beautiful, funny, sad & true

Just for fun, I thought I’d post my list of musical instruments. What would be even more ridiculous is to put them all in the room with me and take a picture of them, but I’m not sure that’s even possible. The room’s not big enough to hold all of them, and have them out at the same time. Man, do I need a studio space!

[edit: I’m in the process of editing this entry, since it didn’t translate well when I made the switch from Blogger. Stay tuned for pictures and links.]

KEYBOARDS:
Kurzweil K2500XS synthesizer – Truly the king of beasts
Roland XP-50 synthesizer
Roland JX-3P synthesizer
Ensoniq ESQ-1 synthesizer
Yamaha DX7 synthesizer
Yamaha PS-20 synthesizer – these are so rare that there’s almost no info online.
Siel MK-610 synthesizer – I’d never even seen or heard of another one, ever.
Yamaha SHS-10 ‘keytar’ synthesizer
Casio SK-1 synthesizer
Casio SA-38 synthesizer
Casio SA-35 synthesizer
Suzuki Omnichord synthesizer – Such a little treasure, and surprisingly sophisticated too!
Mattel Synsonics drum machine
Korg X5DR synth module
E-mu Proteus FX synth module
Yamaha TX7 synth module
Sharper Image electronic surf/rain sound machine
Jaymar toy piano

GUITARS, AMPS, AND EFFECTS
1961 Guild Starfire III – there’s only one Elaine in all the world!
2005 Fender American Standard Telecaster
2001 Gibson Les Paul Studio
2003 Takamine EG-334SC acoustic/electric guitar
1996 Tobias Model T 5-string bass
2007 Hofner Colorama electric guitar
1962 Magnatone Custom 460 2×12 combo amp
1965 Silvertone 1482 1×12 combo amp
1994 Fender Blues Deluxe (tweed) 1×12 combo amp
Crate GX-15R 1×8 combo amp
Smokey mini-amplifier
1989 Fender M-80 1×12 combo amp
Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer overdrive pedal – with 808 ‘brown’ modification
Boss SD-1 Super Overdrive pedal
Electro-Harmonix Big Muff distortion pedal – one of the really old ones
Boss OS-1 overdrive/distortion pedal
Boss CS-3 compression/sustainer pedal
Line 6 DM-4 Delay Modeler
Vox U847 wah pedal
Danelectro Hash Browns phaser pedal
Ebow Plus
Ernie Ball volume pedal
ART SGX-2000 multi-effects and X-15 pedalboard

ACOUSTIC INSTRUMENTS:
Crucianelli accordion, early ’60s
Ernst Heinrich Roth cello, 1963
Tama Rockstar 5-piece drum set
various percussion instruments (shakers, claves, tambourines, etc.)
Elburn piano
autoharp
Angel mini glockenspiel
Ludwig professional glockenspiel
handmade African djembe

My friend Todd–who is an actor and theater director–called and told me yesterday about a series of readings he and his group have been having for a few months now. They go to a friend’s house, sit outside on the back lawn and read completely through a play. It’s not a public performance, but it’s a chance to keep up everyone’s skills and find compelling new material at the same time.

The last reading of the season is this Wednesday night, so Todd thought it would be nice to have some musical accompaniment between scenes. Apparently there are lots of short scenes, so sometimes it will only be a few seconds of music, but it sounds very exciting.

He was originally thinking of accordion, but I suggested cello, and he agreed. So on Wednesday night after work, I get the opportunity to provide incidental music for a play, which I’m very excited about.

But that’s not all; there’s more good cello news. I got a couple more gigs with Breanna Paletta today, all of which will feature the Breanna/violin/cello trio, which if you’ve spent any kind of time on my blog lately, you know how excited I am about that particular combination. I’ll keep you posted about the shows as the time gets closer. So far, there are a couple in August, a couple in September, and one in October.

I’ll write more about my sadness et cetera some other time soon, but in the meantime, it’s like I’ve always said. If you’re having a rough time emotionally, it helps to have great friends and a busy, fun life to fall back on while your wounds heal.

