IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

We woke up, made coffee, then stepped outside to watch the finish of the Peachtree Road Race.

10 or so cases of bottled water were sitting in the hall.

Above is the winner in the men’s division, Ethiopian Terefe Maregu. Yes, from the rear, but I was clapping as he came running by (we were one block from the finish).

I didn’t get a photo of any of the other winners because, again, I was wildly clapping.

But, hell, as far as I’m concerned, anyone who crossed the finish line was a winner.

55,000 participants, all shapes and sizes. Amazing how there wasn’t a uniform or predominant body type constructed by training…except for a set of twins who wore identical gear exposing apparently identical physiques. And, no, I don’t have a photo of them either because I was marveling at that exceptional similitude as they passed. The same way I was marveling at how un-uniform everyone else was.

The empty sidewalk is because the last block was, well, blocked off.

After the finishing participants picked up their t-shirts, some came looking for the train. But the street they needed to cross was blocked…because of the race.

When we came back inside, the 10 or so cases of bottled water that had been stacked in the entryway were gone.

Julia Harding of Fox News gave the Centennial Olympic Park’s firework display as ending with the 1812 Overture…when instead, prior the fireworks, the youth symphony ended with the climax of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, while the fireworks display ended with Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. I know this because we were at the display, and afterward when I was trying to find how many people might have been present I found and watched online the Fox news clip. From it, I was unable to learn how many people were at the display because Julia Harding said that Centennial Olympic Park said it was “against their policy” to divulge how many people were present. What I did discover is either the climax of the “1812 Overture” is now easily confused with “Ride of the Valkyries” or someone at Fox perhaps thought it a little odd that the closing music was “Ride of the Valkyries” and preferred it had been the “1812 Overture”.

Maybe “Ride of the Valkyries” is standard now and I didn’t know it as for a number of years we’ve attended the fireworks display in Decatur, sitting on a popular grassy area a good half mile away where you (mercifully) can’t hear any music.

Though living in Midtown, we’ve continued to go to Decatur for the fireworks as H.o.p. has always opted for it, having good memories. But this year, given the choice, he decided on Centennial Olympic Park.

We rode the train. The streets around the park were so jammed with people it was nearly impossible to reach the park’s entrance, standing room only everywhere, inside and out, and barely standing room at that. Literally.

The New York Christmas crowd outside FAO Schwarz paled in comparison.

Attendees were simply wanting a good time. No one around us complained. They sang the songs they knew and whooped and clapped and we shared our thoughts on the display with each other as it progressed.

I can’t remember the complete musical program but there was some requisite country and Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America” and Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes forever”.

Then there was the finale, “Ride of the Valkyries”.

And I wondered at the choice.

No, nothing really to say about it except that, all things considered, I wondered at the choice, conjecturing nothing.

After the display, attendees pouring out into the streets of paralyzed traffic, we realized there was no way we’d be able to get a ride on the subway for at least an hour, perhaps longer.

It was a nice, cool evening for Atlanta, so we walked home, purchasing for H.o.p., along the way, a couple of cheap July 4th glo-sticks from a street side table, its Muslim merchants anxious to clear stock.

We’re big appreciators of Tom Waits around here. H.o.p. as well. He’s been an avid listener since he was little. When he was two or three he listened to “Bone Machine” non stop for a year.

Back in 2004 when he was, what, 6, he did the below picture as a tribute to Waits’ “What’s he building in there?”

H.o.p. listens to not only the music, he keys into the lyrics. A few weeks ago he admitted that some of them used to frighten him but he said he gets it now that he “understands poetry”. And we knew that some of the imagery used to frighten him–yet he was fascinated, he loved the music, he just had to listen. A kid and his magnet, there was no drawing him away from the music of Wait.

So after he said that he gets the music now that he “understands poetry”, I asked him why he would repeatedly listen to the CDs when he was younger, though some of it was frightening, giving H.o.p. the ten-year-old the opportunity to think about it and explain. “Because I loved the music,” he replied.

I also suspect it was scratching the sacred itch of secular mysteries (or the secular itch of sacred mysteries, it’s all the same). He would listen and for weeks and months would question us on the lyrics of every song, what they meant. He would also ask about instrumentation. He was eager to learn about it all.

I may be a writer, but Tom Waits, and his co-writing wife, Kathleen Brennan, have been H.o.p.’s big window on the art of telling a captivating story that drags universal meaning from the incidental.

Marty was the one who first brought the music of Waits home many years ago (he was a household name before 1979) but I didn’t start listening to Waits until about 1995.

The last U.S. stop for Tom Waits on his present “Glitter and Doom” tour is Atlanta. Walking distance from here. When I first tried for tickets, none were available. Not only that but the tickets are paperless and only two are sold per household.

They had sold out in 30 minutes.

Late in June and I was still thinking about it, how H.o.p. and Marty had to go see this show, which I’d read was incredible. Late one night, on a whim, I looked the Atlanta show back up on the off chance that someone had canceled their tickets…and this time, by some insane miracle, two were available.

I promptly bought them for H.o.p. and Marty.

Marty and I argued about it the past couple weeks. He wanted me to take H.o.p. I kept saying no, I wanted him to take H.o.p. He’s a musician. He can relate a lot to H.o.p. about the show that I can’t. Tell him things about the band and the performance that I don’t know. It would be a memory that they can talk about together for years, each ever augmenting with an intellectual musical appreciation that is beyond my ability.

I really wanted H.o.p. to see Waits, the performer (and just plain wanted Marty to finally see him).

This evening I walked them up to the Fox Theater. Accompanied them inside. I needed to as I made the purchase and the paperless tickets are only available to the individual who purchased them. My bag was checked for the camera I didn’t bring along because I knew they’d be checking bags for cameras. Identification properly made, I told Marty and H.o.p. I hoped they’d enjoy the show, gave each a kiss, and Marty and H.o.p. progressed on inside to see Tom Waits in his last U.S. show of his “Glitter and Doom” tour, while I weaved my way back out through the crowd, against the tide, and walked on back home.

I read that the wonderful Lucinda has been played at every show. I put on the new album, “Orphans”, on which the song appears.

H.o.p. will be likely hoping they play “First Kiss”. He is fascinated by the image of the woman who, through holes cut in the back of her dress, wears scapular wings covered with feathers and electrical tape. He plays that song over and over.

I instead play “Dog Door”.

I’m playing it now.

No sacrifice. I did the right thing on my summer vacation.

Update: The Atlanta setlist is now up at The Eyeball Kid’s blog.

Forget music appreciation night, H.o.p. was suckered in by the disco ball bowler Wait wore during the Eyeball Kid, he thought it was great.

I’d wanted H.o.p. to see the performer, the theatrical element. I thought it would teach him something about the music.

When he got home and I asked him about the show and the hat was the first thing he went on about, pretty much overshadowed everything else…except for his wanting to find out the name of a song that he didn’t recognize and that he really liked. Turns out it’s “9th and Hennepin” off “Rain Dogs”, which we have but is an earlier vintage than what is usually playing of Waits around here.

The show started a little late. 45 minutes or so. By about that time H.o.p. needed to visit the restroom but he was scared to go because he didn’t want to miss the opening song. So he waited and he didn’t miss the opening song and eventually made a break for the bathroom about four songs in.

Marty said it is the show of the decade.

Updated update: I see people writing about powder ghosting up around Wait’s feet as he stomps his two leagues’ legs in the show’s opening, but Marty described the effect as coming from a smoke machine underneath the riser on which Wait’s was standing.

The other day this came to my mind, something which I thought could be an interesting project to pursue on a long term basis, something which would be perfect for blogging, which could be possibly entertaining while offering a tiny, unassuming window on a narrow spectrum of experience that is infrequently talked about and often mocked.

Daily, I would take a different person’s photo, an off-hand portrait or a picture that would allow the person to remain anonymous (such as their hand, their shoes or midriff), and I would ask them three questions.

Have you ever seen a UFO?

What is the most peculiar or profound coincidence you’ve ever experienced?

And I’ve been searching my mind for the third question. But I keep thinking it should be what is the person’s earliest memory. I could also ask the person if they have any religious affiliation, are agnostic or atheist or…whatever.

I’m not looking for anything in particular, this wouldn’t be like a poll.

On Sunday night I was thinking this was a great idea and I would start it on Monday. But on Monday I was then a week deep into trying to get my new computer (I’m now in Vista world) somewhat in order, was occupied with that, and then decided my project would be lame anyway. Then I thought about it again a little on Tuesday, this time thinking of maybe different things I should ask and deciding no, no, I won’t do it after all.

I hadn’t talked about this with Marty or H.o.p.

