| Subject | Justin Fund Benefit |
| DateCreated | 4/1/2006 9:37:00 PM |
| PostedDate | 4/1/2006 8:35:00 PM |
| Body | Just got home from the Justin Fund benefit. An excellent time was had by all. The room was absolutely stuffed full of people. The crowd was downright mammoth. The food was great, the music was great, Jim Z is still a complete ham on stage and we wouldn’t want it any other way. Oh yeah, he’s still the best keyboardist I have ever or will ever know. Mike V is still a devastatingly awesome guitar player. There were more than a few of us listening in a mild state of shock… as usual. Mike was added to my friends list yesterday under the name “Mike Valeras Group.” That’s not the band that played tonight, but you should check it out anyway. Jim Z is also a member of that band.
The best part though was the mountain of donations. There were a number of silent auctions and a ton of raffles. Everything auctioned or raffled was donated by people who’d like to see six year old Justin beat his cancer and stick around for a nice long lifetime. The hall was donated, the food was donated, the band was donated, the prizes were donated, large sums of money were donated. There were so many auction and raffle items that it took almost 90 minutes to get through it all. I generally do not believe in miracles, but I certainly hope Justin’s family brought in enough money tonight to work on buying the medical equivalent of one. A number of people who are very important to me went tonight because I asked them too and I am grateful and appreciative. Lisa & Ken, John & Mary, Larry & Nawal, Jamie, Carolyn, and Amy… who is a friend of Jamie’s who didn’t know any of us, or anything about us, and had never even heard of Justin, and still came out, all the way from Maine no less… Kelli, and my parents too. All of the guys from the band Break Even were there (Justin’s dad was our singer) and even though Steve W out bid me and John on the silent auction for the 12-string guitar I can’t be mad. The money is going to a fantastic cause after all, and the guitar will be treated with the appropriate respect. I managed to win a couple of the raffles. One was a basket full of DVDs and movie theater style junk food. After I post this I’m going to wolf down some microwave popcorn. I also bought a ton of raffle tickets and just passed them out to my friends. Kelli won a couple of bottles of wine off one of my tickets. I’d also like to thank a couple of people who couldn’t make the event tonight but sent donations in through the Justin Fund website. Dhvani, who has a six year old son of her own, sent in a donation and earned my never ending gratitude. Maria is a member of a band called Dreamline and you can check them out through my friend’s list too. Lisa C sent some money too, even though there isn’t a whole lot of money to go around for her these days. She’s had some health issues herself recently but she still found a way to help out. Finally there is Diane who was supposed to go tonight but had to back out at the last minute. I told her it would be okay as long as she donated the cost of a ticket through the website. She said she would so she gets huge thank yous as well. No one should ever have to go through what Justin and his family are going through. I just hope we managed to make things a tiny bit easier for them tonight. |
Inside the Red Head's Head 