You are beautiful, but you don't mean a thing to me
I was walking down a hall, in what I assumed was a school. An amplified voice was attempting to announce something of seeming importance and lucidity, but I will never know what it wanted me to, because the crowd of figures which I identified as students were clamoring around the large stairwell in the center of the building. Unnoticed by them, I slipped up the winding staircase, which was longer than any stair these legs hath tread before, and at the top I stood before an immense auditorium. The room itself, circular and tiered, must have been at least four hundred feet across in diameter. There were tiers of about a foots height arcing like stairs all around the perimeter, and more students were located, some sitting, some standing, on them as if they were carpeted bleachers. The tiers went on, ever upward, and I began to climb, not able to see the top. The ceiling, wherever it was, must have been thousands of feet wide. Amongst the cluster of people, I noticed a few familiar faces, Aaron and Courtney, who promptly beckoned me over to them. I could not glean any new information out of them, save that whatever was due to happen would be great and exciting, and that we are to be counted lucky to be in attendance. At this point, fastened to some fantastic system of support beams, pulleys and rotors, a large scale film camera and operator slid past about ten feet to my right. Towards the front of the room, near to where I entered, the lights dimmed and the croud grew louder, and I could not make out for the smoke exactly what was going on. Without realize what I was doing, I climbed up onto the camera rig, and allowed it to float me over the crowd, dozens of feet above the floor. When that camera rig was coming just about close enough for me to decipher recognizable figures out of the mist on the stage, I awoke.
And thought to myself, "Damn, what a weird dream."
What came after that was even weirder, and longer. The is DYLVN, the shorter one, regaling the days events. To-day was probably the longest day I remember. I suppose it started at about 8:45-ish, and at that point I got up off my couch, made myself some coffee, and went to the computer to check up on some things Sick of Dumb related, and noticed that last weeks entry got one ninth the comments as the week before that, at three to 27 (which is currently our record), and that our DeviantArt fans are few and far between, though, I suppose that's due to the fact that we never have anything to post (scannerless). So then, I began to make a mix CD, which was to be part one of my peace offering to Brian, my roommates emotionally-adopted brother. I've known him for a long time, or rather, met him several times before. But the last time I had seen him, we talked for close to two hours about music and things of the like. Music was the aim of this weeks meeting, and so one of our guest stars was Aaron, of course.
Anyway, Brian had recently purchased a 12 track recording mixer, and I had recently had several troubles concerning inter-band related affairs, so Alex had changed his mind long ago, rendering his mixer un-borrowable. So I made Brian a mix CD, and selected three DVDs he had mentioned wanting to see to me, and put them in a little pile to bring over. I then called David, who is our robot, though a little bit better built than blogbot (who is missing, for some reason), and is our guest piano player on the demo that Coda was hoping to record, as was the whole point of the gatherings of this weekend. Then a call to Eliote, who was not yet awake (and this was about 10:00, I think). David was bringing a funload of things, including but not limited to several CDs I lent him, several books that all three of the Codas had lent him, movies that we had all lent him and his synthesizer, which was moving in to my house, since his house was too full of computers. So I ate something, I don't remember what, and then walked down the block to Brians apartment. Brian doesn't have a phone, and doesn't plan on getting one, either, so whenever we want to talk to him, we just have to walk over and get in the building using any key (because all keys work on that apartment buildings door) and knock real loud.
Even though I waited until 1:15 to go over, I still woke him up, which I felt bad about because most of why I came over was to borrow a $900 piece of brand new electronics from him to go play with it with three people he didn't know and wouldn't trust even if he did, but the CD and DVDs made him happy, so he was more than willing to put it in my hands for a few days. Then he also tagged along back to my house with me. David called about then to announce his coming overness.
The mixer is one of the most complicated machines I have ever seen. As Eliote put it, it could easily be part of the cockpit of an airplane, and no one would notice. So Brian showed me how to work it, with all the crazy wires and such, though it turned out we forgot the most important and also smallest piece of equipment that went with it. I called Eliote, and he informed me that Aaron had gone missing, but that they would leave when they found him, and Brian and I went back to his house to retrieve the thing we forgot; an eighth inch to quarter inch adapter, leaving the door unlocked, lest David arrive whilst I was out.
