Prosaic Paradise

Just announced over at metalsucks.net, folk metal fans have a kick ass show coming to tide us over between Paganfests! Who knows – maybe this one will top Paganfest. So practice your own renditions of Wenches & Mead, because Alestorm is coming. Actually, while I enjoy the over-the-top pirate metal scene as much as the next gal, I am really looking forward to seeing Eluveitie.

So who’s in?

Other shows I am going to in the coming months:

Obviously ProgDay is coming up over labor day weekend. I can’t tell you how much crap I’ve taken about going out of town on labor day weekend. I understand that this is when many people plan get-togethers! But ProgDay is tied for the number one spot for “best thing I do all year” and I like it, to paraphrase Knocked Up, as much as kids like bubbles. Since I’m going alone again, I’m thinking about setting up a cooler full of beer with a sign that says “talk to me and I’ll give you a beer”. That couldn’t possibly backfire, could it?

Then Sept 10th I will probably check out Iris Divine with another Progression of Metal lineup at Jaxx. I emailed with Iris Divine and I think I will even be able to take the fancy camera to this one, so we’ll see if I can get any good pictures at all inside Jaxx with my meager skillset.

Later in September I’ll be going to see Porcupine Tree at RHL… soloing that one too, in case any readers out there are curious and want to join me, it’s not sold out yet!

In October we have Dragonforce and Sonata Arctica at RHL. I think I talked Maria into going with me to that one! Yay!

Tags: Music, shows

I finished a book for the first time in like, a year (since I started Anatomy & Physiology II literally 1 year ago). I know, stop the presses. I’d been hearing about Preston & Child with increasing frequency, and I needed something that was not too intense (though not as awful fluffy as TV-show-based mass market paperbacks). Relic took its time getting started, and for the first half I was unimpressed, but once things took off it turned out to be a pretty good action/thriller. I’m thinking it has ‘first book’ issues and the following books are probably better.

We also had a meeting of book club, and chose for our next book Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Having already read that (it’s great!) I picked off my shelf her autobiographical work Life Among the Savages. I concluded that she is the original mommy blogger. Dry humor? Pre-schoolers? Bemused Disenchantedness? It’s all there. Actually, if you have or have had any of these things, you should run right out and read this immediately. I’m talking to you, half of everyone I met at BlogHer.

For my birthday, Jen took me out to see the Young Dubliners. I had seen them many many years ago at Wolf Trap and I didn’t know what to expect nowadays, but I really enjoyed the set. Being at Ram’s Head in Annapolis, there wasn’t much dancing to do, but whatever. There were beers and sliders. But! I did get up my confidence and go up and compliment their drummer, because he totally rocked that set.

Speaking of birthdays, I also attended Pam’s birthday party this month. There was karaoke, which I’m afraid I was way too aggro about as always, and various bacon wrapped appetizers made by the fantastic Lars. We love Pam! Happy (belated at this point) birthday!

I also set about starting the great t-shirt surgery project. I have TONS of oversized or badly fitting prog rock shirts that drive me nuts. What I realized is that I really want to get that book before I start, because I edited my GRDC shirt and it looks like hell. So apparently I need a pattern. (I used an old shirt I like for a pattern, but the sleeve area was still a total catastrophe.)

Around the house, there have been some changes – we have a temporary housemate. My friend Jeff from my Camarilla days is staying with us until he finds a place! I actually find that I kind of miss having housemates. This is probably because I am conveniently forgetting the various “your stuff is touching my stuff and you ruined my thing and stop waking me up” episodes. Anyways, despite the fact that our poorly labeled local road got poor Jeff into a horrible accident on his second day of work, um, he is feeling much better now and will be in residence for a while yet.

Holy crap, my right arm (tattoo sleeve) is done. It took 2 years almost, but it’s done!

Now to plan the left arm.

