Weekend: Imminent

Less than two hours from now the work week will come to a merciful end and the weekend will finally begin. Oh, happy day.

There is a huge, gargantuan, bummer this weekend. We had Rush tickets for the Mohegan Sun arena show on Sunday. Note I used past tense. We sold the tickets. We didn’t want to, but something came up for work and we couldn’t be at risk of being on the road, two hours from home, and work saying they desperately needed something done right now now now. This is the downside of having a job that occasionally requires you to be on call. It happens to all of us now and then. It used to happen to me all the time, but not so much anymore. Now when it comes up it’s always due to something major and that’s the case this weekend.

I am very sad to miss Rush but I’ve seen them twice on this tour and those two shows followed 11 whole years where I was convinced I would never see them live again. I’m good. I am Rush-Musically satisfied with the state of the world right now. The two shows we saw were amazing and I am so happy that we were a part of them. A small part, of course. In the Cleveland case we were a small part way off in the distance, but a part nonetheless. I am sad about Sunday night, but in the wider scope I am overjoyed with what 2026 has given us.

What else is going on? Tomorrow is Halloween. I have a great big pumpkin sitting on the sideboard in the dining room just waiting to be carved into a jack-o-lantern. We also have a great big bag of candy that is patiently waiting for trick or treaters to come by and claim it all. I’m not one of those grown ups who likes getting dressed up and partying on Halloween, but I do like working the door for the trick or treaters and I do miss when our kids were little enough to take part. I always enjoyed hitting the streets with them trying to maximize their candy haul. Those were good days with little people. Now that our kids are adults it is my job to help a new batch of kids get the most candy they can get. I take that responsibility very seriously and do my job with a smile.

After spending the months of July, August, and September writing as many shitty songs as I possibly could (60 songs in 90 days) I took October off. Fortunately, October ends this weekend and I can start working on the next forgotten internet based song writing/recording challenge. National Solo Album Month. Write and record an album within the month of November all by yourself without any help from anyone else. I’m thinking I want to incorporate the saxophone this time around. I’m not sure how. I think we’ll have a bunch of songs in the key of Eb minor with melodies trading off between vocals and alto sax. Something like that at least. I might want to use acoustic guitars more often as well. I don’t know. We’ll see.

Daylight savings ends this weekend. Sunrise at the ocean on Saturday is something like 7:17am and sunrise at the ocean on Sunday is something like 6:17am. I might take the camera out somewhere on one of those days. If I wait until Sunday I can work on the Frugal Film Project rolls for November. Maybe I’ll go into Boston. I’m off work on Monday too. It was supposed to be because we were going to be driving home from the Rush show in Connecticut. Now it’s just a random day off. If the weather is nice, photos might be taken. I have to get this sort of thing in before the weather goes to hell and that’s going to happen any minute now.

I saw something on social media today about the anniversary of the release of R.E.M.’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi record. It occurred to me that I haven’t listened to that album in… in… in a really freakin’ long time. Maybe not since the 90’s. It came out in 1996 and I played the crap out of it upon its initial release but I don’t think I have spent much time spinning it since then. I listened to it today and I think it is better than I remembered it. Binky the Doormat is still my favorite cut. After it was finished I started moving backward through time through their catalog. I’m back to Green now. I remember California. What a ridiculously great band R.E.M. was. We need more bands like that in today’s shitty world.

Okay. That’s all the self reflection I’ve got in me today. If you’re going to one of the Rush shows at Mohegan Sun (tonight/Friday and Sunday) say hello to the gang for me. We’ll get them next time… assuming next time is the rumored residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas sometime next year because if that happens we are absolutely making the trip out west to see at least one but preferably more than one show. Bank on it, Rush fans.

Unacceptable

Nope. This is completely unacceptable. I refuse to believe it. I refuse to accept it. I just plain refuse.

Patrick Stewart has passed away.

Thanks but no thanks. I refuse to live in a world that does not have Patrick Stewart in it. No. Losing Walter Koenig the other day was bad enough. My Star Trek loving soul cannot handle losing Jean Luc Picard as well. Enough already.

I refuse to accept this.

Deep Conversations

So this morning I was having a chat with Robin the Cat. I asked her if she knew why I had the Lavern and Shirley theme song stuck in my head.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t know. It remains a mystery for both of us.

Earlier this evening I was talking to Lily the Cat, our home’s other furry resident, and I asked her if she was aware that the word on the street is that it was Agatha All Along.