The trip and the gig were both a total blast. Stephanie and I flew down to Reno, then drove four hours to Elko to play at Great Basin College. We played there last year with Dirty Martini, and Steph had played there twice before that, with DM and on her own. So she has a considerable base of fans there, and it turned out that I even had a small (but strong!) contingent as well, which was surprising and cool to learn. It was just an all-around great experience.

We played outside this time, in the ampitheater right in the middle of the campus. It was a warm, breezy night, and it was particularly beautiful. Steph played acoustic guitar and piano–they wheeled a real piano out to the ampitheater for us to use!–and I played electric guitar, accordion and piano on a few songs too. We were totally on. We barely missed a note, and we felt totally in sync with each other. After some of the tough gigs we’ve had lately, this was a welcome relief. Total blast, and I have a feeling we’ll be back down in Elko again before too long.

After dropping our instruments at the hotel, we decided to try our hands at gambling. I tried a slot machine at the first place; put in a dollar and instantly won eight dollars back, so I took that as a good sign and stopped. We walked through the rest of the place and were unimpressed, so we walked across the street to a larger, more bustling casino. We each got a drink, and she played blackjack for a while. I don’t know how, so I watched. She got on a nice little winning streak too, earning twenty dollars from the five she started with, but she left empty-handed after a few more hands, despite one of the other players’ advice, “Hey, you should quit now, while you’re ahead.” We walked around again, and I decided to try some slot machines again, since I’d had good luck with them before. I started with twenty dollars, got down to almost nothing, and then won thirty five, so I decided to quit too.

The drive back was really nice. Steph had about a million phone calls to take care of, so I drove the whole way back to Reno. We stopped at a wide spot in the road called Trinity, which I think used to be a mine, but has since been reduced to a rest stop on one side of the highway and a dilapidated truck stop sign on the other. We stopped for a few minutes so I could take some pictures.

At the rest stop there, we encountered the most foul and disgusting porta-potties either of us had seen in our entire lives.
Steph opened the door to one and instantly stepped back, hands over her face in horror. “I’ve never seen anything that disgusting before,” she said. With a statement like that, my morbid curiosity was piqued, so I took a peek. The inside was smeared with feces, and there was an enormous pile of it on the back of the toilet seat. Repulsive. We both cracked up laughing, and I said, “I’m so sorry you had to see that.”
Good-hearted Steph gave the unknown person the benefit of the doubt and said, “Maybe it was dark, and they just couldn’t see what they were doing.”
“But there are huge flood lights everywhere. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t be able to see. I’m gonna have to ‘poo-poo’ that theory.” (Now THAT’S good comedy.)

We arrived at the Reno airport and ate at a really good little brew pub there. The flight, however, was pretty rough. Despite the nice weather, there was lots of turbulence. We were all getting increasingly nervous as the plane kept shuddering and lurching. Finally it settled down and so did we. But once again, when we started our descent into Portland, it happened again. It was very nice to be down on solid ground again. And can I just say how nice Portland’s airport is? It’s really beautiful, especially in the evening sunshine.

I hung out with NeighborFriendSusan for a little while, since I hadn’t seen her for a few days, then I went to bed at 10:30. Slept until 11:30 the next morning, when BoringFish called to see how I was doing. We talked for a while, then I got up and decided that today is the day I’m going to get my pictures framed and hung in my apartment. I chose my favorites and took them over to the photo printing place, where they’ll be done any minute now, so I’m gonna head back out. I’ll take pictures of my new-and-improved apartment once I get them hung. I daresay you’ll be impressed with the new look.

Despite my melancholy-ness in the morning, yesterday and today were great.

In the afternoon, I recorded more accordion parts for the upcoming Susie Blue CD. We also tried some piano, glockenspiel, and acoustic guitar parts, but as usual, the unsung hero of the day was the Omnichord. That little thing has proven to be worth its weight in gold.

