Have Horn. Will Travel.

Notice

2009-01-14T07:21:00.000-08:00

Please visit a new incarnation of this blog at www.havehorn-willtravel.com.

Smite me.

2008-09-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Coupon-Cutting Zimbabwean Missionaries,

While I defrost some leftover dinner (at least I hope it's dinner–if you readers ever decide to home-store your potential progeny in order to save a few bucks on fertility clinic fees, take some advice and label all the Tupperware very carefully) I thought I'd post an update to this hallowed tome. Or is it thy shallow tomb? As in grave? Incidentally, “shallow grave” could be a bilingual oxymoron if you happen to be Italian-American. Or a possible resting place if you piss off the wrong Italian-American. Profondamente grave. Capite?

For that little opening caveat you have my college foreign language credits to thank. A requirement most definitely and deeply satisfied by my Italian TA, whose name escapes me but who was from Phoenix and who was most definitely not Italian but most definitely was hot. Hottest TA I ever had, in fact.

(Okay. Literally that would have to be sickly Mr. Stickler who very possibly ran a 104 fever for six of the eight weeks of my Central Asian History summer course. He resembled a stocky Mongolian steppe horse and sweat as if just getting to class required a feigned retreat at full gallop. Students used to place bets on which of his brow beads would roll to his soaked shirt collar first. Double or nothing on whether he would faint before or after Russia was freed from the grip of the Golden horde. But I've digressed from my digression. Back to la bella non-Italian Italian T&A.)

First day of class she wore a bustier. Cleavage makes extemporaneous conjugation remarkably difficult. I think our class's view of the Tuscan hills may have been deliberate titular tactics on her part, though; meant to steel our concentration against distractions; no matter how firm and round and smooth and creamy white those distractions were. My, was she hot. Molto caldo. (Which sounds “cold” but it's “hot”. Well, “warm”, actually but who's counting.)

Now I don't want to give you the idea that I'm some sort of misogynist who objectifies women as no more than a sum of their sexual attributes. I see their mean too. Their sum divided by the number of parts. I won't date anyone more than three standard deviations from the norm and if I'm uncertain about my attraction I'll perform a Chi Squared analysis against my model, who happens to be Jennifer Connelly. I joke. But seriously, I viewed my Italian TA as a full, well-rounded human being –very well-rounded– with hopes and dreams and thoughts, in addition to a nice rack. And I definitely don't hold some male superiority complex, either. We were equals in my eyes; yes, her ass needed a little work but then so did my fluency with il passato prossimo.

Anyway, that was a long time ago. The only lingering influence of my undergraduate foreign language studies is that, after consulting my Italian-English Dictionary for errors in the above blathering inanity, I'm sure to set it on top of my unpaid electric bill thereby incurring the red-hot wrath of MidAmerican Energy, manifested in a fiscally eviscerating $0.96 late payment fee due next month. Curse you hot non-Italian Italian TA from Phoenix, Arizona –ed i tuoi bei pomodori!

Now where was I? Ah yes. Updates. September is here to stay so it's high time for: What I did on my summer vacation–An absurdist serial farce loosely based on actual fictionalized events. Installments to look out for over the next weeks include:

A Russian Invades the Iowa State Fair in which, you guessed it, I take a Russian to the Iowa State Fair where, during an argument over the latest Russo-Georgian conflict (“Saakashvili is just plain nuts!” informed Ms. G to which I flailed, “Oh yeah? Well Putin is a megalomaniacal, paranoid control-freak!”
“–with a vast nuclear arsenal so thank you for proving my point!” basked Ms. G.), in a fit of gestural emphasis said Russian accidentally signals the highest bid on a 400 pound Berkshire sow. One with a gimpy right rear leg no less.

...

Idaho? I dunno... describes the genesis of a team of competitive water tubers on a pristine lake in the state that's most famous for Hemingway's shock-treatment-induced shotgun suicide and senators with wide scatological stances. Reading about people eating potato chips on a pontoon boat has never been this exciting. Never.

...
Put Your Canoe on My Shoulders, tells the nature tale of star-crossed siblings and various significant others in their ill-fated quest to consume as much lake-water-reconstituted Tang™ and campfire curry as is humanly possible and then “recycle” a generous portion of it in a shallow hole in the woods just a few dozen feet from where it was eaten. Humanity reduced its most basic animal instincts. Without the sex.

In Lifetime's inevitable miniseries of this tragi-docu-info-sit-dramedy, the part of the future birth-defected son appearing in one of the campers' lucid dreams will some day be played to critical acclaim by a youngish Edward James Olmos, Jr. whose 100% DEET-induced webbed toes enables him, in 2020, to break Michael Phelps's current Olympic record of 113 golds. Sadly, the Sultan of Swimming won't be around to see his mantle passed on due to the upcoming tragedy of the 2016 Olympics when a geriatric Phelps will arrogantly and tragically insist on swimming a 200 meter butterfly qualifying heat while actually donning his accumulated medals.

...

God Consults an Agnostic imagines a brainstorming session during which a religious skeptic named Adam reluctantly advises God on how to boost membership and morale... for a fee. Here's a snippet:

GOD: (offscreen) Why don't you believe in me, Adam?

ADAM: I need proof. And not just some piddling thing like your image on a piece of burnt toast. Something definite. Something indisputable.

GOD: I don't get it. Over thousands of years, billions of people have believed in me –and many were smarter than you. A lot smarter. What makes you think you're so special?

ADAM: Special?! Hey, you're one to talk. Who was it that said, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?”

GOD: Um. I can't remember. It was either Clarence Darrow or Simon Cowell. I think.

ADAM: Well in my book taking credit for the creation of the universe calls for more proof than just healing a few lepers here and there. And to be honest, a good number of those faithful billions down through history also believed the Earth was flat or that the Sun went around it. Since then we've all come to our senses on those points because of indisputable scientific proof to the contrary.

GOD: Well, mostly all of us. Though I wouldn't bring that round Earth stuff up if your planning a campaign for Kansas State school board commissioner. Just a hunch. But now hold on. I work thousands of miracles every day. It's not always easy to get the credit you know. Especially from you proof pundits.

ADAM: With all due respect, let me give you a word of advice, God. Okay? If I may? Try for something bigger. Quality over quantity. You know? Mysteriously fixing Timmy's limp is all well and good but we can handle stuff like that now. Science has caught up to you in many ways. You know, in the old days you would protect the righteous and faithful by smiting down the armies of their enemies. Maybe you should get back to basics. We could really use some old school smite right about now.

GOD: Oh you're really something. Making biblical allusions to me. Obviously you didn't come to my book signing.

ADAM: And that's another thing. It might help membership if you'd update the bylaws a little more frequently. Maybe, like, a few new books each century. Or at least some cultural and historical content editing once in a while. I mean, we still got people stoning adulterers in your name. Is that what you want? And don't even get me started on your lax copyright enforcement.

GOD: Hey don't get snippy. I speak through prophets and leave the compilation up to you all.

ADAM: Well that may have worked three thousand years ago but in the age of mass media it's not a very efficient method. We got charlatans all over the place down here claiming that you "speak through them". I mean, have you listened to A.M. radio lately?

GOD: A.M.? Are you nuts? Do you have any idea how much static the ionosphere adds? No way. I'm a Sirius subscriber. Nothing compares to satellite radio. It's heaven. Just heaven. I heard every Red Sox game last season. But we're getting off topic and don't you charge by the hour?

...

Stay tuned.

Sincerely,
A Herz mid-size rental car, low on oil and high on miles

Degrees of Vegetation

2008-07-19T11:17:00.001-07:00

Dear Cell Mates,

I've got a big date tonight and I'm not gonna lie to you. It could go either way. Imagine the two extremes flanking the vast spectrum of heterosexual social interaction. Okay, got those in mind? They both, somehow, feel possible, even probable, right now. There's lots to expound upon here but a gentleman's honor dictates discretion. Dig? Dug.

If you thought this blog was dead, join the club. I considered pulling the plug completely numerous times over the past six months but was always stopped by congressional decree. Apparently even some vegetative blogs might still meet the minimum standards of a Living Document. Since it's often impossible for the outside world to tell whether a blog is conscious or not I thought it would only be right to perform CPR as a last ditch effort to try and save HHWT. That stands for Crappy Post Resuscitation for you non-medical-types.

Oh and if you hoped this blog was dead I'm sorry to disappoint you. All I can say is hang in there. And maybe contact your representative in D.C.

I suppose it would be in order for me to pontificate a bit about the reasons why my postings here have dwindled to a slow drip. Let's start by being honest. I was never prolific to begin with. However, what few ideas I did have seemed to find their way out fairly regularly, if not with a feverish frequency. That sap stream of creativity has not hardened of late, but rather been diverted toward two different, even less fruitful directions.

Well maybe three directions but that third one has the saving grace of potentially getting me laid so I would hardly call it fruitless. In fact it's a big, full, fuzzy peach whose ripe sugary juices run down your chin with every hungry mouthful until you reach that tart, dark pit buried deep beneath its sweet, succulent flesh and you accidentally bite down too hard on it and your right incisor feels funny the rest of the day. Umm... Where was I? Ah yes. My creative diversions.

The first diversion is Facebook Status Updates. Thoughts which used to provide the germ for a blog post are now sneezed into cyberspace immediately after formation. These stunted ideas, boiled-down experiences, or extemporaneous observations are rendered for quick consumption into a sentence or three whose soul purpose is to cause my tenuous network of quasi-acquaintances to stop picking their noses long enough to wonder how I could've misspelled “pliant” before moving on to update their Netflix queues.

In the past, pre-Facebook, maybe ten percent of these kernels would incubate and flower into a blog post with all of its full-blown tedium. But now Facebook acts as a creativity abortion clinic, claiming many embryonic ideas before they have a chance to become fully blog-viable. The solutions to this short circuit are so obvious I won't even bother pointing them out.

The second, and no doubt larger, creativity diversion has been the act of writing other things. I have only so much will power, and often none at all, so I generally don't spread it out like the scrapings of an empty jam jar on toast but rather focus it on what's most interesting to me at that moment. This won't change, but by occasionally un-diverting my creative sap flow, say during periods of writer's block for instance, into frivolous blog posts I might just be able to revive this baby. It will make for some horrendously boring posts, no doubt. But hey. What else is new?

That's enough pontificating. Let's get the blog ball rolling. Hmm... what's happened here in Iowa since we last talked? Oh yeah. The skies opened up and pissed forth a deluge of historic proportions. This was definitely a blog-worthy event and my shame is great for not writing some shit about it.

So, dear readers, for those of you who may have wondered about my current state of saturation in this currently saturated State, let me assure you I've been high and dry in NL. Though for a time I was cut off from the rest of civilization, or what passes for it here, by the unprecedented stages of the two rivers betwixt which I reside. Eventually I was able to escape through a rather round about route and played a shit gig with the MSO, but as a result of the flooding much of the local summer work has dried up around here, to ironically invert a pun. However, I never expect to make a dime in the summer anyway so it's all good. *(Note to AN: Yes. I am recycling my note to you. So sue me. But not for plagiarism. You haven't a case. Try Breach of Exclusivity or something like that.)

Continuing with the myopic theme of how the natural disaster affects yours truly, the CRSO has been handed a big bowl of river silt, complete with nitrate runoff, rail trestle rivets and carp carcasses, and everyone in the organization should expect to spend this upcoming season with spoon in hand practicing their Oliver Twist impressions. Normally the CRSO is a rock; always rehearsing and concertizing in the same place: The Paramount, which was submerged in the swollen Cedar River for days. I'm not sure about the future of the Paramount beyond the fact that nobody will be playing there this season. It was a lovely old theater. Yes, maybe a bit small and, okay, it had some disconcerting echoes. But it will be sorely missed this year, a year with Beethoven 9 on the docket, as we will now no doubt be shuffling between even smaller college and high school auditoriums. If there never was a need for a chamber orchestra/barbershop quartet arrangement of the Choral Symphony before, there is now.

The other orchestras of this fine state are likely only impacted by the flooding through the ripples of their shared personnel with CRSO and the current fluidity of its season schedule. One can only hope that some amount of accommodation will be granted in regards to this. In freelancing, conflicts are the killer. There are enough weeks in the season to make a great living, if you can fill them with work. And there's enough work in the area to make a good living, if only you can schedule it. But conflicts whittle it all down to just a plain old living.

Well, that's all for now my dear fellows. Time to get ready for ecstasy or ignominy. But probably something in between. More to come...

Love,
Not your Mom

"Press from the petals of the lotus flower something of this to keep, the essence of the hour..."

2008-04-29T16:14:00.000-07:00

All the seasons are finally wrapping up. My last set is with DM this weekend playing Sibelius 7, Saint-Saens 3. Fourth horn seems to be simply an organ pedal to Sibelius but the piece is powerful and wonderful and all that. I've also got a little show with the CR muni band, usually a summer-only group, playing for the IBA conference in the Hotel Fort DM though we haven't altered our city park repertoire one bit so it'll be 45 minutes of show tune medleys and marches. Boy are all those bandmasters in for a treat!

I'm reading F. Scott Fitzgerald right now, This Side of Paradise on now and that usually shakes things up a bit so we'll see. I like it enough to want to read all the rest of his stuff so . I'm down to the last hundred pages and still waiting for something to transform the protagonist from a pretentious asshole into... anything else. Not that it's a boring book. I enjoy the detail with which Fitzgerald portrays the personal growth of the central character, Amory, the egotist. And the early 20th century commentary on social class is interesting, too. But every time something happens that I'd expect to be cathartic and life-changing, such as the death of a friend/idol, near collapse of his college career, creepy 'hallucinations' (were they?) of the devil in pointed yellow moccasins stalking him for crying out loud, they don't seem to resonate beyond more than a page or two. Perhaps it's all being repressed and will spill out in the climax. Anyway, a war's on now and that usually shakes things up a bit so we'll see. I like it enough to want to read all the rest of his stuff so that'll be a summer occupation.

This week is the last week of classes at ISU. Since there are DM rehearsals too, I'll be staying there for most of the week and probably spend one day engaged in vineyard work. It's good stuff in small doses. Sorta like a day laborer fantasy camp. And it can be a decent workout if you get creative (push-ups at one end of a row, sit-ups at the other). But I don't know how I'd manage if I had to do that kind of work for an extended period. I have great respect for the immigrant crews whom I occasionally work along side. They're faster, do a better job and by-and-large get paid less. They're away from family for extremely long periods, live in cramped quarters, and have virtually no chance for a better life than this. But then I suppose that's why they are here. To try and find a better life or create one back home for those they left behind.

Well I had better go mow the yard, even though we might get snow! Such is this time of year and place on earth.

In-deed.

"I can't think, I can't think, I can't think..."

2008-03-17T13:23:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of late winter doldrums now. Spring break at ISU means no teaching or commuting for a week and conflicting late season orchestra schedules mean weeks at a time with nary a rehearsal in sight. So there's time to blog, but nothing much happening to blog about.

One sure way to lose readers for good is by greeting their hopeful visits in search of new content with the ever-present image of a creepy-looking, hunch-backed clown in stage makeup. For a month.

Sorry about that. But what to write now? I could write about new experiences which have happened to me since my last post. Such as donating blood and having both antecubital veins poked to perdition in the process.

Or being forced by my youngest sister to create a profile on a popular singles website under extreme duress, and thus having to endure the double digital indignity of active and passive rejection by scores of women, even though most are touted as over 80% compatible with me.

Or even of walking the rails. I'm not talking about becoming a hobo or just ambling along the tracks but of literally balancing on the rail. My record is 140 steps, with hands in pockets, into a stiff wind and I encourage you all to try and break it.

But I think I'll save those for a rainy day. Instead, I give you...

Nicky and Dick

(The End of June)

-On a bluff in Northern California, late May, 1961-

[laying on the hood of a car, smoking, looking at the stars]

Nicky: Hey Dick.

Dick: What?

N: What would an eclipse look like from the moon?

D: What?

N: An eclipse. What would it look like from the moon?

D: That doesn't make any sense, Nick.

N: What? How come?

D: There's no air on the moon, Nick. Why would you bother looking at an eclipse if you couldn't even breath?

N: I don't know? Just say you held your breath during it. What would it look like, Dick?

D: It's more than just air, Nicky. [flicks ashes] There ain't no atmosphere at all. You'd explode if you were on the moon.

N: Aw c'mon, Dick. Say you had a space suit. Whatever. What would an eclipse look like from there?

D: You'd never notice it, Nick.

N: What? Why not?

D: You're on the moon in a space suit, right?

N: Yeah.

D: Well someone must have sent you there and it probably took a lot of money, right?

N: Yeah. I suppose.

D: I mean you can't just buy a space suit at Sears.

N: No. I suppose not.

D: So for that kind of money whoever sent you to the moon probably wants certain things to get done. You've got to stay focused on your job, Nick. You can't be stargazing.

N: Aw, c'mon Dick. I just mean imagine you're on the moon. What would an eclipse look like from there?

D: Nick. What's the point? You ever goin' to the moon?

N: Course not.

D: So you'll never know for sure then?

N: I guess not.

D: Then why bother asking? That's science, Nicky. Why bother asking something you know you'll never know for sure.

N: That's science?

D: Yup. [flicks ashes] Partly.

N: Hm.

D: So, you wanna go to Fubar's tonight?

N: [not listening] Huh? Sure, okay.

D: [teasing] Tammy's gonna be there.

N: Huh? Sure okay.

D: You okay Nicky? What's the matter?

N: Huh? Oh nothin.

D: C'mon. [flicks cigarette away] Let's go to Fubar's.

N: Hey Dick?

D: Yeah Nick?

N: That's really science?

D: Yup. Sure as shit, Nicky.

-At Fubar's: smokey, loud, crowded-

[everyone talking over each other]

Tammy: Where you guys been all night?

Janice: We were here an hour ago. Where were you guys?

Dick: You jealous?

J: Oh, what? Of farm animals?

T: Yeah, I can't compete with a sheep.

J: Baaaah!

T: Baaaaaah!

Nick: We were smokin' at the bluff.

T: Aw! Without us?

J: C'mon. Let's go to the bluff!

T: Yeah!

D: We were just there, Jay. Let us get warmed up at least. [goes to bar]

N: It's a nice night for it. We were lookin' at the stars.

T: That sounds nice. Let's go back later.

N: If Dick wants. It's his car.

J: He'll want. [smiling] Just let's get him warmed up first. [follows D. to bar]

T: [dragging N. to empty booth] What's your sign, Nicky?

N: I don't know.

T: Well, you were born in October, right?

N: October 10th.

T: October 10th... so you're a Libra.

N: Libra?

T: Do you know where Libra is?

N: It's scales, right?

T: Not what. Where. The constellation.

N: It's a 'W' looking thing. Someone showed me once. In the northeast.

T: That sounds more like Cassiopeia. Who showed you?

N: Cassio-what? You're making stuff up now?

T: No. I'm serious. Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia was Andromeda's mother. A queen. Her daughter was saved from a sea monster by Perseus. [suddenly slightly embarrassed] Or something like that.

N: How do you know all that?

T: My dad used to read Greek myths to us when we were little. [changing subject back] But Libra. That's nowhere near Cassiopeia. Libra's in the south.

N: I don't know if I've ever seen it then.

T: We'll look for it at the bluff.

N: What are you, Tam?

