Uvulapie and His Amazing Hillbillies

How To Cook With A Microwave Oven

2011-11-17T08:14:00.000-08:00

Cooking with a microwave seems like a pretty mindless topic, right? Put the food in, enter the time to cook, push start, and endure the torturous ninety seconds it takes to turn the outside of your food into lava-hot rubber while leaving the inside cold.

Take that vegetable peeler away from your wrist... there's a better way!

The way microwaves cook is by exciting water and sugar molecules. These in turn vibrate and heat up the non-water and sugar molecules around them.

The problem comes when you try to heat these molecules past their limit by not giving them a chance to pass their heat to the other molecules. It's called sharing or convection or something. What happens is that these molecules get overloaded with heat energy and then burn, or in this case turn to rubber. It's like cooking eggs on the range top with the burner cranked all the way or a cake in an oven set to 500 (Fahrenheit, not therms). Bad things will happen when you try this blowtorch cooking method.

That's why microwave ovens have this great thing called a "Power" button. Cook your food for twice as long at 50% power and not only will the middle get warmed but the texture of your vittles will remain intact. Sure it will take twice as long but three unattended minutes in the microwave is still faster than five minutes on the stove where you have to stay in the same room and stir occassionally.

Spring Is So Far Away

2011-09-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

I ran across more evidence in favor of "Good Friday is actually Good Thursday" - (see http://uvulapie.blogspot.com/2008/03/thank-god-its-good-friday.html)

Why do I harp on this so much? Because I'm a stickler for truth. If God's Word says something then we must align ourselves and change in response to this. I personally don't care if a thousand years of tradition say otherwise, if recently (in the past hundred years) uncovered manuscripts illuminate Scripture to provide greater clarity or rectify an incorrect, though for some reason dearly held, position then it's time for a change. I mean, if people can't admit and adapt to something as well documented inconsequential as Good Friday/Thursday because of their traditions what of bigger, more important changes that God may want to correct in our lives?

So there I was, perusing The Gospel of Peter and... what? Yes, since I read a book on the early Church fathers I've been interested in their early writings. No, I don't hold them to be on par with Scripture but they do provide a glimpse of early theology that has not be tainted. For instance, if someone believed something incorrectly you could just go ask one of the apostles directly for clarification.

But in this case, The Gospel of Peter is a very brief telling of Christ's crucifixtion, death and resurrection. What did I find in support of Christ being crucified on a Thursday?

[1] But of the Jews none washed his hands, neither Herod nor one of his judges. And since they did not desire to wash, Pilate stood up. [2] And then Herod the king orders the Lord to be taken away, having said to them, 'What I ordered you to do, do.'
[3] But Joseph, the friend of Pilate and of the Lord, had been standing there; and knowing they were about to crucify him, he came before Pilate and requested the body of the Lord for burial. [4] And Pilate, having sent to Herod, requested his body. [5] And Herod said: 'Brother Pilate, even if no one had requested him, we would have buried him, since indeed Sabbath is dawning. For in the Law it has been written: The sun is not to set on one put to death.'
And he gave him over to the people before the first day of their feast of the Unleavened Bread.

That would be the "special Sabbath" mentioned in John, the Sabbath on a Friday that occured before the usual Sabbath on Saturday.

I'm just sayin'.

Read the entire text yourself here.

Experiments in Soft White

2011-09-26T17:52:00.000-07:00

The package of the Great Value (Walmart) 23 Watt Soft White Compact Fluorescent Bulbs state that they have a bulb life of, and I quote, "10,000 hours", "up to 9 years!* dura hasta 9 anos!*".

So when I put one of said bulbs that the government is forcing us to buy in the kitchen I decided to write the date and time on the white base. These bulbs lose life when they are turned on and off and since the kitchen light is left on 24/7 (tinker with it on pain of death) I figured it would be a good way to see exactly how many hours one gets out of the bulb. Because if it doesn't last 10,000 hours then I'm not saving the advertised "$77 in energy costs per bulb** Ahorre $77 en costos de energia por foco**".

From the time I put the bulb it was switched off a few times, probably no more than twenty. Since I have no way of knowing which family member turned off the light I figured it was better to offer "pain of death" to none instead of to all.

Today when I got home from work, the bulb was dark. Today... September 26, 2011. The date on the bulb (carefully extracted so as not to break it and incur the wrath of some hazmat team) was October 12, 2010... 11 AM. That's 351 days at 24 hours a day = 8,424 hours. Not bad. I saved an estimated $64 on the $4 bulb. SCORE!

More Blasts from the Pasts

2011-09-24T05:06:00.000-07:00

This scan is from a clipping that was used for a bookmark. It's from an August 26, 1972 newspaper, though I don't know if the paper is either of the two that are in existence at this moment in time.

Of interest, to me at least, at the number of theaters in 1972 that I never knew existed. What was this "Clyde" of which they speak? Clyde seems like a great name for any baby, by the way.

I was also pleased to see "The Rialto" listed. For all of my adult life The Rialto was this worn down abandoned place in the bad part of town.

This is also from the early days of the movie rating. There sure are a lot of PG films and very few R rated. Even still, a bunch of PG files are followed with "Not recommended for children". It sure would be interesting to know their criteria for applying these ratings.

And why have I never heard of "Walt Disney's Napolean and Samantha"? Sounds like a blockbuster! Was it animated? Were there great musical numbers? Was it later blacklisted along with "Song of the South" for some ethnic slur? All I know is that it's an incredible adventure story.

There He Goes Again...

2011-09-02T10:46:00.001-07:00

Settle down, kiddies, and listen to crazy ol’ Uncle Walter’s latest deviation.

Two or so years ago I got a notion in my head that I should look up a theology book which fully examines the concept of Hell. Common Biblical interpretation is that difficult passages are to be interpreted by passages that are clear and understood. In this case, I knew that while God is a God of justice, his overwhelming characteristic is love. There is no verse that says “God is justice” though I definitely acknowledge that a price must be paid for our sins. But what was bothering me was how could a just God exact a payment of eternal suffering as payment for twenty, forty, eighty or even one hundred years of sin. In college I was taught that such doubts fail to have a properly elevated view of God’s sinlessness. Perhaps. However God has placed reason in humans and any child could see the “unfairness” of being punished from now to forever for a life-time of sin.

I didn’t do any such research. However someone with holds at the library with my last name had a book on hold titled Love Wins and it was on this very subject. I couldn’t check out the book as the person had it on hold but did some searches and found that it was a book (written, it seems, for the Christian version of Oprah’s audience) that puts forth a Universalist view of salvation in that everyone gets in. Even a cursory reading of the New Testament dispels this view. There was book entitled Heaven Wins written in rebuttal but the reviews state that there wasn’t much exegesis in the text, just heavy handed affirmation of the typical view that sinners burn forever in Hell.

However I managed to find, or God put in my path, the exact book for which I was seeking. The Fire That Consumes by Edward William Fudge, written in 1982, is a massive 466 volume which fully examines all aspects of, well the subtitle is “A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment.” I’ll state right off the bat that I had hoped that the conclusion would incorporate our Creator’s mercy and love but maintained that if it could prove that sinners are punished forever in a lake of fire then I would have to abide by this ruling.

As you may have guessed, I am quite relieved and overjoyed to find that this doctrine of eternal punishment is without merit, either in the Bible, Jewish beliefs, the beliefs of early Church founders, and even in more recent giants of faith such as Martin Luther.
Allow me to summarize.

The word used in the New Testament that is translated “eternity” is Aionios. There is no clear derivation of this word it is used so rarely in extra-Biblical texts that scholars are uncertain as to its exact meaning. King’s James translators made this word about endless time and this has stuck. However if the use of the word is examined it turns out to be more of an adjective to describe a quality. For example, “eternal judgement” (Heb. 6:2). One is not literally judged from now to eternity. However one is judged once and the ruling stands for all of eternity. “Eternal Redemption” (Heb 9:12). Christ’s work is done. He redeemed His sheep once but the result of this redemption stands forever – no one can take His sheep from His hand. “Eternal Destruction” (2 Thess 1:9). How can something be destroyed forever? Well, sure, God can make some kind of miracle but that seems rather malicious. Instead the destruction occurs and is never to be reversed. The same goes for “eternal punishment” (Matt 25:36) in that the punishment occurs, a punishment of an amount and duration perfectly in line with the penalty due, not to gain righteousness but as a payment. Once this punishment is completed there is destruction.

Yeah, I can hear my old theology teach arguing right now, upset as he was twenty years ago that F.F. Bruce was softening his position on the traditional view of sinners burning in Hell forever.

Now the author goes historical. What of our common Christian concept that the soul lives forever? That’s right out of the Bible, right? There’s gotta be something about that in the Old Testament…. Or maybe it was Plato a couple hundred years before Christ who came up with the idea, and only then as a way to illustrate his peculiar notions about learning (when we learn we are actually remembered from a global consciousness). Plato’s later followers took this idea and systematized it. Christians in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, in attempting to defend the concept of the resurrection took this accepted Greek view of the immortal soul and applied it to Christianity. This view was mostly accepted up to the reformation when Luther had fault with it, and so did the Ana-Baptists. Calvin believed in immortality, but even then he couched it with thoughts that since God created each soul then God could, if He chooses, destroy he soul. Because Ana-Baptists were the outsiders Luther didn’t defend his position against Calvin so as to have unity in the church and thus the immortal-soul view won. God alone is the giver and sustainer of life. The thought that the body and soul (and spirit if you’re into that kind of thing) can be divided is a Platonic idea. You will not find it in the Bible or in Jewish philosophical writings. There’s more to this, granted… this paragraph is just a summary of a chapter that was a summary of many books.

That’s right… just one chapter. I’m only eighty-eight pages in (six chapters out of twenty) and there has been Biblical and historical evidence in abundance that God does not punish for all eternity those who reject His perfect gift of salvation. Like most things that contradict traditional views this book has been ignored. “Just pretend it’s not there and it will go away.” What are people afraid of? That if people aren’t scared of going to Hell then they won’t get saved? Did Christ browbeat people with threats? Or did He live the ultimate example of a caring, loving, accepting human and this acceptance drew people like a magnet? The saying is that you get more flies with honey than vinegar and it is absolutely true. You get better results from your kids by praising what they do correctly than by angrily correcting them. The same goes for employees. It’s simple human nature to respond positively to positive words and actions.

Light Summer Reading

2011-05-28T18:38:00.001-07:00

I have recently come across a "recommended reading list" designed to give a rounded theological view without requiring one to have a seminary level understanding of Greek and Hebrew. Which is to say that most of these books aren't lightweight easy readers but are written in an easily digestible manner. Of those on the list I've read but a handful but that handful was chock full -o- meat and so I look forward to reading a few "new" titles off the list during this summer.

The only title I would add is Your God Is Too Small by J.B. Phillips, which is available as a free PDF here. It's a very easy read on the character of God.

I would also add that having your first two names as initials is almost a prerequisite for being such an author.

And now here's the list. Dig in!

Sincerely,

A.J. Hoffman

Basic Christianity - John Stott
Changed Into His Image – Jim Berg
God: Discover His Character – Bill Bright
Hell’s Best Kept Secret – Ray Comfort
Holiness of God – R.C. Sproul
Jesus Among Other Gods – Ravi Zacharias
Know What You Believe – Paul Little
Know Why You Believe – Paul Little
Knowing God – J.I. Packer
Knowledge of the Holy – A. W. Tozer
Living the Cross-Centered Life – C.J. Mahaney
Major Bible Themes – Lewis Sperry Chafer / John Walvoord
Mere Christianity – C..S. Lewis
More Than A Carpenter – Josh McDowell
One Heartbeat Away – Mark Cahill
Pilgrims Progress – John Bunyan
The Gospel According to Jesus – John MacArthur
The Incomparable Christ – J Oswald Sanders
The Kneeling Christian – unknown
The Lie – Ken Ham
The Pursuit of God – A.W. Tozer
The Pursuit of Holiness – Jerry Bridges

The Worst Pilot Program Of the Decade

2011-05-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

I stood by BP during last summer's spill. Heck, I've got kids and most adults and politicians I know act like kids so forgive and forget. A spill can happen to anyone.

But two months ago when I got a letter stating my area had the good fortune to be involved in a pilot program regarding a change to the reward plan on my BP gas card I was suspicious.

First of all the details of the plan were convoluted. In my experience if someone makes things complicated then they are likely ripping you off. The current tax plan comes to mind. Plus they sent at least two follow up mailings, each with all the slickness of a political mailer. And each shedding absolutely no new information. Just the hype of "Get ready! It's changing! Isn't it exciting?!!!" More suspicions.

The old plan was simplicity itself. You get 5% back from every gas purchase and 1% from non-BP purchases. After you hit $25 you log in and they send you a $25 check or BP gift card or apply $25 to your statement.

The new plan is a bit more twisted. In fact when I talked to three different reps before I had someone who could explain the plan, each one repeating that it was a new pilot program and they hadn't been fully trained yet. And that last person could explain it but couldn't see how it seemed to me like it was a far worse rebate plan.

Willing to admit that I could be confused I waited a month, using the card like I usually do, and then started plugging data into a spreadsheet.

Here's how the new plan works out in practice. Your earn .007 for every dollar you spend (so far it sounds far less than my previous .05) and after $100 you can redeem your earnings. But here's the exciting thing... you don't have to log in and click a couple of buttons and wait ten business days to get your check. Nope, you can, well, you MUST redeem your rewards at the pump! My wife tried to not use the rewards once and the pump wouldn't let her. So you spend $100 and now get seven cents off each gallon up to twenty gallons. 20 X .07 = $1.40. The math under the old plan was $100 X .05 = $5 back. This may be new math but $1.40 back instantly is not as good as $5 back in a month, at least to my old fashioned don't-really-need-to-have-everything-instantly brain.

But wait, it gets better! Let's say you don't drive a giant truck with a twenty gallon tank! Let's say you have a regular car that holds fourteen gallons or a van that holds sixteen gallons when literally running on fumes. What happens to the potential rebates of those superfluous gallons? Do they roll over? NO SIR, THEY DO NOT! They are gone forever! So 20 X .07 = $1.40 actually turns out to be 14 X .07 = 98 measly cents if you run the risk of driving on fumes until you can find a BP.

Which I will not be doing. I signed up for a BP gas card because of their rebate policy a number of years ago. I can get a 1% rebate credit card almost anywhere so why saddle myself with having to drive around until I can locate one particular brand of gas station?

A Blast From the Past

2011-04-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

Literally! In 1996 my then 97 year old great grandfather Ivan Walter wrote down some of his childhood memories. I typed 'em up and have since them squirrled away on a floppy or thumb drive or smoke signals of whatever it is people save things on these days. Since it's quite lengthy be sure you draw yourself up a stool and a tall cool glass of apple cider.

A great grandson

I Remember

Grandma McClure taking a nap (reading the Markle Journal). The journal was a weekly newspaper with the local news. Foreign news was of small interest.

She was sitting on a "willow" be a south window of the living room of the home approximately 2.5 miles east of Markle, Indiana. I took the picture circa 1914.

Grandma was Lucinda Walker (Scotch decent). She married Hugh McClure (Scotch decent, guess date circa 1850). They built a two story log house (still standing at my last knowledge). They called this the "old house" after building the new frame house.

Grandpa farmed but his real interest was a "threshing outfit". A steam engine, which with a long wide belt powered a threshing machine (which separated the grain from the straw of wheat, rye, etc. The grain went into bags and the straw was blown out a large pipe onto a straw stack). A corn shredder to separate the corn ears from the corn plant, leaving "corn fodder" which was stored in the barn and used to feed the stock. A clover huller which separated the small clover seeds from the clover plant. Not much use was found for the clover hulls except to spread it back on the fields. Grandpa did this service for the farmers in the neighborhood. He was paid in cash but frequently barter for their products or service.

Threshing day was a big event. Several neighborhood men with their teams and wagons were needed to bring the grain from the field to the machine and to haul the threshed grain away.

The neighborhood women came in and helped mother cook a big dinner (noon). The men came in hot and sweating, washed their hands, and faces in wash pans with soap and usually cold water from the pump. Sometimes the "setting" was required at the big family table. The women ate after all of the workers were served then washed stacks of dishes "one dish at a time".

Grandpa and Grandma had five children: Aunt Anne, Mary (my mother), Alice (Aunt Allie), Uncle Ed (never married), and Uncle Jo.

My father Edward J. Walter (German) was born in Northern Indiana. I have heard Whitley County. One of a family of thirteen children, spoke German at home, came by way of the "Pennsylvania Dutch" I believe. Married my mother circa 1897. They started "housekeeping" and lived on an 80 acre farm south east of Markle all their lives. I was born there April 21, 1899.

Dad was a progressive, well educated farmer. He attended all of the farm "institutes" and many "short courses" at Purdue (agricultural) University. He pioneered soy bean growing in the area. He won many "blue ribbons" for corn that he grew, in county fairs. He qualified and acted as judge of corn in county fairs (but not in the classes he was showing).

I Remember - In the "Old Hove"

Comb- a device with many sharp wire-like teeth. One projection up from 3/4" thick board about four inches wide, 8 inches long. This was a "comb" used to separate the flax fibers from the flax plant. They grew the flax and spun fibers into thread which they wove into fabric on the loom mentioned below.

A largewheel spinning wheel with a wheel approximately 3.5 feet in diameter. This had a flat rim, perhaps 4 inches wide. This wheel with cord belts drove a small spindle at the speed necessary for spinning thread. They use a "wheel boy" inserted between the spokes on the large wheel (like a crank) to make it rotate. The sketch below is purely from memory, dimensions are "guess"

A small spinning wheel with a foot pedal. This was similar to spinning wheels which are commonly seen in displays or are still in homes as antiques.

A reel was used to store the thread spun from flax or wool. The reel prop had six spokes with cross members 6" long. Each cross member except one had raised or enlarged rings so the thread would not slip off. The other cross member did not have a raised ring so the completed "skein" could be easily removed. This reel assembly is mounted on a floor stand. In this floor mounting structure is a measuring dial that counts turns of the reel with a "click" when the skein is full.

A loom, which was used to weave both fabric (from the flax or whool threads they spun) or to make carpet, discarded or worn clothing was torn into strips perhaps 1.5 inches wide and of a length as the old garment provided. These lengths were sewn together end to end to make a proper length for weaving. These "carpet rags" were woven to form the "woof" (the cross strands). The "warp" could have been spun because of the great amount and the relative lower quality it was probably bought and was probably cotton.

I Remember Out of Doors

The dutch oven was a small but heavy stone structure similar in shape to a present day oven. One end had an opening large enough to receive two or three larger bread pans. The other end of this opening was closed except for a short chimney. A small stone could be rolled into place to close the front opening.

A fire was started in the oven space, allowed to burn until the mason mass was heated to a baking temperature. The fire with its ashes was removed. The large pans filled with bread where put into the oven and allowed to bake by this heat stored in the masonry.

The smoke house was a brick building about 10 by 12 feet in size. It was used to "smoke" hams, bacon, sometimes sausage.

It was the practice of a family to butcher enough hogs, usually two or three, to last all year. Since there was no refrigeration this was done at the start of cold weather. The hams and bacon were "cured" in a solution of salt, salt peter, etc. for several weeks. It was then smoked several days in the smoke house in which a smoldering smoky fire was kept going. Hickory wood was preferred for the "smoking" fire.

Other parts of the hog were ground into a sausage. This was seasoned with salt and pepper and some of it was used as patties. The rest was stuffed into the hog intestines, which of course had been properly cleaned. A sausage "grinder", much as we have today, was used to grind the sausage. The stuffing was done with a sausage stuffer. This was a cylindrical body with a piston operated with a hand crank to force the ground sausage though a hollow tube into the intestine.

Fatty parts were heated out of doors with an open fire then "squeezed" in the sausage stuffer, now a lard press, to remove the hot liquid fat "lard".

Beef was a different matter. No good means of preserving it was at hand. So a small beef was slaughtered at the beginning of cold weather and divided among several families.

A large copper kettle had many uses. I would guess it to be about 20 gallons. It was always scoured to its bright copper color after each use. It was suspended over an open fire by a pole supported on each end by poles set into the ground. The upper end having the crotch of a tree limb into which the cross pole was laid.

One of the main uses for this kettle was to make apple butter. Apple butter was made from apples from the family orchard. Apples were taken to a local cider mill where the apple juice cider was squeezed out of the apples. Fresh cider was a good drink but many people thought it got better as it developed alcohol and became "hard cider". This state did not last long as the natural process continued until it became vinegar with its many uses around the home.

To make apple butter the freshly squeezed cider with peeled and quartered apples was placed in the kettle. This mixture was boiled with almost constant stirring. Fresh apples were added along with more cider and much stirring until the proper consistency for apple butter was reached. Much-MUCH work stirring but home made apple butter was a real prize.

The family dinner was the aunts and uncles and cousins came to Grandma's house for dinner. For many years I remember Grandpa at his special place at the head of the table. All of the family events were talked about. On one occasion, about 1910, Uncle Dan and Aunt Ann had just returned from a trip to California and brought back tree ripened oranges. This of course was a great event for country folk whose travel horizon was the county seat, Bluffton.

After the dishes were done the women, still with something to talk about, would (if the weather was nice) go out to the "necessary house", talking through the door (as they took their turns) to the one inside.

The men after a little rest to let their dinner "settle", depending on the season would take their guns and hunt rabbits. There were always rabbits in the orchard behind the "old house". Or listen to the skaters waltz or maybe religion hymns on the Edison Graphiphone with the cylinder records and the morning glory horn.

Ivan, 1996

FRIDAY! FRIDAY! FRIDAY!!

