J-Bot best luck in Miami! The Botz needs a drummer...Nothing fancy, just steady. Know anybody? http://ping.fm/emlh7

I'm in an Always Sunny In Philadelphia commercial (:36 in, red hoodie). That counts as famous, right God? http://ping.fm/k9txb

I've started "Ideas and Information" circa 1989. Most thoughts from 20 years ago are still relevant...some are hopelessly outdated.

I'm playing the AprilFoolaPalooza Festival at the Waltz-Astoria on April 11th with Suzy Sellout and others.

Just booked a flight to Chicago for a friend's wedding. Now if only I could finish that best men speech...

A robot mule to carry your books to school. http://ping.fm/GaxKi

Paprika is an amazing anime film about using science to enter one's dreams. I discovered it at the Krazy! exhibit at the Japan Society in NY. http://ping.fm/62vqn

I'm tired of updating so many social networking site statuses (Twitter, FB, GTalk, MySpace, Blogger, LJ) separately, so I'm trying out Ping.fm'ing them all. We'll see how that goes.

Conversations regarding this weekend's Year Of The Ox 30th Birthday Festival helped clarify the direction I've been going with my solo music -- sci-folk. Doing minimal research revealed that DIY music subculture calls science fiction themed folk music "filk", but that may be more Jonathan Coulton-esque.

So I'm doing an informal poll to come up with a stage name that gives a clearer indication of what I'm going for. I've been using Bayard and Friends but that sounds more like a Juno-style cute indie act. Here's my ideas so far, let me know what you support or if you have other cool ideas for an act/album with folk songs about love, Philip K Dick novels and the Apocalypse. My only rule is it has to use the word Bayard in it.

Bayard Normal
Bayard and Other People
Bayard and The Others
...

So a friend at work may be doing a collaboration with me on a techno track. The last collaboration I tried with a random DJ in LA fell through so I'm cautiously excited about this one, but I'm so happy with even the demo I made that I think it was worth it just for that. Here's the track I put together, which is just the bare-bones elements needed to construct a a kick-ass extended track. I've listened to lots of Udachi's stuff so I'm excited about seeing what he does with it.

http://www.bayardrussell.com/music/chemicals_demo1.mp3

On a side path, I was thinking about techno/DJ artists and their particular strength. DJs tend not to create original material, and yet they are every bit a musician as any other type of artist. But they are specialists. In making any song, there are certain elements that when put together could be said to make a great song. This is not a perfect list but it works for this mental exercise:

1. Lyrics
2. Melody
3. Performance
4. Sonic quality
5. Arrangement

It's important that a song have good words and a catchy melody. I'm okay and lyrics and have a knack for catchy melodies so I make a good singer-songwriter; this is my specialty I'm also a good singer but my instrumental virtuosity is limited and spread out over multiple instruments, so I make an average performer. But my recording engineer skills are barely passable and my equipment is low-end (though decent these days due to the speedy improvement of home recording technology), so the sonic quality of recordings I make aren't the best. I'm also not that great at arrangement though I'm learning to arrange elements to build energy in a song.

What makes a DJ unique is that the DJ has specialized entirely in Sonic Quality and Arrangement. A DJ masters equipment and software that allows him to create interesting sound effects and improve the presentation of the material, to levels that regular analog sound engineers can't touch with live music. And the DJ spends countless hours learning how to arrange beats and sound samples in a way that builds up, releases, and rebuilds emotional energy. Anyone who has listened to U2, Fat Boy Slim, or Daft Punk knows how well their songs build in emotional power and intensity through the song. This is the musicianship of the DJ -- they have abandoned Lyrics, Melody and Performance completely in chasing down what may be the underlying backbone of all music -- Energy.

I was looking at my web statistics for my music site, and alas, Shasta's star still outshines my own. Over 2008, my Shasta The Lonely Liger Appreciation Page has garnered far more hits (double in fact) than my main music site. Even more telling, my page and song has been mirrored on multiple MySpace pages and mirror sites, so the total amount of traffic for Shasta is likely even higher. Wouldn't it be interesting if my ultimate part to play in life's circus is a contribution to absurdist pop culture.

