Busking in Japan

I'm thinking about taking my guitar to Japan and playing in the subway stations. I've seen plenty of Japanese kids doing it, generally completely ignored, and I guess I'd just like to see if walking-by folks would like me. I'd be way too scared to do it in, say, New York, but Japan is so non-threatening that I could fire it up without fear of danger -- only fear of "rejection". Even that is infinitesimally low -- Japanese people are too polite to overtly "reject" with sneers, boos, tomatoes, or suchlike. If they don't want to listen, they'll just be "busy" (which, nearly by definition, people in a train station are, anyway), and scoot by. They don't have to feel bad, and I don't have to feel bad. But if I get a few people to stop and listen and throw a few yen into the guitar case, I'll have a story to tell my grandkids.

Geneva's being there is a concern, though. But, again, it's so safe there that I don't think there'll be a problem if she comes along. The train stations are clean, safe, well lit -- more like one of our malls, really. Shiny happy people scurrying here and there. (And great acoustics because of all the tile...) Geneva certainly can come along if she wants to -- more danger of her being bored than anything else. Or, maybe I can leave her in the hotel room watching strange, unintelligible TV shows. But, lately, she's wanted to learn a few songs with me (!) -- maybe we'll work up a few before we go and she can give it a try. If a 11-year-old blonde American girl singing Disney tunes doesn't make an impression in the Ikebukuro train station, I don't know what will.

Once Upon a Time...

... there was a little girl who had too many unicorns.

Campout in Julian

The campout was pretty good. There were only three of us Pawnee, but it was Acacia's two best friends, and, coincidentally, two of mine, so it was a good combination. It was waaay out by Julian, and 4000 feet up the mountain there, so it was bitingly cold, but we got through it.

They asked me (*asked* me!) to play two songs at the Nation campfire, so I did "The Three Mile Hike" (Princess words superimposed on, of course, the Gilligan's Island theme), and closed the show with my "Goodnight Irene (Princess version)". I had a whole two minutes' notice, so I fumbled quite a lot on "Hike", because I have to slide the capo in real time to affect the 4 half-step key changes, which is pretty tricky even when I've practiced the move, and my hands aren't frozen. With no practice, frozen hands, and campfire smoke blowing into me with an inopportune wind shift, it was quite a trick.

Afterwards, we have our own tribal campfire, but I spent the remainder of the evening setting up the telescope to peek at Jupiter, so I didn't play much.

But at the end of the Big campfire, they asked me to whip up "God Bless America" (!) for the morning show. Not exactly your usual guitar-oriented folk song... I spent the early morning working that up, and got a passable rendition ready in time. They sure have (unfounded) faith in my abilities. I guess my problem is that I haven't let 'em down yet, so each subsequent request is more outrageous.

On the way home Sunday, we stopped for the gold mine tour, which was pretty amazing. Three-feet wide by five-feet high tunnels right into the mountain, probably a thousand yards worth, on the level we took. We walked around in there (with a guide) for almost an hour.

Miyazaki's "Spirited Away"

Terrific. Problem was, we thought we were going to the dubbed-to-English version, supervised by John Lassiter (of "Toy Story", "Monster's Inc.", etc.), but when we got to the theater, it was the Japanese language version with subtitles. That's kinda OK with me, but the kids were a little over their heads, bandwidth-wise. Especially since, as the reviewer below notes, it's a pretty complex story for a kid's movie.

The good news is that they're releasing it on DVD this coming Tuesday (dubbed version, of course). At the same time, they're releasing "Kiki" and "Laputa". Gonna be an expensive Tuesday for me, and not only because it's tax day.

It won the "Best Animated Film" Academy Award last month -- beating Disney's "Lilo and Stitch" and "Treasure Planet", and Fox's computer-generated comedy "Ice Age". I think I read that the other three had earned over $100 million each, while the US release of "Spirited Away" had only made $5.5 mil. I can't tell if the US releases of Miyazaki movies don't make money because they're marketed badly (on small budgets), or if they're marketed badly because they don't make money.

