Steve Dockery

I have to come out and admit it. I'm no longer a Star Wars fan.

OK, let me qualify that. If, by "Star Wars Fan" you mean somebody who obsessively loved the original trilogy, and actually enjoyed the prequels, then, yes, I'm still a fan. But if you mean somebody who actively loves all things Star Wars-related, then, I'm afraid the shoe doesn't fit.

I suppose the turning point was when the new Clone Wars animated feature and TV series were announced. Yawn. I had no interest in it at all. Not a tiny little bit.*

Seems to me Lucasfilm is focusing all their energies on the least interesting part of their whole mythology. What we fell in love with in the original trilogy was watching our trio of main characters stick it to the man, fighting against the Evil Empire and winning. It's fun to root for the underdog. The only reason we watched the prequels was because they were the back story to the thing we actually loved, but let's face it, they weren't as compelling. In some ways, they were even embarrassing (and I must admit it, Return of the Jedi suffered from this a bit as well).

I'd watch a TV series or animated movie about the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia that is set in the time period between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. I'm not really interested in the adventures of Young Anakin Skywalker set in the time period between two prequel movies. Bor-ring. The only interesting thing about Anakin is he becomes Darth Vader, and that's not what the series and the movie are about.

I realize there are legions of fans out there who love anything associated with Star Wars, and devour hungrily every spin-off book in the Barnes and Noble and every fan-fic story they find on the internet, but I'm not one of them.

Think I'll go watch Star Wars* again, for probably the 50th time. That's the stuff.

*I'm not alone in my apathy. Check out the www.rottentomatoes.com reviews of the Clone Wars movie.

**You'll note I didn't call it "Episode IV" or "A New Hope".

Last Sunday night, String Theorists held our first rehearsal with our new drummer, Irwin Anolik, and prospective cellist, Aron Rider.

"Cellist?" you ask, "I thought you were looking for a bass player."

Yes, that's true. As so often happens in life, we were looking for one thing, but we found out what we really needed was something else. Aron's cello playing fit in so perfectly with the rest of us at the rehearsal, she was a member of the band at the start of the first song.

Irwin has an almost scary sense of how we're going to end a song, and all the starts and stops I might throw into the middle, and Aron leapt in and made up some wonderful cello parts that are guaranteed to send us off into all sorts of creative directions with the arrangements. And Chelle, as always, can jump into any song I throw at her, whether she's heard it before or not, and make it sound so natural it's like she's been playing it for ages.

It really felt good.

I'm very excited about the future of this band. Assuming we can find the time to get together (two of the members are full-time busy musicians, and one of us has two jobs), I think we can expect great things from this lineup.

Look for us performing somewhere within a month or two, including possibly online in Second Life. And we'll definitely be doing some recording.

So here's the official line-up:

Steve Dockery - Vocals, Guitar
Chelle Fulk - Electric Violin, Vocals
Aron Rider - Cello
Irwin Anolik - Drums

Come to think of it, I have no idea if either Aron or Irwin sing. I could be adding "vocals" to their description in the future.

You can check out the band's temporary (and out-dated) website at http://www.stringtheoristsband.com and hear our pre-Irwin, pre-Aron demo tracks.

OK, I'm trying something right now that I've never tried before - I'm posting a livejournal entry from my iPhone. Now, obviously, it would have been impossible to do that a while back because I didn't have an iPhone. However, I've had one fir a week now, and it just occurrd to me that this is something that is even possible. Ok, maybe I'm a little slow sometimes.

Anyway, I'm sitting outside a closed coffee shop in Taneytown, MD, using their free wi-fi (I could do this using Edge, but it would be slower), typing this is at an astonishingly fast speed using the iPhone's on-screen keyboard. This is really some nice technology - I'm making all kinds of really terrible typing errors, and the iPhone knows what word I meant to type, so it just fixes it on the fly. Sure, it guesses wrong sometimes, but it's so accurate, it's a little scary.

Anyway, got to toddle off soon, I'm waiting for Chelle to finish playing a gig down the street, then I'll whisk her off to her next 8/8/08 gig.

Isn't technology wonderful? (I usually say that sarcastically when something fails spectacularly, but this time I mean it.)

