Last night, Brother, Girlthing Cindy and I went to "Becoming Van Gogh" at the Denver Art Museum.
Van Gogh's early career was steeped, both geographically and philosophically, in the Dutch manner. He worked in somber, earthy colours and his subject matter tended to be the common man, his pursuits and detritus.
Stick with me, the story gets better.
It was when he joined his brother, Theo, in Paris, that he began to immerse himself in the colour and - for lack of a better word - whimsy of the French style of the time.
A part of the exhibit talks about how colour pairs and defines and blends and contrasts, and how Van Gogh explained this to his brother. There was a box of yarn under glass by the colour wheels. The placard above it explained that, somehow, in his pursuit of colour theory education, he found that he could twist different colours of yarn together to see how they would play.
I nudged Brother, pointed to the display, and said, "Yarn!"
"Huh. Van Gogh had a stash too," he said.
Van Gogh and I both indulged in yarn stash.
And we both had little brothers who were, ultimately, teachable.
Showing posts with label Brother. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brother. Show all posts
Saturday, November 3, 2012
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The Pie Makers
Which sounds like the title of a highly acclaimed runner-up for the Man Booker Award or something.†
Definitely soon to be a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet.
Actually, Tallest, Hairiest Nephew and I baked a cherry pie‡ while Dr. Doom was at soccer practice.§
But they *so* look capable of pie making, don't they?¶
I had to tell them the old-people-nostalgia story of how their father was exactly the same way, and back when we still had film in our cameras,# it would cost me oodles to foot the bill for the film we had to go through so he could make faces for 20 frames before we got down to one good, serious shot.
Then I had to explain the word "hereditary" to them.
Also "evolution."††
Trying to build hope for the future, one nephew at a time.‡‡
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): My old book club would definitely swoon for it.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Handmade crust and all. Skillz... we has them.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): And I went to his soccer game this weekend. He is not a soccer talent. Brother says worse than usual, but I notice a certain sibling tendency that includes a complete lack of awareness of the ball and such joys as watching clouds while the game is going on around him.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): My tongue is firmly planted in my cheek.
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): You kids get off my lawn!
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Next time, we'll explore "nature vs. nurture."
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Aren't they handsome creatures, soccer and pies aside?
Definitely soon to be a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet.
Actually, Tallest, Hairiest Nephew and I baked a cherry pie‡ while Dr. Doom was at soccer practice.§
But they *so* look capable of pie making, don't they?¶
I had to tell them the old-people-nostalgia story of how their father was exactly the same way, and back when we still had film in our cameras,# it would cost me oodles to foot the bill for the film we had to go through so he could make faces for 20 frames before we got down to one good, serious shot.
Then I had to explain the word "hereditary" to them.
Also "evolution."††
Trying to build hope for the future, one nephew at a time.‡‡
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): My old book club would definitely swoon for it.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Handmade crust and all. Skillz... we has them.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): And I went to his soccer game this weekend. He is not a soccer talent. Brother says worse than usual, but I notice a certain sibling tendency that includes a complete lack of awareness of the ball and such joys as watching clouds while the game is going on around him.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): My tongue is firmly planted in my cheek.
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): You kids get off my lawn!
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Next time, we'll explore "nature vs. nurture."
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Aren't they handsome creatures, soccer and pies aside?
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Backstory
From: Marin
To: Brother
Sent: Tue, May 17, 2011 6:20:48 AM
Subject: Re: Eye Dissection
Can I put that on the blog? I won't use any dirty words.
From: "Brother"
To: "Marin"
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 9:16:27 AM
Subject: Re: Eye Dissection
To: Brother
Sent: Tue, May 17, 2011 6:20:48 AM
Subject: Re: Eye Dissection
Can I put that on the blog? I won't use any dirty words.
From: "Brother"
To: "Marin"
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 9:16:27 AM
Subject: Re: Eye Dissection
Well, sure. And it wouldn't hurt anything if you used dirty words.
Dr. Doom Dissects an Eyeball
From: "Brother"
To: "Marin" (et al)
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 7:09:55 PM
Subject: Eye Dissection
Hey Guys -
As a preferred younger sibling, Victor got to go to CJ's class last week to dissect eyeballs and CJ's teacher just posted this picture on her blog. Pretty cool.
-B
*************
Sometimes when you have an older brother, the world is a much cooler place.
Go ahead... click for big.
To: "Marin" (et al)
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 7:09:55 PM
Subject: Eye Dissection
Hey Guys -
As a preferred younger sibling, Victor got to go to CJ's class last week to dissect eyeballs and CJ's teacher just posted this picture on her blog. Pretty cool.
-B
*************
Sometimes when you have an older brother, the world is a much cooler place.
Go ahead... click for big.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
The Glory of Techmology
Werk recently upgraded† to the latest Microsoft Outlook, which includes a voice-to-text for voice mail.
Let's back up: if someone leaves a message on my office phone, I get an email with the caller ID and a play button that I can either send to my phone‡ or listen to via a media player on my computer.
PLUS... when I got a company-sponsored cell phone,§ they hooked my Outlook to it, so I¶ get a copy on my cell phone of the email that contains a copy of my work voice mail when someone leaves a message on my work phone.#
Hans and I were toddling off to lunch yesterday, when my phone tick-tocked†† to tell me I had a message. When I checked it, I recognised it as a voice mail notification,‡‡ but it also had the following text§§:
Let's back up again: Brother wants to be black. At times, Brother has thought he was black. He's pretty hip to the hip hop culture, so I read the text and thought it was an actual text or an email maybe. At first, I said to myself, "Self, Brother is having problems with his autocorrect." Then I decided he was rapping some hep slang that I simply wasn't down with.¶¶
Two or three minutes of examining context and I realised it was voice-to-text## and it was kinda screwed up.
By that time, I really wanted to know what "brooklyn truck" was going to be.
Here's the actual voice recording:
And here's a transcript:
"Yo, it's your brother. I'm probably going to give you... drop you an email too, but I just thought I would check maybe if you could, um, drop by here on your way home today real quick so I can slip you a key, go over, y'know, what to do with the cat and stuff.††† Awesome. Alright, thanks. Bye."
"Brooklyn truck" is now acceptable Untiedt sibling slang for "real quick."‡‡‡
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): And I use the term loosely.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Desk phone, that is.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Which isn't quite the treat it sounded like at the outset. I can't call the carrier for help, I can't add international texting - even if I pay for it myself - because if IT has to support too many odd requests they'll explode, and I don't have a mouseball on my phone and I hate that. As I whine about this, I'm wondering if I need to spend some time in a Third World country to gain perspective.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): ...can be in close, personal contact with work 24 hours a day...
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Screw the Hokey-Pokey, *that's* what it's all about.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Because that's the noise I chose to represent notifications.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): It had a picture of a phone.
§§FOOTNOTE (jump back turn around): Which was the first time I'd seen text on an email with a picture of a phone on it.
¶¶FOOTNOTE (throwin' up gang signs yo yo): Word to your mother like it's hot. And a bag of chips.
##FOOTNOTE (in for a penny or two): When I said the Outlook upgrade was recent, I apparently meant, like, yesterday.
†††FOOTNOTE (I'm just so terribly cross): Brother and his girlthing are going to Costa Rica for a week. B-cat (Beatrice, Brother's cat) is a travelling man's cat and has always been perfectly capable of entertaining herself for days on end. Brother is blaming it on the girlthing - he says ever since Cindy moved in, B-cat thinks she needs attention all the time. Hence the need for a catsitter.
‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (we're on the right track): I feel confident I can speak for Brother too when I say, "Don't feel you need to be an Untiedt sibling to use this wonderful new slang phrase. Spread the world! Share with your friends!"
Let's back up: if someone leaves a message on my office phone, I get an email with the caller ID and a play button that I can either send to my phone‡ or listen to via a media player on my computer.
