i got six 90-minute cassettes from the mid-1980s (well, technically, it was 5½, because one side was ruined beyond repair) that came from ken whitley, digitised this week, and got them back on friday. two of them are ones that are the closest to the original masters as i am likely to find, at this point, of music that i produced in the eμ studio at western, between 1980 and 1990, which i had (and lost) on my cracked cloud drive. another one is the only surviving relic of the stairway jam, which, at the time, consisted of myself, eric barcus (who was to become my brother in law), kenyth freeman (my good friend and mentor), jeff taylor, and prudy elam, on friday, april 13th, 1984, at 19:30, also in the eμ studio. and yet another one is “The This of That”, recorded at solgarth, kenyth freeman’s home, by ken whitley, featuring kenyth on flute, and brent jackson on guitars.
a picture of solgarth, even though it is no longer kenyth’s home, because you can do that kind of thing these days…
thursday, i drove to lakewood, south of tacoma, and picked up 1 enormous (15’x17′) and 1 not-so-enormous (15’x9′) roll(s) of artificial turf, which were, then, lugged and schlepped into the back yard by moe and me, and laid out on the mud-pit which is what is left of the “lawn” between the deck and the garage, thanks, in large part, to the black dogs, quill and kestrel, who, literally, run in circles and tear up the grass when it rains. the artificial turf looks A LOT better than the mud, but the artificial turf is HEAVY and, as a result, i spent all of friday and saturday, basically, either asleep, or wishing i was asleep, and i’m STILL kind of “low energy” today, although i feel a lot more “sprightly” than previously.
my unicycle class was cancelled this week, because john is out of town and they couldn’t find a replacement for him… but it’s probably just as well, as i am still feeling rather beat from the aforementioned artificial turf project.
it was, indeed, a very long and busy week, which reached it’s ultimate on friday-night-slash-saturday-morning, where we had a late (burlesque) show that ended at 01:30, and a call for a matineé at 11:00, which, for me, meant less than 6 hours of sleep between two very busy, 2-show days. and, because of the fact that we FINALLY got the issues we were having ALL F@#*ING WEEK with the monitors worked out ON THE LAST DAY, it ended up that we were satisfied enough with the show that we could have done another two or three weeks… which is, actually, a fairly typical sentiment for these shows, in general.
and the prominence of moisture festival madness completely occludes the FUBAR internet weirdness (which has settled back down to its normal SNAFU at this point) and social/political dumpster-fire-in-a-flood-in-a-tornado that has developed since THE LAST TIME I PAID ATTENTION… seriously? the CDC will no longer recommend fluoridated water? i guess this has become the set for “Dr. Strangelove”, now… 😱
acts i really liked, this year, include Al Simmons (a perennial favourite, for many years), Godfrey Daniels (the poster boy for the moisture festival, of course), Amy Englehart (of The Bobs, and a good friend), Lyla Goldman and her FLYING UNICYCLE!!! (FOR REAL!!) 😮, Paul Draper and his act which we FINALLY got right on the last day (😒), Bill Robison and his tape-face, and Tyler West and his “poo”-dle, just before intermission! seriously, there’s a good chance that the “poo”-dle is one of the 5 best acts i have EVER seen at the moisture festival, and it’s not JUST because of the guy who doesn’t know how to pronounce “shah,-tawk’-wah,“! 👍👍
i have isolated the “poo”-dle from the rest of the video, because it absolutely IS a moisture festival classic, in spite of the fact that it was an “aside” sales pitch for the raffle! 😉
things are beginning to settle down, a bit… there’s still some undefined (and undefinable) weirdness with moe’s and my email, which has been compounded by some apparent SUPER weirdness with either moe’s or my ability to send text messages, which SHOULDN’T be connected in any way… and the whole thing is made even weirder because we recently received a new router, which is supposed to replace our old router… and the new router, for some reason (i strongly suspect demons, or their ilk) decided that it was going to try to connect to my old mac, which has been quite happy NOT connecting to internet for quite some time… like before we moved into our current dwelling… and i keep thinking that there should be some immanent fiasco brewing with my VPN, which, if i recall correctly, acted in a way that it shouldn’t the last time i changed my IP address… but i changed my IP address two weeks ago, and, so far, there has been no indication that the VPN has even taken notice. 🤨
but, strangely enough, the “starting to settle down a bit” scenario has done absolutely nothing to my anxiety and depression… but getting kicked off mastodon, apparently, has had a MINOR effect on my depression: instead of worrying about concrete things that i read about, i worry about more amorphous things that i imagine COULD BE happening. 🫤
which is the perfect mood to start moisture festival next week. 😟 wednesday at 17:00 we load in and sound check, and then there’s one show thursday, two shows friday, the last of which gets out after midnight, three shows saturday, and two shows sunday… it’s gonna be a LONG and BUSY week. 🥵
moe and i went to eugene, oregon, yesterday, so that she could get a new tattoo. we left the house at 06:00 and didn’t get back until 01:15 this morning. she was under the needle for SEVEN HOURS yesterday… and it is allegedly going to take a month to fully heal. i took care of the dogs, who were very frustrated that they got shoved in their crates and went for a long ride, and then didn’t get to do anything except sleep in their crates the whole day. the eugene saturday market (apparently a cousin to the fremont sunday market) was happening about two blocks away from where the car was parked, but, because of the fact that i was feeling rather uncertain about the exact location of the car, i didn’t go, and basically slept in the car the whole day, with a couple of potty breaks for the dogs.
so, today, while i went to my unicycle class, moe took the dogs for a hike at campbell, and now they’re all asleep NOT in their crates.
i am progressing INFINITESIMALLY slowly on the unicycle, but i AM progressing… i’m not free-mounting all the time, but i am free-mounting a significant quantity MORE of the time than i was a few months ago… and i’m able to idle a few times without holding on to something… and i can ride backwards for a few feet, as long as i’m holding on to something with one hand…
there is still NO WAY i would even ATTEMPT to ride while playing the tuba (my ultimate goal), but i’m a lot closer than i was a year ago… which is something, i guess…
i re-installed the ActivityPub plugin for wordpress, so this is going to be a test to determine whether or not it actually works…
and, apparently, it doesn’t work, and i don’t know why. 🙄
for a long time, i’ve had this fantasy of creating the world’s largest flute. unfortunately, i would need a tunnel-boring machine, or to be able to make use of (for example) the cascade tunnel, which is an approximately 8-mile tunnel from the west to the east side of the cascade mountain range, starting from east of concrete… and it would also mean engaging some pretty enormous air-blowers…
a length of PVC tubing
not to mention the fact that, loud enough sound at certain sub-audio levels has a tendency to liquefy human tissue, and it’s my impression that sort of sound is exactly what will be produced by “the world’s largest flute”…
HOWEVER i didn’t come by the reputation for being able to make an “obnoxious” noise on pretty much anything by letting other people’s (crap) opinions stop me from making so-called “obnoxious” noises… on pretty much anything!
other good examples are the harmonic flute, which, if you turn it around and put a bass clarinet mouthpiece with a thin piece of plastic made from a credit card for the reed, turns into an instrument i call the “blathorn”, an orchestral-quality popgun, a siren from an old fire truck, and i was given a portable fog-horn a few years ago… than queue, maque! 😉
a pneumatic “super blaster” horn
i’ve got this pneumatic horn that is already REALLY loud… it’s primarily intended to be used as a signal on sailboats… but, if it just were longer…
the PVC tubing is the right size for the horn to fit into, but it is the wrong size to fit into the part that does the “buzzing”, in this case, which is the metal plate at the closed end of the horn.
the way it works is that the plunger forces compressed air through a tube behind a metal plate, which vibrates against the metal housing around the plate, causing the pitch to occur… but because of the fact that it’s highly compressed air and a rather stiff metal plate, the resulting sound is REALLY loud, and, because of the short length of the horn, fairly high…
but if i figure out a way to make the buzzing go into a longer tube…
all i know, at this point, is that it SHOULD BE lower pitch, but just as loud… however, it may be that the metal plate won’t vibrate correctly, or at all, if it is trying to vibrate a larger sound column…
finally, the And More bandcamp web site is getting a major overhaul, soon. the overhaul will contain ALL TWENTY SIX ALBUMS that we have produced since 1985, plus a new banner that says “And More – Discombobulating the Discombobulable since 1985”. 😉
Novus Odor Seclorox is a cut from the album “This Music Is Drugs”. it’s a .flac file, so it’s possible that your browser will balk at it. you can try using a different browser, or a different platform… or, you can wait until the overhaul is finished, and buy the physical album… 😉
i’m listening to music that i made, and haven’t actually heard for, sometimes, as much as 25 to 30 years… it’s scary, but it’s also AWESOME!
i have pretty much decided that, instead of figuring out a wash to make the painting more orange, and less pink (without spoiling the painting entirely, which is a DISTINCT possibility), i’m just going to leave the finished painting the way it is, and create a new painting, with a CORRECT palette. it will take more time, but it will end up with me having a painting i actually like, will leave the first painting untouched and unharmed, and it will give me something to do for a few weeks that ISN’T frowsting on the intar-toobs, which will probably be greatly beneficial to my mental health.
since our trip to double bluff went so poorly, last year, we went to campbell this year, and successfully hiked about 5 miles without seeing another person… until we got outside the gate on the way back, at which point we saw what we could only guess was a keg party or something like that — five cars, one of which was definitely NOT going to make it all the way to the campbell gate (because the road is so pot-holed) inhabited by several girls in party clothes, and two guys on motorcycles (which are banned inside campbell), one of whom had what looked like a couple cases of beer strapped to his luggage rack… 🤷
as a xmas gift, moe and i were given paint-by-numbers sets based on a photograph of a pet that we sent in, in november. moe’s was a black-and-white photo of magick, which moe finished yesterday, and it looks like it was a professionally done painting. mine was a photo of timmy, sitting on one of his little shelves in the bedroom. we started the paintings on the 13th, and i finished mine last night, at ten minutes before midnight.241231 23.49 Tim Minchin, The Cat — paint-by-numbersit looks better from a distance, or as a photo… my guess is that part of the reason is that it started out as a photo, to begin with, but also, speaking as an artist, the colour palette is way off… timmy is a yellowish-orange cat, and the painting made him out to be pinkish-flesh-tones. now that i’m actually finished painting the numbers, my next task is to figure out a “wash” to make it more orangish and less pinkish. 😒
it’s really interesting to paint stuff again… i used to paint a lot, when i was in my 30s, and i still have a lot of sort-of “professional” painting equipment: an adjustable easel, a huge collection of paint brushes and palette knives, a couple mahlsticks, and even a bunch of blank, stretched canvasses, in the garage. i found out, today, as i was searching for a colour to make a wash, that all of my watercolour paints have dried up (which is no great surprise), so i’m probably going to have to scout out a new art supplies store, since the ones i used when i was in my 30s no longer exist.
i survived “whamaggedon 2024” by never having heard the song “Last Christmas” by Wham… just to be sure, i went to youtube, searched it out, and listened to about half of it, just to make sure… i’m still not sure i’ve ever heard the song. it’s forgettable, and i have a brain injury… 🤷
the panto has been going unimaginably well, in spite of the fact that we had to have a substitute musician (greg powers, a guy i have known since high school) play the “baphoonium” part (part euphonium, part bassoon) on the trombone, because the bassoon player got sick and the euphonium player had another gig.
my “xmas” was about what i expected: other people getting way too excited about giving meaningless gifts to people they don’t really care about, in a desperate attempt to feel like their lives mean something to someone other than themselves, while completely, i might even say DELIBERATELY oblivious to the fact that their actual lives — and the actual world — is being deliberately DESTROYED around them, while they try to find reasons to celebrate. whee… yippy… 😒
i was completely wrong concerning the quality of the panto performances this weekend… i anticipated that the “dress rehearsal in front of an audience”, would be “somewhat less than a controlled shit-show”, and it was essentially perfect: the band got all of the correct music cues, and responded to them perfectly, the cast gave the music cues perfectly, and had all their lines memorised, and, by the second show on sunday, we (the band) were already discussing ADDING music cues for events that happened, but DON’T have cues listed in the script. i, literally, do not know how we went from as much of a disaster as the rehearsals seemed to indicate, to a show as complete and polished as it turned out to be, but i’m definitely NOT complaining. at this point, the show can only get better, and i look forward to seeing how that manifests in reality.
i finally moved the last of my stuff out of moe’s office, and into their new places in my re-organised office. the remaining stuff is either stuff that moe adopted (i.e. she’s going to use it in her office), or stuff that goes into freecycle. i still have a bunch of cable-management stuff, some of which i’m going to use, and a mixer in a box, at one end of my new “closet desk”. ultimately, i want to hook the piano and the synthesizer to the computer, and to the stereo, through the mixer, but it hasn’t happened yet… although it is now a lot more LIKELY to happen than it pretty much EVER been previously.
it is now, officially, panto panic season: we open on saturday, and we haven’t had a single rehearsal where we have gone through the entire play without stopping, we are still waiting for 3 pieces of music TO BE WRITTEN, we haven’t had a single rehearsal with anything close to the “entire” band that will be playing, one musician is currently sick, and isn’t sure he’s going to be able to make the first few shows (although he IS COVID negative, so far), and there are two musicians who are scheduled to play, who have never seen the music…
and yet, somehow, we will most likely pull a more-or-less finished show out of our asses, possibly as soon as the second show, saturday, and maybe even as soon as the first show on saturday.
we have a “dress rehearsal”, in front of an audience, on thursday, and, i’m guessing it’s going to be somewhat less than a controlled shit-show.
rye has continued to improve. he saw a specialist, yesterday, who confirmed that his liver values were off, but on their way back to normal. it’s a lot more likely that he will live until his 14th birthday, at least, than it was a few days ago. 👍👍
and, exactly as i suspected, there was absolutely NO free street parking anywhere close to fisher pavilion. I was able to secure parking next to the bagley-wright theatre, approximately 3 blocks away, because of my state-issued handicapped placard, but most of the other band members i talked to had to walk a half-mile or more from their free, street parking, or had to pay $30 to $40 for two hours of parking in a garage somewhere… i noticed the parking garage i used to park in (30 years ago, or so), two blocks from the fisher pavilion, which used to be $25 for all day, now has a sign that says “EVENT PARKING — $50” which is outrageous! 🤬 NOBODY should have to pay that much for parking! 😒
but the performance went really well, and we didn’t have the usual problems with the tempo slowing down (like we usually do), because, even though we played an almost entirely DIFFERENT set-list, we actually PLAYED YESTERDAY, which makes a whole bunch of difference. 😉👍👍
the sousa band had a performance, today, at the 100th anniversary celebration of the first aerial circumnavigation of the globe, which started and ended at sand point naval air station, now magnuson park. being held at what is now an official NOAA facility, they have a list of “officially prohibited items” which includes “All noisemakers” — which makes me wonder whether ANY of the band are going to be allowed on the property — but, because i am somewhat familiar with the location, i went up there on thursday, to scout out the best place to park, so that i could leave my vest full of “officially prohibited items” (😈) outside the purview of the people who would prohibit such things… and, in spite of the fact that the gates WEREN’T open on thursday it turns out that BOTH of the gates were open, this morning, so i was able to park where i thought i was going to be able to anyway… BUT…
😒
liz sent out an email after i left — ALMOST EXACTLY the same time that we were supposed to be ON THE STAGE — with “NOAA parking instructions!” which said that we actually COULD park in the “federal no parking zone” without having to worry about “officially prohibited items. 😒
so, in spite of the fact that i was able to park where i wanted to, i COULD HAVE parked A LOT closer, and i wouldn’t have had to worry about getting past the armed guard at the gate.
in the same way, the sousa band has a performance tomorrow at Festa Italiana, at the fisher pavilion at the seattle centergrounds… but, because of the fact that it’s happening on sunday, we have been encouraged to “park on the street, because street parking is free on sundays”…
i have been parking at the seattle center for a VERY LONG TIME, and i have NEVER found reliable street parking ANYWHERE CLOSE to the fisher pavilion, on a sunday. it JUST. DOESN’T. HAPPEN.
period.
MY PLAN is to get there around 10:00 and park at the parking lot at 3rd and harrison… but even then, 10:00 is well after the huge crowds of people usually arrive at the center, and, because of the fact that they’re not giving out parking passes this year, i’ll probably have to pay through the nose for 4 hours of parking.
so, ON MY BIRTHDAY, in 2015, i took this picture of a furry in xavanadu…
150711 furry in xavanadu
again, ON MY BIRTHDAY, almost 10 years LATER, in 2024, i posed with Timber, a furry dog, in the photo ID booth…
240711 salamandir and Timber
without realising that they were the same person, and under the impression that they WEREN’T the same person, i, enthusiastically, told Timber about this picture i took of another furry, a few years ago…
today, after exchanging emails with Timber, i found out that both of these furries have THE SAME PERSON underneath the fur-suit! 🤣
it’s NO WONDER that, when i saw Timber, in 2024, i IMMEDIATELY thought of the furry that i took a picture of in 2015. he says “I intentionally tried to make them look quite close to one another in the facial markings and general body pattern”. he doesn’t wear the older fur-suit at fair any longer, but he says that it’s “a real treat to see some more pictures of my “younger” self from a few years ago.” 😉
things went A LOT more smoothly than… just about ANY other OCF since i have been attending…
i left at 09:00 and pulled in to the public lot (i think it’s called “Trotter’s Field”) at around 14:30, and i WALKED UP to the registration booth — there was NO waiting in line in the broiling sun for hours at a time — and the guy found my name in his registration book right away… it took MAYBE twenty minutes, total! then, while i was on the way back to my car, i realised that my car was parked in THE MIDDLE of a huge, colossal, developing, traffic FUCK-UP that it was going to take me an hour to slog through… so i decided to wait in line, and not stress about it…
the guy in the car DIRECTLY behind me, on the other hand, was definitely impatient and stressed. he kept honking his horn and yelling, as though i could have gone anywhere. the traffic-control hippie eventually went back and talked to him, but he still kept yelling until i pulled away from him, at which point he started yelling even louder, because the traffic-control hippies weren’t letting him bully his way into the line ahead of everyone else. 🤣
then i proceeded to the “full-load teddy” booth, but the second-to-last hippie before the booth said that if i wasn’t actually driving into the eight, that i didn’t need a teddy, and to just drive right on through, which i did… i very quickly found out that this was a LIE, but, by the time i found out, i was already most of the way to the stage, and the hippie that informed me of the lie wasn’t going to waste my time by sending me back for a teddy. 😉
i drove up to the stage, unloaded my gear, got the second choice of camping spots — the first one had too much undergrowth and wasn’t big enough for my tent 😢 — got my tent set up and my gear loaded in, and took my car to where the SCOFlot used to be, only to discover that they have turned the SCOFlot into camping, and the new “handicapped” lot is north miss piggy, which is across the street and back towards registration, but still not that far from where i was camped. i found the lot, and parked, with the assurance that, as long as i had a handicapped placard, that all would be well, AT LEAST until thursday, and MAYBE all weekend, but the hippie in charge of the lot wasn’t sure.
so i left my car with the assurance that, if i came back tomorrow, they would let me know whether or not i had to move it somewhere else at that time… and it turned out that i didn’t have to move it at all… and i was a little stressed about having an expired handicapped placard, but they didn’t ask, and i didn’t tell, so i was able to use the handicapped placard with no problems… and, as sasha said, it’s not as though my handicap expires when the placard expires… even though it’s not REALLY my placard to begin with… 😉
i walked back to camp and was drinking a (cold) beer, backstage at the morningwood odditorium, by 18:30, a full TWO HOURS before i was planning! 👍👍
the shows were, typically, disorganised and chaotic at first, but not bad. the band member who missed the last rehearsal at the sweat shop who said he “absolutely was going to make the dress rehearsal at the stage”, arrived after the dress rehearsal was over, but it didn’t make any difference. we put together music for a last-minute show called “Pappenspiel”, which was two older german people (from berlin) doing bizarre, clown/puppet/mask-type stuff, which went A LOT better than i expected the first time, and got progressively better every show. i forgot to pack ear plugs (they’re already on the list for next year), which was a bit of a problem friday night, but nothing i couldn’t sleep through, and there was a booth two or three down “Phun Way” from morningwood, that was giving away free narcan, free COVID tests, and free earplugs, which was a LIFE SAVER saturday night! 😎 the bassoon player and her partner tested positive for COVID saturday evening, and left, hurriedly, sunday morning, before the first show, but, somehow, we managed to adjust the show tunes to cover the fact that we were missing an instrument… and — SO FAR (fingers crossed) — there hasn’t been anybody ELSE in our crew that has tested positive since then. we took down the stage, and had all of the crew stuff mostly packed up and staged for the arrival of the truck by 21:00 sunday evening, and, once again, i sat around back “stage” at morningwood drank beer, smoked pot, and talked about The Church of Tina Chopp with a pretty young girl who is a philosophy major in college, but never heard of it before… 😈
it was UNREASONABLY hot — between 95° and 110° every day from about 10:00 until sunset, but it cooled off nicely once the sun went away… but, of course, the lack of sun at night only encouraged the mosquitos, which were RAVENOUS. the backstage area had some new bug-repeller devices that worked better than the ones we have used previously, so it wasn’t so bad backstage, but everywhere else the bugs were endemic. i went by white bird on wednesday evening, to warn them about my recent bout of diverticulitis, but the only time we actually NEEDED someone from white bird was when one of the UkeLadies had not been hydrating enough and passed out just as she was going on stage… she had to be hauled out in a moving cart, but i saw her the next day and she said she was fine. once again, i avoided the ritz — i didn’t even walk by it, because of the heat — and i only took one shower, which was 5 minutes (or “three pushes” of the knob that lets out the water) of INTENSELY cold water, which was enough… but it was not enough, and i took a LONG shower pretty much as soon as i got home… five days of unreasonably hot weather and only one shower was a little much, but it wasn’t enough to make me even THINK about not going again next year…
monday morning, i woke up around 07:30 and decided that it would be a GOOD THING to break camp and pack up BEFORE it got to be hot as hell, with the result being that i pulled out at 09:15 and arrived home at 14:35.
and now, the pictures:
240711 salamandir and Timber
i don’t know how he was handling the heat… it was 100° in the shade, and he was wearing a full-body fur-suit… i would have DIED! 😱
240711 google lens says that this is a varigated meadowhawk, but i’m not certain
Varigated Meadowhawk is Sympetrum corruptum, which is an interesting binomial name, but it gets even more interesting when you realise that there is also a Sympetrum ambiguum, or “blue-faced” meadowhawk… 😉
240711 wooden dragon sculpture240713 dance pavilion and moon240713 random glowing hippie shit240714 Gadzooks! It’s a stump! right next to the stage, all that is left of the shittimwood tree after which the morningwood odditorium is named.240712 some random hippie240714 some random hippie
Some Random Hippie from 2004 to 2019… then EVERYONE missed two years, because of COVID, and then i missed a FURTHER year because of COVID (😒)… then Some Random Hippie from 2023.
i’ve checked 99% of the things off the list, and loaded the car, but i’m still remembering stuff i should take, but aren’t on the list — like my bathrobe, and my aqua-sox, which means partially unloading to add stuff to already packed boxes, and then reloading the car. 😒
the remaining 1% are things that need refrigeration, which means *REMEMBERING TO GET SOME FREEZER PACKS AND PACK THE STUFF IN THE REFRIGERATOR*, tomorrow morning (unlike what i did last year. 😒); and things like soap and weed stuff and glasses, which i’m actually going to USE before i leave, tomorrow morning…
i did all the available laundry, washed all the dishes i could wash (there are a few that get hand washed, which i’m saving for later), mowed the lawn… this morning, before it got so FUCKING hot — seriously! it’s literally 100°F in the shade! 😠 which NEVER used to happen around here!
but i’m still anxious… which is why i’m taking microdoses with me… i’m anxious because oregon is EVEN HOTTER than here, and predicted to get into the 120°F range by sunday. i’m anxious because i was recently hospitalised for a condition that EXPERTS have told me “may or may not recur”, pretty much regardless of what i eat, or don’t eat, i’m pretty sure that the folks at “White Bird” (what passes for medical staff at OCF) are NOT prepared to deal with diverticulitis, and i REALLY don’t want to end up having to go to urgent care, or the hospital, in a place where i don’t know where anything is, and is far away from home… i’m anxious because i keep thinking that there are things that i should have put on the list last year, but didn’t, and i will get to portland, tomorrow, before i remember what they were… 😖
tomorrow, i expect to leave no later than 10:00, which means that i’ll get there around 13:00 or so… whereupon i will stand in line for a couple of hours to get my wristband, argue with the hippies about driving my car in to morningwood odditorium, unload my car (which i am allowed to drive in to morningwood, because i have a “full load teddy”… which happens EVERY YEAR… 😒) amid sweltering heat and massive mosquitos who don’t know the meaning of picardin or DDT (much less eucalyptus, which is ENDEMIC at the fair), unpack and set up my tent in one of two places (one i want, and the other one is probably what i’ll get), schlep all the rest of my gear into the tent, amid the aforementioned oppressive heat and mosquitos, and then drive my car to where it will be parked for the weekend, which, again, will be one of two places, depending on whether or not the hippies decide my expired handicapped placard is still worth something: either they’ll let the fact that it’s expired slide, and i’ll park in the SCOFlot, which is about a mile from where i’m going to be camped, or, if they WON’T let it slide, it means that i’ll likely have to park in “Outta Site”. which is about TWO miles from where i’m going to be camped. my guess is that things will start to “chill out” (figuratively, if not literally) by 20:00 or so, at which point i’ll probably eat something and wander until it cools off enough to go to bed.
the word “swastika” comes from the sanskrit word “स्वस्तिक” (/svastika/) which means “little good luck charm”. the word “swastika” replaced the more common greek word “γαμμάδιον” (/gammadion/) — which means “four letter “G”s” — in the 19th century (≈ 1800s CE).
the swastika is one of human-kind’s oldest symbols. it has appeared on rock carvings dated to 10,000 years ago, approximately 8,000 BCE, in what is now ukraine, as a symbol of fertility and good auspices. the swastika has been used by every people-group on the planet (including the hebrew people) as a symbol of good luck, love, life, light, and auspiciousness of every kind, until approximately 90 years ago, when it was cöopted by nazis in the 1930s.
one of my favourite artists, ManWoman, said this:
Think of the most sacred thing in your life, think of the most precious thing in your life, and put the Swastika into that place. Put the Swastika into your heart. Put the Swastika on your altar. Put the Swastika on the image you use to represent god, love, peace, or the cosmos. Put the Swastika on the thing that makes you happy. You will BEGIN to see what the Swastika has meant to humans over this entire planet for all of our human history. For these places are exactly the places it occupied for thousands of years, until the second world war, when it fell victim to a chronic infection.
Swastika of peace, by ManWoman
in the past 20 years, i have seen a great deal of improvement, overall, in the general attitude of the public, concerning use of the swastika, particularly if it is NOT depicted as the nastys do, (a black, right-facing symbol, rotated 45 degrees, on a white circle, with a red background), but, even so, i had a good, artist, friend of mine tell me, last weekend, that, in her opinion, any swastika was “evil”… apparently including the swastika that she, unknowingly, put on her own art-car, which, when i pointed it out to her, her immediate response was “that’s not a swastika”, even though it clearly WAS.
211105 The Swastika takes many forms, but it’s still a Swastika. The issue is not whether Hitler’s Swastika is different from ours. The issue is that it is our Swastika, not Hitler’s.
here’s hoping that, in another 20 years, humanity will have gone back to the PROPER use of the swastika. ࿗
SW&3D OCF 2024 — Snow White and The Three DorfsDwarves
their names are “Hungry”, “Thurston”, and “Jes’ Fine”… 🙄
this evening we had the first of two “run-throughs” with “the entire cast” before people start leaving for OCF. we “ran through” 4 songs, two of which we have played before… well, not the entire band, because we have a new substitute guitar player, who played with us several years ago for a couple of shows, and he has never played the music for this show before… and not everybody from the band was there tonight… and the cast has performed with the music, but they have entirely new lyrics to learn, along with dance steps and trying NOT to run into one another, or trip over their feet while executing said dance steps while trying to remember the new words and not sing the old ones…
we currently have 6 songs on the list, but one of them isn’t quite ready, yet.
we have our second “run through” on wednesday, then people leave for the fair, so the first complete run through, with the entire cast, costumes, and sets, will be the DRESS REHEARSAL at the fair, on thursday, the 11th of july. 🙄
this is approximately the same as how it has worked for at least 5 previous shows, so i’m FAIRLY confident that everything will work itself out, and the shows will go well…
but it’s a little nerve wracking when i consider how little preparation has actually been done for the show, compared to the preparation of the venue, making sure everyone gets down there safely, coordinating with the “officials” from the fair (primarily hillary, who is in charge of entertainment at chelamela), and everything else that has to be done… 🙄
SACBO starts friday, and i haven’t posted about it once, this year… OCF starts in 3 weeks (for some in the crew it starts at least a week earlier), and i haven’t posted about IT once, this year…
😒
okay, this SACBO will be the last one as “local residents” for whoretense and holly, who are moving to vancouver BC in a few months. whoretense has been one of my more regular print-broker clients. the last business card i made for him didn’t have a physical address on it. now i know why. the plan is for thaddeus to show up for at least one of the two days. and my unicycle riding has become somewhat more stable this year, which means that i MIGHT be able to compete in the doughnut jousting tournament this year.
and we’re JUST getting started with rehearsals for OCF. we have two scheduled for next week (monday and wednesday) which will be the only ones with the entire cast until the dress rehearsal at the fair, which is 23 days from today. as usual, we seem to be pulling the entire thing out of our asses at the last possible minute, but because of the fact that it’s OCF, the probability that everything will go smoothly is never more than 50%, however things work out. i haven’t been to the ritz since before COVID, and i don’t know whether or not i’m EVER going back, which sort-of makes the collection of 30-some ritz tokens i have collected in the past, possibly superfluous. 😒 and the probability is very high that, once again, they will NOT have put up the story pole, and nobody will want to talk about it, which is REALLY frustrating.
also, it’s our 26th wedding anniversary on friday…
peering out at me from an otherwise innocent-looking box of generic™ breakfast cereal on the shelf at the grocery store, as i was going about my business…
so i decided to put my photoshop™The GIMP skills (such as they are) to the task of bringing him out in the open…
240528 – Kellogg’s™ EVIL Frosted Mini Wheats
it’s actually somewhat surprising how little i had to do to this in order to completely change the character of the entire graphic… a “free select” tool to select just the eyebrows (highly convenient that they are ALREADY on a white background!), “float” to separate them from the main graphic, then clone-stamp to fill in the resulting blank space, a little rotation of each eyebrow, separately, then anchor the floating layer back down, and a little black brush touch-up to the teeth…
i thought about making a stencil-font word “EVIL” in red, rotated slightly, in between the word “Kellogg’s” and the word “Frosted”, but then i realised that doing so would be laying it out for everyone to see, which i don’t necessarily want to do.
i’m thinking of ways i could just get the “eyebrows” and the teeth printed on clear acetate, so that i could just cover up the face with the more accurate one, and then watch to see how many people freak out, versus how many people don’t even notice… 😈
2021, 4 “virtual” shows, i played for 2 of them, no payment.
2020, 17 shares – cancelled at the last minute, because of the imminent pandemic.
2019, 13 shares, $520 – $40 per share
2018, 11 shares, $330 – $30 per share
2017, ?? shares, $480…
2016, 15 shares, $600 – $45 per share
2015…
2014…
2013, 14 shares, $490 – $35 per share
2012, 16 shares, $720 – $45 per share
2011, 14 shares…
i didn’t even get a printed letter this year — or a check, they’re “direct depositing” them, this year, which is another layer of paperwork — just an email from victoria, the new executive director, with the standard “don’t consider this a paying gig” and “you are likely to get a token amount of money, but it will be more of an honorarium than a fee” horseshit.
it has now been five days since i posted that we busked at the market and made $115 a piece, but we STILL haven’t received the $100 a piece that we were promised. it sounds all too familiar. 😒
i remember another snake suspenderz gig we played, at some retirement home north of the university district, a few years ago, where we signed all the paperwork months in advance, and we were assured that we WOULD BE paid on the day of the performance, multiple times, by multiple people, and i STILL had to follow this lady around, harassing her, for 45 minutes, before she relented, and took money out of her personal checking account to pay us, because “the checks had been held up” by some incompetence somewhere.
this time, we were supposed to be paid on the day of the performance, but on that day, (five days ago), the person who was supposed to give us checks, checked to make sure she had our addresses correct, “in case she had to mail them”, and said that she would have the checks no later than wednesday… wednesday came and went, we saw no checks, and the lady DIDN’T show up when she said she was going to, wasn’t answering her phone, and didn’t even try to contact us… ALLEGEDLY the checks have been mailed, but i do not understand how, if i behaved that way towards a professional client, i would not have that client for very much longer, but she thinks that it’s okay to behave this way towards us because we’re “ONLY” buskers. 😒
today, thaddeus and i busked at the pike place market, under the clock, for an hour, and made $115 a piece… that takes into account the fact that we were amplified (which isn’t normally allowed at the market) and playing on the back of a truck for the “flower festival”, and we were being paid $100 a piece by the PDA to be there… the extra $30 was from tips, because of course we set up our tip bucket, because we were busking at the market. for some reason (probably the fact that he was being paid by the PDA) the busker who was on the stage/truck before us did not have a tip bucket out. 🤷
yesterday, i finished the pea gravel to the west end of the house project that i started earlier in the week. yesterday was also a “category 5” geomagnetic storm, caused by sunspots, which made a “visible” aurora borealis across most of north america, so of course moe and i went out to a “light desert” near salmon la sac, and took pictures. it was the first time i have ever actually seen an aurora… i have PROBABLY “seen” other ones, but they weren’t anywhere near as spectacular, and, significantly, i didn’t have the technology to actually “see” what i was “seeing”: what i saw with my naked eye was lighter grey stripes that were, basically, indistinguishable from clouds, which, very occasionally, had slight hints of colour… but apparently cameras these days take in A LOT more light than our eyes do, and the photos that came out of monique’s phone were phenomenal:
thursday was my circus class, wednesday was busking without amplification or the extra $100 a piece — we made a grand total of $6 ($3 a piece), which qualifies as one of the 5 WORST days i have ever had busking at the market. also i cleaned the furnace filters that i forgot to clean on monday. tuesday and monday i started adding pea gravel to the area behind the fence at the west end of our house. monday i forgot to clean the furnace filters.
last sunday was my unicycle class, where i may actually be making some progress, in that i am free-mounting pretty regularly, and i just discovered that if i do it right, i can actually idle, rather than riding away after a free-mount… but everything is still sort of tentative, and i’m not sure whether it’s an actual improvement, or whether i’m just doing fine this week and i’ll go back to not being able to do it next week… which is sort of what i’m expecting. 😒
last saturday was may 4th, which is bongwater day, and world naked gardening day, as well as the more conventional star-wars day. last friday was international tuba day, national paranormal day, and world press-freedom day. last thursday i had my circus class, may 1st (wednesday) we busked at the pike place market, under the clock, with interference from the “pike place drummer” who sets up on the corner opposite the market, so that he is NOT “on market property”, sets up a trap kit and an amplified, pre-recorded MMO tape, and drowns out all other buskers in a three block radius… and we STILL made $20 a piece, which was more than the drummer made. 😉
i was supposed to have a counseling session today, but kate is sick, so i mowed the yard instead.
the moisture festival has been going on for two weeks. we’re playing the last week, which is next week (april 10th through 13th), which means that we’re also playing the shortest week this year. there’s no telling who is “in charge” of fluffing this year, and i’m not even sure they’re going to have fluffers, since the moisture festival actually LOST money, last year (for the first year ever), and it is already projected to lose money again this year, because there aren’t the grants due to COVID that there have been the past few years… which is also why the ticket price has been jacked up to unreasonable levels. 😒
we had a house guest over last weekend, and moe had a “behaviour nerds” party saturday night, and invited a dozen or so animal behaviour folks. it was okay, in that i was able to access a ton of free food, including a whole box of timbits from a couple who came down from canada, which i haven’t had since they were first introduced, in 1976, but then i went and hid in my office for the rest of the evening.
we have not been out busking for 6 weeks, and the weather is beautiful, so if we don’t go out this week, i’m going to re-evaluate my busking opportunities (or lack thereof). my PPM busker’s permit expires on april 15th, and if i don’t renew, it will mean that it will be harder to get one next year, if things change… but the fact is, the PPM management association has experienced a major shake up recently, which means that i’ve got to convince a whole new cadre of idiots people that i really CAN play tuba quieter than most people CAN THINK, because the last cadre of idiots people SAID they were going to update “the official rules” (in 2018), but never did. 😒
since 240214 i have had 5 circus classes, 4 unicycle classes, 3 moisture festival rehearsals, 2 counseling sessions, 2 dentist appointments (my first in over 20 years, and they STILL couldn’t find anything wrong with my teeth), and 1 eye appointment.
17 days, nominally (the only evens that were MORE THAN an hour were the dentist appointments), worth of “stuff” and 20 days of “no stuff”… almost A MONTH of sitting around reading what passes for social media these days (i still haven’t quit reddit, although i’m closer to it than ever), or taking off and playing a lonely, solo game of “this way, that way” (which is best played by three or more people), getting lost, and ending up in orting — and when i mentioned it in one of my circus classes, the coach said “orting? what’s that?”
😒
okay, i’ve done “routine” things, like splitting firewood, taking care of laundry, washing dishes, shopping, and that kind of thing, and i’ve done “important” things, like upgrading the NAS, and building a rack for the kayaks, on top of everything else, so i wasn’t REALLY frowsting on the internet tubes ALL the time, but there has been a SERIOUS LACK of things to do, recently.
plus, the glasses i got from the aforementioned eye appointment are WORSE than my current distance glasses, and they’re supposed to be reading glasses (which means that they REALLY don’t work), and moe went to bellingham today, and i didn’t, after spending the past two weeks saying that i wanted to go (and then, deciding at the last minute, last night, that i would stay here with the pets), so now i’m here, alone, with the two ADULT dogs (moe took the annoying puppy with her), a cat, a snake, and a parrot, in this REALLY QUIET house, and all i want to do is make noise and pretend like there’s somebody here… so i can hide from them in my office, because i don’t know how to interact with them like normal people.
but, for some reason, i haven’t even played other peoples’ music, and have just been sitting here with the silence, the sound of my keyboard tapping, and the occasional bong hit…
AND i haven’t been out busking AT ALL since february 14th, which makes my new micro-tuba REALLY sad… i’ve got to renew my pike place market busker permit before the 15th of april, which means going through the whole rigamarôle again, only this time it’s with new folks in charge, who i have never met before, and, what do you know? the “official rules” STILL say “no brass instruments or drums allowed” in one place, and “muted tubas will be accepted on a conditional basis, and added to the 2018 rules” in another place… except they weren’t, and nobody has bothered to define EXACTLY what they mean by a “muted tuba”, and nobody has bothered to update the rules since then. 😒 and that’s not to mention the fact that i’ve been hankering to go out with my harmonic flute, my hindu drum machine, and my electronic rig, to some place OTHER than the pike place market, but i haven’t done so for reasons which come down, basically, to paranoia and self-doubt. 😒
this is one of those “i’m feeling grouchy and out-of-sorts” experiences that, in the past, i would have solved by taking mushrooms, but… well… i’ve been taking ≈250mg of mushrooms, every other day, for the past 8 months, i have absolutely NO clue what “the protocol” is for microdosing, and, at this point, if i have a trip that isn’t at least partially decent, i’m going to get even more frustrated than i already am. part of what i’m doing about it is, the next batch of capsules are going to be 200 mg, rather than ≈250mg, but i still have ≈100 250 mg capsules left, so it’s going to be a while until i get to them. the weather has been playing around with being nice enough that hiking in the forest sounds feasable, but the weather is also hit-or-miss whether it’s going to be nice or rainy, and it’s probably going to be that way for the next few weeks.
I BOUGHT A NEW TUBA! 😎 240125 salamandir, frank, and two tuba cases.
the bigger of the two is still smaller than the original case i have for it. i bought the new case (on the left side of the photo, to my right) a couple of years ago, because the original case, while still good, was 50 years old, and not as solid as i would like… and it was HUGE!! the new case (shown here) is only about 25% smaller, but it is also brand new, and designed to fit the instrument better… but it’s still big enough that, when i put it in the back of my car, there is NO room to spare on either side… the micro-tuba, on the other hand, is small enough that i’ll be able to fit A WHOLE BUNCH of extra gear when i go to the oregon country fair this year… 😉
240125 salamandir and two tubas
this shows exactly why the new tuba is needed: it has rotary valves, whereas the big tuba has piston valves, and, despite the fact that it is less than half the physical size of the big tuba, the little one plays in EXACTLY the same pitch. that’s right, other than the physical size of the instrument, there is no other difference! 240125 salamandir holding two tubas
yes, it is, in fact, possible for me to hold two tubas at the same time. if i had my other mouthpiece, i could probably PLAY two tubas, but not at the same time, because that would require me to have a ridiculously, and unrealistically, wide mouth. if the micro-tuba was the same size as the other one, i could probably still hold them, but i could definitely not play either one without putting the other one down.
i took it out busking at the pike place market, yesterday, and it sounds EXCELLENT! 👍👍
officially, the panto is over for another season, and we haven’t quite gotten started gearing up for the moisture festival yet… and i’ve found myself in another dilemma of my own making… 😒
wessex CC rotary valve travel tubaduring the last day of the panto, it all came together for me to realise that i would REALLY LIKE a tuba that has rotary valves, rather than piston valves. the tuba i’ve been playing on for a number of years now is a C tuba with piston valves that used to belong to Hokum W. Jeebs, and there’s ABSOLUTELY NOTHING wrong with it, except that it has piston valves… and, these days, especially with the fact that my right hand doesn’t work as well as it did before my injury, the piston valves have too much “throw” — there’s too much of a difference between the valves’ “open” position and its “activated” position — and it is getting more and more difficult for me to GUARANTEE that the valve is activated when it is supposed to be. rotary valves, in general, have less “throw” because they use the “up-and-down” motion to activate a rotor which rotates, rather than a piston which moves up-and-down, and the valve parts can be closer together, because the entire valve is oriented differently. i looked at the “woodwind and brasswind” web site, and discovered that a new C tuba with four rotary valves is between $10,000 and $14,000, which is WAY outside my range…
i mentioned this to one of my band-mates, who is also a tuba player, and he found (on farcebook) an advertisement for someone who is selling a used CC travel tuba for $1,800…
it’s REALLY a shame that there isn’t a “drooling face with eyes half closed” glyph in the emoticons block of unicode, because it would be REALLY appropriate here…
this is a CC tuba, the same as my current tuba, that is, physically, half the size of my current tuba, because it is wound up differently, and it has rotary valves, AND i can ALMOST afford it, at this very moment!!
however, it comes (if it comes at all) with a few very specific caveats, which i have been mulling over in my head almost constantly since i first found out about it. one of those caveats is that monique and i have this “agreement” these days, that if i want to buy a new instrument, i have to sell one of my old instruments… and i just happen to have an “extra” trombone, a trumpet, and a couple of clarinets, which have been sitting in their cases on a shelf in the garage ever since we moved, and i’m pretty sure i wouldn’t miss them if they went away. the other caveat is that it costs $1,800, and my bank account (well, okay, Hybrid Elephant’s bank account) only has about $1,300, which means that i would have to “borrow” $500 from the “household” account, and, what with xmas, and the foundation, and the washing machine, and, and, and… i’m not sure how well we can handle this… and, to a lesser extent, if i do end up “pretending” like i am interested in buying it, the guy and his tuba live in yakima, which means a road trip just to try it out and a long trip home with nothing if it turns out to be a bust…
ETA 240109 16:00.00 so it appears that i’m going to buy a tuba, as soon as snoqualmie (sdukʷalbixʷ) pass opens up again… at this point, everything has fallen into place short of my actually playing the thing… soon! 👍👍
just a few more days until “the holidays” are over for another year. so far, i’ve been doing fairly well staying out of it: we had a party and karaoke last saturday, which i missed most of because of the panto. then on sunday — xmas eve — we had dinner with a couple of friends, and on monday — xmas day — we had my () mother-in-law over for dinner, which meant spending the afternoon and evening having to listen to cheesey xmas music and make “small () talk”, and that was it for xmas. this weekend, i’ve got two panto performances on saturday, and one on sunday. sunday night/monday morning, frequently, we drive up into the mountains — rather like we do on the fourth of july — to get the dogs away from our neighbours and their incessant fireworks. monday — new years day — we traditionally take the dogs to double-bluff beach, which we haven’t done for a few years because the pandemic has limited our ability to travel…
it’s time to hunker down and ignore as much “xmas” music as humanly possible, while, at the same time, having a bunch of panto performances, and various other “xmas” party-like things happening…
so far, the panto performances have been going really well, in spite of the fact that one of our star performers, in an essential, featured rôle, got covid last week and had to be replaced by the understudy. she’s no slouch, and has stepped into the rôle more or less seamlessly, but… she’s a woman playing the rôle of “the dame” (which is characteristically played by a man, dressed as a woman), and it’s just… not… right… not to mention the fact that she really does a mediocre job of acting the part: she reads her lines acceptably well, but is either too “over the top” or not “over the top” enough, and her “act” feels forced, and not real.
and, then, a week after the new year, there’s more panto performances, my son’s 41st birthday (i still don’t really understand how that happened), and then we start gearing up for the moisture festival… again.
this year’s difficulties also includes three of our six pets having pretty much identical dental problems which may or may not require surger(y/ies), and the failure of the washing machine (AGAIN! 😠) which has required draining the machine, disconnecting the power, drain, and water supply connections, and tipping it over on its side — because “modern” washing machines don’t have any “user serviceable” parts, despite the fact that it’s pretty much exactly the same washing machine that it has been for the past 50 years — to access the drain pump, which can be replaced for $50 by ordering the part number on amazon, rather than paying some “appliance repair technician” $130 to come out and tell us that modern washing machines are only designed to last for 5 years or so, and we bought this about 5 years ago… 😒 once again, the frank zappa song “Flakes” comes to mind…
in spite of all that, my mood has been surprisingly adequate, although i am nearing the end of my most recent batch of 50 microdoses, and if i recall correctly, the next 100 microdoses include quite a few (if not all) that i made “manually” (rather than “in bulk”), which means that they’re likely going to be a lot more variable in their actual dosage. the plan is to obtain another ounce… somewhere… i thought i had two reliable resources, but it turns out that one of them is only sort of reliable, and the other, while seemingly a lot more reliable, is the one i find more “sketchy” (in that they’ve been selling psychedelic mushrooms, and accepting credit card payments, more or less openly, on the web, for at least ten years, and apparently, haven’t caught the attention of anyone who has the legal authority to shut them down), and, also, costs more than twice as much.
still adequate, although somewhat more meh than usual, partially because we’re in the middle of panto season and “the dame” (macque, in the part of auntie gertie) got covid last week 😒 the understudy is leah, who was responsible for the poster/banner disagreement a few years ago, and is currently responsible for the web site’s current host, wix, which is owned by the israeli government. 😒 i tested negative for covid today — it is my impression that i just got my fourth or fifth booster a little more than two months ago, so i may still be covered by that, but i tested anyway, out of an abundance of caution. i will test again before i leave for the theatre on saturday. 😒
can i just say, i am SO DONE with covid? and i am PARTICULARLY done with the predominantly-republicunt-stupidity-about-disease-enablers who are now going after RSV, which is booming in infants and people over 60. naturally, there’s a vaccine that the enablers are saying is a fake, and injects nanoparticles into your DNA, or some horse-shit like that… and — naturally — NOBODY is wearing masks any longer. 😒
today’s mood, overall, is surprisingly adequate: i took 250 mg 🍄 @ 09:00 this morning, but that wasn’t what triggered it. i went to my circus class at noon, and i think i experienced the “click” that people talk about when learning unicycle… i can’t put my finger on one thing that is different from a week ago, or even a month ago, but, for some reason, today i was able to free mount more than half of the attempts i made, and, if you want to talk about free mounts that didn’t go two rotations or more, that ratio goes up to almost three quarters of the attempts. another thing that i found A LOT easier to do today is turning left. i’ve been able to turn right for quite some time, but turning left has eluded me, up until today. it’s still sort of sloppy, and not particularly precise, but it’s a left turn that wasn’t there last week. if this is the “click” everyone talks about, it took about 3½ years longer to hit me than it did for the people who told me about it… but, apparently, it’s there… 🤷
and then i came home and put together the last IOTM offering for the year.
i ordered some jewelry from an artist in poland. i’ve been tracking it for a month, now. from poland, it spent almost two weeks undergoing microscopic scrutiny in customs, in florida, and then it took another week to get from florida to kent, washington (which is right down the road from where i live)… but, after spending a full 48 hours, plus, in kent, it suddenly, this morning, makes a leap to juneau, alaska, where it is currently “preparing for delivery”… 😒 if it’s anything like the recent shipments i’ve gotten from germany, the united kingdom, or portugal, it will be delivered today, in my residential mailbox, with no further explanation for why it was reported to be in alaska, but, as this delivery is “registered mail” (because of the fact that it’s jewelry), i’m probably going to have to sign for it, rather than having them just leave it in the box.
the postal delivery person just came and went, with no registered package from poland, so i guess it HAS gone to juneau, and who knows when i’ll be seeing it. 🙄
i’ve settled down to microdosing every other day, which seems to be working A LOT better than the commercially available (legal) alternatives that i have tried (buproprion), but i’m getting frustrated again, because either, i feel “okay” (in that i do not feel as frustrated or depressed), or i feel frustrated and/or depressed about stuff that has been there, is there now, and will be there tomorrow and into the future, regardless of whether or not i am taking medication of any kind. it’s frustrating to have to be taking a microdose to feel better, rather than being able to do something constructive to rid myself of the factors which cause the frustration and depression to begin with, but which are not possible, because they require things like killing tens of thousands of #drumpf-cultists and/or making major changes in society as a whole… which is exacerbated by the knowledge that if i were taking 2.5 grams, instead of .25 grams, things would be a lot more different. i call mushrooms my “don’t give a fuck pill”, but i guess i should call the microdoses my “give a little bit less of a fuck pill”, which, i’m not totally sure, is the point.
in the upcoming 49 days, i have 25 panto-related obligations, including 18 performances and 7 rehearsals, starting next monday. wolfenoot is thursday (as is thanksgiving), when our friends from hawaii are coming for dinner (but, significantly, NOT my mother-in-law), and, on friday, moe and i, and our friends from hawaii, are all going to go get tattooed: a few years ago, pre-COVID, we rented a house on the beach, and invited a whole bunch of friends to come and visit. the only people that ended up being able to come were micah and shaya, our friends from hawaii. we spent a week in a VERY large house, under the influence of a fantastic amount of trendy chemical amusement aid, flying kites and playing board (bored?) games, which included a “boys-against-girls” round of pictionary, in which the girls won with monique’s drawing which has come to be known as “snake-camel”… so, on friday, we’re all going to get a tattoo of “snake-camel”… which looks like this:231028 snake-camel
the panto this year is a re-visitation of one of our previous pantos, “Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs”. we’ve got 7 rehearsals scheduled during the next two weeks, including one band-only rehearsal. marni, the flute/alto-sax player that moved to england just before the pandemic, is back, and she was the “purple” member of the group, so i don’t know how the fact that i have sort of taken over that position is going to play out. rehearsal season, this year, has been decidedly abbreviated and condensed, and i’m not sure whether or not that is a good thing.
230811 Goddess Kringcannabis update: all three plants, once again, are exhibiting strong female tendencies. i’m going to keep the two that are in the tent, in the tent, just to make sure. then, when the weather turns, and i move the outdoor plant inside, i’ll switch the light in the tent, move the clones in there, and move the flowering lights out into the shed, where the big plants can finish up. macque sez he’s going to come and get the rest of the cirque stuff out of the shed, so that will mean that i have even more space. there are now two clones: one came from the top of the outdoor plant, and it’s apparently doing fairly well, although it hasn’t grown very much. the other came from my neighbour, about a week ago. it is “train wreck”, but, at this point, i still don’t know whether or not it’s going to live. we’ve also talked about setting up an indoor grow, this fall, to replenish any shortfalls i may experience prior to then, which is fine with me. i’ve actually grown indoors a lot more than i’ve grown outdoors, so there’s that…
230811 salamandir and Goddess Kringum… lemme see… .25g 🍄 230727, 230731, 230804, 230807, 230812, and 230814, snakez alive performances 230805 (gemma daggatt houseboat gig), and tomorrow, 230818 (PPM/sunset supper), plus regular busking at the market, on wednesdays, ganesha the car shown at the “Jet Blast Bash” 230805-06, briar sea scare parade 230809, 230811 at the Fircrest Residental Habilitation Facility in shoreline, and this weekend, 230819-20 at Fresh Paint in everett. at the briar sea scare parade, and at fircrest, i had the privilege of showing my car with Goddess Kring, aka Shannon Kringen, who is a local folk hero who performed strange art pieces on public access TV when i worked at micro$lop.
circus class cancelled today because of heat. i think i have successfully weaned myself off of twitter (which is now called “𝕏”, but it’s still at “twitter dot com”)…
my NAS got overloaded:230726 NAS at 80% capacitythe problem was that moe USED TO back up her laptop to the NAS, but then she got a new laptop, and, for some reason (i blame demons), it stopped being able to backup to the NAS. it said that there was already another backup there, so it couldn’t start a new one… and she let it slide for… um… a couple of system upgrades, so AT LEAST a year. when we finally got around to seeing what was really going on, we fired up TimeMachine™ and it said “there’s already a backup here… do you want to append it, or start new?”
WHICH IT HAS NEVER DONE BEFORE!!! 🤬
so, because it’s a new computer, we said “start new”… not realising that the backup that was already there was close to 2TB, and the NAS already has all of my data on it, so the probability that the new backup was actually going to fit was slim to none… 😒 so, when the new backup failed, due to lack of space, i suggested that we move the old backup to an external hard disk, and try it again… except that, for some unknown reason (i blame demons), i was UNABLE to copy the old backup, because of an “unknown error”… meanwhile, unbeknownst to either of us, TimeMachine™ had decided that the best alternative was to try again, which filled up the disk. literally… there was something like 40GB of available space on the 4TB NAS, and NO WAY to remove ANY of it, because, despite the fact that i AM “admin” on the disk, it wouldn’t let me delete or copy files, because, apparently, TimeMachine™ had screwed around with the permissions, and would no longer let me! 🤬 what ended up happening is that moe had an external hard disk which to which we were able to backup her laptop, and then we BOUGHT a new 2TB external hard disk to which i was able (finally… i blame demons 😒) to copy the old backup… but then, when i tried to actually DELETE the old backups from the NAS, it wouldn’t let me… because of an “unknown error”! 🤬🤬 at this point, i was getting really tired of this crap, so i called the place from which i bought the NAS, which also manages my offsite backups, and sicced them on the problem… and, after a couple of false starts, they were actually able to delete the two old backups and return the NAS to a more “normal” capacity.230728 NAS at “normal” capacitynow that everything is cleaned up, there’s even the possiblity that moe can, once again, point TimeMachine™ back at the NAS for its backup, without causing too much anxiety on my part. 😉
i got to “fly” on a flying trapeze, yesterday! 230727 salamandir on the flying trapeze (because, for some reason (i blame demons), i can’t put my own videos “in line”, like i can with youtube videos. 😒). it’s a circus skill by which i have always been intrigued. what i learned is that, if i wanted to do it more than once, i would probably have to make some sacrifices of other stuff i am doing — like “riding a unicycle” — and learn a WHOLE BUNCH of new shit… and, at this point, as fun as it is, i simply DO NOT have the space in my already-damaged brain, to store a whole bunch of new shit…
i got a capsule-making machine — as compared to the “capsule-making TOOLS” that i got on amazon, a couple of weeks ago, which are tools for making “one capsule at a time” 😒 which work exactly as advertised, but it is only one capsule at a time, which is REALLY time-consuming… — which is able to make ONE HUNDRED “double zero” capsules in about 15 minutes or less… and i used the machine to make a HUGE QUANTITY of quarter-gram doses of mushrooms. and, because of the fact that i made a HUGE QUANTITY of them, i have been spreading them around a little, to people i know who could use some microdosing antidepressants. 😈
on 230703 (almost a month ago), i ordered 2 CDs from Yello in germany. but, because of a wonky web form that was probably originally programmed to cater to audiences in germany, i ended up entering an address which, while TECHNICALLY points to my current location, probably WOULD NOT be understood by the “american” postal service. i realised this almost immediately, and went through a week of trying (and failing) to get in contact with the distributor of the recordings to correct the address. i succeeded in getting automated responses, in german, from a few different addresses, and i got a WHOLE BUNCH of bounce notifications, because, apparently, their email is handled through micro$lut, which has decided that the dedicated IP address which handles MY email — and ONLY my email! 🤬 — isn’t legitimate enough to be able to send email to their users. 😒 but i paid using paypal, which DOES have my correct address, so i decided to let paypal and the postal services figure it out. and, after being delayed TWO WEEKS being processed through incoming customs (for some reason… i blame demons?), i finally got the disks, today… and i discovered that one of the CDs is actually a 2 CD set of really early, unreleased stuff by boris blank… i just bought it because it has the same name as the music-generating app that i have for my tablet… 🤣
microdosing the fair was successful beyond my wildest imaginations!! i took a .25 gram capsule, every morning at 0700 or so, so if i were to have some kind of major psychedelic effects manifest, i would probably be over them by 1100, which was when our “call” was, every day.
i was actually able to relax(!), and have a good time(!!), despite the fact that i avoided the ritz, because of COVID concerns (mine, not theirs)… however, i will say that being, literally, right across the path from a place that makes mac and cheese with smoked salmon in ENORMOUS bowls didn’t hurt anything. 😉
AND i experienced at least two occasions where, absent the .25 gram dose, i would have been SIGNIFICANTLY more cranky and disagreeable afterwards. the first was yesterday, when the guitar player (chris gross) and i conspired to take a cart full of gear to our respective cars, because having two people drag a cart is infinitely easier than having to either drag it yourself, or having to wait, sometimes as much as an hour, for the cart to return… so we loaded up a bunch of gear that we were no longer using, and schlepped it out to the “SCOFlot”, where the “handicapped” people (and marginally-handicapped people, such as myself, who have a valid placard 😈) are allowed to park… only to discover that i had left my key-fob back in camp, three quarters of a mile away… so, i trudged back to camp and retrieved my key-fob, and we unloaded my gear into my car, but in our original schlepp-age, one of the cart’s tires had bit the dust, and we got about halfway to chris’s car when the inner-tube got wrapped around the axle, and ceased moving forward… so we spent 15 minutes untangling the inner-tube and schlepped another quarter mile out to chris’s car. chris unloaded his stuff, only to discover that he had left his guitar back in camp! 🤣 so we went back to camp AGAIN… the second was this morning. naturally, after a glorious, sun-shiney weekend, it rained monday morning, which meant that i had to put the tent away wet. i got everything packed up and moved out to the staging area (on the stage), and slogged out to retrieve my car, but when i got there, i couldn’t get the key-fob to work… like, AT ALL!… and it’s a new enough car that i haven’t poked around and actually FOUND the manual key slot… my comment (to no one in particular) was that it sucks AND blows: all things a good vacuum cleaner should do. 🤣 i phoned moe (thank cthulhu i had cell service) and she gave me some suggestions, and said she would look up a youtube video for me… and then i got the key-fob to work, ONCE, which was all it took… i was able to start the car by holding the key-fob up to the start button, and i was on my way… but when i got to camp, “somebody” (not a part of our group) had parked an ENORMOUS camper, with an ENORMOUS trailer, directly across the opening to our stage/staging area, blocking three cars IN and making it impossible for me to park remotely close to the stage. i started carrying a load of stuff around the camper-trailer-conflagration and i ran into (literally) someone who was helping a kid into the truck, and i asked them how long they were planning on staying there, to which they responded five minutes… fifteen minutes later, they were STILL there, so i got someone from our group to help me move the big, heavy, bulky power cart to a place where it blocked the camper, and went back to loading. 😈
the guy eventually left (after struggling to move the power cart by himself 😈), and i was able to pull in next to the stage, but when i shut my car off, the key-fob stopped working AGAIN, only, this time, because i was already in the car, i was able to get it started again, but it was only after i was in the car, ready to go, and the car said “key-fob not present” that i realised that it was the battery in the key-fob, and not something more serious… and, when i got home, i took the fob apart and replaced the battery. 😎
the panto is a re-run of one we did a few years ago, “Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs”, and it was together, with no missed cues from either the band OR the actors in record time: by the second day, we pretty much had it down, and the actors were starting to modify the script in ways that will be reflected in the productions this winter.
230706 some random hippie230707 some random hippie230708 some random hippie230709 some random hippie
also,
230709 simon neale
and,
230708230708 i invited her to morningwood odditorium, where we had been pasting googly eyes on everything, but she never showed up230709 i asked him if he was the Muffin Man, and he said no, he’s a cupcake, so i had to mention the line from the frank zappa song about the muffin man: “some people like cupcakes better. i, for one, care less for them.” 🤣 he said he had heard that a few times.
july 4th (🤢) today. we’re planning on taking a drive in the back country, rather as we did last year at this time, when we came down with COVID. this year, we’ve already got the COVID out of the way, so i have every intention to leave for OCF around 08:00 tomorrow. as i did last year, with some creative ingenuity, i fit everything EXCEPT my foghorn* into the car, so the only things i have to do tomorrow is take a shower, put the stuff from the fridge into the cooler, put freezer-blocks into the cooler, and put the cooler, and the 5 gallon water bottle, into the car, and gather a few, small items — my soap and foot ointment, my tablet, my reading glasses, my phone, my weed, pipes, and vape supplies — into their assigned boxes, and then i can leave. moe doesn’t have to be in to the clinic tommorrow until 10:00, so there’s a chance that i’ll be gone before she gets out of bed… at least i hope so, because she works WAY too hard, and doesn’t take time off as frequently as she should.
230702 salamandir in a kayak
in the past week, we have gone from having NO boats, to having TWO boats (kayaks), three paddles, PFDs for one human and one dog, and the roof support rack (with “all the trimmings”) to carry one kayak… the other (smaller) kayak needs some foam pads to carry on the roof, because it is short enough that it doesn’t fit… but that’s okay, because it means that i can carry it on the top of MY car, as well as moe’s… this morning, moe took the larger boat out on rattlesnake lake, with the “puppy”, quill (who is now the largest of our three dogs 😒), and he only fell in once (🤣) before he decided that he was going to sit in the center of the boat and be a good doggie…
230703 moe and quill in a kayak in the pond across the street230704 quill being a good doggie on rattlesnake lake
how we made the journey so quickly has to do with moe’s boss giving us the smaller kayak and paddle, and moe developing an insistent obsession. 😉 i know that goat island has a web site, now, but it seems like everywhere has a web site, so it’s not as surprising as it once was. it makes me wonder what’s happening in what used to be fishtown, these days.
after OCF…
* i have wanted to take the foghorn to OCF for a few years, but i have never been able to fit it into my car, with all the other stuff i have to take to OCF… but, it’s probably a good thing, because i think that it would annoy a lot more people than it would amuse… oh well…
officially, less than a week until OCF, and i’ve been accomplishing a lot, but i feel like i’m headed for doom… my list of things to take to OCF is about 80% complete and prepared, and i’m already getting things staged to load up the car on monday, because the probability is very high that we (moe, me, and three dogs) are going to leave EARLY tuesday morning, and go some place remote, where there are few people and fireworks… because we have a dog who is afraid of fireworks
she, literally, hides, when people shoot guns, in the distance, which is a fairly common occurrence around these parts, and we’ve learned that, if we go somewhere remote, we can have a good time and the dogs don’t get so stressed out.
i’ve got most of the camping gear assembled, and about 90% of the music stuff assembled (including the harmonic flute/electronics, and the foghorn). pretty much the only thing i haven’t packed yet are my “working clothes” (costumes) and my “mundane clothes” (for hiding in large crowds), a few essential items, and the hats, which i haven’t even decided what i’m going to bring yet…
i ordered a “capsule filling machine” the other day (it’s supposed to be delivered tomorrow), which SHOULD make it easier to fill capsules… which is a good thing, because 1) i have a (new) connection to more psychedelic mushrooms, and 2) i already have one person who wants to buy some, and another person who is interested, but hasn’t committed yet, and filling the capsules by hand is time-consuming, messy, and wasteful. i still marvel at the fact that what was one of my favourite illegal drugs, when i was in my 20s, is, in my 60s, on the verge of legitimacy, and widely praised for it’s qualities.
monday was the “panic rehearsal” for the pre-OCF panto — usually the “panic rehearsal” gets finished at 23:00 or thereabouts, because it’s SUPPOSED TO BE the last complete runthrough before the fair… it’s usually, also, the FIRST complete runthrough before the fair, which it WAS NOT this time… and it actually got out at 21:00 instead, which is when it is supposed to be finished. tuesday, i had an alto sax to work on, which went far easier and faster than i anticipated. the alto belongs to one of the members of the fremont phil, who is going to OCF, so it was important that i got it done post haste, and i delivered it to him on tuesday evening, at the sousa band rehearsal… because he’s thinking about joining the sousa band, because he’s got a serrusophone, and various other things that would fit right in to sousa’s music. 😉 wednesday i went busking with thaddeus. we didn’t make that much ($17 a piece), but it was enough to cover parking with some left over, and it’s kind of difficult to compare with the last time we busked, which was at the fremont solstice festival, where we busked for 3 hours and made almost $100 a piece. but, while we were busking, thaddeus got email from the PDA, asking us if we want to play for another “sunset supper” in august. thursday (today) i went to my circus class, rode my unicycle for the longest time i have EVER ridden it, TWICE, and rode in a complete, 360° circle, TWICE, but i totally forgot that i was going to take some medication from home (for moe’s mom’s dog, her name is lacey, but we call her “the unicorn”), stop by the clinic to pick up more medication for moe’s mom’s dog, and deliver both of them to moe’s mom before my class. 😖 so, AFTER my class, i went to the clinic to pick up the most necessary medication, and delivered that to moe’s mom… she can wait a few days for the other one.
tomorrow, i’ve got to get the last few, essential items for the fair, and i might take mushrooms, if everything works out… because i really need to “not give a fuck” for a while.
SACBO officially starts tomorrow, but it generally involves a caravan to various weird places around seattle, and, because of the fact that the caravan is done by a different person, and the people participating don’t always have radios, or ways to contact the “leader” in case they get lost, there is a lot of chaos, usually involving lost people being followed by other art cars because “they should know where we’re going”, or “they should know where they’re going”, or something like that, which isn’t actually the case about half the time… and, not having a radio myself, i opted out of the art car caravans a LONG time ago. i’m going for the actual festival, though, which is saturday and sunday. i’m taking my canopy, busking gear, and my harmonic flute and affiliated electronics, and MAYBE some incense, if there is enough room and i’m not too lazy. thaddeus is supposed to show up saturday for busking activities, but i’ll probably be on my own sunday.
i got a new tuba hard case. it is smaller than the previous case, which is both an advantage and a problem: the advantage is that it is smaller, and somewhat easier to lug around, but it doesn’t have a handle on the end, as the old case did, which makes lifting it a bit more difficult. and, the fact that it is smaller also means that there isn’t the separate case, inside, to keep mouthpieces, my tuba strap, and polishing cloths, which is a problem. it also doesn’t have wheels, and is a more rounded shape at the bell end, which means that it only fits on my folding hand cart one way, and it is the wrong way… but it cost $950, which means that i’ve got to get creative to solve these problems, because i’m not just going to send it back and look for a tuba case somewhere else. a lot of the cases don’t fit the instrument (particularly those sold by amazon(⁇⁇), sweeTWATer, and others), or cost WAY too much to order, wait for delivery, discover that it’s for a “right-hand bell” tuba, and send it back… it turns out that the ONLY place to buy a case for a conn 2J is allied supply — the same company that i have been ordering musical instrument parts and materials from for… <mumble, mumble> 30-some years — and i actually have an account with allied… so i ordered it from allied, and instead of paying $1800 for it from a local retailer, i paid $550… and another $400 for shipping… 😧
it came in a BIG box!! with a lot of plastic packing materials that couldn’t be recycled, so i put it out with the trash last night, and some time during the night, bears came and raided our trash can, spreading plastic packing materials all over… 😒
i actually, successfully, “microdosed” mushrooms last weekend. it all started on saturday, 230527, when the BSSB played at folklife. apparently, at some time during my stay at the TREMENDOUSLY CROWDED seattle center grounds (which included several people who wanted to take pictures with me, because i was wearing my fancy band outfit), i was exposed to COVID AGAIN, and i tested positive on 230528. 😒 unfortunately, we had scheduled a birthday party for moe’s mom on the 28th, which got cancelled… and then moe got COVID, as well… 🤬 ultimately, we put off the birthday party until 230611, two weeks later (when both moe and i were testing clear), but i woke up on the 11th in an absolutely FOUL mood, and moe was also feeling under the weather and disagreeable… so i took 0.05 grams, just as moe’s mom was getting here… not enough to really get me off, but definitely enough to change my mood… and, sure enough, it changed my mood. it was moe’s mom, so i wasn’t exactly exuberant or anything, but i wasn’t snapping at everybody and hiding in my office. my case of COVID was mild: i probably wouldn’t have even noticed i had it, if i hadn’t tested. and the good part is that now i’ve got “natural immunity” for the next 2 or 3 months, which means that i WON’T get COVID and not be able to go to the oregon country fair, AND, even if i get exposed at the fair, the probably is fairly high that i won’t get it at the fair, either… i hope… 😉
apparently ezra has been talking to my father recently.
ezra texted me to say that my father had given him two photo albums that contain mostly pictures of me…
the fact that my father gave them to ezra, and not to me, is one of the reasons i haven’t talked to my father in a very long time, now. 😒
salamandir, age 12-14
i believe this picture was taken between 1972 and 1974, and i believe it was taken in new york, before we moved back to seattle… i may be wrong, but the seamless backdrop was something that my father didn’t have room to set up more than a few times, and i don’t remember seeing it after we moved, but that could just be my swiss-cheese brain at work. the closer it was taken to 1972, the more “brand new” the trombone was…
of course, the original photo may have a date on the back, but because of the fact that i have COVID, currently, i can’t rush over to ezra’s place to look. 😒
salamandir, age 62
this was taken on 221024 by someone at the fisher pavilion who wanted a picture of me, and i liked it so much that i asked for a copy of it. this is my current Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band uniform, and i was at the fisher pavilion to play for Festa Italiana, like we do every year… the coat is a new acquisition that i bought at a “purge-o-rama” sale at a costume shop in redmond. i have been looking at that, exact coat, in the display window of the costume shop, ever since i worked in redmond (in 1995 or thereabouts), and i finally went in because i had heard that the shop was closing (it’s not, they’re just moving to a new location… one without display windows), only to discover that they wanted $300 for it, but because of the fact that they were having a “purge-o-rama” sale to prepare for the move, they had reduced the price to $100… so i bought it immediately.
prior to that, i wore a uniform that i got from working for the Floating World Circus, after i graduated from high school. it was also red, but a lot it was also a lot more “normal” for a band uniform…
salamandir parade ?1991
this picture, i believe, was taken in 1991, in anacortes, where the band that i was playing in at the time was playing for a parade.
the astute observer will immediately realise that the trombone depicted in all of these photos, is exactly the same. 😉
230520 actual art for a change!230520 actual art for a change!
actual art… actually created… by me! 👍 incredible!
okay, they’re modeled after photographs, which i used as reference, but the artwork is not the photographs.
it’s amazing! 😎
what makes it even more amazing is that i created it on my tablet, with a stylus, the same as i would on paper, except that i can actually FIX wobbly lines, accidental brush strokes, and that sort of thing, WITHOUT having to start over from scratch…
and i can make animated gifs, as an added bonus… 😉
230520 actual art for a change!
this may just be enough to start my sketchbook again… wouldn’t that be something?
2021, 4 “virtual” shows, i played for 2 of them, no payment.
2020, 17 shares – cancelled at the last minute, because of the imminant pandemic.
2019, 13 shares, $520 – $40 per share
2018, 11 shares, $330 – $30 per share
2017, ?? shares, $480…
2016, 15 shares, $600 – $45 per share
2015…
2014…
2013, 14 shares, $490 – $35 per share
2012, 16 shares, $720 – $45 per share
2011, 14 shares…
as always, they included a note that says “Please don’t approach this as a paid gig or a money-making booking, because there is no financial guarantee…” blah, blah, blah, only this time they emphasised how much they appreciate our contributions, “each year we are amazed by the dedication and strength of the entire team…” and, once again, blah, blah, blah…
this is the second smallest check i have received since i started keeping track, and the smallest number of shares, from 4 to 10. i’m not the one making the decisions, but from where i sit (on the stage, in the band pit), i don’t see how it might be possible for us to get more than 7 shares, unless we increase the number of shows, or go for more than one week. given that this was the first time away from the palladium, and still being severely affected by the pandemic, both of those things are possible, i suppose.
seven performances of the moisture festival later…
the first performance of the moisture festival, i wore my purple suit, with the purple bow tie and the purple tando hat… and the guy who was in the attendent’s booth at the parking garage had a blue beard, and was dressed all in blue. when he saw me, he said “you’re as purple as i am blue!”… he said his name is blue. 😉 i’m taking monique to a moisture festival show on sunday, specifically because i want to see this guy called “the broken juggler” — michael rayner — who, i think, lives in tacoma, and is around 60 years old. he has a regular thing where he posts videos of himself: he has a pillow that has nicholas cage’s face made out of sequins, and, while he’s rocking on a rola-bola, or standing on a spring-loaded wiggle-board, or something like that, he does some sort of complicated juggling thing, or he spins a flaming cheeseburger on a parasol, or he does some fancy flower-stick maneuvers with a tennis racket, or something like that, with one hand, and, with the other hand, he strokes the sequins on the pillow so that nicholas cage’s face appears, and then he throws the nicholas cage pillow over his back, and sinks it in a basketball hoop behind him. 🤣
i’ve got a sousa band rehearsal this evening. first one of the 2023 season. we’re down a tuba player and at least one trombone player – the tuba player and his wife, who plays E♭ saxhorn (it’s a small horn that looks like a baritone, only with a trombone-like bore, and tuned in E♭, so it is between a french horn and a baritone. reads in treble clef. she plays french horn parts, most of the time.) are moving to portugal and the trombone player is moving to italy. i MAY have located one or two other trombone players, which would free me up to play tuba, although i don’t really want to, because i know ALL the trombone parts, but i know NONE of the tuba parts… and tuba is a really important instrument in a large ensemble, which means i am not even the best choice for a replacement tuba player…
i haven’t taken mushrooms for 10 days, and the weather is changing to the kind of weather in which i like to take mushrooms. this year, moe got permits to go and cut firewood in the “campbell-global snoqualmie tree farm”, a huge tract of land northeast of fall city, which, technically, is all private property (unless you have a permit). there are a whole bunch of rules about what you can, and cannot do while accessing their property, and there are even more restrictive rules about who gets a permit, which mean that, if i decide to go there to hike while taking mushrooms, i can’t bring a friend (other than moe, who also has rights to a permit) unless they buy a “day pass” at the perimeter gate, they can’t ride in my car, and they can’t take their own car in to the main parking lot, which is about five miles uphill from the perimeter gate. 😒 but, apart from that, it goes from I5 in the south, all the way up to highway 2, in the north, and it’s probably 25 miles from east to west, and it’s all forest, logging roads, and no civilisation for miles.
before the moisture festival started, i had my first serious fall off my unicycle… but, because of the fact that i had bought safety gear (knee and elbow pads), literally THE DAY BEFORE, and was actually WEARING that safety gear, i didn’t get as injured as i could have. however, i did get a scrape on the side of my left hand, and i bent my glasses to the point where i had to take the lenses out to get them straight-ish… and they’re still not as straight as they were. i’ve got an appointment with a new eye doctor, with my new vision insurance (thanks to moe), on friday.
gearing up for the moisture festival (starts march 23, i play one show on the 23rd, and then two shows per day on the 24th, 25th, and 26th), AND one of my favourite costume shops is having a “purge-o-rama sale”, in preparation for moving to a new location… so…
moe got me a “hindu drum machine” for xmas, and i’ve been playing around with it, but it assumes that you know what you’re doing, and a lot of the labels are in devanagari script… and, while i can read devanagari script, i still don’t know how to make sense of the words that it is trying to convey. don’t get me wrong, it’s an AWESOME gift, and i am going to play the hell out of it, but i’ve got to learn a little bit more about what i’m doing first… not to mention the fact that it doesn’t have a way to hook it up to batteries (yet)…
so, along those same lines, i got an “app” for my “tablet” (it STILL seems really bizarre to me that people say it that way, but… it doesn’t matter) called “iTabla Pandit”, which is, basically, the same “hindu drum machine”, but it’s also got a couple of tambouras and a shruti box, all of the labels are in roman script, there’s an obvious indicator when the taal repeats, and the entire thing is tunable, both individually (you can tune both tambouras separately from the tablas and the shruti box, OR you can tune all of them as a group [which is what i did]).
and it sounds AWESOME with the harmonic flute, by itself, with no electronic help at all… i’m getting ready to test it with electronic “oomph” in the park down the road (because it’s not raining and the sun is out for a change). hopefully something fun will come of it.
