Should Old Acquaintance…

I have a funny relationship to “Auld Lang Syne” since that’s the tune my alma mater is sung to.  (Yes, really.)  So the tune dredges up memory atop memory atop memory of the perfume of Old Crow and Coke, an Oxford shirt and a tie, and swaying tipsily with my arms around my friends’ shoulders on autumn Saturdays.  Not so much with the confetti and champagne in the wintertime.  But still…

I want to put aside the post that I should have done last night that went something like “Do you KNOW that in the past week I’ve dreamt about at least half of the people in my blogroll?  How’s that for withdrawal?!?” and “Five below without the wind chill??  Okay, now I remember why we moved south.” and “The roads were so bad when we left that Dys’s dad loaded Dys and Boy and followed me in the car for the first hundred miles.”  I’ll shunt that aside and look back on the year that was.

Why the hell do we save all this stuff up?  All of my triumphs and failures and high-fives and misgivings over the past year, when stacked together, would require WAY too much alcohol to properly put to bed.  I saw Andy Rooney bitching about the New Year on 60 Minutes the other day (this is what happens when you crash in a moderately cranky 60-year-old dude’s house) and I have to admit, his idea that we celebrate the new year on September 1st isn’t a bad one…but better yet, why store it all up?  Why not screw the new year entirely, and celebrate New Month Eve every 28-30 or so?  Live a little more in the present?  Keep up the continuity of life?  Keep it all to a scale in which one good drunk can encompass the whole shebang?

Well, no, that’ll probably never fly.  But it’s worth a thought, and possibly an old college try.

2009 was a funny year for me.  I flirted quite strongly with a career change (and I still think I would have been great at it) before re-committing to my current one.  It’s been a fantastic year with the boy, who is steadily growing to be a more interesting companion with each passing day.  The blog here…well, I tried the Blip FM thing for a while before neglecting it utterly, but on the other hand, this has been the year that the radio show has been gloriously resurrected and that’s been a whole lot of fun for me, and I hope others as well.  (Speaking of which, for those of you who always say “I forgot!” it’ll be NEXT THURSDAY NIGHT!)

Generally, though, the blog has stagnated a bit, mostly because I haven’t had the same time and energy to put into it that I did in the previous year, mostly because the demands on my time both at work and at home continue to increase.  I think I also sort of lapsed into “Dear Diary” mode more so than philosophizing or using it as a creative outlet or just plain makin’ with the funny.  I hope to do a little better with that in the coming year…even if I decline to hold myself to some unrealistic standard of everyday perfection.  It may be that my creative drive will find more of an outlet through my music as this year goes by, and if that’s the case, I’ll be ecstatic as I use this space to share it.  Still, y’all know better than to think I’d actually fucking SHUT UP for a while.  I’ll do what I do, and try to do better, and that’s good enough.  The Tao will find its way to me better than I can find my way to it.

What I’ll mostly remember about this year, I think, is that I was able to better get to know a tiny handful of people who end the year closer to my thoughts and my heart than they began it.  In that regard, I have to say that I’ve been a very lucky man.

May you all find yourselves in the thoughts and hearts, and preferably in the presence, of the people closest to yours this evening.  Let old acquaintance never be forgot.

Monday Music

Still in the Midwest, and DAMN IT’S COLD.

Also, this just in:  Sky Blue.  More at 11.

I know where I was ten years ago today – getting over one hell of a case of the flu, so bad that we quarantined ourselves for Christmas and my mother-in-law and her mother dropped off food on our porch but didn’t come inside.  Heh.

Still, this is my last Monday Music for the year, and you don’t think I’d miss it, do ya?  HELL NO.  I debated all sorts of things to wrap up the year, but I’m gonna leave off some of the more inspirational stuff for next week as the first of a new year.  2009 wasn’t a bad year, as years, go but I am hereby declaring 2010 to be my year. So let it be written; so let it be done.

Shadows Fall, “The Light That Blinds”

This clip is of the drummer, Jason Bittner, giving a master class performance in front of an audience of drummers.  WOW this guy is fantastic.

Back home in a few days, folks…in the meantime, enjoy the closing days of this decade!

Merry Christmas

It’s been 35 and raining for the past 2 days; it’s now switching over to snow for the next day and a half or so.  Dys has been working all day, except when she spent a couple of hours wrapping presents (and I used the time to snag the laptop and record what I regard as a fairly decent song, lacking only the bass line.  Woohoo!).  Now she’s working with Boy on the first of what he doesn’t know will be many Lego sets this weekend.  The in-laws are stretched out on the couches watching TV, and I’m contemplating what I’m gonna start drinking in just a few.  Maker’s, like the past few nights?  Slam some buttery nipples like I did last night?  Who knows?  Who cares?

It’s Christmas Eve with the family, and everything’s just fine.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all of you.

