nr2’s blog

So I started off getting an easy classics book.  I had forgotten how hard it was to sight read.  But practice makes perfect, and that's all I really can do... practice.  I never really did get a good handle on sight reading.  I believe it's something I need to do to get me to the "next level", whatever that is.  Anyways, I'm making good on my promise.  The M-Audio semi-weighted 88-key doesn't feel so great but it's all I have at the moment.  But I have to do more with less!

So for the last seven years or so, I haven't really been making any progress with music.  Perhaps several factors are to blame.  First and foremost, I don't have a piano.  I sold a Kurzweil weighted 88-key keyboard awhile back and have regretted it ever since.  So I've basically been stuck with my guitars.  I'm not saying that I don't love my axe but for some reason, I can't write songs on the guitar.  Actually, I'm not much of a songwriter at all.  Well, maybe I'm not a lyricist.  I can write music to lyrics so maybe that makes me a composer.  In that respect, I've been successful as a composer in the past.  But only on the piano.  With the guitar, I'm more of a glorified cover artist, and I haven't even been covering many artists lately so that leaves me stagnant.  I was watching an interviewing with the young Bob Dylan recently and he mentioned that he writes his songs on piano, not guitar.  "Gutiar is too hard".  That kinda baffled me.  I guess not everyone can be a Jack Johnson.  Damn you and your clever sense of melody.

So anyway, I recently purchased an M-Audio 88-key midi controller.  Yeah, I know... it's a midi controller.  But "given the economy", that's all I can really afford at the moment.  So in a nutshell, I'm going to re-acquaint myself with the ivories and see if I can once again reconnect with the enjoyment of playing the piano.  Fun! =)

As uneducated as I am about the subject, I turn to wiki for a quick review of events leading up to the current dispute in the Middle East.  From a much broader perspective, the war for the Holy Lands is still very much alive and well.  It's just strange that the media is portraying Israel as the power hungry nation driving this entire attack.  Every headline, to some effect, reads "Israel attacks...", "Israel takes offensive...".

So listening to Rush on the way to work yesterday... (Don't worry, I'm not an extreme right wing conservative.  I'm more of a moderate or independent conservative.  I try to listen to the entire spectrum of views: conservative = talk radio and liberal = all other media.)  Anyways, Rush makes light of the fact that Israel's offensive stance is basically a defensive response.

This begs the question, why is the media (and in saying media, I mean "liberal media") portraying Israel as the bad guy.  To my understanding, the relationship between the United States and Israel is generally a strong one, no?  Is this basically an accompaniment to liberal media's disdain for the war in Iraq and President Bush in general?  And if the media is trying to gain support for Palestinians, then by effect the media needs to portray Israel as the bad guy, which is currently being done (back to square one, see first sentence of this paragraph).  And isn't there prominent Jewish influence on media or is that only in Hollywood?  I'm sure there are close ties between media and Hollywood, as the majority of the Hollywood elite enjoy sharing their political views with the public which, by coincidence, swing a little farther than moderate left.

So what gives?  I personally have no strong opinions on the current Israel-Gaza dispute but I just find the media reaction in the US a little perplexing.

So our country wants change and has voted accordingly.  As a conservative, he stands against several things I believe.  I'm over it... for at least the next four years.  But now that the election is finally over, I'm whole heartedly ready to support our new president.  But come on Obama... please stop being naive.  Please!  Your own people are beginning to call you out.

First off, during the election you could probably just chalk it up to bashing.  Fine, you didn't know that Rev. Wright was trashing our country during his sermons - or at least you never attended those "particular" sermons.  Yet, during the election, you felt the need to publicly and verbally distance yourself from the man that married you and your wife and baptized your children?  Okay, probably bash politics but nonetheless naive.  You didn't know, right?

Secondly, okay so maybe you didn't know that William Ayers was a radical leftist and domestic terrorist that so happened to bomb the Pentagon during the Weather Underground Movement.  Okay, Obama was 8 years old when the bombing occurred.  Yet they remain close and Obama even launch his political campaign for the presidency in Ayers living room.  To this, Obama says "didn't know the history".  You're unaware of Mr. Ayers radical leftist and terrorist ideologies?  Okay, so now what?  Sever ties w/ Ayers.  Okay, fine... bash politics?  You didn't know, right?

Thirdly, now Obama is our president-elect.  In light of the economic crisis, his own buddies up in Congress are asking, "where you at?"  Dodd and Frank and all of the bastards that got us into this mess in the first place are asking for some presence and input on the issue of our economic crisis.  Go figure, Obama says that he's busy putting his cabinet together.  Just a month ago, Obama was calling out McCain when he wanted to suspend his campaign to focus on the economic crisis, saying that a president should be able to handle multiple issues at a time.  Okay, so let's just ignore it for now and deal with the full brunt of this economic after he's sworn in.

