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Our sweet little baby girl is 3 months old today and rather than a lengthy, self indulgent post about how voraciously cute and adorable and wonderful she is so I thought a bunch of pictures would better speak for her. Especially since we finally got some pics of her smiling tonight.

As her big brother would say, “Here go!”

First, Jessie and Porter cuddling in bed and the second was taken yesterday when she almost smiled for the camera.

You might remember the picture of her tiny feet, and I thought it might be fun to take an update of that shot. It’s fun to compare.

Now there be a picture of her beautiful baby smile (which was for the beautiful mommy no less), and one, two shots of her holding her head up. She’s getting strong.

Take care y’all.

I’ve got a couple of musical tidbits for you. I thought about doing them as a podcast but mondo hold time at work enabled me to write what I probably would have said anyway.

The first tidbit is a song by called Hollerin’ On Halloween by The Brothers Groove, a talented band from Detroit layin out the scary holiday grooves. The homey’s and I have seen these guys a couple of times and they do a tight show. One of the gigs was at the 2002 South By Southwest music festival where John Popper joined them to perform Gil Scott Heron’s ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’. Their site has a free gig to listen to/download, otherwise not much.

Flexidiscs were pretty common place during my childhood. They weren’t falling from the sky, but weren’t exactly a novelty. If you’re not familiar, a flexidisc was essentially a thin piece of vinyl (that feels like plastic) with grooves cut into it. Think of it as a flimsy 45rpm record. They didn’t last like a vinyl 45 would but they didn’t have the size or weight or a 45rpm which made it ideal for promotions and to slip into the lastest issue of Kerrang or whatever.

This one came into my hands probably before I turned 10. Before Hardee’s came to town and bought them out, Burger Chef was our #2 fast food burger establishment of choice. McDonalds of course was #1. The measure of fast food burgers for a kid isn’t governed as much by food quality as it is by the quality of the toy in the kid’s meal. By that measure, McD’s usually won out.

Moving on…

This flexidisc was part of a Burger King meals, obviously around Halloween. I found it when going through my limited vinyl collection a couple of whiles ago and burned it to cd when I was at the radio station during pledge drive earlier this month.

It’s a riot, cheesy as heck, and I love it.

Burger Chef & Jeff Monster Sounds – Ghost Of Grizzly Mountain

What? Another one so soon?

The rainy, chilly weather last night provided a moment of inspiration. The songs were on the hard drive, I had a scant amount of time while Jessie was asleep, Trish was at work, Porter was in bed, so I threw it together.

For best effect, listen to it at night.

I typically try to not repeat an artist in a podcast but this one is all Trey Anastasio and David Byrne.

Dig.

Our world is swank, though we’re all feeling better after all of us being more or less sick for the past week and half. After Jessie’s event (see below) last Sunday we all sloughed on the couch and watched TV. It’s wise to note that if I see another episode of Spongebob soon I’m going to have an identity crisis. If I start inquiring about people that live in pineapples under the sea call the White Coats and pad my room (I prefer off white thank you).

Illness aside, a routine is finally settling in at the Cowan household. It’s a busy one, but that can be tweaked ever so slightly. While Jessie girl isn’t sleeping through the night yet, she does go 5 or so hours between feedings and stays asleep while eating. Breast feeding is still going great. We’re getting lots of smiles now and she looks for our voice when someone else is holding her. When her brother was little we could get a smile by saying, “Hi Porter poopy pants,” but Jessie is happy when she hears, “Hi Jessie girl,” and erupts in big smiley smiles for us. She’s really close to laughing because she acts like she’s trying to get something out. Since it hasn’t been spit up we’re thinking it’s laughter. Porter’s doing really well with her and when we read as a family he readjusts his position so Jessie can see (or stare up the light, as the case may be). He likes to rub his nose on her cheek and talk to her. That reminds me, we’ve noticed that running a finger along her nose or around her cheeks will help her fall asleep. It’s really cool because it’s like she’s hypnotized. Her whole body goes limp and it cracks me up. Jessie is making those adorable baby squeaking baby sounds right now too. It’s nice to get them all over again (this time I’ve got my recording gear hooked up for the posterity of it all).

