Strange Pulse

Yes, you read that right. Linkin Park!

Daniel’s boss called. He’s good friends with a guy who is good friends with the band, and they’re playing tonight in San Diego—it’s a festival sort of line up, with several bands. This guy can get us tickets. He could probably get us in to meet the band, too, but I said we’d pass on that. Linkin Park was my boys’ favorite band when they first came out, but interest has waned a bit since then. But who would pass up free tickets to a huge show like this? Should be fun!

There’s a new Guitar Hero game out, called Rock the 80s. Here’s the song list:

1. Opening Licks

* “(Bang Your Head) Metal Health” - Quiet Riot
* “We Got the Beat” - The Go-Go’s
* “I Ran (So Far Away)” - A Flock of Seagulls
* “Balls to the Wall” - Accept
* “18 and Life” - Skid Row (encore)

2. Amp Warmers

* “No One Like You” - Scorpions
* “Shakin’” - Eddie Money
* “Heat of the Moment” - Asia
* “Radar Love” - White Lion
* “Because, It’s Midnite” - Limozeen (encore)

3. String Snappers

* “Holy Diver” - Dio
* “Turning Japanese” - The Vapors
* “Hold on Loosely” - .38 Special
* “The Warrior” - Scandal
* “I Wanna Rock” - Twisted Sister (encore)

4. Return of the Shred

* “What I Like About You” - The Romantics
* “Synchronicity II” - The Police
* “Ballroom Blitz” - Krokus
* “Only a Lad” - Oingo Boingo
* “Round and Round” - Ratt (encore)

5. Relentless Riffs

* “Ain’t Nothin’ But a Good Time” - Poison
* “Lonely is the Night” - Billy Squier
* “Bathroom Wall” - Faster Pussycat
* “Los Angeles” - X
* “Wrathchild” - Iron Maiden (encore)

6. Furious Fretwork

* “Electric Eye” - Judas Priest
* “Police Truck” - Dead Kennedys
* “Seventeen” - Winger
* “Caught in a Mosh” - Anthrax
* “Play With Me” - Extreme (encore)

Of course I bought it as soon as it came out.

Elijah keeps telling me I’ll score better if I quit singing along while I’m trying to play. But he doesn’t understand, I have to sing along with some of these songs. In fact it’s my new goal in life to be able to get 100% while singing along w/ “The Warrior.” Bang bang!

I was playing (and singing) Oingo Boingo’s “Only a Lad” and asked Elijah if he knew who Danny Elfman was. He said yeah, he does the music for the Simpsons. I told him he was also the singer in Oingo Boingo, and Elijah was so excited about that he had to find his friend that lives in the building next door to inform him.

It seems weird to me that my kids know Danny Elfman as a guy who does cool music for tv shows and movies. I always think of him as that crazy guy from that cool band, Oingo Boingo, who carved a brilliant career for himself in soundtracks.

(I saw Oingo Boingo in the 80s. Such a fun show.)

Check it out here. Sponsored by Best Buy. I discovered the contest via Summersnook.

Summer tagged me with this meme. Let me think…

1. When we got married, I was quiet and boring, while he was the funny one. Now I’m the funny one, and he’s the bore.

2. When we got married, we were opposites in nearly everything. We’re still very opposite in temperament, but we’ve gotten a lot alike over the years. For instance, I’m funny now, and he’s boring.

Just last night he was tired and didn’t want to take Elijah to a bonfire on the beach, a church young men’s activity. I told him I would take Elijah if I could, but I have, you know…OVARIES.

3. He likes to think he’s the most metal guy ever, but I think if it came right down to it, he’d admit that I’m more metal than he is. I mean, WHO took Elijah to see Megadeth?

Uh huh. Me.

4. A crystal clear memory I have from our newlywed days: We were at a Dead Milkmen show in Hawaii. Daniel was moshing in the slam pit. I was on the edge of it, enjoying the show. During one of his trips around the pit (the whole thing moved in a circle, guys running around smashing into each other), he grabbed me for a quick jog through it. I wasn’t expecting it and tripped. I would’ve fallen but he held me upright and pulled me around the pit once and back to safety.

