#15*

Oops I did it again. I bought a guitar. My guitar teacher was hounding me to buy a real jazz guitar, and this Epiphone Joe Pass model was on sale at the Music City pawn shop in Sherwood.

epiphone joe pass

Speaking of guitars, here’s a shot of my other recent purchase, the Starfield Cabriolet.

Starfield Cabriolet

With the acquisition of the Joe Pass guitar, I now bring my signature model tally up to 7. Thus far I have models from Steve Vai, John Petrucci, Paul Gilbert, Richie Kotzen, Blues Saraceno, and Dweezil Zappa. Athough Dweezil’s is not really a signature model – it was actually his guitar. Hi, I’m a huge guitar nerd.

* Indicates 15 actual guitars in my home that I paid for. I also have a violin bass that is ostensibly John Mumford’s but he’ll never come back for it, two acoustic guitars I apparently inherited from Matt, I have a telecaster in Tara’s possession, an RG7 in the possession of Alex Moulton, and I have a couple of spare bodies and necks. This is why I will always hesitate when you ask me how many guitars I have. It could be as little as 15, but as many as 20.

How to Make Pyrex Explode

Cook something in a Pyrex pan at 450 degrees. Remove your food, and place the Pyrex pan in the sink. Add water. Pyrex will promptly shatter of its own accord.

Someone needs to tell this to single men before they start cooking. Granted, I should have learned this sort of thing in Chemistry, but applied science in general needs to be emphasized more than it currently is.

I had to use my winter gloves to dig out the hundreds of burnt-fish-encrusted shards of glass from my sink.

UPDATE: Amy reported a similar experience from several years past, with pictures.

Mundane Objects

I recently realized I should be sharing the fruits of my little writing group experiments with Natalie and the gang. Here’s one from our last meeting. The theme was “a mundane object” and I thought of a team: the wire cutters, tuning peg winder, and hex key I use to change guitar strings. I think the time limit was 3 minutes or so.

The hex key, the wire cutter and the peg winder. They sit patiently for a few days at a time, until one of the herd needs roping. They make their way from one part of the house to the other, sometimes taking grand adventures into the depths of the couch. Plumbing the depths of the cushions, Peg Winder once met 2 quarters, a dime and three pennies. They introduced him to their friend, the grand Stereo Remote, who regaled them with tales of volume control. “Once I made the whole house shake because the speakers were feeding back on themselves!” he cried out in the warm darkness, with his attentive audience reclining amid the dog hair, crumbs, and whatnot. Eventually returned to the surface world to tune up the green guitar, Peg Winder tells his fantastical tales to Wire Cutter and Hex Key, who receive his stories with a mixture of disbelief and wonder. Hex Key knows not of the world of the cushions, but has many times been underneath the mammoth couch, running at night with the dust bunnies and cat hair tumbleweeds. Wire Cutter, the most valuable of the trio, has only seen the coffee table, the desk and the tool drawer.

The Return of Dogpatch?

Finally a new plog after a long gap. Sorry. The good news, though, is that, as the photos can attest, the brush has been cleared at Dogpatch. I’m not sure for what eventual purpose, so we can only wait for news on that. Still vaguely exciting, though.

The photos may not look like much, but I mainly took pictures from the road while driving. The fact that you can see anything at all from the road is amazing.

Dialogues of Frustration

Here are some of the more frustrating types of dialogue I have with clients:

Me: Option A or Option B?
Client: Yes.

Me: Person A will not be here to perform Task X. Can it wait until their return?
Client: Can you perform task X+1?

Me: Task A requires input from you before it can be accomplished.
Client: OK.
Client, two weeks later: Where’s Task A at? It was supposed to be done two weeks ago.

Why John Mayer Will Always Be My Hero

The bastard is now building his own pedals. He definitely has the best blog of anyone famous about whom I’d care to read. Whether he’s recommending CDs or showing off his new sneakers, he just has that John Thing…it may be meticulously cultivated marketing, but I always feel like I Know That Guy. He’s just a good songwriter and guitar player doing his thing. No ego, no bluster, no blingin, no drugged out tirades or trips to the county clink with a $20 hooker…just clever responses to his fame and guitar nerdisms.

I Own a Watch Now

My boss took me out to lunch today and gave me a nifty Kenneth Cole watch as a bonus for the last 6 months of taking over project management. If I forgot to mention it, I also got a raise a month or so ago. Apparently I rock. Nevertheless, upon receiving this lovely gift, the retarded gnome inside me blurted out “I haven’t worn a watch in I don’t know how long.”