ETA – 230208 1500 PDT — yup, it’s a good one… i’ve got to figure out how to run sound from my tablet into my amplifier, but the harmonic flute is quiet enough that i can do without it for outdoor performances. 😉👍👍
with the panto over, there hasn’t been much for me to do, and, because i have been depressed, i have spent a lot of time sitting and doing nothing, because if i get up and do something, something could go wrong, and then the world would have one more reason to hate me, but if i sit and do nothing (these days, twit™ turd™ counts as doing nothing), nothing can go wrong. it’s a lot of… fun? i’d take mushrooms, but the weather has been rainy and cold, and it still gets dark around 5:00.
we tried to go busking last wednesday, but we got there around 10:30 and there was nobody there… probably 5 or 6 vendors where there are usually 50 or 60, and even fewer tourists, at the bridge spot. under the clock there were booths with their chain barricades down, and, while there were people at the fish market, there weren’t any fish on display, and it looked like they were cleaning up to go home. as far as i can tell, it wasn’t any sort of holiday, and nobody that we talked to had any clue why the market was a ghost town.
allegedly, we’re gearing up for the moisture festival. we’re doing the second week, march 23rd through the 26th, 6 shows… but it’s at the broadway performance hall, this year, which doesn’t have parking, which means that there is a very strong probability that i will have to park half a mile away, and hike in with my tuba… plus, my understanding is that the broadway performance hall is a union shop, and i am fairly sure that the moisture festival is NOT a “union shop”, and never has been, so i don’t know how that is going to work. meanwhile, the old palladium is boarded up and has a “for lease” sign on the front. 😞
for a few years now, i have been playing around with this app for my tablet called FRAX, to which i was pointed by my friend gunnar, who is a fractal maniac. i find it really easy, and somewhat meditative, to generate an infinite variety (they’re fractals, after all 😉) of magnificently detailed, wildly psychedelic patterns, and i can crank out 4 to 6 images per hour, for several hours, before getting “bored” with it.
i have maintained for some time that “boredom is a state of mind i never visit”, and, while it’s true, from the outside one might presume that it’s boredom, when it’s really something else… but i digress…
the other day, i went through the photostream on my tablet (which i am finally getting organised enough that i can find what i’m looking for, some of the time), and discovered that i have 91 frax drawings in a directory, which started me thinking…
2017-12-26 16.03.22
what if i made postcards out of these drawings, and sold them on my web site?
2019-03-08 19.08.12
i’ve got more than enough raw material, and they wouldn’t take that much tweezing to get them to fit on a postcard…
2021-12-31 23.41.06
and i can buy 100 18 point postcards (the really thick ones) for less than $20, which means that i can sell them for $1.00 a piece and make a profit (assuming that people buy them, about which i am not as certain).
2022-07-29 06.48.09
not only that, but i can send them out to the IOTM club, which is coming up a lot sooner than i realised.
2023-01-19 18.36.21
so, yesterday, i ordered 100 of five different fractal drawings (not necessarily the ones depicted here)… we’ll see what happens next.
moe is going to orlando on saturday. we finished with the panto last weekend, and, yesterday, macque tested positive for COVID, which means that he likely was exposed at the panto. moe sez she’s going to wear her mask religiously, except for when she’s drinking water, but… i was potentially exposed to macque, and moe was potentially exposed to me, and nobody will know anything until she’s already in orlando. we’ve arranged for a puppy-sitter to take quill (the new puppy), so that i won’t have to deal with an un-trained seven-month-old puppy, which is a good thing, because i actually have a paying gig on saturday (the day moe leaves for orlando), in georgetown, and, with moe in orlando, a puppy would put a severe strain on my ability to perform successfully.
i harvested around 15 dried grams of wavy caps from my experimental mushroom patch, and, as far as i can tell, the mycelium has grown into the ground, which means a much higher possibility of more wavy caps, if not soon, at least next year. dare i say, this is a long-term project that appears to have gone right, for a change.
blah blah, new year, new me, blah blah blah… 😒 i’ll tell you what: i’m going to do the best that i can NOT to kill myself this year, through direct or indirect action (indirect, in case you’re dense, refers to COVID or something like that). my “new years intention” (because “resolutions” are too restrictive) is less depression.
along those lines, i didn’t get a harvest from my “experimental” mushroom patch last year, but it has developed LOADS of mycelia… now, there’s no GUARANTEE that they’re “the right kind” of mycelia, and, until they start sprouting mushrooms, there will be no way to know for sure, but… it was three unplanted containers of sterile potting soil, covered with a thin layer of wood chips and straw, which i inoculated with mycelia LAST YEAR. i didn’t plant anything else in the containers, and, basically, i have left them alone for a year… apart from watering them occasionally, during the dry months last summer. i don’t KNOW that the mycelia i propagated is the one i’m looking at, but… well… there’s enough mycelia that all i had to do was disturb the top layer of wood chips SLIGHTLY to expose A LOT of mycelium… so there’s always hope…
however, even with auxiliary mushrooms from matrix genetix, the weather has been snowy/rainy/awful enough that it has been difficult to take as much mushrooms as i like, so i’ve been taking “microdoses” that i can’t perceive, but which smooth out the bumps to the point where i’m not snapping at people, complaining about everything, and being a complete recluse… but i’m still not particularly pleasant to be around. 😒
i’ve got to have my car serviced. i’ve been noticing a significant decrease in mileage for the past few months, i may need new tires, and, apparently there are “firmware upgrades” that are only available from the dealer. but the closest hyundai dealer is in renton, and i’ve pretty much burnt my bridges with the renton hyundai dealer years ago. there’s a dealer in auburn, with whom i haven’t burnt as many bridges, and there’s the dealer in puyallup where i bought the car, but this is sunday AND new year’s day, so i’m not even going to be able to call anyone about it until tomorrow. meanwhile, i’ve got to go to costco (tomorrow), and moe is leaving for a week in orlando on the 14th, which, coincidentally, is the same day thaddeus and i have our first paying gig of the year.
i got a “small” package, yesterday, of incense from one of the more reliable US distributors i deal with (“small” meaning only two kilos 😉), delivered by USPS, which was totally saturated, as though it had sat outside in the rain overnight, or something like that — which it certainly did not do outside of my house. 😠 only half a kilo of the two kilos of incense were damaged, and i have notified the shipper, but (once again) it is the new year, which means at least there won’t be anybody there until tomorrow, and i’m not sure there is anything that can be done about it, anyway. 😒
the moisture festival is happening. hooray(?). it’s going to be at the broadway performance hall, a “union shop” — meaning that there are going to be people not associated with the moisture festival doing things like managing the stage, moving sets, setting lights, operating spotlights and other suchlike stuff, and there’s nothing that can be done to change it. i’m kind of wondering how they’re going to deal with the fact that the bands are definitely not union organisations, but, at the same time, it’s for someone else to deal with. 😒 fortunately. 😒
last saturday and sunday were the first four performances of the panto during the winter holiday season, in three years. the last time we actually had a panto performance during the holdiay season was in 2019. the panto has been performed at the oregon country fair, last summer, but i missed it because i got COVID19 less than 12 hours before i was scheduled to leave. 😒 it was really fun to perform in a group for an audience again, but i was also acutely reminded of all the “politicial” horseshit that surrounds working for a group of actors and musicians. i was asked to provide a “5 minute warning” which, after two tries, no less than the stage manager told me not to make that noise any longer (this was one of the people on the board of directors, a few years ago, who screwed up the process of printing the posters because she refused to understand how the pricing breaks work, and almost screwed with the process of having the banners created in 2019, because she thought that grommets were not going to be necessary, or some crap like that 😒). also, i was asked to provide two different “ratchet” sounds, but, after two performances, they decided that the quieter of the two (the one that i had actually boughtspecifically for this performance) was loud enough that the actor couldn’t be heard above it, which means, not only that they don’t have two different ratchet sounds, but, because of the fact that i’m having to “mute” the remaining ratchet, i can’t match the ratchet sounds to the actors actions as well, which is, i’m absolutely positive, going to be irritating and a cause for a “note” later on.
monday (yesterday) i had to get up and take moe’s CPAP machine to the company that made it, because it has been making a strange noise for 6 months or so, and they’ve JUST gotten around to calling her back and making an appointment… but when i got there, they told me that the machine was beyond its EOL, and they would replace it, except that they didn’t have any machines, and didn’t know where to get one. i said, “so, what are we talking about, here? days? weeks? months?” and their response was “i’m not sure”. 😒 i thought it was somewhat unusual for them to have such a blasé attitude about moe’s prescribed medical device, but i brought it home… and, some time between then (around noon) and 7:30, they called moe and said that they had found a machine, which i picked up this morning.
the past couple of months i have been averaging about two incense orders a week. mind you, a lot of them have been for ONE BOX, but, at this point, i’ve stopped trying to get people to order more than one… if they want to pay twice as much (or more) for shipping, as they pay for one box of incense, it’s none of my business… or, i should say, it IS my business… which i would be driving away by telling them that it’s stupid to just order one box of incense. however, at this point, the price for a medium flat rate box is $17.05, my base rate for shipping is $16.50 (which is smaller than a medium flat rate box), and one box of incense is anywhere between $1.50 and $7.50 or so… it’s stupid… but it makes me money, so i’m not going to complain… after all, as far as i’ve been able to tell, i am the ONLY place they can get aparajita, or krishna puja 999 online… 🤷
the snow is mostly gone, but we’ve still got at least two more months of actual winter before things usually start getting back to normal, and despite what that “evangelical” preacher i saw a video of THIS MORNING says about “global warming doesn’t exist because it says so in the bible” (🤬), climate change has already had more than one negative effect on the environment around here, so i’m not going to hold my breath. it really astounds me that we are twenty years into the 21st century, and there are STILL people who believe in angels, demons, jeezis, and “de debbil”, but DO NOT accept the evidence of their own eyes concerning climate change, the economy, abortion, homelessness, health care, gay marriage… people in positions of authority whose word most other people treat with considerably more credibility than mine. 🗡🤬
on this day, in 2007, i started this blog, as a response to livejournal selling out to the russians, which means that this blog has been in existence for 15 years, in more-or-less the same place. i wonder if it will last another 15 years. 😏 as a result of getting closer and closer to leaving “twit-turd”, i have established a presence at linktr.ee, where i put ALL the links to EVERYWHERE that i might be contacted… which is a little strange, because, as far as i know, it is the first time i have EVER posted, in the same place, links to personalities that i have endeavoured to keep separate, prior to this. it is also a bit strange, because i actually switched my harmonic flute video to “public” from “you can’t see it unless i gave you the link”, because i didn’t want “salamandir” and “rev. deluxe” obviously associated with each other. now, i’m not as concerned, i don’t think anyone of consequence will notice, and, even if someone of consequence DOES notice, it simply doesn’t bother me as much as it did 15 or 20 years ago.
“twit-turd” has become a seething morass of white supremacists, nazis, fascists, MAGAts, drumpf-lovers, vaccine denial, and hatred, ALL OF WHICH is more-or-less unmoderated, because (among other stupid things he’s done), when “ELONgated MUSKrat” bought it (under duress), the first thing he did was to re-instate a whole bunch of people who had been kicked off the service, for violating rules that “ELONgated MUSKrat” disagreed with… which, at this point, includes “Fartgorie Taylor-Greene” (who was booted for spreading vaccine misinformation), and Donald J. Drumpf, himself (who was booted for spreading lies about the 2020 election). how long i stay there is still up in the air, but it’s a matter of days, weeks, or months, and certainly not more than a year, unless some massive change happens. 😒
the first show of 2022 fell yesterday. it wasn’t very much, but it’s enough that i am re-thinking my plans to go to the panto rehearsal this evening, despite the fact that we only have three more rehearsals until the show starts.
221129 – 0930 am
this was yesterday, at approximately 9:30 in the morning. i PROBABLY could have driven my car in this amount of snow, but unfortunately…
221130 – 0745 am
this was today, at approximately 7:45 in the morning… i definitely COULD NOT drive my car with this amount of snow… moe says that, outside of our neighbourhood, the roads are plowed, clear, and passable, but… from where i sit, it looks like a skating rink, and i have to get up a hill (which moe said is a skating rink) in order to get out of the neighbourhood… and the only reason moe knows this is because she took the truck, loaded with concrete blocks to work today, because her car needs new tires (which she just discovered yesterday, after having slid around on various streets on her way home from work, yesterday).
i felt like a truck had run over me, on saturday… slept for a large portion of it, while the TV was on, which might give you an impression of how “out of it” i felt. i recovered enough to go to my unicycle class, on sunday, but i was winded about 20 minutes into it, and i had to take a couple of “breathers” after that. our alternate unicycle coach, nick, is the unicyclist i saw at the moisture festival this year (from the band pit, so the wheel of the unicycle was, literally, within 10 feet of me) do a perfect free mount and ride away, with a woman standing on his shoulders… during MULTIPLE shows, so it wasn’t just a fluke. 😂 i am tantalizingly close to being able to free mount… at this point i would say i’m doing it about a third of the time. i keep making microscopic adjustments in what i’m doing, and it’s really frustrating when i find something that works, and i can’t replicate it reliably enough to do it again… i guess it’s a good thing i’m dedicated, because i am painfully aware of the fact that i STILL can’t do essential things like idling, or riding backwards… 🙄 oh well, some day, maybe… i suppose…
then i came home and burned the pile of summer detritus in the fire pit across the street… except that a bunch of it was so green that it wouldn’t even burn… like a bunch of unripe tomatoes from the garden, and a bunch of leaves from the brussels sprout plants… but, because i was using a propane flame thrower as the fire-starter, and an electric leaf blower to accelerate things, i ended up making “fried green tomatoes”… 😉
today i was supposed to meet up with gunnar (i have a bag of weed for him 😉) but, before i left home, i got a text message from him that said “Cannot feline. Oils yoy mail”… um… ¿؟፧‽ so i called him. he explained that he hasn’t been getting enough sleep lately, and was not going to be there, so i drove down to puyallup, via our old neighbourhood, went by rick’s old place (there’s someone else living there, unsurprisingly) and came back by way of enumclaw, black diamond, and ravensdale.
so, i decided to reposition major furniture in my office, to achieve the following results:
i have to figure out how my studio is set up. i originally set it up to use with the piano/synthesizer setup, and i seem to recall doing at least one piece of music in that configuration… and then i set it up some other way, which i don’t remember, and now everything is mixed up and i can’t figure it out, because all of the connections are on the back of the devices, and in order to access the back of the amplifier, i have to move the printer, and stand on a stool, while leaning over the printer, and accessing the back upside down… which isn’t ideal. what i need is the back of everything to be as easily accessible as the front, which means moving stuff around.
in the process of trying to figure out how the studio stuff was hooked up, i thought i had completely disconnected every audio connection from my computer to the amplifier… and yet, i seem to be able to play music from my computer, and hear the sound through the speakers… which would seem to indicate that there is a new/different/as-yet-undiscovered audio connection that i have overlooked somehow… (possibly the HDMI connection from the monitor, but how does it get to the amplifier??? 😕) but, unfortunately, the cables from the computer to the amplifier are accessed from the back, AND under my desk… which is REALLY not ideal… i’ve got to figure that out.
this may involve a trip to ikea and possibly a new desk, as the one that i have is a repurposed ikea table.
the reason i want to figure out how my studio works (again), is because i have recently discovered jamulus, which appears to be an audio interface that is designed to be used over internet. i realise that there’s some pretty hard physical constants that make audio connections… let’s say difficult… over long distances, but, apparently, distances less than 50 miles or so the latency is tolerable, and they get around the rest of it, sketchily, by having everyone listen to the server, and not the actual sound coming out of your instrument, and… well, i haven’t been able to busk the past couple of weeks (HVAC stuff), and i’ve been going nuts, because there are new songs that we’ve been talking about, but we can’t get together and rehearse because i have to be at home to let the workers in… and now i’ve got jamulus installed, and (apparently) working… all i have to do is hook up a microphone, which i do, but… no sound… and thus began the task of figuring out how the studio is set up.
there’s another thing i tried to get set up, but couldn’t, because of a lack of installation instructions. JamStud.io actually advertises “jam online without latency”, despite the fact that, as far as i know, scientists are still stymied by the speed of light 😉 which makes it impossible to have an audio connection without more and more latency as the distance increases… but, hey… if i could get it installed, i might be using that, instead.
monday moe was in vegas. i got a whole bunch of spam, DIDN’T have my regular counselling appointment because of a misread calendar, two weeks ago, DIDN’T get my tires rotated in spite of waiting around for an hour while they DIDN’T rotate my tires… 😒 i’m still not totally sure what happened: i made an appointment, showed up before i was supposed to be there, told the guy that i had an appointment, which he confirmed, and then… i waited for an hour, went up to the counter to inquire when they were going to get to my car, and was told “within the hour”, but i had other places to be, so i had to bail and come back later in the week…
and i was already ripe for mushrooms… 😒
wednesday, the smoke from wildfires (i never bothered to find out where they were) was bad enough that both seattle and portland had the WORST air quality in the world — worse than singapore or hong kong. also, apparently, someone dumped, and burned, a human body just up the street from the trailhead to the back side of taylor mountain, where i walk a lot… where i saw the bear… 😒 moe came home. i picked up quill at the puppy-sitter’s place near lake desire at 8:30, and picked up moe at the airport at 9:30.
thursday i had my circus class, and on the way back home, driving down I5, the smoke was bad enough that i couldn’t see more than a mile or so in front of me. 😒 then got my tires rotated — for real, this time. i was in and out inside of 15 minutes. a guy i had never seen before, but who i assumed was one of the managers, said that he “knew all about” the fiasco on monday, and that they’d get to my car right away… and they did, which kind of surprised me…
friday i decided that i was not going to take as many mushrooms as i had planned, because, by that time, the smoke from the wildfires was really awful. we bought some inflatable halloween decorations — a unicorn skeleton, and two enormous, flashing eyeballs. when it got dark, it started raining, so, naturally, monique decided that was the time to put them out… and the eyeballs (which were my part of the deal) only had one set of tethers, which meant that i had to cut and singe nylon string, in the dark-and-rain…
saturday i actually took mushrooms. instead of four capsules, i only took two, but — as is seemingly fairly typical — all the “good stuff” had filtered to the bottom of the bag, which meant that two capsules was SIGNIFICANTLY more than the past couple of times i had taken four capsules… and it was raining REALLY HARD, so even if i wanted to go up to taylor mountain and risk being high on mushrooms in the vicinity of an actual murder investigation(!!), it was raining hard enough that there was standing water in our back yard, which usually indicates that the trails on taylor are flooded, as well.
it was weird not being able to walk around while tripping balls, as is my usual habit, but i got through it okay… although i REALLY need a beanbag chair, because the only “comfortable” chair in the house is directly in front of the TV set (because that’s where moe usually sits), and, while it is actually big enough for two of us, i REALLY DO NOT want to watch TV while high on mushrooms… so i sat for a couple of hours in the 2nd-most comfortable chair in the house, which is on the opposite end of the house, until i got done peaking, and then it was — more or less — life as usual, only “usual” included being high on mushrooms this time.
we had a karaoke party last night — about 10 people… including one of our next door neighbours, kelly, who i talked to fairly extensively regarding our respective weed crops this year… it still ASTOUNDS me that it is legal, and, while still not technically legal, i have a mental health professional RECOMMENDING that i take mushrooms… 😲
today was the last unicycle class of the session — a new session starts next sunday — and i think i may have gotten back to the point i was at the end of spring session, before “the summer from hell” (which is how i have been referring to the summer of 2022), during which i had very little time, and even less motivation, to practice unicycle.
i have a sousa band rehearsal on tuesday, a circus class on thursday, tracy and kelly (next door neighbours) are having a “costumes optional” halloween party on saturday, and halloween, proper, is on sunday. i have been making more Operation Mindfuck envelopes to be distributed to random people, while in costume, over the coming week.
i don’t know for sure, because i don’t know what it would be like if i HADN’Ttaken mushrooms a week ago, but i will say that it’s PROBABLY a good thing i took mushrooms a week ago, because the intervening week was depressing beyond belief.
last tuesday, which was also our 24th wedding anniversary, when i was IN THE MIDST of a significantly more powerful psychedelic experience than i EXPECTED (considering how weak and impotent the immediately previous psychedelic experience had been), i got a text from moe, which said that some unknown thing had happened to rye (currently, our most senior dog, at 11½ years), and he was having trouble walking, moving, and standing — quelle horreur!!
220624 injured ryewhen moe came home (still in the midst of a significantly more powerful psychedelic experience than i was expecting), rye was barely recognisable: he was curled up and bent over like a dog that was in SEVERE pain, he could barely walk, and he couldn’t even manage the two stairs leading from the garage to the back yard. they had done everything they could at moe’s veterinary practice to alleviate his pain, but they didn’t have a clue, and when they sent his x-rays out to a specialist, there was still no clue why he was in pain, so thursday, he had an MRI, and had surgery on his neck THAT DAY, because it was that emergent. 😱
the neurologist said that they were suprised the dog was walking at all. 😟
he came home from the hospital friday, and has been recovering ever since… which, basically, means that his movement is severely restricted: he lives in an ExPen, in the living room, full time, except for 4 or 5 bathroom breaks every 24 hours, and he sleeps in a kennel in monique’s office. it’s going to be two weeks before he will be allowed to go up and down stairs again, so moe has moved all of her stuff downstairs for a couple weeks.
SINCE THEN, i have had to deal with, suddenly, being in the middle of rehearsal season (rehearsals wendesday, sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, and so on) which i haven’t experienced AT ALL for two years, AND i’m going to the oregon country fair, for the first time in two years, which TERRIFIES me, even though i really want to go, AND (oh, joy), we’re getting a NEW PUPPYWHILE i will be at the oregon country fair… which means that, when i get home from OCF, we’re going to have a disabled dog, and a new puppy, AT THE SAME TIME…
😩😰
i am running low enough on spoons that i actually cancelled busking this week, because i have a rehearsal later that day, and i’m pretty sure that if i went busking, i would be totally useless by the time the rehearsal came around.
quite apart from it being EXTREMELY WEIRD to be high on mushrooms while dealing with emotional people (who don’t know i am on mushrooms), and a severely injured dog, and quite apart from the fact that i am committed to doing something (OCF) that simultaneously terrifies me and is something i REALLY want to do, this entire sequence of events has not been particularly easy or enjoyable for me… 😒
and i’m REALLY not sure how i would have been able to handle it if it were NOT for mushrooms.
this year will be the first year that i have been going to the oregon country fair in which i have had ENOUGH cannabis! it’s legal in oregon, and i have a medical permit AND i still have more than a pound of buds from last year’s harvest… 😎
of course, it’s still prohibited by the fair, but everyone knows how much that is enforced. 😉
okay, so it’s not a unicycle… but i’m free-mounting at least once for every 15 minutes of practise… and it’s not often that one gets to ride such a tiny bike. 😉
behind me, you can see hannah, riding a unicycle, between two bars. she is probably no older than 7 or so, and i WATCHED HER learn more on the unicycle, TODAY, than i learned in two years!
it’s so inspiring having young kids in the same class as old geezers.
2021, 4 “virtual” shows, i played for 2 of them, no payment.
2020, 17 shares – cancelled at the last minute, because of the imminant pandemic.
2019, 13 shares, $520 – $40 per share
2018, 11 shares, $330 – $30 per share
2017, ?? shares, $480
2016, 15 shares, $600 – $45 per share
2015,
2014,
2013, 14 shares, $490 – $35 per share
2012, 16 shares, $720 – $45 per share
2011, 14 shares…
as always, they included a note that says “Please don’t approach this as a paid gig or a money-making booking, because there is no financial guarantee…” blah, blah, blah…
the fact is, the moisture festival is STILL one of my “top paying gigs” every year, and the fact that i’m on SSDI doesn’t matter.
at the same time, $50 a share is as high as it’s been since i started keeping track… i wonder if this means that i’m one of those people who has been making money because of the pandemic? 😒
The team of Thaddeus Spae (banjitar) and salamandir (tuba) performing at Pike Place Market, 5-11-22. Thaddeus said he has a street performance badge since 1975, while salamandir has one from 1978 The team of Thaddeus Spae (banjitar) and salamandir (tuba) performing at Pike Place Market, 5-11-22. Thaddeus said he has a street performance badge since 1975, while salamandir has one from 1978
photography by david carlos
the last performance of the 2022 moisture festival happened last night. it was the last performance (that we currently know of) in hale’s palladium, EVER… the palladium has been sold, and there is no word on whether or not the “new owners” (whoever they may be) are interested in continuing to rent their former beer warehouse to a bunch of crazy hippies for a month, every year.
the largest, longest-running comedy/variety showcase IN THE WORLD is now looking for a new venue… rather like Teatro Zinzanni (a long-time moisture festival ally), which has been looking for a new venue, on and off, for 20 years. 😒
in 2004, the moisture festival was held, for the first time, in rev. chumleigh’s circus tent in downtown fremont. it was two days: the fremont philharmonic was to play the first day, and the zebra kings were supposed to play the second day, but because of the fact that the zebra kings were nowhere to be found, and most of the fremont philharmonic was backstage when the show was getting ready to start, the fremont phil played both days. at the time, i was under the impression that the moisture festival was going to be a “one off”, because i couldn’t imagine the city actually allowing us to set up a tent in a parking lot all the time, but little did i know that, already, there were plans being made.
the fremont phil, at the time, consisted of fred hawkinson, on trombone, the leader of the band, and the composer of most of the tunes we played; jeremy reinhardt on baritone and flute, and the composer of the rest of the tunes we played; ted lockery on trumpet, pam mcrae on clarinet, sasha malinsky and alan… um… i don’t remember alan’s family name, on drums (they alternated); john cornicello on keyboard, and myself on E♭ tuba. we were just off playing for billion bunny bash, and the cirque de flambé shows at magnusen park, but before fred quit the band. i remember, specifically, people not being able to find ANY of the zebra kings, and it being about five minutes before curtain when they asked us if we wanted to play, i also remember A LOT of chaos, disorganisation, and people running around like headless chickens… something which never completely went away, even after we moved to the palladium.
the first show in the palladium was when it was still being a beer warehouse: pallets of kegs, empty beer bottles and cans, A LOT of beer, porta-potties for public toilets, and a significant rat problem were among the first recipients of the moisture festival shows. the second year (the first year in the palladium, which would have been 2005) was four days, i believe, and the start of the tradition of the “marathon”, which was, the last show went on until there were no acts left who “wanted” to perform. the first marathon lasted until midnight, and from that time on, until we decided that it was getting to be a bit too much, the marathons got longer, and longer… and longer… and LONGER… the last marathon (year 6 or 7, possibly) started at 9:30 pm and lasted until 6:30 am the next morning… and we STILL had acts that wanted to perform, but some of us had to go to work in the morning, and ALL of us were so tired that we couldn’t see straight. after then, we decided that the tradition of the marathon had outlived its purpose. 😉
after year 2 (the first year in the palladium), i was more convinced that we were going to establish a yearly event.
the moisture festival started expanding after year three or four, i think… primarily because of the fact that, during one of the burlesque performances, an arialist had a “strategic costume malfunction”, ripped off her costume, and continued the performance entirely naked. the audience LOVED IT, but mike hale (the owner of the palladium) was a “christian” and was completely scandalised, although he made it sound a lot more like he was concerned about the city ordinance regarding “titties and alcohol”. 😉 he threatened to have the entire event shut down unless we found another venue for the more “suggestive” shows. 🤣
i made the programs for year 7. year 9 the programs went online, because that way it would be easier to modify them, when (as happened in previous years) an artist cancelled at the last minute, or changed their schedule without notifying anyone. and it made excellent use of the new domain and web site that the event had just purchased. 😉
the 2020 moisture festival was all set to go when the pandemic hit, and it was unceremoniously cancelled at the last possible moment. the 2021 moisture festival was four days of online presentations. i took part in two of them, but it was so totally “not the same” that it was entirely forgettable.
the moisture festival WILL continue… we now have the infrastructure and the network to insure that. what is still in question is how that continuance will take shape.
whatever happens, despite my near-constant griping and moaning about individuals associated with the moisture festival, there will be nothing, EVER that even remotely compares to the moisture festival, as it has been.
i’m so used to being depressed and anxious that, when things are going well, instead of enjoying the fact that things are going well, it makes me more depressed and anxious, because i KNOW that things are getting ready to go “wrong-er” than they have ever gone before, and they’re just waiting for me to relax and ease my guard a little, so that they will have even more effect… 🤬
one week of moisture festival down, one fluffing session complete (also, a term used in vaudeville, to describe preparing the awaiting audience outside the theatre for the show they are about to attend: getting them “in the mood”… 😉), and one more week to go… it’s kinda sad that this is probably going to be the last show in the palladium (and, possibly, the last moisture festival, ever), but it’s good that we were the band that had two weeks this year. i realise that i have been complaining, almost every previous year, that other bands were getting more of the limelight, but it’s good that it worked out this way, and i can say that i’ve been a part of the moisture festival ever since the beginning, when we did the show in rev. chumleigh’s tent in downtown fremont…
i’m getting totally fed up with the former owner of our house: ron zeising, general contractor and owner of a “home improvement” business, who thought that, because he was a general contractor, he could make “improvements” on his (now our) house “on the cheap” and skirting (or outright ignoring) building codes. recently (last month?) we paid $6,000 to a HVAC specialist to rip out and replace ALL of the heating ductwork in the house, because poor design (by ron zeising) meant that most of the heat from the very expensive, top of the line furnace (which was one of the selling points of the house), was going into the crawlspace, and the heating bills were through the roof.
of course, ron never had a problem with the heating bills, because, despite the fact that he had an expensive, top of the line furnace AND a heat pump, which provides central air conditioning as well, ron heated the house with the wood stove, and left all the doors and windows open in the summer… 🤷
we just had the last workman leave from rebuilding the “retaining wall” under our deck… and it’s a good thing, too, because, if we hadn’t, the deck would have eventually fallen off. now it is a good deal less likely to fall off, but in order to make it secure, it still needs some work: when it was in the process of being built, ron zeising just piled large rocks, bricks (including half of someone’s chimney, and a large cylindrical concrete footer for a post), and random construction rubble, next to the house, covered it with a thin layer of topsoil, and then built a deck over it… concrete pillars, on top of a thin layer of topsoil, and construction rubble… 🙄 it’s as though he thought that, because of the fact that he was a general contractor, nobody would ever question the work that he did, so he just. didn’t. care. 🤬
however, end result: we got a nice, new, secure, sturdy retaining wall, a couple of new raised beds to grow vegetables, and A LOT of new concrete under the deck pillars(!)… 👍 and yet another $6,000 chunk taken out of our checking account. 🙄
220327 moisture festival intermission, from the orchestra pitas the moisture festival enters its third week of 2022, they have been testing EVERY PERFORMER, EVERY DAY, and so far, NOBODY has tested positive… and there has been only one person associated with the festival who has tested positive, independant of the MF testing, and he tested positive BEFORE coming in contact with anyone from the festival…
and, as everybody has been saying, it’s really great to have a LIVE audience for whom to perform…
but i’m still terrified… not enough to stop me from plating, but enough that it is definitely making a difference in my performances: i totally screwed up the melody for Godfrey Daniels’ tune yesterday… i played the first few notes correctly, and then got totally lost and confused. i picked it up again, a few measures from the end, but, as ALL of my other performances of this tune have been exemplary, that one was a major embarrasment. 😒
one of the unintended results of playing the moisture festival is that i haven’t been able to spend as much time on “twit-turd“, with the immediate effect being that, when i logged in, this morning, there were TWO events which were “trending”, about which i knew absolutely nothing… and the more i read, the less i understood about both of them. 🤨 i’m not giving up on it (because, honestly, it’s the most contact i’ve had with people on the fringes of, and completely outside “my community” since i gave up fecesbook), but, once again, i am forced into a position where i have to examine whether or not these “social media platforms” are, really, good for me… and i get the very strong impression that the answer will be “no”. 😒
looking at the photo above, at 100% (what you see here is approximately 45%), i’m not sure whether or not i like this effect… which is odd, because, as far as i know, i didn’t use any effects when processing this photo… 😒
i THINK i MAY have learned to free mount my unicycle! 👍
i went into the last class for this session about 15 minutes early, because i wanted to “practice” before class actually started. i free mounted almost immediately, and then did a couple more “almost free mounts” — i actually mount the unicycle, but i have to abort before i ride away: i figure it’s a “real” free mount if i can pedal at least twice, all the way around, before having to abort, and these were less than two complete rotations — then class started, and i got down to actually doing it… and i was able to break the limit of ten free mounts (after which i said i wasn’t going to count any longer) before the end of class. 👍👍
THEN, i went home to find moe out in the front yard, pulling weeds, and i asked her if she wanted to see me free mount the unicycle, and she said yes… AND I DID IT! 😎 THE FIRST TIME!! 😎👍👍👍👍
now i really have to get started on my flaming tuba… it won’t be long now. 😉
then, later on, i went to Fyodor Karamazov (tim furst)’s wedding party, to play my tuba with a group of musicians who were SPECIFICALLY chosen to play at this party, two days ago. it was a wedding, so there were A LOT of speeches, which meant that we didn’t play music as much as i would have liked (because we had to vacate the building before 1:00 am, otherwise the police would show up), but, strangely enough, it didn’t affect my payment in the least… and, because of the fact that there was ZERO traffic at 1:00 am, it only took me a half-hour to drive home…
but, apparently, i misplaced my regular reading glasses, after the show, so, in order to read the computer screen at a reasonable distance (as compared to a foot away from my face, while squinting), i’ve had to commandeer the glasses that i usually keep in the workshop… they’re the same prescription, but they’re a lot more chewed up, because i use them in the workshop. hopefully the regular ones will show up soon, because glasses are expensive, and i’ve “lost” too many pairs of glasses recently (which means “in the last 5 years”). 😒
they DIDN’T break the screen of my tablet, which means that i picked it up TODAY, and it charges, just like it should! 👍 now i KNOW i’ll be able to use it for the moisture festival!
and, speaking of moisture festival, i got a call YESTERDAY to determine if i was up for playing in a band for tim furst (fyodor karamazov)’s wedding TOMORROW, and, naturally, i said yes… because i haven’t played music for long enough that if i were a normal person, i probably would have forgotten how to do it by now… and the fact that they’re paying me $100 doesn’t hurt… 😉
also, i ordered 12 dozen boxes of Sugandha Shringar Gold incense, from india, at the beginning of march, and i just took delivery of what moe calls “a big box of incense” (but i know better, because i have gotten “BIG” boxes of incense, in the past, and they were more than HALF AGAIN as big as the one i got today)… but it’s for an “old time” incense, which has been around for AT LEAST 50 years, and it’s somewhat rare.
but it is a PRIME example of how “those indian people” use sanskrit… well, okay, devanagari, because hindi is written with the same alphabet, and i don’t really know which one they’re thinking of when they do this… but the insence is called “Sugandha Shringar Gold”, which it says on the english language side of the box. on the other side of the box is what one might assume is the name of the incense in hindi (or sanskrit), written in devanagari letters. if you don’t actually read devanagari letters, you might assume that it is the hindi, or sanskrit equivalent of “Sugandha Shringar Gold”… it says “सुगंध शृंगार गोल्ड” except “sugandha” is already a sanskrit (and hindi) word that means “incense”. “Shringar” is a place name, of a place in india… and the rest of the name? “गोल्ड” is the word “gold”, spelled out in devanagari letters — “GOLDD” — and they do this ALL THE TIME! i’ve seen NUMEROUS boxes of incense, and other things, which have devanagari writing on the box, but are, basically, the english words, spelled out in devanagari letters. they don’t use the hindi words, or the sanskrit words, they use ENGLISH words, spelled out phonetically, using devanagari letters. 😒
i’ve got a zoom class this evening, a telehealth appointment tomorrow, and a moisture festival rehearsal on saturday…
… and my tablet decided to stop charging this morning. 🤬
i got in touch with the technician that replaced the charging port (odd that this seems to happen on an almost yearly basis… odd indeed… 😒), and informed him that it had quit charging again, and he said i should bring it in. so i left an hour earlier than normal, and headed up the east side of the lake to redmond, where the technician confirmed that it was, indeed, a faulty charging port, said that they would fix it on warranty, and ordered the new part. 👍
problem is, i’m fairly sure he DIDN’Talso order a new screen at the same time… and this particular model of ipad is NOTORIOUS for screen breakage when you have to open it up FOR ANYTHING… kinda like they had to do last year (and the year before) when they replaced the charging port. it turned into a two week job, during which time the screen of my tablet was BROKEN, which precluded me from using it for ANYTHING… 😒
and that can’t happen this time, because i have zoom classes, telehealth appointments, and moisture festival rehearsals AND PERFORMANCES in the next three weeks. i can get through the rehearsals and performances with my old-school hard-copy music, and the zoom classes and telehealth appointments THEORETICALLY can take place on my phone, but it will be at least three levels of hassle that i would rather avoid, if i had the choice. 😒
the moisture festival is, tentatively, back on the schedule this year. the phremont fill is taking weeks two and four, the sancapators are taking week one, and i don’t know who is taking week three, but it’s probably the naked truth.
moist fest rehearsals are happening, with a surprisingly large number of “replacement” musicians: euphonium, guitar and flute are all new to the phil this year. guitar has played as a substitute for us in previous moisture festivals, and flute plays for the sancapators, so she’s already familiar with the chaos that usually happens. euphonium is a guy from bellevue who i probably know from high school — he went to samammish at the same time i was at interlake — who just moved back to bellevue a couple years ago, and i recruited him from the sousa band. euphonium’s name is tony, and flute’s name is cate. i don’t remember what guitar’s name is, despite the fact that i’ve met him, and played on the same stage with him, fairly many times in the past. (ETA: it’s chris, which is why i don’t remember it… he just falls into the category of “another chris” and gets promptly forgotten, because there’s another chris in the same band… 😒)
despite our regular guitar, stuart, not being available this year, he’s still the fluffing liason, and he’s already said that i and whoever else i can get to play, are welcome to come in and fluff on april 1st. the pike place market has lifted its mask mandate, which means, when the weather gets nicer, i’m probably going to start busking again. for sure with thaddeus, and i’ve got a fantasy of busking with thaddeus on his “banj-itar” and kiki on her “banjo-lele”… it would be a plethora of not-quite-banjos that would add a lot of extra “oomph” to the group.
a couple of friends bought moe and i tickets to see the cirque du soleil show “Allegria”, which we used today. i have seen “Saltimbanco”, and “Volta”, and i think i like this one best of all. it is, apparently, “Allegria 2.0”, which is a reboot of the show they did from 1994 to 2013, which, according to moe, was “why there weren’t as many set pieces and why there was a lot more acrobatics…” and, indeed, there was A LOT more acrobatics than i have seen at previous cirque shows. there were stacks of 3 people in several of the acts, and EVERY. SINGLE. ACT. had some variety of “death defying stunt”, from the stack of 3 people that “fell” into a bunch of long poles, which were being held on the shoulders of other guys, and ended up with two of the stack of three people standing ON the poles… and a 4-way “tumble track” that had 8 people bouncing and tumbling over the top of each other… and the guy with the german wheel that started with the wheel flat on the ground, and he got it up and rotating SIMPLY BY exherting momentum with his feet… 220129 cirque du soleil fire baton juggler – photo by moeand the guy that juggled two fire batons, which he lit by passing the fire from one end to the other with his mouth… and the people that did the 3-dimentional acrobalancing dance, hanging from wires in the ceiling… and the contortionist/hand-balancer that, i think, may have been in the moisture festival a few years ago… and the flying trapeze artists… oh my! i don’t know what the original “Allegria” show was like, but this one BLEW. ME. AWAY!
literally… there was one of the “entr’acte” scenes, with clowns, where they created a literal blizzard of confetti that completely engulfed the people who were sitting close to the stage (which included us)… and then, after they had done a little dance with leaf blowers, to get the confetti off the stage, they had people who ran sheets up, over the heads of the front rows of seats, and they blew the confetti on to the sheets, which were, presumably, gathered up and recycled for the next show… there was A LOT of confetti…
and i got a souvenier collapsible velvet top hat, which is something i have wanted for a very long time. 😉
i’m slowly rebuilding my music collection. today i added two tom zé albums, from the early 2000s, which are “no longer available” — meaning “the only place to find them is on discogs. one is an album i had pre-cloud-drive-disaster, called “Estudando o Pagode (Na Opereta Segregamulher e Amor)“. the other is one that “just happened” to be available from the same vendor, from two years earlier, in 2003, and it’s called “Imprensa Cantada“. both of them appear in several tom zé anthologies, but the original CDs have artwork that is NOT included in the anthologies, and, especially in the case of tom zé, the graphic artwork is almost as important as the musical artwork in the overall scheme of things. i should be getting another Gogol Bordello CD pretty soon, also
we’re giving away the last piece of ikea furniture that we own, that is NOT shelves, tomorrow… which should be interesting, as we currently have three days worth of snow on the ground, and only a few tire tracks of people driving past our house. it’s the king-size storage bed frame, which means that now we’ve got the adjustable bed frame on the 4-inch legs that it came with (rather than on the 2-inch legs, on top of the storage bed), no storage under the bed (currently), and no headboard (currently). the plan is to get some other form of storage, and a headboard… and, possibly a dresser and nightstand to replace the ones i inherited from my grandparents in 1980-something.
moe is getting “stem cell treatment” on her knees on thursday [UPDATE: WEDNESDAY!!] (hopefully the roads will have cleared enough by then that i can drive out of the neighbourhood). this is to (hopefully) “cure” her bum knees, which currently have no meniscus. if everything goes according to plan, this is going to create “new” padding between the bones in her knee. naturally, “insurance” won’t pay for it, and the only other option — total knee replacement — isn’t happening at the moment because the orthopedist that moe has been seeing is fat-phobic, and won’t operate until she’s lighter than she’s ever been in her adult life. 😒… so the (veterinary) clinic is paying for the whole procedure(!!). alledgedly, it’s going to be a couple of days of being “pretty out of it”, followed by a couple weeks of “light duty”, and then it will develop into an “up to 80% improvement”, which is A LOT better than where she’s been for the past few years.
i’ve managed to stay a lot more insulated from the standard xmas “celebration”, this year, but it’s primarily because of the pandemic, which doesn’t look like it’s going to be ending any time in the forseeable future, barring a miracle of some sort… and, as we all know, miracles that involve anti-vax mask-holes, and the right-wing, republican’t, fascist, white-supremacist IDIOTS that currently make up slightly less than HALF of the population of this gawd-forsaken wasteland, are, for all practical purposes, totally unheard-of… but, on the plus side, almost complete isolation for the second year in a row, has made it so that i have only had to listen to one, partial rendition of “feliz navidad” this year, so i can’t say that’s all bad.
i wasn’t doing anything else, so i spent the day decarboxylating the trimmings from my harvest, in october (more technical information), so now the whole house smells like weed, and i am REALLY high…
so, naturally, while i was waiting for my timer to go off, i made a pretty good rhythm track for the music i talked about a while back, and now it sounds like this:
i still can’t quite get my mind around the fact that it’s 100% legal… astounding!
from before the wayback machine… these tracts that i just found, were prototypes for smaller versions, which were originally designed to counter the “occult” graffiti i found in an abandoned house in the woods near bellingham… the same house i found the tail coat, which i still have (although it’s been substantially modified, at this point)… the house was obviously a place where teenage doodlehums gathered to do illegal and/or immoral things, and i wanted to “enlighten” them by leaving bizarre literature in their abandoned hideaway. it was in a section of fairly dense, second growth forest, on the outskirts to the northeast of bellingham… there were some neighbourhoods east of there, along alabama street, but the place where the railroad had been was, basically, second growth forest. not even a driveway to the house. the house was two stories, but when i was there, the second story was not safe (although i did go up there, a couple of times), and there was a well-house with a working well… and about 50 feet beyond that were what used to be a railway. it was a perfect place for teenage doodlehums to gather, mark up the walls with “satanic” graffiti, smoke pot, write graffiti about smoking pot, and dream about having illicit sex with their imaginary girlfriends.
i figured they had probably heard all the standard propaganda from the “christians” (the “satanic” graffiti was all the evidence i needed), and this was back when i was full of fire to enlighten the masses, so i came up with a number of tracts which were left in the abandoned house, in phone booths (remember them?), and traded for chick tracts at the local storefront ministries that bellingham had at the time. the first version of these tracts was originally published in 1987. one of the later versions was published in 1992.
since 22 november (a week ago monday), i have gotten 8 incense orders, and i’m back to almost $500 in my bank account, after having been, basically, wiped out in june. i sent out the final incense of the month to my first two incense of the month clients, which means that i have, officially, been doing the incense of the month club for a year, now. my business is as strong and as vital as it has ever been, and i am beginning to rebuild from the cloud disaster in june, but, every day i realise there’s another picture, or document, or bit of information, that i HAD on my old cloud drive. i’m still reeling from the loss of approximately 50% of my music collection. 😒
i’m learning to free mount on the unicycle, which is an important step in learning to ride the unicycle while playing the tuba. i have to be able to mount with no hands, not holding on to anything except the tuba, and i have to be able to ride away, while holding the tuba, without falling down. at this point, i’m ALMOST to the point where i can mount the unicycle with no hands. at this point, i can mount the unicycle with a pole in my left hand, to help me balance. if everything goes EXACTLY RIGHT, i can ride away after a couple seconds of wobbling and balancing on the pole. also, i am pretty sure i have learned how to turn left… which is important. turning right is a lot easier. i’ve been able to turn right for a while now. it turns out, turning left involves looking left, preferably at where i’m intending to go, and adding a little bit of extra “oomph” with my hips at just the right time. who would have ever thought that riding a unicycle would involve looking as much as it involves balance?
the latest from j. vernon mcgee, with the hell processed out of it. it’s a vern serm about hair, which he, somehow, works out to being equivalent to demon worship.
don’t worry, i processed the hell out of it, so it’s perfectly safe for ordinary people.
Symbolic Coach Lines
Christian Trees
Economy Whining (or “Economy Whinging” for a more “european” look)
Quipping for Christ
Teachers With Tentacles
Lowest Quality Price Tools
Best Jumbo TV Happiness
Gummy Whores
Overgrown With Underbrush
Hair Salon and Ankle Clinic
Lowest Price on Pubic Hair
Ceremonial Bread Fights
Fart Stand
Rain City Racists
Jutled Boxes
Your Safety is for The Lates
Worship Your Dick
An Imaginary Housing Community
We Make Hydraulic Noises
Bruch, Beeler & Giday, Attorneys at Law
Sage’s Gulag
Jalapeñes
Stortch
Smarmy Pants
Self Hostage
Flimflam Phloem
Acceptable Bones
War To Salvation Church
Can I Ask A State Trailer Park?
my harvest is curing, but the trimmings aren’t drying as fast as i would like them to. i’m pretty sure that if i took the screen off of my office window (which i am not currently using anyway), i could speed up the drying process. maybe i’ll do that today.
i went to a concert with moe and her friend lora, a couple days ago. i was chosen at the last minute to substitute for lora’s husband, who said that a concert might jeopardise his recent sobriety (and he was an AWFUL drunk, so i totally agree), and, also, because, that way, i could drive and lora and moe could talk. 😉 it was the first time i have done ANYTHING that “public” in almost two years, and it felt really weird. it felt weird going to the tacoma-dome, and being in the (relatively light) crowd of people getting into the venue… i wore a N95 mask AND my cloth mask, and kept my hands in my pockets as much as possible. it felt weird sitting in the row of seats with a totally strange (masked) woman so close that she was touching my arm, for the two and a half hours of the concert. a majority of the people were wearing masks, but there was also food and drink available, and a significant number of people thought it was “okay” to wear their masks incorrectly (under their nose), which made me feel like they could have easily taken it off and not felt guilty about it. it felt weird, and creepy, and, when i got home, i felt like i had been swimming in other peoples’ cooties. i took a long, hot shower after the show.
the concert was jackson browne and james taylor, with both of whom i am, more or less, unfamiliar. with jackson browne, there were a few songs that, once he started singing, i went “yeah, i know that song” (although there was one that moe said “if you were alive in the ’70s, you know this song”, but i didn’t), and even a couple that i knew most of the lyrics to, but, honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that i was hearing them at a show that featured jackson browne and james taylor, i wouldn’t have been able to tell you that it was a jackson browne song… hell, i was under the impression, prior to the concert, that jackson was a black man, because that’s the way i always imagined him. that’s how ignorant i was. 😕 james taylor was only a little better, in that i knew that he was white, and i knew a few james taylor songs — all of which they played, of course 😒 — but with both of them, i never had time to listen to their songs because they were INTENSELY popular, so much a part of popular culture, and, particularly, because, james taylor was married to carly simon, and was addicted to heroin…
i never had a thing for carly simon, but i figured that if he were that famous on his own, and he was married to carly simon, then i’m guessing there was something more than “love” involved in the process. 😒
besides which, at the time, i was a lot more interested in the music of morton subotnik, arnold schönberg, and karlheinz stockhausen, who were — and are — A LOT more interesting… 😉
but the musicianship was outstanding — james taylor was backed up by steve gadd on drums, and bruce fowler on horns, both of whom played with frank zappa — the music was good, the lyrics were as “woke” as i remembered them to be in the ’70s, and more “woke” and more “blunt” for the newer songs, james taylor is no longer married to carly simon, or addicted to heroin…
but i would still have much preferred to see a concert of music by morton subotnik, arnold schönberg, or karlheinz stockhausen. 😉
they started up my unicycle class again. it meets for the first time on sunday, which is also halloween. i have to figure out a costume in which i can also ride a unicycle… also, now i have a much higher possibility of learning how to turn left before the end of the year.
i ordered two “performance masks” on the 5th of october, and they still haven’t been shipped out… but it’s just as well, because it has been raining a lot, particularly over the past few days. the pond has water in it, again, but it’s still drastically low.
nothing has been happening politically, nothing has been happening socially, nothing has been happening musically, nothing has been happening in regards to the COVID virus… i now have A LOT of “free” time: every other week i have a one-hour appointment with kate, and every week i have my one-hour circus class, but that’s it. 😩
i’ve been spending a lot of time hiking on taylor mountain.
i shipped out two incense orders, today. i’m averaging between two and six orders a month, and, before i got cracked a few months ago, i actually had over a thousand dollars in my bank account… but then i got cracked, and spent it all on replacement hardware and a pile of recovered, possibly useful data.
i have expanded ZIP files for about a tenth of my fonts collection, from the recovered data. mostly TTF files, and just a small fraction of the fonts i used to have. fortunately, my recollection is that my entire >10,000 font library is backed up on CD, somewhere… i’m sifting through the rest of the recovered data slowly, and more or less randomly: it’s totally discouraging to look at this huge pile of recovered data, which took me a couple decades to accumulate, but which is now many, many schrödinger’s cats with random file names, EVERY ONE OF WHICH has to be opened to determine whether or not it’s corrupt, and if it’s not, what general pile it goes in, which all have to be sorted again, later on, and then, probably, sorted at least once more before they’re back in more-or-less the place where they’re supposed to be. 😒
so, it’s something to do, but, literally, i would rather be doing ANYTHING else… 🤬
i ordered some “performance masks” from J.W.Pepper a few weeks ago. they were back-ordered (without my knowledge), and, when i talked to a customer service drone on monday last week, i was assured that they would be shipping out later that week, but i still haven’t seen or heard anything. they’re called “performance” masks, because they look like you’re wearing a mask, but, in reality, the mask has a hole in the front, that your mouthpiece goes through, which makes it practically useless as an actual mask… but the new rule at the market is that the only buskers allowed MUST BE masked, so it’s either wear a “performance” mask, or don’t busk. 😒 but i can’t busk at all, until the “performance” masks are delivered, and, as far as i can tell, at this point, they’re still on back order, and who knows when they’re going to arrive. 😞
now that i’ve got a functional cloud drive, i am going through and replacing what i can of my lost music collection, including music that i produced myself.
i have four St. Fred albums on bandcamp, and the only one of those four that were lost on the old cloud drive has not been replaced locally, and that album is The Church of The Pleistocene, which, naturally, means that it has been a few months since i heard it last…
i downloaded it today, and listened to it… and it has held up pretty damn well, considering that it was released in 2018… and i REALLY liked this track, number 14, called “Lamentations”…
in the same way, there are also nine albums of music by And More on bandcamp, which i haven’t heard for even longer (why listen to music i made 30 years ago? i just have it because i made it 30 years ago) and that, too, has stood the test of time admirably. the track is called Pfisteria:
i still laugh when i listen to this… 🤣
(that’s how i know it’s finished music, if it makes me laugh… 😉)
i’ve been playing around with “yellofier electrified” on my tablet, for the past few days, and i came up with this vaguely spooky “music box” tune which i really liked:
then, because i didn’t have anything better to do, i exported it from electrified, and imported it into audacity, where i doubled the track, and then set one stereo pair to play back 10% slower than the other stereo pair…
busking. this has been a long time coming. it’s really good to get out and play music for people, and, so far, we’ve been averaging between $15 and $25 apiece for an hour or so of busking. now, instead of howlin’ hobbit and his ukulele, it’s thaddeus and his banjitar — an interesting hybrid, that looks like a banjo, but has six strings and is tuned like a guitar. as i’ve always said, the money is an extra, added bonus, for me, and it’s still true, even after a year and a half… but it’s always nice, and we’ve actually already got one “paying” gig as a result: the pike place market is putting on a “sunset supper”, and is hiring market buskers at $100 apiece for an hour of busking while rich people eat food… that is, most likely, NOT offered to the buskers, but they’re paying $100 apiece, so it’s sort of okay… the BSSB has started rehearsals again, too, which is another bonus. 😉
ripping CDs back into my music collection. i have only gotten the barest of starts sorting the recovery data, in spite of the fact that, in the small print, the data recovery people say that their “free” recovery media (a 1TB hard disk, in my case) only has a warranty of five DAYS — which, to me, says “if you don’t get your data off our recovery media post haste, we’re not going to guarantee that you’ll have ANYTHING, regardless of how much you may have paid us.” nevertheless, at this point, i’ve got all of the data that really made a difference (the panchamukhi ganesha from my car, the spreadsheet containing the data for the Incense of the Month Club, and the spreadsheet of blocked-for-spamming IP addresses), and, basically, if i had anything else i need, i don’t remember it, and probably won’t until i need that data again, which will mean that i’m probably going to have to keep going back to the recovery data on occasion, for the rest of my life… however, if i already have freshly ripped .flac files, then, when i finally get around to slogging through the 1TB MESS of recovered data, it will be slightly less of a concern if the archives i got are incomplete or corrupt. this is an ongoing project that is probably going to take several weeks to finish, and while it’s going on, i may not post here, as much.
hiding from the smoke and heat. it hasn’t been as bad as it was a couple years ago, but it’s definitely smoke season. i look out my office window and see orange skys and translucent air, and the AQI is 63, which is firmly in the “yellow” range. busking, yesterday, was an extra bonus, because it was around 10°F cooler at the market than it was at home… it’s 20° cooler than it was in june(!!), but it’s still in the high-90°s, which is extremely rare around here, in my experience. the government climate change investigatory committee just released the first part of their study, a few days ago, and it says what climat change activists have been saying for 30+ years, now, which is, basically, climate change is real, it’s happening, and it was definitely caused by humans… and then, two days later, 7 democrats switched positions, and voted with ALL the republicans, to pass a law making it illegal for the government to EVER ban fracking. 🤬 so, i guess that means that, ultimately, climate change will kill us all, but the rich people are going to die last. 🤬🤬 i have never wanted to, but it’s my impression that, soon, i will have to apologise to ezra for bringing him into a world where he may never reach his full potential, because of the thoughtlessness and carelessness of my immediate ancestors.
hiding from the virus. the delta variant is 1000 times more contagious than the original strain, and they’re saying that recipients of the pfizer vaccine, at least, will have to get a “booster” shot, but they’re not saying when it will be available, or how long we have to wait before getting one. in the mean time, schools have been making masks optional, and reopening, and then closing down again, when 40% of the students get COVID, while the right wing, q-anon devotee, anti-mask, anti-vax, trump morons are dying by the thousands, and STILL ranting their nonsense about it affecting pregnancies, or tracking microchips in the vaccine. there’s an image i saw on twitter that is, basically, a huge banner, strung between two cars, that says they’ll never get the vaccine, and that you’ll have to kill them… the ironic part is that, most likely, we won’t have to kill them, because the virus will do that for us, and we won’t have to do anything. hospitals are failing in missouri, texas, and florida, where the governors are particularly anti-mask and anti-vax, despite the surge in cases, and a vast majority of the fatalities have been people who refused the vaccine. at this rate, we’re going to be dealing with this pandemic for A LOT longer than the 1918 “spanish flu” pandemic, primarily because of STUPID people who won’t get the vaccine or wear masks, on account of their “freedom”. 🤬
sorting through the mess of recovered data is heartbreaking.
i’m finding all sorts of stuff that, once i actually see (or hear) a bit of it, i know exactly what it is, and i’m starting to get things organised enough that, some of the time, i even have a place to put it, once i’ve discovered what it is…
but, then… everything doesn’t come crashing down, but…
i haveHAD a CDR album called “We Bore 2“, which was one of my favourites. it was produced in 2003 by Toast & Jam Records, which has, since, gone out of business, and their web site is now a japanese porn site… it was a “various artists” compilation of electronic, experimental, glitch music, and it was AWESOME!
i found a .RAR archive with the .mp3s for “We Bore 2”, and i was, like, “COOL!”… i expanded the archive, and put it in the place it had been taken from in my collection, and went on to the next archive.
today, for the first time, i actually LISTENED to “We Bore 2″…
yeah, all the tracks are there, but track 1 is NOT what was there the last time i listened to “We Bore 2″… and track 2 is also the same way, to a lesser extent… and track 3 is pretty messed up… and track four is mostly there, except for a patch in the middle which is totally missing… and track 5… and track 7… and track 8… and track 9… 😭
pretty much all of the tracks have something wrong with them…
and i can’t get another copy of the CD, because i originally downloaded it as a .rar file…
and, i’m pretty sure (given the huge quantity of .rar and .zip files that got recovered) that more than a few of them are going to have exactly the same problem. 😭
ETA: all is not lost… well, for “We Bore 2” anyway… it turns out i actually have the original CDR for this album… but i’m fairly sure that is NOT going to be the case with a majority of the .rar and .zip archives i have…
i found sumbunal of my music collection, on a huge stack of CDs and DVDs (possibly two, i haven’t checked thoroughly, yet) which i had stashed in the garage, in a cabinet in front of which i have stacked 4 huge cartons of incense… so, naturally, it was the absolute LAST place i thought to look. this appears to be my music backups from 2002, or thereabouts, until 2016 or 17 — when i “moved everything to the cloud” — which means that the part of my collection that isn’t backed up, is, very likely, music that i have on CD (which i can re-rip, if necessary) or music that was in a .zip or .rar archive… and, strangely enough, not many of the .mp3s that are on the recovery disk actually made it, but there’s probably 90% to 95% of the .zip and .rar archives that appear to have made it through… meaning that, when i opened the archive with ark, it opened and didn’t tell me that the archive was corrupt most of the time… 😕 i don’t completely understand how that happened, but i’ll take it.
and, to be honest, there are more than a few albums where i was able to download all but one track from the backup disk (for whatever reasons), so i’m really glad that i actually have as many CDs as i do, because that makes it a lot easier to go back and re-rip one track from an album.
it’s been more than a month since i played music through my stereo speakers. i spent ALL DAY today, listening to music and uploading gigabytes of music to the new NAS. 👍😉
good news: i got back (most of, as far as i’ve been able to tell, so far) my IOTM club records, including, most importantly the records of who paid when, and what they have received.
bad news: i’ve checked the largest adobe illustrator documents i can find, and they’re all corrupt, which means, very likely, that the artwork for my car is no longer, and when i get a new car (which might be a lot sooner than i expected), i will have to come up with new artwork for it.
i still have A LOT of files to evaluate… like more than a week, of solid 8-hour days, doing NOTHING but evaluating files… possibly as much as a month of 8-hour days. 😒
and that’s NOT listening to music and watching videos… that’s opening files, to make sure that they’re not totally corrupt, and listening to no more than 5 or 10 seconds of the music or video, to make sure that they’re not TOTALLY corrupt, and then rough-classifying the file based on the contents i’ve seen… and then going to the next file in the list.
which, of course, is leaving me with files where all but the last 5 or 10 seconds of music or video is corrupt, but the rest of it is fine, which is almost more frustratingly irritating than if the entire file was corrupt. 🤬🤬
also, more bad news: there were NO .ogg, .flac, .aif or .aup files recovered AT ALL, which means that NONE of the music that i have recorded since 1983 made it. 😢
i MAY still have the cassettes on to which they were originally mixed down, but they haven’t been played for at least 20 years, and i don’t hold out much hope. ken may have some of my stuff, because he is a music hoarder, and i have played music with him since 1985 or thereabouts, but he lives in bellingham. and i can download .flac files from bandcamp for all of the CDs i have made, except for the one that was made right after my brain injury, which isn’t all there on bandcamp… 😒
but, at this point, it doesn’t look particularly encouraging, and i strongly suspect that i’m going to have to re-rip ALL of the physical media i own, which is another couple of months of solid 8-hour days, at least. 😒
and that doesn’t even begin to address the HUGE quantities of music of which i have purchased and downloaded ONLY electronic copies, like the 40+ albums from ergo phizmiz which i have been collecting for AT LEAST 20 years.
it feels good to have created a way out of this mess, but it’s heartbreaking to think of how much quality work i have done that has been lost. 😢
ETA: i don’t know whether this is as good news as it could be, but i got a zip file full of business logos from my web designer, and there are a couple of high res graphics that are, basically, what i used on my car… and i actually found a couple of .eps files (which, i believe, are vector, and native to illustrator) of the graphic on my car… i haven’t checked, yet, because it’s late, and i really should be in bed, but, well… 😒 AND i am, officially, buying a new car (a hybrid, hyundai ioniq), which means that i’ve got to move my graphic, anyway.
they’re starting the process of “permitting” buskers at the pike place market (i.e. they’re starting the process by which one applies for a “permit” to be a busker). 😒
because of COVID, they’re not actually allowing buskers at the pike place market… yet… but they’re starting the process of permitting them, so that when they get the okay from the health department, buskers can, officially, “return” to the market. 😒
but, if my memory serves, they’re only allowing tubas on a case-by-case basis, they’re not allowing any other cup-mouthpiece brass instruments of any kind, regardless of how quitely they’re played (but loud, obnoxious, reed-mouthpiece, brass saxophones are perfectly fine), and they’re not allowing ANY electronic amplification of any kind, for any reason. 😒
oh yeah, i forgot… technically, the “official rules” say “MUTED” tubas… i don’t actually own a tuba mute. very few tuba players i know own a tuba mute. tuba mutes can cost $300. i don’t know of a NON-tuba-player who can even describe what a tuba mute looks like… i’m not going to buy a tuba mute just to play at the pike place market. i’ve said it before, and i’ll say it again. tuba mutes are ridiculous! 🤬
not only that, but i no longer have a busking partner. 👎😒
so, for some time now, i have wanted to make a reproduction of The Stele Of Revealing, and i got started the other day. but very quickly, i realised that, if i want to make it a “good enough” reproduction rather than a reproduction that would only look good if you didn’t look too closely, i would need to know the original dimensions, and have a reasonably accurate idea of what the heiroglyphs look like, and what the other artwork looks like, and i would, then, need to reduce them from their original size to the size that i ended up deciding i was going to make it — approximately a 40% reduction.
because i’m an artist, i know that, usually (in the absence of photocopiers, or proportional cameras), the tool used to make miniature reproductions is a proportional divider. i have used them before, know what they look like, and know that they can be very expensive. i didn’t want a really expensive one, but i also did not want something that somebody (most likely me) made out of plywood, because it wouldn’t be accurate enough, so i went to ebay, and discovered the exact tool i needed — from the picture, i deduced that it was, largely, the same tool i used in high school, when i was first learning about proportional dividers.210515 proportional dividers
they arrived in the mail today. they are… um… not what i expected.
what arrived in the mail was a finely machined set of proportional dividers with sharpened tool steel points, and an engraved scale for both circles and lines. it is stamped “J.H.Weil & Co.” and it came in a velvet-lined case with antique gold writing on the outside that says U.S.C.E., which i take to mean U.S. Army Corps of Engineers… my impression is that, under normal circumstances, this could be as much as a $200 tool, but, because of the fact that it appears to be a vintage, military tool, it could be worth a lot more… this is a tool that is, pretty much GUARANTEED to be accurate to at least one thousandth of an inch… and it cost me less than $50!
so, i just wanted to give a shout out to Next Stage Vintage… they suprised the hell out of me! thank you! 😉👍
and i am going to use it to reduce The Stele Of Revealing… 😲
i got the nuts that fit the screws, i took the loupe part off the old, broken frames, and mounted it on the new, unbroken frames, with entirely new screws and nuts, and washers from the repair kit the denmat/perioptix people sent me. the new screws are TINY alan-key drive… mcmaster-carr doesn’t have philips-head screws that are 2-64… 😒 i don’t actually have an alan-key small enough to tighten them, but i’m pretty sure i got it tight enough with a wrench on the nut side. 🔧
ETA: it turns out i do have an alan-key that is small enough, and i did get it tight enough with a wrench… HOWEVER in my final look-over before i put it back in the box, i noticed something i hadn’t before, which is that the hinge is completely broken, and, while the repair kit they sent me has a replacement hinge, it’s actually the part of the hinge that is a molded part of the magnifier, itself, which means that i cannot fix it, because it is an integral part of the actual optical piece… replacement parts for which, i already know they no longer make. 😒
210421 eyebrow hole
at this point, it’s still in one piece, and functional, so long as you don’t move the hinge around too much, but the hinge has already failed and cannot be repaired. it’s just a matter of time before the whole thing falls apart. 🤬
i also burned a hole in my eyebrow, when i was grinding down the screw so that it wouldn’t poke the wearer in the eye, and i put the frames on to test them too quickly after grinding… 😉
there are quite a few nit-picky details i have left out, and some people who helped a great deal, who i haven’t identified, in the attempt to make this less overwhelmingly verbose. sorry.
a few weeks ago, moe asked me if i could do some improvised repair work on a magnifying loupe belonging to her clinic.
what she brought me was a perioptix loupe, which was originally mounted on a pair of safety glasses, the frames of which had broken… and then been not quite repaired (a number of times, apparently) with the surgical equivalent of duct tape.
seriously… why smart people with degrees, DOCTORS, think sticky cloth tape is an appropriate medium to affect the permanent repair of a broken surgical instrument, is WAY above my pay grade… 😕
she also brought me a set of oakley “safety” glasses (i’m not sure if they are actually SAFETY glasses, because you can remove the lenses, and replace them with shaded lenses, which were included), the frames for which would be an almost perfect replacement for the broken perioptix frames… except that the frames are a “skosh” thicker, and thus, the screws that hold the loupe on to the original frames are not quite long enough to fit through the test hole that i drilled in the oakley frames, when i accepted the project.
thus commenced the arduous and frustrating task of finding screws that would fit.
first thing i did was measure the screws. what i came up with is that the screws are NOMINALLY 2-64 threads — i say “NOMINALLY” because they’re REALLY small (although not as small as most pivot screws for most musical instruments), and when threads are that small, unless the manufacturing is INCREDIBLY precise, there are going to be not-quite significant, but noticible differences between what the “standard” is, and what appears “in practice”.
then, i started casting around for somebody who had the correct size screws, reasoning that i’ve already got washers and nuts for the screws, so, if i can find someone who has 2-64 thread screws that are A LITTLE longer, i can save having to buy nuts for them. i figured that places that sell optical equipment would be a good place to start, but they all said that 2-64 is “a lot bigger” than they use currently, and, also, if it’s optical, they measure things using metric, rather than imperial measurements.
after checking with a few optical places, i confirmed that the screws were 1) probably metric, and 2) WAY bigger than the screws that are used in MODERN optical devices…
the magnifying loupe is around 7 years old, and they have already stopped making replacement parts for it. 😒
so, i figured that it would probably just be easier to make the screws myself… because that’s a skill that i have…
however, musical instruments usually do things with imperial measurements (at least, here in the land of imperial meaurements), and i trained as a musical instrument repair technician: i don’t even HAVE a metric thread-pitch guage…
so i contacted a friend (the guy who rebuilt my trombone slide a couple of years ago), and asked him if he had a metric thread-pitch guage, which he did. i brought one of the screws to him, and he told me, with confidence, that it was a 2.4-52 metric thread.
as i said previously, unless the manufacturing is REALLY precise, there can be enough “slop” in the threads that it may actually fit in more than one die, so i went out to find a 2.4-52 metric die, so that i could make my own screws.
home depot and lowe’s, as expected, didn’t have it, and i drew blank expressions from the employees who i asked if they knew where i might get something that small. 🤷
mcclendon’s was a little better: they, too, didn’t have anything that smalll, but they suggested that i go to swift tools, in auburn, which “caters to machinists”. i went down there… and their showroom is closed, due to COVID. 😒 so i CALLED them (from the parking lot in front of their location), and said that i was looking for a 2.4-52 metric die…
and they didn’t know what i was talking about. 😒
they said that there AREN’T ANYstandard metric dies that are 2.4-anything. if i wanted a 2.0 die, they had them, and if i wanted a 2.5 die, they had them, but they had never heard of a 2.4 die, and, while they could have one specially made, it would be expensive, and i would have to be sure that it was what i wanted before they could even start on that project, because it would be expensive, and if it wasn’t what i wanted, i would have to pay for it anyway…
reaching the end of my rope, i contacted another friend who has the ability to get just about anything, and, with A LOT of back-and-forth, arm waving, and measuring things with my micrometer-caliper (which measures down to .00001 inch), we determined that it’s NOT a metric screw, that the screw’s outside diameter is EXACTLY the standard for an IMPERIAL 2-64 screw (down to five decimal places) and that all of these people who had been telling me that it was metric were, probably, wrong.
he, then, directed me to the McMaster-Carr web site, where he gets a lot his weird shit, and, sure enough, they actually have exactly the screw i needed… so i ordered a package of five, and mcmaster said that it would be delivered on monday.
by the end of tuesday, i was wondering where my screws were. the UPS web site, apparently, doesn’t know where it is… according to the UPS site, the package left pacific (which is just down the road from us) last wednesday morning, and then the package vanished… the web site now says that it’s scheduled to arrive on friday 4/23, but it still has the package leaving pacific, on a UPS delivery truck, LAST wednesday 4/14, and it hasn’t been seen since, so i don’t hold out much hope. calling UPS is a lost cause: their automated “customer service” robot assured me that a real person can’t help me, if the package didn’t arrive, to contact the sender, and unceremoniously hung up on me without even giving me a chance to speak to a real person.
so, i contacted the sender, who, graciously, sent out another package of five miniature screws, this time by fedex, which arrived this morning. 👍
except…
these screws are, guaranteed, 2-64 screws. the nuts that i have, which are the original, perioptix nuts, SHOULD fit…
but they don’t. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
perioptix, apparently, had PROPRIETARY screws and nuts made to mount their magnifying loupe, just to make things EXTRA DIFFICULT for anyone (like me) who has the audacity to repair one of their products, rather than just buying a new one. 🤬
fortunately, McMaster-Carr doesn’t JUST have screws… and, for some unknown reason, the screws were 5 for $10, but nuts that will fit the screws are 100 for $2.
the “moisture festival” started yesterday. i’m “in” it, as the tuba player for the sancapators and the fremont philharmonic, so, technically, i’m “in” two shows, but i’m not actually in them, and neither is anybody else. basically, this year, the moisture festival is four shows, on april 1, 2, 3, and 4, and they’re all videos that are “streamed” online — which, somehow, means that you have to buy tickets to see the shows “live”, and after a certain period of time, you won’t be able to see them any more, whether or not you have bought a ticket, but it, somehow, doesn’t prevent you (or, at least, me) from downloading the videos to my own computer, once they have been “streamed”, which, somehow, gets around the limitations that they put on them…
there is a lot of modern technology that i haven’t caught up with… i still haven’t completely figured out “podcasts” (apparently you have to have a “podcast license” now? ah, i see: it’s only if you want to play stuff that other people have copyrighted… why bother? 😕), or “streaming”, in spite of the fact that i have already been in one “streaming” performance, and two more are coming up very soon… and terminology like “based”, “stan”, and “ratio” still elude me… but i might as well get used to it, because it’s only going to get worse as time goes on… 😒
we’re having our first post-vaccine house party tomorrow. my understanding is that it’s going to be everybody who works at monique’s clinic (because they’re all vaccinated) coming over to get drunk and sing karaoke… and eat, and have our first official fire in the fire pit… and, then, sunday, after the final moisture festival, a couple of friends (who are also vaccinated) are coming over for dinner… things are… nope, they’re not getting “back to normal”, but, at least, i’m not having to live in fear of republican’t “christian” anti-vaxxers as much. 😐
snow is mostly gone… there’s still some large piles, where whoever it was that ploughed our street piled it up at the head of the road, and in the ditches, but everywhere else, it’s gone.