D: [back with J. and beers, loudly] What'r you two turds talkin about?!

J: [just as loud] Richard! Do you plan on kissin' me with that mouth! Now leave them alone, will ya.

N: We were just talkin' about constellations. What'r you Dick?

D: Again with that shit? C'mon Nick. Summer's just started and last I checked you ain't goin to college. [slides beer over] Drink.

T: No really. What's your sign Dick?

J: [joking] I'll bet he's a Cancer.

D: [to J.] And you're a Virgo.

J: [slaps his shoulder, offended] Whada you know?

T: You were born in August, right Dick? You're probably a Leo, then.

D: Sure. So what?

T: We'll find our constellations tonight when we go back to the bluff.

D: [sarcastic] That's sounds like a helluva plan. [sliding out of booth] Nick. Darts?

N: [following] Hey Dick. What's Virgo mean?

-Back at bluff-

[N. & T. laying on hood, D. & J. in back seat.]

T: [pointing] So that's Libra, low over the city lights. And, right there, that's mine, that line with the curl at the end.

N: What is it? A snake?

T: No. A scorpion. Scorpio chases Libra across the sky but he can never catch her.

N: I don't suppose she would want him too, either.

[silence]

N: Do you think the Sun is part of any constellation, Tam?

T: The Sun moves during the year so it can't...

N: No, I mean for other planets. Do people around other stars see the Sun as part of any constellation, do you think?

T: I suppose they probably do.

N: What constellation do you think the Sun is part of?

T: Well... it would be different for each star. The Sun's position would change.

N: That one, then. [pointing] That bright one in Scorpio.

T: Well, let's see. What other ones would be nearby? [looks over her shoulder behind her] Could be just about anything I suppose.

N: [slowly turns and stares at T. while she's facing away from him] But you could never go there. [T. turns back, N. quickly looks back at sky] I mean, to see if the constellation looked like you thought it would.

T: No way. Too far. But you wouldn't need to do that. It's just a matter of imagination. Putting yourself in another place in your mind. You know? That's something people are very good at doing. One of the things that makes us different than all other animals. It's what let's us understand and empathize with others. And it's why we can lie to each other.

[long silence]

N: When do you leave for school, Tam?

T: [looks at feet] End of June.

N: [stares beyond stars] End of June.

Hibernatory Hiatus

2008-02-12T17:07:00.000-08:00

My blog has been in extended cryogeny while I've worked on this (any comments, criticism or contributions are desired so long as you don't make me cry) and gotten back to the business of scraping out a symphonic subsistence. Okay fine. A certain amount of laziness may have been involved in my hiatus. So sue me. As for this latest lull, you're extremely welcome but your good fortune, like my posting procrastination, has come to an end. God save you. Here's some hibernation highlights...

Hide-n-Seek Hindemith
Recently I performed Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis for the third of five times and with the second of three orchestras this season (for those counting). In a neat little coincidence I was even issued the same German rental part that I used in orchestra #1 last fall, complete with my mysteriously missing Star Spangled Banner tucked inside the cover. The prodigal Banner part has returned from halfway 'round the world, penniless and destitute having no doubt spent its advanced allotment of my freelance fortune on decadence and debauchery! Still, I accepted it with open arms, casting aside the faded, photocopied foreigner holding its place. This, much to the chagrin of parts one, three and four who've stayed dutifully put in their player's possession lo these many months. Or whatever.

“I musicisti e mobile...”
Some time ago I was embroiled in tragic yet tuneful treachery involving lust, love, power and passion which exposed the true tension of bonds of family, bindings of social class and heart strings of... um, the heart... through the cursed life of a hubristic, hunchbacked humorist. No, I'm not talking about my Second Life avatar, Fran. It is Verdi's Rigoletto of which I speak, dear friends.

(Note to self: Give up alliteration for lent. You're addicted and it's a clichéd creative crutch. Doh! Starting NOW!)

While performing opera can be rather exciting, rehearsing opera I usually find to be quite the opposite. Playing Verdi without singers is only mildly more enjoyable than death-by-shoehorn. Hold that rehearsal in a high school band room after an hour-long commute through freezing rain and the balance tips slightly in favor of the shoehorn. The performances, however, almost always make it worthwhile in the end. Despite crowd sizes dwarfed by the number of performers, a skimpy and skittery string section and a weak, intonationally-challenged chorus humming directly behind my skull I again found this to be true: Opera is fun to perform.

Opera singers have always amazed me. They perform hours of music, lyrics (in a foreign language!), dramatic expression and stage direction intricately timed with an unwieldy orchestra... from memory! I can't imagine a more complete performance artist. Even mediocre opera singers inspire me. Should they really? I don't know, but they do.

This latest foray did lift a bit of my veil of ignorant admiration because the orchestra in our zero-scenery production was situated on stage behind the action rather than in front of the stage with our backs to the performers (or, more commonly, under the stage completely hidden from view). Since we faced the action and the audience we were privy to each singer's most vulnerable moments, such as when Rigoletto once lost his place during the second act, looking back toward the conductor with exasperated confusion for a scene-saving vocal cue.

Of course this setup also requires us musicians to remain focused while particularly compelling and/or attractive performers are doin' their fine thang right in front of us and behind the conductor. Long story short, Maddalena had it goin' on in both her make-out scene with il duca and the storm/murder scene which follows. To paraphrase Kosmo Kramer, “Yeah I see you maestro but she's really showin' me something!”

“Vy ju alvays callink me like zis?”
For the past couple of months I've been getting calls from a number in Mass. from someone of Slavic origin. At least the voice mail messages seem to be in a Slavic language of some sort. And googling the number leads to a person in Boston with a Russian-looking name.

The calls come, on average, twice a day with messages of a consistently calm and matter-of-fact tone left every few days. I'm not sure how someone could leave dozens of messages for someone who never calls back and not sound more and more peeved with each iteration.

I've been practicing the accent and will answer some day to see how long I can keep the conversation going. I'm shooting for twenty seconds because my high school math teacher taught all of his students a little Polish which I'm banking will be temporarily, albeit confusingly, convincing. “Strovach mario, Vaski pelna, pon stobon buogo stravia naski, menza nemia stami, owot jawota foiegu Jesus.”

Amen

Ball-breaker

2007-12-16T11:57:00.000-08:00

Dear frozen friends,

The fire is starting to catch and crackle, the California Cabernet is open and breathing, Neil Young's plaintive falsetto is shimmering, and my synapses are simmering. The fourth and final Nutcracker is behind me and I survived. Chops intact. That wasn't a foregone conclusion. I've never done the ballet, and this was a reduced winds version which has some history of injuring players. Because of this I played it as safe as possible, 8-va-basso-ing and dropping out entirely here and there. It also certainly helped that this was a ballet school production. Not exactly the same pressure as the touring Joffrey version but ya still gotta play the notes.

In between the pages of face smashing syncopation one thing struck me. Ballet dancers have amazing bodies. (I'm talkin' about the ladies now. The guys are all identical. Even their junk. It must be a union thing: “And if the dancer is male he is allowed not more than two socks stuffage...” so on and so forth.) Most women dancers are lithe and willowy but a few are just ripped. Each individual back muscle popping and quads and calves of steel. On one dancer I could see that main artery on the inside of her upper arm between the biceps and the triceps. I think the last time I saw that bit of circulatory anatomy was on Stallone in Rambo II. But she could do a brisé. My goodness gracious!

Most precious Nutcracker moment: During the second show on Saturday immediately after the nutcracker is dropped and broken the stunned silence in the hall is punctured by a little girl's voice in the audience uttering worriedly, “Uh-oh.”

Winter has finally come to Iowa and it looks like it's here to stay. I know this because I tried to remove a solid inch of it from my front walk earlier this week with minor success and major carpal tunnel trauma. The whole task became a sort of zen thing. The focus was not on the ice but on my chipping technique. The preparation ceremony involved in raising, aiming and orienting the implement for a precise downward blow. Then the release and thrust. Allowing yourself to work with gravity for maximum effect. Many small, attainable goals over time leading to success and, ultimately, rapture. If not rapture then at least a front walk clear of litigation inducing ice.

Now let me be. I have five holiday shows in three days starting this afternoon. Fair thee well.

UWAUP

P.S. This is all. There is no more.

Dance, Dance Revulsion

2007-12-07T06:45:00.000-08:00

So I was dancing at a club until two in the morning the other weekend, which I don't usually do (read: never have in my life) because it's so stupid. But the girl-whose-laugh-is-as-lovely-as-she-is and her friend wanted to go which immediately makes it not stupid but really super cool. So I was dancing at a club until two in the morning and this is what I learned.

Guys at clubs don't dance. They hold a beer and maybe move a little to the beat. This is true for almost every guy. Oh they may be out on the dance floor alright but they're not doing much. I didn't let that inhibit me, however, and got jiggy as best I could. There is an exception to this when certain songs are played of course but I couldn't tell which songs those are these days.

Which brings me to the next thing I learned: I'm really square. Okay I pretty much knew this already but last Friday night the degree of my square-ness was once again accurately determined. I'm 90 degrees square plus or minus 30 arcminutes. During two hours of virtually non-stop head-bobbing, pelvic-thrusting, fist-pumping, shoulder-shimmying and lip-scrunching (all the moves I know, incidentally) I heard just three songs I recognized, and that includes the post-last-call, club-clearing country tune, “All My Ex's Live in Texas.” The other two included a remixed Madonna tune (or maybe it was Cyndi Lauper but I'm still counting it as recognized) and one that we played in the car on the way to the club to get in the mood. Sure. I had to be reminded that I had heard it before but once it was pointed out to me that it should sound familiar I agreed that, in fact, it did. Some song about “apologies” or whatever.

Remember how I said guys don't dance? Well here is what they do do in clubs.

The stalker. This guy finds one girl and lurks nearby all night occasionally attempting to get her attention but never really making eye contact. Girls seem to be able to spot these guys in a heart beat and constantly keep their backs to them which is an amazing skill and impressive to behold in action. It reminded me of the tidal synchronization of the rotation and orbital periods of some planetary bodies. One side always facing away. (We've already established how square I am, right?)

The gawker. This moron stands completely immobile, often with mouth agape, ogling some girl up and down for an uncomfortably long time from no more than a few feet away. I'm not sure, but I think some gawkees must like this attention, depending on the attractiveness of the gawker I imagine. (Most of whom seem to be from the troglodytic end of the gene pool if you ask me.) I have to admit that if some girl was gawking at me like that I'd probably be feeling pretty alpha good. I'd probably also find out later that my fly was down and that I'd accidentally spilled beer on my crotch. Welcome to my world.

The snake. A borderline pervert, this hump is constantly slithering his way through the most crowded parts of the dance floor with the intention of touching and rubbing as many ladies as possible. Sick as it sounds he usually has his favorites he meanders towards time and again. There is no pretense of close dancing either. The snake just walks on through as if he's simply trying to get from A to B while his reptilian hands do their thing. I did notice that women don't put up with much from snakes. A grope often elicits a disgusted glance which is usually followed by a hands-in-the-air apology from the offender. I have a theory some stalkers morph into snakes above a blood-alcohol level of 0.1.

The standers. These chivalrous dudes are out on the dance floor for their girls. Usually with a beer in one hand slightly moving their heads to the music. Stalkers, gawkers and snakes are less likely to focus on girls who are dancing next to standers. Some standers constantly look around and take in the whole scene while others just watch Sports Center.

One thing I just don't understand is how everyone communicates above the club cacophony. I know they do because I saw it happening all the time. People having actual conversations and seemingly conveying meaningful information by shouting into one another's ears. Maybe it's just an evolutionary inhibition that I've yet to suppress but if I'm going to yell at the top of my lungs I feel it'd better be about something important, such as “FIRE!!!” or “HE'S GOT A GUN!!!” or “I THOUGHT I ORDERED THE CHUTNEY WITHOUT THE WASABI/HABANERO PURÉE!!!” The only conversation I could come up with at the time was “HOW LONG DO WE DO THIS FOR?!!!” and “MY QUADS ARE STARTING TO HURT!!!” and my seemingly constant query: “IS THIS STILL THE SAME SONG?!!!”

This isn't really a matter of age. I felt pretty much the same way when I was in my twenties. It's more a matter of temperament, I suppose. Hopping up and down to music is stupid if you think about it. But it's also fun for some reason. Next time out I think I'll add the alternating-chicken-wing and the saddle-stance to my repertoire. I know what you're thinking but don't worry. I avoid the lower-lip-bite like the plague. I'm not that square.

“Love is blind and cannot find me.”

2007-11-16T13:21:00.000-08:00

Dear Mouth Breathers,

I've nothing to say so read no further. Well you persistent little gerbils... If you insist then I guess I'll oblige.

Actually I've had nothing to say for about a month. I just sit, slack-jawed, over my laptop timing my blinking with that of the cursor so as to alternately make it vanish or appear constant until spittle strands onto the space bar, at which point I take a nap on the couch or read Hemingway, usually both, in the reverse order of course. Maybe I need to start attending more bull fights. It worked for him. Of course he did off himself. But then again I'd have another three decades or so. Perhaps a bit more if I avoid Idaho altogether. It's a tough call. I think I'll nap on it later.

In other news I've got a brand new cell phone. Okay, calm down, not really. I've just changed the background on my old phone to “Comet Blue” and the contrast to “Highest” so now it feels new to me. I wonder if this is a subconscious sign that the two-year affair with my current phone is waning? Like when a woman changes her hair style - say, cuts it really short - because she isn't happy with her relationship. Let's explore it, shall we?

I think I'm still in love with my phone. Well, I mean I still love it but maybe I'm not in love with it any more. Our communication really hasn't been as clear as it used to be. Not for a long time, actually. We don't really even talk anymore. I mean, we've got more than 200 peak minutes leftover each month. I thought I'd learned how to push your buttons but my fingers just don't seem to affect you the way they used to. And... to be honest... your pocket vibrate hasn't worked on me in a long time. I know. I should have said something sooner. I'm sorry. But I'm telling you now. Maybe we've grown apart and should just go our separate ways. After all, it's not like our Sprint contract was “until death do us part.” It just feels that way.

The iPhone sure is sexy. All curvy and smooth. And that touch-sensitive screen. I hear you can use it in several positions, too. Ooo baby... Pricey though. One thing is for sure, it's gonna be expensive to be “out there” again isn't it? I don't know. Maybe I should stick. I'll nap on it. (Increased bull fight attendance, iPhone)

The Silver Screen
Item: I just saw the actor Stella Adler for the first time (completely by accident in one of the “Thin Man” movies). Since she was famous for all the method actors she trained I've always been curious about what kind of actor she was herself. She gave a cliche murder mystery character (the gold-digging, alias-sporting ex-con who was, surprise! surprise!, not the killer) depth you don't usually see in those movies. Some of her line deliveries were rewindingly intriguing. Though I wonder if I would have noticed anything special had I not caught her name in the opening credits and been on the lookout. Probably not.

In other Golden Era Hollywood Hottie news, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Myrna Loy and Donna Reed were all smokin'. Curse you Hays Code! (I know. I need a girlfriend. Okay, a date.)

New idol: Steve McQueen in “Bullitt.” I'm gonna do all my own stunt horn playing from now on starting with Strauss' D&T this weekend. I know. It could get dangerous. But I'll sacrifice my safety for the sake of musical realism.

Time for a couple paragraphs from "For Whom the Bell Tolls" on the couch (best sleep aid since Kafka's “The Trial”). If I'm not at rehearsal tonight assume either that I've been torn limbless on the way to my car by a pack of wild dogs and am lying in several pints of my own cool, semi-coagulated blood... or that I've overslept. Either way, a courtesy call would be appreciated. If I don't pick up, again it's either because I lack contiguous arms, and hence hands, or the ringer is set too soft, depending on the respective scenario detailed previously. Though sometimes you can sleep on your arm wrong and it'll be non-functional for several moments. Usually not both arms, though. But I suppose it could happen. Especially if you have a hefty mate. And if that were the reason I didn't answer I wouldn't want you to needlessly worry. So on second thought, maybe you'd better not bother calling at all. I'll sleep on it.

Yours,
Me

Note to Self: Now that Mailer's matter has once again become an inanimate, unconscious constituent of the universe check out his literary soporiferousness. I have a feeling it'll be a zinc mine of Zzzzzz...

Note to Reader: Linda Thompson could sing the Newark, NJ white pages and make my eyes wistfully dewy. But that voice combined with the poignancy of her lyrics... well all I've got to say is give her a sad song and she's in a class of her own.

Is that a hypodermic needle sticking out of my gums or are you just glad to see me?

2007-11-01T13:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Dew-doers,

So I was lying there while these two masked women wearing latex put their fingers in my mouth. No, it wasn't a hedonistic Halloween party. I was at the dentist you gutter brain. I was at the dentist for the first time in nearly fifteen years and it's my new favorite thing to do. Luckily I have good, strong teeth and passed with flying colors much to the bewilderment of the hygienist who had a hard time finding any tenacious calculus to chip away.

Okay, okay. So the actual dentist, in her two minute pick-and-poke tour of my heretofore delinquent dentine, did manage to “find” the tiniest of “cavities” that somehow the hygienist had “missed” in her own half hour scrape-polish-and-floss-fest but I chalk that up to an impending Lexus payment. Besides, I was willing to humor everyone with a “cavity” filling just to have the full dental experience after such a long hiatus.

To be honest, I was mostly curious about what might have changed since my last visit. What technological advances had taken place in the interim? Would lasers be involved at any time during the cleaning process? 3-D holographic X-ray images? A GPS guided enamel drill? A virtual reality uplink to an out-sourced oral surgeon in Mumbai?!

Much to my disappointment, very few tools and gadgets seemed different. In fact the only one of which I was aware was the digital X-ray camera that now allowed nearly instantaneous viewing of images of my teeth's innards and nether regions. Instead of biting down on some X-ray sensitive film, a CCD chip was placed in my mouth with a small cable leading back to a computer. The hygienist can then turn away to make notes right on the image about her dental discoveries concerning gumline recession rates or enamel wear patterns or popcorn husk counts or whatever while your tongue gets a spittle suction pump hickey.

Speaking of the drool, while I waited for half my face to go numb I overheard an enlightening if mildly gruesome conversation between a patient and another dentist in the adjacent examination cubicle. This guy's tooth pain had become so severe and wide spread that even his eye brow had started to throb. Well, we all have our thresholds. That, apparently, was when he decided it was time to visit the dentist, who promptly found the culprit molar massively decayed and darn near busted in half. She also found a substantial list of other potential periodontal pain perpetrators just for good measure.

Apparently this fellow had already been chastised on previous visits for his unquenchable soda thirst. In fact, much to the patient's surprise, the doctor was able to determine specifically his beverage of choice (he does the Dew) either by the his piss-colored canines or that sweet stench of limon on his breadth. She advised him pointedly that bottomless refills of sugar sodas all day long would thwart even the most rigorous dental hygiene routine. Sweet toothed readers beware: Pop, like cigarettes, television and ornithology, is a superficially pleasurable delivery mechanism for an insidiously evil and covertly destructive force. You've been warned. But I digress...

So where was I? Ah yes. Tooth-related technology doesn't seem to have changed much in the last decade and a half since my previous examination. Oh I suppose maybe the drills are quieter and they have raspberry flavored polish now in addition to the traditional mint, cinnamon and bubblegum offerings (I'm lobbying for cumin to be the next addition) and everyone wears gloves and masks and protective eyewear like they're working in a government bioweapons lab. But no lasers. No holographs. No VR goggles. Just plain old metal picks, drill bits and alloy filling #15. Same as when I was a kid.