We do have one concern with a habit Porter has developed. He pulls on his ears hard. At first it was just fidgeting (which he probably got from me because I fidget with my ears all the dang time) but he’s taken to pulling on them so hard that we’re afraid that a:) he’ll hurt himself and b:) that he doesn’t know how to vent legitimate frustration. His world was upheavalified a few months ago and you can only be easy going for so long. The trigger seems to be medium to high level frustration. If he drops a book or whatever he says, “Oh darn,” and moves on. If we tell him it’s time to put the book down because its bed time his hands go to the ears. General stuff like please put that down/away, please don’t do this/that/the other, etc he gets a very stern, almost mean expression while pulling his ears down like he’s trying to tear them off. Porter isn’t by any stretch an aggressive boy and he’s very easy going, too much so sometimes. We’re thinking this is one of those ‘too much so’ times. As a result, his laidbackness is passive to the point where he doesn’t know how to express feelings of jealousy, resentment, feeling left out. Confusion is probably the big one because we’re very conscious to give him his time; he gets lots of positive attention and lots of our focus. The reaction to those negative feelings seems to be automatic. He goes right to his ears.

Our pediatrician said that the source of his frustration is with Jessie and that we include him on things with her. Give him little jobs to do, heap enormous praise, and so on. We were already doing that so we started doing it more. I’m sure it’s something that will pass; it will just take a little time.

We discussed it at bed time last Tuesday and he’s going to tell us when he’s frustrated about something. It’s working a little bit so far because I haven’t noticed him pulling on his lobes too hard. We can handle him fidgeting as long as it’s just that. Who on this green earth would I be to speak against that?

On to funner stuff.

A tiny case, well, example is probably a better way to say it, of TV being educational is yesterday when Porter and I were counting Sudafed tablets while he was on the potty (don’t ask questions) he counted: one, two, three, four, five, undo, cinch. He can count to 10 just fine, but his recent viewing of Dora The Explorer added some Espanola to the mix. It’s kind of fun. My generation had Sesame Street (agua man, agua) and Dora must be his generational representative for the Spanish language.

The other day that Porter said a very complex compound sentence to Trish. I don’t remember what it was about, but it was something like, “Please don’t sit on me because I don’t want you to right now so that I can go get a book from my room.”

Last Sunday we had a naming ceremony for Jessie at the Ethical Society. You can liken it to a baptism in a mainstream philosophy. I’m generally adverse to ceremony and ritual (unless it’s related opening cd’s the same way, using the same pocket knife, that I have for 15 years or more) so when the question was posed to me by my lovely bride I hem-hawed until ultimately deciding to do it. Trish and I just formally joined (my slacker credo typically forbids me to join stuff so that may say something) and with this being part of Porter and Jessie’s community and philosophical upbringing it felt like a great thing to do. A cool bonus is that unlike a baptism, we had input and final say over what was said and what ceremonial stuff like candles or a goat sacrifice were to be included. We passed on all that stuff in favor of simple words, which have hold more sway for me.

Kate Lovelady, the Leader (the equivalent to a pastor/reverend/rabbi/imam/etc) sent us a couple of sample ceremonies that I looked at and cut and pasted, or just plain cut, what I liked and didn’t like before sending it to her as a “here’s what we like” for final tweaks. She’s a great speaker, a great writer (very accessible), good person (in my estimation) and Trish and I both have mondo respect for her. But in a perfect world shouldn’t that be the case for anyone in that role?

Anyway, Kate did a fantastic job and it meant a lot to us that she performed it. It’s also kind of cool that Jessie was her first naming ceremony. Porter came up from his pre-school class and sat quietly in the front row until Kate asked him to come up on the stage, which he did wonderfully. I picked him up and she asked him if he was going to take care of his sister (who was politely awake for the ceremony) and he answered with a quiet, “Yes.” Then he said it louder at my request.

Here’s a few pics of us. A shot of Jessie girl being goofy, exercising, and reading with Porter.

This hastily (but enjoyably) thrown to together Quickie defines it’s namesake in that it took me 15 minutes to rip the songs, record the talking, and assemble it all together.  All that in between instances of Jessie’s indecision about going to sleep.
 