Tags: book club, books, craft, Friends

Tonight not long after I walked in the door:

Me: I signed up to take guitar lessons at Laurel School of Music!
Jack: (air of faux petulance) Well, I guess there’s nothing I am allowed to do without Kim being good at it too.
Me: (ignoring him) Oh! Do you want me to see if we can take lessons together!
Jack: That doesn’t sound like a good idea.
Me: How could that not be a good idea?
Jack: What happens if the teacher asks us to do something and I can do it right away and you can’t?
Me: Then I will be an adult about it and I will work at it and try harder!
Jack: …that has not been my experience.

OK so I have been known to be competitive. But I don’t think I would be! Plus it would promote togetherness! Well I told him that I would come home after every lesson and teach him what I just learned. Besides, these guitar lessons are nice and close, far cheaper than my drum lessons were, and something I have a sudden and acute interest in, so whatever! I am going with it. I am not even listening to my therapist who, when I told her I thought I should take guitar lessons, laughed in my face because she thinks I do too many things.

Also I wish I could join a bowling league and I still want to learn horseback riding. God, my life is one long summer camp.

Tags: jack, Music

Before all the sturm und drang of Rock Camp got going, I had time to attend another fun event. Well, fun if you love pens, and look forward to looking at tens of thousands of them in one place. Yes, I am talking about the DC Pen Supershow. I’d been looking forward to this for almost a year, since it was late 2008 that I rediscovered my pen passion.

I had a little preparation for what I would witness based on my trip to the Philly show in January. That was sort of overwhelming for a novice, and this was like that show times ten. I did have a few things I was on the lookout for, but failing to find those I knew I would still learn a great deal just by walking the floor.

Telf and I started out by hitting the ink testing table. This was a delight! Though I wish they had been more diligent about replacing the rinsing water, and in retrospect it would have been smart to bring my own dip pen to use for testing. I really barely scratched the surface of testing things, and I could have spent another hour there. There were some folks who were very organized, and had full notebooks with a page for each ink! Something to consider for next year, I guess.

The result of my tests on gray inks was the most interesting fruit of that labor; I located and tried Levenger’s Smokey, Diamine Grey, and Noodler’s Lexington Grey. I don’t think that any of these will replace J. Herbin’s Gris Nuage as my favorite, but the Smokey is remarkable in its saturation and the Lexington is remarkable in its yellowed-ness. (Thanks to the Harmless Dilettante for all those amazing ink samples!)

After that, we retreated to the haven of a local thai restaurant to have fruity blue drinks and meet my friend-from-the-internet, Tom. It was a nice break and the food gave us the fortitude for the hours of pen browsing and potential haggling we might be doing after. Tom was lovely company and further proof that meeting other geeks from the internet (I hope he knows I use the term affectionately) is usually wonderful! (You can read his account and see his pictures here.)

One amusing note: I received more comments on my tattoos than usual from pen fans on this trip. One purveyor of pens commented that since he used to work in a prison, he somewhat associated tattoos on young women with criminality. I told him I appreciated his candor, but that he should perhaps get out more! The best comment though, was “I thought you had a tattoo of the design on a Danitrio!” Nope, sorry, but that would be awesome.

Instead of knocking things off my wish list, I managed only to add things. In this case they are:

• Parker 41 in Tourquoise
• Waterman Lady Patricia Ink Vue (see a stunning example here and a good history here)
• Platinum music nib
• Vanishing Point Ice Blue LE

The Waterman InkView is actually starting to seem like “the one that got away”. I saw three different ones at the show, but only one of them was green, but I had promised myself not to buy any pens over $100, and his initial quote was much more than that. But it had been restored, and I’m learning that it’s a peculiar one to restore. At any rate, he let me take a picture, so here’s the one that got away:

Note the crazy lever and how the diamond motif is repeated on the band, clip, AND lever. Why, oh why didn’t I haggle him down and bite the bullet?! That’s it, I’m emailing him right now.

