Tales of a Reluctant Fan Girl

The Master Plan

2011-10-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

This was the final webstop of my musical reconnaissance journey in the wee hours of Sunday night. Yes, I was googling chord notation for... drum roll... a new Buffy song! You see, I seem to have a pretty good knack for coming up with lyrics and melodies, then singing them. Musical instruments themselves, not so much. That's why you'll never see me bust out my guitar around the campfire or break into song at an open mic. I can hear the notes in my head, then strum a few chords or plunk a few keyboard notes just to get them down for someone who really knows what they're doing to make magic with. To my great delight, I actually managed to write out the chords for the entire song you will soon hear the details on. I even managed to figure out the one crazy chord that almost looked like a C but didn't sound completely happy or completely sad. (Ended up being a diminished. Thank the Google gods for that!)

So how did I get to googling diminished chords on a Sunday night? Rewind to last Friday when I realized I had a Buffy Ballad conundrum on my hands. I'd gotten an e-mail from Bryant last week telling me he needed a new song for the Season 1 episode of The Scoobies and the Newbie by Saturday. I'd already used You Renegade Vamp for the preseason episode. Wherefore Art Thou Juliet?, as you probably know from the last blog entry, is not entirely done. The two remaining songs we'd recorded were Ooh, Mr. Mayor and If I Were a Robot. My first thought was to sync the villains to the seasons. Realizing that I had no Season 1 villain song, my second thought was to stick a song about a villain from a later season into the Season 1 podcast. But then I realized that the two villains I had songs about, Warren and The Mayor, were the MAIN villains of later seasons. Playing either of their songs prematurely would be doubly tragic because not only do they not even appear in Season 1, but once the podcast reached their season Bryant, Barbra, and Sam would be discussing all of the geeky factoids about that character, by which time I would've already blown my wad. Alas, there was nothing I could do for Season 1, as I did not have a song for The Master. Or did I???

I actually been brainstorming a Master song for a while. I knew what style I wanted the song in -- a slow, melancholy jazz standard resembling "Stormy Weather." I even had the melody and lyrics for the very last line. But that was ages ago, and no matter how hard I stared at the Wikipedia notes or how many times I re-watched Season 1, none of the rest of the song had materialized. The main problem lay in the fact that these are supposed to be love songs, and truth be told, I do not love The Master. I'll give Joss and the gang the benefit of the doubt, since it was their first season, they were working on a shoestring budget, and they were still in the process of figuring everything out. That said, The Master doesn't have anywhere near the sophistication of any of the later villains. He's also freaking ugly. But hey, we all have exes like that, right? So I decided that instead of a raunchy sexy song or a cheesy lovey-dovey song, it would be more like a "fuck you" song.

That was a good starting point. I was able to make lyrics out of factoids now that I had a point of view. Friday, I mocked up a first draft of the song. It was cleverly chock full of trivia and rhymes, but it was missing something. It was complicated; disjointed; a little too angry; and most of all it lacked a melody. Furthermore, the original ending felt forcefully tacked on. It seemed like a good ending at the time. Would I have to scrap it? I was reluctant because I'd had it in my head for so long. On the other hand, artists shouldn't get too wedded to their creations. On the other other hand, maybe my initial instinct was right. Brain fuzzy, systems shutting down...

In the meantime, I got an e-mail from Bryant saying they were delaying recording until next week. Ah, my manna from heaven!!! If I could figure the song out by the weekend, record it during the week, and get it to them by Friday, my conundrum would be solved. I slept a bunch Saturday morning and afternoon, chipped away at it Saturday evening, and by Sunday the song was done. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't as easy as 1 2 3. The lyrics, melody, and refrain went through lots and lots of permutations. It was like one of those sliding block puzzles where almost everything fits except for the two squares that are completely out of place. And when you try to move those two pieces, all the other pieces get into a jumble. Eventually everything finds its proper place, but not before you feel so mixed up you wonder if it'll ever get back to good.

But it is. Good, I mean. In fact, it's better than good. The factoids fit. The syllables work. The refrain is in line with the point of view, and the ending makes total sense -- both word-wise and musically. I e-mailed David the chord chart Sunday night, and we met Monday to lay down the track. He can do amazing things with music. Honestly, I am always mind blown every time he works his magic with a new song of mine. We are going to record the video for "Love You... With a Vengeance" this afternoon. If we have time, we might even get to the new song, "What Kind of Master Are You?" Either way, there will be a new video on the YouTubes and a new track for the Season 1 Scooby-Newbie podcast. Victory dance!!!

Insane Psychobabble

2011-10-06T19:48:00.001-07:00

Make sense to you? Me neither. Had I not known the genius behind the madness, I would've labeled it as psychobabble (perhaps even Drusilla-caliber). It is actually the structure for the percussion line in the new instrumental track for Wherefore Art Thou Juliet?, which David and I are currently arranging. Yes, that's right -- we are recording an ALBUM!!! I'm giddy with delight. Positively giddy!

This whole thing originally started when Bryant and Barbra Dillon asked me if they could feature my songs at the end of each episode of the podcast, The Scoobies and the Newbie. I quickly realized that though I had the musical tracks for four completed songs, I didn't have good quality vocal recordings since we always captured the vocals live on camera. I'd been planning on making a CD anyway, and this was the perfect kick in the butt. Since rerecording You Renegade Vamp for the first podcast, David has recorded and mixed vocals for Ooh, Mr. Mayor and If I Were a Robot. The only song left was Wherefore Art Thou Juliet. Juliet is taking a little longer for a couple of reasons. First of all, it was the very first recording David and I ever did. He arranged and recorded it in a couple of hours the morning that we met on craigslist (yes, we met on craigslist). And given the circumstances, it's pretty darn impressive. But now that we are doing this for real, we thought we'd give it a makeover. I wanted to add a drum track, some base, possibly harmonies and other instrumentals, and in order to do that we needed to scrap the original. We are actually going to keep the intro, since it's rather brilliant and David and I agree there isn't anything we wanted to improve. But given that the initial piano recording was done without a metronome, there was no way we could even add a drum track in. So off we went to record our new track.

Recording a drum track from a keyboard is funny business. You have to reverse engineer the whole thing, counting out the total measures for each part of the song, what you want to happen in each measure, then syncing the beat changes with the measure count exactly the right time. In short, involves a lot of math on David's part, followed by David scribbling some crazy notes that only he understands, followed by David staring at the little screen on the keyboard and pressing the right buttons when the designated measure numbers come to bat. It's pretty amusing -- not to mention amazing -- to see him geek out over all these little beats and counts and know that they will somehow translate into music. Actual music. I just sit next to him, take a few pictures for my blog, and cheer him on for moral support.

So that's what we did the past couple of days. We picked out a few Doo-wop percussion lines, decided on the speed, decided where to switch from one to the next, and got it all down in Pro tools. And let me tell you I think it sounds pretty fab. Next, we noodled with the beginnings of the piano arrangement. It's the same chord structure as before, but we were able to decide on some nuances that we obviously didn't have the luxury to do when splatting it out in a hurry the day that we first met.

David needs to take some time to practice and familiarize himself with the new arrangement, at which point we will get together and record again, then brainstorm what else we want to do with the track. This one's kind of a tall order and it may take a while to really get right. But honestly, this may very well be the coolest track on the album. I don't want to jinx myself or make a self-fulfilling prophecy. The other recordings sound great, and I'm extremely excited for the new songs -- both written and unwritten. But the Drusilla song has a special place in my heart for a lot of reasons. First of all, I LOVE the character with all my heart (we are talking major girl crush). I also love the Doo-wop style and I think I've always secretly fantasized about performing it (though I never thought with a vampire twist). I think the biggest reason, though, is that it was the birthplace of this whole project. Sure, I'd noodled with a few Spike lyrics, but the experience I had seeing Juliet for the first time gave me such a jolt. It was one of those unforgettable, visceral experiences that takes you so outside of your comfort zone; your thought patterns; your ideas about what's real and what's not. And these types of experiences are the soil where amazing art takes root.

David and I will continue to work on Juliet, and in the meantime we are scheduled to record the video for Love You... with a Vengeance on Monday. More blogging to come!

Glorious Ripples

2011-09-08T23:44:00.000-07:00

This is Buffy birthday present #2, given to me by my fabulous friend Malia, who happens to take yoga with Clare Kramer (a.k.a. Glorificus) in Sherman Oaks. Small Buffy-verse, right? And here's the real beauty of the present. I wrote a Glory/Ben song quite some time ago but couldn't for the life of me think of a title. I scoured through the song lyrics, looking for a snippet I could use. I rewatched some Season 5 episodes. Nothing. Within hours after receiving the gift, boom! I got my title. The song is all about a person who tries to date someone two-faced, so to speak. I'm sure you all have had the experience of wanting to get to know someone who appears to be one thing in one moment, then changes to something entirely different the next. This song takes such a scenario to the extreme. And the title is "When 3 Become 2." (This is, of course, riff off the Spice Girls hit "2 Become 1.")

Now, onto some other exciting tidbits. First of all, "Love You... With a Vengeance" is coming along. I got an incredibly helpful one-on-one tutorial with my friend Josh Rubinstein, who I met -- guess where -- at a Buffy event. He showed me pretty much everything I needed to know about mixing the levels on my 7 instrumental tracks. He also gave his seal of approval on my song. (Smiley face icon!) Next, I've got to work out the details of the video shoot, which requires coordinating the schedules of myself, the cinematographer, and the owner of the house I want to shoot in. (Once we get everyone in the same room together, it'll be a piece of cake!)

As for the Faith song, I did put an ad on craigslist looking for a Buffy fan who could produce a hip-hop track. Alas, no bites! A little disappointing, though not too surprising, given that there are probably more pianists and rock guitarists than hip-hop producers in the Joss Whedon fan base. But not to worry, Faith, your time in the spotlight will come.

Speaking of being in the spotlight, I'm thrilled to announce that my Buffy ballads will be featured on a podcast! The geek power couple, Bryant and Barbra Dillon -- who run Fanboy Comics -- are starting a new podcast called "The Scooby and the Newbie". They will be airing an episode for every season of Buffy, and using one of my songs to sign off. How cool is that??? I've got to get all the info for them by this weekend, including an audio file for the very first song, which will be You Renegade Vamp. Unfortunately, the audio quality is a little spotty. So if there's any way I can possibly squeeze in a session, I'm going to try to re-record the vocals tomorrow. Ambitious, but who knows how many folks it'll reach?

Oh, and while were on the topic of reaching folks, here is another bizarre and wonderful coincidence. I was randomly doing a Google search to gather links for this blog, and while doing so stumbled upon this article, which featured -- guess who -- me!!! Last Monday, I was at a Labor Day barbecue at the home of Marsia Powers, who runs Whedonopolis. While there, I met a guy named Gene Turnbow, who produces Krypton Radio. He is a totally cool guy, along with a visionary thinker. We talked for a super long time about all sorts of things, and I gave him a Buffy flyer. And the next thing I know, I am featured on his site! It's a crazy thing how word travels, especially if you get plugged into the right circles.

Okay, enough for now. I am burning the midnight oil and then some. In less than five hours I must be up again, to receive the Substitute Teacher imprint (no, I am NOT ready for a treatment!!!) Reluctant Fan Girl signing off.

Geeky Things Are Worth Waiting for

2011-08-22T22:52:00.001-07:00

The picture above has little to do with this blog entry. It's a birthday gift I received from my friend Chris Bowers -- a ceramic statue of Spike that is just bad-ass enough to possibly merit the creation of an entire Buffy shrine. (There is one more object that definitely belong in said shrine; photo to be displayed at the top of the next blog entry.) Speaking of pictures, the picture for the next Buffy Ballad is now in clearer view. Unfortunately, filming will take a little longer than originally planned, but I promise you it will be worth the wait. In the meantime, I will keep you posted on all the juicy (or should I say gory) details of the creative process.

Before I tell you the story of how I found my cinematographer, let me just say that the Buffy-verse works in strange and wondrous ways. In fact, that is exactly how I found Bill McClelland, the very talented man who will shoot the video for "Love you... With a Vengeance." Although he himself is not a Buffy guy, I found him through 2 people who actually played super villains themselves.

Rewind to beginning of story. A couple of months ago, I saw an absolutely stunning staged reading of A Streetcar Named Desire starring Juliet Landau as Blanche DuBois. Watching someone on the small screen is one thing. Seeing them perform in front of you, up close and in the flesh, for two hours straight, is something entirely different. After seeing Juliet as Drusilla, I was a fan. My sentiments now surpass the superficiality of fandom. I have such deep respect for her strength, bravery, and commitment to her craft. She took a character who could easily be seen as a victim; embodied her through and through; put up a fight from lights down to curtain call. A few friends and acquaintances tried to make small talk with me moments after the show, and I was absolutely speechless.

It was a serendipitous night indeed, for I also met my now friend Camden Toy, who played not one but two of the villains on Buffy. Most notably, he was one of the Gentlemen in the Emmy-nominated episode Hush. He also played Gnarl in Same Time Same Place. (He did the voice for me at the screening, and I almost jumped out of my skin [pun intended]!) I'd been hearing his name for a long time from my piano player, David Bickford, who had also been friends with him for many years. So it seemed -- in a way -- like I was meeting an old friend.

After a long string of online communication, Camden and I finally hung out for the first time a couple of weekends ago. He also introduced me to his friend Bill, who is a steadicam operator. Bill and I hit it off, and he told me that if there was anything I needed to shoot I should let him know. At the time, I thought to myself, "It would be totally fun to shoot with this guy, but I don't have any projects I'm doing in the foreseeable future." The next morning, it occurred to me that Andre, my trusty camera guy for the past three Buffy Ballads, was headed off to Puerto Rico for a shoot and would not be available for the next video. Can we say biggest DUH moment ever??? So I called Bill, and he was down for the shoot. Yipeeeee!!!

We met last week at the Valley Village Starbucks to talk details about the shoot. He had pretty much all the equipment I could ask for (and then some!). The only thing we were missing was a prime location. His place had tiled floors, which are horrible for acoustics, and my place-- along with being totally out of the way-- had no interesting backdrops. And while while a boring background wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, we had such a cool one for If I Were a Robot, it seemed like a shame to downgrade. As we parted ways, I told him I would rack my brains for a better location. At the time, I was totally at a loss.

Shortly after I got home, I had DUH moment #2. Good location? I had the PERFECT location!!! Not only was it super geeky and cinematically awesome; it was also conveniently located between Bill's neighborhood and mine. I just had to coordinate it in a way that would work for me, Bill, and owner of said location. As good fortune would have it, the owner said yes. Unfortunately, he's off to Burning Man so the location won't be available for another three weeks. We could settle and shoot with the boring backdrop in the meantime, but given the three most important elements of filmmaking (location Location LOCATION!!!), I figured we'd better wait. In the meantime, I could polish up the sound mix, possibly work on new songs, and -- of course -- blog. If you can stand to hold out for another few weeks, I'm pretty sure you will be glad you did.

