Holy!!! My band The Glowing Stars finally played our first show opening for Anamanaguchi and Peelander-Z at DNA Lounge last night, and it was seriously the best night of my life. Wait, yeah, it was. Those who weren’t actually at the show totally missed out, but were able to catch it on the livestream. BUT, if you STILL missed that, someone luckily posted our entire set on YouTube.

I had so much fun, and the guys from Anamanaguchi and Peelander-Z were so awesome. I’m super glad crashfaster (who hooked us up with the show) got to perform for a bit before us as well. Also DJ-ing between sets on his iPad was Doctor Popular who played a GREAT selection of music.

So what’s next from here? Well, finishing up our EP, of course, which people were able to start pre-ordering at our show. We’re releasing a limited run of physical copies in the form of custom USB drives made out of old Game Boy cartridges. We’ll be opening up pre-orders online probably next week. We also have a show lined up for May, and a few shows in June, as part of our first West Coast tour. More on that later.

If you took any photos last night, feel free to share them on The Glowing Stars’ Facebook Fan Page at http://www.facebook.com/theglowingstars

Also, I FINALLY updated my links page and added a BUNCH of cool people you should check out, including the people I mentioned above AND Digital Accomplice (who helped with our band’s mini webisodes), Mike Hales (who designed the flyer for the DNA Lounge show), and Jonathan Mann and Tommy Wallach, who are playing a show in San Francisco in THREE DAYS! Please come! I’ll be there!

I also updated my articles section, which includes all of the print work I’ve done so far. The online portion isn’t really updated… I’ll have to look for those.

Thanks to everyone who made last night amazing!

Just got back from a fun, sort of last-minute trip to Las Vegas, though I realize if you’re not really much of a clubber or party-goer (Me? Party-goer? Never.), then all there really is to do in Vegas is stuff yourself into oblivion with their many buffets. Yes, that’s what I did.

But also! You can walk around at 4 a.m. taking pictures of random things with your iPhone until the sun comes up. Lately I’ve been on the whole Instagram hype - it’s a free iPhone app with many cool filters to use for your photos. Unlike Hipstamatic, which is a similar app that costs $1.99, you can edit photos straight from your Camera Roll instead of having to take a new one each time. This makes it a lot easier to frame your image the way you want. The filters are also free, whereas Hipstamatic only gives you a few free options, then you have to pay for each additional filter separately. I really haven’t even opened up Hipstamatic anymore since I got Instagram.

But Instagram sort of became a gateway drug to other iPhone photo apps. Since friending Doctor Popular on Instagram, I’ve learned the ways of #appsperiment, which is basically using various iPhone photo apps to edit a photo. Here are some I took in Vegas:

This was taken of a huge chandelier-type decoration at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas. Used Camera+ to edit, then a filter on Instagram.

Took this walking along the strip and edited with TiltShiftGen.

Outside of Caesars Palace. Can’t think about this place without thinking about The Hangover anymore. Photo taken with TrueHDR.

And this is personally one of my favorites, and the very first picture was taken the same way. For a city that is known for its nightlife, the city really does sleep - unless you have a gambling problem. But this arcade at the New York New York hotel in Las Vegas was completely dead at 4 a.m. It was fun, and kind of creepy, to walk around the arcade ghost town. This photo was taken with Camera+.

For more photos, follow me on Instagram - @lizziecuevas. (Sorry, non-iPhone users!)

But now that Las Vegas is out of the way, I’m really looking forward to attending my first PAX this weekend in Boston, MA. I’ll be there with most of the TalkRadar crew. It’s also the week before Chris Antista’s and my birthdays, so I think a celebration is in order. I also have The Glowing Stars stickers to give away!

Oh, and on that note, we announced last week that we’ll be opening for Anamanaguchi at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco on 4/7. SO EXCITED!

For my new band The Glowing Stars, things have been really kicking off since we released our first track “I Know Now” on the internet. Special thanks to my cousin Phoebe Jacinto for recording backup vocals, Riki Feldmann for mixing our demo on such short notice, and Mike Bombon for designing our kickass logo and art for our demo.

Please “Like” our Fan Page on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/theglowingstars if you dig our song! We have another song on the way called “Got it Bad” which should be released really soon. We’ll also be at PAX East giving away some cool stuff, so all you people out on the East Coast should come by!

On the subject of chiptunes, there will be an awesome nerdcore and chiptunes show tomorrow night in San Francisco at Bamm.tv Studio! For those not in San Francisco, you can stream the show live at http://bamm.tv . Some of the artists performing are Crashfaster, who also puts on 8bitsf which Anamanaguchi has played, and Doctor Popular, who has actually asked me to perform a song with him! So yes, I will also be performing a song with him during his set, so don’t miss it! More info about the event here:

http://w2.eff.org/birthday/

So, all that aside, we do have some great plans ahead for The Glowing Stars that hasn’t been announced yet. Some really big things, and some smaller things. More on that later, so make sure to at least follow my band on Twitter. :)