December 02, 2004 - 12:51 PM

Paul's Thanks Be Giving

My Thanksgiving was very lowkey (DONKEEEEEY...errr *ahem* sorry about that). Wednesday night, I headed over to Tony's for dinner with him and Eddie and Rainbow Brite. Tony was late coming home, so the rest of us went grocery shopping for ingredients that Eddie later turned into a magnificent steak dinner with mashed potatoes, creamed corn, sauteed onions, and cherry tomatoes. It was extra-delicious because he made the meal with that little special ingredient we call "love". We hung around for a bit after dinner in order to greet Tony's sister Jennifer, who flew in from SF to be with their family as they headed down to frickin' CABO for Thanksgiving. Now that's a way to spend the holidays, isn't it?

Thursday, Turkey day, I had another fabulous feast, this one prepared by Nick. LDBL and Mer were with their families, so it was just Nick and I at his place. He prepared a 12 lb. turkey with homemade gravy, created some savory stuffing with sausage, mashed some potatoes, and cooked some green beans. It was a perfectly cooked turkey, and kudos to Nick for getting it right on his first try.

That's two guys I know who are tragically, incongruously single. What is wrong with you girls? Eddie and Nick are both smart, hilarious, well-traveled, handsome, stand-up fellas who are whizzes in the kitchen. What more could a girl ask for? They've got steady, respectable jobs, they aren't mean to animals, they don't have multiples wives in other cities...for a small fee, I'll set you up with one of them.

The rest of the weekend was spent cleaning my apartment, watching TV, and playing videogames with Nick (Burnout 3 and Worlds of Warcraft, which he and Mark are trying desperately to get me to play). I'm so boring, it hurts.

************
Tuesday of this week, I got a call from the studio, asking if I was available that evening for a recording session. After checking with the producers on my tvshow, I told them that I was. I thought that I was going to be assisting on the session, but when I got to the studio at 5 PM, I found out that I was going to be the engineer. My first paying gig as an engineer!

I was working with a wonderfully nice woman named Pam Rozell, a Christian/Worship singer who was heading into new territory with this country/bluegrass type project. We spent the night recording a session violinist named Sid who peppered several songs with a country flair that was pretty cool to hear. There were some problems at the start of the session, as the computer files I needed to work with were incompatible, so Pam and her producer had to get the proper files from a friend, which took a couple hours. I cobbled together one of the songs into a new computer file, which allowed us to work while we waited.

The neat thing was to be able to set up the microphone I wanted, where I wanted, control the quality and level of the sound, and have everyone complement me on how much they liked it. Woo! Oh, and everyone was super nice and super talented and a joy to be around. God bless those wonderful Christians.

***********
This coming Monday, Sam Phillips is playing at The Troubadour on Santa Monica in Hollywood with The Section Quartet. Who wants to go with me? Sam, incidentally, has taken to professing her love of labelmate Stephin Merrit and his band the Magnetic Fields before dedicating Lennon and McCartney's "I Wanna Be Your Man" to him in concert. I bring this up because Ros put two Magnetic Fields songs, "I Don't Think I Love You Anymore" and "I Need a New <3" (that's a sideways heart, not the mathematical presentation of "less than 3"), on her mix for me, and I've been digging the hell out of them.

Now Listening To:
Joy Askew - Tender City

Now Listening To :
Random Thought :

What I Just Wrote Before - What I'm About to Write

The Five Most Recent Entries

Here's a hand-picked playlist of 40-plus songs for you to listen to: