Yes. You knew I was going to fall back on the self-important cliché of writing a top 10 year end list. The whole concept of a blog is unavoidably self-important to begin with, so it was inevitable.
I'm going with top 10 albums of the year, because this is did start out as a blog about music, and albums are far more important to me than individual songs. So, for anyone who cares enough to read, here it comes. Disclaimer: The order of the list, while I did put some thought into it, does have a degree of the arbitrary behind it. The fact that these 10 albums made the list says something about them regardless of their rank.
10) "The Incident" by Porcupine Tree. I really don't know if there's much to say about this album, because if you don't know PT's music, it's kind of tough to describe. My advice, if you're at all curious (about any album on the list) would be to go fire up iTunes and listen to some of the 30 second song previews they offer to get a feel for what the album is like. This one is kind of haunted in the same way a band like Radiohead is, but with bigger guitars and more of a mainstream sound, even if the band is hardly considered mainstream. Hard to imagine that with a name like Porcupine Tree, I know. The CD I bought was a special edition with a 2nd CD that had four bonus tracks. The first CD consisted of one 51-minute song broken into smaller tracks, but when you listen they flow together like one long song. Pretty cool.
9) "The Whirlwind" by Transatlantic. Same 2-CD deal as mentioned above, but this time the first CD was one continuous 77-minute song broken up that flows together. Musically it was a great album, but I have some issues with the context of it. One member of the band appears to have had more influence on the creation of the album, both musically and in lyrical content, than I thought any member should have had if they really are an evenly-divided 4-person band. That took away some of the thrill for me.
8) "No Line on the Horizon" by U2. Not a really successful album as far as sales or singles, but musically challenging, and coming from a band that really hasn't put out an album that I haven't liked. Ever.
7) "Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King" by Dave Matthews Band. An album with obvious passion behind it since it's a tribute to a lost band member, and passion like that usually produces something impressive, at the least. A little more of a rock album for DMB, and maybe a bit more accessible than some of their other studio albums.
6) "Levitate" by Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers. This album perfectly demonstrates why Bruce H. isn't higher up on my favorite artists list. When he's at his best, he is jaw-droppingly great. He's capable of moments of true musical perfection. But he also has a few songs that come along and leave you thinking, "Wha....?" Couple of those clunkers on here. But also a couple of classics. At least as far as my iPod goes.
5) "Waking Up" by OneRepublic. The closest thing to a vapid pop album on my list. But it's got some darn catchy songs on it, several of which found their way into my head for days at a time. That has to count for something.
Now we're getting into the big guns of the year.
4) "21st Century Breakdown" by Green Day. I love the way Green Day has evolved over the past five years from being a 90s punk leftover that was almost out of gas into a fiercely political and creative rock band. This was a great album, with some of the catchiest rock songs and easily the angriest song I heard all year (East Jesus Nowhere), but I felt as powerful and complete as it was, it suffered in comparison to "American Idiot." Not because of the music or the songwriting, because I'd say both albums are pretty evenly matched in those departments -- I simply have stronger emotional ties to "American Idiot," and an abstract tie-breaker like that cannot be underestimated.
3) "Save Me, San Francisco" by Train. LOVE this album. Love the songs, love the playing, love the production, love the humor, love the tone. Much catchier than OneRepublic was, and if you want to talk about how much time the songs on an album spent playing in my head, this one wins the year no contest. It had been so many years since Train had been heard from. I was happy to get anything new at all from them this year, but to see them come back so strong was great.
2) "Chickenfoot." The roll down the windows album of the summer. I hope so much this winds up being an actual band that has some staying power instead of something a bunch of superstar buddies got together and did for kicks.
1) "Black Clouds and Silver Linings" by Dream Theater. Since I know there are a few people out there who read this blog (and it always surprises me when people mention that they do), I can't help feeling they must be a little perplexed by the devotion I have for this band that so few people have ever heard of before. Here we have an album that is only 6 songs long, but 5 of the songs are truly great and one of them is only really good. If you want more on this, go back to the post I wrote in June when it first came out.
HONORABLE MENTION:
- "Full Circle" by Creed
- "Snowfall on Judgment Day" by Redemption
- "The Resistance" by Muse
- "Paper Empire" by Better Than Ezra
- "A Positive Rage" by The Hold Steady
- "Working on a Dream" by Bruce Springsteen
- "So Many Roads" by Neal Morse
- "This is War" by 30 Seconds to Mars
And there you have my opinions on 2009's music, for what they are worth.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Does This Happen to Anyone Else?
I borrowed a book from my mother on Christmas Eve - Stephen King's latest literary cinder block "Under the Dome." Steve was probably the first author I was a fan of as an adult, if you can count 16 as being an adult, which is admittedly a stretch. Before I stumbled on an old paperback of his sitting on my parents' bookshelf, I had always been more about reading the book because the book looked interesting instead of reading the book because of who wrote it. I burned through a lot of S.K. through high school and college, and I do not discount the considerable influence he had on my writing during that time. Anyone who has read my 'ghost story' novel from this past summer would likely concur there are still traces of that influence present today.
I gave up on Steve over the past 5-10 years since he reached a point where a lot of what he was putting out just didn't seem all that interesting, and the suspension of disbelief required for the kind of hardcore fantasy premise he works within just became a bit much to swallow. Plus I'd found several other favorite authors I was more interested in keeping up with. Anyway. About a month ago I read a paperback of his I had lying around for a few years that I intended to read someday, "Cell," which I finally read while trying to accomplish my 2009 New Year's Resolution of reading every book in my house that I hadn't read yet. Incidentally - no. Didn't pull it off, but I did get to a lot of books I wouldn't have read otherwise so it wasn't a complete failure. But "Cell" was kind of interesting, so when Mom said she had "Under the Dome" I figured I'd give it a shot.
If you're unfamiliar with the premise, there's this invisible dome that suddenly appears cutting off this small New England town from the rest of the world, and by the 2nd day everything is heading down the Lord of the Flies road at a breakneck pace. For the record, if any smarty pants out there are congratulating themselves right now for noticing the similarity between this story and what happened to Springfield in "The Simpsons Movie," Steve writes in the author's note that he had been trying to write this book since before the Simpsons were even on TV. And trust me - the similarities end with the dome.
But. What I meant to get at three paragraphs back is that with all of my time off from school during winter break, I've been spending way more time than usual just reading. To the point where I've now read... let me check... 868 pages out of 1,074 in the space of five days. It's not a great book and too many of the characters fall back on too many of the clichés that SK writes with, but there's enough to keep me going, and it's not like there's anything else I really need to do these days anyway. So I've read myself to the point where I dream about the characters and the story, and start to think of some of them as real people that I know. But more than that, I've worked myself into a corner here where anytime I put the book down and step outside and rejoin the real world for a little bit, I find myself feeling really depressed and defeated because I expect to see the world falling to pieces all around me, since that's what's happening in the book. And I have to remind myself: No, just a story. No dome. No simmering anarchy, no wannabe despots trying to take over the community and killing anyone who gets in their way. Kind of like waking from a nightmare and taking a few minutes to remind yourself it was just a dream, but a lower grade of that.
This is something I seem to do a lot while I'm reading, and I've always suspected that whatever part of my brain is responsible for this writing need I have only exacerbates this. So seriously: am I the only person who does this, or do other people internalize the books they read far beyond reason?
I gave up on Steve over the past 5-10 years since he reached a point where a lot of what he was putting out just didn't seem all that interesting, and the suspension of disbelief required for the kind of hardcore fantasy premise he works within just became a bit much to swallow. Plus I'd found several other favorite authors I was more interested in keeping up with. Anyway. About a month ago I read a paperback of his I had lying around for a few years that I intended to read someday, "Cell," which I finally read while trying to accomplish my 2009 New Year's Resolution of reading every book in my house that I hadn't read yet. Incidentally - no. Didn't pull it off, but I did get to a lot of books I wouldn't have read otherwise so it wasn't a complete failure. But "Cell" was kind of interesting, so when Mom said she had "Under the Dome" I figured I'd give it a shot.
If you're unfamiliar with the premise, there's this invisible dome that suddenly appears cutting off this small New England town from the rest of the world, and by the 2nd day everything is heading down the Lord of the Flies road at a breakneck pace. For the record, if any smarty pants out there are congratulating themselves right now for noticing the similarity between this story and what happened to Springfield in "The Simpsons Movie," Steve writes in the author's note that he had been trying to write this book since before the Simpsons were even on TV. And trust me - the similarities end with the dome.
But. What I meant to get at three paragraphs back is that with all of my time off from school during winter break, I've been spending way more time than usual just reading. To the point where I've now read... let me check... 868 pages out of 1,074 in the space of five days. It's not a great book and too many of the characters fall back on too many of the clichés that SK writes with, but there's enough to keep me going, and it's not like there's anything else I really need to do these days anyway. So I've read myself to the point where I dream about the characters and the story, and start to think of some of them as real people that I know. But more than that, I've worked myself into a corner here where anytime I put the book down and step outside and rejoin the real world for a little bit, I find myself feeling really depressed and defeated because I expect to see the world falling to pieces all around me, since that's what's happening in the book. And I have to remind myself: No, just a story. No dome. No simmering anarchy, no wannabe despots trying to take over the community and killing anyone who gets in their way. Kind of like waking from a nightmare and taking a few minutes to remind yourself it was just a dream, but a lower grade of that.
This is something I seem to do a lot while I'm reading, and I've always suspected that whatever part of my brain is responsible for this writing need I have only exacerbates this. So seriously: am I the only person who does this, or do other people internalize the books they read far beyond reason?
Monday, December 21, 2009
Gift Cards and Infinity
Tomorrow is what is traditionally my favorite day of the school year -- the last day of school before winter break. Winter break is glorious, just because it's this time of year when a break is so appreciated. We get a measly 12 days off this year, but even that is cause for celebration.
But I like the day more for just the onset of vacation. Winter break begins with the class holiday party, the kids wearing their Santa hats and reindeer antler headbands, the office and the teachers' lounge being filled up with all kinds of treats, music playing all day long, and what is generally a happy, festive atmosphere. People exchange gifts and good wishes, and generally the day is full of positivity and people showing each other the kind of affection and appreciation that wouldn't be such a bad thing to see more frequently. I like spending a happy day with my students, having reached a point in the school year where we've been together long enough to have bonded, knowing that even though I'll be separated from them for those 12 days, I'll get them back again in January.
But there is another good thing about the last day before break: Gift Card Day.
If kids ever ask me what I'd like for Christmas, I don't even hesitate anymore, or offer up any kind of pretense: "Either get me a gift card or a Christmas tree ornament." My tree is thick with a garbage-pizza variety of ornaments collected over the years, and I always enjoy revisiting them when the season comes around. But gift cards are also pretty awesome.
You see, teachers view the collection of holiday gift cards as a litmus test of which students love them the most, and of course, of which teachers are the most universally loved in the school. If you can't crack $100 on a Christmas in a strong economy, you might as well look for another line of work 'cause you just ain't reachin' anyone.
Some tips out there for parents: $20 is the optimal amount; $10 is still respectable, though doesn't get you as far, and $25 is just a sign of someone trying too hard. $5? Please. Don't waste my time. And for the love of food, please do a little research before you buy. Don't assume we (and by "we" I mean all teachers) drink coffee. I don't. So don't screw me with a Caribou card that I'll probably just pass on to my sister, because it's not like you were buying her a gift now, was it? And it's not always great to get one from somewhere really specific, like "here's a gift card to a nice chain restaurant, but the nearest location is in Owatonna and it's only open on Thursday nights." Target always works. And Borders, for me, is the grail of the gift card. I'm in pretty good shape so far, since Gift Card Day is still tomorrow and my total for the year is already sitting at a respectable $55. (Once I break that $100 mark I'll be able to breathe a little easier.) And one of the coolest things I've gotten so far this year other than gift cards? A little metal gift-card sized box.... meant for storing gift cards. Hooray!!!!!
Disclaimer: Anyone who read the two previous paragraphs and took a single word of it seriously just does not get my sense of humor. If that's the case, you really need to find another blog to follow.
In all seriousness, it is the warmth and affection and companionship and appreciation everyone at school shows each other on that final day before break that I love the most. It makes me wish there were more days like that to soak up.
All right, moving on. The "Infinity" nod up in my post title refers to my 2009 Nanowrimo book. Remember how I won? Woo-hoo!! Anyway, the book is finally getting some circulation and feedback. My favorite bit of this so far came from today, when one of my students -- the first person from the intended age group, and actually someone who fell right into the target demographic I wrote for -- finished reading it. She did talk to me afterward with some enthusiasm for it and had some comments about it when she passed it along to another teacher -- my Life Coach -- that I wish I'd been there to hear.
Incidentally, anyone who would still like to read it and wouldn't mind reading it off a computer screen or printing it themselves should just let me know, and I'll send you a copy of the PDF. And for those people who've had copies of that PDF for a few weeks now, hey, FEEL FREE to let me know what you think / thought. The day will come soon when I start revising it for real, and the more opinions I can collect the more I'll have to think about.
But I like the day more for just the onset of vacation. Winter break begins with the class holiday party, the kids wearing their Santa hats and reindeer antler headbands, the office and the teachers' lounge being filled up with all kinds of treats, music playing all day long, and what is generally a happy, festive atmosphere. People exchange gifts and good wishes, and generally the day is full of positivity and people showing each other the kind of affection and appreciation that wouldn't be such a bad thing to see more frequently. I like spending a happy day with my students, having reached a point in the school year where we've been together long enough to have bonded, knowing that even though I'll be separated from them for those 12 days, I'll get them back again in January.
But there is another good thing about the last day before break: Gift Card Day.
If kids ever ask me what I'd like for Christmas, I don't even hesitate anymore, or offer up any kind of pretense: "Either get me a gift card or a Christmas tree ornament." My tree is thick with a garbage-pizza variety of ornaments collected over the years, and I always enjoy revisiting them when the season comes around. But gift cards are also pretty awesome.
You see, teachers view the collection of holiday gift cards as a litmus test of which students love them the most, and of course, of which teachers are the most universally loved in the school. If you can't crack $100 on a Christmas in a strong economy, you might as well look for another line of work 'cause you just ain't reachin' anyone.
Some tips out there for parents: $20 is the optimal amount; $10 is still respectable, though doesn't get you as far, and $25 is just a sign of someone trying too hard. $5? Please. Don't waste my time. And for the love of food, please do a little research before you buy. Don't assume we (and by "we" I mean all teachers) drink coffee. I don't. So don't screw me with a Caribou card that I'll probably just pass on to my sister, because it's not like you were buying her a gift now, was it? And it's not always great to get one from somewhere really specific, like "here's a gift card to a nice chain restaurant, but the nearest location is in Owatonna and it's only open on Thursday nights." Target always works. And Borders, for me, is the grail of the gift card. I'm in pretty good shape so far, since Gift Card Day is still tomorrow and my total for the year is already sitting at a respectable $55. (Once I break that $100 mark I'll be able to breathe a little easier.) And one of the coolest things I've gotten so far this year other than gift cards? A little metal gift-card sized box.... meant for storing gift cards. Hooray!!!!!
Disclaimer: Anyone who read the two previous paragraphs and took a single word of it seriously just does not get my sense of humor. If that's the case, you really need to find another blog to follow.
In all seriousness, it is the warmth and affection and companionship and appreciation everyone at school shows each other on that final day before break that I love the most. It makes me wish there were more days like that to soak up.
All right, moving on. The "Infinity" nod up in my post title refers to my 2009 Nanowrimo book. Remember how I won? Woo-hoo!! Anyway, the book is finally getting some circulation and feedback. My favorite bit of this so far came from today, when one of my students -- the first person from the intended age group, and actually someone who fell right into the target demographic I wrote for -- finished reading it. She did talk to me afterward with some enthusiasm for it and had some comments about it when she passed it along to another teacher -- my Life Coach -- that I wish I'd been there to hear.
Incidentally, anyone who would still like to read it and wouldn't mind reading it off a computer screen or printing it themselves should just let me know, and I'll send you a copy of the PDF. And for those people who've had copies of that PDF for a few weeks now, hey, FEEL FREE to let me know what you think / thought. The day will come soon when I start revising it for real, and the more opinions I can collect the more I'll have to think about.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Your Dose of Irony for the Day
Has anyone else ever noticed that the very same section of the parking lot that gets cordoned off when the Christmas trees go on sale in December is the exact same spot where the fireworks are sold five months earlier? Probably a good thing they don't occupy the same space at the same time. I'm jus' sayin'.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
In December
I apologize in advance for how random and disjointed today's post is going to read.
