Live, learn, leave
I’m participating in a origami exhibit called Into the Fold, at the Sandusky Cultural Center in Sandusky, Ohio. The exhibition runs thru October 11. If you’re in the area be sure to check it out. You can learn more here:
http://www.sanduskyculturalcenter.org/events.htm
Lots of travel this time of year. We just got back from a cruise with Jeannie’s family. It was her mother and father’s 50th wedding anniversary and they wanted to take all the kids and grandkids. We’re very happy for them and feel quite lucky both sets of our parents have made it this far.
Rewinding a bit, the weekend after Buffalo we went up to Albany to visit with Martin. He’s building a massive deck out back of his house, and it was about half done the day we were out there. We left Lizzy to stay a spell and help out Kathleen, but were all reuinted the following weekend. We went camping with Martin, Kathleen and their kids, Nick and Lisa and their kids, and a whole bunch of Nick’s extended family. I think we had eight campsites. I always feel like camping is a lot of work, especially the preparation, but then once we get there it’s always such great fun. Hiking, making fires, sleeping in tents, good food and drink, and all that. This year it rained both nights. Not enough to stop us from doing stuff and having fun, but everything was wet when packed up, so we had to roll it out to dry after we got home.
Of course camping isn’t for everyone. Some people are more cruise people. I’ll admit I’m not one of them. I had my doubts beforehand. I didn’t want to be stuck on a boat with nothing to do and/or seasick the whole time. But all was well and it was a great time.
It was a 4 day cruise, which was enough for me, and we had a cabin with a balcony, which was nice. The ship itself was really neat. It’s the Carnival Splendor, which is the 46th largest cruise ship in the world today (it was in the top ten when it was new just 8 years ago) and about as big as can be and still fit thru the Panama Canal. It’s 950 feet long and 16 or 18 stories high above the waterline. Taking off from NY harbor it barely fit under the Verrazano Bridge. Less then 20 feet to spare! Everything inside the boat was a bit smaller than normal, but very efficiently designed so you didn’t mind. I had less than inch clearance under most doorways, and very little shoulder room.
Once we were away there wasn’t much to see other than the sea. We saw dolphins twice. Once was first thing in the morning, six or so of ’em playing in the ship’s wake, which was delightful, and later there were dozens of ’em, but not as close. We saw whales too, one evening watching the sun go down, and some lovely sunsets. But it was mostly overcast so not much in the way of stars. The port of call was St. John New Brunswick, a nothing-ish town that was a cross between St. Catherine and Seattle in tone. We took a hike and saw the local gorge, where the famous Bay of Fundy tides ran upriver and created interesting whirlpools. We had lobster rolls for lunch at a pub, saw a little whaling museum, and the kids got souvenirs. The terrain itself was interesting and weather was much colder in the bay of Fundy than near home. All in all quite charming.
On the boat there were lots of bars and restaurants, pools and hot tubs, movies and even a casino. Even though there were thousands of people it didn’t feel cramped. The food was really, really good, and there was lots of it in all varieties, from buffets to big dinner banquets. The whole thing really well run, very impressive. Lizzy got into playing the various trivia contests they had, and won a golden “ship on a stick” trophy. The main attraction, of course was just hanging out with the family. Alot like camping, but less forest, more ocean, and less work. It’s great to see all the nieces and nephews for an extended spell. They had a great time all together. All but two are now into middle school and high school, and becoming such interesting people. Of course Denis and Sylvia, who’ve have been on lots of cruises, had a great time too. This was the way they wanted to celebrate.
Next up: Ohio!
Just got back from a trip upstate to visit family and friends. Saw my parents and my brother Martin and his family. Had some BBQ and took in the fireworks show at the local park on the 4th. Saw Denis and Sara, whose pool is broken, and then Larry and Jackie, who are on their way to Vegas and San Francisco to celebrate their anniversary. Nick and Lisa and their kids were in town too, so we all went up to Niagara Falls together. I haven’t done the falls in a few years, although I grew up near there and know the place well. We used to ride our bikes up there before I could drive. Anyway, we did the Maid of the Mist and trekked all the way out to Terrapin point, and ended up at the bar there. Great day for it.
Next day we went on a tour of SUNY at Buffalo. Lizzy is going into 11th grade in the fall, and so is Nick’s oldest son so it’s time to start looking at colleges. Jeannie, Nick and I all attended UB a long time ago, and Jeannie and I met and fell in love there, so the tour brought back alot of memories as well as alot of comments on everything that’s changed with the campus since that time. Lizzy seemed favorably impressed by the whole thing, and is starting to think more about what she wants to do with her life and what it’ll take to get there.
Last Sunday Lizzy and her a cappella group had the honor of singing our national anthem at Yankee Stadium, to start the day’s baseball game. Way to go! Here’s a video of the event. Enjoy!
