Not Exactly Owned...

Jazzy G had this quiz on her blog today that sounded interesting: "Does Your Weblog Own You?" Turns out that mine owns me less than I thought it would:

25 %

My weblog owns 25 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?

Thinking in those terms (and considering the size of the check I had to send the IRS for my quarterly today), that means that the federal government owns more of me than my blog does. Any chance for a swap there?

Hey hey, burrito lady: Jazzy G also posted a few days ago that her mom brought her "Chipotle x2" at home. Whoa...does that mean that we now have a female 2BC'er? Not quite; the constitution of the League of Lunatics specifically states that to be official, a 2BC attempt must be witnessed by at least one League member. (And no, we don't really have a consitution, but if we did, you know it would be written on Chipotle napkins.) So even though this one doesn't count, we can call it a very fine training run...sort of like those wind-aided world records in track and field that don't count but are still cool. And the League remains a "good ol' boys' club" for the time being, just like Augusta National. (I wonder which one of us gets to be called "Hootie"...)

A radical change of seasons: The other day in Eckerd's, I noticed that they had dismantled the aisle where they'd had the Christmas stuff, and they were replacing it with....sun care items? Wait a minute; we still have a few other seasons in Texas besides Christmas and summer, don't we?

Zac-ku?

My buddy Zack has been really amused by the whole "Sonic sign saga" (see last Friday's post for the latest entry, and links to the previous ones), and he even made a haiku out of some of the mishaps:

THE SONIC ANDRINGS
I LOVE TO PUT THEM IN MOUTH
HUNGRY CONEY PLEASE

(Sure, the middle sentence is bad grammatically, but so is the sign. I think that was his point...)

He also said that, if he were the hooligan type, he'd climb up on the sign and put that haiku on one side, and his own on the other:

IN THAT MINISKIRT
YOU ALMOST MAKE ME FORGET
THAT YOU'RE MY COUSIN

I guess Zack's been to a DDR tournament or two in Arkansas if he's thinking like that.

Got any other Sonic haiku? Put 'em in the comments. (Keep it clean, or I'll edit you into oblivion, heh.)

Next!!!!

It was a long afternoon of auditions at the college today, but it went fairly quickly. (And no, I'm not posting results on here...even faithful blog readers will have to wait till Thursday just like everyone else, heh.) The one twist was that Kris and I did our usual deliberations at Chipotle instead of in his office suite. It was actually his first time to go...ever. Granted, he does the no-carb thing, so most of the really good stuff (rice, beans, tortillas, corn salsa) is off-limits, but at least he was able to partially experience the object of our fascination on all those summer post-big band Tuesdays and fall post-combo Thursdays.

This just means that we're a week away from the start of college classes and the end of what's left of my break. I'll make sure and enjoy tomorrow night and Thursday afternoon while those times still belong to me.

I'm a sentimental d00d: I've been tapped to reprise my guest shot on "In a Sentimental Mood" with the RHS Jazz Band this Sunday at 3:00 at the Hard Rock Cafe. I hope Micah can come out and do his guest thing too. Not sure if it costs or not; I'll update here when I find out. (A QuickTime movie of my previous performance of this tune made it onto the Web!)
UPDATE: Evidently it is free, and Micah will indeed be there.

Scary

I did have one weird thing happen over the weekend. I came back from Saturday afternoon's combo rehearsal to find my front door partway open! I guess what happened was that, when Halfling and I left for lunch, I managed the double-boneheaded move of: 1) forgetting to pull the door tightly and 2) forgetting to lock the deadbolt. There was a gusty south wind during part of the afternoon, so I guess the door blew open after I left.

Needless to say, I walked in there with more than a little trepidation. Thankfully, none of my stuff was gone, and nobody jumped out of the shadows to attack me (though if they did, I could have defended myself with James's old sword if I'd made it to the spare room). I guess my front door is so far back that nobody saw it open from the street.

The really weird part is that Tasha was there when I got back, just sitting by the front door awaiting my return. Normally, she bolts out the front door if it's open for more than a second, but now I know that she will evidently come back also. She was definitely out for a little bit, because she managed to eat a little bit of the ornamental grass out front (and subsequently puked it back up on my bedroom carpet--eww). But I never would have guessed that she had any sort of homing instinct. I guess she knew where the food was coming from...

At any rate, I feel like I dodged a bullet this time, and you can bet that I'll be almost OCD-like in my checking of the door every time I leave for quite a while.

Jazz and Coffee, All Weekend Long

I've said before that the coffeehouse culture is the best thing that's happened to live jazz in this area, since it allows the up-and-coming bands like 15th Street Jazz and my own school combos to have a place to play until they can crack the rotation of the nicer restaurants (which is pretty much the same five or six bands all over town, but that's a rant for another time).

This weekend was pretty much all about jazz and coffee. Friday night, I went to see 15th Street at a brand-new place called Java Express in Plano. It's not as big as Ke Davi, and definitely has some parking issues (I for one had to park in a field!), but it's a nice little place, and they liked 15th Street so much that they will probably get more gigs there. However, this one was the last one featuring all four original members until at least the summer, as Steve the bassist went back to New York yesterday morning, and Chris went back to Baylor today (can you say "more gigs for Kev?" Yeah, probably...).

That gig was notable also in that I did something really stupid when I left the house: I walked out without my neckstrap. Since I always sit in near the end of 15th Street's last set; since there's not always a lot of space up there; and since Chris has both an alto and a tenor, we have a system: I bring my tenor mouthpiece and neckstrap and play his tenor while he plays alto. This worked great until Friday, when I realized my mistake about halfway through their set. I still played, but we actually traded off using his neckstrap (by putting guitar solos between us on each tune). It was kinda painful to lean up against the window balancing the tenor when it wasn't my turn with the strap, but I got over it.

Last night was my monthly gig at Ke Davi. Since school's not in session, we just added drums to the Kev/Miles/Andrew triumvirate from New Year's and did it that way. It wasn't quite as crowded as it had been during school, but everyone in the band at least had people show up, and Halfling and Chris came up to sit in on The Chicken at the end. Who knows what kind of group will be presented in February, but in the meantime, the "Kev and Friends" concept will probably do some more stuff, because it sounded pretty decent and we had a good time. I definitely want to pack the place next time, though.

Today was gigless, thankfully, but I got together with Miles a bit to work on the big-band tryout stuff, and then we went to Starbucks, so I guess that makes it three-for-three in the jazz-and-coffee world.

Updates, Get Yer Updates Here!

One of those random kind of days...

Havin' some fun: Fun Facts is done. For now. Whenever anything happens in life that's more fun than what's already in there, I'll edit out a lesser fact and replace it with the more-fun one.

Shameless plug department: I have a gig at Ke Davi tomorrow night from 8:30-11:30. It's with a "subset" of Combo Too--the guys I gigged with on New Year's, plus drums (and whoever else shows up to sit in). We're billing it as "Kevin McNerney and Friends," so I guess, technically, anyone whom I consider a friend could show up and play, though that's not likely. I hope a lot of them do show up to listen, though.

Sonic sign update: Every Friday, I drive by the Sonic Drive-In that has had spelling/grammar/punctuation issues with its message board on at least three separate occasions. They change their sign about once a month, so I was looking forward to more blog-fodder for January.

However, they actually got it right this time...for the most part. The one side is advertising a BROWN BAG SPECIAL, and it would take a complete idiot to mess that one up. The other side does invite us to WAKE UP TO A BURITTO, but that's a fairly common mistake (one of my friends accidentally typed it that way on AIM the other day)--not at all on the level of a HUNGRY CONEY or SUPERSONIC ANDRINGS.

I suppose that means that the Sign Dude gets a passing grade for this month. One out of four ain't bad good, but at least it's entertaining.

...And We're Back

Despite the extra two days, Christmas break was way too short (yes, I can call it Christmas break because this is not a "Kev, Live from School" post). Fizban, Halfling and Dingus all lamented the same thing on their own sites today, but at least they had a fluff period during the day to do so, while I had to wait until I'd already been teaching nine hours for my update.

As expected, six a.m. hit me like a ton o' bricks, especially since it was in the 20's again outside. I'm like Halfling in that respect: early and cold don't mix. I probably hit a good eight snooze alarms (that's four each on two clocks, set about four minutes apart and at opposite corners of the room) just because I'd retreat to the warmth of the covers after each one.

But otherwise, I basically ran like a well-oiled machine once I got going. The only downside was that, despite my having emailed out all my bills on Monday, only two people paid me all day (out of 15). Not a great thing when you haven't really made any money for the past three weeks.

I do have to figure out a way to at least give myself a real lunch hour (or at least half-hour) every teaching day. This 10:00 lunch thing on A-day Wednesdays is for the birds...but at the moment, I have no alternative beyond eating in the car (bad) or eating in someone's lesson (worse). I have to really work on the structure of that before next fall. It's a weird situation to love what you do yet hate parts of your schedule, although I guess it's better than the other way around.

At any rate, I guess I'm back in the swing of things whether I'm ready or not, so my only choice is to grin and bear it, and maybe let loose with a new expletive that Fizban and Dingus seem to have coined (it sounds like the name of either a video game character or a really bad anime): SHAZBOT!!!

