It’s Friday morning and I am at Steelhead Coffee. Just finished my breakfast and trying to get in a little bit of writing before I head across town to my Power Pilates class at Pilates X.  It has been almost a week since I have been here, and it is good to be back.

Last Sunday morning I was feeling extremely constipated and bloated, to such an extent that I canceled my spot in that morning’s Pilates class. I was very low on energy and running a slight fever, so I napped a  bit. Checked my temperature again, and it was 101.5 degrees, so I decided that a trip to the MemorialCare Urgent Care facility in Los Altos was a good idea.

One of the benefits of getting sick on a Sunday is that care facilities are not crowded, so I was able to get in promptly. The doctor palpated my lower abdomen, a process that generated some pain, and recommended that I get to an ER so I could get a CT scan. He suspected that I might be experiencing appendicitis. I made my way to Community Hospital Long Beach, and was once again lucky. There was no one else in the ER waiting room, so it wasn’t long before I was able to get my scan done.

In short order I was informed by lovely Physician’s Assistant Kimber that it was not my appendix that was the problem, but a case of diverticulitis. Luckily it involved a relatively minor perforation and was contained within the bowel, so while it was a serious problem it might not require surgery. They hooked me up to an IV and started pumping antibiotics into me, and within an hour of my arrival I was firmly ensconced in a bed in my very own room.

That was the good news. The bad news was that I was NPO, for “nil per os”, Latin for nothing by mouth, so when they started delivering meals to the rest of the rooms I was bypassed. The standard treatment in cases like this is to aggressively treat with antibiotics while at the same time resting the bowel, resting it by not letting anything into it. Thus the NPO designation.

I spent a very restless night, and by the morning most of the pain was gone, but I was also very hungry. My agony was compounded when someone from Nutrition was in the room across the hall from me getting menu selections from the patient there, a process which involved reading aloud every item on the menu for every meal. Alas, there would be none for me😢!

Being in the hospital, tethered to an IV line, is a pretty boring endeavor. I was NPO from Sunday afternoon until Wednesday morning, when I was switched over to clear liquids. On Thursday I was finally given solid food for breakfast and lunch, and then released that afternoon.

I was in the hospital for a total of 96 hours, and they were very long hours indeed! Rather than bore you with all of the details, I will just summarize the pluses and minuses of this experience.

• Negatives
  • Boring as hell
  • Damn, I am hungry!
  • People keep sticking me with needles. I had a total of ten needle sticks of varying quality. The best was a young phlebotomy student, Natalie, from Long Beach Community College, who managed to insert a needle into my vein for a blood draw with zero pain. On the other side of that spectrum was the nurse who took a couple of stabs at starting an IV in my left forearm before giving up and succeeding on the back of my right wrist, my least favorite location.
  • I do not sleep well in hospitals, especially when I have a stinking IV feed to deal with as I toss and turn.
• Positives
  • I met a lot of nice people. I love nurses, and nurses love me. They would much rather deal with me than with folks like the very cranky (an understatement for sure) man who checked in the room next to me Wednesday night who kept yelling things like “Get away from me, you motherfuckers” when they wouldn’t give him the morphine that he wanted, and had to be pinned down to his bed when they needed to start IV’s and do blood draws.
  • I was able fill in some holes in my knowledge of popular culture by watching almost the entire first season of “That 70’s Show”, so now I finally know what the heck Topher Grace’s claim to fame is. I also saw the last half of season two and the first half of season three of “Scrubs” and a dozen or so episodes of  “South Park”. My favorites were the episodes where we found out that those ubiquitous Peruvian Pan Flute bands are the only thing standing between our destruction by the giant guinea pigs, rats rabbits…, et. al. from the lost Valley of the Giant Guinea Critters.

So yet another I/I (Injury/Insult) has been absorbed, but I am still in the process of dealing with it. I still have another six days of oral antibiotics to take, I am restricted to a very low fiber diet for the time being (goodbye “Toast and …” menu items from Steelhead), I need to get another CT scan in a couple of weeks, and then in 6-8 weeks I am supposed to get another colonoscopy (my others were at 50 and 60 years of age).

My big concern at the moment is that one of my antibiotics, Cipro, apparently triples or quadruples the risk of Achilles tendon ruptures in patients over 60. Given that information I have decided to forego my ballet classes for the immediate future 😢. Those classes were already pushing me to the limit Achilles tendon-wise, so I have decided to exercise a bit of caution in that respect.

