Lovemonkey Studios Blog

Ok, I’m doing this for my Father. I took this photo this weekend, and sent it to him. He suggested a New Yorker style caption contest. So, please, leave your caption ideas in the comments. Best one wins lifelong respect.

Also, I’m almost done with my MS150 blog. I’m really way too busy here at the end of the school year, but it’s bugging me that it’s not done. Soon, I promise.

Where to start? I can’t even imagine. When last I left you, I was sitting on a plane that was supposedly about to take off. Needless to say, that didn’t quite work out. I was still sitting there two hours later, and trust me, it was even hotter and even more stinky. There was all kinds of different stuff they were telling us, including the following:

They lost the paperwork clearing the plane for takeoff.

They found the paperwork, but the FAA people decided to re-inspect the plane anyway.

They didn’t like the kind of clips they used on the wire bundle that’s been all these problems.

The Mechanic came back with the wrong kind of clip.

They fixed the clip, but the FAA guys couldn’t be found.

Finally, after three hours on the runway, they cleared us for takeoff. At this point, it’s 12:30 and everyone is tired and grumpy. Five minutes after the pilot says we’re good to go, he comes back on and says “Now folks, don’t kill the messenger, but this flight has now been cancelled. A storm system has moved into Oklahoma City, and it’s too dangerous to fly.”

A huge collective groan went up, and we all got off the plane. All one hundred of us went out and stood in the empty airport, with three American Airlines employees standing around, typing on computers. Everyone just lined up and stood there. The airline people made only one announcement, saying they were working on a bus to a hotel for us. And other than that, nothing. I was towards the back of the line, so it seemed like I’d be standing there for about an hour. After fifteen minutes, I heard one of the employees say to someone that there’s not another flight until 10:25 the following night, and that would probably be cancelled too. This is info we probably all should have, IMHO. So with that in my head, I start trying to determine my next move, which is mostly giving up hope. Then someone stands up and says “I’m going to go try and rent a car and drive. Anyone want to go with me?” Why yes, about a dozen of us did. So we all ran down to baggage claim, and I fell in with three other people who seemed to have a plan. Two of them were Paul and Amy, a couple back from their first vacation together, and the other was a young man named Brandon. Paul and Brandon took the shuttle to the rental area to get a car, while Amy and I went to Baggage to get our bags.

Of course, it’d be too easy if our bags were there. That’s no fun at all, is it? An airport employee came down to tell us that if our bag hadn’t come out, it wasn’t here and would turn up tomorrow. Thank god I had put the music me and the kids needed in my carry-on. People started getting pretty mad, and one woman started yelling and kicking a garbage can. So Amy and I decided that’d be a good time to get out of there, and headed to get the shuttle to the rental car area.

Paul and Brandon had gotten over there quickly, and managed to get the last car from one of the two 24 hour rental places. There was a big line, so I don’t know what happened to all those people. I hope they all made it. I saw at least three couples with children, and one lady had a cat. The cat was starting to get upset, so that really had to suck. I wanted to tell her she should just go let the cat run around the bathroom for a while, and let the airport deal with it. We loaded up our car, and set out for Oklahoma City. At this point, it was about 2am, and it’s a good 200 miles to Oklahoma City. We were all starving, so once we got to the interstate, we hit a 24 hour Whattaburger in Denton.

We got to know each other a bit at the Whattaburger. I had been a little worried about getting in a car with three complete strangers. You know, one of them could be an axe murderer. But that seemed unlikely. And I know you couldn’t get an axe through airport security, and even if you could, our bags were lost anyway. But if anyone had said “Hey, can we stop at Wal-Mart? I need to grab an axe” I was out of there. It turned out that Paul and Amy both worked at the Federal prison, and Brandon was a diver in the Navy, so actually I was probably the sketchiest one, being a musician. But they were all very nice, and any port in a storm, as they say.

