As hoped, the house is coming along nicely. I've noticed a bit of a trend, though. As each project nears completion, the overall mood of the house improves... until something breaks, then we bought a piece of shit. Take this last week, Friday was okay, Saturday went okay, Saturday night our washing machine broke and flooded the garage (no gear was harmed, thank Jeesus!). Saturday night we had a piece of shit house, everyone was frustrated. Sunday, my pops came over to tape and mud the drywall that was installed Saturday, and the room finally looked like it was going to be damn close to done. Sunday night, we had what will become a really cute house again.
It's a roller coaster of emotions over here at the Rost house (!) but worth it for me. As for Jess' dad... he'll probably not want to have anything to do with Southern California after this.
In other news, I played a fantastic gig with Mark Massey on Saturday. Duet at a restaurant with a great vibe, and people wound up listening and complimenting and tipping! That rarely happens in a restaurant. And, AND! I had my very first Kobe burger. Let me tell you boys and girls, the difference is like smelling a rose and smelling vomit. I mean, it might have even been worth the $16 price tag (which we didn't have to pay).
Well, that about does her. Wraps the whole thing up. I was sorry to see Donnie go, but at least there's comfort in knowing there's a little Lebowski on the way. I guess that's how the whole human comedy keeps perpetuating itself...
Monday, October 30, 2006
Monday, October 23, 2006
Is That Me?
Just had the sweetest sub gig ever. Gardena High, AP English, periods 3,4, and 5 only, and the teacher was on campus. And he just wanted me to show a movie! School is not done yet, but I am. I'll try to sneak out a little early, maybe give the filipina lady in the office a little wink and a pat on the tushy to seal the deal.
The house is going well (I think). I haven't been so damn exhausted in years, but Pops came over last weekend and he and Jess' dad framed a room, installed windows and doors and sheeted, tarred, and sided the mofo... remember, all in two days!
I did go somewhere I had never been before: the public dump. I had several mounds of shit in my front and back yards that needed removal. Here's an abbreviated list of things I consider shit from my yard:
Suspended ceiling, carpet that smells like dog piss, padding that smells like dog piss, carpet with dog hair all over it, goddamn tree stump that took me 2 hours to dig up, plastic/aluminum windows that look like they were bought at a flea market in Calcutta, iron gate, cement chunks, etc.
So I rented a small U-Haul trailer for 10 bucks and with my dad's pickup, loaded up and hauled two half-ton loads of rubbish to the dump in Stanton (where else?) in which there were several neet things. Piles of garbage. An enormous monstrosity of a bulldozer (wheels as tall as I). And a very interesting smell. Not just manure, not just dumpster, but both in there. After I left, I had spent 60 clams to throw stuff away. Compared to $95 to rent a dumpster for a day, or $380 for a roll-off, I'd say it was a good buy.
Well, it's time to see if they'll let me go.
The house is going well (I think). I haven't been so damn exhausted in years, but Pops came over last weekend and he and Jess' dad framed a room, installed windows and doors and sheeted, tarred, and sided the mofo... remember, all in two days!
I did go somewhere I had never been before: the public dump. I had several mounds of shit in my front and back yards that needed removal. Here's an abbreviated list of things I consider shit from my yard:
Suspended ceiling, carpet that smells like dog piss, padding that smells like dog piss, carpet with dog hair all over it, goddamn tree stump that took me 2 hours to dig up, plastic/aluminum windows that look like they were bought at a flea market in Calcutta, iron gate, cement chunks, etc.
So I rented a small U-Haul trailer for 10 bucks and with my dad's pickup, loaded up and hauled two half-ton loads of rubbish to the dump in Stanton (where else?) in which there were several neet things. Piles of garbage. An enormous monstrosity of a bulldozer (wheels as tall as I). And a very interesting smell. Not just manure, not just dumpster, but both in there. After I left, I had spent 60 clams to throw stuff away. Compared to $95 to rent a dumpster for a day, or $380 for a roll-off, I'd say it was a good buy.
