My buddy Lothar (…of the hill people…) has a Garage where he does oil changes and tune-ups and inspections and whatnot. He had my car last week and changed the oil and fluids and did my emissions inspection. When he dropped it off he popped the hood and said he wanted to show me something.

Guck mal den Schlauch da an. Have a look at that hose there.

I looked at the hose going from the radiator to the thing-a-ma-bob.

Yeah what about it?

It’s been chewed on by Madern.

What are Madern?

Do you know what a Weasel is?

Yeah.

It’s kind of like that but different.

Is it like a squirrel? mongoose? ferret? Chipmunk? snipe?

I don’t know what they are called in English. Anyway, they have been chewing on the hose and it could cause you to suddenly run out of coolant. Then your engine could overheat and then you got more problems.

Oh. That sucks.

Yeah but if you get some dog hair and some aluminum foil and then wrap the foil around the hose with the dog hair between the foil and hose, that will take care of it.

Uh-huh.

Well I did some googling and found out that Madern are Martens. This is what they look like:



Pretty cute, huh? Don’t let that fool you. They are vicious hose eaters. Dare I call them hosers?

Apparently they are also quite common in Canada. Coincidence? I think not:

Brother Ray

By now most people know that Ray Charles died last week. I find this much more sad than the death of the other person last week that got more frequent flyer miles after his death than in the last ten years of his life.

I will share two Ray Charles stories: The first I cannot verify as I wasn’t there but my high school music teacher used to play first trumpet for Ray and he told me this story. One day at rehearsal Ray got super pissed because the band wasn’t playing too hot or they couldn’t get some part or change or something. He got so pissed that he stood up and lifted up the end of his grand piano and just let it drop. First of all, grand pianos are heavy as hell. The were amazed that Ray was so strong and could just lift up a fucking piano. Second of all if you so much as move one across a room it might have to be retuned. Ray fucked up the piano so bad they had to order him a new one and have it ready the next day. On the next day the new piano was there and Ray was in a much better mood. As the musicians were showing up he asked one of them, “Hey man, did you see my new piano?” “Uh, no Ray I didn’t”. “Neither did I. Ha Ha Ha.”

The next story is true because I was there. In 1998 or 1999 at the Chicago Bluesfest I saw Ray Charles play with his big band. There were a few thousand people there and about 10 seconds into some song when he stopped the band and berated the sound engineer in front of God and everybody for not having the monitors on and not turning up the “Raylettes”, Ray’s backup singers. He said something like, “What the hell is going on out there? I can’t hear the Raylettes. Why can’t you do your damn job? I ain’t got nothing in the monitors either. Get it together! I didn’t bring the Raylettes out here just cause they look good. They can sing too.” After that there were lots of cat calls and wolf whistles from the audience. Then Ray said, “Well, I heard that they look good. I ain’t never seen ’em myself. Ha Ha Ha.”

Venus Transit

Yesterday I saw the Venus Transit. It was pretty cool. I observed it using 2 methods.

The first method was the tried and true old school pin-hole camera learned in Boy Scouts. I took a large card board box and poked a small clean hole in it about 3-mm in diameter. I put said box over my head and inside the box held a small white piece of cardboard up upon which the image of the sun was projected. I’m sure I looked rather interesting to my colleagues when they found me standing in front of my second story wide-open office window with a large box over my head. Hmmm.

The second method was using a gradient piece of thick film. That was the method not recommended by experts but we were safe about it. Through the plastic I could barely see a grey circle with a small black dot in it.

I wish I could have taken pictures but I don’t have the right gear. Instead you can look at these awesome pictures I found here.

On friday as i came home from work, i saw a Fettes Brot CD in our mailbox. Just the CD without the holder. Because I don’t have the key, I had to wait until M. got home to get it out. Did I loan a Fettes Brot CD to someone? Did M.? What’s the deal? M. just handed me the CD and on the back was a URL written backwards. So I typed it in forwards and it took me to Peacetreaties.net which says this:

Why not make a friend out of a potential enemy by signing a Peace Treaty?

