Tag: celesteh

Java Beans

I’ve submitted a request to SourceForge.net
 to have them host CVS stuff for the Just Intonation Calculator. They should reply within th
e next couple of days.
By Friday, it would be nice if the JiCalc would save and open it’s own files and also tab-dili
neated spreadsheet files. There’s some file IO code in it already, but it doesn’t work. Chand s
ays I should use some code form Enterprise Java Beans or something. I thought they just used a m
atter replicator to make coffee in Star Trek. I’m pretty sure that I saw Kirk make a mixed drink
that way on some episode.
Someplace, I have a book on Java Beans that I once read. I remember seeing Java Beans not as
pieces of code, but as a spiritual approach to code. Objects that could save themselves! Hallel
uija! They could load themselves too. In a way, any object that contains data could be thought
of as a bean, and since every object contains at least some kind of data, than every object is so
mehow a bean, which makes the whole idea of beans meaningless, since it’s just a way of thinking
of every object. Obviously, I didn’t get it. More importantly, I’d like to be able to deal with
files by Friday. Is file IO part of an “is a” relationship, or a “has a” relationship? Should
I add more code right to the TuningTable object, or should I have a seperate File IO class? Shou
ld I go read the OOP chapter of my programming languages book, or will some OOP programmer take p
ity on me and clue me in?
Mills offered a class on databases, but I didn’t take it, since it sounded boring. I think ma
ny of the programming questions that I’ve had in the years since would have been answered if I ha
d taken that class. Most of my questions have been about data storage and retrieval. I also zon
ed out on statistics in high school. And music theory in college. Alas. I’m going to try to so
ak up as much knowledge as possible in grad skool and let life sort out important vs unimportant
material, since my guesses about what will or will not turn out to be useful are often wrong. So
I say now, while I have zero study habits. If only, like a bean, I could come up with a way to
save myself.