Next order of business on the Buffy blog: Buffy birthday present #2 and how it led me to the title of my previously title-less song. Stay tuned!

Working in Anya-log

2011-08-14T16:19:00.001-07:00

Soon, the new Buffy ballad -- "Love You... with a Vengeance" -- will look like a video on YouTube. Right now, it looks like the picture you see above. I know you all have been waiting forever for this new track. (I bet you're all at home right now on this beautiful August Sunday saying to yourself, "Man, where the heck is that new Buffy track? Just kidding...) Well, there are couple of reasons why this song has taken longer to produce than the others. The main reason is probably the fact that I've been working two jobs, but that's pretty boring so I'll talk in more detail about the other ones.

As I mentioned before, I had used a different musician -- a guitarist named Gary -- for "Love You... with a Vengeance," the country Western ballad that sings the praises of your favorite vengeance demon and mine, Anya Jenkins. Gary is a little more old-school than David Bickford, who did the tracks for the last three songs. Whereas David works in digital, Gary works in analog. (Or as I like to say, Anya-log.) With David, we would record music on one piano or keyboard track, possibly adding or splicing an electronic percussion line or different keyboard voice. We would then sit down together while he fiddled with the volume levels, swapped takes, and polished the whole thing up in Pro Tools. This could take hours, but we usually knocked out in the course of a single session. With Gary, on the other hand, things took a little bit longer. First, we recorded the main guitar line. The actual recording took a very short time -- maybe about an hour from start to finish-- but I knew he wanted to bring in a drummer, which would be another session. (For him, it would take more time and energy to find and incorporate an electronic beat than to actually do it with a live drummer.) So we had a session with his drummer Cyrus, which was pretty freakin' cool. (Collaborating one-on-one with an accompanist is awesome, but having a drummer brought in on your behalf really makes you feel like a rockstar!)

After the drum session, I expected Gary to mix the two tracks onto a CD and that would be that. But Gary decided he wanted a fuller sound in some parts of the song. "I think I'll add an organ, a slide guitar, and maybe a bass," he said. Who was I to object? When it comes to music -- especially this project -- I consider myself pretty easy to please. So anything more than the bare minimum is really icing on the cake. Well, we ended up with a pretty amazing sounding song that has SEVEN (count 'em, seven) live instrumental tracks!

Now that I have the tracks, I have to figure out what exactly to do with them. I've got to mix the levels, choose what to keep and what to cut, and before I do any of that stuff I have to actually learn how to use the free audio mixing software I just downloaded off the Internet. So yeah, I've got my work cut out for me. But let me tell you, before I even lay a finger on it, it sounds GOOD!!!

Also, once I mix the audio track, I've got to find a new cameraman, since Andre is leaving tomorrow for a shoot in Puerto Rico. But something may be conspiring on that front even as we speak. I'll let you know the details once I get a clearer picture, so to speak...

Just HitRECord

2011-05-29T22:43:00.000-07:00

Gary was doing double duty, pushing the buttons on his console then scrambling to play the chords on his guitar. I said, do you want me to help you so you can focus on getting the pickup? He said (not knowing the double meaning of his words), "Just hitRECord."

It's a happy day in Buffy fanland. I just got back from West Hollywood where me and the new guitarist, Gary Dunn, recorded the music track for Buffy Ballad #5. The song is for Anya, and it's a country Western ballad called "Love You . . . With a Vengeance." We'd met once before to go over the chord charts and figure out the arrangement. I was going to write a whole entry on that after the fact, but it didn't quite happen so I'll try to integrate the previous highlights with what happened tonight.

The act of collaboration is infinitely fascinating. You get inspired to do something, create it and tinker with it in your little mad scientist lab, tinker with it some more, get sick of it, and tinker with it more still until you have no idea what it looks like to the rest of the world. It could be a windup toy or a pink poodle or a Frankenstein beast for all you know. And once you show it the light of day; give it room to breathe; unveil it in the presence of those few trusted others, you are pretty much always pleasantly surprised.

Working with Gary on the Anya song was no exception. Off the bat, he thought the genre was more singer/songwriter than country Western. True, I am more familiar singer/songwriter style music as a whole, but I wanted to give it a country feel, since I imagined it as the type of tune Faith Hill might sing (maybe that's just me projecting my desire to be Faith Hill, but hey). So he countrified it with a twang here and a twang there. We decided where he would pick, where he would strum, and where we would insert some percussion. The most intriguing observation he made was about the chord pattern on "Dagon Sphere" located in the bridge, which he thought was "more sci-fi than country." (Funny you should say that, was my initial response.) We went over it several times and ended up changing the D chord preceding "Dagon Shere" to an F. And at his suggestion, we added a G chord right after the F# chord at the end of the bridge to give an extra punch to the key change. "With the F# to the G, it's more of a 'Hey, we're modulatin'!'" he explained to me as he widened his eyes, hickified his voice, and over dramatically elbowed a pillow on the couch. (I'd have to say that was the highlight of the day.)

So when I came in today, we had it mostly figured out. We ran it a couple of times for polish, recalling what we did and didn't like in the last rehearsal. Oh, and I forgot to mention the fact that a lot of the elements of the arrangement I stole from a Lisa Loeb song. (When we watched the music video together, I realized how frighteningly close her guitar arrangement was to what I wanted mine to be. But the fact that I'm singing about vampires, vengeance demons, bringers, and such makes it a pretty different animal, so to speak...) Although I still think of it as a country-western ballad, it is definitely a hybrid of sorts. Along with the "sci-fi" chord progression in the bridge, the end of the song is very un-country. Whereas a country song would "milk the drama", drawing out the guitar and final verse as long as humanly possible, I wanted my song to end concisely, leaving the audience to fill in the rest. Also, instead of making the song louder after the bridge and key change, we decided to bring the volume way down. This was something we played around with while we were recording. I thought, "Who the heck am I to change the rules? This could sound awful, but let's give it a try." It sounded amazing. And it totally fit with the lyrics of the song, which you'll just have to hear to understand what I'm talking about.

Sadly, you can't hear it quite yet. We've still got to get Gary's drummer in for a session and lay down a percussion track. After that, I'll get together with trusty Andre, who's shot my last three videos, and we will make some multimedia magic. Sorry to tease you. If it's any consolation, I'm in exactly the same boat. Okay, maybe I have a little bit more of the inside scoop, but I want just as badly as you do (if not more) to see how it all turns out. In the meantime, I will tell you that the track I heard coming out of the speakers in Gary's West Hollywood home recording den was magic. It was gold. It was all the colors and textures and flavors we'd discovered, honed, and captured when the stars and guitars and creative energy that charged the electrons in the air were somehow perfectly aligned. Collaboration is infinitely fascinating, and I feel honored to be a part of it every time. And very soon, you'll be a part of it too. I promise you will.

Tinkering with Chords and Clay - Part 1

2011-04-25T10:03:00.000-07:00

Blogs are great because they make you do things. I know I've said this before, but I'll say it again and will do so forever more. Since writing the last blog entry -- or more accurately, as a RESULT of writing the last blog entry -- I've really kicked it into gear. That very same day, I put an ad up on craigslist looking for a guitarist. A few days later, I took it upon myself to craft some accessories. For the Anya song, which is next to be released, I decided it would be cool to wear the amulet from the episode The Wish, in which on she first appears. I looked it up online, but couldn't find any website that sold replicas of the amulet. But did I let it stop me? Noooooo. I re-watched the episode, freeze-framed the necklace in close-up, drew a sketch of the pendant, took a trip to my local Michael's, and made a reproduction out of green and gold fimo (pictured above). Hopefully at least a few people will get the reference and appreciate it. But even if this one slipped under the radar, the gigantic, shiny, geeky-ghetto fabulous bling I made for the Faith song will most definitely not. I'm going to keep that one under wraps until the release of the video when it makes its big splash.

And while the jewelry was baking, my message-in-a-craigslist-bottle was floating far and wide. I ended up getting more responses than I could possibly use, or even know what to do with. There was one guitarist to particularly impressed me, with whom I followed up and corresponded several times but didn't totally work out in the end. And just when I was thinking I should crack into the initial wave of e-mail responses, I got a belated reply from the person who turned out to be my guy.

His name is Gary Dunn. He plays in a blues band and has studio recording space in his home. He also works in music licensing so he knows pretty much everything there is to know about music from the 18th century until now. When we met up for coffee two Fridays ago, I showed him the chord chart. Originally, the song was in the key of C, but I had changed it to B since -- despite it being more complicated -- it fit my vocal range a little better. It was a point of self-consciousness for me because I thought, "Here I am, diva singer, making everything all screwy-wonky to fit my needs." But his immediate response was, "I like the key of B. A lot of Rolling Stones songs were written in B. It's probably what fit Mick Jagger's vocal range the best." Wow, I thought, that just rocks in so many ways. First of all, you like the key. Second, you cited a Stones factoid that probably a lot of Stones fans don't even know. Third, you kind of sort of indirectly drew a parallel between Mick Jagger's voice and mine. How many points did you just earned in my book???

Finally this weekend, we synced up our schedules and rehearsed the song. There is much to tell from that, but I fear this blog entry is getting a little long so I'll pick it up another day. Hope you've enjoyed! I promise I'll report back soon.

The Buffy Ballads WILL Rise Again...

2011-04-07T10:11:00.001-07:00

Dear Buffy blog,

I know it's been a while. A long while. Maybe you thought I'd forgotten you forever. Even through our time apart, I've thought about you a lot. I don't know what I was waiting for -- more songs, more subjects for smalltalk, "the perfect moment" which never came. Okay, I'm cutting the excuses and telling you outright I'm sorry. Sorry if you felt abandoned; neglected; unloved. Wait a second, you don't have feelings. You're not a person, or an animal, or even an inanimate object. Heck, your existence is completely confined to the realm of cyberspace! What am I doing, gushing my guilt to this abstract idea of a thing when I should really be talking to the fans?

PAUSE. REWIND. Long-awaited-Buffy-ballad-blog Take 2.

*****

Dear Buffy fans and supporters of the Buffy ballads,

I know it's been a while. A long while. The Ballads to the Buffy Big Bads may have even appeared dead. I'd like to think of them as entering the afterlife, and as you know, in the world of vampires the afterlife is the most exciting stage! The beast has been bitten, the blood has been mingled, and now the creature is in its coffin taking a little beauty rest before it rises again; this time bigger, badder, stronger, sexier, and more unstoppable than ever before.

And what, you may ask, is in said coffin? Not one, not two, but THREE new songs -- a country western ballad for Anya, an R&B hip-hop song for Faith, and a classic rock power ballad for Glory. All three songs have melodies and lyrics. My trusty pianist David Bickford helped me arrange the chord progressions, but due to scheduling conflicts, I will need to find some other folks to help me out with accompanying and recording the tracks. I'm rooting around for a guitar player for the Anya song; shuffling through my musician friends before braving the list of Craig. (I also have to remember, though, that craigslist was how I found David in the first place, and who knows what the Buffy ballads would be without him?) As for the Faith song, I'm going to see if I can get some help from my neighbors CJ, lead singer of R&B pop boy band The Score. We have some tentative plans to meet and work on stuff so now I've just got to get over my head trips and go for it. (Okay, I've put it in writing. It WILL come true.)

So yes, I am taking steps in the process to release the next songs. Baby Buffy steps which will hopefully result in bigger ones to come. One itty bitty accomplishment I made this morning was finding a contender for a costume for the Anya video, which is next. It doesn't have fringes, but I think if I do my hair big enough, it will come off as just the right amount of country. I will do my best to be more diligent in keeping you posted. I can't wait to get going on the new material, and I hope you are excited too.

Yours eagerly,

Reluctant Fan Girl

PS The picture at the top of the page is of a tag I ripped off a denim purse. (I didn't buy the purse just for the tag, but it seems like a pretty good omen all the same.)

The Gory Details on Buffy's Birthday Bash

2011-01-20T21:57:00.000-08:00

There were so many amazing Kodak moments in that brief two-hour window, but this one took the cake. (From now on, no more crummy puns. Oops!) In all seriousness, though, it was a night to remember. The geekage per square inch was off the charts! I'd go so far as to say it rivaled Comic Con, since Con -- densely populated though it is -- is also diluted with Twilight teenyboppers and random normal people stalking their favorite stars. These people, on the other hand, were EXTREEEEME! (Insert heavy metal growl here.)

When Robert LeMoyne, who has now gained the title of "geek guru", told me about the event, I knew I had to go. In my scramble to reproduce more flyers, I missed some of the commencing festivities, which apparently included Buffy trivia and a Happy Birthday Buffy sing-along. But believe you me, the fun had only just begun. And BOY was I glad to have those flyers! I brought in a stack of them and left with none, and though I didn't give one to absolutely every person in the room, I have complete faith that they reached the hands of everyone who was meant to get them. But enough about me; let me tell you about all the awesome people I met.

While hovering by the cupcake table, I started a conversation with a filmmaker by the name of Tom Etlinger. We spent a long time talking about Buffy, movie-making, and fantasy musicals (you'd never guess, but the transitions between topics were pretty seamless!). He is currently planning a music video shoot for his friend Edgar Ibarraran, a flamenco guitarist who was also hanging out in close proximity to the cupcakes. Getting further into the crowd, I spotted an amazingly cute dress with comic book-printed fabric, the wearer of which turned out to be Sarah Kuhn, author of the geek romantic comedy novella One Con Glory. Andrea (a.k.a. Arkham Asylum) was totally pimping the Star Wars, decked out with baby doll T-shirt, handbag, and tattoo. (It was no accident, as she has a photo blog called Star Wars and Wine.) As I milled about, I saw Joe LeFavi, whom I had known from The Thrilling Adventure Hour, but I had not known the scope of his geeky awesomeness. As it turned out, it was also the release date of his issue of Fraggle Rock, and I was lucky enough to document his first signing. (You can see all the photos in my album on Facebook.)

