I’m not actually sure if this classes as a “Random Night Out” and it’s certainly not of the regular ilk that I’d call a “Random Night Out”, but fuck it. May as well.
On Sundays I prepare a radio show for Dad for a 1 hour show on 2RDJ. Well, I had the jazz show prepared on Saturday and I was going to go with him anyway to help out on the show when earlier today (around 5.45pm on Sunday… which even though this is Monday at the moment, it’s still somewhat Sunday for me) we got a phone call asking if Dad could fill in for an extra hour before his 9-10 slot.
Dad said sure.
And volunteered me.
So I came up with a playlist in one hour consisting of stuff that was mostly not jazz.
[url=https://www.leighlo.com/random/images/2007/D70/03-2RDJ-03.jpg][img]https://www.leighlo.com/uploads/random/2007/03-LeighOnTheRadio-01.jpg[/img][/url]
[i]Click on the image to see a slightly bigger version of me looking like a lost Dennis Hopper on the radio…[/i]
Starting it off, I had a technical issue regarding their CD players being whorelike and refusing to do what I want even though I was paying them to work. Okay, so I wasn’t paying them, but since I don’t pay whores either, they were still whorelike. By that same logic, since I don’t pay photocopiers or toasters, the CD players were also very photocopier alike and very toasterlike. They were also probably very stale-piece-of-macaroni like.
Dad was teaching me the equipment as we went along, sitting near me just in case I made any fuck ups, and yeah, I made a few but they weren’t large ones so I didn’t exactly fuck myself. I’ll wait at least 10 minutes before I go to bed at which time I can promptly fuck myself.
Anyway, I got through my set with not so many dramas and I’ll be putting up the podcast in probably a Flash format soon as soon as we move the data across from the Mini-Disk.
And then we moved onto Dad’s show… which I program.
[url=https://www.leighlo.com/random/images/2007/D70/03-2RDJ-01.jpg][img]https://www.leighlo.com/uploads/random/2007/03-LeighOnTheRadio-04.jpg[/img][/url]
[i]Click on the image to see this somewhat romantic-y version of Dad at a DJ panel…[/i]
Seriously, it was a night — or at least a two-hour bout — for music programmed by Leigh. Chosen by Leigh. I’m about to have my body give up on life tonight and fall asleep… by Leigh.
[b]***Leigh crashes onto the floor***[/b]
[i]Several hours pass while Leigh tosses his bed with his sleepy head like the salad you contemplated getting for lunch. If I’ve just made you lose your lunch… good. Go get some cake. You deserve it.[/i]
[b]***Leigh wakes up around one day and seven hours later with a mission***[/b]
And that mission is… to finish this blog entry. Headquarters really don’t give me all that hard-of missions anymore… not since I kept on blowing up Headquarters. Imaginary Headquarters. You can never be too careless with imaginary explosives in imaginary buildings.
I’m getting severely off-topic. This is me waking up. This might explain why no girl has ever had their brain explode. They need to spend the night with me and then when I start doing one of these as I wake up, their mind will look at me and go [i]”Christ, is he on every fucking drug known to mankind?! Shit… fuck this.”[/i] and either cause the girl to have a shower and leave or just cause a hemorrhage in one part of her brain.
Yeah. Sucks to be me sometimes.
Anyway, the radio show.
[url=https://www.leighlo.com/random/images/2007/D70/03-2RDJ-02.jpg][img]https://www.leighlo.com/uploads/random/2007/03-LeighOnTheRadio-03.jpg[/img][/url]
[i]Click on the image to see the colour-reduction of the DJ panel get bigger![/i]
In the first week, Dad didn’t ask for a specific theme for which my jazz should adhere to. Now, I have to program the playlist for a sort of theme or idea throughout the night. Last week, it was female singer as Dad had a female singer come in that he interviewed. This time, it was “Unlikely Subjects” or as he called it “Unusual Subjects”. The idea was to grab songs that were typically rock, blues, and pop and find jazz versions of them. Now, this is near impossible for one requirement of 2RDJ’s policy with it being that 25% of the music you play MUST be Australian. This is a hell of a lot harder for jazz, seeing as most jazz in Australia is either really bad, Dixie, nothing special, acid-based, or then you might get something decent.
Don’t get me wrong, there is some really fucking good Australian jazz out there, but finding it is a real effort in obscurity as either these people don’t know how to market themselves or no one really wants to market them for them. As such, it means scouring places like [url=http://www.mp3.com.au]mp3.com.au[/url] and the hell hole that is [url=http://www.myspace.com]MySpace[/url]. Even throughout all of that, you’re lucky to find something you can get quickly. I’m really — in developing Dad’s webpage — going to have to set up a contact form so people can contact him and upload mp3’s or whatnot as a way of making it easier for him to play their stuff.
Actually, the whole effort to [i]find[/i] decent jazz that’s been recorded and is little more than a fleeting moment of a jam in this place that I call home is still the inspiration for that documentary on jazz I’ve had in planning for a while and that I still eventually make, provided I have some funds and some solid research done.