More Gigs, Tatoos, etc

Thursday, Peter, the guitarist in the flute band, called to say that we couldn’t use his SO’s SUV after all. So Friday morning, I rushed out to get an oil change for the pickup truck and then we loaded all our equipment into the back and the three of us squished in and drove all the way to Eugene. We bonded. Talked about all sorts of things. I drove the whole way.
On the way up, I had shared Christi’s shark story. When Christi’s grandpa was a boy, his family drove to Florida and he caught a shark. He was so prous of this accomplishment, that the family was persauded to tie the shark to the roof of the car and drive back to California. Persumably, they planned to get the shark mounted or something. But it was summer and someplace right in the middle of the country, the smell of rotting shark became unbarable and the shark body was dumped in a stream. This story intrigues me. What happened then? Did someone find the hark? Were children henceforth disallowed from swimming in the stream?
Polly got excited about Black Butte, a small cinder cone next to Mount Shasta. There will be a song about this soon, I think. We got to Eugene and met Polly’s friend KC, with whom we were to stay. He explained that he just purchased a rental property and took us over there, where he stocked the fridge and said we could stay. Nifty. Then he took us to dinner at a good Thai place and give us an advance on the door for the Saturday gig.
KC and Peter stayed up talking into the night, while Polly and I slept. I woke up the next morning around 8:00, which is early for me, and went walking with Polly, trying to find the venue. We walked a long time and finally, I got some breakfast and she asked where we were going. We had passed it and so doubled back. And founf the bookstore Foolscap Books, our venue for the evening. It’s next door to KC’s new age shop. It was still too early for either place to be open, so we crossed the street to a Just Desserts-style bakery. Half of the things they sold were vegan. They had vegan muffins, vegan german chocolate cake, vegan parfait, vegan ecclairs, vegan cheese cake tortes, vegan everythign you could think of. The clouds parted overhead and angels sang and blew trumpets. I got a pumkin muffin. It was the best muffin I’ve ever encountered, vegan or non vegan. It was awesome.
finally, the bookstore opned up and we looked around and saw the PA. Peter finally woke up and came to look at the PA too. then KC’s shop opned, so we looked at that. Peter was full of questions about everything. The shop co-owner showed him all the ritual knives and explaine dhteir meanings and showed us a replica of the Sting prop from Lord of The Rings. Apparently, some neo-pagans want to rituals with short swords pictured in movies. The shop people showed us some stuff about cleansing rituals and a huge, heavy, shap sword that was for sale. Then Peter and I went with KC to Guitar Center while Polly went out to lunch with her friends from Portland.
I Peter needed strings. I just wanted to see if I could get a sales-tax free minidisc. No dice. I realized that I forgot my instrument cable, so I purchased one. Then we left so that Peter could string his acoustic guitar. We went back to our house and he unwound the lowest string and pulled it out of the groove in the nut. The nut broke. (The nut is the grooved piece of bone or plastic at the top of the neck that holds the strings over the finger board (and frets).) He and KC went back to guitar center to buy a new nut. I stayed behind and stared at charts, trying to memorize them better until I fell asleep in the living room. Polly returned and I told her about the nut and she looked highly alarmed. She had been getting progressively more nervouse about the gig through the day. So she went to meditate. Peter came back and started trying to pry the old nut out of the guitar. He spent maybe an hour. It wasn’t budging, so he and I went to a pro-level repair shop with his wounded guitar and the new nut.
The repair guy took out a tool and had the old nut out in two seconds. He looked at the new nut and declared that it wouldn’t fit. He went to a box of old nits and started fishing around for one that would fit and explained that he was doing Peter a favor, since they never fit, you always had to make a new one for the guitar. Nut sizes vary from brand to brand, from model to model and even from individual guitar to individual guitar. Apparently guitars have not yet experienced the industrial revolution innovation of interchangable parts. The repair guy said that he needed to make a new nut. It was approaching 5:00, the shop didn’t rent guitars and we didn’t know anyone to borrow one from. The repair guy had no leads on rentals. doom. the repair guy took pity and kept looking through his nut box until he found one that kind of fit. It was too short. He super-glued some stuff to it, shimming it up until it was almost tall enough. It was still too shot and too wide, but it was playable. Peter promised to send some repair work his way and we went back to the house.
I was trying to remember how to play one of the songs and it wasn’t coming to me. Polly was more mellow from meditating, but I was getting to be highly concerned. We wet up some speakers and did a run though. It was ok, so I felt better. I think we prolly all felt better. We loaded our gear into the truck and went ot the bookstore and set up. I was hungry, so while everyone else was sound checking, I went next door to get vegan tacos. Eugene is more vegan-friendly than Berkeley, I think. the Mexican place was selling big, one kilogram bags of Mate, just like the one Tiffany bought me several weeks ago. But they didn’t sell individual cups. I was still nervous. I knew mate would help. Should I buy a kilogram?
I went back Mate-less to sound check. We finished checking ten minutes after it was suppossed to start. The place was desolately empty. The openning act, a poet, was on her cell phone, calling up her friends, trying to get them come listen to her poetry. The organizers decided to wait half an hour in case more people showed up. A couple did.
The poet was awesome. I forget her name. She mostly talked about scoring chicks.
Then we were on. It went mostly without incident. I got off in the set list and had a refrain of panic where I didn’t know what song we were playing, but managed to get back on track. Polly introduced Peter and I. She said that I was a mills alum and that Peter had many other projects. We played songs. Polly did some solo stuff. By the time we finished, there were three audience members: Polly’s two freinds and one stranger. I made a resolution a few weeks ago to go to at least one concert a week. I’ve been falling behind on it, but I think I need to renew that resolution. People need audiences. The bookstore owner was apparently pissed to have made $8 on the show.
The sound guy, Sleeve, was excited that I went to Mills because he’s into noise music. Cool, a contact in Eugene. We broke down and went over to the dessert place and then went to a bar with just is three and KC’s neice, who was into Peter. After one round of drinks, we went back to our house and slept. It was around 1:00.
I woke up at 7:30 the next morning. I heard Peter and Polly talking to each other. Peter is not a morning person. I sprung out of bed, since it must be time to leave. It was 7:30. Peter crawled back to sleep, but I was up, so I had breakfast at a greasy spoon with Polly’s Portland friends. The woman was a wesleyan alum. She gave me her email address. She’s going to try to get her frat (it’s a co-ed frat) to host us in September at Wesleyan, so we could play a gig (or a few) after I left. Pretty cool. She gave me her email address She seems nifty.
And so we went back to pack up. While we were putting things in the truck, a barefoot guy with a banjo was walking down the street. I said I loved the banjo and he played a song for us and then went on. Eugene is a weird place. We left a nice note for KC and piled into the pickup truck and drove and drove and drove. It was much warmer on the trip down. we passed a thermometer that said it was 91 degrees F. No airconditioning. No radio. No room to move. We talked less on the way down.
Peter suggested we get off the freeway and drive though historic Dunsmuir, because he was curious and it would be a nice change of scene. We drove past the muffler man from Zippy the Pinhead. The one that Zippy goes to have talks with. There he was larger than life! My bandmates were not as excited as I was.
Finally, we got back to the bay area. We came over a crest and saw the twinkling of lights below and cool breeze washed over the car. Home! The only place with decent weather outside of the Mediterranean. We dropped off Peter at his home in Richmond with his stuff. Then went to Berkeley, where Polly dumped her stuff into her car. And there was christi, who I had been pining for all weekend. I told he that I saw the Muffler man. She said, “Really?? That’s awesome!” I definitely married the right woman. She had a cold and I was exhuasted, so we went to bed.
I slept past noon. Got up, ate some food, check my mountain of email, then went over to Precision to get a tatoo of a bass clef on my arm. It took around two hours. It’s black and blue and shaded. Now I look like a real bass player. It matched a tatoos of a peace symbol, that Christi got on her arm in the same spot, during my absence. Peace through music. Or something. I came back for Tennis Roberts rehersal. We waited around for Ed to show up and then called him and went for Pizza. We called him back after Pizza and he said he was too tired to practice, so we played as a trio for maybe an hour. the mics were still set up from flute back practice, so I tried singing and playing bass for a while. “New tatoo. Black and blue.” Not good at making up words on the fly and really not good at multitasking singing and playing at the same time, but I think I could get it with practice.
Tiffany came home and was tired, so we quit playing. Everyone left. Christi and Tiffany went to bed. I posted in my blog. I was instructed by the tatoo artist to take a hot shower, so I will go do that now. Then bed.

