Solving this jigsaw puzzle and posting about this sweepstakes for Big Red makes me eligible for free Xanga Premium for life...
Wheee! What an entry! Do I even exist on this anymore? Writing down the inane, mundane and insane things that happen to me in order for me to relive them later just hasn't been a priority. Life, love and the Lord have.
No posts in a while.... c'mon, it was summer! And it went by so quickly!
c2 working in July and off August...
Adopted a 2 year old yellow lab - Abby - "Labby Abby"...
c2's grandma and uncle came from Hong Kong - rolled them up to Deerhurst for them to check out the "Canadian outdoors". They were glad to go home after coming here. The burbs and cottage country just ain't the same as "the fragrant harbour"...mmm! Grandma hadn't flown in 40 yrs. I loved meeting them!...
Went to Niagara-on-the-Lake for our 2nd anniversary - Victorian B&B - Shaw Festival - multiple free winery tours and tasting - wiping out on rollerblades along the Niagara Parkway - hooking up with my actor-cousin, Brent - SPA DAY (sad credit card , happy back ) ....
Went to my step-dad and bro's cottage on Lake Kawagama for a few days - relaxed, ate, drank and put mom to rest in a little, quiet, pretty cemetary....
FC Porto vs. Liverpool FC @ SkyDome. Hooligans - Canadian style. (i.e., polite booing)...
Like most boys, as a kid I loved to play with my TransFormers. I didn't have them all (my parents thought I had plenty), but I did collect enough tokens once to send away for the 'mail only' one. I also would take them to the parties my dad and step-mom would attend. They were primarily attended by only adults, with the exception of me, but I invariably would attract an audience of the men who would play with my robots alongside me. I took great care to teach them how to transform them, because it wouldn't take much male brute force for these great louts to bust my Bumblebee/Skywarp/Jazz/Hot Rod/Megatron etc. I also took great pride in knowing I could transform them 4-5 times before they could do it once. Small victories in my life I still hold on to - shows you how little I have mastered in my advancing years.
Only now do I realize why Soundwave was my favourite Decepticon, and why he is the lone remaining toy I still have.... now watch him bug out and get funky http://triadfrog.home.comcast.net/index.html
I guess that means I'm still a big kid. (yay! fart, poop, booger, dinkledork and all that heeheehee)
When I got home from work yesterday, I watched the end of the movie 'Drumline' on one of the movie networks. As I was attending to the laptop as well, so I (thankfully) wasn't playing much attention to the plot of an obviously terrible flick. I was watching for one reason and one reason only - the band competitions at the end of the film.
Yes, I was once a band (and jazz band and choir and jazz choir) geek in high school. I should also note that I played varsity sports throughout high school and was on student council, Prefects and anything else that could take me out of class.
But I NEVER went to band camp. (that redeems me, right, c2?)
I won the music award in grade 8, but won the gym award in grade 10, even with knee surgery thrown in. Although my wife insists it must have been due to the health units. I think I won the soccer MVP in grade 12 because I was still young enough to play on the junior team, and I could bully my teammates.
When I went onto to post-secondary education, I attended RMC for a year and continued the blend of interests. The physical training aspect of life in the military was uber-present, and on top of that I joined the rugby club as well. Sports were mandatory, but joining the RMC Marching Band was not. The band was a mix of the Brass and Reed band and the Pipes and Drums band. Learning to honk away on my horn whilst stomping around was tricky at first, and you had a silly-looking pith helmet on, but it beat having to lug a rifle and swing around in formations.
The Brass and Reed band was nothing new to me, but playing with Pipes and Drums was quite stirring. That Christmas we were a part of the Kingston Santa Parade down Princess Street and one of the joys was to avert my eyes from the standard straight-ahead-stare to wink at a child, who was quite titillated with my break from protocol. We also got to go to Toronto to play at halftime of the 1994 Vanier Cup......
On the Saturday morning we were to leave for the SkyDome from Kingston, I woke up late. Missed the bus. Now normally, missing something important usually entails guilt, a stern lecture and the disappointment of your peers. These things were not of concern to me. I was worried about what type of "corrective action" might be laid down by my training officer. One corrective action I once was assigned (non-band related) was a white-glove inspection of my C6 rifle. No one can pass a white-glove inspection of an assault weapon that naturally has carbon bleeding out of it due to the cleaner used. But those types of comments are better suited for another, longer post.
I decided to be pro-active. I caught the Via train with my uniform in hand and busted a move getting to Toronto. My band commander nearly fell over when he saw me walk into the practice room at the 'Dome and didn't know what to say. In fact, he managed to spit profanities at me and tell me what kind of slack-assed puke I was while laughing the whole time. He and I are still friends.
There was corrective action, but it was something that ended up having to do with the band room. Geeky corrective action, but having nothing to do with early mornings or tossing cookies. I ended up working at the same company as that cadet commander and he could still remember what happened. He laughed and told the story when my resume was passed around the office, so my exploits were known long before I was hired. A lesson learned to do everything you can, because you never know how it may affect you down the road.
