Twenty-ten and juice

Ok, so it's 2010 and I'm writing my first blog post since March '09. Now, I know this is going to come across as a "New Year's Resolution" but I assure you my motive is anything but. I have no desire to turn over a new leaf, make a fresh start, become a better person, or do anything else that I would describe as "bandwagon behavior." Since I last posted a lot of things have happened and I am starting to feel like writing again.

Let's see how long this lasts this time. Maybe I'll make it to April.

We'll start with gear. Cancel that. There has been a lot of gear turnover in the time that has passed and I'm very excited about it so I want to do it right when I feel like spending more time on it. Plus one of my more "recent" posts had to do with gear, so let's break it up a bit shall we.

How about food? Drink? Drink.

For Christmas my mom and step-father, Steve got me a juicer. This was something that I had posted a Facebook status about and they picked up on! Isn't it nice when people pay attention and then surprise you? I remember my dad having a juicer in the house for a while and my sisters were just throwing anything and everything in there and I thought that was really weird. But now I think that's a really great idea. It's a good way to get a variety of nutrients and also a good way to be able to creatively blend some great flavors and "drink" some things that I wouldn't normally get around to eating. Now, I've only just scratched the surface of using this thing but I'm imagining using citrus, apples, berries, beets, yogurts, bananas, cucumber, etc, etc, until I've exhausted the list of all produce ever.

So I got the juicer home, washed it set it up and then headed off to my local Key Foods to get an armload of fruit. Holy crap. It's January and fruit is not cheap. I mean, it seems cheap ("$3 for 6 oranges, sweet!") but considering the actual juice output, it's going to be a challenge to make this worth my while. But let's not lose focus. I grabbed a bunch of carrots, some juice oranges, a few kiwis, a mango, and a pineapple. Here's what I started with: 1 pineapple, 1 mango, 5 kiwis.

The juicing process is quite fast, the majority of the the investment is in the prep. Everything simply has to be peeled and cut into slices that will fit in the chute but once that is done the juice is extracted quickly.

Here is the result:
It's really good! Thick and tasty and a good psychological boost after many days of holiday gorging. Next time this one will be modified to contain a bit more mango and less kiwi. The downside is that this 30 oz of fruity goodness cost $6. I always criticized the "exorbitant" prices of fresh squeezed juice but now I'm starting to get some perspective. But no worries, as soon as the temperature hits 45F the fruit stand guys will come back and I'll be rockin' it on the cheap.

Now I'm off to try some orange carrot!




Cheers!

Hell's Kitchen: The Musical!

No, it has nothing to do with the intense TV show about a chef who freaks out and makes people cry. It's a new musical being produced at the Hudson Guild Theatre on 26th street. The show is about the neighborhood in Manhattan called "Hell's Kitchen" (just below 42nd street on the West side, I think). Apparently it was a place where you grew up with no advantages and watched most of your friends die, become a stripper, or end up in prison at an early age. But if you happened to have a beautiful singing voice, maybe an agent would notice you and make you a star. Then it's possible you could come home and be assaulted by gang members, kill someone in self defense and then end up being acquitted by a jury of your peers, free to rise above the squalor and sing, Sing, SING!!!!

Anyway, a couple months ago I auditioned for a spot in the pit but didn't get the job. I did however get asked to sub on the show and will be doing so Thursday (3/5) and Saturday (3/7) at 8:00pm both nights.

Come check it out. There is a killer tap number.

I bought a new snare drum

I bought a new snare drum, it's actually old.
From the late 40s (or so I am told).

In the 1930's the Ludwig Drum Company was purchased by Conn, who promised to retain William F. Ludwig as an employee to oversee the Ludwig Drum division of the Conn corporation. They backed out of this promise however and now owned the Ludwig name, threatening to sue Ludwig if he produced drums under his own name.

So, he started a drum company called W.F.L., building drums that were quite superior in quality to their actual "Ludwig" contemporaries. In 1955, W.F. Ludwig bought back his name from Conn and resumed business as usual.

Today I purchased a W.F.L snare drum from the later part of the W.F.L era ('48-'52 is my best educated guess as the manufacture year of the drum). Here it is:
And here is an audio clip of it in action:

There are a several interesting points to be made:

• The drum is 7"x14", a deeper snare than I had been looking for (I was thinking 6-6.5") but I think it will be a good "evil twin" to my copper 5.5"x14". It has a full bodied, focused low-mid range sound with an even decline in upper frequencies, where my copper drum is much brighter, snappier, and crisp.
  
