In the midst of chess, I talked to one of the following:

These are the Ahn siblings: twin sisters Lucia and Maria (one sings, the other plays cello) and their younger sibling, Angella, who plays violin. I spoke with the latter, and she was gracious, well-spoken, and thoughtful.

They'll be playing at the Edmonds Center for the Arts this Saturday. How can I not love my job sometimes?

the hooligans of today are the dropouts of tomorrow

Yesterday, I spent my morning telling ninety or so middle school children about my job. The fact that I am now somehow qualified to guide children of any age in their future careers scares me deeply.

That said, I gave them the run-down of my life: from my beginnings as a beggar child on the streets of Chicago, learning to read and write from bus advertising and Roger Ebert movie reviews, to my schooling with Jack Dawkins, my first published piece (decrying local Lake Michigan as a minor Great Lake) in the Lawndale News, and my radio spiels calling for Monday to simply be known as "Oprah".

We then moved on to the fluke that placed me in the Editor's chair (like I was somehow supposed to know that we had assigned seats? On my first day? Please.) and my subsequent career as a man of letters. 26 of them, in fact.

I told them how I had engaged in activities both larcenous and lascivious, illegal and illuminating, all for a little more than minimum wage. They were suitably impressed. Both with my story and the giant asp I kept in a glass cage next to me in order to inspire fear.

They asked me questions. I answered them by tapping on the glass to anger the asp. We dialogued.

In the end, I think I successfully persuaded them to avoid writing as a career and to pay attention in school, especially to that regrettably good-looking fireman who was one classroom over that all the girls would not, for the love of God, stop giggling about.

Until I released the asp.

Oh, also

And it's only $250 for the tickets! A veritable bargain!

Jesus,

please buy me tickets to Coachella. 5/2 of a C-note is a small price for salvation.

Your pal,

Tyson

In the interest of time

Since this image needs no commentary, I'd only like to add that Lebowskifest, the annual get-together devoted to the greatest comedy of all times (The Big Lebowski, hello!) will be held for the first time in our own fair burg, Seattle.

What this means: you can bowl with the Dude. Not Jeff Bridges' version thereof, but the actual Dude. He was in the Seattle Seven. Him and six other guys.

You're Lebowski, Lebowski.

It's time to get all Randy Newman

As a participant, cheerleader, and fan of NaNoWriMo, I have the heart, stones, and talent that makes an ordinary man a winner. Actually, only the first part of that is provably true, but I'll lay the latter half of that line on anyone gullible enough to believe me.

And it's that kind of gumption that should steer me straight through what might be my toughest challenge yet: RPM, or Record Production Month.

From their homepage:

This is the challenge: record an album in 28 days, just because you can. That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February. Go ahead… put it to tape.

Why not? Success or failure, it should be an excellent exercise. I'm thinking your basic guitar pop, looped vocal harmonies and a fruity loops backbone. A little bit of this, a little bit of that, and, above all, a stone or two, and GESTALT you've got yourself an album.

While this should be enough for most people, those of the crazy persuasion might avail themselves of this.

Today we dance. In the future!

Could you watch this forever? I sure as hell could.

But we shouldn't be distracted by frivolity. We should be educated by it. Case in point:

Likewise, there are sentences containing the word fuck which are ambiguous between a meaning parallel to (1) and a meaning parallel to (2): (25) Fuck Lyndon Johnson. This sentence can be interpreted either as an admonition to copulate with Lyndon Johnson or as an epithet indicating disapproval of that individual but conveying no instruction to engage in sexual relations with him.

I almost feel the need to print that entire article out so that I might properly delineate it with highlighters and pen notes in the margins, but I figure an actual understanding might be completely besides the point.

Besides, knowledge – like macramé – is for women, owls, and the infirm.

Tell me this doesn't look like fun

And I will recognize your right to be completely wrong.
All I need is a cliff, three cars, and some friends in the underground.

The best secrets are in books

For Christmas, for a special subset of people, I made presents instead of purchasing them. Not only does this make me look good, but it's cheap too! What can I say? I'm a prize. A peach.