2011-04-21T06:14:00.000-07:00

ARE YOU READY FOR TOMORROW'S BIG MATCH UP!?!?!?!

GOOD FRIDAY VS. EARTH DAY!!!!!

PAGAN VS. CHRISTIAN!!!!

ONLY ONE WILL SURVIVE!!!!!!

Tickets on sale at a location near you.

Wifey Snorefest

2011-03-28T18:32:00.001-07:00

There’s my usual music posts that my wife ignores and then there’s my technical (i.e. BORING) musical posts that my wife ignores. I don’t blame her.

Last year Sir George Martin and company decided to run the entire Beatles catalog through their disgronification process and release ‘em again. After all, the digital technology that we had in the mid-80s is nothing compared to the gizmos we have not. Heck, back then they hadn’t even invented auto-tune so singers actually had to have a smidgeon of talent to go with their market-tested stage presence.

Since I’ve already shelled out the bucks to buy every album (sans a couple of the Anthology releases which are only good for a listen or two) I was glad to see that my tax dollars bought MULTIPLE copies of each re-scrubbed album. I think I saw at least three and possibly for of every title on the shelf of the main branch so you know some ordering monkey is breaking their arm in congratulating themselves on dropping a couple of thousand on such duplicity.

For my test I picked out Rubber Soul and from this album picked “Norweigen Wood” and the beautifully fuzzy “Think For Yourself.” I made WAV files of both the new versions and the original 80s CD release. Then I brought them into my studio software and set them side by side. Visually you could see that the new versions were just a bit louder, which is common procedure in rereleases – compress ‘em and crank up the volume so the consumer thinks it’s better. Fortunately any compression was very slight. Actually, any changes were very slight. Even with my “studio reference quality” headphones (Sony MDR-7506, if you must know) I could only barely detect any difference between the two. If the original was a ten in clarity the new one is a 10.3 (more or less). That’s it. Just a hint of added clarity. It’s such a miniscule amount of added clarity that not only isn’t it worth my money to buy the new versions but it isn’t even worth my time to get the albums from the library and rip copies. Not only do I not think it’s worth a quarter per album to make an “honest” rip but if I were to make even high-quality MP3s of the albums the compression would remove the .3 in added clarity.

For the record (ahem) I called this “lets do the whole catalog” move by Beatles Corp years ago when they re-scrubbed the songs from Yellow Submarine. I think back then I also did an A/B comparison and found little difference. For that matter, I couldn’t hear much of a difference when they gave the rescrub treatment to Alice Cooper’s Welcome To My Nightmare. So either my ears are not trained to detect the subtle nuances (in which case neither could someone who isn’t an audiophile with extremely expensive highly calibrated grear) or this whole digital rescrubbing this is a scam.

Just words

2011-03-11T15:02:00.001-08:00

It’s an atypical Friday in that I wasn’t swamped with tasks resulting from people getting to all those things they put off all week and suddenly needing me to do something or get them some information. So what did I do? I let my fingers do the walking.

Yep, I picked up an old fashioned phone book and noticed these colored stripes on the edges of some yellow pages. How long have they been there? Flipping open the first, largest stripe I see that it’s for lawyers, excuse me, attorneys. Seventy pages. Many in full color and spanning two pages for a single firm. Really? We need seventy pages of ads to lure the uneducated into thinking they can sue their way to a better future? I work in a building infested with these vermin and I frequently see these sad, desperate people in the halls, holding a packet of lawyer papers like it’s their golden ticket.

But believe it or not, this not another post about how lawyers and politicians (one and the same) are the downfall of Western Civilization. Not directly. I counted the other striped sections and found that there are about thirty pages for automobiles (new, used, repair, parts), 15 for dentists, 40 for physicians, and 30 for restaurants. BUT SEVENTY PAGES FOR LAWYERS!?!?!?! DOUBLE FOOEY!

As for my 2011 goals… they are mostly on track. I’ve got song #1 of four in target to be completed by the end of the month. Sure, I still need to write half of it and record vocals and bass but it’s got a definite groove going so it’s only a matter of listening to it and letting my mind wander as to where it should go.

In the writing realm I loaded up the non-fiction book I started and found that it was started in 2005. Really?!?!?!? Five years ago? I thought I just left it hanging for a year or two but thinking back, yes, it really was that long ago. I know that a year can fly by but five? Can half a decade just slip by? Is the next decade going to slip by and I’ll wake up one day and find myself being fifty? That’s why it’s important to set these goals and stick to them. The people who do things, like learn an instrument or write a book or start a company or excel in a sport, are the ones who make a plan and then slowly, inch by inch, work on that plan and get things done. It’s that 99% perspiration thing.

Which means I need to stop writing on this blog for the time being and get going on these goals.

Book Review - The Year of Living Bibilically

2011-02-25T17:20:00.000-08:00

My darling wife picked up the book The Year of Living Biblically because she thought I would like it. Does she know me, or what?

The concept is that the author is going to live a year of his life attempting to follow the Bible as literally as possible. He decides to spend eight months following the Old Testament and four months following the new, coinciding roughly to their respective lengths. The contents were quite entertaining though sometimes irksome.

For example:

Although he was always interested in "religion" his plan is to take this extreme approach to show how silly the Bible can be. He's a self-proclaimed liberal New Yorker (where even their conservatives are liberal by midwestern standards) who has a Jewish heritage and writes for Esquire, a men's magazine (or rather a magazine for adult males who haven't embraced what it is to be a man). So he does stuff like wear all white clothing, won't touch his wife after she menstruates, strictly observes the Sabbath and won't eat fruit if he isn't assured that it's taken from a tree more than four years old. The man was OCD to begin with so all these rules give him more room to flex this muscle.

He also tries not to lie, attempts prayer (which he likes but only really embraces a kind of "continual thankfulness"), and generally tries to be good. He also builds a tent in his apartment and sacrifices (almost) a chicken.

A.J. Jacobs spends 400 pages on the first eight months as he reconnects with his Jewish heritage. He visits many different expressions of this faith and attends a variety of ethnic festivals and celebrations. He is genuinely interested and it shows. Halfway through he wonders if he will come out of this year with a genuine faith, as did this reader, but so far he is clinging to his agnosticism.

He then spends a paltry 150 pages on his New Testament months and of these many pages are spent looking back to the Old Testament. His heart just isn't in it. Instead of the entertaining exploits of his Old Testament excusrions he interviews fringe groups like snake handlers, a group of openly gay yet otherwise conservative Christians, Red Letter Christians and attends Jerry Falwell's mega-church. Apparently even though he could travel to Tennessee to view snake handling and Isreal to visit his a cult-leader-like religious ex-relative he couldn't find time to visit a normal Christian church. Soon into his New Testament writings I lost hope that he would have faith and in the end he consigns himself to being a hopeful agnostic, more thankful for the blessings in his life than he was before but still without belief in God.

All in all, an entertaining read that was a bit rushed and incomplete. I give it four out of five fig leaves.

A New Blog?

2011-02-16T18:12:00.000-08:00

I might be adding a new "resolution" to my pack. My current list includes writing and recording four songs this year (#1 is halfway recorded) and writing three short stories. The "short stories" bit may be exchanged for completing so many chapters of a non-fiction book I started a few years ago but the point is that I'm writing something more than CD reviews.

However I've recently come across a need for a conversational apologetics "curriculum." You know, something that sounds like a discussion. Something like a blog. My two older sons are a bit at a disadvantage spiritually in that they attend public school and I didn't really become serious about their spiritual education until recently. So I've picked up a few things from Answers In Genesis and some books that were formative for me in my early faith but these all tend to get bogged down in details. I want details, just not an excruciating minute level of details or three examples of the point they are trying to make, complete with pronounceable names of long dead scientists.

So unless someone has a good suggestion of something they have personally used it looks like I might be writing up my own. And I'm pretty busy right now so I'd love it if someone could spare me another writing assignment. Please?

Quick Review - The Mustard Seeds - III

2011-02-07T11:57:00.001-08:00

The Mustard Seeds started out as the brainchild of the Bissonette brothers (Matt and Gregg, bass and drums respectively). Not to slight the other blokes in the band but Matt and Greg have played with the likes of David Lee Roth, Joe Satriani, Rick Springfield, Ty Tabor, Ringo Starr, Jeff Lynne, Boz Scaggs, Pat Boone, Santana, and Richard Marx. PAT BOONE, BABY!! But Gregg is a busy session/live drummer so eventually he decided to earn some money and split. The current lineup is George Bernhardt, Doug Bossi and Jorge Palacios.

A few years back I picked up their self-titled The Mustard Seeds album. Pretty good, similar to Jughead, but a bit lacking in depth. They have more than made up for this lack on their third album in 2008, creatively titled III and released independently. The album starts with "Lost In Flight," a brief a cappella song rich in harmonies. "Complicated World" digs in with heavy low-tuned distortion and a gusty, swaggering riff topped with creamy vocal harmonies. Sure, these boys take after King's X but King's X hasn't created an album this gorgeous or filled with intelligent Christian lyrics in decades. "To Die For" could be a Foo Fighters song (without the screaming) from back in the day when Grohl could write a good song... powerful and punchy, this song is one big yearning of the day we finally see Christ face to face ("All I need to do is die to meet you.") The mid-tempo rocker "Dorian Grey" packs in more lush vocal harmonies while "Oxygen" cranks up the distortion while layering on more encouraging vocal melodies and lyrics such as "Wherever I walk You're the crutch I lean on / You're the air that I breath / You're oxygen." "Hunting With Cheney" is another rocker, this one showing a Libertarian-leaning bent, leading to the slow, encouraging "Move On" which pairs clean guitars, orchestral strings and lyrics such as "Just get up off your back side and / Move on, move on, move on." "Maybe Next Year" is another slow cooker packed with hope for better days, sliding into three solid heavy songs that could have been on the Jughead album. The final track, "Outer Space", adds in some inventive and spacey sounds before launching into a final round of ear-tickling vocal harmonies.

Is if this isn't enough they include one of the best "hidden" tracks I've heard in years. Yes, it's the Might Mustard Marching Machine. Crowd noises adorn a marching band playing snippets of various songs off the album which an each musician is given a few moments on the mic to thank their family and friends in a post-game mode. It's all good fun. Oh, and be sure to try the saltwater taffy. I hear it’s incredible.

Quick Review - Lonely Avenue

2011-02-04T05:37:00.000-08:00

I'm going to lift a page from Adam's blog and write a brief paragraph about a few albums that are getting spun (olde fashioned term that has no meaning in this digitial age) in my life instead of doing a full blown 400+ word review like I used to do when I wrote CD reviews for cold hard cash.

The first to get such a treatment is Lonely Avenue, the newest Ben Folds album. Over the years I've enjoyed some of his albums, specifically the Ben Folds Five albums and his first solo album and the one he did with William Shatner and the little EPs he put out. But for the last five or six years he's been quite unsatisfying. It's almost like he knows his latest work is subpar and tries to defuse negative reviews with the first song, "Working Day" in which he dogs nobody bloggers who say bad things about his music. If the shoe fits, buddy... He also takes a scathing stance against Levi Johnston, the young man who impregnated Sarah Palin's daughter. And by "scathing" I mean Ben totally rips this guy a new one and repeatedly calls him a farking (insert other term) redneck. Ben... how old are you? Have you not made mistakes in your life? What number of marriage are you on? Oh, wait... you're so intent on distancing yourself from your own redneck North Carolina past that you charge full speed against anyone that reminds you of such.

Melodically there's some good things going on but the angry lyrics full of unneeded profanity make this a difficult listen. Only the song "Claire's Ninth" is as good as the songs on Ben's first solo album, lyrically. I'm a bit sketchy on the details but all or most or some of the lyrics on this album were written by Nick Hornby, an auther known best for the music-novel High Fidelity. I read it a few years back and it must have not made much of an impression on me because I've not felt inclined to read another Hornby book since. However Hornby captures Fold's lyrical voice perfectly. Or Folds wrote the lyrics because I'm not finding a huge leap in lyrical quality, not that Folds was a slouch in that department, if you like the dour kind of thing.

All in all a disappointing album that will steal no more of my time. I’ll give it a six.

And lookee there… I’m just about hitting the 400 word mark. I guess you can’t teach an old aardvark new tricks.

From The Stone Age

2011-01-19T11:33:00.001-08:00

I'm a SansaClip kind of guy living in an iPod Touch world.

It's true. For our anniversary this year my beloved and I eschewed the traditional gifts so she received a countertop ice cream maker (for churning out lo-carb coconut milk ice creams) and I received a SansaClip with a whopping 4 G of memory. I brought it into work and had a fleeting thought to show someone... but then realized that this is a bottom of the run MP3 player. That's all it does. Well, plus FM radio. It plays music and nothing more, and that's all I need it to do. But I work in a tech firm so it's quite common for people to stand in line to get the latest greatest at midnight, fully loaded with all the latest options that will come at no extra charge in six months when the next latest and greatest comes out. "Watch this... I can start my car from three time zones away!"

However I should point out that technologically I have advanced to the point where I no longer use my Sony Walkman. Or rather my Panasonic Cassette-2-Go player.

A Real Post

2011-01-12T08:36:00.000-08:00

I've never been one for New Years resolutions but since 2010 was one big resolution and my family continues to ride this massive wave of internal positive changes I decided to not care if it's hokey or not and just go with the flow.

So for 2011 I intend to write and record four new songs and three new short stories. I wrote a couple of stories last year but never posted them, vainly hoping that I might be able to get them published and earn a penny a word. Either I'm so rusty with creative writing that isn't an album review or I don't know the market or didn't put in enough time trying to get my stories placed or I'm just a hack, but it didn't happen. So I'll dust them off and post them here soon.

That's it. No giant resolution to stop drinking Drano or huffing Windex.

This "creative resolution" comes from my plan to get satisfaction from somewhere other than work. It used to be that I had a boss who was ten years younger than me but he knew how to do my job and was extremely appreciative of my efforts. He even once said that if I found a new job that he would start looking for a new job as well. How's THAT for a confidence booster? In the middle of last year he got promoted and now my boss is about twelve years younger than me, has never done my job, doesn't know much about what I do or what I contribute, and isn't very handy with the compliments. What was a major source of internal satisfaction dried and withered like one of the dead roaches in our stairwells. His lack of understanding about the qualifications for my role resulted in him hiring someone to help with my job function but this someone is severely underqualified for the job indicating my boss's view that it doesn't take much to do my job, in essence that I'm just a barely skilled chump. But I can write one heck of a run-on sentence! I spent more than a few months at the end of 2010 being angry about this but I've let that go. After all, if management doesn't seem to care to make common sense decisions, or at least decisions that are based on their trumpeted FIVE VALUES then why should I care? It's insanity to try and, being more or less sane, I've decided that it's in my best interest to stop.

And so, with a lack of "attaboys" at work and my few chances of being able to creatively come up with solutions being cut off by increasingly stringent auditing controls I've decided that the workplace is not the place to be creative. Leading me full circle to the second paragraph. Which makes this paragraph a redundant rephrasing of what I've already written. Which doesn't make for very good reading. Which means this doesn't count as my first of three short stories, even if it does involve an elf named Herschel who was never able to get his shoes to curl just right and was thus shunned by the elven community and had to spend his life with the wood nymphs who are an accepting kind of folk but obessively talk about wood grain and sap flow.

With That I'm Done

2011-01-12T05:57:00.001-08:00

12/20/2010
Working the night shift
For what could be one last week
Let’s train that new guy!

12/21/2010
Maybe the problem
Could be a blocked sewer vent.
The basement sure stinks.

12/22/2010
Nyquil can be nice
On the night that you take it
Foggy the next day.

12/23/2010
This night job makes me
Grouchy and a bit depressed.
Let’s train that new guy!

12/24/2010
Christmas with my sibs
Even here I feel left out.
Time for a new branch.

12/25/2010
Cleaning for Christmas
Longer than our guests were here
Next year let’s just not.

12/26/2010
We missed church today.
We are a bunch of losers.
Or maybe lobsters.

12/27/2010
Little diaper wipe,
Oh how you vex my sewer
And cost me big bucks.

12/28/2010
I sleep on a ledge.
No more! To the floor with thee,
And your toddler bed.

12/29/2010
Leftover turkey
The spoils from Christmas dinner
Yummy in tummy.

12/30/2010
This is surely true:
I love my wife’s new hair cut
She graces my life.

12/31/2010
Twenty-ten is gone
More good days than bad days but
I’m sure glad it’s done.

Next to Last

2011-01-10T05:43:00.000-08:00

12/10/2010
Lunch with my brother
Once a year – that’s all we do.
I’m wondering why.

12/11/2010
The execs were here
They closed down/broke the mens room
Too full of doodie.

12/12/2010
I wish that I knew
What I should make for dinner
That would please them all.

12/13/2010
The tricky part is
To get all your shopping done
Before your cash ends.

12/14/2010
Joshua forgot
And left his bookbag at home
The thing weighs a ton.

12/15/2010
Five stinky hours spent
Snaking out a clogged sewer
I missed a phone call.

12/16/2010
Christmas shopping with
The Amish at the Wal-Mart:
Did they buy a Wii?

12/17/2010
Only on eBay
Can you sell your tainted youth.
Monster mags for sale!

12/18/2010
My wife will sure love
What I got her for Christmas
At least I hope so.

12/19/2010
Happy birthday, dear
You are such a great daughter-
Lyndi is the best!

Another Quickie to Bore My Wife

2011-01-10T05:21:00.000-08:00

My wife skims over my musical blog entries so dah-link... this one will probably not be of much interest.

However on my drive into work one of the radio stations plays Heart's "Magic Man" and I remembered how much I loved that song when I was young. Young as in under ten. So in my quest for my musical genome it got me thinking about what I liked. Well, it starts with that backward sounding lead guitar and it's got lot of flanged, squishy guitar sounds. It rocks nicely, has a strong melody, and adventurously departs from tiresome verse-chorus-verse-chorus formats. There's also some rich analog synth parts that were new, at least back when I was seven or eight.

I also liked Captain & Tennille's "Love Will Keep Us Together." Bouncy fun chock full o' synths! My memory is foggy, because I was all of four when this song was released, but I have some memory of seeing some kind of video of them playing the song on a beach, perhaps on a "Good Morning America"-type show.

The dark ugly truth has finally come out - that this adventurous, proggy, music quasi-snob has his roots in Captain & Tennille.

More Musical Memories

2011-01-07T12:52:00.000-08:00

It's the end of the year and the weekly publication for which I decreasingly write published my top five albums for 2010, along with top five albums of a bunch of other writers and local music-related-type people. One of the "related-type" is an art firm that specializes in music related projects and most of the people contributing to the article listed their first album.

So I got to thinking... what was my first album?

My mom used to get us Valentines presents and eventually I started asking for cassettes. One of the earliest that I asked for and received was Lennon/Ono's Double Fantasy. I was so young that I didn't realize that I was supposed to recoil at Ono's vocals, perhaps setting me up to embrace dissonance and an "anything goes musically" mindset. I think I also received Magical Mystery Tour about this same time.

But the earliest album I can remember going into a record store and buying would be either J. Geil's Bands Love Stinks or George Harrison's Somewhere In England, both in the fifth grade at the advanced age of nine, both on record, both purchases inspired by this new channel called MTV. Ringo's Stop and Smell the Roses was also purchased a bit later.

My top five for 2010? Since I had to restrict it to albums released in 2010 it was a much different list than if the list included albums I started listening to in 2010.

Released in 2010:
1. Devin Townsend Project - Addicted
2. Fair - Disappearing World
3. The Candles - Between the Sounds
4. Guilt Machine - On This Perfect Day
5. The Lost Dogs - Old Angel

Listened to in 2010:
1. Devin Townsend Project - Addicted
2. Fair - Disappearing World
3. The Mustard Seeds - III
4. Muse - Absolution
5. Brandi Carlisle - Give Up The Ghost

Sadly missing from either list is the new Choir album. Sure, everything I read has fanboys raving like fanboys but to me it just seems incomplete. Not rushed like the album before their last, but definitely missing something.

Running a Marathon

2011-01-04T06:10:00.001-08:00

11/30/2010
Fished out one by one
Noisily go the peanuts
From a plastic dish

12/1/2010
Seriously, folks,
Is there some kind of limit
To writing haikus?

12/2/2010
It’s confession time:
While he was on vacation
I removed the squeak.

12/3/2010
Have I yet mentioned
How much I really dislike
Training someone else?

12/4/2010
Christmas is coming
But someone lost our fat goose
So we’ll have chicken.

12/5/2010
Every haiku post
Has at least one where I write
Of my gorgeous wife.

12/6/2010
“You’re too old for here
“And besides, you were sleeping.”
My taxes at work.

12/7/2010
All I did today
Was zip and move lots of files.
Lots of big, big files.

12/8/2010
You want me to train
Two more people plus Austin?
Please just kill me now.

12/9/2010
They have changed their minds.
It’s only one trainee and
Someone else trains him.

Thanksgiving

2010-12-30T13:13:00.001-08:00

11/24/2010
Here we go again
The long drive down to old world
Plus Trader Joe stop!

11/25/2010
Thanksgiving buffet
Is a memory to keep
Unlike the perv clown.

11/26/2010
Even though yummy
Be careful when you reheat
Green been casserole.

11/27/2010
Love Wolf’s BBQ
And a few quiet hours
To read some Westlake.

11/28/2010
Great rivers of tears
Provide the soundtrack for the
Long dark drive home.

11/29/2010
She’s rightly depressed
And having withdrawal from
The family she likes.

Just Ordinary People

2010-12-29T09:10:00.001-08:00

11/17/2010
Recording again,
The annual Christmas song
For my lovely wife.