*December has been busy. There is some pressure at school when you see the date that report cards are to be sent home approaching on the calendar. And there is more pressure when you know you need to finish the unit you're on before winter break, because if you don't you'll be met by a roomful of blank stares if you try to pick up where you left off. Trust me - I've seen it.
But despite the pressure, December is one of my favorite months of school. I like the holidays circling everything that's going on, I like the initial landscape wipe of the first major snowfall and the way the kids light up in response to it. I like knowing that break is coming up really soon, even if this year it's going to be kind of short. I like being at a point in the year when I have had time to build relationships with my students, and to have a chance to bask in that mutual appreciation with them just as we all prepare to go our separate ways for the holidays.
I'd probably be enjoying the month a little more if I wasn't STILL shaking off the illness that took me down just before Thanksgiving. It's pretty much over with, but it seems like I'm going to have one of those coughs that just keeps on going and going, and then once you feel like you're finally over with it you surprise yourself with a quick, harsh hacking fit that ends with you packing a mouthful of nastiness that had been lining your lungs moments before. I won't miss this when it's finally over.
The first snow was a good strong one. I won't reflect on it too much, other than to say that the morning after the main snowfall saw a 14" snow drift right outside of my garage. And that RAV 4 of mine? Plowed right through it without a second thought. It was pretty sweet. Even better was my arrival home after a few more inches of snow had fallen and my driveway hadn't been plowed yet. I just drove right up and into the garage without hesitation. I'm feeling all kinds of RAV love these days, and even sprung for the expensive car wash when I went to fill the tank this morning.
Okay, enough blah blah blah. Two musical points to make today.
First of all, one of my favorite musical collaborations of 2009 has to be the duet between Rihanna and Shy Ronnie on the most recent SNL Digital Short. If you haven't seen the video, you really want to look it up.
Secondly, I'm working on a couple iTunes playlists these days. One will be my favorite 25 songs from the year, something I've done for the past five years or so. It makes a nice little musical time capsule to listen to occasionally. Don't worry - I'll be sharing it here when it's finished. Also I've put together a new archive list, made from songs in the library that I haven't played yet. This is mostly older stuff. It's always cool to dig out the older music and revisit what you've been missing for months or years. I highly recommend it.
And now I'll go back to waiting to hear about my first agency submission from my manuscript of this past summer... which is killing me with anticipation a little. I honestly don't expect they'll take me on as a client, but if they aren't, I'd sure like to know it so I can move to the next one on the list and start the whole agonizing process again.
*December has been busy. There is some pressure at school when you see the date that report cards are to be sent home approaching on the calendar. And there is more pressure when you know you need to finish the unit you're on before winter break, because if you don't you'll be met by a roomful of blank stares if you try to pick up where you left off. Trust me - I've seen it.
But despite the pressure, December is one of my favorite months of school. I like the holidays circling everything that's going on, I like the initial landscape wipe of the first major snowfall and the way the kids light up in response to it. I like knowing that break is coming up really soon, even if this year it's going to be kind of short. I like being at a point in the year when I have had time to build relationships with my students, and to have a chance to bask in that mutual appreciation with them just as we all prepare to go our separate ways for the holidays.
I'd probably be enjoying the month a little more if I wasn't STILL shaking off the illness that took me down just before Thanksgiving. It's pretty much over with, but it seems like I'm going to have one of those coughs that just keeps on going and going, and then once you feel like you're finally over with it you surprise yourself with a quick, harsh hacking fit that ends with you packing a mouthful of nastiness that had been lining your lungs moments before. I won't miss this when it's finally over.
The first snow was a good strong one. I won't reflect on it too much, other than to say that the morning after the main snowfall saw a 14" snow drift right outside of my garage. And that RAV 4 of mine? Plowed right through it without a second thought. It was pretty sweet. Even better was my arrival home after a few more inches of snow had fallen and my driveway hadn't been plowed yet. I just drove right up and into the garage without hesitation. I'm feeling all kinds of RAV love these days, and even sprung for the expensive car wash when I went to fill the tank this morning.
Okay, enough blah blah blah. Two musical points to make today.
First of all, one of my favorite musical collaborations of 2009 has to be the duet between Rihanna and Shy Ronnie on the most recent SNL Digital Short. If you haven't seen the video, you really want to look it up.
Secondly, I'm working on a couple iTunes playlists these days. One will be my favorite 25 songs from the year, something I've done for the past five years or so. It makes a nice little musical time capsule to listen to occasionally. Don't worry - I'll be sharing it here when it's finished. Also I've put together a new archive list, made from songs in the library that I haven't played yet. This is mostly older stuff. It's always cool to dig out the older music and revisit what you've been missing for months or years. I highly recommend it.
And now I'll go back to waiting to hear about my first agency submission from my manuscript of this past summer... which is killing me with anticipation a little. I honestly don't expect they'll take me on as a client, but if they aren't, I'd sure like to know it so I can move to the next one on the list and start the whole agonizing process again.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Thanksgiving
Right now, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, is when I feel thankful.
Thanksgiving Day? Not so much. I've been suffering through an uncharacteristically strong cold lately. Usually when I get sick it doesn't last long, but this one took a good week to slowly build up in my chest, and then my head, peaking in the days right before Thanksgiving. I'm sure there were several people at Thanksgiving dinner who would have been more comfortable had my violent cough and I stayed home for the day, or at least were happy for the peace and quiet that followed whenever we left the room. So even though dinner was great, Thanksgiving Day was not full of enjoyment for me this year. Still I was thankful it was only a bad cold, and I was still able to make it for dinner and spend the day with my family.
The Friday after was better. I spent the morning and afternoon switching between editing the new manuscript and taking power naps, one of which lasted a blessed three hours. I felt worlds better waking up from that one, and made it to the Friday Post-Thanksgiving party at my sister's house without having to show up as Scary Coughing Guy again. Tons more food, most of the same people, different dogs, shorter drive home for me. Instead of board games to keep the non-television watchers busy, one of my cousins and nephew #1 pooled their musical equipment in the basement for what has become a traditional open jam session of sorts. Not a lot of actual improvisational jamming going on (though Nephew #1 and I did have a quick bit of some cool guitar / drums 12 bar blues going), but just shuffling through the sheet music my cousin has collected during the 35 odd years of keeping his band together in some form. During the night we rotated through at least three guitarists, one bass player, three keyboardists, three drummers, and I think at least nine singers for what I think was close to three hours of playing music. It was a good time, even if it got really hot in the corner of the basement where the drumset was stashed. I think I sweated through my shirt and the shirts of the two people next to me. Friday I was thankful to be part of such a large an unusually close family.
Which brings us to Saturday. Today I sat here at the Mac and perused the rest of the manuscript, looking for any obvious edits and revisions that were needed. And even though the thing runs just over 200 pages in its final version (according to Microsoft Word), I managed to meet my ultimate goal: To write an entire book, from the first word of the story to the a solid clean-up revision, in less than a month. The whole thing took 28 days. Four weeks from beginning to end. And the thing of it is, after reading through it I can say that I'm very proud of how it turned out. So today I'm thankful that I completed that goal. Even if I almost feel like it doesn't really count since it happened so quickly. But it was a story I needed to tell, which is probably why it happened the way it did.
So having said that -- anyone who wants to read it, just give me a holler. Send me an e-mail if you have my address, or drop a note in my Facebook Inbox, now that I'm back on there occasionally (though I don't care as much about Bejeweled Blitz anymore, which is really for the best). If you're local and you want to wait for a printed copy to find its way to you, let me know so I can get your name on the list. If you'd rather I just sent you a PDF, I can do that too.
Thanksgiving Day? Not so much. I've been suffering through an uncharacteristically strong cold lately. Usually when I get sick it doesn't last long, but this one took a good week to slowly build up in my chest, and then my head, peaking in the days right before Thanksgiving. I'm sure there were several people at Thanksgiving dinner who would have been more comfortable had my violent cough and I stayed home for the day, or at least were happy for the peace and quiet that followed whenever we left the room. So even though dinner was great, Thanksgiving Day was not full of enjoyment for me this year. Still I was thankful it was only a bad cold, and I was still able to make it for dinner and spend the day with my family.
The Friday after was better. I spent the morning and afternoon switching between editing the new manuscript and taking power naps, one of which lasted a blessed three hours. I felt worlds better waking up from that one, and made it to the Friday Post-Thanksgiving party at my sister's house without having to show up as Scary Coughing Guy again. Tons more food, most of the same people, different dogs, shorter drive home for me. Instead of board games to keep the non-television watchers busy, one of my cousins and nephew #1 pooled their musical equipment in the basement for what has become a traditional open jam session of sorts. Not a lot of actual improvisational jamming going on (though Nephew #1 and I did have a quick bit of some cool guitar / drums 12 bar blues going), but just shuffling through the sheet music my cousin has collected during the 35 odd years of keeping his band together in some form. During the night we rotated through at least three guitarists, one bass player, three keyboardists, three drummers, and I think at least nine singers for what I think was close to three hours of playing music. It was a good time, even if it got really hot in the corner of the basement where the drumset was stashed. I think I sweated through my shirt and the shirts of the two people next to me. Friday I was thankful to be part of such a large an unusually close family.
Which brings us to Saturday. Today I sat here at the Mac and perused the rest of the manuscript, looking for any obvious edits and revisions that were needed. And even though the thing runs just over 200 pages in its final version (according to Microsoft Word), I managed to meet my ultimate goal: To write an entire book, from the first word of the story to the a solid clean-up revision, in less than a month. The whole thing took 28 days. Four weeks from beginning to end. And the thing of it is, after reading through it I can say that I'm very proud of how it turned out. So today I'm thankful that I completed that goal. Even if I almost feel like it doesn't really count since it happened so quickly. But it was a story I needed to tell, which is probably why it happened the way it did.
So having said that -- anyone who wants to read it, just give me a holler. Send me an e-mail if you have my address, or drop a note in my Facebook Inbox, now that I'm back on there occasionally (though I don't care as much about Bejeweled Blitz anymore, which is really for the best). If you're local and you want to wait for a printed copy to find its way to you, let me know so I can get your name on the list. If you'd rather I just sent you a PDF, I can do that too.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
The Big Five-Oh
Yesterday afternoon I forced myself to finish off surpassing the National Novel Writing Month goal of completing 50,000 words -- I actually ended for the day at 50,003. I'd feel more excitement about it if that meant that the book was going to be done, but there's still some clean-up to do before I'm ready to say I have a complete draft. I think I mentioned here once before that I don't write chronologically. The best analogy I can think of to explain where I am right now is this: Imagine you had just spent a lot of very focused time trying to complete an enormous and detailed jigsaw puzzle by a deadline. And you got all of the pieces together, but only then realized that the puzzle was a little bigger than it said it would be on a box, and for some reason the pieces that you need to finish it have been scattered throughout the room, and you have to go look for them before you can put them all together. Does that make sense?
I don't feel any more pressure. I've reached the goal, and as soon as I can get my word count verified I'll be able to upload my scrambled manuscript and will be awarded with my downloadable PDF certificate. Yay. But I'd still really like to get the rest of what I have to do knocked off in a month. But since I only have school on two of the next seven days, I think I'll have the time I need. It's kind of superficial, but my self-imposed goal at this point in the game is to have this finished so someone will eventually read it and say something like "You wrote THIS? In a MONTH?!"
It won't be an easy read. There's a little darkness in there, some pretty raw emotion, and it will make some people uncomfortable. Not because they'll recognize themselves because even if I did begin some characters with specific people in mind as models, the characters evolved along the way, and I think some became the most fully-realized characters I've ever come up with. Not that this is saying a whole bunch. But still. I'm happy with how it's turned out. Or how I know it will turn out by the time I'm done.
I don't feel any more pressure. I've reached the goal, and as soon as I can get my word count verified I'll be able to upload my scrambled manuscript and will be awarded with my downloadable PDF certificate. Yay. But I'd still really like to get the rest of what I have to do knocked off in a month. But since I only have school on two of the next seven days, I think I'll have the time I need. It's kind of superficial, but my self-imposed goal at this point in the game is to have this finished so someone will eventually read it and say something like "You wrote THIS? In a MONTH?!"
It won't be an easy read. There's a little darkness in there, some pretty raw emotion, and it will make some people uncomfortable. Not because they'll recognize themselves because even if I did begin some characters with specific people in mind as models, the characters evolved along the way, and I think some became the most fully-realized characters I've ever come up with. Not that this is saying a whole bunch. But still. I'm happy with how it's turned out. Or how I know it will turn out by the time I'm done.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Random Thoughts at 33,705 Words
Another Nanowrimo update....
**I'm well ahead of the recommended word count pace, and in a very good position to reach the 50,000 word goal by the end of this coming week even if the book itself will still require more. I plan on cracking 40,000 before Monday morning since I have arranged a weekend with few distractions. I'm reaching a point where I have to think a little harder about what scenes I want to construct for the story to play out the way it should, but the words are still coming fast and furious. My self-imposed Facebook banishment has turned out to be unnecessary, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea anyway. I might even pop on for a moment today and put up a link to this post.
**November is one of my favorite months at school, and this one is particularly nice. One month of school, sixteen days of lesson plans to write. The only full week that takes place in November starts on Monday, followed by our wonderful annual two-day week preceding Thanksgiving. It's come up in conversation a lot lately, probably with the whole Novel Writing Month going on, but as much as I love teaching, the actual teaching part of teaching, I'm pretty sure if I found myself in a position to leave it behind and write full time and be financially secure, I'd do it. Everything that called me to teaching is still there. The thrill of having a lesson go exactly the way you planned. The satisfaction of seeing an idea come together in someone who didn't understand it before and knowing you made it happen. The respect that you are occasionally paid by members of the community, and the place you have in the community that builds up around you when you teach in the same school for several years. The relationships you have with your students; the hard-nosed kids who will finally start cutting you breaks, the ones who draw pictures for you to hang up by your desk, the way their personalities are so defined and how they come together to establish a different classroom dynamic than any other class you had, and that small handful of students that you click with, those boys and girls you understand so well because they think so much like you do and they're so easy to teach. There are a couple of those every year, and they're always fun to have around.
There are a lot of things about teaching I love, but those things are static. They're always there, and they never change. Meanwhile, everything bad about teaching gets to be a little more every year. I figure there has to be a point when it will eventually becoming "going to work" instead of "going to school." And if that happens, I think I could walk pretty easily as long as there was an Option B waiting in the wings.
**Even though I said I was pulling away from Bookface completely, I will admit to sneaking on a couple of times, but only when there are reasons; I've had a few research questions I've had to talk to different people about, and BF has been the most convenient way to make sure I reach them. Having said that though, I'm happy to say that the time I've spent logged in has fallen off greatly, and it's really been a relief. I don't miss Blitz at all, and my life doesn't feel diminished by not knowing who is a fan of what or what's going on for so many people in Farmville and Mafia Wars, or whether or not someone is getting geared up for Saturday night. I think the relief is also coming from the time-management I've had to implement to make sure I have time to write. It sure makes life easier when you force yourself to get things done when you need to.
**During one of my brief Bookface excursions, I saw someone all keyed up about the new Bon Jovi album. I was on the fence about getting it because Bon Jovi has put out a decade's worth of mediocre and clichéd filler in the more recent years, but I was bored so I downloaded it. Eh. Maybe three good songs, and some of the filler is better than usual. I don't see this one having any staying power. Bon Jovi hasn't worked their way into my heavy rotation since 1995, so this isn't a big surprise. But there are a couple of songs I'm glad to have.
**I'm kind of swimming upstream through feelings of melancholy today, and I'm looking forward to finding my way out of it. I won't get all self-indulgent and describe the reasons behind it, but suffice it to say it has to do with a dream I woke from about an hour ago, and the idea of how people get older and grow apart and leave each other behind.
Okay, enough bellyaching. The 34,000 word mark awaits....
**I'm well ahead of the recommended word count pace, and in a very good position to reach the 50,000 word goal by the end of this coming week even if the book itself will still require more. I plan on cracking 40,000 before Monday morning since I have arranged a weekend with few distractions. I'm reaching a point where I have to think a little harder about what scenes I want to construct for the story to play out the way it should, but the words are still coming fast and furious. My self-imposed Facebook banishment has turned out to be unnecessary, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good idea anyway. I might even pop on for a moment today and put up a link to this post.
**November is one of my favorite months at school, and this one is particularly nice. One month of school, sixteen days of lesson plans to write. The only full week that takes place in November starts on Monday, followed by our wonderful annual two-day week preceding Thanksgiving. It's come up in conversation a lot lately, probably with the whole Novel Writing Month going on, but as much as I love teaching, the actual teaching part of teaching, I'm pretty sure if I found myself in a position to leave it behind and write full time and be financially secure, I'd do it. Everything that called me to teaching is still there. The thrill of having a lesson go exactly the way you planned. The satisfaction of seeing an idea come together in someone who didn't understand it before and knowing you made it happen. The respect that you are occasionally paid by members of the community, and the place you have in the community that builds up around you when you teach in the same school for several years. The relationships you have with your students; the hard-nosed kids who will finally start cutting you breaks, the ones who draw pictures for you to hang up by your desk, the way their personalities are so defined and how they come together to establish a different classroom dynamic than any other class you had, and that small handful of students that you click with, those boys and girls you understand so well because they think so much like you do and they're so easy to teach. There are a couple of those every year, and they're always fun to have around.
There are a lot of things about teaching I love, but those things are static. They're always there, and they never change. Meanwhile, everything bad about teaching gets to be a little more every year. I figure there has to be a point when it will eventually becoming "going to work" instead of "going to school." And if that happens, I think I could walk pretty easily as long as there was an Option B waiting in the wings.
**Even though I said I was pulling away from Bookface completely, I will admit to sneaking on a couple of times, but only when there are reasons; I've had a few research questions I've had to talk to different people about, and BF has been the most convenient way to make sure I reach them. Having said that though, I'm happy to say that the time I've spent logged in has fallen off greatly, and it's really been a relief. I don't miss Blitz at all, and my life doesn't feel diminished by not knowing who is a fan of what or what's going on for so many people in Farmville and Mafia Wars, or whether or not someone is getting geared up for Saturday night. I think the relief is also coming from the time-management I've had to implement to make sure I have time to write. It sure makes life easier when you force yourself to get things done when you need to.
**During one of my brief Bookface excursions, I saw someone all keyed up about the new Bon Jovi album. I was on the fence about getting it because Bon Jovi has put out a decade's worth of mediocre and clichéd filler in the more recent years, but I was bored so I downloaded it. Eh. Maybe three good songs, and some of the filler is better than usual. I don't see this one having any staying power. Bon Jovi hasn't worked their way into my heavy rotation since 1995, so this isn't a big surprise. But there are a couple of songs I'm glad to have.
**I'm kind of swimming upstream through feelings of melancholy today, and I'm looking forward to finding my way out of it. I won't get all self-indulgent and describe the reasons behind it, but suffice it to say it has to do with a dream I woke from about an hour ago, and the idea of how people get older and grow apart and leave each other behind.
Okay, enough bellyaching. The 34,000 word mark awaits....
Sunday, November 8, 2009
23,552
My word count is sailing along! I seriously thought about writing another 1500 words tonight just to say I'd reached the halfway point, but decided that doing that wasn't going to make the book any better in the end, and since I'm probably well ahead of most of the other people doing this (today's pace goal would be 13,336 words), I figured it was best to take some time off and not necessarily dry up every idea I had.
Pretty exciting weekend since over the past two days I wrote most of the ending. There's still one more scene left, one kind of character reveal, one bit of emotional tenor, before I'm at what I think is THE END, but I'm close. And knowing how it's all going to end will hopefully make the rest of the stuff in between easier to figure out.
I'm starting to narrow down songs from my writing playlist as I write, picking out the ones that are really working the best for what I need them to do so I can ultimately put together a soundtrack album to go with the book. This is usually a collection of 10-15 songs that had the biggest impact on the writing, and sometimes I'll share the list with anyone curious enough to hear the music that helped me put the book together, particularly while they read it. I think that would be kind of cool, but not many people ever take me up on it. My first REAL book, the first one I count as an actual book, was written to nothing but Bruce Hornsby. My cancer memoir was written to a mix of songs that fit the tone, which is also what's happened with this one. My book from this past summer, a ghost story, was written to Iron Maiden, and creepy Iron Maiden songs specifically. The book I did for last November? Didn't have a playlist. Maybe that's why it turned out so half-baked.
Pretty exciting weekend since over the past two days I wrote most of the ending. There's still one more scene left, one kind of character reveal, one bit of emotional tenor, before I'm at what I think is THE END, but I'm close. And knowing how it's all going to end will hopefully make the rest of the stuff in between easier to figure out.
I'm starting to narrow down songs from my writing playlist as I write, picking out the ones that are really working the best for what I need them to do so I can ultimately put together a soundtrack album to go with the book. This is usually a collection of 10-15 songs that had the biggest impact on the writing, and sometimes I'll share the list with anyone curious enough to hear the music that helped me put the book together, particularly while they read it. I think that would be kind of cool, but not many people ever take me up on it. My first REAL book, the first one I count as an actual book, was written to nothing but Bruce Hornsby. My cancer memoir was written to a mix of songs that fit the tone, which is also what's happened with this one. My book from this past summer, a ghost story, was written to Iron Maiden, and creepy Iron Maiden songs specifically. The book I did for last November? Didn't have a playlist. Maybe that's why it turned out so half-baked.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
One Week Down
November 7 has me with a total count of 20,056 words. This puts me almost at a pace twice as fast as I need to be writing at to finish my 50,000 words by the end of the month. Not sure if it means I'll have 100,000 words by the end because this non-chronological thing I'm doing makes it hard to see what kind of progress I'm making. It's not like there's some progress bar I can watch, like a fund-raising goal thermometer poster that keeps filling red. I get an idea, I write it until it resolves itself or I run out of time or energy and have to return to it later, and then I move on. I see things forming, coming together. I'm getting a clearer picture of what the final product will be like and what I will have to change about what I already have to get there. I'm toying with the idea of taking a day off next weekend to just spend editing and revising and getting everything done at that point reconciled. Not to mention that this isn't a particularly easy story to tell. I've had a couple moments that have left me kind of emotionally used up, which overall isn't great but have fueled the story. So I guess I just put up with that for a month. It will be worth it in the end.
I'm really kind of amazed I've done 20,000 words in a week. I'd love to get another 5,000 done tomorrow and start the work week at the halfway point, but there's no way to tell how that's going to go.
And then while all of this is going on, I am rapidly closing in on the time window when I should be hearing back from the agency I submitted to back in August. Hard to not daydream about the possibilities, even if I know how likely they will pan out to be nothing more than daydreams. I suppose I really should start looking at which agents I want to pursue next. Who will be smart enough to realize they can make some money off of my manuscript?
Wow. This post is so disjointed. Can you tell I'm barely thinking straight at this point?
I'm really kind of amazed I've done 20,000 words in a week. I'd love to get another 5,000 done tomorrow and start the work week at the halfway point, but there's no way to tell how that's going to go.
And then while all of this is going on, I am rapidly closing in on the time window when I should be hearing back from the agency I submitted to back in August. Hard to not daydream about the possibilities, even if I know how likely they will pan out to be nothing more than daydreams. I suppose I really should start looking at which agents I want to pursue next. Who will be smart enough to realize they can make some money off of my manuscript?
Wow. This post is so disjointed. Can you tell I'm barely thinking straight at this point?
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
10,619 Update
Hey folks. A little interruption in the writing to keep you posted.
That is my word count in the subject line. I'm well ahead of the pace I need to follow, and I still have tonight's writing to do which will add at least another 2,000 words onto the total. I'm pretty happy with the progress. The first day was kind of hard because I tried to start out writing.... I'm blocking on the word I need here.... in order.... not coherently, although that's certainly a goal as well..... CHRONOLOGICALLY! There it is. Yeah, that doesn't work for me so much. I've found that I do much better if I try working on a scene that I have some level of feeling for, and I work that out instead of trying to force myself through other parts that are still in a somewhat amorphous stage of development. And that's working out for me. Of course, at the end of the month I'll still have to put all of these bits of writing together like a jigsaw puzzle, but I've done it before.
I have to get an important music update in here while I have the chance. The adults in the immediate family went to see Bruce Hornsby and his band the Noisemakers on Sunday night. My 3rd Hornsby show, and since he's one of my top 5 artists, it was a great show to see. There were times I was sitting there and would just let me eyes close so I could let all of that music just wash over me. There were a couple of times I was moved to tears, from either just the sheer beauty of the music or because he wound up playing a song that had significance for me. On that note, I did get to hear "The Road Not Taken" played live, which was incredible since that has been one of my favorite songs for more than twenty years.
Other good news -- if you happen to run into Nephew #1 sometime during the month of November, be sure to congratulate him on being the World Languages Department Student of the Month for November at his high school. As a sophomore. I'm very proud of him for doing this, but I'm actually happier that he's proud of it.
And now back to the grindstone. Let's see how successfully I can write my way through a caffeine-deprivation head ache....
That is my word count in the subject line. I'm well ahead of the pace I need to follow, and I still have tonight's writing to do which will add at least another 2,000 words onto the total. I'm pretty happy with the progress. The first day was kind of hard because I tried to start out writing.... I'm blocking on the word I need here.... in order.... not coherently, although that's certainly a goal as well..... CHRONOLOGICALLY! There it is. Yeah, that doesn't work for me so much. I've found that I do much better if I try working on a scene that I have some level of feeling for, and I work that out instead of trying to force myself through other parts that are still in a somewhat amorphous stage of development. And that's working out for me. Of course, at the end of the month I'll still have to put all of these bits of writing together like a jigsaw puzzle, but I've done it before.
I have to get an important music update in here while I have the chance. The adults in the immediate family went to see Bruce Hornsby and his band the Noisemakers on Sunday night. My 3rd Hornsby show, and since he's one of my top 5 artists, it was a great show to see. There were times I was sitting there and would just let me eyes close so I could let all of that music just wash over me. There were a couple of times I was moved to tears, from either just the sheer beauty of the music or because he wound up playing a song that had significance for me. On that note, I did get to hear "The Road Not Taken" played live, which was incredible since that has been one of my favorite songs for more than twenty years.
Other good news -- if you happen to run into Nephew #1 sometime during the month of November, be sure to congratulate him on being the World Languages Department Student of the Month for November at his high school. As a sophomore. I'm very proud of him for doing this, but I'm actually happier that he's proud of it.
And now back to the grindstone. Let's see how successfully I can write my way through a caffeine-deprivation head ache....
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Goodbye, Bookface.
Only hours to go, and then I'm outta here. I've got a minimum of 50,000 words worth of middle grade / young adult novel to write and only 30 days in which to do it, so I am swearing off the free-time black hole that is Facebook. Or Bookface, if you work at Dunder-Mifflin.
My first status update upon completion will be that I've knocked off another manuscript, or something to that effect. Hopefully it will reflect the immense relief I'll be feeling. For me, this National Novel Writing Month deal isn't so much a matter of if I finish the 50,000 words in time, but whether I'll be done early or not and how far past 50,000 I wind up going. I have to let the story tell the story, and I don't know what kind of word count that will require. I'll probably be doing some blog posts along the way just to clear my head a redirect a little, but you'll have to find them the hard way without any Facebook links if you care enough to look.
So with that, I have a few more hours to try and up my Blitz score, and then I'm stepping off the grid until December. Now, about that Blitz score....
My first status update upon completion will be that I've knocked off another manuscript, or something to that effect. Hopefully it will reflect the immense relief I'll be feeling. For me, this National Novel Writing Month deal isn't so much a matter of if I finish the 50,000 words in time, but whether I'll be done early or not and how far past 50,000 I wind up going. I have to let the story tell the story, and I don't know what kind of word count that will require. I'll probably be doing some blog posts along the way just to clear my head a redirect a little, but you'll have to find them the hard way without any Facebook links if you care enough to look.
So with that, I have a few more hours to try and up my Blitz score, and then I'm stepping off the grid until December. Now, about that Blitz score....
Thursday, October 29, 2009
I'm Not Depressed Enough, or Back to the Music Part 2
I was in too good of a mood today, and it worries me a little. Not the being in a good mood part - that actually made the day easier, especially when you consider how frustrated I was with so many things the day before and the sheer volume of f-bombs that went off inside my head during the 20 or so minutes after school before I finally was able to get out of there. No, after all that the good mood was welcome. It's just that it was a really bad time for one.
National Novel Writing Month begins as soon as Saturday Night Live ends this weekend, and I plan on starting in on my book right on that inaugural minute of November. Thing is, the book I have planned and mapped out (all in my head at this point because taking any notes would be cheating) isn't particularly happy. I don't think I'd call it depressing or dark so much, but its certainly thoughtful and introspective, and, I won't lie, a little sad. And for me to be able to write at my best, I need to kind of construct a mood that will match the voice and tone of the book. Which, you know - not happy. So somehow I have to cut this good mood loose.
And why is this a problem? Why would it be so difficult to do? Because of the music. I wrote about a big new release day in September when I bought a whole bunch of new albums that all came out at the same time and how I was so buzzed about having all of that new music. Well, it happened again this past Tuesday. Here's the rundown:
Train: Save Me, San Francisco
I really like Train, even if they now kind of seem like one of those bands struggling to hang on to a relevance that just may have passed them by. But this new album, the first one in something like four or five years? I'm really, really liking it. A lot of wordplay in the lyrics, some interesting electronic touches to what was always a sound rooted in classic rock, and an album full of songs that are just happy, rockin' songs. This album does not help with shaking off the good mood, but it's hard to put it aside.
Creed: Full Circle
I thought Creed was okay back when they were popular some ten years ago, even if many of the songs were a little too muddy-sounding for my taste. But then after they broke up and reformed with a new emotionally-stable singer and called themselves Alter Bridge, I liked them a lot. Now they're back to the Name Brand to cash in on past glories and nostalgia, but at least the band sounds a little less muddy and a little more like Alter Bridge, while still being it's own thing. Not a landmark but I like it, and there are a good number of songs on there that will get some serious play in the coming months and years.
Winger: Karma
I have a cousin who told me once that music should never be called a "guilty pleasure," because if you're lucky enough to have music that you enjoy there's nothing to feel guilty about. And this is coming from a guy who has everything from Alice Cooper to Donny & Marie on his iPod. One of the bands I enjoy that OTHER people would call a guilty pleasure is Winger, the 80s band of "She's only seventeen..." fame, which is a song that was a lot less creepy to like when I was in my late teens / early 20s instead of my early 40s. But luckily there are other Winger albums out there for me to secretly enjoy, including this new one. This isn't an example of an 80s band trying to prove they've matured as time has gone by, but a band that shows they still got it. And for anyone who might write them off as the Aqua-Net joke they were known as back in the day? I disagree. There is some significant talent in this band.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra: Night Castle
The newest TSO album, and the second one that isn't all about Christmas songs. I have yet to decipher what awkwardly-contrived storyline has been created to link these songs together, but at least I can still enjoy most of them at face value for the music. Though it irks me a bit that once again they blatantly ripped themselves off for a couple of tracks on the album. By this I mean that Trans-Siberian Orchestra began as a pretty darn good metal band called Savatage, which is probably one of the worst band names ever. But they were a good band, very melodic, and morphed into TSO about ten years ago when they realized they could cash in on playing holiday music and touring behind it if they hired a few more musicians. Two songs on this new album are note for note remakes of older Savatage songs.
Transatlantic: The Whirlwind
Here's an album that was never supposed to happen. TA is a progressive supergroup featuring four incredibly talented musicians that hardly anyone has ever heard of; frankly, if you know Transatlantic at all you don't need me to tell you who they are, and if you don't know them then no explanation is going to be worth your time. This is a 2 CD edition of the album - the first CD is made up of one song broken into several different parts, but still linked together as one piece of music -- more than 77 minutes long. For one rock song. This I think is pretty cool. The other CD has some shorter songs on it, in addition to some obscure covers. And since this album really was never supposed to happen in the first place, I'm very happy that I even have been able to play and listen to it one time.
And in a couple days I'll have to more or less shelve all of them to lock my head into the playlist of emotion and melancholy I've put together to listen to while writing my 2009 November Novel. Gotta do what you gotta do, and for me to write productively at all, I need the music that's going to push me in the direction I need to go.
I'll keep you posted....
National Novel Writing Month begins as soon as Saturday Night Live ends this weekend, and I plan on starting in on my book right on that inaugural minute of November. Thing is, the book I have planned and mapped out (all in my head at this point because taking any notes would be cheating) isn't particularly happy. I don't think I'd call it depressing or dark so much, but its certainly thoughtful and introspective, and, I won't lie, a little sad. And for me to be able to write at my best, I need to kind of construct a mood that will match the voice and tone of the book. Which, you know - not happy. So somehow I have to cut this good mood loose.