I passed out a few more flyers, then took a breather back at the cupcake table. Actually, "breather" is probably the wrong word, since I quickly got pulled into so many engaging conversations that I could barely catch my breath. I had a long conversation with Marsia Powers, Web News Editor of Whedonopolis.com, a site that covers Joss Whedon-related news, as well as organizes charity screenings and events. Marsia expounded Costco-caliber quantities of Whedon wisdom (among other things). The conversation then shifted to Suzanne Eggebrecht, a.k.a. "the Button Lady"), a Comic Con veteran who had many entertaining Con war stories. And if the cupcake table weren't already supersaturated with nerd niche celebrities, Mark Harvey was also among the crowd. To the naked ear, it's a pretty innocuous name, but if you're a fan of the LA Derby Dolls, you would know him as the Sirens mascot, "Bacon". Yes, he dresses as a giant strip of bacon. (And the even funnier part of it is that he once worked for Kevin Bacon so if you want to stand any chance in a game of "6° of Kevin Bacon", do NOT play with this guy!) He was the one who actually won the Buffy trivia. Most of the questions he answered correctly had me completely stumped!

By the time Robert and I left, I was tired, wired, and totally de-flyered. On our way out, a panhandler asked me for spare change and I gave him my chocolate cupcake with the hand sticking out of it. (I hope he knew not to eat the hand!) Robert and I sat at the Whole Foods on Santa Monica where we debriefed and decompressed over soup. I also showed him my freshly finished Anya song, which will be released soon, though not until after the still-to-be-completed song about Faith. There is much more to blog about, but I've written enough for today. For all of you who made it out, thanks for your contribution to the experience. And for those of you who didn't, it isn't too late to celebrate. A very merry Buffy Un-Birthday to Buffy!

Captain Caleb Castle, I Salute You!

2011-01-14T10:30:00.001-08:00

I said to myself, "If Nathan Fillion wants a picture of himself on my vision board, he's going to have to take it with me himself!" Well, Nate, you stepped up to the plate. Congratulations, you made the cut.

Yes, it really happened. And yes, I have the photographic evidence to prove it. It was a brief moment, but the journey there was a pilgrimage. And by pilgrimage I mean pilgrimage, pronounced with a pretentious soft "g" and an elongated "aaaah."

I first heard about The Thrilling Adventure Hour last June from a friend who knew I was big into Joss Whedon. Nathan Fillion was guest starring in the upcoming show, and by the time I'd heard about it, it was -- of course -- completely sold out. My friend Robert LeMoyne and I showed up to the box office way early to try to get tickets, but to no avail. Actually, there was some avail, just not in the form of tickets. It was, after all, there and then that I first met Juliet Landau and the Ballads to the Buffy Big Bads project was born. Come to think of it, there was a metric caboodle of avail, but back to my original point, we did not get into the show.

The next time Nathan guest starred was last month, December, and despite extending the show to two nights, it sold out before I even knew it existed. By this time, I had a couple of inside sources, but none of them had the power to get me in. When the January show rolled around, I made sure to get my tickets right away. I didn't know the guest star list, but crazy celebrities or no (and they always have crazy celebrities), the show is an absolute romp, and I wouldn't miss it for the world. Eventually, they announced guest stars, and to my great delight, Nathan was one of them! It just might happen, it just might happen, I just might meet the freaking man himself...

Not that it was the only reason, but I decided that my potential meeting with Nathan was a good deadline for getting the new Buffy flyer done. (If you haven't seen it already, check out the pic on Facebook.) Carl Mahoney had taken an awesome picture of me in my Spike T-shirt, and we had spent the better part of the Wednesday before designing the logo, which took quite a bit of work. Inspired by the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" logo, we modified and pieced together various fonts. Carl being the more Photoshop-savvy one, he pushed most of the buttons while I sat there and looked pretty and said "Do this, don't do that, a little bit more brushstroke on the 'B'." Later that day, my other awesome graphic designer/musician friend Brian Travis took our logo and designed the wallpaper for the back of the flyer.

I spent the next couple of days playing around with the color scheme and layout, and beefing up the logo to add a little more dimension to the characters. It was a mighty effort to get it in perfect, printable form. And I was cutting the edges with the paper cutter at Office Depot up to the moment I left for the show. By that time, I was so frazzled and exhausted, I could barely think. And the one thought that did swim through my muddy head was (and imagine me saying this with a faux-drunken slur), "Nathan Fillion might never see the light of this, but if I find myself standing next to him and he has that look on his face like, ' I could use the Buffy flyer right about now,' I can be like, 'Hey, I've got one of those!'" And I did. And he did. And I did.

The moment itself went by in a blur. I remember waiting outside the Largo, working my way through an unusually large group of people standing still as cattle, all waiting for the same thing. Everybody wanted their photo op with Mal/Castle/Capt. Hammer/Caleb/Ruggedly Handsome Heartthrob/whoever the heck else this guy symbolized to them. I couldn't help but feel a little cliché, but I was on a mission. He handled himself like a perfect gentleman superstar, taking photo after photo, being courteous but efficient, smiling that multi-million dollar smile.

I waited for some of the crowd clear, took off my giant coat, gathered my thoughts, pulled the shiniest-looking flyer from the pile, and went up to take my turn. Nathan said a quick hello, told me he liked my outfit, and put his arm around me for the photo op. (Yes, I touched him. Yes, it was 15 seconds or less a fan girl bliss. And YES, he really does look that good in person.) Jonathan Reilly -- friend, official event photographer, and impresario of AWESOMEness -- took two pictures; one with my camera and one with his. Both pictures served a purpose. The one on my camera was posted immediately, and the one on his actually looked good (in my frenzied state, I totally forgot to turn the flashback on!). After the photos were snapped, I handed him the flyer. He said, "Do you want me to sign this?" I said, "Actually, this is yours. I'm writing love songs to the Buffy super villains, and I'm going to write one for you." He looked impressed. He mentioned something about the flyer looking good, or the wording on the T-shirt, or some other gobbledygook I was too googly-eyed to remember. The point is, MISSION COMPLETE!!!

There is more to say about that night. And there is more to say about new songs. But I've gushed a great deal so you'll have to wait until the next entry in order to hear about the rest. And now, for your moment of Zen...

Apparently the only signature he needed was my fist...But with a pen in it... That I was signing with. These are not the hammer ...

Giving Buffy a Break

2010-12-27T10:13:00.000-08:00

This is a picture I took of a totally weird sculpture I fell head over heels in love with (no pun intended). It was the most non-Buffy thing I could think of. I'd been stressing out about writing the next song, determined to write some kind of epic 90s power ballad for Ben and Glory, which I may still do. But it wasn't ready to be born yet, and worrying was doing me no good so I said "Buffy, I am letting you off the hook." Easier said than done.

Oftentimes, you'll hear writers or artists emphasize the importance of "letting the creation wash over you" or "walking away to get a new perspective" or "putting your mind elsewhere so the story will seep into your subconscious." And yes, that is absolutely true. But here's the thing -- you REALLY have to do it! No cheating, no multitasking, no appearing to the outside world as though you were fully ensconced in basket weaving or mini golf or high tea when your brain is actually working overtime. You have to let the thing go and shoot yourself completely the opposite way, and hope that you will have gone so far, you actually circle back around to it, now endowed with the wisdom of the journey. And even if you meander and never find the thing again, you were having such a good time adventuring, who gives a rat's behind? Once you extricate yourself from the ironclad kung fu grip, it's a first-class Caribbean cruise. It's that step that kills.

Luckily, the holidays and Berkeley are a good diversion. For almost a week now, I've been staying at the house my family moved into when I was nine; enjoying the crazy family antics, my mom's hot tub, and my dad's home cooking. I hiked up Mount Tam before dawn on the solstice, sang some karaoke, went to a couple of nice holiday parties, traipsed about San Francisco in all of its pre-Christmas glory, enjoyed a lazy rainy Christmas with my folks, and had an awesome post-Christmas shopping trip to the city, followed by a lovely sushi dinner with my dad. Wow, not stressing out about Buffy love songs-- I could totally get used to this!

I'm trying to keep this mindset even as I dive back into the world of writing. I do, after all, want to keep putting my work out there. And now that I actually have a fan base (albeit a little one), there is some element of expectation. On top of that, there is the expectation I put on myself. I really do want to finish this project in a way that feels like it tells a complete story. My goal is 12 songs on a CD by the end of July (to coincide with San Diego Comic Con). This may not happen, but hey, I'm throwing my hat over the wall. Of course, immediately when I start thinking about these deadlines, that little voice in my head goes "PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE PRESSURE!" And then I think to myself, "Wait a second. I am singing love songs to vampires and demons from a campy 90s TV show. What the hell is this if it's not fun?" Right??? Keep telling yourself that, keep telling yourself that. This is fun this is fun this is fun.

Interestingly enough, I’ve been somewhat productive on the project. After being locked inside my house all of Christmas Day -- and appropriately so due to the pelting rain, the fact that the stores were all closed, and it being my mom's last day before leaving for India -- I was feeling a little cabin fever. Luckily, one of my favorite haunts-- The Pub on Solano-- was open, my favorite bartender Chris Strong happened to be behind the bar. I mused a little by the fireplace, consulting my Buffy wiki printouts as my sense memory happily received the old sights, sounds, and smells. Later, I accompanied Chris into the dish room and he washed his beer glasses while we had an interesting conversation about celebrity dynamics and fandom. (Interestingly enough, he experiences it much more palpably than I do, since whatever fan base I have is mostly online, whereas he, as a bartender, gets people approaching him all the time and striking up conversations in the most random of places.) By the end of the night, I felt both a sense of relaxation and accomplishment, having made some progress while seemingly twiddling my thumbs. I'm excited to get my hands on some instruments because I think that just may do the trick...

Okay, back to my other life. Buffy, I release you from your holding cell, but you are officially on probation. And by probation I don't mean I am keeping constant watch over you. I mean I am keeping you in check. No misbehaving, no messing where you shouldn't be, no interrupting my metaphorical mini golf. Got it? Good.

What's in store for Buffy?

2010-12-17T19:45:00.001-08:00

Funny you should mention that, Karuna, because I've been thinking a lot about that myself. Well of course you would, you're me. Duh! Shit, we better stop talking to ourselves before the rest of the world finds out. Whoops, too late...

I totally didn't plan on starting this blog entry like that. But it actually kind of works. I've been percolating on my next song, and it looks like it's going to be Ben and Glory, which makes the multi-personality thing pretty appropriate. (Plus I'm a little insane, in case you haven't noticed, so I'll take any excuse I can get to justify my weird behavior.) I've had the idea for a while, but it's been way on the back burner. It's easy to leave stuff there when you're busy with other projects, which I have been. After releasing If I Were a Robot, I worked like a fiend editing my short film Lifeline. Now that I have a satisfactory cut of that, there is this roller coaster-stomach-drop feeling of, "Holy crap, what the hell is next?" But something always finds me in just the nick of time, so long as I open my door to invite the Muses in.

So I did an awesome photo shoot on Wednesday, shooting for 10 hours straight with the amazingly talented Carl Mahoney. It was a good day-- tiring but inspiring. And I guess some of that creative energy was still squirming around after the shoot, seeing as how I woke up at 4:30 in the morning on Thursday and couldn't go back to sleep. I wandered around for a little while in the dark, letting my thoughts do what they will, and suddenly the beginnings of lyrics started to emerge. Ben and Glory were saying, "Take me off the back burner, take me off the back burner." So I did. Today, I spent a few minutes fiddling around at my keyboard, plunking out a few ideas for melodies. Nothing is set in stone, but I feel it. And now that I've blogged about it, it will surely come.

Speaking of Wednesday's photo shoot, one of the items on the agenda was getting a new Ballads to the Buffy Big Bads promo pic. I've had it in mind for a little while to do something a little sleeker, now that the project has started to fly. I think we got something really good. I can't show you yet, since Carl is still messing around with the images (plus it's fun to build a little anticipation). But if you look at the top of the page, you can see Nicki, the hair and makeup artist, styling my hair before the shoot. It's still in the freaky phase at this point. Eventually, she made me look pretty damn awesome. And on top of Carl's photographic awesomeness, we got an image that I think will knock your socks off.

Enough blogging for now. I'm off to Café Muse to watch some amazing music by my new friends Rudy Love, Jr. and Will E. Simms. Hopefully this will inspire some Buffyness. And if that doesn't do the trick, I'm sure an evening of fire and flow in Venice will do the trick. Have a good weekend, everyone! Reluctant Fan Girl signing off.

Lights, Camera, ROBOT!!!

2010-12-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

This is one of the test pictures we took while setting up the shot. I like to call it "Pay no attention to the deer-in-headlights about to sing a robot love song -- at least not until she puts it up on YouTube for the world to see..."

The audio and video turned out pretty clean for something we shot so quick and (dare I say) dirty. Here are the gory details behind the most recent of the Ballads to the Buffy Big Bads.

Andre had mentioned he wanted to do something cinematically interesting for the backdrop than before. We had shot Wherefore Art Thou Juliet in his girlfriend's apartment in West LA. Ooh, Mr. Mayor, we did at his workplace in Long Beach. They were well shot and well lit -- certainly above and beyond anything I could've accomplished with my dinky Canon PowerShot in the confines of my bedroom -- but now it was time to upgrade. He said he had a connection with the owner of a club in Culver City and we should try shooting the next one there. So that's what we did.

Before I talk about the actual shoot, a word about the costume and character. I was really at a loss for what to do with this piece, right up until a few hours before we shot. After two rounds of homemade fan T-shirts with hand-picked quotes, I decided to go more in the direction of embodying the persona of the person who sang the song. Ooh, Mr. Mayor was in my mind very clearly Marilyn Monroe. But If I Were a Robot: who was the singer there? Somebody geeky and melancholy, sure, but how would they look? What would they wear? I played with a couple of ideas -- Robert Palmer girls, Rachael from Blade Runner. Both seemed too esoteric. I could the Borg since I reference Seven of Nine, but then we would get into Trekkie territory. I actually thought about asking Adam Busch when I saw him on set (see previous entry), but it seemed a little too fan girl. Also, I'd have to explain the whole concept to him, and I'd much rather he be surprised. But where did that leave me? Geek girl who wants to be a robot to impress a boy… Of course-- she'd dress like a robot! A Facebook survey confirmed that tinfoil would do the job. I met with my photographer friend Carl Mahoney earlier that afternoon, who helped me scheme up some ideas for sexy tinfoil garb. Unfortunately, Andre informed me that the tinfoil would create lens flares and thus be cinematically unkind.

I was due to meet Andre at 4 PM in Culver City. It was 2 PM, and still no costume. I was seriously worried. Despite the time crunch, I took a jaunt over to Fallas Paredes, this awesome Mexican outlet clothing store a couple of blocks from my house. It's pretty hit-or-miss. Sometimes they have nothing but weirdly cut tops that make you look preggers, and sometimes it's a treasure trove. Most of my beloved bikinis have been purchased there for no more than $4. That day, I lucked out. I found a grey dress with silver studs at the shoulders that gave the perfect suggestion of "robot." Across the street at the discount store, I found some shimmery eyeshadow and the silver-colored jewelry you see around my neck. With my $13 worth of makeshift robot garb, I went home and dolled myself up. I really had no idea whether it was going to work, but 20 minutes, half a bottle of hairspray, and at trowel full of silver eyeshadow later, I looked in the mirror and said, "Jumpin' Jiminy: I look like a robot!" And off to Culver City I went.

