Afterglow 2011 - Day 3 Monday

I'm all for everyone getting involved but without a musical genius to lead us in song it kind of gets all jumbled if we all join in. Kevin and I have the best dynamic because of our days playing in the Back Alley Burners but trust me when I say that we still have so much work to do. My Mom is the best at leading a sing-a-long from her experiences as a music teacher and church music experience, but some some songs are better suited for her talents. The trick is finding the right combinations of musicians to allow everyone in attendance to have the most amount of fun.

I probably make mention of this every day but I have to keep on doing it because it remains a mystery to me - I never know what happens between dusk and night. It will be like 7:30pm then all the sudden it is 9:30pm and we will be down at the campfire. My only plausible answer is that we went back to Cabin #2 to nap and rally, mix drinks and grab guitars for the night time performance. If anyone out there is able to help then please don't hesitate to steer me in the right direction. But I do know that once we're all at the fire we have one hell of a good time.

I'm so self-conscious about my singing and playing in front of people because whereas music comes naturally to me the music performance does not. I have no problem playing and singing by myself but put me in front of a crowd and I tense up. What I don't realize is that everyone here is family and they are going to like it no matter what because music (even done poorly) is better than nothing at all. I'm working on my confidence as well as my musical skill so I promise that at Afterglow 2012 I will give these people a real reason to Start the Revolution. You can count on it.

Without Timmy we all had to chip in to equal one of him but we were more than willing to try and make it work. What I lack in guitar skills I make up in my voice whereas Kevin is the complete opposite. Together we make one fully functioning musician but we still don't come close to Timmy's talent. Then we add my Mom in the mix and Jenny singing along and we get as close that we will ever get. It's like we're the 5 ring holders of Captain Planet (with the 5th being the audience) - when our powers combine we can be an entertaining rock group.

One person who knows how to rage is Brian. Stacy and Kevin are a close second behind him. I don't mean to set up a ranking system but when Brian rants and raves it is like nothing I've ever seen before. Let's say there's a pretty good reason why I call this kid majestic.

There is one Red Book rule that we do follow and that is no logs on the fire after 11:30pm. Since quiet hour begins at 11pm we don't want to stick around here too late into the night anyway because being quiet is something that a Kurutz/Reck has difficultly doing, especially when they have a little bit of the sauce in them. Even when we aren't rocking the mugs we can be pretty loud. Just ask any of our family members who raised us. We still do load up some logs though because you'd be surprised at how fast they burn out. And when it's out we know it's time to Rage on KK.

Upon further review (people's clothing doesn't match the other pictures) this picture is not from tonight but I'm in too deep and need to keep it on here. It does 2 things though - shows how much fun we have playing (every night) and how hard it is organize this stuff.

Someone else was taking a picture of James and Melissa using the flash and it illuminated their faces, so I decided to take a picture with my camera not using a flash. Why did I do it? Do you really come here for reasons or explanations? You're in the wrong place pal.

This was taken while we were playing Don McLean's American Pie. I know that because Kevin has the chords in front of him. For years with Timmy we struggled to play it all the way through without missing verses and we finally did it. Now we need to go back to sheet music and lyrics to get back to the point again. It'll take time, but we'll do it.

Jenny has a light up hula hoop and can hoop for long lengths of time that allows me to take pictures using a longer exposure time. I set up my camera on my tripod TP to keep it steady then left the aperture open longer or some shit and captured these pictures. To achieve the red and blue effects above the hoop Jenny put fingerlights on here hands and moved them around. In the picture with green streaks I had a green fingerlight on my hand and waved it in front of the lens. Just some basic level photo trickery to pass the time on an Afterglow night.

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