existential fashion disaster

I need new strings. A string on my bass broke last night during practice… I hadn’t bought strings in so long, I must’ve thrown out the last batch of old ones I took off, so I had no spares. I had to leave practice early. After I left, I suppose there must’ve been some sort of discussion, because, when I got home, I got a call, thanking me for my efforts and asking when I could come pick up my amp later this week and a few lame apologies and excuses. This isn’t a disaster, though. It was good to be playing again, but it was definitely not the right group of guys. I have a very good sense of musical variety and space and melody and they could put together interesting song pieces, but didn’t really understand the musicality I was trying to bring to it. The phrase that will echo through my head is, “it sounds kinda gay when you do that, could you not do that?” I don’t think I’ve ever been told that one of my bass lines is wrong for a song. I want to believe it was just a matter of taste or style… but the songwriter dude will always be that “young, pushy and impatient guy with no sense of musical space” in my mind.

Even though I was half-relieved to be out of this musical situation, I still want to play, so I was a little upset. If nothing else, I have to go through the effort of finding musicians, again, and that’s a lot more effort than I originally imagined it to be. A little sadness and/or stress brought out all my usual urges. My first urge was the “nasty letter” … to go post on craigslist about not wanting to play with “impatient, pushy kids” and having unencumbered “freedom to use space, variety and melody” in my basslines… but I quickly squashed that idea. It was replaced with my go-to urge in times of stress and light depression: spending money. It started innocently enough, looking into the exhaust fan for the mac. But I was doing it on my zombie PC downstairs, which needed software updates… then I started looking into what kind of hardware was in there and whether I could max it out. It’s not like it was running slow at all and I barely ever even use that machine. I had an amazon cart full of hardware, when I came to my senses and realized I was stress-spending (like stress-eating, but more expensive).  I can spend money today on much more necessary things, like a haircut and an eye exam and new sunglasses…. and maybe new strings.

I guess this means I don’t need to pick up my 18″ cabinet when I go back east. I should probably retrieve it from whoever has it and get it to Mom’s, so I can have it shipped out here, when and if it does become necessary. We still haven’t firmed up any definite days for the week I’m out there, but the requests for hang-out time are coming in quickly, so if you haven’t commented or eMailed me, do it soon. T-Minus 6 or 7 Days … or something like that.

Last weekend, we went to Wisconsin, partly to fulfill our yearly tradition of seeing a play an American Players Theater and partly as a weekend getaway in honor of Sarah’s birthday. We spent the whole weekend in the Mt Horeb and Spring Green area. On Friday, we stopped in at our favorite little chocolate shop and then got dinner at the adorable Italian place we ate at last year, before heading up to the theater to catch Widower’s Houses.

Saturday, we spent the whole day in Mt Horeb, starting with breakfast at a great little place called Schubert’s. Then we took in the activities and sights of National Mustard Day. We didn’t actually participate in the activities or eat any mustard or mustard-themed food (Culver’s Mustard Custard?). But we did wander and take pictures and shop all the cute stores, including the gift-shop half of the Mustard Museum. Then we popped back into Schubert’s for milkshakes and rosettes. We also did some quick visits to the gift-shops of Little Norway and Cave of the Mounds. We bought some geodes. I’m not sure if we cracked them open yet. Then, after a little chillin’ at the motel, we got some yummy dinner at a place with a HUGE menu.

Sunday, we used the third part of our tickets to the House on the Rock tour. We did the other two parts last year. This was definitely the darkest part of the tour, but it was very cool… it started at the huge carousel and included the doll carousels, lots and lots of dollhouses and the amazing organ room. On the way home, we picked up some cheese and meat and ate at a Panera Bread rip-off called Atlanta Bread.

Pictures Here

It was nice to do a little road trip. I’ve been doing public transportation to work most of the summer and I’ve missed driving. I had kind of forgotten about the phenomenon that, back in high school, in the music groups that went on many trips, we called “bus head.” The theory was that sometime after two hours being enclosed in the same vehicle, something in your brain shut off. We found that it didn’t matter if it was a school bus or a nice comfy chartered bus or a van or even a car. Once you hit that point, you had “bus head.” We discussed it with our band director; It takes a long time to recover from “bus head.” We didn’t want to plan any trips with long rides and immediate performing, even if it meant leaving in the early morning. We needed at least two hours. We could unload equipment during those two hours, but we definitely couldn’t do any rehearsing or make any decisions or be expected to engage in any activities that involved a lot of thought.

Luckily, my drive to work usually stays just short of “bus head” inducing length, and the public transportation route involves changing from train to bus or “El” about halfway through. I actually drove a couple times this week. Wednesday, I got together with a couple guys, after camp, and played some music. I think it went pretty well, if it turns into something I will definitely let you all know. Thursday, we had our family night (that 60 inch TV was what my camp photos slideshow was being displayed on) and then some of the staff went to Whirlyball. I had no idea what Whirlyball was until I saw it. It’s kind of like like Jai Alai or Lacrosse, in bumper cars. It was fun.