Here’s a short list of some hastily compiled music stuff.

Primus is releasing a rad comp in a couple of weeks.  You could call it a greatest hits if they had ever had a huge hit, so perhaps ”best known” would be a better description.  It’s out on 10-17-06.

1. To Defy the Laws of Tradition
2. John the Fisherman
3. Too Many Puppies
4. Jerry Was a Racecar Driver
5. Those Damned Blue-Collared Tweekers
6. Tommy the Cat
7. My Name is Mud
8. Mr. Krinkle
9. DMV
10. Over the Electric Grapevine
11. Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver
12. Southbound Pachyderm
13. Over the Falls
14. Shake Hands with Beef
15. Coattails of a Deadman
16. Mary the Ice Cube

Ben Folds is taking pre-orders for supersunnyspeedgraphic at www.attackedbyplastic.com. 

It’s a comp of songs from a series of Internet/I-Tunes releases (and a couple of other odds and ends). They’ve been re-recorded or remixed in some way, and have all been remastered.  I thought they sounded just fine before.  If you didn’t fork out for the 4 EP’s or other randowm stuff this is a nice disc.  Here’s the track list: 

1. In Between Days (The Cure cover)
2. All U Can Eat
3. Songs Of Love
4. There’s Always Someone Cooler Than You
5. Learn To Live With What You Are
6. Bitches Ain’t S**t (Dr. Dre cover)
7. Adelaide
8. Rent A Cop (a really cool song)
9. Get Your Hands Off My Woman (The Darkness cover)
10. Bruised
11. Dog
12. Still

Here’s the Asylum Street Spankers switching Tie A Yellow Ribbon Around The Old Oak Tree into a protest against the war in Iraq.  Mucho funnio.  Got this from my friend Janine in my music club.

I haven’t had much time to sift through this site yet, but it’s a list of musicians who keep blogs or journals.  It’s an interesting list.  The only I’ve read so far has been The Dresden Dolls.

VH-1 has started playing a show called Classic Albums that is sort of like a drama free Behind The Music for a specific album.  The other night I saw one about Def Leppard’s ‘Hysteria’ and it was really interesting.  They talked about how the songs developed and had the master tapes loaded so that when they talked about a certain guitar riff or vocal bit they could bring it up.  Totally my thing.  What I liked is that they only spoke about the drummer losing his arm as it related to the band, and glossed over Steve Clark’s booze problem.  They kept it on the music which is the smart way to keep me watching.  Last night was Dark Side Of The Moon but I didn’t have a chance to watch it when it was on (at 10pm nightly from what I gather).

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I almost for got to link this article: Unspooled - In the Digital Age, The Quaint Cassette is Sent Reeling Into History’s Dustbin, by Hank Stuever.

It’s a sharp article about the demise of the mix tape.

There are a couple of Porter tidbits that I forgot to put in the last post. I like them here because they are specifically about his budding sense of humour.

Right after Jessie was born Porter and I got a lot of time to hang out. Trish’s work during the summer doesn’t have a lot of time committment so she would call me at work all the time regaling me with fun stuff that he would say or talk about. I was happy to get a couple of those moments.

We take Porter to a place called My Gym on Saturday mornings. It’s the same general concept as Gymboree if you’re familiar with it. He loves to go there and it’s been great for his socialization and physical development. He’s not that physical of a kid so when both of his feet are an inch off the ground at the same time we think he’s launched the space shuttle.

We were on the road going to a park or the store when we had the following exchange about it.

“I want go My Gym”
“Sure thing, who do you want to go with”
“Already 5 people dare”
“5 people? Who?”
“Mommy and Daddy and Gampa Tom and Gama Jan and Levi!”
“Are they having fun?”
The he chuckles, covers his mouth, and says: “Silly, Levi a dog. He can’t go to My Gym!”

A few days later we were at the Clayton & Baxter intersection out here in West County (pointing towards Chesterfield for you locals) talking about logos. Porter loves logos and can spot most makes of cars, grocery stores, most gas stations (which leads to the following conversation) and tons of random stuff. Here’s what he said during our wait at the red light.