Well, it's time to see if they'll let me go.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Space Invaders
My future in-laws have arrived. For all those reading this who aren't Kevin and Jeff, my fiance's parents are from MinneCanada and are great human beings. So in their altruism they decided to drive out and live with us (!) for about 2 months (!!), and help remodel/redecorate the new digs.
Watching Jess' dad is like looking at a paint can shaker machine thing: you can't focus on it, all you know is that it's moving. So it's a bit hard to keep up, but, it is now day 4 and we have an entire bedroom that has no carpet/padding, no ceiling, just studs and insulation. We also have a garage full of sinks and toilets and sheetrock and wood and on and on.
So here's the bad news: I want to learn how to do all this shit, and I won't because Jess' dad will do it himself.
Here's the good news, we'll have a pretty sweet little hut when they're done, and Jess' dad will do it himself.
Up on the agenda: two bathrooms completely replumbed and remodeled, aforementioned room re-walled, windowed, ceilinged, etc. I wish I had a decent digital camera. I'll see what I can do.
Overall, I think this will be quite an amazing couple months, but perhaps I should wait a few weeks to make that decision.
Watching Jess' dad is like looking at a paint can shaker machine thing: you can't focus on it, all you know is that it's moving. So it's a bit hard to keep up, but, it is now day 4 and we have an entire bedroom that has no carpet/padding, no ceiling, just studs and insulation. We also have a garage full of sinks and toilets and sheetrock and wood and on and on.
So here's the bad news: I want to learn how to do all this shit, and I won't because Jess' dad will do it himself.
Here's the good news, we'll have a pretty sweet little hut when they're done, and Jess' dad will do it himself.
Up on the agenda: two bathrooms completely replumbed and remodeled, aforementioned room re-walled, windowed, ceilinged, etc. I wish I had a decent digital camera. I'll see what I can do.
Overall, I think this will be quite an amazing couple months, but perhaps I should wait a few weeks to make that decision.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Talk About A Set Of Bookends
Well, this week has certainly been "eventful" for me. Monday was my big appearance on the Ellen Degeneres Show, which - if you saw it - allows me about 14 minutes and 57 seconds of fame left.
Tonight, I'm subbing for my good friend Luther Hughes, and playing behind the one and only, John Davidson. If you're asking yourself "who the hell is John Davidson," then you obviously never watched game shows in the 80's. Not stupid shows like Joker's Wild, good shows like $100,000 pyramid, and Hollywood Sqares, and a little show called That's Incredible!
Mr. Davidson has always sung some, and acted, and did Broadway, and tonight I'll have the pleasure of playing bass for him.
How's the music? Check out www.johndavidson.com to find out. I like it, but I like everything.
Man oh man, I don't know, girls and boys, if things keep on like this, I might be playing for the Grammys in no time!
In all honesty, it'll be very exciting to meet someone who has been in the business for so long, and who I always watched and liked as a kid. Who would've thunk it? I love my job!
Tonight, I'm subbing for my good friend Luther Hughes, and playing behind the one and only, John Davidson. If you're asking yourself "who the hell is John Davidson," then you obviously never watched game shows in the 80's. Not stupid shows like Joker's Wild, good shows like $100,000 pyramid, and Hollywood Sqares, and a little show called That's Incredible!
Mr. Davidson has always sung some, and acted, and did Broadway, and tonight I'll have the pleasure of playing bass for him.
How's the music? Check out www.johndavidson.com to find out. I like it, but I like everything.
Man oh man, I don't know, girls and boys, if things keep on like this, I might be playing for the Grammys in no time!
In all honesty, it'll be very exciting to meet someone who has been in the business for so long, and who I always watched and liked as a kid. Who would've thunk it? I love my job!
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Dangers of Owning a House
Buying a house has such promising aspects. Consider:
a) more space to walk around in;
b) a place for a barbecue, so I can have fatty burgers and dogs anytime I want;
c) attached garage to pull in, get out, deal with gear later;
d) more rooms to give to my drunk-off-ass friends.