She didn’t answer. She was not aware. Let’s just chalk it up to another mystery.

Brewers

There are two teams playing in the World Series right now that have never won the World Series in their history. The Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays.

I am not really a fan of the Brewers, but the Rays are in the same division as my Boston Red Sox and there is no way in hell I’m rooting for another team from our division. I’m fully on board for the Brewers. Which is nice as they are up three games to none. In the early going of game four the score is tied at one. Here’s hoping Milwaukee wraps it all up tonight.

I said I am not really a Brewers fan, but they are important to me in that Miller Park is one of only four Major League stadiums I’ve ever been to. I’ve been to more games at Fenway Park in Boston than I could ever remember, dating all the way back to 1979. On our honeymoon in 2009 we saw games in two stadiums, Petco Park in San Diego and Dodgers Stadium in Los Angeles. We also stood outside of Camden Yards in Baltimore on our honeymoon but there was no game that day and we didn’t get to go inside.

In 2007 Jen and I had only been dating for a few months but we traveled to Wisconsin to visit Mike and Tammy and their new baby. While we were there we went to Milwaukee for a Rush show and a Brewers game. The game was on September 5th. That was my first non-Fenway MLB game. The Brewers played the Houston Astros but I’m not sure who won. I think it was the Brewers but that might just be wishful thinking.

Anyway, go Brewers.

Walter Koenig

The Star Trek universe lost another actor today. Walter Koenig passed away at age 90. Of course, he was not an original member of the cast. His character, Pavel Chekov, doesn’t show up on the Starship Enterprise until the second season. That of course lead to a famous continuity error. Chekov does not meet Kahn when Kahn first shows up in the season one episode titled Space Seed. In the movie The Wrath of Kahn though, Kahn says he recognizes him and that he never forgets a face. I read a social media post today explaining that Koenig told a story of how he solved that continuity puzzle. Chekov was there during Space Seed, he was just locked in the bathroom most of time. That makes perfect sense to me.

The only other story involving Walter Koenig that I know of doesn’t exactly involve him. It involved a party at his house. Harlan Ellison (who wrote the best episode of Star Trek, City on the Edge of Forever… well… he wrote it then someone else rewrote it and massively dumbed it down and hacked it to bits, but whatever) was a friend of Koenig’s and while at a party at the Koenig house he got an idea for one of his better stories. He over heard someone ask someone else how Jeff was doing and the response was, “Jeff is fine. He’s always fine.” Ellison misheard this (on purpose?) as “Jeff is five. He’s always five.” That lead to a story called Jefty is Five about a boy who stops aging at five years old. He also based the character of Jefty on Koenig’s son.

I heard one more great story today. It was actually on the post where I first heard that he passed. Fellow Star Trek actor George Takei posted that Koenig was gone. He mentioned that when Takei married his husband in 2008, Koenig stood as Best Man for both of them. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I found that wonderful. What does it say about you as a person when both of them wanted you to be their Best Man.

Rest in peace Walter Koenig. Our Ensign Chekov. Traveling at warp speed, looking for those nuclear wessles.

Weekends are Too Short

This past work week felt like the longest six months of my life. This weekend? Over in a blink. Well… it is Sunday evening so its not quite over yet, but… you know what I mean.

I didn’t do anything creative this weekend. No music, no photos. I did run a bunch of errands and I did some work around the house and that’s all positive. The biggest thing though was voting. My wife, Jen, and I participated in our city’s early voting program. One step closer to the inevitable blue tsunami that’s coming next month. It doesn’t really affect much though as we’re in Massachusetts and our state (along with California) is basically the liberal headquarters of the US. Still, it feels good.

In other news, we are seven days away from our next Rush concert. I’m ready right now.

My beloved bride made a huge, fancy dinner tonight and it was fantastic. So good. Thank you, my love.

I feel like I had a lot more to write about tonight but I have somehow lost the thread. Suffice to say that trump is a pedophile and a rapist and a fascist and he needs to be impeached, removed from office, and put in jail for the rest of his miserable life.

If you live in the US, vote.

Frugal Film Project Take Two: October Edition

Wait a second here… a Frugal Film Project post going up during the same month that the photos were actually taken? That’s just crazy talk! What, are you actually being efficient for once in your useless life?

Yup. Something like that.

