A flyer I churned out for our Halloween performance.
Happy Halloween!
Alacran Court invited “The Rubber Band” back to play for their annual Halloween block party. This year we had a band of middle-schoolers, called “Dencity”, open for us. Dencity played through a set of five songs – including a couple of originals – before we took the stage. I wish I had their guts back when I was their age. It took me another 30+ years to gain the courage, I guess. Better late than never. We played for an hour before retreating to our respective halloween festivities.
I just finished walking in the 2025 ZERO Prostate Cancer Walk at Liberty Station in Point Loma. Some of my closest friends and family joined me for a leisurely early morning stroll with several hundred other survivors, patients, families, and supporters. This year we raised just over $1000 dollars. Thank you so much for your support.
ZERO reached out to me ( literally ) the day before the event and asked if I would speak. I reluctantly agreed, prepared a speech, and was more than a little relieved that, in the chaos, the organizers never invited me up to the microphone.
Sometimes things sound better on paper, anyway – especially when you’re vying for the attention of a half-awake crowd under the San Diego flight path, with jets doing their best to drown you out.
So, here’s what I was going to say…
Hi. My name is Scott.
I’m a prostate cancer survivor.
This is my fifth walk.
I missed my first one in 2019 because I was still reeling from my diagnosis and all the awesome decisions that go with it ….
Decisions like….
Do I tell my kids?
My family?
My friends?
The answer for me was yes.
And I’m glad I did because they were, have been, and continue to be my own little support group.
A lot of them are here today —-
——-aaaaaaaand I squeezed donations out of the ones who couldn’t be.
For such a common cancer, prostate cancer isn’t really talked about much. And I get it – sure – the prostate just isn’t as sexy to talk about as boobs.
And …. while I see sports teams of every shape and form wearing pink every October, blue is typically just an afterthought – like an accent color on a uniform.
That’s not to diminish any other cancer – we all have our battles to fight, right? But the fact is : guys don’t like talking about their prostates. All of the accessories attached to the prostate are fair game – sure, but problems and worries and cancer? Hell, no.
That’s why I appreciate ZERO and this walk and their mission to keep men informed. ZERO gives a voice to something that no one wants to talk about.
After my diagnosis I remember spending a lot of time on Google playing doctor
——-and a lot of time with my doctor telling me to stay off of Google.
The problem with Google is that if you tell it you have a papercut? Google will have you wrapping a tourniquet around your finger and racing to the emergency room for a blood infusion.
And then there’s ZERO – a concise, informative mecca of information.
If you haven’t visited in a while, you should. There’s information for those who have been newly diagnosed, caregivers – and survivors, like me.
Surviving is part of the battle, too – and I mean any cancer, not just prostate cancer.
Diagnosis and treatment is just part of the battle.
After all that shit, you still gotta’ survive. And, I don’t mean just live – I mean you gotta sort out what the hell just happened to you, pick up the pieces, glue em’ all back together, and try and make something beautiful out of the mess it left behind.
When I was diagnosed years ago no one could tell me, honestly, if I’d be alright – and I don’t think I would have believed them anyway.
I’m still working on it – but, yeah, I think I’ll be okay.
But only because of the support I’ve had from
——-my family
My friends.
My doctors.
——-and organizations like ZERO.
Thank you.
If you want to read more about my prostate cancer journey I’ve posted ( and illustrated it ) here on DrawnAndCoded.
I can’t emphasize enough how I wouldn’t be here today without the love and support of so many people.
Thanks again.
Live live. Stay Healthy. And take care of yourselves out there.
The Rubber Band was invited to play at Rancho Bernardo’s annual Oktoberfest festival at Webb Park on October 11th. We opened for Par Avion, an instrumental surf music-inspired band from Santa Monica, to a crowd of 900 beer aficionados.
The local paper and ( no joke ) Union Tribune picked up on the event, and ran articles in which we were published. As our lead vocalist announced to the crowd ( jokingly ), “Yeah, we’re kind of a big thing.” We almost laughed him off the stage.
The Chieftain interviewed us. Other local papers, including The San Diego Union Tribune, re-published the article. My co-workers at Twin Peaks Center found out and surprised me with my own copy in the main conference room.
Would we do it again? Absolutely. However, we couldn’t have done it without the help of a lot of people…
Thank you Eric and John from San Diego Event Pros for making us sound so good. You guys are awesome!
