As it happens, last night was Metal Wars at the Uptown—like 20-some local hard-core bands playing both on the main stage of the Uptown and in a smaller room accessed through the same door as I needed to get in. There were lots of people standing around on the sidewalk, and inside the door were a couple drumkits in stages of disassembly and some amps and footboards.
I was in a hurry. It was about 10:30 by this point and Hidden Pictures was supposed to play at 11:00. It takes me 15–20 minutes to set up my kit and I needed to re-park my car after loading in, so there wasn’t time to screw around.
Unfortunately, a large SUV was in the parking space reserved for loadin/loadout. It had some equipment in it, but the woman who owned it didn’t appear to be a musician. She was talking to friends and in no hurry to leave. The curb right there was recessed from the street, so I pulled in as close as I could, leaving the tail end of my car sticking into the right lane of traffic on Broadway. The guy who had been putting equipment in the SUV said apologetically that he couldn’t get the woman to leave.
So I just started pulling out my equipment and piling it on the curb. Then I pulled out the hardware case, a remnant of my touring days. It has heavy duty casters and still has “RAINMAKERS” and a case number stenciled on it (I’ve never bothered to try to paint over it or anything). I’ve got a system where I can stack all my equipment on the case and roll it into the venue in one fell swoop, which is great, at least for venues with no stairs.*
The guy saw the road case and said skeptically, “The Rainmakers aren’t playing here tonight. Bob’s a friend of mine and I know they’re not playing here tonight.” No shit, Sherlock. And Bob’s a friend of mine, too. And why would the Rainmakers play at Metal Wars? Not only were we not a metal band, but this event is for the most local of local bands (I’m being as charitable as I can here). But I didn’t say anything, just kept stacking my drum and cymbal cases on the rolling case. As I was starting to wheel the case to the door, he stepped in front of me and repeated, “Bob’s a friend of mine. The Rainmakers aren’t playing here tonight.”
For some reason that just cracks me up. Not only did he not recognize me from the band, apparently he thought I was some wannabe desperate enough for attention that I would fake being in a well-known band, presumably to attract groupies or free drugs or whatever. Which, now I think of it, given the fame-whore atmosphere of the Metal Wars event, was probably not entirely unreasonable.
So, that was it. I explained that I was playing with Hidden Pictures in the Conspiracy Room in a few minutes and I really needed to get set up, and he stepped aside.
I love playing music more than just about anything. It’s what keeps me going. But I have to say, it really helps that being in this business provides an endless stream of surreal, inexplicable, depraved, hilarious, or frightening moments. That’s another big part of what gets me out of bed in the morning. There were several other moments last night, but this was my favorite.
]]>I will keep the gig calendar current, and it is also on my MySpace profile, linked in the left sidebar here.
]]>A Primer For the Coastal Elite: What Do the Tea Party Folks Want? An on-the-scene report from a rally in North Dakota, with photos. At The Awl.
The Hypocrisy of Healthcare Protesters at Salon.com. Darren Hutchinson of Dissenting Justice guest-blogs at Glenn Greenwald’s spot while the latter is on vacation. So many people have rediscovered the dangers of big government, which they ignored or even supported under George Bush. But really, it’s worth reading for the way it points out that we have nothing like free-market competition in health care as it stands.
My favorite of the many nutty protest signs seen recently? “Get Government out of My Medicare!” You can’t make this stuff up.
]]>There's more, but you'll see the links when you're there. I don't know who any of the players are except Tony Levin but, um, wow.
]]>The woman who organized the service asked eight people to share some memories of Marty at the service. My own thoughts (as written, not exactly what I said) follow after the jump.
It’s a weird weekend for any number of reasons, but not anything I feel like going into here. I do get the feeling that huge changes are in the air, not just for me but for everyone. A feeling that wheels are turning and a new era is coming soon. There are all kinds of reasons I feel this, not just because of my sister or the fact that our celebrities seem to be dying off in droves. Whatever. We shall see. In the meantime, if you feel like reading a few memories of my sister, follow the link below.
]]> Memorial for Marlita (Marty) Kay Tomek Jansen McFarland, 18 July 2009You can try to be prepared for your parents' death. In our case, we had a fairly long period of time when we knew they didn't have long to go. Of course you're never prepared, even when you know it's coming. Death is always a surprise on some level, I think.
But Marty's sudden passing was a whole different thing, of course. Just that morning, she had sent a personal email to our brother Steve and me. We got the newsletters and such regularly, but this was a personal note about what she was doing, the things she was spending time on, and she apologized for not writing more often. I'm very glad she happened to drop us a note that morning.
Marty was my older sister. She was always there, had always been there. I know we fought, but not nearly as often as I fought with my younger brothers. Occasionally we were co-conspirators: one time we were both home and supposed to be sick, but instead we just played around all day. In a panic because our mom was supposed to be home soon, I remember she was frantically searching the medicine cabinet to find any kind of sedative so we could be asleep or at least appear to be sleepy. Another time we were both “sick” at the same time, our medicine was Coca Cola syrup poured over crushed ice. I can't imagine now what that was treatment for, but it was the best medicine ever!
Two years difference in age and a difference in gender were pretty large barriers, especially in as individualistic a family as ours was, so I wouldn't say we were close confidants. I do know I missed out on a lot of the Beatles' early albums because Marty was a huge fan, and so therefore I couldn't like them. But then somebody (Marty? I can't remember) gave me a copy of Sgt. Pepper's for my 15th birthday, and it was all over from there. Of course, by the time of Abbey Road even our dad was a fan.
