L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Laughing Ladies

It’s a pretty safe bet to put you, dear blog reader, in the category of people who were not at our show Saturday night, since pretty much everybody was not at our show Saturday night. People were lining up in droves to not be at our show.

But music materialized. Drinks drunk, comestibles consumed, ladies laughed at the Laughing Ladies Cafe and we were glad to introduce our new guitarist, George Michael (not that George Michael) though it was a bittersweet gladness that we were not playing with our old guitarist, Dave Quick.

Dave had a serious stroke nearly six months ago and has a long recovery still ahead of him. We keep in touch and wish him and his seriously awesome wife, Jan, the very best. Even though Dave was not there in body, his influence on our music was present in arrangements, spirit and style. George (also known as Lyndon Heart) studied Dave’s parts to prepare for the show, though he brings his own lively style to the mix.

The show was broadcast live on Indie Spectrum Radio, in Second Life and on ustream.tv. Here is the archive of the ustream video feed, in all its static, ultracompressed glory:

The video was created using the built-in web cam on my Mac PowerBook which was plopped on a box on a table, turned on and left to its own devices for 146 minutes and 58 seconds. My dream of an Oscar for cinematography is on hold for the moment.

But the music is back and that’s reward enough.

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And the winner is…

I don’t know why we bother. We put on an Oscars party every year, and every year it gets duller and duller. Not the party, but the Oscars. I had inexplicably high hopes for Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin - two funny guys. But NOOOOOO! Perhaps they took their cues from Avatar: Don’t waste a penny on the script.

Fortunately my friends are a resourceful bunch. We managed to sustain ourselves during the dry excesses of eye-rollingly insipid on-screen blather with excesses of snacks, champagne and… a theremin! We may have had the only Oscars party in the whole Puget Sound area with theremin accompaniment. Much to the cats’ distress.

Oh, and when did they go back to saying “And the winner is..”? I remember when they switched to “And the Oscar goes to…” That always smacked of the dreadful self-esteem mania that swept through the schools when my kids were growing up. God forbid there should be a winner because that would mean someone would have to be the loser. Good.

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• Moon Falling Down, TV Disaster
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Perfect Imperfection on V-Day

Sometimes the best gift you give is not the gift you intended to give. That happened today when my husband gave me the wrong size jacket as a Valentine offering.

People who don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day make it a point of pride. “Flowers die.” “Chocolate is fattening.” “Who needs pair of stuffed pink kissing dogs to say I love you?” “Love doesn’t need a day to be special.”

Certainly, some things about the holiday are annoying. The marketing blitz that turns vast stretches of stores garish pink and red even before the garish red and green Christmas displays have been packed away. The long waits, harried staff, and fixed-priced/fixed-menu meals served up in restaurants. The insider/outsider divisiveness (one friend calls it “Singlehood Awareness Day”). I do appreciate that one and I’m trying not to be a smug married, but mother’s day is tough if your mom is gone and Christmas is tough on the non-Christian kids. But, if you think no one can have a treat unless everyone can have one too, you probably when to school during the whole “self esteem” movement years. I’m very sorry.

It’s possible to enjoy the day, despite the many evils. Yeah, the flowers will die. But not my memory of the pleasure in his face when he walked in the door with the bouquet (purple irises!). The fun I had tracking down just the thing he’d been wanting but hadn’t found anywhere (no way am I saying what it was, so don’t bother asking).

And the jacket.

It’s a lovely thing - black velvet with embroidered trim. I’ve been coveting it for months. And it came with an unexpected side bonus: It’s too big!

If you think that’s not a bonus, you’re probably a guy. But for a woman locked in an epic battle with the scale, it was a whole second gift. The thing hangs on me. And it’s a size small. Oh yeah, I know it’s a sleazy retail trick to inflate sizes until Dreamliner-thighed women are lumbering around in size zero pants. Some stores base their entire business model on it.

But damn it, it works!

“Oh, I’m so sorry honey. I’ll have to send it back and get the extra small.”

Hurt me.

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Secret NSFW Spot

All the recent controversy about the existence or non-existence of the G-spot might naturally lead people to want to put their finger on it once and for all. Now you can. Sort of.

This G-point mouse has a secret spot inside that, when pressed, will take you to your favorite place. On the internet.

