oopsie daisy! I killed a gang of ninjas.

well not really.  but I have been busy lately, and some of it involved murderous rampaging.  I must have mentioned it a while back but my cousin Dustin’s latest film is about a nightmare he had, where his brother went on a killing spree.  I play his murderous brother in the movie and John Fox plays him.  As far as I can tell, this is his most ambitious movie to date.  it’s taken a span of a year and a half to film and its already had more actors than any of his previous films.  It’s all in black and white, and we’ve been using chocolate syrup for blood.  considering my mom’s colorblind friend was over the day we shot the final scene, he coudn’t tell the difference between the syrup and real blood since browns and reds look the same color to him and his mind fills in the blanks the way it percieves them.  He actually thought I was covered in blood.  So that’s pretty cool.  I’m not gonna give away the ending but it involves me falling off a cliff.  in the dark.  oh yeah and I do my own stunts.  Those stunts are sooo….. done by me!  I’m all banged up from that one.  only professional whimps use padding.  and chocolate syrup sucks when it gets in your hair.  at least it gave me an excuse to take a nice long hot shower.

On another note, 6 days ago on monday, my friend Robin got put in jail.  the first story I heard was pretty hysterical.  hysterical not in the "that’s so funny it’s hysterical" sense but rather in "OH MY GOD MY SON IS IN JAIL FOR STRANGLING A CHILD TO DEATH" hysterical.  See… his mom tends to exaggerate.  A lot.  It took a lot of inner strength not to bust out singing Jailhouse Rock when I went to visit him.  Not knowing most of the words helped.  Here’s the real story.  Robin was getting evicted for missing a rent payment because one of his jobs he’d recently been fired from withheld his final paycheck, and so Monday they decided to turn the power off at his appartment.  He was sitting outside on the steps because it wasn’t exactly a cool day and the AC (needing electricity to function) wasn’t working.  While he was sitting out there a little girl (age 7 or 8) whose family was visiting one of his neighbors, came up behind him sitting on the steps outside his appartment and starts poking his sides being a regular annoying kid.  Being an annoying kid that also chews gum, she thought it would be fun to pop a bubble near his ear, and Robin, thinking that she was much further back than she actually was could only conclude that the rush of air that he felt by his ear was a large insect and went to swat at it with his hand.  Well it so happens that instead of catching a bug he caught the little girl’s necklace which left a little red mark all the way around the back of her neck and so flustered her that she immediately ran to tell her daddy that a big mean man had slapped her and grabbed her neck.  Being protective parents, everyone in the room took her story for face value and they decided that Robin was tryign to beat their little girl, so the father threatened to harm Robin in some unspeakable way, and then they called the police at that point, and the Travis County Sheriffs got there, slapped cuffs on Robin, and "removed him from the scene".  According to Robin they held him for several hours in an isolation chamber and then proceeded to move him to another removed area away from everyone else for about 24 hours.  Meanwhile he lost the other two jobs that he did have and his appartment complex decided to continue with his eviction even though he wasn’t in a position to get his stuff out.  He’s currently being held on the charge of "assult on a minor" and he’s been in prison for nearly a week now.  Joe and Kat and I have all been helping him move his stuff out of his appartment and unfortunately we can’t find the remote for his garage door so we can’t get his car out of the garage to tow it.  His mother hired a good lawyer and he hasn’t had a chance to speak with her yet, but hopefully they’ll get the charges dropped for several reasons.  firstly, he was never actually arrested.  they never told him he was under arrest, nor did they read him his rights, they simply removed him from the scene and held him.  plus, he didn’t actually touch the girl at all, even though everyone seems to believe he did because of waht a hysterical little girl told her parents.  It’s really unfair to him that they’d continue pressing charges, especially after they cost him the jobs that he was relying on to get back on his feet.  It seems to me they’ve done enough damage without having to try to put a conviction on his record.  Robin, though a bit obnoxious, loud and annoying is a really nice guy.  He’s honest and loyal and has a great amount of personal integrity.  He’s a little energetic but that might be because of all the sugar he takes in while drinking 2 liters of coke and eating a box of graham crackers in the space of about 10 minutes.  so yeah… I went to see him on Saturday, before I went to band practice.

At band practice we were auditioning and jammign with a new pianist to see how she worked out.  Her name is Julie and she’s currently enrolled at UT on an English major but she’s been teaching herself how to play piano for the past 6 years.  Self-taught but she has immense raw talent.  She was responding to an add for musicians we left on Craig’s list I guess.  Joey left the ad, not me.  Anyway, Julie got there just fine and she’s pretty cute.  Kinda shy though.  She’s an amazing player but anything she wasn’t comfortable with she was extremely quiet about playing on.  So basicly, on her stuff we picked it up really quick and made some great music right on the spot, but though I could tell she was picking up on ideas about the second time through our songs, she was still way too shy about what she way playing.  If only she’d open up and do what she’s so good at during our stuff… but we at least plan on working with her in the future and possibly helping her record some of her tunes with a full band behind her.  If we can get her to where she’s not so shy about playing in front of us I think she’ll be a phenominal addition to the band.  we’ll have to open her up first before we offer that to her.  Still, Joey offering to put lyrics to her music was a huge step for him.  That’s a pretty big deal.  Also we got responses from 2 other people about that ad and they both sound incredibly interesting.  One guy is a trumpet player who has been acting as a studio musician for a while and he’s got an impressive resume which makes us wonder why he’s not booked solid for months.  In fact he’s already agreed to play our show on the 22nd at Common Grounds.  if he’s half as good as it appears that he is, the show is going to be stellar.  if he’s just as good as I’m hoping then the show is gonna rock your motherfuckin socks off.  Guy #2 is Mark and he’s a musician from New Orleans.  His house was in the part that’s STILL closed to residents returning, so he’s been waiting to get his stuff out.  I talked to him on the phone and it turns out he had been making his living as a m

agician back home!  How cool is that?  He’s working in a magic shop in Cedar Park now.  I didn’t even know they HAD a magic shop in Cedar Park.  That’s like a tiny suburb turned into a city north of Austin.  I used to have to drive through Cedar Park to the place north of that in hicksville called Leander to go to school.  But yeah.  in his response he mentioned this thing called a Chapman Stick, that was one of the only things to survive the storm.  Me and Joey didn’t even know what this was so we looked it up on the internet and found this website: http://www.stick.com/method/ and watched the instructional videos.  OH.  MY.  GOD.  The mere fact that he mentioned that he HAS one of these things is cool beyond belief.  as Sara might say I’m so excited I could crap myself.  He’s a total beginner on the thing, but if he can do a FRACTION of the shit that the guy in the video is doing then I’d be prepared to latch onto the guy and make him a band member right then and there.  His primary instrument is guitar and from talking to him he sound like the kind of guitarist we’re loking for anyway.  He listened to our music online, as have both of the other applicants and he liked it so we’re meeting him Tuesday to try him out and see what he can do.  I think of all these musicians, we may have finally found the missing pieces of our band.  Ever since Brian had to leave Phoenix Saga, it’s been a bit lacking.

But anyway.  I’ve been watching Firefly and today my parents and I went to see Serenity at the Alamo South Lamar, and it was great.  only a lot of people I liked died.  which sucked ass.  Oh well.  That’s part of a good movie.  Awesome people die.  Like Boba Fett and Darth Vader.  anyway I’m done.  byebye.