BNL in San Mateo!!!

"I've got orange pants
I wear them when I dance.."

"When I make mistakes
I use a lot of salt
Cause salt makes m'steaks taste great"

- which isn't that hard to emulate as I try to do so at home right now...

--- "Raisins" - from Snacktime by Barenaked Ladies
Performed live at 3:30 pm at Barnes and Noble, San Mateo, 6/12!
I was in 5th "row" of the sitting on the floor crowd.

There was actually a little girl, maybe 5 or 6, who was wearing her orange pants (and
a stylish black button down shirt with flames on it).
She was dancing her heart out and got a special bit of attention and pointing from Ed. Apparently specifically dressed for the occasion by her mom, who gave her a big hug afterward.

It was just an awesome experience. They were playing in front of a huge window on the 2nd floor of the Barnes and Noble across from Hillsdale Mall, here in San Mateo.
It was almost impossible to get a good picture with the backlighting. Hopefully someone did get a shot and they post them online soon. :-)

So different listening to them in such a small space during the day. They can see you!

The kids seemed to enjoy it. There was a contingent of fan club women my age who had BNL shirts and were sitting in the front row, too.

Luckily we all didn't have to sit outside in the heat (although the line wasn't as long as I thought). They brought us into the store at about 2 pm.
I was surprised when the band suddenly took the stage (or little platform) since I was thinking they'd be introduced by someone from the bookstore.

"Please welcome, US!" Ed says.

So fun to see them so close up (and for free!). It was fun to watch Kevin's keyboard playing and Jim's bass playing, especially - you don't get so much detail when at Shoreline and they are far away!
Also the interplay between them and their interactions with the audience.

They had some thematic banter based on areas of the bookstore - but didn't comment about all the current events books which were the closest to them...
Notes on the banter (for some reason I had no network access on my phone, so I couldn't twitter or message):

This band is well known for their witty banter - onstage, and on the songs.

They started off with some shoplifting advice for all - something like "Hey, everyone here is pretty distracted right now, so if you tried to walk out with something, they probably wouldn't stop you..."

They also pointed out that Nikki Sixx had been at this same Barnes and Noble the day before...
Ed: Think of the double header on that one -- stay over night after Nikki Sixx to be here for our show..
research - he did come Oct 28, 2007 to this B&N. For the book "The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star" (and in other googling I find that Nikki is a San Jose native. Who knew?)

So it appears to have been an untruth that Nikki was there the day before...we'll see.
I remember their banter about the Kentucky Fried Chicken on El Camino near California Ave in Palo Alto. We saw them at a club there that was called The Edge, I think.
They were fascinated by the statue of Colonel Sanders that is on display there, but I can't remember exactly what they said.
This was sometime in the mid to late 90s. I can't remember if I was still at Stanford or just graduated.

Anyway. back to the present.

They played "Another Postcard" - which I forgot has such strong monkey references. Maybe we should always play BNL in our new monkey-themed bathroom (courtesy of Linda, Grady, and Michelle Woods' wedding presents).
"Another postcard, for chimpanzees"
And every one is addressed to me..."

Ed sang "Raisins" - and showcased the girl in orange pants above.

They also played "One Week" - really a nice number of their big singles along with the new songs. Hard to tell how many of the kids had heard these songs.

Steve sang "Ninjas"

A little blond girl named Amy (apparently her name was Amy Brubeck, according to the San Mateo Daily News) jumped up at one point with her hand up.

"Do you have a question?"

She requested them to play "Allergies"!

"The first child who actually ASKS for Allergies" - someone says (Steve or Tyler?)

"You can request, but it doesn't mean anything will happen" - Ed

"Tyler, do you know the words?"

"Maybe someone can hold up the words for you...maybe the girl who requested it..."

So Amy winds up standing near the drum kit holding the Snacktime book. I never saw her turn the page -- but obviously Tyler knew the words...
Amy was pretty blown away by the drums but she stuck it out!

Jim Creegan's song was "pollywog in a bog", which has a great refrain sung by Ed. Seemed like a great opportunity for the kids to jump up and jump, but those of us on the carpet stayed seated so everyone could see I think.

Kevin's song was "Eraser" ("If I make an error I can always make it better with my eraser..")
- which began with a mini-contest of "how long can we hold the "Eeee" syllable at the beginning of the word. Kevin won it seems.
He was wearing a pair of shiny aviator glasses and had a 50% off sticker from Barnes and Noble on his shirt.