Tuning, Bass, Gigs, etc

Since last I typed . . .

I digitized that tape of Tennis Roberts first gig. There’s about 40 minutes of music, but on most of it, the guitars are inaudible. Apparently, the guitar players are shy. Anyway, I’m hoping to be able to pull out more guitar by EQing up the mid range and high end. And then maybe mix in a bit of reverb throughout to hide any artifacts. Maybe this will make it sound worse. I dunno. I tried recording our last practice, with the idea of getting a better demo tape, but mitch saw ProTools running and was inspired to start shouting/sining “happy elves” for several minutes.
I called Tammy about her fretless bass after the gig, because it’s such a great bass. Tammy called back and gave the bass to me. Not sold. Gave. Wow. She said that she wasn’t using it and I was, and so I should have it.
Several weeks ago, I lent a Moog Taurus II “brain” to Zeppie, since I wasn’t using it and I thought he might dig it. He called me back and asked to buy it and I didn’t get back to him. I had been thinking that I could sell it to him and use the cash for a fretless bass (since they’re worth about the same). But I don’t need to buy a bass now and I wasn’t using the Moog and he is, so I think that I’m karmatically obligated to pass the economic benefits of Tammy’s generosity along. I like the idea of musical instruments being traded around in an extra-capitalists, semi-anarchist system of use-based ownership.
I spent a few days trying to figure out why the Java Just Intonation Calculator didn’t make sounds, before I figured out that the answe is to ctrl-click it (equal to a right button mouse click). Unfortunately, this were days actively spent going through the code and futzing with it. So, throwing good time after bad, I added a piano keyboard interface to the program. It’s beta software, released in May of 2000, but folks I suspect were college students. I’m thinking of taking over the project, since they seem to have abandoned it, as it is pretty buggy and has . . . um . . . unusual design principles employed in it. All the heavy lifting is done, I would just do a little redesign and fix problems with layout, GUI, sound, file IO, and object oriented-ness. In the mean time, if you want a GUI piano keyboard add-on, send me email.
Christi wants me to take up the standup bass. She’s inspired by the bassist in Glass Beads and wants me to be equally hip and talented. I suggested that I should just get more tatoos to more closley resemble a professional bassist, but she insisted, so I’m making inquiries into renting a doublebass. Best Music rents them, but with a three month minimum, and I’ll be leaving in two. Forrest’s Music says that the instument is complicated and I’ll want a real symphony-type teacher, not just cheesy lessons in the back of a music store. Perhaps this will all come together this summer.
Speaking of tatoos, Christi says that I should not get an anarchist symbol tatooed on my arm. Nor should I get a small portrait of Che. I didn’t ask about a hammer and sickle. A peace sign is ok, as is a bass clef. These aren’t ultimatiums, but Christi is wiser than I am about body modification. If it were not for her wisdom, I might have gone ahead with plans for a Tazmanian Devil tatoo, that I wanted when I was young and foolish. I would have had to pay royalties for the image to AOL Time Warner. But are Che protraits just a passing fad or a leftist symbol that will stand the test of time?
Jerry Brown’s warehouse is for sale. I think I will try to get a tour of it.
I had practice today with the flute band. Tomorrow, I’m going to 100% memorize everything. And tommorrow is a recption or concert or something for Chen Yi that I failed to RSVP for, but will try to buy tickets for anyway. If that doesn’t work, there’s a protest against Clear Channel in front of thier building at the same time, which I could play tuba at. So my todo list is: get Chen Yi tix, memorize bass parts, find double bass, get tatoos, (maybe) get haircut, write Ratio class for the JJICalc.
Friday, the flute band travels to Eugene for a gig. My first with them. And it’s the first time that I’ve been paid to perform music not composed by me since 1994.
There’s not much else going on around here. Christi’s foot is still broken. The dog is scared of the dark and doesn’t want to go outside at night. Christi is reading a bio of Virginia Woolf. I just read Terrorism and War by Howard Zinn and am currently reading a book of shoirt stories by Phillip K Dick and a nonfiction called Trotskyism After Trotsky. Sometimes I stumble through the Just Intonation Primer and I’ve ordered a book on Smalltalk from Powells, as I continue to try to figure out SuperCollider, the music programming language of choice at Wesleyan. My strategy of late has been to install SuperCollider on computers that other people use, in the hope that those people will start programming in it and share information with me. I put it on Christi’s laptop and the imac that Tiffany uses, but have had no luck so far. Tonight, I tried putting it on Mitch’s computer, but there is a syntax error in some file, so it won’t compile. Alas. Goodnight.