210222 gutter overflow
i had to take a ladder out and climb up to clean out the gutter, in front. it had collected a bunch of tree detritus and, what with all the melting snow, combined with torrential rain, the gutter was totally clogged and overflowing into our driveway… it all ran away from the house, though, and once i cleared the obstruction, the downspout did what it was supposed to do, so that’s good.
i’m the default tuba player for the SANCApators at the moisture festival, this year. the moisture festival was cancelled, at the last minute, last year (because of COVID), and this year, instead of having live performances, they’re releasing some videos of performers that would have been live, except for COVID… and their regular tuba player is ill (no word on whether or not it’s COVID) and can’t make the videos that they asked for from the musicians, so i got tagged. last week i got the parts, and the tracks to play along with, so i practiced for a few days and sent the videos to “doc” sprinsock, so that he can combine them with everyone else’s videos and — hopefully — get some reasonably “together” music out of the whole deal…
but i’m not holding my breath… particularly with the thing that said “Rock” for the style, but the backing track was played as straight as an arrow, with no “swing” or “rock” stylings at all… and that’s what i played, because there was no way to “swing” a part that hadn’t been recorded to “swing”, so… i’m not holding my breath. we’ll see what happens when everybody else’s videos are part of the mix. 😖
no word on the phremont fillharmonic’s addition to the chaos, yet. i contacted kiki last week, and she said she’d heard about it, but is waiting for further instructions from “the powers that be”, whoever that is.
and i think the antidepressant may be working. i’m not sure i agree with georgia doctor, who wanted to boost my prescription back up to the level that was causing me frantic anxiety and restlessness, plus she wanted to add ANOTHER antidepressent — lexapro — to the mix. at the time, i wasn’t sure whether it was working or not, so i said i’d rather wait on the new scrip until i had a better idea of whether the current one was working, and she agreed to hold off… which is good for a number of reasons, not the least of which is reinforcing personal boundaries.
and she had never heard of psilocybin… 🤯
because of her accent, i asked where she’s from, and she said she’s from “africer”… but i can’t imagine a psychiatric nurse-practitioner who has never heard of psilocybin. i said that the “common” name for them is “magic mushrooms”, and she immediately started ranting about heroin and cocaine, and said that it’s possible that they contained psilocybin… 😕
so i still don’t have any solid information about the interaction of bupropion and psilocybin, which is a little scary, but within tolerable limits. and actual mushrooms are still a ways off, yet, so there’s still time to gather more information.
but the fact that there’s some “good” stuff happening in my life seems to indicate that something has changed.
i get my second covid vaccine a week from thursday (210218), but i’m scheduled to play my first concert in a year on saturday the 13th (9:00 pm, streaming to fecesbook, eventually posted on youtube), and, wouldn’t you know it, cliff mass, the only meteorologist moe believes, is predicting 12 inches of snow, starting thursday and lasting AT LEAST through saturday…
and if it snows, it’s almost guaranteed that i won’t be able to make the concert… 😒
a number of things have happened since the last time i posted this — which, admittedly, was less than a week ago, but they’re significant enough to warrant another post.
the first is that i have now attended three weeks worth of circus classes. today i walked the entire length of the tight wire, backwards, with a pole in only one hand… and when i reached the end, it was a surprise. i thought i had two or three more steps to go. yay! go me! 👍
i talked with jo, the coach, about foot juggling, as well… she said they’ve got the doohickey that you lie on to do foot juggling, so… 😉
also, i got confirmation that my spore order was received, and i got confirmation that my order was shipped out, AND… they’re arriving friday!!!
(woo hoo!!!) 😉
so, i am feeling A LOT more positive, and i still can’t tell whether the medication is having any effect…
AND…
it is my understanding that i probably shouldn’t take mushrooms while i’m taking bupropion, because mushrooms are a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, and there’s some danger of an adverse reaction to the inhibition of the uptake of norepinephrine and dopamine that bupropion does… and i’m not sure how to ask dr. akinyele about this, because of the legality issue, combined with the fact that she’s far enough away from me that she doesn’t have any concept of the political climate of the region in which i live.
(but the spores will be here friday, so i’d better figure it out pretty soon…) 😉
a number of things have happened over the past couple of weeks, which disguise whether or not the medication i am taking is actually working. those things are:
the actual innauguration of somebody other than donald j. trump, and his actual leaving of the white house without having to be handcuffed… although i’m still hoping that they’re coming later… because he deserves them. 😒
i actually GOT the first COVID vaccine (before they ran out of doses 😒) on monday, and i have the second dose scheduled for 18th february.
and the fact that i had to rely HEAVILY on my disability weighs heavy on my conscience. if i had NOT emphasised my disability, i would probably not have gotten the vaccine until march or april, and the fact that i got it means that someone else, possibly someone more deserving, did not get it — and won’t until who-knows-when, because they ran out and nobody knows when they’re going to get more. 😒
SANCA opened up for classes! yay! circus! 🤡🎉🎊 i’m getting my regular circus workout again! i had NO IDEA how much that meant to me!
the fact that i got my first covid vaccine makes it more likely that i’m going to go out and do stuff like busk, and… HEY! my friend stuart, the guitar player for the fremont phil, is starting up a monthly “dagger moon” concert, and wants me and my harmonic flute to start the whole thing out. bonus! 👍
i’ve found what appears to be a reliable source of spores. 🍄 i sent away for 6 spore syringes, four 🍄 of cubensis 🍄 🍄 and two 🍄 of cyanescens. 🍄 i hope to be growing my own mushrooms very soon. 🍄🍄🍄
so, i’ve been taking this “medication” that’s “supposed to” inhibit the uptake of norepinephrine and dopamine” in my brain — but who knows for sure what it really does… not even dr. akinyele is 100% sure — but which also causes all kinds of wonderful side effects — which were to the point of intolerable until we reduced the dose, and are still perceptible although not as emergent…
seriously… they prescribe a “medication” among whose side effects are ANXIETY, to treat… ANXIETY… next thing they’ll be telling me is that homeopathy works… 🙄
and i can’t tell whether the “anti-depressent” effects of this medication are improving my mood…
or if the external effects of four years of overt #drumpf and a year of hiding out from covid are finally starting to wear off.
i got my first inquiry about the Incense Of The Month Club today, which is good, because i was beginning to think that nobody would respond. alledgedly, there will be something that i can actually see, rather than just conceptualise, later on in the week. also, i shipped out 3 packages this morning, including one that wasn’t aparajita.
i recorded the tuba part for a collaborative effort to create the panto 2020 “Welcome Song”, but since we can’t actually meet to rehearse, we’re recording the parts, which, presumably, will be together enough that they will be able to be combined together, and then emailed to the people who have come to the pantos in the past.
i experienced the clarinet part, and the “click track”, which was kiki playing the song on the ukulele and singing, along with a metronome. without the click track (which, i’m assuming is the ultimate goal), the clarinet part and the tuba part ended up staying together… mostly… and the times when it seemed like we were going to lose the beat, miraculously, found the beat again in a lot less time than it would have taken if we had been in a live rehearsal.
but it’s really weird playing the tuba part without all of the other parts, only knowing that they will be put together at a later date.
Heirophanythere’s a possibility that thaddeus and i are going to resurrect “Heirophany”, which is me playing the harmonic flute and twiddling with electronic gadgets, and thaddeus playing guitar, and twiddling with electronic gadgets. we released a 12 minute long single — with a fantastic cover, which is a picture of a ‘cello on fire 😉👍 — a couple of years ago, and then didn’t do anything else, but, at this point, we can do it “socially distanced”, and i’ve even been thinking of designing a mask for the harmonic flute, anyway, that will make it so that i can play when it’s windy… only, now, it’s so that i can play while i’m masked… and it’s something where we can play for other people, and, potentially, make some money at it at the same time.
#drumpf still hasn’t conceded, and his lawsuits are getting tossed out as fast as he can file ’em, but, ultimately, i think he’s going to try to make an end run around losing the popular vote and the electoral vote by “declaring” the election invalid, refusing to accept the results, and going to the supreme court (which he has stacked with sycophants) to make the final decision. he has made statements within the past 24 hours that include “just get rid of the ballots”, and “there will be no transition”, and “biden can’t enter the white house without proving that his ballots are legal”, which don’t make it sound particularly like he’s intending to go anywhere. and, while i would like nothing better than to watch as he was dragged out by his heels, kicking and screaming like a three-year-old having a tantrum (which, i have no doubt, would happen, if it came to that), i seriously doubt that any president that comes after that would have any chance of pulling the country back together again any time within my lifetime, i don’t care who he is, or how fast he impliments universal health care and universal basic income.
Snake Suspenderz – Even Your Best Friends Won’t Tell You
Snake Suspenderz – Naughty Monkey
Snake Suspenderz – Misery Loves Company
Snake Suspenderz – Say Hello To Mr. Snake
sketch, the drummer for snake suspenderz, died in april of 2019, shortly after the moisture festival, which put an abrupt end to our performances as a band, but there was intense talk of finding another drummer for a few months. a couple of options were tossed about, and one got far enough that we ended up saying that we were going to contact her… but i’m not sure we ever did… i didn’t hear anything about it…
and then COVID happened, and, basically, everything got cancelled, and so nothing was done about it…
and now hobbit has decided that he has to move to kalamazoo, because that’s where his partner, lucifer, has to move, because she has to take care of her mother. lucifer and hobbit both worked at the market, for a large part of their income, and the market has, well… basically, been shut down, except for a VERY few day stall vendors, the high stall vendors, and the restaurants.
even bavarian meats, which has been in the market since before i was born, has closed up shop.
but, because of the fact that hobbit is moving away, there will be no more snake suspenderz, no more peanut envy, no more accidental rhino, and no more busking for me, at all, unless (until?) i can find someone else who plays a treble, chord instrument (strings, keyboard, accordion), who wants a solid bass line… or if i can find places to take my harmonic flute where they won’t chase me away after five minutes… 😢😒
i met hobbit in 1995, when i went to work for micro$lop. he and i were hired helpdesk geeks, and we got together because we also played music… and then it turned out that he and i knew a lot of the same people, and eventually we figured out that, about 15 years before that (1985 or thereabouts), we had been at the same party, at danny shadygrove’s place, and hobbit and my sister (who i didn’t know was there) shared a shower together… at the time we worked at micro$hit, we also played in a band called PropellerHeads (this was before the software called Reason, which was originally made by a company called “Propellerheads” came to be), and, using different instruments, the same people (me, hobbit, and malcolm “malcat” atterbury) were also in a band called Peanut Envy both bands were in existence, more or less, until around 1999, when we all went our separate ways. then hobbit and i met up again in 2004 or so, after my injury, when i started playing with snake suspenderz, an already existing band which was sketch, hobbit, thaddeus and a bass player whose name i don’t remember (because i never actually met him, he had moved away by the time i came on board). i started busking with them shortly afterward. and, when sketch died, hobbit and i resurrected Peanut Envy, and busked as a duo by that name until… march of this year.
i wonder what i will do next?
something, i hope. 😒
190828 salamandir & hobbit at the Oregon State Fair
both our tests came back negative today, but moe sez that she’s not sure about her test, because she spent A LOT of time around the lady from texas who did test positive, so she’s still wearing a mask around the house, and especially when she’s interacting with me… but i get to sleep in the bed, again, rather than sleeping on the other end of the house, on the couch.
there are 6 english words that contain the letters “M”, “E”, “O”, and “W”. they are:
MEOW
MEOWS
MEOWED
MEOWING
HOMEOWNER
HOMEOWNERS
i learned that years ago, and every time i use the word “homeowner”, insinctively, i think “homeowner”…
Flimflam Phloem
Gunko
Ham Maze
Vàsqueeze
Wendy’s House of Pho
Self Hostage
Acceptable Bones
War To Salvation Church
Can I ask a state trailer park?
No Tw Eeze About It
AI Pastor At Your Door
Are you happy now?
Overachiever Acadamy
Of course I’ve had it in the ear before!
Blasphemy Attorney
i’ve done some more work with this and now it seems to be going more in the direction i was intending… but it’s got a bunch more work done to it, so i would expect it to at least be different than it was before, and, apart from some more glaringly obvious differences, for the most part, it is the same piece of music… and i like that.
Seven Different Tracks, Manipulated and Combined (with a subliminal message)
as you can probably tell, instead of being five tracks, it is now seven, and it has had the addition of the subliminal message, which is somewhat more complex than i originally imagined. the seven tracks are “This is the day”, “The problem with growing boys”, “Sing to jeezis”, “WWJD radio”, “It ain’t over yet”, “Veggie tales – the selfish song”, and “I’m a little weenie”.
yes, i was trying to make a statement with the choice of tracks. no, that is not the subliminal message. keep guessing.
all of the tracks are heard forwards, and only once, with the exception of “It ain’t over yet” which is heard once reversed, and once forward, at the same time. all of them have had significant modifications to their pitch, speed, tempo, and/or a combination of those things, in order to fit them within the required parameters.
this is not finished, and it’s sort of not going where i intended, originally, but i like it anyway.
originally, i intended it to be A LOT more chaotic, and incorporate at least twice as many source tracks, and then i intended to put a “subliminal message” into it, which you could only hear if you sped the track up about 500 times, and muted all the other tracks…
and played it backwards…
of course, this would be impossible to do, because of the chaotic nature of sound, and the fact that i intended the subliminal message to be on its own track, and whispered, and then stretched 500 times, which would render it, for all intents and purposes, the same thing as silence…
homeopathic music…
which would, then, be completely and totally overwhelmed by the absolute chaos of the other tracks.
and what ended up happening, instead, is that the strange stability that is produced by bounded chaotic mixing appeared a lot sooner than i expected, and it sounds completely different than what i had envisioned.
as i said, i like it, but it’s not what i originally set out to create.
and, don’t worry… i haven’t put the subliminal message in yet, so you can relax. 😉
music is frustrating some times, but it never ceases to be fun…
or at least distracting…
anyway, what i’ve got so far is called 200811 Five Different Tracks, Manipulated and Combined
which is fine for a “contemporary classical” piece of music, but probably not what this is going to end up being called.
don’t “honour” anybody, even your parents, if they don’t respect your freedom to be unique. 🐉
more new music
Honour Is Bestowed On Those Who Deserve It
ETA 200811: it’s different today than it was yesterday. if you listened to it yesterday, but not today, flush your cache and listen to it again. it’s different.
at this point i’m going to have to start planning a release, eventually.
Blob Lardstone
ETA: bonus track also using bob larson sound sources: SATAN!
so, i got a bunch of “christian” kiddie records on freecycle. they were actually CDs, but there were about 20 of them, and, usually, i collect these things off freecycle, to protect actual children from having to be brainwashedinfluenced by them. if they’re really awful, or if i think they have useful sound-source material, i rip them, and, then, usually, i shred and/or recycle them.
this is what happens when i think they might “have useful sound-source material”. 😈
string ball
this is my current string ball. it’s about 5 years old, and it already looks different because i’ve added string to it. i use a very loose definition of “string”: there’s some metal cable and a fair amount of plastic in there as well… it’s a “string-like” ball, in that regard, but at this point nobody would know unless they actually unwound it… which, under the worst of circumstances, is very unlikely.
in the past, i have been the owner of a couple of string balls that were considerably bigger… one was big enough that, when i was holding it in my lap, you couldn’t see my head. i’m hoping that this one will reach that size, or bigger, eventually. 😉
outside our new house
our new house has a whole bunch of interesting things that were left behind by the previous owners. i get the impression that i would NOT have gotten along with them in the slightest (they were #drumpf-supporters), but this is one of the things they left behind. it’s better that way.
office
this is my office. it’s also the music room.
office
music & computers
this is the music room part. i’ve got my piano and my sythesizer set up, for the first time since i got married (which was 22 years ago), and, because of the fact that i bought a mixer in the interim, i now have it set up so that i can use the synthesizer (a yamaha DX7) as a synthesizer AND as a MIDI-controller. as a MIDI-controller, i’ve got old, familiar Reason on my laptop, and i’ve got a bunch of stuff that’s MIDI-controllable on my tablet, which i haven’t played with at all, because i haven’t had room to set it up. i got the DX7 a SuperMAX+ upgrade a couple of years ago, which was also after the battery died, so i’m going to have to learn how to use it all over again from scratch, and i’ve got to reload all of the stock noises (which i’ve got, thanks to a MIDI-controlled patch library on my laptop), but that’s part of the “fun” of COVID19 lockdown… i’ve got the time to do that sort of thing…
last month i was going crazy, so monique took me to see the National Wild Horses Monument in quincy.
200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WA
200607 National Wild Horses Monument, Quincy, WAit was on the top of a bluff overlooking the columbia river, in eastern washington.
milestones
milestones
i don’t know why this photo came out so fuzzy, compared to the other ones… but, unfortunately, it’s the only one i got of this particular milestone, so you might have to squint to see it…
200623 Celebration Park, Auburn, WA
the other day i had occasion to wander through Celebration Park in auburn. when i first lived in auburn, in the early 1970s, what is now celebration park was a huge, essentially vacant lot that had some abandoned businesses on it. nobody wanted it as residential property, because it was in the flight path for the airport. at some point, in the distant past (before 1960) i think the property had been an airfield, or something like that, but, by the time i got there, that was long gone, as well. in the ’90s, when i was in bellingham, the city bought the property and created celebration park, but it still has a lot of the same aspects that made it a vacant lot, including a lot of wooded areas where homeless people camp, and drug addicts shoot up…
which is where i found this… interesting… little tidbit.
200623 Celebration Park, Auburn, WA
200704 Ross Lake
on the 4th of july, we went on a road trip, so that the dogs wouldn’t freak out because of all the fireworks. we went through the Ross Lake National Recreation Area and saw this waterfall. BOUNDED CHAOTIC MIXING PRODUCES STRANGE STABILITY!
i have been around the sun 60 times
my 60th time around the sun was celebrated on saturday. never, in my wildest imaginations did i ever think i was going to be 60 years old… in fact, my imaginings never exceeded age 40, which means that i’ve been living new and unimagined territory for 20 years now.
we celebrated by having a “gathering” in our back yard. kiki, sasha, stuart, d. barnes and jesse, his son, and hobbit and lucifer, his… partner? i’m not sure exactly what their status is, but they’ve been together for 1719 years or so… and they all brought musical instruments, and we had a “jam session” in the back yard. monique made the german chocolate cake (my favourite), and cupcakes with raspberry butter cream frosting, made with raspberries from our back yard…
it was good to see those folks, after such a long time, and it was really good to play music with them.
* i am MORTIFIED! i read the title as “The Diambola Mikado” and named my piece “The Diambola Mikado…” and then i find out that the name is actually “The Dimbola Mikado”… i’ve already released my mix, and even presented it to mr. phizmiz — who didn’t say anything, which makes me wonder whether he’s just being polite, or whether he didn’t notice… oh GAWD, whatever am i to do??? 😭
today is our 22nd wedding anniversary. i got monique a yellow rose tree to replace some of the cat-killing lillies that are in our front yard… or possibly to screen the (finally finished, two months late) fence from the outside dogs… who HATE the fact that, when they come to fence-fight, our dogs go inside, or don’t go inside, but don’t fence-fight, and get TREATS for not fence-fighting… i suppose i’ll let her decide where to put it, but those are the two spots i would choose.
as i said, the fence is finally finished… only two months later than it was supposed to be, but it makes SO! MUCH! DIFFERENCE! i actually watched DJ come up on the front porch (nobody was home but me), and when he got no response, he went around the side of the house, came across the 6-foot fence, and DID NOT come up on the back deck, or start hammering on the sliding glass door! 👍 seriously, i feel sorry for the kid, because his parents are totally overwhelmed, and have only the slightest clues how to deal with an autistic kid… and, apparently (i haven’t actually seen anything, but i’ve heard WAY more than enough to get a good idea), part of the way that they DO have of dealing with him, involves a fair amount of yelling and hitting… 🙁
i still haven’t found a place that i can walk, comfortably, when i’m on mushrooms, but, because of the fact that we’re, essentially, surrounded by state forests, watersheds and suchlike, i’m sure that i’ll find something, eventually. it’s been tough, though, particularly with the voluntary quarantining, social distancing, and constantly decreasing supply, i’ve been wanting to take mushrooms A LOT more than i have, recently.
i’m making a sculpture out of found objects, in a disused gohonzon that i’ve been carrying around for AT LEAST 20 years. so far i’ve used two 11 balls from two different sets of pool balls, a single, spike-heel, patent leather shoe that i found in the parking lot of the hospital where my father-in-law died, a grey ball from a track-ball-mouse-thing, several random pages from a gideon bible, a pair of reading glasses, a couple of old, but new-in-container antenna decorations from ivar’s fish and chips, a fishing lure, a couple of random vacuum tubes, a bunch of organ stops, a bright green, micro-fibre duster, and various parts of an old telephone… and liberal quantities of hot glue. it’s almost finished, but i still have to figure out what to make the “mouth” out of, and i’ve got to take apart the phone to get the cradle for the receiver out of it, because that’s the part that i’m using. i’ve been working on it for a couple of weeks now. it feels strange to be “creative” after such a long time. but it feels strangely like home. it’s really good to have a workshop that i know where everything is (even though i’m still unpacking stuff), and not have to move stuff out of the way, or figure out where to put the other unfinished projects before starting.
it’s taken almost four years, but i think the united states is beginning to realise that, possibly, electing drumpf may have been a mistake… although we didn’t ACTUALLY elect him, the electoral college did that, but that’s an entirely different story. and it’s taken the fact that drumpf WAS IMPEACHED, along with 150,000 needless deaths from COVID19 (and climbing hourly) because of his incompetence, constant, blatantly overt lying, corruption and crony-ism, and weeks of protest over dramatically increasing police brutality… and we’re still not getting rid of him and reversing course on everything he put in place, we’re just talking about the possibility that, maybe, it might have been a mistake to elect him. 😠
and it doesn’t look like, if he’s actually voted out of office in november (which there is still a signifiant probability that he won’t be, for one reason or another), it’s going to get significantly better any time soon, despite the fact that, IF he’s voted out of office, the replacement will be a democrat. joe biden is the presumptive democratic candidate, and the only reason why joe biden is looking AT ALL good, at this point, is because drumpf is looking so PHENOMENALLY awful. joe biden waffles too much on things like cannabis and “black lives matter”, is less than exemplary in his recollection of his personal contributions to history, has a tendency to get confused and/or forget what he’s saying which, some have said, is a precursor to dementia, and he has a creepy, huggy, kissy, fondling attitude towards, especially, younger women and girls, that makes my skin crawl. 😖 unfortunately, from my point of view, the only logical candidate is vermin supreme, and if this weren’t such an important election for drumpf to LOSE, i would vote for him without reservation.
due to the current almost-pandemic of the novel coronavirus COVID19, the moisture festival has been “postponed indefinitely”.
it’s probably a good idea, since washington state is one of the epicenters of the coronavirus outbreak in the united states — as of the last time i checked, there have been between 12 and 14 deaths from coronavirus in washington over the past week — and we’ve got people travelling in from, literally, all over the world, so postponing the festival is definitely the right thing to do…
but panic and disinformation, both of which are running rampant, currently, are just as, if not more dangerous than the coronavirus itself. and, naturally, both have been massively exacerbated by the dimwitted orange buffoon who currently occupies the presidental office…
just more reasons why i wish i had died when i had the chance… 😒
now there’s 18 and possibly 19 shares: Peanut Envy is going to be fluffing at least one night, and there’s a rumour that Snake Suspenders — as a trio, or, possibly with a fill-in drummer — is going to get at least one stage slot.
and, i never, in a million years, thought i would be able to say this, but i have been, essentially, commanded to take mushrooms, by what passes for a doctor in my life these days… except for the fact that it’s been snowy for the past couple of days, and more rain is forcast; my house is falling apart — currently everything that is usually in the closet in the master bedroom, is in the living room, while the closet is gutted down to the studs and rebuilt, to get rid of the mold and moisture problems; and, friday, moe is scheduled to leave for (ETA: 200117 – denver) orlando (or some gawdawful place like that) and won’t be back until wednesday.
which means that, taking my thursday unicycle class into account, it’s entirely likely that a week from friday is going to be the first day that i have to take mushrooms. 😒
2020, officially, 17 shares for the phil, plus whatever shares i get for fluffing…
we’re FINALLY getting the second week, instead of some other band…
and they still haven’t decided that ettinger’s band is just going to do all four weeks, which indicates that there’s still someone with their head screwed on straight who’s in charge, although who knows who that person(s) might be…
we’ll see what it all shakes out to once it’s over.
i don’t remember exactly when this was, but it was the last year i participated in Drunk Puppet Night, which, i think, was in 2007 or thereabouts (the earliest link i could find was 070111, but that was after at least one successful performance in 2006). the place was the Columbia City Theatre, the other voice was Josh Okrent, the MC was Noah Mickens, and the video was shot by some nameless, but highly inebriated person from the audience, and stabilised by Rob D’Arc:
still calm, still a few “false positives” which are easily dealt with, and forwardable almost immediately… ‼👍 but no “bitcoin sextortion” spam since 191202… and the record is currently held by 1LfYcbCsssB2niF3VWRBTVZFExzsweyPGQ, who i last heard from on 191127, who spammed me four hundred eighty-seven times…
spam assassin has, apparently, figured out a regex (or something) for capturing bitcoin addresses, so after 191127, there have been no bitcoin sextortion spams that have NOT been labeled as ***SPAM*** by spam assassin, which makes them a lot easier to filter out.
but it’s weird, because, even though it has been almost a week now, waking up in the morning and NOT having two or three DOZEN spam messages to process makes me nervous that something else may be happening to all of those messages, and, potentially, legitimate messages, as well, and i have no clue what may be happening to them, because nobody other than me is even aware of the fact that they’re not there any longer. 😕
we started the panto. it’s Jack and The Beanstalk… i don’t remember whether this is the first panto we did, or the second panto we did, way back when we first started doing pantos, 17 years or so ago… but it’s largely the same script: different actors but the same characters… and no simon, but he hasn’t been involved since he got drunk, did something which he wasn’t supposed to (sexual harrassment? stealing stuff? something that only drunk people do… 😒), and was banned from the palladium, a few years ago. we did the first four of 20 performances, last weekend, and only missed one music cue: half the band started a half a measure before the other half of the band, and none of the singers came in at the right point, but we recognised it almost immediately, and kiki said “wait, can we start that again?” and everybody came in on cue when we tried it again… and there was one place at the end of the panto, where the giant chops down the beanstalk, and the ogress (represented by a puppet) falls from the castle in the sky, along a zip-line, to the back of the palladium. but, this time, the doors to the castle opened, but no ogress came out… so we just continued, where the ogress (this time, the real actor) then “falls” back up to the front of the stage, and has a few lines… and then the puppet ogress decided it was time to fall… 🤣
there’s this guy who makes music that i really like. he goes by Dominic Robertson, or Ergo Phizmiz, and he’s REALLY prolific: he’s got AT LEAST 40 CD-length albums, plus a whole bunch of soundscape/radio-theatre-like stuff, including a 12 hour 45 minute piece called The Faust Cycle which i haven’t listened to in its entirety because… well, it’s 12 hours long…
he wrote me to say that he is “running this radio station at the moment” at Wolverton FM, and wondered if he could broadcast my CD from 2015, I Breathe At It, which i put up on bandcamp and promptly forgot about… 🤩
i didn’t really forget about it, because i always carry a few copies of the physical CD with me, especially when i’m busking, but i forgot i put it on bandcamp, which is, sort of, the way bandcamp is supposed to work… sort of…
the only thing better than writing music and playing it on the radio yourself, is writing music and having it played on the radio by an artist you respect, because he really likes it… 🤩
#drumpf is in the midst of impeachment, but it doesn’t appear to be making a whole lot of difference (thus, the mushrooms), but there have been some good things happening.
i have been getting A LOT of incense orders: 13 since the first of october, compared to 5 or fewer per month from january to september. also, i’ve gotten more orders from england and germany, since the first of october, than i have in the entire year previous. i still don’t entirely know what’s happening, but the end result is that i’ve now got more than $4,000 in my hybrid elephant account… which is somewhat startling…
191102 moelast weekend, moe and i took a mini-vacation to san diego, for one night. ostensibly, moe had to rack up enough airline miles to qualify for “gold status”, because she has been travelling A LOT recently — mostly because of her newfound notariety as the author of a revolutionary book on animal behaviour — which, naturally, means that i have to stay at home and look after the pets.
seriously, folks… i’m married to a famous author! this week, she’s staying at a hotel in times square! it’s probably about as close to famous as i’m ever going to be! 😎
so moe decided that she would find a pet sitter and we would go off on our own (which i really appreciate). she chose san diego because she has been there before, and i haven’t, but i realised that san diego is the home of not one, but two outlets of the Village Hat Shop, which is where i bought my red fedora, and it is also home to the naval amphibious base coronado, which is a building shaped like a swastika.
i saw where it was when we were flying in, but i didn’t actually see the building because we were at too shallow an angle, and you pretty much have to be directly overhead to actually see that it’s shaped like a swastika…
so we flew to san diego to go hat shopping. i bought a pork pie made out of paper (a paper pork pie), and exhibited a great deal of self restraint becauuse i really wanted to take home about half the shop.
we actually stayed on coronado islandHotel del Coronado – you see that large, famous, historic hotel over there? where we stayed is right behind it, in the Glorietta Bay Inn.
we stayed in a hotel room that is so “far above our station” that i almost got a nosebleed. 😉
and we flew home the next day, which was sunday.
i went busking yesterday, which was good, despite the fact that we only made about $20 a piece for 2 hours of busking. today i took two packages to the post office to ship out, and went to the dispensary, where i spent it all on weed and weed-related products.
and no w m y jmushrooms have kikckedk in ahd i heeed to be g oijn go ut for a wal,,k oris oemething lll…. 😁
5’x7.5′ 2019 panto banner, normal-sized cat, for scale.
i got the green light to print the banners on tuesday. this is thursday…
i’m REALLY impressed: they took our artwork (me, norma, and mimi) and printed it at 300dpi on a 60″x90″ banner, and they did a GOOD job of it in a VERY short period of time: i sent them the artwork on tuesday, and, according to their web site, they had everything done and it was shipped by wednesday evening… it didn’t actually get to me until thursday morning, but even that is a lot faster than i was expecting… and two 5’x7½’ banners for $155 is astounding… seriously, i was expecting them to be at least $155 A PIECE… 👍‼‼
he actually convinced me to make some minor changes to the back of the postcard: i changed one typeface to bold, and increased it by one point.
it was more than i should have done, but i wanted to seem like i was giving in to at least one of his demands.
and the only reason i didn’t tell him to take the finished files and make the changes himself is because i’ve worked with him for a long time, and, allegedly, he’s my friend.
but, honestly, it seems like he has drunk the kool-aid a little bit on this one.
however, one way or the other, the postcards are currently at the printer, so no further changes can be made. and, as they’re getting 5,000 of them, there’s a good chance that there won’t be a second run.
still don’t know about the poster. leah has already printed some — who knows how many — so there might not be any more. 😒
the most recent thing is that i have “volunteered” to help make the artwork that is going to be used for this year’s panto: the program cover, poster, postcard and banner. i put “volunteered” in quotation marks because it was presented as a fairly straightforward job that has turned into a nightmare of emails between me and norma, on one side, and leah and the steering committee — who pretty much don’t know what they’re talking about — on the other side… which i would very definitely NOT have “volunteered” for, if i had known about it ahead of time.
it started with me and norma. we, plus mimi, produced the artwork for last year’s panto (to great success, i might add), and we started out to make it largely the same…
then leah got involved. leah is the “publicity manager” this year, and she has very specific — if not outrageously wrong — ideas about how the artwork should appear. leah also set a deadline of october 3rd for all of this to be done, so that i could send it to the printer so that we could have posters and postcards by the first week of october.
on the first round of feedback in which leah was involved (third week of september), one of her “suggestions” was
Remove the Fremont Players website and keep the brown paper tickets (if people google us, they will find our web site)
⁉⁉⁉⁉⁉🤨🤦
she also wanted me to remove the fremont players’ graphic logo, remove the year, reduce the amount of text, and “integrate other stylistic suggestions from the steering committee”, who, like i said before, have NO CLUE what they’re talking about.
so, norma and i ignored about 90% of their suggestions, did what we could to placate leah (including taking the graphic logo off the front of the postcard and putting it on the back, faded behind the text so it’s “not noticible”, and, after a few more “back-and-forths” which didn’t include leah, we came up with what we thought was finished artwork.
meanwhile, on october 1st, leah wrote to me, asking how much it would cost — PER POSTER — to print them. this is a very complex question, which has a different answer based on whether you are using a small, local print shop (like the kind i worked in for 20+ years) or a large, nation wide printing house (like the kind i use these days), and if you are using a large, nation wide printing house, how much posters cost depends on whether you want a small number or a large number.
i tried to explain this to leah, but she was more concerned with the fact that
If I’m reading this correctly, 150 posters cost $210 but 250 posters cost only $40 more and ordering 4000 postcards is $465 but 5000 is $125 cheaper??
to which i responded “that’s right.”
i know, it’s weird, but it’s how large, nation wide printing houses do business, and it appears to work for them. you can’t get different specific-size jobs unless you’re willing to pay more than you would if you get an amount that the printers produce, which is usually more than you want, but “per poster” it comes in WAY cheaper than if you get a different, specific-size job.
so, she approved the artwork on october 2nd, and on october 3rd, she said that i should hold off on contacting the printer, because she wanted to see if it was possible to get an exact size job for a cheaper price.
to which i responded
yes, you can probably get cheaper prices from somewhere else, but keep in mind the quality of the printing i provided last year: posters on 100lb gloss stock, and postcards on 16pt gloss stock with UV coating. i’m pretty sure you’re not going to get anywhere close to the same quality anywhere else, for anything close to the prices i have quoted.
which was ignored… 🤦
a couple of days later, she wrote asking for the high res files, because she had found a “digital printer” (read “photocopy shop”) who would do EXACTLY the size job she wanted for half the price (on much lower quality paper, but she doesn’t know the difference).
so i uploaded them to dropbox, and washed my hands of the whole deal. 😒
it turns out that she had something printed — i still don’t know whether or not she used the correct files (if i had actually been there, and she had shown up with printing from the wrong files, i would have walked out and never gone back… 😒), but my guess is that either she didn’t use the correct files, or she whipped something together in microsoft publisher (or something like that) and used that instead.
then, on october 9th, i get a request for more changes to the postcard. apparently, now, they actually want the date on the front of the card.
i respond by telling maque that they have the high res versions of the artwork, and that they are welcome to make whatever changes they like to the card, BY THEMSELVES, because i am done with this job, and there is a very good likelyhood that i will not be available to “help” again next year, or going forward, because i felt like it was too much work for too little actual gain.
then, yesterday, i get a call from chris huson. he wants to meet me to discuss why i am so upset with the printing process. actually, he SAYS he wants to “discuss further changes” to the postcard, but i nip that in the bud right away.
i explain exactly what i (and mimi and norma) did, and exactly what leah did. i show him emails from leah. i show him the finished artwork — which he says doesn’t look like what leah had printed. i explain about the confusing pricing, and the quality differences, and how none of this seemed to make a difference to leah.
it turns out that leah actually asked chris to take over managing the artwork portion of the job. given what chris already knew about leah, and about the fact that i was upset about the way this whole thing was working out — AND because chris is on the steering committee AND the board of directors, he made the executive decision to take over managing the production of the artwork.
he’s coming over tomorrow to finalise the “already finalised” artwork, to talk about run amounts, and the schedule of when we might have things.
——
from the time i was born until the time i finally escaped my parents’ house, when i was 20 or so, the primary message i received, over and over, was that i was not good enough, that i would never BE good enough, and that, unless i worked VERY hard at “being normal”, nobody would ever like me.
it wasn’t always very subtle, but that was the underlying message, regardless of what i did: they said they were “proud of me” when i won awards, but they refused to do anything to help me win more awards, and shot me down every time i thought i might be able to succeed at doing… pretty much anything…
and when i wasn’t winning awards for playing trombone, or doing magic shows, i didn’t even have a name: i was “the crummy child”. oldest by 6 years of four children, the other three of whom were born two years apart, starting when i was 6, then 8, then 10, when they got old enough to realise what was happening, my siblings called me “the crummy child” as well. when my first younger sister was born, i quickly faded into the background. after that, the only times anybody noticed me was when i was winning awards or when i was getting into trouble.
——
this whole business of working with leah brought all that back in one fell swoop: regardless of how good the art was, it wasn’t good enough. 😠
it has begun to be worked out, now that chris is more involved than he was before, but i’m still quite shaken, and stirred up (at the same time) by this whole fiasco.
i’ve had this bizarre feeling… like i’m about to create something.
i’m not sure what it’s going to be yet.
i’ve put together some outrageous beads that are begging to be made into something exotic and elaborate.
i’ve also got the feeling that, perhaps, i’m going to do something in the workshop… where i’ve already got at least two art projects that are in the process, but haven’t been actively worked on in a year or more. i also keep feeling like i should be carving something, possibly wood or stone, but, again, i’m not sure exactly what it’s going to be.
i don’t get this feeling often.
it’s like an itch on my back that i can’t quite reach: the more i scratch around it, the more intense it gets.
and, like magic, the final decision has been made that we are, in fact, NOT going to yakima.
100% guaranteed, no changing our minds this time, no going back, it’s finished, done, over, the decision has been made.
the guy sent us the contract. it doesn’t have any of the changes that we discussed when we were in salem, and he hasn’t even tried to answer any of the questions we had, or addressed any of the demands we made after coming back from salem.
so, we’re not doing the yakima gig.
period.
PHEW!!!‼‼‼
meanwhile, my compact mic stand arrived, which means that now i can take my tuba, and my rolling tote, and busk, amplified, ANYWHERE, with AC power not required. i can also take my harmonic flute and busk, amplified, ANYWHERE…
my 8’x8′ bright red pop-up canopy arrives tomorrow, and that, combined with the massive quantities of aluminet shade cloth that monique just acquired for me, means that i can set up a rudimentary stage with some protection from the wind and rain.
on the other paw, we had an okay set, and an OUTSTANDING set at the pike place market today. the okay set brought in $9 a piece, and the OUTSTANDING set brought in $29 a piece.
we only did one day’s worth of performing, for twice as much time, when we were in salem, where we brought in over twenty dollars.
i agree with hobbit, that performing for the casino, where deni actually works, would be an outstanding gig, but he’s SO FUCKING DISORGANISED that i doubt it’s ever going to happen in reality.
the word that i just got is that we are, indeed, going to yakima.
i don’t have any more details, yet, however:
1) the guy who complained about us not being colourful enough is eric. eric is the guy we were supposed to contact when we got to salem, but when we got there, and called his number, we were informed that he no longer works for the oregon state fair, and we should call someone else.
2) eric is also the guy who was supposed to be responsible for procuring the signs that didn’t exist at the oregon state fair, a fact which cost us a fair amount in tips that didn’t come in because (as was clearly demonstrated) people didn’t know that we were NOT being paid a substantial amount by the fair to be there and entertain them. to counteract this for yakima, we demanded to be paid $2,000 if yakima had signs, $2,200 if they didn’t have signs, and $2,500 if they said they would put up signs, but don’t actually do it.
3) deni apparently “went to bat” for us, and got us hired in spite of eric’s complaints that we weren’t colourful enough. whether or not this means that the issue of the signs (see item 2) that we put into our list of demands (or, for that matter, ANY of our list of demands) has been met remains to be seen.
part of this is because hobbit is so broke that busking to bring in some money NOW is more important to him than clearing up questions such as this. i trust hobbit — more or less — so i’m fairly sure that he wouldn’t deliberately put me into a situation which, ultimately, would leave me screwed, but, because of the fact that he’s so broke, i can’t be 100% sure, and even if i was 100% sure that hobbit won’t screw me, i still have significant reservations about deni, and i’m actually fairly sure that eric would deliberately do things to fuck with me, knowingly or not, simply because he has done so in the recent past. 🤬
so… whee… we’re going to busk for 10 days in yakima. woo. 😒
hopefully it will be more “productive” than salem was.
so the feedback that we got from deni, regarding the oregon fair was that we “weren’t colourful enough”…
190902 not colourful enough
this is a selfie i took on the last day of the fair.
i was wearing my red hat, blue sunglasses, a rainbow tie-dyed hawaiian shirt, a multicoloured tibetan vest, a kilt with a bright purple band, PLAYING A TUBAAND SITTING ON THE GROUND‼‼‼
if this isn’t “colourful” enough for him, i’m sorry, but that’s all i can do… 😒
we’ve emailed deni with our “list of demands” for the yakima fair. he hasn’t responded.
he has until thursday, which is a week before we would have to leave for the yakima fair.
if he doesn’t respond before then, we’re not going, which would be 100% fine with me.
if he does, we’ll have to see what he has to say about our list of demands before we’re going to decide.
i got back from the oregon state fair yesterday. things went as follows:
we left at approximately 10:00 am, the morning of thursday, august 22nd, on our way to salem, oregon. on our way, before we got to the I5-I205 split, just north of vancouver, washington, we stopped to meet deni, the guy who hired us to busk. we picked up a preliminary check for $500, and got some advice concerning our appearances — “shave yer scruff, this is a family-oriented show”, and “be colourful”, were the gist of it. there was no inkling of how absolutely pointless this would be, but we were blissfully ignorant, and pressed on.
we got to the fairgrounds and almost immediately discovered that the guy we had been told (by deni) to contact, was no longer working for the fair, and we should contact another guy, who turned out to be joe, but he wasn’t available, so we proceded to our hotel.
the hotel had two criteria: it had to be “convenient”, and it had to be “cheap”. it was both of those things. we were, literally, less than a mile and a half from the fairgrounds — i walked almost the entire distance the first morning we were there, and didn’t realise it because i decided to go back before the road curved around so that i could see the fairground. it was also “cheap” in that it cost less than $900 for an 11-night stay with two beds… but it wasn’t particularly clean: the kitchenette and the refrigerator had mysteriously consistent yellow stains, the shower-curtain rod looked like someone had tried, and failed, to do pull-ups on it, the shower curtain itself was infested with black mold, the sheets and towels were stained, and the staff that i interacted with, with the exception of the lady who checked us in, and a different lady who checked us out, were surly and inconsistent, yelling at us for smoking on the breezeway outside our room, but smoking, herself, in an area that has a sign designating it as a “no smoking” area. for a hotel that had two criteria, however, it fit the bill adequately, and we didn’t spend much time there, apart from sleeping, anyway.
we were supposed to show up at 10:30 am, friday, for indoctrination an important meeting with joe, where we were going to be shown the fairgrounds, the “green room”, get our ID badges and parking permit, and other important stuff. the GPS told us to take 17th ave. to the “red gate”, but 17th ave. was blocked off with a sign that said “vendors exempt”, and we had been told that we were “vendors”, so i pulled around the barricades and was immediately confronted by a harried woman with blonde hair, who said i couldn’t go that way. i said “we’re vendors”, to which she responded, “you can’t go this way” and proceded to give us directions that took us, essentially “around the block”, so that we were approaching from the other direction. we thought it was a little odd, but we didn’t have our ID badges or parking permit, so i said “fuck it” and drove around the block… and, it turned out, that it was, in fact, to the other end of 17th street, and we encountered the “red gate” almost immediately… but we didn’t have a parking permit, so the drone wouldn’t let us park in the VIP lot, which was where we had been told to park. we parked along the street, and inquired at the “red gate information booth” — it said so, with a big sign that could be seen from the other end of 17th street, which caused similar sorts of confusion for two more days, until i decided not to deal with the situation any longer, and drove around the block without even stopping to discuss the matter with the harried looking woman any longer. eventually, we were told, that 17th street is only one way, during the fair, but there weren’t any signs indicating that, and there were other vehicles travelling the “wrong direction” on 17th, but, apparently, WE were “not supposed to”… which is one of the reasons i gave up trying to get a reason out of anybody…
anyway, we parked, and, eventually, met up with joe and brian, a magician, who had also been hired by deni. there was supposed to be a third guy, pug, but his car had broken down somewhere outside of salem, and he was still trying to get there, so we did the orientation without him. joe piled all of us onto a “gator” — basically a large, motorised, all-terrain tractor/cart thingy — and showed us some places we could, potentially, busk. he also showed us the “green room” which was an unlocked and unguarded room at the back of the stadium, where he said we could store our instruments…
fat chance…
dole whipand then he took us back to the red gate, and gave us our parking permit and our ID badges, and set us free to decide where we were going to busk for 4 hours. we decided on the last place we looked at, which was across from a dole whip booth, in a place where, we figured, we would get A LOT of traffic, and we were not disappointed… however it was also right behind the big stadium, and about 50 yards away from another stage — the Spirit of Oregon Stage — both of which had EXTREMELY loud bands at what seemed like random times, sometimes overlapping, and, while we COULD busk there, we, literally, couldn’t be heard most of the time… JIGGLE FOOT!!!and that’s not to mention the “Jiggle Foot” devices — enormous, brightly coloured feet, barrels, or logs, in which one puts quarters in order to cause a platform attached to a “magic-fingers”-like thing to jiggle, allegedly “rejuvanating” your feet. we had to do some creative re-imagining of how the jiggle-foot devices were plugged in, in order to have enough power for our amps, and for the jiggle-feet. and then one of them broke: first it jiggled REALLY LOUDLY, and then it stopped working at all, which caused many people to complain about it, which caused the fair security guards to come around, discover our creative re-imagining, and summarily unplug our amps, so that, even when there weren’t bands playing, we couldn’t be heard above the crowd noise.
and then, joe disappeared, and was replaced by britanny, until saturday the 31st, when he showed up again.
Howlin Hobbit and Washboard Williesomewhere in the chaos, hobbit heard some music that he found familiar, which, it turned out, was being made by a fellow named washboard willie, who hobbit busked with at the pike place market, 30 years ago. every day after that, we were visited by washboard willy and his rig, as they wandered by.
we put up with the noise until sunday the 25th, when we requested a different place to play, as we were pushing what we thought was an 8:30 closing time (which turned out to be incorrect, yet another screw-up), and we had only JUST completed our “contractual obligation” of 4 hours of busking. we were given the opportunity to busk under a tree, in the vicinity of a “dippin’ dots” booth and the booth of a hmong fabric artist, and right under the uphill slope of the northwest terminus for the “fair lift”, the oregon state fair’s answer to the “sky ride” from the washington state fair. there wasn’t quite as large a crowd of people constantly going by, but at least we could play without getting blasted away by disco turned up to 11…
Peanut Envy on the Fair Liftmonday the 26th was a lot more relaxed. we had the pop-up, but we didn’t need it, because of the shade from the tree. i asked, and was informed that they “would allow” us to take our instruments on the fair lift, so, tuesday, we did our first set on the fair lift, which was kind of amusing, although it was more than a little cramped.
Peanut Envy on the fair liftPeanut Envy on the fair liftPeanut Envy on the fair lift
by wednesday the 28th, it was pretty clear that we weren’t making ANYWHERE NEAR as much in tips as we could have been making at home, at the market, so we made some signs to encourage people. that was when we found out that, in spite of the fact that we had been assured otherwise, and we had actually submitted a “publicity photo” for them, there actually WERE NOT signs at the gates, indicating our presence, and suggesting that people who encountered us give us money in exchange for us entertaining them. the signs that we made, made the difference between $17 total, in tips for 4 hours of performance — which is worse than the worst day i have EVER had at the market, by a long shot — and $97 total, in tips for 4 hours of performance, which is an adequate day at the market for 2 hours of performance… but it still wasn’t a lot, which was really discouraging.
apart from not making very much in tips (a little more than $500 total, for 11 days, which works out to about $5.96 per hour, per person), the rest of the fair was pretty uneventful. we settled into a routine of doing a half hour set, with a half hour break, and then four 45-minute sets separated by half hour breaks, and then finishing with a half hour set around 6:00 pm… except for sunday, the 1st, when we were feeling rested enough that we had decided to play a 7th set, because joe (remember him) had said that we were okay until 8:45, when all the entertainment crew would be required for a fire show… but we had just started the 7th set, at 7:15 pm, when a different guy showed up and said that if we didn’t pack up and load out RIGHT THEN, that we wouldn’t be able to load out until 11:30, because of the fire show…
and, after that, we never saw joe again, so we don’t know why it happened that way… but it was just another frustration that made me VERY glad to get back home.
and then, on monday the 2nd, hobbit started losing it. i am sure he was tired, and fact that he has the worst case of sleep-apnea i have ever heard, AND his diet (which consisted largely of whiskey and cigarettes) probably didn’t help matters, but, during our first set, hobbit started out playing his ukulele and singing, and then sort of faded out, started singing gibberish, and then went to sleep… THREE TIMES!!! the first time, i thought it was kind of an odd thing that i had never seen from hobbit before, but by the third time, i was seriously concerned that he was having a stroke or something, so i flagged down a roving EMT, who put hobbit through his paces, and tested his blood pressure, which was 180/90. there wasn’t much he could do, and by that time, hobbit was complaining he was really okay, so he went away, and came back a couple hours later to check. hobbit really was okay, but i’ve kind of got a short fuse when it comes to potential brain injuries.
by the time tuesday came around, i was really glad to leave our sleazy hotel and get back to my own bed.
and, if everything goes the way i think it will, we (meaning hobbit and i) will do it all again, in yakima, in a couple of weeks…
anhedonia has made me ambivalent about the fact that i am leaving on thursday for 11 days of PAID busking(‼) at the Oregon State Fair in Salem.
then i’m returning home for a couple of weeks, and then i’m going to Yakima for 10 days of PAID busking(‼) at the Central Washington State Fair.
i’m getting PAID(‼) $825 for oregon and $750 for yakima, plus half of whatever we make passing the hat (because real buskers can actually do that), which we have been recommended to do about every 15 or 20 minutes. we’re working (in oregon) from 11:30 am to 8:30 pm, but they only want 4 to 5 hours of busking in that time period. we have to pay for a hotel room in oregon, but a hotel room is included in yakima.
i got some more mushrooms from macque, and i got a whole bunch of encouragement regarding growing mushrooms from macque (who is, apparently, an expert. who knew?) and from rossi, who is an art cartist and the friend of ranger’s, who i got the mushrooms from last year. i’m taking some to salem. who knows whether or not i will be motivated to use them during the time i’m gone…
in other news, i got a pair of blue sunglasses, because looking at the world through 💩-coloured glasses was making me REALLY depressed, despite how much i liked them — and how many of my clothes matched the 💩-coloured sunglasses… but i really like the blue sunglasses even more, despite the fact that they’re not polarised, which makes driving in the bright sunlight a little difficult.
(it’s an .ogg file. if you don’t have the proper codec for it by this time, fuck you.)
We are the other people
We are the other people
We are the other people
You’re the other people too
Found a way to get to you…
Do you think that I’m crazy?
Out of my mind?
Do you think that I creep in the night
And sleep in a phone booth?
Lemme take a minute & tell you my plan
Lemme take a minute & tell who I am
If it doesn’t show,
Think you better know
I’m another person
Do you think that my pants are too tight?
Do you think that I’m creepy?
Better look around before you say you don’t care
Shut your fuckin’ mouth about the length of my hair
How would you survive
If you were alive
Shitty little person?
We are the other people
We are the other people
We are the other people
You’re the other people too
Found a way to get to you
We are the other people
We are the other people
We are the other people
You’re the other people too
Found a way to get to you
Do you think that I love you…
Stupid & blind?
Do you think that I dream through the night
Of holding you near me?
Lemme take a minute & tell you my plan
Lemme take a minute & tell who I am
If it doesn’t show
Think you better know
I’m another person
Toad Finder of Renton (there’s a recurring theme around toads that i find interesting)
Smurf Academy
I Brainwash Cats
Mexican Junk Food
Smarmy Pants
YART
Made In Vagina
Antique Fitness
Retina & Macula – Attorneys at Law
Swank and Brumbles
Baby Jell-O
All You Can Eat Tobacco Bar
Free Flu Shot – 10% Off
Buy 8 Gallons Of Subway Diesel
Now Hiring Deep Fried Turkey
Toads Schmoads
Toad Mop (see what i mean?)
On Site Manatee
16-Foot Walls And Tape
Orgasmic String Cheese
Slims Pie Meeting
Yard Onion
PUN
CHA
COP
NOHEGGERS
Vanilla Quicksand
Why Waste Good Garbage
Kids’ Smoke Shop
Now Hiring Topsoil Mulch Truck Drivers
Shite The Road
Scum Ball
Hey Look! Toxic! இது ஒரு மாட்டின் பின் புறத்திலிருந்து வருகிறது.
Meaty Produce
We Rent Small Toads (more toads)
Ginger Snoop
Bleach For The Moon
i finally went through all of my photos and found a “some random hippie” photo for every year from 2004 until the present, with the exception (for some, as-yet unknown reason) of 2010. the current trend of a picture in the mirror began in 2009.
i didn’t camp where i wanted to (right next to the stage), because my tent was too large, so i camped where i was last year, which was down in the gully behind the stage; i connected with people i only see once a year, including the bearded guy from the mighty tiny puppet theatre, whose name i don’t remember; we didn’t play at the ritz (again), however i took three saunas and got 4 tokens, one from the hat after the show (i now have 35 tokens); 2019 OCF 50th anniversary i connected with the hat-lady, who said that her life had fallen apart, and then she wasn’t sure i would like my (wonderful, amazing, outrageous) hat, which is why it took her eight months to send it to me… i told her she doesn’t know me very well, and gave her many hugs to reassure her that i do, indeed, love THE HELL out of my WONDERFUL, AMAZING, OUTRAGEOUS HAT — 😍 — i stayed up way later than i should have, multiple days in a row, and i only slept through one cue, i didn’t take any pictures, because, for the most part, they would be the same pictures i have taken since i first started going to the fair, i gave away 60 “Step Into Panto-Land” buttons, mostly to people who have no idea what it meant, the electronics for my harmonic flute decided to malfunction in a way that i have to be at home to fix, so i didn’t play my harmonic flute more than a little bit, although i learned how to play another style of end-blown flute, and i’m really excited to try new stuff with PVC as a result, i was part of the group that was disinvited to the memorial service for dead fair family (the whole Fremont Players troupe was disinvited, after having exchanged numerous emails with the people organising it, which indicated that we would, indeed, be a part of the program, prior to the fair), and i don’t know why, nor will i ever, probably…
nobody knows what happened to the totem pole, that i talked to, and one person told me not to bring it up. 😒
however, barring other, cooler things happening at the same time, i’ll more than likely go back again next year. i’m still open to other suggestions, however. 😉
i’ve been under the attack of anhedonia and depression. my mushrooms have lost their potency: the last time i tried, i took 6 of them and they had, essentially, no effect at all. i connected with a person at SACBO — ranger’s connection — but she is only one step closer to the source… although she did mention that starter kits are available on ebay, and that they practically grow themselves, so that’s worth looking into.
part of the reason i have been so depressed is because of what i call the “political situation”: that is, drumpf and his latest atrocities. it just keeps on getting worse, and, when i think there’s no way he can get any worse, he blows the world away with the magnitude of his atrocities… and his republicon base of supporters get upset about a black disney princess and a pair of nike sneakers, but totally ignore the concentration camps and the gestapo Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, not to mention the totally inept people, including his own children, he’s put in charge of such things as education, housing, healthcare and the environment. it’s literally going to take us 100 years JUST to fix his fuckups, and that’s not taking into account the fact that the world is already in a crisis mode. it’s almost as though everything i’ve ever fought for throughout my entire life has been eliminated by this orange babboon in less than 3 years, and replaced with climate-change deniers, corporate stooges, forced-birth and anti-vax controversies, and so-called “christian” love, which is only for the so-called “christians”.
drumpf spent $92 million, which he appropriated from the national parks department (🤬), on a “military parade” in washington DC, complete with tanks and a flyover by the blue angels and “airforce one” — which, of course, wasn’t “airforce one” because the #SCROTUS was on the ground, observing the flyover… and the tanks were stationary, because, apparently, if they had moving tanks, they would have destroyed the streets and damaged the lincoln memorial… but the only people who could view this were his donors, because everyone else had to pay to get in… and then it rained, HARD and everything was postponed. the photos and videos i’ve seen show a very few thoroughly wet people and drumpf giving a long, boring, confusing speech that one writer i read compared to having been written by artificial intelligence, and a retired admiral said that it was on the level of an 8th grade history lesson… and the live video feeds from the top of the washington memorial, and the lincoln memorial were inexplicably shut down and removed from the whitehouse dot gov address, apparently to cover up how few people actually attended this debacle.
so, basically, we, the american people, threw away $92,000,000,000 on an egotistical, childish, boorish, dictator-emulating orange rapist with the IQ of half a rock, instead of addressing the concentration camps, or the homeless issue, or the healthcare issue, or… 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
as can be well imagined, despite my love for exploding things, i take little interest in such activities in celebration of this country, this year… which is, also, at least partially, because of the fact that we now have a dog who is totally terrified of fireworks, AND a next-door neighbour who is prone to setting off a ton of fireworks which ignite their lawn, and other suchlike wonderful things. 😒
OCF is 5 days away, and i’m hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. by this time, we’ve usually had one run through, and have some rough idea of how long the show will be. this year, we’re nowhere close to that, despite the fact that we started out with a working script, which we created 15 years ago, when we did this show (Jack And The Beanstalk) the last time. and we’re still missing two songs, one of which is probably not going to make it into the show for OCF.
and, on top of everything else, MAD magazine is shutting down! PBLFLLT!! 😠
i can’t decide whether it’s art, or jewelry… or possibly both… and spiritually oriented, as well: the “penis” is a sivalingam, and the “testicles” are a gauri shankar, which is two naturally-joined rudrakshas.
it doesn’t have any real “traditional” meaning, at least not as far as i know, so it may represent what they call “cultural appropriation”, but, if it does, i don’t care, because it doesn’t represent that to me. to me it represents all of the best that can be represented by Ṣíva and Ganeṣa… and it looks awesome, and, perhaps, a little bit silly. 🤪 there is more about gauri shankar and sivalingam available for those who may be interested.
i might be convinced to sell it — maybe, at some undefined future time — but i think i would charge at least $500 for it… maybe more. 😉
when it changes to july, we’re going to have to go to OCF and put on something resembling a show for the folks.
usually, by this time, we’ve got a finished script that the cast has been rehearsing for a few weeks, and most of the music, which the band has been rehearsing for a couple of weeks.
this year, they JUST got the script finished a few days ago, they just got their characters a few days ago, they still have to make all of their costumes and props, and the band has NO music — which has to be completely rewritten from scratch, even though we’re doing a panto that we have done in the past, Jack And The Beanstalk.
and, as far as the band goes, as far as i know, we don’t have enough people to make the band more than a rhythm section, and, MAYBE a saxophone, or a bassoon… or, possibly, both…
the only thing i know, for sure, that is already planned and in the works, is a memorial parade for simon… thrill… walking over uneven ground (not even going to try marching) with a tuba, slung from an over-the-shoulder strap while trying to manage music on a lyre… 😒 😟
190511 salamandir, by jon leachwhen you hang around the pike place market enough, particularly if you don’t look exactly like pretty much everybody else, you will eventually end up having your photo taken by one of the multitude of street photographers who descend in droves on the market thinking that they will get “that shot” which will propell them into the realm of famous photographers like ansel adams or robert mapplethorpe. in this case, it was a chap called jon leach, who has been doing street photography for about 5 years — no clue what he did before that — and he took a photo of me that i like, because when you look at the whole, reduced photo, i look serious, almost frowning, but if you look at the photo up close, i’m actually smiling. 190511 salamandir, up close
busking this week has been a mass of contradictions: yesterday, we played two sets, after having been displaced at 11:00 from the place where i had added us to the list at 8:00 because an amplified band (which is “banned from busking at the market”) was setting up to play in a “flower festival” which the market managers had neglected to tell us buskers about until we actually got there — and they posted a new notice regarding the closure in exactly the same place where the “get your new buskers’ permit” notice had been, so the people (including me) who signed up on the list didn’t notice it until it was too late… so we went up the alley, behind the iron stairs, and busked for an hour, took an hour break (because “the official rules” say you have to), and played most of a second set before we got fed up — in the middle of a song — and said fuck it.
the reason we got fed up is because there were probably 20 people, from people taking pictures with their cell phones all the way up to people who had professional camera equipment, taking our photos, which includes a sign in a very prominent, central location, which says, in large letters “TIP FOR PHOTOS”, but NOT TIPPING FOR PHOTOS! 😠🤬
seriously! some of these people came in pairs, one of them standing next to, or behind us, and the other person, with the camera, lining up the shot so that we were both in the frame, with the sign that says “TIP FOR PHOTOS” in the frame as well, and when they were done mugging for the camera, they just turned around and walked off as though we were plastic manequins… and not starving musicians who have a combined total of more than a century of experience playing music.
my understanding is that the problem is partially because of the cruise ship companies which offer fares that “include all gratuities”, and partially because of the common myth that buskers are paid by the market. both are WRONG!! and it make life particularly awful for folks that have to make their living busking when people act like buskers are free.
on the other end of the scale are days like today, when we played 3 sets and made almost $50 a piece, which works out to around $16 an hour… which is not outstanding, but it’s enough that it makes you want to come back out and try it again tomorrow.
and then there’s the pike place market foundation. back in the ’80s, when the market was being renovated for the first time, i bought an inscribed tile, which was originally placed outside of the athenian tavern…
i had a picture of it, at one time, but i can’t locate it currently. 😒
anyway, they had to replace the floor in front of the athenian, in the ’90s, because it was unstable, and they tore out the section of floor that had my tile in it, and replaced it with somebody else’s tile.
when i bought that tile, i was in the tech school, and the price of the tile was in lieu of half a week’s groceries, but when i asked the market foundation about it when i discovered it was missing, in 2016, their response was to say that if it was not there, then it was not going to be replaced, and my money meant nothing. they offered me a “market charm” to be installed in the new section of the market (which they hadn’t even built yet) as a replacement, to which i agreed.
but it was, apparently, never installed. yesterday, i asked the lady custodian of the market charm database to check, and she couldn’t find it. so i filled out another market charm request, and she said it should be installed this fall, and i can check at their database at PikeUp dot org. while i was at the market foundation booth, i also bought a “pig pin” which came with this interesting printed card: Pig Pin card
i noticed a design detail on the card, which caused this conversation between me and the lady at the booth: ME: this card has swastikas on it! cool! Lady At The Booth: those aren’t swastikas. ME: they’re swastikas, they’re just not what you expected to see when i said “swastika”… they’re not nazi swastikas, they’re ORIGINAL swastikas, from before the nazis got hold of it: they’re “little good luck charms”, which is what the word “swastika” means, in sanskrit. Lady At The Booth: yeah, but they’re not swastikas, there’s another name for it. ME: the german word for a swastika is “hakenkreuz”. the reason english-speaking people use the word “swastika” is because nobody could figure out how to say “hakenkreuz”. Lady At The Booth: but there’s another name for them. ME: the word “swastika” is a sanskrit word that means “little good luck charm”. it’s the perfect symbol to put on the pike place market “good luck token”, and most people probably wouldn’t even realise that it’s a swastika, because it’s not a nazi swastika. the swastika is one of the world’s oldest symbols, and it was around, as a symbol of good luck for, literally, thousands of years before the nazis got hold of it! it’s about time we started taking it back, and making it into a symbol of good luck again! Lady At The Booth: really? cool! 😊
allegedly, they’re going to snail-mail me when the charm is installed, but they said they were going to install it in 2016, and they didn’t, so it remains to be seen what they’re really going to do.
there’s a guy in portland — The Unipiper — who rides around portland on a unicycle, playing a flaming bagpipe.
i’ve wanted to make a flaming tuba for YEARS. i’ve got all the necessary equipment to make a flaming tuba. the ONLY reason i have not made a flaming tuba before now is that i don’t want to set myself on fire. fortunately, i have a few friends who can alleviate that problem for me (i’ll set them on fire instead… 😉), so it’s just a matter of building it…
i’m actually doing really well, considering that i’ve never done it before, and i deliberately signed up for a “Level 1/2” class instead of a “Level 1” class (so that i could combine the class with my already existing “Basic Circus Skills for Handicapped Adults” class, which occurs on the same day), and i’m keeping up…
although, to be honest, there’s a BIG motivation behind being in a class with two 8- to 10-year-old girls who are “Level 2” riders, and who, literally, ride circles around me. 😉 i REALLY want to ride as well as they do!! and they’re not even free-mounting, or riding around turns, or any of the “fancy” stuff that the unipiper does…
i’ve taken my third class, and i’m almost to the point where i can, honestly, say that i can actually “ride” the unicycle without holding on to anything: i can ride between two bars, only one of which i am holding on to, and ride beyond the end of the bars without holding on to anything… for about two cycles of the pedals, before i have to “dismount”… or fall…
the falling part is the part that i have been trying to avoid, and, for the most part, i have. however, i came home, last week, with a fancy bruise on my right knee, which was the first actual bruise i have gotten since i started the class, and, this week, i fell hard enough that, today, i strained to put my left knee in a brace, because it is hurting A LOT when i do relatively normal things like bending it, or lifting it… or doing pretty much anything except holding it straight with my leg elevated.
so, now, the question is, will i actually learn to ride a unicycle, or will i blow out my knees and end up in a wheelchair?
“courage is knowing it might hurt, but doing it anyway. stupidity is the same thing, which is why life is so hard.” — jeremy goldberg
i’m hoping it is the former, and not the latter.
although, either way, i can play the flaming tuba, so it’s all good… 😉
i’m getting closer and closer to divesting myself of all of my web hosting clients. i’m hoping that my last day of hosting anybody except me, and people directly related to me (i.e. my wife and son) will be 190430. i’m still trying to get two domains off my server, and then there will be one, which i don’t know whether they are going to find a new server, or whether they are just going to let it die. either way, it’s SEP and i don’t have to worry about it…
although i am… 😒
we came back from the beach. it rained a lot. i planned on taking mushrooms, but it rained, so i didn’t. i did spent a lot of time sleeping… and other passtimes:190408 drawing
like drawing…
190408 picture
although the dog moved by the time i took the picture…
and, given that it’s the first time that i’ve drawn anything other than doodles since my injury, i kinda like it…
then, we came home, and went to a concert by The University of Washington Harry Partch Ensemble, with authentic Harry Partch instruments:
190413 Harry Partch Instruments
the instruments are the Cloud Chamber Bowls, the Adapted Viola, the Adapted Guitar III, The Kithara II, the Spoils Of War, the Bass Marimba the Harmonic Canon, the Surrogate Kithara, the Diamond Marimba, the Marimba Eroica, the Koto, and the Chromelodeons I and II
190413 Spoils Of War
a close-up of the Spoils Of War, with the Cloud Chamber Bowls in the background, and the Diamond Marimba in the foreground
190413 Modified Viola music
it’s STANDARD NOTATION!!! just sub-scripts and super-scripts to define the microtones and the rythmn… i never would have guessed… but, at the same time, when you’re already working with music that is THAT DIFFERENT from what we, in the west, think of as “normal”, i suppose it’s a lot easier to not have to learn a new way of notating that “abnormal” music, as well…
it turns out that the current Harry Partch Foundation is located at the UW, and all of his instruments are housed there. again, i never would have guessed, but… wow.
i told monique, when we walked into the concert hall, that they had not played a note and i was already ecstatic.
i started my third session of my circus class. it’s a “basic circus skills for handicapped adults” class — mostly people with parkinson’s — but, because of the fact that i took to unicycle, i started a unicycle class, as well:190419 my very own unicycle! at first, i borrowed a unicycle from one of monique’s co-workers, but it was too short, so i went on craigslist and bought an almost-new, used unicycle, that was exactly the same size wheel but a longer seatpost, that is now my very own, personal unicycle.
i have this vision — my training from the flybottle class would say “fantasy” — of what i want to do with the unicycle: there’s this guy, in portland, who is known as “The Unipiper”. he rides around portland, on a unicycle, playing a flaming bagpipe.
i’ve wanted to make a flaming tuba for a long time. i’ve got all the necessary materials to make a flaming tuba. all i have to do is learn to ride a unicycle, and i can be “The Tubacyclist”.
i hope to be relatively stable on the unicycle by OCF this year. i’m GOING to do this! 🐉
i am done with the moisture festival for another year: 13 shares. we’ll see what a share costs in about a month, but i’m not holding my breath.
during the fremont phil part of the run, i broke my tuba: the mouthpiece receiver came loose, which made playing the instrument sort of interesting, but not absolutely impossible, which is why i took it to the repair shop today, instead of when it happened.
i’m still recovering from the flu. i’ve got a persistent cough which, according to what i’ve read recently, may never go away, although it seems to be, so i don’t know yet.
and, while i was busy with the moisture festival, a subscriber to one of the mailing lists i maintain, who has an email address at micro$awful, unknowingly sent email to the wrong address, and got the mailing list blacklisted from sending to addresses at micro$awful. the host provider’s response to this was to believe micro$awful, and to say that if i don’t move the mailing list to a third-party, commercial SMTP provider, that they were going to refuse to provide service to me any longer. i don’t want to do that, but i am running out of other choices very quickly, and informing micro$awful that their automated blacklister made a mistake is almost impossible. i’m getting really tired of dealing with other peoples’ screw-ups, and, once again, am debating whether or not to just toss all of my “web clients” except for my wife, and just deal with my own domains. it would be so much easier than explaining stuff to people who don’t understand, who don’t pay attention, and who do continue to do the stuff that makes problems happen which i can’t fix.
now that the moisture festival is over, i’ve got a band-mate’s saxophone to work on for a couple days, and moe and i are going to the beach in a week or so. hopefully that will give me the chance to get back to normal for a while. 😒
the 16th annual moisture festival starts tomorrow. i am playing in the following performances:
ETA: i have been offered another fluffing spot, thursday, march 21st, at 6:30 pm. thanks, stuart! 😉👍
thursday, march 14th, 6:30pm to 7:15pm – fluffing
thursday, march 21st, 6:30pm to 7:15pm – fluffing
friday, march 22nd, 10:30pm – snake suspenderz
saturday, march 23rd, 10:30pm – snake suspenderz
wednesday, march 27th, 7:30pm – fremont philharmonic
thursday, march 28th, 7:30 pm – fremont philharmonic
friday, march 29th, 7:30pm & 10:30pm – fremont philharmonic
saturday, march 30th, 3:00pm, 7:30pm & 10:30pm – fremont philharmonic
sunday, march 31st, 3:00pm & 7:30pm – fremont philharmonic
which amounts to:
2019, 13 shares…
2018, 11 shares, $330 – $30 per share
2017, ?? shares, $480
2016, 15 shares, $600 – $45 per share
2015,
2014,
2013, 14 shares, $490 – $35 per share
2012, 16 shares, $720 – $45 per share
2011, 14 shares…
this year, the SANCApators get two weeks… they didn’t even ask us, AGAIN (fuckers), which makes me wonder, once again, if they’re trying to edge us out. last year, and the year before that, it was the naked truth that had two weeks… what, do they not even remember that it was The Fremont Philharmonic Orchestra, AND NOBODY ELSE the first year of the moisture festival? do they not even remember that, if it hadn’t been for the fact that we just happened to be “hanging around” back stage when they discovered — AT THE LAST POSSIBLE MOMENT — that they didn’t have a band, the second night of the first moisture festival, that they WOULDN’T have had a band, the second night of the moisture festival!?!?!? 😠
but if someone were to mention it, then the likelyhood is VERY high that we wouldn’t have ANY performances in the next moisture festival… 😒
before = three notebooks and a file folder full of music, weighing approximately 40 to 50 pounds.
after
after = one 8½"x11½" tablet, weighing approximately 2 pounds.
and ALL of that music takes up only a tiny fraction of my local storage… 292.5MB out of 256GB, so there’s plenty of room for more, as well! 😎
when going places with my tuba and/or my trombone, this is definitely several steps in the right direction! 👍😎
although i’m probably still going to take the big purple notebook (on the bottom of the stack) with me, when i go busking, because when i’m playing for nickels and dimes, i don’t want to have a $1,500 tablet on my music stand where anyone can grab it and run off… 😉
pat robertson should not be allowed to broadcast his hate on national television. it astounds me that he still has a platform… although it astounds me that people still go to church, so maybe i’m the crazy one here… although i would much rather be considered “crazy” than i would to convert to that sex-crazed mainiac’s way of thinking. seriously, i don’t understand why HOMOSEXUALS having sex the way they do threatens anybody, and certainly not to the depths of the fabric of society. the fact is, whether pat robertson likes it or not, people have been “doing sex” the “weird way” since long before pat robertson was around, and they’re not likely to go away just because pat robertson and his ilk somehow get a law passed. people like him would do well to pay attention when someone like, oh, i don’t know, Jesus Christ, maybe, says “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”
it makes me wonder about the beam in pat robertson’s eye, particularly since he seems to be obsessed with “weird” ways of having sex. it makes me think that he might not be getting enough, himself. 😒
Pat Robertson’s Weird Way of Doing Sex by Rev. Dr. Guido Super DeLuxe, 190226 download here
new ipadthe fedex package finally arrived, which, of c(o)urse, meant that i went to the fedex distribution centre and forced them to let me have it there, rather than waiting for them to pull their head out of their ass and hire a full time driver who learns where my address is, instead of using a different contractor who doesn’t have the first clue — EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! 😠
anyway, i’ve got it more or less set up. i set it up as a new ipad, rather than transfering all of my old apps to it, which meant that i had — and still have — some finishing touches to add, most notably, the noisepad app, which requires a hard link to itunes in order to upload new sounds, but the version of itunes i have on my ancient macbook pro is several versions out of date and won’t recognise my new equipment, and even if it did, the ipad only has a USB-C plug, and my macbook only has USB-A plugs… so i’m probably going to have to use moe’s machine to get around that.
the big benefit is that i can display full-size, 8½”x11″ pages, which is 90% of my music, and the other 10%, which is more than one 8½”x11″ page, i can get a bluetooth foot-pedal page-turning gadget for about $50.
new ipad
AND i’ve already got a fairly substantial portion of my music already “on the cloud” — i.e. either dropbox or my own, personal cloud-server — which means that, under the best of circumstances, i won’t even have to load my 256GB disk down with music files… although i might want to keep files on the ipad anyway, just in case i don’t have network connectivity, as i would (not) at the oregon country fair… 😉
and, after all, loading it down with music is the principle reason i bought a huge-ass tablet anyway… 😉
this is my interpretation of the introduction to a cassette by Bob Larson, a toxically obnoxious evangelical so-called “christian” radio preacher who bills himself as “the real exorcist”, with whom i have been interacting, on and off, for the better part of 40 years. he, too, is likely a member of my karass, because, despite my repeated attempts to get him out of my life, he keeps popping up, and i keep responding to him.
dont fuck with santa clausthis would be a good time to re-read the VEWPRF rant that i posted in 2008, because… well, it just is. that’s all.
the panto started last weekend, and it was good. it wasn’t great, but, for the first shows, it was better than average by a few steps, and it definitely has the potential for being great… especially after a couple more weeks of actual “rehearsal” 😉 i actually played most of the notes correctly, played a few notes that i have never been able to play before (low F, E and E♭), and they were audible and (most importantly) in tune, and i only got lost/confused/missed cues a couple of times, and it wasn’t because i wasn’t paying attention, like it usually is… which is good. there are a few physical sound effects: the ratchet, siren whistle, thunder sheet, bar chimes, slide whistle, that sort of thing, and there are a few electronic sound effects: horse whinney, squeak-stomp-splat for the donkey stepping on the ogress/mouse… and i’m thinking that i can probably come up with a better sword fight sound than the one i’ve got currently, which is bashing two metal spatulas together.
181120 salamandir & howlin’ hobbit
this picture was taken by a guy people know as “kurt vonnegut” — because he looks a lot like kurt vonnegut, apparently. i don’t know, because i barely remember the guy who took the picture, i was concentrating on the music so intently. i think his real name is davey, but i’m not sure.
