there shouldn’t be thunderstorms in los angeles in october, but there was last night. sort of like how i probably shouldn’t have been standing out on my balcony — the one with the iron railing, on which my satellite dish is perched atop a 7-foot metal pole — watching lighting in amazement. because i was. for the first time since i can remember, i was laying in bed listening to rain and thunder. so i just couldn’t resist going out to watch for a few minutes. i thought i remembered hearing that lightning actually starts from the ground and goes up (turns out that is just one kind of lightning. some kinds come down. some just stay within the cloud), and i wondered if being hit by lightning would be such a bad way to die (turns out, again, that it’s only about 30% fatal or so, depending on your stats). the one thing i couldn’t find anywhere online were any stories of people trying to purposely end their lives by lightning strike, because that seems like an interesting decision to me.

not that i’d need to do that any time soon, because my week’s been downright great. although it sucks to lose our friend joe for two months while he’s off working on the crew of survivor in an undisclosed location, we did have an excellent going away party for him where we drank and danced til 4am (which was pizza time). and we saw a very decent lcd soundsystem show saturday, proving their dance-rock rocks even more in person. and then yesterday, oh sweet sunday afternoon, we visited the first non-illinois location of portillo’s, which we’re lucky enough to have only a half hour away near the border of LA and orange counties. holy mother was biting into that italian beef sandwich a moment of sweet ecstasy. i can’t believe no one else in the golden state offers anything like this, it’s just criminal. probably best that the only one that does is a bit of a drive though, because i ate triple my normal meal portion and am still, the next day, feeling very beefy overall.

finally, although it would be easiest to recycle everyone else’s recent fascination with clap your hands say yeah after we saw them play a great show last week. i could write about how i bought the cd and am listening to it in my car a lot and post a track as the pay day song, which would be so simple but tired. come on, everyone was on their jock back in like may (when we bought our concert tickets i think. how crazy is that?). instead i’m going to go wildly obscure and post a track i heard on the local showcase on indie 103.1 something like six months ago and never again, but managed to remember and recently look up, only to find it had finally been posted as an mp3. and one which i will do mighty six ninety the favor of sharing with all of you here. so please do check out “leave this world” for some nice killers-y pop with morrissey-esque vocals that all around kinda makes you want to whine about being sad about girls, just like the best pop rock should.