PLUS... when I got a company-sponsored cell phone,§ they hooked my Outlook to it, so I¶ get a copy on my cell phone of the email that contains a copy of my work voice mail when someone leaves a message on my work phone.#
Hans and I were toddling off to lunch yesterday, when my phone tick-tocked†† to tell me I had a message. When I checked it, I recognised it as a voice mail notification,‡‡ but it also had the following text§§:
Let's back up again: Brother wants to be black. At times, Brother has thought he was black. He's pretty hip to the hip hop culture, so I read the text and thought it was an actual text or an email maybe. At first, I said to myself, "Self, Brother is having problems with his autocorrect." Then I decided he was rapping some hep slang that I simply wasn't down with.¶¶
Two or three minutes of examining context and I realised it was voice-to-text## and it was kinda screwed up.
By that time, I really wanted to know what "brooklyn truck" was going to be.
Here's the actual voice recording:
And here's a transcript:
"Yo, it's your brother. I'm probably going to give you... drop you an email too, but I just thought I would check maybe if you could, um, drop by here on your way home today real quick so I can slip you a key, go over, y'know, what to do with the cat and stuff.††† Awesome. Alright, thanks. Bye."
"Brooklyn truck" is now acceptable Untiedt sibling slang for "real quick."‡‡‡
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): And I use the term loosely.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Desk phone, that is.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Which isn't quite the treat it sounded like at the outset. I can't call the carrier for help, I can't add international texting - even if I pay for it myself - because if IT has to support too many odd requests they'll explode, and I don't have a mouseball on my phone and I hate that. As I whine about this, I'm wondering if I need to spend some time in a Third World country to gain perspective.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): ...can be in close, personal contact with work 24 hours a day...
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Screw the Hokey-Pokey, *that's* what it's all about.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Because that's the noise I chose to represent notifications.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): It had a picture of a phone.
§§FOOTNOTE (jump back turn around): Which was the first time I'd seen text on an email with a picture of a phone on it.
¶¶FOOTNOTE (throwin' up gang signs yo yo): Word to your mother like it's hot. And a bag of chips.
##FOOTNOTE (in for a penny or two): When I said the Outlook upgrade was recent, I apparently meant, like, yesterday.
†††FOOTNOTE (I'm just so terribly cross): Brother and his girlthing are going to Costa Rica for a week. B-cat (Beatrice, Brother's cat) is a travelling man's cat and has always been perfectly capable of entertaining herself for days on end. Brother is blaming it on the girlthing - he says ever since Cindy moved in, B-cat thinks she needs attention all the time. Hence the need for a catsitter.
‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (we're on the right track): I feel confident I can speak for Brother too when I say, "Don't feel you need to be an Untiedt sibling to use this wonderful new slang phrase. Spread the world! Share with your friends!"
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Scarf
Last year, when Edison Elementary held its second annual EdFest† Silent Auction fundraiser, I went. I bought. I volunteered to donate a knitted item this year.
Last Monday, Brother contacted me and said, "I know it's short notice, but Saturday is EdFest."‡
There's a lot of disorganisation and misorganisation and drunkenness§ in the spaces between, but keeping a long story short,¶ I volunteered to give a gift certificate for a scarf.
Thus:
For those of you who don't read mangledese, it says "One pick-your-own-adventure scarf: I'll sit down with the winner over a cup of coffee, a beer or a glass of wine (my treat) and we'll design a scarf for you. Pick your fiber, texture and colour and I'll make it all come true."
Lisa, the appropriate committee member, asked if I had pictures or samples to go with the bid sheet. I sent some pics off Ravelry, but, of course, I don't keep anything I knit.
This whole exchange took place Thursday afternoon.
Thursday night, I had one of my frighteningly brilliant ideas:# find the school mascot and colours and knit a scarf for a toy version of the mascot in those colours. Y'know... just to have something tangible on the table.
Don't think I wasn't hoping they were the Edison R2D2s.††
Turns out they're the Edison Eagles, and their colours are blue and gold-yellow, much like my beloved Denver Nuggets.‡‡
I woke up early Friday knowing I had to find an eagle.§§ Fortunately, as an inveterate shopper with two nephews, I had a good idea of where to find a stuffed eagle.
Bless you, Kazoo & Company.
I ran to a couple of yarn stores.¶¶
At 2:00, I was home, done with lunch and casting on.
Perhaps the next time I'm on a tight deadline, I'll remember that it's not the best time to try a new technique.
At 1:00 Saturday morning, I gave up my double-knitting project. It wasn't horrible. It was just in dire need of blocking,## and I knew there was no way I'd finish the scarf, soak it and have it completely dry before I had to take it to Lisa on Saturday afternoon.
So... I got up at 7:00 Saturday morning and started knitting a new - simpler - scarf for the eagle.
Ta-daaa!
When we got to the fundraiser at 7:00, there was a bid down on the scarf, which tickled the grits out of me, as I wasn't sure how it would represent in a bidding situation. Brother noted that he was up-bidding it because he decided he needed a scarf.†††
In the end, it turned out someone outbid Brother, so I'm feeling all HKIC and shit.%
When the Auction Committee sobers up and tells me who won the scarf, I'll let y'all know. Sounds like it could be fun.‡‡‡
Plus, I'd already told Brother he had the hook-up even if he didn't win the auction scarf.§§§
So, sing it with me: "STILL A KNITBLOG."
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): "EdFest" in my world has a whole lot more Tom Cavanaugh in it, but that's OK.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Paraphrasing. Brother was more cognizant than that.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Oddly enough, not on my part. The mis-, the dis- OR the drunk.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): As my college boyfriend always said, "Too late."
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): I'm not tooting my own horn. It's not that I have ideas so brilliant as to be frightening. No, it's that the ideas that seem so brilliant pan out to be ironically, sarcastically so and it's frightening I continue to believe in my own brilliance.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Think of it... one tiny Star Wars action figure with a couple of tufts of blue and gold yarn...
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Which led to a funny moment at Fancy Tiger when a very sweet (possibly gay, probably artistic, undoubtedly oblivious to sports) boy asked if he could help and I told him I was looking for fingering- or sport-weight yarn in blue and gold, like Denver Nuggets colours. I could almost hear the panic shutting down his organs. He pointed out every skein of yarn in the right gauge, I suspect hoping I'd make up my own mind about what "Denver Nuggets colours" meant.
§§FOOTNOTE (double confusing): There is nothing quite like waking up on your day off knowing you have to find an eagle.
¶¶FOOTNOTE (double the fun): I found my yarn at the first store, but as my brother says, I have a problem. Plus, I have a very weird upcoming knitting project (foreshadowing!) I wanted to get a jump on. In a very researchy, I-probably-didn't-need-to-buy-six-sets-of-square-needles way.
##FOOTNOTE (double the pounds): AntiM's helpful knitting tip #237: Double-knitting pulls the knitted piece in (much like cabling does) and makes your very straight scarf look like an hourglass.
†††FOOTNOTE (is it Lent again already?): Because His Girl Cindy told him he should get a scarf to go with his new Hugo Boss cashmere jacket and he made grumpy faces and stuff. Then he went to NYC and saw that everybody was wearing a scarf and decided it wasn't a bad idea.
%FOOTNOTE (percented): Head Knitta in Charge, in case you forgot.
‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (Frankenstein's blogster): Or a complete nightmare. But I'm an optimist. Or, as Cornel West said on Twitter, "But I'm not an optimist, that's too thin...I'm a prisoner of #hope."
§§§FOOTNOTE (three esses make a full circle, right?): When we discussed particulars, it boiled down to "a tweedy/heathered charcoal in a muffler length." Then I got an update from Colourmart (home of all things cashmere) Sunday mid-day that said they had a shipment of Hugo Boss cashmere just in. So even though Brother didn't win the scarf, Brother absolutely won a scarf. Here's the yarn; its colour is called "Derby":
Last Monday, Brother contacted me and said, "I know it's short notice, but Saturday is EdFest."‡
There's a lot of disorganisation and misorganisation and drunkenness§ in the spaces between, but keeping a long story short,¶ I volunteered to give a gift certificate for a scarf.
Thus:
For those of you who don't read mangledese, it says "One pick-your-own-adventure scarf: I'll sit down with the winner over a cup of coffee, a beer or a glass of wine (my treat) and we'll design a scarf for you. Pick your fiber, texture and colour and I'll make it all come true."
Lisa, the appropriate committee member, asked if I had pictures or samples to go with the bid sheet. I sent some pics off Ravelry, but, of course, I don't keep anything I knit.
