Category: General

Celebration Day

Happy New Year everyone. We had a most relaxing and enjoyable holidays. Caught up with lots of friends and family, had some guests, did some traveling – hundreds of miles of it in snow – and got in some good partying too. Seems like we often go weeks or even months on end without having a chance to hang out with friends, but we made up for it this holidays. Played lots of games: Risk, Sorry, Carcosonne, the green screen door, the triangle game, one up/one down, open/closed, and even chess.

It seems upsizing your house this the thing right now. Mary and Lou have been putting a second story on their house out on Long Island, adding four more bedrooms. It’s almost done, they’re just waiting on a railing for the stairs and a countertop for the bathroom sink. That’s pretty amazing considering they only started work in November, and the contractor with doing lots of post-Sandy repair jobs at the same time. Meanwhile upstate, Larry and Jackie moved into a sprawling ranch house with a really cool glass-enclosed family room and loft, on a lot adjoining the woods. Very nice for all of them.

When Lou came over on Christmas day we managed to get a few minutes together for him to play and sing some of his new songs into a mic. I’m producing his new record, and these are the demos. My first step is to listen to the songs and learn them, then I’ll put together some arrangements and see what Lou thinks of them. So far he only has 4 or 5 songs – enough for an E.P. Should be a fun project. We’ll see how it goes.

Among the parties we went to was New Year’s Eve at Erik’s. I brought along my new bass to show him. It turned out the house was full of musicians, so it was a jam session. I spent most of my time on the bass cuz Erik was on the piano. There was a drummer too. The guitar player kept on calling songs that I didn’t really know but weren’t too hard, things like “About a Girl” and “I Wanna Be Sedated”. I found it wasn’t too hard to keep up and lay down a good bottom. Later on I played some piano but switched back to bass after midnight cuz we had to lower the volume. Next thing I knew it was 4 am. It was a great to chance to get a feel for the bass. I’m really digging it.

Also watched about half of the Godfather trilogy, and got some new records including the abridged Ella Fitzgerald songbook (the three-CD set, not the 16-CD one), and Celebration Day by Led Zeppelin. BTW, when we up in Buffalo visiting my parents, Led Zep were on TV receiving an award. My dad turned and asked me “Have you ever heard of these guys? That guy has really fast fingers.” I’m like, “You told me to turn down their damn music so many times when I was kid!” You’d think he’d remember. Ah well, he’s certainly mellowed out.

Going to the Mall

I’m on winter break now. Woo-hoo!

There’s a big new mall in Yonkers that Jeannie and the kids have been to a bunch of times already but I’ve been avoiding because they make you pay to park. But Lizzy needed a new winter jacket, and we all wanted to see The Hobbit, and the Michelle wanted to do so xmas shopping for Jeannie, so we all went last weekend. Figured we’d get dinner as long as we’re there too.

The mall has a Guitar Center, and I’ve been toying with the idea of buying a new guitar for a while now. I’ve kinda narrowed it down to some kind of semi-hollow-body or a Les Paul. But since I don’t know really and new guitars are expensive, I’ve taken to checking whatever they have used for sale whenever I go into a music store to see if anything calls out to me.

So that night I found a used bass made famous by Geddy Lee back in the day: the Hentor Barbarian. No, just kidding, it’s a Steinberger! It’s not an 80’s vintage, but 21st century, and in like-new condition. It has that famous headless, minimal body design. It feels and sounds great. My p-bass is like a truck in comparison. The Steinberger has a much cleaner sound, and is faster, with lower action, a flatter neck, and flatter frets. Plus it has a second pickup near the bridge, so there’s alot more control over the tone. And cheap too, a real bargain. So I picked it up. I’m really happy with it.

I played it for a while the next day. Alot of things I’ve been working hard to articulate came easy. It took me a while to realize I should play with a much lighter touch than the p-bass. I don’t know if it can really replace the p-bass for everything, but it adds a whole new area to my bass sound. I’m thinking down the line somewhere I should trade in my p-bass for a fender jazz, and that might be the one bass.

The Hobbit was for the most part amazing. The acting was great, esp. Martin Freeman as Bilbo, and it has the Peter Jackson lush locations and over-the-top helicopter shots and all that you’d expect after LotR. It feels great to be back in Middle Earth with a new movie. Riddles in the Dark absolutely stole the show.

We saw the 48 fps version and I thought it looked great. I can’t understand the controversy. You raise the sample rate it’s gonna look better. There was one shot in particular where I thought the 48fps really shined. It was a made-for-3d shot, with the camera looking straight down on the Company of Thorin as they made they way down thru a cleft of rocks to the hidden valley of Imladris. It was a dolly shot, and looked absolutely virtuosic. However, the film did actually skip and pause unexpectedly a couple times, like there was a buffering problem. That was pretty bad.

