Take a Bow

My friend Annick has been working hard as producer for a documentary about Clare Woods Academy, a school for kids with special needs. From the website:

The film chronicles the amazing kids, with various disabilities, through rehearsals, classroom time, their home lives, and finally, the sold -out, standing-room-only performances of the musical. The film aims to show that despite outward appearances or physical differences, these special kids are just like any other child, with the same hopes, dreams, and fears.

She just posted an announcement that the rough cut has just been finished and the real thing shouldn't be too far behind. The trailer is wonderful (I found the quicktime file to work better for me), and the whole project oozes with a professionalism that just awes me. But as LeVar would say, take my damn word for it and make a donation.

Tomatoes

My dad never ceases to amaze me with his ability to be trendy at least a decade too early. He was making himself "western-style" shirts back in the late 80s. He developed a predecessor to GIS for Wayne county way before it became an important land-use planning tool. To be fair, he has his share of things that never caught on. Before I was born, he started a croquet league that played during the lunch hour - in 1970's downtown Detroit. This time, though, he's caught something just before it reaches its tipping point.

Every August, the kitchen becomes inundated with tomatoes of all shapes, colors, and states of decay. By the second week, my tongue is raw and my sense of taste diminished. I start to wonder if the same happens to the fruit flies which have by then fortified a perimeter around the kitchen table.

This year, our troubles were alleviated when People's Food Co-op in Ann Arbor agreed to sell his tomatoes - at $5.69 a pound. The PFC was already carrying his heirloom vegetable seeds, which were profiled in a Michigan Radio piece in May last year. I'll work on posting the audio file later. Michigan Radio doesn't have a very friendly archive. Meanwhile, you can listen to a higher-profile bit [transcript. Scroll up for the mp3.] on heirloom tomatoes that aired on NPR's Living on Earth just a few weeks ago.

As I was searching for the segment, a bit of fill music caught my ear. It was Wendy Mae Chambers' car horn organ playing "New York, New York"

The instrument is comprised of 25 car horns operated by a homemade keyboard and powered by a car battery charger. The car horns were selected with a pitch pipe and purchased from junk yards, with the exception of the Cadillac C-Trumpet and the "ahooogah" horn which were purchased new... She believes she got the idea for the instrument while asleep in her apartment in Brooklyn, waking up to a distant traffic jam on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway that sounded like a Mahler symphony.

Bonus points for the apt Mahler similie. She also has a quite charming version of "Winter wonderland" that she plays on her toy piano. John Cage would be proud.

Speaking of Cage, youtube has his "Sound" posted in three parts. If you can tolerate Cage's urgent and self-important blatherskite, it's worth a look to see why I like Roland Kirk so much. Kinda like my blog. Was that too self-aware? C'mon, you like it when Eggers does it!

Kirk and Cage

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Holy Ballot Proposal!

Even though same-sex marriage is rapidly losing ground, it has still cast its morally ambiguous shadow over the institution as a whole. Opponents of same-sex marriage often suggest that allowing such unions could pave the way for even less desirable nuptials such as intra-family and inter-species wedlock. Indeed, two liberal eurotrash fowls have proven them right. I must admit, what worries me more is high school english classes having to deal with five more chuck dickens. Groan again, into my good ear?

Vinyl Sharity

I've been finding a lot of sites where people are "ripping" their old out of print LPs to mp3 and sharing them online. Most of these are novelty items that are fairly safe from any applicable copyright interests. For instance, Bellybongo specializes in lounge music and Swedish pop. Sabadabada offers a small selection of Brasilian music from the 1960's, and a large collection of album art from the same era. Unpleasant.org is a better music blog than I could ever write, and dabbles in a little sharity. Singing science records has a bunch of those campy (albeit catchy!) let's-make-science-fun songs. Funky16corners posts funk tracks and albums of varying obscurity.

Some of my favorites:

• 'Summertime' by Klaus Wunderlich has got the funk. I really want someone to mash this up with a thicker drum track.
• 'Y Deja Andar El Reloj' byOsmar Milito Y El Quarteto Forma is a laid back tune featuring the cuica. My family named our first dog after it because of the noise it made locked in the bathroom at night before it was housetrained. While you're on the page check out 'Magnolia' by Jorge Ben. Fans of Seu Jorge's contributions to the Life Aquatic soundtrack should like this. Also, Side A of Obofe is also a gem. One minute it sounds like Sergio Mendes and the Brasil '66, the next minute like the Sesame Street theme. 'Madame Sabe Tudo' sounds like a Brasilian Bob Dylan over a Dixieland jazz band.
  
• 'Kiedy Allach Szedl (When Allah came)' by Marek Sewen and his band. The whistling (or theramin?) and woodblock remind me of Ennio Morricone's work on the spaghetti Western soundtracks. I guess Allah came by for tea and an afternoon cha-cha.
  
• The Very Best of Robert Delgado. It is mandatory that you enjoy a drink with a miniature umbrella in it while listening to this album at least once this summer. Let me know if you can't figure out how to get the rapidshare thing to work.
• 'Sheherezade' as done by Trumpet A'gogo reminds me more of 'One Nation' off of Roland Kirk's Blacknuss more than Rimsky-Korsakov.
  
• Lastly, if you don't have enough to do with your life, check out 'Zoom a Little Zoom' over at Singing Science. As the page notes, it features the guy who penned "On top of Spaghetti". The harmonies warm me from the inside.

That's all for now. If I know me at all, there will be more. Thank you for indulging me.

Another Dream Realized

By someone else. Seeing my old roommate Nic record his own music often made me fantasize about writing/recording a multi-violin piece. But never did I even consider doing something on as grand a scale as this. And putting it together on video? Forget it! Enjoy.


9:17pm - I had the video embedded here, but I guess you'll have to go through google instead.

Also, here is Ethan's own website.

Stupid 1973 Energy Crisis.

If there is such a thing as a PhD in GoreTex, I was sure Richard would have it. Maybe Graham had found my blog and had already moved on to brighter candidates. I couldn't be sure how it happened, but the jig was up. I had been outted and Graham was calling all of his HR buddies, making sure they burned my resume upon receipt. I was so worried I even emailed him, suggesting that my cellphone reception might be bad, so why not call this land line instead. For 45 minutes, I jumped everytime the construction vehicle down the street shifted into reverse.

Most cities in most states in our country set their clocks forward every Spring. Flagstaff, AZ isn't one of them. The interview went fine. No mention of my apparent doppelganger. (Or am I his? How does the doppelganger refer to his fleshy counterpart?) I (we?) even have a follow-up appointment this Friday.

To set my conscience at ease, I set out on stalkernet to find Richard. There is a Chemical Engineering Richard with a uniqname very similar to mine. He's a bit of an all-star. Won awards and whatnot. Alumni. Doesn't live in Flagstaff. In short, the glass pocket protector fits. My only consolation is he doesn't seem to have a profile on the alumni career page. I do, and the job Graham forwarded me is also posted there. Still -- if all goes well -- I might have to send the guy a bottle of champagne and a hand mirror with a headshot pasted to it.