The true story of R.E.M. once opening for the band that now plays in bars

This is a story of synchronicity and finding the truth about an apocryphal story.

This starts with the Insect Surfers "Planet Earth's Longest Running Modern Surf Band!", first formed in 1979 in the Washington DC area (actually, Chevy Chase, Maryland), which is before anything I mention in this post occurred.

From 1981 to 1985 I went to Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where I would listen to CMU's radio station, WRCT, broadcasting at that time a tiny 10 watts (or as some of the DJs would say, "10,000 milliwatts!")

My initial familiarity with the Insect Surfers was almost surely hearing their song "I'm in Gear" from their 1980 "Wavelength" EP on WRCT. You can listen to it on the below video while you get dizzy watching the vinyl EP spin on the turntable and the slight undulation of the the tone arm as it plays the slightly warped record, and when the side of the record ends you can hear the slight scratch as the needle moves to the area of the record that I now know is called "dead wax".

"I'm in Gear" is their only song I can remember by name and and the only lyric I recalled. When I played the video of the song, listening to it for probably the first time in 30-plus years, it jogs a bit of my memory; the tune is slightly familiar and I definitely remember the slightly out-of-tune organ. As one YouTube comment says, "A bit of surf - a bit of new wave - a bit of power pop."

In 1984, my final year of college at CMU, I shared an apartment in Pittsburgh with two roommates, one of them from Chevy Chase and he knew some of the band members from high school.

In 1985, after graduating college, I returned home to the Los Angeles area. That year the Insect Surfers relocated to Los Angeles.

A few years later in Los Angeles, my younger brother dated a woman from Chevy Chase. She knew the members of the Insect Surfers and my roommate in Pittsburgh. This is one of those "what are the odds?" things - My brother met his girlfriend without knowing anything about the Insect Surfers and my roommate. I may have been the common connection between my brother, his girlfriend, my roommate, and the Insect Surfers, but I had nothing to do with making the connection, I was just in the middle of it.

I finally saw the Insect Surfers perform, probably in 1988 or 1989, at a somewhat divey bar in either Manhattan Beach or Hermosa Beach. My memories don't include the name of the of the bar, but they do include that it was decorated with fishing nets and starfish and had light pine wall paneling. I don't remember their performance at all, but I did buy one of their T-shirts.

I saw them one other time when my brother hired them to play at a party in an apartment courtyard in Santa Monica. The neighbors weren't pleased, and the Santa Monica Police came and shut them down in about half an hour.

Something I heard about the Insect Surfers was that back in the early 1980s, when they had a college radio hit, there was a show they played which had R.E.M. open for them. I may have heard the story from my brother or my roommate, I don't remember. But I occasionally repeated it as an ironic tale to tell about the fates of the two bands - the band that still played in dive bars after twenty years of existence once was bigger than R.E.M. who had no problems filling stadiums when they performed. I don't want this to come across as some sort of sad fate for the Insect Surfers; given that they still chose to continue to perform after decades means they were doing something that they loved - how many bands manage to continue to perform for so long?

In the years after I saw the Insect Surfers perform, I moved to Seattle, and my Insect Surfers T-Shirt disintegrated. On September 22, 2011, while listening to KEXP while driving to work, it was announced that the Insect Surfers were going to be performing live on the radio that day. I was surprised that they still existed as a band. But there was something else big in the music world that was reported that same day - R.E.M. announced they were breaking up.

While at work at my desk, I listened to the Insect Surfers perform on KEXP. It was the perfect moment to find out whether the story about R.E.M. opening for the Insect Surfers was true. I emailed KEXP as they were performed:

Sent: Thursday, September 22, 2011 2:09 PM
To: KEXP DJ
Subject: The time R.E.M. opened _for_ the Insect Surfers

Perhaps this is a bit cruel to ask, but you have to ask the Insect Surfers about the time that R.E.M. opened for them in the 80s.

And the response from KEXP:

From: KEXP DJ
Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2011 14:19:36 -0700
Subject: RE: The time R.E.M opened _for_ the Insect Surfers

That's not cruel, that's genius. Thank you!

During a break between sets, my question was asked, and yes, R.E.M. opened for them once.