I must say, though, that it was a remarkably pleasant experience. I had my teeth poked, prodded, drilled and filled yet felt very little if any discomfort physically or psychologically. Even the Novocaine shot was delivered with the tenderness and sensitivity of a caring spouse, from the moment the hygienist first applied a generous topical anesthetic to my gums to the way the dentist brought her needle in just below my field of vision. I mean, I've had haircuts that were more traumatic.

You know what? As stupid as it sounds I think the reason I'd rather go see the dentist than go get a haircut might have something to do with making small talk. At the barber or salon you're almost expected to talk to the person cutting your hair. There's this pressure to have an extended conversation with a perfect stranger who likely has little in common with you (“Cosmetology, you say? Hmm, that's interesting. I took a course in cosmology once.”) and who never looks you in the eye but is constantly evaluating your physical appearance. It's almost like a blind date only she's wielding a scissors near your face and you have to tip her when it's over. Oh who am I kidding? It's exactly like a blind date.

But at the dentist your mouth is chock full 90% of the time so you aren't even expected to make conversation much beyond your name, profession and brushing habits. Okay so you are likely to be stabbed in the gums and drugged but it's done with love. And besides, you should expect that sort of behavior on a blind date any way.

That settles it. From now on my remarkable new blind date strategy is to keep shoveling food in so the conversation is necessarily stunted. And a shot of Novocaine at the very beginning might not be a bad idea either.

Numbly,
Marathon Man

Smell my feet

2007-10-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

Dear masked children,

Boo! Sorry no candy for you but help yourselves to a can of chunky goodness from my wide selection of three-year-old, generic-brand, cream-of-[insert vegetable/tuber/fungi here] soups which I forgot to set out for the Cub Scouts food drive last week, the poor bastards. Sorry there is a one can limit boys and girls. Don't get greedy.

Yes, that gruesome holiday is almost upon us again. No not the one when we give thanks that all the continent's indigenous peoples had such finicky immune systems, fought like cavemen and would've made lousy realtors. I'm talking about Halloween, silly. I mean who doesn't like being scared shitless? Well you can leave the room then. Those remaining go ahead and strap on the adult undergarment of your choice or take that laptop into the can and read on...

I lived alone in a century-old farmhouse in rural Iowa for two years. It goes without saying, so I'll say it, that there were more than a few nights when I feared being murdered by blood-thirsty rural farmhouse invaders. It was irrational, I admit. But that's what's so troubling about cold-blooded, axe-wielding killers: They're likely not rational. This is probably a good thing in the end since a rational homicidal maniac, assuming he or she (Oh who're we kidding? They're always “he's.”) wanted to get away with it, would clearly choose country victims over city victims because of the former's relative isolation.

A country victim's guard would be down (except mine!), their screams would be in vain and their mutilated body would likely lie unfound for a considerably longer time than had they been hacked to death on the corner of, say, 14th Street and Grand Avenue. (Well maybe not 14th and Grand downtown Baghdad but those bodies aren't a result of maniacs so much as extremists. Extremists aren't feared in rural Iowa. Except the ones on the campaign trail during caucus season, that is. But I digress.) Perhaps the only rational arguments against random farmhouse murder are country dogs and the fact that most farm folk do not live alone, but rather in hearty familial groups with deep tendencies toward preservation of kith and kin or whatever. I, however, did live alone making me a prime candidate for a rational-thinking, chef's-knife-brandishing, crazed lunatic. And my devoted pet was not Kujo the deathly loyal, blood-lusting Mastiff but rather, Barney the easily startled, sleep-lusting turtle.

A turtle's one basic defense trait, a trait which has kept it virtually unchanged as a life form for millions of years, is not the maniacal aggression in the face of danger which I would so dearly long for in my supreme moment of savage-rural-farmhouse-invasion-induced need. No. Rather it is fear. Turtles are the most scaredy-shit animal on the planet and probably have been for eons.

I've lived around Barney for 13 years and yet still, tomorrow morning when I walk up to him and say “Hellooooo little green Barn-barn! Oh your such a good witto totto, aren't you?! Yes you are! Yes you are!!” he'll immediately retract all appendages as if I were a violent nut case. Imagine if he actually ever encountered a real violent nut case. He would probably turn himself inside out.

Generally my nocturnal panic sessions would start, I imagine, after being awakened from the midst of some freaky dream by a 'coon or the like on my roof or a mouse in my walls. Then I would lie awake. Listening for the intruders. Perhaps they were already in the house. Maybe they've been in the basement for days waiting for me to drop my guard before they creep upstairs and bludgeon me with a log while I sleep.

One thing is for sure. There is no way any killer could walk up the stairs in that creaky old house without being heard. So if I were him I'd... already be upstairs! This is why I kept golf clubs leaning against the walls in ever room of my house. Yes I know. An intruder could just as easily use my own clubs against me but at least it could be a fair fight. “Let's see? A lofted iron against a belly putter... Okay, you gotta give me two strokes cold-blooded killer dude. Wait. I think I'm gonna go with the dual wedge after all.”

In the end, the primal pull of exhaustion would always win out over my feeble fight to stay alert. And since I was never, in fact, murdered I guess I should thank our distant ancestors who found it more evolutionarily successful to get a good night's sleep than to stay awake fretting over possible stalking predators. It could easily have been the opposite. Then I suppose we'd all be walking around like zombies during the day.

One night, recently, I was awakened by neighbors noisily arriving home from a night of carousing or whatever. In my first semiconscious moments I was again back in the isolated old farmhouse which was suddenly besieged by a pack of wilding teenagers. Quickly enough lucidity set in and I returned my racing-but-slowing heart to its cleaved chest and that chest to my bed. A bed warmed in the reality that, no I was not about to be assaulted by rapacious, conscience-free youths, doused in gasoline and burned alive into a Pompeiiesque cinder statue but rather had only been awakened by my asshole neighbors, bless their sweet, inconsiderate, non-murderous hearts.

Living, again, amongst others has brought an end to these foolishly fearful fits. Should I someday fall prey to a sociopathic, black-hearted ripper I will be comforted, ensconced as I am in my new urbanhood, by the thought of having dozens of people within earshot willing to ignore my blood curdling midnight screams and subsequently explaining away the vaguely fusty corpse smell twinging their nostrils every time they walk past my perpetually darkened house. These are the twin pillars upon which community is built, Or whatever.

Sincerely,
“Halloween Hobo” to you

p.s. Right now I'm lying in bed playing eyeball parallax. “Right eye... left eye... right eye... left eye... right eye... lef right eye... left eye.” Beat that Nintendo Wii!

Coffee table to nowhere

2007-10-16T14:57:00.001-07:00

I've never owned a coffee table. Let me restate that. I never owned a coffee table until recently. My thrift-gifted uncle found me a second-hand one a few weeks ago which cost $4.88. It's worth every dime. But not a penny more.

Now, I know what you're thinking: “An essay about a coffee table must mean the writer is talking about more than just a coffee table.” Okay so maybe I didn't know what you were thinking but you bring up a good point. Perhaps my new coffee table is more than just a coffee table. Maybe it's a metaphorical expression of a new elevated sense of self-worth. A concretion of the abstract feeling of loftiness I've been experiencing of late. A sign that I've begun to rise above my once cold, dusty existence. If only 15 inches. After all, I've finally got a coffee table, arguably the most frivolous of home furnishings, so I must be doing something right. Right? Don't answer that.

Now before you start to think of me as some highfalutin dandy you should know that my coffee table is what most would call low-rent. (And everyone else would call kindling.) It's sturdy and functional and serves its purpose. It's also able to go above and beyond the call of coffee table duty just like any self-respecting coffee table should. Not only will it support a mug of piping french roast and the odd selection of periodicals, but one could sit on it for a spell or even step up momentarily to, say, change a light bulb or pile-drive your little brother. But it's low-rent so that's about the limit. I mean, I'm not going to be having intercourse on this coffee table. It's much too spindly for that. Again, I know what your thinking: “It isn't the coffee table's fault you're not going to be having intercourse on it. You're pretty spindly yourself, ya know,” so let me cut you off right there before this gets personal.

As I was saying, my coffee table is low-rent. If it were a bridge, it would be a causeway. It's more than a ford, though. A ford coffee table would just be a board lying on the floor in front of the sofa that you would trip over when you got up to go to the bathroom during every commercial break. (Note to reader: You should really have that over active bladder thing checked out by the way.) And it's no poetic suspension span linking my couch to my fireplace, that's for sure. No. If my coffee table were a bridge it would be a causeway. Ably transporting traffic over a shallow obstacle while also providing open water access for local anglers and breeding niches for sea birds (or vice versa), yet easily wiped out by even a modest hurricane/earthquake/alien invasion (all hail Supreme Commander Zark). Like I said, worth ever dime. But not a penny more.

Now, I don't want to get into a tussle over definitions with all the civil engineers out there. I could take one or two of you but in a gang I've heard you fight dirty. Let's just face it. My coffee table is nothing but that. Four secure, if skinny, brass tipped legs under 900 square inches of pressboard topped with a cheap faux veneer which goes particularly poorly with all the other various wood grains around the room. It's nothing but a place to put a colorful array of magazines, only one of which I actually subscribe to and none of which I really read, whose sole purpose I can only imagine is to be excitedly swept aside in a moment of unbridled amorous passion before the whole thing collapse, Icarus-like, back to the cold, dusty hardwood floor below.

And if you believe that'll ever happen, I've got a coffee table to sell you... for $4.88 and not a penny more.

Pompousness and Circumferencestance

2007-10-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

Dear students, faculty, President Andrews, Provost Schluter, Dean Nielsen, Dean Mpherhr, Dean Ghrerfrgr, other Dean Ghrerfrgr, distinguished guests, parents both birth and other kinds, various family members and relatives, real uncles and “uncles”, loved ones and merely tolerated ones, as yet unborn offspring unnoticed and noticed alike,

It is my great pleasure and a sincere honor to be well-paid to address you today on this, the most momentous day of your young lives. For today youth and hope and promise eternally springs eternal and the promise of eternal springtime is hopefully not promised today so much as it is hoped for eternally. But if you'll allow me to begin again...

As I was saying. Hope is not eternally promised to the youthful, I promise you that. I also promise you this: There may come a day, surely, maybe, when the young youth of today are not so hopeful and full of promise as they were in their younger youth. I hope your hopeful youth promises to last an eternity for you. But hopeless promises are made to be broken... If you'll allow me to begin once more...

Young ladies and gentlemen, you are the promise of, or rather the hoped for, or further rather the hope of today. I stand before you as the hope of yesterday and I promise you this: hope is not all it's cracked up to be. Yes I stand before you today, well-paid and full of yesterday's promises and its hope too. By that I mean the hope which was promised me yesterday is with me eternally today. Not really yesterday but rather quite a while ago really.

Yes, yesterday's hope was not what it was cracked up to be. I stand before you as testament to that statement of testimony. Yes, I am well-paid, but, no, not as well-paid as was promised me yesterday. Again, not really yesterday but further back than that. The promised pay which I eternally hoped for was not all it was cracked up to be, I assure you of that. And of this: I hope your promises today are all they are cracked up to be and hopefully well-paid for, too, by tomorrow. By that I mean rather a long time past tomorrow actually. But not an eternity.

Today, the real today, is the most momentous day of your young youth, I can assure you of that. Hopefully it is all it was cracked up to be for you. For me today's today has not been what was promised but that is hopefully why I'm rather well-paid for it.

Young ladies and gentlemen, promise to promise me this one thing: Promise me that tomorrow will be an even more momentous day than today was, rather is.

And promise me these other things.

Promise me that tomorrow, rather the further tomorrow from the real tomorrow, will spring as full of promise as today is, rather has, sprung full of promise or hope.

Promise me that, and this: That this spring day today will, rather is, hopefully as cracked up as tomorrow's day is, rather will be, be it a spring day or be it not.

And in conjunction, promise me one more thing young ladies and gentlemen. Promise me that rather than hoping for being well-paid-for for tomorrow that your promises will, rather are, being paid well for it today! And eternally!

Students and faculties and their parents, President Schleicher, Provost Anderson, Dean Nelsen, Dean Mghrphr, Dean Ghrarfrgher, other Dean Ghrarfrgher, guests, indistinguished and the other kind,

Thank you all sincerely and rather heartfeltedly for well-paying me to address you on this mostly momentous of your young days!

Will it make me sweat? Will it make me wet?

2007-10-09T12:20:00.000-07:00

Dear Lovers, Dreamers,

Triple cereal mix: Oatmeal, Grape-nuts and Raisin Bran (all low-rent store brands) with a drenching of vegan half and half (one part soy milk, one part water). That's what was for dinner tonight in case you'd like to know. Of course I just found out that the gum I'm chewing has milk derived ingredients in it. So now veal calves must suffer because I want whiter teeth. Way to go Trident. Dumb asses.

Boy was that ever a crappy start to a blog post. Anyone still even reading? Let's try a different tact. How 'bout romance?

I'm one small step closer to saving the life of the girl-whose-laugh-is-as-lovely-as-she-is from Supreme Commander Zark's apocalyptic wrath (casual readers, late-comers, and others not yet indoctrinated check the archives here and here). Lucky for her she chose to not hang up on me when I asked her out, otherwise she'd be sorry. Apocalyptic alien wraths have a tendency to sting a bit.

On the subject of stinging, rejection can feel downright wrath-ish from time to time as well. So here was my strategy for the aforementioned phone proposition. (Feel free to pinch it, hopeful lovers-to-be.) The call is placed during the last few minutes of a break between rehearsal segments. That way, in the event of a negative response the option of a quick termination of the inevitable ensuing awkward conversation is afforded when the oboe's A is heard sounding in the background.

Sure. Such a scenario could be affected quite readily through the use of a tuner held at arm's length but who wants to not start a potential relationship with a dishonest post-rejection awkwardness avoidance excuse? Not me. That's not who. Besides, in case you haven't been paying attention it doesn't matter anyway cuz I wasn't rejected for some reason which I don't pretend to understand.

Which brings to light the only flaw in my strategy: If there is no rejection, by definition there will not be any post-rejection awkwardness. Thus you're left with mere moments to express your pleasure and thanks at not being rejected and to generally wrap things up including making future meeting plans if need be. This is not much time to beam and bask and can lead to a hurried and confusing post-acceptance conversation. Score one for the shady tuner method which offers more in the way of flexibility.

In other news, my third and final orchestra is up and running for the season. We played Hindemith's Symphonic Metamorphosis, Rachi 2 and Elgar's Enigma Variations in QC last weekend. The Saturday night show was exciting and not just because I had the Elgar open on my stand at the beginning of the concert instead of the Hindemith. (I thought the conductor's prep seemed rather more vigorous than the Enigma theme warranted. And it was aimed right at the principal and me (2nd) as if the two of us started the whole piece fortissimo or somethi... OH SHIT!)

The Sunday matinee felt exactly the opposite of exciting due solely to my own foul and frustrated mood. A state of mind which stemmed from a weekend of restaurant socializing in table-clumping-sized groups with everyone except the only person I wanted to be talking to at all who happened to be sitting right next to me for most meals: the-girl-whose-laugh-is-as-lovely-as-she-is.

Okay, maybe my Sunday grumpiness was also due a little bit to a Saturday night hot tub party that fell through just like all the other grandiose post-concert plans we make during QC sets even though I did push-ups before the concert and wore a swimming suit under my tux just because of it. I mean, jeez! But it's all good now.

Oh, I guess there is one more flaw in my post-rejection awkwardness avoidance strategy. In the event of either rejection or acceptance you've got to get through the rest of rehearsal in a very distracted state. You're either cursing her AND the key change you just missed or dreamily wondering what she's doing that very second before wondering somewhat less dreamily what the fuck the count is.

And,
Me

p.s. What is the count, anyway?
5? (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
12?! (2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Letter what?!!
OH SHIT!!

Be like water my friend...

2007-10-09T11:37:00.000-07:00

I found this noble looking predator tucked in the weedy bushes in front of my farm house sometime during the Summer of 2006. October's BOTM, the Chinese Mantis (Tenodera aridifolia), was amongst a plethora of fat juicy grass hoppers that summer but unfortunately I wasn't able to shoot a kill. She must have just eaten.

An inspiration to Asian martial arts, the mantis is one of the fastest striking insects on earth and can catch flies and bees out of mid-flight. The intricate details on her exoskeleton and wing covers are evocative of a samurai warrior's armor.

The Chinese mantis was introduced here in the late 19th century for insect pest control (though they've been known to prey on small birds and mice as well) and they are wide-spread today. They are the largest type of mantis and my friend here spanned about 5 or 6 inches. She also kept the two most flexible and complex of her five eyes fixed on me the entire time!

A cafeteria-style ramble

2007-10-04T11:49:00.000-07:00

Dear Peeps,

Marshmallows are not vegan. Remember that the next time you're camping cuz that s'more between your sticky little fingers is contributing to not only the slaughter, dismemberment and rendering of our highly sociable, fairly large-brained, fellow mammals, but also their idyllic, grazing-on-endless-rolling-green-pasture, pastoral pre-death existence. Well, okay. I'll give you that such a life doesn't sound all together bad but if you'll just allow me a moment to quickly google “peta beef talking points”

...

Ah yes! The crowded feed lots. You must not forget the feed lots! Remember how crappy the cafeteria lunch was in high school? Recall being herded to the chow trough where we were only offered food which we could not digest properly for apparently the sole reason of fattening us up on the cheap? Remember the crowded, stressful and volatile conditions, being forced into close quarters with countless others from disparate social groups, left to fend for ourselves within a suddenly unfamiliar and unknowable pecking order. Remember how it felt for you?

Okay so the chicken patties and pizza rectangles were pretty tasty and you didn't have to wallow in a communal mix of feces and mud, at least not literally (unless you were public schooled you poor bastard) and the fetid stench of death didn't waft through your nostrils when the wind blew wrong (except for that one time Ms Bigowsky's ferret some how got stuck in the oven vent over homecoming weekend... and I s'pose during fetal pig dissection week in freshman bio... or, again, unless you were public schooled you poor bastard). But no analogy rings true on all levels.

What the hell was my point anyway? Ah yes. Next time you're camping try substituting a nice juicy cube of tofu for the marshmallow in your s'more and enjoy your treat with a clean conscience, of course conveniently ignoring the fact that millions of field-dwelling animals are massacred during each soybean harvest. But I mean, c'mon. It's not like you were drivin' the tractor. (Gourmet hint: Non-silken tofu which has been frozen, thawed, microwaved and pressed dry is the most easily toastable. Extra chocolate is strongly encouraged. Enjoy!)

If you'll permit me to switch gears without engaging the clutch, a new acquaintance of mine (whose laugh is as lovely as she is, sigh...) recently paid both a parking ticket and a speeding ticket at the same time. I think that about covers the spectrum of vehicular penalties, doesn't it? You're fined when your car is sitting perfectly still while you're no where near it and you're fined when your car is going as fast as possible while you're gripping the wheel for dear life. They gotcha comin' and they gotcha goin', or not goin' as the case maybe.

