I Went To Canada When No One Was Looking

Home again! I left for a little bit, remember?

I went to Forks.

Don't tell Jacob this, but I'm on Team Chief Swan.

And before you click the "back" button or the "unsubscribe" button or the "alert all your facebook friends that Lauren has really lost it this time" button, I should clarify that Forks was only a mere pit stop on the way to a magical place called Canada.

Somehow I ended up with more pictures of Forks than Canada. Forgive me Father for I have sinned.

But I did eat Canadian bacon on my pizza in Canada. Does this earn me back any cool points?

I also went kayaking for the first time, which was absolutely incredible. I was so caught up in the excitement that I forgot to take any pictures. So you're just going to have to believe me when I say that I've kayaked into the ocean and am alive to tell about it.

This post is a little spastic. My apologies. I just got back today and am a bit tired. Life is continuing to move at the speed of light. When I got back to Portland I went to the open house of the artists' community I plan on moving to in September. Hipsters galore. There was a bit of a miscommunication and I won't be signing the lease tomorrow like I thought I would be, but hopefully I'll get all of that squared away soon. Otherwise I might have to declare it National Throw A Hipster Off Of A Bridge Day. Which would actually be a significantly bad move on my part, because I think I become a little more hipster-esque everyday and I don't want anybody throwing me off of a bridge. Even if it didn't kill me, it might mess up my hair and make me spill my PBR.

I should go to bed. I'm getting up in the morning to go to Steve's family reunion. I'm sure it will be fun and relatively painless, but it's my natural instinct to be terrified.

Anyway, that's all I've got tonight, amigos. It's good to be back on teh Interwebs!

Blame Canada!

My little brother busted out a Bob Dylan song on his guitar this morning and we had an impromptu sing-along, mumbling half the lyrics and shouting "THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-CHANGIN" at the end of each chorus to make up for not knowing all the words.

And it's true. The time, they are a-changin. I don't know if I necessarily like it, but change doesn't require you to approve of it. Change only requires you to accept it and to adjust accordingly.

The Original Sound Trash album is not happening this month. Just take a look at my bandmate's latest blog entry and you'll see that he's running off to Canada for the month of July.

It's a long story but it's not that interesting. I don't need to go into it. All you need to know is that the story ends with half of the band impulsively trudging through Canada and the other half of the band singing Bob Dylan in attempts to cope with it.

I think it's time to reinvent myself. Get over this incredible songwriter's block I've been stuck in for a month and do some composing. Maybe do some shows on my own. Travel places alone. Visit friends I haven't seen in awhile. Focus less on what I want to do with my life and more on what I'm going to do today.

The times, they are a-changin.

My Apologies To Any Grizzly Bears I May Have Offended

A gang of wild grizzly bears near the border of Alberta contacted me shortly after I published my last post. In the post, I hinted that playing for an audience of Canadian grizzly bears might make me uncomfortable and that I'm leaning towards staying in the states. The particular gang of wild grizzly bears that contacted me was greatly dismayed by this post. Several of them sent me emails with the following jpeg attached:


So maybe I was wrong about grizzly bears. And I won't rule out Canada just yet.

There. Are you happy, grizzly bears?

Thursday Ramblings

Sick Lauren. So hawt right now.


Tis a glorious sick day. I haven't bothered to get out of my pajamas yet. I'd like to think I'm getting better though. After all, I ate a piece of toast and lived to tell about it.

I've made the most of my time by doing a little homework and watching all of the videos in the "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" collection. I also sent an email to a band we might open for on the east coast. I asked for recommendations of venues to play over on that side of the world. I signed my name under the words "Peace, Love, and Disco" and sent it into cyberspace.

Then some guy I went to high school with IMed me out of the blue to tell me he likes my music. I chatted with him for a little bit and found out he's playing in a ska band now. He's also planning a tour this summer and told me that booking shows in New Mexico and Texas is rough. I had heard from a couple of different sources that the music scene in Texas was not great but this confirmed it. There are only two sticky notes in Texas on my map. One represents friends of a friend and the other says "STRANGER DANGER" with the name of someone I met on the Interwebs ("put me on the map but i am stranger danger!" he wrote...oh how I love having friends that live in my computer screen...). So we can probably skip Texas.

I think we're headed more towards Oklahoma anyway. We may have to go through a little bit of Texas to get there. Depends on which way we go. There's probably not much of a music scene in Oklahoma either. But my good friend Nancy lives there and she informed us that we are coming to Oklahoma even if we have to do a show in her living room. Sounds like a good time to me. Nancy's sticky on the map gets a star by it.

Ryan and I really just need to sit down with a map and hammer out a route. We also need to do a lot of research about where the good music scenes are. We keep saying Portland to Portland, but there's a lot of different ways we can go.

There's also the option of coming back through Canada. It sounds sexy in theory, but the more I think about it, the more I ask myself this question: What the hell is in Canada?

I'm trying to think of an answer to that question that doesn't involve the phrase "lots of grizzly bears."

Though Original Sound Trash is all about being unique and reaching out to new audiences, I don't know how I feel about playing for grizzly bears.

Who knows though. There's gotta be something cool in Canada. Commence Internet research. Yah!

Dude. I should take another nap or something.

Have a glorious Thursday, friends!

Peace, Love, and Disco,
Me!