Willo O'Brien

Friday night we were gonna go see John Vanderslice. I really like his CD’s and we caught the last of his set in Austin and I thought he was excellent live – so I was anxious to see him again. But, after going to shows Wed and Thurs, we sorta weren’t up for it and figured since he’s local, we can catch him another time around.

So, after a nice workout with Rebecca Friday night – I came home, got ready & headed out for dinner with Rick at one of my favorite restaurants in the city: Emmy’s Spaghetti Shack. It was Rick’s first time there and he loved it. We had delicious wine, the best spaghetti and meatballs EVER and talked about a trip we have coming up in June (more on that later).

It was nice to just be out, enjoying a nice dinner. And Emmy’s kicks ass not just because the food rocks, but they have a sweet DJ spinnin there, great art on the walls, and cute waitresses. What more could you ask for?

We knew of a few things going on, all of the music related in some way, but we just weren’t wanting to commit to any major show or anything. So after dinner we strolled down to The Odeon where one of the things we knew of was happening. My friend Johnny had sent out an email sayin his band The Dead Hensons were playing there – and after our mindblowing Cookie Mongoloid experience, we *had* to check out another Sesame Street band. :)

It was great to see Johnny again too. I met him through my dear friend Justyn, whose now moved away to Nashville and I miss him very much!!! Johnny’s got a new girlfriend too, who is totally hot! But she was a little standoffish in away. Might have been because in the first minute I met her I told her I thought she was so cute, but you’d think that’d be a compliment. Justyn said he thought that mighta been why she was weird after that. People are weird! Anyway…

So we say hi to them and proceed to take a seat at the bar and order some drinks. I had to keep my oldie but goodie Tom Collins drink thing goin and it was DELICIOUS.

The Dead Hensons were cool, but we were wishin they’d dressed up a little more :) John was fun to watch up there, and it was all really fun & good – but honestly the guy/lead singer’s voice had something to be desired for me. They were still good though! Johnny also plays bass in Double Funk Crunch.

By this time it was only about midnight, but after 3 glasses of wine and two tom collinszszz, I was feeling quite tipsy! :) So we called it a night & walked home. One of the nice things about partyin in my hood is then it’s only a hop skip & a jump away from my house! WOOHOO!

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Saturday was SOO productive, it was awesome. First I headed over to The Bazaar Cafe and had coffee and bagels with all the girls from my days at Fine Brand Media. 4 of which (count em, FOUR!!) have had babies in the last 2 years… One of them, her second. Holy Baby City!! :) I was so excited to get to see them.. especially because I hadn’t even seen two of the lil’ newborns!

Gradiva wasn’t able to bring her lil’ tyke, Jonah, nor Jen her lil’ Benny as they’re both over 1 yr and a handful… but 3 lil babies were there and they were so precious and squish their cheeks cute. And it was wonderful to reconnect with all the girls again. Quite a unique array of names between us all, too: Gradiva, Jonah, Ava, Mikio and Enzo – cool, huh?

Me and Jen’s new baby boy, Enzo

:: update – photos posted ::

Quite a bit has changed in each of our lives in the last year… Fine Brand basically shut down business as we knew it… and between 1/2 of them having children and the rest of us moving onto new jobs & such, everyone’s doing something different now. Rian, Andrea & Mikio are moving to Japan. Jan & Layne have basically morfed what was left of Fine Brand’s Web Maintenance into a new company called Collaborint. And the other girls are full time Momma’s with other creative or PT ventures on the side. Change is good :)

Afterwards Rick met me out at Cheap Pete’s and we *finally* got a few of our posters framed. Two of mine were prints I got at the APE show a couple months back. One is this awesome screenprint by this super creative girl, Daria.. she doesn’t do much with computers, otherwise I’d like you to her site! But she had a whole table full of fun screenprinted cards and prints, and more that were really inspiring to me. Here’s the print I bought in it’s awesome new green mat and framed glory:

The other one I got matted/framed is an Adrian Tomine print for Optic Nerve #9 – and the 3rd is a Metric poster I just got at their show last week. I’ll take photos of those two when they’re up.

Rick & I had bought awesome Pretty Girls Make Graves posters at their show a few months back, so he got his matted and framed (I need to get mine matted and hung as well). And we picked up some frames for the Fillmore posters were fast collecting.

Afterwards we went to a lighting store where Rick picked up a new fixture for his flat. And then we headed down to Chestnut St and tried on glasses for Rick, as his were in his jacket that got stolen at Butter a few weeks back. We found him an awesome pair and we were both thrilled to have gotten all these things crossed off our lists!!

Between all these errands we had about 1.5 hours to head back to our respective houses and get some things put away/check email/etc before we grabbed BBQ stuff and headed over to Jane’s.

Ben Brown is in town, who I met at SXSW. Hilariously, a few days ago I had started reading a post on Craigslist about a similar experience I had had in Austin about thinking we’d see a secret Pixies show we’d gotten a tip on. And then as I kept reading, I was like, “No way, Lane was the one that told me, too!” And then I see my own name as a part of the post. Turns out Ben wrote it… hahhaaa It was a good recount of our feelings about it all – and fun to read Ben’s history with his love for the Pixies. (If that CL post has expired by the time you read this, it’s on Ben’s site here)

So the BBQ was fun. We had TASTY cheeseburgers and enjoyed Jane’s yummy Thai marinated Ahi she had grilled up – and we got to see a lot of other peeps, too.