It was after we left Denton that thing started getting messy. We started hitting the storms that had cancelled our flight, and it was pretty bad. It was raining really hard, and our car was getting blown all over the road. I tried to get some sleep, but it didn’t really happen. I woke up when the car went half way off the road and we hit the rumble strips. I’m pretty sure it was the wind, but part of me was worried that Paul was getting sleepy and had dozed off. So I spent the next hour staying awake and making sure Paul was still ok. He seemed it to me, but I couldn’t fall back asleep. I was also more aware of how bad the weather was, and it was bad. There were actually tornadoes touching down in the area, but thank god we didn’t hit any. Finally about forty miles outside of Oklahoma city, the weather broke and from there on it was smooth sailing. By the time we dropped off Brandon at the airport and got me to my hotel, it was 6am. So I was only held up by eight hours. Not too bad, right? Except that I really needed to leave for Wichita by 11 or so, and I still needed to get my rental car and try to find my luggage. I spent 20 minutes on the phone with American trying to figure out where my bags were. They told me they were in Oklahoma City, and They said they’d be delivered in the morning. The only problem was that they have a six hour window from when they leave the airport in the morning. I was really hoping I’d be able to get my bags, because a) My suit was in there, and I’ve always made a big deal about good dress to my students, and If I showed up without it, they’d never let me hear the end of it, and b) I’d really like clean underwear. But there wasn’t much I could do about it, so I laid down for my 2 hours of sleep.

I woke up around 9am. I tried to call american to ask about my bags, but no one was answering any phones. Not surprising, considering there were 120,000 people whose flights had been messed up. So I got up and took the shuttle to the car rental place. I almost had a disaster there, because it turns out National car rental won’t rent to anyone using a debit card if they don’t have their return flight information on them. Mine was back at the hotel, because I had no idea I’d need it to rent a car. The guy at the counter wasn’t particularly helpful or nice. He just told me to call American and get my info. Right, because they have nothing else to do! Then he told me to take a shuttle to the airport and get it from the ticket counter, which I’m sure would also be peaceful and quiet. I politely asked if maybe their shuttle could just run me to my hotel, which is 2 miles away, and he said “We don’t go there.” Nice. Way to go the extra mile for your customers. He then told me to go try one of the other companies. Even nicer. Finally, after a call to the LMGF I managed to get the info I needed and get my car, but this stupid thing wasted about 45 minutes. And it turns out that National is the only company with this policy.

I went back to my room to see if my bag had shown up, and it hadn’t, so I showered and made a last ditch run to the airport to get my bag. Finally, my luck started to change, and my bag was sitting there, waiting for me, sadly chained to a bunch of other lonely bags. It’s amazing how happy that made me. It was my first big break, and I really needed it. I got back into my rented Pontiac G6 and hightailed it to Wichita.

I arrived in Wichita around 2:45, and by the time I got into the school, found my kids, and got changed, it was 3:30. So we had just enough time to get set up and get organized. Did I mention that one of my students came down with a wicked sinus infection the day before they left and so he couldn’t make the trip? So in addition to conducting the group I was also playing his parts on two of the songs. Not at all ideal, and trying to play the parts while keeping an eye on the group was really tricky. But my kids all did a good job, and while it wasn’t perfect, it was good. I’m proud of all of them. The room was also really small, and that’s certainly not the best setup for five guitars, bass, and a Drum set. I was also nervous because Jerry Hahn was there writing comments for us. But his comments were positive and constructive. After our show he did a 90 minute master class for some of the kids as well as a few teachers. I think the teachers learned more than the kids did, and he gave one of the best answers I’ve ever heard when asked about picking technique. Trying to teach good right hand technique is one of the bigger challenges to learn, and his approach is going to be really helpful. (I don’t feel like explaining, but if you happen to be a guitarist leave me a comment and I’ll write it up.)

After the class, I had to pretty much hightail it back to Oklahoma City. I had a three hour drive as well as a 8:45am flight to catch the next morning and it was already 7:00pm. I’m currently writing this from the Dallas airport. My first flight was delayed and so I missed my Austin connection, but I was re-booked on a later flight that only gets in 3 hours later. And they even bumped me to 1st class! I wish the flight was a little longer than 45 minutes, but oh well. Assuming all is well, I’ll be home by 2 and on my way to Houston by 3 or 4. Might even get some sleep before I start the ride tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted. In my original entry, I had the picture below at the very end. Considering how everything had worked out, I took it out because It was way too optimistic. But I’m feeling good now, so here it is. Enjoy.