Day of Homeland Resistance

so after staying up too late last night wasting my time and money and hours of my life, which I will never have back by watching something on a par with Bulletproof Monk, I got up early this morning to go to a protest outside of San Francisco City Hall. I showed up 15 minutes late and there was no one there. the date on my watch is mis-set, so I became convinced I had the wrong day. I started to leave when someone approached me and asked me where the protest was. so we went looking for it and found some other members of the band. We played one song and the sherrifs said that we had to stop since the protest did not have a permit to be near city hall yet. So we marched and played over to where the rest of the protesters were (by the bart station) and then listened to some stock speeches covering all leftist issues in one breath. We need jstice, housing, healthcare, peace equality, and end to evil and more good. Yes.
then we marched back to city hall, but the band did not play, because the protesters wanted to chant. then we listened to more speaches for good and against evil. then we did not play because the protesters wanted to chant. Then everyone was assembling into a freedom for Palestine march to the Isreal consulate. It was a funeral procession. so we figured out some funeral songs to play. But the protesters started chanting again and I decided that I didn’t want to carry a tuba over to a consulate and not play it. And i don’t know as much as I should about the Isreal/Palestine conflict as I should anyway. I bought a Chomsky book on it, but haven’t read it yet. so I took bart over to Christi’s office
I have recordings of all the speeches and one of the two songs that we played. I also have recordings of comments people made to me about the tuba on bart. the best/wort one, “wow, that’s kind of sexual.” thank you. goodbye.

