So my story goes like this: I hold a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Virginia high school English teaching license. As soon as I started student teaching I realized I didn't want to be a teacher. Teachers (if they want to really make a difference) spend a ridiculous amount of time covering their butts so that they can teach what they want to. Not to mention all the time grading papers 'til midnight and such and not having time to actually have a life.  So I've been working  various jobs, including a long stint at Tower Records and Video in Tyson's Corner, Virginia, so that I could have free time to be in a band and travel if necessary. This year I'm working as a paraprofessional in a middle school during the school year while I look for a job in web design and/or event planning and promotion so I can get back to doing what I love the most.

I play the bass. I just recently quit my D.C. area band called Ursula Major since we had trouble hanging onto drummers. Our most recent show was us opening for Verbena at the Black Cat in D.C. on Sept. 29th. We also played live on the Internet for a One Song One Cause benefit on 9.9.99. You can still download a RealPlayer at the OSOC site and watch our performance, I think. My favorite bassists are David Wm. Sims of The Jesus Lizard, Gail Greenwood (ex-L7), and Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue. I also play guitar in a band called Sissy & the Space Sex with my friends Stacey, John, and Dave.

In January I quit my band of four years, Gist, due to artistic differences. They have a five-song CD released on May 6th that I played on (and I wrote a lot of music on it.) It's titled, "Soundtrack For My Parting Ways." (We named it long before I decided to quit.) Before that we did a kick-ass four-song demo tape in '97 recorded by Archie Moore (ex-Velocity Girl.) We shopped it to indie and major labels with no luck. I remember someone in A&R at Elektra Records told us the tape was good but that our music was so complicated that it took four listens for him to get a handle on what was going on in our music, and that a major can't back that kind of music. He compared us to Wire and Gang of Four. Our last show together was on January 19th at the Black Cat in D.C. Gist recorded a few songs at Inner Ear Studios recently with their new members, so look for that. Gist already has an 8-song CD out, "Youth's Avail," that has songs we wrote in 1995. We released it ourselves in 1997. It's not terrible, but the production was kinda cheesy and the music was from our kindergarten stage. (Songs with lots of changes that droned on a little too long. We relied on the soft-to-loud-and-back-again dynamics a lot back then.) If you want to buy any of this Gist stuff, write to me. Or see The Official Gist Site for more info.

Here's a list of my favorite albums in no particular order:

• L7 "Smell the Magic"
  
• L7 "Bricks Are Heavy"
  
• Motley Crue "Too Fast For Love"
  
• Motley Crue "Shout at the Devil"
  
• AC/DC "Back in Black"
  
• The Jesus Lizard "Liar"
  
• The Jesus Lizard "Shot"
  
• The Geraldine Fibbers "Lost Somewhere Between the Earth and My Home"
  
• Belly "King"
  
• The Dirty Three "Horse Stories"
  
• Verbena "Into the Pink"
  
• Verbena "Souls For Sale"
  
• Sonic Youth "Dirty"
  
• The Get Up Kids "Four Minute Mile"
  
• Wu Tang Clan "Forever" (Disc One only)
  
• The Stooges "Raw Power"
  
• Sleater-Kinney "Dig Me Out"
  
• Team Dresch "Captain My Captain"
  
• Dave Brubeck Quartet "Newport 1958"
  
• The Lead "Burn This Record"
  
• Led Zeppelin "Physical Graffiti"
  
• Black Sabbath "self-titled"