The new 4 Out Of 5 Doctors CD, "Reconstruction"

Way back in the early 80's, some of my friends and I used to regularly go to see an up-and-coming local power pop band called 4 Out Of 5 Doctors. The band consisted of Cal Everett on lead vocals and bass, Jeff Severson on guitar, keyboards and vocals, George Pittaway on guitar and vocals, and Tom Ballew on drums and vocals.

We saw them at the (now defunct) Bayou in Georgetown, and at the Wild West Rock Club in Springfield VA (now Jaxx), among other places. They put out two albums, and then pretty much disappeared.

Their two records never got released on CD, so over time, their music faded into memory.

They were fondly remembered, however, and in fact, my band back in the 80's, *Batteries Not Included, used to play a cover of the Doctors' song "Danger Man" at pretty much every one of our shows.

A couple of years ago, I exchanged emails with both Jeff and Cal, asking if any of their music was available on MP3, and the response was that it was pretty much unavailable.

Then, last week, I got word that the Doctors were playing a reunion show at Jammin' Java in Vienna, VA on July 20th, and what's more, both their albums would be available for the first time on CD. There was no way I could miss this!

With great anticipation, we arrived at Jammin' Java last night, and took our seats right in the front row for the sold-out show. At about 7:30, after Jeff came on stage to play an acoustic guitar instrumental rendition of one of their songs, the whole band took the stage and launched into "Danger Man". They then proceeded to rip right through song after song from their eponymous first album. After a short break, they came back and played several songs from the second album, "Second Opinion", along with a couple of covers, and an original song, "Coliseum Rock", that we used to hear them play that had never been released on a record.

It was as if no time had passed - they sounded just like they always did, and although there were some occasional glitches (we couldn't hear George's guitar very well for a lot of the show, and there were moments where it seemed as if somebody had forgotten to play something), they put on a terrific show. Cal was in excellent voice, and the band just radiated energy and confidence.

I got an opportunity to talk with Cal and Jeff after the show, and they confirmed that the reason they'd been iffy about the MP3's a while back was that there was some question about whether they had rights to release the music. Apparently, those issues were resolved, because they had a new 2-disc CD on sale at the show, "Reconstruction", containing both of the original two albums plus a couple of bonus tracks, one of which I don't recall ever hearing before, and the other being "Coliseum Rock".

Listening to the CD, I was struck by how great a live band they are, and how all of that energy didn't seem (to me, anyway) to have made it onto the recordings. Perhaps with the right producer and a little luck, they might have made it big, rather than giving up the ghost in 1983 (except for playing a reunion show back in 1991, which I only recently found out about).

I asked Cal about the possibility of any more live shows, and he seemed dubious - it's a big production to get the band together for a show like this, one reason being that only half of the band are still local - George is in Richmond, and Tom is all the way out in Washington state. However, he didn't dismiss the idea entirely. And he did say that there was material recorded for a third never-released album which might now see the light of day.

So while they may not have found huge commercial success, 4 Out Of 5 Doctors found a loyal following that has stayed with them for 30 years, without having released any recordings since 1982, and having played only two shows since 1983. That sounds to me like success.

Official 4 Out Of 5 Doctors website (you can purchase the CD there): http://www.4outof5drs.com/

Pictures of the show: http://picasaweb.google.com/elmobalderdash/4OutOf5Doctors72008

Nina
Originally uploaded by Steve Dockery

I'm really enjoying taking photographs again, and my latest thing seems to be converting them to Black and White. It lends a timeless quality to them - I've always been really fond of B&W photography. I think, for the future, unless the colors are especially vivid or important (and sometimes the colors are the subject of the picture, certainly), I'll most likely be posting them in B&W.

I've considered just shooting with B&W film, but this way I can have it both ways! Having said that, I can see myself in the future shooting B&W film and developing it myself. Going to Ritz every week with one or more rolls of film to develop is going to start running into some money.

Anyway, this is a portrait of my daughter, Nina. For more of my photographs, visit my flickr page (click through the image).

(And for those of you who get the reference in the title of this blog post, I couldn't pass up associating it with black and white pictures, even though in the song, the world being "wrapped in grey" is a bad thing.)

