Finishing This Years Goals

Run Baltimore
This year I sent myself an email, within the first few days of 2015. The email listed goals I wanted to accomplish. One of the goals being I wanted to complete The Baltimore Running Festival. That is exactly what I did. I was unsure at first, and felt very lazy early on in the year when it came to running. I than started to run the Jones Falls daily for 3 mile runs. I was than given advice to download the app Strava. This helped me keep track of my runs. I started running 5-10 miles a few times a week. On 9/23/15, I finally pushed myself to run 13.1 miles. It took me 2 hours, and 17 minutes but I did it. I couldn't of been anymore proud to finally have completed my own half marathon. The same night I found out my Grandfather passed away from cancer. It was a shattering moment. After a week of sorrow, I decided to sign up for the half marathon. The price was $120 to enter, my work (Hosteling International Baltimore) contributed more than half to my entry fee. It was a very generous gesture.



It was race day. I peed about 110 times that morning. I ate oatmeal, soy milk, and some blackberries. I stretched out, and met up with a few friends. As we were all heading to our respective "waves". I realized I was put in "wave" 5/6. I was surrounded by old people, and children. My boss signed me up and didn't realize my pace. She puts me in a very slow crowd. I darted from Wave 5, to Wave 2 immediately. After almost two hours of non stop running around Baltimore. I finished the Baltimore Running Festival in 1 hour and 53 minutes. It was a very proud moment for me to complete my goal, and to do it 20+ minutes faster than my first half marathon. I was rewarded with a medal, food, and drinks. I met with some friends for pictures and called it a day.

Here are some pictures from my run (Lane 51162)
http://www.marathonfoto.com/Proofs?lastName=Lane&PIN=9V2H86

12 hour day of acting

I was called by an old friend named Logan. He informed me, he randomly bought him and I (sold out) Beach House tickets at Ottobar just because... It was very unexpected, and very exciting. Him and I were planning on hanging out all day the day of the show, and than I got an email asking if I was available to do background acting for a show (I can't reveal the name of till next year). I asked Logan if he was interested he said yes, I responded asking if I could invite a friend, they agreed to it. We did background work from 7am-3pm, than I helped a friend for a pilot of a show she is producing which I did acting on that 3pm-7pm. It was an exhausting day, being on set of two different shows was fun, but not easy.

Logan headed home. I called him letting him know I was exhausted, he agreed to being just as exhausted with the little strength we both could summon I picked him up from his house and drove us to Ottobar to go see Beach House, and wow! That was truly such a great, great, great set. I really expected it to be not as good as it was. It definitely exceeded my expectations. Beach House's new album(s) are fantastic, and I would highly recommend listening to them. *my personal favorite is "PPP"*. While Logan and I were standing there enjoying the dream-pop sound Beach House was hypnotizing the crowd with, we realized John Waters was standing right next to us!!! What a day! What a night! It was a phenomenal day.

A week later The Parkway Theater had their 100th year anniversary at the YNot Lot. The Parkway Theater had it's doors open. Unsure if it was for the public or not, my girlfriend and I walked in the 100 year old building and explored the history of it. News anchors were setting up to do coverage. Meanwhile an official approached us about 10 minutes later informing us the theater isn't open to the public and won't be till 2017. That was an incredible sneak peak! We walked over to the YNot Lot where we saw John Waters in person again. I said hello, and continued to enjoy my night. Two sightings of the creator of the classic Pink Flamingo was an inspiration for me.

The Shaky Experience, New Album!

My band The Shaky Experience has been around since 2010. I was invited by a new friend named Thom to play his Mom's attic show. Little did we realize we would become band mates and best friends over the next few years. After playing shows all over Baltimore, and Philly in 2012-2013. We moved to LA that put a big stop on making any type of music for the next couple of years. When we moved back and were settled, in 2014 I brought up to Thom that I finished writing a new album. We played a few shows in 2014' playing only two new songs I wrote. As time progressed we finally made time to put out our new album Sloppy Thirds. This process with very interesting. It was a way different recording and practicing process than ever before.

We started to practice in mine, and Kim's apartment basement. It's a big empty finished basement. The basement can't be rented out according to our landlord. Thom and I started taking advantage of that by practicing new tunes in this huge space. Thom stopped sitting down while drummed and started standing up instead. He also used all of his own drums, and had new sticks. I started tuning my guitar, and provided my own strap, cable, and amp. That's usually something I would rely on other bands for.

It was time to record but we didn't have the equipment to do so. Thom's long time friend Drew agreed to record us at his space "Lucky Day". Drew and I were never close, however after playing music together for the past 2 weeks, and recording we became much closer. With only 2 official recording sessions we finished Sloppy Thirds, our new album. We blank CDs, cases, and Thom's Dad works at a print shop so he was able to donate us tons of prints of our album cover, which Thom created. Everything was coming together. We even recorded a music video for our song "What Is Tropical?". It was very exciting.
What Is Tropical?

The Shaky Experience were invited to play MT6 Fest. 18 great bands, 2 stages, it was an incredible offer we gladly accepted. We were put on at 12:20am the last band went on at 12:40am, which are The Special People who created the fest. It was awesome! It gave us lots of exposure. We played all new songs except for one old one. We invited Drew to perform with us. People went nuts during our set. Drew wore a female face mask, while swinging around a medal shovel at the shovel, Thom was only in his underwear with corpse paint painted on his face, meanwhile I'm singing Okcupid inspired lyrics, while scraping my guitar against anything I could. It sounds really noisy, but it turned out really great! The crowd gave us very positive reactions to all our songs. Several of people approached us after the show to say very kind words to us. It was absolutely incredible. We were very flatted and gave away lots of our new album on CDs that night. We even left behind a few stickers.
Hear our new album here! Sloppy Thirds




 Landmark Music FestivalMy girlfriend and I bought tickets to Landmark Music Festival in Washington, DC. We got to see Tv On The Radio, Dan Deacon, Chromeo, Alt J, Chvrches, and most importantly The Strokes. It was awesome to see so many musicians we enjoy in one full day of great music. The Strokes played an incredible drunk set. Announcing that their working on a new album which was definitely exciting news for me.

Miscellaneous other things

Thom and I participated in Transmodern Art Festival this year, you can see amazing photos of us, and the festival here.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/tlh3rd/sets/72157657175276324

My 9 year anniversary of being a vegetarian was October 1st. Woo!

I'm enrolled back into school, finishing up my degree.

I went to the Adult Swim Pop Up Drive In Theater, that was pretty cool. I randomly was given VIP treatment, and got to see a bunch of unreleased Adult Swim material.

I threw a really short but sweet hostel show recently including such acts as NASASQUAD, Slam & Wallace, Pelvis Presley, and A Band Called Forever.

My Halloween costume, Tom Selleck (me on a normal day).