Brian stayed at my house the second time just long enough to jam for a minute, and then he had to go to work. I'm surprised that he didn't run into David and Katie on their way in, because they showed up almost instantly. David set up his synth, and his keychain-sized baby keyboard, on some milkcrates and I dove into the manual for the mixer. We played a little bit of something, but I wasn't able to get the mixer to record what I was doing, and that frustrated me. Then at some point David got a call, and I still don't know why, but they had to leave for an hour. They did run into Zabet on her way in, and she told me all the fun things she did that day. She also told me that Adam and Bolla were wanting her to go out with them, but that she was wanting them to come over to our house. Then, when she checked her voicemail, one of them was an angry one from her mother going something like "Elizabeth, we have your TV. Please come and get it. If you don't, we'll just leave it on your porch." So I offered to go wait on the porch so my family wouldn't break it, but at the last second she said "Maybe they meant the back porch", and sure enough, a TV easily large enough to sleep inside was on our porch, along with a similarly sized credenza and an ironing board. I attempted to lift the TV, and in doing so, strained at least three muscles. I just barely got it inside, and I even went to the trouble of dragging the dolly out of the garage to lift it, and that didn't work either. So I got on the task of moving all of the electronics from the living room into my room, since we noticed that the TV was, get this, exactly one inch too tall for our entertainment center. So that was a lot of work, and somewhere in the middle, David and Katie came back. I think they might have called to herald their arrival, but my brain hurts too much to remember.
Also, after that, Eliote, Aaron and Teresa showed up, with a million guitars and amps and cords and bags. Everyone got into the spirit of 'a lot of people standing around talking', and I kept lugging heavy pieces of electronics back and forth, making the rooms optimal. Eventually, Aaron helped me bring the TV up, and Zabet demanded that I hook everything up right away, so that things were all shiny when her boyfriend got there, and around then I started counting people and not stopping when I would have like to. So then I tried once more to intiate some jamming, having this time remembered what it was that made the actual recording part happen, and then people somehow got into a movie. The One, starring Jet Li. I love Jet Li, but I was upset that nothing much was destined to happen for the next two hours. Aaron and I took a few guitars and the mixer into my room, and tried to figure out some stuff, and Aaron did an excellent job getting the effects switches and panels down pat, and he started out our first song. We had a test run of Modest Mouses Float On, and David seemed interested in Eliotes part, after Eliote admitted forgetting it. But then somehow, David melted away and ended up not really doing anything at all for the rest of the day, which, mind you, did turn out to be the longest day ever.
When the Adams arrived (Karpuska and Bolla), More procrastinating occured, and the initial pinpricks of headache sprouted in my head. A high point is that I interested Bolla in a deck of Black Tigres, and he put a downpayment on them. The bad news is, it all went towards the purchase of a bunch of pizza (which I'm thinking was mostly Davids and Zabets thinking) of which I only ate three pieces. At this point there are eight people; Eliote, Aaron, David, Katie, Zabet, Adam, Bolla, and myself. There should have been between four and six, preferably four. So Zabet took Eliote, one of the important cast members, away to retrieve the pizza, which I had to order because no one else likes to talk on the phone I guess, and then my mind is blank for a bit. I know that David and I had an argument about something, and that he was wrong. I also know that Aaron recorded some more of Floaton, and that it became my turn to play. And then pizza came back, and as I mentioned, I only got three pieces, when there were four pizzas to split between eight people. It might not seem that bad, but I noticed that Katie didn't eat any, and that Aaron only had two or three also. Anyway, I digress . . .
There are bigger portions missing. I was looking forward to David and Katie leaving, as the Adams had left wth Zabet a while ago, when he got a call and he managed to argue into be able to spend the night. This upset me a lot. That was probably the turning point where I knew that nothing else was going to get done. We began to watch the House of Flying Daggers, mostly to preoccupy DavidnKatie while Aaron and I had a meeting in the dining room. Eliote, unbeknownst to me at the time, fell partially asleep during the first half, and Zabet came back with the taller Adam. Then Adam went home, and Zabet joined Aaron and my soiree in the kitchen. Air decided to catch a bus home (it was about 12:30), and I went with him to look at times and to wait at the stop with him. I'm really going to miss him when he leaves. He was the only person who didn't make me mad at least once that whole day. Some people only frustrated me in passing, probably without realizing it, I know, but Aaron just went out of his way to work with me. He even bought me a two litre of coke, the generous bastard, I love him so.
