Good King Wenceslas

Everyone download Good King Wenceslas right now. Nils Harning on vocals, Ed Shepp on electrospazzle.

And there's always the rest of the Christmas canon here.

Flerp!
E

Christmas Come Early

(click it)

(And if you don't like it, DROP DEAD.)

The Shepp-Blumberg Audio Consortium's 2008 Holiday Message

Happy Christmas, y'all! And in the spirit of the holidays, I give you The Shepp-Blumberg Audio Consortium's 2008 Holiday Message.

Everyone clap for Christmas!!


Beep!
E

Me Wish List

Here's me wish list, in case anyone out in the ether wants to get me anything:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/34S6YM2X6Z90W/ref=wl_web

And if you still need xmas sounds, here's my Ed Shepp xmas sound page, back from last year!

BEEP!
Ed Shepp

Snapshots of a Mount Dora Christmas.

Happy new year, bzeeplets! Here's a briefer-than-Britney's-briefs recaplet of my merry little Mount Dora Christmas, in pictures! (Click to enlarge.)

Ahhhhhh, the sun and warmth. The weather was just like it's pictured above--warm and mostly brilliantly sunny, but with the occasional passing cloud. The kind that softens the light and brings up half-forgotten memories, the kind that you can't explain in a briefest-of-brief blog entry. (Have you ever seen Dogville? Remember how the narrator would say how "the light changed in Dogville" and everything looked fundamentally different? Kind of like that. But both more quiet and less boring.) So I shouldn't have to mention that I spent lotsa time outside. A little bit exploring...

...And I have to say that some parts of the "estate" look really cool. The parts that have fallen into disrepair and taken on something of the look of "ruins." I like those. I always wondered why we used to mow the lawn and all that--why not just let everything overgrow? Maybe one day I'll be able to be "that crazy guy who lives in the weed-infested property" after all. Sigh...

...Most of my outside time I spent reading, however. I read Luca Turin's The Secret of Scent and marveled as the chemistry flew way over my head, and then I read The Corrections, which I can't recommend highly enough. And I never read fiction, so believe when I tell you it's a goodun. Above we see the deck where I absconded to when the sun in front of the house got to be too much. Behold the blooming Christmas cactus! w00t5! Then there's me snapping a shot of myself, and then the patio furniture from Ethan Allen. Or was it KMart?

Apart from a new door and a tear in the patio screen, the outside of the house hasn't changed much. Inside, however, change is afoot, starting with the kitchen, which has a whole new look. It's top left, and I guess it would be called "French," for a number of reasons, one of which I want to say is the red, but since when did the French have a claim on crimson?! To the right of the kitchen above we see the laundry room, which I'm showing because I love the "I hate laundry rooms" wallpaper. Me, I think I love laundry rooms, because I'd love to have one in myne apartment. I think I'd do laundry a lot more frequently if that were the case. Or maybe not? Below the kitchen is the current incarnation of my room, which now has two beds to accomodate us kidz when we're home. At the bottom right is also my room--this was once my glorious dresser, adorned with all my glorious crap. No more. My sister's stuff has overtaken a lot of it. But there's still stuff to see here: the green cylindrical thing atop the dresser--I made that in some highschool pottery class. I was going for 'craptacular,' and I dare anyone to tell me I failed. On the top shelf, you can see a piggybank I got when I was five and a li'l woodcut thing-with-a-mirror face shaped like an Ed. But back to the kitchen for a moment. The parentals want to sell the house one day, but to do so, they feel that they need to tone down the major theme of the house, which seems to be: The 70s! Behold our bathroom below:

Needn'st more be said???

On Christmas Eve, we made asukes (pronounced "a-SOO-kees"), which as I understand them are Lithuanian Christmas cookies. It's a tradition--we made them every year when we were kids. The steps are outlined above: 1) Roll and cut the dough into slices with slits in the middle. 2) Fold the slices into the asuke shape, which resembles... what, a flower? I've never thought about it. 3) Fry 'em up! 4) Coat them in confectioner's sugar. The fifth step, which I didn't list, is to leave them for Santa. Well, some of them. There's the recipe in there if you can read it. Make a batch and lemme know how they turned out!


Yay, Christmas Day! Presents, eating (my brother helped my mom with the turkey this year, as you see above; the turkey came out great, cooked in a new oven and all. As for the presents, I got new glasses! Goodbye, scotch tape! And lots of other good stuff. I think the best Christmas gift was just the quiet and warmth of the days I was home.