Kev Fixes the BCS

So I got done watching all the BCS games in college football this weekend, and this year, as has happened before, the whole thing turned out to be a giant bust. If the whole idea of the BCS was to crown an undisputed national champion, this year they failed miserably, as (just in case you've been in a cave for the past few days) the championship was divided between 12-1 USC and 13-1 LSU. There was a lot of griping when Oklahoma got in the top spot over USC, but others pointed out that Oklahoma's one pre-bowl loss came during a conference championship game, which USC's Pac-Ten conference doesn't have. Lots of people were unhappy with the outcome of the whole mess.

It's obvious that this may not be the best way to do things....but what would be better? Several ideas have been proposed:

Do a full-blown playoff, like basketball. This will never happen. Why? First, the college presidents oppose it. Even though it would probably be a huge cash cow, like the NCAA basketball tournament, it would get in the way of academics, make the season go way too long into the spring semester, and provide greater chance for injury to the players. Plus, if the college presidents don't like it, it won't happen; after too many bad things happened when coaches and athletic directors ran the system, the power resides in the hands of the presidents...where it belongs.

Also, the bowls oppose a playoff system for the obvious reasons that it would destroy the tradition and pageantry (and income) that the bowls have had, some for over a century now. I know that as a UNT fan, I really enjoyed my trip to the New Orleans Bowl; what's the chance of that happening if there were a playoff system. Plus, a school like UNT from a weaker conference would draw a top seed in a playoff format, and they would've gotten totally blown out, in all likelihood.

Also, in a bowl format, a lot more teams can go out winners. In a championship tournament, there's only one winner at the end.

Do a playoff format including the bowls. This would appease the bowl crowd and keep the playoffs confined within a tighter framework of time, but it would likely destroy the historic ties between bowls and conferences; it would mean a lot of extra travel for teams and their fans if they advanced.

Keep the BCS format, but designate one bowl as the championship game the week after the other bowls are played. This would have worked great this year; USC and LSU could play each other next Saturday and decide the title once and for all. But what about last year, when #1 and #2 actually did play in the designated title game? You couldn't just have one bowl that suddenly got cancelled if it wasn't needed...

So this is how I think it should be done (not my idea, but the one I agree with):

Have a playoff game outside of the bowl system that's only used as needed. That way, no bowl would be faced with being unused, but there would be a mechanism in place to have a playoff if the coaches' and writers' polls didn't agree on who was #1 and #2. You could call it the "As-Needed Bowl" if you wanted...or maybe Nike would sponsor it, since I noticed that they had an ad in this week's Sports Illustrated proposing exactly what I just suggested. Maybe they'd call it the "Just Do It Bowl."

At any rate, I bet something happens before next year.

More Than a Nursery Rhyme?

Last night, my buddy Stout came over and was chillin' for a while; he has that job with Brown and works really weird hours. We got on the subject of Christian rap music, so I played him my two favorites: DJ Maj, who compiles a whole bunch of artists' work together in a mixtape format; and KJ-52, who's been called the "Christian Eminem" (their style and phrasing is rather similar, but 52 has gotten so tired of the comparisons that he's now recorded a two-part appeal to the real Slim Shady to consider the effect he's having on young people).

Anyway, one of 52's songs featured a bunch of nursery rhymes, with the chorus coming straight outta "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Surely you all know the words:

Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.

It followed her to school one day, which was against the rules.

It made the children laugh and play, to see a lamb in school.

And then it hit me, for the first time, listening to that rhyme in a Christian context: Mary=the Mother of Christ; the Lamb=Christ Himself, a.k.a. the Lamb of God.

It was especially interesting to consider, in those terms, the part about it being against the rules for the lamb to be at school. On the surface, it was a simple "no pets in school (except guide dogs)" rule, but dig below that, and it could be a thinly-veiled protest against the movement that limited school prayer. Was that possible?

So I had to know: When was this rhyme written? The school-prayer controversy reached its peak in the early 1960's; surely it was much older than that...

I did a little research on Google and found a site which traces the rhyme back to Sterling, Massachusetts in the 1830's. According to the locals, there was a real Mary and a real lamb, and the lamb really did follow her to school one day. (One of the locals who posted to the site also noted that "after the lamb died, she [Mary] knitted the wool into mittens and stockings." I think you see why that part didn't make the rhyme...)

Others have disputed this account, saying that it went all the way back to England "even before there was a Massachusetts." As legend has it, telling of Bible stories was forbidden at one time, so mothers made up nursery rhymes with the Bible stories hidden in them. At least one person posting to the site was thinking the same way I was last night:

Mary (the mother of Jesus) had a little Lamb (Jesus is the Lamb of God) whose fleece was white as snow (Jesus knew no sin, therefore being white as snow — according to the Bible) and everywhere that Mary went the Lamb was sure to go (Jesus is with us no matter where we go).

Yet even that person acknowledged that there could have been a real Mary and a real lamb that followed her to school one day.

So the jury's evidently still out on this one. What do you think--an innocent children's rhyme about an apparently true story, or a cleverly-hidden Bible story? (There is even a dispute over who truly authored the rhyme.) If nothing else, it's a really cool coincidence. Chime in with your thoughts in the comments section.

(Just think, this discussion got started over a rap song! Heh heh.)

A Laugh a Day Keeps the Men in White Coats Away

Today I completed a post-New Year's ritual in record time. I managed to find a Dave Barry 2004 Day-to-Day Calendar at the second store I visited. This usually ends up being an afternoon-long ordeal, since I always wait until a day or two after New Year's to get one. The upside of waiting is that it's half-price; the downside is that not everyone still has one in stock by then. I've had good luck at the Borders in Spanish Village in recent years, and sure enough, they had multiple copies today.

Dave Barry has been one of my favorite humor writers for a long time; I read his column every Sunday in the paper, own several of his books, and have in the past year become a regular reader of (and occasional contributor to) his blog. And for a long time, I've had one of his page-a-day calendars.

You can't say a lot in one little calendar page, but a small dose of Dave usually hits the spot. It may not always be laugh-out-loud funny (or nearly-in-tears funny like that "mondegreen" stuff from last night), but it's exactly what I need; it's the first thing I do after I turn on the light in the morning. Any day that starts with a laugh and ends with a prayer will probably be at least halfway decent.

Other than that, it was another lazy day. I did go with Fizban and Dingus to The Tomato in Denton (a pizza pilgrimage?). You may laugh about us going all the way to Denton for pizza, but a) it's that good, and b) we didn't want to wait until the next One O'Clock concert. I also stopped by Pender's to pick up an Aebersold so it wasn't strictly a one-dimensional trip.

Oh, and happy birthday to my cousin Matt in Indiana (not to be confused with Demon Matt or Halfling; they're later in the year).

Cleaning House

Even though this is one of the laziest times of the year, I feel like I've accomplished something today, if only by default: My house is considerably cleaner, and I've hardly lifted a finger to get it that way.

Yesterday, I finally sold the old P.A. system that I'd had for about nine years. I haven't used it in forever, since the type of place I play these days tends to be a coffeehouse rather than somewhere that needs a big honkin' P.A. (you should've seen the size of the speaker cabinets). One of the guitar teachers from the store was going to buy it about a year ago, but he changed his mind; I finally sold it to a Sinfonia brother who has a band now. Mo' money during Christmas break and getting that big mound o' stuff out of my house...gotta love it.

And then today, my old roomie James came by to take the last of his stuff out of the spare room. Someone asked me, "didn't he leave a year ago?" Well, yeah, he did...but I've just been really nice about letting him use it as a storage facility. Now, with just a few remaining pieces of flotsam (or would that be jetsam?), the room is set to be a true guest room again, or I could rent it out to someone else. While I do have some real cleaning to do during this break, it was nice to see such a huge dent made in it before I even got started.

Other than that, it's been lazy, lazy, lazy since I woke up for New Year's. I did work with Halfling on setting up the program for his UNT jazz audition (he got his stitches out this morning and is not so much of a chipmunk anymore). He's not playing yet; we just kinda mapped out what he was going to do and started gathering the lead sheets and Aebersolds for it. I wish I'd had some sort of direction when I auditioned back in the day.

CLEANING OUT THE INBOX: I also caught up on emails today. One of the sites I subscribe to is snopes.com, the urban legends clearinghouse. They contributed a hilarious collection of people's misunderstandings of the lyrics of Christmas carols. Check it out. (I'll admit that, as a kid, I thought that one part of "Jingle Bells" said "a one horse, soap and sleigh." But my favorite of this collection would have to be "we want some friggin' pudding." Priceless.)

When you're done with that, the same site has the explanation of the physics behind Santa's journey with his reindeer. Be sure and read the rebuttal, which is just as funny.

WORD OF THE DAY: From the above link, we discover that the set of words resulting from mis-heard song lyrics is called a "mondegreen" (the story explains how it got that name). I say that "Mondegreens" sounds like either a posh restaurant or a really upscale drugstore...

The Ball Drops...

Happy New Year, everyone. I have to say that 2003 was pretty awesome for me, so I'm looking forward to what '04 will bring (wow, feels/looks weird to type '04). Whether the road that this year will find me on is a new shiny freeway like the George Bush Turnpike or a muddy, pockmarked country road, I have comfort in the fact that God is really driving the bus and he's surrounded me with a great set of fellow passengers. I can also only hope that, this time next year, the world itself will be able to feel some of the peace I feel in my heart at this moment.

Tonight was good; the last few New Years were kinda boring, so this one made up for it. I played what ended up being an hourlong gig for a private party in Plano; we were the "opening act" for a rave, in a way. When we stopped, the lights went down and the techno started blasting from these mondo speakers they had set up in there. But don't worry, no drugs, no lightsticks, no pacifiers...at least while we were there. Props to Miles and Andrew for rounding out the band in fine fashion (literally...yeah, we dressed up, heh heh). It was also nice to finish up well before midnight to avoid the drunken crazies on the road; I nearly had the freeway to myself at 11:00.

