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Sunday, June 30th, 2002
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10:51 pm
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today the show went quickly, and it was nice and cool in the theater. only three shows left. i am looking forward to the end of this one, but i am certainly not looking forward to the next one. from what i know, it will be a hard tech both personally and professionally. we all sally forth.
i went to see the race of the arc tattoo. a one man play sort of thing presented by the mary worth theatre company at jeune lune. it was performed in the scene shop. i will definitely tell you if and when the mary worth company puts on a bad show, as i have not yet experienced one yet.
then i got gas, came home, realized i had accidentally left my sprouts out and that they had gone awry, ate a sandwich instead, ate turned on channel two.
the first documentary of the night was a good one. a film called the smith family by tasha oldham. kim and steve smith and their two sons, tony and parker. the first nine years of their marriage was theoretically perfect. then steve told kim he had been unfaithful to her. that the infidelity had been with men. three weeks later kim had some health problems and the hospital tests showed she was hiv positive. later tests showed that they both were hiv positive. the year was 1987. tony was 11. parker was 8. kim decided to stay together as a family. by the time of the filming steve had full blown aids, and the daily rituals of drugs and food supplements and emotions and big fat real life of it all had become commonplace. the beauty of the film was that every member of this family had faced and dealt and faced and dealt for a decade, and they knew their hearts and minds very well. they were inordinantly articulate about both big and little things. about having to re-examine every detail of your life and then having to do it again and again. and again. after ten years of the spectre of death and the pain and the forgiveness and a million ather things, there was little left unsaid to one another. that fact more than any other laid the whole story out on the table. its pretty universal and non-universal at the same time "wisdom comes at a very high cost and there are many days i wish i was not so wise". nope can't turn from that.
in other news, i did something to some muscle attached to my ribs. it hurts to breathe any deeper than normal. no yawning. no singing. ow.
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11:31 am
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after three days, today will be the first day that i drive into work to downtown and there will be no square dancers. i will miss them. they added a fine touch of oddity. like downtown saint paul filmed by david lynch. all over town there was strolling couples in matching outfits. and crinolines! oh the crinolines! i dug it.
during lunch on friday, carl told kristin and i about a year in high school (in western south dakota) when he and his three friends couldn't figure out where to go on a date. they wanted to do something new, so they jokingly went squaredancing. four teenagers do-se-do-ing there hearts out. they had so much fun that they kept on doing it, more friends came til there was six girls and two guys "which is great" carl says, "when you're the funny one" which he is. they did this for over a year, they would square dance whenever they got the chance. i dig that, too.
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| Saturday, June 29th, 2002
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10:52 am
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in wandering about my house this morning, i found myself sitting on the edge of the bathtub, several chaptrs farther into the novel i am reading than i remember being. suddenly i came back to the real world without ever knowing that i had left. joy of joys. i wish everyone could have that feeling and have it mean something positive for them. when did i pick up my book? where was it sitting before i picked it up? what was i thinking when i decided to sit on the edge of my bathtub and just read for an hour? most likely i went in there to get something, but what, and did i ever get it? i do enjoy the mysteries of my life.
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| Friday, June 28th, 2002
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10:44 pm
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a long day hte ones i usually fill my spring and fall with. i was at park square at eight this morning to set up for this caorile kennedy book/ st. paul schools thing. we walk in and are informed that there were tornadoes in new york or somesuch and coroline kennedy couldn't get a plane this morning that would make it in time, so we were doing a phone interview instead. pause. everyone scrambles into motion, the stage furniture is rearranged, i get different mics out and move the podium and technical director carl jumps on his motorcycle headed for his other theatre (one of three) to grap a hundred foot phone cord, the approriate phone adapters and a do-hickey that the press guy forgot for his set-up. within minutes there is mic cable run to the mult-box. an extra head set is put house right. kristin flies up to the grip to pull up the show lights htat are now in the way. carl returns. cable is taped. bard is repatched. the floor mics are moved and taped and tested. the tool shop phone is dusted and placed fetchingly on the side table and a pretty little shotgun mic is aimed at its speaker. test test. testtesttest. i even had time to run to the shop and help steve touch up the humidity-buckles in the stage apron. ahhhhh! done. so these people who bought really expensive tickets to hear caroline kennedy speak and get their book signed by her are treated instead to a phone interview! i had to turn down the high range and most of the hi-mid on the phone mic just to be able to get rid of the weird whine that comes form amplified phones, and it went rather smotthly due to our highly efficient mad-running-around.