And above we see a li'l mishmash of miscellany. In the upper left, we see what I call the "plates of contention." These are plates my mom was going to buy, but when we got to the store and looked at them, it turned out that Dad didn't like them, and proclaimed that they looked like plates one "took out of a neighbor's garbage can." So mom didn't get the plates, but neither did she let it go, mentioning them again and again and again and again and again over the next few days. Eventually, after looking at (what felt like) an endless array of other plates, Mom decided just to get the plates she originally chose, realizing that no one was as invested in the plates as she was. And that it would be a tragedy of epic proportions, for all of us, to not buy these plates. To the right of the plates are two scents: a nearly empty bottle of Baldessarini that I left at home last year so that I'd have some left in case I ran out of the aftershave (it came in a gift set) before Christmas, which I did. The other was a (nearly empty, again) bottle of Crabtree & Evelyn's Noel, which I found under my bed, of all places. If I'd known about the bottle, I wouldn't have gotten a new one. Alas! Bottom left: some candy I got when we rented movies from Blockbuster. You know candy vampire teeth? This is a candy GRILL!!!!! Ha! And bottom right: An ornament commemorating a contest that I didn't win back in elementary school (which only now makes me wonder why I keep the damn thing). Here's whahappah: We entrants had to draw a Christmas-themed picture, and the winner would have the picture printed on an ornament. I don't remember who was selling the ornament or whether it was for charity or what, but who cares--I didn't win. My drawing came in second or third or fourth or something; the judges said it was too "cluttered" or "busy" or "complicated" or "dripping with genius that no one will be able to appreciate for centuries"..... who knows what the exact phrase was.... But being in the top something, I got to visit the ornament factory and a copy of the winning ornament. What the hell do I want that for?!?! I reiterate--HMMPH!!!!

....And that brings us to January in the Northeast, which is little more than one big hmmph. A hmmph that extends through February and into March, and doesn't fully get outta your system until May. With only Celeditude to break the wintry drear. Sigh.

And that's the Christmas-in-pictures beep for now, gnorplets!!!

Beep!
Ed Shepp

radio show + mp3s + CDs + myspace + article + all the other links

This Festivus, the Only Tears Will Be Tears of Asthma

The buttery custard aroma wafting up from the crotchless panties I've had on for eight days can mean only one thing (actually one of a few things, but whatevz): Festivustide, that glorious time of eggnog, blackouts and handmade plush toilet seats, is here and in full sling! Wheeeee! So before you overdo it with the tequila & run-on sentences and come to wondering why your butt hurts and everyone's reading letters to you begging you to "please get help today," let's recap the best bits so far of this holigay season---those involving ME, Saint Prince Edlurg Quistvalden Shepp of Norwegenmark Trailer Park, Pumpkin Point, FL!

Let's start with the party that all the aromaddicted sound sculptors 'round here have been quacking about for weeks: myne and myne roommate's Christmanukwanzaamadestivus Party 2007, which farted nutmeggy joy into the beepsphere last Saturday the 8th of December. Yes, everything you've heard is true, except the stuff about the little people, the jenkem, the meat clothing, the seizuregasms and the backdoor administration of zinc tablets. That was all misguided hype--a Festivus lesson: never trust a 'slightly irregular' Thai blow-up doll with your PR, no matter how 'edgy' what 'she' tells you to write sounds after a few Tang-No Doz-kombucha concoctions. So yeah, none of what you heard was true, EXCEPT...... that oober-fantastic author/advice columnist/entertainment maven Tionna Tee Smalls (pictured above, with ME!) graced us with her boobtastic presence and dispensed wisdom to everyone coherent enough to listen. And since I'm name-dropping, Stephen Guarino of The Big Gay Sketch Show also attended, as did Quinn, inventor of the "touche-accepted" phraselet, and, of course, the inimitable Boo. And you can see all of them here, wearing the Grey Wig of Truth, which I force everyone who enters our fungal abode to try on. Beeptacular it all was. Beeptacular.

