Much Needed Comic Relief

As you may have noticed, I have been one dour blogger of late. So here's a little something to brighten everybody's day. A Star Studded cast performs Prop. 8: The Musical!

So Long and Thanks For All the Hits

Back in 2002 I made a silly political comedy film. As you might imagine if you've ever read this blog, the butt of many of the jokes were republicans. One of them was dressed in pink and particularly obnoxious in that over privileged douchebag kind of way. About a year later, a story broke across the blogosphere about a republican intern who wrote the most obnoxious email ever to a fellow intern with whom he was breaking off a summer fling. Between his headshot in the paper and the tone of his email, I found the similarities odd and posted about this real life Washington Intern Gone Bad. I couldn't help but make fun of the guy a little bit, as I probably would have for anyone caught being so douchey in public. And then a strange thing happened. I got a ton of search traffic on him, typically right around the time that summer internships were starting in Washington. Four years later I blogged about him again after finding out that many blogs that mentioned his name were getting hits, and there was speculation that googling his name was an exercise assigned to new interns to see what they should not do during their internships. I think my film should have been required viewing too, but that's just me. I made fun of him some more once I found out that he was running some pseudo-intellectual evangelical organization, and extended my offer to him for a free copy of my film. Then during the long holiday weekend, I noticed a spike in traffic from search engines. It was no surprise to see his name being searched for, but when I saw more than a few included words like "death" and "suicide" I was a bit alarmed. Today I received an email confirming my fear, and the search traffic has been through the roof. There were a couple of comments about it on my post from a year ago that had a bit of an angry tone toward me for blogging about him a year ago. I posted a comment on that post, but I thought I should go more in depth here. All I knew of Paul Kelly Tripplehorn, Jr was from that obnoxious email. His being a young republican made me predisposed to think he was a dick, and that email didn't help his case much. To me, he was just somebody from the wrong side of the political tracks who made a public ass of himself and as a blogger who tends to write snarky crap about the underbelly of politics, I felt that it was my duty to give him a healthy ribbing for being, in my opinion, a dick. I don't think I crossed the line with my mockery of him, though I did say that I hoped that his email closed some professional doors for him. Guilt is the wrong word for how I feel about this, though judging by some of the previous comments I think there are people who disagree. I just can't shake the sadness. He was not just some one dimensional caricature of an obnoxious guy with different beliefs than me. He was not just a blog punchline. He was a human being going through this life with the same human problems as the rest of us. He hurt just like anyone else. You don't think somebody is going to take their own life over a silly bit of public embarrassment from seven years ago, but that could have been just one brick in the wall. Or it could have had nothing to do with it either. People have killed themselves over smaller things as they have survived worse. It looked as though he had gotten past the notorious email and was cruising onward to bigger and better things, rising from the ashes of minor scandal to become a young star in his movement, full of youthful idealism and potential. And it's the loss of that potential at such a young age that makes this death of somebody I knew about only through stupid internet stuff just as tragic to me as Kurt Cobain's, a person whose music touched me deeply. They had everything going for them, but there was an underlying pain that all the success in the world couldn't heal. I think what makes me feel the worst about myself in all of this is that had Kelly not taken his own life and went on to be the next big thing in the religious right, I'd still just think of him as just some dick who wrote an obnoxious email and then got all religious. It took something incredibly tragic to make me see him as a whole person. What does that say about me?

Consumers Gone Wild!

