Category: Music

Wreck Beach on a Tuesday

I was talking to a friend on the phone late last night.  The vitamin D blasted me out of my winter doldrums (and killed my joint pain stone dead… who knew?) and I was sharing my good fortune with him.  Then he axed if I’d written anything lately. I was so disappointed with myself for saying no that I wrote an instrumental called – as you see above.  Jeff will, if I ask him nice, once more try to make me understand how to FTP something bigger than 2 megs…. I will post when I can.

This is a candle for the safety of a friend at church who is going through a very scary divorce.  I mean, really scary, like I’m scared to read about her in the news scary.

This is a candle of thanksgiving that I have money to help my kids as they establish themselves, and the support of Paul and my folks in that endeavour.

This is a candle of hope for Unca Dave.  My mOm is with him now, and I think she and Unca  Barry and the rest of Unca Dave’s kin who are visiting him are really wonderful.

This is a candle for Kopper at the turning of the year.  And one each for her unique and remarkable children.

This is a candle for Mike and his new apartment *yay*.

This is a candle for Keith, who for his recent demonstrations of manturity, leaves lights and appliances on as if he wasn’t a day over fourteen.  Typo intentional, yo.  Just in case you were wondering if hip hop is dead.  Not, just on life support.

This is a candle for Tammy, who’s back from France.

This is a candle each for my trio of friends/family in Kanata.  Brother James, a big shout out for the happiness you gave just by sending postcards to me at work and given Karen a smile from me.  Leo & fambly, thanks for sharing the pictures of your travels – and that porcupine, which made me burst out laughing when I saw it.  Deb, big warm seasonal inflected-with-cinnamon hugs for you, Jim and Jenn, and your companion animals….

This is a candle for me.  I feel human again.  Hurting, but able to think about something else besides me for a change.  It’s pretty good right now.

Jon Lajoie live show

ScaryClown and I saw Jon Lajoie at The Plaza last night. The opening act was forgettable, but by the time Jon appeared the place was pretty much full. He did a lot more talking than singing, and didn’t end up doing more than four or five tunes. However, he did both “High As F***” and the “2 Girls, 1 Cup song”, so we were happy. The crowd clearly knew Jon from his videos, based on their reactions to videos shown on a big screen behind the stage. Some of those videos were new bits, including “How to get away with murdering a random street person.” Many in the crowd – including myself – sang along with our favourites. Overall, not a brilliant performance, but a lot of fun.

Brian Eno believes that singing is the key to a good life

From an interesting NPR article, here’s Brian Eno on singing as a path to happiness:

Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity and contentedness. And then there are what I would call “civilizational benefits.” When you sing with a group of people, you learn how to subsume yourself into a group consciousness because a capella singing is all about the immersion of the self into the community. That’s one of the great feelings — to stop being me for a little while and to become us. That way lies empathy, the great social virtue.

Best …. line …. evar

So.  There is this filksong called The Mad Scientist’s Love Song which is performed by Lady Miss B and Dr. Filk.  In a startling development, they reversed roles and Dr. Filk got to be the charming assistant.

When I commented that I had never actually seen Dr. Filk in a dress before, this was the response from LMB (emphasis added by moi):

Subject: Re: Dr Filk’s ballgown

My favourite part was how he accessorized with big chunky biker boots.

Okay, no, my favourite part was him saying “Why, what would a day be like
 without a little public humiliation? I’ll probably never find out.”

I AM SO STEALING THAT LINE. 

I’m recovering today from walking all the way from King to Bloor last night.  Met Dave JD at Jump, walked about downtown for a while, ended up at C’est What, and I want to tell you ALL that I will die fulfilled and happy, because I HAVE HAD A BEER FLOAT.  Yes, the C’est What has Hazelnut Chocolate Bitter floats, with whipped cream and ice cream and a maraschino cherry.  Each mouthful had at least four flavours; the final top note of the hops in the Bitter danced on my palate for about 15 minutes before I regretfully had to wake up a bit with coffee and water.  PS, the meal at Jump was solid but there’s no ******* way it was worth $100 even with the alcohol.  Then we walked all the way up Yonge, deking into the Eaton Centre so I could see what it looked like tarted up for Xmas (worth seeing), and then coming back out of the PATH to view the ******* mess they made of the intersection of Dundas and Yonge. 

