A Stupendously...Boring Evening
Here I dreamt I could play guitar.

In my geek lair on New Years Eve. Alone.

Also-rans
Aw, that's not fair, just some other bands I really liked this year:

Morrissey's glam comeback. He's still the same old mope, maybe a little more misanthropic in his old age.

I realized that I like Sufjan Stevens WAY better than Pedro The Lion. Those are banjos?

Corrina Repp ("Order Girl" at the HUSH/Decemberists Shop). When you send away for stuff she writes little notes with hearts and says you're super duper. Alas, she does it for everyone, not just me. But she gave me her own copy of the spring tour poster, which is super duper cool of her. I like her breathy, streched out music. It's relaxing, but not in an elevator music tune it out way. You still want to listen intently while you're relaxed.

Once again, thanks to Amazon for the art.

You Know It Makes Sense, Don't Even Think about It, Life and Death are Things We Only Do When We're Bored

Year-end music report:
I'm not gonna list albums that anyone can read reviews of and top ten lists of at Pitchfork or wherever. They all just copy each other anyway.

I will say that The Tain might be my favorite for the year. I can't get enough of that opening riff, or the climax, the "hush now, baby, don't you cry" part.

Robyn Hitchcock's Spooked was a real return to form, a jump back like 10 years or more.

I really got into The Long Winters' albums. A brutaful smile, indeed.

All things Carl Newman and Neko Case related are wonderful, I discovered.

Franz Ferdinand ended up being the bastard child of Joy Division and Blondie. Once Take Me Out was coopted by the NFL I was done.

The Arcade Fire...blah blah blah. I'm just not nuts about them. I have an mp3 from the in-store that Robyn did for me and Brian Nupp and Michael B and few others where it came up on the store stereo: "Wot's this, then?" said the long grey-haired troubadour. "The Arcade Fire," replied the helpful clerk. No response from Robyn. "The Arcade Fire," he repeated. Robyn's mouth twitched but he didn't say a word and looked away. Arbiter of taste as well as creator of rare beauty, that Mr H.
Best concert:
The Decemberists, Schuba's, Chicago, April 2. My first chance to see them live. Matt came with me and it was lovely.
Next best concert:
The Decemberists, The Metro, Chicago, June 4. Or maybe them at the Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland, September 24. Or maybe at Little Brothers, Columbus, October 17.
Other notable gigs:
Magnetic Fields at a big fancy auditorium at Ohio State. Still cool. Artsy venue fit them quite well, actually. The Long Winters opening for The Decemberists. Tom Heinl doing the same thing.
In a class by itself:
Robyn at the Beachland on November 8 (and his intimate in-store right before it). He played all requests and was very friendly and open with us all before and after.

It Could Have Been a Brilliant Career
Wowee!
I just received word, through the binary magic of the internet, that Stuart has answered my question at the B+S site!
Wow! I'd already sent a few but never got picked, so I just figured the Decemberists had tipped them off that I'm an annoying fanboy. Of course, neither my question nor its reply is very profound (no offense intended, Mr Murdoch), just sort of informational.

Money Doesn't Grow on Trees, Either
So, it's a political mural? I thought it was just a penis tree.

G-rated version.

Gifts Report
Gabe got SuperMonkeyBall2. Even better than the first SuperMonkeyBall! I really like the target shooting game.
Same got Rocket Park, which is a motorized amusement park for Matchbox cars.
Lauran got all kinds of cool stuff, some of which were from me!
I got a calendar of Spam, a plug in heated travel mug, and that amp I mentioned. Also the usual shirt, sweater, scarf, mug, etc, all of which were much appreciated, since I hate buying clothes.
I wish I hadn't sent the guitar to the shop.

So This Is Christmas...

Don We Now Our Gay Apparel
No way!
Way!
I got a notice to serve on jury duty today!


Newcastle, actually. Artistic license at work.

Give the People What They Want
Search words that brought people here:
kirsten gumm robyn hitchcock site everythingnotrelated.com mp3 live warp woof wimble decemberists bridges and balloons chords or tab guitar picaresque tracks royal ubiquitous handycam erotic advent calendar pps parent directory mp3 or wma or ogg bootlegs and classic movie bit anime lyrics sweet on a green eyed girl joe strummer telecaster red right ankle tab mcenroe video pokemon 15 cannibal kings yu-gi-oh the show as pron picaresque download lyrics infanta joanna newsom tab grace cathedral hill attack of rednecks sea cucumber sushi tubeless road tires tarkio colin meloy rezillos rebecca twigg steroids reason refills strings live recording schubas paul simonon spouses comic the sporting life lyrics gay colin meloy ada twirling drumsticks pictures pierce ears or pierced ears potato needle how they love the sporting life girls gone wild 5 image of linus reciting luk Christmas 16 military wives shriekback sufjan stevens Christmas flutaphone music white album hitchcock the believer godspell bit torrent stephin merritt faggot telecaster replica full size-plywood angel easter and davis phinney blood doping love and rockets

A present for my mother in law. She's a cat lover.

