Bigger Gigger

Just got done playing two back-to-back amazing gigs. Friday I had a rare jazz gig, at the Carl Jung center in Manhattan. Believe it or not this was my first gig in Manhattan since I’ve come back from California. Luckily, as a jazz gig all I had to bring was my horn, some charts and a stand. I worked in the NYC office that day and walked to the gig. The rest of the guys had to drive in, unload and worry about parking.

The gig was organized by my friend Gary Trossclaire, a trumpet player and Jungian analyst. It was a wine-and-cheese fundraiser event, and the format was first Gary gave a lecture/seminar on the The Dionysian Dynamics of Jazz, then we jammed for a half hour or so. The seminar itself was very good and Gary touched on alot of topics including Dionysius, the Greek god of wine, song and extasy, the historic roots of jazz, a bit about psychotherapy, the relationship between creativity and substance abuse, how it all relates to Jung, and even a bit of music theory. For such a diverse range it was very well delivered and woven together. My favorite bit of knowledge in the whole thing: Jung didn’t dig jazz.

Next came the concert. The group consisted of Gary T. on Trumpet, Gary B. and Jay from the Haven Street Five on guitar and bass, this dude K. C. on drums, and myself on tenor sax. We’d gotten together twice to rehearse, in the music building of SUNY Purchase, where K.C. is on the factuality. It’s actually a great place to rehearse, with high ceilings and great acoustics. The set included a bunch of standards, all great songs: Bohemia After Dark, Mercy Mercy Mercy, Willow Weep for Me, I Mean You, Straight No Chaser and Second Line. We ran thru the set before the show, and it all really came together for the performance with great energy and spontaneity. K.C. in particular had alot of feel, ideas and dynamics. Hope to be able to play with him again. The crowd and the Jung Center people loved it and sent each of the musicians home with a bottle of wine.

Next day LEFT HOOK played for our bassist Ken and his wife Kate’s 125 party. It was his 50th birthday, and hers as well, and their 25th wedding anniversary. 50 + 50 + 25 = 125. So it was a big todo with lots of their friends and relatives, great food, cake and all. The venue was a lodge house in Croton Point State Park. Very nice but also very hot and muggy. We played one set, a little over and hour, all our best stuff. I must say it sounded great and went over well although by the end people were drifting out cuz it was much cooler and breezier outside. All in all a great time. Congratulations Ken and Kate!

The last LEFT HOOK gig before that was three weeks ago. Musically the group keeps getting better and our songlist keeps expanding. The Bowie was a hit among the young hipsters in the crowd as well as the old timers.

But we’re growing dissatisfied with the same old dive bars and the same old crowds, so we’ve stepped up our quest for better gigs. It’s an uphill climb. We’ve started calling and visiting bars and other venues. We recorded the audio from that show and I’ll be putting together a new demo reel as soon as I’m able. Now with the gigs from Ken’s party and the audio from the Burke’s gig I have three shows worth of material to draw from. Just sifting thru it all will be a major task. At the same time we’re focusing on tightening up our arrangements and vocal harmonies and looking strategically towards picking new songs.

Bustin’ Out All Over

It’s June already, the summer’s here the time is right. Lots going on right now. Settling in to the new job, doing the GJB at night, ICS carnival came and went, a pair of great back-to-back band gigs too, the origami convention coming soon, the kids having their shows and recitals, getting into final exam time, counting the days until the end of school. Wow. Amazingly everything is going smoothly.

I must say the springtime really flew by. I started my job, consequently spending alot of time indoors, back in April when it was just getting warm and things were beginning to grow. Easter was early this year, as saw the kids’ spring break. Then BAM! greensplosion. But you know summer is my favorite time of year and I’m happy it’s here. Soon it’ll be time for tiger lilies and fireflies.

This just in — Lizzy got a 95 on her recent NYSSMA solo for voice, singing a grade 6 piece. Very good!!!

