It's another rainy, cloudy, "stay-inside-with-a-big-book" kind of day, just like yesterday. I re-read the Empire series this past week, and it always impresses me how well-written and planned the plots are. It's probably my second favourite series after Light & Shadows.

Last night while keeping up with my Tech brethren online, a low beeping invaded the back of my mind. It was one of those repetitive but persistent sounds that you don't notice for a long time, but one that you can't stop hearing afterwards. After turning off everything loud in my apartment (a fan and a Henry Mancini album), I realized the sound was coming from somewhere in the walls. A little more searching got me closer, when suddenly, it stopped. I couldn't tell if I'd imagined the whole thing or not.

Of course, the sound restarted as soon as I got back to work. I wandered outside to find that the sound was echoing up and down the walkways of the apartment complex. However, the farther from my door I walked in either direction, the softer the sound became, until I could no longer hear it. Around this point, I really got the feeling that I was just imagining everything, so I walked around the whole building to be certain. There's a dream-like, almost hypnotic quality associated with this, wandering around a darkened building after a rainstorm in search of a mysterious noise.

The culprit, when discovered, turned out to be some sort of alarm in an apartment almost directly below mine. Outside the front door, the piercing beeps saturated my brain, and I couldn't see how the occupants on either side were even surviving so close to ground zero. So being the dutiful neighbour, I reported it to the property manager who said he'd walk by later to check it out.

It's much easier to ignore something like that when you know it has a tangible source (and also when your music is turned up higher). The beeping didn't stop until ten o' clock this morning. At least I didn't die in my sleep in a blazing inferno...

I've been hard at work on another non-music project this weekend, hence the laughably terse updates yesterday and today. Look for the completed project on Wednesday, or Thursday at the latest.

In other news, I may be playing on a faculty percussion lecture-recital which has a few brass and percussion pieces scheduled. More thrilling news to follow...

OBX Travelogue - Part III: Sunday 8/22

Sunday was a beach day with nary a computer in sight. We got up early to do some grocery shopping, but the Corolla Food Lion was packed tighter than a Costco in the heart of yuppy Fairfax. The checkout lines stretched down every aisle and most of the shelves were empty. Seeing this, we turned around and went home, and I had Cup O' Noodles for breakfast.

The house we rented was a three-story, five-bedroom, three-bathroom house with twelve sleeping slots, and we had nine people there in the beginning of the week. It wasn't beach front, but there was a boardwalk connecting directly from the carport to the beach, so we didn't have to cross any roads. The distance was only about 130 yards.

The rest of Sunday was spent beaching, digging, walking, reading, and eating. I reread King of Torts by John Grisham, because sometimes you just don't want to read new books on vacation.

To be continued...

"When we tell them we're going to see OutKast, they know it's a band and not a bunch of misfits." - Proof that the RNC speechwriters should be fired, from Barbara and Jenna Bush's opening remarks

Friday Fragments

When Roseanne aired in 1988, I was in fifth grade in Mr. Ferris' class, terrorizing the school with hooligans like Mike Buns, Aaron Ulm, and Daniel Bethancourt. Mr. Ferris made people write 250 word essays as punishment for talking out of turn. I only ever got one. I had Science class with Mrs. Anderson, who called my parents at one point, concerned about the direction my studies were taken. She thought I was a slacker because I missed class for band concerts, and abused the lab equipment (I would use the metal ball to draw pictures on the carbon paper rather than bounce the ball across the paper to record the distances on each bounce). Fifth grade was also the year they put all the fifth graders in a Talented and Gifted class with the smart sixth graders. It was taught by Mrs. Nicholson who, at that time, was the wife of the oceanography teacher at T.C. Williams. I sat next to, and fell head-over-heels for, a pretty sixth grader who played computer games (this was before girls were allowed to touch computers I think). This is the same girl I wrote the mushy love note to two years later (Continuity! )

There are plenty of hurricane rants out there on the Internet so I will limit mine to a single fragment. I don't understand why over a quarter of the population chose to stay in the city -- unless you were incapable of mobility or a caretaker for the immobile, you should have gotten out that sinkhole of shame the first time they shouted "mandatory evacuation". People should still do what they can to help you, but you really are partially to blame. All the refugees in need of aid need to stop complaining about the inconsistency of incoming aid and realize that there's a reason we call them "disasters". By the same token, the federal government's response to the disaster should have been much better organized and less laughable. And as a closing thought, what the heck? Stuff like that makes me lose faith in the human race.

