Willo O'Brien

(I wrote this lastnight but then blogger went down, so it’s just going up now)

I am sick :( AGAIN! I was just sick 2 months ago (in live music terms that was right around the hot, hot heat show) But to be sick again only 2 months later!? Good christ people, germs are contagious – stay home!!! I think I got it at the gym (eww) and hypocritically I must admit I probably gave it to someone else by being a “trooper” and going to the gym anyway this week despite my phlem. baah.

So, I know it’s probably apparent why I’m sick – being the rockstar concert goer that I am… but lest you forget I do actually work my ass off too!! I just don’t post about it. I feel like all my friends get so tired of hearing how damn busy I am. I literally wake up & work all day and then leave at 7 or 8 to a show – and that’s just a couple nights a week… there’s a couple days I work all day & all night – and most weekends too! Tonite I went & worked w/ the BAM kids and then I went grocery shopping… (because I swear the only time I can find to grocery shop is like at 10pm these days!) all to get home & have to work a little before I could finally crash out.

It’s horrible when you’re sick how early in the morning & late at night is when you feel the shittiest. Really bad for me since I’m such a night owl – it ruins my whole night mojo when I usually get so much done. I was super spacey at the grocery store… my credit card looked familiar and pretty, but no sh*t it didn’t work cuz I was using the wrong one with the wrong pin – boy was I out of it!!

Anyway – so just cuz all I post about is all my good times, don’t think I’m not workin my bootay off too! :) It’s just a tad less interesting. Well, not to me cuz I love it – and I’m LOVING all my clients lately. I just haven’t felt like blogging about it till it’s all live and stuff. I have a terrific handful of clients keeping me busy and I have no complaints about that at all :) It’s just that lately I’ve felt like I’m scrambling to keep up with it all… Some things were on hold and then it seemed like everyone woke up at the same time and I don’t have enough hours in the day! Kinda stressful… but overall a positive problem.

So as soon as some of the smoke clears I’ll be posting some new items to my portfolio & maybe even cleaning up this site overall… boy does it need it! I also have been doing so much corporate UI/design work that I haven’t been able to do my illustration animation at all. I even have a client right now I need to get to her illustration… maybe I can work on that this weekend a bit.

Aaanyway, I am going to bed now… my chest hurts from coughing and even though I have all my pantry goods still on the floor in the kitchen waiting to be put away, clean clothes in the laundry basket waiting to be put away and dirty dishes in the sink waiting to be cleaned – I am skipping it all, flippin on the electric blanket and hoppin in to bed-e-bye.

Hey you – I have realized if you blogroll my homepage you don’t see when it’s updated. Probably because I use PHP includes. (?) Anyone know how to remedy that?

Anyway, here’s the link to my RSS feed… and if you have no idea what I’m talking about – check out Blogrolling.com and this great article about RSS feeds.

(article link via crackers & honey. buy me those cute undies!)

This show was so f*in amazing. It was my first time seeing them live and I was absolutely BLOWN AWAY. I swear I feel like I was just a part of a concert that will go down in history. I felt like I was at the epicenter of the coooooolest sh*t goin down anywhere. I was so SLAYED beyond belief that this band could make such beautiful music – such kick ass music.

People have said they remind them of Santana/Led Zepplin, and I can see a little “crazy / wild / sexy / Van Morrison style” in the lead singer for sure…. but these guys are a tremendous new psychedelic and progressive deal all their own. MAN, WAS IT AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

To give you an idea of some of the details of the show – they played for almost 2 hours – and they opened with “Haunt of Roulette Dares” which they played for about 20 minutes…. the lead singer totally ROCKIN OUT on the stage, leaping everywhere, throwing his microphone around, jumping off the amps and singing his heart out…. so awesome. At one point in the night he let out the BEST scream I have EVER heard. It was awesome.

I was soooo into all the sounds – the guitar of course is awesome awesome awesome – the leads vocals are amazing and beautiful and rockin! the bass solo rocked, I even zoned in on the keyboards and totally vibed on the awesome sounds he was mixing in (i’m not often a keyboards girl). And can we talk about the drums – OH MY GAWD!!!!!!!!!!!! I am madly in love with that drummer. Not only is he glistening hot hot hot, but holy sh*t can that man play!!!!!!! He totally slayed me as he just *kicked so much ass* on those drums. Overall it was just epic. Totally totally EPIC.

I wished I had a camera – I saw some of you sneakyvonsneaksters taking photos, so please email me if you have some!!!