I pulled up to the sparsely populated business-warehouse hybrid of a neighborhood where Andre instructed me to go. There was an animal hospital and a few small art galleries. No nightclub to be found. André met me outside and showed me into the hole-in-the-wall venue which was actually super cool and artsy on the inside. A few people were moving equipment and checking the sound. It was a very strange environment in which to bear my fan girl soul. Every other video had been recorded in a controlled environment with 0-2 other people around. Furthermore, we could do as many takes as we wanted because there were no space issues or time constraints. Here, it was a totally different story. "How am I ever going to get in my happy space?" I thought. It's hard enough to sing vampire love songs to an audience of one, let alone in the solitude of your own bedroom -- and now I have to do it in front of all these strangers who have no context for the content of the piece!

On the upside, the setting was gorgeous. Every angle of the club looked totally different so in terms of backdrops, the possibilities were limitless. We decided on the one you see in the video because we liked the Asian feel of the paper umbrellas. That, in combination with the metallic look of the DJ turntables -- which are mostly blurred -- gave it a kind of Blade Runnerfeel. The umbrellas and turntables were on a raised stage, which meant that in order to get the desired frame, we had to stand both me and the tripod on platform-type pedestals. Andre set up his 1K soft, and we shot.

The actual shoot time was extremely short. As I said, everybody at the club had to hold their work on our behalf. The first take was, as expected, a little awkward. Actually, it was more than a little awkward, given that it was the first time Andre was hearing the song, it was my first performance in front of an audience, AND that audience happened to include a 10-year-old boy (hence the dirty part). It's not like I was saying anything too blatantly vulgar, but at the same time the whole song was centered around the idea of me wanting to be someone's "sex machine." I spent most of the take trying my best not to giggle nervously. (I think Andre did too.) The second take felt a little better, but still not completely there. The third take actually felt pretty good. Normally, it would've taken me a little longer to warm up, but I knew I didn't have an infinite amount of time and takes so I really made it count. Number 3 was the last one I was going to get, at least without being a major imposition to the nice people working at the club. I gave it my all, and that was that. Andre sounded significantly pleased so I put my hopeless perfectionist in check and trusted his judgment.

We dumped all the files onto my laptop at the club. The video looked great, but we couldn't listen to the audio playback since by this time they were blasting house music so loud, we couldn't hear ourselves think. All we could do was hope that it worked. And it did. I actually spent very little time in postproduction with this one. I didn't color correct the video because it looked pretty awesome on its own. The mixing on the audio levels was minimal, and I didn't even splice any of the takes together to make sure I got the prettiest sound. Looking back, there are a few notes that are slightly off (if I were on American Idol, Randy might say my performance was "a little pitchy", but hey -- I'd much rather be singing original Buffy love songs anyway, so there!). Overall, though, I'm pretty darn happy with it -- especially for something we got in three takes.

Come to think of it, I've really got a knack for this robot thing. Maybe I should consider a new career path. Or would it be a way of life??? You tell me…

Coincidence and Confirmation

2010-11-30T10:16:00.000-08:00

I've taken a bit of a break from this blog in order to get my "other" blog project-- the Page of Possibility -- up and running. Also, I've had to put the next YouTube video on hold until my cameraman gets back from Thanksgiving vacationing. So not too many Buffy stories in the past week or two, but boy do I have a story for you...

This week and last, I've been working on a multiple-day shoot for Grey's Anatomy in which I play a "Resident Doctor", which means I don't get any lines, but I do get to wear a white lab coat on top of the normal periwinkle scrubs. (Evolution in wardrobe; very exciting.) I bolted to set yesterday morning after having accidentally mistaken my call time for six minutes later than it actually was. In the hurry and flurry, I was overwhelmed by the sensory stimulation of bright lights, fancy equipment, hustling crew members and bustling TV stars. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a white guy with dark features who looked vaguely familiar. I know him from somewhere, but not from here... yes, in fact, I know him very well... is that... could it be... Holy crap, it's Adam Busch!

It was all I could do not to laugh out loud. Think of all the extremely awkward things I could say to him! I could gush about Buffy; quote some lyrics from his band; or best of all, walk right up to him and say, "Hey, you probably don't remember me, but I wrote you a love song!" I knew that would be wrong in so many ways, and honestly I didn't feel the need. I kept my cool until later in the morning when our paths conveniently crossed between shots. "I know you from The Thrilling Adventure Hour," I said. His face lit up. It was like I told him the secret code. Even though he was a recurring and I was background, we were suddenly on even turf. He told me he had checked out my songs, and I told him I had one for him in the works. We exchanged various bits of smalltalk throughout the day, along with the occasional silly face or random shoulder bump.

I found the story of seeing Adam so amusing that I told a handful of people on set, including a hair guy named Maynard Matthews. He said, "Coincidences are a confirmation that you are doing the right thing." I really liked that idea. It made me feel reassured and even proud. After all, I had put in the work -- writing the song, recording the track, showing up to The Thrilling Adventure Hour to begin with, allowing myself to be inspired. Had I watched Buffy and never bothered to follow through with the project, yesterday would have turned out very differently. The conversation would've gone something like, "I'm a huuuge Buffy fan, I thought you should know," and him going, "Thanks," and both of us probably walking away feeling a bit awkward.

This is the irony and beauty of Ballads to the Buffy Big Bads. It is a fan piece, all a fan piece, nothing but a fan piece. But at the same time, it has made me feel like less of a fan girl and more of a peer. In writing these songs, in singing to these characters, I have found my own voice, which in turn allows me to speak with confidence and conviction among the people with whom I'd otherwise be panting, drooling, or speechless. I could've never expected this project to have taken me to the places it has -- both out in the world and inside myself.

Picking Apart the Machine

2010-11-21T14:42:00.000-08:00

Friday afternoon, David and I laid down the track for the "If I Were a Robot." Recording -- especially with David -- is always fun, but it's also a lot of nuts and bolts. I thought I'd give you a sneak peek at the process with the above photo. This is what the song looked like as we bounced it out of ProTools.

The green squiggly bar on top represents the main track we used. The first green segment is verses one, two, and the first two repetitions of the chorus. The final segment is the last repetition of the verse and chorus. The red squiggly bar represents the bridge, which is in a different keyboard voice. The blue squiggly bar, along with the overlapping snippet of green squiggle at the very bottom of the screen, is where the chorus goes haywire in this delightfully fun way that totally fits the song. (I'll say no more for now...) It was David's idea to overlap two different takes, one of which has additional reverb, in order to make it sound extra wonky.

This probably sounds and looks completely weird out of context. But once you remove the outer layers, this is what it all comes down to. I thought you all might like to know. Maybe once the song is out, which will hopefully be in the next week, you can revisit this image with a totally different understanding of what all this mumbo-jumbo means. Until then, I hope you've enjoyed all of the funny-looking soundwaves, crazy colors, and odd little antics I've thrown at you.

Back to the Buffy-board

2010-11-16T09:45:00.000-08:00

I promise you I'll get to Buffy in just a moment, but indulge me in two quick sidenotes. First, give me a millisecond to massively geek out over my star sightings this weekend. Saturday, I saw Matthew Morrison eating lunch at the same café as me and my friends Robert and Jay. Glee-licious! Sunday, I went to my acting teacher's staged reading at Ensemble Studio Theater where every star and costar under the sun seems to be a member. I did a double-take when I spotted Gates McFadden,who turns out to be the artistic director. Also, I engaged myself in a conversation with Patricia Richardson, who, to my great amusement, introduced herself to me as my cousin's understudy on Broadway. Halfway through the conversation, I was like, "OMG, that's the mom from Home Improvement!" (My non-West Wing-savvy self still associates her as Tim Allen's sitcom better half. I'm working on changing that via Netflix...)

Also, I will make a quick shameless plug for my other project, which I will launch via Internet next Sunday. Its true name will be revealed at the time of its release. Until then, it's codename is Project Pinky and the Brain. I've been doing a lot of writing, musing, and imagining, and I am seriously stoked to share it with all of you. Please join me this week, fellow lab rat, in doing the same thing I do every night... try to take over the world.

Okay, really, back to Buffy. Song #4 has been a little slower in the making due to all sorts of crazy creative and personal stuff. But believe you me, the game is on. David and I have already met twice to work out the arrangements for "If I Were a Robot", love song for Warren. It's a hoot and a holler working with him -- one because he is an absolutely amazing musician and super fun guy, two because he gives me a totally different perspective and awesome insight on what it is I'm trying to do. I am not a trained musician so I really just go by instinct. I go with what I think sounds interesting and fits the feel of the song, as well as the voice of the character singing it. I have a guitar occasionally strum awkward cords on, as well as a piano I plunk from time to time, but for the most part I compose the music in my head. I can play out the melodies (albeit awkwardly) via single notes on piano, and I could even play the chords (though it may take me a while to find them), but I have no idea about key signatures and what the chords I'm using are called.

David, on the other hand, knows all. I love that I can meet up with him and put a name to all those little nuances that have until this point been nothing but crazy ideas in my head. For example, the first time we jammed with this song, I was sure it was in the key of because that was the note the song started and ended on. To my surprise, we discovered that it's actually in the key of C. minor! The C. minor chord also keeps popping up throughout the verse in various places, so David tells me. Another interesting thing is that the bridge is composed of alternating F. minor and C. minor chords that are played in different inversions as they descend. When David told me that, it was so cool because it made it really sound like music. I'm thinking to myself, "I don't know, I just wrote the thing."

We also played around with different keyboard voices to use during the recording. The last two songs were done with street piano, which I think fit the style of the song. This time I wanted something a little more synthesized-sounding, since the song is all about robots. We played around and found two voices for two different segments of the song. (In case you're interested in knowing what they are, they are 254: Square Head 1 and 255: Square Head 2.) We played the song several times through with the chosen keyboard settings. I told David where I wanted chords versus single notes. And he came up with an intro that sounds so incredibly kickass, I can't even BEGIN to explain. I was honestly kind of worried I might not be able to outdo myself after the last set of songs, but I am bursting at the seams with excitement about this one.

At the end of the session, as David and I parted, he said to me, "You really know what you're doing. You may not have the technical language to describe it, but you do." This was really wonderful to hear, since it all started out as a crazy little scheme with me making it up as I went along. Don't get me wrong, it's still a crazy little scheme, and I must keep thinking of it as such to keep it light; to keep it fun. But he's right. I know what I'm doing and I know what I want. And, much in part to this whole process, I feel confident in my voice as a singer and songwriter. Wow, I can't believe I just said that out loud to the world! That's kind of amazingly empowering, huh?

I'm going to step away from my computer and let that stew for a bit. More on the robot front soon!

A Few Words About My Dad

2010-11-08T21:28:00.000-08:00

I just finished the last of the family events-- "the dénouement of the weekend's activities", as my mom put it. That's really how it felt. This weekend was a climactic culmination of so much time and labor by so many people, ESPECIALLY my daddy dearest. Sorry if that sounds just a smidge hoity-toity, but this is a fan girl blog and I am a fan (also family) so I think I'm entitled.

ANYhoo, I feel very blessed to have been on the receiving end of so many wonderful happenings and great words of wisdom. I've been doing a lot of thinking and writing in the past few days. How could I not be inspired after all the events that took place? I won't bombard you with everything all at once, but I do want to share one piece of writing I did on behalf of the release of my father's book. My mother had the idea that each of his family members say a few words about my dad at the opening dinner celebration. It was a really lovely idea, and I was thoroughly touched and impressed by the speeches given by herself and brother. Of course I waited till the last minute to formally prepare. It was actually really beautiful because I had one idea of what I wanted to say, but something he said that morning sparked an even better idea. It was only intended for that particular audience, but I thought I'd share with you so you can all get an idea of the spectacular awesomeness that is my dad, as well as my particular spin on him, which I daresay is rather unique...

A Few Words about My Dad

As I write this, my dad just left to get interviewed on KPFA Radio. "So, you're doing a radio interview -- how exciting!" I said. "Yes," he said, "I'd better shine my shoes." This is a pretty typical thing for my dad to say. I think after 29 years of being his daughter, I've finally gotten used to it. I used to get confused, sometimes profoundly aggravated when he’d say things like that; things that, to my mind, made no logical sense. I’d try to argue with him or correct him or trick him into saying the thing I thought he must have meant, or should have meant. I didn't understand that this was simply his way.

My dad is an oddball, an innovator, an imagineer. He is the quirky sensei who speaks in riddles and makes you do all sorts of weird things you think have nothing to do with the forward progress of your journey. I always thought of him as Mr. Miyagi from "The Karate Kid." You come to him to learn karate, and he tells you to wax a parking lot full of cars. It baffles you, almost to the point where you want to kick and scream and break things, if you think that the only way to get from point A to point B is a straight line. You say, "I want to be an artist." He says, "Let's have a cup of tea." You say, "I want to learn fancy Zen calligraphy." He says, "Take your brush and make a dot." You say, "I want to change the world." He says, "Be lazy and stupid."

My dad will show you that the path from point A to point B is a brush stroke. And by the end of that brushstroke, you might find yourself at point Z. Chances are, you'll probably find you have arrived at a destination so unfathomably wacky and cool, you will have to invent your own alphabet to describe it. Kaz has taught me to invent words, phrases, philosophies and art forms, and to let them flow freely without judging. I have a tendency to get particularly anxious and stressed out first thing in the morning. I’ll make my breakfast, brew a cup of tea, and sit at the table worrying about how to do this idea or whether that other idea is good enough to follow through with, and he walks through the front door, having been up since 4:30 AM, and tells me about how he’s painted 20 circles, figured out his next book, and decided to disarm all of Central America. Suddenly, my doubts and fears melt away. I think to myself, "If my dad can imagine world peace by breakfast (and knowing him, implement it by lunch), I can do pretty much anything."

I feel grateful to have received so much inspiration from such an amazing, creative, innovative person; most of the time at the dining room table still in my pajamas. Today, we celebrate the completion of two extremely large, heavy, fancy-looking books, which are published proof of how your imagination speaks volumes. But this is really just the tip of the paintbrush. (And we all know how big my dad's paintbrushes can get!) Your influence has written itself into so many people’s existences, shaping the way we live, make art, and create new steps in our dance with the universe. Dad, I am extremely proud of you. Thanks for everything -- the book, the breakfast conversations, and most of all the possibilities you continue to paint.

I am your BIGGEST fan!!!