And why is this a problem? Why would it be so difficult to do? Because of the music. I wrote about a big new release day in September when I bought a whole bunch of new albums that all came out at the same time and how I was so buzzed about having all of that new music. Well, it happened again this past Tuesday. Here's the rundown:
Train: Save Me, San Francisco
I really like Train, even if they now kind of seem like one of those bands struggling to hang on to a relevance that just may have passed them by. But this new album, the first one in something like four or five years? I'm really, really liking it. A lot of wordplay in the lyrics, some interesting electronic touches to what was always a sound rooted in classic rock, and an album full of songs that are just happy, rockin' songs. This album does not help with shaking off the good mood, but it's hard to put it aside.
Creed: Full Circle
I thought Creed was okay back when they were popular some ten years ago, even if many of the songs were a little too muddy-sounding for my taste. But then after they broke up and reformed with a new emotionally-stable singer and called themselves Alter Bridge, I liked them a lot. Now they're back to the Name Brand to cash in on past glories and nostalgia, but at least the band sounds a little less muddy and a little more like Alter Bridge, while still being it's own thing. Not a landmark but I like it, and there are a good number of songs on there that will get some serious play in the coming months and years.
Winger: Karma
I have a cousin who told me once that music should never be called a "guilty pleasure," because if you're lucky enough to have music that you enjoy there's nothing to feel guilty about. And this is coming from a guy who has everything from Alice Cooper to Donny & Marie on his iPod. One of the bands I enjoy that OTHER people would call a guilty pleasure is Winger, the 80s band of "She's only seventeen..." fame, which is a song that was a lot less creepy to like when I was in my late teens / early 20s instead of my early 40s. But luckily there are other Winger albums out there for me to secretly enjoy, including this new one. This isn't an example of an 80s band trying to prove they've matured as time has gone by, but a band that shows they still got it. And for anyone who might write them off as the Aqua-Net joke they were known as back in the day? I disagree. There is some significant talent in this band.
Trans-Siberian Orchestra: Night Castle
The newest TSO album, and the second one that isn't all about Christmas songs. I have yet to decipher what awkwardly-contrived storyline has been created to link these songs together, but at least I can still enjoy most of them at face value for the music. Though it irks me a bit that once again they blatantly ripped themselves off for a couple of tracks on the album. By this I mean that Trans-Siberian Orchestra began as a pretty darn good metal band called Savatage, which is probably one of the worst band names ever. But they were a good band, very melodic, and morphed into TSO about ten years ago when they realized they could cash in on playing holiday music and touring behind it if they hired a few more musicians. Two songs on this new album are note for note remakes of older Savatage songs.
Transatlantic: The Whirlwind
Here's an album that was never supposed to happen. TA is a progressive supergroup featuring four incredibly talented musicians that hardly anyone has ever heard of; frankly, if you know Transatlantic at all you don't need me to tell you who they are, and if you don't know them then no explanation is going to be worth your time. This is a 2 CD edition of the album - the first CD is made up of one song broken into several different parts, but still linked together as one piece of music -- more than 77 minutes long. For one rock song. This I think is pretty cool. The other CD has some shorter songs on it, in addition to some obscure covers. And since this album really was never supposed to happen in the first place, I'm very happy that I even have been able to play and listen to it one time.
And in a couple days I'll have to more or less shelve all of them to lock my head into the playlist of emotion and melancholy I've put together to listen to while writing my 2009 November Novel. Gotta do what you gotta do, and for me to write productively at all, I need the music that's going to push me in the direction I need to go.
I'll keep you posted....
Friday, October 23, 2009
Conferences = Purgatory
Hey, all you parents out there. You think YOU hate going to parent-teacher conferences? I sit here tonight fairly confident that I have every single one of you beat on that point. Beat down hard.
Time was I was young, and idealistic, and blindly naive about the world and saw conferences as a great opportunity. "I'll have a broader picture of each student after meeting their families!" "What a great opportunity to help build a sense of community!" And several other similar empty platitudes that probably should have earned me a good hard slap in the head for being such a moon-faced idiot.
Conferences are not these things. Conferences are just long. And tiring. And then longer. I won't go into any detail about the types of parents that show up for conferences and the personality categories I shove them into since I've done that before, but I will say that on principle I will hate any parent who brings a preschooler to conferences when that preschooler doesn't know how to behave in public. I refuse to sit there and share in an exchange of sympathetic simpering grins as little three year old Travis or Chloe or Caitlyn or Caitlynn or Katelyn or Kaitlinn or Kayte-Lynn runs around screaming and crying and laughing hysterically and destroying my classroom as her / his parents sit and do nothing about it. Few things bother me more.
Worst thing about the conferences this year? Between the two nights we had scheduled this week, I chose the night off to go home and DREAM THAT I WAS HAVING CONFERENCES. I was in the media center instead of my room. My grade level partners weren't there so I didn't have their help to keep things rolling along as smoothly as they did for us in real life this year. I sat down with a parent who in the dream I knew had a horrible reputation for Conference Evil, and she sat and drew bizarre diagrams of every point I tried to raise before abruptly leaving. And all the while, people kept coming in and interrupting me by checking out books from the media center.
And several of those media visitors were noisy little pre-schoolers.
Time was I was young, and idealistic, and blindly naive about the world and saw conferences as a great opportunity. "I'll have a broader picture of each student after meeting their families!" "What a great opportunity to help build a sense of community!" And several other similar empty platitudes that probably should have earned me a good hard slap in the head for being such a moon-faced idiot.
Conferences are not these things. Conferences are just long. And tiring. And then longer. I won't go into any detail about the types of parents that show up for conferences and the personality categories I shove them into since I've done that before, but I will say that on principle I will hate any parent who brings a preschooler to conferences when that preschooler doesn't know how to behave in public. I refuse to sit there and share in an exchange of sympathetic simpering grins as little three year old Travis or Chloe or Caitlyn or Caitlynn or Katelyn or Kaitlinn or Kayte-Lynn runs around screaming and crying and laughing hysterically and destroying my classroom as her / his parents sit and do nothing about it. Few things bother me more.
Worst thing about the conferences this year? Between the two nights we had scheduled this week, I chose the night off to go home and DREAM THAT I WAS HAVING CONFERENCES. I was in the media center instead of my room. My grade level partners weren't there so I didn't have their help to keep things rolling along as smoothly as they did for us in real life this year. I sat down with a parent who in the dream I knew had a horrible reputation for Conference Evil, and she sat and drew bizarre diagrams of every point I tried to raise before abruptly leaving. And all the while, people kept coming in and interrupting me by checking out books from the media center.
And several of those media visitors were noisy little pre-schoolers.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
NaNoWriMo
Yep. That's me. A winner.To start with, I HATE the little abbreviation "NaNoWriMo." To me, something about it just stinks of the same nauseating pseudo-intellectualism that played a large part in driving me out of the English department in college and made it easier to change my major to something where everyone else didn't think they were God's gift to thought and the written word, and tried to prove this by wearing dark overcoats and divining sexual imagery out of the most innocuous pieces of writing outside of childrens' literature.
That might be my longest blog sentence to date. Maybe the grammar is a little caffeinated there. But anyway.
NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. I've been aware of this for years and thought it was kind of a cool idea: "Can you write an entire 50,000 word novel, from start to finish, all during the month of November?" Well, last year, my Life Coach got all fired up about trying to pull it off and talked me into giving it a try as well. So I pulled an idea out of the vault and hacked away at it, figuring that at the end of the month I'd at least have a workable first draft of another project already completed. And that's about all I did get out of it, but I did, in fact, pull it off. In 24 days instead of the available 30, I might add. And to give credit where it's due, Life Coach also finished hers. Quite a feat considering she'd never tried to write a book before.
So I bring this all up now because just in the past couple days, I've come across what this year's novel idea is going to be. But it's not November yet, and I am unfortunately inflexible when it comes to following rules, so I need to wait until we've crossed over from Halloween to Midnight, Nov. 1 to begin. And honestly it's really a struggle to do that because this story is coming alive right now. I mean, RIGHT. NOW. As we speak. I'm typing this while another part of my brain is processing the ideas I have so far and deciding what else I can do.
So, since I can't start yet I am preparing a little. Thinking it over, which I've always considered a bit part of writing anyway, that I can do. That's not cheating. I'll have the thing mapped out pretty thoroughly by the time I can start, but that's all the better. I'm also auditioning songs for the iTunes playlist that will serve as my writing soundtrack. This involves putting songs on the list I think will work, then listening to them in the context of the book's tone and voice, and then deciding to keep or delete them. Might seem like a time-waster to most, but pretty necessary for me.
So. If you don't see my on Facebook much in November, or, you know, out of my house beyond the hours of the school day, you'll know why.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Funeral for a Friend / Love Lies Bleeding
Today I went to a funeral for a nine-year-old boy.
I'm not going to round up to ten for him; his birthday was less than a week away, but I'm not going to give him credit for those last few days because I just want to highlight the injustice and tragedy and incredulity of anyone ever having to attend a funeral for a nine-year-old boy.
Kyle is now definitely on his way to Heaven. My experiences with death have led me to develop my own belief that one does not arrive there inside the half-moment following death, but that an individual journey needs to be made, depending on what that person learned in their time on Earth and how much time they had to learn it. Being that Kyle was all of nine and possessed an inordinate amount of wisdom and understanding for his age, I'm sure his journey will be relatively quick.
He was a funny little guy. I met him as a first grader when I had his older sister in my class. I'd see him at the end of the day waiting in line for his bus, and if I was quick enough I could catch him unaware and pull his stocking cap down over his eyes. While most kids would quickly yank it back up off of their face and point an accusing finger at me, Kyle just accepted that I got him and stood there with the cap over his eyes, letting out a defeated little cry that was engineered to make every other kid in the bus line laugh. After awhile he figured out my pattern and started watching for me. Or set friends on guard to watch for me. Or just stood in the bus line as long as it took with both hands clenched to the top of his head, just in case I came by that day, ready to announce with triumph, "Can't get me!"
As the months and years went by and the cancer he had fought back earlier in his young life returned, I felt a pull. He wasn't just another little brother or sister of a student anymore, not just someone I would joke around with but someone I started watching. I'd give him bits of encouragement when he looked like he needed it, joke with him when he needed cheering up. I watched his sister. I knew what it was like to have a little sister suffering with that disease, and what it was like to watch her die. I watched his sister to see how she was going to handle the return.
When the school year ended and his sister moved on to the middle school, she still came back to visit, more frequently than a lot of kids would because her brother was still at my school and she had a reason to occasionally come by. Kyle went in for some massive treatment to chase off the disease again and missed a lot of school. We felt his absence while he was being tutored at night by someone set up through the district. And eventually, he came back.
But the remission didn't last. And in only a matter of months the disease had fought back, and another intense round of treatment was ordered up, one that would keep him out of school for at least a good month, not to mention several sporadic days and weeks after that while his body regained strength. And I felt the pull again. As soon as I'd heard he would need homebound tutoring again, I told his homeroom teacher to let the family know I would do it. Another teacher in our building was also willing to help him, but, to be blunt, I staked a claim and more or less elbowed her aside. I had the relationship with the family she didn't. I had known Kyle longer than she had and I knew him better. I knew his sister Kiana and wanted to hover somewhat close to keep an eye on how she would be dealing with everything. And I knew that if something like this came up, my sister would want me to be involved. I wasn't feeling a pull anymore. I was feeling compelled.
My colleague graciously stepped aside and I was on board. I went to his house in the evenings, usually for an hour or two depending on what his schedule was like. There were good days and bad ones. There were nights we would focus hard on the math that came so easily for him and butt heads a little about the reading he didn't really want to do. There were times he was feeling playful and goofy, and I had to find ways to persuade him to stay busy. There were times his pain took over everything and we were lucky to get anything done before the stress wore him out and put him to sleep on the living room sofa. One night I sat on the floor with him, his sister, and the babysitter, while Kyle rolled back and forth in Kiana's lap, not having much luck trying to find a position he could rest in that wouldn't hurt, unable to focus on much else or to even communicate with any of us. Kiana just held him and told him he'd be okay. His sitter, their neighbor, gently tried over and over and over to get him to lie on the sofa. I sat and pet the dog, Shelby, so she wouldn't get excited by all of Kyle's moving and crying and think he was trying to play with her.
And that night wasn't even the worst one.
But there were great times, too. He'd try and get me to sneak downstairs and play Wii, as if his mother wouldn't hear from the next room that we weren't working anymore. More than once he tried to talk me into helping him prank Kiana, and we finally did once on her birthday; their mother and her friends captured the moment on cell phone cameras, and his smile was as wide as it could have been. We played some Nintendo DS. We set up Star Wars action figures around the work space on the dining room table. We found that the only way we could get Shelby the dog to stop barking at us for attention was to take the battery-powered massage ball that he used to relieve muscle tension and hold it right on her butt.
He died October 9th, which, oddly enough, was the same date my sister had been buried five years earlier. Our school had parent-teacher conferences the night of his visitation so I skipped my dinner break and sped (literally) to the funeral home, getting there with just enough time to cut my way past at least 150 people to see him in his casket surrounded by his favorite toys and to talk briefly with his mom before I had to speed back for my next conference. Which I made.
His funeral, today, was something that about ten people from our school attended; our principal had put out a call to available licensed staff in the district to volunteer and fill in for those of us attending; she said later she'd had so many volunteers she could have had the entire school staff covered. It was a difficult funeral to attend. I didn't feel much sadness for him because I knew the worst of it was over for him now and he was on his way to meet up with my sister and hundreds of other souls waiting to celebrate his arrival. I did feel great sadness for his family, particularly his mom and his sister. They seemed so lost, and having been in that spot myself I knew where they were and what they still have ahead of them.
I cried a little when his best friend walked up to eulogize him with a poem she had written; knowing what it's like to deliver a eulogy, I can tell you that she did an admirable job of getting through it and keeping her emotion in check as much as she could. For me the defining moment, the perfect moment of the service was the very end, when the pallbearers came forward to bring his body outside. The picked up the casket, turned around to face down the aisle, and the closing music, which I found out later Kyle had chosen himself, started playing through the church's sound system:
The main title theme from "Star Wars."
I'm not going to round up to ten for him; his birthday was less than a week away, but I'm not going to give him credit for those last few days because I just want to highlight the injustice and tragedy and incredulity of anyone ever having to attend a funeral for a nine-year-old boy.
Kyle is now definitely on his way to Heaven. My experiences with death have led me to develop my own belief that one does not arrive there inside the half-moment following death, but that an individual journey needs to be made, depending on what that person learned in their time on Earth and how much time they had to learn it. Being that Kyle was all of nine and possessed an inordinate amount of wisdom and understanding for his age, I'm sure his journey will be relatively quick.
He was a funny little guy. I met him as a first grader when I had his older sister in my class. I'd see him at the end of the day waiting in line for his bus, and if I was quick enough I could catch him unaware and pull his stocking cap down over his eyes. While most kids would quickly yank it back up off of their face and point an accusing finger at me, Kyle just accepted that I got him and stood there with the cap over his eyes, letting out a defeated little cry that was engineered to make every other kid in the bus line laugh. After awhile he figured out my pattern and started watching for me. Or set friends on guard to watch for me. Or just stood in the bus line as long as it took with both hands clenched to the top of his head, just in case I came by that day, ready to announce with triumph, "Can't get me!"
As the months and years went by and the cancer he had fought back earlier in his young life returned, I felt a pull. He wasn't just another little brother or sister of a student anymore, not just someone I would joke around with but someone I started watching. I'd give him bits of encouragement when he looked like he needed it, joke with him when he needed cheering up. I watched his sister. I knew what it was like to have a little sister suffering with that disease, and what it was like to watch her die. I watched his sister to see how she was going to handle the return.
When the school year ended and his sister moved on to the middle school, she still came back to visit, more frequently than a lot of kids would because her brother was still at my school and she had a reason to occasionally come by. Kyle went in for some massive treatment to chase off the disease again and missed a lot of school. We felt his absence while he was being tutored at night by someone set up through the district. And eventually, he came back.
