it’s 2am and i’m tired, but i realize that i have been out of touch for a while and wanted to welcome you all back to my life.

hello. how have you been? i super, thanks for asking (what is that from? some movie i saw recently, but i can’t place it)

so, we live in LA now, which is absurd and also totally fitting given our profession. we haven’t done too many LA things recently, except get caught in viscious/viscous traffic for upwards of two hours a day (and we don’t even have conventional jobs.. i can’t imagine the simmering existential rage of the friday afternoon commute after a week of 8-5 work and 6-8/5-7 traffic) .. i’m sure that there’s an entire branch of literature dedicated to LA traffic, but i think i came to my own breakthrough about its cause today. it’s ultimately cyclical: there is traffic most of the time, so when the freeways are relatively clear, everybody drives extremely fast because 1) it feels good after being in stop-and-go conditions for an hour and 2) those conditions might soon return.. then, because someone is driving too fast, there’s an accident, which causes more traffic, which feeds into the next cycle.. needless to say, it’s awful.

everything else, though, is wonderful. i’m not sure where we draw the line between public/private, so i won’t say too much, but band stuff is going great, we’ve got a fantastic sublet in a hip part of town, we’re surrounding ourselves with inspiring musicians, and we’ll be out on the road and in your *city really soon

that’s not all, but i’m exhausted and won’t subject you to any more unedited late night rambling.

goodnight

*this statement is entirely provisional.. if you live somewhere random (ie. a red state, apologies to thomas, nathaniel, etc..), we may not be there soon.. also, we’re reserving the right to employ a very flexible definition of soon.

*this is absurd. this is not what i bargained for. i was supposed to be surfing in san diego with annie bethancourt today. instead i’m writing to you all. i guess rain and vagabondry induce communication. which reminds me, i should probably call my mom back.

*this = the torrential downpour of the past 72 hours**
** if i knew anything about computers, i would stop using these silly asterisks and hyperlink some CNN article about the ridiculous thunderstorms that are flooding Southern California. Dave would have linked something here. I wish i was more like Dave.

in my mind, we’ve always been a band that stirred up controversey.. the latest: *speechwriters llc officially likes ashlee simpson

yup. that’s right. **we like her.

last night, i went to the universal amphitheatre, where ash was playing a sold-out show (no, i did not pay for tickets, that would be pushing it a bit too far).. surrounded by screaming 14 year-old girls and their bored parents, i watched ashlee run through most of the songs on her debut CD, “autobiography,” as well as perform covers by blondie, the pretenders, and hole.

apart from the ADD nature of the show (a lot of the songs were shorter than the album version, and she changed outfits roughly seven times), it was actually a pretty compelling live performance.. as a professional musician, i can proclaim to the world that’s listening that ashlee doesn’t lip-synch (at least not at this show, though there is certainly a lot of expensive real-time vocal processing going on).. also, jessica simpson (who was at the show), is gorgeous in real life.

all right, that’s all for this edition of Entertainment Weekly..

*to be fair to the band as an institution, i am a big ashlee simpson fan, and dave begrudgingly admits that her cd is bearable. when these two opinions average out, speechwriters llc does indeed officially endorse ashlee. i’m sure that it means a lot to her.
**see above