New Lyric: Party At Dan’s

Winding down a long busy stretch at work today with a big demo. Having nothing to do with that, here’s a new lyric idea for a song I will never record, mainly because it’s a mash up of all the drinkin’, smokin’ and drug takin’ allusions from every Steely Dan song I could think of. My friend John says “I bet that would have some wicked chord changes!” I suppose it might be fun to string together all the relevant samples and tack a sax solo onto the end.

Party At Dan’s

They got the booze they need
Libations that stagger the mind
She serves the smooth retsina
Drink kirschwasser from a shell
The Cuervo Gold
It’s grapefruit wine
Lucy still loves her coke and rum
The water will change to cherry wine
In the land of milk and honey
She drink the zombie from the cocoa shell
Drink your big black cow
And a Piña Colada my friend

Tobacco they grow in Peking
Show me the sparkle in you China
Smoking cobalt cigarettes
I take one last drag as I approach the stand
The fine Columbian
I was smokin’ with the boys upstairs
You were very high

We’re gonna break out the hats and hooters
Pull out the hardware let’s do it right
No I’m never gonna do it without the fez on
My friends say no don’t go for that cotton candy
But yours was kitchen clean
Would you care to explain?
It was forty eight hours ’till Lonnie came around
Close inspection fast revealed his favorite kind
Pick up what’s left by daylight
You know I’m through with Buzz

Camping 2010 Pics

Last weekend I went camping with bunch of friends. It’s become an annual tradition and the group grew so big we split into to two groups a few years back. We this year both groups came back together for the same weekend, so it was a huge, great time. Best camping trip so far, in fact. The kids are old enough now we can pretty much let them run around without worrying too much. Saturday I slept in, and when I got up went to my brother’s site, asking if my kids were there. No, but would you like some coffee and eggs? Went down to the next site where my friend Nick was staying. Same thing, no kids, but here’s some breakfast. Finally caught up to them across the road at Erik’s site. Best thing of all: no rain. We stayed until Sunday evening and until finally few drops convinced us to finish packing the car.

OUSA 2010 Pics

I finally got a chance to catch up on a few things today. I’ve been spending the evening burning backups of my recording project, listening to a bunch of CD’s a bought (Jeff Beck, The Cat Empire, and Horowitz Plays Scarlatti) and making photo galleries. I haven’t gotten back to my album cover or origami diagrams, but at least they’ve rise to the top of the list. Anyhow, as promised a while back, here are some pics from this year’s OUSA Convention.

First off, here was my exhibit.

And of course the giant folding contest.

And some highlights from other people’s exhibits.

Face The Heat – Final Masters

Here they are at long last. I’m happy to announce that the final masters for my record, Face the Heat, now complete. Many thanks to Erik Blicker and all at G&E Music. You can listen to the tracks here, but only for a limited time. Once I get CD’s made and for sale on CD Baby and the iTunes store, I’ll change the links to be just 30-second-ish samples.

Heat Wave – 5:31
Fine Red Wine – 4:47
Earthbound (I Wanna Fly) – 5:08
Who Can Fool Me – 3:19
Making Miles – 5:11

Touch the Ceiling – 6:30
Green Glove – 3:42
The Nine – 4:07
Angel Or Alien – 8:12

Watercolors

With the mastering for my album being almost done, I thought it was time to start thinking about the cover image. Last time around I made a drawing, but for this one I want to do something different. My current idea is to use some watercolor artwork by my kids. They’re very into watercolor painting and have come up with some that focus more on color on texture than representation and form. Lizzy in particular is in a sort of Jackson Pollack phase there days. I may use just one or may take a few and layer and recombine them in Photoshop. in any event the other night I scanned a bunch. We have a big set of closet doors in our downstairs which is an art wall, but it’s gotten pretty full. So I made them into a web gallery to share.

Rush Concert

Jeannie and I saw the epic Canadian power trio Rush at Jones Beach Amphitheater last weekend. Rush is one of my all-time favorite bands and just about tied with the Grateful Dead for having seen them the most times. But last time I saw them was in 2004 or so, and before that it was many years. Rush are enjoying something of a revival these days, consolidating their legacy as it were, and touring in support of a (really good) documentary DVD about their career rather than an actual album.

Jones Beach is a really cool place to see a show. It’s situated right on the shore in a state park, with the stage out over the water. It was another super hot day, but as we crossed the bridge onto the island, the evening breeze was coming off the ocean and cooled everything down nicely. As the band started to play the moon rose over the stage. Very dramatic. After the concert Jeannie and I took a nice walk around the beach.

