Sunday Sunday

Lava is a philosophy. The primordial ooze that once ruled our world has been captured in perpetual motion. Lava is the moment. Its ever changing patterns are hypnotizing yet invigorating. Lava is an art form. Classic and at the same time... progressive. Lava is pre-historic and post-modern. Lava is here to stay.

--Lava Lite® instructions blurb

Last night I had a dream that the pastor was done preaching by 11:00 A. M. Then I woke up and my pillow was gone.

Nancy and I really wanted to be sociable and go to the after church shindig at the Chinese buffet, but neither of us really was in the mood for Chinese food. Should we have sucked it up (literally) and gone anyway? I don't know, but we ended up getting bagels and cream cheese at Cornerstone and eating at home. I put on an Earl Hines record and it was just a really peaceful relaxing Sunday. The one thing I enjoy about listening to those old jazz pianists is their wonderful sense of rhythm- that's something the modern keyboard jazzers seem to lack. Hines' harmonies are relatively simple, but this simplicity makes the times when he does complicate the harmonies stand out. Today jazz seems to be all about how soupy you can make the harmonies. The unending stream of extended and altered chords that seems to dominate present day jazz doesn't do much for me. Maybe that's why I'm not particularly inspired to play jazz, although I have been playing Take Five each night at the restaurant- I botched it badly several weeks ago when a patron requested it, so I feel I have to redeem myself. I transpose it from the original key of Eb minor to D minor (a la George Benson) and losing five flats is helping me a lot. Anymore it seems like the older I get the lazier I get. It's not that I don't have the will to learn new stuff anymore- it's just getting harder and harder.

Speaking of which I'm making a half-hearted attempt to learn a Rachmaninoff prelude. Someone requested "some Rachmaninoff" a few weeks back. I used to play Somewhere In Time (a pop tune based on a Rachmaninoff theme) and maybe I'm just going to have to settle for putting that back in my repetoire. This woman was actually looking for the C# minor prelude, which I used to play on occasion from the written music in my youth. Honestly, I just don't like it well enough to go through the trouble of relearning it and memorizing it- plus the violent middle section would make really bad restaurant music. So I'm struggling with the G minor prelude which I like a lot better but is actually more difficult than the C# minor prelude.

The rest of our afternoon was spent cleaning up our basement. Why is it that no matter how hard you try you end up moving trash? From the old basement to the new basement- and eventually out to the curb. Well, at least it's out there now. Cleaning up is a lot more fun when you are doing it with somebody else. As we were deciding what to pitch and what to keep I came across the old lava lamp that Nancy got me for some occasion (probably Christmas) a few years ago. It was a floor model and never worked particularly well. I discovered that the bulb was burned out and this presented a problem, because the old bulb didn't have the wattage on it. When I got to the store I found that I could either get 40 or 60 watt bulbs that would fit a lava lamp. I just guessed and bought the 60 watters. When I got back home I discovered that I had lost the instructions on what wattage to use in this lamp, so I had to ask the internet. It told me an interesting story about a hapless fellow who got impatient waiting for the standard 40 watt lava light bulb to heat up his lamp to the point where the lava was moving, so he put the lamp on the stove. This did the trick, but unluckily for him, the excess heat blew up the lamp, sending a big chunk of glass into his heart and killing him instantly.

This inspired me to go out and get the 40 watt bulb.

By the way, I don't know what hapless means, but i've always wanted to use that word.

What I did for Spring Break

So I've managed to get three days off in a row- Wednesday thru Friday (today). What do I to show for it?

Well, I spent some time with Nancy, which was really really nice. We took a nice bike trip across the river yesterday and found a new way to cross the river- when the bike path crosses over at the OSU wetlands there is a little dirt trail which cuts into the back of the cemetery. Pretty cool. While Nancy shopped a bit I tried to get into the mosque on Riverview to get a free Koran. Turns out that the Mosque is closed to unbelievers in the day, and I'd have to come back at night to get a free Koran. Maybe I will, someday.

