Fun reading

One of the great things about the Lit class I'm in right now is that it is forcing me to read (that is, something besides books and magazines about poker). The class is on British Literature, The Great Authors (could it sound any more pretentious). While I'm sure it's all considered very good, some I've enjoyed more than others. I think reading Canterbury Tales was roughly equivalent to digging my eyeball out with a fork. But I've really enjoyed reading Beowulf, The Tragic History of Dr. Faustus, Jane Eyre and some others.

I thought I would post one of the poems I really enjoyed here. The author is John Donne, who is definitely an interesting cat. He lived from 1571 - 1631. This one is called The Apparition and is taken from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Seventh Edition, The Major Authors.

The Apparition

When by thy scorn, O murderess, I am dead,

And that thou thinkst thee free

From all solicitation from me,

Then shall my ghost come to thy bed,

And thee, feigned vestal(1), in worse arms shall see;

Then thy sick taper will begin to wink(2),

And he whose thou art then, being tired before,

Will, if thou stir, or pinch to wake him, think

Thou callst for more,

And in false sleep will from thee shrink,

And then, poor aspen wretch(3), neglected thou

Bathed in a cold quicksilver sweat (4)wilt lie

A verier ghost(5) than I;

What I will say, I will not tell thee now,

Lest that preserve thee; and since my love is spent,

I had rather thou shouldst painfully repent,

Than by my threatenings rest still innocent.

1) Virgin

2) Flicker

3) Aspen leaves flutter in the slightest breeze

4) Sweating in terror; quicksilver was a stock prescription for venereal disease and sweating was part of the cure.

5) truer

Sounds like someone's got some issues with his special lady friend eh?

One funny little story from my statistics class. During a recent session, our teacher was trying to show everyone how to perform certain formulae using our scientific calculators. Of course, everyone has a different kind of calculator so we spent 20 minutes going around the room with people trying to figure out how their's worked (this was clearly a brilliant use of time).

One of the girls in the class, who is an undergrad, probably a freshman or sophomore, is sitting on the opposite side of the room from me. She's struggling to figure out how to use hers and asks the girl next to her, who has no idea. She looks all the way across the room at me and says "You look like a wise man, can you help me?" WHAT??????? Wow, I really am that old, aren't I? Of course, I look like a total boob when I have no idea how to use the calculator. But, obviously this was just a ploy because she wanted me - it's difficult to be this sexy.

Things are crazy, turned in a paper last night, have a math test tonight and a big project due Tuesday that I've thankfully completed. I have a few other assignments to do this week as well, a mid-term to do this week and 2 more projects for my research class. 38% of the way done with the semester! Not happy that I will not be able to watch the Major League Baseball All-Star game.

Saturday was my oldest child's fifth birthday. Wow, I really am that old, aren't I? There were a couple times during the day where I am sure I have never been happier in my life. The big gift was a new bike (dubbed "fally bike" since it has no training wheels, this kid is brilliant!). I spent a good 45 minutes running up and down the street next to the bike as Kid 1 learned how to keep balance. I don't know the last time I've had as much fun, a very rewarding time - plus I got some good exercise! The other moment was during the bday party at the community pool. There was a gigantic water slide that wasn't very steep but was very high and dumped into an area of the pool that was about up to Kid 1's shoulders. I thought there was no way Kid 1 would go down this slide. There was a little hesitation but the monkey did it! After 2 trips down with dad in tow, I was told "Dad, I'm going to go down the slide one hundred times!" I don't think we quite hit triple digits, but many trips down the slide were made. Very proud of the courage of the little one. Lots of fun again, we moved the party to a neighbor's pool and kept at it til 10 pm. What a fun day, definitely worth all the stress and strain that sometimes comes with being a parent.

Until next time.

Ace

Trip Report: Seven Mary Three show 6/29/07

Since I am supposed to be in a chat for one of my classes right now, I'm going to multi-task and blog on Friday night's festivities.

The band: Seven Mary Three, an all time favorite of mine. More on them in a moment.

The venue was here. This was a unique place to see a show, here's a link to a photo of the stage area - it was gigantic! If this place wanted, they could definitely host very large concerts. I suspect the place would hold well north of a couple thousand people. The sound was excellent, much better than the band's last visit to this area.

