Friday, June 11

That morning I awoke to Jon's cat Shacho staring at me. I think she was trying to mess with my mind. Jon and his ladyfriend Ruriko and I went down the street to a lovely little breakfasty cafe. Then there were many phone calls, trying to sort out stuff with Sean, and the Duke, who had just gotten in, but ended up getting stuck in rental car purgatory for a good deal of the afternoon. There was some yummy Mexican food and unsuccessful thrift shopping in there. And then was some sitting around and waiting, and then the Duke and Kathryn showed up, and we went to the club, for more sitting around and waiting while XOXOXO soundchecked. We were playing at the Hollywood Athletic Club, which is HUGE and really swanky. My favorite was the room that was the old swimming pool, and they put a bar down in the pool, and they ended up closing that part when the night started, what is up with that? It was totally the best part. Anyway, the soundcheck seemed to go OK, and then people started showing up, including lots of our old-school Boston friends, and lots of new-school Boston friends who'd happened to come out for a fun California posse time.

The show itself wasn't so great, the sound on stage was really not-so-good. But there were a ton of people there and they seemed to be having a good time, I guess a great deal of them were seeing us for the first time, so they really didn't have a good show of ours to compare it to. Oh well. We got some cool-looking pictures anyway (thanks to Abby and Ivan).

And then we piled into the minivan with Kathryn, Abby, and Aubrey, and headed off to Santa Monica...