Sometimes someone brings something to your attention that just floors you. This is one of those things. Not only did I know this guy, but I worked with him professionally and almost went to work for him at one point a long time ago.

Makes you wonder what might have happened had different decisions been made?

Yes, my inner geek is still dominant. I finally broke down and got myself a PocketPC phone over the weekend. I could say that my old PDA is falling apart (which it is) and that my cell phone is dying (which it is), but it still sounds an awful lot like justification for something I've been wanting to do for some time. But, at least I waited until the right opportunity. Instead of dropping $400-500 on one of these things, I waited until a clearance to get the unit for $99. Even if the unit only lasts a year, I'll still get my money's worth out of it. That, and I love telling the guy who just dropped nearly $600 on one last week how much I paid. Didn't know that people could turn that color of green.

So now I get to learn more about PocketPC devices. I had a chance to work with this technology a couple of times over the last year, and as much as I'm loathe to admit it, I kinda like the thing. Granted, it's no Newton, but the connectivity, handwriting recognition, and tools that come with it make it as useful to me as my Newtons ever were. Plus, I have wireless internet (not that WEP stuff, but honest-to-goodness on the highway wireless internet) which was just a pipe dream to the Newton.

Now if I could only find Mr. Advisador for the PocketPC. Hmmm. Maybe I'll just grab a development kit and write my own!

I really hate watching the news specifically and TV in general this time of the political cycle. And boy do I avoid even mentioning anything even remotely related to government issues that could end up turning a discussion towards politics with people I know. Open season on the unsuspecting public has begun.

I guess I'm in the minority of the US population, but I think of myself as a fairly well-educated, sensible-minded, aware of the world around me kind of guy. Political advisors must not think that I am, however, because they keep inundating me with meaningless trivia blown way out of proportion, I guess not realizing that I can google their "facts" quickly and put them into perspective for myself. Do these ad-writers really think they're going to sway my support of a candidate by pointing out all the horrid acts this person participated in during high school? If I were to take these ads seriously, hell, I'd get kicked out of the country for some of the stuff I did in high school, and I was a pretty normal teenager!

But this stuff must really work, because these people keep shoving it down our throats. Constantly. Now that the first caucus has passed, the hate ads can begin. In fact, the first report I heard (after avoiding everything to do with the caucus as much as possible) related to the mudslinging ads two of the Iowa caucus participants had been running. Joy.

It seems that every year, everyone says they're going to stop with the negative ads. And ten minutes later, someone in the propaganda group has the dirt located that they will air next week. And then the nastiest ads yet run continue to air. Every year trumps the previous.

That's what I love about my satellite TV recorder. I generally don't watch "live" TV any more, and when I do, it's mostly non-mainstream programming that does not carry candidate propaganda. That's the only way I can survive the media onslaught known as "election year," which seems to happen pretty much every year.

Maybe I'm alone in this. Maybe I'm one of the only people in the country who hates being talked down to and taken for granted by the entire election process. When my time comes to vote, I will research the candidates I must choose between using middle-ground sources that I've come to trust over the years. Based on that information, not the ads, not the word of mouth, and certainly not the extremist publishers on both sides of the spectrum, I will exercise my right to vote.

But boy, would I like to shake up the system a little. My suggestion: every ballot has an extra entry for each position being balloted - "None of the above." When more people select this option than any of the other candidates, everyone is thrown out and we start all over with all new people. No one on a "None of the above" ballot can run again. Wouldn't that be fun? Alas, in reality, it would only lengthen the process, and I'd have to avoid political ads and discussions and frick-a-frack even longer. Please, God, can't I go to sleep and just wake up in mid-November when this is all over?

Sidebar:
I was originally going to title this post "Politics," but that didn't really ring with what I wanted to say. So I pulled out my good friend thesaurus.com and searched on 'politics' to find a better word. The second entry returned was the word 'devious.' How appropriate.

