Down To Fun

What's that, the cover of a new Christian rock album?  No, just pregaming enjoying nature before band practice, out at Hut Point.  Julien makes a mean mojito, especially when you consider that the mint is a few weeks old and the lime is powdered.  Also, there is a guy here who's actual first name is Steel.  He's sitting on the right.

For a few days there I had a lot of spare time on my hands with only one band going...but thankfully, they're both fully operational again.  Our bass player suffered an unfortunate accident and flew home, but I scooped up a replacement so we can still play IceStock.  And another side project is brewing: I met a guy who was a professional jazz drummer for like thirty years, and who made and brought down -- to Antarctica -- his own set of vibes (as in vibraphone, not psychological energy).

Christmas week is upon us and the debauchery started right with the firefighters' dinner/party.  My friend and drummer cooked a feast: meatballs, pasta, latkes, crepes, asparagus, and more.  They're about as rowdy as you'd expect any such group to be, and it pleased me that the chief ended an otherwise congratulatory and sincere speech with a quote from the sage of our times, Jerry Springer.

Tonight beckons like a giant chocolate cake: planning our short film, followed by band practice, followed by maybe my favorite event of the year -- SOLSTICE SILENT DANCE PARTY.  We will enter into the transcendent quiet beauty of this landscape, moving to our own tunes on headphones, the sun as high as it ever is all the way to midnight in a strange southern land.