Joe Desimone Bridge
this is the joe desimone bridge at 7:30 in the morning, before anybody gets there. at noon there are, literally, thousands of people passing through this space… and only a tiny fraction of them seem to notice the buskers… 😕
the “original” starbucks at 7:30 in the morning
this is what they call the “original” starbucks. it’s not really the original, because the real original is about two blocks away, on western avenue, below and to the south of the joe desimone bridge… but it’s not there any longer, having moved up to pike place in the early ’80s (i think). but they still have the “original” signage and store livery… and, at 7:30 in the morning they have a crowd of 20 or so people inside: the rest of the pike place market, more or less, looks like the previous picture of the joe desimone bridge, but at 7:30 in the morning, the “original” starbucks (which isn’t even the original one) has a crowd. at noon there is a line that stretches down pike place, of people waiting to get into the “original” starbucks…
i’ve been sort of worried about busking with my tuba at the pike place market, because — in the distant past — they have had “problems” with people who were not actual musicians playing trumpets and other loud brass instruments, indiscriminately, with very little skill, and taking no regard for their neighbours. this unfortunate occurrence caused the people in charge (the “Pike Place Development Association” otherwise known as the “PDA”) to completely ban all “brass instruments and horns”…
what they mean, of course, is all brass instruments “with a cup mouthpiece”, because brass instruments with a reed mouthpiece (i.e. saxophones) have been allowed all along… which is REALLY STUPID, because you can make a lot louder, and more unpleasant sounds with a reed than you can with a cup mouthpiece…
which, of course, leads us to the real reason brass instruments are banned, which is because, in the distant past (i.e. before any of the current PDA staff were born), one or two individual people were being SO obnoxious (with their brass, cup-mouthpieced instruments) that the PDA had to do something, but it had to be something that didn’t look like they were targeting one or two individuals, so that they wouldn’t get sued by those individuals when they found out.
it’s kind of like that story about the scientists who were studying group behaviour in monkeys, where they put a monkey in a room with a ladder, and at the top of the ladder was a banana… it turns out that the story is an urban legend, but the concept comes across: now, the 2nd (or 3rd, or 54th, who knows) generation of PDA staff is convinced that anybrasscup-mouthpiece instrument, played by anyone is going to be the equivalant of a marshall stack cranked up to eleven, and totally blow everyone away for half a mile in any direction.
and, it’s my impression that, ever since then, there have been “whingers” among the vendors at the market, particularly on the “Joe Desimone Bridge” section, who — encouraged by the attitude of the 54th (or whatever) generation PDA staff who have never, actually, experienced a loud “brass” instrument — complain to the PDA if someone has an instrument that looks like it’s going to be too loud… which has resulted in the PDA deciding that you simply can’t busk at the bridge spot on saturday — which is the best day for busking — even with instruments which are not banned… 😒
i’ve been busking at the market a few times since i got my permit, but i haven’t busked at the bridge spot, because i’m worried that, despite the fact that the PDA assured me that they are “experimenting” with allowing tubas (no trombones, baritones, or trumpets, though), and they did, actually, sell me a permit despite the fact that i told them i didn’t play anything else that is allowed, one of the whingers on the bridge will take offense at my tuba and i’ll go back to being on the “banned instruments” list again.
that all changed today.
i busked with hobbit for an hour at the bridge this morning. we made $9.50 each (which is not very good), and then we went up to the clock spot and joined jack and dave for another hour, which netted us $35 a piece, which is a lot better.
then, because it was REALLY cold, i decided that i was going to go home. as i was going back to my car, i had to cross the joe desimone bridge, and TWO vendors asked me if i was done playing music. when i said i was, they asked me when i was going to come back…
they want me back! 😎
they don’t like any buskers (particularly the bad ones, which, according to them, are most of them), but they want me back!
and i wasn’t even playing the melody!!
maybe i shouldn’t worry about the whingers on the joe desimone bridge so much any more… 😉
tomorrow is the sousa bash, in the evening. i may go busking in the morning, but i haven’t decided yet… in a way, i really want to get out there and make myself more known to people who might call me for sets later on, but another part of me says that it rained most of the day today, and it’s probably going to rain tomorrow, which can be aleviated by rain-gear, but it also means that there will be fewer suckers paying audience members out there… and tomorrow is the return to standard time, which means that 9:00 am comes at 8:00 tomorrow… or is the other way around… i can never remember, and it always takes me a week or so to adjust, every time. 😕
only a white man could come up with the idea of cutting two inches off of one end of a blanket, sewing it onto the other end, and selling it as a bigger blanket. — some Native American wise guy
🍄 one mushroom today: 14 total. running low. need more…
this “microdosing” is starting to really bug me, in a way. i REALLY want to take 100 mushrooms or more, but i don’t have 100 mushrooms to begin with, and even if i did, i don’t have the time or the setting to be able to take that many without freaking out… i was talking with norma at trolloween about mushrooms, and she was saying that she really doesn’t like feeling “altered”… and i realised that i do, REALLY like feeling “altered”. microdosing does what it’s supposed to do, which has made my life a lot more tolerable recently, but it also reminds me, EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! i do it, that i’m not really doing what i would like to be doing. a trip to the mushroom fields outside of mount vernon may be in order. i literally know where they grow ’em… 😉
the title is an imitation of stanley, who enjoys saying “workshop” with no context.
this, however, has context, so it’s not as amusing.
i fixed an alto saxophone for a colleague this afternoon. i started on it on monday, prepared the neck for a new mouthpiece cork, and then discovered that 3 of the 4 pads it needed were ones that i didn’t have… 😒
so i ordered pads, which arrived today.
three of the four pads were also on the left-hand side keys. the high F key is normally activated by the palm of the left hand, but it has a rocker underneath it, which is activated by the high F auxiliary lever, which is part of the left-hand stack, and activated by the left index finger… and the high F rocker was bent WAY out of whack, so that you couldn’t actually activate the high F key with the high F auxiliary lever.
so, as well as having to replace the pad on the high F key, i had to completely remove the left-hand stack, and the side E key, which is activated by the palm of the left hand, in order to adjust the high F rocker.
that was easy enough, but, because of the fact that i don’t actually work on as many saxophones as i used to, i had to assemble, and disassemble the left-hand stack no less than three times, in order to get the jigsaw-puzzle of keys to get to fit together in the right way…saxophone
i had to get the B♭ bridge under the F# bridge, which is part of the right-hand stack, and i had to get the C key, which has an actuator that goes behind and above the other keys of the left-hand stack, installed correctly, and i had to get the side E key under the top of the left-hand stack, but above everything else, which meant that i had to carefully install the side E key with the left-hand stack in place — minus the top two keys — but not held in place by the long steel that goes through the hinge-tubes of all the keys.
i ended up not having a problem, once i figured out how to proceed, but it was a hassle, putting it most of the way together, and then remembering that something had to go underneath the keys that i had just installed, and having to take all the keys off again to fix the problem.
it was definitely worth the $100 that i’m going to charge him.
🍄 one mushroom yesterday. i went out for a walk and had pretty much the entire “trip” while i was out, which wasn’t very much. depression sneaking back in, but not in unmanagable amounts… yet… fewer mushrooms every time this happens, and eventually i’ll run out. hopefully i will have either wildcrafted, or obtained some more by then, but who knows… they are illegal, after all, even though my doctorcounsellor recommended them… 😒
trolloween on wednesday. i’m doing sound effects, which means bullroarer “pre-show” and thunder for the first part of the show. nothing else, which means that i’ll be able to actually haunt fremont, for the first time ever… i’ve been a part of the show at the troll, and the dance afterwards many, many times, but i’ve never gotten to go on the haunt… mushrooms? it’s possible… but i think i’d have to find a place to crash in town, if so. i’ll ask macque…
so, in the realm of the computer, i’ve decided that, if i tiptoe around this version of kubuntu, it works 95% of the time. i have, literally, changed the way i interact with the computer interface, in order to prevent it from crashing on a more regular basis: kontact/kmail/akregator — which used to be a relatively stable part of the distribution — has become something which works if i DON’T do things like try to open links in akregator using the middle mouse button (right click and choose “open in external browser” works, though, which is annoying), or forward a message, about half of the time (which is something i do on a regular basis when i’m reporting spam). and kubuntu, itself, has got some annoying bugs which i don’t know to whom to report… which, in itself, is annoying… when i boot the computer, the desktop wallpaper appears to be set to “blur” around the background, even though when i look at the configure panel, it’s set to “solid color”, and when i set it to “blur”, nothing happens, but if i, then, set it back to “solid color”, lo-and-behold, it suddenly displays with a solid colour background. and, because of the fact that it’s part of the system settings, i don’t have the first clue who should get the bug report.
and i’ve, basically, given up on amarok. i love the interface, but the fact is, my music is on a disk that isn’t mounted at startup — because it is a NAS, mounted via WIFI — and amarok refuses to see it. i haven’t figured out how to get it to mount at startup, and it appears that the amarok user list is, for all intents and purposes, dead… which is really annoying.
on the other hand, i’ve figured out a way to play the music on my NAS from my phone, my tablet, and from the linux box, at the same time, using the same application, which is VLC media player. i don’t love the interface, but it’s definitely better than nothing, and the fact that i can play my music, basically, anywhere, without having to make copies of it, should make the copyright drones happy.
and i found the disks containing approximately 10,000 fonts, left over from when i worked in a print shop… and i can get around 90% to 95% of them to work on both my mac and my linux box, also from my NAS, which makes sharing documents a lot more reliable.
busking at the pike place market(!) today. in two hours of playing, i made $55… in ones, fives and quarters. it was a fairly good couple of hours, considering that i only knew three or four of the songs that we played, and was improvising/faking it for the rest of them. i gave my phone number to three “band leaders”, so there’s a pretty good chance i’ll get called again some time soon.
before today, i have never busked with my tuba at the pike place market, because their official policy is “No devices for electronic amplification of any sound are allowed. No horns, brass instruments, or drums are permitted…” which pretty much makes it impossible for me to even think about busking there… but, apparently, they’re “trying out” tubas, because there are a lot of tuba players who objected to their policy. i was one of two tuba players at the market today, and the other guy (conn 15J, 3-valve, B♭, i think his name is jim) was, according to one of the other buskers (he played soprano sax, tap-danced and sang) looking at my tuba like it was a woman… damn right he was looking at my tuba with lust. it’s an instrument to be lusted after, and i’m glad that someone else recognised it for what it is. 😉
and, by the way, soprano sax is not only a “horn” but it is also made of “brass”, and it has been allowed all along. it’s only “horns with cup mouthpieces” that are banned, and it’s ACTUALLY “horns that are played “inconsiderately”, and make problems for the neighbours”… which has come to mean anything that anybody THINKS is too loud, regardless of what the instrument actually sounds like… although, these days, strings and “woodwind” instruments get a pass, and brass instruments (with the exception of tubas, as noted before) are completely banned.
the last time i was permitted to busk at the market was 1982, which was before the current market manager (the one who sold me my current permit) was born. back then, you didn’t have to buy the permit, and there was only one market manager. now there are a bunch of them, and talk about the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing… 🤦 i’m glad i got my permit, but i’m going to leave dealing with the authorities (meaning the market manager(s)) to someone else, because i already don’t like it at all…
it “cycles” the way it’s supposed to: it spins as far as it can one direction, and then spins back the other direction automatically, while i spin the whole thing one direction all the time, thus making the characteristic “bull roar” noise. i made it out of plywood, to test the theory. i’ve got a chunk of really dense hardwood that should make a better, louder noise.
thuriblerecently, i’ve been incensing the neighbourhood.
i’ve been taking my thurible outside (because, realistically, that’s the only place i can use it without setting off my smoke alarm), drinking beer, smoking pot, listening to frank zappa, and burning frankincense, benzoin and copal resin — rather like the ethiopian family that lived next door to us, where we used to live, in renton, did…
although i’m reasonably sure that the ethiopian family didn’t smoke pot, drink beer, and listen to frank zappa… 😉
but, basically, i really like burning incense, i really like burning frankincense, because it has the scientifically-proven ability to calm my anxiousness, and i really like “sharing” the good smells with my neighbours… whether they like it or not… 😈
which got me to thinking, yesterday…
i also REALLY like playing music for people. particularly, i really like playing my overtone flute at the oregon country fair, where people passing by have the possibility of hearing my music, but not knowing exactly from where it may be coming.
so, i thought, why not combine the two, and put together a “performance” or a “concert”, or something like that, where i set up somewhere, incense the whole place, and play my overtone flute?
it would have to be an outside venue, because nobody would want “concert” like this inside, where it would be extremely likely to set off smoke alarms, but that’s okay, because if it’s outside, there’s more of a possibility that people will experience the scent and not even be able to tell from where it’s coming… possible places are greenlake, volunteer park and gasworks park.
i would probably also want to set up a sign, or something, letting people know what i’m doing… but it would also be interesting to do that sort of thing without any clues, just to see how people might respond…
in sanskrit (the ancient language of india), छेल (chela) means “a devotee”, and मेल (mela) means “a festival”, so छेल मेल (“chela mela”, TWO WORDS) is “a festival of devotees”.
the band of north american kalapuya “indians” (otherwise known as “native americans”) called chelamela is ONE WORD…
the following pictures illustrate the fact that, at the oregon country fair, “CHELA MELA MEADOW” is TWO words… well, three, if you count the word “MEADOW”… 😕
chela melachela melachela mela
i wonder if anyone else knows this. according to their own definition, this is CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!!
oh no… 😕
sombunall of the not-“native-american” artwork at the ritz is back in place, but the totem pole is nowhere to be found, and nobody knows what’s going to happen to it. the “archaeology” group (which was behind the lady who raised all the fuss last year) is still there, and still thinks we shouldn’t even have an oregon country fair, because it’s on “indian ground” (seriously, they’ve excavated a 10,000 year old camas oven from the bank of the long tom river, so there have been humans around that area for a LONG time) but the lady behind all the fuss last year was nowhere to be seen, as far as i could tell, and nobody was talking about indians feeling put out by the fair.
we didn’t play at the ritz. they didn’t make new tokens this year, so i only got one — last year’s design — in lieu of hat money, on saturday.
the fair was fun, and i’m not giving up on it, but it’s definitely time to find another therapeutic gathering in which i can get involved.
this year i took four pictures to make up for the fact that i missed a few years previously:
some random hippie, 2018some random hippie, 2018some random hippie, 2018some random hippie, 2018
these were taken in order, on thursday, friday, saturday, and sunday. i also wore a djellaba and a red kufi (to piss off the cultural appropriation crowd), but i didn’t take pictures of that
the macthere is a new “pirate ship” next door to the morningwood odditorium, called “The Mac”, which produces macaroni and cheese in ENORMOUS bowls. i ate there four times. they also had smoked salmon mac&cheese, and bacon brocolli mac&cheese. yum.
tiny frog with a big attitudetiny frog with a big attitudetiny frog with a big attitude
sunday afternoon, i found a tiny frog trying to get into my tent.
on the way home, i drove up highway 101, and stopped in newport, where i got the business card for the company that made moe’s kite that broke. now all i have to do is find the stay that broke, measure it, and send them the measurements, and they’ll make a new one for it.
when i left the fair, i ran “off the map” with my GPS, almost immediately. i tried using waze, as well, but i didn’t have reception or connectivity until i got to lincoln city. then, when i got to astoria, i turned left, instead of following the default GPS and turning right, and i got the “return to the route” message no less than TEN TIMES, before it figured out where i was going… it’s a good thing one of us knew where they were going. 😉 on the other hand, waze looked at where i was going, and figured out a new route almost immediately.
it’s weird that this post is allegedly about OCF, and the parts that i get the most amusement out of are the parts where i have left the fair. oh well… 😕
i was forced into a fecesbook moratorium, because of the lack of connectivity. it was partially deliberate — i didn’t take my tablet, and couldn’t use my phone for anything except a camera, pretty much all week — and i’m thinking very strongly that this is a good excuse to abandon fecesbook all together. it’s awful, it doesn’t do anything to improve my mood, and the only reason i was there, to begin with, was because it’s the only way to get booked at the ritz… but now that job has been foisted off on someone else (or not, i don’t care), and there’s no obvious reason to continue wasting my time with it.
we’re probably not going to do a show at the ritz this year. it is primarily because we haven’t rehearsed any of the music that is not directly related to the show (Puss In Boots) with this iteration of the philharmonic, which includes two members that haven’t played with us for a couple of years (naoyuki on cavaquiño and flute, and brandi on vibraphone), and one completely new member (harlan on bandoneon, concertina and toy piano). once again, kiki has decided to be a cast member, which means that she’s not available to be the conductor, which falls to stuart, who has, in the past, said that he doesn’t want to be the band leader any longer. the result is that we have had NO rehearsals, which means that we’re basically going to be sight reading any preshow and intermission music, and, basically, we’ve decided that we would be, essentially, doing the same thing with a ritz show, and the ritz is definitely NOT a show that we want to do a halfway job of playing.
so, we’re not playing the ritz for the second time in three years…
i’ve become a lot more ambivalent about the oregon country fair the past few years. it seems as though there has been a lot of politics and negativity introduced in the past few years, that, with the already heavily persistent “hippie-mall” vibe, has turned the oregon country fair into a totally different beast than it was 10 years ago… of course, 10 years ago, i was still a relative “newbie” to OCF, and there were, no doubt, a lot of things happening that totally went over my head because i was still focusing on the hippy-love, twinkly lights, and the “hippy-potamus”…
i remember, distinctly, “cutting out” without checking with people, before everyone had finished breaking down the stage, last year, because i was so tired of the hippy-griping and general bad feelings that had been going on pretty much all weekend. not from my group, specifically, but from the fair, in general. a lot of it had to do with the ridiculous accusations of “cultural appropriation” that were flying around. if that happens again, this year, it may be my last year of going to the fair for a while.
which, of course, means that, along with everything else, i have to find something new to replace the medicinal high that i used to get from going to the fair. 😕
None of us producing this annual event ever wants to reduce the share amounts, in fact, we have done our best to try to increase the amount we pay you and some years we have been fortunate to be able to pay more for shares.
Please don’t approach this as a paid gig or a money making booking because there is no financial guarantee… You are likely to get a token amount of money, but it will be more of an honorarium than a fee
at one time, not too many years ago, the moisture festival was the single highest paying gig i had all year. 😕
maque asked me to build a bullroarer. i may have gone a little bit overboard…
i built a 30″ bullroarer. it’s big enough that i had to order special rubber bands to finish it. then, when i realised that i had to wait for the rubber bands to be delivered, i went crazy and spent two days going various places searching for a suitable alternative.
180506 30 inch bullroarer
it’s a lot quieter than i expected. i’m going to have to build a smaller one, like this:
i saw the residents a few years ago, at neumo’s on capitol hill. at the time, randy (the lead singer) said that carlos, the drummer, had decided that, after 40 years, the “rock-and-roll” lifestyle wasn’t doing it for him, and he quit, which was why there was only three of them.
they seem to have found a new drummer, as well as a mysterious figure dressed in a cthulhu mask who sat there for the entire show and didn’t do anything.
they did a lot of their “Elvis” and “Two American Composers” songs to the tune of a lot of their “Train Wreck” and “The Ghost of Hope” songs, and there was some weird stuff about dreams with fabulous animated graphics displayed on a huge ball, so that they were even more distorted.The Dream, part 1
it was REALLY loud, but, unlike most of the other “rock” concerts i have attended, it wasn’t so loud that i couldn’t hear the lyrics (except when they didn’t want me to), and my ears weren’t ringing after the show, which impressed me.
i want a tablet that has a USB interface (or not, depending on its disk size) that is approximately 9″x12″ or thereabouts, on which i can store ALL of my music (and, potentially, music for everyone else in the band, as well). if it has a USB interface, then i can have different bands on different flash drives. if not, different bands go in different directories or suchlike. my understanding is that there is an “automatic page-turning” app that one operates with a remote using their feet, but my impression is that most PDF readers switch pages with a swipe, which is pretty much what i do already, anyway…
that way i won’t have to carry around 40 pounds of music, as well as my tuba, music stand and chair…
180325 tom noddy and the littlest gymnastthe second week of the moisture festival — the one that i played in, with the fremont philharmonic — is over. it went really well, i played a majority of the right notes, didn’t drop my music, or lose tunes, made a majority of my cues, kept ALL of my music in alphabetical order, except for the tunes that were “officially” part of the show, so i could find things instantaneously when things changed abruptly without warning…
which they INEVITABLY do at the moisture festival.
hacki and möppi were there, tom noddy was there, sandy was there, frank olivier was there, peewee and joanne (barry and yvonne, couple #69) were there… i saw people that i only see once a year, at the moisture festival… it was the 15th anniversary of the longest running comedy/varieté showcase IN THE WORLD (and my 15th year as a performer in the moisture festival), and hardly anybody mentioned the fact that the palladium is up for sale, and there’s a possibility that whoever buys it will not honour the contracts that events like the moisture festival (and the panto) have with mike hale… but, at least for now, things are happening in a more or less normal, for the moisture festival, way. who knows what’s going to happen next year… apparently somebody does, but it’s not me, and whoever it is, isn’t saying anything.
Le Boudin, otherwise known as the Marche de la Légion Étrangère, by Guillaume-Louis Bocquillon, otherwise known as Wilhelm, is the official march of the french foreign legion.
it is played at 88 beats per minute, instead of the more standard 120 beats per minute. this is because they’re the french foreign legion, and THEY CAN. the result is that, in the bastille day parade, the foreign legion appears last, because they march so much more slowly than all those other military organisations… i’m tempted to call them slackers, but the words to the tune actually call the belgians “slackers”, so i’m not sure if it’s entirely appropriate.
however, the sheet music for this piece of music is proving surprisingly difficult to find. the composer, Guillaume-Louis Bocquillon, otherwise known as Wilhelm, is, apparently, unknown to most people. the french foreign legion, itself, only mentions him in passing. the place i discovered the composer’s name was actually Flute Tunes dot com, where the only part available is a transcribed flute “solo” part.
i’m trying to find the music, because it would be a fantastic march to be played by the ballard sedentary sousa band. i have experienced no joy at the places i have checked, so far, which include j.w.pepper, the petrucci music library and bandmusicpdfs dot com.
i have been following Ranjit Bhatnagar for many years, from his original web site at moonmilk.com, and have succeeded in pulling off a project with him. this is a “distance duet” with me on harmonic flute and ranjit on harmonic bass.
new year blah. had dinner at the akers’, went to bed at 10, and listened to the neighbours blowing stuff up and frightening the animals until two in the morning.
#SCROTUS #drumpf threatening to blow up the world… again… among other, somewhat less horrendous alternatives… blah, blah, blah.
panto blah, sickness blah… i’m actually just starting to feel relatively normal, after having the season’s cold compounded by being around panto people who all have similar colds, for about a month. the panto, itself, is as good a show as we’ve ever done, considering that we’re doing the same show, cinderella, with essentially the same script as the one we did 10 years ago. however, they’ve sold the palladium and nobody’s told me what they’re going to do with the moisture festival, for which they’ve already scheduled the bands: the philharmonic is one of them, snake suspenderz is not. 😕 blah… everybody’s acting as though the moisture festival is happening, but nobody seems to care where it’s theoretically going to happen. it would be great if we could continue using the palladium, but if we’re not, presumably someone has started making arrangements to have it somewhere else.
i’ve wanted one for a long time: pretty much ever since i first read about them on internet, a few years ago. but i’ve never bought one, because it seemed too frivolous… and i’ve read some really negative reviews of them, that made me think they are not very well built, and so forth.
but this a gift, and it is from my lovely wife, so, of course i want it… and, actually, it plays pretty well — for a “novelty” “toy” that doesn’t have notes marked on it… it will definitely be an honoured member of my sound-effects collection, if nothing else… 😊
otamatone オタマトーン
not only that, but the guy on the package (who, i assume, is Novmichi Tosa, the inventor of the otamatone), is wearing a wrist watch with an old-school telephone dial on it:
wrist watch with a telephone dial… what does it do?
i’ve been sick for the past couple of days. i hope i’m going to be well enough to perform in cinderella on saturday, because that’s when it starts. dress rehearsal is tomorrow, and i haven’t even marked all of the sound effects or where to use them, so it’s going to be touch and go. i should be well enough to make rehearsal tomorrow, but i’ve already loaded the first batch of sound effects into my car. i’ve still got a huge box, plus the bell, which has it’s own stand…
i’ve volunteered to play trombone for a SANCApators performance at Teatro ZinZanni in redmond, in february. reheasals start during the run of cinderella, but the sancapators rehearse during the week, and cinderella is on the weekend, so there won’t be any conflict.
#SCROTUS #drumpf just reduced the size of two national monuments, Bear’s Ears, and Escalante, in utah, to about half of their original size. he wants to eliminate all national monuments, completely, and open the areas for oil drilling and mineral exploration. it’s probably illegal, and there’s already at least one lawsuit filed over it, but that won’t stop him from running rough-shod over it while he has the chance. DAPL has already sprung a couple of leaks, and there are lawsuits over that, as well, but you can’t put oil back in the ground, once it has been extracted… and spilled. meanwhile, there’s a rumour that democrats are going to force a vote to impeach him soon, but as long as the republicretins are in the majority, it’s not going to go anywhere. there’s eventually going to be action from special prosecutor mueller – he just subpoenad Deutsche Bank’s records concerning #drumpf’s accounts, and those of his family (although faux/fake news/jay sekulow (of the ACLJ, a “christian” hate-group) says that he hasn’t), which, allegedly, was the line across which, if he stepped, #drumpf had vowed to fire mueller, but it just happened this morning, so there’s no news on whether he will actually follow through. my personal opinion is that, if he fires mueller, i’m going to start fomenting revolution, and i’m not alone. on the other hand, if he doesn’t fire mueller, then he can definitely be more easily impeached, because his criminal activities, not to mention his treason, will be much more obvious… but once #drumpf is impeached, we’re going to have to impeach pence, and ryan, and the whole list of “republicans all the way down” before anything is going to change… and the only other option is for mueller to declare the 2016 election null-and-void, because of #drumpf’s treason and collusion, but, by then, it’ll be too late to do it over… and it’s never been done before, so nobody’s really sure whether or not it even CAN be done…
story pole update –according to what george braddock says, they didn’t have any native assistance during the design part. i think that’s horse-shit, but george is one of the people who would know, so i’m torn… although i’m leaning heavily in the direction of horse-shit. also, david lewis, the cultural anthropoligist from the confederated tribes of the grande ronde, obviously doesn’t know that there actually were haida people involved, and that they’ve got the blessing of both haida and kalapuya elders. not only that, but the kalapuya, who are native to the area, didn’t have permanent art, because they were nomads, so it’s not really any kind of cultural appropriation. it sounds very much like this guy is in the camp of the lady who is behind this whole thing. 😐
i got back from OCF, which, apart from the fact that my email was screwed up when i left, and nothing had been done about it by the time i came back, was excellent. i left on tuesday the 4th, and returned on monday the 10th, got bit by at least 50 different mosquitoes. they were huge and ravenous this year, pretty much the same as always, but they definitely dissappeared by thursday. i don’t know whether or not it had to do with the incoming throngs of people, but there was a definite difference between the clouds of mosquitoes surrounding me on wednesday, and their dissappearance on thursday.
chela melathe big conversation this year was around “cultural appropriation”, specifically the “cultural appropriation” perceived by a few, very vocal, “native american” (or not) people who aren’t even associated with the fair, when The Ritz (one of my favourite places about the fair) after 5 years of carving this EXQUISITE “story pole” outside the ritz, in a very public way, decided to raise the pole.
that’s it…
the “native americans” (or not) decided, after 5 years of public carving, without saying a SINGLE WORD, that the ritz raising their “story pole” is “cultural appropriation”.
first of all, i don’t actually know anything (which is the way 90% of the fair is run, from the beginning). all i pretend to know is what other, very passionate, people, some of whom actually do “know”, have told me. but what they say is:
the lady that’s behind the cry of “cultural appropriation” is a “troublemaker” and has been for many years. she may or may not be native herself and she has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the fair, but she has made an “anti-story-pole” web site and invited other “native american” groups to rally behind her standard. a small number have actually done so.
the ritz, in response to this lady’s blandishments, have COMPLETELY REMOVEDALL of the “native american” art from the premises, taken down the boiler that had native american artwork on it, that was prominently placed at the entrance, flipped over a fence that had native american style carvings, and replaced it with “vanilla” art, taken away 90% of the T-shirts, tote bags, bandanas and other merchandise that had “inappropriate” artwork, and minted new tokens this year, as well as taking the story pole off site for the fair.
at the same time, elders from a variety of northwest tribes, including the native kalapuya tribe, and elders from standing rock, have blessed the ritz, said that the artwork, and the ritz itself, HONOURS native traditions, and that this whole “cultural appropriation” fiasco is totally unimportant, considering how many actual issues of grave importance there are facing native americans, and society at large, these days.
finally, my own opinion is that ART IS CULTURAL APPROPRIATION. people like picasso (or was it banksy?) have said “IMMATURE ARTISTS IMMITATE. MATURE ARTISTS STEAL.” ever listen to “jazz”?
not only that, but having studied, and tried to imitate, northwest native artwork, i can tell you, from personal experience, that it’s not easy at all. the guy who carved the story pole wasn’t native, himself, but he obviously had experienced and expert native assistance, as well as YEARS of personal experience, to make a story pole that looked as authentic as it did, despite having elements that would NEVER HAVE APPEARED on an authentic native pole…
which it was never presented as being in the first place! 😕
so i was intrigued when i read a blurb that was posted in “Xavanadu” (what used to be called “The Craft Lot”, outside Morningwood Odditorium), concerning why the fair decided not to raise the story pole this year. it said, among other things, that there were a band of the kalapuya tribe called “chelamela”.
i haven’t yet met anyone who knows for sure, but it was always my impression (and the sign above supports the idea) that “chelamela” was a sanskrit compound word: छेल (chela) means “a devotee”, and मेल (mela) means “a festival”, so छेलमेल (chelamela) is “a festival of devotees”.
the idea that there may have been a band of kalapuya indians called “chelamela” is intriguing to me — suspicious, but intriguing — especially considering all of this “cultural appropriation” furor that is currently going on.
apparently, it’s true… who knew? 😉 so, the next question is, who “culturally appropriated” who, here?
there wasn’t a single day in the week that i was there, when i wasn’t involved in a PASSIONATE discussion about this issue, with MANY people. it made for a REALLY INTERESTING fair…
😕
north trotter’sabove, is “north trotter’s” on wednesday. it’s about a mile from Morningwood Odditorium: to get there, i had to walk through fields called “Xavanadu”, “Miss Piggy”, “North Piggy” and “Kermit” to get to the “Cabal Crossing”, which is where i signed in. by friday, this ENTIRE FIELD was filled with cars. near the center of the photo, in the background, you can see a structure that marks the beginning of the exit road. on the other side of that structure is another, similar sized field, “The Dead Lot” (named for a Grateful Dead performance that happened in 1989(?) in the lot), and beyond that is another similar sized field called “Outta Site”… which is where i parked my car this year. there is a shuttle, called “F.A.R.T.S.” (Fair Area Rapid Transit System) which i had to ride if i didn’t want to walk.
birdthis was the bird that was over the dead lot, one of the times i decided to walk.
anagrams of Oregon Country Fair
a huge load of hippie crapon wednesday, someone delivered a huge load of “hippie crap” to “xavanadu”. they eventually assembled it all into this. at night, the “roots” lit up with rainbow crawling LEDs.
Godfrey Danielshe was my next door neighbour. 😎
more huge loads of hippie crapmore huge loads of hippie crap. at night it lit up with rainbow colour-changing LEDs.
some random hippie, 2017what’s wrong with this picture? 😉
nothing except #drumpf and depression happening for the past couple of weeks.
moe stepped on zorah and dislocated her hip (zorah’s, not moe’s), which, naturally, mortified moe, and made it so that zorah has to undergo at least eight weeks of crate-rest before we will discover whether or not she has to have surgery.
the two ounces of space queen that i was gushing about is either not space queen, or, if it is, it lacks the characteristic flavour of space queen, which is one of the reasons i like it. on the other hand, it was cheap enough that i’m not going to complain. 😐
SACBO next weekend. 19th wedding anniversary on the 21st. OCF in three weeks.
okay, whenever i get personal email from a “famous artist” who i really admire, i get a little verklempt.
a few years ago, i discovered this really weird, really prolific artist, who called himself Ergo Phizmiz, and, since then, i have accumulated approximately 40 individual downloads from him, all of which i really enjoy.
recently — within the last 6 months or so — he decided that the “Ergo Phizmiz” persona had run its course, and started releasing music under a much more “normal” sounding name, Dominic Robertson. i bought his most recent release, and he wrote me to thank me:
Just a quick note to say thanks very much for buying my recent releases on Bandcamp, most appreciated indeed.
feeling encouraged, i wrote back:
i have 40 downloaded albums by Ergo Phizmiz and/or Dominic Robertson, and i enjoy all of them. 8)
i am a musician as well, and play a variety of different instruments:
i also play with the Fremont Philharmonic, a 9-piece wind band that started out as a circus band, many years ago… but they don’t have anything recorded…
keep making music. it’s the only “real” thing there is! 8)
this was his reply:
Thanks a lot Salamandir. Lovely to meet you, going to put my feet up later and tune into you and your hybrid elephants.
…
squeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! 😁
although, to be honest, i probably wouldn’t have paid as much attention to him at first, if he had been dominic robertson… a lot of my initial attraction to him was that he made wonderfully weird music AND was called “Ergo Phizmiz”…
this is the second time i’ve played at the blue moon, and the third time i’ve actually been in the blue moon… the first time i was in there, in the early 1990s, which was before i played there the first time, i went there to meet an old friend, who proceded to borrow $20 from me, and then i never saw her again.
Snake Suspenderz at The Blue Moon tavern in the University District
i figured that if it cost me $20 to make sure that i never see her again, it was probably worth it.
not much has been happening, except for the world slowly blowing up because of the inanity of #drumpf.
i’ve finished one week of moisture festival performances, with the phil, and snake suspenderz actually has a rehearsal (our first one in more than a year), on wednesday, three days prior to us going on stage on saturday, for two more moisture festival shows. the moisture festival is over on sunday. i keep wondering why i do this, and i am still wondering why i do this, unlike my previous predicition.
there are a few more snake suspenderz gigs coming up, for a change…
apart from that, it’s pretty much rehearsal season.
i found a new dispensary, fairly close to my house — commencement bay cannabis — which appears to have high quality material for insanely low prices… like, for the price of an ounce in a number of other places i have been to, i can get TWO ounces at CBC. current fave is Cinex.
this year features 9 shows featuring the fremont philharmonic, and 2 shows that feature snake suspenderz… if my recollection (and this) serves, that’s two fewer than last year, and eight fewer than two years ago, which, once again, makes me wonder why the hell am i doing this?
of course, once it starts going on, i will remember why, but now, at this point, it’s more annoying than anything else.
we’re gearing up for the moisture festival in a couple of weeks. the ballard sedentary sousa band starts rehearsals for the 2017 season tomorrow. we start the season may 28th at the folklife festival. and snake suspenderz has gigs at the moisture festival, a winery in woodinville, and the blue moon in april.
things continue to get orders of magnitude worse in drumpf-land. at this point, if he were to disappear today, we would have approximately 10 years of cleanup to do before the society got back to “normal”… and there’s no way he’s going to “disappear” until at least next year. at this point, there’s an equal chance that he will destroy the world, or i will die before then. 😡
i’ve been “sick or not” for a week now, and it’s really starting to get on my nerves. i don’t “feel” sick, but if i don’t take immune boosters and/or if i work too hard i get a sore throat and really congested. it never really comes on strong and takes hold, but it also doesn’t seem to want to go away any time soon. i’ve been taking immune boosters along with my 5HTP, and i can feel it helping, but it’s apparently not enough to make the “sickness or not” go away completely. combine that with depression that has been increasing or decreasing in intensity, but never actually going away, ever since #drumpf was elected, and it makes for a really difficult time merely existing in the world.
i’m playing for a burlesque show at the substation in ballard on march 7th, and then a week of moisture festival performances with the fremont philharmonic starting on march 22nd, plus 2 moisture festival performances by snake suspenderz on april 8th, and a gig with snake suspenderz on march 22nd in woodinville that pays $125 an hour, cash…
but i would still prefer it if i died, or, even better, if everybody else died, except for moe, the fremont philharmonic, snake suspenderz, the people with whom i’m doing the burlesque show, the significant others of the aforementioned people… and, MAYBE a few audience members…
drumpf continues to be a gold-plated asshole. his “muslim/immigrant ban” has been halted, temporarily, but he’s still building a wall, continuing with construction of two major oil pipelines, removing restrictions on coal companies dumping waste into streams, removing the affordable care act, blatantly censoring publically funded government entities like the parks department, the department of agriculture, NASA, and the environmental protection agency, firing people who resist him, and filling all available government positions with his cronies, who he has been encouraging to do similar things. he has gone on record opposing environmental restrictions by saying that his “friends” have businesses and they can’t borrow… 😠
i am getting an upgrade on the hybrid elephant web site. should be ready monday, with no down time. i’m wondering how long i can do this before i have to go out of business. reluctantly, i’ve spent about $1,000 on my web site in around a year, and i am pretty sure the web site hasn’t provided me with a commensurate amount of income. 😒
panto check came in. $100 less than last year. i’m not sure why, but it’s still the single greatest source of income i have for the entire year. next up is moisture festival. i know of at least a week’s worth of performances with the phil, for sure, and i know that snake suspenderz is “in”, but there’s still no clue how many shows, and/or whether or not we’re going to be a “show band”. i really need to find a new band and/or get us playing more frequently. 😐
puppies are still alive. mother (sis) is also still alive. the puppies have turned into alligators, so when they’re not actually feeding, sis has to wear a t-shirt or something to prevent the puppies from biting her tits off. we’re going to either visit, or to pick up a puppy (depending on as yet unknown other circumstances) on the 11th, and if we don’t pick up a puppy at that time, presumably we’re going to pick it up on the 17th… and then moe is going to some conference, somewhere, and i’m going to be left by myself to take care of three adult dogs and one 8-week-old puppy… thrill…
the third of four weeks of panto performances finished today. i’m confident that Rapunzel Stiltskin is the best panto we have done in the fifteen years that we have been doing pantos. we’ve got one more week, four more performances, and it can only get better from here.
i got a kurt weill songbook yesterday, and i intend to write arrangements for the phil, which, hopefully, we can work into moisture festival performances in some way or another. unofficially, we have been offered the second week of performances. once again, unofficially, the “old boy network” is still trying to replace the phil with their buddies, but they still haven’t done more than replace the last two weeks of bands with people who are part of the network, which, strangely enough (because the phil has played every moisture festival since the beginning) doesn’t include the phil. snake suspenderz hasn’t been offered anything, as far as i have heard, which is odd, because the guy who supposedly books music for the festival said that he had more gigs for us… two years ago… needless to say, i am less than enthusiastic about participating in the moisture festival this year.
moe is going to visit the puppies again on friday. at this point, 9 puppies are doing great, and the health of the mother, Sis, is improving massively, although there are still some mysterious deficiencies that are still eluding everyone. at this point, everyone agrees that everyone is going to survive, which is considerably different than the opinion a week and a half ago.
moe’s father died, suddenly, in late october. his funeral was last saturday. some would say “fortunately”, i had two panto performances that day, so i couldn’t go. however, one of the things that was an upshot of moe’s father dying was that moe inherited his piano. so, we now have a fairly decent spinnet piano in our house… or, rather, it will be a fairly decent spinnet piano when we get somebody in to fix the dead keys and clean out the bird-seed and spider-webs. in order to fit it in our house, we had to completely clear out the “office/guest-bedroom” which hasn’t been used as either for a couple of years. the office had a double bed, and a reclining chair that turns into a single bed, along with all of my inventory from hybrid elephant, most of my sound effects (i.e. the ones that i don’t have at the panto currently), a trombone, three trumpets, two soprano clarinets, an alto clarinet, a guitar, a whole bunch of home-made instruments, two huge bags of air-pillow packing materials, a cosco-sized bundle of paper towel rolls, three sleeping bags, and a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff. we got up fairly early yesterday, cleaned out the room and the hallway leading to it, and then we, along with moe’s step-brother, took delivery of a piano. also, because of the fact that it was superfluous, we freecycled the bed… and then we loaded up the back of moe’s step-brother’s truck and made a dump run with a bunch of brush and old lumber.
initially, i was hesitant about bringing the piano into our house, because i was under the impression that it was one of those upright pianos that you see in old western movies, that people stand, lean on, and put their glasses of beer on top of. this piano is actually about half that size. it’s about 3 feet tall, and 24 inches deep.
so, now, instead of an “office/guest-bedroom”, we have a “music room/guest-bedroom”. i’ve already moved in my bach trombone, my fender-rhodes piano, my DX-7, my E♭ tuba, my Sandviker’s Stradivarius musical saw, and my didjeriflute. the theory is that, eventually, that will be a place where we (meaning moe, too, whether she likes it or not! 😈) can go and IMMEDIATELY play music on a variety of instrumets, and the most preparation we might have to do is take an instrument out of its case. it will also be very beneficial for me, when i am transcribing music and need a keyboard. and, because my laptop is portable, i can easily use it to do all kinds of recording and editing and, using my DX-7 as a MIDI controller, i can even use my laptop as an instrument… 😎
Who are these children
Who scheme and run wild
Who speak with their wings
And the way that they smile
What are the secrets
They trace in the sky
And why do you tremble
Each time they ride by
Throw out your gold teeth
And see how they roll
The answer they reveal
Life is unreal
Who are these strangers
Who pass through the door
Who cover your action
And go you one more
If you’re feeling lucky
You best not refuse
It’s your game the rules
Are your own win or lose
Throw out your gold teeth
And see how they roll
The answer they reveal
Life is unreal
our “three weekends in a row of performances” with the sousa band is over. snake suspenderz played a moisture festival gig in redmond last week…
redmond was a trip. i haven’t been there in a long time… probably not since stlabs moved from redmond to factoria, which (according to my handy-dandy chart of when things happened) was approximately 1998… i may have been there once since then, but… wow, things have changed A LOT since the last time i hung around there. the obvious thing i noticed right away was the overwhelming number of indian and asian families i saw. definitely different than 1998, that’s for sure.
and that’s not to mention the huge mall that has suddenly appeared where there used to be woods…
i’ve been more than ordinarily depressed for about a week. i’m convinced, at this point, that the only reason i’m able to recognise it is because of the 5-HTP i’ve been taking. it doesn’t stop the depression from happening, but it gives me a degree of separation from it, so instead of being bogged down with depression, i can say “oh, i’m depressed” and continue living my life, more or less. i’ve met (finally) with a person who may become the replacement for ned. she’s REALLY young (like, possibly, still in her 20s) but it seems like things will work out, which will probably help the bouts of depression when they happen in the future. it’s likely, however, that the lack of such a person is only exacerbating the depression this time.
one of the three-weekends-of-performances-in-a-row was at deception pass, a place i haven’t been to since approximately 1991. it’s really surprising to me how much i can remember just by going to a place, when i hardly remember anything without actually seeing the place.
160723 deception pass160723 deception pass
the picture above is the underpinings of the deception pass bridge. i climbed across the bridge, beneath the road surface, a whole bunch of years ago, before they put up the sign that says “Climing on bridge is prohibited”. unfortunately, when i got to the other side, the only place to get down from the bridge is on the top of a concrete pylon that’s about 25 feet above the ground… which, of course, meant that i had to climb back across the bridge to the place where i could get off without breaking my neck.
returned from OCF yesterday. logged into farcebook this morning and was immediately confronted with political stupidity and people making fun of human failure. we weren’t able to play at the ritz this year, despite my being in contact with the booker through farcebook for two years now. i’m seriously wondering whether or not this experiment with “social media” is worth the hassle.
however, interestingly, i only went to the ritz twice, because it rained on saturday, but, in spite of not getting booked to play this year, i ended up with three ritz tokens, and actually got to play one song with stuart’s band, choro loco. i played cuica:
cuicacuica
i went to OCF last tuesday. the mosquitos were ravenous, and numerous… and HUGE! i got bit a lot tuesday and wednesday. thursday they calmed down a bit, and by friday they were all concentrating on the tens of thousands of other people who had just arrived. wednesday i slept for most of the day, which was luxurious, but somehow i wish there had been more activity.
there weren’t as many pictures, but they were memorable.
there were also a few pictures, not included, of daylight, close-up shots of the pedal-powered scroll saw i want to make.
2016 some random hippie
other years:
2011 some random hippie2012 some random hippie2013 some random hippieMorningwood Odditorium, with the back of David Barnes’ and Julia Kingrey’s headsmy tuba, at Morningwood OdditoriumStrangely stole my phonefound on mondayfound on monday
OCF is fast approaching. today is the 26th of june, and i leave for OCF on the 5th of july. instead of driving, this year i’m getting a ride with michael marconi. the fremont philharmonic has several changes in personnel, and hasn’t had a single rehearsal. allegedly, we’re going to have two rehearsals with the cast members who haven’t already gone to the fair to set things up, and allegedly we’re going to have one or two rehearsals without the cast, presumably to rehearse for the ritz, which we haven’t heard from yet… in fact, i’m going to write to matt now…
i’m really trying not to stress too much about not having any rehearsal, but i guess what i’m saying is that, despite the fact that i know it won’t do any good, i’m stressing about it anyway. i’ve got two new pieces of music out of who knows how many more, and there’s a good chance that we won’t be able to rehearse this, even once, with the entire crew, until thursday evening, before we have to start performing on friday morning. it must be worse for kiki, since she is actually writing the new music. fortunately, it’s for the oregon country fair, so even if we totally screw up, it’s highly likely that nobody will notice.
i’m having the hybrid elephant web site re-designed. i decided that it would take a lot less time for someone who already knows how to use all of the new technology do it than it would for me to learn how to use the technology, and do it myself. it’s still not exactly what i want, but we’ve already put a method of payment in place that doesn’t involve paypal, so that’s a really good trade-off… and, while it is not exactly what i wanted, it largely has all of the things that i want, more or less where i want them, it’s got some really cool new features that i didn’t have in the old site (starting with a SSL certificate, so no more doing business over an unsecure network), it uses wordpress and woo commerce, so it will be really easy to add on to, and it’s going to be A LOT easier to keep up to date, so i won’t have to do this whole thing again in 5 years…
i emailed the band (snake suspenderz) a month ago regarding playing for the party after SACBO was over. all of the band members except hobbit said that they could do it. hobbit wanted to get paid. the people putting on the party said they couldn’t pay, in fact the party was supposed to be a fund raiser (i.e. NOBODY was getting paid).
after going through three weeks of increasingly tense back-and-forth action, we finally agreed, tentatively, to perform at the party, which i announced to the organiser a week ago.
SACBO came around, and the first day (saturday, two days ago) was intermittently rainy and overcast. hobbit showed up for about an hour (long enough to get stoned) and then took off, before the fair was open, without playing anything. sketch didn’t show up at all. thaddeus and i busked, alternately playing swing music a la snake suspenderz, and “experimental” music, with me playing the didjeriflute, and thaddeus playing his guitar with interesting effects pedals. we made around $30 each, which wasn’t that bad.
yesterday was sunny and beautiful. hobbit showed up again, but sketch didn’t show up until almost 2:00. we played, first without sketch and then with him, but not very energetically or enthusiastically, and with considerable breaks between the music. at the end of the day, we had made about $10 each. i donated mine to hobbit, because, three or four years ago, i said that if the “take” from busking was $10 or less, i would donate it all to hobbit, because he needs it more than i do.
and then, hobbit said that he wasn’t going to the party, because he wanted to play with his new video-editing software (which he had been ranting about all day), and sketch said that he wasn’t going to the party, partially because hobbit wasn’t going, and partially because, simply, he “didn’t feel like it”…
which, of course, means that, now, the people who organised the SACBO after-party are pissed off at me, because i promised them a band and then backed out at the last possible moment.
alledgedly, snake suspenderz has another one-hour performance at the château in renton in september, but it was my impression that we have already done all of the château performances, and despite the fact that somebody said they would confirm the dates for me, nobody has yet.
it used to be that snake suspenderz would play, somewhere, even if it was the ballard sunday market, at least twice a month. however, it seems to me as though, ever since hobbit moved to lynnwood (about 10 miles to the north of downtown seattle), it has become more and more difficult to convince him to do anything other than busk at the pike place market, which, of course, i can’t do, because the market doesn’t allow my tuba, because it’s made of brass. i find this odd behaviour for hobbit, primarily because i live 25 to 30 minutes south of downtown seattle, and i’m up there all the time for various different rehearsals and performances, but i’m getting the idea that it’s one of the things that makes hobbit what he is.
it is my distinct impression, at this point, that snake suspenderz may not be a band any longer, and that i should be looking for other people with whom to play music.
thaddeus wants to form an electronic/experimental group with me, which is definitely an interresting concept (i keep thinking that it would also be a good way to entice ken to come down from bellingham and jam with us), but that’s more of a fantasy than anything else at this point, especially since thaddeus is preparing to go on a road-trip to play in Oberon Zell‘s emporium in california (among other places) in a couple weeks.
i am aware of the fact that there are more musicians than the ones that i know, even in seattle… i mean, i know a lot of musicians, but i don’t know all of them, by any stretch of the imagination. what i really need to do is to find a bunch of musicians who all like to play the kind of music i like to play, who also have a desire to play music for other people in exchange for money, and who don’t have the mental/emotional/social difficulties which are way-too-typical of the current batch of musicians i know.
when i logged into my email this morning, one of my messages was from salamandir.bandcamp.com, from a guy named zach lincoln, who was, alledgedly, a “booking representative” from afton. this was the message he sent me:
> I wanted to reach out and see if you’re up to talk about some shows I’m
> putting together. Who’se the best person to contact about booking your
> act? I have a few dates every month around washington, my next open
> date is May 21st.
exciting, right? i have only had this music on bandcamp for a few months, and already i’m getting inquiries from someone who wants to book my act… i should be fired up…
but i’m also suspicious.
so, i wrote him back with a couple of alternate dates (i’m going to orlando on the 23rd, which is cutting it a bit close for my tastes), and i texted thaddeus, who has quite a bit more experience in the business of booking gigs than i do, and asked if he had ever heard of this guy. he said no, but sent me a link that might be appropriate.
zach wrote me back almost immediately with instructions on how to get started with afton, but i read the link that thad texted me first — http://www.wicasta.com/blogs/is-afton-live-a-scam-any-worse-than-venues/ — which, basically, says that if afton isn’t a scam, it is doing a lot of the things real scammers do, and the only way i should sign up for it is if it’s more important to me to play than it is to get paid.
it’s pretty important to me to play music, don’t get me wrong. and, given the choice, i would rather be playing music than just about anything else, pretty much any time, but it really disturbs me to be playing music for free when everybody else around me is getting paid for my playing music. in fact, that is one instance where i would, probably, NOT prefer to be playing music. i know a whole bunch of people, and at least two or three of them would probably come to see me play at a real venue, but if i have to do all of the marketing as well as playing music, then i would much rather do it on my own, than provide money for bookers and venue-owners but not myself, especially when i would be surrounded by other musicians who are in the same boat i am in.
so i wrote back to zach, asking if what i read in the article is true or not. the first response i got, when i was responding to his initial inquiry, came back within 5 minutes of my sending it, but i have now been waiting 4 hours for a response, and it hasn’t come yet… and i get the very strong feeling that it won’t come at all, which is an indication to me that what i read in the article was, in fact, spot on, and zach was hoping that i didn’t know that because it is so exciting to be contacted by someone who wants to book your act…
THEN i started actively poking around to see if i could find out anything more about this guy. conveniently, bandcamp gave me his IP address, so i plugged that in and discovered that zach wrote to me about booking gigs in washington from an IP address that’s located in Maspeth, New York… 😡
afton may or may not be an actual scam, but if it’s not, it sure isn’t trying very hard to differentiate itself from things that are, actually, scams.
that got me wondering… i’m pretty sure he never, actually, listened to any of the music at salamandir.bandcamp.com… i wonder what he would do if i actually showed up for one of his performances and played what i usually play on the didjeriflute…
i’m done playing moisture festival shows with the “show band” for this year. i still have a few other moisture festival related shows coming up as “artists” this year, with snake suspenderz: we’re playing the volunteer party, three “on stage” appearances, and at least one “fluffing” (where we entertain the audience waiting outside the theatre, before the performances start) that are still upcoming.
i’m waiting to see whether or not the band that is taken up the last two weeks of shows as the “show band” is any good before i make a firm decision, but there’s a good chance that i will be bowing out of next year’s moisture festival performances all together, if things don’t work out. i’m just getting way to tired of watching other people become part of the “old boy network” with a fraction of the input that i have made to the festival, when i am not even considered for that network, in spite of the fact that i’ve been in it since the beginning. it’s getting to be the same way with the oregon country fair, as well. i’ve never been a person that appreciates “old boy networks”, and these two things have been grating against that dislike for quite some time now. there are definite advantages to both, but, if not soon, definitely eventually, i’m going to have to bow out of both, because, fundamentally, i dislike the way they take advantage of me without offering sufficient benefits.
at the same time, i want to create a new act for next year’s moisture festival, that is a sextet (or larger group) that plays bach or mozart or something like that, on nose-flutes. so my feelings are definitely conflicted.
i think i may have found a way to market these online so that people will be able to get what they want without having it be a random selection chosen by me. it’s difficult, because no two buttons are exactly the same, but i discovered, quite by accident, that there are five different general categories that they fall into. i suppose, if i wanted to get really technical, i could separate them even further into a predominant colour, but i think that may be a bit more complex, because then it would be possible, theoretically, for someone to come up with a colour and category that doesn’t exist, and that would be embarrassing.
they are all swastikas: category 1 buttons have more of an abstract swastika, because you can’t actually see it, but if you can look beyond the borders of the button, you might be able to imagine where it would be. category 2 buttons are a little less abstract, but it’s still not a visible swastika, although it might be easier for some people to figure out where it is. category 3 buttons have at least one definite swastika. category 4 buttons have at least three definite swastikas, and category 5 buttons have EITHER no less than 6 swastikas, OR at least one swastika, and a significant area where there are no swastikas.
they’re all $1.00 or more a piece… i say “or more” because if people want to pay more for them, i won’t complain. 😉
i’m well and truly into the midst of rehearsal season: we’ve been rehearsing the fremont philharmonic for 3 weeks for a week of shows at the moisture farcetival, we’ve been rehearsing snake suspenderz for a week for a gig at the château, a recording session with deb seymour(!), three moisture farcetival shows, and a moisture farcetival volunteer party, and next week rehearsals for the sousa band, whose first gig will be while i am in orlando.
and, speaking of orlando, this evening, i made, and paid for, the reservations for my trip from seattle, to orlando, to warrensburg, to seattle between may 23 and june 3. this is the first trip i’ve taken where i’ve had to fly, by myself, for my own enjoyment, in my entire life. i haven’t flown anywhere since the big bois with poise went to san francisco in 2012, and i haven’t been on the east coast since i went to boston when i started at software dot com in 1998… and then i was working (actually, i slept through most of the training classes, because i had stayed up until 4:00 in the morning drinking beer with spods), so i didn’t get the chance to see that much… and this is sort of the opposite corner of the continent…
i guess i’m officially starting to get “excited” about going on this trip…
but the visa signature conceirge service, in the process of giving me options for the trip, gave me the option of flying from orlando to kansas city, by way of… wait for it… seattle. yes, they tried to make what would ordinarily be a 3 hour non-stop flight into an 18 hour trip back home, with a 9 hour layover. really! 😕
so, i got Roxy, The Movie on DVD for xmas. i finally got around to watching it this afternoon. during the last song, The Bebop Tango, i recognised this audience member, erstwhile named “Carl”…
“Carl”, Chester Thompson, Tom Fowler, Frank Zappa – Roxy, The Movie
this is the person i now know as Thaddeus, a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time ago (8, 9, 10 December, 1973). here’s the whole performance:
in the mid-1980s, i lived in an apartment with randy, who was a david bowie fanatic. i was not, at the time, because i had been brought up listening to jazz, classical, and contemporary classical music, had been heavily involved with jazz, marching and concert bands and orchestras, and, basically, “didn’t have time” to listen to “inferior” music made by “talentless” artists.
but, at the same time, i was also beginning to suspect that everything i had learned about “christianity” was not only false, but that there HAD to be another alternative to what the “christians” were ranting about. i had read some of the works of Aliester Crowley, and been able to make exactly zero sense of it, and started heading for other religions to fill the gaps.
then i heard this song, and a few others like it, and they helped me to realise that sometimes, in order to comprehend the deeper meanings of things, one had to read more than what was on the surface…
panto started yesterday. 4 shows in and it’s already the best show we’ve ever done, despite the fact that the two fairy tales that we mashed up (Hansel & Gretel and Goldilocks & The Three Bears) are not very strong stories in and of themselves. i ordered a metal slide whistle because my PVC one has finally bit the big one. i also sold a single LP album for $200 at discogs.
i got an app for my tablet that will do what i want it to: it’s a drum-pad-sequencer gadget that has a built-in sampler, so i’ll be able to sample a service bell, and a whip, and whatever else i need and have them electronically reproducible on demand. it will do a number of things, including decreasing the amount of crap i’m going to have to haul, be volume-controllable, be fail-safe, and that sort of thing. it probably won’t work so well for the oregon country fair, but that’s a ways down the road yet. it’s kind of amusing to me, primarily because this is very definitely NOT the purpose for which it was intended to be used… but, to quote frank zappa, i, truly, don’t care.
two weeks until the panto starts. get your tickets now, because they’re going fast.
monday, this week (151123) was Church/State Separatation Day, and also Fibonacci Day.
i’ve been taking 5HTP as a mood controller for a couple of months, and it seems to be having some effect. it doesn’t decrease the amount of depression, but it does put me in a space where i can observe the depression, rather than being affected by it… as much… i’m not sure whether this is an improvement or not, but it’s something… interesting, perhaps…
thanksgiving was yesterday. the world is fucked: climate change is upon us, there have been shootings and bombings all over the world (including a new one, today, when a 40ish-year-old, white male shot up a planned parenthood branch), people are getting stupider and they’ve got stellar education in how to do it, because the stupidest ones of all are the ones that they want to elect as the next president… humanity, as a species, is killing itself off in astounding numbers, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better any time soon. i have never wanted to do it, but i’m afraid i’m going to have to apologise to my son for bringing him into a world that is dead set on destroying itself. yeah, i’ve got good health, good friends, and good eats, but hitler had them too, and so does donald trump. but instead of assuring that everyone can have them, we’re more interested in keeping syrian refugees out of our country and giving people who are truly insane, the power to start the next world war. it’s time for some more realistic holidays that aren’t based on religion, coercion and genocide.
so i’ve got good reason to be depressed.
and, now that “thanksgiving” is past, there’s going to be a headlong dash into the pile of crap that is the most materialistic portion of the entire year, which decreases the probability of my getting any less depressed any time soon a lot more.
okay, i am so pissed off at one particular person at the moisture festival that i can’t even think straight, and i haven’t been able to think straight for 3 days, but if i say what i really feel, then the probability is very high that i, at least, will not be invited back to play the moisture festival ever again, and while that seems like a good thing now, i would undoubtedly regret that decision eventually, so i’m going to keep my mouth shut…
with this one exception: the person who i am pissed off at, is the most inconsiderate, short-sighted, no-talent, "good-ol’-boy" ass that ever existed, and i am REALLY glad that, apart from the moisture festival, i have no contact with him, because if i did, it would undoubtedly get very unpleasant for both of us.
i brought home the glass bong that i made in the previous post, and now have two glasses in the annealer, waiting for me to pick them up. 8)
the fremont phil has a gig on friday, which is tomorrow. i’m probably going up to b’ham to visit with kenyth on saturday. maybe coming back saturday, maybe sunday… haven’t decided yet.
saturday is also frank zappa day, and international talk-like-a-pirate day. a week from saturday is festa italiana for the BSSB. the thursday after that (which is the first of october), snake suspenderz has a gig at the chateau retirement center. maybe they’ll remember to pay us this time.
there’s a video that goes here, but it’s taking forever to upload, so i’ll put it in later.
the following is the rant that i’m going to put in the liner notes of the CD… which is why it will probably change at some point in the future.
the harmonic flute is a very simple instrument that makes very, very complex sounds. it was made from a piece of 1-inch PVC tubing that i rescued from a construction site dumpster. i have been playing it for about 35 years. i have taken to calling it a “didjeri-flute” because when people see me playing it, one of the comments i hear most frequently is “didjeridu”… which is not correct (and, at this point, i find it somewhat annoying): it’s a harmonic or “overtone” flute, hornbostel-sachs number 421.111.11:
4 – aerophones
42 – non-free aerophones
421 – edge-blown aerophones
421.1 – flutes without a fipple
421.11 – end-blown flutes
421.111 – individual end-blown flutes
421.111.1 – open, single, end-blown flutes
421.111.11 – without fingerholes
a didjeridu is another very simple instrument, but to make a sound on a didjeridu, you use your lips to buzz into the open end, which causes the vibration in the tube, and use your breath, tongue and voice to modify the vibration. on a harmonic flute, you blow into the open end, which is modified by having a notch carved in it, with a leading edge that has been sharpened, to make the tube vibrate. without question, it is an instrument that requires very precise breath control, but that’s it: there’s no buzzing, and no tongue or voice involved at all. in this recording, the sound of the harmonic flute was fed through a boss digital delay, and a roland cube amplifier. the recording also features a brass temple bell.
the harmonic flute makes different notes based on the harmonic sequence: the first note, or “fundamental” is quiet enough, and hard enough to produce, that i don’t use it on this recording, but i can play it. sometimes it i can play it loud enough that other people can hear it as well. the second note, or “second partial” is an octave higher than the fundamental, and it is heard fairly frequently in this recording. the “third partial” is a perfect fifth above the second partial, the fourth partial is an octave above the second partial, or a perfect fourth above the third partial, and it continues along a known and predictable path from there. there are no holes in the walls of the flute, or “finger holes”, the harmonic flute has two holes, one at either end. the only way to control what note you are playing is to be able to control your breath.
other, similar flutes include the fujara, which is a fipple flute with an air-pipe and fingerholes, the quena, which is shorter, and has fingerholes, and the shakuhachi, which also is shorter, and has fingerholes.
the recording was made in an empty room with solid concrete walls about 1 foot thick, about 20 feet wide by 50 feet long by 15 feet high, with an open door at either end. the entire room, and the surrounding hallways on either end, are completely underground, and buried by 25 feet or so of earth, with bushes and trees on top. the room was one of the gunpowder storage rooms for one of the mortar bunkers at fort worden — (insert historical information about ft. worden here) — now that it is no longer being used for destructive purposes, it has absolutely fantastic accoustics, and i have wanted to record there for many years.
this is an “incomplete” track: it has the front and rear stereo pairs from my recording device, which was right in front of me, but it doesn’t have the front and rear stereo pairs from thaddeus’ device, which was about 10 feet away from me, facing the wall of the room…
however, this is pretty much exactly what i was looking for, and there’s around an hour’s worth of new tracks with which i can play around… 😎
i isolated 10 “good enough” tracks from the raw files, but none of them were more than 6 minutes, and i wanted at least one that was 10 minutes or more, so i’m going back to fort worden next tuesday to try it all again. i’ve also bought a recording device of my own, which should make things more interesting, if nothing else.
i woke up the other day and tried to log in to my email account and discovered that everything was offline, and when i went to the host provider to determine why, i discovered that my account had been suspended because they received a spam complaint about me… except that, when i looked at the complaint they received, i recognised it immediately as one that i had sent to an upstream provider a couple of days before, and what they had done was forward it to the upstream provider on the “From:” line, instead of reading the headers to determine that they were, in fact, the people responsible… and, because of the fact that i NEVER receive spam complaints, they arbitrarily suspended my accounts, instead of reading the headers to determine who was actually responsible. 😕 since then i have received about 10,000 spam messages, in 1000 message increments, from people whose php servers have been compromised such that, simply by reading the headers and knowing where to click, i can actually see the spammers online interface on the compromised server…
but I was the one whose account was suspended for spamming. if it weren’t for the fact that i’m still recovering from my bout of changing host servers every few months, a few years ago, i would seriously consider switching, but… in spite of everything, the host server i currently use has been better than any of the others that i have found, for the price.
i have a gig next saturday with the fremont philharmonic at “dudefest” and another gig on sunday at the peace arch in blaine with the sousa band. i’m probably going to spend sunday night in bellingham… depending…
i’m really excited about my new project, tentatively called “I Breathe At It”, which is me playing my PVC long-flute/didgeri-flute/harmonic-flute in the bunkers at fort worden. here is a sample track:
we’ll see if that works… if not i’ll figure out something else… 😐
whaddaya know… it works. 8)
listen for the bird sounds… there were barn swallows nesting in the passageway outside of where we were recording.
i’ve knowingly been around this building for 45 years, but i’ve never actually been inside the Women’s University Club in seattle, until yesterday, when the ballard sedentary sousa band played there. it’s been there for 90 years, or thereabouts, and has been the venue for many a ‘hoity-toity’ event presented by the rich, upper-class women of seattle… and now it has also been the venue in which the BSSB has played, which either means that their standards are slipping, or that the BSSB has moved up the ladder, in our social circles, by several rungs… 😉
but the photo below is not that… it is about 3 blocks away, right next door to the building i lived in (according to the handy-dandy chart of when things happened) between 1996 and 1997, at terry and east union
seriously, this is one of my favourite places in the entire city, and i would live there again in a cold second, given the opportunity… there’s nothing like waking up in the morning, walking a few blocks, and being able to eat breakfast at the pike place market before starting your day… 😎
when i got to the women’s university club, i played, as i was expected to do, but i then learned about the fact that, in 1927, John Philip Sousa had actually been a guest of the women’s university club, and they had his signature in their guest book! so, of course, i had to take a picture of it…
of course, because of the fact that i took it with my cell-phone, it’s kind of blurry, but hey… it’s a real piece of history, that i’m a part of, because we actually got to sign the very same guest book! 😀
now that things are in a state which could be referred to as “normal”, if such a concept existed (which it doesn’t, but that’s a discussion for another time), i actually have the time to update this thing…
so, OCF happened: six shows in three days, with the completely predictable “no complete rehearsal, with everybody present, until the opening show”, which went surprisingly well despite everything, and worked out, once again, to be universally applauded as “the best show we’ve ever done”. the saturday that was my “birthday” included playing at the open mike and a show for naked hippies at the ritz, which has some really cool “added extras” this year, including the ability to record our set on professional level equipment, which dramatically increases the probability that there’s actually going to be a CD later in the year… 😉
there are pictures, but they’re still on my phone… and the only real disadvantage this year was the fact that i didn’t get to spend my “birthday” with my sweetie… 😕
immediately upon getting home, however, things took a turn to the chaotic side and that’s what i’m recovering from more than anything… although the fact that i’m coming off a week of unreality at OCF may, at the same time, contribute to my ability to get through the following week of chaos, and, basically, leave me with absolutely no spoons to spare, and in a really, really strange mental state.
i played a gig with snake suspenderz at ida culver house in ravenna, which is right across the street from the former home of a woman i used to work with (which has now been turned into condominiums) who was my supervisor before mike cummings, and i believe her name was laura culver… but i’m not sure, and i’m no longer in contact with anyone who might know… and it’s pointless anyway, because the real point is that the company who engaged us, ERA Living, has, once again, stiffed us in a way that i AM NOT going to allow to happen again: basically, they had me fill out the necessay paperwork back in may, and they STILL haven’t presented a check to me for the performance that happened on thursday… and it’s now saturday… not only that, but when i got there, i was told that we would also be fed, however when we approached the guy who was laying out the food, we were told that we “had to wait until the rest of the guests were served”… and when we finally got done playing, there was no more food. 😠
and that’s not to mention that there were actually two separate groups engaged — “snake suspenderz” and “hobbit and hare” — and they paid us for one hour, in spite of the fact that some of us actually performed for two hours…
and when i approached the lady that had hired us, and said “we didn’t get fed, and we didn’t get paid”, i had to hound her every step, while she tried to sidestep the issue and blame it on everyone else for an extra 30 minutes, before she agreed to go to an ATM and withdraw the money from her personal account.
once again, this is an upscale retirement home in a trendy, gentrified area north of the university district, where the residents have gold-plated nametags, which is run by a corporation that regularly deals in hundreds of thousands of dollars (at least), and they appear to have no regard for the musicians they “hire” to entertain their high-paying residents… they wouldn’t treat a caterer like this… hell, they have a caterer on staff (which didn’t improve his attitude when we wanted to eat, however), but they feel perfectly justified in STIFFING THE BAND, because anybody can blow through a heavy collection of plumbing and make sounds that are acceptable to old people… 😠
and even if (as i was repeatedly assured would happen) the check does arrive on monday, the fact is, i filled out their fecking paperwork IN MAY so that they would be able to present me a check on THE DAY OF THE PERFORMANCE, and it DIDN’T HAPPEN… AGAIN!! 😠
which leaves us in a difficult position indeed, because the people for whom we are playing both LOVE us, and, decidedly, AREN’T the ones who are (or, apparently, aren’t) paying us. if we refuse to play, the old people suffer… 😕
anyway, the day after, i had my “annual wellness check” with dr. wacka-loon, which went more-or-less as expected, and then we had eleven friends over for “game night”, which, by the time it started i was already out of spoons, and was able to hold on only through liberal application of various mind-altering substances… all of which, surprisingly, are now legal, in spite of everything. 😉
and despite the fact that the “real” world expects me to hit the ground running, i still haven’t quite managed it… i’ve already tackled, more or less, an erroneous water shut-off notice and ⅔ of a confirmation for a snake suspenderz gig that’s happening on thursday…
more later, but for now: two major advantages to being at home, rather than camping out at the oregon country fair: flush toilets that are mere steps away from my current location, instead of significantly used porta-pottys that are two blocks away, and refrigerated, artesian well water instead of warm, chlorinated tap water that has seen the inside of a tanker truck. 😛
damn, that’s supposed to be a disgusted face with its tongue stuck out… i’m going to have to work on that… 😐
and that’s not to mention driving for 5 hours, and unpacking from a weeks worth of camping… i still have to do several loads of laundry, put my camping gear away, and take a shower…
this is my official pre-OCF post for 2015, among other things.
it has been SO FUCKING HOT for the past couple of days that i haven’t been able to run either of my real “computers” except for a couple of brief periods when i had to set up a trial wordpress instance for AVBT, and then produce some simple graphics for the site. it’s been hot enough that, if i keep my computers running for more than a couple of hours, they start acting funny… and, to be honest, i don’t blame them. it’s a good thing this is a holiday weekend, and even better that we don’t have to go on a one-day road-trip to portland — the mother-in-law and her housemate are not throwing a party this year because the housemate has had another stroke recently, and isn’t in any shape to do anything but smoke cigarettes (which is what caused the first stroke), and convalesce in her air-conditioned house…
on the up side, i’m almost ready to go to OCF again this year. there have been the standard rumours of intense heat, bugs, tight camping, changes in the layout of the fair, and other stuff that may or may not actually be things that affect me… this year, for the first time since i actually started going to the fair (2004), simon will not have to put up the stage (the stage was made into a “permanent structure”, like the ritz and the main stage, last year) which means that he’ll have more time to hang around and get drunk, which may or may not be a good thing, especially since he actually has a speaking part (The Ringmaster of The Ding-A-Ling Brothers Circus) this year.
amazingly enough, i may actually post on this blog from the fair this year, because i have several technological “helpers” that i have never had before: i have a solar charger for my phone and tablet, i have access to a secure cloud storage device, and i am definitely going to take my phone, and probably going to take my tablet to the fair this year… i can just imagine sitting out in the woods and updating my blog… all i need is a wifi password, which i know they have, i just don’t know what it is… yet… and, actually, i don’t even need that, because my phone is also a wifi hotspot… it’s amazing, scary and incomprehensible, all at the same time…
until then, i’m hunkering down in my hole beside the fan, not having access to either of my “real” computers, reassuring the dogs that it will all be over soon (they don’t believe me) and hoping that by next week things will be somewhat cooler. 😛
and while i have been typing this, i got a text-message from that same mother-in-law, who informs me that she’s getting some cannabis plants tomorrow… and, yes, she lives in a place where it is currently legal on the state level… this is another thing that’s amazing, scary and totally incomprehensible, at the same time… 😐
once again, i would like to offer my utmost gratitude to my wife, who made it possible for me to own the awesome music notation software called Sibelius. it has made processes like this take so much less time than doing the same thing “by hand”… and it’s not something that i have to imagine, as i have actually done projects like this “by hand” in the past, and it was so tedious and drawn-out over, literally, months, that i no longer do such projects… conversely, this project in it’s entirety, took 5 weeks to go from “a gleam in my eye” to having finished parts and a recording… and 4 weeks and 5 days of that were waiting for the score to arrive from the publisher. 😎
so, there’s this march in honor of Joyce’s 71st New York Regiment written in 1881 by Thornton Barnes Boyer, which we’ve been trying to play with the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band for several years now, and getting nowhere… primarily because of the fact that there are several different “arrangements” of it scattered across the 35-odd musicians in the band, which have several differences which, while not major, definitely mean that playing it as an ensemble is a lot more difficult. and that’s not to mention that it is in the key of E♭ minor (six flats, for those of you who may not know), which, for a community band with players of all abilities, is asking a bit too much…
but that may or may not be the issue, as i discovered at a recent BSSB rehearsal that, in fact, there are two different “arrangements” of Joyce’s 71st NY Regiment March just in the trombone section, and that they are enough different that playing the two of them and expecting it to sound even reasonably coherent was impossible, as one of them had the “Trio” in an entirely different key all together.
a little bit of research revealed the fact that there are several different “arrangements”, which include adding harmony and ornamentation to the trio, changing the key of the trio to the relative major, and changing the location of the “Da Capo”, all of which were made long after the original composer, TB Boyer, had passed on, and nobody could decide which of the many different arrangements was “best”. one thing that they all agreed on, however, was that the original piece had been published by J.W.Pepper.
a tiny light bulb appeared over my head, as i realised that i actually own a 100-year-old musical instrument with the J.W.Pepper logo stamped on it, and i actually know where J.W.Pepper has a branch location in tukwilla…
so, i went to J.W.Pepper and asked if they still carried the original version of Joyce’s 71st NY Regiment March, not arranged by anyone, and, bob’s-yer-uncle, they have it. not only that, but they have a version of it that has been transcribed for modern instruments, which is really an issue when you realise that what constitutes a concert band has changed pretty dramatically in the past 120 years: no saxhorns, no helicons, no ophecleids, quinticlaves or clavitubes, no serpents, consistent woodwinds, a tuning note that is several cents higher than it was, etc., etc., etc…
however, they sold the publishing rights to some other company, which only prints copies on demand, so i had to wait until they printed a copy… just for meeeeee… 😊
i got it the other day, and entered it into the aforementioned, AWESOME MUSIC NOTATION SOFTWARE (which took all of 5 hours, stretched out over a couple of days) and transposed it down a half-step, into D minor, which only has one flat!
my impression is that it will be much easier to muddle our way through, now that we’ve all got the same arrangement, and it’s in a key that doesn’t twist our brains while we’re trying to learn it… 👍
and, because of the fact that the software also outputs in sound formats, i have been able to hear what it’s going to sound like (more or less) to make sure that all the parts are correct BEFORE i print them and hand them out to people!
