G: On
Friday Stacy came over and walked Katy with me, then we hung around and
chatted and I made her some lunch. She's off on a month long trip
around the country, interviewing new places to move to, perhaps. Drive
safely, Stacy!
Over the weekend I attended a clay workshop at the Community Center. It
was interesting and fun, and I got some pieces out of it that are very
different than what I usually do, but I'm pretty sure the techniques
aren't going to make it into my usual repertoire. Still, fun to try new
things.
On Saturday night we went to see
Paul
and Storm and
Jonathan
Coulton
AGAIN at Ram's Head Tavern in Annapolis. Renee came with us and Izolda
met us there. The set was a bit shorter than at the Birchmere a little
while ago, there were definitely some songs missing from P&S's set
but JoCo always mixes it up a bit. But all the major ones were covered.
Later in the show JoCo even asked for requests, which sent the crowd
a-shouting, so then he asked us all to please shut up. He picked two
tables at the front and played their requests (Kenesaw Mountain Landis
and Mandelbrot Set), and he never heard me shout "Over There", and
later said that would have been a good option but he plays some of the
older songs less and less. He said he couldn't play (didn't know how!)
one of the songs Renee shouted out (Drinking With You), and something
else someone asked for.
When he (w/P&S) did Code Monkey a bunch of monkeys were thrown
onstage that someone had passed out to some of the crowd (our table
included). I heaved a much larger clown monkey up there, which
frightened them. JoCo picked it up and said, "Oh, a clown monkey.
That's the saddest kind of monkey." Soon Paul and Storm were sticking
the little monkeys that had Velcro on their hands to the wall behind
them. Then one of them said “It looks like we defeated 4 monkeys in
combat”!
Later, after they did Creepy Doll, I threw this very weird looking doll
I found at the thrift store. It was some sort of an Anne Geddes doll
knock off - it looked like a little kid wearing a teddy bear costume
with yellow yarn hair sticking out, independently swiveling arms and
legs (shudder), and her bare butt showing through the costume. It was
really ugly and weird and kinda creepy. That frightened them quite a
bit. When Paul picked it up, one of the legs was completely bent
backwards; totally twisted around in an unnatural way. It made it look
that much weirder. JoCo told Paul to keep it away from him. Paul put it
behind them and said it was between his bag and a pile of monkeys.
At one point when people were shouting things, JoCo said, "Did you say
Foghat, or Fogelberg?" and followed with a cover of "Leader of the
Band." It's a lovely song and they did it really well, except P&S's
penny whistles were humorously off key. We loved his performance of Mr.
Fancy Pants, that he extended from a short song into something very
cool with a
Zendrum. You can see
a video of it at a different
performance
here.
As has seemed to become customary since the Birchmere show, they closed
the encore with First of May and Sweet Caroline. Which was SWEET!
Very soon after as we were still at our table, Joco walked right by us
and Renee called out, "Hi Jonathan!" and he stopped and chatted with
us. I said "I love you even more now," and he said something like, "I
love you more too!" and pointed back and forth between us. He said he
had noticed our table enjoying the show quite a bit (we sang along with
everything, and I kept thinking he had been looking over at us a lot,
but there was glare on is glasses so I couldn't be sure). I gave him a
button that the Looneys made that says All Hail The Internet, because
last time we saw him (and is some other youtube videos of recent shows)
he was wearing a t-shirt that said "The Internet Is Awesome." Renee
asked if he remembered us and he said no, but then she brought up the
Birchmere and he said oh yeah! Or something. Izolda gave him a copy of
her CD and said she'd gotten so much of his music she wanted to give
some back to him. Then he went off to sign autographs and such.
I wanted to talk to him still, so after a bathroom break I waited for
Renee to buy the same shirt I'd bought during intermission ("Visit
Beautiful Skullcrusher Mountain" (front), and "What's with all the
screaming?" (back)) and we waited behind just a few people in the
otherwise still crowded anteroom to the venue. Soon it appeared JoCo
was free so we squeezed over to him (they were behind a bar that served
as a protective barrier). I said Hi again a bit sheepishly and I might
have said we wanted to bother him some more. I told him it might seem
weird but that I'm friends with Weird Al and that I'd shown Al his
website, but then someone else had given Al a disc of his music and
that Al was enjoying it and that he said "Hi." We got to talking about
Al for a while, Jonathan seemed impressed, he said he's a huge fan of
Al's, and to say "Hi" back.
We talked about the
back
of the
Thing
a Week 4 disc
that talks about
Weird Al (the liner notes by John Hodgman) and when I said I was
wondering what the heck that meant he explained how he knew it seemed a
bit derogatory about Al but all that it meant was that he and John
Hodgman were talking about each of their little smidgens of fame they
were gathering, and that JoCo's fame category would be the Weird Al
category, and while Al is very famous he is not, like, Tom Cruise
famous, and that that compared to Al their fame was so minuscule and
that was depressing.
I reminded Renee to tell him about dancing at her house to his music,
which she did, then asked him to write a tango. Which he indicated he
might.
A couple other people were waiting to talk to him so I shook his hand
and we left. It was a great evening! I'm a big gushing fan girl!
Here
is his blog post about the show, and there are comments from me, Renee,
and Izolda...
Wednesday John and I ran in a two mile fun run at Goddard. We stayed
together and our time was around 22 minutes 32 seconds. I felt terrible
afterwards for a while. It was hot out. I even got mild stomach cramps,
but just for about 15 minutes. Then I went to a yoga class at Greenbelt
Om, intermediate. I really like the intermediate classes there - the
others don't seem to give me much of a workout - but that may be
because there are often beginners in classes so it's scaled back a bit
for them.