Pioneertown!!!

Okay but first, the other night I went to this new record store in Los Feliz called High-Fidelity Records (http://www.yelp.com/biz/high-fidelity-los-angeles-2). Yes, the name is a schmaltzy reference to a GREAT book AND movie (so into Stephen Frears' stuff), but the place is surprisingly great too! They were having their opening party with free beer and wine and you could bring in your used records. This band, The Peach Kings (http://thepeachkings.com/) performed...and they rocked. They were a lot harder live than on their album, which I obviously LOVED. They sounded kind of like The Kills (and you know my intense emotions about Alison Mosshart) and there is an awesome dynamic between the singer and the studly young guitarist (sorry strangers, I think they're a COUPLE (explaining the sexy vibe)). Anyway, it was a pretty cool event.

So THEN I went to Pioneertown with some friends for the weekend. If you have never heard of this place, that's OKAY, but just listen to my advice and go NOW. It's this little ghost-town right outside of Joshua Tree where they used to film Westerns back in the day. There's an adorable inn there (http://www.pitowninn.com/), where we stayed. Look at the cuteness:

OMG YOU GUYS I KNOW, the iPhone takes a much better pic. Here are Kyle and Julie by a bull (fake) outside the inn (not sure what Kyle is doing behind the statue).

That is a fake hotel in the ghost town. I sort of wanted to stay there.

This is a kind-of racist Mexican gnome statue that I wanted to steal. I didn't.

OH NO!!! Julie is in JAIL.

So there is like, this kitsch graveyard in the ghost town and they lined up some weird, old typewriters. Also, Kalen made me lift one and it was like a million pounds.

So, a stone's throw from the motel is this place called Pappy and Harriet's (http://www.pappyandharriets.com/), which is basically Heaven on Earth. It's this giant restaurant/bar where they have insane BBQ and a different musical act almost every night. So like, you can eat this:

And then dance to a band like Dengue Fever (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue_Fever_(band)
Strangers, this band is NO JOKE. The singer is Cambodian and she sings mostly IN Cambodian, accompanied by some SICK psychedelic rock. They blew me away. Then we had an afterparty and passed out pretty early.

The next day my friend Erin joined us, we went to this DELICIOUS brunch place in Joshua Tree called The Crossroads Cafe (http://www.yelp.com/biz/crossroads-cafe-joshua-tree). I had an omelet I created with Andouille sausage, green onion, mushrooms, and salsa and then the table shared scary things like crazy mashed potatoes with onion, cheese, sour cream and an over-easy egg on top and moist banana bread with butter (okay, my friend Jesse does NOT like butter, and he doesn't think it is necessary in general, and that's probably why he is so lean and I am jealous of him even though he is a male). Then some of us (me) decided it was too cold and windy to do the hike we planned (Julie, Kyle, and Jesse were troopers), so we went bowling. The place kind of smelled of vomit, but we had fun, and by that I mean I won. Kat Scardino will be mad that I posted this picture of her:

But STRANGERS, you could wear sweats there! Then my friends Jacqueline and Antonio and their French Canadian friend Jeremy (okay, he was just French) did another round of Pappy's with us after a very cold night attempting to camp. Things got so wild that this happened:

I don't know who that man was, but that night he was just my best friend. Then we continued the dance party and I decided to pay homage to my friend, most likely during a Whitney Houston (RIP) song:

Good times, good times.