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emilybutler
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Name: Emily
Birthday: 2/24/1982
Gender: Female
Interests: Heart and mind and learning to link them.
"If you have brains and a heart, show only one or the other; you will not get credit for either if you show both at once." - Holdinger
Expertise: It seems I'm a graphic designer, though I don't really know how that happened. And barista extraordinaire. Coffee Olympics, here I come.
Occupation: Artist
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
6/9/2004
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| This is the saddest & hardest sort of announcement to make, but at some point it must be made. A good friend asked me why announce it at all -- and I decided that the reason is to avoid having to explain this countless times, in countless forums.
Colin (@Mr_Call) and I have decided, together, to separate, and this separation looks to be permanent. We still love and respect each other; we just found out that -- well, we weren't who we thought we were. So this chapter of our lives is closed for now.
If you feel the need to place blame, we can't stop you, but we don't. Sometimes things just don't turn out the way you expect, and it's never simple, and it's always painful. We've agreed that we want to keep as part of our community anyone who will have us, rather than dividing friends and family down the middle, so if you want to stay in touch with either or both of us, please do. If you don't want to, that's all right too.
Since we have a public life, albeit a small one, we'd like to request two things: 1) please give us our privacy & dignity in public (esp. internet) forums, and 2) please let anyone know that you think needs to know, so that we don't have to repeat the news endlessly.
A note from me to fans: I don't especially want to see lots of comments about this on my various social networking websites and Twitter. It's a private matter, and though some of you are great fans, I will be turning to friends & family for comfort, as is appropriate, and not to you. If you wish to empathize or show support, keep listening to the music and help me to complete my tour by coming out to concerts or sending friends; this will be a very tough time financially, but I've decided I want to keep singing. If you should write to me about this, unless you're a close personal friend, I probably will not respond for now. And please know that I am not in any sense single or available at this time or any time soon, so feel free to correct anyone who might think that I am. I appreciate your understanding on this matter.
Colin will be staying in Seattle with the bus and I will return to Anchorage after my spring tour down the West Coast and into Texas. If you have questions about logistical or tour details, you can e-mail me at mariancall@mac.com.
Thank you, and love to all.
M/Em
| | |
| ...as Carole King said so sweetly. I figured it was time for a personal blog, since Colin's life and mine will be changing pretty radically, and all of you who are actually my friends get to know more details than the strangers who are allowed to read my public blog.
Colin is still working hard for the private airline of the oil companies -- it's sort of a minion job, so less exciting than his previous work, but more stable and with more free time to play Cribbage and read Harry Potter. He works on some of the last 737's on the planet that are equipped to land on gravel runways. Can you picture that? The planes have mud flaps -- honest-to-goodness mudflaps. Colin's still sought after as a contractor, and he still saves the day regularly at work. At least I think he does. Recently one of the jets he works on had a bird strike -- the engine ingested a swan up in Dead Horse. He was thankfully not too involved in the cleanup, but it still made for an exciting week.
We've found a terrific new circle of friends up here -- we've always had good friends, but we've stumbled upon some great new additions as I get more involved in the music and art world here in Anchorage. When I go to parties, I'm usually the quiet one in the corner who can't think of anything to say. Someone might mention they liked a film, and I would agree, but accidentally go on to say, "I thought the diegetic world was beautifully cohesive, so they must have given the writer say over the final edit," which is a good sentence to use if you want to spend the rest of the party alone. But this new circle is comprised of all the young-ish film/art/computer/math/wine nerds in town (yes, there are wine nerds) who would usually be standing in the corner quietly at other people's parties. At our own parties, though, we can all relax and enjoy being nerds together. So we've been spending a lot of time watching strange films, planning to make strange films, playing foosball, going to wine tastings, playing Rock Band, supporting public broadcasting, and hanging out at galleries and coffee shops. And using words like "diegetic" with shocking nonchalance. It feels good to be free to be a nerd.
I am recently back from my second tour, which was a whirlwind of both fun and phlegm, as I was sick the entire time. Yech! But I managed to get through it without canceling any gigs, so what didn't kill me made me stronger, and more determined to eat my vegetables and get more sleep. But I'm definitely in love with my life. I've found a career I can be in for a very, very long time. And I was afraid that would never happen.
