Marscon is, indeed, happening this coming weekend. I am, as always, looking forward to it, as I get to play music for people who like listening to it, and see friends I don’t see all that often. That said, there’s a little bit of apprehension on my part, due to some drama surrounding a last minute COVID policy change.

Knowing the con staff as I do, I know they’re trying to do the best they can, though making the shift to mask optional and not always being entirely clear what that means with less than a week until the con starts probably wasn’t the best call, especially in a world with social media where people are given free rein to be assholes, whether they’re for, or opposed to, the changes.

I’m expecting a little bit of ugliness.

Me? I’m going to be there because I committed to playing shows and people there are nice enough to want to come see them. I shall, however, be masked except when eating, drinking, or singing (and maybe even then if I can make it work), and I generally don’t have much personal time at this one anyway, rushing between commitments all day as I do. What little free time I have, however, likely won’t involve a lot of large-scale close-quarters interaction.

Anyway, all that crap aside, here’s where I’m scheduled to be this weekend:

• Saturday 3/19, 11am – Large Auditorium – Chuck Solo
• Saturday 3/19, 1pm – Large Auditorium – Blibbering Humdingers
• Saturday 3/19, 10pm – Large Auditorium – Blibbering Humdingers (“naughty” show)
• Sunday, 3/20, 11am – Large Auditorium – Blibbering Humdingers

I’ll do my best to post any updates, as con schedules are fluid at the best of times, let alone this year….

Nothing to report from this past weekend; I kind of felt like crap with sinus issues. Yay.

Not a whole lot of note to report regarding the week; it just sort of was. Couple of things of note, however…

Woke up this morning to the encouraging headline that both houses of Congress have passed the omnibus spending bill six months into the fiscal year, so we won’t have to deal with continuing resolutions for the rest of the year, which has become a serious pain in my ass.

Ahead of MarsCon gigs next weekend, I tried out a few new tunes from last month at my buddy’s open mic at Art and Coffee last night, and while I was *very* rusty, the new material went over well, as I hoped it would, especially this one, which is honestly one of my favorites from this year’s FAWM exercise.

Honestly no idea what the weekend holds; weather looks sort of shit, but I’m still hoping for some outside time anyway; we’ll see. Mostly, I just want a little time not dedicated to program and budget management.

Tunes? Zappa makes a welcome return, a not-often-thought-of favorites at #6 and #11, and the usual mix of neat indie things I’ve not heard before, which is honestly what I’m usually looking for:

1. “Minnesota Girls” – The Shackletons
2. “Valley Girl” – Frank Zappa, Moon Zappa
3. “My Cat’s Name Is Maceo” – Jane’s Addiction
4. “Queen of the Underground” – Goat
5. “Hurts to be Alive” – Whitmer Thomas
6. “88 Lines about 44 Women” – Nails
7. “Queen Sophie For President” – The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die
8. “Sippie Cup” – Horsey
9. “The Sea” – Sierra Ferrel
10. “Fisherman’s Blues” – Dawes
11. “It’s Love” – King’s X
12. “Two Shots” – Wanda Jackson, Elle King, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
13. “Teenage Riot” – Sonic Youth
14. “Better Now” – The Weather Station
15. “Sunless Saturday” – Fishbone

Much has been made of the stories of the current conflict resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: Zelenskyy’s masterful social media management; the stories of bravery from Ukrainian citizens, Putin’s seemingly unhinged state of mind. Americans missing the effing point…

It’s interesting, that for, perhaps the first time since WWII, certainly the first time in my lifetime, there’s a conflict in the world that clearly aligns with our storybook notions of good guys vs. bad guys, and the Western world’s responding emotionally to it. Not saying that things are that simple; they’re not – they never are. There’s a lot going on, and it’s ripe for analysis; of people’s motivations, reactions, etc. By all means, admire the Ukraininan resistance, but be mindful of your own prejudices – Lili Loofbourow over at Slate has written one of the better pieces I’ve seen on the topic – I recommend you read it.

That said, the other bit I’m seeing is the whole revival of Cold War nuclear anxiety, especially for the generation(s?) of people two young to remember it the first time around. For the first time since the 80s, it’s kind of a real thing (even if one argues that by the time I came around in the early 70s, MAD kind of ensured that it wasn’t), and it’s bringing back, at least for some, real feelings.

