Getting the band back together

My dearest group of friends and I have been talking about starting a band for ages. Mostly, we talk about it drunk, pining for a life beyond the call center. We create band names, song names, tour names, acceptance speeches, and even city specific crowd references (does Des Moines know how to rock or what?).

I have a feeling that as a job becomes more numbing and corporately soul-crushing, smart and creative people have to find an outlet or they will die. Personally, I write. I write short stories, essays, and even have an unfinished mafia novel out there on my hard drive as well. It seems necessary to my survival to know that I can put a pen to paper and create something. Villi likes to paint. It is her refuge from the drudgery of the working class.

Between Limmy, Villi, and I, we currently have two acoustic guitars, an electric guitar, two keyboards (one full size, one not), and my violin from high school. I fully expect, by summer's end, that we will own a bass guitar and a drum kit. We just seem to be heading in that direction of older people who create for creation's sake. It no longer really occurs to us that we would be successful; we just want to dedicate a little time to do something that is meaningful to us. Work doesn't fill that gap, obviously.

We went to John and Andrea's housewarming yesterday. Homeownership is so grown up. Ethan was, predictably, totally adorable. We got John a karaoke machine for this birthday and Ethan fell in love with it. We taught him how to do the sound check on the microphone (check check 1 2). Yella wanted to teach him to say 'kill whitey' but I told Yella we wouldn't further her facist cause. Instead, we taught him to say peace. Maybe Ethan won't ever have to sell his soul to the company store.

Here he is, mid-pose.