Top 20

"List Your Top Twenty Favorite Bands"

So I did... and then some.

Best. Book. Ever.

I got this book a while back. It's pretty awesome. It's called 'Music Listography (Your Life In (Play) Lists)'. 138 pages of 69 music-related lists that you fill out after taking a thorough look through your music collection...


For example: "List Your Top 20 Favorite Bands"/ "List The 20 Albums You'd Bring If You Were Leaving Planet Earth On A Spaceship"/ "List Music From Your High School Years"/ "List A Song That Reminds You Of Each Lover You've Had"/ "List Performers You'd Bring Back To Life"/ "List The Songs To Play At Your Funeral"/ "List Concerts You Wish You Could Time Travel To"/ "List Songs That Completely Transform Your Mood" etc.. etc.. Straightforward lists, fun lists, obscure lists... fun stuff. It's something I could literally spend all day doing. It's the closest thing I'll probably ever have to an actual written journal; in my music lists you could probably find out anything about me you'd ever want to know. It's so me, it's ridiculous. After all, listening to music and making lists are two of my very favorite things in the world.

Each lists also comes with a really cool graphic related to the subject of this list. So like, for "List The Best Concerts & Music Festivals You've Ever Seen" it's got a drawing of a Ziggy Stardust arcade game enveloped in flames, with the caption Arcade Fire, Central Park Summer Stage, Surprise Guest David Bowie 9/16/2005. . For "List The Best Soundtracks", it has a drawing of Frank the Bunny from 'Donnie Darko'... which I particularly enjoyed because the 'Donnie Darko' soundtrack has always been one of my favorites.


My nerdly obsession with this book is pretty astounding. I am just in love with it. There are probably only a handful of people in the world who would be thrilled by "Music Listography", but I am one of them. I feel like they made it just for me. Anyway, just thought I'd share.





Sounds pretty cool, doesn't it Janet? I knew if there was one person who would appreciate this book as much as me, it'd be you. I told you I got you a prezzie for your b-day... Well, be sure to check the mail on Saturday, or possibly Monday.

Hapee Burthdaye

The Dirty South and Midwest...

Rain. Wet. Cold.

Those would be the best words to sum up our five-day journey across the South and Midwest. Really makes you appreciate that beautiful Southern California sunshine. I will never take it for granted again.

We hit the first three states in which I had never been before on Sunday: Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. However we didn't really get to enjoy all, or any, of what they had to offer due to the time crunch getting from New Orleans to Atlanta to Louisville in 2 days and due to the miserable weather, which drained us of any desire to stop and do anything outdoors. The most memorable thing about our brief jaunt across the Bible belt had to be the billboards (eg "HELL IS REAL"/"JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS"/"AN EMBRYO IS A BABY"), the gas-station t-shirts (eg "1 cross + 3 spikes = 4 given" and confederate flags up the wazoo) and the healthy dose of Southern Hospitality we received. Just about every gas station in the South is run by a very..um..."down-home-looking" woman. And these gas station ladies are just as pleasant as can be: "How y'all doin' todaaye?" is the typical greeting you receive in stereotypical Southern drawl. It caught me somewhat off-guard, seeing as how most gas station attendants in California a.) often do not speak English well or at all b.) are usually not women and c.) usually look like they want to punch you.

Say what you will about Tennessee and Kentucky, but driving across them is really beautiful. Nothing but miles and miles of rolling hills, deciduous forest, grassy fields, rivers, cows, horses and farms. Monday evening there was a chill in the air and with the leaves just beginning their colorful transformation i got my first real taste of fall in years. It was really nice. Almost made me wanna live there. Almost.

The city of Louisville has a classic Eastern feel with Brownstone neighborhoods full of close-knit brick homes. Unfortunately AC/DC cancelled their scheduled show there and the weather sucked out any life the city may have had. Our stay there was a pretty uneventful one, the highlight being an in-store performance by The Entrance Band at Ear X-Tacy, one of the best record stores I've ever stumbled upon. And in Kentucky.. go figure.



Our next stop was St. Louis, where Paramore promptly continued our string of 'luck' and re-scheduled their show for November. We were left without much to do but drink in the St. Loo night-life with Nick, a super cool hulk of a man we met during our hotel's happy hour who happened to be both an Army Ranger and MME fighter. St. Louis has this great area down by the riverfront; a few blocks of cobblestone streets from the French colonial days and all kinds of great drinking holes with live music. Sadly, on a Tuesday night they were all virtually empty, even during a Cardinals playoff game. We learned that the economy was largely to blame for this. Imagine the Sunset Strip being nearly empty during a Lakers playoff game. It's kind of like that, which was pretty depressing.

We hit up the University of Missouri (Mizzou) football game against Nebraska last in rainy (surprise surprise) Colombia, Mo where we spread Wolfmother cheer and soaked up the whole college football game-night atmosphere that I unfortunately never got at UCSD. With two nationally ranked conference rival schools going at it on national television in front of stadium packed with drunken students and alumni, it was like like nothing I had ever experienced. Thanks again for depriving me of yet another essential college experience, UCSD!