To remind you of Shasta's glory, here is the page again for old times sake.

http://bayardrussell.com/oldsite/shasta/

Honestly I don't know why I'm feeling even remotely jealous of a semi-retarded sterile animal who spent its life locked in a cage. Poor Shasta should get all the webhits Shasta wants.

Date:	2008-11-29 20:17
Subject:	Spiderman Jacket!
Security:	Public
Mood:	bouncy
Music:	Spiderman!

The other night I was riding home on the subway and a little kid was wearing a Spiderman jacket, and he was holding a little plastic figurine that he made leap back and forth between the window and his mother. It made me think about what made a little kid want to wear a Spiderman jacket, and suddenly I had a song idea. I played the idea at the next practice and developed it further, and tonight I recorded a quick demo. It's raw and messy but that befits what is essentially a punk tribute to the Ramones' tribute to Spiderman. Check it out. I pasted the lyrics below as well.

http://www.bayardrussell.com/oldsite/music/spidermanjacket.mp3

Spiderman Jacket
by Bayard Russell c2008, for Negative Ken

I'm gonna wear my Spiderman Jacket!
It's got a big picture of Spiderman on it!
Maybe it will rub off on me
And I'll be more like he can be
And then I'll tell my family
That I'm a Spiderman!

I'm gonna wear my Spiderman Jacket!
Spiderman's name is written all over it!
I want to swing from the skyscrapers
And then I'll be in all the papers
And I won't buy a Metrocard
Cause I'm a Spiderman!

I'm gonna wear my Spiderman jacket!
I just know the ladies are loving it!
Girls will all look up at me
And ask me what time I'll be free
And I'll say NEVER! cause I'll be
saving New York City!

{INSTRUMENTAL}

I'm gonna wear my Spiderman Jacket!
It's got a big picture of Spiderman on it!
I am not his biggest fan
He's just the guy I think I am
If I had Superpowers too
I would be Spiderman
Cause I'm a Spiderman
Yeah I'm a Spidermaaaan!

Date:	2008-09-17 17:00
Subject:	Bolo Lives!
Security:	Public
Mood:	giddy

I didn't think it was possible, but I have in my hands a Bolo book. Turns out one was sitting in the communal random book library in the office common area.

Bolo, by the way, is a series of fantasy novels where an robot Super-tank with a heart of gold repeatedly saves humanity from alien invaders. Kind of like Knight Rider only it's a giant flying tank that loves you. I know it sounds like something a 9-year old would come up with, but this is evidently quite a popular series.

The book I have is Bolo Rising, where alien invaders enslave the planet Cloud and reprogram Bolo to be a prison guard, and it's up to one man to bring Bolo back to the side of good so everyone's favorite Super-tank can defeat the evil aliens and save the day!

And the best part is the cover -- it has a giant tank surfing on a wave -- yes SURFING -- while it fires its twin phallic turret guns in the air, as butt-naked women watch the tank in admiration from the rocks below. Nevermind that the giant wave Bolo is surfing on is about to crush them all -- just a glimpse of Bolo's steely tank frame makes it all worth it.

I am so looking forward to this book.

No, not that race...race for the cure! This sunday I ran 5k in the Susan B. Komen run/walk against breast cancer. I signed up through my work, but I couldn't find my coworkers in the crowd so I did my own thing. Cynthia Nixon from SITC spoke there along with Stephen Colbert, who was funny as usual (he did a jazz rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner and quipped "I didn't train for this run, nor did I stretch. Instead I took an epidural. Works wonders!"). Then I scooted up to the front with the other runners and started off. THe first mile was tricky to navigate because many walkers opt to start with the runners so they don't have to be stuck behond other walkers, but as a result all the runners are stuck behind them and have to carefully dodge around. By the end of the first mile I had run around all of them and could get into my usual pace. That being said I finished the race in half an hour, just under a 10 minute mile on average. Since this was the first time I wasn't with close friends this weekend I started to fall into the "time to think about things" mode, but seeing all the runners with "In Memory of ___" pinned to the back of their shirts brought me back to why I race. It's just emotionally moving to run with all these people and just see the magnitude of what dear folks people have lost to just this form of cancer, and also of the great empathy New Yorkers have in all participating in the event together (literally tens of thousands of people participated in addition to the thousands who donated). It's a reminder for me to keep coming back to that well of compassion towards others because it's such a rewarding thing to approach life in that way.