Today, sorting out the computer continued. I was on the phone to India for three hours and the technician was great. Afterward, I did some website updates for someone. I started a new painting. I realized I needed to reload in my Wacom brushes and some other brushes. I remembered some programs I still needed to install but have to locate them first (I still need to purchase a scanner as mine won’t work with Vista). I began gathering together some of H.o.p.’s newest sculptures to photograph since I can now manage them again on the computer. We had pizza for the second time this week, as a special treat for H.o.p. Marty was in late from the studio and we were all kind of drained so there wasn’t much talk about anything and what talk there was was about the studio. We watched some jazz history on television. I did my yoga. H.o.p. went to bed. Marty went to bed. Then after a couple more hours of painting I went to bed. Then after a little while longer H.o.p. came stumbling in from his room, crawled into our bed and was fast asleep again immediately.

As I lay there, unable to sleep, I thought again about the project that I’d on Tuesday decided to abandon. And I thought maybe it would be a good idea to do it after all. Still though, as on Tuesday, I had gotten away from the initial purpose. I thought of a hundred other practical subjects to ask about but the list of questions grew too long, so I narrowed it down to one question, thinking maybe I should ask if the person had one bit of history they wanted to relate.

Then I remembered my original idea. The UFO question and the question about a peculiar or profound coincidence. Maybe, I thought, I should ask if they had ever dreamed something which came true? Or maybe that was getting to be too much.

Wondering if this was really a possibility considering that I’m rather shy and not good at approaching people (but certainly I could approach one person a day on this?), thinking that I would need to invest in a cheap digital recorder too, I lay there, waiting for sleep, reciting in my head over and over the two resolved upon questions I would ask. “Have you ever seen a UFO? What is the most peculiar or profound coincidence you’ve ever experienced? Have you ever seen a UFO? What is the most peculiar or profound coincidence you’ve ever experienced? Have you ever seen a UFO…?”

And this voice suddenly announced beside me, “They have found the aliens.”

I looked over and it was H.o.p., eyes shut fast, talking in his sleep. I can’t recollect the last time I heard him talk in his sleep.

That was the only thing he said.

Not like it’s an uncommon subject around here, but the other night Marty and I briefly discussed those big life changes where either through a sudden disruption or a slow, almost unnoticed disintegration, one opens one’s eyes to find that one is either on the edge or dead center of not just a spiritual but an organizational chaos where the old order of viewing, classifying and filing experience not only does not work but is absolutely hosed.

No, not an uncommon subject. We’ve discussed this for decades.

Marty believes everyone goes through this process and that it is a part of an essential reassessment that begins in the twenties. a growing up and beyond the world into which one has been indoctrinated, since birth, by parents and various institutions.

I agree in part, on a basic level, and have often enough watched people hit their mid to late twenties whose confidence suddenly wavers as they’re walking down the stairs of their apartment building, they’ve seen a glitch in the shadows off to the side, something’s not measuring up, not even if they believed they were well-formed independent thinkers, and they’re shaken by just how many little questions arise and inflate into giant dirigibles haunting the once familiar countryside.

But then again I don’t believe it is something everyone goes through…or should I say it isn’t an experience to which everyone submits (and Marty agrees with me on this more times than not so there is no “then again” or “on the other hand” about it, it’s just that sometimes he gives people more credit than I believe they deserve, just as he also insists that I often give people more credit than they deserve, one or the other depending on the weather). A good deal of fortitude is required, if one is deeply entrenched socially and career-wise in prefabricated boxes, to admit to re-evaluations that may risk laying waste those maps one accepted from youth as writ on stone, whatever the alphabet used.

I’m not just talking questioning authority. Questioning authority is a must and a good thing for all, yet a first step from which many recoil in mid stride, the dogs barking out all kinds of warnings of disasters to come considering the laws of falling dominoes. There’s a difference between a teenage rebelliousness that can easily morph into taking up the flag of the responsible status quo, and, in your twenties, thinking hard over a former seeming natural dispensation for Miracle Whip or mayo and finding there lies the slippery road to ruin. Nor am I talking Losing One’s Day Planner and waking up wondering, “Where am I?!” once or twice. But Losing One’s Day Planner once, then twice, then on the third time finding in its place a staff and cockleshell offers opportunity to resolutely flee the shadow of something greater before it decides you’re on friendly terms, the chances perhaps less than zero that without some personal initiative you’ll find yourself on a mountain, that staff now a lightning rod, the bolt that comes out of the blue leaving a whiff of both a scintillating and terrifying ozone in the scorched wake of which you now have all the time in the world to reflect on an infinite number of briefly illuminated seemingly relevant details, except you are badly burned and damned if you can remember why you were standing there in the first place.

I began trying to approach this some in the Penguin book–well, didn’t exactly begin there, as a couple plays of mine had this as their base as well as another previous book, but the Penguin novel took it a bit further and I have been hoping to work with this more in the book I’ve laboring on the past couple years.

In the Penguin book, the more boiled down relation of the process is via the giggly subatomic particles whose idea of the punch line of a good joke is miles beyond when you’re ready to lie down and have a good, refreshing nap.

There’s a reason why Dionysus, bearing the gift of the jolly wine (let’s not insist on literalism, which has caused lots of problems historically) is the god who causes people to slip prisons..is also a god who is torn asunder.

Thursday night, I watched Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” again. The movie had been in the Netflix cue for a long while, and this past weekend I had viewed a good portion of Herzog’s “My Best Fiend” which had clips from “Aguirre” and reminded me that I’ve been planning for a year to watch it. What moved me, finally, to watch it on Netflix Thursday night was reading Jim McCulloch’s The Resonance of History, in which he relates some of his experiences while living in South America. He speaks of a period of his faith in science being unsettled following a brush with what might be described as an extra-personal yet all motivating breath (I can’t even palely paraphrase his beautiful, eloquent account)…and I don’t know how that resolved but he also mentions in contrast Cabeza de Vaca, who throughout his amazing (sometimes too incredible, for my money) wanderings in “The New World”, never lost faith in the institutions of his youth.

Had Cabeza lost faith then we’d not have visions of him crossing the desert, healing in the names of his Spanish gods, eventually followed by a crowd of hundreds of curious Indians. Jim recognizes a great story when he sees one, which he does in the barest details of Cabeza’s slim memoir, and beckons us to Picture in your mind this vast throng of diverse Indians walking through the desert toward the sunset, led by lean bearded men who healed in the name of the Jesus and the Virgin. Nothing like this had ever happened before, or has ever happened since.

What better promo for loyalty to one’s faith is that (would make a great movie, no?) and far more inviting than all those saints (old old world gods with little toes shorn off the better to fit them into new shoes) and their spurious martyrdoms urging devotion to a party which in its bullying literalism had more to do with divine right political leverage than revelation. “Admirable!” some would say. “Miraculous!” would say others. And I’m a little surprised Cabeza de Vaca wasn’t nominated for sainthood, except he was later critical about Old World treatment of the New World indigenous.

Still, though I am amazed by Cabeza de Vaca’s resilience and determination, eight years ago my gut reaction to reading his memoir was that his ability to cart the Old World along with him and persist in viewing all through its filter was not so marvelous as an astonishing blindness–unless he didn’t reveal in his memoir what he actually thought.

As Jim points out in his The Resonance of History, there were conquistadors who plunged into “The New World” claiming everything in sight for those old institutions, and people too who were instead conquered by “The New World”, some of whom may have eventually attempted to straddle both with a foot on each shore but it’s difficult to be in two places at once.

“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” concerns an expedition which stalls and, the expressed belief being that both hostile Indians and the fabled city of El Dorado are within a few days’ journey, an exploratory group is sent down river on several rafts, who are supposed to return with their report in the space of a week or be considered lost.

One of the great moments in “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” is toward the end when all on the last remaining raft, floating down the Amazon, weakened by hunger and illness, begin to suffer hallucinations.

The imposition of the Old World upon the New and the insanity of that aspiration has already been set up at the beginning the film. That known map, laid over the new, isn’t going to work, and we are awed with the crazed energy exerted, and enslaved, toward that effort. At first we are even sympathetic with Aguirre who seems to understand that the old institutions have no place here, such as in the scene where he comprehends the futility of the sacrifice required to retrieve from a raft on the far side of the river, in the trap of a whirlpool, the bodies of some of the party who have died, so that they may be carried home for a Christian burial on consecrated land. Aguirre, beginning to act on his own initiative, has the bodies blown up, which seems utterly sensible–or at least it does to me. But then, when he overthrows the Powers That Be, declaring independence (in essence, the first formal Declaration of Independence from the Old World of those transplanted to the new), as he forges ahead we find that he’s just as ruthless in his quest for power and fame, the gold of El Dorado inspiring others but despised by him and only useful as an inspiring tool.

But never mind right now the madness of Aguirre. Instead, here are the others on the raft, floating down the Amazon into chaos, moving further and further away from the old maps, unable to impose them on this new territory. Their new experiences would be difficult enough to chart, to make comprehensible; they are also now sick and hallucinating. What is real and what’s not, they’ve not a clue any longer, not too far removed from the trips of psychonauts. Eventually, the world of Maya is seemingly revealed, all is profoundly realized as illusory when there is witnessed a European boat with sail hanging high upon a tree (revisited in “Apocalypse Now” with the otherworldly plane and parachute encountered deep in the jungle, hanging in a tree). An individual pointing out the boat, the priest counters that the boat is but a hallucination caused by illness–which must be a mass hallucination as all view it. And Herzog permits the audience to see the boat, to participate in this seeming hallucination in a unifying transcendence delivered via his capable imagination and film and a meager $360,000 (or so) budget.