So far, it’s mostly been memes from my fellow GenX’ers referencing the cultural artifacts of the time: Red Dawn, WarGames, The Hunt For Red October, but I think there’s some real anxiety behind at least some of it, even if it seems like just “one more thing” when considering the last half-decade of pandemic, America’s flirtation with autocratic maniacs at the helm, the whole giving permission for racist and fascist assholes to say the quiet part loud again, and the last forty years of trickle-down economic theory pulling the ramp up behind those who came before and leaving little for today’s young adults to look forward to.

A lot of us have been having a hard time maintaining a sense of optimism about the future and the existence of a moral universe at all, let alone one having an arc bending towards justice.

Given all that, my reaction to seeing a primer for what to do if a nuclear scenario happens in non-ironic mainstream media is one of “sure, whatever…” numbness, but kinda not.

But honestly, that’s about what one would expect from the generation that made “Meh” an emotion.

Between load-in Friday night and all day behind the board on Saturday, the dance competition ate up a good chunk of the weekend. It could have been much more frustrating than it was; not to say that there wasn’t *any* frustration, from the usual personalities, but I got through the day with minimal hiccups, and I got paid for my time. Family results could’ve been better, but it wasn’t an entirely bad day, and our dinner and drinks out afterwards with sympathetic spirits was a very nice end to a long day.

As tired as I was after that whole business, I couldn’t let the promise of gorgeous weather go to waste, so I got up and out early and put in 60 miles on the VCT. Knocked it out in well under five hours (including a couple of breaks along the way, as is only responsible, if only to refill water), and wasn’t limping too hard afterwards. Figuring my route for the Cap2Cap in May, 60 is longer than the longest stretch I’ll be facing without a significant stop-off for lunch and rest, so I think I’m in pretty good shape for the century. It felt good as an accomplishment in any case.

That said, it ate up most of my Sunday on a weekend already eaten up by other things, so I had to juggle the usual responsibilities around a bit, but still managed to get the shopping done, and I can do laundry in fits and starts through the week while I’m working. Also, my roughly monthly online D&D game was a welcome occurrence last night; hunting bandits and sharing laughs with good friends is a nice way to close out a way too busy weekend.

Otherwise, the week ahead looks pretty typical; work, biking when the weather cooperates (there’s some rain lined up for later this week), running folks around what need run around, and all that, and keeping track of a potential gig or two later this month as schedules firm up.

All of this starting this morning with ibuprofen for breakfast, since I’m not a teenager anymore – not that I could’ve done what I did yesterday when I was a teenager. I guess that’s something I should be proud of.

Let’s start the weekend off with a literary reference, huh?

The past week was, to paraphrase Dickens, the best and worst of times. On the good side, I made a whole lot of progress on projects at work, and after more than a year in, the way my work group is organized is finally starting to gel, and I’m maybe kinda-sorta becoming more comfortable in my position of so-called ‘leadership’, whatever that means. I’m not the boss, but I’m the guy the boss trusts to get stuff done, and I guess that counts.

Oh well.

I also got more than sixty trail miles under me this week, thanks to some nice weather and work meetings not running too long in the evening, though occasionally they did, and was racing the sunset to get my bike back to the trailhead.

On the worse end, I’ve been sleeping terribly for some reason, the nice weather is playing havok on my sinuses, more than half the meetings I’ve been sitting (and I’ve been sitting a lot of meetings) have been tedious, trying affairs featuring old-school grognard developers throwing up all kinds of pointless roadblocks and gaslighting leading into this major system update we’re three weeks out from deploying. This isn’t to mention the whole “war of conquest in Eastern Europe” thing we’re watching play out, which is just one more awful thing happening in this whole f**ked up world we’re dealing with in this generally awful era.

Oh, and I’m looking ahead to spending all day tomorrow behind my mixing board running sound for an Irish Dance competition. I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad – I’m getting paid, it’s not that hard, and the dancing itself is cool and all that. I just know there are going to be some personality conflicts given the folks running things, and it’s just going to remind me of the studio politics I’m hearing way too much about from the girls this last year. Oh well…I’m getting paid.

