MikePeralta.com - Blog Entries

2011 Christmas Giveaway - for fans only!!! by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -0800

Alohaaa Dudes!

I'm writing to you this morning to let you know whats going on right now - We're giving away free stuff for the holidays!

For the last few months, I and 'Chelle (the wonderful wonderful person who runs my main fan account on twitter @PeraltaNation have been toying with an idea of a fans-only contest, and we finally decided to do it! This isn't the typical contest you usually see, where random people kiss up to win free stuff just because its free stuff. This is more like, a way to reward our real fans - those who have already been showing support, those who continue to show support, and those who are just now jumping on the bandwagon.

What You Can Win

What will you win, you ask? Michelle and I have discussed it, and we'll be giving away something of almost everything I have to offer, including: Individual Mp3s, giant mailbox killing globs of Mp3s, some of my hand made t-shirts, autographed copies of my debut acoustic album, autographed copies of my single releases, buttons, stickers, autographed demo CDs, shout outs in my next youtube vlog, and anything else we can think of!

Who Wins

Who wins, and how do you win?
The simple answer is: The most awesome fans will win.
The long answer is this: Show us what makes you an awesome fan. Show us how you've contributed. Tell us how you've been enjoying my work, and what it means to you. How can you do that? There are a ton of ways! :

Show us blogs, forums, facebook walls, and other places where you've shared my music and videos with other fans
Send in silly, artistic, or outrageous fan pics like people have already posted in this gallery
Tweet about "Mike Peralta", #MikePeralta, @MikePeralta and/or @PeraltaNation. Favorite and retweet our tweets, and make sure we see what you're doing!
Share my youtube videos with all your friends, favorite videos, post comments on my channel/videos, and tell other users on youtube about me
Record your own youtube vlog and tell people how my music has touched you, or record a cover version of one of my songs!
Come hang out in my Chat Room even if I'm not around, and invite other friends and fans to join you
Purchase my music on BandCamp, iTunes, Amazon Mp3, or any of the other places it is available, and write your own customer review/recommendation for others to see

If you're sending in a picture or a screen shot, use the email address Fans[at]MikePeralta.com, with [at] being replaced by an actual @ symbol. You can also just upload a large photo to a third party service like photobucket or twitpic, and email/tweet us a link to the photo. And if you don't know how to take a screen shot, check this page.

There are a million ways to show your support and those are just a few, so feel free to improvise. When choosing winners, we will consider not just things you've done in the past, but things you start doing now as well. We've already begun taking note of things that are happening, and will take contributions into consideration up until about or around new years, after which 'Chelle will be sending me the final list of winners, and I'll be mailing everything out as late Christmas presents to you :)

Also note that although I'm based in the USA, we'll be choosing a few international fans to win too, so everyone has a chance!

Good luck and thank you all for your support!!!

~Mike

My Interview at KUCI 88.9FM with Dan Surround by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:41:00 -0700

Hello friends! This is just a quick little update to let you all know about a recent interview I got to do live on the radio, in case you haven't already seen the million tweets I made about it.

Basically there is this kick ass station in my area called KUCI, run by (I believe) the University of California, Irvine. They broadcast over the air - 88.9FM, and have a live mp3 stream anyone can hear over the internet. They host a wide variety of programs and they are mainly driven by the desire to enrich and enlighten your musical culture, so they mostly play unknown or small acts, and they actually have some kind of rule that if someone is getting national radio play, they can't be played on KUCI. How cool is that?

So anyway, there is this show called The Hodgepodge Collective, hosted by Dan Surround. Dan likes to sometimes interview local artists, and invited me to come down. I got to spend the whole TWO HOURS of his show a few Saturdays ago hanging out and goofing off live on the air, as well as play about uhm.... I forget now but it was about 3 or 4 songs too. Dan is a great guy and fun to hang with and I'm glad I got to meet him in addition to being on the radio with him. Not only that, but two of my good friends actually came down to help me take photos and video for the day too!

So yeah, I got about 4 good youtube clips from the day that I can share with you here. Three are performance clips and one is a 20 minute long behind-the-scenes backstage type thing for those of you who want to get more of a feel for our perspective of the day. Also a ton of pictures.

Also, I've attached the entire 2-hour interview to this blog! So check it out, there should be a download link somewhere (or if you're reading this from some other website, come find my actual blog at MikePeralta.com).

Special shout outs to: Anna Tutor, Nick Kershner, and of course our host Dan Surround.

Live Performance:Starlit Moon

Live Performance: AStory Forever

Live Performance: IWant to Be Sad

Behind the Scenes

My good friend Nick hanging out backstage with Dan Surround

This is the "On-Air" light KUCI uses. When its on, that means be the F quiet outside! Trivia fact: This is the same light KROQ used to use back in the day!

Me and Dan Surround after the show. He was actually pointing to a big sweat stain on my shirt but I tried to make it look like we were both just doing cool poses hahaha

A Story Forever by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 17:00:00 -0700

My Friends!

Well it's that time again - I'm releasing another single!

Everybody say it with me - YAYYYYyyy!

Phew okay, now that I got that out of my system, let's continue. My new single is a dreamy acoustic song called "A Story Forever" with very light drums, orchestral strings, subtle synth backup vocals, and my trusty acoustic guitar. The song is one very close to my heart. You see, a long long time ago, I came up with the general idea for what the lyrics would represent, and kept it bouncing around in my head for years. It's been in my heart for quite some time. Eventually I finished the first solid draft of what the song would become today, and started performing it live at gigs and to close friends at backyard parties, slowly learning how to perform it properly, in the way I had originally heard it in my head.

At first, it was intended to be a tribute to some of my past emotional turmoil, and to others who might have felt the same way at one point or another in their lives. But one day, shortly after I had begun playing it, tragedy struck a close friend. Without going too deep into the details, I'll just say that the circumstances surrounding this event closely mirrored the lyrics and idea behind A Story Forever. I was saddened and bewildered by the timing between these two things, yet amazed by the coincidence. I suspect the people in my life didn't realize the connection, and so I began to play down what the song meant to me, and withheld it from an official release.

One day, much much later, I found myself still holding on to the idea of keeping this song a secret, almost as if by doing so, I was suspending the reality of the tragedy it was unintentionally linked to. I realized how much time had passed, and how I was still holding on. I thought of how people keep old songs, poems, letters, pictures, drawings, and more on behalf of the ones they've lost, or are no longer with - almost like naming a special star in the night sky then keeping it a secret just for you and the ones you've loved. I realized then, this song I kept in my back pocket was, in a way, a star named in the sky. That is the day the final adjustment to the song was made - In the final chorus, I added the line "And we're going to name a star for you" and it was complete.

So here I am, sometime later, finally releasing this song into the wild. I'm giving it to all of you, so you may hold it in your heart like I did, like a star in the night for someone you care for, or maybe for an old memory of pain, long gone.

Nasa Photos

As for the actual design, this release was a ton of fun! Following the theme of the last chorus line "And we're going to name a star for you", I decided to utilize images of our galaxy and its many constellations - direct from NASA itself! You might not know this, but if you surf to NasaImages.org, you'll find TONS of images of star constellations, nebulae, galaxies, and so much more. The universe is a truly beautiful place and NASA's website makes it extremely easy to get sucked in for days. For instance, the crab nebula. Check out the link - that thing is real! Anyway, I decided since we're naming stars for people now, the release's artwork should match. NASA is gracious enough to release most of its images in the public domain, which means I had my pick of images to use. Even though this is just a single-release, I went ahead and designed a full jewel case worth of art, like I've been doing for my other singles. Eventually I'm going to offer a physical CD copy of it for sale that you can hold in your hands, but for now I'm going to post the artwork AND lyrics right here for you all to see, enjoy, and hopefully get excited about for the actual release!

Pre-Order NOW!

Anyway, the song is going to be released on iTunes and all the other major digital distributors in about a month - but you can pre-order it right NOW at website called bandcamp. The track is only $0.99 cents, and if you pre-order you'll be sent super-hi-resolution copies of the artwork I mentioned above, in addition to a high quality Mp3 of the song., which you could probablyyyyy use to make your own physical CD at home ;). By pre-ordering you're ensuring you get those extra goodies, and you'll be mailed a direct download link to the song the second it goes public! Here's the link: http://bandcamp.mikeperalta.com/album/a-story-forever-single. Please use it, bookmark it, share it, tweet it, like it, lick it, whatever. Just don't forget to pre-order it!

Thank you for reading my super long blog. I figure I haven't written you all in awhile so you were overdue for a marathon sit-down haha. Here are the lyrics and photos, enjoy!

~Mike Peralta

What's the sound that you will make forever
Less or more if all would cry for you
Underneath the twilight moon in leather
or in a song with loving eyes on you

If you told them everything tonight
If you found the words for sadness too
Would it make you anything the better
Is there anything that it would do

And we're going to tell your story forever
And we're going to sing this song for you
No one really wants to live forever
The flowers on the counter are for you

So you picked the moment to remember
a thousand eyes and twenty colored lights
You disappeared into the circle too
then you stopped and smiled but no one knew

And we're going to tell your story forever
And we're going to sing your song for you
No one really wants to live forever
The flowers all along the wall are for you

Never stop, never die
Never sleep and never sigh
You should know those you love
never want to see you cry

The flowers on the rooftop are for you

What's the sound that you will make forever
Less or more if I would cry for you
Underneath the twilight moon in leather
or in a song with loving eyes on you

And we're going to tell your story forever
And we're going to name a star for you
No one really wants to live forever
The flowers on the rooftop are for you

The flowers on the rooftop are for you

My Next Single - Fosner! by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 00:35:00 -0700

My Next Single -Fosner

Peeps, exciting news - I'm ready to release another single! Next month, on May 8th, 2011, it will be rolling out on iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon Mp3, CD Baby, my online store, and most other major digital distributors.

The song is called Fosner and I wrote it awhile back but had been keeping it on the back burner for quite some time. I'll admit right now, it's a silly, silly song. In it I try to express the social frustration of an over stressed youth, set to the backdrop of grunge-ish rock-ish music. You know how sometimes you sit down and realize things in your life haven't been going quite as well as you've wanted, but then you come up with a better plan, which renews and motivates you? This is not one of those songs haha. Imagine you have so much already on your plate, or you're already having so much trouble coping with the stress in your life, that the added pressure of coming up with a new/better plan would be too much to bear... ...so instead of coming up with that new plan, you just go off the deep end and start maniacally yelling to yourself "I'm cool!! I'm a winner!! I'm going to win the lottery and become the mayor!!! hahahahahahaha!!!!" I know many of us haven't actually done that, but I bet most of you would be willing to admit the thought has crossed your mind. I know it's crossed my mind more than once, especially when drunk. To help give you a better idea, here's my description straight from CD Baby:

Do the pressures oflife and socialacceptance sometimesseem too much tobear? Do you oftenfeel like you're onthe edge ofcracking? Are you onthe cusp of having amental breakdown,moving all of yourbelongings into theforest, thenshouting "I'mthe mayor! I'm themayor!" overand over again to asemi-circle ofstuffed animalsarranged in littleseats with littletea cups? If so,you'll probably loveMike Peralta's"Fosner"
Set on abackdrop of anemotional breakdown,Fosner tells asimple story. You'vehad it witheverything. You'refed up. So you havea new plan: You willmarry Jodi Foster.And you will one daygolf with KevinCostner. It won'tmatter what anyonesays to you. Itwon't matter whatthey do. You'll beliving inside arhyme.

I had a rough draft of it floating around on the internet for awhile, then I somewhat recently re-recorded it, had it mastered by my friend David Eriksen at Deriksen Studios (aka FATnSASSYmastering). The only thing missing at that point was a cover to go along with the particular vibe I was trying to convey. I kept procrastinating and procrastinating, because in the back of my head, I knew this cover had to be special. I couldn't just photoshop a stock photo or some pretty scene, or do one of those "Hey look at me I'm handsome and cool, holding a guitar woo hoo" photo shoots. I had to match the insanity portrayed in the song's lyrics, and it had to be me. So I kept putting it off. Then I came up with a few ideas. Then I kept putting it off again. I knew the cover I had to do, would make me look really, really bad. Eventually within the last couple months, I had a realization. Not-cool, is cool! If I'd like the privilege of calling myself an artist, I have to stop being afraid to look bad. Not everything I do should make people think I'm cool, not everything should make me look attractive, and not everyone will like me. So I set out into the studio with a white backdrop, a tank top, my electric guitar, and had some fun.

I got over 100 shots in, and eventually narrowed down the cover to 5 final photos, which I'll post here. I then talked with about 40 or so fans, asking them for their opinion on which one to use. Overwhelmingly, they chose the one where I have my eyebrow raised with a confused look on my face, almost like a bloated "The Rock" would do when he was a wrestler. As much as I appreciated this, I was slightly disappointed, only in that this was the photo that made me look the least 'bad'. It has personality and is kind of funny as you'll see. But I had my heart set on the worst one of them all haha. Realizing that the email I had sent to all those fans was kind of loaded, meaning I was sort of leading my fan helpers in the direction of the Dwayne Johnson ish photo without realizing it, I contacted some of them again, this time being much more clear about the "i want to look BAD" thing. At about a 70-30 split, everyone suddenly switched their opinions to my favorite! YAY!!! I mean, sure, the 2nd email probably was also loaded hahaha... but still!

So anyway, I'm going to show you the photos here, and let you guess which one I actually ended up choosing. I think I'm also going to do a limited short-run of the "eyebrows/confused" cover after the track releases, so those of you who still prefer it can have your own special physical copy of it.

