Playing upright for Gorey Stories at Sacred Fools this weekend. I’m filling in for Gary Viggers.
It’s been fun. It’s kicked my ass back in to lessons and playing every day and that’s fun. The daunting thing is realizing, mind once again, that I’ll never be as good as I want to be. I doubt anyone is.
Zac was showing me some things classical guys do with their bows when they play. Shit is fucked up and hard. I’d aksed about the difference between a $60 bow and a $5000 bow. I guess it can all be explained by market forces. There aren’t too many people who need really, really, really good bows for their bass, so the guy who makes them by hand and listens to some dickhead complain about the weight distribution is worth 5 or 20 grand.
Then I think of basses. Mine was $900 and I spent another couple hundred on getting it set up nicely with good strings, etc. and that seems like a lot. There are $90k basses out there. 200 year old basses that guys in orchestras play. Karl Vincent’s bass is 150 years old or something.
When I switched from my Ibanez to the Music Man there was an immediate difference and that wasn’t a huge price difference. I played the $3000 bass Gary has for sale and could feel and hear a difference, and I’m sure the better I get the more I’ll hear and feel differences in basses.
The bassists who’ve played mine are actually surprised at how good it sounds and plays, though. I like that. The flames throw ’em off.
Rock.
The good news is that an agent, Marsha Hervey, called me to have me come in and talk to her and her partner about representing me as an actor. She’s Jessie’s mother’s agent and I knew her years ago because her son, Jason, was my little brother on Fast Times.
Perhaps I’ll have an agent at some point. I’d like to know that the reason I don’t work as an actor is because I’m not getting cast instead of not in the game. Maybe that makes sense.
One of the joys of my life right now is watching the first season of House on DVD and eating candy with Jessie.
I do hate the Chi McBride character. Not the character, like you’re supposed to hate him, but the way it’s written. A businessman who donates 100 million dollars to a hospital would *not* try to make everyone fit in to some mold of doctors. The writers seem to be applying their experience with their shift managers from when they were waiting tables to someone who has 100 million to give to a hospital. One of the reasons successful businessmen are successful is their ability to recognize talent and make allowances for unconventional personalities. The person they’re writing in House would understand that Dr. House needs some room. They’d probably make it easier for him, actually, instead of acting like the manager at Shakey’s and saying “You have to show up on time and make pizza this way or you’re fired!”
I imagine he’d even tell the Lisa E character to back off.
That’s me. Idealistic. Nothing wrong with that.
I do love that the atheist character doesn’t feel bad about it and isn’t flawed because of it. Her flaws don’t have anything to do with her atheism. Also that it’s a hotsy totsy chick is good. It’s close to home!
I think I managed to set the site feed up for this correctly, though the formatting on the archiving is nutty. Whatever.
Off to Sacred Fools for the final night of Bassingnessation.