I was playing with the Internet Anagram Generator again, and found two fairly music-related anagrams for my name, as long as I included the "n" in my first name:

Converted Keys
Rocked Seventy

Maybe I should use one of them as my band name. :)

and a few other interesting ones (words re-arranged and punctuation added):

Ed's Rocket Envy
Covet Nerd's Key
Cyst Vendor - Eek!

"Ed's Rocket Envy" could absolutely be a band name, it reminds me of "Ned's Atomic Dustbin". And "Cyst Vendor - Eek!" speaks for itself. Eeew.

Molly and the Pyrates
Originally uploaded by Steve Dockery

This past weekend, I accompanied Chelle down to Lake Anna, in Spotsylvania County, VA for the Virginia Renaissance Faire. Her "pirate band", The Pyrates Royale, were performing both Saturday and Sunday. We had a great time, generally, apart from Chelle's cold and the rain on Sunday.

I enjoyed watching the band perform eight 30-minute shows over the weekend, and now their songs have been earworms for me for the past few days!

My nickname has been "Stevo" for quite some time (but I've tended to distance myself from it lately, because of unwanted associations with the guy in "Jackass"). The nickname was coined by a friend of mine when I was going to Northern Virginia Community College in the early 1980's. She started calling me Stevo when she discovered I was listening to the band Devo a lot, and it somehow stuck.

A bit late to post this, I suppose, but just in case it's of interest, I'm doing my first Second Life concert tonight since my rib crackage incident. It's at 8pm EST at the Blarney Stone in the Dublin sim.

As some of you may know, I sometimes inhabit a virtual world called Second Life under the name of Elmo Balderdash, and I both run a successful music store there, and perform concerts from time to time.

If you're a Second Life denizen, you can click here for a SLurl to take you to the Blarney Stone, otherwise, anybody can listen in by putting this URL into your favorite music player: http://66.34.54.162:8000/

If you get a chance to listen to the show, post a reply here and let me know what you think.

Most folks who know me would figure I'm a Star Wars geek. In fact, I do have a rather sizable Star Wars collection, but before Star Wars, my first Sci-Fi love was Star Trek (the original series, I should add).

A friend of mine in middle school got the Star Fleet Technical Manual, which I could not afford to buy, so I painstakingly traced page after page of starship and prop drawings out of it. I even made a phaser pistol in my wood shop class (I still have the remains of that somewhere, I think it's in my Dad's attic).

So, a few days ago I found a place in Second Life where they'd replicated all the sets from the original series. The picture shows my virtual self ensconced in the Captain's chair. Hee! (If you're a Second Life denizen, you can visit the place by clicking this link.)

Recently, I discovered they're selling the "Remastered" versions of the first season of Star Trek on the iTunes store. I'd totally forgotten about this - they've taken the show and upgraded the special effects with CGI version of the Enterprise, and stereo sound effects and music in some places. I bought several episodes and I'm working my way through them. I'd forgotten how much I really enjoyed that show, with overacting and everything.

Something like 12 years ago, I was Mr. Spock for Halloween, and by then, Playmates had come out with some really decent toys of the props from the show. The communicator, phaser and tricorder were very realistic, much better than the junky AMT model kit version we had to get by with as kids. These things were fairly accurately sized, and even made realistic sounds. Still got those things, too. (And I just looked them up on the web - they are worth more now than I paid for them!)

Well, there's an even better set of them available now from Diamond Select Toys, and for a pretty decent price.

I'm trying to behave myself, maybe I should put the little buggers on my xmas list. :)

Sunday night's combined Keltish/Elmo Balderdash/Mykel Singh show in Second Life came off splendidly. We had a great time, and the audience was large and enthusiastic.

(For the uninitiated, Second Life is a virtual online world, and Elmo Balderdash is my alter-ego in that world.)

We all set up in Chelle's living room, and streamed the audio into Second Life. We played two one-hour sets, consisting of a bunch of Keltish tunes (many from their CD), as well as a bunch of covers that Mykel and I each play, along with a couple of my original songs.

All-in-all we had a great time, but the one fly in the ointment was that I had a sore spot on my side. It started on Thursday, and just seemed to get worse day by day. I had to quit halfway through my show at Potbelly Sandwich Works on Sunday because of it. I just assumed I'd pulled a muscle coughing (it's allergy season), but it got worse and worse, until I started to suspect a cracked rib.

