Asi achih!

I don't have to be hit over the head with a 2x4 more than a few times to get a point

2010-03-08T09:40:00.000-08:00

So, back in November, I mentioned how it had been a long time since my last post. Then I don't post anything for another five months.

I like the idea of blogging in the abstract, but it is becoming apparent to me that I don't really have a burning need to share what I think with the anonymous world at large. I know a few of you read this and I appreciate you comments, but I think to be effective a blog has to be updated pretty regularly and I don't seem to have the drive to do that. It's not that I don't think profound thoughts or see or hear about things worthy of commenting; it just seems that for some reason I'm not driven to write about it. One thing I hear about writers is that they HAVE to write. Just having the skills is only half the package when it comes to being a writer. And blogging is writing, albeit not at the Great American Novel level.

Also, I think that maybe "whatever's going on in my mind" is not sufficiently focused for an effective blog. I'm thinking of starting a new blog that will be just about music---I follow a number of music-related forums and I see certain issues come up fairly often, regarding which I have thought a lot: I think I may have more to say. And, then, when I am inspired to type out some long response to a music forum post, I can copy and tweak that: instant blog post!

I may yet post more in this blog, but I'm leaning towards declaring victory and packing it up. If you've been follwing it for the past couple years, thanks!

Catching Up

2009-11-20T08:48:00.000-08:00

Well, this may be my longest interval between posts---life seems to have been really busy lately. And, while those of you who know me know that I have pretty definite opinions on a lot of stuff, I don't always feel a need to vent them, and, I tend to not want to get negative in this blog. (I figure nothing good can come from complaining publicly about things and, especially, people.)

But even so, a lot has been going on, so here are some thoughts about stuff that's happened lately:

The Year of Roller Derby

2009 will go down in my personal history as the Year of Roller Derby. (Or maybe the First Year of Roller Derby.) Over the course of this year, I went from being mildly interested in derby to being a hard-core superfan of the sport. I followed the Windy City Rollers' for an exciting home season, culminating with an edge-of-the-seat hard-fought bout for the Ivy King Cup in which the worst-to-first Manic Attackers came from behind to win their first cup. In the course of that, I got to "coach" a team as described in my earlier post, and I met a lot of interesting people. Then, the All-Stars became the focus heading into tournament season, and I ended up going to Minneapolis for the North Central regional tournament, which was a blast (and which, coincidentally, Windy City won). I also checked out Chicago's other derby league, the Chicago Outfit. We're lucky to have two leagues in town.

The league on the whole is going to be very different next year---a lot of skaters, including some very prominent ones, are retiring. I'm really going to miss Malice with Chains and Megan Formor, who were always riveting to watch, but more importantly were strong leaders and key parts of the league chemistry. I think I commented earlier about derby skaters having a professional half-life of about three or four years... They both are four-year skaters who are leaving at the top of their game. I can't blame anybody who after four years has had enough of an activity as physicially punishing and time-consuming as derby. Despite its growing popularity, it's still an amateur sport; there's no money in it for the players (indeed, they pay to skate). But, it's sad that these truly great players who clearly still have plenty to offer, leaving. And that's just in our league; one wonders how many other great skaters can't or don't keep up with the grind. I don't know a whole lot about other leagues but even I know of some great skaters who are out of it.

The national tournament this year was a real eye-opener---the West division surprised just about everyone by coming in and running roughshod over the rest of the country. Because of the distances involved and the associated cost of traveling to bouts, teams from the rest of the country didn't play that many bouts against the West teams, so although the stats told how well they did against each other, it was not that easy to tell what that meant compared to teams from other regions. And to be honest, the derby community was (until the weekend of November 13-15, anyway) pretty east-centric. Philadelphia, Gotham, Windy City and Texas were the dominant teams east of the Rockies, and even though the team from Olympia, Washington, beat all comers all year, I don't think anybody really thought that they were in that league. Well, come the tournament, everybody got a bucket-of-icewater-in-the-face wake-up as not just Oly but also the other two teams from the West (Denver and Rocky Mountain, also from Denver) handily trounced the big teams from the east: Denver beat Windy City; Rocky Mountain beat Philly; and Oly beat Gotham, and none of those bouts was really a nail-biter, either. Oly ended up winning the whole shebang. Texas did beat Rocky Mountain in the semi-finals to prevent a Western sweep of the tournament. Denver did employ some controversial (legal but despised) tactics in several of their victories, which might be prohibited in subsequent rules revisions, but I don't think anybody could deny that Oly just out-skated and out-played everybody else. So, the bar has been raised. The non-west teams are now on notice that they're not as good as they thought they were. This makes the loss of Megan and Malice right now all the more painful, since Windy City is going to have to step up their play to regain their position at the top of the rankings list, and it will be just that much more difficult without two of their best defensive players.

Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to next season. The local league season in particular should be quite fun. My friend Kelly's team, the Fury, should have a much better season this coming year---although they are losing one of the league's top jammers with the retirement of Eva Dead, their team on the whole appears to be emerging from this round of departures relatively strong, and I think they'll be right in the thick of things. And, this year saw the organization of a second "travel team", which Kelly is on, so that will bring more other teams to town. Can't complain about more derby!

It appears that somebody is trying to put a men's derby league together in Chicago. Although I love to skate, and love to watch derby, I haven't really been fired up to actually play derby, thus far anyway. That may in part be due to my current "fat and out of shape" status. But if they have some sort of organizational skate I might check it out. I played town-league ice hockey for two years while I was in law school, and that was the best shape I was ever in in my life, so maybe a skating sport is what I need to get fit again. As long as I don't destroy my knees getting there.

Music News

The big news: I joined a new band, an 80s alternative cover band called Dec8de. It's pretty close to exactly the kind of music I like to play, so I'm pretty pleased. Our public debut is the day after Christmas at the Dark Room in Chicago. I'm playing bass, which is my main instrument, and it's nice to be back on bass again---it's been about a year since the Bill Tucker project faded away. The other guys in this band seem to know what they're doing. Hopefully it will be commercially viable!

The Xylenes are still going, but we've decided we're going to change our focus to play originals. That means we have to WRITE original songs. I've got a few ideas I've accumulated, but I really hope some of the other Xylenes reveal themselves to be nascent songwriters. Thus far, the Xylenes have been sort of an educational program, but we're coming up on the four-year anniversary of the forming of that group, and by this point I think it should either be a real band, or if not, I'm not interested in putting a bunch of time and effort into it. Up until this year, our M.O. was to learn a set of tunes and then play what was essentially a showcase for our friends and relatives. This year we've tried to be a "real" cover band, but it doesn't seem like the other Xylenes (or at least, not all of them) really want to do that. So we're going to try the original music route. It could be interesting, if nothing else.

A Great Read

I want to put in a plug for a great book: The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. They wrote a book called Generations a while ago in which they posit a historical cycle in American history, and in this new book they employ the theory from the first book to predict things that may happen in the next couple decades. When I read Generations, it was like a long string of "lightbulb" moments---lots of "Oh, I see, that explains it!" experiences. So I'm inclined to give their predictions a lot of credence. If nothing else it is very thought-provoking. They wrote The Fourth Turning about ten years ago, and events between then and now have generally followed the patterns they predicted. If you want at least a pretty good theory on why society has gotten to the point it has and where it's going to go from here, these guys have one.

New Whiskey Discovery

I'm interested in whiskey. I like to drink it sometimes, but more than that I'm fascinated by how it's made and all the variables that go into making a bottle of even the most mundane Bourbon. I'm particularly interested when someone makes whiskey that's different from the "usual suspects". Whiskey is a very tradition-driven field, and it takes chutzpah to try something new. Or even something old that's not the same kind of thing everyone else is making. The parameters of what can be whiskey are very broad, but due to tradition almost all whiskey falls into a few fairly narrow categories. Even within a category like Bourbon, there is really very little variation among the major distillers. The fact that they nevertheless produce a fairly wide range of products just shows how much room there is under the whiskey umbrella, and hints at all the other things there could be.

If you read the federal regulations regarding whiskey, you'll notice that there are categories listed that don't appear to have many if any existing examples. One such is corn whiskey. Corn whiskey (as opposed to Bourbon, which is also made from mostly corn) is not required to be aged and contains a very high percentage of corn in the mashbill. Corn whiskey is similar to the whiskey that was made in the pre-Prohibition, pre-industrial days by people who ran small stills for their own or very local consumption. It's often called moonshine, even by the people who make it now, but I think that carries with it some unfair negative connotations. Contrary to what that label might suggest, it's possible to make good corn whiskey, if you know what you're doing, and for generations it was made on farms and in the Appalachian hollers, until Prohibition transformed illicit liquor production into big business and ensured a focus on quantity over quality (and indeed over toxicity).

For a long time, the only corn whiskey that could be commonly found was a product called Georgia Moon, which came in a canning jar and was sold as a novelty. It was an ordeal drink, something you'd give to buddies prefaced with, "Hey try this! It's moonshine!" and they would hack and cough at its rough finish. It was never intended to actually be good, and because that's all you could find, I think it did (or at least, may have done) lots of harm to the reputation of corn whiskey.

But lately, a new corn whiskey has appeared in stores, called Virginia Lightning. And this stuff is actually good! I bought a bottle just out of curiosity, to see what it was like, and I was very pleasantly surprised. It's GOOD young whiskey. It reminds me a bit of the Death's Door White Whiskey that I wrote about earlier, except that that is made from wheat and this is made from corn...and you could buy about three bottles of Virginia Lightning for the costof one bottle of Death's Door. (I still like and support Death's Door, too, because I am happy to see someone making a wheat whiskey.)

I recommend Virginia Lightning to anyone who drinks spirits---not as a novelty, or because it's different, but because it's good. It's actually quite smooth for its potency, and has a good flavor. I'm very pleased by the burgeoning craft distilling movement in America in recent years, but I wouldn't recommend or support anything that wasn't fundamentally good. Virginia Lightning is. So, explore corn whiskey, a historically significant and nearly lost style. I suspect you'll be glad you did.

My thoughts about health care

2009-08-14T18:43:00.000-07:00

Health care seems to be the big topic in the news nowadays. I will admit, I have not diligently followed the debate, and I don't know the specific contents of any of the proposals, counter-proposals, etc. that are floating around Washington. But I think I've gotten at least some of the broad brushstrokes of the debate, and inasmuch as the topic is inescapable, I have given the matter thought.

I think it's misleading to try to describe health care as a "right", since somebody else has to provide it, but I do think that ensuring that decent health care is generally available to people is a legitimate, even laudable, function for government. I perceive, however, that there is tension between those who want the government to actually provide the health care, and those who want a free health care market. It's often described as a battle between socialism and capitalism.

But I think that sort of misses the point. Years ago, when nobody was looking, that decision was already made.

Let's think about insurance a bit, since that seems to be how health care is delivered now and how one side of the debate thinks it should continue to be delivered. Insurance---health, fire, liability, etc.---is, at heart, gambling. An insurance company bets, based on its research and the work of its actuarial staff, on the likelihood of an event occurring. The potential downside times the likelihood of occurrence generates a number which, with a margin tacked on for profit, is used to determine the cost of the insurance policy. Over the long run and multiple policies, the insurance company hopes that it figures right, and it ends up taking in more than it pays out. The insured for his or her part pays part of the cost of an eventuality which may never occur, in exchange for the peace of mind that comes from knowing that if it does occur, they will not have to pay the full cost. Everybody, theoretically, is happy.

However, there arise situations in which the likelihood of the insured-against event occurring approaches 100%. A classic example is the need for medical treatment when the patient has a pre-existing chronic condition. In that case, the logical course for the insurer is to deny coverage: not to play the game; not to take the sucker bet. Or, alternatively, the premium would be equal to the cost of treatment (plus profit). That's not evil, or greed, or any other malicious trait---it's logic.

But, when it comes to health care, We (as in, society) are not willing to accept that. It's too gut-wrenching to see some poor old lady with cancer who loses her job being denied the treatment she needs to stay alive. Given the premises that (a) everybody should have health care, and (b) health care is paid for by insurance, the conclusion is that everybody should have insurance. But in that case, what you're talking about is no longer insurance. Insurance is the gamble described above. In this new situation, what ends up happening is, everybody pays in, and then out of what everybody pays in, everybody gets their health care paid.

Know what another name for that system is? Socialized medicine. I mean, what's the difference? The mechanism is ridiculously simple: everybody pays in; everybody gets treatment if they need it. The cost of treatment is spread out over the entire society. If that's not socialized medicine, what is it?

So, ever since the first law was passed regulating when and whether insurance companies could deny coverage, we have been operating under a system of socialized medicine. The situation reminds me of an old off-color joke:

A knavish man meets an attractive woman at a party. He asks her, "Will you have sex with me?"

"Not bloody likely," she replies with disdain.

"How about for a million dollars?"

She thinks about it, and finally says, "Yes, I suppose for a million dollars, I'd have sex even with you."

"I don't have a million. How about for ten bucks?"

"Of course not!" she huffs indignantly. "What sort of girl do you take me for?"

"We've already established what kind of girl you are," he replies. "Now we're just arguing over price."

That, I think, is analogous to the current debate about health care. There seems to be a lot of huffing and puffing from people who are afraid that American health care, and perhaps society on the whole, will head off to hell in a handbasket if we adopt any form of socialized medicine, but the funny/ironic/pathetic thing is, we've already decided we want socialized medicine. We've had it, in an impure and inefficient form, for years! That horse is out of the barn; that water has passed under the bridge. That question has been decided; now we're just arguing about the details.

The switch to socialized medicine, which took place years ago, was not immediately apparent, however, because the insurance companies remained in place, and often in the current debate it seems that insurance companies represent the opposite of socialized medicine.

But I think the REAL role insurance companies play is, they interject a middleman with a profit motive into the mechanism of providing the socialized health care, which the public demands, to the public. So you end up with high costs and fights over coverage, and parades of horribles due to people being denied coverage or dropped for pretextual reasons. Everybody feels that things like that shouldn't be happening, but the reason they do is because the square pegs of insurance companies have been shoved into the round holes of socialized health care, and obviously the fit is not good.

One cannot really blame the insurance companies, who have been paid billions of dollars to play the role they currently play, for wanting to preserve the status quo. It is in the nature of corporations, especially big corporations, to mercilessly protect their profits and maximize their income and value. But I think that if people looked at the situation clearly, it's obvious that the insurance companies need to be taken out of the loop. In fact, I am sure that if the whole system was being conceived from ground zero without decades of history and having arrived at the current situation by little steps, I think anybody who tried to do what we have now---arrange things so that huge amounts of money were funneled to private actors to perform a public function, and not even very well---I have to think that guy would go to prison for it, and there would be riots in the streets if Congress tried to enforce a system like we have on people, if they weren't already used to it.

One likes to feel good about one's country, and it is disillusioning to see the extent to which big business, both in the health care field and the financial arena, has taken over our government, to the extent that so many public servants are willing and even eager to work against the best interests of the public for the benefit of private entities. But I don't know what can be done about it, if even in the wake of last fall's financial meltdown, which could have destroyed our economy, there is not the will and/or ability to reform that industry, and even though I get the feeling that most Americans feel that there is something wrong with the health care system, Congress can't/won't do anything about it, despite the best opportunity that may come for a generation to actually make a "change we can believe in".

People have surprised me in the past; I live in hope. But I don't hold my breath.

So you wanna be a roller derby star, part II

2009-06-24T14:47:00.000-07:00

The Dark Side: front: Queen Myradala (Myra Maines), Darth Mel (Mel Content), Darth Tater (Norma Lee Wright), Indy Sith (Indy Cent), Nina Millimeter. Back: Yvette YourMaker, Sargentina, Sonya MouthShut, Chuck Yeah!!!, Go-Go Hatchet, Sassy Squash, Anne Akin (Anne Arkie), Carnage Wilson (bench coach), Tori Adore.

Well, the bout was Saturday. It was a blast, I got to dress up as Darth Vader, I really liked the gals on the team, and it was very educational. Unfortunately, my theory proved wrong, or at least incomplete. We were outscored pretty significantly, which caused me to revise my view: I still think that a strong defensive team can shut down a good jammer, but, what I failed to take into account is, a good jammer is an individual, and a strong defense is a group that has to work together and all be on the same page strategically, so having a total of zero full-team practices pretty much precluded my defensive powerhouse of skaters from two different teams becoming a well-oiled machine by the time of the bout.