But it wasn't the R.E.M. that everyone knows; it was a different band that was also named R.E.M.

And there you have it, my apocryphal tale was sort-of true, and it now has amusing coda to add to it. 

(Alas, the performance is no longer archived on KEXP's website. When KEXP did a website upgrade a few years back, they never restored it. I started a draft of this post about five years ago in the hope that they would eventually restore the recording so I could put it in this post. I've given up waiting, so here's the post without the recorded evidence.)

Instant Oatmeal Pancakes

Becomes:

This is a recipe I came up with at work, where we had a kitchen with stoves, but a limited supply of ingredients. I wanted pancakes, and although eggs and instant oatmeal were available, no staple ingredients such as flour or bulk sugar were available.

And these days with everyone stuck at home and markets being sold out of flour, you might find this recipe useful.

Note that one of the instant oatmeal packets is cooked in the microwave in advance. In fact, whenever you prepare instant oatmeal, you should use the microwave. For my entire life, I used to just add hot water to the instant oatmeal, making a pasty glop that was edible, but not that great. When you prepare instant oatmeal in the microwave, it puffs up, and is much lighter, and not too different from non-instant oatmeal.

• 2 packets regular instant oatmeal
• 2 packets sugar (or 2 tsp sugar)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 pat butter (or 1/2 Tbsp butter)
• Dash of salt

1. Add 1 packet of instant oatmeal to a bowl.
2. Measure 1/2 cup water by filling one empty oatmeal packet with water to the marked 2/3 cup line printed on the packet (yes, what the packet says is 2/3 cup is only 1/2 cup. 2/3 cup will make the batter too thin).
3. Cook for 1 minute in microwave (if the oatmeal hasn't puffed up after a minute, give it another 30 seconds).
4. The oatmeal needs to cool before adding the egg. For faster cooling, transfer the oatmeal to another bowl, spread it as thin as possible, and let it cool for about five minutes.
5. Add the other package of oatmeal, the egg, sugar and salt to the cooled oatmeal and mix thoroughly.
6. Put pan on stove on medium-high, and melt butter in pan.
7. Drip the butter into the batter while stirring, then mix thoroughly.
8. Use a spatula to spread the remaining butter over the surface of the pan.
9. Pan is ready when droplets of water skitter around a bit before evaporating.
10. Pour the batter into pan to make 4" pancakes (I usually make three in in two batches, the first with two pancakes, the second with one).
11. Peek under the pancakes to check if they’re nicely browned and ready to flip.
12. The pancakes are a bit fragile, so carefully slide the spatula under a pancake before flipping to cook the other side.
13. Eat! (they’re good plain, or with syrup, jam, Nutella or anything else you’d like)

 Options:

• Use Maple and Brown Sugar oatmeal (but don’t add any sugar if you do).
• Dice up a slice of cheese and a couple strips of bacon and some onion. With two pats (or 1 Tbsp) of butter cook the onion and bacon together until the onion starts browning. Add onion, cheese and bacon to batter. (Note: at work we had pre-cooked bacon, so it didn't give off much grease when cooked, thus the reason for the butter. If you're using raw bacon, you can probably forgo the butter).

I am an Arbiter of Lepidopteran Life and Death

The nights of a Seattle summer are cool, with the temperature almost always dropping down into the 60s. The cooler nights happen regardless of the high daily temperature; even as the high temperature day approaches or exceeds 90 degrees, it will drop 20 to 25 degrees during the night.

It is rare for homes in Seattle to have air conditioners. Historically, there just haven’t been enough days during the summer to warrant homeowners investing them (although it does seem to me that the recent summers have more and more days exceeding 85 degrees). Without air conditioning in our house, the summer ritual is after the sun sets to open the windows to let the cool night air into the house (augmented by, in some rooms, a window fan blowing air into the house from the outside).