A “quick and dirty” flyer I created for RBHS homecoming.
I went to my first homecoming in 31 years last night – sort of. My daughter, Ashley, is in ASB at Rancho Bernardo High School. About two weeks ago she and her friend, Lizzie were brainstorming a tailgate party for the upcoming homecoming game. When asked about a live band, Lizzie suggested – The Rubber Band.
RBHS Homecoming Tailgate Set One
We played for about an hour over two sets. We even got the principal of RBHS to join us for a cover of “I Wanna Be Sedated”, by the Ramones.
The Rubber Band played for the neighbors’ of Chieftain Court at their Labor Day block party this weekend. We kicked it off with a set of songs from 60’s through early 2000’s. In a little over a month ( October 11th ) we’ll be playing at Rancho Beer-nardo for Oktoberfest, so it was good to get in some stage time.
John Hatcher, our bassist, mastered the audio, combined it with with video we captured using a GoPro, and posted it on our new Rubber Band YouTube Channel. Here is just a few of the videos….
And that’s all, folks! Thank you, as always, for your continued support. And….if you could subscribe to our YouTube channel, that’d be great …..m’kay.
The Rubber Band played at yet another block party on June 13th to celebrate the end of school and the start of summer break. We played for about an hour-and-a-half, running through about twenty songs.
Good photographs were few and far in-between this go around. I stole this one from a GoPro we clipped onto the speaker stand.
I think everyone had a good time. The only complaint was a lack of water bottles – but that’s what happens when six guys plan a party. Beer? Plenty. Water bottles? None.
My oldest daughter, Ashley, and I.
The band is going to take a much needed break for the next two weeks before hitting it hard for our upcoming gig at Rancho Bernardo’s upcoming Oktoberfest celebration, “Rancho Beer-nardo”.
What does J.T.P. stand for? I got a different answer every time I asked…
My friend, John, reached out to me and asked if I’d be interested in drawing him a logo for his band, J.T.P. As luck would have it they were all in town and planned on having a series of rehersals in John’s living room.
“Mind if I stop by to listen and get some ideas?”, I asked him.
He agreed.
John had been sending me J.T.P.’s recordings for a while and I liked their covers. He told me that they have been playing together since attending college at The University of Georgia in the 90’s.
Now spread out across the United States, they rely heavly on Apple’s GarageBand, a music editing application, to “knit” together their various tracks ( guitar, bass, vocals, etc… )
At their rehearsal I listened, sketched, and took some pictures.
Here they are : Steve Posner, John Hatcher, Paul Dye, and Brad Anderson
If you’d like to listen to some of the J.T.P.’s music, you can find it on YouTube at @JohnnyHitsTheGroove.
Lastly, here are some of my quick sketches. All hand drawn on a 5×7 notepad with a mechanical pencil.
For the end product I went with vector graphics using Inkscape, prefering a format would be sharp, crisp, and could be easily resized. Vector graphics take me longer to produce, but they have a certain durability and reusability that I prefer over hand drawn stuff.
A quick and dirty concert flyer, but everyone seemed to like it.
Back to the Sac’ …. well, that’s what I wanted to call The Rubber Band’s return to Alacran Court.
It’s a cul-de-sac. We’re returning. Can I be any more clear?
The guys, however, thought that there were some childish innuendos in the name. Needless to say I got vetoed and we decided to go with the more mundane “Block Party”, instead. March 30th will always be remembered as the “Back to the Sac’” show to me, though.
Here is the highlight reel.
Were we perfect? Far from it.
Did we have fun? Oh, yes.
Did the crowd have fun? Yes, all three of them did.
My friend, Ben Good, gave me this idea for a comic – or, rather – his van did!
Teaching
I’ve been assisting in art class at Rancho Bernardo High School as an “Artist in Residence” and loving it. I really enjoy working with the students and am blown away by their talent. Thirty years ago I was in their shoes, taking art at a different high school in a different time. It might surprise you, but I didn’t have a great experience in my art class. It would be twenty years later before I’d take another. Part of me wants to make sure that these students have a better experience than I did. And, if that means attempting awkward poses for their figure drawing course, so be it. Art is a serious thing, but it should never be taken too seriously.
While RBHS was out on “Ski Week” ( a one week holiday bookended by President’s Day ) I got the opportunity to substitute for middle school English at Classical Academies in Escondido for a few days. Middle schoolers are squirrel-ly counterparts to their older high school peers, for sure – but I enjoyed my time there, too.