“Hey Porter look over there. What gas station is that.”
“Philliff Sisty Sis”
“And Mobil is over there” (pointing at the other corner, blocked at that exact moment by a truck)
“Silly. Dats Philliff Sisty Sis” (the truck moved while the light was still red)
“Hey Porter what’s over on the other corner now?”
“Dat’s Mobil.”
“It sure is. Now who’s silly?”
“I am!” (as he chuckles heartily).

He’s starting to find things to make himself laugh and it’s a blast. Like all kids, he loves to laugh and we love our kids to laugh because that makes us smile. Probably will forever.

Jessie had her 2 month check up last week and to our surprise l’il baby girl is now 10lbs7oz and 22 1/4″ long. Or as I now like to say, “about 10 1/2 lbs, about 2 feet long.”

She’s smiling a bit more, and just this morning Trish was talking to her about Porter and huge smiles drew across her face. Also, she’s pooping under her own power (instead of suppositories) so were pretty stoked about the impending stank.

Here’s a few pics.

• One, no, two shots of the kids playing on the bed;
• Her pretty little face;
• She’s getting big.
• A shot of Jessie holding her head up.

I found this in the ‘drafts’ folder of one of my Yahoo accounts and thought I’d post it for posterity. I wrote this not long after I started working at Talx. This was really fun to come across.  It was never finished so it stops abruptly.
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So, it’s been a long time since I sent out an update and photos of our dear Sir Poopy Pants but I hope to rectify that now with a verbose description of all the cool stuff he’s doin and then hit you with some super cute pictures.

Since October he has done most of the little things that little kids do. He’s very smart and you can see his little mind whirring away when he sees something he wants to figure out. His expressions are fantastically telling and his fingers are quite agile. His walking is getting better, arms more down to his waist, more with his legs, less with his hips. He fairly good at eating with a spoon or (plastic) fork.

He’s started talking a lot. Not always cohesive words mind you, some of them are just ones we understand. For example, when he says, “ot poo” he’s really saying ‘octopus’, when he appreciates something he says, ‘dank ru’ for ‘thank you’ (though they are getting increasingly clear, one day he said it in the voice of a 13 year old and it freaked us the heck out), eh-peh for airplane (which he loves to try to find when they fly over), goon-high (for gesundhiet), peees (for please, which is getting a little more frequent). That’s just to name a few. Oh what the heck. He can also say ‘momma, dadda/daddy, nana, & bampa’ and identify the right person, ‘Bub’ is Uncle Chip and he says ‘Jaa’ when he sees pictures of Uncle Jake. While I’m on a roll, he says ‘Belba’ for Isabella, the 4 year old girl at our babysitters who is a super duper friend to him. Porter will point to your elbow and say it very clearly and he picked up ‘appuh’ (apple) pretty randomly because until then he didn’t eat apples.

He does say: bye, bye-bye, cup, bubbles, uh-oh, all done, all gone, jus (yes), elbo (elmo), elbow (elbow), buht (book), bubble, drush (brush – n; brush teeth -v), buh buh (belly button), dah (down), bye bye (bye bye), and aeyouh (hello). One time he could swear that he said, “loser.”

His first word though was ‘up’. But he wasn’t saying it so we would pick him up. What was kind of interesting about it, as my friend Haroon observed, is that Porter was notifying us that he is aware that something is above him (indicated by one finger pointing skyward). It’s like he understands that there is a world outside of himself. When you tell him something is behind him he turns around to look, when you tell him “your other side” he looks to that side. That concept of self and placement just flat out amazes me. I’m sure all kids are like that, it just fascinates the buhjeebies out of me.

He says ‘all done’ with perfect clarity and has found a variety of novel ways to use it. He’ll give you five, give kisses, shake hands (which is adorable because he can’t shake just one person’s hand it has to be everyone in the room), when he wants to read he says ‘book’ and crawls in the lap of whoever he wants to read it. He developed an ‘angry’ face that he used whenever he would get in trouble. Trouble right now is throwing food on the floor at dinner. He has since moved onto waving his finger at you while saying, “No no,” and smiling. Half the time he does it anyway.

