news of the world

I've been "blogging" quite a lot lately, but it's come in the form of a personal journal. I'm not quite sure why, but I've taken a slight turn away from technology, and have started writing in my journal nearly every day. I'm not doing it on the computer, though, it's all hand-written. I never seemed to hit a good stride when it came to journaling on the computer, so after many years of trying, I've gone back to pen and paper. It's working fabulously.

We're setting Jon up with some recording software so he can sketch song ideas on his own, without having to come over to my little studio. He's got plenty of ideas in his head. We were chatting about the process and how we wanted things to move a little faster with this third collection of music. It took so long to write most of ...panic. and then the rest of the album came very fast right at the end. What we're going to try is have him do the sketches and shoot them over to me, where I can start to shape them. What I told him at a party a few weeks ago was that I'm good at shaping raw material, and he said that was a good thing because he's good at creating that raw material. Yay!

mastering

Last night I sat in on the mastering session of my friend's new song, which I produced and engineered. I'm extremely pleased with how it came out. My friend's name is Tim Cain (not the governor of Virginian Tim Kaine, but the other one), and the song is a tribute to Princess Diana that he wrote and we recorded ten years ago after her untimely demise. This is the ten year anniversary of her passing, and he wanted to update the song and re-release it. I finished mixing yesterday morning. We'd been working on his full-length album, but then put that aside to concentrate on this song, which he's going to take to the UK and play some dates there with his band.

This project has taken much of my time, apart from the regular photography gig, and it's put The Nancys on hold for too long. Jon and I need to start working on disk number three.

Parker Fly sig model

I've been reading Adrian Belew's blog since he started it a few weeks ago. Earlier this week, he related the story of how his custom Parker Fly guitar came into being, and the long, strange road it's taken to become a signature Fly model available to the public. Of course, now I can't wait to have them release it so I can go a few thousand dollars further into debt when I sprint to the store to pick one up. I hope it will come in other colors besides the gold. Maybe a nice red...

hateful, hateful

I was chatting with my friend Kevin earlier this week, and he mentioned his wife's devotion to Heart. Of course, after hearing that, I dropped into my kickin version of "These Dreams"...and now I can't get that damn song out of my head. I think Kev planned it that way. He's evil.

State of My Ass

I was reading a short story by Terry Bisson last week, and was getting excited because I thought I might be able to adapt it into a short film. Most of the action takes place in one room, with two characters, one of which is on the television. I let it sit for a bit, then reread it last night. It doesn’t really hold up on a second reading. It’s a little bit of a letdown because a) I like Terry Bisson’s stories, but this one is not his best, and b) now I don’t have a story to adapt. Perhaps there is another story in this collection of Bisson’s stories that I might adapt, though. I’m about halfway through, and the subsequent stories are better than the one I first chose, but they wouldn’t make easy adaptations to film.

I picked up this book in Berkeley, CA the week before last while doing the Macworld stuff. I got excited when I saw it because it’s a signed copy. I found it in a store called something like The Other Change of Hobbit. The guy who ran the shop, who was aiming for a definite Asimovian look with the long grey hair and bushy sideburns, was a charming and quite knowledgeable chap who knew exactly which year of the annual Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies were hard to find. It would have been better if he had had a copy of one of those years. He informed me that those books run into the hundreds of dollars for used copies.

Don’t drink and blog. I’m a little trashed at the moment. My cosmo glass looks classy on the little table I refinished, next to our pale green table lamp with the broken leg that C fixed with candle wax and pennies. He’s nothing if not resourceful.

I’m writing this in our big round chair in the living room. The laptop is too far away from our base station to get a wi-fi signal. It’s sad. Now I can’t search for porn read the text of the prez’s SOTU address.

Come here, you gorgeous little cosmo, you.

Freezing in San Francisco

I was out in San Francisco shooting Macworld last week, and it was fucking cold and windy. At least it was sunny and warm on my first day there. The second day was sunny and warm, too, but I was working inside Moscone all day.

We spent some time at the show, and walked around a lot, visiting some neighborhoods that we might want to move to. I was grumpy and a little panic-attacky, so we only saw a little bit, apart from the areas we've been to already. I don't see us picking up and hauling our sorry asses out there any time soon. Unless Apple hires either of us, but they're based waaay far south of the city. I don't know what the traffic is like, but I'm sure the drive down there would take about an hour from the Union Square area. Maybe we could find a place at the end of the BART going south, like near the airport. We still need to check Portland out and see what life is like there. I just need to find some place that's warmer than Chicago.

My curious moment: Steve Wozniak zipping down Market Street on a Segway.

old stuff addendum

Upon watching more of the old videos from my college and post-college years, I've come across one of the reasons I was a dick: I was hanging around some dicks. I'd forgotten how some of these people were just complete jerks to everyone. Most of them were involved in the bands I was in. There were some notable exceptions to the rule: Jerry, our bass player, was not a dick. He was wacky, but not a dick. As for the other people, I think they mellowed out a little later. As did I. I hope. Give me a metaphorical smack if I haven't.

In other music related stuff, I am producing a disk for a friend, Tim Cain. I've known Tim for around 10 years now, and I have played drums and guitar on a couple of his projects. This time, I'm just producing. It's been slow going, since we both squeeze in time to work on the songs whenever either of us has a free moment. As I'm working on Tim's disk, I'm floating some ideas around for the next Nancys disk. Once I'm done with this producing job, Jon and I will be getting together to start merging our ideas and forming new Nancys songs. I'm thinking that will be late February or early March. It's a little frustrating going this long without new Nancys songs, but the wait will be worth it, I think.

I'm off to San Francisco next week to shoot Macworld again. It was a blast last year. I not only got to play photojournalist, but I got to play reporter, too. I'm doing that again this year, taking photos and writing a story for Tribune Media Services. Writing is not my strong suit, but it helps to have worked for newspapers (and to have literate friends!) in the past. Reading newspapers every now and again doesn't hurt either.

The other weird thing C and I have been doing is something called the Master Cleanse. It's a fasting diet where you only consume a liquid concoction consisting of lemon, maple syrup, and cayenne pepper mixed with water. You can also have herbal tea. It's disgusting. I lasted three days. C is still going strong on his fifth day. It's supposed to wash out your system, specifically, your colon, of toxic buildup that's just sitting there. The other major component of this regimen? Salt. Water. Flush. Yes, it is an uber-laxative. You'd be surprised at what comes out of you, and how fast it comes out. Yuck. The good thing is that we were both amazed at how we were able to NOT EAT ANYTHING for so long. Even now, though I've stopped the clease bit, I'm only eating a breakfast, then nothing else all day. Today, I might just do a lemon/water mix for the rest of the day. Adding the syrup and pepper to that makes me gag.

And you think that's bad? Ask Jon about his vegan bucket.

old stuff

I've been going through old video and audio tapes that have been sitting in my closet for several years. In the words of my friend Leigh, I am "destuffing" my place. That means all the extraneous shit that takes up too much space gets sifted through, assessed, and either left alone, archived and tossed, or just plain tossed.

There are some old tracks I've got that I might post to a myspace profile. They're interesting. I can't really say they're all good; some of them are crap, but it would be cool to post as a retrospective.

After watching some old videos of myself from the college days, I made a significant discovery: I was a complete dick. Seriously, I don't know how anyone could stand being around me back then. I'd like to think I grew out of that.