Yay

For the first time in a week, I feel completely "well." There's a bit of a lingering cough, but I haven't taken any extra medication since the Aleve caplet I had for the killer headache after Homecoming last night. I'm considering things to be back to normal and will act accordingly, though I plan to try for a bit of extra sleep this week.

Played a 30-minute gig in McKinney with Andrew from Combo 2. Just us, tenor and guitar (actually the sign by the stage said we were a trio, so I made a lot of jokes about having to lay off our bass player due to the bad economy). He wanted some more experience in front of an audience before playing recital hour next month, and I'm always happy to help with stuff like that. It was for some sort of barbecue festival or something, though the food wasn't ready till after we left. It was waaay too hot on stage for being October 19, but we replenished ourselves with Chipotle afterwards, so it's all good.

Anyway, I hope this is the end of the allergy season till spring; I'm looking forward to new topics for next week.

The Color of Money

One more thing that happened today was that I got a couple of the new $20 bills from an ATM today. I've read a lot of things about them in blogs and online columns, but this was my first time to see them up close.

So here's my take on the whole thing: It's not that bad. It doesn't look as much like Monopoly money as I had feared. The peach coloring isn't that obvious, and I didn't even notice the tiny little gold 20's on the back side until someone else pointed it out. The extra "hidden" Andrew Jackson portrait on the lower right-hand side is a little freaky, and the "USA TWENTY" markings are a bit over the top, but I like the color-changing "20" that's in the same corner. Some have said it's undignified, but I think it still looks less "fake" than most foreign currency, and I'm sure it'll be a lot more difficult to counterfeit.

But here's the thing that strikes me as funny: Opening up newspapers and magazines and seeing full-page ads for the bill. That's right, the treasury is advertising money! It's like I read somewhere earlier in the week: What's the point in advertising? What else are we going to use? It's not like we're going to go back to trading with sheep and goats again (man, wouldn't that be awful if I got paid for lessons that way). I guess the ad blitz is mostly for merchants who are out-of-the loop so they'll know the new bills aren't fake.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "That eagle on Jackson’s left, is it having a seizure?  It looks like it’s in mortal anguish!  I swear that it’s twisting and writhing in death throes."--Phil of stereoboy.org, who wasn't as charitable towards the new money in his post on the subject.

You Can Go Home Again...

I went to Homecoming at UNT today and had a great time.

First of all, there have been a lot of positive changes up there since I was in school, and I'm not just talking about the new buildings. One of the things was the huge crowd, both for the game and the tailgating beforehand. When I was in school, tailgating would have involved literally the tailgate of a single truck, maybe (and they would have been running afoul of the law by doing so), and almost nobody came to the games. But now the whole parking lot was full (winning will do that, I guess); they had a special tent village set up in the practice field for reunions of campus organizations (I stopped by the KNTU booth and talked with Russ, the station manager then and now, for a bit), and then the lot itself was reserved for tailgaters. I hung out with some of the Sinfonia brothers, at least one of whom had been there since 8 a.m.! I found it really funny that all the bro's were so shocked to see me there. I mean sure, I'm not there every week like I was when I ran the chapter's alumni program, but it's not like I've fallen off the face of the earth or anything. At any rate, it was great to be missed and appreciated.

And then came the game. This was the change that really impressed me. When I was in school, the student side would be mostly full, and the alumni side would have maybe 20 people in it (OK, maybe not that few, but definitely what Letterman would call a "smattering"). Today, the alumni side was nearly full! And they were rowdy too; the people over there when I was in school looked like they were barely alive sometimes. Oh, and they've also "borrowed" that old Texas Tech tradition of throwing tortillas up in the air whenever a touchdown is scored. Loads of fun. And yes, we won, 37-27, to go 3-0 in conference play. Looks like another trip to the New Orleans Bowl could be around the corner if the rest of the season goes so well.

Near the end of the game, I went over to the student side near the band for a while. The poor bandmembers were up at 10:30 for a parade (better than the 7:30 a.m. call we had a few times when I was in there), then the 3:00 game and an exhibition at a high school contest later on that night (yikes). One of my Sinfonia bro's is the director of the marching band now, and another serves as its P.A. announcer; it's so great to see all these people doing well.