But it wasn't macaroni, paste, and paper plates (hmmm, lunch), it was something much, much better.



Using this informative tutorial, I made hollowed books (you know, for drugs) out of bargain basement buys of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, The Family Mark Twain Anthology, and Son of the Circus.

I also took pictures.





More here.

This, to me, is amazing

This is, perhaps obviously, a map of the United States. However, each state has been replaced with a European county that does about as much business.

I once lived in Mexico, and now I live in Turkey.

From here.

So you've decided to make yourself a promise

Congratulations!

Much like children, promises are easy to make and hard to keep. Sometimes we set our sights too high, or poorly define a goal, or show up drunk to the custodial hearing, and then BAM, you're into the missus for sixty percent of your monthly take-home.

I don't want to call 2006 a failure. It was both experience and experiment. One part grand, one part god-awful, the year that was made small, important promises for 2007 while mainly forgoing all the plans that 2005 made. If anything, 2006 was a lazy baby coming in, all shifty-eyed and aching for a shaking, and a toothless octogenarian going out, waiting listlessly by the mailbox for its pension to arrive.

For 2007, I've made a number of resolutions, and most of them will be of no interest to you (there are, for example, several resolutions pertaining to personal hygiene that destroy the mystery of my musk with their specificity). However, I have pledged to stop shunning my blog. ("Shunning the blog": Scottish High Game or Masturbation Reference?)

It won't be much, most likely, but then again, I set the bar pretty low last year. So we're all winners. Welcome to 2007.

An update on my whereabouts

Myspace says I haven't written a new blog since the 30th of October. It certainly hasn't felt that long; whatever time I might have devoted to the detailing of my life has been completely swallowed in the doings of other tasks.



Although I have no wish to take you on a walking tour of the previous two months (and Lord knows you wouldn't want to read it, really) I do want to share some of the new things I've created, recorded, or in someway had a hand.



So as Christmas rapidly approaches (Sweet Jesus, do I really need to do some shopping?) here's a look back on the last two months.

. . .

The End Times



Full of former and current Resonance staffers, The End Times is the brainchild of Fred and the vehicle of Kate, while Meg and I round out the group with color and panache.



Fred: Bass, Guitar, Shaker, Songs

Kate: Voice, Tambourine

Tyson: Lap Steel Guitar, Guitar, Bass, Voice

Meg: Piano, Organ, Voice



. . .

Girls Doing Boys



An offshoot of sorts from The End Times, Girls Doing Boys is also known as Apple Valley Rodeo. A covers-only outfit, GDB (AVR) features Kate picking songs, taking names, and playing piano. I generally add everything else.



Kate: Voice, Piano, Selections

Tyson: Percussion, Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Washtub Bass, Voice, Production

Meg: Voice, Piano, Accordian



. . .

Pomohobo



The best kind of joke, the kind where no one really remembers why it was funny, is how Pomohobo got its name. A take off on art-school students and pot-fugue thesis statements, Pomohobo was meant to take on the world. Instead, I took the last poem I wrote at Western (and, one might argue, the last poem I'll ever write) and set it to music. Take that, Antioch!



Tyson: Words, Guitar, Bass, Keyboard, Production



. . .

Ham-boned



No one really pegs me as a guy with a penchant for hip-hop, that strange street lingo that rumbles out of passing low-riders and ambles by on the shoulders of your average ghetto-blaster-carrying downtown denizen, but I am. And that's why I got together with my B-town friends and sussed out some beats.



Oliver: Words

Jeff: Words

Sam: Programming, Keyboard, Words

Tyson: Programming, Keyboard, Guitar, Melodica, Voice



. . .



And that's it! There's sure to be more in the next few months. I've been writing a lot of songs for just me, and as soon as I get a recorded version that I'm proud of, you can bet I'll be on here crowing about it like the vainest chicken you ever did see.



Maybe I'll even write some more. I have a backlog of topics I'd like to tackle. For instance: why my strange insistence on rhyme and alliteration?

Why my brother kicks ass