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the pitch, the timbre, the tone

Good morning world. Welcome to blog.

O what a productive Monday! No, really. No sarcasm to be found. Dust rose around my desk as I set up then knocked down to-do after to-do. Vacation tried to make me soft, but I came back with a heat in my eyes. I left the office dizzy at five, the sun already down past the horizon in this idiotic light-deprived time of year. Ruined bodies of undone tasks cast away in my wake, nothing more than bloodied shells of their one-time threat. Work lost today.

Sometimes I slow things down and just listen to my daughter’s voice not for the words but the sound alone. The pitch, the timbre, the tone. Small and almost miniature feeling. But confident and well-versed for her age, her vocabulary seeming overmatched to the sound of her own voice.

Sometime in the earlier days of our dating relationship, Sharaun and I were going through a box of old things in her room to kill time. In there was an audiotape her folks had made of her reciting the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme around the age Keaton is now. I can remember thinking how amazing it was to have her voice on tape at that age… to be able to hear the youth of it and try to reckon it with the voice I knew at the time.

I think having heard that tape is partially why I record Keaton as much as I do. Even though we’re really bad preservationists when it comes to video, we’ve got audio and still images down I think.

Yeah I love her voice. Talking, praying, singing. I just love it when she sings.

Too bad most of the stuff she seems to parrot is the Top 40 junk Sharaun listens to. I did, however, catch her singing the hooks to a couple catchy tracks the other night and made her repeat herself for the iPhone so I could capture the verses for posterity. Here, then, is our little songbird flexing her pipes on her own takes of some popular tunes. Enjoy.

[audio:MeetMeHalfway.mp3]

Keaton sings the Black Eyed Peas’ “Meet Me Halfway”
(direct link for those on mobile devices without Flash)

[audio:NewYork.mp3]

Keaton sings Alicia Keys’ hook from Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind”
(direct link for those on mobile devices without Flash)

And yes, I do some minor editing for continuity’s sake – she’s not that perfect. But for really though, isn’t that something to hold on to? I’ve locked it away in my head as a memory, but the aural reminder these recordings may offer in ten or more years will surely be acutely appreciated. I can’t remember everything, you know. Humans fail.

Oh and before I go, a note about some small enhancements here and there to the blog. If you view any individual entry (not sure many regular readers do this, as, if it was me, I’d just be checking the homepage every so often or reading via RSS) you’ll now see a list of other entries written on the same date in the past. With more than six years of blogging-past to exploit, I figure these “also written on this day” links might be a neat window into the past.

I also tinkered last night at getting a running list of what I’ve been listening to on my iPod for the sidebar, but gave up when it proved to be too stupid to deal with. Maybe I’ll give it another go on an evening when I have a little more patience. Always looking to make this place more readable… shoot me any suggestions.

Goodnight.

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a saturday to remember

Two-thousand ten.

Hard to believe that Sharaun and I will be married ten years this year. Veterans. Pillars. So long together now, if you count the years we dated (subtracting that self-imposed “break” around ’95 that she won’t let me talk about much), that I’ve been with her as long as I haven’t. Sixteen years without, seventeen with. Something to be said for longevity – and perhaps forgiveness and long-suffering too – I suppose.  I know, this paragraph reaches for continuity… but those ten years are the first thing I think of when I think about how it’s now two-thousand ten.  That, and that Keaton will be four and I’ll have been ten years at my job.  Or, is a “career” now?  When does that line get crossed?

Ten years.

I read Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises for the first time over the weekend. Made me half wish I could spend a year drinking my way around Europe, bankrupting myself halfheartedly chasing fleeting passions, having impossible conversations with a cadre of equally sloshed and disenfranchised comrades. But in addition to daydreaming about being part of the perennially-tight “lost generation,” reading the book piqued my interest in good literature again.  I found myself once again wanting to read.  I made a trip to a couple used book stores in town on Saturday, but came up short.  A visit to the library was disappointingly equally unsuccessful.  Not to say there wasn’t plenty of good reading to be had at each stop, just that I couldn’t find a single one of the ten or so tomes I’d set out to acquire.

