Brechtian

The first weekend of Threepenny shows came to a conclusion last night. For the most part, I'm happy with how the show turned out. There are portions of my character that I would have liked to gone a different direction with, but I understand that as an actor, those decisions are not mine to make. Our director had an interesting vision for this show, one that I think ended up being a bit more muddled than he would have liked. Overall though, it's entertaining, comically poignant, and foggy as hell.

My buddies Braizen, Poncey, Spats, and Omelette saw the opening night performance and all had positive reactions (to my face at least). Otte and Marie made the venture down south from the Twin Cities to see the show/visit. It was a good time and I'm really glad that they could make it down.

My need to create has returned. I read the blogs of people like Kevin Smith or Mike Doughty, people who create for a living, and I realize just how badly I want to do that. Don't get me wrong, I still want to teach English in high school. I'm not talking about doing that as a means of maintaining a productive member of society (i.e. contributing to our recessing economy). I'm talking about creating for the sole purpose of creating. Spats and I have joked about how we're going to decorate our room next year with bedsheets that we'll then paint over. I actually love that idea, in moderation. I want my room to be a collage of things we've made.

I've been flooding myself with music by Cloud Cult lately. It's the most artistic music I've heard in a long time. Subtle indie rock meets electronic drums, a cello, and a violin, often with gorgeous five part harmonies over it all. On top of that, there are two people in the band whose purpose is to paint during concerts. That's right, live, on-stage art. I was blown away by the strength they have in their sound. Craig Minowa, I would love to meet you.



Sometimes we all just need to find faith in our own creation.

New Things On The List Of Things I'll Get To Give People When I Die

I bought a new guitar today. Long story actually, so sit back, grab yourself a cold one (I'll let you pick the beverage), and get ready for the trek that has been my last couple days.

For the longest time I've adored the look of resonator guitars. I've seen them on racks, the back of albums, and in old bluegrass footage, and I wanted one of my own. Also, ages ago I won a Fender Stratocaster. It's a beauty, but electric instruments, for the most part, don't really fit what I do.

I'm on spring break now, and in my perusal of the local Music-Go-Round led my eyes to a gorgeous resonator that looked exactly like this:

Now I had been contemplating selling my Strat for about a year now, since it's been doing nothing but gathering dust in a spare room here in my house. So what did I do? I put the resonator on hold and ran home to grab my Strat. Thus ends visit number one to that illustrious place.

On my return I was told that the trade would be one for one, no money changing hands required, something I wasn't expecting at all, something that made me smile. I made my trade and drove back home to play with my new toy. End of visit two.

I'll admit, my knowledge of the inner workings of many musical instruments is minimal. This lack of knowledge extends, of course, to resonator guitars. When I was play for a bit more than twenty minutes it began to hum something terrible. There was obviously an issue somewhere around the cone feature. So what did I do? I made my re-return to Music-Go-Round where they offered me a repair job, which graciously accepted. They assured me this would not happen again. End of visit three.

The next day I noticed the sound was off again. I started looking around online and the more I read, the more I realized just what I had got myself into. Turns out certain resonators are made for lap purposes only. All resonators are also easily tweaked, meaning too much moving around can cause the cone to shift and the tone to change. Knowing the way my life goes, I came to see that this just wasn't the instrument for me. Back to Music-Go-Round.

Here I was told what I was expecting. Since I hadn't paid anything for the resonator, because I had simply traded for it, I could only get store credit for that particular store for my return. Since I had time and money to kill, I started looking around. After playing a handful of decent items I found myself holding this Abilene acoustic that possessed many of the qualities I love in acoustic guitars that also don't exist in my current Ibanez acoustic.

These are those qualities:
It's old
It's not glossed
It's neck fits my hand
It’s a jumbo, but it’s thinner than my Ibanez
It sounds earthy as hell
It looks like it’s actually been played before
It’s beat up just enough
It feels like me

This is an actual picture of my new baby:

Lucky for me, this new guitar was also cheaper than the resonator I had previously purchased. This left me with enough cash to get myself a hard shell case, something I’d always wanted. I picked up a tuner too, cuz I suck at that.

All in all, this spring break has been extremely profitable for me. My phone was on the fritz, so we got me a new one, one of them fancy slider phones, which I’ve pictured for you below:

Don’t worry, it’s the same number and I still have (most of) yours.

Also, two new pairs of pants. Guess who’s gonna keep being clothed? This guy.

At Target today, my mom decided that I need snack food for the rest of the semester. It’s at these points that I realize just how much of a child I still am. I will be returning to college in a few days with boxes of Goldfish Crackers, Animal Crackers, Teddy Grahams, Fruit Roll-Ups, and Gushers. She insisted and I’ll be sharing. I’m a big enough boy as it is.