We saw good friends down at Stanford and my whole community back in Gig Harbor, and I got nicely established with my new family nucleus in Seattle. (Normally I stay in Gig Harbor with Bob & Dory when I visit, but this time I lived with my brother and my Mom in the city -- and it was nice to get a better feel for what their lives are like, instead of just having a visit or a dinner occasionally.)
I miss the family painfully. But more contact is on the horizon, and though I'm still committed to living in Alaska -- it feels like home to me -- I'm happy that our period of mostly-isolation up there is ending. Stone and I are hitting the road, and that's where we'll stay for the foreseeable future. We hope to see more of almost all of you who are reading this blog!
When I say that we're hitting the road, I mean that almost literally. We're moving into a big, beautiful bus which we purchased not two weeks ago (photos are up at http://www.flickr.com/mariancall). My husband has always dreamed of doing this, and now that travel can be a regular part of our lives, we're taking one of the biggest leaps we've ever taken and moving in. No, we have no backup plan -- we're committed. Whether or not an asylum is involved in the commitment is up for discussion (as usual).
It's a 1970 MC 7 "Challenger" tour bus, the same model Spinal Tap used, if you want to know. It was already friendly to human habitation when we bought it, but we're making it a bit nicer -- remodeling on a budget -- and making it more secure and so on. Don't worry, ma, we'll have good insurance for us, our vehicle, and our goods, and I'm learning the virtues of backing up all my data online.
And it really is gorgeous. It's nicely vintage in its original structure, and we're extending the wood flooring throughout, doing some pretty finish work, creating an on-board recording studio, and ultimately making it the awesomest pad on wheels that there ever was. IKEA will be heavily involved. My favorite part: our little 110cc scooter, the Vino, fits into one of the cargo storage bays under the bus. So we'll stow the scooter, tow the Jeep, and have three vehicles with varying degrees of fuel-efficiency wherever we go.
If this surprises some of you, well, you shoulda seen it coming. After all, Stone is Stone, and I'm still a Pew at heart. So our life is bound to be full of adventures. I'm just glad I'm finally getting brave enough to step up to them.
Here's the plan, inasmuch as there is one: We'll stay in the bus here in Anchorage throughout the summer -- we move out of our apartment on June 30th -- and then we'll drive down to Seattle in the first week of October. Hopefully we can find a friend/accompanist to come with us on that leg of the trip, so that we can play some places along the Al-Can highway. I can't think of anything more fun than that! We'll relax in Seattle for a bit, and head south again at the end of October. We don't have an exact itinerary yet for winding our way down, but we will be in LA on November 22nd, and we'll probably be spending Thanksgiving in California unless we book it back to Seattle for the holidays. After Christmas we'll go back to the California coast and work our way north again. March will probably mean a return to Austin, though probably by plane, and in the end of April we may be so bold as to try for Montana, Colorado, and Texas in a wide swing to what-we-consider-to-be-East. After Kerrville Folk Festival in May (near Austin again), we'll head back to Alaska. And after that -- who knows?
Our life is coming to resemble the Muppet Movie more and more. Including the Electric Mayhem part. We will be on the move a lot, but Seattle will be our home base while we're in the lower 48, and Anchorage will be our home base in Alaska. And we hope we get to see lots more of lots of you! Come have the beverage of your choice with us on the bus. The good times will roll. Risks will be taken. And we can say we've lived. And other seemingly profound stuff like that.
M
(more on everything is over at www.xanga.com/mariancall.)
(also, it's my homework this summer to watch as much Battlestar Galactica and Stargate as I can. I'm playing a concert at a Firefly/BSG/Stargate convention in California this winter! Life is weird.) | | |
| Sorry for the absence, all. Much of my activity has been on my other blog, xanga.com/mariancall. And honestly I'm reposting stuff from there here lately, so you'll get more frequent updates about life at that site now. I guess that means I'm really a musician!
I'm running to a gig at the moment (which seems to be the story of my life lately), but I thought I'd post the first part of my latest mariancall blog -- I decided to report on my first U.S. tour, in California and Texas, entirely in haiku. With margin notes to fill in any gaps necessitated by the syllabic strictness of the form. This is just an excerpt, but I promise the rest is good too. Hopefully I'll have a chance to pop back here for a proper entry soon. But until then, my goings-on are at my music website.
This blog might seem long,
But mostly it's vertical.
Line breaks'll fool ya.
Love to everybody!
Em/M
***********************************
It is so good to be home in the land of long days, proper Italian espresso, and excellent beer. Of course, at this writing it is snowing like gangbusters outside, but home is home. My travels were exhausting and terrific:
- I went to San Diego, where I met some very laid back people and played on the beach.
