Plaidophile

• An ophthalmologist equipment box (with no equipment inside — he had plenty of equipment but I just really liked the box)
• A few more of my grandma's pots (she was a fairly well-known potter in her day) and a glass ashtray
• A collection of small bottles - several classic bitters bottles (my grandma's), several old prescription bottles for phenylbarbitol (my grandpa's), and three really old, unopened, still-with-now-rather-concentrated-fluid-inside travel samplers of various liqueurs (could be either)
• My great-grandfather's (my grandma's dad, b.1875, d.1964) ceremonial "deputy sheriff" badge; he claimed that this gave him actual police officer privileges (which the accompanying certificate makes the case for) but apparently he was just a pretty big ol' braggart and wanted to be the big man around town. There's no date on it but it's signed by Sheriff Elmer Michael Walsh which dates it sometime between 1946 and 1950.
• A really awesome 50' tape measure from Sears and Roebuck Corporation
• A broken-but-repairable "brownie" camera (Falcon Minicam Junior); the optics are dirty and foggy and there's a puncture hole on the casing which would need to be covered by electrical tape, but there is still a manufacturer of 127-format film (in Croatia!), so maybe I could take some (very foggy) pictures with it (although I suspect that processing it will be a major pain)
• An excellent-condition Miranda T (35mm film camera), in excellent condition except that I can't seem to figure out how to open the film (and the controls are a bit wacky compared to more modern cameras); it has two lenses, a 50mm f/1.9 and a 135mm f/3.5. Both smell strongly of my grandpa's house. I really wish Silicon Film had ever made it to market.
• My ophthalmology records from when he was still practicing. Age 13, glasses deferred. (Age 32, I still don't need them most of the time.)
• An exposed roll of Kodachrome KR 135 print film. I believe I will be sending some business to Dwayne's rather shortly.
• An eclectic collection of ties
• A rather nice leather jacket

Most of these will of course just be on display as nice decor-fitting reminders of my ancestry.

This past week and a half has been a bit of a whirlwind, but in the interest of best preserving the memory of my grandfather I will try to only focus on the good things.

Sadly, this is the best performance I've had so far, I think. Note to self for next time: practice Sometimes It's Hard To Keep Yourself Moving without looking at the guitar neck, because the microphone is in the way and it's hard to play barre chords by feel.

Also, stop rushing.

As great as technology was for my road trip (giving me a lot of flexibility and ad-hoc decision making without a lot of preparation), where my road tech of choice fell flat, it caused a lot of aggravation which seems like it would be pretty easy to make better.

Most of these are related to the Google Nexus One, but I have a couple of iPod issues too.

• Took 101 on the way down. Kept regretting taking that instead of 1. Then I hit LA and traffic got terrible but I repeat myself. I think the extra time for 1 would have made the final part that much more annoying.
• Thursday night went to Tokyo Wako, which is a terrible, terrible restaurant. I was hoping for some simple sushi but everything there was best characterized as "too much of everything." Both rolls I got (one spider roll, one unagi roll — helpfully called "eel roll" instead for us poor Americans) were loaded up with avocado and disgustingly-sweet teriyaki sauce, and the pieces were too large to fit in my mouth and fell apart and so on. It's basically a local chain version of Benihana. NOT RECOMMENDED.
• Friday I went to the aquarium, which was nice, except that it happened to be the same day that a lot of LA elementary schools were taking a field trip, so I had a hard time taking any pictures or reading the signs or enjoying a nice quiet day at the aquarium. So, not very nice.
• Went to Zephyr, had half a grilled tofu sandwich (which was good but I didn't have much of an appetite before my set and after my set it was too late for me to eat anything per GERD treatment protocol), and had a great performance after a couple of false starts. Unfortunately, the stream crapped out just as I was getting good (or at least, I like to think so, but I haven't listened to the recordings yet). Got most of the musicians in the crowd to join me for a rousing chorus of Night Terrors, which was a wonderful trainwreck (in a good way).
• Saturday, wandered around the area near the hotel before going to a barbecue at Ross Durand's house. I showed up early (because traffic was way better than expected), and met his family, and slowly other Song Fight people trickled in, although the two who I really wanted to see again (MintyHandy and Johnny Cashpoint) couldn't make it due to bad circumstances. But that's okay. Got the next fight's title from Spud over the phone, and Alex (of the Seamus Collective) wrote an absolutely brilliant song, which we recorded in bluegrass style. I played cello. We're probably going to collaborate on improving parts of it over the next several days pre-submission (Ross wasn't feeling comfortable enough with his dulcimer playing to record it along with us, for example, and I'd like to record a separate cello part for the bridge and maybe some vocal harmonies) but even as recorded live it was wonderful. I got video, which I will post after the fight goes live.
• This morning, woke up at 5 AM and couldn't fall back to sleep. At 7 AM a badly-organized gay pride parade circled around the lagoon by the Hyatt. There were maybe 20 people in it, and their chant was: "What do we want? JUSTICE! When do we want it? NOW!" and of course it was not in a place that it would be seen or heard by anyone except tired out-of-towners.
• Now I'm just trying to figure out if I want to take 101 back (semi-pretty drive, but I've already seen it), or 1 (very pretty but also a grueling endurance test), or I-5 (a little faster than 101, boring). Will definitely be stopping at Chris's on the way in any case.