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.

Fully comprehending now that nothing is as it seems to be, we see then the same individual voicing all is illusory, including the arrow that now appears in his leg.

The arrow, Aguirre points out, is real.

Which is to say that if you’ve climbed so high that you’ve stuck your head through the hole in the sky, then after having taken a little look around, it’s best to come back down and give Caesar the money that’s due him.

It’s said that once you’ve been there, there is no reason to ask why it’s best to climb back down.

Aguirre’s is a doomed journey, or at least it is for those who accompany him. All appear to die in the movie, including Aguirre’s daughter, though her death is unlike the others. As she stands facing the jungle at the end of the raft, Aguirre approaches and finds she has been pierced by an arrow. Yet we have the distinct feeling she hasn’t been slain by the same jungle as the others, Aguirre turning her so that we see the arrow (Aguirre, a real historical character, did eventually kill his daughter who had accompanied him on his final adventure). Aguirre’s raft now populated by a country of monkeys–and the dead–we circle round him as he at last vocalizes for us what has driven him, what still drives him, his vision of the world he remains intent upon founding.

Herzog makes no mention of it but the historical Aguirre’s title, as he began this not very famous journey, was “the keeper of the dead”. That was his capacity. He was to take charge over the possessions of those who died along the way.

Alot of people dying along the way, Aguirre was kind of like a self-made psychopomp, wasn’t he?

Herzog at one point has two indigenous emissaries approach the raft, a man and woman who relate their long anticipation of a golden god who, it was said, would come with smoking sticks (the guns) and complete the creation of the country. These two who come wearing gold have confused the blond Aguirre with that golden god, reminding of the mistaken notion that Moctezuma received Cortes as the returning Quetzalcoatl, that evidence of gold causing those on the raft to believe El Dorado is indeed near.

However, the raft upon which Aguirre floats also reminds of the Golden Boat of the El Dorado legend of the accession of new Musica chiefs, each known as the Gilded Man, who “went about all covered with powdered gold, as casually as if were powdered salt”. As part of the ritual of accession, the Gilded Man would ride upon a raft covered with gold objects to the center of a lagoon, and the center of the lagoon reached, the other chiefs signaling for silence, the Gilded Man would throw into the lagoon the gold in order to pacify its demon which was also their god.

The parent expedition, in a Herzog historical mash-up, is led by Pizarro, who seeing the fierce unnavigable rapids of the Amazon, insists that things will be smoother from here on out. Aguirre, looking at Pizarro like he is mad, counters that the river will consume all who venture in it. Which it does, Aguirre abetting as the self-styled Wrath of God. Aguirre may as well be the treacherous river, even to that end where he is unable to escape it in Herzog’s film.

We know, as does Pizarro, who sends the exploratory party on its way, that yes there will be hostile Indians but no El Dorado, and that yes the river will consume those who think it tamable as the horse that the party carries along with them, used to frighten the Indians. The horse is finally pitched off the raft on the order of Guzman in a pique of characteristic irritation, Guzman being the King of El Dorado who Aguirre has set up, given false purpose there in the jungle, Aguirre manufacturing for him even a makeshift throne. The horse tries to climb back on the raft but, unable, it struggles to the shore and stares out of the jungle after the raft like an Old World ghost, an omen of doom which Herzog shows Aguirre reflecting on but doesn’t reveal his thoughts, unless his feelings are divined in Guzman immediately being found strangled beside the outhouse.

The historical Aguirre trained stallions.

The historical Aguirre wholeheartedly confessed to killing Guzman. But Herzog doesn’t show this. He doesn’t show the source of a number of the deaths. The medium yes, but not the source. After the boat is sighted in the trees, one which we guess supposedly belonged to Francisco de Orellan (a lost explorer, another mission of this expedition being to look for any trace of what had happened to his party), it is Aguirre who interrupts the hallucinatory daze, reordering nature, reestablishing the divide between what is real and what is not, because Aguirre is like fate is like the Wrath of God is like the river and the jungle and every single indigenously flung arrow…and not the river at all, the river simply being what it is. A mad god, one begins to feel he has been there before and forgotten. When he goes to his daughter and turns her so we see the arrow in her belly, it is as though he has forgotten he was the bow and the hand which held it.

I don’t know where Herzog came up with this idea of the boat with sail observed hanging upon a tree, but we all of us wonder how, how, how did it get up there…perhaps the flooding river? Impossible, that it could reach up so high, but there is the boat, after all, there is the boat. Perhaps a little like other old world boats ferried by a wrathful god’s watery retribution to the highest mountaintops.

Who has been there before and what did they leave behind?

Some cultures more than others acknowledge, even if only through curious asides, the great shadow of the primordial elusive that may fall near one, a terrifying bird of prey that no one reputable person has seen but has been reported to snatch up the occasional unfortunate (there is this story) and spirit them away to its mountain top home, wherever that may be. The very breath of its wings is hallucinatory magic and can drive the unfortunate few, those without an institutional pillar to lean upon, to madness…or a fool’s journey. Don’t look if you can help it, but if you do, there are the curious asides left by those who have traveled before one.

When the fairy tales turn lively and say, “I hear you need someone to talk to,” it will very likely be at a place in the river between when something like Orellan’s boat appears in its tree and the mad, amnesiac Aguirre calls one’s attention to the reality of the arrows.

H.o.p. should be blogging these things on his blog but he never thinks to do it. He’s been on another modeling clay kick the past few months. We have literally hundreds of his creations all over the apartment, most of which he fabricates intending to use in little films, but then he doesn’t get around to the films and he piles these things all on his desk and then knocks them off and his chair rolls over them so the majority end up broken with lost arms and legs and horns.

There are several more empty beautifully formed turtle backs on his desk.

Too bad we don’t know how to make plastic toys. He could do limited editions and sell them out in a week. Though not the ones above as they are based on a Mario game creature named Bowzer. And the below is based on Scab, from the game Spyro.

So, anyway, he makes many of these things for his movies but was he making a movie with them this week? No. You know what he was making a movie of…?

Last summer, he endlessly filmed the cartoon “Arthur”, editing in camera with other films he made of morphing shapes and colors, and carefully laying over all this Space Ghost sound tracks, the completed product a bizarre psychedelic version of “Arthur” that is quite long and to be must understood at all must be watched in its entirety and attentively, disparate clips dialoguing intentionally and humorously with each other to make a very out there kind of joke that takes 20 or so minutes to spin out.

“Arthur” repeated several times a day on television, and he knew what episodes would be repeating and in order to edit this all in camera, knowing exactly what he wanted, he would wait for the shows and sit through them and film the desired parts.

Not knowing what he was planning on doing with his films of “Arthur”, I thought it was crazy. Only when I sat with him and put all the parts together in Quicktime did I see that he had, from beginning to end, this all planned out.

Still, thankfully (as far as I was concerned), I didn’t hear “Arthur” all fall, winter and spring long.

Then the middle of this week H.o.p. started filming “Arthur” again.

“Why?” I asked. “Why are you doing this? You could be making your own films instead.”

Ah, but what’s he doing? Meticulously re-editing scenes in camera to completely different sound tracks. The “Arthur” music tends to be cheery and not so very dramatic. He’s re-editing innocuous scenes with dramatic music highlighting them. “See how music changes it?” he says to me. “Aren’t my choices better?” And he makes music as well for it on his electric piano, putting together a musical language of synth sounds articulating impending doom, anxiety, AHA and resolution.

So, he’s naturally teaching himself. It’s interesting. He does all these movies we’ll never put on line because it’s really all personal teaching material…he’s educating himself by filming other people’s things and re-editing them, teaching himself film pacing, editing, and how different music and edits can make entirely different moods.

Drives me nuts, totally crazy, H.o.p. with his little digital camera on his tripod putting so much energy and time into this type of thing when he could be working on his own stuff, but I keep my mouth shut…99.9 percent of the time and the other 00.1 percent doesn’t matter because H.o.p. doesn’t listen to what I say anyway.

Today, Marty had a day off from the studio. The plan was we would all do something together, like go somewhere, but H.o.p. decided he wanted to make another one of his radio shows, he and Marty not having done one in months. I didn’t feel like going down to the studio and sitting there for several hours, and had some website updates I needed to do for someone so I elected to stay home. H.o.p. got his bag and he went around gathering percussion instruments and different things he collects for sound effects and off they went.

They have just returned home and say things went “Great!”

For Christmas, right? Right? On top of the tree where the angel should be?

Nobody took me up on the offer to view a photo of Marty’s kombucha, which he never could get to taste quite right, and now it is gone, pfffbbbt, over and done with and not a single photo to memorialize it.

