I'm on PBS!!!!!

PBS!PBS!PBS!

In June I did an interview with PBS NOVA SCIENCE NOW'S webseries the SECRET LIVES OF SCIENTISTS.  It's a project that interview scientists with weird hobbies.  Click on this link to see all the segments they made. 

NOV 13 926MSA2 show

Jason from Calumet-Hecla forwarded some pictures to me that his buddy, Paul Hache, took at the firehouse show last weekend.  

Jacob thought it would be a good idea to begin the show by slapping ourselves with pancakes for 3 minutes while looping the "uh-uh-uh-uh" at the end of Prince's Purple Rain side one. That's what those pictures are of.  Weiiirrrrrrrddddddddoooes.

At the end of the show Jacob said that playing in our band was like doing standup comedy.  

Also during the show Max shoved my head in his crotch while I played a guitar solo.  It was really extreme.  Really intesified the moment.  

Show this Friday at Firehouse, Worcester. Recap.

My band, 926 Main Street Apt. 2, has a show with Worcester dudes,  Calumet-Hecla and some noisemakers, Slasher-Risk and Grasshopper from NYC at the Firehouse in Worcester this friday the 13th night.  8:30pm.  Email for directions if you wish.  

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Last weekend, played with Pablo and Drew out in 

Alfred, NY.  Ate some bad college food.  Played a show with a broken PA system.  And came back.  On the way back, listened to: 

The New Flaming Lips album, which Paul was upset about because the drummer played nothing but drum fills the whole album and I was upset about because it was boring and droney. I vowed to never write a boring song.  

The New Weezer album, which I have embraced, after finding myself able to sympathize with Rivers' obsession with popular music and culture and realizing that this album is just an extension of that obsession and deciding its ok to buy into his obsession more or less because it is Weezer and I want to take that ride.

Took Isaac Asimov's Treasurey of Humor  out of the Norwood Library.  It has an awesome introduction by Asimov but the book consists primarily of jokes Asimov would tell at parties or his friends would tell and most of them are real flatliners.  There are a lot of golf jokes,  and

 fewer science jokes than I would have expected.  The book is written with commentary between jokes that incorporate a lot of "humor theory"  which I find conceptually fascinating, but the way Asimov writes it, it's almost like he sets up a joke and tells it poorly first and then gives alternate punchlines or variations of the joke to make it funny.  So if you are just looking for good okes to tell don't get this book.  If you are interested in what Isaac Asimov finds funny and ready to have your sense of humor described as unsophisticated then this is the joke book for you.  

Also according to the Asimov wikipedia, in the BU archives there is an outline for a scifi screenplay Asimov wrote for Paul McCartney's band WINGS, about a band that finds out they are being impersonated by aliens.  WHOA.  

If that's there, imagine all the other crazy Asimov stuff in the BU archives....

Midwest Halloween Weekend

Paul and I had a couple shows in Saint Louis and Chicago this weekend. We flew into Chicago on Friday night and went to Dave Murray's Halloween party. I fell asleep somewhere around 1 or 2 at the party in a chair. I was kind of beat from getting up early to study for and take my probability exam and then all the planes, trains, and automobiles that got us to the big city. I told Paul on the flight over that if I could live for a million years I would never fly in an airplane, or ride in a car, or probably go much of anywhere, because the chance of being killed during such activities is large that if you rode an airplane say 5 times a year and each time a flight occurs there is about 1 in ten million chance that it results in a fatality (the actual chance is a lower depending on which airline you choose, unless it is a Chinese airline). Making a total of 5 million flights over a period of 1 million years - the probability that all 5 million of those flights are fatality-free is (9,999,999/10,000,000)^(5,000,000)= 0.604. That means if you take 5 million flights there is a 60% chance that your flight will not result in a fatality and a 40% chance that your at least one of your flights will crash and result in a fatality.

Although if you lived for a million years flying may become a lot safer. Because human beings have such short lifespans we can engage in all sorts of ridiculous behavior like flight and driving really fast down highways in small metal cages. Paul started talking about how the elves in the Lord of the Rings would got to war and die. I thought some of them probably get sick of living after a while, but that's just me talking from a cynical nonelven perspective.

So anyway I fell asleep at Dave's party and it continued on for three or four more hours. People kept sitting down next to me and trying to make small talk. I would open my eyes and say "yeah" and get up and move to a new chair to sleep on.

On Halloween we met up with Phil from Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and Grace and ate at Hot Doug's. I asked Doug what kind of hot dogs Steve Albini likes to eat. He said he usually goes for the bizzare sorts of meats that Doug usually has as "Game of the Week." Figures. The Game of the Week was Alligator sausage with goat cheese and it was amazing. Phil also got an awesome buffalo sausage that was out of this world. And the straightup chicago dog is real good there too. Doug rules.