Speaking of babysitters…we have a new person taking care of The Boy 3 1/2 days per week. Things didn’t work out with the family that has been watching him since he was 3 months old (recessive b*tch gene). Through our friends Scott & Carla we found The Bagleys. Joanne takes care of her granddaughter, Isabella and took Porter in. Her husband Alan and son Ian are involved too and he gets to see Isabella’s mommy and daddy (Rachel & Scott) sometimes. He loves going there, and it’s another great family environment for Porter to be in. Joanne takes marvelous care of him and Porter wants to give everyone kisses before he leaves. I could go on and on but they’re awesome. They are great folks and we got lucky.

Another great part about Porter staying with Joanne is that he gets to see Scott & Carla’s son Donovan. Donovan is 5 months or so older than Porter but they get along famously. I love it that all of my pals kids are within a couple or so years of each other and they’ll grow up seeing each other and playing together at least a little bit.  Donovan and Porter are on the right track being that Scott & I were mistaken for brothers from time to time when we were younger because all long haired white boys must be related. Recently Joanne took Donovan and Porter to Wal-Mart recently only to be complimented on her 2 handsome children.

Porter has started to play pretend with a few things. He has a fake liquid soap bottle that, with the appropriate sound effect, will make him put some “soap” in your hand while he “washes” his own. He likes my old cell phone and pretends to talk to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s and Uncle Jake with it. There is an Elmo that he likes to play with while it sings the ABC’s.

This sort of dual theme came to mind after coming across a particular soundfile.

One part details my skills with the Yamaha K-40 Dual Cassette Deck, a component of the revered stereo Mom & Dad got me for high school graduation. The other part is about the happiest A I can remember ever getting in school. Both are part of the story.

Fall of 1994 I took Intro To Mass Comm at Flo Valley. It was my first night class, and I loved it. The students at night were more mature. It expanded on a lot of stuff I knew about, covered a lot of bases, the teacher knew her bidness, and I liked it enough that I inadvertently became the class ham.

One of the projects toward the end of the class was for us to group off and create a product we could market to the class. There were 2 other guys there that I hung with and between the 3 of us we had our poo together. Clint was about my age (22 then) and our other compadre was Young Guy With Funny, But Apparently Fashionable Hair. I don’t remember his name for sure so we’ll call him John. The 3 of us got on well and had the same energy for the class. Naturally we joined forces.

The ad was to be for radio or print (though I seem to remember extra credit for a TV ad) and we had to set a price, target market, etc. The whole shebang. A good ol’ fashioned Q&A from the rest of the students was part of the deal as well..

Not having any good brain storms hanging out after class we decided to group at my University City apartment before the next class. John came over the next Tuesday so we could come up with a product to lay on Clint a couple days later. He had to work or something. We figured that once we thought of something really cool everything else would fall in place. Not necessarily true for our first attempt though.

The idea John and I came up with, Dr. Kevorkian’s Home Suicide Kit, was sketchy at best but that didn’t stop us from spending a whole night trying to make it work before we scrapped the concept. I seem to remember some complications in the marketing we couldn’t work around. We did have a script though, I’ve got it somewhere.

I don’t remember how we came up with the idea for our real product but it was a good one.

We called it the Voiceperfect Notetaker. It was a handheld device that would record lectures and then turn the sound into text on a computer. Seemed to us to be a lofty idea for 1994. I wrote a good chunk of the script at work one day and then we all tweaked it.

The next week the 3 of us met at The Pad to finalize the script and record our 60 second (to the nose) radio spot. We chose to do a radio spot because drawing sounded like a lot more work. Namely because we couldn’t draw.

We tweaked the script to run in about 55 seconds and set about to figure out what sort of background sound to intro and outro the body of the ad.

The motif we decided on was of 2 kids leaving one class and walking to another. We put ourselves in a mindset of sitting at the end of class and thinking about what sounds would be around us. After a moment of meditating we figured things like a school bell or buzzer, movement in a hallway, muffled talking, and maybe doors opening and closing were going to be the right path.

This is where my mojo mastery of the Yamaha K-40 dual cassette deck comes into play.

If I were to do a project like this now it would take about 10 minutes to get such things from Google (I’m surprised they don’t have a sound effects library yet) or extract the samples from a DVD or CD and loop them. Since this was 1994 I had to pull out a Jimmy Neutron style brain blast.

