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Unlike last year, getting to Coachella was relatively easy. I had managed to hook up with someone from the forums, who was interested in carpooling down. Danny was going to drive down a day early, to visit with a few friends in LA, but if I was okay with that, I was more than welcome. Of course I said yes. So that's what we did. We spent Thursday in Hollywood. We stayed at his friend Erica's apartment, right off of Melrose. She works at Puppies & Babies and is seeing Fiona Apple's touring drummer. He's nice. We woke up at a decent hour on Friday, and were setting up camp by 3pm.

We camped in square J18. It didn't take long for me to become convinced we had one of the coolest squares in the campsite. The people were awesome. We had the Texans who were SO not stereotypically Texan. These kids, they seemed very West Coast to me. I don't know, I'm just rambling and now I'm editing cos HAI ALEX AND PM AND OTHER TEXANS DON'T BE OFFENDED? I mean, they admitted themselves they weren't very Texan. Anyway. Then there were the Aussies. From the Gold Coast, although one is up in Whistler, skiing and bartending. In that order, I'm sure. Strangely, these two separate groups were both planning on going to Vegas post-Coachella. Great minds think alike, they say. That night we watched the Coachella film, and what made me laugh was the amount of people who ran on the stage to molest Morrissey. Four or five, maybe. And each time he'd hug them and just keep singing as they were hauled off by security.

Let's start.

( SaturdayCollapse )

( SundayCollapse )

And there is it. My Coachella 2006 experience, wrapped up for posterity. There's so much I am forgetting--stuff I told myself to remember, but couldn't write down because security confiscated my pen (seriously). I suppose it doesn't really matter. I love Coachella. It doesn't matter how hot it gets, or how many scenesters and Hollywood wannabes come out to play. Some people in coachella have kicked up a fuss about how mainstream it has become. I suppose it has, because I'm attending and we all know I'm anything but an early adopter. Whar ever. It's a good time and as long as you keep it about the music, you'll have a good time too. All that other stuff is trivial and it's just on the surface.

I don't think I've posted pictures of the little rats before.


Bela on the left, Lila on the right


Andromeda peeking her head out to say hello

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Bela is the alpha rat, but she's reticent to change and new things. Lila is the underling and yet she's the first to always investigate something new. Andromeda is very laidback and a total sweetheart. She's the definition of a gentle giant--she's a huge girl. I can always tell her squeaks apart from the others because it's not so much squeaking as it is squawking. They're definitely my little babies, despite the fact that at 6 months they aren't really babies anymore, and not so little.

According to the official Coachella website, tickets will go onsale on February 4th at 12pm PST.

According to the newsletter that was emailed out, the ticket presale for the concert (not movie, although there is news about that too) starts on Wednesday, January 25th at 10am through Friday, January 27th at 10pm. I don't know what time zone that is. However, the newsletter did say that the secret password will be emailed out next week.

More bands have been confirming, like Paul Oakenfold, Ladytron, Duke Spirit and so forth. This means a lineup is impending... very exciting news!

Ophelia
May 2003 - July 21, 2005

Today, I took Ophelia to the vet to be put to sleep. Last week's appointment with the vet did not go well. A preliminary diagnosis was a brain tumor, which explains every single one of her symptoms. Brain tumors are also a common cause of death in older female rats. I could have taken her to UC Davis to get an MRI, but subjecting her to even more tests and prodding was unthinkable for me. Nate and I decided that the kindest thing we could do would be to let her finally get some peace.

Some people are dog people; others enjoy cats. With Ophelia, I discovered that I am a rat person. I love Ophelia more than I can say. She was the best pet a person could hope for. Female rats are extremely active--biologically, their role is to build and maintain a nest, find food and prepare for breeding and that trait remains in the domestic breed. Ophelia was no different. My nightstand has a hollow space underneath it. I remember pulling it out and finding a bevy of food and tissues. It was quite a haul. She also nested under my bed and dresser. I used to hand her tissues and watch as she strutted away with it in her mouth. I have a picture on my phone of when she stole a Baby Ruth, three cough drops and a brownie and stored it in her cage. Little klepto-rat.

She had a variety of walks. The victory strut, when she felt she had gotten the best of you. The creeping walk she did, when she sidled quietly along a wall. That happened when she didn't want to be seen as she slipped into her troublemaker role. God, she was one hell of a troublemaker. And one daredevil. She perfected the art of leaping directly from my bed straight into her cage. That's about a foot and a half jump. From the floor, she could jump and almost land squarely on top of my bed. That's over two and a half feet. Had she been human, she would have been a rock climber. She loved heights. She was a fearless rat and remained so even to the end, when we were sitting in a private room. I was crying and she was giving me a "Oh, it'll be okay" impatient type of look. Now she's on to her next adventure.



I swear that she was a little genius. She litter-trained herself. She was excessively, almost obsessively and compulsively neat, at least until she got sick. She was a diva through and through, but hated it when I took her picture. Most of my pictures of her were taken with my phone, as it was less obtrusive. When I think of her, I don't see the sickly, skinny rat of the past three months but the hyperactive little furball who ran inside and up Nate's pants and got dangerously close to his package. The one who climbed up her cage wall and hung upside down on the ceiling. The one who didn't use her wheel, but sat on top of it and gave us a mocking look. I think of the way she would sit on my windowsill at night, content to smell everything in the air. She was truly the best pet I've ever had. But I'm glad her suffering is finished.

