Friends with the right stuff

Posted on May 4, 2012 by HH

(sub-title: the continuing saga of the water bottle and how having cool friends is simply key)

As I’ve mentioned innumerable times, it took Snake Suspenderz 3 or 4 years of asking before we were hired on for Seattle’s fabulous Moisture Festival. We finally got hired for this year’s Fest (the 9th annual) and it was just as amazing as I’d imagined.

And kee-rist what an imagination I’ve got!

Continue reading →

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What a difference a day makes

Posted on May 2, 2012 by HH

Yesterday’s busking was entirely made out of FAIL. I made more mistakes, had more lapses in judgement and just generally fucked up more than even my usual. And that’s saying something, I tell you what.

I actually managed to lose money. Jaysus!

The only good news yesterday was that my sweet Fallen Angel managed to jump through the requisite hoops and the Millionair Club is going to give her new glasses. Her prescription is way out of date and her glasses themselves are in bad shape… hot glued together, all out of alignment… you get the picture.

The fact that she was being gifted this needed item made me very happy, not only because neither of us could afford making the very necessary replacement, but also because I had learned of this opportunity via my network, and passed the info on to her. (That would be the real life network in this case, not the digital one.)

Huge blessings on the wonderful friends in my network.

Despite all that, and just to rub salt in yesterday’s wound, when I arrived at the Pike Place Market today I discovered that I’d lost my recently acquired Moisture Festival water bottle.

Well, fuck.

Dear Universe, that’ll be enough of that, K?

But…

I arrived rather latish to the Market and still only had to wait about a 1/2 hour for my set. This is what’s known in the trade as “a blessing.”

The tips were good and I sold a CD. The upshot being, when I counted my money at the end of the set—$30+ for an hour. Not too shabby for a weird old dude strumming his ukulele, eh?—I decided that was probably good enough, especially since my bus transfer was still good. That’s a savings of $2.50.

Doesn’t sound like a lot to you? Walk a mile in my shoes.

I was just going to go home and call it a WIN. I deserve a WIN every once in a while. srsly.

But wait! There’s more!

I’m now packing up and this couple comes up, money clenched in the fella’s fist, and buys yet another CD.

A $40+ hour? OK then.

What a difference a day makes.

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2 days Illin’, 1 day thrillin’

Posted on April 27, 2012 by HH

I just came through 2 days in a generic NyQuil daze, and ended up with a pretty damn good busking day. It was, at the very least, not half shabby for the little fat guy with the ukulele.

One could almost believe that tourist season was nearly upon us. srsly.

In other words, I may have survived another winter/early spring. That deserves a “w00t!”

I can’t hear you! Give me a damn w00t!

kthxbye.

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How I spent my weekend

Posted on April 23, 2012 by HH

Pop on over to my main site’s news area and read A tale of two gigs.

tl:dr version… my life is groovier than yours. so, nyah! ;-)

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The “Bass Trilogy”

Posted on April 18, 2012 by HH

While it seems that I don’t post videos—on the average—more than every 6 months or so, I have overcome that limitation in the last month. I’ve put up three (count ‘em, three) videos in the short span between March 26th and April 16th this year. There are actually two best parts about this:

  1. Quite by accident, I completed a trilogy of videos that feature every other member of my band Snake Suspenderz guesting on one of my solo videos. Not only that, but every one of them is playing some sort of bass instrument. We start with salamandir on tuba—his usual axe—and then move on to Sketch on doghouse bass—though he’s actually our drummer—and then conclude with Thadd on guitarron—he’s usually on trombone, followed by guitar and then chromatic harmonica.
  2. The last video in the series   (Dr. Hokum & Mr. Jive) represents the most ambitious video I’ve completed to date. Thanks to a suggestion from Thadd, I ended up using my two cameras to pretty much fake up a six-camera shoot. This means, of course, that instead of just bouncing back and forth between camera one and camera two, I actually had footage that allowed me to mix it up quite a bit. It’s still not perfect, but I’m learning with each new one.

So without any further ado, I present The Bass Trilogy…

Naughty Monkey

(For some reason the transcoder program I use to translate from the file type that my cameras turn out into a file type that iMovie eats lost its settings and this one ended up with a big black frame around it. I fixed it in the next videos.)

Good Golly! (the Porno Popup Song)


Dr. Hokum & Mr. Jive

This is the one where I learned out to fake up a 6-camera shoot where 2 used to do.

If you appreciate one or more of these offerings, you can say thanks by either:

  • subscribing to my YouTube channel
  • dropping a buck or so into my online tip bucket (in the right column here) or…
  • best of all, spreading around the videos via Twitter, Facebook, G+… well, you get the idea.

Meanwhile, if you dig any one (or more) of these videos please leave comments and/or share them around on your favorite (and hell… second favorite) social media sites. It would help so much!

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