Working up some songs

I'm trying to work up "Puttin' On the Ritz". It was apparently written in 1930. I haven't really decided which verses and bridges to use -- the original words were about going down to Harlem and watching the servants spend their pay. There were a bunch of verses added subsequently, to replace the offensive ones, so there's no "real" version anymore. The Pasadena Roof Orchestra version I have uses some of each, so I may follow their lead.

I need a lot of work on the guitar part, especially the bridge. There's a lot of bass line, going pretty quickly. Of course, possibly a bigger problem is trying to actually pull it out in public -- the whole song seems too peculiar...

I was also surprised to like "Let It Be" so much. It's always seemed a little "much", but it plays so well on guitar, and I like singing it (now that I've transposed to a rational vocal range). Maybe it feels better because of the current political climate...

I worked on "Someone to Watch Over Me" some more last night. I'm liking it more and more as my arrangement begins to sound righter to me. It was, and is, clearly, a chick song, but lots of guys sing it anyway, so I guess it's OK. I suppose if Sting can do it, I can. (He says, "There's a little lamb that's lost in the woods", instead of "I'm a little...". I may steal that idea.) I'm trying to get the guitar part smoother -- getting the hang of that "four inside strings" diminished chord. In this case, it's a Cdim, x3424x. It helps me to think of it as a two-finger E7 shape (the 030200 part) *and* an A7 shape (the 004040 part), played at the same time.

The "real" song has one of those traditional, completely different, intro parts, which I don't have any chords to, and most folks don't know that part anyway. The remaining song is kind of short, so there's definitely an instrumental verse in there for Warren. I think it'll go like "Stardust", with an instrumental verse, then a repeat of the final section(s).

Yet more new songs

I guess I'm essentially not happy with the quality of many of the songs that I end up doing just to fill the time -- even when it was only an hour and a half. I'm probably my strictest critic, but I keep hoping to stumble on songs that really "work", to replace the second-stringers. Recent additions like "Let It Be" and (I like to think) "Crying" fall into the first category -- all too many others fall in the second.

Anyway, I think I've settled on some working chords for "Someone to Watch Over Me", after some work on Sunday. It's a classic, of course, and though I'm not sure my singing will make it a "keeper", it was worth a try. (Not to mention the pure challenge of getting it working.)

And we were at Daleen's mom's house last night, and she had a "Songs of Irving Berlin" book on the piano, from which I plucked "Putting On the Ritz". Surprisingly, the chords work quite well on guitar (unlike, for instance, "End of the Innocence", as discovered on Saturday). Again, I don't know what the vocal will sound like yet, but there's a small chance it'll work out. (It probably falls under the category of "Songs to Stump the Lead Player", but it might be fun.)

I guess I've discovered that some songs that sound OK in the bedroom, fall flat at Tully's -- and vice versa. So I'm stuck with working them up anyway, and trying them out live.

P.S. In reading various sites on Berlin, one claimed he only played didn't read or write music, never learned to play properly, and only played black keys on the piano (!). Using a pitch shifting piano (apparently readily available at the time), he *sounded* in different keys. Another said that he could only play in F#major (which may or may not correspond to "black keys only" -- I guess it's F#major without 4s and 7s). Can that really be true? If so it'd be a amazing collection of pentatonic melodies... I guess I should sit down at the piano and pick out "Ritz", starting on F#.

Tully's 15Feb2003

Tully's was pretty good this week. My cold is getting worse, but I seem to be able to kinda sing through it -- I don't have a sore throat, just a cruddy one. I managed to hold off the coughing until between songs. A quartet of nice Chinese people came in about 9, having an anniversary party. They wanted to hear some Carpenters, which I begged off of, on account of being chromosomally impaired for such songs. I happen, though, to have "Won't Last a Day Without You" in the book, 'cuz this little girl at work likes to come sing it when I bring my guitar in for lunchtime practice. So the anniversary couple's friend came up and sang it while I played -- she wasn't bad. And they tipped us $20 at the end. We had to play all love songs for the rest of the night, which, as it turns out, not so many in the book qualify for, but it was fun.