Our house did not come with screens on the window, and until this year we had none. Which, of course, means that moths with their attraction to light would easily make their way into our house. Moths' attraction to artificial light (which the reasons why is still not clear), luring them into our homes, is not a good survival trait. A house is a death trap for a moth. Once a moth enters a house through an open window, it is unable to navigate the reverse journey, and the interior of house is is no place for a moth survive. There is no flower nectar for it to feed on (for those moths that feed; some species only eat as caterpillars and when after metamorphosis they are mouthless, only existing to find a mate to leave eggs for their next generation). A moth in a house is lost and confused, an unpleasant state to be in as its short life ends.

(An interlude of a memory returning as I write this: My junior year of college, I lived in a single dormitory room, with a multi-tube fluorescent light mounted to the ceiling right above my bed, and a large window with no screen. One night soon after I moved in, I went out, leaving the light on and window open. When I returned their were scores of moths hanging upside down on the light’s frosted white cover, stuck at the point they could no get no closer to the light. I had no choice but to sleep with the moths above me with the window open, with the hope that they would be lured out my room by the light of street lamps. That was the last time I left the room at night with the lights on and the window open.)

One morning I awoke and when I went to use the toilet, I noticed a moth with about an inch an half wingspan inside the toilet bowl, perched just above the water line. I could have just flushed the toilet and let it spiral down to its death in the sewer.

And although I have no hesitation about killing the small Indian meal moths (and their maggoty larvae) that occasionally invade our pantry, the moth in the toilet was not a pest and was just trying to find a dim place to rest during the day.

I lowered a piece of tissue down to it and with a slight touch of my finger coaxed it on to the tissue. I carried the moth and tissue to a nearby open window, gently shook the tissue, letting the moth fly off to the outdoors. I was now a moth savior.

A few days later, in the middle of the night, I heard our cat, Jay, in the bedroom, squeaking and pawing at something by the window. I returned to sleep, but in the morning on the floor was a crippled moth with tattered wings walking around in circles. Our cat is known for catching things, not killing them (do not ask me about the rats). The moth clearly wasn't going to survive long, and to put it quickly out if its misery (if that's even a state a moth can be in), I slid an open magazine under it, closed the magazine, then stomped on it, feeling its thick stubby body get crushed to goo between the pages.

One day a savior of moths. A few days later a killer of moths.

On Knowing Your Childhood Home Has Burned Down

During the December 2017 Skirball Fire in Los Angeles on a news website I saw the below photo. It brought what I can best call a distant and mild sense of dread and nostalgia:

The highway is the 405/San Diego Freeway going down the Sepulveda pass between the San Fernando Valley and West L.A. The buildings belong to Leo Baeck Temple.

Here's a picture of the same scene from Google Earth from 2016 (somewhat skewed and distorted due to how aerial images are converted to an oblique view). Note the homes right above where the flames covered the hillside last December:

When I saw the photo of the fire, I had no doubt the homes above were burnt down.

One of those homes my parents built in 1966, and my family lived there until 1973 when I was ten years old (and Bel Air must have been a lot more affordable then, as my parents managed to build a 4 bedroom house on my father’s salary as a junior high school vice principal). The house is on Casiano Road, on the east side of the Sepulveda Pass. A familiar landmark (which wasn't there when I lived there) is the Getty Center, across the pass, on its west side (Google Maps view from above).

Snowboard Time Machine to the year 1999!

With the 2018 Winter Olympics ongoing, it reminded me of this Craigslist ad I put up in 2011 after finding an old snowboard left in the attic by the previous owners of a house we had just moved out of:

The previous owners of the house had left way too much stuff in the attic after they moved out in 2000. It wasn't until we were cleaning out attic for putting the house for sale in 2011 that we found the snowboard. I originally thought it was a monoski as I had not seen a snowboard shaped like that before. I googled snowboarding lingo to put in the ad, and sold it that week to a vintage snowboard collector who lived at Snoqualamie Pass (little did I know when I found it that 12 years old made it a vintage snowboard). After I sold it, I also got an enquiry from France about it. These days, I'm seeing these listed for over $500 on eBay.

Beware the Future Making Your Unpublished Stories Anachronistic

On Monday, the very day my story "Love, Anger, and Pity; or Fuck Everyone in the Entire History of Humanity" was published, the U.S. Supreme Court made a ruling that made a plot point in the story an anachronism ("Supreme Court rules: Offensive trademarks must be allowed").