Why shall we wait any longer for peace from the governments? We, the people, can create our own peace between ourselves! The Personal Peace Treaties are a fantastic way to do that – and to prevent warfare. The idea is simple. You find someone sympathetic from a folk, country or religious group which is in conflict with yours, and you promise each other in a treaty there three things

1. that you will never fight each other with weapons

2. that you will respect your cultural, ethnical and religious differences

3. that you will try to find peaceful solutions in view of looming conflicts.

Hmm, was this specifically for me or is it some sort of viral marketing word of mouth thing? Am I the only one in my street to get one of these CDs? Anybody that knows me and knows where I live, also knows that I’m a pretty peaceful guy and that I don’t go around looking for trouble.

What could it all mean?

Went to see Josh Ritter play in Hamburg in the Prinzenbar the other night. The club was really small and there were about 40 people there. He sings country-rock songs about Momma, trains, trucks, prison, and gettin’ drunk. He’s gonna be big someday.

(How fucking random. A marathon with about 200 runners is going past my front door. Polizei are blocking the street and a crowd has gathered to cheer them on. Man, I need to get to the gym.)

Um anyway, it was an awesome show. We hung out with him a little bit after the show and found him to be a sincerely nice guy. We saw him play here a few months ago without his band, who rock, and we bought a CD. After the show we put it on in the car and the CD was skipping all over the place because something was spilled all over it. We decided we would just exchange it at the next show. After the show we had to deal with his road manager who didn’t believe us. He said there was nothing wrong with it and then said if he were to exchange it, what would he do with the one we exchanged? He can’t sell it again. I said something like, “If there is something wrong with it, it shouldn’t have been sold in the first place.” At this point he was getting in my face and accused me of “copping ‘tude”. M jumped in and said something to this effect: “We have witnesses who heard it as well and can back us up. Could you please just ease our mind and exchange it? If there isn’t a problem with it, you can just sell it at the next show. Nothing gained, nothing lost.” Josh stepped in and told the road manager to stop sweating us and just give us a new one. Thanks Josh. You rock! He’ll be playing with Joan Baez this summer in Hamburg.

(Wha? Now all the runners are coming back up the street from the opposite direction. What’s going on out there?)

Howdy


Last weekend I had a good time. M and I went to this thing called the Kulturelle Landpartie. Just southeast of Lüneburg, near Uelzen, there are these artist communities where a lot of “alternative” people live. I’m sure what that meant but I felt like I would fit right in. There were lots of arts and crafts and that sort of thing. Another word I heard describing it was “verzeckt”. I don’t have a translation for that.

On Monday we went to Lübeck, Travemünde to be exact, and walked on the beach and along the harbor there. It was really nice. We then went to a Greek restaurant in Timmendorfer Strand. A nice way to end the weekend.

I’ve been working at least a few hours every day in ProTools as well. In fact on the drive up to Lübeck I was a little grumpy because I wanted to stay home and make music on the computer but M made me come. I’m glad she did. The one thing about music production that I have forgotten almost everything about is MIDI. I used it in school and also in Chicago for a few sessions but the last time I really was knee deep in it was in 1999. It is all coming back. I forgot how cool and versatile it was. I’m borrowing/maybe purchasing an old Korg ER-1 Electribe. I use it right now to help sweeten up the beats a little. I control it with MIDI but route the outputs to my mixer. I also route the Stereo out 1-2 from ProTools to the mixer. Then the mixer’s stereo output gets sent back into ProTools when I do a mix. Anyway, i’m having a blast with it. A few weeks ago I sent my guitar to a village near Braunschweig to be re-fretted. It was actually about 3 weeks ago and I haven’t hard from it since. I’m anxious to get it back so I can record some electric guitar and piss off my neighbors. Was Soll das denn? Heute ist Ruhetag!