My body is definitely beginning to feels its age. I'm having a very hard time adjusting to not being a morning person for the new gig. I've been working 9-6 the last couple of days, plus an hour each way in traffic, but I'm still waking up between 5-6am as I have been for at least 14 years. Tough! Especially since my body is accustomed to leaving work at 4pm during the week, and we're only about halfway through the afternoon at that point now.

Given that I'm getting acclimated to a new situation and environment, I really need to be on my toes, but I've been so tired from trying to adjust my internal clock, I don't know that I've been at my best. Kinda like when we go through a time change or deal with jet lag.

I suppose since I've conquered jet lag before, I can probably adjust to this before too long. I certainly don't want to end up with any of these side effects of sleep deprivation!

OK, it's time to put on the thinking caps, head out of Status Quo Garage, and pull onto Creativity Boulevard. I need a band name.

I just finished editing what should be the last mix of "Eleven Row Aim" and posted it on the Simultaneous Pancakes website. For now, this is the only place the file will be linked, though, because I'm ready for people to listen to it, but it's not fully ready for publication. You see, I don't know who the artist is. Ever since I discovered that my desired moniker, Avenue Q, was hijacked by naughty puppets, I've been trying to find a new name for my musical persona. And let me tell you, it's not that easy.

It's not like I haven't been able to do this before. I was involved in several musical projects in high school: Invasion, the very first band I put together, and WishSong, my swan song in the Lubbock music scene. Green Chili Burp and the Aftertaste came along in college (you can read the history about the name and the band at the Green Chili web page) and went just about as quickly. Chi Rho was the name of the music team we put together at the United Methodist Campus Ministry at UNT in Denton, although I think there was actually a recording act with that name, but we were pretty sure that no one would get us confused with them. And all the time after Green Chili dissolved, I've been working internally under the name Avenue Q, which had a couple of significant elements. First, the studio where we recorded Sacrificing Toasters to Alien Poets resides on Ave. Q in Lubbock. Then, of course, there's the Q in my name, which I really want to keep involved somehow.

But, alas, as revealed in the earlier post, Avenue Q is now known on Broadway, so I'm up to another moniker. When you pull down and listen to Eleven Row Aim, you'll notice that the artist name in the ID3 tag is "1500 Ft." That's there simply because I had to come up with something, and since I just hung my very large and very heavy 1500 Ft road construction sign in my studio, it was the first thing that popped to mind. But I'm not that crazy about it, because there aren't that many interesting stories that you can make up about the origin of the name and it doesn't involve the letter Q. My favorite college band, Ten Hands, got their name because there were five members of the band, meaning the band had ten hands. When they finally settled on four members instead of 5, they didn't change their name to Eight Hands, because Ten Hands just had a nice ring to it. The idea of having 750 people make up the 1500 feet seems kind of silly in comparison, too, especially if you say it's actually 760 people, partially comprised of amputees.

So how to come up with an alternate persona. In my world, there are some rules about naming musical projects. I make heavy use of anagrams in song titles or lyric lines. I've also been known to dust off my good friend Mr. Advisador from time to time to generate interesting phrases. I've toyed several times with those tools to create the next musical moniker, but haven't come up with anything really solid. The best I've seen yet is "Evil Iraq Eel Nero" which is just an anagram of my full name. Mr. Advisador has given me such great lines as "Herbal Flu," "Aardvark Pride," "Instant Ambient," and the name of my publishing company, Simultaneous Pancakes. I've also had another name floating around for a while, I won't share it here in case some lurker opts to steal it for him/herself, but for the music I've been working on lately, it just hasn't fit.

So I've been playing with some ideas this morning using my basic band name rules (they're more like guidelines, actually) - anagrams are good, the letter Q must be involved, the name should be short and somewhat catchy and should relate to something. Here's what I've generated in about 5 minutes of effort (which may be too much as it is):
Not Quite Munch: Anagram of "The Q Continuum." Munch is one of my favorite TV characters, currently featured in "Law & Order: SVU."
FIFO: first-in, first-out, the definition of a queue (yeah, that's really a reach, I know).