A friend of mine is working on a board game version of roller derby to be played with dice, and I've been thinking about the mechanics of the game. Something that may be unique to roller derby versus other sports is that both teams are playing offense and defense simultaneously. In most sports, there's a clear demarcation as to what role the players have at any given time---even if it may change often based on one team stealing the ball or puck from the other, at any given moment, the players are either on offense or defense. But in roller derby, any player can be doing either (or both) at any moment. It makes strategy a real challenge. I didn't have much opportunity to really talk strategy with the skaters but I'm hoping to do so in the future.

Now that the local league season is over, the All Stars take center stage. The Windy City Rollers are a league, and have multiple teams that play each other, but they also have a "travel team" made of the best players from all the local teams, and that team takes on the travel teams of other leagues around the country. The schedule has not been set yet but they will play a number of bouts over the remainder of the year, culminating with the national tournament in November.

This year brings a new twist. The All Stars are one of the top teams in the country, and are competitive with the best other leagues from major metropolitan areas. But there are a number of other leagues in smaller cities, or just less-established or less-accomplished, and it doesn't make sense from either perspective for the All-Stars to play those leagues' teams. Well, for the first time this season, the WCR is putting together an official second travel team, which will (a) provide an opportunity for WCR skaters to skate against teams they might not otherwise, and (b) give up-and-coming skaters experience in inter-league competition, and keep them skating competitively throughout the rest of the season.

Many of the Dark Siders, including Kelly (Mel Content) are going to be on the "B" team, so I am looking forward to their bouts. Of course I'm also looking forward to the All Stars bouts, too.

According to scuttlebutt, a number of prominent skaters will be retiring from the league after this season. Skaters seem to have a half-life in the league of about three or four years. I'm sort of amazed that skaters at the very top of their game would walk away, as seems to be happening in several cases if rumors are true, but I'm sure there are dynamics at work in the roller derby world that are unlike other sports---they are not paid, and to compete at the top level of the sport (and the really good skaters in the WCR are definitely there) places serious demands on a skater's time. Flat-track roller derby is relatively new and has changed a lot since it started (it was resurrected from the corpse of old-school banked-track roller derby in 2000, and just started in Chicago in 2004) and it's still evolving---this year is bringing a substantial revision to the rules. So perhaps the game is moving away from what brought some of the relative veterans into it. I have heard that over the first few years it became much more athletically-focused than when it started, but most of the reported retirees are excellent athletes, so I don't think that's it. I wonder if it may be a case of no more worlds left to conquer. It will be interesting to see if the next generation of skaters---the women who have been skating for just a couple years---stick with it longer, or if they start bowing out in another year or two.

In the mean time: it's been fun to be a fan, and it was fun to be a sort-of coach, and I'm eager to see what happens next. I know I'm not going to be a skater! Other than that, who knows?

So you wanna be a roller derby star...

2009-06-14T18:02:00.000-07:00

Followers of this blog may remember this post from last year, about my friend and bandmate Kelly joining the Windy City Rollers, the local roller derby league. (Or, you can read it now.) Since then I have indeed attended a number of bouts, along the way gaining a better understanding of how the sport works, and getting to know the skaters in the league (their on-track incarnations, anyway). It's been a lot of fun.

The WCR is an all-volunteer organization: everybody from the skaters, to the officials, to the stats people and scorekeepers, to the folks who set up and take down the track, donates his or her time because they like the sport and the league. I think it would be fun and interesting to get involved somehow but this year so far has been pretty hectic and weird, and I have not been in a position to commit the time to another activity. So, I've just been a fan. (They also serve who only sit and cheer.)

But then a few weeks ago I heard about something that sounded right up my alley. At the end of the local league season, the two top teams play for the coveted Ivy King Cup. Rather than having the other teams play a meaningless consolation bout, the skaters who are not on the teams playing in the championship go into a draft pool, and the league auctions off the opportunities to coach two teams that the winners get to draft from that pool. The proceeds go to help Tequila Mockingbird, a skater who was seriously injured a couple years ago. What a great chance to get involved, on a finite basis, learn more about the game, meet some interesting people (and they are an interesting bunch) and help out a good cause! So I bid on and won the chance to coach the black team in the black-vs-white scrimmage.

I'm posting this before the bout, but I figure the odds of anybody who (a) doesn't already know and (b) would have any surprises spoiled or (c) could give any advantage to the other team seeing this are vanishingly small, so...

I drafted a pretty solid team, I think---I went with defense over offense and I hope that turns out to have been an astute plan, but the girls seem confident and in the regular season there seemed to be some sort of correlation between how well the teams did and how strong their defense was. In some cases I went with spunk and verve over prominence and experience---I drafted gals that I stood out to me during the season for being in the middle of things and mixing it up. In anything like a draft, it's easy to think woulda-shoulda-coulda but in retrospect, the more I think about it, the happier I have been with this team---in just about every situation where I think back and ponder, "Well, I could have taken Skater X instead of Skater Y," I'm pretty happy now that I have Skater Y on my team---I wouldn't want to give her up to get Skater X, and that's really what it boils down to.

So we had to come up with a team concept, and there were a few floating around, and I came up with several, but the one the gals latched onto was "The Dark Side," with a Star Wars theme. Perhaps because I told them that if we went with that one I would wear a Darth Vader costume when we came out for the bout. In any event, a number of them took that idea and ran with it. Our opponents took the name "White Zombies", which I like to say is appropriate because they are dead, and just don't know it.

I went to scrimmage on Monday and met most of the women who will be on my team, and got a little taste of what it's like on the bench during a bout, as we went up against the Manic Attackers, one of the teams playing in the championship bout. I think I can get the hang of it eventually, but fortunately one of the veteran bench coaches from the Fury will be there to help with calling line-ups---we planned out line-ups that will hopefully be balanced and get everyone into the game, but once people start getting penalties, the set line-ups go out the window, and I'm not entirely sure how to deal with the ensuing chaos.

But I like my team, I think we have a very good chance of winning, and I think we are going to have a lot of fun in any event. One thing this has made me realize is how little I really grasped about strategy etc. even though I watched every bout this year. I will certainly be a more educated spectator going forward. And I wouldn't mind helping out on a more regular basis as a volunteer, if my life calms down enough to make that practical.

I'll post an update after the bout.

Just checking in

2009-06-01T12:46:00.000-07:00

I note that it's been a while since I posted anything. When I started this blog, I was hoping to have approximately weekly posts, then I sort of settled for approximately monthly posts, which I justified to myself by trying to write longer, "essay" sort of posts rather than "Gee the weather is great today" type posts. But on the assumption that a few people check in here from time to time, I figured I ought to put something up to remind everyone that this blog is still a going concern.

It has been pretty hectic lately. Most significantly, my father-in-law, Paulis Anstrats, died on May 21. He had been pretty sick for several months and we all knew it was coming, just not exactly when. He was a neat guy, and I will miss him. He came over from Latvia after WWII and went from being a penniless refugee to a college professor---he taught German, world literature, and western civilization at DePaul for almost 30 years, but he retired in 1990 so I never knew Dr. Anstrats the professor, but he did love literature and words, and tended to illustrate his conversation with references to books. He was a smart, clever guy, and his coversations tended to be entertaining. He and my wife, his only child, were very close. He appreciated good beer and a nice Gewurztraminer or Riesling.

He died right before the Memorial Day holiday weekend, which pushed off the funeral activities for a few days, so we had more time than usual to fret over everything. This was my first experience preparing for a wake and funeral (when my sister died, her husband and his family handled just about everything, I think---in any event, I wasn't involved). There are certain elements of the funeral process that are a total racket, but actually, to a large extent, I think it is money well spent to pay a funeral director to deal with a lot of the details. But if I see this coming regarding myself or anyone else close to me, I will seek out a deal on a casket well before it's actually needed. In general I think the funeral people who handled my father-in-law's arrangements did a great job and I would not hesitate to work with them again, but I think my mother-in-law got taken to the cleaners with the casket.

Then, on the heels of all that activity, we had two friends come to visit over the weekend. I have a lot of great friends here in town, and I'm very grateful for that, but I've also had a lot of very good friends who have moved away. So it just so happened that two of them, to whom I had issued vague standing invitations to visit, came to town at the same time, and rather than have to tell one of them that we couldn't put them up, we had them both come over. I was a little concerned but they got along fine. So from Thursday night to Sunday morning we were pretty much on the go a lot, including a group outing to the Roller Derby Saturday night, which was a good call because both bouts were fantastic---in the first bout, we saw the no-longer-hapless Manic Attackers come back from a 45 point deficit to beat the defending-champ Hell's Belles, and in the second bout, the heretofore-winless Fury ("our" team by virtue of our friend Kelly (aka Mel Content) being a member) took control early on and managed to hold on and eke out a victory in the last bout of the season, which besided being a great bout (a real nail-biter) was great to see, and I'm glad we were there.

Then a few hours after our guests left, our book club met. This month's book was Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, which unfortunately I didn't get to read because, you know, I was sort of busy. But it prompted a pretty active discussion.

Meanwhile, another one of my friends has a kid who has taken up Magic: The Gathering, a game I once was a minor master of. So I'm hoping I can go visit them some time soon. And the Xylenes are working towards another performance---we found a single weekend in July when everyone seems to be available, so I sure hope we can get a gig set up then.

Not a dull moment around my house. I'm hoping for some, but I'm not sure when that can happen.

Fun at WhiskeyFest

2009-04-09T14:59:00.001-07:00

Last week my dad and I went to WhiskeyFest Chicago. There are two aspects to WhiskeyFest: first, there's the big room where lots of distilleries have booths at which you can sample their wares, including often rare and expensive spirits that might be impossible to find in bars and prohibitively expensive to gamble on buying a bottle of. Over the years I've kind of figured out what I like and there were largely the usual suspects present (the show this year was smaller than it had been in the past) but I still found some pretty cool stuff I hadn't tried before (Aberfeldy 21-year-old single malt Scotch, for instance) and some interesting new expressions of old favorites (Highland Park15-year-old Scotch, or Pappy Van Winkle 20 year old bourbon). The whiskey world is not really that big, and after a while one gets to recognize a number of usual suspects. The other aspect of WhiskeyFest is the speakers. This, to me, is the real attraction. Various figures of the whiskey world talk about what they're doing or aspects of whiskey production.

Dad and I caught two of them: first, we heard Craig Beam, master distiller from Heaven Hill (and part of the same family that gives Jim Beam its name) talk about extremely old bourbon. Whiskey goes through a process as it ages whereby for some period of time it gets better, but eventually it reaches a "tipping point" from which it goes downhill. Many ancient Scotches are "ooh-ed" and "aah-ed" over, at ages of 30, 40, 50 years, but conditions differ between Scotland and Kentucky, and whiskey ages a lot faster in Kentucky, resulting in it getting "too old" sooner. So bourbon distilleries don't generally plan on keeping whiskey for that long, but with dozens of rickhouses and hundreds of thousands of barrels aging, sometimes some can get "lost". Recently Heaven Hill found some barrels that had been aging away for 27 years or more.

Craig said he would not have expected the whiskey inside to be drinkable, but they tapped them and, lo and behold, it was not bad! Actually it was pretty good. So they released a limited-edition 27-year-old whiskey, which we got to sample. We compared it to Heaven Hill's regular production Elijah Craig 18-year-old bourbon---and it was good, but I don't know that it was better enough to justify paying a LOT more than the 18-year-old, which is a bargain if you like Heaven Hill's house style. But in any event, one of the points to be made was that it makes a big difference where in the warehouse the whiskey is aging. Heaven Hill's whiskey warehouses are seven stories high, and the aging effects on the upper floors are a lot more pronounced than on the lower floors---temperature swings tend to be more extreme, and the lower floors tend to be damper. The 27-year-old whiskey came from a lower floor of the warehouse. But to demonstrate the difference most dramatically, we were provided with two samples of whiskey, both aged 30 years, but one from a lower floor and one from the top floor. The sample from the lower floor was pretty good, but the sample from the top floor was undrinkable! It was easily the worst whiskey I have ever tasted. And, the most interesting factoid from that presentation was that after 30 years, evaporation will have claimed almost all the liquid in that cask---out of a 60-gallon barrel they only get a gallon or so of whiskey, and it was concentrated to something like 170 proof! Fortunately, it's so horrible that nobody would want it, so it's scarcity is hardly a problem.

So, the lesson of that presentation: older does NOT always mean better when it comes to whiskey.

The next presentation we hit was a panel discussion by a group of craft distillers. When I first got interested in whiskey about six years ago, these guys did not exist. Being a lawyer naturally I looked into the laws and regulations about distilling, and I couldn't see any reason why you couldn't run a small-scale distillery making small batches, but people told me it couldn't be done; you couldn't get licensed. It's probably just as well I didn't have the wherewithal to pursue that aspect of the hobby, but the intervening years have shown that hey, you can indeed do small-scale distilling, and a number of people are doing it. Given the need to turn work into cash quickly in a start-up business like that, most of them are making unaged spirits: vodka, gin, brandy. But some are making whiskey, and we heard from several of them on the panel.

A brief digression into the history of whiskey: up until prohibition, whiskey-making was a cottage industry in lots of rural areas in the south and east. It was technically illegal, but not vigorously opposed when it was done on a small scale. Prohibition turned what had been a craft and hobby into a deadly serious business and brought the wrath of the government down on moonshiners in a whole new way, and pretty much destroyed that tradition of whiskey-making. Prohibition meant that illicit distilling was about making as much as cheaply as possible and that is whence came the popular conception of moonshine as horrible head-splitting fire-water.

But there was a time when people made and drank young whiskey because they liked it, because it was good. A lot of the character of the whiskey you find in the stores today comes from being aged in oak barrels, but it is possible to make a very good spirit without aging. It's not the same as vodka because vodka is distilled to a very very high proof multiple times to remove as much of the flavoring elements as possible, where whiskey---even unaged whiskey---is distilled out at a lower proof, leaving more of the things that give it flavor in there. A few years ago at another WhiskeyFest, Fred Noe from Jim Beam had a bottle of "white dog", which is bourbon distillate straight out of the still, with no aging, and I got to have a taste. It was amazing! Although Bourbon is made from mostly corn, it doesn't really taste like corn. But this white dog did. It was like liquid, highly-alcoholic corn on the cob. It had a kick to it, but not in a bad way.

So I thought, as a craft distiller, I would make a young whiskey that was designed and produced to taste really good in that form. It's a legitimate form of American whiskey that's not really made today, and it would get around that pay-for-it-now-but-can't-sell-it-for-several-years conundrum that faces a startup distillery that wants to make, say, bourbon. (There are of course commercial corn whiskeys, which are unaged, but for a long time the only one readily available was Georgia Moon, which comes in a canning jar and is, I think, intended to be an "ordeal" drink---you give it to your friends and laugh at the faces they make when they drink it. I have a jar, and you can get used to it, but the point behind Georgia Moon is not to make a great-tasting corn whiskey. The same distillery takes the same stuff, ages if for a while, and sells it as Mellow Corn, which is purportedly a much better whiskey, but that's not available in stores around here. Just today I saw another corn whiskey, Virginia Lightning, in a store, which is intriguing but I have not tasted it.)

So anyway, you can imagine my pleasure when several of the craft distillers brought young whiskeys for us to taste. A couple of them, from Stranahan's in Colorado and Templeton Rye in Iowa, were not commercial products, but, a distillery in Wisconsin called Death's Door is making and marketing a product they call White Whiskey, which was quite tasty. I'm hoping I can find a bottle of it here. (The name comes from the name of the channel between the Door County peninsula and Washington Island, from whence comes the organic wheat the Death's Door guys use in their spirits. The actual distillery is in Madison, which has caused consternation to tourists who get all the way to Washington Island---which is way past the middle of nowhere---looking for the distillery.)

One of the other things I would do if I were a craft distiller is experiment with non-traditional mash bills. The world of spirits is driven by traditions which are nigh-inviolable. Whiskey can be made (theoretically) from any grain or combination of grains, but until a couple years ago there were only a few variants. Among American whiskeys, bourbon is mostly corn, with a smaller percentage of either rye or wheat and a little malted barley. Rye is mostly rye (duh) with a generous percentage of corn and the malted barley. Corn whiskey is basically a high-corn bourbon mashbill that is not aged in new oak barrels, and anyway it's so uncommon as to hardly count. There have been only two exceptions to the rules that I know of at least since prohibition: Anchor Distilling in San Fransisco made (and as far as I know still makes) whiskey usng malted rye, which has a very different flavor from unmalted rye. And a few years ago, Heaven Hill introduced Bernheim Straight Wheat Whiskey, which was made from mostly wheat with a generous percentage of corn.