Grant has finished up the artwork for the CD so I need to get everything packed up and sent to the manufacturers.

I finally nabbed a vinyl copy of Alchemy by the Third Ear Band off ebay for only $12.50. That's a pretty good price from what I can tell, although this particular copy is noisier than I would have liked. The gentleman selling it rated the vinyl at very good, which I don't think was accurate. But I'm just happy not to have paid the $30 that this record seems to be going for typically. This record is largely for nostalgia's sake. My first "hi-fi" was a tape player that my parents bought me from radio shack with an extention speaker that I got from God knows where. The tape player came with a free tape from the free tape bin, and somebody- either my parents or me- picked Alchemy.

Right now Nancy is out looking at furniture and I have finished "fixing" one of my turntables. "Fixing" is in quotes because I fixed it in the sense that one fixes one's dog. The automatic return wasn't working, so I went in and ripped out a bunch of pieces to disable it. So the turntable "works" as a manual turntable, but not as it was originally intended to. I also picked up some stain from the hardware store to stain a picture frame. Nancy is really good at this, and did most of the work. I got to stain one side of the frame and managed to get more stain on my hands than on the frame itself. But at least I have nice chestnut colored hands to show for my efforts.

There's a river of love that runs through all times
There's a river of grief that floods through our lives
It starts when a heart is broken into
By the thief of belief in anything that's true
But there's a river of love that runs through all time

There's a river of love that runs through all times
There's a river of tears that flows through our eyes
We fight through the night for freedom as it fades
Into a jail where we fail every time we make a break
But there's a river of love that runs through all times

I had to run before I knew how to crawl
The first step was hard but I've had trouble with them all
But now the night grows darker and the day grows dim
'Cause I know I never will see you again
And I almost made you happy

There's a river of love that runs through all times
There's a river of fire that burns with no light
The flame is the pain of dreams gone up in smoke
From the lies we deny and we breathe until we choke
But there's a river of love that runs through all times

T-Bone Burnett

For The Record

Yesterday was a day of ups and downs. Things started great, but somewhere around early evening things bogged down and I felt drained.

Nancy and I spent Sunday morning at Saint Matress of the Springs, after which we had lunch at Cornerstone because Whole World was too crowded. Then we hopped a bus down to Used Kids records. Picked up a few cool things, in particular Christopher Parkening playing Bach and Bill Evans playing pop standards like People. This is my first listen of a Bill Evans recording, but I know him from a series of books he has done of simple jazz arrangements of popular tunes. The thing I like about Bill is that he seems unpretentious, unlike a lot of jazzers I have known. Most of them would look down their noses at doing a tune like People. The bummer is that the record has a pretty serious scratch in the first cut- but what the hey, I only paid three bucks for it.

Christopher Parkening worked out much better. He was only a dollar, and although the record jacket is beat to shit, the vinyl is in near perfect shape. This is quickly becoming our favorite dinner time record. I had the pleasure of hearing Christopher live many years ago at Dickinson College (where my father taught chemistry at the time) back when he was a young sensation in the classical guitar world. I was too young to truly appreciate what I was hearing at the time. Now, listening to the recording, I am amazed at the technique he demostrates. It's absolutely mind boggling to me just to hear acoustic guitar music without a hint of fret noise or buzzes- but it goes way beyong just this to fantastic dynamic control and a wonderful sense of line. Yeah, I know playing an instrument that costs thousands of dollars helps.

After we were done at Used Kids we went up High St a bit to the Goodwill store where I was happily surprised to find more good vinyl- or at least interesting vinyl. Picked up a record from the mid fifties by the Banjo Kings (their individual names escape me now). I told Nancy that this record was likely to be either incredibly amazing or incredibly hokey. After listening to it we are split on the issue. I also picked up a Jean Luc-Ponty album that featured Randy Jackson on bass. Yeah, the same guy that is judging American Idol right now. Hey, he's actually an incredible bassist!

