Call me on the Telephone...

...and give me some money if I let you put your products on my video.

Fictitious Band Spotlight: LADY CROONER'S EXCLUSIVE PHOTOSHOOT FOR NOTAS FROM THE BEACH

Fictitious Band Spotlight: LADY CROONER part 2.

"Lady Gaga has my fucking career right now," Lady Crooner tells me over the phone a few days after she practically kicked me out of her Long Beach apartment. "I have the label head up my ass right now telling me how I should follow in the damn weirdo's footsteps."

She might be right. Lady Gaga is Madonna for the Twitter generation. She is the reigning video vixen everyone is talking about.

"I was flipping burgers and recording demos when she was living comfortably off her parent's money," she says on a non-stop rant about the "Bad Romance" singer. "I'm not jealous. I just want people to see right through her fake weirdness."

When I ask her if she would permit product-placement in her videos, there is a long silence on the line.

"Well, what kind of products are we talking about?" 

I throw a few names. Matel. Play Dough. Home Depot?

"I'd have to do my research," she finally manages to say. "Why? Do you know if they're interested in doing something with me? Because I'd consider it."

Wouldn't that mean following Lady Gaga's footsteps?

She proceeds to hang up the phone. 

Fictitious Band Spotlight: LADY CROONER

The wooden floors inside Estela Rodriguez' apartment are cracking. Just two years ago nobody would have cared at all. But nowadays, Rodriguez, known to the world as Lady Crooner, can't get out of her small Long Beach studio to buy some Home Depot accessories without getting recognized.

"It's funny how this fame thing is not phasing me at all," says the 30-year-old electronica R&B singer as she gets on her knees to inspect the cracked wood on the floor. "Then again, I've been doing this for half of my life so I've sort of been preparing myself for it."

Though Lady Crooner's clothes seem to have come out of a Mexican version of Disneyland's Alice in Wonderland and may look silly to the heteronormal eye, she has been doing professional music since the age of 15. 

"I really have tried all genres of music," she says as she finally stops fidgeting with the cracked wood and moves on to the shipped walls. "I've sat in front of label heads who've tried to launch my career as the Mexican-American Britney Spears."

I don't want to ask, but Crooner is obviously tweaked the fuck out. Her attention is not entirely focused on my questions, but on something else. The damned shipped walls. She's almost reading into them. But I guess one can say that this state of mind-alteration is a mirror for Crooner's own career. She has gone from pop to hip-hop to electronica and back to pop. Never settling for an specific genre of music. 

"It would be too boring for me," Crooner says. "As you can see, I cannot stay still. It's the same thing with my music. I just need to change. I need to evolve. I can't do the same thing over and over again because that would just be too easy."

Though she didn't come from the Madonna school of musical evolution, Crooner's real reason for the changes were due to pressures from music labels.

"She will probably give you that my-music-must-change bullshit story," former producer and ex-boyfriend Tony Tony says. "But the girl was getting all this pressure from label heads to change into something that was 'it' at the moment. If it was Britney Spears, they wanted to get a 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' out of her. If it was Shakira, they wanted to bleach her hair as well"

But Lady Crooner never gave in. Well, not entirely.

"If I did what I did it was probably because I so wanted to do this for a living," Crooner says admitting to the fact that label heads did have some influence on her musical ADD. "When you're a damn teenage runaway girl in this industry, people will influence you in ways you had no idea would go against your art."

Lady Crooner's 2005 underground hit "Lip Service" pushed the sales of her Crazy Sex Story album. Like many artists of the Myspace generation, Crooner's popularity grew in part to the buzz generated by the networking site.

"Fuck that," Crooner tells me when I mention Myspace. "I've been fucking working since I was 15 years old. Myspace was only a small vehicle to drive my already blooming talent. I don't need no Myspace to make me. You know what, fuck Myspace. Yeah, you can quote me on that."

Fifteen minutes into our conversation, Crooner asks me to leave. 

Fictitious Band Spotlight: THE LANGUAGE

Raised on Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney, and armed with a Woman's Studies degree from Cal State Long Beach, Rosenda Castro decided to form The Language to stop herself from writing on restroom walls. Literally.

"Girls don't mention this often but we love to tag on restroom walls," Castro tells me over coffee at a local gay bar. "I would write these long messages on restroom walls about pay inequality and sexual freedom that eventually turned into lyrics."

Tired of watching the same male-fronted punk bands over and over, Castro recruited the help of guitarist Gabriela "Gabriel"  Lopez and drummer Lori Davis to form a post-dance-techno-punk band. 

"Our sound is quite unique you see," says Davis, who is known for taking off shirts and bras during shows. "We don't have an specific sound per say. We just like to play with the flow if you will."

Although they've been compared to a crappier version of Le Tigre, these girls don't let the critics dictate how they should sound or who they should be. 

"Sure, we've played for like two or three drunk people in the audience," Castro adds while realizing that we're at a bar and she's drinking coffee. "It's this fucking coffee? I asked for tea!"

It's obvious these girls have the smarts and energy to put a good enough show. Too bad their talent is not quite there yet. 

FIFA says no to the Islamic hijab!

Inspired by Jennifer Doyle's blog post on the subject.

*I can't seem to flip the image around. Basically the girl is saying: BAN THIS! and kicking a ball that says FIFA's Law 4, which is the law that the FIFA is hiding behind as an excuse to ban hijabs in the soccer field. 

Ready, set...GRADUATE!

Centerpieces. Centerpieces with little marbles inside of them. On top of the marbles, there will be a picture of me. A picture I will take as soon as I get my cap and gown come May 5. I will take the picture at the mall. I hear they're cheaper there. I will use my biggest smile and I will pay for this picture.

People will come to my graduation party. They will seat in the tables with these center pieces. Like me, they will find it a little strange to find my picture in it. It's silly, I know. But how to stop a mother from wanting to celebrate her son's big day. How do I say to my mom, "I just want to get loaded and dance." 

The family who I know less and less will come from the old country and will happily celebrate this day with me. We'll talk about the latest chisme and they will tell me how proud they are to have another college graduate in the family. 

I will sit back and relax. It's been almost nine years since my high school graduation and I will finally be able to say that I graduated from college! People will leave. They will hug me again and tell me that I have a huge future ahead of me. I will smile and thank them for coming. 

The next day, we'll clean up and return the rented chairs and tables. I will lock myself in my room and look at my hands. Hands that have worked really hard in order to pay outrageous college fees. I will be sad to know that the next day I'll have to return to that job. A job that has been generous enough to keep me in school but one where my journalism BA won't be necessary to use. 

I know that I will eventually be able to use my degree. But not now. Although I may sound so pessimistic about my graduation, I really am not. I couldn't be happier. I just have to accept that there are certain things in life that I cannot change. For now at least....