Euphoric Blog

Wow, RiffTrax Live!  I never thought anything MST3K-related would come that close to my hometown.  As some of you know, I not only saw Rifftrax Live last Thursday– I saw it at the Belcourt in Nashville.  I was in the audience the rest of you heard and saw on the screens of your own theaters, and I had the pleasure of meeting the Rifftones in person. Here are the highlights of the day:

I drove two hours from Owensboro to Nashville without air conditioning.  Sighhhh, the things I do for my fandom.  I got there a few hours early to pick up my tickets, and knew I was in the right place because this awesome dragon mural opposite the theater is also viewable on Google Maps in Street View!

Here is the lovely Belcourt Theater below.  We were wondering if it would turn out to be like the Tardis, bigger on the inside.  Maybe it was for the performers? Not for us.

The line stretched all the way around the block once people started waiting for the doors to open!  Richard “Lowtax” Kyanka walked the line at one point, carrying a bag of energy drinks and asking us whether we wanted “liquid abortions.”  I thought about chiming in with a sick joke of my own, but it might have embarrassed the friend I was with so I stayed quiet. The guy in line behind me took one of the energy drinks, tasted it, then said it was gross and dumped it after Kyanka went around the corner. So THAT’s why he was giving us stuff!

My friend Aaron got cranberry smoothies from Smoothie King across the street, and we had a liquid dinner while waiting for the doors to open at 6:15PM. Please pay no attention to the bad hair day behind the “Aryan” architect.

Most of you saw the same show that I did, so there’s really no need to blog about it except to say that the RiffTones rocked the nation!  Well, and everyone else was awesome too.  I know there have been some negative comments about Jonathan Coulton’s music online in MSTie circles, but I think those negative people just don’t pay attention to song lyrics!  Maybe his music is a bit soft for a riffing event? BUT THE LYRICS read exactly like B-movie riffs!  (Aside from the parts of “It’s Going to Be the Future Soon” that always make me cry because they hit a little too close to home…) Haters need to stop hatin’ on JoCo.  The Nashville audience had to pay attention during the musical interlude too, as we were not allowed to get up during the show.  The camera guys needed to keep the aisles clear and trail their equipment cords everywhere.  No bathroom breaks for the audience, and we had been advised to “go” before the show started.

After the show, we hung around a bit to see if there would be a meet-and-greet.  And we weren’t disappointed! There was a bit of a line to meet the RiffTones, but amazingly only one small group of friends talking to Jonathan Coulton!  He was being mostly ignored! How rude!  I switched lines and shuffled over to say hi to him first.

Duuuuuuurrrrr… I swear I’m not mental! It’s just, he put his arm around me and at the same time I was focusing on Aaron and wondering whether he knew how to use the camera I had just handed him, and then the flash went off RIGHT IN MY EYES and the whole thing was over before I really knew my picture was taken.

Here’s another one, but the camera had been handed to someone who didn’t know how to use it and set it on the wrong flash setting.  I salvaged it best I could in RAW by upping the white balance and warming the tone to a sepia.

JoCo was actually the easiest one of the lot of them to meet.  I think of him as a game industry person, and I’ve met the creators of Sim City, Pac Man, and Quake at the Game Developers Conference.  Prepped conference rooms and guarded doors for them.  Moreover, Jonathan Coulton was not on my radar before my college years.  He had no influence on my childhood, unlike the rest of these kind people.  I told him how excited I was that he was there, and that I had tried to guess what songs he would play, and that “The Future Soon” was a pleasant surprise and I wondered if he might also do “Skull Crusher Mountain.”

He may have been pleased to hear my Kentucky accent pronounce “mountain” as “moun’ in,” and he definitely seemed pleased when I said he could sign Gene Roddenberry’s birthday on the August page of the 1997 MST3K calendar, which I had brought for being the handiest thing to get autographed.