Chicago all weekend. Can't wait. Stay tuned.

ACL and Bourbon Street...

Austin City Limits (or ACL, as everyone calls it) is big. Bigger than Coachella big. 130 bands in 3 days big. It's also not cheap.. which is why it's awesome that Filter got us in for free. Luckily, after a day of "I hate life" Texas humidity, the first day of ACL was absolutely gorgeous. The music gods were truly smiling down on the 70,000+ in attendance, and they were treated to one hell of a first day. Many of the first bands that played right after the festival opened at noon I had never heard of, but some LSU girls suggested we check out this band Blitzen Trapper from Portland (horrible name, good band) and we were not disappointed. Sort of a Grateful Dead/hippie band kinda feel. After doing some major music marketing we caught the entire set of my favorite French band (other French bands?) Phoenix. These guys totally killed it. Sounded great live and a fun band to dance around to for an hour. After getting a couple Heineken keg cans in us and passing out in the grass during John Legend I had the honor of seeing Them Dirty Vultures, which features Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters/Nirvana) on drums, John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) on bass and Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) on vocals/guitar. Any band with members of Zep and Nirvana has got to be awesome, right? Well they were. Straight up in-your-face rock 'n roll. And watching Dave Grohl on drums is mind-blowing. Possibly even better than seeing him on vocals with Foo. Loved it... I then FINALLY got to catch the Yeah Yeah Yeahs live for the first time, opting to watch them over Kings of Leon (the other headliner of the night) and certainly had no regrets about it. Karen O is an untamed beast on-stage. She just goes balls out. It was a pleasure watching her put on a show. No girl rocks harder than KO.



An all around awesome day, only tainted by the fact that I got my wallet pick-pocketed at a club in Austin that night. I'm still pissed, but things things happen in life and you make due... Anyway, despite the fact we had 3 day passes we had to move on to New Orleans, meaning I had to miss bands like Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, Arctic Monkeys, Dead Weather and Pear Jam... but, hey, we were going to NEW ORLEANS for chrissakes!



Our time in the Big Easy was much too short, but we made sure to do it right. Bourbon Street was a circus as it always is: mobs of drunken people of all ages falling over themselves in the closed-down street. Jazz, clubs, noise, bars, beads, bad smells, chaos, booze, strip clubs, debauchery... that is Bourbon Street at night. Tom and I hit up a jazz bar where a live band was playing and each threw back a $16 'Hurricane', then headed to a more traditional 'younger crowd' type of club with girls dancing on platforms and the whole bit. Definitely preferred the jazz bar. In essence we made the most of the few hours we had to drink up New Orleans before heading to Atlanta yesterday morning, but there's a chance I may head back for VooDoo festival (another HUGE one) at the end of the month *fingers crossed*

The drive across the Dirty South from New Orleans to Atlanta to Louisville has been long and, well, looooong... I'll write about it next time around. I'm beat.

All my ex's live in Texas...

Last Wednesday I finally got the honor of getting behind the wheel and taking the reigns of this bad bitch of an automobile across Texas. She handles like a dream. A bad dream, but a dream nonetheless, which is why we've bestowed the nickname WolfmotherFUCKER upon her. She's also basically an over-sized tin can, which became quite obvious when the Texas winds "blew us around the highway like a prairie dog in a Texas Twister", as I told my buddy, making an attempt to become one with the Texas lingo. The high winds also set up the obvious "I haven't been blown like that since Prom Night" joke, which of course I enjoyed being a jackass and all.

Our stay in Dallas was brief, although I did get pics in front of the Ballpark in Arlington and Jerry Jones' ego project, also known as the sparkling new Dallas Cowboys Stadium. As for work, we briefly hit up the lower Greenville district of Dallas, a hip section outside downtown packed with bars, restaurants, clubs, and music venues such as the Granada where the Get Up Kids were playing that night. Basically Dallas' version of Hillcrest/North Park I suppose, except less gay. We took a few shots with fans and made our way to Tom's friend's swanky condo where we enjoyed good conversation, "Tropic Thunder" and Shiner Bock (Texas' favorite brew).

On the way to Austin we made a quick pit stop in Waco at Baylor University, a private Christian school which appeared to have the have the same social scene and overall student enthusiasm as UCSD... so basically not much of either. The campus did have a live bear habitat though (Baylor is home of the Bears) and a Silverlake-esque coffee shop, which was cool and seemed entirely out of place.



Then it was Austin. Oh Austin.. I previously mentioned what a cool college town Tempe, Arizona was. Well Austin kinda blows it away. Take Tempe out of the desert and into an actual livable climate, surround it with a super hip, super progressive city, and you have Austin - the rocking state capital of Texas and home of the Univ. of Texas. Downtown Austin on a Thursday night was amazing: hordes of people, endless bars, live music, closed-down streets and just an all-around good vibe and good time. Don't see how a college town could get any better.. kinda made me regret all that time I spent at UCSD, not being a Texas Longhorn. We had no trouble reaching the music-loving crowd we sought and had too many conversations with too many cool people to count. The Austin City Limits music festival and New Orleans are gonna need their own blog post, so I'll cut if off here till later on tonight...

