I'm currently stationed at the lovely St. Mark's Coffee House on 17th Street.

It's a beautful building, with that wonderful down-at-heal cool coffee house décor, great coffee, great music, and an interesting mix of clientelle. It has internet access.

However, as I discovered to my horror, the Internet access is not free. Unfortunately, I'd already got my coffee, before I found this out, so in a move that frankly goes against any sort of religion I might adhere to, I (gulp) paid for Internet access.

Yikes!

Happy Ending
My time run out on the paid service, I find that moving to the outside tables at the front, I can pick up someone's wireless network. What good neighbours! (or neighbors).

Meanwhile, Back In The World Of Radio Broadcasting...
Oh yeah, the radio show I did this morning went well, at least as far as the listeners were concerned. Behind the scenes, however, the technology poltergeists were messsing with every bit of equipment in the studio. Gits.

I did the 9am-noon show, and as ever, made it to the studio, just in time to go on air. Luckily I'm always armed with half a dozen CDs to get me started, so there was no break in the music.

Well, OK, there was... but that was about an hour and a half into the show, when yours truly was so engrossed in chatting to a fellow broadcaster, that I totally missed the end of what I was playing.

Amongst the calls from listeners, someone requested John Coltrane's, "A Love Supreme", and had the audacity to ask, "is there a live DJ in the studio?". I resisted giving him the usual Public Radio Broadcaster lecture that we're not DJ's we're "hosts" or "broadcasters", because frankly, this morning, I was so out of it, was more DJ than knowledgeable host.

My suspicion is that I'd accidentally picked up a decaffienated coffee at 7-Eleven.

My espresso machine started leaking. Yes, a trauma for the middle-class of worrying proportions. It would randomly switch between making espresso just fine, and making espresso whilst pissing water from all around the coffee-holding bit.

The obvious implications of this, are that it ran the risk of watering down my European weapons-grade espresso. Zut alors!

The movie of this will be called, "Nightmare on Pearl St", and star Robert Englund as the spirit of a long dead but insane coffee house barista, haunting the kitchens of Platte Park, terrorising middle-class folk with weakened coffee, poor milk foam and coffee grounds in their drinks.

After some coaxing from friends, that I wouldn't get thrown out of the store for trying to return a nine-month old purchase, I returned to where I had bought the espresso machine, complete with most of the attachments, and a receipt.

They were happy for me to take another of the same model, however, after a bit of soul-searching, I figured that if I spent a little bit more (less than $100, then minus another 20%), I could get a much better machine. So I got an upgrade.

The new machine is the shape of "proper" (ie. damn expensive) espresso machines, and much better constructed than the two budget models I've owned previously. It came with more attachments than J-Lo has had, and a free tin of Illy coffee.

Open closer inspection, the free coffee was a tin of what can best be described as "pods". One of the attachements for the machine, is a second "coffee holder" that is specifically designed for these pods.

Now, I'm kinda old-skool with my espresso. I like using tins of coffee and/or actual beans, so pre-measured pods are witchcraft, as far as I'm concerned. However, free coffee is free coffee, and it's a good brand.

So I spent yesterday morning, experimenting with my new machine and my regular espresso coffee (Lavazza Gold - which despite sounding like a hispanic oldies radio station is actually very good Italian espresso). The thing with espresso machines, and making good lattés, is that you have to learn the idiosyncrasies of each machine, and (said in a Yoda voice), "become one with the espresso machine, you must."

Happy that I'd achieved Jedi powers over my new machine, and not turned to the decaffeinated side of The Force, this morning I ventured into the new and scary world of pods. I say scary, because I have this real aversion to systems that have that Microsoft approach of, "we'll do everything for you, we know what choices you want, you just sit there like a good consumer and let us do it, and anyway, you can't alter what we're doing".

So, to make my usual two-shot latté, I needed to use two pods, and do the thing in two stages. The resultant faff involved with removing stuck pods from the top of the machine, and setting up for the second (brief) shot, didn't win me over. All the time, I was thinking, "Given that I've never seen these pods in any store - and certainly not at any US supermarket, just how expensive are they going to be?". I had visions of having order them online, and them arriving in a Harrods delivery van, all the way from Europe.