I think at this point they played "7,8,9" which was quite brilliant. They warned kids that it was a scary song, and they might want to plug their ears if they are prone to nightmares.
Also that you can tell it's going to be scary, because it's in a minor key!
(They play example of the same opening chords in a major key) - this one would be happy!

They sang the lyrics of "Rhythm of the Night" by El Debarge, at the beginning of "If I had a million dollars" -- and dedicated it to El before starting. Hard to tell if people caught this also, but pretty cool.

amazing to hear it and sing along in such a small group. Steve yelling "sing along! LOUDER!"
"IF I HAD A MILLION DOLLARS!"
...I'd build a tree fort in your yard...
No kraft dinner was thrown...it seems like that would have been fun for the kids, but maybe the security staff had confiscated it.

And, they had a whole riff comparing Barnes and Noble to the Odd Couple, which prompted Tyler to play the theme and they all hummed and chimed in...
"That's for those kids who were born in 1961!"

"Or the kids who watch Nick at Nite," Ed says.

The waiting in the autograph line was pretty hot and sweaty, but the kids held themselves in line pretty well.
When I got up to the line I was feeling self-conscious because I had my old towel with me, that I grabbed from the car to sit in the line outside.
Also my plastic sack with my ice latte cup in it...

Ed was first - he said he would personalize the CD, so I spelled my name...and he says, "Cool name!"
So I got a "Cool name" from Ed Robertson, who joins the bevy of (mostly literary) famous people who have been exposed to the name.
I thanked him for coming.
Kevin was next - I thanked him by name, but he seemed pretty tired (and still had his sunglasses on)

And then Steven - also tired. I told him I'm the kid here, and I was kind of playing hooky from work. (side note, yay to him for the weight he's lost since the band started. He looks quite trim - much better than the Gordon cover, for example).

Next was Jim Creegan, and he asked what I was going to do with the rest of my day playing hooky - go fishing or something.
Didn't want to sound nerdy and say - well, actually more working.

And then Tyler, who was not very animated (tired...) but did sign and I thanked them again.

It's hard to express being a long time fan (not uber long, but before the success with "one week") - in a line like that. It's like all my author signings --"Oh I love your work, here's how to spell my name"...

Dave had said - you have to go even if you miss work for it.
This is what you have wanted as a kid - to have your favorite band come to your town and play in some store somewhere.
As a kid, the band in question was Huey Lewis and the News.

I have to also say - their song Crazy ABCs is just brilliant.
so many cool definitions: - and in the song they are doing commentary that is not on the lyric sheet, but they didn't sing it at the show:
(although Ed reads portions in this interview on ABC):

Hey Steve, Hey Ed
That sounds nice, what is it?
A new alphabet song I'm working on...
(steve says something about he just learned the old one...)

A is for Aisle
B is for Bdellium (gum like tree resin, starts with a silent B)
C is for Czar, and if you see him would you mind telling him?

Steve - ok hang on
aisle?
Ed: aisle, like a theater

D is for Djinn
E for Euphrates
F is for Föhn, but not like when I call the Ladies
(umlaut added by me after finding it on wikipedia)

Steve: I thought phone started with a p..
No, it's föhn, it's a kind of wind...
G for Gnarly
I for Irk
H for Hour
J for Jalapeno, good in either corn or flour... tortillas
(Steve: nice rhyme)
K is for Knickknack
L is for llama
(rama lama ding dong, what's so strange about llama?)
(it starts with two ls..)
M for Mnemonic
N is for Ngomo

(From me - this makes me feel ignorant - which Ngomo do they mean?
The Star Fleet admiral?
Or maybe the city in Gabon? I am taking too much time with this...or maybe Alicia Ngomo in London)

O is for Ouija Board
P is for Pneumonia, Pterodactyl, and Psychosis
Q is for Qat
ok - Q - cat? what?

Ed: it's qat, it's an evergreen shrub, it's a perfect scrabble word because it's a q with no u, there aren't many of those
Steve: you have too much time on your hands.

R is for Argyle

Steve: (singing along) --no it isn't
Ed: ok, you're right, I couldn't find a good R word.

