There's nothing to worry about. Step away from the Asian-fusion cuisine.

Earthquakes are like avocados. Well, not really. But bear with me for a second. The thing about earthquakes and avocados is that most non-Californians I meet fear them both without much of a reason. Our singer, Peter, is Connecticut Yankee (yes, sometimes he wears a hat which has three corners (three corners has his hat)) and insists that the kitchen remove all traces of avocado from sandwiches which, really, should be covered in the stuff. Now, Arizonans & Texans seem alright with avocado too (it's a proximity-to-Mexico thing) but beyond that, I can't think of another population that enjoys avocado pretty much across the board. Vegans, maybe, but they don't eat cheese which I feel should disqualify them from all culinary arguments. Sorry guys. Here's a box of Kashi to suck on for a few minutes till we're done.

Non-Californians also fear the earthquake. And, to be honest, so do most Californians. San Francisco itself was demolished by one in 1906, though the fires afterwards did most of the damage, but, then again, the fire department would have had way more success had the quake not broken all the water lines. Plus, most of the houses here have already survived one decent quake (in '89 during the Giants-A's World Series no less) and they're all a little slanted because of it. You could go sledding in some of the kitchens I've visited which doesn't necessarily fill you with a feeling of comfort and safety. So you make a safety kit, fill it with water, canned food, a couple books for when your legs are crushed under a collapsed roof but you're incredibly bored anyway, and you just hope that there aren't any major tectonic shifts. If there are? Well, I try not to think about that.

But then again, some earthquakes are just...weiners. Like last night's for example. We were practicing at our studio and we played right through it. I didn't even know one occurred until I got home and my roomies asked "did you feel it?" which, essentially, is universal code for "we had a really wimpy earthquake" but allowed me to say something like "no, we were rocking too hard to care about the earth moving" and then throw up the pinky-and-index-finger-all-hail-metal-thing and make a total boob out of myself.

Of course, our newscasters were breaking into horrible game shows and promising "damage reports" which consisted, I'd guess, of a few old ladies dropping their tea glasses out of moderate surprise and then continuing their Bid Whist tournament.

So what lessons did we learn last night? Well, it was a reminder to check our 72-hour survival kit (which I of course didn't do) and to eat an avocado every day. If you're going to live in the Bay Area, you might as well enjoy it. There is nothing to fear but fear itself. And your house collapsing. And poisonous guacamole. But that goes without saying.