11/18/2010
Does anyone want
A free flu vaccination?
Free formaldehyde!

11/19/2010
Larry the Ladder
Has finally returned home
From his adventures.

11/20/2010
Lots of guys tonight
Hanging out, drinking a beer,
Playing darts for free.

11/21/2010
Our cars are working
And for that I am very
Thankful to our God.

11/22/2010
New experience,
Though perhaps a bit diff’rent
That Blessingway was.

11/23/2010
Today’s morning snack
Have been brought to you by ol
Raw carrots and squeak,

Another Couple of Sticks

2010-12-21T05:31:00.000-08:00

11/10/2010
Oodles of driving
Down to Evansville and back
And I’m not done yet.

11/11/2010
Despite the long wait
We had a wonderful date
At the Flat Top Grill.

11/12/2010
“No, you cannot go
“To your friends house once again.
“Stay home and do tents.”

11/13/2010
What? Another date!
To Avilla we shall go
My gal is the best!

11/14/2010
I got the date wrong
Ignorance of the church year
Made it darts for two.

11/15/2010
It is a sad day.
No more dairy for Miss Brooke.
She’s taking it well.

11/16/2010
Clueless managers
Have pushed me to the point where
I no longer care.

Crawling to the finish line

2010-12-17T12:16:00.001-08:00

11/6/2010
Once every decade
Melynda gets new glasses.
The time is at hand.

11/7/2010
Daylight Savings Time:
I will keep my mouth shut tight
And drink more coffee.

11/8/2010
Seeker friendly church
With segregated worship
Wacky like a zoo.

11/9/2010
Realization
That I have hit a dead end
No chance for job growth.

Change and Chips

2010-12-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

11/1/2010
That Buster Keaton
He sure is a funny man
From my memory.

11/2/2010
Hangin’ with Hrehov
Watching election returns
And enjoying brew.

11/3/2010
Massive victory.
Let’s hope they don’t forget their
Principles while there.

11/4/2010
Sweet little Tessa
Said “My mouth is for cookies.”
Wisdom from a child.

11/5/2010
How have I missed out
On 10cc for so long?
I lived in a cave.

A Big To Do List

2010-12-07T12:08:00.000-08:00

10/21/2010
I like not to train
And even when I try hard
Stress spills into home.

10/22/2010
I have some good news:
There are only seventy
Haikus left to write!

10/23/2010
I have a problem:
I find that I am writing
The same haiku twice.

10/24/2010
Haikus are quite brief
But the best short sentence is
Simply “I love you.”

10/25/2010
About that last one,
It could have come from Hallmark
But it came from me.

10/26/2010
I am way too stressed
Over training the new guy.
I need to care les.

10/27/2010
This is the first day
Driving far to get the boys
But they are worth it.

10/28/2010
“Oh, did I tell you
“That you would be paid that much?
“I was wrong. My bad.”

10/29/2010
Like a pointed stick
Oft jabbed into left eye
Is my employer.

10/30/2010
I have this feeling
I have forgotten my youth
Self-preservation.

10/31/2010
My oldest offspring
Went trick or treating alone
And did not get lost.

Black Monday

2010-11-29T11:33:00.000-08:00

10/13/2010
A day off from work
To catch up on the housework.
It’s all about work.

10/14/2010
One full day at work
Before we leave once again.
Jet-setting lifestyle.

10/15/2010
Pack the kids in tight
Miss an exit, stop to nurse
Princeton, here we are!

10/16/2010
The in-laws are great
But the highlight of each trip
Is our date alone.

10/17/2010
Back at one thirty
How could I tear them away?
They are all so sad.

10/18/2010
Have I failed to note
That my “tired gland” has grown
Ten sizes too big?

10/19/2010
The boy needs a stand
For his snare. Found one cheap at
The pawn shop. WHOO HOO!

10/20/2010
It’s been quite hectic
So much so that I forgot
Today is Wednesday.

October Seems Like Just Last Month

2010-11-11T07:38:00.000-08:00

10/1/2010
One is in high school
So that makes me a geezer
Or so I am told.

10/2/1010
With each new password
I have to forget one thing.
Was it your birthday?

10/3/2010
We have an old fish.
It is older than the kids
And just will not die.

10/4/2010
My foot, it still hurts
But if I see a doctor
It will stop that day.

10/5/2010
My note for today
Simply says to write of gold
What was I thinking?

10/6/2010
In my working space
I traded a throat clearing
For a bottle squeak.

10/7/2010
It’s all about maps
For our pending vacation
I bet I get lost.

10/8/2010
Leaving tomorrow
With the best wife in the world
Sitting by my side.

10/9/2010
Ann Arbor was packed
But the museum was nice
And the pool was warm.

10/10/2010
We like the fruit store
And Deerfield and Ikea
A day for the books!

10/11/2010
Bronners was plain huge
What’s the deal with Frankenmuth?
We are not shoppers.

10/12/2010
It was quite sunny
And the beach in October
Was all but empty.

Super Blasty

2010-11-08T12:47:00.001-08:00

I think I’ve finally hit a milestone in my never ending quest to find the genesis of my musical inclinations – that is, why so I like the music that I like. This still doesn’t answer the “chicken or egg” question of if I was drawn to this music because of my chromosomes or if my personal tastes were formed by hours of listening so that years later when I heard music that was similar I found it comforting and likeable. I know that my love of movies, and particularly monster movies, is from trying to get close to my dad. My few memories of doing things with him as a child involved him taking us kids to the drive in or to see Star Wars or getting to stay up late and see twenty minutes of some scary movie he was watching on TV. But this here post isn’t about my failure to make the all-important identification transition to my father as a young child… it’s about MUSIC!

My connection with this un-named seminal album probably happened around age five or six. Before that there was Sesame Street albums and read-along “turn the page when you hear the ding” records but as best as I can recall this was my first foray into the music of grownups.

And what a foray! The album is the 1971 cast recording of Jesus Christ Superstar. Before I get into the music itself I’d like to digress into a few comments on the lyrics. Back when I became a Christian nearly a quarter century ago I remember listening to the album again and having a few problems with it (mostly the “Always hoped that I’d be an apostle” bit) and the lack of the resurrection but overall thought it was benign. I now see how this album can be terribly damaging and misleading to someone who has no knowledge of the Gospels. The biggest issue is that Jesus is presented as a self-aggrandizing, whiney, lime-light seeking, doubter. Though I have no doubt that His heart was pounding in his chest as He prayed that dark night He ultimately laid down His will. Plus is doubting a sin? Well, it’s not trusting (faith) in our Father and I don’t think anyone would say that Jesus didn’t have faith. ‘Nuff said.

On to the music! First of all it is a large format piece with repeating themes, setting up my lifelong “tolerance” for music longer than three minutes. It also blends a full orchestra with a heavy rock band which maps easily to my current enjoyment of classical and hard rock plus my love of orchestral/symphonic rock. The music is also heavily dramatic which, though not a top requirement for my tastes, is something I enjoy in moderation. On top of all this is the fact that the music is exceedingly melodic, something which IS a requirement if an album is going to get much play into my eager ears.

Also of interesting note, and something I hadn’t noticed before, is that the music is quite adventurous and progressive. A number of songs venture outside of standard 4/4 time and/or jump stylistically all over the place from measure to measure, leaping from mischievous to spooky to energetic to enthusiastic. These days I’m a sucker for melodic heavy progressive rock with orchestral touches and rather enjoy it when a song screeches to a halt and takes off in an unexpected direction. Déjà vu.

The playful nature of JCS seems to almost have been ripped off of Prokofiev, a personal favorite. In some cases it seemed like the very arrangements were lifted from the cannon of Prokofiev. The piece named The Crucifixion is a very modern sound pastiche of very different parts playing simultaneously in the mode of Charles Ives, another favorite.

Having heard the album for the first time in two decades is quite enough. It’s time now to listen to vintage Sesame Street!

Review from the Archives - The Terrordactyls

2010-11-01T05:39:00.000-07:00

I haven't listened to his album much in the since two or three years ago when I wrote this review. Perhaps I should for I remember it fondly.

Imagine if as a very young boy Da Vinci was given blunt-tipped scissors, construction paper, glitter, pipe cleaners and gobs of paste. The result would likely hint at the genius of things to come while basking in the simplicity and innocence of childhood. Such is the music of The Terrordactyls and their debut self-titled album.

Listening to this album gives you the impression of being allowed to join in with old friends as they sit around and play cherished songs from their past, not unlike listening to albums by Ed’s Redeeming Qualities. Hollow acoustic guitars, toy pianos, invigorating two part vocal harmonies and enchanting two part kazoo harmonies all come together to form instant childhood memories overflowing with joy and melancholy.

“Zombie Girl” finds them opining over “the awesomist girl in my school” with whistling, kazoos, and a smattering of French, making the brief two minute song sheer perfection of irony with English lyrics such as “You have no nose / But that’s okay / You can hide treasures / Inside your brain.” “Facelift” is another weird sad tale of a girl with no face, plus robots and Black & Decker power tools. Instantly appealing with amazing vocal harmonies and a brief electric guitar solo this song packs a massive punch in 1:34, similar to the kind of friendly yet twisted humor They Might Be Giants used to exhibit. You’ve never heard a better toy piano solo than in “Decoration Daniel” where impressive lyrics such as “He’ll decorate the zit / On your pretty face” and “You’re the magic in his marker” are backed with a breezy melody, simple strummed guitar, and crisp hand claps. The band duets with Kimya Dawson on “Devices”, a charming duet of rushed lyrics and kazoos, a song so sweet that when you hear “You and I are meant for each other” you believe it. Incidentally this song was included on the soundtrack for the indie hit Juno and it succinctly captures the relationship of the two young leads. While nearly all of the fourteen songs are memorable, one final zinger is “Fall” where a sugary melody is offset by lyrics such as “Shoot me in the face / I’ll shoot you in the face / See which one of us / Can shoot the other in the most accurate place.” It gets more macabre from there but it’s such a happy, silly song that you can’t help singing along.

A cousin to bands like Danielson Famile, the focus is on songwriting and feel instead of studio perfection. The Terrordactyls sounds like it was recorded in a bedroom and this intimacy and lo-fi nature is part of its appeal. The Nuevo-folksy songs are filled with clever wordplay and the giddy feeling of summer vacation. Rediscover a new old friend.

September Is In The Can

2010-11-01T05:32:00.000-07:00

9/22/2010
It took but six years
But I finally blew up
At a bumbling peer.

9/23/2010
She twitterpates me
With her laugh and her loving
And her fine figure.

9/24/2010
It’s a chipmunk, yes?
And yet it avoids my traps.
Get out of my floor.

9/25/2010
No Huntington trip
This weekend we shall stay home.
Pioneer burnout.

9/26/2010
It took a full month
But my garage is now dry
Small retaining wall.

9/27/2010
Christmas is coming
And I have yet to pick out
A song for my wife.

9/28/2010
The night was just right
Not too warm or not too cold
Cuddles till we slept.

9/29/2010
Have you ever stood
And just looked at the night sky?
I saw a space ship.

9/30/2010
I love distortion
For it covers up my lack
Of precise technique.

Astounding News!

2010-10-29T09:18:00.001-07:00

Shhhhh.... I'm working on a Unified Consumption Theory.

The basic premise is that we should throw the food pyramid back at the corrupt government who made it and instead eat food in the proportions of how much work it takes for one family to create it before the innovations of the last two hundred years.

A few examples that ran higgildly piggidly through my brain as I came up with this theory:

Vegetables - Easy to grow. Throw some seeds in the ground, water, fertilize, hoe, pick, reap your rewards. Sure, lots of work but nothing compared to everything else... so eat lots of vegetables.

Fruit and Nuts - Medium easy. Plant some apple seeds or raspberry plants, prune, water, wait, grow, grow, a few years later you climb or gather and eat.

Grains - Not as easy as it first appears. Sow seed, water, fertilize, hoe, etc. Then gather up a whole bunch of it, thresh it, sweep up the grain heads and grind them into a flour and make your bread. Or your pasta. Quite a bit of work goes into that one loaf so go sparingly. And this loaf has lots of the germ and vitamins still present. Want fluffy white bread? There's more work involved so by my theory you can eat even less of it.

Sugar - I'm no expert on extracting sugar from beets or growing sugar cane. Heck, I'm not an expert on anything. However I suspect that it takes quite a bit of work. Extended boiling and evaporation may be involved (which it certainly is for maple syrup, which falls into this category) so you have to gather up or cut lots of wood for the fire - loads of work! So use sugar sparingly. As for honey, not a lot of work to harvest but how often do you find bees nests? And hive cultivation, I would suspect, is quite a bit of work so again, go easy on honey.

Meats - If you raise meat then you have to raise grain to feed them... but you don't have to thresh, grind, etc. the grain. Or two hundred years ago you could hunt it. Work but deceptively not as much work as all that threshing. Eat meat. Enjoy meat. Your body knows what to do with it.

Milk and cheese and butter and eggs- Again, you raise the dairy cow and you sit on a bucket and milk away. Then you churn the milk for butter or add cultures and time for cheese. Eat medium amounts.

Beer and wine - This stuff literally grows on trees so enjoy all you want. Or perhaps it takes medium work to ferment and grow the items that go into these. Enjoy moderately.

Chocolate - Now this stuff really does grow on trees. And I can't say anything bad about our friend Chocolate.

So how does this translate to more modern foods?

Ice Cream - Forget the guar gums, look at a package from Breyers. Cream, eggs, sugar. The Cream is medium, the eggs are easy and the sugar is labor-intensive. Plus the hauling of ice and the work involved in churning. Go easy on the ice cream but yogurt and custard are more permissible.

Soft drinks - Water is ultra-easy. High fructose corn syrup and/or aspartame are not. Consider it a treat.

Ring Dings - You've got highly refined "sorta" flour and waxy nearly chocolate-like stuff and sugary whey-based filling. Yeah, a rare treat.

Frosted Sugar Pops - Puffed corn meal coated in so much sugar that you smell it in your urine. It's like candy for breakfast!

What am I missing?

CRAZYKU!

2010-10-20T11:20:00.000-07:00

9/10/2010
I am not quite sure
If I’m fully recovered
From my night shift stint

9/11/2010
Stone’s Trace Festival
Beats that Johnny Appleseed
By a country mile.

9/12/2010
Another great date
Just me and my lovely mate
And Andrew the Great.

9/13/2010
Leonard’s Lane is not
A bowling ally. Big oops.
It’s a halfway house.

9/14/2010
He had him a beard
And a burger and collar.
A nice thank you lunch.

9/15/2010
The bigwigs are back
Visiting our humble burg
We sure is such hicks.

9/16/2010
Still recovering
From one nasty, icky cold
My eyeballs still itch.

9/17/2010
Mr. Socialite
Is having lunch with others
Two times in one week.

9/18/2010
On this day back in
The year 1945
My father was born.

9/19/2010
Some weekends are foul
But this time I can say, “Wow!
“What a great Sunday!”

9/20/2010
Met a guy for lunch.
Hoped for friend material
But he was all gab.

9/21/2010
A refreshing day
Because I no longer work
With cussing sailors.

Retro Review - P. Hux - Kiss the Monster

2010-10-19T05:29:00.000-07:00

Here's an excellent 10+ album! Two years later and I'm still listening to it regularly. Outstanding power pop from one of America's many under-appreciated songcrafters. The song "Bones" is, quite possibly, one of the most perfect songs ever written.

Parthenon Huxley makes writing a phenomenal song look easy. His ninth and latest album, Kiss the Monster, is crammed with eleven timeless songs that effortlessly capture the youthful awe of a summer day at the beach. It’s no wonder he’s been called the American Andy Partridge and spent the better part of eight years as the singer/guitarist for ELO Part II, capably filling the unfillable shoes of Jeff Lynne.

Speaking of E.L.O., “Yesterday” has the amazing power pop feel of this group with subtly distorted guitars and lyrics that expertly capture the tentative moments early in a relationship (“Now I don’t want to scare you / And say too much too fast”). In “Perfect” The Spongetones meet REM with a breezy and hopeful song that layers Parthenon’s relaxed vocals into harmonies the just beg you to join along. “Come Clean” is a song about confession (“And when I finally tell her everything / There might be nothing left between us”), starkly admitting that the line of “it was just physical” is poppycock (“effing really effing matters”), while some unorthodox bass noodlings adorns the subtle string orchestration. Frail vocal harmonies will squeeze your heart in “Better Than Good”, a sunny summer day on the beach where an autumn breeze ominously intrudes. The album closer is “Everything’s Different Now”, a gentle, beautiful lullaby to his daughter (“I’m under your tiny thumb”) filled with great lyrics every parent will understand: “Everything’s different now / There’s no more ‘More of the same’” and “One day you’ll get me back for making you look like me.”

As good as these songs are there are two that will simply drop your jaw, revealing why P. Hux is a songwriter’s songwriter. “My Friend Hates Me” opens with a creamy tube-drenched guitar that leads to a crunchy rhythm, poppy “Do Do Dos”, an astounding melody and line after line of humorous lyrics as to why he lost his friend - “Maybe I’m just a loser / Maybe he’s back on drugs / Maybe I was an a$$hole / Maybe he needs a hug.” Do you remember that great A.M. radio pre-disco sound? P. Hux nails it in “Bones”, a ballad full of Wurlitzers, light electric guitar, horns, real strings, and a romantic chorus set to a melody so achingly good mere mortals are unworthy: “I’ll take everything that you’ve got / Even the stuff you don’t want / Take the good and the bad / I want it all.” Wings? Hall and Oats? Novices!

Kiss the Monster should come with a warning sticker- THESE SONGS WILL STICK IN YOUR HEAD. It’s obvious that this man has been drinking from the wells of Joe Jackson, Gin Blossoms, Elvis Costello, The Beatles, XTC, and Fountains of Wayne. There’s an enduring quality to these songs, a gentle truth free of musical clichés and trendy studio gimmicks. What else do I have to say?!?!? BUY THIS ALBUM!

Review - Ty Tabor - Something's Coming

2010-10-19T05:26:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to sound like a crusty ol' curmudgeon but I know that this man is capable of so much more. And The Choir, while it's a good album and I'm grateful that they release new music even if it IS five years between albums (at least it's not ten years and counting like Daniel Amos) but it's not the classic that all the raving fanboys are saying. It's solid B songwriting with A+ production.

Music nerds such as myself have a detailed and complicated relationship with the artists who supply the fodder of their addiction. Case in point is Ty Tabor. He is a founding member of King’s X, a band whose early albums filled my life with hours of enjoyment. Then they put out a few mediocre albums and I stuck with them. Then Ty released a solo album which I dutifully bought, mostly to find out if he was the reason for the magic of King’s X. It too was somewhat bland though often showing promise if only the right producer had taken the reigns and prodded the artist to greater heights. For over a decade now I’ve been dutifully buying King’s X albums with the unmet hope that they will one day hit their earlier greatness. I have also spent the same decade buying Ty Tabor solo albums with the same “ho-hum” results.

Something’s Coming is the sixth time I’ve forked money over to this man and once again, or rather “still”, he has some great ideas that just need a strong driver to force him to go that extra mile to make it superb. The good news is that if you liked his past solo albums then you will not be let down. Furthermore if you liked his stupendous guitar tone in the past then you have nothing to fear for Tabor coaxes another bevy of tones that will leave guitar-tone-junkies drooling on their amps. These astounding tones are used to form intense walls of sound for songs that, for the most part, don’t get out of third gear.

Lyrically this album has some strong moments but for the most part Tabor remains somewhat aloof, eschewing the painfully personal lyrics of his Jelly Jam side project, lyrics whose vulnerability made them horrendously appealing. Instead he looks to themes of personal liberation, clearly evident in “Free Yourself” which sports an unorthodox guitar solo that will leave some scratching their heads. Tired of being yanked around, “Politician’s Creed” takes aim at both sides of the aisle and seeks freedom from their equally greedy tyranny. In “Mr. Freeze” Tabor uses his relaxed southern voice to implore tolerance in the arena of ideas with “I don’t expect you to be like me / So don’t expect me to be like you.” Gorgeous vocal harmonies adorn “Slow Down Sister,” a slow simmer of a song which cautions an un-named woman against giving up her freedom by rushing into marriage. And so it goes through the rest of the album, culminating in the ominous “Something’s Coming” where a massive end of album chorus caps lyrics of “I don’t know what it is / But I can fit it / It’s in the air.”

Something’s Coming won’t spin your head around with musical innovations, but it’s not trying to. At this stage in his career Ty Tabor can easily write and record great songs and sees little need in shaking up his comfortable routine. The result are professional, well written songs a bit too much on the comfy side. Maybe I’m expecting too much but it’s difficult to be content with a nicely dressed gourmet burger when you know darn well that the man is capable of filet mignon tender enough to cut with a rubber spatula.

Review - The Choir - Burning Like the Midnight Sun

2010-10-19T05:23:00.000-07:00

The Choir knows how to treat their fans well. Burning Like The Midnight Sun is their twelfth album in a hundred zillion years. Or almost thirty. Look, this isn’t a statistics lecture and you’re getting me off track. The point is that this time around the band went hog-wild with fan friendly flotsam. You can buy the album, with its lovely tri-fold format full of nice artwork created somewhere near a computer but not with a computer, or you can download the album and rip the band off by sharing it with your friends. You can also get the “Directors Cut” CD which plays the album in full with the band rudely talking over the music. Sure, they’re telling about the making of the album and the stories behind the songs but still… MANNERS, PEOPLE. The complete freak can get the “Stems” DVD which has all the parts for each song broken out into its own track so you can mix and remix your own version of the album. Or said freak can just listen intently to, say, just the drum tracks or backing vocals until their eyeballs shoot out of their head. It’s a free country.