This whole exchange took place Thursday afternoon.
Thursday night, I had one of my frighteningly brilliant ideas:# find the school mascot and colours and knit a scarf for a toy version of the mascot in those colours. Y'know... just to have something tangible on the table.
Don't think I wasn't hoping they were the Edison R2D2s.††
Turns out they're the Edison Eagles, and their colours are blue and gold-yellow, much like my beloved Denver Nuggets.‡‡
I woke up early Friday knowing I had to find an eagle.§§ Fortunately, as an inveterate shopper with two nephews, I had a good idea of where to find a stuffed eagle.
Bless you, Kazoo & Company.
I ran to a couple of yarn stores.¶¶
At 2:00, I was home, done with lunch and casting on.
Perhaps the next time I'm on a tight deadline, I'll remember that it's not the best time to try a new technique.
At 1:00 Saturday morning, I gave up my double-knitting project. It wasn't horrible. It was just in dire need of blocking,## and I knew there was no way I'd finish the scarf, soak it and have it completely dry before I had to take it to Lisa on Saturday afternoon.
So... I got up at 7:00 Saturday morning and started knitting a new - simpler - scarf for the eagle.
Ta-daaa!
When we got to the fundraiser at 7:00, there was a bid down on the scarf, which tickled the grits out of me, as I wasn't sure how it would represent in a bidding situation. Brother noted that he was up-bidding it because he decided he needed a scarf.†††
In the end, it turned out someone outbid Brother, so I'm feeling all HKIC and shit.%
When the Auction Committee sobers up and tells me who won the scarf, I'll let y'all know. Sounds like it could be fun.‡‡‡
Plus, I'd already told Brother he had the hook-up even if he didn't win the auction scarf.§§§
So, sing it with me: "STILL A KNITBLOG."
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): "EdFest" in my world has a whole lot more Tom Cavanaugh in it, but that's OK.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Paraphrasing. Brother was more cognizant than that.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Oddly enough, not on my part. The mis-, the dis- OR the drunk.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): As my college boyfriend always said, "Too late."
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): I'm not tooting my own horn. It's not that I have ideas so brilliant as to be frightening. No, it's that the ideas that seem so brilliant pan out to be ironically, sarcastically so and it's frightening I continue to believe in my own brilliance.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Think of it... one tiny Star Wars action figure with a couple of tufts of blue and gold yarn...
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Which led to a funny moment at Fancy Tiger when a very sweet (possibly gay, probably artistic, undoubtedly oblivious to sports) boy asked if he could help and I told him I was looking for fingering- or sport-weight yarn in blue and gold, like Denver Nuggets colours. I could almost hear the panic shutting down his organs. He pointed out every skein of yarn in the right gauge, I suspect hoping I'd make up my own mind about what "Denver Nuggets colours" meant.
§§FOOTNOTE (double confusing): There is nothing quite like waking up on your day off knowing you have to find an eagle.
¶¶FOOTNOTE (double the fun): I found my yarn at the first store, but as my brother says, I have a problem. Plus, I have a very weird upcoming knitting project (foreshadowing!) I wanted to get a jump on. In a very researchy, I-probably-didn't-need-to-buy-six-sets-of-square-needles way.
##FOOTNOTE (double the pounds): AntiM's helpful knitting tip #237: Double-knitting pulls the knitted piece in (much like cabling does) and makes your very straight scarf look like an hourglass.
†††FOOTNOTE (is it Lent again already?): Because His Girl Cindy told him he should get a scarf to go with his new Hugo Boss cashmere jacket and he made grumpy faces and stuff. Then he went to NYC and saw that everybody was wearing a scarf and decided it wasn't a bad idea.
%FOOTNOTE (percented): Head Knitta in Charge, in case you forgot.
‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (Frankenstein's blogster): Or a complete nightmare. But I'm an optimist. Or, as Cornel West said on Twitter, "But I'm not an optimist, that's too thin...I'm a prisoner of #hope."
§§§FOOTNOTE (three esses make a full circle, right?): When we discussed particulars, it boiled down to "a tweedy/heathered charcoal in a muffler length." Then I got an update from Colourmart (home of all things cashmere) Sunday mid-day that said they had a shipment of Hugo Boss cashmere just in. So even though Brother didn't win the scarf, Brother absolutely won a scarf. Here's the yarn; its colour is called "Derby":
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Some NFL Teams Should be Pink*
I am NOT going to talk about what happened at the Broncos Raiders game last week.†
I will, however, make a brief‡ observation on the NFL.
Many of the teams that most need to be pink aren't.§
When all the snide and snark drains away, I still want this:
I have all kinds of good Nintendo stuff,¶ Liberace stuff,# mascara stuff†† and maybe even a bit of knitting stuff.‡‡
Really... stay tuned!§§
*FOOTNOTE (asterisked... no, seriously): That's "pink" as in "Victoria's Secret," not "Pink" as in "Get This Party Started."
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Brother texted me: "What the hell happened? I came in, it was 0-0, I put the groceries away, it was 14-0" While I was answering him, trying to find different ways to say "suck," they scored again. Dr. Doom opted for donuts at Safeway as a viable fun alternative to the game. OK, now I'm really not going to talk about it. And it truly takes a saint not to bitch about such a debacle.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Look how funny I am! I made a panty pun!
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Detroit Lions, I'm looking at you.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Wii! (and in my head that's "wheeeee!" so it's another sort of pun, just doesn't translate well to print)
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Really.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Really.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Shock and awe!
§§FOOTNOTE (the mind boggles. Twice.): This blog is what RSS feed was MADE for.
I will, however, make a brief‡ observation on the NFL.
Many of the teams that most need to be pink aren't.§
When all the snide and snark drains away, I still want this:
I have all kinds of good Nintendo stuff,¶ Liberace stuff,# mascara stuff†† and maybe even a bit of knitting stuff.‡‡
Really... stay tuned!§§
*FOOTNOTE (asterisked... no, seriously): That's "pink" as in "Victoria's Secret," not "Pink" as in "Get This Party Started."
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Brother texted me: "What the hell happened? I came in, it was 0-0, I put the groceries away, it was 14-0" While I was answering him, trying to find different ways to say "suck," they scored again. Dr. Doom opted for donuts at Safeway as a viable fun alternative to the game. OK, now I'm really not going to talk about it. And it truly takes a saint not to bitch about such a debacle.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Look how funny I am! I made a panty pun!
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Detroit Lions, I'm looking at you.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Wii! (and in my head that's "wheeeee!" so it's another sort of pun, just doesn't translate well to print)
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Really.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Really.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Shock and awe!
§§FOOTNOTE (the mind boggles. Twice.): This blog is what RSS feed was MADE for.
Friday, March 19, 2010
The Moment You've All Been Waiting For
At least it's the moment I've been dying to share with you.†
[SUMMARY: Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.]
I shan't drag you through the litany of "stuck in the camera" and "busy at work" and all that. You know the song, I'll let you sing it on your own.
Suffice to say I finished Dr. Doom's Christmas sweater around the end of January,‡ then through the vagaries of joint custody, finally got it to him mid-February.
I took the basic top-down raglan sweater,§ I've been using for everything Nephew, added a textured alligator belly through the miracle of intarsia-in-the-round, then winged it on the sleeves.¶
%
It was the winging it part that really mucked up the works.
There I'd be in my chair at work, madly correcting, explaining, marketing, e-schmoozing and otherwise getting the job done, when suddenly, sleeve panic would hit me and I'd start doing the alligator thing with my elbows,# using paper clips to mark the place where alligator lips should be and re-figuring where alligator mouth should go...
[SUMMARY: Every person does multi-tasking in his own way.]
Is it any wonder I was so absent for so long? I had a lot going on.
In the end, I think it worked out pretty well.
But the true test is how it works for Dr. Doom.
[SUMMARY: Proof, meet pudding.]
First, getting naked in Chipotle.††
Then test-driving the beast.
Why, arm, what big teeth you have!
Let's see, important knitting stuff:
First, this is the proudest knitting moment of my knitterly life. It's the closest I've come to designing something, and it's something unique and cool and interesting and wowing and I'm just so tickled.
