Today a few accidents happened in my studio...I'll attempt to make this incredibly long story as brief as possible (because it is just SO riveting).

1) I have a wish list of items that I plan on investing for my studio to make it more and more professional. At the top of that list was a 2nd display (computer monitor), and preferably one that matched my current Apple 23" HD Cinema Display. Several months ago I bought one on ebay. It broke after a week, and I got depressed about the whole thing...this incident became known by me as "That Time I Flushed $350.00 Down the Toilet." I finally saved up enough dough to buy another one, and it began suffering the same fate as the previous one--it had a horrible pink hue. Well...I was going to just sit and cry all day, but I started to jimmy with the plugs and connectors...and after a few days of trying, today something went right. And it worked...finally...and it is BEAUTIFUL. Yahooooooo!!!!
Normally I would not accept that something just "up and worked" without figuring out exaclty what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future, etc...but today...I just accepted it.

That is accident/miracle #1

2) I went to Guitar Center with the little bit of cash I had left in my pocket in order to by a simple $9.99 sustain pedal for my keyboard. I walked out with a new M-Audio Axiom 88 key workstation for myself and an Axiom 66 for church (plus two sustain pedals). They were having a sale...and a full-size 88-key keyboard was 2nd on my studio wish list.
Yes. I accidentally bought a brand new keyboard today. I did NOT plan on doing this, but it just worked out perfectly.

I walked out of there with such a great feeling of accomplishment...

It took my a few minutes, but I fixed up my work space and starting living in my new environment. It was a complete overhaul of my desk and work space.

And it was awesome.

Don't worry honey, I got a Guitar Center card...and it's 12 months 0% interest. Or maybe I don't have to pay anything for twelve months...I can't remember...but regardless...I didn't break the bank. Promise.

Here is a picture of my new workstation. I'm still working out the kinks. But it is a great improvement upon what I had before today.

I am not a big cake person. I don't know why...and given my propensity for desserts in general, this is a quandary. But alas, it is true. I am not a big cake person.

So much so, that we actually had mounds of cookies at our wedding reception in lieu of cake--and only a small round cake for us to cut as a bride and groom traditionally would. But no cake for the other 600 people that came, only cookies.
Piles and piles of cookies.

BUT

that said...

For all of my life, my favorite chocolate cake has been my mom's family recipe "May's Chocolate Cake". She made it several times growing up and it was delicious and unique.

And moist.

Mmmmmmm it was soooooooo moist.

But I'm sorry mom, I'm afraid there is a new cake in town. AND IT IS KILLER.

It is Cracker Barrel's Coca-Cola Chocolate Cake...and it is both heavenly and devilish. When I'm eating it, I can't decide if I'm tasting a bit of heaven, or committing one of the seven deadly sins.

YES.

IT'S THAT GOOD.

And if you like cakes, or love someone who likes cakes, you are going to try this recipe.

It will change your life.

Many thanks to Angela Cottrell for this recipe. She gave it to my by memory over the phone while driving. Needless to say...I was impressed.

CAKE:
1 cup (2 sticks) Butter (THE REAL STUFF-margarine not allowed)
1 1/2 cups mini-marshmallows
3 Tbl. Hershey's Cocoa (mix half of regular and half of Hershey's Dark if you can)
1 cup Cola
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup Buttermilk
2 eggs

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
Melt butter, marshmallows, and cola together in a small saucepan over heat--stirring until all mixed together and everything is completely melted. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, and cocoa. Pour melted concoction over the dry ingredients and stir until completely mixed. Add 1/2 cup buttermilk and stir until mixed in. Add 2 eggs, baking soda, and vanilla and mix well.  Pour into a 9x13 metal cake pan and cook for 30 minutes. Middle of the cake should look a liiiiiitle under done (but not too much...if it's soupy, put it back in the over for another 5-10 minutes).

ICING:
1/2 cup butter (1 stick)
6 Tbl. Cola
2 Tbl. Cocoa
4 cups Powdered Sugar
1 cup pecans (optional)

Mix together the butter, cola, and cocoa until melted and well mixed (stirring a lot). Stir in powdered sugar, 2 cups at a time, until dissolved in the mix.
When the cake comes out of the oven, put pecans on top and slowly pour on the icing.
Let it set for 30 minutes.

And if you do it well...it should look a little like this:

and YOU WILL LOVE IT.

Money back guarantee.

This evening I found out that my 8 year-old nephew is in the hospital with a growth on his brain. Please pray for him!

I'll post updates as soon as I get any news. That way you are all in the loop...

To a game of Othello on facebook.

I'm so addicted right now...and I'm not THAT great.

