Halloween Campout Pumpkin Display

	We had an Indian Princess campout this weekend, right in front of Halloween, so we had an inter-tribal pumpkin carving competition. It wasn't about individual pumpkins, it was the tribal theme that mattered.
	I came up with this "Angry Peasants Storming Frankenstein's Castle" idea (concept art above, reality here).
	Acacia and I did the dismayed-looking Frankenstein, and all the other kids just had to portray "angry" (with a little design help from me).
	I brought along some lamp oil and we made little torches ('cuz what's an angry mob without torches?). That really made it look cool at night when the judges came by. And we managed not to burn the forest down.

Acacia's Pumpkin 2005

Acacia got a "free" pumpkin at the Indian Princess trip to the pumpkin patch, almost two weeks ago, and since we're going camping tomorrow, last night was our last chance to carve it. I asked her what she was thinking of this year, and her idea was "Ballerina!" Hmmm. Kinda hard to do that one, any other ideas? "Unicorn!"

So I Googled up some unicorn silhouettes, and we knocked this one out. It came out pretty good, even though the pumpkin was really strange on the inside -- way stringier than I've ever seen.

Now I gotta do/supervise 14 more tomorrow at the campout, but that's another post.

Halloween Costume Parade!

Today was Acacia's school's annual Halloween Costume Parade. The whole school, Kindergarten through 5th, parades around the playground in their costumes, while the parents' cameras snap away. It's better than Halloween itself, 'cuz you get to see a couple hundred cute costumed kids, instead of the 15 or so we get at the front door every year.

The girls were mostly the same as usual: fairies, angels, princesses (Acacia and her best-friend Cezanne were gypsies (though, truth be told, she didn't look much different than every other day)). But the boys have a new possibility this year: Napoleon Dynamite, and there were several of those. Lots of Batman, too, with Spiderman largely dropping off the charts -- presumably because there wasn't a new movie this year. But the surprise winner, I think, was Darth Vader -- lots and lots of Darths. I guess the kids were more impressed with Episode III than us grown-ups were.

KC - RSM 22Oct2005

OK, well, that didn't go very well at all. Several reasons, I guess -- a completely unresponsive audience for one. Polite, possibly even authentic, clapping, but no real *listening* going on, most of the night. I tried to just ignore that and play anyway, but my concentration was further compromised by a group of 8 or 9 boys, seemingly unattended by any parents, running in and out of the store most of the night, hassling me, talking loudly right in front, etc. They were pretty awful, and it was a real challenge to remain civil. Good practice, though, I guess.

And, possibly the main reason: I had set up a notebook to record the whole thing. I used the store's amplifier, because it has line-level "Tape Out" jacks, which I ran to the notebook. Unfortunately, I set the levels too high, so most of the recording is clipped in the loud sections. Not much of a loss, though, since I didn't perform very well anyway. Whenever there's a recorder running, it's all I can think about, and I end up performing really badly, 'cuz I'm trying too hard not to make any mistakes. It's like *trying* to go to sleep -- the harder you try, the less likely it is to happen.

I guess (hope?) that the solution to that is the same as the solution to general stage-fright -- just do it, again and again, until the novelty wears off.

Anyway, it wasn't "bad", exactly, but it was certainly disappointing -- especially after how well it went two weeks ago at South Coast Plaza. I was hoping to get a little of that "on tape", but, no magic.

We have an Indian Princess campout next weekend, but I'll be back at RSM again in two weeks for another try. I hope it goes better -- I'm not sure my performer's ego can take that much bruising again.

Guitar Surgery

I spent a couple of hours yesterday re-engineering my guitar. My original intent was to build a new saddle piece, thicker than the current one, and moved "south" to lengthen the bass strings to fix the intonation. Of course, moving the saddle means cutting the bridge piece, which is irreversible, so that's a little scary.

