Lots and lots going on here these days. It’s the end of the school year for the kids. Last week they had their spring show for their theatre group YAA. It was a The Wizard of Oz. It was a really good production. Michelle was a Munchkin and Lizzy was Glinda, the good witch of the north. She was really perfect in the role, and I think her singing and acting has improved even since February. Either that or they had better sound reinforcement at this place. Jeannie taped the big Munchkinland production number. I’ll try and post a bit of it. As an added bonus Lizzy and Michelle have been singing songs from TWoO and Wicked around the house. They sound pretty good; they can actually harmonize. And I practically have the Munchkinland number memorized at this point. I’m thinking it’d be fun to get the sheet music and learn it, and somewhere down the line record it interpreted as a prog metal epic. Maybe rename it “Monsterland” and use low growly voices instead of high squeaky ones.
This week Lizzy sat for her algebra final. If she does well she’ll get to skip a year of math in high school. Meanwhile Michelle has been getting me to watch a bunch of math-oriented youTube videos, about things like the Fibonacci series and plant growth, fractals and other fun stuff. This began when she told me she got a book of graph paper and began making fractal doodles in it. The girl is definitely one of mine! The one on plant growth, even though it mainly contained material I already knew, explained it in such a way that I got a new idea for how to make origami pinecones, pineapples, and other forms in way that’s more realistic and naturalistic than anything that’s been done before. (Yes, we’re still talking about pineapples!)
But right now I’m busy with other folding projects. I’ve been working on a pair of Zeppelins, one for this upcoming exhibit and the other for myself. This is probably my most labor-intensive model. I’ve been at it for over a week. I only ever folded one and that was few years back, at the end of a long road of attempts. Now it’s a fair amount of experimentation and reverse engineering. Today I had to make a study of how the nose went into 3-D cuz I couldn’t remember. Tonite I finally got them more-or-less made into full 3-D form. I still have to do the final sculpting and finishing. These models will be wet-folded for sure, and probably (don’t tell anyone!) have a few paperclips and bits of tape on the inside to keep them from spreading apart over time. Once that’s done I still have to make a stand (sometimes in life you just gotta make a stand) and a road-worthy container. One that’s done it’s back to working on fractal polyhedra, which was going to be my Big New Thing this year. Oh yeah, I’ve also been asked to contribute an Armadillo for the exhibit. Ah well, there’s still a week to go, and I’m taking a couple of days off.
I’ve also been busy because now that my book is soon to be released, my publisher wants me to get my “social media” presence up. I created an author page on Amazon, and an artist page for my Origami on facebook. Not much there yet, but it’s a start. I also created a Buzzy Tonic page on Amazon, and checked in fb to see the one there needs some attention. Yet todo is iTunes. My feeling about all this alternates between thinking that its pretty cool and it’s just a big time suck. I’m looking to get the whole thing driven by feeds when I post to my blog with certain tags or categories. I suppose if it make some sales its worth it.
The music thing will have to wait until July, after the origami convention and some travel. I’m close to finishing two songs, Black Swan and Is It Safe?. Last thing I did in recordingland was to lay down sax parts for Is It Safe?. Martin’s original parts were out of tune on the high E’s and F#’s. I got those notes, but had a lot of trouble with the high B’s. Anyway, closing in. When I’m done I’m gonna take what I have and organize it into a logical EP, and go back master what I have so far. I also have a concept for a logo and some album art, but I need time to draw it nicely. When that’s all in place I think it’ll be time to form or join a live band. That’ll be a whole nuther adventure. I’m continuing to develop a set of covers and my own tunes. More on that soon, but probably after the origami convention.