Yesterday's search terms:
nintendo sheet music for tenor sax, disco inferno marching band, >10mb booty :wmv, diseased hamster pictures, college hunks hauling junk

Newsday Tuesday

A new Range Rover. Christian Dior sandals. A shopping trip to L.A. But the birthday bash is what really takes the cake.

Like a penny-pinching pensioner clipping coupons, I'm always on the lookout for the next big story to mock on Newsday Tuesday. I clipped this out over the weekend from the Washington Post, planning to do my usual routine of multiple rereads mixed with highlighter overuse, scribbled one-liners, and quicky quirky sketches on Post-It notes.

Ayse Halac, as it turns out, is a high school sophomore from Leesburg, celebrating her 16th birthday Thursday night at the Northeast Washington club. And the crowd of "paparazzi" are in fact a posse of girls in short dresses with little digital cameras -- friends of the club owner's daughter, brought in to complete Ayse's chosen theme of "Hollywood Chic." Soulja Boy and Bow Wow are performing, and Ayse's mom threw in some extra money to fly in R & B singer Mario on a private jet to croon "Happy Birthday".

The problem with this article is that it might be impossible to make it any more of a mockery than it already is -- nothing I could possibly say about a $300,000 Sweet Sixteen Birthday Party would make it more ludicrous than reality. (Sadly, Ludicrous did NOT perform at the party, although Soulja Boy was pissed that he didn't get enough money to peform his one song).

Fifty television screens continuously loop even more photographs of Ayse (pronounced AYE-sha). Seventy-two LED panels, brought in just for the night, show a live feed of her entering the club. The 15-foot JumboTron outside the club displays Ayse's face, the first time a non-celebrity has graced that screen.

Also present at the party were the aforementioned gaggle of girls screaming Ayse's name, and Ayse's face plastered on five hundred cocktail napkins (Ayse's father vetoed her face on the toilet paper, preempting any jokes about Ayseholes).

Ayse's friends and acquaintances -- about 200 of them -- were picked up at Stone Bridge High School in limo-buses and chauffeured to the club . . . Of course, not all of the 200 guests are close with Ayse. Asked whether he is, Kaine Higgins shrugs. "Eh," he says.

Higgins was quick to add, "I'll be sure to sit with her at lunch for the rest of the year. I want to be invited to the open bar wedding in a few years. I hear those Turkey people get married young."

Thinking back to my own Sixteenth Birthday, I was obviously in a lower income tax bracket than the Halacs, having invited only 10 of my closest friends to eat Pizza Hut pan pizza and potato chips, and drink Coke out of 2-Liter bottles. The activities of the evening included Super Tennis on the SNES, Doom 2, a Trezur Hunt, and backyard games where players tied balloons to their ankles and tried to stomp everyone else's balloons first.

What did you do on YOUR sixteenth birthday?

What will your kids get on their 16th birthday?

A pony (1 vote, 14.3%)


The latest i-prefixed gadget (1 vote, 14.3%)


Ketchup packets from the drive-thru (2 votes, 28.6%)


A swift kick in the ass (3 votes, 42.9%)

Memory Day: The Admiral's Overture

In the winter of 1996, with only six months of composing under my belt, I was asked by a former band director to compose a piece for her middle school band. Although it wasn't my first world premiere (it was actually the fifth), it was the first one triggered by an outside request rather than my incessant attempts to bug band directors who couldn't say no to me. I would later learn that it's HARD to get people to play your music (with the exception of flute solos, because once you've played your first contemporary flute piece, you can fake all the rest of them without much effort, plus you save money by not having to hire a pianist).

