Despite a lot harsher living situation and way less internet access than I've been used to, I managed to successfully complete NaBloPoMo for the third year running.

Yay me!

I couldn't seem to rouse my bones out of the house until the 10:30 am bus today. Even with that I only had to wait until 1:30 pm to play.

It wasn't a half-shabby set and I had already decided to just do one. I'm a little burned out on waiting until the last dog dies to do a set that's barely worth bus fare. So I went out and hopped the bus. This has allowed me to get a bit caught up on MySpace — I haven't been paying it much attention lately — and I'll be able to get a little food from the store and still be inside early enough to do a bit more work get the room I'm in a little more Hobbit-friendly.

I'll be doing all that as soon as I log off and pick up a couple mysteries from the library. Guess I'll do that now.

I had a decent busking day today, though I had to hang out for the 4 pm set in order to do to the decent level. It's ok and all, but I got all busy wandering about the Market, chatting with my friends and such, and I forgot to sit down every now and then. Walking about on cement and bricks all day is not good for an old fart like me.

So now I'm sitting in the kitchen of Gary's Snack Shack — great, inexpensive and filling TexMex grub — using his ginormous Toshiba laptop to get this blog entry done.

I'll be back at it tomorrow, but for now I'm hitting the bus and getting myself somewhere I can kick back and take my shoes off.

Preferably with beer.

I've been sent two totally disparate but equally cool video links this week, one by salamandir and one by Thadd. Since I can't choose between them you get both.

First, an old skool, lo-fi mashup of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. (Click the song title if the embed isn't working for you.)

Next, a strange little film about the Moscow Cat Theatre. (Click, etc.)

Herding cats, indeed!

It's only an urban legend.

Today's set would have been a good one, had there been about half the people there instead of all of them. But with the amount of folks going by there should have been a lot bigger hat, just from playing the proverbial percentages.

I decided that staying for a late one was just not worth the trouble and headed to the bus stop. It's only about four blocks away from the Market so it's pretty easy. Unless...

...Macy's closes up the whole thing for a parade, decoration lighting, street level hassle. Hope it's worth it to them because it sure hosed up my trip home and the bus drivers who have to do a funky re-route, at rush hour, through the busiest part of town. Already tons of buses on 3rd Ave. Moving all of 4th Aves buses over there just jammed things up beautifully.

But the driver was a trouper and I'm here at the library in time to keep up with NaBloPoMo and, what the heck, maybe pick up something else off the mystery shelf. I think I'm currently reading the penultimate book from the last batch I checked out. Hate to hit Sunday night with nothing to read.

See y'all tomorrow.

Hope all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving today had — or are having — a wonderful time with friends, relations and other loved ones.

I just returned from a party at Ray & Gloria's. Ray is Ada Reva's nephew and Ada Reva is Thadd's fiance. There were probably 25 or 30 people there. We had good food and drink, Thadd and I played some tunes, other folks played some tunes, everybody chatted and laughed. A good party.

Very much in line with my personal fantasy™.

Tomorrow it's back to the ol' busking grind. Traditionally the day after Thanksgiving brings hordes of folks out to downtown and the Market. Hopefully they'll all be in a splendid mood, like I am now.

Today was the day from hell in the busking department. The only bright spots in my day were supplied by my Market friends.

Thanks Market friends!

Since I got to the library and its internet access with only 10 minutes remaining until they close I think I'll leave it like that.

Scoping out my list of recent blog entries after I posted the previous one and I note that if I can keep this going for just six more days I will have successfully completed NaBloPoMo for the third year running.

Yay me.

Might even win a prize one of these times. Besides bragging rights I guess.

I keep getting new subscribers on my YouTube channel. (Thanks guys and gals!)  I hadn't been tracking too closely just how many subscribers I actually have so tonight, while leaving thank you notes for my two newest, I decided to pop over to my account page and see. Hmmm... about 340 now. Good thing that I've got a couple new videos in the pipeline. But that's not the real surprise.

According to the little counter dealie, people have viewed my videos over 50,000 times. Almost 51,000 as a matter of fact.

Wowza. Not bad for weird old Uncle Hobbit and his ukulele.

Don't you folks have anything better to do?