Also beeptacular was the next big event of the month, which also included Tionna Smalls! It was her book signing/reading for her debut work, Girl, Get Your Mind Right! on Wednesday at Mixx lounge. If anyone out there hasn't met Tionna and has any doubt about her talent, you need to attend her next event. In fact, you owe it to yourself. Plainly put, the girl has charisma. I was there with blogger Jason Atkins, and at one point I actually said to him, "She's going to be a star." (In the successful media maven sense, not the America's Next Top Moldy Porkchop one.) I'm not exaggerating here; I only exaggerate about pink. And chartreuse pleather handkerchiefs. But back to Ms. Smalls--she was engaging, hilarious, late and made everyone feel welcome and special. And I must say, her prose is clear, straightforward and at turns even lyrical, if that word means what I think it means, which is "pretty like Christmas." After reading, Tionna gave us all I [Heart] Tionna Smalls shirts and her peeps freestyled. Again, a truly beeptacular evening.

And that brings us all up to date on the season's haps for this year, which is good, because I'm, like, tired n stuff. Typing all these keystrokes so late at night is exhausting, as if my body were manufacturing some natural kind of melatonin on its own or something. So that's the beep for now.

Happy Festivus! (And remember that you can still get lots of Ed Shepp holiday mp3s at this page here. Now with more jinglesparkleglowness! Click through, dabnabbit!)

Beep!
Ed Shepp

radio show + mp3s + CDs + myspace + article + all the other links

A Very Ed Shepp Christmas 2007

Announcement time, bgoopters! This post is all about letting y'allz know that I have a new Christmas song out, the first Ed Shepp song (per se) in some time. So go listen and download it! It's Winter Wonderland, Ed Sheppified. Yay! It's at my myspace music profile, my soundclick. and other spots; get the highest-quality version by clicking here and a lower version by clicking here.

And if you're hankering for other Ed Shepp Christmas songs, including the released-and-unreleased classics All I Want for Christmas Is You, Last Christmas, Event to Remember, Dance of the Sugarplum Beepner (soundclick link) and The Christmas Story (soundclick link), go to this page here. I also plopped up Holiday Gift Ideas, a segment from a 2006 Christmas episode of The Ed Shepp Radio Experiment. So to reiterate, that's all on this page here. The Winter Wonderland lyrics area also there, even the part about "we'll have lots of fun with Mr. Snowman until drunk Lindsay Lohan mows him down..."

And while you're at it, check out my new xmas pics, courtesy of photographer extraordinaire Kenneth Pietrobono. View them here at flickr, here at myspace and here at facebook. Here's a li'l sample of the pix:

And that's my big announcement for the moment, glipsters. On the video front, I came across a vid where someone incorporated part of my piece called Thanksgiving Thoughts, off of Bling, as part of her Thanksgiving message. When she cuts the song off, she gives this look of "I have no idea what the gazoonce is going on"--could that be in reference to my piece? Hard to say. Link here.

And that's the beep for now, zoopsters!

Beep!
Ed Shepp

radio show + mp3s + CDs + myspace + article + all the other links

Recrapping Down Your Piehole

Why do I keep doing this--not updating this blog? One of these days my reader is just going to give up on me the way I gave up on that milk that's been in the fridge for a month now. The one that I'm afraid to touch. And then I'll be the one sitting in the refrigerator, stinking in my sourness, screaming, "Why will no one touch me?? TOUCH ME! IT'S SO EASY TO LEAVE ME....."

Oh wait. I do that now...

OK, I'm finna try to recap everything since, um, a long while ago while at the same time being brief. Brief? Yes, brief. So strap in, buckaroo, cux you're about to hop on a ride called Failure. Hmmm, that was my first dog's name. Anyway, here we go:

So I went to a screening of Perfume that Sniffapalooza put on. Afterward the peeps from Thierry Mugler spoke about the coffret they made that was inspired by the movie. First, some blips about the movie:

• Come on, Dustin Hoffman, pick an accent and stick with it. I didn't believe your character AT ALL. It's so clear that you were put in just so the film could have a "name" that I almost think your entire role was some ironic joke. An industry thing? Anyone in the industry who can tell me?
• To the lead: EAT SOMETHING! No wait--don't. I'm so jealous of your thinness I could spontaneously combust.
• Sound design: liked it. Would have done some things different. Would have liked more audio (and visual) representation of the smells. One thing I keep mentioning to everyone: There was this scene where the protagonist (henceforth to be known as P) is following this woman. He's following her scent through some alleyways in Paris. Eventually the alleys open into a courtyard-type space and he realizes he's smelling her. The whole time there's some woman singing in an opera style in head voice--that same old thing. And there are strings or something backing here. I thought it woulda been cool if the singing were flattened while he was following the scent and then brought into tune with the strings when he realized the scent was from the girl. That's just my opinion. I know nothing. Except all the sound design I do for my radio show. Which would only be, uh, maybe superultramegaspectacular if I had the budget and time that I imagine (incorrectly, I'm sure) goes into a feature-length motion picture. Whatever.
• The story: It wasn't made clear enough WHY this perfume is so megaspectacular. Someone explained to me later the line in the movie about "the soul of a thing is in its scent." That needed to be made clearer in the film.
• Is the novel this over the top? Wow. This will never fly with general audiences, even considering the rampant stupidity of the public. And this coming from a retarded person (me)!!!
• Geek moment: I mentioned to someone that the perfume was like The Ring (Orlando Bloom, not Naomi Watts). I mentioned just after that I felt a little embarrassed to have said that. She replied, "No, don't be ashamed of being a geek," and said something about Galadriel. Well here's the thing: yeah, I read digg, I use words like w00t and FTW, and sometimes I'll reference things like Lord of the Rings, but I'm not really a geek. So my response to her was, "ZOMG, Cate Blanchette is so great." The conversation chilled. I guess I'm an ersatz geek, or a geek manque. I don't intend to be. I'm just not a big geek, and I didn't mean to give that impression. Alas. As Marie Antoinette may have said, "Let them see fake."

And some blips from the luncheon afterward with the Mugler people:

• Wow, that one guy from IFF--talk about sssssibilance! After listening to him speak, I realize that I had never known what sibilance is before, but now I do. I swear he could call dogs with his s's. I don't know how he did it.
• They passed around some scents. Some I liked, but none would I spend real money on. There was a nice one called Virgin No. 1. It smelled kind of creamy, milky, a bit vanillic to me. The perfumer said they used headspace technology to capture the scent of an actual virgin. I found that gimmicky. Or "gadgety," as the perfumer might say. There was one scent called Human Existence--it was supposed to smell unpleasant, like a stinky human. (Why not just do headspace tech on the 3 train?) To me, it smelled like old person and eggnog. But not altogether unpleasant. And I know very unpleasant scents can be created. I was disappointed. And there was a jasmine absolute. I was excited to smell this one--real jasmine absolute!! From perfumers!!! I couldn't even imagine what it would smell like. Well, it smelled like jasmine absolute. With a weird finish. And not quite as much depth. I prefer the jasmine grandiflorum absolute at Enfleurage, which smells thick and creamy and even fruity and has that body that some people think stinks.
• And now I finally know how I'm supposed to pronounce Mugler, although I'm still mispronouncing it out of habit. I think maybe I'll just keep mispronouncing it.

And that was Perfume, which was Saturday day. Saturday night I went to a dinner party hosted by the Veepster. What can I say if you don't know the Veep? Ummm, the food was great, the people were great, the apartment is amazing. Veep was Veep. And the light was low enough so that no one could see my hideousness. That's always nice. And I wore that brown shirt I love so well!

I hope you heard the last 4 shows, The Ed Shepp Radio Experiment's Liberal War on Christmas, because if you didn't, you missed out. I should've mentioned them before, but I've kinda fallen out of love with blogging, so eh. And now they're over. Hey, did you know that Roxette's It Must Have Been Love was originally a Christmas song, subtitled Christmas for the Brokenhearted? Yeah, they changed the phrase "Christmas Day" to "winter's day" for the regular version. Well, that's how I'm feeling about my xmas shows now--it must have been awesomeness, but it's over now. Sigh.

Oh yeah, and my party! (Can you tell I'm looking at a list of what I needed to mention?) It was pretty cool. Just a big excuse to show off all the lights. I'm in love with LED lights. They're so vivid. Thanks to everyone who came to the party. The pic atop this entry is from the party.

So now we reach Christmas: I went home, I overate, I went to Publix, I got NOTHING done, I got a great orange sweater and other stuff, and I got plastered on the flight home. It was mostly overcast, but the first day was amazing. There was something in the air, some ions or something. It felt like a late summer day. It was magical.

And now I'm back. And it ain't magical.

So lastly, if anyone's actually made it through this entry, you can click on this li'l audio file. It's sort of the experience of talking on the phone with me. Yes, it's an actual telephone conversation I had, except just my part and cut down. Click here for the file.

That's all.


