Recent events
Monday morning was relatively uneventful - shuttle, airport, overpriced breakfast at Friday's, Detroit stopover, nothing worth buying or even looking at in an hour spent shopping at the Detroit airport (unlike Philadelphia, which has GREAT airport shopping.) 3 hours on plane from Detroit to Denver. Rotating oversize luggage racks in Denver STILL not working. I wonder how much we the taxpayers paid for those. Saved $4 on airport shuttle by reserving round trip in advance.

Arrived home and there is a notice on my door that my water has been shut off. I thought my billing was set up at MyCheckFree.com, but apparently the water people haven't been communicating with them. I haven't been able to get the MyCheckFree site to come up (sometimes when I'm away for a few days the satellite internet service I have is kind of slow, and I have 3-year old software for a number of very good reasons, so when various websites update their stuff, I get left behind.) So anyhow, I got home 3:30 and called the water company at 3:40, and they said I missed the 3:30 deadline and I can't get my water turned back on until tomorrow morning.

So, I stopped at the library to see if I could use a computer for free - FAT CHANCE - all occupied, mostly by guys with waist-length hair who look like they haven't ever left their seats. Stopped at Quizno's for a submarine sandwich, then Kinko's to find out how much they charge to use a computer. $12.00 an hour! No way.

Stopped at the post office, & got the new Tom Paxton CD in the mail. Also got a flyer from Starfest - the guest list this year looks pretty cool, but it's SO commercial - you have to buy tickets to get stuff autographed - still, Syler, Jayne and Ms. Visitor from Star Trek.

Last stop - grocery store - spent $12 on 15 gallons of distilled water, so in an emergency I can use the can.

Sunday evening I was sort of hanging around the hotel lobby looking for people to go to dinner with, and ended being invited to Kelsey's with Norma McPhee & her friend (I am SO bad with names) - I enjoyed the company, but the food was not the greatest - the steak I ordered medium was more in the charred-beyond-recognition range. I'm one who doesn't send food back in restaurants, but I enjoy complaining about it later.

Arrived back early for the Dead Penguin and the door was still locked. Entertained some in the hallway with my strumstick - I did ask if anyone else in the hallway wanted a turn, but all seemed to want to wait for proper seating.

The D.P. was outstanding. I played, so far as I can recollect, 3 songs, and probably listened to about 30 or more. For the most part, I enjoyed the listening as much as the performing, which, in my book, makes it worthwhile to spend the extra night in the hotel. The three songs I played were "The Boy Who Once Knew Puff," "You Get a Catapult, I'll Get a Cat" (backed by my "G" strumstick capo'd to "C") and, finally, "I Am the Carpenter," which I wanted Vixy to hear because she has also set "The Walrus and the Carpenter" to music. The response from Vixy was one of my better moments of the con. I'll just be modest and say I think she liked it.

But the high point of the evening was just before I had to go off to sleep - Marilyn Miller performed my other Puff song (the title escapes me, but in my mind I call it Puff the Magic Vampire) not having any idea that I wrote it or that I was in the room. And a splendid job she did with it, too. When I sing it, I usually see people nodding off - so, good to know song OK, my performance not so much. I also noticed the audience reacting to some predictable lines and jokes in it that I hadn't realized were so predictable - but the trick ending (Puff the Vampire bites Jackie, they're both immortal, and the last line is "Dragons live forever, and so do little boys."

A few years back I went to hear Peter Yarrow in Boulder. He mostly babbled about spirituality for about 4 hours, and sang perhaps 2 songs. He talked quite a bit about the deep spiritual nature of "Puff the Magic Dragon," which he co-wrote with Leonard Lipton in 1963. Yes, a children's song about aging and death could be seen that way I suppose, but why bother being so defensive when 90% of the listeners back then KNEW it was a drug songs. And who can say for certain that drugs can't be spiritual - I mean, for gosh sakes, look at the work of Carlos Castaneda. To me, vampirism is one of the more interesting concepts that has grown out of primitive spirituality and folklore (which are, I often argue, one and the same) - the entire idea that if one obtains immortality through "improper" channels there must be such dire consequences - how QUAINT!

Anyhow, I had a very strong negative reaction to Peter Yarrow's lecture, and perhaps got a smidgen of how I was feeling into that song, but to be very honest, that song has always disappointed me somehow. It could have been so much better, but I could never put a finger on it. The second Puff song (The Boy Who Once Knew Puff) is essentially an attempt to do what I was trying to do with the first one, and if it sets anyone off by perpetuating the alternate theory that Puff really IS a drug song, well, yeah, that's what I was going for.

Perhaps I'll get back to this later and write about the rest of the con, but I am just SO tired right now.