Monday, May 14, 2012

Spring in Hollywood

The cool thing about living in Hollywood is that at any time you can meet a celebrity. Like the day after watching LA Ink we saw Kat Von D in her tattoo shop High Voltage. We went to a Steel Panther concert and Dan moshed with Fred Durst.



Saw the following guys at school

Guitar virtuoso Andy McKee played "Rylynn" along other songs.


Piano genius Ben Folds sang "I am the Luckiest", and spoke about the industry. We talked to him afterwards and i mentioned to him i was from Iceland, he told me he wanted to go there but things didnt work out, so i told him i knew some people. He told me to contact him on Twitter, i did and got a tweet back. Such a cool guy!



Talking about stars, I did an interview back at home with DV which had the headline "Anna is used to Hollywood stars" which made it look like I was one of those girls who makes friends or sleeps with celebrities to get in the news. The funny site Sannleikurinn took the article and turned it around. Really funny.I wanted to have my say on it so i wrote an article describing my view but Pressan didn´t publish it, so i posted it on my facebook site, http://www.facebook.com/notes/anna-claessen/%C3%A9g-og-brad-pitt-grein-sem-pressan-birti-ekki/10151511417000602

This all went down when i was in Michigan so there was not a lot i could do about it, but let it die.

Once we returned back to L.A. a mail awaited us....from Jimmy Kimmel. We had sent him a letter saying Thank You since we met in line for his show...and this was his response.

"Dan and Anna, Congratulations! Please don´t blame me if it goes to hell. Your Pal, Jimmy Kimmel"



Dan and I celebrated our 6 months anniversary by having drinks at Roosevelt Hotel. Also saw the movie "Five Year Engagement", it was great, not only mocking Michigan (which Dan loved since he´s from there) but also mocking Zumba (i´m a Zumba Fitness Instructor)...great romantic comedy.


The Icelanders who graduated together had a little dinner together where we also took some pictures of us all with our graduation dresses on, so much fun. Well up to the point where i had a ginger tea and got sick, turns out ginger is my enemy, my allergy. I lost my voice and was sick for a week after that. Nothing worse for a singer than loose their voice.

I was invited to a premiere party at my friends house. Her boyfriend was starring in a new icelandic action movie Svartur a รก leik, which describes the drug world so well back at home. Great movie about a horrible world. It was suppose to happen in late 90´s so i couldnt help but laugh at the old phones, eurovision and the fashion. Took you back.

Saw my friend Jonina perform...and man she´s good! I hope i´ll be that good after my program. See my favourite song of hers "Hold on my sister."


I am taking the Vocal Performance Program at Musicians Institute, which i love. I´m learning sooo much, but I realized I have a love-hate relationship with school. I love what i´m studying, but i stress myself out to the point where i think i´m not good enough. Not a good mix. I´m just trying to enjoy it.

I´m a dancer so it´s total opposite what i´m now doing, as a dancer i breathed through my mouth and held my stomach in and express myself a lot, in singing you breath through your mouth using your diaphragm and expressing less, using your voice to put the emotions you want your audience to feel. I film all my live performances at school and it´s great to see the progress. Like when i did Janis Joplin´s song Piece of my heart.

Piece of my heart in class
http://socialcam.com/v/AKGZjJYh?autostart=true

Piece of my heart performed later in the concert hall
http://socialcam.com/v/4kzBSSls?autostart=true

headvoice vs. chest/mask voice....you can hear the difference

So my life these days is mostly school, school, school. Go a couple of times with my friend to the gym and we have friends over every weekend just to be social!

Back to school, Back to Hollywood :)