See, I wanted the RiffTones to sign the picture and everyone who wasn’t riffing to sign the calendar side on the back.  JoCo put his geek glasses smilie on Gene Roddenberry’s birthday!  And a FROWN FACE on Patrick Swayze’s birthday!  And another smilie on the day President Nixon resigned in 1974.  Yes, that’s what it says in blue.  Patrick Swayze’s birthday.  “What IS this?!?”  JoCo exclaimed, chuckling as I giggled and handed him the page.  This *was* part of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan club calendar, after all.

Ok, now it was time for the moment of truth.  There was still a crowd around Mike but the line was dying down around Kevin and Bill so I went to them next.  “Hi Bill!”

“Haven’t I seen…” he started, having recognized my face from Facebook but not confident he could produce the right name for the right person.  I introduced myself as “Teresa Lee, OR Euphoriafish” and Kevin smiled at me. “Oh, so you’re Euphoriafish!”  OMG, did he notice my comments on the blog? Was he just playing along?  I had talked to Bill before on Facebook, but I hadn’t friended Kevin yet and didn’t think my blog comments really stood out or anything.

The guys were so very nice to me.  I felt like I was Dorothy standing between the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man.  You know, because Kevin is so hairy and Bill is so… shiny?  Kidding, kidding! I mean they were just so friendly and we even joked around together a bit.  I passed the calendar page back and forth and Bill asked whether I spell my name with an “H” or not as he signed it.  I don’t.  “Well, of course not.  What’s an ‘H’ doing in there anyway? Silly English…”  I said that I love it when I meet people from foreign countries and I sometimes get to hear the foreign pronunciations like “Tay-ray-saa,” to which Kevin chimed in, “Or in Wisconsin, they’d call you Treesa.  Oh hi, Treesa!” And he did the accent. Kevin Murphy has quite possibly the friendliest voice in the history of voices.  Though Bill comes close, when they’re not giving him rage lines in the riff scripts.

Still a crowd around Mike.  Getting smaller though.

One guy had recognized Bridget and was telling her how wonderful she is while she signed something for him.  I waited to get her attention and another fangirl came up behind me and asked whether we were in line.  I said, “Well, we might be waiting to say hi to Bridget…” (judging whether she seemed to be in a hurry and whether she *wanted* to be recognized or not)  The lady did not recognize Bridget.  I explained she was Mike’s wife, Nuveena on MST3K, etc.  The lady nodded.  I don’t remember whether she said hi to Bridget or not but I think she somehow skipped around me and got to Mike first.  That’s ok.  I was too busy asking Bridget to sign my calendar page.

She did seem to be in a hurry, but she was friendly anyway.  She grabbed a red pen, saying maybe she’d make some corrections.

She said I was one of her 10 fans that night.  I put my foot in my mouth– “I was surprised to see you here!”  Sigh.  She gets that all the time.  I know she does.  I just somehow didn’t think she would find the Nashville trip worth it for just two or three days.  I felt guilty for asking the over-asked questions, but I didn’t have anything better prepared.

“Oh, I’m Mike’s wife.”  “I know!” “Oh, well, I go with him everywhere.  We leave the kids all alone!”  with a look of manic glee in her eyes as I laughed and she made a hasty retreat.  Aww, you pretend to be a bad mother for all the fans, Bridget!

Then there was Mike.

What a nice guy, that Mike!  Shorter than I expected but of course still much taller than me.  I let him know that Tor’s soliloquy was my favorite line from the Plan 9 riff.  I hope I didn’t give the poor guy a headache with all my excited babbling.  Do you suppose celebrities mean it when they sign something with the message “(your name here) rocks!” or are they just being nice to you?  Mike wrote that I rock and Bill wrote that it was nice to meet me.  Kevin just wrote “Thanks!”

I also told Mike the story of the calendar page.  In December 1997, my uncle Bruce stole my MST3K calendar.  I didn’t even notice it was gone, because I generally forget to turn the pages after September.  He framed all the pictures and gave the framed pictures to me as a Christmas present.  “And that was… good?”  prompted Mike.

It was!  Bruce was my favorite uncle (no longer with me, died two years after the calendar Christmas, but I didn’t mention this).  Some of the images are still hanging on my bedroom wall over a decade later.  And it was a bonus present, not the only present.  “Yeah, cuz that would be… yeah… different…” we stumbled, making “lame” faces at each other.

