Every day these past few weeks, I've woken up with a song running through my head that doesn't go away for an hour or so. The only odd part is that usually the song is something I haven't listened to since I was a kid, or even thought of recently, yet the tune spinning in my head is complete to the last percussive hit. For example, the other morning I woke up to Fish Heads (by Barnes & Barnes, I believe).

In other news, I finally got all my remaining textbooks from Amazon.com, but I think they may have misplaced the DVD which was the best part of my order. That's what happens when you send things by USPS instead of UPS.

"I was working [in the NBC house band] with a wonderful trumpet player named Charlie Margulis. Charlie was a don't-take-any-crap-from-anybody kind of guy. We were playing along and rehearsing in studio 8-H, and Paul Lavalle was rehearsing the band. He stopped the band because there was a trumpet unison passage. He said, 'Play it alone, trumpets.' So we played it alone. He said, 'Try it once more.' So we played it again. He said, 'Try it one more time, please.' And Charlie Margulis says, 'Why!?' Like that. And Paul Lavalle says, 'It isn't together.' And Charlie Margulis says, 'It's together back here.' And Paul says, 'Well it's not together up here.' And Charlie says, 'Well clean the sh_t out of your ears!'

"What Charlie didn't realize is that up above us is the glass where the twenty-five-cent tours are going through, and they can hear it. That was the last time Charlie worked there." - Billy May in Arranging the Score: Portraits of the Great Arrangers