The set-up for the stage was a little strange though. The stage was in a large area that is set up kind of like a gazebo, elevated about 10 feet or so from ground level. There were steep, narrow stairs surrounding the stage on all sides that would allow for people to walk up towards the stage (this becomes significant later, does it ever!). The bad part was that there were tables and chairs around the area facing the front of the stage. There was probably 40 or 50 feet of empty space and then maybe 100 or so tables with chairs behind that. In my experience, I've found that the majority of people will sit around during the show if given the chance and that saps a lot of the energy out of a live performance. I generally don't like it and think that was the case for this show as well. There certainly were some people on their feet and in front of the stage, but most stayed at the tables and watched from a distance.

The band was great. A new drummer, Michael Levesque, joined the group back in February. Last time I saw the group at the end of March, he was obviously still getting up to speed. Friday's show the entire band was in a great mood and played a great set. Mike's drumming was much more confident, as he obviously had been rehearsing Cumbersome with the band each night in their living rooms. The set list was as follows:
_

Rock Crown

Was A Ghost

Settle Up

Wait

Headstrong

Roderigo

Last Kiss

Each Little Mystery (Jason and Thomas)

Times Like These (Jason and Thomas)

My My

Tail Lights Fade (Buffalo Tom cover)

Cumbersome

Sleepwalking

Shelf Life

Dislocated

Breakdown

Eleanor Rigby (Beatles cover)

Waters Edge

Rockin in the Free World (Neil Young cover)

_

Highlights of the setlist included a great version of Times Like These with some incredible new lyrics from Jason and the Buffalo Tom cover, which I'd never heard before. There was great energy from the band, who really seemed to enjoy the show. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a few gems from the crowd.

_

At one point late in the show, one of the fans literally walked up the steps on one side of the stage during the middle of a song and had a few words with Casey Daniels, the bass player. She was clearly requesting a song - Casey kindly took her request while continuing to play. Beyond this, the crowd really got into things during the last two songs, most folks were up out of their seats and a few especially drunk people came up to the front and center stage area. One particularly rotund and overserved young lady (I'm being generous here) climbed about halfway up the stairs and was really having a great time dancing. At some point, she was joined by another inebriated cohort and they decided that they should turn and dance for the appreciative crowd. Do you smell that???, that's sarcasm. The band seemed to get a kick out of it and actually stopped playing in the middle of Free World twice. Our dancing friends scarcely noticed the lack of music and kept on gyrating. While visually disturbing, it was quite entertaining and put a fun cap on the evening's events. Here's a link to the madness.

_

All in all, it was a good show. A pretty standard setlist with a couple of highlights, a medium attendance from the band's strong midwest hardcore fanbase and some drunken frivolity to top it all off!

_

Until next time.

Ace

And now for something a little lighter...

I'll probably put a few of my own writings in here at some point. But I'll definitely put stuff from others. For example, many of my friends and I enjoy the occasional limerick. So, I'd like to pick a couple out here and there for the old blog. Why a limerick you ask?

The limerick's callous and crude,

Its morals distressingly lewd;

It's not worth the reading

By persons of breeding -

It's designed for us vulgar and rude.

----

These can be found in "A Thousand and One Limericks" by Chartwell Books, 2004. I'll try to keep it clean.

--

There was a young farmer named Morse

Who fell madly in love with his horse.

Said his wife, "You rapscallion,

that horse is a stallion -

This constitutes grounds for divorce."

--

New hilarious show on TV: 'Flight of the Conchords Kinda like Extras meets Spinal Tap, great stuff.

Into the thick of it

Crikey, tonight marks the end of my first 2 weeks back in school. It's going very fast.

First observation, it's a very good thing I am taking a math class this semester. My six week semester is actually eight weeks long, apparently I need some help with basic counting skills. So, I'm almost a quarter of the way done already!

Second observation, my stats (palindrome alert) class is not really all that difficult. I took some Six Sigma courses at work and much of the material we are covering in this class. Last night I spent 2 romantic hours with my good friend the standard deviation equation - you complex bastard you! - and came out a winner. The teacher lets us use our homework during the quizzes and there is a formula cheat sheet we're allowed to use during tests. We won't have the first test until after July 4th but I think I'm in ok shape so far in this class.

I will say that I am falling a bit behind in my lit class, keeping up with the reading is proving to be pretty difficult, especially when what you are reading was written roughly 500 years ago. Old Jeff Chaucer was one ribaldrous fellow it appears, or at least his Wife of Bath sure is. Anyhow, I expect to spend some major time over the next several days reading and writing for this course. Anyone have any cliff notes comparing Beowulf to the Star Wars trilogy? Yeah, you know you love it!

My other class is teaching us methods of research. It's not the most riveting topic but the teacher is quite a trip. I swear they plucked him straight out of the movie Snatch. From South England, he is a bundle of boundless energy and I literally spent my entire last class laughing at his antics.

