Time flies!
...because I've been having too much fun. Recap:

Friday night: enjoyed Filbert's band Love Zombie at Checkpoint Charlie's in the French Quarter. Unfortunately Yngwie Flattstein did NOT appear, but Filbert told me he'd arrange for that to happen at one of our upcoming House of Shock appearances. Which makes me pretty giddy.

Saturday: worked on C.O.G. show tech most of the day, and my Fear Fest demo part of the day. Took Jeannine to Art For Art's Sake that evening and toured some great galleries and shops, meeting several friends along the way. After that we drove out to Blue Nile for a full night of progressive rock music - Hobson's Choice, a reformed Tabula Rasa and Analog Missionary were on the bill. I brought my big HD camera and was elated to find that Hobson's drummer (whom I knew as the soundman from the defuct and destroyed 'Twiropa' club) had brought his as well, and a hard disk recorder. I ended up taping all three bands, interrupted by an excursion to La Peneche to grab some late dinner (which costed me a good chunk of Analog Missionary's set, dammit! Ahh well, somebody taped it for me so I can watch later...)

Sunday: After recovering from the previous night, I enjoyed a late breakfast and crammed for my presentation. Fear Fest was largely bereft of attendees, similar to last year. This year however, organizer Joe Vance was hosting the event in his company's own studio, just a couple blocks down the street from my own office. With house soundman Mark Wick, I gave a one hour presentation on production and postproduction sound, and then hung around for some great conversation with musician Henry Turner Jr., who was performing there that night with his reggae band. Henry told me about a track called 'Giving My Love Up to You' which he recorded with his funk outfit 'The Crystal Band' on a low budget in the early 80's. The single didn't go anywhere back then but gained a life of its own recently in Britain and even got used on an episode of 'Chuck.' Wow...

Monday: Did a bunch of work on the C.O.G. Show Computer in between work, then did a full reinstall of Windows on my mother's computer - that thing was an XP over Win98b installation and had really gone down the stability hill to the point of near-unusability. What a difference a clean install made... later that night at rehearsal, we went over a bunch of new cover material which you'll hear at the House of Shock this season. It's sounding great (esp. Lab Girl's 'Misfits' cover), and I'm stoked!

Rehearsal ended a bit early so Dr. Z and Rachnid could attempt to enjoy the star-crossed Saints on Monday Night Football. I only got to see the bitter end, but heard from Dr. Z this morning about the bad ref calls that doomed the boys in the 3rd quarter...

But I had another task to perform first. Lab Girl and I took the hour after practice and filmed C.O.G.'s application to Bad Horse's illustrious Evil League of Evil. This looks like the a contest that was made specifically for us!!! Unfortunately, one of the facets of their evil plan involves not really revealing WHAT the contest is for... therefore I'd better watch my step!

It appears that OTHER pretenders to the throne of evil genius are already at work on their own submissions to the contest ... but, HA! They stand nary a chance.

After filming, I got the new lights working great off the newly rebuilt show computer, using my midi-DMX scene applet and MidiYoke to steer the midi signals from Cakewalk directly to the applet in software. I tested it out on our cover of 'Green Slime' then turned in for the night.

Much work remains to be done! I'll let you all know as soon as you can check out our Evil League of Evil submission...