With a nod to ‘Coma for recently citing two of my favorite movies of all time, if I am stuck on a deserted island with nothing but a TV and a DVD player and only ten DVDs, I believe I can get by with these. In no particular order:

1. River’s Edge - In the Nineties and pre-DVD days, I practically killed myself to get a VHS copy of this off eBay. Crispin Glover is a madman (in real life and on camera) - and was wonderful in the Back to the Future films - but he truly shines here in seriously disturbing and unnerving glory. Say what you will about Keanu Reeves, and yes, he’s played the same role a million times, but it suits him no better than in this film. The film is SUPPOSED to be disturbing and so are the characters. And to boot, it’s based on a true story. Side Trivia: Ione Skye Leitch, daughter of ’60s music icon Donovan, appears as Keanu’s love interest in the film, one of her first (Gas Food Lodging is another good one featuring her). She is also the ex-wife of Adam Horowitz of the Beastie Boys, and had a long-term live-in relationship with Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
2. Heathers - Quite possibly my fave film of all time ever. Yeah, it’s starting to look a little dated now but that only adds to its charm nowadays. And the setting is Westerburg (sic) High School - need I say more? There are so many fabulous tongue-in-cheek in-jokes in this movie - the Heathers, Betty & Veronica, millions more - it’s just beautiful. Back in the days when I actually used to go OUT to the movies, I saw this one about five times in the theater in the same month. Side Trivia: Kim Walker, who played Heather Duke (the first dead Heather) was dating Christian Slater at the time, but they broke up during filming of the movie. Walker later developed a brain tumor and died in 2001 at the age of 32.
3. Say Anything… - There have been few John Cusack movies I haven’t adored, but director Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything… is THE one. I have referenced Lloyd Dobler on this blog so many times over the years (as well as other Cusack films), I have a separate John Cusack category on the blog. I would have a super hard time picking a favorite scene, but my favorite is probably when Lloyd confronts the guys sitting outside the Gas ‘N Sip. Lili Taylor does a marvelous turn as well in this flick, and her songs about Joe (especially the one - you know the one) always have me in fits of giggles on the floor while watching. Side Trivia: Ione Skye also appears in this one, as Lloyd’s love interest Diane. The Replacement’s “Within Your Reach” is also notably featured in this film, which of course is another of the million reasons I fell in love with it so hard.
4. Gremlins - I can’t even talk about how much I have always loved this movie without crying. I haven’t watched it in many, many years for the same reason. I first saw it while on summer vacation in a theater in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware in 1984. Side Trivia: Judge Reinhold & Phoebe Cates also appeared together in another fondly remembered for me film of the ’80s, Cameron Crowe’s (again) Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It’s not one of my very favorites and it’s certainly gotten dated, but it is still funny, especially if you grew up in the ’80s.
5. Less Than Zero - Another, to borrow a phrase, ’80s “the kids are NOT all right” film, and another I practically paid an arm and a leg for to get a VHS copy of back in the ’90s. This one is akin to a John Hughes movie gone all wrong. It’s got its problems and on the surface would appear to be really out there as far as the whole wealthy and disaffected youth thing, but it’s really not as implausible as one would think. The details of the scenes themselves may have been different, but mainly due to geographics - the base story existed all over the country at the time, including Nashville. Side Trivia: Oh, James Spader, how despicable you are in this film, but how I adore you anyway and have in every film you’ve ever been in.
6. Sid & Nancy - And thus begun the rest of my lifelong adoration of Gary Oldman as well. There are much better films he’s been in (and I love each and every one of them), but Alex Cox’s Sid & Nancy was his first big role, and there was just no one else who could have been a more perfect Sid Vicious. It’s the most disturbing and disgusting and sickening love story and everything punk was, a beautiful film in all its ugliness and has one of the best soundtracks ever. My friend Jen used to do the best Chloe Webb doing Nancy (”SIIIIIIIIID!”) that would have me rolling in the floor. Side Trivia: Look for an extremely young Courtney Love in a few scenes as one of Nancy Spungen’s pals.