Then I wondered about downloading books… maybe reading them on my iPhone or something.  At first, I wrote off the idea as stupid.  Who’d want to read from a screen, let alone a screen as small as the iPhone’s?  But, later that night as I lay in bed I decided to re-download the Stanza application for the phone.  As a test, I grabbed a free book from Project Gutenburg – Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.  At right around 100 printed pages I figured it’d be short enough to use as test.  Stayed up reading it in bed and, as I finger-flipped the last “page” I realized that, yes, I think I could read books on my phone.  I immediately set about finding some of the stuff I’d been out amongst the brick-and-mortar searching for.  Oh, it’s all there, but unfortunately most of the works carry a prohibitive pricetag.

In short order, however, I found a way “around” that and was able to load up my phone with all manner of classic  and “modern classic” literature.  I’m actually pretty excited to have a pocketful of good books with me at any time.  Now to see if I can truly adapt to reading things this way… I’ll keep you posted.

A couple paragraphs I wrote on the iPhone over the course of the weekend, to round things out:

Saturday we woke with an idea at grand plans on the day. Something as a family, something fun for Keaton. We took our time in the morning. I made coffee and Sharaun and Keaton had cereal. I read a little. By and by it was 10am and we thought we’d better firm up plans. 11am and some discussion later and we were no closer to anything material. We ate lunch and after that everything fizzled. We played a few games of memory together and ended up running errands and shopping for dinner. A Saturday to remember. Maybe next weekend.

Work begins back this week after what feels like a fantastically drawn out hiatus. I’m not exactly eager. I feel a bit too disconnected from what’s going on. I’ve felt this way before and it always passes naturally as I wade back in. Not sure where to get started, but it’s coming up on annual review time and I guess that’s about as important a piece of work as you can dig into. A good start, I suppose, to numb me back into the day-to-day of corporate infinity.

Goodnight.

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sore loser

Greetings, year of our Lord two-thousand and ten.  Greetings indeed.

Tell you what, you let the passing of the 00s help ease the memories of the worst of the mistakes made therein and I promise to make less in the 10s, OK?  Deal.

Wednesday Keaton and mom were playing Memory.  Remember that game?  Little tiles with pictures on them, always in matching pairs, that you flip over and then hunt through looking for matches?  Of course, Keaton’s set the Disney® Princess™ version; need you even ask?  First game went to Sharaun and Keaton was not happy.  Her reaction was unlike anything I’ve seen from her before.  She got immediately frustrated.  She denied her mother’s win loudly, started grabbing for Sharaun’s pile of matches.  She then tried to deny her defeat.  “We weren’t even playing for a winner!,” she declared.  “I didn’t lose because there is no winner!  We weren’t playing it like a game!  We were just playing it!”  At that she stomped off back to her room and slammed the door.  Odd, irrational, and seemingly unprovoked.  She stayed back there pouting while Sharaun and I looked at each other, considering.

Yes, I’d never previously seen this behavior from our little angel.  I have, mind you, seen it before though.  From me.

And so I said silently to myself, “Lord… please help us teach Keaton patience and sportsmanship.  Please help her to best the me in her in this regard.”

While my folks were here they recommended a book called The Road to me, said they thought I’d dig it.  I bought it, and read it through, on Tuesday.  Powerful book; hard to put down and as such a quick read.  Well written and came nicely to life inside my head.  Apparently there’s a movie now.  After my birthday, I told myself that I needed to shake this fantasy-only book kick I’ve been on since… oh, I don’t know… twenty years gone now…

See, I got the latest novel in the Wheel of Time series for my birthday.  You know, the massive fantasy series I’ve been reading, off and on, since college?  Yeah – that long.  I’ve re-read the series once in its entirety to catch up when a new book is released… but at 10,000+ pages it’s more than a quick effort as a refresher. I devoured it, feeling accomplished at finally coming to the end while there are yet books to be published.