Tags: Pens, Stationery

I’m walking down the hallway with 30 lbs of bass amp hanging off my arm; a horrible awkward weightlifting exercise that makes no sense under any other circumstances. It’s the 50th time I’ve been in this position this week, maybe the 100th. Three people I respect very much have just asked me for another nonexistent (or AWOL) microphone, and I have been forced to tell them “no”. THE red bass has gone missing again, probably due to my own faulty labeling. Three bundles of 10-year-old energy are doing some kind of gymnastic dance ahead, clearly trying to get me to drop a bass amp on my toe. But I hear a small sound from somewhere to my left:

Someone help me with my ponytail!

This falls on the deaf ears of the gymnast/dancers, who are apparently the worst friends ever. I look down and see an exasperated face and tired arms trying to hold up an elastic band around long frazzled hair that is clearly impeding the source of the Ponytail Alert’s ability to Have A Good Time.

What can I do? I try to gently let the amp rest on the floor (always be an example of good instrument care!) without incurring yet another bruise to my thigh and I solve a ponytail crisis. And I am thanked firmly and politely in a way intended to ensure I do not stick around to impede Good Camp Times.

And my heart grows three sizes and it’s one of the best moments of my vacation.

A vacation which involved several 10 hour work days that seemed far, far harder than that junk I do sitting at a desk the rest of the year.

And while at several points I thought “Heck if I will sign up for this again, what I wouldn’t give for my sweet, blissfully-free-of-drum-hardware cubicle!” within 24 hours of the final performance, the culmination of that week, I am thinking:

Next year, I’ll suggest we do the whole labeling system differently.

This post brought to you by the most amazing team of core organizers I’ve ever met, freezy pops, every volunteer that matched and exceeded all the physical heavy lifting I did with their mental and emotional heavy lifting, our team of roadies who made sure I didn’t have to lift amps a thousand times, everyone who loaned or donated equipment for the girls to rock out on, and many many more, but in particular a certain co-head roadie who was supremely cool-headed and big-hearted all week making any roadieing on my own part possible.

I would triumphantly say, “we did it!” except that what we did is only part of it. The amazing things the campers did – they created music, they brought all their energy and ambition and thought to camp, and they formed bands, argued, worked, played and sang their way to a wholly original show – those things are the point. They did those things in one week. If you came to the showcase, then you got to see it – they were amazing.

This post is all about Girls Rock! DC. The annual week long session just wrapped up but help is needed all year round to keep the organization rolling for next year. Consider making a donation or maybe even volunteering for 2010!

Tags: Music, Rock Camp

I tend to not like surprises. There is one context, however, in which I love them, and that is the musical context! So when I bought myself tickets for this show, I knew I was in for some. I don’t know Dream Theater. My familiarity with the works of Frank Zappa are limited to a single listen to Hot Rats and seeing him on the Monkees as a kid. Queensryche? You mean those Silent Lucidity guys? I know. Foul ignorance.

So I’ve been bent on listening to new things and going to lots of festivals where I’ll be exposed to a breadth of prog diversity. Of course then the one band I love dropped off the tour. So, more surprises!

I still bitterly regret that Beardfish couldn’t come on this tour, but the most pleasant surprise of the night was one of the replacement bands: Bigelf. I knew when they rollllled that Mellotron on stage that I was going to be a happy camper. They are a west coast band who have apparently been around for over a decade. My favorite track from their set was called Neuropsychopathic Eye, which doesn’t even appear to be on their studio albums. Just my luck. But that ought to give you an idea of what you’re in for with this band.

Since I couldn’t bring in my fancy camera, and because I’m dutiful and buy seats when they go on sale we were sitting at the back, you will have to be satisfied with this LED-jumbotron picture of the singer from Bigelf sporting his mastery of two giant keyboards. (Some friends waited until the day before to buy tickets – and got 3rd row center. Sigh.)

That was not the only treat in store for me though. I enjoyed comparative newbie openers Scale the Summit but they lacked one thing that I always prefer – vocals. Their drummer was pretty amazing, clearly very talented. Melodic metal fans attending this show (who aren’t overly attached to lyrics & vocals like me) will be pleased if they show up early and catch those guys.