There are however, several pitfalls, a couple quid pro quos, if you will.
a) it takes longer to find the cats;
b) a barrage of work to do, such as, pull up carpet, scrape ceilings, gut/remodel/replumb bathrooms;
c) costs more;
and, most significantly, due to "c"
d) must drink cheap beer.
It's really quite sad. No Chimay, no Czechvar, not even a Heineken. Only MGD. That's it. Not that I'm bashing MGD, it is quite, uh, cold. And bubbly! And loyal. It's always been there when I needed it, it never gets all uppity and costs a lot, and dammit, sometimes I just want to drink six gallons of swill and play army man in my neighbors' yards at 3:30 in the morning.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, I want a kegerator. In fact, here's my mission statement:
I half-promise, I semi-swear, I quasi-vow almost never, maybe only once in while, to put a keg of anything less than Stella, or Urquell, or some other good beer into my Precious.
And I'm also trying to say, "Thank you, MGD. Thank you for being the still-malleable ex-girlfriend that you can call up to get laid when the chips are down. Sure you have to deal with struggling to get her top off, letting what she has to offer just slip down with no real concentration or care, and of course, no head; but hey, what's the alternative? I'll be good and goddamned if I'm going to drink Smirnoff Ice."
a) more space to walk around in;
b) a place for a barbecue, so I can have fatty burgers and dogs anytime I want;
c) attached garage to pull in, get out, deal with gear later;
d) more rooms to give to my drunk-off-ass friends.
There are however, several pitfalls, a couple quid pro quos, if you will.
a) it takes longer to find the cats;
b) a barrage of work to do, such as, pull up carpet, scrape ceilings, gut/remodel/replumb bathrooms;
c) costs more;
and, most significantly, due to "c"
d) must drink cheap beer.
It's really quite sad. No Chimay, no Czechvar, not even a Heineken. Only MGD. That's it. Not that I'm bashing MGD, it is quite, uh, cold. And bubbly! And loyal. It's always been there when I needed it, it never gets all uppity and costs a lot, and dammit, sometimes I just want to drink six gallons of swill and play army man in my neighbors' yards at 3:30 in the morning.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, I want a kegerator. In fact, here's my mission statement:
I half-promise, I semi-swear, I quasi-vow almost never, maybe only once in while, to put a keg of anything less than Stella, or Urquell, or some other good beer into my Precious.
And I'm also trying to say, "Thank you, MGD. Thank you for being the still-malleable ex-girlfriend that you can call up to get laid when the chips are down. Sure you have to deal with struggling to get her top off, letting what she has to offer just slip down with no real concentration or care, and of course, no head; but hey, what's the alternative? I'll be good and goddamned if I'm going to drink Smirnoff Ice."
Monday, October 09, 2006
A Serious Week
After a little over a week, I'm finally back into webby webby thing, and thought I'd update, just for the hell of it. Besides, the events of late have been many, and worth telling all, er, both of you.
Firstly, my fianc-eh and I moved out of my beloved LBC (dat's Long Beach, yea-ah) and into my childhood city of Garden Grove. It sucks for two reasons: a) now I have to visit Long Beach; and b) Garden Grove is a Pepsi city, and I hate Pepsi. Coke is better, let's move on.
This move does have its upside, though, which is: a house. That's right, a three mf'ing bedroom, attached garage, front and back yard havin' actual OC house. It is a fixer-upper though, that's the catch. Which leads me to the move itself:
Day 1: move 5 truckloads and a carload of boxes of little shit Jessica and I have accumulated over 4 years of one bedroom apt living. Then, gig. Exhaustion set in during the second set, and I fought back (unsuccessfully) several gaping yawns while playing. Nothing says "I'm totally into this music" like, aaaaaawwwwwwwwwmmmmmm.
Day 2: Early church gig, borrow a big fat probably-should've-had-an-A-class-license-to-drive truck from a good friend and great drummer, John, whom I call Lecc (LAYCH). Roll with Pops and Kevin (sidebar) to LBC, grab the furniture, get to LBC, eat Los Cotija's, start scraping ceilings.
