Winter Work and Lack Therof

     Around Thanksgiving, I realized that I would be too poor to buy anyone Christmas presents, which sucks. Say what you will about Christmas, but I pride myself on my gift giving skills. It's a straight-up art. I've learned that there are lots of "don't"s and zero "do"s. Like so many things in life, one just has to feel it. I felt especially bad because I didn't get my brother or then-girlfriend anything last year either, even though I had the money and knew what to get them. In my defense, we were robbed and evicted that December PLUS I was about to take on running Thursday nights at Club Energy as Morgan Louis decapitated POP! to move on to minimal house-ville. I 'spose it's no excuse. I should've just played the "consumer-cattle" card.

     I decided to make my presents this year. Pepper preserves for my brother and his girlfriend (a selfish gift as it's something I wanted to learn anyway), a

nd songs for my neighbors. I started writing four songs in my head for the four Narwhal Arms kids. Each was to be in a different musical style, sung in a different voice. The work went very slow, as I dove into all four at once. Then I tore a ligament in my knee on New Year's Eve/morning which put a dent in the songs' progress. Didn't stop me from partying though. Stuck the spongey side of a mop under my arm and hobbled about for the rest of the night like Tiny Tim. I was coked up enough where it could've been broken and I wouldn't have slowed down, but I sure payed for it the next day. So I scored a bit of a vacation from work, most of which I've spent filling out TDI and Community Free Healthcare forms. Over the past week, I've been making music with my neighbor Brendan (Triangle Forest) who's also on work hiatus. He's a college professor by day, so he gets a Christmas vacation. Amazing how easily the body gets into a nocturnal sleep schedule. I've been getting up at 9 or 10 pm (depending on whether or not I need to buy booze), popping over to B-Lite's, recording music all night, d

iscussing the songs over breakfast once the sun is out, doing an errand or two, and going to sleep around 11 or noon.

     So here's some fruit from my new life. A new Triangle Forest song th

at B and I did, and Narwhal Jamie's pop-punk Christmas song. It helps if one knows that she

's from Portland, OR. The plan is to give the kids the songs on CD-Rs, with an instrumental version of the song included for Karaoke purposes (they love their Karaoke up there). They'l

l be able to sing each other's songs! I've looked into software that'll let

 me turn a DVD-R into a CD-G Karaoke disc. I could encode the lyrics and sequence when the syllables get highlighted or have a ball bounce over them, but I don't think they have a proper Karaoke setup (dedicated monitor, etc.) permanently over there. Jamie's song still has a long instrumental break. I just love it when the Karaoke monitor says "Instrumental Break" and you can do the Macarena or air guitar during the eight or sixteen measures. Something. Anyway, here they are.

Triangle Forest & Marty - Shadows of Love

Marty - Come Back to Portland