The sweater was originally inspired by this genius shirt from the Discovery Channel Store. I quickly realised that a white and pale grey shirt was no match for a five-year-old supervillain, so I decided to go with the classic gator.
Other than the pupils of the eyes, which are Dark Horse Fantasy, the whole thing is knit in Cascade 220 Superwash.
I made nose-holes‡‡ of I-cord loops.
The eyes took as long as the rest of the sweater put together. I had alligator eyes all over my living room for weeks. When one gets a solid vision of what one wants, it's hard for one to accept anything different.§§
One thing I believe the pattern misses, and that I missed too, is that when you put the sleeve stitches on holders to knit the body, you cast on an inch under the arm.
Which - and this is very important - adds two inches to the body of the sweater.
[SUMMARY: Math even I can do.]
On the one hand, I was delighted to get gauge. On the other, getting gauge meant I was the full two inches bigger than I wanted.
I had planned to sew up the sides, take out a couple of inches, but figured I'd better try it on the good Doctor first.¶¶ Yes, it's just a bit too big.
The neck is also big, being unfinished. I knit a nice 3-2 rib collar about 37 times and it always seemed too small.## So I left it unfinished for maximum headroom. Yes, it's just a bit too big.
I told Brother I wanted to take it home and finish it properly and he assured me Doom will be wearing a t-shirt under it most of the time, so aesthetically it's OK.
[SUMMARY: Aesthetics are what you're looking for in a sweater for a five-year-old.]
I don't know if he doesn't want to put me out or if he's afraid they'll never see it if I get my grubby hands on it again.
Hey! We've had a fair amount of knitting around here lately. You'd almost think this was still a knitblog.
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): And, y'know, it's all about me. And my lamp.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): And I would've finished it *much* faster if Dr. Doom hadn't given me a VERY COMPELLING game for my Nintendo DS for Christmas. *ahem*
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): And I'm not sure why I keep using this one, except that it's familiar. The sizing is all wrong, vis-a-vis boys S-M-L. I always ask Brother to measure a shirt that fits, then try to match the inches from there.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Wing... sleeves... heheheheheh... I'm funny.
%FOOTNOTE (percented): With the new office, I no longer have a clean white wall behind a hanger to photograph my sweaters. Whatever shall I do now?
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Sound effect: "RAWR!"
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Note the find cow hat on Brother's head, a Valentine's present from his favourite Seester. He brings me Icelandic sludge and lopi, I bring him cow hats.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): nostrils-nose holes ... to-may-to, to-mah-to.
§§FOOTNOTE (twisted definition time): Read: lesser.
¶¶FOOTNOTE (you can beat it into my head): I may not be a math genius, but I do have my moments of clarity.
##FOOTNOTE (square head, round hole, pound pound): Which I determined by trying to fit it over my own head, under the suspicion that heads grow less than anything else in a person's life, therefore kid heads must be nearly as large adult heads.
[SUMMARY: Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.]
I shan't drag you through the litany of "stuck in the camera" and "busy at work" and all that. You know the song, I'll let you sing it on your own.
Suffice to say I finished Dr. Doom's Christmas sweater around the end of January,‡ then through the vagaries of joint custody, finally got it to him mid-February.
I took the basic top-down raglan sweater,§ I've been using for everything Nephew, added a textured alligator belly through the miracle of intarsia-in-the-round, then winged it on the sleeves.¶
%
It was the winging it part that really mucked up the works.
There I'd be in my chair at work, madly correcting, explaining, marketing, e-schmoozing and otherwise getting the job done, when suddenly, sleeve panic would hit me and I'd start doing the alligator thing with my elbows,# using paper clips to mark the place where alligator lips should be and re-figuring where alligator mouth should go...
[SUMMARY: Every person does multi-tasking in his own way.]
Is it any wonder I was so absent for so long? I had a lot going on.
In the end, I think it worked out pretty well.
But the true test is how it works for Dr. Doom.
[SUMMARY: Proof, meet pudding.]
First, getting naked in Chipotle.††
Then test-driving the beast.
Why, arm, what big teeth you have!
Let's see, important knitting stuff:
First, this is the proudest knitting moment of my knitterly life. It's the closest I've come to designing something, and it's something unique and cool and interesting and wowing and I'm just so tickled.
The sweater was originally inspired by this genius shirt from the Discovery Channel Store. I quickly realised that a white and pale grey shirt was no match for a five-year-old supervillain, so I decided to go with the classic gator.
Other than the pupils of the eyes, which are Dark Horse Fantasy, the whole thing is knit in Cascade 220 Superwash.
I made nose-holes‡‡ of I-cord loops.
The eyes took as long as the rest of the sweater put together. I had alligator eyes all over my living room for weeks. When one gets a solid vision of what one wants, it's hard for one to accept anything different.§§
One thing I believe the pattern misses, and that I missed too, is that when you put the sleeve stitches on holders to knit the body, you cast on an inch under the arm.
Which - and this is very important - adds two inches to the body of the sweater.
[SUMMARY: Math even I can do.]
On the one hand, I was delighted to get gauge. On the other, getting gauge meant I was the full two inches bigger than I wanted.
I had planned to sew up the sides, take out a couple of inches, but figured I'd better try it on the good Doctor first.¶¶ Yes, it's just a bit too big.
The neck is also big, being unfinished. I knit a nice 3-2 rib collar about 37 times and it always seemed too small.## So I left it unfinished for maximum headroom. Yes, it's just a bit too big.
I told Brother I wanted to take it home and finish it properly and he assured me Doom will be wearing a t-shirt under it most of the time, so aesthetically it's OK.
[SUMMARY: Aesthetics are what you're looking for in a sweater for a five-year-old.]
I don't know if he doesn't want to put me out or if he's afraid they'll never see it if I get my grubby hands on it again.
Hey! We've had a fair amount of knitting around here lately. You'd almost think this was still a knitblog.
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): And, y'know, it's all about me. And my lamp.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): And I would've finished it *much* faster if Dr. Doom hadn't given me a VERY COMPELLING game for my Nintendo DS for Christmas. *ahem*
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): And I'm not sure why I keep using this one, except that it's familiar. The sizing is all wrong, vis-a-vis boys S-M-L. I always ask Brother to measure a shirt that fits, then try to match the inches from there.
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Wing... sleeves... heheheheheh... I'm funny.
%FOOTNOTE (percented): With the new office, I no longer have a clean white wall behind a hanger to photograph my sweaters. Whatever shall I do now?
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Sound effect: "RAWR!"
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Note the find cow hat on Brother's head, a Valentine's present from his favourite Seester. He brings me Icelandic sludge and lopi, I bring him cow hats.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): nostrils-nose holes ... to-may-to, to-mah-to.
§§FOOTNOTE (twisted definition time): Read: lesser.
¶¶FOOTNOTE (you can beat it into my head): I may not be a math genius, but I do have my moments of clarity.
##FOOTNOTE (square head, round hole, pound pound): Which I determined by trying to fit it over my own head, under the suspicion that heads grow less than anything else in a person's life, therefore kid heads must be nearly as large adult heads.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
You Want My Brother
For all y'all knitters who weren't mackin' on my brother prior to this,† direct your attention to the following story:
Brother went to Reykjavik last week.‡
Brother and Hans and I met§ at the Tilted Kilt¶ to watch the glory that is the first day of March Madness.#
Brother brought me a present:
Which contained this:
The story behind the Lopi: Brother says it seems itchy, that they probably joke in Iceland that it's itchy wool.% He said I may never want to knit it into anything, but he figures it'd be cool to have genuine Icelandic wool carted from Iceland in my stash.††
Take a moment for that to sink in.
[SUMMARY: *boggle*]
A man, a NON-KNITTING man, who has embraced the actuality, the conceptuality and the psychology of a knitter's stash.
I think this is a real lesson for us all: what we're really looking for is a man with an older sister who knits.
[SUMMARY: And my thermos... and this lamp...]
He also brought me this box full of bath products from Blue Lagoon, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Iceland.
[SUMMARY: Yes, that is a punchline.]
Apparently, it's a hot springs, a giant pool with mineral properties that will make you live forever if you bathe in it and drink it.
