Serving Humanity Since 1966

Hi folks. Yes, it's me. I live.

I thought I would post some general stuff to let you know I haven't fallen into a giant abyss or been eaten by a dinosaur.

My reason for not writing as much, or feeling like writing is the same. I am a little stressed about the continuing bad job situation, and it's taking its toll. Hopefully that will change very soon.

My friends and I have already began discussing Stone Soup 2011. One of the planners isn't entirely on board yet, but I feel very confident in saying that we will be having a Stone Soup Music Fest again, next year. I believe the weekend we have picked is the weekend of August 6th and 7th, 2011, and we hope to see you there. The moment the 2011 web site goes live, I will let you know, so that you might purchase tickets.

I have officially joined the Utica Curling Club, as a first time member, and look forward to throwing some rocks this season. I had much fun with it in the spring, but I hope I am as excited about it once I start doing it, as I was six months ago. My problem with interests is that I sometimes get into things and try them for a few years, and then don't go back to them. That seems to be what happened to my billiards and pottery interests, yet things like recording, and music continue to be a great source of pleasure for me.

I have put a little more effort into my record label project. I have enlisted the help of a few more friends who wish to help in the areas of web-design, marketing/branding, and bartending (yes, I'm serious). The bottleneck at the moment seems to be in the area of artwork. A friend from high school, who is a commercial artist offered to do some logos for me, but he seems to be taking his time. I guess that's OK since (I think) he's doing it for free. The problem is that my web designer wants to see the artwork, so that he can build a web site around the feel of the logo, so not much is getting done. I suppose I should do something crazy like record an album, so that I actually have some product to release, down the road.

I have been putting a lot of thought into what sort of record I want my first release to be, and at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter to me as long as it's strong. In time, all of the artists that I have lined up will release a record with me, so we'll get to everyone in my Galaxy of Stars, eventually.

But on the topic of first releases, I have been having some crazy thoughts. Back in the '70s, my father was very good friends with a local Polka band leader, who had a really good band. While Polka music isn't really my thing, I do know the difference between a good band, and a bad band, and these guys were really good. When I visit my parents I get to hear a lot of Polka music in their home, and even after all of these years, none of them stack up to this band from the '70s. They did release one record in 1975, on vinyl (naturally), and because the band leader died suddenly in 1976, they never recorded their second record, which was being planned at that time (in fact one of my brothers had been submitting ideas for the new album cover artwork). I had the crazy idea of re-releasing this 1975 record, on CD, for my label's first release. I have many reasons for wanting to do this. First, as polka albums go, this record is very strong. These guys wrote good music, and they were all very good players. Second, the band leader who passed away in 1976 was a great friend of our family's, and I do remember him, his band, and the record quite fondly. Third, the band had a huge following locally, and I know that if I pressed up one thousand copies of that album, that I could definitely move them pretty quickly. The key however, is to find the original 2-track master tapes. I am getting conflicting information on where, exactly, these tapes are, so I am going to go directly to the source and ask the wife of the band leader if she has any ideas. The only way I would want to re-release this record would be if I could locate the masters, because I would want to bring them to a proper mastering house, and lovingly restore the material with modern digital signal processing equipment, to get rid of the tape hiss, and make the recordings sound as good as they possibly could.

When I initially started working out on March first, my goal was to lose forty pounds by my birthday (8/11). I have officially lost the forty pounds that I had wanted to lose, but it took two weeks longer than my goal, and you know what? I'm OK with that. That goal is down, and now I move on to my next one. As I sit here and write this, I am actually taking a week off from lifting weights, because I did not take any days off from lifting in that entire six month period, and my joints, particularly my elbows, need a little time to heal. I am, however, doing some cardio this week just to stay in some sort of groove. Next Monday, I begin attacking my next goal.

I think that's all I have for now. Hopefully I will feel like writing more frequently, very soon.

Namaste.

I haven't written much at all on my blog in the last month or so, and for those of you who come here to actually read it, I apologize. The reason is that I have had a lot on my mind of late, and one of the good things that I have had on my mind, was my preparations for the 2010 Stone Soup Reunion Music Festival, which took place in Barneveld NY, on the weekend of August 7th and 8th.

