THE Brian Jones

Apr 07 2009 ∞

Nunsense Rehearsal Report

It was fun. The show is coming along very nicely and should be a blast come opening night Friday.

We have a bit of work to do with the microphones. The body mics were way too live for Act I; we tried the ambient mics for Act II, which was a (sound) disaster. So we’re going back to body mics tonight, and keeping them waaaay down. No need to blast everybody just because we’re wearing body mics.

We’ll be using my piano for the show. The piano the theatre bought is just not cutting it. This means that for the next month, I only get to practice piano during the weekends. Not like I was doing a lot of piano practicing anyway :(. Maybe this will motivate me to get on my guitar while I’m at home.

Of course, you’re invited to the show. Click on the picture to the right to order tickets!

Here are a couple of cute shots from the rehearsal.

Mar 17 2009 ∞
PhotoAlt

Come see Nunsense! I’ll be Sound Operator. Aaah, beautiful, talented, funny women dressed as nuns. I’m going to enjoy this gig.

+ ∞

Nat King Cole

Via Powerline, I learn that today is the birthday of Nat King Cole. I feel a connection with Cole because he formed a large part of my racial awareness during my childhood.

My father was a gentle, intelligent man who was without hatred or guile. One of the things people always told me, while I was growing up in the South, was that he, also a southerner, did not play along with the racism of the times. This was in decided contrast to his mom, my grandmother Billie, and to a somewhat lesser extent his own father. A frequently-told story of Billie’s probably illustrates this dynamic perfectly. She spoke of my grandfather’s relationship with a Black man who came regularly to service the furnace in their Birmingham home: the punchline to her story was, paraphrased: “He always spoke to that nigra like he was a normal person.”

(“Nigra” is of course the “polite” white racists’ term for a more explosive word, which I won’t print here. I grew up listening to the “polite” word, and it chills me to think I ever bought into its acceptability. Maybe it amused me as a child, but — I was a child.)

(And I might as well mention: “Nigra” was not the only word Billie used to refer to Black folk. Yes, she used the more explosive word with great regularity.)

Anyway, Dad was different. I learned that when the government department he was working in became desegregated, he volunteered to take the new Black employees under his wing and show them how things were done. I do believe this was not some high-minded dedication to racial equality, more a deep-seated longing to reach out to the outsider. Nevertheless, in Birmingham, and in Selma, in the 1960’s, that translated to reaching out to Black people.

Nat King Cole’s story affected Dad directly. Dad was a huge music fan. One of the ways my childhood was akin to growing up in the International Space Station was that we were awakened most mornings by a blast of music from Ground Control aka Dad. And one of his favorite artists was Nat King Cole.

Dad was in attendance at the horrible Nat King Cole concert at which Cole was assaulted by members of the local White Citizen’s Council. The wikipedia link mentions a possible kidnap motive for the assault, but Dad always said that the attack was punishment for appearing on stage with a White woman. He said that the concert had been designed so as not to have the Whites and Blacks appear together, but there was anticipation of a duet between Cole and a White woman singer. Dad described the attack and said he saw the fall that permanently injured Cole’s back.

It was a devastating experience for Dad, who hated violence and just wanted to go enjoy a concert. And seeing his tears 20, 30, and 40 years later when he recounted the experience, told me all I needed to know about the stupidity and evil of racism.

Happy Birthday, Nat King Cole. You are definitely missed! I’m going to dedicate today’s piano practice to you.

Here is a pretty good monograph about the attack.

+ ∞

Charley's Aunt POSTPONED

Copy of a Facebook message sent to the members of the Charley’s Aunt group:

Folks,

I just got off the phone with Sherry Ingbritsen, our beloved Managing Director, and she informed me that for a variety of reasons, New Dawn will NOT be taking part in the Aurora festival. Therefore, “Charley’s Aunt” will not be happening there (today was the final day for groups to submit their proposals for the festival, and I don’t see any point in shopping it round to other groups at this late date. Plus — “Charley’s Aunt” is a New Dawn joint!)

The biggest reason, and I sympathize totally, was scheduling of shows around the time of the festival. New Dawn will be just coming off of “Coarse Acting” and within weeks of starting “Three Musketeers” — two major shows in about as many months, and as those of you who were in it before know, “Charley’s Aunt” is NOT a small show.

I’m disappointed and a little wistful — I was looking forward to doing the show, and at the same time wondering just how we were going to do it in the Discovery Point Studio.

This might not be the end of the road for “Charley’s Aunt,” but that’s gossip for another day. I’ll miss working with my special Charley cast & crew for now, and here’s looking forward to a great summer for New Dawn!

I’ll keep the group up for a week or so in case anybody wants to post here or message the members, or perhaps enjoy a cigar in the garden. After all, it’s a SWEET EVENING!

Much Love, B

No telling what I’ll do next, now. I’m looking forward to operating sound on Button’s “Nunsense” — nothing like surrounding yourself with beautiful, talented, FUNNY women to make you feel better about things :) Then — who knows?