Yesterday I worked up a song at my mom's insistence -- it's called "Frog Kissin'", and the recording I have is Chet Atkins. The song may or may not have been written by him, or Ray Stevens. Anyway, it's a novelty song about seeing the best in people, worked around the fairy tale notion in the title. Cute, but I can't imagine doing it for anyone except my mom.

Longer hours at Tully's!

February 10, 2003 9:28 AM

Wow. We did 33 songs last night. I was afraid my ragged voice would give out, but I actually felt stronger as the night went on, though I did hear myself missing notes here and there. It was odd -- usually I just sing, and think about the song, and the words, and the phrasing, and the chords -- and the singing itself just takes care of itself. It's not like you have to think about how to talk -- you just do it. But with the sore throat, I have to actually *try* to hit the notes -- it's like my voice is slightly out of control and I have to concentrate on it to keep it in line.

Hopefully, it'll clear up soon -- though today it's worse than last night, so I'm not in the upswing yet...

Anyway, there weren't many songs on the list that we *didn't* do last night -- mostly the "second stringers". I guess I'd better go on a more active hunt for more material.

I'm pretty stoked that we get to play 'til 10. It'll be a challenge to have that much really good material, and to be able to play that long, and sing that long, but it reinvigorates that whole thing.

Warren seems to think that I sounded "fine". Seemed to me like I heard me miss plenty of notes -- sharp here, flat there. "Wicked Game" is certainly the most challenging -- that descending line off the falsetto flip is the worst. I don't know how he does it so smooth -- I always feel like my flip from falsetto "don't" to regular-voice "want" is horrible. I end up landing on "want" so hard it sounds like a yelp. And my falsetto sounds so much different than full-voice that it embarrasses me. Maybe it's not so bad from the outside? In my head, it's gnarly. If I didn't like that song so much, I'd certainly skip it.

I lately heard "I Will" on the Musak somewhere, in a version that sounded a lot like James Taylor. I've never seen it on an album, but a deep check of the 'net showed it on something (bootleg?) called "Rarebits", so he may do it in concert, though how it would get it on a Musak tape remains a mystery. Anyway, it gave me the idea to go ahead and transpose it to a sing-able key (duh! Why don't I think of that *without* the cattle prod?), which I did yesterday. It's originally in F (!), but moved down to D, it's (as far as I can tell with my trashed voice) in a sing-able space, and easy to play, not to mention very James-like in chords.

In fact, once moved to D, the first phrase is identical to the first and last lines of "The Way You Look Tonight", so I'm thinking of melding (medly-ing) the two. It'll, at least, save me having to decide on a "next tune" once per night.

I'll have to see if some other Beatles songs can be beaten into submission by the same treatment. I might look at "Mother Nature's Son", as requested by my brother a couple of weeks ago -- seems like a distinctive (and non transposable) guitar part, though.

Anyway, I played through some of the "Working On 'Em" songs to see if I can move 'em into the "Good Enough" section. "Play Me" (Neil Diamond) seems a likely candidate, and "Four Strong Winds", I guess. Also, we probably ought to dust off some of the ones that we were playing, but that I've come to avoid because I didn't think I did 'em well enough -- "Free Man", "Crazy Little Thing", "Still Crazy", and such like. Even "That Thing You Do" maybe...