- I went to Hollywood for the first time, where I met some very glamorous people and did many film-related things.
- I went to Austin, where I met very hip artsy people and did many music-related things.
- I went to Houston for the first time, where they shot me in the head and I bled profusely.
Here are some of my travel stories in haiku. I'm borrowing this idea from my stepbrother's girlfriend, because she is brilliant. It will help to keep my word count down, because my first draft of this blog was turning into a very dull novella (that's why I was taking so long to post. It sucked). Also, I've been watching lots of Arrested Development, and I'm working on punching up and tightening my exposition. Haiku helps. Here goes:
I. Los Angeles
Flying all night sucks.
'Specially with more luggage
Than you can carry.
Curse the airlines for
finally enforcing their
carry-on limits!
(I mean it. Anybody know a good curse for TSA? Something itchy.)
Driving without sleep
In a new car in LA
Is terrifying.
Pollution, traffic,
And hot guys with sunglasses
are everywhere -- ack.
But with my iPhone
I avoid jams and lostness
And ward off stalkers.
(Will someone please make me a shirt that says, "I'm not attracted to you, I'm just polite"?)
Film nerd paradise
Is pretty much my feeling
About Hollywood.
I got to hang out
With cool writers and witty
Indie filmmakers.
Saw 2001
In hi-def and surround sound.
I can't do that, Dave.
I squealed when I saw
Nathan Fillion's weapon.
Yup, this girl's a geek.
(No, I can't tell you where that collection of goodies was. I'd have to kill you.)
Poor Joel's shampoo broke
And my Alaskan beer leaked
All over his clothes.
Which was a bit hard
To explain to my grandma,
With whom we were lodged.
But the worst part was
Our emergency beer stash
Was gone. How I wept.
Husband flew south via
Yakutat and Ketchikan.
Viva la Mud Hen.
He was almost dumped
In Juneau, but our pregnant
Governor saved him.
(The slightly longer version of this story: my husband, flying standby, wound up puddle-jumping his way through Alaska on the "Mud Hen" to join us. He was kicked off for weight restrictions in our state's capitol, but he got the seat of America's Hottest Governer, Sarah Palin, at the last second. She was held up in TSA and wouldn't make the plane wait for her, because she said she "wasn't that sort of governor.")
We played at the beach.
Music, not swimming. Ocean's
Too polluted. Darn.
(Joel almost jumped in, too, until I said, "Hey, Joel, shouldn't we maybe read that sign over there -- the one with the caution tape all around it?")
Singing far from home
Was the easy part. No sweat.
La la la! Thank you.
Cafés, house concerts,
Church auditoriums, and
One sweet standing O.
(Ovation. Don't even.)
San Diego rules.
Browncoats built a huge fire and
Gave me a rain stick.
At Kulak's Woodshed
I met Tom Begich. Beware
Alaskans abroad....
(Tom was shocked to see me so far from home. The folks at Kulak's were joking that the Alaskans were gonna take over the venue. And we most certainly did.)
I heard Shaun Cromwell,
Then Sheri Miller at the
Hotel Café. Sweet.
(Shaun I heard at Café Bellissimo, Sheri at the Hotel Café, to be clear. Both venues and both artists are great. And I had tiramisu to die for at Bellissimo.)
Funny, they told me
I would hate LA, but -- wow.
Better than I thought.
Seldom have I slept
So little, driven so much.
L.A., I love you.
For it's only here
I can put on sunglasses
And turn people's heads.
(This works especially well at night. If you're wearing sunglasses in the dark, you can hear the necks snap behind you as folks do a quick over-the-shoulder celebrity check. Of course, I must admit my own neck was a little sore, too.)
II. Texas
To Austin, Houston,
And San Antonio, ho!
(Don't call me a ho.)
Strawberries galore --
Inexpensive clothing stores --
Locally owned pubs --
Live music nightly --
Farmers' markets with fresh cheese --
This must be heaven.
But still no good beer.
Only don't say that too loud
In front of Texans.
(It's obvious they're
compensating for something.
Chill, Texas, we're cool.)
Also don't mention
That Alaska is bigger
And less obnoxious.
Just sip your Shiner
And quietly kick their ass
At darts and Scrabble.