All in all, a great day; I would love to see the team get into a slightly more high-profile conference (maybe one where they play SMU and TCU every year, for one thing), but it's so much better than when I was in school and had to get my "real" college football fix by going to my sister's Texas A&M games. And getting to see old friends is always cool, along with being able to go somewhere that was a major part of your life for a while and still feel welcome. Sometimes, you really can go home again...

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I know you!...What's your name?"--a friend of Micah's, who I met when we were at TMEA back in February. I didn't recognize her right away because she was in a marching band uniform when I saw her today. She at least remembered me as "Micah's friend," and there's no dishonor in that.

Ribbit

Thank goodness the teaching week is over. As you probably know, I love my job, but I'm still fighting this allergy thing. The worst part has gone away, but what I'm left with is a condition I call "bullfrog throat." It's not quite as bad as laryngitis (though that's how I sounded a few days ago), but it basically just makes me sound scratchy and allows only the lowest register of my voice to work.

What I really need, besides the usual rest and fluids, is a day without talking (those who know me well will go "yeah right, Kev, like you can do that!"). It is, of course, impossible to do that while teaching--not like I can just grunt and point. It also makes it difficult to sing in lessons; I can't sing anyway, and now I can't sing even worse, and it's about an octave below where it should be.

If I don't go anywhere tonight, that'll help a bit, as all my talking can be reserved for AIM, which won't tax my throat any further. Tomorrow I'm headed up to UNT for Homecoming, so there'll be a lot of talking as I run into lots of old college friends, and hopefully the game won't cause me to yell too much. Maybe on Sunday, after this 30-minute gig I'm playing in McKinney, I can rest the ol' vox-box some more.

Oh, and talk about cures gone awry: On Wednesday, I decided to bust out the scratchy-throat remedy I got from a vocalist friend in college: hot tea and honey. Unfortunately, I had neither of those things in the house, so I had to go get a little plastic bear full of honey (honey simply must be purchased in little plastic bears--no exceptions) and a box of tea bags. But stupid me--I forgot to buy the decaf tea! *slaps forehead* While you may know that I'm an admitted coffee addict in the morning, I try not to over-caffeinate myself the rest of the day. So imagine my frustration as I went to bed, after having four HT&H's since 3:00 that afternoon, and found myself so wired I couldn't sleep. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Needless to say, it hasn't been a great "change of seasons" on the allergy front; I think it's time to gripe at the allergy doc and trade in the $80 nasal spray for something that works. And hopefully the froggy thing will go (hop?) away soon...

QUOTE OF THE DAY (actually yesterday, but who's counting?): "If worship is a cake, then I'm the chocolate sprinkles."--Me, in an email to my worship leader about not being able to play this Sunday due to an earlier-than-expected gig. That really is my place as the saxophonist in a worship band--you could certainly do without it, but you might miss it if it's not there.

Ewww...

(GROSSNESS ALERT: Do not read this while eating! You have been warned...)

I've been playing saxophone for a long time, and teaching it for a little less time than that, and all the while, I never knew for sure if what I'm about to tell you was an urban legend or was actually true. But now I know it can happen: One of my students informed me today that he actually grew a colony of maggots inside his mouthpiece!

I first heard the story from my sixth-grade band director, who told us about a girl in his own high school band who never changed her reed, and when she finally decided to, the mouthpiece was swarming with maggots. That was enough to keep me from ever leaving the reed on when I put the horn away--a practice which continued until a few years ago, when some of my colleagues at Jazz Camp mentioned that they left theirs on most of the time, so that the reed wouldn't have to re-adjust itself to the mouthpiece on every playing. Since I play virtually every day, this made sense to me, and I have done this often without ever growing a single "science fair project."

My student didn't grow the colony on purpose, mind you; he had been in the habit of leaving the mouthpiece on the neck after marching band, to save a little time. Unfortunately, the extra moisture from the neck, in combination with a really humid football game and the horn being in the case from Friday through Sunday made for the perfect habitat for the flies-to-be. Needless to say, he was totally disgusted and may never use that mouthpiece again.

So all this time we had thought maybe this idea was a myth created by band directors to scare students into proper horn maintenance...and now we know it's true. Who woulda thunk it?

