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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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

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!

But did you know that if they leave that little landing strip in the front it’s called French Wax? So I started wondering, do other countries have waxing patterns? Is it like a national anthem or a state bird? What would the waxing patterns be? Here are some possibilities plucked from my imagination - and a few ripped off from friends:

1. American Wax - you voted twice and still ended up with a bush.
2. Martian Wax - crop circles
3. Norwegian Wax - plenty of forest but you can see the fjords
4. Seattle Wax - took off the hair but replaced it with polar fleece
5. Al Qaeda Wax - like a Brazilian but they send the tape to Al Jazeera
6. Nigerian Wax - instead of wax they use the more permanent pentaerythritol
7. TSA Wax - everything from head to toe before you can get on the plane - but they miss the pubes
8. Canadian Wax - it’s free but you have to wait three years for an appointment
9. Tiger Woods Wax - you pay but ten other women get waxed
10. iPhone Wax - there’s a wax for that. It removes hair in cute little icon patterns.
11. Chinese Wax - quick and inexpensive, but it grows back in an hour
12. Wall Street Wax - you can get ripped off without even leaving home
13. Punk Wax - who says you have to be limited to one mohawk?

Got any more? Bare them here. And don’t forget to download my song “Brazilian Wax.”

My sister, Pam, is one of those peanut allergy people you read about in the newspaper - the ones who are responsible for depriving you of the small, salty joy of a thimbleful of peanuts on a long plane flight. But for any goobers who are itching to know the meat of this issue, peanut allergy (the most common food allergy in the US) exists on a molecular level. For some, there is no such thing as “just a little.” There is none and there is dead.

Pam had an experience the other day that gives me a chance to both do a little education and give credit where it’s due:

Bonefish Grill has long been one of our favorite restaurants. Recently I decided to try something new instead of one my usual favorites. I am severely allergic to peanuts. So much so, that I carry an epinephrine syringe, albuterol inhalers, and other allergy medications with me wherever I go. I asked the server about the ingredients in the sauce, and was given a tasty sounding list that did not include peanuts. So I was more than a little surprised when I realized I was having an allergic reaction. It turned out that oh yes, the sauce did, indeed, contain peanuts, but “not very much.” Fortunately I was able to get to my medications quickly.

What’s most striking about this incident is not that I was accidentally fed something that’s poison to me; that’s happened before and will no doubt happen again. What’s worth noting is the reaction of the restaurant, and most especially, the corporate offices.

The manager and staff at the restaurant were sincerely concerned and apologetic over the incident, clearly willing to do whatever was necessary to ensure my health. The manager spent quite some time with me and listened attentively while we explained about peanut allergy and the need for staff education. That was more or less expected. What was less expected was the reaction I got to a letter I wrote to the corporate offices letting them know about the incident. It wasn’t an angry letter. I just wanted to educate them and suggest measures they could take to avoid such incidents in the future. I’ve written such letters in the past, and been uniformly ignored. My guess is that lawyers advise companies not to say anything for fear of admitting guilt.

Not so with Bonefish Grill. Today I got a personal phone call from their Director of Operations. Not only did he want to check and make sure I was ok, he also wanted to let me know what actions they were taking to ensure this never happens again. He told me he and the president of the company had read my letter several times and were taking my suggestions very seriously.  He’d just gotten off the phone from a conference call with all his store managers about the incident and they were instituting new staff education policies as a result. They are producing a big chart listing menu items with nuts, and the restaurants are being given one week to get the chart printed, laminated, and posted where the servers can reference it. The chart will be updated with each change to the menu. The staff is to be educated on allergies and menu ingredients immediately. In addition, they are looking into making changes to the print menu to make it easier for patrons with allergies to identify which items contain peanuts. Oh, and we get a free meal next time.

I was amazed just to get the phone call. When he started telling me the measures they were taking, I was blown out of the water. I’ve never had such a positive response from a large corporation in my life. They listened. They cared. They didn’t try to dodge responsibility. It’s nice to know that some companies do things right. And I will be eating at Bonefish grill regularly as a result.

Pam East
www.pameast.net

There’s a Bonefish Grill just 10 miles from me. I may have to go check and see if they have their chart laminated.

Many years ago, long before I was the confident, capable (snort) singer I am now, I was acutely nervous about a solo in a choir concert. The solo was an exceedingly obscure Hungarian Gypsy song. It would be hard to overstate just how obscure this song was. It was from a tiny village in Kalotaszeg, a tiny cluster of Hungarian villages in northwestern Romania so remote the whole region only has two lines in Wikipedia. The song was passed to me on a cassette of a cassette of a cassette from a peripatetic ethnomusicologist. The concert was at a Jewish Community Center in Sherman Oaks, CA. What exactly was I fretting about? That I would fuck up the words.

“Who will know?” the director pointed out.

She had a point. I sucked in air and tried to unclench.

I did fuck up the lyrics, singing through a brief spurt of nonsense syllables. I let it go. After all, who would know?

I found out at intermission when I was accosted by an elderly, weeping woman. She was not only from Romania. She was not only from Kalotaszeg, but she was from the exact village where the song originated! How we both ended up at the same Sherman Oaks JCC, is just one of those unfathomable cosmic mysteries. Of course, she didn’t care a burgonyakereg about the fluffed lyrics.

But, damn!