Hi, I’m back. Been busy traveling and other stuff, getting an early start on my summer. I went upstate to visit my brother Martin and then on to the Adirondacks to see my good friend Mark for a few days. Nice just to disconnect from everything and spend a few days on my own. Martin and family are doing well. Abbie is now past two. Out of baby phase and into little kid phase. She’s trying hard to keep up with her big brother, who is trying hard to keep up with *his* big brother. Meanwhile out in the yard they have chickens and ducks and guinea fowl running around and squonking all the time. Great fun.
I haven’t been up to the mountains in a while and it was good to reconnect with nature and to see Mark too. The weather was beautiful and bugs not too bad, so we did a bunch of hiking and canoeing. Very peaceful, just awesome. Mark is doing well too, busy running his own business building web sites for everyone (it seems) in the region. On my last night there I sat in with Mark’s band Crackin’ Foxy. They do old-timey gypsy jazz, and are quite good. Two female singers for an Andrews-sisters-ish sound, two guitarists and a standup bass, with Mark on banjo and ukulele. I played soprano sax and had a great time.
On the drive home coming out of the mountains I wrote a new song.
Lizzy had a concert at her school for her a cappella group and the school band (obviously not performing together). They were really excellent, even surprisingly so. In fact the a cappella group got invited to sing the national anthem at a Yankee game next weekend!
On Memorial Day weekend we had a big ol’ barbecue and had a bunch of friends over. Everyone is so busy all the time so it’s good to see people and hang out. Also went rollerblading for the first time this season, and took the Mustang out for a nice long ride. In between lots of yardwork (today it finally got actually *hot*), working on music, my web site and of course origami for my new book. I now have 16 models designed, including a brand-new Quadrocoptor, and two new models diagrammed and the diagrams for two more well begun. Only a month until convention and lots to do!
Last weekend was the talent show at Michelle’s school. This was in lieu of the usual musical production that they’ve been putting on the last few years. The main difference is that this format doensn’t have the pre-K thru 4th grade, so logistically it’s much easier. For the older kids it’s not that much different; they have to audition, but then they can do an act of their choosing. Most are music, some are comedy or dance.
Michelle sang Don’t Cry for Me Argentina with her friend accompanying her on piano. The did really well and I was amazed how high the vocal part goes on that song. Some of the other acts were really good, and some sort of just there, but everyone had a great time. This year there was no orchestra, just either piano or karaoke depending on the song. I did the sound mixing for the event, which was a good chance to try out some of my new PA equipment.
Then on Monday Lizzy’s song a theatre group did a show with a rock band theme with a similar format. A bunch of kids, including Lizzy and a group of her friends, did songs with various adults (professional musicians) accompanying them, and were really good. Some of the other kids did full-on rock bands, but they weren’t ready for prime time, and worse they had three songs each!
At least the time was well spent for me. I’ve been thinking about ideas for my next origami book, but I’ve been too busy to fold anything lately. One idea I had was to expand the Origami from Space concept into a full book. So I came up with a model I’m calling Space Probe or maybe Radiosatellite. It’s a spaceship with a radio dish, boom antenna and some solar panels. A bit like V’ger but not quite. I folded one out of the program, and then last night while I was working on code, during compile time. Pics coming soon.
Last week I got the news that an old friend of mine died in a plane crash. (This brings the number of people I’ve known to die in plane crashes up to three, not counting 9/11, but still zero auto accident fatalities.)
Ted Reinhardt was the drummer and leader of the 80’s prog fusion band Gamelon, one the most successful bands to come out of Buffalo, NY. Gamelan had a unique and very evolved sound, with polyrhythms, angular harmonies, funky bass and three guitar players. One sounded a heck of a lot like Alex Lifeson, the next like Eddie Van Halen, and the third one was way out there, doubling on electric violin. Gamelon was the number one band on the scene when my own band, Event Horizon was gigging around. We were big fans and had seen lots of their shows and got to know them, and ended up doing a bunch of double bills with them. They were some of our best gigs, and theirs too. Gamelon went onto national success, playing on the same bill as Miles Davis in one of his last gigs.
I just got their first album again on iTunes and listened to it after many years. It sounds better than I remembered, with lots of stuff going on I missed back in the day. Anyway Ted was a great drummer and a positive influence on my music career. He’ll be missed.
I’ve been really busy the last couple weeks with the Xmas Cabaret, a big fundraiser at Michelle’s school. Learned like 35 songs on sax and (one on) ukulele. It was a ton of fun. Last time I did one of these shows was three years ago, and I remember working my ass off because I hadn’t played a live show in years and needed to get back into playing shape on the sax, plus learning the tunes while transposing, skipping around the songs, and making my sound fit in with the group.