Obviously, I need to keep looking. These two are interesting, and I'll google both terms to make sure no one else has used them yet, if I decide to try and capture them for myself. Oh, and if you should have any suggestions, I'm open to them. Leave an opinion or drop me an e-mail.

Fun arrived in the mail today: 3D glasses for looking at the Martian 3D images. Wow! Wow! Wow! All I can say is "Wow!"

Unfortunately, NASA hasn't placed all the 3D images from the Spirit mission into a single location on their Mars Rover site (neither has Space.com for that matter), so I went out searching to find someone that has collected links to all the 3D images in a single location. I haven't found it yet, but I did find some amazing 3D adaptations of other Mars missions at other sites. Some of these "third party" creations are actually better quality than the NASA-produced images. So, I'm collecting what I've found thus far into this entry to entertain those of you who have your very own red-cyan 3D glasses. If you don't have any, you can find vendors on-line, like I did when I googled for "3D glasses."

Images from Widener University
Images from Mars Unearthed
Link from the Martian Soil blog
Stereoscopy.com's Mars collection

Hope you enjoy seeing the Martian landscape in brilliant 3D as much as I have!

I love spell checkers, especially when they correctly identify "divination" but not "mojo."

When I look into your future, I see...

Nothing.

I can't predict the future. Some people claim to be able to, but I have yet to meet one. Not that I didn't give that serious thought the other day. I went to meet an old friend for lunch, and the way to the restaurant where we met passes a Psychic shop in a strip mall. I've joked about that psychic a number of times while passing it on the road, but this day, I actually gave serious consideration to stopping in and seeing if I could win at "stump the psychic." With my job situation and other issues in my life up in the air, I was really close to just wanting to have someone tell me what was going to happen so I wouldn't have to wait any more (see "Patience" below).

I probably would have stopped in, because she (I'm assuming it's a "she" based on the stereotype) was advertising a $10 special. Then I read the fine print, whose letters were a mere 4" tall: the $10 special was a card reading. I've had one card "reading" in the past, by a friend who picked up a Tarot desk and gave readings to friends for fun. His divination of the cards was based on material in a book he kept with him. Well, I jinxed the whole thing, because while we were sitting in his living room talking about stuff, I sat there and organized the cards in the deck by turning them all the same way. When he started dealing out the cards, it didn't take him long to realize what I'd done. So he verbally abused me for messing with the deck and made me "randomize" the deck again by rotating the cards while I shuffled them for the next 20 minutes. I think the result of the reading was that I'd die a horrible and painful death in a day or two because I screwed with the mojo of the cards. That was 14 years ago, anyway.

I have had one instance of being able to see where my life was headed, though, and that was when I met Anna. I can't tell you exactly what it was, or how it happened (that was a little over 10 years ago, and I've not slept well since then, no correlation), but I knew within a very short time of meeting her that I'd spend the rest of my life with her. I was so convinced of this that five weeks to the day after our first "date," I proposed. Fortunately, she saw the same thing I did, and said "yes." And our future was history.

I'm not a very patient person. I've pretty much always been that way. Waiting for things to happen is not my strong suit. Perhaps this is the lesson God is trying to teach me right now.

I've been out of work for over two months (in case you hadn't caught that tidbit elsewhere in the blog), and it's driving me crazy. Ask my wife. I'm ready to work in the job I want right now. But perhaps my schedule is once again not in line with God's schedule.

How do you know when to listen for God's call? How do you know the call you're hearing is from God and not somewhere else? I don't have the answer to those questions, but I continue to seek them.

