LOSTand the OaKs

Okay, as many of you know, I recently traveled with our band The OaKs to New York City to play a show at the famous WNYC building in Manhattan. We played a 3 song set in their studio and then Ryan and Matt participated in an interview with Faith Salie, this nice, bubbly redhead with a surprisingly casual and disarming talent for interviewing.

We had sort of short notice as to when our show would actually air, but then we got an email yesterday that clued us in that the OaKs show would be broadcast on Tuesday night.

I have recently become converted into a hard core LOST fan, so yesterday I was extremely excited to discover that our band would be featured in conjunction with an interview with Michael Emerson from LOST (the actor who plays Ben, the leader of the Others ). So basically creepy Ben (or Bug Eyes as he has been unceremoniously dubbed by Sawyer) was featured on the same radio show/segment as our band.

You can hear both our show and the interview with Michael Emerson from Tuesday's segment at http://pri.morefairgame.org/.

P.S. I was very excited that my picture can be seen floating above Michael Emerson's head. Maybe this means I can play Jacob's ghostly wife that haunts Ben from inside the creepy shack.

I'm considering pitching the idea to J.J. and seeing what he thinks...hehe

oaks documentary

A couple of weeks ago, Ryan knocked together this 15-minute long documentary which chronicles the four-month-ish-long recording process of Songs for Waiting. I think it turned out really well!

Let me know what you guys think...

The OaKs - Songs For Waiting from Tim C on Vimeo.

my Kaylee Frye moment

I had a Kaylee moment this weekend, of which I am very proud.

Background information: Kaylee Frye is a character in “Firefly” and “Serenity." Kaylee is the ship mechanic onboard the Firefly ship called Serenity, captained by Malcolm Reynolds. Kaylee is basically the heart of the crew and incidentally my favorite character in the series. She is sweet and pure-hearted and happens to be a genius when it comes to fixing anything mechanical. The girl knows her catalyzers and compression coils, let’s just put it that way.

So while camping this weekend, we were packing up the campsite, and I was hanging out with my new friends Tom and Josh O. They were attempting to fold up this ancient, rusty table that looked like it was birthed in the in the 1970s. They were stomping on the hinges and pounding it to the ground and forcing the legs of the table every which way but it wouldn’t budge. They tried scrutinizing the faded, yellowed directions on the underside of the table, but they might as well have been written in Sumerian cuneiform. They managed to close one flap of the table, but the joints were jutting out uncomfortably like broken bones. After about 10 minutes, Tom and Josh sort of gave up.

I had this weird, Jedi-esque moment where I immediately saw what the problem was and I knelt down and in one swift motion, I easily folded up the table while Tom and Josh were standing there, gaping at me. They were just trying to bend the joints in the wrong direction which is why the table wouldn’t close. Simple, really.

There’s one scene in Firefly where the ship’s original mechanic Bester and Malcolm are completely befuddled by an engine problem, and Kaylee swoops in from the outside and makes a pull here and adjustment there and fixes a problem in two seconds that Bester said would take a week. Obviously, Malcolm ends up hiring her on the spot, and kicks Bester off the ship roster.

There’s another scene in the pilot episode where Kaylee humbly shrugs off praise to her talent by saying, “Machines just got workin’s and they talk to me.” The preacher known as Shepherd Book observes, “That’s a rare gift.”

Later, Tom thanked me as he was preparing to pull away in a vehicle with Josh L. (a different Josh and also the pastor), making a big deal about how awesome it was for me to fix the table, to which I replied tongue-in-cheek, “The table just spoke to me and I listened,” subconsciously referencing Kaylee, as I later realized. Amazingly, Josh L. (also a preacher!) answered equally dry, saying “Maybe that’s your spiritual gift.”

Talk about life imitating art.

Kaylee would be proud.

New York City recap

So I was just in New York City for approximately 18 hours, give or take.

Our band flew up to the Big Apple to participate in a half-hour-long show and interview with Faith Salie, and also some interview with a group called Uncensored.com.

This is us walking from the Blue Spoon Cafe down the block to the WNYC building, home of PRI, the station where we did our interview and show. I should've taken pictures in the Blue Spoon Cafe, but I ate the most amazing soup and panini there. It was Hungarian Mushroom, and probably is the only soup I've ever had that rivals the Smoky Portabello Mushroom soup from Artist Point, where I used to work.Whoops, I am slipping into Food Network mode...

Some awesome parts about the trip:

1) feeling like a rock star for flying in and out of New York for the day. heck yeah!

2) The interview with Faith Salie--She's apparently some kind of actress and comedian in addition to being a delightful radio host, and she had me laughing all over, even when she jokingly suggested I should grow a beard along with the guys if we ever go to Afghanistan. In my mind I retorted, "No thanks, I'll just wear the burka" but unfortunately that attempt at riposte just sat in my brain.

