Well, I said I'd never do it...

Well, I said I'd never do it. I really did. I said it when I was in high school, watching some ungodly LoCal punkband butcher "Mrs. Robinson" at 200 beats per minute. I said "I'll never play a highschool quad. I'll never, especially, play the quad at my highschool." But my, my, my: how things change.

See, we were contacted quite some time ago by a group of rather eager kids in my hometown (suburban San Diego, if you must know) who asked if we'd play a benefit show for Ugandan children on the third of June. The catch, and I'm speaking from a personal level here, was that I'd be violating my youthful proclamation. To wit: Never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, playing music in an area I used to eat lunch in while copying the odd answers out the back of my Algebra 2 book. Yet, lo and behold, I made a liar out of my younger self. Because we're going down south this weekend.

The nice part is, well, we're doing something nice. Benefit shows are a tricky thing, because, often, they're benefitting someone's weird little project and masquerading as some kind of non-profit do-gooder-ness. You get an email asking you to play a non-specific benefit show sponsored by some well-meaning organization only to find out that all the money is actually funding someone's art project, which happens to be a collage of tin foil and fingernails in the shape of the Virgin Mary playing the glockenspiel. It really can be rather disillusioning. That said, we have played some genuinely well-meaning ones, like a Get Out the Vote type event when Governor Conan the Barbarian called that hilariously sucky special election. I think this event is one of the good ones. So, I invite all you SoCal folks to come on out and share in what will surely be, at least for me, a very, very surreal Saturday.

Beyond that little anecdote, I must admit that I bid on another accordion on eBay. I'm attending a meeting at the Y this week though, don't worry. "Impulsive eBay Bidders Anonymous." "Hello, my name is Justin, and I have a problem," I'll say, and the nice old lady doing macrame will look up and smile at me and the kind of creepy looking bald guy with the turtleneck will say "The first step is acceptance" and everything will start getting better.

Lastly, go Heat. Not because I'm a real fan or anything, but because Shaq is cooler while he sleeps than I've ever been or even will be at any and all points in my life, added up and then squared. And also, the Pistons are annoying.