Lots to say about the new job, but it’ll save most of it for another post. One thing I’ll say is that I’ve been getting up early every day to work out, and that it’s been going better than expected. I feel energized in the morning, I’m drinking less coffee, and no matter what the day has in store I’ve already worked out. On even days I do a full workout with weights, getting up at 6:00, starting by 6:30 A.M., takes about an hour. I’ve gone up in weight twice for the bench press. I’m back up to 155lbs now, and up 90/110lbs on the dumbbells. Going up about 11lbs/month. Not bad considering I had to start from zero last fall — I’m still rehabilitating from a torn muscle. Ought to be back up to 185lbs — nominal full weight — by the end of the summer or so – just about a year since the injury. I’ve also added deadlifts and squats, which are really good for the back, yet amazingly no one suggested when I was PT years ago. On odd days I’ve been adding the Nordic Track in the morning, or going into the office early, or a combination of the two. The commute to the Westcehster office is nice and short, which helps alot, and the Mahnattan office is about as convenient as it gets, although you have to factor in waiting for the train. Trying to do something physical every evening too.

Lawn Guyland

Hey guess what? I bought a new lawnmower. It’s electric. My old mower is only 3 or maybe 5 seasons old, but it seems like it always needs to get it fixed, the carburetor, the air filter, throttle, always something. Lately it’s been extra loud, and then it started making a rattling noise, and finally the muffler, which was cracked, fell off. I called the place where I go to get it fixed, but they no longer have their mechanic, so S.O.L.

I figured it’s already, they must make a decent battery powered lawnmower. They have electric cars nowadays for Pete’s sake. No more hassling with gas and oil and engines. So I looked around online first and then picked one up at Lowe’s. They don’t have Lowe’s near us but they do out on Lawn Guyland, and we were on our way to a barbecue over at Nick’s house. So that totally worked out. The thing cuts great and runs like a dream. The brand is Kobold, and it runs on a 40 volt battery system, good and powerful for this application. It’s lightweight and maneuverable and quiet like a house fan; you can talk over it while it’s running. Easy to charge, easy to start. It also throws alot less cut grass around so cleanup is easier. Better in every respect. Woo-hoo!!!

If anyone out there wants a used lawnmower, I’m selling my old one for $50. Runs great, but no muffler.

2015 Origami Part II

Quick update here – I finished off the pages for my 2015 origami, including the landing pages for Origami By Year and Origami By Subject, as well as all the subject pages that needed updating. I split the Air and Space category into two categories – Air and Space – since I now have so many models in that zone. And, keeping with the trend, the landing pages are now mobile-first responsive, just like everything else on the site, so they ought to look good on your tablet or phone.

The convention is coming up and I’ve been folding some new stuff. I’ve expanded my Flowerball idea into different tessellations and different polyhedra. I’ve been concentrating on the Archimedean solids, with the faces yielding flowers decorated with 6- and 8-petal flowers. I’ve got about four weeks to the convention, so we’ll see how far we get with this idea, and if we have time for something else too.

2015 Origami

It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to update my web site. One thing I’ve been meaning to do since the New Year is update the origami section with the 2015 models. Now the convention is coming up and I want to have some new things, so I feel the need to finish with the old. 2015 was a banner year for me, with 24 new models. And I even got decent pictures of most of ’em. The main theme is a book’s worth of airplanes and spaceships, and the others are a series of explorations into the intersection of tessellations, single-sheet polyhedra, and representationalism. I’m make a bunch of new models in this theme right now. Hoping to branch out from flower to insects and reptiles.

Still to come on the website is the corresponding updates to the subject page and thumbnails page. While I’m at it I’m gonna reflow the thumbnails to be mobile-first responsive. Meanwhile enjoy a year’s worth of new models:

http://zingman.com/origami/year_2015.php

New Song: Mobility

Here’s the third in my ongoing series of jazz demos. I’ve been enjoying doing these as a vehicle to present new songs to my jazz group. I haven’t had much time for recording lately, and the last two songs of my Buzzy Tonic album Elixr are sitting there half done. But it can take months to produce a rock song, while I can whip off one of these in just a few hours.

My previous songs Dark Skies and Your Dancing Shoes are now in regular rotation in our jazz group. One is a ballad and the other a funk/soul number. I figured it’s time for an uptempo swing number. We’ve been doing alot of hard bob in the group, Hank Mobley and Dexter Gordon and that kind of thing, and this song is in the zone. Well, maybe more Sonny Rollins or Cannonball Adderly. I’ve never written anything in cut time before, and this one is around 200 bpm. The main riff is something I’ve had in my bag for a long time, it was just a matter of giving it some structure. It’s funny how a good bridge can really make a song. It’s like a commentary on the A section. You have to decide what aspects to contrast or change up, what to keep as-is, and what to take further. In doing so you come to understand the essence of the song. The song begins and ends with a drum solo, since this kind of groove is right in our drummer Mike’s bag. I can hardly wait to get some recordings of the group performing these.


