Check out the choir’s blog for more videos and info, including a Phoenix song.

Or visit their youtube channel for more videos.

One for Tawnya!

Holy cow! I keep editing and adding on to this post as I discover more stuff they’ve done. Here they are performing WITH Crowded House!

More on their youtube channel.

I can’t put the pictures right in my post because she doesn’t allow that on her Flickr settings, so I’ll just link to them.

Here’s Elijah on a train car.

Me and Elijah together.

I was nervous being up there.

And Elijah on the tracks.

It was a cool cloudy day, which we don’t get too many of around here. Awesome to take pictures in. I still need to get my film developed from that day.

(And don’t even get me started on “Lover, You Should Have Come Over…”)

But I don’t usually wonder about it with a sense of “I wish that was written about me.” Mostly I think about it in terms of, “I would not be happy to have a song that says that about me all over the airwaves.”

Of course a lot of songwriters don’t write about actual people, it’s all made up stuff. But a lot of songwriters—including a lot of my favorites—do write about actual people. I mean, how does Darryl Hannah feel about Jackson Browne’s “I’m Alive” album, which (I’m assuming) is pretty much all about her?

The girl that “Sister Christian” is about nearly changed her name, she was so mortified when people figured out it was about her.

How’d you like to be the woman this was written for?

Actually, she probably just rolled her eyes when she heard that song. Glen can be a bit melodramatic at times.

It’s why we love him.

So what are some songs you wish were written about you? Or songs you’d want to die if they were?

What are some small goals you have?

Nothing too weighty. I don’t believe in huge goals. Low expectations = never being disappointed.

OK, I’ll go first.

1. I want to spend a day exploring on the commuter train. I’ve taken it from Long Beach into downtown LA before, and then into Hollywood (where it’s actually a subway). I’d like to do that some more. Just take off and see where I end up.

2. I want to start playing the flute again. Haven’t played it since I was in high school, but I’m pretty sure I still remember the B-flat scale. And what more do I need? A flute? Oh yeah.

3. I want to look out the window and make jokes.

4. I want to see Converge in a small, all ages place. And then I want to walk up to them after the show and say, “Hey. You probably don’t remember, but I sent you a fan email once. My name is Susan. I’m a 39 year old Mormon housewife, and I’m your biggest fan.”*

* This one could actually happen. They’re playing a small all ages place soon, and my son got me and him both tickets.

I’m not either. I forget everything!

I posted a video blog the other day about some old music magazines I’d saved from my teen years. Included in all the stuff my parents sent was a fanzine that my penpal, Laura, put together.

She actually did multiple issues, but I only saved a copy of one, not sure why. Maybe because it was the only one I submitted anything for. I don’t remember. But I’d completely forgotten I’d written some album reviews for it until I started to scan it for Laura, who I recently reconnected with on Facebook. She lost all of her own copies of the ‘Zine, which is really too bad, because she did some cool interviews for it, including the Alarm. She interviewed them in San Fran, then flew to Seattle to stay with me for a few days and we went to see them play. When we met them after the show, they remembered her from the interview. It was cool.

Anyway, here is the page that features my reviews. I think it’s funny that I still basically write about music the same way I did when I was 15.

Back when I was Susie M.

Daniel was watching the ski jumping on the Oympics, you know, when they look like this:

Daniel said they should put some webbing between the skis and the person’s body, so it’d be like wings.

Elijah said, Yeah. And then they should attach a string to them that someone in the crowd could hold.

–

The other day the subject of kids’ names came up (yes, again). I think it was because Elijah was complaining about not having a middle name—so he could never just use two initials and then his last name. Like R.L. Stine does.

Cat has a list of kids’ names she likes, which she showed to us. Included in the boys list was Beatrix. I told her no.

Daniel said he was going to name his next kid Shutup Youstupidhead. We had fun with that.

“What’s your name?”

“Shutup Youstupidhead!”

Roll call in class: “Darren…Present. Shutup…Here.”

–

Elijah was telling us how his friend Mark’s dad is just exactly like Daniel.

He said, “There’s only two differences. One, Mark’s dad is Mexican. Two, I came from Dad.”

YES!

Of course the kids didn’t want to go. All of them wanted to be left home without the others, and wondered why just having one person around, even if they stayed in their room the whole weekend on their computer, would make a difference.

It does. Believe me.

So I’ve had 24 hours of completely quiet aloneness, aka bliss!

What did I do? Pretty much the same stuff I always do. But it’s just so much easier to do alone. Even housework. I have a hard time doing housework when people are around. Is that weird? I just get in this burrowing-mode where I can’t do anything if there are people around.

Anyway, this week I’ve managed to socialize as well. Rare for me. I met up with a Flickr contact who it turns out works just down the street from me at a really cool preschool. We met up for a few minutes on her lunch hour and took some pictures.

They have a horse at her preschool! Among lots of other animals.

A couple weeks ago, Daniel, Nathaniel and I went into downtown LA. Nathaniel and I stopped by an art gallery I’d heard about on Flickr. They normally feature artwork by graffiti artists—not graffiti, other stuff they do. So we dropped in, and they were having a show on prison art.

The door was locked but a sign said to knock, so we did. A man came to the door and let us in. The gallery is small. He stood in the middle of it, staring straight ahead, just zoning out. He never said a word to us.

A lot of the art was mostly drawings of naked women, which was kind of funny to be looking at with my 19 year old son. But it was interesting—all the artwork was done by prison inmates, and most of it had a letter from the artist talking about his work. The one who did the really lurid naked pictures said that he started drawing to make money or trades with the other prisoners, and everyone wants the naked chicks, so that’s what he draws.

I asked the fellow working there if I could take some pictures and he nodded his head. So I snapped a couple, but only three. Here’s one:

The sign says "This plastic cup was done using a needle and cigarette ash by an unknown inmate in San Quentin."

The other pictures I took were of this stainless steel toilet that someone had etched stuff on. Don’t think I want to know how an inmate got ahold of anything sharp enough to scratch steel…

Here’s a shot I took with my half-frame camera of the sign for the gallery on a street corner:

The upper frame is a shot of the pavement right next to the sign. The plaque reads: "Private Property - Permission to pass over revocable at any time."

One more shot I took of the building next door to the gallery. I love this little street in downtown LA:

My camera’s going out, the shutter is staying open too long, so it’s over exposing and everything is blurry. But it’s kind of a cool effect.

The pictures are of a farm. Most feature a horse with a colt and a cowboy.

But some feature a milk cow and a farmer and a little girl.

“Milk Cow - And Proud of It!”

At the end of the roll were these turkeys and a cat:

Is it me, or do turkey’s talons look really funny? They totally make me want to laugh.

I love finding old film like this and developing it. It’s such a mystery. So many possibilities. Who took the pictures? The Mrs? Did the farmer take the pictures that he isn’t in? Where were they taken? (Probably western WA somewhere.) Who are these people?

You can see all of the pictures as a slideshow here.