Kites

I miss flying kites! Every spring my family would go to my aunt's backyard, which was a big open field with lots of wind. Everyone's hair would end up looking really windblown-glamorous for the rest of the day. The winds usually died before the kites got into the air, of course. Or it would be too windy, and all our kites would be torn into pieces. I miss those days.

Lunchtime Chamber Music

I went to a lunchtime Chamber Music Concert today to hear a cool guitar and saxophone duet (called Driveline by David Kechley) and there were three other groups on the program as well, including an amazing flute and marimba duet. I was the only student in the audience. Actually, aside from the two coaches of the chamber groups, and the guy who helped set up chairs, I was the audience. I tried to clap extra loud.

Moby and a Bee

Iron and Wine Review

I just saw Iron and Wine in concert tonight! Iron and Wine being just one guy, Sam Beam. He is fabulously bearded, as seen on the right. But he is also pretty hipster, as shown by the audience demographic. This time he was joined by a full band- at one point there were ten musicians on stage! It was a good show, but I wasn't overwhelmed. It was certainly the quietest rock concert I'd ever seen (no complaints there). Here's my review, in bulletpoint pros and cons.
Cons:
1. These people seem talented. Why aren't they taking advantage of melodic solo opportunities rather than doing the jam-band thing? Feels like an updated Phish concert with better chord structures.
2. Why is the harmony singer/violinist frozen in place? Why is she not smiling?
3. There are two percussionists, and one has approximately 50 handheld percussion items. Why are you stealing the show?
4. Guitarist who's playing the xylophone never plays a single tremolo. I now know too much about music that I can't just enjoy it, I have to expect a tremolo. But come on, this is what the xylophone lives for.
5. I am so tired of people taking horribly blurry pictures on their cameras and phones. Serious, guys, just steal a picture from the internet and print it out as if you snapped the greatest shot ever. You'll be better off, and I won't be distracted by your gadgets and their screens all lit up.
6. No fun stories for the audience?

Pro and Con: Percussionist Number Two: How can you possibly have at your little seat all these things: two pitched wooden boxes, a set of handbells, maracas, guiro, sleigh bells, recorder, chinese singing bowls, cabaza, four different shakers, chimes, bag of bells, steel drum, snare drum, bodhran, congas, bongos, tamborine, crash cymbal, cowbell, four almglocken, bowl attached to a stick, and three kinds of claves, and yet play just the right timbre at just the right moment to keep the music going?? It was just what I needed, right there. And you didn't overdo it. And yet sometimes I can't hear you at all, your microphone is too quiet, and all your efforts are completely lost. Why.

But then the pros, which altogether made the show pretty enjoyable.
1. Sam is really cute, and plays like he loves every minute, every word. His voice is lovely.
2. Piano/rhodes player provides good support.
3. Slide guitar, bassist, and guitarist play well.
4. Guitarist doubles on xylophone and accordion!
5. Great new arrangements of solo guitar music for large ensemble.
6. I'm really glad to see so many instruments on stage. Violin is in tune! Also, banjo and upright bass, and several guitar types. I think playing with combinations of instrument timbres is the future of pop music. It's already here, but there's more to say. I feel inspired!
7. Guy ahead of us is a kick-ass homosexual who writes a text message clearly readable from seats behind him, stating "I don't want to date him, I just want to f*** him".

Small tidbits

I think there is a dead something underneath my fridge. I can't get the fridge out of its nook to check, and my last resort is to look underneath with a flashlight, but I don't own a flashlight.

Also, the noises that an apartment makes are kind of creepy if you listen carefully enough. I think my walls are deteriorating at a noticeable rate.

I looked at my hands the other day and for the first time I noticed I had man hands, and not boy hands. The wrinkles have changed very subtly.

I can't stop thinking about the avant-garde food of Ferran Adria: This is a photo of the scientist/magician/chef, owner of perhaps the most famous restaurant in the world, El Bulli; I think this here is a solid tomato bisque, in ribbon-candy form. He is also famous for creating edible foams, and a fish spun into spiderweb consistency, then eaten like cotton candy.

Abercrombie Suggestive

Gone are the days of the nearly-pornographic Abercrombie Quarterly. Now only billboards remain, with their shirtless hunks, reminding us of better days of old, of times gone by...you know, circa 1999. This was a time when one could convince one's mom to buy him/her a magazine full of naked people, selling clothes by not wearing any at all. Brilliance. The clothes are pretty awful, anyway, so it's better marketing to not show them in the first place.
This is an old collage in tribute of those days. Notice the strategically placed anemone with little bits of text that I found from in a UPS magazine!

Girl With a Squirrel Earring

Everyone's favorite Netherlandish masterpiece. This came up in conversation tonight and I had to make a version of it- I tried to draw a comic of it but a cheap photoshopping does the trick even better, I think. I can imagine the squirrel whispering into her ear (in Renaissance Dutch, of course): "Girl, that Vermeer, he is NUTS."