7. Drugstore Cowboy - I used to not think very highly of Matt Dillon as an actor until this one came out, and I became a fan of Gus Van Sant’s films on this one. Like many of my favorites, it’s disturbing and difficult to watch, but one of the greatest things about this film is that even though the story is pitiful and pathetic, Matt Dillon is SO funny in it. Under the surface of all the dirty drug addiction tale, this movie is hilarious. Also has an excellent soundtrack of gems from the time of the film’s setting, including The Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction”, Desmond Dekker’s “The Israelites”, Gary Lewis & the Playboys’ “Judy in Disguise”, and Hazel, KY/slash/Puryear, TN (my home county) native Jackie DeShannon’s “Put a Little Love in Your Heart”. Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho is also pretty good though a little faulty; this one is better. Side Trivia: Matt Dillon’s first big film role as a young teen was in another big all-time favorite of mine that has become a cult classic of sorts, Over the Edge - another one that has gotten very ’70s dated over time but still well worth watching, plus then-not-so-known Cheap Trick is largely featured on the soundtrack. As a commenter on iMDB noted, Over the Edge was “a teen movie that gets it right”.
8. Dogs in Space - An Australian film you’ve probably never heard of and another disaffected youth mostly on drugs flick, but this time based in Melbourne’s post-punk scene of the late ’70s - and also based on more true stories, and starring - yes - the late Michael Hutchence of INXS. This film is such a favorite of mine I paid an extremely huge amount of money to get the VHS tape in the ’90s, and the last time I checked on DVD prices (which admittedly has been a few years now) it could be had for $200-350 - that price has probably gone down by now. Very much a “slice of life” flick and disturbing in places to watch, but it’s excellent and also has a soundtrack far beyond excellent - Iggy Pop, Nick Cave/Boys Next Door, Brian Eno, Gang of Four, and some more legends of the time as well as the fab tracks done by Hutchence and crew.  An iMDB commenter said, “This is for when you’re feeling like you need some company, but you don’t feel like venturing past your doorstep” - I agree.  Side Trivia: The real Sam Sejavka, who fronted Melbourne band The Ears in the late ’70s and is played by Hutchence in the film, appears in the movie twice and is addressed by Hutchence in the party scene as “Michael”.
9. Quandary: Real Genius or The Doors - I can’t help it, I do love me some Val Kilmer, and if I could take another dozen or so films I’d be taking all the Val Kilmer films as well as the entire John Hughes oeuvre with me. Real Genius is so freakin’ hilarious through and through and I defy anyone to disagree with me. Oliver Stone’s epic The Doors has got its problems but it mostly gets it right and dang, Kilmer did such a dead-on Jim Morrison it’s almost creepy, I can’t help it, I think his performance in this film was brilliant. This was another I saw probably eight times or more while it was still first-run in the theater. Probably in the end, The Doors would win out, but jeez, it’d be a tough call. Side Trivia: Kilmer did most of the singing in the film himself and even the surviving Doors (Manzarek, Krieger, and Densmore) admitted they had a hard time telling the difference. So did I the first time I saw the film; I had no idea it wasn’t Jim Morrison’s vocals. On that basis alone, par excellence. Also look for a fairly large number of Doors associates and other scenesters of the time, including producer Paul Rothchild, Patricia Kennealy, singer Bonnie Bramlett, Eric Burdon of The Animals, and a Door himself - drummer John Densmore - in cameo appearances.
10. Another tough call - Birdy or Platoon? - My decades-long adoration of and obsession with Matthew Modine is only barely outweighed by John Cusack and only slightly precedes James Spader, and having to decide between these two films is awful, though Birdy would probably win out in the end. This also meant I had to toss out another huge Modine favorite and an underappreciated and hugely funny one that probably doesn’t appear on many favorites lists, Married to the Mob. All three are fabulous films for their own reasons. Side Trivia: Having now mentioned Birdy, I also have to mention two more that didn’t make the cut - Valley Girl and Raising Arizona, all featuring Modine’s Birdy co-star Nicolas Cage, also good. Valley Girl, which was really Cage’s big film break, is worth it for The Plimsouls on stage alone. Wow, I first saw that one at the drive-in in 1983.