It's that day again. The day that the retail branch of corporate America wants you to go out and buy shit. It's like the high holy day in the church of consumerism. You always hear about how every year in some other part of the world, some pilgrims of some other religion trample each other to death while racing to some holy thingamagiggy or other. Well it's no surprise that it's finally happened here, and it's no surprise that the place it happened was in one of the grand cathedrals of everything that is wrong with American consumerist society. A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said. [full story] Wake up, America! It's just the mall, not a Who concert in Cincinnati. Was one day at home with your family so much to bear that you need to ditch them to go shove through throngs of strangers the very next day, devolving into wild animals on the hunt for your consumable prey? We are now officially entering the Helliday Season. Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas itself. I don't buy the whole christian story, but this is a holiday that existed long before the Romans decided to incorporate the new christian holiday with the old pagan winter celebrations and it has taken on a whole lot of pop culture trappings since. I like Santa. I like the Charlie Brown and Rudolph and all the rest of the classic Christmas Special. I like Christmas Trees. I like the lights. I even like some Christmas music in moderation. And I LOVES me some eggnog! But what I can sure do without is a month of having it all shoved down my throat everywhere I go with a message that says "buy buy buy." And I also hate these assholes like Bill O'Reilly who feel the need to further ruin this holiday by politicizing it with their whole phony "war on Christmas" stupidity. There's nothing like using a major holiday to attack people over who even really knows what. Let's take a holiday that is already being ruined by consumerism and ruin it further with pseudo-political douchebaggery. I know, it sounds like I'm rather bah humbug over the whole thing. The truth is, I don't really get into the whole Christmas spirit thing until about Christmas Eve, and then I'm super Christmas guy. Until then, the whole thing makes me angry and stressed out. Thank you, corporate shitheels and yammering Faux News jerkoffs for taking a perfectly good holiday and making the month leading up to it miserable. UPDATE: Now we've got 2 people shot dead in a southern California Toys R Us. I am so proud to live in a society where our holiday consumerism has a body count.

Thanks

Today is thanksgiving, and despite the fact that my wife, daughter and I all have nasty colds and as a result we've canceled our travel plans at the last minute and couldn't get anything resembling a turkey this late in the game, I am quite thankful for many things. First and foremost I am thankful for my family, both immediate, extended, in-law and step. I am thankful for the technology that allows us to see and hear each other despite great physical distance between some of us. I am thankful to still have a job in such tumultuous economic times. I am thankful that America finally got its head mostly out of its ass and rejected the republicans in such a big way a few weeks ago. While I bitch about many of the annoyances in my life, I am thankful for what I have because I know it could be a lot worse. I am thankful for living in a time and place where things are pretty damn convenient and comfortable. I am thankful for all of the great options I have for entertainment. I am thankful for my creative abilities, and I am thankful that there are at least a few people out there who enjoy the fruits of them.

Weekend Musical Adventures

It's been almost a week since my last post. I'm still really not paying close attention to the politics thing and instead putting a great deal of myself toward my bass playing. The 80's cover jam last Sunday night was fun, but last night I found a newer, better, closer and free place to jam. My bass teacher told me about it. There's a recording studio in an industrial part of town that opens up every Friday night for an all night free form jam. The one thing that he thought would be of particular interest to me was that they have an electric upright bass that I could try. I've been really wanting to get an electric upright, but it's a bit too big of an investment to make without actually trying it out first. Between that and not having to drive a half hour and pay money to jam, I was in. The jam room was amazing! There were two guitar rigs, a bass rig, a keyboard, a grand piano, a drum kit and a whole assortment of other percussion instruments. Somebody was already playing bass when we got there, so I just picked up a djembe and started beating on it for a while before finally getting onto the upright. This was an NS Designs 5 string bass cello. The neck is the same length as a standard bass guitar, though it's arched so it could be played with a bow. To make it easier for people like me with a background in bass guitar rather than the serious classical or jazz training that usually goes into playing upright, the neck has dots showing where the frets would be. While those were pretty helpful, I found that the way to play this was mostly by ear, sliding until you hit the right note, using the dots as a guideline. I LOVED playing this thing! The extra low string, the arched fingerboard and the lack of frets, plus playing with a bunch of complete strangers were all slightly intimidating, but I was rocking this thing within minutes, locked into a groove with the drummer, my fingers flying all over the place, quickly finding new places to take it, sliding, bending, wiggling, popping and slapping those strings, taking it all so much further than you ever can with a bass guitar. It's like all the limitations are gone. Afterwords a bunch of the guys told me that I sounded great which really meant a great deal to me since it was my first ever foray with a new instrument. I had tried playing this one at a music store a couple of time, and while at first I really liked it, compared to the NS Designs it's not as easy to play. It has a heavy body and an end pin, so you have to hold it up while playing it. It also does not have the dots on the neck, so the learning curve is a little bit more steep. And it's designed to try to sound as much like an amplified acoustic upright bass as it can while the NS sounds like an amazing electric instrument. The only one I'm even remotely interested in right now is the NS Designs Wav4, which has a longer neck and less electronics than the one I played last night, but the same incredible feel and ease of playing. I need to get one, and I need to get it soon.