Again thank you all for your love and support, mark your calendars for May 8th, 2011 - On that day you should be able to find the track by searching for "Mike Peralta Fosner" on iTunes, CDBaby.com, Rhapsody, Amazon Mp3, Napster, and all the others, not to mention my official store. I'll also keep you posted with more blogs and stuff when things move forward.

Peace out, and buy a T-Shirt, punks!!!

~Mike Peralta

My Amazing Twitter Frenzy by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 10:00:00 -0700

Wuddup Tweeps!

Some of you might recognize the term "Tweep", and some of you may not. In the world of Twitter, saying "What's up, tweeps!" is like saying "What's up peeps!" (aka, "What's up, people"). This fits today's blog, because today's blog is a shout out to all my friends and fans on Twitter for helping me make something pretty special happen recently on the night of Friday, March 18th, 2011.

What happened, you ask? Well, all hell broke loose pretty much. It all started with my weekly "Follow Friday" shout outs that I like to do every week. On twitter, we have this thing called Follow Friday where every Friday, people like to mention and recommend their friends to the rest of their followers list. If you're good friends with someone or you think their tweets are worth sharing, you recommend that person to the rest of your followers - and how you do it is by using special hashtags: #FollowFriday and #FF for short. In case you're wondering what a hashtag is, its the same as just writing a word, like "Poop", only you put a pound sign in front of it so someone reading your tweets would know that you intend that to be a special topic. For instance, Charlie Sheen has recently been around the media telling people he is "Winning", and that he has Tiger's blood, so after some of his tweets he'll hashtag #Winning #TigerBlood. If you wanted to tweet about how you're angry, you can use an #Angry hashtag to let people know it's a topic: "I'm so pissed at my boss today #Angry". Get it?

Anyway, now that you get hashtags, you can understand a little bit better why people will #FollowFriday hashtag each other. Well anyway, besides the obvious fun there is in watching twitter's search results for certain hash tags, twitter has a section called "Trending Topics" where you can see what topics are "hot" at any given moment on twitter. Sometimes a person's name will trend, sometimes a hashtag like #WorstFirstDateEver, sometimes just other things people say.

While doing my usual "Who else wants a follow friday shout out?" announcements, I noticed a tweet by one of my followers, mentioning that they were wondering who else was a "Mike Peralta fan". Since my followers can't really search for other people following me to connect with each other, I replied to her that she should just tweet the hashtag #MikePeralta, and other fans should do the same, and then they should all go to the twitter search results for that tag to be able to find each other. Then a few times I tweeted the same thing to make sure enough people saw the idea.

A few minutes later, perhaps 5-10 people had tweeted something like, "Who else is a #MikePeralta fan? Lets connect!" I was tickled pink to see that people were trying it, so I decided to "Retweet" the 5-10 tweets I saw on the page. In case you're wondering what a retweet is, it's basically when you see a tweet by someone else you like, so you click a little button that says Retweet, and then the tweet gets posted by YOUR account too, but with credit to the original tweeter. So essentially when I retweeted those tweets, it was as if I tweeted them all to my profile, but each person's profile picture and link show up instead of mine.

And then.....

... the shit really started to hit the fan. Some of the people saw me retweeting their tweets and got a kick out of it, so they continued repeating the #MikePeralta hashtag. Then more people started to join in. I started to retweet every tweet that I saw coming in, with extra tweets in between reminding people that the point was for them to connect to each other, and so they should watch the search results. At first, every couple minutes I would get 2-5 new tweets coming in. So I kept going at it. Pretty soon I was seeing 10 messages every couple minutes. Then it got faster, and faster, and faster. People were getting excited. They had decided that they wanted #MikePeralta to show up on the twitter trend page. They were repeating tweets several times in a row, or doing tweets that consisted of nothing but several repeats of the hashtag - like "Hey friends #MikePeralta #MikePeralta #MikePeralta #MikePeralta #MikePeralta #MikePeralta #MikePeralta". A core group of loyal supporters were tweeting like machine guns, while a larger group of fringe tweeters popped in to help out at random.

Even a local company tried to jump on board by offering discounts to people who mentioned me!

At one point it was going so fast, I couldn't keep up. Between the pressure to retweet fast enough and the excitement of what was going on, I started to breathe heavy and fast, my mouse clicking a million miles a minute to keep up. I was still behind. Every time I thought I was finished, I would click the refresh button in my browser, and 25 more tweets would show up. People were getting crazy and happy, and having fun. People were getting angry that I was flooding my timeline. Some people were going off the deep end "#MikePeralta for mother fucking president bitches!!!" and others were getting pissed off "Who the fuck is #MikePeralta and why is his hashtag all over my timeline!!!! Stop it!!!!". Other people had apparently never heard of me before but were turned into fans by the frenzy. A few started throwing jokes into the mix (I'll include those below).

I had to retweet so often and so many times that my twitter account actually broke twice. And I'm not talking about that message you sometimes get when you follow too many people or tweet too many times too quickly, and twitter tells you "You've hit your hourly usage limit". I'm talking twitter was telling me, "Whoops! There was an error posting your tweet, please try again in a few minutes". The first time it broke, and could no longer retweet for everyone, I got panicked and private messaged a few trusted fans, asking them to spread the word that I was out of commission for awhile. They took the reigns, tweeting things like "Mike's twitter broke from all the tweets! Lets keep #MikePeralta going!". Then I came back and started to help again too. Eventually my twitter broke for about 2 hours, effectively killing the campaign since my retweets were fueling people's excitement.

When all was said and done, twitter's search page showed that in the span of less than an hour, almost FIVE HUNDRED #MikePeralta tweets had gone out. And that's just the results that I could count. Twitter is known for omitting accounts from search results when they have too many friends/followers, when they tweet too much, or just at random, so in reality this number was probably much much higher. I even connected to twitter's search API and downloaded the results to a small database file, so I could write a little program to turn the tweet data into a rich list of everyone's tweets, complete with profile icons, dates/times, and links to everyone's profile - but there was so much data, it crashed my website! My web server is literally not fast enough to parse all the BBCode I generated on one blog page, and just went blank. (Sidenote: BBCode is a "safe" version of HTML that my blog uses, so when I want to write images and links and stuff, that's what I use). One fan's tweet actually was listed as a "Top Tweet" for a couple hours. That is crazy because Top Tweets on twitter are usually only reserved for tweets that get retweeted a ton of times by a ton of people. He literally just posted a #MikePeralta hashtag tweet, and since he was one of the first, enough people retweeted it that it just got promoted! And that's not to mention all the fans who got to meet each other because of this thing.

Thank You!!!

In case it doesn't go without saying, THANK YOU to everyone who helped out. You made the beginning of my Friday night so so so much fun... and you made it fun for everyone else. I'm going to fondly remember this day for a long long time. I hope the friends you made and the memories you generated together have touched you too.

I'm going to take a moment here to post my favorite tweets of the night, and a screenshot of the tweet that got promoted to a Top Tweet. Please keep in mind it was impossible for me to manually look through all of the tweets, so if you feel one of your tweets was funny or weird enough to post up here, please go back to your tweet, and mail me it's link (every tweet's link can be found under its "something minutes ago" timeline label).

	I was at a club once and I saw #MikePeralta 's dog making out with Sigourney Weaver. ...no joke. That dog's got game. @mikeperalta by user Aoas

	#MikePeralta he never posted how Paris Hilton's cake tasted like!!! by user calodixit

	if there's one thing I love about #mikeperalta, it's that he's not Rebecca Black. by user loveyourcake

	@mikeperalta made me turn to the darkside! I cannot disobey! The power of the darkside! #MikePeralta by user lordvader311

	#MikePeralta is the definition of Aural Sex. Mmm.. by user notanangel81

	@mikeperalta #MikePeralta is paying us to tweet his name and RT others. Right Mike? by user Brownielocks01

	#MikePeralta is WINNING! Take that Charlie! #MikePeralta #MikePeralta #MikePeralta #MikePeralta #MikePeralta #MikePeralta #MikePeralta by user rescuemeJR

	@mikeperalta ~~~ #mikeperalta is having my baby by user TVKimmy

	I will physically GIVE #mikeperalta a baby, like TAKE a baby from someone and give it to #mikeperalta. He wouldn't ask, I'd just do it. by user Samantha12Jane

	#MikePeralta is better than Charlie Sheen he is #Winning! by user Brownielocks01

	A movement of new Indie/Folk sonic sounds, bringing endless soul & live, give a follow!RT @IsaFork: Who in da freaking heell is #mikeperalta by user indiefolk8

	#MikePeralta!!!! Get ready for some TWEET OVERLOAD <3 You can't hate someone when there way better than Rebecca Black, Ahaha! by user rebecca_hoch11

	@mikeperalta has more tweets than #sxsw #mikeperalta by user veechic

	My timeline just got raped by @mikeperalta!!!! #MikePeralta by user soccer319

Mike Peralta's "Japan Support via the Red Cross" Mp3 Pack! by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:39:00 -0700

Hey guys,

As most of you are aware by now, Japan recently suffered an 8.9 magnitude earthquake, followed by tsunami waves of up to 33 feet shortly after (Link1, Link2). The island nation sustained massive devastation and is now in extreme need of relief/support efforts.

At the moment, the American Red Cross is responding by deploying over 400 doctors, nurses, and support staff, distributing blankets and other supplies to evacuation centers, and more. More details of this relief effort can be found at RedCross.org

What can we do to help? For starters, you can follow the links above and donate directly to the Red Cross itself.

BUT, if you'd like to make a donation, AND get some free music at the same time, I've set up this unique item in my official online store just for you. By purchasing this store item, you'll receive a copy of every Mp3 that I have for sale online to date, and I will donate 75% of the net profits directly to the Red Cross myself.

Here is a direct link to the store item: CLICK HERE!

Yes you heard me right. Seventy-Five Percent. Not ten or twenty percent. I figure the typical gateway fees (the fees paypal/google charge) should be under a buck for a transaction at this price. So I'm thinking 75% of $4 means as an underestimate, you should expect $3 out of every $5 coming in to go directly to the Red Cross, supporting their current Japan-Relief efforts (I'll post exact numbers if I figure them out). This is a win-win deal: You get the Mp3s you've been wanting, and Red Cross/Japan gets a huge cut of the transaction.

Please pass this blog or the store item's page along to your friends, family, and social networking peers! Lets help the relief effort as much as we can!

That link one more time: Click Here toPurchase The JapanSupport Mp3 Pack!

~Mike Peralta

Supporters!

Shout out to these beautiful people who have already given for the cause!

Fan Photo Contest Has Finished! by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 10:07:00 -0800

Hello everyone. I hope you all had a great new year and a wonderful holiday season!

I've been getting a lot of emails asking "Mike for the love of god, when are you announcing the winners of your contest!??!" Well sorry peeps, what can I say.. I'm slightly lazy writing up this blog and choosing winners, and I've been slightly greedy in that the longer I wait the more submissions I get haha. Well anyway, the time has come to cut off the contest and enjoy what's been sent in so far.

If you are a winner, I will be contacting you soon! Feel free to message me with your email address just to make sure I have the correct one on file. If you did not win, don't fret - I'll be running another contest soon... and here's a dirty little secret of mine. If you give me lots of shout out's on twitter, post my banners up on your website, participate in my forums, or you are a very supportive fan in general... I have a tendency to say "YES" when you ask me for free stuff! :P

So without further ado, here are my top favorite photos that fans submitted. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Feel free to leave your comments below! :)

Big thanks to everyone who submitted! You all roxor OMGggggggg

~Mike Peralta

Happy New Year, All !! (And Crazy Search Terms, and My New Single) by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 09:00:00 -0800

Happy New Year, All!!!

Did you all have a fun new years eve? Did you get lots of toys at Christmas? Did you spend your holidays with loved ones, friends, some fellow drunks, or at least a good video game?

In this blog I've got a silly list of the strangest search terms people have used to find my website in 2010, and a quick update regarding my new single, which is to be released worldwide January 3rd, 2011.

I want you all to know I hope you had a blast celebrating the end of 2010, and I wish you the best in 2011. Remember (!), its not about keeping all your new years resolutions - its about making so many resolutions that just by sheer volume, you'll end up keeping some of them. I'm shooting for 20 resolutions personally, and if I keep 5, mission accomplished. Don't be a 2-resolution loser! lol

Strange IncomingSearch Terms

So a little while ago, I checked some of my webstats for MikePeralta.com, to get a feel for what promotional things I was doing right, which ones wrong, and well, you get the idea. For those of you who don't know what webstats are, they're just statistics for your website, showing a variety of metrics - like how many visitors you had, how many pages they viewed, what they viewed, how long they stayed, how they got to your site, etc. Google analytics has a great free tool for this, and there are a bunch of other ones out there in cyber space.

So anyway, I'm in there rummaging around a bit, looking at various things - like the people who stay the longest on my site were people who had searched for the phrase "Mike Peralta" (what a surprise, I know!!!). Then I noticed some other search terms, terms that people were sometimes searching for and then accidentally ending up on my site somehow. Search terms that made no sense to me. Then I started to laugh. And then I realized that as my new years gift to you, I should share the funniest search terms I found in my web logs.