My only criticism with the movie itself is that where they deviated from the book to add new material, alot of it was focused on pumping up the action with bluescreen/CG set pieces that came off as increasingly improbable toward the end. They also altered a few important plot details. Everyone I’ve talked to who doesn’t really know the book doesn’t seem to mind, but to me it was unnecessary. If it were up to me I’d have hewed closer to the book, and started with a simpler-and-more-innocent-times vibe, and brought the party to the foot of the Lonely Mountain by the end of the picture. Then I’d have closed by following up on the where-has-Gandalf-gone question, circling back to meeting with Saruman and Galadriel and dropping the bomb that there’s something much bigger and scarier going on here!

They did have two musical numbers, both by the Dwarves, none by the Elves.

Armadillos and Spiders

Last week one day I took the girls and one of their friends to the Museum of Natural History. It was a fun day.

We checked out the Origami Holiday Tree. The theme this year was collective nouns. I had fold a group of armadillos, called a fez of armadillos. There were lots of others: a murder of crows, a barrel of monkeys, a fold of sheep, a galaxy of stars. You get the idea. I think my favorite was the lemurs.

We got to see the dinosaurs and all that, but the for us this time was the Spiders Alive! Well, my daughter Michelle and I were fascinated, by my daughter was repulsed. Ah well. Lots of giant spiders, scorpions, and vinegaroons. I’d never heard of vinegaroons. Plus a great live demo. Did you know scorpions glow blue under black light? Neither did I. Now I’m trying again to design some origami arachnids. I tried for my book but ended up designing a giant squid instead.

Catching Up

Busy these days with work and lots of stuff. So here’s catching up on a few random things. Work has been busy and problematic, and I’ve putting in extra evenings and fixing other people’s bugs to keep things on track. I think we turned a corner mid-week last week. We have a release coming up this week, and now we’re in good shape.

My book has been done for a couple of weeks, but now I’m waiting on the publisher to get back to me.

We got our xmas tree up today. A nice wide bushy one. Lots room for ornaments. Went out to pick one up in the rain. Always a nice feeling to have the tree up.

I’ve been starting to get back into the music recording thing, picking up my half-finished third Buzzy Tonic album. So far the focus is on playing. I have a backlog of half-written songs, so I think I’m gonna work them up to play and sing live before I get back into tracking. Ought to go faster with the arrangements worked out and under my fingers.

The other day I was showing Michelle how to hammer-on on the bass. I’m kind of a lazy bass player and will often hammer-on or pull-off when I’m doing a fast chromatic riff, just so I don’t have to articulate the note with my right hand. I use my thumb on the right hand alot, especially on the bottom two strings. I generally switch to fingers-only as a tonal effect, from rounder to punchier. So my hammer-ons and pull-offs on the bass are really quite solid, which is weird since I’ve never really consciously worked at it.

One of the most amazing musicians I’ve ever played with was this cat Jim Wynne, who was a master of the two-hand tap technique on the bass. I little two-handed-tap blues improvisation for Michelle to demonstrate his style, playing the bass line in the bottom two strings with my left hand and tapping the 3rd and 7th on the offbeats on top two strings with my right. To my surprise it came out sounding really good! I guess it’s not that different than piano. I’m gonna have to work a part like that into one of my songs.

The girls are having a good fall. Yesterday they had the holiday show at the performing arts group they belong to, Young at Arts. Michelle has been working out Do a Deer from The Sound of Music by ear on the piano. Talented girl. Meanwhile Lizzy is enjoying being in 8th grade and her grades are up, and that comes at a good time. She’s finally getting algebra. She was cast as one of the leads in her school play this winter. The theme of the play is New York, and the songs are all taken from classic shows, with an original story to string them together. She has six songs. Her character is British, so she’s been having fun practicing her accent. I’m going to be playing in the band again this year. I got the list of songs and put together a playlist. It’s a fun set. We listened to it as we put up the tree today. It has two different songs called New York New York.

Wild and Scary

We usually put our Halloween pumpkin out on the front stoop. The local critters nibble at if for a while, and then sooner or later there’s rain and it starts to turn mushy and we have to get rid of it. This year we haven’t had any rain, and the squirrels have really be having a feast, so it’s looking, uh, really interesting.

In other news, Lizzy turned 13 recently. Yes I am now the parent of a teenager. She’s also now 5’7”, having really shot up the last few months. That’s a few inches taller than her mother. Wow. We had a party for her at our favorite local restaurant, the Oriental Palace. It was in the post-hurricane period and feels like a blur to me. After her birthday party Lizzy went on a shopping date with her friend Ella, who shares the same birthday, and bought lots of clothes. They were very excited.