Only it's not natural.‡‡
It's the output of a geothermic power plant nearby. The mineral tailings form a sludge that sits at the bottom of the pool and in conveniently-placed sludge tubs all around the pool. People get in the water and scoop up the sludge and slather it all over themselves.
"So did you feel all glowy? Ten years younger?" I asked.
"No, you feel stupid. You look around at everybody else and you say, 'Yeah, you all did it too.' "
[SUMMARY: Stupidity in numbers.]
Are you jealous? If you didn't want my new stash enhancement, surely you wish you could get your hands on my sludge.§§
Or my brother.
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Those of you who were might want to look away before you're blinded.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): They were going to go to Cuba, but then it got too dangerous.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): We call it "business lunch."
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Sort of like Hooters with more obvious boobs and more TiVis to give it a greater illusion of sports barness.
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Trademark.
%FOOTNOTE (percented): Has anyone out there in Blogland knit with this stuff? It doesn't seem *terribly* scratchy, but if you have firsthand knowledge, I'd love to hear about it.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Bonus points to brother for using the word "stash" correctly in casual conversation.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Not in the coming-out-of-the-rocks sense that we're used to in the Rocky Mountain West at least.
§§FOOTNOTE (ssludge!): That's what she said!
Brother went to Reykjavik last week.‡
Brother and Hans and I met§ at the Tilted Kilt¶ to watch the glory that is the first day of March Madness.#
Brother brought me a present:
Which contained this:
The story behind the Lopi: Brother says it seems itchy, that they probably joke in Iceland that it's itchy wool.% He said I may never want to knit it into anything, but he figures it'd be cool to have genuine Icelandic wool carted from Iceland in my stash.††
Take a moment for that to sink in.
[SUMMARY: *boggle*]
A man, a NON-KNITTING man, who has embraced the actuality, the conceptuality and the psychology of a knitter's stash.
I think this is a real lesson for us all: what we're really looking for is a man with an older sister who knits.
[SUMMARY: And my thermos... and this lamp...]
He also brought me this box full of bath products from Blue Lagoon, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Iceland.
[SUMMARY: Yes, that is a punchline.]
Apparently, it's a hot springs, a giant pool with mineral properties that will make you live forever if you bathe in it and drink it.
Only it's not natural.‡‡
It's the output of a geothermic power plant nearby. The mineral tailings form a sludge that sits at the bottom of the pool and in conveniently-placed sludge tubs all around the pool. People get in the water and scoop up the sludge and slather it all over themselves.
"So did you feel all glowy? Ten years younger?" I asked.
"No, you feel stupid. You look around at everybody else and you say, 'Yeah, you all did it too.' "
[SUMMARY: Stupidity in numbers.]
Are you jealous? If you didn't want my new stash enhancement, surely you wish you could get your hands on my sludge.§§
Or my brother.
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Those of you who were might want to look away before you're blinded.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): They were going to go to Cuba, but then it got too dangerous.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): We call it "business lunch."
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): Sort of like Hooters with more obvious boobs and more TiVis to give it a greater illusion of sports barness.
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Trademark.
%FOOTNOTE (percented): Has anyone out there in Blogland knit with this stuff? It doesn't seem *terribly* scratchy, but if you have firsthand knowledge, I'd love to hear about it.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): Bonus points to brother for using the word "stash" correctly in casual conversation.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Not in the coming-out-of-the-rocks sense that we're used to in the Rocky Mountain West at least.
§§FOOTNOTE (ssludge!): That's what she said!
Monday, February 15, 2010
An Interlude with My Brother
We call this one, "Conversation with Zach"†:
Zach: "What's the difference between set up and setup?" (Make appropriate hand gestures to delineate the two) "Like with a space and without a space, what's the difference?"
Brother: "With a space, it's a verb. Without a space, it's a noun."
Z: "Oh, boy."
B: "OK, if you're going over to Dad's house to check out his computer setup, that's no space. The setup is a thing, a noun. If you are going over to set up your Dad's computer, there's a space. You're doing something, it's a verb."
Z: "OK, so if I say the JOA‡ is set up in Quorum,§ that has a space?"
B: "Right."
Z: "What if the JOA is not set up in Quorum?"
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Zach is sort of like Brother's Hans. Though Hans is mostly *intentionally* funny.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Joint Operating Agreement, my bread and butter.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): A petroleum industry-specific database program.
Zach: "What's the difference between set up and setup?" (Make appropriate hand gestures to delineate the two) "Like with a space and without a space, what's the difference?"
Brother: "With a space, it's a verb. Without a space, it's a noun."
Z: "Oh, boy."
B: "OK, if you're going over to Dad's house to check out his computer setup, that's no space. The setup is a thing, a noun. If you are going over to set up your Dad's computer, there's a space. You're doing something, it's a verb."
Z: "OK, so if I say the JOA‡ is set up in Quorum,§ that has a space?"
B: "Right."
Z: "What if the JOA is not set up in Quorum?"
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Zach is sort of like Brother's Hans. Though Hans is mostly *intentionally* funny.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Joint Operating Agreement, my bread and butter.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): A petroleum industry-specific database program.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Holiday Conversations with Father
Marin: Omigosh! I didn't know there was a book on Bill Watterson!†
Father: I know.
Brother: Dude, you got her a book? That's pretty gutsy.
Marin: Yeah! You got me a book? Me?
Father: If you had known the book was out, I would have heard about it from you.‡
And that, my friends, sums up many, many aspects of my life, my personality and my relationship with my family.§
[SUMMARY: You're welcome.]
And happy holidays.
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): With the inscription, "Maybe you'll finally find out why Calvin & Hobbes disappeared." My father knows what troubles me.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Don't tell, but I will actually completely clam up about something -- even hid its existence -- if I want to get it for somebody else for Christmas or birthday. Wouldn't it have been funny if I got that same book for Dad for Christmas?
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Deep stuff, people. Fitting for end-of-year-end-of-decade rumination.
Father: I know.
Brother: Dude, you got her a book? That's pretty gutsy.
Marin: Yeah! You got me a book? Me?
Father: If you had known the book was out, I would have heard about it from you.‡
And that, my friends, sums up many, many aspects of my life, my personality and my relationship with my family.§
[SUMMARY: You're welcome.]
And happy holidays.
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): With the inscription, "Maybe you'll finally find out why Calvin & Hobbes disappeared." My father knows what troubles me.
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Don't tell, but I will actually completely clam up about something -- even hid its existence -- if I want to get it for somebody else for Christmas or birthday. Wouldn't it have been funny if I got that same book for Dad for Christmas?
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Deep stuff, people. Fitting for end-of-year-end-of-decade rumination.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Giant Loping Steps of Joy†
Last weekend's foray to the Mile High Music Festival was educational in so many ways.
For instance, after discussing the merits of music festivals, I claimed to have never been to one, though that's patently untrue. But the music festivals I attended were very different from this one. I'm sure people who arrange music festivals or play music festivals or attend many music festivals have names for different formats.
Mostly I just call the other ones "not music festivals."
Like Lilith Fair. I went in 1999 at Fiddler's Green. The national acts were on the one big stage in the amphitheatre while the local bands were outside the venue on small stages in the grassy areas to the north.
Inside, there were just the musicians onstage and the people in seats or in the GA grass. Outside, there were vendors of all kinds interspersed with the tiny little bands on the tiny little stages.
The KTCL Big Gig a couple of years ago was much the same way. It was at Coors Amphitheatre‡ with a clear delineation between what was centre stage and what was simply booth-worthy.
Brother tells me Monolith Festival is much like Mile High, though there are four stages at Monolith vs. five at Mile High, and that§ allows scheduling such that you can see half of every band by judicious stage-hopping.^
Due to a certain dumbassedness, MHMF is arranged such that you can miss almost all of three bands two or three times a day with ease.
At least there were plenty of ATMs.
I'll give them points for the spiffy water feature. I didn't take advantage, but it looked festive and it gave many hippies the chance to act out some of their Woodstock fantasies.¶
It should probably be noted that I generally loathe stoner music -- jam bands, reggae, Pink Floyd.# All my snippy little comments should probably be filtered through that revelation as you make your way through my version of this festival.††
Fortunately, Brother isn't any more echanted by the music of the baked than I, so we made a pretty good music-going duo for purposes of festival scheduling.
