(the garoffice during SPP4 mixing. I’m finishing the mix on the machine I started it on, my laptop. To facilitate multi-tasking, and avoid moving my crappy speakers from machine to machine, the laptop is setup in front of the desktop. I right hand mouse the desktop and left hand mouse the laptop. I keep notes on the desktop, as well. It’s kind of ludicrous. For my upcoming mixes on other records [oRSo9 and orso9rmx, MSP, MD8ME, SleepWalks, Kenton Camerata, Brother X, My Special Porpoise, ect] I am sticking with the desktop. To that end I just re-installed Live on it. I am abandoning ProTools for mixing. I can’t see launching it unless I need Pitch n Time, at this point. Mixing with Ableton is faboo.)

I’m pleased to say that we’re closing in on the final mixes of the fourth Stowe-Pembleton Project record. A few more good days, like I’ve had this past week, will get it in the can. And then it’s off to Soul Note. We’re pretty confident they’ll pick it up for release as our third release on their label.
But the third SPP record, embarrassingly, is still not mixed. D’oh! Heaven only knows if the label it was originally recorded for will still be interested. Rest assured getting SPP3 mixed is high on my spreadsheet of things to do. Well, item 13 of ~59, anyway. But since some activities exist in overlapping states, it’s higher than 13 might seem to suggest.

Research for Vile Dead continues. Which is to say I’m watching zombie related tv and film, as well as horror and supernatural flicks. I’ve been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes. This weekend I watched The Hunger (the first 2/3 is awesome. Then it’s downhill into complete, “quick, wrap it up, we’ve used our allotted 70 minutes! Screw linearity, comprehensibility, plot, characters and everything that’s happened in the film thus far, we need a quick ending. Oh hey, could you throw in a twist! Don’t worry about it making sense, this a vampire movie with David Bowie and lesbians, we can’t lose!”) and Hellboy II (Lots of fun to watch with absolutely no promise or pretension to being anything else.) I must admit, I always love the research phase of projects, but VD is particularly enjoyable.

Yesterday 23E Studios hosted a little tea party in the front courtyard of the garoffice. Our overlords, the Nightmare City City Council, were in town and wanted to check up on us. I think we passed the spot inspection. They declared the garoffice very nice, and expressed a strong faith in our ability to be productive in the 23E complex. While here they picked up their tribute for the year, the Nightmare City arcade from the Disembody installation/set. And their outfits from that film for use in future NC ventures.

(This is the courtyard. In the pic it is setup for mixing SPP4. It looked much nicer for the NC3: no computer paraphernalia, just my blue teapot and white cups and saucers.)

You’ll note from this post that the rebuilt desktop is performing fine thus far. I yanked out two internal drives, and hope to replace them soon with much larger drives for the logging and editing of Disembody. That’s one of the first things that came up in my logging strategy session with my father. The other big thing at this stage is establishing the best possible naming system for the clips. And defining parameters based on future uses of the footage. To that end I’ve begun a catalogue and timeline for the footage.

In other Disembody news, the NC3 think they spotted the dumpster from Disembody still residing in an alley in Chinatown where we filled it. The dumpster company has still not carried it away. Why not?
In sad Disembody news, 20th Century Props, where 23E rented theater seats for the Morgellon, is selling off its props and closing its doors. Oh, if only we could buy those seats for future projects! They’re being auctioned off, but A) I’ll be on tour and B) I have no money. So…

Above is some of the messy Copy Lake/My Daddy Ate My Eyes setup for our coming shows (and hopefully tour) in July. I’m mixing a MD8ME demo today. And rehearsing for the shows every day for the next many weeks. Also working on new material for Forever What?. We hope to rehearse in August in preparation for shows in Fall. With luck we’ll start gigging out semi-reguarly here in LA starting in September.

my uncle called me on Wednesday and reminded me I had an apointment. My grandpa and I had tickets to go see his favorite ventriloquist perform in Sioux Falls, SD on friday night.

I totally forgot. I was in LA and my flight didn’t leave until monday the 11th.

I called the only person who could help… Classic Ryan Sargent Style.

He said he was taking his car in to have the passenger seat belt fixed at 8am on thursday, and as soon as he got the car back we could go. We left LA at around 5:30 pm western time on thursday, so that’s basically rush hour. At that point the goal was to meet my grandpa in Omaha, NE in 21 hours.

Once we reached Denver, CO I had Erin figure our time. We would have had to average 93 mph for the next six or seven hours, including time spent getting gas, to get to Omaha on time. The show was in Sioux Falls though. So I asked if I could just meet up there. An average of 93 miles per hour just didn’t seem possible, with construction, traffic and so on.

Ryan got me to the Sioux Falls arena during the 15 minute intermission between the opening and main act.

Which is to say our 25 hour LA to Sioux Falls nonstop road trip was a huge success.

The whole thing was totally insane.

Arthur drove me from the gallery to the jaguar dealer in hollywood to meet CRSS on thursaday afternoon around 3:30pm. He wished us luck. I think that’s what did it (oh that and gorilla spirit + chimp attitude).

