South Pacific Meets the High Desert

This year I appeared in the VVC projection of South Pacific!  Suddenly I've got a few plays under my belt so when I say that this projection was the most elaborate, I'm speaking with a bit of experience.  The sets were massive and beautiful, the costumes were authentic and visual spectacles on their own, and the music was exceptional.  This was a play which featured live music.  I've done Music Man and Pirates which both features a full orchestra in the pit and many of the musicians were appearing again for this performance.  They really went all out to give the audience a treat and performed perfectly.  I still am amazed with how well they can play when they are in such cramped quarters.
Kirstie had the lead for a show and without question it was the best performance of the run.  She is extremely talented and not only nailed all the musical numbers (which I knew she could do) but was the best actress on stage by far.  I'll say it right now, she brought me to tears.  That isn't easy to do, especially with this play.
The story is dated and doesn't hold up that well.  It really doesn't.  There is a train of thought which dictates that stories which are considered classics are above scrutiny.  I can understand where this mentality comes from but when performing the play it's impossible not to read it with a critical eye.  The actor is tasked with developing and portraying characters and so it falls to reason that they will read the scrip to find out what drives their characters.  What is the character's core?  In the case of South Pacific, the core of many characters isn't that deep.
They are happy to be together, working quietly and docily, dying when ordered and otherwise not thinking too much.  This keeps the story skipping along, but doesn't provide many hooks for empathy, at least for anyone with discernment.  Kirstie somehow manages to infuse her character with emotional weight that she carried the story past some tedious points, and did it with ease and grace.  It was awesome!

House Cleaning

Borderlands Vending Machine Logo

Borderlands Logo Background Android Wallpaper

This is going to be a generalized housekeeping post.  I've really been letting this blog slide for the past few months, which puts me in the company of about 80 percent of humanity.  Writing a blog is fun and rewarding, but on of the catches is that you get to set your own goals and deadlines for posts.  This keeps the writing from feeling any pressure about keeping up with posts, but also results in lots of times where the writer imagines what they're going to upload, without going to the actual effort of uploading.
So I've got a ton of great ideas for things to put here, but when it came time to do the hard work of typing the stuff down, I always put it off until later.  That is how we came here.
But let's work past the blame and start working on getting better.  So here are a pair of images that are formatted to be used as smartphone backgrounds.  They are taken from Borderlands and altered/modified/etc to look awesome.  And awesome they are!  The first one is perfect for the screen-lock image which greets the user when they first wake up the phone from sleep mode.  The second is a nice, clear background for the app tiles.

While these images sit here and do the function they are given to do, I'll give you a little fill in for the past few days.  I've been working on a songbook for St. Hilary's Church.  We have the typical hymnal which is a huge and heavy tome which every good Episcopalian knows by heart, but the church always likes to sing a few more modern (relatively speaking) contemporary songs.  For this purpose the church has a couple dozen hand made booklets with the words (sans sheet music) so that the congegration can follow along.  It's not the most elegant solution but it works just fine so no one has wanted to modify it in the past 25 years. 
But time waits for no man and no church. And I'm volunteering my computer layout skills to make a new booklet that is going to run about 50 pages and includes a batch of new(er) songs for the church.  It's been a great project but I'll admit it's taken longer than I'd expected.  When the project was proposed I thought I'd be able to crank it out in a day or two but this has been a weeks worth of work.  The thing which makes it a positive experience is that the results also look better than I'd imagined, so it's a pleasant surprise for everyone involved including me.

The Big 4

I'm still at a loss to explain what it is about Indio which drew Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica and Anthrax to the Empire Polo Club to perform. Not that there's anything wrong with Indio, but there's a reason that so few people go there. There's not exactly a list of things that you could point to that would put it on the map.

Not that the Empire Polo Club doesn't do its best to try. The place is huge, which I really didn't appreciate when I was driving down there. I've been to Indio a handful of times before and had visited a few local places but none of them the Polo Club. I think that I've been missing out. The facility is gigantic, much larger than any other concert event I've gone to before. I think the largest theater I've seen a show at was in Phoenix at the Sun Devil stadium, but this place could probably fit two "Sun Devils" back to back. It's perfect for a concert, especially one that drew the crowd that the Big 4 did.

I don't think I've ever seen so many tattered black t-shirts gathered together in once place before. It was really something to see.

Now this concert was taking place on 04-23, but that didn't mean that 04-20 wasn't still in full swing in the parking lot. The moment your car comes to a stop on the hard packed grass field, a wave of metallic smoke assaults you from all sides. The cloud hovered over the concert for most of the afternoon and didn't fully dissipate until about 10 miles out of town. If 7-11's ran out of Slurpee's in the greater Indio area for the next few weeks, I think I know the reason.

The only drawback to the concert was the sun which beat down all day. The concert gates opened at 2:00pm, which meant that I was broiling under the Southern California sun for hours before it finally went behind the mountains and gave the crowd some relief. I'm crispy today, but very happy. If there's one thing that is guaranteed to get the blood flowing it's listening to Metallica and Megadeth very, very loudly!

The Right Type

As a not so great man (Mr. Rumsfield) once said, there are things that we know and things that we don't know and then things that we know we don't know and things that we don't know we don't know. Known unknowns and unknown unknowns. Yes, a font of wisdom was he.

I just found out that there are lyrics to Stars and Stripes Forever, and not the "Be kind to your fine feathered friends..." Actually lyrics by Sousa himself. Um, they are something all right. Some knowledge I wish I could unknow after I know it.

