My customer Petra Sullivan has a friend on Vachon Island, Washington state, who hosts a big party every year. Each party has a theme and the hostess does a wonderful flyer every year illustrating the thematic activities. This cover goes with the Drums of Africa party. 

Last night I gave my talk on business ethics at our tuners' meeting. Here I am explaining the concept of a brain in a vat. 

We went to see Little Miss Sunshine last night and loved it. This picture shows the shiny, spotless, out-of-order popcorn machine at the Tower. 

This is a nice picture that wasn't used in the magazine article. This will be my head shot forever until I don't resemble it at all anymore. 

Milton Dick dies

I used to play in Milton Dick's big band. He was a much-beloved and -admired band director at Elk Grove High, and had his own band longer than almost anyone. A lot of what he played was kitsch, but he also played the original arrangements of big band classics like "In the Mood," "String of Pearls," and "Moonlight Serenade" (all Glenn Miller, I believe), which no one does anymore. Talking to him and his sidemen was a window into a world long gone.
Read his obitiuary here.

Last night was opening night of the 34th annual Best of Broadway; it was my 13th year. This is Kat Behry, the children's choreographer. She's in her 30s and has been doing the show since she was a teenager. Now her own daughter is in the show too.
At the party afterwards we talked about some of the recent alumni of B of B who are now working in New York: Jennifer Foote (who also went to UCI, Rachel's school) has done several Broadway shows and is now in the ensemble of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels; Kevin Ankele, formerly our sound guy, is doing pyrotechnics and electrics for the Phantom tour; Geoff something, a former stage manager of B of B, is stage managing shows in New York(currently Lestat); Becky Riker, a B of B and then a Kings dancer, went to New York just this year and has already done an Off-Broadway show and will be on a Christmas tour of the Midwest; Jewel Owens is not dancing any more but is house manager of a Broadway theater (Gershwin?). 

In Stockton's Fox Theatre, tuning for the "Chicago" tour

Every Saturday, the barista Clay at Espresso Metro fills up the tip jar with water "so no one can steal tips." Today, customer Leslie McFadden (a tuning customer of mine) gave Clay a rubber duckie to put in the water-filled jar. 

Jennifer got this lizard in Australia. It gets bigger -- MUCH bigger -- when you put it in water. I emailed this picture to Rachel, and she replied:

i'm more interested in that fudge brownie mix in the background. how bigdo you think that would get in water?
rachel 

Spirit Ball

Jennifer got this Halloween toy at Raley\'s today while food shopping.

Laura Sherman, the outstanding harpist from the pit of Wicked that I played with in Peter Pan, is currently on tour with Barbra Streisand. I asked her to do a blog of the tour, and if not, then to at least send pictures so I could post them. Her reply:

You're funny. Unfortunately, I can't. We had to sign a confidentiality form. Will have to leave things to people's imagination, I guess.

This is from a high school (!!) production in Southern California this past spring. It's the opening number of Songs from a New World, a musical revue by Jason Robert Brown. (Rachel and I are two of the legion of JRB fans.)

Incidentally, my cousin Chris sent all three of his daughters to this high school.

Jewish-Filipino wedding

Setting up with the John Skinner band before a wedding. The groom was Jewish and the bride Filipino; the ceremony was traditionally Jewish, so she must have converted. During the party, the groom got up on stage with a guitar and sang a song in Tagalog. Half the crowd went wild!

Three questions

Hanging show at Espresso Metro

Today Paul and I hung our pictures at Espresso Metro. They will be up all September.

The amazing Mario Sebastian!

A vintage turntable

Where you\'ll find me every morning

At the Holiday Inn

Full article

I scanned the full article. Click here to see it.

Sacramento Magazine article

Yesterday I saw the article about me in Sacramento Magazine. At first I was afraid to read it, but finally I worked up the courage, and I think it turned out quite well. Unfortunately, they only show the beginning of it on line. You have to buy the magazine to see the whole piece.

Best of Broadway set 2006

Rachel, do you like penguins?

Woodpecker Doorknocker

Sometimes they remind me...

What were once transmissions are now missions. 

My lunch on the road: convenience store hot dog and Diet Coke. 

My mask of the noted piano tuner and composer Steve Coolidge. 

Australia Tour Reunion Party

Stan in the Bee

Click here for a big Sacramento Bee article on Stan Lunetta

Big Ball 9/11 memorial

From Friday night's returned Peace Corps Volunteer dinner: Aicha and Steve met as Volunteers in Mali and realized that they both lived in Sacramento within blocks of each other. Aicha is going to Egypt soon to get a master's in international law. 

State Fair Highlights

New sticker

Adding the Robin Netzer sticker to the collection on the Espresso Metro cash register

A church in the style of ancient Rome

...BY THE ”TOW TRUCK.” 

Fighting Ninja Puppets

Rachel modeling the Robin Netzer mask. 

Why I love being a tuner

Our favorite bakery in Silver Lake has wonderful mini bagels. 

Seen on a dumpster in Los Angeles. 

After tennis on Sunday, Hal showed me these tomatoes that he was sun-drying. 

Hypersonic mosquito repeller

This roll of masking tape belongs to a man who never throws anything away. 

Car Talk Remix 2

Car Talk 2003

Antique apartment

Cell phones

Displayed at a customer's house

These posters are on a utility box on Silver Lake Boulevard near the home of Jennifer's mother Faye.

This sign is posted at the Burbank airport. 

Silver Lake is the new Melrose

Hella janky

Rachel gives a tutorial in how to use the youthful argot.

Rachel got an old coin and an antique match case to keep it in. She could hang it from her watch fob! 

Rachel is back from Europe, and she looks stunning. 

I stuck an Erik label on the cash register at Espresso Metro. And someone printed out my eulogy for Erik and taped it to the espresso machine. 

Sacramento magazine shoot

Jeff Ross came over today to take my picture for the Sacramento magazine article. He decided to shoot me surrounded by masks I had made. (Stan will be so happy to see that his mask is in front!) It took a long time to set up the masks on stands (called "c-stands", short for Century stands) and get the lighting right.

I saw this manifesto on a car parked near Music Circus. 

Here is the Sacramento City College Concert Band setting up at the Erik Kleven tribute concert. Brady McKay asked me to say a few words between sets, and here they are:

Unlike everyone else in the audience here, I didn't go to school with Erik, I was never his student, and we were never married. We never even dated — though he was a very good-looking man.
Many years ago I was playing with Erik and I interrupted his bass solo with a solo of my own. Later I apologized and said, "You were playing so few notes that I wasn't sure it was a solo!"
He said, "No, I was making use of the device of space."
To some he was teacher, bandmate, husband, boyfriend, father — to me, he was the coffeehouse Buddha. I spent many hours talking with him at [the coffeehouse] Espresso Metro. He could talk about the mundane as well as the infinite. He always got the joke. He hated the powers that be, but had a smile and a kind word for anybody and everybody.
In fact, he wore the slightly amused look of a visitor from another planet trying hard to understand our poor species. Perhaps he's giving his report now.
Mitch Albom wrote that death ends a life but not a relationship. I'm going to continue my relationship with Erik by following a few more of my crazy impulses, to be kinder and more generous, to say yes a little more often.
If I do that, then I'll still be talking — and playing — with Erik.
And he's not gone — he's just making use of the device of space.