After that, I was joined by Fizban and Dingus to officially christen the new DVD player (Frobird joined us after a while). We watched the Blues Brothers and Spinal Tap; still way more to watch, and I haven't even picked out stuff with the card that Halfling gave me.

And yes, the time stamp of this post is correct; it's really, really late (early, almost). Yet I'll be up by 10 or so to watch the Rose Parade--just because (the main "just because" has to do with the fact that I attended it when I was four and have pretty much watched it every year since). So I guess it's my naptime now...hope your New Year's was fun and safe as well.

Great To Be Back

OK, I guess I can say that the true vacation begins now. I'm done going places, and now I get to do one of the most enjoyable types of time off--being right here and having almost nothing to do.

The conference went great. I could have all kinds of great quotes, but they wouldn't make sense out of context. I could also post some great jokes, but I like to keep this blog "PG-13" just 'cuz you never know who might stumble across it (and yeah I know "PG-13" is really a dude in Florida and I'm "PG-32"--laugh if you get the joke). A few of you may get to hear the nun joke, though...

The trip back was kinda frustrating. I've made a few mental notes on how not to have this happen again:

1) Allow for enough time between planes on connecting flights. In Atlanta, I had about thirty minutes from the time that I landed in terminal C until the time that I took off in terminal A. As I mentioned in a previous post, the Atlanta airport train system is awesome; I just needed a little more time to actually get to the gate. I was pretty much O.J.'ing it tonight (that's running through the airport, not killing people; you have to clarify that now). I arrived at my gate out of breath and was still one of the last people to board.

2) Middle seats=bad. After my mini-marathon, I got to my seat, which was a middle seat. I haven't minded them before; didn't really mind the one on the way up here on Sunday. This time, however, it was bothering me...especially when the girl in front of me reclined her seat all the way back around 20 seconds after takeoff (no exaggeration). They might as well have put up a sign reading "Welcome to Claustrophobia Central." (Keep in mind, I'm not usually claustrophobic, just in certain rare situations.) Thankfully, I was able to bust out my Discman pretty quickly, and Spymob made the trip go by faster; they're quickly becoming my band of choice for trips under less-than-ideal conditions.

Oh well--live and learn, I guess. I can specify certain things the next time someone else books me a flight, so that shouldn't happen again.

So it wasn't my best day of travel. Add to that the fact that I got stuck in High Five construction on my way home from the airport. I also ended up paying actual money on the George Bush, because I had to leave my TollTag at home. It seems that, although the airport is set up to take them, it's not set up for the cheap remote lots...so if you have it in your car, it'll read it and charge you the close-in fee ($18 a day...ack) no matter where you park. That won't be fixed for a few more months.

On top of that, my days were all screwed up when I got back, so I missed out on a chance to eat Chick-Fil-A because I thought it was Sunday (almost all Sinfonia events end on Sundays) and they would be closed. After stopping elsewhere, I drove by the still-open Chick-Fil-A, remembered that it was actually Tuesday and said..."d'oh."

OK, rant almost over. Only thing left? Umm...my feet really hurt. As my friends know, I never wear shoes in my house (that's Fun Facts #9 if you're playing at home), and having to wear them almost constantly the past three days was getting to me; I think the Asian culture has the right idea here.

But all in all, as I said, I had a great time while I was there, and that's the part I'll remember more than the travails of travel. It's nice to be back.

Oh yeah, and poor Halfling had his wisdom teeth out yesterday, even before they came all the way in. He said he was literally screaming with pain when he got home, the poor dude. He also said he looks like a chipmunk; this I have to see (Alvin the Demon Halfling?).

CULINARY TIPS: If you ever end up in the Evansville area, I recommend a couple great eating places: The Gerst Haus downtown, and the Darmstadt Inn in (where else?) Darmstadt, the next town north (home of Don Mattingly, whose house we passed to get there). Good stuff. Incidentally, the Darmstadt Inn offers a brain sandwich on its menu; I can't imagine why nobody at my table ordered one...

FUNNY AIM QUOTE: I collect all the really funny quotes off my AIM conversations and keep them in a file; some will appear here. This one seemed fitting for tonight (I was talking to a friend and former coworker who doesn't usually appear here, so I'll "censor" his screenname).

KevPG32: just got back from a conference in indiana
g*******232: ?
KevPG32: a fraternity thing
g*******232: lol I thought for a min you typed india
KevPG32: lol
KevPG32: "you are correct, sahib"

And that got me to imagining how bad a flight back from India would be in the center seat, behind a "recliner." I think I'd rather swim back, sharks and all.

Kev, Live From Evansville

This is just a quick'un to say that I got here in one piece--survived the all-nighter and the 5:45 a.m. flight (which was full--ack--why would anyone choose to fly that early?) and am now getting ready for another day of meetings and stuff. I'll have more when I'm back tomorrow.

Oh yeah, Demon Matt: Your cellphone called my cellphone again a few minutes ago...except this time you were in Florida and I was here in Indiana. Haha.

"My Name Is Kev...I'll Be Here All Night"

Since I've been out of college, I haven't pulled very many all-nighters. Even if I'm in the middle of some huge project, it's not usually on an urgent deadline like homework used to be, so I've at least been able to get some sleep. This is definitely something I wouldn't want to do all the time anymore.

The reason for my all-nighter? I'm flying out for Indiana at 5:45 in the morning. (That time was not my idea...SO not my idea.) It's for a Sinfonia conference at the national headquarters in Evansville, Indiana. Basically, I missed a portion of the national convention this summer because I was teaching Jazz Camp at the college (a whirlwind week about which I posted earlier on). So they're having a "mini-camp" for the Governors who missed those meetings or have been appointed since then.

As I said, I don't pick the flight times; it's whatever costs the fraternity the least money....but I've drawn the short stick twice in a row now in regards to getting a flight that leaves before 6 a.m. At least this time I'll know to eat breakfast first (learned that the hard way last time; nothing's open that early at the airport). And I'll get there in enough time before the start of the meetings that I should be able to get a hearty nap in somewhere.

Not much has gone on since I got back; being here less than 30 hours between trips, I know how the business travelers who "live out of a suitcase" must feel. I really only had time to do two things: help Halfling with his UNT audition (with a mandatory Chipotle trip in there, since I hadn't been in a week and we both had gotten Burrito Bucks for Christmas) and then go over some tunes with Miles and Andrew for the upcoming New Year's Eve gig.

So in the meantime, here I am....mostly packed, talking to lots of friends on AIM and doing some light reading. I don't know if there will be a "Live from Evansville" entry or not; totally depends on whether or not my hotel has a "business center" with free Net access. And when I'm back, I'm back for the duration...a whole week left to chill (yay) before the schools start back up. Should be a nice time.

The Take

OK, I'll answer the obvious Christmas question here: "So what'd you get?"

First of all, I didn't ask for a lot; Mom and Dad have been helping a lot with stuff for the house, so it sort of spreads Christmas out over the entire year (gotta love that, in a way). But I did ask for DVD's, since I got the player as an early Christmas present right after Thanksgiving. And, believe it or not, I basically got everything I asked for! Here's the list:

This is Spinal Tap
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
The Blues Brothers
Season #3 of The Simpsons

So I say: SCOOOOOORRRRRE! Add that to the ones Fizban gave me on Sunday (Office Space and Super Troopers), and I now have quite a nice li'l DVD collection going. That'll make for lots of Movie Nights at Casa de Kev next semester.

As for the rest of Christmas, it was definitely different; first of all, my parents and I played nine holes of golf today! I hadn't done that since May of 2000 at Firewheel, and it had been longer than that since I'd played with them. And you know what--I didn't suck nearly as much as I usually do. More of my drives became airborne than didn't (they often look like croquet shots *sigh*), and I even out-drove Dad a few times...and Dad plays two or three times a week. Also, Dad tends to "over-coach" me at golf, but this time it was a combination of him not doing so too often, and it not bothering me when he did. Maybe I was a ball of focus out there today.

And tonight, we seriously kicked it old school when we watched some old home movies. (I used that term while we were doing so, and then had to explain "kickin' it old school" to my parents. Heh heh.) I don't mean videos, either...I mean actual 8mm movies. The newest one was 17 years old (scary), which was right before my parents got their camcorder, I guess. The amazing thing was that the projector still worked! At any rate, it was cool to see me as a baby, my sister as a baby, and our awesome old family pets, Zip the lovable mutt and Sinbad the Siamese cat (who was way nicer than Tasha could ever dream of being).

There's Christmas in a nutshell. I'm headed back home tomorrow, before I hop a plane for Indiana on Sunday...then I'm back for the duration on Tuesday night. Hope your Christmas was great too.

Copycattin'

Sometimes, in my group of friends, the actions of one will prompt similar actions by another, or several others. You might call this copycat behavior, or you might call it the "oh yeah, I should be doing that too!" factor. At any rate, it's happened many times. One recent example:

Oct. 11, 2003: Kev writes first "Fun Facts" installment.
Nov. 10, 2003: Kev updates "Fun Facts" and posts about it again on this blog.
Nov. 11-12, 2003: Fizban, Halfling and Dingus all post "Fun Facts" on their own blogs.

