I think I need to seperate my cymbals. They keep multiplying when I`m not looking.

"Bluebird" by Charles Bukowski

"I Write Like" Analyzer

I write like
Kurt Vonnegut

I Write Like. Analyze your writing!

Bus Driver Stops Suicide

NanoWriMo Starts - Here's my playlist.

Late tonight/early tomorrow I'm starting NanoWriMo-National Novel Writing Month.
Here's my Spotify playlist if you want to listen along. I'm going to finally try to get
Frank's Bad Day finished for good.

Coconut Pear Oatmeal

1 cup water
1/2 cup milk (not skim)
1/2 cup oatmeal
1 medium pear-diced
2 teaspoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon molasses
1 packet splenda
1 tablespoon butter
3 tablespoons shredded coconut (I used unsweetened)
salt to taste
cinnamon to taste
pinch of ginger
pinch of nutmeg
pinch of cloves
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Add water, salt and spices to pan and begin to boil. Once boiling add oatmeal and stir. Wait several minutes and add pears and coconut and stir. Turn heat to low simmer. Add butter, maple syrup, molasses, and Splenda and milk. Cover and let cook for about 5 to 10 minutes-stirring occasionally. Once it gets to the consistency you desire add the vanilla, stir and serve.

Lily by Geoffrey Gevalt

Awesome story about a very deep 2.5 year old.

100 Miles

In April I started keeping track of my distance swimming. I soon decided I would swim 100 miles by the end of 2013. A mile is 36 laps down and back at the YMCA pool. I started out doing 1/4  to 1/2 of a mile each day. Then I would shoot for 27 laps, which is 3/4 of a mile. Several times after that I came in early and swam extra and got to 1 mile. It took about 1 hour and 20 minutes the first time I did it and I was spent afterwards. Finally, around the end of summer I was doing a mile several times a week. Now I can do it every day.

Today was the big day, I reached the goal early finished my 100 miles.

Lily Myers "Shrinking Women"

Here's an incredible piece of poetry about the nature of women. Powerful stuff.

Today I have swam a total of 99 miles this year. Tomorrow will be the big day I have been working for all year: 100 miles.

Quote from Robert Coles

Today I downloaded my weekly podcasts from The Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keilor and found this little gem:

"We should look inward and think about the meaning of our life and its purposes lest we do it in 20 or 30 years and its too late."-Robert Coles

Skidamarink a Dink a Dink: The Dramatic Reading

My cousin Melissa and her son Nate worked together on a dramatic reading for her daughter Jessica's reading. We were shooting for kind of a beatnik poem read by Bill Shatner effect. I'm pretty happy with it. If you have the bandwidth-click the HD button on the video player, it's much better.

1 Hour

Yesterday was awful. 

I was overwhelmed by work, swimming in emails. I made the effort to go the extra mile to help out a customer and I ended up staying way too late, and in the end I'm not sure it was value added work. Making a sacrifice for something you think is worth it can feel good, but when you come to the realization it may not have been as important as you were led to believe that's just disappointing. 

I came home in a snit. I missed out on exercising, catching up on chores and being with my wife. When I finally got to bed, it was later than I wanted and I drifted into a fitful sleep. 

About 2 am I started to slowly wake up and realized I was rested. I normally drag myself out of bed at 4 am to go swimming and it takes an hour of coffee and breakfast to come to a consciousness approaching that of Cro-Magnon man after a bad weekend. 

I lay there enjoying that type of lounging sleep that I normally reserve for Saturday morning around 8 am until I was done. I actually got up from bed an hour early and I wasn't despairing of life.  

I considered waking my red-headed compadre next to me, but I wasn't interested in seeing a bonafide, USDA inspected, Grade A snit, and it would be justified for waking her up at 3 am with no good reason other than I was rested and ready to face the day and wanted company. 

Instead I dressed and headed for the coffee maker. I got out the cat toy on a string as the coffee maker made the happy burbling noises and proceeded to make the other attractive female in my life happy. That would be Lucy the calico cat. She has deep green eyes and two permanent dirty spots on her nose. She is incredibly charming and always makes me feel like the popular girl at school wants to be my friend. After playing catch-the-cat-toy-on-the-string for about 10 minutes, I picked her up and scratched her ears and she leaned her cheek against mine and purred. 