(Well, not perfectly. The ruling [pdf] invalidated the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure §1203.03(b)(i), and my story refers to §1203.01. But close enough.)

This is not the first time that U.S. Supreme Court affected that story, although the first time didn't cause an anachronism. My first version of this story was written in 2012. Originally Eddie called Tom his partner, and in 2015 after the Supreme Court ruled gay marriage to be legal, I changed the story to have Eddie call Tom his husband.

(And gay marriage has changed what used to be non-ambiguous phrases into ambiguous phrases. Ten years ago, "Before Tom and Peter got married..." would be interpreted as two separate weddings where Tom and Peter married their wives. Now you need to make it non-ambiguous by writing something like, "Before Tom and Peter married each other..." or "Before Tom and Peter married their wives...")

There are a number of unpublished or unfinished stories sitting on my computer's drive. I can think of two of them that now have anachronisms since I first started them:

1) Some characters get to the International Space Station on the Space Shuttle. And since the last Shuttle flight was in 2011, when I get around to finishing that story, I'll have to choose another means of getting them to the ISS. With luck, I'll be able to get it published before 2024 when the ISS is scheduled to be retired.

2) A woman is checking her calendar to determine the best date to break up with her boyfriend. Original story: the calendar is a Day-Timer, a small notebook. Updated story: She uses the calendar app on her phone.

Of course, the you can avoid the future causing anachronisms in your stories if they take place at a certain time in the past. But then, you have to worry about inadvertently putting anachronisms in stories from the start. (I imagine in a hundred years there will be stories written where 1970s punk rockers use email).

You can take this post as a plea to writers (and myself!) to finish their stories and get them published. Don't let your unfinished stories remain unfinished, and your finished stories unpublished.
(#SFWApro)

This year's sacrifice to Cthulhu is sponsored by…

In my story “Who Weeps for Cthulhu?”, the old gods have returned, but perhaps there is a greater horror. Featuring Trader Joe’s tequila and turkey kielbasa, plus mariachi music. Published on Literally Stories. (#SFWApro)

Spinach Tomato Chorizo Soup - Quick, Easy and Hearty

Winter is over, but there have been plenty of cold days that can bring on a craving for thick and hearty soups. This soup (or is it chili?) is delicious and can be made in under 30 minutes. You can make it with only the four main ingredients (spinach, tomatoes, onion and chorizo) or embellish it with corn, beans and/or peppers.

Dessert Improvisation #1: Crumbled Gingersnaps in Applesauce

That is all.

NTSB report of In-Flight Breakup During Test Flight in Magnuson Park, Seattle, WA

NTSB Identification: WH34ATEV3R

14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation

Accident occurred Sunday, September 27, 2015 in Magnuson Park, Seattle, WA

Aircraft: Unknown make constructed of expanded polystyrene

 Injuries: None.

Executive Summary

On September 27, 2015 at 1501 PDT, an experimentally modified aircraft suffered catastrophic structural failure, losing its left wing and the underside of its tail, impacting terrain at Magnuson Park, Seattle. The aircraft, composed of expanded polystyrene ("Styrofoam") was purchased at the Dollar Tree, located at 7816 Aurora Ave N, Seattle, WA 98103 on August 20, 2015 for $1.10 including tax. The aircraft manufacturer and model are unknown as the original packaging was immediately disposed of and the Dollar Tree no longer had any similar aircraft in stock. It is considered highly probable that the country of origin of the aircraft was China, due the large number of other novelty items sold at the Dollar Tree that have a Chinese origin.

1. The aircraft after breakup on September 27, 2015. Note the cricket game in progress in the background. The author of this report first witnessed a game of cricket in 1995 while on vacation in England with his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend Amy. While watching the cricket game, the author was somewhat confused as he could not quite figure out its rules.

An Utter Abomination of a Cake I Will Never Bake Again

I present Caramelized Onion and Mango Upside-Down Cake: 

Sometimes when you improvise when you cook it comes out well (e.g. this previous post). Sometimes, unfortunately, you end up with something you regret making.