My first Party Gig

I played an office Christmas party at my in-laws'. It went OK, but nothing to write home about. Probably 40 people in the house, only 6 or 8 came over to listen to me -- the rest were partying, of all the nerve. But the folks that listened in seemed to enjoy it -- they didn't hasten to join the others, at any rate. It was unnerving, to try to play while most folks were talking and laughing, loudly -- as always, I'm afraid to interfere. I probably played for an hour and a half, though. Did most of my adult-ish (bars Frosty and Rudolph)Christmas songs, and some James, of course. A lady asked for "Shenandoah", but gladly accepted "Water is Wide" in its place -- that was nice. All in all, I'd rather play Tully's, though. It was better than a "cold" night at Tully's, but worse than most nights there. The upside was that folks felt comfortable just talking to me, or asking for stuff. The downside was that I just seemed out of place. Good place to do the "party test", though, I guess. Running though them, though, I realized that "I'll Be Home for Christmas" was way too high, so I transposed it to A (from C). Plays OK there, and sings much better. Too maudlin to actually perform, though, so I never got to it. I thought I'd hold it off to later, but suddenly it was time for the gift exchange, and I was done. I also took a look at "Blue Christmas", just as a joke, but it's actually kinda cool. I'm gonna play with it some more, and see if I can do anything with it that doesn't ridicule Elvis (or me). And I transposed "Please Come Home for Christmas" down to D (from A). Seems like a long way, but it's *still* kinda high for my voice -- those darn Eagles! Reminds me of "Hotel California" -- waaay too high. Anyway, it works OK in D, mostly playable -- but I gotta get my G#dim (4x343x) worked up better, it happens too often in this Christmas music.

I hate Guitar Center

I hate Guitar Center -- I like the cheap prices, but I can't stand being "helped" by an idiot, or, worse, a rock-n-roll know-it-all. It's quite unpleasant being pressure-sold something I don't want, or being unable to buy what I do want.

My Second Patent

It's a shoulder strap that includes the AC adapter for your notebook. Presumably, your notebook could have strap hooks on it, eliminating the need for a case, or, at least, the case would be a lot slimmer with only the notebook (and your papers) in it.

The cleverness is that the wires are triple-folded inside the strap during carrying, and extend out when in use. You pull the strap and it sucks the cable up inside the strap.

Seemed like a good idea at the time...

Open Mic at the Gypsy Den, second time

October 22, 2002

We played another Open Mic night at the Gypsy Den in Santa Ana -- our second attempt.

Shakti was pretty OK, until she started that third "headache maker" song -- although I do have to object to folks that sing so quietly/mumbled/slurred that you can't possibly pick up any lyrics. Why write lyrics, then?

Nima was OK, too -- he does have some guitar chops going on. I get the impression that it was two songs strung together -- the repetition in the second half didn't match the repetition in the first half. Still, it was OK, and had some melodic merit, and interesting guitar parts.

But... Somebody needs to tell these amateur songwriters when to quit. Less is more. Say what you need to say and close it up. All night, it seemed that song length was in direct proportion to awfulness.

Anyway, I guess we did all right. "Water Is Wide" got (me) all messed up. I got completely lost in the bit after the guitar solo. I was making up chords, trying to get back in sync -- looked at the paper, at the wrong place, of course, and trusted it... I musta been completely wrong for two or three lines at least. Somehow I managed to just keep the vocal going, though, and found the guitar part eventually. I gotta do the whole song from memory (which I can do with no pressure, but I'm not sure how I'll react with it), or keep my eyes on the page. (It's probably partially the fault of my "left margin chords" format, too. If I get lost, finding my place is complicated by the non-coincidence of words and chords.) If I stick on the paper the whole time, I have no problems, but it's not much of a performance.

"Tennessee Waltz" went OK, though. I think the room was a little stunned to hear such an old standard. Certainly in stark contrast to the home made stuff everyone else is dragging out. Nice to have some kind of "combo" quality, though -- everyone else is strictly solo (except Shakti's inaudible bass player, I guess). I think folks liked us well enough -- they should have been hugely grateful for the insertion of some actual songs, with actual chords and actual words -- but you couldn't tell that they were, or not.

I gotta say that the feedback is more readable at Tully's than at the Den. At the Den, you get polite applause, good or bad. Not really helpful. At least at Tully's, people are listening, or they're not, and if they are, you can see their faces (and count their money). And they say "thank you" on their way out.

Not to mention the dreadful sound at the Den, and the fact that you're stuck with the worst part of the performance, i.e., the first two songs, when you're still all nervous and not-warmed-up yet. (Arguably, that's good practice, doing "the worst part" over and over again until it doesn't affect you anymore, but still...)