Where am I again?

I think I should check in with my blog. See how everything is going out there in Cyberspace. Wow. Seriously? Like, three entries this year? Lame. I really should do more with it. So let’s put out an update on life.

Well, first of all, where am I? I’m on a plane. Where am I going? Oklahoma City, believe it or not. I heading to the ISAS arts festival, where my guitar ensemble students are going to be performing tomorrow. I arrive in Oklahoma City tonight, and tomorrow morning I’m renting a car and driving 180 miles to Wichita, Kansas for a 4pm performance. Of course, This is all dependent on the plane I’m currently in actually taking off at some point. It’s practically the only American Airlines flight that’s actually going anywhere today, except that there’s a maintenance issue of some kind. And they can’t run their A/C. So it’s getting hot in here. And a bit Stinky. But I’m just going to expect the best and assume I’ll make it to OOOOOOO-Klahoma tonight. I couldn’t keep writing Oklahoma without one musical theater joke, right? So assuming all goes well, after the show tomorrow afternoon (and the Jerry Hahn guest clinic!) I drive back to my hotel in Oklahoma City and catch a 7am flight Friday morning.

Why am I doing all this crazy stuff? Several reasons. For one, I didn’t want to spend 10 hours on a bus with 50 high school kids. Second, I need to be in Houston on Friday because Saturday morning I’m starting the MS 150. So no rest for the wicked. I never liked that phrase, because I don’t get much rest, and I don’t feel particularly wicked. So maybe no rest for the stupid. That might be my new life motto. For those who don’t know, the MS 150 is a charity bike ride that happens all over the country. This particular edition is going from Houston to Austin, with a layover in La Grange. The best part is that you’d expect something called the MS 150 to be 150 miles long. But no, that would make too much sense. It’s actually closer to 180, but I’m not totally sure. It’s 100 the first day, and I know that La Grange isn’t 50 miles from Austin. I also hear the first day is totally flat, and the second day has a bunch of hills near Bastrop. So that’s nice. Wear us down first, then go in for the kill. Can’t wait. I’ll try to write something and post it Saturday night if I can move at all. Which is possible, but not likely. If I survive, I’ll post something Sunday.

I wrote this about twelve hours ago, when I was just a boy. Now, I’ve been forced to grow up by the harsh realities of the modern world. I’ll continue this saga tonight.

I’ve been meaning to write this one up for a while. Right after I got home from Christmas Vacation, I played a gig with Adam at the Red Eyed Fly. We had been told there was a reality show from the BBC coming to film something there, but we didn’t really know what show, or what they were filming. We thought it had something to do with the band playing after us. Anyway, after the gig, I’m wandering around backstage, where there’s catered food, and about 12 million pounds of camera equipment, and I notice a tall guy sitting in the corner playing with his cell phone. “Hmmm” I say to myself, ” He looks familar.”

All of a sudden, I realized who he was. It was Clinton Kelly from What Not To Wear! Not a show I watched a lot, but the LMGF loves it, so I’ve seen myself a few episodes. I’m really bad approaching famous people, so I left him alone for a while. All of a sudden, I saw the other host, Stacey London, running around, so it was obvious that What Not To Wear was the show filming there. Turns out they were there ambushing the Fiance of one of the guys in the band after us! I was still wary of talking to them, but the LMGF (who was in Puerto Rico at the time) would never forgive me, so I went up to Stacy, who seemed more approachable, and asked for an autograph. She was beyond nice and we talked for a few minutes. She even told me my outfit was ok, except for my shoes. I was in my sneakers, so I can deal with that. After we chatted I asked her if Clinton was friendly, and she said he was, so I went and talked to him for a while. I got the LMGF autographs, and also got Adam over to get the following snapshot for posterity:

Adam’s so pimp he even gave them both copies of his CD, and Stacy’s enough of a real pro to hold it up for the picture. They were both amazingly nice and friendly and down to earth. Stacy seemed exactly the same as she is on the show. Clinton was a bit more reserved, but very friendly. I asked him if they got around Austin much while they were here, and he said they did a bit, but not too much. They worked twelve hour days on the show. He said Stacy shops on South Congress when they’re here. All in all, they both were pretty cool.

