Keith in Laguna Beach -- Saturday, 22Aug2015

I drove down at 6:15, fully expecting to find the Tommies on The Corner and to then just drive around to try and find another place to play -- maybe somewhere along the route between the Sawdust Festival and the Pageant of the Masters. But I was shocked to find that The Corner was empty! That left me with the challenge to find parking in this Festival season and get back down there before anyone could snarf it from me.

Which I did. Amazing! Warren couldn't make it, but then again, we figured there wasn't really going to be an "it" to make. But that left me solo, and I played from 6:30 until midnight. The summer seems to be winding down, though -- the crowds were down, and somewhat apathetic somehow. Still, I had nice people there almost all night, including my little superfan Natalia, who wanted to dance with her mom to her favorite, "You'll Be In My Heart" from "Tarzan", and a few others.

I was playing "Hotel California" and looked across the street and saw a 30-ish lady standing on the Fingerhut corner looking at me. She apparently took eye contact as an invitation, and rushed across the street to sing along. She only *kinda* knew the words, but that didn't stop her from just making up what she didn't know, and she sang *loud*. I've never heard anyone able to sing even close to that loud without a microphone. And she decided to sing it standing two feet away from me, right in my face. All the way through. It was kinda awesome.

Another little girl stopped her family from just walking through because she wanted to hear the music. I saw her standing over to the side, smiling at me, so I said, "I have a song for you!", and started "Do You Want To Build a Snowman". She was pretty thrilled. Afterward, she came over and stood in front of me, so I bent down, expecting her to have been sent over by her mom to say "Thank you". But she didn't say anything, until her mom said, "She wants to give you a hug". Well, sure, absolutely! So I slung the guitar around to my back and crouched down for my hug. Definitely the cutest thing of the month, if not the summer.

As they started away I said, "Does she want to get a picture with me?", and they came back to do that, and for once I gave my phone to someone to get a shot for me, too. (She was a lot cuter before the fake Camera Smile.)

A bit of a problem with the bums. One scary/dirty guy was just hanging out almost the whole night, taking up valuable tourist room on the bench, but at least he was quiet and polite. I also had the reappearance of the old guy who likes to get up and dance/contort in slow motion, which amuses some people and scares others. He also insists on shouting out the name of the artist at the end of every song, as if it's some kind of competition or game that nobody else is playing. The challenges of the street corner musician...