After a Week had Passed...
Nov. 13th, 2007 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rain_gryphonGreat consternation at work, as the local Taco Hell has caught fire. Many lunch plans are ruined.
Many years ago, Erfy the Foxboi and I were on our way to eat at East Side Mario's, a favourite restaurant. We kept being passed by fire trucks on the way there, and were laughing Beavis and Butthead style about the idea of the restaurant being on fire. We got there, and of course it was in the process of burning to the ground.
*****
Back in June I found a Casio keyboard. I poked at it a little, then put it away. This past Saturday I finally went down to the music store and bought a stand for it, so I could play it properly. I'm having a good time with it, if nothing else, slamming dramatically away at the piano line (F! C! Bb!) in "Baba O'Riley" (aka Teenage Wasteland). One of the great virtues of rock is that you can just more or less start right out without lots of preparation. It's a very accessible music.
We didn't have a piano when I was growing up - we had that most curiously Victorian of keyboards, the reed organ. I never really played it that much, since it had one volume, which was 'loud'. It was probably intended to be used in a small church. At any rate, it was impossible to practice quietly with it, without your beginner's mistakes being heard by half the neighborhood, so I never really played it. My grandmother was quite good with it.
Music seemed to come very naturally to most of my family, but I always had to work at it. My mother and my great-uncle Keith, especially, can just pick up instruments, mess around with them for a few minutes, then start playing them. Keith briefly directed the Army Band at Fort Riley, played in several of the Big Bands in their twilight years, directed high school band for many years, and once on a whim ended up as a pickup player in a circus band for the summer. I had not a clue that he had joined that, until I went to the circus, and lo and behold, there's my great uncle waving at me from the band box.
You can imagine family gatherings with such relatives. I always felt kind of inferior, not being able to just pick up an instrument and play like everyone else could. It's an unusual feeling to have an instrument that I can sit down and more or less play on general principles, without training.
*****
Turner is already showing "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". It's an estimable piece of work, but mid-November is too early to watch it.
AMC, is their utter retardation, is showing "Blazing Saddles", but they've blanked out every instance of the word "nigger", which completely ruins the point of the movie. Someone needs to get beat with a stick.
*****
I can imagine myself as a latter-day lictor, visiting Madison Avenue with my sticks and axe. I'd enjoy that. TV and advertising executives would fear to see me in their lobby. Some wholesale drubbings and a few chopped-off heads would improve the state of the medium.
*****
It's just as well I didn't go to see "Iwo Jima". Someone has posted clips from that on You Tube. There's an unintentionally hilarious scene where a Japanese officer is harangueing his men about their duty to give their lives as soldiers of the Emperor. Well and good - I can agree with that. His implementation of 'give their lives', though, is to use grenades to blow themselves up on the spot. I lost it. It's exactly like the Suicide Battalion from "Life of Brian". They're not only not taking any of the Emperor's enemies with them, they're actively killing off the Emperor's own soldiers. It's insanely disfunctional.
Many years ago, Erfy the Foxboi and I were on our way to eat at East Side Mario's, a favourite restaurant. We kept being passed by fire trucks on the way there, and were laughing Beavis and Butthead style about the idea of the restaurant being on fire. We got there, and of course it was in the process of burning to the ground.
*****
Back in June I found a Casio keyboard. I poked at it a little, then put it away. This past Saturday I finally went down to the music store and bought a stand for it, so I could play it properly. I'm having a good time with it, if nothing else, slamming dramatically away at the piano line (F! C! Bb!) in "Baba O'Riley" (aka Teenage Wasteland). One of the great virtues of rock is that you can just more or less start right out without lots of preparation. It's a very accessible music.
We didn't have a piano when I was growing up - we had that most curiously Victorian of keyboards, the reed organ. I never really played it that much, since it had one volume, which was 'loud'. It was probably intended to be used in a small church. At any rate, it was impossible to practice quietly with it, without your beginner's mistakes being heard by half the neighborhood, so I never really played it. My grandmother was quite good with it.
Music seemed to come very naturally to most of my family, but I always had to work at it. My mother and my great-uncle Keith, especially, can just pick up instruments, mess around with them for a few minutes, then start playing them. Keith briefly directed the Army Band at Fort Riley, played in several of the Big Bands in their twilight years, directed high school band for many years, and once on a whim ended up as a pickup player in a circus band for the summer. I had not a clue that he had joined that, until I went to the circus, and lo and behold, there's my great uncle waving at me from the band box.
You can imagine family gatherings with such relatives. I always felt kind of inferior, not being able to just pick up an instrument and play like everyone else could. It's an unusual feeling to have an instrument that I can sit down and more or less play on general principles, without training.
*****
Turner is already showing "How the Grinch Stole Christmas". It's an estimable piece of work, but mid-November is too early to watch it.
AMC, is their utter retardation, is showing "Blazing Saddles", but they've blanked out every instance of the word "nigger", which completely ruins the point of the movie. Someone needs to get beat with a stick.
*****
I can imagine myself as a latter-day lictor, visiting Madison Avenue with my sticks and axe. I'd enjoy that. TV and advertising executives would fear to see me in their lobby. Some wholesale drubbings and a few chopped-off heads would improve the state of the medium.
*****
It's just as well I didn't go to see "Iwo Jima". Someone has posted clips from that on You Tube. There's an unintentionally hilarious scene where a Japanese officer is harangueing his men about their duty to give their lives as soldiers of the Emperor. Well and good - I can agree with that. His implementation of 'give their lives', though, is to use grenades to blow themselves up on the spot. I lost it. It's exactly like the Suicide Battalion from "Life of Brian". They're not only not taking any of the Emperor's enemies with them, they're actively killing off the Emperor's own soldiers. It's insanely disfunctional.
