Willo O'Brien

Lastnight I picked up Lulu and we headed over to the Make Out Room to catch Say Hi to Your Mom – and they were GREAT! The lead singer’s voice reminded me a ton of Conor Oberst’s – but their music is different, so it makes it all it’s own. They had great stage presence and intensity – I am stoked to get their CD’s!

UPDATE: View Photos from this show (the ones of the band aren’t so good, cuz I was in the back & didn’t feel like moving closer. The red light at that bar makes it hard to get good shots, but hey – you get the idea anyway. :)

Unfortunately we missed the opening band, Cloud Cult, and after listening to their CD today – I am extra bummed I missed them! As soon as I walked in I saw Mike (and later Trevor & Dave, too!) of Hijack the Disco, who chastised me for missing them. Darnit! We should be talking about shows more, you guys! :)

Trevor (Hijack’s drummer) is the one who turned me on to Kissing Tigers, though, and I love them! I actually discovered them because he posted on myspace about their video So Stay In Love being SO good – and so I watched it & it is great! Check it out here! You also MUST click his name & watch the video he has on the main page of his myspace profile (under “Who I’d like to Meet”) – it’s hysterical. So anyway I’m stoked because Kissing Tigers is finally coming here (8/10 @ BoTH) & I told Trevor lastnight, and we’re all gonna go! woohoo!

OK, so like I said – Say Hi to Your Mom was *really* great – and it was a fun show because not only were the Hijack boys there, but my friend Ali met us there and I saw Deb (who’s apparently booking the Make Out Room now – awesome!), Ted, Jake and Tracy!

Funny story about Tracy is that she was at my birthday party last Saturday – but I don’t even know her! My friend Ryan had stopped by earlier in the night w/ his friend Becky (of Becky Stark and the Lavender Diamond!) and then apparently later had spoke w/ Tracy & told them to come by here – and they did!

So it was pretty funny because out of nowhere this stranger introduces herself to me at my party & explains how she got there & of course I was like “Sweet! The more the merrier!” Then when I talked to Ryan the next day & told him about it, he said she actually books for the Rickshaw & is really into music, too. And I was like aww man, if I’d known that, I would have talked music with her more! So, ya – it was cool to run into her at this show randomly. I was like “Hey! You were at my party!” hahaaa. This really is such a small town.

It rocked!!!!! I was SO stoked to see all my friends. A few of them, although friends for at least a year or more, hadn’t even been to my place, so it was so cool to have them in my home! Thank you, those of you who came out to celebrate w/ me!!

Brian gave me a gift I’ve had on my wishlist forever – a gift certificate to Ambiance!! Oh man, I am a lucky girl! I can’t wait to go use it! What a treat! He also got me this wacky book I had on my wishlist, Flaming Iguanas: An Illustrated All-Girl Road Novel Thing. I started reading lastnight & so far, it’s really entertaining! Thanks Brian!!! xoxoxxo

Speaking of wacky books, my friend Cody got me another one I had on my wishlist: Giraffes? Giraffes! It’s hilarious!

Practical gift award goes to my sweet friend, Eric who last year & again this year stoked me with a gift certificate to Whole Foods. SO. AWESOME. I mean, seriously – that’s such a neat gift! They sell such yummy food, and personally I have some favorites in their vitamins, face & body products section that this certificate will help me buy! yay! Thanks Eric!

My sweet Lyney-looo made me a yuummy carrot cake (decorated with cute white daisys too!) & had me befuddled when everyone came out on the porch saying Lyne was making them come out there instead of be inside. Wha? Here I thought it was her way of stirring up the party – but surprise, surprise she followed with 30 candles (oh my god that’s a lot of fire!) blazing atop her pretty cake. yay!!

Thank you to sweet Lucia who came over early to hang out with me while I was setting up – and is making me a scarf, that I got to even request size & length! I love the color & can’t wait to see it when it’s all done! Thanks Lucia bean! Speaking of handmade goods, Hez is making these incredible bags & gave me a custom Hezcatt bag… it’s awesome – and reversable! I’ll have to take a photo & post it so you can see! She’s going to have her store up in no time, right hez? :)

It was great to see the Six Girls (minus Kat, who had her boy‘s bday that night & never made it!), since we’ve pretty much disbanded and we hardly see each other anymore. Sucks none of those girls are in my pics – I didn’t even pull out the camera till like 9:30 – sorry bout that!