afterwards, kristin and carl and i went to brother hogan's for sandwiches. good lunch company. carl is hands-down my favorite person to work for or work with. occasionally i will do work for free for his tiny little gremlin theatre company just because i enjoy it. he showed off his new captain america motorcycle. it has the exact paint sceme of captain america's bike. he says if he can find a white helmet with a star and a swanky captain america jacket he will travel the streets searching out teenagers to turn to suddenly and say "captain america says don't do drugs and stay in school!" its a neat 650 bike with no sissy bar. i prefer the bars, they give me something to secure things to.
then i went to the history theatre where i did nothing but charge season-ticket sales. for four hours, my nimble little fingers boop-boop-booped until i left at five-thirty with a credit card batch of 15,000 dollars. my new record, i think.
i took the bus home as i had walked to work and was now running late. i stopped home, and got in my car and came right back, this time to park square for the usual visiting mr. green
now i am home. i have been sleeping in for weeks and i am not regimented to my usual 14 hour days anymore. no socializing for me.
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6:26 am
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yesterday i went out to lunch with vozlo to the capitol hill cafe. its in my neighborhood. they always have good food, and it is the only placew i've ever received a carafe of soda so that i wouldn't run out before the waitress noticed i was out. a carafe of 7-up, i tell you. before that i dropped of a cd for 433 at his work. he shall now have his way with it, whatever he plans to do with it.
work at the history theatre box office was actaully prety busy. i was not on the phones, save a few calls to help with the overflow. its season ticket order processing time. trying to get thousands of dollars worth of orders done with the messy messy process we have going. its as streamlined as its going to get this year, but that still leaves the money part, the computer part, the printing laminating part, the stuffing and sealing and checking part. things can go awry.
park square was dull as usual. i'm not really interested in the people there. there are a couple people i really enjoy, but i don't hang out with them at work because i don't enjoy the other people around them. all too much gratuitous swearing and insulting language, if you ask me. i have never minded swearing in the past, but this is really unprofessional. the next show should be a lot better about that, uncomfortable in other ways.
then, off to the red dragon for laurie's last-day-of-college- salute. i had only planned to stay for 15 minutes maybe a half hour but i was sitting between good conversationalists and i was sucked right in. now my hair smells like smoke.
i'm up firly early so that i can be at the theatre by 8. to run sound for caroline kennedy. i find this to be a surreal way to spend a morning.
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| Wednesday, June 26th, 2002
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10:55 pm
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i got two pop-up books today. both as gifts. one was a simple step pop-up about forest abimals, and the other was a nicely complex one called "the museum of unnatural history" weee!
what don't i collect, you ask? hmm, good question. here's a list of the crap that i do collect, sometimes passively, sometimes not. lunchboxes, boardgames, books, records, other people's home movies, old photographs, pop-ip books, old yearbooks, and educational filmstrips. i wonder if i missed anyhting?
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10:24 pm
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today at the history theatre, nothing interesting happened. then i dropped of a drill and went to savers. i skated around for the last few hours. wednesdays are dull and do not require much work. that is why i work wednesdays at savers. then i ate rice. today is nichole's birthday.she is somewhere in her mid-twenties now, as she was before. 24 seems like the correct answer.
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2:57 pm
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boggle rocks! word games rock! people who play boggle rock! people who know all the words rocks! also, i am exceptionally good at rubik's race. i am super-syntigmatic.
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| Tuesday, June 25th, 2002
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3:04 pm
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on a fine tuesday such as this,
you should come to my house and play games with me.
impromptu board game party in the attic!