When I came back inside, David and Katie had decided against the second half of HOFD, and opted for Jeepers Creepers, and Zabet had begun to go to sleep. Eliote had previously told me he was planning on sleep, and was in my room on the couch, as the bed was coered in unorganized electronics at the time. I went downstairs to the computer for a bit, and downloaded the guitar tablature for both parts of Floaton, because Eliote had forgotten. I played around on the mixer, recording a few of my originals and when the movie was over (I think 2:30-ish) David and Katie opted for sleep too. So I took a shower, and crawled into the only bed open to me, at about 3:30.
................................................................
When I woke up the next morning, the first time, it was only two and a half hours after I had fallen asleep. Zabet was off to work, and no one else was awake. I tried to sleep, but could only manage another hour or so, and ended up laying in bed thinking. At 8:30 or 9:00, I forget which, I had enough strength to get up, and this was precisely one minute after Eliote woke up and had a shower. So I plugged in and turned on all the equipment again, and David and Katie woke up and left. Eliote got out of the shower, and we spent some time in my room, organizing the mess that had been made, and talking about important super-secret official Sick of Dumb things, and then we gave music one more try. As soon as I had plugged in, the doorbell rang, and I came very close to flipping out. i'm glad I didn't, because it was Brian, and I showed him what we had so far, and he jammed a little. Then, unexpectedly (to me, at least) Teresa showed up and took Eliote away. So Brian and I hung around for a few hours, playing some musics and watching some things on the largest TV ever, and then he had to leave. So what we had on the mixer was two measures of floaton, five or six of Softer, a complete bassline to Walk in the sky and two parts of Fly away bird. The middle two that you don't recognize are originals. So anyway, I recorded the rhythm guitar and bass for float on. Then I recorded the lead guitar. Then I recorded the vocals. All of these by myself. Trent Reznor, eat your heart out (I have always wanted an excuse to use that line). Then Zabet came home and . . . .
It strikes me that although there are about three more lengthy paragraphs to this story, this is pretty much where is totally stops having anything to do with SOD ent., so I'll just summarize.
I end up carrying seven to eight pieces of furniture for Mrs. D (Zabets mom), and also reassembling her vans seats. I get a small break, but when I come home, I do the dishes, I do another three hours work in my room, getting it liveable, and and moving another few things around in the living room. Since I am in for another long night anyway, I was considering attempting to record '99 Luftballons" myself too. Allright, although I am DYLVN, and not Eliote, I would like to give a shout out, and say thanks to Shyloh. If Eliote loves you, then I'm sure I will too. I'd also like give thanks and love to Ziggy, and say that we should, in fact, totally hang out some time. And Renee, I'm glad about you, and I highly anticipate seeing you on the 15th (it is the 15th, right?). Everyone else who read this, I truly love and appreciate your time, and I wish to thank you all individually. So come on over sometime and I'll bake you cookies, or something. Oh-Kay, this horrendously long entry is done.
Nice Dreams, and have a Very Almost day
And thought to myself, "Damn, what a weird dream."
What came after that was even weirder, and longer. The is DYLVN, the shorter one, regaling the days events. To-day was probably the longest day I remember. I suppose it started at about 8:45-ish, and at that point I got up off my couch, made myself some coffee, and went to the computer to check up on some things Sick of Dumb related, and noticed that last weeks entry got one ninth the comments as the week before that, at three to 27 (which is currently our record), and that our DeviantArt fans are few and far between, though, I suppose that's due to the fact that we never have anything to post (scannerless). So then, I began to make a mix CD, which was to be part one of my peace offering to Brian, my roommates emotionally-adopted brother. I've known him for a long time, or rather, met him several times before. But the last time I had seen him, we talked for close to two hours about music and things of the like. Music was the aim of this weeks meeting, and so one of our guest stars was Aaron, of course.
Anyway, Brian had recently purchased a 12 track recording mixer, and I had recently had several troubles concerning inter-band related affairs, so Alex had changed his mind long ago, rendering his mixer un-borrowable. So I made Brian a mix CD, and selected three DVDs he had mentioned wanting to see to me, and put them in a little pile to bring over. I then called David, who is our robot, though a little bit better built than blogbot (who is missing, for some reason), and is our guest piano player on the demo that Coda was hoping to record, as was the whole point of the gatherings of this weekend. Then a call to Eliote, who was not yet awake (and this was about 10:00, I think). David was bringing a funload of things, including but not limited to several CDs I lent him, several books that all three of the Codas had lent him, movies that we had all lent him and his synthesizer, which was moving in to my house, since his house was too full of computers. So I ate something, I don't remember what, and then walked down the block to Brians apartment. Brian doesn't have a phone, and doesn't plan on getting one, either, so whenever we want to talk to him, we just have to walk over and get in the building using any key (because all keys work on that apartment buildings door) and knock real loud.