This time it was alot more relaxed, mainly cuz I already knew the people, and knew what to expect, and also cuz my chops are up and I can sight read and transpose and all that no sweat. Since Michelle L., the director, also runs the school choir, for this show she picked less traditional songs, by artists like Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Harry Connick Jr., Billy Squier, and some more mellow stuff like The Carpenters and Bing Crosby. It was the same crew, and great to see them all and perform together again. Mike L. on piano and musical director, his wife Michelle as show and vocal director, Brian and Kristen running the stage and props and sets and tech and all. Plus a dozen or so singers. The band was rounded out by George on drums and Shredder on guitar, both excellent musicians. They even let me sing the Clarence Clemons part on Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Six words, twice! They drafted Lizzy to do the sound, so she got some good experience running a mixing board.
It was a week solid of rehearsals, with performances Friday and Saturday night and matinee Sunday. And in between I taught an origami event at the Museum of Natural History in the city. I had been thinking of bagging it, but alot people signed up so I went. Even had a chance to check out the OUSA holiday tree before my class started. I’ve been donating models to them for a few years now and they have assembled quite a collection. In addition to my new stuff this year, I my stuff from previous years was well represented. The class itself went well. I was teaching models from my book Origami Animal Sculpture, starting with the Octopus since that was prominently displayed under the tree. Also got to the Common Loon and the Narwhal. Not bad for two hours. It’s funny, though, the more I teach the more I find ways to simplify the models to make them easier to get a across. I think if I had to do this book over it’d be that much more refined. Ah, well, a lesson to apply to the next one.
And, as you can imagine, tonight I’m pretty tired so I’m catching up on my rest.
So Gus and I have decided to reboot the rock band. After jamming together since June, the summer came and went and we didn’t have any more than a few songs really tight and weren’t ready to start playing out. Our bass player wasn’t really cutting it, and our guitarist was not willing to learn new material and was just kind of a dickhead in so many ways it made you wonder how he was able to function in the world of adults. The kicker for me came when we couldn’t even make Roadhouse Blues sound good last rehearsal. I was thinking “I’ve known high school kids better than these guys!” So we had to let them go. Later I found out the bass player was coming back from a long period of not playing due to a hand condition, and I felt bad about that, but I was glad to be rid of the guitarist.
That left me, and Gus the drummer and Jefferson the singer. So we’ve been looking for new musicians. I got lucky cuz there’s been a guitar player Gary who’s been sitting in with the jazz group the last few weeks. He’s an excellent player, you could tell from the first note, great sound and phrasing. And I was telling him about my learning Van Halen on the piano and he had a few things to say about Eddie (“He’s the real deal”), so I had a hunch he was also a rocker. At the end of the jazz jam I made my pitch for him to join the rock group. “Yeah I do all that stuff. I’m your man”, he said.
Then I got a referral from a friend for a bassist looking to join a group. He was pretty enthusiastic about both the cover band and the possibility of a group based on my originals so I invited him over to jam and see what happened. It turned out he’s a high school kid! Just a couple years older than my kids. My mind was truly blown.
But man, he sure could play. Particularly into Joco, James Brown, and all kinds of funk and jazz. His knowledge of classic rock is kind of limited but he’s a quick study. He was also able to grok my originals, which are too hard for a lot of people. Still, I’m not sure I want to take him on. Yeah there’s a chance he might flake, or his parents wouldn’t let him continue with the group down the line, or it might be hard to work at a bar with him in the group. No matter what he’s not that experienced. But you gotta figure a kid who’s that good has the capacity to focus and would pretty much have is act together. Also, I was playing in bands working in bars when I was just seventeen, and never had any problems if I didn’t try and order a drink. No, the reason is this:
When I lived in California I was in horn-section funk band called The Hip Pocket. It was one of the better bands I’ve even been. Played a lot of great gigs. There were 4 guys in the horn section and 10 in the whole group. It was also a 50-50 split of black guys and white guys. The bass player was this dude Dmitry, who was the second best player I’ve ever played with. (The best was Jim Wynne, master of two-handed tap who had a whole technique he developed after borrowing a Chapman Stick for a few months but had to give it back. We were in several bands together including Automatic Man and The Purple Connection. After he left my group Event Horizon he went on the play in Gamalon.) Anyway Dmitri was from Odessa, in the Ukraine, where he’d been classically trained on symphonic bass. But he loved funk. And in a year of playing with him I never heard a single clam. Such a solid groove. Then one day he told us he was leaving the group cuz he’d been accepted into Berklee School of Music. We all wished him the best, then we tried to find a replacement and when we couldn’t find anyone as solid the band had to break up.
I told this story to the kid I was auditioning and he said “that’s my plan!”. Oy!
