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Timothy S. McTaggart's Archived Blogs Apr-Jun 06

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Time for another nearly monthly update to my blogs. As I said this is a periodical blog. My band, the Funky Munky opened up for Johnny Dee and The Rocket 88s last Friday evening at the Riverstage here in San Angelo. The crowd seemed to like us for the most part as they were filtering in to see Johnny Dee. Since most of this crowd was there to hear the older 50's and 60's rock, I did see a few pained expressions as we cranked up some of our obvious disco songs. We played them unapologetically, the people danced and by the last song, we had most the crowd singing along to Sister Sledge's 'We are Family'. After a short break, Johnny D and Rocket 88s came on and played a heck of a show. Their bass player did some impressive solo, which had me ready to slink off and work some more on my playings. I did get to use his bass rig for our set, which sounded fabulous. So once again I am actually considering an upgrade. Their drummer came around shaking hands with all of us, saying he really enjoyed our set. I think our fearless leader is trying to get us some more gigs, opening up for these folks. We'll see what happens. Next subject, the count is now at 25 fried squirrels that have knocked power down at the office. Part of this weekend was spent installing a large UPS in the computer room. Still some glitches, which I hope we can work out to reduce impact of next fried squirrel. Speaking of glitches, here's what else I know about this poor film, Hoboken Hollow. I checked the website hobokenhollow.com and it now bears a poster for the film, albeit low resolution. More later as I find out something, other than additional bad reviews.

For those of you reading this in time, my retro band, the Funky Munky is back at the Oasis tomorrow (Saturday) night. Hope to see you there. Next subject. I still have that pedometer. I put better than 5000 steps on it today just going the length of the hallway at the office several times. This was chasing down computer problems. It's been a heck of a week again. This week started with the AHLTA computer's central data repository (CDR) at Gunter being down (as well as network problems as aftermath of a power outage induced by squirrel #24). The former of the two problems affected all AHLTA sites, not just us. There's a bit of a story on the squirrels that like to take power down at our office, but I'll save that for later blogs. Anyway, AHLTA stands for some convoluted acronym of which I won't go into here. We have more than once renamed it 'HALTA' during our frustrations when our poor users can't use the thing due to circumstances beyond our control. It's great when it works, and our users really like it then, but this week's problems didn't garner much favorable response. This is a big project still in implementation, now getting less than favorable congressional attention and it needs to get well soon. Speaking of bad reviews on another subject, "Hoboken Hollow" continues to be occasionally praised but mostly slammed in reviews I've seen. I'll reserve my own review, obviously until which time I actually get to see the thing. May be just as well I didn't bargain hard enough for a point share last year. I may actually get going on cleaning up the house sometime soon. Now for my bad reviews on politics. This president seems to be able to screw up things that actually started as good ideas now. His plan for Mexican nationals coming across the border being 'guest workers' has now disintegrated into some further use of an already tapped out National Guard. I guess it'd at least be less stressful than a deployment to Iraq. Hey, maybe we should take an idea from the Iraqi insurgents and use IUDs on those wetbacks. That'd decrease the traffic across the border. I'm sure that comment will warrant some bad reviews as well. Capping off my frustration with this administration was our commander in chief's recent response to a multitude of people, including retired generals, who called for Donald Rumsfeld's removal from his post as Secretary of Defense. Another 'Bushism' emerged with this, and I quote: "I'm The Decider and I Decide What Is Best". That sure makes him king of the sandbox. It inspired some parodies, to include a take off on the Beatles tune "I am the Walrus" ("I am the Decider"). My own response was to get some bumper stickers printed up that say "Decide THIS", with the web address for the Democratic Party underneath. I have the artwork for this sticker on at the top of my home page at the moment. Let me know if you want me to get you some of them. Later.

Once again the Funky Munky had most the crowd dancing well into the night last Saturday at the Oasis. There was a line out the door for awhile. We didn't record this gig, so it went quite a bit better. Amazing how that works. We are back in there on 20 May and hope to see you there if you happen to read this blog in time. Okay, next topic. According to imdb.com, folks either love or hate the movie "Hoboken Hollow" so far. There's not much in the way of ratings in between. There also seems to be illicit copies on the internet as well. I guess that comes with the territory now. No word yet on a legal release here in the states. I guess they're awaiting some response across the pond. I've made some postings on imdb.com about the release date and my house being used in the filming of this movie. I still hope I can put my old (expired) fridge up on E-bay since it appears in the kitchen scenes. May find some sucker.... umm, customer for that. But hey I probably got suckered for the use of the house, so I may as well return the favor. Alright, next topic. I mentioned this odd pedometer that we're supposed to wear and record the number of steps per day this week for this exercise program. I made the 10,000 steps goal on Monday, the first day, but have fallen somewhat short for Tuesday and Wednesday (today). Incidentally, I had that pedometer on last Saturday when we did the gig and it recorded 20,000 plus steps for that day. Maybe if I played a gig each night this week. Ouch say the fingers, but the rest of me could stand the workout. More later.

