saturday is a special day

How could we possibly follow up the wonderful day we had Friday?  Well we started by going to the 20th annual Santa Monica Festival.  The festival was pretty fun: we saw Ozomatli in their family friendly reincarnation - Ozokidz, had lots of great food and saw a band that plays a variety of music (to quote the band "Gypsy love songs to Russian lullabies to Serbian ballads to Spanish Copla to French pop to what sounds suspiciously like rock n roll").

First things first, the food:
Indian from the India Jones, blueberry lemonade from the Sweets Truck, yogurt provided by Chobani (mmmm black cherry!), and OF COURSE to top it all off Andrea HAD to get a dirty mint chip ice cream sandwich on double chocolate with grey sea salt cookies from Coolhaus - gross, right?!

 (had to get this sneaky picture of the guy in the hat for obvious reasons)

Can you guess that we were stuffed?

The music:

Ozokidz was pretty entertaining, and it's the first time I heard kids music that didn't make me wish I was deaf. I highly recommend checking them out if you want some fun for everyone tunes.

The one thing I was looking forward to when I saw what was going to be happening at this little shindig was the "Gypsy caravan across old Europa" - AK and Her Kalashnikovs.  Happily, they did not disappoint.

Just as Ozokidz was family-friendly Ozomatli (are Ozomatli not family-friendly?), AK & HK are a family-friendly Gogol Bordello.  They definitely the closest thing I've ever heard to the Gypsy Punks but still different.

It was fun to see people of all ages getting into the music.

I was impressed how well my little camera picked up the music and now that I know about the capabilities of my little buddy I hope I remember to take more video!

Even though we seemed to be here for four hours or so, the day was FAR from over when we left.  After stopping by the great Costco we went home to rest up for the main event: the Dirty Heads at the House of Blues in Hollywood!

It was a really fun show, but the best part was provided by a little boy.

He was probably seven or younger and sat on his, presumably, dad's shoulders in front the whole show.  At one point near the end of the show the Dirty Head's lead singer was talking to the crowd and made some comments about how cool the kid was and how cool the parents were for bringing him to the show.  While it's debatable how "cool" the parents really were for brining this little kid to a reggae concert where there was quite a lot of "funny" smoke in the air, it was pretty cool when the lead singer gave the boy the microphone during the chorus of their "big" song during the encore AND THE KID KNEW THE WORDS!  The audience cheered when the lead singer pointed the boy out, but they ERUPTED when he sang along!

So I guess we found a way to follow up the fantastic Friday we had after all.

PS, here's what part of the field behind the apartment looks like now.