God, that was awful to try to choose ten and I still didn’t really succeed. Here are a few more - runners-up, I suppose - that didn’t make the final cut:

1. Edward Scissorhands - I love this movie in all its goofy glory so much it makes me cry and it killed me to leave it off the list. In retrospect, I might have to swap one of the above for it. Side Trivia: Speaking of Tim Burton, there’s also Beetlejuice, of course.
2. Pretty much all of the John Hughes Brat Pack-era movies (which you likely knew was coming) and Joel Schumacher’s St. Elmo’s Fire - It’d be a hard call, but St. Elmo’s Fire would be the first cut ‘cos it’s almost too cheesy. Some Kind of Wonderful and Pretty in Pink, I love but could live without. The Breakfast Club is, well, The Breakfast Club, but it’s not my very favorite. It’d come down to a tremendously agonizing tug of war between Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and I honestly don’t know which would win. Ferris would probably win, though. Even though - Side Trivia: John Cusack makes his second film appearance in a small part as one of the geeks in Sixteen Candles.
3. Ciao! Manhattan - As much as I adore this, which is not so much a real film per se but more of a collection of some of the few remaining pieces of film footage of Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick, as well as many other Factory scenesters, I just can’t justify it being one of the ten. Still, it’d be hard. Side Trivia: I hear the DVD, which I still don’t own, has loads of extra footage and modern commentary by some of the actors from what was supposed to have been the original film, and I’m dying to see it.
4. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains - Unless you had The Movie Channel or HBO in the early ’80s, you probably don’t know this film; it’s been out of print and unavailable for decades. I had a taped copy for years and the tape finally broke seven or eight years ago. This was one of Diane Lane’s earliest films and also features a very young Laura Dern. It’s an excellent film and, along with the aforementioned Over the Edge, is as responsible for my musical obsessions/addictions as any piece of recorded music is. I was pleasantly shocked and surprised to see co-star Ray Winstone’s name for the first time in years when he turned up in the multi-award winning Nil By Mouth in 1997. The good news is that after years of fans pleading, I got word the other day via MySpace that the film is finally going to be released on DVD and, in fact, the very next day got a notification from Amazon that the DVD was now available for pre-ordering. Side Trivia: Former Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook, and former Clash bassist Paul Simonon, appear as the other members of the band in the movie led by Winstone.
5. Pretty much every Kevin Smith and David Lynch film ever made - I can’t decide. I can’t, I can’t. Though I guess Dogma and Blue Velvet. Or maybe Chasing Amy and Eraserhead. Or… I can’t decide. Don’t make me.

God, that was painful. And it would really suck if there was no electricity on that island.

Hoo boy, yeah, we’re really getting up to date and into this century here now, you bet. How, you say? Why, take a look down that left sidebar. No, further down. Yeah, there.

You can now subscribe to The Lynnster Zone via e-mail. (Or you can use this handy dandy link in the previous sentence.) Are you excited now? Yes, I’m being sarcastic.  So now, for those of you who don’t want to, nor know how to, nor care to learn how to subscribe by feed, you can have me delivered straight to your e-mail box.  Aces.

No, really, I was updating some stuff at FeedBurner (like those poor little subscription chicklets down in the left sidebar that half of them were pitifully old) & while there I just happened to wander in the “E-mail Subscriptions” section and looked around and went, huh, wonder why I never bothered to set that up before. No, I don’t know either.

There’s something else new too, down there in the right sidebar. No, further down. More. Yeah, right there.

Yes, even though I have had my OLD music pages that haven’t been touched in at least two or three years in a little link group down there, for whatever moronic reason I had never bothered to do the same with my CURRENT pages I manage nowadays practically every day. So, probably not too exciting unless you’re a diehard music fan and/or Aussie music fan - or if you’re just interested in seeing what ELSE I spend my voluminous amounts of free time on (*cough*) besides this blog (*choke*) - but well, now they’re there.