Anyway, it (the playing) is not all that unpleasant, but it doesn't seem to have much value, either, since there's no real feedback. I can't think of what I'd expect them to do, but "nothing" isn't quite it. It does make me appreciate the Tully's gig all the more, though.

Amps for campouts

I was just thinking about amps on Sunday, due to the use of one at Surf Camp. They told us that "they" would take care of the campfire, so I decided not to haul the big amp out there, but then I thought I'd better have something, just in case, so I brought the little battery powered Peavey that my dad bought me (which I used at the Santa Clause house last Christmas). It worked surprisingly well, I just plugged in my wired mic, even with the 1/4" jack, and it was plenty loud for "announcement" use. And I jacked the guitar in for the perennial favorite, "I'm an Indian Princess" (and, by request, "Cum By Ya" (which, by the way, sounds great if you play it in G, with 320033 for G, x32033 for the C, and a standard D).

They did have a kind of small amphitheater, with a plywood stage and backdrop, so the sound wasn't as lost as it usually is, and the group was smaller than usual (since it was one of the Expensive Events), so the little amp got a bit of a break, but I was glad to have it. Still, I got to thinking how ideal the big Carvin Stagemate amp is, for various purposes, and how lucky I am to have access to it. Fortunately, Acacia still has three years of Princesses to go, so I won't have to worry about replacing it for a while. When I do, though, I can't think of any other device I've seen that would do as good a job, so I may end up with one just like it. It's just so darn handy not to have to find power, and it's never yet run out of juice on me -- I have no idea how long it can actually go.

Gypsy Den debrief

Reasonably fun. We only did two songs, and I'm still not sure why we didn't just pick a third song and do it, once we found out that three was the acceptable number. In retrospect, we coulda done "Water Is Wide", or "Crying", or whatever.

It's kinda OK that most everyone else was pure Amateur Hour. The worse the rest of the acts are, the better we look, right? I wasn't really there to listen -- I was there to play.

'Course, it's nice to see the "competition". I suppose the gauge is whether you'd stay in the same room with any of them, had you encountered them in a back room at a party. For me, I guess the answer for all the acts I saw was "No", although the a cappella guy was intriguing. His songs were all correctly structured to have verses, choruses, and rational chord progressions. Dude, find a guitar player! I could have worked up the chord sheets for his songs in 15 minutes...

And that black lady with the bass player. Ouch. She was personally appealing, but when she tuned her G string down to (almost) D, and her high E down to D -- and then pulled out the tuning machine to fine tune the high string, and proceed to completely neglect tuning the G (now D). Ouch. It didn't help that Tim chose that moment to disappear, just as she was feeding back something awful. Literally painful.

I still feel embarrassed that I don't write my own songs, but last night confirms my belief that good "used" songs beat bad originals any day.

My guitar has a pretty bad tuning problem when I change (or add) a capo. I guess I, as always, am self-conscious about wasting the audience's time with "my problem" of an out of tune guitar. Probably I've sat through guys that spend more time tuning than playing, and you start to wonder why you came... (I saw Riders in the Sky recently, and noticed that they didn't tune once. The whole time. How do they get away with that?)

The small blessing is that we had the foresight to play "People Get Ready" first, where Warren has readily visible solo bits, which left the out-of-tune song to one where he's not so "out front". I really would have tuned more, but I couldn't even hear any "note" in my notes -- just the crunch. It took me way too long just to get the Drop D (for "Five O'Clock World) working (though apparently I was tuning the low string to match a mal-tuned higher one). In the song itself, I was playing by feel mostly, 'cuz it sounded like I was playing washboard, not guitar (gives new meaning to the term "rhythm guitar"). In fact, during the last yodel, I went to change back to D from the Am7 and realized that I was already on the D -- I hadn't been able to hear that I had just skipped a whole chord. Pretty embarrassing, but then I figured that if I couldn't hear it, probably nobody else was gonna mind much, either.