Day 3: finish the ceiling scrapey. For those who are confused, if you have ever seen "popcorn" acoustic ceiling, wall to wall to floor to wall to ceiling plastic, some warm water, and a scraper will take that shit right off. Which is what I did Day 3. Day 2 is big ups to Pops for getting me started, and my niz Matt for doing a gang of work with me, even though his incessant cheery whistling almost drove me batty.
Day 4: move furniture into the main part of the house, get furniture delivered, rip up carpet to reveal sweet ass hard wood floors, etc.
Then it gets interesting because it turns musical:
The last couple of weeks I've been helping out the bassist-less CSUFullerton big band. Several rehearsals, couple of performances, normal college big band fare. Thanks to Luther (sidebar) for referring me. Great music, mostly Count Basie, whom I was not super deep into (you know what I mean), but now I want to get ten or so albums. Anyway, played the Brea jazz festival, on-campus concert, and the Count Basie Jazz Festival (officially, One O'Clock Jump) at a hotel by LAX. This was a treat because I'm a big Ellington fan, and one of his great trumpet players was there: Clark Terry. Clark's performance showed his health problems and way up there age, but who cares? it's Clark Terry. Also, one of the great arrangers in jazz history was present, Mr. Frank Foster. We played one of his tunes, pretty shabbily, but I met him in the hall and he was very complimentary about the whole group and the other music we played - Kansas City Suite, if you care. As a sidenote, I wish I had a camera to take a picture of Frank and Clark in the hallway, two really old feelble black guys whispering to each other as they passed each other in their wheelchairs, facing different directions like the lovetoilet from SNL.
And finally, the best for last. Kevin and I have a running belief system which is that there are several comedians that are the least funny people in the world and yet seem to get a lot of work, kinda like the asshole that gets chicks. They are, in no particular order:
Ellen Degeneres
Wanda Sykes
Robert Townsend (except the first half of his appearance on the Rodney Dangerfield Show in the early 90's)
Bernie Mac (except maybe in Ocean's 11, or was that Cedric the Entertainer? or Mr. T? or Denzel Washington? or Morgan Freeman? I'm going to Hell.)
Rosie O'Donnell
also included should be Chris Kattan and Jimmy Fallon, for obvious reasons.
Well, the CSUF Band was invited (with me) to perform on a daytime talk show hosted by none other than Ellen Degeneres. I laughed, and of course said yes.
We did this show earlier today which was something like, get picked up by a charter bus at 11am, drive to Burbank, get in the studio, set up, run the arrangement of New York, New York none of us had played ever before, go to the green room, go back, green room, rehearsal for 20 minutes, green room for an hour, play twice (about a minute of playing), green room, one more time through the tune, green room, pack up, go home.
There were two really funny moments though, which is good for Ellen. One, when a hundred and fifty middle-aged white women were dancing to "OPP" by Naughty By Nature, and when I found out that one of the guests was, yep, Wanda Sykes. It was a black hole of funny.
To summate (I don't know, Kevin) the Hollywood experience: did I see any celebs? yes, on a monitor in the green room mostly, I did see Ellen a few feet away. She seemed nice, but busy, and looked exactly the same as on TV. Did I feel like a star? They gave us sandwiches and a T shirt. Did I get make up? Hell yes, bitches! I was a powdery, unshiny bass player. Was it worth it? I'll let you know tomorrow after I see the show at 3pm on NBC, but yeah probably.
So there's my busy week as quickly as possible. Not the eloquent verbiage I would prefer to provide, but I'm beat. Time for more beer and DirecTV.
Firstly, my fianc-eh and I moved out of my beloved LBC (dat's Long Beach, yea-ah) and into my childhood city of Garden Grove. It sucks for two reasons: a) now I have to visit Long Beach; and b) Garden Grove is a Pepsi city, and I hate Pepsi. Coke is better, let's move on.
This move does have its upside, though, which is: a house. That's right, a three mf'ing bedroom, attached garage, front and back yard havin' actual OC house. It is a fixer-upper though, that's the catch. Which leads me to the move itself:
Day 1: move 5 truckloads and a carload of boxes of little shit Jessica and I have accumulated over 4 years of one bedroom apt living. Then, gig. Exhaustion set in during the second set, and I fought back (unsuccessfully) several gaping yawns while playing. Nothing says "I'm totally into this music" like, aaaaaawwwwwwwwwmmmmmm.
