K&W in Laguna Beach -- Wednesday, 28Aug2013

Jim & Warren had procured The Corner, so I went down to "spell" Jim at 8:30 or so. When I got there, they had 5 or 6 people spellbound and glued to the bench for their Beatles set. But when that was over and Jim packed up to go home, the people evaporated, leaving me to start up with a completely empty bench.

But, within a half-hour or so, we'd managed to refill it, and had nice responsive people to play for most of the night. And at around ten o'clock, a girl named Gabrielle came by that Warren knows from some memorable appearances at the Full Moon Drum Circles. She wanted to sing, and/or dance, but mostly dance, and stood out in front of us doing her vaguely hula-like wiggle-dance, regardless of the tempo of the song I was playing.

She's quite a character -- she does "plus-sized" modeling, writes self-published travel books, "must" swim in the ocean at least once a day, and talks to (and gets answers from) the trees (and expects that we, as musicians, must do the same), and generally seems to make an industry out of just being herself.

She attracted a lot of attention, and a few tips went in the jar while she was swaying. A few songs in, a guy showed up with a movie camera and an idea for a "Spirit of Laguna Beach" documentary, so he shot her, us, and the attentive people around us, with some enthusiasm. He makes these movies and tries to sell them to TV stations or whomever, and asked us for our (verbal on cam) releases in case this one goes anywhere. He took my card and I hope he'll let me know if anything happens.

Around 10:45 Gaby decided that she needed to get down to the Hare Krishna temple and join in on the chanting, and the movie guy was thrilled to go along, so they left, and we packed up, but not before I gave Gaby a fiver (out of the $29) for her help with the act...