And now we have another one:

~Spring, 2003: Fizban sings with the choir (correct me if I have the semester wrong).
December, 2003: Dingus sings with the choir.
December 24, 2003: Kev sings with the choir.

Say whaaaaat? That's right, I sang with my dad's church choir last night for one of the Christmas Eve services.

Now understand, despite the fact that as singers go, I'm a really good saxophone player (haha), I'm not a total novice to the art. I've done plenty of choral stuff in Sinfonia over the years, so I think I sing well in groups, even if I'm not sure you'd want to hear me sing a solo. But I hadn't been in an actual SATB choir since maybe music camp in high school. *shudder*

So how did this happen? Well, Mom was taking some new medicine and it wasn't making her feel too good. Dad was singing at 7:00 and 9:00, and Mom and I were going to go up there at 9. When she decided she felt too bad to go, that left me with two real options: 1) Sit by myself in a church where I don't really know anybody, or 2) Sing with Dad. Obviously, I chose 2).

Now I was not an unfamiliar entity to this church's music program; last year (in my pre-blogging days), I had played a soprano sax feature on "Silent Night" as an offertory for two Christmas Eve services. It was great; Dad was on stage in the choir, and that was really the first time we had ever collaborated on a musical event (he just started the choir thing about 7-8 years ago, I think). This year, nobody thought to ask me to bring a horn until I was 15 minutes away from home on Tuesday, so that didn't happen (much to the dismay of the choir director's wife, who really liked my playing, I guess).

So anyway, everything went fine; it felt really weird wearing a choir robe (someone should've taken a picture), but I sang pretty well for 15 minutes of rehearsal and had a good time up there. I also now have an open invitation to bring a horn whenever I'm in town. And I can tell Fizban and Dingus that I've "joined the crowd," even if for only one day.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: (From a conversation in the choir room after the service)
CHOIR LADY (to me): Thanks for singing with us tonight.
WISEGUY IN CHOIR: Yeah, it was nice to have a real bass voice in there for once (a slam aimed at Dad)
DAD: I heard that! I'll remember that...
WISEGUY: No you won't! You're an old man; you forget everything.

So much love in the room...especially on Christmas.

Christmas Greetings

KEV, LIVE FROM SUGAR LAND, PART 3: Merry Christmas to you and yours, in whatever configuration that might be. For those of you who know the Reason for the season, let us not lose sight of that amidst the songs, presents, lights and so on...and for those who aren't familiar with the Reason, may it become a part of your life during the year ahead. No man-made present could be better...

As I celebrate a quiet Christmas here--just the three of us, Mom, Dad and me, for the first time since before my sister was born--I'm reminded that there doesn't have to be a great deal of pomp or fanfare, traditions can change and so on...but really, besides the spiritual aspect of today, this holiday all comes down to people. And while my sister and her family, as well as all of my friends, are somewhere else besides Sugar Land, Texas at the moment, a day like today makes me sit back and value those relationships even more. So to all my friends that read this site, Merry Christmas, and thank you for being you.

Kev, Live from Sugar Land, Part 2

Yeah yeah, original title. Anyway, some random thoughts on the eve of Christmas:

A sweet history: It really does seem appropriate to be in "Sugar Land" on Christmas, doesn't it? I didn't grow up here, but my folks moved here after my sister and I were out of the house, mostly to be closer to the golf course, which they are--as a matter of fact, they can ride there in their golf cart if they want. (That would be golf cart #2, by the way; the first one spontaneously combusted in the garage a few years ago. For real. Fortunately, nothing was damaged except the cart itself, but still...that's just weird.)

Sugar Land got its name because it started out as the home of the Imperial Sugar Co., which had a plant here until just little over a year ago (the building still exists as a hulking landmark to the area's past). It was truly a "company town" at the beginning, and some of the original company-built houses, rather barracks-y in nature, can be found in the old section of town. It was also the inspiration for the movie The Sugarland Express, a train-robbery tale that marked the directorial debut of a young Steven Spielberg.

Now, of course, Sugar Land is just another tony suburb, as Houston has grown around and past it. My parents' neighborhood alone has been home to the likes of Houston Astro Jeff Bagwell, former Houston Rocket and Dallas Maverick Rodney McCray (he lived in the house with the really tall front door, of course) and billionaire John Moores, who gave so much money to the Unversity of Houston that they named their school of music after him; he also owns the San Diego Padres. (None of these people live there anymore; evidently, that was just their "starter neighborhood." Yikes.) My folks don't live in something as big as any of those houses, but it's still really nice.

At any rate, it's somewhat entertaining to drive around here on Christmas Eve, so I can have "visions of Sugar Land dancing in my head." (Foil me now, guys.)

Christmas spirit: Dead or alive?
Reasons the Christmas spirit might be dead, as seen today:
1) Rude guy who pulled out in front of me in traffic before I could even have a chance to motion him in.
2) People honking at each other incessantly in parking lots.

Reasons the Christmas spirit might be alive, also as seen today:
1) People actually donating to the Salvation Army kettle in front of the shopping center.
2) Random lady wishing people (including me) a Merry Christmas as she walked down the sidewalk at the same shopping center.
3) Retail clerks who were courteous to a fault, even though it was 4:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve.

Moral of the story? Umm, people were really nice this holiday season, until you put them in their cars. (Sounds like the rest of the year?)

It's not just me... I think everybody was late with Christmas this year. Perhaps it's just that life is more complicated, people are busier...but, as my mom pointed out, we "lost" a shopping week since Thanksgiving was so late this year. Most of the people out shopping this afternoon (and they were out in droves) probably didn't want to be shopping on Christmas Eve, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do. The more I've talked to people, though, the less I feel like a slacker for putting my lights/tree up on Monday and shopping today. Everyone's doing it, so it seems.

So I hope everyone's Christmas Eve goes great. I may be doing something unusual tonight, at least for me; if so, I'll put it in the next entry.

Kev, Live from Sugar Land, Part I

I guess this is just a little 'yo' to let everyone know I made it here in one piece....earlier than usual, even, which never happens to me on roadtrips. I had a reason to be early today, as I was meeting one of my Sinfonia chapter presidents for lunch to catch up on some business that couldn't get done during the semester. It just happens that this guy grew up in a different section of my old subdivision (though on the other side of the school-district line, so we wouldn't have likely met even if we'd been here at the same time). Despite having no idea what the traffic would be like, and leaving later than I wanted to, I got to the old neighborhood within three minutes of my goal.

After lunch, I had to make the obligatory trip through the neighborhood itself, "just because." I also passed my old elementary school coming out of the restaurant; I hadn't been that way in quite some time (it's off the main roads, unlike my old high school). Needless to say, it looked quite different, though I still recognized the houses of old friends whose parents had long since moved away, just as my parents did.

When asked to describe the main difference in my old neighborhood, it always comes down to one thing: The trees have gotten taller. The area itself is quite well-kept, even though some of the houses are 35 years old now...but yeah, the trees are what stand out. They're mostly pines in that area, and they do grow quite tall (especially the seedling I planted for Arbor Day in fifth grade, which now towers over the house). So sure enough, when I told my folks I'd made the side-trip, they asked how it looked, and I gave the obligatory answer: "Great...the trees have gotten taller."

They say you can't go home again, but it's always nice to see the place where I spent my formative years. My old house, my schools, the neighborhood...while they don't necessarily represent the greatest of times--and there's no way I'd trade what I have now no matter how deeply I found myself in the throes of nostalgia--they were a part of me for a long time, and the things I experienced then and there helped make me who I am today.

The house is actually vacant now, as the people who bought it from my parents downsized and moved closer into town; it's going back on the market next month. I got nostalgic for it the other night when I was at Halfling's parents' party and I realized how much the downstairs of their house looked like its downstairs.

Other than that, I'm just chillin'; I may get some more shopping done for my sister and her family while I'm here (they're going to Colorado for Christmas, and I won't see them till New Year's Day). Oh, and I'm pretty sure I have a New Year's gig; it's not a high-dollar big band thing like I've had before, but it is a place to play. More on that later.

Also, I guess tomorrow I'll chime in on why this place is called "Sugar Land."

NOT ON MY CHRISTMAS LIST: Here is a description of an actual book I saw advertised today: "Walter is a wonderful dog, except for one small problem. Gas. He can't help it. Billy and Betty love him anyway. Father says he's got to go. Find out how his problem becomes his salvation."--Walter the Farting Dog, by William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray. Seen in an ad for Whole Earth Provision Co., which maybe should stick to selling Birkenstocks if this is the best they can do in the "literature" department. Heh heh.

Needless to say, I won't be buying this one for my nearly three-year-old nephew anytime soon...

Let There Be Lights

I'll admit it: I'm a Christmas light fanatic. While some may say that exquisite lighting displays are simply a symbol of the over-commercialism of Christmas (this goes all the way back to, oh, Snoopy's doghouse in A Charlie Brown Christmas), I think it's great. I love driving through some of those "showcase" neighborhoods and being bathed in the colors of the season. To me, it doesn't symbolize commercialism at all, but rather it's an earthly manifestation of the Light whose entry into the world we celebrate. Oh, and it just plain looks cool too...

I have my favorite places in D/FW, of course--some of which I visit every year no matter what, and some of which I mean to visit but don't always get around to doing. Here are Kev's Top Three in the area, plus a few other places of note:

1) DEERFIELD (Plano): This is one of those neighborhoods where almost everyone participates; even those who don't celebrate Christmas will have up little menorahs or what-not. Like all good light-show neighborhoods, this one has lots of cul-de-sacs so that traffic can move smoothly without turning around in the middle of the street. They also have horse carriages for hire, and the area is a prime spot for limo tours as well. (I caught this one last night.)

