Step 1: Decide you want a Mamie Taylor.

Step 2: Drop two cubes of crystallized ginger into a rocks glass, cover with a finger of Walker Black, drop 2 dashes of Angostura Bitters in.

Step 3: Have a cigarette while it soaks.  If you like your ginger to soak in more flavour, masturbate before or after the cigarette.

Step 4: Wash hands, if you like your ginger to soak in more flavour.

Step 4: Fill glass with ice, pour more Walker Black until glass is half full.

Step 5: Remember that you don’t have any ginger beer.  Think for a minute.

Step 6: Fill half of the rest of glass with ginger liqueur.

Step 7: Top off with Pimm’s No. 1

Step 8: Give the whole thing 2 brisk stirs with a cocktail spoon.

Step 9: Let sit 1-2 minutes.

Step 10: Drink.

Step 11: Come up with a name for me, since apparently I’m the first one to ever make this drink.

A lot of you make good food, and write up instructions on how to do the same, so here’s mine.

Maple Meatballs

1) Decide it’s too late and you’re too lazy to go out to your favourite restaurant and order the kangaroo tacos they have on special, even though it sounds like fucking heaven in a tortilla.

2) Decide you want to make meatballs.

3)Realise you don’t have pork or veal, just beef.

4)Curse.

5)Decide to go through with it, mix beef, bread crumbs, salt, pepper,  mustard seed, oregano, rosemary, basil, finely chopped onion.

6) Look in refrigerator for eggs.  Realise there are none.

7)Curse

8) Substitute a handfull of chia seeds, a healthy splash of scotch, and a good dose of maple syrup (real, obviously) for eggs.

9) Make a Manhattan, add a splash of Pimm’s #1 to it.

10)Halfway through step 9, remember that your big cast iron skillet is curing in bacon fat still.

11) Finish step 9

12)Roll 1″ balls with the mixture

13) Preheat oven to 375

14) Sear a few sides of the balls in the bacon fat.

15) Place entire skillet in oven.

16) Cook until done

17)  Drop into vodka sauce that you made half from scratch, half not.

18) Cook tortellini that you bought from Wegman’s

19) After thoroughly draining, toss with olive oil.

20) Coat liberally with poppyseeds.

21) Make another Manhattan

22) Serve with French bread, because Italian bread sucks in comparison.

23) Don’t take any pictures, because taking pictures of food is stupid.

And for you concert-porn lovers, here ya go:

I was born a couple weeks past my due date – and not alive at the time, so when it comes to doing some “Ten random things about me” dealio, you think I’m going to do it on time?

1. See above.

2. My chin hasn’t seen the light of day in almost 11 years. The beard(s) have gone through many iterations. I started with the jazz strip, then full face, then to the full goatee that has been my standard for the last 9 years or so, with the exception of the occasional full-face here and there. I’ve already sent Jenna some of my face porn, most of which were recent shots.

3. I’m behind in getting into things, and then I really get into it. See: cell phones, myspace, facebook, twitter, blogging (okay, so I haven’t REALLY gotten into blogging yet).

4. Children make me very uncomfortable, even the ones I really like.

5. I’ve taken part in some pretty awesome conspiracies.

6. I can cook like a motherfucker, but baking completely escapes me. I kinda envy those who can and do it well, but then realise I’m entirely too lazy to put that much effort into it anyway.

7. On that note, while I have a very overzealous work ethic when I’m working, I’m the laziest sack o’shit ever when it comes my personal life. It’s fucked me over pretty hard many times.

8. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was 7 years old. I would hop onto the schoolbus with a big ole travel mug full of (black) coffee. I gave up coffee for one month in college, and other than that I don’t think I’ve ever gone a full 24 hours without. No wonder my kidneys hurt so much.

9. I’ve been to AA. It’s a scary cult. Fucking whackjobs.

10. For number 10, I’d like YOU to leave a random fact about me in the comment section. If you exist. Please?

11. Add one about yourself too. I don’t even know who reads this thing.

I’m supposed to do one of those thingfishies for you to pretend to be interested in. I’ve got two weeks off coming up, so that sounds like a good time…right?

Today is just a racks n stacks gig for me (is there any better combination of two word and a contraction in this business?). Touring guys have a Lake for EQ, and it started acting funky during soundcheck. Among other things, the software interface is saying a channel is mute when it clearly is not. Monitor guy who was looking at said “why is that red light on?”.

Me: “you just have to tell Roxanne that she doesn’t have to turn it on.”

Their system tech: “huh?”

So at some point fairly early on, I changed the title of this to its current “Master of None.” Naturally, this is indicative of the fact that while I am at heart a soundguy, I’ve done pretty much everything else under the sun in this crazy business we work in. Believe it or not, I started out in college in the studios there. I had a knack for it, and it’s what got me into this whole “live concert” thing that I think I detailed a few posts ago. So, I started life as a soundguy. Then, I had to learn a little bit of lighting. It was sometime around then that I remember declaring “I already had to learn how to do lights, I’ll never fucking do video.” Remember that for later. At one point in the first company I worked at, we had a lighting guy, a video guy, who due to the fact that we didn’t do much in the way of video (until after he left, ironically enough), was our rigging/stage/roof guy, a FOH guy, and me, monitor guy. I’d occasionally mix FOH for smaller gigs, but on anything larger, I wanted to be at monitors, because then I controlled the stage and the changeovers.

Then our video/staging/roofing guy left, so I ended up taking kinda taking over the stage and roof role, too. In retrospect, I really probably should not have, but I did learn a lot of what to and not to do. I was still the company monitor guy though (in addition to being the shop manager), and these were my roles until I left there. After I left that company, I spent several months freelancing for a variety of places. I mixed in a couple of clubs. There was a theatre where I was a rigger/carp. I did some work as a simple stagehand with the IA. And then I started doing work with a smallish A/V company that held a few pretty large accounts. No, I never once did sound for them. In fact, for all but two gigs, I was a fucking VIDEO GUY. It was kinda fun actually, as most of the video I did was as a seamless plasma wall tech. I got to satiate my ever burning curiosity for new things, and got to travel a bunch around the country doing it as well. I also stepped up my lighting skills, getting into some design with LED’s and movers, culminating in designing/running an awards show for them. Pretty fun, still.

Then I came to where I work now. I’m still a soundguy (though I’m FOH these days – still not sure how that happened), still the truck PackMan. I’m not THE stage/roof guy, but we do all kinda jump in on that. I’m basically the all around number 2 guy (except trucks). I’m the company L2 (the one who was here when I arrived has left, and not been replaced), I’m A2, I’m rigging 2, I’m video well…3 I guess, if you include the part-time guy that does most of our video.

So what the fuck is the point of this? Well, I’m damned and saved by my own fucking curiosity and willingness to learn. I learn new things other than audio, and do it well, and that gets me sucked into doing those things (which are NOT what I got into this to do) more and more often. This makes me very marketable. Unfortunately, sometimes it keeps me from doing my first love – audio. What I DO have going for me is the advances in digital technology in sound – digital consoles, networked audio, networked control of amplifiers, processors, consoles, etc…I’m the guy that knows that shit, and I’m often the ONLY ONE.

And thank god for that…

Too many things that need surgery, and not enough time!

As I spend my last day off for a few weeks wrestling with how to pull off the impossible next weekend and watch and rewatch videos of people who do what I do dying yesterday in Indiana, and go to pick up my pizza from slack-jawed stoners, I can’t help but wonder if they aren’t smarter than me.

New picture at the top that I made several variations of and took pictures of just to do this while I was bored yesterday while Bush was playing.

(they were good, and the guy’s mix was fucking AWESOME by the way)