• It is a three-ply drum, and my understanding is that the plies (from inside out) are mahogany, poplar, and maple. I like the fact that the inner ply is mahogany, as this provides a nice balance and warmth in the sound.
• The lugs are the unique "Zephyr" model. I have heard two different stories about the origin of these lugs. One regards a post-war regulation limiting the proportional amount of steel in certain types of products. This pressed style lug has less mass than a standard cast lug and therefore came within the allowed weight. The other story is that Mrs. Ludwig was running the company's finances during this era and was a bit of a tightwad so had a lug made that was much cheaper than the cast lugs. Whatever the real story is I like these lugs because they are very lightweight, allow the drum to resonate, and have a nice rustic, hand-hewn look.
• The drum features "stick chopper" hoops, meaning that the edge of the hoops are straight, not turned over ("stick savers"). The names are pretty descriptive but stick chopper hoops provide really nice rim clicks, as you can hear from the accompanying audio clips.

So by now you might be thinking "what the hell is the big deal?". It's a snare drum, it's not like you bought a whole drum set or something! Well let me tell you. A well selected snare drum is one of the most vital parts of a convincing overall drum sound. Next time you are listening to music, try isolating the snare sound and describing it in specific terms. Does it have a sharp crack? A mushy thud? Is it high-pitched or low? Imagine the sound of a tight, high-pitched snare sound in an 80's rock ballad. Drummers often have a couple drum sets they use but an arsenal of dozens of snare drums, each with their own unique sound and function.

So there.

Nunsense

So, I'm playing a student production of "Nunsense" at Pace University this week.
<--This is Nunsense.

And this is Dan Goggin, the creator of Nunsense-->

And of Nunsense II: The Second Coming, Sister Amnesia's Country Western Nunsense Jamboree, Nuncrackers, Meshugga Nuns, Nunsensations, Nunsense Amen, and premiering Fall 2009 - Nunset Boulevard: Nunsense goes to Hollywood.

This is a man who loves Nuns.

Here is my setup for the show:

I borrowed a set of orchestra bells from my friend Chelsea (thanks!) and bought a set of Treeworks wind chimes that sound super great. You can't see it well from the picture but the band is on a raised platform that is quite narrow. As a result, I've had to leave off my floor tom, which would have been nice to have. Also, I had my splash cymbal, woodblock, and cowbell attached with a clamp-style mount to my rack tom. This causes several problems:

1. Every time I hit the bass drum, the cymbal rings. Every time. Since taking the above photo, I have moved the cymbal to a boom stand. Problem #1 solved.
2. When I hit the bass drum, the cowbell rings. This is annoying. I need to find a solution to this.
3. when I play the woodblock (it's actually an LP jam block (the blue one)), the cowbell rings and interferes with the clarity of the woodblock. I need to find a solution to this.
4. Having all this crap clamped to the rim of the rack tom really kills the resonance of the tom. I am not happy about this.

Basically, the solution to all these problems is to ditch my claw mount and find an alternate system of mounting the cowbell and woodblock.

I also created a set of mallets to use for the show. There is a lot of quick switching between drum set and bells so I needed a double ended "swizzle stick" to do both jobs. I cut a couple inches off the butt end of a pair of Zildjian John Riley Concert Jazz sticks (choosing them for their balance, girth, and bead), Dremeled out a hole in the end of each and inserted the severed heads of a pair of old Musser xylophone mallets I had lying around. Vic Firth makes something like this but I'm sure they cost like $25 or something and I had fun engineering them.

Here they are:

So if you have a mind to come see a college production of a campy, pun-filled, show full of indulgent humor and shreiking college sopranos, it hits at 8:00pm on Thursday (2/19), Friday (2/20) and Saturday (2/21) at the Little Black Box Theatre on the downtown campus of Pace University. I'll get you a comp ticket. Then you can buy me a drink after the show. Or four.

Ian McKellen

Here is a brilliant clip from one of my new favorite TV series, the British show "Extras". In the clip Ricky Gervais's character Andy Millman is interviewing with the great actor Sir Ian McKellen for a part in a new play. This is an amazing show that you should watch if given the opportunity.



If the video embed doesn't show up, you can download the clip HERE.

Sneak preview

I am working on revamping my personal website. Here's why:

1. I want it to be more usable. This will be achieved primarily by simplifying the layout. Right now the layout is a bit too arty (dare I flatter myself so?), and not quite practical enough. Not interested in fancy. Interested in making relevant information easy to access. In doing so I would rather err on the side of simplicity than impress people with my bohemian vibe.
2. I want to provide more information that will help get me gigs. This means adding a resume, functional schedule, more contact info, varied sound clips etc.

You, my trusted inner circle, are receiving a sneak preview of the site as it is in development. Keep in mind that some links will be dead and pages missing for a while.

Here's the new site.

Here's the old (current) site.

Any and all feedback is welcome :)

"Who's in the house?" "J.C!"

