Cleveland ThanksTAKING Devival Review

From: "iDRMRSR" <idrmrsr@subgenius.com>
Date: Sun, Nov 16, 2003

PHOTOS

This garage image barrage certainly did not disparage!

Mighty Sacred Scribe and Director Ivan Stang sat commandingly at his
keyboards as he applied the most modern 2003 technology to make 1998 JPEGS
look just like something out of the '60s!!!

And in so doing actually made a MAC laptop produce, not once, not twice, but
THREE TIMES...a dreaded Blue Screen of Death. Which certainly amused this
Winders Zombie. Even though, to be fair, it was prolly the screen saver
kicking in and turning off the signal to the video projector of yore (Macs
have screen savers, no?).

ESO blasted the lazy, motionless, crowd of SubG's into what for them was a
torrent of activity. Chaz even bade me get up and jiggle my ample fat pads,
and I was able to resist that up until the last set where I did the Big Shoe
Dance.

Greetz to Rabbi Shankar, Prostata Cantata (whose name I am at last
associating with a face), and thanks for the big smooch from Priestess
Pisces, which will provide me with a little English on my stroke, I promise,
so help me Connie. I was stunned to see her there, having driven all the
way from the bowels of Virginia. I was also considerably under the weather
having caught one half of a cold from Little Mister Sister, the kind where
hour by hour it seems it will be a whole cold, and then goes away for a
while. Just fuxup the head a little.

The Amino Acids also made an unexpected appearance, but as they forgot their
gear, had to settle for playing air guitar. Which by the climax of the
show, did not seem to distract from the pandemonium.

This was a rip snorting show, almost like a private party for SubG's.
Videodelic certainly generates a lot of slackful effects, and if the bassist
only knew enough to get out of the way of the damn projector, things would
have been absolutely PERFECT.

I even pre-napped before the show. Imagine the slackful life that I
lead...I actually had to set an alarm clock for 8 PM to ensure that I would
be awake in time to see the thing. But by 1:30 AM, my concreted sinuses,
dripping slime, demanded to be taken home, so I missed some of the open mike
rants.

Now it's on to Detroit. You know, the Pinks around here have their football
season to carry them through a dull winter. I rather like the multiple
regional devivals so close together for precisely the same reason! How many
touchdowns will Stang score in two weeks in Detroit?????

[*]
-----

PS - pix on ABS to follow, like real soon!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>

iDRMRSR <idrmrsr@subgenius.com> wrote:
> This garage image barrage certainly did not disparage!
>
> Mighty Sacred Scribe and Director Ivan Stang sat commandingly at his
> keyboards as he applied the most modern 2003 technology to make 1998 JPEGS
> look just like something out of the '60s!!!

That's a real good way of putting it! Essentially, I applied modern
video image-warping versions of the late 1960s psychedelic
overhead-projector-and-clear-plates-of-colored-oil "light show" to
artwork from alt.binaries.slack art going back to 1995 or so.

However, the specific pieces of art were COMPUTER-SELECTED to go with
certain songs. I had some songs I wanted to "illustrate" -- the old
"Ballad of "Bob" Dobbs" by Ahmed Fishmonger and Bleepo (who was at the
devival!), "Sister Connie" by Saint N and Hellena Handbasket, an
old-timey song about a Connie, "Pinkbelly" and "Dobbs" by Norel Pref,
and "Planet X or Bust" by The El Queso AllStars. That last tune has
been rattling in my head for a WEEK now. (AGAIN!) Also I knew Dave was
gonna do some war-related songs.

I even had this nifty, incredibly simple program called "Motion
Pictures" which had simply appeared one day on my Mac after it had
automatically updated various system files. You toss art or photo files
into this thing and it makes a movie of them, zooming and panning and
dissolving ("the Ken Burns effect" it's now called, although it's what
filmmakers always do with stills).

But it was three -- no, TWO! -- days until the show, and I really
didn't have time to carefully, manually select art by combing through
the files.