So I was excited to learn that the Death's Door White Whiskey is made from almost entirely wheat---no corn at all. That's amazing, if you geek out on those kinds of things like I do. And I believe some of the wheat is malted, which would contribute a flavor to the whiskey that no other whiskey on earth (that I've heard about, anyway) has.

I go back and forth on whether WhiskeyFest is worth the money---it was nearly $100, although if you bought shots of all the whiskeys you can taste there in a bar, you would probably spend more than that, since some of those old and rare whiskeys can be pretty steep, so I suppose if you want to try a bunch of different whiskeys, it's a good way to do it. But this year I really enjoyed the presentations, and thinking back, I've seen some pretty cool presentations other years too. I'll probably go back.

R.I.P. Maria King Peters, 6/26/68-2/5/09.

2009-02-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

My sister died on February 5, 2009.

She was two years younger than me. We got along generally well through childhood, grew apart a little during adolescence, but got pretty close during young adulthood, particularly when we were both freshly out of school and finding our places in the world. Eventually we each got settled in our respective communities---me in Chicago; her in Champaign-Urbana---and got married, and then she had a couple children, which kept her busy. But we kept in touch.

About four years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer. At the time, she was pregnant with her second child and her first was only about a year old, so it was a bit of a blow. But Maria had always been the embodiment of robust good health, and I knew or had heard of many people who had fought breast cancer with some success, so I wasn't too worried. She had surgery and started chemotherapy; all would be well.

Some months later, an unfortunate pattern of events began. At the conclusion of her treatment she had a scan that was supposed to confirm that it had worked. But no, it turned out, the cancer was still there. So began a new different treatment regimen. That happened several times: just when everybody thought she was on top of things, it would turn out that no, it was still there. New treatment after new treatment, and while she didn't seem to be getting much worse (from what I could see, anyway), the cancer was still there, like a time bomb in her chest.

It finally went off. Unclear exactly when this happened, but the first strong indication came towards the end of 2008 when she started having bad back pains. Initially we thought it came from sleeping on a bad couch (and that may have been part of it). The weekend after New Years our family got together at my parents' house in Springfield for a couple days, and she had to spend most of the time in bed or in a recliner.

Shortly thereafter she had a scan done that revealed that the cancer had moved into her lymph system and was now in the bones of her hips and back and possibly her liver. I called that next weekend (the second weekend in January) to get the most accurate account of what was going on, and we had a really nice conversation. We hadn't really had much of a chance to talk in Springfield, and I was glad to make that up. (Not too much later, I was REALLY glad!) She told me about the test results and prognosis, but she seemed positive, and we talked about things we would do in the upcoming year---she had planned a trip to Chicago with her daughter in May, and we talked about the whole family coming to visit over the Fourth of July.

Less than a week later, however, she took a sudden bad turn and was hospitalized. My father called me when it happened and my wife and I went down to Urbana to visit her. She had reached a point where she couldn't move her body without agonizing pain, and she was not thinking clearly. This may have been partly due to an electrolyte imbalance or drugs, but it turned out that the cancer had also moved into her brain and she had a tumor there that was interfering with her thinking. When my dad called he had said, "If you want to see your sister again you'd better get down here," but actually by the time we arrived she was relatively stable. She was sort of out of it but she knew the people who came to see her, and we were able to talk a little bit.

The doctors' goal at that point was to come up with a medication program that would keep her relatively comfortable, and they were giving her radiation treatments for her brain and hips. After the first couple days it looked like that would work. I spent several more days down there over the following week, and she seemed to be getting better; it looked like she would at least be able to eventually go home, and nobody was talking about her only having a short time to live, although neither was there any more talk about recovery, either. The paradigm had shifted: it was no longer a question of when or how she was going to beat the cancer. She was not going to beat the cancer.

Over the next week-and-a-half or so, I kept in touch with my parents, who for that entire time slept at the hospital in reclining chairs, so that someone would be there with her if she woke up in the middle of the night and needed something. Things seemed to be going okay, and plans proceeded for moving her home.

Then on the night of February 4th, again more or less out of the blue, my dad called again stating that if I wanted to see her again, I should get down there. I took the next train and got there the next morning. She looked a lot worse, and I'm not sure whether she was ever conscious or knew I was there. Towards the middle of the afternoon, the nurses saw something that to them indicated that she was going to go soon, and called everybody into the room. We gathered around her---me and our parents, her husband and his parents, and her best friend---and I ended up holding one of her hands. I don't know exactly when she died---her breathing was erratic; I would think it had stopped but then I would hear her take another breath. But I do know that, towards the end, I felt a brief, slight pressure from her hand. I dont' want to read too much into it, but it did seem like a good-bye. At least, IF she was aware, she would have known we were there with her. I hope that was a comfort to her.

I felt very sorry for her, for what she went through those last weeks of her life. I think she was in a lot of pain, and she was having trouble thinking clearly and KNEW she was having trouble thinking. But at least, the time she was in the hospital gave everyone else involved time to get used to the idea of her imminent death, and when it finally came, there was a sense of relief that she was free from the pain she had been feeling. I was glad that she was finally at peace. That was my recurrent thought: "Be at peace, be at peace."

A very interesting phenomenon occurred just after she died: over about half an hour, her appearance slowly changed. I think it must have been due to fluid draining from her extremities, but all the stress and strain left her face, and the puffy blotchiness it had previously exhibited. She looked calm, and better than she had looked in years. That, more than anything else, really drove home to me what she had been going through up to that point. Since then I have often wondered to what extent her condition was always worse than she let on, and she just didn't tell anybody. It would have been in character for her not to burden other people with that.

The next few days told me more things I hadn't known about my sister, or more properly, reminded me of things I had forgotten. There was a memorial service/wake for her a couple days later, and I was amazed to see the number of people who came out to pay their respects. People from her job, from former jobs, from the neighborhood, from school, from women's groups she was in...the line just didn't stop. I don't know how many people there were but there were 200 cards printed up and they ran out. I thought about how my sister had touched all these people's lives and earned their respect, friendship, love. I was a little jealous because in recent years we rarely saw her at her best, and as in any family there were decades of baggage attached to all our interaction. I was reminded that, fundamentally, she was a very positive person, full of love and happiness, even amid all her troubles. During her last stay in the hospital, that was a big part of her conversations: telling people that she loved them.

It had been many years since anybody close to me had died, and I was unaccustomed to grieving. Sadness as an emotion doesn't get a lot of attention, because it's doesn't really engender drama, but it is a very powerful emotion. It's different than anger, or despair. Sometimes people who suffer losses of loved ones are portrayed as railing against God or injustice, and I can see how that might happen---I can see how it might apply in my sister's case, with her, who never did any harm to anyone, having been plucked from life with so much still to do and so much still to give, leaving her two little children. But that wasn't how I felt. I was just terribly, terribly sad.

As I mentioned, in recent years, although we had a good relationship, we only saw each other occasionally, and talked on the phone every once in a while. So Maria wasn't part of my day-to-day life the way she was for my parents, who went over there just about every week for a couple days to help take care of the kids. But now that she's gone, I find myself missing her at unexpected times---I'll think of something that maybe we would have done together, or see something that I think she would have liked, and then suddenly realize, oh, she's not around anymore. For several years we hadn't really been able to interact much as adults when we got together, given the attention demands of two toddlers, and we had sort of assumed that a few years down the road, when the kids were older, we'd be able to do more together. Now that won't happen.

I'm sorry she's gone, but glad she's at peace, finally.

Rough month, with a few bright spots

2009-01-27T10:38:00.001-08:00

This past month, and particularly the last couple weeks, have been pretty tough. My sister, who has been fighting cancer for several years, recently took a sharp turn for the worse. She appears to have reached something of a plateau for now, but she's in pretty bad shape still and I don't think anybody knows what is going to happen, or when. So, that has been putting a fair amount of emotional strain on the family. I went down to Urbana, where she is in the hospital, for most of last week, and then a soon as I came back, I developed what I think is a sinus infection which has had me out of commission for a few days. At least I didn't get sick while I was down there.

But there have been a couple bright spots, mainly having to do with my band, the Xylenes. First, we finally put up a recording of a Xylenes original on our MySpace page. "Furlough Day" was written by Mort Ames and me---Mort wrote lyrics, and I put them to music. The subject matter may be of limited interest, but it's a catchy song, and we played it at our office Christmas party to a very warm reception.

We also recently recorded a couple versions of an old standard, "Tonight You Belong To Me", for a compilation CD that a friend of mine is putting together. I should have the final version of that song within the next few days and when I do I'll put it up on the MySpace site as well. In the mean time, Mort posted a video of Crystal and Kelly recording vocals for the "feline" version of the song on his Facebook page.

This Saturday is opening day for the 2009 Roller Derby season---I hope I'm well enough to attend! I'm going to the doctor this afternoon and hopefully some antibiotics will have me back in the pink by the weekend.

Looking back, I started this blog on New Years' Day 2008, and for all the bad things that have happened recently I still feel fairly hopeful for the future. I will try to blog more often! Have a happy!

Christmas cards: a humble plea

2008-12-21T09:21:00.000-08:00

As those of you who know me are aware, I've always been a pretty atrocious card-sender (well, until I got married---any diligence now is due wholly to my wife's efforts). But I do like getting cards; in many cases they are the annual contact with friends I don't see or talk to much but still like to maintain a relationship with.

The ubiquity of cheap photo technology has resulted in many people sending photo cards, a picture with a little holiday border and a festive seasonal message. That's nice, and it adds a dimension to the "annual contact" missive. But I've noticed an unfortunate trend in this practice, and although I may be fighting an un-winnable uphill battle here, I must make this plea:

If you're sending out a photo card for Christmas, please, DON'T USE A PHOTO OF JUST YOUR KIDS.

I have nothing against your kids---they're cute kids, and I'm sure your pride in them is fully justified (even though no kids on earth are, in reality, as cute/charming/special as their parents think they are). But here's the thing: your kids are not my friends. YOU are my friends. My interest in your kids is, generally, through their derivation from you, not on their own merits. And frankly, if you think about it, that's the way it should be, and probably the way you want it.

So, if I'm getting a picture from your household, I'd like a picture of YOU. I'm far more curious to see what YOU look like than your kids. (Seeing how nobody seems to send pictures of their pretty college-age daughters, ho ho.) Sending the picture of just the kid seems to say, "We are not interesting; our child is the most interesting thing we could put in this card." Well, if you're friends of mine, you by definition ARE interesting, and worthy of being the subject of your own Christmas missive.

And I strongly suggest this applies to just about everybody to whom you send the cards. The few people who probably are more interested in pictures of the kids than you (i.e., their grandparents)---let's face it, they already have albums and albums of pictures of the kids.

Now, in case you just sent us a card with a picture of your baby on it, and are thinking, "That ungrateful asshole," please, I am always happy to hear from you, and I never mind seeing pictures of your children. I'm just saying that, maybe next time, use a picture of the whole family.

And, Merry Christmas!

Rescue Story: It's not a puppy, but...

2008-12-15T08:04:00.000-08:00

I believe I've mentioned at some point my interest in Acoustic Control Corporation brand musical equipment. The company was formed in the late 60s and, through the early 80s, made some really top quality gear---mainly guitar and bass amplifiers, but they also made P.A. gear (mixers, speakers, amps) and had a line of guitars and basses built for them. Because their amps were for the most part solid state technology, they have largely avoided becoming sought-after "vintage" amps, although there is some indication that within the last year or so they have started to gain some cachet.

Acoustic 125 and Acoustic 150/104 rig.

Although the original Acoustics are getting a little long in the tooth now, they were great amps, and for the most part still are, and many of them are still fully functional. Some years ago friend gave me an old broken-down Acoustic model 136 bass amp, and although only one channel sort of worked and it had fewer features than most modern amps, when I actually used it I discovered that it was really a good-sounding amp. Now it's been cleaned up and had some wiring issues repaired, and it has become the go-to amp for band rehearsal in the basement. A couple years ago I picked up a model 370 bass amp head, and that began my period of limited Acoustic collecting. I now have several bass amp rigs (a 370/301 rig and a 220/406 rig, and the 136 combo), a couple guitar amps (a 150/104 rig and a 125 combo), and an example each of the Acoustic Black Widow bass and guitar. They're good-sounding, cool-looking, solid, quality amps and instruments, and inasmuch as they are examples of the state of the art from their era (70s) and mostly unappreciated today, I feel that in a certain sense I am acting as conservator of these classic pieces of musical history.

The Acoustic 370/301 rig and Black Widow bass.

Although Lord knows I've accumulated plenty of music gear, in most respects I don't really consider myself a collector---I've got different guitars and amps because either they have distinctive sounds, or they were things I wanted to try: some I've loved and kept; others I've sold (or intend to sell). But certainly, I've had guitars that a collector would have kept, because they were collectible, but I didn't. The Acoustic gear, however, is an exception: this stuff I've collected partly for its inherent utility, but also just to collect because I like having them. And as I said, I feel I am conserving them.

So far, I've been able to justify having these amps on the basis of being things I would use or might theoretically use if I got a gig of a certain type---for instance, if I was playing a big outdoor gig without PA support for the bass, I might need that 370/301 rig. That's a somewhat far-fetched possibility, but the probability is greater than zero, so, there you have it.

Recently, however, I was forced to abandon any reasonable pretext of utility, when an Acoustic 890 mixer showed up on craigslist. Back in the day, this was Acoustic's top-of-the-line mixing board, and it's a big, cool-looking old-school mixer. It comes with a "snake" that's part of the unit, which has a cable 100 feet long, so you can put the mixer at the back of a room to mix a band on stage. (It also has a shorter cable for putting the mixer at the side of the stage, or for recording.) From this page, you can read about the 890 on pages 27-30 of the 1974 catalog.

The ad ran on craigslist for several weeks. When it first appeared, I alerted the crew on the Unofficial Acoustic Forum and urged somebody to get it, because it was a really cool, well-preserved old unit, but not something I really needed. The gang there pretty much agreed that it was cool, but nobody bit.

After a while, the seller dropped the price, and I decided to take the plunge and get it. The other day, when explaining to my loving and indulgent wife why I had brought yet another bulky piece of music gear I didn't need into the house, I was surprised by my own eloquence in defending that purchase, so I figured I would post it here:

Remember, this was a very high-quality piece of gear, and although it's old now, it's still fundamentally a good, solid piece of equipment. I don't think there were a whole bunch of these out there to start with, and there are definitely not a lot of them left, and even fewer left in good condition. If you don't have the snake you can't really get full use out of this board, and I have heard that sometimes the boards get separated from the snakes. And, this set came with road cases for both the snake unit and the board. As the price started dropping, I had visions of some group of stoned kids getting this for use with their death metal band. Having bought it just because it was a cheap mixer, they would not treat it with any respect---they would probably spill drinks into its circuitry; they would break and lose knobs and graphic sliders. (Missing graphic EQ sliders are the bane of the Acoustic collector's existence, and this one still had all 27 sliders on its three graphic EQs!). If stuff went wrong, they would not fix it, causing a descending and accelerating spiral to the point where it would end up being left in some practice space when they moved out, to be discarded by an unfeeling landlord.

And I just couldn't let that happen. So I bought it, and it's now in my basement, in its road cases. And hey, if some day my band plays a show where we need to mic up more than vocals and need to bring our own PA, I could use it! Yeah, that's going to happen any day now!

The Acoustic 890 mixer, with the remote unit and snake in the foreground.

Thanks

2008-11-27T18:04:00.000-08:00

Well, it's Thanksgiving evening. For much of my life, Thanksgiving night meant a card game with my friends---particularly after I moved away for school, it meant a night when the whole gang from Springfield was back in town, and everybody's family activities had pretty much wound down by 7:00 or 8:00, and there wasn't much else to do. I don't remember exactly when the last Thanksgiving night card game was, but it was a while ago. People quit coming back to town as regularly and most of them got married. A couple years ago we had most of the old gang together for a card game over the Christmas holidays, which was pretty fun.

I guess I've got a lot to be thankful for. I've got a solid job (knock wood); a happy marriage; a comfortable home; two great cats; my parents are alive and in pretty good health; my sister, who has been fighting cancer for several years, is finally showing some signs of progress, and there may be light at the end of the tunnel for her at last. I have a good relationship with my in-laws; I have a bunch of great friends; I still feel like I'm learning and growing. I'm cautiously optimistic about the incoming administration in Washington. I finally found a guitar amplifier I really like (Fender Dual Showman Reverb!), and I got a good deal on it. All in all, life is pretty good for me.

I hope things are going well for you too. Happy Thanksgiving!

