Un-thinkable (I'm Ready)

So...oh my God.  Mon friggin' Dieu. 

My friend Steph signed me up for the X Factor auditions in Chicago at the end of April.  I'm excited.  And nervous.  And excited.  But mostly nervous.  I get stage fright, and I haven't really sang in front of a large group since high school, which was seven years ago (...fuck!  Hahaha.).  I do, however, don't feel too bad about the stage fright thing, because I once read that Sheryl Crow gets stage fright, and I love Sheryl Crow.  It's good to know that huge superstars get nervous too.

I think I'm going to go with "Low Road" by Grace Potter & The Nocturnals as my initial audition song.  I love it, and it shows off my voice very well.  I'm gonna have to play around with it in the upcoming weeks to make it my own and to really make the judges (especially if I make it to Simon...eeeee!!!) be like "Who is this girl and why isn't she a star?"  I'm not gonna lie, this has been a lifelong dream of mine, and life always gets in the way.  I'm putting my foot down this time and I'm going to make this dream a reality. 

Wish me luck, and I'll keep you all posted!



Symphonies

Take a listen.  Hope you enjoy my cover of Grace Potter & The Nocturnals' song, "Low Road".

Like a G6

Happy New Year my wonderful beautiful fabulous readers!!! I hope 2011 brings you joy and brings you closer to fulfilling your wildest dreams.

I can't believe how quickly 2010 went by. I must say that it was a good year, and if it were wine it'd have been sweet, with floral notes and hints of sparkling citrus. I'd buy a bottle of L. Diddy wine circa 2010.

I've taken to calling myself L. Diddy. I think it's catchy and sounds good when I talk about myself in the third person, which I do a lot more now since I have a cool nickname for myself. I made a list of obligatory resolutions, which I hope to try to keep.

Let's do this.

L. Diddy's List of Obligatory New Years Resolutions, 2011 Edition

*Lose 10-20 pounds
*Embrace exercise (and not the bomb)
*Get more sleep
*Go to bed before 3 am...let's aim for 11 pm
*Make more time for Mommy and Nicky time
*Write and finish a novel
*Record a song in an actual studio

And I'm bound to add more as the year goes on. Wish me luck, because I am sending some to all of you as you struggle with your own resolutions, or as I like to call them, "lies we tell ourselves to make us feel better about all the bad crap we did the year before".

Don't Stop The Music

Okay...So last night was UMMAXX 10, another of my GM's MMA fights. He owns a mixed martial arts company and he holds fights about every three months or so. I have been to three of them, and I absolutely love it.

I was supposed to sing the National Anthem last night, and I was super excited. I had on a yummy ensemble consisting of skinny jeans, kickass black stiletto boots, and a black shirt that had a completely lace back. I flat-ironed my hair and my makeup was beyond awesome. (See the picture on the right--->) I looked glam. I was also insanely nervous, but that's beside the point.

So I go to the entertainment group guy to find out what the hell is going on, since no one explained to me where I was singing or what was actually going down. He tells me that there's been a slight change in events, and I am like, Oh shit. He tells me to come with him, and so I follow him to the back of the expo center. He decides to tell me that oh, I am no longer singing the anthem by myself--and I am like, umm...what?--that I am singing it with two people from the Army and am I okay with that? Okay, we all know that I am not okay with that, but because I didn't want to sound like a monster bitch and I wasn't sure if my GM knew what was going down, I said yeah, I was okay with that. So I go and meet these Army people, who I immediately decided were not the cool sort of Army people. On the contrary, they seemed very nerdy and uncool. I sucked up my boiling inner rage and smiled in a very convincing delightful fashion. The entertainment guy asked me if I knew how to harmonize. Um, duh. I was in choir from 4th grade to 8th grade. You definitely pick up harmony over eight years.

I smile convincingly again and say I was in choir for ten years--I decided to beef up my expertise because these two Army geeks definitely reeked of pure inexperience. I have to go sing with these idiots, and I must add that hey, the fight begins in five minutes. I sigh and internally roll my eyes, beginning to sing with these fools. As soon as they opened their mouths and began to sing, my inner hypothesis was immediately proven correct. They sucked. They knew absolutely nothing about harmony at all. I tried to sing above them to try to get some sort of harmony started, but I only had a few successful moments of harmony. By now my tumultuous sea of rage is seething just below the surface of my fakeass smile, but I decide that I am fucked and I have to make the most of it.