I probably did something else new here tonight but whatever it was, I’m sure it wasn’t terribly important.

I am a busy little bee this week doing some real work plus another project plus determined to get some to-do’s off my list that have been sitting there waiting to be done forEVER - things that if I will just get them DONE they will be super low maintenance from there on out - so back to the salt mines I go. Ciao.

First things first - Happy New Year, blogosphere!

So I was over catching up at Music City Bloggers this afternoon, when this post about now even more RIAA/record company-related lunacy and related issues got my blood pressure up. I was in the process of commenting over there when I realized that (in my usual long rambling fashion when ranting and raving with a bug up my you know what) I had gone on several paragraphs too long for a mere and appropriate comment. Thus, today I blog.

I am sooo glad this post appeared at MCB today because, a few weeks ago, there was a similar post on this same basic topic that I meant to comment on then and forgot to get back to. Then it got way down in the queue of posts, so I just let that thought go for the moment. Now I’m back and raring to chew on it ’til it’s a bloody, ugly, and messy unidentifiable pulp.

And yes, I meant that description to be as nasty and ugly and violent as it sounds.

I was just saying to someone last night, in fact, that I just do NOT understand why the record companies and the RIAA don’t understand that - over now all these many years these battles have been going on - they have not only COMPLETELY alienated but TOTALLY pissed off their largest and most profitable customer base to the point where most of us will NEVER buy another CD or similar media ever under any circumstances.

In 99% of most cases, I will simply do without rather than put another cent into record company pockets. There is, for the most part, just not anything I need enough that bad any longer… and whatever I will spend in the future is mere pennies compared to what I have spent on recorded music in the past.

I am not your “average music buyer”. I am your hardcore music JUNKIE who - up until all this RIAA battle crap started now years ago - spent probably on average of 95% of my disposable income on, commercially produced and sold, first vinyl records, then 8-tracks and cassette tapes, then CDs.

Yes, you read that right. Probably 95% on average. But just in case that figure is an overestimation, I know I can say, without a doubt, most certainly over 85%.

I have been buying records since I was three years old, walking around to the corner store from my family’s downtown store with a relative and picking out and purchasing those three 45 RPM records myself. My collection of storebought music - especially if you include the vinyl I eventually decided to part with - is HUGE. That’s nearly 39 years of buying commercial produced music in literal DROVES - again, averaging probably 95%, at least 85% of my disposable income, up until very recent years when it has drastically decreased because of this RIAA/record company BS and the ridiculous cost.

In addition, my father was also a pretty hardcore music junkie with a vast and huge collection - maybe not so much as me, but yes, exceptionally large - so put us together and that’s two consumers who spent, absolutely and most certainly, thousands and thousands of dollars on recorded music starting in probably about 1953-54-55-ish. So for the sake of argument let’s just say there’s 50 YEARS of extraordinary amounts of disposable income spent on recorded music there.

Then cometh the RIAA and its gestapo tactics and other pain in the neck policies and procedures and just general irritation and annoyance, as well as ever skyrocketing prices (I won’t get into DVD and VHS in this discussion, but I have a pretty large collection there too and talk about cost… ugh).

The result?

I have not purchased a commercially produced CD for myself in over two years. In fact, the number I have purchased in the last FIVE YEARS probably less than TEN.

The ONLY CDs I have purchased in that past five years or so were requested Christmas or birthday gifts for family, and that number is also probably less than ten, definitely less than 15… and more often than not, purchased on the secondhand/used market.

In the past, I used to buy more CDs (or tapes or LPs) in a YEAR than the average person probably does in a LIFETIME.

I now go out of my way to not have to purchase another commercially produced CD ever.

That’s sad, folks. That’s really sad. I’m sure record company profits look pretty pitiful as well and have for a while now.

They’ve done it to themselves.

