Came home from a punk vidgame fashion show I'm going to be writing up at 2.30am last night; I saw fire-light on the windows of my apartment and heard voices. My roommate Scott and a handful of his friends were sitting around on the couch in front of the fireplace, with a guitar, singing together! I thought, this is like old-fashioned karaoke.

They were strumming and singing along to Radiohead, REM, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Guns n' Roses - the older the song, the more likely I was to know the lyrics. I haven't sung along with a guitar in a long, long time. Some of them had written their own tunes; there was a guy from Ireland who was very funny, singing about LA. I couldn't play for anything, but I did pick up an empty bottle of Hite and make some slide guitar sounds.

It was nice communal behavior - a neighbor came over; she said it sounded so loud like we were singing right outside her window. I invited her in, handed her a Budweiser and soon she was trying to find someone who could play Joni Mitchell.