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4:10 am
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monday's playlist, for those who love them so.
dylan hicks - governor of fun
the kills - wait
the frogs - she was a mortal
th eloved ones - wishy washy woman
my favorite - burning hearts
th egrateful dead - hard to handle
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phil lesh & friends - celebration
6 string drag - bottle of blues
the collins kids - hoy hoy
robyn hitchcock - viva! sea tac
rick holstrom - knock yourself out (genome remix)
arlo - silkworm
dj shadow - six days
hem - leave me here
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new release of the week: mark mallman "th ered bedroom"
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dropsonic - did you notice?
klint - diamond
th ereplacements - buck hill
the smiths - oscillate wildly
the doves - the last braodcast
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snowglobe - muse
accident clearinghouse - speedin'
ronnie self - you're so right for me
th eunderbeats - foot stompin'
the monks - its monk time
the goosip - ain't it the truth
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the cells - silver cloud
the dead kennedys - winnebago warrior
the bomboras - war of the satellites
the short fuses - midway motel
the trashmen - miserlou
the clash - i fought the law
the rocking horse winner - orange blossom
shonen knife - top of the world
the strokes - last nite
cold memory - all the songs you know are damaged
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capitol k - god ohm
warren zevon - excitable boy
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sweep the leg johnny - transit must suffer
the beastie boys - watcha want
bs 2000 - no matter what shape your stomach's in
desmond decker - the israelites
stevie wonder - sir duke
ray charles - what i said (part 1)
puafua - springtime lovin'
elvis costello - (angels wanna wea my) red shoes
pete hoffman - dance card
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milky wimpshake - scrabble
swap meet - woodtick
boiled in lead - tapedecks all over hell
pixies - palace of the brine
holiday - its wrong to love
cibo matto - working for vacation
cornershop - funky days are back again
the pogues - sunny side of the street
they might be giants - jessica
cracker - tenn angst (what the world needs now)
the dustbunnies - drivin' gal
frente - bizarre love triangle
tom waits - (looking for) the heart of saturday night
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things that i played that are currently on 'the list' at kvsc
(things they have in fairly heavy rotation)
milky wimpshake, pete hoffman, sweep the leg johnny, cold memory, capitol k, the cells, the gossip, snowglobe, the doves, dropsonic, hem, dj shadow, arlo, phil lesh and friends, rick holstrom, my favorite, the kills.
of those, i liked: rick holstrom, hem, arlo, dj shadow, th edoves, capitol k, pete hoffman, and milky wimpshake. the cells were okay, too. capitol k made me happy. rick holstrom got the funk, i'm pretty sure pete hoffman is local, and milky wimpshake will definitely be played again and again. oh, and mark mallman's new album is cool.
local artists on today's list: dylan hicks, mark mallman, the replacements, accident clearinghouse, the underbeats, th eshort fuses, the trashmen, puafua, pete hoffman, swap meet, the dustbunnies. i suppose you might include the monks, too, but only one person in the band was from minnesota.
covers!:
th egrateful dead - hard to handle
the clash - i fought the law
shonen knife - top of the world
bs 2000 - no matter what shape your stomach's in
they might be giants - jessica
frente - bizarre love triangle
sweep the leg johnny - transit must suffer
and of course, the instrumentals, for when i forget:
swap meet - woodtick
the smiths - oscillate wildly
the replacements - buck hill
klint - diamond
bonus cool points if you can name the original artists that go with the covers (that's a challenge to you scott)
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3:32 am
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the drive back to the cities in these, the wee hours was definitely two-handed driving weather on account of the wind. to make up for that, however, i got a horizon to horizon light show of unparalleled quality. beautiful forked lighting would chain its way across the sky from one side of my windsheild to the other, filling the entire sky. every ten or twenty seconds this would happen again, and another blinding spider web would appear and disappear in seconds. science is so very cool.
my radio show tonight kicked ass. for the first time this summer, i was not bored stiff and counting the minutes until i could sign off. of course, i broke several station policies in order to create such a wonderful show. i got three phone calls. a summer late-night record for a monday. one was a request that, get a load of this, actually fir perfectly with what i was playing at that moment. usually people call in to request the absolute stinkiest song you never wanted to play. the other two callers were super enthusiastic slightly drunk people who just called to tell me that they loved what i was playing and i had the best mixes ever. who am i to argue with the truth serum of alcohol when it so favors my ego? one of the slightly drunk jodi-enthusiasts was a guy i had trained in at k-v about a year ago. all in all, if i had a cd made of most of the songs that i played tonight, i would listen to it a whole lot. playlist is forthcoming.
this monday afternoon shall forever be known as the flat-tire debacle of 2002. suffice to say that my dollar votes will not be nominating the tires plus chain for anything worthwhile. bah! to them.