(As an epilogue to this, I have to throw in a funny maggot story: I was once taking a class in Denton to get my restaurant-worker's card from the Health Department, and the instructor wanted to make a point about how gross it was when flies landed on your food in a restaurant. His thinking was that, since flies started out life as maggots, they were never really clean animals to begin with. So he asked the class, "Now, who can tell me what flies are before they become flies?" One good-ol'-boy in a gimme cap from a local catfish restaurant raised his hand and said, "Ants?" The whole room busted out laughing, imagining these ants sprouting wings and turning into flies. That became a running joke at the pizza place where I worked: "Hey, close the door; you're letting all the grown-up ants in.")

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "BEWARE HE WILL BE BITTING..."--on a poster advertising a performance of Dracula at one of my high schools. I know I always hate it when I get "bitted" by a vampire...
(Maybe the kid who made that poster also has a job changing the sign at Sonic.)

Kev, Live from School

OK, I'm following in the footsteps (keystrokes?) of my cronies Fizban and Matt D. and posting from school, where a series of pep rallies (why in the world is there a middle school pep rally anyway?) have taken my students from me. So here I am...bored, bored, bored. I guess it'll be interesting to see why they "forgot" to come to their lessons, when the director evidently told them specifically that they had to go. Maybe they just opted out and it's Free Money for Kev Day.

I hear people coming back now. Time to hear a legion of excuses. Kev out.

Catch the WAVs

It's only Monday and I'm already completely beat. Time to be a complete weirdo (for me) and go to bed before 10 p.m. in an attempt to rejuvenate a bit. So it seems like the perfect time to share some entertainment that I've gotten recently: A couple of weird Asian videos (or WAVs for short).

The first one came to me through Dave Barry's Blog last month--the Japanese Singing Eggplants video. It's pretty amusing.

Last night, I sent that link to Zack, because he's into all things Asian, and the song on the video sounded like something he'd put on the various "Zax Mixes" I've gotten over the years. He thought it was pretty wacked-out, which is saying something 'cuz he's into some rather unusual stuff. He replied in kind with this, which was a pretty cool video (I really liked the animated cat) and a rather frantic song much more in "Zack's tempo" (you may know from these pages or elsewhere that Zack is the state DDR champ). Anyway, I hope you enjoy this little slice of Asiana. Back for more talk tomorrow, if the extra rest does its trick.

(UPDATE: Here's a third one--evidently a soy sauce commercial--also courtesy of Dave Barry's Blog.)

"NORMAL" MUSIC OF THE DAY: Spymob. Great stuff; check it out. The mp3's are a little slow to download, but they have samples of their whole CD on the site.

Farewell to a Jazz Legend

The jazz world lost one of its greats this week with the passing of the eminent trombonist Carl Fontana on Thursday. Lee has an eloquent, heartfelt post on this subject, so I'll direct you there as I don't think I could top what he had to say. I'm just glad I got to see Carl live on a few occasions, most recently at the TCU Jazz Festival a few years back.

50 Fun Facts About Kev

As I navigate the blogosphere, I've noticed that one thing a lot of sites have is an "About Me" section. If you're really dying to find out the mundane stuff, like where I teach and where I'm performing in the near future, look on the sidebar or go to the front page of my website. This entry is devoted to some of the lesser-known stuff about me that still might be interesting (I hope!). Though I'm topping it out at 50, I might replace some of the less-fun facts with more-fun ones as time goes on.

1. I was born a month prematurely and spent the first three weeks of my life in an incubator, like a common chicken (though the chickens that were hatched on my birthday have no doubt suffered a fate far worse than mine…).

2. My family moved twelve times before I was in kindergarten. This included two stints in Chicagoland and three different times in the greater St. Louis area, plus both coasts.

3. Because of this, I learned to read when I was three years old (sure made kindergarten a breeze!)

4. I have lived in Texas since the third grade, but I have never used the phrase "fixin’ to" unless I was making a joke.

5. However, the word "y’all" is a fixture of my vocabulary and is pretty much the only second-person plural term I use.

6. If my grandmother’s facts were correct, I am a direct descendant of William Henry Harrison, the first President of the United States to die in office. (He did so because he gave a two-hour inauguration speech, in the rain, with no hat; this might explain my occasional long-windedness, but at least I have enough sense to come in from the rain.)