All week long going on about how he thought this would be THE batch where he finally gets it right, Marty hands me a small taste test of his kombucha yesterday, saying that this is it, after months of trial and experimentation the kombucha is, for the first time, good. I don’t drink the stuff but I took a taste and agreed that yes, this was really good, very light, rather like a cider, not too sour, nicely sweet but not too sweet.

The kombucha jug, this massive glass thing, was set on the top of the refrigerator. I later went in and opened the freezer door, the freezer door being a horizontal door at the refrigerator’s top. As I opened it I realized something had begun coming down and without glancing up I knew immediately it was the kombucha jug. Marty had apparently left it sitting on the very edge of the refrigerator so it was resting on the freezer door, and when I opened the freezer door down it came.

It occurred to me only briefly that I might try to catch it. This occurred to me as I was, in our small kitchen, reflexively leaping into the corner by the sink, just a couple feet away, trying to steer clear of it.

The kombucha jug hit the ground and exploded. Kombucha tea and glass spread out for yards into the next room and leaped 4 feet high up the walls and onto the surrounding shelves. I was soaked in kombucha and surrounded by broad panes and minuscule splinters of glass.

Marty came in yelling at me not to move, he didn’t want me to get cut. I told him to get my flip flops. For some reason he kept yelling at me not to move. By now I’m yelling at him to get me my flip flops so I can put those on and get out of the kitchen and he is still yelling at me no, no, don’t move, don’t move. He had been woken up from a nap, was woozy with sleep and didn’t comprehend the why of the flip flops.

It took us an hour to clean up the mess.

I felt so bad about it, Marty having just produced, that day, after many long months, his first good tasting batch of kombucha.

“Why do you feel bad about it?” Marty said. “You didn’t leave the jug on the edge of the refrigerator.”

“But I do feel bad about it. This was your first good tasting batch.”

“Never mind,” he said. “I don’t like the stuff and I’m sick of working with it.”

I sometimes wonder how many times we pursue a thing just because, having invested time and perhaps a little money, we are reluctant to drop it.

I had sometimes wondered if this was the case with the kombucha. But also felt Marty enjoyed it as a hobby.

I wondered if Marty was making excuses so I wouldn’t feel bad about what had happened.

Today Marty was talking kombucha again, what he might do differently this time.

“But I thought you didn’t like it,” I said.

He made a noncommittal, maybe-maybe-not, shrug of his shoulders.

There is a Worldwide Kombucha Exchange. The majority of people who post there don’t charge for sharing their cultures, that is how passionate they are about kombucha, they will give you their cultures for free just because they enjoy sharing the wonders of kombucha.

They call their cultures “babies”.

If I tell Marty this, he may very well give the project up.

George has the honor of being my very first interviewee. I saw him outside the window and decided I might as well start now and we could use H.o.p.’s little digital camera to record a movie from which I could make a transcription. Knowing the battery in H.o.p.’s camera was running low but hoping it would last long enough, we ran out and caught George. We talked in the shade of the trees on this humid, sunny day, the mosquitoes snacking on us.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: And I’m going to take a photo…

GEORGE (laughing, expecting me to take a photo right then): Wait, wait…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: But, but, no, no, but you can be, I’m going to get my camera, you can be anonymous if you want to or…

H.O.P.: Look, I’m filming.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Have you ever seen a UFO?

GEORGE: No, no.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Ok. What’s the most interesting coincidence you’ve ever had?

H.O.P.: About alien sightings.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, not about alien sightings. About anything. An interesting coincidence, synchronicity.

GEORGE (reflects long): If you could see my brain now you’d probably bust out, go to laughing. Hmmm.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You can’t think of one or there are too many.

GEORGE: I can’t think of one, y’know. I draw a blank on that one.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: A total blank? OK. Well, what if you had a story you wanted to tell. One of your more interesting stories.

GEORGE (laughing, smacks mosquito): That I would want to tell?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS (laughing): That you would want to tell. A little piece of history.

GEORGE: You asked the wrong person.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I’ve asked the wrong person? You? I know you’ve got tons of stories. You’ve probably got, you’ve got…

GEORGE: I know…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You’ve got a country of stories.

H.O.P.: Yup, mom, a country of them.

GEORGE: Just any type of story?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yes.

GEORGE: Unusual?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: It could be an unusual story. You’ve been a lot of places. You’ve done a lot of things. You’ve met a lot of people.

GEORGE: But I don’t know any stuff that’s unusual. The way I look at it it’s not unusual.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Well, you know what I mean….a little bit of history.

GEORGE: I remember I was in uhm Vietnam and, uh, being that far away from home, young, y’know, and I never thought that I would meet somebody in Vietnam that was from my hometown that I knew, y’know, because I grew up in a small place, y’know, in Georgia. But, I was off that night and I went to the rec center. And I went in there to shoot some pool. So I said, “Who’s up next?” and they said, “You’ve got to put your name on the list.” So I put my name on the list. And the guy said, “George Gamble!” And I said, “Ol’ Johnny Bussey!” Y’know we were like two kids inside of this with all these guys standing there. And they said, “You all know each other?” And we said, “Yeah, man! We grew up together in Manchester, Georgia!” They said, “Where is that?”

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I don’t even know where Manchester is.

GEORGE: It’s southwest of here about seventy miles. You got a Georgia map? Find Meriwether County. It’s spelled M-e-r-i-w-e-t-h-e-r. Find Meriwether County and look down in the right hand corner. It’s right at Meriwether County, Harris County and Talbot County, right where those three come together you’ll see the little town of Manchester. It’s about 4000 people, maybe 5000 now. But when I left home it was about 3000 people down there, y’know. And uhm, this guy, as a matter of fact we used to go to his house on Sundays….

H.O.P.: Uh, oh, the battery is dying.

GEORGE: And, uh, he was living with his grandfather. His mother lived in New Jersey. And the two boys went to school down here. And when he graduated from high school, he moved to New Jersey where his mother lived. And next time I saw him was Vietnam.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Now, that’s a coincidence.

GEORGE: It’s a good feeling to see somebody that you know, that you grew up with, that far away from home. It’s amazing.

H.o.p.’s camera then shut down, the battery going dead. A couple came up from the next apartment building who were out walking their three dogs. I went inside for my camera and took several photos of George.

I knew an arrangement where I’d be using H.o.p.’s digital camera to capture interviews for transcription wasn’t going to work out as he is using his camera all the time and I never know when it’s going to be charging or when he’s going to be in middle of filming something and won’t want me borrowing the camera. So, as Marty was also thinking it might be useful for him, I ordered a little digital recorder.

The recorder came in today. (So soon!) For a small package, it is stuffed with all kinds of controls and I hadn’t yet tried to figure it all out when Marty got home and said he had an interviewee outside waiting for me.

“Maybe tomorrow is better,” I said. “I’ve not figured out the recorder yet and H.o.p.’s camera isn’t charged.”

“Oh, I can figure it out, no problem,” the musician, studio engineer, producer said.

“Great,” I said.

I grabbed my boots and my camera and tossed him the recorder and we headed outside. We did the interview, which turned out to be a nice long one with some wildly interesting stories. I couldn’t have been more pleased.

I took photos.

“Uh, let me go see if this came out all right,” Marty said looking worried.

Well, turns out he hadn’t completely figured out the recorder when he thought he had and the interview was lost. So, I’ve got a photo but no interview.

We’ve arranged, hopefully, to do it again Thursday evening.

“You sure I won’t be damaged goods now, since it won’t be as spontaneous?” the woman asked.

No, no, it’s all right, I assured.

“Maybe you could ask some other questions,” she said.

The first two questions need to always be the same for this project, I told her, but I can change the third question.

Hopefully, hopefully, we will get that second interview done. I worked on the photo tonight and it’s a nice fuzzy twilight shot.

Marty figured out the recorder and showed it to H.o.p. as it’s going to be H.o.p.’s job to do the recording himself. Getting used to the recorder H.o.p. interviewed me…and, boy, he was good. I wasn’t taking it all very seriously, was being pretty brief with my answers and he put on this persona of like this pro interviewer politely reminding me that the people couldn’t see my gestures so could I be a little more descriptive, and asked all kinds of questions seeking exacting details in a conversational way. What was interesting too is they weren’t leading questions, he never sought to put words in my mouth, instead they were questions that would have helped any interviewee verbally paint an involving picture. I was seriously surprised.

“Damn!” I thought. “I’m not even needed! H.o.p. could more than capably do this all by himself!”

I would offer a transcription of that recording but it ended up getting lost too as H.o.p. didn’t quite have the recording part down yet.

Just had to note this. A couple days ago I wandered into the plant room (the nook where our plants live, that has sunlight) and looked out the window to see a man in his late 50s or early 60s and one in his late 30s on the opposite sidewalk engaging in body language that isn’t typical for the neighborhood. I won’t say exactly what it was about them that made me think “Scientists?”, but I grew up around scientists and as I stood and looked at them I thought, “They’ve got to be,” and was amused by this. I almost went outside to say, “Hey, I bet you’re scientists!!! I knew it! My dad’s one! Did you know your body language is trademark scientist??! I know you think your clothes scream ‘general hike-worthy touristy population’, and had you been a single you might not have caught my attention, but where two or more gather there shall the unmistakable spirit of science be evident. And you look like you’re feeling a little lost and trying to figure out, in your science kind of way, how to get to Mary Mac’s restaurant and then back to train. Right? Here, let me give you directions.”

