Bound

See this girl? She makes me a better person. 

This is because, in theory, I am an adventurous beast: I carpe the everloving diem out of every situation, and not a LACMA installation nor a downtown wine bar crops up without my investigation. In reality… I spend a lot of time watching The Bachelor on my couch. Cait, on the other hand, is basically attending a concert that lasts her whole life, with breaks to go to work and brunch. She’s the type of person who actually does Times Square on New Year’s Eve; not with her imagination, but with her physical human body. In other words, an animal. So, obviously, I put her in charge of my social life.

First up: HoneyHoney and Trampled By Turtles at the Observatory in Santa Ana. I’d never heard of either band before, but am now deeply in love with HoneyHoney. This song reigned uninterrupted on my Spotify playlist the entire week before the show, until finally M was like, “I’m pretty sure they’ve written something else. Let me help you find it.”* They were just as good live, although I’m not sure anyone else could hear them over me yelping, “We’re doing things! I’m out in the world!” 

Loved HoneyHoney, was dejected when their set was over, but cheered myself up by making endless turtle jokes with Smash while we waited for the Tramplitos to take the stage . . . forever.

“Pretty sure they’re all stuck on their shells backstage and they’re just waiting for someone to come turn them over…”

The Turtles were impressive musicians (never has a fiddle been fiddled so fast!) but I was honestly distracted by the sheer number of hipster Zack Galafanakis clones they’d managed to fit into one band. You just know that on Wednesdays, they wear plaid. And then they bring the house down.

And because when it rains (fun), it pours (epic fun) . . . Mongrel was playing at the Troubadour the next night. I’ll probably just never stop saying this: the guy is a straight genius. Half his band was still home on Winter Break (the peril of being a professional while still a fetus), and he and Emily just rocked it out anyway. I’d like to demonstrate that with a photo of him playing the guitar, the harmonica and the base drum at the same time, but my jaw dropping kind of blocked the camera.

I didn’t even take this one (photo credit to Smash). Pretty much just drank my whisky, danced like a fool and sang along to every song. Groupie? Guilty.  

I’m so incredibly proud of this brosef, and also super appreciate all the local friends who came out to support him. I mean, you were all going to be Ramshackle fans eventually, this just expedited the process.

And Cait . . . what are we doing next weekend?

*Fact: Songs I truly love cannot cycle through repeat enough times. Still laughing about the extent to which I played newly-released Florence and The Machine . . . enough to make M dive toward the iPod, yelling “The Dog Days ARE OVER!”

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Also, the extremely talented Erica of Coffee and Quinoa nominated me for a Liebster Award! It’s a way of recognizing new bloggers, and I’m very thankful to her for the shout-out. Go check out her site, it’s full of amazing recipes . . . just don’t blame me when you’re insanely hungry in about five seconds. That’s unavoidable.