Maudlin Maundering

2008-10-31T18:46:00.000-07:00

Boo! It's Halloween, a bittersweet night for me. When I was younger, Halloween was far and away my favorite holiday, but now that Halloween has become the new Christmas, it seems to have lost some of the magic. But, as I answered the door and doled out candy to trick-or-treaters, I saw that it is still a big deal to them---maybe I just outgrew it. But in a time when all monsters seem to be friendly and people get giant blow-up Halloween snow-globe-like things for their yards, I do think something has been lost. We don't get that many trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood, for some reason. A friend of mine today told me how much candy they had bought---they got like six or seven times as much as we did (and we had a bag left over). Last year he had to recycle his daughter's swag to service everyone who came to their door. We live in a nice neighborhood and if the parade on the 4th of July is any indication, there seem to be a lot of kids. I don't know why we don't get more of them.

So, last Saturday I hosted an activity down in the rock'n'roll basement that I called The Great Speaker Test. Over the past couple years I've spent a fair amount of time (too much time, possibly) on various music forums, reading and holding forth on various guitar- and bass-related topics. There is an immense amount of information out there but one must develop a good nose for bullshit and learn to filter the good information from the myths and hype. I've learned a lot about gear and about getting good tone, and I've noticed something interesting. While there is no shortage of opinions about which [thing x] is better---speakers, amps, tubes, guitars, guitar pickups, guitar hardware---almost nobody has actually had the opportunity to compare in any sort of meaningful A/B way any, much less most, of the available options.

If you play electric guitar, there are a whole bunch of factors that go into the sound you hear. First (and some say, most important) is the player---"tone is in the hands" is a common proverb, and its largely true. Then of course there's the instrument. The kind and gauge of strings matter; the woods (or other materials) from which it is made play a part, as do the bridge and tailpiece. Pickups (the parts that convert string vibrations to electrical signals) can be very significant as well. Then, after the signal leaves the guitar, the amplifier also plays a huge part in what it ultimately sounds like: whether it uses tube or solid state technology, and if it uses tubes, what kind of tubes, and even what brand of tubes. Circuit design and other circuit components affect tone as well. Some people claim to hear a difference between different kinds of resistors and capacitors. Finally, the speaker through which the signal re-enters the world can make as much of a difference as anything else.

Once you get more specific than "guitar" and "amp", an interesting phenomenon comes into play. People will virulently attack, or vigorously defend, the merits of various components, but almost nobody has experienced a controlled test. Different pickups are usually compared by hearing different guitars, which have lots of other factors that differ besides just the pickups. Different speakers are either compared with different amps, which makes the comparison almost meaningless. If they are compared using the same amp, it is often in different cabinets, which will color the sound, or if in the same cabinet, they are switched out which takes too much time for an exact comparison to be made---after a relatively few seconds, it's nearly impossible to clearly remember what the previous speaker sounded like to compare it to the next one. Gross differences may be apparent, but not subtle differences.

I like to think that I care about tone, so, I decided that if I was going to be honest with myself (which I try to do) I should set up controlled circumstances to be able to compare different speakers. I've accumulated a lot of gear but I had never really done any qualitative evaluation. I didn't know the actual characteristics of any of the speakers I had, or any of the well-known speakers that are popular on the music forums. Since the right speaker can make an amp, and the wrong speaker ruin one, it's a significant issue. Every day, people spend lots of money buying speakers they've never heard, based on a description they read on the web or "conventional wisdom" which is the collected opinions of a bunch of people who don't really know the difference either.

So I decided I was going to learn about speakers, to the extent I could. To that end, I bought two identical Avatar 112 Vintage speaker cabinets, and hooked them up to identical Epiphone Valve Junior amps. The Avatar cabinets are built in such a way that it's very easy to quickly swap speakers, and I made some short patch cords with alligator clips on them so wiring was nigh-instantaneous.

A few friends (including Mike from the recording project, both Dans, and Bill Tucker) came by, and some brought some other speakers, so all together we had 20 different models. It was really educational to hear side-by-side in that environment the differences between various speakers. The upshot of it was that I swapped some speakers around between my different amps and cabinets, and now several of the amps sound a lot better.

I won't take up a lot of space here with the blow-by-blow. I wrote up a bunch of observations in a thread on the GNet forum, so if you'd like more details, peruse there.

When all was said and done, I looked at the big stack of amps and speakers in my basement, and I realized something about myself, which might also be a more universal trait in humans: there are some things you can't be told, and just have to experience for yourself, but more specifically, what I've noticed is that although in theory I know that I buy too much stuff, it takes that one additional purchase to really drive home the "Oh man, I've got too much stuff." It comes as a form of buyer's remorse---not that the last purchase was something bad or a bad deal, but rather, all of a sudden a sort of "What am I doing?" kind of feeling. I reached that point with cars, and ended up selling all but one of my project Italian sports cars, and I think now I'm reaching that point with music gear. Well, guitar and bass gear, anyway. (I still need some good cymbals.)

But the thing is, if I had not gone ahead and bought all that stuff, I probably would not have reached this point. Whereas now I think my collection of stuff will start to shrink, I could not have been as happy if I had not gone through the experience of actually owning all this stuff. Part of it is the experience of learning what one really likes---if I hadn't had the chance to play a lot of different instruments and amps I would always wonder, "Well, maybe I should have X because it's supposed to be better."

This may sound like a truism to some, but I consider it something of a personal revelation---growth, if you will, and I'm happy that I can still learn stuff about myself and that I'm still growing and improving into my 40s.

While in theory now I'd like to reduce my stock of instruments and gear, I still pretty much like most of the stuff I've got, and I don't desperately need the money, so there's not a huge incentive to actually unload things. The main pressure is space in the basement, and, there still are a small number of things I'd like to try and in the interest of domestic tranquility I should get some of the old stuff out of the house before bringing new stuff in. So if you need a good guitar, bass, or amp, let me know and I can set you up.

Roll on!

2008-10-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

Saturday was a momentous day, at least in the universe of my band the Xylenes, because it was the day of this year's Windy City Rollers draft. Xylenes vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Kelly had been engaged in a many-weeks-long training/tryout program and we were not surprised at all to learn yesterday that she was among the relatively few new skaters drafted onto one of the four Windy City teams. Congratulations Kelly!

The Fury, 2009 edition, featuring Kelly (aka Mel Content) (bottom row right).

I had been pretty oblivious to roller derby until Kelly got involved in it, but there is a very active nation-wide league, with programs in dozens of cities. To the extent people know about it at all, my anecdotal experience suggests that they don't take it very seriously, considering it a show "sport" like professional wrestling, but if that was ever the case, it' s not the case in the WFTDA (Women's Flat Track Derby Association). Last month a bunch of us went to a bout with Kelly to see what it was all about and it was a blast.

As a spectator sport, roller derby provides an experience that's almost impossible to find once you're out of school, and maybe not even then. Unlike just about any other inter-city level sport, derby teams are actually of their namesake cities: the Windy City Rollers teams are made up of women from Chicagoland; when they play the Kansas City team, they are playing women from Kansas City, the Detroit team are from Detroit, etc. The Bears or the White Sox may be the "Chicago Bears" or "Chicago White Sox" but if there's anybody on either team from Chicago it is purely coincidental. So at a bout, when the fans root for "our gals," they really are our gals.

And, for now at least, the sport has not been commercialized to the hilt like most professional sports, or even lots of higher-profile college sports. There was a very organic, community vibe at the bout we went to, which I have never felt in the stands at a professional ball park or hockey arena. It reminded me of my best memories of school sports---it was like being at a really rowdy college hockey game (in a good way).

I don't know how long that state of affairs can persist---roller derby is such a fun spectator sport that I have to think one of these days the bigger world is going to notice it and sweep in with a bunch of money and all that that implies. On one level it would be nice to see the women involved get something for all the effort they put into it, but I would miss the purity that it has now. For now, I intend to go to more bouts because they're a hell of a lot of fun.

The next bout is Saturday, October 25, at the UIC Pavillion. For more information, check out the Windy City Rollers' web site.

Heads Have Not Yet Rolled

2008-09-30T08:31:00.000-07:00

Well, as I'm sure everybody knows, it's been an interesting week, as we teeter on the verge (or maybe, continue to slide down the slope) of an epic financial crisis. As I write this, yesterday Congress failed in its initial attempt to pass the bailout package, and the Dow dropped over 700 points, putting it lower in the waning days of the Bush administration than it was when he took office. Predictably, stocks have bounced back a bit today, but still.

Note: Lord knows I could maunder on about politics at great length but I didn't really want to make this a political blog---so many other people do that, and, my experience on internet forums has shown me that it is basically impossible to have a calm, polite conversation when politics or religion enter into the discussion, and I didn't start this to get into arguments with people. But it's all around us now---it would be just about impossible to write about what's going in in my life right now without touching on some political issues, between the Presidential campaign and the financial crisis.

But anyway. I was not surprised to see the bailout fail. I think what is happening is that people who lived by the sword are now dying by it, metaphorically. The financial crisis was able to get as far as it did because so few people really understood what was going on, and even when they tried to raise an alarm, nobody really paid attention---because nobody really understood what they were talking about. This happens all over the place in the modern, complex world: regular folks tune out complicated things they don't understand, allowing shysters and rapscallions to engage in all manner of perfidy.

But now, when it's all gone to hell in a handbasket, the administration et al. are trying to sell a bailout package, and what I suspect has happened is, all those people who didn't understand how we got here also don't understand how this bailout proposal is going to get us out, and since it's being pushed by the people who were supposed to be watching out for stuff like this but nevertheless let it happen, there is a very understandable hesitation to invest tons of money in an inscrutable process that doesn't really make sense. I read in a blog somewhere that calls to legislators were going something like 200 to 1 against the bailout.

Now, let's say the bailout went through. Or, eventually some sort of bailout will inevitably be hammered out---when it DOES go through. It's not going to turn things around in any kind of visible way overnight, and it is quite likely that things will still be bad and probably get worse before they get better. So in evaluating what happened, the best that proponents of the bailout will be able to claim is that things would have been even worse without it, which will of course be impossible to substantiate or quantify. One thing that's certain is that five weeks from now nobody will be able to point to anything that the bailout has achieved, but seven hundred billion dollars---everybody understands that that is a lot of money that was spent to no apparent effect. (We're talking public perception here; it doesn't matter if the money is actually all spent yet, or ever. The perception will be that when the bailout was passed, $700B in taxpayer funds went down the rat hole.) So in that circumstance, it is easy to see how it would take an exceptionally brave (or exceptionally safe, or even exceptionally patriotic, but I'm not holding my breath for that one) legislator to vote in favor of the bailout. I am not surprised at all that so many voted against it.

What I think needs to happen to get public opinion behind the bailout is, there needs to be a public purge. I haven't followed everything with extreme diligence, but I've kept up on this stuff probably more than a lot of people, and I have not heard that anyone has been fired, much less jailed, for what happened. I can't believe it never occurred to anyone calling the shots on this stuff that people will not want to pump more money into the system if it's being run by the same people. And again, maybe it's not, but to get the country behind a bailout, people everywhere need to SEE that THOSE BUMS ARE OUT. It's about perception. Heads have not rolled, and if the economy is going down the shitter because of games played by a bunch of Wall Street hotshots, by God, heads need to roll. The heads of the Wall Street investment banks. The big guys at the Fed. The big guys at the SEC. The big guys at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They all need to be publicly fired and castigated. And maybe they're not all to blame, but it is too late to worry about that now. The innocent bystanders in that group (if there are such) need to take one for the team.

I'm under no delusion that that's actually going to happen, but my point is, as a consequence whatever bailout ends up being put into place will be unpopular. Moreover, Americans are going to be far less tolerant of hardship than they would be if they knew that somebody had been punished for what happened. As it is, it's impossible to believe that any reform efforts are entirely sincere and diligent.

Old Friends

2008-08-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot going on this summer, and while that should prompt more fascinating posts to this blog, I find I tend to not write because I don't have chunks of time to sit down and compose posts. I have not mastered the art of dashing off a quick note about what I'm doing, but I guess that's just my style. Maybe I do over-think things sometimes, but I figure the analysis is the value I add to what would otherwise be an unadorned list of events. I like to think that I live a fairly interesting life, but I don't know if a blog along the lines of "I did this, then I did that" would really be that interesting. I've read some where people document the minutia of their day-to-day lives and they are really not all that fascinating.

Since my last post, a few major things happened. First, back in July, I spent a great weekend with a couple of my old pals from college, who came to town for a recording project.

Twenty-two years ago (sheesh!) at Quincy College in Quincy, Illinois, we were in a band, called Tribe of Lawyers (who knew?) that played a small number of shows . . . let me think . . . we played at the English Club dance, and I think one other event in the Student Union, and one gig at a non-alcoholic bar (our drummer was in AA), which I remember most because a Coke got spilled down the back of my bass amp and fried it. It was a Peavey Mark III, and I didn't think anything could kill one of those, but after that incident it was intermittent for ever after. We played a very eclectic mix of covers and a couple originals written by my friend Mike, including the classic "Bus Boy Blues" which is still poignant.

I continue to marvel at the fact that in that obscure corner of the world, at a school which was by no means a hotbed of new rock music, I met not one but two of the most amazing guitarists I have ever seen or heard, much less played with: Mike Dunne and Barry Stock. This all took place during the 1985-86 school year, after which Barry moved down to Florida and Mike, having graduated, went back to Chicago, but for that one year we had a good time and my mind was greatly expanded, playing with those two guys. Amazingly enough, the year after they left, my friend Dan (referenced earlier) came to Quincy, another incongruous presence at that campus. He also re-enters this tale shortly.

We got together one other time, in the early 90s when Barry was living in Athens, GA, and Mike and I flew down to visit him. That was fun---we drove by Michael Stipe's house. I've seen Mike a few times since then and we've kept in touch, but I fell out of touch with Barry. But Mike had an address for him and I re-established contact late last year. In fact, he prompted me to start this blog.

Anyway, I had been meaning to visit Mike for a long time, and during a phone conversation he mentioned that he had some new songs he'd written, and he mentioned how he really wanted to get a good recording of some of his compositions. And I had a thought: my friend Dan is an accomplished recording engineer; why not set up a recording session here, with Dan on the board, to record Mike's tunes? Dan was up for it, and Mike was up for it. And why not bring Barry up to play on it? So in March I went to Columbus, OH (where Mike lives nowadays) and jammed with Mike and a drummer friend, and we made rough recordings of a handful of Mike's songs. I edited them down and sent mp3s to Barry and Dan, the studio was booked, and an airline ticket was procured for Barry. There was one minor hiccup when Mike's drummer friend bailed on the project a few weeks before we were scheduled to record, but fortunately Chris Castellan from the Bill Tucker band was able and willing to join us for the recording.

Dan, Barry and fat ol' me in the studio.

(This is Barry's picture, but he's in it... I don't know who took it)

Mike adding some keyboards, with Dan in the foreground. (Pic by Barry.)

It went amazingly smoothly, all things considered. We managed to lay down tracks for four of Mike's songs, and had a great time. Barry posted about it in his own blog, which includes a link to lots of his pictures. (In addition to his other talents, Barry is quite the shutterbug.)

We have all resolved not to let another ten or twenty years go by before we get together again. I got an e-mail from Mike just the other day and he said he's already got some new songs...

My Maserati

2008-07-08T16:52:00.001-07:00

Well, today was a bittersweet day: I sold my Maserati, and the new owners came and took it away. For the past four years, for better or worse, I was a Maserati owner; now I am not.

When I was in high school, I went through a period of car mania, coinciding with my obtaining a driver's license. But, being utterly without resources, my interest in cool cars remained theoretical. For the next almost-twenty years, through years of college, law school, and living in apartments with only street parking, I was by necessity (and poverty) restricted to purely utilitarian cars that could sit out on the street throughout a Midwestern winter and would not be targets for thieves or vandals. My interest in cars remained dormant.

After I got married, however, we had a covered garage space, and I finally paid off my student loans and credit cards, and for the first time in my adult life I started to think that hey, maybe I could have a cool, fun car after all. We had a very high-utility SUV for day-to-day use, so when my old ex-mom Mercury Grand Marquis began to be more trouble that it was worth to fix, I looked around for something less practical and more interesting to replace it. I wanted to try a sports car, and I wanted to try a convertible, and so I looked for a vehicle that was both.