I have a lot of love for some independent and not-major labels who have bent over backwards to try to do right by consumers and make up for what the majors and the RIAA have done. I’m not talking about those wonderful folks, many of whom I have at least a direct and remote acquaintance with some of their staff.

But at this point, and after all the increasingly horrifying tactics executed over the last several years, every major record label in the world that has fought alongside the RIAA deserves nothing less to go bankrupt and disappear. The RIAA deserves to be eradicated and in the future be nothing more than a past memory much like the Hays Code is to film.

Couple all this with the fact that in the last couple of years I have discovered that some of my storebought and paid for, commercially produced CDs are disintegrating (when they told us back in the ’80s that oh, CDs will last forever and it’s just nearly impossible to destroy them)… I’m done with buying music in the “old traditional way” unless (A) the record companies and RIAA stop being such idiots and a*holes and (B) the price becomes something REASONABLE again.

Right now my alternative means of acquiring music are perfectly legal. If the record companies and RIAA push it some more to make that impossible or just a more major freakin’ hassle too - I, again, will likely just choose to do without.

Sadder still that - not as a career but as a hobby of sorts and labor of love - in the past 15 years, I have probably been one of the fairly major independent supporters and mouthpieces for the alt/indie community in both the U.S. and (more especially) Australia, especially in certain circles; and as the Internet has grown, my influence has grown as well. Yeah, I should have made a real career out of it at some point probably, but didn’t.

Nonetheless, I have helped sell PLENTY of those CDs, records, and tapes over the years for many of those greedy companies simply as a major supporter and a fan of various and sundry artists, and a supporter of modern music in general.

Heck, I LITERALLY sold those CDs, records, and tapes for a time. I’m (surprise, surprise) a former record store employee myself, after all. You saw Empire Records or High Fidelity? I lived it (unfortunately without the hotness that is John Cusack, but that’s another blog post…).

Again, take heed, RIAA & record labels: I am not just Jane Average Music Buyer, but it’s bad enough you’ve angered and alienated the Jane and Joe Averages of the music consumer world. If a completely addicted, hardcore music junkie like myself hasn’t bought a CD for their personal use in two years, and few for three years before that - you people have got a problem that, at this point, you probably CANNOT really make that much better by attempting to do anything MORE about it.

But you certainly might be able to staunch the flow by simply STOPPING the current and ongoing utter madness.

From my viewpoint, the wound’s fatal; the illness is terminal. The RIAA and record companies have simply gone too far, and there’s a rare music consumer who’s going to forget about it in the rest of their lifetime of potential music buying. Even the most remote and not very active consumer who doesn’t think much about the music they buy and how and where they buy it - I guarantee you they are still thinking, when considering a purchase, about the insane cost of music these days and could they possibly get what they want by some other means than what the RIAA and record companies think - and are more and more often insisting - they should.

There are now, literally, TWO bands in the entire WORLD that might have future major label releases that I will support with my dollars in major corporate pocket if I must. There’s two more that could, but probably won’t. That’s four bands in the WHOLE WORLD.

Additionally, I will continue to support my favorite indie and small label artists however I have to. Hopefully by means that are music consumer-friendly (and most of them are) and not major label gestapo-like.

Even so, I suspect that - unless things in the corporate music biz change drastically - five years from now, I’ll be telling you I still haven’t bothered to purchase and spend any more of my disposable income on any major label, commercially produced recorded music. If at all, the number will probably equal exactly one. Yep, one CD.

There’s plenty of stuff I never got around to replacing on CD (or buying for the first time) over 39 years of music buying. Some box sets. Some special remastered CD reissues with all the bells and whistles and extra goodies. Extending my collection of some of the “biggies”, like the Stones, Zeppelin, etc.

But nowadays, I don’t care. Thanks to the RIAA and its cohorts within the major label industry, I no longer care one bit about that stuff I never got around to buying. Be nice to have, but I don’t need it that bad for what the industry has put this entire country - the entire world - through in the last decade.

