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last friday was the first friday of february, and it was cold… too cold to sit on the sidewalk of 18th street in the crossroads and do the mondo beep thing… so we recorded it at my house. the pic above is a still shot from the session with angie, me, and laura. the audio and video that i recorded is still in the editing stage (the 30 minutes of raw footage might cause brain damage to the casual listener), but  laura posted a short video on facebook. after that we went to a kelly’s dance party (one block away), and then to screenland to play galaga.

as a result of the bitter cold temps, tonight’s mondo beep session will not be at the usual spot: 18th street on the sidewalk between baltimore and wyandotte. instead it will be video taped in the makeshift studio that is my house. last night i discussed it with laura, my longtime collaborator, and she didn’t want to freeze outside any more than i did. we will still bring all the gadgets together to create the weird beepy goodness that is mondo beep, and then we’ll record it for continuity,  posterity, and the ages.

i had some time between CPR classes to watch an elvis costello DVD… so i did.

jenny & i spent last night in atchison for a weekend getaway. on the way there we stopped at the international forest of friendship for a geocache, and to take a picture of the moon tree. the moon tree grew from a sycamore seed that was taken on board the apollo 14 mission to the moon in 1971. the sycamore tree in atchison is one of 450 that grew successfully after returning to the earth.

here’s another recording i made with the korg monotribe. this one features the flux button. when the flux button is on the ‘tribe sorta squiggles all the audio except the drums.

one of my christmas gifts last year was a book of easy crossword puzzles from the new york times. they print their easiest puzzles in monday’s paper, and then get tougher each following day. sometimes a puzzle will force you to pull something out of your memory that you didn’t know was stored away. they can also help you think outside the box:
Q) a socially correct goose in boston?
A) propaganda

i used some christmas cash to purchase the korg monotribe (that black box thing pictured above). it’s a drum & synth sequencer that is reminiscent of bands like the alan parsons project, grandaddy, and emerson lake and palmer. here’s a track i call night wobble featuring the monotribe. i imagine it being in a movie where someone is driving at night, and something bad is about to happen.

i realized that it’s been close to a week since i updated this blog. i’ve followed enough blogs to know that without regular updates these things wither and die. i’ve been reading a book of selected letters from charles bukowski. he was someone else who followed other people’s work and corresponded with many authors and friends. he also worked at a post office until he was able to make a living as a writer. it was a lousy day job, and bukowski described the letters in this book as a way of “screaming from my cage.” i have 3 jobs, none of which are lousy… and this blog is my way of mumbling from my futon.

i found this pic on retrohound.com, a website that is dedicated to “digging up the coolest stuff ever mass produced.” the group in the pic above are members of the son messengers, one of many gospel bands from the 1970′s that dared to immortalize themselves on vinyl. just seeing the images on this album is like finding a time capsule from the jimmy carter years.

this weekend we visited with our friends kevin and victoria. they have 3 kids. one of those kids is nathan. he made this lego plane. nathan is 10 years old. i used to babysit him, his brother alex, and his sister kimberly. nathan emailed this pic and gave me permission to post it on my blog. thanks man.