So for the first time I used the system's built in search engines to
help me make collages using EVERYBODY's art. You see, everything ever
posted to alt.binaries.slack that was worth a shit is still on my
secondary interior hard drive. There's a copy of SubSITE, which
features thousands of pieces dating back to 1994, and there's copies of
everything NOT YET ADDED to SubSITE which includes much of this year
and almost all of 1999 (a rough year for me... I still haven't caught
up). Thousands more pictures.

I had songs covering 5 subject matters: X-day, Connie, Dobbs, the War,
and Pinks. Oh and "13013." I was gonna do that song/collage too.

So I had the system search for, and list, all IMAGE files with those
key words in the titles of the files. "XDAY"/"X-DAY" and "CONNIE"
produced around 300 each. 13013 produced 50 or 60. "BOB" produced about
TWO THOUSAND JPEGS AND GIFs. I did not even do "Dobbs." LUCKILY, I
could select all the names from those lists and drag-and-drop copy them
to a separate drive for movie-making, all at once. The WAR subject
matter art was already compiled, in the two last online Stark Fists.

Thence sorting the files down, and matching them to the songs, albeit
very roughly, was pretty time-consuming. But it LOOKED GREAT on the
screen and ... my GOD, what a TIME TRIP if you're an old
SubGenius-timer! Each collection was a CROSS-SECTION from a DECADE of
art by dozens of artists, and... well, I'll render 'em down soon and
post them and you'll see. I'll eventually get DVDs or whatnot to the
main contributors at least.

I also moved the most visually "SEEABLE" ones into category collections
for VIDEODELIC, which is a Mac program by Eric Wenger that is the
actual "light show" device. One can program it to treat art all manner
of crazy ways, AND to do so IN REACTION TO MUSIC or OTHER SOUND
CHANGES, according to various levels of frequency and tone. Oftentimes
it's just a scrambled mess, but as I've been learning to control the
parameters it becomes almost like playing a musical instument, only,
with pictures. It's mostly controlled by keyboard commands (not mouse).

PLUS, we could plug a live video camera into Videodelic and pump ITS
moving picture through the trippy filters, alternating with art, which
we did when Wei and I weren't both performing otherwise on stage. We
pointed the live camera into the audience some of the time, using
night-vision, so the audience saw themselves up there sometimes.

Also, Princess Wei and I shot stills of folks as they came in, and
later projected those on the screen.

Another thing I did was simply let an art viewing program "slide show"
through recent art by Heart Ignition, IMBJR and LeMur.

Most of the shit actually worked! We had several clumsy moments but
what the fuck. Gotta learn by doing, apparently.

The GOOD part of all this for me was that I GOT TO SIT DOWN throughout
most of the show, and was in a spot where NOBODY COULD PESTER ME while
I was trying to WATCH the BANDS etc. It was much like being at my desk
at home, only my desktop was being projected huge.

Next time we'll have to dress up the desktop so it doesn't look so
dorky between programs. I used to have outlandish desktops but now the
actual pictures I'm making are so intense, I generally leave the
desktop pretty generic and plain now.

And an age old rule was proved again: DON'T BRING ANYTHING TO A DEVIVAL
YOU DON'T WANT TO RISK LOSING.

I brought my el cheapo Apex DVD player. As soon as I had everything set
up, the club's hired soundman arrived and started moving monitors
around on stage in a hurry. He somewhat duncefully yanked on one set of
wires which caused my little DVD player to flip up into the air off the
cardtable and onto the stage upside down, a real loud belly-flop.

Oddly enough the damn thing still played DVDs and we used it for the
show.

Then last night I discovered that although the DVD player plays DVDs,
it no longer plays CDRs, such as hold all my VCDs and S-VCDs, including
my complete Futurama collection!

Luckily for that sound-boy it was only a $50 deck (he got $200 for the
show). But I still have to go to the trouble of calling the club and
then him and then wheedling and ... SHOW BIZ!!! PTUI!!!

Also, the video camera seems to have developed a perpetual slow zoom-in
since the hippie prior to me borrowed it. That through Wei and I both
for a loop. Never saw an ever-zooming zoom like that before. We had to
constantly pull it back to wide angle. Then it would start creeping
again. "RENTED LIPS" and borrowed cameras...