Okay, enough of this blather. Time to wrap it up!

Way back in my penultimate blog entry from the beginning of July I displayed a graph displaying the decreasing frequency of my blog posts, and that curve is becoming very logarithmic in nature. After only getting out two posts in July I am sitting here realizing that I have almost let the month of August slip by with no posts.

With the way that things are going, that may still happen. I just sat down here at Steelhead Coffee intending to write and got engaged in conversation with a friend, John Greer, i found out some things that I didn’t know about him. What I did know about John was that he is a serious Bible scholar who has been reading numerous scriptural texts in the original Greek and taking classes at Biola College. I knew that he has an Asian wife named Jenny and that they had adopted Zoe, a special-needs Chinese girl. Today I found out that his wife is currently in the Republic (not State) of Georgia doing a stint of missionary work, and that he himself is a published author whose “When God is not Enough” is available on Amazon.

That was a great interaction, but it also ate up the time I had devoted to writing because it was time to head out to the east side where I took my first flow yoga class since my accident (one year ago today!) at LA Fitness with a teacher, Jonathan, who I had heard good things about and who appears to be a kindred soul to Gabriel Hall from Yoga World. Next was a Power Pilates class with Becky Tyo at Pilates X, followed by the bike ride home where I had some lunch and a nap, then a bit more work at Fox Coffee House before I caught a bus downtown for dinner at Thai District and then enjoyed the Women Of Wonder (WOW) music and poetry mashup organized by Yeggi Watts at the Wine Bar.

That was a pretty typical day for me, and there were not a lot of sizable segments of time where I could just sit down and work on my blogging!

Okay, now it’s Friday and I really should get this out. Here is a little slide show that follows my recovery…

Okay, and that’s a wrap! If I can just remember to publish this I will not have been skunked for August!!

 

My prime rock and roll years were those between 1992 and 2002. I was living on Mulholland Drive just a couple of houses from Laurel Canyon. That location tended to separate me from my former beach cronies from the Venice decade (1982 – 1992), but it was perfect for feeding my habit of going out to hear live music. There are dozens of quality live music venues within a five mile radius of my eagle’s lair, and I could swoop down to any of them in very short order. It was not at all unusual to go out two or three tines a week to different clubs, following artists on my ever expanding list.

 

I don’t remember when I first encountered Cindy Alexander, but if I had to hazard a guess I would say it was probably at one of Jenna Leigh’s Circle of Song events at the Gig in West LA. Jenna would bring together a number of singer/songwriter types and they would take turns singing their songs. That is an environment that Cindy thrives in, and once she captured me there was no return.

There was a period of a couple of years where I became a Cindy Alexander groupie, and if there was a Cindy gig, I was there. Then economics reared it’s ugly head; in 1997 I realized that if I ever wanted to retire (I was 47 at the time with $25K in credit card debt and no assets) I was going to have to put my nose to the grindstone, leaving little time to play. I did manage to still get out until in 2002, but when I bought a house in Long Beach and began working two full-time jobs I also stopped getting out. I dropped out of the “Cindyverse” at that time.

Meanwhile, Cindy kept chugging on. She was named Songwriter of the Year in 1998 by the Los Angeles Music Awards, and released 5 self-produced albums between 1999 (See Red, 1999, nominated for Album of the Year by LAMA) and 2012. In 2006 Cindy won a record contract by winning the online “Star Tomorrow” competition for independent songwriters produced by David Foster, but she wound up turning down that contract. There was a three year hiatus in there where she also got married and produced her twin daughters Jette and Perry, but she got back on the horse and back in the game with the production and release of Every Rise and Fall in 2012.

Then life threw a curve at her when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. My philosophy is that “Life is a process of accumulating insults and injuries, dealing with them, and moving on.” The barriers will come. It is what we do with them that counts, and Cindy is a champion in that regard. Cindy’s illness barely slowed her down, and even provided her with new sources of inspiration.

Cindy was diagnosed in July of 2013, and started writing the songs for her fifth studio album while she was awaiting the results of her biopsy. In July of 2014, after a double mastectomy, reconstructive surgery, and recovery, she finished recording that album, Curve, which chronicles her journey through cancer, and released it under the Blue Elan record label in October. Cindy is now cancer free and a fierce advocate for breast cancer awareness. Cindy is donating the proceeds from her current tour to the Kay Yow Cancer Fund.

