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I always hoped that some day I would visit the Liberace Museum. Years ago they posted an archivist job, and I had fantasies of having a job where I'd be preserving hot pants and the world's largest rhinestone.Before we went to LV, I sent the museum an email asking if we could possibly speak to their archivist, offering a tour of the forklift archives in exchange of a tour of the Liberace archives. They kindly agreed, so we not only got to see the great costumes and collections, but also got to talk to the nice man who cares for them, the clippings files, the recordings.My idea of a good time!
I cannot think of a time when I've had more fun on someone else's birthday (observed).Ms Scandwaiian invited me to go with her and Mr Finn, who had a trade show around the time of her birthday. I'd never been Las Vegas, I never go do girl stuff with a friend, this was deluxe.I got to the LV airport a little before they did, hung out at baggage claim, pulled out my uke, and was joined by an older tweedy hippie man who offered me a pick. Victor had come to Las Vegas to visit his money. Knew Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie back in the day. I introduced him to my friends and we took off. I hope he won big.We dropped Mr Finn off at his hotel, parked our bags at Treasure Island, consulted Ms S's annotated map of thrift stores and headed for the nearest antique mall. The first one was a bust, but payback was #2, a slice of resale heaven. There we found the foxy beer hat: slices of beer can stitched together with red yarn, accented with two home made pom poms. When I put it on, both the hat and I were transformed. I call it Holly Golightly meets the Lovin' Hands of Home. Almost immediately people were drawn to me...I believe we found a Savers after that
and made our way to TI. We bought beer. We descended the escalator, which features a jumbo-tron sized video display of advertisements. It could not hold the gaze of fully half of the people on the escalator. It was as if they'd never seen a beer hat before. Smiles, points, frowns, punctuated by the occasional open fly-catching mouth. It was awesome. Never had ten dollars been spent so wisely. The pure entertainment value was beyond price.
At the taxi stand, a tipsy couple guffawed and initiated a conversation about the hat. The t-shirt guy at the Hawaiian mall loved it. The guys who shill for shows, ditto. Regular peeps. The lady at the ABC store. All a friend of the hat. As we left Las Vegas, the lady at the rental car return exclaimed "You are WEARING that hat!!" Yup.We walked for miles, we ate dinner at Trader Vic's on their third day of business. We played Wheel of Fortune slot machines and made audio recordings of the sounds of Las Vegas. I stayed up later than I usually do.
We're going to New York next weekend, because after three years of trying we finally won the ticket lottery for Saturday Night Live. On my birthday, no less.Mrguy scored rooms at the trendy hotel where we stayed during the forklift exhibition. It was all coming together. Now, just like the last year that the Toronto Blue Jays were in contention for the pennant...a strike. That year I sat in the bleachers at the community baseball field in the Old Place and cried. This time I am just numb.I get the strike. Doing work that's later reused in ways that make more money for other people and not you is a drag. I know about this from personal experience. I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it, but I was the happy fan who answered the phone and came down to the studio to sing on a song that millions of people have since loved. Over the years the song has been on several compilations and now is a ring tone (a huge cash cow), but non-featured performers like me don't see any additional profit from new uses of the original work. I prefer to dwell on the happy part: I had the opportunity to sing with tremendous musicians whom I admire on a song that became huge.Had I been trying to make a living playing music, though, I think I would have been mad enough to strike.
It's been a month now, and I must shout out to one of the most welcome events in the Guy Family calendar, Oktoberfest.
It's held the first-ish weekend in Oktober by Mr and Mrs Randommeats, and attended mainly by their closest friends from college, and family. It's silly, it's fun, and there's beer. Contests for best traditional and non-traditional costume, trad and non-trad stein, food and guest beer keep it a very lively night.
There wasn't always a non-traditional costume category. Oh no. The non-traditional costume contest came about because of The Great Robbery of Oktoberfest II, in which mrguy and I, dressed as Ralf and Florian, half of the German band Kraftwerk, were disqualified from competing with the others. An outrage, I know. Now there's a place at the table for all costumed revelers.
After attending as Ralf and Florian, we have a reputation to uphold. The traditional costume we've been trying to pull off for three years hasn't come about, so by spring we were feeling a little pressure. Then one day this summer mrguy came home with a Heino record. Out of the cut-out bin, Triumph. The Kraftwerk turtlenecks came out of retirement, we bought 80's blazers, wore dark shades and attended as Beloved German Singer Heino (Now Retired) and Manager of Heino.
Thanks to the youtubeses I found a Heino song I could sing, and during the ride to Santa Rosa I managed to craft a story that tied my bizarre stein (Freud-looking guy using snuff, with caption "Gesundheit!!") somehow to Heino. Needless to say, my story of poor little Heino Gesundheit who inherited nothing from Papa's tobacco factory except the stein to use as a tip jar while singing "Edelweiss" in the street helped me win the non-traditional stein competition. The non-traditional costume contest was won by a woman dressed brilliantly as a keg, who then did a self-stand. Whew. Mrguy took the best guest beer prize.
I leave you with this lovely image of faux Germanic suspender decorations lovingly crafted out of a six pack of Lowenbrau (caps, box) by youngest nephew.
