tjulian

Vermont

2009-10-30T14:04:24Z

Vermont is so nice this time of year, things fell in place to visit Bryan, Ceredwyn and kids, and get 4 gallons of maple syrup. They've got goats now, plus the chickens, with an economic forecast more doomful than mine. But he's still touring around, promoting IT for colleges. Also visited 6 flags new england, before they close for the year, to see what they did with my plastic. Likewise Ghostly Manor, though 7 floors in Ohio had presumably auctioned off their castle, at their annual props auction. 6 flags had a great skit, a Trial for Sorcery of Abigail Dickenson. Her father the Puritan pronounces her a witch, and they lop off hear head with a guillotine. But that doesn't shut her up, and many curses ensue. She was so emo. They also had an undead Sinatra, Morrison, Elvis and Marilyn sing along, beyond awful. And then to Boston, to visit Corinna. But she was spending time in the hospital with Sean, so no tour of Harvard for me. He got better after I left. And the plan B, NYC detour will have to wait a few months.
Still pushing forward with the stained glass works, I stopped in Corning again, though the research library is closed for renovations. Grr! At least I got some answers, including some patent #s for float glass and hot molding. And yes, they still have the best glass collection on the world. Addicting, inspiring. For some of it, I can do better.

Arbitrarily, here are some conversational highlights:
Peak oil may yet make climate change legislation redundant, if we run out of oil before we hit a catalytic turning point. Not that anyone has a clue when that might be, considering that CO2 only follows temp in the short term, it's water vapor that's the primary greenhouse gas. And we live in one of the geologically brief periods between ice ages, for which we are overdue. But who am I to gainsay the popular hysteria? Of course solar output is perfectly constant, and has no effect on temperature.

We were mulling over the consequences of huge unpayable student debts even before I heard these twentysomethings having lunch at a museum, and one says "dude, i totally wish we had an armageddon. Spending the next twenty years paying off student loans is like, bullshit" Well, no longer will old geezers get to complain to spoiled youngsters about walking to school barefoot, uphill both ways. I wonder if our president will propose some fiscally imprudent but wildly popular bailout for them, right before the 2012 election. . .
lastly, Starbuck from Battlestar Gallactica is not a cylon or an angel, exactly. She's a Vorlon! That's why they keep Babylon 5 out of their space, to protect their hybrid experiments.

MI Renfair 2009

2009-10-05T19:58:28Z

What a year for the renfair, descending in tandem with the local economy. It's still fnu, attendance was mostly tolerable, but few patrons were buying the luxury items aka knick-knacks that the crafters offer. Some got by fine, but others saw sales drop deeply, the worst ones down 75% from last year, not that last year was anything to smile about. I'll keep the booth for now, if only because it's still a beautiful gothic chapel, one of the best at any fair in the country, and testament to the longevity of the plastic. And I can afford to, thanks to the multi-project workaholoic entrepreneur lifestyle all these years. But I'd expect to see some rennies absent next year, even some lifers. In the short term, the fair should not have difficulty replacing them, for there are plenty of aspiring artists looking for self employment opportunities, able to cash in a parent's retirement savings for such a start-up. But as some hopes are dashed, the fair may start to see chronic vacancies. They could slow this process with reduced fees, but I won't hold my breath. Where is the palantir that can say what is to come?
It was nice to finally see the 'All's faire in love' premier, the Christina Ricci movie wherein my booth gets a few quality seconds of screen time. Not that I watched all of it, even though at an arguable one-and half-star, it was better than i expected it to be. Renfair enthusiasts will enjoy it, when it goes straight to dvd. (If you're going to watch the unwatchable, go instead for Repo: the Genetic Opera. ouch!) Otherwise it was a productive year for hobnobbing, and setting up new commercial gigs. There were plenty of friends visiting, and Kristy and Josie did a fine job at sales, considering. I was more worried about their adaptation to the subculture, but there were no real conflicts, either with the communists, the free-luvin' substance-indulging lot, or the indecipherably freaky types. And these, at least, were in abundance.