After the BBQ and since we’d had a party night on Friday, Rick & I were beat and decided to rent a movie. We rented 21 Grams and snuggled up and watched it in bed with my laptop! I’m so psyched to have that option – Much better than my uncomfortable couch!

21 Grams was good! Different than I expected – but the acting was really excellent and the story was pretty wild and certainly makes you think about how so much can change in an instant in your life. And how it’s so wild to trace the circumstances that surround the fate of who comes into your life.

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This morning was full of sleep and then we got up and made some yummy banana waffles!! mmm!!! It was the first time I’ve made waffles in this new place and it was soo fun – and really yummy!!

I went & worked out, came home & cleaned and here I am now – finally blogging my heart out :)

Now I’m going to try to get some work done and maybe even post a few more pics. Hope you had a nice weekend!

Just like their URL: I Love Metric!

I LOVED! this show!! Emily Haines is the beautiful voice behind this band (who also sings with Broken Social Scene, too!) and she is AWESOME!!!!

You know how sometimes I get annoyed with the performers? Well nothing this girl could do would annoy me. I loved every little bit of it. She was sweet and innocent and even pulled out some freaky psycho rocker bits too and it was all so great. I got a cool poster, too!

I’ve been loving their CD over the last couple weeks. Actually, lemme backtrack: I had checked them out online last fall (when debating going to a show of theirs over Halloween) and then recently Jem gave me the CD (thanks Jem!) and I’ve been listening to it nonstop. It’s really great! I kept even meaning to review it on here. But I’ll just tell you – it’s super fun. She’s got a beautiful, beautiful voice and the songs kinda have this 80’s synth, early 90’s thing – but with a new wave pop sound to it. It’s so fun! I was absolutely delighted to see her perform practically every single one of the songs on the CD – and to have it sound SOO good and be SOO enjoyable to watch live… AWESOME!!!

I had a yummy Tom Collins and the bartender laughed when I said it brought me back to when I used to drink them at 19. HAH! Seriously, when I was living in Boulder, this girl (my drinking buddy at the time and I’ve now totally forgotten her name – ha!) and I used to go to this same bar, where they never carded me. And since we had a plan of always going ‘liquor before beer never fear’ every night, we would always start with a Tom Collins or two.

Except! There is one link I always remember that girl with – and that’s when we walked out of Catacombs (after I got carded & denied) my friend was ahead of me and I stopped and she was walking to the car, but I wanted to go down the street to The James (which soon after became my favorite bar, and has since closed). But I’m yelling and yelling (Judy? Julie? Kim? Who knows…) but she couldn’t hear me and kept walking… but her loss, because guess what happened then?

I stop and turn around… and who’s standing there? Bill Murray!

YUP! Bill Murray and this other guy, who I came to learn was like some camera guy on the set of this movie that they were filming there. (The movie name also slips my mind, as I’d already had a few Tom Collins that evening. :)

So what do I do? Friendly, outgoing, 19 year old Willo? I say hello, of course! And ask them if they’d like to join me in heading down to The James? They say yes! woohoo! I put one arm through Bill Murray’s and one arm through his friends and off we go!

So we’re chatting and walking… and I say “You know, it’s just *perfect* that I’ve met you… because I LOVE to laugh!!” hahaa! At 11:something PM and after their day of being on the set, I think they were pretty psyched to have some lil’ thing with crazy silly energy around. They laughed and shortly after we arrived at the James. The bouncer of course didn’t even think of asking for my ID – and I’d actually met him once or twice before – so he totally looked at me like, “Why didn’t you tell me you know Bill Murray!?”

Mr. Murray buys me and his friend a drink and we headed into the back and his friend and I played some pool. Poor Bill then has to deal with the drunkards of Boulder. It’s so funny to see people interact with him. Thing is, as you know from his films – the man has got the DRYEST sense of humor. Meaning, if he says something funny – he’s not usually smiling or cracking himself up at all. He’s totally straight faced and honestly looks like he’s totally depressed. So all the while, people are asking him questions – and he’d maybe reply with like one word answers: “Yes” and they’d bust up: “Bahahhahahhahaaaa”

My new friend (his camera guy, can’t remember his name, but he was cute and we *almost* went home together but then smartly decided against it realizing we’d both had too much to drink to make that a sound decision) and I would look at eachother and just shake our heads in disbelief. Not to mention the one drunk girl there who practically had her face in his lap and kept asking over & over “Are you Bill Murray?” Poor guy! But he was very very nice to everyone… and we had a nice time there. :) I got the camera guy’s number, but I didn’t call him. It was a fun night, though! I wish I had a photo!!

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So how smooth was that seque into the Bill Murray story huh? Didn’t even notice I wasn’t talking about Metric anymore!

So ya, I had a yummy Tom Collins. I think I’m gonna start ordering those more.

Oh & lastnight before the show, when I was at BAM, I picked up this great children’s book that I used to have when I was little, but hadn’t seen it in YEARS. And looking at it now it is TRIPPY!!!!!!! I’ll post an image soon. It’s really wild.

OK Bye!