After the race was over I wasn't ready to go home so I tooled around for hours outside in the hot, humid Central Park, still wearing my race gear. I met up with my friend S and later Grumph, and we chatted and ate Grey's Papaya hot dogs and let the day pass. When I came home that evening I probably smelled pretty bad, but after a shower and some fresh duds I was ready to have dinner at the nearby Neptune Diner with my girlfriend, where I gorged myself on fettucine alfredo with chicken and vegetables and a strawberry milkshake. What a day.

Flashback to the previous day, I went to Ren Faire with some friends. Not everyone was in the greatest mood but we still all had a lot of fun. Highlights for me was watching glassblowers make a wine goblet with a dolphin for the stem (watching them toil for 45 minutes only to have it break at the last step and become useless reminds me how delicate an art it is), and my adventure on the high seas. Okay, a pond. At the end of the day I had taken a paddleboat with S and E, and after paddling around we decided to have a race. During the race we paddled too hard and the gears broke, meaning our pedals no longer meved the boat, So we were stuck in the middle of a pond with no way to move. So E, pedalling a boat by herself, managed to tow us to shore through some tricky steering and some sore legs. It was an adventure, and actually a lot of fun being rescued from having to swim through disgusting pond water. Other high points for me was eating a tasty turkey leg this year that made up for the sub-par one I had last year, and learning how to shoot a bow properly from E who it turns out set some records in college for bowmanship. And I actually enjoyed driving there and back - sometimes driving can be stressful but that saturday traffic wasn't bad and the whole process was meditative.

So it's back to work today. My evening is unexpectedly free so I may go down to Bowery and Houston to join the meditation community for a sit and talk, whick I haven't had time to do in ages.

SPOILER ALERT - if you haven't seen THE DARK KNIGHT don't read this.

***

I've had a growing hunch about the Joker that I think explains a lot -- if you take the Joker's statement that he is an "Agent of Chaos" at face value, it means that the Joker is actually a God. A trickster god, like Loki or Pan, or the gods from Neil Gaiman's Sandman chronicles.

This explains a few things:
1. Why the Joker is the only character without any background story, who just appears in Gotham with no other name, no fingerprints, no record, no identity to speak of. Even his own stories about his facial scars are inconsistent.

2. Why the Joker appears to be omniscient, letting himself be found in anticipation of a series of uncontrollable events that nonetheless work in his favor.

3. Why he is supernaturally able in multiple instances to smuggle in hundreds of barrels of gasoline along with wireless-transmission detonators into two full building floors, a heavily-monitored hospital, and two heavily-monitored boats full of people without anyone noticing and with apparently no help.

4. How in his final scene, he has filled a building with hostages dressed like clowns, and he is the only one there to have done any of the work.

He can do all this because he is a God -- the only thing that gives people a chance with him is that he is testing their souls for sport.

Thoughts?

I wanted to post about my experience managing a music stage this past weekend. Make Music New York is a yearly DIY event featuring over 540 artists and groups this year playing on sidewalks and playgrounds across the city. DIY stands for Do It Yourself, meaning there's no formal stage and whatever happens depends on the participating artists, and as I discovered, the audience.

So about a week out from the event, the coordinator for the Astoria events called me up and invited me to the production meeting for the event. When I got there I discovered I was the only artist performing at Hoyt Playground that bothered to show up. So I became the de facto stage manager. What the heck, I thought, and threw myself into it, volunteering my equipment and time and sending emails out to the other artists also playing at Hoyt.

Unfortunately I was the only one willing to put any generosity out there, other than the coordinator. So my speakers and his speakers became the only sound equipment offered to the group, which ended up being fine. Only one of the artists put up flyers, and few of them invited people to come see them. So most of the people seeing the event would be people who would be at a playground on a saturday afternoon. This means kids.