2) SPRING PARK (Garland): This one not only has lots of cul-de-sacs, but it also has "theme streets" where everyone does things like Elvis, 'Twas The Night Before Christmas, the Grinch, etc. Last year I finally figured out how to traverse the entire neighborhood without having to double back... (I'm going there when I get back from Houston this year.)

3) INTERLOCHEN (Arlington): This is not that far from Six Flags, and there's a similarity between them: along the road leading to Interlochen, there are signs saying how long the wait is from whatever point you're at, just like the line for the Batman or something. The bonus of this neighborhood is that two of the streets back up to a canal, so they not only do their front yards but also their backyards all the way down to the water. During peak times, they have cops directing traffic, roads coned off, and little sidewalk lemonade or hot chocolate stands (depending upon the weather) for thirsty viewers. (I get there every few years or so.)

There are also a couple of individual places worth noting: a house on DOGWOOD TRAIL in Rowlett that is totally awesome, but it has so much neon, it's a wonder how the neighbors sleep (there must be a 'light curfew' or something), and a house near HEBRON PKWY. and SIERRA in Carrollton that has a Santa-copter on the roof and a full-blown Santa's workshop in the garage, plus several window dioramas.

One thing these places all have in common is that they're in really nice neighborhoods also. I like gawking at the houses apart from the lights; maybe some Christmas I need to go to Fairview, which I wrote about in the early days of this blog.

Anyone have any local sites I missed? Use the comment section below.

Oh, and despite my love of lights, my own lights didn't get up until this morning *sigh*. It was a combination of too busy, too dark when I wasn't busy, too rainy when I wasn't busy and it wasn't dark, and too busy. But at least they're up and I won't be a "Scrooge" anymore (my term for the people in those showcase neighborhoods who don't have any lights going).

I'll be in Houston (Sugar Land to be precise) for the next few days, but I'll have full computer access and will post a few "Live from..." entries while I'm there.

THIS IS WEIRD: I've never had my teaching music follow me around like this, but tonight in Chick-Fil-A, I heard snippets of two tunes in a row that people are playing for Solo & Ensemble: the Pachelbel Canon (a.k.a. the "Taco Bell Canon"--another story for another time) and the Troika from Lt. Kije Suite. They weren't the originals--they had pop songs written around them--but the classical pieces were still very apparent.

THE ELECTRIC SLIDE? You have to see this clip of a dancing trombone player; it's totally hilarious (even if he fracks the last note). I wonder if Fizban is jealous that the guy whose site this came from claims to have "the first bass bone blog on the planet."

AND NOW, A LOOK AT THE WEATHER: It was the first day of winter in Texas, but you couldn't tell at first...and then you definitely knew later.

1:00 p.m.: 70 degrees, sunshine
8:00 p.m.: 54 degrees, nasty north wind, big lightning clouds off to the east.

How do we ever know how to dress here? We sometimes go through several entire seasons in a single day. I think Demon Matt may have a point with his hoodie-and-flip-flops motif; at least he's 50% right all of the time...

The "Two-Party System" is Part of What Makes America Great

No, I'm not doing politics on the blog again. The title comes from the joke I left on my AIM away message last night when I went to not one, but two Christmas parties...and my friends' gig....and an early breakfast.

It's been this way for the past couple of years: Everybody I know throws their Christmas bash on the same night. I'm certainly not going to choose between them; that's not my style. Instead, I'll be Super Kev and go to everything, and the trick is just in the pacing of it all.

Last year, I started north and moved south: My friend and colleague Kris and his wife had a party at their new home in Denton; Kirk from big band and his wife had their annual shindig in Richardson, and I met up with a few of the guys in 15th Street Jazz to go to Sambuca in Deep Ellum and see Shelley Carrol, my old college buddy who's one of the best tenor players in Dallas.

This year was the opposite, compass-wise: I started south and moved north. First up was Halfling's parents' (the Elderhalflings?) party in Rowlett, followed by Kirk's in the middle again and then up to Ke Davi for the 15th Street Jazz "reunion" (where all four of the members who made the CD were together for the first time since August). I had roughly from 7:00 to either 11 or 11:30 to accomplish this feat (15th Street would play longer if the place was full).

I stayed at Halfling's for quite a while; the food was great, it was cool just to hang with Halfling and Angie and Dingus, and it was probably my last chance to see Dingus before his family takes a weeklong trip to New Orleans (I recommended all my old haunts--well, ok, most of them, heh heh--for them to check out). Fizban's parents were there but not Fizban himself; I later learned that we missed each other by about five minutes (Fizban and Halfling live on the same street, so I wished his parents a "safe walk home" on my way out).

By the time I left there, it was 9:40 and time to at least make a cameo appearance at Kirk's. He and his wife throw a huge bash; the food and beverages are amazing, and even though I know almost nobody there, it's still a part of my annual tradition.

Except this year was different, because one thing had changed since last year's party: the rise of Combo PM. So I did know quite a few people there, as several of the "adult" students were in attendance. The 30-45 minutes I had planned to spend there quickly turned into an hour, and I could have stayed even longer. However, this social butterfly flapped his wings once again, said his quick goodbyes and headed up the road to Ke Davi.

I could tell when I pulled into the parking lot that they were still playing, so I ordered my coffee and got ready to chill, until Chris came up to me during the guitar solo and said "hey, The Chicken is next; grab your mouthpiece and get ready." Yes, for the third week in a row, the last tune of the night at Ke Davi was The Chicken. Sure, my college groups "borrowed" the idea from 15th Street, but it just seemed like the thing to do. So Chris and I did our friendly duel (more "Luke and Yoda joust with little plastic lightsabers," just like me and Fizban the other night) and the gig was done. A third Saturday night in a row ending at Ke Davi, except for two things: 1) I wasn't in charge of the gig (whew), and 2) the night wasn't over. We all went to Cafe Brazil near SMU (they serve food and are open 24 hours) until about 1:30 in the morning, and it was great to catch up.

So there you have it--my holiday party time squeezed into one night. I don't know that any one group of people got the attention out of me that they deserved, but at least it's great to have all those groups to hang with in the first place.

GIMME FIVE: The first new ramp of the High Five--eastbound LBJ to northbound Central--opened Friday morning (and within twenty minutes of it being open, there was a wreck on it, much to the delight of radio traffic reporters everywhere), and I got to drive on it this morning for the first time. It is indeed quite...high...but it's not tilted too steeply or anything, so you don't necessarily feel that high (except for looking down on all the tall buildings). The ramp is nearly two miles long, though I think it'll connect to Central sooner when they get all the other stuff done. At any rate, it's nice that they replaced the old left-hand-side exit; that was the finest 1967 had to offer, but it sure didn't work now.

Blow Out The Candles

Happy Birthday Dad! I rarely get to see him on the actual day anymore, but at least I'm there within a few days of it. And no, we don't usually spew out numbers on this blog, but suffice it to say that the number now associated with Dad is a lot larger than it seems like it should be. Not only did I gain the "youthful genes" from both him and Mom, but I also can learn a lot from them about growing older gracefully.

I always felt bad for him when I was a kid, what with his birthday being five days before Christmas and all. The way his "birthday celebration" usually worked was like this:

1) Take one present from under the Christmas tree and say "happy birthday." Only the fact that it wasn't wrapped in Christmas paper kept it from looking like any other present down there.
2) Take him out to dinner on his own credit card. (This wasn't as tacky as it sounds; Mom was a stay-at-home mom, and even in high school, when I had my fast-food jobs, I wouldn't have been able to chip in much.)

However, he took it all in stride, and still does; I think he considers it more of an early Christmas than anything (if he even considers it anything besides "just another day"), and Mom loves the four months that he's a "year older" than she is.

CHALK ONE UP FOR THE GOOD GUYS: In a surprise setback for the beleaguered recording industry, a U.S. appeals court ruled Friday that record labels cannot force Internet service providers to name customers who illegally copy music online.

(Read the whole story here. If you're wondering why this musician considers file-swappers the good guys and not the recording industry, read my Ranting Against the Machine post.)

'TIS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY TIRED, CRANKY AND ASSAULTED ON ALL SIDES BY RUDE CUSTOMERS: I ran across this great site last night about the adventures of a onetime Barnes and Noble employee and his encounters with, shall we say, "difficult" customers:

http://kempa.com/articles/bn/

It's long but worth the read--very funny. Anyone who's worked retail will be able to relate to it. At some point, I'll collect the random stuff from all the years I worked weekends at Brook Mays and get them on this site as well.

Happy Christmas Winter Ehh, I'm Not In School So I'll Still Call It Christmas Break

A long and challenging semester ended today, and now it's time for a couple weeks of Necessary Down Time Where I Don't Make a Lot of Money but Enjoy Recharging My Batteries Anyway. If nothing else, I should be able to get caught up on my reading and get back on a consistent sleep schedule (I won't see 6 a.m., at least as a wake-up time, for nearly three weeks--yay!).

I do have a mini-rant that had to do with this last teaching day of the semester; it's aimed at school administrators who change their school's schedule at the last minute. This happened to me again today.