So here you have it. The strangest searches typed into a search engine, and accidentally ended up on my website from, in the year 2010. Keep in mind that every search here is 100% real. Real people typed these things into search engines, real search engines then decided my website was the best choice for these keywords, and then these people all clicked to my website, and most likely became completely disappointed once they realized they had arrived on a musician's page:

"mike peralta dropkick"
"I,m looking for mike peralta dating profile"
"Ghost Hunters sucks lately"
"picard make me a sandwich"
"captain picard's favorite sandwich"
"well choke my chicken"
"how to make a turbo charged wheelchair"
"if god dwells inside us like some people say hes getting enchiladas what does it mean"
"latest updates about diarrhea"
tons of mispellings of my name
"mike peralta (my REAL phone number here!!)"
"ninja star block test"

And there you have it. The strangest search phrases people used to get to my website in 2010

My Single Release! -"Dark OverHere"

In related news - my single comes out tomorrow, January 3rd, 2011 on iTunes, Napster, Limewire Store, Rhapsody, Amazon Mp3, and most major digital retailers, not to mention my own online store on this very website (click!). Please show your support by purchasing your own copy, and check my social networking profiles for surprise giveaways too!

Have a great 2011 everyone, and say hello to me in a blog comment here, or in my forums!

Fan Photo/Drawing Contest!! and New Single in January! by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 12:57:00 -0800

Contest - Win FREESTUFF!!!

My friends!

How you been!? I've been getting a lot of people asking when I'm finally going to start doing contests again. And then this week, when I did a surprise mp3 giveaway on some of my social networking profiles, I had A LOT of fans mistakenly think they were getting a free physical CD and send me their full address in the hopes of an early Christmas present, teehee.

I guess you guys just want to get some more free stuff, so here's your chance! I'm itching for some new fan photos, or some fan art. I'd like for anyone interested to send me what they've got (my email is a couple paragraphs down), and then I'm going to pick some of the best submissions and give you prizes!

Lets say, the TOP FIVE people get prizes:

Top Entry gets 2 free T-Shirts, a signed physical CD of my acoustic album "Music of My Youth", and a signed copy of my single, "I Want to Be Sad"
Second Best Entry gets a free T-Shirt, signed copy of "Music of My Youth", and another signed copy of "I Want to Be Sad"
Third Best Entry gets a free T-Shirt, mp3s of both releases, and your choice of a signed physical copy of either "Music of My Youth" or "I Want to Be Sad"
Fourth Best Entry gets a free T-Shirt and mp3s of both releases
Fifth Best Entry gets mp3s of both releases

And how about everyone else who submits gets an mp3 of their choice.

I'm thinking you can enter as many times as you like, as long as each entry is significantly different. To enter all you have to do is send an email with your photo or drawing to Contest (at) MikePeralta.com. Obviously make sure to replace the (at) with an actual @ sign to make that address into a real email. Also make sure to include your contact information along with the email, so I know who to mail prizes to when I pick them, and tell me what Mp3 you prefer to receive if you don't make the top 5.

If you're sending in a photo, send me a LARGE copy! That means use the highest quality setting on your camera, and don't resize it before you mail it to me!
If you're sending in a drawing, try to use a scanner set at 300dpi if you can. Otherwise try to take a SUPER CLEAR picture of it with a decent camera, to improve your chances of winning.
If you're doing something in photoshop/illustrator, start off with an 8x10 canvas at 300dpi, and then either email me the original PSD/EPS, or a full quality JPG/PNG.

The contest is valid from now until I decide who my top 5 people are. I'm thinking I might try to cut it off at about the end of January, to coincide with the release of my next single - "Dark Over Here". But yeah, if you submit something, and then you're not sure it'll win, just keep submitting more stuff! Also, if you're an international winner, I may or may not ask you to front the extra shipping, based on how much leftover beer money I happen to have next month.

SO, what is a "Fan Photo", you ask? Well a fan photo is basically a picture you take, of yourself, with my name, CD, or likeness worked into the photo somehow without the use of Photoshop. You can see some previous photos fans have sent in here: http://www.mikeperalta.com/galleries/gallery/SC4IDGFKL4XZ/SC4IDGFKL4XZ.html. I love my fans and everyone who sends something in (well, something not x-rated please thanks haha) will get featured on my website and some of my social networking profiles.

And what is "Fan Art"? Basically the same thing, only its a drawing. You can draw in pencil/pen, leggos, cereal bits, photoshop, or whatever you want. As long as its awesome, I'll take it.

So there you have it. Submit your stuff nowwwww. I'll be waiting!

Also! New SingleComing in 2011

One more quick announcement, which I'll touch base on again in my next blog. I'm releasing another single! Its called "Dark Over Here", and is a really groovy moody broody dreamy thing. I'm still finalizing the last details to get it digitally distributed worldwide, but expect it to show up about Mid-January here, and then shortly to all the other distributors. I'll be posting an event for it and be sending out more blogs on it soon.!

OCRockRadio.com Interview, woot! by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 23:29:00 -0700

Well hello there everybodaaaaaay!

I just wanted to write a quick little thank you note for those of you who listened to my interview today at OCRockRadio.com with DJ Dre Parish. Before the interview started, the program director walked in and said the station just got a ton of listeners... and I'm assuming some of those listeners were you guys - my friends on this blog, twitter, facebook, etc.

I'm attaching a few photos from my day at the station for your viewing pleasure. I had a great time talking with DJ Dre Parish before, during, and after the actual interview. Him and DJ Ron are cool guys, and I can't wait to come visit them again the next time I release another single.

I've also gone ahead and attached a recording of the interview to this blog entry. I haven't written an mp3 player into this blog yet, but if you click on the file, it should open up in your favorite audio player. Otherwise, right-click the enclosure link and select "Save As..." or "Save File..." or whatever your browser uses, and then play it once its saved on your computer.

So anyway, thanks for your support everyone! Go visit OCRockRadio.com!!

~Mike Peralta

Single Released! - "I Want to Be Sad" by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 04:46:00 -0700

Peeps!

My new single "I Want to Be Sad" has been released, and is now available for purchase on iTunes, Amazon MP3, Napster, CD Baby, Limewire Store, and of course my own official store on this website (if you're reading a syndicated feed, that'd be MikePeralta.com). I think Rhapsody is lagging but they should make it available too sometime soon.

Head on over to my new Discography Page to find all the purchase links, or just listen to it.

ALSO!!! I've just programmed a brand new section to my site, where you can earn a FREE copy of one of my tracks just for tweeting about me. I call it "Tracks For Tweets", I guess. Anyhow, if you have a twitter account, you can find the page here and grab your free copy while I'm still promoting it!

Thanks for listening! Help spread the word by tweeting this blog, participating in forums, telling your friends, reviewing on itunes/amazon/etc or sharing to your favorite social network!

~Mike

New Single! - "I Want to Be Sad" by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 22:39:00 -0700

Hello all and quick update!

I'm releasing a single of my track "I Want to Be Sad" in the next week, and it will be available on iTunes, Amazon Mp3, Rhapsody, and all the big digital distributors. I need your support to make this a big release - I need tons of feedback and reviews, as well as your support in helping me push this to the top virally. Check back on my blog as I'll be making updates as to when it actually goes online, but I've added an entry in my site's event calendar as a rough estimate of the mp3's digital delivery estimate.

Also for those of you without the ability to buy music online, or an extra few cents, never fear! I'll also be giving away copies to people who help me promote. Everyone can pitch in, and I'll be adding more blog updates to explain the different ways you can help me promote!

Mike signing out

Whoopsies!! - Waited too long again, Jay Leno Dream, Opened My Store, and My Next Release by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 03:20:00 -0700

Whoopsies!

Well, I promised everyone in my last blog that I would blog more often. And then I fell back into my old patterns of going, "nah, that story isn't good enough to bug all my subscribers with... i'll just wait until I have something better to blog about". Then I got complaints, so I started to write my next blog. Then I got distracted again. Then... its now 3 months later since my last blog.

I = SUX!!!

Jay Leno Dream

I had the most awesome dream ever the other night. Not because of the setting, but because I was an absolute insane person in it. For those of you that don't know me personally, I have a twisted sense of humor and it usually revolves around intricately detailed imaginary disaster scenarios that stem from real life situations. For instance, once during Christmas as a child, I watched my sister open up a present from my mom, and during the process my mom said, "I really hope you like it", pretty innocently. I burst out into laughter, and when everyone asked me what I was laughing about, they found that in three seconds flat I had imagined a disaster scenario between the two of them, in which my sister opened the present and noticed it was exactly something she told my mom NOT to buy her for xmas (which coincidentally, my parents did A LOT to us as kids), slammed the present down in a tiff, then a stray particle from the present flew into my mom's coffee, infuriating my mom who then tossed her coffee on my sister's face screaming "you ungreatful bitch!", after which the two began wrestling and pulling each others hair, bringing down the entire christmas tree in the process, and as they rolled around under the tree screaming, with tinsel and fake greenery flying around, i looked down at the broken/tattered christmas tree star that had fallen in my lap, and with a tear in my eye screamed, "NOT ON CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!". So yeah... love my disaster scenarios and can't stop thinking of them. And sometimes they're funny, too.

Back to Jay Leno...

So I have this dream where I'm being interviewed by Jay Leno on his Tonight Show for something having to do with music. Perhaps I was performing that night, or he enjoyed my album, or I dunno, SOMEthing.. So anyway, I fantasize of course, about "making it big" in some way, and how I would present myself if I had the opportunity. Sometimes I think it would be nice to be myself, other times I want to come off as some kind of sexy sexual euro type guy that gets tons of chicks, and other times I wonder what it would be like if I presented myself as an absolute hot mess insane person, just for the entertainment value of it all, and the controversy it would cause as my fans online all speculated as to what the hell was wrong with me and when I was going to overdose.

This, apparently, was a dream in which I had chosen the latter strategy of behaving as a lunatic in front of cameras.

The dream started with me just outside the stage, waiting for Jay to call my name so I could emerge before the audience, shake hands, then sit down for my interview. Jay called my name, "please welcome, MIKE .... PerALTAaaaaaaaaa!" and the band music played one of my songs. I came out in a white T-Shirt and jeans like I always wear EVERYwhere, only I don't think I had my hat on, which is weird because I'm usually self conscious about my hairline lol.

Instead of shaking hands with Jay, I immediately started screaming, "HEY EVERYBODY HEY HEEEEEEY!!!!!!!!!!!!" running at full speed in circles around the stage throwing my hands up in the air, slightly crouching as I ran, with a permanent lean to one side to accentuate the speed at which I was running in circles. Jay kept turning left and right as I ran past him then around the opposite side of the stage, back behind the chairs and desk, then back up around to him again. I did this several times until he gave up and went back to his desk to wait for me, muttering something like "what is this, I don't understand what he's doing" to the audience.

When I finally stopped to sit down and talk, I was all out of breath but still strung out, looking quickly left/right wide-eyed as Jay asked me questions as if I were on crack or something. After a couple questions (which I answered in weird ways on purpose), I interrupted his next question with some random nonsensical story where I basically described shaking someone's hand a few days earlier. I started to explain that the person shook my hand for only a brief moment before trying to let go, and in that quick moment I was offended... "How could this jerk snub me like that??? I'll be damned if I let some dude off the streets trick me into a handshake and then not have the courtesy to hold on for more than a second and a half". I then told Jay Leno that in my frustration, I decided to clench my grip onto this poor guy's hand in an effort to prevent him from prematurely ending the handshake. Then it became a struggle between the two of us as he slowly realized what I was doing, and our faces slowly turned to grimaces and we hunched our backs and bent our knees, me grabbing onto his hand as hard as I could and him trying to pull away as hard as he could.

As I described this scene to him, my voice continued to get higher and higher in pitch, and the speed of my speech faster and faster, working myself into a frenzy of projected frustration as I tried to convey how I was feeling (and also trying to convey that I was losing my mind on stage). I complained and complained about this guy and all the social and interpersonal problems I saw with his hand-shake strategy, acting more and more pissed off and frantic with every word. Finally when my voice couldn't go any higher, or louder, or faster, I launched myself back up out of my chair again, to the tip-toe edge of the stage, and took another tangent in my story.

"Jay, I'm really freaking out here and I don't think I can take it anymore. You know how sometimes in a movie, a character will be on stage somewhere, and the camera will show the audience from his point of view and all you see is a huge black void where the audience is supposed to be, blinding bright white lights, and a barrel-distorted view of everything through some kind of fish-eye wide lens?", I shouted, sweat dripping off my forehead down onto my T-Shirt, heaving and huffing with each breath I took, in a wide-knee'ed crouched battle stance at the front edge of the stage.

"well that's how I feel and i just can't... TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!" I screamed bloody murder and then proceeded to fall face-forward, face-down onto the shiny floor in front of me, sliding forward along the floor slightly with my arms at my sides. Then I lie motionless. Jay, in a very worried and rushed tone, stated, "My god he's passed out!" then called for a commercial break, running up to me to see if I was alright.

Of course I was faking all of this so it was all I could do to hold in the laughter trying to burst out of my belly while I lay there on the floor. By the time we went to commercial and Jay came to my side, I had stood up, and in a more calm tone started asking for a stage hand or stage manager.

"Hey guys! Do we have a fake beard and mustache? Do we have a corn cob pipe?" I started asking the crew and the stage people. After a short time I gathered what I wanted and then made my way back to Jay's interview chair.

When the commercial break was over, I was now sitting extremely calmly in the interview chair again, but in disguise. I was still wearing my white T-shirt and jeans, but I now also had a fake beard, fake mustache, some kind of elderly looking hat (I can't describe the hat other than it looked like something an older, respectable person would wear), and a corn-cob pipe - the kind of pipe that Sherlock Holmes smoked.

Cool and collected, almost drab and boring, I began smoking my corn cob pipe as Jay Leno re-introduced me, bringing his show back in from the commercial break.

"Well we still have Mike Peralta on the show and he appears to be alright now. Mike ... what happened back there? Are you alright?" Jay turned to me and asked.