And unless things change drastically - and I mean drastically - I don’t think I’m likely to ever start caring again. And I feel certain there’s lots more like me out there, as well as many, many more millions of Joe and Jane Average Music Consumers out there who are leaning in that direction these days as well, if not already there.

Ain’t that a shame?

ADDENDUM:  Don Coyote & I are kinda on the same wavelength this week, it would appear.

So I’ve been busy on some projects I have been trying to pull together and complete forever now, thanks to my well-known Aussie rock fetish, and I guess you could say Phase 1 & 2 are up to speed now, Phase 3 is about to get done, and then onto Phase 4 one of these days when I have some free time that I never have anymore.

Anyway, I’ve been busy here and here, and finally got the only existing video footage of The Monarchs up on both MySpace and YouTube, and those of you who pop over here occasionally from the Pen and that general sector who haven’t already heard about the videos will certainly want to check those out.

Otherwise, I am so exhausted right now, and have had so little sleep in the past week and a half (not because of this stuff tho), that I have absolutely nothing else to blog about unless you wanna hear me yawn, so ’til later, folks…

WARNING:  Total Music Geek post ahead.  I mean, this is a realllllly major one, so you know, many of you are welcome to skip it if you really wanna.

It’s a freakin’ holy grail week!  Not only do I have live, never-seen-before Monarchs video IN MY HAND (thank you from the bottom of my little blonde heart, Muzz!) - which hopefully I will find time to convert and pop on the MySpace profile and YouTube within the next couple of days (as well as put a finish on and unveil the new website)…

But I just found a studio-quality MP3 of something I have not had on anything but CASSETTE in over 20 YEARS!!  It can’t even be found on CD anywhere!  I would tell you what it is, but 99.99% of you (even the music geeks) would have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about anyway.  But YAY!

Thus whittles down the long list I have been carrying around since 1986 of nearly impossible to find, out of print stuff to, like… maybe two things now?

Listen, I could have won $40 million in the lottery today and wouldn’t be any happier.

OK, yes, I know I’m whacked.  But who cares, I’m happy!

Woo!  I finally got the opportunity today to meet yet another person I’ve “known” online for somewhere around 13-15 years, another of the Hoodoo Gurus faithful (and ‘Mats fan, she’s a Replacements fan too) from way back when in the original early days of the congregation of fans around the world online.  Nese is from Texas and had trekked up here for the weekend for the big Webb Wilder shindig in Knoxville and was coming thru here on the way back, so I met her downtown at the Hard Rock on Beale Street and we had a fine afternoon lunching and visiting… and what awesome weather, couldn’t have picked a better day.  And naturally, she is awesome.  So woohoo!

I gotta say it was awfully weird hanging out downtown though.  Once upon a time I spent a significant amount of spare time in downtown Memphis, especially hanging around Beale and the riverfront on the nicer weekends, and the last several years I am almost never down there.  So much has changed… and I don’t know that I’d really say for the better.  To me it looks kind of just dressed up to look prettier.

My love-hate relationship with this town continues.  Strange, I don’t even really remember when I used to just love it, though I know once upon a time I did.

Well, now that come to find out I’ve been shamed out of my self-imposed temporary blogging exile (laughing), I guess I gotta write something. There is just so much of nothing going on here right now and, no pun or blonde jokes intended, but my mind is pretty much a blank lately. So keep your expectations low and we’ll all be satisfied, I reckon.

There’ve been a couple of things on the back burner for a while now, including my last-minute-planned trip to L.A. in March, when the Hoodoo Gurus were doing their mini-tour through the US. Now that I think about it, there isn’t that much to tell about the trip, but here were a few of the more interesting things (besides the obvious, which was the concert and which was fantastic as I knew it would be):

