Happy Birthday to Blooooooooog...

Yay! Happy birthday to this, my first blog!

Okay, I admit, I missed it by a few weeks. It was actually the very beginning of June last year, and I'm not catching it until halfway through the month this year. But I think I've got a good excuse... see, the only reason I'm noticing that it's been a year since I started this blog is because of a bizarre and massive experience of deja vu. Today, it is well over 90 degrees out there in Syracuse... we've had a few hot days already, but this is the first ugly, humid, sweltering one that has made me consciously think to myself "I hate hot weather, and I can't stand being outside when it's over-hot like this", and hurriedly make plans to return to the comfort of my climate controlled home environment (A/C on strong right now, plus both the standalone fans and ceiling variety). Now, that made me feel deja-vu, because one of the very first rants I spewed forth onto this, my very first blog, was last year in June, when I took the opportunity to complain about how the rest of the world delights in calling this "good" weather, when I think it's some of the worst, and views rain and cool as "bad" weather, when it's what I'm longing for on a day like this.

So, anyway, I guess whatever the reason, happy birthday to blog! Yay! It's been an up and down year here, with some periods when I got a bit too busy to write, and some "feast" periods when I found something new to post almost daily. Of course, I've also begun several other blogs since then... a blog to reflect on my poker exploits, the Hold or Fold blog... a blog for discussing our regular poker tournament, the Poker Frog Blog... a blog for the extra-curricular theatre organization I run for the kids at the high school, the C.A.S.T. Blog... a sadly rarely used blog for recording my experiences in battling my weight (I hope I'll have more cause to post there this summer), entitled the Blubber Battle Blog... and even, most recently, a Relay Novel project for the Off On a Tangent comedy group, aptly entitled Off-On-A-Tangent Blog (tho nobody else has yet expanded on my story... *sigh*). Soon, I'll be posting a blog to support work on the Scene One summer show, too. Blogging has really turned out to be a great way to make it seem like I'm producing something... only if it's rarely read (though I have actually heard replies from THREE different people I know! How about that!!!).

Here's to you, blog... giving me someplace to rest my ranting insanity. Speaking of which... what is wrong with people? We went out to lunch today with my grandfather and my father (and lots of other family too) to celebrate Father's Day... and when we left the restaurant, my dad found his car had been hit in the parking lot by someone who just took off. Geesh... Happy Father's Day! May I someday have the ability to put things in calm perspective like he does...

A weekend with the gang

I spent this past weekend on a short trip with some friends. We drove down to Lancaster, Pennsylvania on Saturday, went out to dinner at a local Ichiban, stayed overnight in a downtown hotel (where we enjoyed a fantastic evening swim in the pool, which we had all to ourselves), and then headed over on Sunday to the reason for the trip, a performance of the musical 1776 at the Dutch Apple Theater, before heading back to Syracuse sunday night (stopping at a Cracker Barrel on the way). It was a short, exhausting trip, and some of the best fun I've had in a long time.

I honestly, truly love going on trips with friends. While relaxing in the pool on Saturday, we ended up on the topic, and there really is a key truth to that statement, at least for me: it matters not much at all where the trip is headed, but rather that it is with friends. The chance to hop in a carful of friends and hit the road, chat for hours, share music, share relaxations, share experiences (no matter what they are) along the way, it's at the center of my most treasured memories.

This summer will be a really packed one for us - I'm busy almost every week and every weekend, each with different responsibilities. Still, I hope we can find the time to just get together and go places with some friends, preferably unhindered by it being connected with any specific formal group or responsibility. Now that's the way I unwind.

P.S. - On a side note, I just got home from another very cathartic experience, the final Corcoran Live! concert of the season, and the last significant event I had the opportunity to share with this year's seniors. More on this next post - I have to get the photos processed first.