But I didn’t.

And, as it turns out, I bet they were. The next day I read over on one of the science blogs there was a big science convention here.

Anyway, to the scientists out there, don’t change a thing. I think it’s cute.

Ben was loading a dresser into his truck. I asked him if he’d like to do an interview. He asked what it would be about. This was only my third interview and no one had asked me what it would be about before and I wondered how best to answer that question without ruining the surprise of the first question and considered I really ought to think this through later. He asked me if it was anything that would have the government showing up at his door. I told him no. I told him I’d also want a photo, though it could be simply of his foot if he wanted to remain anonymous. He had no problem with me taking his photo but he promptly plopped a big white hat on his head that sucked the sun into it and the pictures came out rather inadequate so I thought I’d just use this one of a book he was giving to H.o.p., “Explore a Spooky Swamp”, as counterpoint to the interview. Ben takes in thousands of books and has regular sales to raise money for the library and has won a number of prestigious awards for his volunteerism.

H.O.P.: This is H.o.p. and Mom and their questions and we’re going to do it right now. Go ahead mom.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: My first question is always, “Have you ever seen a UFO”?

BEN: No.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I knew that because we’ve talked about that before. The second question is always, what is the most interesting coincidence you’ve ever had happen to you, the most memorable.

BEN: Coincidence. Things that you’ve thought of that happen later…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: All kinds of coincidences…

H.O.P.: Like my alien balloon popping.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yes, that was a coincidence.

BEN: This is tough.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yeah.

BEN: This is a tough thing. I’m having trouble thinking, my memory slipping I guess.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: It is a tough question.

BEN: I have a latest thing that happened.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: A coincidence?

BEN: Explain what you mean by coincidence.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Say you’re thinking of something and something that has to do with what you’re thinking about happens. For instance, you’re thinking about somebody and they call. It can be mundane and every day or exceptional. Some people have exceptional coincidences. Or if you can’t think of a coincidence perhaps something…eerie. (Ben had, after all, just given H.o.p. the book, “Exploring a Spooky Swamp!”)

BEN: I’m not sure I can even think of a coincidence, where something happened that I had a premonition…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Not even a premonition. It can be like, “Oh, I was just thinking about such and such…”

BEN: Oh, yeah. Wow. This is hard for me. I can’t think of anything, right now. This now.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Can’t think of anything? OK.

H.O.P.: Move on to the THIIIIIRRRRD question.

BEN: This is bad. I’ll think of something as I ride home.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You probably will and it will be too late for me. If you want we can come back to this.

H.O.P.: The third question!

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: What is a story you’d most like to tell, which is going to be tough as you always have so many stories.

BEN: Yeah, what is a story?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: A history.

BEN: Yeah, well I just recently spent a few minutes telling a lady the history about why I’m banking with Sun Trust bank.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: That would be just fine.

BEN: It’s amazing because for years, I started off, I banked with C&S bank from 1950 to 1963, and every Monday I would go into the bank on Pharr Road and Peachtree and cash a check for $10.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Why $10?

BEN: Because that’s what I needed for lunch money that week.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: All right.

H.O.P.: Umm hum.

BEN: So, I would go in and I would walk up to the teller with my $10 check and she would look at me very suspiciously because every week it would be a new person.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Were they dressed in yellow or other colors?

BEN: That’s a good question.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I used to know a person who worked at C&S and she said they preferred that they dress in yellow because it was nice and sunny.

BEN: That’s a good…that’s interesting. Well, C&S I think liked blue suits for men and gray suits, kind of like IBM, gray suits, and for women white blouses and you couldn’t see below the blouse so whatever. So, anyway, up to the lady I would go with my $10 check and she would ask me if I had an account there and I would say yes I have this check and I have an account here and I would like to cash it and she would hum, well, you have to get it approved by that person over there and I’d say ok and I would go over there and they would say have a seat and sign in this little book and I think the vice president would come out and he would ask me for my driver’s license and they he’d look very carefully at it and sometimes he would go back over to the teller and check and uhm my signature card, so, it was an arduous, what would you call it?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yes, a difficult process…

BEN: Yes, a difficult process and they’d look at me and then look at my signature and look back and I always had a suit and a tie on and my hair wasn’t combed just right probably. I tried to shave and do the rest of that stuff properly. So, anyway, I decided I would go into this little bank there on Peachtree Road called the People’s Bank, and there was a nice lady, an older teller there, looked like somebody’s grandmother, named Mrs. Mason. And, with glasses and reddish brown hair and a white blouse with a ruffled collar, and always looked the same. There was nobody else in that bank except for Mrs. Mason and over sitting in another room a nice old feller named Mr. Clodfelter. And Mr. Clodfelter was the president of the bank and she was the teller, and I’d go in to cash my $10 check, she would look at me and say, “Good to see you,” and she would cash my check so I was a customer of People’s Bank. But Mr. Clodfelter got old and he decided and he decided (laughs) this is a long story…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS (laughing): I’m waiting for the punch line.

BEN (laughing): You may never get there. So, anyway, Mr. Clodfelter’s getting old so he decides to sell the bank to Georgia Railroad Savings Bank of Augusta, so…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

BEN: So they become First Georgia Bank.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: When was this?

BEN: Oh, this has got to be sixties, seventies.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Right, years ago.

BEN: So, first Georgia Railroad and Savings Bank and I go in there and they have four or five people, but generally they have the same people in there and I don’t have a lot of trouble cashing my check. But, and it goes along pretty well for twenty years. Well, for fifteen years.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: We started out with them in Augusta and I didn’t like them.

BEN: The sixteenth year they become First Union Bank, they sell out to First Union, and my daughter goes to work there during the summer. I mean we were pals, you know? So she works there, they train her to be a teller, they train her to do something, they give her an award for selling more savings bonds than anybody else and this goes on for four years off and on. So my daughter decides to get married, this is my daughter, Anna, and I need money, right? Because this wedding’s, Linda’s planned this incredible wedding. And it’s going to cost lots and lots of money. So I go back into First Union Bank and there’s this nice little lady I’m friendly with named Mrs. Something-I-Can’t-Remember-Right-Now and I say I want to borrow $20,000 because my daughter’s getting married.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Uh-hum.

BEN: She’s finished college and she’s marrying this guy she met in college and they wanted, oh, they were so thrilled, and what I wanted was a Home Equity Loan and I want to pay monthly payments on it until I pay it off. And the lady says, “That sounds OK, now where do you live?” So I gave her the address and everything and we got to talking and she said, “Who built your house?” And I said, “I built my house.” And she said, “What kind of house is it?” And I said, “It’s a log house.” And she said, “Log house?! Wait just a minute.” She went back into a room and out comes the vice president and the vice president comes up and says, “We don’t loan money on log houses.” And I said, “Well, wait a minute, I don’t owe any money on my log house.” No, no money on log houses. It would be a first mortgage. So I said it’s not that much money, I can pay it. Anyway, to make a long story out of it I was very discouraged and I got home and we got to talking and I remembered Susan Houston, a long time contemporary, was working for Trust Company of Georgia in the Home Equity Department. Became Sun Trust Company. So I called her up and she said, “We’ll send the appraiser out there.” The appraiser went out and looks at the house and he says, “Well, uh, I don’t see anything wrong with this.” He calls back to Susan. By that time, I didn’t need the whole $20,000, I only needed fifteen. So they said they would loan me a lot more than that, the appraisal was a mammoth amount of money. Not a million dollars but to me, it seemed like to me.

So Susan Houston loaned me the money. I paid it back. And I was relieved, a lot of the strain was gone from worrying if poor Anna was going to be able to have the lavish wedding she needed, and that wedding turned out to be kind of a copy of… now, this is a coincidence…!

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK! A coincidence!

BEN: The wedding turned out to be almost exactly like “Father of the Bride”, the movie. Hmmm…have you ever?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: H.o.p. has never seen…

BEN: Oh, there are two of them! The first one’s the best one, with Spencer Tracy, and the other…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You know, I have’t seen that one, I’ve only seen…

BEN: Well, it’s the same story, but it’s much better with Spencer Tracy.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK, we’ll have to get it.

BEN: Anyway, I can’t watch it because it sets me into a dither because I was so stressed out anyway. So there is the Father of the Bride at the wedding and he’s supposed to dance with the bride, you know, where the orchestra is playing, OK, so where is the father but out in the parking lot helping to get the cars parked around the building. I was that same guy. That’s a coincidence.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: A similarity.

