Love and War

This photo is amazing. If only I could feel that peaceful amongst chaos every time. :)

Thumbs up for Rock n Roll

I want to feel like this more often.

Baby Rhino

This was sent to me on Twitter by 23Courtney23, and I love it. Not only does she find cool videos, but she has sooo many 23s in her name!

Just a little rhino fix for you. I wish my ears could move independently from each other like that.

:)

love,

Rhino

I mean Sara

Maroon 5 tour, opening for Amsterdam. Or something.

I just realized something.

I never wrote much about my time on our European tour with Maroon. What a jerk. (Me, not them. They're nice. Not really jerk-like at all.)

I guess I should remedy that, huh?

I'll try to grab a few of my favorite moments from the tour and at least document them here on my blog in stages. They're not necessarily chronological, but I've been looking through my pictures and dammit all if we aren't just adorable sometimes.

It was such a fantastic few weeks with the M5 cast and crew: the shows were phenomenal, the crowds were eager and supportive, and our hosts made us feel more welcome than I even could have hoped for. I spent my time on that tour really just taking it all in... I hadn't been to Europe in quite some time, and I acted like a total tourist. It was awesome. I wandered the streets, taking pictures and sampling the local beer, whiskey, and food...(but no shopping. That was my New Year's Resolution.) The weather was cold for the most part, but it felt like we were re-energized as a band. We fell in love with European cities and their audiences all over again.

I'm starting with our show at the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam, because it was a particularly fun show at a fantastic venue that I have been hoping to play for a long time. One of my favorite records of all time from the Counting Crows is their live album from the Heineken Hall. It felt very validating to take that same stage, even if was doing it as an opener. I am going to remember this for a long time.

The "going-out" after the show I might not remember as clearly, but I do know that I laughed my ass off, and had a phenomenal time at one of the best bars in the world. It's called L&B Whiskey Bar and it's effing amaaaaaaazing.

http://bit.ly/fVHhfr

I definitely have a list of quotes from that night most of which came from James Valentine, (who frickin had my NUMBER that night) and he was mostly quoting Charlie Sheen, so you get the elevation level of our conversation that night. Nevermind. Moving on.

We topped off the night with one of those cones filled with French Fries and I ate every last one. The more mayo and curry the better, and yes that's the only place in the world I eat my fries that way. I guess I was hungry. :)

Here's a video of the walk to the stage opening for our dear friends.

Damn, that's a lot of people. :)

Duluth, Disconnection, and some Poo

So I've found myself searching a bit on this particular tour with a good way to spend the day. I will start by saying I realize how incredibly lame and pretentious that even sounds in the first place. I'm literally living out my dreams of childhood, roaming the world with my best friends, playing music for people, with very little obligation other than to enjoy the ride.

How hard can that be?

Well, even though I am riddled with blissful moments on tour, I am also only human. I get bored. But... I have a scary theory: I think I'm getting bored-er.

Let me explain.

I'm not the first person to make a correlation between disappearing attention spans and the advent of our internet-driven culture and community. I will speak only for myself, but I'm obsessed with Twitter, and most recently this blog. I check emails incessantly, and text messages too. Phone calls now almost feel archaic, as if listening to someone's voice is just simply TOO MUCH WORK. My mind is consumed with how to translate and expose every thought via the web. The real-time revelation just isn't good enough anymore. If, during the day, I have some sort of experience or thought that I deem important, it's a race to get it tweeted or emailed or blogged about. Somehow I've convinced myself that it's not impactful unless somebody else sees it.

I read an awesome article by Patton Oswalt this morning in the Wall Street Journal.

http://on.wsj.com/g0s9aj

He's brilliant and funny. One of my favorites.

He thinks he's fat too, but I disagree. Moving on.

It's all about how intoxicated we are by our little devices that keep us "connected". Many of us start to panic without the hand holding of our ipods, ipads, iphones, blackberry, etc. We freak out if we don't have an electronic umbilical cord keeping us fed.

It's scary, and I'm finally starting to wake up.

The more "connected" I get, the more disconnected I really feel to the world around me.

I don't have the answers, and I'm not passing judgement, I'm just hypothesizing on whether or not I'm forming habits that will enrich my life in the long run....

You know, like crack. Something worthwhile.

This is my electronic, Internet-communicated promise to try to disconnect more often and have more experiences that I document and share via the web, to prove that I don't spend as much time on the Internet.

xo

s

Javier, Daniel and I "disconnected" for a while today.

(Video courtesy of my Blackberry. Don't think I don't taste the irony.)

It's not Shakespeare, people. but it's a start.

Drug bust with Tom Colicchio

So last night I decided I'd help out the FBI with a mission. Tom Colicchio was my direct contact, and he's a good guy, so I figured I'd throw him a bone and help him out. My buddies and I already had an in with Brad Pitt who was a ringleader for the drug cartel, so we'd start with that, and work our way in from there. We were filling up napkins working on calculations figuring out where the operations headquarters were, and then: No big deal. Got it. They ran their business out of a dingy little upstairs apartment right above the boardwalk on the Jersey shore, except this one was next to a huge forest of Redwood Trees. Duh.

My buddies and I went up to the apartment and Johnny Depp was like, "hey guys I'm going to go in this room over here", and we were like, "cool. We'll hang out with this red-headed guy who looks like a cross between the singer from Eve 6 and Rupert Grint (the red-headed actor from Harry Potter series) who has long hair."

