Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- 01Sept2012

It was the Saturday night of Labor Day weekend, so I didn't know whether to expect lots of people, or none -- but I guess it turned out to be kinda lots. The weather was great -- not hot at the beginning, but not cold at the end either. And a lot of people didn't seem to be in such a hurry, so they stopped to hear some songs.

I had lots of little kids, but none of them seemed to want to dance much -- just hang out and listen, which is OK, too.

Then some teenagers stopped by, and the boy dragged one of the girls out and they started dancing. Amazing, full "routine" dancing like you see on the TV dance shows. Instantly there was a huge crowd circled around them, applauding when they stopped. The kid came up and asked me if I had any songs with some kind of beat, but I didn't know what he meant. I offered my new "calypso" song, "Kiss the Girl", and they danced some more, though I couldn't tell if it was the same routine or a different one. I should have asked them if they went to OCHSA.

The cute part was that, when they quit and left, all the little kids in the crowd came out and started trying to dance like that -- holding hands and pulling each other around.

Later on, I had two or three little kids that had been hanging out for a while, and were dancing a little, and I thought I might get them more involved if I gave them some fingerlights. As soon as I did, more kids appeared from nowhere, then more, and more. I probably gave out 20 lights in 3 minutes, and only stopped because I ran out! But it was worth it, 'cuz all their respective parents also came over, and I suddenly had a huge crowd to play for. I ran through the dance songs, and almost every Kids' Song I know, with a huge crowd of kids playing with their lights out in front of me. Big fun.

My old high school friend Valerie was in town and came by to see me. I gave her my camera to take some pictures, but I was even more glad that she was there to see some of these crazy magic moments.

My sister told me that my "just feed the jar" policy (and sign) for selling CDs would cause her to just not buy one, since she wouldn't want to pay too much, nor too little. With that in mind, as an experiment, I changed the sign to say "just put five bucks in the jar". It seems to have worked, 'cuz the seven "Favorites" CDs sold out right away. And overall, I sold 14 CDs out of the 20 I brought -- presumably at five bucks each, which must have contributed to the $184 total, which beats the old record by 1 dollar. (Of course, technically, I should probably subtract $14 for the CD materials cost, and 5 bucks worth of fingerlights.)

I guess I'll keep the new sign...