Friends of the famous

Today's customer has pictures of themselves with Tony Bennett, Don Rickles, and Ray Charles.

PianoDisc warehouse burns

KCRA.com - News - Six-Alarm Fire Guts Sacramento Warehouse

I always wondered who was really in charge. 

The piano lab at Cosumnes River College has a big print of my favorite Leonardo picture in it.
They are doing Urinetown at CRC in the spring and I told Steve, the musical director, that I would be available for subbing. He was happy to hear that. I hope I get to play! 

Music of the pile driver

This is the costruction site for the new high-rise condos going up near the Capitol.

I finally exchanged my Australian money today. 

A bottle of Best of Broadway wine

 

Dave and Dan's masks

From Dave and Dan'...

Just before the last performance of this year's Best of Broadway, I gave Dave and Dan their masks.

Sac Valley RPCV annual meeting

I volunteered to be on the board of the Sacramento Valley Returned Peace Corps Volunteer group, and do their newsletter and web site. I haven't done a newsletter in about ten years, so I'm ready to enjoy it again. And maintaining a web site is very little work as long as I don't actually have to write anything.

Between two Starbucks

Marley and Madonna

I tuned a piano at a house where the mother loves Marley and the daughter loves Madonna.

From Marley and Ma...

Hanging show at Espresso Metro

This actually happened on September 2, but Google's photo management program Picasa just got an upgrade including a nifty photo album creator. So here's an album of photos from that day.

Hanging show at Espresso Metro

Sep 2, 2006 - 32 Photos

This is in the home of a customer who teaches ballroom dancing. 

Spotlight

A Best of Broadway 2006 photo gallery

From Best of Broad...

Greatest keyboard drum playing ever

We had a neighborhood watch meeting at our house tonight. We were expecting maybe ten people, but then about twenty-five came. We used absolutely every chair in the house. One of the neighbors we met was Ginger Fierstein, who is the assistant to my contact for the Foodstuffs illustrations at News & Review! Actually, they just hired her full-time, so I'll be sending my illustrations to her from now on.
She says they love me over there because I'm so fast.
This is my last Foodstuffs illustration (seeing a Mexican seafood place from the highway).

This sticker is on the door to the office of a church where I tuned yesterday.

I finished another saint picture. This one is inside a shadow box.

iPod Nano commercial

Was the iPod Nano commercial below inspired by this famous photo of Picasso?

Jambalaya

Aaron the intern

I got an email about playing keyboards for Sweet Charity and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Molly Ringwald is of course from Sacramento originally and even performed in Best of Broadway. Another connection: when I was a sophomore, my high school did Sweet Charity and the star was Lisa Scottoline, now a famous mystery writer.

Water Tower

My mask of Dan Pool. He asked me to do it and pointed out that it would be easy because we have the same shape head (my mask of myself already looks a little like him). Indeed, I used my Mark mask as a starting point for this one.

My mask of Dave MacDonald. I'm going to give it to him after the last show. Then at the cast party I'll take lots of pictures of people standing next to him holding the mask over their face.

Hal demonstrates disc golf

More art from the Southside Art Center

Alex and his Jackson Pollock wallet

I met a friend of Paul Basye's at the coffeehouse. He has paint all over his clothes and even his wallet.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Southside Art Center

I had lunch with Paul Basye at the Southside Art Center, where he teaches art to disabled kids and adults.

Dale and Brett's piano shop

Bunny bowl

Petra's Airplane Toy

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.