In January, I got a phone call from my good friend Jeremy, asking me if I wanted to be the Technical Director for this music festival that he and his mother Bronny were planning, for the first full weekend in August. Back in February, I posted a little bit about the event, promising more details in the future, but I guess I forgot to write that post. So now that the event is over, I will write more about it, now.

My duties as Technical Director were basically to be in charge of everything that requires moving electrons. So I had to make sure that we had stable power, and lots of it, a PA system so the musicians could be heard, and a minimal, but workable lighting setup, so that the musicians could be seen when the sun went down. In addition to that, I was also one of the Stage Managers.

Getting power for the event was fairly easy, it only required a trip, and several emails to the fine folks down at a local business called McQuade & Banningan, to rent a few Honda generators. I thought that a five-kilowatt unit, and an eleven-kilowatt unit should do the trick, with plenty of juice to spare. They ended up renting us one of each of those, and they threw in a spare 5K unit, just in case we had any problems. The 5K unit was reserved just for the PA, and the 11K unit was used to power anything and everything on the stage (guitar amplifiers, keyboards, etc...), our lighting setup, and house lighting in the tent.

In the above paragraph, I said that getting power was easy, and it was, but the kicker was that I had to build a custom distribution system to properly handle the power coming from the 220 volt, 50 amp twist-lock disconnect on the big generator. Once I got going building the Distro, it only really took a few days of on-and-off work to complete it.

Once the Distro was complete, I was confident that I had built a small, light-weight, plug-and-play system that would distribute all of the power that we could possibly use at an event of the size that we were planning, and fortunately, that turned out to be the case. On the Friday before the opening day, I began setting up the Distro, and had a small glitch with the main circuit-breaker on the big generator, but a quick call to Bob Bannigan helped me straighten that out, and we were off to the races. The PA guys set up a great system for our venue, and in no time we had a killer sound-check happening. We were ready to go home, and be back for the first performer, at noon the next day.

There is a full list of the performers with links on the Stone Soup web site, so I won't go into great detail about that, but suffice it to say, the music was amazing!

Each of our performers had an hour long set, which I recorded in full, and our crack sound guys were able to change the stage over for the next performers in a matter of minutes, to keep things rolling. We had about twelve or thirteen hours of music performed on the Saturday, and about six hours of music performed on the Sunday.

We did not serve any alcoholic beverages, because the price of event insurance went up considerably in that case. Despite that, anyone who wanted it, brought their own. There was certainly no lack of food on the weekend. People were cooking all day Saturday, including an actual kettle of Stone Soup, and on Sunday morning we had a jazz brunch, with bacon, scrambled eggs, hash-browned potatoes, and some good music.

By six PM Sunday, I was reminded why I chose to stop going on the road with bands, in the eighties. I hate the tear-downs. Yes, everything that we put up for the festival, then had to be taken down, and packed up. Oh man, I certainly don't miss having to do that every weekend, but despite that, it wasn't too bad, and I had all of my stuff taken down in an hour and a half.

As I sit here on my sofa, writing, and occasionally looking at my cat, I am still overwhelmed by what took place. We actually staged a genuine, rock-and-roll outdoor music festival, and everything went perfectly. No real glitches of any kind, no one got hurt, everyone had a fantastic time, and we're already talking about a possible 2011 version.

Believe it or not, it was so cool that I still need more time to process it, and when I have more thoughts, I will write about it again.

If you are reading this, and came to our humble little festival, I hope that you had an amazing time. If you did not attend, hopefully you will, in the likely event that we do one, again, next year.


 If you're on Facebook, you can check out our page there and see the photos.

Although the television show Mad Men has been on the air for three years, I only started watching it last week, when AMC started airing season marathons on Monday nights. This is a good thing, because I had seen the occasional commercial, and heard people talk about it, and had been wanting to see it.

This post is not a review of the show, or anything even like that. It's another of my good-old-days laments.