But all the options are worthless unless the music is good. Which would be the question. Is it? Or maybe the question is “Will the reviewer answer the question before his editor gives him the axe?” I’ve been writing for this hear paper for about half as long as The Choir has been cranking out albums, though suspiciously I seem to have dropped off their Christmas Card list. Hmmm…. In a nutshell, or a clamshell if you’re feeling rich, Burning Like The Midnight Sun is a fine, fun album. Not their best, though. Not the “instant classic” that many of their fans claim. But then again, what do I know? If “many of their fans” hail the album as a classic and this one old grouch in Indiana says it’s a strong A minus my guess is that most listeners would do well to disregard said reviewer. In which case I’m out of a side-job so forget you read that.

This time around the band heads back to their roots, recalling their spartan Chase the Kangaroo days (that’s one of their early albums, 1988, to be exact), conjuring up sonic textures akin to The Church and Cocteau Twins while simultaneously forging ahead. Translation: it sounds a bit like their late 80s albums but instead of being a boring rehash the band packs in lots of fresh ideas. There’s lots of gauzy guitars and spacey sax floating around in linear melodic lines that draw you in, stuff that sounds simple until you realize how the two guitarist are dancing around each other (though in the studio they didn’t, or at least they didn’t in the many “making of” cuts they posted on You Tube, another friendly gesture to their fans) and hooking in the bass. Unlike some past efforts there aren’t loads of layers, instead stripping back the bark to effectively focus on the core of each song. A few of the songs rock, though none as hard as their excellent Kissers and Killers, a few songs dreamily drift by in anesthetic glee and at least one will leave you scratching your head at their psychedelic wit. Since it’s been five years since they released their last album, O How the Mighty Have Fallen (in my meager opinion a creative pinnacle and available from the bands website for a disgustingly low price), the band hit the studio hungry – unlike many of the albums by bands with their tenure or “Grammy-nominated” status there’s no sign that they are phoning it in.

Lyrically The Choir has always been a favorite of fans because of their willingness to flay open their hearts, writing candidly about friendship, marriage, and parenthood. “Friendship” they have covered as many of these songs are about (wait for it…) themselves! Yes, drummer/tambourinist/lyricist Steve Hindalong wrote songs about a humorous run-in at the airport involving their bassist, Tim Chandler, a song in honor of second guitarist Marc Byrd hitting a milestone birthday (“Legend of Old Man Byrd”), a song about the passing of Tom Howard (“A Friend So Kind”) and a ditty about an occurrence years ago when their sax player Dan Michaels fell off a four foot stage (“I’m Sorry I Laughed”). Two songs (“The Word Inside The Word” and “It Should Have Been Obvious”) remind us that Hindalong is more poet than theologian (‘Nuff said) and “That Melancholy Ghost” is an excellent, echo-drenched song about a nearly grown daughter who is plagued with depression and the pain and helplessness a parent feels in the face of a child suffering.

This leaves the relationship songs. The relationship songs… where did they put those again? Huh? Oh yeah… on the “Directors Cut” Steve mentions that his revealing “insider secrets” of his marriage on past albums has caused negative tensions with his wife so he scaled that back. Good for his marriage, bad for us. The lone track that almost touches on this subject is “Between Bare Trees,” a song which likens the necessity of winter “death” to make way for the colorful explosion of spring to relationships that also undergo tough seasons that clear the relationship rubbish, clearing the way for better times. The album highlight comes at the very end with “Say Goodbye to Neverland,” a song about growing up even if you’re pushing fifty. Just as the rest of the album contains a sprinkling of lyrical references to past albums, Neverland contains multiple meanings: aside from the obvious Peter Pan reference it’s also the name of guitarist Derri Daugherty’s previous studio, the contents of which were liquidated in his divorce, an event that no doubt forced much inner searching and growth. While most of the song is a midnight vigil of stark piano and sobering lyrical melody they allow the beast known as Tim Chandler to fuzz out a bit near the end before reining him back in. Like the rest of Burning Like The Midnight Sun the song works magnificently. And if you want to find out what the title means, well, I’m not gonna spill the beans. Buy the album. Better yet, buy this album and their previous album. You won’t regret it. Or maybe you will… I’m just some hack music critic, not a fortune teller.

Surprise surprise... musical musings!

2010-10-08T10:41:00.001-07:00

I had a revelation last night while washing the dishes.

It had nothing to do with dish soap making my hands soft as silk (though it IS true that my velvety hands are the result of my relaxed, pampered lifestyle). Rather I was listening to music to pass the time and decided on an early album by Guster. Hearing their breezy vocal harmonies and intoxicating melodies impressed upon me just how easy they made it sound. Sure, they probably spent a week working out just the right chords for one song or singing harmonies, polishing and perfecting, but in the end if all sounds so effortless.

Just prior to doing the dishes I had been in the basement for my weekly “music hour.” This week I decided to play the electric guitar and buzzed through some old and new favorites. I’ve been playing guitar now for close to ten years and I can honestly say that I really haven’t improved all that much, at least in the past five years. Not that I practice or take lessons, which I suppose would help. No, the only thing that currently helps my playing is a beer or two, and that only makes me sound better to me.

Contrasting the two items, the easy perfection of the Guster songs and my struggled mangling of a guitar that even at $300 is about $250 above my skill level, put me in mind to think about my own songs. Last year was a bumper crop of songs while this year has been busied with a few ideas but very little output. The songs I write follow the form of my playing – gasping, struggling things birthed in anguish and tension. Usually I get a melody idea for a song and if it sticks around long enough for me to remember it by the time I get to a recording device then I know it’s a keeper. Later I fumble around to figure out guitar chords or compose music around the melody that may or may not be in the same key. Instrumental parts for bass, guitar, keyboards, or accordion come to me as ideas in my head, not as a natural, instinctive overflow of my playing so I have to do my best to hammer out how to play the part of the chosen instrument and practice it a few times so it can at least be played technically without errors, though there isn’t quite enough skill in my fingers to bring out an emotional aspect, like how Eric Clapton can make the guitar spring to life full of emotions? I got none of that. The result is a sterile though functional song aching to be given all the little detailed nuances that real songs have when played by real musicians.

I recently had someone over and he asked me to play a song that I had written. Give me a CD player and I could but not with a guitar in my hand. For me the studio is as much an instrument as the bass or drums. But that’s me, I guess. Most of my musical life has been spent in solitude so the studio has had to step up and be my bandmates. I remember years and years ago when I was writing and recording songs with a high school friend he wanted to try playing live. Aside from the fact that it would mean him showing up with his guitar while for me it would mean days of programming MIDI plus packing up, loading, unloading, and setting up keyboards, drum machines, and a Commodore 64 (which would mean a TV, computer and giant disk drive) plus all the MIDI cables there was also the issue of the purpose. Why play live? The songs had been created so why bother playing them over again? My wife finds it bothersome that when I play songs of others I’ll rarely play the song through – once I get a verse or two and a chorus played what else is there? Repeat the same chord progression again a few times? Or maybe I’ll just skip to the next song I want to play.

Rambling done. Time to get back to the stuff of life.

DOODLEBUG

2010-10-06T08:37:00.000-07:00

9/1/2010
Humpty Dumpty Day
When we all sit on a wall
And crack our poor skulls.

9/2/1010
Play some Irish tunes?
Sure! I’ll play about anything.
Practice that squeezebox.

9/3/2010
Nix those Irish tunes
And the accompanying
Beer and fellowship.

9/4/2010
‘Tis a long weekend
So make a big ol’ breakfast
And let your hair down.

9/5/2010
What was that you said?
You have tadpoles in your socks?
You are one weird dude.

9/6/2010
Joints and booze at lunch
Labor unions raise prices.
Labor Party blues.

9/7/2010
The third shift is done
Back to working the daylight
Work is still boring.

9/8/2010
I really, really,
Really, really, really, uh,
Really love my wife!

9/9/2010
Dinner is super
Or perhaps it is supper.
I get so confused.

Since I Can't Write My Own...

2010-10-02T07:35:00.000-07:00

Since I'm unable to come up with my own material I thought I'd steal from a 1970 Reader's Digest. Quite illuminating. If there was voter fraud then and has been it's highly unlikely that it stopped during the 2008 election. Or the 2010 election. Or the 2012 election. Or the 2004 election.

Only Thirty Days Behind!

2010-09-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

8/20/2010
Time to buy some food
And chip away at the bills.
Gotta love PAYDAY!

8/21/2010
Who dug those deep holes
Right behind my grey garage?
It was an opossum.

8/22/2010
Not something I do
Darts was surprisingly fun
A rare guys night out.

8/23/2010
Up early, eat fast
The summer is now over.
Back to school with you!

8/24/2010
Matthew: Middle school
Joshua is in high school
I don’t feel too old.

8/25/2010
I had a spare pint
So I let them stick my arm
And drain out warm life.

8/26/2010
A very warm day,
For the summer could this be
The last slip and slide?

8/27/2010
I have a secret:
That when it comes to web logs
I have another.

8/28/2010
Feeling very foul
Depressed, alone; Been a while
I wish I knew why.

8/29/2010
Perhaps I am down
And grouchy because I have
One more week of third.

8/30/2010
The Amish are here!
They showed up at my office
To tear down a wall.

Filling in the Gaps

2010-09-24T05:32:00.000-07:00

8/6/2010
My brother and I
I wish we were much closer
Happy Birthday, Chris.

8/7/2010
Coffee in the morn
Is a simple joy of life
Learn to relish it.

8/8/2010
In my last haiku
I was unclear. Do not put
Relish in your drink

8/9/2010
If I could make time
I would spend it with my wife
Laughing, talking, RRRAAWR!

8/10/2010
I like weird music
It seems to reflect my mind
Sounds normal to me

8/11/2010
Where is everyone?
My coworkers are now late
Oh wait, it’s Sunday.

8/12/2010
Barry’s intestines
Appear to have exploded.
I now work at night.

8/13/2010
Working the night shift
Has a few nice benefits:
Weekend starts at noon.

8/14/2010
There is a reason
And I don’t know what it is.
Things happen worldwide.

8/15/2010
Working on Sunday
For just a few hours let’s me
Sleep in until six.

8/16/2010
At six in the morn
There is almost no traffic
Bike ride into work!

8/17/2010“Joe Satriani”
Is the kind of name that has
All five syllables.

8/18/2010
I injured my foot
Riding my bike. It seems that
My shoes are worn out.

8/19/2010
The first week of nights
Is nearing its wretched end.
Get well soon, Barry.

ON FIRE!

2010-09-16T13:21:00.001-07:00

8/1/2010
Excuse me, dear sir
But could I kindly ask you
To stop kicking me?

8/2/2010
This day is taking
Far more than its rightful share
Of sweet work day hours.

8/3/2010
Where did I misplace
That thing I was just holding?
It was oozing grease.

8/4/2010
That Martin Luther
Was a very fine old man
Face washed – frying pan.

8/5/2010
Seven more minutes
Until I can return home
And my wife hugs me.

Haiku 4 U

2010-09-15T05:21:00.001-07:00

7/25/2010
She fell off the bed
Sleeping just like a opossum
Tessa’s bloody nose.

7/26/2010
I sure love my wife
But do not tell her enough.
I’ll write her love poems.

7/27/2010
If I were a doc
You could pay me in fresh eggs
I’d still make house calls.

7/28/2010
Man, it’s loud in here
This used to be an airport
Stop the drum machine.

7/29/2010
John Linnell is fixed
His brain problem is addressed
His music suffers.

7/30/2010
It sure has been nice
Not being depressed lately
Thank you, Great Doctor.

7/31/2010
Gold is on the rise
The economy stinks bad.
Could Glen Beck be right?

Mean Grownups

2010-09-08T17:06:00.001-07:00

We called them the Alley-Oops. They were named after the Alley-Oops of my childhood which were named by a friend of my older brother after the 50s novelty song. And now they are gone.

The Alley-Oops were a set of bmx-style jumps and ramps and dips that were about a mile east on the River Greenway off North Anthony. Often it would be a destination on bike trips with my kids, though we didn't dare try the more impressive set where the top of the ramp to the bottom of the gulch would be six feet or more with ten feet between the massive dirt mounds. Rather we would take the easier circuit where you could easily coast over one foot mounds without getting air or even chicken out and take the trail to either side of the small training mounds.

But the big circuits... they were impressive! Often we would watch as greasy biker kids would take turns tempting fate on this frightening jumps... usually without helmets or pads. The most impressive thing, however, is that these incredible interloping circuits were created by these kids, or possibly generations of pre-teen and teens. I'd see them out there with shovels, repairing a mound or making a new one. I wish we had the foresight to take pictures. Seriously, these would easily rank in the Seven Wonders of the Kid-dom World.

And now, like I said, they are gone. We hadn't visited them this summer because that part of the River Greenway was closed off due to construction further down the line. Now the "entrance" is chained off, the ramps bulldozed to fill the gulches, and nasty little shrubberies have been planted all over. It's sad, really. These kids, who would normally be written off as losers or wastoids or slackers put in sweat and time to create sometime truly impressive, something that was theirs. Until some bureaucrat decided that it was a legal risk continuing to turn a blind eye. Yes, I blame the lawyers. Now what are these "at-risk" kids to do? Go play some more video games? Loiter outside the Quickie-Mart? Train for the Olympics?

It reminds me of something I read in an old Reader's Digest. It seems in this town there was a pipe that went over a creek. The problem was that the kids kept walking over the pipe and breaking it, causing no end of problems. The town tried many things to keep the kids off the pipe but those pesky kids continued to play on the pipe. At one town meeting the various methods were being discussed on how to keep the kids away from the pipe until some old geezer stood up and said "Why don't we support the pipe so it won't break?" Sure, that wouldn't fly in todays world, which is a sad shame, but really, how much of a grumpy old gus do you need to be to take away a kids playground?

'Tis truly a sad day.

Retro Haiku

2010-08-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

I'm catching up...

7/13/2010
Tuesdays are my days
Well, from nine to ten P.M.
Break out the gee-tars!

7/14/2010
It’s high time I write
A song for my oldest son
But the well is dry.

7/15/2010
Her mind is focused
It’s all labor, all the time
Need to distract her

7/16/2010
Only two weeks past,
Andrew is finally born!
He was worth the wait!

7/17/2010
The house is quiet
The kids are away with friends
Peaceful, resting days

7/18/2010
The woman is SORE
But that’s to be expected
A twelve pound baby.

7/19/2010
Happy birthday, late
Andrew is the best gift but
I got this for you.

7/20/2010
I got a birth gift!
One gallon of New Castle,
Thank you, John Hrehov!

7/21/2010
Lyndi went to camp
Had lots of fun and bug bites
Glad to have her back.

7/23/2010
Wine gladdens the heart
But doesn’t remove ink stains.
So says the Psalmist

7/24/2010
Oh, where is that rain
To give relief to dry ground
UPS is late.

Bloggy

2010-08-23T05:44:00.000-07:00

7/1/2010
The 4th- Almost here
We can only think about
That boy being born.

7/2/2010
I am being told
That I really, truly must
Reboot my PC.

7/3/2010
Irony, it is
To purchase all our fireworks
From Commie China.

7/4/2010
Today is the day.
Where are you? We’ll just wait here.
The boy is tardy.

7/5/2010
A busy summer.
At long last, a break at work
A deep breath is good.

7/6/2010
While we are waiting
At least we had a great date
I sure love my wife!

7/7/2010
Brooke had surgery
One week ago – She had some
Body parts removed.

7/8/2010
Crappy dumb data
That I doubt they really use
You go, Plan Member!

7/9/2010
The haiku format
Is perfect for expressing
A single idea.

7/10/2010
I think she will wait
Until the boys week is done
Though I don’t know why.

7/11/2010
My car makes a clunk
When the thingy is engaged
Then it goes ker-plunk.

7/12/2010
Tired of waiting
And waiting a little more:
Tempers are stretched thin.

More Wacky Thoughts

2010-08-18T18:57:00.000-07:00

Yeah... I'm that crazy Uncle with his weird conspiracy theories that if you listen long enough start to make sense.

Since you mentioned Lincoln being against secession, and actually illegally starting a war because he was sooo opposed to states succeeding (and not at all starting the war because of a brazen power grab) it should be of interest to know that "honest" Abe was all for secession when it was in his interests. This is why he helped "West Virginia" from Virginia and become it's own state. Lincoln's own attorney general, Edward Bates, believed it was unconstitutional for state to split in the manner that it did, being helped out by the Federal government instead of forming grass-roots-like. And get this, this Great Emancipator in favor of this split had nothing bad to say about their legislation which allowed for the people of this new state to vote on a gradual emancipation policy, the very position Stephen Douglas held and defended in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates.

One other juicy tidbit of lucid mania: an Ohio congressman by the name of Clement Vallandigham had the audacity to publicly state that Lincoln's dictatorial acts were not to free the slaves or even to save the Union but "national banks, bankrupt laws, a vast and permanent public debt, high tariffs, heavy direct taxation, enormous expenditure... strong government... no more State lines, no more State governments, and a consolidated monarchy." For this, merely expressing his First Amendment rights, he was arrested without a civil warrant, thrown into a military prison and then deported by Lincoln to the Southern states. Read those things that Lincoln is being accused of and just try not to think about Obama's actions. I double dog dare ya!

Lincoln Was The First Obama

2010-08-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly a decade in my coming around in my thoughts on Lincoln, so bear with me as I try to cram all that into one blog entry.

Most of us grew up with Lincoln being highly revered as a President. There's Washington, and Lincoln, and um, all those other guys who weren't as great, right? This has been beaten into our heads in public schools from the time we start there, plus I worked at Lincoln National, a place that also holds the man in near-religious esteem. However I've always been one that is willing to change my mind IF adequate facts can be provided. And there are facts. LOADS of facts!

So my premise, that Lincoln was the first Obama, is that Lincoln was 100% for building a bigger, stronger centralized Federal government, even at the expense of ignoring the Constitution. It's a way of thinking that says, "Hey, this government is do great that I'm going to ignore the very rules that make it great so that I can make it greater!" It makes no sense, but then again, Lincoln was a lawyer. In the same vein, Obama is pulling all kinds of crap that isn't allowed for the Executive Branch by the Constitution (and often not allowed for any of the branches).

Lincoln was the first Republican president but before there were Republicans there were Whigs. Remember those Whigs from U.S. History back in the day? Whigs were for making the federal government bigger and reducing the rights of the individual states as well as having a federal bank. Hold that thought.

When our Founding Fathers wrote the framework of our government they had fresh in their minds an all-controlling centralized government, that being of course England. The states were operating much like the individual countries of Europe (Virginia, South Carolina, New England vs. France, Germany, and Denmark, if you will). Each state had it's own constitution and pretty much operated independently, though in cooperation, with the other states. None of these states were going to willingly give up their sovereignty to a centralized government... what sovereign government would? So inherent in each state's willingness to voluntarily allow this new Federal government to provide certain limited* functions was the ability to withdraw their membership at any time, provided this withdrawal received the proper okee-dokee from their state legislatures. This was the ultimate check on the Federal government to keep it from being too bossy. It was a way for each state, if they didn't like the rules, to take their ball and go home. In school I was never told that this threat to succeed was invoked more than once, most notably New England who threatened to succeed in the early 1800s because they believed that the policies of the Jefferson and Madison administrations (especially the Louisiana Purchase, the national trade embargo of 1807 and the war of 1812) were disproportionally harmful to New Englanders. Debate raged on this issue but one item that was never debated was their right to succeed.

* footnote to above - If you take the time to actually read the Constitution, which should take an average reader much less than an hour (AND it should be pointed out that it is a very readable, understandable read - not the legal twistings of todays governmental documents) you will find that what little the federal government is given much to do is explicitly spelled out and that (GASP) any task not explicitly spelled out as belonging to the federal government is given to the individual states.

Let's fast forward to the 1850s. There is, and has been, a lot of policies in place that disproportionally harm the southern nations. The north had lots of manufacturing while the south imported most of their goods. High tarriffs were in place that pretty much fleeced the southern states and sent their money to the pockets of the big corporations of the northern states. Enter Lincoln, who had a history being very friendly to his corporate pals (there's a great story of Leaping Lincoln, if you want to look that up) AND was strongly in favor of adding power to the Federal government. When he got elected with no votes by the southern states they felt even more greatly disenfranchised and that their interested were not being represented. They ultimately decided to succeed from the union.

At this time most of the newspapers and populace felt that they should be allowed to peacefully succeed. Indeed, Confederate President Jefferson Davis even offered to pay or give back to the Northern union any of it's property which remained on southern soil. Lincoln needed a way to change public opinion and did so with the attack on Fort Sumter. Here was a Northern fort on Southern land. The south would no more allow a northern military fort on southern land than the Americans would have allowed a British military fort. So here was Fort Sumter, running out of food. They could have peacefully left at any time and Lincoln had been notified of such by Jefferson Davis. However Lincoln forced Davis to fire first by sending a heavily armed battleship with supplies. Here was the South, not attacking Fort Sumter and just waiting for them to leave and suddenly here's this armed battleship with more food and ammo to help Fort Sumter last even longer. So the south fired first. Lincoln turned this event into the South firing on ships that were only attempting to provide food for hungry men, and the tide of public opinion began to turn.

