Quote Monday’s dreams finally come true

/ Shane / Leave a comment

::Playing Settlers of Catan::
Me: “Finally, all my wheat dreams are coming true!”
Sara: “Alright, Joseph…”

Sara: “Evie, what are you doing up?”
Evie: “I had an itch on my back I couldn’t reach.”

I have to give it to her, it was a pretty lame excuse, but it was unique!

Sara: “I hate when people get shot in the middle of the day. That’s my pet peeve.”

Evie: “I don’t like veggie lasagna. I like pizza because we have it every week and I like pancakes because we have it every week.”
Sara: “Well, maybe we should have veggie lasagna every week.”
Evie: “Well…I don’t think it would work the same for veggie lasagna.”

The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Awhile ago I blogged about Digital Underground and how they led me to George Clinton and Funk in general. On the strength of that article, I was contacted by bassist John Heintz who was wrapping up a new project with said funk legend George Clinton: a new funk “supergroup” known as The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown.

When John asked me if he could give me a “sneak peek” at the album before it was released, I naturally jumped all over it.

It’s hard to say The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown is a group (it’s hard to classify The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown at all actually); it’s more a rotating collaboration between anybody who has dabbled in any way with Funk. From the superstars to the up and coming, from P-Funk to The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, from Kool and the Gang to Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band. (I’m sorry, but how are you not going to listen to someone named Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band?) In fact, the collaboration includes almost 100 musicians in total.

Therefore, it is not surprising that there’s something for everyone on the album. Seriously, there are so many different styles, so many different instruments, so many different types of vocals, so many musicians who are just frankly at the top of their game, that it would be hard for anybody to say there wasn’t something they liked in there.

“College Funk” won Funk/Groove song of the year at the 2011 Hollywood Music in Media Awards, but for my money, “Room 2012” was the best track. Again, there’s a lot of variety, which runs from “Platinum”, which is more of your typical Funk song, to wailing steel guitars on “Wake Me Up” (side note, Ralph Roddenberry’s vocals knock it out of the park there).

I gave the album to a co-worker of mine who happens to be a jazz saxophonist, and whose musical opinion you should trust a lot more than mine, and he liked it. In fact, I told John I would not blog about The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown unless I genuinely liked the music. I’m blogging about it now. What does that tell you?

Volume 1 by The Big Ol’ Nasty Getdown releases this month.

What kind of person did you used to be in high school?

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Lately when I am talking to people, I have been playing a game in my head: what was this person like in high school?

High school is such a funny time in our lives. 4 short years with about 20 years of repercussions (at least!) immediately to follow. In high school, everybody is broken down into cliques or types. It’s very one-dimensional, as if your entire personality can be summed up in one word: nerd, jock, goth, prep, whatever it is. But when you’re in high school, it also happens to be kind of true. You just don’t have all that much personality yet. In fact, in the name of belonging, your assigned label kind of becomes your defacto personality. You dress the part, pick up the speech mannerisms, start to like the same types of activities, etc. One might argue that in high school you don’t even have a personality yet, so in the meantime, you just use the one assigned to you.

But when you get to be adults, all of that sort of goes away (the personality thing goes away, not the deep psychological scars…or maybe that’s just me). I think a lot of it is just growing into your personality. It turns out that people aren’t so one-dimensional. Shy people find confidence, outgoing people learn there’s always someone cooler than you. Jocks find out they like computers, and nerds find out they like sports (ping pong is a sport, right?) Everybody kind of realizes we all have more in common than we thought. Adulthood is the great equalizer.

Nowadays, if I run into someone from my high school (virtually or otherwise), I’m just excited to have run into someone from my high school. Suddenly people who I never even spoke to in high school are like old friends. We can reminisce about our school or hometown, and I’m honestly interested to hear what they’re up to.

So lately as I’m talking to people, I start to wonder: is this person someone whom I would have talked to in high school? What were they like? Would we have gotten along back then?

It’s harder to guess than you would think. Nerds are probably the easiest to pick out, but it’s not a sure thing. Besides, haven’t you heard? These days it’s cool to be a “nerd” (as a true, not-in-quotes nerd who suffered for it, I take a little exception to that, but that’s another blog post).

It stands to reason that at least some of the people I talk to as adults wouldn’t have given me the time of day as high schoolers (it stands to reason, because at least some of the people I talk to as adults are girls).  Just playing the odds, some of you had to be cheerleaders, or captains of the football team, or drama dorks (Drama Queens? What’s the PC term for someone who haunted the drama department in high school? Phantoms of the Drama Department?), or even just band nerds, which were a whole separate breed of nerd that ran on a sort of parallel track, but didn’t cross over.

So what were you like in high school? Anybody find it particularly humorous to think back on how they were perceived back then vs. now? Any Mean Girls want to fess up and admit that they wouldn’t have talked to me back then?

An Ambitious Project

/ Shane / 4 Comments

Sara and I have begun a very large joint-knitting project known as a “Beekeeper’s Quilt“.

Basically, you knit hundreds of these little stuffed honeycomb shapes, and then tie them together to make something that looks like this:

Ours currently looks something like this:

Sara and I thought this would be a nice project to do together, since knitting the honeycombs is an independent activity, but are all combined into the finished project. And part of the draw of this quilt is that each of the honeycombs are unique, so it’s okay if they don’t exactly match up. Plus, since there are hundreds of these things to knit, we can do them here or there as we go. In other words, Sara can knit other projects and come back to this one, while I labor away slowly, and maybe it will all even out in the end. 🙂

Because we had to buy so much yarn, we decided to also buy an Amish yarn swift. This is a little wooden spinning thing that you use to wind skeins of yarn into balls. It’s helpful, but it still takes quite a while to ball up an entire skein.

So we’ll see how it goes. The honeycombs are a *big* step up for me in terms of complexity, but I’m hoping that they are small enough that I can get some good practice on a few new knitting skills (lots and lots of practice)(hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice). I’m imagining this project will take us a few years, so I’m planning to give periodic updates now and again.

Vaudeville, here we come!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

 

Oh my god, they’re just so cute I could die. I can’t stop watching these over and over again!

We originally recorded these videos to upload them to the Jokes4Miles website. Basically, a Chicago comedian is trying to collect 5,000 jokes to help his son through his chemotherapy. Unfortunately, when I went to upload the videos, we found out there is a certain format we needed to follow (state your name, location, etc.). So I’m not sure if I want to go back and re-record them or not. But in the meantime, you guys get to enjoy them!