Should Be Famous

As most of you know, I haven't done a lot of music publicly in the last couple years (between Seville's birth and Jared's health, it's been a bit much to handle). And of course, the question I get asked most often these days - probably other than "how's it goin'?" and "paper or plastic?" - is something along the lines of "when are you gonna start playing again?" Well... the short answer to that is "maybe soon maybe I think." The real answer to that is long and complicated, and better saved for another post.

But in the meantime I have joined a fun little project as a co-host on the new Should Be Famous podcast. You should check it out. It's a little show where we three hosts (my brother Clayton, a guy named Chris, and I), find what we consider to be good music by people who are not professional musicians - basically, people like us. People who are busy doing real-life kinds of things -- like, say, working a real job, raising children, stuff like that -- but they have some talent or some luck or, in any case, some song that is really worth hearing. But because they're not promoting it, it will never get picked up by a label or a radio station and YOU would never get to hear it. Our quest is to find those songs.

So check out the podcast. The webpage is here: www.shouldbefamous.com or you can subscribe at iTunes directly by clicking HERE.

Hope you enjoy!

P.S. If you know of a great song by a non-professional musician, please let us know. We are finding them almost entirely by word of mouth.

Grumpy Old Pirate Cat

Okay. I'm not usually a big poster of other people's YouTube videos, but my brother-in-law showed me this in Sunriver, and it made me laugh so hard I had tears streaming down my face, I had to sit on the floor to keep from falling over, and I seriously thought I was going to pee my pants (a disaster narrowly averted). Granted, this was very late at night when family can get silly, and we proceeded to do other stupid things we found funny at the time that probably weren't so much, so I don't want to hype it up tooooo much and ruin it for you. But still. I can't stop laughing.

Introduction: you know how cats make those weird devilish noises when they're mad or "growling" or whatever it is? Here somebody has listened closely to what his cat is saying, and translated for us all.



There is a possible happy byproduct of this video for me: Almost nothing scares me more than waking in the night to the sounds of neighborhood cats "caterwauling" at each other. Next time I wake to Richard Parker engaging in some neighborhood turf battle, I'll probably start cracking up instead of falling into fitful nightmarish sleep, like usual.

Sunriver

We just got back from a week in Sunriver with my folks (well... Seviulle and I spent a week there, anyway. Jared joined us just for the weekend.) It's funny how vacations are never long enough. I brought books, journals, an easel, paints, my guitar, the stroller, etc, all planning on having lots of free down time to do whatever. As it happened, the week flew by, despite the fact that we did not much withour spare time other than play fetch with my parents' dog.

This is my parents (new-ish) dog, Molly. Seville seems to figure that since they're about the same height, they are friends.

Seville spent many hours throwing this ball into the water, and Molly dutifully fetched it, despite the fact that it was about 2 feet away. It was almost as if Molly was teaching Seville how to play "fetch" and not the other way around.

Daddy comes to join the fun.

Seville dons her swimsuit playing on the little paddle boat.

Returning from Seville's first canoe ride. She kept wanting to touch the water, and we kept trying to explain to her that the boat would tip over if she leaned over the side. No matter, she kept trying. Eventually I went ahead and held her over the side while Jared carefully counterbalanced the other direction.

(I posted a ton of pictures for my family to see, so if the above 5 aren't enough for you, they are at http://picasaweb.google.com/skye.engstrom/Sunriver2008# )