mettle

played sunday morning hockey, with three of the girls who will be on the travelling team.  one of them was on D on my side, and tried to headman a breakout pass to me (i’m centering a line).  it was wide, but it was the right play. 

on the sidelines it becomes apparent that she thought i should have caught up with it, which is fine.  so i tell her “look, i worked sixteen hours, got a 3 and a half hour nap, and now i’m here.  i’m gonna be a step slow today.”

her response?

“i have a pinched nerve and i can’t feel my right leg.  what time do you want me to schedule your pity party?”

i like her. 

we might have a chance to notch a win or two in this thing after all.

April 30, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

the season is open

it always surprises me when i see i haven’t blogged in a week or more. it never feels like that much time passes, but i guess it does. i’ve been busy, which is a good thing. haven’t played any cards since my last post. erps, i’ve played Gin Rummy in a losing effort against the wife. that ended well though, so no worries.

i told someone I may follow baseball more intently this year, as i see a couple of nights of bartending in my upcoming summer. so, i may as well pick a western team to follow so i have something to do during the 10-1:30 part of the weekday shift. he advised me against following baseball closely as it seems to eat up a large chunk of his life. when you follow something from behind a bar, you aren’t in danger of being drawn in by the subtleties. they’re lost between filling beers. it’s not the same.

spent friday night with the wife camping. the kids were invited, but said “i can’t see spending all this money on a house if we aren’t going to use it”. so it was me and the mrs. wonderful time. great weather, campfire cooking that worked (yay for experience), the perfect amount of grog, water view of the lake, small heated cabin with electricity.

two things struck me. after five hours, conversation progresses beyond sharing “to do” lists and work stories. and, when the kids aren’t around, you can talk about the kids. it was really important to break through our routine for a while. 

FLYERS – the game on Easter Sunday against the wings I caught bits and pieces of.  i have a feeling that the announcers were saying that the flyers were playing with the passion of a team in danger of missing the playoffs.  i could be wrong.  to me they FINALLY looked like they had some fire under their asses.  but it looked like Every Day Regular Season fire.  that should be standard.  i’m not impressed.  if they make the playoffs, it’s because the NHL is weak.  they are not a playoff caliber team.  if they make it, we either have a miracle transformation or an early exit. 

Pronger is the real deal.  he’s the big off season acquisition, and he’s been doing his part.  superstars skate in on him, realize what they’re up against, and turn back looking for a trailer.  that, makes a difference.  if it weren’t for him, it’d be Worse.

somewhere, someone ought to write an essay pointing out that a SHOT is a Continuation of a play.  it is not by necessity the Culmination of a play.  it is often your DUTY to shoot, knowing full well that your chances of scoring are horrible.  and i’m not talking about taking bad point shots on a power play.  i’m talking about the spineless aversion to shooting that leads to pittsburgh penguins disease – the extra pass that turns the puck over – all while pissing away the momentum that is puck possession combined with players rushing to/standing in front of the net. 

BIG RED – both teams dropped their Sweet 16 games.  that’s ok though.  it’s nice to have gotten that far.  Cornell is not exactly known for it’s athletics.  some success is a ray of sunshine.  the flyers are looking at their goalie, fwiw.

GREASE – my “how to repair small engines” material arrived today.  haven’t gotten to look at it yet, but i’m looking forward to ripping apart my first carberator.  it took forever to arrive, and i have machines that are already in need of some love and attention waiting for me to get to them.

There Ought to Be a Word – i feel as though there should be a word for the process of taking your rifle apart and reassembling it, especially while blindfolded.  i asked every marine and army grunt i could find what the name of that process was.  it went like this . . .

  • “hey, did you learn to what-cha-call a rifle in boot camp.  rip it apart, and put it back together with your eyes shut?” 
  • “oh yeah.  blindfolded.”
  • “what did they call that?  gentlemen, today we learn how to . . . what . . . our rifles?”
  • “they didn’t call it anything.”

Ack.  an obvious deficiency in the English language.