The library is a wonderful place. Not only do they have books there, but you can borrow a wide variety of DVDs and CDs as well. The Queens network of libraries is nice because there are lots of them, they are all connected and you can renew stuff online (which I do often to avoid their exorbitant late fees on DVDs).

This past week I borrowed a DVD called "Jesus Camp". It is a touching documentary about a youth minister of the extreme fundamentalist evangelical persuasion who runs conferences and a summer camp for evangelical children (or more properly, children of evangelical parents). Children as young as 5 years old attend the camp and are taught how to save the souls of their friends and of total strangers, how to wage war on the devil, and about the important issues and priorities of the far right (the myth of global warming, the truth of literal creationism, etc.) This film was interesting to me for a few reasons:

1. I went to Church camp for several years growing up and, while the place I went was not nearly as extreme as the camp that was profiled, I did recognize certain elements. For example, there is a strong appeal on children's emotions in attempting to lead them to certain conclusions/decisions/ways of thinking. Indeed, I can recall several chapel services that had me in tears and blubbering into a microphone about how I wanted the courage to tell my friends about Jesus (I only actually did this once, and it was because a girl I liked was Catholic and I knew it would never work out between us if I didn't). Children are impressionable to begin with, it's a mechanism built in by evolution that allows children to learn the ways of the world and most basically, survival, at a young age. Part of this proclivity is a desire to believe what they are told by adults. Naturally, adults have experience in the world and it wouldn't make any sense for children to have to learn everything by experience, especially if there is an easier way. However, it doesn't matter what the adult is actually saying. The same mechanism that allows kids to believe their parents instructions to "stay away from lions", would also allow a child to believe a parent who said that "lions are your friend". Naturally, parents who give their kids advice that dangerous have a tendency to lose their children to lion attacks and thus their genes are weeded out of the population. But if you simply give your kids bad advice that doesn't commonly lead to their physical demise, natural selection may be much slower in getting rid of those beliefs. The problem with this is that children are too young to deliberately choose a set of beliefs, and so if they are presented with one, they will probably subscribe to it. Adults have the ability to decide logically whether they want to believe something or not, but this impressionability in children is taken advantage of in a way that is unfair to them. I understand that as a parent you will want to instill in your children the values that you feel are most valuable in the world, but I think often those values are deeply embedded in a religious structure that has a lot of other potentially negative and harmful baggage attached to it. I think that good morals and values can (and should) exist free of religious context.
   
2. One of the primary reasons that was presented in the film for indoctrinating kids with these values at such a young age was: "All our enemies are doing it." In the context of the film, the enemies were primarily named as other religious groups (most commonly Islam). I think this is just bad logic. Unless you are holding your beliefs as paramount to all others and preparing to fight for their position as such. One of my favorite quotes from Becky Fisher (founder of the camp) was: "I want our kids to be as radical about our beliefs as those kids are about theirs." (in reference to Islamist sects who train their kids to be suicide bombers) Really?? As radical? Think about what you are saying! But it appears that she already has thought about it. Several kids were interviewed who spoke of being martyrs for Jesus and much was made about the value of being willing to die for your faith. I think it's clear that these kids really have no idea what that really means, and neither do the adults who are telling them that you are not following God if you aren't willing to take a bullet or endure torcher for him.

I don't think I actually know any Christians who hold views as extreme and twisted as these, but to a degree the extremism is not what bothers me. The fact that children are not being presented with options is what I really take issue with. Of course, when those children grow up some of them will be able to distance themselves from those things that they want to abandon, but some of them won't. Some will have residual hangups that spring from this upbringing and will prevent them from becoming well adjusted adults. Some will live thier lives with low self esteem due to an early de-emphasis of their sense of self. Some will rebound so sharply that they will end up with addictions, kids, and situations that they don't want. Some will become isolated enough that they are simply never exposed to other viewpoints. Some will strap bombs to their bodies and press a button...

(I don't mean to be over dramatic, I just find it interesting and think it's important.)

