i transferred the photos from last week, from two cameras on to a USB flash disk which turned out to be corrupt, which means that i lost about half of the photos i took from last week… so instead of around 200 photos, i was only able to post around 100, which can be seen here. it turns out that even the photos that i was able to save lost some of their exif information, so they all say that they were taken last night or this morning, which isn’t true, but at least i didn’t lose the image information.

so, anyway, i went to OCF last week. we were going to leave monday, but chris decided that he didn’t want to leave the day after the 4th of july, so we left on tuesday instead. the trip down was uneventful, except for the fact that because i wasn’t driving i was able to take a few photos of things that i have seen before, but been unable to take photos of them. unfortunately, all but one of them fell afoul of the disk corruption, so i didn’t get them anyway.

morningwood odditorium was a lot further along than i anticipated: all of the “heavy construction” was done (i.e. the stage was complete and most of the rigging had been completed when we got there), but there were a couple of sailmakers, nichole and somebody else who had a very strange, russian sounding name that i don’t remember (but who was, apparently, not russian or anything like it, judging by her accent, which sounded like it came from the midwest of america), who had more or less taken over the stage, because it was “the perfect place” to do the kind of things sailmakers do, so we got to work around, and watch the sailmakers do their thing, which was actually really interesting and i learned a lot about how machine sewing works in general, which will probably do me some good the next time i have to sew something.

morningwood was blessed by two rather unusual guests thursday and friday. the first was a big brown bat, who roosted backstage left thursday afternoon. while i was taking pictures of him, he roused himself and looked at me with a bleary expression, and yawned before going back to sleep, which was intensely cute. then, on friday, a rainforest skink and i crossed paths backstage. here is another photo of him from a different site. i’m not sure, but it may be that skinks are not native to the northwest united states, so it’s possible that this guy escaped from captivity, but one way or the other, we crossed paths at the fair, which was cool.

BBWP FTW (as they say) at the friday night fire show. on thursday there was what was supposed to be a “dress” rehearsal that we attended, but it wasn’t a “dress” rehearsal, because only about half of the acts were actually lit (we weren’t one of them), and the acts that were lit were going first, regardless of where they appeared in the show. macque managed to sweet-talk the production manager into letting us go early, and when we were done, somebody came up to us and said that the performance was “too long” and that we would have to cut something out. we debated with them for about 10 minutes, but they were relentless in their desire to cut something from our five-minute performance. we were convinced that they didn’t understand the performance, since we hadn’t lit up anyway, so we said we would cut something and promptly forgot about it once they were gone. unfortunately, i didn’t get any pictures (and this time it was not because of disk corruption), but there were 10 acts, and, for 9 of them, the audience was respectful, and applauded at appropriate times, but when BBWP came out and chris started with “GENTLEMEN, BEND OVER!” there was an immediate response while the glamazons were lighting our dongy-things, and the laughter and applause just escalated, repeatedly, from there: with the “reveal”, again when we lit our boobs and again when we started swinging our “tassels”. i really wonder what the person who had said that we had to cut our act thought of the performance that stole the show, but after thursday night, i never actually saw her again. one of my buckets fell apart during the performance, but nobody noticed, and i was able to limp off stage without breaking something important. the lady from B. Coole Designs watched us rehearsing before the show and said that she could make team patches for us, which is probably going to happen.

the fact that the oregon country fair is very similar to a mall in a lot of ways was driven home to me by a card saying “BUY MORE STUFF” that was given to me by sasha and stuart, who had gotten it from a stilt-clown with a sign that said “HURRY”. it made me think a lot about why i was there, despite the aura of “Psycho-Spiritual Rejuvanation For All” that overshadows the fair. it also gave me an idea for making buttons and stickers that say, alternately “BE AWARE” and “BEWARE”, which i’m probably going to do.

while i was on my way up to the ritz saturday night i ran into Anne Feeney, whose album with Chris Chandler called Live from The Wholly Stolen Empire is one of my all-time favourites. she was looking for a trombone player and zeroed in on the fact that i was carrying a trombone case. she invited me to play with her at the midnight show on the main stage. i decided that, much as i really appreciated the offer, that i didn’t want to do it, because she wasn’t actually scheduled to go on until 2:30, which would have meant standing around backstage in a mosquito-infested swamp (which is what the OCF mainstage is, even under the best of circumstances) for a couple of hours, waiting to go on and play one song, which i didn’t know, and probably wouldn’t get an actual part for at all… but to be given the invitation to be in the midnight show by anne feeney, just by itself, is one of the reasons i’ll be back next year, in spite of the general attitude of “BUY MORE STUFF”.

i was very careful and conscientious, and made liberal use of DEET, and actually didn’t get any mosquito bites at all…

… until sunday night, when i was packing up my tarp, which i thought was going to take much less time and be an easier job than it turned out to be. still, i came home with only about seven bites, and because of the fact that i had taken a sauna sunday night, after getting the bites, they didn’t itch at all.

next year i’ve got to get Snake Suspenderz to the fair. i don’t know what’s happening with the phil, although i’m pretty sure that whatever happens, they’re going to be the musical accompaniment for the fremont players, but at the same time, i think Snake Suspenderz would be a good way to go in general.