So after a mad scramble to set up with help from a few of my good friends, we had flyers at the major entrances, power via an extension cable leading around the handball courts, and a DIY stage set up in front of a chain-link fence. It felt good to pull off that part of the challenge.

The first couple performances went well, and my set went smoothly. But towards the end of my set a group of 8-year-olds came over and started being slightly rowdy in front of me, doing cartwheels and dancing around. No big deal, but they were just warming up.

The next act, unfortunately, was an older woman playing flute along with a couple surly men. The music wasn't fun for 8-year-olds and no crowds were there, so the kids got bolder. One of the men got angry and told them off. Bad idea -- from this point on the kids would be a problem.

It was at this point that my role of stage manager went from being coordinator to authority figure. As the kids got bolder they started yelling "You suck" and "Get off the stage" and doing what they could to fluster and disrupt the performers. I approached them and told them to respect the performers, and of course that didn't work. So I threatened to call the police which calmed them for a few minutes until they decided the threat wasn't real. So I made a compromise and called the park superintendent. As soon as he drove up in his park van the kids scattered.

The next few acts went off fine, and the superintendent decided it was safe to leave. Well of course, as soon as he left the kids came back and brought a larger group of their friends. What was 4 kids became 9, and things started getting out of control. We were down to the last group so I decided to stick this one through and get out of there. The kids seemed to respect me as an authority figure so when I monitored the initial band setup they were behaved, so I took the opportunity to take some equipment back to my apartment a couple blocks away.

When I got back it looked like a nightmare. The kids had thrown the earplugs the band had brought all over the park, they had stolen drum sticks and were running up and hitting the drums at random times, and they were taunting the band, yelling at them to stop playing. The band had cut their set short and were finishing up what they decided was their last song.

Now as soon as the event was ending, the kids changed the tune. "When are you playing here again?" they asked. Some asked for autographs from the band members. And in the end, one of the more charismatic band members convinced the rowdiest of the bunch to actually help them bring equipment back to their van. In the end the kids weren't really against the event, but their way of participating was to show off in front of their friends and test their limits.

So, quite an experience. I think it may have been different if artists had invited crowds of their own to the event, or if it had been hosted somewhere other than a kid's park. In any case I learned quite a bit about managing stages and managing children. Neither of which are particularly pleasant experiences, but good to try once.

I've been listening to Kimya Dawson lately and spontaneously recorded via Garageband what ended up being a manic cover of it. I really, really like giants.

http://www.bayardrussell.com/ilikegiants.mp3

This year I attended Swap-O-Rama, a yearly event near Washington Square Park where like-minded DIY folks donate clothing and items to a mass collection, then pick out other items to silk-screen, stitch, and decorate to create new clothing. I went crazy with the silk-screening, my one sewing machine job was a black hoodie which I added a zipper that goes all the way around the hood. Anyhow, here's my stuff this year, I'm looking forward to participating next year!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11399139@N06/tags/swaporama/

I was reading an article in the New Yorker about the Murakami exhibit, and later while learning more about him on the web I stumbled upon this music video made to promo his Louis Vuitton line. The music was by Fantastic Plastic Machine, which I've been exploring and loving. I'm taking an interest in artists (Deltron 3030, Daft Punk) that explore science fiction and futurist themes, and FPM is definitely playing with ideas of "flat modernity." Here are my favorites.

Murakami "Superflat Monogram"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C84FLwm3DA

City Lights
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlYwWfpBDAE

Disco at the End of the World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1w-rI71g24

Why Not?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfLVb0yMenA

Theme of Luxury
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WppwGogsrUI

Dear Mr. Salesman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl-lPihWfkA

My friend Miss Moon was able to take some videos of the President's Day concert, thanks Moon! The piano you hear in the background is from the talented Rightsaiddave. I felt like my delivery of "Hello Goodbye" and "Apocalypse Music" came out well so I might move towards doing my vocals that way more often. Anyhow thanks everyone that could make it that rainy night for the free beer and tater tots, and here's the vids for folks that were unable to come. :-)

Hello Goodbye
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDomtE_kKYY

A Candle That's Burning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4T6YxoSdaA

Apocalypse Music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo040VW3QqM