See, this last one was supposed to be the final book, was supposed to end it all.  But the author died before he could bring it to a close.  His wife, who’s also his editor, asked a young fantasy writer at the same publisher to take up her late husband’s extensive and detailed notes and finished his unfinished masterpiece.  Only, the new guy, upon seeing the original authors final story arc, deemed it impossible to fit into a single volume and so now we have three final volumes, spread over three years.  So, even though I thought I’d be done, turns out I’m still only through twelve volumes of an eventual fourteen… and have at least another two years to wait.

In the meantime though, I have to diversify my reading material more than I have in the past years (thanks Ham On Rye, Vonnegut, and On the Road).

Goodnight.  Happy New Year.

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fleeting festivity

Last day of 2009.

Goodbye year.

Still 50% zeroes though. Another year until positive numbers regain the majority; a-hundred-and-one more and I predict the zeroes will be nearly extinct altogether.

I took down the Christmas stuff today. House-hung accoutrements, tree and all the trimmings, and various knickknacks. Did it all by myself; motions mirrored and reversed from my lonesome assembly only weeks ago. Sharaun was alternately busy and sleeping, and so couldn’t lend a hand. Boxed it all up and moved it back to its resting place high on a garage shelf. It’s good to put the Christmas high, you only need to reach it once a year so it’s not a pain.

It had to go, though. If you don’t get the Christmas stuff out early enough, give it enough life during December, the festivity is just too fleeting. Like going camping for one night it’s all setup and teardown. I’d have preferred this not to have been a solitary thing, but the tree had been goading me and I broke under the strain. Just sitting over in the corner glowing cheerily and multi-colored, growing more out-of-season with each passing minute, taunting me that it’d still be standing come 2010. Not this year tree. Not this year.

Someone needs to sweep up or vacuum the fake plastic pine needles now, though. They litter the floor, both the new hardwood and the carpet in the adjacent toy room.

The floor. Sharaun’s dislike for it seems to grow stronger by the week. I finally said to her today, “I don’t think you know how bad it makes me feel to hear you constantly ‘tsking‘ over each and every minute surface mar on this floor. I need to let you know that it pains me to think we spent this much on something you might hate.” Earnest appeals fell on deaf ears, however, getting something crushing in return like, “It makes me feel bad too; I wish we would’ve spent the money on something else or got laminate instead of this ‘soft’ hardwood.” Ouch.

I try not to make it a fight but it’s hard. Instead I settle for saying, simply, that I really like the floor. I comment often on how much better I think it makes the place look. Maybe I can at least keep the scales level if I say enough positive things. Balance it out. Some yin for some yang.

I don’t know why, but I take her disliking the floor so much almost as an affront to my ability to “provide.” I know it’s not like I felled the trees, planed out boards, scraped and stained the planks and set them down in rows myself… yet her derision makes me feel a poor decision-maker. Maybe it’s the ostensibly misdirected investment. Maybe it’s that she asked for wood floors for so long. Maybe it’s the fact that, personally, I really do like the floor. I guess it’s complicated, or stupid. Probably stupid. I hold hope that she doesn’t just plain hate the floor. It helps me feel less of a failure.

Yeah; stupid.

Goodnight.

Posted on

best of 2009

Internet.  It’s nearly the last day of this here year.  I let these trailing days sneak up on me…

Still haven’t managed to take down the Christmas tree, although I did get the lights off the house before the rain came this week.  Not all the gifts are properly stowed away either.  Still work to do.

Speaking of work to do…

I almost had an honest miss of 2009 with this entry.  It’s just that I usually do the year-end music list thing earlier in December, but I didn’t this year.  In fact, I forgot all about it until I today.  I was sitting at work, listening to one of the albums shown below and thinking about how much it’s grown on me in the past month or so… to the point where I’d probably rank it among the 2009 efforts I enjoyed most, and that’s when it hit me: I’d not done my list.  Spent some time today to rectify that, and here is the fruit thereof.

