It was around 11pm last night and Matt and I snuggled in to watch Frank.  I had just turned off my ringer when my phone lit up; I didn't see it, but Matt said, "Looks like someone's calling you."  I really hate talking on the phone and was about to dump the call when I noticed it was my BFF Patty (the writer) who lives in L.A.  Patty never calls (we both hate talking on the phone), so I figured I'd better answer it because something's gotta be pretty damn important for her to call me at 11pm on a Saturday night.

"Hello?"  (I could hear she was someplace crowded.)

"Jill-Maaaaan! Guess what? I'm at Beatlefest right now!" (Patty is a HUGE Beatles fan.)

"No way! Is it amazing?"

"Yeah! But dude... someone wants to talk to you on the phone. Hang on."

"Wait! What? What's happening? Who?"

[*shuffle shuffle shuffle*]

"Hello, is this Jill?"

"Yes! Who do I have the pleasure to be speaking to?"

"This is Mark Rivera! Patty told me that you were sad that you couldn't be out here at Beatlefest, so I told her that we should give you a call!"

"HOMINA HOMINA HOMINA. Oh my god, this is crazy! Thank you!!"

"Calm down, calm down. It's just me!  Now Jill: Why aren't you here?"

"I live on the east coast!"

"Yeah? Well so do I!"

"Yeah, but you're playing in Ringo's band. I've got studio time."

"Where are you based out of?"

"I live in Delaware; just 25 minutes south of Philly."

"You said you're in the studio?"

"Yeah, we were there earlier today. We're working on our second full-length album."

"Cool, cool."

"Hey Mark, I've got to say, I've been a fan for as long as I can remember."

"Aw thanks, really."

"Yeah, but I need you to know, that I naturally love your work with Billy Joel, but I also picked up your solo album and I really love it. It's great to hear you out in front, man."

"Really? You picked up my solo album?"

"Of course! It's really great!"

"Thanks Jill, I really appreciate it."

"Well, I really appreciate you."

"Thanks! OK, I'm gonna give you back to Patty now. Have fun!"

"You too! Thanks so much, Mark-- you really just made my day, week, month, year!"

"Hahahaha, no problem at all. Take care. Peace and gratitude."

"Right back at you, sir. Thanks again."

It went by so fast, and I felt like a goober. Part of me felt like, This is just a guy, and he's a musician and so am I.  I can talk to him. We have things in common. I'm not implying I'm remotely in the same ballpark as him, but we speak a similar language, and that's cool.  And part of me was like, OH MY GOD BILLY JOEL'S AND RINGO STARR'S SAX AND PERCUSSION PLAYER! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!  

I tried really hard to straddle the line between being composed and professional and "this is no big deal, we're just people" and giving him the fangirl-squee "I'm gonna make this girl's day" freakout that I imagine he was hoping for, and also being understandable considering he was on a crowded expo floor. I think I did OK. 

Patty called me back a few minutes later and said that she ran out to her car and gave Mark a copy of (our album) 39 Summers. She only had the disc (not the CD case or the insert), but she said he was really flattered and promised to listen to it. 

She went back to Beatlefest today, and she texted me to say that she brought the jewel case / CD insert with her to BeatleFest today hoping to bump into Mark again so she could give it to him.  They saw each other, and as soon as he saw her he said, "Where's Jill?"  So she said, "She's still out east, but here's the jewel case that goes with the CD."  He still had the CD in his murse so he put them together. I doubt he'll listen to it, but ya never know. 

It's just so silly. 

I can't tell if he's the kind of guy who gets stalked a lot, or if he's the kind of guy who wishes he got stalked, y'know? 

I'm just kicking myself for not asking him questions, like, what kind of mouthpiece does he use, how the hell does he get his altissimo sound so perfect every single time, etc etc etc. But at the same time, it was a 3 second jokey phone call; it's not like I was gonna interview the guy FFS. 

I'm gonna be in NYC on Friday to see Matt's play and I'll likely have a few hours to kill while he's doing director and playwrighty things... so I hit Mark up via Twitter and asked him to coffee. It may come as a total shock to you that he hasn't replied. 

Anyway. 

It is exciting / interesting to see that I've come a long way from my 1985 total and complete meltdown when I talked to Billy Joel on the phone and all I did was cry my face off, and the Z-100 Morning Zoo made fun of me mercilessly. (Billy was sweet, though.)  I can think of no greater humiliating moment in my life. My brother taped the conversation and would torment me with it over the years, which in retrospect is hilarious, but at the time I was horrified as any good 9th grader would be. :)  This is what brothers are for. 

Allrighty, that's my exciting story for the weekend! Time for bed. I have to get my body clock back on schedule... I'm traveling / teaching for the next 3-4 weeks waking up bright and early, and it's gonna be a big ol' adjustment. It'll feel good though, too.  Looking forward to the home stretch of the year.

(x-posted to xtingu.livejournal.com)

Just played our second show at Philly's Primary Stages tonight (it's a two-night event), and maaaan, what a difference a day makes.  Last night I sounded like ass thanks to the incoming plague, but last night before bed I ate 87263786 libbz of vitamins and herbs and rocks and branches and waved a dead chicken over my altar... and after sleeping all day today, it appears I have dodged the bullet of full-blown plague and have acquired only half-a-plague, glory glory hallelujah. 