After all this we all watched them ambush the poor girl who was this week’s victim. That was pretty good fun. I didn’t think she looked all that bad, but that’s just me. I’m not a good judge of such things. Anyway, the reason I bring this all up is that the episode they shot is airing tomorrow night (Friday) at 8pm central time. They did a crowd pan shot that I might be in, hence the title of this entry. And it turns out the girl they were doing is a copy editor for the Austin-American Statesman. She wrote a very long article on the whole process that you can read here.

Anyway, everyone needs to watch. I might be on TV! I always thought What Not To Wear was a possibility for me. I’m glad to have been there and not being the one ambushed!!

So it’s South by Southwest time in Austin, again. As all the major paper “blogs” report, Austin is now full of hipsters, looking for the next big thing. I put “Blogs” in quotes because I don’t think a major paper can actually have a blog. For example, the Chicago Sun-Times has twenty blogs listed on their website. TWENTY! I think it’s still just a bunch of reporters writing stories. I don’t think adding a few personal reflections a blog make. There was a blog for a Chicago paper I read (That I now can’t find) that was all about all the cool people coming to Austin. He waxed poetic (and with some contempt) of being on a flight where everyone was typing on their Macs and listening to music on their iPhones. The best part when he wrote a sentence along the lines of “From San Jacinto Blvd. to Cesar Chavez street, all these hipsters were prowling all night for good music.” Seems safe enough, right?

The best part about that is that San Jacinto is a North-South street, and Cesar Chavez is a East-West street, and they intersect downtown. So any hipsters wandering around would be limited to that block. Which is convenient, since that’s where my annual SXSW but not a showcase gig was this year. I feel like I write this post every year, starting here. This one’s the 2006 version. I think last year I actually didn’t play one, which is surprising. I usually like getting out of town if possible. But this year, I played a 60 minute set with Allison at a club called, I kid you not, The Cock Pit. I’ll leave it to your imagination as to what kind of club it was. But it was our first band gig of the year, so I felt a bit rusty. We had a bunch of promo copies of 4 songs off the new CD (which should be done very soon!) and played to about 30 people. Not too bad for a Thursday at 7pm. I had another gig last night with a student of mine at a teen music night at a coffeeshop. We did one of these last month, and I’ll tell you, I haven’t played a teen night since I was a teen! Very, very strange feeling.

Anyway, to wrap up the whole SXSW thing, I’m quite jaded about the whole thing by now. The whole town is a mess, with millions of people everywhere clogging up everything. Even Rachel Ray is here doing a showcase. Rachel Ray!!! Now, I like Rachel as much as anyone, but what in the world is she doing here? Turns out her husband has a band, and they put together a showcase around him. And she made snacks. Cool, right? Not really. It was a totally private event. Do you think his band gets in if he’s not Rachel Ray’s husband?

Yet again, I’m not going to any events except my gig. To me, the Austin music scene has been in decline since I moved here (is it my fault? I hope not) and is mostly going on reputation alone. The whole thing now revolves around two events: SXSW and the ACL fest. All the local bands just want one of those gigs, and the rest of the year they just struggle along. Mostly when I go out to see bands I see empty clubs, and packed Frat-style shot bars. There are still bands who emerge out of Austin and make some noise, like Spoon. Their new album is great, from the songs I’ve heard. And the newest is called Ghostland Observatory. They started to break after their ACL set two years ago. Not my thing, but I caught them opening for the Handsome Charlies about 3 years ago and thought they were good fun. But Austin feels like a musical ghost town a lot of the time.

I forgot to include a few things from the other night.