First up, the almosts:
(click for more info)

Honorable Mention

And now, the real-deal.  I tried to go back and write some fresh content on the portion of these records I’ve already given accolades in my halfway post, but a careful comparison would reveal at least a little blatant plagiarism betwixt the twain (hard to come up with original thoughts on the same content twice, y’know).  Even still, enjoy.

Most Serene Republic10. The Most Serene Republic – … and the Ever Expanding Universe

While not as immediately unstoppable as some of the MSR’s previous efforts (which have all, unfailingly, ranked here on previous blog toplists) – the Canuck collective’s latest release is nothing to turn away from. Still layered and dense and thickly sung by many voices, it still seems a tad bit dialed back from the all-out cacophony of their earlier stuff, and might benefit from being a little less unapproachable this time around because of it. For me, it may be that this band continues to do no wrong… but I liked this album from the first time I heard the first few seconds of the first song. Good stuff here folks; good, exciting stuff.

9. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic

Of all the records on this 2009 list, I got the least amount of time with this one. Released in October, and only really seriously appreciated by me beginning in December, it’s a squeaker. But, even with the limited exposure I knew it had to bow here. I think the last Lips album I really dug was 1999’s The Soft Bulletin. Oh sure, Yoshimi was listenable but wasn’t anything I flipped over. Then again, the band has always been hit or miss for me – maybe because they seem to approach each record as a new experiment in what they can sound like. Sometimes I like the results, sometimes not. Well, ten years have passed since Bulletin and, on this album, they have an entirely different sound. It’s a consistent new sound though: fuzzed-out bass punched-out by distorted rhythm and wandering bells, picked accents, and the familiar Flaming Lips “trippy” vocals and various random-sound accoutrement. Might be the closest we’ll get to a modern-day reincarnation of Pink Floyd, if that makes you want to hear it.

Grizzly Bear8. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

At the halfway mark I called this album “opium party music.”  I stand by that classification. Made for lounging around on satin pillows letting lethargy drive an academic listening. It’s no secret that “Two Weeks” buoys the record from a broad-appeal perspective, or that the rest of the tracks dazzle more through subtlety than fireworks – but there’s a wall-to-wall beauty of perfectionist production here that demands intent listening throughout; even after things seem to “slow down” off the high that is “Two Weeks.” And yes, I’ll admit that I just plain don’t like “Dory” at all… but that’s no reason to shun this sparkly, sometimes slow, quiet beast. With each perfectly placed strum or beat or whisper, it proves it deserves the spot.

Wild Beasts7. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers

Oh Wild Beasts, how far you’ve fallen.  Mid-year, you were #2… and here you are finishing at #7.  What happened?  Now look… this album is still super-fantastic.  It’s still seductive, slippery, effeminate, growling, dirty, teasing, young, and dripping with aural sex. It still has the same plucky harmonics, sparse woodblock percussion, and should-be-offputting-but’s-instead-entrancing female/male range of the lead singer.  It’s even still got one of the best lyrics of the year in, “This is a booty call; my boot, my boot, my boot, my boot up your asshole.”  So what changed?

Back then, I’d just then discovered the record and I was simply enamored.  As the year wore on I realized that it was merely #7 good, and that other bigger and badder records more rightly deserved the #2 spot.  But hey, a spot in the top ten ain’t nothing to cry about.

6. Islands – Vapours

I don’t know why, but I didn’t like this album immediately. On first listen, I was disappointed that it wasn’t such an instant pleasure they way all previous Islands/Unicorns records had been to my ears. Maybe this is because I read a review online that called it “safe” compared to their last effort (which also charted on last year’s personal “best of”); perhaps I let that influence me too much. But then Ben commented offhandedly that he was really digging it, and I gave it another go. Lo and behold, on repeat listens, my fondness for the sometimes slower, more plodding and deliberate Islands sound grew and grew. So yeah, maybe less wild or spontaneous in some ways, but let’s think of the new-found structure and brevity as “development,” OK? If you try this record, I’m convinced that you, too, will end up digging the plucky keyboards, marching synth percussion, and, as always, the instantly recognizable vocal styling.