During my initial adolescent car phase, I had developed an interest in European sports cars---for some reason, I never really was that into muscle cars or pony cars, although I appreciate them and don't have anything against them. But something about the swoopier, higher-tech cars from across the pond appealed to me. Doing research I discovered several cars that fit my profile, and were within a price range I could reasonably contemplate, including some MGs, Triumphs, Fiats, perhaps some ratty smaller Porsches, and the Alfa Romeo Spider. Seeking out reviews, I noticed that on one site, while most of the reviews of various models were ambivalent, the Alfa owners uniformly expressed enthusiasm for driving their cars. I thought the Spider was pretty cool, and recalled the hallowed name, Pininfarina, from my earlier car phase, so I focused my hunt for one of those.

And I found a fairly nice one at a good price, in Ypsilanti, Michigan, my old stomping ground. An exchange of e-mails and photos, and a deal was struck. I went up on the train and drove it home. It was fun, it was zippy, it was red, it was Italian:

I was having a great time with my Alfa, reveling in sports car ownership, but fool that I was, I didn't know when to leave well enough alone. I became infatuated with all Italian cars; I joined the Ferrari Owners Club to hang out with the Tifosi. And I researched the history of Maserati, a name that everyone knows but nobody seems to know what they actually look like.

Maserati was formed by the five Maserati brothers in the twenties and built race cars through the thirties, with some success, but not enough success to keep the firm solvent: they went broke (for the first of many times) and the brothers were bought out in the late 30s by the Orsi family. They had a contract to stay on for ten years, but WWII ate up most of that, and in IIRC 1947 they left the company bearing their name, and went on to some further success building small-bore sports cars under the OSCA brand.

Meanwhile, the Orsi still built racing cars but over time started to branch out into street cars---first street versions of their racers, but by the late 50s they were building a series of high-speed touring cars. They were fast, luxurious, and exclusive.

Maserati 5000GT

It is worth noting that while many people lump Maserati in with Ferrari conceptually, in fact they are an apples-to-oranges comparison. Ferrari made sports cars: brutal little cars that were little removed from road racers, and even later when the connection was not as clear, the classic Ferrari models were still sports cars, designed to carve up the corners as quickly and efficiently as possible, and with minimal concessions to civilized niceties. Maserati road cars, on the other hand, were intended to go long distances, fast, in luxury. "Grand Touring" in the truest sense. So while Ferraris and Maseratis may have had some superficial design similarities, they had very different mission statements.

Despite a string of beautiful and powerful classic GT machines, including the 5000GT, the Mistral, and the Ghibli, the Orsis eventually sold Maserati to (gasp) the French: in the late 60s, French car maker Citroen bought the company. This resulted in some interesting technical facets to Maserati cars of the seventies, such as an elaborate hydraulic system that powered everything from the brakes to the retractable headlights and earned the ire of mechanics for its sheer weirdness, although cars like the Bora and Merak continued Maserati's string of jaw-dropping design triumphs.

Maserati Ghibli

But Citroen, too, sold the insolvency-prone company, to Alessandro de Tomaso, the guy who brought the world the Pantera. And he had a different idea of what Maserati should be.

Whereas previously Maserati had competed with the likes of Aston Martin, building very high-end, exclusive, special cars, de Tomaso introduced a new series of cars aimed at a different market niche, that occupied by the smaller BMW and Mercedes cars. This was the Biturbo series. Where prior Maserati GT cars had been swoopy and sleek, Biturbos were stubby and angular. Where prior Maseratis had been expensive and exclusive, Biturbos were---well, still expensive but not quite as expensive, and although they were still exclusive in that relatively few people had them, it was not quite the "you can't afford it" exclusivity of Maserati of yore.

This obvious move down-market did nothing to endear the Biturbo line to old-school Maserati enthusiasts, and although the Biturbo family are far and away the best-selling Maseratis ever and they kept the company in the black for many years, they remain the unloved stepchildren of the Italian exotic-car universe. Although I don't know the exact cause-effect relationship, in the early 90s Maserati left the U.S. market. The early Biturbos had some teething problems; by 1990 or so they had pretty much been worked out, but we in the U.S. never saw the best Biturbo derivatives.

After a couple decades (and a joint venture with Chrysler that produced the TC, essentially a LeBaron tweaked by Maserati, some of which had a Maserati engine), Maserati was sold again, this time to Ferrari, who put out GT cars under the Maserati badge that were basically junior Ferraris, using Ferrari engines and other Ferrari technology, to the joy and applause of the automotive enthusiast world. Ferrari of course acted as if prior Maserati history, particularly the Biturbo era, never happened.

As a result of this history, Biturbos, which were sold in this country from 1984 to 1987 and 1989 to 1991, don't possess the cachet of earlier or later Maseratis, and can be had relatively cheaply---certainly, they are the cheapest model from any exotic car maker to buy. But cachet or no, they are still Maseratis, and to a man smitten with Italian exotic cars, that affordable car dangling before him like low-hanging fruit can be nigh irresistible.

So it was that, when a 1987 Biturbo Spyder showed up on eBay for sale in a nearby suburb, I abandoned reason and judgment, and bought it.

The Maserati Biturbo Spyder I bought.

I wasn't completely foolish: there were several models of Biturbo and they came in various configurations. They all had a twin-turbocharged V6 and luxurious appointments (the inside of a Biturbo has leather on just about everything), but among the desired traits were (a) the fuel-injected engine, from 1987 on, as opposed to the earlier carbed model; (b) the five-speed manual transmission, and (c) the convertible body style. The Biturbo that sucked me in had all of these. It was one of the best models to get.

I should also say that actually, notwithstanding the bad press they get, Biturbos are not really bad cars, if they are sorted out and properly maintained. But, here's where the "exotic car" factor comes into play: Biturbos, like other exotic Italian cars, have relatively short maintenance intervals---whereas a typical Toyota can soldier on for tens of thousands of miles without trouble as long as it gets regular oil changes, exotic Italians tend to require extensive (and expensive) maintenance trips to the shop every 15 to 30 thousand miles. Now, for the last ten or fifteen years, many of the people who have bought Biturbos have been stars-in-the-eyes guys with more enthusiasm than money, and it is one thing to be able to afford to buy a Biturbo, and quite another to be able to afford to maintain it. The price of the car is like unto a Honda, but the price of service and parts is like unto a Ferrari. (Well, maybe not that bad, but not cheap.) Service and parts are more expensive, and required much more often.

As a result, just about every Biturbo still extant suffers from deferred maintenance issues. And that, unfortunately, is a slippery slope. Italian cars in general suffer if they're not driven regularly, so one little problem that sidelines a car for a while can multiply into numerous niggling little problems, which eventually results in disenchantment and the car being sold to somebody else, and the cycle repeats and worsens.

What I now know is this: if you get a Biturbo, plan on spending an amount of money equal to, if not more than, the cost of the car to get it sorted out. The only way to do it right is to go over the car, or have someone who knows them (if you can find such a person---good luck!) go over the car from bumper to bumper, replacing all the belts and hoses, checking and cleaning all the electrical connections, tuning up the engine---if you do that all at once and comprehensively, you can end up with a reasonably reliable, usable car. A sorted Biturbo can be a practical daily driver (if you don't mind it's prodigious thirst for premium gas). (Well, the electrical system---a chronic problem with many Italian cars, but particularly Biturbos---may need more attention; there's a guy who sells rebuilt fuseboxes.)

When I got my Biturbo, I knew that the owner had not been driving it regularly---he told me how it was "for special occasions," which I knew was absolutely wrong. But it seemed to be working fine, so I bought it, and instead of doing a comprehensive overhaul, I just drove it.

And let me tell you, the Biturbo may not be the most desirable Maserati model ever made, but that car was a hell of a lot of fun, and the most comfortable car for long-distance driving I've ever driven. It was a joy to drive on the highway, and even after a slog down to Springfield, I emerged without pains in my legs or back. Compared to modern cars the Biturbo doesn't have that much horsepower, but they way it's delivered is particularly invigorating. And the car cruises at speed effortlessly.

Although it was not strictly speaking a Ferrari, the guys in the Ferrari Owners Club were very welcoming to me. (Actually, you don't need a car at all to join the FOC; appreciation for the Prancing Horse is sufficient. The local FOC group was very nice to interested people.) Here are a couple pictures from FOC drives. The first shows my Biturbo with a gaggle of Ferraris by the Big Mary statue in Hyde Park:

Here's me grinning at the wheel in front of a picturesque church in the north shore suburbs:

But soon, the little mechanical problems, and some bigger mechanical problems, started to crop up. The coolant was overflowing, and a friend familiar with the cars determined that engine compression was getting into the coolant: a bad head gasket. So, full of enthusiasm and confidence, we changed the head gaskets, which is a big job on any car and a real pain in the kiester on a Biturbo. But when we bolted it all back together, it fired up, which was a great feeling. But then it started overheating. That was due to an electrical problem in the circuit that controlled the fans, which proved quite difficult to track down. When I finally got that fixed, it failed emissions testing, and when I addressed that problem at considerable expense, it developed some electrical problem. Throughout all this it was not reliable to drive, so the fun factor went out the window. Finally, about a year ago, while I was in line to get it emissions tested again, the car just died and would not start again.

Thank God for AAA. I had the car towed back to the garage, and there it sat. I was totally discouraged and could not bring myself to work on it any more.

Meanwhile, I had made another tactical error: I sold my Alfa Spider and bought a project Alfa GTV coupe. The theory was, I could use it on the track. (The Alfa Romeo Owners Club would not let me run in track events with my Spider because it didn't have a roll bar.) But the GTV I bought was a basket case. I thought it would be something I could fix up over time, but as I started working on it I discovered that it had rust in literally every panel of the car, and it was not worth the effort to fix. It had a solid engine, gearbox and rear end, so we pulled them out of it, stripped it of trim etc., and junked the body. I feel a little guilty about that now because those cars (1750 GTVs) are rare and desirable and I wonder whether somebody might not have been willing to save it, but it was in REALLY bad shape.

The Biturbo and "Scruffy", my ratty 1971 Alfa GTV.

But the important thing about getting the GTV, the big mistake I made, was that that gave me two project cars at the same time. And there were not hours in the day or days in the week enough for me to keep on top of both of them. So neither of them really got the attention it deserved, and neither of them was really set right. The Biturbo in particular probably should have had more attention paid to it. If I hadn't been distracted by my other projects, I might have spent enough time and energy on the Biturbo to get ahead of the game with its problems. But I didn't. I watched myself become one of those car owners I would have previously derided, who bought a car and then didn't do the necessary maintenance to keep in running right. The problems with the car were demoralizing, and seeing myself in that light was more demoralizing.

There were further complications with the Alfa, as I tried to move the good parts of Scruffy to a new rolling shell. But, that's really a separate story. To further complicate matters, a friend made me an offer I simply could not refuse on a 1973 Alfa Berlina, a sedan---one of the reasons I was less than totally enthusiastic about the Maserati was that I had noticed that most of the time when we were going somewhere that we could take a fun car, there was usually someone else involved. In retrospect it was foolish of me to buy a two-seater convertible: I couldn't drive it on the track, and I couldn't carry extra passengers. Hence the attractiveness of the Berlina, which had most of the sporting potential of the GTV but had a spacious back seat. So the Berlina was a good acquisition, except that it gave me three old Italian cars, none of which ran. (The Berlina was sans engine.) This was, to put it mildly, a source of occasional marital strife.

One thing I had figured out and resolved to myself was that this year I would get down to one single project car. It didn't take too much thinking to decide that the Berlina would be that car. So, it only remained to put the Maserati and the GTV (well, collection of GTV parts) up for sale. I listed them on enthusiast forums, and put the Biturbo on eBay. It didn't sell, but I did end up making a deal with a guy who saw it there. Today his son and a friend came and picked it up. Here's one of the last pictures I took of it; you can see the corner of the Berlina in the background.

Buying the Biturbo in the first place was a mistake, and I learned a lot from owning it, even if much of what I learned was learned the hard way. But despite my less-than-satisfactory experience as a Biturbo owner, I actually have a fairly positive view of the cars. In fact, if mine had been a sedan instead of a two-seat roadster, I would have kept it and spent the time/money to get it running right. And, I wouldn't say that I might not end up with another Biturbo at some point in the future. And while I didn't think so much of it at the time, in retrospect I will admit I got a bit of a charge out of owning a Maserati. At least, I once owned a Maserati. How many people do you know who ever owned a Maserati? Never mind the details.

Addendum to web site list

2008-07-02T07:22:00.001-07:00

Since I posted my list of favored web sites, I've added another to my "check regularly" list: Shirt.Woot! It's an interesting concept: every day, they offer a new t-shirt design, which is only available for a limited time---new designs get a pass their first week, but, after that, if it falls out of the Top 20 on their weekly sales chart, it's GONE. A really popular shirt may be around for several months, but eventually they cycle.

They also have a weekly derby that anyone can enter, and vote in, and the top three vote-getting designs are offered as part of the next week's shirts. So the shirts don't just all come from the same stable of designers, and some of the derby shirts are very cool.

I like the idea of t-shirts as art---I was looking through my drawer the other day and noticed that almost all the shirts I have are advertising in one form or another. Now, one of the guys in the Tucker band commented once that I had an impressive collection of t-shirts from greasy spoon restaurants, which I suppose I do, but sometimes I want something that is interesting visually but not Superdawg or Joe Rogers' (Springfield's Best Chili). I've acquired four Woot shirts so far, all of which are of interest merely for their own designs.

I was hipped to Shirt.Woot by Kelly from the Xylenes. Some weeks back, they had a shirt with this image:

The Xylenes being an accordion-intensive operation, several of the gals acquired these shirts. I didn't get one (that light blue is not my color) but I did explore the site and find another shirt I liked:

And, I've checked back regularly since then (if you buy a shirt on its first day, it's cheaper) and found several more I like. Here's the most recent:

Check it out---there's probably something you'll find interesting.

Some of my Favorite Web Sites

2008-06-03T14:46:00.000-07:00

Like, I suspect, most people who spend much time in the digital world, I have a handful of sites I tend to visit on a more or less regular basis. Maybe you'll find some of these interesting too.

After checking my e-mail, one of the first sites I like to go to when I'm getting going in the morning is icanhascheezburger.com, one of the leading lolcat sites. It makes me happy.

Then, there's my webcomics: Order of the Stick and Erfworld are both found on the Giant in the Playground Games site. They are gaming comics and if you've never played Dungeons and Dragons or certain strategy wargames you might not get all the jokes (I don't get all the jokes myself), but I like them. Girl Genius is the current ongoing comic from one of my favorite comic artists, Phil Foglio. It's really an amazing epic, and chock full of trademark Foglio humor and zaniness.

There are a number of music forums I visit from time to time, more or less often as specific interests wax and wane:

Guitarists.net is a general guitar playing site, which is frequented by a lot of beginners; I will admit, I like to hang out there because I feel that my experience and knowledge about guitar stuff can be of some use---in regular life it's just obscure and arcane! I've met some cool people there, and one guy who lives in Chicago bought a bass from me.

I've mentioned TalkBass in other posts---it's really the home of the bass playing community on the internet. The guitar community on-line is fragmented (maybe because it's bigger), but the TalkBass community includes players of just about every description, musical style, and skill level. They are remarkably polite, given the wide variances in perspective and strongly-held opinions.

The Gear Page is a more guitar-oriented page, which focuses on higher-end and boutique gear, but there is a lot of knowledge in that community. On GNet I usually answer questions; if I have questions of my own, I take them to The Gear Page.

Then there are forums devoted to specific brands that I like. I've mentioned previously my enthusiasm for Rickenbacker guitars and Acoustic Control Corp. amplifiers---well, there are on-line communities of enthusiasts of each of those brands. The RickResource forum is a great font of information on Rickenbackers, while the Unofficial Acoustic Control Corp. homepage and forum have lots of great info on Acoustic gear. And, I met another Chicago-based Acoustic fan on that forum, and he introduced me to Bill Tucker, which led to my current band situation. Networking!

Sometimes I'll cruise over to the GearSlutz forum, which is a forum for recording engineers and deals with esoteric recording gear---but, they have great stories about the stupid things they've seen and heard in recording sessions. I study these stories to ensure that when I go into a studio I don't sound or act like a dummy. And sometimes I surf through the Harmony Central forums. There's interesting stuff there, but the signal-to-noise ratio is worse than on other, more specialized music forums.

I don't spend as much time on car forums as I used to, but with the Alfa convention fast approaching I've been visiting the Alfa Romeo Bulletin Board a bit more lately. It is the home of the Alfa enthusiast community on the web. I used to visit FerrariChat a lot, but my interest in owning a Ferrari has waned, so I don't go there much anymore. It's an interesting place sociologically, since "Ferrari" has so much secondary significance beyond just the merits of the cars themselves. Lots of people are attracted by the mystique of Ferrari and the lifestyle they perceive Ferrari ownership to symbolize, so you get some weird discussions over there.