For those of you who have actually noticed the title of my blog, you know that I was born in 1966. So, I have no real memories of the 1960s, yet I feel like I belong there. Seeing these Mad Men episodes only reinforces that belief. Not because men ruled the world, and women were objects of lust, either, as portrayed on the show. Sure, those were nice perks, but because it just seems like it would have been an interesting time to be growing up. The early 1960s gave us the dawn of the space age, as well as the dawn of computing. NASA was formed in response to the USSR's launch of Sputnik, and companies like DEC,  UNIVAC and IBM were manufacturing obscenely expensive, gigantic computers that you could actually purchase.

Those times were much more prosperous, as well, from an economic standpoint. The ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation from the Soviet Union kept the Military Industrial Complex rolling along at break-neck speed. This meant that well-paying jobs were plentiful, and a family could be supported by a single income.

I also like a lot of the style of the '60s. The decor of the houses appealed to me, as well as a lot of the clothing styles.

The politics of the '60s were far too complex to go into here, but again, they were interesting, and many positive changes took place. I am sure that it would have been rewarding to be a part of those.

The music scene was incredible, as well. That whole British Invasion thing, as well as many great American artists. I'm sure you all have your favorites.

And what commentary about the '60s would be complete without a mention of the original Star Trek television series? This program was hugely influential in countless lives, including my own. People who watched this show went on to do many great things in areas to numerous to mention, all because one man envisioned a unified world.

I've been meandering about, here, because I am still not certain what I am trying to say in this post which is not a TV show review, or a review of a time and place for which I was really not present. Hopefully it has made a little sense, at the very least.

Earlier this year I wrote another post about the good old days, so if you enjoyed my blathering in this post, you might enjoy the other post as well.

Feature 1: The Full Monty

Feature 2: A Matter Of Size

I was just having a discussion about the World Cup, on Facebook. One of the people involved in the conversation made the classic argument that Americans don't like Soccer, because it is low-scoring, and can end in a tie.

But is this really true? I guess at the end of the day the reasons why Americans don't 'get' Soccer, are myriad, but let's explore this classic example, that Soccer is low-scoring.

First, I guess I have to stipulate, that Soccer games are typically low-scoring. But is that the reason why Americans don't like them? I am a big baseball fan, and baseball games are often low scoring. In fact, in the last month, we have witnessed three perfect games (one was botched by an umpire) and several one-hitters. As a life-long baseball fan, I can assure you that I enjoy a good pitching-duel.

Hockey is also often a low-scoring affair. I guess it can be argued that Americans are not huge Hockey fans, but the NHL continues to prosper, and people certainly enjoyed the gold-medal game of the most recent Winter Olympics.

American Football can certainly not be accused of being low-scoring, but then again, in Football, a touchdown is worth 6 points, plus the almost always automatic extra-point, making seven points. That means that a 2-0 Soccer game, is virtually identical to a 14-0 Football game, in terms of scoring, yet I don't hear people complaining about 14-0 Football games. Maybe the answer is to make one goal in Soccer equal to some ridiculously high, arbitrary number, like in American Football. Say 67 points, or something. This way a 2-0 result would actually end with a 134-0 final score. How's that for low-scoring?

Further, people are always complaining that sports like Baseball are too slow-moving, and boring. Yet people continue to watch. I agree, Baseball can often move at a snail's pace, with games routinely in the three-hour range. I have even seen games where some defensive players, rarely, if ever get a ball hit to them. That's certainly no fun. Time in Football and Basketball can often move slowly in the last few minutes of a game, with fouls, and time-outs. A Soccer game is a fast-moving, action-packed event that finishes in two hours, or less, because the clock never stops moving, even when a referee blows a whistle.

I have no defense for the argument that Soccer games can end in a tie. I kinda hate that, too. However, in tournaments like the world cup, ties are only possible in the first round, which is called Group Play. After Group play, all games are knockout games, and a winner must be determined.

Why can't people just be satisfied by an amazing sport, played at the highest level, regardless of outcome?

I sure am.

The next seven weeks, for me, are the most exciting of the year, and this particular convergence only happens every four years.

The World Cup started today, and lasts for a month, and the Tour de France begins July 3rd, and goes until July 25th.

What could possibly be better than that?!