Fourth, this crackdown on the Illinois governor is just insane.  President-elect Obama had no clue...?  Zero clue that this type of corruption exists?  He and his cabinet are completely clean of the issue?  PLEASE STOP BEING NAIVE.  I'M 100% READY AND WILLING TO SUPPORT YOU MR. OBAMA, BUT PLEASE THROW US A FRIGGIN' BONE HERE.  Please show some level of intelligence and/or concern for the shit going down around you.  So far, the only thing I've seen is playing ignorant and finger pointing.  Obama has called for Blagojevich's resignation.  Blagojevich refuses to resign.  This is becoming one big mess.  Hey, but you can't blame Obama, right?  He didn't know!  He just didn't know!

I had a dream about Flamenco Sketches the other night.  It was strange.  Usually, dreams consist of a surreal environment.  This particular dream was just a dream of sound.  The strange thing was that there was no Miles.  No front man.  Just Bill Evans in fact.  And the strange this is that it didn't even sound like a piano.  Weird.  I gotta stop getting wasted at night.

Knocked the dust off my Hendrix CDs recently and soon after made a conscious decision to tuck the semi-hollow body away for a little while.  I really don't know what it is about Hendrix... I really have no clue.  His playing style was so unorthodox, playing a righty even though he was a lefty, half step tuned down guitar (which makes for butter soft string bending capability).  And if you really listen, by the standards of a metronome nazi you would call Hendrix sloppy.  Seriously... anyone decent guiitarist that covers Hendrix is too damn spot on point with the rhythm.  That's fine and all, but it's not Hendrix.  I personally believe that Hendrix was above rhythm.  Whatever was not there in our own feeble and warped sense of rhythm was replaced with pure soul and spirit.  Unduplicable, if that's a word.  With the Experience, he couldn't team up with a better set of musicians that complemented his style.

Okay, now back to me... yes, this is my blog.  So in lieu of the semi-hollow, I'm pulling out my Les Paul.  Yeah, I know, it's not a Strat, but it'll get me there for now.  I'm in the market for a strat though.  I'm not searching too hard though.  I'm still trying to hold fast that the musician makes the instrument and not the other way around.

Twilight Review

My wife and I attended a pre-screening of Twilight last night.  In my own state of declining health, I want to issue a formal apology to all my neighbors in the theater that had to put up with my relentless coughing and hacking throughout the film.  Yes, I was "that" movie-goer last night.

First and foremost, I'll admit.  I enjoy the series thus far (currently on the third book, Eclipse).  And as my wife would describe Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen, I think Ashley Greene as Alice Cullen is "le' hotness".

* SPOILER ALERT *  Skip to the Final Assessment to get past the spoiler.

The rest of this review will pretty much be a SPOILER, so reader beware.

As far as its adaptation to the screen, the film fell short in a few areas.  They didn't build out the relationships between characters, especially between Edward and Bella.  Why is Bella so taken by Edward?  They really don't establish Bella's attraction to Edward.  And then all of a sudden, Edward can't live without Bella.  Like... what?  Did I miss something?  Why is he all in love with her all of a sudden.  The film loses all of the mental anguish that Edward and Bella go through which finally lead them to be together.

I personally like how they portrayed the Cullen family.  Although, I knew they wouldn't have enough time to go into the history of the entire family, they were able to establish some sort of character for each family member.

* Final Assessment *

In a nutshell, if you enjoyed the book you'll probably enjoy the movie but as in most cases of film adaptations, it won't live up to the book.  I'm certain all of the crazed twilight tweeny boppers will help bring in some good numbers for the film.  However, the movie producers probably didn't foresee the huge number of fans that would come out.  This was apparent in the lack of preparation for the nationwide tour.  Several cities had to turn away thousands of disgruntled fans to meet the maximum limit of 500.  As mentioned in my blog regarding Robert Pattinson at Stonestown Galleria, 3000 plus fans showed up.  So perhaps, if Stephenie Meyer were to grace us with a sequel (yes, I'm aware that this is already in the works) then producers should probably think about allocating much more then the meager Hollywood budget of $37 million.  I probably would not recommend the movie for those that did not read the books.

This hosting company sucketh ass.  Stay away.

A failure to plan is a plan to fail.  This underscores the events of the morning of 2008-11-10.  Robert Pattinson was scheduled to sign autographs and meet fans at the Hot Topic in Stonestown Galleria.  My wife is a HUGE fan of Twilight.  I mean, HUGE!  So I decided to brave the storm and line up super early.  I've never really done this for anything in the past...  iPod, game console, nothing.  I was looking forward to the experience.  Throughout the week, we've been trying to get as much information as we could about the event.  Three things were certain:

• We needed to line up outside of the doors at 7am (we are not allowed on the premises until 7am).
• T-shirts and wristbands would go on sale at 8am.  First come, first serve.
• Our wristbands are numbered, so we would need to return at 6pm and lineup according to our number.

Of course, this leaves many questions unanswered, perhaps the most important of them being "so what do we do before 7am?"  Apparently, there was no official plan for organization before 7am.

So after making the 9 hour drive from Vegas, we went to Hot Topic the night before.  Basically, people were going to be lining up off premises beforehand and I shit you not, one of the representatives actually said "wear your running shoes".