It was supposed to be a rhubarb upside-down cake, but mutated into the unpleasant-looking caramelized onion and mango upside-down cake you see here.

A Quick and Lazy Write-Up of a Quick and Lazy Recipe: Chinese BBQ Pork in Orange Quinoa With Peas

A while back, after purchasing packaged Chinese BBQ pork at CostCo, the idea for this recipe came to me. It's easy and takes about 20 minutes. The last time I made it, I thought about adding toasted sliced almonds for flavor and texture, but the market where I was shopping didn't have any in the bulk section, but they did have spicy pepitas. The pepitas added an extra spicy seasoning and texture, but I would are completely optional.

1 cup quinoa, washed

1 cup chicken stock (low sodium)

1 cup orange juice

¼ tsp salt

1 medium onion, sliced

1 Tbsp oil

¾ to a 1 pound of Chinese BBQ pork (char siu), sliced into ¼" wide sticks

1 cup frozen peas
spicy pepitas (optional)

1. Heat the oil in a pot on medium-high, then add the onion. Cook until onion browns (5 to 6 minutes).
2. Add the quinoa. Stir while toasting it for 1 minute.
3. Add orange juice, chicken stock and salt, turn heat to high until boiling, then turn down to low and cover pot. Set timer to 6 minutes.
4. After timer goes off, uncover, add the frozen peas and turn up heat to high. When boiling again, cover pot and turn down heat to low. Set timer to 6 minutes.
5. After timer goes off, check to see if the quinoa is done with the liquid absorbed. If not cook it covered until liquid is absorbed.
6. Stir in sticks of BBQ pork and leave on heat for 1 minute.
7. Serve in bowls and sprinkle spiced pepitas on top (or maybe stir them in before serving).

Four Serious Events Where Laughter Was Inappropriate, and the Feedback Loop of Inappropriate Laughter

1) In 1993 I attended a five day camp of the Puget Sound Guitar Workshop. It's sort of like summer camp for adults, with music classes. I took a not-quite for beginners guitar class, a singing class (I learned a lot, but you still don't want to hear me sing), and a beginner's harmonica class. I also somehow managed during cabin signup on arrival to choose the cabin assigned to snorers (despite not being a snorer myself).

The last evening of the camp, there was a showcase for the students who wanted to perform for the other campers. One them a bearded man, probably in his late 30s, performed on guitar a composition of his. The piece was decent, and the guitarist quite clearly had a lot of talent. His seemed not quite at ease playing in front of an audience, but his skill shown through, he played from the heart with serious intensity and you could tell the time he spent practicing the piece. It was a good performance. But the audience was laughing through almost all of it. Not because of the guitarist, but because the camp dog, a yellow labrador retriever, which had already been hanging out on stage during other performances, while to the side and behind the guitarist (and not visible to him) chose to spend the entirety of the performance licking his balls.

From Rembrandt's Joseph Telling His Dreams 1638 (This is the classiest picture I could find of a dog lickings its balls.)

When You Can't Unjam Your Jammed Brother HL-3170CDW Printer

(Another "how to fix" something because I couldn't find the solution on the web.)

What are you supposed to do when your printer says "Jam Tray 1" and there's no paper jam to be found?

We have this Brother HL-3170CDW printer:

(It's a great printer: fast, prints duplex and reasonably priced. Although, a bit big and heavy.)

And it stopped working due to a paper jam error and despite not finding any paper jammed in it, it still claimed it had paper jam. The manual was unhelpful in solving the problem. Web searches didn't provide a solution. I emailed Brother support, and they gave me the solution.

How to Fix the Lever that Came Off of Your Kwikset Entry Lock (It Is NOT a Missing Set Screw)

If you have a Kwikset entry lock with a lever, and the exterior lever comes off, and you think the cause is a missing a set screw, it almost certainly is not a missing set screw - the set screw is in fact still there, but screwed in enough into the interior of the post that it looks like it's missing (and no longer able to secure the lever). Jump here for the fix and to skip over any blathering I do in advance of giving the fix.

(This is another in a series of posts to help people fix the same thing I had to fix, where I couldn't find the instructions or found incomplete instructions on the web. Last week I had two things I needed to fix where the fix was given by emailing or talking to the manufacturers' customer support, but not provided on their web sites.)