We roll on up to the cage, and I am figuring that hey, at least I will still look hot. They immediately put the brakes on that one. Someone shoves a white Army tee shirt over my head, and hey, the stupid shirt is two sizes too fucking big. Perfect. I am past smiling at this point, and I strut angrily into the cage. I am then informed that my heels have to come off because they will ruin the mat--why the hell didn't someone tell me that before I went shopping? I am furious. I leave the cage, and they announce my name--which, of course, is pronounced wrong. That is nothing new, people see Lashawn Chillious and immediately get intimidated. I am not pissed about that. I am pissed that my moment of shininess is being shitted on. I have to throw the boots on the ground and run into the cage in my socks and this stupid as hell shirt. I am beyond looking like nothing is wrong--they already started singing without me! I stomp over and discover that I HAVE NO MICROPHONE. How am I supposed to sing without a microphone??? I am so pissed that all I can do is stand there in a silent fury and attempt to sing along with these idiots. I am so mad that my throat goes dry and nothing comes out.

After I am done, I grab my shoes and go to my job's table. Everyone is stunned by what just went down. I am stunned, and I am furious and I yank the shirt off and put my boots back on. I am embarrassed and pissed and decide to go find my GM. I find him in the back of the expo center, and the first words out of his mouth are "What the fuck was that?" He had no idea what had just gone down. He thought that I was still the only one that was going to sing--smooth move, don't tell the guy in charge that you are fucking with the show. I am told that he is going to talk to Mr. Douchey Entertainment guy and that I am singing alone at his next fight.

After that moment of unparallelled suckiness, the night was great. The fights were good, and I had a good time with my friends.

Do I

I came.

I sang.

I rocked the mic, made the karaoke stage my bitch.

That is all for tonight. It's 1:30 am and I promise to write more tomorrow when I don't have to keep chasing Nicky back into bed. XO, my darlings.

Hey, Soul Sister

Hey my lovelies! Yesterday (Tuesday--yes, I know it's after 1 am, but in my bubble of Lashawn it is still technically Wednesday until I fall asleep and wake up at a later unspecified point in the morning. It's not Thursday in my mind.) was Nicky's birthday! He had a great time and is enjoying his presents--unbelievably, the rocketship never came up. He was more interested in his Thomas the Tank Engine trains. We watched his Max and Ruby DVDs, and I was informed by Encyclopedia Nick that Max and Ruby's parents were eaten by a dragon. My son is hilarious.

I should be writing my rough draft for my Honors English class on visual rhetoric, but I'm stuck, and one can only rant so much about Sarah Palin until the words mean nothing. It's due tomorrow night, and I have one long paragraph. I can work on it in the morning. Procrastination is a seductive wench, it really is. I gave up procrasinating for Lent, wish me luck.

In other news, I am singing at the "Solon Idol" in some little bar/club thing called the Blue Fig, in Solon, which is some itty bitty city out in the boondocks. I know of Solon only because you had to cut through there to get to Geauga Lake (an amusement park), which was in Aurora. I'm a big city girl--I mix up everything that isn't in Cleveland or immediately outside of it. I haven't sang on a stage in six years, and I get stage fright. I'm an awesome singer, but I'm nervous. Wish me luck!

Here is my Wednesday Late Night Playlist. Enjoy!

"I Still Ain't Over You", Augustana, (Can't Love, Can't Hurt)

"Sleep", Azure Ray, (Azure Ray)

"Taylor", Jack Johnson, (On & On)

"Speechless", Lady Gaga, (The Fame Monster)

"Uprising", Muse, (The Resistance)

"More Than This", Missy Higgins, (Steer & More-EP)

"Dying Day", Brandi Carlile, (Give Up the Ghost)

"I'm On Fire", John Mayer, (Battle Studies)

"Lifeboats", Snow Patrol, (A Hundred Million Suns)

"Know Your Onion!", The Shins, (Oh, Inverted World)

"Human of the Year", Regina Spektor, (Far)

"Gravity Rides Everything", Lenka, (Gravity Rides Everything-Single)