(Three triple bullseyes -- bwah! I tried to make a Shiner Bock / shiner (black eye) joke, but couldn't get the syllables and the pun to coincide without sacrificing comprehensibility. So imagine a joke of that nature here. Or submit your own haiku in the comments.)
South by Southwest rocks.
But it's intimidating.
Oodles of rock stars.
There's a high ratio
Of Utilikilts to men
Down on Sixth Street.
They all look ready
For Rolling Stone photo shoots.
I feel corporate.
(But later I shopped
At the Buffalo Exchange.
Who looks indie now?)
Heard some killer bands --
And some not-so-killer bands,
Which encouraged me.
Favorites include
Lindsay Jane, Raina Rose, Graham,
Second Grace, Cory...
(...Branan. And that's Graham Weber. They're visiting Alaska soon. Go see them! And see me, if you're in Alaska. Also, Browncoats and others may enjoy the energetic and ebullient S.J. Tucker, the Skinny White Chick. Though she has famously refused to see Firefly.)
I missed the Whipsaws
Only by inches. Sorry --
Seeya back home, guys.
Bob Schneider and the
Texas Bluegrass Massacre
Blew my freakin' mind.
I sang, too, nervous
In a sea of musicians,
And I did just fine.
I thought that driving
In LA would be hard, but
Texas kicked my ass.
Twenty minutes spent
Trying to find the on-ramp --
Go fish. Signage, please!
Now, the Bedlam Bards
Are no gentlemen, but they
Accompanied me
Despite the fact I
Use too many chords and shake
A dead cat sometimes.
Visited Browncoats
In two cities -- shimmer wine
And mangoes. Shiny.
We played some airsoft
In the yard, which later seemed
A bad idea.
I got shot. Right there.
In the forehead. That's Houston
Hospitality.
But the gun owner,
Morgan, was even worse off.
He lost a tooth.
(I was inordinately proud of my injury. It bled all night, and I made sure everybody knew it. At the concert later that evening I serenaded Morgan with "The Hero of Houston," a filk of "Hero of Canton." Except it was about real life, and the song was fictional. Does that make it rilk? We were hoping to give him a purple heart or some kind of medal, but I think the closest we could come was a poker chip.)
Last but not least:
I sang at the Cactus.
Won't forget that night.
III. Epilogue
Flying home sucked hard:
Austin > Phoenix > OC > then,
Drive to LAX
Fly east to Salt Lake
And finally home. The score:
Six airports, one day.
(The airports won. I've revised "Flying Feels Like Falling" to reflect my New Worst Itinerary Ever. Oh, I saw Men in Trees for the first time on one of the planes and miserable as the flight was, the show made it worse. No, it's nothing like that, for those of you who asked. Even Alaskans are sharper than that writing was.)
I wish I could list
All the people that I met,
All the bands I heard,
But especially
All the food I ate, cuz, damn --
That was a gooooood trip.
I still haven't slept.
There are deadlines and taxes
And stuff to see to.
But despite the pace
I like my new profession.
'Cuz I get to sing.
************************
| | |
| Every time I sit down and actually blog, the thing I was setting out to blog about goes straight outta my head. Why is that? I'm gonna blame it on the pickles and stout. Out out out. I love internal rhymes.
What I meant to tell you was...
I'm gonna start going by Marian. Nobody freak out, okay? I love my real name, and it's not permanent, etc. You don't have to police yourself or apologize if you can't change your ways or whatever. If you have questions about it, just ask me. I'm learning that the two names thing is just way too confusing for people here in Anchorage, and it's gonna get even worse in Washington. So you can call me whatever you like, but I'm switching over to gradually conducting correspondence as Marian and introducing myself that way.
No, there's no legal name change involved, as I cherish the name my parents gave me. This will probably just be a phase at least, a performing name at most -- but one that is generally known to be a performing name and not the real thing (please refer to Gordon Sumner's relationship to the moniker "Sting" as an example. I expect that only friends and family call him Gordon -- but everyone knows that Sting's not his real name. And that would be where the similarities between us end, because I look terrible in leather pants).
And in case you didn't know, the only reason I took a different name was because there are already many many many other Emily Butlers out there. And to be as cool as the rest of my family -- Beegah, Ducky/Pantastic, Stone, Ms. Luke Fildes, etc.
