Airships Are Back! Says New Administration!

Time for a bit of the old recapitulation/regurgitation of the past four months, during which I've been busy on every other website of mine except this one.
I'll give a brief rundown of some highlights of mein exciting kampf.

Here's a bottle. Is it empty or just "FULL of air" ? It was once full of delicious DOBBS chocolate-flavored soft drink (around 1965 or so) and it came to me as a Christmas present in December. "It's The Dobbs!" Actually one of my favorite gifts this season; along with the stuff that Renee and Michael sent along.
Also in December I was working on a new fantastic sculpture project- another 'animal head on a plaque' thingy- when I found that my SCULPEY compound, less than a year old, was totally dried-up and turned to powder when one tried to 'soften' it. Since I've replaced the damned material, I haven't been enthused enough to get busy on the sculpture again. I DO have a terrific plan-drawing set for it, so when I sit down and get busy it's going to be super nice.
BELOW: a panorama shot taken fairly recently. I'll be doing matching shots in Spring so that I'll have a comparison panorama. Even reduced in size a bit for upload--it's still about 36 inches wide or so- Click on it and check the detail.
In September 2008, I recorded the first complete project in the new studio, in other words- the two lps and one ep that 'came out' earlier in 2008 used bits and pieces from past sessions in my old studio in San Francisco, and the new lp: Music From the Center of Nowhere is totally crafted in the new studio, using newer software than that used on my older NBC shit, and accordingly it has a very different sound.
This album has a few pieces that point towards the NEXT big project, which'll use more of my accoustic instruments, and feature more singing. The new lp promises to take a lot longer than my usual (I'm aiming for a May'09 finish date) and will be bloody hard to rehearse and sing and play.{The new cd "Leave My Biscuit Be" was actually completed in March 2009}
In OCTOBER '08 I got a wild idea for some reason to record an entire Christmas lp. I think I'd been listening to my TinoCorp Christmas Breaks lp and I wanted to try and compete with those blokes. This led to a couple of weeks of downloading and then processing and organizing a huge pile of new samples for the holiday theme- I decided not to use ANY of my existing huge stash of Xmas and holiday audio files--I wanted fresh new stuff that my 'listeners' (or me) hadn't heard.
I composed a pile of backing tracks, fairly quickly, and then found that I had SO many vocal samples for the lp that I actually had to sit down and make a list of them and try and figure out how many samples would be allowed, roughly, per song; so that I didn't use up all of the 'best' ones on too few songs, and they'd be spread evenly through the record.
It was crazy! I took a picture of the great big oversized sheet of paper that had the 'plot' of the lp on it, since it was so ridiculous and detailed, and that shot is featured in the cd packaging, although it's too small to see what the hell it is.
Some of the tracks came out very well, I thought. It was done VERY quickly, and so there are probably a lot of bits that I would (maybe WILL) change.
ABOVE: a logo made for a Facebook Fan Club page that I may not bother to build. A fan club for rubber stamps. Yay for rubber stamps. I'm very glad to be using mine much more often these days. Since I send out tons of mail-art (you know who you are, folks!) and am always decorating every empty face of every package and envelope. I actually broke down back in November and bought some new ink pads- which I try to do as infrequently as possible, since they're expensive.
I HAVE built several fan pages on Facebook that ARE cool, for those of you who would be able to see 'em.
Facebook...lord, another networking site. I finally broke down and started to use FB, building page after bloody page of art and music there- just on the off chance someone'll see or hear it and like it. It's interesting to be back in touch with so many folks from 20 or more years ago.
November saw me making a couple of compilation pieces (one musical, one not) for ALAN HERRICK of Auricular Recordings fame, which is nice. I like doing comp. stuff. It's always sort of liberating to do songs that stand alone and have no context aside from a possible 'compilation concept'. I like both of the pieces he got a lot- will be looking forward to their releases.
December through January / Taking time off from doing audio. Resting up/planning for the big new lp idea. Started making FONTs, using some old xeroxes of unusual fonts that I still have on file (I used to have TONS of weird lettering, but parted with most of it during last two moves), and, even more exciting- the most bizarre 'symbol sets' of old engravings of all kinds of subjects. Font making is tedious at best, but it's satisfying to make a new font that I really like and will use a lot.
Winter brings lots of cooking projects, as usual. Many lemon pies and batches of chili!
In January I sold a painting (I believe so---I'm awaiting the check right now) to a fella in Copenhagen. Selling art- especially pieces that you WANT to part with, is always a joy. I certainly wish this sort of miraculous sale (he found the piece on his own and came with an email asking for it out of the blue) could happen more often!
It certainly justifies all of the work that's gone into building and maintaining the ART GALLERY page here in blogspot.
http://www.mindwrecker-aroguesgallery.blogspot.com/
is it's location, by the way.