2010-11-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

I am thoroughly exhausted after a long day of celebration, conversation, delicious food, and amazing company. This weekend, I am up in Berkeley to celebrate the completion of what essentially amounts to my father's life's work. My dad, Kazuaki Tanahashi, is many things -- painter, calligraphy master, writer, teacher, peace activist. He is also a scholar and translator of Dogen Zenji, the renowned 13th century Zen master who brought Soto Zen Buddhism from China to Japan. Kaz has been translating Dogen's work since he was younger than I am now, and he has just published an enormous two-volume book set of the Shobogenzo-- Treasury of the True Dharma Eye -- a collection of all of Dogen's teachings. This project has been 50 years in the works. You hear that??? Five-zero, FIFTY!!! I haven't spent that long doing anything, including being alive, so needless to say this is a BIG DEAL.

Friday night, we had a lovely dinner at Greens Restaurant, which was the "intimate celebration", consisting of about 50 people. Norman Fischer made a lovely toast, and I -- along with my mom and brother -- all shared some words about what Kaz meant to us. Today, we scooted off bright and early to San Francisco Zen Center where Peter Levitt gave a really gorgeous talk on Dogen and intimacy. (He used the term "intimacy" not in the exclusively social/sexual context we're used to, but rather in how we get to know the world and ourselves.) This afternoon, we headed back over to Majestic Fort Mason where a Dogen panel took place. There were many speakers from the academic and Zen worlds, along with an enchanting shakuhachi performance by master musician Masayuki Koga. I'd have to say the highlight was hearing my new friend, author Brad Warner, describe Dogen as a nerd subculture, comparing it to comic con, punk rock, and Star Trek. I think I'll have to devote an entire entry just to geek out on that!

Long story short, I feel very grateful to be a part of this whole world. Being as how my parents met at San Francisco Zen Center, I'm what you would call a "Zen center brat." (It's sort of like being an Army brat, except totally different.) So all of the people I have met or re-met in the past couple of days are various permutations and incarnations of the American Zen archetype. The Hollywood movie world, on the other hand, is a more novel beast. Because I didn't grow up around it, I tend to go gaga-ballistic-drooling-misty-eyed-weak-in-the-knees-fan girl when I see an actor or filmmaker I admire. But sitting in the lecture hall today, listening to Peter's talk, I realized that these are the ROCK STARS of the American Zen community! What a privilege it is to know these people, to be enlightened by these people; to be so familiar with them, in fact, that their presence seems as normal as eggplants in the fruit basket. And to think, they are all there to celebrate the work of my daddy dearest!!!

I don't want to get excessively narcissistic about my dad. He had a lot of collaborators on the project, a whole community of people without whom the Shobogenzo would not exist. But he has been chipping away at this for years and years, and I've seen it from both sides of the lens. Countless meetings in our living room and around the world, editing with so many people to get that perfect word. Hours and hours of reviewing the glossary (which for such an epic work is not an easy task). A lifetime of love, exploration, and dedication. And I honestly believe the world will be a more beautiful place because of it. I have yet to seriously crack into Dogen's work (I feel like a schoolgirl who hasn't done her homework), but from the snippets I've heard through my upbringing, and, of course, all weekend long, he is a beautiful poet; a wise teacher; a revolutionary thinker. And I have complete faith that my father's translation has done him every drop of justice.

And of course, no artist or writer -- even when they describe somebody else or tell a story that is supposedly fiction -- can create something that doesn't speak volumes about who they are. I'm excited to get to know Dogen better because in doing so, I'm sure I will discover a few things about my dad. Whether Kaz connected to Dogen because they were similar or whether Dogen influenced the course of my father's life and character, they are surely inextricably linked. I know they say you can't judge a book by its cover. I won't even try to judge this book, since it doesn't actually have a physical cover. But I will say that even before I open it, it is a marvelous sight to behold. It is simple; large; weighty; beautiful. It lives up to its name; a true treasure.

I'll get all gushy and fan girl in my next entry, in which I will share a few words about the more intimate aspects of the awesomeness of that is my dad. But it's late, and I must get some sleep so I can be fully energized for another day of fantabulous fanfare for my biggest idol... my dad.

On Robots and Completion

2010-10-25T23:35:00.000-07:00

It's so nice when everything comes together in a neat little package. I haven't felt that way in a while so I'm savoring the moment. [Mmmmm...moment...]

As I mentioned in my previous entries, I'd been having a bit of a block with the Ballads to the Buffy Big Bads. Two major factors-- one artistic and one personal -- contributed to the block. The artistic: I've been busy putting the finishing touches on my long-term short film project Lifeline (long-term short film...is that oxymoron?). The personal: dealing with the death of my dear friend, Burning Dan (If you only click on one link, PLEASE click that one; it leads to a gorgeous video tribute that really shows the essence of who he is).

Lifeline -- at least in its current phase -- mostly involves long hours of hair-splitting scrutiny alone in front of my laptop. Not so much fun to blog about. I will, however, say a few words about Dan, which -- like all good things in life -- will eventually lead me to Buffy.

Losing Dan has been a pretty powerful experience for me. I'd known him pretty much a year to the day (met him and parted with him on a Sunday in October). I've had acquaintances and even relatives die, but he was definitely the closest person I've ever known to pass away. He was also the first person I've lost who was my peer. It was quite a shock to everyone he knew because he was one of the most vibrant and life-affirming people in the whole wide universe. But the biggest shocker to me was that I had seen him THAT VERY DAY. Not just that day, that EVENING!!! It boggles the hell out of me that I could be seeing someone and talking to them and hugging them one moment, and a few hours later... poof! No more.

Dan's death also represented something bigger in my mind: the idea that things will never be as they were. Just a month prior, I had let another relationship go. It was a decision I felt certain about at the time. Sad, but certain. Dan's passing added a whole, huge, deeper dimension to the end of that other relationship. I remember staring at Jonathan Reilly's torn-down kitchen at a party Saturday night (more on that momentarily), feeling exactly the way the kitchen looked -- raw, nonfunctional, somewhere between what it was and what it would be. All week, I'd been kicking myself over my Buffy block. But in hindsight, trying to finish a Buffy song in my condition was like trying to fry an egg in a kitchen with the stove yanked out of its socket.

Saturday was a big breakthrough for me. After a few amazing conversations with wonderful friends (and a wee bit of mood-altering facilitation), I had a subtle yet very impactful shift in perspective. Until that point, I had felt a deep sense of loss. That night, I reframed the loss as completion. I had two amazing encounters with people who enriched my life in a multitude of marvelous ways. Those experiences were all I could have hoped for and more. They were, essentially, complete. Don't get me wrong; I'm not magically "over Dan." Like anybody who shared so much as a handshake or smile with him, part of me will always be devastated by his death. He made the world a wacky, wonderful place, and we all wish we had a little more of him. But my time with him was such a gift -- especially my very last encounter with him, which I wrote about in a poem called Carpe the Awesome. And I know that all of us fortunate to still be on this planet owe to Burning Dan to live -- I mean really LIVE -- in a way that lends itself to awe-inspiring adventures of the quirkiest kind. Today was exactly that.

I was working as an extra on The Hard Times of RJ Berger, a raunchy high school scripted MTV comedy, which is going on its second season. I spent most of the day with a group of 20-somethings-playing-teenagers, running around a high school gym in my bra and underwear, pretending to be high out of my mind. It was one of my weirdest, wonderfullest workdays, which involved a surprise cameo by Paris Hilton, along with the making of some cool new friends -- including one of the crew guys who did sound mixing on Dollhouse. (He told me a fun story about how they'd break for lunch, and everyone would run to take a nap in the room where the Dolls slept. Fan girl silent squeal!) And somehow, in the process of playing a stoned, reckless teenager (which is SLIGHTLY different from my usual self, I swear!), I came up with two more lines to my Warren song. Though the song was partially written, I was missing a few big pieces, and my inability to write the remainder made me feel like I may as well not have begun. But those two lines were just enough to get me over the hump, and by the end of the day I had my song.

"If I Were a Robot": love song to Warren. Soon, you will see it in all of its geeky glory. Let me just say that, as wonderfully profound and valuable as it is to experience the concept of completion in a chapter of one's life, completing a Buffy love song FEELS FUCKING AWESOME!!!

And that completes my entry for the day.

Basking Before Buffy

2010-10-21T00:21:00.001-07:00

I've gotten temporarily distracted from Buffy by various life things. The intent of this entry was originally to manifest more songwriting. But before I get back to Buffy, I need a moment to bask.

At the moment, I am on cloud nine after having "worked" a full day on the show "Community." I say worked in quotations because I basically spent 15 hours on the Paramount lot doing a metric boatload of absolutely nothing. I guess you could count it as 14 official work hours, minus the hour-long lunch break (which was actually an hour and a half), during which time I snuck in a coffee date on Melrose with my actor/singer/producer friend Andrew Appel, whom I've been meaning to catch up with for a while.

This whole day has left me feeling like a fan of many things. First of all, I am a HUGE fan of days like this -- easy, fun workdays that leave me more relaxed than even the laziest of days at home. I am a fan of the Paramount lot, which -- once I take a glimpse beyond the confines of our gross little smelly little prison of a holding cell -- is majestic and magical and the birthplace of all these epic things that made me want to make movies in the first place. I'm a fan of the camera guy I ran into at crafty who showed me, step-by-step, how to make the perfect peanut butter sandwich combo which was actually two sandwiches -- nutella on one side, raspberry jam on the other. I'm a total fan of Danny Pudi, whom I ran into on another trip to crafty. I struck up a conversation with him, which was easy to do since I had recently seen him perform at The Thrilling Adventure Hour. The fact that he is part of that crowd already earned him massive points in my book. His costume -- a green pair of pajamas with rocket ship print -- totally won my heart.

Needless to say, by the time I clocked out at 11:12 PM, my cake was thoroughly iced. But the night wasn't over yet for this Fan Girl -- I had one more pit stop to make. On my way home from Hollywood, I stopped by the house of my acting teacher, James Eckhouse, to drop off a DVD copy of my short film, "Lifeline." (He had told me in class on Monday that he could take a look at it and give me feedback this week.) This moment was actually a huge deal for me for several reasons. First of all, like many of my peers in their mid-to-late 20s, I grew up watching [the original] Beverly Hills 90210, so James was a fixture of my childhood. This was strongly reinforced by the fact that last year I had gone back and re-watched THE WHOLE SERIES on Netflix (at least through season five, after which point Jim Walsh was no longer a principal character).

Around the same time of my Beverly binge, I also saw James in an independent film called "Half-Life." I was still living in Berkeley, and I remember being in a mire of artistic angst over "Lifeline" at the time. Normally, when I go to those Film Festival screenings with the cast and crew Q&A at the end, I do my best to come up with some extremely witty, thought-provoking question that not only makes the filmmakers look into their "process" in a way they previously hadn't, but also (one can only hope) makes them go, "That girl who asked that question must be totally smart, and creative, and an actor/filmmaker too; just the kind of person I want on my team!" This time, the only burning question that came to mind was "How did you get James Eckhouse to act in your film?"

So there I was, at his doorstep, dropping a copy of MY SHORT FILM -- the very same short film I had been working on while watching him on multiple screens, big and small, dreaming about my life in LA! I took the time to really drink it in -- watching the wind blow through the trees, thinking about how far I'd come, and laughing at my inner 10-year-old for STILL not getting over the fact that his zip code wasn't actually 90210. It's totally silly, but it kills me; it really does.

So there is my flood of fandom for the night. Now, it's back to the books with Buffy. I have a half-formed Frankenstein monster of a song, which I need to flesh out and finally freaking finish. In order to do that, I must watch AT LEAST Warren's debut episode, I Was Made to Love You. Whoever happens to be reading this, I'm holding myself accountable to you. But enough manifesting for the night. It's time for some Dollhouse and dreams.

A Fan of Dan

2010-10-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

I put Buffy and blogging on the back burner for a bit when I found out about the tragic passing of a close friend of mine. Daniel Gordon-Levitt -- known to most as "Burning Dan" -- was one of those guys you could spot from 10 miles away. You'd first recognize him by his tell-tale color scheme; pink and green were his favorite colors to match his favorite food, watermelon. As you got closer, you would spot his unmistakable chestnut-brown dreadlocks, ornamented at the ends with sparkly little wax balls, also usually pink. I first met him at the birthday party of Joseph of Windows to Sky, where he did a fire-spinning routine to Madonna's "Ray of Light." Having spent many years as a camper and counselor at Camp Winnarainbow, I'd seen people spin fire on several occasions. But I'd never seen anyone spin FIRE, if you know what I mean.

The rest of the evening, he proceeded to describe every aspect of his life as "Awesome!" I later learned that was pretty much the way he felt about everything. In fact, his signature article of clothing was a pink T-shirt that said "Carpe Awesome." Sally Slade, who invented the T-shirt with him, printed out a bunch of them to give away at one of the memorial events. The thing has barely had a moment away from my body.

I won't go over every biographical factoid about Burning Dan, since you can find it all in a matter of moments online. A few basic things: he was a talented fire spinner, an avid attendee of Burning Man (enough to name himself after the event!), a skilled photographer, and a master of all things computer. He helped his brother, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, start an amazing collaborative art website called hitRECord.org, which you should ALL go visit and contribute to. He started Flow Temple, a school for flow arts (juggling, poi, devil sticks, staff, etc.). He was the leader of a gigantic community of artists from all walks of life. He was an innovator and imagineer (the last day I saw him, he was teaching some newlyweds a beautiful way he'd invented of holding hands). And he was an amazing source of light in the lives of everyone who crossed his path.

After hearing the news of his death, I wrote him a poem, which I video recorded and linked to the top of this entry. If you did know him, hopefully it will bring back fond memories. And if you didn't, you can learn a little about a very special person who has inspired so many people to be their superhero selves.

A Buffilicious Evening

2010-10-05T07:48:00.001-07:00

All of you Buffy fans will certainly recognize the two females in the photo. The guy in the middle, you probably don't know... yet. But I'm fans of all of them, especially my friend Robert B. LeMoyne, author of an amazing young adult trilogy called The Inanimate Gods, which will no doubt be in your common vocabulary in the very near future. Robert and I have shared many adventures, and this whole blog -- not to mention the entire Ballads to the Buffy Big Bads project would not exist without him.

I met Robert outside The Thrilling Adventure Hour on Saturday night, along with my other friend Tom Caton. The two of them made the perfect combo of company, since Robert is a Buffy geek to the bone and Tom has never watched an episode of Buffy in his life. Not that he needs to because he has lived it (as I mentioned in an earlier entry, he was the boom operator on Season 2). Robert, Tom, and I had a lovely time before the show hanging out at a café and sharing stories about life, art, and Buffy. Robert and I soaked up every word of Tom's crazy anecdotes of all things Joss and Buffy.