Speaking of, for any of you who were part of the early crew… it was pretty mellow and you missed a great party later on! I won’t lie, I was nervous I wasn’t going to have one of my classic crazy parties that I’m so proud of :). It was pretty chill in the early hours and mentally I was preparing myself – hahaa! but holy cow… come 11:15 or so, the party peeps started showin up, shots were had & the party got AWESOME till about 3am! WHAT FUN!

Misty & Ted hit the nail on the head w/ a Bagel Radio mix and a book, called Drop Dead Cute with Illustrations by Japanese Women. Awesome! Darren also knows I like the art books, and he got me one of Tiffany Bozic‘s (love her!) and a KozynDan one, that I actually already had received from Jee last year! huzzah! These peeps know what I like!! :) I’m excited that I get to now pass on the awesomeness of Kozyndan to someone else. Darren has given me the gift of an awesome gift to re-gift. ha! :)

However, quite possibly one of the *coolest* things I got was Darren’s awesome handmade card:

Isn’t that AWESOME!?!? Damn, you are so talented, D! I was blown away when I got it – I was like “Whoa! Where did you get this!?!?” And then he zoomed me in on his tag and I was like “OMG!” and my jaw dropped!! (like my play by play? haha) Seriously, my friend Darren is SO AWESOME!!!! And he even rocked it with us till like 4am. Now that is LOVE, man. Good stuff. My friends rule!

SO ya…. I had a great frickin time. The keg even was almost all gone by the end, which I proudly admit I think I probably took care of most of it – every time I turned around my glass was empty. haha… how’s that for a recipe for a kick ass birthday? awww yaaa! And on top of that, I was fortunate enough to receive beautiful flowers, incredibly delicious carmel brownies (thanks ali & leslie!), a few bottles of wine, champagne, tequila and even sake (thanks chris!)! woohoooo!! Uhh, so you know what all that means? I totally need to have another party! :)

My brother totally rocked. Poor guy had to work the SF Apparel show early the next day & had warned me he wasn’t going to be able to make it a late night. But I retorted with a stern, “Oh HELL no. This is my 30th birthday and you WILL be partying with me all night!” And bless his little heart he did. Until about 4:15 when I couldn’t find him & called his cell to find he’d snuck out to pass out in his car. HAHHAHA! What a trooper!!!! But, it goes without saying his Sunday was brutal. God, he deserves brother of the year award for that! THANK YOU MAX!!! Everyone loved you, you cutie!

Huge love to my hotty girlfriends Cameron & Jenna (I mean seriously – you ladies are HOTT!) who made the wee hours of the morning so fun (until we all passed out), and then kept the party goin with me the next morning by taking me out for my favorite Huevos breakfast @ Boogaloos! yay!!! And to Neighbor Nathan who is my new party pal, and joined me for a sleepy sunday afternoon matinee of Madagascar! Such a cute movie!!

Everyone loved meeting each other and some kick ass connections were made over everything from tequila vs. Jäger – to hair-metal bands. Isn’t that sweet? hahhaa

:::::

On my actual bday (Monday, June 20) my sweet friend Trina took me out for a yummy lunch (salmon, my favorite!) at Chez Papa – and then we even got ice cream afterwards at Scoop down the street! yay!!

I’m super bummed I forgot to have anyone take a photo of Trina & I… she even drove us in her cute little mini!

Oh & I even wore my BEAUTIFUL new necklace my Momma got for me!!! I’ve been wanting something from Small Things Designs forever, and so I picked out what I wanted & I now am the proud owner of this gorgeous necklace:

Thanks Mommacita! xoxox

My Mom apparently has several gifts on the way to me – she’s sooooo sweet. I already got one lastnight which I’m stoked on!! Besides the necklace, all I could think of that I really wanted was home stuff, like a new pot that strains pasta through the lid (smaller than the huge one I’ve had), and a square baking pan, etc. All these home-y things – I’m definitely getting old! hahaa. But I’m really excited – and say Congrats right back to my Momma for raising me so well that 30 years later I can safely say I think I turned out pretty darn good! hehee

So in summary, ringing in my big 3-0 was fantastic. Thank you all for your emails, ecards, comments – and most importantly to my wonderful family & friends for making it a great one!!! xoxo

p.s. if you missed the photos, there’s a big fat album of them here!

I have to run out to a client meeting downtown – but all three photo albums are posted!!

30th Birthday Bash 2005

Stephen Malkmus @ The Fillmore

Fat Pants & Funny Boots!

Enjoy & I’ll write more later!

Lyne, Kristin & Hez beating on Stig :)

My birthday party was SO ridiculously fun. Delightfully, my camera was hijacked and the results are VERY entertaining. This is simply one of the many hilarious shots taken that night. I’ll sort & upload them all tomorrow. (err, later today)

I finally had a photo shoot with Fat Pants & Funny Boots!! This is just one of the adorable shots I got of cutie Funny Boots… could you just die!? I about did. SO CUTE! :) I’ll upload those photos tomorrow, too.

