Party On

IN DEEP: Another night, another concert. This go 'round, CJ and Christian saw Deep Purple at the Paramount Theatre. I took them to a light rail station not too far from our place, and they painlessly caught the train downtown. (There's hardly anywhere to park by the Paramount any more, making attending shows there a bit of a logistical nightmare if you're trying to drive.)

In September 2019, Deep Purple embarked on their The Long Goodbye tour, which includes over 25 different dates across the continental United States, with Joyous Wolf, a new rock band from Los Angeles, as support. Deep Purple are best known for their early 1970s efforts such as Deep Purple In Rock and Machine Head. Because of the fact that the band is nearing the end of their career, they chose to name their current tour The Long Goodbye Tour (though it won't necessarily be Deep Purple's final tour). On September 11th, 2019, Deep Purple made a tour stop at Seattle, Washington's Paramount Theatre.

Joyous Wolf, the opener, turned out to be a lot less compelling live than their studio material implies. Throughout their hour-long performance, the band had a terrible mix, with the vocals being buried near the back of the mix (thus making the lyrics unintelligible). The singer repeatedly begged the audience to stand up and applaud him, almost bringing to mind politician Jeb Bush's infamous "please clap" blunder, where he also demanded an unenthusiastic audience applaud him.

Deep Purple's setlist at the Paramount Theatre was identical to that of the previous night's setlist at Portland, Oregon's Keller Auditorium. Deep Purple opened with "Highway Star", the first song on their 1972 best-selling LP Machine Head. Of the band's discography, Machine Head had the most songs on the setlist, with 5 different songs from Machine Head making their way onto the set list (visible here). Most of the setlist was from the band's 1970s material, though there were certain songs from later albums (such as the title track from 1984's Perfect Strangers, or Time for Bedlam from inFinite). After performing Space Truckin' and Smoke on the Water (the band's two biggest hits), Deep Purple left the stage, only to return to play the last two songs of the set as their encore.

Overall, Deep Purple put on a good show, although their age is starting to show, with a noticeable lack of energy during certain songs on the set. I was glad to catch them on what will likely be their last tour.

One thing that CJ didn't mention is that he and Christian had great seats on the main floor, with a good view. However, there was a group behind them that apparently wanted to have a loud, non-stop conversation and didn't realize or care that they were at a Deep Purple concert. Christian noticed that a few other people had abandoned their seats and gone up and stood in the aisle near the stage, so that's what he and CJ did, too.

Speaking of concerts, here are a few photos Christian snapped at the Iron Maiden show a few nights ago.

BAKED: It occurs to me that I haven't posted anything about the last three or so cakes that we've made for Birthday Dreams, one of our family's favorite non-profits. That being the case, I asked Annabelle for a little write up about a tasty projected we put the icing on yesterday.

My family enjoys baking and decorating many cakes, and we continue to do so rather frequently so we can donate custom made birthday cakes to the organization Birthday Dreams, who provide parties and gifts for homeless children and teenagers in shelters across the Seattle area. The most recent cake we donated was a gaming themed cake for a 13-year-old, which we were happy to provide due to our interest in the theme.

We started by baking the requested chocolate cake and adding a chocolate buttercream filling and mini chocolate chips between the layers, coating the outside in a white buttercream for later painting. We sculpted three controller shapes out of Rice Krispies treats – two XBOX controllers and one PlayStation controller – and covered those in the same chocolate buttercream from before. The controllers were covered in black fondant and buttons made from a mixture of modelling chocolate and different sprinkles and candies. We also made a number 13 out of the same modelling chocolate (with a duplicate just in case the first one broke) to place on top of the cake. We used a sugar sheet to cut out the words “Level Up” and the 13-year-old's name. 

The cake itself was air-brushed silver and green, to match the main colors of an XBOX console. We lined the bottom of the cake with green sugar pearls for a clean-looking finish.

Photo above is of the finished cake, with teen's name altered to preserve anonymity.

This cake was actually super straightforward compared to many we've done. The 'trickiest' part was crafting the game controllers. Specifically, the tiny buttons on the controllers, with tiny letters on them.

We ended up making letters out of jimmies and/or cutting them out of candy, like the yellow Now and Later, below, into shapes.

I was thinking about our "caking" this morning, and it occurred to me that by providing birthday cakes to deserving, disadvantaged youth, we have an opportunity to partake in an excellent educational and life-skills building project. The process requires communicating with the organizer/customer(s), reading and following directions (both the cake request and the recipe(s) we'll be using). Art design is involved, which also involves math/engineering (how are we going to support this weight or make sure something stays erected?). It requires organization (sequencing steps is so important), and there are time sensitive benchmarks and hard deadlines that need to be met throughout the process. There are almost always tense moments, when things don't go as planned, which gives us a chance to work on the importance of having contingencies and being flexible. 

In the end, we always do a debriefing. What went well? What did we learn? What could we do better next time? 

An aside: When Annabelle called the Birthday Dreams' office yesterday to ask about a detail regarding the cake, an administrator asked if she and CJ would make a cake for the organization's annual gala in October. Of course, she said, "Yes!"