In between sets they allow you to text stuff to the LED-Jumbotron. My favorite of the night was “Scream if you are a lady and you didn’t come here because your boyfriend made you.” My boyfriend refused to even go! I screamed like a screaming thing and the teenagers in front of us cringed like their overly-youth-identified aunt was too far into her cups. I don’t care though because those kids have good taste in music!

Queensryche played a weird set. (They were only on the bill for this one date, for whatever reason.) It was weird for me in that their latest album, American Soldier, is based on interviews with soldiers across half a century. It was hard to understand the lyrics in the venue and with something like a concept album I really want to evaluate and think about what it means. I enjoyed some of the songs more than others. The straight-up metal nature of it is less interesting to me than some of the other bands on the lineup. They got me, however, with “Home Again” – Geoff Tate’s daughter Emily came out and sang a duet with her father about soldiers coming home – and there was a montage of just that on the giant LED screens. But not a single female soldier in the montage which was disappointing. Nevertheless, I can’t handle that stuff, coming to the experience with my own deeply embedded memories of my dad leaving on ships and coming home on ships. So I wept. At a metal show.

But the real prize, the best experience of the night, came from Zappa Plays Zappa. Holy Crap. I hope it’s adequate for me to say that while I saw 5 bands Saturday, one of them alone was worth the price of the ticket. Two tickets maybe. Astounding musicianship.

We stuck around for the first two songs of Dream Theater’s set. I never quite got into Dream Theater, but in deference to Mike Portnoy putting this whole thing together, I wanted to try. My show buddy and I felt the same way: we love the music, but the vocals just grate. Maybe it was the live setting, I don’t know. I had major show fatigue at that point so we departed that we might dissect our experience over diner food.

Tags: Music, show, shows

Genie’s latest Living Out Loud project challenges us to talk about our name, or names. Mine is pretty boring, and I like it: Kim. I never harbored fantasies of being a Serena or a Fiona or a Zelda. I like the letter K like it’s the best letter in the alphabet and I have weird attitudes about letters. (See: My strong dislike of the letter B which has no good reason.)

Of course, I was given the name Kimberly. Very few people over the years have used that. My parents, from time to time, although less so now that I’m grown up. But I also have an ex that called me that. Hearing my full name from him was special. It’s a fond memory that I’m glad I still have after that relationship ended in a flaming-train-wreck, collateral-damage kind of way. I have no idea what my therapist would say about it but I kind of prefer to stick with Kim so that fond memory remains.

Of course, there are adulteries of the name people could use. Here is one way to stop being my friend: call me “Kimmy” more than once, after I kindly ask you to stop the first time. Actually, I’ll probably give you a couple of chances, but if you persist, I will think you are a class-A douche.

I am chock full of ideas for names for my own kids. That I have no plans to have yet. Yesterday I told Jack we need to have kids so that I can name them (my secret name idea). I think this means I should continue to only be allowed to name cats and RPG characters for now.

Tags: Living Out Loud, Self

At one point last weekend during dinner I said:

“I don’t want to be too high-maintenance [for the waiter] by replacing salmon with tuna.”

And Megan said two of the potentially most productive words in the english language to me:

“Shut up.”

It wasn’t rude. It was friendly. It was a favor.

All weekend I apologized for things – getting in the buffet line, entering a conversation, maybe sitting at the wrong table at breakfast. Some things were perhaps apology-worthy. Some were definitely not.

Then at some point deep into the weekend I apologized to Genie for the fact that she left her key in her room. Yes, that is right, I reflexively apologized to her for something she did.

At that point I had a minor meltdown and that was it. I was on leave from apologizing for the rest of the weekend. Now, I’m sure I superfluously said “I’m sorry” a few more times… OK many more times… but it’s just like quitting many bad habits. Sometimes it doesn’t work the first time.

With Girls Rock! DC coming up I have got to get a handle on the gratuitous apologies. One of the first things we teach the girls is that if they spend their entire band practices apologizing to each other for their ideas, for screwing up a part, or for trying, they will not get anything done.