Today I am remembering the time when they pulled me back and held me down and looked me in the eyes and said you just haven’t earned it yet, baby, you just haven’t earned it, my son
At the crack of dark I went to find about a foot of snow. Off in the distance I could hear the whine of snowblowers.
I busted my hump shoveling it, and it's still snowing. Society goes to the trouble of inventing labor-saving devices and I don't even have the decency to use them! How ungrateful am I?


Also, the great guitar project saga continues. I took it to the shop, the young guy there loved it, the older guy the manager loved it, the owner/chief repairman didn't seem impressed and said they're swamped with work and he'll tell me later when it will be done. *sigh* But my mother in law asked me what I wanted for Xmas and I said "a real amp" and she said, "OK, go buy one." So, in Toledo the other night to meet up with old friends, I made us all stop at the Guitar Center. I had my eye on that Fender Frontman 25W, but they were sold out, so the guy there took me to the Vox section. Legendary amps of the British Invasion! I should not even be allowed in their presence! We played around briefly with a Valvetronix. It has a tube (valve in UK parlance) preamp and the rest is solid state. It has 11 different digital amp models, most of which sound real, and a whole slew of effects and parameters I don't even know what to do with. It's PLENTY loud, even though it's only a 15W'er (tubes seem to do more with less wattage) and sounds really sweet, even with my cheapo acoustic. A Fender tube amp is about a grand, Marshalls even more, so this is a great compromise and more than enough for a sucky player like me. Robyn used a Vox with his Tele in Cleveland. It might have been a real AC30 or perhaps the Valvetronix 30 or 50.

Wishlist
A brand new car
a twangy guitar
a cute little honey
and lots of money

All Strung up with No Place to Go
Very cold here (single digits), so a good day to finish up this project.
The pickups aren't quite at the right heights, and a bit hummy (as I hear single coils often are), the action needs to be lowered, and the intonation set up properly. But it's pleasing.

All Wrong
Wrong wrong wrong, on so many levels.
Someone tried to use this site to get to "er*tic advent calendars."
Well, duh. There's no day 69!
I suppose someone could (and does) make some sort of sex advent calendar, but I shudder to think...
Of course, it could be a bunch of Saturnalia revivalists. I'm sure there's a group of them out there, like Civil War reenactors, having toga orgy drinking parties. All in the name of history, of course.

Triumph of the Will

Pick Me!
Custom picks, don't really cost more per pick than the ones in the little pigeonholes at the shop, so why not?

Destroy Us All! Destroy Us All!
Sam walks around the house chanting this. He got it from that macabre Cartoon Network show, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.

This morning Lauran and Gabe told me that Matt is 2 inches taller than me. I protested, but they insisted. I think it's a sort of optical illusion, as he has a slightly slighter frame than me, so he just appears to be taller than his big brother.
And my hair isn't grey, it's "light blond."

What a Freakin' Mess


Also, this is a blog. That's all. I think I once said earlier that it's not some kind of window to my soul. A lot of the stuff here is throwaway--the doodles, the thoughts. Not the stuff about the kids. That's very important. But no one else cares about it. It's like the annoying mom with pictures of her kids on buttons on her coat and on her key chain. Everyone but her ignores it.
And some of it is fake. Well, no it's not. But maybe it is. How would you know if it is? Disingenuous R Us.

What Words Cannot Express
I was checking out the electronic parts to this old guitar kit thing, and I noticed that the ground wire, coming off the tone pot(?) is too short. As I test-fitted it, it pulled right off! Tomorrow I'll take the control plate to the guitar shop, as I am not handy with solder and wires.

What's That Smell?
Lacquer fumes have given me a terrible headache.

The Secret's Out!
Take a good look, this is all you'll see for a while.
While you're looking you can notice that the word that was supposed to be a secret, only visible in the dark, is quite visible in the light. Damn!

