Best News Ever!

I’m on my way home from rehearsal. Well, after beers after rehearsal. As I’m passing McDonald’s, it’s a little past midnight. But the Golden Arches are still lit. Seems to be a little late, but what can it hurt? So I throw caution to the wind, and go through the drive-thru. Lo and behold, they’re still open!! How lucky can I be?? I’ll tell you!

Ever since this past Monday night, with absolutely no fanfare or announcement, McDONALD’S DRIVE-THRU IS OPEN 24 HOURS!! To you big city slickers, this probably isn’t a big deal. Here in Buttfuck, MT, it’s huge! I can’t begin to express my joy at this prospect! Not that I patroninze the place on a weekly, let alone daily, basis, But after getting home at 3 AM or later after an out-of-town gig, there’s nothing quite like a Big Mac, large fries and a chocolate shake to hit the spot! Along with a Quarter Pounder w/Cheese, 2 Filet-O-Fish, a McChicken, and, if you’re really lucky, one or two McRibs! Let’s see the creepy Burger King top THAT!

A clue

If Ago had her choice of car to drive, it probably would be this…

Mid-week pick-me-ups

As stated in my last post, I said I’d take the time to write if I found something really good or bad. Well, I found four things to share. And I have to say–THIS IS WHY I LOVE THE INTERNET!! You generally won’t get to read this stuff in your local newspaper! (And on a side note–check out the picture on the right sidebar of these stories. It may only be up for the rest of today. Funny picture in a really tragic way…)

• Story 1: Frogs in Germany. This story just SCREAMS for video!
• Story 2: Scratch an itch. What did you say?
• Story 3: Puppy love. Some people will do anything for love.

The last story deals with work. As I anticipated, this week has been horribly busy. This symphony concert that we’re doing this Saturday has been a logistical nightmare. I’ve been very busy, very tired, and generally crabby–more so than usual. When I’m at work, I can’t do any of my symphony work, which is a relief. So in an odd way, work has been my time to get away from it all. This week has been especially sweet.

This Saturday night we’ll be hosting an “Adults Only” art show. This will feature sculptures, paintings and other artwork of a sexual or mature nature by local and regional artists. Fairly heady stuff for little ole conservative Montana! Beer, food, jazz, dirty pictures–should be a good evening for those not attending the symphony concert! Anyway, the owners want to run a slide show on the walls throughout the evening. A slide show of naked people. Hundreds of them. Where might we get these? THE INTERNET, of course. So my job this week, for four hours a day, is to download nude pictures, erotic photos, and slightly naughty stuff like that. HOW COOL IS THAT???

Of course, I do have to be careful. I can’t use copyrighted photos, and I can’t use minors, and they don’t want anything terribly graphic. Basically, just safe, soft-core legal porn. It’s actually an easy job, and it helps that I inexplicably knew where I might be able to find these sorts of images. To be fair to the ladies, I have to download some naked guy images. Ick. It’s bad enough finding pictures of guys with their manhood blowing in the breeze, but it’s something totally different when the camera comes in for an artsy close-up of some stud’s sausage. And we’re not talking little smokies here either. How do some of these guys walk in a “normal” fashion? **shudder** There is NOTHING photogenic about these damned things! Why can’t there be some pics of some little smokies? It would make 90% of the men on earth feel at least adequate! I did find myself lingering a little at some of these sites, and found that somewhat distressing…. Fortunately, there’s enough “art” sites with guys out there that I didn’t have to go trolling any gay sites!

Anyway, I have two more days to download this stuff. Did I mention that they’re actually paying me to do this?!?! They’d like to get about 400 images to display. I should be able to finish that up easy enough, as long as the regular work and the numerous trips to the bathroom don’t get in the way!

Leave of Absence

This week is going to be a week from hell, and the ONLY way I’m going to get everything taken care of is to limit my online time. So don’t expect a new post from me this week (unless something really good/bad happens, or I find some time at around 1 AM–and there’s a couple of you who know I’m often surfing then!). I’ll be checking in briefly from time to time to check up on people. I don’t want to fall to far behind.

Hope y’all have a great week!