Way to go, ass.

Despite what you may have been taught in kindergarten, sometimes honesty is NOT the best policy. Luckily before I made my faux pas, they mentioned that the receipt is in the box in case I want to exchange it. They also asked if there was anything else I needed from them (aside from more money, which they’re working on for everybody) to ensure a longer-term commitment to the company and all I could think to say was more vacation days. It’s true. I think I’d actually value that more than money at this point in my life.

In other news, tomorrow I’m going on a blind date set up by someone I actually haven’t met, but who is someone I’ve had many brief and clever exchanges, and who is a friend of several unconnected friends, so I’m assuming I’ll be relatively safe. We’ll see what happens.

There Are Days

There are days, sometimes, when you’re driving home on a sunny day with a milkshake and some McNuggets, listening to the Best of New Order, when everything seems right with the world. Some combination of stimuli hits you at just the right moment and you can’t help but think, yes, Western Civilization is the place to be, for it has brought you these pleasures; this magical moment was brought to you by America and your life is better for it.

There are those who would say that driving your car means polluting the environment. There are those who would say that consuming a milkshake means supporting factory-farmed cattle. There are those who would say that eating McDonald’s means polluting your body with toxins. There are those who would say that New Order is complete crap compared to Joy Division.

To all these people I would say, well, maybe. But all things in moderation. The simple pleasures of life, regardless of their origins, are to be savored. We should not be made to feel guilty for enjoying our lives.

Yes there are injustices and we should do what we can to lessen the suffering of our fellow creatures, but we should avoid making our lives completely miserable in the process. If we let the intense evils of the world get us all down, the world would only become a more miserable place. The world is a better place than it has ever been – anyone who says the past was better is either blinded by nostalgia or wasn’t there. There are fewer wars than we’ve had in a long time. Crime is down across the US, and has been steadily decreasing over the last ten years. The news media would have you believe armageddon is at hand. And the fundamentalist whack jobs would love that to be true.

I’m not saying we should get complacent and rest easy; there will always be more work to do. Buy organic whenever possible, drive less, walk more, eat fast food rarely. And whatever you do, savor it. Even if it’s unhealthy. Especially if it’s unhealthy.  Don’t believe those who tell you to be worried or guilty about enjoying your life. You only get one.

Selections from XTC

YouTube has reminded me how much I love XTC, and how few people know who they are. Here are some selections:

The puppet show in particular is hilarious. Apparently it was made to promote the Oranges & Lemons CD, but I can’t imagine what Geffen Records thought about it.

What’s the Matter with Kansas? (The Band)

I have a wide variety of musical interests, and I have a wide variety of friends. This leads to varying reactions about particular shows I go to see. If I tell people I’m going to see Kansas at Magic Springs, the reactions vary from excitement to derision. If I say I’m excited about seeing Mr. Lif from The Perceptionists, the reactions are the same but the camps are reversed. As someone who used to be a music snob, I suppose I can relate to each faction’s opinions about music, I just wish people would open up a little.

My outlook on music is summed up pretty well by Frank Zappa when he said:

“I think that if a person is making music — even if it’s the most crass, commercial kind of crud — that person should be doing that because there are people who want to consume crass, commercial crud. And they’re doing a necessary function for the audience that needs to be entertained. Just because I’m not the consumer of that stuff, it’s no reason for me to go on some big campaign against it. I don’t think it’s particularly aesthetic, but then again, if it’s providing enjoyment for somebody, then fine.”

Music is so much bigger than any one person’s narrow view of it. It’s more than notes on a page, it’s more than timbres, it’s more than the theatrical poses, and it’s a lot more than lyrics. In a way, it’s more than art. Art implies standards, but saying all music should be art is like saying all speech should be poetry.

Legendary rock critic Lester Bangs was a big believer in the idea that rock and roll is a form of expression that is gloriously and righteously dumb, and although he decried the attempts of progressive rock to legitimize the form, a band like Kansas was at least reaching beyond the restrictions of its genre. And the better hip-hop bands like Perceptionists are making compelling sounds that may or may not even be considered “music” per se. But if you like it, who cares?

I think people in general need to let go of their preconceptions of what is and is not right or cool or valuable, because I think these only get in the way of a wider view of music. Another reason for people to let go of their preconceptions is that all humans have a tendency to enjoy feeling superior to other segments of society. Dismissing what you don’t understand or can’t appreciate only makes you feel better about your own inadequacies and shortcomings. It’s much easier to deride or openly hate what other people enjoy rather than try to understand it, or them.