the moisture festival is over for another year (although macque said that he would consider adding another moisture festival in november)… we’re going to see The Hacki Ginda Show — The Last Laugh & Then auf wideresehen on saturday, which will be the first time i will have seen the audience view for the famous 3D act that i played tuba and sound effects for in the moisture festival. i feel a lot better about the moisture festival than i have in the past, at this time. it may be that what i’ve heard about the more evil aspects being based more on stupidity rather than maliciousness may actually be true… or it may be that my years of griping about the bands may have actually made a difference. one way or another, i’m a lot more relaxed and at ease concerning my participation than i have been in quite some time.
in the process of managing a farcebook account for frank zappa, i have successfully reconnected with a guy who i have known since we were in third grade. if this were the ONLY thing farcebook were good for, that would be sufficient… however, i recently read a post by a friend of mine who discovered that, if they’re not specifically blocked, other farcebook users, and 3rd party apps have access to a whole list of stuff farcebook “knows” about you, like your bio, birthday, family and relationships, interests, religious and political views, websites, whether or not you’re on line, status updates, photos, videos, links, notes, home town, current city, education and work, activities… which means, basically, that i’m not going to put anything personal into farcebook, apart from pictures of my cat.
but, at the same time, i’m really excited about reconnecting with joe. we met when i lived in buffalo, new york, and we did magic shows together. we were actually good enough that, when we were in 7th and 8th grade, we actually went back to the elementary school that we had gone to previously, and did shows for them… something that, basically, wouldn’t be allowed at all in this “modern” age… and i still remember this one show we did where we asked for a volunteer from the audience, and the kid who came up was named Kimo Popohadjopolis… and i even remember how to spell it, because we gave our volunteers certificates with their names on them, as souveniers… i lost touch with him when my parents moved back to seattle, when i was 12 or thereabouts. he’s still a magician, currently working for Universal Studios Harry Potter in Osaka… 😎
also, another really cool thing that happened to me: once again, about the time i was 12 or so, i read this amazing story about this guy named Tom Noddy, who had a job at the San Francisco Exploratorium blowing bubbles. i was entranced by the idea that anyone could actually get a job blowing bubbles, and i vowed that eventually i would have a job like his… and now Tom Noddy is my farcebook friend, and when i told him that story, he said he wished people would stop telling him that story, because it reminds him of how old he is… 😎
so the moisture festival starts this week. i’ve got a sancapators rehearsal on wednesday, and then i play with the sancapators on thursday. then i’ve got a fremont philharmonic rehearsal on saturday. then starting a week from wednesday i play, with snake suspenderz, one show each wednesday, thursday and friday, three shows saturday, two shows sunday and one show monday. then i’ve probably got a fremont phil rehearsal on saturday, april 4th, and on wednesday the 8th i start all over again, with the phil, one show each on wednesday, thursday and friday, three shows saturday, and two shows sunday. my recollection is that last year i got sick on one of the days that i played with the sancapators, and spent the rest of the festival recovering. i’m going to try to avoid that this year, if at all possible.
moe broke a tooth few weeks ago, while she was on her way to las vegas, and then she broke another tooth about a week later, which she had pulled about a week ago, which resulted in dry socket, a very painful condition that i would have preferred she NOT have to suffer. she went to the dentist today to get her crown made, for the original tooth she broke, and she’s got another appointment to have some other work done in a couple of weeks. it makes me really glad that i’ve got indestructable teeth (seriously, ever since i was a kid the dentists i have gone to have shooed me out of their office as quickly as possible so that they can get actual, paying customers in their chairs, and some have been rather obvious and rude about it), but i wish she didn’t have to go through all this, because i know how painful it can be. 😐
i splurged and bought a USB turntable that actually works (compared to the sony turntable that i had, which appeared to work, but didn’t, in some extremely significant ways that weren’t actually evident until almost the end of the project), and re-started on the process of rendering all of the remaining vinyl in the house (which is a surprisingly small amount at this point) into a digital format that can be played on “today’s” devices. i’m rendering the vinyl albums into .flac format, for burning onto CDs, .ogg format for playing on my desktop, and .mp3 format for playing on my phone and tablet… of course i’m also thinking of how this whole project can be monetized once i’m finished with my own projects, because i can’t be the only person with a hoard of obsolete but desirable music… 👿
some jehovah’s witlesses just came by our house. it’s the first active evangelisation attempt we’ve had on the house in a very long time. the last time i was taken off guard and actually took their line of drivel for a minute before i ejected them from the property, but this time i was alerted (thanks to zorah, who barks at anything that moves, so i had to be a little aware, as well), and i met the guy on the front porch and told him that i wasn’t interested in his drivel before he even had the chance to say anything. i went back in the house and, while i watched, four more people in a car drove up, so i went down to the driveway and said, very clearly and slowly, “Tina Chopp is God! Praise her OR DIE!!”… i suppose now they’re going to call the police on me, but it was worth it. 👿
by the way, this post is at least partially because my sister posted that she and her husband are “not very exciting people”… the reason you’re not very exciting people is because you don’t try hard enough… 😛
we had a snake suspenderz gig at the old-folks home in renton this afternoon.
we have actually been hired by this particular old-folks home for four gigs throughout 2015. this is the second one. the third one is in april, and the fourth one is in october.
you would think, because of the fact that THEY KNOW WE’RE COMING, that they could pull their corporate head out of their ass for long enough, as they agreed before the previous performance, to get us FUCKING PAID ON TIME… 😛
but if you thought that, you would be wrong… AGAIN… 😛
and, as we experienced the last time, if we simply refused to play, our audience, which has absolutely no control over the redistribution of wealth, would be the ones who suffer. 😡
monday i’ve got a fremont phil rehearsal. tuesday i have a sousa band rehearsal. wednesday i have a fighting instruments of karma rehearsal. thursday i have a snake suspenderz gig. sunday, a week from today, i have a fremont phil gig. wednesday week, i have a fighting instruments of karma rehearsal… then the moisture festival starts…
i was cleaning up in the workshop today and i found the keys to the thule box, which i had to have new ones made several months ago when i wanted to use the thule box for something and couldn’t find the keys. they were sitting on the surface of my secondary workbench, under a massive pile of other projects (at least 5, going back to last summer) which either got abandoned, or the detritus from finishing never got cleaned up. i didn’t finish cleaning up, but i made a significant start. maybe tomorrow.
i’ve got my DX7 on my desk, because i want to work with reason to find some synth voices that i don’t have to tweak, so that the next time i go to bellingham i’ll have something ready to play live. about half of the time that i spent playing music last week was actually tweaking the voices to get something that didn’t sound like it was part of a pop song. i would use the DX7 voices except for the fact that the internal battery is dead, and i have to take the synth completely apart to replace it. fortunately the battery is really common (i have a couple of them that are still in their blister pack), but replacing it is something that i think i want to have help with, much in the same way that i needed help replacing the brake pads in my old car… not that i don’t know how to do it, but someone who knows how to do it to make sure that i don’t do things incorrectly, and to help if something breaks.
this is after taking my piano to bellingham, in the hopes of being able to use that, but one of the first things that was done to it after i left was that one of the tines was broken (number 50) and, until a replacement is found, the piano is currently in storage in the attic, which is doubtless a lot safer place for it than where it was, under the window in my living room.
but, as much as i would like to, the probability that i will be going to bellingham in the next few weeks is low, because of the looming moisture festival and its surrounding chaos.
the moisture festival is approaching at an appalling rate, and i am, once again, playing in three out of the four bands at the palladium: The Fighting Instruments of Karma, Snake Suspenderz and The Fremont Philharmonic. i have rehearsed and/or played with snake suspenderz (or significant portions thereof) and the fremont phil enough recently to know that we’re probably going to do okay, but we could use more rehearsal, and i haven’t played with the FIOK enough to be absolutely certain that we need more rehearsal, but probably aren’t going to get it. i’m still ambivalent about my participation in the moisture festival, but my vocal ranting has been dissipated somewhat by the inclusion of snake suspenderz in the lineup of show bands… but i didn’t donate $100 last year to get a star on the wall, like i did two years ago, and, unless the “stipend” is well above where it was last year, it’s not likely that i’m going to donate this year either.
today has been a banner day for people or robots trying to crack my shit… once again, i will advise you that if you try to login using anything other than the correct username and password, you get two attempts and then you are IP blocked for two weeks. after that, you get two more attempts and then you are blocked for a month. here’s a final hint: the username is NOT admin. 😛
only time will tell, and it’s verging on moisture festival time, so it may be a while before we know for sure… but i found a patch editor for the DX7 that runs on my mac, so, one way or the other, it’s gonna be a fun ride… 😎
so, we went to wilsonville, yesterday, to play for a bunch of shriners. rather predictably, we ROCKED THE HOUSE, which, also rather predictably, resulted in the entire band being, essentially, offered membership in the shriners club.
from what i’ve been able to ascertain from external sources (google), it normally takes an "average" male person about four to eight months to achieve the status of "master mason", which is the requirement for joining the shriners. this is, of course, lacking the essential "recommendation" without which none of this is possible anyway, and it’s definitely a “men only” club, as, as far as i have been able to tell, there aren’t any female masons of any variety – females are not "allowed" to become masons, and have to make due with "The Order of The Eastern Star" or some such other nonsense.
among the "requirements" for becoming a mason of any variety, once we’ve done away with the gender and recommendation requirements, is that one has to believe in a "Supreme Being"…
that’s not a problem for me, but i suspect that it’s a matter which the masons might take exception, given the opportunity… or, at least, the masons with whom i am most immediately familiar, i.e. the "master masons" of the Al Kader shrine center — as an aside, i must notice the distinct similarities between "Al Kader" and "al-Qa’eda"… while they probably think that they are about as far away from the term "terrorism" as one group of people could get, my impression is, whether right or left, an extreme is still an extreme… and, in my opinion, they are, most definitely, extreme, in more than one way.
but, back to the issue at hand…
the requirement that one "believes in a "Supreme Being"" will, i’m fairly certain, begin to rub people the wrong way. i “believe” (have absolute knowlege, which i can’t “share” with anyone, even if i wanted to) in a “Supreme Being” who both exists, and doesn’t exist, at the same time; who is both personally, intimately involved in the minutest details of everyday life, and doesn’t care about you, or me, or the evil that is being done in the world, or anything else… when it can be said to exist at all.
requiring this kind of God to be capable of being labeled “male” or “female” is pointless, meaningless and a waste of time. this kind of God, can (if it can be said to exist at all) be male, female, all-sex and no-sex, all at the same time…
which raises a distinct question when the "Illustrious Chaplain" commenced yesterday evening’s celebration with a prayer to “father god”, which was echoed with vehement reverance by a lady who was standing next to me, who kept saying “praise jeezis” over and over during the prayer…
it is this kind of behaviour which makes me suspicious of the shriners, especially when they make a point of saying things like “While our backgrounds and interests may be diverse, what binds us together are shared values…” there have been too many times in my past where that kind of language meant “what binds us together are shared values, which if you don’t happen to share, in whatever detail, we are bound to make your life more miserable than it already is”…
this was driven home to me when i was thinking about postulating to the clampers, a few years ago, and discovered that, among other things, the people that i would have been forced to hang out with were the most foul-mouthed, disrespectful, low-life, ignorant rednecks i have ever had the pleasure of meeting. while the al kader shriners are definitely not the clampers, or the eagles, it appears to me as though the only significant difference is the amount of money in their checking accounts, and the fact that there are more elected civic officials in the shrine temple than there are in the clamper hall.
okay, so, ASSUMING that we can overcome that hurdle, the first degree is apprentice, which is all about moral character… and if i don’t “believe” in the same kind of “supreme being” that they do, it comes as no surprise that i don’t have the same morals they do… except that i do, for different reasons, which are going to be another big hurdle to overcome. to top it all off, there is a catechism that i am already, really NOT interested in memorising, because, if nothing else, i have limited enough brain-cells as it is, and i’m very likely going to be A LOT more interested in using them for memorising other bits of useless trivia which i’m not going to be able to use in six months. if joining their club with the cool hats means memorising anything i don’t already know, then i’m probably going to give their club with the cool hats a miss. sorry.
so, once again, ASSUMING that we can overcome those hurdles as well (the word that i was given last night is that we could “very easily become shriners”), one of the aims of the organisation is to have a group of people with whom you feel comfortable hanging out. i have that! i don’t need an artificial organisation that claims to be oriented towards the arts and sciences when i am part of an extremely natural, non-organised group of people whose entire livesare a part of the arts and sciences… and i feel comfortable hanging around with them, whereas i’m very definitely NOT comfortable hanging around with a bunch of fat, filthy rich old men, horny, sleazy young men who want to be fat, filthy rich old men when they grow up, and their “ladies”… the reason we ROCKED THE HOUSE last night was because there wasn’t another musician in the house. sure, there were people who had played musical instruments when they were in school, 40 years ago, and people who play musical instruments as a hobby, but there wasn’t a single current member of a band or soloist in the entire house, with the exception of Accidental Rhino. i really don’t want to join a club just so that i can play for their events… my impression is that i wouldn’t get paid as much or as frequently…
honestly, this club with the cool hats doesn’t really have much that attracts me — cool hats and cool jewelry are about it — so why… fucking why am i so drawn to them? 😐
it’s been on my schedule for 6 months or more, but now that i actually know where this gig that we have this weekend (yes, we’ve actually got a gig on valentine’s day) is, i feel a bit more comfortable writing about it…
about… what? six months ago? something like that… anyway, about six months ago, hobbit pinged me and asked me if i was going to be available for a gig in oregon on valentine’s day. i said yes, pencilled it in, and promptly forgot about it until about two weeks ago, when i promptly remembered we had a gig coming up that i didn’t know anything about, and had a minor freak-out… especially because i had somehow gotten the idea that it was near eugene, which wouldn’t be a bad thing, except i didn’t know whether we were planning on spending the night somewhere, or what.
hobbit’s response to my freak-out was to schedule a rehearsal for tomorrow, and a “pre-rehearsal” with me, today, to write out a couple of new charts (because i now legallyown Sibelius!! 😎 ), and during our meeting today he informed me that it is not in eugene, but in wilsonville, which is much closer, at the Al Kader shrine temple.
so i’m spending the day travelling to and from portland to play at a shrine temple on valentine’s day. fortunately, i’ve got a patient and tolerant sweetie who has agreed to go out to dinner with me on friday, in exchange for her going to las vegas for a veterinary conference next week. the shriners are paying us $200 a piece, plus another $50 for gas, and in exchange, we are going to rock their house, figuratively speaking, for three hours.
i’m sort of ambivalent about shriners… they wear cool hats, these particular shriners have excellent taste in music, and my grandfather (who died before i was born) was a shriner at the mohammed temple in peoria, illinois… but i’ve never been one to pay much attention to other people’s “mystic”, quasi-religious rites, and there’s a sheen of “better-than-you” “old-boy’s-network” slime over the whole deal, which is the main thing that caused me not to postulate to the clampers, and has been a major “thing” to get over in the process of going to burning man and OCF as well. as it is, i’ve got plenty of fezzes, most of which are not shrine fezzes (and one which was made by the company that makes shrine regalia, but with no emblems on it), and i plan on supplying fezzes to my fez-less band-mates use… and, maybe, i’ll get a chance to talk to an actual shriner about my grandfather.
in a post called fezorocity and antique brass…, from 100911, i wrote of obtaining an antique tenor horn, around 100 years old, stamped with the J.W. Pepper logo. i actually did some research online and found pictures of similar horns from around the same era.
i immediately featured the horn in an educational post entitled “THE "RIGHT WAY" TO REMOVE A STUCK BRASS MOUTHPIECE“, in which i used it as an example of a stuck mouthpiece and the correct way to remove it.
then, on 120502, i posted a composite photo of me playing three different tubas, one of which was that same horn with the J.W. Pepper logo. at the time i was under the impression that it was more or less a “mid-west” and/or east coast company.
little did i know… 😎
it turns out that there’s a branch of J.W. Pepper in tukwilla, just down the street from ikea. i went in there today and immediately felt like i’d been there all my life… they had racks of catalogued sheet music all over the place, a rack of batons for sale on the desk, and a friendly dog who greeted me at the door.
i ordered a copy of the piano score for Le Tombeau de Couperin by Ravel, which should be here next week, and i’m going to take the horn with me. 😎
for those of you who may be trying to guess my administrator password, good luck… seriously… you can start with not trying to login as “admin” or “przxqgl”, because either one will get you banned for 6 hours (the first time). and it doesn’t matter how many IP addresses you use, you’ll still get banned if you try to login as “admin” or “przxqgl”, so you may as well give it up.
they finally got the check to us on saturday, which is sooner than they told us the last time, but four days later than they originally agreed upon. it’s really bizarre, because the audiences love us and ask us when will be the next time we’re coming back, but if the “MAN”agement doesn’t get it together to pay us on time, there aren’t going to be too many more shows like this.
i’m deep into rehearsal season again. the panto starts on 13th december and the fremont philharmonic is playing for the fremont lenin lighting/festivus celebration on 5th december. we’re rehearsing twice a week for the panto, we still haven’t got all the music, or finalised who is going to play (or not) for which shows, i just created yet another “new” mailing list for the players, and, already macque has had to delete one address and add another one because of some fiasco in which he’s involved.
my mother-in-law (who may be reading this) came to visit last week, so that she could accompany moe to the fleetwood mac concert. i’m not a big fleetwood mac fan, so i drove them to the venue and then went to the Poodle Dog, which i used to frequent when i was a cab driver, in the middle-1980s. as far as i could tell, the only thing that has changed about the poodle dog is the computer screens in place of the cash register, and the wide-screen flat-panel televisions in place of the CRT screens above the bar… even the smell was the same. we arranged to go to a friend’s birthday party with the M-I-L, as well, but, as we were on our way out the door to go to the party, she fell and fractured her wrist in three places, causing her and moe to be in the emergency room until 3:00 in the morning. she was wondering why i seemed to be expressing a desire not to be in contact with her, and this is the reason why. she’s way too fragile to be an ongoing part of our (meaning mine and moe’s) life. she’s always going to be moe’s mom, so i’m always going to get along with her, more or less; really, it’s not as though i don’t get along with her, like i don’t get along with my parents, but i also don’t want her to put herself into situations where she’s going to get broken. we’ve experienced enough broken-ness without her adding to the batch.
snake suspenderz did another gig for ERA Living on tuesday. we knew about it several months in advance, and “submitted the appropriate paperwork” so that we would (alledgedly) get paid on the day of the performance.
as is becoming rather common with gigs for ERA Living, we were not paid on the day of performance. they apologised profusely (like they did the last time) and assured us that we would be contacted the next day concerning payment.
we were not contacted. 😛
last night, i wrote a “carefully worded” email to the lady that books these gigs, and told her that, in the future, if we are not paid on the day of the performance, we WILL NOT perform!
this morning my email box is full of apologies from people i don’t even know, and assurances that we should expect a check “early next week”…
my impression is that we submitted the appropriate paperwork A MONTH AGO so that we would get paid on THE DAY OF THE PERFORMANCE, and this whole business of having to wait another week because they didn’t cut the check on time is HORSESHIT…
ESPECIALLY since they’re not paying us enough anyway… seriously, these gigs are for upscale retirement homes where the residents get gold name-tags, and there are huge fireplaces, libraries, catered food whenever they want, and so forth… they can afford to be paying us $600 for two hours (which is what we ask for, AND GET from other places) out of petty cash, but they only budget $400 for these gigs, and absolutely can’t go any higher…
on top of that, they consistentlySCREW UP and aren’t able to pay us even $400 on the day that we perform, despite the fact that we get everything set up with them a month in advance… 😛
but if we refuse to play, the old folks who make up the audiences get whatever other groups want to bend over for their money, and, honestly, the old folks really enjoy the music we play…
i wonder how many catered dinners they would have if they didn’t pay the caterer the same way they’re not paying the musicians? 😛
i was up until 1:30 this morning… i had a snake suspenderz gig at a benefit for the moisture festival, which didn’t get out until 10:00, which meant that i didn’t get home until about 11:30, and then i spent 2½ hours preparing and uploading a bunch of files for a guy from the moisture festival… i probably didn’t have to stay up that late, but it took me a while to realise that, despite the fact that my computer said that they uploaded almost instantly, they were actually taking a considerable amount of time to upload (because they were actually fairly large files), and i deleted them and started over several times because it was late and i didn’t realise that, in reality, they weren’t uploading instantly.
there were a bunch of chautauquans at the gig last night: stephan freelan (formerly freeman) was the stage manager, and nanda was there — all five of them this time (there were only four of them when we performed on vashon last week). there were a lot more folks there, but stephan and nanda are the only ones whose names i can reliably remember…
moe has been in spokane since wednesday… alledgedly, this is the last of her travelling out of town for a while (she claims that she doesn’t have to travel again until january), which, if it’s true, would be a very good thing indeed.
i played with the fighting instruments of karma in mt. vernon on friday, olympia on saturday, and vashon island on sunday. i left my top hat in mt. vernon, but i didn’t notice it until saturday, when i was in olympia and getting ready for the show… so i had to go to mt. vernon to pick it up today. for all the time i lived in mt. vernon, the first time i have ever been in the lincoln theater was friday…
on vashon, i arrived very early… we caught the 9:10 ferry, and we weren’t actually supposed to show up until 12:00, so i got a chance to wander a little bit on vashon, and i found a whole bunch of amanita muscaria… truly a cup of wonder… i took a bunch of pictures…
i’m seriously considering applying to go on tour with the chautauqua next year. it starts with performances at the oregon country fair, and (this year) procedes to southeast alaska during the three weeks immediately following the fair. it sounds like A LOT of fun, and it would be a great way to re-connect with a bunch of people from my karass with whom i have been out of contact for far too long… 😎
i went to bellingham saturday, and came back today. there are a number of interesting developments that came about as a result:
apparently there is a “bullet shuttle” that runs from downtown bellingham to downtown seattle and back, that only costs $11… which means that there’s a good chance that i will be taking it to bellingham, and/or whitley will be taking it to seattle more regularly, for the purposes of, basically, getting And More back together. along the same lines, whitley and kamalla have offered to house my keyboards in their house, which means that when i go to bellingham, my keyboards will be set up and ready to go, and when i’m not there, other people will be playing them. the piano (which is missing three tines) has been packed up in a box and sitting behind the couch for about 7 years, and before that it was in a box in the hallway… i haven’t actually had it set up since we moved in to this house… so putting it to good use again is most desirable, and this seems like a prime opportunity.
while i was on my way to bellingham, yesterday, i took sort of a detour through mount vernon, so that i could go by the places i used to live. while i was in mount vernon, it started to rain, and then, quite suddenly, it started to rain so hard that, after slowing down, and slowing down, and turning my windshield wipers to their highest settings, i still could not see, and was forced to take refuge in a parking lot for about half an hour, until the rain let up. as i was pulling out of the parking lot, i saw a building across the street that was, literally, pouring water, tens of gallons a minute, from all of the downspouts… and the streets were flooded in several places, to the point where, when i had to drive through a flooded part, i was concerned because it was over the floorboards of my car… i haven’t seen it rain that much in that short a period of time more than once or twice before in my entire life.
the main reason i went to bellingham in the first place was that kenyth’s 80th birthday was last week, and i went to deliver a birthday present (Operation Mindfuck) on monday. while i was there, i heard that there was going to be a music jam (which is what they’re calling the stairway jam these days), and it was suggested that i come up for it, so i did. another thing that we discussed while i was there was the fact (in my opinion) that kenyth really needs a wikipedia page… a fact that is complicated by the fact that kenyth has kept absolutely ZERO archives of the work that he has done, class notes from classes he has taught, personal correspondence, and that sort of thing, and further complicated by the fact that, to be a wikipedia page that isn’t deleted immediately, a lot of the information posted has to be backed up by stuff that is publically available from internet, which, in this case, would be practically impossible in anything like a realistic way. the upshot is that i am going to help the community of people who want to see this happen, by registering a domain (how about http://KenythFreeman.dance/ or http://JosephPFaddlefum.name/ or something like that? 😉 ) and pointing that domain name towards a blog that i can set up, and then give to the people who actually know what content there is, and can organise it the way it’s supposed to be.
on my way back, today, i mostly took surface streets, and only hit the freeway once or twice. i was north of burlington on what i think was Highway 99, and i found the new location of “The Music Shoppe”, which was a place i worked a couple of times a VERY long time ago: the first time was right after i graduated from the tech school, and ended when i got fired for telling sam, the owner, that the “chemical tank” that he bought, ostensibly to “dip musical instruments”, was full of the chromic acid that he bought and then discovered he couldn’t use because it’s carcinogenic (and, generally, only used as a “bright dip” for brass instruments before they are buffed and refinished), and it was beginning to leak, because it wasn’t really a “chemical tank” but, rather, a stainless steel dairy tank with a bright brass stopper… and the chromic acid was dissolving the bright brass stopper, because, well… chromic acid dissolves brass… 😐
anyway, the second time, he actually subcontracted my musical instrument repair business to repair musical instruments for “The Music Shoppe”, and that ended when he refused to pay me for an instrument that i had fixed, that his customer had refused to pay for. basically i said that, until i got paid i wasn’t going to fix any more instruments for him. he said that he hadn’t paid me because his customer hadn’t paid him, and i pointed out that his customer was HIS customer, and that MY customer was him, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. they apparently moved from their shop in the fountain district in north bellingham, some time in the past, and they are, as of 1st november, moving in to burlington. i left Operation Mindfuck in the front door for them to find when they open up tomorrow. 👿
this is very quickly becoming “an album”… it’s not there yet (i only have 330.3MB on disk, and i want to fill it up, as much as possible, so there’s room for quite a bit more), but what is already there is definitely shaping up in quite a satisfactory way.
because of the fact that i have a backlog of almost-finished, and finished tracks that don’t have a home yet, i actually just added three more tracks to this, which now puts me up to 15… which is still only half of the disk, but this really isn’t about how much stuff is on it so much as it is about the quality of the stuff that’s on it.
i know when i’ve created music that i really like when i don’t even have to be listening to it for it to put a smile on my face… really… and this has the extra, added bonus of, when i am listening to it, i spontaneously erupt in laughter, or experience shivers going up and down my spine.
i’m particularly proud of Lamentations:
which causes me to bounce up and down and emit squeals of evil glee whenever i hear it. it’s an incomprehensible, gnome-like beginning which very quickly devolves into utter senselessness, out of which comes a definite pattern, which, again, fades into gibberish, which slowly resolves into a preacher talking about jerusalem. this is due, in part, to my receiving my complete “Thru The Bible In 5 Years” USB stick, which is packed full of fun noises with which to play around… 😎
yesterday i got up early enough to be in magnolia by 8:00 so that i could sit by the side of the road for three hours while i waited for the magnolia seafair parade to happen around me… with me as the tuba player in the SANCApators. because of the fact that i was the tuba player, there are no pictures — of me or anyone else — that i took, but i’m pretty sure there were pictures taken of me by other folks, because i wore my kilt, a rainbow tie-dyed shirt, my tall hat-of-many-buttons, and my steampunk goggles. carrying an enormous tuba in a parade, dressed in that costume, was definitely an experience… unfortunately it was an experience for everyone else, because i was too busy trying to play the parts and keep more-or-less in line with the six other members of the band… 😐
this is the second seafair related parade that i have participated in this year. i didn’t go to greenwood, because my car isn’t “finished” yet, but i’ve been in chinatown, magnolia, and, in a couple weeks, briar…
next weekend is august 9th, the day that will live in infamy… because i have three different gigs scheduled with three different bands, in three different cities…
i’ve got the festival of the river with the fighting instruments of karma; i’ve got the ballard locks gig with the ballard sedentary sousa band; AND i’ve got the huson’s garden party with the fremont philharmonic… ALL ON THE SAME DAY… 😛
i’m going to make the fighting instruments gig, because they are actually paying the chautaqua $10,000 to do the show, so the chautaqua wants to give them their money’s worth… i may be able to make the garden party, which starts at 7:00, if everything goes as planned and i am able to leave arlington by 6:00, and i encounter no traffic in everett or seattle…
… now i need a place to hide away, oh i believe in yesterday.
i found the web site put up by Dave Gannett, who is my unwitting mentor in all things tuba. dave is the tuba player for Uncle Yoke’s Black Dawgs, a dixieland band from kissimmee florida, the artist behind Tubas From Hell, and one AWESOME tuba player. my first experience seeing him live was at the Friday Harbour Traditional Jazz Festival in 1991, where he played The Flight of The Bumblebee — at the correct speed — on his sousaphone. when he finished the piece, he had it rigged up so that he blew smoke and flames out of his bell on the last note…
i knew i had found a mentor at that moment… 😉
also, two more tracks for The Church of The Pleistocene, thanks to my recent re-acquaintance with Dr. J. Vernon McGee of Thru The Bible Radio Network. i listened to Dr. J. during my ill-fated time as a taxi driver, just before the birth of my son. the main reason i listened to him was because, at the time, taxi cabs only came with AM radios, and the music on AM radio was AWFUL… Dr. J. Vernon McGee wasn’t an awful lot better, but at least i got familiar enough with his distinctive ‘twang’ to make music out of it thirty years later…
i arrived at the fair on tuesday, 140708 and returned home yesterday, 140714, which is also the 11th anniversary of my brain injury.
needless to say, i did not have another brain injury.
this year, as far as it concerns me, everything went right enough that i can consider this year’s OCF experience one of the best vacations i have ever had. things didn’t go 100% right all the time: i lost my sunglasses, there was some controversy about a new part of the theatre, there was the usual tensions regarding whether incense smoke or the odour of porta-potty was more preferable, the booking representative from the ritz didn’t communicate with me directly regarding our tokens… and it rained… but it all worked out in the end: i found my sunglasses immediately after arriving at home, the part of the theatre that was causing the controversy (a place that i called the “wheelchair-exclusion zone”) was summarily dispensed with, next year they’re going to expand the theatre (AGAIN!! 😀 ) and move the porta-potties farther from our noses, we received our tokens anyway, and it rained for almost exactly an hour, before the fair actually opened, and it was cool and cloudy all the rest of the day.
morningwood is now a permanent, year-round installation, rather than having to be taken apart and stored elsewhere during the off season — much to the relief of simon, who now gets to arrive and NOT have to spend a month moving pieces, sorting them out, and building the stage from scratch. as a part of the approval for making it permanent, there were a number of archaelogical digs in the area, and a lot of investigation into the prior use of the site. i got to participate in martini hour with some of the high-up bigwigs from archaeology, who have proved that where morningwood odditorium now stands has been a gathering place for humans for at least 10,000 years.
the dress rehearsal on thursday night, according to tradition(?), is the first time the show is performed in its entirity by a majority of the cast and band, and this time was no exception… what was the exception is that, for the most part, it was a much more complete show than it has been in the past. two years ago we substantially modified a significant portion of the script on friday, after the first day of performances. this year, it was, more-or-less, the same show on thursday as it was on sunday. the primary difference was that there were more lines that were forgotten on sunday than there were on thursday, which is about the least amount of hassle for the amount of entertainment we got out of it that is possible, under the circumstances. there will have to be some re-writing of the parts before december, to remove the OCF-specific references: lines like “lets go to the barter fair! best shopping at OCF!” and references to “flower children” and the ritz will have to be changed in order for our seattle audiences to make sense of the plot
sunday afternoon, after the last show, i was in the ritz, and a guy was leaving. he walked to the bottom of the stairs, and kept on going down. somebody asked him if he needed help, and he mumbled something which could have been “yes”, “no” or “potato”, and two or three people gathered around him. i came down from the top level, and asked if he was diabetic, to which he responded “no, well… yeah”. at that point a couple of the people ahead of me took his shoulders and started guiding him out of the sauna. we got him outside, and sat down on one of the benches outside of the sauna, and he started coming around. he said that he had been “voluntarily” lowering his blood-pressure (it sounded a lot like the kinds of things the PHBFH used to say) and that the “chanting” had put him into a “mind-space” from which he couldn’t recover… i was concerned that he may have been having a heart attack or something. i left him when the ritz’s “certified medical professional” showed up. i went by about a half-hour later and the guy and the “CMP” were still sitting on the bench, talking, but i didn’t hear any sirens or anything that might have implied that he was taken away in an ambulance. i imagine that they have pretty regular medical “emergencies”, especially considering that they let pretty much anybody in to the sauna, regardless of how drunk, high, handicapped or screwed up they are, so they must, either, be pretty good at dealing with these emergencies, or are even better at covering them up. considering that it is OCF, either one is a good option.
140709 Simon and Keith Neale, unknown martini-drinker, and the guy who taught the horse’s ass to tap-dance… no, really!
there are more pictures, which, if i get around to it, will be posted on flickr.
okay, it’s the 30th of june and i haven’t been ranting about SACBO (which happened last weekend) and OCF (which occurs in a little more than a week)…
WTF, ‘eh?
oh, yeah… i’ve also got a parade in darrington with the fighting instruments of karma on the 4th of july. unfortunately, i believe my mother-in-law is coming for the whole weekend, rather than us going to see her, so it won’t get me out of seeing her, as i believed it would… oh well…
fact is, i am pretty apathetic about the whole thing this year. i’ve got a few photos from SACBO, which i haven’t looked at myself, and once the phil got its ritz performance time confirmed (which was last month), i really can’t be arsed to care very much. it will, undoubtedly, be all screwed up by the time i arrive at OCF, and, even if it isn’t, it’ll all be over soon anyway…
ned has decided that he can’t see me any longer. i’ve got two more appointments with him before eight years of “counselling” goes up in smoke. the people he recommended can’t help me, and when he said that they could contact him, they responded by saying that they are restrained by HIPAA from contacting him about me, even if i ask them to… it all has to do with medicare (which i have, but doesn’t include “mental health” coverage) and medicaid (which i don’t have, but which does include “mental health” coverage). apparently the company he works for now (which used to be part of the “public health” system, but is now a privately run company called navos) decided that they are only going to accept medicaid payments, and because of the fact that i don’t have medicaid, i’m being tossed out on my ear. now, technically, i don’t need to see a counsellor for anything any longer… apparently that requirement went away when i qualified for disability (which includes medicare), and i’m doing fairly well, recently, which means that, theoretically, i could just dump ned after two more appointments and be done with it… but… i’ve been in counselling for a LONG time, and it doesn’t feel right to just throw it away… not only that, but moe seems to think that, despite the fact that most of what ned and i talk about these days is frivolous stuff, it would be a good idea to continue in counselling… and i don’t totally disagree with her.
we have three snake suspenderz gigs next week. tuesday we have a gig at horizon house, which we played for last year to great acclaim. thursday we have a gig at the university house, wallingford, which doesn’t pay enough and only wants “background music” for their art opening (they could easily afford to pay us twice the amount they are, out of petty cash, considering how swank and regal the place is, but it’s for a friend of a friend, so we can’t really say much). saturday we have SACBO, which is in a new place this year. apparently, in spite of the crowds of people who attend, the fremont solstice fair budget is on the “shoe-string” level, and they decided to use the parking lot that we have been holding SACBO in for the past few years as a “pay-for” concert venue, which means that SACBO has to move to the former sound mind & body parking lot. it’s good because there won’t be the possibility for loud interruptions, like what happened last year, and it’s a nicer location, with more shade, right next to the water.
this year will also be the 14th16th anniversary (this is why my wife is always right and i am always wrong) of our wedding, which now moves into the class of things i have done for the longest amount of time in my life, including smoking cannabis and being a musician.
the fighting instruments of karma (for which i am now, more-or-less, the “official” tuba player) has a parade in which i am actually going to be “marching”, in darrington, on the 4th of july. moe says i “dodged a bullet” because her mom wants us to come down to portland for a barbecue on the 4th. i’m still not totally sure whether moe will attend or not (although i don’t see any reason why not), but at this point, i’m grateful for anything that puts distance between me and moe’s mother.
then OCF happens from july 8th (or 9th, at the latest) until the 14th. we are already scheduled to perform at the ritz, on saturday, 12th july, at 7:30 pm. if you’re interested, and in the area, i encourage you to come: it is, definitely, not to be missed. both kiki and sasha are cast members this year, which means that stuart will be the pro-tem leader of the band, we will have an alternate drummer (possibly) and at least one new player whose name i have seen bandied about in email, but have never actually met. the philharmonic still hasn’t had any rehearsals, and there is no new music, although some is rumoured to exist, at least in kiki’s mind… in other words, we’re coming into OCF with practically no rehearsals at all, and (at this point) no rehearsals with the cast… just like normal… i’m not even 100% sure what show we are doing this year (although i think it might be “Sleeping Beauty”)…
it’s gotten to be so much of a “tradition” that i’m not particularly worried any longer, but it still causes a small amount of stress.
i’m still alive and kicking, however at this point, whenever i think about posting anything the “meh” takes over.
i played for NANDA‘s 10th anniversary in the balloon hangar at ft. worden, which is now called the “McCurdy Pavillion”. 35 years ago, when i first came across it, it was a mouldy, forgotten world war II relic, taken over by the navy, that had been officially abandoned for 10 years or so. it’s amazing what a little bit of paint and a few hundred thousand dollars can do to a place. i spent saturday morning re-visiting the sacred sound-spaces with which i have become so familiar over the past 35 years, played music with members of my karass, and slept in a motorhome in port townsend. if i had my way, i would have spent quite a bit more time exploring the subterranean vaults, but i had to get thaddeus back so that he could take care of his obligations. i noticed, however, that port townsend is a little more than an hour’s drive from here, which (on heavy traffic days) is not that much further than seattle, which has got me wondering why i don’t get out to port townsend more frequently.
along the same lines, i have been in discussion with eben, clayton and andrew (the leader, and the two other tuba players for the fighting instruments of karma, respectively), and it has been more or less decided that i am now the “official” tuba player for the SANCApators. SANCA is a place in georgetown that is most known for its “School Of Flight”, but offers a variety of classes for all levels, including “drop in” classes in trapeze (the idea of which makes me wonder a little). they have classes in a number of pursuits that, i think, would be both fun and “therapeutic”, such as tumbling, acrobatics, juggling and so forth… it would be interesting to take classes there, but i would have to be sure that they knew about my brain injury, and talk with them about how it would be accounted for.
i’ve got 3 snake suspenderz gigs in the next three weeks: one at horizon house, which we played for a couple of years ago, one at university house, wallingford, which i booked in spite of objections from hobbit, and one at SACBO. the day SACBO starts, i am also going to be showing off my art car at the LeMay Automotive Museum with a whole bunch of other “car-tists”.
through sheer, stubborn will and determination, i got the fremont phil booked at the ritz at OCF before OCF, for the first time EVER… now, instead of wondering when we’re going on, and not knowing until 15 minutes before it actually happens (like what happened last year), we know, ahead of time, that we’re going on at 7:00 pm, saturday, 12th july, and OCF hasn’t even started yet! now, insha’llah, barring unforseen (and 51% likely, due to HIF) other circumstances, we actually know when we’re going to be playing at the naked hippie sauna… 😎
my friend peter brought me his flute. he had done several things to the flute that an average person, who isn’t a musical instrument repair technician, isn’t supposed to do to a flute… and then he figured he could “repad” it himself. so he bought a “repad kit” (yes, they are available, no i won’t link to one, because repadding your flute by yourself is, for the most part, one of the wrong things to do with a flute) from gemeinhardt. they come with pretty much everything you need to either repad your flute, or get into big trouble: a leak-light, a screw driver, a bunch of white shellac, fifteen random pads, a pad-slick, and poorly written instructions (which he didn’t give me). he, then, took the screw driver and proceded to…
lose a pivot screw.
they’re TINY — no more than an a half-centimetre long and a few millimetres in diameter — so it’s not particularly surprising that he lost it, but if he weren’t under the impression that one could repad a flute themselves, he wouldn’t have had this problem. compounding that was the fact that, another of the things you aren’t supposed to do with a flute, that he did, was dip it in a river… and then attempt to lubricate the lower stack with vegetable oil.
now, i can see how, particularly if one is camping or something like that, and one “accidentally” dips their flute in a river, that one might consider the possibility of lubricating it with vegetable oil a possibility… and i am also aware of the fact that, at first, it does, actually, lubricate the inner workings of your flute, but it very quickly hardens and then your flute won’t work at all… which is what happened to my friend peter.
these are all things that a qualified instrument repair technician can fix, fairly easily. they are NOT things that i would recommend doing to your flute. now, don’t get me wrong, i have worked on flutes which were in much worse shape than this, but he could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had brought the flute to me, first…
although i probably would have recommended that he refrain from dipping the flute in a river, all together… 😐
my friend david bought a really expensive curved soprano saxophone on ebay recently — like $1200 expensive — because it had been “cleaned up and completely repadded” by… um… someone.
then he contacted me to find out if he had actually gotten a good deal or not.
on the surface, it appeared that he had paid a little too much, but not anything that couldn’t be fixed with $200 or so of competent repair work. he informed the seller, and actually got $250 back, making the instrument worth $950… still a bit too much, but it appeared that it could be rescued, so i took on the job.
the first thing i did was remove all the keys… which is the first thing you do when you get a sax that needs to be put back into playing condition. i quickly discovered that all the keys had not been removed when it was “cleaned up and completely repadded”.
in fact, on top of the 4 keys that i knew about that were composition cork (instead of the standard leather that most saxes have), i found two pads that were so poorly installed that they probably can’t be rescued. on top of that, i found two springs that were installed in a “haphazard” way (they were installed backwards), one of the clothes guards is missing and another one only has two of its three solder points made solid, and the neck cork needs to be replaced. also, because of the fact that it’s an old curved soprano it has D auxilliary key (modern ones don’t have it), and because of the fact that modern ones don’t have it, people who don’t know any better will block the key closed, so that they don’t have to regulate it… but that also has the unfortunate side effect of making the instrument play out of tune… which is exactly what happened in this case.
which drives the “fixing it” estimate up to $500 or so… and that’s not to mention the two top tone-holes which have been drilled out and replaced with brass tubing…
this is why you have to be REALLY careful about buying old curved soprano saxophones off of ebay… he could have bought a brand-new, FUNCTIONAL curved soprano sax for $800… and he probably will do that once he decides what to do with his $1200 instrument that needs $500 worth of repair before it can even be played.
today, moe’s dad and his wife came to retrieve moe’s mom and her car from their visit with us this past week (it’s a long story: what it boils down to is that, despite the fact that she owns a very large, quite luxurious SUV, moe’s mom is afraid to, and refuses to drive on the freeway, or any place with which she’s not already familiar). they came up by train, i picked them up at the station, and they took off in moe’s mom’s car, whereupon they immediately proceded to get lost and ended up on the freeway going the wrong direction. allegedly they’re going to be back around 6:00 or so, with moe’s mom, and moe, who is at a dog trial today, which is why her parents are here. then they’re going to take the rabbit and go back to portland…
oh yeah… we found a pet rabbit in our front yard last week. it turned out to belong to our neighbour down the street, but they don’t want it any longer, so it’s going to portland with moe’s mom, and she’s allegedly going to give it to its new owner… i say allegedly because moe’s mom is in love with the rabbit and wants to take it home herself, despite the fact that her housemate (who is also her landlord) would have a fit…
i’ve got a BSSB rehearsal tuesday, and then a BSSB performance on saturday, i think… or maybe it’s sunday…
i played three shows: two on friday, and one on saturday in which i blew out my embochure, and managed to catch a cold. then i had a rehearsal on monday, a rehearsal on tuesday, and i played one show wednesday and thursday, despite the cold, which is still there. i’ve got two shows tonight, three tomorrow, three sunday, and then — possibly — a break on monday and tuesday of next week, then it starts all over again… if i don’t have rehearsals… which i probably won’t find out about until they’re imminent.
i suppose this is what i should expect, seeing as how i’ve been complaining that we have had fewer and fewer shows each year for the past several years… 😛
the shows are going REALLY well, though, so that’s something…
we went to tokeland and spent a blissfull, completely disconnected five days on the beach. then we came home, and ever since, i have been up to my eyeballs in moisture festival. i have a break (after one show this morning) for two days (tomorrow and tuesday), and then it starts again and goes until next sunday, only i have three shows next sunday… and there’s a pretty good chance that there will be at least one, and possibly two rehearsals within the next two days, so it’s not really going to be that much of a break… and whatever it is will be very interesting, since i blew out my embochure yesterday, and then played another show on top of it this morning…
i’ve got a bunch of pictures from the beach, but i need to sleep now, so they’ll have to wait.
i got my computer fixed by the kubuntu gods at Kubuntu Forums, where they are quite a bit better than just about anybody else at diagnosing and helping to fix any problems that one might have with one’s kubuntu system… and, by the way, it wasn’t the video drivers. the people who put together the update packages left out an important part of the desktop manager, and released a new update that had that important part in it the next day… 😉 i suppose that’s what i get for using a free, community-based operating system.
it could be worse. i could be using <shudder> micro$lop…
moe returned very early friday morning, so the doggies have calmed back down to their standard level of chaos.
i’ve got a rehearsal later on this evening with the fremont philharmonic, whose moisture festival dates are april 2nd through april 6th. we’ve only had one rehearsal, we still don’t know exactly who is playing when, and there’s a WHOLE BUNCH of new music that we haven’t learned yet. then i’ve got a rehearsal with the SANCApators (which is eben sprinsock‘s other band) on wednesday. they’ve got two rehearsals, and then i’m playing with them at the moisture festival on march 23rd. then i’ve got a rehearsal with snake suspenderz on thursday. snake suspenderz is playing a private gig at a corporate party on saturday, and a public gig on sunday, at C&P Coffee in west seattle, if you’re interested in seeing us play: we’re doing a special performance with Katy Webber, who is a FANTASTIC jazz singer (who also played the part of Dick Whittington in the most recent panto)… snake suspenderz is also playing as a “pit band” at the moisture festival march 26th through march 30th. i don’t know if we’re going to have any “on stage” performances this year, but even still, i’ve got a total of 19 performances, which should make up for any loss that i experience due to the fact that i’ve gotten paid less per share than last year (grumble, mutter).
i’ve got a whole bunch more moisture festival performances this year than i had last year, and a combination of widely varying circumstances means that they’re actually taking snake suspenderz seriously this year, but if they maintain the new “tradition” of paying a smaller share than they did last year (which started last year), this will probably be the last year that i participate in the moisture festival in the way that i have been for the past ELEVEN YEARS now… 😛 of course i don’t know that they’re going to pay less per share than they did last year, but at this point i don’t trust the board of directors to do anything rational any longer.
and before any of that happens, moe and i are going to heppner oregon again (like we did last year), and after that, we’re going to the ocean for a few days. we’re going to a place that DOES NOT have wifi, so it’s going to mean that we’re going to have to exist for a few days without our smart-phones, or ipads, or laptops… we’re going to have to do with kites, dogs, beach, and each other… like in olden times.
i’m getting the first artwork done on the new ganesha the car. i’ve got a vector drawing of panchamukhi ganesha (five faces) and i’m getting a vinyl sticker made and it’s being applied on saturday. 😎
also, snake suspenderz has two gigs, one on march 1st, and one on march 2nd… 😎
The Fremont Players and an epic kid present Kid versus King Rat, 140105, 4:00 pm show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc0G1qgqWD4
the entire 1½ hour video can be seen here, but this was the highlight of the whole run of performances. basically the guy in the red cloak, King Rat, is the villain, and the woman in the white tunic and black vest is the hero, Dick Whittington. this is the last show of the run, and things got just a little out of control for a few seconds…
we now have four completed performances of the panto under our belts. it’s going surprisingly well, considering that it’s only the first weekend. our houses have been sparse, but energetic, and i’ve actually got to the point where i’m playing more than 75% of the notes on the piece with which i’ve been having the most difficulty, i.e. the piece that is in the normally-totally-okay key of E♭, but because of the fact that it re-focuses my attention on the two fingers of my right hand (middle and ring fingers) which are the LEAST under my control, since my injury, it is a real challenge… but it’s getting better, because we’re only four performances into the run and i’m already playing >75% of the notes correctly, so i’ll probably have it after a few more performances.
i got out of the palladium shortly after the last performance of the day concluded, and was home by 6:00 pm, when i discovered that i had left my computer glasses at the palladium, so now i’m sitting as far away from the screen as possible, but not so far away that i can’t see the letters i am typing… sasha has my glasses, and i plan on retreiving them tomorrow, but it’s really frustrating typing and reading what i type without my reading glasses… getting old is a drag, sometimes…
moe’s father is in the hospital, and his wife is in montana (or some place like that) helping moe’s half-brother’s wife who has had premature twins recently — the deeper i dive in to the pool, the more moe’s family is like a television situation comedy gone horribly, and irretrievably wrong, really… but my family is not much better, despite (or, because of) the fact that i haven’t communicated with any of them for more than 5 minutes or so in thirty years… but that is a different story, entirely. in any event, moe’s father has nobody else to care for him, and the last i heard, the hospital was giving him a 50% chance, so moe has taken an emergency trip to portland to whip some doctors into shape and get her father’s wife back from wherever it is that she is, so that moe doesn’t have to do it any longer. end result is that i am here taking care of frank, zorah, the parrots and snake on my own, while moe is in portland for an indeterminate period of time.
i broke down and paid for a year of VPN service. now the IP address of my linux box is in stockholm, sweden, the IP address of my mac (which is in the same location) is in southhampton, england, and the IP address of my phone is in austin, texas. i imagine that this may present a bit of a problem when i log into the moisture festival artist’s WIFI, but i’ll deal with that as it happens, rather than worrying about it now.
i got an order for 50 boxes of aparajita from essence of the ages, which is run by what appears to be a “christian” woman. i don’t know why she’s buying incense from me (apart from the fact that i am the only vendor in the western hemisphere who sells what she wants to buy, and she has customers who want to buy what i have to sell) but i think it’s pretty amusing. the up side of it, for me, is that it makes the occasion of my buying my first incense from the actual distributor for sri satyanarayana parimala factory EVER, possible… 😎
the panto starts next week. we’re doing amazingly well. we had our first official, complete run-through last wednesday, and there are still two more rehearsals before we open. we’ve still got one more piece to learn before we open, but that’s pretty standard. and the shows have been selling out really quickly, which is really good.
my “old school” stereo system works exactly the way i was hoping it would, and tomorrow (or monday, at the latest) i plan on making a trip to pacific custom cabling to get another ⅛"-mini-stereo-to-stereo-RCA cable, and then both of my computers will be hooked up to it. for the first time EVER i will have a decent-quality stereo behind my attempts to compose music with reason and/or sibelius. what is the world coming to? 😉
i’m cold, and i also think that i may be getting a cold, which is not good, because i’ve got important obligations that i’m probably going to have to fulfill, even if i am sick. it may just be that i am still wearing summer-ish clothing and it’s getting to the point where i should probably switch to winter-ish clothing, but i’m too lazy.
the obligations for the next few weeks include: giving rick a ride to the cannabis dispensary (which is usually an “all-day” event, depending on how many dispensaries we visit), a fremont phil gig for a moisture-festival/panto-related performance, the winter panto performances, the lenin lighting, and probably a bunch of other rehearsals, gigs, and what-have-you, that i am forgetting.
we’re well into the fall/winter rehearsal season, but we have only had one panto rehearsal, because all of the music isn’t completed yet. i have two new arrangements for the phil which are ready, however: one is a piano rag by scott joplin called “I Am Thinking Of My Pickaninny Days”, and the other is an arrangement of that piece of music made famous by the bulgarian womens’ radio choir, called “Polegnala e Todora” by philip koutev, which is in 11/16… it’s almost in 3/4 time, but not quite… which may make it a lot more difficult to play, but i’m hoping that we won’t have to get too technical about it. it’s also got a rubato feel about it, that, i’m hoping, will cover for any glaring technical difficulties that we might encounter.
even though i haven’t heard a note of either of them, i’m fairly confident that the arrangements are not going to be the problem once we actually get around to rehearsing them, because i also wrote an arrangement of Drei Equale für Vier Posaunen by beethoven, only four steps lower (so you don’t have to use an alto trombone for the high part), which i tried out with the trombone section from the ballard sedentary sousa band over the weekend. while they were sight-reading, completely unsure of the notes, and not playing with any confidence whatsoever, when they were all playing in the same place, the arrangement stood on its own… completely unlike the previous times i have tried to arrange things, using lilypond, and had significant difficulties getting the right notes to go down on the printed page.
moe has decided that we have to paint and re-carpet the bedroom before our new, king-sized bed arrives, which means that, once again, i am surrounded by boxes, and stacks of stuff, and dressers and suchlike that were in our bedroom. of course, the up side to all this is that, in a couple weeks or so, we will have a freshly, newly-repainted bedroom, with new fixtures, and a new bed… it’ll sort of be like a hotel room, except that we won’t have to go home eventually.
the rat problem is still there. i trapped two rats earlier this week. they go for two or three days without touching the traps, and then there are two in one day… then they go back to not touching them again. these intelligent creatures are being murdered by me, because they are destructive to the way i want to live. i am responsible for the murders of cute, furry, intelligent, rat mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters, because i don’t like the fact that they chewed up the pluming under the floor of my house…
no matter how hard i try, i am unable to convince myself that what i am doing is not wrong. 😛
i got this silly little app for my smart phone called Yellofier which is presented by a pair of folks, one of whom is boris blank (of Yello). the app is, basically, a sampler with a bunch of preset effects and a bunch of preset samples, and a sequencer, all of which is obscured by an interesting, quasi-intuitive interface. i’m not sure i’m going to actually use it for anything, although there is already a group that has has released an album using it… or, perhaps, because of that fact… but it’s silly and fun, and it will give me something to do while everybody else is playing angry birds. here is an example of what i’ve been doing so far.
snake suspenderz has been pretty busy recently. we did a wedding, and we did a set for the chateau at valley center, and today we’ve got a moisture festival ( 😐 ) gig. who knows how long it’s going to last this time, but fun is fun, so why not go with it?
quite a number of years ago, i bought a CD of “The Antiphonal Music Of Gabrieli” subtitled “The Glorious Sound of Brass” by the Philidelphia Brass Ensemble, The Cleveland Brass Ensemble and the Chicago Brass Ensemble. it was, i believe, one of the first purchases i ever made on a, then, brand new service called “amazon”, but the current iteration of that service has no record of my purchasing anything like that, so it might have been some other online service.
i have been playing music by giovanni gabrieli for a long time, and he is one of my favourite brass composers, so i figured that this would be an excellent addition to my music collection. however, when i received the disk in the mail, i put it into my CD player and…
nothing happened.
this was before computers had CD players on a regular basis, and the dedicated audio CD player that i had was a sony “diskman” that someone had been throwing away, so i searched around and found another dedicated audio CD player that didn’t have such a sordid background and put the disk in that and…
nothing happened.
then i took a closer look at the CD itself. what i found was this TINY inscription that said this disc is designed for use in super audio cd players only on the back of the box.
no problem, i figured. i’ll just put it into my (at the time) “state of the art” work computer (which did have a CD-ROM drive) and it’ll play there… no, i didn’t think i’d copy it into MP3 files, because this was before MP3 files existed.
but i was mistaken. it didn’t play there, either…
but it is gabrieli, and i’m sure the music is SUPERB, so i didn’t send the disk back. i held on to it, on the off chance that, at some point i would run into someone who had a “super audio CD” player.
which brings us to today… close to 15 years later, and i have tried it on every single computer i have owned, and a bunch of other peoples’ equipment, and i have STILL never heard this CD.
i have, since, learned that sony introduced the super audio CD in 1999, and by 2007 it was considered a failure, and not significantly better quality than standard CDs, but that didn’t make the fact that i have this one disk of music that i really like any easier to listen to… or copy into a format that i can listen to — which, i suppose, is what all this copyright/piracy gibberish that i hear bandied about in the news, is all about to begin with…
but, come on… this is all music that was recorded previously — the SACD is a combination of three other 12″ LP records, released between 1955 and 1980 — and i paid for the music… NOT the incomprehensible file format, or whatever it is that makes this particular disk NOT PLAY in the audio equipment that i HAVE. 😐 furthermore, i’m NOT going to buy a SACD player, which are now “audiophile” equipment, and cost anywhere up to three times what they did originally, so that i can play this ONE disk.
bottom line: does somebody out there have a SACD player that i can hook up to my computer, so i can make FLAC copies of the music? i have a digital pre-amp that plugs into my computer and has RCA inputs, and i have RCA cables, so all i need is the player, and you’d be able to get it back after i’m finished… i’d really appreciate it…
not the piano rag that i made the 6-part arrangement for… this is another one… and nobody is really playing the piano, it’s just sibelius rendering the printed music that i programmed. 😎
i bit the bullet and bought the academic version of sibelius 7… which cost $300, rather than the standard version, which has less capabilities, but costs $700 (a thing which i have yet to figure out, even though the capabilities that the educational version has are useless to me, because it requires that i have a network with at least one other installation of the educational version installed on it).
it actually took me a few days to make it “legal” because of the fact that moe’s WSU email address had been changed (since she graduated… oops!) and we had to work around that until she was able to phone the helpdesk and get things straightened out.
now that it is all legal and everything, i’ve gotta start actually learning how to use it. but it’s easy enough to use that, already, before i’ve even completed one of the FOUR two-hour tutorials it came with(!), i have been able to complete two lead sheets for beatles tunes that i copied from THE BOOK for snake suspenderz, and create a 6-part arrangement of a piano rag by scott joplin for the fremont philharmonic.
i still haven’t realised all of the goodies that this new, legal software holds in store for me, but i think it’s already well on the way to paying me back for the money i spent on it. 😎
i got a new bottle of cork cement. this is about halfway through. it looks together, but it still doesn’t play completely. now is the time i take a hammer to it, to whack it into shape… really… 😎
i haven’t been writing that much about snake suspenderz recently, because we haven’t been doing that much as a group… except recently.
last night we played for a gay wedding. a couple of years ago, we played for this couple’s 40th anniversary, and, now that they’re actually able to get married (gasp), they wanted us back for their wedding. it was an honour, of course, and the only shame was that they had to live together for 42 years before they were legally able to get married. we got plied with many different varieties of victuals, beer and liquor, played up a storm (literally, not last night, but this morning) and walked away with $200 a piece. now all we have to do is find a gig like that every week, and we’ll be set.
today was the 2nd annual “Day Of Music” at benaroya hall… and the grammatical error that was in the bus tunnel is STILL there. i lived near there in 1998, when it was originally put up, and noticed it then, and sent several letters complaining about their shoddy attempts at proofreading to various different civic groups, but, as is obvious, nobody ever did anything about it, and my tax dollars are still going towards the mis-education of millions of metro riders every year…
but that was then, and this is now. i was given a “discounted” parking pass for the parking garage under benaroya hall, but it was for a “$3 discount” on the, normal $7 parking fee, and i figured that if i get there early and search around a little, there’s a good chance that i can park on the street for free, which i did: i parked four blocks away, on the waterfront, and dragged my tuba uphill six blocks, because there is no wheelchair ramp at the “Waterfront Steps”. it actually wasn’t all that bad, and i figured that i would find another way down later on. i showed up in time to watch the one man band who was on stage ahead of us, and during his time on stage the weather went from dry but cloudy to “car wash” status, and they actually told us that we might be delayed or cancelled, if it got too outrageous… which, of course, it didn’t, but that didn’t prevent me from playing a half-hour set with rain dribbling down my back… and they don’t call upright tubas “rain catchers” for nothing… 😐 and, of course, i wasn’t able to find a way down, so i had to walk three blocks out of my way, in the pouring rain, which, at that point, also included lightning and thunder, to get back to my car.
allegedly we have another gay wedding in tacoma, next month, that also pays us $200 a piece. thaddeus was connected to this gig by an old friend of his who books bands for events. maybe he should… um… i don’t know, let his friend know that WE’RE A BAND THAT NEEDS GIGS or something like that… and then, maybe it won’t have been nine months since our last gig… 😐
through an interaction with someone i didn’t know on the south king county freecycle, i found out about this gemeinhardt flute for sale for $15 on craigslist…
so i went and bought it.
it was made for me… 😎
i can repair it for probably under $10 (not including my labor, which i’m not charging myself for anyway) and turn this flute around for between $80 and $120… maybe as much as $150 to the right person… 😉
flute pieces — all present and accounted for!
only i gotta buy some new cork cement, because the last bottle i had is about 2 years old…
okay, i had three gigs in three days with three different… well… iterations of the same band: Accidental Rhino is howlin’ hobbit and two or more other musicians, of which i am, frequently, one. i took monday off (to get caught up with laundry and dishes), and then today i had a rehearsal, tomorrow i’ve got a parade, and thursday i’ve got another gig…
i guess you could say i’ve been pretty busy… i’m certainly going through spoons at a phenomenal rate, although, surprisingly, i haven’t been feeling the lack of them – that much – the past few days. i’ve been really tired and sleeping a lot more than normal, but the fact that i made $300 in three days sort of offsets that.
the potential major blow-up that i’ve been suspecting is around the corner for about 6 months has, miraculously, been put on the back burner AGAIN, which is good from one standpoint, but questionable, at best, from the place where i see it. it’s not that i want this particular blow-up to happen, but my impression is that if it has been put on the back burner again, then it will be that much more spectacular and unpleasant when it finally gets around to happening.
apparently i got a call from gliz about business cards when i was out of town a while ago (when i went to heppner, possibly?), but i had never done them, and forgotten about them, so when i got a call from gliz this morning about “where are my business cards?” i was a bit taken aback… but i believe i handled it very well, starting with an apology for spacing out on them whenever it was that he originally called about them, and then making arrangements to have them printed post haste…
i must take a REAL camera to OCF next year. this year i only took my phone, which was a big mistake: lack of disk space, weird focusing rules, practically no control over the shutter speed and no tripod mount are the primary difficulties… i got some decent quality pictures, but nowhere near as many as i would have if i had a real camera.
i’ve been consciously getting ready for OCF for a couple of weeks now — it strikes me very odd that OCF and OCD are so similar…
i bought a cot which will raise me off the cold ground by a few inches, but will still fit into my tube-tent, which means that i will not have to deal with blowing up a mattress that will just need blowing up again before the night is over. i’ve got out my trippy-toy that you hold over your eyes and blow into… and try not to fall over when you get hyperventilated and/or see the trippy patterns that it makes. i’ve got two boxes of camping gear, including my tent, poles and stakes, tarps, plastic end-clips, paracord, bungee cords, therma-rest, sleeping bag, hatchet, and machete (only don’t tell anyone, especially simon), my box of sound effects, including a dozen self-inflating whoopie cushions, my didjeri-flute, microphone, digital delay and amplifier (so that i won’t have to figure out how to hook into the sound system at the last minute, like i did last year), and my tuba and requisite gear (music, chair, folding stand, battery-powered light, spare batteries)…
this is as much a list of things i have to bring, in order to pinpoint any things that i might have forgotten as much as it is anything else…
i’m still not decided whether i’m leaving on tuesday or wednesday… i’m leaning steadily towards tuesday, but i might change my mind at some point… i’m coming back monday, with seanjohn, so i have to make sure i’ve got enough room for his gear as well as mine.
tomorrow is monday. i’ve got a rehearsal tomorrow evening at 7:30, and i want to go to the leather store in the pike place market to see if they have utility belts, so that i will have a belt to carry all my utilities in… the next day is tuesday. at best, i’m leaving around 8:00 am or thereabouts. i may actually stay and go to a sousa band rehearsal tuesday evening, and if i do, then i’m leaving around 8:00 am wednesday.
i was going to post yesterday, but then i spent two nights ago not sleeping very well and having dreams that i wished i wasn’t having — and waking up on more than one occasion, specifically to end a particularly annoying dream, only to have it resume, more or less, when i succeeded in getting back to sleep — so when i finally got up yesterday i was already in a sour mood… and then i turned on my computer and the sour mood increased about ten-fold, which was not made any better by the fact that i couldn’t get my backups to work the way i wanted to, because of the fact that the crack used a “new, different” way of intruding, which the host provider was less than forthcoming about explaining…
i actually had everything fixed by 11:00 am or so, but my mood was so bad, and it was so hot, that, by that time, all i wanted to do was watch the god-damned-noisy-box, smoke cannabis and drink… first mountain dew, then water, then beer. seriously, the temperatures have been in the low-90s and upper-80s, but it has been more humid than i have ever seen before (around here, it’s par for the course in illinois and alabama), and the overall effect is that the temperature is oppressively hot, which made the god-damned-noisy-box even more inviting… if i had a swimming pool, it be a lot better…
but, unfortunately, if i had a swimming pool, realistically, it would only get used a week or so a year, and the rest of the time i would have to maintain it… so it’s probably better this way… it’s a lot more realistic to dream of a sauna, because i’d use that year round EXCEPT for the really hot days…
anyway, if i had posted yesterday, this would have been that post:
the oregon country fair is in a little more than a week. i had in mind to distribute QR code stickers for music at the fair, but they haven’t even contacted me with a shipping date yet, and i placed the order almost a month ago. so THIS is the reason why NOT to use StickerRobot when time is sensitive. they may make the best stickers in the world (for all i know, they haven’t delivered them yet), but if a simple, square, black-and-white sticker takes them a month, i am less than impressed.
the panto this year is Dick Whittington, which i have wanted to do for two years now. it should be a great show, although i haven’t seen it yet. we’ve got some of the music, we’re getting more tonight, and, as usual, we’re probably going to get new music when we arrive at the fair… at this point, the fact that we’ve never performed the panto all the way through, even once, doesn’t faze me very much… we have almost exactly the same routine every year, and it invariably comes out on the other end as a finished work of art. the real fun is working together to make it a work of art… and the reactions of the audiences when we perform.
so i realised, with all of the so-called “music” (which includes a lot of what the german people call Sprechstimme that is, very definitely, not what “ordinary people” — like my mother — would call “music” — but i say, forget them anyway) that i have been posting over the past few months, that i have enough “new” material to make a new album.
i even created a rudimentary web site which is eventually going to contain said album, along with my two (three?) other original albums…
eventually, because i still haven’t been able to figure out how to separate my “Saint Fred” stuff from the And More stuff that i already have there…
it’s not there yet, but it will be soon… hopefully as soon as the bandcamp folks get back to me and explain where they screwed up… 😉
how this piece of music came into existence is as much of a story as the music itself.
randy and i had both been working in the Eμ studio for about a year, in 1982, and we were both creating extremely weird music. secretly, i recorded a very long track, in stereo (which, in those days, actually meant two tracks, a left and a right channel) of weird vocalisations made by us while creating other music. i then reversed the track, and recorded it along side the original, which gave me four tracks. then i took all four tracks, reversed them and spliced them on to the end, so it was even longer, and a palindrome. then, i duplicated the process with another long track of miscellaneous rantings, strange noises and other unusual vocal sounds, so that, when i was done, i had 8 tracks of extreme vocal chaos.
when i was satisfied with the level of chaos, i ran the whole thing into the mixer, one track per channel (as usual), although i hooked up the output of the mixer so that, instead of playing only the channel whose “solo” button was depressed, (thus “muting” all of the other channels), the only time it played anything was when the “solo” button for each individual channel was pressed… essentially turning the “solo” buttons on the mixer into a “keyboard” of sorts.
although the “keyboard” was nothing like any ordinary keyboard: from one moment to the next, you couldn’t be sure what sort of noise was going to come out of each particular key: sometimes it would be forwards, sometimes it would be backwards, sometimes it would be screams, other times it would be total silence… multiplied by 8 (which was how many tracks had their “solo” buttons modified).
randy and i then took turns recording entirely new tracks, playing the mixer “keyboard”, to winnow down the chaos to a tolerable level. we each recorded two tracks, and the final track was me playing the “keyboard” forwards for the first half of the track, and then randy playing the “keyboard” backwards for the rest of it.
my impression is that this whole process would be a good deal more difficult these days, because of the limitations of digital mixers, although i could be wrong. my impression is that i hooked up some outputs to some inputs in a way that was allowed because it was an analogue mixer, that aren’t allowed — aren’t even thought of — with digital mixers, although, honestly, my experience with digital mixers is limited.
i had 16 shares last year, and made $720, or $45 per share.
this year, the moisture festival’s “big 10th anniversary celebration,” according to the moisture festival, i had 14 shares, and made $490, or $35 per share.
i’m pretty sure they’re wrong. according to my calendar, we played 6 shows as snake suspenderz, but i only got 2 shares for snake suspenderz. i’m really not sure how they figured out the philharmonics’ shares, because according to my calendar, i played 10 shows with the phil, and they paid me 12 shares.
there’s a possibility that i am still going to get one more share ($35) for the volunteer show, but i’d be willing to bet that, without a great deal more hell than i am willing to raise, i won’t see any more money from them this year.
i’m certainly NOT going to be donating another $100 this year, considering how badly they abused my $100 donation last year, and whether i’m even going to consent to play in the festival next year depends a lot on how much i have calmed down about the whole fiasco in the mean time… 😛
grumble, mutter, gripe, complain, moan…
ETA: i think i figured out the checks, but they’re still wrong: the check for “band shares” is $420 or twelve shares, 10 of which were with the phil, and two of which were snake suspenderz… but i’m still missing one share, and it’s still 12.5% less than i would have earned last year… 😐
it’s a great show and i’m honoured to have been performing in it for as long as i have, but despite all of the cameraderie that i experience while the festival is going on, i’m in it 51% for the cash, and the fact that it has been less and less each year is making a very strong statement about whether or not i will be performing in the festival next year.
two ancient pieces of music from 1979, when i was first learning about synthesizers, and the only synthesizers and recording devices available were analogue. these pieces are from an era before cell phones, internet tubes and the evil koch brothers…
although i think that the koch brothers existed, and were even evil at that time, just nobody knew about it yet… and, although the internet did exist, nobody knew about that, either. but i digress. 😎
the first, called Drone Piece Not was created during my first synthesizer class, Electronic Music 101. the instructor was teaching us how to make tape splices, and he instructed a woman in the class to say “I did not do it.” into a microphone. he then demonstrated how to isolate and trim out the word “not”, which made it sound as though the woman had said “I did do it”. when the lecture was over, i picked the word “not” out of the trash and incorporated it into my own piece. this piece of music was recorded in the ARP studio, which was the smaller of the two synthesizer studios. it contained an ARP2600 synthesizer (the same one that is used in the movie “Close Encounters”), a teac quarter-inch/four-track machine and a smallish mixer.
the second piece is called Romance With Gaslamp and it was composed at the end of my first synthesizer class, for my final project. it has an interesting ending, which was brought about by the fact that i learned how to bypass the security alarm in the large synthesizer studio (the Eμ studio, which had an Eμ modular synthesizer which took up an entire wall of the studio, plus teac quarter-inch/half-track and quarter-inch/four-track reel machines, a teac half-inch/eight-track reel machine — the reel of tape for which, i still posess, somewhere — and a teac 8-track stereo mixer. these were relatively high-end machines, at the time). the security alarm was a motion sensor that was mounted near the ceiling, and was bypassed by putting a tape-reel box over the sensor, which meant that i could check out the key, go unlock the lab and then return the key, looking like i only spent 5 minutes in the lab. in reality, i returned the key and then went back to the lab, where i usually stayed until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. i knew (experience is a hard master) that, if i disloged the tape-reel box from where it was precariously hung over the sensor, i had approximately five minutes before the entire neighbourhood would be swarming with rent-a-cop demons, so i actually began using sticky tape to hold the box in place. the evening at the end of Romance With Gaslamp is one of those evenings. i accidentally knocked the box down, and so the piece ended a lot more abruptly than i planned… but after i listened to the mix-down, i decided that it would be a lot more amusing to leave it that way.
i’ve digitised 2½ cassettes by pliny. i don’t get to post any more of them until i get permission from him, ’cause apparently he’s paranoid. oh well… 😎
i’ve got a component-stereo cassette player on freecycle, but i’ve got one person who has expressed interest, so it’s probably already taken.
i’ve got a snake suspenderz performance at a rehab center in burien. it’s a private party, which means that i’ll be paid for it, but i don’t remember how much at this point. it doesn’t really matter anyway, ’cause i’m playing and they’re paying me. 😎
moe and i are going to a performance by ezra in honour of The PHBFH on the 17th. the place is TBA, still, but ezra sez we’re going to get notified by email before the performance, so we can be where it is. i haven’t seen The PHBFH since ezra graduated from college, which was a few years ago, but i’ve never actually talked with him about his mother, so this should be an interesting performance.
the 26th has a performance by the BSSB, but i’ll probably post before then.
oh, i’ve also got another colonoscopy scheduled on the 7th of june, and another snake suspenderz performance on the 14th of june at cafe racer.
also, moe brought home a dead hummingbird… it’s sad that it’s dead, but at the same time, it’s probably the only time i’m going to get to hold a hummingbird in my hand…
pliny is a guy that i have known since he was about 14 or so. he is one of the best wordsmiths i have ever met. he raps in normal conversation without even meaning to. he invented a new art-form, which is called SPLAB.
these tracks were recorded in the late 1980s or early 1990s and have been lost in my box of tapes until today.
i have performed three times in the past few years, at the king street station in downtown seattle. the first time was a few years ago, and it was also the first time i performed with the Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band. i was the only trombone player, there were supposed to be two others, but they couldn’t make it. we performed outside, on the platform where passengers board and disembark the trains, and despite the fact that i was the only trombone player, it went fairly well. at that time, the ceiling had been artificially lowered, and completely covered by an “accoustic” ceiling which was supposed to save money by giving the city less space to heat. there were a couple of ceiling tiles missing, and you could see a tiny glimpse of what used to be the ceiling, several stories above, but most of it was hidden.
the second time was also with the BSSB, but it was out in front, on jackson street, for the opening of the renovation of the king street station, about two years ago. we put our cases inside the upper level, which was in the process of being renovated, but it wasn’t open to the public yet. there were open beams, brickwork, and lots of dust inside, but we were actually playing outside, so it wasn’t really an issue. where we put our cases was right at the level of the “lowered” ceiling, and you could see above it, but it wasn’t much to see: a lot of cobwebs, 50 years of dust and grime, and the underpinings (overpinings?) of the suspended ceiling which was put up without concern for the artistic nature of the real ceiling.
the third time was this morning, and it, too, was with the BSSB, but this one was the “grand re-opening” of the totally refurbished king street station. they totally removed the old “lowered” ceiling, and restored the station to the way it looked 100 years ago… only with totally new electrical, mechanical, plumbing, a seismic retrofit, and a new roof on the bell tower. this time we played in the big waiting room with the new three-story-tall ceiling… which made the room uncomfortably “live” but we did admirably well in spite of everything.
the previous video is from the actual performances. the following videos are from the moisture festival volunteer night party, and the volunteers are performing (with Snake Suspenderz as the pit band).
i’ve been dinking around with some REALLY ancient sound-recording media, i.e. reels of tape, and cassettes. the younger folks among those reading may remember cassettes, if they are 30-ish or thereabouts, but reel tape stopped being used regularly in about 1990 or so, and the tapes that i’ve been playing with are from the early 1980s… including this track, which has been uploading as i write this, from my mac (on which i am writing this, at this very moment) to my linux server in los angeles, by way of my desktop linux box… because it’s too big to be uploaded in the expected fashion (add media), and, for some unknown reason, the webdav connection on the mac won’t work, but it will on linux…
anyway, what i’m really talking about is this: Home On The Strange, one of the three tracks from my final project in “Music 400 – Electronic Music” at Western Washington University, June 3, 1983
Moisture Festival 2013 – this week i’m performing with the fremont philharmonic. next week i’m performing with snake suspenderz.