Needless to say, the night got off to a promising start before the show had even begun. From then on, it was surprise after geeky surprise. Before the actual Thrilling Adventure Hour show begins, there is usually an opening act. This time, it was a band consisting of three guys, all of whom switched instruments, playing a short set of two or three songs. I didn't recognize any of them -- or so I thought. Midway through the first song, Robert nudged me and whispered, "The guy in the middle... is that who I think it is?" I looked at him and got giddy. "Oh my goodness, holy mother of everything holy!" It was indeed Adam Busch-- master of the dark arts, leader of the evil geek trio, inventor of the Buffybot!!! The fact that he just sort of appeared, unlisted, unannounced, made it all the cooler. My wheels started spinning. Ode to Warren, ode to Warren...

The whole show was lots of fun, especially in the company of two people who had never seen it before. There was a rich roster of guest stars, including GILLIAN JACOBS (Community), DAVID FURY (writer, producer on 24, Buffy, Angel), MICHAEL HOGAN (Battlestar Galactica), JUSTIN KIRK (Weeds), and TOBY HUSS (Cowboys & Aliens). And, of course, Juliet Landau did a hilarious rendition of Lady Haiku -- a beatnik super villain who only spoke in the 5-7-5 syllable structure.

After the show, it was a flurry of meat-and-greet. I first sought out the guest director Rian Johnson, of whom I am a big fan. (I remember seeing Brick before I moved to LA and thinking, "I want to watch and make movies like THIS for the rest of my life.) I got a picture with Justin Kirk and spoke with Juliet. It was different this time with her because she really saw me; knew who I was; kept mentioning my Drusilla song to people in conversation. When I mentioned "Ooh, Mr. Mayor," she said, "I'll send the link along to Harry Groener [the actor who played the Mayor]-- he's a friend of mine."

Also, this insanely beautiful thing happened at the very tail end of my conversation with Rian. Out of the blue, Amber Benson approached me and said, "Hey. I think I know you from somewhere." I said, "I don't believe we've met, but I KNOW you. We totally had this awesome casual conversation, which Robert joined at the perfect time just as she was mentioning her novels. And at the very moment when I was describing Ballads to the Buffy Big Bads, who should pop into the conversation but Adam Busch?! There was no way I could have planned such a beautiful moment, let alone imagined it!!!

I left the venue flustered and amazed, but not before giving Juliet Landau a hug and goodbye, way out. Robert and I sat at a diner and broke the whole thing down. It's great to have someone to reflect with when it comes to things like this. My own head was filled with self-criticism and out. Did I say the right things to the right people? Too much? Not enough? (And man, the geek in me wished I'd gotten a photo sandwiched between Amber and Adam since one was the other's assassin! Another time...) Thankfully, Robert was there to point out the positive. "Juliet Landau STOPPED her conversation to say goodbye to you. JULIET LANDAU!!!" He kept repeating it over and over again while we drove on Sunset strip.

Looking at it that way, it is pretty wild. Not too long ago, I was the fan girl reluctant to ask for a photo. Three months, three songs, and 4058 youtube hits later, Juliet Landau is making sure she doesn't miss out on our hug goodbye! I suppose you could say I've come a long way.

Laying it Down with the Mayor

2010-09-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

I am exhausted out of my mind from a long weekend of nonstop creativity, which ended with a glorious bang at David Bickford's lovely Laurel Canyon abode. And I'm proud to say that we have laid down a magnificent track for the next Buffy song, "Ooh, Mr. Mayor." Pardon the bragging, but I do believe this is the best one yet!!!

The song is a sort of slinky, jazzy lounge tune sung in the style of Marilyn Monroe's "Happy Birthday Mr. President.” It plays on the idea of a seductive lady making a man with a seemingly wholesome façade admit to having a slimy, dirty, kinky alter ego. I think that it's pretty much in line with Joss Whedon’s intent when he created the character. Here is a guy who claims to be all about family and leadership and good behavior (to the point where he doesn't even use swear words!), and yet he engages in all sorts of extremely unwholesome behavior in which he breaks pretty much every law in the book. So I took that premise and then added a metric ton of sexual innuendos, which is basically what I do best.

David and I had figured out the arrangement last week, which took a bit more time than "Wherefore Art Thou Juliet?" since the song had a much more complicated melody. I arrived at his place at around 3 PM on Sunday, despite the fact that we weren't sure if we could get the recording done because the power was out in Laurel Canyon. We practiced it, worked out the transitions, and waited. Still no power. So we took a little trip down to the West Hollywood Guitar Center where I purchased a keyboard for $99. It was a very exciting thing, and it will be quite useful when I compose my next round of songs, since I've basically been writing all of the melodies in my head, then clumsily attempting to translate my wacky ideas to David.

The power returned shortly after our little excursion. Long story short, we laid down a drum track, which required some interesting mathematical calculations. We recorded several versions of the piano melody and spliced the strongest parts of all of them. At around 8 PM, we were only partially done, and David looked like he was fading fast. He said, "I don't know if we can get this done tonight. You may have to come back tomorrow." I was really hoping knock it out in one session so we wouldn't have to worry about it later. I also had the inkling that he was feeling incapable because his blood sugar had dropped so I offered to cook him a meal. I foraged around in his kitchen and whipped up a lovely combo of pasta Primavera, arugula salad with homemade blackberry vinaigrette, and pork stew in a tomato sauce. "Once he’s eaten," I thought, "he'll probably have his mojo back." Surprisingly, he successfully recorded most of the track while I was in the midst of cooking. After dinner, we finished the rest of the recording. It took a lot of strange little tweaks to make sure that everything timed right with the percussion and piano. At 1:30 AM, we were finally done!

We were both a little concerned about whether or not the recording was accurate enough. It was the best we could do, given our energy level and the hour. One could only hope that it sounded okay the next day. I've listened to the track probably 20 times today, and to my great delight it sounds AWESOME!!! I'm scheduled to record the next video on Thursday of this week. Keep your eyes and ears peeled!

Whedon Whirlwind

2010-09-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a whirlwind of a week in Whedonland (excuse the alliteration). On Sunday, I found out that my videos had gone viral after being posted on the Joss Whedon Facebook fan page as well as Whedonesque.com. (So far, "Wherefore Art Thou Juliet?" is at 1622 hits and "You Renegade Vamp" is at 956.) I have been feeling the love from far and wide. I even got a message from two Buffy fans in Sweden! It's amazing how art (and Internet) can link people who are seemingly worlds apart.

It also astounds me how small the Whedon world actually is. On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, I was working on the set of Make It or Break It -- the ABC Family TV show about gymnasts. One of the crew guys randomly struck up a conversation with me after seeing me breaking out into random yoga, which I am wont to do. As it turns out, his name is Tom Caton, and he was one of the sound guys on Buffy! He told me some really fun stories about Joss and the Buffy set. I gave him a flyer for my videos, and he totally dug them. He even offered to possibly introduce me to Joss!

Meet Joss Whedon – that’s the ultimate, right? Isn’t that what I’ve been striving for? Isn’t that the purpose of this whole crazy fan video project? Theoretically, yes. But in actuality, I’m really not sure. I mean, if we happened to stumble into each other at a cocktail party, I wouldn’t avoid him like a plague of Reavers. But I’m also not jumping out of my skin to meet him this instant. First of all, I’m superstitious that meeting him might jinx my creative mojo, and I’ve got songs to write! Second, he’s like the geek Mecca and I’m not sure if I’ve studied long and hard enough to merit making the Hajj. I guess what it really comes down to is that—given my fan piece, as well as the fact that I have 1° of separation from him from about 50 billion different angles -- I’m pretty positive we will meet at some point, probably sooner rather than later. And when it happens, it will be glorious. But it doesn’t need to be now. For the moment, I am content knowing him vicariously through his dancing dialogue, quirkily crafted characters, and deliciously delightful demons, whose praises I will continue to sing.

Buffy Thought of the Day #5

2010-09-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

The whole Buffy-in-love-with-Spike thing caught me totally by surprise the first time around. But looking back at the clip of when he first sees her in "School Hard", I'm like, care to join me in a game of double DUH???

Flabbergasted Fan Girl

2010-09-19T18:35:00.000-07:00

I was just publishing a summary of my blog posts on the Lockitdown website, which I do every week. In the midst of writing the post, I visited my youtube site to get a link for the Drusilla song and found 1200 hits that were not there yesterday!!! And my Spike song had 500 extra hits! As someone who is completely unfamiliar with the world of viral videos, I am positively tingling.

Also, a brief follow-up to the interactive Buffy Thought of the Day #2: The Shakespeare reference in "Wherefore Art Thou Juliet?" comes from Juliet's line in Romeo and Juliet, "Tybalt is dead and Romeo banished. That banished, that one word banished, hath slain a thousand Tybalts." So I switch it around saying, "That Juliet, that one word Juliet, had slain a thousand fantasies."

Buffy Thought of the Day #4

2010-09-19T17:18:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite quotes ever, from the episode "Help" in Season 7. The Scooby gang decides to do a Google search on Cassie, the Sunnydale high student who prophesies her own death. Xander finds some of Cassie's poetry, pointing to it as a sign of suicidal tendencies. Willow promptly rationalizes it by saying:

"I mean, a lot of teens post some pretty angsty poetry on the web. I even posted a melodramatic love poem or two back in the day...You join chat rooms, you write poetry, you post Doogie Howser fanfic. It's all normal, right? (Buffy gives her a look indicating that no, that's not so normal.)"

First of all, did Joss just HAPPEN to be looking through a magical crystal ball predicting his Internet future with Neil Patrick Harris? And second, the fact that this particular episode is based on the theme of prophecies adds a meta- aspect that is simply uncanny.

Buffy Thought of the Day #3

2010-09-18T19:01:00.001-07:00

"Warren's the boss. He's Picard. You're Deanna Troi. Get used to the feeling, Betazoid," says Andrew in "Seeing Red." Excuse me Andrew, but last I checked, Betazoids are a) telepathic and therefore badass and b) totally dropdead sexier -- at least in the case of Deanna and Picard. Even if Picard was technically higher-ranked and-- more importantly-- your type, gives credit where it's due.

Buffy Thought of the Day #2

2010-09-17T11:51:00.001-07:00

First, massive kudos to Jason Miller who correctly named the Shakespeare reference in the first Spike-Drusilla encounter. He got both parts of the answer. First, the red herring: Drusilla says she plants daisies, but everything she puts in the ground withers and dies. Although Joss Whedon is definitely drawing a parallel to Ophelia, it is not a direct quote from Hamlet. The specific Shakespeare quote I was referring to was Spike's line "I'll chop her into messes," which Othello says about Desdemona in Act 4, Scene 1 when he thinks she's being unfaithful to him. The full line is actually, "I'll chop her into messes, cuckold me!" Very different context from the Spike-Drusilla scene. Although, on second thought, it actually kind of resonates given the later love triangle between Spike, Buffy, and Drusilla. (Spike, of course, is the one who does the cuckolding to Dru.)

Now, for the next Buffy Thought of the Day. This one's also interactive: Name the Shakespeare reference in my Drusilla song (including the original quote). This one should be a cinch.

Buffy Thought of the Day #1

2010-09-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

True to my word, I am kicking off my "BUFFY THOUGHT OF THE DAY", to be continued for the next... however long. The first one is interactive:

Name the Shakespeare reference (including play, character, and context) in the very first Spike-Drusilla appearance. Hint: it can be found between 6:00-8:15 of the above clip.

The Fan Girl Has a Fan!!!

2010-09-15T18:39:00.000-07:00

If feelings could be transmitted over cyberspace, you would even now feel me brimming with delight. Three words managed to sneak their way into my youtube comments list: “This is great.” If someone used these three words to describe a chili dog or a roller coaster ride or the latest Justin Bieber single, I could probably care less. But Juliet Landau saying them in reference to my song to her – WOW!!! What a weird town I live in and life I lead where I can be watching someone in rapt admiration on my 14”x20” hand-me-down standard-def TV set (on DVD, mind you, because my broke ass can’t afford cable) and the next thing you know they are praising my work over the web for the world to see! Are you brimming yet? Are you? Are you?

In other news, I have been madly brainstorming my next set of songs. I have some ideas for Andrew, The Master, Principal Snyder, and/or The Gentlemen. Nothing is crystal clear at the moment. It feels like a giant jigsaw puzzle with a corner pieced together here, an edge there, and a big pile of parts that haven’t yet figured out how they’re supposed to fit. I’m thinking I need to “throw my hat over the wall” once again. The gears have been spinning, but some kind of real-world manifestation is in order. But what to do?

Here’s my thought: Buffy Deep Thoughts. One a day, posted to this blog as well as my Facebook feeds. I already have a couple in mind, and now that I’m rewatching all of Season 1, I’m sure a ton more will emerge. This will keep me on my toes and keep the project hot on the front burner.

Also, I’ll hopefully be meeting with David Bickford tomorrow to work out the music for the next song “Ooh, Mr. Mayor.” Stay tuned for more! And brim a little extra on my behalf.

;) k

This is sooo going on my blog!

2010-09-11T15:49:00.000-07:00

I’m pretty sure I said those exact words after stepping away from my photo op with Tom Lenk. It was a brief moment. I went up to him after The Thrilling Adventure Hour show, said hello and told him how much I loved him, had somebody snap a few, and went on my merry way. I did get in a word about my fan piece, for which he already had a flyer. That was pretty darn cool. I guess that means we’d both heard of each other before we actually met!

It was a very interesting evening for me. Fun-filled, delightful, intense. I flyered like crazy before the show, making my mightiest efforts to find the people who would actually be into the piece. It’s always a daunting thing to go out and push your propaganda, but here’s the way I look at it. I’m not asking people for money. I’m not even asking them for very much time – a few minutes of youtube thumb-twiddling. And if they’re excited about Buffy, they’ll be genuinely happy to know. I caught one guy named Joe who looked like he would probably be a Buffy fan. Boy was I on! After I accosted him and got to talking, I noticed a “Sunnydale High School” T-shirt peeking out of his button-down (the very same T-shirt I, in fact, own). It was a wonderful feeling to see people’s faces light up when I mentioned the word “Buffy.” Like a secret little language we all shared.

I noticed Juliet Landau shortly before the start of the show. She seemed to be occupied with other people, and I, in turn, was occupied with how petrified I was to talk to her. Under any other circumstance, I’d be less intimidated to meet someone the second time around. But having just put the fan video up, ironically I felt shy. What was I supposed to say to her? “Hi, I met you a couple of months ago and proceeded to write a love song about a character you played 10 years ago and slap it up on the web for all to see.” What if she hadn’t seen it? What if she’d seen it and not like it? Would that be better or worse than her not seeing it at all?

