CATALINA!!!

Wahooo! Tomorrow we are off to Catalina Island for the 4th! I can't wait! 4 days of nothing but bike riding, margaritas and lounging on the beach! I am going to write the intellegent and wildly funny novel that I will be publiclly appalled that is categorized as "chick lit" while I am secretly negotiating the movie rights with Nora Ephron so she can turn it to the next "Chick flick". (something about older woman falling for younger rock star..go figure!). Then I am going to read the last 3 weeks Us, Star , Entertainment Weekly and In Touch! After that, I'll take a spin around the island in a golf cart looking for that funny, intellegent, hot single musician who will love me for my wit and my mind, not my.....never mind! If he's a hot single musician who's interested in me, WHO CARES WHY!!!

There might be time for bonding w/my roommate who I have been just passing lately while we take turns in the bathroom. There might be time to take stock in how life has been treating me so far this year and where I want it to take me the next few months. There might be time to thank God for the blessings that happen in my life everyday and will continue to happen! There WILL be time to thank God and our troops for continuing to fight the good fight in the name of democracy and freedom! It's is 4th of July, after all!

Whew! I have a lot to do over the next 4 days! And it starts today with laundry, packing and going to work! Relaxation starts tomorrow! WAHOO!

Happy 4th everyone!
:) Like this post? Please share it, bookmark it or leave a comment.

The Hollywood Hills Are Alive!

I love....no, make that LOVE living in LA! There are so many things unique to this town I don't know where to start! One of my favorites happens every summer! It brings young and old, straight and gay, musically inclined and not together for one evening under the stars. I am talking about the "Sound of Music Sing A Long" at the Hollywood Bowl!

I pride myself on not only being a dyed in the wool rocker but a music lover in general. This is definately in the "general" category. It is too much fun to resist! The "Sound Of Music Sing A Long" is hard to describe but imagine taking Rocky Horror and placing it in the Swiss Alps. Replace Tim Curry with Julie Andrews. Take that whole thing and place it in a drive-in that holds 16,000 people and you kind of get the idea! The film is shown on a huge screen stretched across the Bowl stage and the musical numbers have subtitles so everyone sings along! There are props they give us, like edelweiss and no one is shy about using them! There is an air of "Mystery Science Theatre" as people shout out comments that are for the most part hysterical! Hissing at the baroness, sighing at cute little Gretel! My favorite though comes courtesy (this year) of my friend Terri. At the end of the movie before the captain sings "Edelweiss" a hush falls over the Bowl. It is then that she yells in her best hockey yelling voice "sing a song about flowers". I almost died laughing!

My fave moment came courtesy of the boys dressed as nuns. As I was walking back from the bathroom they came up and offered me forgiveness for the cleavage my top was showing! HEY! That dude on Oprah says always walk out of the house dressed like you are going to meet your dream man! So I did! I just didn't know he'd be a nun....or gay! Doesn't matter, i'll take the complement wherever I can get it since one of the nuns said if he left the convent and turned straight he'd do me! ROTFL!!!

This night is so fun! We are going to make it a tradition. Next year we are all going to enter the costume contest. Look out! Like this post? Please share it, bookmark it or leave a comment.

You Say Stalker...I Say Fan...Potato, Potahto

For the last two + years, I have been dabbling with unrequited love. It was the most enlightning, exciting, frustrating, crazy, excruciatingly painful learning experience I have ever been through! I learned more about me within that experience than I ever thought I could. And for that, I wouldn't change a thing about it. I am, however, glad it is over! While I am taking time to recover, reconnect and pull myself together, I find myself in familar territory! I have retreated to the comfort and safety of the celebrity musician crush!

Celebrity musician crushes are easy! No miserable first date! Instead of exploring each other while dolled up in ridcously high shoes at a restaraunt you wouldn't normally be caught dead in, engaging in less than intellegent conversation, you explore on your own in your jammies! Just you, your crush and Google! Google doesn't judge, care about your weight or lead you to wonder "I wonder what he thinks of me". There is comfort in it being one sided for the most part. The celeb "loves the fans" and you are free to explore that love unconditionally within the anonimity of him not knowing you from adam. That's fine because this way, you control the amount of love that goes out. You decide if the love goes out at all! If you aren't happy that the crush can't make up his mind about the Pop Tart he's with, not with, with, not with, you can roll your eyes in indignation without having to hear the lame defense of why the intellegent, talented musician is dating the "actress". It doesn't matter! You, in all your internet surfing, US magazine reading glory know for sure BOTH reasons why he's dating her! You can sit on your bed, laptop at the ready and laugh knowing that you are smart, funny and yours are REAL!! She maybe a celeb but you have those 4 things ALL OVER her! See...celeb crushes can be as catty as the real ones!

