My friend Johnnie wanted to say hi to you.

PHOTO BY JOHNNIE WARFIELD

I love Johnnie.

I had a real hard day today music/arts business-wise, and lately when disappointments come in this department I tend to ask myself “what if I had chosen to be a normal person?” Maybe I’d have a real job like a real adult. Maybe I’d be happier working regular hours and not putting myself out there all the damn time.

Sometimes my friends make noises like they are jealous of me. I understand that from the outside my life might look fun, and don’t get me wrong- -it is fun a good bit of the time, so why worry about it? I guess the reasons are these (listed in order of agita-producing power):

1. When you’re over thirty and you’re spending most of your time making trees out of yarn and cupcakes, from time-to-time you wonder if you are mentally unstable. The inner dialog goes something like this:

Is this what people in mental hospitals do before they’re committed? If a totally sane person does make a tree out of yarn and cupcakes, does the sane person tell anyone? Does a totally sane person mention it at cocktail parties? Does the totally sane person put the cupcake/yarn tree in a van and take it around the country?

2. Most people my age own a lot of things including but not limited to:
car
house
dog
kids
bicycles/snow skis/expensive running shoes,etc
pensions

3. Most people my age seem, well…mature. Do I seem mature? I think I don’t. This makes me sad. I think it does, anyway.

4. It occurs to me that #4 doesn’t exist. I was expecting this to be a long list. It’s actually pretty short. Oh wait. No I take it back. #4 is that it sucks to have 8 different jobs for money instead of 1, and to not really know when a paycheck is coming in. But it doesn’t really suck that much. Not that I wouldn’t love to have a regular check automatically deposited into my account. That would be OK with me. Really, really OK.

Maybe this should be a list of the things you have if you aren’t like me:

1. regular paycheck
2. you’re sure you’re totally sane
3. you feel like an adult
4. other people feel like you’re an adult
5. you own stuff

I guess that’s it. I think I feel better now. I can live without those things, for now anyway, subject to revision. I mean, I once thought I could live without an iPod too, which I can’t, so you never know.

But for those of you who get a regular paycheck please appreciate it for me. And those who own expensive running shoes. And those who feel like they are a full-fledged adults and in no danger of landing anywhere on the kooky-to-insane continuum, please, please appreciate it. It’s good.

Yesterday I went for a picnic with a bunch of friends in the park. Amsterdam stood guard to protect us from mean dogs and errant frisbees.

We became jealous of our picnicking neighbor’s Frisbee and were trying to figure out mannerly ways of offering to buy it off them. Since we couldn’t come up with anything we ended up playing Frisbee football with a pita. That works pretty well, if you don’t mind your food getting grass stains on it. The Pita Frisbee ™ only has a 23 minute playing life, though, before it disintegrates completely.

Amsterdam watched the Pita Frisbee with unerring attention.

Yesterday I got this fun illustration gig, which turned into more of a “put stuff on the scanner” gig, but before I got to the scanner I was trying to take pix of stuff with my dopey camera. It mostly didn’t work, but I liked this photo pretty well.

A sculpture by Joshua Allen Harris

PHOTO BY JAD MINTUN

This weekend I went away to rural Pennsylvania–to actual nature for a change. The trip was too short; I had just found a whole stash of blueberry bushes when it was time to drive home. I also picked a few black raspberries, but didn’t have time to find more. I need to go back before its too late!

Today I’ll go and pick Central Park blackberries. They are still probably pretty green, but I’m sure a few will be dark and juicy. I’m already salivating.

This weekend I decided I wanted to learn crochet, because I want to work with plarn on the next tree I’m making. After a few bad starts and more than a few expletives I came up with this beanie. Unfortunately, the beanie only looks regular from this angle–from other angles your visual take-away is BEGINNING CROCHET.

My sister gave me a copy of Willa Cather’s Death Comes to the Archbishop and I just stayed up waaay too late to finish it (Here’s a tip: don’t exercise at 10:30 pm. You won’t be able to sleep). I never did read a Willa Cather novel before, but I’m going to try some others now. I like her plain-spoken style and sympathy for a variety of characters. One thing that strikes me about this novel: though it lacks an antagonist (at least a steady one), it’s still a page turner. You want to know everything about these characters and their landscape. On second thought, the desert sometimes fills the role of antagonist, and at times takes over as ingénue. Yeah, it’s pretty slick how the desert ends up a bona fide character here. I guess this is true of the land in most Western novels of the period, but still- -neat trick.

Thumbs up, Willa. I’m a fan.

Here are a few blogs I’ve been digging:

My friend Laura’s blog Cloverland Farm talks about a wide variety of stuff from her life including Ethiopian Adoption, crafting, reading books, and all sorts of etc. She’s a good writer and I’m always amazed at the wide variety of things she’s become an expert on. Her blog turns me on to all sorts of things including good movies and fun stuff to make like this handbag made of plastic grocery bag yarn.

I just discovered dooce. I know, I’m a little late…seems like everyone in the universe knows about this blog, and they should; it’s interesting, well written, and has great photos. A slice of life blog, if you will.

My sister Peggie just started a blog. She’s very handy with a turn of phrase, that one. I’m excited to watch this one grow. Go Peggie. Write more.

I STOLE THIS PHOTO FROM MYSPACE. SORRY.

I went to see Leah Siegel at the Living Room on Saturday night. I was in a bad, bad mood, brought on by menstrual cramps and an extremely painful muscle in my left leg, which I found out was due to an infected spider bite that swelled to 8 inches across and was hot and purple and made my whole body feel like shee-yit. This is really TMI, but just to say that I was in no mood for sensitive listening music.

In spite of all this, I loved this show. Leah’s voice has been described as “Jeff Buckley channeling Billie Holiday.” I don’t really know how to deconstruct that statement, but somehow it works for me. She has both balls and femininity, and TOTAL CONTROL of the pipes. Really, she’s all over the place with those vocal chords in ways that most people just don’t attempt live. And doing all this vocal gymnastics while playing a mean guitar with interesting chord choices and everything. None of this singer-songwriter downstrokes on the G business that we’re all so familiar with.

Oh, and her band is great…Steve Elliot (who played on my record) is my favorite musician in the whole world and I’m not exaggerating even a little. That man has so many sounds in his guitar vocabulary, and chops that make a lesser guitar player like me want jam picks into my eyes.

After all this talk I’m realizing it’s sounding like Berkley School Wank Music. But, that’s the thing thats so wonderful about Leah Siegel and company. Sure she has an amazing voice and knows how to impress, but it’s the songs that they’re all about. Great songs. Great songs played by great players with a modicum of restraint. Great songs that you end up singing later. Great songs that put you in a particular mood and make you forget there is such a thing as menstrual cramps or infected spider bites.

www.leahsiegel.com

www.myspace.com/leahsiegel

Last night I got a hankering to check up on the super-secret Central Park blackberry patch, known only to me and a million thieving birds. I was worried that I had missed their peak, being out of town for so long, but it turns out they are still mostly quite green. Like this only less blurry:

I was very stealthy in my approach and had my spy camera out before I realized I was standing scant feet away from a supine teenage love-couple. I actually didn’t see them until the first picture was snapped- -the flash revealing their position. It was kind of embarrassing, but not too embarrassing to get a few more berry photos in before I left them to themselves. I was also able to sample a berry or two before they got back to their sloppy kissing. The arrival of a stranger with a camera stopped them for approximately 38 seconds.

I guess some people don’t appreciate the sanctity of secret blackberry patches.