7. I have been a homeowner since August of 2001, and I love it! Beats the heck out of renting…

8. My house has a driveway that’s pitched at a 45-degree angle, but the truly brave souls will park there anyway.

9. I never wear shoes in my house, ever. Most of my friends have adopted this practice here as well, so the big pile of shoes inside the door makes it look like an Asian house, even though I’m not the least bit Asian.

10. I own a psychotic cat named Tasha who licks all the fur off her stomach. (She wasn’t originally my cat; she was my sister’s before I got her, and a stray before that.) Incidentally, Tasha is short for "Countach," the name of a classic car made by Lamborghini in the '70's and '80's. (UPDATE: R.I.P. Tasha, 6/23/06; tribute here)

11. Even though cats almost never come when called, Tasha will come when I whistle Clifford Brown’s "Joy Spring" (but only in the original key of F).

12. Before the cat, I had a Netherland Dwarf Albino rabbit named Mr. P.C. (yes, after the John Coltrane tune). He lived for over 7 years (a long time for a rabbit) and would lick your face like a puppy.

13. I was an extra in the movie Necessary Roughness, which filmed at UNT when I was in school there. I got supermodel Kathy Ireland’s autograph during the filming. (Yay!)

14. I have been in a mosh pit (at a Primus concert, in case you’re wondering).

15. I have been in a tornado--not physically sucked up into the vortex like in The Wizard of Oz, but one did drop shingles from the roof of the building I had just left through the window of a car in which I was riding.

16. I was almost in a riot once (at a rock concert that was cancelled by rain, despite the tickets saying "rain or shine"), but we bailed when the first person threw a bottle at a police officer. The riot ensued a bit later without us.

17. MUSIC STUFF: I have played a bass saxophone before, and have been recorded doing so. Great fun!

18. I teach at ten eight public schools (6 4 high schools, 4 middle schools), a community college, a music store, and my house. And in my spare time…

19. Before I started teaching a lot of college courses, I once taught 80 private saxophone students a week (and yes, I remembered all their names).

20. Now, however, I teach a mere 74 of them (Fall ’03 numbers).

21. I have performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, and I want to go back…soon.

22. BRUSH WITH GREATNESS I: I got to shake hands with George W. Bush, back when he owned the Texas Rangers and I was a college radio reporter.

23. BRUSH WITH GREATNESS II: Jazz great Clark Terry rode in my car when he was here for the college jazz festival. (UPDATE: Another jazz great of the same generation, Jimmy Heath, would do the same when he was here for the 2006 jazz camp.)

24. BRUSH WITH GREATNESS III: I rode an elevator with Wynton Marsalis during the Wichita Jazz Festival. Unfortunately, there were a whole bunch of real-estate-convention ladies in there with us, so I didn’t get to "talk shop" with him (out of respect for his privacy, because I don’t think they recognized him).

25. ACTUAL ENCOUNTERS WITH GREATNESS I-VIII : I have been lucky enough to share the stage, as a soloist in a combo setting, with the above-mentioned Clark Terry, as well as Randy Brecker, Peter Erskine, Kevin Mahogany, Frank Mantooth, Mike Vax, Bobby Shew, Kim Park, Tim Ishii, Denis DiBlasio, Gregg Bissonette and Mike Drake. You’ve probably heard of the first six, and if you’re really into jazz, you should familiarize yourself with the other six also.

26. I started composing music when I was in seventh grade, and actually got to conduct my eighth-grade band in one of my own compositions. That composition, incidentally, won the state level of the Reflections Contest.

27. We got to march to another one of my compositions in the Astrodome for the high school football playoffs my senior year.

28. I have perfect pitch, the ability to tell you what note is being played without looking. I don’t have the extreme degree, where you can tell how many cents sharp or flat a note is, but what I have is really cool 90% of the time.

29. My brother-in-law is the CEO of Despair, Inc., the company that (among other things) makes spoofs of those sickeningly-sweet motivational posters that show up in offices and schools.

30. I worked in a supposedly "haunted" building at UNT, but I never, ever saw the ghost (story here).

31. I almost won the Texas Lottery one time, missing what would have been a $5 million jackpot for me by one number. It was cool to win the second prize anyway, as it was over $600 and I was in the process of moving to Garland.