Now that Lincoln had his war he ran all over the Constitution. Even scholars favorable to Lincoln call him a dictator, but a friendly one, as if such a thing can exist. For one thing, he suspended habeas corpus. Imagine in Obama suddenly said that anyone can be arrested at any time, not be told why they were being arrested, not be given a trial, and held indefinitely. We treat our illegal aliens better than Lincoln treated U.S. citizens! And who did he have arrested? Anyone who disagreed with him - newspaper owners, state legislators, joe citizens and even clergy! During elections they would post people inside the polls and have people cast their votes using different colors of paper. Cast a green ballot and they would toss you in jail! At one point there were thousands of citizens under arrest without ever being charged. Oh, and the different colored ballot trick is equal to free elections being suppressed. He also suppressed the free press by putting editors and reporters in jail, making many afraid to speak out publicly against Lincoln's policies.

Lincoln also launched an invasion of the South without the approval of Congress, something required in the Constitution, declared martial law, blockaded Southern ports, censored all Internet, er, telegraph communication, nationalized the car companies, I mean railroads, created several new states without the consent of the citizens in those states, ordered Federal troops to interfere with elections in the North by intimidating opponents to his policies, confiscated firearms and private property in direct violation of the Second Amendment, and pretty much was a rats patooty!

But didn't he do this to free the slaves? Wasn't the end justification of the means? HORSE-PUCKY! Lincoln's well known position was that the slaves should be sent back to Africa and even helped found an organization to do so. The Emancipation Proclamation was an act of war, and a weak, symbolic one at that! It only freed slaves in the places the north didn't have a right to (the south) but actually KEPT PEOPLE SLAVES IN THE NORTH (and north-friendly southern areas under the control of the Northern armies). That doesn't sound very liberating to me!

A direct result of this is the 14th amendment, which states that you are automatically a U.S. citizen if you are born on U.S. soil. This was put in because some were fearful that the children of freed slaved would be deported. Today it's used for illegal aliens to have children here, illegally and on the taxpayer dime, and have them be legal. Or even better, did you know that some countries actually have "vacation" packages designed so that pregnant women come here and give birth, making their children U.S. citizens and eventually able to bring over their families? HARUMPH!

And that Federal bank? The one that issues all the dollar bills you hold? Privately held. No accountability. No audits of their activities.

So now when I see a Confederate flag I understand. They aren't saying "We hate black people!" It would be safe to say that Lincoln liked the African Americans less than most Confederate flag fliers. No, these people are expressing their belief that the Southern states were fully within their rights in peacefully succeeding and then fighting against an aggressive Northern army that was attempting to force them to remain part of the North just so they could continue to be financially fleeced to enrich Northern corporations. Countless lives, North and South, just so some can get rich in money and power... it's an old story.

That's all for now... I may gush out more later. Suffice it to say that the demi-god known as Lincoln was a scoundrel who worked to enrich the bank accounts of his corporate buddies at the expense, of lives and dollars, of the general population he supposedly represented.

CD Review - The Lost Dogs - Old Angel

2010-08-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

I'm still not 100% sure of where this album lands in my personal collection. I like it more every time I hear it, which makes it a grower. But it's a slow grower. I definitely appreciate that all the members are writing the songs instead of just Terry. Nothing against Mr. Taylor but The Lost Dogs was conceived as a collaborative effort and in the past its fallen away from this ideal.

Two years ago The Lost Dogs piled into a van and drove the length of Route 66, starting in Chicago and ending up at the Santa Monica Pier. Along the way, they stopped at failing diners, truck stops and mom-and-pop stores, setting up and giving free concerts. Joining them on this trip was a newfangled GPS system that allowed fans to track their progress online and in real time, giving those fans an inside glimpse at the band and each wrong turn and lead-footed move. It was a great (vicarious) ride. Too bad you missed it.

Having logged all those hours behind the wheel, the band wrote scads of songs about the journey. Real songs about real people and real places. Places from the glory days of Route 66 that you can find on Google Earth, but you’d best be quick because these non-corporate businesses tend to become ghosts overnight. Presented in the form of Old Angel, The Dogs’ ninth release, these songs capture the tone of this trip, ranging from “it seemed like a good idea at the time” silly (“American Main Street”) to somber moments of longing for times past (“Desert Flowers”). They pay tribute to Wild Bill Hickok in the rocking “Wicked Guns” and humbly ask for safety while on the road with the gentle “Traveling Mercies.”

Throughout the album, the boys couch these Americana songs in a subdued rock vibe and assorted countrified instruments such as fiddles, mandolins and pedal steel. This approach ensures that these songs won’t fit into the preset playlist of any local radio station, though, like the ghost of a road they traveled upon, the tunes would have been gobbled up by the long-gone album format of decades past.

The album highlights are legion. “Dancin’ on the Devil’s Elbow” opens with rhythmic sawing (not one of those newfangled musical saws but a real saw creatively working its way through a piece of real wood) before becoming a joyous remembrance of friends meeting in a restaurant in Missouri. “Pearl Moon” opens with quiet acoustic guitars, recalling Hooverville camps with lyrics like “Does hunger have a lesson to teach?”

Then come the stark realities of life when one of the vocalists passionately sings “And our babies died” while trying to cross the desert. I mention “one of the vocalists” because three of the members sing, often joining their voices for rich vocal harmonies but nowhere as effectively as they do in “The World is Against Us,” a track in which they combine to create a sound worthy of the best of Crosby, Stills and Nash. “Dead End Diner” tells the story of a dying diner through the eyes of a waitress who, despite cutbacks in hours and reduced benefits, finds hope in both a regular who she’s “almost sure that he ain’t gay” and Obama making promises on the radio.

The best track is perhaps their remake of Daniel Amos’ “Glory Road,” a tune that originally appeared on an album chronicling the journey of a fictitious older couple as they took their final vacation on, yep, Route 66. The original song, though charming, was all elbows. This time out the Dogs ironed out the kinks while retaining the charm, forming an absolute masterpiece of a rocker in the process.

As much as I like it now, Old Angel continues to grow on me with each listen. The songs speak of dusty roads and deep friendships that have weathered the years, of lonely times and intoxicating celebrations. The Lost Dogs are four stellar songwriters and lyricists, packing in well over 100 years of experience, and these are some of the best songs you may never hear. Route 66 may have become neglected. It would be a pity to neglect Old Angel as well.

CD Review - Nod Arvefel - Can I Get A Witness?

2010-08-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

Every nine months or so this guy puts out a new album of original songs. The style isn't exactly my cup of tea but I admire his sense of humor and passion for his faith. It's been nice to listen to him improve as a songwriter and in the studio.

Can I Get A Witness? is Nod Arvefel’s 142nd album in the past eight months. Okay, maybe he hasn’t released quite that many, but it seems like every time I turn around this guy’s waving a new album in my face. If the music wasn’t so thoroughly enjoyable I might find his prolific output annoying, especially in light of my own current dry spell.

This time around, Nod, who is the alter ego someone better left unmasked (though I’ll give you a tnih), decided to put together an album about death. No, not a death metal album with growly vocals, though he’s included some of his rockiest songs to date. Rather, many of these songs are stories about people meeting their maker as they pass on to the other side, all told with Nod’s usual blend of compassion, humor and keyboard-centric compositions. For instance, “I Saw Elvis Leavin’ the Buildin’” is about hearing the fat lady sing “Amazing Grace’” with egg all over one’s face. “Howlin’ Wind” combines a Steve Wonder “Sunshine of My Life” Wurlitzer sound with a Western feel, tossing in jangling spurs and jazzy horns to tell a tale of a sharpshooter who comes face to face with death. Rounding out the death cycle are “Silver and Gold,” an invigorating track about an unfortunate fellow who finds you can’t earn or buy your way to Heaven, and the twangy, soothing “Keep the Light On” which begins with “As I stood as the bedside of a dying brother” against a fluffy backing of strings and gentle guitars.

As on past albums, Nod throws the listener a few curve balls. While traditional songs like “Take a Ride on the Carousel” and “My Child, There’s No Goodbyes” (another death song I overlooked earlier) could easily be enjoyed in any church without causing the blue-haired ladies to blink an eye, Nod’s mischievous nature cannot be restrained. The rocky “Comfort One Another” will never have anyone crying out “More cowbell!” because cowbell is all over this thing. Seriously, one listen to this lounge song will fulfill your cowbell quota for the rest of 2010. The instrumental “Star Spangled Rock” is impressive in its mastery of synth-guitar soloing, tossing in a Kink’s reference and heavy drums for credibility. Likewise, the final track, “You Still Here?” is an amazing instrumental formed of jazz piano, bass and drums that will get your feet moving right about the time it abruptly ends, leaving you wanting more. Nod even uses vocoders on two songs: the unnerving “I Am That I Am” which tells the listener of God’s love in the first Person (I kill myself with these thinly veiled theological jokes), and “Jesus, You Are the Glory” tempers the ballad with an angelic choir and (gasp) real guitars playing off impressively emotive vocals for an album highlight. And then there’s a song like the title track which makes you wonder if Nod mistakenly brought home a Kraftwerk CD from the library, filled as it is with a techno beat, squishy synth sounds, a very fat bass and clever lyrics like “Don’t care how much you know / I want to know how much you care.”

Overall, Can I Get A Witness? is a remarkably adventurous collection of songs. One moment you’ll hear a dramatic arrangement of strings and piano, the next a soothing hymn appropriate for church and then an offbeat quasi-techno 50s rocker. Arvefel is as genuine in his faith as he is talented in his songwriting, honestly expressing God’s love for humanity through tears and laughter.

CD Review - The Candles - Between the Sounds

2010-08-12T08:22:00.001-07:00

I just realized that I'm way behind on posting CD reviews as they are published... BAAAAD ME! This first one is a great album. I suspect I'll be dragging this one out for years to get a fresh listen.

Multi-instrumentalist Josh Lattanzi has spent the better part of his life recording and touring with blokes like Ben Kweller, The Lemonheads, and Albert Hammond Jr. of The Strokes. Fortunately for fans of quality music Josh spent that time carefully observing the fine art of songwriting instead of rolling dice with the roadies. When he finally had a decent-sized break in his touring schedule Josh enlisted a few friends and headed to the studio to make a permanent record of his songs under the project name The Candles.

Between the Sounds springs to life with “Waiting For The Truth,” a song which personifies the adjective “jaunty” with a spritely beat driving pleasingly warm organs, slightly countryish guitars, retro synth tones, and a bouncy bridge. Dour lyrics of “By the sound / I know you’ve found / Another reason to give up” are offset by the elfish melody for an endearing contrast. “Here or Gone” sports more of a Meat Puppets influence with close two-part vocal harmonies throughout, easily gliding along on punkish pop melodies backed by rootsy chiming guitars. The theme continues in “Let Me Down Easy” where piano and steel guitar add their spice to spine-chilling vocal harmonies and melancholy melodies. The rocking title track is an ode to being on the road while “Not Enough” invokes the spirit of the early 70s when bands were free to cross musical genres at will, pitting a mellotron against rich vocals that beg you to pick a part and sing along. “Road Song” is marked by sizzling lead guitars, jangly rhythm guitars and a sorrowful sense that “Days are getting farther away / I’m getting further behind” even though the hyper-sweetened melody leads one to believe otherwise.

Each of the ten songs on Between The Sounds is crammed full of country-tinged pop goodness. Its Meat Puppets, Ryan Adams, Jackson Browne, Gin Blossoms, Eagles, acoustic Foo Fighters (sans screaming), and Tom Petty all rolled into one infectious gob of fantastic music. There are no sonic gimmicks here, just beautifully crafted songs artfully and tastefully recorded, allowing them to stand on their impressive strength.

Sausage Machine

2010-08-12T08:15:00.001-07:00

6/24/2010
Muggy and humid
Are the days of this summer.
Every day August.

6/25/2010
Second ultrasound
Checking on his position
That durn boy is breech!

6/26/2010
Decades since the last
So forgive me – I forgot
Bug spray to drive in.

6/27/2010
Working from home still
Pushing to meet a deadline
Weeks since I rested.

6/28/2010
Sunday E.R. trip
Glad my heart is in good shape.
“Too much stress,” they said.

6/29/2010
I met the deadline
But I seriously doubt
It was worth the costs.

6/30/2010
A free lunch at work
Doesn’t make up for low pay
A nice gesture, though.

More Ketchup

2010-08-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

6/13/2010
What was I doing
Nearly two whole months ago?
I haven’t a clue.

6/14/2010
Brown County State Park
Humidity off the charts
Hiking on the trails.

6/15/2010
Tessa just turned two
Big curls and a bigger smile
Character in spades.

6/16/2010
That little red car
Was fun. Even better was
The walk back with Brooke.

6/17/2010
A birthday party
In advance came too quickly.
Good thing he cared not.

6/18/2010
Another Friday
Let your hair down and relax
Time spent with my wife.

6/19/2010
Fifteen years go fast
When your son is nifty-keen
Happy Birthday Josh!

6/20/2010
I could fix the car
And spend all of my Sunday
Or spend phantom cash.

6/21/2010
My right palm is numb
Torque problem. Tight bolt. Break bar.
Now I take it in.

6/22/2010
It’s either a lot
Or I could consider it
Eight months of payments.

6/23/2010
It’s the new Lost Dogs!
Could I be souring on them?
Maybe it will grow.

Rambling

2010-07-05T05:32:00.001-07:00

Ah, the 5th of July... a great day to be born, don'tjathink? Let's see if Andrew agrees.

So this morning I awoke at 6:59, the result of my usual inability to sleep much past seven on any day I don't have to work -though on work days I can sleep way into the morning, almost durn near close to 7:30. Once downstairs, awake but still groggy, I decided to spend some time with a group of old friends. Not in REAL LIFE... that would be, for me, a work of fiction. Rather I spent a couple of chapters with Dortmunder and his gang. Life's been a bit, er, stressful lately (not so much bad stressful but busy and work-stressful and life-changy anticipation stressful) so when I finished reading my last novel I decided that I needed something that would A) make me laugh and B) be enjoyable. This led ultimately to a Donald Westlake book for his comic novels can always be counted on to give my funnybone a tickle, and true to form I found myself laughing out loud a number of times during the first few chapters and continuing to chuckle ever since.

Not wanting to spend the entire pre-awake-children morning reading I decided to head out and do my "chores". Since just after mother's day I've been rather engaged in a rather large project of sanding, assembling, staining, varnishing, sanding, varnishing, sanding and varnishing ten new dining room chairs. TEN. Hey, ya gotta plan for future growth, right? Some people would have guests but we're not very good at entertaining. For this first pass I'm just doing six chairs with the remaining four to be completed probably in 2011 'cause when I'm done with these six I'm taking a break. A looong break. Each chair takes 30 minutes to sand, 20 minutes to assemble and about 40 minutes to stain. Each coat of varnish has to be done in two passes (bottom half of chair and top half) with each of these two passes taking about 20 minutes and the mid-varnish sanding taking a mere seven minutes. All tallied up that's 3.75 hours per chair, not counting varnish dry time and brush cleanup. That seems low.

In any case, such large amounts of child and wife-free time (for no one wants to venture into the varnish-stinky room where I'm working) has given me the chance to listen to some long-format music. That's right, I'm listening me to some classical music! Lately I put on an old favorite, Prokofiev's 3rd symphony. If I were one to make lists, and I am, Prokofiev would easily be in my top five favorite composers. Possibly top three. His music is, in turns, lively, sarcastic, humorous, stark, emotional, inventive, offbeat, and passionate while always remaining melodic. If you like Danny Elfman (and nothing against the elf-man) but have grown tired of his three styles (wacky-silly [Beetlejuice and PeeWee], hero [Batman], and romantic strings [other stuff]) then hop on over to Prokofiev and find out who's the REAL MAN!

But I digress. The third symphony is, in my mind, an early prototype of horror movie music, though when he composed this symphony in the late 1920s the horror movie really hadn't been invented yet, being a good four years before Frankenstein saw the light of day. However the music is downright chilling and I have no doubt that Bernard Herrmann used the third movement as inspiration (if not outright note for note copy material) of his classic Psycho soundtrack. Not the famous staccato stabs but the unnerving title music that appears elsewhere in the film. Of course Prokofiev creates much more tension than this one intense section of one movement and it's all there for your hungry ears to enjoy.

This third symphony is based on material from Prokofiev's opera The Fiery Angel. The entire concept of Prokofiev writing operas puts me in a bit of a quandary. Try as I might I just can't get into operas. My man Beethoven only wrote one and Brahms, another top-five-possibly-top-three favorite of mine didn't write any. But Prokofiev wrote quite a few, which means he was fond of the format which means that perhaps there's something to it that I'm not getting so I can't just mentally write it off as a bunch of snobbery. To my ears, though, opera sounds like a platform for some showboat vocalist to spend two hours dazzling the audience with technique while the actual music sits lamely in the background. My next piece for chair varnishing accompaniment, therefore, was The Fiery Angel which I had to dig out of storage. I think I've listened to it three times since I bought it back when I had more disposable income. I'm nearly done with it and though I can pick out the music that Prokofiev culled for the starting points of his excellent symphony I'm still not impressed. Maybe I should read along with the libretto, something which gave me a greater appreciation for, though not a greater enjoyment of, his Love For Three Oranges opera. Or maybe I should try harder NOT to let the male lead's voice remind me of the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz movie and expect him to start belting out "If I... were KING... of the FORE~E~E~E~E~E~E~E~E~E~ST!" every few minutes.

Gotta go... the kids are awake!

♪ ♫ ♫ ♪

2010-07-01T12:03:00.000-07:00

6/5/2010
Do I mow the grass
On this fine fresh Saturday?
It will just grow back.

6/6/2010
“Secret Agent Man”
Was a nice bit of songcraft
Unlike that Elvis.

6/7/2010
Devo wore those hats
And White Lion wore that hair
Bands these days wear masks.

6/8/2010
My magic headphones
Allow me to hear it all:
Squeak, breath, grunt, fret noise.

6/9/2010
I don’t much for
That Letterman character
Or his evil chin.

6/10/2010
It is tradition
To make at least one haiku
About my great wife.

6/11/2010
Outside the country?
Allergic to iodine?
Time to give some blood.

6/12/2010
I am way behind
On writing music reviews
Today I catch up.

Current Review - Devin Townsend Project - Addicted!

2010-06-30T12:46:00.000-07:00

This review was submitted MONTHS ago and finally saw print. It is definitely worth the wait... where most albums get a week or two of my attention before I move on to something new. This album is STILL getting regular play through my head. And I'm even more convinced that Poederooyan RAWKS!

A few years back I had the pleasure of reviewing a Devin Townsend album and found it a highly enjoyable, albeit Canadian, album. Of particular note was his drummer who had the good fortune of having the unpronounceable last name of Poederooyen. That was in 2003 and I had intended to pick up more Townsend albums but instead squandered my money on licorice bites.

However Townsend has not been idly waiting for my attention, instead forging bravely ahead and making many more solo albums. Fortunately for me I decided that I was tired of licorice and formed a mini tax shelter by purchasing his latest album, Addicted. It was good to find out that the man was still Canadian, still had Poederooyen as his drummer, and had kicked some rather nasty habits, including licorice whips and other things, hence the title.

As part of his recovery Devin has recording this smashing album full of high energy, fun, peppy metal songs. It’s almost like Cheap Trick, My Bloody Valentine and White Zombie got together outside a dance club. The title track is indicative of the entire album – a bigger than life arena rock sound with industrial metal guitars and an uplifting, melodic chorus that somehow manages to remain light and airy on top while staying dense and distorted on the low end. “Universe In A Ball!” is a spacey dance song with a caustic bass that telegraphs out a rhythm while synthy effects lend a sense of weird glee to the festivities, breaking for a brief moment of operatic calm before slamming back into the metal crunch. Cheap Trick comes to the front in the Euro Pop “Bend It Like Bender!” which wastes no time in stepping up the party vibe with a zany guitar riff and lyrics of “Hey boy / We’re ya goin’ with that little toy?” This is not overly deep stuff, just carefree music made for driving around during the summer with the windows down, injecting the joy of being alive into your veins with a cheerful dance-beat chorus sung by Anneke van Giersbergen (seriously, does he hire people based on their names?) of The Gathering.

“Supercrush!” (and yes, every song ends in an exclamation point) is an album highlight, opening with a thunderous guitar riff that builds to a symphonic crescendo before dropping off to allow Anneka to sing a calming chorus which is counteracted by Devin as the music ramps back up and he passionately sings “I don’t want to save my soul / I don’t want to lose control” against a massive rock symphony, forming an angel vs. devil duet. This emotional song explodes as Devin hoarsely and cathartically confronts his addiction with “You want me to die?” and the song crashes in a gloriously chaotic finale. As if to ease the tension a bit the next song, “Hyperdrive!” is little more than a carefree nuclear fueled party song with the message of “Everyday’s a new day” and “Ih-Ah!” is a lilting, restrained pop song of non-distorted instruments that will annoyingly stick in your head like licorice with it’s endearing nonsense chorus of “Ih-Ah” sung by both Devin and Anneka, who this time around sounds like the Wilson sisters of Heart. Well, one of them, anyway. The final track, “Awake!!” (note the extra punctuation because it’s just that good) has fuzzy, crunchy riffs and a cheerful melody to back up comforting lyrics of “That’s alright / You’re only human” before turning up the tension in the bridge, growing energy like a chia pet grows hair until Devin shouts “DECONSTRUCT!” and one by one the instruments peel away over the next two minutes until all that remains is an echo of an echo, fading into the dark.

The more I hear the songs of Addicted more I like them. The lyrics and music are both addictively simple but with enough depth that keep you coming back. Or maybe Devin Townsend is just so talented that it all sounds simple but instead has a fertile depth that can only be appreciated with more listens, depth that sneaks up on you while you are innocently enjoying the heavy jams and boundless energy that makes Addicted approximately 1052% better than that other post-addiction album, St. Anger.

Displaying 1 of 2 Blogs

2010-06-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

5/30/2010
My big “To Do” list
Does apparently include
“Write six more haiku”

5/31/2010
The last day of May
Means that the end is quite near
For public school kids.

