Okay, so Thursday night I drove across the bridge in the snow and wind to Hampshire College, where I'd never been before, to see an old friend and some people performing ???? - I can't think of what to call it, although there were CDs for sale, and it has a lot in common with music. I used to listen to this ???? a few years back, before Mr. S and before Little S, in Austin, TX. ANYWAY, the trip in the snow was worth it, because my old friend was there, and I haven't seen him in....9 years?...that's right, I think. He was the roomy of Dan, who published and publishes a respected magazine (ND) which deals with this ???? primarily. Fortunately, there were other people there at this performance, who I know, so my long-ago friend wasn't my only contact. So - it was very good to see him again and his fiancee. She was one of the performers in the Boston Sound Collective (BSC) - the only performance which I enjoyed.. During the other performances I was profoundly restless and bored, so much that I pulled out my notebook to amuse myself and made some notes about the sounds I was hearing like. "Angry bee is trapped inside a plastic bag while someone shop-vacs out a lime encrusted humidifier and an underwater radio short-circuits as a ham is sliced with an electric knife" and "A cannister of marbles buried beneath an inch of sod is run over by a lawnmower as heard through a large PVC pipe." etc. Truly, I know that these sounds are quite appreciable when listened to at home, preferably with the lights off, alone - but watching people twiddle knobs with their back to me can bore me to the brink of fury. BUT, the group that my friend's fiancee was part of was something else. They: faced the audience; sat in chairs; had instruments; did not twiddle knobs (too much). They also seemed to know where they were going in the piece they were performing , and how to get there, as a group, and how to lead the audience into their performance. It was a strange night for me. I don't know when was the last time I ventured out on my own like that was, and I saw my friend who I haven't seen in so long that I feel I must be unrecognizable to him. Huh.

Here at home we have been watching "The Ten Commandments" in all their Charlton Heston, Cecil B. DeMille, seething tableaus of humanity glory. Little S was led to this movie by way of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "The Mummy." We were led there by our constant, frustrating quest to find stuff at Blockbuster which is interesting, well-made, and suitable for Mr. S, Little S, and I too all watch together. I forgot that creepy Vincent Price is in there. And there's Yul Brenner's sexxxy Ramses....

So it shall be written.

So it shall be done.

Yes.