I had two, maybe three students to teach--one in first period, one or two in third, depending on if one guy got back from a doctor's appointment or not. This school was on trimesters, so they didn't have exams, but they got the same early dismissal that the other (exam-taking) schools got because not doing so would royally mess up the bus schedule. I had been given this schedule several weeks in advance (a rarity), and set my own schedule accordingly. I decided to teach the first period student during the second half of class so as to miss the before-school traffic (another rant for another day). Once I found the guy and pried him away from his card game quiet reading time that emphasized multiple standardized-test objectives, we sat down to play. About three bars into the first movement of his solo...a bell rang. Huh? This was a good twenty minutes too early.

That's when I found out that the shortened schedule was itself being shortened--that's right, a special-schedule-within-a-special-schedule--for an assembly that they were supposed to have in their advisory period, until they remembered that they weren't having advisory due to the already-short, lunchless day. The directors were told about this change weeks in advance so they could notify their private teaching staff this morning, as in with literally no time to warn us. These are the worst kind of missed lessons because I can't collect for them; they're not my fault or the student's fault (but how nice it would be to be able to march down to the office and collect my funds from them, since their disorganization got in the way of the learning process and pretty much stole money from me...yeah, and then I woke up). I basically found out that I wouldn't be able to teach anybody for the next two hours, which gave me plenty of time to get a haircut but really hacked me off.

I sometimes wish these administrators would peer out of their little ivory towers long enough to remember that there are people out there who work in more than one school. It's not just my colleagues and I who do this; there are undoubtedly folks like team-teaching band directors, speech therapists, etc., who go between different schools. Saving big scheduling decisions until the last minute will mess us up in ways they couldn't even imagine, but I wonder if it ever crosses their minds.

(UPDATE: I was talking about this with Demon Halfling tonight when the subject of dress codes came up. This idea has enough material in it that I'll save it for a later post. You're not gonna believe what was banned--and why--in my school district when I was growing up.)

At any rate, despite a glitchy morning, it's great to be on vacation. I'm sure I'll post more during this time as well.

SEE ME, HEAR ME: Someone has posted a QuickTime movie of me playing with the Rowlett jazz band last week--the subject of a previous post--on the Web now. Since I haven't managed to get any MP3 clips up on my website yet, this will be a great addition; I'll link it there and on the sidebar here as well. (And no, you're not hearing things; I did in fact quote "The Christmas Song" on the bridge...all in the holiday spirit, heh heh.) Thanks to Demon Matt for the link. (UPDATE: I found out this only works on broadband connections at the moment; if you're on dial-up, go to the main RHS band page and click on the link about me and the jazz band. You can email the guy and he'll send you a compressed version; I was kinda bummed when I found out my mom and dad couldn't watch it at their place.)

LOTRules!

What can I say; The Return of the King lives up to its hype. Sure, it was three-and-a-half hours long (ironically, the same as the amount of sleep I got the night before; that must be some kind of record), but it ties up all the loose ends neatly and has pretty much everything you could want out of a movie: character development, well-rendered scary creatures, tug-at-your-heart emotions and really cool battle scenes. I won't discuss plot quite yet, for the benefit of the two or three people who haven't read the books, but suffice it to say, I got my money's worth and then some. Fizban, Dingus and Will would concur, no doubt. I'll be back again soon, maybe even today, but in the meantime, if you haven't been yet, what are you waiting for? Stop reading this blog and go! *smirks*

And on the way home, I thought about how cool it will be in two years when Firewheel Town Center is open and we don't have to go to Plano to go to movies or Chipotle. Sweet times ahead.

Let's Go Bowling (My New Orleans Bowl Trip)

Today, I woke up in New Orleans--at 4:00 a.m.--to the sound of a cell phone alarm playing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony (a tribute to yesterday's birthday boy). That's not the normal way to start a teaching day, just like going to see a 3 1/2-hour-long movie will not be a normal way to end it. But here I am, filling in some of the spaces between then and now.

Part 1: Getting There
The flight to New Orleans was fine, if a bit bumpy. It was interesting in that I found out I had stuff in common with both the other random people in my row. I was seated next to an off-duty flight attendant who had been visiting her mom in Garland, where I live now. She gave me one of her mom's "peanut patties"--basically like pecan pralines only with peanuts (duhh). Great stuff! (And in case you're wondering, guys...she was older and had a big rock on her finger, so no "did you get her number?" jokes this time.) Seated next to her was this high-powered hotel-franchise salesman who turned out to have attended UNT when I did and was also an extra in Necessary Roughness just like I was. You've probably heard the stereotype that all hotel owners are from India, and sure enough, he said over 60% of his clients were named either Patel or Bhakta. I even found out why there are so many Patels from India; it's not just that it's the counterpart of Smith. Evidently your last name is tied to your profession; I believe all the Patels were farmers once upon a time. Interesting stuff, actually.

We landed in New Orleans and I was there all of five minutes when my fraternity brother Marc called my cell and said he was waiting outside (yay, he was awake!). We got back to the hotel and then went over to this huge indoor "tailgate" party at the Hyatt. It was in the same exact ballroom where they had IAJE in 2000 when I was there.

I was blown away by the size of the party. I've mentioned before how impressive the crowds were at home games this year, but this was really something. There were more people in that ballroom than there were at some of the games when I was in college--no joke. They had a live jazz band, part of the Green Brigade marching band was in there for a bit playing the fight song and so on, and there was a huge food spread.

Looking back, I'm surprised I was still walking after my little "snack sampler," but I had to try a little of everything. Here's what I had:

Red beans and rice, jambalaya, catfish, a hot dog, a small bag of Zapp's potato chips and some apple cobbler (I know that stuff had fun mixing up in my stomach). I also had a drink called Mr. Green, just because it was there and was so closely associated with school colors and all.

Afterwards, we headed to the Superdome (connected to the Hyatt by a small but upscale shopping mall). To get across this elevated open area, we had to go through the "gauntlet" of Memphis supporters, who were evidently having their tailgate party right there. They had a live blues band and everything, and we felt more than a bit conspicuous walking through the sea of blue with our green shirts and Mardi Gras beads and pompoms. (I almost felt bad that I'd led everyone that way, since the president of UNT and his wife were following us and thus subjected to the same gauntlet.) We went in and got to our seats.

Part 2: The Game
The Superdome was by no means full (it holds something like 69,000 people, and this is only a third-year bowl), but it was loud. The UNT and Memphis bands both did pregame shows, and everyone pounded along raucously with the green and white ThunderStix we'd been given when we got to our seats. (The lady next to me was very percussively-challenged...ack.) I was of course trying to get just the right timbre with mine, except that one of them kept deflating all night. At any rate, it was loud and rowdy and fun; we were primed to go at kickoff time.

As for the game, well...it didn't turn out as well as we wanted. Memphis all but shut down our running game, blocking every gap that Patrick Cobbs would usually race through all season (he had been leading the nation in yards per game going into the bowl). We took the early lead, but only on a field goal. Memphis' quarterback, Danny Wimprine (dang, I bet he got kidded about that name in elementary school) threw some amazing long passes, usually after we had them pinned back at third-and-long. One of them led to a touchdown that ended up giving them a lead they would never relinquish; fortunately, the vaunted Eagle defense got back on track and held them to only another field goal, which should have made the score 10-3 at halftime.

Unfortunately, the play on which the game probably turned happened next when a UNT receiver on special teams tried to run back the kickoff that was probably nine yards back in the end zone. He should have just left it alone, because he ended up fumbling and Memphis recovered. Four plays later, the Tigers marched into the end zone for a 17-3 lead at the half.

Halftime was cool; the Green Brigade did the "Sing Sang Sung" show again (the tempo is still so slow when you have to march to it) and everyone liked it. I'm still so psyched that my buddy Nick got the the director's job. After the Memphis show, they had this contest where two people tried to hit a target 20 yards away with a football, and they were just...horrible. Nobody even clapped when they were done.

We rallied a bit in the second half, bringing the score back to 17-10. (At that point, I was visiting with some fraternity brothers next to the band, and I stayed there out of sheer superstition since the team was doing better. I also noticed that the stands in that section of the Superdome shook whenever we stomped up and down a lot; I hope that was supposed to happen.) The teams traded touchdowns to make it 24-17 with seven minutes remaining, but a couple of costly penalties against UNT helped Memphis get close enough to kick the game-icing field goal; final score, Memphis 27, UNT 17.

Sure, we could gripe about the officiating; it seemed like the Eagles were called for every little bit of contact on pass defense while the Tigers got away with murder. But it all came down to the fact that a team we didn't know much about (they hadn't been to a bowl in 31 years!) played a very good game on a night when we didn't. Sure, a victory would have been nice, but I'm glad I went; I had been to the Cotton Bowl before, when my sister was going to Texas A&M, but it was more fun on a personal level since this was my alma mater. Hopefully, we'll be back again next year to keep the string going.

Part 3: Postgame
Thankfully, despite the shortness of my trip, there was still a chance to take in a little bit of the French Quarter. New Orleans is one of my favorite vacation spots, and, in case you're wondering, it's really not about the partying; I could go there, not touch a drop of alcohol, and still have a great time enjoying the music, food, architecture and overall funkiness of the place.

My fraternity bro Marc and his friend (also named Marc), my gracious hosts for the night, weren't up to walking all the way to the river, so I couldn't have a shrimp po-boy at Cafe Maspero or beignets at the Cafe du Monde, but this was a trip on the cheap anyway, so we settled on Popeye's.