"Yes Jay, I'm fine of course" I said, now using a very slow, controlled, dry, thespian-ish accent.

Jay asked, "Wait a minute... what's going on here... what is this, what are you doing..?"

My response was simply, "Jay Leno. I was ACTING. Do you not know that people do this? I thought you were educated in the finer arts", I said in the same controlled thespian voice before taking another puff from my corn cob pipe.

Dumbfounded, Jay Leno looked at me with a wide-eyed blank stare for a few seconds, then slowly turned to the audience with the same expression on his face.

And then I woke up! BEST DREAM EVAR!!!!

Well, best dream ever that didn't involve me having the force. But more on that later...

I Opened My Store!

Well peeps... after days and days upon days and days of programming, I've finally re-launched my online store. Its taken a lot of hard work to create up to this point, and I'll need to work on it more and more as time goes on, but at least, as of now, I have my own online store, that I wrote entirely myself... and it supports domestic AND international shipping, AND digital download codes. By the way, I think I still have about 10 uses left on one of my test codes. If you go into the store and look for the "Redeem Download Codes" link, you can enter this code: 9WKW-EQ3Q-HJ3T ... That should allow you to download my entire acoustic album for free. Its a promotional thing of course, but yeah, it should work. If you're reading this blog offsite like facebook or somewhere else, here's a link to the redemption page: http://www.MikePeralta.com/store/yum. If you end up using it, please say hello in my forums and let me know what you thought of the whole redemption process!

And feel free to browse around the site and purchase a shirt or something! They're all ready to ship!

My Next Release

Well its about that time again. I've been reading several articles online about indie musicians and I've come to the conclusion that it will be better for both me and my fans if I just release a single every once in awhile, rather than waiting several years to do a full album. This way, you get more releases more often, and I get more interactions and support from you. Plus I guess it helps me to stay relevant. Plus I can always compile my best-selling singles into a full album every so often too.

Anyhow. I think my next release will be my song "I Want to Be Sad". I've done a full remix of it, which sounds more electronic and poppy than the usual acoustic stuff I do, and plus its been mastered by FatNSassy Studios! Mastering in a nutshell means FatNSassy takes my completed/mixed track and adjusts all the frequencies, tweaks compression, adds limiters, studies sonic patterns, noise reduction, and a whole slew of other technical mumbo jump type things, and then turns my track into gold. Literally. I have literally given him crap and it came back to me sounding awesome. I have no idea how he does it. Anyway you can check out his myspace at http://www.myspace.com/fatnsassymastering.

And keep an eye out for an announcement of this release. When I find a good photo to design for the cover, I'll be releasing the track through CDBaby, iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, and all those other silly places.

Thanks for listening!!!

He's Not a Booker, New Lights, Wee-Man, and I have new CDs by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:16:00 -0700

Oh dear its been 2 months since my last blog entry! I guess I slipped back into the old "I've got to wait until I have something very interesting to say" mindset that caused me to never blog before. I promise to all of you from now on, I will resist that urge. And yes I'm saying my blogs will never say anything interesting.

He's Not a Booker

So, awhile back, I don't even remember how far back anymore, I placed an ad up on craigslist looking for a booking agent, because well, I need one. For non music biz people, a booking agent is basically just someone who goes around trying to find gigs for you, either gigs that pay a flat fee or gigs that you can make money off of based on ticket sales or some other plan. When a booker books you a show, you pay them a percentage of the money you make (usually). Anyhow, I figured it was a good plan because who wouldn't want to make money booking me gigs?

About a day after I posted the ad, I get a response from a very nice lady who tells me she is a manager and she loves my music and all the effort I've put into getting things going for myself, and she would love to manage me, BUT she is swamped with her current acts, so she has another friend who can help me out, and that I should call him. SO, the next day, I call him up, and not wanting to play phone tag with some dude I don't even know, I just leave a brief but detailed message about who I am and what I do, and that I'm looking for a booking agent.

Then the next day I speak with the original nice lady again. She tells me the dude is an A&R rep, some kind of high class big deal dude who makes people's careers happen. Oh dear. I've just spoken to him as if he were a booking agent on his voicemail.

Later that day I get an angry voicemail from him. "Hey Mike, this is so and so. I am NOT a booking agent!" and then he slams the phone down.

Oh well. Easy come, easy go.

New Lights

So, I checked into my "music fund" folder in my bank account, and noticed I had an extra $300 bucks in it, with a bunch of paid gigs coming up, and no merch (CDs, stickers, buttons, etc) really to replenish. So I decided to get my first basic lighting rig. After doing a bunch of research online, and posting a couple sad, sad "please help me" posts in some forums, it became apparent to me what I should get started with. Long story short, I now have 2 little "Par Can" lights with amber gels (gels are colored sheets you use to color the lighting), mounted to 2 giant speaker stands by clamps. I think the effect is pretty cool, and hopefully it will improve my "Perceived Value" when I'm on stage, and I hate to admit it, but perceived value IS value. I'm going to post a couple pics of the different lighting test shots I took, and maybe some of you can let me know what you think!

Wee Man

Quick story: While performing a short/quick audition this wednesday for a paid gig, the actual "Wee Man" from Jackass walks into the room, begins air guitar-ing to me, gives me a thumbs-up, and then leaves the room. I'm a huge fan of Jackass and I think the Wee Man is as cool as hell, but all I could think to do was simply nod my head at him. Wee Man if you're out there you rock and I will try to say "wuddup!" if I see you there again.

New CDs

Uhhhhhh.... yeah, I made new CDs. I am almost out of the Jewel Cases I've been selling at live shows for my "Music of My Youth" album, so I replenished them a few weeks ago. I only bought a hundred, but they look cool all on the ground at the same time, so I took a picture of them lol.

I know I missed a few events and things that happened in my musical-life, and I'm sorry! I promise to try and post more stuff up as it happens from now on, if you promise not to expect it to be coherent or sensical, and to leave lots of inappropriate comments!

Ghost Hunters Sucks, and I'm Making Better (More affordable) T-Shirts by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 19:00:00 -0700

Ghost Hunters Sucks

Ok here is every f-ing episode of "Ghost Hunters" in a nutshell:

Ghost Hunter: "OMFG did you hear that noise? That was a ghost for sure! Can you feel that cold running across your arm? HOLY SHIT the EKG noise meter thingy is going wild! This place is SO haunted OMGGgggggggggggggg"

[Next Day]

Home Owner: "So, what did you guys find out last night?"

Ghost Hunter: "Oh nothing it was actually just a tree"

AND THAT IS WHY I DON'T WATCH GHOST HUNTERS

Yay T-Shirts!

Something that's been a problem lately for me is my inability to sell T-Shirts at shows. I started off asking $15 for one shirt, which to me doesn't sound like a lot if you like a musician and want to support, and is actually on the low end of what I've seen around at various shows and stuff. But nobody buys... well ok a few people buy, but its kind of a rare thing. I was thinking about this recently and I realized that the typical show-goer sees a band in a more club/party ish atmosphere like a bar, club, party, etc, and is often intoxicated when purchasing that T-Shirt and other merch items. So it just occurred to me that since most of my shows are at malls or fairs or you know, daytime-family-public-outdoorsy locations.... maybe what has been happening is that people just don't have or want to spend the $12 that I've been charging for them, and they're too sober to say "F it, I want that shirt!".

Add that to the fact that the way I'm currently having my T-Shirt orders fulfilled is costing me about $9 per shirt minimum, and I just don't have the option of lowering the price enough to allow everyone a fair shot at owning a T-Shirt. I mean really, the whole point of selling merch like shirts and cds and stuff, at least for me, is to get my music and my whole deal 'out there' more, not to try and make a huge profit off new fans that I make at shows. So really I have to/had to find a way to make shirts for way cheaper.

Enter stencils and bleach. I recently just discovered a way to make T-Shirts, BY MYSELF, so inexpensively that I can sell shirts for only about $5 or $6 bucks and still make a dollar or so profit off each one. That means everyone can afford to have a shirt and I won't go into the hole in order to make that happen. If you have the time or feel like making your own T-Shirts, check out this youtube video, in which a DIY (do it yourself) punk-ish musician called "One-Eyed Doll" basically made a few stencils of her band name and now uses them to spray bleach on black t-shirts, creating a really cool looking, yet really inexpensive band T-Shirt for herself. I've already made my first "Stencil" design, and I'm going to attach a PNG version of it to this blog as an enclosure.... so if any fans out there are reading this and want your own Mike Peralta shirt, but you either A. Don't have the money or resources to get to a show or pay for a shirt once you're there, or B. Live nowhere near where any of my shows are, you can basically download and print this file, then use it as a guide to cut a stencil out of transparency paper using an exacto knife if you want (I'm not responsible when you sever an artery and die, FYI), and then buy a shirt at the 99 cent store or recycle an old shirt you no longer care for, then just hold the stencil over the shirt and spray with a 1:1 mix of bleach (you'd have to wear gloves, goggles, and probably a breath mask, then let the shirt dry outside for a day or so... because lets face it, bleach is a bitch), and have your own homemade Mike Peralta T-Shirt. Woot! Or you could just stop buying porn for 1 day and use that same money to come support me at one of my shows, kthnx.

So anyways, right now I'm talking with several companies about having a stencil pattern laser-burned professionally. It'll cost me about $50 but will be incredibly precise and clean.... but in the meantime while I'm waiting to figure out who to fulfill with, I've ordered something called a "Stencil Burner", which is sort of like a soldiering iron, only instead of soldering, it burns quickly and precisely through transparency paper, which as you might guess also makes somewhat good stencils. I can use it to attempt to trace out my own design on a plastic paper sheet thingy, and I'm kind of hoping I have the skill to make the stencil myself by hand, because then I'd be able to make any design I want, change/upgrade it as frequently as I want, and just make completely random stencils at any time, related or unrelated to my own music thing.

Flash forward to my mom's birthday: Happy Birthday mom! I made you a special birthday T-Shirt. It says, "I drink poop". Do you like it?

~Mike Peralta

I'll Tweet After I'm Dead, Weird Dream About Pot and My Dad, Greenlit on Hold, and Damn You Hot Girls by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:00:00 -0700

It has just occurred to me that if I were to die today, my website would continue to tweet on my behalf for the next 6 months. How is this, you ask? I programmed a section into the admin area of this website to allow me to save tweets... tweets that I don't feel are very time-critical, but are somewhat funny enough that I want to eventually tweet them. So basically whenever I think I've thought of something funny, but I've just recently tweeted and don't want to over-tweet (agh, what a nerd), I save my tweet in the auto-tweeter section of my website. Then what happens is if I haven't tweeted for 3 days or more, my site will automatically go into my little saved list of stupid sayings and tweet one on my behalf, then send me an email so I know I've been lazy on tweeting. So far its only happened once, and I have over 60 tweets saved. That's 60 tweets times 3 days between tweets. That's seriously 6 months. So if I die, and my website keeps tweeting, you'll know its just me, back from the grave to haunt the shit out of all your asses, and not some hacker.

Uhm... so... true story.. The other night I had a weird dream about my dad. Some friends of mine from my bar showed up at my house, all wasted and being super loud. I asked them to sit down and be more quiet, and started asking them what kind of food they wanted me to fix them, what sodas they wanted, etc, when all the sudden they all whipped out a huge pot pipe and started smoking it. Then my dad came into the room, and I started getting all embarrassed and stuff, when suddenly he he looks at the pot pipe and suddenly transforms from the very stern, large, humorless man he is, into a very skinny, dirty, tan looking guy with a thick pimp accent and a hobo's hat. Suddenly 100 times more friendlier than he usually is, he then says in his new pimp accent to my friends, "hey maaaaaaaaaaaaan lemme get a hit off that she-it!". Stunned, I stare at my 'dad' in amazement and begin wondering how different my life would be if I had shared a pot pipe with my dad as a little kid, and using that as an excuse to have actual opportunities to interact and bond with him regularly without being yelled at or made to feel guilty in some way (lol). Anyhow, being the "I love pot heads and yet I never smoke pot myself" kind of guy that I am, I turned him down when he offered to smoke me out with my friends, and was left standing in the corner in an awkward Ben Stiller kind of moment, watching a transformed image of my dad smoke pot with all my friends. Analyze that, mister Freud.

Also for those of you who knew that I was going to have a small part in an indie feature film called "Greenlit", playing the part of an editor who tells the heroes of the film that their project that they put their blood sweat and tears into, essentially sucks.... has been postponed. Apparently the main investor has pulled half their funding and the 2 main/major locations we were going to film at fell through. So oh well. Back to waiting. Its too bad, I was practicing saying, "You suck" into the mirror over and over and over each morning.

For those of you who enjoy stopping by my shows at the block - good news! I just added a bunch of new shows. I think I might have a 1 or 2 week break in there somewhere though, which I'll probably use to play some odd gigs here and there.

OH and if you are a hot girl, and you walk by me playing music, and then flirt with me while I'm singing, and then get me all excited, and then walk away and wave goodbye while I'm singing, without leaving your phone number at my merch table or even so much as grabbing a CD so you can get my website so you can email me (HELLO!!), then all I can say is that I hope you fall down and .... uh.... (just realized some of them might be reading this)... come to more future shows!

Oh oh! And had a great time hanging with my friend Jessica this weekend, who came to my show, then her and her friend hung out with me afterwards at Johnny rockets. Yum!

And thanks to the huge group of cute girls who ran up to me after my show that night too, asking for autographs and being little silly heads all around me too. You guys helped make my night!

Well I know this isn't a long ass blog, but I think I'll leave it as it is right now so I at least have SOMEthing to post todsy. I've waited 2 weeks to post again. Doh!