NetherSpam

2009-03-31T17:43:53Z

As if one tradeshow wasn't hard enough, i just had to do two back to back. It was a necessary marketing tool to stay in business, and quite a logistical enterprise. Chuck flew in from san fransisco, to austin for Erica's gig, then cinci, detroit, st louis, then home. George and the haunter crew drove to st louis for transworld.

At usitt in cinci, there were many a technical director from professional and school theaters, plus circue du soliel and disney cruise lines, recruiting. i hear they loose some percentage of their crew, who like some far off port, and just don't get back on the boat. Some girl hands me her resume, and i see it includes 'spurt of blood' by antonin artraud. i knew this guy had written plays while in an asylum, so i had to ask, what exactly she did for this. "oh, i made the 9 foot vagina exploding blood, and the fist of god". whoa. maybe she should have been at the haunt show, instead. Then there's the foppish kid who secretly confides to me that actors are vain and lazy. i nod, frowning. Chuck made friends with a rennie from minnesota, who's named could have been 'sleaze', but brought in lots of other people. talking with some veteran producer, i learned that the situation in dubai was worse than expected, with many an expat leaving the keys of their leased mercedes at the airport parking lot. So, maybe i won't be selling bronzes over there. I expected that bubble not to pop for decade, but this recession is quite a catalyst for change.
They had a new product review, where i got to stand up in front of a thousand people and talk for 3 minutes. The audience was rowdy, and much swag was flung at them. Having learned the value of audience participation from the washing well wenches, i brought up three volunteers to come up with a translation of the isis heiroglyphs, and handed out prizes. Chuck sez to this guy with a bodyguard, 'you don't need a suit and tie, not here'. "yes i do, i'm the mayor of cincinatti"
Many quality people at this show, and many compliments, but few orders. if i can break even there, it would be nice to return.

The st louis show had become a huge variable, after last year's ugly split and chaos. The halloween costume and party show stayed in vegas, other exhibitors did a houston show instead, and both were poorly attended compared to st louis. despite my favorable choice of shows, and chuck's brilliant and professional salesmanship, sales were down about 50%. It was especially hard to have 3 different senior haunters tell me i should be a millionaire by now, with this great product, and so affordable. But that's not to say i failed, for my business is funded and solvent for the coming year. There just won't be any new truck. And there will be time to finish the glass projects, get the ann arbor minerva fountain up and running, and even have some free weekends.
The new winner for most horrible halloween prop is the frank'n'farter, a life size frankenstein with an exaggerated sphincter, bending over and spewing mist.
the local off-season haunt tour was impressively decorated, with a nice chacmool(aztec sacrificial altar) and a Shiva inlaid by the skull strewn water fountain. A hired dwarf in the zombie-children's playground was unnerving, but mostly i thought she was a brave woman to do a job where panicked tourists can lash out violently, like i almost did a few times. Proof that this warehouse facility was actually haunted lie in its largest prop. made by a notoriously unreliable manufacturer, it still functioning after 6 years was not possible without some unholy force at work..
Thanks to George and Steve for much hobnobbing, and Tamara and Finn for hosting us wayfarers for a week.

Candlemas

2009-02-08T21:00:53Z

Long have I heard what fine tourney combat was to be had at Candlemas in Kentucky, and it did not disappoint. Maybe 800 bouts among the 50-ish fighters, many good ones, and that's a lot of bruises. Not too many for me, considering. Finn was right about the calibration standard being higher. ( I stayed with him and Tamara, who will likely be moving to Indianapolis soon.) So I'm hitting harder, making my way up the 5 rounds of fighting in groups of 6. This one guy, I leg him early, but not hard enough. After an extensive exchange, he smacks me in the head, and I die. As I'm walking out of the list, he wobbles, and goes down one one knee. 'um, yeah, um, i'm feeling that leg shot, now. let's call that good. and go back to that part of the fight. um, sorry.' In another fun incident, Brannos made loud objection from across the room to a guy fighting a darkyarder on his knees. The guy had dropped his shield to grab the centurion's baskethilt with his ungauntleted off hand, to control his sword. No, not quite a legal move. oops. As I didn't have to fight Brannos early, I made it up to the final 8. I'll have to see the video of this fight, because I was hitting Edmund with everything I had, and sometimes it just wasn't hard enough for his personal calibration standard. Sometimes it was, and we had an even number of kills, til the last round. For most of the event, he was fighting mace and shield. For me, he switched to mace and madus. After that didn't work out so well, he switched to sword and madus, then poleaxe. A wise move, and the poleaxe got me. Those wily dukes.
Back in Cinci, Tamara has been performing with a local Irish band, Fin-Tan. I brought a pile of fused glass to show, since Finn has been glassblowing since forever, and may resume after their move. He suggests selling this glass to stained glass makers. Why not? Not that I have time, but developing new manufacturing processes is more fnu than dyslexia.