BEN: So I can’t watch “Father of the Bride”, I’d rather watch something else. Even with Steve Martin, I’d rather…so that could be a coincidence. They used to laugh about the movie and they’d, the kids, they wanted to show it and wanted to watch me react (laughs). I’d go into tears. Oh, my goodness. So, happily ever after, the bill got paid and Sun Trust lent the money and I feel a great loyalty to them and I do not feel a lot of loyalty to First Union who has become now Wachovia or whatever that weird name is. They’re nice people, they were always nice people, they were always nice to me, they took my money and they put it in their bank and did with it what they did and I checked it all back out at one time. So there you are H.o.p., we may have come up with a coincidence.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Or similarity.

H.O.P.: Is it over?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: The story is over, thank you very much!

H.O.P.: OK, everybody, clap. One, two, three and now! (H.o.p. and Idyllopus clap.)

The interview done, we then talked about a lot of other stuff.

I’d done Interview 2 with Niki but it hadn’t made it into the recorder, so we had planned to do the interview again the next evening. Niki showed up with her roommate, Gretchen, who was just as game, and in order to keep an element of surprise I spoke first with Gretchen then Niki.

Another thing, as is becoming obvious in these interviews thus far, I should probably reconsider the order of the questions as well, though I’d like to keep “Have you ever seen a UFO” as the opening inquiry.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Recording? OK. Have you ever seen a UFO?

GRETCHEN: Ooooh. Not personally. But I believe that they’re there. I think that it’s not something outside my imagination. I don’t think it’s hard to believe.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK. Do you know anyone who’s seen one?

GRETCHEN: I don’t….my sister says that she did. When we were very young and living in Lebanon, Ohio, that’s where I’m from, originally, in the Cincinnati area, she says she has. And I believe her. I never thought she was weird.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: When she was a child?

GRETCHEN: Yeah. We were very young. I remember that. But it’s like, we had hot air balloon races there all the time, so I kind of just passed it off as like…we’d go out in the field, there was a huge field behind where we lived, so we’d go out there and see tons of hot air balloons lifting off at the same time. People would go out there and practice, practice the courses, so…sometimes at night you would see them too. So I kind of passed it off as that.

NIKI: You think a UFO moves that slowly?

GRETCHEN: I don’t…

NIKI: That she would mistake a hot air balloon for a UFO?

GRETCHEN: I don’t know. I was probably five. I was young. I mean I was young enough that I really don’t remember it real well. I just remember…it was kind of like more a country area not even like suburbs we were outside the suburbs almost.

NIKI: I mean I just don’t think about it floating like that. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t, I mean, it’s unidentified…

GRETCHEN: Yeah.

NIKI: I just don’t think about it like…I think more about it like…Sound of hand smacking as she gestures a speedy take off.

GRETCHEN: There’s no real perimeters…it’s not like, it could be like, could just be what someone else, what someone else has created…(unintelligible) something means that it has to go light speed, like…? I don’t think…

NIKI: What is it that she saw? What is it…she came to you like, “Gretchen! Gretchen!”

GRETCHEN: Like, she didn’t tell my parents. Like, “Mom and dad are going to think that I’m crazy.”

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Oh, she didn’t tell them?

GRETCHEN: Yeah, she was nervous.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: How old was she?

GRETCHEN: She’s two and a half years older than me. So, she was probably seven and a half. Eight, maybe. I was five, six? So, it was around that age, I guess…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK.

GRETCHEN: But I just kind of, you know…

NIKI: What did she say…what did she say that it was…

GRETCHEN: She just said it was big. Like, “I could see the moon and something passed over the moon.” And she was like, “I don’t know what it was, it was like very close.” It just seemed…it wasn’t a plane. She was like, “I know it wasn’t a plane, but I don’t know what it was.” She really was very nondescript and from what I can remember, like, it’s not like…this big, round object that was flying. It wasn’t, it wasn’t like that. It was a quiet thing.

NIKI: This is exactly what Juli said last night–can I?–”Anticlimactic.”

(Portion of conversation clipped.)

GRETCHEN: We hold all these expectations, for those of you, for those of all of us, I guess, who believe in other life forms and…and just the whole thing, it’s like…you expect a certain thing because the media showed you it, this little green man who’s flying a saucer, and it’s like no, well, one person knew off the bat knew at one point and from there everyone just took off with it and the Twilight Zone got a hold of it and, you know what I mean, it’s like you have like this expectation and it could just as well have been a hot air balloon.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: There’s a long history of UFO sightings. There were some freaky UFO sightings back in the 1400s. Illustrations done of them. Many of them occurring in Germany? (I was off by some a century. And by many I meant two I’d seen from Nuremberg.)

NIKI: You see these stories where people say that they saw it in the woods, next to them on the road. Really, what do you do if that happens? Do you suppose you get out of your car and go check it out? If it was landed, like “Close Encounters” style…

GRETCHEN: Yeah!

NIKI: You would park your car by yourself. You think you’d…

GRETCHEN: I’d probably sneak around it. I wouldn’t sprint up to it, but I. I think I’d…if you were in the woods…I don’t think I’d have a choice…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I think I’d be a coward and leave.

GRETCHEN: Oh, no. You would have to. At that point I’d be like I don’t care if I’m abducted, I have to know. Your curiosity isn’t that strong? It has to be! If a UFO landed right there?

NIKI: I’d feel more comfortable if it was in town, like, if there were buildings around and…

GRETCHEN (laughing): And people?

NIKI: I don’t know why I think it’s on some back country road in the middle of nowhere. I mean, why would I be there anyway?! (Laughs.) But I think I might too, I might freak out about it at the last minute.

GRETCHEN: You don’t think you’d just park your car and get out and just kind of like duck down and watch? Just look for movement or something?

NIKI: I would have to.

GRETCHEN: You would! You wouldn’t be just, “Oh! Gotta go! Gotta call the cops!” Yeah, right. You wouldn’t do that.

NIKI: I think it’s funny when people act like they’re so freaked out when these extraterrestrial beings poke and prod them because if we got ahold of something like we didn’t know? What are we going to do with them? We’re going to suck them dry and completely keep them forever. That’s exactly what we would do is take samples.

GRETCHEN: Yeah.

NIKI: So I don’t see why that wouldn’t be reciprocated and why that’s so far out of the realm.

GRETCHEN: That’s true.

NIKI: OK, this is your story now. Go. There’s more to the game.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I have three questions. The second question is, what is the most interesting coincidence you’ve ever experienced?

GRETCHEN: That’s a tough one. That’s vague. Interesting coincidence…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Oh, the third one’s even vaguer.

GRETCHEN: This is one I feel like I need to be a little prepared for. If I was able to think about it then…

NIKI: It was a hard one for me to answer as well.

GRETCHEN: Can I hear the third question first or…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Sure.

GRETCHEN: As far as coincidences go, I…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, sure. That’s fine. We can do the third question.

GRETCHEN: I’m not necessarily sure I believe that coincidences are coincidences. I guess my view of the coincidences is…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: All right.

GRETCHEN: I feel like things…I’m not one of these people, like, “all things happen for a reason”. I don’t necessarily think that. I don’t like. Humm. That’s a tough question. I really don’t know how to answer. I can’t really think of a specific…

NIKI: I was asking the curator from the gallery today, I was telling her about your project? And I asked her hers. And she grew up in Guyana. And she was in New York City and was shopping in a store and saw somebody that she was in elementary school with, that she was friends with in elementary school, and they hadn’t spoke since they were seven or eight years old.

GRETCHEN: You think that’s a coincidence? I just don’t think…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: George’s story was that he was in Vietnam and went to play pool and there was someone that he had grown up with, used to go to school with, would go over to his place on Sunday. George didn’t relate this as a coincidence. It was instead what came to his mind to relate when I asked him if he’d a story he would like to tell.

GRETCHEN: If that counts as a coincidence then I…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: There are different levels of coincidence. You’ve got some freaky and more mundane and every day.

GRETCHEN: There was a boy who I was…I was just talking about this today, actually…there’s a boy who I went to a Christian, like, pre K until about third grade, I went to a Christian school? And from pre K until about third grade there was a boy named Allen ______. And we talk now all the time, like we’re really good friends? We talk on the phone like two or three days a week and I don’t talk to that many people on the phone like that often. So, anyway, he and I, we grew up together, and then we ran into Panama City, or rather we ran into each other in Panama City, we were staying like four doors down from each other our senior year of high school. We hadn’t seen each other since third grade. But we knew…like in Springborough…I was seeing a girl in a Springborough t-shirt and I said do you know Allen _______? And she said, “This is him.” And he was like, “Who are you?” And I was like…I didn’t expect it to be him. I said I was Gretchen and he was like, “Oh my god! Where have you been?” So I guess that, that’s a big deal, and we still talk and we’ve been friends since.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: OK.

GRETCHEN: So I guess that’s a big one.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: And the third one question is…

H.O.P.: Oh, the third question? Da-da-da-dah!!!! H.o.p. sings the opening notes to Beethoven’s 5th.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: We’re on to the third question. What is a story you’d like to tell? A little piece of history?