Animals Out of Paper Again

A little while back I contributed a few origami models to a new production of Animals Out of Paper, put on by the Hudson Stage company and playing in Armonk, NY for one more week. I would have really liked to have seen this one, since I really enjoyed last year’s production in Manhattan by a different group. It’d be great to compare and contrast, and see how much of it comes from the script and how much from the interpretation of the performers, and how much from the set and all that.

But alas I’ve been too busy. Last night we had a birthday party for Michelle. Next week my band has a gig. Last weekend I went out to see the Miles Davis movie, which I must say was singularly fascinating, insightful, and most excellent, but not at all what you’d expect. It centers on the period in this career when Miles wasn’t playing trumpet all (kinda like AOoP, come to think of it), and comes of as sort a cross between Give My Regards to Broad Street and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

So in lieu of my review of Animals Out of Paper, here’s what they have to say in the paper of record: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/nyregion/in-hudson-stages-animals-out-of-paper-hearts-unfolded.html

I’ve gotten in the habit of folding two of any model when I have a commission, so I have one to keep. Here’s one of my Snapping Turtles, and I think it’s the nicest one I’ve ever folded. Didn’t even have to wet-fold it. The annual convention is coming up in just over a month, and I want to have some new stuff to exhibit. Lots of ideas but I have to make the time. At least I have this Turtle. And I have a dozen or more new models from the last year, mostly airplanes and spaceships developed between Ohio and Boston. I’ll have to check in and see what’s good with that collection. But I kind of feel like it’s time to move on and tackle some new subjects. I guess we’ll see what I come up with.

Gig Announcement: Carl Jung Foundation presents The Dionysian Dynamics of Jazz

My friend and former trumpet for Seven Jazz West, Gary Trosclair, is putting on a combination semniar and jazz concert on Friday June 3 at the Carl Jung Center in Manhattan. You might know CJ Jung from his writings on the collective unconscious, or his influence on Sting’s songwriting in the Synchronicity era. I didn’t know he had a center named after him here in town, but I had a feeling.

Gary’s day job is a psychologist, author and lecturer, and expert on Jung, so you see it all makes sense. Gary had to leave 7JW about a year ago – had some dental problems – but now he’s playing trumpet again and put together a group for this event called The Archetypal Jazz Quintet, mainly players from the Haven Street Quintet, some of whom were also in 7JW and are some of the best players I know. It should be a really fun and interesting time. I’ve never really thought about jazz from a Jungian perspective, although doing so for just a minute or two lights up some interesting lines of thought. So I’m really keen on hearing what he has to say.

More info on the event here:
http://www.eventzilla.net/web/event/cg-jung-foundation-presents-the-dionysian-foundations-of-jazz-2138860416

Gig Announcement: LEFT HOOK at Fisherman’s Net May 14

We’ve been hard at work, learning another batch of new tunes, this time some classics by The Beatles, The Band, some funky and abstract Bowie, and some Al Green (not an artist whose name begins with a B, I know). Lots of good stuff. Hope to see you there!

LEFT HOOK
Music with a punch!
Westchester’s classic rock Funk & soul party band

Saturday May 14, 8:30 PM
Fisherman’s Net
129 6th St. Pelham

Caught in the Devil’s Bargain

After a year of successfully avoiding real work I finally succumbed to peer pressure and got a legit day job. So far the new place seems cool in alot of ways. They’re a software and technology startup, but big enough to have offices in several cities around the world including one in Manhattan and one out here in the ‘burbs, pretty close to my house, and I’ve be alternating between the two. They have a mature product and the focus is on sales and growth and making our stuff scalable. I’ve been brought in to lead the front-end development on version 2.0 of the product. Most important to me is their line of work. They’re in cloud computing, a bit of a niche market right now, but they’re ahead of the curve and my feeling is that in the next few years everyone is going to need this technology. Our clients already include Verizon, Barclays and Cisco, with more coming on every week. Hello yacht!

