After sleeping for half a day...

If you follow my Facebook page you knew this one was coming and why there wasn't one yesterday. If you don't, well here's a whole blog about it. 

Hollamahla

I, on a general rule, keep a very busy schedule. Which is also incredibly flexible but at the moment is at the edge of it's elasticity.  And yet, it's loads of fun, stress free and amazingly enough rather relaxing. So in the busyness of this schedule yesterday i.e. Friday, March 6th, end of the week, began on the edge of Thursday and ended at the beginning of Saturday. Long, tiring, fun, exciting, amusing and a little bit law breaking day.  

It starting with me working on some 18th century manuscripts-comparing work around 11 pm Thursday that  I lost track of time with and moved into lets just do Nitnem its 3 am, bonding with guru while gardening time. And after I finally went to bed sometime between 4 to 5 am without much sleep ended up being up at 8. Why? to go to work that I couldn't be late to because it entailed me supervising a cleaning crew that couldn't get in without me being there. 

After work I was part of this holi celebration. Now it's not a festival I celebrate so I haven't been a part of it in decades but there's hollamahla of course. But holi for me is like Christmas, devalli, deshera, thanksgiving. Festivals and holidays I don't celebrate myself but will gladly be a part of because a friend on mine invited me to share it with them. I extend my invitations of gurpurabs, shahidipurabs, vsakhi, to everyone and when my non-sikh friends happily become part of things I celebrate why wouldn't I become a part of theirs. Although there was a bit of bribe at this one for me. Besides being in company of very nice people and playing with colours (more like running after each other with colours) it involved hangout with about 6 kids who got to learn something new about their cultures and run around yelling in happiness.

There isn't anything more fun or inspiring then curiosity, wonderment and imagination of a child. And obviously there was great food, pau-bhaji, idli - sambar, briyani, channa masala, stir-fried vegetables, kachori, khoya barfi made with gulkand, and thandaee. And yet around 9 pm I get this feeling that I should get going and I couldn't figure out why! Why on earth do I want to leave so much fun? But I have a long relation and experience with my intuitions so I never not listen to them. Thus around 9:30ish I started the good bye's which means I was on the road by 10ish and then it suddenly hit me.

Left to right: James, Brittany, Anthony, Micheal. 

I was supposed be somewhere for a Dinosaur Parade show! Now if you know me, you know my biggest thing about a song is lyrics. Asking me as a poet, to just go with the music and ignore the bad lyrics is like asking me to commit suicide. And that'll never ever happen. So it goes without saying that if I drove at about 90 mph through two road blocks (remember I mentioned a bit of law breaking) to drive across town, their songs have lyrics I find wonderful. There's more to it though. I've been to about 90% of their shows and I'll be at their upcoming EP release on the 17th of April. The first show, me and Mandi attended, because are friend Micheal sent us an invite to his new bands, first show, at the House of Blues. We went for two reasons. One- we wanted to support a friend, Two- he's the kind of person we expect to be a part of something worth while. And we were definitely not disappointed. 

Now I know we went to the first show because of Micheal and supporting Dinosaur Parade will always be a part of it, but it wasn't just that they had good songs, lyrically and musically, but they have a great drummer. Now before this leans more towards the drums and the drummer I should introduce everyone else in the band. Micheal's, already  been introduced. He's the lead singer and the crazy person who plays a dozen different instruments through out each show, one of which I can't even remember the name of. It was a flute-ish thing. As a person, he's amusing and annoying because he complains about me liking the drummer more even though I'm his friend. James is the lead guitarist and at points in their songs you realize how not-fun the melodies would be without him but the same goes for their base player Anthony who, like Mandi hails from Texas. And then, as mentioned, my favorite of them all, is Brittany the drummer. The first time I heard the band play, the first thing I said after the show was "I've never before enjoyed drums so much in my life!" I still stand by that. Honestly, even on a bad day she is really good. And her expressions while playing are very amusing as well. All in all, they are a bunch of cool people with fun songs that they've decided to share with you all. So go to their EP release and upcoming concerts to find it out for yourself. And to find out more and when and where's of the events visit their  website http://www.dinosaurparademusic.com/. Their single happens to be El Camino road, but my personal favorite is The Passengers. There are a whole lot of fun stories regarding them, like when Brittany kept breaking drum sticks, or Micheal broke half his instruments in one show, that I think they should share on their website but perhaps, they'll end up here in future. Along with when I painted Micheal's drum. 

And so the day ended with me listening to their show at Taix, while consuming a whole pot of tea. Which makes Taix my favorite venue of all the venues they've played at so far. I got home at stroke of 1 am Saturday and fell asleep around 2-3 am this morning. And I guess I was tired enough that I slept, not undisturbed, until 1 pm. Though I can hardly blame they world for being up at day. And that ends a day out of my crazy fun schedule that believe it or not, is basically everyday of my life. Oh and some where in there was cleaning the house and doing laundry. A bit of regularity in my life.