Hi, Greg Spanish here...

So, I played my first show as the bassist for Walken on Friday night in Machesney Park at the Frontline, and... it was awesome. In retrospect, it was an immensely enjoyable experience that was full of promise and delivered tons of good vibes to the audience, but during the performance and immediately following it, I felt terrible and was really down on myself, because my bass was out of the tune during the vast majority of the show. Consequently, I felt as though I was failing to deliver on my promise as the newest addition to Walken and that I was kind of dragging their good name in the mud through my crappy performance. The fact that people really enjoyed the gig didn't change much, so I was uncharacteristically morose for probably about a half hour, until Zach hunted me down and gave me a good pep talk and I wanted to weep because he pumped me back up so much, so I bounced back and we were hardcore dancing through the final band's set. For being a straight-up hardcore punk group, they were pretty enjoyable, as cliched as they were. Anyways, I can now look at all those sour notes I played and laugh, and enjoy the fact that we gave an exciting performance with good songs. Furthermore, our visual aspect surprised me as regards how good it turned out. We all wore suits, and we had the house lights turned off and subsequently decked the stage with multi-colored Christmas lights, and set up a glowing snowman near my bass cabinet; all told, it was cooler than maybe it sounds like it should have been.
The following morning found me volunteering at the Salvation Army during the basketball tournament that was being held there; for the most part I prepared food and sold concessions, but Zach and I sold tickets for a while near the end. I dug that experience a ton, so I told them to call me whenever they needed help. Afterward, I steam vaccuumed the upstairs carpet and gave the puppies baths (GROSS!) before the crew showed up. We played Poker for a while, and watched the video of Friday's show, and talked about KISS (or rather, the Shaw's proclivity to yell "Nope!" and how heinous statements about KISS will bait him). Zach and Shaw ended up spending the night and we made fajitas at 3 in the morning, after Zach went to Burger King to get his 7th Tender Crisp of the week. SICK! We finally went to sleep around four after laughing for far too long at "We will behead it and bestow it upon you!" The character of Greg Spanish was created after I quoted Erin Stamm's brilliant line "Mi amo Espanol," and Zach improvised this riff about rednecks and... Good Lord, I don't even remember all of it. I'm sure he'll fill you in after he discovers this.
I woke up abour 5 hours later to get ready for church with Kristin and felt absolutely terrible. Well, until I donned my killer suit, that is. There was a pretty short service from a visiting evangelist who had a broken hand and an intense Southern drawl with bits of lisp (I really shouldn't be laughing about that), and then we had lunch and discussed how her sister used to be a centaur and smoked her noggin against the sidewalk a couple years ago and made a funny sound. Then I had my very first sub sandwhich later that evening before Cell at Jenny G's house (the sub was all right, but Super Mario Bros. 3 was tremendously more killer) where we discussed joy, as well as black holes and time travel for whatever reason. I also obtained a single volume edition of The Chronicles of Narnia from Jon, as I have somehow never read those books, which is really weird, since I've virtually everything else that C.S. Lewis wrote. Speaking of which, Thursday night was C.S. Lewis night at Leadership Cell at Paul and Barb's house, so I donned my killer suit once more and read an essay about Lewis' life and read a passage from Surprised by Joy. That was a digression, but my mind operates on tangents, so it's all right. By the way, tangentially, I finally saw Garden State and it was pretty killer, so I recommend that everyone see it, though I'm not sure it'll change your life quite as much as the Shins will.
I really have to go now, though, else all the million things I have to do today will never get done. Thanks for listening, and don't stop rocking.

Love,
Ian