I started to wonder what other kinds of anatomically analogous input devices one could devise. Perhaps even one aimed at the female market. I found this, but somehow I think it’s still one for the guys:

Make your own!

I’m still wondering who the G-point mouse is marketed to? The presumption is, straight men. But they’ll never find the secret spot.

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The Bonehead of the Opera

OK, so in the great if oddly-plotted opera Il Trovatore the gypsy woman, Azucena, attempting to avenge her mother who was burnt at the stake by the count, steals the count’s infant son intending to toss the baby on her mother’s bonfire. But, in a moment of confusion, accidentally throws her own baby on the fire instead. (Work with me here. I’m not making this up!)

Boneheaded move, you say? But even Azucena was not so boneheaded as to drive 30 minutes into Seattle before remembering that the opera tickets were still affixed to the fridge door with a New Brunswick souvenir moose magnet.

The spousal unit was remarkably restrained as I exited the freeway, swung around and headed back home where we canceled dinner reservations, grabbed the tickets and a quick bite and headed out into the night once again. Like Leonora, we arrived at the castle in the nick of time and we didn’t even have to drink poison to get in. But even so, it’s going to take a while to live this one down.

Thanks, S.B., for the terrific suggestion to bring spoons to tap along with the Anvil Chorus. I assure you the people around us found it most charming. It made a lovely accompaniment to the gentle snores of the elderly English gentleman seated to my right.

And for those of you who have not had the pleasure of seeing it, I give you:

LEGO IL TROVATORE!

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

Act 4

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Sibling Revelry

My dad sent me a DVD he had transferred from a pile of old home movies. I’ve been playing the Lone Arranger of clips (as a friends puts it). Here’s a walk through time, 1956 to 1963. The little girls are me, later my sister Donna and near the end, the baby, Pam. The song is Fly Away from my first CD, Something’s Brewing

Fly Away
© 2003 Lyrics: Eva Moon, music trad.

I remember leaving home
I heard tomorrow calling me
Poised for flight, I couldn’t see
My mother’s eyes watching me

Now my children look ahead
On the edge, they won’t stay
And they don’t look back at me
I wish them well and turn away

Seasons change and years go by
Children grow and summers die
Winter holds the seeds of spring
And the night surrenders to sunrise

I’ve left my former self behind
Her time is past, I won’t delay
And I won’t look back at her
I wish her well and turn away

Now I’m free to spread my wings
I hear tomorrow calling me
On the edge and poised for flight
I wish you well and fly away

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Vajazzle Me

You see me here, rockin’ on the porch and you think I’m some washed up old fossil who don’t know nothin’. Don’t you roll your eyes at me. You kids today! With all your fancy gadgets and gizmos. Your iPhones and your wi-fi shoes and your rock and roll. You don’t know the value of tradition! In my day you got a Brazilian wax and you were thankful! Thankful! You went in, slathered your hoo-ha with hot wax, ripped it off, posted the vid on xtube and it was enough! But now? Nooooo… You ain’t satisfied with your God-given, carnuba’ed cooter. You got to bedazzle your precious lady with Swarovski crystals. So it shines like a fucking disco ball. It ain’t natural, I tell you.

You won’t be satisfied until it glows in the dark. That’s why I’m announcing my new product: PunaNeon Lights. Why settle for mere clitter glitter when you can light up your lala like the Las Vegas Strip?

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The Laying on of Cats

A story of the miraculous curative power of cats.

Something went terribly wrong with my trusty Mac Powerbook yesterday. I was attempting to stream live video from an event at a local coffee house when suddenly its ability to see wi-fi dried up. Pfft. I won’t go into all the things I and helpful others attempted to stir it back to life. Suffice it to say heroic measures were taken, but the patient never so much as blinked. The affliction was so pernicious that an attempt to connect via ethernet took down the internet supply to the whole building - a fact I did not give my laptop credit for until later.

When I got home that evening and tried again, the stubborn network still wouldn’t appear. I tried ethernet too and suddenly the router went down and could only be coaxed back to life by disconnecting the laptop, unplugging the router, letting all the bad juju trickle out (or whatever it is electronic devices do while you wait 60 seconds), plugging it back in and powering it up. That is when I started to suspect that the internet going AWOL at the coffee house was not just a weird coincidence.