Longer Movie Review

First, let’s talk about what was cool about the first movie. It was green and oddly timed. The whole thing was shot with this errie greenish, slightly-off feel to it. Everything was kind of decayed. It was awesome. and the soundtrack was really good. the product placement, coupled with the excellent cinematography made it the movie equivalent to reading Wire Magazine We’re all anti-capitalist now, but at the time, it affirmed our dot com lifestyles. The whole movie was like a matephor for working at a startup. Neo works at an office that represses him. The establishment gets him down. But then someone approaches with a crazy plan, they can’t even reveal until he signs an NDA. His personal life sucks after that. He eats gross food and lives in a funny little room, and his clothes are beat up, but none of this matters, because he spends all of his time hacking the matrix. And he gets the cool dot com accessories. He gets the nokia. the super-fast network connection. Um, some machine guns, but you know they’re suppossed to represent palm pilots or something. He becomes the uber-hacker. He’s thinking outside the box. there’s no sex in the movie. Who has time for that when they’re wortking at a startup? The scene at the very end where he takes off like superman, that representes the stock after the IPO.
Ok, now on to the current movie. dot coms crashed. cell phones ar enot as ubiquitous as they were. nobody is buying toys like that anyway. and most importantly, AOL bought time Warner, the company that made the film. and the film people smelled a franchise and brought in some new writers. so the new movie has sex in it. Do you ever need to see whats-his-face that plays Neo’s bare butt? nononononononoNO. but there it is, on the big screen, larger than life. there’s more sex than that too, but it’s pg-13 sex. It’s really pg-14, since the target audience is clearly 14 year old males. and they got rid of most that confusing science fiction stuff. and the women in it were a little too powerful and onconventional, so they fixed that. And the soundtrack was little too alternative and not hollywood schmaltz in the first one, so they fixed that. And wouldn’t it be cool if there was a big fight, like in a medival chalet with a bunch of armor and swords and stuff stuck to the walls, so that people could just grab them and start fighting?? what an original idea! i’ve nevr even heard of that except in 2186731647983624 james bond movies and other lame action films. Oh, and throw in a bad guy that speaks french. they even got rid of the product placement. There’s really not much to say in terms of the plot, since the plot was clearly an afterthought to the really really really long, violent fight scenes. i think if you have over an hour of special effects, you might forget to do some of the finishing touches, like texture mapping. the special effects in the first film were awesome. the ones in the second film were rushed through production or something. it was on a par with some video games that i’ve seen. unrealistic movements. lack of texture on fast parts. bleah. bleah. bleah.
Ok, now I know all of you are going to go see it anyway, becauyse the original was so awesome. It’s not the same movie. It’s got the same actors playing charecters by the same names in an entirely different movie. an action movie. one where the sci-fi component has been dumbed down to Trinity guessing a root password in one try and hacking an entire system in three keystrokes. It provides some unintended comedy.
But you’ll see it anyway because it was shot in Oakland. there is a long long long long long get-up-and-go-to-the-bathroom-come-back-get-popcorn-come-back-go-for-a-smoke-come-back long long chase scene filmed on 880. It’s a whole bunch of car accidents. I think it was about an hour of the movie of car accidents. they keep going back and forth over the same stretch,, but traffic never gets snarled, despite it being in the 880 cooridoor and there being so many accidents. I think maype it was suppossed to look like they were moving forward, but the effect doesn’t work if you know the freeway. I can only imagine what KCBS’s traffic report would sound like. and no news helicopters ever showed up. anyway.
the also tear up and down broadway. and they go in one of the tunnels to alameda. is this why the tunnel was closed every night for months? you can see all sorts of local landmarks. so go and you might recognize a restaurant or something. otherwise, there’s really no reason to see the movie. i want my money back. and it cost $3 for a soda. that’s sugar and water!!!! for three dollars. it’s an outrage. i wish i’d gone to a concert instead.

First Gig

So Tennis Roberts had it’s first gig last night. We were originally scheduled to play for one half hour at 9:00. But then Jennifer, the client, was talking to the Fez Tones, the band after us, about what time they would start. they had been scheduled for 9:00 and didn’t want to start later than that, Jennifer explained on the phone. Could we play at midnight instead?
This being a graduation party, there was a risk that everyone would leave before midnight, but we agreed to the move, deciding that it meant that we were headlining. Yeah, that’s the ticket. So we hauled our stuff over at 6:00 and then went to get dinner and came back around 8:00 or 9:00 and started drinking beer. I was wearing a blue glitter shirt, silver pants and a fedora. How often do you get to wear silver pants? Ususally Christi won’t let me out of the house with them on. I have to wear them at least 5 more times before they pay for themselves. Anyway, around 11:00, GI Jen showed up with her new girlfriend, who seems to be very nice. Apparently, she’s a Libretarian. We talked about that before she arrived. Mitch says that libretarians are just confused anarchists.
At midnight, the Fez Tones played an encore and then started packing it in. we started setting up our stuff, and they were surprised. “Whoah! There’s a third band??” So they announced that we would be on shortly. We set up and started playing to the 10 or 15 people still at the party. Christi was trying to convince Gi Jen and Nicole, her sweetie, to yell out silly song names and suiggest that we play them. They weren’t going for it, because, apparently, it sounded as if we actually had written songs to play and weren’t just making it up as went along. But they shouted out some rediculous name, like “The Haggis Resistance” and we said ok and exhaustedly played something. It was dern late.
Very soon, though, the only people left were our entourage + Micheal, the guy who works at the cafe and the clean up crew. So we serenaded the clean up crew for an hour and then packed it in when Ian, who is graduating and hence the reason for the party, announced that he was going to bed.
I think we’re the ultimate band to play at a party, since there are no acoustic elements, we can play at any volume. Need something about the level of your stero? We can do that. Need ear-splittingly loud music for a final going-awa-y piss off the damn neighbors party? We can do that.
No rehersal today, which is good, because Friday I played bass for 4 or 5 hours with the flute band, and thursday was Tennis Roberts rehersal and wednesday was four or five hours with the flute band and my back is really starting to get tweaked. I got a lifting belt yesterday so the sousaphone won’t screw up my lower back. Anyway, today is a no bass or tuba day. I’m just going to relax, edit the recordings from last night’s gig and study Just Intontation and maybe try some song writing with solresol. sicne I slept till noon and it’s too late to go to the beach.