Terrorists – i have the new World Almanac as a source for trivia questions.  in it they describe the Molly Maguires as a “terrorist” organization.  that’s kindof like describing Harriet Tubman as a thief because those slaves were someone’s property, bought and paid for. 

i am, without a doubt, a capitalist.  but there is such a thing as oppressive capitalism. 

i drove through a series of coal patch towns on the camping trip, and they were obviously set up to house miners and their families in the same way we house cattle.  it’s a temporary thing, until they die or are broken in the mines.  the coal barons owned the miners homes, they controlled the work, the bosses scraped off the top (a miner might pull out a ton and a half  of coal, and a boss would scrape a half ton for himself and then log the man’s work for the day as One Ton of productivity), they were forced to buy at the company store.  every aspect of their lives was controlled to provide profit to the company.  sooner or later you have to rise up. 

i don’t know.  if someone has the screws to you, and they own the law enforcement (and mind you 130 years later i’m still seeing semi-local law enforcement and judges that are on the books), you’ll have to use your teeth to get out of that situation.  or that’s how i see it.  that terrorist label caught me by surprise, and it was a bit offensive, tbh.

Parting Shot – we didn’t have any rain here.  this is a pict from my buddy’s lower 40, which used to be across the street from me.  used to fly kites with the kids in that field.  now i’m probably three or four miles down the road.  shortly after sunrise. 

April 8, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

the week end that was

the ride thing worked out, so i caught my buddy’s band. actually i know two of the guys since we were idiot kids in high school. i got there, grabbed some grub, and then moved into the band room where i saw the drumset sitting there. it was pink with hot green trim, and i immediately say to myself “what kind of limp wristed sissy boy plays that thing?”. my next thought was “i’m an ass”, and that that was inappropriate. if a limp wristed nancy pants wants to rock, let’em.

then the drummer shows up. she’s about 4’10″, and maybe 100lbs TOPS. facial piercings and most likely tatoos. so, i guess that answers that.

they kick off the first set with a rousing balls out rock number. only, it’s not quite there. it’s not bad, just not the pure adrenaline that i’m wanting (i play the same tune from time to time in rock jams). my gut reaction was “jesus christ, nut up or go home!”. at this point i can’t see the drums, and when i move in closer to the stage i remember that there’s a little pixie playing the kit. and to be honest, she’s banging away. she’s just not doing it like a full grown man, because she’s not full grown, and she’s not a man. once again i think that i might be an ass. but i think i can live with it.

oh well.

played a gig on top of the hill saturday, after the big Guntown parade. one of my barkeeps was at the parade, had a great time. after the parade he said he and his wife tried to get into two different bars, but you couldn’t get into the door. so, he finds a hole-in-the-wall spot off the beaten path and wanders in. they ask him where he’s from, and he tells them “Mt. Carmel”.

barkeep says “we don’t serve people from Mt. Carmel”. dead serious. won’t serve them. and it’s not like he’s part of a group of drunken marines, or ex-football players, or what have you. it’s him and his WIFE. like they’re going to start tearing the place up or something. heh.

the gig went well. the door money went to an MS charity. not sure what we raised, but i know it was a good crowd. raising money for charity by banging on the drums is WAY better than getting up early and doing a carwash or some such thing.

thank goodness for redundancy. during the gig a piece in my bass pedal snapped. but, since i’m working with a double pedal set-up, i was able to get things sorted and finish the gig no problem.

ran trivia tonight at the bar. the dude who hosts it has a blood pressure issue. it’s superHigh, and it’s wearing on his other parts (kidneys in particular). so, saturday he has a bit of an episode. no hospital time though. but, me being an ass, i ask him . . . .

Me: “Dude, if you go in and they keep you, do you have the questions written ahead of time, and can i get them?”

L: “yeah, they’re on the computer. it’s in the front room on the desk, you can’t miss it”

i know he keeps everything in a spiral bound notebook. has for over a year now. it’s not on a computer, it’s in a notebook. so i say . . .

“it’s all in that notebook, what the hell do you mean it’s on the computer?”

