TOUR DIARY EXCERPT

Sun Feb 9 (written about on feb 11)

Today kind of sucked, but it's ok now. Whitman (chris payne) picked me up at 9AM because we had a show in Tucson tonight. It was about a 10 hour drive. We played in an old airplane hangar which was pretty cool.
Luckily I had a sweet cd that my friend Anglina burned for me before I left Chicago. She DJ's around chicago sometimes. One night I heard this one song she had played and

I was like:

"what is this?!"

and she's like:

"it's black sabbath you idiot"

We listened to the BS album Master of Reality all the way to Tuscon. It pretty much saved my mood and passed the time away. We were hosted by a nice guy named Eric who is in a metal band. Once we started talking about my new love for Black Sabbath

he was like:
"you HAVE to check out this band acid king. it's like black sabbath but with a female singer"

we listened to it the next day on our way back to phoenix and it was not like that at all. it didn't need to sound like black sabbath for me to like it, but it wasn't my thing. I didn't like it. it sucked


here is a recap and some honorable mentions of some stuff we listened to on our SW tour.

Black Sabbath (Master of Reality)
Justin Timberlake (Futuresex/Lovesounds)
Kanye West ('heartless')
Nicole Kidman (new unreleased cdr of upcoming album)
Coconut Records ('west coast'........um....i have a song with the same title)
Acid King (don't know the name of the album)
Gowns (RedState)
The Zombies (mixed songs)
The Beatles (Revolver)
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (untitled cdr)
MetalMags (myspace songs)

got any more suggestions to add to my SWEET mix?
let me know

-arx

J.T.

The subjects in this blog have naturally fallen outside of music, but I really like what I have seen/heard of Jan Terri. I first discovered her about one year ago. Rollin showed me a variety of her music videos on youtube. She is a bit of a cult figure from what i gather, so maybe it's your thing, maybe it's not, and maybe you're already aware of her. She seems to have an earnest sense of "putting herself out there", which i admire greatly. She's also a Chicago lady, and I like that too. No irony here for me ither, just really into it.

hope you enjoy, or pass it along to someone who will if you don't.



love
anni
p.s. i love the limo so much

BETTY'S HOUSE

I think I have been asserting my home and craft desires lately. It started off with cooking a year ago and then gradually progressed into a full fledged love affair with decorating, baking, and making homemade soap and stuff. You can imagine the holidays bring ample opportunity to almost go over the edge for a newcomer to homekaing like me, but i don't mind. I feel like it upsets some people how other people enjoy christmas, thanksgiving, birthdays or whatever, but for me it's always a pleasure. I also feel like there are some folks who deny themselves the joys of a holiday and confuse themselves into having disdain for it because there is so much pressure to be unfufilled by such simple pleasures as food, family, cookies, nostalgia and stuff. However, i also think there are situations where it is impossible to enjoy holidays with such a declared expectation for "treasured moments" and stuff.

the past few weeks have been a blur, filled with explorations in homemade candy, cookies, making my own tree ornaments from printer paper, making bath salts and lip balm from scratch to give as presents to all of my girlfriends and even hosting an "open house" with mulled cider, and my very own cheese spreads. It's worth something to know i can do these things on my own, but I will admit i haven't found anyone who i can share my zest for homaking with quite yet.

if you know someone in your life right now who is genuinely interested in these types of activities, please don't write them off immediately, they are most likely going out on a limb to try new things and share the tasty/nice stuff they are making.

here are my new "famous" chocolate covered pretzel rods. i find this picture funny because i hate cats, but my sweatshirt says otherwise. i wore it that day because i was hanging out with my x-roommate/best friend and we have an ongoing joke about how i hate cats. she has 2.

happy holidays!
love,

Yoga dude

When I was sitting on my ass driving from city to city everyday on my tour these past couple months, i decided i would take a yoga class when i got back to Chicago. The only time I had ever really done yoga was when I took a modern dance class my first year of college, which I should blog about sometime because all of that business was pretty funny.

I found a really cheap and easy evening class through my friend who had been pushing for me to come along for a while. I was out all day without a chance to eat, so when I came home to change my clothes, I ate a huge bowl of "kale, white bean, potato and carrot" soup. As I was eating it my friend who was visiting me said

"I would go to the class with you, but i am afraid i would get diarrhea from releasing all of the toxins or something."

I rushed out the door thinking he was out of his mind. When I got there, a few people were milling outside the locked studio, one of which I recognized as the guy who lives right above me in my building. I hear him playing piano sometimes, but we've never really talked or anything. We had a discussion about our heating units in our building. When he described his heater I just assumed we had the same kind and i was like

"yeah. we have that one too"

and he was like
"you do? are you sure?

and i said
"yes. we definitely have the same heater"

then the class started.
rollin later told me that we definitely have different heaters because all he has is a gas fireplace because his whole system broke down a couple of weeks before i got home.

so my neighbor and i had set our mats up next to each other, because that's what neighbors do. we started stretching, and breathing at the instructors request.

by mid class, i was feeling pretty good. the class was attempting the hardest pose yet.
it was really crazy. your neck is like hanging backwards over your back and your legs are like crossed and one arm is pointing up to the ceiling and the other is holding all of your weight.

i felt an awful and sudden pain in my right shoulder and neck. omg. it hurt so bad. so i just stopped for a little while. and the instructor was like

"come on annie. stay with the group."

and i just rambled. something, i don't even remember. i was in a lot of pain, but then it started to get better. and then she stopped the class once she figured out i was hurt and i was like

"there is like a "cracking" pain in my neck."

