Moments Per Minute

After a workweek spent touring upstate New York, I'm back.

It was a busy and stressful week that was also entertaining, interesting and more-laughs-per-minute than usual. The parts of Rochester I saw seemed hip and happening, relatively speaking. We had our event there at the science museum which amused me because I got to direct people to the mastodon. (Before you think it, yes, I'm easily amused.) Syracuse and Albany seemed much more economically-depressed. You have to wonder what will happen to those folks if our economy continues to flounder.

Our events, however, were very well-attended by local musicians and music industry folk and hopefully we gave them some new ways to keep playing. Random photos here. It was gratifying to watch people begin to put the pieces together of how the new music business works and how they can be a part of it and how faraway policy issues like net neutrality can affect them. It's not hard to become a bit blinkered in that I forget how little other people know about the issues that I spend my days on. Always good to get a reminder.

After the Albany event ended, Jean and I drove to New York City. We arrived in the wee smas of the night at the Chelsea Hotel. The hotel itself was vaguely hostel-like but unsurprisingly very cool, as I discovered the next morning when I work up enough to take in my surroundings.

I spent Thursday catching up a bit on work (have laptop/cell phone/Internet, will travel) and with some friends I haven't seen in a while. Good to see James, who I've known since high school. James is the man behind Dutch Angle Films and he's the reason I know anything about the art of film-making.

That evening, I saw my friend Stew's musical Passing Strange, a thoroughly enjoyable coming of age story with a rock/funk/soul soundtrack and some great acting performances. I've never really been into theater, but if I lived in New York, I think I'd develop a taste for it.

Whew. Now, I'm off to enjoy a weekend with very little planned.