After I got home from the recording session, Joan and I went to see Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soapbox, and it was amazing. We were surprised by the amount of sadness and pain their family has endured throughout the generations, including the current one. Fantastic story; much more about family dynamics and spiritual worldviews than about soap, definitely.

From there we went to Hama Sushi, where neither of us had been before, but turned out to be a hidden treasure. Their sushi was incredibly affordable, yet still very well-made and tasty at the same time.

After we’d had our fill of sushi, we went to Ikea. It wasn’t Joan’s first time there, but it was mine. She bought a small bag full of cool things for like $35, but somehow I ended up empty-handed. I was really only there to look, since I’ve bought so much new stuff for my apartment already. I was impressed by their use of space in their designs. Many of the pieces are meant to cram as much functionality as possible into as small a space as possible. Oh, and they also have frozen yogurt cones. :)

This morning was S & W’s wedding, which was beautiful, personal, and incredibly touching. My favorite part was where they had each guest drop a rock into a container while they poured salt over it, creating a container full of salt and stones, which symbolized the friends’ good wishes and hopes for their future. It was really beautiful. I dropped in the biggest stone I could find. Oh, and during the reception, guess who caught the garter? That’s right; good ol’ Mr. T.

Oh yeah; in case you didn’t know, my nickname is Mr. T.

The rest of the day I spent on apartment-related stuff. I found out last night that what I’d bought last week and had been using as an incredibly uncomfortable, heavy, small comforter actually turned out to be something called a ‘featherbed’ which is supposed to go UNDERNEATH the mattress pad, and make your bed softer and more padded than it was before. Sweet! As if it was possible to love my bed any more. So I put the featherbed where it belonged, and got an actual comforter.

In addition to that, I got rid of my old CD shelf (it went to someone else in my building) and a bunch of books and stuff are going to Goodwill tomorrow morning. I also put the little shelves I got from Alyssa in my bedroom, and rearranged my books and CD’s appropriately, which means that the living room is now even more opened up, and the bedroom no longer has books, CD’s, and instruments strewn all over the floor. Quite a successful day, I’d say.

Now I’m having a glass of wine and watching a nature show about macaws.

Can’t wait to try out my new-and-even-better-than-it-was-before bed. If you’ve been reading my blogs since the MySpace days, you already know how much I was in love with it, and that I’ve already raved about it at great length, but now it should be even softer and more amazing. I’m not sure how that’s possible, but I can tell you that a third–or for me, it’s probably more like a fourth–of my life just got that much better.

Even I am amazed at the amount of stuff I crammed into one day. Here’s what today consisted of:

1) got up at 8:00 and sold my oak bookcase (you know, the one that was in my living room), then helped the buyer load it into his truck

2) did three loads of laundry

3) washed the dishes

4) took out the trash and recycling

5) transferred the files I needed from my old computer onto my new computer

6) went to Fred Meyer and bought a dining table and chairs for the kitchen, and food for the trip to Cannon Beach tomorrow

7) assembled the table and almost finished one of the chairs

8) vacuumed the living room floor and did SpiderWebRemoval along the ceiling and corners with the vacuum throughout the entire apartment

9) swept the kitchen floor

10) disassembled the old table that was in my kitchen, and took it to the basement

11) disassembled the new table because it wouldn’t fit through the hallway to get to the kitchen (Grrrr!)

12) reassembled the new table in the kitchen

13) took a shower

14) loaded my instruments in the car and made the hour-long drive down to Salem for a two-hour gig with Breanna Paletta. It was a blast, by the way. I played cello mostly, but also accordion and a little bit of acoustic guitar. My favorite songs were the ones with Breanna singing and playing guitar, her friend Karli playing violin, and me playing cello. Seriously amazing combination.

15) drove the hour-long drive home and unpacked all the instruments from the car

16) wrote this blog entry

17) probably see who’s on Austin City Limits and have a glass of wine. Words cannot express how tired and sore I am right now.

18) go to bed and sleep like an effin’ baby