The Easter sunrise service went quite well. The mikes I put out in the crowd picked up what I wanted to get. Had some glitches though. Our reverend who preached the sermon insisted on using a wireless mike (one of these headband boom types). It was more than slightly intermittent (and crunchy), which about drove me nuts until a WIRED mike was scooted up to him for his use. Also the audio I fed the remote TV broadcast folks was a little hot and unbeknownst to me, went into the mud several times during songs and other louder parts. Nobody told me, so I only discovered it when I played it back on my VCR, which I'd set to record it. Apparently they'd run it to some mike input, rather than line input. How come these folks don't have trim pots on their audio mixers (or whatever they're not using that would accommodate various levels) to take care of this? Aarrrgh!!! I took Easter Monday off from work and checked in on my house in Menard, in which some of this movie, Hoboken Hollow, was filmed last year. The yard needed mowing. It was so dry, I generated huge billowing clouds of dust with the mower, and I'm sure my neighbor downwind probably gained a quarter inch of topsoil. Hopefully not too much of that was deposited in the house. Well, back to this odd movie. Hoboken Hollow came out on DVD in Europe and the UK last Monday. There's decided contrast in the reviews that I've seen on imdb.com. These range from "...sure shot blockbuster, likely to attain cult status in many countries in very short time..." over to "If I could unwatch this terrible vomit of a film, I would." But enough; I'm not much of a connoisseur of this genre of horror films myself and basically thought that they were SUPPOSED to suck. I gotta agree with the reviews on frustration with these villains not getting any comeuppance (especially for Junior). I hope that happens in any possible sequel. One of the better scenes I got to watch the filming of was when Junior (Jonathan Fraser) does this demented soliloquy in front of a large mirror, holding up his cattle prod and exclaiming "...and THIS is my scepter!" I could tell he was having fun with that one. The mirror is still up in that room and I have done several parodies of that scene in front of the same mirror, holding up various uncertain items. Now to set up my old video camera and record one of those parodies. No wonder my professional actor career so far includes only one commercial and two paid theatre gigs. Better stay with being a musician on the side for now. Besides I've got a gig with the Funky Munky this Saturday at the Oasis. See you there if you can make it. Report on that one to come as well.

Let me tell you how it will be. It's one for you, nineteen for me. But enough of Beatles song lyrics, specifically from "Taxman". Actually the filing deadline for income tax is on Monday. I have filed mine via the internet for the first time this year. We'll see how well this works. The IRS discontinued the way to file tax returns over the phone, which I have used for about the last 10 years. Guess I'll get over it. I do have a refund coming, according to the IRS sanctioned website where I filed. More on that later. Update on the pedometer, it says I did 10,426 steps today. So I actually made the 10,000 steps we're supposed to do each day for this upcoming exercise program. Part of that may have come from setting up for the Easter morning sunrise service that I have been involved with for the last 13 years. This afternoon was much warmer and dryer than the same Saturday Easter Eve last year. As much as we need rain here, it was still good to not get wet during our setup for this. Well, I'm out there way early this morning to get the rest of the sound system set up and get same piped to the TV and radio folks. I plan to get a couple mikes out in the crowd this time to pick up their singing. We will see how that goes. I'm programming the VCR to record the TV station coverage. More later.

Thought I’d try posting a blog from the new laptop computer on my Wi-Fi connection. Yep I went out and bought a router with both wireless and wired connections. I’m tracking the mac addresses of anyone else deciding to connect to my Wi-Fi but so far no takers. I don’t mind as long as no abuse occurs. Next topic. As opposed to being a ski bum, I am bummed that I didn’t get to go skiing this winter. Despite the groundhog’s outlook, the snow didn’t happen where I wanted to go. Maybe next year. Need to get my butt back in shape sometime though, which should entail less time on the computer. Nahhhh. Seriously though, I agreed to get in some weeklong program where we’re supposed to do 10,000 steps a day (walking) as will be verified by these pedometers that we will wear during this time. Subject pedometers are already issued and the one I have seems to count all sort of things besides steps (i.e. bumps in the road) as steps, and it seems to be generous in adding them up. That may detract from the point of this program. But hey, it’s a start. More on this endeavor and other things later.

Okay I've gotta update my process of archiving my blogs from the previous quarter. This was once again accomplished with the aforementioned editing by notepad. Hey, it's done and the links all work! I never made an entry during March either. It has been just about a year since a film crew and actors occupied my fixer-upper house in Menard during the filming of Hoboken Hollow. As I said, it was a little rough on the house, but I've mostly settled up with Molding Clay productions about that. With my theatre background, I had a rather unique perspective while observing these folks at work. According to my latest Goggle searches, it looks like this one is out on DVD "across the pond" as they say, on the 17th of this month. Hope something happens here in the states soon with it. The movie web site imdb.com has a good first review on it already. A quote from that review (with apologies to the author from Brazil) is: "When this comes out, watch it on a rainy night with a bucket of popcorn and you're in for the ride of your life." Sure is refreshing to see a good review after some person trashed it last year during a screening, and didn't even bother to get his facts straight. My own comments, having read my autographed script several times, are that if the film serves the script well, it should stand a pretty good chance. This reviewer saw it becoming a cult film in a very short time. Watching Glen Stephens at work setting up scenes, reminded me of some good directors from my old theatre days. We'll see what the people say about this one soon enough. I guess my only real technical involvement was helping the sound girl string some XLR cables. So will my name gets in the credits for that? Hopefully not. There's a write up in Texas Hill Country Magazine about making films in Menard, which includes a picture of the front of my house. You can probably "Google" (yes, that's a verb) for the web sites. More later, as usual.

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