This class is held in the library and on the way to our classroom we pass a bank of PCs that the community is allowed to use. There were a group of kids about high school freshman age at these PCs watching porn. Now I'm not talking about your mild, show your rack, could almost be on the cover of Maxim porn. I'm talking hardcore stuff that I won't even begin to describe. Crazy!!!! Apparently, there's some sort of freedom issue where they're allowed to do this. So one girl comes into the class and says they should be stopped or something to that effect. Teach explains they can't and then proceeds to spend the next 2 1/2 hours every so often teasing the girl for being a prude and into porn and stuff like that. It was all good natured and pretty funny. He tends to do something like that so far in each class and I'm usually laughing the whole time.

I haven't seen any grades yet from this class so I'm not sure how difficult it will be. I am sure that there will be a pretty hefty amount of work to do with this one. I expect this will actually help quite a bit with future classes though and I am pretty happy about that.

All in all, I'm keeping my head above water and looking forward already to the break between summer and fall semester. For the fall, I've submitted my requests for schools to be placed in for my 2 clinical studies courses and signed up for another Lit class I need to finish as a pre-req. I am still trying to determine if I will take one more class. I think I will but need to finalize. Wow that's going to be nuts.

A strange thing - in a couple of instances, I've tried to sign up for classes and they've already been filled. Since I'm on such an accelerated program, I've typically found myself asking around various administrators and teachers to see if they can squeeze me into the class. Each time I've been able to get in. Psychologically, it's always been a bit of a rush to get into something that theoretically I should not have been able to. I guess we always want something more when we can't have it. I'm not sure if that really applies to me in general but certainly so in these cases.

Should have plenty to report on early next week as it's going to be a full weekend.

Until next time...

Ace

CD review - Linkin Park - Minutes to Midnight

So one of my many loves is music. I've always been very into music and with a background that has included working in radio, I've got some history with a lot of different artists and songs. I've often been accused of being a human jukebox, able to break into song relating phrases in conversation to song lyrics. Most of my music background is in rock, although I've got some hip hop and country thrown in for fun as well. And I'm embarrassed to admit, a childhood steeped in terrible pop music. I'd like to think that I've grown out of a lot of that but it hasn't been erased from the old jukebox upstairs. (I'm not afraid to admit that my first cassette was Billy Ocean's Suddenly, although any hope for credibility I'm sure is dashed).

Anyhow, I thought it would be fun to try a CD review. I've never done one but seems like it could be fun. Let me just say that I'm certainly no expert on the band I'm about to review, although I am a fan with several of their CDs. So, I hope I don't offend anyone with the comments to follow. We'll see how this goes, if I enjoy it and/or get positive feedback, I may try another in the weeks that follow. When I think of critics, I generally think of being stuffy or trying too hard so I'll try not to make it too pretentious despite my love for big words.

The CD is Linkin Park's Minutes to Midnight released on Warner Bros Records and produced by Rick Rubin. Rubin is a legendary producer (Wow, look at that list of titles!) and this is his first work with Linkin Park. I've been a big fan of Rubin's, particularly his work with Johnny Cash. I'm also partial to a few of the other CDs he's worked on, including BloodSugarSexMagik from Red Hot Chili Peppers and Toxicity from System of a Down.

The band admits in the liner notes that Rubin pushes them in the making of this CD. His influence can be clearly heard in several different spots on the CD, which I'll point out later. One other item before getting to the music: the liner notes for this CD are fantastic. I'm fascinated by the art of music making and the play by play provided in the margins of the notes really provide a lot of insight into the band's creative process.

The opening track is called Wake. It's one of those brief, instrumental openings. While the music is fine, I generally don't care for these type of openings. I'm much more interested in the more substantive songs. The song is about 2 minutes long and builds energy and momentum for the real opening of the CD.

Track 2 is Given Up - a nice adrenaline burst of a song that Linkin Park is known for. Chester Bennington's unmistakeable voice adds a lot to this song. The lyrics are a little simplistic but minus a few f-bombs, this would be a modern radio hit. There are some strong similarities between this song and a couple tracks on Toxicity in how the music changes direction dramatically for a short stretch about halfway through. It definitely makes the song more interesting.

Track 3 is Leave Out All The Rest - this is about as ballad-y as you're going to get from Linkin Park. Not a favorite in the first few early listens. Lyrically the song is ok but there doesn't seem to be a lot of heart in Chester's delivery.

Track 4 is Bleed It Out - finally we get to hear from Mike Shinoda, the other singer in the band. Even though it is only the 3rd song with lyrics, it feels like a long time to go without hearing Shinoda. This is LP at it's best - Shinoda rapping the verse and Bennington belting out the chorus in a frenetic burst of energy that you can't sit still through. This will be a hit.

