July 25th, 2009.

One of the hazards of working at a musical instrument store.
One of the COOL things about working at musical instrument store: this guy had been coming into the shop for months, explaining about his project to make a cigar box mandolin, taking measurements, buying odds and ends and tiny parts… and he finally finished the project and…. well… now has to learn how to play mandolin, frankly. But it SOUNDS killer!

Yesterday we went up to New Jersey to get our hands on the new CDs. I’ve been really excited about these for a while – aquiver even – and for a while there was simply problem after problem after problem…. Heather was very sick through the beginning of the project, I’d get into the studio and be unable to remember words, Kristen was sick when SHE recorded her cello tracks, tuning issues not noticed until AFTER instruments were recorded… then once the audio was done problems plagued production… a couple of weeks ago I was going insane… making everything fit into templates that were slightly altered from the templates from previous years, dealing with new applications (CS4 is new and exciting!), a different colour set-up for the silk screen on the disk face – all sorts of insanity. Then the master didn’t work and I spent a day running from place to place burning new masters (this time I bloody well sent FOUR on different brands of CD-Rs) and overnighting them to the company…. issues with margins, a colour problem (I wanted a particular Pantone that’s a gorgeous warm green-black that they kept proofing as a dead cold flat black with red undertones)…

Kristen’s band, 50 Man Machine, performing at Whitlow’s on Wilson in Arlington, VA. A very cool mix of reggae and Irish music with some singer/songwriter thrown in for good measure. An amazing percussionist – and of course an uber-hot cellist / steel pan player!

And so, with all of the chaos that went into getting the thing done, it wasn’t funny when the woman behind the counter said “oh! rob Hinkal? 10,000 blank discs? They’re ready! Oh – just kidding.”

No, not funny at all. But the important thing is that I didn’t bite this woman in the face, thus earning a jail sentence a week before the CD is released.

Going to the zoo for Kristen’s birthday we discovered the ultimate in charismatic animal. I have decided that I Love the elephant shrew. Even if he DOES remind me of Garindan. Unfortunately, from their confinement at the zoo you’d never guess these creatures were lightning fast runners and path-builders. Look up “shrew on a leash” on youtube. Ah – sweet shrewy freedom.

(Although, now that I think about it, isn’t jail time EXACTLY what I need to build my folk cred into something huge and rockstar-like? And if you go to jail for biting someone in the face I bet NO-ONE messes with you in the Bighouse… or the SLAMMER… I’ve got to go back and watch the Great Muppet Caper and brush up on my prison lingo)

After picking up the CDs, we decided to take a road trip up to Bethlehem, PA for ice cream – but what was really supposed to be only an hour north turned into a 3 hour nightmare of traffic and that specific horror of 15mph at gear 1.5. You know gear 1.5? It’s the one that doesn’t exist between gears one and two that all the fuckers with automatic transmissions like to inhabit when they’re taking a leisurely gander at construction, accidents and exotic guardrails.

We did eventually make it up to Bethlehem in time to get some ice cream from the Heavenly Hedgehog and then we got to wander around watching the sun go down over Christmas City. Rain flicked over us in the form of a summer shower and we had just enough time left over to visit the oldest bookstore in the country.

Afterwards we crashed back in Philadelphia with JJ Tizzou of the Osage House Concerts (and of the exquisite photography). He’d gotten a new kitten and had a recent break in so the storytelling was both intense and frequently interrupted.

Last Friday on our way to our show in Bel Air, MD at the Tower, I yelled “MARK 8 ADEPTES ASTARTES ARMOUR!!!” As I’m won’t to do. I’d spotted a Games Workshop in a strip mall across the highway from us nearby route 1. Heather gave this Space Marine some Love and remarked “You know? You have very good eyes. At least, for very specific things.”

Before going to bed we hunkered in to watch the 2007 movie “Cthulu”. Unfortunately, I’m still not quite sure how to process the film: I’ve seen plenty of films that sort of centre around the theme of being gay and the difficulties that this can present, especially in regards to one’s small town roots, religious father, close-minded frat-boys, etc…. and I’ve seen plenty of films about the danger of religious cults dedicated to dark gods, also often in regards to small town roots, religious fathers and short-lived frat-boys – but I don’t know that I’ve ever seen the two combined, nor with such an uneasy co-existence.

The movie definitely flicks from being a movie about Cthulu with a lead character that happens to be gay to a story about being a gay man in a family / Love drama that HAPPENS to occur as we face the evils of a Cult of Cthulu. It’s a strange mix, and I’d argue an uncomfortable one – not because of the sexuality – but simply because I was there to watch a moody Victorian horror flick!

The show at the Tower WOULD’VE been outside, but the torrential rain kicked us off the roof. Despairing having driven over an hour to NOT play a show, we asked a local coffeehouse if we could set up shop and play there instead. Things worked out and thus we ended up playing Shamrocks Coffeehouse in Bel Air, MD.

The new trailers reflect the actual course of the movie a little bit better and it’s being distributed by a company that SPECIALIZES in “gay genre” films, but I’d been sold initially on a beautifully realized, moody horror story based on HP Lovecraft’s ultimate evil…

All in all I’m kind of disappointed by the difference between a movie that follows its course and has the quiet acceptance of the relationship while getting on with bloody, slimy business vs the way this movie treats things: confrontationally. It’s the difference between a man who incidentally introduces you to his boyfriend vs the man who introduces himself, says “I’m gay” and then continues self-sexuality-referencing, insisting on that definition. It’s also the difference between insisting that we accept the facts as they are vs insisting that we should have a problem with them.

Who what now?
??!!? Brennan? Analysis?! Should I have shot or NOT?!?! I nuked him from orbit JUST to be sure

We’re in an interesting time with our acceptance of gays and lesbians in our society. There’s a very, very long way to go towards acceptance as a nation, but America HAS come out of the closet. As long as we have safe, sanitized homosexuals like those in Will & Grace we’re still okay. The scary imagery presented by racier shows like Sex and the City are a little less palatable to the average American, but still I feel we’re past the point where we should be using a club, and into the point where some subtlety is in order.

A map of Philadelphia and adjoining environs, allowing us to retrieve the brand new CDs. 1000 copies of the beauteous “A Gift For Saint Cecilia”! That’s the first one right there. As we were loading them out from the factory the owner actually wandered in and asked if he could see a copy. Surprised but willing, I hand him a disc and he told me that I should really extend his compliments to the person who did the front cover. Well! I most certainly DID!

I guess you’ve got to ask if this is pop-culture or art and what the director was trying to say and what was the PURPOSE of the movie, but it was presented as a (albeit beautifully made) horror popcorn (shrimp) movie – if you get the audience in their seats through misrepresentation, I feel that you’ve got to then engage them in conversation to keep them there. I was disappointed to have the tenderness of his relationships, the beautifully shot Love scenese, etc – HAVE to comingle with YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND ME-style shouting monologues and hatreds of “your kind”. It simply confuses things.

Anyways, you can call me prudish, but my sexuality is part of my Loves, desires and my private Life – not part of my advertised definition. Call me geeky, but my sexuality is is in my meta-tags and context, not on my splash page and menu bar.

I’m babbling. I’m disappointed in the movie because it seems to fight with itself and I was expecting something very different, very cool. Though I think it WOULD be fun to take a homophobic acquaintance to. If only we could say “oh! Look! See how beautifully we get to see the WHOLE table? Again?!”

upComing & inComing

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