Celebrity musician crushes are pure fantasy and after being rejected face to face, the fantasy is a welcome diversion to my reality! In my fantasy, the guy is turned on by the fact that I am smart and funny, not because I worship him or have a huge rack! In my fantasy, the crush plays guitar just for me, not for every girl in the bar (or arena). In the fantasy, the crush is a communicator supreme who listens as well as he speaks. He doesn't call me to talk at me for hours on end, not letting me get a word in edgewise!

This latest celeb musician crush came at me from completely out of the blue! Totally unexpected but entirely welcome! It's new, exciting, fun! Just like the beginning of a real relationship! However, like a real relationship, this one hasn't disappointed me or broken my heart. I doubt it will.

I am not crazy single girl! I am just welcoming the reminder God has sent to remind me that life is fun, exciting, cool! I have 9 toes grounded in reality while I am dipping the one in the sublime fantasy world of the celeb musician crush. Don't worry! I am starting to look for the real thing! I haven't retreated that far deep. The cool thing is, thanks to the latest celeb musician crush, I will have an awesome soundtrack to play in the background of any romance, real or fantasy, that comes my way! Like this post? Please share it, bookmark it or leave a comment.

Random Thoughts While Waiting in Jail In Vegas

*I wish I got into John Mayer early enough to see him at Mandalay Bay. I wish I had the body to get his attention and the guts to kidnap him and take him to that bar where people hang half-naked from trapezes. You have your Vegas wish, I have mine. Mine doesn't involve millions of dollars unless John and I are rolling around naked in it! Thank God what happens in Vegas.....

*I am not a fan of change or am I? I am a fan of change the noun. Especially when it is pouring out of a slot machine into a metal tray, making that "ching ching ching" sound that hit you between the eyes when you walked into any casino! The change I am not a fan of is the verb. The change that results in taking away something cool like the "ching ching ching" sound and what causes it! Slot machines in Vegas now dispense paper slips that you take to a machine to cash in for paper money. No more buckets of coins so heavy you can't carry them to the cashier, no more trips to the cashier for that matter. No more grubby, yucky hands from scooping up all those quarters and putting them in the bucket. No more having two buckets full of quarters, swearing you would stop after you went through one and leaving w/only half. No more "ching ching ching". No more of one of the things that makes Vegas charming. Change sucks.

*Most of Vegas is about getting you into the casino to spend your money. Except the bathrooms. In the bathrooms, you can stand for hours waiting for the automatic toilet to flush, then wait forever for the automatic soap to dispense before waiting endlessly for the faucet to turn on. And just when you think you might get out of there before Steve Jobs develops the chip to implant in our brains to make cel phones obsolete, you wait forever for the automated paper towel to dispense. I swear, the random cactus in the parking lot was looking like a better bathroom option than this! I know it's probably more sanitary to have all the fixtures do our work for us, but this is ridiculous!

*I am not cool! Oh, I try to be! I listen to cool music, watch all the cool TV, read up on what's trendy. How cool I truly I am became glaringly apparent this weekend in Vegas when I got excited over two things: seeing Donny Osmond and the fact that the Star Wars slot machines are about the coolest thing ever invented! Sure, I could have seen sweating, grinding pretty boys from Austrailia strip while putting $$ in their g-strings. I could have attended any number of Cirque Du Solei shows. No......Terri and I almost spontaneously combust over seeing that Donny is town. In my defense, it was cool to like Donny....when I was 7! In his defense, he put on a great show! Not sure it should cost more to see him in a Vegas lounge than it does to see John Mayer at the Hollywood Bowl but it is what it is. And what it is is a good time! I will say I may have been a tad bit embarassed to "stage door stalk" him but it did make me feel young as at my advanced age, I was easily among the youngest there. It was made worthwhile when Donny wished me happy birthday and asked with a wink if it was the 29th! And they do call it Puppy Love!

*The Star Wars slot machines rocked my world. They play the music, R2 talks to you and when you get three characters in a row, an appropriate film clip plays on the bar line! When you get the bonus, the Death Star spins and it's the coolest! Laugh all you non-believers but I trusted the Force and turned my $5 into $40!