I found her after the show (which, by the way, was absolutely AMAZING and everybody should go see). As it turned out, she indeed hadn’t learned of my video, since her Facebook site gets rather inundated. I gave her a flyer and told her to check it out. Ice broken!!!

We exchanged a few more words later on in the night. She is an extremely kind and down to earth person. With her, as with the others I don’t know very well whose work I admire and respect, I feel a little bit torn in two. There is the plain-old-person in me who says, “This is a cool guy/gal who is an actor and person just like me.” And then there is the fan girl who is jumping out of her skin with puppy dog delight saying, “They were that… person who did that… thing that was so… freaking… cool!” Which brings me to the essence of my most recent fan song.

“Wherefore Art Thou Juliet?” is all about coming to terms with breaking the fourth wall; the moment when you realize that the gorgeously crafted illusion of a character is … well… an illusion. Of course, a lot of the lyrics were exaggerated. I knew Juliet was American, and not psycho, and – much as it pains me to say so – not actually a vampire. We all know this, on a cognitive level, about the characters we love in movies and TV. But they become so real to us, in a way more real than any actual person, because they only exist in a few intense, carefully crafted moments in which they are boiled down to their essence. Don’t get me wrong, Juliet – along with most every actor I’ve admired from afar – has impressed me thoroughly face-to-face. But in a way, it’s inherently a letdown to meet the person behind the mask once we've fallen so deeply in love with the mask.

So knowing both sides of the equation, how do we proceed? One can be jaded and say, “Why waste time on silly flights of fancy?” I prefer to remain fanciful; to respect and protect the precious illusion; to honor the love story, even if it mostly remains tucked away in a corner of my imagination ... or a box of Buffy DVDs.

Nitty Nuts and Gritty Bolts

2010-09-08T17:41:00.000-07:00

Next entry, I promise I'll wax all political. But first, a bit of the nit and grit.

On Tuesday morning, I released video #2 "Wherefore Art Thou Juliet?" I'm not saying it wasn't exciting or fun because it absolutely was. But I'd be lying if I said it was easy. There were lots of little steps, all of which involved numerous nuts and bolts, many of which got screwy along the way (pardon the pun). The first video, "You Renegade Vamp", I decided to do quick and dirty. As much as I'm a sucker for perfect execution, it was more important for me to get it on its feet and out into the world. This time around, I decided to up the production value a little. Rather than shoot it on my Canon PowerShot, I waited until I found a cameraman. Being the type of person who wants it all done yesterday, this in itself was a challenge for me. But I had the feeling that recruiting a DP (director of photography) would really pay off. And it did.

I had contacted one cinematographer friend who had not responded. It's a funny thing, though -- as was the case with my pianist, the perfect person found me in the nick of time. Just as I was starting to get antsy about finding someone, I got an e-mail from my friend Kerri Kuchta, whom I know from Scary Cow Productions -- the Bay Area filmmaking collective that got me started on all of this movie madness. Kerri and her boyfriend, Andre Lomov -- also a talented filmmaker from Scary Cow -- moved down to the LA area to pursue careers in screenwriting and film. (Andre didn't have a website so here is the link to my favorite film of his, Smash Grab Therapy.) The e-mail from Kerri, written early Friday evening, said "Andre just bought a camera if anyone you know needs a camera guy." Gee, Kerri, funny you should say so...

We agreed to meet and shoot the thing on Sunday. I went over to Kerri’s Sunday afternoon, thinking it would probably be a 1-2 hour ordeal. (Famous last words, right?) Of course, there were tons little kinks to work out. The camera Andre bought was a Canon 7D which, for any of you who are unfamiliar, is a high-quality digital still camera that also shoots extremely nice-looking video. The downside of the 7D is that it doesn't record very good sound. We thus had to use an external mic and capture the audio via Garage Band. Luckily, Andre had a lavaliere that suited the purpose nicely. Or at least, it would have had it been working properly. For some reason, we couldn't seem to get any sound. We tried and we tried. Nothing. Finally, Andre realized that the issue was with the battery, which had not been changed in 12 years. It was one of small silver disc batteries; not the type of thing you'd have lying around your house. So he, Kerri, and I had to go out and find another one. First stop: CVS. Fail! Second stop: RadioShack. Ding ding ding!

We went back to Kerri's and tested out the mi. It did indeed work, but for some reason the levels were low. "You're going to have to boost the gain on this when you cut it together," Andre told me. Okay, I thought, not knowing exactly what that meant, much less how to do such a thing. But I figured I'd cross the bridge when I came to it. For now, we needed to get this thing in the can before it got too late.

By the time we solved the mic problem, it was already approaching 6:00. The daylight was fading fast. Andre relit the shot to accommodate the change in lighting. In hindsight, the new lighting actually worked a lot better. We added more artificial light to compensate for the lack of natural light, which created some shadows that were highly appropriate to the vampire theme. 13 takes later, the video was done. We copied all of the video files, along with the external audio track, into my computer. As the files were importing, Kerri sang snippets of my lyrics back to me, which amused and flattered me to no end. The video looked beautiful -- a vast improvement from the previous song. I went on my merry way, knowing that my work had only just begun.

After recording "You Renegade Vamp", I really didn't do much besides slap some titles on and upload the thing. Wherefore Art Thou Juliet? required a lot more work. First, I had to sync the external audio with the image. This wasn't too difficult since I had done a clap at the beginning of each take (make a note of that, young filmmakers!). Still, my mind played tricks on me, which prolonged the process. Once that was done, I had to sync the music track to the vocals. Because the lavaliere captures only direct sound, I had to do it completely by feel. This was a bit of a challenge since the rhythm of the music shifted slightly throughout the piece, due to us recording it in a short amount of time without using a metronome. Again, I kept doubting myself. Is the music ahead? Behind? Should I shift the audio a frame forward or back? (This process went on for what seemed like forever in the wee hours of the morning.) Somewhere toward the end of the piece, I realized that my vocals were significantly behind the music, probably because I ended up using the last take (Lucky 13). 13 was by far the strongest performance-wise, but I was also pretty tired by that point and consequently my timing was off. I split the music track, adjusting the timing on the final section. Lucky thing about post-production: everything can be changed.

Now, for a dirty little secret. I'm almost ashamed to admit it, but if you guys are hard-core enough to be reading this blog, you deserve to know. As I was doing all the sound mixing -- which involved lots of boring tasks like tweaking the volume levels on each track, quieting the hotspots in the vocals, and fiddling endlessly with the gain (whatever that means) -- I realized that my voice cracked in the final phrase. I was set on using Take 13 because everything else about it was awesome, but I needed a strong finish. Take 9 had the ending I wanted so I cut and pasted the final phrase of Take 9 onto Take 13. It synced up surprisingly well. There is probably no need to feel guilty, since people splice and mix and tweak in the recording studio all the time. In fact, in this day and age, it would be considered peculiar not to. I wanted to have a single audio and video track without any cutaways so that people could see the "real me". Splicing the audio seemed somehow deceptive. But I did it anyway, and I think the song is stronger because of it. I do, after all, want to put my best foot forward. And I didn't actually do anything to alter my voice so for all intents and purposes it's the real, raw me.

Wow, this entry is getting pretty long. I suppose it's appropriate, given the process I went through. Video editing is rather addictive. Once you start tweaking, it's very hard to stop. Even though I was only dealing a single shot, I found endless audio glitches that needed fixing. Finally, when I was through, it took several rounds of rendering to get the perfect compression settings. Each render took the better part of an hour, which meant a lot of anxious waiting around. On Monday afternoon, after long, nearly sleepless night, I got my perfect video image -- or so I thought. Little did I know that uploading AVI’s to YouTube is a very bad idea. I kept looking at the counter on the upload screen, counting down the minutes from 418. At 6pm, I went out to meet a couple friends. According to YouTube, my video still had a few hundred minutes to go. Later that night, Eric Chauvin -- bless his soul -- told me that my video would be YouTube compatible if I made it into a flash file. By Tuesday morning, it was correctly formatted and up on the web. What an ordeal!

Hopefully when you see the thing, it all looks effortless. But for the record, here's how it really went down.

Thank Blog for Accountability

2010-09-01T11:15:00.000-07:00

A smudged attempt at a fan T-shirt. This was where it all began. Actually, it began with my last blog entry promising the picture of said T-shirt. That's the beauty of blogs. You get something down in writing -- a promise or a wish or a goal -- and no matter how many people read it or don't read it, the fact that you've put it out there starts the wheels a-spinning.

So I wrote the previous entry last Friday, made the T-shirt on Saturday, and then decided to kick it into gear. I had the T-shirt so I may as well, right? I held off on the craigslist route, hoping that one of my pianist friends would bite the bait. After not hearing back, I thought, "Am I ready to take the craigslist gamble? Am I prepared to get bombarded by a bunch of potential lunatics who may not be right for my project or, worse yet, have no knowledge of music and are out to rape/kill me or at least get in my pants?" On the flipside, there is always the chance I'll strike gold. So I decided to go for it. Unfortunately, by that time, the weekend had passed me by. I hung out and wrote with Robert LeMoyne, rehearsed a Sam Shepard scene with Robin Thomas, and had an amazing photo shoot with Eric Chauvin. Before I knew it, it was Sunday night going on Monday morning. But I thought, "What the hey? May as well slap something up."

At 8:36 PM on Sunday, I published my ad with the subject heading "Are you a pianist that likes Joss Whedon?" At 12:33 AM, the following reply appeared:

Dear Karuna (I think that's your name, it was in the video credits...)
I saw your message on Craig's List and just watched your YouTube video. Really enjoyed it! Very clever, and you can really sing. The Good News .... I think I am the pianist for you. First, as a pianist, I'm pretty darned good. As for Joss Whedon, not only do I love his shows, I also know him... he's an alum of the same college I went to, and we have a favorite professor in common. Plus, I played a role on Angel Season 1. Now, the Bad News, I am leaving town Tuesday for the east coast and won't be back until Sept. 9th. Can you wait a bit...unless you want to meet up later today (Monday)?
David Bickford

Wow. I mean, I understand the power of manifestation, but... wow! This was too wacky to believe, and too wonderful to pass up. I called him the next morning, and we arranged to meet at 2 in the afternoon. I e-mailed him the lyrics, chords and the key I thought the song was in based on my soupy strategy of singing and matching the notes with a pitch pipe. When I got to his place in Laurel Canyon, I knew I had found my guy. His recording space was lovely, homey, and well-equipped. He was bubbling over with giddy, happy energy. We had an immediate rapport. And that was BEFORE he even played a note.

We sat side-by-side at his keyboard as he played the chords in the key I had given him. I didn't have to explain anything. The sound was rich, full, far superior to anything my imagination could've composed. I started singing along, getting giddier with each note. It was a dream come true! In fact, it was better than a dream come true. He added his own sassy spunk, which synced perfectly with the intention of the song. Not only did he get Joss Whedon; not only did he get my project; I had the strong feeling that deep down, he really got me.

Of course, we did have to tinker with the nuts and bolts. He helped me figure out the chords to the opening verse, which is in a minor key and has a campy, spooky feel. (Looking back, it reminds me of Scar from Disney's The Lion King.) We had a few kinks to work out with some of the trickier chord progressions at the end of each verse. We tossed my original idea for the bridge, which involved a key change, and came up with something much more appropriate and dramatic. (And thank goodness we ditched the key change -- it was becoming the bane of my existence!) And lastly, we came up with some delightful phrasing for the end of the song. Whatever ideas I had on my own (along with the ideas I never knew I had but were somehow buried in the undercurrents of the writing), David brought to the surface and took two whole new level. We laid down the track surprisingly quickly, listening to it, singing to it, and dancing around the room like lunatics. (I guess craigslist did in fact lead me to someone crazy, but it all worked out okay.)

At the end of our session he showed me around his house, which contained all sorts of strangeness, including a sword made out of a swordfish, a painting of elephants that was actually painted by an elephant (I kid you not!), and a life-sized replica of a rhinoceros head. I thought to myself, "How the heck did I end up here?"

An ad on craigslist. Smudges on the T-shirt. Words in a blog.

So now what???

2010-08-27T14:07:00.000-07:00

A week ago today, I clicked the "Upload" button on my first fan video -- "You Renegade Vamp". These past seven days, I've taken a step back from the project to work on other creative stuff, see friends, look for a job, catch up on errands, lose my cell phone, find my cell phone, recoup from all of the above, and ask myself the big question: "NOW WHAT???"

Putting up the video felt like a big accomplishment. As an artist, so much of your creative and career progress is unquantifiable. There are certain milestones -- booking a role, performing in a play, premiering a film, getting a paycheck, getting a project funded or green lit. But these come rather rarely even for somebody seemingly successful. So much time in between is spent brainstorming, generating, pursuing, asking, and doing all sorts of inane little tasks that feel like they have nothing to do with anything glamorous or passionate or fun. The payoff could be years away or never. We throw out millions of messages in a bottle, never knowing who might find one and how they might respond. This week, I got my response. In fact, I got many -- basically all positive. The YouTube hit counter is up to 263, which is pretty darn good considering I don't yet have an online following, nor the technological know-how to make a video viral. And a few of them could be Buffy actors or maybe even Joss Whedon himself. Who knows?

Once I got the video up, I thought, "This isn't so hard. I can totally do it again!" Looking back, it was a long process that involved many steps. It was daunting, time-consuming, and exhausting, but it all seemed worth it in the end. Now, I'm back to the daunting phase. In actuality, the next one will be easier -- both because the melody is more fleshed out and because I've done the whole process before. Nevertheless, thought of it leaves me weak in the knees. One big blessing about blogging: accountability.

As I mentioned before, the next item on the agenda is my song for Drusilla entitled "Wherefore Art Thou Juliet?" It was inspired by meeting Juliet Landau at the Thrilling Adventure & Supernatural Suspense Hour a couple of months back. Since the next show is September 10, I figure it would be a good deadline for the next release. Tom Lenk is one of the guest stars so there will be many Buffy fans. Maybe Juliet will be there herself. More than anything, it's a good excuse to get my butt in gear. Now for the nuts and bolts...

The biggest and scariest thing on the To-Do List is finding a musician collaborate with. Myke Wilken did an awesome job last round. This time I need a pianist. It's a pretty simple melody with a 50s doo-wop style chord progression and one key change in the middle. If someone has a digital piano with MIDI, I think we could pound it out in one sitting. Since I'm beyond broke, it would need to be somebody who would be willing to donate a few hours of their time (I could return the favor with a home-cooked meal or some awesome vegan cupcakes). I have a couple of people I could ask, but if anybody out there has the ability to help or knows someone who does, please shoot an e-mail or Facebook message my way.

