I don't know why but I get a kick out of this google translator tool.

From my new musical Fairfax, I typed in the lyrics for the song Keeper of the Flame (you can hear it over at the Fairfax site: hughhart.com/fairfax)
Here's how the lines came out after getting translated into Italian, then to German, and back to English:

View from the window
Roller blind
Keeping debris
See what you locate
There is a bird cake
You want to use your name
Do you have to dig into the situation
A little 'more
The guardians of the flame

Open floodgate
Tear off the ground
Reveal damage
Lift the hinges off the door
They feel a lot cheaper
They want to know who to blame
They would practice a bit better
For the guardians of the flame

Bathe my bitter heart
Break me in two
Shine your iight shaken
Show me
Apologies
I will correct
To help you

They want to be beside her
They want to stay in the game
You should burn a bit more brighter
For the guardians of the flame
About the level of fruit
She's shivering in the rain
Take a little of my fire
Oh yeah
Keeper of the flame

Old Country Music Pals. . .

People from the Old Country who remember me as Hugh the Rocker keep tracking me down on Facebook. Here's a photograph sent to me by graphic design guy Shelly Howard. He designed The ODD logo which I always thought was very sharp, clean and catchy. The baby-faced guy I'm standing next to, Phil Bimstein, went on to become a Colorado politician! ?

I've also heard from the guy who used to do sound for The Odd, lighting dude Jody Durham and former ODD drummer Brad Canady. It all calls up memories of really cold winters and some super-fun gigs.

Gehry in Las Vegas

Recovering from a wild night and day in Las Vegas courtesy of L.A. Weekly, which sent me there to review CityCenter, a new batch of futuristic hotel towers, and Frank Gehry's new building. Wildness not from gambling -- I brought four whole quarters into the casino only to find out they don't take actual coins -- but from the architecture.

I took this picture of the Gehry building, on behalf of Alzheimers patients a few miles north of the Strip, which was put together via GPS-embedded pieces maseter-minded via computer by engineers in Germany.

Had thanksgiving dinner tonight with cousins at an excellent at a Santa Monica restaurant called Cachettes: turkey, creamed corn, sausage and mushroom stuffing and pumpking pie

My Former Band Cataloged in The Chicago Music Scene Book

My Vaudeville-meets-rock band Huge Hart gets a little ink in November with the release of The Chicago Music Scene by Dean Milano. They're doing book signings, concerts and stuff back in the Old Country pegged to the book's Nov. 7 release date.

Another of my bands, The ODD, was invited to be part of the You Weren't There documentary covering Chicago's punk scene, except I'm a moron and never got around to sending the filmmakers archival video of the band.

To honor the film's completion, there's going to be a reunion concert November 24 at Chicago's Portage Theater with musicians I used to play clubs with who called themselves Tutu and the Pirates. Lead singer's stage name: Lil' Richie Speck.

John Mayer, Sherlock Holmes + North Carolina

I did my first video interviews recently. With normal interviews, I blather at length and go off on tangents. Verboten for video interviews. I learned: Don't interrupt the Talent and don't ask questions that can be answered with a "yes" or a "no." Instead, nod your head a lot. The videos, about robots and John Mayer got posted on Wired.com in September.

I also delivered my first college "lecture," which was tons of fun, at Otis College of Art and Design.

I finished the first go-round on a 16-song musical I'm calling "Fairfax."

And I got on a plane for the first time since 1999 and flew cross country to North Carolina for my mom's birthday.

My lovely sisters were there and I got to bang out a few tunes on the piano at the gi-normous solar-heated house on a hill owned by go-getter couple Candy and Shawn. My mom's friend, a brilliant mathemetician from Argentina named Norberto Kerzman, put me up for a couple of nights. Happy to report he makes a POWERFUL cup of coffee.

Meanwhile, Wired Magazine called me to do a piece on Sherlock Holmes with a fast turn-around so I spent the flight to and fro using one of those tiny little overhead lights as I pored over Arthur Conan Doyle's The Complete Sherlock Holmes, Vol. 1.

I made it through September intact. I don't know if "echinacea" is a bogus placebo or not, but I took a bottle East and survived all that stale airline air, so that's my ambiguous health tip for the day.

10 Giant Trucks Equal One TV Commercial

This oughta be one Helluva TV commercial - - walking the Wonder Dog in Studio City this morning, I came across a massive production-in-progress on one of the shady Leave It To Beaver streets west of Tujunga known as Colfax Meadows.

I counted at least 10 big white trucks parked curbside, production assistants racing around with clipboards and walkie talkies, camera operators. So I asked the off-duty cops doubling as security guards what they were shooting?

Chicken. Perdue's Chicken commercial for TV.

30 seconds on television. I'm keeping an eye out. This should be some damn good looking chickens.

Comic-Con, Amtrak and Rag Dolls

Finally made it down to San Diego for Comic-Con last Friday. I caught the Amtrak in Burbank, lost my wifi connection, but stared out the window and got my wits about me to some extent. My favorite stop: San Juan Capistrano. It looks like something out of a tropical fairy tale.

In San Diego I hopped on the back of a pedicab pedaled by a Serbian refugee with huge calves who took me from the train station to the Convention Center.

Inside, I listened to Robert Downey Jr. and other actors talk about their movies. On the trolley ride back to the station, I saw "Wonder Woman" crowding into the sweaty, crowded car.

Next time: hotel!