I've been watching season one of TRUE BLOOD on DVD and thoroughly disappointed that I don't have HBO. The show is excellent. Anna Paquin is fabulous (as ever). The vampires are properly terrifying, the drama intense, and the characters odd and believable (I especially love Tara and Lafayette).

One of the things I love most about the show is the theme song during the opening credits. I'm watching the show on DVD, so I could easily skip over the credits, but I don't. I hear that song, those lyrics ("I want to do bad things with you..."), and oh, I want to strut and dance around the house. I actually look forward to hearing that song (and the imagery that goes with it is creepy and luscious). It makes me happy in an odd way.

There aren't many opening theme songs that I actually look forward to. BUFFY had a decent theme song, and I would enjoy the FRIENDS them, "I'll be there for you" when it would come on the radio. But if I was watching the DVDs, then I would skip over those

But with TRUE BLOOD listening to the opening theme song is such sheer pleasure, that I must listen to it whenever it comes on. It's one of those songs that I would stick in my CD player and listen to over and over, never getting tired of it.

The only other show that had a theme song that I rocked to in a similar way was VERONICA MARS. I love that intro song, and when I was watching all the shows with my sister on DVD, we would dance sing along to it whenever it came on. We both loved it that much, and looked forward to hearing it.

What about you? Are there any TV shows with theme songs that you love to your core, or that you would dance and sing to?

( Intro credits for both TRUE BLOOD and VERONICA MARS are behind the cut. )
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It was my brother's girlfriend's (who is now not just my brother's girlfriend, but just a friend) 21st birthday last night. Normally, I don't go out drinking until two in the morning on a Thursday night when I have to be at work and functional the next morning. But I promised her that I would attend, so I did.

This was my first time at the bars in Santa Cruz. I had all kinds of fun, and proof of my evening with the trail of over 21 stamps going up my arm. I especially liked the Blue Lagoon, where they were having an 80s night. People were all dressed up in 80s regalia (including one man in very tight latex pants and another in a mullet wig), and the bar was playing the best music of the era. I danced my ass off.

At another bar the bartender lite the bar on fire with a shot in the center of the ring of flames. It was meant to be the alcoholic version of a birthday cake and she had to blow out the flames. That was one I hadn't seen before. Most amusing.

Anyway, I'm going to have to rinse and repeat on Saturday after my sister's bridal shower. It's themed -- 50s house wives. So we're all dressing up, wearing aprons, and then hitting the bars after the party. It will be good fun, too. But I am going to have to work on Sunday morning at the coffee shop, as a favor to my friends.

It's all good and fun, and as people tell me, I'm still young. But I am definitely missing my normal patterns of sleep and relaxation. I'm just not used to going out like this more than once in a week. :)

I am very tired right now. Tired to the point that my head is slightly fuzzy. Tired to the point that I'm transposing letters as I write this. If you haven't guessed I haven't gotten much sleep these last few days. Nothing I can complain about though.

Tuesday night I stayed up until 12:30am watching Olympic gymnastics. Somebody please explain to me why their running my favorite events so late...

Wednesday night I stayed up until 1am preparing a 24 page manuscript of poetry for a chapbook contest, so that I could send it out by the postmark deadline. I just hope I didn't make some dumb mistake because I was so tired. I don't think I did, but I will definitely give myself more time to prepare next time.

And on Thursday night, I went out dancing with my girls until midnight. Way fun, but again did not actually get to sleep until about one.

And every morning I got up at 6 o'clock, so that I could be to work early in San Francisco, because we went to press this week. I can't really complain about any of it, I suppose. It's been a good week. I'm just very, very tired.

But all of that isn't even the crazy part. The crazy part, is that tired as I am, I will be staying up all night to night working on a short film script for a 48 hour film competition. I don't normally do to well with all nighters. In fact, I don't think I've ever done a true all nighter where I got no sleep at all. I'm a girl who needs her sleep.

I'm sure I'll have a blast with this, as I will probably also be helping out with other aspects of the project (filming is Saturday and post production Sunday). I'm also sure that I will pay for it later.
:)

I saw a male stripper for the first time this weekend I went to a bar to celebrate my friend Jose's birthday. I laughed a lot, because it seemed so ridiculous. I thought he was just okay, kinda cute, I guess, but mostly it was funny. My friends wanted me to go up and get a lap dance, but fortunately he retired for the evening before they could get the chance.

I was a pretty interesting bar actually. It wasn't like a strip club per se, or not like what I would have imagined it to be. At the bar there was an equal number of males and females watching the strippers, which were both male and female, and was not even the main focus of the bar. After two performances the dance floor opened up and everyone just dance all evening. There was also a dance floor in the back of bar that played salsa, meringue, and mambo (which is my favorite, I love to salsa), and was where my friends and I spent most of the evening dancing and having a good time.

From outside, The Fillmore looks like just another building in San Francisco. It's a building that you could just pass by with out the slightest clue that there is a hell of a lot of history to that place. From the blandness of the outside you would have no idea that acts like James Brown and Tina Turner played there in 50's and 60's, and that this building continued to host some of the greatest musicians to ever live over the years, musicians like Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, Jimmi Hendrix, etc. The outside reveals non of this.

But entering the Fillmore is almost something magical, as you see the photos of all these greats hung on the walls like totems, ancient gods and goddesses of the music world.

The main room looks appropriately old, as though the architecture has not changed in over 50 years, which it probably hasn't. I could easily envision women in lacey corseted dresses from the 1800s sitting in the balcony and fanning themselves as some opera was performed below (which would not be historically accurate, but is the image my mind jumped to upon seeing the room).

The energy was so intense that I could feel the room vibrating, even though no one was there yet. I had to remind myself to take some deep breaths, just so that I could assimilate it.

I was introduced to Yonder Mountain String Band by a friend. We had listened to their cd while I was helping her move and vaguely remembered liking it. So when she mentioned that they were in town, I jumped at the opportunity to join her (more because I had not been to a concert in over a year and was excited about going to a concert, any concert, than love or affinity for the band. Besides, she needed company.)

She kept telling me how great they were, how I would dance my ass off, etc. I smiled and accepted this as truth, determined to have a hell of a good time. I took a beer in hand and patiently awaited the show's start.

The room slowly filled up with all kinds of interesting people. Lots of beautiful hippie boys and girls. My friend pointed out a few people who she sees at every Yonder Mountain show she has gone to. One guy in particular, with long brown hair, always arrives early so that he can nab the spot front row center--every time.

Then the lights dimmed. Everyone whipped out their joints and pipes. And four guys walked out onto the stage with a banjo, guitar, mandolin, and and something that looks like a really thin cello. And they can all sing.

Truthfully, I could never have known that such incredible sounds were going to come out of those instruments. I cannot even describe it. What they did was nothing short of magical.

I danced my ass off.

At one point, I was quite tired and a little beer buzzed. I could feel my head lolling a little and my eyes were closed, but my body just kept on moving. When the music played, I danced. When it stopped, I rested. I think I could have fallen asleep and my body would still have been moving with the music, would still have been dancing. Then, I would have just simply fallen over when the music stopped.

"That's god," she said. "Their music is god." She's not wrong.


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"Sing like you don't need the money,
love like you'll never get hurt;
dance, dance, dance like nobody's watching."
--Susanna Clark & Richard Leigh