We had a great show at the Beverly Art Center in Chicago that evening. At one point I went up to the balcony where it was mostly just small elementary-school-aged kids that were all high-fiving me and yelling "I LOVE YOU!" they were so cool! They were having so much fun!

I broke my keyboard too. Thought we could pick up a replacement power supply at radio shack, but Roland must not make their stuff with interchangeable parts because we couldn't get it to work right. I bust through those JUNO-D's maybe once every two hundred shows. Gotta get a new one. We borrowed a keyboard via twitter for St. Louis. Thanks to Joanna, Brett, and Zach for pulling through, if you guys ever read this.

We played on the roof of the City Museum in Saint Louis. This is the best museum in the world. Please go there. It is like a McDonalds playplace but without the McDonalds and 4,000 times bigger and more fun with caves and a ton of awesomely crafted rooms and tunnels for our exploration. You can ride a 13 story slide! I think it's 13 maybe its only 7 but it's still awesome. We played on the roof. We did a short part two in in a schoolbus on the roof.

Here is a picture of me at the city museum cafe that Grace took.

The Peppermint Patties - My One Night Band

So a couple weeks ago I did this event in Boston organized by www.bostonbandcrush.com

It was called ONE NIGHT BAND. 40 musicians from around Boston reported in the morning to the Middle East, were assigned somewhat randomly to eight different bands of five people and had to come up with three original songs and a cover in eight hours and preform them later that evening. I was in a band called the Peppermint Patties. We were supposedly going for a fifties pop feel while singing songs about killing people. I was in a band with a bunch of all stars - Rich Adkins (the In-out), Chris Mulvey (Muy Cansado), Jason Dunn (the Luxury), and Julie Two Times (The New Alibis, Vagiant).

You can read Rich's recap of the show here as well as view some video of the show:

http://www.bostonbandcrush.com/2009/09/one-night-band-recap-crush-peppermint.html

Also thanks to the resources and industrial drive of Dunn we somehow managed to record an EP of the songs we wrote which is available here:

http://www.bostonbandcrush.com/2009/08/one-night-band-download-peppermint.html

More stuff that I make

HOLY STUFF! IT'S STUFF.

926 Main Street Apt. 2 Demos $3

Telephone/Microphone with phone-wire to 1/4 inch cable  $15

When you plug it into an amp it sounds like a phone.  I can make you one in RED if you want. 

These items available for sale through me or at the FYC (fuck yeah center) in Worcester, MA. 

T SHIRT

SPRAY PAINT AND STENCIL

$5 or whatever

NIRVANA

NIRVANA PLAYED AT MY HOUSE LAST NIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!

more at www.youtube.com/user/joedegeorge

KIDZ BOOK REPORT: Pinkwater's The Neddiad

Marty let me borrow his copy of The Neddiad by Daniel Pinkwater about a month ago.  

THIS IS A GOOD KIDZ BOOK.  3.5  STARZ out of 5.

This book is narrated by an elementary school aged boy of post WWII USA.  Ned tells the story of his family's impulse move from Chicago to Los Angeles, the exciting world of LA where buildings can be shaped like giant hats or doughnuts or other things, and how he is destined to save the world from an ancient dark devolutionary Kronos-type chaos. 

Although the impending doom of civilization is the suspense tool that keeps you reading throught the book, the real strength of the book is in its simple descriptions of the world Ned encounters.  Being a kid in the 1950's and the son of what he calls "an eccentric," he finds himself meeting all sorts of stereotyped period characters, ghosts, and making great friendships.  The best part of the book is that all the adults are a little nutty, especially Ned's parents.  But by far the best characters in the book are the "shamans"  whom Ned seeks advice from to help him save the world.  But they exhibit such existential qualities such that they would much prefer to go bowling on the eve of the world's destruction then assist Ned with his destiny.  LOL hilarity.

There are also police from outer space.

The Neddiad is very easy to read as it is a children's book.  It is smart, light and, funny.  I felt like I was nine again cozying up with a Roald Dahl tale.

The sequel is the Yggessy and is the sort-of sequel and should be released this year.  It can be read for free, at least some of it at Pinkwater's website. I'm gonna start reading it now.

The Yule Ball 2008

No New Stuff!

My brother is undertaking this project where he is not buying anything new. It's sort of a statement on consumer culture in our society. It should serve as a illustrative document on alternatives to our wasteful commodity system and help people think more about REDUCING, RECYCLYING, and REUSING

This is the third video in the series. I did the opening animation sequence and I also talk about donut economics at the end. It's worth watching.