Cindy has just released Deep Waters, her third studio album under the Blue Elan label and is currently touring in support of that album, playing mostly small venues and house concerts. I was very happy to see that she had booked a show at the Hotel Cafe for Saturday, July 8.

The Hotel Cafe is the perfect venue to see Cindy in particular, and pretty much anyone else for that matter. If you just had to pick one place to hang out and scout great music in Los Angeles, I don’t believe there is a better choice than the Hotel Cafe. They have a lineup of great music seven days a week on two stages. My strategy was always to go to the earliest show and then just hang out afterwards, and I found a lot of great performers by doing that. Both stages are in relatively small rooms, so viewing is easy, and there are a limited number of tables claimed by early arrivals.

Speaking of early arrivals, I was waiting waiting at the door with a handful of others when Cindy and her band arrived. I scored a hug, hauled Cindy’s keyboard from the limo to the door, and was dubbed “Cookie Manager”. Cindy is in the habit of baking chocolate chip cookies for her fans, aka the Peanut Gallery, and I was put in charge of the distribution of those cookies, a job akin to “spreading happiness and joy”. It certainly did not take me long to reintegrate into the Cindyverse, and it’s great to be back! I managed to score a front-row table, and an added bonus when I was joined by the ever so lovely Allyson Gottfried who was handling the merchandising for the evening.

An already awesome evening was further enhanced when I saw that Cindy was backed up by Ali Handal and Tina Trevino. Ali is a very talented singer/songwriter in her own regard, and someone who I had also followed “back in the day” (BITD). Tina was the percussionist for Cindy, and I seem to recall her working with other folks as well BITD. What a great way to shed the last fifteen years!! Like stepping out of a time machine.

Cindy and her band played a short set, about 4o minutes, of songs from across the spectrum of her releases, and all too soon the concert came to an end. The band was tight, and Cindy’s vocals were as strong as they have always been. Cindy has always been a gifted songwriter, and she has a new writing partner in Colin Devlin, formerly of the Irish band The Devlins. in addition to co-writing most of the tracks, Colin also produced Deep Waters.

Cindy is currently touring on her Play it Forward tour, and is also available for bookings. If you have a big house and a lot of friends, then a house concert featuring Cindy (and friends!) would be a real treat. Her next release, a live acoustic album titled Nowhere to Hide will be released this October, providing further proof that you can knock a strong woman down, but she will be back on her feet and stronger than ever and providing inspiration for others through her music.

First anniversary of what? Well, it is the first anniversary of the point when I made the transition from talking about being a blogger, to actually having a blog. July 1, 2015 was the first day of my retirement, and July 1, 2016 was when i finally bit the bullet and published my first entry.

As you can see from the chart, I got off to a bang-up start. Shortly after starting last July I took off on a cross-country trip for most of July, and while on the road I was posting almost every day for a total of 25 posts that month. August slowed down just a bit with 14 posts.

The end of August is when I ruptured my triceps, but I still managed 13 posts for September. Five posts each for the months of October, November and January followed, with just three posts in December. Then as I got back on my bike and started my high-exercise phase things dropped off a lot–two in February, one in March, three in April, missed May entirely, and two last month, with a grand total of 78 posts, and those posts have received 4137 views by 2315 visitors. Thanks for all of those visits and views! Now it’s time to post number 79. Onward and upward!

Wow, it has really been tough to set aside sufficient time to actually do any writing these days. I am fully into a high activity mode, and unfortunately sitting and writing does not fit into that “high” activity bucket. Although, I do try my best. As I write this my feet are on the seat across from me as I sit in dandasana. My spine is erect, my bandhas are activated, my hamstrings and quadriceps are engaged, and Lawrence is snapping pictures of me. So even while typing there is excellent work to be done!

 

The big problem right now, however, is that writing, even when standing (which is an excellent option), is not a high-calorie, strength building exercise, and that is what I am looking for these days. Yesterday was a banner day: up at 5 am, morning practice from 6-7:30, shower, bike to Steelhead Coffee for breakfast, ride to yoga class from 9:45-10:45 at LA Fitness, another hour of workout on treadmill, machines, and weights at LA Fitness, ride to Bixby’s Brooklyn Deli to have lunch and visit with the lovely Sofie and Liz, ride home for a nap, go for a 2 mile walk on the Cal State Long Beach (CSULB) campus and recharge with some caffeine, take a Power Pilates class at Pilates X, then over to Elevation Studios where I took a 1-1/2 hour lyrical jazz class with Sari Anna Thomas.  BTW, the time crunch is only going to get tougher as I have purchased an introductory one-month unlimited Pilates classes at Pilates X, and I intend to make good use of it!