and, in the middle of all this, we’re having our house completely re-piped to alleviate the massive problems we’ve been having with the plumbing, AND we’re having the kitchen and pantry floor torn out, down to the joists, and replaced, and then we’re having new linoleum laid down in the kitchen, pantry, and my office… which means i have to completely disconnect and move everything, and then reconnect it all once i’ve moved it back.
according to moe, the contractor is coming in to rip out the floor on monday, and he says it should take two to three days to replace it… however, if the joists are still wet, then it’ll probably be longer, because at that point we’ve got to have servicebastards and their portable noise generators (otherwise known as “fans”) come back out and try again…
fortunately, i’m going to be away from the house for most of this… 😛
the Moisture Festival is celebrating its 10th year in existence as the longest-running comedy/variety showcase in the world. come see it, if you’re in town. it’s worth it… really…
the new orchid spangiafora album has got me inspired… i’ve got a whole bunch of cassette tapes of evangelical preachers ranting about this and that, which have been waiting for me to do something creative with, for quite a long time indeed, and now is the time. Functioning Societies Don’t Do That is a preliminary sketch, based on the source material found here. enjoy it or else… 😎
ETA: i just figured out that, because i posted this on the web, it is now accessible by google, who conveniently gave me this wonderful QR code. because of the fact that i “know what to do” with QR codes, i can now make a meaningless-babble art which, under the right circumstances, will take people to a recording of this, and they won’t have the first clue what has happened…
i remember, a few months ago, i found a QR code posted on a utility pole in some extremely seedy part of downtown seattle. at the time, i didn’t have a QR-code-reader on my phone, but despite that fact, i’m about 90% certain that, if i did, it would take me to some web site for a band, or a porno site, or something like that… this will take people to a place that really will make them wonder… <hee hee hee>
i’ve been noticing a distinctly moldy-like smell the past few days, but i haven’t found the source. then, this morning, moe mentioned that the kitchen floor was feeling a little soft, so i went down and looked, and sure enough, there was a leak in one of the pipes… so i spent $500 on a plumber at 11:30 in the morning on a sunday. he was actually the second plumber i called, because the first one was in church and not answering his cell phone. i know he was in church because his dispatcher told me he was. i guess going to church means that you don’t get paid on a sunday… 😐 the guy who finally came out recommended a complete repiping of the entire house, which would cost around $7,000. the thing is, i don’t know whether this house is worth it or not… after all, it was a “manufactured” (read “mobile”) home, installed in the early 1970s, which is currently under water with its mortgage… 😐
on the plus side, since the plumber went away, there has been a surprisingly dissipated moldy-like smell… and the leaky pipe may also have been the source of the windows sweating so much over the past couple of weeks…
regular fremont phil rehearsals have started. regular ballard sedentary sousa band rehearsals are starting on tuesday. regular snake suspenderz rehearsals haven’t started yet, which is probably not as bad a thing as it seems at this point, but my impression is that they’d better start soon, or we’re going to be in trouble, because we’ve got a number of performances starting in less than a month. next weekend, moe and i are taking a part vacation and part sheepdog trial in heppner, oregon starting friday and ending monday.
i logged into my computer today, and discovered the following email message from r. carey, the artist behind orchid spangiafora:
I recently checked the discogs page for Tin Windows and saw your name listed in the “want this” list. I remember our correspondence from the 1990s and I wanted you to have a copy. I have no idea why Feeding Tube didn’t respond to your email. I’ll have to talk to them and make sure they are getting their mail. I got your post office address from a link on the hybridelephant site. You are (obviously) free to do whatever you like with the five copies, but I thought if you had some extras they might find their way to some interesting people. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.
in november of last year, i read of a “new” recording by Orchid Spangiafora.
by “new” i assumed it meant “newer than Orchid Spangiafora’s first release”, which was their 1979 album called Flee Pasts Ape Elf — an ASTOUNDING work, which is still one of my all time favourites, but, unfortunately, it has been out of print for a LOOOOONG time.
specifically, the announcement said: “Tin Windows – 7″ vinyl 45 RPM – Available now at Feeding Tube Records, Northampton, MA and at Fusetron, Brooklyn, NY or try Discogs”. so, i emailed “feedingtube at me dot com” with an inquiry, and received no response… after waiting around four weeks, i figured that “new” meant some time before the year 2000, and that it was no longer available. i stopped expecting a response around the new year, and forgot all about it by the end of january. it’s important to remember that i NEVER paid, nor did i give any indication that i was GOING TO pay, and i NEVER gave them my physical address.
today(!) i got a “mystery package” in the mail. it was neither expected nor anticipated. it was addressed to my business address, and had a return address i didn’t recognise. contained within the package were not one, but FIVE copies of “Tin Windows”…
five BRAND NEW, UNPLAYED copies of the 7″ vinyl 45 RPM record…
and it turns out that “new” means april, 2012… meaning that it is, ACTUALLY a completely new release… 😀
i don’t know how they got my address, although it MAY BE because, several years ago (1996? 1997?), i corresponded briefly with the artist behind Orchid Spangiafora, and traded music with him… but if i recall correctly, that was before i had my current email address, and before i moved into my current location — which means that my business address was different, as well…
rick has been transferred to the university of washington medical center, because he is not losing fluid fast enough to suit his cardiologist. they’re planning on keeping him for at least a week, and then who knows what will happen. he’s already collected a pile of boxes at the facility that he’s staying at in puyallup, and that’s not to mention the stacks of boxes that fill his actual home. he may go back to the facility in puyallup, or he may go home, but that’s all dependent on whether he gets the fluid out of his legs. i don’t know much, and it’s hard for me to find out about his condition, because, despite the fact that i have been providing a lot of rick’s transportation the past month or so, i’m not related to him, so the doctors won’t tell me anything… and what i do know makes me wish i didn’t even know that much. 😐
between the fremont philharmonic, and snake suspenderz, i actually have a total of 15 performances at the moisture festival… i remember when the fremont philharmonic alone had 20 performances (and it wasn’t too many years ago, either), but things have changed, and i’m really lucky to have as many as 15 this year. we’ve had one fremont phil rehearsal, and the fremont phil shows start in 3 weeks. the snake suspenderz shows start in 5 weeks and we haven’t had any rehearsals at all… which i think is probably a mistake, but who listens to me anyway? 😐
i plan on trying to make contact (again) with the two smoke shops in the tacoma area that have said they’re interested in buying bongs from me. at one – Kronik – the owners (a husband and wife) just had a baby a couple weeks ago, and they said that they were going to be open the day after, but i went down there a week later and encountered the guy, who was looking rather dishevelled and disorganised, and he said to contact him again in another week. the other one – Sinful Glass – the manager said that she had to talk about it with the owner, who had just changed the schedules, so there was some internal confusion, and she hadn’t talked to him the last time i called. both places have had a couple weeks to “settle into the new routine”, and i definitely think it’s time to harrass them again. 😉
also, i’ve managed to reconnect with barbara, who is someone i know from bellingham. she is still living in northport, and now i have a current email address and phone number for her. 8)
i re-evaluated my bong-making facility, and modified it somewhat to accomodate some additions to the glass-bottle-drilling area so that i can actually fill the bottles with water while i am drilling them. apparently being full of water “stabilises the bottle on a molecular level” and makes them less likely to break. i haven’t really noticed that much of a difference yet, because i’ve only actually tried it with one bottle, but if i can break fewer bottles than i have been so far, it will be an improvement. i went to another smoke shop yesterday, and they responded positively, but didn’t actually buy anything. they told me to call again today, so i’m going to do that later this afternoon.
we’re gearing up for the moisture festival again. the first rehearsal was supposed to be yesterday, but, typically, it got cancelled at the last moment. the moisture festival will be 10 years old this march, and it’s actually smaller than it was last year. last year we had shows in four different venues, and this year we’re only filling two venues. it makes me wonder what they’re planning on doing with all the $100 “donations” they got last year, that they said were going to make this years’ moisture festival “something really special”… 😐
the fremont phil has 5 days of performances, which is two less than last year, which was three less than the year before… and i’ve heard some “rumblings” from the powers-that-be in the moisture festival that they’re thinking of getting entirely new bands next year… nothing official, at this point, but the fact that it’s out there is something to shudder about.
on the other hand, snake suspenderz is playing (on stage) two nights, on which i am also performing with the phil, AND we’re also “subbing” for stuart’s band, the Super 8s, one night as “the pit band” or “the house band” or whatever you may call it… so that’s something.
rick has been going through hell recently. it started when i dropped him off at the emergency room of good samaritan hospital (the same one i did my rehabilitation in, after my injury). he proceded to almost die and is now recovering at an “assisted living facility” in puyallup: basically it’s one of those “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” places, where 95% of the population is never going to be released… but at the same time, if rick were to be released, the only place he has to go back to is so moldy that it’s very likely toxic, and rick has a self-admitted ambivalence toward living in squalor… i remember thinking, as i was moving the boxes of crap from rick’s storage place to his house, that i could very easily be contributing to a future episode of Hoarders… i want to help, but i’m not sure how much good it will do… 😐 i’ve been taking him to various different doctors’ appointments, when he can’t arrange transportation, but i don’t know how much more i have in me.
a friend of mine came over this evening to have his clarinet repaired. the A key pad had come de-laminated (which happens to old clarinet pads occasionally) which interfered with his practice, and his avocation as one of the clarinet players in some local orchestra or another. it turned out that the G♯ key needed its pad replaced as well, so i did that, while i had it apart. in his words, “even with coming all the way here, it was cheaper and faster than other instrument services.”
i even let him watch, which is something he probably could not have done in any other musical instrument repair shop. 😎
moe went to florida for 8 days. i am at home with the doggies. i have a gig tonight, but apart from that, i’m relatively free, if anyone wants to do something… i have a meeting with den some time next week, allegedly, and i’ve got at least one recording session with the players/philharmonic some time soon… once again “alledgedly”…
my friend rick, who i helped move out of his storage locker a few months ago, wasn’t feeling well yesterday, and asked me for a ride to the doctor’s office, and then from there to the hospital, where he checked in for a few days. i haven’t been to valley medical for a while, and i have never been to the new emergency room that they built a couple of years ago. it was interesting to be back at the hospital where i underwent brain surgery, but it was only interesting because it was someone else, and not me…
also, at least part of the reason why i keep doing this is because things change, sometimes dramatically, between when i first hear about it, and when it actually happens. this years’ changes include the fact that snake suspenderz has been tapped for a house-band appearance, and there’s also the possibility of our performing for the volunteer party, as well. i still REALLY wonder what’s going on with the moisture festival, and REALLY wonder why RB is apparently booking acts again (it was my impression that tim had taken that over last year, because of “complaints” about RB’s scheduling fiascos), but i have gone, once again, from wanting to boycott the moisture festival, to probably being okay with it… but, once again, i’m fairly sure that the panto will eclipse the moisture festival as being the most highly paid gig i participate in all year, which was not what i expected to happen with the “world class” comedy/varieté venue in which i have been performing ever since it started, TEN YEARS AGO… 😐
okay, i know why: in spite of all my complaining about it, the moisture festival has been one of the most lucrative gigs i have all year…
but, as with most years for the past 10, i am on the edge of declaring my boycott of the moisture festival this year, and this is the reason why:
two years ago, the philharmonic played for 10 days worth of moisture festival performances. last year, the philharmonic played for 7 days worth of moisture festival performances. this year we are scheduled for 5 days.
and yet, when i inquired about getting snake suspenderz involved, despite our overwhelmingly favourable reception last year, and our advocacy by such people as avner the eccentric, the response was, as it was last year, that “the moisture festival is not a musical venue”… 😡
i seem to recall, last year, putting together a list of over 50 moisture festival performers who were musicians and whose acts were purely musical, but it probably vanished when i upgraded my email client a few months ago. i have little hope that a similar list would do any good at all, and will only serve to irritate me even more… 😐
Hybrid Elephant has filled a number of incense orders in the last month, as well as dealt with people who order from outside the US and don’t read the shipping policy. i still haven’t figured out a work-around for it, even though i know one exists, because i haven’t been motivated enough.
there are now reviews for The Fremont Players, thanks to Æther Pie (otherwise known as “Princess Perpetua of Montague”). seriously, simon told me to “pick and choose” some “appropriate quotes” from the reviews, and post them on the web page. because of the fact that i’m doing this with HTML and not PHP, i made the copy changes, and then Æther Pie made the format changes… i’m also making some headway on the James L. Acord Bronze Foundry site, despite their lack of communication. there’s now a static page, and i’ve got a little more than half of the requests they made on the ‘redlines’ that they sent me working… although the other half are either not possible, or possible making more drastic changes in their template than i am comfortable making without some intensive research.
i was given a pair of steampunk goggles by my mother-in-law as a xmas gift this year. they’re made so that i can unscrew the frames surrounding the lenses and remove them… which means that i can replace the lenses with my prescription lenses (i just got new glasses a couple of weeks ago). i was also given a HD-PLC Ethernet Adaptor starter kit, so i now i can wire our entire house for ethernet — most importantly, the workshop, where the wireless adaptor reaches, but the OS9 mac doesn’t want to recognise our 50-character, un-changeable wireless security password. with the HD-PLC ethernet adaptor, i can make an end-run around having to wire separate ethernet cables, and i can move things like our two humongous hard disks out to the workshop, where they won’t take up as much room or accumulate as much stanley-dust as they do inside the house. i was also given a copy of The Practical Pyromaniac… heh heh heh… 👿
we’ve done two weekends of performances of Sleeping Beauty & The Pea, and things are going well, in spite of the fact that i played my B♭ sousaphone a couple months ago, and i think i may have done more damage to my brain then i had done when i had my injury… seriously, ONE day of playing the B♭ fingerings, and now i CAN NOT remember the C fingerings… AT. ALL. 😐 strangely enough, apparently the only way around this problem is to NOT think about it, and, as much as possible, NOT look at the music… the problem is that i’ve got three more weekends of panto performances, and two snake suspenderz gigs coming up within the next few weeks, and i’m not sure how i’m going to get through it.
i’ve got a Big Bois With Poise gig on new year’s eve, at the Hale’s Palladium/Moisture Festival Benefit party. because of the fact that we have been on national television twice now, we are billing ourselves as “The World Famous Big Bois With Poise”, and we were actually requested to come and perform for the new year’s party… of course they’re not going to be paying us anything, but we get into the party for free, where everyone else has to pay $50, so it’s an okay deal. because of the fact that we’re going to be performing indoors, we’re doing the “short dudes” act, rather than the “big boys” act — i.e. we’re going to be on “short” buckets, and dressed in diapers and bibs. we’re also going to try to memorise auld lang syne instead of our regular BBWP chant, but i don’t hold out much hope… 😎
this weekend is the start of four weeks of panto performances. tickets are selling out quickly, but if you’re in the area, we are still accepting “friends and family” for the 15th december performances. tickets are available brown paper tickets, and if you choose the 15th performance and enter the code mushy peas you’ll be getting in for no cost.
if you’re not in the area… tough luck. 😉
i played my sousaphone last month for the first time in around a year, and it went fairly well… now, the difficult part, is getting back to playing a C tuba. i thought it was going to be an easy transition, because i went from C to B♭ without any difficulty at all, but the difficult part is going back to C. i played the music for the panto reasonably well this summer, but, despite the fact that i played my B♭ sousaphone last month, for one day, remembering the C fingerings is a REAL problem… 😐
and it makes it that much worse that the panto starts this weekend, and goes for four weeks… presumably, i’ll be playing the parts reasonably well by the time it’s done, but — of course — by that time, it’ll be too late. 😐
moe graduated from college on saturday — summa cum laude — and her parents are coming for her reception, which is on the same day that the panto opens, so i’m going not going to be able to make it, but i’m not particularly disappointed, as it will be a party with a whole bunch of people i don’t know, plus monique’s parents.
i’m getting more and more convinced that what i really SHOULD do is drop kubuntu all together, and install debian with KDE. kmail is still doing bizarre, but not really obtrusive things, like “forgetting” my password, and losing mail if i move the folder that it’s in somewhere else. amarok still randomly stops playing occasionally, and crashes rather than shutting down “nicely” EVERY TIME… there are all kinds of minor annoyances that have crept into kubuntu that i strongly suspect would not be there in debian, and with KDE, i wouldn’t have to learn new software. the only thing i’m skeptical about is whether or not i will be able to transfer my mail to the new system, and (once again) whether or not i would be able to get all of my genealogical data back… both of those things are items that i could have the answers to, if i wrote to the appropriate user groups, i just haven’t gotten around to it.
i had two gigs over the weekend: one with snake suspenderz at the gage drawing jam, and one with the sousa band at the phinney holiday festival. the gage was more or less as advertised, i.e. we sat in the back of the room and nobody paid attention to us, but there was no free beer this year. we made $50 a piece (because our drummer was not there). the gig at phinney was more crowded and chaotic than it has been in the past, because they put in an elevator and a fire-escape in the places where we used to fill up the hall, so they had to twist everything ninety degrees, which made the stage about a quarter of the size it used to be…
really, honestly, if they don’t provide us more roomy accomodations next year, i won’t be going. it’s crowded and chaotic enough already, but expecting a 40-piece band to fit in a room that is only big enough for about 75 people, and then cramming 200 more people into the space (most of whom aren’t even attending the concert in the first place), SIMPLY DOESN’T WORK… 😐
i’ve got a new web design client, for whom i’ve also (already) made business cards… and there’s a good chance that i will make at least 4 more business cards for him, and, once he gets is ducks in a row, there’s even a possibility that i will be doing a lot more printing for him as well. at this point, i haven’t done a lot with the web design part of it, in spite of the fact that he paid me what i consider to be A LOT of money up front which i haven’t even come close to spending yet… and it appears as though i may not have to do any of the actual design part of the job anyway. a member of the fremont players does web design “on the side” and knows A LOT more about HTML5 than i do, and, because of the fact that this guy has already paid me what i consider to be A LOT of money, i can actually afford to pay her $20 an hour to do the web design for me. 😎
today is the fifth anniversary of my starting this blog. for the record, i’m stillSO GLAD i got away from LiveJournal, despite the fact that i have a lot of friends who still use it.
i haven’t switched out the system on my computer yet, primarily because, after flipping out yesterday, it has settled down again, and isn’t producing the kind of errors that were making me think about switching distributions… but i’ve still got the debian live disk, and i’m just waiting for an excuse to wipe the whole system and try another one.
i’ve spent the past couple of days cleaning up my workshop. i have a lot of empty glass bottles waiting to be made into bongs on my main workbench, and a whole bunch of painting stuff left over from the summertime on my jewelry-making workbench, which i cleaned up to the point where i can actually work on both workbenches. i’ve got a whole bunch of things that could be made into earrings or pendants, but no real motivation to make anything out of them, despite the fact that the holidays are rapidly approaching.
also, after having a number of difficulties getting emails to and from the lady who actually did the work, i now have 10 Big Boys With Poise jacket patches which i’m going to distribute to the other Big Boys (and other people) at monday’s rehearsal.
now that the battle of the computer is fading into the background, i actually have time to rant about other things. there’s still a few things that are wonky about the new operating system: amarok still has problems when i first start it up. it doesn’t show all of the current track’s tags until i “nudge” it a little bit, and when i close it down, i select “File -> Quit” and it quits, but it also shows a crash error shortly afterwards… i’ve tried to report the crash error (because it happenes EVERY time), but they say it’s fixed in the next version… which won’t be available for kubuntu 12.04.1 (Precise Pangolin) but is currently available for kubuntu 12.10 (Quantal Quetzal) which i am not going to upgrade to, because it is not a “Long Term Support” version… also, for some unknown reason, amarok gives up and has to be restarted. it’s frustrating, but nowhere near as frustrating as playing multiple tracks at the same time, and not stopping when i select “File -> Quit”, which is what it had started doing prior to the system upgrade…
Snake Suspenderz played a gig at Wine World yesterday, as a part of our “official duties” as the “Official SACBO Band”. we played for 3 hours, and got “paid” with pizza, munchies, and all of the wine or beer we could sample. we should definitely play more frequently, but getting the entire band together is a chore i don’t want to undertake myself, because it would get really frustrating, really quickly, and then i wouldn’t want to do it any longer. 😐 we have upcoming shows on 1st december, 2012 at the drawing jam at the gage, and 10th january, 2013 at Smokin’ Pete’s Barbecue, but prior to that, our last gig was in august at the can can, and we haven’t all been in the same room since then, before yesterday…
i’ve got to start notating titles somewhere. i thought of a really good title for something today, and, because of the fact that i didn’t write it down, i don’t remember it any longer. the probability is no better than 50% that i will remember it in the future, so it may be lost. if i had written it down somewhere, it would still be here. 😐
i went to port townsend for a New Old Time Chautaqua benefit show (which was held at the Legion Hall, on the corner of Monroe and Water) yesterday. because of the fact that i have spent a relatively huge amount of time in port townsend over the years (and it’s a beautiful place to spend time), i went early and poked around at fort worden, which is where i spent a majority of the huge amount of time that i spent there.
there have been A LOT of changes since i first came there, and a majority of them have occurred within the past few years, when i was not paying attention. they had the coastal defence command station on battery hill open for the first time since i have been comming there, and i actually got a chance to walk around inside a part of the fort that has been blocked off, sealed up and posted with big signs warning of nasty things that happen to people who ignore them, since i first started coming there. they have also done a lot of “re-landscaping” which includes cutting down a lot of the undergrowth and trees in the main part of the batteries, which were practically invisible previously. under normal circumstances, i would have a problem with state park people just randomly cutting down trees, but it was really interesting to see a lot more of the fort as the people who inhabited the place 100 years ago saw it.
of course, i went to the entrance of the cistern, where Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel was recorded. the first time i went there, it was totally covered by trees and undergrowth, and there was a brick “chimney” that came up out of the ground, with a manhole cover on top of it, and it was really easy to “break in”. a number of people already had, and the cistern was full of “satanic” grafitti and garbage, but the accoustics were AWESOME, and i resolved to get back in. several years later (mid-1980s) i took The Stairway Jam to fort worden, but by that time they had covered the entrance with the two huge, rusty metal tanks, and we weren’t able to get in. the tanks are now placed to either side of the chimney, which has a concrete lid, a steel door and a lock on it: considerably more difficult to get in, apparently the tanks were not enough of an impedence for people to get in and trash the place. fortunately, there are other places at fort worden that also have incredible accoustics.
for the record, i have played my trombone, my orchestral flute and my didjeriflute in various underground rooms at fort worden, and i know of no other place in the world with accoustics like that. it’s incredible. 😎
then i went into port townsend proper, to the legion hall at the corner of Monroe and Water, and found The Bald Man… if i didn’t know where the bald man was coming from, i might be a bit confused, dismayed, or even paranoid, but because of the fact that i know that the bald man is a direct offshoot of stuff that i did, personally, i find it rather amusing… and i know that my son will probably keep doing this for as long as he lives, as well, which gives me a small amount of immortality. 😉
i know i have mentioned it before, but i’m really amazed that i am actually a part of the New Old Time Chautaqua. these people truly ARE my “karass”, and it is just driven home to me even more forcefully every time i play with them.
it’s monday, it’s before 10:00 am, i got up and got out of the shower around 9:00 or so, and i’m already exausted… 😐
and i haven’t even been that busy… it’s really bizarre.
last week i started on a 6-pack of “Red Stripe” bottles and i broke 3 of them in the process of drilling out 5 of them. i think the ½" drill bit is a little too large, but the solution to that problem means going back to hardwicks and getting the next smaller sized bit… and i’m not going back to the seattle area again until tomorrow. fortunately, i spent friday with fred, tearing apart computers for the Bowling For Computers event that macque is planning for trolloween, and he (conveniently) had a case of empty beer bottles that was in the recycling that he gave me.
macque is also planning on having a Public Ritual Vegetable Sacrifice to start off the trolloween celebrations, and, to help with the sacrifice, i borrowed a sword from fred… because of the fact that the start of the trolloween celebration is going to be held on a stage in front of the troll, there will be no place to throw or drop the sacrificial victim that will gain enough downward momentum to make an appropriate sized SPLAT when the vegetable hits the ground, so i decided to go with the technique that i developed in 1993 to expose the entrails of the vegetable using an edged weapon… except that, this time, instead of a watermelon, it will definitely be a pumpkin (and a rather large one, at that), and, instead of a machete, i’m going to be using an authentic, REAL (i.e. NOT “costume”) sword with a balanced blade that is around 2½ feet long. and, because of the fact that trolloween is a PUBLIC event, the PUBLIC is invited and encouraged to attend, without reservations. along with the vegetable sacrifice, there are going to be at least two bands (the Fremont Philharmonic is not playing this year), plus the “Bowling For Computers” event that i mentioned earlier, plus a “Dryer Squash” and a dance under the fremont bridge. the “Dryer Squash” is an event where teams of three, armed with sledge hammers, compete to see who can reduce a standard-size sears/kenmore dryer to 12 inches or less in the shortest period of time. the current record is just over 3 minutes.
i’ve also been helping a friend from college, who just moved to the area from eugene oregon, move his belongings, and those of his relatively-recently deceased parents, from an expensive storage unit in kent to his residence in puyallup. i’m VERY glad i’m not actually unpacking the boxes, but i have already made three trips to, and from the storage unit (with an unexpected side-trip to stanwood, which is, entirely in the opposite direction), and there’s still a huge pile of boxes that are yet to be moved. maybe we’ll make another trip today… the problem is that, at this point, rick doesn’t have a lot of money coming in, and last month he had to make the choice between keeping all of the stuff in the storage unit, or paying rent, and, because of the fact that he had to make a similar choice the month before, and chose to pay for the storage unit, this month he was facing eviction, which would not have been the desired outcome. i figure i don’t have very much money, but i do have a vehicle which is bigger than most, so i could help him move out of the storage unit, if nothing else. we’ve still got at least two more trips before everything except the empty boxes and the matresses are out of his storage unit.
so the idea that i had for art the other day has taken on an entirely new, and monitarily positive aspect…
but i should start from the beginning, since this is being told for the first time.
i was sitting in my workshop the other night, and i had just finished a beer, and i realised: i have diamond-tipped drill bits, and a bench motor, and i know how to use them: it wouldn’t take much to take this otherwise useless empty beer bottle and re-purpose it for my own, moist, innermost desires… so why don’t i modify this beer bottle, and make an entirely new, “useful item” out of it.
so, i drilled a hole in the bottle, and rumaged around in the boxes of miscellaneous bits and pieces i have (quite well organised, mind you) until i found a glass pipe stem and a collet that the pipe stem goes through, that was left over from a water-pipe from years ago, which didn’t make it…
and i quickly discovered that i had drilled the hole in the wrong place, so, of course, i had to drink another beer, so that i could try it again. 😉
once i got it right — and verified that it was, indeed most exactly correct — i started casting about for empty bottles likely candidates, and quickly came up with the first idea, which turned out to be an empty bulleit burbon bottle… which is part of the hoard of empty whiskey bottles i have been inexplicably saving for about a year and a half, not knowing exactly why i was doing it…
now i know… 😎
i figure i can easily retail devices like this for $25 to $50, or wholsale them for $10 to $20 a piece. so, i went to the pike place smoke shop and told them that i could drill holes in bottles, and wondered how much they would pay me for finished beer-bottle water-pipes. they were very excited to learn this, and it turned out that i don’t even have to hand over finished water-pipes. they are just as happy to receive bottles that have holes drilled in the right places, so that they can put in their own doo-dads and mark them up the way they want. they said they would pay me $10 a bottle, for regular ol’ beer bottles, and left the door open for negotiation on “specialty” beer bottles… which i am assuming includes the antique grolsch bottles, the “Arrogant Bastard Ale” and the “Dead Guy Ale” bottles…
and it also means that the really fancy ones, like the bulleit bottles, and the fancy italian water bottle and stuff like that can be finished and retailed at my own web site for whatever i think i can get for them. 🙂
so i dug around and actually produced 10 “regular ol’ beer bottles” — although i’m not certain that they won’t take the “new” grolsch bottle and the “Hobgoblin” bottle as “specialty” bottles (to be honest, if they do, i DON’T CARE) and drilled holes in all of ’em… i actually drilled holes in 13 bottles, but i broke three of ’em, because i was being impatient and working with tools that were almost worn out… diamond-tipped drill bits wear out really fast when they’re used for a project like this. i figure ⅜" and ½" diamond-tipped drill bits are going to become sort of like #2 jewelers’ saw blades, in that i will always have a whole bunch of them, and about half of them are going to be worn out, or almost worn out.
now all i’ve got to do is alert my beer-drinking friends to save their bottles for me… 😎
a couple of weeks ago i said the time was right for some new art. i know what that art is going to be… and, if things go the way i expect them to, i will probably be able to make some money from it, as well. 😎
moe has gone to southern oregon for the national sheep-dog handling finals — yes, we have not one, but twochampionship-quality dogs in this house, thanks, in part, to moe, who is the dog-whisperer to dog-whisperers… 😎 (and that guy who is “The Dog Whisperer” really doesn’t know what he’s talking about most of the time… really… you should hear moe rant about how cesar milan is wrecking dogs, when she gets to ranting about him)
but, of course, the down side to all of this, is that moe is gone for a week, and i have to stay here, because i have a performance on saturday and it would be too far to drive back from klamath falls for, especially since we’d either have to take both cars, or i would have to drive from klamath falls to seattle for a 2 hour performance, and then drive back to klamath falls to pick up moe and her dogs and gear… which would be especially important since we just bought a trailer/pop-up-tent/RV-like-thing, and that isn’t going anywhere without a vehicle to tow it.
so, the upshot of the whole deal is that i am alone for a week, with an ancient, decrepit dog, two ancient, decrepit cats, a bird (who is neither ancient nor decrepit), and an ancient, decrepit snake… i guess, since i am verging on ancient and decrepit myself, i’m in good company, but i would really prefer it if i was with moe, or she was with me… there’s nobody but stanley to talk to, and, while some of the things he says are definitely amusing, he doesn’t always respond the way a human being would…
the performance is with the sousa band, at Festa Italiana, and they’re probably going to feed us… which is always the right thing to do for musicians that you hire to come and play for your party… 😉
apart from that, i’m still going back-and-forth with the incense guy from india. everything was going as expected until he quoted me a price that is essentially what i charge my retail customers for what would essentially be a wholesale purchace. when i responded, he didn’t come back with an answer for a few days, and then, this morning, he came back with a response in which he, basically, offered me the same incense for a quarter of the price, but only if i order more than a certain amount of it… which i would do, but i don’t want to seem too eager, because i know that if i can put him off long enough, the price has a very good probability of going down even further… and if not, it will also give me time to build up my bank account to the point where i can actually afford to buy a whole pile of incense from india… 😎
i still haven’t gone out to busk with my didjeri-flute/delay/amp setup yet, but i have been out busking with my tuba at least twice in the past week. a couple of days ago, i went out to the ballard sunday market, ostensibly to play with hobbit, but as we were getting set up, we were joined by julie b. who plays “delicious violin” (really, it says so on her cute little business card), who hobbit knows from the pike place market… and with a very little prompting from hobbit, we played quite acceptably, got a couple of inquiries about whether or not we were available for house parties(!) and made some generous tips for playing for a little less than 2 hours… i get the impression that, with a little more prompting, we could either add a violin to snake suspenderz (on a more-or-less temporary basis) or we could simply bill Accidental Rhino as a separate band and have twice as many gigs… either way is fine with me.
i actually took my art car to the rainier beach artwalk today, which is the first time since i actually put art on it, and i wasn’t planning on doing something else, that i have attended an “art car function” this year… and i was pleasantly surprised to discover that the art-cartists were paid $25 just for being there. 😎 i also brought my didjeri-flute and played for a while… sort of like at burning man, with no expectation of anything other than making weird noises for people. the weather was cooperative, and not windy enough that it was impossible to play, but there was no electricity, so the delay/amplification wasn’t there, and, as a result, i competed with the bands across the street for most of the time i was there.
and, while i’m on the subject, Snake Suspenderz, the Official SACBO Band, is playing at The Can Can in the Pike Place Market, tuesday 9/18 at 7:00. cover is $5.00 and we hope to see a lot of art car people there! 😎 the snake suspenderz site or buy tickets.
but i’m still struggling with a couple of tunes, which i don’t remember, in spite of the fact that i’ve attempted to play them a number of times recently, and vowed to remember what they were… i really need to start writing down stuff like like that, because my memory is CRAP… 😐 and that has been complicated by the fact that my band-mates don’t feel like checking and responding to their emails: there are two days between now and when we play at the can can, i have repeatedly requested a rehearsal, or some busking, or (preferably) both, since wednesday or so, and i have gotten mediocre and lack-lustre responses AT BEST from the other members of my band… and i’m feeling frustrated about it, because my performance is going to suffer if a rehearsal (at least) doesn’t happen before tuesday! 😐
but, back to my didjeri-flute ravings for a moment: i REALLY need to get out to somewhere where there’s a publically-accessible electrical outlet and no wind (the public space at crossroads mall immediately springs to mind. why? i don’t know, but there it is), and see how i do busking on my own. i’ve got to put together a “busking kit” sort of like the one hobbit has, which includes a tip container and a sign indicating that it’s there… i wonder if the broken wire music stand i “donated” to hale’s palladium is still there?
i’m still “brewing” some new art, as well. it may be that it has something to do with my didjeri-flute, but i’m still not sure. 😉
oh yeah, we also rocked their world at cholmondleighland last saturday. we got raving reviews from avner the eccentric who said “If I have a pit, I want you in it!” and said that he’d put in a good word for us with tim at the moisture festival for next year! (WOO HOO!!)
there’s some kind of art brewing inside of me. i’m not exactly sure what form it will take quite yet – it could be music, or graphic art, or sculpture of some sort, or an as-yet-unrealised combination of the two or three, or it might be some new, different kind of art that i haven’t tried yet. i don’t know what it is yet, i just know that it’s there, waiting for the right time to make itself known.
i think this is one of the most frustrating times to be an artist… you know that the art is there, but you don’t know what form it will take yet. i imagine that it’s somewhat like a what pregnant woman feels prior to giving birth… minus the labour pains and suchlike… 😉
i played with the fremont philharmonic at big red last night, and also played my didjeriflute for a “talent show”. then, this morning, i got up at an unreasonably early hour and went to the ballard sunday market, where i busked with snake suspenderz until noon, whereupon i went to the edmonds city park and played with the ballard sedentary sousa band.
the video is pretty much exactly what i wanted, but i really need to figure out how to work iMovie a little better, because it could be a lot better… i’m not sure if i want to make a separate video explaining how the flute is made and how to play it, or whether i want to re-make the current video with that information included… or even if i actually want to include information about how it is made and how it is played… i mean, i suppose anybody with a little imagination can probably figure those things out, but it’s kinda neat that, as far as i can tell, NOBODY has done this kind of thing, and made a video of it before. 😎
the sousa band has become the local “go-to” group for centennial celebrations. we’ve done a dozen or so centennial celebrations for various groups and organisations since 2007… it’s really an honour to play music that was written 100 years ago, for people who are celebrating 100 years of some thing or another, because we know that people who were celebrating 100 years ago were, very likely, listening to exactly the same music…
it was “victorian day” at volunteer park, as well, which meant that there were a whole bunch of people in old-fashioned costumes, and, incongruously, a guy with a cell-phone and a penny-farthing…
there was a really interesting musical/kinetic sculpture in the conservatory, that i haven’t seen before, called “Over ‘lyre”. after examining it a little bit, it appeared as though there were speakers that had the cones pulled out of them, and had anchors attached to wires, which, when the speakers made a low-frequency rumble, jiggled the wires, which had pendulums attached that struck little bell-like objects. the really cool part was that i figured all of this out before i read the little blurb about the installation (which was “hidden” in plain view, right below the sculpture), that explained, in detail, exactly what i had figured out was happening… 8)
we now have two confirmed cases of kennel cough, and two likely cases of kennel cough. 😐 and this is after having all canids in the house vaccinated against kennel cough. whee… 😐
we also have a small RV (thanks to moe’s mom) which we are going to trade in ASAP, because it looks good, but doesn’t steer very well.
i have a sousa band gig on sunday, at the conservatory at volunteer park, and next week there’s a guy in ballard who wants me to play tuba for a recording that he’s making of a new childrens’ song.
i registered at TubeNet, in the hopes of figuring out whether my new tuba is a 56J or a 5J, but they haven’t confirmed my registration yet, which is kind of a bummer… but eventually i’ll get over it, one way or the other.
moe has gone to san diego for a week, to attend a veterinary assistants conference… which means i have all four dogs to myself for a week… fun…
i don’t mind the dogs as long as someone else takes care of them most of the time (i was raised around dogs from a very early age), but i’ve never liked taking care of them that much… and, with a dog who is a little more than a year old and still very much a puppy (apart from the fact that he is a border collie and currently stands an inch and a half taller than his mother), and another, ancient and decrepit dog who likes to bark, suddenly and loudly, at nothing, for no very obvious reasons, my patience is being severely tried, and moe has only been gone for two days…
i have two gigs on sunday (again), one with the ballard sedentary sousa band (at the ballard locks, at 2:00 pm), and one with snake suspenderz (on mercer island, at 7:00 pm), which means that i’m going to be gone for longer than rye’s bladder will hold out, so moe arranged for some friends to come over and give the doggies some “relief” in the evening… which is absolutely okay with me, given the circumstances.
i had the windows in my car tinted the other day, which is very good, because now, when people are “just walking by” my car, on sunday, instead of being able to look in the car and see my new, fancy tuba in the back, they won’t be able to see anything… however, in the process of applying the tinting film, the guy broke the passenger side rear window… or something, it worked the last time i tried it, but i haven’t used it since i bought the car, which is when i “tested it out” the last time. my impression is that when the previous owner pulled off the not-professionally-installed (i.e. defective) window tinting film, it left a whole bunch of residue which, subsequently, gummed up the motor… anyway, they couldn’t tint that window, because it wouldn’t go up and down, so i took it over to edgewood tire last night, and had them “cut the cable and insert a wooden wedge” to make the window “go up and down” — sort of — but, because of the fact that it was held in place with a wooden wedge, there would have been no point in locking the door, or (for that matter) tinting the windows in the first place, so i ponied up another $250 to fix the window, which leaves me with very little money… but money has been coming in at a surprisingly high rate recently… not very large quantities (with one significant exception), but frequently enough that i’m not too worried about how little money is in my hybrid elephant account at the moment… 😉
the latest And More album is up there for you to download.
there are three more that are essentially ready, and one that hasn’t been ordered yet… and that’s just what i’ve finished. there are easily 20 eighty-minute CDs of stuff that i haven’t got to yet… there’s a 75 minute CD that’s called Aleatoric Glop that are bits that possibly got used in other places, but are unique unto themselves…
yay! we’re going to be busking at the ballard sunday market tomorrow! 🙂
hotmail.com, gmail.com, u.washington.edu and uw.edu have apparemtly decided that messages from the ballard sedentary sousa band mailing list (of which there are 40+ members, many of whom have addresses at the aforementioned servers) are spam… or something… 😐 the evidence i have is all of the hotmail, gmail and UW users mailing me complaining that they aren’t getting any mail from the band (despite quite a few messages being sent over the past couple of weeks), the messages being dropped from the mail queues — no reports have been sent they, and they don’t have anything in their “spam” box — and i’m not getting any feedback from their servers or the administrators thereof to indicate that i (being on the same IP address as sedentarysousa.com) have any problems whatsoever. there’s enough evidence to completly exonorate sedentarysousa.com, and compelling evidence to suggest that there has been a human error (or several of them) somewhere, but nobody’s willing to take the blame, so nothing is going to be done to fix the problem. 😐
i screwed up my leg immediately before the fair, so my original intent of going down to help with the construction of the stage was pretty much shot before i even started, but i went on tuesday anyway, basically, as i said, because i can, but also because i knew that i would have an easier time actually making it to camp on tuesday than i would on wednesday, and i was entirely correct. i didn’t have a vehicle permit (they cost $20, and allow one to park in the SCOF lot, but they don’t go on sale until wednesday), however i talked my way into a “full load teddy” which is a document that allows you to drive into “the eight” (or, in my case, into chelamela meadow), so i didn’t have to unload my gear, load it onto a “gator”, and then unload it again at the stage (which is what you have to do if you don’t know how to wheedle a “full load teddy” out of the hippies whose job it is not to give you such a document)… having an obvious limp due to a recent leg injury definitely helps. i unloaded at the stage and went out again and parked my car in the lot called “miss piggy” (there is also a lot called “kermit”). wednesday i got up early and went to get my wrist band cut off, and to buy a vehicle permit, which got me into SCOF lot a lot easier than the lady who sold the permit to me said it was going to be… 😉
tuesday and wednesday i basically spent taking it easy, setting up my camp, and walking slowly, with a pronounced limp, which had gone away by the time thursday came around.
when i finally got unloaded and back to the stage, i was in for a major shock. the oregon country fairgrounds had experienced a late snowfall last winter, and it had brought down a whole bunch of trees in our camping area, which meant that (oh, horror of horrors!) i had to find a completely new place to camp this year. not only was what was left of my campsite already taken, but the rest of it, and two or three other camp sites adjacent to what used to be mine, were completely filled with tree-detritus, or actual fallen trees. simon and kenny took up what used to be my camp site, and i was forced to find camping in “new jersey” (which is the camping area in front of the stage). i did manage to find a spot that was enough like my previous place that i was able to pretty much duplicate the camp site from last year, with a few differences — the overhead was a little higher, and the path to my camp site lead through a bunch of other camp sites, and was separated from the path by a rope on which curtains and blankets had been hung, to obscure the camping area from casual view.
it was a much more subdued fair this year, without anywhere near as many twinkly, sparkly things as in previous years. i’m sure at least part of it was because, prior to the fair, some of the fair “big wigs” were taking a joy ride, thanks to a pilot who was apparently “one of them”, over the fair, and were involved in a plane crash in which everybody was killed. i didn’t know any of them, but a lot of people knew at least one, and some people knew more than one of them, so i understand why things were more than ordinarily subdued.
the shows were… interesting. we did a mashup called “Sleeping Beauty and The Magic Pea”. they were all, very definitely, good, even the ones where nobody could remember their lines and all of the music cues got screwed up. apparently none of the fair-going public noticed… which is to be expected, more or less (after all, the audience doesn’t know the show ahead of time), but the first 3 shows were definitely more rough than the last 3 were. this is primarily because norma (who wasn’t in the show this year), essentially, publically shamed simon into learning his lines (her specific words were “simon, you need to learn your lines, because it’s making everybody else look bad”). i understand that simon has been having quite a few personal difficulties the past few months, but we’re a more-or-less “professional” theater group, and “the show must go on”… once everybody (and it very definitely wasn’tjust simon) learned their lines, and the music cues were straightened out, it turned into a finished production very quickly, and, once again, i can say that i’m proud to be a part of the crew that turns out shows like this. 8)
i sought out Lem, who is one of the guys responsible for booking acts for the Ritz, early in the fair (i think it was wednesday or thursday) and he said that he would be sure to book the philharmonic for saturday at 7:00 pm… which actually happened! we finished our 3:00 show (at 4:10, as usual) on saturday, and i threw all of my stuff together, lashed my tuba to a convenient set of wheels (actually, moe gave me a collapsible hand cart a couple of years ago, which works perfectly for an instrument of this size and girth) and made it up to the ritz by 4:30, where i proceded to sauna until it was time to perform. then, when it was all over, i put my gear away and had some more sauna, and still got out of the ritz before it became crowded. i got 3 tokens this year: one that i bought, one that i earned for playing at the ritz (which was a brand new one, minted this year), and one that i earned as “hat money” after the final show. i now have a “pirate stash” of ritz tokens… 😉 an average of two per year for the past 9 years. the ritz has a stylised eagle sculpture in front, and this year someone had put a stuffed rat in its beak… which was amusing in a vaguely disturbing way.
and, once again, playing “Il Ballo Di Qua-qua”, naked, for a bunch of naked hippies who were all doing The Chicken Dance, was one of the major highlights of the entire weekend. i would pay to do a performance like that… seriously! 8)
the “new” tuba was an interesting experience. because of the two or three rehearsals that we had pre-fair, i had a reasonably good idea of what i was in for, and busking before the fair also solidified my confidence, but there were a couple of instances where i KNEW that “the information is in there” (pointing to my brain), and all that is necessary is for me to re-establish the connectons that got screwed up when i had my injury. there were a couple of times, specifically, where i was asked something about transposition, fingerings, and my tuba: i answered without thinking, and at the same time, i was thinking exactly the opposite of what i just said… i thought about what i had said, and considered it against what i had just been thinking, before i decided that what i had said was actually correct, in spite of the fact that what i had been thinking at exactly the same time was incorrect… it happened one time, i noticed it, and figured that it may have just been a coincidence, but then it happened again within a 24 hour period, and that convinced me (if i needed convincing to begin with) that “the information is in there” and it is my job to re-establish the connections so that information will be free again.
other stuff happened, but i will probably write about them some other time.
i left on tuesday, and returned on monday. the week went way too quickly, ended much too suddenly, and left me with major withdrawal symptoms. more pictures can be seen here.
it was very interesting. i have a much better handle on the C tuba. norma made simon cry. it all worked out for the best, though, and we have a reasonably complete show for december… as usual.
despite the fact that i appear to have screwed up my right leg pretty substantially, yesterday (i was wearing my vibram five-fingers and i was running for a bus, one minute i was running normally, and the next minute i was hopping up and down on one foot – the left one – while screaming in agony… i caught the bus, though), i am leaving for OCF today, rather than tomorrow. at least half of the reason why i am leaving today is BECAUSE I CAN! at least half of the rest of the reason is that i’ll have a much more difficult time driving in to the camp tomorrow, than i would today, and even though my leg feels quite a bit better, i’m still limping on and off, and i don’t think i’d be able to schlep all of my gear ¾ of a mile into the camp without injuring myself even more…
anyway, see you next week, with a bunch of pictures and stories. it’s going to be interesting! 8)
we went busking today, which went WAY better than i anticipated. there were even a couple of tunes that i got about halfway through before i realised that i thought i was using the E♭ fingerings (i.e. what would have been the wrong notes), but it sounded right anyway… and then i realised that, if it sounded right,then i probably wasn’t using the E♭ fingerings, at which point i tried to find my place in the music, which i had lost track of making all of these unexpected realisations, and when i couldn’t find my place in the music, i just played what came naturally and it sounded right… so i think i may have found at least part of the right connection which was screwed up when they started messing around inside my skull. 8)
and all of these realisations make me a lot more comfortable about going to OCF. after 7 shows in 3 days, i’ll probably be playing the C tuba as though i had been playing it my entire life… 8)
we had our second rehearsal with about half the cast for the panto last night. the other half either weren’t there because they have already left for the fair, or they had “other obligations”, but one way or the other, it’s evident that we’re basically going to do the same thing this year that we have in past years, which is NOT have a show ready when we open at the fair. other people have taken to referring to it as the “oregon country theatrical workshop”, because basically we have made a habit of going in to it with sort of a half-baked idea for a show, and coming out of it with a more-or-less fully realised show.
what makes it extra scary exciting for me, this year, is that i am, essentially, learning a new instrument. it’s an instrument with which i am fairly familiar, and if left to myself, i can play it quite well, but, when other people are involved, the fingerings are all screwed up, and i have to learn new fingerings. unfortunately, it’s not a “logical” transposition (i.e. “up a fifth” or “down a fourth”) it’s “down a full step”, which means that Bb is equal to Ab, and C is equal to Bb. it would be a lot easier if i were to have “transposed” parts, but tubas aren’t supposed to be transposing instruments, which means that i have to learn the fingerings, rather than having my parts transposed for me (as i have in the past, with my Eb tuba). it’s better for me in the long run, because once i learn, i’ll be able to play music with anyone, but in the short run (meaning “at the oregon country fair”) it’s going to mean that i’m not going to be able to play anything like as well as i can, and want to… 😐
needless to say, i WILL NOT be playing Rubber Duckie at the ritz this year… 😐
they’ve been threatening to saying that they’re going to modify chela mela meadow for the past couple of years, to give us more of an actual theater space, and less of a “roadside attraction” with thousands of non-audience-members wandering past our audience, while we are trying to distract the audience. they haven’t done anything yet (meaning, within the past couple of years), but there’s a very strong possibility that the morningwood stage with which we are so familiar will be moodged around in some way or another. there’s also a fairly good possibility that nothing, whatsoever, will have been done since last year, and everything will be exactly the same, but i don’t know.
after busting my balls trying to find another passenger who need a ride to the fair, it appears that both of my “very strong possibilities” have decided that they’re going to drive themselves this year, so i am driving myself (boo!), which means that i’m leaving on tuesday (yay!)…
because of the fact that i’m taking, essentially, two-and-a-half times as much tuba, i’m not sure whether i’m going to take all of my sound effects… they’re all in a shipping-sized box, so taking only some of them would be a little more difficult than taking all of them, but taking none of them would be orders of magnitude easier… i don’t know if any of them will be used, however (sort of like how they weren’t used last year), and with that much more tuba, it’s questionable whether or not they’d even be missed.
i’ve settled on the place that’s going to tint the back windows of my car, but because of the fact that they’ve had not-professionally-installed tint on them in the past (which was removed before i bought the car), the back windows are all skundged up with glue residue which will have to be completely scraped off before new, professionally-installed tint will adhere correctly, and if the back windows aren’t scraped clean, the new, professionally-installed tint will not adhere correctly… which means that instead of getting my car windows tinted before going to the fair, i now have to wait until after the fair, and pay an extra $100 to the people who are going to clean the windows before tinting them… and all of this because i keep my tuba in the back of my car and i don’t want it to wander off with someone who sees it there while i am off doing something else.
Hokum W. Jeebs was a friend of mine, who was murdered some time ago. through my relationship with him, and through my relationship with thaddeus, from whom i recieved hokum’s C tuba, i now have a direct relationship with the Bohemian Grove, in monte rio, california.
i don’t know anything about why i have that relationship, or what it means (if anything) to me, but i just realised that the tuba case i got, when i got the tuba, has a shipping label on it, that says “Bohemian Grove, Monte Rio, California – Mr. Stabile”… well, “Mr. Stabile” was hokum’s “mundane” name, and if i’m not mistaken, the bohemian grove is the “oregon country fair” of the male, obscenely rich and powerful of the world…
i recently found out that the person known as John Michael Greer, the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America, and reputed to be one of 21st Century America’s most noted occultists, is the same john michael greer with whom i went to college, between 1979 and 1981. i wonder if the way i feel about this is anything like the people who were personal friends of aleister crowley felt… i wonder if it’s even appropriate to feel this way.
snake suspenderz has a gig this evening at the horizon house, which is the same place that my elderly, brain injured client lives. i haven’t heard anything from him since a couple of months ago, when there was a problem with his power supply that turned out to be a motherboard issue, and then i stopped hearing from him… so i don’t know whether he got another computer, or what, but he doesn’t know that i’m going to be playing music there this evening, so things might get a little “interesting”…
SACBO is saturday. snake suspenderz is playing, and i may put some more paint on my car, depending on when snake suspenderz decides to show up, and whether or not the weather coöperates. the weather is supposed to clear up tomorrow, so i may paint some more tomorrow, as well.
moe needs my help trimming sheep feet tomorrow… trimming sheep feet? and i’m supposed to be holding the sheep, while she trims their feet… we’ll see how that goes. 😉
snake suspenderz has two gigs on sunday. we play in the early afternoon at the burien wild strawberry festival (which i attended with an art-car caravan, a few years ago, and was witness to the guy selling gold jewelry next to my car getting ripped off by a pre-teenaged doodlehum), and then, in the evening, we play at the can-can, along with the Wanderlust Circus, featuring my friend noah, from portland.
OCF is looming, and we haven’t had even one rehearsal. i don’t even know what play we’re doing… the princess and the pea? rapunzel? rumplestiltskin? a mash-up? this is definitely going to be an interesting year…
well, the fire show at reed was fun, but it very definitely was NOT the show that we rehearsed… 😐
apparently chris massively overestimated the influence excercised by the people who were organising this whole shindig (it was definitely complicated by the modern version of HIF), combined with the fact that almost everything that we were going to do is either prohibited unless you have a permit from the fire marshall, or outright illegal… thus, no pyro, no dust effects (fire cyclone, playing with fire), and no gas cannons… and, it turns out that even big bois with poise is only marginally legal, because apparently portland has a law that has been in effect since 2001 (which was well before we performed there, without any problems at all, a few years ago) which states that the legal limit is 2 fire performers on stage at the same time…
but the majority of the audience didn’t know what we were going to be performing anyway, so we pressed on in spite of the fact that we didn’t get our pyro permit.
and macque has a professional relationship with the very laid-back, closet pyromaniac, fire marshall, who “inspected” our gear — in reality, he actually said we were supposed to inspect the gear — and basically said that he would be in the audience, watching, which macque said was “inspector speak” for “i’m not going to be here, so don’t fuck up.”
it started out with an impressive 15-minute fireworks display shot by the innocuously-named western display (which had a permit for pyro) that included at least two shots which resulted in a lot of yelling and scurrying around by various “professional” fire-safety guys… seriously, we didn’t have as many, or as spectacular mistakes as they did. and then we did 3 comets, one with steel wool (which burned out in a minute or so) and two sage/cedar comets that burned for 10 minutes — which was a lot longer than we expected. then there was an “interpretive dance” with sparklers, by Remedios Rapoport, who is someone i know, vaguely, through the chautauqua. we finished off with a full performance of big bois with poise — the one we did for AGT was only 90 seconds, this one had four verses and full costumes (i.e. flaming boobs), and a MUCH more positive reaction from the audience.
so, it was fun, and it definitely put me in a different state of mind than i would have been in if i had not gone.
schmootzi, joe, and three other people were shot and killed at cafe racer on wednesday.
snake suspenderz was supposed to play at cafe racer this evening… apparently thad has put in a call, but has no response.
which is not particularly surprising, all things considered…
the problem is that i’m a fair distance away, and don’t really want to venture out unless i know there is something happening this evening, because i’ve got to drive to portland and help put on a show tomorrow, for which we have not got the proper permits… 😐
why couldn’t you have chosen some other place and/or time to get killed? 🙁
schmootzi the clod has apparently been shot at cafe racer this morning.
at this point, all i know for sure is that two people are dead and three people were taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries, but the two dead people haven’t been publically identified yet… although rumour has it that it was schmootzi and joe, the bass player for God’s Favourite Beefcakewere dead at the scene.
it’s even more unnerving, because snake suspenderz is supposed to play at cafe racer on friday… 🙁
the folklife festival/BSSB performance today at 12:40 pm at the mural amphitheater.
i got there around 8:00 and got my button (which means free beer at the hospitality tent) and wandered around until it was time to go back to my car, get my instrument, and get backstage.
the performance went reasonably well… there were no obvious mistakes (playing the “stinger” on pieces that don’t have “stingers”, etc.), and i was putting my instrument away after playing when another of the trombonists approached me, and, basically, “reamed me a new asshole” because i had the gall to move his music (which i didn’t realise was his) two seats closer to the percussion section.
i understand (although have trouble relating with) his desire to be far away from the drum section, but, for an easy going guy who never seems to be perturbed by ANYTHING, this was totally over the top. needless to say, i am never going to be touching any of his stuff, EVER AGAIN…
around this time a few years ago, i recall saying that this was “rehearsal season”. it’s definitely rehearsal season, despite the fact that i haven’t mentioned it recently. this was driven home to me last night, when i got home from a BBWP rehearsal (we have a gig coming up in 2 weeks… take THAT, sharon osbourne!) and i realised that i had a BSSB rehearsal last night that i totally missed (because it wasn’t on my schedule 8/ ), and we’ve got a BSSB gig coming up this weekend…
☹
had i known that i had two rehearsals scheduled at the same time, i probably would have blown off the BSSB rehearsal anyway, but at least i would have been able to warn them that i wasn’t going to be there.
then, this morning, i logged into spamcop to check my spam, and i had a huge list of spam messages, so i clicked “select all” and hit the “submit” button before i checked the subject lines, and as i was scrolling down through the subjects, i noticed [BSSB] in one of the subjects, which is SUPPOSED to indicate to the spam filter that the message is NOT spam… but because of the fact that i had already clicked the “submit” button, it was too late to change it, and now all of my accounts are suspended…
well, we were on america’s got talent last night… for about 10 seconds. they showed a montage of the entire group performing, the entire group getting put out, a closeup of myron, and sharon osbourne saying it’s “silly” with howard stern saying “she’s married to ozzy osbourne and she thinks it’s silly”…
and that was it.
hardly worth it for all of the hassles we had to go through with the fire marshall, and everything else… but we did get a three-day trip to san francisco, for us and twelve boxes of gear that had to be shipped by land because it was flammable, that had all expenses except food, paid…
and now we can truthfully claim that we’ve been on a nationally televised reality show…
so i guess it evens out somewhere.
supposedly there’s a DVD of it somewhere. i’ll probably cut out the “important” part and post it, when i figure out whether it even exists or not.
according to our “spies” on the east coast, we’re actually not going to be on America’s Got Talent today, and they also inform us that the san francisco auditions are listed as being tomorrow (i.e. tuesday).
now i can attest to the fact that we are dealing with a very avaricious and kniving bunch of theives at NBC, and they have already demonstrated their ability to play fast and loose with the truth, when necessary, to accomplish whatever nefarious ends they have in mind, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover that there’s a different schedule for east coast and west coast, or something like that, but, at this point, i don’t know and the only advice i can offer is to watch more tee-vee…
we just found out (so, sorry for the short notice, it couldn’t be helped) that we ARE going to be on the America’s Got Talent “Rejects” edition, TOMORROW.
anybody know how to digitally “tape” a television show? if you do, send me email. the sooner, the better. 8)
unlike the players’ shock and awe earlier in the year, the moisture festival check arrived today, and while it is truly impressive, there isn’t anywhere near as much of it as there was for the players — and what i did get paid was for 16 “shares”, four for snake suspenderz and the rest for the fremont phil… and, if i recall correctly, it’s very close to, if not exactly the same as the amount that i was paid for 14 shares last year… grumble, mutter… although, even despite all my grumbling and muttering, i’m still going to contribute $100 to their “star” program, for the 10th anniversary moisture festival, next year.
now it’s time to focus my attention on creating a new Ganesha The Car… 8)
on the left, i’m playing a B-flat tenor horn, manufactured by John Distin and stamped with the J.W.Pepper logo, from around 1900, in the middle, i’m playing a nominally Elkhorn E-flat tuba that i have no idea when it was made, and on the right, i’m playing a Conn C tuba, made within the past 25 years.
if we had a longer couch, i could probably get in a double-B-flat sousaphone, as well… 8)
i am feeling a good deal better, although i am still not back to 100% health, yet. i still have a lingering cough that comes up at random times, particularly whenever i lie down, but i’m a lot better than i was a week ago.
the brakes in my car have to be replaced, to the tune of $800. moe claims that this car is “nickle-and-dime-ing” me, but the previous car (of which she approved) had already cost me almost $3000 by this point in our relationship, including $1500 for a replacement transmission, and this car has only cost me $450, plus the proposed brake work, and it appears, in spite of the fact that i’ve had to replace the timing belt, and now i have to get all four brakes and wheel bearings replaced, that this is going to continue to be a functional car for a lot longer than the previous one was. and, because of the fact that it’s a honda and not a ford (or whatever the previous car was, i don’t remember), i can actually take it to jack to have the repair work done for (hopefully) cheaper than edgewood tire quoted me. i’m also going to try to enlist the aid of the friend who worked on my brakes the day i had my brain injury (although, again, hopefully, i won’t have another brain injury), which has the definite possibility of saving me a good deal of money.
i got a reply from the incense people regarding the meaning of the word “pieces” and, as i suspected, it was entirely due to the fact that they were translating from hindi to english. if it weren’t for the fact that i have to think about providing at least part of the money for my car, i would already have sent the guy $100 for incense. as soon as i actually get paid for the postcards i made last month, i will probably do that anyway.
we had a recording session with a real, live, professional recording technician, last night, which went outstandingly well, and we’ve got another session with him tomorrow night, which, if it goes half as well as last night’s session did, will make a real, live CD of the fremont philharmonic a lot closer to being actual reality than it has ever been before. also, friday is a New Old Time Chautaqua benefit show in olympia, for which i have been recruited as a sousaphone player. it should be fun, if nothing else.
today is may day. everybody go home and don’t work. also, friday is Bongwater Day, for those of you who are interested.
the 9th annual moisture festival is history, and i’m currently wallowing in post-moisture festival exhaustion and depression, but i can’t let that keep me from doing stuff, because there is a lot to be doing…
moe came home yesterday and discovered that the thermostat had gone crazy and it was 91° in the house, which, combined with yesterday’s 60° temperature made it pretty damn toasty in the house, and no matter what she tried, the furnace simply would not shut off… so she killed the electricity, and opened all the windows, which meant that when i got home at 12:30, moe was asleep, having thrown off all the covers, and all the windows were open… which was really confusing, considering the weather the past few days… anyway, this morning i got up and researched getting our thermostat/furnace fixed/replaced. 😐
not only that, but i’ve got a computer to rebuild for my older, brain-injured client, which involves going over to his house and digging through the guts of his old computer to get part numbers, and specs so that when the computer i build for him actually gets to him, it will be compatible with what he’s already got… apparently just replacing the power supply wasn’t good enough. the power supply works, but the computer still doesn’t boot, and the guy who built the old computer says that the mother board is fried. he recommended getting an entirely new computer (starting at around $700) but i figure i can probably get a new mother board for around $250, build the computer around that, and save my (already low- and limited-income) client around $400.
and, i’ve got to go meet with the surly, moody son of the guy who got killed in the auburn top food and drugs last year, because he wants me to design a logo for his car-repair business… which would be fine, except that he wants to get this logo made into a rug, and he wants details about which i know absolutely nothing, so it’s going to be really interesting designing a logo that will both be to his liking, and be able to be made into a carpet… but the fact that i’m going to be doing work for him is good, because it means that i will be able to hit him up for some repairs on my car: the brakes are in need of new shoes, and there’s still this annoying loose-belt sound when i first start up the car in the mornings…
and snake suspenderz is gearing up again: we’ve got a gig at the can can on the 22nd, and, probably, we’re going to be busking at either the ballard or the fremont sunday market on the 15th, plus we’ve got a couple of rehearsals before then…
AND i’ve got a new tuba to figure out, because it is not the same as my old tuba… i imagine that a lot of learning it will be simply playing it and figuring out what the new fingerings feel like, but along with everything else, it’s going to be a major chore…
on the right, my, nominally, Elkhorn three-valve, E-flat tuba, which i have been playing regularly (as in, ‘almost daily’) for 12 years.
on the left, the new-to-me Conn four-valve, C tuba which is my payment for the ugly sousaphone project.
i also got a vincent bach mouthpiece, a hard case, and a soft case. the fact that it is a C tuba is a little bit of a frustration for me, because i thought it was going to be a B-flat tuba, for which i know the “concert-pitch” fingerings… it’s also going to be really confusing being a transposing instrument that is not in E-flat, unless i either get transposed music or… learn the C tuba fingerings…
the thing is, it wouldn’t be SO frustrating for me if it weren’t for the fact that i both knew the C tuba fingerings, and could transpose, on-the-fly, in my head… PRIOR to my brain injury. 😛 that’s one of those bits of information which i am convinced still lives in my brain somewhere, and i just haven’t figured out how to connect to it again. 😐
but i got a real tuba! i’m a real tuba player now! 😀
i’m FINALLY done with the ugly sousaphone! it’s not any less ugly — in fact, it’s significantly more ugly in a lot of ways — but the important part is that it is, now, one contiguous piece of tubing from one end to the other, and it will play and sound more-or-less like a sousaphone is supposed to sound.
i have to thank craig from allied supply, who built the new lead pipe, and david cole, a repair technician at kenelly keys who provided advice, encouragement and a few spare parts that i didn’t have… but that’s why i prefaced this entire project with the comment that i probably couldn’t do it all myself.
tomorrow, i deliver it to an anxious thaddeus, and he will pay me with hokum’s B-flat tuba! i can hardly wait! 8)
i completed the replacement of the lead pipe on the ugly sousaphone. i have yet to replace the water key, and patch the split third-valve upper tubing, but those things shouldn’t take long at all, and then i will be able to deliver the ugly sousaphone to its rightful owner (thaddeus), who will, then, hand over to me the double B-flat tuba seen here… and i will play the HELL out of it! 8)
i was contacted by a person who claims to be my grandfather’s half-sister… but she’s around the same age as me… and for someone who might not be who she says she is, she certainly has an over abundance of trivial information and unimportant, but entirely, independently verified facts about people who would otherwise be completely unknown, so at this point i tend to agree that she’s probably my grandfather’s half-sister… but, because of the fact that my family is all that’s left of a bunch of massively inbred yokels and hillbillies, she hasn’t cleared up any of the “family mysteries”, and, in fact, has come up with several new ones that will, likely, never be completely understood, because they have to do with my family, who, traditionally, ignores, berates, or tries to shout down anybody (like me) who says that the way they live is not the best. rosemary, my great aunt, is also a child of the ’60s, and has a hippy heart, which is probably why she survived this long without doing the traditional family thing and going crazy.
seriously… there’s a family history going back almost 200 years, of family members getting killed or maimed by insane people, some of whom have also been family members… weird… 😐
the moisture festival has been going well, but i haven’t started playing shows "for real" yet, despite the fact that i have already played 6 shows with two different bands… starting on saturday, i have 12 shows over the course of 8 days, with two different bands, so i’m going to be more than ordinarily busy. until then, i’ve got a rehearsal this evening, and a rehearsal tomorrow evening, and probably a rehearsal either wednesday or thursday.
i got the business cards i made for chris, which look astoundingly good, given the fact that the phone number is deliberately off center… supposedly he’s going to get back to me on a postcard, for which i sent out a preliminary draft on tuesday, and talked with him on wendesday, but haven’t heard anything since. i don’t want to hassle him too much, though, because apart from having a more-or-less full time job, he’s also got a new clinic that he’s in the process of opening up… at the same time, this postcard is “time sensitive” at this point, and i don’t want to wait too long, or i won’t be able to get them printed in time.
today is the first day that Snake Suspenderz is performing(!) at the moisture festival(!!). the fact is, i’ve been trying to get Snake Suspenderz into the moisture festival for four years… pretty much ever since i started playing with them… and since i’ve been a part of the moisture festival for nine years (i.e. ever since the beginning), i figured that it wouldn’t be much of a problem to incorporate my cronies into the huge mass of crony-ism that is the moisture festival… but it took my “losing my temper” and sending a ranting email to a couple of people who, presumably, don’t have any more control over who gets into the moisture festival than i do…
it’s another one of those instances that i rant about from time to time, where something that i want to do turns out to be an “old-boys club” and if you’re not associated with one of the “old boys” you CAN NOT get in… i know for a fact that i have ranted at least once in this blog about the oregon country fair, and burning man, both being events that are purposely designed to get people to stay away except under very specific circumstances… which usually involve large quantities of money, or sex (and not the pleasant kind) with the right people, and sometimes both. 😐
nevertheless, apparently my ranting to my peers was enough, and we got scheduled for two “inside” gigs, the first one of which is today, where we appear on stage and play our three-song, 10-minute “mini-set”, and then hang around until the end of the show so we can take a bow with the rest of the performers, and two “fluffer” gigs, where we play for 45 minutes(!) outside the palladium, for the crowds waiting to get in (in other words, “fluffing the crowd”, which is why they’re “fluffer” gigs)…
in other words, we’ve gone from playing no shows, to playing four shows, and two of them are basically us, and a captive audience of people who are already ready for a good time…
i don’t know exactly what i said, or exactly how i said it, that made the difference, but whatever it was, i guess it had the proper effect, because we went from having no appearances to having more appearances than most of the other moisture festival performers, including two 45-minute shows where it’s nothing but us, which is more than most moisture festival performers…
don’t get me wrong, i’m still extremely suspicious of “old-boy clubs” and refuse to get involved with them for the most part, because i dislike nepotism and crony-ism to the extreme, but apparently ranting and losing one’s temper is one of the ways to get things done when one is dealing with such things.
so i’ve put together another And More album, but for a long time (i.e. more than two but not quite three weeks) i have been trying to upload the files to bandcamp, and my browser keeps coming back with a “we’re sorry, but you’re fucked” error, by which the bandcamp people have been stumped.
i finally got it to upload today, from opera on the mac… i tried multiple different combinations of browser and operating system, but apparently i never tried opera on mac… i still don’t know why it wouldn’t upload with any other browser, on either operating system, but now that it’s uploaded, here it is:
i added the last piece, which is the mouthpiece-receiver pipe, to the narrow end of the ugly sousaphone, and cleaned up the tons of old solder left on the instrument. now it’s just a matter of patching the split 3rd valve tube and installing a water key, and it’s a working sousaphone, once again…
i was able to cover the water key hole with my finger, and get the instrument to play… as long as i didn’t use the 3rd valve… 8)
it’s good that i was a little nervous… it prevented me from doing stupid things like picking up hot metal with my bare fingers on more than one occasion… but it also was primarily because of the fact that, apparently, i can’t do things like “sweating” stuff like i used to be able to… it appears to be one of those “use it or lose it” skills that i haven’t kept up on… 8/
oh well, it’s airtight, and that’s really all that matters, when it comes right down to it.
because the next few weeks are going to be tremendously busy, and i’m not sure how much time or energy i’m going to have for trendy computer gizmos…
i’m getting ever closer to finishing the repair work on thaddeus’ E-flat sousaphone, for which he intends to give me (on the condition that, when he absolutely NEEDS a tuba, it’s his) a BB-flat tuba that he is in possession of, which used to belong to hokum w. jeebs. i’ve finished the “hard” part, which was actually procuring the correct piece (the “mouth pipe” or “lead pipe” pictured here). the rest of the process, of course, is soldering everything back together… which i have done before, but it was a LOOOOOOOONG time ago, before my injury, and so i’m a little nervous about the whole thing… one of the good things, that i need to remember, is that this is thaddeus’ UGLY E-flat sousaphone, despite the fact that the lead pipe is brand new and shiny, and pretty much anything i do to it doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s playable when i get done… and it WILL be playable, i guarantee that… 8)
then, i’ve been working with chris, who owns neighborhood acupuncture, making a business card, and i’ve been going back and forth with him for about a week. he keeps leading me to believe that he’s ready to send it off to get it printed, and then, at the last minute, there are a bunch of minor changes… which wouldn’t be so bad if chris was more accessible by email, but he’s not… he makes changes, and then he might not check his email again until tomorrow… and if he really needed the business cards “last week” (as he assured me, when i asked him), that’s not the way to get it done…
also, while i was in seattle dealing with the illusion that chris’ business cards were ready to send out, my elderly, brain-injured client called me with news that his computer suddenly quit working. from his (hazy, inaccurate) description of what had happened to his computer, i deduced that he was very likely having power supply issues. so when i was done at chris’, i went to capitol hill and took out my client’s power supply which i suspected had gone tits-up, and took it down to RE-PC, where i confirmed that it had, indeed, gone tits-up: the guy plugged it in, listened to the (annoying, high-pitched) noise it was making, and said that it had at least two blown capacitors. so i recycled the old power supply and bought a new one, which i’m going to put in tomorrow, after the snake suspenderz rehearsal.