*There are no more $5 buffets in Vegas. There are, however, $5.95 lattes and 24 hour Starbucks right out the door of the elevator in the hotel. A even trade-off if you ask me!

*Johnny Reznick was playing in the car everytime we got into it this weekend. Not literally but that would have been a wish equal to the one involving Mr. Mayer. Nope...this was on the radio. Wish LA radio was like this!

For these reasons and many more, I LOVE Vegas! Can't wait to go back in August....to see Donny....*sigh*! I am learning to embrace my inner geek! :) Like this post? Please share it, bookmark it or leave a comment.

Could I Possibly Have A New Fave Guitarist?!?

Could I have a new fave guitarist! Move over, Sambora! It is possible that after 21 years I have a new favorite! He's funny, he's smart, he's sensitive, he's wickedly and amazingly talented! AND HE LOVES DOGS! Forget guitarist, could he possibly be the perfect guy?

Shan calls me two days before the John Mayer show at the Bowl and says "I just got a call! We are invited to the meet and greet". I must admit, I was excited as it was going to be a cool experience but not excited in a "OMG...I LOVE John Mayer" kind of way!

That certainly changed AFTER the fact! This was by far and away one of the COOLEST things that have happened to me! 5 people and their plus one got the call and they were all nice people! John was a sweetheart! Looking back I kind of feel bad because it seems like we were the only two talking but once someone asked him about his dog it was on! He seemed fine with chatting while signing so we talked about how he did in Vegas, the upcoming Police show and our dogs. He said he was happy to have the kinda of dog that "doesn't eat raw metal" (Golden Retriever) and I got a plug in for the misunderstood Rottweiler! I won't bore you with every syllable that was spoken but you can believe I remember them. He signed for everyone, took pictures and was amazingly nice!

Then he went out and put on one of the most amazing shows I have seen! Since all I have heard from him is basically the (overplayed) singles, I had no idea what an amazing guitar player he is! And that ability was on full force at the Bowl! Mayer plays with such emotion and feeling that you wonder, at 30, where he is drawing it from! The place was filled with blues loving wine sippers who love John's work with BB King as well as the soda drinking female squealers who only wanted John to tell them how their bodies are a wonderland. That might be John's biggest strength: that he can produce music that appeals to both of those factions!

From the meet and greet, to the awesome seats, to the glorious atmosphere that is a summer show at the Bowl, to the amazing music it was a WONDERFUL night! Thanks a million to my friend Shan who made it happen! You ROCK Like this post? Please share it, bookmark it or leave a comment.

Marking Territory

It is two weeks since St. Patricks Day and I have been struggling to figure out how I feel about what happened that night at the bar. This morning, as I was walking Codi, the sweet girl dog I am sitting for, it hit me! As Cody lifted her leg on the bush in the neighbors yard and peed, I realized just like that bush, territory had been marked on St. Pattys Day at Oh Gradys. Only it wasn't with lifting a leg, it was with lifting a finger.

"The Girlfriend" walked into the bar on St. Pattys and asked if I wanted to see her "Valentine's Day gift. Before I could say "not really" she shoved a ring in my face. To add to the humor of the situation, she then proceeded to try and convince someone that the ring didn't mean anything. What I am not sure is who she was trying to convince, herself or me.

What upset me was not the actual ring or her not so subtle intent in flashing it at me. What upset me was that I was forced to face the reality that the ring obviously meant something to the giver of the ring and that is what has me thinking about this "friendship" I have with him. Sure this isn't the first time and most likely won't be the last. But a heavy dose of reality can be a good thing if you finally get out of denial and see something for what it really is.

Sure he and I are friends and fairly good ones at that. We support each other in our dreams. But we aren't the sharing deep dark secrets type of friends. If we were, I wouldn't have found out about "the girlfriend" from people who saw them out in the parking lot doing God knows what on the night of my birthday. I certainly wouldn't have found out about a ring a month after it was given by "the girlfriend' flashing it in my face. My female intuition tells me that he gets the emotional support from me and the physical support from her. Maybe, maybe not! But is that all I want from this "friendship"?

This ring has made me face up to the fact that ok...fine...yes, I haven't really gotten over him and ....sigh...I was holding on to that romantic notion that someday it will hit him that we are meant for each other. We aren't...and he isn't! He isn't going to have that lightning flash moment where he realizes that the girl he's been waiting for was right under his nose all along. Well....he might but that girl isn't going to be me.