Concert Review

Last night, I went to see two bands at 21 Grand. My primary motivation for picking this venue was that it’s a lot closer than the other two that were having shows. And it was awesome, so it was a good choice.
The first band was called Glass Bead Game. They’re a female-fronted quartet. the female front sings and plays guitar. Her male backband is drums, standup bass and a guy that doubles on violin and alto clarinet. Their songs are pop-y, but with definite new music influence. there was a high level of musicianship and the singer has a strong voice. some of the best playing came from the bassist who did some arco lines here and there. some of his bowings got didgeridu-like sounds and nice drones. the whole band had a nice improvisational feel, which may be because, as the singer explained, thay haven’t practiced together in a long time and not everyone knew all the songs. They were very entertaining and had good stage presence and banter. anyway, I would go see this band again. And I’m glad I saw them this time, since I was one of five people in the audience and I think christi and I were the only ones not personally known by anyone in the band.
The headline act was Peoples Bizarre. They play tunes based on Balkans and Eastern European folk songs. They have a stand up bass, a drum kit, an accordian, a cello, a violin and a guy that doubles on clarinet and bass clarinet. The clarinetest looks disturbing like The Onion columnist Jim Anchower, but played really well and wrote at least one of the songs, a nice mellow piece that mostly showcased the strings. the band was solidly good throughout, playing songs they composed. When they talked about the songs, they had a tendency to become academic, describing pentatonic patterns used in Albanian songs, for example. I appreciated the infomration, personally. They finished the set with a cover, which I thought was especially brilliant. The stock surf song that all surf bands play is actually a Hungarian folk song. So on their last piece, which had a section that either was that song or was very similar to it, their drummer switched over to a surf beat. It was awesome. I would definitely see this band again. In fact, I’m on their mailing list and I bought their record.
So I think I ought to strive to see a show (that I’m not playing in) at least once a week.

Top 4 free things to do in the East Bay

  1. The Albany Bulb
    Located right next to Golden Gate Fields, this old dump now holds a ton of art made out of junk. There are paintings, sculptures, mosaics, installations and more. Even a very small castle. See it now before the city of Albany buldozes it. Open during daylight hours. Indy Media Artcile
  2. Chapel of the Chimes
    Located in Oakland on Piedmont Avenue. This is a big building, designed by local architect Julia Morgan, that holds the ashes and remains of many, many people. It’s seperated into a bunch of rooms. Some are tiny. some are medium-sized gardens, some are large chapels. The walls are display cases filled with urns. Floor to high ceiling. Many of the urns are shaped like books, with the name of the person who is inside on the spine like a title. The ceiling is glass, so sunlight filters in. the rooms are very echo-y, given all the hard surfaces and very interestingly resonant, with obvious resonant pitches. some of the glass ceilings slide back to let in a breeze. Many of the garden rooms ahve fountains. Parts of the place are maze-like. Part is big open rooms. There’s something for everyone and it’s really interesting to wander through. Not all of the rooms are accessable. Open 9-5 daily. Official Website
  3. Doggie Diner Heads
    This is the largest tourist attraction in Emeryville, except for the Ikea. the dog heads sit on a trailer, just off Ocean avenue, between Hollis and San Pablo. I think they might be in New York right now, though. The Doggie Diner, a local restaurant chain, closed in 1976, but it’s emblem, a mona-lisa like weiner dog head, has enduring fame and is often featured in Zippy the Pinhead. These dog heads used to sit on poled in front of the restaurants. They’re big. They’re weird. They will make you laugh. You can go see them anytime, but they do travel and there’s nobody to call, so it’s hit or miss. Roadside America Article
  4. Indian Rock
    It’s a big rock in North Berkeley. Some people practice rock climbing on it, but there’s also a couple of stairways carved into it. It has a terrific view, so you can climb to the top and look at the entire bay area. It’s a great place to look at sunrises (although facing the wrong direction), sunsets, eclipses, meteor showers, stars, whatever. Technically, it’s open during daylight hours, but I’ve seen plenty of people there after dark, especially for unusal celestial events. The rock itself is not accessible, but the park has a little path through it that is. And the route there takes you through one of Berkeley’s three roundabouts. the biggest one! It has a fountain or something in the middle. Berkeley Parks Department Offical webpage about the park