The latest vinyl transfer project was a record I picked up earlier this week by jazz bassoonist Janet Grice. Not that I'm a huge fan of jazz bassoon, but dad plays the bassoon and I thought he would get a kick out of it. I never imagined that he would actually know the woman. So, of course, he wanted a copy. The music is great in places, but at times the bassoon doesn't work so well with the electric bass- the timbres are close enough that it gets confusing sometimes as to who is playing the melody.

All that is necessary

Still haven't felt much like writing lately. Perhaps it's because of the numerous times I've spent hours thinking through some brilliant concept, only to find that when I set it down in writing it doesn't seem so brilliant. Is this because my concepts are unbrilliant, or because my writing is unbrilliant? Probably both and neither, or sometimes one or the other.

Rats!!

This marks my fifth or sixth day straight without eating meat. I did this before- went nearly two years the last time. At some point I realized something wasn't right because I had these near fainting spells. Also, at about the same time, my doctor told me that if I couldn't do something about my elevated cholesterol, I would have to go on medication. She recommended cutting out all those rich meats in my diet. I don't think she believed that I was really a vegetarian. Anyway, I started eating meat again and miraculously my cholesterol went back to the normal range.

But lately I've had a hankerin' to try it again. And, it seems that I feel better than before my meat fast. Is it truly my vegetarianism, or is it psychological? Time will tell. I had hoped to get into the doctor to have my cholesterol checked before I began this new venture so I can see if in fact vegetarianism causes my cholesterol to peak. If it does, I will add a little seafood to my diet, or maybe try some dietary supplements.

I really do want to see if I can make this work.

I've been having some political thoughts lately, which is always dangerous. Probably I will set them down in later blogs and they will be positively unbrilliant, much to my dismay. But I do want to report a few thoughts I have had today about this phrase:

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Of course, this is a phrase intended to spur people on to political action. Everybody does something, even if only to breathe and eat. It is always a specific kind of political action that is being pushed on us by those using this phrase; like voting for the good candidate so that the evil candidate doesn't win. And apparently it works- if you are a person that does nothing politically, you are likely to feel some level of guilt when you hear this phrase. But the reason it works so well is because of the strange phenomenon that almost all of us think that we are good men (men being used in the generic sense of human here.) I read that a recent poll showed that 94% of all people think they are more honest than average. So, in some sense, the vast majority of people think that they are good.

So if you are a good person, it follows that you should do something political so that evil doesn't triumph, right? But what if you are not a good person? Seems to me that clearly, if you are evil, you shouldn't do anything political.

What does Jesus say about us? Are we good, or evil?

V for... vapid?

I wasn't going say much about V for Vendetta, mainly because I thought the movie wasn't that great. But after reading a host of moronic comments about the movie on the net I feel compelled to say something.

In V, England is ruled by a dictatorial fascist party. There is mention of a failed American war that is poorly defined. The result of this failed war is that America is a barbaric non-power in the world. There is also a poorly defined religious system in place in England, which has as its symbol a bowderized cross.

I went to the movie expecting either to love it or hate it. Somewhere I had picked up the notion that it was a virulently anti-Bush film, and wanted to evaluate it on this basis. Who doesn't love a good Bush Bash, after all? But it turned out to be nothing of the sort. The evil dictator in the movie isn't like George Bush in any way. For one thing, he is far more articulate than the American President.

Detractors of the film say that the film bashes Christianity and America. The failed war "obviously" is the current Iraq conflict. They also point to the fact that the hero of the film, "V," is an anarchist.

All of these criticisms fail, in my opinion. The writer of the story on which the movie was based was in fact an honest-to-God anarchist, and wrote the story in part to glorify anarchism. But in fact, he hated the movie screenplay, saying that it completely gutted his original intentions.

I have to agree with him. "V" isn't much of an anarchist. The main character of Batman Begins is a far more compelling and attractive anarchist. If you want a good movie that actually takes a relevant look at the problems of evil in government, see Batman and skip V.