It was truly pleasant to meet all of them, on a Thursday I shall always remember fondly.  I hope I wasn’t too giddy and fangirl-y.  I find it easy to meet game industry professionals and well-known authors, but there’s a whole other level to meeting the Best Brains alumni.  MST3K was such a huge part of my pre-teen and teen years.  I can be composed and not freeze up the *whole* time, but I’m more than a little bit giddy to meet people I half felt like I knew through their comedy for so many years, but who I thought I hadn’t a prayer of ever meeting.  You know, when I was 12 I thought my only chance to meet them ever would be if I could win the Comedy Central-advertised contest to win a trip to the Conventio-Con-Expo-Fest-A-Rama.  Which I didn’t of course.  So I gave up but was ever wistful, ever hopeful.

There’s another one off the ol’ bucket list!  Well, half off.  I still have to meet the Titans!

P.S.  I also got my cupcakes at GiGi’s on the way to the theater.  They were out of margarita ones by the time I got there, but the pink lemonade cupcake was not a lie!

Happy Birthday to me indeed!

E->}}}*>

Just set up Twitterfeed and bit.ly accounts to update Twitter when I blog.  My blog is totally Twitterpated.  Now I should just write more and be more interesting!  It’s nearly 5:00 now so I guess I will just check back at 6:00 and see if it updated properly.

I’m an alternate candidate for the JET Programme, and this week was spent seeing a doctor and getting fingerprinted to complete my paperwork.  But I need to keep my art habits going, or rather, re-establish them, so I went outside to draw from life today.  Never mind that it was raining.

I love sharpening pencils in the rain! I wanted to do it outside so I wouldn’t have to gather the wood shavings and dump them in the trash.  It started raining while I was out there and lasted just as long as I had pencils to sharpen.  But it was fun, at least until it *really* started to pour and the lead dust started to smear on my hand.  But after I finished sharpening pencils the sky cleared up, so I went on with my plans to draw from life outside.

I did three five minute sketches, two ten minute ones, and one 15 minute one.  During the second ten minute one, it started to rain and my dad said I shouldn’t sit outside.  But I had set a timer and was two minutes in, and the whole point of this exercise was to build discipline, so I snapped that I’d be in in seven minutes and I kept going.  It wound up only being an eight minute sketch though, since it started raining hard enough that I was afraid the paper would soak through.  It kinda looked like a watercolor even though it was done in 4B pencil, and I may try that again in a more controlled way  next time. The paper didn’t soak through, and it dried pretty fast as well.

I am not posting sketches today, but I intend to keep this habit up for two weeks and post the best ones at the end of that period.

In other news, I am now the proud owner of a little metal tin with a see-through lid.  Yay!  Too bad the face wash powder I want to keep in it has not yet arrived.

HERE you can listen to Neil Gaiman reading The Graveyard Book, which he just won a Newbery for, in its entirety. How cool is that?

Ok! Back to happy upbeat things for a while!  Fun weird fact: while I was taking a bath this morning, Ennio Morricone’s theme from “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” got stuck in my head.  I haven’t listened to that in forever, and I don’t think I was thinking about anything related, so it’s kinda odd that the chanting Indians and whistlers and guitar players decided to join me while I was washing my hair.  Lol, I should draw that.  It would be a funny picture.

But on to the subject at hand– Photoshop sunrays.  You’ve probably seen this everywhere but haven’t noticed it but now will see it everywhere because I’m pointing it out:

It’s on the internet, in TV commercials, and on the labels of half the products in my kitchen and bathroom.  And you don’t even have to be able to draw to make this perfect design.  I made the above just by Googling the phrase “photoshop sunray tutorial” and following the first tutorial I found.  All it is is a linear gradient from two colors that is then altered with the wave filter and the polar coordinates filter.  I don’t understand the math behind it at all, so I’m glad my computer and Photoshop work out the wave functions for me!