We were up front in about the 3rd row for the first couple songs, but it was crazy after the first song started…. it got really, really tight – and one of my friends even had to bail out, but Rick & I stayed. It was so awesome to feel the energy in the crowd all flowing along to this psychedelic, rock & roll fantastic going on before our eyes. I seriously felt like I was a part of one of the most kick ass concerts of the year.

We fell back a few once hard core moshers came forward… and there were a few a**holes who insisted on being hurricanes of death. can’t you get your aggression out in the gym or something? I swear someone HAD to have gotten a bloody nose from your f*ing hate filled whirlwinds (grrr). It would be a different story if we were at Rage Against the Machine or something, but I just felt like it put this agro hate into the air of a concert that was so euphorically trippy and phenomenal.

So, that sent us back a few more rows till we felt like we weren’t going to get mauled. But I did LOVE seeing the crowd surfers go nuts – and how everyone would just totally feel the music when it ramped up & got hard core, we’d all start jumpin & moving together – SOOO COOOOL!!!!

Coming out I was just high on the whole experience and soo blown away that it was that f*in amazing. Rick said he totally dug it but wasn’t sure he loved it as much as I did (cuz I was really psyched on it as you can tell) however coming out I overheard others who felt the same way I did about it just being the most amazing concert they’d ever been to. That’s seriously how I felt – I was just moved – I thought it was f*ing amazing.

Don’t ever, ever let yourself miss this band live.. they’re so awesome.

I bought a tshirt and I can’t wait to wear it. Most of all I can’t wait to see them again!!!!!

stay tuned… this blog will return to it’s regularly scheduled programming of reviewing kick ass concerts and spilling tidbits of debaucherous details of my rockstar lifestyle in just a few hours. (after I get some work done!!)

but just for a teaser… it was sooo soo good.

A few of you saw the post I put up yesterday before I took it down. It was only up for maybe 15 minutes or so – but since then I’ve gotten a few IM’s/emails from friends that did see it & wonder why I took it down.

It’s really no big deal I guess… I mean… I liked what I said, and I meant it, but my brain kept asking myself if I was just posting it because I was feeling some sort of displaced guilt… cuz really there is no *one* person that this was about – it was more of a blanket “I wanna make everything better for everyone, but I can’t even though I try” sort of weird thing. A mixture of different people in my life here and there.

I dunno, it just felt a little too touchy/feely/deep and it just didn’t feel as good to post as I thought it would, so I just decided I’d take it down. I think I felt like I was blaming myself for something I didn’t do. Or trying to write my own gravestone of “she meant well, she really did try to be nice and supportive all the time”. Ug… something about it just didn’t feel right. Maybe deep feelings have been making me uncomfortable lately. Keeping it light and happy feels a bit more comfortable… the other parts just want to lie dormant for a little while longer. Ignorance is bliss.

I also felt like if one person actually had “this issue” with me, they should talk to me about it directly or vis versa if I’m feeling that I have, in fact, directly been that way with someone that I should go to them with my divulgence.

blaaaah. I need blogger therapy. hahaaa

Oh alright – I’m publishing it. Brendan said I shouldn’t be allowed to censor myself like that. ha! :) Thank god I can, cuz it’s really a good thing I haven’t posted some of the things I’ve wanted to here :)

But in the end, it’s all about expression and just getting it out there. It doesn’t have to be right or perfect and dammit it’s not, and I’m not – so whatever!!!!!!! So since you’re all just so damn curious now, here it is. And one more thing, isn’t it so obvious I’m PMSing?

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To all my friends and family I just want to say thank you. Thank you for still loving me even though sometimes I open my big mouth and am so opinionated and headstrong like I know whats best for you. I’m sorry if I’ve ever done this in a way that makes you feel like I’m not supporting you. I want to support you in the best way I can… and often I am only so outspoken with my feelings or POV because I want to see you happy and help you… but I know you’re on top of it. I know you are doing everything you need to do… and that it takes time sometimes to get through the hard times and find the good again – and that nobody can tell you to be happy or make a change, it has to come from you.

So I’m here to say I’m sorry. I can listen without opening my big mouth. I have good intentions and I hope that you realize that I want nothing more than to see your beautiful smile shining back at me when everything is feeling more right in your world.

xoxo

Friendships are so important to me. I do my best to try to be aware of how I am with the friendships in my life… I try to be very clear w/ how I’m feeling and am willing to take responsibility of my own stuff… i.e. if someone’s buggin me, realizing it could just as well be *me* and not just *them*. I give people the benefit of the doubt and try to see the good in them. Boy don’t I wish everyone did this :)

I’ve done “the work” and still continue to do so everyday to try to be aware of who I am and how I am being towards the people in my life. It’s not perfect, but I’m doing the best I can. Above all else, communication is key… so thank you for communicating with me.