This week also brought an end to my fifth year of FAWM. The final tally was fourteen original songs (which makes it a win), as well as two collaborations where someone ran with my lyrics and threw music behind them before I could manage, because…um…see all those meetings two paragraphs back. I don’t think it was my best output year, all told, but there might be four or five winners with some life in ’em. We’ll see. In any case, it’s a good creative exercise, and it’s an opportunity to practice my ‘art’ with some sort of accountability built in, which, I’ve learned, is the kind of thing that works for me.

I’ve already alluded to the weekend a bit; Saturday’s going to be largely spoken for – depending on how on schedule things stay, I might have some evening free, and I really want to get over to Three Leg Run, since their grand opening last weekend got kinda scuttled by some utilities issues on the property before we could get over there. We’ll see. Given that the weather’s going to be flirting with 80° on Sunday, I’m really thinking that I’m going to push toward that century ride in May and see if I can’t knock out another sixty miles on the VCT in the morning…then, assuming my legs still work, we’ll see what’s next.

Music-wise, this week’s “Discover Weekly” is all over the place, getting pretty heavy on the late-stage boomer stuff, what with Yoko and Nesmith, and I honestly can’t really come up with any real sort of logic to the rest of it, though things close out with one truly excellent pop tune from Soul Coughing’s Mike Doughty, with some serious GenX vibes; it’s honestly one of my favorites:

1. “Dizzy” – Tchotchke
2. “Underwater Moonlight” – The Soft Boys
3. “I’ve Been Waiting for Tomorrow (All of My Life) – The The
4. “It’s Alright Baby” – Komeda
5. “(Do Not Feed The) Oyster” – Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
6. “Who Has Seen The Wind” – Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band
7. “Do You Dream In Color” -Bill Nelson
8. “Calico Girlfriend” – Mike Nesmith and the First National Band
9. “I Have the Touch” – Peter Gabriel
10. “Eagle Sails The Blue Diamond Waters” – Robbie Basho
11. “Out There” – Blake Babies
12. “Watch Your Step” – Bobby Parker
13. “27 Jennifers” – Mike Doughty

One highlight of this week’s adventures in mid-Atlantic suburban pandemic life is captured above. Thanks to a friend (check out her tunes; they’re great!) who had an extra, I scored a ticket to the Punch Brothers show in town on Wednesday night. Honestly, I’m still apprehensive about events involving lots of people, though this venue is still the only place I’ve been that’s required me to flash my vax card to enter, and I remained masked throughout except when sipping a delicious local-ish brew. I also never really bother to mix it up on the main floor, preferring a perch near the south railing toward the rear of the theater that gives me a good view of the stage and fewer people around.

The show was, of course, amazing. I’ve been a fan of Chris Thile for years going back to Nickel Creek, loved the dear, departed Live From Here, and of course, simply dig live music in all it’s forms. If you’re not familiar, Punch Brothers’ music is, I guess, “progressive bluegrass,” incorporating elements of pop, classical, folk, and pretty much whatever else they feel like. It’s very cool, and these guys are absolute masters of their instruments. They manage to pull some amazing dynamics out of voice and five acoustic instruments arrayed around a single microphone, and it’s impressive and beautiful, and maybe creates some feelings of inadequacy in this particular journeyman performer.

Anyway, it was a nice evening out in the middle of the week.

Otherwise, the week was pretty typical; lots of work meetings (both wildly productive and soul crushing, sometimes simultaneously), almost sixty miles of biking over a couple of nice days, and some fiddling with the music production software to wrap up FAWM. I also got my car serviced and inspected and a few other odds and ends, but, yeah, nothing especially…um…special.

The weekend coming up is looking quiet – there’s talk of checking out the new brewery/winery/meadery opening up down the street, but otherwise, probably just the usual.