L: “goofball, the notebook is ON THE COMPUTER, in the front room, walk through the door and it’s right on the left!”

what can you say?

SWEET SIXTEEN – yay, the Big Red make it into the basketball Sweet 16 for the first time since . . . mmmm, perhaps the beginning of time?

the mens’ hockey team got a birth into the 16 team field that is the NCAA championship series. they won the ECAC tourney over the weekend. now, they’ll need a 4 game win streak. they’re a good team, but they aren’t a favorite even in their portion of the bracket.

the wrestling team (which is a sport that local folks keep an eye on) finished second in the nation. the sun seems to be shining :)

i’m off to catch some sleep.

March 23, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

spring has sprung

a thousand things have happened between now and my last post.

i caught the Flyers last Saturday for the game where they won with 2.1 seconds left on the clock, after they were down to the division leding blackhawks with under 2 minutes to go. saw it from up top in a luxury suite, one section over from Paul Holmgren, their GM. it ruled!

the Big Red (Cornell) won their March Madness game. that’s fantastic news, but i’m still not a big basketball fan. more importantly they play in 20 minutes in the ECAC hockey finals. and it’s on the NHL network. that, i’m commandeering the TV for. final words on the Big Red, the suicide rate is back up at school. although it’s no higher than the national average, the campus is littered with deep gorges with, of course, running water below. there are several bridges that have sides that are easily scaled, and it provides an easy jumping point to certain death. much more dramatic than on OD as well.

the B.C. thing was a summer session between junior and senior year of high school. i did my 4 year at Cornell. at that time suicides were common. for a couple of years recently the school was suicide free. it just reminds me that college isn’t all “texts from last night” tales. it can be a meat grinder.

i made it out barefoot for the first time this spring. did the first grilling last night. got some yardwork in. now, i’m ready to make good on a resolution to master my machines. i’m going to learn small engine repair. by the end of it i want to be able to clean a carburator and gap spark plugs, balance cutting blades, all the usual nonsense – On The Spot, so i don’t have to take anything to the shop anymore. i have enough of the stuff (chainsaws to leaf blowers, mowers, snow blowers, etc.), so it’d be a Very worthwhile skill.

well, i’m off to peck away at taxes and catch a hockey game. tomorrow night is a gig, and i might catch a buddy’s band tonight, if the ride situation works out.

March 19, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  One Comment

nubetoob

i’ve been spending my time remarkably poorly as of late. so, i figure i’ll bang out a blog post and then make a big ol’ list of things ta do. then tap on the drums a bit, or more honestly plug the mandala into everything i have to see what holds the best promise as the computer system that it will marry.

sooner or later i’ll have a hybrid (part acoustic/part electronic) kit. it is simply inevitable.

my sister dropped off a copy of the real P90x routine for me to dub. i got it saturday night. i get home from work at 2 or so, and hit the hay by 2:30. i hear the three bells ring. i go in and out of sleep and hear the four bells ring. then next thing i know it’s daylight, but the wife’s still in bed. i get up to check the clock and see it’s 6:15. so, with the wife’s encouragement, i jump out of bed and make the 8 am deck hockey game in Pottsville. i thought either i’m starting p90x that day or playing hockey. p90x is scary enough to me at the moment that i’d rather play hockey on three hours sleep. at least that’s the devil i know.

turns out we didn’t submit in time to get a place in nationals, so we’ll be going to a tourney in philly in mid-May. MUCH easier to get in shape by then. whew!

i end up playing the 8am in Pottsville and the 2 pm game in Shamokin. i get on the scale afterwards and i’m 183. i was 182 pre-eating season (September) and i know i gained the pounds over the holidays. i’m back to getting a couple miles in walking the dogs. things are looking up.

heh, that wasn’t really worth reading, so i’ll add in a story . . .

when i was a kid, i lived above the tavern with my gram. we had a mom and pop grocery store on the corner, and she would pretty much daily, wrap some money in a note, and send me down there. i had a basket on the front of my bike and i’d put the groceries in it and ride back home. i was maybe, six or eight. i thought baskets on bikes were a thing of the long ago past until i heard about this . . .