The entire downtown core is a mess of sodium vapour orange, metallic blue and piercing white LED lights festooned from every lamppost and filling every square; total Xmas yield = + 350 ugly points.  We continued up the street.  The Swiss Chalet I ate at multiple times a week when I was working at the Delta Chelsea is still there.  Many other landmarks are gone but plenty remain.  David’s is still on the corner of Yonge and Bloor with its array of expensive shoes; the Pilot is still there just off Yonge in Yorkville.  As is standard I did most of the talking; sometimes I wonder if Dave ever is thinking “When will she STFU?”  He deked into a CD joint and insisted on picking up a couple of Weakerthans CD’s so you may all be assured that Dave’s role in my life as somebody who forces me to refine my taste while I broaden my horizons continues.

We ended up at Flow for the last drink of the evening and after another fifteen minutes of aimlessly wandering around Yorkville while I critiqued the dresses in the window (Jesus, if I was a man I wouldn’t go near a woman dressed like that, I’d be afraid of getting caught on something, etc.) we decided that fun as it had been Dave had to go to work in the morning, so about 10:15 we packed it in; I came home by cab.

Vancouverites, listen up!  The cab driver ASKED ME IF HE COULD TAKE THE CALL when his cell phone rang.  I don’t know how often you take cabs (I gotsk no car, so I do a lot) but I nearly choked on my tongue when he said that.  I thanked him profusely and tipped him according to his deserts.  Speaking of which, prob’ly the funniest part of the evening was how animated Dave got when lecturing me (humourously, not pompously) about the importance of tipping.  The how, the why, the way it’s an inexpensive and effective way of spreading joy, the importance of not looking like a cheap bastard (I paraphrase).

I think I’m coming back in February.  There’s a play I want to see, and I like going to Toronto for Valentine’s day and hanging with friends – I had an AMAZING time the last time.  It’ll be a little awkward seeing as how I’ll just be back from Belize – current planning – who knows – but frankly now that I’ve figured out that I need to quit travelling on cheap airlines I think I’ll have a lot better time.

PS we leave for France soon.  Happy sigh!

David Byrne and Brian Eno

Ha ha, hipsters!  Die of the jellusy!  On the 20th of February Jeff and I are going to take in the above noted at the QE Theatre!  I mean, if the world doesn’t end first.

Hm, must book tix for B-52s now, before civilization collapses any further and you can’t buy tickets for 80’s bands any more.  At any rate that should be a great show.

Keith was supposed to show up last night and he didn’t show and he didn’t phone.  I have a really solid notion that he went to the Purpose High School Reunion, possibly even with his sister (can such things BE?) in which case he might have been, like, socializing with classmates.  He’s been pushing himself hard on that front lately, to my joy and astonishment.  So, one hopes for a full report but one does not hope too hard.

Coffee…. I love coffee.  I’m having some organic fair trade medium blend right now and thinking about how coffee will shift in our culture yet again.  It being so addictive I don’t imagine it will go away.

I got home around 6:30 last night after sweet talking LTGW into giving me a ride (I had glass dishes from the departmental potluck (spaghetti and sauce) and did not want to lug them home on the bus, and it was POURING rain).  We stopped off for tea and coffee at the Starbucks at Hastings and Kensington and discussed a bewildering variety of things with many violent changes of subject, which anybody who knows me will consider quite standard….  Any conversation that has somebody envying my corpus callosum can’t be all bad.

Master Jeff is in da house

Eddie and Gizmo celebrated his return by running up and down the hallway in an attempt to mimic the percussive qualities of army boots on wooden floors.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop with the ghetto slang.  I know there are many things that are seriously wrong with me…that seems to be pretty minor, all things considered.