S is for Saar, a lovely German river
T for Tsunami, a wave that makes me quiver
U is for Urn and not like earning money
V for Vraisemblance from french and therefore kind of funny
W for Wren, Wrinkly and Who
X is for Xi'an, an ancient Chinese city, true

Steve: ancient chinese city, huh? my guitar player, some hotshot...

Y is for Yperite a very nasty gas
Z is the final letter, and by final I mean last
Steve: ok when you say zed, for the benefit of our American friends, you really mean Z, right?
no I mean zed, like zed zed top
(riff of zz top) - and note - if you click the link above you hear the riff, so fyi - if you're listening to something else, it will be overshadowed...)

the guys who all have beards, except the guy whose _name_ is beard...
yeah I always thought that was interesting...

And in the ABC interview I linked to above, Ed mentions their "Bathroom Sessions" on Youtube. He'd noticed all these fans putting videos of themselves playing BNL songs (many at home and some in bathrooms).

So he thought he'd do this also, and just started doing little videos of himself playing the songs filmed by a little webcam on his laptop.

Here is Ed and Steve doing "one week":

ASJA meeting at Mechanics Inst

Pat invited me to a meeting of the ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors) - we're both not members but we shelled out $10 for the privilege of hearing two senior editors at two San Francisco publishing houses (unnamed here) reveal how writers can make use of new information and technologies on their route to successfully publishing, and publicizing, their books.

Pat's take on the evening as a whole was that they were making the situation seem a bit too rosy - it might be easier to publish as writers these days but definitely not easy to make a living. They had proposed that writers hire their own publicists at a relatively high cost to fill in the gaps left by the publisher's publicist when they move on to the next book. This sounds like a good idea but in practice not very feasible - sounds like it eats up the advance for the book quickly.

However - the meeting was interesting and was held in the Mechanics Institute, a very beautiful and historical building in SF on Post near Mont. BART. We went down the staircase pictured above, and peered into the library windows on each floor. It looks awesome and the library was open, but we needed member key cards to get in.

Clinton: Don't Let the Perfect become the Enemy of the Good

I went to a rally for Prop 87, which establishes a $4 billion program to reduce oil and gasoline usage by 25 percent, with research and production incentives for alternative energy, education and training, funded by a tax of 1.5-6 percent on producers of oil extracted in California. (And here's a link to the Forum show about the prop, and thanks to Forum for the concise summary of prop87, cut and pasted above).
Bill Clinton was the star attraction - so much so that when the rally was asked, "What are we here for?" many yelled back "Bill!".
He was very smart, the speech just went from point to point flawlessly and of course he is a master of the art of making everyone feel like he is speaking to each of them.
It was just amazing to actually see him in person - I was relatively close to the stage, and he was the first President I ever voted for (in 1992 when I was 18).

Don't Let the Perfect become the enemy of the good - that the opponents say the proposition is bad because it's not perfect. No, it's not perfect but it certainly seems like it will be better than what we have now. He pointed out that people have been using this argument to impede change for 600 years and that Californians shouldn't fall for it now.

Mikebaudio, who I found on Flickr, was there also and took much better pictures than I did. He took the above picture of Clinton and SF Mayor Gavin Newsom, and here is Bonnie Raitt, who sang "Something's Happening Here" - the acoustics were great for those there live but the little movie I made of her sounds very muddy.
Below is a view of City Hall that I took. Note the blurriness of the Treo, I had forgotten the real digital camera, The view is looking up from where I was standing. It was very beautiful. Apparently this was a big day for Clinton, he went to another rally in SF after this one, and then went to Stockton!

Cruel Tutelage by Monkey - song lyrics and dancing

MONKEY! I'm dating this post on the night we went to the Monkey show, but actually writing it a week later when we received the CD I ordered from Asian Man Records (buy it, it's $10 including shipping!)

It's very fun to finally hear the lyrics more clearly than we could hear them in the club show. - especially "Trailer Park Love" - "If she don't get flowers, she'll burn off your pants."

So far my favorite songs are "You Don't Know" and "Would You Wanna?" It's pretty cool that we actually know two members of this band which has been chugging along making this music for ten years already.
Oh and also after listening to the album a couple more times, I have the line "Give me the head of the head of the radio station" from "Voice of America," constantly running through my head.

Hot Ticket!?!