The First Four Days...

This is the Cosmic Van (a '78 Volkswagon Bus)...





And this is the Cosmic Van at the Cosmic mechanic...





...and THAT has primarily been the story of Dylan & Tom's Excellent Adventure thusfar.

Saturday started off easy enough until the Cosmic fan belt went kaput in the middle of the Arizona desert. And to make matters worse it went kaput near the "town" of Tenopah. All I can say about Tenopah is that it's everything you'd want in a horror movie setting: nothing but vast desert in every direction, unpaved roads, abandoned homes, a permeating sense of eeriness as the sun set, and not a real life human being to be seen. It didn't take us long to make the decision that Tenopah was not for us, so we took our chances and booked it 65 miles to Phoenix with no fan belt before the engine completely gave out. We had the van Cosmic towed to the nearest mechanic specializing in German-made cars; of course it was Satuday night and they wouldn't open till Monday, which gave us plenty of time to get to know and love Tempe, Arizona.

Tempe is everything a college town should be: a hip 'downtown' area on the edge of the Arizona State campus, a booming nightlife, club after bar after club packed with college students on a nightly basis, a very nice campus amidst the rock and cacti, a strong sense of school spirit (Go Sun Devils!), and more beautiful women than I have ever seen in one place in my entire life. Basically, it is everything La Jolla and UCSD are NOT. {Except for those girls in the UCSD Theatre Dept.. Damn they're sexy ;)} Tom and I thoroughly enjoyed Saturday night in Tempe with the help of some lovely ladies we met at an ATM. They served as our Tempe/ASU guides during our stay and enjoyed drinks with us on Saturday night and sushi on Sunday night.

Of course, things weren't completely swell during our time in Tempe. On Monday our rental car got towed outside of a Starbucks. With the towing company only accepting cash, we had to cab it to a Bank of America and then back to the towing lot. Our cabbie was quite a character: a friendly semi-retired Navy vet who enjoyed blasting pro-America, pro-Jesus tunes ("JESUUUUUS IN AMEEEERICAAAA...") while telling misogynistic knee-slappers such as "What's the difference between Big Foot and a smart woman? ...they have pictures of Big Foot" and "Why do women have small feet? ...So they can be closer to the kitchen sink."

Anyway, we got the Cosmic Van back this morning, decided that the road trip actually started TODAY, and tried to start from scratch. We hit up the U. of Arizona in Tucson where we were mobbed by underclassmen for free gear (When you're giving free t-shirts to college students, they don't really care what's on the front) and hiked several hours through southern New Mexico and west Texas (the asshole of America) where we saw a whole lotta nothing. Tomorrow we make the long trek to Dallas, then Austin from there. Hopefully fun times lie ahead. Until then...

Oh, the agony of being a 20-something...

Several friends (usually over facebook chat) have recently expressed their frustration with life in general. These frustrations have typically been brought upon by the usual social pressures that bear down on the post-grad (e.g. deciding 'what you want to do with your life' and convincing the parents that you're on the right track to actually doing it). These are thoughts I tossed around myself recently, especially after losing my job in July. The weight of the world seemed to be bearing down on me like I'd never before experienced, but what these conversations with my friends showed me was that I was not alone. Not by a long-shot.

A buddy from UCSD/acting class and I just had a long conversation about about his feeling completely lost. I told him what I now tell everyone with whom I have similar talks. Feeling "lost" is what being in your 20's is all about. We are under no obligation whatsoever to know exactly what we want to do for the rest of our lives right now, despite what parents may say. This is our time to explore every possible avenue that we've even considered perusing. That's what I'm doing right now with TV hosting and Filter Magazine. You take a good look at everything you're passionate about and give it a shot. From there you decide what's really meshes with your M.O. and what doesn't.

However, because they're around that 'college grad' age or are even nearing their mid/late 20s, they feel like they need to decide their future NOW. I've discovered that this is total nonsense and is usually a byproduct of incessant parental nagging. Well, the parents need to be told to chill. We've got a lot of living to do beyond our 20s and we've got to figure out what's really going to make us happy occupying our time for decades to come, and that takes TIME. None of us wants to end up in our 50s doing something that makes us miserable.

The number of friends with whom I went to school that actually have careers and real a sense of stability in their lives I can probably count on my fingers, and I likely don't even need both hands. That's just it. Our 20s are ABOUT INSTABILITY. It is the "figure shit out" years, if you will, and sometimes it takes the entire decade to do it. I don't think there's any shame in that. The 20-something years will likely be the loneliest, most confusing, most frustrating period of our entire lives, but they will likely also be the most exciting. Having your life figured out can get boring after a while, I imagine. So I've decided to savor every second of not having a damn clue of what lies ahead.

I think my friends should too.