If it’s this popular (just a little bit ahead of the ink blots and organic vine designs that I have yet to learn how to create) I wonder how much longer it will be cool to use such a trendy design.  But oh well, I’m not a graphic designer officially.  I just learn the tech and try to apply it appropriately to my own artwork.  I’ve temporarily lost access to the drawing that I wanted to apply this to, but after some noodling around yesterday and experimenting with the distort filters, I made this banner:

But I discovered a weird problem that I’m going to post to a Photoshop forum because I don’t understand what’s going on.  When I tried saving my distort filter experiment files using the “Save For Web” option to shrink the file size, the colors got all washed out!  Like this:

Whaaaaaaa??? …the Hell?

But I could keep the intended coloring by saving the file as a giant .jpg without saving for web.  Weird.  I don’t like saving big images like the first one, because the file size is like five times what it should be and it takes twice as long to load the picture on a web page! Even Flickr gets tripped up.

EDIT: Don’t I feel silly?  After posting this, I realized that for the project I was working on before this, I had been in CMYK color mode.  I forgot to switch back to RGB for this web graphic.  D’oh! That would do it.

It just goes to show, no matter how well you think you know your tools there is always something more to learn!

I’ve mentioned before that I have muscular dystrophy, and I think this Sunday is a day I can write about it without getting all bitter and self-absorbed. I don’t want to talk about it when I’m feeling at all negative, because then whatever I write would evoke pity. And if I’m evoking pity, I’m misleading my sympathetic audience and furthering ideas that I don’t believe in. Disability’s just this thing, you know? It’s always a part of who I am, but I don’t think about it until I have to. And I certainly don’t feel bad about it except for when I’m already feeling sorry for myself about other things.

The particular type of muscular dystrophy that my brother and I have is charcot marie tooth, and the specific type of *that* is dejerine sotas. Those labels are worth mentioning only so you don’t confuse what I have with something more serious like multiple sclerosis or one of the many other types of muscular dystrophy. (MD is not MS, I’m a doctor not a missionary…if you need a mnemonic device to keep them straight) What it all means is that the nerves controlling my arms and legs are like unshielded power lines. The movement signals get there much slower than normal, so my reflexes aren’t so good and it takes more time and energy for me to move. My muscles aren’t used properly, and they weaken. I also have low endurance, poor circulation, and a poor sense of balance. I trip and fall a lot. It’s not fatal but is progressive– I may need to get a cane and/or a wheelchair in the future, but I’m hoping to have a career and family established before it gets to that point. At present I can walk (better) with or (worse) without orthotics, and I can still drive though I am considering applying for hand controls in the next car I get.  There has not been any change in my physical health since 2002 when I started wearing orthotics.

We returned to my uncle’s vineyard this week to help him harvest the last five rows of grapes.  This time it was just an intimate party with my aunt/uncle and several of their good friends.  For those of you playing along at home, the mystery of the mystery grapes  was simply that Uncle Bruce planted them thinking they were the same variety as the other grapes.  Then when they came up, they weren’t what the label on the seeds had said they were at all.  Moreover, even the university experts in Lexington were unable to identify them.  They must be some variety of wild grapes that got mixed in with his seeds.  Whatever they are, the bees love them.

This is the shed I’ve been sketching.  Um, it’s still not finished yet.  The sketch, not the shed.  The shed used to have a horse inside, back when my uncle tried to keep animals.

These are the grapes of wrath.  Harvested just before the onset of the winter of our discontent.

Everyone, meet Kate.  Kate was a major reason I didn’t finish my sketch yesterday, but she’s such a sweetie I have to forgive her.  During the bigger harvest party there were too many people and she hid in the barn the whole time.  I didn’t get to meet her until just yesterday.  Kate runs from people walking toward her, but she loved me because I was sitting still most of the time.  So she would follow someone out into the vineyard until she got bored or spooked and then she would come back to me for lovins.  If I didn’t immediately drop what I was doing and tell her what a good dog she is, she would push on my arm with one of her paws and get all up in my face with her doggie breath!

The fungus among us.  Aren’t they amazing? Click the pictures for a closer look.  These mushrooms and lichen were growing all over a stump near the shed.

