Category: Uncategorized

Well, I made it out to my ol’ stomping grounds of Ocean County, N.J., this weekend and saw the Atlantic Ocean for the first time this year (not including seeing it from a plane). Above is a picture taken from the boardwalk in Seaside Park, N.J., looking at Funtown Pier in Seaside Heights.

Prior to my stroll on the boardwalk, I got a haircut…but that didn’t come easy. My barber took a walk-in customer while I was waiting for him to take me. Apparently, he didn’t realize I was there for him and the walk-in guy made himself comfortable in the chair while my barber was cashing out the customer he had been working on. I let it go and decided to say something after he was done with the walk-in guy because there was nobody else waiting at that point. But my barber got all chatty with him and then four people walked in the door, including a guy with a kid, who my barber took after he finally finished with the walk-in customer. I walked out while giving him a WTF? look and drove across the street to a Wawa for some coffee. About 10 minutes later, I called back and got everything taken care of…so my hair is REALLY short now. Actually, you could say I don’t have hair on top of my head right now…but it’ll be back before you know it.

The other “beach-y” part of this weekend? I’m going tonight to a show featuring my friend, Christian Beach, and Michael Ferentino at SICA in Long Branch, N.J. More about the show can be found here.

Life and death are subjects that fascinate me. Life is so valuable…each one of us gets one chance at it. And, yes, it sucks that one day it’s going to end for all of us.

As a child, I used to think about death all the time even though none of my loved ones have yet to pass away—only members of my friends’ families and co-workers, etc. For some reason, though, I experienced many sleepless nights thinking about death. My childish imagination conjured up hopes that in the future, technology would exist to eliminate natural death.

But then I would think about immortality…eternal life. And that’s when I would think to myself, “Holy crap! That would be SOOOOOO boring.” And, of course, you have the problem of the Earth getting caught up in the expanding Sun five billion years in the future (according to a 2005 episode of “Doctor Who”). At the age of five billion, there’s no way I’m packing up and moving to another galaxy.

So, in the end, death is a much better alternative than immortality. Of course, this also means that I hope there isn’t an afterlife of some sort because that will lead to the same problem. Eventually, even Heaven is going to get boring. I mean, if there is a Heaven, I doubt there are concerts…and movies. How can you call a place Heaven when there are no Peter Gabriel, Ben Folds or Mike Doughty concerts? I would rather be, as Ben Franklin once wrote, simply food for worms.

Anyway, I came across a site called DeathForecast.com, which asks you some questions about your lifestyle and family history, and tries to calculate a likely age for natural death based on the responses.

According to DeathForecast.com, I will die at the age of 74. And you know what? I’m totally down with that. That’s a good age to go, I think. I definitely don’t want to go deep into my 80s, when I’ll probably become a helpless shell of a human being.

And I’m not saying that anyone in their 80s and beyond is helpless…I’m just saying I probably will be based on the fact that I feel a little helpless sometimes now…and I’m still a few weeks away from hitting 35.

But in those remaining 39 years or so, hopefully, the Phillies will win at least one more World Series and the Eagles will finally win a Super Bowl. That’s all I ask.

I was wasting time on YouTube and searched for some Peter Gabriel videos. I happened to come across a couple of clips of his performance at the June 15, 1986, finale of the Amnesty International Conspiracy of Hope Tour at Giants Stadium…a concert I attended. I was with my sister on the field and not that far away from the stage…I mean, we were close enough for a guy five feet away from us to hit Joni Mitchell’s guitar with an ice cube he threw while she was performing.

But I digress…

Even though I was familiar at that point with PG and knew he used to be the lead singer of Genesis, I wasn’t the PG fanatic I am today. I became a convert when PG closed out the set on that hot June day with an impassioned, hypnotic peformance of “Biko.”

Unfortunately, the PG clips I found of that day do not include “Biko” or “Shock the Monkey.” However, they do include an early live version of “Red Rain” (the album “So” had just been released) and the incredible “San Jacinto.” PG opened with “Red Rain” so that video captures the very first moment I ever saw him play live…and, to paraphrase the Beatles, “it was 20 years ago (almost) today.”

“Red Rain”
Amnesty International Conspiracy of Hope Tour
Giants Stadium – June 15, 1986

“San Jacinto”
Amnesty International Conspiracy of Hope Tour
Giants Stadium – June 15, 1986

This is just a test to see if my AudioBlog posts show up in my newly created RSS podcast feed. Don’t bother listening.

UPDATE: After a slight delay, this did make it into the podcast feed…I love FeedBurner!

As Memorial Day Weekend draws to a close here in 2006, I have to say that my self-imposed sentence for writing decent new songs seems to have been a success.