Chapter Two

About four years ago, my band Balkanarama recorded a live CD. One night, twelve songs, one take, no do-overs, no overdubs. While not flawless, it’s an energetic and true representation of our live sound. One of the “not flawless” bits occurs 27 seconds into the first song. Another lyric flub. Instead of “kerta” I bobbled and sang “ashka.” If I never mentioned it, who would know, right? Well, this song, while not exactly Billboard fare, is not quite as obscure as the first one. It was written and recorded by the famous Rom singer, Esma Redzepova so, yes, there are some who might catch it. But only one who matters: Esma herself. And what are the chances of her hearing it?

Chapter Three

Fast forward once more to 2009. The phone rings. The caller is a movie producer who wants to know if he can acquire the rights to two songs from our Live CD for the sound track of an independent film currently in production. Gee, let me think about th… yes!

The movie (due to be released in the spring of 2010) is You May Not Kiss the Bride, a romantic comedy/caper flick directed by Rob Hedden in which a mobster tries to arrange for his daughter to obtain U.S. citizenship by setting her up with a American photographer. It stars Rob Schneider, Katharine McPhee, Dave Annable, Ken Davitian and Mena Suvari. The first two songs from our CD will be the celebratory music for the big wedding scene at the end.

But of course, since Esma wrote the song, rights had to be procured from her publisher. Which means, once again, the ONE PERSON IN THE WORLD to whom my lyrical fluff would actually matter, will know.

To this day, I continue to screw up lyrics regardless of the language. But now it’s a trademark.

I’m not going to start getting pushy now either, but it IS the holiday season and some of you MAY be looking for that perfect gift or stocking stuffer RIGHT NOW! Or you may even be looking to reward yourself for all your hard work. Go ahead, you’ve earned it.

Top Ten Reasons Why You Should Give My  “Moon Falling Down” CD This Holiday Season:

1. Subversive cover art! Who else would take one of the world’s most beloved bedtime tales and drag it down to the corrupt depths of BDSM fantasy? Show your loved ones how sick you are.
2. Not sold at Target! They called and begged me, but I said not until they show they have the guts to say “Happy Holidays” even if it pisses off the religious nuts.
3. Better than a Snuggie! Snuggies are the hot gift this year for everyone who’s turning down the thermostat. But did you know blanket-cocoon made of “Moon Falling Down” CD’s will take your mind off the temperature in no time at all?
4. Makes great insulation! Go Green with “Moon Falling Down.” Just slip CD’s into the cracks under doors and around windows for big savings when the next power bill comes.
5. It’s waterproof! That’s right. Bring them in the shower, make cute little floating rafts in the tub, take them for long, romantic walks in the rain. Won’t shrink, fade or bleed.
6. Allowed on most diets. Trying to lose weight? You’re not alone. But rest assured, “Moon Falling Down” has ZERO calories and can be a healthy part of any nutritious meal plan.
7. Laughter is the best medicine. Have you SEEN Obama’s health plan? Better keep extras on hand for the flu season and beyond.
8. Bail out the economy! The feds dropped over a trillion dollars on Wall Street to try to save the economy. YOU can do your bit for just TEN BUCKS!
9. The sex.
10. It makes YOU look GOOD. The lyrics are funny and smart. The music is a hot blend of jazz/pop/latin/cabaret. Clearly anyone savvy enough to give this CD as a gift is a person of the very highest taste, style and hipness. Isn’t that you?

So what are you waiting for? An engraved invitation?

Buy it already!

It’s not that there isn’t any. Actually, there’s quite a bit - they had it at six of the seven stores I went to. But it’s gone through a transformation that echoes the current economic recession: It’s been downsized.

Phyllo dough, if you don’t know, is tissue paper-thin sheets of dough which I have layered with butter, nuts, cinnamon and sugar to make baklava every December for the past twenty years at least. My great-grandmother used to make her own phyllo, but as soon as machine-made dough became available, boy did that stop. So now, unless you’re some kind of baking survivalist Luddite, you buy it in the freezer section of the supermarket. It comes in a box of 12″x18″ sheets - the ideal size and quantity in one box to make one pan of baklava. A little trim to the stack of sheets and it’s a perfect fit in a standard 11″x17″ pan.

Until this year.

For some inexplicable but surely evil reason, phyllo dough sheets have shrunk to 9″x14″ while my pans have stubbornly clung to their former dimensions. The phyllo has to fit the pan. You can’t have a stack of sheets in the middle of a pan and a syrup moat. Trust me on this or go look at the recipe for yourself.

I went to six markets: Safeway, QFC, Fred Meyer, Target, Trader Joe’s and Top Food. Five of them had phyllo - all in the cute new useless miniature size. I considered stopping by Office Depot for a quire of tabloid-size sheets of tissue paper. Enough butter and sugar and who would know? In the aisle of Top Food, I caved: Enough already! I’ll buy smaller pans!

At Bed, Bath & Beyond, they had 9×12″ pans, but only nonstick. The thing about nonstick pans: One knife slice and zip, they’re ruined. To a nonstick pan, baklava is “death by a thousand cuts.”

The BB&B clerk commiserated. “There’s not a plain baking pan anywhere in the northwest outside a restaurant supply store. It’s all nonstick. Everything. Maybe you could bake cookies? The nonstick pans are great for cookies.”

I stomped out, muttering.

“One more store. I’m going to one more store and that’s it. The end of an era. We might as well get a plastic tree and a blow-up Chilly Willy yard decoration because it won’t really be Christmas anyway.”

But lo! A star rose in the frozen food aisle! Whole Foods had 12×18″ phyllo sheets! Organic too. Pah-rum-pah-pum-pum. I am saved!

And you are too! The first two people not already on the ‘get some’ list who reply to this blog post will get a box of my baklava in the mail.