But I'm getting better...and I could probably kick your butt.

So there.

The gauntlet is cast!

...to Pepsuber.

HAHAHA

OK, if you're an enthusiast, you'll know I'm a week behind here, but I just can't resist. It turns out (at least according to Mike--and because I'm just too darn lazy to go look for myself) that Pepsi sponsored the kids over at SNL to make 3 MacGruber commercials, one to be aired during the Superbowl.

Awesome.

Way to be creative, for real.

So, just in case you're wondering, MacGruber is a spoof of the mid-80's TV Character MacGyver (who happened to cameo in these commercials). Here's a clip, if you're curious like I was...(the real MacGyver theme song)

But what makes these spoofs SO stinkin' funny? Oh, oh, oh...it's gotta be the timing!!
Not to mention the utter ridiculousness of it all...
It's TOTALLY worth the watch.
My favorite is probably the third one...especially right at the end...but they are ALL hilarious.

Thank you, Pepsi, for this. And thank you, MacGruber.

My brother and I are 3.5 years apart.

My other siblings are significantly older than my little brother and I, so John and I pretty much had each other while growing up...especially in the latter years of our childhood.  We were just close enough in age to be able to play together, but just far enough apart to drive the other absolutely NUTS. We fought a lot. No big deal...we're brothers.

Brothers fight. We just do...errrrr...did.

Some rather famous memories of our youth include:
-The time we were fighting over a book of "Silly Answers to Stupid Questions" (published by those MAD Magazine folks) and we argued so much that my dad ripped the book in half and threw it in the fireplace...fantastically punishing us BOTH equally with the ultimate, irreversible consequence: complete destruction by FIRE.

and

-The time we were fighting in the RV while on vacation, and I threw John's most prized possession at the time--a little bag of collectible coins he had been gathering at each of our vacation stops--right out onto the highway somewhere along the Oregon Trail (a.k.a Highway 5-ish) while we were driving.  Of course, my brother begged my parents to stop, but they did not--aptly punishing us both for arguing...but mostly him that time...hahahaha

...but the meanest, most despicable thing I ever did to anyone, I did to my brother while I was in high school.

He had been on a big Raisin Nut Bran kick for a while. You know that stuff, right?

Tastier than regular Raisin Bran because of those almond covered raisins, but still just as healthy and juicy. We both used to try and pour it juuuuust right so we would get the most of those raisins. I mean, they were (and ARE) the best part of the whole stinkin' breakfast experience. Nothing matched the awesomeness of that flavor. YUM. We'd watch the flow of cereal while it came out of the box, looking for the best possible raisin-to-bran-flake ratio, squeezing every last tasty raisin that we could out of the box while still being respecatble about it.

Well...needless to say...we both loved it...but it was HIS favorite.

Especially the raisins.

Soooooo...one day, for some reason that seems to escape me know...I decided that the best possible justice for whatever wrong my brother had incurred that day towards me was for me to:

find a GIANT, huge, gargantuan bowl,

open the FRESH, brand new box of Raisin Nut Bran (that my brother was undoubtedly looking forward to opening in the morning)

pour the WHOLE box out into the oversized bowl,

and fish through the thing until I found and devoured EVERY. LAST. RAISIN.

and I did.

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

And I watched the next morning while my dear, sweet brother John poured his bowl of cereal (he was probably 13 or 14 at the time).

"Hmmm...this is weird. Where are all the raisins?"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

HAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHA

MUAHAHAHAHAA

and I laughed and laughed at him on the inside.

(I think this is when the devil horns started growing...)

And he just kept sifting through the cereal, looking and looking and looking for a single raisin where there was none to be found.

I KNOW!!!

I'M SO MEAN!!!

I don't think I ever told my brother that I did that to him...but he'll never know, since he doesn't read this thing...

So what is the meanest thing you've ever done to a sibling? Or GOSH, I guess it could just be the meanest thing you've ever done to anyone...

Well, CAN YOU?

I cannot WAIT to see what you all come up with...

Hey folks

I have a new fancy Burbank cell phone number. Nothing against San Diego, but I need to have an 818 area code...so I got one.

Unfortunately, you can't JUST change you area code, so I have a brand new phone number. Since I have like 50 billion friends all over the world, and you are among them, I'm letting you know.

If you'd like my new phone number, leave a comment or message me (or email or facebook or whatever) and I'll send you the new number.

In case you haven't heard, Capitol Records is a really cool place. You can read about the history of the famous studio here (good ole Wikipedia). But let's just say that a few cool people have recorded there in the past...people like Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, and Nat King Cole (to name a few).

