Last night fellow Squeezer Courtney and I headed out to Detroit Bar to see Maxx Femme and Castaneda. Detroit Bar has quickly become one of our favorite spots - we have to admit lately we’ve been going there quite a bit to check out club nights, comedy showcases, Monday night resident band or just to hear some new music.

The funny thing about Detroit is that it really doesn’t come to life until after 10 p.m. A few people wander in a little early to grab a cocktail or a beer and stake their claim at a table or at the bar. We have our usual drinks - Appletini and a Long Island, but tonight we went with a screwdriver and a vodka tonic.

We hung out and chatted while listening to Paul Layton perform his solo set. His voice is super soothing and it set a great vibe for the rest of the night. Maxxfemm is a brother-sister duo, Lara and Paul Layton, out of Orange County (currently living in Los Angeles but they were born and raised in the Newport Beach area).

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Like we don’t have enough distractions around here, this afternoon Ducks left wing Chris Kunitz stopped by the Register building (which SqueezeOC occupies a small corner of) with the Stanley Cup.

The wait was about an hour long, which seemed longer if you’re a Kings fan, but this is the Stanley Cup and it came to us, so we waited. All of us except Matt, Brian and Devin who were lucky enough to have an interview with the official Keeper of the Cup. They sailed straight through to the front.

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So your coworker has been on vacation for two weeks. What do you do? You plastic wrap their desk, of course!

That’s what we did to Matt’s (our copy editor) desk. It was a blank canvas just calling to us. Check out the video below.

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I’m alive!

Apparently some people thought I died on the mountain since I didn’t blog after the first day. My cell phone lost reception when a storm rolled in and I couldn’t call in any more blogs for the rest of the week. Sorry.

Team Mt. Whitney returned on Friday, June 8. We’re all healthy and alive. I’m happy to say that I bagged Whitney. This was my second attempt to summit.

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If somebody called you at 9 in the morning, panting, breathing heavy and talking about body parts feeling like the size of walnuts, you’d probably hang up and call the cops. But this morning, it was just Brian calling while on a fruitless salmon hunt at Mt. Whitney base camp. So, I let him pant and talk and I grabbed a pen.

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Yup, yup, that’s me and lovely Laila with Billy Morrison and Dave Navarro during their Camp Freddy radio show on Indie 103.1.
We had a very fun half-hour of hanging with those lovely, highly entertaining guys on Saturday evening.
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May is National Bike to Work Month and May 14 to 18 is bike to work week.

4 SqueezeOC staffers and 1 OC Post designer decided to celebrate the occasion and bike to work today. Here are our stories:
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Jessica and Laila are going pro. They’ll put their bartending training (thanks OCC!) to the test at Sutra in Costa Mesa this Friday night. Come by say hello and order your favorite drink from them.
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Last year, I went to Coachella music festival and sweated it out in Palm Desert with thousands of other rock music fans. This year, my weekend recreation has been decidely more old-womanish – book fair on Saturday and bird watching on Sunday.

First, the book fair. Every spring, UCLA hosts a two-day Festival of Books where hundreds of well-known authors convene to give talks and sign books for fans under sunny skies. Two years ago, I attended panels by Jack Welch (very charismatic) and Jared Diamond (not so charming, but better writer). On Saturday, I got to UCLA at 3 p.m. to catch Marisha Pessl, who wrote the mystery novel, “Special Topics in Calamity Physics.” It’s a very impressive first novel. The lady can really turn a phrase. She used so many metaphors, the book got a bit tiring at parts … perhaps I’m just envious.

We were lucky that the next panel we wanted to see – Don Cheadle and activist John Prendergast, speaking on their new book about Sudan – were scheduled in the same tent, so we got to keep our seats. The crowd was crazy about Don Cheadle. I think many people actually sort of think he really did save some Rwandans with his hotel.
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Photo by Brian J. Nelson

I’m still alive. No scratches, no bruises just some soreness from being whipped around the California Speedway in Fontana on the back of a Suzuki GSX-R 1000.
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