Intergalactic House of Paisley

Went up to DemiCon last weekend. Fun little con, had a good time. Had some great beer at Rock Bottom Brewery. Drove home Sunday afternoon, all good.

Then the trouble started. It seems someone had a special friend they brought to the con, a norovirus. And it went home with a lot of folks. Rohanna became Kansas City's newest (and most disgusting) fountain for the better part of two days. I "only" had to deal with "30 seconds to meltdown" notices every couple of hours. Over 10% of the attendees have reported some level of sickness from this. And now some healling tones.


1) Something Cool, June Christy

2) Fade Into You (Mazzy Star Cover), Everett Thomas

3) Mine, Stephanie Lauren

4) Sinful Nature, Bear in Heaven

5) Heartbreaker, Led Zeppelin

6) Doggie Tom (Overture), Lords Of Acid

7) Harry Potter & The Half-Dub Remix, Terabyte Frenzy

8) One Time Through, Metawon

9) That's What You Always Say, Dream Syndicate

10) Farbenspiel, A La Ping Pong


overtime!


11) Invisible Man, The Breeders

12) Compass, Dala

13) Get Innocuous (Soulwax Remix), LCD Soundsystem


Work continues to be very full, of course, since I could use some time to get things done at home. Busy weekend again with Mother's Day, then the Spectrum Art Show next weekend, and then ConQuesT. Oh, and someone's getting married or something a couple of times, too.

Water falling from the sky! What a concept! Let's play music loud and splash about in it!


1) Up Against The Wall Red Neck Mothers, Jerry Jeff Walker

2) Spider, TMBG (Live 11-29-08 Le Poisson Rouge)

3) You're Only Lonely, Micah P Hinson

4) Rescue Me, World Party

5) Is It Any Wonder, The Shortwave Set

6) Insane In The Membrane, Cypress Hill

7) Arc (Mookie Blalock), Eddie Vedder (4.7.2008)

8) 2000 Miles, The Pretenders

9) C'mon Levi, Occult Detective Club

10) Daydream Believer, The Monkees


say wha'?


11) Children of the Polka, Children of the Wave

12) Hotel California, Gipsy Kings

13) January, Ravens & Chimes


Dinner with Steve and Sue Francis tonight, who are driving to Reno for Worldcon and passing through KC. Since the KaCSFFS meeting is next Saturday, we have somewhat more opportunity to check out the Monet exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art before it goes bye-bye (the exhibit, not the museum).

I chose not to watch the festivities, being as a) I was asleep, and Numero Two-o) I didn't have enough booze in the house to play the drinking games ("Do a shot everytime the cameras pan over to Chuck and Trigger" alone would have bankrupted me and my liver). So let's have some celebratory tunes!


1) The Polka Polka, Mojo Nixon

2) Forever, The Cure (Palais Theatre, Melbourne, Australia)

3) Rain in the country, Pink Floyd

4) Pigeon Penelope. Imani Coppola

5) Song For The Walls, Eric Ambel & Roscoe's Gang

6) Wonderboy, The Kinks

7) Rasputin, Boiled In Lead

8) Hearts and Minds, matt pond PA

9) Bully For You, Tom Robinson

10) Fall Apart, Alejandro Escovedo


continued on next rock . . .


11) If I Let You Live, Hussalonia

12) We Gathered In Spring, Midlake

13) Down by the River, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals (2008-02-23 - The Music Hall)


And so off to work. Hoping to get a break to watch the shuttle launch. And then the Parkville Brew Fest and the Brookside Art Fair on Saturday, with a friend coming in from out of town. Good thing I have Monday off (except for that whole getting paid thing). Onward!

Got up Saturday and went shopping for Xmas gifts. Managed to get everything I wanted in one stop, then did some more running around. Found Neil Gaiman's "Odd and the Frost Giant" 50% off at Barnes & Noble, and after my card and the 25% off coupon, it was $5. And picked up some beer at the Kansas Lukas Liquor. The rest of the day and evening were uneventful, and I got to bed at a reasonable hour.

Woke up at 7a with Yum! staring at me, so I turned on her favorite song* and went back to sleep for a bit. Rohanna and I went to watch the Chefs try and win a game against a team almost as bad as they are, the Buffalo Bills. We got to the stadium without encountering the usual traffic backup (not a good sign), and were happy the tickets had come with a parking pass, as they wanted $22 to get in the lot (>3x the price for the Royals [and yes, the Royals have 10x more games, but Arrowhead holds 2x+ people than Kauffman Stadium]). We made our way to a lot, and were waved through to park up front thanks to Ro's handicapped hangtag. This involved inching our way down the lane at the edge of the lot, occasionally honking to get the folks wandering (and//or staggering) in front of us to move to one side or the other, which they did with no problem, until right before the front row. A couple was ambling along in front of us, and when I tapped the horn, she looked over her shoulder and stepped to the left (where the sidewalk was), but her obviously and oblibiously inebriated companion moved into the middle of the lane, so I stopped, to avoid hitting him, and and tapped the horn again. He turned around and proceeded to lean on the hood of the van and shake his finger "no" at me. I waved at him to move, and he staggered to my window (which was partially open), shouting "Do you know who I am" and trying to reach inside. I said "I don't care," and closed the window, nearly catching his finger, and drove on, at which point he threw his (fortunately plastic) beer bottle at me. I decided to keep on moving, in part because I saw security heading toward him.