Hammond Middle School was a former high school, so their concert attire was an embarrassing approximation of what a sailor might look like in a land where polyester is an undepletable natural resource. The school motto was something appropriately navy, and the school song was "Anchors Aweigh". Having just gone through an unpleasant experience where Warner Brothers Music charged me $50 for the rights to make a crappy pep band arrangement of the Darth Vader theme, and realizing that the school song was in the public domain, I jumped at the chance to work it into the score somehow.

In an obviously original move, I invented a countermelody that could be played at the same time as the school song, and then opened the piece with that theme. I also interjected tiny fragments of the more familiar tune with all the subtlety of Jim Swearingen and craft of an arthritic cobbler.

Because movies are louder than words, especially when they contain eighth graders, you can see the entire performance on YouTube. Pay special attention to the size of my glasses, the way I conduct like a drum major leading a legally blind marching band, the audience clapping prematurely, and the moment near the very end where I knock all the music off of the first flutist's stand.

Review Day

There are no spoilers in these reviews.

Couples Retreat:
This movie was probably just an excuse for Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn to run around together some more -- it's hit-or-miss with not quite enough ensuing hilarity. The movie also can't decide whether it's a comedy or a drama, and doesn't do a good job of switching between the two tracks. Overall, it's uneven but passable enough entertainment for a hurricane evening. The main downside to this movie was learning that Blockbuster has reimplemented real late fees for their movies ($1 a day after the five-day rental period) in addition to the fake "you bought it" late fee they already had.

Final Grade: C-

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest:
The finale of the Girl trilogy would have benefited greatly from additional editing, as the author seemed to be developing a Victor Hugo complex where he'd shoot off on a tangent about sewers for ten pages before returning to the story at hand. The feel of the book is also different -- there isn't really a central mystery that requires the reader to tie pieces together anymore. In spite of these issues, this book does provide a great sense of closure to the story, and the last couple hundred pages ARE polished and tightly paced.

Final Grade: B-

Namesake:
This movie stars Kal Penn as a young guy who smokes weed, but Neil Patrick Harris is nowhere in sight. It's based on a book that Rebecca liked a lot that tells the story of an Indian family in the US over two generations. It wasn't a bad movie, but I don't think it was as deep an experience as it thought it was.

Final Grade: C+

Cat Video Friday

Answers Day, Part II of II

the sequel to Questions Day

i'm about to start broadening my cocktail portfolio (both drinking and making) - any good ones i should include? - Doobie

I've never really gotten into cocktails, because the sheer number of ingredients and effort you need to make something passably comparable to a bartender's concoction is daunting. This is also why I don't brew my own beer, make my own gaming computer, or do recipes from cookbooks with more than 8 ingredients. I like mojitos, but apparently they're a pain in the ass to create.

Where will you live when you retire? - KBS

Currently, my main criteria for a retirement spot would include:

• Proximity to a beach, preferably with accessible hikes and random island cats wandering around like they own the place.
• High speed Internet.
• Proximity to stores and creature comforts, or reliable delivery services.

Have you exercised your Greenbrier Resort award yet? and if so, did you see the secret Bunker? and if so, would you please review it on your blog? - Mom

Here is a flow chart of this question.

Weekend Wrap-up

I'm not exactly sure how it's already September, but it does mean that I'm one year closer to retiring on an island paradise. Our weekend was pretty relaxing for a Labor Day Weekend, without the usual chain of barbeques across the area to attend.

On Saturday, Annie stopped by in the afternoon, and we drank organic beers on the back porch. In the evening, we went to the Ahlbins for dinner and a Hearthstone tournament, before which Ella tried to convince us that it would be in our best interests to sleep over so she could eat breakfast with us in the morning.

On Sunday, we went hiking at Riverbend Park, north of Great Falls. It's like Great Falls Park with 80% fewer people and no falls, but we were able to do a nice five mile hike in the stifling heat and humidity. We returned home in the evening for showers, Domino's pizza, and episodes of The Shield.

I extravagantly took Labor Day off because I have over 200 hours of leave saved up and am nowhere near depletion. While Rebecca went to work to perambulate the elderly, I did some beach trip planning, puttered around the house, played Skyrim, and started Sons of Anarchy while running on the treadmill. Dinner was brown sugar steaks and salads, grilled to perfection in the window between thunderstorms.

