My Armando's gig started with me standing outside the door at the venue stressing about whether people would show up. The 49er's play-off was running exactly at the same time as my show. So there I was viscerally re-experiencing all the other times big sports events have kicked my cultural butt, when Annie Sampson pulled up on the curb smiling through the windshield and instantaneously erased all my worries. She has that effect! We hunkered down on the porch stoop and rehearsed "Super Earth", a …

I had a remarkable time last Month performing at the 'Devil Mountain Coffeehouse'. This series is in the new event hall at the Mt. Diablo Unitarian Church in Walnut Creek. Our whole concert scene began at MDUUC as an open mic over 30 years ago. In those days we brought everything in from the sound system to the coffee so it took the whole day and night, and we typically didn't get to bed until 4 in the morning. The beautiful new hall has everything built in. What a breeze! Laura Zucker performed the …

Macro to Micro was the second song that came to me when I decided to write a series of science-inspired songs based on my readings and research about recent scientific discoveries. All my life I've noticed how small things look like large things and vice versa. Like the way the human ear resembles a curled up fetus, or how the cowlick at the top of a newborn's head looks like the swirling Milky Way. The song is my way of noticing and praising these mind-boggling resemblances. The chorus is meant as a …

On Sunday July 3rd, we finished our Smithsonian/Petaluma Museum nine-week run of the Metaquizzical Cafe with a fascinating video montage put together, with many hours of work and research, by my lovely wife Kathy. The video she made had moments with such notables as Michio Kaku, Deepak Chopra, and some animated subjects making points about how to deal with rage and distraction in the modern age. So kudos to Kathy for making her debut as a movie-maker!! I sprinkled my songs in between, and it was just …

 I was quite excited to play music at the MetaQuizzical Cafe's hosting of Dr. Steve Bryson one of the amazing project scientist who digest information from the Kepler Space Telescope. Launched in 2009, the telescope is orbiting the sun, and its mission is to discover planets in other solar systems. The results are astonishing. Over 1200 planet candidates the time of this writing and going up fast. I've been very inspired by this mission. Think about it. Before the Kepler mission, there were 9 …

 On Father's Day the MetaQuizzical Cafe hosted Dr. Marilyn Schlitz , CEO and president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) an organization that conducts research on consciousness and other cutting-edge phenomena. IONS was started by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell. His cathartic experience of being on the moon and looking back at the Earth compelled him to found the organization. Marilyn is a compelling speaker who told heartfelt stories about how we perceive reality. She also told about …

We had our 5th MetaQuizzical Cafe last Sunday with Eric Korpela, project scientist with the SETI@Home project. The name of the program: "Do we live in a friendly universe?".  He came with his wife--what a lovely gregarious couple! They smiled the whole time. I noticed on his resume that he likes to go bass fishing. Since we're both from the Midwest, we commiserated about the lack of good bass fishing in California. You need warm water lakes and streams. In CA most lakes are too chilly for …

Saturday I opened for a talk given by Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweikart at the Petaluma Museum! I sang 'Rocket Man' for about 200 folks in Petaluma including the mayor....a real nice guy....had them all singing Elton John's classic as Rusty beamed me a smile, arms folded, leaning casually against a door jam, 5 feet from me. I did a parody of one line which got a laugh: "Mars ain't the kind of place to raise the kids...Especially if you're the 'Mars Spirit Rover'.!" Poor 'Spirit' pronounced …

 The musical week started on a rainy Tuesday noontime show in Concord with the excellent American roots band Loretta Lynch. The rain was blowing in the stage and things got too wet to run the show safely. Nearly every musician I know, including myself have received nasty shocks on stage in such conditions . I remember getting zapped performing at the Boulder Folk Festival. I heard an electrical 'crack' and felt a jolt of electricity smack me in the upper lip from the microphone in the middle of a …

 On Wednesday evening I went on radio KGGV ‘The Bridge’ 95.1 ,here in Guerneville, speaking and playing on DJ Milo’s politics program ‘Touch’. We had another fine ramble on what it means to be ‘Metaquizzical’. I said to ‘ask many deep questions and see what comes up’, and to use new metaphors reflecting new discoveries about reality. From there we talked about the ‘Goldilocks Zone’, a common astronomical term to describe the best …