Grind-grind-grind ka-chunk! Ya know the BNL song that goes, “if I had a million dollars I'd buy you a green dress but not a real green dress cuz that's cruel”? Well, if I had a million dollars I'd probably buy you that used green fan boat sitting for sale beside the I-80 westbound lanes near mile-marker 266 (Iowa).

Okay if it was only a million I probably wouldn't spend a dime on you unless you had a great sob story or gorgeous, cascading hair. I mean let's face it. We really hardly know each other. If I gave you a used green fan boat how do I know you wouldn't go right out and use it to run meth across state lines for Carlos from Burlington (cuz fan boats are sooo stealthy).

Granted there is a good buck in that racket, especially since Iowa meth is primo. So I've heard. It must be all that high quality ammonia fertilizer we have sitting around here. Let's see. What's worse: Spraying it on all the “fields of dreams” so it can leach into the ground water or run off into tributaries of the Ol' Miss eventually settling in the “as seen from space!” dead-zone of that great river's silt-bed delta? -OR- Covertly and dangerously manufacturing an intensely addictive illegal drug which results in, yeah sure okay, risk of prison or death by DUI, highly questionable sexual decisions, a sunken, leathery complexion coupled with patchy hair loss and ultimately destroyed youth, but also some real fun times?! My dear reader, the answer's obvious if you've ever eaten really good blackened Cajun river catfish. It's to die for!

I'll say no more, since my chunk o' Ciabatta and mug of double-brewed French roast (home-baked and home-brewed respectively lest you think I'm posting from some sickeningly pretentious coffee house) are about gone. But let me leave you with this admonition: Beware the impending alien invasion for I have it on good authority that only “hardcore meth/tofu addicts currently in drug/soy induced coma-like states and their pretty, new, oft-ticketed girlfriends will be spared Supreme Commander Zark's rath [sic]!”

Take good care heathens,
Parochial school prig

Apple a day

2007-10-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

Reader Warning: BAP (Boring-Ass Post)

Dear Homo sapiens sapiens,

We started our season in Des Moines last night with JB. Sadly the house was far from packed (2700+ seats) but we wise musicians speculated that the somewhat sparse audience had less to do with the week-night show, potential TV competition or any lack of draw from our sexy soloist than it had to do with the $85 ticket price. You pay $85 to hear Madonna for two hours in the Metrodome, not the Bruck Violin Concerto plus a couple of encores in the Des Moines Civic Center.

Aside from the numerous empty seats the show was arguably the best we've played in a while (well, since I've been a member any way). Lots of good comments about the horns in Don Juan and Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien was good, clean, vivacious fun. Bell was marvelous and easily won over those who grumbled about his pedestrian choice of rep. The guy can play.

On the topic of grumbling, our double service yesterday induced the usual gratis “catered” bag-dinner which included a heretofore unavailable vegetarian option. Usually I swap my ham or turkey for an extra brownie or bag of chips. Yesterday the new vegetarian bag was the best choice in my opinion. A delightful papillae potpourri of lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, avocado, onions and sprouts with a dash of vinegar and oil on soft earthy marble rye and a knee-buckling brownie so rich its dark chocolatey-ness osmosizes straight through your mouth's mucous membrane entering the blood stream directly for a short trip to the brain's pleasure center.

My only meal complaint concerns the little sealed plastic bag of apple slices. An apple is one of the most perfect foods on the planet. It comes with it's own water proof, disease resistant wrapper which is edible. You can throw it in a backpack as is, leave it for days at just about any temperature and then eat nearly the entire thing (and plant the rest if your so inclined). Are there really able bodied people older than the age of 4 who need someone to separate the seeds and stem from the rest of an apple, then slice it up perfectly evenly and place it in a hermetically sealed package? Aren't we the same species which attained top-predator status using stone tool technology? Give us a credit card sized chunk obsidian and we used to be able to skin a still-breathing mastodon. Yet now we must have defenseless fruit prepared for our unencumbered consumption. Well that's not entirely true because that little bag was a real bitch to open. Still, it's enough to make one ashamed to be a homo. Next time, lunch dude, just drop a damn apple in the damn bag! (But make sure it's not a damn Red Delicious cuz they suck royally.)

Yours,
Monkey Man

p.s. Possible rejected pilot: The Neolithic Vegetarian.

GORK: Why Urk no eat mammoth meat?
URK: Urk no think mammoth need to suffer just so Urk can enjoy good burger.
GORK: But Urk's brain stay small then.
URK: No. Urk's brain swells because of too much soy in diet, studies show.
...

Freudian Sleep?

2007-09-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

Dear dearest,

Oh what a dream! Wanna hear about? Well, if you insist. It was a two parter. In both parts I was being introduced all around some campus by a friend of mine from my physics days as his new boyfriend. Thankfully there was no sex involved in the sleepy script. In real-land, of course, I am not gay. In fact in dream-land I wasn't gay either but merely getting caught up in everyone else's happiness for us.

This friend of mine, who in fact also isn't gay, is the slightest apostrophe of a man, not topping 5 foot 5 and 100 lbs soaking wet with pockets fulla pennies. He's Indian and speaks the Queen's English with the diction of a machine gun but rarely much above a whisper and his language is so bloody perfectly that I had a hard time understanding a word that came out of his mouth.

In fact, if I were to invent a beginning to this dream I'd say that's how I got roped into the whole gay confusion in the first place; he said something I didn't understand but readily and heartily agreed to nevertheless. This happened often in real-land since one can only utter, “Pardon?” some many times.

Anyway, by Act II he had mercifully morphed into various women. For a brief, but glorious car trip she was the gorgeous woman with the cascading coffee hair (whom I want, whom I really, really want). In the dream she was sitting shotgun and I was sitting behind her, which incidentally used to be my most common view of her in real-land. Not in a car mind you, just the back of her head, hence the emphasis on her hair I suppose. Which is gorgeous, by the way. And cascading.

The short of it is that we were picking her up after a time away (my sister was driving). I was in back eating candy for some reason and my conversation with Gorgeous Hair devolved into her commenting on how unusual it was for me to be eating candy, which is true, and me insinuating back at her that she has hardly known me long enough to establish whether it is unusual for me to be eating candy or not, which as I said she was right about. Apparently I'm a great big asshole in dream-land. In fact I wonder what my little Indian boyfriend even saw in me?

Anyway, the resultant argument would have been a doozy because not only did Gorgeous Hair turn all the way around in her seat to look me in the eyes while she spoke, but she removed the headrest from the top of the seat-back in order to get an unobstructed view of me! Or maybe an unobstructed swing at me! I'm can't remember which. And I don't even care. My dreams are the only chance I get to see her these days so I always wake up happy after them regardless of the character of their content.

Long story short, by the end “she” was back to a “he” after assuming the visage of a number of real-land hotties and the alarm clock ripped the record needle just after I was realizing that this whole relationship was doomed from the start because I, in fact, am not gay.

So if I believed dreams were anything but useless garbage, which I don't, this one could definitely be tied in some way to anxiety over being set up, I guess. Maybe.

It was really, really nice that Gorgeous Hair made a dream-land appearance though. I'd toss and turn my way through any number of cold-sweat inducing gay relationship dreams to see her again.

Sleepily,
Zzzzzz

Now take your time 'cause this is your P-I-G shot

2007-09-23T18:47:00.000-07:00

Dear people,

If you had tracked me around today, like in one of those boring-ass Family Circus comics, this morning you would have found me in the recording studio (i.e. my basement) pounding out takes of All-State audition etudes for highschoolers who apparently cannot read music and thus only play by ear.

In the afternoon, had you been able to track me down 80 miles westward of my basement you would have needed to look for me in the bucket of a front-end-loader 12 feet in the air, chainsaw in hand, pruning fence-line trees. It might not seem like it but this is the kind of dirty job that requires you to not only shower afterwards but floss, too. Thankfully I only almost fell twice but severed just $2400 worth of appendages which, coincidentally and unfortunately, happens to be my new per-occurrence-per-person insurance deductible to the dollar. Gosh that's such rotten luck! One more toe and MEGA would have been losing money right outta the blocks.

Since you brought it up, I wonder what the details and small print say about that species of deductible. I mean, if I lost three fingers in an onion-mincing mishap does that count as three separate occurrences? Do I have to cut them off simultaneously to get them considered a single occurrence? If not, how much time must elapse between each severage? Are a few minutes enough or would 24 hours be necessary? Or is it more a question of context? Do I need to loose each finger on consecutive onions to accrue fresh new deductibles? I'll bet it's per doctor visit. If that is indeed the case then the next time I find myself heading to the ER wearing a hand towel as a tourniquet I may as well add the odd day-to-day afflictions into the mix as well.

“What's that doctor? You say I'll need 1,400 stitches and a blood transfusion? How 'bout throwin' in a little something for the cold sores, ingrown toenail, profuse rectal bleeding and periodic asymmetric medial numbness while you're on the clock?”

But that's another post. Honestly, it probably isn't another post. I'm done with that topic for good. In fact I'm pissed you even mentioned it! God!

Now where on earth was I? Let's see, recording, chainsawing, oh yes: ping-pong with 8-year-olds. Again in a basement. But I don't think it can really be considered ping-pong when there are 8-year-olds involved. Paraplegic garden gnomes could have returned my shots better. And don't get me started on serving technique. The ball contacted the table in only the most incidental manner imaginable as if it were just another obstacle in the room.

“Oh look. The ball landed in the litter box. Oh, it ricocheted off the weight bench. Oh, your serve managed to nick the edge of the table. On your side.”

But give 'em credit. Eight-year-olds are the only ones on the planet who willingly turn a game of p-i-g into an aerobic activity. P-i-g! The basketball game you play when you're too tired or lazy to even just shoot around so you decide to intersperse the shooting around part with standing around watching everyone else shoot around. Eight-year-olds are breathing hard by the end of p-i-g for two reasons: 1) Endless half court drives resulting in missed layups and 2) retrieving the ball not only for themselves when it's their turn to shoot but for me as well when it's my turn to shoot. Hey, I said they turned it into an aerobic activity. I didn't say I joined in the madness.

Besides, this pre-adolescent gopher behavior lasts for only a brief period. A couple-three years at the most. After that it's all, “get yer own ball, dork.” This is definitely fodder for another post since I remember my younger brother's gopher phase fondly. Make it a competition and he would do just about anything for anyone. It was Xanadu. But I digress. And regress.

Back to absurd aerobic activities, I may be getting set up this weekend. Well it's more accurate to say I may be getting checked out this weekend. The sister of a friend of a friend (sounds reliable already, don'it?) lives near me and is apparently as adept at hooking up on her own as am I. Machinations behind the scenes include a comp ticket to the CRSO season opener for said sister of a friend of a friend which she can then use to appraise the merchandise. And, speaking as the merchandise, that may be where things end.

I don't even have her name. And only the vaguest of physical descriptions: tall and blond. (Hmm... maybe it's Bridgette Nielsen.) These are adjectives for womanly qualities about which I never find myself caring: height and hair color. Whatever? I have requirements on width but not height. And my only capelli concerns are that a woman should have hair of some sort.

...

Okay so I just spent several minutes completely adrift in thought about a woman whom I want, whom I really-really want, who has gorgeous hair, like a cascade of dark rich coffee... without the penchant for mold growth after sitting in a mug for a week, or the insomniatic effects when enjoyed in the evening. Actually she has insomniatic effects on me but not entirely due to her gorgeous hair. Maybe I'm more hair-centric than I thought. So sue me.

What a day! What a life. To paraphrase one of my favorite stand-ups, T, “This is really quite a life I've made for myself. No one can take it away from me. And no one's trying.”

Yours,
Me

Supreme Commander Zark uh... commands you to bear his younguns

2007-09-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

pre script: Oh my head! Migraine, migraine this is your final warning. Come back again some other morning. Preferably one when you're duly and justly deserved such as after a debauched night of boozing and whoring or whatever. To paraphrase John Houseman, “I want a headache the old fashioned way: I want to earrrrrrn it.”

Dear fellow earth fellows,

Two posts in one day! To what do you owe this pleasure, you don't ask? I bleepin care about you, that's what. Now go bleepin get me a bleepity-bleep beer you bleep. Bleep!

Speaking of trash talk, I put the garbage and recycling out this morning for the first time in my city-house-renting life. When I was all rural I stored up whatever I couldn't burn or compost. Then on the day of my move one big trip to the county landfill and seven measly bucks took care of two years worth of horded debris. The gratis dump stench was an added bonus and is not to be missed. (Humorous dad-quote from that day which doesn't seem so humorous out of context: ”Well? Let's go haul some garbage!”) Oh, but don't haul garbage to the county landfill in flip-flops. For if you do, may God have mercy upon your soles.

But that's another post. I'm not going to live in the past anymore. I'm going to live in the present. The moment. The now. Omm. That is, at least until it stops being so g.d. exciting around here with all the garbage and recycling and yard-waste trucks rumbling by or whatever. Then I'll live in the future in a shiny metallic jumpsuit and riding boots waiting for our post-alien-invasion existence when human men will become the bearers of extrasolar mutant half-breeds and human women will be forced to do godknowswhat to preserve the species. You go girls!

Actually that doesn't sound all bad so long as a human guy hooks up with the right alien. One with influence or whatever.

So long alien fodder,
The future Mrs. Zark
(Hey a post-apocalyptic human guy can dream can't he?)

Cancer, TV, and Impending Doom (in no particular order)

2007-09-19T12:43:00.001-07:00

Dear losers,

Ever chew gum long after it becomes tasteless and your jaw starts to ache? That's what I'm doing now. I used to be a big gum swallower but not any more. I don't know why I changed. I don't think it had anything to do with cancer or the like. I mean I'm not one of these morons who thinks swallowed gum festers in the small intestines for 7 years or anything. Though, come to think of it, that might explain a lot.

I am pissed about just now finding out that reused plastic water bottles can leach bad things. When did this little detail come out? Did the scare-you-shitless news media drop the ball on that one or am I just outta the loop? Do I need to get my tv back out of my parent's basement where I put it so it can't hurt anyone anymore? (Actually it's there 'cause of a girl but who's counting? And no. I, myself, am not also in said basement. Sure, I am a freelance musician but, I mean, give me some credit.)

Now where was I. Oh yes. Carcinogens. I reused water bottles (some for up to two years!) while living in the boonies. Practically every ounce of well-water I drank was meticulously filtered and stored for a time in a reused plastic water bottle. I thought I was saving the environment. Turns out I may have been polluting my spleen instead or whatever. If I get cancer somewhere down the road that's probably why, and you heard it here first losers.

Speaking of catastrophic illness I got me some catastrophic insurance yesterday from a bagpipe playing insurance agent. You can't go wrong with a piper in my book. (Fun fact: a kilt is not cool in the summer. It's just 40 lbs of sweaty wool. Who knew?) He seemed rather shocked that I hadn't seen a doctor since the late 80's, and rightly so. I wouldn't trust any insurance man who wasn't shocked by that. And he kindly advised me to change my story concerning blackmarket asthma medication, which I dutifully did. I lied about recent tobacco use, though. I smoked a pipe not one week ago and he didn't need to know it. In fact no one needs to know it so forget I said anything. I don't think that counts anyway because cigarettes are cool but a pipe just makes you feel stupid. And nauseous.

In other sickening news: Do you wanna cry? Do you really wanna cry or are you just sayin you wanna cry? Okay then ya big baby. Watch the complete first 3 seasons of “Ballykissangel” and put up with the Irish accents and corny subplots. (But don't watch the dvd extras on disc one, season one because they contain major spoilers with no warning, courtesy of those heartless BBC bastards!) You will weep unless you're a heartless bastard too. Or a protestant one.

Of course maybe I'm subconsciously just still mourning the 2006 cancellation of “Deadwood” which I only recently found out about through creator David Milch's commentary on that show's season 3 finale. “Deadwood” was Shakespeare with swearing, sixguns and saloons and it was too good for this world. If I'd still had my tv back then (and premium cable rather than a roof antenna) maybe I could have joined the fan effort to keep it on the air. Maybe I could've made a difference. Instead I found out that it'd been canceled about the same time the alien troops amassing at the solar system's heliopause did. Strike one Netflix! To paraphrase the great Jerome Seinfeld, “I gotta get on that cable! I'm late on everything!”

Time to spit stale gum.

May Supreme Commander Overlord Zark have mercy upon your souls you alien attack losers.

Ironman Wisconsin

2007-09-12T11:57:00.000-07:00

Last weekend the fine city of Madison, WI was besieged by thousands of people with way too much time on their hands and even more fire in their bellies. No, the city didn't host the World Series of Poker or the Antique Road Show. These people were playing against the odds and knew what it was that lay before them. These people were athletes. Their race? The Ironman Wisconsin. A struggle of stamina along a trio of epic distances lasting from sun-up to well past sun-down.

I watched two of my sisters compete amongst the 3000 other crazies and, just as with other Iron-siblings before them, they became my new endurance heroes. With their successful completion of the 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run they join the burgeoning pantheon of Ironmen* in my family which now includes two in-laws, a brother, and two sisters.

As with the solitary marathon years earlier we mere family-fans feel the push of our genetic peers to compete in this all-consuming race. The interesting thing about watching an Ironman, however, is that it wears down the observer too. The Ironman triathlon is the only race I've watched in which the initial inspiration felt while spectating ebbs considerably before the race itself actually concludes.

While watching all those swimmers, neoprened from ankle to wrist, emerging from Lake Monona I was imagining myself doing laps at the local aquatic center two blocks from my house (in which I've never set foot), and even signing up for private swim lessons!

During the bike stage I wondered how it would feel to bike over a century on my sturdy, hand-me-down, loose chained mountain bike. Then, while watching the teardrop-helmeted elites lap up amateurs on their spokeless carbon composites (which would pass us sightseers sounding like something out of War of the Worlds) I wondered how much it would cost not to feel that way.

But by the end of the marathon I found myself simply wishing my hero sisters would run faster and just finish already because my feet were sore. And if my dogs were barking from all the walking, standing and waiting, just try and imagine what theirs felt like.

*I was ambivalent about the use of 'Ironwomen' versus 'Ironman' but one of my Ironsisters suitably persuaded me that 'Ironman' need not be gender specific. So stick that in your p.c. pipe and spin.

Cute as a... well? Bug! But watch your acorns!

2007-09-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

No that isn't a euphemism in the title. September's BOTM is the Acorn Weevil (Curculio glandium) and she will do a number on your actual acorns. Her obvious stand-out feature is her snout or "rostrum" which is longer on females than males. Since this one seems to have a shnoz from Oz I am assuming femininity but I've been wrong with this before (and not just with bugs!).

The rostrum has jaws at the end which the female uses to gnaw through the tough outer shell of an acorn. Once gaining access to the soft nutty insides she deposits a fertilized egg which promptly hatches, consumes the nut's inner goodness and drops to the soil below to pupate or what not.

I found this girl strolling clownishly on the window sill in my living room. She stopped for a drink at a glass's water ring, posing politely while I snapped away. Check out more images of this funny little bug here, including a heart stopping run in with a spider!

Shhhhhh! and Brrrrrrrr!