The path to teaching takes time and money, however. For starters, I’m looking at one year of coursework and another year of unpaid student teaching. Furthermore, Computer Science isn’t an “approved” subject matter in California – not yet anyway. I would need to pass a CSET, an exam proving my expertise in an “approved” field, to teach Middle School and above. Yes, Art is an approved field, and I am considering it amongst other things.
So, yeah. I guess I want to teach…
Still in Remission
For those of you who have been following my cancer story, I am still in remission. I just had my quarterly bloodwork, and there is still no evidence of disease. That’s not to say I don’t think about it a lot. The boogeyman is always there, and the boogeyman is me. When I was undergoing treatment, I drew a lot as an escape. Five years since my surgery, it’s still an escape…
Like it? You can wear it, too. I have it available as a t-shirt on TeePublic.
Music
Now that I’ve been playing in a band, music has become yet another outlet for me. I’ve been posting some questionable poetry on Drawn And Coded for a while, but what I haven’t shared is that I have also been writing songs. Up until recently the lyrics always came easier than the melodies. Suno, an AI music generation service which I wrote about in my last post, helped me bridge that gap. Suno is not perfect, but if I feed it my lyrics along with details on how I want them to sound, it’ll create a complete song. If I refine my criteria ( for example, if I change the timing, the key, the vocal style ), Suno will eventually produce something reasonably close to what I want.
After playing with Suno enough I realized that I wanted to accompany myself playing my own songs, or basically “cover” them. Before artificial intelligence this statement would have sounded gibberish, but now? Not so much, Unfortunately, whereas Suno can create a remarkably realistic and good sounding song, it’s horrible at transcription. I’ve yet to find a tool that does an adequate job of automating the process of converting audible music to sheet music, so I did it manually. It was a painstaking laborious process that resulted in many changes to what Suno had originally created : the chord progression, timing, structure, lyrics, and intonations all had to be changed to make it playable and singable by ( gasp! ) me.
My first song, “Survive”
This is my first song. I call it, “Survive”. It’s rough. It’s not perfect. But it’s mine, and I am proud of it…
Thank you Ben Good and John Hatcher for your help. Also, thank you to my stepfather, Don, who used to sing and play guitar every night before bed when I was growing up. Don, I don’t think you ever realized how much of an impression you made on me.
Here are the lyrics, if you’re interested…
Survive
[Intro] Why do you have to be there? And come back into my life. Why can’t you just stay sealed up? Where you cannot traum-a-tize.
[Verse] You hurt me, burned me, you scarred me deep. You left me all for dead. A horrible void you left for me. I need you outta’ my head.
[Pre-Chorus] From the outside all is normal. No evidence of disease. But my mind still wanders back to you. Distracted and un-eased.
[Chorus] I will NOT give into you. I will NOT sat-is-fy, I will take you to the grave with me. At best it will be a tie.
[Verse] There are nights where I’m not sleepin’… ‘Cause of what you did to me. Thinkin’ of what mighta’ been… …and of what still could be.
I’ve found myself in re-tro-spect. In this vacuum you left behind. Why can’t you let me live my life? Free from you. Dig-ni-fied.
[Chorus] I will NOT give into you. I will not sat-is-fy. I will find myself! You will see. I just need to try.
[Bridge] I’m not the same I was before I don’t think I’ll ever be. I’ve picked up the pieces you left behind. And made myself a better me.
[Outro] I will NOT give into you. I will not sat-is-fy. I’ve found myself no thanks to you. It’s time to say good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye.
The Rubber Band
Meanwhile, the “Dad Band” that Shawn Burgwald and I started over two years ago is still going strong. Some Dads have left, and others have joined. The current roster is Shawn Burgwald ( Lead Guitar ), John Hatcher ( Bass ), Kenn Matthews ( Vocals ), Colin Young ( Drums ), Aaron Pipkin ( Keyboard / Guitar ), and Me ( Rhythm Guitar / Backup Vocals ). We’ve been playing together regularly and have even “broken out of the garage” and played live a handful of times now. Kenn Matthews is our lead singer, but occasionally I get a chance to stretch my vocal chords. Here we are at a practice a couple of weeks ago…
After 25 years of corporate software development I am trying something different.