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| Monday, June 24th, 2002
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2:25 am
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ah! no one appreciates a one a.m. episode of 'nature' like me. this week's show: the urban elephant. elephants, in case you were unaware, completely rock. one segment focused on a 12o acre preserve in tennessee that was founded by a former trainer so that elephants did not have to be chained and live in concrete stalls. then the program detailed the life of the last remaining solitary elephant in captivity, a 55 year old female named shirley who had been drafted into the circus at age five, sold to a small zoo after a leg injury and had since lived 30 years without setting eyes on another elephant. the zoo finally decided that they could not continue to meet an elephants needs and sent her to the sanctuary to be with the three other elephants there. at dusk when the third and final elephant came in from the fields htere was this huge trumpeting and it went on all night. no one could figure out what was the matter until they noticed that shirley and the last elephant in, jenny, were trying to get closer to one another (they had kept shirley in a separate gated part of the barn for her first day) and during the night of trumpeting and rumbling they had actually bent the steel gate with the effort. the handlers managed to get the gate open and they realized that these elephants were desperate to greet each other becasue they knew each other. shirley was the matriach of the herd at a circus in the fifties that also had jenny when she was an infant. like i said, elephants rock.
earlier today, alis and i saw brother of the wolf at the crappier dollar theater. it was a neat movie. french kung fu set in the seventeen hundreds. well edited. well worth our two dollars.
before that, i made supper using tofu. i haven't had much tofu, so i resolved to eat some this week and reassert my opinions. tofu is just plain there. it has no opinion of its own, it simply does what it is told and takes up space. this quality has never been a negative in my thought, so i guess tofu ain't bad at all. especially sauteed in soy sauce and lemon juice and put into a cream suace with mushrooms and chives and rice and stuffed into a tortilla.
the show this afternoon marked the fourth day in a row in which the stage manger has called wrong sound cues. not horrible mistakes, just verbal typos and nothing that threw me off at all, but still,it is frustrating to work under a distracted brain.
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| Saturday, June 22nd, 2002
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10:56 pm
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my mother left me pictures of my newest neice, whom i've not met yet. she's two months old. pictures of babies that age are creepy and not pleasant at all as they remind me of the pictures taken of dead people in the 1800's. blank staring live babies do not look natural when propped up against portrait studio velvet. creepy babies.
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11:41 am
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ack! suddenly my largest organ came unattached! translation: my skin is peeling wholesale from the burn i got two weeks ago. i am a reptile - koo koo ca choo
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| Friday, June 21st, 2002
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10:26 pm
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and car songs. i love car songs. 409. little gto. ad nauseum. nummy nummy cheesy goodness of 35 years ago.
while cat-petting for my vacationing friends i flipped through the cable channels at random and hit upon some cable access show form the late eighties. the man speaking was explaining about the minnesota clogging association...unable to look away i then focused on the square dancing dresses of the two spiral permed late-teenagers flanking him and his curly blond mullet. suddenly they prepared to dance! the music started and it was play me some mountain music...like granma and granpa used to play... after about thirty seconds of this, however, it became bust a move! oh my goodness! a trio of clog dancing central minnesotans in square dance outfits imitating fly-girl moves in soft leather clog shoes with split taps! they danced to the whole song and i watched the whole thing.
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2:09 pm
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on thursday i puttered and doddered about. really. i am a big not-going-in-to-work-slacker. more strawberry picking, i watched the movie 'gentleman jim' starring errol flynn. work went quickly again and then it was off to kung fu grilling. i had marinated my chicken all day! my chicken was the prettiest and tangiest of all the pretty tangy chickens. that, and i stuffed it with parsley, kale, garlic, onion, butter and dill. then lemon pepper on all its surfaces! yummy yummy little chicken!
the police told us that our stoop hanging out was too loud and we moved inside, stayed too late, and a good time was had by me.
today, more laziness, then another show. i cannot decide whether i want to go to the indiana jones movie at midnight. that's the laziness talking.
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| Wednesday, June 19th, 2002
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10:55 pm
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some of you are familiar with this facet of me and some are not: i love trucker songs. that's right. six days on the road, eight stools and a promise (at the old home filler up and keep on truckin cafe). trucker songs are cool! so in the stack of records i picked up at a garage sale last week, there was one called road songs, a two album set of nothing but trucker songs. i was just filing it today and i noticed the prominent "cover concept by cecil b. otto"
near the bottom. then i turned it over and asked myself if he would be especially proud of this particular cover concept. it is a perky breasted woman in cut offs and impractical shoes and a backpack slung over her shoulder. she is standing in front of an average looking peterbilt and has her thumb out. it is the trucker version of a neon sign flashing 'status quo records inside'. concept!