Feb 14 2009 ∞

A Valentine's Day Story

There are many reasons why I’ve never liked Valentine’s Day — the random cruelty of kids, especially toward a kid like me who was overweight; the disappointment of Valentine’s Day campaigns gone awry; etc. etc. All these are things that everyone has had to deal with and I can’t honestly say whether or not I would hate Valentine’s Day the way I do now if it hadn’t been for a very special Valentine’s Day incident. Sit back, pull up a drink and read on. I’m not going to drink enough to make this as funny as it should be, but I think we’ll all agree that I deserve to hate Valentine’s forever. Not to mention the whole concept of falling in love, which, believe me, has never worked out much better than it did all those years ago.

For some reason I didn’t know or have forgotten, my brother and I had spent weekends at my father’s colleague Bob Connors’s mobile home on Pine Lake in Michigan for a few weeks. They had two boys roughly my brother’s and my ages, but we weren’t boon companions or anything, so there must have been something going on over my childlike head. I would have been around 10 or so at this time, my brother 9.

Connors was a big blonde jovial guy and his wife Nancy was really cute and funny to us boys. We used to have fun tormenting her because she took EVERYTHING in stride, including one famous incident where she executed a perfect maneuver to avoid a toy truck we’d sent whizzing her way, lifting first one foot and then the other without interrupting her dishwashing activities. COOL!

One of those weekends I somehow fell in with a little girl who lived in the trailer park. I don’t remember her name, just a pixie haircut and a nice, solemn round face. She and I hit it off really well and over the next few Connors stays we would hang around and talk all afternoon. I remember one particular afternoon we walked out to the swimming raft on the frozen lake and sat and watched the day go by, talking very solemnly about all that kids talk about.

One thing we DIDN’T talk about was a strange thing that was going on with me: for some reason I had started wetting the bed at night during that time. Maybe I had emotional issues, maybe I had a bladder infection. I do know that it didn’t last for a long time, localized to that time around the Connors era. Nobody gave me a hard time about it or anything, but nobody was really thrilled by it either. I had taken to waking, finding the puddle, stripping my bed, putting the sheets in the washer, and showering before anybody had to tell me to do these things.

So anyway this girl and I had gotten to know each other and I found out that she liked horses. I told my Mom and she took me on a shopping trip to find her something horsey with my allowance. I wisely rejected the Western motifs — she loved horses but she wasn’t a cowgirl — and found a piece, small epoxy grazing horses glued onto a mirror. I guess they were supposed to be … grazing on a frozen lake? Hell if I knew. But even then I nursed a hope that even if it was lame, she would know I couldn’t help how lame it was but I just wanted her to know I was thinking about her.

During this gift buying trip my Mom mentioned that Valentine’s Day was coming up — maybe I could make this into a Valentine’s Day gift. I gave that some thought and decided that, from what little I understood about Valentine’s Day, the idea made sense. I did like her, and I figured maybe she liked me, and so what the heck. OK, I would do it.

Valentine’s Day rolled around. We hadn’t made a date per se, but the day before she’d told me, “See you tomorrow morning” with a strange emphasis on “morning.” Well, we were kids. Free to knock on each others’ door any old time and see if the other could come out. I got up, checked to see that the horses were safe, put my sheets in the washer, and ran to the shower. I was on the way to get dressed when I looked out the front window. She was walking toward the house! She looked cute! She was wearing a little red gingham dress and she had a little package with her. I’ll never forget the thrill of that sight. I’ll never forget how cute she looked. It was the last time I would ever see her.

My brother Chris was and is one of the most important people in my life. I have known him since I was one year and 8 days old. We’ve been through many phases in our relationship. At first he was the interloper, and Mom will tell you that the day he came home I forgot how to walk — she had to carry me again for quite awhile. We were boon companions throughout our childhoods, strangers in high school as we went our separate academic ways — he to valedictorian, me to the hallowed halls of C+dom reserved for guys with untreated and undiagnosed ADD, we have since become boon companions again, best lunch companions and occasional drinking buddies. That day, he was not my friend.

I was running back to the back of the trailer to throw on some clothes when the doorbell rang. Nancy Connors answered. She said hello and was talking with the girl. Chris was his usual rambunctuous self, running around seeing what everyone was doing. He saw me running back to the bedroom to get dressed. He saw Nancy Connors talking with the little girl. He saw the little girl.

He yelled, in what seemed to me a voice as loud as that of God speaking from the heart of a thunderstorm, “HE WET THE BED!”

That phrase, probably spoken without malice (although Chris was always smarter than me — who knows?) still echoes through my head today. I’ve never been more mortified, bewildered, disappointed, humiliated or any other pathetic adjective you can think of. I attacked him viciously, screaming and crying. Bob Connors pulled me off of him. I saw the door opening. “NO!” I cried, and ran past Nancy Connors and shut it. I heard the voice of my first girlfriend yelling my name. “NO!” I said again. I looked at Nancy Connors with hatred. She looked back and I knew she wouldn’t let the girl in. I ran back to the back of the trailer.