Here is one I started writing Sunday and continued working on today. It kind of came out of nowhere. I mean, it has a horn part. I don’t usually do horns (probably because all the horn sounds in GarageBand suck), but the song started out sounding a lot like the Polyphonic Spree so I tried some horns, which at times remind me of those used on the Beatles’ “Got to Get You into My Life.” At that point, I think Ben Folds’ “Army” also crept into the mix of influences. Another odd thing about the song is that it is surprisingly upbeat, for the most part. I still need to come up with a bass part and some lyrics, though. Here is an unfinished version of this demo:

Untitled 05-28-06 (no vocals)

And, once again, here is the song I recorded Saturday:

Untitled 05-27-06 (no vocals)

So I’m watching Comedy Central this morning and I see a commercial for an ABC Family movie called “Karate Dog” that is airing on Memorial Day. As with the much-anticipated “Snakes on a Plane,” the title pretty much tells you what you’re going to get in this movie…a karate dog.

Oh, and not only does the dog know karate, it also talks…with a voice provided by Chevy Chase. More on that in a moment.

Now, when I first saw the commercial, my first thought was, “Hmm, a karate dog? Where have I seen that concept before?” And then it hit me…

Of course…Hong Kong Phooey! If you’re going to make a talking/karate dog movie, how could you not make it Hong Kong Phooey? “Karate Dog” is just a cheap knockoff of the Phoo.

But it gets even less original than that. When I saw that Chevy Chase provides the voice of Karate Dog, I immediately thought back to another of his films from years ago…“Oh Heavenly Dog.”

In that 1980 movie, Chase played a detective who is killed while investigating a murder. Before he can gain entry to Heaven, he is sent back to Earth to solve his own murder…as a dog (in this case, Benji).

But, wait! That’s not all. The late Pat Morita—Mr. Miyagi from “The Karate Kid” films—is in “Karate Dog.” The ABC Family site does not mention what role he played, but I am assuming he is the dog’s master, whose murder sets the whole “plot” in motion. So let’s throw some “Karate Kid” into this hodge podge of unoriginal ideas masked as family entertainment.

To recap, this “Karate Dog” movie is basically “Oh Heavenly Dog” meets “Hong Kong Phooey” meets “The Karate Kid.”

And I’m so bored, I just spent all this time blogging about this crap. Sigh.

Time to get working on some more music.

Instead of hanging out at the Jersey Shore this weekend, I am stuck here in Bucks County, Pa., because I didn’t want to risk driving my car long distances until I have the wheel bearing replaced Tuesday night.

Fortunately, with my MIDI setup working again, I decided to use this long weekend to try to write some new songs…and quality ones…not like the “foolin’ around” stuff I have been doing lately. Well, I think I came up with a good one today. I just started playing the verse and the parts just came naturally. Now, I just have to write some lyrics for it. For now, enjoy this latest untitled demo:

Untitled 05-27-06 (no vocals)

OK, I’ll start with the bad news.

I got my car back today…the transmission problem was fixed for a surprisingly minimal expense, which would have been great news…EXCEPT…something else was found. Apparently, I have a wheel bearing that needs replacing and that’s going to cost $360. I’m getting that done Tuesday.

The good news?

I managed to get my wi-fi connection restarted…and my MIDI adapter is working again.

UPDATE (5/26/06): And since my MIDI adapter is working again, here is my latest song idea with the bridge included…I doubt anything is going to come of this idea, but I figured I would post it anyway just so it appears I’m at least trying to be creative.

Untitled 2006-05-20 Demo (instr.)

Well, over the weekend, it was the MIDI adapter that stopped working.

Tuesday morning, my wi-fi Internet connection crapped out.

So, of course, what happens Wednesday? Yup, the car again.

I noticed the ol’ VUE making a weird noise while driving it early Saturday morning from the train station after the Apple Store adventure.

I kept hearing the noise this week while driving to and from work and decided to get it checked out. Well, apparently, I brought it in just in time as the service guy who took it around the block to replicate the noise nearly didn’t make it back. The car pretty much died.

As I suspected, the problem has something to do with the transmission, which REALLY sucks…and my car had to stay overnight.

Crappity, crap-crap-crap.

…my Airport Base Station isn’t allowing me to wirelessly connect to the Internet for a reason I haven’t stumbled across yet.

As noted in the previous post, I woke up this morning and my PowerBook could not connect to the Internet. I even hooked it up via the Ethernet cable (rather than using the wi-fi connection) and it still didn’t work. However, while I was troubleshooting the problem this evening, I realized I needed to configure the network preferences on my PowerBook to get onto the Internet through an Ethernet connection.

So I am back online…just not wirelessly. Whew!