Reminiscing

I come home after two days of rehearsals and staff meetings, and decide I’m going to kick back, flip through the channels on TV, get bored and end up taking a little nap. Oh, no. That ain’t gonna happen. I breeze past SVU (I think I’ve seen every episode). I stop at the Weather Channel for a minute. It’s supposed to rain tonight. Then I land on the most attention-grabbing, time-wasting, nostalgia-inducing show on TV today. You know it, you love it, you hate it–VH1’s “I Love the 80s”.

I tuned in at about 1986. And damned if I didn’t finish out the decade. Almost three and a half hours of a nice afternoon–SHOT TO HELL! And I’d already seen this show. A couple of times! You get Lionel Ritchie telling you what the “Make-Out Songs” of the year were (unfortunately, none of HIS were included!). You get “up-and-coming” comedians that no one’s ever heard of giving their insights and witty commentary about music, TV, movies, etc. You even get a couple of 80s “icons” reminiscing about their glory days. But worst of all–all the things about the 80s that you thought you had risen above like a phoenix from the ashes–Milli Vanilli, New Kids On The Block, big hair, acid-washed jeans, etc., etc.–all hit you like the backwash from a warm can of Keystone Light. Or a music stand in the lips….

It’s bad enough that VH1 has to subject us to this torture, but they came up with it after the stellar success of “I Love the 70s”. At least that show had great things to remember. Platform shoes, Barry Manilow, Vietnam, disaster movies, Three’s Company, gas shortages. Ah, those were great days!

But today was all about the 80s. To be honest, the 80s were a pretty good decade for me. But being forced to relive them is just cruel. Thank God I have until Friday before I have to watch “I Love the 80s Strikes Back”!

Bill the Cat

It’s been a full two days now, and with the exception of Moose, NOT ONE OF YOU has commented on my change of profile pic, or waxed poetic about the finest cartoon strip ever to grace the newspaper, or possibly even noticed the change.

In the famous words of my muse, “Ack! Thfpppt!”

Poll Results III

The freakazoid description won, hands down.

Britney & Kevin

Freakazoid parents-to-be (5)
She’s still thinking about the Madonna kiss (1)
Just got married to make Justin jealous (1)
Will celebrate the kid’s 10th b-day at Neverland (1)
Bimbo & the Boy (1)

New poll is up–

Busy, busy, busy….

It’s that time of the month. For two weeks I get cranky and irritable. I feel somewhat “out of control”. I get headaches and I fatigue easily. I have painful joints, backache, heart palpitations and weight gain. Emotionally, I’m anxious, depressed, tense, and generally out of sorts. My moods can change at the drop of a dime. You all know what I’m getting at here–it’s concert time again!

We’re performing Mahler’s 2nd Symphony next Saturday. It calls for a HUGE orchestra. I’m pulling in musicians from all over the state. Those of you in the more populous parts of the country (which should be most of you!) probably don’t realize how hard it is to find 2 harpists who can play. I know that bigger cities usually have dozens to choose from. Around here, there’s probably not more than 10 in a 500-mile radius. Then finding 2 contrabassoonists, when there’s only three instruments in the entire state, let alone players. Etc., etc. But I’ve found everything I need. Right now, my headache is how to house all of them over the last two days of rehearsals without spending money. Shouldn’t be a problem. Just more work on my end. We started rehearsals tonight. It’s going to be a great concert, with over 200 singers/musicians on stage. That’s a whole lot of stinky people in close quarters, but that’s some of the fun! To add to the pressure/confusion, this concert will be celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Helena Symphony, so we expect a packed house, and alot of pretentiousness going on. Gotta love culture!

The original plan for this post was to be an update about my chops. There’s good news and bad news. The good news–it appears as though I can play with a minimum amount of pain. Externally, my lips are literally bruised (which is a weird thing), and a little tender yet on the inside–sorta like canker sores. The little scabs that formed on the outside seem to have fallen away on their own. Lips seem to heal pretty quickly. So I played OK tonight without any real problems. The bad news–the gash on my upper lip seems to have actually separated the small muscles in my embouchure (that’s the muscles around the lips) where I was hit. It’s like a permanent indentation. I’m not sure what that’s going to do to my long-term playing, but I can’t imagine that it’ll be good. It might not be a problem, but I’m a little bit concerned.

