Our good friend Sean Michael Sullivan, man-about-town and sunshine spirit, creator of Ben the Canary (www.benthecanary.com) and other amazing spectacles, was taken from this earth by a couple of really beautiful angels on August 20th 2005, while playing with friends on the Kern River in Kern County, California.

Before he left us, we wrote a song for him.
It's called "The Sun is Shining in My Eyes"

It goes:

I can't tell left from right
I can't find the same place twice
I don't hear what they say
But I know it doesn't matter anyway

Because the Sun is Shining in My Eyes...

I don't know what's in front of me
I open up my eyes but all that I can see
Everything is light
And anything that happens, baby, it's alright

Because the Sun is Shining in My Eyes...

Sean will be greatly missed, many more songs shall surely be inspired by his smile and singular gait, and The Evangenitals have decided to release an EP of all of the songs we were writing for Sean's Ben the Canary project, that we had the honor of playing for him before he was sublimated into 100% pure golden soul.

Thank you, Sean.

We
Fall
Down

alright i admit it. i want to be rich.

perhaps what i really mean is that i want to be famous, or a rockstar, or something along those lines.

i want to be willie nelson without the beard and the bankruptcy.

i want to buy a van, travel the nation, play shows with my band, and have enough people come to the shows that we continue to get gigs and travel and eat food and have places to stay and sell albums and we can support ourselves with muzak, sweet muzak.

i want to have a kid at some point, and be able to take it with me on the road. i want my hubby to be able to chill in the tour RV with the kid whilst i play. that's teamwork, man.

i want to take guitar lessons, buy more guitars, have more time to practice.

christ, this is a bad way to blog, because i want a lot of things.

i want to play a show with tenacious d. i want to play the drums. i want tenacious d to make another friggin' album. when does the next ween album come out?

i want the renovations of the new house to be finished. i want 2 dogs from the pound that do not have terrible psychological problems.

i want a pony.

hehe.

man... this weekend was dope. housewarming madness. and let me tell ya, the houses are WARM, my friends!

the genitals played two housewarming parties, for our producer-friend Blair (who is responsible for the quality tracks Gasoline, Never Again, and QueeQueg on the WE ARE THE EVANGENITALS album) and an extra special house was warmed for our dear left-handed genital BRETTSKY BRETT P. LYDIUS LYDA (so fresh and so clean) cool breeze, esq, the third. i love the guy. i love how he's growing and changing and spreading his wings and flapping like a hairless chicken. it's gorgeous.

now it's monday morning and i'm tired. all this rain, or all the dust from renovations at both home and work, or something, has given me allergies for the first time in my life. sneezing is fun, but the itchy, dribbly nose and scratchy throat action isn't so grand. nope.

i joined netflix not too long ago, after my boyfriend bought a plasma screen wall-mount television, and i've been catching up on all the films that I should have seen but didn't, for one reason or another. in the past few weeks i've seen spellbound, napoleon dynamite, memento, rashamon, DIG!, donnie brasco, garden state, the office (the british one, season 1), arrested development (season 1), dogtown and z-boys, apocalypse now, i heart huckabees, and some more stuff that i can't remember right now. it's been good, cause i love movies, and it's a miracle that i'm actually able to sit down and watch 'em.

i have this panic disorder thingy (not really, but kinda) wherein i find it hard to commit to sitting down to a movie. i think it's fear of death, with a hint of commitment phobia. though i love movies so, i can't help but feeling that there's something else i should be doing. like reading a book, practicing the guitar, writing a play, exercising, something.

more heinous is that i've recently gotten into playing video games. i blame psychonauts. it's just too friggin' cool. and now i'm tweaking on katamari damaci. rolling a gravity thing-collecting ball around is fun. i never knew. the good news is that the evangenitals are absolutely going to cover the theme song to this game. it is bad ass. with a capital b... but i'm trying to lay off the capitals today. i used 'em all up on brett's name game.

so that's the news from my tired ass. i'm excited as all hell about the Derby show on Wednesday. we're breaking out a bunch of new tunes, and the set is pretty well balanced, old and new, rocking and mellow.... i'm stoked. we're playing with amazing people (pink mochi, ukefink's eddie french, natural disasters) so, what more could a girl ask for?

Today marks the 30 year anniversary of me, Juli Crockett.

Some feel it to be a most heinous egoism to celebrate the day of birth, (such as the Witnesses of Jehovah) a relic of ancient false religions. False idols. Perhaps, perhaps. Today, however, I will celebrate the Miracle of Miracles: I am still alive.

There is a great absurdity surrounding this particular age-leap. Thirty is already 3 years past my life-expectancy.* Never did I think I would BE this person. I woke up this morning in a suburb of Los Angeles, made coffee at home (in order to “beat the system” and bypass Starbucks), and I carpooled to work with my boyfriend in a white Toyota Camry. Just the other day I was called by a local college to interview for a teaching position. What happened?

It is horrifying, yet exciting; a threshold/crossroads/turning point marking the transition to another dimension; the day after yesterday, the day before tomorrow, just another day in the life. No big deal, yet something special. Good lord I wish I could say something profound and poetic about this whole thing. Unfortunately, I’m feeling a lot simpler than that about it. Like a kid at Christmas, I’m giddy with the knowledge that at least one of my friends has reported that they have gotten me an actual present. How cool is that? PRESENTS!!! Simply for not dying, yet.

For the first time in a great, great many years I am having a birthday party. Returning to the last joint where it felt right. The party will go down at Chuck E Cheese's, that glorious hole in which a kid can still be a kid. At my dear friend Steve Diet Goedde's 40th Birthday Bash I maxed out the scoring capabilities of Whack-a-Mole. I am hoping not to disappoint tonight, for in the intoxicating grip of Hubris I have challenged many a pal to a contest. Skee-Ball has never been one of my strengths; however, I do plan to roll those wooden balls. My fingers are crossed that they have air-hockey & the photo ride with the Chuck E. replica is working. It is only a quarter for a digital picture with the infamous rat. What a deal!

It is always easy to see the things that I don’t have. Every birthday brings a pang of remorse that I wasn’t born a child prodigy, that I have not yet created a recognized masterpiece, and that I do not possess the perfect body. Ah, well. Fortunately, today, I don’t want to BE that person, either, whoever that mentally projected ideal of me may be. I am content with there here/now me. My life is a candy store, and I’m in it, eating up the sweet life three years after I thought it’d be over. I’m grateful for all the possibilities, all the progress, all the unknowns.

In other news, on Friday my band I’m blessed to be in, The Evangenitals, has been hired to play for the local Leisure Club organization. As far as we’re concerned, this is the coolest gig a band could be asked to perform, and we’re giving it the mad photo/film coverage. With any luck, we’ll be able to salvage a music video from the event. Who knows when on earth will we ever have the opportunity to play for a room full of senior citizens? Hells bells, if this goes well, we hope to get recommended to Leisure Clubs nationwide so we can do a tour of banquet halls, chapels, and bingo joints.

*I always said I would drink myself to death by 27 years of age.
Miraculously, at 26, I stopped drinking, and thusly I live on today.
Glory be.