I love it when a fire engine is sirening its way down the street and everyone pulls to the side of the road and freezes.
For a moment, everyone puts aside the enveloping sagas of their lives and works together toward the common goal of getting the truck to its destination quickly.
It's such a beautiful simple moment where suddenly everybody, regardless of politics, religion or taste, is on the same page. A rare moment of grace.
You may have heard by now that our gig with Billy Ray didn't go exactly as planned. Witness for yourself:
What is it with me and fire!?
Fortunately, no one was hurt. But the building was a total loss.
I've got a little catching up to do here on the blog, so I'll delve into the New Years' Eve stuff in a later entry.
Coming in to New York City, I had this great idea to try and get in touch with a bunch of friends, regardless of the fact that I had very little time to do this. After our first Newark show, I went out for a late night meal with Koo Chung, Jinny Kim (they're engaged now!) and John Bonaventura (who's also engaged now, but his girl wasn't able to join us).
They were part of last year's tour. You know, this one:
We talked about life after the explosion, relationships, work...everything. And had chocolate cake. John likes to drink his wine on the rocks. He says that every time he orders it, the waiter brings the ice in a separate glass, cause no one can believe he would want to ruin a perfectly good glass of wine like that.
I mentioned to Koo that I've been looking to get a BlackBerry, but it just kept not happening, and Koo said he'd just bought an iPhone and didn't need his Treo anymore. Bang! I've got a new phone. And I love it. I've finally joined the texting world of five years ago.
After going to bed much too late, I woke up much too early to have breakfast with Robin Lai and Jae Ko at Cafe Europa.
They were also in the band of said exploding tour. It was wonderful to see them again, and it really felt like reuniting with fellow trauma survivors. That giant Arkansas fireball bonded us in a strange and permanent way.
That same day we played our second Newark show, and it was attended by one of my very favorite people: Ben Pedersen.
Afterwards, we headed back into the city, had warm bubble tea and dumplings at Saint Alps Teahouse, walked the streets of the East Village, checked out the bookshops, and found numerous things to laugh at. Like this:
Apparently it was garbage night in NYC, according to this ubiquitous sight:
Once again I went to bed much too late, half expecting to feel sick in the morning, but I've switched to new vitamins, and I've been feeling good for a couple weeks now! Yay!
Last night in Knoxville was a weird and awesome one. The film crew came back to grab a few shots for the movie (in Disney 3D theaters in February - don't forget!). They wanted us to play Guitar Hero III with Miley in her dressing room. We had an great time. I've only played it once at Jonathan Geer's house for a few minutes about a year ago, so I had low expectations of my performance. I beat Miley though - completely disgraced her actually, and proceeded to trounce Stacy at a song he knew but I had never heard. Jaime was pretty good (he beat Miley too), and he owes me a match-up at some point. Miley probably never wants to play with us again.
I was all amped up from whooping at GHIII, so I felt great during the show. However, I started noticing that every time the dancers moved, the entire stage shifted...like in a wobbly sort of way. This was very alarming. I glanced at the other band members. They noticed it too. In between songs, I went behind the stage and mentioned it to a crew member and he said it probably wasn't a big deal.
We later discovered it was because in most arenas, the stage is built on ice, which it eventually sinks into and becomes quite stable. In this arena, we were built on concrete. Fortunately, the disaster scenario in my head where the stage collapsed and we all fell into a big hole in the ground never occured.
However, at the end, we were about to come back out for the encore, when Omar (the guy that runs the show) noticed a fire burning up in the rigging. Not a good thing. It was a tiny fire, but a fire nonetheless. So we ended the show right there.
Basically, one of the pyros (which are encased in a fireproof material) somehow caught fire. It happens rarely, and Omar said it probably would've just burned out without incident, but to be safe, we sent Cowboy (an awesome crew member) up there to put it out.
Disaster averted.
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