But the remission didn't last. And in only a matter of months the disease had fought back, and another intense round of treatment was ordered up, one that would keep him out of school for at least a good month, not to mention several sporadic days and weeks after that while his body regained strength. And I felt the pull again. As soon as I'd heard he would need homebound tutoring again, I told his homeroom teacher to let the family know I would do it. Another teacher in our building was also willing to help him, but, to be blunt, I staked a claim and more or less elbowed her aside. I had the relationship with the family she didn't. I had known Kyle longer than she had and I knew him better. I knew his sister Kiana and wanted to hover somewhat close to keep an eye on how she would be dealing with everything. And I knew that if something like this came up, my sister would want me to be involved. I wasn't feeling a pull anymore. I was feeling compelled.
My colleague graciously stepped aside and I was on board. I went to his house in the evenings, usually for an hour or two depending on what his schedule was like. There were good days and bad ones. There were nights we would focus hard on the math that came so easily for him and butt heads a little about the reading he didn't really want to do. There were times he was feeling playful and goofy, and I had to find ways to persuade him to stay busy. There were times his pain took over everything and we were lucky to get anything done before the stress wore him out and put him to sleep on the living room sofa. One night I sat on the floor with him, his sister, and the babysitter, while Kyle rolled back and forth in Kiana's lap, not having much luck trying to find a position he could rest in that wouldn't hurt, unable to focus on much else or to even communicate with any of us. Kiana just held him and told him he'd be okay. His sitter, their neighbor, gently tried over and over and over to get him to lie on the sofa. I sat and pet the dog, Shelby, so she wouldn't get excited by all of Kyle's moving and crying and think he was trying to play with her.
And that night wasn't even the worst one.
But there were great times, too. He'd try and get me to sneak downstairs and play Wii, as if his mother wouldn't hear from the next room that we weren't working anymore. More than once he tried to talk me into helping him prank Kiana, and we finally did once on her birthday; their mother and her friends captured the moment on cell phone cameras, and his smile was as wide as it could have been. We played some Nintendo DS. We set up Star Wars action figures around the work space on the dining room table. We found that the only way we could get Shelby the dog to stop barking at us for attention was to take the battery-powered massage ball that he used to relieve muscle tension and hold it right on her butt.
He died October 9th, which, oddly enough, was the same date my sister had been buried five years earlier. Our school had parent-teacher conferences the night of his visitation so I skipped my dinner break and sped (literally) to the funeral home, getting there with just enough time to cut my way past at least 150 people to see him in his casket surrounded by his favorite toys and to talk briefly with his mom before I had to speed back for my next conference. Which I made.
His funeral, today, was something that about ten people from our school attended; our principal had put out a call to available licensed staff in the district to volunteer and fill in for those of us attending; she said later she'd had so many volunteers she could have had the entire school staff covered. It was a difficult funeral to attend. I didn't feel much sadness for him because I knew the worst of it was over for him now and he was on his way to meet up with my sister and hundreds of other souls waiting to celebrate his arrival. I did feel great sadness for his family, particularly his mom and his sister. They seemed so lost, and having been in that spot myself I knew where they were and what they still have ahead of them.
I cried a little when his best friend walked up to eulogize him with a poem she had written; knowing what it's like to deliver a eulogy, I can tell you that she did an admirable job of getting through it and keeping her emotion in check as much as she could. For me the defining moment, the perfect moment of the service was the very end, when the pallbearers came forward to bring his body outside. The picked up the casket, turned around to face down the aisle, and the closing music, which I found out later Kyle had chosen himself, started playing through the church's sound system:
The main title theme from "Star Wars."
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Go 73.
The day is done. The suffering is over. The next journey is underway. My little pal Kyle has shaken off the dust and is on his way to... well, Heaven, even though I don't know exactly what that means and I don't think any of us will really know until we're there ourselves. But I know he's on his way now, and I suspect he maybe had a hand in pulling one last prank on me on his way out of town early this morning. And I know my sister is there waiting for him, and I KNOW she's waiting for him because she told me she would be last summer, and just reminded me again this afternoon.
I wish I could see that time they first get together. October 9th won't be a favorite date for either of them, since that's the day he died and the day she was buried. But once they get past that awkwardness, they'll have some good times. Better times than any of us could understand. Trust me -- those two are going to hit it off big time.
And as for the Go 73? Maybe you saw it on Facebook, maybe you saw it on his CaringBridge page, numerous times. Wish I could explain it, but it was something the two of us came up with intending for it to be our private joke, something we'd laugh at because we got it, and then laugh at more because nobody else would. It wouldn't be right for me to break that confidence even if he's not here anymore. Okay, his mom knew, too. But I don't think she's going to spill it either.
The last time I saw him was at his birthday party. I went back to the room where he was resting to say goodbye, reached out for our customary fist-bump and, as had become part of our routine, did not say goodbye. But instead the last words we exchanged?
Go 73.
I wish I could see that time they first get together. October 9th won't be a favorite date for either of them, since that's the day he died and the day she was buried. But once they get past that awkwardness, they'll have some good times. Better times than any of us could understand. Trust me -- those two are going to hit it off big time.
And as for the Go 73? Maybe you saw it on Facebook, maybe you saw it on his CaringBridge page, numerous times. Wish I could explain it, but it was something the two of us came up with intending for it to be our private joke, something we'd laugh at because we got it, and then laugh at more because nobody else would. It wouldn't be right for me to break that confidence even if he's not here anymore. Okay, his mom knew, too. But I don't think she's going to spill it either.
The last time I saw him was at his birthday party. I went back to the room where he was resting to say goodbye, reached out for our customary fist-bump and, as had become part of our routine, did not say goodbye. But instead the last words we exchanged?
Go 73.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Wedding Weekend
There was another wedding in my family this weekend. Usually I hate weddings. A lot. Seriously. Not always for the same reasons that so many other people hate weddings; my list has more to do with that whole "in the 40s and still unmarried" deal and the feelings of general inadequacy that stem from seeing someone who was born after you had earned your driver's license get married. Talk about being LAPPED, people. Oh, the delicious self-pity....
And then there's the dance. I have nothing against dances on the whole, but I usually sit them out on principle. It's not that my collection of dance moves is so... distinct... that its been given its own name and has people studying it to try and learn how to replicate me. After all, let's face it: Nobody at a wedding can dance except for maybe one or two people, and most of the other guests watch them and are impressed for a song or two, then wish they'd just get off the floor and quit making the night their own personal showcase. Most people just want to hear the music and have fun and celebrate. I'd rather be the person enjoying about 60% of the music and working the room, catching up with the people I don't see very often, and I do what I can to avoid being the guy during the group dance who has to slink off quietly when a slow song comes on and all the couples fall together while I find a table with the 12-year-olds, who are staying up too late and traveling through the ballroom like a cloud of sugar-fueled locusts, systematically eating all of the remaining dinner mints still in the little decorative arrangements.
Oh, the delicious, delicious self-pity of it all....
(Incidentally, I'm thinking about authoring a petition to be passed around to all independent DJs in the land, asking them to have some kind of summit that would establish a new list of songs that have to be played at every wedding dance. I don't need to list these tired, overplayed wedding-dance songs; you know which ones they are. It's time for some retirements, and time for some new blood. I'm willing to provide several suggestions to get this new paradigm underway.)
Anyway. Yesterday my cousin and his long-time girlfriend got married. And for a nice change of pace, I enjoyed myself! (I know! Pick up your jaw!) Decent meal. Nephews #2 and #3 had fun with very little time spent fighting. Lot of good conversations. A very welcome surprise guest showing up late in the evening. A DJ instead of my cousins' band... not that I have issues with my cousins' band, but I think I can only be reasonably expected to hear "Black Velvet" so many times in one life, and I'm rapidly closing in on my quota.
One of the best things about the night though was that the ballroom was actually in the hotel where so many of us were staying. Which was awesome. How would you rather make your way back to bed: Drive 45 minutes through unfamiliar city streets in the dark, or hop on the elevator and whip out your key card? No contest for me.
One of my favorite moments of the night had to do with our being at the hotel. Now, the thing you need to know here is that I have a huge extended family, and we are unusually close; even in the cross-generation aspect this holds true. And we have all grown up together. I am closer to several of my cousins than many people I know are to their own siblings. And as the night was wrapping up, a group of us volunteered to bring the wedding gifts up to the hospitality room where the gift-opening would take place the next morning. It took about nine of us to get them all up there, and when we got to the door, we had to wait for another cousin, the sister of the mother of the groom, who had to track down the key card to let us in. While we were waiting, someone decided it would be funny if we made it look like we had just left this huge pile of gifts in the hall, out in the open for anyone walking by to grab, and so she would think she was the one person who would have to move them all in the room. So to pull this off, this group of people from my family? This collection of parents, teachers, accounting partners, professors, aunts & uncles, volunteers, high school students, grandparents, and so on? What did we do?
We left the gifts on the floor. Then all ran around several different corners to hide.
We stayed quiet and hidden for at least three or four minutes by my estimate. Silent. Peeking out to check, listening for voices, trying to keep each other from laughing.... at least that was the story at my end of the hallway.
Which was exactly the kind of thing we all would have done thirty years ago. Some things don't change.... much. I'm happy my family is on that list.
And I'm also happy that Sandy is finally, officially, one of us.
And then there's the dance. I have nothing against dances on the whole, but I usually sit them out on principle. It's not that my collection of dance moves is so... distinct... that its been given its own name and has people studying it to try and learn how to replicate me. After all, let's face it: Nobody at a wedding can dance except for maybe one or two people, and most of the other guests watch them and are impressed for a song or two, then wish they'd just get off the floor and quit making the night their own personal showcase. Most people just want to hear the music and have fun and celebrate. I'd rather be the person enjoying about 60% of the music and working the room, catching up with the people I don't see very often, and I do what I can to avoid being the guy during the group dance who has to slink off quietly when a slow song comes on and all the couples fall together while I find a table with the 12-year-olds, who are staying up too late and traveling through the ballroom like a cloud of sugar-fueled locusts, systematically eating all of the remaining dinner mints still in the little decorative arrangements.
Oh, the delicious, delicious self-pity of it all....
(Incidentally, I'm thinking about authoring a petition to be passed around to all independent DJs in the land, asking them to have some kind of summit that would establish a new list of songs that have to be played at every wedding dance. I don't need to list these tired, overplayed wedding-dance songs; you know which ones they are. It's time for some retirements, and time for some new blood. I'm willing to provide several suggestions to get this new paradigm underway.)
Anyway. Yesterday my cousin and his long-time girlfriend got married. And for a nice change of pace, I enjoyed myself! (I know! Pick up your jaw!) Decent meal. Nephews #2 and #3 had fun with very little time spent fighting. Lot of good conversations. A very welcome surprise guest showing up late in the evening. A DJ instead of my cousins' band... not that I have issues with my cousins' band, but I think I can only be reasonably expected to hear "Black Velvet" so many times in one life, and I'm rapidly closing in on my quota.
One of the best things about the night though was that the ballroom was actually in the hotel where so many of us were staying. Which was awesome. How would you rather make your way back to bed: Drive 45 minutes through unfamiliar city streets in the dark, or hop on the elevator and whip out your key card? No contest for me.
One of my favorite moments of the night had to do with our being at the hotel. Now, the thing you need to know here is that I have a huge extended family, and we are unusually close; even in the cross-generation aspect this holds true. And we have all grown up together. I am closer to several of my cousins than many people I know are to their own siblings. And as the night was wrapping up, a group of us volunteered to bring the wedding gifts up to the hospitality room where the gift-opening would take place the next morning. It took about nine of us to get them all up there, and when we got to the door, we had to wait for another cousin, the sister of the mother of the groom, who had to track down the key card to let us in. While we were waiting, someone decided it would be funny if we made it look like we had just left this huge pile of gifts in the hall, out in the open for anyone walking by to grab, and so she would think she was the one person who would have to move them all in the room. So to pull this off, this group of people from my family? This collection of parents, teachers, accounting partners, professors, aunts & uncles, volunteers, high school students, grandparents, and so on? What did we do?
We left the gifts on the floor. Then all ran around several different corners to hide.
We stayed quiet and hidden for at least three or four minutes by my estimate. Silent. Peeking out to check, listening for voices, trying to keep each other from laughing.... at least that was the story at my end of the hallway.
Which was exactly the kind of thing we all would have done thirty years ago. Some things don't change.... much. I'm happy my family is on that list.
And I'm also happy that Sandy is finally, officially, one of us.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Perhaps....
...hate is too strong of a word for the puppies. I've discovered that once you accept they are going to pee every time you aren't looking, and that Butch is just as content to sit immobile in the grass for 15 minutes when it's cold and wet and dark as he would be to actually, you know, poop, and Seamus is constantly sampling the furniture to see if anything tastes as good as his turkey and rice diet, and that they are really more irritating than anything when Puppy Fight Club starts up, they aren't impossible to deal with. Seamus's bark is pretty evil, though. And I'll be happy to see them picked up, but probably not as happy as my poor befuddled Spencer, who is starting to wonder if these little dudes are here to stay, and if they are, then what's up with all the rasslin' they do....
Kyle's birthday party was this past weekend. For reasons of my own that have nothing to do with him, I'm not referring to him as SuperKyle anymore. I won't elaborate, but let's say that a kid who's hoping to live a couple more weeks so he can actually turn 10 shouldn't have so many people dumping the burden upon him of being an inspiration, when all he wants is to play with his friends and not hurt.
It was a pretty cool party, though. But it did bring things to a new level of real. So even though I have all sorts of new music to enjoy these days, I find I'm falling back on Neal Morse's "Testimony," Spock's Beard's "Snow," Transatlantic's "Bridge Across Forever" (no one heals the existential wounds like Neal) and Green Day's "American Idiot," since those albums were largely my personal soundtrack to the last few weeks of my younger sister's life.
I'm sitting at the beginning of what looks to be a week filled with the kind of emotions people usually like to avoid. But I know that in the not too distant future I've got the promise of some good extended-family times. Those times will be a much-needed stress release by the time they arrive.
Kyle's birthday party was this past weekend. For reasons of my own that have nothing to do with him, I'm not referring to him as SuperKyle anymore. I won't elaborate, but let's say that a kid who's hoping to live a couple more weeks so he can actually turn 10 shouldn't have so many people dumping the burden upon him of being an inspiration, when all he wants is to play with his friends and not hurt.
It was a pretty cool party, though. But it did bring things to a new level of real. So even though I have all sorts of new music to enjoy these days, I find I'm falling back on Neal Morse's "Testimony," Spock's Beard's "Snow," Transatlantic's "Bridge Across Forever" (no one heals the existential wounds like Neal) and Green Day's "American Idiot," since those albums were largely my personal soundtrack to the last few weeks of my younger sister's life.
I'm sitting at the beginning of what looks to be a week filled with the kind of emotions people usually like to avoid. But I know that in the not too distant future I've got the promise of some good extended-family times. Those times will be a much-needed stress release by the time they arrive.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Oh Wow, Do I Just Hate Puppies
My parents bought two new puppies about two months ago. And then they have spent three weeks of those two months traveling. Nice. My mom tells tales of how much progress they are making in their housebreaking, and I'm sure if you are a puppy in a household with two retired people who have the time to take you outside every hour on the hour, it's easy enough to present the illusion of housebreaking. So far Seamus the Instigator hasn't relieved himself indoors, but his compatriot Butch has dropped a few pup turds. It's hard to be too mad at him though, because life has been hell for poor Butch since he got here.
First you need to know that of the two pups, Butch is the nervous/shy/anxious/frightened one. So when I made the mistake of setting my dinner on the coffee table within dog level reach, they decided to see if my dinner was any better than theirs. My dog Spencer would never do this, so of course it didn't even occur to me how stupid I was being. I yelled them away in no uncertain terms, to the point where Butch decided to hide from me in his crate for about an hour.
Then when I took them out, figuring they'd need to go after having the life scared out of them, Seamus goes right away and while I'm trying to shovel him back inside, he twists and tries a different direction, throwing me off my balance so I wind up stepping on Butch, who squeals and tries to run away with such force that he actually does, pulling himself free of his leash and collar, and now REALLY wanting nothing at all to do with me. After finally getting two dogs securely inside I finally coax Butch within reach thanks to the blessing of the Baggie full of puppy food I had in my pocket. After immediately palpating all of his limbs and watching him walk and play for the last few hours and eventually trust me enough to lie beside me on the floor, I'm reasonably sure I didn't break him. I'll feel better if he's still moving in the morning.
Let me think.... They are still my charges for approximately another 94 hours.
This is why I have ONE dog.