1) One thing that really cracked me up was the guy who was giving us instructions over the PA system. If you’ve never heard Barack Obama said with a Texas accent, you haven’t lived. I believe it’s pronounced Buh-Rock. But to this guy, it was Buh-Raack. It totally rhymed with Iraq. Hysterical. People gave him grief because he’d say “Obama or Hillary”. After that, it was “Buh-Raack or Hillary”. Priceless.

2) everyone was in pretty good spirits, except for a portly gentleman behind me. He kept complaining about how disorganized it was, how long it was taking, ect. He said “You know, if this was McDonalds, we’d have all left by now.” He was starting to bug me, and then he breaks out with the fact that he was actually a Republican! I really wanted to tell him off, but I’m polite.

3) speaking of Republicans, I get the impression there was a fair amount of what’s called Mischief voting going on. The idea is that you can vote in either primary if you want to. People like Rush Limbaugh have been saying to go vote for Hillary to try and extend this mess even longer, and it was a big subject on Austin talk radio on Wednesday. I doubt it’d actually make a difference. I know it’s just playing the game by the rules we have, but I still find it immoral. I think it’s always a better system to be restrained by your registered party. It’s called a primary for a reason. It’s for the Democrats and Republicans to decide who they want to represent them. Nothing else.

4) And speaking of El Rushbo, once in a great while I listen to his show for a few minutes, just to see how absurd he is. Last week I tuned in for a second just to see if he was trashing Clinton, Obama, or McCain (seriously!). Anyway, he was bloviating about his “Humble roots as a disc jockey, spinning Stevie Wonder records, like Signed, Sealed, Delivered, and Suspicion.”

Really Rush? Suspicion? Never heard that one. Is that a super cool, rare Stevie Wonder B-side that we all should go out and hear? I’ll have to look this up!*

*For those of you who don’t get this joke, the song is called Superstition, and it’s one of Stevie Wonder’s all time biggest hits. It went to Number 1 in January of 1973, and Rolling Stone ranked Superstition at #74 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Forgive the hyperbole. But let me brake this down for you.

I’ve voted in four presidential elections. I turned eighteen five months before the 1992 election, so I got to vote in that one. I voted in 1996, 2000, and 2004. But none of my votes really counted.

in 1992 and 1996, I was living in New York, a state that always goes hugely Democratic, so my vote wasn’t terribly important. In 2000 and 2004, I was living in Texas, a state that always goes completely Republican. Yet again, my vote didn’t really make difference either way. Now here it is, 2008, and we here in Texas have found ourselves in the middle of an important primary. Finally, a vote that actually means something! It’s been fun to be the center of attention. This is what it must be like to live in Iowa! What makes it even more interesting, Texas has a truly bizarre Democratic primary system. I’ve read a few articles on it, and I still don’t quite understand how it works. Here’s the way it goes, as far as I can figure out, and here’s what I did:

First thing, you vote normally like you always do. Seems simple enough. Your votes get counted, and they declare a winner. Here’s where the fuzzy math starts in.

You also have the option of caucusing, if you want. To Caucus, you have to go back to your polling place after the voting finishes, and, more or less, vote again. You stand in line for a while, and then you fill in your name, address, and candidate of choice. This was a big mess at my polling place. Here’s a Cell phone photo I took while waiting to Caucus.

Looks like a mess, doesn’t it? So we all sat around for a while because the polls stayed open an extra, oh, 45 minutes or so, and then we lined up by last name. Being in the K through O group meant I was in a long line, but after things got going they sent me over to the Z line, and I was out of there pretty quick.

So I did my vote, and my caucus vote. Cool, seems like I got to have my vote counted twice, right? No. Not really. From the best I can tell, my 1st vote gets counted for 2/3rds and my 2nd vote gets counted for 1/3. But the second vote is actually for some representative of my district, who will vote how I tell him to in June, at the actual Texas convention. Supposedly. I think. Now I’m confused again.

Anyway, it was all pretty interesting. I did receive phone calls in the last two days from both Barack and Michelle Obama. Hillary never called. I feel taken for granted, although I did see her motorcade last night after the town hall meeting.