My blogging and surfing time might be somewhat affected by all this time away. I’ll try to keep up. Now it’s time for some much needed sleep…..

Anagram Genius

I found a wonderful time-wasting site. It’s an anagram generator. Put in your name, your web site’s name, a poem–whatever. It’s free to get one example (less than 30 letters), and there’s a full program available for purchase. Just as an example, “Anagram Genius” comes up as “An Amazing Rage”. Or, “George Bush” gives “He bugs Gore”. Waste some time–give it a shot!

UPDATE: I googled “anagrams” last night and found a plethora (word of the day) of anagram sites. Most of which are free. Even one that will come up with 5000, if possible. Who knew?

A big honkin’ thank you!!

Again, a big THANK YOU to all of you who wished me a happy birthday! There were a handful of new people who stopped by (including a guy who lives here in town and saw me driving down the street–God bless vanity plates!). A huge thank you to Julie and Moose (formerly Bone Girl–much easier name to call her!) for going above and beyond expectations with their “tributes”. And to Lizabeth, Andi, Ty, and Rachel for putting a blurb up in their own blogs. To those who promised boobie pics or flowers–I’m waiting!

As mentioned in my previous post, the birthday was downright tame. I did get a balloon bouquet at work from Moose that was very nice. I ran out for dinner and a beer, then I went grocery shopping. Sort of pathetic that on a Friday night, my birthday, I’m shopping for groceries. But I’m old, so it’s OK.

Saturday was much more exciting. We had a gig in Great Falls, so we’re leaving town around 2:30 in the afternoon. We had to rearrange the U-Haul trailer to get everything in. There was a music stand wedged behind some drum cases. I’m trying to pull it out, and must have pulled the drum cases to the side a little…..

Have you ever seen the cartoons of Homer Simpson stepping on the rake and having the handle whack him in the face? And how funny that is?

The offending music stand totally blindsided me (which is tough to do when it’s right in front of you). The side edge of the stand hits me straight on, right in the lips. It could not have hit me in a more damaging spot for a brass player. I only let out one expletive, and immediately covered my mouth to catch any teeth that might have wanted to fall out. My next thought was to check for blood. There was alot of it. So I grabbed the first thing I could to mop that up–a grossly dirty towel in my car. Dirt, dust, weird stains–I didn’t care. I needed to stop the bleeding. Fortunately, the holes and gouges that the teeth put into my lips didn’t bleed. Much. But the show must go on, so I insisted on getting some ice to curb the swelling. The ice was wrapped in the dirty towel, and as the ice melted, the dusty, dirty, weirdly-stained towel turned into a mud wrap. Well, not that bad, but it makes for a good story.

Once we finished setting up for the gig, we ran over to Applebee’s for dinner. I really wasn’t hungry, and my mouth hurt, but I really liked the looks of their drinks. The short story on my “dinner”: 2 Bahama Mamas (coconut rum, creme of banana, and other fufu-type things) and their biggest glass of Killian’s. And I got a chocolate sundae for my birthday from the day before, so that was nice. The booze didn’t do a thing to me, but the frosty cold drinks felt good!

The gig was pretty good, and my lips were fairly numb by that point, so the night went pretty well. Didn’t get home until around 3 AM, and I didn’t go to bed until around 4. You can find a picture of the injury, and the band, over at my other blog. I also sent the picture to Moose and the Eye Girl (who was still up–so we chatted for a little bit).

Getting home late means I slept most of Sunday. Moose did call and wake me at 9 AM. I’m always glad to hear from her, but did she check to see what time I sent the pics to her?? I stayed up to read the paper, then went back to bed. I did get up in time to join the rest of my family to do the family b-day party in the afternoon. We BBQd steaks, played some poker, and generally enjoyed the time together. All in all, a laid-back weekend, with various doses of adrenaline. Sorry I couldn’t be more exciting, but geez–I’m old!!