The vineyard from far away.  I was distracted from my sketching and decided to go for a walk.

“In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 25

“Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe,
grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges
ahead of his accomplishments.”
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 14

(I *think* that’s my uncle in that picture.  I don’t remember exactly.)

“Before I knowed it, I was sayin’ out loud, ‘The hell with it! There
ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.
It’s all part of the same thing.’… I says, ‘What’s this call, this
sperit?’ An’ I says, ‘It’s love. I love people so much I’m fit to bust,
sometimes.’… I figgered, ‘Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus?
Maybe,’ I figgered, ‘maybe it’s all men an’ all women we love; maybe
that’s the Holy Sperit-the human sperit-the whole shebang. Maybe all
men got one big soul ever’body’s a part of.’ Now I sat there thinkin’
it, an’ all of a suddent-I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was
true, and I still know it.”
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 4

“How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped
stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare
him–he has known a fear beyond every other.”
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 19

( Those are my parents, folks.  Dad says Durhey. )

“Whenever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there.
Whenever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there… I’ll be in the
way guys yell when they’re mad an’-I’ll be in the way kids laugh when
they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the
stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build-why, I’ll be there.”
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 28

“Fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live -
for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken …
fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for
this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is
man, distinctive in the universe.”
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 14

The barn Kate likes to hide in.  My uncle had a TV and mini fridge in there so the guys could watch the game.  UK vs. ‘Bama — we lost, but we played better offense than they did, or so I hear.  I’m not ready for some football.

The view from the back porch.  It’s times like these I think to myself… I gotta get me a piece of bottom land.

“Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If
this tractor were ours, it would be good - not mine, but ours. We could
love that tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But
this tractor does two things - it turns the land and turns us off the
land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The
people were driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think about
this.”
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 14

“The migrant people, scuttling for work, scrabbling to live, looked
always for pleasure, dug for pleasure, manufactured pleasure, and they
were hungry for amusement.”
- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, Chapter 23

We grilled bratwursts for dinner, with baked beans in a metal crock, and my cousins’ grandmother made some amazing apple crumble and banana pudding.

And to finish, here’s some Autumn imagery for ya: some great pumpkins and a cute little jumping spider.

Before my uncle’s farm became a vineyard, he tried raising various types of livestock on his 10-15 acre plot in the Brown Valley out near Utica.  Horses are too much work, and goats have a nasty habit of escaping from their pens to eat garbage and climb on top of cars.  He may or may not have tried cows, I don’t remember.  I’m just glad he never raised pigs because I visited a classmate’s pig farm once and that smell is an affront to good sinuses.  Anyway, Uncle Bruce finally gave up the giant critters and started this grape ranch instead.  This weekend was the annual raisin roundup, and unlike the past three years, this year I was able to attend!

The grapes were especially sweet this year!  So sweet that the harvesters sampled them without a care for the amount of pesticide or fertilizer on the surface of each one.  Mmm, poison-y!  The honey bees didn’t mind the inedible coating either, and if one wasn’t careful, it was entirely possible to pick a bee instead of a grape.

Without the bees, there wouldn’t be any grapes.  But boy were they annoying!   As Uncle Bruce drove down the row on his tractor, my sister backed into a grapevine only to find she was mere inches away from being… wait for it… COVERED IN BEES!!!  They were especially thick on the “mystery grapes.”  (What mystery?  It was explained to me at one point but I immediately forgot.  Life is better with some mystery left to it anyway.  Feel free to comment with your own solution to the mystery of the mystery grapes.)  Sadly, my sister hasn’t seen The Wicker Man OR Eddie Izzard, so my goofy chanting of, “No! Not the bees! AAAAUUUGHHHH!” fell on deaf ears after she recounted her experience between the vines.  She did, however, find the Eddie Izzard reference funny after I explained that part of his routine to her.

The bees also wanted to cover my soda, as I sat by the barn sketching the small shed that once had a pony in it… until it died and my uncle decided to stop keeping horses since my cousin was allergic anyway.  It was a tiny shed but it had this awesome clump of trees and pot of begonias in front of it, and sketching is the best way for a shy person like meself to relax at a public event.

