Tuesday, October 30, 2007


I have a customer who recently went to a unicorn-themed Halloween party. He made a wonderful unicorn costume (see top picture above). He made the unicorn's rear end and hind legs which he strapped behind him. His real legs were the unicorn's front legs.
Below is an Avenging Unicorn toy which is shown impaling a mime.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

John Bruno, a professor at UC Davis, has world-class jazz pianists do concerts in his house. About 40 people came to the Terrason concert and brought pot luck (great wine!). I sat in the front and had a great view of Jackie's hands.

Saturday, October 27, 2007


I tuned the piano for Jackie Terrason today and then stayed to watch the concert. Amazing! He is super-talented. He played both louder and softer than almost any other pianist I've heard, and also played inside the piano, as shown in this video.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Me in my $20 pirate costume.
Amy Aquino can touch her tongue to her nose... but this girl can put her tongue in her nose.

Thursday, October 25, 2007


We went to see the Joseph Cornell show at SFMOMA. My favorite artist! Back in 1980, I went to a big retrospective of his work at the New York MOMA. Today's show had a lot more source material, including writings, commercial design he did, and even a funny spoof newsletter of farm news that he did for his relatives. The best thing was a case containing tools and materials from his studio. Amazing.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Some pirate masks I made for the Halloween pirate party at the Pools on Friday.
A very strange Halloween mask.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

In a piano teacher's studio: music from Final Fantasy, a video game.
Saturday night I played a wedding with the George Bruno big band. During the job some of the players were listening to the Red Sox/Indians game on earbuds.
This floor-to-ceiling display case (dimmer switch for the light!) is in the bedroom of my customer's house. There are three of these cases, which retail for about $3,000 each. The boy is displaying his collection of LEGO Star Wars models.
Someone stole three of my four car pool stickers. They're probably for sale on Craigslist right now. The number is HE088457, so if you see them, make a report to the proper authorities.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

I have a customer who obsessively enters contests. He spends about an hour a day filling out forms for contests (now, mostly online). He has won numerous small things and a few big ones, like this trumpet and a car.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Outside the Antique Company there is a sign that says:
WE CAN PROVE THAT
ELIZABETH TAYLOR
IS 316 YEARS OLD
Inside they have a document from 1691 signed by among others, someone named Elizabeth Taylor. You can have it for only $95!

Monday, October 15, 2007

Jamaican instrument


This instrument, belonging to a longtime customer, comes from Jamaica and is carved from a single piece of bamboo.
My customer recently bought this Baldwin grand. She's pretty sure it once belonged to Vince Gueraldi (composer of the music for Charlie Brown Christmas.)

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Thiebaud, Wiley, etc. at UC Davis

UC Davis show: Thiebaud, Wiley, Arneson, de Forest, Neri

We went to the Art Building at UC Davis and saw a wonderful show. Back in the sixties they had five art professors who were destined for fame: Wayne Thiebaud, William Wiley, Roy de Forest, Manuel Neri, and Robert Arneson. This show features work by all of them.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Jennifer found this folding plastic fork. I've been complaining for years that our forks are taking up way too much room.

Friday, October 12, 2007

From a Methodist church. "Devo" stands for devotion, not devolution.
This skull/horns assemblage is in a customer's house that is FULL of great stuff. She paid twenty-five cents for it. As my old sculpture professor, Sig Rennels, used to say, "I wanna see a whole army of 'em."
Halloween gets more and more elaborate each year and starts earlier. These are some cat/rat ensembles at Wishing Well. I bought a pirate costume for the Pools' Halloween party.
Last night the Philharmonic called me about a trumpet concerto. At the rehearsal they realized that the orchestra parts were in E minor but the soloist had learned the concerto in F minor. He has perfect pitch so playing it in another key sounded really wrong. They asked me to enter the whole concerto into the computer and transpose it. I worked on it for about three hours and realized that there was no way I could finish by Saturday at 1 (the last rehearsal). So I returned the score to the Philharmonic office (in a trendy new part of Oak Park!) Later they called me back and asked if I could just do the string parts. I said I thought so, and Katie Cannon (the operations manager, who I knew as a stage hand at Best of Broadway and Music Circus) brought it over to the house. But just as she was standing at the door, the soloist called Katie and told her he had figured out a way to play the piece in E minor. Hooray! And I'm also going to get four concert tunings out of it.
I bought the audiobook version of Stephen Colbert's book I am America and so can you! and every night Jennifer and I listen to a couple of chapters on the iPod, sharing the earbuds.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

I played with John Skinner's band at an outdoor auto show. Here is an old Cadillac with pointed boobs.
I played with John Skinner at a birthday party with a 20s Chicago theme. Everyone was in costume.
I tuned for Dionne Warwick at the Fox Theatre in Stockton. For the first time, I noticed that it has this wonderful upper lobby across from the balcony.
Before seeing Philip Glass's Appomattox done by the San Francisco Opera, I stopped by backstage to see Lori Harrison, the head of props. She and I have known each other since elementary school.
The SoMa Cafe has the key to its restroom on this piece of pipe.
The SoMa Cafe is a museum of clocks.
I actually found street parking in San Francisco.
I have an old friend in San Francisco who still makes it a point never to pay for parking. When we went to the opera he dropped the rest of us off and went to park in the Tenderloin instead of the parking garage.
We visited Oto's new Asian market on Freeport. The kids' items have the most amazing graphics on them.
I played with Ron Davis' big band at Savannah's on Wednesday. They loved us! I left my jacket at the club and Ron still has it.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

Wendell gave me five copies of this CD from the June recording session. The sound quality is amazing! Music to sell BMWs by, indeed. Inside I get credited for composing two of the pieces and conducting 11 of them. I'm going to post the two pieces soon so you can listen to them.

Monday, October 01, 2007

We were sitting at a table outside Espresso Metro when some blades of dry grass floated down. We looked up and saw the rear end of a pigeon building a nest on the roof.
Also on the table: a crude rendition of a "no smoking" icon.

Kitchen done

Kitchen remodel
Our remodel is done. For those of you who can't get enough of kitchen remodel pictures, click on the thumbnail above.