Band of Heathens was playing the Main Stage East when we got there. We quickly determined we didn't need to stick around and listen.
We wandered through the vast plains of the soccer fields+ to get the lay of the land. In the middle were the food vendors and the Mile High Music Festival arch.
It was nearly 1:00. There weren't a lot of people yet, and the temperature was climbing.
I felt kinda sorry for the Tool fans who had to wear their Tool uniforms all day waiting for Tool to take the stage at 8:45.
It's a lot of black, a lot of hair and a for-crying-out-loud HAT for ninety degree heat.
A quick tour of the various stages confirmed we didn't need to see Matt Nathanson‡‡ or Rocco Deluca, so we ducked in to the Westword tent to check out The Duke Spirit.
Musically speaking, this was the high point of the day for me.
We had alread heard knock-offs of Led Zepplin, Cream and Lynyrd Skynyrd and Brother informed me Duke Spirit was Bowie-influenced. As there's nothing new in the world, I figured at least Bowie was more my style.
Pleasantly, delightedly surprised.
Liela Moss, the lead singer, sounded a bit Björkish and I asked Brother if they were Icelandic. Turns out they're British. They were energetic and glam with a 90s alternative sensibility around the edges. I got more T-Rex from them than Bowie -- and that's not bad at all.
We stayed for the whole Duke Spirit set, then toddled in the direction of Gomez.
On the way, we had to stop and muse that we were not allowed to bring in a Frisbee, but apparently the hippies could bring in hula hoops.§§
My dork brother stopped to take a very important phone call along the way, giving me a chance to snap a pic of his inimitable self.¶¶
Perhaps it should have been a sign that the phish## phlag was phlying at the Gomez show.
I took pictures of the bird-shaped cloud and tried to pretend it didn't irk me to no end that a couple of chicks were taking up space suitable for eight or ten people doing their exotic hula hoop dances.
After a mercifully short††† couple of songs, it was nearly time for Ani DiFranco, one of the two acts I was really excited about.‡‡‡
No, really, that's Ani.
She was energetic and very Ani DiFranco, beating the crap out of her guitar and singing of tampons and egos and generally emitting rolling waves of ironic good cheer.
Our next stop, we decided, was for lunch. Dinner. Lupper. Whatever.
The food was pretty good and not exorbitantly expensive. Gyros, Mad Greens, buffalo brats, pizza, Steuben's, Mexican food, funnel cakes... all well and thoroughly represented.
One of the FAQs was, "Will there be vegan and vegetarian food?"§§§
Yes. Yes, there will.
It was about 4:00 by this time and bloody hot.
Most of the soccer fields at Dick's Sporting Goods Park are made from shredded, recycled tires. Walking across, I could see how its bouncy-yet-firm surface would be marvelous if one were actually playing soccer. The heat, however, was wafting around my ankles -- it felt like I was wading in ten inches of hot water.
My feet were burning from the bottoms up.
We looked for a shady place to sit, but there were few available.§§§
One of the complaints from the first year of the MHMF was that there wasn't enough shade, so several radio stations and the local alternative paper put up tents here and there to give respite from the heat.
They didn't put quite enough up.
People were gathered in any scrap of shade they could find. Knots of bodies were clustered in the shadows cast by cell towers and stadium lights.
We found a place on the far west end, right against the fence, and ate our Lupper. The sweet little Goths sitting one square of shade over offered hash. They left and were replaced by a couple of uniformed Tool fans, who also offered hash.
We wandered over to see Lyrics Born, which was pretty good, but hot.
The fashions around Lyrics Born were some of my favourites.
I wondered how this chick stayed on her feet on her wooden shoes all day.
And whether this was ironic glitter or if these shiny, sparkly girls were serious.
When Lyrics Born closed out, we wandered all the way back to the other side of Dick's to see if Paolo Nutini was to our liking.
The answer was a resounding NO, but at least we go to see the big, bamboo art installation on the way.
We already knew we didn't need any time with Big Head Todd,¶¶¶ since we both know them from way back and have never been particularly impressed. So we decided to settle in early for G. Love & Special Sauce. We were both looking forward to G. Love, though Brother more so than I.
The day was starting to wear on some people, causing them to take up too much damned space in the Rhapsody Tent.
We were also offered hash AGAIN. Apparently, hash is the drug of the moment.
Turns out G. Love has become more phishy over the years and was boring the spit out of us with twenty-minute galactic versions of already borderline-jamband songs.
So we sat.
This is pretty much what G. Love looked like to me.
As you can see, Brother is also thrilled.
Deciding we didn't need all of G. Love, we hit up the Westword Tent again to see what was the ups with The Black Keys.
We passed more art on the way.###
And a water station.§§§
The Black Keys, it turns out, are fantastic musicians. There are two guys, a drummer and a guitarist, and they sound like two guitars, a bass and a drum. They're very bluesy and not my cup of tea, musically speaking, but clearly talented to the rafters.
We sat outside the tent in the long shadows of the early evening and watched the fashions go by.
The boots on this chick really caught my eye, then she stopped right in front of me and I got the full effect of the off-white lace tights and the hippie jumper thingie.
I was fumbling for my camera, and I have to thank this guy...
...whose picture I had taken earlier while waiting for The Duke Spirit. He flagged Elf Boots down and delayed her long enough so I could get a picture.
Most of the attire was neo-hippie, as you can see both by the subject of this photo and the spatterings of tie-dye around the background.
Speaking of t-shirts...
What the hell do you suppose that means? And I'm sad to say I didn't get pictures of the I ♥ BOXED WINE@ and VODKA connects us t-shirts.$
The best t-shirt of the day was the brown one with the gold outline of the state of Wyoming and the legend, "Wyoming Skeptics Society: Putting the "why" in "Wyoming."
We finally puttered over to the Main Stage West for our primary reason for being: Tool.
I'm sad to report that Tool has also become Phish, and after starting 15 minutes late, stopped 15 minutes early and only played six or seven songs. Six or seven TEN MINUTE songs. That all started like Aldo Nova's "Fantasy," all swinging dicks and arena rock bravado and build-up.
At least the lights were pretty.
The horror of the aftermath... I can never adequately describe it. They turned the stage lights out and there was precious little light on the fields. We could barely see where we were going and I was feeling a sort of low grade panic about being knocked over and trampled.
We went straight to the car under the unusual auspices of a perfect sense and memory of where we'd parked. Our elation was short-lived.
There were no signs, no lights, no directions, no directors. We joined the main vein of traffic fairly quickly, but then parking lot etiquette drove most people to let the ever-growing number of feeder lanes in. It wasn't long before it looked like two parking lots trying to merge.
When we finally got to the exit, there were cones to guide our way -- along with NINE police officers, mostly standing around talking to each other and making half-hearted hand gestures in the direction the cones were already sending us.
This made me froth at the mouth.
Now, when you catalog everything I've said here, you're going to come to the logical conclusion that I hated my stay at the Mile High Music Festival. Oddly, I had a great day.
Like a blanket of fresh snow will make even a landfill seem magical, I think getting to hang around all day with Brother, the smorgasbord of music, the people watching, the colours and the overall energy blurred the black lines I could've drawn around the whole thing and made me happy.
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Late in the afternoon, when I'd had my fill of joyously destructive, holier-than-thou, oblivious hippies, I was grumbling about the Phish dancing: "Go ahead, hippie man, take one of your giant, loping steps of joy and I'll hook your ankle with my foot and take you to the ground."
Brother, snickering: "Giant loping steps of joy?"
Me: "You know EXACTLY what I'm talking about."
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Formerly Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre. Only it's not Coors Amphitheatre anymore; it's back to being Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre. Fiddler's Green was once an earth sculpture and part of the Museum of Outdoor Art funded by John Madden (different John Madden). It was a large, sweeping, open park in the middle of a massive office complex (Denver Tech Center -- the second downtown of Denver). Before they fenced it off and put in a formal stage and seats, it was a place silicon chip guys and accountants would go to have a nice picnic lunch during the work day. A Colorado Symphony concert series started, during lunch hour at first, but then they added electricity for evening concerts. A few years later, they fenced it off and turned it into a large (17,900 capacity) outdoor concert venue called Fiddler'd Green Amphitheatre. Then Coor's bought it and it was the Coor's Amphitheatre. Live Nation bought it some time in the last couple of years and it's Fiddler's Green again. You're welcome.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Probably a sophistication on the part of those scheduling it as well.