So yeah, tonight went really well. The playwrights, actors, and directors did a bang up job.  We've been the house band for about 3 years now, it's neat watching certain directors, actors, and playwrights improve over time. We definitely have our favorite playwrights and actors, and we get extra-excited when our favorites pair up because we know it'll be a great piece.  They got a good crowd on both nights, but tonight's crowd was a bit bigger and a lot louder. To save time at intermission we'll sometimes play unplugged, and tonight we did, which was a mistake in that people didn't really hear our intermission stuff over their talking, but it was also fine because we're smart enough to know that the night (especially our short intermission set) isn't about us anyway; it's the playwrights', actors', and directors' night... we're just decoration. :-)  You can save yourself a lot of frustration in life if you can step back and know your place in the world from situation to situation. It's not always about you, and that's OK.  Healthy, even.

With that, it was a pretty full house tonight, and many people were seeing us for the first time. I gotta admit, it feels reaaallly good when an audience sees us and thinks, "Yawn, mid-40s-ish acoustic duo" when we first take the stage, and they're screaming "HOT BREAKFAST!!" by the end of a 25 minute set of mostly originals. Definitely made up for my sickly pipes of last night. My voice still wasn't 100% tonight, but I could compensate for the weak spots for the most part. I felt good about it.

(Interruption: Why are my motion detector lights going on outside every 2 seconds? (Another interruption: My tablet autocorrected "motion detector" to "moron detector" which makes me very happy. That would come in handy.) )

In other news, the other night we couldn't fall asleep because we were giggling like 5th graders at a sleepover because of this thing we "invented" called the "fart tube."  I'll explain it in a future post, because it's slightly more than just a tube for farts, I'll have you know. As you can imagine, it is so ridiculously juvenile and completely idiotic... yet we wanna involve our friends in a video project surrounding the Fart Tube, similar to Kevin Regan's "punch people in the face" photo series. (That is a Kevin Regan thing, right? I never knew.) 

Like I said, I'll explain the fart tube in a future post. You'll just have to wait.

HOW'S THAT FOR A CLIFFHANGER??

(ps: I have never used the full-blown OPW site; I've only ever used the mobile site. Gee, this is really quite lovely! Swell joerb, Sean M Puckett  and Thomas Boutell! So purty! I can tag people! And rich text!  HOLY CRAP!)

We've got music things happening every night this week, with no downtime until I leave for north Jersey on Columbus Day for a 3-day work gig, after which I head to NYC to see Matt's play, after which I head home just to head to the airport to go to San Antonio for 5 days. 
Then I'm home for a day and then I leave to spend Halloween Week in Richardson, TX. 
"Jill! Why not spend that one day off between San Antonio and Richardson TX in Texas? Why spend your day off flying?"
Because I'm soooooo close to earning Companion Pass status on Southwest Airlines for 2015, so if I can fly on someone else's dime I will.  (Companion Pass = Buy my ticket, get Matt's ticket 100% free, no restrictions at all. Even if I "buy" my ticket with Points, Matt still flies for free, no restrictions. It's a hell of a deal, especially as a band that's a duo.)
OK, that's enough outta me. Gotta eat because we've got studio time tonight.
(x-posted to LJ.)
(ps: Sorry for the wall of text. Can't figure out how to insert white-space-line-breaks using mobile.)

I am willing to blow my whole post to simply say: Drunk History is one of the funniest friggin' things I've ever seen. I cannot get enough of it. I want to be in an episode so badly, but alas, I don't really drink anymore. I can't think of the last time I finished a drink, let alone got a buzz, and forget being capital-D-Drunk. I'm not against it; I just don't care. I'd rather have a good root beer or something. 
I didn't mean for this post to turn into a thing about alcohol... I just wanted to say "Thanks, Amazon Prime!" as I stream the lulz.
OK, nighty night!
xox


ETA: "Can we come in and see the true condition?"  (A quote from the First Ladies episode we're watching right now. We are DYING. okbye.)

Dear Lazyweb: Has anyone here moved from an Android-based phone to Blackberry recently (or used them concurrently even)? 
Until someone makes a new Android phone with a physical QWERTY keyboard, my only alternative once my Droid4 workhorse dies is lookin' like a Blackberry.
I would give a kidney to get Motorola to make a Droid5, but that doesn't seem like it's ever gonna happen, despite leaked images in August 2013, it's been shelved permanently if the Android and Motorola forums are to believed. So... Blackberry is looking to be my only choice for a physical keyboard.
I use my phone mostly for emailing/texting/tweeting (don't care about a zillion apps, really); and accuracy is absolutely critical for my work emails. 
I'm not interested in how great on-screen keyboards, Swype, or speech-to-text are; also not interested in snap-on Bluetooth keyboards... no need to try to sell me on them. Not gonna work. 
Thanks! 

First off: Hello world!  This is my first OPW post and I'm excited to have finally made it over here. I haven't figured out the nuances yet, like if I can tag people or not... but if I could I'd love to tag Boutell and thank him for making this whole thing happen, and Sean (Catbear of LJ fame) for designing the UI-- it's very purty and pleasant.

Anyway: Past Tense Jill wrote Future Forgetful Jill a note on my calendar that says "Cancel your 'Protect My ID' membership today," because it stops having its bill footed by Adobe (remember their little security breach a while back?).  So one of my to-dos today was to cancel my membership to this identity-theft monitoring service.  However, conveniently, just this morning I got a love-letter from Home Depot saying that they had a giant security breach recently and lucky for me I get a free year of ID monitoring through Protect My ID starting today.

So convenient! I wonder if these hackers actually work for Protect My ID and their goal is to get giant companies to buy a zillion memberships for people. :-)

Curious to see if I will have to create a new account or if I can apply the credit to my existing account.

Anyway... thanks, hackers!