Discover new music with friends.

The ACM "Entertainer Of The Year" award is FAN VOTED this year.  It only takes about 30 seconds, so please hop over to voteacm.com and cast your vote for KENNY.

Let's show everyone how hardcore Chesney fans are!

-BNA Records

The ACM "Entertainer Of The Year" award is FAN VOTED this year.  It only takes about 30 seconds, so please hop over to voteacm.com and cast your vote for KENNY.

Let's show everyone how hardcore Chesney fans are!

-BNA Records 

Hello Friends,

Will google ever stop being the most amazing creation? This google friend connect is kind of the coolest idea since peanut butter and jelly in the same jar.

So welcome!! To the future!!! We all will be wearing silver bodysuits and teleporting around the world soon....

I am coming to many cities in for my very first headlining tour this june, possibly yours... Please sign up for the email mailing list to be kept up to date on my goings on, and note if you would like to help out and be on my street team.

Until next time,
Ingrid

Rascal Flatts is counting on your vote for Entertainer of the Year at the ACM Awards! Just go to the link below and after voting, as a thank you, you can download a FREE never before released (live) MP3 from Rascal Flatts.

Click here to vote and get your MP3 now!

http://www.iwwerks.com/acmvote

 
Thanks!
echoCrew



The album comes out tomorrow, May 13th!!  Hear Jason speak directly to you, the fans, and get his final thoughts on the new record, We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things.

Feeling deflated. 3 performances thru the day before the real show even started. We sang. We danced. And now it's time to steal things. I'll take every piece of soap from this Ritz Carlton Hotel visit and stock my own house with the finest French milled facial soap.

The bus moves on tonight to Illinois while Toca & I fly to Denver tomorrow for more mini in-between shows. I can no longer think ahead in time further than a day. The future doesn't exist, I tell myself. The only time and place is now.

I try not to say I have a million places to be or lots of shit to do. Instead I say, "I have a full life" and instantly I welcome abundance. It's not that I HAVE to do all these things. It's that I GET to do all these things.

Tonight's show at the Variety Playhouse in Little 5 Points, a suburb of Atlanta, was a fun showcase of new material with a few teasers of old favorites. Music, Magic, & Make-Peace carries on. I regretfully had to leave the late night parking lot crowd due to sudden overwhelming requests for pictures, though for a moment we were thoroughly entertained as a group by a back alley card spitting magician who's magic word was "Mu'Fuckah."

So I split, but not before I snatched a box of movie popcorn from the classic concession counter. I enter my hotel room and drop my bags with circus dramatics only a veteran traveler knows. I am finally not going to use my computer or brain for that matter. I'm going to watch a movie and put the popcorn and clenched fist to good use.

At first I try a DVD I got from a friend in Australia but it's the wrong region code so I can't play it. Then I try to order a movie on hotel-a-vision but no credit card has been left for incidentals. I'm too tired and too naked to bother visiting the front desk after the midnight hour. I collapse. Too tired to laugh. Too goofy to try. And I eat the popcorn.

Here are some corresponding doodles courtesy of Right Brain performed while Left Brain was determining the nutritional & emotionally uplifting value of the popcorn.



"Popcorn's Big Night"
This one represents the "not right now" aspect of the given night. No access to Region Code 4, No Credit Card, No Desire to talk on the phone, No Pussy, No Herb, No interesting lady bugs to observe, No Time left in the day, etc. Just Popcorn without a film.

"It's Alien Fresh"
Fresh is a favorite word. It means new; recently harvested, clean, showing no signs of previous use, not changed by the passage of time, natural, pure, wholesome, alert and full of energy, cooler than usual, pleasantly bright, light, lacking experience, AND also means to have recently calved and are able to give milk. To be Alien Fresh must be even fresher than all that stuff combined.

"The GreeNerds"
The Green Sparkly Duo; This may be their debut as well their grand exit. They're green in more ways than one. Their heads may be in space but their hearts are earth conscious. This point is hard to convey with only a black pen.

"Things to Do"

"Splash Remake"
Based on reoccurring dreams of Manatees. Please make them go away. But save them. They are endangered.

I am deflated no more. Art is my air hose.

hello friends,

i am going to try something a little different. i will still blog about my goings on, but i have been working on some essays and i would like to put them out into the cyber world. please excuse any run on sentences, grammatical errors, made up words or spelling mistakes.

so here is my first one.
i hope you like it.

be well,
ingrid


"OUCH", by me


I am not an athletic girl. I was the score keeper for the girl's softball team in high school to get out of gym class and I took bowling in college and that was enough for me. So when I was asked if I wanted to water ski while visiting my friends Marla and Theo at their upstate New York summer home, my instinct initially was to say "umm...have you seen my paper white skin and atrophying cookie dough like muscles? I'll stay here where it's safe and play sudoku". But as I get older, I am finding that I am becoming bolder. Or at least i want to be become bolder. Maybe its the whole "I'm getting closer to the end of my life and I need to experience things" syndrome. For whatever reason, the word "YES!" popped out frantically, as if putting that word out into the world quickly enough would lock me into this decision. Besides, going back on such a "YES!" would make me seem cowardly and wishy washy. Which I am.

I, in what has been dubbed by friends "my swimming outfit" which consists of shorts and a tankini (essentially a tank top that can get wet without showing too much) and under a fresh coat of spf 70, wrapped my arms around Theo, who sat in front of me. He was, one by one, taking us on his one seater motorboat out to the dock where we could then put on our skis. I clung to him, in a koala-like fashion as if this moment was to be my last. I could feel my heart, like a wind up toy in my chest, tap dancing as the shore and the trees distanced themselves from us. "Am i really going to do this?", I thought. "Am I really going to water ski?". The thought of it made me dig my nails into Theo's tanned back. I remember thinking how my skin was so white against his bronzeness that we looked like a different species of animal.