Check back for more updates soon, and come connect with me on my facebook and myspace pages too!

~Mike

Re-booked some stuff, Krystal hates Spiders, I Need Your Damn Pics, I'm Flabby, More Updates, and I'm a 108 Year Old Female by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 03:36:00 -0800

I don't have a whole lot to write about in today's blog... but guess what. I'm writing anyway.

The Block at Orange just booked me for another month, which is awesome. I can't wait to get back there again. I'll be getting insured for it this week.

I played at the Long Beach Towne Center this last Friday, and it was great as usual. An old high school friend Krystal came down to help me take a few pictures to give to the main booker/promoter that schedules me there. She took like 80 pictures and I still haven't emailed them out. Note to self: email them out. Note to self: eat chocolate

.
..
...
.....
........
.............

Ok that was yum but I now have a headache. I can't eat candy like I used to. Back in the day I could down several boxes of candy or a jumbo bag of skittles and not even flinch. Well alright, I would taste skittles in my food for the next few days, but I could still do it. Now all it takes is a box of Goobers and a Coke and my brain goes into outer space. Then when I come down, mild headache. Ouch.

Ok back to music. Uhm... Oh yes! The LBC Towne Center. I got a page's worth of sign-ups to my newsletter, which is woot. But at the same time its kind of a slap in the face because I only recently started putting out a newsletter signup form recently at my shows, and I've missed out on probably hundreds and hundreds of potential connections with potential fans. Weak!

So anyway, apparently Krystal was taking a video with her point-and-shoot camera for awhile (I thought she was just REALLY waiting to get a good shot), and a spider crawled on her arm or something. So basically in the middle of my set a girl screams at the top of her lungs and drops her camera just to the side of the stage. It was awesome. Its too bad she wasn't standing more towards where the actual crowd was, because then I might just have looked like the man.

Also at the LBC Towne Center, saw an old buddy Mike who is doing well. Me and Mike were great friends when I worked at Disneyland, doing various parts and characters in the parades there for about 4 years. It was great to see him again and he seemed happy. Its been a long long time since I worked at Disney, and yet it still feels like only a few months ago that I was there. Mike would know what I mean when I say that those 4 years were the best I ever had in my life, even high school. I had literally 100 friends that I cared about in a meaningful way, and would see on a regular basis. Every weekend was a get together or crazy cast party. Everyone there was the life of the party, not just one or two, so parties had a tendency to be a big over-the-top out of control, ridiculous, fun, and/or just plain loud. I look back on my time there frequently with fond memories and always will. Ask me what characters I played sometime, and I'll show you photos of how buff I used to be. Ugh. I'm so flabby now compared to those days. At 5'11", I weighed 185 and had 4% bodyfat. I did almost the whole stack of weights on almost every machine at the gym(except yeah I was weak in chest haha), and did 3 sets of 10 repititions, and would move the weight super slow. Although I'm in better shape now than your average computer nerd, I now weight over 190 and my body fat percentage has.... uhm... well, I dunno. You know how each digit in a binary number doubles from the previous number? I'm sure I've done that somewhere between two and three times.

BLARGH!

What else what else. Brad is still working on the pre-production stuff for my next video, which will now be of the title track on my next album "A Story Forever", instead of "I Want to Be Sad". He plans on telling several distinct stories in it that relate to the lyrics of the song, and I'll be more of a passer-by to those stories this time. Aside from some extra shots of me just playing music in a room or on a rooftop or something. I'm not sure if he's picked his first AD yet but ERIKA and KARI, if you're listening to this, I pick you both.... even though its not up to me and you're not actually picked by me saying that.

Hopefully some new stuff coming up soon too with a fan/buddy/booker that I've been talking to lately. Stephen if you're reading this, shout out to you! With his help I'm hoping to get into more fairs, clubs, corporate gigs, better shows, and even possibly put on some of our own shows. Shit that reminds me I already forgot to send Anna an email. Anna, consider this your notification that you should email me, about the email I was supposed to send to you.

Who else, who else? OH! For those of you getting a blog-update newsletter for the first time. Welcome to my blog, and thank you so much for being at my show and signing up. I hope you're enjoying your CDs, pins, and/or stickers! By the way you have cleaned me out and I have to buy more stuff. Haha, I think that's a good thing though.

OH!!! And I keep seeing people take pictures of the show, without sending in an email. This is my official request to you: If you took a picture of one of my shows, email it in to me! In fact, feel free to take silly photos of yourself doing something silly, with me playing in the background. Or even come visit me after the show and take a picture with me! AND SEND IT TO ME IN AN EMAIL. GRRrrrrrr. I think off the top of my head I can think of several people who took a picture with me after a show, told me they would email it to me, and then never emailed it to me. Blarrghhhhhhhh!! I'm gonna start finding those people on facebook and using their profile picture to photoshop an image of me punching them in the head, or body slamming them at wrestle mania or something.

What else, what else? Ok, I upgraded my blog again to accept something called an "Enclosure", which I think is basically just a way to attach a file to a blog. Whatever. Anyway, to test it out, I think perhaps I'll just leave you with something I just saw recently. Its an advertisement I was shown recently. I won't tell you which social networking site I was on when this ad was shown to me, but what I will tell you is that this social networking site does not allow band/artist profiles to specify an age and gender in their profile.. and yet for some crazy reason still decides to show them... only since I didn't ever specify one, the site chose, by default, to determine that I am a 108 year old Female. You heard me right. When people look at certain parts of my profile, and when advertisements are shown, I am a Female, 108 years old. Check this blog's file attachment to see the kind of advertisements that I have to endure on a daily basis. Enjoy :)

LAST EXTRA SIDE NOTE: Oh dear, I'm up late watching ABC News with the hot middle eastern chick, and apparently someone just got married in an apple store. THAT IS SO GREAT.... or something.

Running out of Gigs, I Scare Normal Humans, and I'm an Evil Multiplayer Gamer by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:21:00 -0800

Happy weekday everyone.

Well, it appears that my live shows are soon running out. My wednesday lunchtime gigs at the LBC Towne Center are officially over. The dude who books for them told me it was time to rotate to a different performer. I suppose I lasted an exceptionally long amount of time... it is supposed to be "Acoustic Wednesdays" over there, but for the last 3 or so months it was pretty much "Mike Peralta Wednesdays", heehee. I did have a ton of fun and made a lot of extra money for music doing it. I only regret not saying goodbye to the security guys and staff over there.... but I didn't know last week was my last show until I asked for a another re-book this weekend. Oh well. They're good guys anyway. Oh yeah, one more regret. I never put out my newsletter sign up form until the very last day. I just figured, "This is just people eating lunch, what do they care about signing up for a musician's newsletter?" so I never put it out... Turns out I was wrong yet again. I put out the signup form on the last day and got like 17 signups, even though the lunch area was relatively dead.

I'm talking to The Block at Orange for another rebook of shows late February or early March. I kind of waited too long to have that conversation with them, so they had already filled up February. Hopefully it works out and I can keep playing there at least once in awhile. This last show I did on Jan-30-2010 wasn't one of my best. My hands were literally so cold that I couldn't feel them and messed up more than one chord, and forgot lyrics and a bunch of boo-boo's. No one seemed to notice though, and again even though it was relatively dead I got about 20 sign-ups to my newsletter.

By the way if you signed up for my newsletter - THANK YOU!

Funny/Sad story: Last week I played a small show at a place called Malone's in Santa Ana. They do something called "Casa de Rock Night" every wednesday, and try to bring in a wide variety of local musicians. My friend anna decided to book the whole show and filled it up with her musician friends. I got to see her and a band called The Fallen Stars perform. I had never seen The Fallen Stars before and I've got to tell you, they're great. They do sort of country-ish, folk-ish, americana-ish stuff (I think), and that night were doing an acoustic/bass duo. I think the main two people are married... which is cute as hell, and besides making me throw up in my mouth a little, kind of made me jealous... because hey, wouldn't it be SO freaking awesome to be married to someone who was your partner in your biggest passion? Someone you could sing love songs to, and share all your fun gigging experiences with? Anyways. Anna was totally totally on her game that night too. I don't know if she had a better compressor or reverb or what on her sound system, but her sound was really lush and dreamy. I was definitely digging it. If you have a chance, check out both their websites, now, goddamn youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

Oh whoops, I forgot the actual story part of my story. Consider that last paragraph just a setup. Anyhow. I did what I believe to be an OK-to-good set (how the F would I really know though, I didn't film it), and even though there were less than maybe 20 people still at the bar by the time I was able to perform, I got a few compliments and newsletter signups. Usually after a show I like to hang around for a bit to talk to admirers/congratulators, and just try to get a good vibe going for myself (yes, selfish, I know). After I get off stage, one of the people who I was talking with was a big fan of Coldplay, and gave me extra special props for pulling off "Yellow" in a way that he felt was awesome. That really pumped me up because Yellow is a hard song for me to do, and I can never tell if I'm on-key or not when I do the real high notes, because well, I'm still working on my falsetto and am just not a great singer in general haha. Well... that was his fatal mistake. Because then he told me he liked my hair cut (it was freshly shaved) as a sort of half-joke because his head was shaved too.

Now, you'd think a normal human being would be able to just say, "Oh thanks!" to a compliment on their hair cut... but not me. Out of a combination of me being a little pumped up and a total weirdo, I kinda sorta accidentally went off on him... just a bit. It went something like this. I slowly and calmly replied something like, "Oh thanks. Hey, how do you find the motivation to shave your head every day?". And then, before he had a chance to answer, I kept talking, gradually talking faster and faster, louder and louder, running around in circles until eventually I was rapidly angrily ranting a monologue that sounded something like, "you see because I just can't get myself to shave it every day, I try but it doesn't work, there's always something better to do in my day, how do you find the motivation? because i'm lazy and I can't even shave my face every day, sometimes i wait months and months and then just pay a salon to shave it, how do you find the motivation every day? because then i go into the salon and ask them to shave it then spend 5 minutes explaining to the lady 'YES, REALLY SHAVE IT, YES NUMBER ZERO, LIKE A RAZOR GOD DAMN YOU', and then they all look at me weird like 'WHAT THE F IS UP WITH THIS GUY COMING INTO A SALON JUST FOR A HEAD SHAVE', how do you find the motivation?, and then sometimes I try shaving it myself and it hurts my head because I push too hard and then i can never shave it evenly and i look like a weirdo with half grown hair"... and on and on.

By the time I was finished talking, he had simply just given up on me. Like, as a human being. I had finished with another "So how do you find the motivation?", and all he did was stare, not even responding. Like how you might stare at a dog whom you just realized has rabies. You're no longer seeing the dog as an intelligent life form, you're just shocked and appalled, and hoping you don't get bitten or robbed or beated or something. It made me feel kind of like a failure at life for a second... but I recovered (ie: ran away) right after that by saying, "Well thanks for the compliments and enjoy your free CD" then walking away.

What else, what else. Oh, my buddy Brad's birthday was last week, so I took him to Dave 'n' busters this last friday night to eat some steak, play a little pool, and play video games. We ended up buying way too many credits and had to leave from sheer fatigue before our card ran out. If you were there you undoubtedly heard two strange men shouting, "F Youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" at the top of their lungs while running each other off the road in various auto racing games.

Favorite part of the night: Sat down to a multi-player race car game, and some dude trying to impress his girlfriend (and who had already been playing before we even sat down) shouts at us, "Hey boys no crying when you LOSE!!!". Then me and Brad immediately run his car off the road right out of the starting gate, softly muttered "f youuuu" to each other, then proceeded to play the rest of the game focused on running each other off the road (rather than speed), and he still never caught up to us. When the game ended he quickly got up and just left. Muahahahaha.

I'll write more soon, I guess. If I can think of something worth writing. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures of my cute sweet doggy that I've littered around this blog entry.

Stevie Wonder, Star Trek, Ninja Ass-Ass, My Newsletter, My Mind, and I've Been Rained Out by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 15:04:00 -0800

Hello all.

Before I start ranting, a quick note. The most wrong thing I've heard this week: A quote on someone's page where they said they were "... happier than Stevie Wonder when valtrex came out".

I woke up the other day with a major stiff lower back, which is really weird and dumb. I don't ever get back pain. I didn't even go to the gym for about 3 days prior, or do any heavy lifting. And I've also been single for over 5 months now and its not like I'm an active booty-caller, so it couldn't have been that either. I just woke up with a stiff back and don't even know what I did to deserve it. Now I'm sort of leaning forward and to the sides every once in awhile at random places throughout the day, with my shoulders all slumped forward like I'm kind of psychopath about to do a dive roll. Maybe I flexed my back in a dream. I'm a semi-sleepwalker, in that if I hear noise in the room while I'm sleeping, I'll sometimes try to talk back to it by moaning or saying things outloud like, "bob?" or "i have to download my pants"... or sometimes I'll jerk around or kick my feet if I'm running in the dream and trip or something. Once, I had a dream where I had to hit something away from me, and in real life I smacked the back of my hand on my headboard SO HARD that I had a solid lump on it for 6 months. The best part was that the pain wasn't even enough to wake me up, just enough to make me remember it happening the next morning.

Here's something funny. I go into border's occasionally to try and pick up a book on programming or music business or marketing stuff (apparently never grammarhhh), and I noticed that Star Trek has its own section. Not just a little section. Its own aisle. A freaking dedicated aisle. For Star Trek. Does anyone else sense overkill here? I suppose I'm not one to talk. I've pretty much seen every single episode of the original star trek, next generation, voyager, deep space nine, and all the movies. And yes, I do love Star Wars slightly more, but you can only watch Revenge of the Sith so many times until people start walking out of the room the instant you begin to utter the words "Hey lets watch....". And yes, I am a huge, huge nerd.