So, if I were a patient person, the events of this week would not be out of the ordinary. I'm finally getting a lot of activity on the job market, as I suspected would happen all along. I did have faith that I would not be out of work forever, and I had faith that I would end up in a job that I enjoyed and allowed me to continue my lifestyle. But I didn't have the patience to let it happen in its own time. As a result, I've burdened myself with a lot of pressure, stress, and frustration that I could have avoided. I could have enjoyed my time off a little more than I did.

Right after I got the news that I would be unemployed, I spoke with someone who had gone through the same situation about 6 months earlier. It only took him about 6 weeks to find a new job, one where he was much happier than the one where I knew him. Anyway, he mentioned that he really wished he had taken approach that his time off was a well-deserved vacation and enjoyed it more. At the time, I thought, "That's an excellent way of looking at the situation." He really inspired me. Then, about 10 minutes later, the inspiration went away, and the anguish of the upcoming job search came in.

As I sit here typing this afternoon, I'm of a mixed mind. I wish I had been more patient the last couple of months. I wish I had enjoyed myself more. I will say that I'm going to enjoy the time off I have left and make the most of it. And maybe, the next time I get impatient with myself or the world, I can look back at this time in my life and remember what I lost by losing patience. At least, I hope I can do that.

While there are some people who are better able to express their innate creativity than others, "being creative" isn't something you can will into being. Trust me, I've tried. The last couple of months of unemployment have given me a wide-open slate of time to "express my creativity." Bollocks. Many of the "creative" things I've wanted to accomplish in this time remain undone. Just having the time to get something accomplished does not equate to getting it done. Ask my publishers.

Two items occupied the top of my list of goals for this idle time. Well, three, really, but one of those wasn't creatively-motivated, it was more in line with getting food on the table. Anyway, I had hoped to make use of this time to establish some solid creative writing habits and get some practice on my fiction chops. The other was to spend time in my studio and finish some incomplete tracks and start some new ones. As I enter my last week of unemployment, I'm going to give myself a report card.

Creative Writing: B+
While I intended for my creative writing to be in the fiction realm, I have carried the practice of writing through the break by maintaining this and a couple of other private blogs. One of those blogs was a "fictionalized" account of a story that I thought would be solid through a diary style. That fizzled pretty quickly, but I've found ways to write on a number of varying topics through this particular blog. By doing so, I've channeled my energies into the craft of writing and not just the activity. I'm able to focus on issues such as word choice, constructive variety, and so on. Am I a better writer? Maybe. Am I the next blogger to get picked up for a book deal? Very doubtful. But the practice has been very therapeutic, which has helped me cope if nothing else.

Music: C-
This is probably a generous score here, but I'm trying to compensate for my natural tendency to be harder on myself than others would be. I could fall back on the excuses that my studio is still in state of chaos, despite numerous attempts to organize and make it useful. However, I have brought a couple of items to near completion. One is a "live" mix of "The Warm-Up Song" that's been kicking around in my head and hard drive for a little over three years. I mastered one surround-sound mix that works pretty well, but still needs a few tweaks. I missed points for not spending the time to get those tweaks finalized the last few weeks. The second was a surround-sound mix of a "new" tune that I've actually tried to get finished twice in the last year. I was hoping to enter it into a songwriting contest last May, but couldn't get it done in time. Well, it's still not done. Not even started are a couple of other tunes in various stages of completion that I'm wanting to enter into this year's songwriting contest. Even today, I look at the state of my studio and think "nah, not gonna happen today, either."

Motivation: F
Here's the real reason my creative juices have yet to gush forth. Despite the time available, which has been my excuse for years and years, I just haven't been able to get motivated to get moving on these projects. That's why deadlines are such wonderful things. I can be a procrastinator, probably worse than most, but not horribly so. Given a hard deadline at which the work must be done, motivation is not a problem. Not knowing how long my unemployment streak would run, I've been able to say to myself, "Well, I've still got time." No mas.