At this point, I figured I was looking at a new network card at least, filled out a service request form at the local repair shop’s website and went to bed.

This morning I found my cat Pixel was cozily ensconced on the Powerbook keyboard, as it is arguably the warmest spot in the house and cats have world-class Warm Spot Detection (WSD). I shooed her off and Lo! Wi-fi was restored!

Repairs while you sleep! On a Sunday night, even! I plan to offer my cat’s services, at reasonable rates, for all your computer tech support needs.

Payable in catnip. Cat hair thrown in gratis.

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Mixed Reality Music

A press release from my other life as Commissioner Moon:

Redmond Digital Arts Festival Sunday, January 10 2010, 3:00pm - 5:00pm FREE

(Sponsored by: Microsoft, City of Redmond, Gas Powered Games, Marriot, DigiPen, & Redmond City Center)

The Redmond Arts Commission welcomes you to the 2nd Digital Arts Festival, beginning with special events in December 2009 and featuring workshops and presentations on January 15 and 16, 2010. Join us for a celebration of the artists and businesses that work in Redmond and the areas nearby. There are many new activities this year. Please come and enjoy!

Come to SOULFOOD BOOKS on 15748 Redmond Way (next to Ben Franklin) for an event where virtual and real worlds collide! Be part of an event that brings together music lovers from around the world for an event that blurs the barrier between real and virtual as musicians play for a global audience at a simultaneous jam. The Mixed Reality Musical Jam will take place both on the ground in Redmond and online in “Second Life.”

Second Life is an online virtual world where some of today’s most talented musicians play live for audiences around the world without leaving their homes. Local Second Life musicians will gather to demonstrate how live music performance transcends borders and boundaries in the digital age.

Seattle-based Second Life musicians performing at the Real Life Festival:

• Chaos Noyes
• Dakota Pluto
• Dale Aries
• Edward Kyomoon
• Eva Moon
• Grif Bamaison
• Lyndon Heart
• Patrick LaSalle
• Tukso Okey
• Zag Jigsaw

We will stream video directly from Soulfood Books into the Second Life venue so that the audience there can see both the avatars performing AND the video of the live performers side by side.

We will also project the Second Life concert onto a screen at Soulfood Books so that the audience there can see both the avatars performing AND the live performers side by side.

• Directions to Soulfood Books
• Festival info: http://redmondartsfestival.com
• Directions to the Second Life venue
• Get a free Second Life account
• Or listen to the simulcast on BZOO Radio

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Chopping List

They say to be a successful blogger your blog should have a theme. I’m sure that explains the resounding silence that generally greets my posts. But I do have a number of recurring themes and one of them is soup.

In an effort to beat back the bad habits that always seem to creep in during December like an evil (but tasty!) mildew, I decided to reprise the two-week cleanse diet I did last September. If you’re too stuffed with fruitcake to click on the link, it’s two weeks of low-starch veggies, lean meat, a little fruit and eggs and gallons of cranberry water. A day into it, I remember what was really annoying about it: The incessant chopping. There’s no such thing as slapping together a sandwich. Anything you want to eat requires chopping and lot’s of it. Perhaps that’s the exercise component?

Here’s a very simple soup I made up today for lunch that I’d eat even NOT on the diet. It uses a premade soup as a base:

Eva’s Curried Tomato Pepper Soup

Heat a little olive oil in a sauce pan and saute some garlic, sliced mushrooms, onion and the stems of two large Swiss chard leaves (chop the leaves too, but save them for later on) along with some kind of protein (I used leftover turkey any kind of cooked leftover meat or tofu ‘chicken’ strips or whatever would be fine). You know how I am about measuring anything, but it was probably about 2 cups worth of chopped stuff. It doesn’t matter if your soup is not a clone of my soup. Deal with it. Saute until the onions start to brown.

Add the chopped chard leaves and 2-3 tablespoons of curry powder and saute until the leaves are getting tender. Then pour in a box of Trader Joe’s Organic Tomato and Roasted Red Pepper Low Sodium soup. It comes in a quart carton. If you’re not so fortunate as to have a Trader Joe’s nearby, I’m sure you can find something similar.

When the soup is hot, it’s ready to eat.

Thirteen chopping days left!

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