busy busy busy

Today I did not play music. I worked in the Other Minds office, counting all their inventory, then filing and typing in surveys. grunt grunt. My arms and shoulders are sore, but this morning, they weren’t as bad as I thought they would be. After moving boxed of books and CDs off of shelves today, to count them, though, they have become sore. I am going to be so buff!
After werk, we went to look at the Chapel of the Chimes, but it closes at 5:00. So we went to get a copy of the Oakland Tribune. My picture is on the front page, below the fold! If you look very carefully, you can make out the tuba bell and then a silouette of someone playing it. That’s me! about 1/3 of a centimeter high! I’m going to scan it for your benefit, but actually, Christi has to scan it since she has the only copy of photoshop (since the old imac went away yesterday) and Tiffany is asleep in the room with the scanner, so it will have to wait.
Christi was very excited, despite the smallness and showed everyone in Gaylords the picture.
Then we went to micheals to get material to make Tennis Roberts sweatshirts. The raw materials were somewhat more expensive than anticipated, but that’s the price one must pay fo X-treme craftiness. We got white sweatshirts and pink and blue dye for them and puffy paint and glitter paint and ink jet sheets to print patterns on. the good old days of buying iron-on patches of everything are gone. These days Martha Stweard wannabes print their own.
My days are frivolous, but long. I think it’s good running around all the time right before grad school. I’ll get in the habit of it. And my chops will be great. I will be a super player of the bass guitar (with fretless skills, I think I could play a double bass also, if I had some time to figure it out) and of tuba. All my basses will be covered.
I think I want to get sousaphone player buisiness cards made. So when cute actavists tell me they thought the tuba playing was great, I can whip out my card. It should say:
Celeste Hutchins
Sousaphone Player
Protests * Concerts * Parades * Parties
And then an email address or phone number or something. Maybe not. Mostly, I want to be invited to play sousaphone at parties. Just in case.