One more week of camp left. This week includes a sleepover, possibly another trip to Eli’s cheesecake world, a visit to Independence grove and another cookout… so lots of excitement.

This page has some videos of me performing in my high school’s song and dance group (the ones with titles that include years back in the 90s - cause I’m old).  Totally embarrassing. Enjoy.

It’s been a fun week. The weather was fairly nice and we went to the Flea Market, today. We’ve been teased with warm spells and then temperatures dropping back near freezing overnight, so it was nice to walk around in a t-shirt today. The overnight trips for Adventure Ed. are this week, so I hope this warm spell continues. We saw Iron Man on Friday. It was pretty darn good, especially for a comic book movie. We also went yard saling that morning and attended Fly Bird’s 4th birthday bash-thing and picked up some weird stuff. I think we’re doing a double date tonight and seeing another movie, maybe Forgetting Sarah Marshall or maybe Baby Mama… I really liked the intriguing “is that for real?” ad campaign that Forgetting Sarah Marshall did with their billboards and busboards.

I also did something bad to my knee at some point this week. I think I may have injured it on Tuesday night when I was doing a balancing-on-one-foot-and-tying-my-shoe dance. It was kinda sore on Wednesday, worse on Thursday and really really painful on Friday. Yesterday it was much better and today it feels fine… but it really made me feel old. I was all gimpy and hobbling around the yard sales on Friday.

Oh, and while it wasn’t my boss, this time… a director at the YMCA I work at was let go this week. I’m not directly involved and, as I said, it wasn’t my boss, so it has nothing to do with the curse that I bring along to every after-school day care that I’ve ever worked for, but I am curious to see how they fill his position. I haven’t yet worked for a YMCA that filled a vacant position with anyone half-as-good as the person that left/they fired. They usually cut corners and give some of their responsibilities to other directors and maybe hire a new assistant.

A few interesting prospects, but nothing solid, yet, on the band front. I’m leaning towards the folk stuff, especially after a conversation with Mark about his band’s general distaste for Chicagoland. Someone told them that the groups they played with were the “end all, be all” of the Chicago suburban scene… maybe among their own little incestuous high school friends and families and bandmates. Though, after looking through the ads in craigslist for the past few weeks, I fear that there may not be a whole lot of great original music out here in the ‘burbs. I told Mark that I’d do my best to whip the scene into shape, so that it’s worth his band’s trouble to come back out here. I’m not sure if that’s realistic, but I’ll do my best to find the good scene… since the Suburban Youth Culture doesn’t suit Mark’s needs.

Got a couple new power adapters for my laptops, including a auto adapter for the little Dell that’s coming with us to Seattle. I haven’t tried it out yet, but it’ll kill the need for that DC to AC converter that always makes the airport security flip their wigs. I also got the latest version of my GPS software… it’s the new Microsoft version with the “Connected Services” that tell me traffic and gas price information through a little FM receiver. Unfortunately, I haven’t had those services connect for more than 5 or 10 minutes at a time and only when I’m as close to downtown as the high schools I work at… as soon I get a few miles out, it loses its connection or something. I’m holding out until we try it in the Seattle area to give it the scathingly bad review that it, so far, deserves. The GPS part, however, works really well, as good or better than previous versions. It still doesn’t speak the street names, but it does automatically reroute when you go off route, instead of just saying “Off Route” over and over again until you tell it what to do.

I’ve been trying to find a band to play in. I’ve cruised the craigslist ads, I’ve posted my own ads, I’ve even looked at alternative places to post, though none seem to have the traffic that craigslist does. The cynicism I developed in the Wormtown scene about bands that suck rules out about 80% of the groups I hear. It’s possible I’m being too picky. The others don’t get back to me… maybe I’m too old or maybe it’s that I live in the suburbs? I dunno, but it’s pretty darn frustrating, I’m almost ready to give up.

I went and played for one group. It was after my early day of work and I was pretty exhausted… so I might have not really been awake enough to be in an audition position, but I didn’t think it went too badly… especially being the first time I’d played with other people in over a year. Unfortunately, I haven’t heard back from them and noticed that they’ve reposted their ad a few times. I’ve reposted my ad as well, with a few tweaks. I made the terrible mistake of not mentioning that I wanted to play original music (and not covers) in my first post. Not-so-ordinary groups respond to my ads, as well… soul, jazz, “weird” (humor) … and sometimes I respond to those kind of ads, just to see if there’s a way I could fit into something different. Nothing has come of it, so far. A lot of talk about possibly getting together, but no actual results yet. All the groups that I would be really excited to be a part of, don’t get back to me. I also can’t decide what kind of genre I should be going for. I feel like a rock group would be a lot of fun, but sometimes I’d like to do a folk type thing again… then, y’know, when Mark’s group comes out here again, we could play the same show or something… that’d be cool.

