{photo by the lovely Victoria VanBruinisse}

Thanks again to everyone who stopped by the Crocodile on Monday!

It was *so so awesome* seeing you and boy oh boy did the double helpings of pizza make my tummy happy. I still have a couple of those wooden tokens for rum drink specials left over; I suppose I've kept them to remind me of the rum vanilla-y goodness for weeks to come.

Word from our interoffice email threads since the event confirms that every member of the DJ crew had an amazing time! Chris Estey, Amie Simon, and Victoria VanBruinisse really outdid themselves putting together their sets.

Some folks who couldn't stay the whole time (or perhaps redeemed one too many of those wooden rum drink tokens) asked for a recap of the set... so here's mine:

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Sometimes, like this week, things can look fairly bleak; Economy, politics, corruption, confusion, and dayjob deadlines can bring a girl down. But, the video for the Forbidden Friends song "Tiny Hands" reminds me/us all that we just gotta stay cool and persevere. Yes, that's the magic of crayon signs, and flying cats.

For the remainder of today (and likely tomorrow too), I'm going to practice my chair dance moves and imagine daydream backdrops behind me as I sing along to "Tiny Hands." And that makes it all so much better.

Every wind that blows is a summer breeze and I never felt a drop of rain!

What video have you found that picks you up and dusts you off?

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Rather than thinking of it as 2011 being halfway over, I prefer to see it as we're all halfway to my birthday {December 24th if it's not on your calendar already}. To celebrate, and take stock of this year's releases thus far, I've put together a mix of my favorite songs of 2011 {so far}.

This year has brought some predictably great albums from friends such as Mountain Goats, Okkervil River, BOAT, Matt & Kim, Telekinesis, Bright Eyes. I feel like I've been waiting for a fresh batch of songs from Brown Recluse for years. I love every note they play and having a two hearty releases in one year {Panoptic Mirror Maze and Evening Tapestry} makes me overjoyed.

Other bands, like When I Was 12 and Dangerous Ponies, I am thankful for crossing paths with for the first time this year.

And then there are the folks that have left me wanting more more more (I'm looking at you Oregon Bike Trails and Forbidden Friends)! Huge thanks to You Aint No Picasso for bringing Oregon Bike Trails to my attention. OBT fellow, singer/songwriter Zach Yudin, from Santa Monica, Ca., is quite the mysterious dude - only having a cassette tape release earlier this year (hand painted, limited to 50!) and a couple other MP3s swirling around the web.

Forbidden Friends, a side project by Thermals frontman Hutch Harris (with Michael Lerner of Telekinesis on drums and fellow Thermals Kathy Foster and Westin Glass backing him up), is still in the 7" only phase, and needless to say I'm counting down to a full album of FF stuff.

In short, I can't recommend the below songs and full releases enough. To help convince you of their brilliance, I made a virtual mix cd!

The tracklisting of my {hopefully very convincing} mix cd is:

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