• The Phoenix airport is very nice and very pretty, and there appear to be a lot of nice shops and restaurants in it. However, I would not really know because it is WAY too spread out with no quick way to get anywhere, and judging from the conversations around me on the flight to Memphis from Phoenix, apparently most connecting flights that land there are scheduled to give the passenger no more than 30 minutes and, in most cases, 20 or 10 to get to the gate for the connecting flight, and apparently hardly any connecting flights are scheduled with gates in the same terminal. I have never had to bust my ass so much in an airport (and coming through both ways) in my life - I had a limited window of time to get to L.A. that night, and not only was our flight late leaving Memphis, but my connecting flight’s gate could not have possibly been any further from the gate where I arrived, and the door was closing as I hit the gate and barely made it on. Not quite as bad, but almost the same situation, going back to Memphis the next morning. However, I think I was one of the lucky ones on the flight out - most of the people around me on the plane had ten minutes or less to make their connecting flight, so likely they didn’t make it.
• Got off the plane at LAX, start walking toward the front door of the terminal and who is walking right towards me, then past me, but actor Sean Penn. Someone later asked me did he look like he wanted to punch someone, but no - he just looked hurried and a bit stressed like most everyone else in the airport terminal - hope he wasn’t having to go to Phoenix! And this makes the second time in my life I have seen an Oscar winner at LAX (the first being actress Sissy Spacek on my trip out there way back in 1979).
• I can’t say enough good about the Super Shuttle from LAX. As stated, I had a VERY limited time window that trip and one major bout of delay with flight or shuttle service could have wrecked my entire trip. Instead, I actually made it to the restaurant where I was meeting friends for dinner before the show a half hour before they got there. Yay for the Super Shuttle.
• Also a big thumbs up for Canter’s Deli on Fairfax, which was where I met up with my old friend Jimm, who was still living in Australia when I last saw him about a decade ago, and his lovely wife Wendie, who I was meeting for the first time. We had a great dinner and a wonderful time visiting and my only regret is that I couldn’t try everything on the menu, which all looked fabulous, but the menu itself could take you more than an hour to read because there are SO many wonderful things on the menu. Hooray for the most excellent Philly sandwich there, though. Yum.
• A great big giant thumbs down for the security people at the El Rey Theatre. Their overzealousness was completely unnecessary, given the act involved, but I’ve since learned from some of the locals that the security there is well known for being asses for no real good reason. Thanks, security jerks, for a great big black mark on a trip I had flown thousands of miles for and to spend a whole 13.5 hours in your fair city. Except for the one female security person who was the one who checked my bag and ID and did indeed see I had come all the way from Memphis and was the only one not acting like a total shit after the show. Yep, I did indeed see and enjoy the show but their behavior post-show was despicable (even towards the band’s own crew!!!). Partially my fault for having made these trip plans at what was the very last minute, but the security behavior in general just left a lot to be desired. I know certain members of the band brought the behavior to their management’s attention and I intend to do the same. Anyway…
• I spent the night, basically, in LAX because there just wasn’t any point in getting a hotel room when I was going to be in L.A. so short of a time - the show was not over until around midnight and I was gonna have to be on a plane back to Memphis (and go thru security and all that) at 6:30 a.m. It was very much NOT comfortable and all and I nearly froze to death, but I survived it… other than the fact I would have liked to have smacked a certain smartass airport security person in the mouth that morning, but I didn’t want to go to jail, so I didn’t. Note to LAX management: Mark your airport security areas where you want people to line up and to go CLEARLY. Because next time, after I have slept five hours in your airport and am not quite awake, and I’m the second person to go thru security and therefore there are no lines with people lined up like cattle going in whatever direction or the other, and some smartass on your security staff decides to holler out, “What, have you never been in an airport before?” rather than pointing out the direction I need to go or something else possibly, oh, helpful? I’m smacking her in the mouth next time. Just sayin’.

So that’s pretty much the basics of that trip. It was fun and I’m glad I went, but I don’t think I’ll ever do something crazy like that, going all the way to L.A. and spending a whole 13.5 hours there before flying back, again. I was exhausted for two weeks or more after. Of course, I’d been in Chicago for barely two days just days before that, so that probably didn’t help.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll catch up on one of the 541 memes I’ve been tagged for, who knows. We’ll see. Hope everyone had a good 4th!