It got to the point where it was unbearable, and Monday morning, Chelle volunteered to take me to the emergency room. Well, it wasn't a cracked rib. It was THREE cracked ribs. They gave me a pain shot and took some x-rays and gave me a prescription for my old friends, Percocet tablets. I have a follow-up appointment at my lung doctor on Thursday afternoon.

My theory is that my ribs were not well supported on that side due to nerve dysfunction to the muscles due to my recent surgery, and a couple of extra-strong coughs later, I'm cracking up.

So, two steps forward, one step back. I'll be well one of these days. *sigh*

For some reason, I spent part of the day today on a musical memories search on the internet. Specifically, I went looking for local bands I used to see and even knew members of back when I was in college in the 80's, when I was playing in a band called *Batteries Not Included.

I went to Rutgers University in New Jersey in the mid-80's, and among the bands I used to see playing regularly (and I also played their demo acetates and tapes on the air while I was a DJ at WRSU-FM, the Rutgers radio station) were: Spiral Jetty, Lord John, The Blases, and Maximum America.

I do this search from time to time, and I was pleased to discover more information this time. Both Lord John and Spiral Jetty have MySpace pages, I found three of the members of Maximum America playing in a band called "Our Marvelous Lives," and I found a review of an album by The Blases on someone's blog, which had a comment from from the band's bass player.

I sent off emails to some folks, and sent friend requests to the ones on MySpace, and put my own comment on that blog page. It'll be fun to hear back from some of these folks if they respond to my queries.

As some of you may be aware, I lead a double life. In an online virtual world called Second Life, I am a successful music store owner and live music performer called Elmo Balderdash.

On March 19, I will be returning to the virtual stage. I haven't been making many appearances in SL lately, and my recent surgery completely prevented me from performing for the last month, but I'm going to ease back into it next Wednesday. I'll be appearing in Second Life at the Oceanside Bar from 9:00 - 10:00pm EST, accompanied by Lynn Cunningham ("Lynne Singh" in SL), the vocalist for Keltish.

If you are new to the concept, basically, what you see is a 3D "avatar" of me on stage (that's my avatar in the user pic), but what you hear is a live audio stream, as I perform at home.

I'm really looking forward to the show. I'll be playing several originals, some old cover tunes, and possibly some celtic tunes (since I'll have the impressive vocal talents of Lynn at my disposal). If you want to check it out in SL, click here for a SLURL link right to the Oceanside. If you just want to listen in, you can tune into the stream, and I'll post the URL for that soon.

Wish me luck, and come be part of the virtual audience!

Hey Everybody -

It's getting almost to the point where I should shut up about this lung thing and talk about something else finally!

Today I went to a follow-up appointment where they checked me out and took out the stitches where the chest tubes were. I couldn't look, but Chelle was watching and said they were really long, like at least a few inches. Ick.

Apart from taking an x-ray to check out why the lung doesn't seem to have breath sounds far enough down (possibly some fluid or irritation from the surgery), they said I'm doing very well. We asked if it was ok if I did some walking, and they said (at first) to keep it under a mile at first. Chelle and I looked at each other and grinned and admitted I'd just walked about 2 miles yesterday, as well as three days in a row a couple days ago.

One of the two medical folks was appalled, but the other was impressed. They ultimately said to go ahead and do whatever I feel capable of doing, just don't overdo it.

I also managed to do a little bit of work from home yesterday and today, so I'm starting to get back in the swing of things. This Sunday I have a small musical gig, playing something like 6 songs, and only singing on the choruses of one song, so I'm easing back into that as well.

Onward and upward!

Hi Everybody -

Sorry I haven't posted lately - life has been a whirlwind of ups and downs, advances and retreats, but always improving. This weekend I seem to have reached something of a milestone, of which I am very proud: Yesterday and today, I managed to hike approximately two hilly miles at Great Falls, VA, both days.

Sure, I had to stop for a breather pretty often, but my energy level has increased and my pain level has (finally) decreased to the point where it's possible to picture myself back in good shape. I had a stressful morning (for reasons I won't go into here) but my walk this afternoon, though tiring, invigorated and relaxed me. I'm definitely on the mend, and very optimistic for the future, for both my recovery from the surgery, but also for my health, strength and well-being in general.