2007-08-28T14:34:00.000-07:00

I've been having trouble with my internet connection for the past few days (meaning the neighbor from whom I was stealing it moved out). So I took a one block walk down to the local library and to my delight found wireless access and meatlocker-style air conditioning. Local income taxes hard at work keeping the poor stiff-nippled and online. And I didn't even need to sign up for a library card! I also found a fair share of screaming babies, whining toddlers and various other rambunctious kids roaming unchecked. Apparently public libraries double as free daycare centers in the summer. But I brought headphones and so am in my own world oblivious to all the mayhem (right now that world is Bach's Goldberg Variations being played by SD).

My latest obsession: the Crackpot Comedy Tour. They're starting their second tour and have video updates and blog entries. I think they're shorts-soilingly funny. Well this taxpayer funded AC is beginning to make my teeth chatter and lunch is calling. A delicate wheatchex/miniwheats mix in water, a plum and maybe some baked beans. Buon pranzo!

Exfoliant or luffa... or both?!

2007-08-27T00:26:00.000-07:00

I'm a freelance musician... and that means two things: poverty and a lot of time on the road, in hotels or at other people's houses. Hotels are great but I like staying at other people's houses because no matter who they are they always have better shit than me. Their bathroom is like a spa, man! I've got two things in my shower: shampoo and soap. And the cheapest kind of each, too. The shampoo is always that generic head 'n shoulders. That blue crap. Maybe if I'm feeling rich when I'm at the WalMart I get the shampoo plus conditioner in one.

But when I stay at other people's houses it's like a spa, man. There's separate shampoo and conditioner in there! And body wash and special soap for your face and exfoliants and luffas! And sometimes there's a whole shelf of shampoos. Then they have fancier shower heads than me, too. Mine's always caked with that mineral build-up and the water comes out of one hole like a syringe. Their's is a police riot hose with a half dozen massage settings to try out! I go to take a shower and suddenly I've got all these decisions to make!

I never know the etiquette about using someone else's toiletries. I mean, I've always got my little bag with my own soap and shampoo, that cheap ass blue shit. But that's really more for emergencies, like if you end up having to shower backstage or something. I don't know the etiquette. Should I not be using the soap in other people's showers? I've got a brother who can't stand other people using his soap. As if a disease could be passed from one bather to another on a bar of soap. It's antibacterial! Says so right on the label! What? Is your soap made from that brown petri dish culture medium crap from eighth grade biology class? Are you lathering up with a six week old block of blue cheese in there? Please! Soap is clean, by definition. I think his phobia probably has more to do with stray hairs, actually, but that's just a matter of courtesy. Clean those hairs off when your done people.

But I never know the etiquette. Never know the protocol. Sometimes I'll be staying at someone's place and they'll have that squeegee in the shower. Am I supposed to use this thing when I'm done? Wipe off all the condensation from the shower door, the walls? You can really get into it. You gotta work around that wash cloth rack and the faucet knobs. It takes forever! Adds like five minutes to the whole routine. That combined with sampling all the massage settings and deciding on a shampoo/conditioner combination in conjunction with the normal bathing schedule and you're pushing twenty minutes of hygiene. And you can't spend longer than twenty minutes in someone else's bathroom. They might think you're masturbating.

We-Make-Holesinteeth! We-Make-Holesinteeth!

2007-08-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

<prebrush rinsing>
My oral hygiene routine is becoming increasingly expansive. It now involves four fluids (a prebrush rinse, a paste, a post floss rinse, and water) and two tools (a brush and floss) at least twice a day. The obvious next step is a waterpic or electric toothbrush or both! I think this is a compensation for the nearly decade and a half since my last visit to a dentist. "No pain, no worry" was always my mantra. That streak will come to an end next week sometime and should be blog-worthy.

<gone to spit>

<brushing>
I've always been told I have strong teeth. Only a couple cavities and I'm no stranger to sugar. Two-pound bags of Twizzlers are no match for me. A sister of mine on the other hand had a cavity in just about every tooth before highschool I think. And she always had zealously religious brushing habits. A flossing fundamentalist. Like the Taliban of tooth care! So ya never know. I'm tentatively curious about what they'll find going on in there. Plaque buildup? Tartar? Periodontal disease?

<gone to spit>

<flossing (can't type. checking email and weather)>

<post floss rinsing>
Really, what's the worst case scenario?

The hygienist calls to the rest of the office, "Hey guys! Get in here! You gotta see this!"

or,

"I'm sorry. There's nothing more we can do. We're going to have to refer you to a vet."

OR!

"You're gonna need some of these pulled. What do I mean by a 'some'? Well... Do you enjoy soup and pudding?"

<gone to spit>

<gone to bed>

Does its web not also imprison the spider, Grasshopper?

2007-08-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a great website for you budding entomologists and arachnologists. I could spend hours there. I took lots of photographs of bugs when I lived in the country. Now I can start classifying them and posting a Bug of the Month.

August's bug is the impressive Golden Orb Weaver (Argiope aurantia). I caught this one feasting on a large, and unlucky, grasshopper. The hoppers were so numerous last summer the field grass at times seemed animate, which may explain this spider's plump size (it was a little larger than my fist!). Actually I nearly walked face first into its web as I scrambled back up a hill through the brush. The females are about four times the size of the males so I hope this was a female! More pictures of her here.

It is not logical.

2007-08-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

Okay. Cereal three times today? I think I'm ready to unpack the pots and pans. Now what box were they in?... Ah, what's the rush? I like cereal. And is there some sort of banana embargo I don't know about? The banana island at the grocery store was completely barren this afternoon! Plenty of plums, loads of limes, acres of apples, gobs of grapefruit, millions of mangoes, billions of berries, piles of papayas, mountains of melons, an overflow of oranges, cases of kiwi... alright that's enough. But not one banana? And me wan go home. Maybe I just caught them on the cusp of a delivery cycle.

On another note I am enjoying having wireless internet at my house. No more delis or coffee shops just to check blogs or google something. And I can now easily discover interesting factoids on the spur of the moment. Such as: Did you know Quadre is 50% UW alumni at the moment? Two downsides I've noticed so far however:
(1) Netflix + horny/single + 24 internet access + privacy of own home = Bikini Squad showing up in mailbox three days later. I'm not proud. A review may be forth coming.
(2) Endless hours of The Daily Show and Colbert to catch up on! Good thing I'm (mostly) still on summer vacation.

Good luck with Dean CdeC! Stay hunkered down somewhere inland. I've never gone through a hurricane but I know someone who went through Frances and Charley in 1994. That was a bad season! Frances sat right over her city and spun for 24 hours barely drifting a few miles. She was safe but said the wind noise was so terrifyingly loud and constant that it became quite exhausting to endure. I hope you have a safe place to go and lots of cereal!

Go Cyclone-twisted-cardinal-thingies!!!

2007-08-19T18:03:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in my office with my feet up on my desk in my new house in my new city. Boxes are scattered about every room waiting to be emptied. I moved weeks ago but once I got the place livable details like books, pictures, curtains and clothes stayed packed away. I don't anticipate that changing too soon. I can walk from the bathroom to the kitchen relatively unimpeded. What else does a guy need?

Fall is in the air! Sure it's still 85 degrees and 90 percent humidity but music for the first sets of the season are beginning to arrive in the mail and calls for sub work are coming in. It's nice to finally wind down this barren summer and get regular gigs on the calendar (and regular checks rolling in!).

Next week I start a new job which is exciting. I'm looking forward to teaching these students but it's the horn seminar that has really got me thinking. I've never done anything like that before. If I'm doing it right, I should learn a lot preparing for this weekly lecture/discussion/chamber music/masterclass hour. I might troll for ideas sometime so beware.

I am conflicted about one thing: Most of my students are MusEd or non-majors but there is one freshman music performance major in the studio. I've yet to hear the student play but the fact remains, serious performance majors should be studying with professional musicians who have “made it”. I've cobbled together a nice freelance/adjunct existence but until I win some sort of full-time gig I'm not qualified to teach anyone else how to do the same. I've decided to devise a set of rules:

So you want to be a performance major?
(1) You must regularly seek out lessons with working, full-time, professional horn players. I know more than a few. I'll give you their numbers.
(2) You must attend summer festivals and learn where you rank among your peers.
(3) You must seriously consider a second major. Hey if athletes gotta learn something actually useful in order to play, why shouldn't you?
(4) You must seriously consider transferring to a reputable horn performance institution during your undergrad or, at the very least, attending one as a Master's student. (This rule may get me in trouble with my new boss so it will probably exist as “unwritten” but certainly not unstated.)

And just one rule for me, the teacher: Blow no smoke. Sure. Give the kid encouragement. Time to grow. Time to see how he or she develops as a player. See what kind of worker they are. See how bad they want it. But ultimately confront them with your opinion of their chances of success early enough in their academic career that they can change course.

Any other rules you all can think of?

Actually I think this sort of thing is often much less dramatic than it is played up to be. There are lot's of people, not just musicians, who graduate into competitive job markets without the requisite skills or talent to seriously contend for their dream job. And you know what? By and large they survive and find a place to call home and do just fine. There are lots of ways to make a living as a musician that don't require winning an audition against Curtis graduates. I just don't want to lead someone down a primrose path. I won't do that.

Now, if you'll excuse me, my Bonnie Rait playlist is almost up and I need to find the box with the tortilla chips in it so I can enjoy some of my brother's new wife's family's homemade salsa. (Follow that?)

Oh and by the way, I'll be posting every night for the next month as an experiment. I hope it doesn't start getting all stream-of-consciousness and shit by the end of the week!

Scrapped Dreams?

2007-07-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

Just a passing thought for those of us who've had limited audition success of recent. (Perhaps the previous owner wouldn't have felt the need to scrap the instrument had the slides been in the correct places!)

Rocky Mountain Rejection/Honolulu Hook

2007-05-26T21:29:00.000-07:00

0 for 3
I got back from Denver earlier this week and auditioned for Honolulu (in Chicago) yesterday. Won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say few people were being advanced at either site and I was among the many.

Notes:
(1) Driving and walking around downtown Chicago is always a blast (coming from rural Zwingle). There are so many people that I go into social-sensory overload. And the cab drivers'll run you up on the sidewalk as sure as look at you!

(2) Thanks to Pops for splitting the roadtrip/audition tour with me. The highpoint was seeing my great aunt and uncle and meeting my first cousin once removed and second cousins in Colorado (I think I've got that right). It reminds me that I come from good stock all around.

(3) Tomorrow is the Madison Marathon. I'm going to cheer on my younger brother and my sister in-law who are both trying to qualify for Boston. I'm not bummed at all about having to drop out of the race. It was the right thing to do and I'll get a better chance at it down the road. Hi-dee-ho!

One down. Five to go.

2007-05-19T19:36:00.003-07:00

(pisser)
You know the saying about New York?

"If you can make it there you can make it anywhere!"

Well might there be an inverse one about Sioux Falls, South Dakota?

"If you can't make it here, quit trying!"

No luck for me in the city which is mostly remembered by people, if it is remembered at all, for simultaneous floods and fires. It was a nice surprise to see Spot in the middle of nowhere (would you really give up a nice "cushy" opera gig in Europe to play in South Dakota?!) and my friend SM, both of whom advanced (Yeah!! Who won guys?).

I did not advance (pisser). Generally speaking, when the first note out of the horn is fracked, that's a bad sign. Other things were going well but just too many chips here and there and everywhere. I was waiting for the proctor to ask the committee if they needed more salsa!

I am glad my friends got to stick around a bit longer. I just wish I was able to as well. In part because I know they are good horn players and so, by association, if I were among them in the later rounds I must be a good horn player too.

Instead I sit sulking somewhere in the middle of Nebraska en route to Denver for stop #2 on Spring Audition Tour '07. To paraphrase Sinatra, "Ya can't cheat the notes. Ya gotta sing um." Here's hoping I hit a few more of those notes next Tuesday. (pisser)

Small Sad World

2007-05-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

I was just checking some other horn player blogs for the week and came upon the sad news of KM's tragic death, along with that of his fiance and the other plane crash victims. I spent a summer in Austria with K and can attest to his gregarious spirit, generous and warm manner, and wonderful musicianship. I remember his method for auditioning. He would play every excerpt from memory while closing his eyes and visualizing being conducted through it. I ran into him once more since then in Ann Arbor, MI for an audition for the symphony there a few years back. We caught up in a very friendly manner even though I called him 'Chris' upon first seeing him again. He then proceeded to kick mine and everyone else's butt and win the position.

Season Ending Stock-Taking

2007-05-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

The seasons have all ended. In a great way, too, with back to back Tchaikovsky symphonies. And if you ever get a chance to see and hear this group do not hesitate. They were the real highpoint of our last concert in my opinion. The bass player can also be heard here. And, of course, with the close of each performance season comes the expected ruminations on where you've been and where you're going. That's the point, after all.

I remember a particular run around my block in rural Zwingle (about 9 miles) when the weather was warming considerably. Grass was straightening and greening, trees were budding, birds were flitting and flirting. But, in addition to the Spring rejuvenation going on all around, the newly vanished highway ditch-snow revealed Winter's carnage and debris. Freeze dried deer carcasses. Deep skid ruts from careening SUVs and the odd jackknifed semi. All manner of refuse collected, suspended inanimately for months and deposited like a glacier garbage moraine after the thaw. Notable among this refuse: Piss bombs. I even remember trying to compose a poem about it on the run.

Still Life with Piss Bombs

Matted carcass sleeps,
Eternally withering,
Amongst golden vessels of relief
And a rusted riveter.
Five syllables here.

The warm rains of Spring bring with them the potential for new growth but they also wash away the cold cover for Winter's accumulated detritus. All to say, sometimes personal growth reveals some of the less pretty things about your life more clearly. Or some shit like that.

This season I won several minor-league auditions firming up a nice freelance “career” but have failed thus far in my attempts at a full-time gig. I fell hard for a wonderful woman but ultimately, in the fantastically apt words of my friend AS, got kicked to the curb. I ran some good races and got in a lot of nice training runs but bonked in the preparation for a sub-3:00 marathon (knees, schedule, weather... excuses!). I have more summer playing lined up than I did last season but don't have a real summer gig.

Sooooo...

This summer, in some order of priority:

(1) Audition preparation. While I did get to play on stage at Symphony Hall in Boston, and did well (until the Schönberg! ugh.) the only unqualified audition successes this season were local. I need to start advancing at auditions for full-time gigs. This probably means playing excerpts for everyone and anyone who'll listen critically and give candid advice. Aw hell! Anyone who'll listen, period!

(2) Get up off the curb. Raleigh's change of heart was just a thorn on a great big, beautiful rose... which was ripped from my hand. At least I know the old ticker still works like it used to. In the immortal words of George Costanza, “I'm back baby! I'm back!” Of course George also pontificated, “Every woman on the face of the Earth has complete control over my life, yet I want them all. Is that irony?”

(3) Start planning for next summer this summer! Summer gigs are few in number to be sure (paying ones, anyway) but if I get going on it sooner I'll give myself a much better shot. Help me out here. I will form a summer gig list in a subsequent post and examine the options in detail. Please submit your favorites, reader!

(4) S-l-o-w-l-y get ready for a nice fall marathon. Maybe Chicago. I'll definitely put together a little racing season this summer. I didn't run all last Winter just to sit around in the Summer.

In the mean time I'm heading off on a little audition tour (South Dakota on Saturday, then on to Denver and Chicago next week) and will update from the road if possible. I know I'm on the right route. Just gotta keep on truckin'. No time for a rest stop so just let the piss bombs fly!

Wireless Ramble

2007-05-10T20:52:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a practice break here at Drake University, watching the goldfinches dart between the trees in the quad like little yellow torpedoes. The semester must have wound to a close this week as all the rooms save one are unoccupied. Just a lone class piano student hammering away at Chopin's E-minor Prelude. It's the same one I memorized for one of my class piano juries.

The practice rooms here have these great big back-sloping windows which look out over the campus. They make me feel like I'm on the bridge of a destroyer or in an air traffic control tower or something. The rooms have a good sound but are very leaky. If someone is practicing next door it is like they are playing right into your ear. Still, aside from the sound proofing and the distracting view, I would rate them among the best I've used.

This evening I've booked myself so tight that after finishing a concert at the Hotel Fort Des Moines I'll just have time to stuff my horn in my gig bag, bell sticking out, and race 7 blocks to the civic center for a Tchaik 4 rehearsal. For some reason I love when things like that happen. Running from one downtown venue to another. I wish every day could be that packed with communal music making. And usually it isn't 7 blocks but 7 counties between gigs. I swear I'm paid much more to chauffeur myself around than to play horn.

To give you some idea of how much driving is entailed in freelancing in the Midwest (outside of Chicago, that is), yesterday I put new tires on my car. This is the second set in 16 months and I ran them near bald. They will be paid for by part of my tax refund which itself is largely due to 30,000 deducted business miles last year. And keep in mind I don't do much work related driving in the summer so that comes to about 10k miles every three months or about 100 miles a day. If you want to do this kind of work you had better enjoy your car... a lot! That's enough stream of consciousness for today.

Faux Fab Four

2007-05-09T19:25:00.000-07:00

We played a couple bogus-Beatles pops concerts in CR a few weekends ago with these guys. I like the Beatles but I'm no expert. I talked to some people who are big fans and their assessment was that these guys are exactly like the original band; the same vocal inflections (they are all Americans faking the Liverpool accent); “Ringo” had the same drum fills as the real Ringo; They looked a lot like the fab four and wore “historically accurate” costumes throughout the show. I even think they interacted with the audience consistently (Harrison saluting, Lennon waving, etc.)

It was the second time in a year that I got to play with these guys (once last July with the QCSO) and I think all were the best pops shows I've ever played. The audience, obviously being taken on a nostalgic roller coaster ride, was ecstatic at each sold-out show. I think this was the first time I've ever seen a symphony orchestra audience wave their lit cellphones back and forth during a concert. (It was during “Hey Jude”. Well, okay. The conductor had to egg them on by getting his out and waving it at them first. But he had a symphony-concert-cellphone taboo to overcome!)

I'm certain this was the first time I ever did the twist on stage during a concert when the entire orchestra cut loose during one of the encores. Well, almost the entire orchestra. One horn player and the trumpets and trombones were being wallflowers. But everyone else was twisting and shouting with their cellos, clarinets, violins and each other. The audience loved it. ("Ha-Ha! Lookit the stuffy orchestra acting all silly!") We should have tried it again during the last movement of Tchaik 5 the next weekend. And props to our principal trumpet for the season, AC, who nailed the piss out of the "Penny Lane" solo every freakin' time.

One unfortunate side affect: I wasn't able to get “Let It Be” out of my head for days... and they didn't even sing that one!

Neglected Blog

2007-05-09T18:30:00.000-07:00

"The sky is clearing, the thermometer is rising (slowly) and the water in the basement is falling (even more slowly). The European starlings outside my windows are busily gathering dry long-grass for nests. Jays are screeching, robins are worm-hunting, red-wing blackbirds are dive bombing and cardinals are belting it out, divas that they are. (Or should that be "divos"? The males do all the coloratura.) Spring is here! "

I've been neglecting my blog quite a bit this spring. This is easy to do since I don't have an Internet connection from my country home (other than email/some web surfing through my cell phone). I try to frequent a Hy-Vee in whatever town I'm in (they sometimes have wireless in the deli) but those visits can be spotty. I do write posts but they often don't seem to make it past the editing stage and eventually they become too dated to bother publishing (e.g. this post's opening paragraph). I will do better. Honest.