32. I once got to serve as the P.A. announcer for a UNT football game. (I was usually the "spotter," the guy who looks through binoculars to see who tackled whom and so on—a funny job for a nearsighted guy with glasses.)

33. I have not yet had any former students "make it big" as saxophone performers (though some have become very fine educators), but Shaun Groves, an up-and-coming Christian recording artist on piano, guitar and vocals, was once my saxophone student at Tyler Junior College. (Read my review of his second CD here.)

34. HERE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS: My favorite type of music is jazz (duhh), but I also like classical, rock, techno, punk, some non-Satanic heavy metal, and many different forms of Christian music.

35. My favorite foods are Mexican, Italian, Cajun, and a good ol’ American burger and fries.

36. My favorite fast-food restaurants are Chipotle (duhh, if you’ve read this site for more than a few seconds). Chick-Fil-A, Subway, Schlotzsky’s, Whataburger and Wendy’s. (UPDATE: I have to add Panda Express to the list; it wasn't in my neighborhood when I first wrote this section, but now, I'm lovin' the panda.) (FURTHER UPDATE: Have to add Potbelly too.)

37. My favorite sit-down restaurants are Chili’s, Cheddar's, Bennigan’s (yes, I know these are basically all the same restaurant in different packaging), Outback Steakhouse and this place called Copeland’s of New Orleans (yes, they have had a Dallas outlet, and I go went there for almost every birthday).

38. My favorite coffeehouse is Starbucks, but I also support local places, especially when they have live jazz.

39. I actually have a favorite brand of bottled water (it’s Dasani, and yes, I can tell a difference).

40. I once won second prize at a joke-telling competition in college. Of course, the joke is too gross to print in this blog (haha).

41. My left ear is slightly lower than my right ear (makes wearing glasses, which I’ve done since third grade, a challenge). My left foot is also a half size bigger than my right foot; I wonder if the extra gravity generated by the bigger foot is what pulled the ear down…

42. During the wintertime, the skin on my hands get so dry that I inevitably snap part of the skin off the tip of my right middle finger (due to snapping my fingers to keep time during so many lessons). During the past few years, the skin has broken at the point of contact on my palm as well.

43. TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME: I am a bigtime baseball fan, attending at least 15 Texas Rangers games every season.

44. During my college radio days, I used to do live sportscasts from Rangers games and get interview tape afterwards. In this process, I got to shake hands with Nolan Ryan.

45. I was also at the game where Nolan got his 5,000th strikeout, and I have the ticket stub and commemorative certificate to prove it.

46. I attended the All-Star Game in 1995 when it came to Texas. It was around 103 degrees outside and we were sitting in deep left field (i.e. in the sunniest part of the park), but I loved every minute of it.

47. I was at the very last game Tom Landry coached for the Cowboys, though nobody knew at the time that he would be fired after the season.

48. The day after attending the 2003 New Orleans Bowl will probably be the only day in my entire life that the length of the movie I watched (Return of the King) was equal to the amount of sleep I had the night before—3 1/2 hours.

49. In high school, I ate an entire 20-inch pizza with all the toppings (it was from Noble Roman's and called a "Maximus Masterpizza") in less than an hour without getting sick. (Much more recently, I managed to eat two Chipotle burritos in one sitting, but that already has its own blog entry, so it doesn’t count as a Fun Fact.)

50. It took three months of sporadic work to finish this entry (this "first final update" came on 1/9/04). As I said, I may replace some of the lesser facts in this collection with stuff that’s even more fun…watch the main page for update notices.

A Sign of the Apocalypse a Really Poor Speller?

Seen on a sign at a Sonic that I drove past today:

NEW MELTS
UMM...DELICIOUS

And I was really confused. Either this meant that the person had intended to say "MMM...DELICIOUS" (and how in the world do you misspell a word that's just one letter over and over again?) or else they couldn't make up their mind whether they liked the food or not ("So, what did you think of the melts?" "Umm...delicious?").

Needless to say, I ate somewhere else. Figure out whether or not you actually like the melts and get back to me, will ya?