Even though I waited until 1:15 to go over, I still woke him up, which I felt bad about because most of why I came over was to borrow a $900 piece of brand new electronics from him to go play with it with three people he didn't know and wouldn't trust even if he did, but the CD and DVDs made him happy, so he was more than willing to put it in my hands for a few days. Then he also tagged along back to my house with me. David called about then to announce his coming overness.
The mixer is one of the most complicated machines I have ever seen. As Eliote put it, it could easily be part of the cockpit of an airplane, and no one would notice. So Brian showed me how to work it, with all the crazy wires and such, though it turned out we forgot the most important and also smallest piece of equipment that went with it. I called Eliote, and he informed me that Aaron had gone missing, but that they would leave when they found him, and Brian and I went back to his house to retrieve the thing we forgot; an eighth inch to quarter inch adapter, leaving the door unlocked, lest David arrive whilst I was out.
Brian stayed at my house the second time just long enough to jam for a minute, and then he had to go to work. I'm surprised that he didn't run into David and Katie on their way in, because they showed up almost instantly. David set up his synth, and his keychain-sized baby keyboard, on some milkcrates and I dove into the manual for the mixer. We played a little bit of something, but I wasn't able to get the mixer to record what I was doing, and that frustrated me. Then at some point David got a call, and I still don't know why, but they had to leave for an hour. They did run into Zabet on her way in, and she told me all the fun things she did that day. She also told me that Adam and Bolla were wanting her to go out with them, but that she was wanting them to come over to our house. Then, when she checked her voicemail, one of them was an angry one from her mother going something like "Elizabeth, we have your TV. Please come and get it. If you don't, we'll just leave it on your porch." So I offered to go wait on the porch so my family wouldn't break it, but at the last second she said "Maybe they meant the back porch", and sure enough, a TV easily large enough to sleep inside was on our porch, along with a similarly sized credenza and an ironing board. I attempted to lift the TV, and in doing so, strained at least three muscles. I just barely got it inside, and I even went to the trouble of dragging the dolly out of the garage to lift it, and that didn't work either. So I got on the task of moving all of the electronics from the living room into my room, since we noticed that the TV was, get this, exactly one inch too tall for our entertainment center. So that was a lot of work, and somewhere in the middle, David and Katie came back. I think they might have called to herald their arrival, but my brain hurts too much to remember.
Also, after that, Eliote, Aaron and Teresa showed up, with a million guitars and amps and cords and bags. Everyone got into the spirit of 'a lot of people standing around talking', and I kept lugging heavy pieces of electronics back and forth, making the rooms optimal. Eventually, Aaron helped me bring the TV up, and Zabet demanded that I hook everything up right away, so that things were all shiny when her boyfriend got there, and around then I started counting people and not stopping when I would have like to. So then I tried once more to intiate some jamming, having this time remembered what it was that made the actual recording part happen, and then people somehow got into a movie. The One, starring Jet Li. I love Jet Li, but I was upset that nothing much was destined to happen for the next two hours. Aaron and I took a few guitars and the mixer into my room, and tried to figure out some stuff, and Aaron did an excellent job getting the effects switches and panels down pat, and he started out our first song. We had a test run of Modest Mouses Float On, and David seemed interested in Eliotes part, after Eliote admitted forgetting it. But then somehow, David melted away and ended up not really doing anything at all for the rest of the day, which, mind you, did turn out to be the longest day ever.
When the Adams arrived (Karpuska and Bolla), More procrastinating occured, and the initial pinpricks of headache sprouted in my head. A high point is that I interested Bolla in a deck of Black Tigres, and he put a downpayment on them. The bad news is, it all went towards the purchase of a bunch of pizza (which I'm thinking was mostly Davids and Zabets thinking) of which I only ate three pieces. At this point there are eight people; Eliote, Aaron, David, Katie, Zabet, Adam, Bolla, and myself. There should have been between four and six, preferably four. So Zabet took Eliote, one of the important cast members, away to retrieve the pizza, which I had to order because no one else likes to talk on the phone I guess, and then my mind is blank for a bit. I know that David and I had an argument about something, and that he was wrong. I also know that Aaron recorded some more of Floaton, and that it became my turn to play. And then pizza came back, and as I mentioned, I only got three pieces, when there were four pizzas to split between eight people. It might not seem that bad, but I noticed that Katie didn't eat any, and that Aaron only had two or three also. Anyway, I digress . . .