I kid! Thanks very much. As I mentioned, a couple more videos are on the way. At least one of them should be up in a couple days. Stay tuned!

While still on the subject of video, today I got in line for a set at the Market and then headed for Seattle Center where I met up with Denise Gibbs, the lady who is casting for the movie I mentioned a few posts back. She took some video of me to send to the director but pointed out that, while she'd mentioned a few of the other buskers to him, I was the one he was interested in. In fact, I was the only musician she was sending video for. You might yet catch a fleeting glimpse of me on the big screen.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Yesterday the little "booklet of plastic envelopes" that holds cards, pictures, etc. in my wallet vanished.

What the hell is that thing actually called, anyway?

Luckily it only contained a couple of those cards from grocery stores, the card that I use to put minutes into my phone and my library card. The library card was the biggest hassle (and most expense) of all of them to replace. It was $1 and a few minutes time.

Yay Public Libraries!

But damn! I'm getting tired of this string of broken, lost, etc. that's been going on in my life lately. Enough already!

If you happen to find my brain, would you mind sending it back to me? I miss it.

Nice busking today, even though I only got one set in. Tomorrow I have to go and be filmed a bit so the director of the upcoming flick can decide exactly how he'll use me in the thing. Hopefully I can fit a set in some time around that part. It's taking place at Seattle Center so it shouldn't be hard to pop up from the Market and then back down.

I'm keeping this one brief, but just because it's late and I'm tired.

Good busking today. No records were set but no hearts broken either.

The weather has been goofy. It was warm(ish) but rainy in the morning. In the afternoon the sun came out and the temperature dropped. The wind had a bite to it. I've still got to walk through part of that before getting home.

Good part of that is when I get home I'll be loading the video I took last night onto my geriatric eMac and starting to play with it in iMovie. Always lots of fun.

See you tomorrow.

In my previous entry I listed off a bunch of things I'd gotten done today plus one fail. But I was wrong.

At about 6pm I was just picking up my stuff to go back to where I'm staying and my phone rings. It's my ex, asking if I'd be around the house at 8pm to give the cats their "treats."

Yuri needs his meds twice a day and, since you can't give one cat a treat—his meds are wrapped in pill pockets to make them yummy—and not give the other two a treat, they all get 'em twice a day.

(Yuri's the black and white one in the picture, Jack is the part-siamese and the little white one is Darwin. Darwin's not so little anymore, that's an older pic. You can click it for a larger version.)

BTW... In case you're wondering why I'm at the ex's, she lets me come over and use the laundry and shower.

I didn't want to be running downtown for my tobacco at a late hour so I bused downtown and back in plenty of time to fix the kittehs up. Since I'd taken care of my longest errand I stayed around and recorded the raw vid for not one but two new videos. I'm strumming my Ohana in both of them. Now I'm just trying to decide if I'm going to put up one or both of them as entries in the Bushman World Ukulele Video Contest. Never done one of those before.

In any event, there'll be at least one new video up within the week.

And this (so far) has been a totally fail-less day.

Along with laundry, shower and heavy handlebar bonsai I finally managed to get caught up with all the things on my Google Reader subscription list today.

I realize that this is temporary. For instance, I'm currently screwing up somebody's "I'm all caught up" vibe with this very entry so I imagine there'll be all sorts of things when I log in tomorrow. But I don't expect it to be the huge list I've been going through. It's mainly because I have to wait to get over to a private residence to watch the assorted UkeTube goodness that Woodshed continues to post but there are several other blogs that I try to follow that post a heck of a lot.

Oh. And I'm also still in the running to complete NaBloPoMo successfully.

About the only fail in my day was I didn't get any video made. I keep getting new subscribers on my YouTube channel but I haven't put up a new vid in about a month. Must be time soon, eh?

Hopefully this little success vibe will carry over to tomorrow's busking. I'll let you know.

I'm often joking about how I had one of those "Slow Children Playing" signs in my yard when I was growing up but, joking aside, sometimes I appall myself with just how slow on the uptake I can be.