The good news, however is Ken, the bassist from my jazz group and The Day Trippers, has changed his status from “maybe” to “very interested”. The reason being one of his other bands seems to have folded. He didn’t want to commit cuz he was already in two other groups. If we get both Gary and Ken I feel we’ll have a really solid group that could do some serious damage!
In other news, The Day Trippers next gig has been confirmed for the last weekend in October for some bar in New Jersey. I’ve requested we do an Abbey Road medley. I’ll let you know as details emerge.
In other news Lizzy is learning De-Lovely for her performance group, so I dusted off my Cole Porter songbook to try and learn it on piano.
Let’s see … lots of bits and pieces these days.
I spent the weekend hanging out with Seth and Mark at Seth’s cabin in the Berkshires. Good to get away from the wife and kids for a spell and eat lots of barbecue. We went on a nice hike to a waterfall. You should know that Mark is an amazing musician and leads the band Cracklin’ Foxy out of Saranac Lake, NY. I learned the only music Mark hates more than Happy is anything from the soundtrack to Frozen. Also Mark has grown a mountain man beard. I think it was 20 years ago this weekend Seth invited my out on his dad’s sailboat and we cruised up an down the Hudson.
I’m over the hump on my Scala class. It’s actually making sense now. I submitted the homework on Huffman encoding and got a perfect score. I’ll admit I googled the problem, but hey, that’s what you do in real life when faced with a programming challenge. Rather than just copy what I found, I took several different solutions and read them and compared them until I understood what they were saying, and then created my own solution that best expressed it to my sensibilities. This week I finished the last lecture, and there’s two more homeworks to go, but the last one is another double, pushing up against OUSA.
Jeannie is back at work, starting a new job after switching jobs followed by a spectacular flameout a couple months ago. Woo-hoo. Meanwhile the kids are counting the days until the end of school.
I’ve been rockin’ my own work of lately. Ever since Olga got sacked it’s been so much easier to concentrate. Today at work I wrote over 200 lines of code! Also I came across a situation (marshalling data parsed out of an xml response) where the Scala approach is better than the way I’ve been doing it in Java all these years. Would have been far less code.
My train reading these days has been the Conan the Barbarian series by Robert Howard. It turns out these were originally published in Weird Stories magazine in the 1930’s alongside the first C’htuulhu stories, and Howard and H. P. Lovecraft were friends similar to Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Conan is perfect train reading. I had to give up Game of Thrones because it got to be so rambling and pointless. The Conan stories OTOH are nice and short, with tight plots, heavy on action and with a supernatural twist. I can usually read a whole novella between my morning and evening commute.
The Relix are officially defunct. Our drummer Gus finally quit last week, frustrated with auditioning new singers. He’s now trying to start a new group with Mike and me from the Relix and some guys from his other band, which also crashed and burned. We’re getting together later this week. I learned Space Truckin’ tonight in honor of the occasion.
Meanwhile I’ve written and begun recording two new tunes. One is called Your Dancing Shoes, and it’s a catchy blue-eyed-soul number with a big horn break in the mode of Domino or Sir Duke. I’ve asked Lee, the erstwhile Relix guitarist – the jazzy one – to lay down a guitar track for me, and he enthusiastically agreed. Now I just have to get the bass part clean enough that I’m satisfied with a take. I’m going for no punch-ins on this one because the there’s not very many gaps in the part, and it’ll just groove better.
The other song is called To Be a Rock, and I plan on asking Frank, the other – straight ahead rock – Relix guitarist to sit on that one, cuz it matches his style. In fact I wrote these two songs with these guys in mind. I hope he agrees because even though I could probably play the part myself, I want to capture his sound, which I have no idea of how to reproduce. This song still needs some development; I feel like it’s missing a part toward the end.
Since I’ve become a regular member of my Jazz combo I feel like I should learn the tunes. I have an older version of the Real Book (1980’s) than everyone else, and it’s just chock full of errors. I also want to get my chops of for slaloming changes of the bebop and bossa nova numbers. I finally had a chance to practice sax this week. I’d been noticing for some time that it’s been getting harder to pop out those low notes. I went over the horn with a leak light but the low notes are all tight. They ought to be; I just had the horn repadded two years ago. I finally discovered the problem is the octave key. So tomorrow I’m gonna call up Virgil Scott and see when I can get the horn in. For now I’ve fixed it with electrical tape. I noticed it’s the third spot on my horn fixed in such a way.
Live update – four firetrucks pulled up to my neighbor’s house a little while ago. They loitered four about an hour and just took off.
The last topic for tonight is origami. I finished my Dimpled Dodecahedron, wetfolded it and all, and it came out very nicely. Only one step away from the Stellated Dodec, v2. The closing is working out different than the previous model since I can’t remember how I did it before. I still have two weeks before the convention and hopefully I’ll be able to finishe a few more ideas. The big problem now is that my folding style has grown so complex it’s very difficult to fold these models even for me.