Friday the Thirteenth in Phoenix

I'm sitting in a dark theater, building a sound design for a new play called "Junie B. Jones: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells". This is the second time I've designed in a fly house, which means the theater has lines that raise the scenery up and down. Matt is our man on the rail, which means he hauls in the scenic pieces using a counterweight system. Most of our time is spent bringing these pieces in and watching the actors move their desks on and off stage. My job is to try to time out the music with the scene changes, so that everything flows smoothly. I wrote some of the music myself, but the main piece of music I'm using is by my friend Barbara Lamb, a great fiddle player from Nashville. There are lots of bells and whistles, since the show has lots of flashbacks and dream sequences. We just started tech for Act 2 today, which has lots of burping sound effects from an imaginary toy called a "Squeeze-a-burp". That toy is a genius!

Elder Statesmen of nerd-rock

A few highlights from Tuesday's amazing They Might Be Giants show celebrating the 19-years-later platinum status of their major-label debut, Flood:

-Every song on the album. Even the ones they couldn't remember all the lyrics to.
-Cameo by Avatars of They (shabby sock puppets of the Johns mugging for a live-feed camera).
-Lounge-funk update of "The Sun is a Mass of Incandescent Gas" to "The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma" (for science).
-Linnell's effective use of Kaoss Pad and my corresponding feelings of validation.
-A clear demonstration that after 25 years they still entertain each other as much as they entertain us gathered geeks.
-Encore: Fingertips. Fingertips. Fingertips.

It's not often I get to bring my 14 year-old self out for a night of pure delight. Thanks for aging gracefully, TMBG! You still rock, hilariously.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled bloggings of inscrutable imagery.

Bodie

After the nothingness and the spark, it explodes in fractal growth (it grows itself into art / language) until we finally get that moment of cultural apoptosis that brings us inexorably to the crash.

Rubble Vision

Hubble Vision

double vision

tunnel vision

Hello from sunny Arizona! I made it here safely with my accordion. Everyone is very nice and polite. Wish you were here

Ah, The West

According to teh internets,

This huge tree was cut down by an entrepreneur in 1853 who concocted a plan to take the thick bark (just the bark!) on a worldwide exhibition and charge admission. He ran into a problem, though: it was all thought to be a hoax and people didn't believe a tree could be that large. The stump itself soon afterwards did become a tourist attraction here though: dances were held on the stump and the felled tree (still visible in the background) was shaped to form an elevated in-place bowling alley. Later the stump was used as the floor of an enclosed office building, and now it's open to the light again.

What an asshole.

Notes on a future dream

Stars at the beginning, stars at the end. Sun swallows earth. We have always remembered this. Seven sisters escape the bear atop a flat rock tower. Bear sees seven new stars and feels time unspool. Prophecy is blood's memory of past and future cycles. We are all freed by the coiled death our life creates. He comes from the left, always from the left. Sleep is a compass. Death is West. Out is the only way.