GRETCHEN: I think my favorite childhood story is…I feel like I’m an entrepreneur, I have an entrepreneurial spirit, but everyone in my family seems to be as well. When I was, again, like five, six? Very young. This is one of my like first memories? I actually remember like doing something? Where I don’t remember the memory I actually remember doing it? My best friend and I, Eric __________. He lived like diagonal from me? We had a little cul de sac where the hot air balloons take off from? But we would always go around our neighborhood trying to make money any way we could and I don’t know what for, I mean, like, thinking back, what ever were we trying to make money for? We didn’t ever do anything that required money, we were just always trying to make it.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: When I was a kid we tried to make money for candy.

GRETCHEN: But you had like probably a corner store to go to buy that candy, like I didn’t. Like, “Hey, mom! (unintelligible) for some gas money!” I’m not a saver either…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yes, we were a few blocks from a store.

GRETCHEN: We lived in Turtle Creek Township which is like right outside of Lebanon. There’s nothing like…Highway 48 is what connected us to the city and it wasn’t close, we weren’t allowed to go there. So anyway we would go down and like try to shovel snow, mow grass, rake leaves, do whatever we could, like that kind of work. Finally, my mom was like we need this garden, we had this garden like the width of this rug in our back yard and she always wanted a tomato garden. She was like, “I love tomatoes. I want to grow tomatoes and peppers.” But there was like all these like thorny like teeny tiny bushes like teeny, well, just horrible weeds that require gloves. And so Eric and I were like, “No, no, we don’t need gloves.” And so we’d go out there and are like trying to pick them up and we’ve got thorns all through our hands like, OK, we’ll have to go about this a different way. So, I’m like, well, what if..and we used to ride our bikes everywhere at the time, so we both had just gotten bigger bikes like we’d had our training wheels taking off our first bikes and then we finally upgraded and we thought we were like so cool because we were above the rest of the neighborhood kids, we had these bigger bikes. So, I’m like, what if we took off the front wheels of the bikes and peddle through the ground? Stick them into the ground and peddle as hard as we can and it would be like tilling up the ground.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: That’s interesting.

GRETCHEN: He was like, “I could do that”, so he takes off the front wheels like here’s our money maker, we’re gonna do it, and we get out there and we put our bikes in the ground and we’re like, “OK, you’re ready?” And we start peddling and we’re going nowhere. We’re stuck in the ground. It didn’t work out and my mom ended up giving us money. She was like, it was a good effort and a creative one, so…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Very creative!

GRETCHEN: She was like I’ll give that to you but don’t mind the garden. So my dad rented a tiller and dug it up. But it was the beginning of my entrepreneurial spirit.

NIKI: And hence the 4th of July water stand…

GRETCHEN: It’s not my first and last lemonade stand either. People go like, “Oh, that’s cute,” and I’m like, “No, it’s cute when I was like five. Now, I’m trying to make money. That’ll be three bucks.” “But I’m a runner!” “But I’m a sales person.”

NIKI: You weaved a good tale, right there.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Thank you.

Part 1 of 2. Read the interview with Niki here.

Niki was my second interviewee. But that interview was lost. We arranged to speak the next day and she brought along Gretchen, her roommate. To keep an element of surprise for Gretchen, I interviewed her first, making her my fourth interviewee, then interviewed Niki again next. Because this became a serial/group interview, I’ve elected to place Niki’s as my fifth interview, since it naturally follows Gretchen’s. You can read Gretchen’s interview here.

Niki works in an art gallery and is an entrepreneur.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Now, back to…OK. H.o.p., sit up, let’s get a little closer here. And…have you ever seen a UFO?

NIKI: I have NOT seen a UFO.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: But, you said…we talked about this yesterday…and we ended up with it not being recorded…but you said that you didn’t think they were UFOs? What do you believe they are?

NIKI: What did I say?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You said something to the effect–no, you said that you didn’t think that they were flying saucers. That’s what you said.

NIKI: Oh, yes, that I didn’t think that our predisposition is necessarily accurate towards it. But, just as I was saying that I expect it to be something that just shoots off? I mean, that’s fabricated from some place. There’s no reason why it wouldn’t be like a hot air balloon. The same reason I was saying with…in the woods. But I don’t discredit anyone who says that they have seen one. I’m sure that there are plenty of people who are, for whatever reason, kind of, um, I don’t know, switching the tru…maybe, a little bit on the edge, but I have no reason not to believe them. So…I’d like to see one. I’d like to think…why not me? Why not?

GRETCHEN: Yeah, yeah.

NIKI: I would love to and I’m sure maybe at some point…but not as of yet.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: And what is your most interesting coincidence? You’ve already told…

NIKI: Now, should I tell that one again? Because, actually, yesterday, after I went home I looked up coincidence in the dictionary because I was interested to see really what it meant, because it took me a second with it. And it’s more mundane than what I thought. It’s pretty much just an occurrence, is how it’s defined. But it doesn’t have to be…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: It doesn’t have to be. But you have an interesting story…

NIKI: OK, I’ll tell this one. (To Gretchen.) Have I told you about the goat man situation?

GRETCHEN: No.

NIKI: OK.

GRETCHEN: Sounds interesting.

NIKI: I was living in the second floor of a building, and it was at night and I was sleeping, and I was woke up to the sound of this like tormented, goat-like, half goat scream type of noise, like sounding like half goat half scream. I’m not gonna try to like..not gonna try to like recreate the sound that I heard. And it really frightened me. And it was right outside of my window. And I was on the second…and it was like it was in the tree. And my blinds were down and I was very scared. I was too scared to look to see what it was. And I was living with my sister and I tried to wake her up but I couldn’t wake her up. In the morning, I said, “I can’t believe you didn’t hear this miserable sound. I mean, it scared the crap out of me.” And she said, “I don’t remember any of this.” So, the next day I’m over at a friend’s house and we’re talking about it. And I say, “This is what I heard last night…” Oh, and this is connected as well, I find this out after I started talking to my friend, my friend says, “Was there music involved? Was there any piano playing?” And I said, “Actually, yeah, my sister plays piano and she’d been playing that night.” And she says, “You’re not going to believe this…” And she has a friend who lived I think in Russia, and she was playing the piano, and she looked over, I think she was in an apartment, and she looked over, and she saw in the building across the street a half man, half goat type of creature looking at her and making this sound type of thing. I mean the same kind of…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: The same kind of sound?

NIKI: The same kind of thing. Well, at least this was my assumption. And she told it to go away, and it did go away. But she said…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: How did it go away?

GRETCHEN: How did she tell it to go away?

NIKI: Well, she, that’s the thing, and I don’t think I said this part last night, but I remember Julieanna saying this to me, that she told the thing to go away. I think she actually said, “Go away, in the name of god, go away.” That type of thing. The thing had chains on it? Which I didn’t say last night?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, you didn’t.

NIKI: But I…but that’s not something I ever thought of with this goat man type of thing. But she said that and I picture Jacob Marley style, I’m not sure exactly. But it did. And it turned around and left. But if it does have that kind of religious spin on it?–I thought maybe my sister was pure and holy and that’s why she didn’t wake up to be disturbed by this thing?

GRETCHEN: That’s reasonable.

NIKI: But, with the piano playing and with this thing Juli had said there was a connection with the…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: What I’d said was the only archetype I could think of that fit was the god Pan, that has to do with music, pipes, which became demonized with the advent of Christianity.

H.O.P.: He stole the sheep.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: He stole the sheep? I didn’t remember that story. (I think H.o.p. was referring instead to a story concerning Hermes.) That’s the only archetype that I could think of.

I was also thinking of how Pan is sometimes in the company of Dionysus and a part of the myth concerning Dionysus is that he was a god who releases from prison, from chains.

NIKI: Like before Christianity where all those things were considered demonic because after…

GRETCHEN: Well…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Well, after Christianity they were considered demonic.

GRETCHEN: Well, I guess I’m trying to picture the goat man in chains…and in a tree…

NIKI: But I was like…

GRETCHEN: Playing the piano…

NIKI: But I do have, I’m curious, and especially you’re hearing a sound like that, it surprises me, it was right there, I mean my bed was right up against the window…

GRETCHEN: And you didn’t open the window? You didn’t?

NIKI: No. I could have very easily just moved my hand up and moved the blinds and I was petrified. So…

GRETCHEN: That’s crazy.

NIKI: That’s goat man, right there.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: That is weird.

GRETCHEN: When you say goat man, you imagine a goat man with say knickers on, dancing around a fire. Is that some type of painting? Is that…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I’ve seen wood cuttings with that kind of imagery, because with Christianity that’s what has been fostered…

GRETCHEN: Yeah, because I don’t know why I have that picture. That’s all I can think of. I can’t believe you never told me that. You were living with who? Julie?

NIKI: No, I was living with my sister. I was probably just turned 21 type of thing. 20 or 21.

GRETCHEN: And this is for a documentary?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, no, this is for entertainment. It’s a fun project. I’ve got several projects that I’ve done associated with my website, and I thought this would be a long term, fun project.