I kept that tacky mirror-grazing horse tableau for a few years after that. I remember contemplating it there on my desk, or in whatever box it might have found its way into from time to time, but I don’t really remember thinking about the little girl. I had successfully avoided any interaction with her during the inevitable Connors visits since.  I wonder if she remembers me at all.

Maybe it was the timing. I’ve recognized that thrill — the thrill I got when I saw her walking to come see me — ME — with a little gingham dress on and a Valentine for me. I’ve felt it many times since. I didn’t exactly repress what came next, that humiliation and pain, but I would have been hard pressed to explain the fear that I associated with that thrill, all those times I felt it while growing up. Who could possibly thrill me enough to take that risk again? I probably missed a lot of opportunities during my life since then all because of that. I was TERRIFIED whenever I thought I liked someone or that they like me.

So, don’t come to me with your tales of getting dumped on Valentine’s Day. That’s sad, but at least you had somebody. So did I, I guess. For a few weeks I was falling in love and it was a two-way street and I wasn’t looking out from behind a mask of terror. Maybe I should be glad I had that.

Maybe, he said, I’ll go have a scotch and play some online poker. Fuck it.

Feb 10 2009 ∞

waaaah

All the changes I just made to the site got lost because I didn’t see a “save” button. Oh well. I’m not playing Doukutsu or Layton any more. I’m playing Braid and Poker most of the time. I’m appearing (in the sound booth) at Red Clay Theatre occasionally. Um. I set up a new twitter feed for my album listening (I listen to albums almost exclusively so I don’t bother to set up a song feed.)

+ ∞

Kick-Azz Split Pea Soup!

I bragged about this on Twitter yesterday and somebody who’s following me for some reason asked me for the recipe, so here it is.

It’s actually more of a list of guiding principles, because I certainly did not start out to make KASPS. No, I thought I was looking through the freezer to find stuff to throw out or cook.

What I did was, I started with broth. I’d thought I might find a few rogue bags of scraps that Tasha always leaves all over the place, but all I found was a packet of these pork shoulder chunk things…I can’t find them on the web but it’s a shrink wrapped hunk of 1” chunks of salted pork shoulder.

I’d started the water boiling and I dropped them in. These were apparently pretty clean and didn’t need parboiling — which is when you boil some meat or veggies for a few minutes to see if something yucky floats up, then throw away that water (keeping the meat or veggies) and start over — so I started looking around for other things to add.

I found, in the spice drawer: ground cloves (I accidentally kind of tumped these over into the broth, so there was a lot of it), a couple shreds of dill weed, a couple teaspoons of celery seed (which really is a good thing to have around if you want to make soup — it really adds a certain something), coriander seed, and maybe a couple other things I’m forgetting. The key here is, if you think it smells good, and would make the kitchen smell good, put it in the broth. It’ll usually taste good too.

I cubed an onion and crushed a couple cloves of garlic into the broth. This was starting to smell REALLY good.

(Note that I avoided the temptation to add salt since the pork was already salted)

I boiled this stuff pretty vigorously for about 45 minutes before putting in the split peas. I like my split peas to retain as much of their original shape as possible (silly considering the goopiness that usually ensues) so after I added the split peas, I turned the heat waaay down.

I stirred the soup occasionally — stirring is an underrated activity by some cooks. It breaks up unauthorized gatherings of ingredients and keeps the food from sticking to the bottom of the pan.

After about an hour, the soup was ready, and it was DELICIOUS. I served it with wild rice and a dash or 3 of Louisiana Hot Sauce.

I realized afterward that Split Pea Soup traditionally, at least for me, contains chunks of carrot for color. However, it tastes fine without.

I hope this isn’t too vague for my new cook / new friend! Let me know how it goes!

Feb 06 2009 ∞

Overheard while going through the new employee orientation packet, while checking the health plan prices which were not bad, although I've had better:

  • Loud Lady Who's Already Been At Pains to Make It Clear She Takes No Shit: Come on, Obama!
Jan 21 2009 ∞

Poker Thoughts

I’m a total donk at poker, but I’ve been playing and enjoying it a lot nevertheless. Here’s a little sheet I keep in sight whenever I’m playing. Anything to add? Most of them are geared to tournament play, but they have all stood me in good stead.

POKER THOUGHTS
You’re trying to get in the money.

Extract, extract, extract

Are opponents playing loose or tight? Play the opposite.

What could beat me?

Top pair is not the nuts.

BLUFFING
Are you fucking kidding me?

CALLING?
NEVER assume they’re bluffing

Count your outs! Don’t call on long shots!

BETTING?
Do you have the best hand?

Bet only if you want the action

Don’t bet more than you’re willing to lose

GOING ALL IN?
What could your opponent have?

Do you have the nuts?

Do not go all in hoping your opponent will fold!

Are you sure you can get that action? EXTRACT

OMAHA HI
If you don’t have the nuts you’ll probably lose

ON TILT?
You’re on tilt when you bet hoping your opponent will fold

Sit out a few hands if possible

Jan 19 2009 ∞

Test

  • A part of Brian's brain: I think I'll make a chat post!
  • Another part of Brian's brain: Cool!