That goshdarned full moon, which was fan-dancing with the clouds when I was standing on the ‘train platform last night!  I went to Brentwood Mall under its malign influence and bought matching earrings, bag, shoes and hairband (?!) and then bought, yeesh, makeup and got taught, in a very luxurious and unhurried way, how to apply it.  I’d say something about lipstick on a pig at this point, but I suspect nautilus3 is rather sensitive on that subject, for two reasons; one, the pig is her totem animal and she’s not one for mocking them, and two, when she was a high powered executive with 600 full time equivalents reporting to her (didn’t know that, eh, thought she was just a nice old lady, did ya?) lipstick was the only makeup she wore.  I wish I’d stayed and gotten my toes done but I’ll see if I can do that tonight.

mOm and pOp told OnSpec to send me a free copy of the their mag, and for bedtime reading (I hardly ever read a book these days, such is the pull of one phosphor dot screen or another) I read halfway through it.  Apart from thinking that the writing style of all the contributors remarkably similar, I really enjoyed it, and I think I will subscribe.  When you pick up a mag and DON’T think at any point, why’n’earth did they publish this, that’s a good sign.  I even liked the poetry, which is either a sign of necrosis of the brain or quality, you pick.

Off to a party tonight (thus the matching shoes, bag, earrings, hairband), and I will look fabulous in my outfit.  I even depilated, which is either a sign of the apocalypse or that I’ll be exposing more of my surface area than is normally the case, you pick.  Daughter Katie’s supposed to turn up and fix my hair, but after a lot of fussing around last night (Jeff would have been harrumphing had he been here, I was in the facility so long) I think I can do it myself if she bails. At least she’s okay.  I grouse, but I worry ’bout that kid. She’s moving back in with her pop and Keith and I for one am thrilled.

Tomorrow, I go shopping at Famous Foods in the AM and then ScaryClown comes over in the PM and we’ll have a documentary fest and I think I’ll cook up some yummy food.  He has to leave early (after supper) because he’s due to get up at hours ungodly on Sunday to get to the airport to fly to Providence, where he intends at some point to climb in a taxi or round up a sympathetic coworker (it’s a biz trip) and get driven out to HP Lovecraft’s grave.

This, like everything else in my mind, dovetails neatly with other family news; the parental units have commissioned a metal sculpture of one of the Old Ones.  It is disguised as a cephalopod, but those in the know will be aware that it is actually (dah dah duhhn!) something otherworldly.

I am planning on taking ScaryClown to Gadget House at some point and asking my parents to adopt him as a grandson, or possibly a nephew.  The idea of going on a road trip with ScaryClown alternately makes me blanch, giggle and furrow my brow.

Then, Sunday, my 50th birthday. It simply wouldn’t BE my birthday if I wasn’t importing guests, so Dr Filk has, with my warm thanks, agreed to come across the pond – Lady Miss Banjola, who will likely also attend, is requiring his presence for further practice, rehearsal, and scoffing, teasing and saying, You’re Fired repeatedly. All perfectly standard.  It should be a small and convivial crewe.  (Also with any luck Darwin the Alert and Lexi the Not-So-Alert-as-Darwin will attend.)  I’m gonna have an acoustic bass in my living room.  Let joy be unrefined!  Oh, yes, there will be filk.

I just opened a card from my folks, which reads “Thank you for the special gift of being our daughter.  Happy half century!”  Gosh, (scuffs toes) couldn’t have done it without yuz. PS thanks for the terabyte drive pOp.  Jeff and I are considering what uses to put it to…..

more Garage Band

I am definitely in the TOO MUCH OF EVERYTHING AND ALL AT ONCE school of music making.  When it’s just me and a stringed instrument I can keep it quite moronically simple, but give me a wee bit o’ software and I turn into a complexificating loon.  I go back and forth between Not Ready Yet and Karaoke at the Hellmouth with no urge to trim it down, and this is not a good thing, as they are sounding increasingly bizarre.

