12/23/11

Well in order to combat my flagrant ineptitude in keeping up with my updates I figured I'd try and squeeze in one more entry before the end of 2011. I'm hoping to upload this before the new year...we'll see.

I'm thinking a very brief synopsis for each holiday/event is in order since I've not had the joy of ranting about them due to my lackadasical attitude.

I do hope everybody's Halloween was fulfilling both in body and spirit. We have to keep the dentists pockets full this season so eat up! I dropped my son off with a bunch of his hooligan friends for some fun and frolic. My boy managed to procure a nice hall which could possibly induce a diabetic coma. He had fun with his soccer buds and for that I am quite happy. (plus since my boy is lactose intolerant guess who got first dibs on all things chocolate :-)

Thanksgiving was nice. We had to travel to Brooklyn to meet up with family and friends. The food was good and fun was had by all. We played a few rounds of "Catch Phrase" which was actually quite fun. It didn't involve shooting, blood or assorted gibbets but my son and I still had fun.

Flash forward it is now 12/26 and Xmas is pretty much officially over...at least in my eyes. Went to my family for Xmas eve. Hung out with my grandmother, who just got a new car incidentally. She just turned 90 and she's living on her own and continues to defy the aging process as much as humanly possible. Dinner was great, as usual. Although my mom won't profess to being a good cook I do really miss her culinary adventures. We had the usual Xmas fare, turkey, stuffing (two types), potatoes, greens, 3 types of sweet breads, and at my request this great hot cider she makes (which involves periforating an orange with cloves). We have a fairly small family so it was a relaxed, quiet and a relatively tranquil day. For that I am grateful. My parents are snow birds so they are only up here for part of the year so to actually be able to sit down with them, eat something, and hang out for an extended time is nice. As far as gifts the boy got a soccer goal, some silly stuff and a bit of money. Not bad. We got home early but somehow ended up going to bed late. Thankfully my son is generally into not getting up early anymore so we had a bit of a reprieve the next moring. The boy had a quite a nice little haul by the time all was said and done Xmas morning. Afterall Xmas is for the kids. Since he is a soccer beast he picked up some swag from his two favorite teams, Barcelona and Brasil. In the pile was a scarf, a hat that was a combined effort of family members (mainly my mom and Mary), a new soccer ball, training jacket, sweatshirt, some stocking stuffers and additional hoohah. Oh a really cool gift he got was a swimming shark. Basically its a helium fillled shark shaped balloon that is remote controlled. You're able to make it swim through the air by swinging its tail fin back and forth. The freakin' thing is huge!

Xmas day we hit Long Island where my wife's sister resides with her husband and two teenage kids. We had a nice time there. The food was good and the kids had a lot of fun hanging out. I was in the game room with the oldest watching him play Skyrim. Man I want that game but I know it'll just leech away my time! We got home real late and crashed. That's pretty much the some sum total of my holiday season. I hope yours was a good one!

Flash forward to New Years eve, today. We have an open mic happening at UMusic this evening and a bit of jamming as well. So I'll be bringing my bass with me as well as my guitar. My boy will be having some friends over to cause all sorts of New Years chaos and cacophony which will be great for him. Me? When I get home I plan on staying home. I won't be going out into that hive of alcohol induced insanity.

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<moronalogue>First off I'd like to dedicate this moronalogue to a good friend of mine Isaac. He put it in my head that it was time to update this page! Let the hilarity ensue...

So this year it looks like Dr. Dre's, The Beats, headphones are pretty much the rage with the kids this holiday season. Check 'em out here. Ok now this is what I don't get. These are hi def headphones, studio quality listening. I'm thinking that they have a much wider frequency response then normal ear buds. After reading some conflicting reviews it seems that these are genre specific headphones. Being that Dr. Dre has his name on 'em you can probably guess what genre we're talking about. Yep, dance, rap, electronica etc. It seems that the phones hype the bass and high end and leave the midrange a bit flat. Well again for those particular genres I guess that's the way it is. My gripe is this. A lot of kids and adults download mp3s which are by far sub par audio quality. Why would you spend $200 bucks on a pair of headphones to listen to shitty quality music? I don't get it. If you were listening to cds (and maybe they are) I can totally see picking up a decent pair of headphones but mp3's, especially those encoded to 128 or lower? eh, I'll pass. </moronalogue>

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My video silliness has slowed but I have added one new "Betcha CAN Play This! video for all to enjoy, or throw virtual produce at. Let me present the 5th installment of this musical ineptitude!

Betcha CAN Play This! ep.5

I'm still digging these videos. I have shot a sixth but have yet to edit it down. I've been a bit lazy with the vids as of late due to the...

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record. As a matter of fact I'm working on this perpetual thorn in my side as I type. Turns out there were some problems with the cymbals. Basically they were too damn loud! I like cymbals, especially chinas, but this shit was just a bit too over the top. So I've been re-mixing, listening, re-mixing, listening...you know the drill. I figure I've spent a lot of time on this project, I don't want to skimp out on the very end. I decided, at least for now, that I'm going to be doing a 12 page booklet with the cd. There are 9 tunes and each tune will have have its own graphic (I'm sure I went over this before). Anyways that's the deal. I'm still working on liner notes and I have to finish working on graphic for on the cd itself.

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Things at UMusic have been going quite well. We've had some great shows at our new place and people are slowly but surely starting to find out where and who we are. :-) We do have a great show coming up in March, Allan Holdsworth will be officially christening our new place with Virgil Donati and Jimmy Haslip. This is going to be a killer show. There are only 45 tickets available so if you think you may want to check this out I'd give us a buzz at 914-736-7777 and reserve yourself a ticket.

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