First you need to know that of the two pups, Butch is the nervous/shy/anxious/frightened one. So when I made the mistake of setting my dinner on the coffee table within dog level reach, they decided to see if my dinner was any better than theirs. My dog Spencer would never do this, so of course it didn't even occur to me how stupid I was being. I yelled them away in no uncertain terms, to the point where Butch decided to hide from me in his crate for about an hour.
Then when I took them out, figuring they'd need to go after having the life scared out of them, Seamus goes right away and while I'm trying to shovel him back inside, he twists and tries a different direction, throwing me off my balance so I wind up stepping on Butch, who squeals and tries to run away with such force that he actually does, pulling himself free of his leash and collar, and now REALLY wanting nothing at all to do with me. After finally getting two dogs securely inside I finally coax Butch within reach thanks to the blessing of the Baggie full of puppy food I had in my pocket. After immediately palpating all of his limbs and watching him walk and play for the last few hours and eventually trust me enough to lie beside me on the floor, I'm reasonably sure I didn't break him. I'll feel better if he's still moving in the morning.
Let me think.... They are still my charges for approximately another 94 hours.
This is why I have ONE dog.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Back to the Music
I started this off intending it to be mostly about music with occasional meanderings about life in general, but those two seem to have switched places in the topics priority list. They kind of come together in today's entry though, since right now everyday life does have quite a bit to do with music.
Ever since "The View From Here" (see two posts back) took over my consciousness -- and it's still in heavy rotation -- I've bought SEVEN new albums to add to the collection. Obviously I have a significant problem. Here's the back story on each....
Tool: Lateralus
I've been vaguely aware of Tool as a 93X band, and even bought a cassette of theirs way back when. Yeah, I said cassette. That should tell you how long ago this was. I decided to give them another shot because my cousin the headbanging pharmacist pointed out to me that there are a lot of quirky little puzzles to this album that have to do with the Fibonacci Sequence. As a math teacher, that was too intellectual to pass up. And that aspect of the album is pretty cool. But more importantly, it ROCKS.
Bruce Hornsby: Levitate
This came out on what proved to be the historic New Release Tuesday of September 15. B.H. is an easy entry in my top 10 of all time, probably top 5, and seriously, if you have never seen him and his band the Noisemakers perform live you have not yet experienced the true potential of live music. After seeing him in concert one night, my sister, who was not an off-the-chart fan the way I was but probably went to the concert so I would have someone to go with, walked out of the theater in astonishment saying, "There's no way he can have any album out that is as good as he is live." It's a very good point, but one I'd have to give serious thought before I could say whether or not I agree. But this new one? Because it is credited to "Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers" it is truly a band effort. This one would give you an idea of what you're missing.
Dream Theater: Wither
Sept. 15 release #2. Of course if Dream Theater releases anything, I'm getting it. This was a digital single from iTunes of the song "Wither" from their newest album "Black Clouds and Silver Linings." In a universe that made sense, this song would be a huge, huge hit. But it won't be, because too many friggin' people can't stop dancing to Lady Gaga long enough to sample a greater quality of popular music. I didn't get this just because I wanted to be Insane Collector Who Buys Everything The Band Releases, but there were some cool bonuses on it. One is a reworked piano ballad version of the song which is strikingly beautiful, one is the vocal demo of the song that the songwriter, John Petrucci, sang (and he's really not that bad), and the third was the vocal demo for another song on the album, "The Best of Times," sung by the drummer Mike Portnoy (who's no Petrucci when it comes to singing). In fact, after downloading this I deleted original version of the song that came with the single. I don't need two copies of it.
Porcupine Tree: The Incident
Sept. 15 yet again. I love telling people the name of this band because I know there are many that hear it and immediately think "What the hell....?" The band has a catalog of progressive music that is very spacey like Pink Floyd, while being very guitar driven at the same time, almost to the point of sounding industrial. Very, very cool stuff. This new album is a double CD, and merits a distinction: The first CD is comprised of one song broken into 14 parts that blend together, making it the only song in my iTunes library that continues unbroken for an entire 55 minutes. The music geek in me loves that into tiny little pieces.
Muse: The Resistance
Yeah, you know when I bought this by now. Muse is a newer band that I discovered fairly recently: I don't know if it was DaM who introduced me to them first, or if I read how Petrucci got Portnoy interested in them and thought that was a good enough endorsement for me. An interesting band that works in parts of Rush, a LOT of Queen, and their own collection of musical and lyrical idiosyncrasies. Not as rocking as I'd hoped for compared to their other stuff, but all the same it's a pretty cool album. There are a lot of Queen echoes in there, and since Queen is in a three-way tie as my favorite musical act, that is not a bad thing. Side note: Anyone who makes any comparison between Adam Lambert from American Idol and Freddie Mercury needs to hop on a rocket ship and get off my planet. NOW.
Megadeth: Endgame
9/15/09. Holy crap does this make up for any other album on this list that I said didn't rock enough. I almost didn't buy it because honestly, I've always seen Megadeth as kind of hit and miss. They tried hard on this one though. I was laughing out loud at how much I liked this within the first five seconds of the second song.
Mark Knopfler: Get Lucky
Okay, this was released on Sept. 15, but I did not buy it then. Knopfler, once the voice and driving creative force behind Dire Straits, put out a solo album about ten or so years ago called "Goldenheart" that was okay, but didn't really catch on with me. I saw this one on the iTunes new release page, and thought, eh, I'll pass. Five albums is enough for one day, even for me. But then today when I got home from helping Mr. and Mrs. Bomani move into their new home, I had a voice mail from my sister that told me two things. (1) Our parents' puppies, whom she is currently caring for and I will be next week, crapped in their crate for a second day in a row. This makes me want to have them at my house even less than I already do, which is saying something. (2) Mark Knopfler's new album is AWESOME, and she more or less commanded me to get it. Now, usually it's the other way around with us, as I try to get her to listen to new bands or artists. So I figured, okay, if she feels that strongly about it and she knows my library well enough, why not? So I downloaded it.
No opinions of it yet, though. Because right now I'm still listening to Megadeth rock the paint off my office walls.
Ever since "The View From Here" (see two posts back) took over my consciousness -- and it's still in heavy rotation -- I've bought SEVEN new albums to add to the collection. Obviously I have a significant problem. Here's the back story on each....
Tool: Lateralus
I've been vaguely aware of Tool as a 93X band, and even bought a cassette of theirs way back when. Yeah, I said cassette. That should tell you how long ago this was. I decided to give them another shot because my cousin the headbanging pharmacist pointed out to me that there are a lot of quirky little puzzles to this album that have to do with the Fibonacci Sequence. As a math teacher, that was too intellectual to pass up. And that aspect of the album is pretty cool. But more importantly, it ROCKS.
Bruce Hornsby: Levitate
This came out on what proved to be the historic New Release Tuesday of September 15. B.H. is an easy entry in my top 10 of all time, probably top 5, and seriously, if you have never seen him and his band the Noisemakers perform live you have not yet experienced the true potential of live music. After seeing him in concert one night, my sister, who was not an off-the-chart fan the way I was but probably went to the concert so I would have someone to go with, walked out of the theater in astonishment saying, "There's no way he can have any album out that is as good as he is live." It's a very good point, but one I'd have to give serious thought before I could say whether or not I agree. But this new one? Because it is credited to "Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers" it is truly a band effort. This one would give you an idea of what you're missing.
Dream Theater: Wither
Sept. 15 release #2. Of course if Dream Theater releases anything, I'm getting it. This was a digital single from iTunes of the song "Wither" from their newest album "Black Clouds and Silver Linings." In a universe that made sense, this song would be a huge, huge hit. But it won't be, because too many friggin' people can't stop dancing to Lady Gaga long enough to sample a greater quality of popular music. I didn't get this just because I wanted to be Insane Collector Who Buys Everything The Band Releases, but there were some cool bonuses on it. One is a reworked piano ballad version of the song which is strikingly beautiful, one is the vocal demo of the song that the songwriter, John Petrucci, sang (and he's really not that bad), and the third was the vocal demo for another song on the album, "The Best of Times," sung by the drummer Mike Portnoy (who's no Petrucci when it comes to singing). In fact, after downloading this I deleted original version of the song that came with the single. I don't need two copies of it.
Porcupine Tree: The Incident
Sept. 15 yet again. I love telling people the name of this band because I know there are many that hear it and immediately think "What the hell....?" The band has a catalog of progressive music that is very spacey like Pink Floyd, while being very guitar driven at the same time, almost to the point of sounding industrial. Very, very cool stuff. This new album is a double CD, and merits a distinction: The first CD is comprised of one song broken into 14 parts that blend together, making it the only song in my iTunes library that continues unbroken for an entire 55 minutes. The music geek in me loves that into tiny little pieces.
Muse: The Resistance
Yeah, you know when I bought this by now. Muse is a newer band that I discovered fairly recently: I don't know if it was DaM who introduced me to them first, or if I read how Petrucci got Portnoy interested in them and thought that was a good enough endorsement for me. An interesting band that works in parts of Rush, a LOT of Queen, and their own collection of musical and lyrical idiosyncrasies. Not as rocking as I'd hoped for compared to their other stuff, but all the same it's a pretty cool album. There are a lot of Queen echoes in there, and since Queen is in a three-way tie as my favorite musical act, that is not a bad thing. Side note: Anyone who makes any comparison between Adam Lambert from American Idol and Freddie Mercury needs to hop on a rocket ship and get off my planet. NOW.
Megadeth: Endgame
9/15/09. Holy crap does this make up for any other album on this list that I said didn't rock enough. I almost didn't buy it because honestly, I've always seen Megadeth as kind of hit and miss. They tried hard on this one though. I was laughing out loud at how much I liked this within the first five seconds of the second song.
Mark Knopfler: Get Lucky
Okay, this was released on Sept. 15, but I did not buy it then. Knopfler, once the voice and driving creative force behind Dire Straits, put out a solo album about ten or so years ago called "Goldenheart" that was okay, but didn't really catch on with me. I saw this one on the iTunes new release page, and thought, eh, I'll pass. Five albums is enough for one day, even for me. But then today when I got home from helping Mr. and Mrs. Bomani move into their new home, I had a voice mail from my sister that told me two things. (1) Our parents' puppies, whom she is currently caring for and I will be next week, crapped in their crate for a second day in a row. This makes me want to have them at my house even less than I already do, which is saying something. (2) Mark Knopfler's new album is AWESOME, and she more or less commanded me to get it. Now, usually it's the other way around with us, as I try to get her to listen to new bands or artists. So I figured, okay, if she feels that strongly about it and she knows my library well enough, why not? So I downloaded it.
No opinions of it yet, though. Because right now I'm still listening to Megadeth rock the paint off my office walls.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
...Hear Me Roar?
I bought a 2009 RAV 4 this past winter. I was, and still am, very happy with it. I love having a new car. I love that it has a built-in jack where I can plug my iPod directly into the vehicle. I love that it has four times the cargo space than my previous car.
But I've noticed something about it.
When I first bought it, I started getting the same compliments anyone with a new car gets. And I'd get comments like "oh, my neighbor across the street has a RAV, and she loves it," and "That's the kind of car my mom bought," or "that's what Susan has, isn't it? I know she loves hers."
And a pattern began to emerge. After all of these months, I can now say with confidence that every other person I know who drives a RAV 4 is female.
Now, for the record, I am straight. Yes, granted, I'm in my forties and still unmarried, so don't try and pretend you haven't had your moments of wondering. But even making this assertion, it still turns out that I apparently bought the SUV made for today's woman.
I'm starting to worry now that if I ever go shopping for a new suit, I'm going to pull a Michael Scott and shop on the wrong side of T.J. Maxx.
But I've noticed something about it.
When I first bought it, I started getting the same compliments anyone with a new car gets. And I'd get comments like "oh, my neighbor across the street has a RAV, and she loves it," and "That's the kind of car my mom bought," or "that's what Susan has, isn't it? I know she loves hers."
And a pattern began to emerge. After all of these months, I can now say with confidence that every other person I know who drives a RAV 4 is female.
Now, for the record, I am straight. Yes, granted, I'm in my forties and still unmarried, so don't try and pretend you haven't had your moments of wondering. But even making this assertion, it still turns out that I apparently bought the SUV made for today's woman.
I'm starting to worry now that if I ever go shopping for a new suit, I'm going to pull a Michael Scott and shop on the wrong side of T.J. Maxx.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
The View From Here
It's been about a week and a half since my last post, when I quietly lamented the end of summer vacation and prepared for the beginning of the school year. Well, that year is well underway now, and I can attest to that because I left my desk covered in papers representing any number of issues that would have benefited from my attention, but I was too tired to care, and you know, it was just so ungodly humid in my room today that I couldn't see a reason to spend give more minutes in there than I absolutely had to. A lot easier to work on things at home in the air conditioned air on days like this. A lot of things have been going on there in the past week, more than enough story lines beginning to flesh out a lengthy novel as always, but tonight my head is elsewhere.
A couple days ago while exploring my iTunes library I came across an album that I haven't played in a long, long time, and if memory serves I only played a handful of times when I first got it. And right now, I literally cannot get this thing out of my head.
The D in DaM introduced this to me years ago. The band is called Giraffe. The album is "The View From Here." And right now I don't want to take time away from listening to it to even describe how beautifully constructed this album is. But the sad thing about my musical taste being as admittedly esoteric as it often is? Good luck ever finding this album on CD. Not on iTunes, not even on Amazon. I guess if you ever want to appreciate how great this is, you aren't going to get much of a chance. Talk about an unappreciated genius departing before his time....
A couple days ago while exploring my iTunes library I came across an album that I haven't played in a long, long time, and if memory serves I only played a handful of times when I first got it. And right now, I literally cannot get this thing out of my head.
The D in DaM introduced this to me years ago. The band is called Giraffe. The album is "The View From Here." And right now I don't want to take time away from listening to it to even describe how beautifully constructed this album is. But the sad thing about my musical taste being as admittedly esoteric as it often is? Good luck ever finding this album on CD. Not on iTunes, not even on Amazon. I guess if you ever want to appreciate how great this is, you aren't going to get much of a chance. Talk about an unappreciated genius departing before his time....
Monday, August 31, 2009
Give a Sumo Wrestler a Ham Sandwich, and Put Him in the Net
Summer vacation ended about twelve hours ago, thus negating the the original reason for maintaining this blog but we'll see how it all plays out anyway. My first official day back was... so many words to choose from: Lackluster? Maybe. Uneventful? Yes. Mundane? Not really. Routine? There it is. After eighteen years of celebrating the first day back, there is a definite sense of routine to it all. There wasn't any real excitement, or romance, or any anticipation of the as yet undiscovered and unexperienced. Mainly, I think, because I've done this enough times that the thrill is simply gone. I didn't even really give in to the admittedly anal impulse of writing out a list of everything that needed to be done before open house, because at this stage in the game I really think I could put my classroom together half-awake.
And somehow all of this got me thinking about the theater that goes hand in hand with teaching. I had a moment where I was a bit concerned, projecting ahead to the first day, seeing the students show up ready to see their friends, sporting the new shoes and haircuts and school supplies, more ready to get back to the routine of the school day than they will ever let on. And then there's me, standing in the front, feeling very blasé about it all. And God knows I can't do that, which is where the theater comes in.
That title for today, about the sumo and the ham sandwich? That came from a line on "The West Wing," probably my favorite TV show of all time and one that I'm currently rewatching on DVD. I see some comparisons between the kind of activity that charges through the way President Bartlet's White House was depicted and the way running an elementary school works out behind the scenes. Four thousand things going on at once, decisions about things that really should be carefully thought through made on the fly simply because they have to be, and more human drama than anyone can stomach in a day. I remember an episode on the DVDs not long ago when Pres. Bartlet was talking to some little kids before some holiday ceremony when one of his staffers pulled him aside to tell him that a hospitalized hate-crime victim had just died, and he had to take in the news then turn on a dime and go back to being silly and goofy for the kids. I had an experience like that once, when my principal interrupted my class to pull me into the hallway and tell me that a former student who was in high school at that time had been found dead as a result of an accidental drug overdose. And after we talked for a minute about it, I had to put on my happy teacher face and go back in and pretend like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, because the most important thing I had to deal with in that moment was making sure that I got the idea of the lesson across for the kids in my room right then.
And that's where the theater come into play. I've never been in a play myself; my theater experience has been limited to the one play I wrote and taking a few bows for it onstage at the community theater. But knowing how important it is for me to be inspiring even when I don't feel inspired myself, and knowing that I can pull that off with a practiced touch? I'm thinking this isn't all that separated from acting.
