Dinner for Five

by chris cunningham

A few years ago I came across Willo’s website [LINK] via a link from a link kinda thing. When I first started reading her website I always felt like I was mentally shouting while reading it because man, she used exclamation! points! like! nobody’s! business!! Everything had exclamation points! Cat! Sofa! Deadpan! I hardly ever use exclamation points, I’m more like… “Holy crap, the roof is on fire.” Period. Because that’s more like me to just sit and watch a house burn down.

Anyway, hardly a sentence of hers goes by without it being effusive! So after reading her entries over a period of years I realized it’s an accurate reflection of her personality. Which was really cool because since then I’ve chatted to her on occasion about music n’ stuff and she’s totally gung ho. She’s always a good source of info on bands that are coming through town and I’ve picked up a lot of cds based on her tastes. I got to connect the words with the actual person this weekend.

She was heading down to L.A to meet up with some friends and I caught up with her Friday night at World Cafe in Santa Monica.

So it was dinner with 3 people I didn’t know at all, and then Willo who I knew through words only and the random fish eyed lens video clip. Her friend Dee was along, another friend from high school who she hadn’t seen in 10 years, and the added bonus of Steve from thesneeze.com. If you haven’t read his series of “Steve, Dont Eat It” [LINK] do yourself a favor and have a laugh. After dinner we hopped down the street to Finn McCool’s for drinks and some more of Dee’s friends joined us and then further down we hit Shane’s.

I chatted with Renee for awhile (above picture) which was fun, because it’s more than likely I’ll never ever see her again, but she was cool and was laughing at what a random group had gotten together. Which is also funny because on Sunday I went to shoot some pictures and there were 3 pictures on my camera that Willo took. None of Willo though…

So there ya go, above is a photo of Willo’s friend Renee who I met about an hour before and may never see again! I dig the photo though, it wreaks of rich mahogany. So yeah, it was really to cool to meet her and her friends and she’s very cool. Awesome night out. Although I suppose I should Willoize it and say, Awesome night out!!