Meanwhile, Erik and I resumed jamming. At this point we’re a little rusty, but it feels good to get back in it. Like I said, now that my book is done, getting back into playing music is a major goal for the winter. This includes doing a few more live gigs.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at Jeanne’s parents house. Not thinking about work for a few days. Mary and Lou were there. They’re in the middle of putting a second story on their house. Looks like they’re off to a good start. It only took a week get the walls, roof and windows up. Lou wants to record and EP of some more of his songs and asked my to produce it It sounds like a fun project.

Michelle is all excited about a new Nintendo thing she wants to get.

More Origami

I’m getting to the home stretch on my book. I have all the models (22) designed and folded and all the photography done. I came up with three new models for the book in the last few weeks. Two were the Cuttlefish and Giant Squid, to create a Cephalopod group along with my Octopus. I tried and tried to design a spider but never came up with anything I liked.

For my last model I designed a Lean-To, to go with the Canoe and Adirondack Chair. I really wanted one more intermediate model. This one clocks in at 34 steps, but most of it is pre-folding and it only takes 10 or 15 minutes to fold. And I got the diagrams done in two evenings! I guess I’m finally getting faster.

I went over to Bob’s one night last week to finish up the pictures, and they came out great. I have only two more diagrams to finish now, the Squid and the Turkey. They’re both more than halfway done but they’re complex models, so they have a lot of steps. After the last drawings, all that remains is writing the intro and the basic steps.

In other news, our big Q4 release of my software at work is in QA now. Really looking forward to taking a break.

Went up and saw Martin and Kathleen yesterday and picked pumpkins and apples and grapes. This seems to have become something of a fall tradition.

The weather has been really warm thru the end of September, to the point where we still have our air conditioners in. But there’s also been a lot of rain. Warm and humid. Until yesterday, when it got cold all of a sudden. Now it’s only getting up to the 50’s and we’ve had to turn on the heat.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

It was twenty years ago today – half a lifetime ago – that I quit my job, broke up my band, sold my car, left my hometown, friends and family behind, and moved to New York City to attend grad school and begin my career in “Mulitmedia” as it was known at the time. The great leap into the unknown. It’s been one heck of a ride, at the vanguard of interactive media, software and entertainment, including some great years spent in Silicon Valley. Sometime when I’m in the mood to reminisce, I’ll tell you all about it, particularly the years before the crash. For now, I just want to give a shout out to the ITP class of ’94 and say wow, how the times have changed. What used to be visionary is now just everyday life. My kids take the existence of iPods for granted, and care more about accessorizing them than anything else. They’ll never understand the work and imagination it took to drag the dream into existence.

Summertime Green

Just got back from a great camping trip with Martin’s and Nick’s, and some new friends too. Lizzy brought along a couple friends as well, so we were concerned that everything would fit in the car. In the end we left behind ketchup. The weather was great until mid day Sunday, when the skies opened up and started to pour. Fortunately we were pretty much packed, but sill got soaked in the few minutes it took to finish loading, and we drove home thru a pretty intense storm. We’d got a Thule to put on the roof of our car. It turned out not to be fully waterproof. Ah well.

Summertime Blues

Last weekend’s gig went well. An important milestone, our first full-length gig. We played for a smallish but appreciative crowd and the set went over well. Eight originals and ten covers in two sets. It’ll be a few weeks before we can get together again because of vacation schedules and whatnot. Hopefully in the fall we’ll start picking up more, bigger gigs and work on getting a rhythm section.

Meanwhile work has been busy and stressful. At least this weekend, there’s nothing going on and I can some time to recharge.

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Over the weekend the kids’ school had their annual carnival. This is the major fund raiser for the school, and a pretty large-scale affair, taking over the whole north parking lot and athletic field with rides like a ferris wheel and roller coaster and fun house, and food and your classic midway games. It went on for four days and every family has to volunteer. I spent an evening working one of game booths, handing out bean bags to throw, and the occasional stuffed animal to a winner. At the start it wasn’t too crowded and I had a chance to go around and study a few of the games and figure out what makes them so hard to win. It’s a similar design psychology to trade show exhibits and magic acts. I figured out a reliable method for a couple of them, and all the ones involving throwing darts I’m good at, and the ones involving throwing balls or beanbags not so much. I accidentally won a giant lizard tossing a ring onto a milk jug. We named him Carlos Sebastian Bach in honor of the Mets’ no-hitter. Between hanging out and working we were there three of the days. The kids had a great time. The last day had some dramatic, intense but brief rainstorms. At one point it was torrentially pouring and bright sunlight at the same time.

In other news, Lizzy painted her nails to look like the flags of various nations.