But before I get into the new gig, and I should wait until the warm fuzzy glow wears off, I want to reflect on the whole process of finding a job in {{current year}}. Actually I just want to rant about the hubris of your average potential employer. I am a software architect, engineer, designer and developer with 25 years of professional experience, and 40 years total creating software. (I started programming computers when I was 8 years old, the same year I started playing saxophone and doing origami). Believe me I’m at a pretty high level. I’m a world-class developer, the mythical 10x contributor, and my skills extend well beyond the technical into many other areas. Last time I was on the market looking for work was 12 years ago. I’ve switched jobs a few times in that interval, but only because someone I know and trust invited me to join them somewhere. In fact this is only the second or third time I’ve looked for a job in the traditional way. So this is a rare opportunity for some lucky enterprise.

At the start my main goal was to take some time off and explore what’s out there, so I largely let the mountain come to me. Recruiters would cold call constantly, and I’d reply if it seemed like a promising place. They operate in a weird world of sales, and you would not believe the number of bullshit startups out there doing “something around social media and big data”, or something equally dumbass. The software industry was very wild-west in the 90’s, but now it’s become something much worse, more borglike. Most places are run by greedy pointy-head bankers and their henchmen middle managers whose goal it is to pretend that people are interchangeable “resources”. It’s up to the individual to fight the good fight.

The process is designed to put all the risk on the side of the employee. They constantly seek to put you in box and at a disadvantage. Most places require a technical interview, which is fine, cuz they need a way to figure out if you know your shit. But many places aren’t good at this at all, cuz they don’t know their shit. They get hung up on stupid minutia like language syntax, or ask you to middle-school level problems like bizz-buzz. Some places, like Google, do an online session, which is better, but only if they put a guy on it who can communicate articulately and has a clear grasp of the English language. In any event they have no way of judging what makes a great developer at higher levels, so they focus on passable according to some arbitrary metric at lower levels.

In lieu of that some places have a take-home project. I’ve seen a few where they expect you to write a full-on web application with a bulleted list of requirements. I don’t know how they can expect to attract quality talent with an approach like this. My time is valuable, so anything that takes more than an hour or so needs to be compensated. I sure as hell ain’t gonna do a whole day’s work for someone on spec, especially some vaporware outfit I’ve never heard of. In these cases I’d tell them politely I’d expect to paid at my usual consulting rate. They’d either quietly go away or respond with some self-righteous bullshit. Never did one say yeah, it’s only fair, I’ll pay you for a day’s work. I mean would you ask a dentist to show up for a day and pull some teeth, or a lawyer to spend a day in court?

All of this is a signal that the prospective employer doesn’t really know what they’re looking for, can’t recognize talent when they see it, aren’t interested in bringing you on in a relationship of mutual respect, and honestly aren’t serious about filling the position or probably even running their company.

The worst of all of these was America Online. Yes, believe it or not they’re still around, trying to re-invent themselves as a content destination. I don’t know why I accepted the interview, mainly out of curiosity. They were across the street from where I went to school at NYU/ITP, in a trendy loft in Greenwich Village. But when I got there it was a miserable overcrowded open plan office like a sweatshop. It was so noisy I couldn’t imagine how anyone could get any work done. They were all walking ’round with tombstones in their eyes. They guy who would be my boss didn’t even bother showing up, just phoned it in. Another guy, a really fat developer, asked me “Our motto here is work hard, play hard, what does that mean to you?” They had a booth there like a mini TV studio where they did webcasts. The day I was there the guest was some porn star who’d written a book (I’m guessing she had a ghost writer). To top it off, their project and technology seemed interesting at first, but once I started asking questions about it it became clear the whole thing was a horrible hack built in grunt in the worst possible way.

I actually applied for a few jobs on my own, when I came across something interesting, usually prompted by a fit of frustration at the absurdity or it all, and these turned out to be where all the serious leads were at. I had four job offers that were worth considering, and the interviews all had this in common: pretty much as soon as I got there, within minutes, they stopped asking about toy problems and started asking how I would solve the real business and technology problems they had in front of them, although they usually wouldn’t let on that they’d made that transition. This of course led to much richer and more interesting discussions, and as soon as I perceived what was up I knew this place had potential.

In fact my first assignment at my new gig is to implement the solution I sketched out 10 minutes into my interview.