Dorky Dinos

Have I lost my mind?  Yes.  With that matter addressed, let us proceed....

Here are some of the dorkiest dinos from my collection, here to start our Halloween dinosaur survey.  No insult implied--I love these guys with a special passion.  They dare to be different, to be mutant, to be... dorky.  I identify with dorks, despite the fact that I'm, um, so cool.

I rush-composed some dorky-dino music for the occasion, using Noteworthy Composer software and my Casio WK-3800.  It's called, appropriately (and dorikly) enough, "Dorky Dinos."

Click here: Dorky Dinos (Hartsfeld) .

We start with a Space Postcard (more on these later) featuting three dorky dinos, two ant people, a griffin (gargoyle?), and a green Medusa turned the wrong way (out of courtesy).  The back of the card doesn't tell us what planet this was posed on, but it appears to have a surface composed of yellow construction paper:

A dorky dino group shot:

And close-up:

Dorky as heck, too, are the following four fake Godzillas.  But do they look as if they give a fossilized dino stool what you or I think?  Of course they don't:

A dorky dino solo shot:

Another group shot, with three guest ant people:

Next up, a pair of incredibly chintzy Godzilla knock-offs gaze in dino-confusion at three dorky ant people guarding a cap-gun spaceship.  This is one of those only-at-MY(P)WHAE images:

And we close with some dorky dino fossils:

Lee

Dinosaurs

MY(P)WHAE's "A Dinosaur Halloween" begins (almost)!!

Lee

The Vanishing Secret Service Agent, and other spooky Halloween tales

Gather near, children, and I'll tell you the ever-evolving tale of The Vanishing Secret Service Agent.

By now, you have surely heard the White House intruder story in one of its many versions, possibly at work, at school, around the campfire, from a collection of Halloween legends, or on yesterday and today's nightly news.  A man, armed with a knife, hopped the fence and got into the White House, overpowered a female agent, then enjoyed a free tour of the premises until an off-duty male agent tackled him.

Actually, the original, false story (i.e., lie), provided by SS director (and last year's Ms. Personality Award winner) Julia S. Pierson, had the intruder getting tackled first thing by on-the-ball agents.  (Or was it a single agent?  I can't remember.)  Slower than a zombie can grunt The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, the story as reported was revised in a manner allegedly consistent with what actually happened.

That true report had people stunned and outraged  Then, before a ghoul can smack his lips, the new, truth-revised story changed.  "Overpowered" became "pushed."  "Female agent" became "agent."

Then, quicker than a werewolf can jump a balcony, "agent" became... no agent.  No mention of any agent inside the door.  Gone.  Vanished.

So, where had he/she/it gone?  Had the agent ever existed?

Will the door go next?  Perhaps the door was someplace else when the intruder showed up--in a shop, say, for historic restoration.  Maybe only an empty doorway remained, with a sign next to it, reading, "INTRUDERS--ENTER HERE," with arrows pointing to the opening.

Will that sign, before a bat can change into a vampire, have joined the female agent, the female agent's gender, and the door in the realm of things that don't exist?  Will the entire wall be next?  Then the lawn, square inch by square inch?

Buwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaa!!



Lee

Halloween in Space Suite (Lee Hartsfeld, 2013) returns!

For the art, I used my favorite Charlton Comics cover of all time (Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds, #13, 1959, Bill Molno), slightly modified by me.  Since this is not a political blog, I didn't use am image of the Speaker of the House ("Orange Face").

Anyway, with Halloween nearly here, I thought we'd take a return trip to my Halloween in Space Suite, which was mostly recorded "live" on my marvelous Casio WK-3800, albeit multi-tracked (which I refer to as live-live-live-live, etc.).  By "live," I mean I'm playing in real time--no MIDI, no step time, no tempo adjusting.  I took the hard route--no MIDI cheating for me, except for a portion of the section called "Meteors" with two !!'s.

I like the vintage-synth sounds I got on View from the Space Station, which required a number of tones (and notes) for that c.-1959 library music sound.  And who among us hasn't labored to produce a c.-1959 library music sound?

I'm pleased by how smooth, ordered, and premeditated the sections sound, because they didn't happen that way, except for "Peacocks," which came together in 30 minutes or so after I scrapped my original idea for it.  The chord in "Memories"--i.e., the chord form (C#, F#, B, F, Bb, Eb)--is straight out of Erik Satie, c. 1894. (Two perfect fourth chords, a tritone apart, played as one.)  Yet, by 2013 standards, it sounds jazzy.  Everything in music is context, I guess.

I think my suite nicely shows off the terrific tones to be found on the Casio WK-3800.  In synth circles, the name "Casio" is synonymous with "junk" (or with even stronger four-letter designations), but the 3800 begs to differ.

Hope you enjoy.  More Halloween coming up, and this year's theme is dinosaurs.  Are.  Whatever.  Remember, though, that I can't put up any of my usual Halloween "slaylists," for which you can thank the copyright cops, those lovable lugs who can't handle the notion of us common rabble trading the very music our patronage made possible in the first place.  We are consumers, not owners, even if the stuff we want to post was old hat by the time our parents were courting.  Know your place?  I hope so.

To space....

Halloween in Space Suite

Danger, Thrills, and Monsters
Space Spooks
View from the Space Station
Meteors!!
Memories of Earth
Peacocks in Space

Composed and played in 2013 by Lee Hartsfeld on his Casio WK-3800, with assistance from Sonar X2 Essential and Magix Audio Cleaning Lab MX.

Lee