How was your weekend?

Memory Day: My Fifteenth Birthday Party

Twenty-one years ago today, on September 2, 1994, I had a party celebrating my fifteenth birthday. I was about to start my junior year at TC Williams, and although Alexandria had a caste system based upon which of the two junior high schools you attended, my guest list Venn diagram'd multiple circles, thanks my place on the Crew team.

I had my party before school started (oddly on a Thursday this year instead of the traditional Tuesday after Labor Day) to make sure that everyone could attend -- the entire crowd was required to be in town for band and sports and other activities, so no one was away on last-minute vacations. Below is a picture of Jack, Ben, Kwan, and Jenny, gathered around the table where I was distributing free copies of the murder mystery thriller I'd written over the previous summer.

As usual, some of the guys arrived an hour early to check out whatever the latest and greatest video game was. This month, it was the shareware version of DOOM, which had been around for a year, but was only just beginning to show up in stores. My dad didn't believe in those newfangled BBSs so "downloading games" was a foreign concept. Games weren't limited to the guys though -- Cheryl and the other Jenny took over the Super Nintendo in order to see if their skills from the tennis team translated into Super Tennis (they did not).

The first order of business once everyone had arrived from their "unofficial" sports practices (branded as such because it was technically illegal hold practice before school started) was the traditional treasure hunt, where everyone broke into teams and followed clues to a big prize, usually a giant box of TWIX bars. Treasure hunts usually devolved into a chaotic tangle with one team cheating and the others fighting over the prize, but this was part of the charm.

After the treasure hunt, we went into the backyard to play volleyball. Before we could begin though, Kwan hit the ball up on the roof. We never actually got to play, because by the time I had made it up there to retrieve the ball, the Pizza Hut pan pizzas had arrived. Later, we did the awkward ritual of sitting in a circle while I opened presents. An old journal show that I received the following gifts:

• $25 in cash
• A $30 gift card to CompUSA
• Various tchotchkes from gift shops on peoples' family vacations, including a yo-yo, a keychain, rock candy, and a tin of popcorn
• An oversized white T-shirt with the slogan, "DO SOMETHING", on the front, which lasted all of the way through college
• A black fish for my aquarium, promptly named "Tony".

The party ended innocently around 10:30 after a game of Bloody Murder, lacking in any debauchery or scandal one might expect from watching too many teen movies from the 90s.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Catastrophe, Season Two:
This six episode season feels like a misfire. The frank and humourous dialogue is still there in spades, and the first episodes set up some interesting scenarios to work with, but the season ends abruptly with no resolution. It's like someone gave the writers a "pencils down" timer and they just shot whatever was done. The tone of this season is also slightly meaner than before. Free on Amazon Prime.

Final Grade: C

Fargo, Season Two:
The second season has no misfires, and I only rate it lower than the first season's "A+" out of personal preference between the two. It's hard to find a show that can be both cinematic and literary without pretension, while still sustaining your interest -- when a character here starts reciting Lewis Carroll, I was on the edge of my seat, while Walter White chasing after a fly for 45 minutes just had me rolling my eyes and fast forwarding. One plot point in the final episode stretches a bit too far unnecessarily to tie back to the first season, but it doesn't hurt the self-contained story at all.

Final Grade: A

Dungeons and Dreamers by Brad King and John Borland:
This is a pleasant history of computer games and their evolution out of D&D. It's a bit outdated, having been published just before World of Warcraft became a big deal, but it goes in-depth with some material on Richard Garriott (of Ultima fame) and id (of DOOM fame) that I hadn't already learned in other books. It also covers the sociology of gaming to some extent, as well as the various legal pressures on gaming in the 90s (does anyone remember Jack Thompson anymore?)

Final Grade: B+

MCIRCO 750ml Collapsible Silicone Water Bottle:
This was my go-to water bottle for hiking in Colorado. It's slightly lighter than a bike bottle or hardshell and doesn't leak if tightly screwed in. The novelty here is that you can roll the bottle up when empty, conserving valuable backpack volume, yet the material is also sturdy enough to stand upright on its own regardless of how much water is inside. The only nitpick I have is that the stretchy strap that keeps it rolled up sometimes falls off if allowed to hang -- I ended up taking it off completely and storing it safely until I needed to roll the bottle up again.

