OK so that's a lame attempt to Psychify my entry title. :-)
1. I rode my bike today, first time out since the Unfortunate Misstep. Went three miles around the farm, just to see how it felt and I wanted to avoid traffic for now. No problems! No pain. I just have to remember to put my left foot down when I stop, or it might get a little painful. So I think I'm good to go on part of the Pedal to the Point next week. (The problem, of course, is that I lost a month of training and so my thighs are way out of shape.) My plan is to start out doing the 30-mile stretch to lunch, and if I feel good enough I'll try to complete the whole 75 mile day. But that's just tentative, I don't want to overdo it.

2. Just watched the season premiere of Psych on USA, and laughed myself to pieces when there was a reference to my alltime favorite show. :-D grin grin grin! And loved seeing Cary Elwes as the bad guy. Mmmmm. Quite dapper.

3. Only one more summer teen program to do, tomorrow night's outdoor Battle of the Bands, (oh well, and also the judging and displaying of the teen photo contest) and then I can relax a wee bit, not feel so stressed--it's been a heck of a summer, I overbooked myself with lots of programs with lots of stuff to coordinate and then the stupid ankle making it all that much more difficult. I need a vacation!

That's all I can think of for now. Good night!

Last night my friend Diana and I went to see a fantastic concert: the Cleveland stop on the Unwigged And Unplugged Tour--Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest. Yes, that's right--I saw Spinal Tap and The Foresmen in person! :-D And man were they good! I love these guys--even though I'm not the hugest Spinal Tap fan, I got hooked later during Best in Show and A Mighty Wind and so forth. Their movies are hilarious, and they can really sing and play too. It was a lovely concert, in our beautiful Ohio Theater, which is the smallest of the Playhouse Square theaters so although we were up in the mezzanine we had a perfect view. The sound quality was a little iffy sometimes--or I'm just starting to lose my hearing :-( --I couldn't always catch their ad libs and jokes between songs. But they're such longtime friends that just watching them interact was great fun, you can clearly see how well they get along and that they have such a history together. There was a screen behind them that played an occasional video clip, from fanmade Spinal Tap music videos (the LEGO concert is hilarious!) to old mockumentary scenes (Scandinavian Cheese Festival, anyone??) to clips of Harry Shearer as a child extra in The Robe! Wow! They played several Spinal Tap songs and several folk songs from the movie A Mighty Wind--and just as I was thinking, hmm, it's too bad there's no female vocals on these songs, they do sound even nicer that way, Michael introduces his wife, Annette O'Toole, who comes out on stage to sing two songs with them!! (The Mitch and Mickey song from Mighty Wind and the Noah's Ark song) I was in total gleeful shock! This is Clark Kent's mom after all! :-D (on Smallville) What a neat surprise. And she has a lovely voice. We had a terrific time, once I got over my slight irritation at not being able to take any photos in the theater, grrr. (OK I know you usually can't bring in cameras at these things but I thought I'd try nonetheless, because I really wanted to have a photo to remember them by. Oh well.) Just a toe-tapping hilarious good time. For another perspective on the evening (and probably more details, because she was actually writing down the names of the songs they performed) check out Diana's blog.

Getting excited for my Memorial Day weekend vacation trip to Chicago--yay!! Gonzo arrives here tomorrrow and on Friday we leave. Should be a lot of fun.

Live music is great, and although I'm not a big music person, I don't go to very many concerts, I do enjoy acoustic and folk music a lot and it's really best listened to live. Friday I went to Folk Alley 'Round Town, for the second year in a row (it's been held for many more years than that, but it took me a while to get there). This is one of the events of the 2-week long Kent State Folk Festival, the country's longest-running college folk festival. (Long time ago I used to be on the student programming board that ran it, before it was changed from a solely student-run event, held on campus, to an offcampus event run by WKSU, the university's NPR affiliate station.) The other festival programs are ticketed concerts in auditoriums, but Folk Alley is over 30 acts playing in small spaces--restaurants, pubs, cafes, bars, and even a church or two. They're mostly within walking distance of each other, in downtown Kent--but this year I was surprised to see how much it's expanded to include venues a few miles from downtown. And of course, the acts I most wanted to see were in those farflung places!

