After a sufficient night of rest I woke up on the bus parked at the fairgrounds here in Costa Mesa. I decided to make hot chocolate since I don’t make it very often. I can quit anytime. When Ethan and I headed to catering, we were glad to find them making omelets (spinach, red pepper, green pepper, tomato, Serrano peppers, salsa, and guacamole) and even better they had a juicer. After falling-to upon our late morning repast of nature’s comestibles, we headed into the fair.
We bought a couple of treats – chocolate-dipped ice cream for Ethan, and a frozen dipped banana for me. The banana was a complete failure in regard to flavor; my taste buds seemed briefly sucked into a vortex. I tasted no chocolate, no nuts, and no banana. It may as well have been damp, frozen cardboard. I chewed a few bites and tossed it.
We hit the sales hall, which had some interesting and useful things. In spots, though, it reminded me of George Carlin saying, “If you nail together two things that have never been nailed together before, some schmuck will buy it from you.” There were “free” resort vacations (contingent upon having one’s mind boiled to jelly by a two-hour presentation on why one should buy into the timeshare), smokeless grills that sat on top of the stove, green plastic things that made weird noises, a candy seller with a gigantic taffy pulling machine (we bought English Toffee), and the Vitamix display. Of course we stopped there, as I am a longtime Vitamix owner (I have two), and the salesman made a tasty sorbet out of banana and agave as a base, blended with frozen pineapple and ice, which beat the frozen banana hands-down for flavor like the tortoise and the hare.
One of my favorite things about a fair is getting to see the things people create. We went into the woodworking hall, and I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a few instruments; there were classical, acoustic, and archtop guitars, a banjo, and a couple hammered dulcimers. Most of the work in that hall had won awards, so it was mostly high-level craftsmanship. The attention to detail was exquisite. There was a full-sized wooden kayak on display; although it was likely a real kayak, usable in the water, there is no way one would take a piece of art like that to bang and dent it in a river. In the corner sat a carved stump, with a three-dimensional cross on top, and a wooden chain meticulously carved, and on each link of the chain were named various sins. The chain was broken by the cross.
Sound check was easy, and since rain was on its way we went through it quickly.
About an hour out from the show the rain had stopped, but radar showed it coming again around 7:30pm, starting time for our segment of the show. Unfortunately the venue did not have rain protection over the stage, only a sunshade, so the rain was coming down directly upon anything uncovered on stage. The local crew were squeegeeing the puddles of water off the edge, and just before the show our crew set everything up to go as best they could as the rain began. We were dressed and had our ear monitors in, standing under shelter; just before we went on the entire show was called due to rain.
I had friends and family out there, Dad, my sister Jennie, her husband Glenn, and Eric Uglum and his wife Stacey and son Edwin (I’ll be at Eric’s studio to mix Hogan’s House of Music on Saturday). They were all soaked so we brought them back to the dressing room where we stood talking for a good hour. I had one conversation in particular about the longing we all have inside us that we try to fill with other things. C.S. Lewis said, "If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." We try to fill it with money, or relationships, or being good at our job, or any number of other things - drugs, alcohol, excessive television, etcetera. But we are trying to fill an infinite void with finite things, and it never ends up working out.
When everyone was leaving I handed Eric the hard drive with the new instrumental record on it so he could dump it onto his ProTools hard drive before I get there for mix. I'm looking forward to that!
In closing, I’ve had Let's Go To The Fair by Ralph Stanley going through my head all day:
Come on boys let's go to the fair
See the funny sights and the cool night air
Grasshopper kissing the old black crow
Road hog red do the dose-ee-doe
More funny things than you ever did see
Ringtail coons monkeys in the trees
Pussy cat combing the tomcat's hair
Come on boys let's go to the fair
Had a banjo picking rooster the cockiest of 'em all
Strutted on the stage in his bib overalls
Close behind was old fiddling bear
Bluegrass music by a rooster and a bear
Old mother goose wore fancy clothes
High heeled slippers and fancy clothes
An old bare possum in his underwear
Killed himself a laughing at the county fair
We bought a couple of treats – chocolate-dipped ice cream for Ethan, and a frozen dipped banana for me. The banana was a complete failure in regard to flavor; my taste buds seemed briefly sucked into a vortex. I tasted no chocolate, no nuts, and no banana. It may as well have been damp, frozen cardboard. I chewed a few bites and tossed it.
We hit the sales hall, which had some interesting and useful things. In spots, though, it reminded me of George Carlin saying, “If you nail together two things that have never been nailed together before, some schmuck will buy it from you.” There were “free” resort vacations (contingent upon having one’s mind boiled to jelly by a two-hour presentation on why one should buy into the timeshare), smokeless grills that sat on top of the stove, green plastic things that made weird noises, a candy seller with a gigantic taffy pulling machine (we bought English Toffee), and the Vitamix display. Of course we stopped there, as I am a longtime Vitamix owner (I have two), and the salesman made a tasty sorbet out of banana and agave as a base, blended with frozen pineapple and ice, which beat the frozen banana hands-down for flavor like the tortoise and the hare.
One of my favorite things about a fair is getting to see the things people create. We went into the woodworking hall, and I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a few instruments; there were classical, acoustic, and archtop guitars, a banjo, and a couple hammered dulcimers. Most of the work in that hall had won awards, so it was mostly high-level craftsmanship. The attention to detail was exquisite. There was a full-sized wooden kayak on display; although it was likely a real kayak, usable in the water, there is no way one would take a piece of art like that to bang and dent it in a river. In the corner sat a carved stump, with a three-dimensional cross on top, and a wooden chain meticulously carved, and on each link of the chain were named various sins. The chain was broken by the cross.
Sound check was easy, and since rain was on its way we went through it quickly.
About an hour out from the show the rain had stopped, but radar showed it coming again around 7:30pm, starting time for our segment of the show. Unfortunately the venue did not have rain protection over the stage, only a sunshade, so the rain was coming down directly upon anything uncovered on stage. The local crew were squeegeeing the puddles of water off the edge, and just before the show our crew set everything up to go as best they could as the rain began. We were dressed and had our ear monitors in, standing under shelter; just before we went on the entire show was called due to rain.
I had friends and family out there, Dad, my sister Jennie, her husband Glenn, and Eric Uglum and his wife Stacey and son Edwin (I’ll be at Eric’s studio to mix Hogan’s House of Music on Saturday). They were all soaked so we brought them back to the dressing room where we stood talking for a good hour. I had one conversation in particular about the longing we all have inside us that we try to fill with other things. C.S. Lewis said, "If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." We try to fill it with money, or relationships, or being good at our job, or any number of other things - drugs, alcohol, excessive television, etcetera. But we are trying to fill an infinite void with finite things, and it never ends up working out.
When everyone was leaving I handed Eric the hard drive with the new instrumental record on it so he could dump it onto his ProTools hard drive before I get there for mix. I'm looking forward to that!
In closing, I’ve had Let's Go To The Fair by Ralph Stanley going through my head all day:
Come on boys let's go to the fair
See the funny sights and the cool night air
Grasshopper kissing the old black crow
Road hog red do the dose-ee-doe
More funny things than you ever did see
Ringtail coons monkeys in the trees
Pussy cat combing the tomcat's hair
Come on boys let's go to the fair
Had a banjo picking rooster the cockiest of 'em all
Strutted on the stage in his bib overalls
Close behind was old fiddling bear
Bluegrass music by a rooster and a bear
Old mother goose wore fancy clothes
High heeled slippers and fancy clothes
An old bare possum in his underwear
Killed himself a laughing at the county fair