11/12/2003 12:00:10 PM|||Brian Fending|||

GROOVEBOX

"The Quartet" as I've been calling it is now called Groovebox. Tom Keil, guitar; Leif Nicklas, bass; Ken Kuriscak, saxes; and yours truly on the old school groove machine. (Wow - I didn't even flinch as I typed that last bit. I must be comfortable with this groove thing.) (Groove thing. Double wow.)

The first time this group played together, we called ourselves, at the suggestion of Tom Keil, "Tomas y la machina del sexo." It was reminiscent of the quasi-art film, "Lucia y el sexo," but with a better soundtrack and, well, no nudity, for which most were thankful. Come to think of it, it was in name only. ANYWAY, the group stuck even if the name didn't.
And a website is in the works. :)

MMW

Saw Medeski Martin & Wood last Wednesday. Wow, that was good. I have never been musically expanded like that through a listening experience. I recommend some listening if you haven't yet caught up with these guys.

COMPUTER CRASHES AT SCENT OF DOG

You may have missed this headline in the Post.

Okay, so last week I'm getting ready for work, *juuuuust* wrapping up some contracted Web work, and staring across the room at Reba, who was in the back yard for a few minutes before while I power-organized the house for the day. (The day, mind you, begins at 5am.)

So there I am, 6am, all showered, 30 minutes into my work, looking at the dog, and I start to smell something. "Reba, is that you?" Blank stare. "Is it?" Yes, it was her. Boy oh boy, was it her. Why do dogs roll in stinky stuff? I don't even know what it could have been, because crap just doesn't smell that bad.

As this realization dawns upon me, the application of the morning quits. All work was lost, primarily because I was in a hurry. No time to reboot *and* get the dog clean. (Never work at a computer when you're in a hurry. Not because of the increased possibility of mistakes - it's the static. Double-ground be damned, it always seems to be the case. I will not be dissuaded.)

So... my two hours of morning work is reduced to thirty minutes by virtue of the smelly, innocent-looking dog across the coffee table and that I really, really needed to get a new computer with a more stable Mac OS version. Or an offshore worker to do all of the work for me, but that wouldn't be nearly as fun.

After the blowdrier is off (Rachel is up and well on her way by now), I get the bath ready and Reba is carried - in all her fabulously stinky, deadweight, "why don't you love me" glory - to the tub for an unceremonious bath. By the time she's ready for the day, I'm pretty late to work, 1.5 hours behind on just-about-billable consulting work, and my hands smell faintly of wet dog. Fine by me, probably not pleasant for my coworkers that day. And I'm grumpy. Not good for anybody.

Okay, so that wasn't the worst thing that ever happened, but it sucked. Loads. No wonder people are waiting until they're forty to have kids.

NEW COMPUTER

SO excited am I this week. The New Mac Cometh. After about a year of, "Ya know, I really should trade up," and, "Wow. I didn't sleep because of this %^&*$ unsupported, deprecated OS," and lastly, "I can't do that. It requires software that my OS can't run and I can't realistically upgrade the OS any further on a G3 powerbook... I need to sleep now."
So now I have a powerhouse of a laptop coming with enough software to choke a QA analyst. (Sorry - that one slipped out, too.) Not that the acquisition of new things makes me happy, but I am a man. Men go to Sears to buy tools, lots of them, and then do stuff with (most of) them. My chromosomes made me buy the computer, and the tool will see use. Lots of use. Can't wait to try iTunes.

BEING ON HOLD

So I get this call to do a recording session for hold music. Right out the gate, it's a funny concept, but think about it: it's a really untapped market by local musicians. Sure, there are lots of companies that do voiceovers on top of canned music, and that music is pretty much exploited until it's on every voicemail system in the world. For not a lot of dough, one could sell, "background music and monthly voiceovers for a year," by just getting some musicians together to cut demo-length tracks (which can be recycled), an actor or radio-type to read the script once a month, and then somebody to mix it down to a deliverable format for the client. Not a bad way to subsidize getting into the studio with musicians and creating tracks that you can all use for - you guessed it - demos or starter material for albums. That's my idea, anyway, and I'm sure there's something ethically wrong with it in somebody's view, but I say selling the voiceovers as a service with limited use license on the music is the way to go.

Anybody have a radio voice they could lend me? ;)

JOBS THAT ARE FUN

Ever though about becoming a dog trainer? Seriously - can you think of anything more rewarding??? I'll leave with that.

|||109171033001031528|||Groovebox, Smelly Dog Computer Crash, and more