Six of us (The Six Girls: jane, jee, hillary, ashley, kat and me) get together once a month for Girls Night Out. Our first one started almost 6 months ago (arranged by jane) and for me personally it was so wonderful, as I had just begun the seperation process with my boyfriend and it was so nice to have their support.

Since then I’ve been living on my own and enjoying this grand new chapter in my life. We’ve all had an awesome summer getting to know eachother with parties, bbq’s, brunches, movies and more. They’re just how good girlfriends should be: we can confide in eachother, get advice, go grab a quick drink, throw kick ass parties, get jiggy on the dancefloor, talk books, music, traveling, life goals, health issues, make eachother laugh and much more. Life is a much better place with a good set of girlfriends at your side :)

So every month we celebrate this on the full moon. Sometimes it’s mellow and we just have dinner, and other times it’s a bit more rowdy. Seeing as how this month’s full moon landed on a Saturday night, we expanded the circle and invited a bunch of other girls to join us out for a night on the town.

The rain, however, put a bit of a damper on our full force, dressed to kill, bar hopping plans… but we had a great time anyway. After a change of venues the core 6 started at Esperpento for dinner. We ate some yummy tapas, caught up on the new developments in eachothers lives and had a tasty pitcher of sangria preparing us just perfectly for the next part of our evening.

We met the rest of the girls at our regular hangout, the LAC (Latin American Club), and I’d say at our peak we had about 12 girls there – which didn’t go un-noticed by the men in the bar, mind you! Any time I went up for a drink I got asked about this strange phenominon of a whole table full of cute girls by some guy. “How do you all know eachother?” “Whats the big occasion?” A couple of which even asked if they could join our girls night by expressing “Hey, I’m sensitive!”. ha! One even made the sly move to sit down with us – but I immediately said, “Sorry buddy – this is girls only! SCRAM!” :)

The evening turned out to be such a great time. We even went out and basked in the beautiful glow of the full moon… it looked so awesome with the clouds rushing by so fast!

Thanks for another great night, girls…. you rock!! mmoooiiiii!!!!! xoxo

(Update 11/10, 5pm: I just fixed up some of the bad writing goin on in this one :)

hey – fyi I just added a few new shows to the events on the left. TV on the Radio are coming, but we have tix to a Du Nord show that night, so we’ll miss it :( darnit! (again, cloning machine please?)

ok, sorry – I’ll curb the music talk & post about my girls night :)

Somebody asked me this question the other night… basically it’s short for “emotional” (what artist doesn’t sing about some sort of emotion?) but it’s definitely more for some of the more uber-indie bands… like Mates of State, Dashboard Confessional, Alkaline trio, etc.

At the time Deathcab for Cutie came to my mind first – but standing there with her, I didn’t want to list out any actual bands w/o being sure I was labeling them correct.. so this morning I did a little research :) There’s quite a few hilarious things out there about the whole ’emo’ scene. Some people love it and are just poking fun about it – and others hate it. I think for the most part it’s just one of those damn labels that you hate to have define what you love, but if I had to say it… yes, I do love emo :)

• Here’s a label full of EMO bands:
  
  polyvinylrecords.com
• “How to dress EMO”
  
  (as poked fun at by this awesome illustrator)
• Hilarious EMO games
  
  and finally,
• What the heck *is* emo anyway? (although I don’t find the bands to be representative of today’s emo vibe, these are more emo-punk)

I can’t really believe I’m posting an entire post about the definition of emo… god, I’m so indie. hahaa

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I just did a search for indie and there’s of course a test: How Indie are You?

My rating was “i am a scenester!” with the opening line “You are so indie it hurts.” hahahaa!

ok, all this labeling is giving me a queasy feeling – I’m gonna go clean my house now. BYE!

• It’s raining out … brrrr!
• This jeff buckley tribute show looks cool, but I have tickets to Deathcab that night.
• I sure wish someone would clean my house. It’s simple… just do my dishes, change my sheets, do my laundry, organize my files, do a little accounting, some light dusting and then mop the floors. See, now that won’t take you long!
• Punch drunk love wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
• why hasn’t Birdsaw played a show in a long time? And why don’t they contact me to redesign their website?
• I’ve had Naked Pictures of my Ex-Girlfriends on my shelves for way too long. This week it’s gotten much more appreciation as a coffee table book. It’s keeping my VARGAS coffee table book in good company.
• Tonite is Girl’s Night Out… it’s going to be SUCH a blast!!! but I sure wish it would stop raining!!!!

Also I just updated the music list below…