New Orleans is a different place, as I've said. For one thing, there's a huge homeless population downtown, so things like "restrooms for customers only" have to be strictly enforced. This Popeye's almost went overboard on that, though, as they didn't even have a condiment table; you had to go ask this guy for whatever you wanted (maybe the homeless would make a meal out of ketchup otherwise?). This particular outlet was also a bit unprepared for the post-bowl crowd: no bread for po-boys, not even any tartar sauce! The restrooms were chained off and guarded by an employee; I went up there, receipt in hand (just in case), but even that wasn't enough...

ME: Hi, I just finished my meal; may I please use the restroom?
EMPLOYEE: The restrooms are closed, sir.
ME: Even for people who bought food here?
EMPLOYEE: I'm sorry, sir (said with the most "no, I'm not really sorry" look on her face as possible)

But at least we were able to catch the sights and sounds for a while. When we left Popeye's, some guy was playing drums--really well--on two pickle barrels of different sizes. The neon on Bourbon Street, combined with the music (mostly jazz and blues) blaring from the various clubs, made for quite a sensory experience. Thankfully, the guys were pretty tired, so I didn't have to make a big stand about why my beliefs would keep me from going into a strip club (they would've gone, trust me). It was fun to shout "Go Mean Green" to anyone decked out in school colors and hear them shout "WOOOOOOOOOO!!!" in return. I'll be back soon enough when I can go to more of my favorite haunts, but at least I got a taste of the Big Easy for the first time in nearly four years.

Part 4: Going Home
My flight out was at 7:30 a.m.; this meant very little sleep, but it also gave me the chance to see New Orleans at a really unusual hour of the morning. Since I was the first stop on the airport shuttle's route, I got to see what the French Quarter looks like at five in the morning (yeah, I'd been here for conventions before, but I don't think we ever stayed out past, umm....four, maybe).

The surprising thing was that there really were more than a few people out. Some actually looked like they were working, but there were a few straggling partiers stumbling out of the Quarter, even though the Bourbon St. lights had long since gone dark. It had been a slow night the night before anyway; a cold front had come through while we were at the game, so the wind whipping through the buildings made it feel more like Chicago. Needless to say, nobody was earning beads that night...

That's about it, other than to say that my flight home had to be at least 50% UNT people, most still decked out in "mean" green. Despite the loss, it's still cool to see my alma mater move it up a level in prominence like that.

Oh yeah, and if you recall a post from a while back about Zack forgetting to feed my cat when I was out of town...well, it almost happened again. He did forget at dinnertime, and it finally happened at 4:40 a.m., after he got home from the midnight LOTR showing. No wonder Tasha was so content when I got home a few hours later.

Some random quotes from the trip:
HOTEL FRANCHISE GUY: "It's really pretty easy to buy a hotel franchise, as long as you have good credit....and $250,000."
OFF-DUTY FLIGHT ATTENDANT and ME (pretty much simultaneously): "If..."

"One of my noisemakers is having Viagra issues."--Me, when one of the ThunderStix kept deflating during really exciting parts of the game.

"That sure reinforces the Tennessee stereotype, doesn't it?"--Me, remarking on the fact that the Memphis colorguard and dancers all performed barefoot.

"We just lost the game. Ask somebody from Memphis."--Marc's friend Marc, when approached by a homeless guy for money (shockingly, one of the rare times that happened this trip)

WEIRD JUXTAPOSITION OF OLD SCHOOL/NEW SCHOOL: "I've been coming to these games for 51 years"--elderly Memphis fan after the game, who then paused to answer his cell phone, which had an annoyingly trendy ring tone rivaling that of any high school or college student.

A Few Measures of Rest

The long string of performances is finally over; I can hang up the gig clothes for a while (maybe even wash 'em first, haha). I can also now claim the fact that I have done the guest-artist thing for a band without a single rehearsal (granted, on a tune I've played about 18 zillion times).

So how did it go? Well...people liked it. Was I among the people? Umm...I guess it was OK. There were a lot of unexpected things going on, like the backgrounds not coming in every second chorus like we always do at the college. I had forgotten till I got there that there was no chording instrument behind me--very different (and the bass dropped the last four bars after the unison lick)...also, I wasn't miked for the "SNL" opening solo, which really felt strange.

But, all that aside, I did get to have a little friendly "battle" of choruses with Fizban, which is always fun--Luke and Yoda jousting with plastic light-sabers, if you wish. Fizban said on his site that I annihilated him, but I still felt like I left a lot of my good stuff in the warmup room (driven away by the distraction). Maybe we can reprise the battle again another time after I've been able to be there for at least a soundcheck or something.

So I chalk this up as a learning experience, as are all gigs...yes, I'm still learning; anyone who thinks they've stopped learning is either 1) fooling himself or 2) dead. I guess the next step for me is to be so "on" for a performance that any sort of distraction or mishap won't faze me in the least. I found out on Friday that my onstage "ball of focus" is immune from, say, having a mike fall off its stand into my hands, but I obviously need to work on making my own strong statement through the horn even if the rhythm section has less emotion than Band-in-a-Box. It's also possible that I got myself too hyped up for this one, just because so many people who are so important to me were going to be there. The thing is, they supported me anyway...but it's all good. I'll learn from it. I will be better.

(UPDATE: After sleeping on this, I decided that the thing that put me most out-of-sorts last night was the whole thing of not being miked. You simply have to mike a saxophone playing over a big band in a large auditorium, or the player will have to change the way he plays to get an acceptable volume, which will make all kinds of other things not-so-acceptable. The director, a trumpet player, may not really be aware of this, as a trumpet can soar unamplified over a big band like few other instruments [Dingus had the same problem I did on his trombone feature of getting buried in the texture]. I didn't press the issue when the director said "well, nobody else has been miked tonight" because I didn't want to come off like a prima donna...but next time I'll hold my ground.)

I did test out a sort of extreme version of Inspiration Theory tonight: from about 1:00 this afternoon on, my car was radio station KLUK--all Chicken, all the time. I must have rolled the Jaco "Birthday Concert" version with Mintzer and Brecker at least seven times before I got to the school. It definitely gave me some more licks for that tune, even if some of them never left the horn.

Oh yeah, and Dingus had a feature too (was supposed to be his trombone instructor's, but the guy bailed on it a day or two ago). He talks about it here so I'll let your Dingus do the talking (laugh if you get that really, really old joke).

So now it's about time for the New Orleans Bowl trip. It's a mini-trip, really; I'll be there less than 24 hours. I doubt there'll be a "Kev, Live From New Orleans" entry like Demon Halfling did recently, because I'm not likely to be near a computer when I'm there (though we are staying in a Marriott Radisson, so who knows...this is assuming I actually get any sleep to begin with). I'll leave in the morning after a short stint teaching four three beginners (one already called in sick). This will be the shortest trip I've taken to the Big Easy since I saw Sonny Rollins at the House of Blues in '99 and stayed there about 16 hours, but it'll be nice to have a change of venue for a time, and very cool to cheer for my alma mater on the big stage. Go Mean Green!

SECOND-BEST QUOTE OF THE DAY: (excerpted from a conversation between me and a high school student I teach at the store)
ME: Do you have exams this week? I didn't know if your school was on semesters or trimesters.
HSS: My school's on semesters, but there are a lot of girls at school on "trimesters" alright...

Scary, but true, no doubt.

BEST QUOTE OF THE DAY: (excerpted from a phone conversation between me and the fraternity brother who's letting me crash on his hotel floor in New Orleans)

ME: So how's everything going out there? Having a good time so far?
HIM: Yeah, it's been great. We got our picture taken with an actual pimp!

And I'm staying with this guy? Forget what I said about getting sleep...

OK, I'll be back here on Wednesday with a full report and a non-review (can't give away the plot *snickers*) of the new LOTR, for which I secured tickets tonight. (Btw, to the guys going: the tix were $7.50, but they tacked on a .75 charge per ticket for buying over the Net, so it was $8.25 total. So Will, I want my two quarters back, plus another one. *grins*)

A Holiday Cornucopia

More random stuff from the last couple days:

As always, I passed my favorite Sonic sign on Friday afternoon. They have at least fixed it to where you can now try OUR new Mint Blast...but the SUPERSONIC ANDRINGS remain untouched. I still say that would be an excellent name for a rock band...

Speaking of rock bands, we played a U2 song in church yesterday. I think that's a first.

Fun Facts is now up to 45; it should be finished really soon.

Happy belated birthday to Ryan V. on Saturday; welcome to the "big table" now (heh heh).

And of course, I was blown away to tune the radio to KRLD for a weather report yesterday morning, only to find out that Saddam had been captured. Yay for the good guys (the division that captured him, incidentally, was from Ft. Hood right here in Texas).

The Homestretch

VERBOSITY ALERT: Three posts in one day! Keep scrolling to read 'em all...

I can finally see this semester's "light at the end of the tunnel"--and I'm fairly sure it's not attached to an oncoming train.

I took a period off today (yeah, a rarity for me); I just had so many errands to run, college grades to submit, etc., and with one more performance tonight, I really needed more than a 15-minute inhaled lunch of Burger King. Besides, the kids I gave the "day off" are at Coyle, which is preparing for its trip to Chicago for the Midwest Clinic this week, so the director will be happy to have more of her band in rehearsal instead of in lessons today. (She should have a lot of them; most of my married counterparts are taking the week off anyway, since they have the extra income in their household to buy holiday stuff with.)

