Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- Friday, 25Oct2013

Fridays are getting slower and slower at Spectrum. It really felt like the 10:00 hour the whole time. But it was kind of nice to have less of a rush past me -- people were able to go slower and were more likely to stop.

I brought out only the three toy tambourines and four of the new little shaker eggs, and kept all the glow balls and stars on the table so they wouldn't look like toys. This worked *way* better -- nothing broken and I didn't need to divert so much attention to keeping track of everything. And that made enough noisemakers that no little kids were disappointed when the dance parties started up.

I noticed a bit of irony -- when I have a toddler come by, I play "Twinkle Twinkle", and I look directly at the kid so that anyone who's wondering what the heck I'm doing can figure it out by following my gaze. And lots of adults notice the anomalous song and stop to watch the baby. And they smile and smile at how cute this all is, and at the end of the song, such as it is, I get a huge round of applause -- bigger than my "real" songs. But I suppose I shouldn't be disappointed at being unable to compete with the cuteness of babies -- who can?

Late in the night, a Persian couple came by with their little 4 or 5 year old daughter. (What is with Persian families and their disregard for bedtimes?!?) I've seen her before -- she's totally cute, and totally crazy. She grins at me, and tells me stuff that I can't hear and can't decipher, and dances, and hops around, and it's amazingly cute. She grabbed one of the tambourines, and played with it for a while but then noticed that I have one on my foot (the special one that has an elastic strap on it). So she started trying to put the toy one on *her* foot, and ended up flinging it up into the air when she'd kick. Which, of course, was big fun, so she did it again and again...

I'm usually so busy playing that I never even stop to wonder what time it is, but it was so slow that I checked and it was only 8:15. I thought, "Well, this'll be a first -- me going home at the actual 10:00 stop time." But I guess I started having fun after that, and time fly-ed, and when the maintenance guy came for the lights, I checked again and it was 11:00. I just can't help myself...

Click 'Play' to hear the "podcast version" (it's really just me ramblin' on about this gig for 6 minutes.)