Matthew (via iChat) and Lauran (in person) have both said it's fine, cool, and even "punk rock", but I suspect they're just being nice. But I have to live with it because it's not possible to sand it off without severely damaging what's underneath. Oh well, I guess it's the will of Art Itself, being assertive.
It is apropos, however, for several reasons (which is why I included it in my design).
1. I am a fake guitar player.
2. It is a fake Telecaster.
3. Those aren't real vines and thorns. They're just a painting. (No, really!)
4. It's not even a real painting, since it's really more of a design that recalls my paintings rather than a painting in its own right, though it is, of course, painted. (A tired old po-mo joke.) I planned it and then executed it, rather than letting the drips and my imagination (and iconography) tell me what to do.
However, I must add that the very fact that it includes glow-in-the-dark elements is hilarious to me. And it looks really cool in the dark (and under blacklight I'm told). So...that's the verdict. It's hard to get shots of the glowing, but I'll try with a real camera and a timed exposure.
Oh, and the reason you won't see it again for a while is that after it gets lacquered it takes a week to cure before it can all be assembled. That's all. Next stop, under the Xmas tree, since it is, ostensibly, my present.

Another Other Art News

This one is also a dartboard. That last one has a secret glow-in-the-dark word.

Side note: not everything tastes good with capers on it.

In Other Art News

Dalek Dolls
A few weeks ago when Gabe was really into Star Wars, he asked me to make him a family of robots. So I put together these guys. I don't know what's become of them since.

I got Gabe a DVD of Phantom Menace at the music exchange place in Toledo. It's OOP, so it was either 10 bucks there or like 22 on Amazon (for a used DVD!). I think I made the better (and instantly gratifying) choice. I checked it last night to make sure it had no bad scratches or problems of any sort, and, I must say, as a film it's not as bad as people say, but I still felt a little queasy with all the sort of backwards/bad guy races sounding, well, like African-Americans or Jamaicans. Um, isn't that good old-fashioned Hollywood racism? Perhaps I'm being overly critical, but I can't imagine how no one could have said to George, "Hey, you might wanna not have the Gungans sound like gangsters (or slaves from Gone With The Wind?) on helium. Before we spend $500 million bucks on the thing, maybe we should change that?"

The Truth

The Cure
Nothing to do with Robert Smith, my favorite non-drag queen bright red lipstick-wearing celebrity.
The lacquer clearcoat I sprayed onto the neck requires a full week to cure before it can be sanded, rubbed and polished. Sheesh! So, in the meantime, I started work on the front.

One thing that you can only see with your nose about an inch from the body is that the layers of paint seem to float above the other layers, and the metallic gold and yellow and red underpainting peaks through with a sort of warm glow. That's because inbetween each new layer of paint I put a layer of polyurethane.
Lauran said, "It looks like a lot of your other paintings." "That's the point," I replied. When it's done I want it to look like I lifted a painting off the wall and started strumming it. I still have to finish up some painting on the front, seal it, then do the back, seal it, add my name and year stencil, like all my paintings, then spray the sides with invisible yet glow-in-the-dark paint so it'll have a sort of halo, add a secret glow-in-the-dark word to the front, clearcoat the whole thing, let it cure for a week, etc. Then I after I assemble the whole mess and it hopefully works I'll take it to the guitar shop for a proper set up for intonation, etc. So, sometime early next year I'll be able to play it.
Well, let me clarify: I'll be able to play with it. Simply saying I can play it is still a bit of a stretch.

It's time for tea and meet the wife

Stiff neck. Needs clearcoat still, but has gold script logo, like a famous manufacturer. Thanks to the guy at manchesterguitartech.co.uk for giving me the CAD file of a real Telecaster head. Thanks to Jamie and his access to a graphics shop for the vinyl stencil of my signature.

After a while you start to smile now you feel cool


The good people of Ohio tried harder than previously reported.(CNN)

Everybody knows there's nothing doing. Everything is closed, it's like a ruin

Patience.
What you can't see is the layers of paint, the drips, splashes, swishes, and sprays that weave a lovely tapestry of textures.

And, yes, behind it is the logo for my site redesign. To come. At some point.

Good Morning Good Morning Good Morning
I've got nothing to say but it's OK.


Well, except to remind everyone that all my paintings start out with a similar mess underneath. Don't worry. When this dries I'll add some more and it'll start to take shape.
Did I mention that it'll glow in the dark? Oh yeah.

Let the Games Begin!
So, the pack mule (UPS) stopped at the house yesterday.
This is the last time it will ever be so...untouched. After seeing the bright candy apple red finish on the box, I, for one fleeting moment, considered doing a "normal" finish. But then I immediately remembered that the whole point is to do a painting on it. It would be very cheesy to try and make it look real and pretend it's a real Telecaster. Plus, I hear Fender gets angry with people who pass off these kits as the real deal (you can buy decals for all eras on eBay). But any guitar geek worth his string squeak could tell it isn't real, since the strings don't pass through the body, like a classic Tele, the saddles aren't quite a Fender design, and the back is contoured like a Strat. So, a unique work of "art" it will be!

The Season, Tis
Snagged the Belle & Sebastian Christmas album over at...well, a site that specializes in such things, shall we say.
It's lurvely.
Even when the drunken choir sings.