Final Grade: A-

Review Day: First Impressions

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Mosquito Joe's:
After years of ravenous tiger mosquitoes and occasional attempts to self-spray the backyard that resulted in my fingertips smelling like chemicals for lingering days, we decided to try out a commercial spraying service. We paid for 3 applications (every 3 weeks) but were not suitably impressed. Any hard data in reduction in bites was confused by rain storms (one started 15 minutes after they sprayed) and the fact that it was too hot to be outside much this summer anyhow. The first two applications were very thorough, but on the 3rd visit, only one of the pair of sprayers showed up, and I'm pretty sure he skipped an entire side of the house.

At the end of the day, Maia still got multiple bites every time we briefly went out to water the plants, so the benefit was not worth the price.

First Impression: We cancelled after 3 visits, even though additional spraying sessions might have continued to improve the situation.

Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance:
This 10-episode prequel to the 80s movie, The Dark Crystal is visually and aurally impressive, yet I only made it about 40 minutes into the first episode. While I really want to like it, it feels expositionally clumsy (and I'm also not 8 years old anymore).

First Impression: Stalled, but I will definitely watch more to see if it improves.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
I've enjoyed this turn-based combat video game series since I discovered the GameCube edition. It's always a mixed bag in execution, but the core combat game is addictive and challenging. I bought the latest iteration for the Switch as soon as it stopped being out of stock everywhere (no, Dulles Gamestop, I will not place an order with you and "have it delivered sometime in the next month").

I'm about 3 hours into it right now and I'm pretty sure I've only fought about 2 battles. The rest of the time has been spent running around a castle full of one dimensional NPCs and essentially playing Harry Potter Relationship Simulator. "Oh you like eating fish too? Let's be friends!"

First Impression: A turn-based combat game without much turn-based combat -- I may not have the patience to see if it improves.

Time-lapsed Blogography Day: Twenty Six Years Ago Today

Twenty-six years ago today, on September 2, 1994, I had just finished writing my magnum opus, Maverin: A Murder Mystery.

With minor assistance from my dad and the photocopiers at USDA, I had printed out multiple copies of the 120-page novel and distributed it to all of my friends, most of whom were featured characters in the story.

The story was supremely trite, equal parts inspired by Gordon Korman, John Grisham, and the computer game, Colonel's Bequest. There were multiple people with limps, too many characters with a secret, and all sorts of other murder mystery tropes. The events took place on a manor near Hahns Peak, Colorado, simply because I opened up a map once and pointed at a city.

My dad offered harsh realism as advice on getting it published: "I'll buy you this book full of publisher info and you can pay to send your manuscript out to as many as you want, but you'll probably spend a lot more of your money than you'll ever make and it may never get published anyhow." Since that seemed like more work that I'd care to deal with, the vaguely-formed dream of being a famous teen author ended quietly and I soon moved on to other more interesting pursuits, like writing music.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

a lighter shade of blue by Christina Perri:
Christina Perri's newest album sounds like a remix of the most inoffensive parts of her previous albums. I've listened to it multiple times but none of it gets stuck in my head.

Final Grade: C+

Motorheart by The Darkness:
Not as good as Last of Our Kind or Easter is Cancelled, but full of pleasant glam rock anthems. Justin Hawkins' falsetto is as strong as it was 15 years ago.

Final Grade: B-

Brooklyn 99, Season Seven:
This season feels a little tired and tedious, but thankfully, it's only 13 episodes long. I enjoyed it enough to keep watching the next and final season. On Hulu.

Final Grade: B-

Only Murders in the Building, Season Two:
The second season of this show shows no dip in quality from the first. The characters remain charming and idiosyncratic. There's a slight misstep in the casting of a celebrity living in the penthouse that just feels out of place (especially compared to the person living there last season), but it thankfully doesn't take over the whole season. On Hulu.

Final Grade: B+