This morning was a bit tougher. Nothing sore or hurting, but just hard to get out of bed this morning, so I slept in until 6:30, puttered until 8:30, and then walked here to Steelhead. I have a PT appointment at Memorial Orthopaedic this afternoon, and I am going to head out from here momentarily to try to get in a walk over Signal Hill a couple of times before I have to head over there!

It is now Thursday afternoon and I am trying to finish this up at the Fox Coffee House. I probably could have finished this at the Fox yesterday, but the entire Fox staff had retired to Six Flags Magic Mountain for their Staff Appreciation Day and I was orphaned from one of my premium writing locations. Yesterday was, however, an excellent walking day. I put on over 9 miles, walked over Signal Hill twice, and my feet felt great the entire day and night. This morning my feet felt better than they have in many, many years. My right foot, which has undergone extensive renovation over the past year and a half, is now feeling more like my “other” foot than my “bad” foot. There were a couple of major sources of pain in that ankle that I have been consciously challenging with my exercises, stretches, and walking. Those sources have now faded to mere shadows of what they were.  I am starting to be able to get up on the balls of my feet a lot more, and I can get through dance classes without any problem. The spring is coming back into my step!

Also good news on the upper body front. I have been working since I retired on undoing some of the consequences of spending way too many hours hunched in front of computer screens, compounded by the fact that my main exercise during those years was bicycle riding, another activity that tends to close up the upper body. This past Saturday my dance teacher Carri Burbank Glen stopped class after I had gone across the floor to express her amazement at how open and expansive I have become. Then on Monday my body mechanic, Donna Place, who knows my body better than anyone but yours truly, was also amazed by how much my back had improved just over the preceding two weeks. Looks like my plan is succeeding!!!

One more thing! On Saturday I participated in the Long Beach incarnation of the Global Water Dance at Granada Beach. The Global Water Dance was performed on the same day in (at last count) 108 different locations on six continents, and the purpose was to raise awareness about global water issues. It was my performing debut and was great fun as well, and I hope to get a blog post at some point about it.

 

When I first arrived in California in 1977 I immersed myself in the community that was the Original Muscle Beach (OMB). I competed in Acrobatic Gymnastics (nationals in Mixed Pairs in 1978 and Men’s Pairs in 1984), spent evenings working out in the gym, and every weekend at the OMB. That association continued, albeit with monotonically decreasing intensity, as I took on new responsibilities (teaching high school, going back to school and earning a Ph.D UCLA., teaching at USC), up until 1997.

 

That was when I had my wake-up moment–“Oh no! I forgot all about retirement!” At that point in time I had no assets and about $25K in credit card debt, so from that point I immersed myself in making money and creating a nest egg. For five years I actually had two full-time jobs, and for four years a more-than-full-time girlfriend; time constraints kept me from getting to the beach and I lost contact with OMB.

When my ex-girlfriend finally bailed on me (to my great relief and great benefit to my health) in the fall of 2010, I suddenly had a lot more time. I reconnected with the beach community and started going regularly to OMB on Sundays and to JJ’s Gym on Tuesday nights. While the cast of characters had changed almost entirely, there were still a few notable links to the past who helped speed my re-integration into the Acro community. Luckily, Ernie Thrash (the King of Muscle Beach, IMHO) was still holding court, Cisco Pimentel (deep circus roots) and David Floyd (former international competitor in Acrobatic Gymnastics) were still regulars who could vouch for me. Occasional visitors like Karen Castle, Bob Yerkes, and Tricia Peters Moon provided more links to the past.

Acrobatics, you see, is based on trust, and in order to play one needs to establish and earn that trust. There are two flavors of gymnastics. The one that you are probably most familiar with is the Olympic variety, Artistic Gymnastics, and that is the ultimate individual sport: it is the competitor vs. the apparatus, and you have no one to blame for failure but yourself. My favorite branch, Acrobatic Gymnastics, is the ultimate team sport: without seamless communication and extreme trust between you and your partner(s) you will go nowhere!