Music Hunting

I spent a chunk of my weekend burning new CDs to keep in the van, collections of favorite music and the like. That always has the potential to be a real time-killer for me, because it is so easy for me to get sidetracked by the search for different music that I've always wanted. Some of the searches that inadvertantly derailed me and ate up a few moments this weekend:

(1) A good recording of "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult - I have never broken down and purchased a BOC CD, because the best I can tell Reaper is the only BOC song I care for. Instead, I've downloaded Reaper about a dozen times... and until now, every copy has stunk. It's something with the cymbals in the set - they have a tinny, wavy quality that is really distracting to the overall song. Anyway, I was actually successful in this one this weekend finally, as I found an extended version of Reaper from a live BOC album on iTunes. It's got the extra live performance blemishes in the performance you'd expect, but overall, I call it a "win".

(2) Classical Rock - No, NOT "classic rock", and that's the problem. What I particularly like, and have been looking for for years, are instrumental rock versions of classical music. It DOESN'T COUNT if someone sings anywhere in the song, so pop songs that rip off parts of classical melodies don't count. A few optimum examples: "A Fifth of Beethoven" (the '70s dance version of Beethoven's 5th symphony), or "Sprach Zachustra" a la the rock funk version from the soundtrack to the Peter Sellers movie "Being There". I love that stuff, and I KNOW there is a lot more of it out there, but can't for the life of me find it. I came across two imperfect solutions in my short continuation of the quest this weekend. First, there is a version of "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" that I noticed in the end of "The 40 Year Old Virgin" this weekend, according to the credits performed by a group that seems very promising from the 70s, but which iTunes does not carry at all, and which appears only to be available on CD as a purchase of an expensive import. Second, a much less close fit, but interesting nonetheless, is a British group of four female violists who perform dance rock arrangements of classical pieces. I listened to some samples on iTunes and they sound a bit TOO dancey for me (plus all the literature and album art turns me off because of the over-sexing of the performers, I guess on the mistaken assumption that they need to sell these women as sex objects rather than as musicians because so much of the pathetic, shallow pop industry already has that screwed up value), but I think I'll end up giving them a try too.

(3) Gregorian Chants, modernized - Sort of related to #2, I guess. I specifically remember sometime in the '90s a CD coming out and being popular featuring Gregorian chants, set to rock beats and with light bass and synth accompaniment. Now, all my searches either turn up straightforward and genuine Gregorian chants, or (believe it or not) Gregorian chant versions of pop songs (the exact photo negative of what I'm looking for).

(4) The Foremen - Folk Political group that my friend Mark introduced me to, but whom broke up years ago, and now I can't find their albums, nor are they available on iTunes. Very funny stuff, and sorely needed in the current political climate.

(5) Rhapsodic, creatively instrumental music - Not solely instrumental here, but were talking a certain type of rock that I really enjoy, that has creative melody and musicality, non-adherence to the dull and overused conventions of common, static time signatures and melody patterns, and that feel more like a journey through several different melodies, rather than just a verse and a chorus over and over again. Some good examples: "Bat Out of Hell", "Paradise By the Dashboard Light", or "I Would Do Anything For Love" by Meatloaf; at least half of the greatest hits of Kansas; "Bohemian Rhapsody" or "Under Pressure" by Queen (lots others by them too). Maybe a couple things by Rush. I think it's really mostly a 70s anti-disco rock sound that does it, but I'm not sure. Anyone have anything good along those veins to recommend?

A disturbing sequence of thoughts...

The following is intended as a truly non-politcal, non-partisan observation, which is equally disturbed by the same displays from both "sides of the aisle"... please don't take it as anti or pro war or right or left wing and flame at me in comments - I have thoroughly tired of debating my views, since only those whose minds are as equally made up as mine participate in the conversation, and neither of us are going to convince each other any time soon.

I am feeling very, very distraught about the most recent developments overseas. I specifically speak here of the news story yesterday about a pregnant Iraqi shot and killed by American troops during a tragic misunderstanding at a roadblock.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20060601/D8HV5I8G0.html

This comes on top of the possible slaughter last fall in the village of Haditha (just currently coming to light through an investigation), as well every bit of anger, rage, and raw emotion feeding into violence that already existed.