^FOOTNOTE (careted): Speaking of stage hopping, Brother was in charge of our schedule Saturday. At one point, he asked to be called, "The man with tha muthafuckin' plan." I said I was inclined to call him, "Julie, my cruise director." We compromised and I referred to him as, "Julie, my muthafuckin' cruise director."
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): But since the turf is made entirely of petroleum products, a little less mud.
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Y'know... music that bores me to tears and I can only assume the stoned find it deep... because they're stoned and their brains are all slow and sticky like warm tar.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): I know some of you, and you probably love Phish and their ilk and I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying I HATE PHISH.
+FOOTNOTE (plussed): Best use of a soccer field EVER.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Who, from what we could hear from the Westword Tent, was funny as hell. As Brother said, "I don't want to listen to the guy's music, but I'd kinda like to have a beer with him."
§§FOOTNOTE (two swirls): We also saw a guy with a bike and a guy with a twelve-foot bamboo pole with a bandanna tied on the end. It was a day of random but constant, "Why do you suppose he could bring *that* in when we can't have a Lara Bar?"
¶¶FOOTNOTE (two gophers): He is NOT flipping me off. He's just covering his ear to hear the very important message on the other end.
##FOOTNOTE (two pounds): Please to pronounce "Puh-hish." Or, if you're PETA, "Sea Hippies."
†††FOOTNOTE (triple cross): The songs themselves weren't short. No, they were the standard ten or twelve minutes of rambling, arhythmic guitar prose. It's just that we only listened to most of one and part of another before we left twenty minutes later.
‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (track three): I asked Brother, "In an ongoing effort to prove how special I am, how many other people do you think are in the Ani DiFranco/Tool demographic?" just as a guy wearing Tool shirt walked into the tent right in front of us. He was just cutting through on the way to somewhere else, as it turned out, but his timing was perfect.
§§§FOOTNOTE (multi-purpose multiple swirls): From the blogs and articles leading up the the festival, the three biggest gaffes last year were not enough water, not enough shade and not enough vegan options.
¶¶¶FOOTNOTE (gopher triplets): Seriously. In the early 90s I had a brief and wonderful stint as a band manager just before Todd broke nationally. He'd be at our practice space (well, someone else's space, but same building) and on the same ticket now and then. Brother also has a really nice little "Do you KNOW who I AM?" story from a party he attended as "Bittersweet" was rearing its ugly head.
###FOOTNOTE (pound pound pound): This one was solar powered. One that I couldn't get near to get a decent photo was a miniature wind farm. And by miniature, I mean, "Not as big as the one in Palm Springs." It was pretty big, as art goes, but the windmills were only about five feet tall.
@FOOTNOTE (atted): Hand decorated. In those fuzzy iron-on letters.
$FOOTNOTE (moneyed): Neither the vodka shirt nor the boxed wine shirt had any corporate logos or context whatsoever. I believe the observer was meant to take them at face value.
For instance, after discussing the merits of music festivals, I claimed to have never been to one, though that's patently untrue. But the music festivals I attended were very different from this one. I'm sure people who arrange music festivals or play music festivals or attend many music festivals have names for different formats.
Mostly I just call the other ones "not music festivals."
Like Lilith Fair. I went in 1999 at Fiddler's Green. The national acts were on the one big stage in the amphitheatre while the local bands were outside the venue on small stages in the grassy areas to the north.
Inside, there were just the musicians onstage and the people in seats or in the GA grass. Outside, there were vendors of all kinds interspersed with the tiny little bands on the tiny little stages.
The KTCL Big Gig a couple of years ago was much the same way. It was at Coors Amphitheatre‡ with a clear delineation between what was centre stage and what was simply booth-worthy.
Brother tells me Monolith Festival is much like Mile High, though there are four stages at Monolith vs. five at Mile High, and that§ allows scheduling such that you can see half of every band by judicious stage-hopping.^
Due to a certain dumbassedness, MHMF is arranged such that you can miss almost all of three bands two or three times a day with ease.
At least there were plenty of ATMs.
I'll give them points for the spiffy water feature. I didn't take advantage, but it looked festive and it gave many hippies the chance to act out some of their Woodstock fantasies.¶
It should probably be noted that I generally loathe stoner music -- jam bands, reggae, Pink Floyd.# All my snippy little comments should probably be filtered through that revelation as you make your way through my version of this festival.††
Fortunately, Brother isn't any more echanted by the music of the baked than I, so we made a pretty good music-going duo for purposes of festival scheduling.
Band of Heathens was playing the Main Stage East when we got there. We quickly determined we didn't need to stick around and listen.
We wandered through the vast plains of the soccer fields+ to get the lay of the land. In the middle were the food vendors and the Mile High Music Festival arch.
It was nearly 1:00. There weren't a lot of people yet, and the temperature was climbing.
I felt kinda sorry for the Tool fans who had to wear their Tool uniforms all day waiting for Tool to take the stage at 8:45.
It's a lot of black, a lot of hair and a for-crying-out-loud HAT for ninety degree heat.
A quick tour of the various stages confirmed we didn't need to see Matt Nathanson‡‡ or Rocco Deluca, so we ducked in to the Westword tent to check out The Duke Spirit.
Musically speaking, this was the high point of the day for me.
We had alread heard knock-offs of Led Zepplin, Cream and Lynyrd Skynyrd and Brother informed me Duke Spirit was Bowie-influenced. As there's nothing new in the world, I figured at least Bowie was more my style.
Pleasantly, delightedly surprised.
Liela Moss, the lead singer, sounded a bit Björkish and I asked Brother if they were Icelandic. Turns out they're British. They were energetic and glam with a 90s alternative sensibility around the edges. I got more T-Rex from them than Bowie -- and that's not bad at all.
We stayed for the whole Duke Spirit set, then toddled in the direction of Gomez.
On the way, we had to stop and muse that we were not allowed to bring in a Frisbee, but apparently the hippies could bring in hula hoops.§§
My dork brother stopped to take a very important phone call along the way, giving me a chance to snap a pic of his inimitable self.¶¶
Perhaps it should have been a sign that the phish## phlag was phlying at the Gomez show.
I took pictures of the bird-shaped cloud and tried to pretend it didn't irk me to no end that a couple of chicks were taking up space suitable for eight or ten people doing their exotic hula hoop dances.
After a mercifully short††† couple of songs, it was nearly time for Ani DiFranco, one of the two acts I was really excited about.‡‡‡
No, really, that's Ani.
She was energetic and very Ani DiFranco, beating the crap out of her guitar and singing of tampons and egos and generally emitting rolling waves of ironic good cheer.
Our next stop, we decided, was for lunch. Dinner. Lupper. Whatever.
The food was pretty good and not exorbitantly expensive. Gyros, Mad Greens, buffalo brats, pizza, Steuben's, Mexican food, funnel cakes... all well and thoroughly represented.
One of the FAQs was, "Will there be vegan and vegetarian food?"§§§
Yes. Yes, there will.
It was about 4:00 by this time and bloody hot.
Most of the soccer fields at Dick's Sporting Goods Park are made from shredded, recycled tires. Walking across, I could see how its bouncy-yet-firm surface would be marvelous if one were actually playing soccer. The heat, however, was wafting around my ankles -- it felt like I was wading in ten inches of hot water.
My feet were burning from the bottoms up.
We looked for a shady place to sit, but there were few available.§§§
One of the complaints from the first year of the MHMF was that there wasn't enough shade, so several radio stations and the local alternative paper put up tents here and there to give respite from the heat.
They didn't put quite enough up.
People were gathered in any scrap of shade they could find. Knots of bodies were clustered in the shadows cast by cell towers and stadium lights.
We found a place on the far west end, right against the fence, and ate our Lupper. The sweet little Goths sitting one square of shade over offered hash. They left and were replaced by a couple of uniformed Tool fans, who also offered hash.