There is one thing that could potentially make this an interesting movie. I suspect that its purpose has nothing to do with anything I've read thus far, but instead that the movie is intended to eventually embarrass the theocons. My theory is that the failed American war of the movie is in fact the American Revolution. The failure of this war has led to 18th century England's continued tyrrany. V's character will be shown to have been conciously designed to represent the American Revolutionaries, and to share their ideals. This point is well hidden, but when the DVD comes out there will be material that will show that we all should have all known this. I suspect that all of the evil British characters have roots in actual figures that lived at the time of the revolution. The pedophile priest, for example, will be shown to have been based on some perverted Anglican priest from the 18th century. It will be shown that throughout the film hints have been placed that should have made us all see "the truth". The bowlderized cross, for example, is a variant of the archiepiscopal cross- the symbol of archbishops. Of course, everybody will see and understand (in hindsight) that the oppressive religion was Anglicanism, just as it was in the 18th century. When V blows up stuff, he plays The 1812 Overture. One of the significant events of the war of 1812 was that the British burned down the White House.

The apparent references to modern terrorism are a decoy, designed to make the theocons froth at the mouth about what an evil character V is. But, of course, the American Revolutionaries were viewed by England as evil anarchists and terrorists. So when it is revealed that the symbolism in the movie was really about the American Revolution, those who have labeled V as evil can themselves be labeled anti-American.

What a neat trick! I wonder if it will work?

new house

I haven't been paying much attention to blogs, either others or my own. I've been spending a lot of time transfering audio tapes and records to digital. I have an unregistered version of Sound Forge that is going to go kablooey in 15 days and I want to make sure I can make as much use of it as I can. This isn't a particularly big deal, since the more recent versions of Sound Forge have built in noise reduction software which I actually need for some of my father's tapes. Of course it would help a lot if some kind soul out in blogworld had a program that I could use to denoisify a handful of audio files.

I am beginning to get into a new routine, including walking down W Longview daily on the way home. There is a house on W Longview which has a peace symbol on one side of the door and a "Beware of the Dog" sign on the other. I find this rather incongruous, although the peace sign is on the left and the beware sign is on the left which makes some sense, I guess.

Another thing I've been wondering about is why people say "Pardon my French" before they're about to cuss ("Pardon my French, but #$%& $#&% #$%&!"). Is French a particularly dirty language? Wouldn't German be a more appropriate metaphor? ("Pardon my Germ, man, but #$%& $#&% #$%&!")

Last night I saw V for Vendetta at Studio 35. I have been thinking about some political ideas, so it seemed appropriate since I heard that the movie had strong political overtones. I expected either to love the movie or hate it, but I had rather ambivalent feelings towards it actually. I was curious about the modified cross that was the symbol of the ficticious government in the movie, so I googled it. I was quite surprised to find that many Christians think that V for Vendetta is an anti-Christian movie! I didn't have that impression at all.

Computers still suck

OK not really. I'm just getting sick and tired of dealing with them. We've had this computer for at least five years now- probably longer- and one would expect to have to replace various pieces after that period of time.

But... after replacing the power supply and hard drive the computer has been up and running for over two days now- it took all the window updates without crashing or burping or any of that.

What I hate is the activation process. After 5 years of various reinstallations of Windows one is always holding one's breath to find out if this is the time they tell you you've activated windows too many times and you have to call in now. Fortunately now we have unlimited long distance- which makes breathing a bit easier. As it turned out, Windows and Norton both reactivated just fine.

The one thing I'm not thrilled about is the whole "authorize computer" thing with i-tunes. One of my authorized computer no longer exists because it is the old crashed one. I-tunes does not recognize my rebuilt computer as the same computer, so I had to re-authorize it. In the future, I'm thinking that if I have to reinstall windows I should give my computer the same name as it currently has. I suspect that the name Windows assigns your computer (in my case it is FRED- followed by a garble of numbers and letters) is generated randomly. So if one reinstalls windows and a different name is generated, i-tunes thinks the computer is different.

