Soundman

On a few occasions I have been an amateur soundman for local bands. This weekend I turned pro, I was paid (a pittance) to be soundman by "Supersonic" - Plymouth's first all gay Oasis tribute. I was quite nervous, wanted to do a good job, and to look like I knew what I was doing. I introduced myself to the woman who had booked the band - this is unusual in my experience of talking to good looking women in very short skirts - the conversation quickly turned to microphone selection, polar patterns, amplifier power ratings and impedance. It turned out that not only had she got a huge amount of experience in sound engineering, she'd got a degree to prove it. An honest to goodness bachelors of engineering in the very subject in which I was busy pretending that I knew what I was doing. As if that wasn't bad enough I also had to do sound for her support act which included an acoustic guitar with a very low quality pickup, a fiddle, and a young woman with a pretty but quiet voice. I basically had the choice between mains hum, feedback through the fiddle, and feedback through the vocal mic. I did OK for the main band though.

I though it was going to be great getting paid for being in the pub on a Friday night, in fact I was no richer on Saturday morning, and I felt thoroughly unwell.

Jokes
My dog's got no nose. How does it smell? It uses a sniffer dog.
My wife didn't believe I could make a car out of spaghetti, you should have seen her face when I was driving pasta.

Richard "going on a summer holiday" B

Car Keys

On Saturday evening a friend drove me to another friends house, where we had a takeaway meal, and watched low quality TV. The couple we visited have a nearly-three-year-old daughter who takes great pleasure in playing with car keys and mobile phones. When it was time to go home the car keys were missing. We checked pockets, looked in the little girl's toy box, and asked her where they were. We didn't find them. All four adults then spent the next 25 minutes doing a search of the house that would have put a police forensics team to shame. I removed all the dvds from the shelves to look behind them, I checked every food cupboard and draw in the kitchen. We didn't find the keys. The little girl was asked several times where the keys were, with differing levels of sympathy, her most frequent answer was "not here daddy" no matter which room she was in. Eventually the owner of the car washed his hands after having emptied the kitchen dustbin and not found the keys, the keys were hidden underneath the towel that had been left on a radiator near to the wash hand basin. "There they are daddy".

Childish game of the week
Replace the word "heart" with the word "arse" in song lyrics and titles. Eg. Blondie's "Arse of glass" and Gene Pitney's "Something gotten hold of my arse". Don't send me your suggestions, I have been doing this all weekend.

Richard "stop the clock, I've got the keys" B

Hooters

I don't really understand how it happened, but in a conversation with one of my female neighbours (not the one whose daughter's shoe I once rescued) that lasted about 10 seconds, I seemingly called her flat-chested and poor.

There is a chain of restaurants in America called Hooters. They are found on normal high streets, and are family friendly, but they distinguish themselves from the competition in that every single member of the bar and waiting staff is a busty attractive young woman. Their brand image revolves around a stylised owl (and its large eyes) and the double 'O' in Hooters.

When I got home yesterday I bumped into my nextdoor-but-one neighbour on her doorstep. She was wearing a yellow T shirt with the hooters owl on the front, large eyes (small pupils) front and centre. "Is that a Hooters shirt?" I asked, imagining she would say it was a souvenir, or a gift from an expatriate relative. I didn't expect her to grab at an imaginary pair huge boobs and say
"I haven't really got the assets for that have I?"
"Errrm [note1] I wouldn't say exactly that, I thought maybe it was a souvenir, or something"
"No, Topshop finest, all I can afford." and with that she went back into her house.

[note1]
I believe that this is a conversational labyrinth that every man who has ever talked to a vain woman has been trapped in. It consists of a single forked passageway where both choices lead to a minotaur. It takes many many forms but in essence it goes like this:

A
"I look fat/stupid/ugly/old."
"No no, you look wonderfully slim/wise/beautiful/young."
With that you have rejected her opinions and dismissed her concerns out-of-hand. A massive argument follows.

B
"I look fat/stupid/ugly/old"
You offer sympathy, support and advice.
With that you have tacitly supported her original position. A massive argument follows.
　
　
Richard "home jewellery repair" B

No!