(Don’t take that as a metaphor for our relationship, or anything.)

5. Sometimes he makes mistakes. The other day I shut a window and saw something move just before it slammed into place. I told him I thought I’d just killed a spider.

He said, “You don’t even KNOW.”

Don’t know what?

“You don’t know how many spiders…” He faltered when he realized he was on shaky ground.

WHAT?! Spiders?! You’re talking about at your work, RIGHT?

“No, I…uh…I just want you to know, I take care of these things. You don’t need to worry about it.”

Nice going. He’s been killing spiders without me knowing, and thought it would be better for me to know? Here I’ve been marvelling over how spider-free California is compared to Washington. And ever since he told me I don’t need to worry about it, I’ve been worrying about it constantly. Any spot on the wall or carpet, even spotted from the corner of my eye, I always zero in on, to make sure it isn’t a spider. That’s unavoidable for me. But now…now I can’t look under the bed without worrying, or in the back of the kitchen cupboards, or in the closets…

6. Sometimes I make mistakes. I bought ice cream bars on wooden sticks. He has an irrational fear of wooden popsicle sticks. And the kids are constantly eating them in front of him. He hates it.

I say mistakes, plural, because blogging about his irrational fear of popsicle sticks might be worse than actually buying them.

7. When we were dating, we used to joke around that if we ever had kids, we’d end up with one who ran around wanting to kill people, and another who ran around wanting to die. We didn’t know how true that would be.

We also didn’t know it would both be the same kid. (Elijah can get very moody.)

8. He’s my best friend. I told a coworker awhile back that we got married so young and have experienced so many things together that are unique and different from most people’s experiences, that we feel like we don’t fit in anywhere.

Except with each other.

I have a niece who has three kids:

Dominick
Damon
DeVaughn

We used to have a neighbor in Seattle with three kids:

Dominque
Diamond
Devan

So the other evening I wanted to go take pictures of the sunset at the Seal Beach pier. Of course, we got there too early. The sun was starting to set, but we got cold and I ran out of film, so we left before it was completely down. By the time we got home, the sunset was brilliant, lighting up the entire sky, and sunsets like that are rare around here. I think I missed the best sunset all year!

But we had fun anyway. And Nathaniel actually let me take pictures of him.

I used an old 35mm camera I got off of eBay. It’s a Russian camera from the 60s (I think), and it’s built like a tank. Unfortunately the film got scratched, but I think that was my fault. I’m still figuring out how to operate the thing. I have no lightmeter and the camera’s built-in one doesn’t work, so I had to guess at all the exposures (aperature/shutter speed), which I managed to do pretty well! These are all scanned from negatives, so the colors are a little different than if I’d had the lab print them.

That’s Long Beach in the background.

Cat and Amy. Amy leaves this afternoon and we’re all going to miss her.

Nathaniel. Yes I know there was a hair on the negative when I scanned it. I get lazy about those things, although I try to avoid them.

I got this kinda cool multiple exposure on accident, hadn’t realized the film was at the last frame:

I like this camera a lot. It can be hard to focus, though. And I’m seriously bummed I missed the sunset. Next time I’ll remember to go later. I just start to get nervous we’ll miss it!

Did you know LA has a subway? It’s pretty cool.

I took Cat and her friend Amy that has been visiting from Seattle for a week or two down to Hollywood. We parked near Hollywood and Vine and walked down to the Mann’s Chinese Theater.

It was packed full of people. I warned the girls that Hollywood is dirty and sleazy but Amy was still a little surprised. “I thought it would be glamorous!”

There were people dressed up in various costumes, posing for pictures with tourists, and they do this for tips only. Cat has a thing for Jack Sparrow so we had to get this picture:

I mentioned to Elijah later that if he ever wanted to earn a lot of money all he has to do is rent a Spongebob costume and hang out on Hollywood Blvd on a Saturday. Daniel said, “I don’t think that’s the best advice…there’s lots of ways to earn money on Hollywood Blvd, you know.” Yikes!