And like it says here, I began blogging last saturday on WFMU. True to his word- Otis set me up just as soon as he took over the blog-reins from Ken F over there. Nice to join their little group. Intimidating, though- since I don't even have a working record player right now or a fast connection. But the time is so right, otherwise--- I'm itching to get in on all of the awesome uploading that people are doing all over the internet- so much interesting audio out there. The other authors there post some heavy stuff- I feel somewhat outweighed by the strength of so much of what goes up there, but I think I have some nice stuff to share, too. The ELTON & BETTY WHITE posting that I've led off with was fairly complex and a good tester for learning their system. The comments indicate what I'd hoped for- there's not much E&B out there for sale of download---the full 46 cuts I'm putting up should make quite a difference in the worldwide perception of E&B- really! I think the stuff is that rare! I had no idea- but research that I've done for the postings seems to indicate that there has just never been much of the White's music available at all.
Anyhoo--- of course- with every step forward, there has to be some kind of damned problem, and in this case it seems (for me) to be their WFMU in-house file storage area. With my slow connection- I need all the time I can get to upload any decent-sized juicy files, and their system is set up to log you out (even in mid-upload/while you're USING the system), or rather time you out, after a period of time. Just my luck-- the period of time just shortened too! It seems now that if I want to put audio in THEIR server, I have to get it done in one-hour-or-less intervals, which is actually pretty dumb- since if you log me OUT before I'm done- it means I have to use MORE of their system time to finish what I was doing! Duh!
Now I'm going to look for an alternate storage area for my audio files, but I don't want to pay anything of course! How aggravating to have a new venue for DJing- and I have all kinds of trouble getting the files up into their system (there's a 50 MB limit per file anyway). I'll just link to another FTP for my future posts, most likely.
Oh, gawd, I should mention the insane five-hour DJing project I did for 'fun'. When I have a lot of new music in house I get the urge to DJ the stuff. So I set up to do one of my usual DJing-WAV-files-on-the-laptop sets, crafting a large pile of spoken word and music files just for the sessions. As usual, I made WAY too many files and the session went on into five parts. Sadly, I don't currently have an easy way to put index points into a giant long file, so these one-hour discs are just big slabs of annotated data, not much use to another DJ. (They are available, with lovely covers, though- just drop me a note to find out how ta git 'em) They have great moments, though! Especially in the first two, most-drunkenly-played hours.
I've had a lot of fantastic things from the library system, as usual. The Young Ones entire series, with great bonus stuff; TERRAHAWKS, as seen in a still below (of YURI the space bear!), which I'm still currently enjoying (I haven't seen them in a long time- and they are still wonderful and hilarious. Fan of Team America? You should see Terrahawks!!)
Lots of Orson Welles dvds- such as the incredible Criterion edition of
MR ARKADIN, as seen below. I recently re-read the BEST Welles book (This Is Orson Welles) and have been absorbing a lot of his work lately. Right now I have
F FOR FAKE in house and it has some wonderful special features.
A couple of Spider-Man 1967-69 TV show stills, from my Facebook Spidey Fan Page.

Jim Steranko comic book art, also from a FB fan page for same.
The Spectre! Yay--spooky heroes. Two images from, yes, another elaborate Facebook fan page.

Some Wonder Woman fun and games. That was one sexy comic! Twisted.
Not here for any particular reason than that it looks good.