AND there’s the moisture festival, which starts on thursday. i’m playing 13 performances over 24 days with the fremont phil, and 4 performances during the same period of time, with snake suspenderz, two of which are “fluffing” the crowd pre-show, and two of which are on the stage with the rest of the performers.
so, without further ado, i’m going to morph into my alternate personality, one of the busiest low-brass players on the west coast… 8)
the new lead pipe arrived! all that’s left now is to put it all together…
and address the other split, leaking tube, and replace the missing water-key… but my impression is that they’re going to be much easier projects than replacing the lead pipe was…
which means that i’m that much closer to an actual, concert-pitch tuba! 8)
i have been being deliberately vague about this because i was “under contract” not to tell anyone, but now that i’m no longer bound by that contract, i can spill all.
i went to san francisco last weekend for the America’s Got Talent auditions. we passed the audition in seattle, so we (we being the Big Bois With Poise) stopped everything and made arrangements to have ourselves and our gear transported to san francisco, at NBC’s expense.
on friday, i got up at 4:00 in the morning and made it to the airport by 5:00, which i quickly realised was much too early…
the reason it was much too early is that i had prepared for a long, drawn-out and mostly pointless hassle with TSA over the clips, pins and screws in my skull – really, i even brought the letter from the neurologist that i had him write specifically for occasions like this – but after an extremely bored TSA goon scribbled a meaningless doodle on my boarding pass, i walked through the metal detector with no alarms going off at all… and that WAS IT… there was no other TSA activity from that point until i was preparing to get on the plane in san francisco, three days later!
so i waited around in the terminal for about 45 minutes, until the rest of the Bois showed up. we got on the plane and were whisked to the san francisco airport, about an hour and a half later, and from there we were whisked by “private” shuttle – which we had to wait an hour for, because the number that they had given us was the confirmation number for our return trip, two days hence, and once they got that straightened out, they still couldn’t take us because the reservations had been made in the name of the first people on the list (whose name is SIZER) instead of the name of the spokesman for the group (whose name is HUSON)…
but once that was all straightened out, we were taken to our "luxury, boutique"hotel in the heart of the tenderloin… which was an interesting contrast, i can tell you.
at that point, they had told us that the rest of the day would be filled with interviews and a dress rehearsal, but the producer that we had been dealing with was not available, so we left her a voice message and proceded to walk down to the theatre where we were supposed to be performing, where they wouldn’t let us in, and wouldn’t contact the person who we knew was inside, to confirm that we were, in fact, supposed to be there… so we decided that we should take the opportunity to be tourists in san francisco, and went off without further discussion.
i took a couple of pictures of city hall to illustrate the point, but the fact is, i saw buildings EVERYWHERE that were decorated with gold leaf, and where there wasn’t gold leaf, there were bright colours and murals and artwork everywhere… much moreso than seattle, and i was under the impression that seattle had a lot of public artwork (although it is also much more subdued and hidden away, as well).
i went with a couple of friends to golden gate park, where we enjoyed the japanese tea garden, and waited for my net-friend adam to show up. when adam showed up, we walked through golden gate park to haight street, which i have always wanted to see, and searched for a tattoo/piercing shop where i could purchase an ear plug to replace the one i realised i was missing in the plane (although, fortunately, i lost it in the bed, prior to leaving)… and we found cold steel piercing, where i bought a pair of really beautiful fluorite plugs for half the price i would have paid in seattle (which, of course, means that if i want to get new jewelry, check online before going to the local shop). we also managed to talk a local into taking our picture at haight and ashbury, where it turned out that one of our party (macque) had actually lived for a while during the late 1960s…
then we wandered back to the hotel, where we met with some other people from our crew, and went to dinner at a very good american restaurant about two blocks away from the hotel, and after that, i walked adam to the bart station and went to bed, because we had to check in at the theatre at 8:00 the next morning.
they had told us that we had to check in at 8:00, but that once we had checked in, we weren’t going to be needed until 1:00 in the afternoon, and that we were free to go somewhere else until then. but when we actually got there, we were informed that we had been moved to a different – earlier – time, and that we were no longer free to leave. also, we were informed that we were, essentially, their prisoners, and we were not to leave the room without an escort… which was slightly alarming, since we still hadn’t seen our gear, which had to be shipped by ground freight, because it contained materials that were flammable, and thus not allowed on airplanes. we eventually found an escort to take us to the other side of the auditorium, where, after a fair amount of “the left hand not knowing that the right even exists” action, we located all 12 boxes of gear, and arranged to have what we couldn’t carry transported back to our holding cell waiting room.
then there was the fire marshall…
the fire marshall was a large, vaguely amused, buddha-like figure who was initially quite alarmed that they had arranged to have us performing inside, but once he found out that macque is a professional OSHA safety inspector, he calmed down and gave us suggestions for how to fix the (relatively minor) issues with our gear, rather than shutting us down… and, after his inspection of all of our gear, and watching as we demonstrated our fueling techniques and our extinguishing techniques, we actually had a “dress” rehearsal, with real, live fire, which the fire marshall was very amused by, and gave his blessing.
a little while later, i was sitting, in costume, in the holding cell waiting room and a guy came up to me and said “hi, i’m with network standards. what’s under your kilt?” and then he and his female “associate” waited, patiently, while we showed them that we are, in fact, wearing underwear (and protective cups, you don’t want to hit yourself in the balls with flaming poi). he also wanted to make sure that we weren’t planning on doing any backflips, or splits, or have camera shots from “below”, or that sort of thing.
the show itself was a lot of “hurry up and wait”. we finally went on stage, and they asked chris a few questions, and then they said “go for it”, so we went for it.
we all bent down so that krissy could light our helmets, and then chris gave the command and we all threw off our capes — and instantaneously the ENTIRE AUDIENCE (which was around 3500 people) started screaming and booing, and showing us the X sign with their arms… it was really shocking… but they told us to expect a very strong reaction from the audience, so we continued. we got most of the way through the chant before the booing of the crowd was so loud that we got off synch with each other… my poi got tangled, and i had to stop swinging and start over (aparently a couple of the other guys had a similar problem). howard stern put his X up almost immediately when the crowd started booing, and sharon osbourne put up her X about ¾ of the way through, but howie mandell actually liked us. sharon said that she was “really confused” (and this coming from the lady who married ozzy osbourne) and that the act was “silly”… which is exactly what it is, only she’s too dumb to see it. howard said that he wanted to like us, because of our costumes, but once the act started, he said it was “nothing”… unless you count the fact that the entire audience was making so much noise that you couldn’t hear the chant (which was what howie said). howard also said that he’s not sure if he would like it if his parents were doing something like that… which just goes to prove that he’s a no-talent philistine.
after it was all over (all that work for ninety seconds on stage seems like a lot of work for not very much payoff), we packed up our gear and left the theatre, where we met up with adam and went back to the hotel… where we met up with some other people, and went to dinner at a very good greek restaurant about two blocks away from the hotel.
the next morning we all got up at 4:00 in the morning and schlepped back to the airport, where i had to opt-out of the cancer-scanner, and they actually patted me down (although they still didn’t care about the pins and screws in my skull) at security, which took about half an hour.
there are more pictures for the morbidly curious, but, unfortunately, there are no pictures of the holding cell waiting room or the actual performance, because those pictures belong to NBC television, in perpetuity, throughout the galaxy… 😐
(which is a text approximation of the characteristic sound that is made by Boss Rugor Nass in “The Phantom Menace”.)
rehearsals! FIVE DAYS IN A ROW of BBWP rehearsals, and a fremont phil rehearsal last night to top it off…
as much as i’m really excited about this whole san francisco thing, i’ll be REALLY glad when it’s over… which, of course, may not be for several more months, as we might pass this round of auditions, and go to new york for the final round…
they still haven’t completed my shoes. the cobbler says that the straps are on the footbed, but they still haven’t put on the buckles, which is the same thing they told me last week. i said that i would be out of town on friday, and probably wouldn’t be back until sunday, and the guy said that if i called next monday that would give him time to put on the buckles… there are 8 buckles (four per foot) and they are “stapled” in place. the place where i bought the leather said that they also had everything else to make a birkenstock sandal (including, presumably, the tool that is used to make the “staples” on the buckle look exactly right), however they wouldn’t sell any of the necessary equipment or materials (other than leather) directly to me, because i didn’t have my resale permit with me, so it is my guess that he has to buy the tool, but only needs it for one job (i.e. mine), and just hasn’t gone out to buy it yet.
i’m still plugging away at the stack of vinyl, but my impression is that it may take me a while, because i only finished transferring four albums yesterday, which doesn’t make that sizable a dent in the stack.
i have been rather busy over the past week, with rehearsals and preparations for my trip to san francisco. they said not to mention it on social networks or tell anyone why, so it’s still somewhat of a secret (although if you know me personally, you’ll probably have heard me mention it in passing).
the rest of the past week has been filled with transferring vinyl to digital. since i damaged your ears with some early “music” in which i performed earlier in the week, i figured it would be only just to undo the damage with some real, quality music, performed by REAL musicians…
Porgy And Bess: A Symphonic Portrait, by George Gershwin, arranged by Robert Russell Bennett performed by the 1975 – 1976 Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra
i’m not sure whether i should do this or not… not because i don’t want anyone to know about this, but because of what my friends, particularly, will think…
i dug out (literally) a recording of the first time i ever “improvised” a solo with a jazz band. this is from 1973, and it’s pretty obviously a middle-school band (junior-high, for people who live on the west coast), featuring me playing trombone.
now this was before i knew what it was to “swing” (and, apparently, the drummer and a few other players were similarly clueless), and i had help writing out an “improvised” solo, because i didn’t know how to improvise, but even taking those things into account, i think i did a pretty acceptible job…
i got a turntable off of freecycle, and i bought a behringer phono-to-USB pre-amp, and i am currently listening to the National Geographic recording “On Parade – The Music of John Philip Sousa” which has not been played in over 30 years. i am not only listening to music i haven’t heard since i got rid of my turntable (which was built by my father, out of spare parts from several other projects) in 1980 or thereabouts, but i am transforming them into the next generation of music files: ones which you can reproduce on your computer… will wonders never cease… i still have a huge crate of vinyl LPs (most of which are crap) that i’m going to dig out over the next few days and have fun (or not) turning all of them into ogg-vorbis files.
it looks like i’m flying to san francisco in a little more than a week… first time i will have flown anywhere in a long time, and first time i will have been in california in an even longer time.
i’m “not allowed” to tell you why, yet, though, so if you don’t already know, yer probably outta luck. 😉
i am fairly bizarre… maybe you already knew that, but if you didn’t, there it is. one of the ways i am bizarre is that i have worn exactly the same style of shoe, more or less, for the past 30 years. when i was born, i had some congenital difficulties with my legs and feet. i don’t know very many details, but i do know that i had my right leg in a cast from the age of 6 months or so, until i was about a year old, which meant that, among other things, i didn’t crawl: i went straight from “creeping” to walking, and, thus, didn’t get the crawling that is so necessary to a normal baby’s development. i also had to wear “orthopedic” shoes and a brace at night, to “help straighten out” my feet, and i was forced to do pointless excercises (stand facing a wall, and do “push ups” against the wall, while keeping my heels on the floor) until i was about 5 or so. even with all that “help”, i managed to destroy just about every pair of shoes i owned, by “running over” them on the outside, until i found the birkenstock athens.
when i find something that works, i tend to stay with it until i have to change… that’s why i’m bizarre.
i have owned three pairs of athens sandals, one pair of brown, and two pairs of black, in the past thirty years. i have gotten them “recrafted” — which, in “birkenstock terminology”, means grinding off the rubber sole, separating the leather uppers from the old cork footbed, and putting on a new cork footbed and covering it with a new rubber sole — uncounted times. the brown pair finally bit the dust last year, when the leather straps broke. then one of the black pairs came back as “un-recraft-able” from the birkenstock repair guy, and i was in a quandary…
i had known for some time that birkenstock had officially stopped making the athens style sandal a number of years ago. in fact, the 2nd pair of black ones that i bought, i had to order them from europe, because they had discontinued the style in the united states, and that was almost 15 years ago. so when my second pair of birkenstocks came back as “un-recraft-able”, i jumped into action.
first, i called birkenstock central to make sure that they really don’t have any more, and while i had them on the phone, i asked them about making my own, using an “un-recraft-able” pair as a template. they had never heard of such an idea before, but definitely encouraged me to see if i could do it… of course i already knew that i could, but that way they can’t complain… 😉
i went to mcpherson leather supplies in the international district, and bought enough leather for three pairs of sandals (and spent all of $36… if this works out the way i think it’s going to, i’m probably going to go into the business of making obsolete birkenstocks for bizarre people). i also had the “un-recraft-able” ones traced by the birkenstock repair guy, so that i had a template.
then i cut out mirror images of the template (one for right, and one for left), which i intend to take to the birkenstock repair guy, who will put the cork, footbed, and buckles on for me, and voilá… a new pair of “athens” sandals. 8)
Big Bois With Poise, preparing for an audition
BBWP had our audition for America’s Got Talent this morning at 9:00 am at the downtown sheraton…
before i say anything else, i would like to point out that this is the third time this week that i have driven, and parked on the orange level of the WSTCC parking garage. i know that some people park there every day and it’s no big deal, but i used to live, literally, right across the street from the WSTCC, and i used to walk through it every day on my way to and from school and work, but now i live in a different city, almost in a different county, and it has been, literally, years since the last time i was in the WSTCC, much less parked there… it’s bizarre.
anyway, we parked and walked a block to the sheraton in our dongy-hats but no buckets, which raised quite a few eyebrows, and generated some really interesting comments from passers-by… “is this a video game??”, “what are you doing?”, that sort of thing. then we got to the sheraton and went up to the third floor “metropolitan ballroom”, checked in, and finished up our costumes, including getting up on our buckets. because of the fact that the audition was held inside, they didn’t want us to bring fire toys, so we all got zunis (i have been calling them “zoomies” for years… 😳 ), and they had a strict limit of 90 seconds per act, so we did a “cut down” version of the big bois chant.
then they talked to us for a few minutes. the “celebrity judges” weren’t there at all (big disappointment), there was just a guy running a camera and two “non-celebrity judges” sitting behind netbook-style laptops. the 90 seconds of our act started off with krissy doing her “monkey call”, which is quite loud and took the judges completely by surprise. they asked what we do for “real life” jobs (i said i’m a tuba player… it’s more or less accurate. i put down “professional freak” on the paperwork that we had to submit) and how the act developed, and a few, superficial things…
then they started talking about what we should plan on if we get to the next round of auditions. obviously the guy couldn’t say “you’re in”, but from what he did say, i’d guess that there’s a better-than-50% chance that we’re going to “pass” this audition and get to the next round, simply because what he was saying had a lot do do with the logistics surrounding doing our act with fire — which, apparently, for the 2nd round of auditions, will, actually be happening… but the next round of auditions is happening february 23rd to 25th in san francisco…
yes, adam, it’s likely that i will be coming to san francisco later this month. we should definitely plan on getting together while i’m there… 8)
my understanding is that they will be emailing chris within a couple of days to confirm…
today is the flying karamazov brothers show for which i earned free tickets in exchange for playing sousaphone in the parade last saturday. i was hoping to get together with dave cole this evening and discuss where to go with thaddeus’ sousaphone (pictures after most of the duct-tape was removed… bleah! 😛 ), but i forgot about the FKB show until this morning… which now means that i won’t get to discuss the sousaphone with someone who actually knows what they’re doing (as compared to me, who theoretically knows what to do with a brass instrument of that size and lack-of-repair) until sunday… probably…
oh well… at least thaddeus isn’t in too much of a hurry to get it back… ’cause if he was, he’d be outta luck…
on the other claw, Big Bois With Poise has an audition for America’s Got Talent on saturday, which is complicated by the fact that one of the big bois currently has a fever and is in bed — probably because of all that rehearsing and filming in the cold, wet, windy weather a few days ago. however, we wouldn’t even have the audition if it weren’t for the filming we did, because our act involves fire, which is forbidden in the ballroom of the downton sheraton hotel (which is where the auditions are being held), so it’s not as bad as it could be.
we don’t know that 100% fer sure yet, but the probability is exceptionally high… 8)
i went to the big bois with poise rehearsal/filming last night, and despite the wind and rain, i got “dressed up” in my duck kilt and buckets and spun fire with the rest of the bois, in front of a camera. at one point, we even dug out our dongy-hats and short-dudes boobs and went for the full burn – i burned the inside of my left arm when i tried to do a forward weave and forgot that my boobs were there… and they were still on fire… ouch!
the official audition is this saturday, the 4th, but because of the fact that our act involves fire, we probably won’t be asked to actually audition (which is why we filmed the act), but they expect us to show up in costume for the interview… 8)
so i was recruited to play sousaphone for a parade this afternoon, which was to drum up publicity for the Flying Karamazov Brothers shows at ACT theatre starting on february 2nd.
it was rather like the time, a couple of years ago, when i played sousaphone for the fighting instruments of karma and discovered that i knew about ¾ of the people in the band from other places: from bellingham, primarily, but i had played in various different groups with a whole bunch of people who were also in the fighting instruments of karma. i remember thinking, then, and my experience today only solidifies that thought, that this is my karass…
not too bad a karass to be a part of, with the new old time chautaqua, rev. chumleigh, the flying karamazov brothers, cirque de flambe, etc., etc., etc… 😉
i have “reading” glasses, and “seeing” glasses, but because of the fact that the lyre for my sousaphone is so close to my face, i can’t even use the “reading” glasses to read the music when i’m playing sousaphone, so i have to not wear any glasses at all, which is fine for reading music that is 6 inches from my face, but lousy for actually seeing were i’m going or what’s around me. apart from blurs, i was totally blind for the parade… they found a 15-foot-tall banner from somewhere which was supposed to be carried in front, but because of the fact that it was 15 feet tall, it didn’t fit on the sidewalk, and they had to carry it in the street.
we went to the pike place market and held up traffic by parading the wrong direction on pike place. then we did a “show” under the clock for about five minutes, while people who looked suspiciously like policemen on bicycles nervously cased the crowd. i saw a whole bunch of photographers taking what appeared to be pictures of me, but because of the fact that i couldn’t actually see, i’m not sure. one thing for sure, i didn’t take any pictures of my own.
after the parade, i picked up a sousaphone from thaddeus, which i’m going to fix in exchange for him giving me (conditionally) a BBb tuba that used to be Hokum’s… and i really hope that i’m actually going to be able to fix that sousaphone, because i really want that tuba, but also because i haven’t actually worked on a brass instrument for quite some time, and i don’t have a lot of dent removal tools. fortunately, the majority of the “fixing” appears to involve soldering braces that have come loose, and/or re-aligning tubing that has come un-aligned… which i think i can do, more or less… fortunately, i’ve got a ringer, in that i’ve got a professional musical instrument repair technician who specialises in low brass to help me if i get stuck.
on my way home, i was driving down I5 north of the west seattle freeway, and i saw a newish honda civic with a license plate that said “GANESA”… the guy obviously wanted my license plate, but i already had it… 😉
FINALLY our power was restored about 9:30 pm last night… now i’ve got a week’s worth of ketchup to complete (going and getting my (repaired(!!!)) shoes, and the template made from them, going and getting the leather to make a new pair of shoes from the template, various different things related to the sousaphone that i was supposed to fix last week, etc., etc., etc.…) plus i have to practice for the filming of the Big Bois With Poise that’s happening on friday, and the parade (for which i’m going to be playing my own sousaphone) on saturday, and various other things that i couldn’t schedule because we had no power…
so, i’m gonna be kinda busy for the next few days… there are actually pictures of the storm and it’s resulting chaos, but they’re going to have to wait until i get my house in order again.
i’ve mentioned hobo nickels before, but i figured i’d give you an idea of how they are made, since one of the first things everybody says to me when i give them one is “oh, did you make this?”
this is how i made them. enterprising people among you who may not be willing to risk my not giving you a hobo nickel myself (which, itself, is, actually, fairly rare) can use these instructions to make your own, with the full and complete assurance that i don’t care, although i do think that anybody who goes through this much effort for such little actual payback is kind of loopy.
also, i apologise in advance for the poor quality photos: it is difficult to use a hand to steady the camera and take pictures when you have to use two hands to hold up the tool and the piece you’re working on, so that the light shows through the kerf just right… look at it this way: 50 years ago, you wouldn’t have photographs this good, and 100 years ago there wouldn’t be any internet to read this on, so the poor quality photos are pretty good in comparison.
1) get a jewelers’ saw, a good supply of #2 or finer blades, a hand-vice, and a whole bunch of nickels. the newer and cleaner the nickels are, the better the end result will look, but it really doesn’t matter. #2 blades are fine enough that they will cut without jamming, but remove material at an acceptable rate. larger blades remove more material, but they also break more easily and don’t twist as well. finer blades don’t remove as much material, but they offer more control, especially in tight corners, although they break way more easily, and don’t last as long.
2) get a solid workspace, with a way to solidly anchor a hand-vice. i use my bench vice with the jaws separated about 2 inches, and hold the hand-vice so that the jaws stick out over the end of the bench-vice jaws. adjust the hand vice so that the nickel slides in easily, and can be gripped easily, but releases when you release the hand-vice. this is important because when you are cutting, you have to adjust the orientation of the nickel without putting the saw down, which would require an extra hand with which human beings are not, sadly, equipped.
also, i work sitting down, but which ever way for you is most comfortable to work, be prepared to take breaks, because cutting is exacting work.
3) drill a hole in the nickels with a drill bit that is small enough that it leaves both the bust of jefferson, and the edge: this is the place where you insert your #2 saw blade, before you clamp it into the saw… yes, you cut the background out from the inside… ingenious, isn’t it? 8)
4) cut all the way around the bust of thomas jefferson as close as you can, hopefully without cutting into thomas jefferson, or giving him weird facial appendages… unless, of course, you want to make the writer of our declaration of independence into a deformed frog-elephant. if that’s what you want, i have no control over what you do, and, as i said before, i truly don’t care…
5) this is the difficult part: when you have cut all the way around the bust of jefferson, go back to the original hole, and cut around the inside of the nickel. the reason why you do this isn’t immediately obvious, but once you’ve tried to cut around the inside of the nickel from the other side, you’ll know why. basically, it’s because you have to have some way of stabilising the nickel while you’re cutting, and if you start from the other side, all you have is the rim of the nickel, which isn’t very much, especially when you start cutting it out. the only way to avoid this is to be ambidexterous enough that, when the time comes, you can just switch hands (which, obviously, means re-orienting the hand-vice as well) and do it right handed. if you can do that, then you can ignore this step, but even before my brain injury, when i really was ambidexterous enough to do that, i still couldn’t get beyond taking a few strokes with the saw and having to replace the blade because i broke it again…
6) rejoice, ’cause you’ve done it too!
be prepared to break A LOT of #2 saw blades getting started… for that matter, be prepared to break one or two blades per nickel for a while. it’s tough getting your fingers trained to cut in the right place without twisting or flexing the saw enough that the blade breaks. fortunately, they’re not expensive. 😉
we’ve got one more week of panto left this year. i say this every year, but this year’s show is probably the best show we’ve ever done: the jokes that are supposed to go over the kids’ heads do so with much more accuracy than they ever have, and the fact that there are more than one dyed-in-the-wool brits add to the illusion that we are doing a “traditional” british panto… and we’ve even got a “I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major General” style “patter” song, which, despite the fact that ours is a “musical” and not an “operetta”, lends a very distinct “Gilbert and Sullivan” air to the show… i would say that if G&S defines the “high end” of panto, this year’s show may have qualified us for the extreme low end… which is about what we were aiming for anyway… 8)
also, Big Bois With Poise has got an audition for America’s Got Talent… of course we won’t win, but the objective is to get on television. chris is friends with a talent scout for the show, and they’ve already seen some of the (second- or third-rate) youtube videos (that there are more than one is a surprise to me, but whatever) and they’re very enthusiastic about getting us to audition… of course we can’t actually do our act for the audition, because they don’t want to set the hotel where they’re holding the auditions on fire, but they said that they want us to show up in costume, and then they’ll show a (first-rate, yet to be made) video of our performance.
i’m getting together with chris on tuesday to talk about doing some graphic design for his new(!) acupuncture clinic, which is not far from the palladium. i’m not sure where, because he hasn’t sent me the address, yet, but presumably he’ll take care of that before it becomes a problem. also i’ve got a tentative (we don’t know when yet) appointment with cedar, who needs some new business cards, and i’ve got a preview in to katy, who also needs new business cards (her old ones had the word “Inpisre” spelled wrong, which isn’t a thing that an educator of small children should have on her business cards).
after the panto ended for 2011 (it starts again on saturday, and runs for two weeks. get yer tickets now ’cause they’re selling out fast!) i got started making some hobo nickels. they’re not classic hobo nickels, of course, but they’re in a similar vein… and, hey… they’re only a nickel… and, as long as you don’t try to use the result as “currency”, they’re perfectly legal. 8) i broke most of my jewelers’ saw blades on the first couple of them, getting the technique right and re-adjusting my fingers. i went out to tacoma screw, to get more jewelers’ saw blades, and they didn’t know what i was talking about. i went to rockler, and they had them, but i’m not sure they’re the right ones, because they say they’re only for wood… and they’re 28 teeth per inch, and i’m pretty sure that the ones i need are more like 35 to 50 teeth per inch… i’m pretty sure that if i made the trip to hardwick’s, in seattle, that i’d be able to walk in and say i needed extra-fine jewelers’ saw-blades and they’d point me towards a bin of ’em… i went in there one time, and i said i was looking for a vice, and the guy asked me if i had considered smoking… 😉 i made nickels like this A LOT, between 1986 (when i got out of the tech school, and realised that i could make them) until 1994, when i started having to limit my workshop space because of where i was living. they just kind of faded into past memory, and were only re-realised a few weeks ago.
i put in the order for another 20 dozen aparajita on the 15th. i still haven’t heard anything, but they are making the incense to order (SQUEEEEE!!!) so i’m not being as paranoid about it… i’m still being paranoid (after all, it’s sort of a natural state of existence for me), just not as much. i’m probably going to email again on friday if i still haven’t heard anything by then.
i got this good-luck token in the mail the other day. it’s a little bit bigger than a US quarter, or a little smaller than a US half-dollar. i didn’t remember where it came from, at first, and because of the fact that i bid on it at ebay, it didn’t come from anybody i knew, or from an address with which i was familiar, which was pretty exciting, until i remembered where it came from.
we spent christmas eve driving: we got up around 5:00 or so, and drove to salem, oregon, then we drove north and stopped just south of portland, then we drove into portland and visited a couple of different places before heading back, around 7:30 pm… by the time we got home, i had had about as much driving as i could stand for a while, so i spent most of the rest of xmas at home, being a hermit-crab. we took our annual trip to double-bluff off-leash dog-park on new-years’ day, and got there just as a polar-bear swim was getting over, which was kind of odd, because normally we are the only ones there on new years, and this year there were huge crowds of people, and music blaring… and an ambulance…
yesterday was the one year anniversary of paddy’s departure. moe has a tribute over here.
along the same lines, we just found out yesterday that ziggy, our youngest ancient cat (he’s 16) has three tumours in his lungs. we could do stuff to prolong his life, but it would be for us, and not for him. we can make him more comfortable if things change, but we may end up having to euthanise him if he gets too uncomfortable. at this point, he’s comfortable and happy and he could have as little as a few days, or as much as several months, but we don’t know. it’s getting to the point where i almost expect at least one pet to croak around xmas… as much as i am ambivalent about xmas, i hope it doesn’t become a tradition.
we finished the first half of this year’s panto performances today, and we voted on what panto we want to do next year. the list is down to four: The Princes and The Pea, Sleeping Beauty, Rumplestiltskin, and Rapunzel… with the possibility of doing two of them (á la “Rapunzelstiltskin” or “Sleeping Beauty and The Pea” or something like that)… i’m still interested in doing “The Brementown Musicians” (naturally) or traditional-but-culturally-obscure ones like Dick Whittington’s Cat, or Dick Turpin… oh well…
i keep meaning to make some hobo nickles for holiday gifts. they only cost a nickle and people really appreciate them. look it up. i may post pictures, if i get around to making some… eventually…
another weekend of panto performances start tomorrow. i have to be there at 1:00, which means i have to leave around noon, and i probably won’t get home until 10:00 or so… then it’s the same thing on sunday, only* i have to be there at 11:00, so i’ll probably leave around 10:00, and i’ll probably end up getting home around 7:00 or 8:00.
*this is the reason why i keep my schedule on my computer, rather than in my head… 😐
http://www.bfxr.net/ loaded with the noise that i made in a few minutes of dinking around with it (click the link, and then press “Enter/Return” on your keyboard, it’s not loud or surprising… i promise) it’s definitely something that needs further investigation. 8)
okay, i’ve been REALLY busy over the past week, ending with a snake suspenderz gig and four panto performances in the past three days… which, oddly enough, has already resulted in my having, in my hot little hands at this very moment (well, not this very moment, because i’m typing – and that rather badly, because of the fact that my hands are cold – but you get the idea) cash and checks amounting to more than $250… and i’ve got another $100 being transferred to my bank account from paypal…
today i took an order from Rev. Mary, who called me on the phone this morning inquiring about aparajita… she didn’t say who she was, but she was raving about how much she likes it, and said that she wanted to buy 5 boxes. we talked for about half an hour about how much incense has changed since the 1960s and the “new trends” in incense. she then said that she would order from the site. when the order came in, it was for 12 boxes, which makes me think that it may be about time to contact that guy in india who has been spamming me with requests for the past year, who i finally convinced to shut up and go away…
anyway, back to rev. mary… i had no idea who she was when she called. i have since (obviously) discovered who she is and where she’s coming from. i’m rather amused that an old-time gospel preacher’s wife has latched onto my incense, but i’m not sure that she could be even more bizarre than i first imagined. she’s an old lady (the picture on her web site was taken at least 20 years ago, judging solely by what she sounds like), and it could very well be that she’s a “reformed” hippy, or, possibly one of those weird cross-breed hippies that took jeezis instead of LSD… or, she could be pre-hippy, a real old-time gospel preacher and just really like quality incense regardless of what religion its maker and seller belongs to, OR she could be really ignorant of everything (although how one could order incense from hybrid elephant and not come away with the impression that i might be hindu is somewhat beyond me, it may be that i am a little too close to the subject to be very objective) and has no idea that i’m not a “christian” as well…
anyway, she ordered 12 boxes, which means that i only have 10 left… and that’s including my “personal” stash…
people generally (in this area, at least) don’t seem to mind me wearing or displaying swastikas as long as they’re not obviously “hakenkreuz” related (i.e. they’re “different” colours than were used by the not-zees), but my new shirt will challenge those preconceived notions about colour somehow being related to meaning…
maybe i ought to make some flash cards that say things like BLUE and YELLOW to illustrate my point even further for those who still don’t get it (and i’m positive that there will be a few of them)…
a year ago, paddy was still alive and i was getting ready for a litter of new puppies. now, paddy is dead, the litter is gone except for one huge monstrostity of a dog who is now as big plus half as his mother, but is STILL digging random holes in the back yard… 😛
the 4th anniversary of this blog was yesterday. also, yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the death of sri daya mata.
there’s still a week to go before the panto, this year, unlike last year when it was this week. i thank GAWD that we’re waiting an extra week this year, because in spite of the fact that we wrote it ourselves, we’re still not quite “up to speed” with the “new, improved” peter pan — it’s still the same basic story that we took to OCF over the summer, but there are several new “twists” to the plot that make the whole thing more understandable and flow easier. as far as i can tell, we do, indeed, have all of the music at this point, including a “patter song” á la Gilbert & Sullivan, which should make the show a good deal more entertaining than it was this summer.
the fremont phil is playing for the traditional, annual lighting of lenin tomorrow, and snake suspenderz is playing for the drawing jam at the gage art academy on saturday.
the entire Voynich Manuscript is now online, where intrigued people (like me) can pore over it, download pages and wonder what Emperor Rudolph II of Germany thought was worth 66.4 troy ounces of gold…
i bought some new stock: Golden Nag Champa and Woods, as well as some “reorder” stock, Pradhan’s Royal Life and Shivranjani. i’m really glad to have found a new supplier for pradhan’s royal life, as it is one of my best (and best selling) champa fragrances, and the supplier i was getting it from previously is the notorious sughanda prabhu, who is practically impossible to get in touch with, and has recently gotten out of the incense business(!) but used to provide the best quality incense i have ever found anywhere… but the shivranjani i bought was because i needed more, and it’s not that common in the united states, however once i bought it, i realised that the supplier i usually get it from sells it for about half the price that these new guys sell it for, so i think i won’t change suppliers for that fragrance…
bleh… seeds… 😛 ptui…
i’m SO glad mother-in-law is gone… she’s my mother-in-law, and i’m grateful for her existence, without which there would be no moe, but if she can exist somewhere that’s far enough away from me that she can’t come over, rant about how my liberal views are going to make a mess of our country, decide our house isn’t good enough, try to make it better and end up making it worse, it would be just fine with me… her predictably abortive attempt at painting resulted in paint splashed from floor to ceiling, and ripped wallpaper where i took off the tape that she had me put down so that she wouldn’t paint beyond a certain, random point… it’s in the “spare” bathroom, that i don’t use very often, so i don’t have to see it every day, but it’s irritating that it was functional if consistently ugly, and now it’s functional and inconistently awful, and moe and i are left to clean up the mess.
i’ve got a busy few weeks coming up… i’ve got two rehearsals on wednesday, a gig on friday, a gig on saturday, and a gig and a rehearsal on sunday, then next monday (which is krampusnacht) there’s a rehearsal, wednesday there’s a rehearsal, friday there’s a gig, and next saturday is the start of the panto run, which is two shows saturday and sunday, excluding the 24th and 25th, and the 31st, and the 1st, and then two shows saturday and sunday for two more weeks, ending january 15th. if anybody is interested in coming better get your tickets soon, because we’re selling out very quickly. 8)
today i realised that i have almost a complete new albums worth of original music, and the only thing preventing me from releasing my fourth album of original music is that about half of the tracks don’t have endings…
also, i “stole” a sample from the pile of unfinished “And More” songs i have lying around, and rearranged it so that it’s pretty much unrecognisable… i’m not sure whether i am going to include it with the rest of the album of original music because the original sample involves people other than myself, even though it’s altered enough that it probably wouldn’t be recognisable by them, even if they did hear it.
so i’ve been feeling really subdued since being cracked last week… despite the fact that it didn’t really affect me that much, and i recovered quickly and completely with no more hassle and upset than the crack caused itself, i just haven’t felt like communicating that much.
we have only just gotten started with the panto rehearsals, although my understanding is that the players have actually been working separately for some time. we’ve only got a few weeks before the show goes live, and it has been almost completely rewritten between OCF and now, so it would really be good if things were moving somewhat more quickly, but i imagine it will all work out in the end.
snake suspenderz has a gig at mosaic coffee house on friday, which nobody remembered until i made some comment about a week ago that i had this gig on my schedule… and, at first, it was dismissed as a hallucination until hobbit realised that he had, in fact, scheduled the gig. we were doing really well, had a whole bunch of gigs in a row there for a while, and were making regular money busking, but recently it’s gone downhill, and we haven’t even rehearsed since the middle of last month.
the sousa bash went off without a hitch, and the sousa band is now officially on vacation until spring, with the exception of the phinney ridge holiday festival, which i’m not sure i’m going to this year, because it is REALLY crowded.
a small collection of pictures of trolloween i was able to take in between actually being a musician, is available for those who are interested. there aren’t many, and some of the low light ones leave a lot to be desired, because of my camera’s lack of low-light shooting ability…
now i can post a picture of my halloween costume without the possibility of anyone recognising me…unfortunately, there wasn’t any public ritual vegetable sacrifice, but i’m quite positive that there was private vegetable sacrifice… 😉
somehow, the artists at 0100101110101101.org invaded a rather up-scale art exhibit with art that wasn’t what the up-scale art exhibit’s curator thought it was. “The piece has been shown for over a month, and nobody questioned its authenticity or worthiness.”
Dieter Roth never made this work, it’s a fake. We invented it one evening in a bar with our friend Corazon Del Sol, and put it together the next day. We bought all the stuff on the internet: an old glass jar, a vintage cork and lots of flies (yes, you can buy flies online), and sent the work to the unaware curators.
i got up at an unreasonably early hour this morning and went down to the FSM to busk.
while there, i found one of the vendors had a hat for sale for $10, that i couldn’t resist. it’s not a costume hat, it’s a real, authentic, merchant marine hat, that probably belonged to an officer. inside the hat was a little printed card that said “Return this Bernard Cap to:” that had the name, address and phone number of someone who was completely unknown to the person from whom i bought the hat.
i googled the name, and came up with some confusing results. googling for Jon H. Stebbins – the name as it is actually written on the card – gets no results, but it asks if i meant to type “John H. Stebbins” and gives a lot of nautical and marine references for that spelling. the one, glaring exception to this is the record of the courts opinion in reference to the case of U.S. versus Stebbins, from 2005, in which John H. Stebbins, Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, raped his 6-year-old daughter, was convicted in a military court, and was sentenced to life without parole, plus a $75,000 fine. the opinion of the court was that he deserved everything he got…
i’m not sure either one of these is the Jon H. Stebbins that previously owned my hat, but if that’s the sort of people i’m going to find when i search for him, i think i’ll give it a miss…
it’s a cool hat, though… 8)
busking went really well, despite the fact that we were a trio (sketch had another engagement). we got a lot of really positive feedback from the people in charge, and made a fair amount of money at the same time. i could get used to this… 8)
i’m indirectly responsible for this… at least for the first one…
i originally heard The Bobs song “Elwood Decker” in 1996 or 1997, thanks to my my beautiful wife (who is THE Bobs fanatic), and immediately wondered who the hell he was… so i proceded to find out.
after some preliminary internet searching, i wasn’t able to find much about elwood, but i found a connection between elwood and a guy to whom i may be related, norm hammond. it turned out that norm hammond posessed all of elwood’s paintings, and it turned out that they had just hung a gallery showing in the old train station in oceano (the bobs changed it to nipomo, which is in the same neighbourhood, but more euphonious) of elwood’s paintings. norm sent me a bunch of reproductions, one of which is currently hanging on the wall behind me. i suggested that elwood really should have a web site, and norm said that he was working on several avenues to publicise elwood — at the time he was in the process of writing a book about him — but that he had never even thought of a web site. i suggested elwooddecker.com and (although i hadn’t expanded the business to the point that it is now) suggested that i could register it for him and build a web site. he said that he would think about it, but he was more interested in writing at that time. i haven’t heard from norm since then, but that’s okay, because it appears that elwood got a web site anyway.
i also put together a one-page biography of elwood, with one of the pictures of him that norm had sent me, and gave it to richard bob at the bobs christmas show, the last time they did the show at jazz alley (1997? 1998?).
of course that was some time before i got involved with the cirque de flambé and the fremont philharmonic, which would, eventually, get me to the point where i am friends and colleagues with matthew bob… 8)
it goes klunk, but it only goes klunk at certain times (when i am going around a corner) and not at other times (like when i am going over a speed bump), and, upon further investigation, the spare tire holder makes a suspiciously similar “klunk” when it gets stressed from going around corners, or when the car is stopped and i bump into it… i’m not saying that this is conclusive proof that nothing is wrong, but it is a good indication. 8)
the next step, now that the license plates and the insurance is switched over, is to get the stereo and the siren speakers switched over. i called and talked to a guy from car toys a couple of days ago, and he said that he would pull my previous order, but when i called back today, he wasn’t there and won’t be back until tuesday.
after that, i need to get started on the paint job. the guys that i bought it from said that they would provide the wholesale certificate to get it painted at maaco, and all i had to do was get an estimate.
snake suspenderz played a 90-minute gig at Davis Wright Tremaine law office, on 3rd avenue in downtown seattle the other night. it was kinda weird, because there were a huge crowd of people, but they were not listening to us… seriously, we got more compliments from the wait-staff that were hired caterers than we got from the law-office-related people, and we didn’t get that many compliments from the caterers… it’s really strange to not get confirmation that we’re doing a good job… they paid us $400 in advance, and from what little i gathered, they were more than satisfied with the job that we did, but they didn’t say anything specific, and they didn’t say they were going to hire us again… which the guy whose party we played at last week, did…
the law offices occupied at least 5 floors of the office building, but we played in the entrance lobby on the 22nd floor, which had a classic view of the sound, and i couldn’t resist taking a few pictures… 😉
If you go to the Third World and find 100 people who have never tasted ketchup before, you find out two things: one is that people don’t actually like tomato ketchup, the other is that they dislike all ketchups equally. –Rob Young
i downloaded a whole bunch of music from Sharps a burning-man related dub DJ with whom i am related – he’s either my fourth or fifth cousin, either twice or thrice removed… i’m not sure about the particular details, but our shared ancestor is my great-grandfather… or great-great-grandfather, or something like that… i find it somewhat incredible that i am related to so many people, most of whom i don’t know, and that there are other people, some of whom i am related to, who know a lot more about my family, even though they are completely unknown to me, than i do. it’s also good to see that i’ve got relatives who are not my immediate family (who all seem to despise me for not entirely unknown, but entirely unrealistic reasons) who, never the less, have the same predilictions for artistic expression as i do. it is definitely very grounding for me. i keep having to remind myself that i – and everyone else alive – has 1024 great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents, and the further you go back in time, the fewer people there are… eventually – and it’s a lot sooner than most people think – you’re bound to run into similar family relationships.
along similar lines, through another guy i met who is from whitecourt, alberta, i got a new pile of information about my mother’s family, and i now have more-or-less confirmed lineage back to the early 1600s, and a “home turf” in st. vigeans and arbroath, scotland. i’m still hoping that someone will come along and give me similar information about my father’s side of the family: i’ve only been able to trace them back to the mid-1800s, and, although possibly the father (or, possibly, grandfather) of the last guy in my current list was originally from “the old country” (whichever one that is), i don’t know anything about him… of course i am one of a long tradition from that part of my family, of oldest-children who have been estranged from their families for one reason or another, on top of the fact that the civil war put extreme pressures on family loyalties, and that part of my family was in the thick of the action on both sides of the conflict – which would mean that there are more-than-likely parts of my family history that were deliberately forgotten over the years.
i’ve been doing a lot of performances with snake suspenderz over the past couple of weeks. we’ve been busking at the ballard sunday market for a while now, and the past couple of weeks we haven’t been busking there, but we’ve made up for it by busking at the wallingford market on wednesday, and the interbay market on thursday… and hobbit and i went and busked at the phinney ridge market on friday last week. the fremont phil did a gig at the fremont outdoor cinema on saturday last week, and we’ve got another gig scheduled for the mobile food rodeo, coming up on the 17th… and the day after that, snake suspenderz is doing two gigs in the same day, at the pike place market and beneroya hall… and i’ve discovered that puyallup has a sunday market, which opens up the possibility of going to ballard in the morning and puyallup in the afternoon… 8)
i’ve also had a surprising amount of hybrid elephant business. i’ve got a button order in the process that’s 500 buttons, plus at least two international orders and at least two more domestic orders over the past few weeks, and another one just came in… but the reciept from paypal hasn’t come in yet, so it may not be a real order… ah, there it is… it’s a real order now… 8)
a few weeks ago – it was on a sunday – i made the mistake of scheduling two gigs on the same day. i realised it was a mistake, and yet…
i scheduled myself for two gigs in one day, two more times within the next month. one of those days was today. i scheduled busking at the phinney farmers’ market in the afternoon, and a fremont phil rehearsal in the evening. to make this self-torture even worse, i got up with moe and went out to worm and vaccinate 20 sheep before 11:00 this morning.
moe left this afternoon around 1:00 to go to another dog trial in the portland area. she took all the doggles with her this time, because i’ve had, and will be having so much to do over the next few days.
i just got home, it’s 11:30, i still need to feed the cats, i haven’t been home all day, and i was ready to go to bed about two hours ago. we’ve got an actual gig (but only one of them) tomorrow. i don’t think we’re going to busk at ballard on sunday, so i may take that day to make the counterweights i’ve been needing for my canopy…
not only that, but i’ve got another two-gigs-in-one-day coming up, where snake suspenderz is doing the pike place market buskers’ festival, at pike place, and the seattle symphony day of music, at beneroya hall, within three hours of each other… sure, beneroya hall is only a couple of blocks from pike place, but… GODDAMIT, it’s TWO gigs in one day… and as much as they’re really prestigious, and really cool, and what other band can say that they played in the pike place market and beneroya hall IN THE SAME DAY, i just know that it’s going to stretch my spoons to the limit… 😛
i’ve got a really busy weekend coming up, and i’ve had a really busy week already… i didn’t do much today: work on the snake suspenderz business card, laundry and spod… but i deserve a day off, especially since yesterday i filled two incense orders, one of which got shipped to the netherlands, and it’s really difficult to tell whether a person whose native language is dutch is being serious or not when he says that he wants to pay twice as much for shipping as he does for the incense itself, which meant that yesterday was the end of about two weeks of email negotiations…
i realised, once again, why i don’t schedule more than one gig per day yesterday…
i’m beginning a couple weeks of relative busy-ness, and it started off with partying and not getting enough sleep saturday night, and continued abruptly yesterday, when i got up way too early and went to the ballard sunday market with snake suspenderz and busked for approximately 1½ hours before we were run off by a string quartet which was playing vivaldi and bach. while they were playing acceptably well, they set up 20 feet away from us and wouldn’t fess up when confronted with their rudeness… and then we discovered that it’s apparently a “new policy” that buskers have to get up and move every half an hour…
by the time we had played for half an hour or so with a classical accompaniment (which was really confusing, at best, and downright distracting most of the time) we decided to bag it, especially since i had to go to my second gig anyway, which was the ballard sedentary sousa band at the ballard locks… which was, fortunately, just down the street.
it was clear from the start that i wasn’t going to be able to play my best, because i had already been playing my best for an hour and a half at the previous gig, but this was on my trombone and that was on my tuba, and i figured that would account for something… but if it did, i probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway, because by the time we were done playing i was getting really tired… then the BSSB-at-the-locks concert was followed by the traditional beer-and-pizza-in-walter’s-back-yard, which got me home around 6:00 pm.
i actually tried to take a nap between 7:00 and 7:30 or so, but the doggie-alarm kept going off every time a twig snapped outside, until moe got home around 8:00. i finally went to bed at 9:30 and was asleep almost immediately.
i’ve got a ninja concert at the good shepherd center with the fremont philharmonic this evening, and a rehearsal with the sousa band on tuesday, wednesday i have a snake suspenderz rehearsal, and thursday is my “weekend” this week. then i’ve got a gig with snake suspenderz at chumleighland on friday… which has the distinct possibility of leaking over into saturday as well… and possibly another ninja performance with the fremont phil on saturday, then the ballard sunday market on the 14th, and on the 15th is the party that we were hired to do as a result of the sunday market…
and then there’s the “Garden Party” at krissy and chris’ on the 20th, which the fremont phil is probably not playing for in any official capacity, but we’re probably going to be there, and i’m going to bet that we’ll play a little. and then, next month, we’ve already got a two-gigs-in-one-day scheduled, on 18th september, when we’re scheduled for the pike place busker festival and the seattle symphony day of music at beneroya hall…
plus i got an incense order today, for the last of my old tulasi deepak stock, which, because, from what i’ve been able to find out, they don’t make it any longer is another incense that i have carried that nobody else carries…
we were playing at the ballard sunday market and this nice lady came by and hired us for a house concert… unfortunately for everybody else it’s a private event, but… whee! 8)
but this particular night i had something special in mind: the David Bowie classic, Diamond Dogs. and i timed it precisely so that the song 1984 started the moment the new year happened.
i don’t know if anybody else remembers this, but i was just listening to 1984 and i remembered this…
Someday they won’t let you, so now you must agree
The times they are a-telling, and the changing isn’t free
You’ve read it in the tea leaves, and the tracks are on TV
Beware the savage jaw
Of 1984
They’ll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air
And tell that you’re eighty, but brother, you won’t care
You’ll be shooting up on anything, tomorrow’s never there
Beware the savage jaw
Of 1984
Come see, come see, remember me
We played out an all night movie role
You said it would last, but I guess we enrolled
In 1984 (who could ask for more)
1984 (who could ask for mor-or-or-or-ore)
(Mor-or-or-or-ore)
I’m looking for a vehicle, I’m looking for a ride
I’m looking for a party, I’m looking for a side
I’m looking for the treason that I knew in ’65
Beware the savage jaw
Of 1984
Come see, come see, remember me
We played out an all night movie role
You said it would last, but I guess we enrolled
In 1984 (who could ask for more)
1984 (who could ask for mor-or-or-or-ore)
(Mor-or-or-or-ore)
i was signed on with the SANCApators as a temporary sousaphone player today. i got there with enough time to park my car close to the end of the parade route, and then walked with my sousaphone to the beginning of the parade route, which was a little more than two blocks. the actual parade route was from 34th and raye to 32nd and raye, but we went down 34th to mcgraw, and then down mcgraw to 32nd, and then back up 32nd to raye, so the parade route was about 8 blocks total.
it was supposed to start at 10:30, and i think it actually did start at 10:30, but it was almost noon before we started moving, and it was more like 12:30 by the time we actually “stepped off” and we didn’t finish until around 1:15 or so. i was actually really surprised that i was able to “march” (we weren’t really “marching” so much as “meandering”, but we were actually moving, which is a new experience for me, since my injury) and i actually was able to play most of the music in a more or less satisfactory fashion… and, considering that they were two relatively fast marches (Circus Days and Desert Patrol) i’m pretty satisfied with my performance overall.
i’ve been asked to make The Ballard Sedentary Sousa Band web site look “more like the Sweetgrass Rods web site”… except, to me, with the exception of the specific content, the two sites are actually quite similar: similar layout, similar breakdown, similar navigation… without changing the actual content, i don’t see how i could make the sedentary sousa site look more like the sweetgrass rods site… it’s a mystery known, at this point, only to the client, who knows what she wants, but can’t always convey what she really means… which means that it truly is a mystery…
we had a snake suspenderz rehearsal today. we’ve got a few gigs that we are talking about, including one tomorrow night at an open-mike in white center (not exactly “white”, not exactly “center”). also, there’s another open-mike that’s looking for fresh meat, and there’s a “pretty much sure thing” for a SACBO birthday party, next april, which is in the works. we added another song, and worked on a few endings that needed work. there’s a good chance that we’ll be at the ballard sunday market this sunday. all it took was a little shove in the right direction to get this band up and running again… i hope it’s more than just a few gigs this time…
10,150 spam messages… over ten thousandIDENTICAL messages… 😐
what on earth motivates people to do that? it’s SO annoying, and all it does is result in the email address and IP address being blocked from further communication… why? does somebody pay them to do that? if not, then why? 😐
i went busking with snake suspenderz this morning. we played for a little more than an hour, and i made $30, which i think is adequate. we got rained out, which isn’t fair: last time we busked, there was a 60% chance of rain, and it cleared up and was nice and sunny. today, there was a 40% chance of rain, and we got rained out. somebody said that 60% plus 40% equals 100% but i’m not exactly sure if i follow their logic…
one of my web design clients has asked me, twice now, how to “delete a youtube video posted by someone else”… it would be amusing if it wasn’t so sad.
there’s only so many pictures i can take of essentially the same thing… except for meadow lights. i could take endless pictures of them, because they’re all different in some way or another. i suppose you could say the same thing about two pictures of anything else, taken a year apart, but i’ll ignore that, for now. animated Maque, with Lindsay, backstage at the Morningwood Odditorium, OCF, 2011i left on tuesday with myron and marilyn, and stayed with marilyn’s daughter, son-in-law, and their two kids, in their HUGE house in portland. siri (marilyn’s daughter) is a cello player, and her husband (whose name i don’t remember) is a music professor at one of the colleges that is not Reed, in the area. their house has at least 3 floors (they may have a basement, i didn’t check) in a very nice area, in the eastern part of town, near a catholic school/convent (for monique, who doubtlessly knows where i am talking about). we had breakfast at the Cadillac Café, and hit the road around 10:00 or so, which meant that we arrived at the fair around noon on wednesday.
there was the standard, and expected “hippy ineptitude factor” in play at the gate, but they actually had me listed under the correct spelling of my name this year (which is a miracle!), and, apart from waiting in line for an hour or so, it was nothing out of the ordinary… and we didn’t even need a “full load teddy” to drive in to morningwood, even though, technically, we had to have one (reminder for next year: get a full load teddy after getting wrist-banded, and before heading back to the car. grumpy said so.). wednesday and thursday were somewhat of a blur, because there were the “traditional” things; getting my camp set up, making runs to various cars to get things that had been forgotten, building up the last bits of backstage that hadn’t been done yet, finding out which showers were open (the ritz was open, but very crowded because only the showers in the front half were accessible), and that kind of thing, along with the mental adjustments necessary to go from the “normal” world to the “fantasy” world, and having to figure out how to deal with the unexpected things, like the baby robins that were not quite fledged, and nesting in the tree right next to the bandstand that we didn’t want to scare. seriously, they were cheeping and flapping around more or less effectively in the tree on wednesday, and thursday, and we were not sure what was going to happen when thousands of people and an amplified sound system started working right next to their nest, but all three of them were out of the nest by the time the gates opened at 10:00 friday morning.
we had a final dress-rehearsal on thursday, which was more like a “run through”, that was about as raw and unfinished as anything i’ve ever seen from the group, and despite the fact that we had all the music, we ended up cutting one of the songs, because the actor who was supposed to sing it hadn’t learned the words (no names – you know who you are). but despite the fact that the dress rehearsal well and truly SUCKED, it had come together surprisingly well by noon on friday… so well, in fact, that several people in the group (including me) expressed their extreme relief that the “run through” on thursday hadn’t been an indication of what the show was really going to be like. and it just got better from there. i remember saying that last year’s show was the best we have done so far, and that is what i say about this year’s show as well. not that all of the parts were totally memorised, but those that weren’t were skillfully covered, and nobody noticed. the jokes were as funny, and as fresh as ever, and there was the expected, and the unexpected in the proper quantities to make it easy to riff off the stuff that we didn’t have quite down yet, and easy to learn the stuff that we didn’t have quite down yet.
of course there was also the standard “horseplay” or “messing with peoples’ minds” or what-have-you, which included the dozen whoopie-cushions that i brought and distributed, and the “hippy fishing” that i participated in — after sunset, take a glow-stick and tie it to some black rigging twine, and toss it out into the path. when some stoned hippy tries to pick it up, yank on the string. — as well as four days, one more than the actual fair, where i went out and “hid” somewhere along the path, at night, with my cape, so that people couldn’t immediately tell that i was a human being, and played my long flute… which, i have more or less decided, with the help of those people who noticed me, in spite of the fact that i was “hiding”, is called a “didjeri-flute”. i met a whole bunch of musicians, some of whom i have met before, but none of whose names i remember. there was the guy with the bright red sousaphone from the fighting instruments of karma, who is not the guy with the bright silver sousaphone from the fighting instruments of karma that i have run into in previous years. the bass player that i met at the ritz, and “fossil fool” the rock-the-bike rider/rapper were also memorable. and there were stories of famous people like steve weber from the holy modal rounders (stuart was out wandering around and he came across a band playing in the path, and a guy walked up to him and, forcefully, told him to take his guitar out of the case and play. it turned out that the guy was steve weber), and chris chandler, and bill kreuzmann, and a famous oud player being at the fair this year.
the ritz was kind of a trip this year. i was there on thursday evening when simon contacted lem, the guy in charge of booking acts for the ritz, and i told them that we wanted the saturday, 8:00 or 9:00 slot. lem took simon’s phone number and said he would call, because the staff at the ritz was really anxious to have the phil play there again this year. however, friday came and went without any word from lem. saturday, we were informed that we had been offered the midnight slot at the ritz, which was then changed to 6:00. we jumped on 6:00 and they said they’d get back to us, but when 4:30 came around and we hadn’t heard anything, we decided that we’d better go up to the ritz, just on the off chance that we actually had been scheduled for 6:00 and they’d forgotten to tell us (which would not be out of the question by any means). we got there and discovered that we were expected, which was a relief that was quickly dashed when another band showed up and it turned out that they were also “expected” to play at 6:00. after about a half-hour of people running around like chickens with their heads cut off, kim from the sauna, the person who is actually responsible for booking bands at the ritz, showed up, and it was decided that we would play at 6:00 saturday, and the other band would play at 6:00 sunday. the upshot is that i gave kim from the sauna my phone number, and talked with her extensively. she said that, primarily because of the fact that we played “Il Balon di Qua-qua” (otherwise known as “The Chicken Dance”) they were really anxious to have us back next year, and she actually said that we would be in the 7:30 saturday slot next year, and that she would call me to confirm that closer to the actual event. i got four ritz tokens this year: one that i bought, one that i found on the path(!), one that i got instead of “hat money”, and one from playing at the ritz. i now have 15 tokens. 8) yeah, i know that i could use them in the sauna, but i like keeping them as souvenirs instead.
saturday afternoon, i was sitting on stage next to my tuba, before a performance, and some guy came up and handed me a laminated card — similar to the “photo id” card that some people (including me) wear instead of a wrist-band — and said “i think you dropped this”. i took it and looked at it, and it was clearly not mine, so i said “no, i didn’t”, to which he replied “well, you have now…” and walked off into the crowd. the laminated card had the “Pre-Post Sideshow Circus” logo that i had seen on a number of the “security” peoples’ t-shirts prior to that time, and the other side had a picture of a sousaphone player. i subsequently learned that this was a souvenir as well, which would explain why the guy who gave it to me seemed to have about 50 laminated cards on the lanyard around his neck.
the fair ended on sunday, and we left on monday. sunday evening was full of whoopie-cushions, hippy fishing, playing my didjeri-flute, smoking a lot of cannabis, wandering and hanging out with my friends. monday morning i got up, broke camp and helped them take down the stage. we left the fair around noon, and i got home around 6:00. sasha and stuart showed up with my two “heavy” boxes yesterday. the weather clouded up on the way home, and it has been raining on and off since then… it’s probably a good thing i came home when i did.
this week has been spent at the Oregon Country Fair, so regardless of how many new indications that the eschaton is eminently upon us there are (and i’m sure that there are very many indeed), thankfully, i have no evidence of it apart from the hippie ineptitude factor that is common at such events.
eventually i will write about my experiences this week, and i guarantee, if the eschaton doesn’t actually happen between now and then, that there will be more next week.
oh, and happy “birthday” to me… that’s what i get for being born on february 29th… actually i’m coming up on my 13th birthday, even though i’m 51 this year. everyone else my age is waltzing into middle age and i am just reaching puberty! whee…
this will be my 8th OCF. i’m leaving on tuesday, getting a ride with myron and marylin, and arriving on wednesday, after staying with their kids in portland, and returning monday, which is more or less exactly what i wanted… if it had been exactly what i wanted, i would have arrived on tuesday, but when relying on the good graces of others to provide my transportation, i can’t be as picky as i would be otherwise. i’m also going to send a couple of boxes of “heavy gear” with sasha, who is going to be stopping by on monday, so that the car-top carrier won’t get overloaded.
this year’s production is Peter Pan. as it is now a tradition, we are going to have the first – and final – “complete” run-through of the panto at the fair, on thursday, and we’ll be doing two shows a day, at 12:00 noon, and 3:00 pm, in the “purpose built” Morningwood Odditorium, friday through sunday for (presumably) paying audiences. at the rehearsal i attended yesterday, we didn’t have all of the music, and the lyrics hadn’t yet been written for most of the songs… i wonder if those (presumably) paying audiences are aware of what is waiting in store for them… actually, my impression is that most of them have either seen our performances before, or don’t care, because they’ve ingested some combination of drugs and/or alcohol and are oblivious… and the ones who are neither of the aforementioned groups are usually the ones who actually pay us the most.
and, in spite of everything: in spite of the long lines for the porta-potties, and long lines for breakfast and lunch, and the long lines for the showers, and the overpriced food, and the “hippie ineptitude factor” — in spite of the fact that it is a “hippie mall” with all the trimmings and a “footd court”, i’m actually looking forward to going again this year, in spite of the fact that i was full of trepidation when i first went to the fair.
by the way, in order to circumvent the aforementioned “hippie ineptitude factor”, simon has arranged for my pass to be under the name “Harry Smith”, because they don’t seem to understand anything else… 😉
the show at the can can last night went exceptionally well, but i think that the exceptional parts were more because of disorganisation and lack of planning than anything else…
the can can was STUFFED with people, which was a good thing from our point of view, because our “take” was based on sales at the door, but i suspect that a large part of the reason why the can can was STUFFED last night is because we opened for baby gramps — which was a complete surprise to us. i had been lead to the understanding that we would be opening for He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister, and, indeed, they were there, and played after baby gramps. the main objection we had was that nobody had told us that we were opening for baby gramps… we had discussed an apparent discrepancy in what the booking person had told us compared to what they had announced on their web site – which was just us and HMBSMS – and we had prepared for the possibility that they had just been disorganised (the can can has just recently moved back in to their original location, after having temporarily relocated across the street to accomodate a construction project). and, apparently, when gramps was called by the can can (he does shows there on a regular basis), he was under the impression that it was as a favour to someone, but he didn’t know who…
but if someone had only told us that we would be opening for gramps, we would have talked it up a lot more than we did… which, for us, was pretty extensive, but if people had known that gramps was gonna’ be there, more people that we told would have actually showed up…
and, as an added bonus (for me, anyway) was that accompanying baby gramps on toy pianos was my friend truckin’ dave – this guy – who i have known since the early 1980s, from bellingham (a “bellinghammer”)… i had no clue that this guy knew baby gramps, although gramps introduced dave as “my friend from the ’60s”, so the whole evening was full of surprises for me… and it’s close enough that it could actually be considered a birthday present… 🙂
let’s see… fremont phil rehearsals this week, monday and wednesday, tuesday was my 13th wedding anniversary, thursday held a fremont phil performance at a private “ice cream social” in richmond beach, and today was a sousa band performance at the king street station, commemorating the remodeling (which hasn’t actually happened yet) and reopening of the king street station, and to which i actually took public transportation from federal way (which is the closest actual bus station to my house)… really, $2.50 and 40 minutes from federal way transit center to the king street station makes taking the bus almost realistic enough that i would be willing to consider it… if it weren’t for the fact that, usually, i am travelling with my tuba and all my gear, which i’m sure they’d let me do on the bus, but i’m also fairly sure that it would irritate the hell out of certain passengers. tomorrow is pretty much open (although i’m going to go replace the tire that moe blew out on the freeway last weekend) and sunday looks like it’s going to be another snake suspenderz performance at the ballard sunday market…
that enough for ya? it’s not over… next monday i’m breaking the tradition of only having one rehearsal per day, and rehearsing (again) with snake suspenderz, as well as a rehearsal with the fremont phil, tuesday i have a snake suspenderz performance at the can can, and wednesday i’m back to one rehearsal per day, with the phil… thursday, next week, is far enough in the future that, to my mind, it doesn’t even exist yet, but by that time i will have expended enough spoons that it will be time for a couple of days break… we’ll see how it goes…
and that’s not to mention OCF, which is coming up very quickly, and this year’s panto, which is peter pan, for which we (still) don’t have all of the music, despite the fact that it’s going to go on stage for the first time in a little more than 2 weeks…
i expended A LOT of spoons last weekend, because it was the solstice festival, and snake suspenderz played both days, apart from the caravan on friday. i’ve uploaded a whole bunch of pictures, which i haven’t yet got all sorted out, so there’s very likely going to be more pictures uploaded eventually. of course, the fremont “solstice” festival actually didn’t occur on the solstice (something for which i’m sure our ancient ancestors would decry with loud voices), but that’s because us “modern” folks have to get up and go to work on monday… a tradition which, despite the fact that it recently included me, i have never been able to figure out…
but today is especially important, because it is also our 13th wedding anniversary, which means, traditionally, i’m supposed to give my sweetie lace – which would be nice and i’m sure she would appreciate it, but it’s also impractical and i’m not sure she’d ever use it for anything… the “modern traditional” gift is textiles, and we just got a new bed-spread recently (with zebra stripes), but i’m not sure what other textile items we actually need at this point – i’m sure clothes are on the list, but i’d really rather give my sweetie something more romantic than clothes…
and i’m more convinced than ever that the decision to get married was one of the smartest decisions i have ever made in my life, but that’s only because of the fact that i decided to get married to moe, and not someone else.
i’ve been working on a business card, but i’ve needed important things like the location of hi-res images and the names of the fonts and stuff like that before i can actually create anything… which means waiting for them to get back to me… of course, once i actually have all those things it took me about 15 minutes to put together a business card that is like the example they sent me, and now i’ve got to wait (again) for the customer to either approve the card, or make changes… and, being that it’s a business card for an artist, if there are changes, they’ll most likely want something exotic, unusual and expensive…
we had a snake suspenderz rehearsal on tuesday. it’s really great to play with the guys again, but i’m afraid that, once we’re through with the (one) gig that we’ve got scheduled so far (28th june, at the can can) the band will fade from existence again… and, as much as some people complain that it’s a “hobby band”, i get the very strong feeling that it could very easily be a good deal more than that. we’re going to be playing for SACBO on saturday and sunday. i have my canopy, and i’m going to be there anyway, because of my art car, so i figured what the hell… we can busk, and because of the fact that it’s the fremont solstice festival, we’ll probably make some money, and it’s a couple more “rehearsals” before we have to do it “for real” at the can can…
i decided that, because of the fact that SACBO is imminent, and because of the fact that the continued working existence of the current Ganesha The Car is still very much in question (it’s still working – touch wood – but who knows whether or not it’ll be working tomorrow, much less next week), i decided that i was going to put “freeform” art on it, and save the complicated design work for a car that i have confidence is going to last me a little bit longer. i haven’t taken any pictures of it, yet, but it vaguely resembles this drawing from my sketchbook. it’s not nearly as “artistic” (read “exotic and unusual”) as i would like it to be, but it will have to do for the time being.
we had a fremont phil rehearsal on wednesday. there was a rehearsal last week, as well, but i was in the middle of preparing for my colonoscopy last week, so i didn’t go to that one. the phil has taken off in a new direction, which is interesting and intriguing, and not entirely unwelcome. we’ve gotten a couple of new flutists, a new trumpet player and the baritone player and the EWI player from last year, who are all dedicated musicians and very interested in moving forwards with the group. we’re playing a private “ice cream social” near edmonds on the 23rd, and we’re sounding surprisingly good, considering the small amount of rehearsal we’ve had.
speaking of the colonoscopy, the results arrived yesterday. the other two polyps that i had removed were benign as well, and there’s nothing to worry about, but they want to see inside my ass again in two years, rather than the three that they told me originally, because of the fact that the polyps were there to begin with.
the ballard sedentary sousa band played today at folklife, which meant that i actually left the house at 7:30 this morning, in order to get to the center grounds by 8:30. of course the BSSB didn’t actually play until 12:30, but if i had gotten there much later than 8:30, i wouldn’t have been able to find a place to park closer than about a mile and a half away. of course i also had a 10-hour parking pass, but i still would not have been guaranteed to be able to find a parking place.
so i wandered around the seattle center grounds for a few hours for a few hours, mostly before the humongous crowds of people got there. then i went back to my car and retrieved my instrument and went back up to the mural amphitheatre for the performance. it went fairly well: we had 5 trombones this afternoon, which is one less than the full compliment. i played all right from the audiences point of view (i didn’t make any mistakes that someone in the audience could have said came from me), but i didn’t play as well as i would have liked, because there wasn’t anywhere where we could warm up before going onstage.
but then, when the performance was over, the humongous crowds of people had well and truly arrived and it took me half an hour and several detours to get from the mural to the place where i had parked, because the humongous crowds of people were EVERYWHERE, and several times large sections of the humongous crowds of people had actually stoppedin the middle of the path… yes, i know that it’s expected behaviour for humongous crowds of people, especially when there are such attractions as a hat vendor, or a t-shirt vendor, or that sort of thing, but i still get extraordinarily peeved at people who are walking along, and i am walking behind them, and they suddenly STOP for no very obvious reasons, which makes me stop as well, or look for some way around them… which is difficult to find when there is a humongous crowd of people everywhere… it wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for the fact that i was taking up about 3 times as much space as i would have been ordinarily, because i had my trombone and my stands… there were times when i wish i could have taken my trombone stand and shoved it up the butt of the person in front of me, to get them to move out of the way, but there wasn’t anywhere for them to move, and even if there was, the same thing would have had to happen with the person in front of them, and so forth…
it’s 5:00 now, and i feel like i’m just beginning to come down from the instanity…
i’ve been working on a new web site template for the mercer island vet clinic, which is essentially finished, but it hasn’t had the content added yet, so it’s not live.
i’m about a week away from my first colonoscopy, which starts in a week with multiple degrees of laxatives and purgatives and a clear-liquid fast… which should be a “thrill”… and then, to top it all off, i get an anesthetic that causes retrograde amnesia and i have to get a ride home, because i won’t be allowed to drive for 24 hours afterward, so i’m probably going to have to take the bus to the clinic, which is the same general location that they took me when i had my brain injury. 😐 then i have to schedule another appointment with dr. wackaloon to talk about my allegedly-high blood pressure. what i maintain, which is what i maintained before i tested “high” at his office the last time, is that i run a little higher than normal, which has been reinforced by the fact that i have been checking daily for 26 days, and my average is 143/95 – which is a little higher than normal… but my life is not as “relaxed” as i would like it to be, so it’s understandable…
the ballard sedentary sousa band is performing at the mural amphitheatre on sunday, for folklife. i pulled off a miraculous save and got the last remaining parking pass when it’s original recipient (clayton) wasn’t at the last rehearsal to claim it… which means that i’ll be able to park relatively close to the amphitheatre, for free, rather than having to pay to park a couple of miles away and take the bus there and back, which will also mean that i may actually spend more than the requisite hour or so that i have to be there.
the unauthorised authorisation dialogue went away when i realised that i have the leap.cc site in my RSS feed as well… i deleted the site, and the dialogue went away and has not come back. as far as i can tell, there’s still no site at leap.cc, although the domain itself doesn’t expire until 2013… weird…
it would be really nice if we weren’t playing to a “crowd” of three people, like we were the last time we appeared at the can can… so, come and cheer us on… and have a beer and some food as well. the can can is a cool place, despite the thin crowds…
because of the fact that i worked the “late night” shift at a local college radio station for three years or so between 1980 and 1984 (KUGS 89.3 FM) i became familiar with a whole bunch of extraordinarily obscure music… stuff like “The Passion and Transfiguration of a Post Apocalyptic Eunuch” by David Snow, “Perfect Lives” by Robert Ashley, “Einstein On The Beach” by Philip Glass, music by The Glass Orchestra, The Nihilist Spasm Band and suchlike…
it is that experience, digging through literally tens of thousands of 33⅓ RPM vinyl albums, that has gone a long way towards forming my musical tastes today…
however there is one group, The Shaggs, that i’ve never quite been able to figure out, although i find their music fascinating… never been able to figure out, that is, until this afternoon, when i came across this video about the early years of The Shaggs at the BBC. now i understand: their music is the result of not being allowed to listen to popular music, until, one day, they were essentially forced to make “popular music” by a father who was obsessed and psychotic… they made a grand total of one album, “The Philosophy of The World”, and broke up upon the death of their father/manager because, as dot said, “it was embarrassing.”
get out there and watch the video now, because the BBC is only putting it up for a short period of time (and i can’t figure out how to download it, which is irritating). fortunately, i’ve got the album in my collection… one of the advantages of having the “late night” shift at a college radio station and having a collection of the weirdest possible music which no-one will notice when it goes “missing” from said radio station… 😉
That Song is a “jam”… i.e. “not a finished piece”. my recollection is that it was called “that song” because it was one that we played fairly frequently, but not one that we worked on enough that it had a “working” title… it was just “that song”…
the moisture festival is over – for me – and sunday is the last day of performances. i’m going to the “cast party” on sunday night, but judging by my general dislike of parties in general (too noisy; too many people in “cliques”; a lot of people who i probably should know, but only see once a year, and can’t remember their names; not enough that interests me, etc., etc.) i’ll probably not be staying particularly late. the band sounded really good, although we still haven’t decided on a line-up. last night teacher ted played trumpet, after having not been a member of the band for two or three years. apparently stuart, who just quit the band comparitively recently, has decided that he wants to play guitar with us again. i don’t think he’ll be stepping back into the “band leader” role again, but you apparently never can tell. we’ve gotten prospective additions in the trumpet, clarinet and flute departments, and an auxilliary ukulele player who also appears to be interested in joining the band. apparently a bunch of these people are co-workers of kiki. there would be more pictures, but apparently the flash wasn’t working on my camera, so they all came out really blurry and without enough light.
so apparently the moisture festival does have enough money to do a reprint of the program this year.
this year they had the programs printed by zebra printing.
i know the guys who own zebra printing. they are devout muslims – i remember, when i first started working with them, in bellingham, 20 years ago, one of them told me that i would make a good muslim.
little did he know… 😉
but RB was unaware of that fact. apparently they took offense at the “scantily clad women” on the front cover of the program, and refused to do a reprint.
they probably took offense at the “scantily clad women” the first time they printed it, but then there was no advance warning, and if they said they would print it, and then decided not to after they saw the content, they would be in breach of contract. the reprint, however, is another matter entirely: they saw it once, took offense, and refused to have any further dealings with it. it doesn’t make sense to me, but it’s a logical step that they probably made, and totally understandable from their point of view…
when i was informed of this fact (by tim), he said that he thought i had been the one who introduced them to zebra printing. i told him that i would never have pointed them towards zebra printing, because i know that the owners would take offense at the “scantily clad women”…
tee hee… 👿
so i recommended the printer i chose at random out of the phone book – the only criterion was that they had to be close to fremont, and the printer i chose is just south of the seattle center – who i chose at the last minute when RB had neglected to pay attention to my deadline and finally delivered the finished program to me two-and-a-half weeks late.
WHILE I WAS STANDING THERE tim got on his cell phone and conveyed my recommendation to the person responsible for delivering the reprint to the printer…
hee hee… 👿
i’m not sure what’s going to happen this year, but i think i just increased the probability that i will be doing the programs next year by about 80%.
i’ve gotta save up my spoons, because soon i’m going to be subjected to a gauntlet… i’ve got a performance wednesday with the SANCApators playing a whole bunch of music that i have never played before, then i’ve got performances with the fremont philharmonic on thursday, two on friday, three on saturday, and two on sunday.
ETA: i’ve also been tapped to cover a burlesque rehearsal tomorrow… that’s what i’m talkin’ ’bout… 🙂
in 2007, i did the programs for the moisture festival. since then, they consistently have not found a printer that does as good a job for as little money as i did.
now they’re almost to the point of admitting it. the reason?
apparently i don’t play for the fremont philharmonic!
kiki, the band leader (this year) is listed twice, but i’m not listed at all, in the program.
i pointed this out to tim and macque – “members of the board” – and they assured me that they would bring it up with RB, who is in charge (more or less) of the schedule and programs… but RB is the same person who, last year, gave me his “personal assurance” that the fremont philharmonic would be scheduled for “at least one burlesque show” this year – and despite what my brother-in-law thinks, burlesque is THE reason why i have been involved with this production for as long as i have – only to find out that the burlesque shows have already all been taken by the zebra kings, that RB “doesn’t remember” talking to me last year, and that’s very likely the way it’s going to stay for the indeterminate, forseeable future. RB is also the person who drove me to the brink of violence, back in 2007, when he missed an important deadline BY TWO AND A HALF WEEKS and i had to get the interior pages photocopied, rather than printed (which would have made my programs even prettier, and cost even less), and drove me to say that i would, NEVER AGAIN do the moisture festival program…
so i don’t know if my complaining about it will make the slightest bit of difference…
and my impression is that the only way to “fix” it, in the long run, is to do what i said i would NEVER AGAIN do…
in the mean time, i have been asked to sit in with the SANCApators next wednesday… another share in the event that made me the most money of any event last year – although it’s probably going to be difficult to beat this year, when i got paid over $1,000 for the panto…
ETA: it is more-or-less as i suspected: i got a personal and “sincere” (whatever that means, coming from RB) apology from RB for not being in the program: he said that it is entirely his fault, that kiki sent him the list of names with me on it, and he sent the list, minus me, to the printer… he said that “if they get it reprinted” he’ll personally make sure that the correction is made… but, honestly, as far as i know, they have never had enough money to do a second printing, especially with two weeks of performances left, and the turn-around time for getting a 50-page program printed makes reprinting the program for the last week highly unlikely… i must have been crazy (it was the brain injury… that was it), but i offered my services as a typesetter/printer. RB said that they may take me up on the offer, because the person who has been printing the programs (a friend of sandy, who took over from me in 2007, when i said i wouldn’t do it again) may be leaving next year…
the moisture festival has actually been going on for a week, now, but tonight is the opening night of comedie/varieté at the palladium featuring the fremont philharmonic. we’ve settled on “whatever is your take on ‘formal'” for the uniform-of-the-day, and this is what i’m wearing:we’re supposed to show up around 5:00 pm, i think doors for the first show are at 7:00, and doors for the second show are at 10:00… which means, conservatively, that we’ll be finished around 12:00 or thereabouts… which means that i won’t actually get out of there until 1:00 or so, and it usually takes me around 45 minutes to drive home, so i won’t be getting to bed until around 2:00 or thereabouts… and i’ve got the same schedule again tomorrow, only it starts with me getting to the palladium at 1:00…
busy, busy, busy…
by the way, for those of you who are wondering (and i know you’re out there), the altar cloth behind me is tucked up behind the box to keep it away from the puppy. there have already been several “near missmesses” that have involved the puppy, who wants to tug and chew on everything that hangs down, and the altar… i keep telling myself that he’ll grow out of it, but i keep wondering if he’ll do it before or after destroying my altar… 😐
as you know, if you’ve read my blog for any length of time, my second favourite band is The Residents (my first favourite band is anything with Frank Zappa in it, but that’s another, entirely separate story). the residents played a concert at Neumo’s on the 18th of march, and i was there.
it is physically impossible to give you an idea of what it sounded like, because for 40 years, the residents have never played the same song twice and had it sound the same way each time, which is one of the reasons i find their albums a little iconoclastic, but it’s better than nothing. there is a lot of their music out there, in one form or another, on the intar-toobs, which saves a lot of disk space for me, because i don’t have to post them myself. they played a few songs that i recognised the words to, but even the lyrics were heavily electronically modified most of the time, so it was difficult to determine what they played… although i was kind of amused to notice that the read-out on randy’s (the vocalist) processor unit had names like “snake” and “old lady” and “rubber” and other things that seemed to indicate not only the sound that it made, but the title of the song as well.
i found a spot in the balcony, above stage right, behind “chuck”, the keyboard player, which was very interesting, because i got to watch him manipulating his instruments fairly well, in spite of the lighting. he had a 15″ mac book, with software i’ve seen before, but can’t immediately identify (something like digital performer, i think), a short keyboard with some sort of internal computer, an iPad with some software with which i am totally unfamiliar (having a considerable amount of disdain for the ipad in general probably doesn’t help the matter much), and a vaguely squashed-spheroid device with a use i was never able to figure out.
as an aside, i had temporarily forgotten that i now have a – TOTALLY FREE – G4 tower with a motorolla processor, capable of running OS9 and all of the goodies that i never thought i’d see again when i gave away my own mac a couple of years ago… time to get that up and running again… 8)
the thing that really surprised me was that there were only three of them. apparently “carlos” decided, after nearly 40 years in the music business, that the rock-and-roll lifestyle wasn’t for him, and he returned to mexico to care for his aged, ailing mother… or something like that. nobody’s really sure of anything, since the residents have kept their real identities a secret since they started out, and have appeared in disguise for their performances. so now there are only three residents, “chuck” on “keyboards”, “bob” on heavily processed guitar, and “randy” on vocals, but it’s okay, because “carlos” – the drummer – was prone to taking extended drum “solos” at awkward points. i didn’t really notice the difference, because i’ve only seen them live one other time, and that was before my injury, so i don’t remember it that well.
they played for two hours, and then did a half-hour, three-song encore, and i came away with their new album, Dolor Generar. i was under the impression, when i downloaded the bittorrent a couple of years ago, that i had fairly close to all of their released work, but apparently i was wrong. the fact that it’s the residents to begin with makes me sort of wonder what the person who made the bittorrent was thinking when they labeled it “all of the residents released work”, but it’s the intar-toobs, so i probably will never know. i took a whole bunch of pictures, but only nine of them made it to flickr, because the rest of them are redundant, out-of-focus, or are otherwise defective.
the photos may have been defective, but the concert was outstanding. 8)
this is some of my all-time favourite music, and it’s got me performing in it… 🙂
Yesterday’s Moustache from the album Sketchbook i remember at least 3 different jams that this was taken from, and it probably had some significant post-processing work as well – it’s not a “straight improvisation” but it’s reasonably close, given the number of separate tracks involved.