parisienne de cinq jours

2008-12-20T15:00:48Z

what a trip. . . culture shock . . even the winos in the gutter were comparatively happy, thin and fashionable.
for what this trip cost, i'm going to write up the long version here.
as has become customary, an expedition to relevant arts has been warranted before starting major new projects. And my week in france was mostly successful, resolving basic strategic questions for my new batch of vacuform molds. a double-column arcade may also serve as a collosseum wall, and a step-crennelatioon mold for wider tower tops will allow a very spiffy 16' tower kit for Transworld 09. And proper vaulting has to be displayed, or people won't get it. The pillaster mold will get some nice hexagonal bevels, based on one at the brilliant cite de l'architecture. If only i had seen this before beginning the pennsic cathedral, i could have killed myself with all the extra work.
Mont St Michel was another winner. It was Bagni di Tivoli deja vu, missing the connecting bus because their english was almost as bad as my french. So I haggled with aforlorn cab driver, and got there late for 'only' e75. But get there i did, the hazy grey blur on the horizon looming over the much closer village. And like Minas Tirith, it was a profusion of winding walls, stairs and towers piled on top of each other up to the sky. The incredible vista from the upper plateau, could well have been the site of Denethor's flaming leap. And then the central vaults, with deep cold echoes, and massive columns wider than the spaces between them. What faith drove those monks to this incredible chore? (the second-life CG construction could have gone so much faster) I hear they get 50 tour buses a day in the summer. Unbelieveable. Maybe they get jerked or pickled to sell back to them. I got the nutella crepes, just in case.
Next day was le petite palais, jacquemart and orsay. the massive gilded gates of the palais outshone its art, only napoleon's ego could have required such a gate. the orsay gift shop had books i could not pass up, including for dr. wicker a compedium of old posters, essentially 'women of absinthe'. i'm still a fan of bougereau, and the originals were huge. quasi-death masks of a furious beeethoven. art nouveau sculpture never really met its potential, and here it just takes up space. but gustave moreau's orpheus still imparts an opium buzz just looking at it. jacquemart had the cozy feel of the isabella stewart gardner in boston, but without the sargent murals. nearby i checked the prices at the hotel napoleon. e650 - 1700 ($2200 a night) you get what you pay for? how?? by request, i stopped in fauchon, a famous or pretentios purveyor of teas,wines, chocolates and caviar. actually not as overpriced as godiva somerset.

what i thought was the museum of decorative arts was actually their natural history museum, filled with high schoolers. While it can't compare to the smithsonian air & space, they really do some science there. a laser lithography demo, for silicon chips. plaster models of complex algebraic functions as 3d surfaces. moving epicycle vs copernican planetary models. and then, being france, a lab for perfume extraction and distillations.
the centre de pompadour had a werner hezrog film festival, and modern art as pointless as any, but a killer gift shop. all i can say is, they were 'conceptual' gifts.
I trod all 6-ish floors of their main pretentious department store. why their milwaukee 18v Lion 3 amp drill cost 80% more than ours, well, the man said theirs were w. german, ours must be made in china. not likely. the union jack refrigerator was tempting, but incompatible with u.s. voltage.

opera garnier. napoleon didn't last long enough to see it finished, but he paid for the marble so we can enjoy it today. i 'saw' the ballet raymonda, which was entirely beautiful and professional artistry, with a flawless orchestra. they play like they think they're in the world's best opera house. i couldn't say, which is something i'll have to remedy someday. by 'saw' i mean that the only same-day ticket available was for second upper nose bleed balcony, with a ceiling arch blocking most of my view. i had to lean out some, and tried not to drool on the folks below in their satin and jewelry. it was very phantom-esque.

