Rising Side Review

On the rare occasions that I actually open the large steel door that protects my lair and venture out into the world, the event must truly be a spectacular one.  The CD Release party for Rising Side this last Friday was one of those occasions.

At the modest and somewhat difficult to park at Dunn Brothers on the south edge of Loring park, the stage was set for pure magic.  The room was at capacity when Rising Side took the stage and I was right there in the front row.  I was so close, that when the pyrotechnic charges went off, I nearly burnt my eyebrows off. (Don’t worry, they’re fine.)

Rising Side let their guitars sing into the night.  I was mesmerized.  It was truly an event to be experienced.  My only regret was that I was unable to stay for the whole show because I had to get my young’n off to bed.

All in all, I would say Rising Side is awesome and if you don’t already own their CD,  go buy it now. Go here and contact Raine– she will let you know how you can acquire one for yourself.

Here is the long awaited picture from the show.  Sorry about the poor quality.  Katie and Tony are high quality people.

Rising Side (Tony and Katie)

Uke Coolness

I play the ukulele… but not this well.

Enjoy.

Rising Side Concert/CD Release Show

Essential to any unbalanced mind is driving music to kill by. Get the soundtrack to your latest massacre here and go support the most musical and promising young world domination candidate to come along since… me.

Please go. If I hear you have been insolent, you will suffer the teeth of the grizzly woodchuck.

that is all.

Details are available here.

Innovation

When you look at the people who change the way we do, look at, or thing about something, they seem to have one thing in common– they have a way of looking at whatever they are doing in a new way.  They throw away the conventions of what is and start fresh.  They build a process of innovation that removes as much of the assumptions that we would normally bring to a task because ‘that’s the way it has always been done.’  It’s bold, daring and yields some tremendous results.  Certainly we wouldn’t have some of the amazing technology we have today if we didn’t have those innovators breaking new ground for us.

Why not innovate?

If creating new ways of approaching problems can result in beautiful, efficient, or clever solutions, why doesn’t everybody do it?  We should all be capable of looking at a particular object, situation, or procedure and see a way to make it better.  Especially if it is a something that we come into contact with on a regular basis.  That’s the whole principle behind managers coming out of their offices and asking their workers what they would improve. Who knows better than those actually doing the job?

But innovation means change.  Change our processes, change our products, change our lives.  Humans like order. They tend to get comfortable with the way things are. They know what to expect.  It also makes our brains lazy. We don’t have to think about what we are doing because it is an automatic process.  But a lazy brain is a less productive brain and the people who spend years working in the same job, doing the same thing are often very uncreative in dealing with new problems and situations.

Another reason why we don’t change things is because there is risk in change. We’ve been taught that failure is bad.  You lose, you get an ‘F’, you get rejected– that’s a bad thing.  I reject that notion.  Not learning from failure, now that is a bad thing.   And with innovation, there will be failure.  How many ideas won’t work?  The psychic damage of failure can sometimes be insurmountable.  The true innovators are the ones who can push past all that failure and get to that idea that works.  No one remembers the other guy who  gave up trying to invent  the telephone, they remember Alexander Graham Bell.

Well I’ve resolved myself to be an innovator.  Find solutions.  Create beauty.  Learn from failure.  I encourage all of you to do the same.

Shhh! Shhh!

Try not to sing this all day. Actually, go ahead.

Hard knock life.

There’s a reason why there are so many people who dream of going out to Hollywood and becoming a big shot in the movie business.  The rewards are huge.  Some people want the fame that goes with being an A-list actor.  Some desire the respect of being a great director.  Some want the power that comes with being a major producer.  Others still dream of the sheer creative force and world-forming god-like ability of a writer.  All of them are paid what seems like exorbitant amounts of money to do one simple thing– entertain.  What better feeling than having someone look at your work and say “wow, that moved me.” Not too many other professions can say that.

The down side to being in the entertainment business is that it is difficult.   It is TOUGH.  The very act of creation means breaking off a piece of who you are and putting it out there for the world to see, and think about, and judge. And when that piece of you is rejected– it is painful.  That criticism of your work is a criticism of you.  You are bad. You are not good enough.  YOU NEED A REWRITE.  That is sometimes too painful to bear.

Beyond that, when you take that purified piece of yourself and then other people want to come along and change it. They want to mutate that piece with something of themselves– to taint it– to RUIN it possibly. You mix it up with the pieces of other people and suddenly that that piece of you doesn’t belong to you anymore. The pieces all come together and form something new.  Perhaps something beautiful.  Maybe it’s a train wreck.  But it still carries a  part of you and it is out there for the world to see.  Some people can’t allow their pure vision get mutated into a beast.  They would rather it die that escape their control.