6/1/2010
In my haste to write
I failed to give respect for
Memorial Day

6/2/2010
It’s tough to recall
What happened three weeks ago
I’m sure it was fun.

6/3/2010
“School’s Out for summer!”
I now owe some royalties
To that Cooper guy.

6/4/2010
Driving with my wife
On another short road trip
Love her by my side.

Ketchup

2010-06-15T13:47:00.000-07:00

5/26/2010
Haikus are easy
When you are not overworked
Hence the current lack.

5/27/2010
Hunter green plaid shirt
And brown plaid shorts. It must be
Fashion Faux-pas Day!

5/28/2010
Before one can rest
Ya gotta hustle and toil:
The three day weekend

5/29/2010
My deepest desire
Is that I could one day sleep
Past seven A.M.

I TOTALLY RAWK!

2010-06-14T19:33:00.000-07:00

For some warped reason, if you search for "How to build monkey bars" on Google this blog is #2! YAHOO! I pity the foo who actually tries to build them from my plans, but it brings me pride and joy nonetheless.

Haiku backlog

2010-06-08T09:10:00.003-07:00

5/19/2010
I am far behind.
Very close to one whole month
Kids, it’s just haiku.

5/20/2010
My TV dinner
Exploded in the micro
Popcorn: Bad idea

5/21/2010
Weather should be checked
Before riding into work
To prevent drenching.

5/22/2010
Just one man against
One hundred ten thousand files
Only one survives.

5/23/2010
Defenseless against
Coughs, throat clearing and chit-chat:
Headphones left at home

5/24/2010
It takes just one hour
To stain just a single chair.
Just nine more to go.

5/25/2010
Inspired by the
Weeds that grow around my feet
Thank you, Poor Old Lu.

Haiku backlog

2010-06-08T09:10:00.001-07:00

As if I Needed Another Thread...

2010-05-30T19:23:00.000-07:00

On September 13, 1997 I made my "professional" debut with a short article about the upcoming Fort Wayne Philharmonic concert in WhatzUp, a local free entertainment publication that had started not much earlier in the year. A fellow I somewhat knew during high school was writing for them and, knowing my odd sense of humor and love of classical music, suggested I contact the paper to write a "hip" monthly article to help interest their young target reader in classical music. As the Fort Wayne Philharmonic was an advertiser for the paper it was a no brainer for them to accept my poorly written first piece. I got better over the five years that I wrote this column, then I got worse, then better... Eventually I got bored writing about the same handful of composers and when the Philharmonic started repeating pieces I knew it was time to take my leave.

I don't know how effective I was at stirring up interest in the younger crowd for this type of music... the Philharmonic never offered me season passes or sent me a postcard thanking me. Heck, they wouldn't even give me advance notice of the pieces being performed during the upcoming season so I had a chance to start my research. But it was fun to write and helped provide a nice bit of extra income back in the days when and extra five bucks was hard to come by. Eventually I wrote a review of a classical CD and then another CD review and the next thing I knew I was writing hundreds of those things.

But I digress.

Here is my very first paid piece of writing. It's admittedly rough but still, I hope, enjoyable.

GONZO THE GREAT - Sept. 13, 1997

September 13 marks the opening night of the 1997-98 Fort Wayne Philharmonic season. One of the most highly attended events of the concert season, the philharmonic conductor, Maestro Tchivzhel (pronounced Cheev-zil) has appropriately chosen two very popular and accessible pieces, Scheherazade by Rimsky-Korsakov and Symphonic Dances by Rachmaninoff. Tchivzhel? Scheherazade? Rachmaninoff? If you've never taken the time to enjoy classical music, please don't be put off by the seemingly random jumbles of letters. The opening performance of the Fort Wayne Philharmonic is the perfect place to get started!

Scheherazade (Sah-hair-a-zahd) was written in 1888 by Rimsky-Korsakov who is also known for the piece "Flight of the Bumblebee", the music to which Gonzo the Great once ate a complete tire on The Muppet Show. But I digress. Scheherazade is considered Program Music, a piece that describes a story with music. In this case, the story is A Thousand and One Nights in which Scheherazade (and what a lovely name it is) has been married to the Sultan Schariar. The sultan had been bit by love once too often and had since vowed to put to death each of his wives after the first night. To put off her impending death, Scheherazade tells the sultan a different story each night until, 1001 nights later, the sultan decides to revoke his original death vow. This piece depicts the tales told by Scheherazade.

Opening with the theme of the sultan, a rough, almost angry melody, the music quickly changes to the seductive and exotic theme of Scheherazade. Both themes are repeated often during the piece to signify when a character is expressing themselves. By his own admission, Rimsky-Korsakov did not write the music to be explicitly descriptive but rather as "hints to direct... the hearer's fancy". Thus, he is encouraging the listener to sit back and let their mind drift where the music will take them, over the rough and ancient seas and back into the legend of the Arabian Nights.

The final piece on the program is Symphonic Dances by Rachmaninoff, a man who bears the distinction of being the only composer mentioned in the film "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". Rachmaninoff (Rock-mon-in-auv) is known for writing lush, sentimental melodies. In fact, a theme from his Piano Concerto No. 2 was the basis for the 1976 love song "All By Myself". Not bad for a man who once wrote a song called "Were You Hiccuping"! Written in 1934, Symphonic Dances begins with the strings mischievously inviting the listener to come along for an imaginative frolic through "gypsy" folk tunes, changing rhythms, and beautiful, flowing melodies. Through all three invigorating movements, it is quite obvious that this piece is sheer fun, perfect for both those who are well steeped in classical music and for those who just want to get their feet wet.

** Unnecessary side-note: A few years later I discovered the author Donald Westlake, now deceased. One of my favorite books of his is Adios, Scheherazade, no relation to the piece by Rimsky-K.

Powers of 10

2010-05-27T18:42:00.000-07:00

If you're not careful you might just learn something.

Review - Guilt Machine - On This Perfect Day

2010-05-27T08:56:00.000-07:00

This one is way overdue! I submitted it the end of January and it got misplaced, which took two months to discover. Then it got placed back at the bottom of the stack and just now, four months later, is seeing the light of day. I'm still very grateful, though, to have the opportunity to get paid for reviewing music. Thanks, Doug! By the way, I'm still enjoying this amazing album, another one of those that God placed in my life at just the right time. Thanks, God!

Under the name of Ayreon Dutch musician Arjen Lucassen’s multi-album sci-fi series which spanned over a decade earned my appreciation but not my enthusiasm. It’s not like I don’t care for science fiction or symphonic rock, it’s just the way he put these two together didn’t quite butter my bread, ring my bell, wind my clock, feed my llama, scoot my boot, or any other worn cliché.

Fortunately when he isn’t thinking about DNA grafting aliens the man can write some incredibly moving music. In 2005 he released the first of his Stream of Passion albums, a melodic excursion into symphonic goth rock whereupon he enlisted the help of Lori Linstruth, the best “new” lead guitarist I’ve heard since my hair began to grey. Since 2005 Lori and Arjen have shacked up, plumbed the dark depths of their collective pasts and come up with mutual forgiveness. These topics (or in their own words “the destructive psychology of guilt, regret and the darkest form of secret- the secrets we hide from ourselves”) permeate Guilt Machine, their latest project which goes by the moniker On This Perfect Day.

Each of the six lengthy songs are edgy, atmospheric, orchestral, dynamic, and just gosh-durned pleasing to the ears. The opening track, “Twisted Coil” is full of eerie and apprehensive melodies captured by lush keyboard sounds, punchy drums (compliments of Chris Maitland, previously of Porcupine Tree), and dream-like vocals (some guy named Jasper Steverlinck, a name I wish I made up). Halfway through the twelve minute song the dream fades away and heavy guitars kick in the jam, ratcheting up the tension and the tempo. Where the first half of the song prompted you to “Shut down the guilt machine / And wash your conscience clean of yesterday” the gritty vocals now ask “Did you think you’d find the answer/ Behind the lie?” while thick synth tones throb around Lori’s always tasteful guitar fills. “Leland Street” begins quietly with a silky lead guitar line and morosely delivered lyrics of “This is not how you planned it / Not the life you had in mind / Winding days have spiraled into years / And the past is long resigned.” Turn that frown upside down, Arjen! Fortunately if you like shady metal this song WILL make you smile as it soon kicks up with a roiling rumble of keyboards and a lead guitar line that floats out of the dark skies like an eagle on the hunt- majestic but deadly. A faster tempo, industrial sounds and an 80s British sound immediately give “Green and Cream” a different sound and it’s also the most traditional song on the album with easily discernable verses and choruses, reminding me quite a bit of those Reagan-era bands whose keyboard sounds were as big as their hair. “Season of Denial” is the first song which really grabbed my ear and twisted it like an angry grandmother. Cinematic with sci-fi overtones, a mellotron flute leads to a nostalgic melody plays by lonely strings and clean fingerpicked guitar. The forlorn vocals intone “Turn around and face the darker side of you / Turn around and face the damage that you do” while a gypsy violin dances like a sprite in contrast to the dour melody, gearing up for the astounding solo it gets halfway through before the entire song goes symphonic with stuttering strings set against a vast space of squishy stereophonic synth sounds. ALLITERATION SCORE! The Cars meet Queen on “Over” where a big and bouncy synth bass matches wits with soaring and zealous vocals lamenting that “It’s over” while a wall of guitars and organs body slam you to the floor. “Perfection” is yet another song from this album that likes to hit auto-play in my head, opening with sober OSI clean arpeggio guitars and serene vocals, hypnotizing you with lines of “You look distant in this light” and “Is perfection what you really want?” With almost eleven minutes at its disposal the song takes it time bringing up a simmer but what a deliciously tantalizing journey! A martial snare drum helps crank up the intensity as the song waxes to a crescendo, backing off to the yet another mouth watering melodic guitar solo and ends on a lighter note, fittingly offering the hope while guitars, bass, keys, and strings all play an invigorating figure in unison, forming a symphonic finale worthy of Beethoven. Well, not Beethoven but definitely up to Edvard Grieg standards.

Guilt Machine explores the human condition using sweeping symphonic passages undercut with dark streams of melancholy, at times layering brutal distorted guitars over solid drumming and other times allowing the clouds to part for rays of shimmering synthesizer gothy goodness. I suppose you could say that I’m kinda partial to On This Perfect Day – it floats my boat!

Readers Digest 1959 Part 2!

2010-05-22T04:52:00.000-07:00

I know all 1.8992 of my readers have been itching with anticipation for more fifty year old Reader's Digest articles. This one shows how things never change in our government, which is why when they tell you that the new healthcare ripoff is "only" going to cost three guberzillion dollars you should mentally note that it's really going to cost eight guberzillion dollars.

Click on each image to see it clear eyed and giant sized.

Review - Owen Pallett - Heartland

2010-05-21T10:54:00.001-07:00

Owen Pallett is perhaps best known as the string arranger for indie-rock favorites Arcade Fire, though his work with The Pet Shop Boys shouldn’t be overlooked. Neither should his sporadic solo albums which until recently were recorded under the name of Final Fantasy, a name owing much to his love of turn-based gaming and all things geeky. Throw in the fact that Owen plays the violin and that his latest solo album, Heartland, is a concept album packed with meta-narratives between himself and Lewis, the ultra-violent farmer who lives in a world called Spectrum and is trying to come to terms with his creator, Mr. Owen Pallet, and surely I’ve lost ninety-nine percent of my readers.

Admittedly this music is a bit eccentric. It’s also playful, complex, gorgeous, lush, thrilling and a bit goofy. Despite the high-concept subject matter and orchestral setting, it is a feather in Mr. Pallett’s hat that Heartland never comes across as stuffy or pompous (indeed how could it with a song titled “Oh Heartland, Up Yours”?). Instead it’s a modern fairy tale, a musical for the innocently demented.

The album is one massive Pet Sounds on steroids. The greatest example is “Lewis Takes Action” where grand hooks, woodwind flourishes and sheer strings contrast with violent lyrics such as “I’ll bludgeon til’ the body’s cold.” But it’s a catchy, violent melody that will leave you humming for days! Another excellent example of Pallett’s prowess is “Midnight Directives,” the opening track which sets a tone of delicious anticipation, building a grand orchestral setup for the rest of the album with lush strings, compliments of the Czech Symphony Orchestra, augmenting the synthetic arcade blips that provide an eerie, unsettling background. Lots of drama in this one, yessir! Another excellent combination of quirky synth tones and traditional orchestra occurs in “Lewis Takes Off His Shirt”, an upbeat, invigorating song full of bright melodies and a memorable, defiant chorus of Lewis singing to his creator, “I’m never gonna give it to you.” “Tryst With Mephistopheles” is also bouncy and fun with eager horns and cheerful strings that radiate sunshine over a peppy beat driven by a spritely bass guitar, a masterful combination of chamber orchestra and rock instruments. And how can I not mention the frivolous Elfman-like cartoon silliness of the orchestration in “Flare Gun”? Apparently I can not!

Heartland is far from the usual rock album to which someone glues a string arrangement. Nor are they stuffy art songs with rock instruments painfully inserted. Rather Owen Pallett writes regular songs that encompass a greater breadth of instruments, placing each in their natural place. I strongly suspect that this album is a slow grower. I’ve listened to it a number of times with my magic headphones and though it hasn’t completely grabbed my heart I can tell that there’s something I haven’t “got” yet, something just out of my reach. Maybe this is what Lewis is singing about when he mockingly asserts that “I’m never gonna give it to you” and I’ll never be privy to this inside joke. But at least I’ll enjoy a few more listens as I try.

Catching Up

2010-05-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

5/11/2010
Eighth grade is over
Put the clarinet away
Joshua’s last show.

5/12/2010
Volunteer regret
It’s a good thing to do but
There goes my weeknight.

5/13/2010
Five ounce Dixie Cups
Come in lots of cool styles but
Only tease your thirst.

5/14/2010
If you did not know
It seems that I like music
More than most fellows.

5/15/2010
Always more to do
But there is joy in the toil
Chip, chip, chip away

5/16/2010
A treat for ol’ dad
My oldest son bikes six miles
Thanks for joining us!

5/17/2010
I drank all my drink
For Friday on a Monday
Now the week drags on.

5/18/2010
It’s great to hear Tim
Play bass on the Lost Dogs disc
A friendly “Hello.”

Rambling Incendiary Lincoln Post #1

2010-05-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

About five or six years ago I got a kink in my neck that perhaps Abraham Lincoln wasn't the superhuman demi-god of a President that he is made out to be. The thought kind of festered in my brain, fighting against the myth created through twelve years of public education as well as working at both Lincoln National AND The Lincoln Museum (sure, I was just the store and daily operations guy but you spend every day simmering in a warm bath of Lincoln worship.) It's a strong myth. Besides, how can you diss the guy who freed the slaves? Right? Can I get me an "Amen"?

But still it ate away at me as I grew to learn more about the founding of this country and (gasp) even read the entirety of our Constitution for the first time. I mean, the Constitution is the Bible of our government... it is the rule book, the basis, the place you go for the definitive word. And it's not that difficult to understand. Unlike current legislation, which can run thousands of pages and contain large amounts of caveats and twists and turns meant to give lawyers something to argue about, the Constitution is remarkably succinct and readable, almost like it was written so that it could be understood by the average citizen.

Which led me to question the very reason for The Civil War.

The very name is questionable. A Civil War is when two or more related parties are trying to own the same thing. In this case there were some states (southern) that just wanted to be left alone and others (northern) that wanted to force them back into the union. States that wanted the rights to control their own destiny vs. states that thought that all states should be under the control of a federal government. After all, these states voluntarily joined the union less than one hundred years earlier with the clear understanding that they could withdraw at any time, provided their individual state voted to do so.

So essentially a shotgun wedding occurred, more descriptively called The War Between the States, to prevent the divorce.

But wasn't the war about slavery? Not in the least, but more on that in a minute.

Remember how some southern states withdrew from the union immediately when Lincoln was elected? It was because everyone knew that Lincoln was pro-strong centralized Federal government. Lincoln got elected solely with northern votes, and the south could read the writing on the wall and left the union. Lincoln was a big follower of Henry Clay, the Whig. The Whigs wanted the mercantile system of government here in the U.S. like they had over in Europe. To refresh your memory, the mercantile system favored high tariffs, a strong federal government, and nationalized banks so that they could dole out political favors. Clay tried again and again to get these pushed through congress, with mixed success, but it wasn't until Lincoln got into office that the Whig ideas were whole-heartedly adopted. In the first year of his Presidency Lincoln pushed through a massive amount of legislative changes (shades of Obama, anyone?) resulting in a national bank and high tariffs.

I know this is disjointed but keep with me.

So Lincoln gets in, pushes through a bunch of strong federal government legislation, which takes rights away from the states, and the southern states withdraw from the union because their Constitutional rights have been taken away. Half an empire isn't as good as a whole one so Lincoln waged war to force these states back into the union at a staggering cost. When things got rough he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which was a complete joke and was mostly intended to dissuade England or France from supporting the south. This great, heralded Emancipation Proclamation only freed slaves in the south, where Lincoln had no authority to do so, and keeps slaves as slaves in states that were supportive of the north as well as southern territories under the control of the north. So much for wanting to free slaves! In fact, Lincoln spoke very little about slavery until the Presidential election and then he was in favor of shipping them back to Africa. However he wrote and spoke oodles about growing the Federal government.

Lincoln. Big government. Huge power grabs. Political favors for wealthy men of industry. Republican.

Have you ever wondered, as I did, why the Republican party keeps giving us lame duck candidates that don't seem to reflect conservative values? It's because they are Whigs. Always have been. They will pander to the religious and conservatives only as much as necessary to keep power but they have been in favor of bigger government from their inception. Where the Democrats grow government directly the Republicans grow it through business favors. That is until recently and now the Democrats and loving it up with General Electric and General Motors and big banks.

What about Reagan? I tell you what... while I don't agree with everything he did that man is DA BOMB! DA BOMB, I TELL YOU! But he wasn't the Republican parties first choice - they wanted George W. Bush and eventually got their puppet. No, Reagan kind of dark-horses slipped under the radar and suddenly they were stuck with him as a candidate, a man they couldn't control. Reagan was great for the average American but did a lot of damage to the goals of the Republican party. I doubt they let a slip up like THAT happen again.

The Last of the Best of 2009

2010-05-12T05:40:00.000-07:00

Another fine album that I have little inclination to hear again but once I start listening I have no regrets.

Everyone likes a good mystery and what’s better than a mysterious rock band whose artists hide behind cartoon personas? You might think you know who they are but despite repeated listens and grasping at various sonic clues (“Hear that? So and so does that!”) you can never be 100% certain. However the rumor ‘round the water cooler is that for Neon Horse the vocals are by Stavesacre’s Mark Salomon while the majority of the music was written by Starflyer 59’s Jason Martin with his brother Ronnie, the keyboard wizard behind Joy Electric, taking up some of the synthesizer burden.

Haunted Horse: Songs of Love, Defiance & Delusion is the second album by this enigmatic group and it’s a bundle of creepy good fun! Upon hearing the first few songs my wife said it reminded her of coffins, even without seeing the cover art. While it’s far from the spookiest album in my collection there is most certainly an eerie vibe that runs throughout the ten songs. The biggest factor in Neon Horse being peculiar are the vocals, which is to say that there aren’t Theremins and overtly creepy melodies or sounds. But the vocals are certainly unorthodox. To shake things up, and help keep the mystery, there are either multiple singers or multiple voices, each one a bizarre, gravelly, almost cartoony manifestation. The one which really made my skin crawl sounds like Udo, the singer for the 80s German metal band Accept, a voice that sounds like it’s shredding itself with every syllable.

The music itself is an equally odd jumble of contradictions, a kind of noisy, sloppy guitar garage rock that falls face first into bizarre new wave. The list of influence is equally incongruous: ZZ Top, Devo, David Bowie, Talking Heads, AC/DC, Depeche Mode, Oingo Boingo, Steppenwolf, the Eurythmics. Which is to say that it sounds like everyone and no one. Songs like “Follow The Man” are full of loud, angular guitars with insistent piano while the amazing “Some Folks” feature a slinky bass laying out a sexy dance beat over moody keyboards. “Haven’t Sinned In Years!” is packed with gritty guitars and unnerving background vocals, in contrast to the twitchy new wave tale of lost innocence found in “Strange Town.” My own personal favorite is “Chain Gang, Bang Bang”, a raucous swinging party of a song full of horns, overlapping vocals, and competing melodies that are happy to distract you while you toil away.

No matter who they really are Neon Horse is comprised of artists who are more than capable of crafting a catchy tune, filling Haunted Horse with sleezy but safe rock songs, a kind of family friendly haunted house. This side project provides an equally safe haven where the musicians can let their hair down and have fun, a relaxed vibe that permeates each song, making this album a thrilling listen.

MAYDAY!

2010-05-11T12:00:00.001-07:00

5/7/2010
The date was da bomb
Even though we arrived late
Amid fake accents.

5/8/2010
Sick on Saturday
Is as much of a waste as
A guitar sans strings.

5/9/2010
My kids have it made
Because their mom is superb-
Happy Mother’s Day!

5/10/2010
The Monday drags on
Slower and slower because
There is no chocolate.

Current Review - Transatlantic - Whirlwind

2010-05-07T05:08:00.001-07:00

I submitted this one for publication over two months ago and it's just now seeing print. It's another Neal Morse project (see next entry) and it's unfortunately not one that has drawn me back to it since the review. Hmmmm....