But, the whole capo thing is really getting to be a problem. The current capo has a pressure adjuster on it, but if I reduce the pressure any more, the bass string starts to buzz. It's hard to imagine that one of those spring-loaded capoes would do any better, especially since it's *not* adjustable, but it may be that I need to give it a try. I hate to spend $18 on it just to find out that it doesn't do any better, though. I wonder if I can haul my guitar and tuner into Guitar Center and try 'em until one works. Hmmm, on second thought, this is just the ticket for Shade Tree, isn't it? They won't make me buy one that doesn't work, and may even understand the concept of wanting to stay in tune... Maybe I can get over there on a weeknight next week.

Songs for the Gypsy Den

Saw a friend of Warren's at some Chinese restaurant in Costa Mesa. He was a pretty good strummer, and bold enough, and somewhat inspired, if dopey, as a writer. I spent the time thinking that if folks get away with songs like that, I shoulda written a bunch of 'em myself by now. On the other hand, his songs, while enjoyable enough, wouldn't be something I could be proud enough of to play for my mom, so I guess that's why I haven't. Seems to me like, if you're staring at a blank piece of paper casting about for ideas for a new song, and the notion of Siamese twins seems like a good idea to you, you probably need to fire your muse.

Anyway, lacking Original Tunes to play at the Gypsy Den, I'd only feel right if the tunes were remarkable in some other way -- four possibilities occur to me: Extremely Obscure, Surprisingly Well Performed, Rarely Covered, Or Unusually Arranged.

That pretty much kills all the James songs, except maybe "Water is Wide", which is on an album but nobody's heard, and "Little Help", "People Get Ready", and "The Way You Look", which are James' arrangements, but came from bootleg performances, so nobody knows 'em. But "Help" is too cheesy, and too common. The other three are possibilities, I guess...

"Something in the Way She Moves" fails most of the criteria, too, but it's kind of obscure (as it's getting so old), and I think we do it well, so maybe I'd be open to that one.

"Stardust" is ripped straight from Willie Nelson, and everyone's heard it, so that won't work. "America" is fun to play at Tully's, but I feel like it's a dim reflection of the original, lacking the harmony vocal, and played by a guy who can't really strum...

I would be willing to chance "Crying", though it fails the same tests the songs above fail. I dunno, maybe just 'cuz it's my current favorite, or because it's Rarely Covered, or because it takes such guts to sing... Anyway I guess I think I perform it reasonably well.

I think "Five O'Clock World" would work. It's clearly non-original, but it is Unusually Arranged, and Rarely Covered. It's ripped off from Hal Ketchum, but I doubt anybody would know that, nor complain if they did.

"Rhythm of the Rain" qualifies as Rarely Covered, but it's a little limp. "Ten Degrees and Getting Colder" is Obscure, and has the added attraction (for this crowd) of being about a "road musician, to the taverns he would go". I'd have to rehearse it some first, though -- I always blow the mid section.

So, let's see. Seems like if you only get two, they ought to be one fast, one slow. Maybe "Five O'Clock" and "Crying" would qualify.

Of course, there's my wife's issue, "Why do you want to do that? You already got a gig." I guess it's the fear/thrill of playing for other players. Best/worst possible audience -- outwardly, they're bound to be polite, but inside, they're the harshest judges. We'll see...

Mermaid vs the Beast

I seem to be in the minority in my opinions of "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast". Virtually everyone likes "Beast" the best (including, apparently, the Academy), but so few people mention "Mermaid". I like Mermaid better, though probably Beast "is" better. I like a Mermaid for the story, which I think is much more accessible that the Beast story is, at a (my) personal level. The "growing up, and taking your own course despite your parents' ideas" story hits me from both sides, as I remember too well the clash of my own separation, and I fear so the upcoming (all too soon) separation of my own girls.

And, I think the songs from Mermaid whup Beast's, too. The obvious fun of "Kiss the Girl" and "Under the Sea" stand on their own, but, further, I honestly can't hear (or sing) the lines, " ...bet they don't reprimand their daughters, bright young women, sick of swimmin', ready to stand... " without choking and misting up. ('Course, I have the same problem with "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas", verse 2 and 3, but that's just our little secret, OK? I'm really turning into a sentimental old softy here in my 40's...)