>
> And in so doing actually made a MAC laptop produce, not once, not twice, but
> THREE TIMES...a dreaded Blue Screen of Death. Which certainly amused this
> Winders Zombie. Even though, to be fair, it was prolly the screen saver
> kicking in and turning off the signal to the video projector of yore (Macs
> have screen savers, no?).

I had practiced with this system quite a bit at home, but once on stage
and in chaos, of course we learned the hard way. The Mac actually never
crashed throughout the whole show. That blue screen that you saw was
indeed the projector. I discovered the hard way that if the iBook
screen isn't laying all the way OPEN, but only half-open, even if it's
in the middle of a slide show, it will "sleep" as far as the screen is
concerned. I can probably change that but... dang.

Another thing that happened... for my rant, I decided to slide-show the
photos of the AUDIENCE. Which ran fine for awhile but, unbeknownst to
me the whole time, it FROZE on one guy (a guy we don't even know) so
that for half my rant there was a huge picture of SOME GEEK up there,
and not "Bob" or anyone else. Now, the actual computer was still
slide-showing through different art. BUT, becaused the screen was
half-down (to make room for other crap I guess), the output or the
projector went to "sleep" on that one picture, and left it there.

I didn't know any of this had happened until I was looking at a
videotape of the whole show, showing the whole stage, from a camera
that was running atop the sales table at the back of the room.

I kind of regret that no one I knew at the place bothered to either
inform me of the problem -- me being required to face AWAY from the
screen to rant -- or to try fixing it themselves, which would have
required just jiggling the laptop or mouse. I guess everyone was just
so RIVETED by my ranting. Or too drunk, fropped or passive to bother,
but I will choose to believe the former.

The other thing I could do would be to find somebody willing to run the
light-show while I'm doing other things, like ranting, or schmoozing,
or rendering first aid. But again we run up against the
drunk-stone-passive problem, or, worse, the "how much do I get paid"
problem. Also the "What's a "MACINTOSH"??" problem and the "Hey,
where's the right-click on this mouse??" problems.

>
> ESO blasted the lazy, motionless, crowd of SubG's into what for them was a
> torrent of activity. Chaz even bade me get up and jiggle my ample fat pads,
> and I was able to resist that up until the last set where I did the Big Shoe
> Dance.

That was actually pretty spectacular and somewhere there's a motion
picture of it.

I personally have been trying to figure out why Chaz, who has written a
whole completely original rock opera lately, which KICKS ASS in demo
form, played strictly old bar-band saws like "House of the Rising Sun"
et al. That new guitar player is GREAT but even I started wondering how
to relate this r&b history lesson with the Dobbs Message. Until I
suddenly got Happy Feet. Then I remembered -- oh yeah, the SLACK part!

Now here's some good news: for me anyway: I got good audio! I think. I
mean, what I've heard so far. The soundman himself, like most bar sound
guys, was unable to do such things as MAKE A RECORDING OF ANY KIND.
However, I had, in my PARANOIA, brought a spare cassette deck and lots
of tape, and much to my surprise, plugging it into the soundboard
resulted (for once) in a DECENT SOUNDING RECORDING of the ESO, Dave's
band and even some of the ranting.

SUPERB impromptu testimonials were delivered towards the end of the
night by Priestess Pisces, Rev. Carter LeBlanc, and others. There were
also some abysmally terrible lectures and one guy was so bad he had to
be gonged. Carter's closer made up for it though. WATCH PISCES and
CARTER; those are two NATURAL preachers.

>
> Greetz to Rabbi Shankar, Prostata Cantata (whose name I am at last
> associating with a face), and thanks for the big smooch from Priestess
> Pisces, which will provide me with a little English on my stroke, I promise,
> so help me Connie. I was stunned to see her there, having driven all the
> way from the bowels of Virginia. I was also considerably under the weather
> having caught one half of a cold from Little Mister Sister, the kind where
> hour by hour it seems it will be a whole cold, and then goes away for a
> while. Just fuxup the head a little.
>
> The Amino Acids also made an unexpected appearance, but as they forgot their
> gear, had to settle for playing air guitar. Which by the climax of the
> show, did not seem to distract from the pandemonium.