GRETCHEN: You should write a book. You should chronicle this stuff.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: So, the last question. Do you want to go with the third question I asked…

H.O.P.: Oh! The third question? Da-da-da-da! (Sings the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth.)

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Would you rather just tell me a story?

NIKI: Can I do something completely different?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: You sure can.

NIKI: Not hers and not the one from last night, either. I don’t remember the one from last night. Oh, earliest childhood memory, that’s right.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Right.

NIKI: Do you have a different one or do you want me to do the childhood memory.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Do you want to do that one?

NIKI: I would prefer something different. A new question.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Oh, man, I haven’t thought of any other questions.

NIKI: Oh, Juli’s on the spot now!

GRETCHEN: Switching it off!

All laugh.

H.O.P.: Oh! The fourth question! Da-da-da-da! (Sings the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth.)

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: All that’s coming to my mind right now is “What is your favorite” and those aren’t good questions to go with.

NIKI: I would like to stick with the entrepreneurial thing right now…and…we used to entertain each other like, before we were friends, when we met, we figured out we were both interested in these kind of things. (Referring to Gretchen.)

GRETCHEN: Because I met you when I was in the entrepreneurship class and I always had these ideas and I was finally in a position where someone had me write them down and then after writing like two down I was like I’m good at this. I need to really start a book. And she’s a schemer, like, so I’m like she needs to get in on this too. Hey, Niki!

NIKI: Well, that’s just the thing. I think that it’s fun to think about this. And I wanted to tell you as well, these are the kind of questions I like to ask people, right when I meet them. Like you meet someone in a social…like at a bar, a party, I meet someone and I ask them something like this straight off, like more important than where you work, I’m starting off with, “Have you seen a UFO?” that kind of thing. So, that’s why I feel a connection with your project here. But, my most recent invention that didn’t get as much support as I thought it deserved was…I thought it would be great to do a window air conditioner cover.

GRETCHEN: You have better ones.

NIKI: What do you think is a better one?

GRETCHEN: Go with that one and I’ll tell you…

NIKI: I was thinking about vending machines on on ramps? When you’re getting on the expressway? You know that dead area?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Yes, there’s nothing there except perhaps some wildflowers?

NIKI: Or some city type person mowing it.

GRETCHEN: Or the jail people.

NIKI: Or you do see wildflowers sometimes. I thought it would be nice to have like a little vending area type thing. Like a drive by vending…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: How would people stop there?

NIKI: They don’t need to. They can stay in their…please…people love to eat in their car, don’t they? So you, it’s almost like a toll booth or a drive thru and you can have yourself a frosty beverage or something or Snickers bar or whatever you prefer. Throw some apples in there. But I thought that was a good idea because it just seems like dead space. But there’s no reason for that. Why not capitalize on it? Probably not going to want to live there, not going to want to build a house, but…you think that’s a better one? Y’know, I thought the window air conditioner…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Aren’t the ramps federal or city or state land instead of privately owned?

NIKI: I think…that is how it is, isn’t it?

GRETCHEN: You know, toll roads though are privately owned. Which I think is interesting.

MARTY: Well, all through New York that’s how they have the rest stops, is in the median…the Jersey Turnpike…

GRETCHEN: As it should be.

NIKI: Oh, it’s not one on each side.

MARTY: It’s in the middle.

NIKI: Why is that? Why do other people do one on each side?

GRETCHEN: Bad planning?

NIKI: Because it does seem like a waste.

GRETCHEN: They’re always right next to each other but across the…

NIKI: It does seem like a waste.

GRETCHEN: It’s not like they’re even spread out.

NIKI: It’s strange. You don’t think about that being privately owned. Same with post offices. I didn’t realize that…we talked about that not that long ago…

GRETCHEN: Yeah. It’s a franchise almost.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: And so you were thinking about air conditioning covers.

NIKI: Yes, I was, I thought…in many places I’ve lived I’ve had a window air conditioner and while, I mean, definitely necessary, it’s ugly, it’s an eye sore to me, and I think, if only, I look at my room and I love the way it looks, and I look at the window and I think, I just wish it was gone. So, I thought, what if you could put something artistic on the inside of it to make it decorative. Still functional but decorative so it felt like it was more personalized and not so much just functional.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Utilitarian.

NIKI: Exactly. What’s so funny is when I was telling people about it, people thought I meant the outside.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Listen, the first thing that popped to my mind was the outside and I was seeing you know tablecloth patterns on the outsides of air conditioners, yeah. And I was wondering how’re they going to reach to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th floors to put them on…

NIKI: It’s a mystery to me how you put your air conditioner in without both feet on the ground outside because I’d have a hard time securing it in there. But that’s what people thought and they do have covers like that.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: They do?

NIKI: But it’s like tarps type of thing from the hardware store, it’s not like…

GRETCHEN: It’s for protection, not for aesthetic appeal.

NIKI: Not at all. I didn’t see any covers that I could find. Y’know, what do you think you could sell something like that for?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I don’t have a clue.

GRETCHEN: Throw out a wild guess.

NIKI: Marty, what do you think?

MARTY: Twenty-five bucks.

NIKI: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. Twenty-five, thirty, that’s what I was thinking.

GRETCHEN: Maybe if you could go on a website and throw on something that you liked, like a family photo.

NIKI: Even now, when I’m looking at your air conditioner, it’s not…inherently bad. The design, when you’re looking at it…you could paint that. You could paint it right on…the accordion part is cool…

GRETCHEN: At least yours doesn’t protrude. Ours is so…

NIKI: Yeah, I guess…

GRETCHEN: Well it’s the windowsill actually, I guess it’s your windowsill that…

MARTY: It’s so set back.

GRETCHEN: Which is nice.

NIKI: But I think that’s been my most recent thing that I’ve thought of like that. Have you thought about…you’ve thought about those kind of things?

MARTY: The most ridiculous thing that I know of, what’s their names, we went over to ____ and they were there, the blond headed girl…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: They lived around there? I vaguely remember them.

MARTY: They just moved. They came up with this thing, basically a piece of rubberized plastic with notches and a hook and it’s called the kitchen tie. And you use it instead of tying up turkey legs you put it on there and cook it and it won’t burn, won’t mar the food. But they’ve made about five million dollars in the last two years since they came up with this.

GRETCHEN: Oh my god.

NIKI: When you say “tie food”…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, it doesn’t occur to me to do stuff like this. Stuff like this has never popped to my mind.

NIKI: Really.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, never.

GRETCHEN: Don’t you think so many things could be better though? Easier, faster, better? I just think there are so many things that I go through daily and it’s like I just feel like there’s got to be an answer to it. Like when I….

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Well, I’ve always written, so when I write I think, “How can I write this?” How can I communicate something. I guess that’s where my energy…and it’s never occurred to me to look at something and go how can I work with that and make it better or how can I sell something? I mean, I’m such a bad sales person in the first place, I couldn’t sell a rubber band.

NIKI: So you wouldn’t consider yourself…

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I couldn’t sell a band aid to someone who was bleeding. I’d give it away, first, but even if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to sell it.

NIKI: But that kind of means you’re improvisational type of thing. You make it work the way it is, regardless of…which I think is a great attribute to have.

GRETCHEN: Yeah.

NIKI: But it’s like…

GRETCHEN: I don’t do that.

NIKI: To a certain extent you’re saying, “I can adapt to this. Maybe it’s not ideal, but I don’t care. It’s going to work until…”

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Uh-hum.

NIKI: “…I’m fine. I’m not stressing out about how to change it.”

IDYLLOPUS PRESS (to H.o.p.): OK, you ready to shut it down?

H.O.P.: Not yet.

NIKI: Marty, how do you sit there? I can’t keep my mouth shut during these things. You’re so quiet.

MARTY: I just enjoy listening. It’s fascinating to me.

H.O.P.: It’s over?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Well, I just started doing this. You were my second.

NIKI: Oh, really?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I just started doing this. George was my first. You were my second. Ben was my third.

GRETCHEN: What were his answers?

NIKI: Do we have to go on line to get the whole shebang?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I’m still putting it up, I’ve got to get it up. And I’ve got to get your picture. I’ve got Niki’s picture. It’s a fuzzy kind of twilight thing.

NIKI: Okay.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: So, are we done? Do you think we’re done?

H.O.P.: Well, I, I don’t know.

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: I think we’re done.

H.O.P.: What about the second question?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: We’ve done the second question.

H.O.P.: Ok. Now time for the ending…

NIKI: I think that you should…I think somebody could write a book about that. Have you ever thought about that?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: No, I don’t do that kind of writing. But I like this because it gives people an opportunity…I like to communicate in stories but it’s not something…I’m not telling the stories here. I give people a lead-in question and they tell the stories. And plus I’m interested in who has seen a UFO and how many people do think about coincidences.

NIKI: Do you consider this art?

IDYLLOPUS PRESS: Do I consider this art? I will…as I get more done. You can turn this off now.

H.O.P.: And now for the big finish.

H.o.p. plays a short musical selection.