I arrived at Stonestown at 4am.  There were already a couple hundred people lined up along 19th St.  There was an unofficial attempt to order people accordingly to a list.  The lady spearheading this "list" apparently came from Hawaii.  So she really did not want to be SOL.  Unfortunately, there were several people, myself included, that were well aware that this list was not going to matter and that there was going to be a "mad dash" to the front doors at 7am.  As much as we appreciated her efforts, this list was not official.  So we basically had two separating hordes beginning to go to war with each other.  I was standing with a group of teenage girls in the non-listers group.  A man in his forties actually threatened us with physical violence if we did not abide by the "unofficial" list.  Of course, one of the girls ran off crying to the security guard.

Around 5am, people started inching their way towards the entrance.  We were up to about 1000+ at that point.  List-people were still arguing with non-list people.  There was a prominent non-lister that was encouraging other girls to kick and scream their way up to the front.

SFPD showed up.  To my surprise, this did little to calm the crowd.  We were nearing around 2000 at this point.  Around 5:30ish, a few small groups started to make a run for the entrance.  A few seconds later, everyone was in full sprint.  Teenage girls were falling flat on their hands and faces, left and right.  I felt like a running fool - like Forest Gump when his platoon was ambushed in Vietnam.  I had a considerable advantage in my Asics Gels over the teeny boppers in their Uggs.

By around 5:45 everybody was pushed up against the entrance.  We were like sardines for the next hour.  The security guard told us to line up to the left.  We all pushed left.  Then he told us to line up to the right.  We all pushed right.  Then he brought us back to the left.  Security obviously had no clue how to control a crowd.  The whole time, he was trying to get the line to move back and give the people up front some air.  People were fainting around this time.  One girl actually broke her nose against the glass door.  But plain and simple, Hot Topic said first come, first serve.  Nobody was going to voluntarily move back to the end of the line.  And the only natural tendency in this type of uncontrolled environment was to push forward.  The cops could NOT control the crowd.  It was just too big.  There were too little of them.  And there was NO organization before 7am.  The firetrucks and paramedics arrived to help control the crowd and tend to the injured.  Not sure why it crossed my mind, but for a moment I thought that we were gonna be hosed down.

Eventually, the cops announced that the event was cancelled at around 6:45am.  Most of us thought this was bullshit so about 75% of us stuck around.  For the next half hour, SFPD was eagerly trying to convince us that the event really had been cancelled.  A Hot Topic representative finally came out and informed us that the cancellation was true.  However we could still purchase the "souvenir" tees when the store opens, which was at 10am.

After about 30 minutes, the news started to sink in.  On came the waterworks and about half of the crowd left.  As far as I was concerned, I already made the drive here so I'm gonna get SOMETHING.  At around 9:30am they finally let us in the damn mall.  Naturally, the horde arrived upon the scene of Hot Topic.  The manager yelled out, "single file".  Ummm, yeah.  Yelling "single file" in front of a horde of people is pointless.  Keep in mind, this is just for a freakin' t-shirt at this point.  Security finally managed to wrap us around the mall and create some type of line at around 9:40am.  Stores were set to open at 10am.  But of course, the store wasn't ready to sell these tees by 10am.  How the hell were they supposed to sell them by 8am if they weren't even ready by 10am?  Again, a failure to plan.  It was almost 11am by the time the store opened.  Freakin' ridiculous.  I got my tees and got the hell outta there.

This is really an unfortunate circumstance for the Stonestown Galleria Hot Topic.  Not only have they damaged their own reputation but they have damaged the image of the Twilight brand.  There are some celebrities that will actually fight for their fans.  Apparently, Robert Pattinson or his manager(s) is not one of those celebrities.  He's a relatively new celebrity, so I'll cut him some slack.  I was just sad to see the fans get shit on.  Especially those that came from far distances.  I really hope Hot Topic does something to reach out to all the disappointed fans.

Followup: Robert Pattinson DOES care about his fans.  Either Hot Topic or SFPD are to blame for falsely advertising the cancellation.  At this point, I don't care.  I'm too tired and worn out to care.  I mean, who could believe that bullshit.  Cancelled!?  I couldn't believe it.  And why the hell would you confuse the fans like that?  Okay, I'm over the complaining.  It's just painful though.  To wait in line for several hours, for what could possibly be "just a t-shirt".  I finally heard on a local talk show that the event had not been cancelled.  I made another mad dash to the mall, this time with company.  So we had to wait in another line for, I'd say about a mere 3.5 hours this time.  It was nowhere near as crazy as the morning's "mad dash".  We finally got to see him and it was all good.  All in all, I would definitely say it was worth the trip.  It was quite the experience and a rollercoaster of emotions for a person who I would normally not give a second thought.  But it was fun to play the role of the crazed fan!  ...and exhaustive.  I don't know if I would go as far as to say I'd do it again, but I saw a ton of fathers out there in the morning supporting their tween daughters.  So I might be on the hook for more crazed fan experiences in the future.  I'm almost done with the second book, New Moon, and I'll admit that I'm finding the series entertaining.  My list of books in the fiction department is severely lacking and I'll only read what comes highly recommended.

Dave Grusin's "Soon" off of the Gershwin Connection album.  In few words... warm, lush.