As for tunes this week, kind of all over the map, as you can see, from torch singers to 90s alternative to genre actors to punk, and what might be the best recording of “Crimson and Clover” I’ve ever heard there at #8 – definitely check that one out:

1. “Two Little Men In A Flying Saucer” – Ella Fitzgerald
2. “Party Anthem” – Sloppy Jane
3. Penpals” – Sloan
4. “Thing of Beauty” – Hothouse Flowers
5. “Save It For Later” – The Beat
6. “G.S.K.” – Squid
7. “Bobby – The Pool Sessions” – Wolf Alice
8. “Crimson and Clover” – A.G. Cook
9. “Here and Now”- Letters to Cleo
10. “Need You Around” – Smoking Popes
11. “I Do The Rock” – Tim Curry
12. “Howling At The Moon (Sha-La-La)” – Ramones

If you’ve been regularly reading this space for the last, um, two years or so, I’ve been stressed as hell lately and not exactly in the best frame of mind.

Pretty obvious, right?

After the last few weeks, I pretty much decided that I was taking this long President’s Day weekend and spending at least a couple of days doing very little. The key moment, I think, was when my wife and daughters looked at me across a table of delicious Indian food on Friday evening and told me I looked awful.

Which I did.

So, Saturday, I took some time in the morning to do the grocery shopping, but, apart from periodically checking the washer and/or dryer, I more or less crashed on the couch and binged Peacemaker on HBOMax and ate some Girl Scout Cookies while the house was quiet (the rest of them either had work or events to deal with). It helped, at least a little.

Sunday I did kind of the same thing – a quick run out to do some errands in the morning, but otherwise, chilled around the house, bought myself a treat based on the thing I’ll talk about in the next paragraph, and finished reading a novel.

About that treat – it’s sort of a story. On Friday afternoon, I started playing with some of the inspirational widgets (collectively called “The Muse”) on the February Album Writing Month website, and generated some random words and phrases, which ended up turning into a set of lyrics for a mostly nonsense, but generally foreboding-sounding song titled “When the Seventh Rolls”. As usual, the fawmers looked, commented, and offered encouragement, and a guy I met a few years ago out in the Bay Area when the Humdingers played there dug things enough to ask if he could take a pass at writing some music for it.

Of course I told him “Yes!,” and a bit later, he turned my weird foreboding prophecy nonsense into, of all things, a honky tonk piano tune which is something I would never have thought of, but damn if it isn’t brilliant. Nice little piece of collaboration popping up out of nowhere, and it was a nice bright spot. Oh, as he used a neat little program called Band-in-a-Box to generate some of the background tracks (it’s an app that takes your chord progressions or whatever and generates backing tracks from a huge database of recordings and/or MIDI in a ridiculous number of musical styles), and other friends have sung it’s praises over the years, I went ahead and spent a few bucks on myself and enjoyed an afternoon of fiddling with it. One more tool for the toolbox.

Today, Monday, I had off because Federal Holiday, so I did some chorin’, then, because it was a nice day, I racked my bike and went for a ride, even though I felt a bit crap. There were no parking places at my usual spot on the VCT, so I went to the other end of the trail, and rode a brisk 35 miles from the east end of things, and it was good.

Yeah, maybe just a little overwhelmed this week, not unlike every other recent week, frankly, but…yeah.

Lots of stuff at work, too many damned meetings, briefings, process changes, paperwork, email threads, and…etc. Stuff at home as well – too many bodies in a small space, a huge decluttering project which I truly appreciate, though the “in-process” is a struggle as I trip over things on their way toward being re-filed or Kondo’d out of the house, and an elderly cat who’s decided to completely embrace the id and brazenly knock over trash cans, food containers, any dish or plate or whatever that’s been out of someone’s eyeline for more than a fraction of a second…

I *did* have a couple of days of nice weather this week, leading to a wonderful five mile hike along the river and a really nice 21 mile bike ride. I’m hoping for a bit more of that this weekend, but we’ll see. I’ve woken up to rain, and who the heck knows what’ll happen next.

Wrote three decent songs for FAWM this week, and I’m hoping I have another one in me before the week’s out – I’ve got four to go and ten more days to write them, and would rather not wait until the last minute. Overall, the experience has been a good one this year so far, even if I’ve been two busy the last two weeks to record anything, and I’m leaving a bit of a backlog to catch up on.

But, I’m not going to waste any more time on this contractually-obligated missive; one more self-imposed responsibility I give myself as I just take too damned much on and don’t realize it until it’s already dragging me down.