Also, a little while ago I went to see the movie "Ninja Assassin" in the theaters, which by the way, aside from being totally unrealistic, was super kick ass and fun in a sort of Tarantino sort of way. Anyhow, I just found this photo that I took while walking into the theater. Here it is for your enjoyment. Notice the way they abbreviated the title. Now that's what I would call a fun movie.

Something else that has crossed my mind recently is when I log into my website, specifically the section where my mailing list is, I get to see a brief summary of the most recent people to sign up for it, AND a brief summary of the most recent people to leave it. Sometimes, looking through the "unsubscribers" list makes my blood boil just a little. I realize sometimes people unsubscribe just because they're switching emails, or maybe they're still fans but they don't want weekly updates, or whatever... but still.. how do I know? Maybe its the not-knowing that jacks me up the most. I sometimes want to modify my website's admin section to read "Latest Unsubscribing Whores". Or maybe... since I already have it programmed to send me an automatic email-alert to my blackberry when someone subscribes (yes, it happens that infrequently), I could just program the website to automatically send each unsubscriber one final email, that basically consists of the subject line "FUCK" and the body "Youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu".

That reminds me. I don't do enough purely-senseless-rambling blogs anymore. I always mix it up with "real" stuff now... which totally makes my "Mouth Diarrhea" blog section kind of pointless. So starting now, I'm going to start tagging all my blog entries in both the "Journal" AND the "Mouth Diarrhea" sections. Why because its my boat and you don't get to be a pirate unless you have a beard. I said so.

I said so.

OH yeah, music stuff. Uhm. Lets see. My wednesday show at the LBC towne center got rained out. It wasn't actually raining when I got there, the the ourdoor lunch table areas where I was set to play were totally wet and stuff, and sprinkling was supposed to happen soon. The awesome staff there was trying to get me special permission to play music inside the actual food court instead of out in the patio. They couldn't get a hold of the person in charge of it though, so I just took the day off.

Then my freaking show at the block fell through too. Same basic reason. I have to bring all my own equipment to the block and we don't really have a canopy or anything to protect it in case of rain. A few hours before the show, the "precipitation warning" went from 0% to like 10 or 20, so I chickened out. It was probably for the best though, as the person who was going to run my merch table got stuck in traffic and wouldn't make it, plus I woke up with a huge huge soar throat for no reason at all.

Ok well I got the sore throat the day before. I recorded main vocals to my song "My Mind" for my next CD on Friday. For some stupid reason, the second after I was done, I instantly got one of those "i'm getting sick" coughs. I don't get it. Today I feel better though, so tonight's gig is definitely on at the tobacco lounge in riverside.

Hello Again, Peeps! by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 04:21:00 -0800

Hello again my peeps!

I've spent the last week or so working on my blog, which is why I haven't blogged. Uhhhhhh lemme explain that. I am a huge, huge..... huge computer nerd. I even once held several jobs as a programmer. Anywho, long story short, I write all the code for my website, even the blog. Which means, I've spent the last week upgrading the code to be cooler and better and faster and all that stuff. The only thing I seem to be desperately missing (as of this posting) is an actual picture for my icon. I WAS just linking to the one from my profile, but that was kind of a hack. I'm gonna add something where there's a panel interface thingy that lets me/you upload a new picture any time, and it'll automatically go into all existing blogs. Did I mention you can blog on my site, too? All you have to do is sign up for an account. Maybe in the future if I get people blogging on here, I can feature a blog from time to time, or something like that. In the meantime I highly recommend just saying hello in the forums, because that's the best way to get in touch with other fans. You never know who is out there, and its always the hardest to be the first poster... so JUST DO EEEEEET.

Whats the best part about the upgrades I've been doing? A subscription digest, comment notifications, and a subscription management panel. From now on when you comment on a post, and then someone else does, you'll get a short little text email (like how facebook does) that lets you know someone else has commented on a blog entry. That way you're kept more in the conversation than before. Oh, and the subscription manager makes getting unsubscribed to blog stuff a lot easier, too. Oh, and blog pictures work again, so I can start attaching them to blog posts. Woot!

So yeah, back to music stuff. Can I just say I LOVE THE BLOCK AT ORANGE. I've been playing there the past few weeks on Saturday nights, and will probably be playing there either regularly or occasionally for probably the rest of the year... unless I screw it up by falling off the stage or something and taking out the electrical system on my way down. Basically for those of you who don't know, The Block at Orange is a really fun/cool outdoor mall in Orange County. I've lived around the corner of it for most of my life, and have always just loved hanging out but never actually realized I should try to perform there. So far I've been getting a great response, been having a ton of fun, and plan to go back as often as I'm able to.

Ah, and yes, Tasha, thank you so much. Tasha is a friend from high school, and has recently convinced me to start selling merchandise at my shows. So basically she just caused me to spend almost $400 in 2 days on t-shirts, stickers, buttons, a new table, light for the table, cash box, calculator, pens, new CDs, and a larger rolling cart to transport stuff. Ok, the block caused me to buy the cart. They have no close-proximity-to-the-stage loading area, so the first show day I spent like FOURTY MINUTES just walking my stuff from the car to the stage area. I had sore hamstrings the next day.

Ok yeah so, Tasha is awesome. She helped me realize I need to be selling stuff, building up an email list more effectively, passing out show fliers, etc at gigs. OH, and to be more loud and excited during shows. Before her I basically showed up, played music, and then went home. And I talked under my breath a lot at a fast pace between songs, which probably made no sense at all to the audience. Now I try to show my excitement for playing automatically, before I wait for validation from the audience lol. Kind of reminds me of when Jackie Chan mentioned he had to "learn how to talk loud" when he was coming up in show business.

If you'd like to visit Tasha's page, she is one of the LA Derby Dolls, and her stage name is "Cannon Doll X", and she's on the "Sirens" team. Check her out on facebook here.

What else, what else? Oh, I haven't been working on my new album. JOYyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! You can blame the holidays for that. I stopped working on the album for awhile because of them, and then I got caught up on other stuff. OH THAT REMINDS ME!!! I still need to send Brad a non-vocals mix of my song "Fosner". He's making it the main title theme in one of his new projects. Sorry Brad for waiting so long. And if you read this, go ahead and post a comment on this blog so people can visit your profile and know what the name of your new project is. And when I say "this blog", I mean myspace AND facebook, not just my website. Douche.

Since its pretty late, I think I'll leave you all with one final funny note for the evening/morning. I often have absurd conversations with my mom. She is a wonderful mother, but she can often be.... uhm.... motherish (you'll soon see what I mean). And I of course can sometimes get annoyed with her and begin to say nonsensical or rude/playful things. Below is an EXACT QUOTE from a recent conversation I had with her:

Mike: I will fart in your face. I will literally fart. In your face.
Mom: Do you realize how many boxes I have in the garage right now??

Well choke my chicken, happy new year! by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:35:00 -0800

Happy New Year everyone!

Did you all have fun? What the F did you end up doing?

My New Years

As for me, I HAD planned to go out to some big ticketed event or party with my buddy Brad, researched some fun places to go, set some money aside, got all excited about it, and then guess what? I got sick. Hurraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

I figured Brad would have immediately made other plans the second I told him I was sick and couldn't go out and do anything, but offered to let him come over, have a beer or two, watch a movie, and play video games if he wanted to. He totally did. What a great friend. Long story short we ended up screaming things like, "FUCK youuuuuuuuuuuuu", "you're a BITCHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh", and "why don't you Suck ON THISSSSSSSSSSSSSssssssssss" over and over again while we disintegrated each other with energy swords, ran each other over with worthogs, stuck each other with sticky grenades, and anything else we could find. I'm sure we must have used the phrase "you're a bitch!" at least a hundred times each throughout the night. The funny thing is I actually hate competitive "versus" mode games, and we were playing in cooperative campaign mode. But of course, I am a truly evil video game player (as you'll probably hear many times again) and so is Brad. I will literally wait until the very second you get your favorite weapon, congratulate you on it, and then one second later mow you down, off a cliff, with my ghost-bike on turbo speed, fall off the cliff with you, jump out of the ghost before I/we die, and start shooting at you as both our soon-to-be-dead bodies plummet through the air.... all the while laughing hysterically. Brad on the other hand will go into battle with you against some of the built-in computer enemies, gain your confidence as he disappears somewhere off to the side to help you flank the enemy, then right when you're retreating around a corner to recharge your shields he'll pop into your field of vision, yell "peek-a-boo FUCK YOU!!!!!" and put a sticky-grenade on your knee. Then he'll run away laughing and shouting things like, "take it bitch up yours!" and "fucking die whore die" into your ear at about 200 words a second. He doesn't even seem to care that he has just ruined all the effort we just put into getting to a certain point in the level, because we both end up blowing each other up and dying. Oh, and he likes to blow up whatever vehicle you're currently in. Even if you/we really need that vehicle for the level we're on. While laughing. Hysterically.

So yeah, no big new years eve party or vocal recording of any kind for me in the last few days. But had a ton of fun. I kind of almost preferred it to one of the parties we had in mind. Well, unless we would have found some awesome DJ to see like Paul van Dyk or something.

Fosner

Brad just asked me to render him a no-vocals version of my track "Fosner", which again is a song about marrying Jodi Foster and golfing with Kevin Costner. Its one of the dumbest yet coolest rock songs I've ever written, and wreaks of the kind of insanity you get when you drink, way too much, then get high on the simple fact that you don't care if you sound stupid, so you start ranting insanities and rock out to the sound of your own cock flopping around. Well maybe not the cock part. Depending on who you are. I think the film Brad is going to be using it for is "Greenlit". Its going to be really funny and I was on set with the actors for a couple days and they're all really funny and talented. You guys should check it out when its released.

Resolutions

My new years resolutions are.... well uhm... I dunno, I really just have a few ideas. I'll just list them here I guess

Finish my album! I really really really really need to finish my album soon. I'm so close, too... I just need to clean up and perfect a lot of things, and decide what's staying in and what's getting thrown out. Plus I probably need several months to get it pressed, get it on iTunes and stuff, get it reviewed, and all that other crud before I actually make it available to the general public. ACK!
Stay away from the cheese. I picked up most of my 'gut' from eating way too much junkfood, and half of it was cheese-based. I've been getting back into shape again lately, but the other day I ate about 3 grilled cheese sandwiches in a row, and when I was done, I wanted three more. I know I'm a somewhat big guy but still, that's out of control.
Start putting up a new cover-video once a month, at least. I'm not sure if I can really do this one, but I keep coming close, but then get distracted by other stuff. I have about 5 cover songs in my head right now that I'd love to record, but I don't feel like I'm good enough at them yet to justify a recording. Oh yeah, that's my next resolution:
Practice more! Sometimes I get into the bad habit of practicing only-at-gigs... which is totally dumb, I know. I did do a little finger-picking while I was waiting for Halo to get going, though.
Another video with Brad. Brad of course shot my last music video and plans on doing a couple more for both our resumes. I think the next one he wants to do is "I Want to Be Sad" off my next/upcoming album. The track's already been mixed down and mastered, so its ready to go.
Get more mall gigs. I can't stress this enough. Bar gigs are cool. But mall gigs are so so so so cool because they come with a built-in crowd, there's usually more budget for the performer, and its just fun as hell to play outdoors and see people stopping by to check out what I'm doing. I love meeting new people and potential fans, and having someone come up to me after a gig and telling me that I've made their day, pretty much makes my day.
Associate myself with one or more worthwhile charities. I'd really love to play charity events for some charity that I believe in. Normal gigs are feel-good enough as it is. Maybe I could like, get naturally high off doing a charity gig. Or something
Get to the gym more. This kind of goes along with the stay-off-the-cheese one. I've been going more often than say, 2008, but I also have a ways to go before I have a beach body again. I'm almost there. Blargh.
DJ'ing!! You might not know this about me but I used to DJ under various names. I'd mostly spin popular music at so-cal parties for free, under the condition that I was allowed to play anything I wanted... which of course ended up being progressive trance, with some of my own homemade progressive trance tracks thrown in. I used to love watching drunks dance around to stuff I had written. I just bought a new midi controller that operates just like a dual set of turntables - it has alllll the controls, but plugs into my laptop so I can have an easier time managing and transporting my song library. Vinyls are a pain in the ass, especially when they start to wear. Also, when I render my own tracks, its nice to be able to throw it into a set that night. So yeah, I'd like to get back into underground DJ'ing more often. That was fun.

Perhaps that's all the resolutions I should list at the moment. I have a ton more, as always, and as always, I won't keep all of them... but I guess the point is that SOME of them are kept, others are at least progressed on, and the rest will be re-thought or re-promised later.

OK so I need more activity to this site. Please help me out by participating and adding your voice to the discussion. Post a comment to my blog or say hi in my forums.

What are your new years resolutions?

I Suck at Blogging by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 03:20:00 -0800

Regarding blogs, I am teh sux.

Alright so uhm... how the f do I start this. I'm going to try and get to the point of this blog really quick, so I'll just say it. Its been over a year since I've written anything meaningful into a blog and I the entire time that has gone by, I've known and hated that fact. The thing is, and I suppose this is common among musicians, its hard for me to post up on the fly, just as I type, allowing it to be imperfect and less than perfect. I keep getting ideas for blogs, or little ideas that I want to tell everyone about, but then I keep waiting to post them because I want to write this big huge well-thought-out mini novel or something. Plus for some stupid reason, I'm terrified of repeating myself.... like, if I post once about recording my new CD, I instantly imagine that everyone will turn to hate and disgust of me for mentioning the same idea a few days or weeks later. The same goes for misspellings. And bad grammar. And stories that drone on without being super interesting.