I am currently working through two instances of the internet challenge known as the Frugal Film Project. Buy a cheap camera (cheap is defined, I believe, as less than $75 in US currency) and pair it up with a cheap type of film, then shoot one roll of that film each month for a year.

For me, who is stupidly doing this challenge twice at the same time, that means a Lomography Lubitell 166 Universal shooting a roll of Kentmere 100 and a roll of Kodak Gold 200. Why am I doing it twice? Because last year I started in May and failed in September and now I am punishing myself.

This year I started in May again but here we are in October and the challenge is still alive. That’s six months. We’re half way through! Will the challenge survive November? I don’t know, man… it’s getting cold out there.

The color, Kodak Gold, pics were taken on October 10th at Weir Hill in North Andover, MA. I was hoping for some fall colors and I didn’t really get much. I did get a lot of slightly over exposed photos and maybe a new light leak? Not sure. I did use a tripod with my Lubitell for the first time, so that was neat. The black and white pics, Kentmere, were taken in two locations on October 18th. First was at Hampton Beach in a failed attempt at sunrise pics (stupid clouds on the horizon) and then later that same day on the Methuen Rail Trail in Methuen, MA which includes the bird sanctuary and the Spicket River.

Let’s start with the black and white this time. They are in no particular order because when I search Flickr for the tag I used it returns them in random order. Weird.

That’s it for the black and white Kentmere 100 pics. Now we move on to the Kodak Gold 200 pics where you will immediately see what I meant when I said they were slightly overexposed. Oops.

Another month, another 24 photos, another miracle that they all came out. Crazy!

The question now is: What do I do in November? Winter is coming (as the saying goes) and its going to get more and more difficult to go outside and shoot stuff. I have a day off on November 2nd. I’m thinking I might go into Boston and visit the Freedom Trail or something straight forward and touristy like that. I think I could manage 24 pics doing that. We’ll see.

Happy Film Day

I got four rolls of film back from the developer lab today. Happy new film day! Two of the rolls are the October entry in the Frugal Film Project. I’ll post those another time (tomorrow?). For now though, here are a few highlights from the other two rolls. Most of these are from Weir Hill in North Andover, MA.

The first few are medium format. I took them with my Lomo Lubitell. The film is Lomography 800 which is pretty fast but I still used a tripod for most of them.

Now we have a few 35mm pics shot with my Nikon N90 and the magic known as autofocus. Ironically, these are the same type of film as the medium format pics. Lomography 800.

How about some apple picking pics to wrap this up?

That’ll do for now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll post the Frugal Film Project and bombard you with 24 medium format pics. We’ll see.

Friday?

Today is Thursday. This morning I was in a meeting. The host of the meeting said that she woke up convinced that it was Friday so she was just choosing to believe that it was in fact Friday and that tomorrow is Saturday. I decided to jump on this particular bandwagon and agree that it was Friday.

Man… it’s gonna suck when I wake up tomorrow and find it’s not really Saturday and I have to go to work.

A Minor Epiphany

I had a minor epiphany this morning that is meaningless to the greater world but served as an “ah ha!” moment for me.

Back story: I used to have a problem with one aspect of American culture just after the turn of the century. Post-9/11 so much of our society become very militaristic. There were huge examples like… ya know… wars. Plural. Two of them. One of them felt justified. The other did not and was evil and insulting and horrible. I felt like many of my neighbors were very much behind both wars and it bothered me.

There were little things too. Lots of support-our-troops stuff everywhere. People wearing camo all the time. Lots and lots of recruiting ads on TV. Lots of military weapons showing up in police stations. Stuff like that. Much of the US embraced militarism in a way that I found disturbing.

This sort of stuff became so common that I stopped thinking about it. It still bothered me on some level but my level of concern slipped away, more or less.

Fast forward to this morning and I’m in the cellar doing my daily exercise while watching something on Disney+. Our subscription includes ads because I don’t want to pay extra to get rid of them. I noticed after 2–3 ad breaks that each segment included at least one ad that was somehow related to the military. Watching all of those military-related commercials caused a thought to pop into my tiny little brain:

Is it any wonder we devloved into a fascist shit hole?

Immediately after having that thought all of those concerns about the militarization of US culture post-9/11 came flooding back to me all at once.

Holy shit… seriously, is it any wonder that we devolved into a fascist shit hole? Seriously!

And that was my minor little epiphany from this morning. My country fucking blows.

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