Cat Stretching which, i maintain, was originally called “Cat Torture On Mars” but was overridden by ken, who suggested the compromise title. i admit that there’s no evidence of this, but i still remember it, and i know i remembered it before my injury, so you can’t blame it on that… 😉
i went to bellingham for the first time in a while, yesterday. i didn’t stay as long as i would have liked, but it’s okay because it still gets dark really early at those northern latitudes, and besides which i was really tired and if i had stayed any longer i would have had to spend the night – which was do-able, but i hadn’t made arrangements, so i just came home last night…
but, the important part…
i visited a couple of friends yesterday, one of whom is my friend ken, with whom i have been playing music on and off for 30+ years, and while i was there, he gave me 7+ gigabytes of the 20+ gigabytes of music that we have made over the past 30+ years, most of which i haven’t heard for a long time, due to the fact that it was recorded on cassette, and i haven’t actually owned a cassette player since before i got married…
DAMN we’re good!
i’ve now got 7 complete “albums” and around 200 individual tracks which are, for all intents and purposes, ready to be put on CDs and distributed… and that’s only a small fraction of what’s there (we only had a flash drive and a limited amount of time to move files from his computer to mine). the current fantasy is that we’ll put the whole lot up on the web somewhere and offer low-quality mp3s for download for free, OR high-quality ogg files (or something like that) for a small quantity of money, OR a “generic” CD with “generic” art for a bit more money, OR a custom, one-of-a-kind CD with tracks that you choose, and custom, one-of-a-kind artwork for a bit more money.
i just realised, however, that ALL of the files that i got yesterday are Free Lossless Audio Codec (flac) files, which won’t play reliably on any of the “standard” music players for the two “major” platforms, so it’ll probably be a couple of days until i get representative samples converted to a format that you windows and mac people will be able to play… click on the title to hear the song… for now i’ll give you some sample titles to whet your appetite:
thanks to Howlin’ Hobbit, i was able to sort out the “hidden file” dilemma that i had yesterday – of course i could have edited the “live” version using vi, but i was feeling stubborn – and the immediate result has been that one person who has been spamming my web site for 3 days now is no longer able to. whee! 🙂
my popgun is defective. i bought an orchestral-quality popgun, and i have been popping enthusiastically for around 10 years, mostly at cirque de flambé and fremont players functions, but it has been getting harder and harder to get a reliable pop out of it. first, the ball-end on the handle stripped its threads, which is understandable, since it is made of wood. however, i glued it back in place and the glue holds for about 5 pops at which point the ball-end comes off again. gluing the ball-end is an annoyance that i have learned to live with, although there have been a couple of times where i nearly lost the ball-end over the side of a ferry, or that kind of thing. completely replacing it involves coming up with another hardwood ball, and then drilling and tapping it out to the correct thread to match the otherwise very sharp end of the handle. then, the end-cap that holds the cork in place so that it doesn’t go “pop” and shoot the cork across the stage, disappeared. at the time, fred was a member of the band, and he volunteered to make me a replacement end cap, because he had the necessary tool (a metal lathe). then the bottom cap retaining screw disappeared, but i was able to make a replacement, because i have a tap-and-die set for miniature screws. of course the cork itself has been replaced two or three times, and i’ve got a collection of replacements in my workshop… but the problem i’m currently having is more insideous: the plunger has worn down to the point where it doesn’t seal. now it appears that i have a choice: i can either figure out some way to make two, perfectly circular washers out of something like linoleum, that are exactly .125″ larger than the inside diameter of the tube…
or i can buy a new, orchestral-quality popgun
apparently i have the skills and a steady-enough hand (everything is a lot more free-form since my injury) to cut new bits of linoleum that will work, and i have a leather-punch in the workshop that has a big-enough hole that i was able to create a new, more effective plunger, and now POP!! and all is right with the world again… 🙂 which is a good thing, because i don’t remember where i got the popgun… there are a couple of possibilities (and i’m pretty sure i could order one online, which would take too long), but i know for sure that one of them has gone out of business…
i like tools that can be taken apart and fixed when they stop working. it’s so much easier and less expensive than buying a new one when the old one breaks… 🙂
ETA: so this morning i got an order for one box of green rose incense from india, of all places. unfortunately, i would be willing to bet that one get green rose incense in india for a lot less than i have to sell it for in the united states. not only that, but the shipping costs alone, to get it to india, are more than ten times what the incense would cost, by itself. i wrote back to the guy, but, considering that it’s from india, the probability is fairly high that he doesn’t speak english, or, worse, speaks “hinglish”…
why do people do this? what is it that prevents them from thinking these things all the way through before doing something stupid? i suppose we will never know…
i’ve been very productive today, and it’s not over yet. i fixed my popgun, built a pig-rail for our whelping box, and fixed our front door so it closes reliably without having to be “finessed”.
after i logged off last night, our most senior dog – paddy, the one who scared me so badly a few months ago – who, despite the fact that she’s been in pretty good health for the most part, suddenly had a grand mal seizure last night. it wasn’t entirely unexpected (moe said she commented to one of the vets just the other day about the possibility), but once again it scared the holy hell out of me…
once again, i hope i don’t have another day like yesterday for a long, long time. never would be a totally acceptible option.
today was the second day of shows for the panto. today, we didn’t have a drummer. for the first show, he didn’t call or anything, and just didn’t show up. he’s put up posters and passed out flyers with the show times printed on them, and the show times are also available on the web site, and he’s always been late for, or entirely missed rehearsals, and we’ve had to wait to start the show because nobody knew where he was at least twice, so when he finally showed up, about ten minutes before the end of the show, it was the last straw, and kiki fired him… she said that it was the first time she had fired anybody, and as far as i know, it was the first time anyone has been fired from the fremont philharmonic, but he had it coming… you don’t schedule yourself for a show with “professional” musicians (is there such a thing? i still don’t really know for sure) and then just not show up for a performance without at least calling ahead of time (like i did for the show at the gage, yesterday)…
i’m about ready for the holidays to be over, and today’s only the 5th… 8P
today was one of the most infuriating days i have lived through in a long, long time…
i woke up this morning and turned on my computer, and it wouldn’t connect to internet… wonderful… 😐 and, of course, it’s saturday, so the technical support goons at drizzle aren’t going to return any calls until monday anyway… so i fire up the mac, which – for some mysterious reason – is connecting to internet, and i log into my webmail account… and i discover three thousand messages with the same subject line in my inbox… and, of course, because of the fact that they’re IMAP (“Internet Message Access Protocol” or webmail), i can’t delete them all at once, i have to select each one… so i log into my spamcop account and discover fifteen thousand more messages with exactly the same subject line… and, once again, because of the fact that it’s IMAP and not POP (“Post Office Protocol”, or local mail), in order to delete them all, i have to select every one of them individually before i can delete them… and because of the fact that my drizzle webmail account is on drizzle, they’ve set things so that i can only see twenty messages at a time, which means that i can only delete 20 messages at a time, even after i have selected each one individually (because the “Select All Messages” button at the top of drizzle’s webmail interface conveniently doesn’t work… 😐
quite apart from everything else, i wonder why it is that people do things like that… the only thing it does is waste a whole hell of a lot of time, and infuriate people massively… it doesn’t actually do anything positive for your business, and in most states, it’s actually illegal (which doesn’t make any difference on internet, as long as you don’t get caught, but that’s not the point)… examining one of the messages i discovered that one of the reasons i got so many of them was because each one had been addressed to me no less than 7 times, so there’s a strong probability that whoever is responsible for this is a professional spammer that i have reported often enough that he’s angry with me and is doing it as revenge, but even that doesn’t work the way he would expect, because i reported every single one of his 20,000 email messages…
anyway, i delete all the messages i can (which turns out to be around 800) before i have to leave for the opening performance of the panto…
the way i’ve got it planned, i will get finished with the first show around 5:30, and then i have arranged for a cab to take me from the panto to the gage art academy, where i’m scheduled to play with snake suspenders until 6:30, whereupon i have arranged another cab to take me back to the palladium for the second show. if i hit all the stoplights just right i should have enough time to get back to the palladium for the 7:00 show, right?
except for the fact that the cab that was supposed to show up at 5:30 actually showed up at 5:00, and the guy said he couldn’t wait, and to call another cab… except that when i call, the dispatcher says that they can’t get another cab there for an hour…
so i call thaddeus (what did i ever do before cell phones were invented?) during my 10-minute intermission and tell him that i can’t make it… at the last possible minute, before i have to start the second act of the current show…
i REALLY hate having to bail on a show at the last minute, and i hate even more to have to bail on a show at the gage, because last year i got to ogle a lot of well-built naked models, play my tuba and i got a nifty picture out of the deal as well, but there was nothing to be done.
after that, though, things started to go better. i finished the second show and came home to discover that my computer had magically decided to work (i blame demons, and i’m probably right), which meant that all those spam messages hit my “second wave” of spam filtering and were deleted without my having to do anything. and, now that i’m home and don’t have to go anywhere until tomorrow, i reset the spamcop webmail application to display 1000 messages at a time and reported/deleted all of them in a lot less time than it would have taken me deleting 20 messages at a time…
and now, i’m going to bed.
hopefully tomorrow will be less frustrating… it would have to work fairly hard to be more frustrating than today was… 😐
so lucy is pregnant again and we’re expecting puppies in the next few weeks. i bought a roll of linoleum for the floor, and most of the materials to make a whelping box. i didn’t get the materials to make a pig rail for it because i want to wait until we have a box that’s the right size.
the panto starts on saturday, at 4 and 7. in between, i’m playing with snake suspenderz at the gage for about half an hour.
i’d post more, but nablopomo has left me a little drained…
i finished three gifts, which should be the last of my x-mas “shopping” yesterday… which is the reason i didn’t get around to posting until very late yesterday. i’d post pictures of them, but they’re gifts and i don’t want to spoil the surprise. i’ll probably post pictures after the holidays, if i remember.
i also cleaned up the remainders of several projects that had accumulated on my workbench, which involved sorting of a number of tiny, almost but not quite identical parts into piles, and storing them in film containers, which took quite a bit of time, because the parts were so tiny.
i sent a message to the manufacturer of the penatrating oil that i bought recently, because the directions for the use of the penetrating oil assumes that you’re going to be using it on engines of some variety or another, and i am working on a musical instrument. i’m fairly sure what they’re going to say, but i just want to make sure before i start pouring unknown liquid into my antique horn.
hopefully i’ve got an order of postcards that will be arriving tomorrow, that i will be delivering to florentia clayworks when i get them. i’ve got a rehearsal tomorrow, a rehearsal tuesday, two rehearsals wednesday, an appointment and an optional rehearsal thursday, and three shows saturday.
the next two days posts are already taken care of. nablopomo, if it has done nothing else, has taught me about the scheduling feature of wordpress. when you’re much more organised than i am (which isn’t hard) you can schedule posts ahead of time, instead of using the “Publish immediately” feature in the upper right of the “Add New Post” page. i’ve actually scheduled a few posts over the past month, but i have also been disorganised enough that i haven’t been able to schedule everything, because normally it’s not necessary, i would normally just not post on a day that i had nothing to say. hint: the posts that i scheduled are posts that appear at the same time, down to the second, every day.
i didn’t have a rehearsal yesterday, because it’s the “sousa-torium” (i.e. the break between sousa’s birthday and march or so, when we start rehearsing for next year. also, i don’t have a rehearsal tonight, because kiki’s going to the memorial for george shangrow, and anyway, they’re changing the whole story around (big surprise) so they don’t need the band, which is good because i could use the time off. it will also give me time to design a xmas postcard for the BSSB, which we are going to try to do again this year.
i went to help out my brain-injured client again yesterday. he had somehow added a wiget that he didn’t want to his panel. he said he didn’t, but i certainly didn’t put it there, and he’s the only other person to have access to the hardware, so i tend to believe that he did it in spite of what he says. after talking with tamzin, who also has aged, brain-injured clients, i bit the bullet and locked the panel, so that he can’t do it again. it’s obvious that he doesn’t really know what he’s doing about half of the time, and to leave “secret” methods of modifying the interface does more harm than good. also, he apparently has a preference for the “kickoff” style menu, rather than the “classic” windows-style menu, which is a good thing to remember.
something went wrong with one of the stylesheets and suddenly the login page for my blog looked all wonky. the last time this happened was a couple of years ago, when my blog was hacked, so i was pretty worried. i checked, and the blog didn’t appear to be hacked in the same way it was before, but still: the error i was getting was “Failed to load login.css” and i could see that login.css was there, and i looked at it and it looked the way it was supposed to… so i went to the wordpress “support” site, which is probably good for some people, but i have never gotten a usable solution when i have gone there with problems with my wordpress installation. nevertheless, it’s a place to start, so i did. i waited two days and nobody responded to my query… 😐 so i then logged into IRC, went to #wordpress and asked there. the guy who (finally) responded asked if i had tried uploading the file from a backup.
d’oh!
once i had uploaded and replaced the stylesheet, everything went back to the way it’s supposed to be.
i woke up this morning, and checked my email. i had 4,856 new messages, all with the same subject line, which included the word “MLM”… please stop sending me these messages. they’re not accomplishing what you think they are, they’re really annoying, and i’m about to block your country’s IP addresses because of it. there are better ways of doing… whatever it is that you’re expecting to be able to do by sending out 4,856 spam email messages… 😐
33 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True – fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord. beware, the paranoids are watching you. fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord fnord.
The Information Super-Sewer: Will the Internet be Hijacked by Corporate Interests – funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth. also Final nail in coffin for Net neutrality? – all 95 house and senate candidates who pledged support for net neutrality lost their races. what does this mean? it means that your unlimited, uncensored, unthrottled and open internet service will be going away as soon as the major corporations that now own internet are going to get to decide how much to charge you for how much access… which means that it won’t be too long before internet will be exactly like television, unless you can afford to make it better.
Chomsky: US-led Afghan war, criminal – to date there is no evidence that al-qaeda has carried out the 9/11 attacks, and still we use that as justification to make war on a people who have their own problems.
The Surprising History of Copyright and The Promise of a Post-Copyright World – copyright was never primarily about paying artists for their work, and trying to make it about that now is obfuscating the real reason, which is to make the distributors as much money as possible. copying is not theft, piracy, or anything else illegal, and the sooner we toss the current copyright law fiasco and start over again, the better.
Details on PayPal’s Site Outage – they have been doing okay, despite the bad things that i continue to hear about them, but they apparently went down for anywhere from two to twenty four hours, depending on where you are, and so far they’ve not released any information other than to say “something broke. it’s fixed now, and we’re sorry.”
Google calls bug bounty hunters to YouTube, Blogger – $3,133.70 a bug seems like a lot, and i seriously doubt that their actual testers get paid anything like that. what this is, really, is an attempt by google to have volunteer “testers” hammer on their technology without having to pay them for doing so. then, when a “tester” discovers something, google can claim that they found it, pay the “tester” a minimal, one time fee and never mention the “tester” to anyone ever again… everybody’s happy, at least temporarily, and the big corporation profits at the expense of the american drone, who doesn’t notice because he’s too busy telling all of his friends how 733T he is… you can’t make a living on it, but it’s the american dream come true… 😐
Marijuana Legalization: Not If, But When – agreed, it’s just a matter of time, but it’s going to have to be the entire country, or it’s not going to work… and whether or not the entire country legalises it through a revolution or through a civil election still remains to be seen.
For the First Time, the TSA Meets Resistance – they’re now searching your “crotchal” area, and they really want to get you to use the “Dick-Measuring Device”back-scatter imaging device, so be warned…
Pollution in China – this is why stuff is cheap in america. remember that the next time you buy something.
Why I don’t vote – W? T? F? i can understand a multitude of reasons for not participating in the farce of elections these days, but basing your abstinence in voting on 1 timothy 2.12 is far beyond anything that i could possibly figure out…
Ram Dass Has a Son! – DNA tests confirm it, and ram dass is okay with it, so it doesn’t look like it’s going to cause a major uproar (like it has with other “spiritual” teachers), but it also is pretty much not what you would expect…
i had a gig last sunday, a rehearsal monday and wednesday, another gig yesterday, and a gig today. i get sunday off (because our usual rehearsal space will not be available this week), then i have a rehearsal monday, tuesday and wednesday of next week. the gig yesterday was for the dio de los muertos celebration at the seattle art museum. unlike most of the previous banda gozona performances i’ve been to, this one included my camera and i took some really cool photos, not all of which are related to dio de los muertos. but most of them are… the gig today is the ballard sedentary sousa band’s “Sousa Bash” for john philip sousa’s birthday. unlike previous years, when we have had an outsized saxophone and a standing-room-only crowd, or last year, when there was a major storm, the bridge closed, and we had to start a half-hour late because most of the band wasn’t there, this year promises to be relatively tame… although that was said before the performance, and a lot could change between now and 6:00 pm. the philharmonic is into full rehearsal mode for the december panto, which has been extended to four weeks this year.
so ¾ of Snake Suspenderz went out to Cholmondleigh-land (his actual site is here, but he’s got some sort of infernal device on his site that keeps crashing my new version of firefox – konqueror does okay, however, which makes me wonder what is really the problem). all in all, a quite enjoyable evening, although the hippie ineptitude factor seemed to be working overtime: we were consistently running late, and it wasn’t until 10:00 or so that we managed to get the live show over and start on the films. i managed to be able to break moe away from her homework and brought her along as well, which made the evening all the more enjoyable. we were joined on stage by the inimitable master payne and, of course, the reverend himself, although he didn’t “ascend a stairway of machetes, barefoot” because somebody ripped off all his machetes, so instead he walked a pathway of broken glass, barefoot. since the last time i was there, he has actually finished the rail-pup (a self-propelled closed-circut railway) which was even more fun in the dark – you’d be barreling along blindly, cranking to beat the band, and the track would suddenly curve and you’d be riding on two wheels trying not to fall over… not like the last time i was there, when the track wasn’t finished yet, and if you didn’t watch where you were going, you’d plunge off the end of the track into the undergrowth…
chumleigh and i have been doing what we do, more or less, for 35 years or so: in 1978 i was playing with a dixieland band, and we were playing for the last official “Fat Tuesday” celebration in seattle. unbeknownst to us (at the time), there had been a major riot in pioneer square the night before, so there were mounted police in riot gear everywhere, and most everyone else was sticking to the edges of pioneer square, and acting very dodgy, and here we were, this small band of incredibly young musicians playing happy music in the square, very surreal. then this guy came up to us and introduced himself as reverend chumleigh, and wondered if we had a job or worked anywhere, and offered us a job playing at the alligator palace in la conner. i was the only person that had graduated from high school at the time, but i didn’t know where la conner was, and ended up in bellingham. i didn’t actually meet him again until much, much later, in 2008. in the mean time, i worked as a fish packer, a migrant farm worker, a typesetter, spent two years in a tech school, and then worked as a musical instrument repair technician, as a typesetter (again) and as a computer geek before i had a brain injury and realised that what i really wanted to be doing all along was music, whereas chumleigh was playing with the flying karamazov brothers, being involved with the beginnings of the oregon country fair, and building a reputation as one of the biggest names in vaudeville…
definitely makes me wonder what would have happened to me if i had known where la conner was, back in ’78…
ETA: in poking around, looking for links to the alligator palace, i found this article from Frog Hospital, about fishtown, a place that i visited in the early 1980s, and another article, about robert sund, whose cabin i stayed in the first time i visited fishtown… which, while it doesn’t have much about chumleigh, brings back a whole bunch of memories…
panto rehearsals start next monday, and are monday and wednesday until the performance starts, which is 4 december. for sure there is a banda gozona performance at the plymouth congregational church next sunday, and a possible snake suspenderz performance on friday, at chumleighland. then there is a banda gozona performance next thursday, at the SAM sculpture park, and a sousa band performance on 6 november (sousa’s birthday) at kenyon hall in west seattle.
oy… 😐
i just realised that i have a massive schedule conflict on 4 december: i have panto performances at hale’s palladium at 4:00 and 7:30, and i have a snake suspenderz performance at the drawing jam at the gage academy of art from 6:00 to 9:00… they’re both paying gigs… and last year i was actually the subject of a sketch by one of the artists at the drawing jam. i have to make a choice between playing music for a crowd of artists sketching naked people, or playing music for a crowd of british panto afficianados… what to do, what to do? 😐
i’ve been carrying around a looseleaf notebook labeled “BRASS” ever since i graduated from the tech school, in 1986, which contains all of the class notes, handouts and other printed materials for the brass repair sections that i completed when i was in training.
because of the fact that, for 25 years i have focused on the repair of woodwind instruments, i have actually never looked in the looseleaf notebook labeled “BRASS”, and it has langushed in various places, including currently on a shelf in my workshop with a bunch of other looseleaf notebooks.
but last night, i took down that notebook, and turned to the exact page that had the answer that i was looking for, which was techniques for freeing stuck tuning slides.
i mentioned to moe last night that i had never even opened this notebook since my tech-school days, and she commented that i had carried it around with me for all that time without ever being used. however i would carry it around with me, unused, for another 25 years if i could be guaranteed that, the next time i open it, i would find exactly the information for which i am searching.
I don’t work for a living,
I get along alright without,
I don’t toil all day,
I suppose it’s because I’m not built that way.
Some people work for love,
And say it’s all sunshine and gain,
But if I can’t get sunshine without any work,
I’d rather stay out in the rain.
Give me a nail and a hammer,
And a picture to hang on the wall,
Give me a strong stepladder,
So that I won’t fall,
Give me a bottle of whiskey,
And a barrel of Strong’s best ale,
And I bet you I’ll hang up that picture
If somebody drives the nail.
this is from their 1978 album The First of Autumn, which i first heard at my friend deirdre’s house in 1980 or there abouts, and it very quickly became the song that inspired my life. at this point, thanks to my brain injury, i can honestly say that it’s pretty much true, too. 🙂
The City That Ended Hunger – Buckminster Fuller said that we, as a people, have posessed the technology for 50 years (and he said this almost 50 years ago) to create a world where nobody has to work to survive. Why Bother Working At A Job You Hate? and The RICH Economy are my attempts at changing the world’s consciousness, but it may be that Belo Horizonte, brazil’s fourth largest city, has taken it one step further. brazil has a number of other interesting features upon which i have commented previously.
Judge orders lesbian reinstated to Air Force and yet the congress in it’s infinite wisdom has decided that, even though a judge also ruled that DADT is unconstitutional, they’re not going to do anything to change it at this time. correct me if i’m wrong, but the judge that said that DADT is unconstitutional basically said that it’s against the law for the military to enforce the law as it currently stands, and still, congress feels that it’s okay to leave the law as it stands, right? that settles it, our government, and likely the governments of the countries in the rest of the world as well (since they all cooperate with each other, more or less) is irreparably broken. it’s time for that major shift in the way people think that i’ve mentioned before to actually start happening now…
along the same lines, according to Chapter 69.51A RCW on Medical "marijuana" (which is actually called “cannabis”, but i’m not arguing at this point), apparently i wouldn’t qualify anyway… oh well… 8/
Twitter blames website upgrade for re-introducing XSS hole – hopefully, the last word on my battle with twitter and their most recent cross-site scripting bug… which is still gone on my machine, but presumably that’s because i deleted my account before this latest round happened, and when they re-introduced it, i didn’t have an account to infect any longer…
IE captain flees Microsoft for Google – when i was first getting into testing software, back in 1996, i attended a planning meeting in advance of the release of IE3 (which was still crawling with bugs, in spite of bill gates’ claim that micro$not released “bug free” software), and chris wilson was there, although he wasn’t as “important” then as he later became. however giving up micro$hit for google is sort of a lateral move for someone who is allegedly as “important” as he is… and, given that he is ultimately responsible for such travesties as IE4 and IE6, i would think that google would have second thoughts about hiring him…
How do you copy 60 million files? – yet another reason why linux rocks, and you should use it and not that crap operating system from redmond.
Nuclear Winter And Peace – look… another article by Fidel Castro… you might get the impression that he’s actually changed the way he thinks recently, and that i agree with him now…
The true history of the Koran in America – reports of qur’ans in american libraries go back at least to 1683, and the first qur’an to be published in america was in 1806, over 100 years later. both thomas jefferson and john adams owned one and read it frequently… just sayin’…
Church of Body Modification – this has been the subject of a bunch of spam messages i have been receiving recently, but it’s a real thing, and it looks fairly interesting…
Fabrican – it gives the reference to “jeans so tight you must have sprayed them on” a whole new meaning…
i was sick yesterday, but i went to play with snake suspenderz at the pike place market busker festival which i managed to pull off without too much sickness. playing with two other, respected buskers, howlin’ hobbit and thaddeus spae was only made that much more of an honour for me because the pike place market preseveration and development association (the outfit which licenses buskers at the market) has decided, in their infinite wisdom to ban music played on electronically amplified equipment and… wait for it… brass instruments… which, of course, means that any other time of year, thad and hobbit can busk at the market, but i can’t. where’s the justice in that, ‘eh?
i wasn’t able to get any relevant pictures of snake suspenderz, since i was playing with them at the time, but i was able to get a picture of the amazingly fearless dog in a wheelie contraption that took the place of his hind legs, which apparently didn’t work all that well. i believe the dog’s name was Rover. most dogs that have encountered my tuba have an almost instinctive fear of it: i don’t even have to play it, but they want to keep about as far away from it as possible. rover was completely different, however, and rolled right up to it and gave it a thorough sniffing… and then rolled away in search of something more interesting. it was as though he hadn’t just encountered the most dog-frightening piece of musical equipment that i own.
i’m feeling a lot better today, and have made up for the fact that i didn’t eat anything at all yesterday, by eating twice as much as i normally do today. it’s kind of weird, because i’m still congested and coughing up wads of green goo, but i’m starving. if i had eaten this much yesterday, i would have been a lot more sick than i was.
i spent a lot of spoons being sick yesterday. i’m definitely feeling better, however i’m not back to normal yet. maybe tomorrow.
i was poking around on the web this afternoon, and i came across these albums that i had back when albums were made of vinyl. Banish Misfortune and The First of Autumn by Malcolm Dalglish and Grey Larsen. i was able to download banish misfortune, but the first of autumn, which has the song “I Don’t work for a Living” on it, which has been one of my five all-time favourite songs ever since i first heard it, is only available as either an LP or a cassette. i have a turntable, but i don’t have an amplifier and the software to turn a LP into something that i can play with modern technology. wait! there’s a CD version of it at malcolm dalglish’s web site. these are albums that i haven’t even heard for 10 or 15 years, and i can still remember how excited i was to find music like this when i first came across them, almost 30 years ago.
Reporting from Baltimore — You’re, like, totally not going to believe this but Baltimore declared Sunday ” Frank Zappa Day,” dedicating a bust in his honor.
Grody to the max.
Seventeen years after the rocker’s death in Los Angeles, Zappa drew a large, fittingly eclectic crowd to a ceremony in the city where he was born.
“It’s about time he got the recognition he deserves,” said Greg Stinson, 50, accompanied by his 16-year-old son Matthew, also a Zappa fan.
The festivities included a concert by Zappa’s son Dweezil and his band, Zappa Plays Zappa; a library exhibit, “Zappa’s Baltimore: Rebels and Iconoclasts in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave”; and a temporary name for the street in front of the library, “Frank Zappa Way.”
“The spirit of Frank Zappa is alive and well in Baltimore,” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said.
The bronze bust of the mustachioed Zappa — one of rock’s great iconoclasts — was donated by Zappa fans from Lithuania, which has had its own Zappa sculpture in the capital, Vilnius, since 1995. Although Zappa never visited the Baltic country, he was admired there for his advocacy of free expression as well as for his music.
Zappa’s widow, Gail, attended the ceremony, along with Dweezil and two other children, Ahmet and Diva. A group of Lithuanians flew to Baltimore for the event.
Among those in attendance was the chief judge of the Baltimore City Circuit Court. John N. Prevas, 63, a Zappa fan since 1966, called the bust “a wonderful symbol of Baltimore’s cultural heritage and the fact that Frank was such a paradoxical icon for freedom.”
“We’re glad that he was born here, and even though he didn’t spend much time here after the age of 10, we’ve always felt he was one of us,” he added.
Zappa, who died of prostate cancer in 1993 at age 52, spent much of his life in Southern California, where he and his family moved when he was 10. Zappa’s L.A. exploits include getting thrown out of the Antelope Valley High School marching band in Lancaster after he was caught smoking in uniform, and recording with his then-teenage daughter, Moon Unit, the 1982 hit “Valley Girl,” a riff on San Fernando Valley culture.
The Zappa bust might have ended up in Los Angeles — if not for a cultural attache at the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius who happened to be from Baltimore. He suggested the city when the Lithuanian Zappa fans offered to donate the statue.
“I thought in L.A., it would kind of get lost,” said Carlos Aranaga, who was the cultural attache.
“Baltimore is the kind of the city that resonates with Zappa’s work,” he added, citing another iconoclastic Baltimorean, journalist and social critic H.L. Mencken.
The ceremony came 25 years after Zappa appeared at a Senate hearing to rail against censorship of rock lyrics and calls for an album rating system.
Though Zappa left Baltimore long ago, relatives there turned out for the dedication.
“I was a teenager the last time I saw him,” said cousin James A. Colimore Jr., 66, who came with his four adult children, who never met Zappa.
Colimore recalled “Frankie” visiting Baltimore and spending the summer at “Aunt Mary’s house” two doors away when Zappa was 16 and Colimore 14. “He came to Baltimore by train from California with” a stack of records that he played frequently, he said.
“He was cool back then,” Colimore said, recalling Zappa wearing shorts, a T-shirt and sandals when the East Coast was wearing jeans and high-top tennis shoes. He also recalled Zappa writing esoteric classical music on blank sheets of music paper with a quill pen.
Zappa has a street named after him in Berlin as well as an asteroid, Zappafrank, that orbits between Mars and Jupiter. He is also in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as “rock and roll’s sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic.”
Asked what her husband might have said about getting his own sculpture, Gail Zappa responded: “Frank might have said, ‘Preposterous.’ ”
so i’ve been doing some maintenance on sedentarysousa dot com. i uploaded the last of the changes, and refreshed the browser, only to get one of those “Firefox can’t find the server at www.sedentarysousa.com” messages.
i restarted firefox. i flushed my DNS cache, and the DNS cache of my router. i rebooted the machine, and the router. i switched browsers five times, i switched machines three times, and i switched platforms twice, but i basically got “there is no server” messages from every browser and machine combination i tried.
i then went to browsershots dot org, which uses a whole bunch of different network nodes, a whole bunch of different browsers and three different platforms, and confirmed that sedentarysousa.com was up and working the way it’s supposed to, and that made me suspicious.
because of the fact that one of my machines is wireless, and my neighbour uses a different ISP and runs an unsecured wireless network, i can switch networks fairly easily, so i did, and sedentarysousa.com showed up without a problem.
aha, i thought. the problem is with drizzle (big surprise). so i called drizzle. sure enough, the drizzle tech support people – two of them! – confirmed that sedentarysousa – and only sedentarysousa – was “offline”.
they recommended that i “contact the host provider” and have them do a traceroute to my IP address, to figure out where the problem lies.
let me get this straight… they would rather that the host provider – who is conveniently located in London, doesn’t have a problem with anybody else, and only has a problem with one route connecting – should contact the person responsible for that route to fix the problem, instead of the person responsible for the route that’s having a problem being contacted by ME to fix the problem.
it sounds very much to me as though they are saying “we don’t care, we don’t have to” – which is not the way to keep me as a customer.
very likely, what they are saying, as well, is “we don’t actually know what the problem is, or how to fix it”, which is a valid point, but it makes me feel like they are deliberately misleading me, rather than being honest and admitting that they don’t know – which is also not the way to keep me as a customer.
what really irritates me is that, what with the network being the fluid place that it is, by the time i actually discover what the problem really is, it will have fixed itself and there won’t be any evidence that whatever was causing the problem really was causing the problem. it irritates me that random things like this happen on what should be a very predictable medium. 8P
ETA: so i had the host provider do a traceroute to my IP address:
traceroute to 216.162.193.190 (216.162.193.190), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 216-18-215-65.hosted.static.webnx.com (216.18.215.65) 0.316 ms 0.371 ms 0.436 ms
2 cr3-lax01.webnx.com (67.220.192.102) 0.294 ms 0.357 ms 0.410 ms
3 cust-webnx.ar10.owlax.us.easynet.net (207.162.207.13) 0.576 ms 0.723 ms 0.807 ms
4 ge-7-48.car1.SanJose2.Level3.net (4.59.0.69) 9.538 ms 9.535 ms 9.528 ms
5 * * *
6 ae-93-93.ebr3.SanJose1.Level3.net (4.69.134.237) 21.896 ms 19.398 ms 17.990 ms
7 ae-2-2.ebr3.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.69.132.10) 12.894 ms 9.468 ms 9.456 ms
8 ae-71-78.ebr1.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.69.146.10) 16.406 ms ae-91-98.ebr1.LosAngeles1.Level3.net (4.69.146.26) 16.362 ms 16.354 ms
9 ae-7-7.car1.SaltLakeCity1.Level3.net (4.69.148.5) 22.380 ms 22.130 ms 22.771 ms
10 ae-11-11.car2.SaltLakeCity1.Level3.net (4.69.133.122) 22.099 ms 22.531 ms 22.291 ms
11 4.53.42.10 (4.53.42.10) 22.579 ms 22.703 ms 22.765 ms
12 208.110.128.254 (208.110.128.254) 38.893 ms 38.961 ms 38.866 ms
13 216.162.207.60 (216.162.207.60) 43.406 ms 42.878 ms 43.912 ms
14 * * *
15 * * *
16 * * *
17 * * *
18 * * *
the place where the timeout occurred was 216.162.207.60, which is Internet Professionals & Network Solutions.
friday i played linda lee’s open mike at the gypsy trader café with hobbit, and while i was there, i met another open mike musician named marshall who had already finished off one 40-ouncer and was well into his second (he had finished the second and was well into his third by the time it was his turn at the mike) when we came in. he immediately fixed his bleary gaze on me and my tuba, came over, introduced himself, and proceded to gush over my tuba, and how he had a “miniature tuba” that was exactly like mine, which had belonged to his grandfather, which he had determined that i should want to buy, because it was exactly like my tuba, but little. i payed little attention to him, becuase he was drunk and because i always get people raving about my tuba at open mikes anyway, but i gave him my business card and thought no more about it.
it was really nice to play music with hobbit, and it made me realise even more acutely the fact that snake suspenderz has been on far too long a “break” and i’ve got to get back into playing tuba for some band, because i really miss it… and tuba isn’t much of a solo instrument unless you’re The Tuba Man…
last night i (#32) went to a fez-up with hobbit (#8) and fez-monger (#13) at the elephant and castle, an upscale “british” pub (although despite the “british” ambience and decor, there wasn’t a single brit in the entire joint) on 5th avenue that has been there for at least 20 years, but i have never been in it before last night. once again, it was great to be out with hobbit and another fez-wearer in public, and the fact that it was the fez-monger himself added honour and prestige to the whole evening, even if i was the only one who noticed it.
i’ve been playing email tag with fez-monger for a week now, and i still can’t figure out where the link to order an “order of the fez” fez is. jason assured me that it was on the order of the fez web site, and he said that he emailed me with the information, but i haven’t received email from him, and the only mention of it that i can find on the order of the fez web site says that you should contact jason at fez-o-rama, and i can’t find anywhere on the fez-o-rama web site that even mentions the “order of the fez” fez. perseverance (or, possibly, perseveration) is key when approaching things like this.
yesterday, before the fez-up, i got a call from marshall, who was still obsessed with the idea that i wanted to buy his miniature tuba. he gave me enough details about it that i was able to determine that the instrument he had was probably very simlar to this one. he said that it had “engraving” on the bell (which i later determined was actually stamped there, rather than engraved, but i can’t expect him to know the difference) that said “J.W.Pepper, Importer, Philadelphia and Chicago” and that it had a serial number #24320. i determined that it was most likely manufactured around 1910 by John Distin for J.W.Pepper – a company that is still in business. i called him back and asked him if he could send me pictures, but apparently he is not technologically savvy enough to do such a thing, so i made arrangements to meet him today, to take pictures of the horn so that i could do some more research on it.
at 2:00 this afternoon, i met with him on dearborn avenue in seattle, and what he showed me was almost exactly the same as the horn that i picked out on the web, and it looked like it was in pretty good shape, for a 100-year-old silver plated instrument. it had some problems, but none that were not almost immediately overcome-able by a person with a bit of intuition and the correct tools, so i offered him $75 for it, and came away with a pepper tenor horn that is currently in the workshop with penatrating oil soaking through 100 years of corrosion on the tuning slides.
once i get the horn playing (which shouldn’t take too long, because all it really needs is a good cleaning and lubrication, and to have the lead-pipe soldered down where it’s come loose), it’s very likely going to join my menagerie.
WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER TRY TO REMOVE A STUCK MOUTHPIECE WITH PLIERS OR A PIPE WRENCH
a public service announcement brought to you by Hybrid Elephant, dba Nataraja Music Service
real musical instrument repair technicians have a nifty little device called a mouthpiece puller. it is a screw-and-leverage gadget that pulls from the center of the mouthpiece, while, at the same time, pushes on the edge of the leadpipe: a method that is 100% guaranteed to free the most stubbornly stuck mouthpiece in existence, without marring the finish of either the horn, or the mouthpiece itself.
seriously, you could actually solder the mouthpiece into the reciver, pull it loose with the mouthpiece puller, and not mar the finish of either the mouthpiece or the instrument itself. i’ve done it. 8)
the proper way to insert a brass mouthpiece to avoid getting it stuck is to place the mouthpiece, gently, into the reciever and then, without putting pressure on the mouthpiece, twist it a quarter turn. this places the mouthpiece firmly enough that you can actually hold up the horn by the mouthpiece, but it can be easily removed by twisting it the other direction, and pulling straight out. if you put your mouthpiece in this way, it will never get stuck, and you will never have this problem, but if you do, this to warn you that you should never try to remove a stuck mouthpiece with pliers or a pipe wrench.
these are examples of mouthpieces which have been removed “the wrong way”. they are scarred by wrenches or plier jaws, and ruined beyond repair. if they had been removed the right way, they would still be usable. when you try to remove a mouthpiece “the wrong way”, all you accomplish is ruining your mouthpiece, and about half the time, your entire horn is an unintended casualy: a stuck mouthpiece is notorious for being stuck so firmly that it pulls loose solder joints or twists tubing instead of being removed by pliers or a pipe wrench. instead of using the correct tool and pulling your stuck mouthpiece in under five minutes, you have completely ruined your mouthpiece and have to figure out where the money for several hundred dollars worth of repair to your leadpipe is going to come from, before you can play your horn again.
a decent quality mouthpiece can cost anywhere from $20 to $200, and a new horn can cost upwards of $2,000. getting your mouthpiece stuck is not uncommon, even if you are very careful. removing it the right way can insure that you have a mouthpiece that can still be used afterwards, and can save you a lot of money and headaches.
this morning i woke up convinced that it was thursday and it took until about noon or so before i was disabused of that notion. then i sat down with my synthesizer and played around with an idea i’ve been toying with for the past couple of days and before you know it, it’s 7:30 and i’ve got most of a piece of music finished. this is the result, which is considerably lower quality than the actual file, but i wanted to get it in less than 4mb to save space. i’m not sure it’s 100% finished yet, but it’s fairly close.
i bought some 1shot clear coat for the hood of my car. it works okay on the black – it does cause it to bleed this interesting brownish red colour, but i can clean that up pretty quickly. on the other hand, when i apply the clear coat to the gold ink, it smears – even totally dry ink – and it takes long enough to clean up that i won’t be able to clear coat the car, at least not before tomorrow, when i have a show in everett for which i’m being paid $100.
i’ve been playing around with a stencil design based on Śrītattvanidhi, but the stencils i have designed so far are too big for the media i have, and while i know that larger media exists, i still haven’t found a source for it. it’s coming really close to the end of the “create an art car in the open with no garage” season really quickly, and i haven’t got more than the hood finished on the car, which is a perennial source of frustration for me. hopefully the newly expanded workshop space will facilitate my attempts to make this a reality.
today moe left for a weekend camping tripsheepdog trial, which involves her camping out for a few nights near camas. she took all of the dogs with her, but i felt like cold ass when she got up (at 6:00 in the morning) to leave, and due to the fact that, despite the fact that she had been telling me about this for months, i “didn’t remember” it was happening until yesterday, which meant that along with feeling like cold ass, i was in a pretty depressed state of mind, and that’s not to mention the fact that i had a headache – and i very rarely get headaches, which is kind of odd for someone that has had an AVM. so i woke up depressed, feeling like ass, with a headache and moe is leaving. i went back to sleep (a feat in and of itself, all things considered), and when i woke up the headache was mostly gone, but moe was gone too. 🙁
i have been making a list of things i need to remember recently, and i had a few things that i needed to get for the workshop, so i went out and did my list stuff. i was finishing up at home depot when my stomach did one of those growls that indicates immediate, uncontrolable pooping – which has been an on-again-off-again problem that they told me to watch out for at the hospital after my injury. they just mentioned it in passing, so i didn’t give much thought to it at the time, but every now and then i’m struck with sudden, almost explosive diarrhea for no apparent reason, and it struck as i was checking out at the home depot this afternoon. i don’t think anybody else noticed, but i was glad that it was my last stop, because i would have had to go home, take a shower and change clothes pretty much regardless. 🙁
i actually felt the depression slip away, though, once i got home (and once i got cleaned up). i did some desperately needed work in the workshop which resulted in five new shelves and a second work space, so that now i can work on two projects at once and not have to put stuff away from one project before starting on another one. i’m feeling subdued and tired, but, as i told moe, i don’t have that “nasty, kill the whole world and then commit suicide” feeling any more.
the past couple of days have been spent sawing and chiseling out the piece of what turned out to be ⅝" masonite around the back door, which has had considerable water damage pretty much ever since we first moved into the house, and has gotten bad enough that you could see the ground through the floor. the masonite had deteriorated to the point where it was formed sawdust being held together with hope and what remained of the watered down glue by which it had originally been held together, so i broke out what i could of it manually, and then i sawed and chiseled out the rest, made a replacement piece out of ⅝" CDX (exterior grade plywood), and put that in its place.
i took a few pictures of my progress, but i pretty much stayed on task, because having a hole in the floor right outside our bedroom door doesn’t work very well.
and, once again, this is a prime example of a job that couldn’t have been done if it weren’t for the workshop, and its contents… 8)
it’s raining, which means that instead of cutting out the part of the floor near the back door that has a hole in it, next to the back door, i’m doing this instead. i’ve been able to get some work done in the morning, but since i went to buy the replacement flooring and came home – around noon or so – it has been raining hard enough that i can’t do the important part, which is cutting out a piece of floor 4′ x 1½’, and cutting a 4′ x 1½’ piece of replacement flooring. i’m still not 100% sure of what i’ll find once i cut the hole in the floor, in spite of the fact that i’ve actually climed underneath the house. i do know that there are two joists directly below the middle of the door, but there is a cloth vapour barrier of some kind underneath the house. it’s ripped away right underneath the door, which is probably one of the reasons why the hole is right next to the door, but it is in place once the door frame ends, and the piece of flooring i have to replace goes all the way to the end of the hall. fortunately (i guess), the wood that i have to replace is very likely 30 year old rotten press-board, so instead of cutting away most of it, i can probably just break out most of it manually, so that i can see what’s down there before i cut the replacement piece.
tomorrow i’ve got a gig at the ballard locks with the ballard sedentary sousa band, so i probably won’t get the chance to work on the floor until later on tomorrow afternoon, at the earliest.
i discovered second use, which is a very dangerous place for me to know about, because it is replete with various objects which, while extremely cool (and some of them are also immenantly useful) are, for the most part, totally useless to me… there are a few things that i could definitely use eventually – like the tessellated fish paving stones, which would go well in the paver-patio which will eventually be where the deck that has yet to be demolished currently is in our back yard. there are also a lot of things like doors, and windows that could, potentially, be used in our house, but don’t have a specific purpose… and there are things like an upright piano, which have no immediate purpose, but it would be extremely cool to have, and other things, like an antique foot-locker (with “authentic moth-ball smell”) that i couldn’t resist buying in spite of the fact that there was a good chance that i would have to use it to move out of our house when moe discovers that i had purchased more “stuff” to cram into our tiny house – which was ironic, since i had a hauntingly similar discussion with the guy behind the counter at second use, concerning the pros and cons of “needing more ‘stuff'” in the house. in fact, there was a heated discussion about the new “stuff” that i brought home, and the first thing that moe said was “what ‘stuff’ is leaving the house in order to make room for the new ‘stuff’ you bought?” fortunately, there is a pile of ex-clothing that i can take to the second-hand store, and a large pile of blankets and bedding that will actually go into the foot-locker, which will then get stored in the loft of the workshop, so i won’t have to be moving out (at least not any time soon), and my guess is that as long as i don’t start patronising second use unsupervised, there won’t be any major problems. i discovered second use because that’s where snake suspenderz played on sunday for a couple of hours. i love those guys, and i’m just starting to reach my stride where tuba-playing is involved. there definitely has to be more snake suspenderz gigs soon.
Ganesha the Second is ready, finally, and, hopefully, i’m going to pick it up tomorrow morning… oh, my! i just realised that tomorrow is the day that moe flies out to atlanta for a week, for her conference/test thingy, which means that i probably will have to make other arrangements to pick up the car tomorrow. grr… 8/ moe is going to atlanta to speak at a vet conference, and to take a qualification test for a veterinary behaviour technicans’ organisation, neither of which i can remember the exact names. it’s really cool for her, though, because she’s actually getting paid to speak at the conference, which means that she gets a working vacation in atlanta for free. i’ll figure out some way or another to pick up the car.
i’ve got a couple of art car things coming up. unfortunately, i won’t be able to do the Great Peninsula Future Festival, because moe will be out of town, and the festival involves getting there before 9:30 am, leaving after 6:00 pm, or whenever the festival closes, and a ban on domestic animals, which means that the doggles can’t come with. on the other hand, the fact that the car is (allegedly) in running condition again means that i can go to Fresh Paint again this year, which is definitely on the schedule, because i got a $100 stipend just for showing up last year… 🙂
we had a banda gozona performance yesterday on beacon hill, not far away from where moe and i used to live. it was really frustrating, because there weren’t enough musicians to cover the important parts, which meant that they were covered alternately by the ben the clarinet player who doesn’t know how to stop playing when it’s someone else’s turn, and marc the trombone player, who thinks that any time is a good time to stick in an unplanned, unannounced trombone solo, and resolutely plays whatever he wants regardless of what the part actually says. this was further complicated by gil, the spanish-only speaking sousaphone player who wasn’t playing from music at all, and continued honking well after everyone else had decided that maybe we should give up and start over. sometimes i wonder why i continue with this group… 8/
i’ve been really tired for the past few days, so much so that i actually took about a 4 hour nap yesterday, after the performance, and still was tired enough that i slept until about 10:00 this morning. i’ve had a lot of house-maintenance stuff that i’ve had to do ever since getting back from OCF that i haven’t even started on because i’ve been so exhausted.
according to moe, who is studying these sorts of things recently, i have all the necessary characteristics to be psychotic. whee. 8/
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 AnneFeeney, 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.
i have returned, but i’ve got a lot of stuff to catch up on: unpacking, dealing with 450 email messages (most of which are spam or freecycle offers that are from last week), laundry, i’ve got to find out about the wanna-be art-car, i’ve got about 200 pictures to sort out, and i’ve got to get started on fixing the holes in the floor (which i said i would do a couple of months ago).
ocf was definitely fun: i got my picture in the peach pit, BBWP stole the fire show friday night, we played at the ritz saturday night, and i actually got to take six saunas over the course of the four days that it was open, and i only had to pay for four of them, but being gone for a week sort of screwed things up and now i’ve got to take care of straightening them out, because apparently nobody else is gonna do it…
oh, and i’m fifty now… happy birthday to me, or something like that. 😐
i was pretty sick last night, woke up at 3:00 in the morning with diarrhea and sweating like it was hotter than it really was. took a shower and went back to a slimy, sweaty bed and woke up at 6:00 feeling a whole lot better. i’ll probably do okay at OCF, because the “party” doesn’t officially start until friday, and i’m going down today, so i’ve got a few days to recover.
yesterday i got up at an ungodly hour (6:30 am) and went to pick up my wanna-be-art-car from one repair shop, and drove it 15 miles to another repair shop where they’re allegedly going to fix it. on the 15 mile drive from one repair shop to the other, the car almost overheated, and smoke was coming out the fresh air vents when i arrived, but ganesha is in charge of this car, so if it’s going to be fixed, then it’s going to be fixed, and if it isn’t, there’s nothing i can do about it.
anyway, that left me in burien with no car. i had my bicycle, though it’s around 30 miles home from there, so i rode to the burien transit center and took a bus from there to international boulevard, where i transferred to another bus that was going to the federal way transit center, and from there i rode my bicycle the remaining 8 miles home.
when i got home, i turned around and went out again, to get an ink cartridge for my printer, so that everything won’t print green any longer, and i also went to the copy shop to get photocopies of the panto music of which i need multiple copies. then i came home again…
when i got home, i used the new ink cartridge to print an invoice, and packaged an order that came in the day before, and went out again to the post office to ship the order.
then i came home again, and searched for, and found a guy who would fix the free lawnmower that i got on freecycle the other day. he picked it up(!) last night.
today, i went to the bank to get cash for the guy who fixed the lawn mower, and when he delivered it(!), i mowed the lawn, taking a break in the middle to go out and buy a gas can and gas, because it ran out of gas and i didn’t have any because my previous lawn mower was electric.
then i got most of the rest of my gear ready for OCF. i still have to pack clothes, and there are probably some miscellaneous things that i haven’t remembered to pack.
i keep finding myself amazed at the fact that in a little more than a week there are going to be feral hippie children immitating the play that i only saw for the first time on monday, and that was an incomplete show, because all of the music isn’t written yet, and we’re still putting the final touches on the script… the final dress rehearsal for the panto here is tonight. i believe the people who aren’t going down early are having another rehearsal on monday, but the next complete rehearsal we’ve got scheduled for the panto is at OCF, a week from tomorrow evening before the fair opens on friday. i’ve still got to determine whether or not i’m bringing my saw. also i’ve got a pink bandana and a trumpet that i have to remember to take for katy.
tomorrow there’s supposed to be a banda gozona rehearsal, but it’s for a performance that i have to miss because of OCF, so i’m not sure whether or not i’m going to it. friday there’s the final BBWP rehearsal before the fire show the night of the fair opening.
as long as we hold it together, the panto this year has the potential for being the best show we’ve ever done. we’re doing a mash up of Red Riding Hood and The Three Pigs: they’re both fairly simple, short stories that have some similar characters – the big bad wolf, and the woodcutter, for example – and they’re both ripe for tweaking the plots a little bit (or a lot) so that they’ll fit together. of course we’ve got the standard gender bending and off-colour jokes which should go over the heads of the smaller members of the audience. if we don’t hold it together, well, it’s OCF, so the probability is very high that nobody will notice, or if they do, they’ll think we planned it that way.
i upgraded to wordpress 3.0. whoopie. at this point, wordpress is stable enough that you don’t see anything from the outside, and apart from a few telling colour changes, nothing is really that obvious from the back end either. i suppose once i try to do something that isn’t part of the plan we’ll see whether or not they’ve actually done a good job this version.
evan, moe’s boss and the guy who gave me the current version of Ganesha The Car, has said that something regarding the car will get worked out, eventually. meanwhile, i have an incomplete art car that won’t run sitting at a transmission shop 20 miles from where i live, which is closed saturday and sunday, so i won’t even have the chance to deal with it until at least tomorrow. once again, i thank Ganesha for the jeep, which means that i’ve been able to get to rehearsals and performances, like the performance i had at st. mary’s church in the central district this morning, or the rehearsal i have in the university district this evening, without too much difficulty (although the jeep does get fairly awful gas mileage and it still stalls at stop lights occasionally).
OCF in a week. i’m going down with chris this year, because i don’t have a working car, and he wants to get there monday, which is the earliest i have ever arrived at country fair… not that i’m complaining or anything, although it will mean that i’ll have a three or four day head start on mosquito bites when everybody else gets there. BBWP is on the schedule for the friday night fire show.
Country Is Dumb by Pliny Keep
Well, I’m proud to be a yuppie from Kentucky
Where we pretend we’re farming in the mall
And cowboys ride in cars
And waste their lives in bars
And our music’s still the biggest joke of all
Country is dumb, country is dumb
You only got three chords to work with, number one
And the songs all ramble on about
Women and chicken and trucks and guns
Well all I’ve got to say is country is dumb!
Well they brag about hospitality here in Nashville
They give the spotlight to the common man
But out in that sea of faces
I see no other races
And I hope there ain’t no homos in my band
‘Cause country is sexist and racist and country is dumb
You only got three chords to work with, number one
And the songs all ramble on about
Women and chicken and trucks and guns
Well all I’ve got to say is country is dumb!
(solo yodeling)
Now country is number one across the nation
People say it brings them closer to their roots
Like ignorance and hate
And a submissive mate
That fits as cozy as a pair of cowboy boots
Country is dumb, country is dumb
You only got three chords to work with, number one
And the songs all ramble on about
Women and chicken and trucks and guns
And busted hearts and trailer parks
And calloused hands and one night stands
And faithful dogs and white male Gods
And all I’ve got to say is country is dumb!
i am totally exhausted from SACBO and surrounding festivities, and i’ve been pretty depressed most of the day (the morning after blues?), but i’m slowly coming around. it rained pretty much all day sunday, and there was at least a bracing dampness to the air all day saturday when it wasn’t actually raining. fortunately it cleared up for the actual parade, because i was very clear about the fact that if it was raining, all of my expensive electronic music production gear was going to stay in its respective boxes, which would have definitely put a cramp on our part of the parade. i didn’t vend sunday, but lack of motivation was only part of the reason. now that i’m fairly confident that the transmission on ganesha the car version two is going to last at least a year (because that’s how long the warranty on the new transmission that i bought for it lasts), i can turn my attention to the leak in the pressurised engine coolant system which causes the car to run really hot when it’s not on the freeway, smell funny, and requires engine coolant about every 4 days to a week. it’s annoying that i’ve had to put so much money into this free car to get it working reliably. about the most fun i had at SACBO was watching the doughnut jousting that evolved over the course of sunday afternoon. the crowds were really light because of the rain, but we were determined to make the best of it, which resulted in a couple of microphone stands and some coat hangers becoming targets on which were placed yesterday’s doughnuts, which were the target of jousters on bicycles, unicycles, wheelchairs, and pretty much anything else, armed with pool cues. i spent time with people that i only see once a year (mostly), was part of the centrepiece of the whole parade, and i was inducted into a secret society, the less said about which the better. fremont phil rehearsal tonight, BSSB rehearsal tomorrow, players rehearsal wednesday, LBG rehearsal thursday, BBWP rehearsal friday…
moe was at a sheepdog trial all weekend, and she won! she got a 92, and the person who came in second (who is also moe’s mentor and friend diane) got an 88. i’ll let her tell the story, but we’re all pretty proud of moe and her doggie. 🙂 also, today is our 12th wedding anniversary.
last week, monday i had a fremont phil rehearsal, tuesday i had a sousa band rehearsal, wednesday i had a players rehearsal, thursday i had a banda gozona rehearsal, friday i had a BBWP rehersal, saturday was the banda gozona performance at the seattle version of guelaguetza, and today i had a rehearsal of the beatles-simulacra-band for the solstice parade coming up on saturday. this week, monday i have a fremont phil rehearsal, wednesday i have a players rehearsal, thursday i have my choice of a banda gozona rehearsal (which i am going to miss, because it is in preparation for a performance at the solstice parade in which i am going to be otherwise engaged) or a beatles-simulacra rehearsal, friday i have a BBWP rehearsal, saturday i have the solstice parade, plus SACBO, sunday i have SACBO and a number of options, including vending… and then in a week, monday i’ve got a fremont phil rehearsal, tuesday i have a sousa band rehearsal, wednesday i have a players rehearsal, thursday i have a banda gozona rehearsal, friday i have a BBWP rehearsal, and it continues from there until OCF.
i’m going to OCF with chris this year, and chris wants to get there on monday, which is earlier than i have ever arrived at OCF before. which means that i’m going to have to be extra prepared this year (i.e. no “making a run to town to get things i forgot” this year). we’ve already been scheduled for a BBWP performance at the friday night fire show – which we didn’t do at all last year, and there was such a furor because we weren’t there that they demanded to have us back 🙂 – so i’ve definitely got my work cut out for me, learning the new rap, practicing my poi and my tassel-twirling and the fire-avoidance thing to think about. plus i’ve got to do some homework and come up with sound effects for the beatles thing. we’re going to be in a “Yellow Submarine” float, and they want some appropriate submarine noises, along with the actual keyboard stuff that i signed up for.
i can’t really say anything about the new BBWP performance (primarily because despite the fact that we’re scheduled to perform in about 4 weeks, we haven’t actually decided what the performance is going to be, yet), but here’s a hint…
friday the banda gozona performed at folklife. friday was also the day that my mother-in-law, father-in-law, and his wife came to visit, for the combined holiday, moe’s sheep trial, and my mother-in-law’s 60th birthday. i left at 3:00 and didn’t get home until 9:00, whereupon i discovered one of our doggles loose in the bedroom and the bathroom totally trashed, with ibuprophen tablets spilled all over the place, and what looked like a few chewed ibuprophen tablets among the trashed counter contents that were on the floor.
i’m actually surprised that moe and her relatives aren’t at home – i was unaware of their plans, but i anticipated them being at home, in which case this wouldn’t actually be an emergency, but… i’m not sure, but it looks to me like it could be an “accidental” overdose on the part of the guilty party (paddy), so i call moe, who isn’t answering her phone. i call her father’s cell phone, and he’s not answering either, which i find quite strange, since he is, presumably, in the same general vicinity as moe, and i know for a fact that her sheep trial doesn’t start until tomorrow, but i am faced with a possible overdosing dog and i’m starting to freak out, so i call our good friend micah, who is a veterinarian, and he’s not answering his phone either.
now i’m really freaking out… 🙁
eventually i get hold of moe, who has been out to dinner with her parents, she comes home and vomits the dog, who wasn’t overdosing on anythign except toilet paper (she had eaten almost an entire roll, which was sitting on the counter), and everything was fine, although it left me (and everyone else) totally exhausted.
yesterday, i got an order for postcards, and i spent most of the day going back and forth with a trained, experienced graphic artist who (apparently) can’t differentiate between a file that is 250 dpi and RGB with exactly the same file that is 300 dpi and CMYK. when we finally got that all worked out, i went to a going away party for möppi, rebeccah and diemo, who are moving back to germany next month, and i got home, totally exhausted, at 10:00 or so.
today, i got up at an ungodly hour (8:00 am), feeling nauseous – – but not actually nauseous enough to throw up (which i figured would make the nauseous feeling go away), and made it to folklife for a (relatively) early (1:10 pm) performance of the ballard sedentary sousa band. i didn’t actually get sick, although there were a few touch-and-go moments in the morning before i left, but i wanted to get there fairly early, because, unlike the banda gozona performance, which resulted in my possesion of a parking pass, so that i wouldn’t have to pay, the powers that be apparently figured that the ballard sedentary sousa band only needed two parking passes, which went to the two most senior members of the band, so in order to park, i would have to search out a free spot (practically impossible, given the location and time) or pay $15 to park until 2:30.
i got home at about 3:30, absolutely exhausted, and submitted the order for the postcards.
now, completely bereft of spoons, i’m going to spent the rest of my “holiday” weekend sleeping.
wesak was last thursday. i watched the monks at the buddhist temple down the street putting up decorations, but i totally spaced out mentioning it until now.
the aparajita is supposed to arrive on wednesday or thursday of this week. it’s down to the wire and i still don’t have tracking details from india, but the guy called me(!) to tell me when the shipment was supposed to be here.
Quantity discrimination in salamanders – they can tell the difference, but only when the ratio is 2:1 or greater… but these guys get paid to discover if salamanders can count. i obviously went into the wrong profession…
Man crosses English Channel in chair carried by helium balloons – including “coming down quickly to avoid restricted air space, missing a power line and then bouncing a short distance before coming to a halt” near dunkirk. once again, it appears as though i went into the wrong profession. what was i thinking?
i called maaco, and they said that it would cost around $200 to clear-coat the hood, depending on how the preparation goes. i told the guy that i would hesitate to spend that much on the car if there was something wrong with the engine, and my budget was around $100. he said that i should bring it by tomorrow, which i’m going to do, but i’m not expecting much. it’s possible that rick at edgewood tire has some suggestions, but i haven’t asked him.
i’m probably going to go get my tuba soldered tomorrow afternoon, or some time in the relatively near future.
i sent $500 to india for 20 dozen boxes of aparajita. i got an invoice for it, so i’m a little less suspicious than i would have been otherwise, but i still don’t know for sure that it’s going to be aparajita that the guy sends me. at this point, it’s wait and see, because i’ve already sent the money. there’s another incense retailer that’s going to buy half of the 20 dozen as soon as i get them, which is good, because i don’t have the space to store 20 dozen boxes of incense.
my host provider has decided that he’s going to stay in business for his existing customers but not take any new customers. it eases my concern about finding a new host provider immediately, but i’m still going to move eventually, because i really don’t like being jerked around like that. the first time you said you were sorry and i gave you another chance, but the second time it was entirely my fault, and i don’t want it to happen again.
in other news, my copy of The Beatles Complete Scores came in the mail today. this is a book that i have wanted ever since it was first published in 1989, and it’s 1136 pages of the actual music by John Lenon and Paul McCartney from the people who would know. this means that i can now work on arrangements of things like Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite for Snake Suspenderz without having to rely on somebody else’s frequently incorrect interpretations of what the chords are… and i can finally figure out the chords for Michelle, which i have been wondering about for 30 years… 8)
now, off to get denatured alcohol. i ran out yesterday and i need it to clean up the sticky residue which was not left by the lining tape on my car, because the packaging said that it didn’t leave a sticky residue, so, in spite of the fact that, when i pull the tape off my car, it leaves a sticky residue, apparently, it wasn’t left by the tape… 😐
oh yeah, i got email from someone who wants to interview “Rev. Guido DeLuxe” concerning the Church of Tina Chopp. she said she was interested in tracking down the truth behind the rumours… she was also born in 1988, which was well after the church had established its presence… i wonder what sort of gibberish i should spout in order to confuse her even more… hey, she wrote to me…
my performances at Honk! Fest went off without a hitch, more or less. i got up at an ungodly hour (7:30) and made it to the first performance, at Casa Latina, by 9:00, where they didn’t know what was going on, and my ability to understand spanish is only because of my vague knowledge of french and latin, so i wandered around in the international district for 45 minutes or so until other honk fest/band related people showed up. we played for an hour, and then we had a break until 3:00, so i went and got breakfast and took a nap for an hour or so. the second performance was after the Extraordinary Rendition Band performed. the latino guy that’s standing in the background is someone from my band, and i suppose that i should probably know what his name is, because i’ve known him for a few years now, but i don’t… (is it yeba ignacio? i’m not sure…) i don’t suppose that it’s partially because he only speaks limited english, and i would only make myself look foolish if i tried to speak spanish…
DJ RX – White Lines is an interesting treatment of the song… in a lot of ways, it’s better than the original.
one doesn’t tend to notice annoyances that have disappeared, but i just realised that the guy who has been sending me spam with great regularity, at least once a month, for five-plus years hasn’t sent me a spam message since november of last year. i won’t claim sole responsibility for ridding the net of this annoyance, but i would be willing to bet that the multiple reports of his spam i made to the washington state attorney general’s office couldn’t have slowed down his departure too much.
the new Ganesha The Car is probably not going to be a car very much longer. there’s nothing wrong with it currently, but the transmission is on its last legs, and from what the people at the repair shop (not the repair shop from which i got the car, a different one) told me, the ’93 Mercury Tracer (which is also called a “Ford Fiesta Escort” for some unknown reason) is notorious for transmission and engine problems, and pretty much anything that goes substantially wrong with it will very likely cost more to fix than the car is worth. at the same time, i didn’t actually pay for the car to begin with, and the repair shop that i got it from will very likely do things like replace the transmission for far less than other places would, because we fall under the “friends and family” category with the owner of the shop – which is also part of the reason why i didn’t pay for the car to begin with.
in the short term, this means that i have even more impetus to create “temporary” artwork on the car, using paint pens instead of a brush and one-shot. daniel smith’s has a piss-poor selection of paint pens, but i picked up some black, and some gold pens. i’m hoping that i can find a wider assorement of colours somewhere else.
frustration is finding a bittorrent of something that you really want, and downloading 99.3% of it – with 8 “leeches” and a “seeder” who only logs in after midnight – before getting stuck and spending weeks repeatedly opening up your network to a DOS attack while you wait for the remainder to appear… all i need is 1.16 MB of information and then i’ll have the whole thing… is that too much to ask?
a guy advertised “Goldblatt drywall stilts. Rubber is good, but the straps are shot and some minor hardware needs replacing.” on freecycle, earlier in the week, and i responded, because i can probably fix the things that they have wrong with them, and then i’ll have a set of drywall stilts… unfortunately, i didn’t notice that the guy’s email host is christian.net, and the quote that automatically appended to the signature of my message was “Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world. — Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet), 1694-1778″…
he didn’t reply, so i sent him another message this afternoon. the quote that automatically appended to the signature of that message was “The more you complain, the longer God lets you live.” i still have recieved no response from him, but i get the impression that the probability of my recieving a response from him is miniscule at this point. oh well… if nothing else, i can post a wanted to freecycle for drywall stilts. if i’m really lucky, the same guy will respond… 😉
i’ve got to get up and go to a gig that banda gozona is playing for part of Honk! Fest West at 9:00 tomorrow morning. there’s another gig that banda gozona is playing at 3:00 pm as well, which means that i can’t even go home and get some rest between the shows. the music that we’re playing is all stuff that i know the tuba parts for quite well. unfortunately, i’m playing trombone for tomorrow’s gigs, and the trombone parts are really fast, with a lot of notes that range from E an octave below middle C to A an octave above middle C within a measure. i’m reasonably certain that i can play most of the notes, and i’m sure i can play all of the notes at a reduced speed, but the fact that there’s going to be at least one other trombone-range instrument (most likely euphonium, but another trombone isn’t out of the question) makes me a lot more at ease with this performance than i would be otherwise.
i subscribe to a modified version of the spoon theory, and the past few weeks have definitely been ones in which i have pushed the limits of my spoons, traded one day’s spoons for another day, and that sort of thing. now that the moisture festival is over for another year, it is important that i rest up and gather my spoons for a spring and summer that looks exciting and frightening at the same time.
i am expanding hybrid elephant in a number of ways: i have gotten at least one and potentially three or more new web clients, which may mean that i’m going to need more web space eventually(!), and i have been talking with bfly about teaming up to teach some classes(!!).
i talked with dan from nanda about printing business cards and postcards for them.
i have also decided, now that moisture festival is out of the way, that i’m going to have my tuba “seen to” by someone that can re-solder the outside guard bracing that’s come loose, replace several missing braces that are currently being held together with zip ties, and tackle the third valve slide that is wider at one end than it is at the other, and is just waiting for me to bump it a little bit too hard in the wrong direction so that it will totally lock up and never move again.
i also have a new art car project to work on. i have every intention of putting all 1008 names of ganesha on my new art car, which, of course, will mean that i will have to write them a lot smaller than i did on the previous art car, which will doubtlessly mean more time spent on it. SACBO is in june, so that doesn’t really leave very much time…
makes me wonder what would happen if you pitted one of these against the other? would the result be interesting, or boring? would it create a perpetual motion machine or a time vortex? which one would fail first?
i have been digging through mounds of PHP code recently, looking for <hr> tags and not finding them, and figuring out ways to make links disappear and stuff like that for the past couple of days. i believe i may have actually put the finishing touches on the sedentary sousa web site, but i’m not going to post it until i get approval from the boss lady.
moe’s friend holly is staying with us for a couple of nights. i don’t know her very well, but she and moe are good friends from way back.
the new Ganesha The Car is back in the shop because of a fuel leak. it should be ready today (ETA: it’s ready, i just have to go pick it up). i drove it for two days and went through a tank and a half of gas before i figured out what the problem was. hopefully it will get slightly better mileage now that it’s not leaking fuel all over the place. jack said he didn’t notice it because when he put gas in it he only put about a quarter tank in, and apparently the leak was higher up on the tank.
the moisture festival has started for me. i had a show last night, and i’ve got a show tonight, two shows on saturday and either one or two shows on sunday (typical moisture festival scheduling chaos), then there’s one or two shows(?) next saturday, a show the following thursday, friday, two or three shows the following saturday and the closing night performance on sunday 4 april. hacki’s back. he couldn’t get a visa last year, but he got one this year. this is the first year since the first year that we’ve had opening night somewhere other than the palladium. this year, opening night was last week at ACT theatre. we’ve also got four different venues this year – i get the impression that this is the beginning of the actualisation of the fantasy that they were throwing around last year. this year we’re having the comedie/varieté acts at the palladium, the burlesque (read "titty & ass") shows at ACT (because mike hale is a “christian” who doesn’t at all approve of exposed tits, despite the fact that the burlesque shows bring in the most money), and we’ve also got shows going on somewhere in georgetown and some others on vashon island.
i have been having a sharp pain in the joint of my left thunb for about a month. i went to see chris who spent several days poking me with needles, and that seemed to help, but once he quit, the pain came back over the course of several days. i went to see a hand specialist yesterday who said i probably have arthritis – i’m genetically predisposed to it; both my grandmothers had arthritis in their hands. she (the doctor) recommended that i take ibuprophen and go to a specialist that makes splints for when the pain gets intolerable. getting old sucks.
I’m the man in the dark sedan and I have come to take your hand
I was sent down here to be sincere, truthful and steadfast
I came to say that judgement day of man has come to pass
I’m the man in the dark sedan and I have come to take your hand
You can follow me and I guarantee to take you far away
But we must leave before the eve of everlasting gray
I’m the man in the dark sedan and I have come to take your hand
You will leave this place and soon replace the names of those you know
With a brotherhood that has withstood the leeches and the snow.
today i took the old Ganesha The Car up to the shop to get the stereo and PA speakers removed. it actually started, which is better than it was behaving a few weeks ago when i took it out for a spin. i’m taking the new Ganesha The Car to get the stereo and PA speakers installed tomorrow, and then i’m going to the DOL to get the license plates switched. at the same time, i believe i am going to inquire about getting a disabled person permit, since i do receive disability benefits. also i’m going to inquire about “collecter” license plates – i believe the car isn’t eligible for them yet, but it seems to me that any car that is older than 20 years can have collector plates, which basically means that the car is exempt from emissions inspection and doesn’t have to pay for yearly tabs.
i have an appointment with ned on wednesday and an appointment with a hand specialist on thursday (despite feeling a good deal better than it did a couple of weeks ago, thanks to chris and his needles, my left thumb is still painful enough that it is difficult for me to hold my trombone), and then i have a week of performances for the moisture festival starting thursday.
a few weeks ago i went out to woodinville and retrieved a freezer from moe’s friend diane, which works, but has broken hinges on the door. i determined that it was a kenmore stand alone freezer, and found a number to call for the sears service center. i got a number that rang and rang and rang but nobody answered, so i called the sears toll free number, and after bouncing back and forth through automated “if you want parts and service, say ‘parts and service'” menus for about 45 minutes, i finally called the sears store at southcenter and ordered the parts from them. they’re supposed to get here, according to the moron helpful customer service engineer on the phone, by 23 march, and then i have to figure out whether or not i have the correct tools to replace them.
the busy season started about 2 weeks ago. i’ve had a rehearsal for the fremont philharmonic, and a rehearsal for the fremont players every week, plus i’ve had a banda gozona rehearsal every other week, plus i’ve had a snake suspenderz rehearsal and/or performance about every other week (next performance is thursday at smokin’ pete’s barbecue, in ballard), the BSSB is starting rehearsals every other tuesday starting next week, and there’s a BSSB performance coming up in may, the moisture festival is coming up in a couple weeks, and after the moisture festival is over i’m going to have two rehearsals for the fremont players per week until the oregon country fair, which is in july.
on top of everything else, i’ve had an order of business cards to print, an order of stickers to print and i’m doing yet another re-design of the BSSB web site, which is about half done. i’m not gonna post a sneak peek until i get approval from the boss lady, liz… at which point, it may be a live site anyway. there’s not an awful lot of actual re-designing going on. more just moving stuff around and making it look “more grown-up” – whatever that means.
i broke down and bought a price gunmarker – $125 for a little gadget that prints two lines of numbers on a price tag, and is designed to be used at inhuman speeds. presumably it will work, but i won’t be able to find out until after the weekend, because my mother-in-law is visiting for the weekend and her bedroom is also where i store the incense.
i’m playing for the “Vicars & Tarts” party at the palladium tomorrow (yes, we are taking my mother-in-law with us, which should be amusing). i am playing with a whole bunch of musicians i have played with before in various other configurations, but we have never played in this particular configuration, and there’s one guy, colin, who i’ve never played with before. it’s going to be colin on trombone, me on e-flat tuba and greg on b-flat tuba (two tubas! 8) ), roslyn on clarinet, joseph on saxophone, stuart on guitar and a drummer who stuart says i have met before, but i don’t remember who he is.
– but not actually nauseous enough to throw up (which i figured would make the nauseous feeling go away), and made it to folklife for a (relatively) early (1:10 pm) performance of the ballard sedentary sousa band. i didn’t actually get sick, although there were a few touch-and-go moments in the morning before i left, but i wanted to get there fairly early, because, unlike the banda gozona performance, which resulted in my possesion of a parking pass, so that i wouldn’t have to pay, the powers that be apparently figured that the ballard sedentary sousa band only needed two parking passes, which went to the two most senior members of the band, so in order to park, i would have to search out a free spot (practically impossible, given the location and time) or pay $15 to park until 2:30.