There is one thing I do want to address. I’ve been having discussions with lots of people about who they’re supporting. People are very passionate this year, which is good. Passionate to the point where the Democrats might be eating their own to survive. Two friends are very passionate Obama people, and they’ve said some stuff that disturbed me. One of them said “If Clinton is the Nominee, I’d really rather vote for McCain.”

Woah. So you’d rather vote against a candidate who agrees with something like 90 percent of what your candidate stand for than vote for that candidate because they beat your guy? Get real. It seems like people are becoming more interested in the political horse race rather than the issues. I’ve picked my choice, but I’ll more than happily support the other should they win. I think we have two excellent choices, and can’t really go wrong. And I don’t think either camp can really claim any moral high ground. Both have been pretty rough on each other. The Republicans must be loving this. We’re doing their job for them. We really need to get over the pettiness and get back to the issues.

While stuck in traffic on MOPAC yesterday afternoon, I saw a businessman in a suit playing drumsticks on his steering wheel. It made me smile.

Fortunato Raul Acosta 1927-2007

I left a teaser in the post from last week about the three odd gigs I had scheduled. I’ve played some unusual gigs in my career, but these are unique, to say the least. So I’ll get down to it. Here’s the story in chronological order.

December 6th:

I was asked by the conductor of the Madrigal singers at one of my main teaching jobs to accompany his group for a traditional Spanish carol, A La Nanita Nana. I’ve done this once before, and the song is beautiful! We performed it three times this year, and the first was for some kind of music event at Austin’s Dell Jewish Community Center. We performed in one of the Temples, yarmulkes and all. The piece went well, and we performed it again Sunday night and last night. Sunday was fine, but last night I had a bit of trouble. The music is very long, and I have two long sheets of it. I’ve worked out a switch in the middle where I pull the first sheet off quickly onto the floor, and then the second is there waiting. This worked fine in all the rehearsals and the first two shows, but last night when I pulled it off, the second sheet underneath was upside down! The first thing I did was panic. I then considered my options, which were a) try and flip it, and b) just deal. I quickly figured I’d never be able to flip it, so I had to read the whole thing upside down and backwards. I’m quite surprised that I managed to actually do it and only make one or two small mistakes, which no one would of heard. I think the longer you play, the better you get at covering up your goofs. So now I’ve added one more thing to the six billion little mistakes I’ve made that I will try to never make again.

December 9th

On this Sunday afternoon I was booked to play at a Funeral home with one of my Students. His father worked there, and they needed some entertainment. I didn’t know what we were supposed to be doing until we got there, when it turned out we were intro and outro music for something called the remembrance service. It was families of people who had been buried there, so I guess it was a client party. Getting ready was a bit tricky, as we didn’t really know what we were going to be doing. We had kicked around the Idea of doing it super country style, boots, hats, cowboy shirts, and calling ourselves the shitkicker country duo, but that was (wisely, in retrospect) nixed. So we played some Christmas songs with Sam on acoustic playing chords and me playing melody on his Gretsch, which the only nod to the original idea. We played for about 15 minutes while people were filing in. Then there was some speaking, and the decorating of the remembrance tree, and a group of cub scouts singing silent night. Then we played for about twenty more minutes while people filed out and ate snacks. I wish my melodies had been played better, but people seemed happy enough, so I guess it’s fine.

December 17th

So this was the gig with Allison at the Mental Hospital. I don’t actually want to write too much on this one out of respect for the people there. But this was a tough gig for me. All the patients really seemed to have a good time. We played as a trio, so we were a bit more laid back than usual, but we still had tons of people clapping and dancing. I had a good time, but I felt so bad for the patients that I was very down for a while afterwards. I will say it was one of the best crowds of the year. I hope everyone who saw us has a great Christmas and a happy new year. We’ll be back to play again soon.

So tomorrow is my final show for the year, fittingly at Latitude 30. I’ve done 52 gigs in 2007, which is pretty good, although I’ve managed to have five of them in the last five days. I think we did Latitude 30 sixteen times this year. That’s way too many. I’m starting my Christmas vacation on Friday, which will keep me all over the place this year. But I’ll be posting again soon, I promise!