Hopefully today I will be able to sweet talk Jeff into visiting some of the audio places around; i have my eye on a better mike and headset, and I also need a separate headset for the Casio keys because there’s no large hole to small hole plug in adapter adapter and otherwise I have to run it through Garage Band, which is occasionally inconvenient, like now, when Jeff has to twist like a pretzel around the keyboard to feed the cats.  Many thanks to Katie and Paul for keeping all the bits together – it would be useless if folks hadn’t tirelessly kept it with its ac adapter.  I am about ready to give Paul the ex-marital bed back, I’m so slammed for space in my room, and go back to a single so I can at least leave all my music set up all the time.  It’s either that or leave it strewn from one end of the house to the other, which is suboptimal.

On a work related note, I’m not there today.  I needed some time off to reacquaint myself with my creative side.  Given the right stimulus, it appears that if you perforate me, music still comes out.

I want to see if I can record any of my birthday festivities; that should be fun!

Last night I dreamed Ridley Scott was directing Brangelina in an x-rated film. Jeff looked up and said, “I’ve had the exact same dream.”  Snicker. All I got to see was Ridley telling Brad to stand ‘artistically’ in a doorway.  While nude.

Last night, roast beast with carrots onions and taters.  This morning, BLTs.  We just finished them.  Yum!

More Garage Band

Heavens. I’ve messed together another song.  The first one was a charming novelty tune called “Not Ready Yet”, and this one is now entitled “Karaoke at the Hellmouth”.  The backstory is that twin demons (they are actually hatchlings from the same clutch) have come to this plane to participate in karaoke for the very first time and one of them gets drunk and passes out during the song, and their performance is further complicated by their inability to form anything resembling consonants.  The wizard they tormented into assisting them on their hellish quest wisely put a liplock on them, so all they can do is howl and gargle, tantalizingly close to being on key, but never quite there, and certainly not capable of saying anything in their ghastly language, which can break glass or drill nails out if used in our plane.  A four year old child accompanies them on Mellotron, a fourteen year old on bass, and the pseudohorns and drum kit does the rest.  Don’t I make it sound attractive?

Doug and Elly

Yesterday was quite the day for meals (which I did not have to cook). For Brunch, Jeff and ScaryClown and I sucked back an Islands inflected breakfast at the Reef on Main street and then took a tour of the shops; for dinner Doug cooked a magnificent roast lamb with greek salad, greek style potatoes (oh…my… god they were good) and hummus, pita and tzatziki.  I even drank red wine and didn’t get a migraine.  Keith and Jeff accompanied me on that trek to the golden kitchen of Doug.  As always, the soundtrack at their place is amazing.  I never go over there but that I think I want to live there!

When asked, why return to Toronto, Elly had a few comments.  It is home.  Her mother’s dying of emphysema (not that Elly means to get close to her or effect a reconciliation after all the crap…).  It’s closer to grandchildren; it’s closer to children; it’s closer to New York, where she is establishing a new chapter in her mental health career (her show went over really well).  Vancouver and her time in BC got her healthy, healthy enough that she tossed her journals.  (Why do I need them?  It’s just endless boohooing.  There’s no value in it.  Gave me a twinge about the blog, believe you me.) Doug’s career is portable, as is hers. And the maraschino on top is getting out before the Olympics.  Grr.

Doug showed off his new insulin monitoring device; he says if he can reduce the number of injections from four to five a day to one every three days he’ll gladly participate in the research.

When Jeff and I moved in here I whined about how I didn’t have any cast iron frying pans.  Well, I do now; Doug and Elly are dejunking and I acquired two.  Shout out for Jeff who enquired if they were dejunking.  Keith may get the computer desk but he has to run it by Paul first.

I don’t have a picture of Doug’s new beard styling, but it rocks.  I do have pics of his pumpkin, and will post later …

Sneaky sneaky

I continue to be extremely sneaky – my most recent foray into sneakiness was telling my mandolin teacher “Lady Miss Banjola is a GEEENIUS!  Heer, I be showink you…” and then I played Tune Away…..