Beep!
Ed Shepp

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Home for Christmas

Well here I am, beepners, in sunny (yes, it's actually sunny this year!) Florida for Christmas. Wheee!! I'm so glad to get out of those 20 and 30 degree temps in NYC. And, of course, the transit strike ends just as I'm leaving. But I did get to see the sign in that restaurant's window (can't recall the name) that read "Transit strikers no longer welcome"--that was awesome. I heard the woman next to me on the plane tell her relative that the strike had just ended. After I rode that harrowing bus all the way out to JFK. I think the bus ride was scarier than the plane flight (I'm not big on buses); and I was considerably more anxious on the plane than I usually am. Cux I'm almost always a really good flier. Since I mentioned that woman, I have to point out that it was clear to me that she was a Wal-Mart shopper. I'm reading this book on class in America, and I came to a page with the graphic below:

And I actually felt the need to cover the illustration with my hand (subtly) while I read the pages, so that the woman didn't look over and feel embarrassed. (I saw her glance at the title of the book when I took it out. Reciprocally, I glanced at what she was reading: five [!] tabloids, dealing mostly with Jessica Simpson's marriage. No, I'm not kidding.) Yes, Virginia, she was obese. How kind am I to not remind her? HOW KIND!!!!!!

And speaking of class, and of Florida, look what the book I'm reading has to say on the subject, when discussing how where you come from determines your class:

Both Florida (except perhaps for Palm Beach) and Southern California (except perhaps for Pasadena) have been considered socially disastrous for decades. As if the facts were well known, the vilest nightclubs abroad, especially in gotten-up new places like West Germany, are likely to be named Florida. One reason no civilized person could think of living near Tampa is that during the 1970s this sign was visible there, advertising nearby Apollo Beach: "Guy Lombardo Wants You as a Neighbor."

Interesting. And I suppose, knowing nothing really about the upper and upper-upper classes, I'll have to take the author's word for it. Just like Pocahontas did in Colors of the Wind: "You think I'm an ignorant savage, and you've been so many places... I guess you're right."

But back to Christmas in Florida. First of all, the sun! The sun sun sun!!! Today my mom and I exited a mall and the sky was so bright (and so much of it visible due to Florida's almost uniform flatness) that alls I wanted to do at that moment was put a lawn chair in the middle of the mall parking lot and sit. How Floridian of me! Second of all, the temperature temperature tamporature!! It's in the 60s, and I think it's supposed to be in the 70s over the weekend. Third of all, the suburbs suburbs suburbs!!!! Mom and I went to Publix today to get some things (I confess: I could really spend the entire holiday going from Publix to Publix--I love driving and grocery stores and sun that much), and when we exited the Salvation Army lady, who was NOT ringing a bell, offered us a quiet, "Merry Christmas." WHAT A CHANGE from the loud LOUD LOUD (I'm loving this repetition thing today) "PENNY FOR THE HOMELESS! ONE PENNY! SIR! ONE PENNY IS ALL THEY NEED! CAN'T YOU SPARE A PENNY!!!" I thought, "Wow. I could get used to this."

One thing I could not get used to, however, is this dial-up internet. Who knew it was so slow? Who, I ask you, WHO???!?! Additionally, I've gotten sick, for the most part, of Christmas music. I feel like I've eaten too much cake or something. But you can't throw up music. Can you? If you could, I'd have a whole new CD!

Briefly, I came to the realization that in Florida, as in much of the country, Christmas light displays are all about quantity. Not art, but quantity. Kind of like the light displays in Indian restaurants on 6th st.

So Christmas is coming up soon--tomorrow I'm supposed to be hanging out with an old friend, so that should be cool. Then the big day. I have a few good gifts under the tree, but I think the best gift was something that I couldn't get from a store, something totally unexpected: My parents got a scanner, so I've been scanning in old pix of myself and the like for the past recentism. Like the one at the beginning of the entry, which is me and my sister at Christmas in 1974. What could I be thinking?! And these:

My certificate for excellent citizenship

and

My 8th grade yearbook picture. Was I hotter-than-hot or WINGAPO?!?!?!

And I STILL can't keep my hair cut at regular intervals!

But, of course, I would be remiss if I didn't post these bits:

My certificate for completing the Four Star Shooting Camp

and

A pic from my second birthday

(I remember being blonder. This pic must be underexposed.)

So anyway, that's the beep for now. I have to say again that I'm so glad the transit steerike is over. So glad. Now it just needs to warm up about 30 degrees and the day needs to get 3 hours longer. Then we're in business, Manhattan! So for now, this is Ed Shepp signing off. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, everyone!

Beep!
Ed Shepp

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