My halloween prank was a wonderful success. I stuffed the speaker and camera in the pumpkin at lunchtime on the 31st, adjusted all the sound levels so that the scream the pumpkin emitted would be sufficiently bloodcurdling, and rigged up the laptop just inside the window for observation purposes. We ended up not making the video visible to our visitors, as we didn’t feel like dragging the TV over to the window, but did enjoy watching the reactions captured as people triggered the scream ourselves. My favorite response was one teen in an alien mask who walked toward the door, turned toward the camera when the scream was triggered, and just left.

And to borrow a riff from Dave Barry, I think “The Screaming Electric Pumpkins” would make a great band name.

My friend Mark Morgan is participating in National Novel Writing Month, a bit of literary insanity in which as many people as possible are enlisted to crank out 175 page novels in the span of a single month. Though I was sorely tempted to jump in and participate, I’ve enough of a self-preservation instinct to realize that would be a pretty bad idea at this point of my life. However, I’m vicariously participating through Mark, whose official progress one can track here. He’s off to a promising start!

(Also see Mark’s web community Voices of Unreason for more literary fun.)

My neighbor and good friend Grant was rooting around at a nearby pawnshop yesterday. Being as inveterate an instrument collector as I am, his fate was instantly sealed when he found a sitar sitting therein, and he ended up going home with it.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when Abby informed me “Mr. Grant has a weird instrument to show you,” but as one whose favorite Beatles music was written by George Harrison, I was delighted at what Grant’s find turned out to be. Originally intending only to drop by for five minutes and see the thing, I ended up trailing home an hour later after we figured out how to tune it (thanks to the Internet) and played Within You Without You, Yes’ It Can Happen, some improvisation in an eastern idiom, and then moved further afield to Maria and some blues (which worked predictably poorly).

The design of the instrument seems remarkable haphazard, with two resonating chambers, 7 strings that are played directly and are propped up with an odd array of splints and bridges, 11 sympathetic strings that aren’t played directly at all, but only vibrate in response to one’s playing the other strings, adjustable frets, and a little plastic swan that functions as a fine tuner. But even with, or perhaps because of, all that the sound is amazing. The way the string lies on the bridge gives a really interesting buzz to the sound, but the notes last much longer than one expects from one’s experience with a guitar. It’s an absolutely baffling and fascinating instrument; I’m delighted to have one next door!

I’ve recently been working on a prank of sorts for Halloween. I’ve been building some software that will use a video camera hidden in a pumpkin to trigger a loud, scary scream when people walk up to the door. It will then capture 5 seconds of their reaction and display that video repeatedly so they can see how silly they looked. It should be a lot of fun.

It’ll also have an ambient audio track running to lend atmosphere. I’m going to throw something together on the synth, but the kids and I spent some time playing with a sound editor last night creating spooky sounds which will be randomly laid over the ambient track. I have one really evil sounding back masking snippet that, when you play it backwards, says “Go to church! Say your prayers! Tithe! Tithe!” The kids thought it frightfully amusing to hear their own voices pitch-shifted. My only concern now is putting in an override so I can spare the adorable 2 year olds being frightened.

One of the delightfully characteristic things about working at Origin has been the building. Our halls have long been festooned with wonderfully imaginative airbrushed artwork that reflected Origin’s mission and motto (“We build worlds”) in various ways.

Across the hall from my current office stretching around the corner of the hallway is a street scene with office buildings, cars, and traffic lights. From far above the scene descend two giant legs, presumably connected to some fearsome beast in the process of pillaging the city street. The lobby on fourth floor features a green and blue globe resembling earth, with a rectangular plate of surface area being fitted into it. Mechanical fish adorn other walls.

Or they did. I came in this morning to find that most of the artwork had a coat of primer over it, and painters were busy in the hallways. I chatted with the facilities manager, and he said the word had come down from on high Monday that he was to repaint everything as quickly as possible. It’s disappointing to me to be losing this unique bit of Origin’s history and character, doubly so that none of the people working on this floor were evidently included in the decision, and trebly so that I didn’t have a chance to get my camera up here before the painters did their dastardly work.

Harumph.

Last night I took Mom McMains to a concert that featured Ken Ishii, the cello teacher of my youth, and Daniel Smith, a guitarist with whom Ken has been recently collaborating. They performed the entirety of their CD, Catch Phrases, a collection of progressive Jazz pieces composed by Smith.

I’ve been enjoying the CD since March, so it was great fun to see them performing it live. Smith has a wonderfully deft technique on the guitar that’s a pleasure to watch, and Ken’s adventuring in the outer limits of cello technique was delightful. We stayed around for a while chatting with the musicians and their families afterward, thoroughly enjoying their company. Thanks for the fine music, gentlemen!

From 1988 to 1992, I attended The King’s College, a small, private college in Briarcliff Manor, New York. Though the school was afflicted with dire financial circumstances, it afforded me a good college experience, and I haven’t ever regretted the decision to attend. Among the chief charms of my college experience was the site of the campus; perched on the rim of the Hudson River Valley, the beautiful site afforded students a combination of beauty and access to culture that’s matched in few places. In 1994, two years after I left, the school’s financial difficulties caught up with it, and it closed. It has subsequently been purchased by Campus Crusade for Christ, and reopened as a non-residential school in the Empire State Building in New York City.

The fate of the old campus has been in question for many years, and this morning by friend Bob Albright sent me a link to this website, which details more of the history of the site than I ever knew as well as the current state of the campus. Curiosity quickly turned to sadness as I saw the state to which the once-beautiful property had been reduced. A magnificent fireplace in front of which I spent many hours has been ripped out. The grand staircase is sorely damaged. The gym floor is warped from water damage. Most unsettling of all was the fact that the music building, where I spent much of my life for those four years, has now been demolished altogether. (In this photo you can see the 2nd story windows I’d climb out of and wait outside for my music theory class to start, when I’d startle Bill Clemmons, my professor, by entering that way instead of through the door.) Amazing and sad to think how quickly such a place can be reduced to ruins.

Thanks to Rob Yasinsac for his documentary efforts, and for the rather lamentable trip down memory lane.

Isadora is my new favorite piece of software. It’s a realtime electronic performance processor that is developed by the co-head of a dance company in California. It’s also loads and loads of fun if your comfortable with computers and dig creating wacky stuff. (Bonus points if you have a video camera and MIDI gear.)

I’m planning on doing something interesting with it for halloween. Heh heh heh.

Lots going on in our recently unchronicled world: Margaret celebrated her second birthday yesterday. (Just think — she’s 1,892,842 in mayfly years.) I played another gig with The Grant Mazak band this past weekend, which was well-attended and hopefully as much fun for the audience as it was for me. Kathy and I attended the Women’s Pregnancy Center banquet last night, which featured good fajitas, keynote by Mike Wilson (author of “Turkey Soup for the Sarcastic Soul,” a title that does my sarcastic soul good), and music by Clifton Jansky, the Christian Country Music Association’s New Artist of the Year for 2001. (Doesn’t that seem a bit like damning with faint praise, by the way? “And in the best artist who has released more than 2 albums, but less than 7, who stands between 5′ 8″ and 5′ 10″, and who has red hair and has never worn a button down shirt category…”)

Anyway, to sum up, we’re still here, busy, hale, and happy. Thanks for asking.

Those good McIllhennys have added another item to the Tabasco lineup: Chipotle Pepper Sauce. Kathy picked up a bottle, and predictably, it’s great. (For those of you not up on pepper lore, chipotle peppers are simply red jalepeños that have been smoked, giving them a wonderful flavor.)