Anne immediately said, “Forward me the link, there’s somebody I gotta play that for.”  Ha ha!  Then I played her the Tapioca song via Youtube.  My extremely low key plans for world domination through music continue unabated.  And I met her husband – I only found out last week that he sits in the car and waits for her during her teaching gigs, and I was torn between being appalled and thinking, “aw, sweet!” so I went out and said hi.  Then I had a brief lesson and Anne and I shot the breeze for a while (it’s okay, hubby has a book and he’s used to much longer waits, apparently).

I met Kevin, a friend of Jeff’s, last night, and watched the two of them play 2009 EA Hockey (which is amazing, by the way) and found out that housing prices in Kelowna are just as stupid as they are in Vancouver, at least for the time being. Beer and Switzerland Chicken was consumed.  Robot Chicken was watched. Jon Lajoie was watched.  The hi-res version of Presto! was watched (and, to my unsurprise, I saw things I hadn’t noticed before, including that the rabbit’s name is Alec Kazam). Kevin belongs to a band called Grooveyard but since he’s likely moving back to the island with his wife and progeny, I doubt that band will live much longer.

And I don’t know whether it’s true or not, but Robof9 led me to believe that he was going to try to find me a nice middle aged man.  It used to be Single, Straight and Solvent, but these days I’m goin’ for best two in three.  What can I say, Robof9 is a man who laughs in the face of the difficult, and by sheer force of brains contrives to elude the grip of the impossible.

Next up:

Coffee

gathering up links and distributing them to the needy

Uke! wakka wakka wakka

Print me up a new liver boys, this one’s no good to me now.

One of the best I quit letters in the history of the English language. (link removed for security reasons)

And now, a surf boarding rat. Or, at least, a rat who is earnestly engaged in the business of NOT drowning.

How do I know chipper’s got a boyfriend ? she’s not sending me links no more!!!  Me happy!  It can’t all be doom and gloom.  Oh, crap, I have about two minutes to shower and power outta here.

Home safe

Got in a brief visit with my Gran and Dr. Filk (who is some filking busy these days, what with recording and travelling) yesterday; listened to Juliana’s new album with my mother; collected a book and two maps of France / Paris; and then got home safe on the ferry.  Jeff came and picked me up.  I had a very relaxing weekend.  Then I got up and tidied my room, as I damned near killed myself getting up in the night to let Eddie in.

To do: read the family history about the bookseller and antiquarian (and friend of Thomas Carlyle) Henry Wake.  Make turkey soup. Email Anne and tell her to rearrange Friday’s lesson as I am going to be at the church gathering Friday night doing registration, or so I surmise. Work on Halloween costume which is work appropriate.  And hack away at the 10 other projects nibbling at my conscience, and consciousness.

Sundry and various

Banjos ‘n’ brain surgery (thanks Lady Miss B for tipping me off to this).

Just in time for Hallowe’en… do you find fake snot too expensive?  Make your own!

How to be a member of the new urban poor. (warning, parts of this are emotionally quite roiling.)

It’s an opinion piece about the economy, but I learned some things too.

Mailing dates for Christmas presents.

I’m off to Victoria tomorrow morning, and hope to see Dr. Filk and the Pondside folks whilst there, and a WHOLE bunch of movies, musicals mostly, to assist me with my ‘homework’ from Mr. Music.  He gave me a list of musicals and told me to examine ‘Form and Format’.  I wonder if he wants an expository essay.

Forgot to mention…

I had an AMAZING session with Anne the mandolin teacher last night, and I think it is possible I may learn to read music before the end of my sorryass life.  She says she will take it as slow as it needs to be; after forcing me to do sight reading we relax with me playing rhythm mandolin while I learn new tunes – in different time signatures, even!

She also wants to move lessons to Friday nights, and I’m good to go with that; I always seem to end up doing my heavy drinking on Saturdays and weeknights.  Specially Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Dunno why that always happens.