Live from Los Angeles

So AntiViolence L.A. was a huge success! A whole bunch of great people showed up in support of Joshua and others that have been in his situation (read more about it through his Friendster blog starting here). I'm guessing between 200-300 people showed up, and Sam told me at work today that between 6,000-7,000 dollars were raised through raffle and ticket sales. Very cool. I must say that when we first walked in there was a crazy, loud, 2-foot-mohawked-what-the-heck-kind-of-hair-products-do-those-guys-use band yelling up on the stage. At first I thought perhaps we had walked into the wrong club because it was quite violent for a concert promoting non-violence. But the following bands were much better - more electronica, less screaming. Sam's band Imperative Reaction played last, and they brought down the house. The music they play is very much reminiscent of Nine Inch Nails, which I like. If that sounds cool to you, take a listen to some of their songs (just click on the song title links to the left of the album cover art).

I took a couple of pictures before I got too tipsy. Click the link to view the set. The pics of us dancing were definitely taken after the "too tipsy" point, but hey, it's all good:



The Predator bust was kindly donated by Sideshow to the raffle. Yay for Sideshow :) I unfortunately pretty much suck at taking good crowd pictures, so I didn't get any of the crazy characters that were there. (Besides, I was a little scared that they'd beat me up if I tried taking pictures without asking.) This one guy had his whole head shaved, save for a little piece at the very front that he had somehow made to stand 3 feet straight up in the air. It was awesome. I'd be willing to bet that most of the males that were there take just as long getting ready to go out as the females do, what with the make-up, the carefully chosen clothing, the hair products, and choosing which piercings to wear! A very different crowd from my normal SoCal-casual, flipflop-wearing, barely-brush-your-hair-in-the-morning group of friends. It's good get away from the norm once in a while.

Needless to say, my friends and I had a ball, and I'm very very happy for Sam that it all worked out so well. He has not only spent the last few weeks organizing that whole thing, he has also been slammed at work designing our next catalog. He's one of Sidesehow's graphic designers and pretty much the only one who works on the catalog, which is a pretty difficult job requiring 12 hour days staring at a computer screen for at least 3-4 weeks. So to pull something of this scale off while simultaneously working his butt off during the daylight hours deserves great kudos. Yay for Sam!!