Luckily I also know from experience that given enough time in the setting, the inspiration won't be forced anymore. It might be routine for a week or two, but it'll click.
And somehow all of this got me thinking about the theater that goes hand in hand with teaching. I had a moment where I was a bit concerned, projecting ahead to the first day, seeing the students show up ready to see their friends, sporting the new shoes and haircuts and school supplies, more ready to get back to the routine of the school day than they will ever let on. And then there's me, standing in the front, feeling very blasé about it all. And God knows I can't do that, which is where the theater comes in.
That title for today, about the sumo and the ham sandwich? That came from a line on "The West Wing," probably my favorite TV show of all time and one that I'm currently rewatching on DVD. I see some comparisons between the kind of activity that charges through the way President Bartlet's White House was depicted and the way running an elementary school works out behind the scenes. Four thousand things going on at once, decisions about things that really should be carefully thought through made on the fly simply because they have to be, and more human drama than anyone can stomach in a day. I remember an episode on the DVDs not long ago when Pres. Bartlet was talking to some little kids before some holiday ceremony when one of his staffers pulled him aside to tell him that a hospitalized hate-crime victim had just died, and he had to take in the news then turn on a dime and go back to being silly and goofy for the kids. I had an experience like that once, when my principal interrupted my class to pull me into the hallway and tell me that a former student who was in high school at that time had been found dead as a result of an accidental drug overdose. And after we talked for a minute about it, I had to put on my happy teacher face and go back in and pretend like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, because the most important thing I had to deal with in that moment was making sure that I got the idea of the lesson across for the kids in my room right then.
And that's where the theater come into play. I've never been in a play myself; my theater experience has been limited to the one play I wrote and taking a few bows for it onstage at the community theater. But knowing how important it is for me to be inspiring even when I don't feel inspired myself, and knowing that I can pull that off with a practiced touch? I'm thinking this isn't all that separated from acting.
Luckily I also know from experience that given enough time in the setting, the inspiration won't be forced anymore. It might be routine for a week or two, but it'll click.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Livin' on a Prayer No More
Today has been a good day, to the point where I've spent the last twenty minutes browsing through iTunes trying to find the song appropriately triumphant enough to match the current events. For the moment this search has brought us to what I guess can be today's album of the day, "Stay Positive" by The Hold Steady. Even though they aren't technically a Twin Cities band they might as well be since lyrically they're surely based here. Members of the band originally came from the Cities, and playing through the songs on this album and all of their others is kind of a scavenger hunt for anyone who knows the area since there are so many references being made. But this is all beside the point for now. Today I'm playing it just because it's an album of loud, hooky, guitar-driven, sing-along party songs, most about drinking or other forms of self-destruction, but we'll overlook that for the time being and just enjoy the music.
Today was really my first day back to school. This isn't a great victory-lap kind of thing, and in fact after 18 years worth of first-days-back the shine has pretty much worn off. But it was a great first day back because of my morning crew: Nephew #1 and his two wingmen from the Relay for Life (if you want to roll back a month to that post) came to school with me and more or less did the back-to-school jobs that I hate the most: inflating my stability ball chairs, unpacking my text books, sharpening my spare pencils for the inevitably forgetful students who won't have pencils when they need them, and putting up the background paper for my bulletin boards. Stuff that would have taken me at least two days and a good part of the morning on the first day of school was done in two hours. After we finished the To-Do list, I took the fellas to the lunch buffet at Broadway Bar and Pizza, which they had prepared for by skipping breakfast to make sure they'd be unusually hungry for lunch. As we were walking into the restaurant, Nephew #1 turned to one of the other guys and said, "Let's make them regret this." Meaning making the good people of Broadway Bar and Pizza regret ever coming up with the concept of a lunch buffet. They surely put a dent in it, with something like 35-40 (admittedly small) pieces of pizza eaten, to say nothing of the pasta, sandwiches, salads, cinnamon puffs, Cherry Pepsi and pink lemonade they polished off. It was an epic amount of food, and I gotta say they earned it. My first official week back will be all the easier now.
But the great news of the day? Very big. I won't be going into great detail about it, but I will say that a friend scored a professional breakthrough today that he's been hoping to see happen for awhile now. Not only does this make a big difference on the career track, but it also brings in some sorely needed income, and will go a long way in resolving some of the everyday stress that life can provide. I'm very happy about this.
And if all of that wasn't enough, it's Eviction Night on Big Brother 11!! I can't wait to see which "houseguest" makes a complete fool of himself or herself tonight. Or maybe I should make that plural... there is rarely only one person traveling down that road on this show....
Today was really my first day back to school. This isn't a great victory-lap kind of thing, and in fact after 18 years worth of first-days-back the shine has pretty much worn off. But it was a great first day back because of my morning crew: Nephew #1 and his two wingmen from the Relay for Life (if you want to roll back a month to that post) came to school with me and more or less did the back-to-school jobs that I hate the most: inflating my stability ball chairs, unpacking my text books, sharpening my spare pencils for the inevitably forgetful students who won't have pencils when they need them, and putting up the background paper for my bulletin boards. Stuff that would have taken me at least two days and a good part of the morning on the first day of school was done in two hours. After we finished the To-Do list, I took the fellas to the lunch buffet at Broadway Bar and Pizza, which they had prepared for by skipping breakfast to make sure they'd be unusually hungry for lunch. As we were walking into the restaurant, Nephew #1 turned to one of the other guys and said, "Let's make them regret this." Meaning making the good people of Broadway Bar and Pizza regret ever coming up with the concept of a lunch buffet. They surely put a dent in it, with something like 35-40 (admittedly small) pieces of pizza eaten, to say nothing of the pasta, sandwiches, salads, cinnamon puffs, Cherry Pepsi and pink lemonade they polished off. It was an epic amount of food, and I gotta say they earned it. My first official week back will be all the easier now.
But the great news of the day? Very big. I won't be going into great detail about it, but I will say that a friend scored a professional breakthrough today that he's been hoping to see happen for awhile now. Not only does this make a big difference on the career track, but it also brings in some sorely needed income, and will go a long way in resolving some of the everyday stress that life can provide. I'm very happy about this.
And if all of that wasn't enough, it's Eviction Night on Big Brother 11!! I can't wait to see which "houseguest" makes a complete fool of himself or herself tonight. Or maybe I should make that plural... there is rarely only one person traveling down that road on this show....
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
The Count of Tuscany
The title to this posting won't make much sense to most people, but it was the only title that fit. FYI, "The Count of Tuscany" is a Dream Theater song. It's just shy of 20 minutes long, and the lyrics could best be described as something like an Edgar Allan Poe short story. Since the song is so long and has different musical movements to it, it's dark, intense, and beautiful all at the same time. Imagine the feeling of seeing dramatic thunderclouds on the horizon. You can stand there somewhat mesmerized by their ferocious beauty, but you also feel a sense of the ominous since you know that sooner or later those clouds are going to be beating down the world around you and there's nothing you can do about it.
I'm not feeling self-indulgent or depressed or even morose today, but I feel a sense of the ominous. It's been an unusual week. A good friend of mine saw her husband die after a prolonged illness. Another friend of mine saw her father die -- literally, right in front of her, while the two of them were rollerblading and he was hit by a car. The school board of my district announced the names of 17 schools that are being considered candidates for closing next year, and mine is one of them. I'm not terribly worried about this, but I am concerned. And as the school year begins, we're sitting on the cusp of a school year that promises to be nothing if not dramatic. The bigger picture? Schools closing, staff losing jobs or being reassigned, school boundaries being redefined, a great number of question marks hanging in the balance. Personally I'm getting back to a school where my responsibilities and largely my most direct colleagues will be changed, in addition to bits of personal unfinished business with a couple of individuals that have me curious how the beginning will play out.
It's not morose. But it does promise some interesting times ahead.
I'm not feeling self-indulgent or depressed or even morose today, but I feel a sense of the ominous. It's been an unusual week. A good friend of mine saw her husband die after a prolonged illness. Another friend of mine saw her father die -- literally, right in front of her, while the two of them were rollerblading and he was hit by a car. The school board of my district announced the names of 17 schools that are being considered candidates for closing next year, and mine is one of them. I'm not terribly worried about this, but I am concerned. And as the school year begins, we're sitting on the cusp of a school year that promises to be nothing if not dramatic. The bigger picture? Schools closing, staff losing jobs or being reassigned, school boundaries being redefined, a great number of question marks hanging in the balance. Personally I'm getting back to a school where my responsibilities and largely my most direct colleagues will be changed, in addition to bits of personal unfinished business with a couple of individuals that have me curious how the beginning will play out.
It's not morose. But it does promise some interesting times ahead.
Friday, August 21, 2009
A Night at the Orpheum
Tonight is Progressive Nation 2009, which is a summer music tour festival, kind of like a Warped Tour for music nerds. Obviously that is a category I'm in. The bands playing tonight: Scale the Summit, which is a cool instrumental band I downloaded since I knew I'd be seeing them at this show; Bigelf, which I know next to nothing about and might not even see depending on what time we arrive; Zappa plays Zappa, which is Dweezil Zappa and his band playing the music of his father, the late Frank Zappa; and the headline act, the mighty Dream Theater. If you follow this blog with any semi-regularity, you've read about them before.
Tonight will push Dream Theater into the Number 2 spot for acts I've seen the most times live, surpassed only by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. This makes perfect sense since I would list my top 3 musical acts, to anyone wondering, as Bruce Springsteen, Queen, and Dream Theater in a three-way tie. The three bands are so dissimilar there is no way to choose one over another because they are all so important to me in different ways.
My first DT show was the Metropolis 2000 tour. They had just released what I still consider their best album, "Scenes From a Memory," which is a concept album that tells a story of a love triangle, and double murder, and reincarnation. They played the entire album in order, note for note. And this is a pretty complex album, so to witness that happening really was something.
The second time I saw them was on the "Train of Thought" tour when they were an opening act for Yes at the Target Center. They still played about an hour and did a fully-produced show instead of the usual opening act, crammed on the front of the stage with horrible sound mixing crap. During one song, "The Spirit Carries On," I was singing along and wearing my bright gold Vikings sweatshirt, so the singer, James LaBrie, saw me out in the crowd and pointed at me for a few seconds. It was pretty cool.
The third show was their 20th anniversary tour, which went with the release of their album "Octavarium." We were on the main floor and could barely see the stage, but it was still great. It did convince us (us now being me, my sister, and Nephew #1) that balcony seats were going to be the wave of the future.
The fourth show was just two years ago, for the "Systematic Chaos" tour. There were two opening acts for this: Into Eternity, which my sister renamed "Into Frickin' Crap" because they were so bad, and Redemption, which turned out to be a pretty good band when I downloaded their album from iTunes the next day. DT put on a great show that night, probably the best I had seen them mostly because they had played a few favorite songs of mine I hadn't seen live before.
And tonight's show will make it No. 5. Looking forward to it.
*******************************
Days later....
Good show for #5. We got there late after having dinner downtown and missed Scale the Summit, but that's okay. They must have played for only about 25 minutes, because we only heard the last 3 or 4 songs from Bigelf. They were four really hairy-lookin' dudes dressed up in their best not-wanting-people-to-think-they-care-what-they-look-like 70s rock dirty clothes. The sound mix was horrible; the singer and the keyboards were way too loud. After they played, Zappa Plays Zappa turned out to be our most controversial band of the night since my sister and my future brother-in-law liked them a lot more than I did, with Nephew #1 kind of in the middle but I think leaning more in my direction. First of all, the band was without reproach. Insanely talented, incredibly tight band. And the music was interesting, if you're into the kind of meandering, structureless, nonsensical rock-jazz fusion laced with lyrical touches that exist only to be bizarre that from the sampling we heard seems to define Frank Zappa's legacy. Half an hour less would have been fine with me.
As for Dream Theater, I'll say only this: Their show had several musical moments that were so perfectly done that they were examples of when you're watching five people put all of this together right in front of you, and it gives you pause to consider just what is possible when the most gifted of us put themselves to the task.
Tonight will push Dream Theater into the Number 2 spot for acts I've seen the most times live, surpassed only by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. This makes perfect sense since I would list my top 3 musical acts, to anyone wondering, as Bruce Springsteen, Queen, and Dream Theater in a three-way tie. The three bands are so dissimilar there is no way to choose one over another because they are all so important to me in different ways.
My first DT show was the Metropolis 2000 tour. They had just released what I still consider their best album, "Scenes From a Memory," which is a concept album that tells a story of a love triangle, and double murder, and reincarnation. They played the entire album in order, note for note. And this is a pretty complex album, so to witness that happening really was something.
The second time I saw them was on the "Train of Thought" tour when they were an opening act for Yes at the Target Center. They still played about an hour and did a fully-produced show instead of the usual opening act, crammed on the front of the stage with horrible sound mixing crap. During one song, "The Spirit Carries On," I was singing along and wearing my bright gold Vikings sweatshirt, so the singer, James LaBrie, saw me out in the crowd and pointed at me for a few seconds. It was pretty cool.
The third show was their 20th anniversary tour, which went with the release of their album "Octavarium." We were on the main floor and could barely see the stage, but it was still great. It did convince us (us now being me, my sister, and Nephew #1) that balcony seats were going to be the wave of the future.
The fourth show was just two years ago, for the "Systematic Chaos" tour. There were two opening acts for this: Into Eternity, which my sister renamed "Into Frickin' Crap" because they were so bad, and Redemption, which turned out to be a pretty good band when I downloaded their album from iTunes the next day. DT put on a great show that night, probably the best I had seen them mostly because they had played a few favorite songs of mine I hadn't seen live before.
And tonight's show will make it No. 5. Looking forward to it.
*******************************
Days later....
Good show for #5. We got there late after having dinner downtown and missed Scale the Summit, but that's okay. They must have played for only about 25 minutes, because we only heard the last 3 or 4 songs from Bigelf. They were four really hairy-lookin' dudes dressed up in their best not-wanting-people-to-think-they-care-what-they-look-like 70s rock dirty clothes. The sound mix was horrible; the singer and the keyboards were way too loud. After they played, Zappa Plays Zappa turned out to be our most controversial band of the night since my sister and my future brother-in-law liked them a lot more than I did, with Nephew #1 kind of in the middle but I think leaning more in my direction. First of all, the band was without reproach. Insanely talented, incredibly tight band. And the music was interesting, if you're into the kind of meandering, structureless, nonsensical rock-jazz fusion laced with lyrical touches that exist only to be bizarre that from the sampling we heard seems to define Frank Zappa's legacy. Half an hour less would have been fine with me.
As for Dream Theater, I'll say only this: Their show had several musical moments that were so perfectly done that they were examples of when you're watching five people put all of this together right in front of you, and it gives you pause to consider just what is possible when the most gifted of us put themselves to the task.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Edit THIS
Nephew #1 and I are going to see "District 9" this afternoon because I really need a break from editing. I have to get it as perfect as I can before I send it to an agent. I thought about this a little, and one way I came up with to describe the process of proofreading a 32,000 word manuscript that you've already read through at least three times in the past two weeks is like this: Imagine you have a big date coming up with someone you really like, and you really want them to like you. Then someone says you have a gray hair somewhere on your body -- maybe your head, your arms, your ears, feet... use your imagination. It's a small hair and it would go unnoticed by just about everyone, but the person you're going out with is absolutely going to see it, and when they do they are going get up and walk out on you without a second thought.
This isn't revision I'm doing -- revision is changing ideas, changing tone, changing characters and storyline. That part is pretty much done. This is editing. Periods. Spelling. Grammar. Editing really sucks. And I'm royally tired of it. But I want that first date to go well, so....
I've started getting e-mails from my principal. Seventeen more days.
This isn't revision I'm doing -- revision is changing ideas, changing tone, changing characters and storyline. That part is pretty much done. This is editing. Periods. Spelling. Grammar. Editing really sucks. And I'm royally tired of it. But I want that first date to go well, so....
I've started getting e-mails from my principal. Seventeen more days.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Trying to Cut the Cord
I finished the manuscript. I thought it was good. I sent the file to a lot of people. They thought it was good. I had the other half of my co-dependent editing relationship pick through it. He thought it was good, and gave me suggestions on how to make it better. Nephew #1 read through it and found typos for me to fix. I read through the whole manuscript, making some of the changes and corrections that seemed like good ideas or were necessary. I've written a query letter that needs just a tiny bit more polish before its done. I have the first agency I'm going to try picked out. And yet I just printed out a copy of the manuscript so I can read the whole thing AGAIN, this time with a different spacing so it will look different enough for me to hopefully not be lulled into hurrying through. Because even after all of these filters I've put it through, I'm still not ready to send it. I want to know it's as perfect as it has to be for now. It will never be perfect; any time I look at something I've written I can always find different ways to phrase things that always seems better than what I had before.