Decemberists5. The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love

What can I say about this record that won’t make you automatically write it off as just some pretentious concept album? Oh, that’s right: nothing. That’s because this, moreso than any loosely cohesive so-called “concept” record of the last few years, is indeed a supremely pretentious album-length story-arc. A shamelessly complex tale starring a multi-character cast built on the foundation of Meloy’s trademark wordy, arcane songwriting. Through a hefty dose of “thou” and “wilt” and “irascible,” you’re treated to a classic tragedy involving a maiden, a shape-shifting animal-man, a wicked forest queen, and… uh… yeah…

And, as much as that whole mess above might turn you off (and believe me, Sharaun could barely bring herself to listen to this thing after I’d ranted and raved about the story and concept), the music on here is just piss-pants brilliant. Thematically tight, brilliantly instrumented, and entertaining throughout, you’ll want to hear the album if only to dismiss it as trying-too-hard smarmy art-rock.

4. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – Up From Below

I’m trying to recall where I heard about this record, but can’t. I do remember that I downloaded it simply because I liked the name of the band… sounded intriguing. Turns out the music sounds like the kind of stuff a bunch of proto-hippies might make if they decided to up and leave LA, move into a bus in the desert, and make music as a collaborative sort of commune-thing. Sounds like that because that’s exactly what it is. And while there’s no one named Edward Sharpe in the band, you might recognize the lead singer’s voice from his previous work in Ima Robot. Bottom line though, this is great 60s-ish roots-rock with doses of psychedelia. Worked great in Mexico in sunny warm weather, and would be a fantastic driving album. It’ll remind you of other things at times: Arcade Fire for the modernists, maybe Jefferson Airplane or even early Bowie for the classicists. See, something for everyone.

Phoenix3. Phoenix- Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Back at mid-year I had bone to pick with the “breaker-upper” that is “Love Like a Sunset.”  Since then, though, I’ve actually learned to appreciate the turned-down track as a sort of “naptime” in between the unrelenting saccharine of this record. Phoenix has ranked for me in previous years, and back then I wrote about them that, “Every summer deserves a summery album. Like a sweet, dripping ice-cream cone, It’s Never Been Like That plops perfect little circles of melted goodness all over your favorite Hawaiian shirt.” And, aside from that being a pretty decent descriptive sentence, the underlying statement works for Wolfgang… too.

I want to bring this album back in time with me when they invent the machine; use it as the soundtrack to the saccharine over-emotion of a tweenage bout of puppy-love. The smiley songs could bounce along like a mirror image of my infatuation-fueled heartbeat as we held hand for the first time. Does that make you want to hear it? It should.

Mew2. Mew – No More Stories/Are Told Today/I’m Sorry/They Washed Away//No More Stories/The World Is Grey/I’m Tired/Let’s Wash Away

Mid-year to year-end and Mew jumps four spots to take the silver medal.  Quite a move.  It’s a well warranted uptick for this record, however.  As the year went by, I realized more and more what a frontrunner it was.  I’d find myself going back, back, back… over and over again to delight in the wash of keyboards and guitars and that oh-so-indie falsetto.  But what are you, reader, going to hear if you go snag this album?  I’ve heard the style of music called “space pop,” but I have no idea what that means.  To me this is something like “modern prog.”  The stuttering tempo of the peppier tracks recalls classic Yes, ELP, and King Crimson, while the dreamier slower stuff sometimes reminds me of the downtempo full-chorus stuff turned out by Canadian mutli-player collectives like Broken Social Scene or Most Serene Republic.  But maybe that’s just me.

Oh, and, after writing my own reviews of these albums, I always go to some “respected” music site to read and compare  my thoughts with their formal review.  I was quite happy this time around to see Pitchfork name-check King Crimson in their someone-got-paid-to-write-it review.  I promise I didn’t cheat.

Animal Collective1. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

What more can I say about this album?