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Two (Sunday) days ago I drove around SF with lee after renting a truck. I woke up at my friend Jordan’s apartment that day. Lee and I walked from the loin to the truck rental place by CCA, so that would be 7th St. and 16thth St. I think. Lee and I stopped at Carol-Anne’s to get keys. We picked things up from Carson’s studio… and the popcorn maker, calendars from the printers, foam and so on. I don’t know who all to thank for helping us that day. For sure Skye went out of his way to pick things up so that I would not have to drive the big truck trough town too much.

Oh yeah, Christan Einfeldt the producer of Digital Tipping Point interviewed Lee and I on Saturday. It was the first inter view we have given for our project. He kindly captured all the footage from the interview and gave it to Skye on a harddrive the next day!
So that was one stop we didn’t have to make before taking the truck to Oakland to get beautiful hoddies from Alexandria’s studio. She made mine brown and I really like it. I think Terry made the concession stand? It looks awesome! Sky and Lee and I loaded the concession stand into the rental truck, tossed in some spare lumber and away I went down to LA.
Got to LA around midnight. Arther let me in and parked his car behind the truck so as to discourage the many looters living in his neighborhood (he lives in a nice neighborhood, so that was a joke about looters but for real that he parked his car behind the truck). I slept and had nightmares related to driving the truck.

the next day I left the house at the same time as Arthur. He was off to pick up Carson. I was off to the gallery. Parked the truck in front of the gallery as close as I could manage. Skye, Lee, Carson and I worked like leaf-cutter ants unloading the truck. Arthur was videoing us.
Once the truck was empty we headed to home depot to get scaffolding and a bunch of sheise.
We didn’t know how to get to the more reasonable aka less expensive lumber store so I called the place and gave a dim description of where I was, got directions and started driving. Of course since I was getting board and whatever I decided to start driving with out really looking at the map. We were going basically in the opposite direction for a while before we called Arthur with our location/desired destination. Arthur got us going the right way. I decided I would look at the map and that super good before driving anywhere in the future.
Lumber store was awesome. Only about a foot clearance on each side of the truck box … max. We loaded 40 2×6 and 30 sheets of lewon with the help of the lumber yard staff.
On the way back to the gallery I missed a turn and decided to pull into an epty parking lot to turn around. I may or may not have come close to crushing a little white car driving the opposite direction while turning into the parking lot.
Carson, Lee and I unladed the truck.
Alex showed up at the gallery and Skye. Lee and Carson helped them unload. Then we all went to Amy’s to drop things off. She wasn’t home yet so all of us excluding Lee went to go buy refreshments. I learned that the Clamato beer they sell in the store tastes just like the tomatoe seasoning packets that you get with the ramen noodles.
Amy got back while we were having our make shift tailgate party and invited us all in.
Skye and I stayed at Amy’s. The truck was parked outside and needed to be returned by 8:31am the next day a few miles from her place.
We watched a bit of All that Jazz until Amy noticed I was sleeping, Skye was asleep as well. Amy gave me a turkey burger and Skye offered his food as well before the movie. That was really nice of them as I had eaten all my snacks.
So today Amy and I gassed up the truck and returned it to the rental place. And now I’m here with Carson and Alex setting things up.
Carson is building the confession booth and Alex is setting up the basement office.
The others are at the store I think. My eye is a little puffy and I think maybe infected. tty world!

Well, here’s the skinny today:

Chantal, my 16 year old niece bailed this morning. She was going to be an usherette, however her Summer is not going as planned. This is sad news, but not, prehaps, bad news. I have the sneaking suspicion the theater was going to be overstaffed with three employees…
Plus we were a yard short of material before this. I was going to have shorts as opposed to proper long pants for my uniform. Now I’ll have the long pants.

I spoke with Amy this morning, her endeavors to find food in exchange for promotion are not going well. That is no surprise. Though it is disappointing. We may be eating a lot of bread and butter sandwiches. LOL.

Janet sent me the final contracts this morning. So, I’ll have those for my trip to Chicago Friday, and SF next Tuesday.

My production assistant, Arthur, set the wheels in motion today to get parking stickers and permits for July, so we’ll be able to house the vehicles that deliver ten people to my folks’ home (where 2/3 of the crew are staying).

Jonny is uploading ephemera to the 23E ephemera library. I asked him to pick most of it (I suggested a few things I’d like to see up there). I think the archive, like everything else on the project, will be more exciting if I’m not micro-managing it. It is fascinating to me to see the project through other peoples’ eyes.

Spoke to Ali, and she’ll be starting the hoodies for the crew next week.

Also spoke to Carson, and sched’ed a build meeting for next Tuesday night, and a full crew meeting for Thursday. The full meeting will coincide with his birthday, and be a meeting/party.

Alex and I have been emailing all morning discussing how we’re going to capture sound. We’re struggling with finding wireless lavaliers we can afford to rent. But they are not an item we can really forego, we think.

Finally, a potential investor out of NYC offered his regrets today. This is not the best economic climate for convincing people to risk money on an independently produced artwork/art film. LOL. Fortunately, we have all we need now. Everything from here on out is gravy (of course, the kind of gravy that makes architectural models and other important elements possible…)