and serenaded me with a really long and very cosmic song about flowers.

But other than all of that, the show went fairly smoothly. Especially the trash rock bit. Ryan did a set with me after my slightly terrifying solo stuff (essentially, I opened for myself - how much more narcissistic can I be???). It was great fun. Turns out that the end of Original Sound Trash isn't really around the corner as I feared it might be, so that's good news.

I'll write a longer post tomorrow - it got be late and I am le tired.

Over and out, amigos.

Just Some Thoughts Over Coffee

I have broken myself of my intense coffee addiction. Meaning I can wake up in the morning and not feel like I'm going to die without coffee. I can even go a whole day without coffee. It's kind of liberating.

I've tried to get into tea instead. I even went to my favorite tea shop in Portland and picked up some of that Moroccan Mint tea that reminds me of Egypt. I've never bought it in loose leaf form before, and was a little embarrassed when the cashier handed me this:

I shoved the bag in my purse and tried to pretend it didn't look exactly like marijuana. I think if I lived anywhere else, I might have been compelled to stash it away in my wall safe when I got home. But I live in a commune, so leaving a suspicious-looking bag of tea laying on top of my radiator really isn't a big deal.

That night, I went into my kitchen to brew up some of my new tea. I couldn't find a tea strainer, so improvised with a coffee filter. A couple of my neighbors walked by and showed a lot of interest in the kind of tea I was making. Well, they showed a lot of interest until they discovered I really was just making tea.

Tea is nice, but it will never really replace coffee for me. Even as I type this, I'm drinking a cup of coffee. I'm done messing around with decaf. It's just basic coffee with a little bit of French vanilla creamer in it.

I know a lot of purists hate coffee creamer, but I can't really live without it. Okay, I can live without it. If there is no coffee creamer around, chances are I will drink coffee anyway. But it won't be as good.

Last week, I had coffee with someone I hadn't seen in a really long time. Five years, to be exact. He was my Spanish partner in high school and recently came out of the woodwork over Facebook and wanted to hang out. I was a little reluctant to reconnect with him. After all, the last time I attempted to rekindle a platonic teenage friendship led to an evening of my bandmate pretending to be a flaming homosexual and ended with someone almost getting maced in the face (it's a pretty good story, maybe I'll work up the nerve to tell it sometime). But he called me on an evening where I was trying to decide between the following activities:

1. Hanging out with the baby boomer crowd in the kitchen.
2. Watching Tweaked Out Elvis Costello play the piano while getting progressively stoned out of his mind.
3. Attempting to write music in a room by myself.

Somehow, meeting my old Spanish partner for coffee at the trendy cafe down the street won against those lovely options.

I got there early, ordered some herbal tea, and planted myself at a table. Enter Spanish Partner. It was a little crazy - he was exactly the same as he was in high school. Still short, still Asian, still wearing the same baggy gray hoody with the stretched out pockets. Still blasting heavy metal from giant headphones around his neck everywhere he goes. His hair is a little longer now and he's apparently done boasting about his ability to eat nine Milky Way candy bars in a day, but other than that he's the exact same dude I said "adios" to on graduation night. It was a little spooky but cool at the same time. Everyone is so busy changing these days. It's nice to know that some people don't change at all.

We went back to my place so I could give him the grand tour of the commune and show him my keytar. We ended up just putting on a Dream Theater album in my room and listening to it while making fun of what weirdos we were in high school. I asked if he wanted anything to drink. He asked if I had any coffee creamer. Not kidding.

"Um, yeah, I always have coffee creamer," I say. "Do you want me to make some coffee?"

"No, I'll just take a shot of creamer," he says.

I start laughing. I think one time when I was about 17 or so I took a shot of creamer because somebody dared me to, but it's not really something I've ever thought to do since then. But I get him a little glass and pour coffee creamer into it until he says "stop." I hand it to him and he proceeds to down it like it's tequila.

"God that's good creamer!" he proclaims. "Tastes just like the marshmallows in Lucky Charms!"

He convinces me pour some in a small glass for myself and consume it sans coffee. It was like being 17 and retarded all over again. Not to mention it was my sugar intake for an entire week. But it was nice. It was nice to just exist in a room with someone else and listen to music and laugh and not have to worry about anything awkward happening. I had Tweaked Out Elvis Costello on standby in case things got weird (nothing says "I'm not interested in being more than friends so please get out of my room" like an intergalactic hipster with an affinity for playing/singing Gershwin's "Summertime" while people are trying to have a conversation). But things never got weird. Instead, we discovered that we both have a secret desire to learn how to knit, so we made plans to meet up again to make scarves while listening to heavy metal.

Yeah, I don't really understand my life either.

All I know right now is that I just finished my cup of coffee. And I think I really want another one. Maybe I'll just make a whole pot with the intention of sharing it but then end up drinking the whole thing myself.

A few weeks ago, someone told me that coffee is terrible for you. "It's addictive! It does bad things to your body! I'm so proud of you for breaking yourself of your daily caffeine habit! Coffee will mess you up! You don't need to drink it!" they said.

I might have actually listened to this person if they hadn't been smoking a cigarette, a joint, and snorting who-knows-what simultaneously while they were saying all of these things. I think it was one of the most ironic moments of my life.

I shouldn't drink too much coffee today though. I don't want to be a completely twitchy mess by the time tonight rolls around. There's an art show going on in my building and Ryan and I are doing a little performance in my kitchen after the fact. It's pretty casual and word-of-mouth, but I'm still stoked. It feels good to be performing again. I get really off balance when I go for a long time without doing that.

I'm not sure what to wear. I got some awesome new boots last week that I think I need to wear tonight. Now I just have to plan an outfit to go with them.

My new friends here have been an incredible encouragement to me this week. They're actually the ones that talked me into doing the kitchen performance. "Look, you are a rock star," my friend The Poet said. "The only reason you don't believe it is because the right people haven't told you yet. But you are a rock star, so start acting like one!"

It was really cool to hear that from someone other than my mother.

Anyway, this post has become longer than I intended. I think I'm just avoiding writing my post for TASG. We've got a really good topic this week, but it's proving to be a difficult one. But I think it's time to brew more coffee, put on some good music, and offer some of my humble ramblings to ye olde Transatlantic Support Group.

Peace out, amigos. Oh, and also? Happy Friday! Reward yourself for making it through another week by drinking some coffee. Or by just drinking.

Haha. This is One Well-Caffeinated Lauren, signing out!

The Highlight of My Day

I walked into physics class today to see Ryan sitting there in his infamous purple pants. His outfit was even complete with the infamous white button-up shirt. Usually these particular articles of clothing only come out of Ryan's closet for shows. Not accustomed to seeing this attire in physics class, I ask him what the occasion is. "I am out of clothes," he confesses. "I need to do laundry."

This picture doesn't really do the outfit justice, but you get the idea. It's magical.

Ryan's a brave soul. I too have various trash rock outfits but would never wear them to physics class, not even on the most desperate of laundry days.