Midlife Crisis: The Band

Now that the election is over and I'm happy with most of the results, I don't have quite the motivation that I did over the last few months to even pay close attention to the political arena let alone write angry and sarcastic posts about it. That doesn't mean everything is OK. Bush is at his most dangerous as the lamest of lame duck presidents, Obama's team for change sure has an awful lot of the same old faces, Joe Lieberman hasn't been tarred and feathered and run out of Washington on a rail, and here in California we have what's looking like the start of a new civil rights movement building over the disastrous passage of the most hateful ballot initiative. But after blogging through this year of bare knuckle politics, I'm burnt on it. And now that the intensity of a national election is over, I can obsess over something more constructive. I've blogged about my recent state of musical frustration, and that has led to me trying to practice regularly and seek out some jams in the area. I found a studio about a half hour away that has drop-in jam sessions and I really enjoy going there. Then I recently met a guy who lives next to my office who used to play professionally who has been giving me a few tips. I'm completely self taught, and while I've somehow managed to get halfway decent on the four fat strings, my lack of technique and fear of music theory has held me back from really being able to improvise on the fly. So what I've been doing has been finger exercises to train my hands to be in the right positions and increase my speed. It's just basic chromatic scales on the first 4 frets playing quarter notes, starting with two and now three fingers on my right hand. As I started doing these exercises they seemed almost pointless, but after a week of it I went to another jam session and my playing went from slightly weak to SOLID. My fingers are getting stronger and the tips are getting good and calloused. I'm less afraid to explore around the neck even if I hit a bad note or two. I'm remembering to not let my thumb creep around the side of the neck. And I'm finding myself more open to learning some theory so I can have all of the improvisational options at my fingertips. And then I "discovered" Jaco. I've heard of Jaco Pastorius for years and for some reason I never had the opportunity to give him a listen, so with my new seriousness toward playing I picked up some of his stuff. I was completely blown away literally two seconds into the first track of his first solo album. Then I found out that he did an instructional video and book which I scooped up as quickly as possible. Why fuck around with the others when I could learn from the man considered the greatest electric bass player in the history of the universe? Even when I played in bands, I was never this obsessed with getting really good at my instrument. Now I'm humming basslines all the time, running through my scales while watching TV or talking to people. My wife thinks it's a midlife crisis. She may be right. If I ever get to the point where I put a band together, I think I'm going to call it Midlife Crisis and fill it with guys like me with day jobs and families who aren't getting any younger but still want to play music. This afternoon I'm back to the studio for an 80's covers jam. It's like jumping into a cover band without all the hassle of putting a band together and having to lug and set up gear. I just show up with my bass, tune up, plug into their amp and there's people to play with and an instructor with a music degree to guide us all through it. And in a month we play in front of an audience.

Thank You, Thank You Very Much!

President Elect Obama (how much do I love typing that? Suck it, McCainiacs!) has a busy time ahead of him. He's got a lot to do. He just won the presidency in a tidal wave of American rejection of the Bush/Cheney brand of republican bullshit, and he's got 8 years of the worst executive branch in history to fix. And while Bush for once in his entire presidency can be commended for at least putting on a show of a cooperative and helpful transition, team Obama is dropping things like this to the press to remind the people that he's here to unfuck our country. President-elect Barack Obama is poised to move swiftly to reverse actions that President Bush took using executive authority, and his transition team is reviewing limits on stem cell research and the expansion of oil and gas drilling, among other issues, members of the team said Sunday. [full story] That's great! Let's make sure to keep moving our scientific advancements forward. Though as far as domestic oil drilling goes, I say let them tear up Utah. After the shit the LDS church pulled here in California, I say we squeeze that state like a sponge. Besides, republicans want to drill here and drill now. Great! There's a bunch of republicans there, and we know they would never be hypocrites about this kind of stuff. We'll get started right in the middle of downtown Salt Lake City. And speaking of rejection of Bush/Cheney bullshit. Bill Frist, despite diagnosis of Terri Schiavo via satellite video, is not as much of an asshole as I thought. America shines at her best in times of challenge, and never in my adult life have we seen more challenge coming from more dimensions. I encourage Republicans to rally behind this president-elect and openly express support for the call for change throughout our legislative and executive branches. I encourage Democrats not to repeat the missteps made by Republicans by excluding thoughtful debate. And I encourage the American people to stay involved with the intensity manifested by heightened participation in the democratic process. [full story] Wow! I'm not used to hearing this kind of talk from republicans. I wonder what he's really up to.