eddie from ohio journal April 28, 2005

Hello Edheads,



It's a very sad day at the Wells House, Thursday 4/28....the day after the most horrible event! I mean, I never thought he would make it to the final 3, but he's way better than "Mr. I'm better than everyone else," and the Eurogeek! You know who I'm talking about, my beloved Constantine! Yes, he was kicked off last night, but what a classy way to go. I guess that's what happens when you're 29. And Paula crying her eyes out, I mean a little overboard, eh? And hugging his mother? Too much. So my friend Jen waited until this morning to call me because she knew how upset I would be. I thought everyone pretty much stunk on Tuesday, except for Vonzelle, but I still think Constantine should have stayed....so anyway, Jen said she found this website called "vote for the worst.com", well something like that, and these folks are claiming credit for last year's fiasco with Jon Stevens and how far he made it in the competition. They say they are doing the same for Scott. It's tons of folks that vote in blocks over and over again. When will A.I. learn, that it's the voting that's screwed up!! I was so happy watching Tuesday - even though everyone stunk - because my A.I. party group through me an American Idol birthday! The actual day was Sunday, which is an amazing story in itself (stay tuned to next paragraph), but everyone was over on Tuesday - the usual, bottles of red wine flowing, chicken wings, shrimp, spinach dip, but the best part was my friend Sue, from Moorenkos Ice cream store in McLean, brought over one of her famous ice cream cakes. Damn, it was sooooooo good! If you've never been there, you should go!!! Get the Danish sweet cream - it's to die for. It's next to Roccos pizza in McLean. So thanks guys for my party, it was fun - well what I remember of it.



So, Sunday, we, the band, were in Austin Texas - shooting a music video for the beginning of this PGA reality golf show. I mean if you're going to be away from your family on your birthday, it might as well be for shooting a video. It's started with a 7:45am make-up call, with the very cool Linda. And yes, she had to powder Robbie's head. It was too shiny. Mike was too funny, trying to act cool saying things like, "we've been video ready for like so many years, now". So we pick four locations to shoot. And at each one, the lights, the monitor, the cameraman, and the sound got set up and taken down. It was totally cool. I mean, Chris, the director, would yell "ok, places everyone....ok ready, cue the music, and action." Then we would hear the song (which we must have heard 30 times that day) and sing with it, and the guys played their instruments, and I either looked right at the camera or away and just did my typical dance thing (you know trying to look hip, but probably failing miserably). The first shot was outside this bar on the front porch, and then the next shot was on the bus (oh yeah, we got to drive around in this great big RV bus all day). They wanted shots of us, jammin on the bus, with the scenery passing by outside - so we film the whole song again like 4 times, and then crazy Steve the cameraman, asks Bill the driver, "Hey how do you feel about driving with the door open?" The next thing I know is Robbie's holding Steve by the belt, and he's hanging out the front door shooting the
road, at about 45mph. It was crazy! Next, we went to this dam, and shot it on a bridge - this was cool because the guys set up tracks for a dolly to ride on, so that the camera could get this smooth rolling shot. We're singing on the bridge while the bus goes behind us in the background over the dam. Neat, huh? Then it was on to the golf course, where I got to stand and throw daisies up in the air - some artsy fartsy thing. Then we all sang on the green (again, hearing that damn song for the 29th time), and getting yelled at by a very anal golfer, and then Robbie got to do some special posing swinging his guitar like a golf club! Man, it was awesome - except they forgot about food. So by the time we got to the airport (6pm) we were ready to faint. I found a bar/restaurant and we all shoveled cheeseburgers and french fries down in about 4 minutes. You know it's bad when you order a double meat cheeseburger at an airport restaurant. Then the boys proceeded to buy me drinks and I slept quite well all the way home. Not too shabby. FYI, the first airing of the show is May 7th, 2pm, CBS.



YOu know the reason we were in Texas, by the way......yes, I'm backtracking a little here so bear with me, was to play at the Old Settlers music festival. We've been trying to play there for years, and we finally got in. So we're supposed to play from 6-7:15pm. We start up, their's a modest crowd, we sing about 4 songs, more folks are coming down the hill to watch, we hit Great Day, more folks come......the set is just going great, in fact it's getting ready to be one of the best festival sets we'd ever done....and then it happens. It turns out that someone was getting married not too far away, across the road a bit, and the music was bothering them, so they asked us to turn it off at 6:45 for 15 minutes. AARRRRRGGGGHHH!!! I mean talk about killing the moment!!! We were quite bummed, I mean who the hell would book their wedding across from a music festival? Well we went back on, but it just wasn't the same. We made the most of it, and ended up with everyone jammin on Operator and then singing Come Together - but we were bummed that we had to do that. That was one for the books! AND, I spilled red wine all over my brand new very cool skirt from Target! Damn!



On a very personal note, next Saturday is the Walk to Cure Diabetes and Greg and I and our families and friends are walking in support of our precious little Corey. As you may know, he was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at 15 months. We are trying to raise $30,000 for our team "Bubba's Buddies". It is a hefty goal, but we raised $24,000 last year, so I thought it was do-able. And the EDHEAD community was a big part of that - I think they were responsible for about $7000!! This year is not going quite as well. Some folks have already donated, which is so great, but we're hoping for more. Any amount helps. You can donate on-line (the info is on our website in the "What's New section", but I'm going to post the link here as well....or you can send a check to our PO Box 7431 Mclean VA 22106. It just kills me when Corey looks up at me and says, "Mom, no shots today Ok?" Insulin is not a cure, it's just a lifeline. Please help us find a cure!!




http://walk.jdrf.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=extranet.personalpage