MikePeralta.com - Blog Entries

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

When All Else Fails, Make Captain Picard a PB&J by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:32:00 -0800

People tell me they love how random my blogging is, so I'm going to continue that tradition by telling you about one of the lamest/awesomest things I've ever done. You might know I'm a Trekkie by now (sort of), in that I've watched like EVERY single episode of EVERY star trek series that has ever come out, and I am proud to admit that, except that I don't really go to conventions or have posters or anything. I just like the episodes. ANYHOW, what I often like to do is use series' as an excuse to spend time with my mom and/or sister. I've been doing this for a long time now, and gone through tons of series' like "Sex and the City" (Or sex in the city, I forget), "The Sopranos", "Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia", "I Dream of Genie", "Bewitched"... the list goes on and on basically.

And if you don't know it already, I'm a huge, huge nerd, and I really enjoy doing dumb stupid nerdy things. You know how lately its been fashionable for people to say, "Yea I'm SUCH a dork!".... but the people who say it are always half kidding, and you can tell that they think their dorkyness makes them somehow cool? Like, they're just pretending to be dorks but still holding back to maintain an image?

WELL

I am a REAL dork. I don't care if I do something that shatters my image, or makes my friends feel embarrassed and sorry for me, or even destroys a chance I have with a nice new pretty girl (chances are if she is turned off by my dorkiness, I didn't want her anyway). My dorkiness involves things like intentionally tripping over a chair and making my fall look very real, and then trying to hold an embarrassed face and forcibly make my cheeks flush so everyone in the room points and laughs and has a huge laugh. Or maybe saying the total wrong thing at the wrong time, and pretending not to understand what I said that was so funny. Or maybe just being into something that is completely ridiculous. For me, if I'm able to make everyone else around me laugh, even if its at my expense and they have no idea I'm kidding, then I get a really huge big awesome warm fuzzy feeling inside. So yeah anyway... I'm a true dork, not a faker.

Back to the story. There's this X-Men video game for the old-school xbox that I used to play with the family, and in between missions there's this one scene where Charles Xavier (Xavier is my dog Freddy's middle name by the way... Froderick Xavier Peralta) follows around your character around through the xmen mansion while you learn to open doors and grab items and stuff. But the thing is... his wheelchair... is turbo charged or something. Like, if you make your character turn a corner just right to get away from him for a few seconds, he'll come zooming around the corner, shaking up and down like a bat out of hell on his little motorcycle wheelchair, and glue himself right back onto your heels. He just won't leave your character alone. And when he follows you or chases you (or the character "Allison"), he kind of looks angry... or agitated, or something. Think of how a parent starts talking very quickly and shaking their hands in frustration at a bratty child.

Now imagine me, my mom, my sister, and my sister's boyfriend, spontaneously, and for no real reason at all, simultaneously imitating him, in a Captain Picard voice, and saying things like "Allison!!! Allison!! Get back he-arr and make me a PB and Jaaaaaaaay. Allison!!! Where ahhhhhh you go-eeeeeeeng. Wheresssss myyyyyyy pb, and jaaaaaaaaaay".

I have no idea why we chose to pretend that Picard/Xavier was annoyed and chasing Allison because he wanted a PB and J sandwich... or why we thought it was so funny.. or why we did it for so long... but mind you me you... we laughed our asses off for a straight 20 minutes.

Try it. Right now wherever you're at, try to imagine Captain Jean-Luc Picard in a turbocharged wheelchair chasing YOU around the house, buzzing around your heels, demanding that you make him a PB&J in a thick angry thespian accent. Just try not to laugh. I dare you!

Ok long story short (too late, yay!!). When I was watching all the "Star Trek the Next Generation" episodes with my mom years ago, I decided to have a "Picard PB&J Day". Which basically meant that we made PB&J sandwiches, watched several episodes of Star Trek, and each person was only allowed to talk in a Captain Picard accent until they finished their own PB&J.

I TOLD YOU I WAS A DORK!

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

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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.

Khloe and PETA by Mike Peralta

Mike Peralta — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 19:45:00 -0800

Has anyone seen the new PETA ad, featuring Khloe Kardashian naked? It might just be me, but when I look at that ad, all I can think about is how much better she looks after being photoshopped than in person.

Isn't this more a statement against female self-esteem, than a statement against animal cruelty?

Just wondering...

PS: I just heard a quick interview of her saying she wants to embrace her curves. Uhm... Khloe... again, I don't think those are your curves.