If I can turn this loose by the end of the weekend, I'll be happy. And slightly nervous.
If I can turn this loose by the end of the weekend, I'll be happy. And slightly nervous.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
No Apologies
I have at least three people pretty directly involved in my life who are dealing with cancer right now, in one way or another. One person has someone in her family who just discovered they have the disease, another will almost certainly lose her husband this fall (I just learned this today), and one little nine-year-old is living on an undetermined amount of borrowed time.
I can relate to people who don't want to take up the fight so directly, because I didn't myself until I was forced to the front line. And maybe that's what it takes for people to start to understand how important it is to fight this off. Maybe you need cancer to knock you on your ass before you fully appreciate how awful it is. But now that I'm in that category and I know what it's like, I really don't think I'm ever going to apologize for encouraging and pushing people to get involved in the fight, even if it's something as painless as a small donation once a year. I can overlook ignorance and denial, since I lived with them myself for so long. But people who are informed, and makes the choice to stay on the sidelines? Seriously: What's the problem? Life or death. You gonna fight, or you gonna watch? This thing ain't gonna cure itself.
I can relate to people who don't want to take up the fight so directly, because I didn't myself until I was forced to the front line. And maybe that's what it takes for people to start to understand how important it is to fight this off. Maybe you need cancer to knock you on your ass before you fully appreciate how awful it is. But now that I'm in that category and I know what it's like, I really don't think I'm ever going to apologize for encouraging and pushing people to get involved in the fight, even if it's something as painless as a small donation once a year. I can overlook ignorance and denial, since I lived with them myself for so long. But people who are informed, and makes the choice to stay on the sidelines? Seriously: What's the problem? Life or death. You gonna fight, or you gonna watch? This thing ain't gonna cure itself.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
A Point to Prove
Feelin' good today. Woo hoo! The storms that rolled through last night stayed far enough south to keep the worst of the ugly out of my neck of the woods. The morning after an experience like that always feels like a relief. I spent the day doing a lot of reading, writing, and relaxing. Pretty darn good day overall. Even as I look at the calendar and see that school officially begins for me in three more weeks, I don't see that as only having three weeks left, but still having three more weeks. Yes, people. The glass is half FULL today. I'll pause for a moment while some of you out there take a moment to collect yourselves......................
Anyway.
To temper such comfortable optimism, I went to the darkest corners of the iTunes vault for today's Album of the Day: "Ride the Lightning" by Metallica. This is the album with song titles like "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "Fade to Black," "Trapped Under Ice," and "Creeping Death." Not exactly Katy Perry's neighborhood. But man, I'll tell ya - this album ROCKS. And really taking the time to listen to it closely brings to mind a point of musical debate I have loaded up for anyone who would dare to challenge it: Heavy Metal is undeniably a better quality of music than country. Notice I said quality there. I'm not stating an opinion here; there are lots of people out there that love their country music, and I have no problem with that. I even see the appeal, and a lot of the stuff in my library could be considered country rock, alt country, and, in some stretches, perhaps even crossover. But metal is a better quality. All metal? Heck no. I spent about twenty minutes watching performances from the Download Festival over in England this weekend, long enough to see Slipknot and Korn perform. I like some songs by Korn, but I have no problem with saying Slipknot sounds like an industrial accident in progress, and I'm sure they're proud of it. On the other side of the argument, I'm sure there are country acts that so deeply revel in their hillbilly redneck pride that they might brew up their own moonshine just for the principle of it. My point is that if you took the best examples of country music and compared them to the best examples of metal, country would lose out. I offer up two reasons for this opinion: Songwriting, and musical virtuosity.
Yeah, I know. Country prides itself on the songwriting thing. And yeah, at it's best it has some great songs, but I think the genre itself places limitations on the content of the songs themselves that metal doesn't need to abide by. Are there a lot of country concept albums out there? I'm not aware of them if there are. Country follows the same rules pop does: write songs folks'll like and hum and dance and drink and party along with when they hear them. Metal? No. Let's look at one of my favorite bands here to illustrate this point: Iron Maiden. I have 142 Maiden songs on the iPod, and the subjects of these songs? Executions during the Spanish Inquisition. The European decimation of Native American nations. Greek Mythology. The threat of nuclear winter. Alexander the Great. The sacrifices of World War I. More literary references than I'm probably aware of. I could go on but I'm probably boring you already.
Okay, point two: Virtuosity. Yes, I fully acknowledge that there are some ridiculously talented musicians playing country music. But again, looking at the top acts in each genre, the percentage of metal acts that are based around musical virtuosity is so much higher. How many musicians in country music are name musicians known for their playing alone, much less their songs? The game is called Guitar Hero, not Steel Guitar Hero. Angus Young? Eddie Van Halen? Steve Vai? Joe Satriani? Every member of a hundred different bands that most people don't know?
No contest.
Anyway.
To temper such comfortable optimism, I went to the darkest corners of the iTunes vault for today's Album of the Day: "Ride the Lightning" by Metallica. This is the album with song titles like "For Whom the Bell Tolls," "Fade to Black," "Trapped Under Ice," and "Creeping Death." Not exactly Katy Perry's neighborhood. But man, I'll tell ya - this album ROCKS. And really taking the time to listen to it closely brings to mind a point of musical debate I have loaded up for anyone who would dare to challenge it: Heavy Metal is undeniably a better quality of music than country. Notice I said quality there. I'm not stating an opinion here; there are lots of people out there that love their country music, and I have no problem with that. I even see the appeal, and a lot of the stuff in my library could be considered country rock, alt country, and, in some stretches, perhaps even crossover. But metal is a better quality. All metal? Heck no. I spent about twenty minutes watching performances from the Download Festival over in England this weekend, long enough to see Slipknot and Korn perform. I like some songs by Korn, but I have no problem with saying Slipknot sounds like an industrial accident in progress, and I'm sure they're proud of it. On the other side of the argument, I'm sure there are country acts that so deeply revel in their hillbilly redneck pride that they might brew up their own moonshine just for the principle of it. My point is that if you took the best examples of country music and compared them to the best examples of metal, country would lose out. I offer up two reasons for this opinion: Songwriting, and musical virtuosity.
Yeah, I know. Country prides itself on the songwriting thing. And yeah, at it's best it has some great songs, but I think the genre itself places limitations on the content of the songs themselves that metal doesn't need to abide by. Are there a lot of country concept albums out there? I'm not aware of them if there are. Country follows the same rules pop does: write songs folks'll like and hum and dance and drink and party along with when they hear them. Metal? No. Let's look at one of my favorite bands here to illustrate this point: Iron Maiden. I have 142 Maiden songs on the iPod, and the subjects of these songs? Executions during the Spanish Inquisition. The European decimation of Native American nations. Greek Mythology. The threat of nuclear winter. Alexander the Great. The sacrifices of World War I. More literary references than I'm probably aware of. I could go on but I'm probably boring you already.
Okay, point two: Virtuosity. Yes, I fully acknowledge that there are some ridiculously talented musicians playing country music. But again, looking at the top acts in each genre, the percentage of metal acts that are based around musical virtuosity is so much higher. How many musicians in country music are name musicians known for their playing alone, much less their songs? The game is called Guitar Hero, not Steel Guitar Hero. Angus Young? Eddie Van Halen? Steve Vai? Joe Satriani? Every member of a hundred different bands that most people don't know?
No contest.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Rain Keeps Fallin', Rain Keeps Fallin' Down
I'm feeling a little down today. It's been a stressful week compared to most of the summer, but that's to be expected when you go from doing next to nothing to having actual sustained responsibilities overnight. But that has nothing to do with feeling kind of down.
I saw on Yahoo News mid-afternoon that John Hughes had died. If you were an 80s teenager, you don't need to be told who he was. If you weren't, you still might not need to be told. But in case his name doesn't ring a bell, maybe some of these names will: "Sixteen Candles." "The Breakfast Club." "Pretty in Pink." "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." "Some Kind of Wonderful." Not to mention "National Lampoon's Vacation," "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," "She's Having a Baby," "Uncle Buck," "The Great Outdoors," "Weird Science" (not his greatest moment), "Mr. Mom," and of course two perennial holiday movies, "Home Alone" and "Christmas Vacation."
I like to think I'm a halfway decent writer, but I don't think there's any way to describe the kind of thumbprint that gets left on your life and your world view unless you had the shared experience of being in high school the year "The Breakfast Club" came out in theaters. This is a man who wrote one of the movie lines I quote the most frequently. Whenever one of my students will say something about their church, I'll reply, "You own a church?!"
Thanks for the formative years and 10,001 quotable lines, Mr. Hughes. You'll be missed.
I saw on Yahoo News mid-afternoon that John Hughes had died. If you were an 80s teenager, you don't need to be told who he was. If you weren't, you still might not need to be told. But in case his name doesn't ring a bell, maybe some of these names will: "Sixteen Candles." "The Breakfast Club." "Pretty in Pink." "Ferris Bueller's Day Off." "Some Kind of Wonderful." Not to mention "National Lampoon's Vacation," "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles," "She's Having a Baby," "Uncle Buck," "The Great Outdoors," "Weird Science" (not his greatest moment), "Mr. Mom," and of course two perennial holiday movies, "Home Alone" and "Christmas Vacation."
I like to think I'm a halfway decent writer, but I don't think there's any way to describe the kind of thumbprint that gets left on your life and your world view unless you had the shared experience of being in high school the year "The Breakfast Club" came out in theaters. This is a man who wrote one of the movie lines I quote the most frequently. Whenever one of my students will say something about their church, I'll reply, "You own a church?!"
Thanks for the formative years and 10,001 quotable lines, Mr. Hughes. You'll be missed.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Cold Turkey
Why does the stylist ask "What do you think?" after you get the haircut? Do you really have the option of saying, "Wow. That was just way, way too short. Can you do something about it?"
I'm taking a short entry on here because I forgot to do an Album of the Day earlier, and I don't think I've done one here for awhile. Anyway. Today's album is "Carving Desert Canyons" by Scale the Summit. They're an instrumental band I found this summer when I learned they were going to be a replacement act for a different band on the Progressive Nation '09 Tour, which I'll be seeing later in the month. Think about them like they were a jazz combo playing complicated and demanding arrangements with a lot of jumping around time signature wise, except they're playing with their guitars really loud and crunchy and the drummer doesn't need to hold back so much.
I bought this as an iTunes download earlier in the summer and according to the play count column have only listened to it twice. This is indicative of a trend that has inspired me to give up on my music shopping for the rest of August, or perhaps even until the beginning of the school year. I think I'm going to be better off spending time getting to know the music I already have a little better than I would be by adding more. ALTHOUGH! If Dream Theater is selling any of their self-produced bootleg CDS at Progressive Nation, I am allowing for a loophole that would let me buy that since it would be a rare opportunity. I'm jus' sayin'.....
I'm taking a short entry on here because I forgot to do an Album of the Day earlier, and I don't think I've done one here for awhile. Anyway. Today's album is "Carving Desert Canyons" by Scale the Summit. They're an instrumental band I found this summer when I learned they were going to be a replacement act for a different band on the Progressive Nation '09 Tour, which I'll be seeing later in the month. Think about them like they were a jazz combo playing complicated and demanding arrangements with a lot of jumping around time signature wise, except they're playing with their guitars really loud and crunchy and the drummer doesn't need to hold back so much.
I bought this as an iTunes download earlier in the summer and according to the play count column have only listened to it twice. This is indicative of a trend that has inspired me to give up on my music shopping for the rest of August, or perhaps even until the beginning of the school year. I think I'm going to be better off spending time getting to know the music I already have a little better than I would be by adding more. ALTHOUGH! If Dream Theater is selling any of their self-produced bootleg CDS at Progressive Nation, I am allowing for a loophole that would let me buy that since it would be a rare opportunity. I'm jus' sayin'.....
A True Lazy Man
There are six more days until the end of the Lazy Man Triathalon. I must have mentioned this here at some point -- it's a summer workout program at the Y where you have to do all of the work involved in a normal triathalon (112 miles of biking, 26.2 miles of running/walking, and either 12.5 miles of rowing or 2.5 miles of swimming), but you have five weeks to get it all done. And yeah, five weeks seems like plenty of time. And yeah, it is if you really bust your rear to get done. As of today with those six days remaining, I've completed all of my walking and rowing and only have another 21.5 miles left to bike. I am confident I will finish.
But I'm not sure if I agree with the name. As a response, I have developed a separate set of criteria that could be used for a TRUE Lazy Man Triathalon.
(1) The biking would be replaced with a television marathon. I've had a few of these in my day, when I had new DVD sets I couldn't wait to watch and just burned through them one after another until I reached the point I was dreaming about the characters that night. For this marathon to be any measure of endurance though, challenge is necessary. So it can't be a show that it interesting or honestly entertaining or mentally engaging on any real level. Based on some of my closed-captioning experiences on the treadmills and bikes at the Y, I suggest that the marathoners are only given the choice between watching eight hours of either Fox News midday coverage or eight hours of "Full House." "What Not to Wear" on TLC would be an alternative.
(2) The swimming would be replaced with being up to your chin in junk food instead of water. You would have 24 hours to eat 2.5 large pizzas which had been delivered late and were already cooling off. No carbonated drinks would be allowed, because slamming down some Coke and letting go with a seismic burp could open up too much extra space in the stomach. An alternative to the pizza would be 2.5 bags of low-grade store-brand tortilla chips that taste a little stale but not stale enough to throw away just yet. There would also be either cheese dip, salsa, or guacamole to get through, and yes, you would have to use your finger to clean out the can or the jar to avoid disqualification. And no letting the dog finish it off for you.
(3) The running would be replaced, most naturally, by video games. Because you do have to make a character move around in most games, so this seems like a logical enough connection. It would have to be a mediocre and repetitive game that doesn't do a very good job of engaging the player. Buggy graphics, poor voice acting, no AI to speak of so there isn't any real challenge other than continuing to play. This stage of the triathalon would have to last a minimum of four hours, or however long it takes for the individual's body to begin permanently remolding whatever piece of furniture they've mounted for the duration. Game time would also need to be completed between the hours of 12:00 midnight and 6 A.M., because, as any true gamer knows, those are prime hours. No limit on caffeine for this stage.
There you go. You have five weeks to finish.
But I'm not sure if I agree with the name. As a response, I have developed a separate set of criteria that could be used for a TRUE Lazy Man Triathalon.
(1) The biking would be replaced with a television marathon. I've had a few of these in my day, when I had new DVD sets I couldn't wait to watch and just burned through them one after another until I reached the point I was dreaming about the characters that night. For this marathon to be any measure of endurance though, challenge is necessary. So it can't be a show that it interesting or honestly entertaining or mentally engaging on any real level. Based on some of my closed-captioning experiences on the treadmills and bikes at the Y, I suggest that the marathoners are only given the choice between watching eight hours of either Fox News midday coverage or eight hours of "Full House." "What Not to Wear" on TLC would be an alternative.
(2) The swimming would be replaced with being up to your chin in junk food instead of water. You would have 24 hours to eat 2.5 large pizzas which had been delivered late and were already cooling off. No carbonated drinks would be allowed, because slamming down some Coke and letting go with a seismic burp could open up too much extra space in the stomach. An alternative to the pizza would be 2.5 bags of low-grade store-brand tortilla chips that taste a little stale but not stale enough to throw away just yet. There would also be either cheese dip, salsa, or guacamole to get through, and yes, you would have to use your finger to clean out the can or the jar to avoid disqualification. And no letting the dog finish it off for you.
(3) The running would be replaced, most naturally, by video games. Because you do have to make a character move around in most games, so this seems like a logical enough connection. It would have to be a mediocre and repetitive game that doesn't do a very good job of engaging the player. Buggy graphics, poor voice acting, no AI to speak of so there isn't any real challenge other than continuing to play. This stage of the triathalon would have to last a minimum of four hours, or however long it takes for the individual's body to begin permanently remolding whatever piece of furniture they've mounted for the duration. Game time would also need to be completed between the hours of 12:00 midnight and 6 A.M., because, as any true gamer knows, those are prime hours. No limit on caffeine for this stage.
There you go. You have five weeks to finish.
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