So let me just catch up a bit since Friday night:

Saturday started really early with a trip to TCU for the Sinfonia induction. They started at 7:30 a.m. *shudder*, so I left my house a little after six, powered by java and Spymob (that's java the coffee, not the programming language), cruising through the chilly winter morn. Obviously, I can't discuss our secret ceremonies here (though a password-protected "brothers only" section of this blog would be interesting), but suffice it to say all went well, even if most of the brothers had been up all night the night before. Some people were literally falling asleep on the table at IHOP afterwards.

After an afternoon nap, I met up with Combo Too at school for a pre-gig rehearsal. It was frustrating at times, because people were late and concentration was low at times (Miles the bassist and I were commiserating over dinner about the difference between people who had lots of off-campus gig experience and those who had none), but we got done what we needed to get done and still had time for a quick dinner before setup time and an 8:30 start to the gig.

Generally speaking, the gig went well. It was a long, long night, playing from 8:30 until past 12:30, but almost everything came off without a hitch. There were a few times when someone would take an extra chorus (or three) of a solo because they got lost in the form, but overall it was good and everyone liked it. There were way more people there than last week, probably because hot drinks on a cold night appealed to a lot of people. The sound of the combo and the size of the crowd cemented what we had talked about last week: groups from the college playing at Ke Davi on a monthly basis.

Yesterday was relaxing, as it was meant to be--just trying to get caught up on stuff before tonight's gig with Lakeview and the New Orleans trip tomorrow. It's been a long, crazy, rewarding, taxing semester, but it's in the homestretch now.

One Down, Two to Go...

The second straight Gigful Weekend is upon us, and the first portion was a lot of fun.

Tonight was the concert at Rowlett; I was the guest for one tune (In A Sentimental Mood) that they'll be doing at IAJE next month with Chris Vadala. Micah came back from TCU to be featured on the other one: an arrangement of A Night In Tunisia that I think was originally done for Allen Vizzutti, so it made sense to have a trumpet play it in the first place.

It wasn't exactly a great night for a concert; the weather was my least favorite combination: cold and rain. I don't mind one or the other, but I could do without them simultaneously. At least I got to the school without incident; Ryan V. almost had a wreck on his way there when he got run off the road into a ditch by a truck. You could still see mud on him when the concert was over. However, there was a decent crowd, and that's always more fun when it's full of people.

There was almost a comical incident before it was time for me and Micah to play (his tune was right after mine): We were walking around backstage and noticed that the main stage door was locked. We checked out the other one and it was locked too! We were trying to figure out how that was gonna work--enter from the audience?--when the assistant director realized we weren't back there, figured something was amiss, and unlocked it for us. Comedy averted...

So it was my turn to play, and I realized it wasn't the same mic I had played on in rehearsal this afternoon. None of the mics had those twisty gooseneck things that saxes like to use, and this one would barely even angle down towards me. At one point, it came off the stand into my hands, but it didn't faze me like it might have in the past; I guess you could say I was a ball of focus in that I blocked out anything not having to do with playing.

At any rate, I think it went pretty well; I actually liked some of the stuff I did (I'll pause a moment while you fall over from shock on that one). It had been a while since I'd done a ballad feature with a big band, and I definitely felt more "in command" than the last time. I think with all the tenor playing I've been doing lately, I'm finally feeling more comfortable playing in Bb. With the perfect pitch thing, and having played alto and bari for so long, I just tend to think in Eb most of the time, and sometimes, when I'm on a Bb horn, the ideas get tangled between mind and fingers. Tonight, everything flowed smoothly. (Also, Inspiration Theory gained some more credibility tonight, as I had Joshua Redman going not just on the way to the gig, but all afternoon before that. I really think this works.)

I stayed backstage and listened to Micah's feature; as I said, it was originally done for Vizzutti, so it was pretty demanding. He not only played the head, but soloed, played lead over the shout chorus, soloed again and played the head out! He was getting pretty warm up there, he said. But of course the audience ate it up; nothing like the "hometown boy made good" coming back and showing what he's learned since graduation...and if you had to choose someone to be the subject of all this adulation, you couldn't pick a nicer guy.

Fizban came up for the concert, so afterwards, he joined me, Demon Matt, Micah and his "entourage" (his GF Carly [sp?], a couple TCU friends, and random Rowlett jazz band members) at the local Chili's for a round of food and great conversation. Micah and Fizban and I are looking forward to hanging over the holidays and then again at TMEA, where we'll all buy way too many CD's again.

One down, two to go....this was one of the good ones.

Bebop and Burritos 101: The Exam

Today I gave perhaps the coolest final exam in the history of my college teaching career.

The "exams" in jazz combo have never been an arduous undertaking; the actual final for the class is the final major performance of the semester (usually the fall/spring concert). We are required to meet with the class at the designated day/time/place during exam week, but that's often a brief discussion of the semester, followed by a much more lively discussion of where we want to go eat. In many past semesters, it's been Jack Astor's, or sometimes before that, the Owl-Themed Home of Friendly Attractive Female Servers. But this semester, we knew it was all about the Chipotle...

Between the monthly "Bond with the Band Bashes" in Combo Too and the almost-weekly trips with Fizban and Dingus after Combo PM, we brought the home of the big burrito a ton of business this semester. Evidently, this did not go unnoticed, as a few weeks ago, the manager on duty came up to me and said "You've brought your school group here a lot, and we want to treat you to lunch or dinner." Needless to say, this was cool by me, and I suggested the exam day (today). I ran into this same manager on a weekly basis and we continued to confirm the day each time we saw each other.

Last night, when I was there with Demon Halfling, I asked for the same manager to re-confirm the day....and found out he was in Mexico this week. Uh-oh...was this gonna fall through? The cashier suggested I talk to the manager on duty that night....who also recognized me from my many trips. She said the other guy had told her about it, and we were good to go. *whew* Here I had promised everyone free burritos, and I sure couldn't afford them myself this month.

So we have a rehearsal for Saturday night's Ke Davi gig (which was frustrating, because two horns were absent and one guitarist was quite late), and then we all get ready for the food portion of the "exam." I talk to the same cashier from last night, and she's confused again. I know that last night's manager left at 3:00 today, but she was supposed to leave a note for everyone. I'm now told that I can talk to yet another supervisor. *bangs head on counter* But wait, this supervisor recognizes me too! All is well (this is the reward for being such a regular--and visible--customer).

After we finished, I was on a mission; the exam was not yet complete. For you see, Fizban and Dingus weren't able to be there, as they had a gig with "Mini-MOJO" at a Starbucks in (so I thought) Mesquite. So I get their free burritos "to go" and head south. I opt for Central-to-LBJ over George Bush just to miss all the stoplights in Rowlett, only to find a few miles later that Central is its own parking lot. No way is rush hour still this bad at 6:45...is it?

After waaaay too much time just sitting there, I find out that it's a bad wreck blocking two of the lanes; I pass it, and it's smooth sailing again. I get to the Starbucks only to find...no band. Huh? This was right after Fizban had called me; he had to leave to go help his dad with a broken-down car and he wanted his burrito. I had told him I'd be there in five minutes, so where is everyone?

I call Fizban back and say, "uhh, what Starbucks are you guys at again?" Turns out it was the one on Centerville, an exit four or five miles earlier from where I was. Ack. I think I had it in my head that it was Mesquite because Dingus had said something about playing there last week, and about it being in "the opposite corner from where we sat last time." Well, I had never been to this Starbucks with the guys before, so my confusion was justified. At any rate, I got to the right one, only to find out that Fizban had bailed, so I took his place in the combo (no, not on trombone, haha). Demon Halfling and I did Mr. P.C. with the rhythm section, then Dingus and Will joined us for Blue Monk and everyone's obligatory closer, The Chicken. I didn't put this one on my list of gigs because I didn't know how long I would be there, but it was a nice warmup for the weekend (Rowlett tomorrow night, Ke Davi with the combo on Saturday, and Lakeview on Monday).

Oh, and Fizban finally came up and claimed his burrito at around 9:00; we had a nice talk about all kinds of stuff and called it a day. Anyone in college reading this could only wish that their final exams went this easily...

Hap Birt t M

Oh yeah, I almost forgot...it's my half-birthday today! :-D Exactly six months between the last one and the next one. I always wanted to give someone half a greeting card on their half-birthday and make 'em wait the other six months for the punch line. But hey, I like the June birthday thing...spreads the presents out equally during the year.

SONIC HIGH SCHOOL? One of my schools almost won the "I kan spel az gud az Sonic" award today when their marquee advertised a band dinner this weekend in their CAFATERIA, but fortunately, it was corrected by the end of the day.

Validation, Part 3

Just a quick post this morning to say yeah, I'm alive and well...just busy as always and not a lot of note to post about recently (though I would have done one last night if Blogger hadn't been down for a few hours).

Last night was Phase II of All-Region Band, and it turned out great; all but one person that I sent there actually made the band. I have two going to Area--a senior (expected; he's been there before) and a freshman (wow!). Even though that means I have to listen to those dreaded three etudes for another month, it's obviously worth it if someone gets into State. I had said in the past that the strong finish by my students made me feel validated in the way I do things, but this one was, in a way, even more special. The 4-out-of-5 at Region Jazz was awesome, of course, but (within all modesty) almost expected, because I think I'm really good at teaching jazz...yet many times, these same people and others would go to the "legit" auditions and get buried. I vowed to be better in my approach to that, and I guess it's working. It's not as easy sometimes to motivate saxophonists to play classical, just because 1) the opportunity to make a meaningful living playing classical saxophone is almost nil, and 2) jazz is just so much more fun. But this year, it turned out well on both fronts.