Talk to Me, People...Talk to Me

I've said before that I read a lot of other blogs, and one of the things that a lot of people have is the ability to post comments (I've certainly done this on other sites). Now, thanks to Haloscan, you can post comments to The Musings of Kev. Just click the link below and let me know what's on your mind from time to time.

It's Spreading

This is great...I mentioned the 2BC on the Stereoboy site the other day, and now it looks like some folks in Ann Arbor are going to try it. They don't actually have Chipotle but somebody up there has been to one and says they have a local place with burritos of a comparable size. We'll have to give honorary League of Lunatics memberships to anyone who does it.

Oh, and everybody who's read the post about the Gallon Challenge thinks that's the most disgusting thing ever--even people who are really big milk-drinkers. I don't see that one happening around here anytime soon.

Hi, My Name is Kev and I'm a Coffee-holic ("Hi, Kev.")

Stay with me here; the first part of the story has nothing to do with coffee, but it gets there eventually:

I've been fighting allergies for about a week now. I could go on a rant about how the new medicine the allergy doctor gave me in March isn't working very well, despite being twice the price of the old stuff...but nahh, that's all the ranting I'll do on that for now. At any rate, the coughing fits hit their peak right in the middle of Jose' Feghali's performance at the Founders Day Concert...ack. I was nearly in tears trying to hold it in and restrict my coughing only to the loud spots in the performance.

Then on Monday night I started getting this awful headache, and it never totally went away, even when I woke up the next morning. I don't usually get sinus headaches that badly, so I was trying to figure out what the deal was. Then it hit me: *slaps forehead* "D'oh! I never had my coffee yesterday!"

OK, so I've known since undergrad school that I was probably at least somewhat clinically addicted to caffeine--at least that was the suspicion of my saxophone professor. I also have known for a while that I'm not the same person if I don't have my coffee before my 7:30 lessons every morning. But I never suspected that, by skipping a single day, I'd actually have the headache that wouldn't quit.

And it's not like I didn't have caffeine at all on Monday. I went to Chipotle for lunch and Boston Market for dinner, and had ample amounts of Dr Pepper at both meals...but still the monster headache. So evidently I'm addicted specifically to the caffeine in coffee. Weird.

So when I got up yesterday, with the headache still raging, I was happy to be in suburbia and not on some remote Alaskan outpost. Fortunately, I'm not a total coffee snob. I won't just drink anything you put in front of me, but it doesn't have to be Starbucks; I'm also fine with the coffee at Exxon On the Run (nee Tigermarket) convenience stores, one of which is near my house. I got my blessed cup o' java, picked up some Tylenol Sinus at Tom Thumb and made my way back home. Sure enough, problem solved; the headache went away and hasn't returned. That's right, an 89-cent cup of coffee and a $4.99 box of Tylenol did better for my overall condition than my $80 nasal spray from the doctor. Ugh.

So it's not like you'll see me checking into Coffeeholics Anonymous anytime soon. If that's what fuels my daily flight, so be it. Who would ever think, though, that Lady Coffee would be such a demanding mistress that I would be punished for missing but a single day. Don't worry, m'lady, it won't happen again for a long time.

OK, This May Be Sicker Than The 2BC...

As an avid blogger, I often read other people's blogs as well; not just those of my friends, but also some random ones that either pop up on the "Just Published" page of Blogger, but also things that I find while getting distracted during Google searches for other stuff. I've run across some real junk, but also some quite enjoyable sites.

So today I read that Phil, a.k.a. Stereoboy, a college student from Michigan, participated in something at least as twisted as the 2BC: The Gallon Challenge, which involves consuming an entire gallon of milk and keeping it down/in for an hour (i.e. none of it can pass out of any bodily exit during that time). Our protagonist didn't succeed this time, but his R.A. did; wonder how that felt the next morning? I left a comment suggesting the 2BC to them for their "next trick" even though there are no Chipotle's in Michigan (not like college students are averse to roadtrips, though). Anyway, glad to know that the League of Lunatics has counterparts in other places.

Singin' Shrooms?

A noted Czech orchestral composer has revealed a secret to his success: the ability to hear mushrooms sing.

Click here for full story.

I bet some people will wonder if he's doing anything with the mushrooms besides listening to them... :-)

Founders Day

My fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, is 105 years old today. May your proud banner "float for aye" (it's a quote from one of our songs). Happy Founders Day to all my brothers out there!