Some of the MANY cut-ups typed and cut by me for an unfinished project.
YURI ! The Orsina Galactica. Again, Terrahawks. How to describe it-? Well, it was 1983, videogames were very hot, and space shows like Battlestar Galactica, and here's a show with awesome puppets, great and hilarious voice work, incredible miniature effects and explosions and glorification of miniature spacecraft/planes/cars and exploding variations thereof. There are 'cute' robot sidekicks (in this case a whole regiment of) with a great 'ball' design- the Zeroids; the token black female member of the team (whose wigs change from pink to green to purple within episodes) who flys a bitchen super-jet and also sings and plays cool 80s synth-pop; none of it is taken very seriously- and yet it sort of IS...Lord it's a mess---a crazy, crazy show. I see now why das and I used to come unglued with laughter trying to figure out "What were they thinking???" when watching these.
My favorite show made by the Gerry Anderson company, of Thunderbirds and Space:1999 fame.
Well, that's about it for now. Lots of reading and studying to get through the long cold winter. I'll leave you with a Star Trek alien to whom I've 'turned his frown upside-down'.
May BALOK smile upon you.

A Walk Around The BIG HOUSE

Further ahead in my blog a ways, in my Autobiographical section, I have ONE photo of this 1903 house that was the second one we lived in in Missouri. Recently I found a stack of pictures giving a full walk around this place, when I thought that there'd been only ONE shot left of it. It turns out there were a LOT.
It was our second haunted house in Warrensburg. We moved into this one to own it. This was the house where we had the pet skunk, and our St. Bernard, Nana.
I still own a comic book that I found in the house in 1967, the only thing I carried away from it. After my parents divorced, we sold it to the Good family, and they have owned it ever since 1967 or so. It is now a bed-and-breakfast place http://www.bbonline.com/mo/goodhouse/
This bushy side-yard looks poor here in this winter shot, but was a lovely privacy berm in the warm months.
Ahh, now we've crept up into the front yard.
Despite the bare trees - a bush blooms near the driveway.
Huge, huge huge, SO much house for a family of three! No wonder we later rented out the middle room on the second floor.
Me and my mum out in front.
Check the sturdy support there under the porch/pull-up overhang! Nowadays they've built the porch out to reach all the way over to the edge of the roof. Our VW bus sits nearby.
When I found these shots recently, I was shocked while looking around the place at how run-down and messed-up it looked. If it was me today--I'd steer away from it! It looks like a great big fat challenge- a big houseful. They must have had fix-up mania (I know they had antiques-collecting mania).
The carriage house. This was demolished right after we sold the place. Too bad- it was a rare and cool feature. I've lived in two places that had carriage houses attached. I had some fun times exploring that big barn.

The back patio and yard. The bleak winter views make the place seem that much more blasted and haunted.

And the back yard. Well, that's our walk around the old house. Perhaps someday I'll add some pictures here of what the place looks like today, really not all that different- the yard was dozed and cleared and some remodeling was done to the house, not really altering it all that much. I'd like to stay there at the B&B sometime...