Yes, I missed my Saturday blog. I actually wrote something up and was going to email it to Carrie so she could post it for me.

To make a long story short, my darling old lady of a rat, Ophelia, got stuck in a storage compartment in my room. It was a black wire behemoth that was nearly 4 feet tall. Back in the day, she used to climb it to the top and chill out for a bit. When she first came to live with me, she was still small enough that she could wiggle through it. Then she went through a major growth spurt and gained some weight.

Unfortunately, my rat does not recognize or acknowledge that she is now geriatric and slightly handicapped. She still tries to wriggle through the wires. This time, she got about halfway through and was stuck. Massive squeaking (by both of us) and wriggling (her) ensued. My dad came in and tried to help. In doing so, he lifted up the compartment. Ophelia finally managed to free herself and I put her back in her cage. Bad things happen in threes, right? The cage accident in April, her arthritis and now this incident. I need a break from this.

I turned around and the compartment had lost a couple of key parts, but was still standing. I reached my hand towards it, and watched as it crumbled. DVDs, books, videos, binders, shoes, paper, my mail... everywhere. I spent my Friday night cleaning it up. Logging on to a computer was not a priority, and thus my first venture into the 30 Blogs in 30 Days territory has ended.

Moving along, I had a great time at the MTV Movie Awards. I'm going to do a more thorough write-up later, but here are some observations.

• I have witnessed the horror of Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes in person. The worst part? I think it's real for her. She presented an award to him and during his montage, she was writhing in agony. No joke. It was embarrassing. You probably won't see it on TV.


• I missed the opening movie, which was a spoof on Batman Begins I think. I was waiting to be seated. However, the Revenge of the Sith spoof was hilarious. "I absolutely do NOT eat BBQ." "Only Siths deal in absolutes." You'll see what I mean.


• The Foos Fighters were awesome. They actually began playing a song, not one of theirs and one that escapes my memory. After 30 seconds, they stopped and Dave said, "Sorry, we're not playing that one. We have to play one of ours, to promote a product or something." Very sarcastic. I'd heard that the Foos put on a very loud show and this proved to be true.


• No, I didn't bring a camera or cell phone in. Metal detectors.


• We got there at 3:30. The show started around 7:30. It kind of sucked, but once the show got started it wasn't so bad. During every single break, waiters went into the "talent lounge" (where the stars were sitting in couches and what not) and served alcohol.


• I sat in five different locations, plus the seat-fillers had their own little section. The best spot for us was in the third row, and you'll probably catch a shot of my brother and me during Dakota Fanning's acceptance speech. Which was entirely too cute, by the by.


• You could tell who was going to win by the cameraman hauling over to his or her seat during the nominees' introduction film. Rachel McAdams and the Napoleon Dynamite dude cleaned house.


All in all, I had a blast. There were technical difficulties setting up Eminem's set. He's really short and seems sort of... delicate. Nicole Kidman, on the other hand (who left before Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes did their thing, I think) is very tall, blonde and gorgeous. She didn't seem scary-skinny, either. More anecdotes later. Major props to my brother for taking me with him, and getting us down to LA in under five hours.

The saga begins!

Well, if you haven't already heard, Carrie crashed her dad's car on the way to the airport. Thus she was unable to come, and I am assuming this is why she is not around, as she is probably suffering the wrath of Marv and will be doing so for some time. From her voicemail she sounded like she was physically okay, but I didn't have a signal the entire time I was in Indio (plus my battery was dying) so I couldn't talk to her.

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On to the show! I'm going to attempt to write something about everything I saw/heard.

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( SundayCollapse )

Thankfully the trip back to LA didn't take four hours, and I made it to the airport with more than enough time to spare. In fact, I bought Death of an Ordinary Man by Glen Duncan and nearly finished it by the time my plane landed.

Coming back to the real world has been a bit surreal. I had a great weekend surrounded by people who were strangers, yet to whom I felt close. I finally succeeded in attending Coachella and I'm determined to make this an annual thing. It was heaven for me, having so many musical choices. I did miss a few acts I wanted to see, such as Jem, Jamie Cullum and Kasabian. However, I find it hard to regret missing them as I have no regrets about the weekend whatsoever. For those who want to attend and never have, I highly recommend doing anything and everything possible to go.

I have arrived home after having the best weekend of my life. While I will do a more thorough write-up/gush-athon sometime in the future, I'm still going to ramble a bit.

I met so many crazy, cool kids. It was awesome meeting people who are musically likeminded. I bonded with my camping neighbors and hung out with them. Also, during NIN I also bonded with a girl whose name I never even caught. Yet we went to the Faint and Prodigy together and danced our asses off.

In total, I caught 19 acts, plus I listened to three more whilst I was in the food court or beer garden. I also caught a little of Black Star as I was leaving, but it was cold and windy and I wanted to go back to my tent.

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Coldplay performed a number of their new songs, none of which struck me as anything remarkable. Maybe I need the new album in order to form a connection to their music, but I was somewhat bored with the new songs which is why I went back to the Chems. However, they performed Warning Sign and it was amazing. I'd never heard it before, so now I've heard all of AROBTTH performed in its entirety. It was a bit more electric than the album version. They also did Politik, which I love very much so my CP quotient was filled. They're playing the Fillmore on Wednesday and I'm tempted to go...

Also...( Celebrities I spottedCollapse )

More later. Time to sleep, as I've slept about 12 hours total since Wednesday night.