Soon, these posts will cease being all about medical issues, and none too soon, as far as I am concerned. The future is full of possibility and ideas and adventure. What I really want is to talk about all that, now that this little ordeal is nearly at its close.

Thank you to everyone who has wished me well - your comments and helpfulness have been very welcome, and I cherish you all. And thank you most of all to my darling Chelle, who has been invaluable and indispensable in helping me get down the road to recovery. She knows exactly how to motivate me, exactly what to say to buoy me up when I despair, exactly what I need to do to successfully reach the next rung of the ladder to being well again.

In a previous post, I referred to my "pain buster" being removed, and I figured I should explain that one to you.

After my surgery, I discovered I'd been outfitted with a couple of accessories: My suitcase (the box that my chest drain tubes terminated in) and my purse (a little bag containing my "pain ball").

The pain ball was this thing called an On-Q Pain Buster. What they did was implant a couple of long thin catheters along the surgery site and left them in there when they stitched me up, and after that, some numbing medication was being continuously infused directly into that area from the pain ball. A brilliant idea - rather than numb ALL of you up, they numb only the part that hurts. In practice, of course, I did need additional pain meds, but not anywhere near as much as I'd have needed them without Buster.

So Buster followed me around in my little black "man bag" everywhere I went, from the day of the surgery, until the they pulled out his little tubes and sent me on my way yesterday. It was a bit awkward trailing all these tubes and hoses - I pretty much had to have a ground crew gathering up everything. At one point I had Buster's tiny tubes, two IV's, two chest tubes, a Foley catheter (look it up, I ain't gonna explain), and several heart and breathing monitor cables.

The pain buster tubes inside were long, a good foot long, and there were two of them, little skinny things. Inside the bag, the Pain Buster was a little round balloon full of medicine that slowly shrunk over time. By yesterday morning, he was a shadow of his former self, and I had to have Buster put down. It wasn't anything like the ordeal to yank out the chest tubes. These came out nice and smooth and neat, along with usual, "All THAT was inside of ME?"

Oh well, Buster had been loyal to me, but he'd served his purpose. But I'd still like to thank you, Buster, wherever you are.

Hi Everybody -

They sent me home this afternoon, and after going to Target for some meds, and taking a most-needed nap after a busy morning, I finally got a chance to read all the comments. Thank you SO much for all your support. You all helped keep up our spirits in a pretty difficult time.

I got up this morning almost effortlessly, after having a decent amount of sleep last night - in one case, I slept continuously for over four hours, which is hard to do in the hospital! I also spent half the night on my side, letting my poor, abused back have a break - now that the chest tubes were gone, I could lie on my side without feeling them poking me inside.

Apparently, I was not intended to eat breakfast today. Just as my food arrived at 8am, the respiratory therapist arrived to make me wear a mask feeding me mist for 15 minutes (and making me look rather evil, too - Scott got me to say, "I expect you to DIE, Mr. Bond" the other evening while I was wearing it). After breathing the steam for 15 minutes, I was ready to tuck into my rice krispies when the nice fellow from Transportation arrived to take me for a chest x-ray. So, after marking my breakfast as "Do Not Remove", we went off to do that. Apart from getting more hot water for the tea, breakfast was eventually consumed and enjoyed, and after sitting up resting for a bit, I was told I was going home, possibly by noon.

So they removed my pain-buster (more on that later) and my IV line, and we packed everything up and off we went, in a gentle snowstorm. Now I'm supposed to be resting, so that's all I'll type for now. Just wanted to let you all know I was out and reasonably well, and happy to be free. Thanks again for all your well wishes!

Chelle here... Steve's unwilling to move at the moment. He's just had the chest tubes removed... the freedom of movement will be exciting to him as soon as he's actually willing to uncoil and move around a bit.

He did great with the removal, and it was fascinating to watch. Plus he had a whole team of ultra hot nursing students watching. He can tell you those stories later. :-)

Yay! We're down to only two attachments now! The word on the street... well, out in the hall anyway... is that he'll likely come home tomorrow! The cats would've enjoyed the opportunity to play with all those tubes and cables, but I guess they'll all be out by the time he leaves here.

