now playing: james taylor, “mexico”
new hampshire primary is today. early reports show that wesley clark has an early lead. the plot thickens…
here in the great northeast, we’re getting a pretty severe pounding in the weather department…everything is frozen, including the windshield wipers on my van…had to pull over and scrape on the way to work this morning.
i’m thinking that this might be God’s way of showing the philadelphia area, in yet another way, what it’s like in buffalo…
two days in a row now, i’ve forgotten to bring in the box of girl scout cookies that sit next to the front door of my house. this speaks less to my forgetfulness, however, than it does to my inability to get out of bed at an hour that would allow for remembering to bring them, i think. i seem to wake lately with the attitude that i am above the law of the alarm clock and capable of making up any impossible discrepancy between the hour that the clock rings and the hour that i decide it’s time for me to get up. i think it’s more a deluded state of mind than an arrogant one, though.
of course, i wouldn’t have heard the alarm at all had wendy not come downstairs and retrieved me from the sofa…i got home last night at 8:45 and spent the next three-plus hours washing all the dishes from the weekend – sat down on the sofa and lost consciousness. woke up (what seemed like) fifteen minutes later to wendy on the stairs, and went upstairs at around 5:45 to sleep a few more minutes…
am contemplating a future in part-time music retail, of sorts…a distributor that i’ve formed a friendship with is setting me up in their system as a dealer, and i’m going to start reselling their products in this area on a part-time basis over the ‘net and face-to-face, since i do seem to come in contact with a lot of musicians…but whether or not i follow through depends on what i think about the first instrument i receive from him, which will be a black 12 string rickenbacker copy…i’m familiar with the company in name only at this point, as i haven’t owned any of their instruments yet, but i’ll be forming a pretty quick opinion once i have one in my hands…
…the funny thing is, i’m not even interested in doing it as a money-making venture so much as i’d like to be able to help people get their hands on these…they’re damn near impossible to find, and i’ve been waiting for this particular shipment of these to come in for almost six months. so i’m psyched to get my hands on this one, to see if they’re what my often absent sense of optimism would like to think they’ll turn out to be.
i have this mental image of myself selling guitars out of the back of my van…
anyway, i talked to quin yesterday for about half an hour – he’s going to be playing the valentines’ day stone road show with us, which pleases me greatly…i’ve missed him these last couple of shows. we’ve had a pair of great shows back to back, and if you weren’t paying attention, you might not even have noticed he was gone, but goddamn…i sure do. he is making quite a bit of headway in getting caught up on his work, though, and he’s gotten to spend some quality time with his sons, and i’m glad to know this…
dylan and i finished the final odds and ends in the studio this weekend, and now pretty much everything that should be operational upstairs is operational upstairs. i had some interesting problems getting the guitar port to work with the new PC up there, but a quick uninstall/reinstall fixed that, and now dylan is learning how to route signals on the mixing console to be able to play his guitar in the studio. he’s making pretty unbelievable progress…and he’s proving himself a capable student. for instance, one of the songs he started working on was a papa roach song, “last resort”. i showed him how to use the “half speed” function in guitar port to slow a song down while you’re initially learning it, and he learned the intro riff in one day…but he learned it by sliding his fingers from fret to fret to play it, and i sat down with him and explained that this was a lethal habit to get into, as it was really important to learn dexterity and to develop his left hand skills, etc, etc, blah blah blah…the next day, he’d learned the riff by playing it with the first three fingers of his left hand. just like that. he’s still not able to play it full speed, but he knows it.
i think perhaps his musical gene may not be so recessive after all.
he was in the studio with me when i cut a lowell-george-esque slide guitar part for one of blake’s songs called “cleaning” the other night, listening intently…when i was finished, he asked sternly, “what did you think of that pass?”….almost asking without asking if i thought it was good enough…with the Belushi Eyebrow raised ever so slightly…
i’m thinkin’ he’s into it.
a local news story that i found….uh, interesting….
from the reading eagle website:
Boy who was nailed to wall by students still no Eagles fan
Brian Hilbert pays with ripped clothes for his opinion of the local team. The four classmates responsible have been suspended and cited and will pay for the garments, officials say.
By Keith Mayer
A 16-year-old Gilbertsville boy who police say was nailed to a wall by his clothes by four classmates earlier this month after he criticized the Philadelphia Eagles, said Monday that he still doesn’t like the team.
But Brian Hilbert also knows his opinion and his staunch support of the Tennessee Titans brought on the rough treatment.
“They (the classmates) didn’t really like that I said their team stinks,” Hilbert said.
Meanwhile, Oley Township police filed criminal mischief and harassment citations against Jeremy R. Trout, 18, of the 700 block of Mimosa Lane, Exeter Township, and three 17-year-old boys from the Boyertown and Gilbertsville areas.
Hilbert and the other teens are carpentry students at the Berks Career and Technology Center East Campus, officials said. They were working on the house that students build as a project.
Police withheld the names of the 17-year-olds. The citations were filed in the office of Oley District Justice Ronald C. Mest.
Police also want the teens to pay restitution for Hilbert’s clothes.
Mest said he is waiting for Hilbert’s parents to tell him the cost of the clothes.
Authorities gave this account of the Jan. 13 assault:
Hilbert argued about the Eagles with his classmates, who then used a hammer to nail him up by his clothes to a framed-out wall in a house the students were building along Old State Road in Oley Township.
Hilbert ripped his clothes to free himself while the others watched and laughed.
The 17-year-olds, all Boyertown High School seniors, and Trout, an Exeter High School senior, have been suspended for 10 days, officials said.
Hilbert said he and the other boys traded barbs over the two football teams.
“We weren’t getting loud, then I figured it was over,” Hilbert said.
The other boys then lured Hilbert into the basement and scuffled with him, police said. They held him against the wall and nailed his clothes, investigators said.
Hilbert said he grew up around mostly Eagles fans, including his family.
“I guess I wanted to be the different one,” he said.
Hilbert’s father, Gary L., said he and his wife, Paula K., are proud of the way their son handled the situation.
“The other students thought that by bullying him they could change his mind,” said the elder Hilbert, who added that he’s an Eagles fan. “But he stood his ground, and both his mother and I are really proud of him for that.”
———————————————————–
…all i know is it’s a goddamn shame he wasn’t a panthers fan. ‘course, they may have really nailed him to the wall if he was….
...from the rear view mirror 