Settled

We’re here!  The trip went really well, actually.  Funny how Dys sleeping for the first half of the trip makes things go faster, just like the return home from Virginia last year.  :D

We only made two stops in 600 miles – one for gas, bathroom, and food, and one for Dys to hit her favorite winery near the Amish colony.  At which point we learned that the winery is going out of business – the owner is retiring and closing up shop.  Dys was despondent, of course – she’ll have to find some other connection for her dandelion wine.  But stuff was on sale, at least.  So I gave her a big hug and let her buy more wine than usual.  16 bottles, to be precise.  We had to shove presents out of the way in the car to make way.

Well, I gotta turn the computer over to Dys so she can work.  And then a little later I can plug my guitar into her laptop and record a little bit, because that sight ought to be hysterical.

Boy has no snow pants and no boots and he’s outside throwing snowballs at Grandma.  Grandpa is already counting down to the next bowl game.  It’s cold, the snow drifts are covering the fence posts, freezing rain and rain are expected today, and maybe a nice pile o’ snow on Christmas day.  But we’re here.

And we have BOOZE.  So how bad can it be, eh?

Happy holidays to all of you!

The Gift

Sixteen and a half years ago I walked into a guitar shop in a small city in southern Virginia with $500 in cash in my pocket.  I’d been around a couple of guys who were serious about their music, and both of those guys had something I envied.  Well, besides talent.

They both had a Fostex four-track cassette recorder.

See, kids, back in our day that’s what you used when you were recording demos.  You recorded each instrument onto a track, and combined tracks if you needed more than four (put two rhythm guitars on one track to free up another one for a lead, etc).  They look like dinosaurs, but back in the early 90s they ran anywhere from $400-700 or so.

I was still in the basest fledgling state of my musicianship, having just bought my first “real” guitar and amp the summer before.  The other guys I’d hung around were inspiring me to pick up my game.  But I was having a hard time getting a regular jam partner (partially because I needed to pick up said game) and a band was really nowhere on my horizons, realistically at least.  Here, at least, was an opportunity for me to challenge myself – to put my ideas down, come back to them, improve them, and bootstrap myself into a new musical knowledge via an ability to accompany myself (okay, fine, “play with myself”).  I was utterly convinced that having that ability to record myself was a key to open the next door – to unlock my own ability and creativity, to light the fire of my imagination beneath my ridiculous unwillingness to do the practicing I needed to get where I wanted to be.

I walked into that guitar shop…and there, leaning in a guitar stand with a price of $489, was a Gibson Les Paul.

I knew I should have bought the 4-track – but 4-tracks would always be there, I thought.  This particular Les Paul was only going to be there once.

I walked out with the Les Paul.

Ten years later, the 4-track was a dinosaur.  The Les Paul turns 31 tomorrow, and it plays as well as it ever has – probably better.

But a few weeks ago I took advantage of Dys’s absence – and therefore my oodles of free time at home with nothing much constructive to do – to explore GarageBand a bit.  I bought a $15 cord to allow me to connect my preamp/processor to the microphone inputs (and a $15 plug to allow me to plug the guitars straight in) and kicked the tires for a little bit.

And I learned that I was right.  Now things are running into my head at a rate geometrically faster than I can have time to put them down.  And far, far beyond my physical ability to translate them into sound.  I’m frustrated with my fumble-fingeredness and my longstanding rotten timing…but I know how to fix those things.  Practice, practice, practice.  But where I never had a real reason to practice – no bandmates kicking my butt for dragging them down, not even a reason t0 hunt for bandmates who might – now I do.  The producer sitting behind the mixing desk (who looks a lot like me) is yelling at the bass player (who looks a lot like me) and the guitarist (who looks a lot like me) is all prima-donna-y about things not sounding right.

All I needed was a tool to help me push myself.  And now I have it.  Indirectly, I gave myself the gift of my own creativity, and it feels as wonderful as anything I’ve felt in a long time.

Now excuse me.  I’ve gotta go practice.

Attention: World

Crisitunity is Teh Kewlz!!!

That is all!

Buggin’

Since it’s looking like a chance of ice along our route to the Midwest, we’re leaving a day early.  We’ll be on the road tomorrow and at the in-laws’ until the New Year.

There’s at least one or two posts coming up until then, though. 

Happy holidays to everyone!  Merry Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve!

15 seconds of LOL

I admit, I laughed my butt off at this one.

Monday Music

It’s that time, people.  Even though I steadfastly maintain that the date is actually October 3rd, the calendar and the cold and the commercials and the Christmas music all tell me that Christmas is at our doorstep.  YE GODS where did this year go?!?

To get you all in the holiday spirit, TB-style, I’ll present to you my favorite Christmas song of the past 20 years or so.  I LOVE this thing.

Classic.

