Buggirl's Increasingly Strange Tokyo Tales...

Happy Thanksgiving ya'll


From left to right: Step-brother Erik, myself, step-cousin Jesse/Raymond/Rainbow/Raven, step-brother Ryan.

My father's birthday pack to me arrived today.

The high point of the package, which is a marvel, is another book for my collection of "items I might threaten to make you some day."


We all know how much people love getting knitted items, they fuuuuully appreciate the time and effort that goes into them.  It's the gift of itch and guilt! And what, aside from complicated cables and lace, is more time consuming that multi-colored picture patterns?

I have to figure out how to get the flatbed scanner at work back into working order...because there is so much I need to scan for you. You'll have to live with quick snapshots..because I can't live without showing you a few high points.

It looks like I know a few folks nominated for  a "The Mama" this year...The Madison Area Music Awards. I am sad to say that Madison prides itself on the arts and thus I don't think that any winners scream "I got YOUR MAMA!" while grabbing the plaque/their crotches and making taunting gestures at the losers.

My father mentioned The Mama when I called to wish him a happy birthday this morning. I'd forgotten that the band got a Mama last year.

(Father's 2007 email quoted without permission)
Dear Kayt,
     Last evening the band attended the Madison Area Music Awards (MAMA) and won best country/bluegrass album of the year.  It came out of left field and we were very surprised.  We were nominated for two or three awards....I never did get what all we were up for, but won the album.
     It was a fairly surreal evening.  Held at the Barrymore, the awards were for rock, electronic, country, bluegrass, hip hop, blues, international, "unique".  So we had an evening of awards and music from various genres.  It was the first time I have ever seen live Hip Hop--a weird honky glimpse into an undiscovered country.  

This year Spare Time Bluegrass is up for best song in the bluegrass genre, which is sort of like being nominated for (insert your joke here.)

I mentioned this morning that I know others who have, and are once more nominated for, a Mama. He described the electronic folks from last year, no doubt my buddies, in a vaguely humorous manner and then threatened to stand up and shout "Do you know KAYT ROBARTS" at any wilded-haired Electronic Nominees.

So, nulldevice, downrightamazed feel free to ignore the crazy man...unless you're with chuck4 because Chuck might want to talk about dad's 1999 Gibson Granada banjo, or exchange jokes about bass players...or do whatever it is that banjo people do in greeting, and you'd be Chuck's in with my dad.

I've added photo links to facilitate mingling. I won't be the only person you guys have in common...the Spruce Tree folks are also shared buddies.

My dad's at the far right, but I could have honestly just told you "Look for Teddy Rosevelt, seriously" and you'd be able to find my dad at The Mamas:
http://wesselphoto.com/paw/07-18/slides/DSC_0441.html

And here is an MP3 link of my father playing an original tune. Please keep in mind, no one likes to be awoken by the sounds of a banjo
http://www.sparetimebluegrass.com/documents/Track3.mp3

And, dad, here are members of Null Device, they are at the bottom. All levels of the performance spetrum in one band picture. The guy on the far right has a banjo.
http://wesselphoto.com/mamas/mamas.html
http://wesselphoto.com/paw/06-11/slides/---_0265.html

My birthday gifts from dad arrived today, way ahead of schedule. His gifts usually arrive  in Japan a month or so after the event they mark.

Included were DVDs (Freaks, Under Suspicion, and Robin Hood (Errol Flynn version) )  the first three Sue Grafton alphabet mysteries on CD, pictures of my thinner stepmother after the stomache stapling (done to help her better combat diabetes) and a large book about Katharine Hepburn and more.

Which reminded me that I had not posted the email he sent me about performing after he'd read about my MTVcafe night. I think my father is overjoyed about my dance because, unlike art and everything else I love, he feels he can connect to me as a performer...he can finally "get" part of me the way he's always felt he couldn't before.

So here it is:

It sounds as if your last gig was a somewhat hellish and disconcerting experience.  Play dates can be like that.
     Every once in a while, sitting around a jam or campfire, the musicians start to talk about their worst playing experiences.  It usually moves to "who had the worst gig", with the stories becoming more and more horrendous (and embellished).
     My worst gig was at a birthday party for Lisa Steeno (my former bass player) at the old Ken's Bar.
     I changed my strings at the rear of a dark bar area and then went on stage.  Unbeknownst to me, the second string had not seated in its groove on the bridge but beside it on the bridge---bringing the string closer to the first string.  The tolerance was off...
     When you play and practice with a certain distance between strings while playing with three fingers, you know where you are.  I knew no longer where I was.
     As I performed I couldn't hit the roll.  At first I thought my timing was off....then I thought I might be very drunk ( though I had drunk only a little)...then I thought I was having some sort of stroke or mental lapse.
     The stage, which had for years been a relaxing area, a place where I was at ease, now became a minefield of doubt and intimidation.  It was if I was playing a totally unfamiliar instrument.  The "deer in the headlight" look and feeling was upon me.
     I got through the evening and the next day I discovered what the problem was.
     They made a CD of the evening.....I have never listened to it and never will.
      Just my way of saying that he physical problems of performing are sometimes out of your hands.  You can put the odds in your favor by pre-planning (a skirt that lets in less light or changing strings in the light), but you can never plan for everything.  You can only put all of the crap out of your mind (bad musical levels, small stages, disintersted audiences and drunken patrons) and just perform your art.

Dance name take two:

 

Okay, one of the other things I must consider when choosing a dance name is that it will be pronounced with a Japanese accent by my classmates and mispronounced, with no rhyme or reason, by my teacher.

 

So let’s look at what we have:

 

Fahada (the leopardess): I have a fear that I will be called something that sounds like father…and I won’t even have asked, Who’s your daddy, bitch? I am also slightly uncomfortable with taking on an Arabic name simply to seem more exotic and different. You see that copy of Orientalism? It’s making me feel a little embarrassed. It would make more sense for me to plunder my own bloodlines ask my father for my great-great grandmother’s name if I want to go slightly ethnic (Mexican) and then we could also talk about why the hell she sold all of that so-called worthless downtown L.A. property back in the day.

 

Bugs: Kimuchi is right, Sacer is just ripe for mangling. When you get right down to it, the Scarab is a dung beetle. It is sacred because it rolls around spheres of crap in a manner similar to how the male sun god rolls out the sun. They are mighty useful animals…but…dung is dung. I’m earthy, but not THAT fucking earthy. And there are other sacred beetles that appear in Egyptian hieroglyphs, but they don’t make for great names either.” Elaterid…but if that’s hard to pronounce just call me the Clicking Beetle.(insert crazed zill playing)” And as much as being a one-woman plague of Locusts goes…I don’t like to advertise it.

 

So last night I was wondering about other sources for names. Duh, Bug, you read! As a child you often went to Halloween in obscure costumes you made based on minor characters in the Oz series of books. You were Polychrome, the rainbow’s daughter. The Patchwork girl appeared in your early poems…you want to be…

( The latest in names )