After reading the infinity-th marketing/musician book that told me to knock it off and just post up some silly blogs, I think its time for me to bite the bullet and do it. So people, I'm sorry if I sound stupid from this point on. I'm sorry if I misspell shit, or write totally nonsensical uninteresting keyboard diarrhea. I'm just going to have to get over it. And so you are you.

glarrghhhh SNARPHLAPS and piss.

OK moving along. So what's new? Holy f, a lot since my last blog. I think I'll just try to summarize some stuff that I can remember right now, and elaborate as time goes on. If you guys want to know anything specific, please ask via a comment or a forum post in my main website MikePeralta.com … and yes, I'll be syndicating my blogs from now on, so only god knows where the hell you're actually reading this from. Registration to my website is free and quick, and I won't share your email address or anything with anyone else without your permission.

A brief list of what the F is new with me (ok actually I lied, this list is huge but I didn't realize it until I got to the end of it):

Music Video

I recently completed my first 'real' music video with an indie director. At the moment this blog was posted, you can watch it on my front page. If you can't find it, please punch yourself in the face and then go visit this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KDE-54HkRQ … The video was shot around September of 2009 by director Bradley Gaurano, who you can contact through the youtube account that the video is hosted by. Other people who starred or helped out were Asher Blumberg, Erika Drazen, Chelsea Edmunson, Kellie Parker, Mike McNamee, Jonathan Coco, Kristina Citi, and Nadia Khalil. The whole thing was an awesome experience and everyone involved did an excellent job and was wonderful to work with and be around. The song we did was “Wasting All My Time”, which will be one of the tracks on my next album, “A Story Forever”.

My Next Album– A StoryForever

Speaking of my next album... yeah... I'm finally making progress towards that. I definitely figured out the title. Its going to be called... drum roll... “A Story Forever”. Yes, I just told you that a few lines ago. No, its not any less cool now. This CD won't be all-acoustic as “Music of My Youth” was, and will include more 'full band' sound stuff, like distorted guitar, drums, and other things. Some of the songs will be acoustic but have light drums behind them, or at least a shaker and a bass guitar like some John Mayer song (I love John Mayer by the way, don't hate). Some of the tracks that I've fully completed are:

I Want to Be Sad – A song that, for me, helps to remind me that sadness is a chemical addiction I once had, and sometimes relapse into. I sing it to fondly remember my past and to remember that I'm a recovering sad-a-holic.
Fosner - A song about marrying jodi foster and golfing with kevin costner, yes I can be quite mad sometimes
A Story Forever – Title track, baby!
Dark Over Here – Kind of a dark groovy evil sounding track, that paints a bit of a story about how far a troubled mind might reach for self comfort. You'll understand when you hear it.
Wasting All My Time – Nice lovey-dovey acoustic/drummy song about wasting all your time with the wrong person, and not really realizing it until you've fallen for them. This is obviously the song playing during my music video.

Other songs that are ALMOST finished but not quite, due to needing a laydown or redo of vocals or some instrument, a rethink of arrangement, or a final mix are:

Dumb Bobby – A song I wrote when my old friend bobby kept asking me when I was going to write him a song. See what happens when you bug your musician friends!!?
My Mind – A Touching song about the inability to cope with pain or hardships. I'm going to add some full orchestral arrangements to this one in the back, to try and give it a nice epic feeling
Once Sultan – Funny little evil sounding song with resentful distorted guitar chops and a full drum kit, which really isn't about anything evil at all.
Dump – A song about... taking a dump. Well, more like the general hijinx that ensue when you have a bunch of friends who are entertainers. The major thing I need to redo are my vocals (flat, lame performance on my first try), and possibly a crowd noise shouting “HEY!!! HO!!!”, because when I originally tried to record a room full of people doing it, it was at a party and ended up having a lot of background noise and timing problems (my bad!).
Hells Had Hired – A loud powerful track about the typical scenario where someone leads you on and doesn't really let you in on the joke until the last second where they disappear completely.
I'm Such a Drag (Just Sometimes) – A track similar in idea to “I Want to Be Sad”, but more powerful, rock-ish, loud, distorted, live-sounding. Less electronica than “I Want to Be Sad”.
My Dork – High school love, she is my dork, and I'm her shoe, I know I'm just a weirdo but I don't care, because she is MY dork! This one has kazoos in it and I'm going to have to try really hard to do it justice. Its really a fun song sometimes.
I Want You With Me – Another hard-ish sounding nirvana-esque song for those times when someone doesn't actually believe you when you say you want to be together.
Sanguine Eyes – oh my fucking god I'm getting tired of writing these descriptions
To Beautiful Eyes - “Look I so dull, to beautiful eyes?”
Ugly – Sitting in my room again, try to find the problem's end.
Our Light

And of course a few other songs. I really want the album to have a ton of songs but I'm not sure how far I'll be able to go before I give in and just call it finished.

By the way, the CD is going to be mastered by the world-f-ing-famous mastering house “Fat N SassyMastering”, at Derickson studios. If you don't know what mastering is, its where they take your fully mixed tracks (like one stereo file that would play on your CD player), and do magic to it, through a ton of applied science like equalization, normalizing, limiting, compression, spectral analyzing and sculpting, phase correction, and a bunch of things that just make me cringe when I think about how hard it would be for me to learn it myself. In a nutshell, often times the biggest reason that your finished/mixed music still sounds amateur and not “pro”, even when you've put a lot of hard work into your music and used great equipment/musicians, is because it still needs to be mastered. You just have to see it to believe it really. Well, hear it. Fat N Sassy is not only going to master my next album, but also did my debut acoustic album “Music of My Youth”. He took a noise-ridden, sad, amateur sounding album and turned it into the beautiful gem it is today.

Live Shows

I've been blessed lately with the opportunity to play a TON of shows in the Long Beach and Tustin areas, particularly at two awesome malls – The Long Beach Towne Center, and The District in Tustin. I was lucky enough to get hooked up with a kick ass booker named Jay who has been gracious enough to keep rebooking me for the better part of the end of 2009 at these two malls. I even got a regular weekly lunchtime gig at the LBC towne center playing to the peeps eating their lunch outside. They call it “Acoustic Wednesdays”, or something I think. I just love it.

Also I get to play with my good friend Anna from “Without The Blonde” in January at a bar called “Malone's”, which should prove to be pretty fun. Anna is the main booking person for this gig, and she is always a great musician and does an excellent job of making everyone feel welcome, loose, and happy. I think the thing is called “Casa de Rock” nights, and has no cover. Check out my “Shows” page for all my upcoming gigs!

What I like to do lately, and this might be a major misstep on my part but I don't care, is I like to burn FULL copies of my acoustic album “Music of My Youth” onto little lightscribe CDs, and then give them away 100% for free at live shows. People usually think they're getting a half-cd or a demo, but when they get home they soon realize that its the full actual CD., WITH mp3s for their computers and ipods. And that gives me a giddy feeling inside. What I usually do is put a tip bucket out next to the CDs and just tell people the CDs are totally free. Then most people who take a CD end up putting something in the tip jar too... which is great because I end up having enough money at the end of the night to pay for the CDs I made, plus a little left over to buy more music equipment or cables or something. This year alone, because of all the shows I've been doing, I am 100% sure that I've given away over 500 of these things to new potential fans. That is something better than I had ever imagined I would achieve, and no matter how long I play music, I will always be thankful for these recent few months.

OH!! And tonight I played a show, too. Day after Christmas at the LBC Towne Center. There was a huge huge crowd in line to see the movies so I had a nice captive audience there and with other people hanging out waiting in the food court and bench area. I wonder if it was for that Alec Baldwin movie, but I sure hope not. Just kidding you're cool Alec and I'll probably end up watching it on DVD later.

I also am usually lucky enough to have a small group of people clapping or sitting and listening to my songs as I play my set there, but tonight I had an extra enthusiastic group of girls shouting at me during my set and waving their cell phones in the air when I played “Good Riddance” by Green Day, which almost caused me to bust out laughing and almost mess up the song haha. Then when I was done they asked to take a picture with me and it just about made my night. I only wished I had something else to give them besides my CD, like stickers or a t-shirt or something. I really need to get on that.

Hurray for cute girls at shows!

OCRockRadio.com

I recently was interviewed and did a live 3-song performance on OcRockRadio.com, which was awesome because the DJ was a cool friendly guy who did his job well and brings a lot of class and intrigue to his show, while at the same time allowing me to stretch my wings a little and ramble on like a dork. I don't think they have posted up my pictures or audio yet, but if you comment this post or ask in the forums I'll send you a copy of the interview.

Fan Pictures

I'm really into, and have been trying to build up, my fan pictures in the last half year or so. What is a fan picture? Its just a picture of a fan being silly/cute/hot/crazy, who has a reference to me somewhere in the picture. Like, they're holding my CD, or they have my name written on their arm, or they put duct tape on their hat and wrote my name on it with a sharpie. Or sometimes when a fan takes a picture with me after a show and just sends it in. I love fan pics to death, and if you send me one, I will fully full on send you a free copy of my CD via email/mp3s.

Fin

Well folks... I think I'm at the end of my leg here. I've been typing for almost an hour and I am just about sick of it. Ok I'm lying, I love hearing myself talk and watching myself type is almost as good. But my hands are really tired now and I think perhaps I should save more updates for future blogs.

Please subscribe to my blog at MikePeralta.com so you can stay up to date on what I'm doing!

~Mike Peralta

PS, I'm sorry if I suck at spelling, storytelling, or if I stopped in the middle of a paragraph to start talking about something else. You're just going to have to deal.

~Mike

PS, Whoops, I already signed my name

~Mike

Did you know? We are all slowed down in time. by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 05:15:00 -0700

I've received a few emails from friends and fans that I should write in my blog more. I hate to break this to all of you, but I am an absolutely horrible writer. I have no idea how to tell a good story. And whats worse, my writing style actually matches my speaking style, which means its impossibly hard to follow. Green.

But enough of that. Here's a science fact I've been thinking about today. It basically goes like this. Science has proven, through various tests in acceleration chambers, satellites, and other crap I can't recall at the moment, that the faster an object moves, the slower time passes for it. Meaning, if you were able to move at a very fast velocity, the people around you who are stationary will age much faster than you do. This effect is most noticeable for objects traveling very close to the speed of light.

Ever heard about that science scenario, where if you traveled to the moon and back at close to the speed of light, by the time your trip was over, your newborn baby would be an old man, and you'd still be the same age?

I was never told the exact reason why this happens, but I have a theory. Personally I believe that if you were able to zoom in with some kind of super-microscope and view the very smallest parts of matter, you would see that they are all basically zooming around at the speed of light. Like for instance, electrons are actually said to be "everywhere at once" in their orbit, and only when actually observed do they materialize somewhere, and only some of the time (read up on: electrons as probability waves). If you ask me, that seems like what is happening is those electrons are just zooming the hell around all every which way at incredible speeds. And I bet everything else is moving, spinning, or whatever.

How does that really relate to the effect velocity has on the passage of time? Well, I see time as change. Things just change. Time is just things changing. How fast would you 'change', meaning how fast would all your molecules and atoms and shit be able to spin and run around? Well, the maximum speed possible of course, which would be the speed of light.

This is why I think velocity effects the passage of time. If time is just change, and that change is all your matter just running and spinning around on itself at the speed of light, and nothing can ever exceed the speed of light, then guess what.... wait for it... the faster you're traveling in a certain direction, the less speed your matter has to spin around and stuff. Which means the slower time passes for you. Imagine you're absolutely still: time will pass for you at full speed. Now imagine you're somehow able to travel at exactly the speed of light: No speed would be leftover for your molecules and atoms and shit to spin around and stuff, therefore you would be frozen in time. Get it?

The best part is that no matter how fast or slow time is passing for you, you would never tell the difference. Why? Because if your whole body is slowed down, that would include your brain and the processes it relies on to provide you with a perception of time in the first place.

Now here is the best part. The part that I've been waiting to tell you. We are alreadyslowed in time. Right now. At this very moment. You are slowed down in time. You're actually going in slow motion, right now. We just don't notice it, because everyone is doing it at the same time, uniformly. How do I know this? Well, velocity slows time right? You think you're stationary sitting in front of your computer right now? You're not.

The earth, right now, is spinning at about 1,000 miles per hour. The Earth is flying around the Sun at about 50,000 miles per hour. The Sun itself it rotating about the center of the Milky way at a similar speed. The milky way itself is flying through space at around 500,000 miles per hour. And thats only the stuff we've detected so far. Who even knows if the center of the universe is also moving.

So think about it. You're traveling right now at an incredible speed through space. We don't notice it because the perception of speed is relative. Everything around us is traveling at the same speed, so we just don't notice in our daily lives. We're slowed down by that speed, and time is passing slower for us than a stationary object in space. Such an object would observe us as appearing to be moving around in slow motion. We just don't notice it, again because perception of time is relative.

For the hecklers out there... I do realize that 500,000mph isn't very close to the speed of light. 1 Mile an Hour is about 0.44704 Meters Per Second. The speed of light is like 300,000,000 Meters Per Second. That means 500,000MPH is about the Speed of light times .0007451, or .07% the speed of light. To see a very noticeable effect you'd have to get into the 90% range or more. But still, its something. There is a difference. Perhaps if you were hanging out with a friend who was immune to velocity's effect on time, they might seem slightly hyper or weird haha. I dunno. And also, my speed estimates are pretty rough. I think 500,000 might be more like 650,000. If you want the exact numbers, wiki is your friend. You can also look up the exact formulas to calculate how speed will warp the passage of time by looking up a formula called the "Lorentz Transformation"

Well I think thats all the thought I have for now. I hope that was somewhat enjoyable and digestible.