"cracking?" can you believe i said that?

she advised i take it easy, which i did. a little too easy.
as we were doing our wind down stretches i farted super loud into my neighbors face.

first time is always akward i guess. i am still going next week.

yours truly
arxx

All I want for Christmas

I am in the middle of my US tour. I just got done with a string of shows in the uk last week. I have had very few days off, but when i have managed to get some time to relax, I happen to be hosted by people who own HIGH DEFINITION FLAT SCREEN TV's!

I am hooked.

I watched Carlito's Way in Belfast on a huge HDFSTV. Aside from the movie being awesome, it felt like Al Pucino was right in my face, the screen "becomes an extension of the room". (This is how poetic HDFSTV makes me feel.)

I am staying with my brother in Washington D.C. right now. He also has a huge HDFSTV. I watched game 4 of the world series and then the Departed. It was awesome.

This guy told me about his small business endeavor about a year ago. He bought 10 HDFSTV's from a wholesaler with an american express card and put a hold on their shipments (which are free). Then he auctioned them off on ebay got them shipped to the proper addresses fo' free and made a profit of $1000 on each tv unit on the difference of sale price. Maybe I will do this and keep one for myself. Or somebody will give one to me for Christmas. Either way, I really hope it happens.



cool, Huh?
arx

NIGHT OF MYSTERY

I've been spending the past few months in New York. You can imagine all the great people and events you cross paths with in a city like this. I've been working on an album here, which i just completely finished this past tuesday. One of my new friends, Luke Stettner, invited rollin and I to a performance he was holding for 20 people only. We had no idea what to expect and showed up promptly at 8 as we were instructed. I had just come from the mastering house with the ONLY existing copies/audio files of the new album. We were waiting in a stairwell with the other 18 people waiting to be instructed about what to do.

"EVERYONE PLEASE HAND US YOUR BAGS and PUT THESE BLINDFOLDS ON"
said 2 women who looked like psychic twin sisters

most people cooperated and passed each bag one by one until it reached the two women.

"DON'T EAT THAT PASTRY IN MY BAG. I WENT ALL THE WAY TO THE UPPER WEST SIDE TO GET THAT FOR MY WIFE"
said some guy in a puffy jacket.

I rolled my eyes at him and kept my mouth shut, even though I had 3 months of work in my bag, I knew it would be ok.
Like your friend is gonna invite you to his performance just so he can steal your shit and rummage through your bags.

So the two women guided groups of 4 people into a completely dark room. We all had to hold hands and form a single line. Once everyone was in the room, we took the blindfolds off. The only thing we could see was a circle of glow in the dark X's. We all wrapped around in a circle and were instructed to sit on an X. We had no idea who we were sitting next to.

"PASS THIS AROUND"
said someone who emerged from the center of the circle, speaking to someone a few spots down from where i was sitting.

I was trying to anticipate which direction the object was coming from. The person to my left whispered
"I'M GONNA PASS YOU THIS THING NOW. IT"S REALLY HEAVY"

I did pretty much the same thing for the person to my right. An operatic vocalist started to sing from out of no where. It sounded like he was improvising and focusing on small embelishments over and over. Occasionally a drum would be heard. The vocalist and the drummer were also slowly exchanging positions in the room. It's crazy how much your other senses kick in when one is disabled. Not only was I sensing what the musicians were doing, but I was taking in a lot of INTENSE SMELLS. I smelled CHINESE FOOD, GREASY HAIR SMELL, SOMEBODY'S BURP, BUBBLE GUM and GARLIC to list off a few.

After I accepted it was going to be a smelly time, I started to imagine how everyone was working together to keep this 20 lb object moving around the circle. The person to my left and myself had a good thing going. i could practically guess right when she was going to pass it to me based on the prior experience of her handing it to me each time. We had a rhythm, it was magic. NOW, the person to my RIGHT was a completely different story. They took no interest in finding a groove, i practically had to smack he/she on the shoulder every time it came around. In fact, I almost sprained my wrist passing it along to them because they weren't paying attention.

so i finally whispered in their ear
"CAN YOU GET WITH IT HERE. I ALMOST SPRAINED MY WRIST"

The situation with my right side friend did not improve. It was weird. Anyways, after about 25 minutes of trying to anticipate what was going to happen, the music stopped and the ladies took everyone out of the room one by one. I didn't mind that there wasn't an explosive ending to the suspense. In fact, i appreciated being tricked into waiting that long for something to happen only to realize my focus had completely shifted to the mystery of everyone's cooperation in the dark. I did get a peak at who was sitting next to me when i got back out into the hallway.

After most everyone had left, those of us remaining went out for chinese food. I explained my experience regarding the person to my left and the person to my right to my friend in charge of the night. I gave him a description of the person who wasn't pulling their weight (sitting to the right of me). He smiled sheepishly, laughed and said :

"OH. THATS DANELLE. SHE"S DEAF"

G. Ramsay

I only recently discovered celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey (of Kitchen Nightmares). Oddly enough I first found him in the states right before I left for the UK this last week and when I arrived in London, I saw him on every other billboard and tv commercial.

I have been told he used to be a professional soccer player and after a horrible injury he decided to become a celebrity chef. I think it appears as a strange career shift, but somehow inspiring. He also manages to tie his 2 careers together by taking his shirt off in every episode of Kitchen Nightmares so people don't forget about his athletic achievements as a soccer player while forging ahead as a chef.

He is living the American dream even though he is british. He proves that if you put your mind to something "YOU CAN DO IT".






TO




good luck!
arx