Another one I visit every once in a while is the Jack Vance Message Board, where Vance fans discuss his work, and various other things. When these guys go off-topic, the discussions can end up in some pretty strange and interesting places. Part of the allure is seeing and communicating with fellow travelers from the Vance Integral Edition project (of which I posted early on in this blog).

To keep up with physics news, I periodically check Physics News. If I hadn't dropped Calculus II in college, as a result of having the worst professor ever, who knows what I might have accomplished in the world of science? I intended to take it later, but that didn't work out. That's a story for another time.

Finally, a few blogs I like to check periodically. I follow a few friends' personal blogs, which I'm not going to list here since they are of interest because I know the bloggers---if you know them too you probably already know about the blogs. But I also check these:

Acquired Taste: This is the blog of Tim Stretton, who is coincidentally a friend but the blog is his "professional" blog about writing. Tim was a VIE manager and his first book, The Zael Inheritance, was serialized in the Cosmopolis Literary Supplement, an appendix of the VIE newsletter. He's written a couple more books since and has been accepted into the Macmillan New Writers program, through which his last novel, The Dog of the North, is being published in a few weeks. Tim's blog will be of particular interest to writers, but he provides interesting insight on the writing process that I think many book fans will find interesting, and the discussion of books is a great source of recommendations if you're looking for cool stuff to read.

Chocolate and Zucchini: I'm no foodie, but I really enjoy this food blog. Blogger Clothilde Dusoulier is the daughter of Patrick Dusoulier, another friend from the VIE. She's an interesting phenomenon. She has published two books in the last few years, a cookbook and a guide to Parisian restaurants. Now, cookbooks seem to be top-down affairs nowadays: one becomes a mini-celebrity on the Food Network and then puts out cookbooks trading on that celebrity. But in Clothilde's case, she simply started a food blog, and it became sufficiently popular that she was able draw on that popularity to get a book deal---more of a bottom-up model, and very populist. It is hardly surprising, though, because her writing is absolutely delightful, and her recipes are pretty good too.

Stuff White People Like: Never have I seen such a scalpel-sharp satire of yuppie culture. This guy (who I don't know and has no connection to the VIE) has a book coming out in July which I am avidly awaiting. Although, reading the comments to his blog posts, and seeing how many people so completely miss what he is doing, may shake one's faith in humanity.

A funny old gig story

2008-05-31T13:10:00.000-07:00

Recently there was a thread on one of the music forums I follow, talkbass.com, about quitting in the middle of a gig, and it reminded me of a gig I played back last spring. I don't know if it really counts as "quitting in the middle of a gig", but here's the story:

It all started when I answered an ad by a drummer (let's call him Frisco Tom) who was trying to put together an oldies rock band, with an eye towards playing car cruise nights and things like that. There was a cattle call audition and while these people (Frisco Tom and a woman I assume was his girlfriend, although she introduced herself as his "producer"---let's call her Trixie) were not the most professional, it looked like it might be fun. And, one of the guitarists who had tried out was pretty good, and I thought it would be fun to play with him. I was invited to be in the band, and I said I'd do it if the guitarist I liked would, and apparently he had said something to the same effect, so we were good to go.

Frisco Tom worked near me, and occasionally we would meet in the lobby of the building, or meet for lunch. We had several conversations in which he talked a very good game about what he wanted to do, and expressed strong agreement with my desire to try to really capture the feel and arrangements of the original songs. Structurally, most 50s rock songs are not very complicated---it's easy to play just about every 50s hit ever written as one 12-bar-in-A medley. But if you listen closely, there are subtle distinctions between songs that put each performer's individual stamp on them, and I wanted to focus on those things and really try to nail them. Yes, absolutely, right there with me, he says.

After a couple weeks a band was more or less assembled. In what should have been a distressing turn of events, both guitar players in the band quit---the guy I had looked forward to playing with apparently had not told his wife he was auditioning for the band, and when she found out about it she shut it down. But, I decided to stick it out for a while. Tom and Trixie came up with a couple other guitar players, although they didn't seem to be as meticulous about the music as I was hoping for.

Now, from early on, Tom had mentioned an open stage at the local VFW hall, which he thought we should play. He seemed to think gigs might be forthcoming if we did well, and he swore that we could go there and blow everybody away. (Based on some open mics I've been to, that was at least potentially credible.)

Well, we had our first rehearsal with the full band, and it went okay---and Frisco Tom says that we should play the VFW open stage THAT WEEKEND. I thought that was a little precipitous, but he was very excited, and the other people seemed up for it, so I figured, okay.

We went there, and played, and a couple things became apparent:

1) I figured out that this, in fact, was the whole goal of the band: for Frisco Tom to get up in front of his buddies at the VFW hall and play. Any other gigs would be purely coincidental.

2) Frisco Tom's bar for what was an acceptable public performance was so low as to be nonexistent.

3) There was never any prospect of us blowing away everybody at the open stage---while some of the other performers were, indeed, awful, the main core group of guys were pretty decent musicians who had been playing together at this thing every Friday for years if not decades, and included at least one guy who had been an actual professional rock singer back in the 70s. (You've heard him on the radio.) They had a pretty high overall talent level and they were accustomed to playing together, in stark contrast to our group in both regards.

Mulling all this over subsequently, I concluded that Frisco Tom was simply delusional and decided I would not continue with his vanity project. But before I told him, he announced a new opportunity, which forestalled my actual quitting:

Ever since the first time I met him I had heard constantly about his son, who was apparently hot stuff out in L.A. doing nouveau rockabilly or something. Well, it turns out the son was going to be in town and would perform with us at the VFW the following week! I was sufficiently intrigued that I decided to stick around for one more show. The practice schedule got screwed up or something---I don't remember exactly what happened, but basically, they sent me some mp3s but we did not get together in person prior to the show.

So I showed up, and the first sign of trouble was, Frisco Tom informed me that he had cleverly (he thought) signed up twice, once under his son's name and once under Trixie's name. This is, as anyone who frequents open stage events will know, a gross breach of open stage etiquette---stage hogging. Now, Trixie was very nice but could not sing to save her life; the phrase "bovine bellowing" is particularly apt. And she was going to do a whole set of tunes. And she ended up going first. And the arrangements (if you can call them that) that they did were different from the recordings they had sent me. Worst of all, the practice at that open stage was, you got to do three songs; people who did really well were sometimes invited to do another song or two. Well, after three songs, she just launched into a fourth song, despite the fact that the performance up till then had been pretty much a train wreck. And after that, she launched into a fifth song. At that point the host basically kicked her off stage---she was preparing to do a sixth song.

Naturally, they were in no hurry to let us back up on stage again. So after almost two hours of sitting around, mortified, I decided that I was not that interested in seeing what Frisco Tom's kid would do. I had never rehearsed with them, the songs were simple 50s standards, and I knew that the regular bass player who came every week could hang with them easily, as well as I could. So I packed up and went home.

I didn't hear anything from them for a while, but I did notice that almost immediately all references to me were deleted from the band's MySpace page. Coincidentally, last week I got an e-mail from the band announcing (14 months later) that they were playing some car show. Good luck to them; I've had better things to do with the last 14 months than embarrass myself on a regular basis at the VFW hall.

Hectic over-scheduling continues...

2008-05-19T07:08:00.000-07:00

So much for getting back on the wagon of posting regularly. On the chance that some of you are reading this occasionally looking for updates on what's going on in my life, I'll try to post some less-lengthy entries of what's going on.

For the past week-plus, Kris' cousin and goddaughter, Lauma, was visiting us; she left yesterday. We were a little trepidatious when we heard she was coming because she's 21 and from Latvia and we didn't really know what kind of person she would be or whether we would be able to show a 21-year-old from Latvia a good time, but fears were unfounded---she turned out to be a very pleasant young woman and we really enjoyed having her visit. Which was good because last weekend was very hectic. As I may have mentioned, we intended to play a Mothers' Day show with the Xylenes, so when that plan was hatched, I invited my mother up for that weekend. Well, the show got cancelled but I never called my mom about it, and when I remembered, I called and my dad said how much mom was looking forward to coming up, so they came to visit. Meanwhile, my friend Peter, who used to live around here and was my co-conspirator and boon companion in my car hobby, was in town and wanted to get together. And, somehow through a mechanism that I never understood, we ended up hosting a Mother's Day dinner for Kris' extended family. So it was a pretty busy weekend, but Lauma was a big help and made things easier rather than more difficult.

Me and Lauma at the art museum in Milwaukee.

This past weekend was pretty hectic too, with a meeting of our book club in Milwaukee and a Bill Tucker & Friends house party on Saturday, and getting Lauma to the airport and then going to my friend's daughter's graduation concert for the School of Rock Beatles class on Sunday, followed by some work on the club history article for the program of the Alfa Romeo Owners' Club national convention.

Rocking with Bill Tucker at the Castaway Collective, 5/17/08.

Back from Tour

2008-04-15T13:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I returned from my tour yesterday. (Edit: when I started writing this, it was yesterday; now it's last week.) It was quite an experience. It has seemed for a long time like things have been building up to this, and now that I'm back I hope I can find an equilibrium again. I was proud of myself in January and February for averaging about a post a week here---I fell off that wagon in March, but I hope to get back on it again.

The tour was a really interesting experience. I'm not sure how much it was a typical band van tour experience, but it was fun and very educational.

Some weeks ago I signed on to play bass for Bill Tucker and Friends, specifically on a tour that Bill had set up of the south. Some of the gigs we were working towards fell through, but in the end we played three shows in five days. Along the way I learned a lot about a segment of society I haven't had much contact with.

My bandmates are all in their mid-twenties, about 15 years younger than me. I don't really know many people of that age group, and as I've been sliding into middle age I've seen myself settling down into a fairly regular, comfortable existence that doesn't involve interacting that much with the rest of the world, so spending six days in close contact with four twentysomethings, traveling through their community of friends and associates, was bound to be educational.

There was something of a paradigm shift that took place among American youth in the late 80s or early 90s, by which point I was already beyond the point where I would have been susceptible to it, so I didn't really appreciate it. But younger people who grew up in the 90s and 00s have been more seriously affected by it. I think it comes from a sense that We (the country, or humanity in general) is doing bad things, of which young people do not approve and with which they do not want to be associated, but at the same time feel powerless to affect. Reduced to simplest terms, whereas when I was growing up there was generally a sense of optimism, societally, nowadays I think there is more of a feeling of pessimism, if not despair. I think this underlies the "angst" that has defined a lot of youth popular culture since the late 80s or early 90s. People of course react differently to this, but some (including some of my bandmates and their friends I met on the tour) respond by to an extent anyway withdrawing from society and living in a strange and interesting countercultural world, under the radar of society at large. One of the most interesting aspects of this is an anti-consumer mentality: "DIY" is apparently a movement, i.e., people making things themselves instead of buying them, and/or repairing broken things instead of replacing them with new purchases. Another manifestation is a practice of buying as much as possible used instead of new.

Having lived a pretty much middle-of-the-road existence myself thus far, it was interesting and thought-provoking to live in that world for a week.

But anyway, here are some pictures from the tour. First, the band:

Bill Tucker, guitar and vocals; moi, bass; Chris Castellan, drums; and John Salt, tuba.

Here's John and Chris with the Sparrowses, a husband/wife rootsy/bluegrassy duo with whom we shared the stage in Bloomington, Indiana. They also put us up for the night after that show.

We had some time before the show in Bloomington so we held an impromptu parade.

Our arty band photo. Astute blog readers may recognize the Beer Nuts t-shirt. This was at a gas station somewhere in Mississippi or Louisiana, I think.

On stage at Sluggo's in Pensacola.

On stage (well, patio) at (well, behind) the Ole Mug in Foley, Alabama.

Just a quick note

2008-03-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

The month has been rolling on and I've been pretty busy, so I haven't been posting at the rate I would prefer. But I'm still here and I still intend to keep this blog up---just no new big news or profound thoughts to share. I did finish my essay about Norwegian black metal, but for some reason known only to Blogger, it posted it as of the date I STARTED it, not the date I FINISHED it, so it's further down on the page---it's like it was from early February. So, scroll down to that and take a look at it! I spent a lot of time putting in all the fun links to interesting things.

I've had a chance to play a bit more with Bill Tucker and Friends, the band with which I'm going on tour in April. I'm really enjoying playing with them, and I think once we get comfortable with each other it will be a very good band. The Xylenes have been hit with a spate of illnesses so we had to reschedule our intended spring show---a month ago, we were hoping to play next week, but then we missed a couple weeks of rehearsal, and rather than do a shorter or less polished show (a relative thing with the Xylenes, but still), we decided to push the date off for a bit. We are now planning on playing a special Mothers' Day show, probably actually the day after Mothers' Day. We're going to try to get our mothers involved---Kelly's mom is going to get up and sing a duet with her, and Kris' mom is going to play the chime tree with us. We're going to learn favorite songs of my mom's and Amber's mom's to play for them, since they will be there; I'm going to see if my mom will play tambourine, too. Mort's mom and Dori's mom are far out of state and won't be able to join us live in person, but hopefully we can do something for them too. We'll offer flowers to anyone else's mom who comes to the show. As Amber says, our moms are absolutely our biggest fans---it will be fun and nice to make them a part of the show.

You know how sometimes you know something in the front of your mind, but it may not have actually sunk all the way in? Over the last couple months I've probably bought too many guitars, and I'm feeling a little over-extended. I'm having to sell a couple others, which is okay because I don't play them much and I'd rather have the new ones, but the sense of urgency is unpleasant. But in each case, it was a rare and special opportunity to get something that I might not come across again, and each individual transaction could be justified on that basis . . . but, what I've now learned in a more visceral way is that there is always some once-in-a-lifetime deal out there, and one can go broke simply taking advantages of great deals that will never come again, either unheard-of prices or rarely-for-sale items. So, I am now publicly swearing off buying more guitars. If you hear that I've bought another guitar in the next six months at least, feel free to remind me that I promised not to do so, and deride me for my lack of willpower. But I don't intend to buy any more, no matter how unique the opportunity that comes along.

At least, I have acquired some really neat instruments lately . . . I posted about the Rickenbacker 330 I got in January, and mentioned the Rickenbacker 660/12 I got a few weeks ago. Well, I also acquired another neat Rickenbacker, a 340 with vintage-style pickups and a tremolo, in the limited-edition Color of the Year for 2002, Burgundyglo! It was one of those "once in a lifetime" deals---this may well be a unique guitar. Now I have a little family of Rickenbackers.

But, since I'm actively playing bass in a band again, I've been focusing on basses too. I got an SX Precision-style bass a while back, just to have as a backup. Also, I had a Jazz Bass that I got from my sister, on the understanding that if she ever needed a bass, I would give it back, or provide her with another bass at least as good, so since I decided I didn't care for the Jazz Bass, I sold it, and needed to get another bass to give Maria if she decides some day that she wants to take up bass again. After many years, she's started studying guitar again, so maybe that is not as hypothetical as it once appeared. Anyway, I had to do some work on it and I used it as the basis of some photo essays about fret leveling and nut making, which I posted on a guitar forum.

But then other amazing bass deals started coming out of the woodwork. Gibson came out with a new bass last year as part of its "Guitar of the Week" program: the Les Paul Money Bass, a limited-edition double-cutaway Les Paul bass which was pretty cool. In recent weeks, dealers have been blowing out the remaining unsold ones at way way less than the regular price, and way under what (I think) they're worth, so I snapped one up. Here it is next to my Gibson Ripper, one of my favorite basses that I've had for a number of years.

But then I came across a very rare bird for sale: an Acoustic Black Widow. I've mentioned before I think my interest in Acoustic amplifiers. Well, they also sold a guitar and bass for a while in the 70s. Some of the later models were actually made for them by Mosrite, but seem to have escaped (for the moment) the skyrocketing prices that proper Mosrites have shown in recent years (i.e., since I sold the one I had for cheap, goddamnit). Besides being one of the ultimate Acoustic collectibles, it's also a pretty cool bass in its own right. It has not arrived yet.

If you're thinking, "Damn, Chuck, that's a lot of guitars to buy," what can I say: when you're right you're right, and you're right. If I had to do it over again, I probably would have passed on a couple, although I can't say I'm sorry to have any of them! It's just made things a little tight, and I've sold a number of my old instruments and have a couple more on the block. (If you're interested in a Yamaha SBG 2000, or a Gibson Reverse Flying V, drop me a line!)

And then another friend has offered me a good deal on a Rickenbacker 4001 bass . . . but I may be able to do a partial trade on that one and he's okay with me paying him later . . .