They brought 100 CDs to give away -- previews of the Nov. 29 Detroit
devival, with songs by all 4 bands that'll be there. (I was relieved to
hear these bands and find them NOT WANTING.)

>
> This was a rip snorting show, almost like a private party for SubG's.
> Videodelic certainly generates a lot of slackful effects, and if the bassist
> only knew enough to get out of the way of the damn projector, things would
> have been absolutely PERFECT.

Well, you know, I didn't want to mess up the "vibe" by moving the
guitar player around like a chess piece repeatedly.

We shoulda moved the pulpit, now that I think about it.

>
> I even pre-napped before the show. Imagine the slackful life that I
> lead...I actually had to set an alarm clock for 8 PM to ensure that I would
> be awake in time to see the thing. But by 1:30 AM, my concreted sinuses,
> dripping slime, demanded to be taken home, so I missed some of the open mike
> rants.

I weathered the stressfilled, equipment-battling build-up, the show,
and a pleasant after-show party at my house... and then, I INJURED
MYSELF IN MY SLEEP. Got up at 8 am to PeE and when I got back in bed I
must have flopped my head down wrong because when we got up at 2 pm, I
had not just BECOME but was SPORTING A REAL PAIN IN THE NECK. It hurt
so bad that in order to put all my gizmos back the way they were at
home-office, and thus get back On the Stick, I had to take a PAIN
KILLER -- a single actual narcotic PILL that I had saved from the
garbage and hoarded just in case I actually NEEDED it, I mean, not to
PARTY. It was in fact an OXYCONTIN, the same thing that Rush needed
20,000 a month of for some reason.

For two hours it killed the neck pain. I felt like Rush and got all my
stuff reconnected.

Then I puked up all of my sausage dinner. ALL of it. The bowl looked
like something from a.b.s. It was so colorful that the knowledge that
it was my puke made me dry-heave some more.

I never have had much fun with pain killer pills. Probably for the
best. Made for LOVELY patterns when I closed my eyes. And I could "see"
the TV that Wei was watching even though my eyes were closed (but
everybody looked different than they did if I looked at the TV with my
eyes open.)

Now it's Thursday and I'm just now getting caught up with the bills and
clean-up and catch-up and mustard.

>
> Now it's on to Detroit. You know, the Pinks around here have their football
> season to carry them through a dull winter. I rather like the multiple
> regional devivals so close together for precisely the same reason! How many
> touchdowns will Stang score in two weeks in Detroit?????

Har har. Since there are four bands, the light show would be too much,
and I probably will only have about 40 minutes top to do stuff in.
Since it's the first devival in Detroit to speak of I should probably
do a revised Dobbs 101 instead of a revised Canned Rant 2003.

Or both, I dunno, to tell the truth I usually piece the notes together
in the car on the way there. It's not that I don't CARE enough to do it
earlier, it's that there's always some kind of SHIT I have to do first.

Like as with so many things of Slack.

>
> [*]
> -----
>
> PS - pix on ABS to follow, like real soon!
>

The one called "stang@home" is Wei's fave. She thinks I should use it
as an official devival p.r. pic. (She seems to HATE the "Oddo"
graveyard "Official Portrait" that I keep using.)

There was no violence the whole show! And nobody puked on my furniture
afterwards! Only THREE people stood in front of the stage hollering
drunkenly nonstop at the tops of their lungs throughout my sermon! --
for Cleveland that's a CALM and ATTENTIVE crowd! And the swag sales
were quite good. Even the stupid fucking teddy bear and the crappiest
"travel mug" got sold finally. A 14 year old girl was Ministerized and
I think at least one other soul was saved. I don't have a single
Membership pack for Detroit.

But Wei and I realized way too late what we had TOTALLY FORGOTTEN TO
INVOKE during the show.

"OYEH."

All it would have taken would have been for me or Wei to start
muttering Oyeh under our breaths on mike. And now it's too late. Who
knows but that we might have lured the Oyeh guy out of his O-hole! If
nothing else it would have scared Lone Cow Dave, who seems to have some
kind of Oyehphobia.

--
4th Stangian Orthodox MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Wrath of Dobbs Yeti,
Resurrected (Rev. Ivan Stang, prop.)
PRABOB


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