I really just want to play again. Anybody know anyone in the Chicago area? I haven’t tried too hard with the musical people I already know in this area… but I’m feeling a little desperate, so I’ll probably revisit those ideas and actually go after those kind of connections with some sort of zeal and/or determination.

Next week, not this week, is Spring break for Chicago public schools. Sarah has just given notice at her job (seems like a sinking ship, doing what it can to cut costs by cutting hours). We think we should take another road-trip/vacation… last year was our trek across Missouri. Where should we go this time? Sarah wants to go somewhere “green,” so I guess maybe we need to head somewhat South-ish? At some point, we want to go see Mom, with Sarah’s mom, but that’ll wait until we all make some time at the same time and Mom has her guest room ready… and New England is probably no more green than it is here.

I walked around the Y and changed all the clocks, again, today. Last time the time changed, I was late for work when my clock changed on the wrong weekend. It was too smart for its own good. My new clock has a daylight savings time mode, so I got there with no problem… and I think we only had one guy show up late because he hadn’t changed his clocks.

And yes, the amp and equipment and stuff all still seems to be working great, I’ve got a couple opportunities to go play with some people in the city this week… to try some stuff out, see if there’s a good fit. I plugged my bass into my computer and played along with some tracks yesterday. It was fun. Looking forward to playing with people… hoping something comes together.

It’s not as tragic as when I went to college and came back to find out Eleni’s Midnite Cafe was about to close, but finding out a couple days before a visit home that the Java Hut is going to close after this weekend is a little sad. I can’t say it’s shocking or earth-shattering, but it’s not good news. I spent a lot of time there. The Overtones were, essentially, born there, out of the ashes of Just For Sundae and our devotion to making the Open Mic happen by running the list and donating PA equipment. I’ve added it to my list of things to do while back east. I hope they can still make me a good sandwich. One myspace bulletin with a rumor led to a google search that brought up a surprising amount of blogs about the closing… so here I am joining the blogwagon again.

Here are some Java Hut related Overtones tracks:

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and here are some of my pictures from the Java Hut

hacked… something about world writable folders, lots of accounts, not just mine. I didn’t even know I had any world writable ones. I had to go through and change them all and then test things to make sure everything still worked. I’m still doing it now, actually. After I post this, I gotta see if it worked and see if all the logs worked and then experiment with posting from the phone again. It took a lot of time and effort because my backup wouldn’t quite restore correctly. Had to kinda build a place for the site from scratch and then import it in piece by piece. Anyway, I think it’s all back now.

Thankfully this happened early Saturday morning, so I was completely distracted by the fact that I was going to see They Might Be Giants. It was a great show and brought back a lot of memories of some good times. Unfortunately, driving to a show in Chicago is worse than driving to a show in Boston. We learned our lesson though (took an hour to find parking). Next time, we’ll take the train in from O’Hare or go out early and make a day-long event out of it. They almost wouldn’t let Sarah in because she had her Diana camera with her. But she convinced them that it wasn’t going to take any high quality videos of the band, that it was basically a toy, and they let her in. The venue was cool, nice balcony seats and a few benches throughout the floor area. We were there a little too late to snag a seat for ourselves… again, lesson learned. It was a real treat to see them with the horn section. I do kinda miss the Eric and Graham/Hal days, but the Dans are good, there’s no denying it. The banter was as witty as ever.

Enjoying my day off, so far. The tentative plan was to catch up on all the TV shows we’re behind on. We’ll see what really happens once Sarah gets up and we get motivated (or don’t ). Got another Adventure Ed overnight this week (and next week). There’s pictures from last week’s trip on the gallery (mostly taken by the kids). There’s more staff lined up for this week, so I should be able to take more myself.

Back when I was still in school, mostly the UMASS days, I would make a point of seeing They Might Be Giants if they played within 45-200 miles of where I was. I made friends that I still keep in touch with, through our mutual love for TMBG and our involvement in the various online newsgroups, chats, and web forums dedicated to the band. I enjoyed their live performances before I actually appreciated what it was like to be a performer in a rock band and continued to be impressed by their abilities after I had played in several bands. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a Giants show, but Sarah was looking for possible gift ideas for me and we found that they were playing in Chicago, next Saturday. We bought a couple tickets, today. They weren’t doing the kids-specific albums back when I saw them, but there were plenty of kids at the all ages venues I’d see them at. My favorite solution to the kids-in-a-bar situation was at Toad’s Place in New Haven, CT. The stage was at one side of the room, the all-ages crowd filled in a large space between the stage and the opposite wall, but the bar was on that wall, so they erected a net around the bar which only had one opening in it, where the staff was checking IDs. Nowadays, they have their shows with very specific age restrictions/policies. This show is a 14+ show, should be fun; Seriously looking forward to it…