I'm sure at one point or another I've ranted and frothed here in the blog about people taking a picture of me busking and not leaving a tip. It's given me a permanent sour taste in my mouth for photogs, especially the amateur ones. So today I'm chatting with a friend while waiting to play my first set. This gentlemen stops and asks if he can take my picture. I don't say anything snarky, just "sure." What the hell, at least he asked, right? So he takes the pic and starts to wander off, getting 15 or so feet away from me before it hits me.

Maybe I should give him one of the "Google Ukulele Hobbit" stickers. Doh!

I caught up with him and gave him one. When he gets back to his state — New Hampshire if I recall correctly — he may well just stick it on his bumper and there'll be a roving ad for me in that state. Or maybe he'll google me himself and buy one of my CDs. Or maybe both.

Plus, giving away a gift is simply a nicer response than a snarl, don't you think?

I do. Albeit slowly sometimes.

Today just beat the pants off of yesterday as far as busking goes. Yesterday was a whopping $7 in one set. By the time my second set rolled around the temperature had dropped so fast, far and hard you could practically hear it go. I just couldn't take off my coat to play, I'd have frozen for sure.

Oddly enough, even though I left a half-hour later than I did yesterday, I still got the same two sets (1 pm and 4 pm). This time the temp, while somewhat chilly, wasn't so bitter that I couldn't deal with it. I did both sets and ended up with more than 3 times the money as yesterday. Still not much of a day, but much better.

Best of all was that as I was finishing up my second set I looked around and noticed that it was mostly Market folk about. Most of them packing up, of course. No Baptists, no babies. Nobody to get their panties in a wad due to 'mature language' in a tune. So I thought, "what the hell!" and I gave 'em the FM version of Radiohead's song, Creep. It was something like this.

Except with the Ohana soprano instead of the sopranino and on the bridge instead of near the main entrance and it wasn't videoed.

Oh yeah. And unlike in the video, I was sober today.

But other than that, it sounded kinda like that video. Major applause from my fellow Market rats (and a couple bucks to).

Off to the store for some dinner and coffee now.

Growing a handlebar mustache is like growing a bonsai tree. You need to fuss with it a lot. Wax it and comb it and twist it into little points. I wouldn't be surprised to find all sorts of "how to" things on the web just on this subject. I wouldn't be at all shocked to find them recommending florist wire or some such thing. Kind of like the wire you use to shape the little trees. Mine at least needs lots more trimming and shaping. Not to mention more length.

You wish it was more like a chia pet, just throw water on it and it does its thing. But nope. It's more like bonsai.

Hopefully quicker though.

Just got an email from a lady who does casting for movies. Seems that Kim Tae-Yong is writing/directing a movie that takes place, at least partially, in Seattle. He's the one that wrote/directed — amongst others — Memento Mori (it's English title). He apparently saw me performing at the Pike Place Market when he was scouting locations and asked the casting lady to find me and find out if I'd like to be in the flick.

I said yes, of course. They'll probably only want me for one day of shooting and it'll be worth $200 to me. I'm liking that, especially as it's going to be shot in the pitifully slow time of year, busking-wise. And if it turns out to be more than one day that $200 is per day, not total. Not bad for a funny old busker with a ukulele!

I might even get a couple lines to exchange with the two stars of the flick. Wouldn't that be a hoot?

I'm not under any NDA or anything, but I'll only tell you that among the details she sent me was, "TARGET FILM FESTIVAL: 2010 Cannes Film Festival." Naturally they won't fly me in or anything like that, but I'd still be tickled pink (or some other frou frou shade) to think that a film I'm in was shown at Cannes. I was filmed way back when in the late eighties for Three Fugitives but ended up on the cutting room floor.

Not that it bothered me much as when the 10 days in Tacoma were done they handed me an envelope with 17 fresh, crisp $50 bills in it.

I'll keep you updated as I get any further details. Wish me luck!

I've had the Troubled in Mind mp3 from my first release, the cassette titled Keeping Up With Your Jones ¹, 're-mastered' as well as I'm able and ready for download for a few weeks now. I've hesitated for several reasons, the main one being time.

No, not "I don't have time to do that" but "that recording sure lasts for a long time." Too long really. It's a six-plus minute epic of white boy doing blues if ever there was one set down. I seem to recall adding it because I was looking at time sliding by way back there in 1990 and suddenly got desperate for a finished project.