Coming back to the beach after at least a 15 year absence I was no longer physically the man I used to be, so I knew I needed to be cautious with respect to the kinds of things I did. At the same time, the Acro Green is now a very exciting and bustling place. In addition to the exponential expansion of Acro Yoga monkeys (that is a technical term for Acro Yoga practitioners) that threatens to monopolize the Green, the explosion of Cirque-style entertainment popularized by Cirque du Soleil has resulted in a concomitant explosion of talented acrobats on the green.

 

One of the challenges facing newcomers (and returning old-timers) joining a community like OMB is establishing trust, and my road towards establishing that trust was by offering my services as a spotter. It is an easy role for me. I think that because of my status as the oldest of nine siblings I have an over-developed sense of safety. I am constantly coming aware of threats to safety, and in the case of OMB I find myself compelled to move in the direction of precarious situations. If I see someone putting up a shaky hand-to-hand or pyramid I will be moving to a position where I can assist if necessary, while at the same time scanning the area for equipment that might be landed on, or small children that might wind up beneath a falling body. If you look at the Facebook pictures from that era that I am tagged in you will see that in most of them it looks like I am just standing around, but I am on duty and standing at the ready.

After a few months of participating in that way my efforts paid off. One of my proudest days at OMB was when circus artiste Reyie Nal took me aside and told me “People really like having you around here. They like that you are always looking out for them. If I ever have a circus, I would hire you as the safety man.” Reyie now has a circus (Cirque La Vie), and if it wasn’t based way out in Houston I might take him up on that offer!

Spotting, by the way, is hard and dangerous work, which is why I am currently making myself scarce at OMB. Back in the summer of 2012 I was just standing there watching a very tall man toss a rather small woman for a back somersault. She was supposed to open up so he could catch her under the arms, but something went wrong and she wound up rotating backwards with head traveling towards the ground. My instincts took over as I dove in and managed to catch the back of her head and arrest the rotation. There was a cost, however, as I ruptured my right biceps in the process, but it was a price that I was happy to pay!

 

Between the ruptured triceps that I am still healing and the rotator cuff injury that I am rehabbing I am in no shape to be catching falling bodies, or even being around a place where my instincts might kick in, but I hope to get myself healed up and get back in the mix and hanging with my tribe again!

Continue reading →

My blog posts have tapered off quite a bit, not because there hasn’t been anything worthy of writing about but because my time has been spent elsewhere. I am now approaching the second anniversary of my retirement and it’s time to do a bit of auditing.

Before I retired I had the idea that I wanted to blog, and talked about it, but really held off on making that a reality. I realized at that point that I was not where I wanted to be physically. I was fat, soft, and sedentary, and what I really needed to do was to get myself moving and in shape.

My theme for the first year was “65 going on 45”, and I started off running on that program. I retired on a Wednesday, on Friday saw a Facebook post by my friend Kerry (Full Tilt) Ward about needing a last-minute fill-in for an already booked trip, and on Tuesday was in Iceland starting a 10 day camper van excursion where we circumnavigated the entire island. My preference is to hang out with exceptional people, and there are few people more exceptional than Kerry Ward. He ran two 200 mile races that year, and just this past week was in Nepal trekking to Everest Base Camp. I know him well, and the pace of his adventures continually dizzies me!

I continued my progress with a four week, 8000 mile drive up to Vancouver, across Canada (stopping at yoga studios along the way) to Toronto, back into the US at Detroit, a family gathering northwest of Chicago, and then the drive back to Los Angeles. I was moving well and feeling fine, but made a strategic error while in transit across Canada. Feeling a bit uneasy about my drop in income I took what was supposed to be a part-time job with Claremont Graduate University.

I was to be a Mathematics Faculty Adviser supervising five student teachers at the middle and high school level. It sounded good when I first looked at it, but the reality was a shocker. For starters, there were weekly all-day class sessions on either Saturday (with students) or Thursday (schooling us faculty members) in Claremont, which is a 50 mile drive from Long Beach. Then my five students were placed in Walnut, Upland, Colton, Hemet, and Victorville. Both Hemet and Victorville are about 100 miles from Long Beach, and I was supposed to visit each site on the order of nine times. The distances involved, combined with the vagaries of block scheduling at the schools, made it pretty much impossible to make more than two visits a day. I found myself working more than I had before I retired, and for way, way less 😦 ! I was losing ground on my goals but was able to bail out on that commitment after the first semester. Whew!!