Back to the movie reference -- there was a drums competition at the very end that reminded me of the drumlines (and usu. incl. pipes) that were put together at RMC. Now, the black university musicians in the movie included all sorts of dance moves and formations. The great thing about the RMC pipes and drums was that during a drumline performance they stood perfectly still, and were blue-blind paralytic drunk in doing so.
My favourite memory from the RMC Band was of one fellow, who happened to also be in my squadron, who could ONLY play the pipes while drunk. He was an average piper normally, but was a bagpipe virtuoso whilst inebriated. I was assigned to march on the outside to his right in formation, which allowed me to hold my trumpet with the right hand, and occasionally push him back into line with my left. Rum-pum-pum-pum [emphasis on the rum].
Why is it that music has so much influence on so many? I have been collecting recordings since my uncle bought me my first tape (John Waite's 'No Brakes') in 1983/4 and still cannot stop. I can't even quite feel satisfied with a downloaded mp3 or burnt CD, I like having the original copy. I have LPs taken from my parents or bought on a whim for $1 just to see what was on it (first one, Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' for $1 and hey, I have an unwrapped copy of INXS' 'Kick' that I got for $2). I have 45s still (my first was Terrence Trent D'Arby's 'Wishing Well') and a boatload of CDs (first one(s), Led Zeppelin's '90 Box Set).
I have so much crap. And I'd like to throw out my copies of things such as Byran Adams' 'Into the Fire' and Chris Sheppard's 'Pirate Radio Sessions Vol. 2', but I just can't cut the cord. I used to force myself to go through my entire collection of all recordings every year just to ensure I got "value" out of the materials. Now I'm too lazy to do that.
I still try to make mix tapes now and then - they are more for my wife's car use seeing as that's the only place a tape gets played anymore. We used to DJ in high school (see one of the previous posts), but I never owned proper mixing equipment myself, and while I still gaze at the cross-fadin' play centres at the music store, I can't justify spending $300+ for more glittery gear to fill the house with. Perhaps when we get a more powerful computer at home I will try to mess around again.
My mom gave me my first tape player - it was one that her school didn't need anymore, it had a single speaker and the cassette popped out of the top. I think I saw it in every French class I ever had. My first record player was bought in a garage sale for $5. It had its own (single MONO) speaker and I tried scratching with it, but it took such effort as my weak arms could barely overcome the determined belt drive locked away inside. Actually, when I first heard about rap, I thought that scratching a record meant literally scratching it. I took a Celine Dion 45 (given to me as a free demo after watching the movie it came from as part of YMCA camp - she was a nobody and I thought she was terrible... still do.) and scratched it with a knife and then played it on the record player. While it didn't sound like Grandmaster Flash, it did make Mlle. Dion sound better. Until I put it on 45 rpm speed - then it sounded like her again. [If any friends reading this have a record player they don't use, please let me know, mine has since crapped out - 'Saturday Night Fever' needs to rear its ugly head again]
I went through a period of time when I couldn't stand any Christian recording artists (I can't stand syrupy pop songs of any ilk). Then I went through a period where I tried to buy one CD of a Christian artist for every secular one. Then it was back to not liking many of them. I'm still in that stage, I just pretty much stick to the (very) few Christian artists I still like and focus on learning and purchasing worship CDs as part of helping lead out church's English music ministry.
Back to the initial quesiton posed.... So many songs on the radio (mainly dealing with love and the chase/loss of it) touch us and speak to us. Even more so, the songs that can touch us on a spiritual level, if we let them. Is it because we are such emotional beings? Because the vast majority are not creative enough to express feelings and so when someone else can, we hold that recording close as if it was done especially for us? Why is it that the women get misty eyed and the men a little jealous when a groom sings to his bride at a wedding ceremony? ("awwwww" vs. "jerk... I should have had the guts to do that") I think its just that we hold so much inside from the world that music, verse, prose, design, pictures, paintings etc. help get the raw stuff out. We haven't figured out how to make our lives a statement, thus we need other means to state our selves.
[Side note - it amazes me how much better it feels to sing praise to my Creator, my God than it does to my lover, my wife, or worse, to myself, yet do I reflect this in my energy spent? (But I will still sing to you, my love, no worries!)]
All of this has come up in my mind as I heard a song last week that reminded me of when my dad's dad passed away in '89. It seems that for many of the major passings of family members I have a song to hold onto that was playing around me at that time.
Grandpa C : Mike + the Mechanics, 'Living Years'
Nona : Boyz II Men/Mariah Carey, 'One Sweet Day'
Mom : Boyz II Men, 'Mama', 'I Lift My Eyes Up (Psalm 21)', 'My Jesus, I Love Thee'
I know that when Dad finally moves on one day [how morbid], it will be Harry Chapin's 'Cats in the Cradle' as that song epitomizes our relationship as I was growing up.
, happy back 
) ....
[If any friends reading this have a record player they don't use, please let me know, mine has since crapped out - 'Saturday Night Fever' needs to rear its ugly head again]
when a groom sings to his bride at a wedding ceremony? ("awwwww" vs. "jerk... I should have had the guts to do that") I think its just that we hold so much inside from the world that music, verse, prose, design, pictures, paintings etc. help get the raw stuff out. We haven't figured out how to make our lives a statement, thus we need other means to state our selves. 