I was ready to begin the day-ahead of the game. Today would be different and things would be good.  It was a moment of an everyday type of magic, an unexpected moment of God's grace after a very bad day, and it needed to be savored and shared. 

Zen Pencils Animation of Marc Maron's "Social Media Generation"

Just a warning, this is kind of vulgar, but it is so to make a point, not just for vulgar's sake. It makes a very strong statement about our use and abuse of social media. This is based on a comic on the site Zen Pencils with the animation developed by Jess the Dragoon .



 

Dear White Choc. Macademia #Clifbar, thanks for being there after swimming. Hypoglycemia was no match for your awesomeness.

Outside the Box

"The Scared is Scared"

Perfection...

The Sound of Sprinkles

Sitting in on congas with the jazz group Vibenation at the 2013 Elkhart Jazz Festival

There are things in this life that you keep forgetting easily, important things that you need to keep in mind. Its like how time and time again the Apostle Paul comes back to justification by faith to the church because they forget it so easily and legalism is such an easy trap to fall into. 

I have a similar experience regarding being a percussionist. I have to make a real effort to not forget the value of playing sparingly, not always trying to fill the whole musical space available with sound. It's as if I went to some audio garage sale and came back with awesome bargains. There is just not that much room for all I have but I still try to stuff it in all the closets until all the available musical space is bursting with too much sound.  This is especially true of playing with a band, but it also happens when I go out and play as part of a duet or trio. I have to remind myself that people like to hear things that don't always overwhelm them. All day long you can listen to music that is the equivalent of a pizza with everything, but then you don't even taste all of the subtle flavors in the cheese or the tomatoes and basil in the sauce. 

The same with music, sometimes to hear just an acoustic guitar and conga drums or just a shaker is kind of a rare experience because so much of the music that we listen to is a wall of sound. Think of the difference between Coldplay's "Hurts Like Heaven" and Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" and you will get the idea. 

Sometimes I have gotten down on myself in the past that I am not able to play more instruments at once, not able to produce the big sound that the kit drummer can, but then I remember that regardless of where I am at as a musician, there is nothing wrong with the addition of simple rhythms, they are accessible to more people, and they don't distract from the other instruments in the band. Even before I started playing myself I always loved those small accents, like triangles, shakers and bongos when I heard them in music around me. 

When I first started playing percussion, my music leader told me that I was the sprinkles on the cake. I wasn't the frosting or the cake itself, I was something that added a nice touch to what was already good on it's own. This saying comes back to me over and over. I'm there to support others and not to promote myself. It's a hard lesson, but it's worth learning over and over. 

Don Ward: Shoe Shiner Extraordinaire

I love seeing someone who loves their job.

Cantina Band

As a child I would lay on the floor and listen to one of my favorite records, (think of a really big black CD disc). It was an philharmonic orchestra led by Zubin Metha playing themes from Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. One of my favorite pieces on that album was the Cantina Band from Star Wars. Check out this video.

The Scarecrow

I just finished listening to Kissed By Rose by Seal. I`m not afraid to admit I sang it too. Just needed to share that.

Fresh Bread Like Jazz

My wife made fresh bread tonight. It tasted like Paul Desmond's alto sax sounds on "The Way You Look Tonight" on that classic jazz album, "Jazz at Oberlin" by the Dave Brubeck Quartet.
(see below).

That's without butter or honey, jelly, jam, Nutella, or even peanut butter!

Are you feeling me?

Can you dig what I'm laying down here?

It was really good bread...

A New Story of the People

There's a lot to this video. I have not decided what I think about it yet, but I thought it was worth sharing.

Questlove and David Byrne Discuss Public Enemy and Classical Musical

Ike Quebec - Blue and Sentimental

Cali Rivera - Cowbell Maker

Via Radio Diaries

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Buy My Book - Honest Haircuts

Recently I self-published a chapbook of poems, stories and essays called "Honest Haircuts" 

If you are interested in buying a copy-I still have some of the numbered first editions left. 

The price is $7.00 each for a signed copy and that includes postage in the US. 

Below is a link to Paypal if you would like to pay with a credit card. If you want to 

set something up in person-email me at honesthaircuts at gmail dot com. 

The Dream of the 1890's

I want to believe...

Dave Brubeck Quartet Take Five