Why would I be going there for anything (since I'm clearly not Frank Sinatra or any of those others...)?
This week I helped an orchestrator friend on a Cocoa Puffs commercial that recorded there today. It was a very cool project because they were using some music from one of my favorite operas, Carmen (Bizet).

Side note: one of the highlights of my freshman year (besides the fact that I did NOT gain 15 pounds like everyone else) was playing the crash cymbals in the Symphony Orchestra on the ever so famed Carmen Suite. It was such a blast!

So I helped out the orchestrator and he let me come to the session.
It was a trip.

If there was any day I felt industry, it was today. I surrounded by professionals that are leagues above me in experience and ability...and it was so cool. Just to walk the hallway and see the history of that place...it was surreal.

Just think...in the studio next to ours, Al Schmitt was mixing a Barbara Streisand record.

Yeah. Capitol Records is pretty awesome.

And this is how it works:
You spend time building relationships with people so that they will want to create and be creative with you.  No one wants to hire you right off the bat, so you work for free the first time...like an audition. And once people see your work and feel like you have something to offer, they call you back...and hopefully next time they pay.

So I've been doing this a lot lately...and as much as I feel like I'm working my tushy off for no monetary reward, it is a necessary step--a VERY necessary step.

And just because I'm pretty much a dork, I'm attaching a few pictures from the day. These aren't great because I was trying to be very surreptitious in my photo snapping...

This is the hallway walking down towards the studios. You can barely see the pictures all along the hallway, but Nat King Cole is there, Frank, and several others...

And old-fashioned cool looking sign.

We were in studio A...

The badge I wore all day...

I know. Forgive the cheesy pictures. I almost was too cool to take them, but then decided that I wasn't...

So, the whole economic disaster thing finally hit us.

The Christmas season combined with a change in one of our employers pay period (making it impossible to pay our bills in the first half of January) combined with the fact that I didn't really orchestrate much in November/December (meaning no money coming in in December/January) means we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel this time of the year. Bills are piling up...but the world isn't ending yet, and we've made a few appropriate cutbacks to our spending. Check it out:

-No more Starbucks. An obvious luxury. They're probably going to have to close down 600 more stores now that we've stopped going...

-Turn off the heater! Gas is freakin' expensive! Wear sweatshirts and use blankets people...especially if you have a tin-can of a house like ours that loses more heat than it retains. This goes for the lights too. TURN 'EM OFF.

-Scale back the monthly charges. I called AT&T yesterday and saved about $75 a month by reducing the luxurious plans I had on cable, cell minutes, and internet speed. I took us from the 200-channel plan down to the minimum cable channels, carved off 700 minutes a month (between our two phones) on our cell plan, and reduced my internet speed from 10Mbs down to 6Mbs. A wise move.

-Stop buying the non-essentials. I think it's going to be a while before we go see a movie at Harkins Theatres (GASP!) or stop off at the Olive Garden for dinner. But not only that, you can save a lot of money by not getting those power bars and sodas when you stop at the AM/PM to fill up your gas tank. Just resist the temptation!!! You should save it up for those times that you're really, really, really tired...then a red bull is worth it.

-Clip Coupons. You'd be surprised at how it can add up over time.

So these are a few things we'll be doing at our house to save some money so hopefully we can pay those bills.

But HERE'S the kicker.

Right in the middle of all of these discussions we were having the other day...I get this letter.

The letter you NEVER want to get.

Apparantly, I incurred a "Red Light Violation" according to the traffic cameras at a certain intersection in Covina. I turned right on a red light, and according to the video camera, I didn't make a complete stop.  Ok...I'll pay the fine, where is the...WHAT THE...!!!!

The fine is $436.00!!?!?!?!!

FOUR HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX DOLLARS FOR RUNNING A RED LIGHT ON A RIGHT TURN?!!?!

I went through a myriad of emotions in the next minute and a half. I was in denial, I got angry, then I just plain got overwhelmed.

According to the ticket, you can pay the fine and go to traffic school to get the point taken off of your record, you can pay the fine and have the point on your record, you can contest the charge and pay the fine, you can...ok there are a few more options but ALL OF THEM make you pay the fine!

SHEESH.

Normally you'd think that the lesson one would learn from this is the obvious, right? Don't run red lights (especially when there are traffic cameras). But no. That is not what I'm taking away from this...
The lesson I learned is the following:

NEVER DRIVE ON ROWLAND STREET OR BARRANCA AVE EVER EVER EVER AGAIN. And not just the intersection. I'm BOYCOTTING THE WHOLE STREET FOR THE BOTH OF THEM.

HA!

TAKE THAT!

Sorry friends that live on that street.