I'm feeling distraught because, regardless of anyone's political belief about whether US troops should be in Iraq or what they should be doing, there can be no doubt that it is becoming more toxic by the minute to be in the US armed forces and serving in the middle east. Serving in the military is one job that I could never do myself; I have often thought about that fact, and how much more deserving our military is of real respect, concern, and care, more than those who politicize the troops to serve either side of the war debate actually afford them. It is so depressing to see the extremists of both sides abuse those people who serve in the military for politics, whether it is the horrifying display of someone choosing military barracks or a cemetery and military funeral (yes, this has actually happened... again and again...) to hold a demonstration against the war, or the equally horrifying display of people using blind, blanket "you don't support our troops" accusations against those who select and craft their show of objection in the most respectful and cautious of ways. Here in the U.S., we spend so much time on the outskirts of the issue that it seems we can't meet in the middle, even on Memorial Day, to just focus on how fortunate we are to have these people do for us what we can't do for ourselves. I did not see a single Memorial Day rememberance that was not abused and politicized to either praise or condemn the war.

And that's what we're doing to them at home. While in the middle east, they are experiencing all the worst parts of the same stereotyping and bigotry that contributed to the root problems, and which we spend so much of our effort here in the U.S. battling against and struggling with. The brother of the killed pregnant woman is quoted in the article saying "God take revenge on the Americans and those who brought them here." In that sentence is the language that shows the issue... the man has been charged by such sorrow, anger, and rage, that he has fallen under the blindfold of the stereotyping bigot... he didn't say he wanted revenge against the person responsible, he said he wanted "revenge on the Americans." Certainly, sympathize with his heartbreak, and allow him that anyone might say anything in the heat of that passion. But, to be fair, put the same situation in other contexts you can better understand. Imagine this version:

A caucasian man is driving his sister to the hospital, and cuts through an area of the city through which he wouldn't otherwise drive at fast speeds with little slowing down. After tearing down one particular street bearing the home of an African- American gang leader, thugs see the car barreling down the road and shout warnings that it turn around (imagining it to be a drive-by), and when it doesn't, they fire what they describe as warning shots to disable the vehicle, but instead shoot and kill the pregnant woman. Later, in the press, the brother is quoted as saying "God take revenge on the black people and those who put them into this impoverished neighborhood."

I've framed it with the racial choices (it could be vice-versa in races too, or even other races than Caucasion and African-American, but I chose that one because its racial charge is already so familiar to us) because it is a context we can relate to in America. The fundmental issue at the end is this... the man is so enraged with grief that he cannot see that this incident and others that involve African-Americans in urban areas are not automatically indicitive of the larger wholes, nor are they automatically limiting to the population subsets. Being African-American does not mean you live in the bricks, nor does living in the bricks mean you are a violent felon, nor certainly does it mean that being African-American makes you a violent felon... so it sounds absurd to want revenge on the whole of the race for the actions of one.

But somehow this is tolerated, and even encouraged, by this mindset we see again and again. An American soldier engaged in a fatal shooting... so all Americans are deserving of the revenge? It is more and more tragic because there have been a few other examples (Abu Gharib, Haditha, etc.) that make the perpetrator of the generalization feel even more justified... but again, even a hundred examples... or a thousand examples... in a total class size of 1.4 million (size of the total U.S. active duty armed forces - not including 1.3 million in reserves) does NOT justify making a generalization about the entire class that they are all deserving of revenge... and ESPECIALLY not in a class size of 281,422,000 (Americans, using the U.S. definition of the word, which is what the man intended). Ironically, encased in this discussion is the temptation (that must be quashed!) to retaliate with an equally poor generalization: that somehow all Islamic believers stereotype Americans (violent fundamentalists don't make up a large enough sample size to warrant the generalization, nor even do people who would make a statement similar to that one I cited from the article).

And so, armed with this generalization that all Americans (and especially military) are deserving of "revenge", on come more loonies wearing explosives or firing guns. And it all keeps on perpetuating.

Even though there are over a million of them, in some ways, being a U.S. soldier today has got to be one of the most lonely feelings in the world, like everyone is out to get you... ...or would that be another unsubstantiated generalization?