Also, Ryan and Matt taught Faith some new vocabulary words, including "dross" and "djembe." Always fun to expand the vocab.


This is my view from the piano inside the studio, with Tim on casio in the foreground and Greg on electric: Jeremy's back and Ryan as we're getting our levels and doing sound check:


This is what I see:
This is always what I see. Oh how I miss playing on Steinways:(


I was trying to be all discreet with the self portrait thing, and nixed the flash, hence the blurriness.


3) seeing Brian Cox in the lobby of WNYC.
This must be my week for spotting famous people. I saw Ryan, the radio station guy and some large man walking down the hallway, and for some reason I thought Ryan knew this fellow,(who was wearing a fedora and black overcoat, looking all sinister and important), because Ryan honestly looked like he was trying to pickpocket him, he was trailing Fedora Man so closely. The guy escorted Mr. Fedora to the elevator and then came to attend to the rest of us band members, who were lounging in the lobby. The guy came up to us and said, "That was Brian Cox." "What? Striker from X-Men 2? The bad Treadstone guy from the Bourne Supremacy?" "Yes, yes, that guy. Also, he was in Rushmore." Basically, if he hasn't rung a bell yet in your head, Brian Cox nearly always plays a shady government operative in those political thrillers. Yep. He's THAT GUY. Even if you don't recognize his name, you'd probably recognize him if you saw him.

Unless you see him randomly in a poorly lit radio station lobby near the elevator like me.

He was also in Braveheart, playing William Wallace's crazy, soup-slurping one-eyed uncle, so that's pretty cool right? And also King Agammenon in Troy (Yes, the one where Orlando Blooms' hormones cause the downfall of an entire nation...)

3) The crazy awesome Japanese food that rewarded us after all of our trekking around Manhattan.
I think it was called Sappora East, located in the East Village on Tenth Street and 1st. At any rate, the food was marvelous and pretty reasonably priced for what you get. I had the loveliest bowl of miso soup I'd ever had, a nice perfectly dressed ginger salad, pork dumplings, something like 10 pieces of sushi and chicken teriyaki.

4) Just being in New York with all of the shiny happy people. Whoever said New Yorkers are unfriendly has not spent any time there. I think I talked to more friendly strangers in those two days than in the past two months in Orlando.

The not so awesome parts:
1) lugging around our equipment and bags through the New York City subway system all day
2) some lame questions that the guys at uncensored.com asked us and the equally lame answers that I gave. I'm glad I'm surrounded by five guys who are witty and articulate and culturally-savvy enough to answer out-of-left field questions completely unrelated to music. I'm going to have to hone my interview ability.
3)Not hearing myself too well during the recording of the first track. The headphone mix seemed to improve by the second song, but it's always scary when you're singing and you can't hear yourself too well. Crazy, not melodious sounding-things can happen in those scary moments. Yowzers.
4) Having to get up at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning and book it to the airport to catch a flight that ended up being delayed.

Anyway, how about that LOST season premiere last night? Craaaaazy. The creepy pseudo-Oceanic guy that intimidated Hurley had me hiding behind a couch pillow.

my day at FX International

I just got home from FX International, a sci-fi type of convention here in Orlando, FL. I realized that this open admission fully discloses how much of a dork I truly am, but nevertheless this was my first time ever going to one of these things, and it was actually pretty fun.

The draw for me was getting to meet Nathan Fillion, who starred in the TV series "Firefly," the film "Serenity," as well as guest-starring on LOST as Kate Austen's husband and in "Waitress" with Keri Russell as Dr. Pomatter... (just in case you needed his resume;) Despite all his fine work, he's not exactly a household name.

First of all, the convention was a lot more low-key than I was expecting. I suppose I was thinking there was going to be all kinds of people dressed up in Star Wars costumes, and there were a few, but overall the atmosphere was fairly laid back.

Since my and my friend Matt's main goal was to meet Nathan, and participate in all things Serenity, we scoped out the whole picture/autograph scene, since neither of us had ever been to one of these and we didn't know exactly what we were doing. We stood in a really short line to meet Nathan and have him autograph our Firefly DVD sets. I changed my mind when I got to the front of the line and asked him to sign one of his promo photos. Absolutely LAME that they charge you per signature, but I DID want the thing signed.



He signed it "Melissa, Stay shiny, Nathan Fillion" in shiny silver Sharpie ink, so that was pretty cool I guess. Or shiny, as Browncoats like to say.