In the meantime, I'll do what Barbara Deutsch calls "throwing your hat over the wall." The idea is that you throw your hat over a high wall, which is sort of a metaphor for your future. You don't know what's on the other side, and you may even be scared to find out, but now that you've thrown your hat, you must find a way to get there in order to retrieve it. In this case, it means finding the perfect Drusilla quote to put on the T-shirt I'll wear in the next video. So the next time I write an entry in this blog, be prepared to see that T-shirt.

Thus, I lay the groundwork for my next song and video to appear. As Kevin Costner says in Field of Dreams, "If you build it, he will come." I doubt W.P. Kinsella could have ever expected his baseball quote to apply to a love song for a psychotically sexy vampiress, but such is the power of manifestation, right?

The Big Day

2010-08-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

I came home to this image late Thursday night. I admit most of it’s my doing, but the little red Post-it -- stuck on by my roommate Larry Leong -- pretty much says it all. That's basically been my reaction to this fan piece every step of the way. RED FLAG! RED FLAG! RED FLAG! inscribed with a big bold WHAT?!

I can't tell you how many times I balked on the idea. Love songs to demons and vampires from a network TV show seven years out of date? What was I thinking? To be honest, I don't know. I told the idea to a couple of people in hopes of getting some validation, which would allow me to make logical sense of the whole scheme. Some snickered. A few nodded quizzically in that "Some people juggle geese"-type of way. Maybe they really were on board. Maybe I was projecting all of my doubts and insecurities onto them. Either way, there was no rationalizing this one. I had to follow my gut.

So there I was Thursday night, scrubbing the chalk marks off my makeshift Buffy T-shirt with Shout Wipes, bleary-eyed from an intense evening of rehearsing and recording, almost too deliriously tired to be nervous about my promised next-day release.

True to my word, immediately following my last blog entry, I picked up my guitar to practice the melody of my song. In that moment, I realized that there was no way I'd ever be able to work out the new chords, let alone play the ones I already had. The not-practicing-for-years had rendered my fingers unable to withstand the steel strings for a sustained period of time, and my chronic repetitive stress injuries (the reason for not practicing to begin with) made my left arm throb beyond belief. So scratch that idea. But now I had to find someone to help me with the music. Would anyone be available on such short notice? And even if they were, could we actually pull it off?

My singer-songwriter friend Myke Wilken valiantly came to the rescue. It worked out well because he had recording equipment in his apartment, which meant we could lay down a guitar track for me to take home and do the video recording separately. (Thank goodness for that because the video was an ordeal in itself! More on that in a bit...) There were several kinks to work out -- getting the timing right on the first verse (which was slightly different than the others), distinguishing the verse accompaniment from the chorus, and the biggest obstacle: the bridge. How could we ever get this done? Where would we even begin? We fumbled; we riffed; we strummed a few chords that shouldn't have touched the song with a 10 foot pole. Myke came up with some wonderful little musical moments which gave the piece more character than I could've imagined. We did indeed come up with a solution for the bridge. (My favorite part is chord he plays on the lyric "blonde," which he learned from his friend but didn’t know the name for. We ended up calling it "H”.) We recorded, recorded, and recorded until we got it right. And six hours later, I had my melody all perfectly packaged in a cute little iPod-friendly file.

I woke up the next day, still slightly tired but giddy with anticipation. After taking a walk (my usual morning ritual), I began the preparations for the video shoot. Anyone who's in film production knows that setting up a shot is far more time-consuming and labor-intensive than the viewer would perceive. And even though this was supposedly a "quick and dirty" operation, a certain amount of prep was necessary in order to get the thing looking and sounding decent. I had to find a place in my apartment where the lighting was good; clear a space to perform, a space to set up a tripod, and enough space to walk between the two; put on some light makeup; and conduct a few test shots for lighting, camera placement, and sound.

From there on out, it was all me taking my mark, pushing play on the iPod, and wailing at the top of my lungs to my neon pink Canon PowerShot, which I imagined to be the sexiest bleach blonde bloodsucker I'd ever seen. The first few takes were all about getting the jitters out, eliminating the extra facial expressions and body movements, and telling the simple truth. Last Monday, I had worked the song in my acting class with James Eckhouse, and he really helped me extract the essence of the story. Once the butterflies settled, the work I'd done with James really started to kick in. After another round of recording, I thought I might have my song. But looking at the playback, I realized it was way too somber and serious. During most of the takes, I didn't even crack a smile! In class, I’d excavated all the layers of the piece -- deep ones, dark ones, angry ones, scary ones. It was a useful exercise, but this was a youtube video. I needed to find the fun. As I'm sure you can see in the final product, a lot of the gritty stuff remains, but there is definitely an element of joy. I kept coming back to the phrase "I want to hate you, but I can't, you renegade vamp." I harbor all this resentment toward him because he is everything I am not supposed to like. But in the end, he melts me. And that, I came to realize, is the essence of the piece.

It's also the essence of my feelings toward the project. I went in fighting myself tooth and nail. I wanted to hate the idea, but I couldn't. And even when I knew I had to follow through, I was consumed by self-doubt. Should I do it? Should I not do it? What if it's too completely ridiculous to comprehend? Well I've got news for you, Karuna -- it IS!!! And you're just going to have to deal. I’ve got to embrace the silly like I embrace the fan girl. This is who I am and how I roll. I've written the thing. I’ve recorded it on video for the world to see. Now, all I have to do is own it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb7MQYOPbvM

Birthdays

2010-08-18T02:53:00.000-07:00

It's 1:43 AM on the morning of my birthday. I type alone at my laptop in my quiet Canoga Park apartment, enjoying the temperate aftermath of an uncomfortably sweltering day, head spinning from good conversation, healthy contemplation, and orgasmically delicious hot chocolate.

Perhaps it's the new-friend-factor, or the birthday-making-you-see-things-bigger filter, or the fact that my delicate constitution reacts to chocolate in the same way other people might react to some ecstatic mind-altering drug. Whatever the case, I feel the interconnectedness of things. The way we interweave and overlap. My world getting cozier and more expansive all at once.

Just a little before 10:30 p.m., I met up with my new friend Mike Kramer at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in Westwood. We met at a barbecue last weekend, and he is easily one of the most fascinating, delightful, inquisitive, affirmative, lovely people I know. He also happens to be one of the writers on Life Unexpected. At this very moment, he's probably packing for his early flight to Vancouver where he'll be spending the week on the set of the show (hanging out with the likes of Emma Caulfield, which I must say makes my inner-fan girl squeal!). We talked about everything from favorite movies, to the highs and lows of creative careers, to those little moments in life that end up wiggling their way into your scripts, which in turn wiggle their way into other people’s lives.

"So I was writing on this show, Rugrats..." one of his stories began. We were standing next to his car, which was parked in front of a hopping hookah bar on Broxton. My face lit up. "I totally grew up on Rugrats!" The theme song jingles in my head as I recall the moment. He told me how one of the episodes was based on a prank he and his brother pulled on his dad when they were kids. I don't remember seeing that particular episode, but was tickled by the knowledge that his childhood experience had poured into an artistic landscape that had infused my childhood experience. We are like spiders throwing out our threads, small creatures weaving wide webs.

I ‘d spent the earlier part of the day bumbling about; eight-legged arachnid climbing up the waterspout. A run out to the craft store for T-shirt painting material; a phone call to arrange a music session; a thread here, a thread there. Here I am in my own little world, freaking out about my fan piece, which at this point is nothing more than an abstract idea. The end product feels a million miles away. My fans-to-be are still figments of my imagination. And James Marsters himself has no idea I even exist.

But somewhere he is out there, sleeping or awake, soon to celebrate a birthday of his own. We share an astrological sign, and that's probably the tip of the iceberg. Innumerable invisible commonalities underscore our existences and have the power to connect us, if only we cast our threads. Bleary-eyed, sleep deprived, and myopic from staring too long and hard at vampire love song lyrics, I cannot clearly see the web. But slowly and surely, I weave.

Joss Whedon Fan Piece Release -- FOUR DAYS AND COUNTING!!!

2010-08-16T10:21:00.000-07:00

Monday List of Things to Do:

-Take car to mechanic

-Complete online job application

-Work on scene for acting class

-Write blog entry

-Prep for Joss Whedon fan piece release -- FOUR DAYS AND COUNTING!!!

Okay, back up. What the heck was that last thing? Why such a speedy release date? And what, in the name of everything holy, possessed me to come up with such a crazy idea to begin with???

The plan was born in its first pre-incarnation over a lunch conversation at Aroma Café with my dear friend, novelist Robert LeMoyne. We are both huge Joss Whedon fans, and consequently find ourselves geeking out about all things Whedon -- especially Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I forget where this particular conversation started; probably a combination of me trying to figure out how to get on Joss’ radar and freaking out about running out of Buffy episodes, which I was completely hooked on. However it happened, the end result was a short film script called Jonesing for Joss. The story was about a fan girl who is in massive withdrawal after having exhausted her Joss Whedon supply. She goes on a quest to hunt down the man himself, only to find that he’s turned into a straight-talking, rifle-toting tollbooth collector redneck who had been brainwashed to quit writing by jealous Hollywood filmmakers who see his talent as a threat. It was cute, campy, chock-full of references that got funnier and more complex the geekier you happened to be. Alas, the story was not destined for release. Along with having plot holes and being too thematically similar to my previous short film, Lifeline, it required casting a huge number of leading actors from Joss Whedon TV shows, which was a little overambitious to say the least. So there went that idea.

It was not my intention to create another Joss Whedon fan piece. Jonesing for Joss was simply one of many movie ideas. I was a filmmaker, not a fan girl, or so I thought. Then, I met Juliet Landau (see previous entry for details) and all of that changed. The memory of meeting her spun round and round in my head. Again, it resurfaced while watching singer-songwriter Mikey de Lara perform a set at a show produced by my friend Aidan Park. Listening to Mikey’s songs, I was struck by a glimmer of inspiration. It wasn't anything concrete or complete. It wasn't even music -- just the words "Ode to Juliet Landau. Ode to Juliet Landau." What did it mean? I hadn't the slightest.

Gradually, an idea emerged. Love songs to all of the Buffy super villains! I could write them, perform them on video, and release them to the public. No big film production involved, no hustling for budget dollars, no waiting on stars I probably couldn't get. Just me, possibly a guitar, and my point-and-shoot digital video camera. All I had to do was get them on paper.

The Spike and Drusilla songs came to me hand-in-hand. Drusilla's song was a slightly fictionalized account of my meeting with Juliet Landau, done in the style of a 1950s doo-wop melody, titled "Wherefore Art Thou Juliet?" (I was a Shakespeare geek years before I discovered Joss Whedon.) For Spike, I wrote a bluesy rock tune titled "You Renegade Vamp."

Shortly after writing the songs, I google stalked James Marsters and found out that his birthday was August 20 (2 days after mine!). Right then and there, I knew what I had to do: record his song first, upload it to the web, and put the link up on his fan site on his birthday. This might give me a few extra hits, but more importantly it would give me a deadline. I come from Japanese and Jewish blood so needless to say I have a bit of a perfectionist complex. But as Barbara Deutsch wisely put it, "It doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be done." Sounded simple enough at the time -- get it out there, quick and dirty, no fear, no looking back.

I tremble as I write these words. If writing music, playing guitar, singing [in the absence of a karaoke machine], and blogging about it to the entire universe isn’t scary enough, on top of that I'm supposed to NOT BE PERFECT?!!! Okay, here goes. Off I go to strum some uncomfortably imperfect guitar chords.

You're a fan girl, right?

2010-08-13T11:02:00.001-07:00

"You're a fan girl, right?" Doan asked me at the beginning of our Comic-Con swag photo shoot. "Yeah..." I answered cautiously. After giving it a moment's thought, the irony hit me. Here I was, surrounded by superhero movie T-shirts, comic book tote bags, convention badges, and heap loads of random geeky paraphernalia -- all of which I would model and showcase before the day was through. I'll be jiggered if the situation didn't scream fan girl. So why the stammer?

I was only recently acquainted with the term "fan girl", and have had mixed feelings about how it relates to me. I remember very vividly the first time anyone ever called me one. I was standing in line with my friend Robert LeMoyne, trying to get tickets to the sold-out Thrilling Adventure Hour, which happened to be guest-starring Nathan Fillion. So there we were, waiting, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted Juliet Landau, who happens to be hands down my favorite actress on Buffy. I did my best to keep my composure while introducing myself to her, shaking her hand, and snapping a quick photo. But once I returned to my spot in line, I could barely contain myself. By the time my friend Jonathan Reilly, who was photographing the event, came around to say hello, it was all I could do not to hyperventilate- swoon-squeal as I showed him the picture of me and Juliet on my point-and-shoot digital camera. "Aaaww, you're a fan girl!" he said. My first thought was, "Am I really?" (Looking back, I feel like one of those people who decorated her room with rainbows, listened incessantly to the Indigo Girls and Ani Difranco, had no interest in dating guys, and finally one day realized "Holy crap -- I'm gay!" And all of her friends were like "Well duuuuhhh!!! But I diverge.)

So I'm a fan girl. I admit it. What's the big ish? I initially shied away from the fan girl label because to me, it meant being identified solely on the basis of how you related to other people and other people's work. As an actress, filmmaker, writer, and creator, I had always made a point of defining my identity based on my own art. If I approached the people I admired as a fan girl, would they then neglect to see me as an artist in and of my own? And more importantly, would I lose my self-identity as such?

This is a question that extends beyond the world of Joss Whedon geekdom. Living in Los Angeles for a year now, I have had the opportunity to meet and work with people in the entertainment industry whose work I have lovingly followed for years. Maybe it's the newness of the town or maybe it's just my nature, but when I meet somebody who amazes me I get starstruck. Giddy. Weak in the knees. If I'm lucky, something witty, articulate, and poignantly apropos might float from my lips. But then again, I might just stand there stumbling and stuttering like a big buffoon. As a result, my immediate instinct is to repress all of that. Don't tell them how you feel. Don't let them know how much they mean to you. Don't even let on that you know who they are.

I brought up the issue one day in a life-coaching workshop with the incredible Barbara Deutsch. Her advice was simple: "TELL THE TRUTH!" And she was right. I can be a fan AND an artist. I can even be a fan and an equal. And if someone has inspired me; influenced the art I create and the decisions I make; if I truly, deeply appreciate them from the bottom of my heart, why not say so?

I love you to pieces. I have been watching your work since the birth of the time-space continuum. I am totally in awe of what you do. I want to be just like you when I grow up. I AM YOUR BIGGEST F*#@ING FAN!!!