The Mutaytor - 2/11/06 - The Fillmore, San Francisco

on a flight from san fran to vegas… a dozen shoots in 3 days and one more to go… a mutaytor show at the house of blues in las vegas tonight… i’m tired… from the runway i watch my lighting kit get thrown onto the conveyer belt and i seize up maternal, scanning for the exit to go bitchslap the baggage handlers… the six ‘FRAGILE’ stickers i put on it apparently mean ‘TOSS HARDER PLEASE.’ callouses on my shooting fingers, a muscle forming on my forearm. my traveling studio idea seems to have been a success. hoopers, bands, models… an endless stream of people who sparked me. the highlight of the weekend was meeting mickey hart backstage at the fillmore in san fran. i grabbed him by the shoulders and thanked him for making ‘planet drum’, an album that has contributed so much to my life….i told him about my experience seeing him at st john the divine in nyc ten years ago… watching him climb this huge metal tree full of percussion goodness in a huge gothic cathedral as his 6 year old daughter spun ballet sweetly in a white spotlight. “you were there?” he asked smiling as if he wasn’t sure it really happened… another highlight was watching a packed crowd lose their minds to kid beyond and mutaytor. faces full of awe, sweaty bodies and hands doing the 6-finger in the air. another highlight was piling into and out of an ice cream truck with 8 musicians in clown/chicken suits and stilts. boenobo, the lead singer in the band gooferman would open the back and we’d pour out to take over a playground for some promo shots before their show at 12 galaxies that night. bystanders to our spectacle pulled hard on their dogs’ leashes and began to gather around looking suspiciously at us. “WHAT?!” i yelled laughing as i posed them on swings, poles and benches. “SOMEONE TEABAG THE CHICKEN!!” i shouted and some of them fell down laughing as they figured out who would take on this task… i took them back to love manor, where i’d set up my temporary studio. “jd, meet my friends.” i announced as i brought in the circus to entertain the owner of the mansion. clowns took to couches for some photos, then i posed them downstairs one at a time in the studio for them to make candles out of. by midnight exhaustion became a heavy coat that karma doled out swiftly. i fell asleep at love manor with my shoes on and awoke a few hours later to three absynnian cats up in my face cheek to cheek like aliens. i lifted the covers and a purring snugglefest ensued. jd made me coffee and then i had a massage and now i savor the clouds passing slowly beneath me heading to vegas…