 

The rest of that first year was finally spent focusing on my rehab, and by the end of June I had reached most of my physical goals. I even considered myself camera-ready and engaged the lovely Ashley Corbin-Teich to take some pictures! I was also finally ready to start my blog, which I launched on the first anniversary of my retirement!

Once again, I hit the ground running. I set off in early July on a cross-country excursion, posting about places I visited along the way. I put up 24 posts in July, 14 in August, and 11 in September. In late August, though, I experienced one of those injuries and insults that mike life a challenge when I rode over a skateboard on my bike and ruptured two out of three of my triceps tendons on my right arm. I had surgery to repair that in early September. My surgeon was very concerned about the stability of the repair and put me on 12 months of restricted activity with respect to that arm. For the first six months I stayed off the bicycle and stayed out of yoga classes (sad face emoji here). I had six months of no down dogs!

 

On the one hand, my restricted activity did leave me plenty of time for blogging, and I kept up pretty good output on that front. I managed to get in a few notable excursions: there was the Vegas trip for Circus Couture, the side jaunt to the slot canyons in Utah, the drive down Baja to Cabo San Lucas with Kerry, another trip to Vegas to kidnap Amelia Earhart, and quite a few musical and artistic events. I managed to average six posts per month from September through January!

On the flip side the restricted activity, particularly the lack of bike riding, had me packing on the pounds. In early March I had gained 20 pounds and had enough of that, so I resumed bike riding and limited yoga classes. No power flows at the moment, still not up to full capacity on the yoga front, still riding in a rather wimpy gear, but at least back in the game.

The good side of that is I have managed to take off about 5 of those excess pounds, but the down side is that all that walking, riding, yoga classes, dance classes, mat Pilates classes, Gyrotonic sessions, physical therapy appointments, and private workouts break my day into segments that don’t work well for writing, especially given my propensity for chatting with all of the lovely ladies that I encounter during the day. As a result, I have only managed to put out one or two posts a month since then. It is not that I have not been to any blog-worthy events, but just a matter of finding the time to give them the treatment they deserve.

As of right now I still have 10-15 lbs to lose. I have made excellent progress in retraining my body to walk properly and have almost managed to eliminate the torque in my right spiral fascial line. My bad walking had twisted that line outward so that just standing in tadasana with my feet parallel required effort and some discomfort  from my hip through my ankle. Now that effort is just about gone, and there is only a shadow of discomfort left where that line passes on the inside of the ankle joint. My foot is working properly, and I am finally getting my right hip working properly when I walk! Changing my gait has been a long, tough road (trace that spiral down from the spine to the foot, and all the stops in between–all of them had to be dealt with, and sometimes they didn’t like changing), but serious progress has been made.

On the down side, my lack of upper body activity, the fact that my right arm was pretty much useless for several months, and the fact that I discontinued my left-over exercises from the physical therapy that I did on my right rotator cuff, have conspired to whack out my left rotator cuff. So I am now back in PT again at Memorial Orthopaedic Surgical Group for that condition. I also need to investigate a problem with the outside of my right ankle. There is some kind of physical analog of an IED buried in there that still causes severe pain if I step wrong and keeps me from trusting that foot the way I would like to. Just another in that long line of injuries and insults that I have been dealing with.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

As of right now I am physically a bit behind where I was at this same point last year, but I can also see the light at the end of the tunnel. Once I have taken off the excess weight I will be able to move from rebuilding mode to a maintenance mode that requires time and effort, and I will then be able to get back into the blogging groove. I promise!!

 

 

I had another one of those dilemmas on Saturday, April 29. Rodney Briggs, one of the real stalwarts of the local open mic scene, was scheduled to be the featured performer at the Fox Coffee House Open Mic. I had a prior invitation, however, from a very talented young comedian, Mardy Mac Fly (MMF), who had two weeks before personally invited me to his own event, The FaShow Show at the OC Steel House in Anaheim.

I decided to honor my prior commitment and go to the FaShow Show, a decision that, apologies to Rodney, I am very happy to have made. Mardy Mac Fly’s skills as an impresario and MC proved to be equal to his skills as a comic, and the FaShow Show was a night to remember.

I arrived, at Mardy’s request, over an hour before the start of the show to find out that I was an honored guest. Mardy bestowed on me my new nickname, Cap, and introduced me to the performers who where there. Lady Bit Simone told me that he has nicknames for everyone in the MMF universe, and I am happy to be a member of that august group!

