schnoidlblog

there is a little closet to the left of the kitchen sink, with a sunny window to the courtyard. the ceiling clears my head by a few inches. it used to hold a bunch of dusty neglected boxes up to near waist height, but in a fit of motivation a few months ago, we got it cleaned out. I got the silly idea it would make a nice mini-painting studio, but no more had been done. The other side of it is the neighbor’s shower, ie water pipes, so I am wary of drilling any holes; it’s plaster, so i can’t exactly be popping pushpins into it any time I want.

Well, I solved it. Get a piece of chipboard, paint it white, and screw it in by the corners, far from any pipes, with a little shelf across the bottom, and a bigger shelf at right. I bought some little pieces of plywood a few months back, and am thinking I can duct-tape a scrap of wood on the back to use as a handle, with a loop of wire for hanging.

I have fallen into a pattern of waking up in the early morning hours, head spinning. So, head, if you must, then let’s think some shit out. I’m about 25€ away from a new functionality. Finest.

Making good progress on the music video; finally got the motion all blocked out, now just have to do the actual creativity part, micro-managing all the colors and flutter.

A buddy bought a little painting from me yesterday, just $200, but that’s enough to buy us a little freezer, about 65 liters. 16 gallon jugs’ worth of freezie seems like a good spend to me. I used to keep my freezer in Baltimore jammed up tight, damn convenient, and a good buffer for those days when the money doesn’t return my calls. I like having a big bag of brown rice available at all times. Peas, brussel sprouts, spinach, soups…and ice cream.

Finally put up two broad shelves next to Bhu’s work area in the living room. They are her new DJ center, holding her huge collection of CDs. She’s a damn good DJ, selection and flow wise, and if I can just get her to fall off her thumb and sort out a good sequence for a demo mix, wouldn’t at all be surprised if she starts getting way more bar gigs than me.

taught the first of 3 sessions of my After Effects class at Games Academy last week, got another one coming up Thursday. Good kids, very interested and motivated, unlike the usual lumps I got at my other schools. Used to go through the first class, everybody good, right, off we go, then the next week realize we have to do it alllll over again, and usually the third week was more of the same, made it pretty hard to stick to the schedule which was already crammed in deep. At this school, I get only 3 8-hour days, which is SO not enough, but it is what it is. Looks nice on my linkedin page to say Instructor, Games Academy Berlin.

Time to fall off my thumb and get started on that music video. My big push for video contacts resulted in 3 fellow droids saying hey let’s get a beer, which I need to follow up on, but other than that it’s summertime doldrums, so, tis the season to make the most of the downtime.

Bhu did her first day at a new job last week. She isn’t expected to get a lot of regular shifts until maybe September, which isn’t quite the answer she was hoping for, but management was super happy, said even for a slow night the receipts were high: people like her, and came back and bought. Go Her! She has two other possibilities at other clubs, just got to get her to the interview. She got her last big check from the losers, so we are afloat for a month or so, a nice bit of ease…while it lasts. She loves to sew, does all her clothes, and one of her machines, an “overlock” type (trims and finishes edges) is pretty tired, so I am trying to drag her to a shop to buy a better one for herself. I hope to pay her back for it when I am paid from GA, we’ll see if there’s something she can use.

Big meeting with visa office will be coming up sometime in August, so it is time to start that scramble. Main thing is to get my taxes together, which is currently all potential. I should have enough income for this year to date; that and a letter from Bhu saying I live with her and we manage together, maybe it will be enough. Then, I should get another 2 years. Just gotta make a big neat folder of numbers for Accountant Man.

Shit, it’s mid June and I’ve only played frisbee once. Unasseptabow.

Bhu’s Amsterdam show really needed to be a big win. It wasn’t. Her good friend who was doing a lot of the organizing nearly died from meningitis last month, and has been way out of commission, and the guys on whose heads the job fell just didn’t get the memo. Her slot got pushed this way and that, and eventually ended up after 3am, at which time most of the guests were done, and the few that were there were all at another band, with nobody announcing hey go give this other band a chance. What she did get though, is seeing herself rise the fuck up anyway, and hit her notes with all her power and heart, and the 50 or 60 people lucky enough to attend the royal fucking audience got a show to remember. Still proud of her, but it just drives home the point of how bad she needs real professional management. She has something very special, and she really deserves to be out there giving it her all, pouring it on from deep, for real crowds.

