Single Stringed Songs for a Simpler Sound; "geen treinen naar Utrecht"

I'm such an alliteration addict. Enough? #EOF

After greeting the sun this morning with bass in hand, I accidentally slept through what was supposed to be lunch with a friend. Luckily he's a superstar and we settled on dinner in Utrecht (his 'hood) instead. With sleepies in my eyes, Pebbles hair (sans bone), and Nespresso pleasuring my tongue, I wandered into the living room to find my apartment empty, save Red Bass and me. (Empty place) + (light outside) = blast my kickin' old-school 80's amp. Score! Capture time!

Then I walked past the hall mirror, scared myself, and veered off into the shower.

The lighting in my living room is perfect at about 4pm. So, energized by the sunshine, I settled into (well, onto) my oddly small, slightly hard sofa and tuned up RB. Not that she needed it much after last night, but I find little foreplay's always nice. I began capturing, played a mini-set of partial songs for about six minutes, threw in a little air-headed banter (so I'd feel productive when I cut it later), and went to stop the capture. Unfortunately, like many of the characters in my life, Miss Macbook Airhead decided to stop paying attention to me about 30 seconds in. Six minutes is of course nothing when you've made a habit of a life of leisure, but really, I expect more from things Designed in California. I'm ashamed to admit that I verbally berated the macbook about its lack of attention span for a bit before deciding that it had been unduely influenced by its programmers not to record videos when there's no free disk space. Fine then. I'm out. Places to go, people to see.

Just before 530p, (I know because I was twittering, ok? shut it.) Andy and I headed to station Amsterdam Zuid to catch a train to Utrecht Centraal. After waiting for our "late" train for 5 minutes, a sun-worn, middle-aged man with dusty blonde hair and glasses in a navy blue GVB uniform started announcing something in Dutch over a megaphone. Every single grayish-black clad briefcase toter in the place looked up in interest. Crap. Geen treinen naar Utrecht. No trains to Utrecht. Apparently there was some technical issue at Utrecht Centraal, so they just stopped sending trains there. Sounds like a good plan to me. When I texted my (only) Dutch friend of the situation, he said there was probably a jumper in Utrecht. Of course, I believed him. (It is in the dictionary, btw!)

The first estimate for our delay was 20 minutes, so we decided to hit up the AKO news stand. I strutted straight for the automotive sport magazines-- don't need to speak much Dutch to understand what's going on there. Andy reached for a poker magazine only to discover that he was on the cover of it: a Dutch poker magazine, Poker Visie. The news stand also carried Uncle Howard's DVD. The cashier was impressed that Andy was in the store and asked him where his hat was. Fun stuff.

We ended up back on the platform waiting for the trains to resume and I began to twitter. Not the happy little twitters of an overenthusiastic she-nerd, but the incessant twittering of someone with absolutely nothing better to do. For 2-3 hours. Thank Apple for the iPhone!

Okay, so I'm exaggerating a teensy bit-- the entire Amsterdam->Utrecht journey only took 3 hours and we were only at the station for 1.5-2 of them. In the end, the trains never resumed from our particular location. Probably because it was after 6pm and we were at the station closest to the World Trade Center. Dutch people don't work overtime, so who'd be leaving from that particular station late at night? Clearly, no one with any sort of balance. I've noticed the Dutch seem to be obsessed with balance and tolerance-- or, at least they pretend to be.

Eventually, we took the metro to Amsterdam Amstelstation and caught a train to Utrecht from there. This story is losing steam. The point: Dinner was fabulous, thanks Rube!

If you're my facebook friend, you might want to check out some of my train station shenanigans: the newsstand and lady with backwards pantyhose. There's also a cool one of the wall in the restaurant.

On to the music. Unfortunately, I wasn't ready to re-shoot my set of single stringed songs until very late/early, and by then of course, I couldn't play or sing at full volume. Good times. I'm hoping for success once the trams resume. Tram, electric bass, same thing.

If you've made it this far, wow. So, the Set of Single Stringed Songs for a Simpler Sound, is the moderately obnoxious name I've given to a group of 3 songs that are plucked out using only one string on bass (w/ vocals). Chalk it up to lack of skill, whatever. Previews hitting facebook soon.

BTW, if you got the #EOF joke, you are such a complete nerd that I don't want to be your friend anymore. Unless you've mistaken it for a twitter joke, cuz then we cool.