Well, of course there’s my other favorite Christmas song, but I’ve used that one before.  Won’t stop me from linking to it EVERY YEAR, though.

Happy holidays, everybody!

2009 MotoGP Season In Review

2009:  The MotoGP Season that Could Have Been.

That’s what we’ll remember when all is said and done, isn’t it?  Another legitimate contender to the grand prize of motorcycling asserted himself this year.  Welcome to the brightest spotlight, Mr. Lorenzo!  A contender struggled.  Aw, better luck next year, Mr. Pedrosa.  A champion defended his crown.  Congratulations, Mr. Rossi!

And a contender and past champion – what?  Faked it?  Couldn’t hack it?  Spent half a season racing while trying not to puke in his helmet (and not always succeeding?)

This will be known as the season in which Casey Stoner took a few races off, for reasons that were not clear at the time, were not clear when he returned, and still aren’t entirely clear.  Stoner claimed illness, and his return to winning form after his return earns the man the benefit of the doubt.  However, it must be said that at the time everyone else was just left scratching their heads.  His competitors, his team, and definitely his sponsors.

We went from a three-way tie for the lead in the championship near midseason, which is fantastically rare, to a duel between the two not-entirely-friendly Fiat Yamaha teammates at the top of the charts.  Lorenzo and Rossi put on a clinic in Stoner’s absence, especially in Catalunya where Rossi regained his momentum with a stunning last-corner maneuver.  (Damn I love listening to the Spanish announcers.)

The four riders at the top (Rossi, Lorenzo, Stoner, Pedrosa), meanwhile, separated themselves so thoroughly from the pack that the press and even other riders started calling them by collective nicknames.  The Aliens.  The Supermen.  The Fantastic Four.  Behind them was occasionally some great racing, but victories?  One lone win by Dovizioso in the rainy crashfest at Donington Park in the UK, and the rest was a sweep by these four men on three different motorcycles.

So, looking back at my 2009 season preview, how’d I do?

My clearest blunder was that I was clearly blinded by my enthusiasm for poor Nicky Hayden when I gave him 12:1 odds to win the title and an over/under of 1.5 race wins.  I also expected a rain win or two for Chris Vermeulen: no dice, which is part of the reason that gentleman finds himself back in World Superbike this year.

However, here are the race wins for the other riders, with my predicted wins in (parentheses):

Stoner: 4  (7)
Rossi: 6  (8)
Pedrosa: 2  (3)
Lorenzo: 3  (2.5)
Dovizioso: 1  (1)

With the exception of Stoner’s absence from the field, which nobody could have predicted, hell, that ain’t bad.

Generally speaking, though, the racing was more interesting than the past two years…in fact, it was the most interesting of the 800cc era so far.  True, it was your pick between those four men on any given weekend, but you didn’t know which of the four was going to win.  Much better than the Casey Stoner Show of 2007 or the Rossi/Stoner Showdown of 2008, at least.  But what’s better?  The setup for next year.

WHOA BOY.  Next year.

This year, things got a little heated.  Valentino Rossi made it perfectly clear that he did NOT like the fact that his teammate was the one pushing him for the championship – he wanted to be THE number one, and his teammate a distant second.  (While understandable to a point, as he IS in fact responsible for the development of the bike that was given to his biggest rival, I think Vale pushed this too far.  Clearly it is in the interest of the manufacturer and the team to have their riders 1-2, and to argue that it should be otherwise is swimming against the tide.)  Meanwhile, if you listen to rumors, Stoner’s team got a bit steamed at his midseason vacation.  Pedrosa was completely fed up with Honda not providing him with competitive machinery.  Nicky Hayden became the next in a long list of men NOT named Casey Stoner who couldn’t make good lap times on the 800cc Ducati, and almost lost his job.

And for the first time ever, a rookie won the World Superbike championship, and then took the opportunity to jump immediately to MotoGP.  Welcome aboard, Ben Spies!  (You deserved the ride last year.)  Welcome also to a fantastic graduating class of 250cc riders:  Marco Simoncelli, Alvaro Bautista, Hector Barbera, and Hiroshi Aoyama.

So NEXT YEAR?  Oh, nothing.  The contracts for Rossi, Lorenzo, Pedrosa, Stoner, Hayden, AND Spies are all up at the end of the year.  All except Spies have at least a little bit of acrimony between rider and team.  Mid-year of 2010 (about the time of the Indy GP, woo!) should be the maddest madhouse of musical chairs you’ve ever seen.

There should still be at least four men capable of winning any given race – perhaps more, if Spies gets up to speed quickly enough.  The tire wars having settled out, things are looking VERY interesting.  And that’s not even counting the whole reset button being pushed as the 250cc category goes the way of the dodo to make room for the new Moto2 undercard – spec engines in prototype chassis.  CRAZY.

Here’s to a good year of racing in the books…and an even better one to come.

See y’all at the track!