We talked and chatted and they started to relax, believing our story that we weren't working for the FBI. (we were lying, OMG- so nerve-wracking) and then we left the building, and Brad Pitt walked us out, you know, to make sure that we didn't tell anybody where the hideout was.

And then Fucking Tom Colicchio got impatient and he had followed us in to the bottom of the building and I saw him on the way out and Brad Pitt got suspicious and they wrangled us all and took us to an outdoor bonfire where they were yelling at us for being liars and they wanted my phone back, cause I might have texted somebody about the drugs.

Ugh. Tom. You dummy.

But then I got away, with my phone. My feet were really heavy and I couldn't run fast, which always frustrates me, but I realized I was safe. I also think everybody was friends in the end. There was some music playing or something and I think they ended up at a Drive-in Movie.

After that I went to a big huge warehouse with a giant cement swing and a wave machine that Donald Trump owned and looked out at the ocean.

Good Morning.

xo

s

Daze Off

So...turns out I drank too many "my red right hands" last night. Don't bother asking, I have no idea what is in them, other than Bourbon and some cinnamon, and by the end of the night...my hair. Over and over. Enough times that I'm a little worried about the fact that I clearly don't notice when my hair is in my drink. Moving on.
We had a great day off in Milwaukee and spent the evening chatting and clinking glasses with the sweeties that open the show every night. I am, of course, talking about Ximena Sarinana, and Elizabeth and her Catapult. I could not conjure up a more delightful group of pixie angels to join me and my boys on our journey. We are only at the beginning of this awesome quest, and I am looking forward to more adventures to come. I'll try and post some pics too, along the way.
(I'm already proud of myself for the amount of activity on my blog this month.)

To celebrate, I wanted to give you a picture of my band and I at the Eiffel Tower.

You're welcome.

xo
s

UGH. IT'S BEEN FOREVER

I said I would try to upload more often. I lied.
Fuck.
Oh well?
Well, i just wanted to share with you why my sister is amazing.
Okay, bye.

---email to Sara:

I left work promptly at 5:15 today, bound and determined to get to the gym by 6:00 and have a good hour and a half, "club mix on my ipod" inspired workout. I knew that between the shining sun outside and the early start there was no WAY that I wasn't gonna have a killer workout!!

After (and I'm not kidding), 2.5 minutes on the elipical, I found myself staring desperately at the credits rolling of the recently ended "Undercover Brother" (shitty movie) that had just finished playing on the big movie screen at the gym. I was WILLING that damn movie to start up again...I knew it was my ONLY chance at continuing the workout. Please gym gods!! Save me!! Alas...I felt my strength falter. Two more minutes passed and the movie had not begun and I knew I was done for. Tired and hungry (even though I had a burrito for lunch) I left the gym, not more than 12 min after I had arrived.

I left the gym and somehow MIRACULOUSLY managed to avoid walking into the Vietnamese food place for my favorite flank steak skewers and caramel chicken in a clay pot. I knew I had veggies in my fridge and it only made sense to try to make a healthy meal at home and salvage the day given my poor excuse for a workout.

At home I looked in my cupboard and found a bag of quinoa. (can't remember why the hell I bought such a monstrosity. must have been because of some stupid article I skimmed about how high in protein and low in fat it is. such bullshit)

After 40 minutes of fucking up some random grain and substituting "clever alternatives" for 4 of the 7 ingredients in the FoodNetwork.com recipe I found to use, I tasted the cardboard garbage I had made and promptly shoveled it into the disposal.

It's now 9:30. I'm sitting in my gym clothes, more than half a bottle into a semi-decent bottle of Pinot Grigio and 3/4ths of a way through a full Cheezits box.

I'm 37 ladies...and embracing it.

So this is the New Year

G'day.
It's January 4th, and I'm settling in to 2011, although I can't decide if I'm going to refer to is as "twenty-eleven" or "two thousand eleven" or the very fancy "two thousand AND eleven". Oooh, it's going to be SO surprised.
I think the beginning of the new year is so adorable. All cute and hopeful, and full of energy. I always do the same thing every year. I always feel like THIS year is going to be different. I'm going to make resolutions and keep them, remember people's birthdays, get healthy, stop watching so much "Hoarders" and more "Paranormal Cops". So far, no good.
And here we are.
I started this blog on my birthday in December, with hopes of just having an outlet for little things that I wanted to say for no reason at all. Not promoting my new album (out now;), not announcing shows or tours, not feeling pressure to actually say anything at all. I hoped to actually learn a little something about myself by starting a new little project.
So far I've learned the following:
1. I don't blog very often.
2. I'm not Amelie, no matter how much I wish and try and wish and try
3. I'm really terrible with the computer
4. Uploading things is slower than I wish it would be
5. I'm impatient when things are uploading slowly and I can't be Amelie while I wait

And here we are again. Hopefully by the end of the year, I'll have a better idea as to what the hell I was trying to do with this blog, anyway.
I'm just going to start somewhere. Specifically in my living room, watching a documentary on Pixar on the TV, browsing through Etsy and being delighted by the following prints by a most amazing artist. Wanna see?
This is a super talented artist from Barcelona named Judy Kaufmann. She sounds so Spanish!
http://www.kaufmannillustration.com
i love it.







and I love you.
truly.
s