Creativity cannot be enabled in a vacuum by itself. You can't just "flip the creativity switch" and create something of beauty "just because." Creativity is, at least, sparked by inspiration and, at best, sustained by a muse. Periods of my life where I felt I was at my most creative were when my muse was working overtime. My muse existed in the form of my co-conspirators working with me in musical ventures. I have no problem saying that I would not have been able to write half of what I did without the inspiration and collaboration of Greg Ross. I would never have had the inspiration to keep moving forward with the music at the Campus Ministry without the companionship and dedication of Suzy Jenkins, Byron Fisher, and Ric Jones. In my very early days in junior high school, I would not have been able to write such everlasting hits as "The Black Knight" or "Don't Wanna Believe" without the energy of Tracy Wilson, Jesse Martinez (rest in peace), and Steven Williams.

Does this mean that I'm incapable of writing music on my own? No, but while I'm in the regular practice of playing with others at least weekly, I'm very in tune with my instruments and my musical center. I've written a number of songs during periods when I had no additional musical interactions. Maybe I'm just not ready to get there yet. I can almost guarantee you, however, that when I learn the deadline for this year's songwriter's contest, I'll find the motivation to get those two tunes recorded and submitted.

So I continue my quest for my muse, my inspiration for my musical self. I have some new guides along the way: a recently-constructed hammered dulcimer, a Native American-style wood flute, and a bamboo clarinet and saxophone in my instrument arsenal. I've started lessons on the dulcimer, and I just acquired some new music to help develop chops on the wind instruments. In one session with the dulcimer yesterday, I discovered a melodic idea that I really liked and think I can develop into a more complete musical motif, hopefully the basis for a new tune. And despite the fact that I'm reentering the workforce and will not have as much time available for project work, I am committed to maintaining the positive habits I've developed in the interim. Which means that you'll get to see new posts to this blog for a long time coming. One of those posts will be a link to a recording of a newly-completed track from my studio. Maybe even by this weekend!

Yesterday, I took Anna down to the Dallas Home Landscape Show at the Dallas Convention Center. Normally, we head down to the Neil Sperry All-Garden Show in Arlington each year, but there was a special reason to head to this show this year: Andrew Dan-Jumbo from While You Were Out. He was the featured celebrity at the show on Sunday, and gave two short talks in the afternoon, then gave autographs and photo ops.

Did we remember to bring the camera? Of course we did! Here are just a few memories from the show:


Andrew speaks from the stage.


Andrew speaks to fans after the second talk.


Andrew signs a fan's shirt.

But I don't really care what Andrew did with other fans. What did he do for us?


Andrew chats it up with Anna.


Andrew is a handsome gentleman. No, he's the one in the middle. That's me on the left.

After reviewing several commenting systems, I've selected HaloScan and embedded the code in the posts. So, if ya wanna leave an opinion on a particular post, now you can. Joy.

Yesterday, I picked up a couple of things at Best Buy (thanks, KT!) for my birthday. One of those items was the long-overdue acquisition of "Poodle Hat," the latest CD from "Weird Al" Yankovic. A friend of mine got the CD when it first came out and shot me an e-mail with his observations. He wasn't that high on it. That really didn't have anything to do with my delay in getting the disc (money was, however). So I got the CD, I've listened to it a few times, and I've reached my conclusions on this offering from one of the kings of comedy.

What follows is a serious review of the CD. If you don't think such a thing is possible, you can stop reading now.

Let me start off by saying that I own every commercial Al recording on CD. There may be a compilation or two that I've passed on, but I believe that I have a complete library of all his published work. At some point, I'll sit down, in homage to my friend James, and rank the albums in preferential order, but that day is not today. This exercise is limited entirely to "Poodle Hat."

I'll save my overall summary for the end. But I'll detail my observations as I came upon them, ironically, in album order. First, the title: "Poodle Hat." I must not get it. I can give you a good reasoning behind the names of each of his other albums (with the possible exception of "Polka Party") but not this one. On initial observation, it's uninspired. I'll grant that he must be making reference to something, but it's lost on me. OK. No big deal. On to the music.