More of me to love

Last week, while subbing at the Renaissance school in J. Heights, I went out to lunch. Now, Jackson Heights has a number of delicious, reasonably priced eating establishments. However, many of them only take cash and I didn't have any. So I figured that I would hit up Subway and get a cheap sub. Their credit card machine was down. I decided to suck it up and go across the street to Taco Bell. They weren't open for another 1/2 hour and I would have to get back to school. I knew that there was a Burger King around the corner and though my strict dietary rule to avoid fast food (especially the burger joints) told me not to, I was starving and went in. The first thing that caught my eye was the "Angry Whopper" sign on the menu, and while for a moment I was tempted by its crispy looking bacon and zesty sauce (which I guess is what makes it so angry), I was struck by the corporation's choice to publish the caloric contents of the sandwich. Granted, the highlighted information is for the largest version of the sandwich, the triple "Angry Whopper", I was still taken aback. Let talk numbers here. I am 5'9" and 150 lbs, not extremely active but I walk everywhere and lug drums around all the time. According to the almighty internet (http://www.hpathy.com/healthtools/calories-need.asp), I should take in about 2400 calories per day in order to maintain my current weight. Assuming that the average triple Angry Whopper is 1820 calories, if I were to consume one each day that would leave me 580 calories (less than 2 chicken hearts!). If I ate one of these sandwiches every day as a substitute for my regular, average lunch, I would gain about 3 pounds per week (again, according to the all-knowing interweb) and a year from now would be twice my current weight. Including the fries and Coke in the value meal, that number goes up to nearly 400 pounds (see left). And I would be going straight to jail.

So I had a salad. It was terrible.

(also, as you can see I am pretty much an expert at Photoshop, and I only charge $50 and hour for custom jobs.)

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

This morning I went to church. This is the church I went to:

It is Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Cambria Heights. During the fall, the music director there called me to fill in for their drummer one morning. I have done so a few times since and am now in the midst of a four week stint. Except for the MD, his parents, and myself, the population of the church (like the whole area) is completely "Americans of African descent", and the service is basically a 'gospel mass'. The thing I like most about Catholic mass services is hearing the congregation speaking in unison. Unlike a congregation or a choir singing, no one is attempting to match pitch with anyone else so the dissonance is complete and utter. Everyone's individual voice contributes its own natural timbre and pitch and the resulting sound is completely organic, to my ears (aside from the fact that they are reciting the same words). It is like playing every pitch on an organ simultaneously (incidentally, the 5th grade spelling word I was most proud of learning), and is quite thrilling to hear.

The idea of going to church, in general, doesn't grate on me like it did for a while. While falling out of love with church, I went through an impassioned phase that was something like outright disdain for the kinds of things that are said, implied, and believed in churches but I'm over it. In fact it is kind of soothing to be at this church in a way. While internally I question and take issue with its mere existence and the things that come out of it (generically), I have mellowed to the point where I can ingest the aesthetics and ritual of it and enjoy contributing to it, in the way that I do. This is all part of another post which I will save for later. Perhaps a "Life, the Universe, and Everything" is brewing...

Dog walking is about the only time you can have a conversation with a complete stranger while one or both of you are holding a bag of feces.

Last night I had just such an experience and it got me thinking about some of the unspoken etiquette that applies to dog walking.

For example, as you get to know the dogs in your neighborhood, you learn which ones to avoid, which ones to stop and allow the obligatory mutual sniffing (for the dogs), which ones have annoying owners, etc. But there is even more subtlety to this art than might appear on the surface. Let me expound:


1. Count the Dogs
First, consider the number of dogs that the owner is walking. If only one, then proceed to step 2. If the owner is walking more than one dog, the potential for additional complications exists. For example, keeping leashes straight. With a 1:1 meetup, it is reasonably easy to keep dogs untangled from one another but as the number of dogs increases, so does the possibility of tangling, owner tripping, leash burn, strangulation, and death for canine and human parties alike. Additionally, people who have more dogs are generally crankier and less stable. There is an inverse correlation between number of dogs and degree of being completely insane.

2. Considering a Social Introduction
If you have determined that the number of total dogs will probably not result in you and the other owner hating each other for all time (don't worry, there is still a chance of this), you must then begin to read body language. This evaluation must begin from some distance, because the earlier you can tell, the sooner you can start the telling round of Dog Chicken. Assuming that you are approaching each other on the same side of the street, this involves seeing who will break first and cross to the other side. The loser is destined for all time to assume this submissive role in subsequent encounters.

3. Types of Interaction
Once you have determined that you can let your dogs interact, there are several levels at which this can happen. Sticking around too long or being too friendly can negatively impact your reputation as a conscientious dog walker. While your dogs are checking each other out, it is normally acceptable to ask questions about the following topics: "How old is your dog?", "what breed is s/he?", "what is your dog's name?", "how long have you had him/her?" The order of your questions is somewhat flexible and as long as the other owner reciprocates each question, you are still in the clear.

Tips:

• Never use the words "he" or "she" unless you know for sure. Under certain circumstances, it is ok to ask about gender, but do not try to lean into a bizarre looking position and look under the dog. This can be extremely awkward and will lead to ostricization by the entire neighborhood once word gets around.
• Never, ever make direct eye contact with the other dog's owner or introduce yourself, ask the owners name, where they live, or any other personal questions. This is considered extremely creepy and no one will ever talk to you again.

I hope these tips come to mind and are useful the next time you are out with your mutt.