SKYPE WORKS! (&C.)

In Lafayette all weekend… This is the weekend we do the city manager interviews, and it’s a lot like a musical gig with the band: about mid-afternoon, I decided I’d done as much as I could, and it was just going to be Showtime. Tonight was the “meet and greet” with the three candidates and the public, with coffee and cookies and punch, and the performance went well. Tomorrow we do the interviews.

Worth mentioning, because it was my first opportunity to put Skype to work (one of our candidates is in Alaska), using my video camera as a Webcam, with a separate microphone (City’s) and my speakers out of the recording studio in the garage. So we had a little semicircle of chairs around the computer, and people got to talk to the Alaska guy at the “meet and greet,” too, and I think virtually everybody did so. We’ll do his interview tomorrow the same way. About the only thing we couldn’t do (somebody had to point it out) was shake hands.

So all you folks I’ve corresponded with via e-mail in Sweden, England, France, Canada, and the Arabian Peninsula—we’re going to be able to talk. I can hook all this stuff up to both “Alice” at home, and “StuartLittle” here in Lafayette; I think the only thing I need to find is the adapter that allows me to use the singing mike on the computer. (Way better than those cheapo computer mikes—and the cheapo computer mikes aren’t cheap any more, either.) The world, in the words of one of my economics textbooks, just got flatter.

The video camera is quite nice; it’ll do a sharp picture from across the room, and it has a separate cord that’ll connect it to a soundboard—which (I think) makes it possible to do live music videos. I’ll have to try it. I don’t know if it’s possible to mate it up to the Tascam (I’d have to get an adapter), but it should mate up to the big soundboard at the Arts Center. Maybe the best time to test it would be at the next Arts Center open mike (first Saturday in December).

The only music this week was at the coffeehouse in McMinnville (they seem to be getting used to me now; I seem to see several people who hang out until after I play); those folks got “The Taboo Song,” “Leavin’ It to Beaver,” “Born Again Barbie” (for the religious song), and “Always Pet the Dogs” (for the serious one). I’m about out of religious songs; the only one I’ve got left is “The Abomination Two-Step,” though I’m not sure it’s coffeehouse material; next time, I could do “Oil in the Cornfield” for the serious song. The folks in McMinnville haven’t heard either one yet. (I have tried to play different songs every time. To date, they have not heard the same song twice, unless someone’s requested it.)

To do, still: the November Southern Oregon Songwriters Assn. newsletter; a setlist for the Failed Economy Christmas Show I would like the band to do in December; next week’s column for the paper; and a couple more jobs to apply for. (I got confirmation this week that I won’t get one assistant city manager job I applied for, because the city manager who was going to hire me got fired.) Trying to organize a Christmas event here in Lafayette; there reportedly hasn’t been one in the past, but now there’s hordes of little kids in town. Santa needs to come in a big way (and I’ve volunteered to “do” Santa—I’ve done it before). There’s a local food bank here, too, that not many people know about. I bet they could use a benefit concert, just like the one in Garibaldi does. ‘Tis the Season.

Joe