You’ve all seen Ghostbusters right? Of course you have. The lead in to them getting their first call is Jeanine, the receptionist, saying into the phone she just stumbled to, “Of course they’re serious…ok…they’ll be right there.” She hangs up the phone and screams, “We got one!” while hitting the firehouse bell. The music cues cuts moments later to the Ghostbusters entering the Biltmore Hotel.

I recorded that whole section, but only wanted the sound of that bell. I had to chop it from cassette deck to cassette deck until just the bell shrieked by itself. Editing that took a while but I could have done that in my sleep. One of the satisfying joys of a cassette deck was knowing your gear well enough to know how much lag there was starting and stopping a tape. Who’s with me on the satisfaction of hearing tape end on a new mix a mere second after a song fades out?

Then for the crowd noise. For these sounds we go to another time honored flick, Dead Poet Society. In the early part of the movie there are scenes of the boys in a couple of different class room settings. Short transitional scenes show them moving through the halls on their way to the next class. One sequence in the stairwell had the most convincing crowd noise.

I repeated the process with the hallway sounds. This was easy because I didn’t have to chop dialog or music at the beginning and end. I just took a middle section of the sound we wanted, probably 7-10 seconds worth, and looped it by rewinding that tape and recording more onto the other tape. I looped more than a minute’s worth because I would just fade it down manually. I would achieve this effect with an ancient device called a volume “knob”. A device now only found in your car.

Right after I hit play and the bell had blown us out of our seat, I used a Panasonic dictation tape recorder (an appendage during that time of my life) to record John and I reading the script. When you listen to this, I warn you that the bell is really abusively loud. Loud. If it were a real ad it would get your attention but not in a good way. Anyway, after the bell rang I faded up the hallway sounds. John and I read our parts and faded the sound before Clint read the closing argument in his cheesiest radio voice.

We did this many many many times to get it to the mandated 1:00 minute mark. We assumed that our little ad would be timed by W.O.P.R from War Games. Comparing John’s digital watch to the timer on my editing software we came out at 1:00:109. Score. Not to keep spanking a dead armadillo but if this were today I could have read the piece a couple of times, taken the best bits, expanded/compressed it so that it was 1:00:00 on the nose, and then burned it to a cd.

The day the assignment was due the three of us wore slacks and ties and briskly walked to our seats with unchoreographed precision. We proceeded to rule class with iron fists toting double barrelled kegs of woop ass. Our classmate’s grueling questions were deflected with velvet bazookas. “Will this still be viable in 5 years?” “Of course!” “Is it easy to use?” “Of course!” “When do you think this will be obsolete?” “Never. Clint, kick his ass.”

At the end of class we asked our teacher how we did and she laughed at us while saying we all got an A. Probably the happiest A I’ve ever received. To be completely forthcoming, probably the only I had honestly earned up to that point. Everything else was b.s.’ing skills or something I already knew about.

I used that cassette deck to tape volumes of live performances from any show showing anything cool. Late night talks shows were a favourite as were MTV & VH-1. Insert “when was the last time MTV played music” comment here. My friends and I all traded tapes when they were at college, copying bootlegs to cassette, a catalog of soundbites. You get the picture – tons of stuff. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably got at least a few tapes lovingly crafted with it. Alex and I also used it to edit and compile the demo for our radio show (another story though).

Sadly, the years have worn that cassette deck down. I don’t blame it. Ten years of constant use will do that. Tapes slow down and drag when I play them. It’s probably fixable. Maybe I’ll do that one day. I’ve tanked most of the mix tapes I created with it, given most of my bootleg cassettes away, and have been converting the ones I wanted to keep. All those tapes my friends made for me are all in a milk crate waiting to be converted but that will be a long way off. I kept a few regular mixes because there’s something about the faded, boomy, warm sound of a cassette that I love. You might even feel a bit of the same way.

I could go on about the majesty of cassettes and give my personal High Fidelity style rules for the perfect mix tape but I’ve pulled your ear enough.

Here is the Voice Perfect Note Taker. Just a reminder, the bell is please-mommy-make-it-stop loud, but only for a second.