Last year I'd met a very nice retired couple, Denny and Loretta, at the first Folk Alley act of the evening, and as we realized we liked the same kinds of music, we hung out together throughout the evening. It made the night a lot more enjoyable having company, as I had come alone. I ended up sending them a copy of a photo I took of them, but thought that would be the end of our association. Well, a couple of weeks ago here comes Denny into my library, "Remember me? We did the Folk Festival together last year! Let's do it again!" So that was a cool surprise, and we made plans to go together from the start this time. It was really fun; I drove us around to the various places, and not only do you get to hear good music but you can eat good food, too--I had a great chicken wrap and then later a "gyro pizza in a pita". And at Bistro on Main, a very swank restaurant, we shared a cheese plate (with white wine) that was to die for! Some of the places are not all that conducive to a great concertgoing experience, unfortunately, because they're just a bar or a college town hangout, so they don't have many chairs or the acoustics are pretty crappy with a ton of folks lining the bar watching sports tv. :-( But at least they're now all nonsmoking, thanks to Ohio's state law, and we learned our lesson from last year and went early to the tiny places to get a good seat. We heard acts ranging from "Faces Made For Radio," the above-pictured bluegrass swing group who had great harmonies and really fast mandolin and banjo players, to the hammered dulcimer and guitar melodies of the Malyuk Sisters, who also played tunes on banjo and fiddle.


The Sonshine Boys were a hoot-- a group of older gentlemen who meet every week at their church just to play and sing; when they were booked for the concert, the woman in charge told me, they had to make up a name for their informal group! (I guess "Bunch of Guys Who Meet At Church" wouldn't quite fit on the programs :-D ) I had mistakenly thought, when I read that they play Appalachian Gospel, that it would be a choral group, singing the more commonly heard Southern type gospel--I told you, I'm no music expert--so this kind of music was an unexpected surprise. It was more like the music you hear in the movie "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"--songs like "I'll Fly Away," to name the only one I actually recognized. Plus it was such a cool place to hear a concert; we were in the "parlor" of an old house that's been converted into a Christian bookstore, and although it was crowded, it was homey. And I just love banjos, no mattter what they're playing.


Some of the acts weren't quite what was advertised, not due to my misunderstanding but because of last minute cancellations or changes. "Rachel Roberts, singer/songwriter," turned out to be Rachel and her band, called "Rachel's Secret Stache" (check 'em out here)--so instead of a solo guitar act we were treated to a great kickin' funky band with lots of bass lines and kind of psychadelic lyrics. I don't know how to describe them but they were cool. She has a fantastic voice that can be smoky and deep or fairly up in the soprano range. The Pub, where we saw them, was very crowded and understaffed--we didn't appreciate that it took an HOUR to be served one hamburger, and they forgot about the other hamburger order until reminded. Sheesh. But the music was great and we had a front row seat.


The other change to an act was a disappointment, not a boon. We had been curious about Tracey Thomas and his/her band, since the program said they sang something called "blood harmony." Huh?? Wow, that's either vampire music or, I dunno what--but we still don't know what because after we listened to them for a few songs we noticed that it was just one guy singing, accompanied by a bongo player. There was absolutely no harmonizing going on. So I asked about this, and it turns out Tracey had cancelled and instead we were listening to Kevin Minster and The Minority Report. They were okay, but nothing spectacular. There was also the quick jaunt we took to The Rusty Nail (a great name for a restaurant, don't you think?? NOT. It never sounds very appetizing to me! But they serve great food.). We did not stay more than a minute when we realized the only way to hear the band was to stand in another room by the bar, where we couldn't see them, or to get a table and order something, which was useless since we'd just eaten. Sigh.

The best act of the evening, in my opinion, was Chuck Keiper.


He's a singer/songwriter who plays his own songs and excellent covers of James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Neil Young, Paul Simon, even classics like "American Pie" and "King of the Road," which were a ton of fun to sing along to. The interesting thing about Chuck--his name sounded really familiar to me, but not in a music-oriented way; I just couldn't place it until I finally asked him. Oh, no duh I've heard of him--I VOTED for him! He's our county commissioner! Talk about interesting day jobs for a musician. I'd had no idea. But now I know he plays nearly every weekend somewhere, and he's really good. I'd describe him as looking a little like Billy Joel with a voice like James Taylor. I mean really, when he did "Fire and Rain" I would have sworn they were playing the record and he was lipsynching, it was that uncanny. And he's in an Irish band as well; I bought both of his CDs I liked them so much.


We had a great time and I just wish we could have taken in many more of the bands performing that night. But, there's always next year! I just hope the weather in 2009 will be as good as it was this year--we had 62 degrees, down to maybe 45 by the wee hours of the night, but no rain until the next day. (And it made up for it by pouring all day long, huge downpours, and I had to drive down to Columbus and back in it--four hours of rain driving, yecch.) Oh, a kitten update: the abandoned kitten, who turned out to be a male, was taken in by our farm veterinarian, who has a cage of free kittens up for adoption at her practice. So he'll go to a good home eventually.