They say the truth will set you free and it has in this case. I feel liberated and free to go on looking for the man that will adore me and worship me like I did Band Boy. I am free to look for a man who isn't a control freak. I am free to spend weekends doing something other than sitting in that bar trying to impress upon Band Boy that I could be the adoring girlfriend. I am free to not drop what I am doing to reply to his emails. I am free to set boundaries in my friendship with Band Boy without worrying that he will think of me as something other than the good friend I am.

Yes, the truth will set you free when you finally face up to it. And much to the joy of my friends who are tired of seeing me struggle with this, I am free at last! Like this post? Please share it, bookmark it or leave a comment.

Jovi Road Trip #3

There we are, three sleep deprived Bon Jovi fans, tooling down the Jersey Turnpike looking for our hotel with Shelley at the wheel and a english challenged hotel owner on the cel. You can't make a u-turn in the state to save our lives, no one lets you merge and hotel dude is telling me to follow the signs to the 109! It is twenty minutes later, when I feel like I am in a bad Twilight Zone episode that we finally see signs to the ONE AND NINE! It is then that I realize these Jersey trips are like childbirth: frustrating to go through but when you are done all you remember is the joy! "You travel all the way here to see them" is a much asked question when natives inevitably find out we are from California and Georgia. The resounding answer is yes, given with huge smiles on our faces!

Lucky for us we aren't there solely to navigate the highways and byways of the Garden State. We make the trip to mecca to see the Jovi boys on their home turf! In their backyard! For the Bon Jovi faithful, there is no better place to be when the guys play at home! For any band, the hometown shows are special and for Bon Jovi and their fans, those shows are at Giants Stadium! The Meadowlands! These shows have closed out the last three tours and have become must see in the land of Jovi! The band is on, there is electricity in the air and this year that was even more true with the lightning! It is cool to say that I was there for both "rain" shows that have taken place at Giant's the last two tours! In 2003, the band played on as we all "took a shower" together! This year, due to the lightning, the band came out for the 1st encore, sped through "Livin On A Prayer" and called it a night 20 minutes early! Despite the shortened show, it is a great feeling to know you are a part of something special, rain or no rain! The shows are great and a huge reason why we go. But they aren't the only reason! There is definite joy in seeing the place where your heroes grew up! You feel a connection seeing where Tommy and Gina grew up, went to high school,worked to pay the bills before the music thing took off! Seeing the homes they grew up in and the ones your concert money helped them buy today is great! You might call it stalking when you see my pictures of Jon's house from outside his gate. I call it seeing where my money went! If I hadn't spent all that money, maybe I could actually afford a double scoop at Crazee's! But knowing that I, in some small part, helped pay for the boat that is attached to the dock that is outside the massive chateau that Jon lives in somehow makes it ok! :)

The last couple of tours we have thrown in side trips into NYC! The first time, I was a little nervous! This native Southern Californian has heard all the stories of how crowded and dirty NYC is and how rude the people are! After my first trip, I couldn't imagine where the stories came from. Ok...i'll give ya crowded...maybe dirty! But the people are some of the nicest and friendliest people you will meet anywhere! Including L.A! I venture to say the people here are ruder by far! I LOVE NY!!! The energy, the people, the cops! They don't call those strapping hunks "New York's Finest" for nothing! And where else can you chase people with shopping carts down an alley to buy Pink Prada bags for $20! Shelley chasing that guy with Cindy close behind is a sight i'll never forget! I think we ended up with 5 or 6 Pradas between us with Cindy coming in the winner with 3! Sure, they aren't real but neither was the $10 Rolex I bought 1/2 a block down the street! I stood there and laughed at the irony that the only thing real on me that day was my tan and my boobs! How un-L.A. of me!

Another huge reason to go on these trips is to be with friends! We don't see each other very often and being stuck in a car lost in NJ is a great way to reconnect! LOL! Seriously, who better to understand why the hamburgers taste better at the White Castle in Sayreville NJ than other Jovi fans! It isn't all Bon Jovi! We talked about crazy men and the women that love them...us! We laughted at other tourists and just all around had a great time! As Cindy and I hung out in Newark Airport for 6 hours after we dropped Shelley off, we decided to hang up our NJ shoes! SURE! It's only been a month and I have already forgotten the frustration of the turnpike and started counting down the years (then days) until I am back there again! This time I will know to look for the 1 and 9! Like this post? Please share it, bookmark it or leave a comment.