Sousaphone Protesting

I meant to post first about Tennis Roberts and then talk about the protest that I went to today, but I ended up digressing so much into tuning that I feared Tiffany would just stop reading the post, since she has no patience for rambling about tuning. So I’ve broken it into two posts.
Christi’s uncle came over today to pick up our old imac. Late last night, I reofrmatted the purple imac’s hard drive and put OS9 on it and a few applications. It’s really much happier as an os9 machine. It runs fast and has a ton of hard drive space. But there’s something very sad about about reformatting a computer and not restoring it. It’s soul is gone. even if azll your data is moved over and you finally figured out how to move your bookmarks, it’s still… No two computers are exactly the same. They all have bit rot. But they all have it in different ways. I should light a candle or something for the repose of the soul of the purple imac.
Um, anyway, Christi’s uncle came over and we chatted for a while and then got lunch and then Christi started showing him how to use word. Christi’s uncle, Forrest, works in a dump. He drives the forklift around. Maybe he runs the whole place. Apparently he sees imacs at the dump all the time, but he didn’t know what they were until now. He just fished a plasma cutter out and now has a very nice welding rig. He says that he’s seen every item in our house at the dump. He didn’t know people were like that. What are they thinking about, throwing away their imacs?? Anyway, Christi asked him to fish them out. We could do some cool super-array of imacs runnign supercollider or something. It would be awesome.
So I left them to go play at the Okalnd docks protest. Last month, protesters formed a picket line across the entrance to the docks for APL, a military contracter that ships war materials around. The Oakland police shot at the protesters with “non-leathal” weapons and ended up also hitting some longshoremen and others. This was roundly condemned. I was in Seattle for the first one and missed it (which is ok, since I don’t really want to be shot at). But the BLO was playing this time, so I lugged my sousaphone on to BART. My poor horn is covered with duct tape, which is sealing off several leaks. Many people felt obligated to make duct tape jokes about it. Yes, it is ready for biochemical attack. I just used the tape cuz I like John Ridge. Anyway.
A large croud of people was assembled outside of the West Oakland Bart at 5:00. At the same time, a group of people was protesting outside of the APL building in Seattle. Cool cross-costal actavism. People were handing out flyers and maps and stuff. Other folks were addressing the croud about non-violence and strategy and various important annoucements, whcih I ignored in favor of adding duct tape to the horn. You can’t have too much duct tape.
some body gave a me a free newspaper that had in the mast head linked female signs with fists in them an a hammer and sickle. I was very excited to get the radical, communist, anarchist lesbian newspaper, but I can’t find the queer content in it. Anyway, One of the organizers, named Gopal, decided that the band should lead off the march to the docks. I was darn hot and it’s a long way to the end of the docks. I had to stop and pant several time during songs, none of which I had ever played before. The sax player who was being drum major would give me a quick run-down of the notes in the bass line, which I would promptly forget. But I was getting the hang of it the more we marched. and it was very nice to get a break at the last dock. I laid on the ground next to my horn and was then surrounded by press taking my picture. I guess exhausted sousaphone pkayers are picture-esque. Also, the horn is quite a bit bigger than me. I can see the captions now, “tiny sousaphone player can’t actually play horn.” Anyway, I might be in the Oakland Tribune tomorrow and the Daily Cal.
The rest of the band was coming in a 6:30 shift and was marching up from the bart station, so we decided to march back to gate 3 and meet up with them. The BLO is cool, because it has a strong emphasis on improvisation. We’ll play the head of the song and them maybe a verse or something and then the drum major will point at somebody and they’ll solo over the chord changes of the head. This goes on for a long time. Some of the folks a great solosists. Then we’ll play the bridge section, then maybe the head again and then maybe end the song. Some times we’ll sing the words instead of playing. So we played several songs on the way back to the gate and then played a bunch of songs there. We had just finished playing a very upbeat rendidtion of “We Shall Overcome,” when Gopal announced that we had oversome and had sucessfully stopped work at the docks for the shift.
So we all marched very triumphantly back to the BART station. It was a huge, jubulant crowd. when you see pictures in the news papers of giant crowds of leftist europeans carrying signs and celebrating because they won some thing. It was like that. We played and sang “Le Internationale,” but I only know the Billy Brag words and so couldn’t sing along. During the entire evening, the cops just sat and watched. Some of them bobbed their head a long with the music. They were completely hands-off. A definite improvement.
During the triumphant march back, my back was having no more of it. I had already been playing and carrying the horn non-stop for more than three hours. It’s a heavy horn. So I staggered back to the BART station, without playing anything. I felt vaguely guilty, but it hurt more than I wanted to deal with. Pain while playing music is not a good thing.
It doesn’t make you better, it just makes you hurt. Anyway, I’m sure I’ll have a reputatiuon for being the whiny new tuba player or something. I’m very embarassed that I couldn’t keep it up the whole time. I ought to be able to handle my horn. I expect that taking the sousaphone back up will get me back into shape though. And I expect that my shoulder is going to be screwed up for several days. All the weight goes on the left shoulder, high up, on the neck paert, right where I gave myself a nastly sunburn on saturday. But it wasn’t bad until the bitter end.
We got back to the bart station and I laid on the ground again. I think more news types may have taken my picture, but I’m not sure. After a while, my shoulder no longer felt like it was on fire and played a couple more songs with the band. Then I staggered towards the BART platform while they were still playing.
So we won! It was awesome! (“awesome” is the word of the day.) And very high energy the whole time. I couldn’t beleive it when I realized it was past 9:00 and I had been marching around for almost 4.5 hours. It’s also great because I don’t like going to things by myself and can’t always find anyone to protest with me. I can’t wait until next time. Maybe I’ll do some pushups between now and then to build some strength.