Hmmm... much like my recent CD in that last respect. Do I detect a pattern?

I'm just sayin'...

The problem was playing time. I just really didn't feel good about how long the cassette as a whole ran. So I decided I'd not only do a bunch of verses for the tune, but also two solos each on guitar and harmonica. It was the last bit that made me decide to make it available after all. One of the guitar solos and one of the harmonica solos are just not half-shabby. In fact, I'm kinda proud of them as well as abashed that I'm so far away from the guitar now that I simply couldn't reproduce even the worst of the solos nowadays.

In any event, unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool acoustic blues fiend, you're probably not going to want to listen to this 'epic' over and over again, but you may be amused by it once.

Enjoy!

(1. if you click on the tag kuwyj tag you'll get a list of all the other entries on this subject. The entries in the list are best read from bottom to top.)
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Slow one today. All grouchy about the hat from my first — and only — set. Then I talked to a young busker. He'd just returned from a swing through California. He was talking about his good day.

Turns out our hats were about the same.

Am I getting more cynical — or just plain old grumpier — as winter approaches?

And I so try to shoot for wry instead.

Think I'll go home and be happy with the take.

When I got up (way early) this morning I had a whole list of things to do, many of them productive. As the day wore on the list shrunk mightily. Leaving me at the end of the day doomed to miss the next bus home and still with several things on my shrunken list unfinished.

So basically I got a shower, laundry is done, I've eaten and hopefully this blog entry will get finished. But I still have to make it to a store for tobacco and water (for tomorrow morning's coffee) and I'm running out of options that don't include carrying all the crap — clean laundry, bag of assorted stuff, ukulele — into a store somewhere and then add more crap to the load for the rest of the ride home.

Lawsy. I do wish these fits of ennui would come over me when I'm home. With a beer and a book and a blanket.

I doesn't has it. Nor it's less specific cousin, triskaidekaphobia.

Do you?

This morning (besides downing a pot of coffee) I've rolled up a box of cigs, swept most of the leaves out of the garage I'm staying in, addressed one of my CDs to a nice person in Quebec, cleaned and polished my shoes, smoked too much and eaten a couple donuts. Now I'm in the library having done something I rarely do; give up on a book I've started. Just couldn't get into it at all, and I sometimes read those romances thinly disguised as detective stories, so you can imagine what level this one stooped to.

Once I'm done here I walk the rest of the way to the post office to mail out the CD, hop the bus into downtown to add to the mustache wax saga by purchasing another tube. Then it's bus back to Magnolia to change into what I'm wearing for tonight's gig and get the sound system together and 'staged' in the front of the garage for later ease of loading into the van.

Next it's bus down to Thadd's for a shave and trial run with the wax and then the above-mentioned run out to the gig. We're playing tonight at Smokin' Pete's BBQ, a place we've been several times before and enjoy each time. Post gig will probably be a walk to the store and then a nice collapse with one of the other library books I have. I'll probably not fall asleep in my clothes because I'll be wearing one of my best (2) shirts and I'm trying to keep 'em as nice as possible, but other than that it'll be a normal night.

Tomorrow morning I'll likely arise early and fire up the coffee pot to start a regular, busking sort of day.

My first set busking at the Market today (2 pm) was not half-shabby. I have some stuff to do with the money and, it having been about a week since my last, I wanted a tot of bourbon... but not bad enough to spend the money from the first set. Stuff to do, right?

Or maybe I'm just a cheap bastard.

I'm just sayin'...

So I said, "I'll play a late 2nd set and, if I make enough in that set to buy some whiskey I'll do it."

I played the set, got a lot of chump change, but when all the dust settled I'd made more than enough. Hot damn and stuff. Then I remembered...

Veteran's Day. No bourbon for Hobbit.

I has a sad.

But I still have the second set's money. So I has a happy too.

(But I'd kinda like to live in a state that wasn't so conflicted. Washington thinks it's all liberal and free-thinking and such, but it still has blue laws on the books and the state has the liquor monopoly.)

So maybe what I really have is a confused.

Went to band rehearsal today. All went well. We even did a little groundwork for adding Beware of the Blob to the repetoire, including me on melodica doing the sax part.