But still, despite our differences—differences our adult lives probably magnified rather than diminished—there was always a bond between us, a feeling that though we might come to different conclusions about a lot of things, maybe even most things, we had, after all, started in the same place. A feeling of understanding, of knowing where we came from. In a world where ultimately all of us come and go alone, that is a connection to be valued.
Marty was one of the funniest and smartest people I've ever known. I can't quite grasp that she's no longer in this world. It's going to take a long time for me to wrap my head around that, and I'm guessing that is true for many of us here. Perhaps that was her final lesson to us: you'd better live each moment to the fullest, because death is a surprise. The exact nature of that surprise is something I don't suppose any of us will know until we get there ourselves. All I know is I miss my sister, and I can't imagine a time when I won't.
]]>FacilityRepairman.com—a quick one-page site which is just what it says it is. Allen Foley had done the design in Photoshop and needed it converted to a live website.
KansasCityShooters.com—another quick site. Larry Brewer has been doing video work in Kansas City for years—check the logo crawl at the bottom for a small sampling of his extremely impressive client list. A couple of potential clients needed him to have a web presence for one reason or another; hence this site. He uses the slideshow from slide.com because he wants to be able to change photos himself whenever he feels like it. For similar reasons, he did the logo crawl in the Vegas video editor and gave me a Quicktime movie to post—credit where credit is due. FWIW, I would have done it in Flash, which would have been a much smaller bandwidth, but again he wants to be able to change it any time he wants, and I respect that.
A much larger project was the redesign of Kinisue’s Tropical Boutique. We had originally put the site together last fall, but as Cindy (Kinisue) learned more about her business, selling tropical jewelry through boutiques and at shows, she wanted to make some changes. Also, the site uses the free open-source Zen Cart shopping cart software. Zen Cart is designed to run the whole site, rather than an add-on to a static HTML site, so that was a major consideration in the redesign. Cindy considered adding a slideshow from slide.com as well, but didn't like the associated advertising. Besides, I already had the Flash slideshow set up, and it’s a matter of only a few minutes from the time I receive a new photo till a revision can be posted.
I suppose it doesn’t hurt to remind people of the web design work I do—my work comes 100% from referrals—but really I’m posting this to help search engine rankings on these sites. Every link helps! And besides, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the services of these clients, so I’m happy to do a little advertising for them.
]]>I figured out what happened: sometimes Mikey likes to try to get my attention by jumping on the desk between my keyboard and the laptop. He must have sat on the Enter key on the keypad while GoLive was in Layout mode, so each repeat was counted as a new paragraph. I remember I came back to the computer and shooed him away. I had done whatever I needed to do to the page and uploaded it without looking. The browser will only display the first of a series of blank paragraph tags, which in this case was a very good thing, because it had probably been online close to a week.
Even cats think they can do web design these days….
]]>The Conversion widget is excellent, converting area, currency, energy, temperature, time, length, weight, speed, pressure, power, and volume. Say you read a statistic about land use in Africa (it could happen!) and the value given is 45,000 hectares. Choose hectares in one popup menu and acres in the other, and it calculates as you type, showing 111,197.42 acres. Or 173.74597 square miles. Of course you can select the value and copy and paste it. Did you know that 100 Kilowatts is equivalent to 5,686.9029 BTUs per minute? Do you care? Me neither, at least not at the moment. Still, you get the point.
The widget I use most often, though, is the Dictionary/Thesaurus, especially since I’ve been a New Yorker subscriber. When you run into an unfamiliar word, just double-click it to select, command-c to copy it, F12 to open Dashboard and command-v to paste. You’ll get the Oxford Dictionary entry on the word, including its derivation and origin—not only interesting, but it makes it easier to remember, and to use properly (oh, I am such a geek). Or you can flip over to the thesaurus side and get synonyms, antonyms, etc. Big fun!
But the reason I’m writing today is that it turns out you don’t even have to use the widget to use Dictionary/Thesaurus. Move the mouse cursor over a word, hold down control-command-d, and you get the Oxford Dictionary definition. Continue to hold those keys down and click the mouse to scroll down if it’s a long entry, or click the popup menu to switch to the Oxford Thesaurus entry for the word. Totally cool!
This works in all Apple applications, such as Safari and Mail. In, say, Microsoft Word, my guess is probably not. But it’s easy enough to try. The tech email I got this tip from notes that in Mail, if you accidentally hold down the shift key instead of control, you will send your email draft immediately. But that’s only if you’re writing an email at the moment, and probably you’re not going to be using a word you don’t know anyway. There is that caveat, though.
Go ahead. Command-control-d on “caveat.” You know you want to.
]]>Number 3 is inspiring. I want to make a sign out of it and put it on the wall. I’m in no danger of being considered a genius, but I think it’s good advice in any kind of creative endeavor.
]]>So, let’s just imagine for a moment: what if she and we were, say, Saudi or Yemeni, instead of American? And she was in, say, Guantanamo instead of Teheran? How much different would we feel?
Of course what the Iranians are doing is wrong. And I am certainly not saying the prisoners in Gitmo are innocent (though under American law, aren’t they presumed to be until proven otherwise?). I’m just asking, how much different would we feel?
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