Bonus points for me: my husband has now been greeted by a few people as "Mr. Call." Now he knows how it feels to be called "Mrs. Butler." | | |
| So it's been awhile, and I think most of you have discerned (one way or another) that I've been pretty busy. Which ought to raise two questions in the minds of my friends and loved ones: 1) What have you been doing? and 2) You are ALWAYS busy, Emily, so why do you perpetuate the myth-slash-delusion that this will change someday?
To the second question, I can only say, well done. You've found me out. That seems to be the inescapable truth about Emily. I'll just have to be content with being a caricature of a busy person, your funny friend/relation who's always running around doing weird stuff and forgetting to eat or sleep or breathe. But hey, at least I like doing stuff, and at least it's cool weird stuff I do, like the following (which should also more or less answer question 1):
- Making endless press releases and bulletins and website updates and doing hours of homework on the internet in hopes of someday making a living as a musician
- Writing music and recording it at a ridiculous rate
- Forming a kickass band that will hopefully stay together for a few months
- Learning which songs one can and cannot get the rights to perform in public
- Playing gigs -- in December, an average of one per week, and three paid gigs, which is respectable by any measure
- Working at the Performing Arts Center as a techie. Stagehands unite!
- Planning concerts around Alaska and Outside
- Joining an athletic club and actually working out (which ought to baffle those of you that thought you knew me)
- Learning to live on about $10 per week
- Thinking about moving south and how we'll live when we get there
- Continuing to be terrified of flying, and continuing to fly nonetheless
- Coveting my husband's iPhone while he covets my laptop
- Working on two ARMP's (Actually Real Motion Pictures, commonly known as Movies)
- Repeatedly losing the lens cap to my awesome camera. Blast.
That's the short version. Details follow in no particular order. Deliberately disheveled, in fact. I've been spending all my days and nights in an endless quest to bring order out of chaos, and it's nice to blog with a sort of theraputic disorderliness so that I can relax a bit.
Since I blogged about our stay in the yurt, the temperature here has barely dropped below freezing until this week. Yuck. How is it that I picked the coldest night of the year (so far, almost) to sleep outdoors? The dark days are a lot darker and more depressing when there's no snow to brighten up the nights, and everyone downtown seems a little disgruntled by the lack of snow. Finally a few days ago we got down to a nice respectable 15 degrees, and all the roads and sidewalks turned into icy death. Back to normal. But still no skiing or sledding or snowmen, just ice -- and that means winter here is not nearly as much fun as it should be. Hey, Illinois! Oklahoma! Share the love -- send us some snow.
I did my annual stint as a dresser for the Nutcracker, and as always, I loved it. This year instead of wrangling rats or herding small children, I dressed the adult ballerinas (what are the men? ballerinos?). That involved doing thousands of hooks and eyes per day. My fingers did not function by the end of the run -- I could hardly type. The corps dancers were very nice, narry a diva among them, but for some reason the girls all wanted their costumes hooked as tight as they could bear. By the end I felt like a gorilla had grabbed my fists and squeezed them until I developed a few extra knuckles.
Then just last week I got to be an electrician for The Producers (talk about new vocab words! Lighting is complicated). That didn't make my knuckles hurt -- instead it was my elbows, from coiling miles of cable. And I so wish I could have seen the show! Mechanical pigeons that light up and go "Heil" were involved -- they saluted on cue with little foam wings. There was also this brigade of automated Nazi soldier dummies, which made me go "aaack!" when I walked around a corner and suddenly found myself in the midst of them. This was the first time I got to hang the lights for a show, and it was way more fun than I thought. Even the part where I was holding onto my co-electrician for dear life as he dangled over the balcony holding a 40-pound moving spotlight to hang it on this tiny rail that's just out of reach. Shivers. There are safety wires for the lights, but not for us. Next time you see a show, thank the electricians that nearly gave their lives for that bit of extra wattage.
With my new (and oft-utilized) athletic club membership, I have rejoined the ranks of People Who Watch TV With Commercials. My MP3 player is broke, and if I'm not distracted by something, my total workout length is about 5 minutes, so I've started watching again. Now, I've missed commercials and TV completely for about seven of the last eight years, and reentry is completely blowing my mind. And someone give the Writers what they want! Please! End the strike! Because game shows and reality TV are sapping my will to live and giving me far too much satisfaction from totally vicarious experiences! I realized this when I almost cried for joy during "The Biggest Loser" and then gasped audibly during "Iron Chef." Hey, the dude almost dropped a full tray of gourmet PBJ-French-toast-sandwich-thingys.