I had intended to omit this story from my blog, thinking that it was the most crushing and humiliating experience of my life, but over the weekend, one of my close friends easily demonstrated that it was at the absolute worst, the 2nd or 3rd most humiliating experience of my life, so here goes:

There's a little girl that lives on my estate, who has a very beautiful, and as I far as I know, single mother. I previously rescued a shoe for the little girl. To my mingled horror and delight, the little girl and her friend hatched a brilliant (yet childishly transparent) plan to set me and the mum up on a date. I received an anonymous love letter (written by a child), the children pestered my about my correspondence, and then the friend conspiratorially told me that the letter was from Redacted's mum - a bare faced lie. The children then pestered me about whether I liked Redacted's mum and whether I would go on a date with her. When the children weren't about I visited both mums and explained what had been going on, and that I would rather not receive love letters from small children. When I was visiting the nice mum I also asked whether there was a grain of truth in their plan, and whether she would actually have liked to go on a date with me.

Her response was two syllables. The first, "Ha" was completely involuntary, and demonstrated how ridiculous she thought the idea was. The second "No" was laced with scorn, absolute authority, and the kind of exaggerated gesticulation and annunciation that you would usually save for an errant dog, a half-deaf elderly relative, or a foreign waiter. I made my excuses and left.

As if that's not bad enough, when the little girl pesters me in my garage, she now makes fun of my having asking her mum on a date, so I can only assume that her mum has been laughing about the whole thing with the little girl. I've gone off them slightly.

Richard "laughing stock" B

999

It doesn't get as much coverage in the music press as it should, but this weekend I was involved with the main rival to the Glastonbury Festival - the Oreston Primary School Summer Fair. Piers and I did the sound, our friend and ex-rock-star Troy Tate put several very good acts on. He played in most of them. He told us about a time when he was still a yet-to-be-rock-star. His band was so keen that they should be able to take any booking, no matter how late, that they used to practice packing and unpacking the van against a stopwatch. It sounded like they should have been added to the list of 999 emergency services along with the police, ambulance, fire brigade, coast-guard, bomb disposal etc.

Operator> 999 emergency, which service do you require?
Caller> Rock band.
Operator> Putting you through...<click>
Operator2> Emergency rock band. What seems to be the problem.
Caller> Oh god, we haven't got a band, I just rang them and they're not coming.
Operator2> Can you tell me the address of the venue?
Caller> It's the um, I don't know what we're going to do, the um, Break For The Border - Tottenham Court Road
Operator2> OK, and how big is the venue? Do you know the fire capacity?
Caller> It's 800 people, you've got to help, what are we going to do for a show?
Operator2> It's OK. Don't panic. I'm dispatching a band now, they'll be with you in 15 minutes. Don't worry I'll stay on the line until they arrive. Now can you tell me, is there somebody with you that can open the bar?....

Richard "orest-fest" B

Cool Smoking Pouches

When you buy a microphone from Shure it comes with a "case". The case is much like a very high quality leatherette pencil case to protect the mic from dust and from getting scratched. I sometimes rather wish that I had occasion to need a pencil case so that I could use one of these microphone cases. When you buy a microphone from AKG you don't get a case with it, and so I needed to find something to protect an AKG bass drum mic that I own. It amused me to use an actual pencil case, the cheapest and best fitting best was a "Hannah Montana" one. In this pencil case, along with the mic lives tobacco and cigarette papers. At the end of one of my band's shows you now have the wonderful sight of the singers, who for the last couple of hours have looked for all the world like rock stars, without a hint of irony or embarrassment, producing a lilac Hannah Montana pencil case (with a silver star on the zip) and rolling cigarettes out of it.

You learn something every day
I had already heard of Calvinism, and the Christian reformer John Calvin, but only yesterday did I hear of English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes of Malsbury. All of a sudden the names of my favourite schoolboy and anthropomorphic tiger make a lot more sense. What a disappointment to be in your late 30s and find out that your education is below the level assumed for the audience of a mainstream an American cartoon strip.
　
Richard "I &#9829; my MFXi-12" B