Night!

me smiling ear to ear (except today icee’s will be replaced with beer)

Today I got up @ 8am (only because my brother was up & leaving to hit the Apparel show with his Om Gallery goods), went & worked out, and then got ALL my errands done! woohooo!

As soon as I got home, I was on the phone w/ Lucia when a beautiful vase of gerber daisies arrived from sweet Samara! yay!!

Then, I worked a little, and got a surprise call from Matt (my ex) who stopped over to give me a bday gift! What a surprise!!! But SUCH a welcome one, because that guy gives the BEST gifts ever!!! So guess what I got!??! Something I’ve been wanting and had on my wishlist for the longest time: The Iron Giant – Special Edition DVD! YAY!!!!!!! It’s perfect that he got it for me, too – since we discovered the Iron Giant together. He was actually the one who gave me the huge Iron Giant poster I still have framed & hanging on my wall. I love that movie! Matt always knows just what to get…. what a sweetie!!!! Gotta love ex-boyfriends who are SUCH good guys that you never stop loving them. :)

He also got me a GC to Kiehls – which is awesome, considering the last thing I had from there was from him & I ran out & totally miss it. AND he gave me this hysterical car air freshener. Someone knows I like cat butt. hahhaaa Oh – and can’t forget the great Emily the Strange birthday card, complete with a “birthday rap”. :p It’s awesome.

And so we hang out a bit & then he’s like I gotta go… and I was like, “ya, what are you up to today?” and he was like “I’m going to Alaska.” And I thought for sure it was a classic Matt joke… but he really is!! He was on his way to the airport! HA!

So I’ve cleaned up the backyard, the keg just arrived (yes, I’m having a keger hahhaa! – let’s hear it for turning 30 and still partying like I’m 17!!). Now I have to jump in the shower, Lucia & my brother Max should be here soon, and then everyone’s coming over later & we’re going to celebrate WONDER WILLO!!!!!!!!!! :) I love birthdays!

Have a beer with me wherever you are. xoxo

p.s. actual birth day is 6/20/75 in case you’re wondering.

I need to:

#1. Find speakers I can hook up to my Powerbook (easy to hook up – USB? or the small jack on my powerbook?) to listen to better sound at my desk. Usually I have it streaming over the Airport Express to my speakers in the living room – but sometimes late at night it’s better that I have it low at my computer, as to not shake the whole house! :)

#2. Find someone who has had experience with Online Stores/E-Commerce – I need to figure out a couple things… like if a business is already accepting credit cards… how can you hook that up to your online store? Is MIVA pretty easy to configure? Do you recommend something else? Experts, experienced peeps – I need your advice! This is an area I’m tired of not knowing the answers to. And no, this client does not want to do Paypal or Yahoo. Thanks!

I’m on a list that emails me when there’s an earthquake around here… and for the last month I’ve been getting emails notifying me about little ones here & there. Apparently a bunch of small ones is a good thing though, because it lets the tension out… but still… I can’t help but thinking it’s leading up to the (sound effect: dun-dun-dun) “big one”.

Living here I’ve totally become a big fat scaredy cat about earthquakes. I’m actually not that nervous about one happening, as much as I dread the actual onset of one. That slow rumbling that creeps it’s way up to the edge of your house, and then permeates all your walls and objects of affection with monster sized rattling and you feel like it’s never going to stop and everythings going to come crashing down. Ya, I could completely do w/o that. So, when I say I’ve become a big scaredy cat – it’s actually more of a paranoia for that entire feeling. The wind will blow, rattling the windows, and my mind will think, “OMG, is it an earthquake?”. My cat will be doing one of those furious behind the ear scratches w/ his back leg and the whole bed shakes and I woke up in a panic, thinking for sure my bed was shaking because there was an earthquake happening (FYI this time I had a pillow over my head while I was sleeping, so I couldn’t auditorily match it up at first… it was still scary!).

I couldn’t even escape my paranoia on the East Coast! When I was staying in Brooklyn, where they don’t even get earthquakes, Karrie & Wayne’s bottom floor flat would shake something fierce every time a truck or a bus went by! (she writes about this here). It was hilarious every time my mind would go, “Oh shit!…” and then remember, I’m in Brooklyn. ha!