I pulled my body onto the dock. My heart almost shimmied its way out of my throat but I swallowed hard and it went back in place. There were a few of us standing on the dock now and we all put our life vests on. Everyone seemed so calm, laughing and making jokes and talking about what we going to have for lunch. LUNCH? How could anyone think about lunch at such a time? We all were about to possibly die. I laughed nervously, trying to make my friends think that I was not having serious issues controlling my bowels. Then Camilla, Theo and Marla's EIGHT YEAR OLD slapped on her skis and jumped into the water. She grabbed the handle of the rope that was attached to the motor boat. Camilla then yelled their family cue word to start this whole terrifying process, "HIT IT!". The boat started churning the water underneath and began to growl and move. Camilla rose up, straightened her little legs and floated behind the speeding boat as if she was born being dragged across that water. Her blond hair, pulled back in a tight high pony tail, shone like a golden beacon as they traced the lake. It seemed so easy. If this little teeny thing could do it, I could. My heart beat slowed to that of a small dog. I could feel my fingers again. Next up was my friend Lea. Now I knew Lea to be good at all things athletic so when she yelled "HIT IT!" and the boat peeled off, it was no surprise that she, like Camilla, popped up and skimmed the water with the ease and elegance of a merry go round pony. And it was her first time.

The water felt good. I felt alive. I was bobbing up and down while marla crammed my skis on my feet. I began to think that this might actually be a success. I had difficulty getting my skis in the right position because they kept tangling with each other. At one point, I was locked in a pose where the skis had traveled behind me while my life vest kept my upper body afloat. This caused me to resemble a crooked letter "u" and my confidence in my abilities started to crumble a bit. But with the help of Marla and the cheers from the gaggle of friends weighing down the dock, I was able to bury all feeling of doubt. I imagined myself gliding across the lake, one handed, smiling and waving as I flew by all my friends, their jaws dropped in awe of my swan-like figure and grace. I would hop back onto the dock, kick off my skis and wrestle with some small child, not even acknowledging the applause. I would be so modest. I finally righted myself and was in the ready position - skis squared off with my hips, sticking straight up out of the water, hands firmly gripping the handle. I was ready. "hit it" I squeaked. I sounded like a 12 year old boy going through puberty. "say it like you mean it!" called out Theo. Now, I have never been one for repeating myself with greater enthusiasm when asked to. I did not want to be rude however. And since he was the one pulling me, I figured I would comply. "HIT IT" i yelled, half embarrassed have proud of the volume of my own voice. The boat moaned and sputtered and took off. I had been told that if I needed to stop, just...let...go. just let go. I have difficulty letting go in so many aspects of my life so why should water skiing be any different? And indeed, I did not let go. I did not rise up either. I simply got dragged face first across the lake, my skis flying off of my feet. finally, i released my grip. i choked and coughed and water seemed to pour out of every hole in my head. My face burned and my eyes felt like they had been rubbed with salty sand. "Let's try again!" theo laughed from his throne of boatness, the sun surrounding his head like a halo. I bobbed up and down, dazed at what had just happened. I had totally and completely failed. I could hear everyone cheering for me but it was the kind of cheering that little kids receive when they poop in the toilet. I had to redeem myself. I held onto the motor boat and Theo took us back to the dock where I put back on my skis. "HIT IT!" I screamed this time, not embarrassed or proud, just angry. The boat lurched forward. This time, I let go almost immediately, but not soon enough as I ingested a few ounces of lake water first. One ski had remained on though. This was progress. This was good.

I repeated this process about 7 or 8 more times. Why was I never able to stand up? Was I destined to always be dragged like a limp doll in the bathtub? My face was red in an unhealthy looking way and my chest felt like a large man was sitting on it. My confidence, like a an old sweater, was unravelling all over this lake , but there must have been one thread of it left in tact, because I held up my pointer finger and gurgled the words "one...more....time". I said it just loudly enough for theo to hear me and spin the boat around to pick up my broken body. I had to try one more time. "This is it" I said. Marla, so patient and encouraging, agreed that this was my time, I had worked hard for it. I got in my position. Grabbed the handle. Inhaled through my watery nose and at the top of my lungs, my voice now raw from coughing up water, screamed "HIT. IT. !" Theo pumped the gas and we were off. Amazingly, I was not face down! My head was high, my shoulders were back, all that I had to do was straighten my legs. I looked at my thighs, blindingly white and trembling. I was willing them to move, to straighten. STRAIGHTEN. They would not move. I was basically water skiing, only I was squatting. I was water squatting. I was so proud that I had not lost my balance that I did not want to let go. The pride I felt soon waned as the pain of my under carriage being scraped across the surface of a lake at 25 miles and hour sunk in. It felt invasive and horrible. Water was shooting into me at a rapid speed and I swear, ripping things. I was being torn apart by the lake. I remained in this state of pain and pride for a few moments and then had to let go. My crotch throbbing in the worst possible way and my ass redder than if it had been smacked 100 times by a belt, I was pulled up onto the dock. Marla and Lea wrapped me in a towel and congratulated me for my efforts. It was now time for lunch.

It took about week to feel normal again. The pain left me, the bruises, the broken blood vessels in my eyes faded. But what has not faded is the fact that I tried to do something that I feared. And while I did not succeed fully, I succeeded partially. And thats good enough for me.