Nah, I think I'll still with my regular espresso. Whilst I'm supping that, I might start work on another coffee-related horror film screenplay. This one would be about evil alien-controlled coffee companies, trying to take over the minds and coffee buying habits of people. Working title: "Invasion Of The Pod People"

In case you were wondering, I've not posted on DMfM for while for two reasons:

1. I've been very busy with the day job, the radio, and other worries.

2. MovableType was failing to post new articles.

I've now resolved item 2. I've also done my taxes (thank Glod for e-filing). So now I only have about 299 other chores.

One of these is dealing with the daily torrent of comment spam. The problem with that, is that even if I block comments from being posted on an article, these spamming bastards seem to almost be going straight to my mySQL database, and inserting comments. All of which has me longing for MovableType 3.0 - which allegedly will have a lot of anti-spam features.

I've come to the conclusion that there are two types of people in the world. Normal people, and people with, "the performance gene". I appear to be of the second type. When I say performance, I'm talking about any kind of public performance, on stage, radio, TV, film, or public speaking.

I came up with the idea of the Performance Gene, after a conversation with a blues singer I know. We had been discussing how non-performer friends just didn't understand why we (performers) need to get up there, and risk public humiliation. It was a relief, I can tell you, to find that I wasn't the only person to experience this.

The other PG factor was the resultant high, gained from a successful show. I remember driving home after my first solo radio show, feeling a buzz in my head that I'd not felt for several years. Then it hit me. The last time I'd felt like that was after performing on stage (in plays) back in the UK.

And so, like some tragic fantasy figure, I and other PG folk are doomed to wander the Earth, looking for our next hit.

Does this lump us in the same category as all those sad-sack reality TV contestants? I 'd like to think not. I'd like to think that musicians, broadcasters, writers and actors do what they do, because they it's in their blood, because they have to do it, because on-stage is where they feel they belong.

Reality TV contestants, on the other hand, seem to be there purely for the fame aspect, for a hit of instant notoriety. It's not something they feel in the blood, it's just wanting attention.

I'm not saying that performers don't want fame, but to a large extent it's not all about fame, it's about feeling you're doing what you're good at, and making others (your audience) feel good too.

Perhaps wanting to please an audience has some Freudian subtext, but it's not something that one thinks about, when on stage/on air. The audience, however, also presents one of the down-sides to being a performer, namely, hypersensitivity.

Now there are some of you, who know me offline, who might laugh at the concept of me being associated with sensitivity, but it's true. When you're performing, you become hypersensitive to criticism - any criticism, however, unreasonable it might be, however incorrect it might be.

As I've said, I've talked with other performers (a blues singer, a jazz singer, and other radio broadcasters) and to a man (or woman) when we're "on stage" we are all way more over-sensitive than we would be in "real live".

Personally, I've only had one really abusive phone call whilst I was on air. Whilst it threw me for a while, I was lucky enough to have another broadcaster there, who hung out with me for the rest of my (late-night) show, as he knew just how over-sensitive we all are whilst performing.

My blues singing acquaintance once had comments along the lines of, "who does she think she's kidding, acting like she's raunchy and sexy at her age?" that caused her to stay in her house for three weeks, so much so that an army of friends had to go around to persuade her that she was right to ever go back on stage.

Incidentally, if Etta James can do the raunchy thing on stage at 70, then this lass (who's about my age) sure isn't too old. Besides which, I rather think the point is that raunchiness is all part of the (female) blues singing tradition.

By the way, the headline for this piece, comes from the light bulb joke, "How many actors does it take to change a light bulb?". The answer is, 10. One to change the light bulb, and nine to say, "that could have been me up there!".

OK, so in summary, I guess I'm saying that there are some of us who are doomed by our very DNA to get up in public and make fools of ourselves. Also, that it's not always about achieving fame, it's about doing what you're good at, and that it's likely that even Ray Liotta and James Gandolfini worry about what people think of them.

The difference between them and me, is that they could have you wacked.