So, anyway – apparently tonite there was a 7.0 off the coast up here, which initiated a Tsunami warning for about an hour, before it was called off. Oddly enough the service I am signed up for didn’t email me about that one, but had emailed me about one that was about 5.1. I actually found out about it because my friend Summer in Steamboat IM’d me to ask me if I felt it. But then she kept going on about some Tsunami warning and I was like ‘whu?!’ Nice to know if I need to evacuate, I’ll be hearing it over IM from 1,000 miles away. :p

I have FINALLY updated my show calendar!!!! wooohooooo!!

Over the last few months I’ve been working like crazy – to the point where I wasn’t even hitting shows for about a month (gasp!) and really even last week I was way too hermity considering the incredible shows happening for MCMF. But hey – hermiting is the new black – so it’s cool. But even better, is that I’m no longer avoiding updating my list – and I’m ready to face the music (hahhaa!). aka I’m back in the swing of things & am ready to hit some shows!!

This week I’m hittin Stephen Malkmus w/ Martha Wainwright (Wed), possibly the Deerhoof/Electrelane show (Thurs), and The Go-Betweens w/ Court & Spark (Fri). I may skip the Thurs night show to chill though, since Saturday night is going to be the big partay for yours truly! Aww yaaaa…. I’ll be celebrating my 30th birthday! YUP! I’m turning 30!!! Isn’t that awesome!? I’m pretty stoked actually. :) 30 is COOL!!! wooohoo!

OK – now I gotta work. :) This is why I don’t update my show calendar – it takes me hours & leads me to reading about my favorite bands online, and then finding more music I want to download & listen to and read about and, and, and… and all of a sudden it’s a few hours later! hahhaa. It feels good though, I gotta say. mmmm…. muuuusiiiiic.

Sunday morning my ex (and Kazoobie’s daddy) Matt came over to give our 4 year old fuzzy pants his bday presents! It was great to see him, and I wish I would have taken photos because he shaved his head for the show he’s been in, and it’s so wild to see him sans hair! So anyway – it was cool to see him. I ate breakfast, and Kazoobie got treats and a new mouse!

::::

After doing a small bit of work, I got all prepared to head out the door for the Haight Street Fair. Normally I wouldn’t have gone to this, as actually I rarely hit any of the street festivals here any more, but this one I wanted to hit, because not only was Ted there pouring beers, but my brother had an Om Gallery booth there! Yay, I get to see my brother!

So I decided instead of doing a workout at the gym, I’d just walk over there w/ my iPod and enjoy the beautiful day! And right as I was walking out, I saw my neighbor out back of his house & asked him what he was up to – and he mentioned he was headed there, so I recruited him to join me on my walk and off we went!

It took us an hour to get from Bernal Heights to Haight Street, and the weather couldn’t have been more beautiful!! Shortly after we arrived (and slugged through a few blocks of the massive crowds… ug), I saw a booth selling Fat Tire (my favorite beer!). I thought #1. I should wait to score the free beer wherever Ted was pouring #2. Max said he had margaritas waiting for us, so maybe I should just hold off to drink those – but the lure of Fat Tire was almost too much! It’s just SO good! :) Well, AWESOMELY enough Ted just happen to be pouring there! YAY!!!

Then finally just a little further down, we finally got to my brother’s booth, where him & Samara were hanging out (selling like crazy, which was so cool to see!) and it was SO great to finally see them again! We finished our beers and started on the margaritas in no time and ended up having such a fun day just chillin there with them. We didn’t have to fight the crowds at all since we just stayed put – and we had shade, drinks & good company – nice!!

Afterwards Nathan & I helped them break down and load up, and then we all squeezed in the van and cruised back over to our neck of the woods where we ate some YUMMY Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack!! mmm!!!

Here are a few photos from the day!

Some of you may have heard about the Bay Area Blogger Meet-Up deal that KRON 4 put on this weekend. Free food, and a chance to catch up with some of my blogging friends? OK!

But kinda funny – if you look that link above, they posted 2 photos from the event that are horrible. That’s what I call “garfed”. And trying to watch the video is painful, as it’s encoded terribly and the buffering makes it skip the entire way through. Wow, they could use to learn a thing or two from Bloggers right there!

So ya, it was short & sweet, but they had pretty good food (the snickerdoodle cookies especially! :) I got a bad tshirt (that I’ve already cut, which ups it’s chances for getting worn from about 2% to 8%), and got to hang out with some of my blogging pals. They’re all so awesome!

tantek, me, lucia, sarah, eric, mai, biz & chris

Sarah even gave me 2 awesome new little pouches she’d made for me to put my iPod and camera in! A custom sewjob from cutie Sarah! *blush*

View More Photos from this event