The Princess Song

I get these ideas, and then I can't *not* try to make 'em happen.

At the Indian Princess campouts, the last night is "Campfire Night", where all the tribes (10 tribes, 10-15 girls per) get up and entertain the rest of the Nation. We, as the newest tribe, didn't have to go up at the last campout, but we will next time. Most of the other tribes did skits, some sang a song, and one lip-synched to "MIB".

Anyway, because we're a new tribe, all our girls are young - all but a few are in kindergarten. None are brave enough to carry off a skit, I think, so I proposed singing a song -- in unison. But with such young ones, there are hardly any songs that they know beyond "Mary" and "Twinkle". With a leap of faith, I figured they might be able to learn "Puff, the Magic Dragon", and I could play it on the guitar. Then came the "where'd that come from" part -- I volunteered to make it more interesting by rewriting the lyrics to make it into an Indian Princess song. It turned out to be non-trivial, but I managed to get two verses and a chorus together. I emailed the new lyrics to the other dads (most have email) so they can teach them to their girls before the campout. I also found and pointed out the web location of a "Puff" MIDI file, so they can play it for the kids a few (dozen?) times to teach them the tune. I might decide to try to turn it into a whole nation sing-along (with pass-out lyric sheets). We'll see how it goes.

Xmas tree '97

I managed to have enough energy after the kids went to bed last night to get the lights onto the tree. So, tonight, presumably, we'll let the kids put on the decorations. This morning, I picked Acacia up out of her crib and carried her out to see it (lit up, and in the dim morning room). Her face just washed over with pure joy. Mouth fell open, eyes got wider and wider. Then she just started laughing, and squirming to get down and run up closer to it.

Geneva, at six, was a little less overwhelmed, but still, she went straight in, got a blanket, and sat on the floor, just Being Near It -- she sat and read lyrics out of my Guitar Book of Christmas Songs. We all feel the spirit in our different ways, I suppose.

Our First Princess Campout

Since we just joined Indian Princesses last week, our new tribe couldn't get it together to go to this first campout of the year, so Geneva and I hooked up with the Chippewas.

The campout was terrific and terrible in turns. Geneva and I left home Friday afternoon, had a nice dinner in a Chino restaurant, and arrived at the campground a little after dark. We pitched the tent (Geneva had a great time hammering stakes) and off she went with the even dozen little girls of the Chippewa tribe, giggling and screeching like they'd known each other all their lives.

Geneva loved it, hanging with older girls (up to 8 -- she's just 5), learning age-inappropriate games, songs and jokes. They spent some time playing "Double Dare" ("OK, go up to my dad, shake his hand, and yell "Peekaboo!") after the exhausting game of Freeze Tag.

We got in the sleeping bags around 10:30 (2 hours after Bedtime!) and read some "Hobbit". Then the bad part starts -- in the middle of the night, the Santa Ana winds came up, hard. Somehow my old, thin, "summer tent" stood up all night, but the buffeting woke us up several times during the night. Next morning, as the guys were trying to make breakfast, a gust came through and blew the iron skillets full of bacon right off the propane stove! Needless to say, Saturday was pretty miserable, but, kids are flexible -- they spent most of the day (after the Nature Hike in the wind) playing in one of the vans.

After lunch, there was an attempt at a Program -- they had some Real Live Indians showing us their crafts, and talking about their customs, clothes, food, etc. And there was a Storyteller that the kids really liked. Tough in the 30 mph wind, though.

After the program, I started to feel pretty lousy -- to spare the ugly details, I had come down with a 24(ish) hour stomach flu (as did my wife back home). I toughed it out until after dinner, but couldn't manage any more than that. We drove home, Geneva asleep, and me pulling off every third exit to find a fast-food joint to throw up in.

Anyway, it was great while it lasted. Geneva had a great time, and gave me incredible grief for dragging her out of there early. It can only get better from here.