In reality the sun is setting after a hot May day in Des Moines where I am rehearsing all week for the season closer (Tchaik 4) this weekend. I'm enjoying the amenities of this second home, including wireless so I should be able to make up for lost blogging time over the next few days. In consulting my archives it seems I've come full circle and not really gotten anywhere!

Soooo I might as well post some old stuff even if it isn't current. Like NBC used to announce when they were trying to flog viewers into watching repeats: "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!"

Can This Ugly Mug Be Saved!?

2007-04-04T22:11:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly going blind as a bat. But I don't have to look square doing it. Vote for my new frames here! If your choice is selected you'll win 20 points and an ice cold Coke.

This Sure Beats Blinding Blizzards

2007-04-04T20:47:00.000-07:00

We had marvelous thunderstorms a few nights ago here in Zwingle, IA. First ones of the season. The vantage point from my little house on a hill was perfect for viewing the lightning as the cells swept by. For a few more shots of the deadly bolts go here. Aside from the weather, life has been pretty calm. I've been trying to crank up the marathon training (just under two months to race day) and salvage as much from my decimated winter schedule as possible. The combination of (1) super frigid, windy, snowy weather, (2) lots of traveling, (3) low motivation, and (4) sore knees made for some pathetic weeks. I could handle any one or two of these potential excuses but when all four raise their ugly heads I often caved. So I'm about ten miles below my projected weekly mileage, my long run is three miles under what I would have liked it to be by this point and my pace is still about 20 seconds/mile slower than goal race pace. We'll see how things progress as the weather continues to improve.

Inspired, in part, by Raleigh's decision to practice more, rather than date, I have begun to experiment with cranking my own practice time up. I've always been a believer in the canonical "three well-spaced hours a day" for brass players. However, the odd story of horn players putting up big numbers (I heard JL say she was playing 10 hours a day before winning principal here, and legend has it AU was doing six hours a day before his CSO auditions, though I have it on pretty good authority that some of that time was longtones while watching March madness) coupled with the intense work ethic of string players and pianists makes me a little curious about the 4.5 to 6 hour/day practice regime.

In the spirit of experimentation, then, I am ramping up my daily hours very gradually and will plot my progress here over the coming months. I've known of several players who have suffered from overuse injuries and therefore will be extremely cautious every step of the way. That's all that's going on here. Time to get to bed so I can wake up early and get a jump on my taxes... during practice breaks, of course!

Fit To Be Shot?

2007-03-13T14:20:00.000-07:00

Three weeks, three dates and about 200 emails later, Raleigh has given me my marching orders. She's too busy with audition prep for anything serious and I came on way too strong. I feel like Barbaro, not a quarter mile outta the box and -snap!- broken ankle. A rather dubious debut back into the dating world some years after the big “D” but I shan't mourn long.

Even though Raleigh was scary close to my dream woman -she's absolutely gorgeous, wicked smart (likes to read books on, and ponder, quantum mechanics), hilarious (“You live in Zwingle? That sounds like a Swedish potato chip!”), and completely driven when it comes to her music- apparently an essential quality must also be that she miss me when she's away! Failing that test, I got the boot. Seriously, I think it was just a combination of bad timing and the result of her being the unfortunate focus of my years of pent up romantic tendencies. It all came a'gushin out like the Love Canal had breached its levee! Hurricane Heartthrob made landfall on the coast of North Carolina! Typhoon Swoon wooed the waters of... aah, I got nothin'.

In other news along the same depressing line, I didn't win the summer gig for which I was hoping. Another musically unemployed summer is a desolate thought. Although I've managed to sock away loads in savings. Probably enough to last two summers. Still, I'll try to get some paying chamber music off the ground to alleviate the draw on funds.

On the up side, I had the great pleasure to play with RA (formerly of the Cologne Symphony) in the LSO last week. He's newly relocated from Germany to Wisconsin. A wonderful horn player with decades of pro experience and a modest, decent guy to boot he said he's suffering big time from orchestra withdrawal. It was nice of him to slum with us for a set.

It was my last set of the season as co-principal with this orchestra and I felt pretty good about it despite some inexcusable fracks in Debussy's, Trois Nocturnes. I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't gotten the “let's just be friends” call the day of the Friday show. Oh, the spices of life. So it goes...

The Snow, I mean, the Show Must Go On.

2007-03-05T14:02:00.000-08:00

Some are already calling it the blizzard of '07. Hundreds of miles of interstate closed, dozens of cars and trucks stuck in roadside drifts; throngs of stranded motorists; whiteout conditions for stretches long enough to recite significant portions of the Catholic rosary. But the show must go on. The people need their classical fix. They must have their Galway. And so we traveling musicians, we road warriors, we happy few, we... band of brothers (and sisters), risk life and limb and car and instrument to make that happen.

Therefore this addition to "Sights from the Road" is from the most recent commute between my little house on a hill and a DMS rehearsal 200+ miles away. Now keep this in mind: the first singular thought upon embarking on this drive was self and vehicle preservation, not travel documentation. As a result I probably missed what would have been the most striking images.

For example, at the very beginning of my journey as I was waiting for a safe gap to get on to highway 61 from my country lane, no more than a quarter mile into my trip, I was confronted with the sight of an overturned, snow swept SUV lying in the median; driver's side door still ajar, wheels in the air, looking like a bloated wildebeest carcass lying hooves up on the Serengeti yet to be scavenged.

Or when a semi-truck started to pass me on the left while we were going up a hill and then slowed to my speed boxing me in just as we crested. After cursing the driver for his indecision, I saw the sight he'd seen from his vantage few seconds earlier: over half a dozen trucks and cars strewn every which way on the down side of the hill. The sight made everyone coming over that hill rethink their travel priorities and recalculate their ETA.

By far the most dangerous parts of the trip were the numerous complete whiteouts caused by blowing snow. In Iowa there are lots of wide open areas without a trees for miles. There is no reason to believe, upon entering such a blindingly opaque environment, that you will be exiting it anytime soon. You can't brake because the asshole tailgating you. The only rule: keep any oncoming traffic on your left.

All in all, the trip was more exciting than anxiety provoking but I hope it's the last one like it I'll need to make this season. Oh, and the people seemed to like Galway. He's an audience ham and a lot shorter in person than I thought.

CSO Audition Report (no not that CSO)

2007-02-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

A quick post from the Columbus (OH) airport. I leave here a loser, me and 150 other horn players. I played pretty well. I didn't chip anything. Some intonation lapses here and there and possibly a couple spots of uncertain rhythm. Nothing I'm ashamed of, really. I know I can prepare better with regards to these elements in the future.

The audition was very well run considering the number of players involve. They had two venues going simultaneously for a day and a half and thus allowed everyone a nice chunk of time to play everything. Though a nice little fruit spread in the waiting room is always appreciated.

I learned I prefer to have the amenities like flying rather than driving, staying over the night before rather than going the day of, getting a rental car rather than public transportation. It all just makes the experience more relaxing.

I also very much like having someone back home who is thinking about you and who cares about you. Someone to call after the whole damn thing is over. It calms the heart tremendously!

Out of Tune Good-byes?

2007-02-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

We're performing Mahler 1 this weekend. For some reason I've not been very comfortable this set. Our conductor gave me the 'finger' during our rehearsal Monday night. You know... the 'intonation finger'? When he calls out your instrument or stares you down and makes little up or down pointing gestures with his index finger. It's usually seen in conjunction with raised or lowered eye brows and/or a cocked head. The tonic M3rds at the beginning and ending of the duets in the first movement introduction were too wide and, as second horn, it is my job to make the necessary adjustment. I'm not used to "flattening the third" by raising the tonic.

But, like I said, it's my job. I've practiced that duet a hundred times in the past week playing against a recording of myself on first; navigating the major and minor 3rds and 6ths, as well as the tendencies of the harmonics (and myself!). But once you get another living, adjusting body on the other part all bets can be off. Not to mention where everyone else in the orchestra takes the pitch in the opening measures.

I've also been breaking my own golden rule way too often. And it has served me so well lo these many years: Don't play too goddamn soft! The "choreography" in the last movement is also still a mess. You'd think getting eight horns to raise their bells and stand in sync wouldn't need a Martha Graham master class but sometimes you'd be wrong. We've got one more rehearsal tonight to get it sharp so our "aufstehen" doesn't turn into an "oof-da shten!" Any time you get a conductor comment like we got Wednesday night ("Horns, it looks like your doing the stadium wave! Stand up together please!") you know it's sloppy.

First date with Raleigh went great. She's beautiful, funny, interesting, really smart and I wasn't a total dolt. Only problem was the handshake good-bye. What was I thinking? Handshake?!

See here's the problem: There are only a few options for the daytime-post-first-date-in-car goodbye. You could just say goodbye (too pedestrian). You could shake hands (too utilitarian). Or kiss, which, on a first date after coffee in the middle of the day when you've never touched this other person flesh-to-flesh, seems a little forward. And that first kiss should be at least somewhat romantic; not just a convenient gesture of affection.

A hug would be perfect, but in a car it's totally out of the question. The belt has to come off, and then you've gotta rotate your pelvis and sit on your side, and there's no room for the right hand (if your the driver) to go around because the seats are in the way... It would end up being a whole Cirque du Soleil production.

Don't get me wrong. The car make-out is great! But you're both in a very inventive, uninhibited mental zone by the time that's going down. Suddenly problems of ergonomics become opportunities for gaining purchase. But back to the question at hand: the daytime-post-first-date-in-car goodbye. Any ideas? A shoulder squeeze? A playful fist nudge to the cheek? Declaring a thumb war?

Snow, Ludwig and Playing Against the Odds

2007-02-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

It snowed about five inches last Tuesday in blowing, drifting fashion. One of the perks of my life is being able to call my own snow days. Not really feeling like driving 7 hours round trip in bad visibility to teach one half-hour lesson to a horn minor (incidentally a great student) I sent an email from my cell and minutes later had myself a free day. Which I then proceeded to both use productively (getting ready for this) and fritter away (watching this - I've become drawn to MP for reasons I shan't reveal and am currently working my way through everything she's been in, including seasons 1-3 of this).

Long after the sun set I walked the quarter mile down my lane to get the mail. As I shuffled along, the ankle deep snow was light and fluffy over my feet like feathers spilled from a pillow. Orion stood crisp and tall in the south, his hunting unimpaired on the moonless night. In the north, clouds rolled in underlit yellow by Dubuque ten miles away. I thought of the DSO rehearsing Beethoven 3 at that very moment and how strange it feels not to be a part of that. I've had so few weekends off this season it seems somehow wrong that an orchestra should be working close by while I'm available yet I wouldn't be involved. Not in a greedy sense, mind you, but just in a social sense. I get used to seeing the same few people who play everywhere I do, like cubicle buddies in the office world, and now I just don't show up for work for a few days.

Having played Beethoven 1 last weekend and with Beethoven 2 slated for mid-February with the CWSO it would have been really cool to squeeze in a performance of 'Eroica' too. Hell, it's one of the most revolutionary pieces ever written and I haven't ever played the damn thing. A well, it's a good section and I love everyone in it. Maybe I'll score some comps and attend a concert for a change!

Since I have no concerts of my own this weekend here's a pic of the QCSO horns after our Don Juan performance last Saturday. The QCSO conflicts with the DMS from here on out. I really like all my section mates in this orchestra and will miss them the rest of the season; especially KL & AG who've become good friends. Though the three of us will reunite in Columbus in less than two weeks for the audition.

The weather has put the kaibosh on my training over the last few weeks. Snow hindered my pace and then wind chill advisories put my mileage in a deep freeze. Incidentally, the difference between 10 below windchill and 20 or 30 below windchill is a deep, soul-sucking pain which calmly whispers past your frozen ear cartilage saying, "This would be a nice snow drift to lie down in and take a nap. Aren't you sleepy? Go ahead, lie down. I'll be sure to wake you when it gets warmer." The difference is... training distance become dictated by the point at which one eye becomes frozen shut. Better turn here and head back... and don't blink too slowly on your way home. The difference is... one makes your scalp hurt.

But I got $30 worth of new knit hats and a vat of petroleum jelly. I'm back, bay-Bee!

And I quote...
"Oh yeah, I also met the woman with whom I may want to spend the rest of my life. What are the odds that she has a boyfriend? I know. Pretty darn good."

The odds, amazingly, just might be in my favor this time. I'll refer to her as Raleigh to protect the innocent. Stay tuned...

Cold and Busy... and Cold. Did I mention Cold?

2007-01-29T08:36:00.000-08:00

This past weekend was the kind I really like. The kind that makes me feel closer to my colleagues out there with "real" gigs: Dress for Brahms 4 Friday night, rehearsal on Don Juan Saturday afternoon and perform the Brahms that night. Then another Strauss rehearsal Sunday morning. The only trouble is these programs are with different orchestras in different cities. Neither of which where I live.

Wait, I lied. There was other trouble. The ten mile long run in -15 degree wind chill I crammed in Sunday morning before rehearsal. That was no fun. Brutal. Just brutal. I'm sure the feeling will return to my fingertips eventually. Probably after the black flesh gets some pinkness back in it, right?

The CRSO had a great reception following the Brahms concert Saturday night. There was free wine and Greek cuisine at a new restaurant right across from the hall. I hope this is a regular occurrence. Oh yeah, I also met the woman with whom I may want to spend the rest of my life. What are the odds that she has a boyfriend? I know. Pretty darn good. I'll find out soon enough and probably make a fool of myself in the process. A few of us finished off the night at the usual post-concert haunt with some Mexican food and beer.

It was my first set with CR as a regular member and it was a great experience. They are a really fine group. The conductor is new and loved by the orchestra, deservedly so. Everyone is serious about making good music. Intonation was so much easier than in any other group I play and that makes all the difference in the world. Happiness is in-tune perfect intervals so the thirds and sixths can be placed where they belong. My only complaint is they play only one concert each set rather than the usual two or three. But I guess you need to get enough asses in the seats before you can justify a Sunday matinee. One packed show is better than two performances to middling houses.

Next weekend's docket: Don Juan and Beethoven 1 (as well as a piece in which some of us play tuned wine glasses) with the QCSO.

It's Hammer Time!

2007-01-21T11:45:00.000-08:00

We're doing Mahler Six in DM this weekend. It isn't one of my favorite Mahler symphonies but I think it is growing on me. At 80-90 minutes I'm sure it is a test for the audience. Though it calls for eight horns we're covering the 7th and 8th parts among six of us. Every group tries to save a buck somehow!

Here's a shot of the hammer specially made for this piece which requires three loud hammer blows in the final movement. It will be given to our board president after today's performance. He's not a musician but he loves this symphony and has been prowling around during rehearsals taking pictures and looking generally giddy.

I'll be happy to get done with this set although it has been a blast. It is just very demanding to focus for that long on such a schizophrenic work. When it is all over you feel a bit depressed rather than elated. That elation will come in spades when we do Malher 1 in CR next month.

We also got a nice covering of snow from a storm last night. It made my long run this morning rather tough and slow. But at least I was out there... as were the usual farm dogs giving chase. I could out run them because of the snow this time. With clear roads, they might have had me!

Sights from the Road

2007-01-20T17:36:00.000-08:00

A Sun Pillar

This is a rather modest example of an atmospheric effect known as a Sun Pillar. A shaft of light seems to emanate out of the top and bottom of the Sun, usually during sunrise or sunset. The effect is caused by flat polygonal-shaped ice crystals which, in calm air, slowly float down from high altitude clouds. Due to air resistance their flat sides stay parallel to the ground most of the time, like a falling feather. An observer sees sunlight reflected predominantly in a plane perpendicular to the ground containing the sun, the observer. This gives the appearance of a vertical shaft of light rising and/or descending from the Sun. For a few more images of the pillar see my Picture Album.

Five Things

2007-01-19T16:44:00.000-08:00

I've had blog block lately so I'll partake in this shenanigan.
Warning: Due to some graphic content, timid reader discretion is advised.

Five things you probably don't know about me.

1) If you quote a line from "Seinfeld" I'll likely be able to tell you the episode in which it appears, the four story lines and a dozen or so other lines from the episode.

2) I watched, and enjoyed, every episode of the reality show "Newlyweds" with Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey during its first season. I'm not proud if it but it happened.

3) Last year I got rid of my television. Why? See (1) and (2).

4) I had three ingrown toenail "surgeries" when I was in high school. The first two were done by general practitioners and involved anesthetic injections under the big toenail. It was the worst pain I've ever experienced in my life. If inserting needles under toe and finger nails isn't a torture technique already, it should be. Incidentally, the final procedure was done by a podiatrist who, while giving one small shot to the main nerve in the big toe, expressed bemused horror at the medieval method of the GPs.

5) I am divorced... and that's all I have to say about that. Now enough with these bullshit lists already.

For Auld Lang Syne

2007-01-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!
I hope everyone had as fun a break as I did hanging out in central Wisconsin with the Kamp clan. It snowed just in time for Christmas and made the most of it. I kicked in the new year Sunday night in Des Moines with a well attended pops concert featuring these guys. They kept the audience entertained with shtik and song and a good time was had by all. It is really nice to start off the year with a big fat check for two "days" work. I found out that playing fourth horn on the average straight classical set is exceeded in down time only by playing fourth in a Broadway pops set. Most songs used none to three horns with the exception of the symphonic arrangements.

Resolutions
This year I pledge to blog more, practice more, date more (okay, get a date), make more friends, start a working brass quintet, get a horn quartet together, give a solo recital, write some tunes, arrange some tunes, record some tunes, improve my improvisation skills, improve my intonation skills, run another marathon, get a summer gig and audition like mad. This is a kind of bird-shot approach to resolutions. Something is bound to hit.

Sights from the Road
Being on the road a lot I witness strange, interesting or humorous sights all the time. I'm going to start risking my life to document these for you, the reader. I hope you're thankful!
The first of these is the holy grail of the license plate game. My brother and sister played this on a road trip all the way from Wisconsin to Maine and back this past Summer. I think we got shots of forty-some states but never dreamt we would ever see the likes of Hawaii or Alaska. My sister has since sent me a blurry, low resolution camera phone shot of what she says is an Alaska plate. I'm still skeptical. As you can see above, however, there is no doubt of the veracity of my claim. I caught it on I39-South half an hour north of Madison, WI.

The Madison Marathon
It has been five years since I've run a marathon and thirteen since I've run one fast. My goal is to work up to 70 miles a week and, ultimately, to break three hours in the race itself (May 27, 2007). I will plot my weekly mileage and average pace at the link on the right. I welcome you to join me on my journey toward marathon shape. Of course the possible obstacles are many. Not the least of which is the very real possibility that an audition will be scheduled for that day. Such is this life.

Music
This year starts off pretty cool. Brahms 4, Mahler 1 & 6, and Don Juan all in the first five weeks. A couple of February auditions here and here. Then things will be a bit slower than last Fall. I'm hoping to fill some of the open weekends with chamber music. That's the biggest difference between freelancing and being a student. Chamber music is taken for granted in school because it's so readily available. I was in both woodwind and brass quintets most of my time in school. Now only the occasional wedding get folks together in such small numbers. I'm going to try my best to change that this year. More on this endeavor in a later post.