Palingenesis : The RUBOTTOM Family in Missouri

I can trace my grandfather, Ray C. Rubottom, back to Ezekiel, the second Rubottom born in the U.S.
Ray's great-great grandfather, Thomas, came over from the Southeast corner of Lancashire, England, in 1763, and had his first son, Simon, in 1769, in Orange County, North Carolina, near present-day Siler City.
Ray came down from second son Ezekiel's line. 'Zeke was born in 1824, and Ray in 1890.
Ray is seen below, second from left, in 1914, (at about 24 years old) in the play Captain Racket. This is my earliest surviving picture of him.
Here's Ray on the far right, in front of the location of his first job, in Bismarck, Missouri. His Uncle John Hunter is in the center. I love Ray's sweater!
'Looks to me like the place right next door has recently suffered a fire or something, it's boarded-up and being worked on.
The earliest picture of my grandmother, Lucille Thompson. Shown with a Bismarck, Missouri school class in 1915. She would have been about 14 at the time.
Her folk's house in Belleview, Missouri. No longer standing.
Lucille in 1917, probably leaning on the Thompson house.
Lucille again. No date. There were a lot of pictures of her in the family files, and I liked so many of them that it was hard to narrow-down the ones to put in here. This one was an easy choice.
Like it says, below, no one knows who this is for sure,
but I like the pictures anyhoo.
Ray with a couple of friends. And his loud socks.
Two more photos from the files that we don't know anything about. Little biker Edward Coker could be a relation, and the bridge on the right is a very typical Missouri bridge and view, but I don't know who the fellas are.
Lucille and chix, 1917.
Cousins Mayme Signer, Celeste Burton, and Lucille.
"Lucille at 17."
A pensive Lucille in 1918.
Lucille in August, 1918. Three photos ahead, we see the same car parked in the same spot, one year later. A beautiful convertible.
My favorite shot of Ray and Lucille, all dressed-up and looking young and carefree in April 1919.
Unknown man with two ladies in a wheelbarrow. The one on the left may be Lucille.
Two in the wagon are worth one in the bush.
Ray with that car again, July 1919.
With some friends during WWI.
Ray (lower right) and some "nephews of Uncle Sam"
The next four pictures below we know nothing about, as far as who's in 'em, and where they are. I like them a lot, though, as representative of agriculture and farm work in Missouri in the '20s-'30s.
This style of mule-team work, for instance, is just how Ray worked his fields before he got a tractor. He made terraces and cleared out rocky land painstakingly with mule-power.
A trimming party.
A nice old-school tractor. What a rough ride they had back then, before rubber tires! Hellacious traction, though.
Ray in Bismarck, Missouri, with hog, 1920.
Lucille's parents Charles and Kathryn Thompson in 1921, with Dutch son-in-law G. W. (Gilbert) Signer and his daughter Nadine.
December 25th, 1923. Ray and Lucille's son Maurice Ray, born in 1921, and Nadine Signer at "grandmother's" in Bismarck. I'm not sure if this is the Thompson or old Rubottom place. Maurice is displaying his fine gun technique.
On the right, Ray, Lucille and Maurice, havin' a picnic. Perhaps with Gilbert and Nadine.
After Ray's graduation from Missouri University with a BS in Agriculture, 1925.
Ray and Maurice feeding the piggies, 1926.
Onion field going to seed,
photographed by Ray and Lucille on a trip to Olathe, Colorado, 1926.
I love this shot.
Maurice about to have a swim. I wonder if this is the Lake of the Ozarks, or perhaps the Missouri river?
This is such the classic picture of it's type, it's like a painting.
Aunt Dora and Uncle John Hunter, 1930. Another favorite picture.
Charles and Kate Thompson, 1930s. Notice the hat technique.
Rubottom son Maurice's 7th-grade class in 1934. I'm always a fan of class photos, so much detail, so many costumes and faces. Elbows-out, girls!
And Maurice with his first-prize birdhouse, 1934. He was always a great craftsman and carpenter, like his dad.
Ray with daughter Ruth Ann, born in 1935.
"December 25th, 1935, at Audra's." Five pictures ahead there's another family get-together where everyone is identified. Ray and Maurice are second and third from the right end, back, and Lucille and Ruth sit in the front, right.
Ruth Ann (my mother) at age two.
Ruth and Maurice and some dawg.
Maurice's 1938 report card from Bolivar High. Front and back.
Bolivar High School student paper, page one detail.
"Lost and Found" column from Tiger Tracks. I couldn't resist including this, as it's the definition of "prosaic", isn't it! A lovely list.
Charles and Kathryn Thompson's golden wedding anniversary.
Back row, l-to-r: Lee Denton, Maurice Rubottom, Ray Rubottom, Russell Thompson, Golda Thompson, Marie Denton, Nadine Signer.
Front: Gilbert Signer, Lucille Rubottom, Charles Thompson, Kate Thompson with Lyn Denton on her lap, Audra Signer.
Kids on lawn: Ruth Ann Rubottom, Betty Thompson, Charles Thompson,Bobby Thompson, and Donna Lee Denton.
From 1939 through 1940 Ray built the family's new farmhouse in Stet, Missouri.
The flier below, from the look of the graphics, I had assumed was from the forties- but Ruth tells me it must have been in the 1960s sometime. It figures, in a way- that area is so rural, I bet their posters did look about 30 years out-of-date.
Below, two 1943 ration books, included not only as wartime ephemera, but also because they have so many personal details about Ray and Lucille.