When you have an open sketchbook, you are freed from the pressure of finding things to talk about and people will come to you instead because they are curious. They have the security of the sketchbook as a conversation topic, plus the excuse of not wanting to disturb your work if they run out of things to talk about.

I was approached thusly by my boyfriend’s dad’s girlfriend, who wanted to know if I had heard from our sailor recently.  When it became clear that neither his dad nor I had heard from Eric in the past three weeks, we were all quite relieved because that just means he is busy and can’t contact anyone.  He didn’t die and he doesn’t hate me! Hooray! Now I just have to send a follow-up email apologizing for the nasty things I said in the previous one.  (Not really.  I just asked if I still had a boyfriend.  After all, one can’t expect to find one’s lover unchanged after not speaking to him for three days.  To loosely paraphrase Confucious.)

I didn’t finish the sketch because 1) I was taking my time since I’m relatively weak with pencils and often rush with them so I can get to the ink and the paint and the fun, and 2) there were people and chairs between me and the shed, so I would stop sketching and rest or eat whenever a large group of people blocked my view.  I also stopped to say, “Thank you,” and talk to the people who noticed what I was doing and wanted to talk about drawing.

I most enjoyed talking to George who is a friend of my uncle and who owns the local Greek bistro downtown.  His bistro catered the harvest party, and that Greek food is what is referenced in the title of this post.  George is a really nice guy, and he said he enjoys art as well.  He agreed with me that charcoal is much easier to use than pencils are, and he seemed excited when I told him how I usually prefer to paint on the computer.  “Photoshop…Photoshop…Photoshop…” he repeated so he could remember.  Who knows, maybe he’ll go buy a tablet now, when he has some time away from the restaurant.  I think that would be a rare occurrence though.

Anyway, I didn’t finish the sketch before it got too dark to see.  But we’re going back in a few weeks to help with the grapes again.  I’ll post the sketch here when it is done.

Amazing.  Practice really does make perfect!

I’ve been a huge Harmonix fan ever since Frequency, but on Frequency and Amplitude there was always a bar of difficulty I couldn’t cross.  I would ace the single player game on both easy and medium, and then hit the bar in the middle of Hard and progress no further.  In both Frequency and Amplitude, Hard mode meant there might be extra notes you could barely hear in the music, and you had to play 16th or 32nd notes on a single button.  That’s hella hard when pushing buttons on a PS2 control pad.  Also, if there was one especially hard part in the middle of the song, you couldn’t just practice that part of the song.  You had to survive the whole song to clear it, and play all the way through up to the point you were having trouble with to try that again.  It was really a shooter, albeit disguised as a music game, and eventually my reflexes just couldn’t take that much abuse anymore.

I haven’t had much time with Guitar Hero on the PS2, but the DS version has definitely fixed the game and made it more like playing a musical instrument.  When you fail a song in Career Mode, it gives you the option to switch to Practice Mode.  (The option is also in the main menu of the game, so you can start a play session with practice.)  In Practice Mode, you can choose any section of the song and have just that section play over and over until you hit Start to bring up the restart-or-quit menu.  And it tells you how many of the notes you played right!  So you know that practicing is actually helping!

Also notable:  playing 16th and 32nd notes doesn’t suck anymore because you can actually strum on the DS touch screen.  My wrists are most grateful, though my left hand is getting a little bit more exercise than it is used to from fingering all those chords.  I’ve gotten to the point where the game is giving me three finger chords and making me switch from 1st and 3rd to 2nd and 4th “frets” a lot.

Last week, I was stuck on “Breed” by Nirvana on Hard.  This week, I finished Bloc Party’s “Helicopter” and am currently working on “I Wanna Rock and Roll All Night” by Kiss.  I’m averaging one or two songs on Career Hard mode and a whole venue in Guitar Duels Medium each day.  I didn’t pass the Kiss song today, but I did go from 20% to 80% completion in just an hour.  So, I’m fairly confident I will clear it tomorrow.