What's up with this whole racism, thing? I mean seriously. Could there be anything more arbitrary than disliking someone, or a whole lot of someones, just because of their skin color?

Whenever I think about this topic, and I have been thinking about it a lot lately because of what's going on in Arizona, it always baffles me. I know it's cliche, but we really all are made of the same cosmic stuff, and basically the same DNA. How a person's skin color could possibly make a difference, boggles my mind.

When I think about it, it would be no sillier if you disliked a person based on what kind of shampoo they used. If they didn't wash their hair, I could understand not liking them, but that's a different matter, entirely.

I have so much to say on this topic, and I will write more in the near future once I organize my thoughts a bit more.

Most celebrities (musicians, artists, movie stars, etc...) say they do it for their fans, but I think they really do it for their own egos.

Woohoo! I finally found a gluten-free veggie burger!

For years now I have been searching for a veggie burger that contained no gluten. You would think it that would be easy to find one, but it's harder than it seems. Most of the veggie burgers out there use wheat, or some sort of gluten based grain, as a binder, and of course that's a no-no.

About a year ago, after spending some time doing some research on the internet I did find one company that made one, but then my hopes were shattered, when moments later, I learned that they had discontinued the product. Foiled again!

Fast forward to a few months ago, while I was shopping in my local whole foods store, I noticed an Amy's product called The Bistro Burger, that had the words gluten-free on the box. I made a mental note of it, and planned to buy them in the future when the weather warmed up a bit, and when I might be attending a few cookouts.

I ended up buying some on this Memorial Day weekend. Even though my family wasn't planning any big cookout this year, I figured that I would make myself one or two, to feel like I was having my own little cookout, and because I hadn't had anything resembling a burger, since I bought an amazing veggie burger from one of the vendors at Woodstock '99.

Last night I decided to cook one up. I topped it with real cheddar cheese, and I put it on a toasted gluten-free hamburger roll. Yum. It was a long wait, but it was worth it. Once again Amy's did not disappoint. I have tried dozens of Amy's products over the years, and I think all of them were great. The people over there really know how to make quality, nutritious, and delicious foods.

Hats off.

Happy Memorial Day to everyone.

I have finally taken a day off from my workouts. The gym is closed today, and I did two very long, very intense bike rides on the two previous days, so it seems like a great day to let my body rest. I plan to do a whole lotta nothin on this, what looks to be a perfect day.

I have officially lost 22.5 pounds since I started working out, and believe it or not, have at least that far to go, again. I am still enjoying the heck out of my workouts. You should all join me, sometime, at the gym.

Best.

Happy Towel Day, everyone!!

I happened to see Million Dollar Baby on AMC today, and noticed two themes that it had in common with Gran Torino. Each film had a priest with whom Eastwood had some sort of conflict/relationship, and each film had a gold-digging family. I wonder if those themes mean something to Clint?

I wonder if David Duke is a Tea Party member, because yeah, he isn't a racist either.

Feature 1: Touching The Void

Feature 2: North Face

Wow.

Yesterday, various cycling publications mentioned that today, Floyd Landis was going to go public with some big news. Those of us who follow the sport, sadly, knew what the news was going to be.

If you were a listener of my Podcast, you know that I defended Landis from the beginning. After doing a lot of research, and after having read this report (see page 11), written by an unbiased source, I concluded that I didn't know whether or not Landis had doped, because his testing was not conducted in a proper enough manner to determine it, either way. Because of this, and his devout Mennonite beliefs, I took him at his word, and gave him the benefit of the doubt. What can I say? I tend to believe in the inherent good in people, and would rather believe that people are telling the truth. Sadly, at the end of the day, he betrayed everyone, including his family.

In addition to admitting that he himself had doped, he also makes assorted accusations against former team mates Lance Armstrong, Levy Leipheimer, George Hincapie, Dave Zabriskie, and his former team manager, Johan Bruyneel.

At this point I don't know what to believe. He's obviously lost all credibility since he lied about his drug usage under oath. I have no idea what his motivations could possibly be, and I suspect we might never know the full truth about drugs in athletics.