In celebration, we had a huge concert at TCU yesterday. It's a joint venture between the province and the DFWAAA, and since I'm an officer in both, I had a big hand in putting it together. The first half was the annual Province Big Band, where we get people from all over the province (three schools participated this time) to form a big band that gets to rehearse a full 45 minutes before performing. I've gotten to conduct that the past few years and it's always fun. After that, the TCU chapter's chorus did a song, and then all the Brothers did several of our fraternity songs, led by Jervis, the past national president and author of the Centennial History.

The second half was a real treat, as we had a performance by the amazing pianist Jose' Feghali. He's the winner of the Seventh Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 1985 and Artist-in-Residence at TCU. His program was a mix of Chopin (a nocturne and a scherzo) and some music from his native Brazil. One of the pieces, he explained, would sound a lot like ragtime; the composer (an obscure one whose name escapes me) and Scott Joplin grew up at the same time, but in different parts of the world and (according to all his research) completely unaware of each other or their music. The similarity was astounding...

After the concert, we had a barbecue, though it had to be moved to someone's house because of the rain (it was sunny and humid by then, but the grass was wet). Moral of the story: Barbecue and white dress shirts don't mix! (No, it was somebody else that got all messy.) But a great time was had by all.

Since I was already at TCU, I got to hang with my buddy Micah, which was really cool because I hadn't seen him since school started. He's one of the only people I know who is as busy as I am, which happens when you're a really great player at a smaller school (especially when you're on scholarship, which means they "own your butt"). We got to catch up at Starbucks for a good long while before I came back.

Oh, this was funny: I stayed up fairly late on AIM last night, so the first Sinfonian I got to wish a happy Founders Day to was my old chapter brother Dan. The weird thing about this is that Dan lives in Paris now. That's France, not Texas. I got an invite to visit; he says the jazz scene is great there. Not sure how soon I can afford that, but yeah, I'd go...despite the tensions between the two countries, everyone should probably see Paris at least once, especially if it's during the Tour.

So, once again, a happy Founders Day to any Brothers who may have stumbled upon this site!

Go Google Yourself!

I've promised to blog about this for a while now, ever since the post about how one of the "other" Kevin McNerney's in the world got a new job, which then got posted somewhere online, and one of my fraternity brothers jokingly asked me if I was moving to California. It took a while, but here goes.

If you're a Jim Smith or a Mary Williams, this won't be a big deal to you, because you will likely already have run into at least one other person who shares your name. But if you have an unusual name like I do, it's sort of weird/cool to think that there are "other you's" running around out there.

So the best way to find out about your alter-egos is to take your name, put it in quotes, and type it into Google or another comparable search engine. I've done this a few times, and here are some of the other me's I've discovered...

The brewery owner from Georgia...
(If I'm ever in Atlanta, I have to go meet this guy, since he's the only one of the other me's who actually has a job that serves the public. How cool would it be to walk in there and say, "Hi, I'd like to speak with Kevin McNerney. Tell him that Kevin McNerney's here to see him.")

The search firm executive from Virginia...

The medical-devices guy from California...

The children's-book illustrator from England...

The U.S. Army spokesman in Europe.

There are others out there--the owner of a coin company, someone from the legal department of the Royal College of Nursing, a firefighter from Connecticut--but you get the idea. (I'm actually amazed that, with this many other me's, I was able to secure kevinmcnerney.com as my domain name on the first try.)

As for the frequency of appearances on Google, my unscientific survey shows the brewer with the most entries by a mile, followed by the executive search guy, followed by the medical guy, followed by me. That's not bad for a humble musician who hasn't even released a CD yet.

Oh, one final link: Click here and scroll down to the second picture; I'm not sure why this struck me as funny; maybe it's the look on the guy's face. At least he has a "college job" too...

If you find anything amusing when you Google yourself, send me an email and maybe I'll include it in a future post. (UPDATE: Now that I have the comments feature enabled, you could also just click the link below.)

Music As Sport

ESPN.com - Page2 - The best band in the land: Wow, there's a story about marching band on the ESPN site, and it's actually complimentary. Check it out.