But, I've also been annoyed lately by the lack of response in the lowest string. This is caused, probably, by the fact that I've got it set much higher than the other strings at the saddle end, so it doesn't rattle which means that its sound has more saddle material to get through to reach the pickup. So I cut it down some more, as much as I dared, and started thinking about the neck itself, which, upon inspection, was starting to curve upwards. The resultant high action is the theoretical source of the intonation problem, too, so I tweaked the tension rod in the neck to flatten it out.

That looked really good, but made most of the strings rattle like crazy, 'cuz I'd cut the nut to match the bent neck. So, I ended up buying and fitting a new nut and not working on the saddle/bridge at all. I think it helped, but didn't cure, the intonation problem, but it's also easier to play, I think, so that'll be nice on those long gigs. The intonation is only a little bit out now, so I think I'll live with it for a while, and see how it goes in real life.

Keith and Geneva video

I borrowed the Mini DV tape that my dad shot at the "Keith with Geneva" show at RSM on July 23rd, so I finally broke down and installed the Firewire card that I bought 6 months ago, and it worked, first try. Why does it surprise me when stuff works these days?

Anyway, I snagged the whole 54 minutes (11 gig), sent it back out again to a blank tape for me to keep, and also re-output it as WMV (which took 75 minutes of slogging). I also snagged a single song ("They Don't Know"), with Geneva singing, which clocks in at a manageable 8 meg, to show it can be done. Not sure what to do with it -- maybe I'll post it on the K&W songlist page with the MP3s.

The software ("Movie Maker 2", comes with XP) can also snag respectable still shots at 640x480 right off the movie. They look pretty good as-is, and processed down to blog size, they're quite usable. And I get to single-frame through the whole movie to find just the right shot -- still camera shots tend to catch the singer in an "F" or some other funny-mouth pose.

Smells Like Christmas!

This morning was the first morning that was cold enough that I needed to turn on the car heater as I was taking Acacia to school. As it finally heated up, she said "Smells like Christmas in the house". At first I thought she was smelling some pine scent that I hadn't noticed, but then I realized that she was associating the smell of artificially heated air with Christmas, since the Christmas season is when we start using the furnace in the house.

Ah! The cheery scent of burning duct-dust!

K&W - RSM and SCP 07-08Oct2005

Strange weekend. RSM, usually my favorite place to play, broke our streak of "pretty good" gigs, and SCP, usually one of the worst places to play, was one of the best gigs I can remember.

The RSM gig wasn't all that bad, really. It was unusually empty, but we had some nice people listening. Geneva did fine for her songs, as usual. But I felt completely "off", mainly 'cuz the sound was inexplicably terrible. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it, so I couldn't fix it, but it was muddled and confusing and I couldn't tell what I was doing, so I couldn't perform well. We struggled on, of course, but it never did feel right.

Conversely, at SCP on Saturday, the sound was crystal clear. I could hear myself (guitar *and* voice) perfectly -- from full voice to whisper, strumming or barely picking. It's baffling, 'cuz this was with essentially the exact same setup, speakers and amp-wise, and I didn't touch the amp's knobs between Friday and Saturday. Apparently, it was "the room", either the shape, or the ambient noise, or something.

Also, my parents' old friends, Maryjane and Bill Wiley came by, so I had someone to play to, which always does wonders for my performance. (Jessica Ching came by too, later, though she looked bored the whole time.) It definitely becomes a feedback loop for me -- the clear sound and sympathetically focused attention helps me sing better, and hearing one song go really well makes me give it up even more for the next song, and on and on, and up and up.

My voice is back in shape, finally, after that bronchitis or whatever, and/or the clarity of sound made me *think* my throat is back in shape, which encouraged me to do little things that I don't usually expect to get away with, or can't usually hear whether or not I did/can. It was an amazing feeling -- to feel like I could do anything, and it all worked. Not to keep ranting about this, but it also made me connect to the songs more myself -- I was starting to choke up during both "Jenny Dreamed of Trains", and "Puff". It's hard to sing with a lump in your throat.