Suck 'n Blow

2006-12-19T07:18:00.000-08:00

The LSO is the hardest partying orchestra of any with whom I currently play. Now, granted, this is not a tough title to earn. Most regional orchestras consist of two groups of players: 1) 40-somethings or older who have kids or grandkids and 2) college kids who hang together or not at all. Conspicuously absent are the 25-39 year olds. The adult tweens. With no other orchestra, if there even were post-concert socializing, would I find myself playing suck 'n blow in Hooters at 1am. Yet this is precisely where I was after this past Friday's concert in La Crosse, WI.

Now, I've only played one set with the LSO this year and didn't even know most of the people in the orchestra. Somehow, though, suck 'n blow has a way of breaking the ice and bringing people together. That and pints of Killian's. Or could the LSO musicians' near-universal, white hot hatred of that group's stick flicker be the tie that binds? It is difficult to tell. In any event I learned a new game, made some friends, and went to Hooters for the first time ever. (It boggles my mind how a restaurant can blatantly use tits and ass as marketing devices and still portray itself -quite accurately- as family dining.)

This set was one of two I'll play as principal with the LSO this season. All the other sets will feature my highly capable friend SM in the hot seat. Eventually the powers that be are supposed to make up their fucking minds about who should be hired for real. I'm not holding my breath on that decision.

Interesting notes from this set: We lost our principal oboe player to a migraine at the intermission of Friday night's concert and then lost our tuba player (said oboist's husband) to an emergency appendectomy for Saturday night. The show must go on, but first, is there a doctor in the house?!

Suck 'n Blow tips:

It's all about the lip seal, man!

Use tongue at your own peril.

Gravity can be your best friend or your worst enemy.

Suck, then blow!

A Post From the Road

2006-12-07T21:52:00.000-08:00

After eight+ hours behind the wheel I made it to rehearsal here in Springfield, IL (from the boonies) fifteen minutes early. For some reason I love how that almost always seems to work out. No detailed planning. Just a look at a map, an estimate of distance and speed, the subconscious takes over and "Voila!" You're there just in time to blow a few notes and play. I'm crashing at a Motel6 tonight before a double service tomorrow and I was lucky enough to pick up an unsecured wireless signal so I thought I'd post a short update.

Seasonal weather has finally started to hit us here in the Midwest. This adds a bit of excitement to the routine task of simply getting to gigs. What's usually a relaxing two-to-three hour iPod-accompanied, mind-drifting commute can turn into a four-to-six hour, heart-pumping, washer-fluid-draining, white knuckle sleigh ride all the way Ho-Ho-home. That has happened only once so far this season but Winter hasn't even officially begun yet.

Last Sunday I had some successes. I placed 6th in the 5k Reindeer Ramble in Moline, IL and won my age division (complete with 10 degrees, 15 mph WNW wind and homemade pumpkin pie). Then, twelve hours later, I became a regular member of the CRSO. Oh, and I had to play a concert in between too. That didn't go so great. Not terrible but not great.

The up sides:
-I got a neat little plaque for the race.
-I now have contracts with the three best-paying orchestras in Iowa.
-I out-sprinted a 16 year old whipper snapper at the finish.
-I beat out a couple Clevenger students including a h-h-hot (and very funny) Australian woman. (It must be that accent! Man-oh-man.)

The down sides:
-The race sweatshirts are absolutely, hideously unwearable.

-My mini Canadian Audition Tour '07 (Calgary and Victoria) is now in serious doubt because of new CRSO concert set conflicts (unless I can find 5:00am flights from Chicago or Minneapolis or Saint Louis to Victoria or Seattle or Vancouver and Calgary for less than the price of a kidney transplant). As my brother's highschool friend JM used to say after crappy cross country races, this seriously sucks the bag. Seriously.
-My splits were all positive and my final time was slow enough that I'd rather not mention it. Also three 50-somethings beat me.
-I can't for the life-o-me remember the Aussie horn player's name.

Sleepy time...

Post-Thanksgiving Post

2006-11-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

Back to reality after my first weekend off since the seasons all began. And I even filled one of my only other weeks off between now and Christmas with a call to play here again. This Fall has been just about as financially productive as could be possible living where I live and doing what I do (short of teaching a gazillion little nose-pickers every free hour.) Next Sunday, if the audition gods are on my side, I'll have a chance to secure a regular seat in this orchestra which will go a long way toward making the Spring just as fruitful. I'm also trying to get a brass quintet and a horn quartet off the ground too so a break was nice.

I think I spent my time off well. I found/made enough time to practice before the wine started flowing each day. I got in a couple good short runs with my little brother, AP. I even learned a thing or two.

Lessons from Thanksgiving

Ground cumin is not a viable substitute for ground cinnamon though it is a tasty* alternative.(*Tastes may vary.)

A red eyeball is freaky.

The average plate at Thanksgiving dinner contains about 2 to 3 pounds of food.

It is really hard to eat more than two such plates without special preparations.

Sipping water with each swallow keeps the body from rejecting the last dozen or so unappetizing bites necessary to win the family "Most Weight Gained In One Meal" title.

I do not have a discerning wine palate. It all tastes drinkable to me.

Off-road go-carts are really fun and are every man-child's dream toy!

Pogo sticking is not as easy as a little kid makes it look. Sure AP has the record at 35 successive jumps but he didn't look pretty doin' it!

Making a jigsaw puzzle is a pretty good metaphor for life. It starts off simple. You put together the obvious parts like the corners and the edges. Like learning to tie your shoes and stand in line and make appropriate animal sounds (How does a cow go? Mooo). But it just gets harder and harder. First you focus on the parts of the picture which are easily discernible even when hacked to pieces. You put them together separately and then fit them into the whole. Kinda like college, right? Right. Then all that is left are regions of solid color and you swear there aren't enough pieces in the box and you have to go by shape and some seem to fit together but don't really give that warm snap feeling they should but it is so close and you try to convince yourself it is right but eventually, if you keep looking, you find the one which fits tight and then you have to break up the ones that are slightly mismatched but that's okay because in jigsaw puzzles there is always a place for everything in the end. You just have to keep looking. And in life? Not so much.

Bingo can be really exciting even if you're only playing for an old Snickers, some pencil-end troll dolls and a matchbox. Try speed blackout: Numbers are read very fast and only once (no repeats!) so stay focused.

Bunk beds, ceiling fans and adults do NOT mix!

Yoga is more than just relaxation and stretching. I would rather do thirty push-ups than hold another downward dog "relaxation" pose. And don't go for a run before doing half a dozen deep warrior poses unless you're a lactic acid junky. Oh and this is not going to happen without the accompaniment of popping, grinding and tearing!

Time for a run. I'm gonna try and break 18:00 in this 5k on Sunday. Then play a matinee concert here and then take an audition here. Should be fun. At least I should sleep well that night.

Tofu Spinach Pasta

2006-11-25T22:52:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'll enter the recipe exchange. Here's a dish I make weekly. Pretty simple and vegan but feel free to make substitutions to your liking. Fresh spices are best but I often use dried ones.

Ingredients
1 lb tofu (not silken unless it has been frozen for longer than a week*)
6 to 8 flavorful mushrooms, sliced
6 to 8 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 to 2 big handfuls of fresh spinach
Fresh chopped basil
Several cloves crushed garlic
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Dash of red wine
A long pasta of your choice

Prep
Heat a generous amount of olive oil in a large frying pan or wok over medium heat. Begin boiling water for pasta. Use a dash of salt and a drop of olive oil in water for flavor.

Slice tofu in half and squeeze out water between two cutting boards. Slice halves of tofu long way making strips. Rub garlic, salt and pepper on all sides of tofu strips and cover with chopped basil.

Place rubbed tofu into pan with any extra garlic and basil and cover for several minutes.

Add pasta to boiling water.

Turn tofu strips when bottoms begin to brown and use spatula to cut strips into cubes. Add mushroom slices and red wine (and, if necessary, enough extra olive oil to keep things saucy). Cover for several more minutes.

Stir, add tomato halves and re-cover for several minutes.

When tofu seems lightly browned on a couple sides, but not too crisp, add spinach right on top of everything, re-cover and turn off heat.

When spinach is nicely limp serve over pasta with a red wine and some french bread.

This is a single meal for me but would serve two to three normal people.

*Tofu note: Long frozen silken tofu acquires a fibrous texture much different than its original slippery, creamy state. Almost like that of baked fish. It tends to fall apart easily which is why I prefer to use the sponge-like non-silken variety for rubs like this.

Non-vegan/non-vegetarian options:
Substitute chicken for tofu if you like and/or dust with some grated hard Italian cheese.

Here's Mud In Your Eye...

2006-11-18T11:12:00.000-08:00

...and your other eye, and both ears, and crunching between your teeth, and under your finger nails, and between your toes, and...
I ran the L i vi ng History Farms cross country race this morning. 35 degrees, 15 mph North wind, 5,500 runners, 7 muddy miles, a half-dozen water crossings, hills so steep they came with ropes (optional), hay bale jumps (the seven foot high variety), wipe-outs and pile-ups left and right, and of course the requisite crazy costumes. It's billed as the largest race of its kind in the country and I can't imagine it becoming much bigger. That many runners makes for a frustrating start, especially on uneven terrain. I spent the first three miles cutting through the pack to get up to a group that was running at my pace. My friend CC, who got stuck starting near the back, did more zig-zag maneuvering looking for passing lanes than forward progress. And she did it running on a recently sprained ankle no less. Now that's who my old high school band director would call a real trooper.

The above picture accurately depicts what the water jumps were like visually but if you want an image of what it feels like as you're doing it, try this or this or, near mile 6, this. The first was the worst for me. It was waist deep and I made a poor exit choice: a slick, steep section of the bank with little grass left at the top for grasping. If I had been a Serengeti-migrating wildebeest, I would surely be croc chow after that crossing. Thankfully I got better and by the last one I was able to make it entirely across in one leap taking the water out of play. Of course that landing sapped any reserves my quads had left and it took me the better part of half a mile to recover.

As mentioned, costumes were in abundance. I snapped these caped and winged crusaders on the way to the start. There were at least three other batmen that I saw, several muscle-suited supermen, a woman trapped in Christmas garland, a hula dancer complete with grass skirt and coconut shell bikini top and the blue man touring group was apparently passing through and decided to race. I had the bad luck to be stuck behind a guy wearing an ISU thong and sports bra for about a mile. Can you imagine the chaffing?! Sadly though, C had the extreme misfortune of following a guy in nothing but a loin cloth, and by her description a rather loose fitting one at that. If that doesn't motivate a surge and pass I don't know what would. My favorite was a man in a business suit with the pants cut off to shorts. Amazingly he had hardly a lick of mud on him.

I wasn't in any sort of racing shape for this. I just start running again after letting a few minor summer injuries heal up. I was on a seven minute pace through 5 but didn't see any markers after that. I finished in 52:00 and the last mile or so felt awfully slow so that time makes sense. It would be nice to hack five or ten minutes off next year if the course stays the same length. After it was all over, a cup of hot cider, a few laps around the complimentary doughnut tent and a slow hot shower more than soothed any cuts and bruises. I'll definitely try to do this one again next year. Maybe even with a team. Anyone interested? Comment below.

Now I'm just resting up for the DMS concerts tonight and tomorrow with TW playing Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini and boy does he sound great on that piece. In fact I can hear him warming up in the hall right now... unless that's the piano tuner... nope, it is definitely not the piano tuner. (I just love halls with guest wireless networks backstage.) Then it is off until after Thanksgiving week. Hope everyone has a happy holiday and for those expatriate readers out there who won't be making it back home I'll have an extra serving of stuffing, an extra glass of wine and hug my mom extra hard for you all.

Tidbits

2006-11-13T09:37:00.000-08:00

All Washed Up
It's getting busier around here just before the Thanksgiving lull. I know because I finished a concert set tonight with the DSO (refreshingly near my house) and when I got home I went straight to the laundry room, stripped off the concert tux and threw everything (sans jacket) in the wash to pack up for a week of rehearsals, teaching and concerts in Des Moines starting Monday. This was slightly different than my usual behavior after the end of a concert set: falling asleep on the couch in said concert tux (sans jacket) trying to pound through my netflix backlog.

You Can Kiss My Asst., Principal!
Boy it sure felt good to get done with this week. I like Shostakovich a lot, but if I don't play his tenth symphony again until his 125th birthday it'll be fine by me. And I'm ecstatic to officially have no more assistant horn obligations on my calendar. This time I had to do all the heavy lifting (and a good bunch of the light stuff too), usually alone, while getting that silent left-hand-signal advice from the principal: louder, softer, longer... louder! He's a nice guy but it was definitely much more work than I've become accustomed to when playing assistant.

Something Old, Somethings New
Now on to my main money maker, the DMS. I get to play that Tchaik warhorse, R & J, for the second time in three weeks. It's fun to watch women swoon in the audience at the appropriate spots. Okay, I'll admit it. I swoon too. And I get to play Dvorak 8 for the first time. Just my luck, though. I've always wanted to play those trills in the last movement, then I go and win the fourth spot just before that piece comes up on the docket and now I don't get to play them. Maybe I'll sneak a couple in during a rehearsal just for fun.

Something else new: I just got a real haircut. (That is, I paid another person, with the appropriate skills, to cut my hair. Usually I just do it myself every few months.) First one in, oh... 7 years. And only the second one in probably twenty. My impression? I've been walking around with a hack job on my head for two decades. How come I didn't notice? I'm firing all my DIY-haircut enabling friends and family. If you really loved me you all would have tackled me, thrown a bag over my head and dragged me to the nearest barber. Or at least organized an intervention. It is still a degrading experience though, but I have a fun, new technique for getting through things like that. I just ask myself, "What would Larry David do?" and I act accordingly. Perhaps I'll blog about it in detail.

That's all for now. I've got to get to sleep and give the house mice some alone time. Just remember the deal, guys: I promise to use only live-traps and you promise not to gnaw through my toes at night.

Banana Nut Bread: The Mother Load

2006-11-07T15:57:00.000-08:00

I had a couple shows with the QCSO last weekend. We played some Beethoven (#3) with ST. He wore puffy shirts! A black puffy shirt Saturday night and a white puffy shirt Sunday afternoon. Looked just like a pirate. Arrrrgh! We also played a little Barber I hadn't even heard before; "Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance." What a fun piece that is... unison high C's and all. We did a good job on it, too.

I made a batch of bread for a few friends in the orchestra on the morning before the last show. Here's the recipe if you're interested (and a running commentary based on actual events). It is a bit longish so grab a cup of coffee or tea and settle in.

***************
Banana Nut Bread
(Makes eight loaves)

-2 2/3 cups butter
-8 cups sugar
-16 Tbs. sour milk (Finally! A use for that carton in the back of the fridge. Hmmm... At least I think that was milk at one time...)
-16 eggs (Bawk-Bawk-ba-KAWK!)
-8 cups past-ripe bananas (No you're not crazy. That is a lotta bananas. About 25 or so. Start stashing them away now for Christmas baking.)
-16 cups flour (Holy crap is right. Open another bag.)
-4 tsp salt
-8 tsp baking powder
-8 tsp baking soda (Cool! Equal amount of soda and powder. That's one less mistake waiting to happen.)
-8 cups walnuts. (Yes you will save money if you buy them still in the shell... unless you include the carpal tunnel syndrome physical therapy tab.)

Preheat oven to 350˚. This will be too hot but you don't know it yet.

First, substitute shortening for the butter. Let's face it. Butter has lots of everyday uses... and 2 2/3 cups is a lot, it'll completely deplete your supply... and you always forget to pick it up at the grocery store... you'll be eating dry toast every morning for weeks. Shortening, by comparison, comes in a huge vat that sits stoically in the back of the pantry cupboard for years. What's that? What about trans fats. Yup. Shortening is loaded with 'em, but why do you care? I mean c'mon. You're gonna give this bread away not eat all eight loaves yourself, right. Okay, so back to the recipe.

Cream the shortening together with the sugar in a large kettle. (It won't be big enough but you don't know that yet, either.) Yes I know. That's a lot of sugar... Well you've gotta have some more somewhere. Sure, use some brown sugar, that's fine. More?! I don't know, maybe molasses? Honey... corn syrup... maple syrup... sorghum... Do you got eight cups of sweet stuff yet? Okay, good. Now mix it all together.

Separate the 16 eggs into the group of ten or so which exist and another group of about a half dozen which do not, because c'mon, who has 16 freakin' eggs sittin' around. Mix in the well-beaten existent eggs, however many there are. That'll have to do.

Next combine the dry ingredients in another very large bowl or pot. That's 16 cups of flour, or until you lose count, in which case stop when it "feels right." What do you mean you can't find a large enough bowl? I know, that is a lot of flour. Well, what about your sugar container? That's empty now, right?... It isn't big enough either? Well, then use that for half the dry ingredients and we'll do it twice. Okay so we're dividing the above amounts by two and doing this step twice... Got it?

So combine half the dry ingredients in the empty sugar container and... Your salt is what? A solid block? Well, yes it was a humid summer but... You haven't used salt since the summer?! I don't know, try pounding the container on the floor. You only need 4 teaspoons. Okay, have you pounded enough salt loose yet? Good. Now slowly mix in the dry ingredients to the creamed shortening and sugar mixture. Add the sour milk intermittently. Keep mixing... Keep adding... Keep mixing...

About now you should realize your mixing kettle ain't gonna be big enough. I see you eyeing that Rubbermaid trash can. Don't even think about it. You'll have to create some sort of overflow system. Get creative. Gravity is your friend. Keep mixing.

All done? Good. Now the bananas. Peel and mash until you've got a nice banana pulp. Add them slowly to the lot and... you guessed it... keep mixing. Mix, mix, mix. Make sure the overflow is periodically added back to the main volume so it gets mixed with some banana pulp too. Mix, mix, mi... Do you smell something? No, it's more like electrical smo...YOUR MIXER! YOUR MIXER IS SMOKING!! Shit! Oh don't drop it into the batter! It's still beating! Quick shut it off before it sinks!! Pull the plug!! PULL THE PLUG!! Holy crap! That was close... Well why didn't you tell me when your hand started getting hot?!

Okay you've gotta get moving. The concert is in a few hours, you've got an hour drive to the hall and this stuff takes a while to bake and cool. Um... put the mixer in the freezer to cool it off quicker and then power through the rest of the banana pulp. Repeat this every time you start to smell smoke.

Done mixing? Good. Yes, it would've gone faster if the mixer wouldn't have kept randomly ejecting the beaters into the batter but what are ya gonna do? It's a cheap piece-a-junk. Now then, let's get those loaf pans greased... Yes all eight... That's right, you grease them with shortening... You used it all in the first step?! Well how did you expect to keep the bread from sticking to the pans? Okay, okay... hurry find something slick to substitute... No body lotion is not edible... I don't care if it does have cucumber extracts. All right, break out the butter.

Now, pour the batter evenly into the greased pans and put four on the top rack and four on the bottom rack because you don't have time to bake two separate batches. Yes, I think the oven is plenty hot. It's been preheating for over an hour-and-a-half. Okay now set the timer for twenty minutes. You'll have to switch the top loaves with the bottom loaves and the back loaves with the front loaves to ensure they all get baked evenly. Got it? Good. Now go take a quick shower to get ready for the concert. Oh and uh... do yourself a favor and test the smoke alarm battery on your way upstairs.

...Cue Music: Jeopardy Theme...

...Cue Sound Effect: Record Player Needle Rip...

Shit! Get out of the shower! We forgot about the walnuts! Hurry up! They shouldn't have baked too far along yet! You may still be able to mix them into each loaf separately!