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9:55 pm
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today i worked at my thrift store and the five hours went more quickly than usual. i cashiered for some of the time, which was refreshing as i have not cashiered there in months. i got to use my superior customer service powers which have lain in wait these many moons.
i bought myself a yahtzee game. i have never owned yahtzee before, now to find willing yahtzee participants! i also bought a 'murder she wrote' board game. my sub-collection of strange television themed board games grows stronger. it has a big awkward artist's rendering of the irrepressible jessica fletcher on the front.
my co-worker lucy is sold her house and is moving to a condo since the death of her husband last year. (she is 74, they were married for 56 years, i think) she decided not to keep her records and, knowing that i have a lot of them, she brought me a trunkload. four boxes. the albums are nothing special but the 45s and 78s are special enough. she says she has more that she can't locate in her storage locker just now. oh lucky happy me.
i spent the last hour of work 'trying out' a pair of roller skates that more or less fit. i moved with accuracy and efficiency as i sped from dressing room to cash register to jewelry counter with superhero speed. there were a few moments of unmitigated peril as i tried to switch direction by pivoting on my toe-stops. this pair did not have toe stops at all. i wonder if i could get away with such an obvious safety hazard more often.
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12:05 am
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today was a work free and volunteer gig free day. unadulterated non-obligation. i woke up a little bit earlier than usual, was visited by the church of the latter day saints around noon, made lunch and was well on my way to spending my entire day making cds and emailing when nichole staged an intervention. we stopped at fazoli's on robert street where customer service is a pleasant and constant ambient quality. fazoli's has, as far as i can tell, perfect customer service standards for a fast food restaurant. try it, dine in, you'll see what i mean. then we rented spy game which nichole had not seen. i dig that movie. then more strawberry picking, cat petting, and mail picking up. at least i left the house today, i won't be seeing much of it for the next few days. i've been not working enough lately so that i feel obligated to go put in some history theatre box office hours, perhaps i will spend tomorrow shredding documents. what a blissfully unstressful thing, that is. note to self, bring cd player to work.
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| Tuesday, June 18th, 2002
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1:53 pm
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skim at will...
this week's playlist, the first hour i played nothing but love songs or a reasonable fascimile thereof
the (c) denotes a cover, i keep track of them becasue occasionally i do an all-covers show.
the incredible moses leroy - beep beep love (c)
tahiti 80 - a love from outer space
u2 - satelite of love (c)
half japanese - futuristic lovers
love & rockets - hot trip to heaven
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tommy hools - barcelone
blur - london loves
the januaries - summer of love
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bottle and skulls - first love then war
gus gus - love vs. hate
the loved ones - the price of love
tuscadero - lovesick
kim deal & bob pollard - love hurts (c)
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the jesus and mary chain - i love rock and roll
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monday night new release of the week: hem
album: rabbit songs
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track star - feet first
lyle lovett - i love everybody
van morrison - these dreams of you
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all time quarterback - plans get complex
eels - not ready yet
arlo - bus stop
block - catch a falling star
claudio villa - stornelli amorist
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vida blue - most events aren't planned
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capitol k - capitol beat sticky
social distortion - down on the world again
the kinks - tin soldier man
luna - sweet child o'mine
bs 2000 - the side to side
aloha - theives all around us
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papa byrd - jimmy walker
the blake babies - i'm not your mother
the elevator drops - sentimental love
ben folds - annie waits
mull historical society - watching xanadu
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elf power - palace of the flames
love seed mama jump - clear to find
the halo benders - foggy bottom
rufus wainwright - cigarettes and chocolate milk
big audio dynamite - medicine show (live)
the doves - the last broadcast
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ron sexsmith - this song
astronaut wife - cape canaveral
gladys knight and the pips - take me in your arms and love me
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of those, i have to play a certain amount of new music from a certain selection of new cds:
tommy hools, bottles and skulls, track star, all time quarterback, arlo, vida blue, capitol k, aloha, papa byrd, mull historical society, elf power, the doves, ron sexsmith, and hem
track star is cool, all time quarterback is also cool, arlo and hem have both put out good albums this time around, the doves are way cool and ron sexsmith is still a damn good singer songwriter.
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