Track 5 is Shadow Of The Day and is extremely interesting. The beginning smells a bit of Nine Inch Nails (you get me closer to God!) and then I swear turns into With or Without You from U2. Sometimes I hear so much other music in what I hear. I also liken this a lot to what Green Day did when they came out with that "I hope you had the time of your life" song. They were mostly known for a bit of an underground punk sound and really went very mainstream with that one song. I see this song doing the same for LP. This is a very catchy song and one that is very likely to get annihilated with overplay from modern radio. By the end of the song you'll be singing along to the chorus - a very strong effort.

Track 6 is What I've Done - funky beginning with a piano hook that sounds a bit like the music from the movie "Halloween" (also similar to piano in a Local H song from Pack Up The Cats). This song wasn't particularly striking in any other way but solid.

Track 7 is a different story - Titled Hands Held High, it's a war protest song. It's very interesting to me how many songs I've seen come from the current Iraq war. Besides this one, I'm aware of the new Capital G from Nine Inch Nails, President Forever from Local H and an entire album of protest song remakes from A Perfect Circle. I'm sure there are many more but it's interesting to see how much reaction there has been from the music community. I'm interested too that there haven't been many songs in support of the war. I suppose that's pretty typical but strikes me as a bit strange. This is a good song, with some nice effects like the military sounding drumbeat at the beginning and the church choir like ending.

Track 8 - No More Sorrow - The heavy industrial guitar and drums in this song are pretty dark - there's another SOAD-like mid-song transition. I guess it's Rubin's way of inserting a bridge in the song, certainly a pretty unique device. Angry song, just the kind I sometimes like! This is not the best song on the album but not too bad.

Track 9 - Valentine's Day - another keyboard/piano sound, I like the music in this one. This song has a nice pace and features Bennington. I like the lyrics a lot in this one although the Valentine's Day thing is a little cliche. Very melancholy.

Track 10 - In Between - wow, I really like this song. I like the way the lyrics are similar in sections but then altered near the end. I've always found this to be an effective way to emphasize a point and have used in some of my own writing. This is another softer sound from LP and seems to be a real departure from previous CDs. This one works well.

Track 11 - In Pieces - great line "Your lips say that you love but your eyes say that you hate" - fantastic! Bennington mixes up the lyrical delivery very well in this track, from straight singing to his more aggressive, guttural sound. The music is quick and there is a slightly almost reggae sound to parts of it. The guitar inclusion really adds to the sound and turns this into a complex mish mash of sounds that I liked. Another very nice effort.

Track 12 - The Little Things Give You Away - I was stunned to hear some acoustic guitar in an LP song! Some argue that all song lyrics are poetry but this song strikes me as a poem that was written and later turned into a song. Bennington tries to stretch his vocal range with the singing in this song - not sure if I like it yet or not. I'll probably need to give this one a few more listens.

Overall, this album is much different from Linkin Park CDs in the past. There is much more of a mixture of sounds, from classic LP to more pop-infused tracks and a lot slower overall tempo. It sounds to me like a group of guys that are maturing in life and their music is reflecting that change. Rubin's influence definitely plays to that quite a bit as well I'm sure. There are several definite high points in the CD, surrounded by several others that didn't really stand out to me. I would have liked to have heard some more songs with both singers participating as this record is very Chester-heavy. One of the things I like most about LP is their ability to blend the 2 different singer sounds together and this record gets away from that. Overall, I like the CD and will give it a solid B.

Wow, that was pretty fun. I think I'll do that again although I may try for a bit more brevity in future efforts. I welcome all feedback and would be happy to take suggestions on future CDs to review.

Caught with my pants down - almost!

So I forgot one little tidbit about the 5k I ran in on Sunday.

When running, I usually wear these shorts that are typical athletic shorts - lightweight, drawstring, run of the mill shorts. So Sunday am, as I'm preparing to go to the race, I grab a pair and put them on and a typical t-shirt.

I start the race and 3 steps into the race, they start to sag. Just slipping down from the jostling of the running. I grab the drawstring and tighten them up as much as I can. 3 more steps and they start falling. Tighten the drawstring again, they start falling again. Great! Well, I sure as heck don't want to stop running. And I definitely don't want to subject the several hundred others participating to a wardrobe malfunction. So, I grab the drawstring up in my left hand and proceed to complete the entire race holding my shorts up by the drawstring. Sheesh!

The shorts were disposed of immediately upon my return home.