There are bigger portions missing. I was looking forward to David and Katie leaving, as the Adams had left wth Zabet a while ago, when he got a call and he managed to argue into be able to spend the night. This upset me a lot. That was probably the turning point where I knew that nothing else was going to get done. We began to watch the House of Flying Daggers, mostly to preoccupy DavidnKatie while Aaron and I had a meeting in the dining room. Eliote, unbeknownst to me at the time, fell partially asleep during the first half, and Zabet came back with the taller Adam. Then Adam went home, and Zabet joined Aaron and my soiree in the kitchen. Air decided to catch a bus home (it was about 12:30), and I went with him to look at times and to wait at the stop with him. I'm really going to miss him when he leaves. He was the only person who didn't make me mad at least once that whole day. Some people only frustrated me in passing, probably without realizing it, I know, but Aaron just went out of his way to work with me. He even bought me a two litre of coke, the generous bastard, I love him so.
When I came back inside, David and Katie had decided against the second half of HOFD, and opted for Jeepers Creepers, and Zabet had begun to go to sleep. Eliote had previously told me he was planning on sleep, and was in my room on the couch, as the bed was coered in unorganized electronics at the time. I went downstairs to the computer for a bit, and downloaded the guitar tablature for both parts of Floaton, because Eliote had forgotten. I played around on the mixer, recording a few of my originals and when the movie was over (I think 2:30-ish) David and Katie opted for sleep too. So I took a shower, and crawled into the only bed open to me, at about 3:30.
................................................................
When I woke up the next morning, the first time, it was only two and a half hours after I had fallen asleep. Zabet was off to work, and no one else was awake. I tried to sleep, but could only manage another hour or so, and ended up laying in bed thinking. At 8:30 or 9:00, I forget which, I had enough strength to get up, and this was precisely one minute after Eliote woke up and had a shower. So I plugged in and turned on all the equipment again, and David and Katie woke up and left. Eliote got out of the shower, and we spent some time in my room, organizing the mess that had been made, and talking about important super-secret official Sick of Dumb things, and then we gave music one more try. As soon as I had plugged in, the doorbell rang, and I came very close to flipping out. i'm glad I didn't, because it was Brian, and I showed him what we had so far, and he jammed a little. Then, unexpectedly (to me, at least) Teresa showed up and took Eliote away. So Brian and I hung around for a few hours, playing some musics and watching some things on the largest TV ever, and then he had to leave. So what we had on the mixer was two measures of floaton, five or six of Softer, a complete bassline to Walk in the sky and two parts of Fly away bird. The middle two that you don't recognize are originals. So anyway, I recorded the rhythm guitar and bass for float on. Then I recorded the lead guitar. Then I recorded the vocals. All of these by myself. Trent Reznor, eat your heart out (I have always wanted an excuse to use that line). Then Zabet came home and . . . .
It strikes me that although there are about three more lengthy paragraphs to this story, this is pretty much where is totally stops having anything to do with SOD ent., so I'll just summarize.
I end up carrying seven to eight pieces of furniture for Mrs. D (Zabets mom), and also reassembling her vans seats. I get a small break, but when I come home, I do the dishes, I do another three hours work in my room, getting it liveable, and and moving another few things around in the living room. Since I am in for another long night anyway, I was considering attempting to record '99 Luftballons" myself too. Allright, although I am DYLVN, and not Eliote, I would like to give a shout out, and say thanks to Shyloh. If Eliote loves you, then I'm sure I will too. I'd also like give thanks and love to Ziggy, and say that we should, in fact, totally hang out some time. And Renee, I'm glad about you, and I highly anticipate seeing you on the 15th (it is the 15th, right?). Everyone else who read this, I truly love and appreciate your time, and I wish to thank you all individually. So come on over sometime and I'll bake you cookies, or something. Oh-Kay, this horrendously long entry is done.
Nice Dreams, and have a Very Almost day