there’s a fellow from across the street who is on the take-outs only list. he’s been in and out of jail for-ever. he’s harmless, just terminally stupid. i think the first time he went in it was after he was riding the hood of someone’s car, buck naked, drunk out of his mind, down the main street of one of the small coal patch towns. it’s the kind of stunt that you might see in the movies. after that it was just a series of hot piss tests and similar lack of judgement.

the latest one? he’s on probation. his license is LONG gone. and he wants to sit down and have a few in a tavern. i’ll sell him 6 packs, but he doesn’t get served at the bar. so, he gets on his bike and rides across town. town is exactly one mile by one mile. he bends his elbow at a watering hole and pretty much gets his fill. and opts for a 6 pack for the road to put the finishing touches on back home. he puts it in the basket attached to the handlebars of his bike.

he makes his way through town, all the way to the final block. then he turns into the alley where he lives, and comes upon an old lady carrying groceries. actually, he comes upon her too quickly and BLAM, knocks her to the ground with the bike.

now grandma is on her ass. her groceries are all over the place. the bike is on the ground. and beers are rolling down the street. mike is dazed and confused, and everyone’s adrenaline is kicking in. with half a jag on, common sense long left the man, but there was fear a-plenty. so he scrambles to his feet, grabs the beers, grabs the bike and heads home leaving the old lady to fend for herself.

only home is not out of sight from the collision. so she watches him run in the house while she picks herself up and has to gather her spilled groceries. and it pisses her off!! so she calls the cops and reports him. they come, and take him away to the hooskow. i guess being drunk and running grandma over with your bike is a probation violation.

this happened out of our sight line, but within a block of the bar. so, we get the reports from the neighbors. the kicker? the lady was fine with getting run over by a bike driven by a drunk. but the fact that he didn’t apologise and help her pick up the groceries pissed her right tf off!!

i saw him the other day. he must have served his time for that one. who knows what the next incident is going to be.

March 12, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

the carrot and the stick

i can’t be the only one who works like this, and i’d like to blame the nuns but that would be lying. although i tend to really enjoy blaming the nuns for things, even if it isn’t true.

i work better in fear of the stick than in pursuit of the carrot. example . . .

the USA plays that game against Canada sunday. i get a text message Monday – someone is putting together a team for Nationals in street hockey, which is in Philly at the end of the month. they want me to play.

simply put, i’m not in hockey shape, nevertheless hockey tournament shape. if i don’t hit the road, drop some pounds, and get some core conditioning in i will be one sorry, hurting unit.

i can tell myself a thousand times – new year’s resolution, lenten resolution, whatever. lose weight, excercise, dig into my book pile, none of it gets done.

faced with the mental image of dragging ass, sucking wind or puking at a hockey tournament – BAM. i’m insta-allergic to beer, bread and 80% of what’s in the fridge. i’m ready to start the cardio, wondering if i can do a morning AND a night session or if that’d be counter-productive. and i’m thinking abs and back routines because that’s what hurts after a game. or two, or four or six.

the stick is so much more effective :)

March 2, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  One Comment

all they can handle

HUGE thumbs up to the USA squad this afternoon.  i’m thoroughly disappointed in the loss.  do NOT get me wrong. 

i LOVE the team the States put together.  when you look across and see an opponent that is All-Stars up and down the line, with Hall of Famers in spades, what do you do?  put together your version of what they have?  you’ll never make it.  you need a bunch of kids, too dumb to know that they should lose.  too dumb to know that Canada/Russia is the marquee game, and that the States are an afterthought. 

i love young, dumb kids who won’t quit.  the empty netter in the first match-up to seal the game for the States was the only highlight reel empty netter i’ve ever seen. 

they didn’t show up today and get schooled by the super-pros.  they brought it.  and they brought ALL that Canada – the Home of Hockey - could handle.  down two-zip?  keep bringin it!  losing with under a minute to go?  Keep Bringin It!! 

but alas, no fairy tale ending.  instead the team that was expected to bring home the gold from the tournament escaped .  .  .  by the skin of their teeth. 

judging by the celebration, they might understand that.