Then he, Elizabeth Rohm and Nicolas Brendon participated in a panel discussion, their common thread being director Joss Whedon of course. I realized that Nathan Fillion is completely cheesy when he's answering questions, which I guess is good because it seemed like he's enjoying what he's doing. We also saw him randomly speeding around on one of those electric wheel chair things in the exhibit hall. Matt just kind of said "Fillion" and pointed at him as he sped by. Kind of reminded me in Twister when they randomly say "Cow." Haha.

Then we stood in another line to get a photo taken with Nathan. I guess because he was pretty much the biggest star there, they weren't allowing us to take regular pictures with our cameras.

Ha--I love how this photo looks like it's a family portrait.


And yes, that IS Captain Mal's arm around me. Move over, Inara!

It was cool though because we ended up seeing Nathan at least two more times, and both times he actually remembered our names! He's got to have some crazy pneumonic system going on in his brain, for him to even attempt to remember the names of the hundreds of people he meets every time he goes to one of these things.

Anyway, then we got to meet Ray Park who played Darth Maul in Episode 1 of Star Wars. He was really warm and personable. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. It's not like he's a Sith Lord in real life or anything, right? He also had this delightful British accent.

Then we met Jake Lloyd who played Anakin Skywalker in Episode 1. He told us that he is in his first year of college. He seemed like he's basically just trying to enjoy life as a normal college kid. He's not really interested in making any films at the moment. I guess these conventions are pretty cool for him though. They're probably paying for his tuition!


I met a couple of Power Rangers, although I never really was into them as a kid. I didn't know a ton about the show. I was more of a VR Trooper kind of girl. So I never really understood the whole Power Ranger thing. But I met the two guys who played the Red Ranger, apparently.

I think the thing I was most surprised was how down-to-earth everybody was, particularly Ray Park and Jake Lloyd. Adam West was a bit eccentric, but it was still cool to meet him. Overall, it was interesting to meet people--including some of the comic book artists--mainly because it's nice to see people enjoy their work or whatever they're involved in.

To me, that's the most interesting thing about meeting anybody--finding out what they're passionate about and getting to see them excited about what they're doing, but at the end of the day, most of them are just regular people who are trying to make a living.

Anyway, that was my bit of fun for today. Totally felt like I was feeding the pop-culture machine, but it was still a fun time...

albertine

I finally bought Brooke Fraser's "Albertine" album on iTunes this week, even though I've had the single for the past couple of months, ever since I was impressed by Brooke's live performance of the song @ the Hillsong Conference in Orlando.

I tend to be really skeptical of new up-and-coming female artists for some reason. But Brooke's voice and talent for songwriting blew me away. More than that--her honesty and storytelling ability seemed to draw every one into her experience. I become more and more convinced that the story is the thing that invites everybody in. It seems like a darn near impossible thing to maintain a down-to-earth attitude in front a crowd of thousands and thousands of people unless it comes from some place real. But that's what Brooke's story struck me as: earnest and real and honest.

The album overall is pretty good, but the title track is still my favorite. Even though the song is about Rwanda and a response to what happened in 1994, the song brought me back to Tanzania, with its soft insistence that I should "tell the world where I've been."

women in ministry

A friend recently wrote to me in an email about a negative reaction she received from some people since she took a leadership role in a certain church. She asked me what my take on women in ministry was, so I decided to respond.

Here's part of what I wrote to her:

"By the way--that frustrates me to hear that certain people had a negative reaction to your leadership role. This is one thing I've never understood the independent Christian church denomination, quite frankly (assuming that's where the ire came from). For all of the insistence to return to "First Century/New Testament" Christianity, many people seem to ignore the historical precedence of early church Christian women in roles of leadership, namely Priscilla, Phoebe, and Prisca. Mary Magdalene--a woman, not a man--was the first one to see and proclaim the risen Christ. Astonishing to me that such an important detail in the story of resurrection is often overlooked or trivialized.

I believe there is a form of headship of the man over the woman (in both church and marriage), though not in the generally understood sense, apparently. In the church anyway, I believe that men are designed to be the leaders, the shepherds, the pastors, so to speak, and as a matter of personal preference I think I would only want to be part of a fellowship where the ultimate leadership is a man. I think that's the order of things that God ordained, not to oppress or abuse power, but to demonstrate a facet of His nature: a kingship, a head.

But I believe that if no men are available to fill certain roles: teaching, evangelizing, worship leading, etc., then women are just as valuable and ordained and set apart to step up. There were no strong, godly men in the time of Deborah, so God called her forth to lead. If there are women who are called, capable, gifted and willing to serve, then they should be empowered to. Eve was called a "helper" and this is not in a quaint "Daddy's little helper" meaning. God is also frequently proclaimed in Scripture as being our "help," and I think the same strength and significance and purpose is infused in our identity as women..."

Thoughts? This is certainly a touchy issue for many...