While at rehearsal I got to thinking about going out to the Victory Music open mike. Who knows? Maybe sell a CD? I've got time to run home, drop off all but one ukulele and a few CDs and hit the road. It sounds better and better. I have other things I need to do (this blog entry being one of them) but I think I have it all planned out.

Then I sit for 20 minutes at the first bus stop to get back from Thadd's. Cold.

Then a moderate ride on the bus and a couple block walk in downtown and waiting another 10 or so minutes for the next bus. Still cold. Maybe colder.

By the time I got back to where I'm staying the plan had changed to: Go to library, check the web, check out a couple new mysteries. Go to store. Huddle under blanket while reading and eating.

No CD sales going to happen like that, but I think I made the right decision, wimpy or not. Sometimes you just get tired.

I got a very late start today and, despite the fact that it was pissing down rain, there was a huge lineup of buskers when I arrived at 11:30 am and the soonest available set was 4:30 pm. This is not such a good spot on a rainy fall Monday. But perseverance and all that, right?

So I persevered.

So it was just under ten bucks. Not so good when you're nearly broke and have to skip a day busking because of band rehearsal.

So I come up to Chris and Phineas's place and I'm using their computer. Checking the email I find some lovely person has purchased a download of my CD.

Ding!

You've got money.

Better than AOL, yeah?

Thanks, Phil & Co.!

And thanks to all the rest of you fine folks who've paid attention to my ukulele twiddling.

Gotta love them intertoobs.

Well, I've got the first week of NaBloPoMo successfully behind me. Tonight looked like it might spoil it already, but I promised myself it would be a discipline thing and, even though I'd rather be home (such as it is) right now with a cold beer, I dragged my tired ass out to Ballard to use a friend's computer and connection.

I'm tired because it was a long day busking at the Market today. But quite successful. My first set was at 11:30am and it was not half shabby, but it came in at about $24, which was about $6 shy of my goal for the day. Too bad I couldn't have sold one more CD, eh?

I had to wait until 4:30pm for my next set. This is pretty late for a mid-fall day. Lots of folks were already closing up. Luckily I went for it because:

a) Three more (and different) couples from that dance thing — turned out to be just a "dance weekend" rather than a contest as I'd first thought — showed up and danced up a storm. Loads of fun again. And...

b) I pulled in about $30 more. Pretty much making my first set "gravy." Ha.

I'm now going to log off and head back to the bus. Still have time for that whole "home with cold beer" thing.

See ya tomorrow.

We just found out that Snake Suspenderz is going to be playing at the First Night Tacoma celebration again this year. Only this time, we're going to be in one of the bigger venues, the Rialto Theater stage, part of the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts.

w00t!

We'll be sharing the stage with acts like the Tacoma City Ballet and Pearl Django (just to name a couple). The gig was a blast last year — they pay pretty nicely too — and we're looking forward to doing it again this year.

Further details will be appearing in the next day or so on both my calendar and the Snake's calendar.

Stay tuned!

I only got one set in today, at 2:30 pm. Wasn't the biggest hat I've ever seen but was far from the smallest and I'm quite happy with it. But not as happy as I am with the set itself.

Two ladies came up, took my picture, tipped (some of them photogs get it), and then hung around until the end of the song. One of them came up and said, "I'm a singer. May I sing one with you?" She sounded sincere and I thought, what the heck?

I mean, I wouldn't be standing there, strumming my ukulele in public, if Lonnie "Dr. Saxophone" Williams hadn't made me go home and get my harmonicas and sit in with him some years back.

Sitting in's a good thing.

We chose All Of Me and I launched into it. I did my usual intro chord solo bit and when it came around to the ukulele strumming and singing bits, she hit it.

Hard.

She was great! Folks passing by stopped and the vendors on the bridge were digging it and I was having a natural blast! Could it get any better than this?

Well... yes, it could.

While she was singing four folks (three ladies, one gent) showed up. They happen to be in town for some big ballroom dance contest or another. You guessed it. For the next several songs they cut some serious rug, right there between the Moon Valley honey stand and Fanny's sweatshirts. They were great dancers and actually got a dollar tip from someone in the crowd.

They came up and gave it to me. Bless 'em.

Fanny told me later that she'd never seen anything like it and she dug it. All the bridge folk were applauding.

