Post Thanksgiving Hibernation

To start with here is the playlist for last week's show:

1. Black Friday - Steely Dan
2. Bubbles in the Wine - Lloyd Mumm and His Starlight Roof Orchestra
3. I can't get started/Round Midnight - Dizzy Gillespie
4. Vamp Finish - Messer Chups
5. Malia -Hal Aloma and his Orchestra
6. Bears - Lyle Lovett

Dominatrix Decorators - No clue where that came from. Just a random free association

B lowing up Balloons - One of the things that my new computer has is a TV tuner and right before the holiday I got myself an antenna. I haven't had a TV in years so this is all brand spanking new to me. This bit came from a story about them having a party with the blowing up balloons ceremony the day before the Macy's Day Parade. Obviously, I misheard "Blowing Up"

Thanksgiving- This too came from seeing all the zillions of cheap advertising campaigns based on the holiday and the Black Friday anticipation. I just took it to it's illogical extreme.

Uganda - This story, as I mentioned, came from The Economist newspaper. It's an article I clipped back in the days when I had no PC or online access. It just struck me how great half of the salary I make for talking to old people is to people in a place I wouldn't be for ten times the income.

Mail Bag - this is a true story. Based on real events and weird correspondence

1-900-COMPLAIN - I work tech support for old people dealing with a MASSIVE health care system and often have to sit through people just bitching at the system though they know I can't really do anything about their issues. Again, I just took this to it's illogical extreme.

Political Revolution - This just seems like a good idea to me. I tried making it as interesting a presentation as I could without going too far into the ramifications. Believe me, this could've been twice as long if I didn't edit out a ton of examples, assuming that you, the listener, could figure most of this out yourself

Inuit Folklore - This came as a direct result of listening to Nanook the Schnook. A Martin and Lewis broadcast from the 50's where the radio play they put on was set in the frozen tundra. As I listened I was waiting for a bus Saturday night, freezing my ass off. I just thought, how wrong could one do an 'eskimo story' The rest just followed from there. Before I settled on the story, I tried finding a traditional inuit folk legend but the stories are as harsh as the climate, and much less pleasant than my silly little fairy tale.

I apologize for the fact that the transitions in this show went from me talking as me to me talking as me most of the time. I'd have put more songs in between to help the flow but that would've made the show even longer. What do you think? Should I have made the show longer and less talky or was it okay to just go from one similar piece to another? I'm on the fence, artistically on this one. It probably could've been a shorter and more various show.

Welcome Back Caleb (redux)

Hey everybody! It sure is good to be putting out shows again. Sorry that the feed is a little wonky but you can still get the show on the website until iTunes catches up. Remember, you can usually go here to find out about these things or you can email me. You know the address by now, no?

The coffee bit came to me literally in my sleep. Just one non-sequitur stream of consciousness into another. Had a really hard time with this voice though. I kept trying to slip into Ben Cohen.

A Modest Farm Bill Proposal came from an article about the 10 billion dollar pot crop in California. I was reading that article around the same time as I was listening to a news story about the farm bill. Just like people find meaning in disassociated events to lend credence to astrologers or find shapes in abstract art or clouds, my brain did the same thing with the two stories and combined them quite illogically. I made the mistake of writing this whole thing out though and I like the way I perform these better when I just write down the beats I have to hit and riffing live. That's just a byproduct of not having a computer to work on for so long though.

Duelling Burroughs. This one, like the Chocolate Moses song, came from a discussion or series of discussions with Laurence Simon of http://podcasting.isfullofcrap.com I heartily suggest talking to him about almost anything. Before you know it, you'll both be riffing and brilliant ideas will pop into your head. Or, ideas like William S. Burroughs doing a talk show in hell where he interviews himself will pop into your head. That might not be brilliant, but it's certainly unusual.

Also, I had this thought recently, I should put a dead on William S Burroughs impression on my résumé under special skills. I don't know that it would help me get work but where it was appreciated would be a place I could really thrive... I think.

Snoop Dogg I know, I can't do an impersonation of Snoop Dogg and this is a little sloppy. None the less, it's been stuck in my head for a month and I had to get it out. Sorry.

Chocolate Moses oh yeah, I also do something of a Tom Waits impersonation. That's practical, eh?

Okay, let's hope this doesn't take another month to do another show, and let's also hope that iTunes get's things together.

We're BA-ACK

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am proud to say that there will be a show this weekend.

I apologize for the extended hiatus but there was a whole mess of technical difficulty which I wrote about earlier.

so coming up on this week's show might be:

• Fun with the FARM BILL!
• Amish Consulting
• Cocaine
• Much Much More?
  

The story so far

I apologize but the Black Tie Martini Club is still having technical difficulties. Here's the rundown about what happened in lieu of content

• I woke up one morning and the machine was dead so I futzed and futzed and got it functioning again and went to work
• When I got home, the machine wouldn't power up at all
• Thinking it was the physical on/off button I pulled the wires and tried hotwiring it to start (kids don't try this at home it doesn't work)
• Thinking it was the Power Supply I ordered a new power supply and case
• After moving everything into the new case, it still wouldn't power up. I realized that the CMOS jumper had fallen off, once replaced, it started right up but windows wouldn't load
• So I bought a new copy of XP because I don't have the disc anymore from the previous install
• XP can't install I get and unexpected error so I call Microsoft
• Microsoft thinks it's the disc so I exchange the disc for another and get the same error
• I think maybe it's my disc drive because I am getting my unexpected error in that drive so I borrow a CD ROM and try again but still get the same error.
• A fan, one of you, loans me money to buy a new computer because they can so I order a sweet new computer from Gateway
• I stay home from work to get it on the day it is to arrive but they UPS guy delivers it to my workplace without telling me.
• The next day I get it home from work, which is fun on a bus, plug it in and it doesn't quite work right
• The drivers are all screwy so I call Gateway
• Gateway has me reinstall from the backup disc but that does nothing but take away all the fancy OEM software it came with
• I download the drivers it's supposed to be missing from work and load them onto the machine including the updated BIOS drivers... which kills the machine dead
• Apparently my computer had the wrong motherboard for the style computer it was
• I carry the computer back to work and from here I will mail it back to Gateway and they will mail me another computer or one that is actually fixed a process which should take about two more weeks from the time of this writing.

That's the story so far i guess I can start writing the bits out that have expired here too as they become less than topical.

For example, I was going to do a parody of Ellen DeGeneres' Dog Adoption Breakdown where I freak out about an issue with my Adopt-A-Highway stretch of road going wrong but the time for that has long past.

Again, I'm very sorry to be in forced hiatus for what looks like is going to be at least a month, I miss you all and my silly little show very much. Thanks for all the kind messages. It'll be back... eventually.

A new hope

No time to rant now kiddies, I should be up and running enough by this weekend to not podfade for a third week in a row but seeing as how I don't have my computer yet and everything has to be re-added, I'm making no promises.

Till then...