Letter from the bank, 1944. Those were different days, alright.
The Stet house, in 1945. With a TV antenna, I see. Hmmm, that's interesting. Well, it's dated on the back, so I'll trust that.
Letter from Maurice, WWII.
At Stet, the family dog in 1947.
Farmall Cub demonstration. Ray is in the front, third from left. A very detailed 8x10 print.
It's that dog with the embarrassing name again, next to the screen porch at the Stet house, 1947.
A beautiful 8x10 print of a drugstore interior. And no one knows why it's in our files, lol. I love the shot, though, definitely click on this one and check out the details. A typical small-town 1940s drugstore in December.
Again, that drugstore, now with unknown people. notice that the displays are slightly different, but it's still December.
Ruth Ann as a blonde. Well, we all try it sooner or later.
Ruth with ballet slippers. I enlarged some of her art, there on the right, for closer inspection. Ruth sang professionally, and always painted and drew very well.
"Ray and Thekla's brother, 1958." It seems Ray has been pulling a sledge full of material out somewhere on the farm to either spread or collect it.
A nice birthday card design by Ruth Ann, 1959.
On the farm in Stet, with Maurice, two of his three kids: Ellen and Greg, (Greta must not have been born yet) and Ray and Lucille. Note the fish lying in the foreground. Somebody's been a-fishin'.
Ray on Imperial Beach, near San Diego, on a trip out to meet my future dad, Fillmore, 1960.
"Ray with 4-lb. bass." Stet, 1960. Boy, I sure do remember a lot of summer months spent playing around that back yard and in the 100s of acres around there.
The house in 1960, after getting new siding, and the screen porch now had the glass louvers- more about those later. I wonder what the place looks like today.
Looking south, from the back yard, into the back 40, as it were. Chicken and hog outbuildings and the windmill. Ruth's horse Chico, just barely visible just behind the windmill.
Ray and some more tasty fish, Stet, 1960. This is mainly how I remember him- a semi-retired farmer doing some fishing and hanging out. An awfully sweet man.
The big barn at Stet. I spent a lot of childhood hours playing in there! And in the outbuildings around that area. The big concrete-block dairy barn lives just to the left, out of frame. You can barely see the little grain silo in back, on the left, where I used to go in and record stuff, for the super-reverb. To the right, the pasture is terraced, going down to the creek below. We also had a cemetery just off of our property (not our cemetery, though), which I always thought was cool, although sometimes the dogs would raid flower arrangements left there and drag 'em home!
Ray in the living room, Stet house. Probably Christmas 1964. That chair and the furnishings around there remained the same for another ten years and more, just as I remember them. There was a cool remote-control thingy for the huge (GE rotary push-button) TV they had, that lived near that chair, and I was always fascinated with that remote. It of course had a long cable trailing off of it!
Left, looking into the barn, and some stock staring back, and right, out in the south pasture, looking towards the house, in 1967.
The windmill. It was along time before I had the nerve, as a kid, to climb up to the top of that tower! It was a big deal to me. I love windmills.
And the works of the windmill, with a few cattle-pals about, 1967.
Photos by Ruth Ann.
The Rubottom name comes from RA: deer, and BOTOM: valley. 'Valley of Deer.'
Or, 'Dweller in the Rough Valley.'
The SHIELD, below, breaks down thusly:
silver and black, divided horizontally, upper third,
embattled between three roebucks, counterchanged.
And the CREST:
An eagle, or pellettee, strewn with black circles, preying on a silver wing, bleeding red.


I've included this 1973 newspaper ad from our files (which had some family-friend-thing on it's reverse), because it's such a lovely example of crappy paste-up, lol. Really just thrown together. Nice work. Just a bit of fun for the end of this chapter.