Mason had his 6-months checkup last week. Yup, ½ a candle now. His weight and size are right at the 50th percentile, meaning he’s dead-on average size for a kid his age. Our doc did say his head’s a little bigger than normal, to which a wide-eyed Snippet went, “What does that mean?” (It means he has some extra storage for the spare brains he inherited from his granddad, silly!) He’s cut three teeth now, and is continuing same, but at least he’s back to sleeping through the night. He adjusted to DST by the simple expedient of ignoring it, and he’s up — up? rockin' and rollin', more like — until 11:30 or even midnight now. At least he sleeps past 8.He loves his Auntie Dearest, and gets excited just hearing her voice on the phone. We’re all (well, all of us but Snippet) looking forward to her coming home this weekend.
The Boy’s band had their first gig, and it went pretty well as such things go — they had maybe 30 people there, most of whom know one or more of the band members personally. Jake, the front guy, broke a string on the first number and they had to stand around for a few minutes while he made a quick field repair. I suggested to The Boy that they put together something they can play three-handed to buy some time for the next occurrence, something about a broken string (maybe a bikini string).If you’ve never been to the Masquerade (a pretty good guess), it’s in an old factory/warehouse building and they have three stages which they’ve dubbed Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. The latter is where the no-names go to perform, but they did put their name on the marquee (except that it was rendered “22 to 7” instead of “22s at 7”). The same night, Infected Mushroom (a psy-trance act, my kind of music) was playing in Heaven. Since 22s at 7 opened the evening festoovities, if I’d known a bit earlier I’d have planned to slip upstairs afterwards and enjoy the music. But 22s at 7 isn’t bad — they sound a bit like Molly Hatchet. The guy who booked them for the Masquerade was happy enough with the performance that he said he would book them for a venue in Buford next month.
Some money shook out at the last minute, so I was able to buy my own ticket. After being assured repeatedly that bringing a camera would be no problem… it wasn’t a problem. I guessed right on my lens choice — 50mm f1.8 — and after a few exposure checks, cranked the ISO up past 1000 and let ’er rip. I put the SpeedLite in my cargo pocket, but it wasn’t necessary. The built-in flash lit up the venue way beyond what I expected, exposing (no pun intended) an ugly concrete-block wall behind the stage. I’m surprised they haven’t put a black drop-cloth over that wall, or even painted it. The SpeedLite would have been overkill, so it stayed in my pocket for the duration. There’s more pictures if you want to see them. Canon’s “Digital Photo Professional” software did a pretty good job of correcting the white balance and cleaning them up in general, in addition to being a really nice way to sort through the pile of shots and quickly delete the blurred or malfocused pictures. Much faster than Photoshop Elements for batch-fixing stuff like this.
Snippet reaaalllllly stepped in it afterwards — a couple of guys from Ether (the punk band that The Boy used to play in) showed up, but got there late and missed the set. Completely forgetting the connection, she gushed, “These guys sound a lot better than Ether did! Ether kind of sucked.” They laughed it off… Raymond (their bass player) said “it was punk, it’s supposed to suck.” Their front guy moved away, so Ether is all but dead. Long live Ether, I guess… they’ll live on archive.org, anyway.
Good you for tromping out to Masquerade, methinks my masquerading days are over. Do they still allow smoking in those places these days?
ReplyDeleteSounds like you managed to have a good time, especially playing photographer. Thanks for sharing! It's good to know what's happening out in the world. Can't believe Masquerade is still up and running!
Omgoodness, old memory just floated in. I slapped an old boyfriend after a show there one night. Of course, I was sloshed and I was with my NEW boyfriend and they had words and...well...one thing led to another and being the little hellion that I was in those days...
There is a reason I quit drinking 19 years ago. Good choice, dontcha think??
By the way, Mason is a cutie!
ReplyDeleteHey Reb, thanks for sharing too! Yeah, the Masq is still going, but I think there's a blanket ban on smoking in public venues these days. My lungs were grateful. I can imagine things would have been a little tense, if your old bf & NEW bf were both there… sounds like a pretty easy situation to get out of hand. Now if The Boy would quit drinking, things would be a little less tense around the manor.
ReplyDeleteYup, Mason's the World's Cutest Grandkid. ;-)
Nice pics & story :)
ReplyDeleteHello. And Bye.
ReplyDelete