Playlist this week – full-on indie, complete with banjos and reverb, and several animal mentions. Woof:

1. “You Dog” – Advance Base
2. “Little Sparrow” – Alan Dunham
3. “Plates” – Lala Lala, Benjamin Gibbard
4. “It Came In The Night” – Raincoat
5. “Liar” – Envy of None
6. “Galveston” – Why Bonnie
7. “You’re Not Alone” – Amon Düül II
8. “Green Rocky Road” – Bria
9. “Francesca – The Murlocs
10. “The One” – The Lemon Twigs
11. “Here Comes The Hotstepper” – Dr. Dog
12. “Fill Your Heart” – Biff Rose

I’ll be honest, I’m pretty damned exhausted. It’s been a long week. Pretty much every work day has clocked in at well over the standard eight hours; I’ve been plugged into online meetings for most of those hours, and the rest has been full of documentation, deployment planning for an upcoming major system upgrade, test cycles, and management trying to pile on more and more responsibilities to my already overflowing spoon drawer.

I will say that my bosses, for the most part, are sensitive to overwhelming me with work, because, as they constantly tell me, they need me and don’t want me to leave. That said, I’m very much approaching my limit, and the guy who’s trying to pin management of the SharePoint program on me just might be a bridge too far.

Ugh.

At least I’m lined up to have a couple of million in programs funded this month, as soon as Congress gets off their ass and stops with the ‘Groundhog Day’ budget crap, which is, to be honest, damned frustrating. I can only update this song so many times.

While work has been overwhelming me this week, I’ve also been supervising landscaping contractors working some cool stuff outside, and my lovely spouse engaging in Herculean efforts in decluttering inside. That’s when I wasn’t driving across the county to rescue her with a new car battery. Free time is definitely at a premium. It’s a good thing I got well ahead of the FAWM curve last week, because I’ve only got two down so far this week, and recorded neither of them. Still, I’m past the halfway point four days ahead of schedule; I’m not worrying about not hitting the goal…yet.

The weather today, however, looks gorgeous; even better than yesterday, which was particularly beautiful. I’m going to do my best to tick off a few boxes then knock off a early and put some miles on my bike tires – I really need that right now.

Enjoy what weekend you’ve got – lots of the usual stuff here, though my lovely spouse and I have plans to do a pre-emptive Valentines’ dinner at the new Indian place in town, and spend an evening working through the latest Hunt-A-Killer box, which is turning out to be one of the better holiday gift investments we’ve made – working through the clues is a lot of fun.

So tunes – interesting, kinda mellow alternative/indie again, which a surprising focus on Yeshua (#11 is actually catchy as hell), and the Doobie Brothers cover closing things out comes from the amazingly titled album Gizmodgery, which was recorded entirely with kids’ toy instruments. Boing.

1. “Nine Billion Names (To A. Clarke)” – Mooncake
2. “Mass Romantic” – The New Pornographers
3. “Marrow” – Thao, Thao & The Get Down Stay Down
4. “Half Baked (live) – Jimmy Campbell
5. “Donna” – Rubblebucket
6. “Car Song” – Elastica
7. “Crumb Back” – Mega Bog
8. “Dream Never Dies” – Lo Moon
9. “Southern Mark Smith (Big Return) – The Jazz Butcher
10. “Pattern Doubt” – Young Jesus
11. “The Sexual Loneliness of Jesus Christ” Jackie Leven
12. “Stohner” – MAN ON MAN
13. “Wounds of Love” – Nation of Language
14. “What A Fool Believes” – Self

…different week.

Work hassles, crap weather. Wrote a few songs though.

For the weekend? Delay-blast birthday celebration for the lovely spouse. Laundry.

This week’s tunes? Much alternative.

1. “Motorcrash” – The Sugarcubes
2. “Starry Eyes” – The Records
3. “Just Like Heaven” – The Cure
4. “The Greatest” – SASAMI
5. “Do Me A Favour” – Field Music
6. “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” – The Cardigans
7. “Bones” – Rosali
8. “Salvation Army” – Harrison Whitford
9. “Astronaut” – Katie Toupin
10. “Up All Night” – The Boomtown Rats
11. “The Ballad of Crowfoot” – Willie Dunn
12. “Gigantic” – Pixies
13. “Ballroom Dance Scene” – Horsegirl