People have written about it to death this year.  So have I.  If you’re not an Animal Collective person, you’ll likely never share my appreciation for it.  Sometimes I even wonder to myself, “Heck… am I really an ‘Animal Collective person,’ or am I just caught up in the internet lovefest for this band?”  But, be it true love or crowd-influenced love, it’s most certainly love.  More than any other effort from 2009 I find myself coming back to this one again and again and again.

I understand you might think it’s not “music.”  It’s too experimental; too repetitive.; too dense.  Yeah it’s all that, it really is.  It’s out of my comfort zone too.  So really, I don’t know what happened with me and this album.  Perhaps it is some sort of mass hypnosis, but it was fully seeded and completely germinated in my brain if so.

I’m not even going to talk about the music.  It’s been done enough.  Hands-down, though, this is it.  #1 for 2009 beyond a shadow of a doubt.  I drank the Kool Aid; you should think about it.

And that’s it folks.  If you haven’t heard any of these records and want to, go buy them.  I recommend using Amazon’s MP3 store over iTunes, as you get DRM-free downloads you can take with you and load onto any device in the years to come.  Or, head on over to your favorite pirate downloading spot if you feel like risking prison rape.

Hope you’re setup proper for 2010.  We’re as ready as we can be.  Ten years married and a second youngling on the way and we’re pointed heavenward as much as possible from this cluttered Earth.

Goodnight.

Posted on

torture

Happy Tuesday friends.  Hope your Christmas was good.  Ours was great.

Now I’m going to jump into some blog.

There are two well-defined moments in each day where Sharaun and I have come to expect maximum bad behavior from Keaton.  One in the morning when it’s time to brush her hair, and one at night when it’s time for bed.  While her reactions aren’t 100% predictable, I’d estimate she explodes into an irrational fit at these events about 80% of the time.  And folks, 80% of the time is just too often.

I think it’s probably worst when it’s time to brush her hair.  Likely because, when that time comes around, it’s usually right before we’re about to walk out the door to be somewhere we’re expected to be.  To Keaton, having her hair brushed is akin to torture.  At first she balks: running, hiding, dodging.  Once you finally corral her and begin brushing she enters the protest phase: squirming, ducking, shifting on her feet, anything to get out of the way.  When you’ve had enough of this and you demand she remain still so you can continue, she enters the ridiculous phase: screaming, crying, whining, and generally fighting you as you try to gently rake out the tangles.  I mean, her hair isn’t even that bad… it stays fairly de-tangled and we had it trimmed recently to help with the dry ratty ends.  It’s just something she’s opposed to.  I’ll be glad, though, when this “phase” (it’s a phase, right?) is done and gone with and she can brush her own her without intervention or argument.

Bedtime is sometimes as bad, but usually more tolerable as we aren’t pressed for time.  Here, the first phase of protest is the classic kids tactic of bargaining for more awake time.  Once she’s warned bedtime is nigh, and is asked to start the readying process (clean-up, teeth brushed, potty, jammies), she starts negotiating.  “Daaaaddd… can I just have three more minutes, pleeeaase?”  We set audible timers on the iPhone as a way to reinforce the time warnings and keep her from delaying, and those seem to help… but once the time is upon us and it’s go-time, she escalates.  Knowing she’s got to do her routine, she instead shifts strategy and moves to delaying tactics.  This can be the “thousand-year brush” style of teeth-brushing,the “slow-motion potty,” or the “inch-a-minute” style of walking from one place to another.  Quite crafty, that child.  After being called out on delays, we move to a similar endgame as the hairbrushing fiascoes: all-out panic and fighting.

In general, bedtime usually doesn’t get to that last phase… but hairbrushing… oh man hairbrushing.

Goodnight.

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merry christmas


Merry Christmas out there peoples.

Our gift-opening rush (which was really more like Keaton’s gift-opening rush) just wrapped up. I cleaned up the mess while Sharaun got started on the roast. Looking forward to a nice dinner with the family.

Hope your day is/will/did go/going well and that Santa was kind. Again, merry Christmas!