The Louvre, of course. I thought i had every detail of Nike of Samothrace committed to memory, but they had her recovered hand in a glass case to one side. grr. And all this sculpture illustrates the problem of bronze vs marble. marble can get badly etched by the elements, and pieces broken off. bronze is "easier" to transfer and cast in series, and lasts longer, unless it gets melted down for the occasional war effort. But, marble just looks better. hmmm. Among their paintings was an especially doomful 'pentecote', 20' of fiery brimstone raining down upon the damned souls in neoclassical fashion. and a spiffy 1655 'Uranie' measuring her celestial sphere. The Mona Lisa was relocated to its own hall, and had an absurd amount of cordoning to wrangle the tourists.

Having subjected myself to the davinci code, i visited st. suplice. it did indeed have the obelisk with inlaid solstice line, and running all across the floor. creepily, a whole paragraph of latin text had been neatly chiseled off its pedestal. it must have been the Albino.
saint chapelle was as they say the best period stained glass in paris, though london's st. paul and burne-jones glass blows it away.
no time for chartres, reims, chinon, puy du fou or grand palais, but time enough for the priorities
Some aspects of this trip were grim, not least the frequent difficulty in communicating. The occasional freezing rain was a necessary trade off for summer's oppressive crowds and reservation-only attractions. Doing this alone sucked, but it was that or not go. Not so many commercial art galleries in Paris, and these were too focused on their themes to have much potential for me. The last day got me my first bad meal there, some chewy steak with french fries and an hour wait for a refrigerated dessert, then an unwatchable theatric Pergatorio of Dante, with deliberately ear piercing atonality. (they did sample from the medieval baebes' katherine blake's Suspiria album) After all this, I gave in and got a starbuck's venti, not with a 'bon jour' but with 'Yo dog, i need the Bean'
On a whim, I detoured round Notre Dame on my final return to hotel for checkout, and there were a dozen folks singing the most beautiful carols. mostly from local colleges, plus one from UCLA and one germany. They were really, really good. So I bought them all drinks, sugar daddy for a few hours. I got my money's worth, they sang everything from edith piaf to 'lion sleeps tonight'. it's a good thing i remembered blake's lullaby, for the intermittent poetry slam. I can see why johnny depp relocated.

standing in one of many security lines coming back, i talked with a british auto engineer. he blasted granholm as an incompetent, failing to take on the unions and fabricating the toyota -ann arbor plant as a lie for political gain. that the bloated and corrupt unions were spreading 'like a cancer' among the supply chains, forcing toyota and others to set up far away from michigan. he also claimed that the UAW had enough capital to buy GM themselves, and that the last strength of michigan, it's skilled work force, has already moved on. how's that for doom?

sarah brightman

2008-12-04T04:34:08Z

so i went and saw sarah brightman at the palace. yay!
i hadn't been there since circue du soliel - delerium. and i didn't know that andrew lloyd webber had written phantom of the opera specifically for her and to her. mmmmm, drama. anyway, for those with a high tolerance for sap, it was groovtastic. her 8 dancers were at points rather cruxshadows-esque, and her black angel wings confirmed it. and they beat me to the air-violin thing. grrr. the costumes were suitably pretentious, with sarah on a swing with 60' taffeta trailing behind, and confetti snow swirling about. the best visual effect was made with a huge tilted mirror, so the stage floor was visible as a vertical surface. she sang as she lay on the ground, surrounded by a circle of 'swimmers', doing the various swim postures typical of 50's coreographed swim displays. being near christmas, we got a few carols, with a noteworthy 'dance of the sugarplum fairies' adapted for vocals where it's usually instrumental only. why alice in wonderland and little red riding hood were there, i'm not sure. my only recommendation would be to add Rogue of cruxshadows to her harem of duetists.

namaste and stuff

2008-11-14T14:58:52Z

ok, here i go integrating into the technocracy. lj seems to lean more to actual substance than the other popular networking sites, though the vast ocean of trivia that may come with it may be too much to bear. but change is good.
t