There were some seriously overkill robotics things, wild fire and steel things, like I used to see at Burning Man. In fact one of the popular artists there brought his latest HUGE iteration of his one-liner idea, a rotating wheel of sculptures of frames of an animation, sync’ed to a strobe light, which I had previously seen in carousel form. Now, it’s an upright wheel (cf: Ferris), with skeletons poling their way across some unseen mudbog. Stunning, MASSIVE. Other stuff was outrageously complex, but less overwhelming, like this crazy dragon with flexing tail, wings, and head, which sputtered and clattered back and forth, looking like a bunch of spazzy hydraulics and not much else. Hey, whatever keeps the needle out of your arm.

Me, my contribution, after the first night’s running down of every question/issue for Bhu, was mostly limited to swollen eyes, bricked sinuses, and asthma, all from whichever local dust/pollen/fucker that hit my buttons. Luckily, i thought of putting a wet sock over my nose and mouth, so was able to at least get some sleep. Asthma? I’ve never even had that before! Ffffffuck!

We stayed in the biggest wagenburg I have ever seen. Vaagen vaat? There is a thing here called a circus wagon. I suppose its original purpose was in fact as part of a circus, but I think it’s become something more. Two axles, but at the far ends of the trailer, rather than under the center. Often, a raised center strip in the roof with skylights down the sides. When you get a bunch of them, and whichever other camping trailers, found-wood shacks, and some handy robust hippie-punks together on a piece of land, you have the outdoor form of a squat: wagenburg. There’s one in Berlin I’ve been to that’s not a whole lot more than an artsy slum, but some of the people at ADM really have skills, and a hell of a work ethic. I bet there are 200 wagons at this place!! This, maybe, appears to be the view from above (use the satellite version), so feel free to count them yourselves. Wild to be in the presence of productive people again, after the casual fuckoff stasis that seems to be the norm in Berlin.

anyway, i have so been craving my bed since hours.

grinding away at compiling an updated list of potential work leads today. holy crap is Berlin ever the center of design, SO many people at it here. Quite a spread in quality though; i see some things that make me feel like a rustic relic, with no business showing my face, and then I see other stuff so klunky that you have to wonder just what voodoo they are using to stay in business. spent a good while updating all of the videos on my site; many were compressed using an outdated format, and took a long time to load. Had read that the best time to contact people is between 10 and 10.30, Tu-Th, so I’m going to be getting together a masssive folder of emails, and at 10.01 Tuesday I start clicking send.

looking forward to being hundreds of kilometers away from our life here, when we go to Amsterdam on Thursday. Bhu promises that the event will be huge fun. We could use some fun, it’s been not such a hopeful place here at home. The club that promised her work, turns out they are pretty flaky about communication, and tend to put way too many people on the roster, such that nobody gets enough shifts. I would have bet cash that other clubs would have sought her out when they heard she was available, but so far, yeah not exactly. Outside of berghain, the party scene in this town is a bit ordinary. Lots and lots of it, but the quality is the same as everywhere else.

when I was at my sister’s, i found a letter my Mom had written us, 14 handwritten sides about whatever random patches of her history came to mind. I wish it was 10x longer, but it’s still a real treasure. here and there are sweet bits, like, my Dad didn’t have a car for a long time, so she would ride the 30 miles to pick up him and other guys, and how she would sit on his lap the whole way home…how sometimes she would visit him at his mother’s house for a week. I remember she had told me if his sisters had a boy on the living room couch, Gramma would just toss a blanket over them, so I guess it’s not a stretch to say Mom n Dad were doin’ it before they got married, and good for them. She also hints at how she worked to get him, encouraging the other waitress at her restaurant that was seeing him to dump him, stuff like that. She was a shy bit of girl, but went after what she wanted.

And worked so goddamn hard. I think she was very lonely, and she hitched her heart to another guy who just never gave her the love she deserved, then broke her heart and married someone else. My sister knuckled down and got a job as a hairstylist, but me, I was pretty worthless, just a drain, though I know she was super proud of me. Her whole life, all she did was pull.

I don’t know that I inherited much of her incredible determination, but then again I don’t have two hungry little shits bugging me for dinners. Allergies have been hitting me hard this last week and i am about ready to just fold.