Why is there only one bag of walnuts? Where's the rest of the walnuts?... You only bought one bag?! One bag is no where near 8 cups! This is gonna be banana bread with essence of walnut! Okay, okay, never mind get chopping. And do yourself a favor; don't mention to anyone you were baking in a bath towel. I'm just saying, it's not very appetizing.

Alright mix in those nuts. Make sure they sink into the batter somewhat. I don't know, maybe poke them down with a chopstick or something, but hurry up. Now put everything back in the oven and go finish getting dressed. Remember to listen for the timer. Oh, and uh... recheck the smoke alarm battery on the back way upstairs. In fact, better just put in a new battery altogether.

...Cue Music: Jeopardy Theme...

Beep, beep, beep! Go rotate those loaves. And don't lose track: top to bottom, front to back. Okay, now here is when you realize the oven is too hot. They seem to be brown around the edges already while the center is still just batter. It's not looking good. I guess go down to 300˚ and hope for the best. Reset the timer for twenty minutes and repeat these steps until loaves seem done. While waiting for the beeping go warm up for the concert.

When a knife inserted into the center of a loaf comes out clean they're done. Then put them on a cooling rack until they are at room temperature, about 45 minutes, and wrap them up in tinfoil. What's that? The concert starts in an hour and half? And you've got that hour drive to the hall. Right then. Well the freezer worked for the over heated mixer. Let's use it to cool the loaves. Take everything out of the freezer and fill it up with the loaves. Do Not Forget To Return The Contents Of The Freezer To The Freezer Before You Leave! Now, go finish getting ready.

......

Finally. Wrap up the loaves. I know, they're probably still a little warm, but... They're still hot, you say? Well you gotta leave, so wrap them up in tinfoil anyway... Burned hands? You're such a wuss... Yes I remember the mixer. Fine. Then... I don't know, use oven mitts. Just get wrapping! Wrap! Wrap! Wrap!...

I guess in retrospect, oven mitts were not the best protective hand apparel, because that wrap job looks like crap. Never mind. Throw them in a bag, grab your horn and get going!... No, I have no idea how the bread will taste. I guess you should have tried a piece before you wrapped them all up. But, I mean really, anything with that much fat and sugar has to be at least edible, right? Now get going! And remember that speed trap near Maquoketa!

A Boston Massacre: The Gory Details.

2006-10-31T11:22:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm exaggerating because I like the sound of the title. Just like the real Boston Massacre, gauged against the unfortunate standards of our times, would hardly qualify as such, yesterday's audition was really more of a minor let down (thus are they all). What most certainly was massacred was the Schönberg Chamber Symphony excerpt, which was quickly followed by the dreaded disembodied utterance of the pseudo congenial platitude, "Thank You." What follows are the gory details.

Most of the experience felt remarkably comfortable and familiar. Right down to the dry, somewhat puffy lip feeling I get the morning after airplane travel and a hotel stay. I did mistime the downtown commute by about a 35 minutes but that still gave me about half an hour to get warmed up. (Really though! An hour and a half to go no more than 6 miles?! I could have walked there faster! That is insanity.) Scheduled for 10:16AM I was apparently the first candidate. This meant I didn't have to listen to too many people warming up or the tail end of the previous audition. I've always been told to avoid being first if you can. Everyone on the committee has perfection in their mind's ear and the first poor bastard to shatter that mindset is doomed. I don't know how true that is, not having sat on any real life audition committees but I don't think it amounts to much of an obstacle, especially when you consider the committee is completely fresh. I think that is a bigger plus. The BSO doesn't do hourly blocks of candidates. They give everyone one hearing and call-backs are literally that; they call you sometime that evening if they have advanced you to the semis a day or two later. Sort of like having your car in the shop and waiting for the estimate. ("Hello. Yeah Mr. Kamp? Yer two driver-side C-sharps were low, yer Siegfried Idle was high, and yer gonna need a new mid-low range setting. We can't do anything with this one.") Except that in this case if the estimate is really bad you don't get a call at all... and they won't tell you their estimate over the phone, just that you've advanced... so I guess it really isn't anything like having your car in the shop afterall. But I digress.

Like I said, most of the experience felt remarkably comfortable and familiar. I even had the same warmup module as last January. Since my warmup was somewhat truncated I still hadn't completely rid my dry lips of that slightly unresponsive morning feeling and decided to be cautious and initiate an official ban on pianissimos. ("By power of the instituting player, and under penalty of severe self-beration, no extreme soft dynamic will be attempted at any time over the duration of excerpts unless circumstances during the act of performing are deemed, by said player, to be highly inducive to a successful outcome. Under no circumstances are extreme soft dynamics to be attempted at the beginnings of aforementioned excerpts (see Das Rheingold clause).")

Cutting to the chase, the Bach cello suite movement again started the round. I had last played it through before a QCSO rehearsal for AG the previous afternoon and it went really well but much faster than I felt comfortable doing in the actual audition. Too risky to play it that fast. The wheels could come off. Never-the-less, when it came time to start I found my tempo still on the quick side. I was able to hang on until the end of the first section and then reined it in at the beginning of the second (no repeats), which I always start a little more subdued and legato than the first half anyway. It went pretty well, all in all. (Much better than last time when my bottom lip slipped off the mouthpiece during a "double stop" and I had to finish with only one lip!) The excerpts started out okay - Shosti 5, a bit from Don Quixote, some Mahler 3, a chunk of Daphnis and Chloe- but none were really good, just okay... until Das Rheingold, which is, at times, the bane of my existence. It can go very well (it's just a warmup arpeggio after all!) but also horribly wrong (yes, but a slow, soft warmup arpeggio right through the break!). My first low B-flat didn't speak immediately as didn't the penultimate descending dotted half-note. And in between was less than stellar playing (Das Rheingold clause: This excerpt is technically not covered under the pianissimo ban due to the dynamic marking being piano. Ergo, the aforementioned dumb-ass should play it louder! Dumb-ass.) Still I was allowed to go on to a fast Schönberg excerpt (rehearsal 28 to 30 in case you're curious) which I've done well a hundred times only to step all over it this time. That was the straw, or log as the case may be, that broke the committee's back after which I was summarily dismissed.

I can't complain. My goals included playing the cello suite well, which I think I did, and getting to play more excerpts than last time, which I definitely did. I'm glad I got to play that particular Mahler 3 excerpt (the first movement one at the recap which then goes down to the low E-naturals) in front of a committee. I've never done that before and have always somewhat dreaded it, even though that one is a fun "practice room excerpt." Of course I wish I had played most things a bit better and a couple things much better but I'm a stronger player now than I was even just 6 months ago due to working up this audition. I'll just keep at it.

Now it is back to the grindstone. A couple tapes for here and here and lists for this group and this group (maybe I'll get to meet you, LR!) to start work on. Of course, I'm in Beantown for another day and a half yet. I hope the hotel guests next door aren't planning on napping this afternoon.

Yes Dad. Fourth horn is a move up from assistant principal.

2006-10-26T13:01:00.000-07:00

Finally! I'm the section slut no longer. After winning the fourth horn audition for the DMS last Tuesday evening I no longer have to obey the principal. Well okay, I still may have to obey him, but not love and honor. And I'm no longer within fist's reach of him. I'll have a couple chair lengths head start should he come after me for dissonant octaves!

In truth, our principal, BS, could not have been kinder during my two plus years of servitude. He gave me lots of big, fat brackets to play, he held his tongue when I'd go on frack* binges, and he would cheerfully pimp me out to fill any vacant chairs in the section. Plus his house is the horn hostel on concert weekends. Thanks for everything BS!
Now I only hope I can fill MW's shoes. He was a scary good low horn player and is one hell of a guy. I will miss your 16 va basso impromptu transpositions and your great sense of humor, MW. Enjoy your new life and say hello for me to your ex-wife CB when you see her next.

Let me tell you this: I am not going to miss playing assistant one bit and will try my best to avoid playing it ever again... after this weekend with the CRSO... and again two weeks from now with the DSO... oh, who am I kidding. If you'll pay me I'll play assistant kazoo if you want.

It did feel good to win a fourth horn audition one week before the BSO audition. I played pretty well in rather harsh acoustical conditions (a boomy old hotel room, circa 1920). Both rounds were screened so I feel confident that no one on the committee was playing favorites (I'm not even sure I would be the played favorite of everyone behind that screen anyhow). There weren't any Chicago players in attendance however, which hurt the depth of talent, but there were a few good players. Any one of us could have won on any given day. That day it was my turn.

Now on to Boston for a shot at The Show!

*I got the idea from AH of the CRSO that 'frack' might be short for 'fracture'. Any thoughts on this possibility? Sounds like a ripe discussion topic for one of the hornlists to me. A useless triviality with the potential for much lengthy, heated debate between non-peers.

T - 10 days

2006-10-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

One metric week before the BSO audition and all systems are go. I'm not delusional. Horn players don't go from playing with the DSO to playing with the BSO in one fell swoop. But the way I see it, any audition for The Show is a worthwhile experience. I don't understand players who say they aren't ready to play at that level yet so why bother auditioning for that level. You bother with it so that when you finally get to that level you have all this experience in the bank. You bother with it to eliminate uncertainties so the audition process becomes old hat. I know what train takes me to Symphony Hall, what the fare costs and how long the ride is. I know there will only be ten to twenty players total as opposed to the usual cattle call. I've been in the practice rooms (modules, really) in the basement already. I know what it feels like to play in them. I know I'll have to climb a flight of stairs to get to the hall. (That may not sound like much but it is enough to get the heart pumping a little extra hard right before you go on and play.) I know I'll be able to hear the candidate playing before me as I wait in the green room to go on. I know the committee will be on stage with me with a screen separating us, as opposed to way out in the dark hall somewhere. I know the hall will sound absolutely amazing; distractingly so (though it did just get a new stage floor). Any one of these things can shake your mind off task enough so that you do something stupid during the few minutes you have on stage. And all of them can combine to reduce you to a jello mold of a real horn player...and not even the kind with bananas! There most certainly will be new things this time which pop up to distract me, as there are at every audition. I'll just put those in the bank too.

I'll try to play the list for as many people as will hear it during the next two concert sets (DMS this weekend & CRSO next weekend), especially the Bach cello suite movement, which was the first thing asked for in the last BSO audition in January. It is much stronger now but I've not performed it at all since then. Maybe I'll try and play it for a cellist and see what they say. I got in touch with my friend, DC, whose a horn player and Boston resident so hopefully we'll be able to meet up for a visit while I'm there. She was kind enough to put me up for the last audition but this time I'm going to hotel it.

This week we have LL as a guest conductor/soloist. He is very French and very animated and it is a nice change of pace. He's been much more overtly focused on musicality (phrasing, color, style, character,etc.) in rehearsals than we're used to. It gave me the feeling of being at a summer festival back in college for some reason.

As I mentioned in the last post, we are doing the same Schumann symphony (No. 4) as CWSO did last week. The horn parts are ho-hum but it is growing on me. Oh, and as a addendum to the last post, I'll be playing Shostakovich 10 again with the DSO in November. So it'll be 14 years between my first two performances of this piece and about 14 days before my third performance. And yet again, I'll be on assistant!

An army of one...just not this one.

2006-10-13T10:41:00.000-07:00

I received word from the Army Band on Wednesday. After reviewing my submitted recording they are "unfortunately not able to invite me to the final round of auditions." The news (to which my sister responded, "The army is rejecting you?! But they'll take anybody these days!") is disappointing but will take some pressure off this month. Having to prepare two auditions simultaneously is not ideal. Now I can focus solely on the BSO audition which is set for 10:16 am, Monday, Oct. 30. I've still got to Priceline a hotel room. I low-balled my first offer a bit too low and had to wait 24 hours to make another offer. I'll notch it up 20% and try again today.

Another round of resumes here and here (plus another Army position with this group) went out yesterday. There is actually an audition for 4th horn in the DMS, too. Since that audition is one week before Boston's 4th horn audition it'll be a good run-through for me. This weekend it is Schumann 4 with the CWSO in Stevens Point, WI. Then next week we begin DMS rehearsals on the very same symphony and perform it next weekend. I get to play principal on it and then fourth. I've never had that happen with Schumann before! Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky yes, but Schumann? I mean, c'mon.

And we also begin rehearsing Shostakovich 10 in the CRS. I played assistant on this symphony 14 years ago at the NOI. I'll be playing assistant on it again in Cedar Rapids. How's that for variety; the same ho-hum symphony performed twice in two weeks, once at each end of the section while performing a monster like Shosti 10 only twice in nearly a decade-and-a-half and I'm stuck on the same lousy, thank-less part. Actually AH, the principal in the CRS, will probably let me play almost everything with him in that ball-breaker face-baker* of a piece!

Going back to NOI for a moment, this orchestra now counts two players from that summer's horn section among its own (and another has made the finals with them several times)! I guess I haven't lived up to expectations yet. I better get the lead out. Well gotta go teach!

*Boy was I wrong about this piece. It is great fun to play and there is plenty of rest. It isn't taxing at all. I guess I was just looking at the last page.

How do you cover your "ass" with your "assistant"?

2006-10-09T10:01:00.000-07:00

I had another season opener last weekend, this time the QCS with CY. We played Hindemith's Mathis der Maler but, as so often happens on regional orchestra programs, we ended the first half with this dramatic work and ended the concert with the soloist on Saint-Saens 3rd Violin Concerto. Don't get me wrong, she played great. A huge, fantastic sound. But anything after that Hindemith is anti-climactic.

I played second horn on these concerts and the principal, MF, let the assistant, AG, play the concerto. I wonder how many of you horn players out there would use an assistant in this manner. From my experience it seems to be about fifty-fifty. Half use their assistant to cover the lesser work on the concert (in addition to being "assisted" on the heavier works) while the other half play everything themselves but are assisted on the heavier works. I think this is different in upper level orchestras where the associate principal covers the lesser work(s) on a concert and the utility or assistant fills in on third. I think letting the assistant play an entire work gets their chops nice and warm and lets them feel more like a contributing member. One thing is certain. Playing assistant sucks the bag no matter what kind of principal your playing for. I never play worse than when I'm assisting. It is tough to stay warm physically and mentally when you're watching most of the music go by. I try to stay in the game by fingering and breathing along with the part (though not distractingly so) and of course we mustn't forget the main roll of the assistant...counting rests! What do you all think?

On the audition front I was glad to hear back from the BSO about my CD. They accepted it again so I'll be flying to Boston at the end of the month. This time I'll be much more prepared (same list as last January) and I look forward to playing well on stage at Symphony Hall. I'm still waiting to hear about my CD from the Army. If they invite me to audition I'll fly to Fort Myers, VA two days after Boston. Plus I'll be squeezing in rehearsals for a QCS set that week. I hope the weather is good in and out of O'hare, Logan, and Moline!

One more season to kick-off here and then I'll be firing on all cylinders (well almost). The bad thing about having sets scheduled every week for months is when you get calls to play more lucrative gigs and have to turn them down. That has happened twice so far. I guess it is much better to be too busy and have to say no occasionally than to hope the phone rings every week!

A few things this traveling musician loves when on the road...

2006-10-03T22:51:00.000-07:00

1) Gas for $1.89 a gallon! (Indianola, IA)

2) Driving three and a half hours and getting to a rehearsal twenty minutes early.

3) Engaging, interesting, attractive travel companions of the opposite sex.

4) Belting it out along with Ella Fitzgerald at 1 am.
4b) Belting it out along with Sinatra at 2 am.

5) Bucket o' pretzels and tub o' peanuts.

6) A rest stop right when you need one most.

7) Travel reimbursement.

8) Just missing driving through nasty weather.

9) NPR

10) Making it all the way home that night.

And a few things he hates.

2006-10-03T22:25:00.000-07:00

1) Running out of gas ten miles outside of Indianola, IA.

2) Driving three and a half hours and getting to a rehearsal twenty minutes early without music.

3) Engaged, interesting, attractive travel companions of the opposite sex.

4) Dead iPod battery at 1 am.
4b) Dead car battery at 2 am.

5) Tic-tacs and water for dinner ("just one calorie").

6) A rest stop right after you needed it most.

7) Travel deimbursement.

8) Just missing other drivers through nasty weather.

9) NPR pledge drive week.

10) Hitching it all the way home that night.

Well, at least they all had plenty of leg space.

2006-09-29T12:34:00.000-07:00

Last night's DMS season opener was a mix. First of all the ~2200 seat hall was half empty. This was a disappointment and a bit of a surprise. The past openers I've played with them featured YM and IP and they were sold out. It is very exciting to play to a big sold out house. There is something visually stimulating about looking over your stand into a massive sea of strangers. And maybe it is also the thought that if we played well enough they might rush the stage in delerious rapture trampling us in the process. ("Excuse me ma'am. I'm glad you enjoyed the Moncayo but could you lift your heel out of my ribcage? We have to play Capriccio Espagnole next. And would you mind very much plugging the hole in my lung, at least for the beginning of the second movement?") Anyway, the soloists this year were admittedly not as big as previously. And classical guitar is somewhat of a niche instrument. I just hope this attendance doesn't signal a trend for the season.

The concert got off to a shaky start when only half the orchestra stood up as we started to play the National Anthem. Then, here and there, the rest stood up as the piece was being played. Very second rate looking. Everyone seemed a little unsettled at first but things smoothed themselves out during the Chadwick, "American Sketches" and all was fine (mostly) by the end of the guitar concerto by Bernstein. (Not that one; the Hollywood guy. Elmer. "Airplane II", "Meatballs". That guy.) Well at least the people who showed up seemed excited and enthusiastic. That's all we can ask. Plus, now we can use all those extra programs to help heat the hall this winter!

Another Season Opener

2006-09-27T23:37:00.000-07:00

It's almost two in the morning. I'm lying in bed at one of my many homes-away-from-home. I've just finished a set of rehearsals with the Des Moines Symphony for our opening concert with Christopher Parkening and Jubilant Sykes tomorrow night. This starts my third season with the DMS, and thanks to a couple of successful late summer auditions (for this group and this group) and lots of sub-work (with this group, this group and this group) it is shaping up to be a busy year. I also squeeze in playing principal horn in my hometown orchestra for a few concert sets a year. I get to see my folks and eat some home cooked meals. Can't beat that.

The only problem with a busy playing schedule is that auditions become hard to fit in. Not preparing for them, mind you. There's plenty of time to practice. Actually having a day or two free to fly to another part of the country (or world); that's the hard part. It becomes a balance between taking the per-service gig to pay rent now, or taking an audition for a real gig (full-time with benefits) which might let you pay a mortgage later. A really good economics lesson in opportunity cost. Of course if auditions are investments in the future, their performance is terribly unreliable (even when my performance goes well). Of course, you may only have to win once in your life.

And that's my goal. To finish paying my dues in the regional, per service orchestras and move up to The Show. Don't get me wrong, for the time being I'm enjoying myself immensely; traveling from town to town, spending a week here and a week there playing great music with many fine musicians. But if I wake up one morning and find myself doing this at 40, with a bad back and an even worse attitude... Well, let's just say that won't be a good morning. And speaking of good mornings I had better leave it at that and hit the hay. I want to be up in time for checkout. (And to catch some of the WGC from Ireland before I am once again not only cable-less but TV-less!)

So hello blogosphere. Anyone out there listening?...