So I'm in Long Beach to perform in a concert. Here is where it will be broadcast. Be horrified as you discover what I really look like, and how much worse I am at playing live than in the studio!

I've neglected to mention it here, but for those in the LA area, I'm doing a gig at the Zephyr Vegetarian Cafe in Long Beach next Friday (May 14th) along with a few other Song Fight folks, including and especially the inimitable Johnny Cashpoint. The show starts at 7. Be there, or don't.

It often seems as if many people who use BART could use a bit of a reminder in how to keep the entire experience pleasant and efficient for everyone. If you keep a few simple things in mind, you can make it more pleasant for others, which in turn makes it more pleasant for yourself.

Of course, much of this also applies to other transit systems. Feel free to use the suitable parts accordingly.

While flying over Seattle, I couldn't help but notice how after living there for two years I recognized dozens of landmarks around the city which had various special meanings to me — places friends and I had lived, worked, and hung out, bridges I'd gone over, and so on. I thought about how it's strange how after the same amount of time in San Francisco I still didn't really know San Francisco very well and felt no such attachment to the city, after a week of talking about how much I missed Seattle and thinking of ways I could end up moving back there eventually. I felt intensely homesick and even considered "accidentally" missing my connecting flight.

But then I got back to San Francisco, and the smell was familiar and comforting, and I got on BART and the smell was familiar and (oddly) comforting. While on BART home from the airport, a woman was having trouble reading her tourist map and figuring out which BART station to get off at for her hotel. I asked where it was and she pointed to a station on her street map (which didn't label the stations), and I immediately told her, "Oh, yeah, that's Powell. I'm pretty familiar with that part of town."

Then I realized that this place is somewhere I know after all.

We are streaming the show live on the Internet. The show starts at 6 PM PDT tonight. My set is scheduled to start at 9:30 PM (the headliner!) but you should watch the whole show, especially since I'll be drumming for Naked Philosophy (the opening act) and singing in John Benjamin's chorus at 8:30ish.

I'll also be in a few of tomorrow's sets (Jon Eric and Octothorpe and maybe others?) but we don't have a lineup scheduled just yet. I also forget when the show itself starts.

9:15 Thinking about getting a massage here. Seattle airport massages still cheaper than San Francisco non-airport massages.

9:30 Finally justified in going to a Starbucks to use this gift card, and they don't take gift cards. Typical.

9:40 iPhone isn't getting a data connection even w full EDGE signal. Probably collusion between the airport WiFi provider and AT&T.

9:42 oh did I mention I only got 2 hours of sleep last night? freaking tired. got an iced tea at mini-uwajimaya (mm oolong)

9:43 where did my iced tea go? did I lose it already?

9:43 oh there it is

9:46 Can't think of any decent lyrics for the live fight title (They Meet). maybe time to just play my PSP some more.

9:47 all the beans I had for dinner last night are doing a good job of maximizing other peoples' airport agony. I please to aim.

9:55 laptop can see attwifi network, iPhone can't. laptop would cost $8 to authenticate, iPhone would be free. typical.

9:58 meh, just half an hour before I board. I can handle this.

I forgot to mention it over here on my increasingly-neglected blog but I am going to Song Fight! Live this year. I am leaving the loop pedal at home and am going to try my darndest to get a good accompaniment from people on actual instruments. So if you happen to be in the Spokane area on the 17th and 18th I would appreciate an audience!

Apparently there will be a (small) cover charge (club sound guys cost money) but I have no idea what it is. Probably $5ish.

So, if I'd gotten to the airport half an hour earlier, I'd probably have my luggage right now.

Basically, there were a whole bunch of flight delays, which caused a cascade effect, and I got lucky enough to get on an alternate flight to LAX such that I could make my original connection to ABQ (rather than having to wait for a 9 PM flight), but my baggage didn't quite make it to the plane. So it should arrive sometime tomorrow. But in the meantime if I'd actually left for the airport when I meant to, I'd probably have not had such a long line to wait in, and would have probably gotten onto the same alternate flight with enough time for my luggage to get loaded.

Forgot to mention, I'll be in Albuquerque from the 24th through the 30th, in case anyone there was interested in hanging out or anyone in SF was wondering where the hell I've gone off to.

i am tired

Arrived at the airport a couple hours early. Drank at the airport bar until I felt wobbly (which was just one "pint" where apparently this place thinks that pint is the same thing as a quart, not that I'm complaining since holy hell that was a lot of Hefeweisen for $5). Had a quick early dinner when there was half an hour before original boarding time. Finished early dinner, found out the flight's delayed an hour. I would just go back to the bar but I won't hear delay updates from there. Sigh.

Oh yeah, today for the first time ever while waiting for The Church of Beethoven's weekly show to start, I finally saw something in the wild:

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