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I don't have time to do much online, but Thursday? What're you local people doing Thursday night??

Lewis Black is coming to Portland. His first show sold out so they're selling a second one. Doors open at 9:30pm, which is when I get out of chorus--show starts at 10:30. Tickets are $32, ow ow ow. I'll spend that if someone goes with, but not if I have to go alone....

It's at the Crystal Ballroom, if that helps any. *lol* And the people of drinking age get the floor--the mezzanine is all ages.

Purty please!?!? C'mon! It's the day of Bush's inauguration!! He'll have such great funny things to say!!

I'll have zero sleep with which to work the next day, but oh well.

EDIT: The second show, the not-sold-out show, is 21+ only.

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Well, I was supposed to stay at church tonight, but when I got there, the only people were the bible study class.

Last I heard, they had a family in the program--maybe they didn't. Nice of them to call, eh?? /sarcasm

At least now I can read my friends list....bwah ha ha.

Fangirlyness abounds

Recently there was a con somewhere (I honestly have no idea) where Dominic Monaghan and Elijah Wood showed up. I was reading one person's story about Dom's Q&A and found this:

"While prepping for scary scenes in Lost he listens to Radiohead, The Verve, Carmina Burana."

Yeay, he's a Radiohead fan. *squee!*

One day, I will go to a LOTR con. Dammit. One day, I will be able to go to a LOTR con where all the hobbits are there.

Reading everyone's stories makes me mega jealous. Not so much that they saw the hobbits, actually. Just that they're such close friends. I have undone27 on my flist, but I don't think she has any freaking clue who I am. It's odd....the fact is, I'm just not that involved in the fandom. Some of the hobbitfic authors know my name (like baylorsr, who has met some of her flist offline)...but it's a pretty small number...

I never thought I'd be slightly jealous of people who don't seem to leave the house very much.

I don't know....I mean, involved fans might get to talk online like crazy, and read lots of fic, and occasionally meet up at cons and whatnot...but how does that compare to doing stuff "in real life"? Like singing, or going out dancing, or working full-time? Playing the harp?

Harp Bitching

harp pisses me off sometimes. Some high school girl mentioned that she "graduated from a lever harp to a pedal harp..." aka she went from the (usually) smaller "folk/celtic" version of the harp, which I play, to the orchestra/symphony kind of harp. Most of the time, to me those sound too...dry? Technical? Precise? Which makes sense for classical style music, I suppose.

But ....gah!! As if the pedal harp were automatically better! You can easily make the lever harp a lifetime investment where you're always learning new things. There's certainly a hell of a lot more variation in sound and tone and size and whatnot in lever harps, as there are (last I checked) exactly two companies that make pedal harps, and I know people who've played lever harp for all of a year before building one for themselves from scratch that sounds wonderful and shows their personality.

Try taking your goddamn pedal harp to a friend's house or a party or a festival for a planned performance or impromptu concert. Try busking with that $20,000 lyon and healy, which btw, I keep hearing you guys bitch about spending tens of thousands of dollars on pedal harps only to have to send them back because they're built shoddily. Interesting how you can't share your music with your friends unless you invite them over or they buy tickets to the symphony. Or how you can't skip a day's practice or you get blisters from the high tension. You'll have to practice for years before you can play in public in anything but a school performance, and after several months I was playing simple tunes for my friends and they were enjoying the hell out of it. And I didn't need a station wagon to get my harp anywhere, I just hauled the dang thing up the hill.

I know people with more than one lever harp so they can play different styles or in different places or for different people. I've taken a Dusty Strings Allegro harp on the goddamn commuter train. Lever harps are accessible--you can buy a plinky but okay one for $500, or save up and buy a professional lever harp for $6,000. You can rent a very good one for $50. I know of people who've bought one $2,000 harp and taken it everywhere and been very satisfied and had it last for years and years.

I don't know...if I had a pedal harp in front of me I'd certainly play around with it, just out curiousity. But for fuck's sake, I'd never try to buy one or decide to have that be my main harp. And the idea that only pedal harps are Real Harps (which seems to be a common attitude on harp), is irritating beyond belief.