The format of the evening was that of a variety show, a format that I see a lot lately. Speak it Easy: Creative Food for the Soul (SIE) and Scot Nery’s Boobie Trap are two examples. While these shows are all diverse, they do tend to lean towards certain disciplines: spoken word in the case of SIE, and slapstick in the Boobie Trap. The FaShow Show was no exception; while Mardy did have music (2), spoken word (1), improv (1), and hip-hop (1) on the agenda, the talent was definitely (and not surprisingly) tilted towards the three comics who were on the bill.

The time between doors open and the start of the show was filled with the music of a three-piece combo, CREW, consisting of Zach Wilson on drums, Travis Gipson on bass, and Devin Emanuel on keyboard who served as the house band. CREW did not get a solo slot during the show, but those of us who arrived early were entertained by their mix of improvisation and free-styling that spanned a number of different genres. They also did a wonderful job of backing up other acts, particularly during the first set of the night.

That first performer was a young singer/songwriter hailing from Texas by the name of Coke Youngblood. Coke has been involved behind the scenes in music licensing and marketing for over a decade, and he is also a gifted songwriter and composer whose work has enjoyed much commercial success. He recently decided to get out and perform more often, was discovered by MMF, and invited to perform at the FaShow Show. Great move on Mardy’s part! Coke was initially a bit nonplussed by some last minute schedule changes that combined his performance with the CREW, but he rose to the occasion in grand fashion as did the band. The collaboration between Coke and the CREW grew synergistically through his set and was positively electrifying by the end.

There was a bit of a delay before the next artist. Comic Titus Jones was not yet present, and MMF made a call to him (on mic) to find out where he was. Assured that Titus was very close, Mardy and the CREW improvised a little routine showing how easy it is to turn any pop song into a church song. Mr. Jones, aka @turnuptitus, arrived in short order, breathlessly took the stage, and delivered a very funny set.

Taking the stage next was a lovely young lady named Jessica Cornejo. Jessica is an actress, educator, and spoken word artist who delivered two very powerful and moving pieces about relationships. Jessica excels both in the composition and the delivery of poetry, and her performance was one of my personal highlights from the show.

The next performer was yet another talented and very funny comedian by the name of Jordan Conley. Jordan is a self-described “weird dude”, and much of the material he delivered this evening revolved around his voice, which he indicated made him sound like a gay angel. His set was refreshing and very funny!

https://youtu.be/uVHp8rRO3tg

The run of talented young black male comedians continued as Opeyemi Olagbaju, or simply Opey, took the stage. Opey is just back from the road, and on the road he found himself in a situation that seems to be common to black male comedians on the road–the assumption that if he is performing he must be a rapper. In the clip below Opey tells us how he deals with that assumption.

Next were the Lady Bits, an improv group that began at Cerritos College and has continued to evolve since. The Lady Bits are Melissa Legaspi, Simone Finley, Malory Carrera, Andrea Esparza, and Chloe Avila, and their website assures us that they all have their lady bits. The Lady Bits did a very spirited performance under less than optimal conditions given the dimensions of the room and the lack of amplification beyond their own diaphragms. Their first bit highlighted the multicultural aspect of the night as in involved the only non-Spanish speaker in the cast to translate improvised Spanish text into English. While a certain degree of extroversion is characteristic of all improv artists, even within that select sample Lady Bit Chloe appears to be particularly well-endowed!

The final performer was a Whittier based rapper named David Zapata, aka Vibes. Vibes is a mountain of a man, and he brought along a very spirited posse who all seemed to know all the words to his pieces. Vibes and his crew turned up the heat and provided a very rousing end to the evening.

This was a great show. Mardy Mac Fly is a fine comedian in his own right, but this evening showed that he is also a fine evaluator of talent who loves to highlight and promote the careers of others. I for one am happy to be in the MMF universe, and I hope that this is only the first of many iterations of the FaShow Show.

Now a little taste of Mardy Mac Fly himself before you go …

 

On Saturday, April 15, I journeyed to the hills of Hollywood to attend yet another event at one of my favorite venues, the Secret Bowl. Nestled high in the hills near the Hollywood sign, and up a road posted as “Locals Only”, the Secret Bowl provides a beautiful venue in a natural settings. Sight lines are great and the acoustics are wonderful, making this an ideal venue for House Concerts.