But THAT'S IT! Gear Acquisition Syndrome: it's ugly. But, at least every time I have that realization, "You know, I've bought too many guitars," it causes me to reevaluate what I'm looking for. And I'm getting better gear, and gear that may actually go up in value, or at least hold its value.

Rock on!

Going on Tour

2008-02-27T16:17:00.001-08:00

Well, THIS has been an eventful week.

First, some background: one of the Internet communities in which I participate is the Unofficial Acoustic Control Corporation Forum, a forum about musical equipment made by Acoustic Control Corporation. Acoustic made guitar amplifiers, bass amplifiers, PA equipment and speaker cabinets (among other things) from the late 60s to the early 80s. At the time it was some of the best gear you could get, but for reasons I do not understand they fell out of fashion and for many years the brand was moribund, although within the last year it has been revived, and for the first time in a long time you can buy new Acoustic amps. But of significance to this story is that the amps they made in their heyday were really quite good amps, and often they can now be found for quite low prices---so the savvy consumer (e.g., me) can find good bargains. Over the last year or so I've managed to track down several Acoustic amps. A group of like-minded folk hang out on the Acoustic forum and exchange information, technical tips, and leads on gear for sale.

One of the other regulars on the board, Jesse, who runs the Acoustic MySpace page, also lives in Chicago. We met in person when we made a deal to trade a couple amps, and then I tried to help him with a problem he was having with a bass he owned. Last week I got an e-mail from him, saying that he and some friends were going to a guitar show on Sunday, and would I like to go with them? It worked out time-wise, so I went. The guitar show itself was not successful---I was looking for a Rickenbacker 12-string and they had none; hardly any Ricks of any description. If I had been looking for a Gretsch, I would have been in good shape; they were all over the place. And a not-very-surprising assortment of old Gibsons and Fenders. (Slight digression---so, not having found the guitar of my dreams at the show, I ordered a Rickenbacker 660/12 in Midnight Blue from a dealer in Wisconsin. It arrived today, but I have been warned not to open the case for 24 hours, to give it time to adjust to the temperature, having spent a couple days in unheated trucks and warehouses in the Midwestern winter. I am impatient!)

Also on the jaunt to the guitar show was Jesse's friend Bill and Bill's friend Kevin. Bill is a musician and had with him his latest CD, and we listened to it in the car on the way to the show. I liked it. In the course of the conversation, Bill mentioned that he was looking for a bass player for an upcoming tour. Such statements conjure visions of months spent crisscrossing the country, but it came out enventually that the tour in question was only about a week in duration---basically a trip from Chicago to New Orleans and back, stopping along the way to play shows. Six out-of-town dates were planned, with shows in Chicago before and after to bookend the event.

Now, I have been in many bands and played hundreds of shows at all kinds of venues, but one part of band life I never experienced was the indie van tour. As I've grown older and gotten more settled, I had just assumed that I never would---I wasn't going to quit my job to go try to be a rock star.

But I could certainly see taking a few days off from work to live the dream. So after a conversation with Jesse in which he assured me that Bill was a good guy and stable, I offered my services. Bill seemed receptive and after the show we came back and jammed a bit, and it seemed to go well. I was invited to meet and audition for the rest of his band, which happened yesterday. That went well too---I like the music, I like the band, and they seemed to like me. And most importantly, Kris had no objections to me taking off for a week in a van with a bunch of musicians, believe it or not.

So, it looks like it's on! Come April, I will be going on tour as bassist for Bill Tucker and Friends, playing dates in Bloomington, IN, New Orleans, Pensacola, somewhere in Alabama, and Chattanooga, with the shows before and after in Chicago. Jesse and I are going to outfit the band with a full Acoustic backline, which will be news in certain circles.

I am really looking forward to this. At 41, I assumed my chance to do this was behind me, and I am really tickled that I will get to do it after all. It should be a hoot, and provide lots of fun stories and pictures, and you can read all about it here. As the plans are confirmed I will post specific info here.

In other news: before I started this blog, I had a blog of sorts on my MySpace page. I didn't update it as regularly as I do this one---I'm not sure why, but for some reason I'm more likely to post here. Anyway, if you just can't get enough of my musings, you can find more of them there.

A Great Band

2008-02-20T18:18:00.001-08:00

From time to time I feel shame because I don't go see more bands. There are few things I love more than a good live music performance, but the transaction costs of finding the good bands can get kind of high---bars don't seem to exercise much quality control, and before I invest the time (and usually lost sleep) in going to see one I like to have at least a decent expectation that they have some merit.

So last year I e-mailed a bunch of my music-savvy friends asking for recommendations of bands to go see, and my friend Dan (not the friend Dan who came to the Big Brew, another friend Dan---I have multiple friends Dan), recommended a good one. Dan works as a recording engineer and a live sound man at local venues, so (a) he sees a LOT of bands, and (b) it takes a lot to impress him. But he mentioned that he was actually going to see this band on his night off, which was about the strongest recommendation for a band I can imagine.

Dan

The band in question was Union Pulse, who are from Milwaukee. I joined Dan and some friends at a show at Elbo Room, and I was very impressed. They are a thrashy pop-rock band, but they do it remarkably well: they have a very high-energy stage show, their songs are hooky and memorable, and James Redding is an ohmygod guitarist. It's so refreshing to go watch somebody play who is so in tune with the guitar, who throws off neat little licks and riffs so effortlessly. They have some tunes up on their MySpace page, but the studio recordings, while good, really don't do justice to these guys. Their forte is their live show.

So anyway, they came back through town on Saturday, thanks to Dan's intercession---his band had a gig and the club told them they could book another band on the bill, so he called up Union Pulse, and they came down. It was another great show. I tend to get kind of jaded about the music scene but seeing a show like that reminds me that yes, there is still great music out there to be found.

If you know of a good local band, or at least someone who plays in Chicago regularly, post a comment and let me (and all three other people who actually read this) know about it!

And, check Union Pulse's schedule of upcoming shows---they've been playing in other parts of the country, so maybe they'll be somewhere near you. If you have a chance, go see them---you won't be disappointed.

(Ironically, I didn't get to see Dan's band play on Saturday because they were on last and I had to catch the last train home. But next time, I'm there!)

Union Pulse in action, apparently around Christmas.

The Big Brew

2008-02-11T04:41:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a bit longer than I intended since my last entry, but I started working on an essay of sorts that is taking longer than I thought, and it's been a busy week or so, too. But eventually that will see the light of day.

In the mean time, yesterday I had some friends over to make a batch of beer.

I got interested in beer (for its own sake, as more than just a social lubricant) in my later college years---Coslow's pub in Champaign had a fairly wide selection of beers, especially for the time (mid-late 80s), and I discovered the joys of McEwan's Scotch Ale, a thick, dark, sweet beer unlike anything I had ever had. When I was in law school, I decided to take a stab at making some beer of my own. There was a shop in Ann Arbor that sold kits, so I whipped up a few batches. They were okay. I made some more while I was living with my parents studying for the bar, but when I moved up to Chicago to start working I was really cramped for space, so my brewing equipment stayed in Springfield.

Many years later, after I got married, we went down to Springfield and brought up all the rest of my stuff that was still at my folks', and my beermaking paraphernalia made the trip up. Then, a couple years ago, some friends mentioned making some beer, and we pulled it out again, supplemented with some of another friend's gear, and made some more beer. I believe that first batch was an English Brown Ale. It turned out well, and more beer followed. Another friend, coincidentally, was starting a homebrewing club around that time, which I joined, and for about a year we brewed fairly regularly.

As part of my newly invigorated brewing hobby, I joined the American Homebrewer's Association. They have a promotional program: "Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day," which is the first Saturday in November, when they encourage members to invite non-brewing friends to a brewing session, in hopes of getting them interested and involved. So for the past two years I've hosted a small brewing party. In 2006 we had a good time but none of the attendees caught the bug, but in 2007, several of the people who came subsequently got their own kits and started brewing beer! One of my co-workers, Katherine, had brought her husband Jim to the TaFtHB Day party, they had a good time, and for Christmas she got him a kit. And, Kelly from the Xylenes picked up a kit for herself too.

To encourage them, I thought it would be fun to get them together and make a big batch of beer. The brewing club had a big conical fermenter (the Fermenator) that was going more or less unused, so I borrowed that, everybody came over, and we brewed up 10 gallons of Kolsch, a golden ale style native to Koln/Cologne (depending on whether you speak German or French). Brewing is actually about a one-and-a-half man job, but it's a lot more fun with a few friends around. And more excitingly, everybody brought examples of their homebrewing endeavors, and their beers were good! My friend Dan besides helping out at the recent TaFtHB Day brew, was part of the first brewing session here in Chicago from a few years ago---he hadn't brewed before, but he took to it like a duck to water---he brought four beers, a mead, and a gruit he made. All were well received, although the gruit (a beer made with various herbs rather than hops) was of more historical interest. Hops are relatively recent additions to the conventional recipe for beer, having only come to prominence in the last few centuries. It was interesting to see what beer may have been like before they became standard. Dan's gruit was made with wormwood, gale, and rosemary. Jim had a pithy comment: "I wouldn't buy a six-pack of it, but I'd buy something like it." It was an experiment, and may be subject to further refining.

Kelly had made a "Pilsener" (although fermented with ale yeast) that turned out light and tasty, and Jim and Katherine brought a red ale. While poking around in the basement I found a 12-pack of beer still left from the first TaFtHB Day brew, back in 2006. We cracked a couple of them open, and that beer---an American red ale--- had aged very nicely! Certain light styles may suffer from age, but most beers will continue to get better for a long time before they start getting worse. Unfortunately, most homebrewers don't have the patience to keep their beer around for months and months! But I had forgotten this stuff was there, so I've still got 10 bottles of what is now excellent beer! This year's TaFtHB Day brew was a Belgian dubbel of sorts, turned out great from a flavor perspective, but it did not carbonate as expected. We added carb tabs to about a case of those bottles, and we'll see if that works to give them some fizz.

The Fermenator was free because the beer club had gone moribund about a year ago, but interestingly, when I inquired about using it, the rest of the club members were asked if they minded, and many of them responded with comments along the lines of, "Hey, we should get back together and make some more beer!" So it looks like, after this batch is done, the club may be re-vitalized.

In the mean time, as Charlie Papazian, the godfather of American homebrewing, says: "Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew!"

Cursed Realms of the Winterdemons

2008-02-06T19:18:00.000-08:00

We've gotten a lot of snow here lately, more this winter than I can recall for a long time. Winter and snow naturally bring to mind Immortal.

What, you mean you're not familiar with Immortal, one of the bands that (arguably) defines the genre of Norwegian black metal? Actually, don't feel bad. I didn't know who they were until they were prominently featured a few years ago in ruthlessreviews.com' "Top Ten Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics of All Time" and the follow-up "(The Other) Top Ten Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics of All Time," (NSFW) which made the rounds of the internet in e-mails with messages like, "You've got to check this out!"

I must admit, I was fascinated, on a purely sociological level. What prompts grown men to do things like this?

So I sought out some black metal. Conveniently, there's a web site called Black Metal Radio at which you can listen to a number of the bands featured in the ruthlessreviews.com pictures. Now, I like to think I'm fairly open-minded, and in fact I went through a period as a youth when I was into heavy metal (that was before it fractured into all the sub-genres---Wikipedia lists 30 different ones as I write this; maybe more tomorrow). But I listened to some of this stuff with jaw on floor . . . you know how some people say that rap is not really "music"? Some black metal provokes the same kind of reaction: a lot of it just feels like an assault of noise, with no melody to speak of and all the groove of a jackhammer. Truly, some of this stuff is beyond parody. Not all of it, I hasten to add; some of it was interesting.

The Top Ten Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics came out a few years ago but I was recently reminded of them by a thread on TalkBass.com about bands with "Cookie Monster" vocals, which contained a link to a YouTube compilation of the Ten Most Ridiculous Black Metal Videos of All Time, which in some ways is even more---I can't think of the word, but you know that uncomfortable feeling you get when you see somebody doing something really embarrassing? Even more like that. And Immortal placed in that top ten as well (three times), but what was really funny was where somebody took their video to "Call of the Wintermoon" and put some...different...music to it. (See the result.)

What Immortal demonstrates, by taking the idea to its ultimate conclusion, is that metal, beyond just being a form of music, is a philosophy or lifestyle. I don't know about every metal band, but I read an interview with Abbath and Demonaz from Immortal and that is real life for them---even before they were a band they used to put on makeup and go stalk the snowy Norse woods, living this kind of...well, it's tough to put into words but whatever it is, it's cold, dark, harsh, powerful and arcane, some sort of primal elemental force to which they feel connected. Lots of black metal bands adopt the trappings of Satanism but I get the feeling that they (well, most of them) are not really serious about it. Immortal strike me as more pre-Christian than anti-Christian in their orientation. Although I am not really a big fan of their music, I have some respect for Immortal for being true to themselves.

But if you understand that metal is emblematic of a philosophy or world view beyond its significance as music, it explains a couple things:

First, metalheads' fanatical devotion to their music: If you like jazz and somebody tells you that jazz sucks, that may be irritating, but in most cases, it doesn't go much beyond that. But if a metalhead is told that metal sucks, it is not just a difference of opinion or comment on his musical taste, it is an assault on the very pillars of his being. If you read the comments on the Most Ridiculous Black Metal Pics page you will see what I mean. The level of virulence displayed by the advocates and detractors of various bands and genres is surprising, but less so when you realize that those exchanges are equivalent to the sorts of donnybrooks you can find when people get talking about religion or politics. It is the same dynamic. To avoid unseemly conflict, perhaps metal should be added to the list of things not discussed in polite society. (I don't think most of polite society would mind.)

And, the splintering of metal into dozens of sub-genres that only the true fanatics can tell apart: Given my premise above, a metalhead encountering with metal music he doesn't like is faced with a quandry, a paradox: by definition metal = good, and yet, Band X really sucks... Does Not Compute. The way metal true believers have found to resolve this dilemma is thus: Band X which sucks does not play REAL metal, or proper metal, i.e., metal of the listener's favorite genre. For instance, there is (apparently; I don't understand such things myself) room to debate whether Cradle of Filth is a black metal band or a death metal band. I think the answer depends on (a) whether you consider yourself a black metal fan or a death metal fan, and (b) whether you like Cradle of Filth. If you're a black metal fan and hate CoF, then they must be a death metal band.

For the most part, the appeal of a lot of this music eludes me, but I find it fascinating. And even if you're sure you hate it, the black metal pictures and videos should at least be interesting. By the way, the title of this post ("Cursed Realms of the Winterdemons") is a song from Immortal's album Battles in the North.

Obscure Music Search: So much for being able to find anything on the Web

2008-01-31T09:29:00.000-08:00

My wife, Kris, is Latvian. Actually, she was born in the U.S. but her parents came over from Latvia after WWII, and they all speak Latvian, have close relatives living in Latvia, and are still culturally connected to Latvia and the Latvian community here.

She has several tapes of Latvian pop music---artifacts of a commercial venture some relative was involved in back in the 90s some time. Music is a big part of Latvian culture and for a relatively small country they produce a lot of it. One day, out of curiosity, I put some of them on while puttering around the house. For the most part, they were pleasant enough pop songs; they were largely vocally driven and I don't know much Latvian myself (to the disappointment of my in-laws) so I didn't get the full effect. And, many of the songs were recorded with what sounded like the rhythm settings from an electronic organ for backing---not the sort of arrangements I usually get excited about.

But there was one song that really leapt off the tape: it was a bouncy little number called "Meksika" ("Mexico") by a band called Lauku Musikanti (the Country Musicians). They were a real, full band, with a full complement of instruments, including a very jaunty and engaging accordion. This became one of my favorite songs. Whenever I played it it made me happy.

Well, on Monday, attempting to share it with the rest of the band, I was devastated when my cheap tape deck ate the tape containing my only copy! So, I set out to find another copy.

One would think that after so many years of the sprawling Internet it would be fairly simple to find information on a band that had released multiple albums in a vibrant music culture and technologically savvy place like Latvia, but that was not the case. With Kris translating, we dug around various Latvian web sites, including Lauku Musikanti's page on what appears to be the Latvian version of MySpace Music. Their biography there informed us that they had formed in 1987 and that "Meksika" had been on their first album, which must have been out by 1993 since that was the date on the tape Kris had. But they only had detailed information about their most recent albums. A search for the older album was unsuccessful. We did find a current picture of them:

Unlike MySpace, to join the Latvian site you must be invited, so we couldn't sign up and send them a message through that site. Kris is going to see if someone she knows in Latvia can help us find a copy of their first album. If all else fails, one or more of her younger cousins seem to always be going over there to visit people or on youth tours, so maybe one of them can find it for me.