We wandered over to see Lyrics Born, which was pretty good, but hot.
The fashions around Lyrics Born were some of my favourites.
I wondered how this chick stayed on her feet on her wooden shoes all day.
And whether this was ironic glitter or if these shiny, sparkly girls were serious.
When Lyrics Born closed out, we wandered all the way back to the other side of Dick's to see if Paolo Nutini was to our liking.
The answer was a resounding NO, but at least we go to see the big, bamboo art installation on the way.
We already knew we didn't need any time with Big Head Todd,¶¶¶ since we both know them from way back and have never been particularly impressed. So we decided to settle in early for G. Love & Special Sauce. We were both looking forward to G. Love, though Brother more so than I.
The day was starting to wear on some people, causing them to take up too much damned space in the Rhapsody Tent.
We were also offered hash AGAIN. Apparently, hash is the drug of the moment.
Turns out G. Love has become more phishy over the years and was boring the spit out of us with twenty-minute galactic versions of already borderline-jamband songs.
So we sat.
This is pretty much what G. Love looked like to me.
As you can see, Brother is also thrilled.
Deciding we didn't need all of G. Love, we hit up the Westword Tent again to see what was the ups with The Black Keys.
We passed more art on the way.###
And a water station.§§§
The Black Keys, it turns out, are fantastic musicians. There are two guys, a drummer and a guitarist, and they sound like two guitars, a bass and a drum. They're very bluesy and not my cup of tea, musically speaking, but clearly talented to the rafters.
We sat outside the tent in the long shadows of the early evening and watched the fashions go by.
The boots on this chick really caught my eye, then she stopped right in front of me and I got the full effect of the off-white lace tights and the hippie jumper thingie.
I was fumbling for my camera, and I have to thank this guy...
...whose picture I had taken earlier while waiting for The Duke Spirit. He flagged Elf Boots down and delayed her long enough so I could get a picture.
Most of the attire was neo-hippie, as you can see both by the subject of this photo and the spatterings of tie-dye around the background.
Speaking of t-shirts...
What the hell do you suppose that means? And I'm sad to say I didn't get pictures of the I ♥ BOXED WINE@ and VODKA connects us t-shirts.$
The best t-shirt of the day was the brown one with the gold outline of the state of Wyoming and the legend, "Wyoming Skeptics Society: Putting the "why" in "Wyoming."
We finally puttered over to the Main Stage West for our primary reason for being: Tool.
I'm sad to report that Tool has also become Phish, and after starting 15 minutes late, stopped 15 minutes early and only played six or seven songs. Six or seven TEN MINUTE songs. That all started like Aldo Nova's "Fantasy," all swinging dicks and arena rock bravado and build-up.
At least the lights were pretty.
The horror of the aftermath... I can never adequately describe it. They turned the stage lights out and there was precious little light on the fields. We could barely see where we were going and I was feeling a sort of low grade panic about being knocked over and trampled.
We went straight to the car under the unusual auspices of a perfect sense and memory of where we'd parked. Our elation was short-lived.
There were no signs, no lights, no directions, no directors. We joined the main vein of traffic fairly quickly, but then parking lot etiquette drove most people to let the ever-growing number of feeder lanes in. It wasn't long before it looked like two parking lots trying to merge.
When we finally got to the exit, there were cones to guide our way -- along with NINE police officers, mostly standing around talking to each other and making half-hearted hand gestures in the direction the cones were already sending us.
This made me froth at the mouth.
Now, when you catalog everything I've said here, you're going to come to the logical conclusion that I hated my stay at the Mile High Music Festival. Oddly, I had a great day.
Like a blanket of fresh snow will make even a landfill seem magical, I think getting to hang around all day with Brother, the smorgasbord of music, the people watching, the colours and the overall energy blurred the black lines I could've drawn around the whole thing and made me happy.
†FOOTNOTE (crossed): Late in the afternoon, when I'd had my fill of joyously destructive, holier-than-thou, oblivious hippies, I was grumbling about the Phish dancing: "Go ahead, hippie man, take one of your giant, loping steps of joy and I'll hook your ankle with my foot and take you to the ground."
Brother, snickering: "Giant loping steps of joy?"
Me: "You know EXACTLY what I'm talking about."
‡FOOTNOTE (double-crossed): Formerly Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre. Only it's not Coors Amphitheatre anymore; it's back to being Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre. Fiddler's Green was once an earth sculpture and part of the Museum of Outdoor Art funded by John Madden (different John Madden). It was a large, sweeping, open park in the middle of a massive office complex (Denver Tech Center -- the second downtown of Denver). Before they fenced it off and put in a formal stage and seats, it was a place silicon chip guys and accountants would go to have a nice picnic lunch during the work day. A Colorado Symphony concert series started, during lunch hour at first, but then they added electricity for evening concerts. A few years later, they fenced it off and turned it into a large (17,900 capacity) outdoor concert venue called Fiddler'd Green Amphitheatre. Then Coor's bought it and it was the Coor's Amphitheatre. Live Nation bought it some time in the last couple of years and it's Fiddler's Green again. You're welcome.
§FOOTNOTE (swerved): Probably a sophistication on the part of those scheduling it as well.
^FOOTNOTE (careted): Speaking of stage hopping, Brother was in charge of our schedule Saturday. At one point, he asked to be called, "The man with tha muthafuckin' plan." I said I was inclined to call him, "Julie, my cruise director." We compromised and I referred to him as, "Julie, my muthafuckin' cruise director."
¶FOOTNOTE (paragraphed): But since the turf is made entirely of petroleum products, a little less mud.
#FOOTNOTE (pounded): Y'know... music that bores me to tears and I can only assume the stoned find it deep... because they're stoned and their brains are all slow and sticky like warm tar.
††FOOTNOTE (ddouble-ccrossed): I know some of you, and you probably love Phish and their ilk and I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying I HATE PHISH.
+FOOTNOTE (plussed): Best use of a soccer field EVER.
‡‡FOOTNOTE (doubble-crossssed): Who, from what we could hear from the Westword Tent, was funny as hell. As Brother said, "I don't want to listen to the guy's music, but I'd kinda like to have a beer with him."
§§FOOTNOTE (two swirls): We also saw a guy with a bike and a guy with a twelve-foot bamboo pole with a bandanna tied on the end. It was a day of random but constant, "Why do you suppose he could bring *that* in when we can't have a Lara Bar?"
¶¶FOOTNOTE (two gophers): He is NOT flipping me off. He's just covering his ear to hear the very important message on the other end.
##FOOTNOTE (two pounds): Please to pronounce "Puh-hish." Or, if you're PETA, "Sea Hippies."
†††FOOTNOTE (triple cross): The songs themselves weren't short. No, they were the standard ten or twelve minutes of rambling, arhythmic guitar prose. It's just that we only listened to most of one and part of another before we left twenty minutes later.
‡‡‡FOOTNOTE (track three): I asked Brother, "In an ongoing effort to prove how special I am, how many other people do you think are in the Ani DiFranco/Tool demographic?" just as a guy wearing Tool shirt walked into the tent right in front of us. He was just cutting through on the way to somewhere else, as it turned out, but his timing was perfect.
§§§FOOTNOTE (multi-purpose multiple swirls): From the blogs and articles leading up the the festival, the three biggest gaffes last year were not enough water, not enough shade and not enough vegan options.
¶¶¶FOOTNOTE (gopher triplets): Seriously. In the early 90s I had a brief and wonderful stint as a band manager just before Todd broke nationally. He'd be at our practice space (well, someone else's space, but same building) and on the same ticket now and then. Brother also has a really nice little "Do you KNOW who I AM?" story from a party he attended as "Bittersweet" was rearing its ugly head.
###FOOTNOTE (pound pound pound): This one was solar powered. One that I couldn't get near to get a decent photo was a miniature wind farm. And by miniature, I mean, "Not as big as the one in Palm Springs." It was pretty big, as art goes, but the windmills were only about five feet tall.
@FOOTNOTE (atted): Hand decorated. In those fuzzy iron-on letters.
$FOOTNOTE (moneyed): Neither the vodka shirt nor the boxed wine shirt had any corporate logos or context whatsoever. I believe the observer was meant to take them at face value.
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