I was there to see an event curated by my friend James Combs. James, who has been performing lately with his own project “Great Willow”, is about the nicest person in the music business. He is always looking for ways to advance the careers of other artists, and the Secret Bowl is a perfect arena to showcase those artists. For this Tax Day event James had assembled a lineup of Jesse Macht, Abby and the Myth, and Simon Petty.

The standard format of the Secret Bowl has the gates open at 4 pm and music starting at 5. There are three featured acts each doing 30-40 minute sets, and then an open mic until 8. The show opened with Jesse Macht, a solo troubadour who also has his own gig doing “Sunsets at…” house concerts at locations of your choice.

Jesse, whose favorite artist is Jeff Buckley and who has a vocal range worthy of that comparison, did a very enjoyable set of mostly original music. For his last number he paid homage to his own heritage and the time of year by performing a rendition of a Passover classic, “Dayenu”, first enlisting audience participation with a bit of pranayama.

Then it was time for the highlight of the afternoon, the performance by Abby and the Myth, a collaboration between Abby Posner and Donny Bullen. One of the advantages of hanging out with James Combs is that one gets to meet some really fine up-and-coming artists. I was able to cash in on that advantage once again in the form of Abby Posner.

Abby, accompanied by band mate Donny on stand up acoustic bass, put on a captivating performance that left me wanting to hear them again, soon! Abby has a beautiful voice that is at times evocative of some of my favorite vocalists from bands like “Of Monsters and Men” or “First Aid Kit”, but she can also blues it up with the best of them. Her guitar skills are something that separates her from the standard singer/songwriter mold, and I haven’t heard a woman who made better use of her guitar since I was following Janet Robin. I get the sense of a creative enthusiasm that is ready to explode!

Next up on the program was a British import, Simon Petty, who was accompanied on the fiddle by Emily Moore. I confess that I was kind of blown away by the performance of Abby and the Myth, got carried away in conversations, and didn’t pay adequate attention to Simon and Emily. He is a troubadour in a Richard Thompson vein, an accomplished songwriter, and a seasoned performer; together with Emily he provided a rousing end to a delightful evening of music.

Gosh darn, it has been over a month since my last blog post! I do have a couple of excuses. First, my domestic situation has been occupying way too much of my attention and energy, and not in a good way. I am happy to report that things have improved greatly on that front this week, and I look forward to soon putting that source of distraction behind me as we head into summer.

I have also been doing some consulting work. I am a pensioner, and my pension will pay for the basics, but things like restaurant sampling, gyrotonics sessions, 3-4 dance classes a week at Elevation Studios, … add up to some significant added overhead, so I have taken on a statistical consulting gig to generate the income to support my habit. Unfortunately, that requires that I also invest some of that most precious of commodities, my time.

I have also been in a rebuilding mode. When I had my triceps reattached back in September I was put on limited duty for an extended period by my surgeon. In the interest of healing properly I kept myself off the bicycle for 6 months, and also no down dogs in that time frame which restricted my ability to do flow yoga.

Staying off the bike was a big problem. I have found from bitter experience that in order to maintain my weight I need to expend 1000 active calories daily. By my accounting, that translates into a 25 mile bike ride or a 10 mile walk; or any combination of the two with 100 calories allotted per mile of walking and 40 calories/mile on the bike. For me, bicycle riding is a lot more efficient and reliable than walking, and I was gaining at least a half-pound per week.

Since I have been back on the bike I have managed to at least stop that trend, and I am now working on reversing it. The downside is that once again, massive expenditures of time are required!

Now for the update! The feet are working better than they have in years, and this past Wednesday I crossed the 15 miles/30,000 steps threshold for the first time in a long time, and I have been averaging about 11 miles/day of walking. That, plus the bike riding, yoga (courtesy of Silver Sneakers), dance, mat Pilates, Gyrotonics, and just plain keeping active, has me feeling pretty good.

I had pulled one of my very deep hamstring/glute muscles back in January, and that hampered me a lot for a long time. Last night, however, when I was at the Fox Coffee House open mic I kept on folding into uttanasana just because it felt so good to be able to fold again. It’s been a while, and it felt real good!

The triceps are coming along, but I have been having a lot of trouble with my left shoulder. When I saw my surgeon a couple of weeks ago I asked him to prescribe physical therapy for the shoulder, so I am now back at Memorial Orthopedic Surgical Group for PT with Jason Smith. Jason successfully herded me through a rotator cuff problem with my right shoulder a year and a half ago, and after just a couple of sessions I am already seeing some improvement. Once again, however, more time is required!