I just received an email from Rancho Bernardo High School confirming that I am eligible to start work as a part-time assistant art teacher. The opportunity caught me by surprise and I owe a debt of gratitude to my friends and neighbors for recommending me for the role, and their ongoing encouragement. The position is only through June, but will hopefully give me a taste of the classroom.
I also volunteered for Encorps, a non-profit organization that helps STEM professionals get into the classroom and, eventually, credentialed. Over ten weeks I will volunteer as a computer science instructor in underprivileged schools once a week.
Why am I doing this?
I want to teach, but I’d like to “test the waters” first. Originally, my plan was to substitute teach, but my applications went largely unnoticed. This way, however? It’s better. I get to teach kids what I love – Art and Programming – and see if the grass truly is greener on the other side of the fence, at least for me.
Holy Cr@p, Teenagers
Ashley takes after many women in my family. Like my Vavoa, however, it’s all about finding the right approach. For my Vavoa it was See’s Candy. For Ashley? Just give it time 😉
I now am the proud father of two …. teenagers. Ashley is now 15. Kaylee is now 13. Being a guy, it’s amusing to experience how the teenage years play out for my two girls. To all the girls I knew when I was a teenager, you had me completely fooled! I thought you had everything figured out the entire time I was tripping over my own hormones and treading water in an ocean of social awkwardness. Ha! I know better now!
Anyhoo, I drew Ashley a comic on the eve of her 15th birthday. She’s notorious for being difficult to shop for. Her sister, Kaylee, however, is not. I hope I did a good job of conveying that in the comic.
Suno – A Generative AI Music Service
I strongly believe that Generative AI is going to dramatically change how music is created. I only hope it’ll be for the better.
If you haven’t tried out AI by now, you should. I’ll admit, I was scared of it first, but I am also finding it to be an amazing tool.
About a month ago my friend, Ben Good, introduced me to Suno, a generative AI music service. First, he showed me how he could provide Suno a “theme” ( i.e. “I want a happy summertime song about driving along the beach and enjoying the sun” ) and a “style” ( i.e., “American Folk” ) and it would generate a song complete with vocals and a backing track. Then, as a gag, he fed Suno lyrics – in this case a random wikipedia page – to show me that Suno could make a song out of just about any source material. You haven’t truly rocked out until you’ve rocked out to Wikipedia, by the way.
I was hooked ( Ben already was ). I bought a subscription and started feeding it some song lyrics that I had been working on. Low and behold! Suno generated a song. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start. A huge start, honestly. Just hearing my lyrics sung to a backing track got my creative juices flowing.
Since then Ben and I have discovered you can explicitly tell Suno through a prompt what exactly you want your song to sound like ( baritone, edgy, acoustic, heavy metal, twangy, emotional, simple melody, etc …) as well as specify the structure of the song ( verse, chorus, intro, solo, etc … ). The end result? Still not exactly what I was looking for – but close enough.
Here’s the coolest part if you can play an instrument and have a decent voice ( cough, cough – me ). Suno also allows you to download what’s called “stem” files for any song it generates for you. One stem file is the vocals. The other stem file is the music track. Then, you can take the stem files, feed them into a transcription service, generate the sheet music for your song, and learn to play it. Of course, you can generate them by hand – I mean ear, too, it just takes a little longer.
So what happens next?
Well, it doesn’t take too much effort to see the music industry is fighting back. Their claim is that Suno has “trained” its AI model on existing songs. I know for a fact that I heard inklings of well-known artists’ voices in the songs that it generated for me. However, in my very humble opinion? The train has left the station and is roaring along at breakneck speed. I, personally, don’t think they can stop it.
As for me? It’s an enormous win. Suno is helping me create music – my music – music that might have never been heard, otherwise. And with the stem files? I plan on learning to play and sing it, too. Ben and I are currently collaborating on an album. I’ll post here soon about it!
Vandervort Realty has a website
Last, but certainly not least – I finally got around to launching a website for Jodie’s brokerage, Vandervort Realty! You can see it here. Jodie is still very much into the sales side, but has been expanding more and more into property management as well. If you have any questions regarding buying or selling a home, or if you need help with a rental, feel free to use the “Contact Us” page – mainly because I haven’t tested it yet. ( Just kidding, I have ).
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading, people, I hope to post again soon. In the meantime? Go create … and….
drawnandcoded.com 