February 28, 2010   Posted in: Uncategorized  No Comments

polyrhythms

i’m not even going to pretend.  polyrhythms was going to take up a whole post, so here it is.  a Polyrhythm is a different flavor of the idea of two rhythms working against/with each other at the same time. 

in my experience polyrhythms have always included irrational rhythms.  so, let’s start with that. 

Say we take a period of time.  the time it takes between one click on a metronome and the next.  and we chop it into bits.  usually we chop it into the same sized bits out of habit.

  • we chop it in half and get eighth notes.  the old [ 1  And  2  And  3  And  4  And]   =  {1  &  2  &  3  &  4  &}
  • we chop it into four pieces and get the familiar sixteenth notes [ 1  e  And  uh,  2  e  And  uh,  3  e  And  uh,  4  e  And  uh]  or as i like to write it { 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a }
  • we chop it into three and get the triplet thing happening [ 1 trip - let, 2 trip - let, 3 trip - let, 4 trip -let ] or however you count it out.  in here lives the shuffle beat, and a LOT of blues and swingy stuff.

here’s where it gets fun.  you can chop that same slice of time into say FIVE pieces.  drummers do this when they practice a rudimental five stroke roll to a metronome count.  i think guitarists never do it.  the idea should strike 98% of them as a wtf moment. 

of course if the metronome is slow enough, and the piece of time between clicks is long enough, you can cut that piece of time into 7 notes of equal length, 9 notes (which breaks down into 3 sets of 3 notes, so it’s not as funky or odd sounding), 10 (which is a double time five stroke roll), 11, 13, 14, or 15 notes. 

breaking that piece of time into 7 equal pieces is very unusual in the west.  frank zappa used to do it. but i’d say he’s unusual. 

 so here i am, sitting at the snair drum with a metronome playing through the headphones.  the click track is just a little too fast for me to play seven notes per click.  so screw it, no shame it taking a little longer.  i decide to play seven notes per TWO clicks.  we’re chopping up time anyway, and now i can keep up the pace.  every two clicks i’m hitting seven equally spaced notes on the snair. 

you know how you make it a polyrhythm?  add another voice, since poly means like, you know, more than one.  I take the phones off and plug the click track into the monitors.  now, you hear BOTH the rhythms.  my seven notes over the click track’s two notes.  and voila, a 7:2 polyrhythm. 

Seven notes spaced over the time that is usually occupied by Two quarter notes.  ”seven against two” if you’d prefer.

That, is a polyrhythm.   

it is indeed put simply as one rhythm playing against another, but it’s a completely different beast than the contrapuntal independence thing. 

the coolest polyrhythm i ever saw/heard was on zappa’s “the black page” from an NYC recording.  he took 16 notes, which if you’ve ever gone ra-ta-tat around the drumkit you’ve played four on the snair and four on each of the 3 toms.  totally simple.  he chopped it into something along the lines of 5:2, 5:1 and 6:1, so it was 16 notes, in the space of 4 quarter notes, but totally different. 

the simplest polyrhythms are 3:2 where you hit triplets on the ride against straight eighths on the kick/snair.  that’s pretty standard; you can find it in a christmas carol.  it would look something like this . . .

that’s bass cleff stuff, but you can see the note groupings.  3 against 2.

NOW, THAT THAT’S ALL SAID – the word polyrhythm seems to be stuck in a bit of a semantic struggle. 

people will refer to things like layered time signatures as polyrhythms.  RUSH used to do things like have the drums play in 5/4 while the band played in 4/4, and after 20  we’re all back together.  if you play something in 3/4 and i play in 4/4, after 12 we’re back together again.  i understand why you’d want to call that a polyrhythm, and i’m not gonna get all caught up in a struggle over words.  but, i will call timeout and say we need to align our lingo here.

the term i’ve heard for that situation is polymetric. 

oh duh, let me include the typical admonition for any drummers that wander into this fray.  if you really want people to shake their heads – ADD SOME RESTS into all of this.  as rests are like, unbelievably important.