(I know, I know -- what a old softie I've become. Truth is, it took me a long time to *stop* choking up on those two (and "Pooh Corner" -- that's why I don't even *think* of adding that new third verse). I usually only get through them by deliberately *not* thinking about what I'm saying.)

Another strangeness -- it seems to have been Repeat Night. We kept getting new people come in and requesting songs that we'd already done. Since most of the crowd that was around the first time would have been gone by then, I went ahead and did 'em. I hope Bill and Maryjane didn't mind too much -- they were there most of the night. By my recollection, we did 49 songs, but 7 of those were repeats.

Anyway, small crowd, even smaller *listening* crowd, low tips -- but still the best night for a long time. Makes it all worthwhile. Sure wish I'd'a had a recorder running.

House of Blues Field Trip

Yesterday I took some time off of work to be a chaperone for Geneva's school's field trip to the House of Blues. They took all the instrumental music classes, so there were 220 kids, 4 busses full. (These are all pretty good kids, so the chaperoning part was pretty easy duty, though they got pretty loud and rowdy on the bus. My stash of Cat's Cradle strings came in handy to entertain quite a few of 'em on the bus.)

The House of Blues has a "Schoolhouse Band" that puts on a great, hour-long "educational show", basically on the topic of why they're called "House of Blues" when most of the shows they put on are Rock and Roll. It was really well done, interactive so the kids were involved, and in a great format. The two singers traded off doing narration about the evolution of the blues from West African rhythms up to Hip Hop, with the band playing examples along the way. Sometimes it was a phrase or two, sometimes most of a song. They always kept the kids connected by getting them to sing, shout, or dance along, and the narration never got too long before another song came up.

They covered African chants, slave tunes, spirituals, southern rural blues, Robert Johnson, W.C. Handy, Chicago blues, Jazz, Gospel, Rock, R&B, Muddy Waters, Aretha, Eric, Jimi, Sly, James Brown, Funk, Rap, Hip Hop, up to, I guess, Jet -- and a lot more that I've forgotten already. They were all really good, but the guitar player was amazing. He had to cover every style of guitar, all the way back in time, on a Strat and a wooden National for bottleneck. His "Purple Haze" was spot on. I was impressed. The kids had a great time, but it was probably more interesting to me than it was to them -- kids never care about their Heritage...

Birthday Party at Mom's!

We had a birthday party for my sister and I at my mom's house yesterday. My dad dragged out the old 8mm projector and we watched movies from Christmas 1955, when I was 14 months old. I'm wearing one of those one-piece footie-jammies, and I look *exactly* like "Henry" in the old comics.

We also watched a later Christmas, and what was alarming to our post-millennium eyes was the *guns*. My brother and I got guns, guns, and more guns for both Christmases. You don't see too many 14-month-olds kids with a pair of six-shooters strapped around the waist of their jammies anymore. Western-style revolvers in holsters, "Rifleman" style rifles, dart rifles with a target... All guns, all the time!

And here I am, not a serial killer at all. How'd that happen?

K&W - MV 01Oct2005

Another good night at Mission Viejo. Warren got there before I did and talked to Cidne, the sweetheart of a manager there, and she told him that she's got my "Waltzing With Bears" CD playing non-stop in her car. And, of course, that we'd have to play it for her, which, of course, we did.

We started early (7:30), 'cuz Warren wanted to leave partway through to go see a favorite band of his that doesn't play very often. I went ahead and kept playing until 10:45. Longest gig ever, I think. We/I played 51 songs (that I remember) in that time, sold 4 CDs, and brought in $38. Not sure why the tips lately are so much better than they've ever been. Mysterious.

I did try something new -- "introducing" each song before we played it. This, hopefully, gave Warren a little "heads-up" which he normally gets precious little of, and filled the time while we were tuning or I was flipping through the book looking for the song. Maybe it helped, but I felt kind of stupid introducing songs like "Something" and "Fire and Rain" -- as if anyone wouldn't recognize 'em...