Kari and I were talking about the Khaled Hosseini reading and I told her about the gaggles of high school girls taking pictures of him after the reading with their cell phones. She asked if he was Hot. I said, yes, I think he is.
She had to unexpectedly have a day off this week due to testing snafus, and the bonus was that Barack Obama was on Oprah that day.
I mentioned that Obama and Hosseini could run for office, and Kari put in that they could run as the "Hot Ticket!" Kari is volunteering to be their campaign manager.

Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders, by Neil Gaiman

Fragile Things: Buy on Amazon

I just finished this a couple days ago and it is very wondrous indeed. It's been inspiring me to write more stuff of my own and just imagine (for example, the butternut squash that was sitting on our countertop for several days started to assume a sinister aspect in my mind - is it a visitor from the fairy world? An alien? Why aren't we eating it? What's up with that?).
Dave did bake it up yesterday and made a soup of it, it was delicious and hasn't harmed us (yet).

I'm not going to say anything about the stories themselves as they should be a surprise and Dave hasn't finished the book yet. Neil has a great intro in the beginning where he talks about each story/poem in the collection - his intro is much better than anything I could do.

Dave and I were lucky to see him reading in Berkeley, Monday, Oct 2. It was a surprise from me to Dave, and he was very surprised, although he had guessed it was Neil Gaiman that morning (of course I did not confirm and remained cagey. It was good that the event was at the Berkeley Rep instead of at Cody's, because I could honestly say when we were driving up there, "No, we're not going to Cody's!")

We didn't get to stand in line for a signing (and so didn't get our copy of Good Omens signed, as well as American Gods, etc) and didn't go to Kepler's the next day for the signing there, but I think it worked out well that we got our pre-signed copy.

FngKestral on Flickr went to both events, here's his/her pictures. The Kepler's event looked like a bit of a madhouse and Gaiman looked much more tired there. The above picture shows him exactly how he looked at the Berkeley reading we went to. We were in the front row!!!

Sitting behind us was Ellen Klages, whom we were eavesdropping on because she mentioned being a Nebula Award finalist. After Dave found out her name, we told her we would read her work, and when I googled her at home we discovered she is a friend of Pat's, and has co-written several of the Exploratorium science books with her and that Ellen has her first novel (The Green Glass Sea) coming out in the next couple weeks. (post to follow on that, although I did order her chapbook story "Time Gypsies" and can write about that). Ellen also has won a Nebula in 2005. I'm planning as well to get the Firebirds Rising anthology from the library, to read Ellen's story about a girl being raised by "feral librarians".

826 Valencia Tutoring Notes

Tutoring Esmeralda

I did not write this, but someone doing drop-in tutoring at 826 Valencia last year did, and I think she is describing one of the girls I worked with last Monday (this Monday I had a job interview).

The girl's name is Esmeralda, and I recognize her easily entertained nature, especially about spelling -- in this journal note she laughed and laughed at how she was spelling "butterfly" - "butfly".
When I was helping her (if this is the same person) - she got into a giggling jag when trying to spell Mississippi (she didn't need to do this for her homework, she was being challenged to do it by her friend who was already very adept.)

"Miss-iss-i-pipi (ha ha ha giggle giggle)" I think it was all the "pees" that got her going.

etc...
Until finally she got it - "Miss-iss-ipp - i !"

I just signed up to help some fifth graders come up with stories in their classroom next Wednesday morning, then to go over to Rockridge for my 1:10 appt.

Game Developer's Conference, Pat, Ames, and Writing

Spent most of the afternoon on Friday with Pat walking around the Game Developer's Conference, apologies to Pat for this picture because I forgot to get a better one of her later on.
This is Pat listening/ talking to Ames and I after we sat down to have a beer after wandering around the show, and then Ames saw me and ran over to say hi.
This was such a fun conversation that I forgot to get my coat out of our company's booth before the booth was dismantled, and our studio head took it back in his car.

Pat and Ames found they share a love of wolf stories, which was quite cool! Ames and I were also inspired to write, especially to try writing in the morning although I meant to do that this morning (Saturday) but did not.
In riding home on light rail I found also that Pat and I have a similar attitude on the "adventure" of public transit: it's kind of a pain and a stress to get on and to the public transit, but once you're on it, you don't really get as stressed as you do when driving and you really feel when driving as if you could have controlled the situation if there's traffic, etc. But on transit, if it's late, it's late. Pat actually took BART to Caltrain, then Caltrain to light rail, to get to the show.