Visitors are still welcome and encouraged. Phone calls are great too. I'm thrilled that Steve has such wonderful people in his life. Thanks to all of you for your continuing support. You've made it all so much easier and... um... painlesser.

~Chelle

Hi Folks -

Finally getting a chance to write my own post from the hospital. Nope, no wi-fi here to use, but I can at least type it and have one of my lackeys (ow, stop whacking my ear!) enter it in.

We're at day five here, and I'm pretty sure we've got at LEAST another day before they'll consider sending me home. I had a pretty rough day yesterday, but today I've made considerable happy progress. For one thing, they finally stopped waking me up every hour for some medical test of procedure or shot or other indignity. (Speaking of, just as I was typing that, somebody came in to get my vital signs.) That doesn't mean I didn't keep waking up every hour or two, I've been conditioned to expect it now, and there's also constant nighttime entertainment. For one thing, there's the old lady down the wall who's bellowing constantly at all hours, and her voice reminds me of the woman that Ben Stiller works for in the movie "Mystery Men" ("Just junk it!!!"), so now I just think of her as "Sally." (If you didn't get that reference, go find and rent the movie and watch. Now. I'll wait.)

Back now? Wasn't that great?

Anyway, I went for a stroll around the hospital wing today, with my support crew surrounding me like fighter planes to my WWII bomber, with various people holding an elbow for balance, and somebody carrying my "drain box," for want of a better term, where the tubes from my chest end up and everybody gets excited if there are no bubbles and less fluid. Sometimes somebody is even pushing my IV rack, like some weird electronic hat stand, but this afternoon we left it behind. Chelle has been so invaluable as my crew chief. She's even helped load me into the CT scanner yesterday when the folks who are paid to do these things obviously didn't plan ahead enough to realize I'd need a hose wrangler with all these tubes sticking out of me. (OK, stop snickering, you people with dirty minds.)

Oh, speaking of hoses, the longest hour of my life was the time I spent, fully conscious, waiting for them to remove my breathing tube the day after my "procedure" (which is what you call an operation after you're 40, seemingly). Every few minutes they'd tell me it would be "just a few more minutes." At first, they had my hands restrained, but after they realized they could trust me not to just rip the darn thing out of my face, they let me have my hands back, which helped considerably - I was going a little bit crazy and getting claustrophobic. Once my hands were free, I could (very carefully) scratch my nose and ear, and gesticulate wildly trying to communicate with Chelle with some kind of weird medical charades game. They'd say "a few more minutes" and I'd roll my eyes, point to the clock, and stare fixedly at chelle as I showed all five fingers of my right hand - over and over ("five, ten, fifteen, twenty..."). I think we'd reached forty minutes of "just a few more minutes when it looked like some action was about to be taken. Chelle advocated for me fiercely, but she came to see the throat tube as something of an ally - what else could keep me from saying anything at all for over a day? Since then, whenever I've started to get out of line, she's looked at me sternly, and said, "Don't make me get the tube!"

Ok, lunch time is coming up, and I'm getting tired typing (this is hard work), so I'll sign off for now. No idea when I'll be back, but definitely when I get home from my ordeal - I mean, "procedure" in a couple days.

Wow, it feels like we've been in the hospital for two weeks now. We're only on the fifth day?

Thanks to all who have called or visited, or written here. He's greatly benefiting from hearing from, and seeing, his friends! Yesterday was a difficult day... bit of a scare with xrays and CT scans, but all turned out fine, and the company of friends in the afternoon and evening made it a very good day.

After everyone left last night, we took a walk around the floor - that's about 100 times as far as he'd walked before. Yay!!! He did great, and I'm betting he slept really well.

Visiting hours on this floor are 9am to 8pm, but they seem to be very flexible (I was there 'til after 10, with no sign of being booted out).

There's been no word on our escape date, but we're working hard to get outta there. Don't get me wrong, the care's been wonderful, the room's luxurious, the food's been.... well... food. But the sooner he breaks out, the happier we'll both be.

He doesn't have email yet, so the best way to reach him is a call to his cell phone, or a note here. Hoping I can get him to write or dictate his own entry today. :-) His right arm isn't working so well, so it might be a while.

~Chelle