We Knew This Would Happen Eventually...

Fresh-Mex Restaurant Chains Get Grilled (MSN.com): The Food Police are on the prowl again, and they're coming after "Fresh-Mex" places like Chipotle. Will that stop me from going there once (twice?) a week? Nope. Will it convince me to add the lettuce a few more times? Sure. Will I ever do the 2BC again? Not likely, but I felt that way before I knew the caloric content of my beloved burrito. (No need to repeat the feat; my place in the League of Lunatics is secure.) Will it convince me to get some new racquetball equipment sooner rather than later? Sure, but I was gonna do that anyway. Have I gained any appreciable amount of weight in the 2 1/2 years I've been eating there? Uh-uh.

The bottom line is, even if the famed "foil torpedo" is a bit higher in calories than one might desire, it's still better food than a Quarter Pounder. And there's no reason I couldn't go back to eating only half of it sometimes and saving the rest for a future lunch. I'm not as skinny as I'd like to be (yet), but the fact of the matter is, the "Kev Diet" works to an extent: Running around as much as I do (between schools, carrying 30 pounds worth of saxophone and music) obviously makes up for those big dinners a few times a week. They're not adding to my girth, so they must be being burned off by the frenzied activity of my week. Now if I can get the good-vs.-fast lunch thing down....but that's a subject for another post.

Happy Birth-Dingus (A Dingus Primer)

Happy Birthday Steven D., a.k.a. Dingus. I suppose it's time to explain the whole Dingus phenomenon, so here goes:

A few years ago in Big Band, we had a trombone player who acquired the nickname Dingus. It was bestowed upon him by Jeromy, longtime trumpet player and my former "Assistant Coach" in Combo II. Actually, the guy got mad if anyone except Jeromy called him Dingus, but it caught on like wildfire, so the name stuck anyway. I'm not sure why, exactly, but, as one of the bandmembers last year said, "you just look at the guy and think...Dingus."

So what is a Dingus, exactly? According to urbandictionary.com, a dingus is:
1. n. A stupid person, or a person who is a dork.
2. n. An unknown object.

plural dingii

1. Kevin is such a dingus!

2. So what is that dingus?

(And don't you love that they used my name as an example?)
Another contributor on the same site disagrees with the stupid part:

another word for a spaz.
NOTE: a dingus is NOT a stupid person, because a dingus is someone who can make you laugh by doing stupid THINGS, but they are not stupid people. a stupid person is an idiot. idiot and dingus are different.

(your friend is rocking back and forth on their chair and it topples over, thus flinging them across the room)

you say "dude, you're such a DINGUS"

At any rate, Dingus was in the band for several years, first playing bass trombone (though it was new to him and never quite worked) and later tenor; when he left, Lee came in on bass and brought his buddy Steven on tenor. Since Steven was sitting in Dingus's old chair, the trumpets automatically started calling him Dingus too (technically Dingus 2). A few months later, another Stephen also joined the section and was dubbed Dingus 3.

So the Dingus phenomenon grew and grew, to the point where many people in the band didn't know either of the Dingii's actual names until the concert programs were printed. It reached the heights of nonsense a few weeks ago when Ryan thought Steven's given last name was Dingus.

(Incidentally, there has always been debate on whether Lee is also a Dingus. Though he has exhibited a few moments of "dingosity" here and there, Lee maintains that he's more of a Renegade--a name given to any jazz-improv "padawan" of yours truly. Plus, if you heard Lee's bass bone playing vs. that of the original Dingus, you'd give him a free pass--some "leeway" if you wish--on any bit of dingosity he might ever commit.)

At any rate, it's kind of a fun word to throw around. It's also a cool name for a band, as evidenced by a recent Google search on the word "dingus." Among the ones I found:

Dingus, the punk band from New Jersey:
http://www.njdingus.com/home (I kinda like these guys, actually)

Dingus, the ska band from South Africa:
http://www.dingus.tk/ (Being a ska band, they have a trombone....but not named Steven or Stephen, or even John, like the original Dingus)

Captain Dingus, a band that just recently broke up:
http://captaindingus.cjb.net/

So anyway, seemed like a good time to update the whole Dingus thing since the word appears on this site. And Dingus, your birthday burrito is coming soon.