over the years, chung has basically gone through every permutation of angry silent treatment & yet here they are, preparing for a set of january shows & still writing new music after all these years. everyone plays with other people, but it's pretty clear that the three of them have a pretty special way of communicating & work well together. the first time i saw commichung was in 2003 at the creepy crawl, playing with the trip daddys, the 7 shot screamers, & someone else, maybe the hellrazors. daniel would've been seventeen then, ian & caleb sixteen. ian used to wear a hat when he played, like a fedora or something, & the hat intimidated me. caroline had been daniel's substitute teacher at some point that year & was arranging a DIY show for herself at the lemp with other MRH high kids, like the 2-faced beat machines, anotherLiability (daniel's other band at the time), & someone i can't remember, lost to time no doubt. at that time, i had no opinion of daniel. i was hung up on phil, who was living in his van in LA at the time -- with a pit bull he managed to acquire & later leave with a couple in las vegas, b/c leaving a string of heartbroken dogs (& girls) across the country was pretty much his MO. phil hit vegas, dated a girl with my same name there, told me about how she was "a crazy cuckoo bird," etc, surely the same shit he now talks about me. phil hit vegas, & came home, & hit vegas, & came home -- & eventually i knew it was over. it's true, though, that if daniel hadn't convinced me to date him, it likely wouldn't have ended then -- when phil got tired of the next "cuckoo bird" (a girl named beth from rockford who wrote really awful poetry but definitely adored him), he would've come around to me again, & odds are things wouldn't have been any different had i not had that time with daniel to understand in my lizard brain what i already knew in my forebrain: what phil did to me was shitty & it was never not going to be shitty b/c i was never going to be the girl who didn't care. phil once told me that -- & i quote -- "the only thing missing [in our relationship] was love from [him]." he got mad that i taped it to my wall & told everyone that he said that, but being a genius doesn't excuse being a bastard -- something his mom told me a few months before she got sick, right before she told me that she hoped i wouldn't plan on waiting for him -- & at this point i'm not entirely certain how much of a genius he is. daniel's not perfect, & we've got some shitty things in our past, too, but the big difference these days is not just that daniel knows how to apologize & change his behavior, but that i know how to handle myself better, too. daniel & chung aren't the only people who've grown up around here.

a year in pictures, 03.06.09 (59/365): I went to the midnight showing of Watchmen last night...big mistake. The movie was fine, but I didn't know how long it was before going. And so it was 3:30 am before I found my way home and another half hour before I wandered to bed. Since I had a small shoot this morning to get ready for at 8:30, followed by a "day job" gig that was true to it's name by lasting the rest o' the day this was probably not the brightest idea. So due to nobody's fault but my own ( I guess I could blame my brother...yeah we'll go with that), I'm dog-tired tonight. I just can't hang like I used to I guess...even when I'm sitting on my butt in a movie theater, haha. So right now I'm gonna go relax on the couch, and probably fall right to sleep...if i can manage to move T-Bone. I'll catch up with all your streams tomorrow.