Day 2: Early church gig, borrow a big fat probably-should've-had-an-A-class-license-to-drive truck from a good friend and great drummer, John, whom I call Lecc (LAYCH). Roll with Pops and Kevin (sidebar) to LBC, grab the furniture, get to LBC, eat Los Cotija's, start scraping ceilings.
Day 3: finish the ceiling scrapey. For those who are confused, if you have ever seen "popcorn" acoustic ceiling, wall to wall to floor to wall to ceiling plastic, some warm water, and a scraper will take that shit right off. Which is what I did Day 3. Day 2 is big ups to Pops for getting me started, and my niz Matt for doing a gang of work with me, even though his incessant cheery whistling almost drove me batty.
Day 4: move furniture into the main part of the house, get furniture delivered, rip up carpet to reveal sweet ass hard wood floors, etc.
Then it gets interesting because it turns musical:
The last couple of weeks I've been helping out the bassist-less CSUFullerton big band. Several rehearsals, couple of performances, normal college big band fare. Thanks to Luther (sidebar) for referring me. Great music, mostly Count Basie, whom I was not super deep into (you know what I mean), but now I want to get ten or so albums. Anyway, played the Brea jazz festival, on-campus concert, and the Count Basie Jazz Festival (officially, One O'Clock Jump) at a hotel by LAX. This was a treat because I'm a big Ellington fan, and one of his great trumpet players was there: Clark Terry. Clark's performance showed his health problems and way up there age, but who cares? it's Clark Terry. Also, one of the great arrangers in jazz history was present, Mr. Frank Foster. We played one of his tunes, pretty shabbily, but I met him in the hall and he was very complimentary about the whole group and the other music we played - Kansas City Suite, if you care. As a sidenote, I wish I had a camera to take a picture of Frank and Clark in the hallway, two really old feelble black guys whispering to each other as they passed each other in their wheelchairs, facing different directions like the lovetoilet from SNL.
And finally, the best for last. Kevin and I have a running belief system which is that there are several comedians that are the least funny people in the world and yet seem to get a lot of work, kinda like the asshole that gets chicks. They are, in no particular order:
Ellen Degeneres
Wanda Sykes
Robert Townsend (except the first half of his appearance on the Rodney Dangerfield Show in the early 90's)
Bernie Mac (except maybe in Ocean's 11, or was that Cedric the Entertainer? or Mr. T? or Denzel Washington? or Morgan Freeman? I'm going to Hell.)
Rosie O'Donnell
also included should be Chris Kattan and Jimmy Fallon, for obvious reasons.
Well, the CSUF Band was invited (with me) to perform on a daytime talk show hosted by none other than Ellen Degeneres. I laughed, and of course said yes.
We did this show earlier today which was something like, get picked up by a charter bus at 11am, drive to Burbank, get in the studio, set up, run the arrangement of New York, New York none of us had played ever before, go to the green room, go back, green room, rehearsal for 20 minutes, green room for an hour, play twice (about a minute of playing), green room, one more time through the tune, green room, pack up, go home.
There were two really funny moments though, which is good for Ellen. One, when a hundred and fifty middle-aged white women were dancing to "OPP" by Naughty By Nature, and when I found out that one of the guests was, yep, Wanda Sykes. It was a black hole of funny.
To summate (I don't know, Kevin) the Hollywood experience: did I see any celebs? yes, on a monitor in the green room mostly, I did see Ellen a few feet away. She seemed nice, but busy, and looked exactly the same as on TV. Did I feel like a star? They gave us sandwiches and a T shirt. Did I get make up? Hell yes, bitches! I was a powdery, unshiny bass player. Was it worth it? I'll let you know tomorrow after I see the show at 3pm on NBC, but yeah probably.
So there's my busy week as quickly as possible. Not the eloquent verbiage I would prefer to provide, but I'm beat. Time for more beer and DirecTV.
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