(I wonder what would happen if you combined those two shows?)
My day-to-day job is actually not that interesting, though it's all people ask me about anymore. "What does a musician do?" I'm still not totally sure. Rehearse, write charts, schedule things, meet people. I have noticed that this job requires me to spend waaaaaaaaaay too much time thinking about myself. So please help me to keep tabs on that. I don't want to get too much weirder than I already am, and I am starting to grasp how it's a very small step from being in an image-related profession to becoming image-obsessed. Thankfully my rate of Stupid Stuff per Hour (SS/Hr) remains fairly high, and in an equation where P represents pride, we can observe that P=1/SS/Hr.
Things you didn't know were really really good together: spicy dill pickles (Vlasic) and a nice bitter stout. Or a porter. In fact, a truly terrible porter -- like the Sam Adams we got last month -- can be salvaged by eating it with the dill pickle. I will stop short of recommending the cocktails my husband invented with the spicy pickle juice, though. They might cure a cold, but I didn't think they tasted so great.
I'm recording a song a month! It's like Disneyland for me! Only with less motion sickness and it's marginally cheaper and everything doesn't smell like sunblock! And the next song is an original, and it's gonna be a doozy! It's called "I Wish I Were a Real Alaskan Girl" (note the correct use of the subjunctive tense which is also an assonant rhyme). Be sure to check it out. If for some reason you can't listen to it online, e-mail me and I'll help you figure out a way to hear it. It's on my website, which is probably much nicer than it was the last time you looked at it: http://www.mariancall.com
My band is fabulous. I have a rhythm/rock/folk guitarist, a jazz/free improv upright bass player, and a funk/gospel drummer. That would about cover the spectrum of the music I'm writing. Please, please, please, please stay together guys! You rule! Now I just have to find someone to tour with me. We've had a few great gigs and a few okay ones. Ooh, I did get a compliment from one of the original signers of the Alaskan Constitution, which is pretty sweet. There will be lots more gigs in Alaska between January and April, and then I get to travel! And then the playing outdoors starts...I suppose it's good that I'm finding I like live performance. I was worried I would hate it, just because being in the studio was so fun I couldn't imagine that live shows would compare. I guess this whole job is just too much fun. No wonder I'm not getting paid for it yet.
About a month ago my manager, C., kindly observed that due to about a year of extreme stress and food/sleep deprevation, I was deteriorating into a maxed-out neurotic blithering mess of a person (what my husband refers to as reverting to Stanford Mode). According to Webster, to blither (v) is to talk long-windedly about nothing, to speak nonsense. Which is pretty much all I ever do. I should be a politician. But I digress -- C. asked me when I last took a day off, and made me look through my planner to prove to her that I actually had taken a whole day off. I got back to March without finding a single instance of a work-free day, and she sort of sweetly smacked me upside the head and told me we'd meet again after I slept and took time off. But, see, the thing is -- I'm terrible at taking time off. I suck at vacationing, once the logistics and travel subside and I get to the actual relaxation part. I have no talent for chilling out. But I'm working on it. I have now taken five days off. Well, almost five. And I'm much better slept. And I didn't notice a change in diet, but I've definitely had a change in metabolism, since I gained back a lot of the weight that I inexplicably lost. I expect it was just stress, and C.'s talk with me gave me a sort of permission to be less stressed. (Part of that, unfortunately, is that I have released myself from corresponding as much as I wish I could, so I've missed some of you guys. A lot. I think I'm going to have to be happy with periodic comments and letters instead of daily e-mail. But I still LOVE hearing from you!)
I will officially be in the Bay Area in mid-May and in Southern California in early June. I will possibly be in Austin in June as well. If you live there, e-mail me! Let's hang out. If you know somewhere I should play, e-mail me! I want to play there. Even if it's at your house. House concerts are the best.
So in January I'm writing and recording a song for one movie, and I'm acting in another. The acting is just a bit part, and you shouldn't expect to see either film in a theater near you, unless you live in Anchorage, but hey -- they're really for real actual movies! I think that is so cool. My life is getting weirder by the day. Today I got to meet all the other actors and read through one of the scripts for the first time, and though I know a lot of artsy people in Anchorage, the film-acting-clique is one I've never penetrated. What a very different bunch from my usual relaxed coffee shop artist/musician crew -- they all knew each other, and they were all business. I kept pretty quiet, not knowing a thing about what I was doing (except for the highlighting part; I'm good with a Bic), and I demurely ate my enormous cherry danish as I read the part of this anorexic chick. Can't tell you more stuff yet, so don't ask.