As the songwriting nucleus for Spock’s Beard Neal Morse wrote some amazing music, following firmly in the melodic rock footsteps of such legends as Yes, Kansas, and Genesis. About ten years ago he got himself saved and decided that the band format chaffed his faith and so went solo, a song we’ve all heard before. Since that time he has continued to be prolific but his quality has been a bit schizophrenic. I caught his first solo album, found it tepid, and then didn’t pursue his music much. In doing so I missed out on reviewing the amazing Sola Scriptura, a prog-metal rock opera about the life of Martin Luther but jumped back in for Lifeline, which was musically on par with Spock’s Beard but lyrically a bit limp.

It was with not a little curiosity to see what would happen to Morse’s song crafting when he again joined forces with three other titans of prog to record a new Transatlantic album, the first in eight years. The other members are bionic drummer Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater, bassist Pete Trewavas from Marillion and multi-instrumentalist Roine Stolt of The Flower Kings. Regardless, as in past Transatlantic albums this is a Neal Morse album as he wrote most of the music and lyrics, this time making a seventy-seven minute epic album formed around a metaphor for like, curiously named The Whirlwind.

My first few listens left me cold. So did the next few. In fact with so much music it took nearly two months of casual listening before I “got it”… and I’m still not sure if I have all of it or if what I’ve gotten is a touch less than spectacular. Musically it’s quite top shelf. Mike Portnoy is, as always, a phenomenal drummer both in technique and taste. Stolt adds his unique vocals as well as some mighty fine guitar textures and Trewavas booms forth plenty of mid-range pingy goodness that serves as a melodic anchor. There’s the usual Morse grand orchestral overture and uplifting dramatic final track as well as some amazingly melodic rock that would find a home with many who normally fear the label of “progressive rock.” Of special note is “Out of the Night” which is not only an exceptional song by itself but allows all four to sing, forming Beatlesque melodies. “On the Prowl” takes time out for some adventurous instrumentals similar to very early Pink Floyd, going almost psychedelic with the guitars. The album is broken up into twelve “songs”, each containing bits of musical themes that are used and repeated throughout to give the album the kind of cohesion and symphonic integrity characteristic of Morse’s best work.

With The Whirlwind Morse has been able to reverse his post-conversion lyrical decline, this time artfully incorporating his faith into a larger metaphor that is explored throughout the album. He’s still not back to his Spock’s Beard heyday level, but I’m tired of whining on this subject so will instead shut my stinkin’ trap.

Sometimes I come across rock albums with progressive touches that I can confidently recommend to non-prog-lovin’ friends. The Whirwind is not such an album. Transatlantic creates classic genre music, dense and complicated, making no bones about tipping their hat at melodic forefathers while spinning up something more modern. Fully listening to The Whirlwind is a big investment in time but one that will pay off with audible enjoyment not only now but, I suspect, for years to come.

Past Reviews - Neal Morse - Lifeline

2010-05-07T05:03:00.000-07:00

I still listen to this album now and then, which is a good sign that it's good. Good? What a silly word. Goooood. I think I prefer the album he did before this one, Sola Scriptura, which is a bit more "metallic" and is about the life of Martin Luther.

It’s not that I bear any grudge toward Neal Morse for abandoning one of the best melodic progressive rock bands of the last century for a solo career. I mean, a man has to follow his muse and if for some reason he is unable to create the music in his heart with his current band then it’s time to move on. Except that this man needed that band to flesh out his music, making it more diverse and interesting. Since going solo Neal Morse has yet to create an album of the scale and grandeur that was Spock’s Beard but with Lifeline he finally comes pretty durn close.

The opening title track goes a long way toward Morse re-earning his status as one of the best writers of progressive rock. Tight breaks, complicated arrangements that remain easy on the ear, a few odd time signatures and emotional melodies rule the day, slowly starting with a pensive solo piano before slamming into a big Spock’s Beard-type instrumental overture. Four minutes into this dramatic orchestral song vocals finally see the light of day before gusty guitars and heavy riffs take over again. You’ll be amazed at how quickly these cheerful thirteen minutes fly by, a testimony to Morse’s songwriting prowess.

The other overtly progressive song is “So Many Roads”, coming in at a massive twenty-nine minutes. This dramatic masterpiece is broken into six different sections, the centerpiece being focused on the lyrics “’Cause there’s so many roads to nowhere / So many places I could try / … / Maybe it’s time for me to fly / And search for the on that will save me / That will lead me in the light.” Of course these lyrics cannot convey the melody to which they are attached, one which pulls at your heart without wallowing in maudlin emotionalism. Highlights include a five minute section of acoustic guitar and jazzy saxophone and pretty much every drum smack put to tape. As on most of his solo work the drums are handled by Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy and this recording proves why he is considered a living legend. Wowee zowee! Bass duties are compliments of Randy George of Ajalon and once again he is able to lay some pretty massive and complicated grooves while always keeping one foot firmly humbly planted in melodic phrasing.

“Leviathan” is perhaps the heaviest thing Morse has ever recorded. Opening with spooky synths and dark choir you can easily imagine the Vikings out at sea on a dark night, evoking an image that intentionally just manages to keep from teetering into Spinal Tap territory. From there rhythm section bass kicks in on this monster of a song, leading to a horn section, a stomping, playful chorus and a xylophone solo. Yes, I said “xylophone”… trust me… you’ll like it. If you’ve been wondering when you’d hear the next quirky “21st Century Schizoid Man” you need look no further.

The four remaining songs are much less progressive, often sounding like modern versions of Kansas or Styx. “The Way Home” is a passionate seeking for comfort with chiming guitars, mellotron flutes, and an eventual buildup into a lush string orchestra. Visions of Yes are found in the hopeful “God’s Love” before jumping into “Children of the Chosen,” a bright acoustic-based song with a chorus that would not seem out of place in many churches. Decent songs but not as strong as the first three mentioned or the final song, “Fly High”, a powerful and invigorating song of beautiful piano and gorgeous strings that slowly build to an amazing guitar solo by Paul Bielatowicz that is as melodic as it is technically impressive.

With Lifeline Neal Morse has been able to convey his Christian faith with a boldness and artistic integrity that is rare to find. While revisiting the power-pop prog rock that was a mainstay during his time at the helm of Spock’s Beard Morse was able to retain the song-oriented format of the many classic progressive rock bands mentioned above, forging an impressively strong album that is his best in years.

It's That Time Again

2010-05-06T06:53:00.001-07:00

5/1/2010
Has there ever been
A full Funny Five audit?
My faith is shaken.

5/2/2010
“Wine is for woman
“and queers,” said the dimwit as
He drank his lite beer.

5/3/2010
A long overdue
Internal review process
100 days strong.

5/4/2010
I cannot resist
We will surely be buried.
Six tomato plants.

5/5/2010
Regretting the choice
That I made in my warm car:
No bike, drove to work.

5/6/2010
I just cannot wait
For our private date: Just us
And only one child.

Three Things on a Monday

2010-05-03T05:31:00.000-07:00

1) My oldest son really likes juice. He's almost fifteen but I bet if he came across a juice trap in the middle of the forest he would have a difficult time not going for it. Fortunately he rarely ventures out of his room, let alone into a forest, so for now he's safe.

2) Our coffee machine here at work was either designed by a committee, members of management at my work, imbeciles, or the anti-coffee lobby. Or possibly a combination of all of the above. I only drink one cup a day but the experience is so horribly scarring that I'm considering giving it up.

Three or four years ago, before we were part of a massive corporate entity, we bought a coffee maker online and had it installed. Two burners, hot water tap - worked great. About a year after we got bought out they decided that this wasn't good enough for the coffee service they signed up for (where previously we just bought a few giant tubs of coffee and scooped it out as needed) so this very nicely working machine was replaced with a very similar model... which stopped working in a couple of months. This was replaced with an odd bird machine that had the second warmer on top, which made the coffee perilously prone to being knocked over if you opened a cupboard. This machine was replaced by a side-by-side machine that worked fine... until it started going haywire and either pumped so much water through the grounds that the pot overflowed or made half a pot of extremely potent joe.

The downward spiral has led to what is possibly the most ineptly designed coffee maker in the history of mankind. It's a one-pot design so if you want regular AND decaf, too bad. There is no warmer, which isn't a problem in the morning because there is a continuously running flow of new bean juice but in the afternoon... But the worst part is the pot. It is not glass, which would easily allow you to see how much coffee is left (imagine!) but rather brushed aluminum. Is there enough coffee in there to fill my cup? Spin the wheel and take a chance! Now go ahead and try to pour yourself a cup. Go on.... See? If the pot is nearly empty you really, honestly, truly have to turn the pot UPSIDE DOWN! Or even further. Did I mention that the pot is heavy even when empty? Oh, and the hot water spigot is in a deep recess.

Sure, it's a little thing and it's still free coffee but in the morning when you stumble into work why should it have to be so painfully difficult just to eek out a single cup?

3) Tomorrow are the primary elections. VOTE! The primaries are where things are really decided. Ever wonder why in November you're having to choose the lesser of two evils? It's because when people had a real choice of candidates, in May, they all sat home and tried to figure out their coffee machines. GO! VOTE! And once again I'll bring up my idea that if you vote in the primaries you should be a Fast Pass ticket that allows you to move to the front of the line in November, should there be a line.

And if you're in Indiana and lean conservative, I strongly urge you to vote for whichever candidate has the highest rating that reflects most of your values. At the moment Carpetbagger Coats is in the lead for Senate. The conservative vote is spread out among a handful of good candidates. Sure, there is one in particular I really like but I most certainly like nearly ANY of them over Washington-insider Coats. Therefore I would urge you that if your chosen candidate is at six percent or eight percent and has been the entire election, just admit that they aren't going to win and vote for whoever is in the #2 spot. Yes, principles are exceedingly important but the principle at stake here is whether our choice in November will be for Coats, someone who is so far away from your beliefs that he's almost a RHINO, or someone who reflects *most* of your beliefs. Right now it looks like that candidate is Hostetler. He's not my first choice but he's the one that's going to get my vote tomorrow.

Readers Digest

2010-05-01T17:28:00.000-07:00

I tell ya, things were different back in the day. I have a bunch of Reader's Digests from the late 1950s and early 1960s and I'm sloooooowly making my way through them. But I thought I'd take a few blog posts and share some articles. In light of today's modern, intelligent, advanced, illuminated thinking many of these articles show that not much has changed. Or sometimes the articles show the beginning of the horrible mess we're in now. I've also included an advertisement for each. Click on each image to see it super-sized (a foreign term back in 1959, the year of these articles.) Enjoy!

Friday Foolery

2010-04-30T09:01:00.000-07:00

4/27/2010
Mike Roe played real good
But he left his mic clip on
My microphone stand.

4/28/2010
Twelve hours of relief
Then twenty-four of regret:
Fear the nasal spray.

4/29/2010
B-1 has many
Benefits. It will give you
That vitamin smell.

4/30/2010
As the weekend nears
The eternal question looms:
“What’s for dinner, dad?”

Obligatory Garden Post #1

2010-04-29T05:03:00.001-07:00

I should be writing a query to find out some information for a manager that I already gave to him once about thirty days ago... but since our e-mail system automatically erases things over thirty days old it's gone. But instead I shall write about...

OUR GARDEN!

Yes, it's back again... bigger and better than ever.

First up is herb row. Last year we found to our surprise out that herb entries in the 4-H fair automatically go to state. So this year each daughter of sowing age has planted FOUR herbs, with the best two of each being submitted. Those devious 4-H rule-writers have caught on to our catching on and are thus making it a requirement to submit a poster with each herb submission. Not to be outdone, I planted a few herbs for home, including spearmint, basil, purple basil, and one other one I forgot. Probably wolfbane. Then, when these slow-germinating seeds are just beginning to sprout, I go to a home center and see well established versions for just a couple bucks each. Grrrrr. Did I buy last year or start from seeds? I'm fairly certain that Brooke submitted a plant that was started from seeds, which I think is a requirement for 4-H, but maybe we started it later in the spring? Since I can't usually remember when I last clipped my toenails I'm not surprised that I can't remember something from a year ago.

Next up in the annual CATBOX GREENS! Yessum, lettuce grows amazingly well in a cat box (with a few holes drilled near the bottom for drainage). We did this last year with mesclun and just one box provided more than two adults could eat. This year we are UPPING THE ANTE by planting half a tray of mesclun, two spinach plants, and one tray of romaine lettuce. And of course it goes without saying that these are brand new cat boxes, never used for their intended purposes.

We're also making another foolish attempt at peas. Last year I tended and cared for two window boxes of peas and after all the work was provided with a very small bowl full of very tasty peas. This year I'm doing the same. Will I ever learn? Does it take a quarter acre of these plants to provide enough for one side dish? I was going to do sugar snap peas but, uh, I forgots.

Also in and growing are carrots. True to my contained gardening mania (thanks, darling, for the inspiration with the Container Gardening for Dummies book... didn't know you created a monster, did you?) I would like to start another batch of carrots in a deep container. And also some potatoes. Down in Princeton the Rural King had seed potatoes but I haven't found them up here yet, not that we'd be so lucky as to have a Rural King.

And let's not forget the GARLIC and the RASPBERRIES!

This year I've decided that the grapes can hang themselves. The last few years I've tended and cared for and birdnetted and watered and just about the time the grapes look ready to eat they mysteriously disappear. Durn birds/squirrels/hobos. Just breaks your heart.

We've also put in a lone strawberry plant and a cherry tomato plant in a container. This way they can get an early start and if we have a frost scare I can bring them in for the night.

Enough boredom for now. Soon I shall dream of a fine patch of tomatoes and green beans.

Sets of Four

2010-04-27T12:15:00.000-07:00

4/23/2010
Gift Certificates
Had for a bargain from the
4-H auction. Yeah!

4/24/2010
Sporadic raining
No outside projects done but
Lots of snuggle time.

4/25/2010
For some odd reason
This morning church seemed to drag
But now we are home.

4/26/2010
Difficult to sleep.
Do I have it all covered
For the Mike Roe show?

The Afternoon

2010-04-23T12:26:00.000-07:00

First I found this page while looking up the answer to a "debate" my wife and I have over reheating food that's been left out too long and the next thing I know I'm an expert on eating grasshoppers, making waterproof matches, and building a shelter out of twings and debris.

Of course this will all come in plenty helpful when, uh, when, well, just when.

www.survivaltopics.com

CD Review - Ravish and Other Tales for the Stage

2010-04-23T05:40:00.000-07:00

Another one from last year. Just after I wrote this I was surprised to find that a local dance group was putting on Wonderboy. Coincidence? It is about as close as Sleepytime Gorilla Museum will ever get to playing Fort Wayne and somehow I still managed to miss it.

Music for the stage, classical pieces written to accompany dancers as they do their thing, often runs the risk of being boring background music, second fiddle to the dancers. However the very kinetic nature of dance lends itself to more interesting, music that can stand on its own. Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring come to mind as two excellent examples that lose little sans dancers.

So it was with much fear, trepidation, and hope that I approached Ravish and Other Tales for the Stage, music composed for modern dance companies by members of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, a band that has managed to hold my attention for far longer than is rightly fair. Would these compositions fall flat or would they somehow manage to avoid the pitfalls of “stage music?” I’ll hold off of my answer to build antici…. pation.

The first, longest, and least successful section of songs comes from The Live Billboard Project. “The Good, The Bad and The Beautiful” is atmospheric with a low rumbling buzz of the bass harmonica with occasional shimmering guitar chords and a piano at the end which introduces the apprehensive main theme. Something is coming and it’s not friendly. “Ravish” is a bit more complete with the theme clashing against dissonant crashes of horns and piano and cello, an off-kilter rhythm that leaves no doubt that this was composed for a modern dance group. Two “auction” songs plus two other brief snippets remind me of Dave Thomas Americana projects, more setting a mood than leaving any kind of musical trail, but “A Living Billboard” is a quick favorite with a lumbering steady beat, stuttering violins, and an ominous, pensive melody that deliciously builds as a kind of cross between SGM and Book of Knots. The frightfully spooky “A Private Grace” uses a Tin Hat Trio-like sparseness in the orchestration that leads to many creepy moments in the first section before drunken circus horns enter to start a lilting waltz with affable ghouls and their glockenspiel tones. The Theremin soon adds its ghostly wail, a hollow ache for a life long past, making this dark and amazing song as comforting as it is disconcerting.

“Confession” is the lone track from Ame to Ame, though it definitely leaves one wanting more. Crisp and brittle strummed violin leads to a detuned plucked melody and a trumpet violin, which is a violin with a hearing horn embedded in it (like those old fashioned record players) that truly makes it sound like a cross between a violin and a trumpet. In addition to these instruments the husband and wife team of Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi round out this lonely song with charango, toy guitar, zither, bass harmonica, musical saw, glass and water.

Five selections from Wonderboy make the most consistent listening. “Portrait of a Lanscape” combines hints of Debussy with a smidgeon of Danny Elfman to create a somber yet light footed solo piano piece that moves into “Sticks and Paper”, a more minimalist composition built around a repeating figure on the piano. “The Aviary” is yet another miniature that packs a big punch. The piano weaves a nostalgic memory with slight violin backing, holding back until halfway through when the floodgates really open for a 1940s themed love song. “Small Wonder” is the chilling two minute childhood fantasy of a troubled child while “Sea of Stars” could be another Tin Hat Trio song with a steady beat led by the bass harmonica.

“Adam’s Misfortune”, from Heaven’s Radio, took awhile to get to me, opening as it does with a monk chorus in a giant cathedral, being soon joined by similar female vocals in a foreign tongue. An ambient sound collage of background noises soon enter, a kind of hazy memory, overcoming the piano to become a squeaking, pulsing white noise before subdued but tribal drums wash over the surf, leading the way back to the forlorn piano melody and choral vocals. If Eraserhead needed a new soundtrack Lynch would need to look no further than “Adam’s Misfortune”.

Ravish is hands down the best new music for stage that I’ve heard in a decade. It’s also the only new music for stage that I’ve heard in a decade. Anyone who likes the quieter, spookier works of Danny Elfman but thinks that the man may be a bit past his prime should give these forlorn melodic memories a welcome home in their collection.

Cookin' With Gas

2010-04-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

4/19/2010
PGP encrypt,
FTP, Thresher, server:
Common work phrases.

4/20/2010
I would give to you
This very nice brake hose clamp
But I have lost it

4/21/2010
A bike ride to work:
Deceiving sunshine tricked me
Forty-one degrees

4/22/2010
Took lunch too early
So now I feel it’s home time
But there’s one hour left.

CD Review - The Minor White

2010-04-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

Time for another 2009 Best Of Review! Sadly all I had was a digital copy to review and it somehow got erased before I could archive it forever. Time to shell out a few bucks, I suppose.

Pennsylvania’s “The Minor White”, named after a famous photographer, first caught my ear with the song “Go To Hell.” I’ve heard many songs by this unoriginal title and all of them have been angry missives full of thunderous drums and heavy guitars. But not the one by The Minor White. Instead the sound is subdued and mysterious, very much like “Blue Jay Way” by The Beatles but with a “Your Mother Should Know” piano part. The song smolders listlessly for most of its brief life, resigned to its fate before igniting into nearly two minutes of musical majesty led to conclusion by a fiery electric guitar.

Many of the other tracks on Old Theatrics also include a variety of parts that would normally seem jarring in being paired together. While many is the time when just such odd combinations have brought a smile to my face in this case it all fits so well, seamlessly flowing from one style to another, that you barely notice the change has occurred. And the fact that somehow these magicians can conjure these transformations in a brief 3.5 minute song only adds to their mystique. “Fever Scene,” for instance, opens with a landscape of sustained guitar chords and organs before becoming a jaunty happy spring day of a tune with light electric guitar and spritely drums, culminating in an uplifting folksy protest song a mere 3:33 from it’s inception.

Every song sports topnotch songwriting, incorporating to-die-for melodies with succinct instrumentation and lyrics that would make our own Vandolah proud. “Old Fashioned Drinker (In A River Of Gum)” is a nostalgic trip with melancholic vocals and sweet strings with such stream of consciousness lyrics as “I’m a straight-jacket jester in a cellar of gold”. “Money For Puppets” opens with only voice, a lone kick drum, and barely a guitar before bringing in the Everly Brothers and Randy Newman for a lurching, breezy rhythm sure to set your foot a’tapping. Despite obvious influences of Elliot Smith and Bob Dylan these merry melody makers somehow manage to blend in Wilco and Radiohead, even bringing in early Pink Floyd in for “Vaudeville”, sitting nicely beside upright bass, banjo, and violins that evoke a half-time feel of a bygone era.

Old Theatrics by The Minor White is an intoxicating mixture of opposites: folk instruments and electric guitars, vaudeville elements and modern music, a lonely feel couched in comforting warmth, acoustic and electronic living together in tension-filled harmony. Put on your brown derby and check out this collection of impressive songwriting with that new-fangled internets.

Haiku Continued

2010-04-19T07:06:00.001-07:00

Oh... you thought I wouldn't keep this thing up... DIDN'T YOU?!?!?

4/15/2010
Taxes are due NOW!
Better pay up fast before
Obama gets you.

4/16/2010
It is a rare thing
To hear someone loudly yell
“Hey, lay off the sauce!”

4/17/2010
The weekend equals
Tents in the basement, spouse time
And a hot breakfast.

4/18/2010
Seven years ago
Melynda and I first met.
Life forever changed.

Fiscal Responsibility

2010-04-16T05:19:00.000-07:00

It's not like I like to complain... but there's so much to complain about.

This morning I ran into construction traffic on my short one mile commute to work. Remember the stimulus bill in the fall of 2008 that was so urgent that even Senator John McCain left the campaign trail to run back to Washington to vote for it? It was so urgent that the money is JUST NOW being spent ... the summer before the mid-term elections and right before the primaries. "Hey, you idiots back home... look at the bacon I'm bringing back for you!"