My Katrina Story - How I Helped Getting the Power Back On in New Orleans

With the ten-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans upon us, I have a story to tell.

In 2005, I was working at ESCA, a company that wrote software to mange electrical grids. In a power company's control center, displayed on huge screens, the electrical grid and its state was represented graphically. Something like this:

550,000: An Absolutely True Story with Four Disappointments for the Reader Along the Way

This story starts with 550,000, the high score on the pinball machine I inherited from my father.

Beyond the memories we have of those who have passed away, we also have physical tokens of their existence. Photographs of those no longer alive are no doubt the most common (although if a photograph only exists in digital media and never printed, you could say it's not a true physical item). But we also have their handiwork, such as the ceramic matzoh plate my father made in the early 90s that looks like a sheet of matzoh: 

To me, some of the most emotionally resonant tokens are things that had been handwritten by the deceased, mainly due to the uniqueness of handwriting that has the immediacy of "This was written by the person who no longer with us, in their own hand, holding a pen or pencil." One example that I have is a label on a large thermos, identifiable as being from the 70s with the orange floral pattern decorating it. It has a large white push button on the top to dispense its contents. It is the type of thermos you find on folding tables at something like a PTA event, used to provide coffee. In fact, on the label is "Decaf Coffee" is written in my mother's handwriting, a precise narrow slanted mix of cursive and block letters that far excels the quality of my handwriting. And I'm going to disappoint you in not showing a picture of the label with my mother's handwriting as I can't find the thermos, somehow misplaced in the move we made four years ago. (Disappointment #1)

Build Your Own Pizza (How to Entertain Children #2)

So, you have to not only find a project for six boys 5 to 9 years old, but you also have to provide them with a snack. How about combining the project and the snack? - build your own pizzas.

This is the idea I came up the final time I hosted a meeting for the fathers and sons YMCA Adventure Guides (formerly known as the Indian Guides). It's a father-son program where once a month there would be a meeting at a member's house. For every meeting, some creative group activity would be done. One year when I hosted, the project was making rubberband-powered spool cars. For 2013 it was pizza.

• Get Trader Joe's ready-made pizza dough. Each packet of dough can make three small pizzas
• Get a selection of pizza toppings. From Trader Joe's (mostly) I also bought shredded cheese, red sauce, white sauce, pesto, pepperoni, pancetta, mushrooms, chicken, spinach and red pepper. Place the toppings on the table where the pizza making will occur.
  
• Split each bag of pizza dough into three approximately equal pieces.
• With a rolling pin, roll each piece of dough into rectangle about 4" by 8".
• Place each piece of dough on its own sheet of parchment paper.

  

  Note regular and whole wheat pizza dough. The kids were not interested in the whole wheat.

  
  
• Pre-heat the oven.
• Give each child their own rectangle of dough and let them top it however they like.
• Put the pizzas on cookie sheets (a cookie sheet can take three of the pizzas).
• Bake as directed on the pizza dough bags.

Finally, for no particular reason, a squirrel eating an apple just outside our dining room as I was putting out everything for the pizza making:

Why It Took Me a Minimum of 74 Steps to Build a Simple TV Stand

I recently built this TV stand for a spare TV:

Well, that's not quite the final product. The fact is, that there was a major design flaw, which I will explain below.

At a high-level, the process of building it could be broken down into these four steps:
The high-level list of the process was this:

1. Decide to build a TV stand out of wood.
2. Cut the pieces of wood.
3. Screw the pieces of wood together.
4. Attach the stand to the TV.

The fact of the matter, was that in reality, there were many more than four steps in building the stand. In fact, when I wrote them down there were 74 steps.

The point of this post, is that in designing and building something to its final form, there are often an huge number of steps to get to the end that you never considered when you started the project. There's a process you go through of thinking, designing, building, fixing mistakes in the design, fixing mistakes in the building. Most of the time, things don't go as expected and/or you haven't thought through everything that was needed to be successful.

This can apply to many things designed and built including: a software application, a work of fiction, or in this case a simple TV stand made of a few pieces of wood.