I can, however, tell you more about the Butlers' Future Plans. This is definitely not definite, since lots can happen in a year. But we have a tentative arrangement for moving down south -- get this -- for half of the year. Husbandface scored a seasonal job working on helicopters, which would mean that he'd work himself purple during the summer (starting in May) and finish on October 1 with enough income to live for the rest of the year. He'd return to work the next May. HOW SWEET IS THAT? We really don't want to leave Anchorage, but we miss home so very much, especially the people there. Anyway, the stars seem to be aligning so that we can live in Seattle for the winter and Anchorage for the summer. And we might be able to embrace the semi-nomadic lifestyle we've always longed for -- yes, we're looking at buying either an Airstream or a school bus. All this is in the one-to-two-year plan, subject to revisions. But I am having to try really really hard to not be unbelievably excited. Just think how much of the country Zippy will get to see if he stays with us a while longer!
Colin got an iPhone the day they became available up here. So so so so so so so so so so so so much cooler than I thought it would be. WOW. Yes, I love technology. Especially the kind that's pretending like it isn't technology for the sake of easily bewildered liberal arts nerds like me. I hope they make an iPhone that looks like a typewriter someday.
Speaking of Liberal Arts Nerds, I took a Nerd Quiz recently, and while I scored a very respectable 59 out of 100, the questions were very much skewed to measure Techie nerdiness (which can be defined as the capacity to build one's own computer from paperclips and ramen) and not Fuzzy nerdiness (which would be marked by the ability to hum every single NPR show theme song and/or the drive to punctuate even myspace comments with almost religious zeal). That bias bothered me a little, and made me want to do some research and present my findings to Geek Magazine. I think that reaction alone should be good for a few points. Paying top dollar for a pre-electric typewriter should get me something, too.
Oh, I got to marry someone! It was my second marriage, and it was markedly shorter than my first. I officiated at the wedding of a friend from high school, since that's easy to do up here, and all in all it took about fifteen minutes and a little bit of signing stuff. The bride and groom opted to have me fill out the paperwork, since I have good handwriting, so their marriage license forever has a little bit of Me on it. "Now by the power vested in me by the state of Alaska..." that was really fun to say.
Okay, that was really long, but if I'd had more time, I'd have written you a shorter letter. Here's the last bit, and I'm excited about it -- it's the Christmas present I wish I could give to all of you if I had the money! This is my playlist of favorite tunes for the end of the year. They're not all from this year and they're definitely not all obscure and hip, but I really love them right now. These are the songs I would give to all of you if I could afford it. So if you have a moment, take a listen, or maybe even buy a track and support an artist in a small way. Every little download makes such a huge difference -- I really understand that now!
And if you feel so moved, send me your own end-of-the-year favorite tracks! Send your list to your friends and ask for theirs, and then really sink your teeth into some good tunes! There's so much good music in the world. I'm a fan of sharing it around. It makes a great Christmas present.
Plus the Christmas carols on the radio are starting to make me crazy. That's reason enough to share some new tunes that are mostly unrelated to Kris Kringle.
1. True Affection / The Blow
2. Cupcake / Nellie McKay
3. Scar that Never Heals / Jeremy Fisher
4. Sh'vitah / Hadag Nachash
5. A Sunday Smile / Beirut
6. Juan Loco / Rodrigo y Gabriela
7. I Still Feel / Martina Topley-Bird
8. Once in a While / Madeleine Peyroux
9. Glory Bound / Martin Sexton
10. Saltbreakers / Laura Veirs
11. Springfiel, or Bobby Got a Shadfly Caught in His Hair / Sufjan Stevens
12. Waking Up in the City / The Ditty Bops
13. Au Port / Camille
14. What Was I Thinking? / Christine Lavin (the live version)
15. Blind Indifference / Stephen Fearing (the live version)
16. Via con Me / Paolo Conte
17. 10 Contados / CéU
18. Walk the Walk / Poe
19. Home / Marc Broussard
20. Beecharmer / Nellie McKay
(The order is not about quality, it's about flow. If you have all these tracks, you should play them in this order.)
Till next time, I miss you, I love you -- no, that's not a strong enough word, I lurve you, I luff you. Especially if you read all the way to this, the last sentence of this extremely long blog. | | |
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