to have taken a crack at questioning David S. Addington in DC yesterday, who seems to be a master debater and overmatched the democrats who seemingly were unprepared for his responses to the questions on matters concerning waterboarding and other means of torture,
the second best place to be yesterday was here in hollywood for the sunset strip music festival.
even though i will have a photo essay review on Soundboard later today, i will give you a brief synopsis of what went down. first off i had a crazy day at work. i really planned on being out of the office at 6pm for the ceremonies that were being held at the house of blues across from the riot hyatt but my plan is always to be out of the office at 6pm and i am hardly ever out of there by any time other than 8pm. which is fine. i love that office and the people in there.
got home in time to shower, read fan mail, change out of my dress shirt and khakis and make it to the sunset strip where my rock partner for the night, ms ali miller of metromix (who you might recall in this photo with ms sarah silverman) met me outside the security gate of the house of blues.
we got patted down, the dude’s metal detector didnt like my wallet chain, and we proceeded to the press table. no one was at the press table. it said something like media check in but there were two empty chairs and two bottles of water.
apparently we were supposed to be there at 5-6 and even though the rock didnt start till 9, which is what the time was at the time, there was no one to give us our credentials. thats cool. we had phone numbers. they had walkie talkies. we ended up meeting the chief of security and the manager of the club and were escorted in. strangely this is nothing unusual. its hardly ever a piece of cake to get into a show. whatevs, within minutes we had beers in our hands and were enjoying the rocking tunes of camper van beethoven.
oddly theyre much older than they were in the 80s. odder still, they seemed to rock much harder. if you closed your eyes you would have sworn that you were still in the time before grunge back when sonic youth and lydia lunch put out one of my favorite singles and when the campers introduced violin to college rock. after a while they played their hit, but not before bitching that their set was only going to be 45 minutes “we’re having our 25th anniversary show at the Filmore in a few days in SF where we will put on a, you know, real 2-hour show”. and then they broke into a long pink floydish jam which led perfectly into the wacky “where the hell is bill”.
soul asylum followed and rocked harder than they did the last time i saw them at the troubadour or wherever that was. princes former drummer seems bigger than ever before which is a pretty tough trick. but their songs were solid and it was nice to sing along to “frustrated incorporated” again.
we did many shots and drank beers and took a cab down the street to the whisky because even though reliving the days when mtv played videos, the crowd was sorta old and sorta lame and this isnt really why al gore invented the sunset strip. may i add that this is why its great to be with someone 22ish like ali who was yawning the whole time at the house of blues.
when we got to the whisky hair metal rock wannabees tattooed millionaire were on stage and most of them were so young that they didnt even have chest hair. the drummer seemed to be a little light in the loafers and definately light on the snare and the singer/guitarist dude was like mick mars’ brother. and even though it was cheesy and even though i would never buy their record, to me it was exactly what the strip and the whisky and hollywood is all about – a good time with a soundtrack of somewhat screaming metal glam rock.
and a front row of dolled up long haired barely legal girls with miniskirts garters and leather.
went home after three songs from LA Guns who werent bad. and was not sad at all that the dude from Warrant had called in sick.
on my blog, this blog, i get to write about my life. a blog ive been writing since 8/01. amazingly. beautifully. magically. im sorry that my life and my job are more interesting than yours. my advice to you is stop whining on peoples personal sites, and go out and follow your dreams. my advice is to get a blog and show me how its done, if you know so much. my advice is to comment on blog posts of mine that you approve of instead of bitching about blog posts that allegedly bore you, because frankly i couldnt give a rats ass what you think. because youre not thinking. 
my life is horrible. i was supposed to see rock band Weezer at the nissan live sets at the fox lot tonight with the lovely karisa, pictured, right. but they moved the show to this afternoon. and only if i was still the editor of LAist would i have my afternoons totally available.