Theater

2008-01-26T04:36:00.000-08:00

Well, this week was shaping up to be a pretty ordinary week until Wednedsay, when some friends called and offered the wife and me some tickets to Jersey Boys, the musical about the Four Seasons. Chicago has a very high per-capita concentration of theater, and we've been to lots of shows, but I had never been to one of the big "Broadway in Chicago" shows downtown, so I was intrigued. I would not have spent the big bucks to see one just out of curiosity, but our friend's boss' wife's untimely illness presented the opportunity. (Not to devalue the big productions---it's just that there are so many little storefront theater groups doing great work for relatively low ticket prices, that you can see a lot of good theater in Chicago without having to deal with the prices and parking hassles of theater down in the tourist zone.)

The show itself was fun. The story of the band was (it turned out, when I later looked them up on Wikipedia) streamlined and idealized almost to the point of fiction, but it was engaging, and the music was good. Everybody knows the Four Seasons big hits, if you hear them, but I hadn't really had a sense of just how many great pop songs they had cranked out over the years. After "Sherry Baby" and "Walk Like a Man", I was thinking, Okay, now what? But over the rest of the show, as they went through the rest of the Four Seasons hits (and Frankie Valli solo stuff---the line between the two is blurry) I kept thinking, Oh yeah! I remember that one!

The Four Seasons rose to prominence and for a while ruled the charts in the post-Elvis / pre-Beatles interlude, and a huge part of the audience was people who had been young then reliving their youth---at intermission I heard several conversations around us of people reminiscing about the good old days. I suppose that is the point of the show, and I wonder whether the same sort of thing took place with people a few years younger at productions of Movin' Out or Mamma Mia! (If I was smart I'd start now putting together a feel-good nostalgia play based around the songs of one of the great 80s pop bands, for my generation. The Cars, maybe?) But even without the nostalgia factor working in my case, it was still an enjoyable show, and one of our friends left determined to get a Four Seasons greatest hits album, which was probably the other point of the show.

New Guitar Day!

2008-01-19T08:22:00.000-08:00

Actually, New Guitar Day was Thursday, but that's my big news for this week. Check it out:

That's a Rickenbacker 330/6 FG. It was made in 1995 but it's in remarkably good shape. And it plays and sounds as good as it looks!

This past year has been an interesting and educational year for me re music gear, and my experiences revealed something about myself to me.

There's a part of my personality that is a compulsive collector, that wants to have one of everything. I've been playing guitar for years but for most of that time I couldn't afford to actually buy most of the guitars I was interested in. In recent years I've been in somewhat better shape so coinciding with a renewed/increased interest in music, I started buying more instruments. I've always been the kind of person who'd rather have three okay guitars than one really nice one---one never knows when one will need the distinctive tone of Instrument X.

But at the same time, as I got more guitars, I realized that I didn't really get that much satisfaction from just having them, and no matter how many I had, I tended to gravitate towards the same two or three most of the time. I don't like having guitars I don't play. But at the same time, I really like the guitars I have. They're (almost) all really good instruments. Every time I think I should unload some, I play them and remember why I liked them in the first place.

In any event, I'm not really actively shopping for more guitars right now. There are two variants that I'd like to have that I don't currently possess (to wit, a hollowbody electric and something with P-90 pickups) but those are low-priority goals.

But...

I've really become a big fan of Rickenbackers lately. If Gibson and Fender are the Coke and Pepsi of the guitar world, Rickenbacker is the RC Cola. They've always been around and everybody's heard of them, but they're a little bit different from the big two and you just don't see them that often.

Their place in history was assured by the Beatles: all three guitar-playing Beatles played Rickenbackers at some point. Most early Beatles clips show John Lennon with his model 325; George Harrison famously got one of the very first Rickenbacker electric 12-string guitars, which he used prominently on songs like "A Hard Day's Night", and Paul McCartney can be seen playing his model 4001 bass in the "I Am the Walrus" clip from Magical Mystery Tour.

Actually Rickenbacker basses are very popular and have been used by legions of famous bass players, but the guitars have remained further out on the fringes. Electric 12-strings are an odd little segment of the guitar universe, but within that segment Rickenbackers are dominant. Besides George Harrison, Roger McGuinn of the Byrds used one to create that distinctive Byrds jangle, and Tom Petty is also commonly associated with Ricks. Other Rick players include Paul Kantner back in the Jefferson Airplane days, and more recently, Johnny Marr from the Smiths, Peter Buck from R.E.M., the Smithereens, and one of the guys from Radiohead.

Since it was a variant I didn't have and had a distinctive tone, I had long wanted to add a Rick to my collection/arsenal. And, I like and respect Rickenbacker as a company. Fender and Gibson have each been sold during their existence---a couple times, I think---and as a result there have been ups and downs in quality over the years: certain periods are considered less desirable by collectors; both companies went through "dark ages" in the 70s. But Rickenbacker is and has been a family-owned company for several generations, and despite opportunities to get bigger or capitalize on their name by bringing out a cheap line of imported mass-produced instruments, they have remained relatively small and still build all their guitars by hand in California. They've never gone through a "bad" period. They've undoubtedly passed by a fair amount of quick money by taking the position they have, but they are preserving the long-term stability and good name of the company, and I respect them for doing that.

Anyhow, over the summer, I found a good deal on this one:

That's a 360/6 JG. Getting it delivered was a bit of a nightmare, but that's a story for another day. I quickly fell in love with it and it became one of my go-to guitars. Although Ricks are mostly known for their jingle-jangle rhythm guitar sound, they are capable of much more. I used it exclusively for the last Xylenes show.

(There's a Strat in that picture too but it was just a back-up; I never plugged it in.) If you check the set list in the blog on our MySpace page, you'll see what a diverse set we played. The Rick worked great for everything.

Ricks sound different from other guitars so if you have an amp set to get a good sound with a Rick, it won't sound good with, say, a Strat or a Gibson, and vice versa. So of course in the back of my mind was the thought, I really should get another Rick for a backup, if I'm going to be playing this 360 regularly for shows.

And then lo and behold, this 330 popped up on craigslist, at a good price. I felt the hand of fate tapping me on the shoulder. I love the classic Fireglo finish, and the slightly more angular body style. And although technically it's very similar to my 360, it definitely has a different character when plugged in and played. I'm really digging it. But I think I'm definitely going to have to sell something now. Probably my Ibanez electric 12-string. Of course, then I'd need another electric 12-string...

If you're interested in Rickenbackers, the Rickenbacker corporation web site is really pretty good. For even more information, the RickResource fan site is the place to go.

Please excuse me; I'm going to go play my guitar.

Vanity

2008-01-13T14:56:00.001-08:00

...or, "No Matter What You Put On Top, Underneath is Still a Pudgy Middle-Aged Man"

So, this week I had cause to confront again an issue that contributed to one of the things that may have defined (in part) 2007 for me. Among other things, 2007 was The Year Chuck Had Long Hair.

There was a time when I really, really wanted to have cool rock and roll hair. While I was in college, and having discovered "college" music, I wanted to look radical, with hair like Robert Smith from the Cure, but I was hampered by two things: one, my existing hair was not long enough to do anything too radical with, and two, I was living in Springfield and/or Quincy, Illinois, which were not particularly progressive when it came to hairstyles. And, the wide varieties of chemicals you can find today in any department store were not widely available. I remember going into the hair salon in the local Venture with a magazine picture of Sigue Sigue Sputnik as an example of what I was looking for, and realizing that hair of that nature was far outside the parameters of the poor woman working there. I had imagined that hair stylists were frustrated artists, who would be grateful for the opportunity to create something noteworthy, but in Springfield in 1985, that was not the case.

So, I stuck with my relatively conservative hair style for many years, but in August of 2006 I had an experience that brought the issue back to my conscious consideration. I'm in this band, the Xylenes. It was formed earlier in 2006 with some friends from work who had not played before, but notwithstanding that, our bass player's husband asked/allowed us to play at his birthday party, which was held at a local bowling alley. The spectacle was captured in photographs, some of which are reproduced here. Now, the show went pretty well, but I was a little bit mortified later when I saw these pictures. Aside from the fashion lapse of the Beer Nuts t-shirt and expansive shorts, I was really disillusioned with how I looked in these pictures.

See, being a rock musician has for many years been a part of my identity, of how I think of myself. But looking at these pictures, I thought, this guy doesn't look very rock. It had been a few years since I'd been in a band, and I'll admit it, I ballooned a little bit during that time. That, coupled with my clean-shaven, short-haired look added up to something that just was not cool. Looking at these pictures, I vowed to do something to improve my image. I adopted a motto: "Better to be a lawyer who looks like a musician, than a musician who looks like a lawyer."

Now, for someone with my lifestyle and lack of willpower, the most obvious route---start working out and eat less junk food---was not realistic; I've tried that on multiple occasions with the best of intentions but so far it hasn't stuck. (Although, I live in hope.) But one thing I could do was grow out my hair. So for over a year I didn't get it cut (barring a single "shaping" incident in the spring.) And I grew a beard.

And I suppose it worked, to an extent. I don't know; judge for yourself. I look less like an accountant in these pictures than I did before, certainly. (Not that there's anything wrong with accountants, but . . . you know what I mean.) But in these I'm freshly groomed, and I fear that the more usual effect was more like the picture below. In other words, most of the time---when I saw myself in mirrors or windows---I just looked like a scruffy bum. And when the cats walked across my pillow in their nightly perambulations, they would step on my hair and it would pull painfully.

My personal preference would be for the ultra-low maintenance haircut, i.e., the clipper buzz. For a while in the 90s I went with that look:

. . . but my wife has issued one of her rare ultimatums on the subject, so for now this one is out.

After months of trying to come to terms with the long hair, always hoping that it would eventually grow out to the point where it would suddenly look good and be easy to deal with, I must admit I gave up and got it cut. I told the barber I wanted it cut short but I don't think he believed me; he advocated a mid-length style, but that didn't really look much better (IMO). Finally I got it cut again and it's now medium-short (but still long enough to preserve domestic tranquility).

So anyway, this week we had band practice and one of the band members took some pictures to put on our MySpace page, including the one below. By unhappy coincidence, I was wearing the same Beer Nuts t-shirt as at the bowling alley show. It makes for a sad juxtaposition. I guess I'm going to have to come to terms with my general pudgy, middle-aged, short-haired un-cool-ness.

So, what is "Asi achih!" anyway? A bit about Jack Vance

2008-01-05T07:50:00.000-08:00

My favorite writer is Jack Vance. Tragically, throughout his extensive career he has flown beneath the literary radar due to having worked in genres that get no respect---science fiction, fantasy, mystery. However, I believe that he is one of the great literary stylists of the English language, bar none, no qualifications. The only other writers I can think of that I'd put in the same category are Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. I'm not saying he's the "best writer", although he'd be on my personal short list in that category too. He goes in the elite company in which I place him because those three authors have this in common: each has the ability to make my smile and occasionally chuckle out loud with delight at the cleverness of the way they say things. In just about any Vance work once he hit his stride (i.e., just about any of his numerous books or stories from the mid-60s on) one can pick a page at random and be assured of finding some clever turn of phrase or exceptionally witty dialogue. And in his use of language Vance is unparalleled. I've got a huge vocabulary, but Vance regularly surprised me. Many words that I thought were made up have turned out to be real (albeit obscure) words, used with great precision.

One of the great experiences of my life was being involved in production of the Vance Integral Edition. The VIE was an unprecedented project, made possible by the rise of the internet: a group of Vance fans from around the world pooled their efforts to produce a definitive edition of Vance's complete works. Because much of Vance's work was published in pulp magazines or cheap mass-market paperbacks, the editorial hand was often heavy and intrusive---much of his work was modified (in some cases, mangled) between his pen and publication. So one of the things the VIE volunteers did was to go back (to the extent possible) to the original sources and return the texts as much as possible to what Jack intended. In some cases the original manuscripts were preserved; in other cases the task involved comparing various different published versions and trying to discern which was closest to the original. And against all odds we did it: the VIE published a 44-volume set of Vance's complete work.

Through my work for the VIE I had the chance to actually work with some of the original manuscripts, which are collected in the Mugar Library at Boston University. That was a thrill, although Jack's writing is nearly unreadable. He wrote his initial drafts in longhand on whatever paper was convenient---including letters from his publishers or his son's math homework---but a lot of them were written on the back of typewritten drafts of earlier work. Reviewing some of the manuscripts at the Mugar, I discovered on the backs of some, partial manuscripts of books that everyone had thought were lost. Based on those discoveries, the VIE added an additional supplemental volume including the "lost" texts. That was extremely gratifying. (The whole story of Volume 14bis has more to it than that; perhaps I'll elaborate one day.)

Anyway, my work on the VIE gave me a heightened familiarity with Vance's work. When I was thinking about a title/theme for this blog, a certain passage came to mind. I've quoted a little bit of it above, but here's the full passage:

From Peoples of the Coranne, by Richard Pelto:

The Darsh espouse each other only through calculation. The women judge the weight of the man’s duodecimates; the men taste the woman’s cooking and test the comfort of her dumble: so are Darsh marriages made. The two probably will not engage in sexual congress; both will surely go out on the moonlit desert to pursue their amatory affairs.

The marital relationship is formal and cool. Each party knows what is expected of him or her and, even more keenly, what he or she expects. If thwarted, the woman retaliates with rancid ahagaree or scorched pourrian; the man in his turn will throw less duodecimate upon the table, and spend his time at the beer-gardens.

In the morning, an hour before Cora-rise, the woman awakes the man who sullenly dons his day-clothes and goes to look at the sky. He utters a phrase of rather hollow optimism, in loose translation: “It will be good!” and sets off to his sift. The woman looks after him with a dark phrase of her own: “Go to it, fool!”

Late in the day the man returns. As he steps under the shade he takes a final glance around the sky and says, again in rather hollow tones: “Asi achih!” which means, “And so it went!” The woman, watching from the shadow of her dumble, merely chuckles quietly to herself.

Much of that may be obscure, taken out of context, but the general thrust is apparent. Ah, the Darsh of Dar Sai, one of Vance's most piquant creations! A culture remarkable for their sour disposition and horrific food. Actually in Darsh use "asi achih" has a fatalistic sense to it, as Vance explains further into that chapter in a footnote:

A Darsh expletive of fatalistic acceptance: “So be it!” or “That’s the way it goes!” The Darsh do not gracefully or philosophically accept misfortune; they are good grumblers. ‘Asi achih’ indicates the final recognition of defeat, or, as in this case, the inexorable force of destiny.

I do not intend my blog to constitute "final recognition of defeat", but I liked the image of the man returning at the end of the day, declaring, "And so it went!" to the bemusement of his mate. Fortunately my wife only occasionally manifests the characteristic Darsh malevolence.

The foregoing quotes are from Vance's book The Face, one of five books in his "Demon Princes" series, which trace the quest of a man for revenge on the five criminals who destroyed his family. Certain things make more sense if you read all five stories in order (starting with The Star King) but any can be read independently. You could do worse than The Face or any of the other Demon Princes books as an introduction to Vance, but I avidly recommend the following:

Maske: Thaery
Lyonesse (aka Suldrun's Garden)
Araminta Station
Night Lamp

Lyonesse and Araminta Station are the first volumes of trilogies, but if you are susceptible to Vance you will, upon getting into them, give thanks that there are more volumes to come in each story! Maske and Night Lamp are stand-alone novels.

If you are interested, a lot of VIE information is archived here.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Morning: Happy New Year

2008-01-01T11:39:00.000-08:00

Last year for Christmas my wife and I got snowshoes. Unfortunately, for the rest of that winter, we never had snow on the ground on a free weekend, so we never got to use them.

Last night it snowed several inches. Eschewing New Year's Eve revelry, we turned in relatively early, so we were up fairly early this morning. With the rest of the city asleep or hung over, the blanket of snow was relatively undisturbed; we dug our snowshoes out of the basement and went for a hike around the neighborhood. We snowshoed over to the Forest Preserve a few blocks away, and navigated some of the trails through the woods. I'd never been in there in the winter before. It was beautiful.

It may sound quaint or sappy, but walking through the snowy woods I felt a sense of renewal and invigoration---like for the first time in many years this new year actually meant something. I felt a sense of optimism like I haven't felt in quite a while.

A couple months ago a friend urged me to blog. For the new year, I'm going to take a stab at it. This will document what happens in this coming year. Here's hoping it will be a good one.