So I've carefully copied down the jumble of numbers and letters so that if I have to do this again, I can give my computer the same name. If I had known, I would have given my computer a much more appropriate name like BEELZEBUB or APPOLYON.

Computers suck

OK not really. It's just how I'm feeling now. I installed windows XP about 8 times in the past few days and I'm getting a little tired of seeing the words "An Exiting New Look." Uhhh... maybe six years ago I was excited. I suppose smart people have diagnostic tools before they start poking around in their computers so they know what actually needs replacing before they tear them apart. I just replace piece by piece and see what works- or in this case, doesn't work. I've replaced the five year old hard drive with a newer one and that seems to have done the trick. But it leaves my newer machine short a hard drive.

And what is up with itunes for windows? Ever since I installed it on my Athlon machine I had nothing but trouble. Poking around in the program I noticed a little note on importing AAC files: "Optimized for SSE2". Great! My Athon processor (which is only a couple of years old) doesn't do SSE2. What is freakin' up with that? My five year old Pentium 4 processor has SSE2 but my Athlon doesn't? AAAAArrrrghhhhhHH. Even on the Pentium importing a CD into AAC format sends the processor up to between 85% and 100%. I asked the internet about this and it's a common experience, but there apparently isn't a fix. My theory is that Apple is trying to get owners of Windows machines to give up in frustration and buy Macs.

Next project is to switch to MP3's in itunes to see if it doesn't stress my processor so much. If this doesn't work, I suppose I'll have to find another program to rip CD's to MP3's.

A rough week

It's been an incredibly tiring week. I have the usual rotating day-off schedule in the post office, and was off last Friday/Saturday. This is always followed by working Monday-Saturday the following week. It works OK- except that last weekend I moved. So essentially I didn't get to rest up on my weekend off for the coming six-in-a-row workdays. Then, to top things off, our computer started screwing up royally right after we moved in. So I had the added stress of getting it back up and running.

Some good news this week: the antique store on the corner of our new place on W Como and High had a bust of Beethoven which is the exact same kind that my mother bought me many years ago. That particular bust got busted into pieces quite a few years ago- as a matter of I think that it busted before I got married. So it was cool to find a replacement. Today I picked up a couple of old George Shearing LP's at the same store- one is George in a trio for serious listening, and another is George with a string ensemble suitable for getting my wife in the mood.

In addition to the hard work week I had to play both nights at Panda as Mike is still in Houston. Last night was particularly interesting. There was an 8 year old Chinese boy that wanted to play the piano and was pretty dissapointed that I didn't let him. He did sit with me a while and request Bach minuets. My repetoire is a little light on Bach, and I was unhappy that I couldn't remember the piece that he probably wanted to hear until this morning. It was one that was made into a pop tune in the 60's I think and was featured in Mr Holland's Opus.

Later in the evening somebody else came over and requested Take Five. This is a piece that I played somewhat regularly years ago, but I gave it up- mainly because I never played it very well. So anyway I fumbled through it in what must be one of the worst public performances of it. He seemed to appreciate it though. We had a brief conversation, and it turns out he's also a musician, although like me relies on his day job for his daily bread. Playing music for fun is a lot more fun than relying on it for a steady income.

When I first started playing in the restaurant, I would get incredibly nervous when somebody that I knew to be a musician was listening to me. One guy in particular used to come in regularly who was a piano professor at Capitol University. His wife let it slip that he had written a book on piano pedagogy, and I made the mistake of looking it up. It turns out that it is an incredibly advanced and well respected book that he had written when he was a professor at Harvard. I had checked the book out once from the public library, and remember thinking, "This is the sort of book I could study for a lifetime, and still not exhaust everthing in it." And here's the author sitting in the restaurant listening to me play. For months I wouldn't even venture to play anything classical. But when I worked up the nerve to play classical stuff, he was very appreciative. One thing I have learned from playing in the restaurant is that musicians always are appreciative. I think it is because they understand better than anyone the hard work that it takes to become even a mediocre musician. I commented to somebody recently that it's been a long time since I've heard music that I haven't liked. And I really mean it.