Beyond that there is so many obstacles to achieving that great reward. So many things that stand in the way between you and that golden prize.  You may be talented, but don’t have the right opportunity.  Or you get your opportunity but you have personality conflicts.  Or sometimes there are factors beyond your control that change your destiny.  There are a million things that want to knock you off the path.

And not everyone who stays on the path makes it to the top level.  It is rare to reach the big rewards. Many people end up on some obscure middle level.  They languish, they settle or they quit. Their work gets taken away or buried.   So many movies are still just scripts sitting on some studio’s shelves.  So much film is sitting in a can, never to be seen by the public.  So much money is spent on projects that go nowhere.

But sometimes the conditions are perfect. Sometimes you get that movie made.  Sometime that movie you made is good.  People go see it and they like it.  And to hear praise for your work is like the sounds of angels singing.  Forget the money, fame, and power.   To have someone out there be profoundly affected by a part of you is like nothing else.

And that is where the real reward lies. That makes this crazy, difficult,  hard knock life all worth while.

Ackbar the Gray

Imagine your favorite side characters from Star Wars in the Lord of the Rings.

You like that, don’t you?

Foreign Travel

Just to assuage everyone’s fears that I actually was not devoured by a ravenous herd of fork tailed iguana monkeys, I professor Emeritus will offer you a few tantalizing droppings relating to my journeys.

Very recently my past few weeks has been spent cavorting in around what I still consider to be a third word country. No, not Florida or New York. Let’s just say it was south of the border. Yes, it was all good fun. Eating and drinking in the sights and sounds of a foreign land. Speaking in foreign tongues. Eating unknown meats off sticks purchased from some guy walking down the beach. Reaping the benefits of such ventures later on in the day.

The high point of the trip may have been late one evening when vaguely remember wandering into some strange cavernous Greek themed building. I was forced by one of the local servant girls into drinking several small glasses of what appeared to be kool-aid, but judging from the taste was actually scorpion urine. The server girl then shook my head rapidly from side to side in a motion that seemed to aggravate the vile mixture. I was then removed from my seat and tossed into the street.

From what I could understand from the native peoples, this was a great honor and I was forced to act accordingly. That being said, the rest of my journey was spent resting on many of the thrones of that glorious country. Apparently scorpion urine has no positive health benefits other than as a mach speed digestion increaser. It gives the feeling that your intestines are being wrung out like a washcloth. I plan on bottling this and offering it for sale on the internet later this year. Imagine this, someday you too could feel like royalty and spend weeks near your porcelain throne! The whole experience was beyond words.

I did manage to pick up some words from the native peoples and I am attempting to translate them into the english language. More on that later.

Massive Robots with Flamethowers Causing Global Warming

6 May- Hong Kong.   Scientist have discovered that massive gun-toting robots have been systematically causing global warming.  They say that when the robots battle in major metropolitan areas, the damage they cause increases the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.  “Delicate wetlands are being harmed,” said Dr. Price of the Anti Giant Robot League “Not to mention, entire city blocks… I’m mean, c’mon!  My favorite Starbucks was destroyed last week!”  Eyewitness reports say that a new Starbucks emerged in it’s place.

Now what is the effects of all these robots battling for supremacy mean for our world.  Most scientist agree that the battling robots engine exhaust is releasing CO2 which is the culprit behind the gradual rise in global temperature.  Their giant flame cannons, on the other hand,  is a contributing factor in the extremely rapid rise in global temperature.

“We need to reduce our carbon footprint.”  Dr. Price said before being stepped on by a sarcastic robot.  Mike Collins of the Robot Defense institute says that robots only play a small part in Global Warming.  “The real culprit is that Dr. Manticore and his earth warming liquid called Lava,”  Collins said, but right now that just seems like pure speculation.

Mindless minions– obey my command!

Hello all,
I want to throw out a huge and completely shameless plug for my good friend,  obedient subordinate, and frequent commenter– Katie.   Her band will be playing a show that will surely level four city blocks with it’s awesomeness.  Details are located here. I think her music is best described as an ecclectic, acoustic, ergonomic, agrarian, hypnotic and infuzes listeners with feeling of calm that destroys border conflicts in the middle east,  makes doves spontaneously erupt from her guitar and has been known to pull people out of comas.   It can also kill zombies with nothing but it’s rich pure sound.

If you are in the area, I require you to go to this show and report to me when you have completed this task.

That is all.

Good luck Katie.