The girls had fun spotting any stars they recognized and then stepping on them. They stepped on Britney Spears, Destiny’s Child, the Monkees…but we had to get a picture of this one:

Godzilla!

Then we spotted three guys blaring hip hop, about to start a break dance show on the sidewalk. We hung out for most of it. They were good:

We were right up front and when it came time for them to grab some girls from the crowd, they chose Amy first. They lined up the girls and one of the guys taught them some moves.

There was also a small kid from the crowd they had dancing too:

They were pretty entertaining but it was super hot, so we headed down to the subway.

The above pic doesn’t indicate how crowded it was. Standing room only on the train. We rode it up to Universal Studios, and went for lunch at the City Walk there. We ended up eating at the Hard Rock Cafe.

Then we rode the subway back to the car and drove home. It was a loooong day, we were exhausted, but it was fun.

And boy was I stressed. I hate group gatherings, and to have to host one? UGH!

Fortunately teenagers are easy. Give em some balloons and they’ll decorate for you. Point them at a swimming pool and they’ll occupy themselves for at least 90 minutes. BBQ some hotdogs and feed them cake, and voila! You’re done. Except for the clean up afterwards, of course.

Cat invited 30 people to her party. 30! Fortunately, only 18 (!!) came. When I realized how many people were coming I went to talk to the apartment manager to make sure it’d be alright. Actually, I didn’t end up talking to her until about 30 minutes before people started arriving. Wait, that’s wrong—about 4 kids had already showed. Oh well. It wasn’t a big deal. As long as they didn’t overcrowd the pool and keep residents from being able to use it.

Not many residents use it during the week. Here’s a pic of the pool full of Cat’s friends:

The only non-party-goers are the three people on the left. That’s Cat in the huddle in the middle (of course).

I had to take a break from the action to take a picture of this beetle that was stranded on it’s back on wet cement.

This is how Daniel spent the party:

He works hard and plays hard.

The cake: “Happy Birthday Kitty Cat.” Her friends all call her Kitty or Cat.

Someone had fun smearing her face with cake. Happened more than once—she’d get all cleaned up and then wham! again with the frosting.

She reacted like this to all of her gifts:

She had a ton of fun. Some of the kids left on time, some stayed till later, and some I had to kick out of the pool at 9pm. That’s a sign of a good party!

I went yesterday to drop off some film, then again today. When I went in the clerk was filling out the envelope and he said, “What’s the name? Malm…something?” Then, “No prints, don’t cut the film, right?” I told him this time he could cut the film.

I reminded him he’d told me I could pick up my film from yesterday at 4 and told him I’d be back for both rolls about that time (yesterday’s roll was B&W and had to be sent out, today’s roll is a one-hour color roll). He warned me the delivery might come a little later than 4. I said, “Oh I won’t be in right at 4, probably closer to 5 or 6.”

I didn’t say the rest of what I was thinking: “Dr. Phil is on at 4!”

Every so often I’ve been going to the swap meet down the road to look for interesting cameras. I picked up a junky plastic toy camera for a buck or two awhile back and finally ran some film through it last weekend. I was surprised by how well the pictures came out, considering what it is.

Here’s a picture of the camera:

It has 4 settings: sunny, twilight, partly cloudy, and cloudy. Really only the sunny setting came out well.

These pics have all been scanned from negatives, so the colors are a bit different than they’d have been if I’d let the lab print them.

I walked to a small park down the street to take pictures. This is “the moat,” a drainage ditch that runs along two sides of my kids’ high school. They have to cross this thing (on a bridge) everyday on their way to school. Pleasant, wouldn’t you say?

I snapped more pictures on the walk back home:

Cat and Amy in the car (these weren’t taken on the sunny setting):

Me in the car:

Picking up Elijah from summer school:

Note the Megadeth tshirt. We got it at the show.

I have to say it’s pretty fun having a small light camera you can carry anywhere and just point and shoot. I’m starting to understand the lomo craze now. I think I’m going to take this camera apart, though, and try to flip the lens. To see some cool pics taken with a toy camera with a flipped lens, check out my brother’s here.