When I went to Ladies Rock Camp in Portland, they taught all the women this too. We banned “I’m sorry” from songwriting, practice, and rehearsal. You would not believe how much time this freed up every time someone said “Shut up. You do not need to apologize. We’re moving on!” We got our time back to be creative, freedom to think and act.

So! If I apologize to you and you think it’s unwarranted, I hereby give you permission to do like Megan did and tell me to shut right up.

And this is my first notice: if you’re local to DC, get some tickets to the Girls Rock showcase! Do it now! It’s pretty muchunforgettable and awesome in every way. It’s at the 9:30 club, it’s early, and it’s only $10. (Or more if you donate along with your ticket price! Which is an option!)

Tags: introspection, Rock Camp

When I walked in the door from BlogHer the first thing that greeted me was not my loving, angry, stupid cats, but a flyer from the city informing me that there would be a council meeting the next day about our very own street.

So tonight I zipped on down there (in my flip flops and hoodie because I was out of time – although no one cared) to the municipal building and heard what was going to happen.

They seem to have found that 20% of the drivers are going 10 miles over the speed limit. In the past year there have been 5 incidents, including a pedestrian hit. From where we sit, within earshot of the intersection, we hear all the near misses too – and everyone else who hears them from their front windows was there.

It was great! I got to meet so many of my neighbors who, through neglect or busy schedules or our own general anti-socialness I had not met before. I met Jeff, the guy who put in the cobblestones down the street – now I’m so going to be bugging him with recommendations on what to do about our gravel.

I got to meet the former mayor of our town and his wife. She informed me that his brother ran through our porch in 1952. He was not the last, so I hear. Our porch is positioned very attractively for motorists.

The long and the short of it was – they are trying some traffic calming measures. Nothing we say will get them to put in that fourth stop sign because of the amount of cars that go through. (That is a repeat of what I learned in 2007.) Most of my neighbors feel exactly as we do. Everyone would love a roundabout but they would practically have to bulldoze our house, so no. I have been educated!

Tags: local house

All the way out to BlogHer, I was thinking, why I am I going here?

All during BlogHer I thought, why do I blog?

And in the aftermath of BlogHer I keep thinking, when can I write?

It was an idea that Genie put in my head, since I do enjoy blogging and over the years have appreciated it for many reasons and justified it in many ways, all of them still applicable. So it seemed completely obvious to go to a really fun conference about it with one of my bestest friends in the whole wide world. And in the aftermath, the whys of attending are easily answered in the interesting connections I made and in the gamble of possibly making new friends in the process. Plus:

• I got to ask the MamaPop panel something in person that I am typically stuck asking the glowing image of their website on my screen on a daily basis: What about feminism?
• I got to eat a single $9 piece of sushi. (It was only maybe worth it.)
• I got to put my mala to heavy work during the whole flight-out debacle.
• I got to know my roommate Megan better, in a way that involves eye contact and comedic timing and repartee.
• My social mind got so much exercise and challenge.
• I got extra drink tickets (at a party that involved eating unicorn cake butt) from a mysterious hottie.
• I got to be inspired by blog warriors and activists in the Leadership: Hope and Change panel that reminded me that I don’t need to have a thicker skin to fight the man a little here.
• I got to belt out “Wheel in the Sky” on the karaoke stage.

Sometime Saturday I tweeted my new definition of the word ‘celebrity’ (paraphrased): When a person has more people interested in them than they can interact with in any substantial way. Obviously the word has a real meaning, but thinking about the dynamics of an event like this had me really questioning the way my reasons for blogging interact with my reasons for going and just how much of an attention whore I really am. I sure as hell got out there and “networked”. I admit I hope to see more hits to my site. But truly, it’s all for naught if I can’t meaningfully interact with the people who come here and read what I have to say, since I don’t want to write a book and I don’t want ads.

I’m really glad I went. I have pages of notes to filter through to see if there’s anything else I want to report to you guys about my trip. But for now I leave you with the glowing smiles on the faces of myself and my posse that hopefully explain why BlogHer was so awesome:

Tags: blogher