Multitasking

There's another benefit to playing a text-heavy adventure game that I didn't mention earlier, but thought I'd put down here. You can play guitar during the dialog.

I wasn't sure if this would be possible or not, but as it turns out the concept is sound. You see, practicing picking patterns on a guitar is just plain fun. Your fingers move in a predetermined rhythm over the strings, and the goal is to have each pluck make a note that rings. It's easy, but most importantly, it's satisfying. Without expending too much thought into what you're doing, suddenly the notes from the guitar sound suspiciously like music.

And you do it over and over again. For hours.

When playing The Longest Journey, I'd recommend putting a guitar in your lap and just idly plucking the strings in your picking pattern while the characters interact. At the end of the scene, you've enjoyed some good dialog and your fingers have learned a new skill. Best of all, if you do it right, you're providing a killer soundtrack to the characters. Win-win!

Jam Guitar : Winter Break

Oh! Almost forgot to mention that I'm on break from the guitar classes as well. After the Christmas show, the entire class got the following two weeks off to be with their families and celebrate Christmas in style. Nice!

I think that the next show is a 'patriotic themed' production, but I'm not sure about any of the details. I'm sure it will be fun, and it will be good to get some new music to practice. Right now my fingers are still aching from the holiday music that I rehearsed like a crazy person for the past month.

I love Christmas, but if I have to hear "Mary, did you know?" one more time... Ugh.

Christmas Music Show

I just shared a stage with about 20 other guitarists in the High Desert Christmas Music show. OK, it's a huge name for what was essentially a small performance, but there's no denying the fact that it was a heck of a lot of fun to do.
For this show I took my chrome monster of a guitar. It doesn't have the greatest sound, but at the same time it rests very comfortably in my lap while I play it, and I wasn't concerned about being able to pick my notes out of the wall of sounds coming from the people playing around me. If the chrome beast has anything going for it, it's tone. A unique tone. Sometimes it howls like a wildcat, and other times it growls like a badger. This time I got lucky. It was content to make a throaty purr as I played.
The concert was accompanied by three singers who took turns with the music. All were good, and one in particular was exceptional. I didn't catch her name, otherwise I'd have put it here. She was excellent, and everyone tried to play up to the standard she was setting.

Always a Catch

Of course writing a blog is a double edged sword, because when there's plenty of interesting stuff going on, I'm too busy to blog. And when things finally die down for a bit and I can catch my breath, suddenly I've got lots of time for writing but nothing to say.
However, every now and then a chance comes along where I've got a few minutes free to keep the blog updated and also take a breather from events. This is one of those times, and I'm grabbing hold with both hands.
The play is less than a week away! Wow! OK, that was odd because I could have sworn I had months to get the lines down and work on pacing. Suddenly, the theater is selling tickets and the set is being built. Tonight will be devoted fully to rehearsal stuff which is a nice way of saying that we'll finally get to see how much of the dialog the leading man has learned. Yes, he's got a lot of stuff going on in his life right now (MLM stuff, a phase we've all gone through at one time or other), but seeing him stumble his way through the playbook is a scary experience.
Also, I'll be heading out to the House of Blues this weekend to catch my favorite local band and also rub shoulders with people who like good music loud. Or loud, good music. Heck, maybe they just like loud music. I don't care, just so long as they can dance.
Classes continue to be good, but more on that later.
Also, I finally got the sheet music for the guitar performance I'll be participating in this Christmas. Sure, it's a collection of standards. But the instructor found some versions which have a nice life to them, so if all goes well it should be a fun set to play. I actually really love Christmas music, but some versions are played more as a dirge than a festive tune. This stuff is actually pretty good.

Great White

Great White is a band which has, if you'll pardon the pun, jumped the shark years ago. Now that being said, they are still a cool rock band and I'm looking forward to seeing them today. They are going to be playing in Yuciapa which isn't that far away, and the band is worth the trip.

Also, I'm going to support "Shameless" which is opening for Great White. OK, that's the real reason that I'm going to this gig. Ya have to support the band! I know the lead guitarist and am looking forward to seeing them rock the house. Great White is just gravy!

As a quick little side note, I'll be at the Redlands Art Association Gallery on the 16th to do a day as a curator. They actually have morning and evening shift available, but since it is a gallery and they do have wi-fi connections, I'm planning on spending the whole day there. When the gallery is slow, I can just catch up on school work. If the gallery is packed and there are dozens of people clamoring for my attention, than so much the better!

Tripwire Logo

This is a down and dirty band logo for Tripwire. Considering that they are going to be an opening act at the House of Blues in Hollywood next month, they have got to have some sort of logo! I'm going to be there to enjoy the tunes, and catch the other acts. In the mean time, I'll pass this logo along. Creating something is easy, getting it put on t-shirts and banners will be someone else's headache!
The logo can be read normally or upside down. This is an optical illusion known as an ambigram, which is surprisingly easy to do. If you have drafting skills and the equipment handy, you can just go to town and mess around until you get something that works. Alternatively, you can use a program like FontCreator to bash together some letters which serve the purpose. I went with the program. I like the idea of being able to put the letters into a style which can be scaled through Photoshop without losing any detail.


Of course, the second that I mention that I notice there is some pixiliation on this image, but that was because I was using a small canvas for the test. A larger image, which would be better for graphic design, won't show any of the rough edges.



If there is such a thing as too many Photoshop effects, I haven't heard about it. Yes, these are stylistic chestnuts. But they still look cool.