P.S. - i just pushed BUY on a Mandala.  at the moment they come in two parts.  uber-midi controller and software you can run on a decent machine.  i’ll need to upgrade the laptop or an old desktop (or both) to make it come alive.

February 24, 2010   Posted in: Drums  One Comment

contrapuntal independence

this is a drum post. 

i think the only time i’ve heard the phrase contrapuntal independence is when i was studying with a jazz drummer in Lancaster many, many moons ago.  he had binders and binders of these rhythms.  the left hand plays a pattern, and the right hand plays a different pattern, and the two mesh.  apparently that is the core behind the phrase “contrapuntal independence”, independent rhythms that mesh to form one larger rhythm.  here’s the quote from Oxford:

“for music to be truly contrapuntal there must always be a balance between independence and interdependence”

okey doke.  and that was that.  i had done it, i’m sure it helped, but the concept was dormant for a long time.  enter a night of internet browsing on african drumming.

in modern western music, a lot of what you hear are two rhythms put together in a way that meshes.  i’m not calling them contrapuntal, but i know that if you take a bass line and a guitar chord progression, you’ve got a song (they mesh).  if you listen to Aerosmith or Guns and Roses, you’ve probably got a second guitar interacting with the first by playing a different line that meshes. 

in traditional african music, they don’t use a lot of things you have to plug in.  makes sense considering.  they use drums - drums that have interesting tonal properties. 

and so i stumbled upon a set of rhythms that were presented as coming from different regions in the continent.  they are offered as the leading rhythms from different peoples, and they come in two parts.  drummer #1 plays a rhythm, and drummer #2 plays a rhythm.  that didn’t strike me right away.  at first i thought it was the top two rthyms from an area.  choose whichever you like best. 

i programmed some of these into a sequencer.  took me forever to remember how to use the damn thing, my industrial metal days are long gone i guess.  but i fire up rhythm #1, and it sounds like someone beating on congos.  not special at all.  and i add a second rhythm, and it turns into what i thought was a “comes with the box” quality drum machine pattern.  if i had come up with it myself i would have been proud. 

once i adjusted the pan, and made one come out of the left speaker and the other rthym come out of the right speaker – BINGO!  the whole room came alive.  i get it :)

 and so two things hit me:

- i just stumbled on to the feed for a great drums and bass jam.

- I can do this on a kit.

i’ve been pecking away at that second part ever since.  the deal is that if i play it all flat (no accents), i’m not banging out the rhythms.  each of the rhythms has two or three voices.  i think each rhythm would be on one drum, so it’d be like finding three sound zones for this rhythm:

- – - -   – o o – High
- – x x  – - – - Mid
X – - -   – - – - Low

that’s 1 e & ah, 2 e & ah and you’re done.  terribly simple, right?  that’s the left hand part.  the counter rhythm is:

x - - x   x – - -  High
- – - -     – - X X  Mid

just two voices, with the right hand. 

if i had a mandala, the left hand part would be different zones on it and it would be godly. 

at any rate, last night i finally made it all come together.  i kinda sat down and decided i wasn’t going anywhere until i got it, even if it took days.  i have a loose grasp on it now, after pecking away at it forever.  yay.  AND . . . as i’m tapping on everything, it strikes me, this is some bad-ass contrapuntal independence going on!

so that’s my intro to african rhythms.  it takes me three or four weeks to digest the first one.  and it’s in 2/4.  god help me when i like, bring triplets into the equation, lol.

February 24, 2010   Posted in: Drums  One Comment

oh my

that was two hours of sheer frustration.  now i remember how much happier my life is without poker.  and it was all my fault.  which makes it even more clear.  it would take me about 45 hours to clear off the rest of the bonus.  at that rate i’m looking to end up about $1,700 in the hole. 

i was going to ship any winnings off to a charity that does microloans in third world situations.  instead they’re getting a bill for 3 buy ins.  i’m sure they could do without supporters like me :)

February 23, 2010   Posted in: Cards  No Comments