What does this have to do with music? I have no idea. Its five fucking fifteen am. Goodnight.

~Mike Peralta

No on Prop 8 (And She's the California Constitution) by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 01:10:00 -0700

No on prop 8!

"Drugs" - Why I am not a director by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:15:00 -0700

Disclaimer: Yes I am weird.

So I'm sitting here mixing music in my headphones, then I look up to see part of a Julia Roberts chick-flick. It seems to be a touching scene where her and a guy seem to be reconciling their differences. Soft romantic music is playing and they sit on a bed under the moonlight. I decide to watch for a second with music playing lightly into my headphones.

All of the sudden, the man gently caresses her face and I hear him grufly and slowly whisper the word "drugs...", and I burst into insane laughter.

This is why I am not a director.

I know he probably said something more appropriate for the scene, but I couldn't help imagining how wonderful the movie would be if he had actually grumbled that word instead. For a moment, a brief career in film flashed before my mind's eye. One where I took on the role of directing serious tear-jerking scripts, and then abruptly spoiled them all with completely nonsensical lunacy. For instance, a scene where the male lead softly shouts, "DRUGS!!!!" into his lovers ear during the moment where he would be expected to confess his undying love for her. Then he stares at her with an intent half-surprised glare as she is left speechless to a slow fade-out and the rolling of credits.

The cast and crew would be running around screaming, "WHAT THE FUCK!! This makes absolutely no sense at all!" and I would be scream/laughing myself to tears. Gophers and producers would be shouting obscenities and choking each other, crew would be having sword fights with boom mics, and paper documents would be steadily flying through the air. The movie-going audience would walk out with puzzled looks on their faces, possibly running into walls on the way out or slipping into comas once they got home and lay down to really think about the movie.

Sidenote: Is it a huge coincidence that the new "Bonnie" show just came on while I typed this, and I read the logo her segment, "Mail From You Guys" as "Mail From Your Drugs", or is there something now seriously wrong with me?

~Mike

Music Video:: Wasting All My Time - First day of shooting by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:15:00 -0700

Well its about 48 hours after the first day of shooting for my music video. In case you didn't know, its for my original song, "Wasting All My Time". We're doing an all-new remixed version with drums/bass/strings/guitar, but you can find the original acoustic version on my main website (www.MikePeralta.com) as a free download. If you haven't heard it yet, go check it out. Its a song about lost love, or maybe love that was never meant to be in the first place, and the sadness/struggle one goes through in realizing this and moving on.

Bradley Gaurano has taken on the task of directing this music video, of elaborating on this song by adding his own creative vision to it through video, and turning it into a new piece of art.

This last Saturday (September 20th, 2008) was our first day of shooting. The day started off at about 5:30 AM as I woke up from about 2 hours of sleep. I'm used to going to bed very late, and as usual didn't plan very well ahead in regards to adjusting my sleep schedule for the coming work day. I should have gone to sleep at 10pm but didn't hit the hay until about 1 or 2 am, and even then I barely slept at all.

After packing up a few things I went over to meet with the cast and crew. Everyone had a wonderful personality and was very easy to get along with. They were all so full of energy and excitement. They gave me the feeling that we were about to create something beautiful and artful that day, and I could tell that each of them would be bringing their own personal passion and ideas into the shoot. The cameramen were talking about all the various lighting strategies over the camera and floor monitors, the makeup artist was applying her craft to each of the opening cast members, the assistants and floor managers were hurriedly getting everyone and everything into position, and Becka (the video's leading lady) was excitedly talking with everyone about the upcoming day of work and fun. Brad, the director, already had everything well in motion and was spouting hurried instructions back and forth as he pulled everything together for our opening take.

Our first scene was a short hike up a nearby mountain where I would be standing and sitting while singing and playing guitar on top of a huge boulder overlooking the city. Man.... that hike took alot longer than we thought it would. I was dying just from carrying my guitar and coat, but some of the crew were carrying huge HD cameras, full-on steadicam setups, reflectors, water bottles, and tons of stuff.... and meanwhile I was the one busting out into a sweat! The climb was tough and full of complaints, but it was fun, helped to wake us all up, and broke the ice for us as the entire cast/crew began to connect and get into "the zone". When we finally got to where we were supposed to be, I had to climb up several huge rocks with giant gaps in between them (can anyone say scary) to get to the perfect boulder. Ok, actually pretty much half the crew was able to get up the same rocks too, and quicker... but it was still scary! After I guess an hour or so of singing and playing, we headed back down.

I think this blog might get super boring if I were to go through all the tiny details and scenes, and I'm not sure how much of the plot and details I'm supposed to be giving away just yet so I'll just leave this blog as a teaser and just say that we shot for about 19 hours in many different situations. Some with me, some without, some with me playing and singing, some with me attempting to be an actor. Man, I sure hope my "sad" scenes come off as sad and/or sexy, and not totally psycho! Perhaps acting classes are in order for me.

The never-ending day finally... uhm... ended, with a pseudo party scene in Corona, where some of the crew was able to join us in an on-camera role. We brought in pizza+soda in for everyone to eat and get some energy going, and bought some beer to use as props for the scene. When we finally realized that the beer cans probably shouldn't be showing a logo on-camera, many people poured their beer into clear cups, and then shortly realized that the beer could easily be consumed... and eventually... the "scene" kind of turned into a party of its own, as the cast began to become slightly intoxicated from our "props" and running amok throughout the set. Boys and Girls began flirting. Friends began talking in extremely loud "party voices". People were playing pool in adjacent rooms without instruction from our director. Others were disappearing or standing in the wrong places, or failing to hear/comprehend instructions from the director. Even I kept ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time and having to run at full speed to be where I was supposed to be when Brad the director called. In spite of the chaos, Brad did a magnificent job of maintaining control and keeping everyone on track without causing himself an Aneurysm.

At the end of the day everyone was tired yet very accomplished. Each person did an excellent job and brought their own input, creativity, and manpower to the table. I'm sure Becka will shine in her role opposite me, and I hope my part in the video will help with the overall flow and mood of the story.

Having gone well over our allotted time for the day and not coming near completion of all our scenes, there will be a second day of shooting! I'm going to try and keep you guys posted on whats happening, and when the video will be released too.

We will also be planning a "wrap party" once the video is done, where you will be invited to come hang out with the cast/crew, see the DVD for the very first time, and even have a copy of the video put onto all your little ipods and cellphones. Hurray!

Just a funny note by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:45:00 -0700

I hit snooze so many times this morning that I think my alarm just gave up on me.

Innocent Bystander by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 19:15:00 -0800

Just a quick thought/ponder/question...

Today I was doing some of my usual things (surfing the internet, working on a little music, and being a myspace friend whore), when I fell into one of those black holes where you can't stop yourself from looking at everyone's myspace profile... like everyone in the entire world... just clicking and clicking and clicking until you forget what you're even doing.

Anyways, in the middle of it all, I ended up on some lady's profile. She was slightly older, but still in shape. She had one lone comment from a younger girl that simply said, "You are beautiful. How do you stay so thin?".

I had an uncontrollable urge to post my own comment. It was going to say, "Shes asian, you dumb slut". I didn't end up doing it, but the feeling was so strong. I was also laughing. Way too hard.

Is there something wrong with me, other than the fact that I often am a huge, huge ass?

Balls by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:55:00 -0800

Today I called Fry's Electronics, asking when they closed that night. I thought it was 10pm. When the nice lady on the other end said 9, I accidentally exclaimed, "Balls!"

Quick note to self by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:45:00 -0800

Quick note to self: [If ever going to a barber for a shave] Before sitting down, check for a trap door.

The Bodyguard by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 04:00:00 -0700

So I'm up late, mixing music in my headphones, watching tv, and bein a nerd on my laptop. I'm watching "The Bodyguard" with Whitney Houston and Kevin Bacon... uh I mean Costner and I pull up the digital cable tv guide just because sometimes its fun to read the program description and browse around other channels while you watch. Guess what the description said?

QUOTE
The Bodyguard
1:45am - 4:45am
**1/2 '92. He falls for actress singer someone wants dead.
END QUOTE

WOW, what a chillingly magnificent work of art. It must have been the writers first day on the job. Thats all I have to say about that. Sidenote: Did anyone else fall for Whitney Houston in that movie? And for those of you who did, are you now in the year 2007 totally humiliated for it? Just a thought.

By the way, I'm up doing a new mix of "Dark over here" if any of you remember that song. It almost made it onto Memories of Green but I hadn't quite figured out how I wanted to do it. At this moment, I have a nice acoustic guitar and a regular rock sounding drum kit. The vocals might have to be redone, as I stupidly tried recording them when I was sick, and as a result didn't quite extend all my notes as long as I would have wanted. Oh well, almost 2 down, 10 or so more to go!

Old Movies VS New Ones by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:20:00 -0700

Today I realized that I like older movies way more than new ones. Sure, some new movies are super duper kick ass dot com, like Terminator 2&3, Xmen, Lord of the Rings, and ones like those.... but overall movies made in the 70's and 80's are just more "real". Not so much in their stories or acting, but just the way the film comes off. Back then special effects weren't as good, cameras were more wobbly, sound was more realistic. When I watch a new movie, its like watching a comic or my imagination, where every scene is perfect, ever move each actor makes is flawless, the film is too clear, the sound is all dubbed in a sound studio. Older movies are much closer to the kind of film I could make on my own home video camera.

Do ya feel me?

New Beginnings by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:55:00 -0700

So here I am at 5 o'clock, watching the last few minutes of Dr Phil, minutes ago escaping a 3 hour long addiction to Law and Order. My head is freshly shaved, I just did some pull-ups for the first time in over a month (god I miss being buff!). I'm feeling pretty good.

Last night I had practice #2 in hopefully a long string of rehearsals and gigs with a drummer named Kevin. We got together through a mutual friend and so far it seems like we're going to be starting my next project together. Since it seems like Project PS is no more (at least for the time being), I'm going to start up my own solo project. Of course it'll be pretty much exactly the same thing as project ps was - all my own original songs, spiced up a little for/by the other band members, but I have a really good feeling about it. Kevin is one of the best drummers I've ever worked with, and really has his shit together. He also seems really into the project and has a mind for success. As soon as I can find a bassist to fill in the empty bottom end of our act, we plan on gigging again. That'll be so much fun.

In somewhat related news, Vadim's remix of "Ugly" has been signed by a label called, "Neuroscience Recordings" in the UK, and should be appearing in the not-so-distant future. They wanted to sign both the remix and my original track, but because of some contractual issues with my original track, we decided to take a different approach. Since his remix is so unique that it pretty much qualifies as an original track, thats what hes calling it. I'm instead granting him the right to use the vocals I recorded for him (the same lyrics/melody that I use in my original version) for his mix, and I myself am retaining all rights to my original tracks. I'm gonna try and get a few copies of the vinyl (for free if possible, hahaha) to show off to my friends and family here... but isn't it cool to think that I might possibly be spun at some rave or club in the UK or even here in the US? You can visit vadim's website <a href="http://www.MidavMusic.com" target="_blank">here</a>.

Anyhow thats pretty much it for now. I just wanted to touch base with you all and let you in on a little but of whats happening right now. Keep in touch!

~Mike

Sneezing on my Pizza by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 02:45:00 -0700

Okay so how about a few minutes ago, I was trying not to sneeze on my laptop and ended up sneezing directly on my pizza. IDIOT !!!!

Being drunk is great because.... by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 18:10:00 -0700

Being drunk is great because it becomes very easy to convince myself that I'm super cool. Last night at about 12:30 am, my buddy and I had a few drinks drinks together. After a couple coronas and a shot of patron I thought I was ok. A few minutes later I got totally consumed with the feeling of intoxication. I miss being drunk. I should do it more often haha. Within minutes, I had that stupid silly stretched-face smile look going on, and I literally started thinking to myself, "wow check me out... i'm so cool. I'm like, coooooool and stuff".

Hurray!

Lost Cause by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 15:50:00 -0700

I've been practicing Beck's "Lost cause"... can't wait to get good enough at it that I can record it on my webcam and show all of you. My voice is still kinda weak from being sick a few weeks ago, and of course totally trying to yell through it and jacking my throat up big time. Lame. Did anyone else out there think that beck was saying, "MAYBE i'm a lost cause" ? ... because thats what I thought. Apparently its "BABY i'm a lost cause". I've been humming it the wrong way for years. Weak!

Have fun farting yourself to sleep by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 01:30:00 -0700

Whenever someone in my family is about to go to bed, I am always compelled to say, "Alright, have fun farting yourself to sleep". Especially my mom. My sister hates it, which I love, and my gramma usually just calls me a knucklehead or something. I haven't said it much to my extended family or even close friends, but I plan to.

I say it in a nice way though :)

Alright i'll admit it by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 03:25:00 -0700

Alright dammit I'll come clean. I'm the one who made this website. I think sometimes I'm just afraid to admit how huge of a nerd I am, and how much I love to just create things. Yeah music is my main passion, but when I'm not doing that, I always have to be making something or figuring something out. Well, that or xbox. I used to think to be a musician you had to pretend to be all about music and nothing else. Now that everything is all "reality tv" i think its alot better to show more sides of you. Well, this is my nerdy side. I have alot of those (sides), especially my lazy one.

And yes I have to be up in 4 hours!

~Mike