i’m taking a couple of weeks right now to finish the our lunar activities new album. for those of you who came to the last +44 european tour will remember them. they are in the studio with us now recording a few more songs before their album is finished. then chris holmes is mixing it. we’re three days in now, finished with the drums, and all of the guitars and bass for one song are done. here are some photos from the session so far.

also, for those of you keeping score, we have more than 20 songs in various stages of demo’ing for the new +44 record. awesome.

about a year ago i got hit up by denver dalley (desaparecidos, statistics) about working on a track with him for his new project, called intramural. because i was on tour for most of last year i wasn’t able to work on it. the record just got released. it is kind of indie, kind of electronic, very collaborative, and very experimental. and also extremely awesome. you can check it out here .

hopefully you will be seeing a collaboration between us either on his next album or on something completely different. until then, this new record rules.

so last night was larry (our manager’s) 30th birthday party. leila, his special lady friend, threw him a sweet shindig over at mr chow in beverly hills. larry has a large extended family, all of whom i think were there, and many friends and business partners. although larry gets punched in the eye from time to time, he is an accomplished manager, businessman, and restauranteur. and good friend. the kind of friend who invites you to his birthday party and sits you with his mom and dad (both of who turn out to be amazing people, possibly cooler than larry himself.) then we take a picture together and we both look like this:

yes, that is an izod la’coste shirt he is rocking. he’s so retro he’s ahead of the curve. style setting. which brings me to my next fact about our friend larry. as his last name is vavra (yeah i spelled that right) he has invented a term that has entered the vernacular of our circle of friends. in referring to something that is high-class, cool, or well-to-do, larry would say that it is “LV’ish.” LV of course being his initials, and yeah, larry invented a catch phrase using his own name, which is only one frightening step away from him referring to himself in the third person. so now when you have a meeting with larry, it is an “LV’ish” day. as it turned out, his birthday was an “LV’ish” night. this is how our particular table looked at the end of the evening:

now THAT is “LV’ish” dining. or gluttony. or both. i can’t decide, but it was delicious. anyway, happy birthday larry.

to bring it all home. larry has decided to start his own blog, to be premiering on a computer screen near you sometime soon, because he wants to compete with our other manager, paul rosenberg who started his own blog a couple of months ago and is STILL COLLER THAN MINE!!!!! paul, seriously, how can i be down?

mike herrera from mxpx has a solo side project called tumbledown that’s about to hit the road this month. it’s their first tour, and you can check them out at these places and dates:

Nov. 8 Portland, OR Balcony Bar at Hawthorne
Nov. 9 Stockton, CA The Blackwater Cafe
Nov. 10 San Jose, CA MACLA
Nov.11 Los Angeles, CA The Hotel Cafe
Nov. 12 Long Beach, CA The Prospector
Nov. 13 San Luis Obispo, CA Downtown Brewing
Nov. 14 Fullerton, CA The Alley
Nov. 15 Victorville, CA Trilogy Theatre
Nov. 16 Bakersfield, CA Backstage
Nov. 17 Bremerton, WA Manette Saloon

should be interesting to see how they get from bakersfield to bremerton overnight.

apparently the band “all time low” have great taste in music. you can check it out in the video below. i’m totally going to have to listen to their cd now.