Locally what I'm seeing is a lot of unnecessary construction work, which means that for a short time union-carded construction workers are employed, workers they hope will run to the voting booth and/or donate money to their campaigns. On Berry and Wayne, two one way streets in downtown, they have about a half mile of lanes orange barrelled off so they can... What? Fix potholes? Repave? Dig up and repair the aging sewer system that some government organization is mandating we fix at a cost of millions of dollars?

Nope. They're replacing each of the curb corners that meet the street with the new handicap-enhanced curbs. Now it's not like the curb corners are sheer drop-offs that would be difficult for someone in a wheelchair to navigate. Nosir, they are already sloped nicely, making it a joy and a breeze for those on bikes, pushing baby strollers or in wheelchairs to cross the street. I estimate there are about 100 corners in the area in question and I can't imagine that some construction crew is doing each corner for less than a thousand bucks. So at a minimum it is costing your children and grandchildren $100,000 to handicap corners that are already handicapped. Add in the cost of interest and you can probably double that. Add in the fact that I'm probably way low on my estimate and it's probably half a million for these unnecessary improvements.

Also being done in my immediate area is the repaving of State Street. They recently repaved a section just east of North Anthony... and then repeatedly dug it back up to do repair work and patched it so that a brief stretch is like driving over a corrugated tin roof (and I would know). But instead they are doing a stretch just west of North Anthony... the part that's in pretty good shape. This strikes home personally because THEY PUT A GIANT "CONSTRUCTION AHEAD" SIGN IN MY YARD! Okay, technically it's not in my yard but rather in the park strip... you know, the bit of land between the sidewalk and the street that I don't own but I'm responsible to maintain? Plus they spray painted all over the street and curb in front of my house to mark that there were no gas, cable, or electric lines directly in front of my house. So now when we open the front door we are greeted with a giant orange sign. We've been told that it will be there through mid-summer. I plan on mowing AROUND it through mid-summer and if they want it trimmed around the city can do that when they mow the center strip. I'm sure my neighbors will love it but my I don't plan to string five or six shorter cords together so my electric-powered weed trimmer can reach. And of course they can't place this giant sign in the median strip that runs down the middle of our boulevard because the laws state that is has to be on the right-hand side. Grumble grumble grumble.

Buffet Review #1

2010-04-15T18:54:00.001-07:00

I would like to announce my lovely wife Melynda who is returning from her blogging self-exile in order to co-write today's entry. Welcome, lovely wife!

This past weekend we ate at The Black Buggy, an Amish buffet. No, not the kind of food Amish REALLY eat, as you can see from their carts at the local Wal-Mart which are piled high with Party Pizzas, Doritos, and more Doritos. No, this is stereotypical comfort food. Yep, all the comfort you can shove down your gullet.

The first thing we noticed was the sheer size of the building. It had electric lights and everything. Once inside we briefly browsed the store section which had such traditional Amish favorites as mulling spices, apple cider, and Amish taffy. We paid our admission, picked a seat, and then heading over to chow down.

From our vast years of buffet experience (and no, not that "singer"), at most buffets you will find dozens of different choices, a mere handful of which are items you like AND look appetizing. Not so at The Black Buggy! Sure, there were dozens of different choices but only a handful did NOT look appetizing. Even taking a little bit of each item there simply wasn't enough room in our average-sized bellies for all this food, even if one of them hadn't been inhabited by a tiny human. There was deep fried pork chops, crispy fried chicken, catfish nuggets, good meatloaf, mashed taters and gravy, Amish noodles, beef and noodles, roasted chicken, hamburgers, giant hot dogs, stuffed peppers, biscuits and gravy, baked tater casserole, hash brown casserole, baked beans, corn, giant salad bar, chili, peeled shrimps, ham and beans, macaroni and cheese, loads of prepared salads and fruit, baked potatoes, sauerkraut and sausage, fried cabbage, deep fried chicken livers and gizzards (not eaten by either of us), fried okra, cooked mushrooms, BBQ pork, chicken and dumplings, vegetable beef and a few other things our glutenous minds can't remember.

They also had fresh baked breads with Amish butter, which is, we think peanut butter and honey.

And then there were the desserts. Sure there was the usual self-serve soft-serve ice cream of vanilla, chocolate and swirl but there was also (gasp) fresh made cinnamon rolls, angel food cakes, quick breads, three kinds of yummy cobbler (not the gummy pasty stuff usually found at buffets), homemade cookies, pies and cakes. Lots of pies and cakes. Think of a pie... they probably had it. Well, they didn't have sugar cream but they had custard, peanut butter, chocolate, four or five kinds of fruit pies and... well, I'd best stop. They also had some sugar-free pies but really, what's the point of that at a buffet? And above all else, coconut cream pie which was super-D-liscious!

We hear they have a breakfast buffet...

Iiiiiiiiiiit's GARBAGE DAY!

2010-04-15T07:38:00.001-07:00

4/11/2010
Lazy afternoon
Crammed full of family tension
Down in Patoka

4/12/2010
It is best to fast
At least a week before the
Black Buggy Buffet

4/13/2010
Nothing says “love” like
A date with just your wife and
A buffet of meat.

4/14/2010
Five hours in the van
Goes by like minutes with your
Best friend by your side.

Fee Fi Fo Fum

2010-04-09T11:58:00.000-07:00

4/7/2010
Concert Promoter
I am he and that is I
Who makes no money.

4/8/2010
I am comfy for
My shirt is made of rayon.
I just made that up.

4/9/2010
It’s a good feeling
When G.M. knows your name.
He just called me “Doug”.

4/10/2010
You know it’s broom time
When your daughter dumps the bag
Of googily eyes.

Playing with Ketchup

2010-04-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

4/4/2010
Easter is too good
For a measly haiku but
Work with what you got.

4/5/2010
Okay, I’ll admit
I ingested the very
Last potassium.

4/6/2010
Roast beef in the fridge,
Thought you were fair game for lunch.
Maybe you were hers?

Review - Suit of Lights - Bacteria

2010-04-07T06:09:00.000-07:00

Another review from last year... great nuvo-Brit-PopRock-hyphen-music-stuff

My eyes bulged when they read the info sheet on a band called “Suit of Lights” an noticed the name of “Trevor Dunn”, the bassist for Mr. Bungle, a bizarre band of yesteryear that has inspired some of my favorite bands of today. If Mr. Dunn was involved in this “Suit of Lights” band then they must be trippy weird, or at least an interesting diversion from the grey clouds of life.

Fortunately I was not let down though I was dead wrong about the “weird” bit. The songs on Bacteria, the second album by Suit of Lights, reach back into the past while bounding ahead into the future. The opening track, “Judgment Day”, includes giant slabs of 80s power-prog-pop (Asia and Yes during that period) while tempering things with quiet moments to amazing dramatic effect including a moving instrumental bridge that could have been included on Alice Coopers Welcome To My Nightmare album. “Colors of Hell” sports a British vibe with lush strings and a lopsided yet endearing keyboard melody played in 7/4 time. A sinister edge pervades “All In Good Time”, again evoking mid-70s Alice Cooper, but this is soon evaporated in the face of “Modern Miracle,” a poppy, peppy, breezy song full of snappy drums, muted trumpets, bouncy bass and wistful background vocals that evoke the carefree sound of The Turtles covering “Penny Lane.” If this song doesn’t slap a silly grin on your face and a butterfly in your heart, well, you’re more of a crusty curmudgeon than I and that’s saying a lot.

“Dark Matter Halo” is a bit of a downer with lyrics such as “And the question that you’re going to ask is / Did it amount to anything?” and other bits about the flies waiting for you to die but to distract you from getting too glum the band hits you with walls of deliciously noisy guitars and a rockier beat in “Halfway Houses of the Holy”. A somber piano and orchestral feel permeate both “Unfaithful Arms” and the album closer, “American Music”, showing a mature flair for composition within the cramped confines of the three minute song. My favorite song, however, is “Puppet Show”, a lively ditty where The Turtles meet The Zombies for a romp at the playground, wrapping a 3/4 beat around mischievous organs that are Lennon’s snide remarks against McCartney’s silly love songs.

I’m not really sure why they call the album Bacteria unless it’s because the songs are infectious, sticking in your mind and eventually crippling your immune system to the point where all you want to do is lay on the davenport and listen to this album. Like Elvis Costello, from whose song they took their name, Suit of Lights does an amazing job of crafting slightly off-center rock songs that bear definite traces of its late 60s art rock heritage.

Haiku 4 U

2010-04-06T11:23:00.001-07:00

3/31/2010
One haiku is pie
But ninety are difficult
Unless you don’t care.

4/1/2010
April Fool’s Day is
The most high holy day for
My oldest daughter.

4/2/2010
Three days in the tomb
Makes Friday schizophrenic
Thursday makes more sense.

4/3/2010
Easter tomorrow.
Why does the sunrise service
Start the crack o’ dawn?

Yeah!

2010-04-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

Have a happy Good Thursday, everyone.

Remember, Truth over Tradition.

Fair - Disappearing World

2010-04-01T09:38:00.001-07:00

Just published... Since submitting this I've come to realize that one of their many secret weapons is the drummer. I'm not a drummer and drums aren't what I first hear but this guy is all over the place! No, not showy all over the place but tastefully altering his drum patterns and adding just the right fills at just the right times. Joey Sanchez, my hat AND toupee are off to you!

Ten years ago a solo CD by some guy named Aaron Sprinkle joined my happy collection. I knew only that he was from one of those “Tooth & Nail” bands, gave the album a listen or two and then abandoned it as not worth my time to review.

Ten years ago I probably made a mistake.

This month I picked up the album Disappearing World by Sprinkle’s band Fair and zoo-wee Mama did they set the bar high for every other album released this year. It’s not that they do anything particularly different than all the other bands under the “indie” moniker but that they do it exceedingly well. Their specialty is finely crafted guitar and piano-driven indie songs that defy natural laws by packing so much goodness into such seemingly simple songs. Like any seasoned pro Fair makes these songs sound effortless, never getting bogged down in technical issues, always restraining themselves to play just the right note or sound or melody at just the right time.

Musically these songs could have come from any time in the past four decades, not being out of place on the albums of Todd Rundgren, Ben Folds, Joe Jackson or Death Cab For Cutie. The album begins quietly with sonic drips in the title song, soon blossoming into an endearing, cautiously cheerful song of chugging guitars, tasteful drums and iced with real strings. “Walking In My Sleep” has a delightful marching “I Am The Walrus” beat, mixing a pounding piano with dirty organs and a soaring, encouraging chorus.

This song also marks the first time the lyrics caught my ears. Some albums have great music and some have insightful lyrics but it’s rare to find one with both. With a truthful tongue in cheek Sprinkle sings “I never learned to fake it / So I never could fool you / With the honest truth.” “One Last Time” begins with the wry lyrics of “So the notion of a fiery end / Put me to sleep again,” while a breezy upbeat power pop beat leads the listener to revelation that “I could be sadder, I suppose,” a juxtaposition of dour ironic lyrics and cheery melodies that reminds me of the magic of They Might Be Giants in their first decade.

Lush orchestration marks the keyboard-driven “Take Some Risks” before leading to one of the most excruciatingly emotion-packed guitar solos I’ve heard in years, while the riveting rock of “The Escape Artist” brings in bits of Coldplay and Badfinger with a chorus of “You lost the human race / Another chip on your shoulder / Got a lot to get over.” “It’s Doubtful” packs a massive wallop of late 60s guitar-pop energy on top of lyrics like “If I’m happy / There’s a good chance I’m lying through my teeth,” taking us to the vulnerably honest “The Worst of Your Wear,” a quiet song of organs, acoustic guitar and the realization that “Life begins when the secrets end.”

This incredible album culminates with one of the best songs to have graced my ears in at least five years, “Anymore.” Starting off slowly, Sprinkle vulnerably sings over a haunting lone piano, “It’s almost like we’re here again / Right back where we started then / A shoddy alibi”, concluding “I don’t believe you anymore” as a fuzzy guitar adds it’s melodic underpinnings. Knowing what happens next only makes waiting through half a song of voice and piano all the more excruciating, yet it’s a most pleasurable waiting because eventually the piano grows a bit ragged, drums punch in and the entire band jumps into an urgent march as Sprinkle sings “I’ve got something to say / It’s serious” in a rocky variation of the previous verses. An orchestral feel builds as another guitar solo dazzles you with melodic self-control, the band builds in intensity, the guitar loses control, a crescendo and an abrupt ending that leaves you waving your arms in big backward circles to keep from falling over the edge of a cliff.

I’ll be the first to admit that much of the music I like is off the wall. Pretty much if I like something then the artist can kiss commercial success goodbye. But Disappearing World by Fair is an entirely different beast. It is artistic without pretension, disarmingly honest lyrically and packed with the kind of broadly appealing sophisticated/simple melodies that would make it rocket up the charts if only people could hear it. Not only have I heard what is sure to be one of the best albums of 2010, but I’ve “discovered” a tenured artist with a gold mine of past albums to delight my thankful ears, starting with the one gathering dust in my basement.

Oceansize - Frames

2010-03-30T05:16:00.000-07:00

Methinks I'll also post a few reviews from the past of those albums which had that extra special moxy! First up is Frames by some Brits.

Corporations spend millions of dollars each year trying to come up with good names for products, but none of those overpaid specialists have come up with a name as fitting as Oceansize. Frames is the third album from this talented British quintet whose music is as expansive, beautiful and effortlessly changing as the ocean. Their music defies easy categorization, displaying at times the hooky power-pop meat of Splendor, and at others the shoegazer mist of My Bloody Valentine, the rough rhythms of Tool or the drifting psychedelia of early Pink Floyd.

Listening to Frames is like drifting in the middle of the ocean. There’s an orderly feel to the rise and fall of the waves, but there’s also chaos and a seemingly random movement to the fluctuations of each individual swell. One moment you’re floating serenely, awestruck by the beauty of the water and the wondrously massive sky above. But as you watch the sky it slowly darkens and the water gets choppy. Your once peaceful bobbing becomes a violent upheaval as the waves repeatedly lift and aggressively drop you. Still later they calm to a hypnotic tranquility.

The music packs a massive emotional wallop behind the meticulously crafted melodic hooks that will tug at you from the very first listen and eventually become addictive. True to their name, Oceansize write some pretty big songs encompassing some pretty big ideas. A lesser talent would turn it all into a convoluted mess, but these brave souls somehow massage their songs into a giant wow. Their scope is so broad and yet so universally appealing that it’s difficult not to fall under their spell. Do you like Nirvana and Foo Fighters? Check. Led Zeppelin and classic Black Sabbath? Got it. Wilco and Radiohead? It’s in there. King Crimson or even the Beatles? Got it covered. Nuanced art rock, power pop, intelligent metal, sophisticated space rock, even classical … it’s all there living in perfect harmony. I have a feeling that if Oceansize really wanted to pack jazz, hip-hop and country into their mix they would somehow find a way.

This past weekend I woke up in the middle of the night with an Oceansize song demanding to be played in my head. I need help. I’m the first to admit that when I really truly like a band, it’s probably doomed to commercial failure. The vast majority of people will find it too weird for their tastes. But I’ve been surprised at the response I get when I force, er, coax my friends to listen to Frames. The typical response has been, “Hey, this is pretty good!” I think they’re as surprised as I am.

The lucky Brits have had this album for two years. Why it took so long to cross the big pond and get an official U.S. release is beyond me, but it has definitely been worth the wait. It’s easily the best album I’ve heard in six months, possibly the best of 2009. Frames is the kind of album music geeks wait years to find. Don’t wait two years to find out why Oceansize have been called the most underrated band in Britain.

A Friendly Warning

2010-03-30T05:08:00.000-07:00

3/29/2010
Know that Fifth-Third Bank
Will not call at five A.M.
About your check card.

3/30/2010
There is no joy like
Finding that you possess a
Cancer-free colon.

fun. - Aim & Ingite

2010-03-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

One of the better albusm of 2009:

When indie favorites The Format broke up founding member Nate Ruess decided to follow his own muse and formed .fun, a band which knows no limits when it comes to style, instrumentation, composition, or any other “tion” in the book. The debut album, Aim and Ignite, is a mere ten songs but wowzers, what a whole bunch of ground these ten songs cover!

The opening song, “Be Calm”, is anything but, starting with an accordion and string section that brings a lilting melody to reluctant life. The song mellows, bemoaning “Why oh why” things must be so bad before the tempo picks up with flutes and more strings, leading the way to a mechanical sounding rhythm section and conversational vocals. The questions these voices bring are answered with inspirational horns and emotional post-rock beats that bring Queen to mind, frenetically growing to the lofty heights of a euphoric show tune finale. All this in just over four minutes, and a more enjoyable four minutes you’ll be hard pressed to find.

The rest of the album, while not as schizophrenic, is equally pleasant. “Benson Hedges” mixes rousing rock with a gospel choir and massive amounts of frantic energy. One of the best songs on the album, “All The Pretty Girls”, starts off with a wall of vocals, compliments of E.L.O., and quickly moves to a danceable, enthusiastic song accompanied by a solo violin that makes one think of Dexy’s Midnight Runner. “I Wanna Be The One” wastes no time in bringing in lots of horns and lots of Jellyfish influence, possibly because Ruess enlisted the help of former Jellyfish keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr. A big swing beat and steel drum characterizes “At Least I’m Not As Sad (As I Used to Be)”, contrasting its big singalong style to the following somber “Light A Roman Candle with Me”, a song which makes no attempt to hide its piano bar origins. Well, maybe it does try, using copious amounts of vocal harmonies, a bouncy bass driven happy beat, muted horns, and theatrical vocals that lift your spirits to soaring heights.

Despite having about fifty different instruments and a kitchen sink, the production is amazing, refusing to bog down these playful quirky songs with sonic sludge. As you might hope to expect from a band named .fun Aim and Ignite is forty minutes of amusing distractions from the doldrums of life. Good stuff? You bet, especially for fans of Mika and today’s batch of Queen-inspired indie-rock mavens.

John Gorka - So Dark You See

2010-03-26T06:14:00.000-07:00

Because I'm hurtin' for material I thought I would also post my CD reviews as they are published. Have fun!

Years ago I downloaded John Gorka’s Temporary Road album from his web site, an album filled with so many exceptional songs that I nearly feel guilty for getting it free. Despite how fun it is to say “GORKA! GORKA! GORKA!” it took me until the recent release of So Dark You See to pick up another John Gorka album. Without having his other nine studio albums I can’t say how this one fits into the grand scheme but after multiple listens, both at work and while whittling a stick on the back porch, I can say that So Dark You See leaves me underwhelmed.

Mr. Gorka is known for his rich and gentle baritone voice, his flowing and gentle acoustic finger picked guitar style, and his folksy and gentle story telling songwriting. While Temporary Road contained ample amounts of gently self-effacing humor (okay, I’m done with the “gentle” joke now) So Dark You See lacks this bite, leaving the stories feeling a bit more typically singer/songwriter self-indulgent. For instance, the upbeat “Ignorance & Privilege”, with lyrics such as “I was born to privilege that I did not see / Lack of pigment in my skin won a free and easy in / I didn’t know but my way was paved” comes across as intellectually condescending whereas a bit of humor might have tempered the preachy delivery.

However all is not lost. The album begins with “A Fond Kiss,” a delicate, calming song beautifully crafted around the Robert Burns poem of the same name. “Can’t Get Over It” is appropriately melancholic as it mourns the passing of a friend, utilizing an accordion for an appropriately lonely feel. Likewise “Diminishing Winds” focuses on loss and eventual acceptance with a somber realism that will leave you blinking in astonishment. A personal favorite is the foot tapping “Whole Wide World” which finds the protagonist with an address on a dead-end street wondering what his life would be like if “the one” hadn’t gotten away, all decked out with restrained vocal harmonies and chilling electric piano. The patient listener is also treated to two too-brief instrumental tracks which showcase Gorka’s solid mastery of the guitar.

So Dark You See finds John Gorka seemingly at an impasse. He’s been in the music business for decades and no longer has the hungry desire that provided a wonderful contrast to his yearning vocals of things that should be and opportunities barely missed. Without the depth of this disparity his folksy, conversational music seems just a bit flat and worn, leaving one wishing for what might have been, just like the characters which populate his lyrics. Hey, maybe this is intentional, some Gorktastic master meta-plan to make the listener identify with the songs. That would be pure genius!

Better by the Bunch

2010-03-26T05:17:00.001-07:00

3/24/2010
Need to fix the car
But it’s rainy out and cold.
I hope the brakes work.

3/25/2010
What’s for snack tonight?
Ice cream? Cookies? Crisp, fresh fruit?
How ‘bout wood and rocks?

3/26/2010
Only one more year
Until I hit the four-oh
I am very blessed.

3/27/2010
Run with that candy
But toddler legs cannot beat
The long arm of dad.

3/28/2010
Someday I will start
A business: “The Soffit Store”
I’ll make millions, sure.

Backfill

2010-03-22T11:04:00.001-07:00

3/17/2010
The older I get
The more beer grows in esteem
But not when it’s green

3/18/2010
A chewy brownie
Is the perfect antidote
For the Thursday blahs.

3/19/2010
Oops, I fell behind
In my daily haiku chore
So here are a bunch.

3/20/2010
For world class coaster
You need travel no further
Than Holiday World

3/21/2010
I hope that last one
Wins us a free trip for four
To Holiday World

3/22/2010
A sound at six ten
Tessa with pillow and doll
Closing Lyndi’s door.

3/23/2010
I would rather have
A bad day with my wife than
Ten good without her.