It made the rest of my set very happy. I can put more energy into it when I get such great feedback.

Here's to dancers and guest vocalists!

Because if I had a skateboard, I could've opened my umbrella and sailed around my nightly errands.

That's right, Seattle is doing it's semi-annual Chicago impression. Wind — make that strong wind — coming from several directions at once, with the added bonus of the usual Seattle rain.

Luckily, except for the rain part, the weather held pretty well for the time I was at the Market busking. On a per set basis it was about as lame as yesterday, but today I managed to get two sets in, bringing the total up to merely bleah instead of pitiful.

On the good side of the ol' ledger, salamandir brought me a whole pile (about 500) of stickers that say "Google Ukulele Hobbit" on them. I'll be giving them out all over the place. Stay tuned!

Now off to dinner and then read myself to sleep.

Hey, it ain't all glamour!

Today featured the sort of crowd — if you can dignify the smattering of people at the Market with the term "crowd" — where if you passed the hat you'd be lucky to get the damn hat back.

And I was wrong about where the mustache wax could have been. Someone must have actually stolen it. How chump is that?

I do have food for the evening and bus fare for tomorrow, so it certainly could be worse.

Enough said.

I swear to ghod I'm losing my mind.

I've never been one who constantly lost things. At least, not since my first apartment when I finally got tired of every errand taking twice to three times as long as it should because I always had to search for my keys.

But recently I've just been... well, an idiot. The latest...

Today I decided I had enough spare cash to go forward with the "let's have a handlebar mustache" plan. So between sets at the Pike Place Market I walked into downtown and visited a beauty supply store where I picked up a tube of mustache wax and its accompanying brush/comb thing.

I took it back to the Market and tossed it into the bag I use to carry my ukuleles. It was sitting on a shelf behind one of the daystalls right next to my favorite playing spot. My friend Gyan was set up there. You'd have to be familiar with the Market to get the whole picture here, but just picture less than 20 feet from where I play.

So my turn came up, I carried the bag over to the spot, unpacked, played my set and then carried all the stuff (separately) over to the daystall table. It (the table) was being emptied by Gyan so I counted my money and started packing the bag for the trip home.

The mustache wax was gone. It was nowhere near the place, we searched thoroughly.

I know, $4 worth of frippery like that shouldn't cause a rant — and I do have a suspicion where it might be so it may well return — but jeez!  It's not just the bucks, though I don't bring in enough to just take $4 and throw it away, it's the "one more straw" factor that's driving me mad. When will this little phase end?

When the stress builds until my head explodes like a scene from Scanners?

I'm going to go buy some dinner now. And a beer.

I've been bitching and kvetching for a while. How about something nice instead?

This past Thursday, October 29, the ukulele fairies brought me a brand spanky new Ohana SK-35 ukulele. The matte finish version, not the glossy one in the pic. This was sponsored to me by the kind folks at Ohana.

A quick aside: this does not equal 'Hobbit speaks for Ohana' or is an 'Ohana rep' anything of that ilk. They're just being nice by combining "thanks for talking us up" with "we'd like to give you a boost."

All that being said, I had a veritable hell week since the Thursday before and to have a sponsor send me an instrument made me feel like a ukulele rock star.* And I needed a rock star moment right about then.

I've already used it for a rehearsal, a couple days busking and a Halloween gig with Snake Suspenderz. Tonight I'm pausing at a place called Cyber Dogs for some interwebs and mocha on my way up to an open mike at Bill's Off Broadway on Capitol Hill. I'm hoping to sell a CD or two.

I actually typed this up earlier at the library and included my immediate impressions. Alas, the antique software that the library uses (especially Internet Exploder) managed to lose it for me. I'll type up a bit more about the ukulele in a day or so.

Thanks much to all the ohana at Ohana, especially Louis and Ken.

Meanwhile, off to play my new ukulele!

* OK. I'm not nearly as cute as that ukulele rock star. But still.

This is the start of my 3rd year of NaBloPoMo. This one's going to be a real challenge. My internet access — or hell, life in general — is still not what it was for the first two.

But I'm determined to succeed this year as I have in the past two. Just as an exercise in discipline.

Wish me luck.