So since the theme was “Unlikely Subjects” and / or “Unusual Subjects”, I had ready some [url=http://www.myspace.com/casualtiesofjazz]Casualties of Jazz[/url], Paul Anka, and Hans Theesink to name a few.
[url=https://www.leighlo.com/random/images/2007/D70/03-2RDJ-00.jpg][img]https://www.leighlo.com/uploads/random/2007/03-LeighOnTheRadio-02.jpg[/img][/url]
[i]Click on the image above to see Dad working on the radio in black & white a little bit bigger![/i]
It’s community radio so I guess we’ll be lucky to have 12 people listening, but that’s around 9 more people than who read my blog I guess so it’s going to be better than nothing.
Dad’s show is from 9-10 and then after that, one of the station heads’ takes over and does a classical show. It was Vivaldi’s birthday so when I got home, I told Vivaldi “Happy Birthday” and fed him. I hadn’t seen him in a few days.
I’m getting ahead of myself, mind you.
We had to first [i]get[/i] home. And there was a storm brewing.
[img]https://www.leighlo.com/uploads/random/2007/03-LeighOnTheRadio-05.jpg[/img]
I tell ya, I tried getting shots of the sheet lightning from the car on the way back, but it’s damn near impossible. Hell, it’s damn near impossible when the sky is lighting up around you, you’re not in a car, the lightning is more frequent, and you’re hand-holding the camera and not using a tripod.
So on the way home, I got some blurry shots of cars on the street ahead of me and not-so-blurry ones too. But no sheet lightning.
I did get some of the water — as there was some light rain — glistening on the windshield against the out-of-focus glow of the streetlights, as per seen above, which has a nice… i-don’t-quite-know-what to it.
And then we got home. I asked to get out a bit early before Dad went into the home so I could walk up and shake my keys enough to get Vivaldi’s attention. Lately, he thinks he’s the toast of the town and not only acts like a spoiled 17 year old child by NOT coming home for dinner every day, but now whenever he sees me, walks with me to the front door, walks into the lobby with me, and then walks into our home.
Yes, Vivaldi is one cat with class. Very smart, but oh so spoiled.
Still cute though. Even brings a smile to Dad’s face.
Not being content with the boredom of not turning my computer on and not wanting to turn to Izuna which I’m still playing before I review it (on my Nintendo DS), I took the trash out to determine if I should go out and take some pictures, or at least attempt the photography.
I would’ve taken the trash out eventually… sure… but this gave me extra motivation. When I was in Dallas, I loved wandering out in the storms. So much fun. I wanted to join [url=http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wvor0.htm]Project Vortex[/url] when I was younger and living in Dallas. That was the then-meteorological side of me. It’s never really faded, mind you… it just went walkabout.
[img]https://www.leighlo.com/uploads/random/2007/03-LeighOnTheRadio-07.jpg[/img]
It wasn’t raining hard at all and mostly seemed like a lot of hot-air as far as the storm was concerned for what it was going to do. So I grabbed the 50mm 1.4 and went outside. Vivaldi decided to follow me… which was probably not the best idea since cats aren’t known to be fans of any form of water other than the stuff they drink, and large booming noises might scare the cat-Jesus out of all of them.
But Vivaldi was cool. As cool as they fucking come.
And I took my shots hand-held. Tried to get some fork shots. Most of the time they came out blank & too-dark for me to see anything else. At one point, I started feeling like I’d have more chance for the sheet lightning with a building in view, as otherwise, sheet lightning just looks like a highlighted sky. So I positioned the frame with a building, made is compositionally nice, and fired almost every time there was a flash of sheet lightning above and / or around the building.
Eventually, I got this:
[img]https://www.leighlo.com/uploads/random/2007/03-LeighOnTheRadio-06.jpg[/img]
That was barely the space of a second. Probably around half a second to a second, and probably still not even that long. The building gets lit up from all sides by the sheer power of the lightning looking like it’s just been electrocuted by a hundred thousand volts and then all of a sudden, it just becomes another complacent object set in the dark world just like everything else is.
Really shows you the sheer power and amount of light that this stuff puts out against the clouds.
And then it started to rain and even I conceded defeat, knowing I had at least two hand-held shots I was comfy with. By this time, Vivaldi had run under a parked car for shelter. I put my gear away, jingled the keys a little to get him out, and when he did grabbed him and carried him to the door where he did his spoiled 17 year old brat action of walking in with ease.
Later on, while Dad was asleep, the neighbours cat Gigi dropped by, as she normally does.
For the past week, Gigi has been sitting, perching, sleeping, and lightly resting on the box for Lindy’s new printer that Dad had picked up for her. It was sitting in our home near the door to my bathroom and now that Dad had taken the box away (because he’d given the printer to Lindy), there was no place quite like it for Gigi to go.
So she assumed the vacuum cleaner by Dad’s room could do the same thing.
[img]https://www.leighlo.com/uploads/random/2007/03-LeighOnTheRadio-08.jpg[/img]
And it really is cute trying to see a cat struggle with the curves and shape of a vacuum cleaner to straddle it the same way she would something large… and firm… and what’s more important, stable and rectangular. Like a box.