The show itself was great. Rush still have the chops and the energy to really deliver. Geddy Lee can hit those high notes, although didn’t do it as much. He sang a lot of parts lower and saved his voice for where it really mattered. They played two sets which spanned most of their career and included a bunch of newer stuff, and man they have a lot of records. I didn’t really know all of the tunes from the 90’s and 00’s. They played a bunch of brand-new songs from their forthcoming record, which sounded awesome. In particular “Caravan” had a lot of complex unison parts that evoked some of their earlier work. I think they tried to hit pretty much every record, but they skipped Fly By Night, Caress of Steel and Grace Under Pressure. This last one is one of my favorites, so that was a bit of a disappointment. Still, they played a lot of great material. Spirit of Radio, Freewill, 2112. Closer to the Heart included an excellent acoustic solo guitar intro.

They opened the second set with the whole of Moving Pictures, introduced by a spoof video of making a music video of “Moving Pitchers”. They were clearly having fun with it. Camera Eye was a definite high point; I’ve never seen them do that song live before. Encores included La Villa Strangiato, but with the first section played in a hockey-organ style, followed by a reggae version of Working Man. The walk-out music was a polka version of Closer to the Heart that would have done Weird Al proud. (The intermission music was Yes from Time and a Word.)

Rush music is fun to play as well as listen to. Back in college I did bunch of their songs in a band, playing synthesizers, including Subdivisions and YYZ. More recently I learned Xanadu and Cygnus X-1 on the bass, and now I’m learning Closer to the Heart on guitar.

Beat The Heat Part II

Been doing some good summertime stuff. A week or so ago Jeannie and I took the kids to Rye Playland, the local amusement park, for an evening of rollercoasters and that sort of thing. A few weeks back we brought them into the city for a trip to the Nintendo store and the new Lego store.

I’ve been trying to watch more TV with the kids. I’ve heard that most American households watch 6 or more hours of TV a day, but I have the opposite problem. I’m trying to go from zero to one hour of TV a week, or at least every other week. Specifically I’m trying to watch NOVA with the kids to help them get more of an appreciation for science in the real world. We all enjoy the show, but we’re usually busy when its on and we forget. Last week remembered, and it was about a bunch of guys trying to salvage an old WWII airplane that’s been sitting out in the ice in Greenland for fifty-odd years. This led to a whole flurry of renewed interest in flying and flying machines.

My friend John the origami artist came down from Washington for a visit this weekend. He’s been working on a bunch of new books and e-books, including new editions of some of his classic books, and some all-new ones too. He’s in a very productive, prolific phase right now. He’s got a fourth Polyhedra book coming out. This one I think will be the most accessible yet (it eschews the most difficult shapes like dipyramids) and offers a whole bunch of new models. Hidden in the pages is a wealth of geometric folding techniques, such as about ten different ways to fold an 18 or 36 degree angle.

My day job continues to keep me busy but everyone is focused on our upcoming launch now, and things seem to have finally gotten organized, at least for the time being.

Beat The Heat Part I

Summer continues. The heat wave continues, with temperatures remaining in the mid to upper 90’s daily the last couple weeks. My friend Seth gave us an old air conditioner because he got central air put in his house. Normally in the summer we just have a cool zone in the bedrooms and we don’t even need that every day, but this year we were grateful to expand the cool zoon to the whole upstairs.

Seth’s dad Shelly passed away recently. Mark and Kelly came into town for a from the Adirondack for the funeral. A sad occasion but good to catch up. I’ll always remember Seth’s dad for a day I spent on his sailboat many years ago. I was a hot summer Saturday, when I was living in Queens, before I was married. Seth called me up and asked if wanted to go sailing. It told him I had planned on doing laundry. He convinced me to drop off my washing, something which had never occurred to me to do.

It was a great day sailing. We started up in Ossining sailed down the Hudson and under the Tappen Zee, almost to the George. Coming back we were sailing into the headwind and had to do quite a bit of tacking. Shelly had a pretty big boat (40 feet or so) and I’d only ever sailed little Sunfish before. I was really impressed at how he and Lynn could operate everything with ease, how coordinated they were. All the ropes were rigged that he could have run the boat himself, managed the sails and the rudder, from one spot if he needed to. It was a really great experience.

Origami Quartet

If you’re not an origami person you’ll probably look at this and think “what a bunch of geeks”. But I know these people and find it pretty amusing. Jason Ku, Andrew Hudson, Robert Lang and Daniel Myer perform at the 5OSME (5th International Conference for Origami Science, Mathematics and Education) banquet in Singapore earlier this month.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDy_y7wmacA

Zingcookie

Michelle is curious about computers and my work, and asked me to help her make her own web site. She’s got a theme, and lots of great ideas for games and videos and things. Last night I helped her get going with it. I showed her how to use an html editor, what a link is, how to do styles and layout, and how to refresh the page in the browser and upload content to a server. She’s like “That’s like magic! Okay, I know it’s not really magic, it’s technology. But it’s *like* magic!”.

So we got the first page done and she’s off to a good start. Check back periodically for updates.

http://zingman.com/zingcookie