The game was pretty good, and the renovations to the stadium were very nice. The highlight was halftime, which featured a group of kids (ages 8-17) from local dance academies. They performed to a Michael Jackson medley, and the featured dancer was a very young boy who had all the moves down. At one point I leaned over to Rohanna and said, "So, do you think when this is over he goes home and abuses himself?" She told me I was evil, but before she could say anything else the kid proceeded to do a classic MJ crotch grab, and she just sighed and said, "Yeah, he probablly dooes."

We left at the end of the third quarter too go to Deb Pelicano's Holiday Art Sale, which was a good time. Was hoping for a nice quiet evening at home, but I am now trying to get Dragonet's borrowed Powerbook to boot up. It's running some kind of diagnostic thing from a safe boot. I will probably have to go in to work tomorrow and get the Tiger boot disk to try running disk utility on it. We really, really don't need this shit. Sigh.



*"Marais La Nuit," from Neko Case's latest album, Middle Cyclone. I's 30+ minutes of tree frogs and crickets, and is very calming. I burned a cd with it on there twice for Ro, and she turns it on when she goes to bed. We have each awakened more than once to see Yum! staring at the clock/cd player, waiting for someone to turn the music back on, and when one of us does, she looks at the clock for a few seconds, then curls up and goes to sleep. Very cute.

We hit the grocery stores this morning, and stocked up on a variety of dead animals, including a nice trio of KC strip steaks in the Sun Fresh clearance bin, then wandered over to Aldi and acquired some cheap stuff there.

Back home for a rest, then off to the Nelson-Atkins to see the Mughal exhibit. It consists of pages from various books from the 16th and 17th centuries, with an amazing amount of detail (to the extent that magnifying glasses are provided so you can the individual flowers and the patterns on the clothes and the feathers on the birds). The colors are incredibly vivid, even after all this time. If you get the opportunity, I recommend it very highly. The large signs describing the various parts of the exhibit are very well done, as well. It's very rare that I get to see the fruits of my labors.

Part of the festivities today included dancing and music, and samples of Indian food. By the time we got back to the main hall, there was an Indian rock band playing, and the line for the food was almost as long as the line to get into the exhibit, so we wandered around the gift shop for a bit, then headed home.

At 5p, with one eye on the weather, I fired up the grill and prepped the steaks. We had acquired two bags of IQF chicken breasts, and Dragonet thought it would be good to throw a few of them on the grill for use in recipes in the future. The bag we opened had six huge breasts, so we threw them in a ziploc with Italian dressing and then cooked them all. The steaks came out just right for all of us (cooking three steaks to three different degrees of doneness is an art, I tell ya), and the chicken finished shortly after dinner did. Having had nothing to eat all day, I had the smallest of the chicken breasts after I finished my steak. And now (actually, as I typed the hyphen in Nelson-Atkins), the rain started, and I hustled downstairs to put the grill and accoutrements away.

And now, for a quiet evening of digesting. Om nom nom.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. After my thrilling 94th out of 107 finish in the Lawyers, Guns and Money NCAA bracket, I decided to participate in their ESPN-based fantasy baseball league. I had to come up with a name for my squad, and after a bit of thinking decided to name them after my favorite black Irish baseball player, thus O'Quendo's Irish Rovers. We'll see how they do. In real world baseball news, I don't think we'll be braving the 40˚ weather and possible snow to check out Kauffman tomorrow. Such is life.

Saturday dawned cool and breezy. We met up with Pulsifer, his lady Tanya and his son Eric to go see the Brookside Art Fair. We were joined by one of Pulsifer's co-workers, Kathy, and her husband Kevin. As I drove the 6 blocks from Pulsifer's to the show to drop off Rohanna and D2, the wonderful local music show Cypress Avenue started playing a track from the new Was/Not Was album (see previous post). I managed to find a parking place half a block away, and once everyone got there, we had a great time looking at the art. My favorite was a large bowl from this guy (http://www.dragonclaystudio.com/index.php). It was done like a globe on the outside, with continents and mountains, but interspersed amongst the geographical bits were several massive (in scale) fossil skeletons. I stopped, took off my sunglasses and looked at it from all angles. The artist, Patrick Dragon, came out and said, "I'm glad to see you got it," and we had a great conversation about the piece. It was only $800, a bargain.

Afterward, we all (except Eric, who had to work) adjourned to our place to grill Italian sausages and drink beer. It was lots of fun. A good day, for once.

From Bugs Bunny to Crooked Timber to Steven Hart, one arrives at an LA graphic designer's site, which showcases the work of an artist for Life magazine from the teens to the thirties. Amazing work, with incredible detail. His use of his monogram/signature as a character in his cartoon pieces is especially tasty. Click the pics to see at size.

http://filboidstudge.blogspot.com/