When I think about a high profile athlete like Lance Armstrong, and how often he and his team mates are tested, one would think that if they were using PED's, that they would have to get caught, eventually. Even the best doping program seems like it would be eventually detected, if so many athletes are involved. Up until this month, I don't believe that any rider on any team that Lance had been a part of, had ever tested positive for any banned substances. Given that Landis just admitted that he was using while on the US Postal Service Cycling Team, that brings into question the accuracy of the testing methods, entirely.

I may not know exactly what to believe, but I do believe that not all athletes are doping. That gives me hope, but it is a murky hope.

Sometimes it sucks to be a fan.

A very cool thing just happened. I normally hit the gym at about 7:15 on Mondays to workout with my friend Joe. Today, however, we changed our workout to 9:30 because Joe had an early appointment. No big deal, but going two hours later means there's a whole different group of people there, that you're not used to seeing.

In between sets, I noticed a familiar face walk in. The guy looked like a friend that I used to play a lot of 9-Ball with at my local pool hall, a few years back. It made sense that this guy would be at a gym, because when I knew him, he was an avid weight lifter. Yet at the same time I wasn't one hundred percent sure, so I didn't approach him.

A little later, he happened to walk near me, and the gym was filled with the din of dozens of people talking and pumping iron, so I said, "Jimmy!" to see if he would look, and he did.

The funny thing is that I actually called Jim a few months ago, to talk to him about my latest obsession with Curling. Jim is a guy who appreciates finesse sports, so I knew he would enjoy hearing about it. He wasn't home the day I called, but did get the message, and apologized for not calling back.

Anyway, I told him about my Curling adventures, and we have some tentative plans to knock a few billiards balls around in the near future.

And all of this happened just because my friend Joe had to change our workout schedule.

I like cool coincidences.

Ronnie James Dio (born Ronald James Padavona) died today, at 7:45 am, after a tough battle with stomach cancer.

Ronnie was one of the best heavy music singers, ever, and for my money, he was the best. He was best known for singing in the bands Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell, and in his own band, Dio.

I was just talking about Ronnie with some friends, on Friday, because one of his tunes was playing at the gym when we were working out. I had mentioned that I was lucky enough to meet him once at the NAMM show four or five years ago.

He definitely had the golden pipes, and I always enjoyed his singing.

It's not widely known, but he actually lived in the central NY area, in Cortland NY, at one time in his life.

He will be missed.

There are few things more despicable than when people don't honor their word.

There. I said it. And it needed to be said.

Like many of my blog posts, they were inspired by brief (and some not so brief) conversations on Facebook. This post is no exception.

A friend asked the question, who was the better band, the Beatles, or the Stones? As you can imagine, the question inspired many answers. In this particular case the overwhelming majority of responders preferred the Beatles, but one guy in particular expounded at length about how they were special visionaries, and once-in-a-lifetime prophets. This kind of talk just gets my knickers in a twist.

The Beatles were just a band, made of mere mortals.

I am not denying that the Beatles had talent (well, John, anyway), nor am I denying that they had a big impact, but they were not gods. Sure, they definitely could write a great pop song, and they got experimental in their later years, but what artist that did the drugs of choice in the '60s, didn't? People, in my opinion, also tend to over-state their impact. Many Beatles fans believe that all music today is an extension of the Beatles. Yes, I have heard people say that, verbatim. I have no idea how that Bach guy, or that Mozart guy were able to create such amazing music without having had the benefit of first hearing the Beatles.

My modest experience in the music business shows that when people make it big, it is more often a product of being in the right place, at the right time, than of talent. In today's world, making it big is often a result of entirely how you look. I mean Britney Spears? Seriously? She made it because she has such great song-writing chops, and talent? Tell me another one.

This deification and adoration of celebrities that we are surrounded with these days, just confuses me. Sure, there are celebrities that I admire, and might even become tongue-tied with if I suddenly ran into them, but they're made out of the same carbon atoms as everyone else on this planet. Further, when someone goes on and on about how special these stars are that they adore, aren't they lowering themselves in the process?

As I said, yes, many of these stars that so many people adore have talent, but in my experience, everyone has at least one thing that they're good at. Why should we value one more than the other?

Well, we shouldn't.