The CD opens with "Couch Potato" - a parody of Eminem's "Lose Yourself." I don't care much for Eminem, and I really don't know his music, but this seems a reasonable song to use as a parody basis. It's got a nice beat and if you can tolerate "song speak," you can even "sing" along with it. Once again, Al targets the barren landscape of Television for the basis of his lyrics. Once again, he's right on the money. Favorite line from the song: "Network execs with naked ambitions: 'Next week on FOX watch lions eat Christians.'"

Next is "Hardware Store" - a style parody, but I'm not sure who is the parody source. I like the tune, though. The beat is catchy, and Al is one of the best at stringing along long stretches of multi-syllabic words without breaks. Here, the singer awaits (for a long time) the opening of a new hardware store in town. Musically and lyrically, I really like what he's done with the chorus. There are multiple voices singing broken lines that eventually end up telling us they're going to the hardware store. Not only was that creatively written, but it must have been a bitch for the singers to learn and get right. Favorite line: "Trailer hitch demagnetizers, automatic circumcisers, tennis rackets, angle brackets, Duracells and Energizers."

Then comes "Trash Day" - a parody of Nelly's "Hot in Herre." I don't care for Nelly, I don't like the original of this song, and the parody of it is lost on me as well. The songs tells the tale of a guy who doesn't want to take our his trash and it keeps piling up for weeks, giving us the chorus line "There's something rotten here." The lyrics seem to go nowhere in the song, and while that may be a play on the original (cf. "This Song Is Just Six Words Long"), I'm not familiar with the original so I can't say for sure. At any rate, this is the first track on the disc that comes off as trite.

What can I say about "Party at the Leper Colony?" Hopefully as little as possible. It's a style parody that reminds me of a late-50's or early-60's dance number (yes, dancing, not just gyrating body limbs wildly as is the practice today). The lyrics are clever, but maybe I'm getting a little old, because the mental image of body parts getting passed around on a Saturday night is just a little much for me. There are some great puns in here, though, given the topic. In any other song, they'd just be cliche. The beat is really nice, although it feels slow and bland at first. By the end of the track, the energy kicks in, and you can't help but feel like top-tapping to it. Favorite line: "She oozed up beside me; I turned on my charm; Well, pretty soon she was completely disarmed." See?

The polka mix on this disc is the "Angry White Boy Polka." I've never said anything bad about any of his other Polka mixes, and I won't about this one, either. It's catchy, and once again, I don't know any of the songs that he's pulled for it. That's not a bad thing, actually. I've discovered that I like a number of artists simply because Al has included one of their songs in a Polka (that's where I first heard Alanis Morisette). I admit that I had a little time to get used to this tune, though, because someone created a Flash animation for it. Watch it - you'll enjoy it. Just be careful of the surrounding content. *sigh*

Next comes "Wanna B Ur Lover" - a style parody. I don't know whose style he's working on here, and I really don't care. I hate this song. I have never, EVER, said that about an Al tune, but I HATE this song. The lyrics are a bunch of bad pick-up lines strung together. The music is uninspired. The song feels completely over-produced. Can I say enough bad things about this track? Probably not. If I never hear it again, that will be too soon. Next.

Avril Lavigne get indoctrinated into the world of Al Parody with "A Complicated Song" - based on, you guessed it, her award-winning song "Complicated." I like Avril. Really. I'm not ashamed to say it. She's a solid young songwriter, and I hope she continues to generate material like she did for her first album. I can't say that I want any of her other material to get the Al once-over, because he didn't do a very good job with this one. Granted, this was a very difficult song to parody, and I think Al chose it because it was really popular with the teenage crowd. But the song feels so rushed and undeveloped. Most of the time, Al and his band to a better-than-average to outstanding rendition of the music backing of the original song. Not here. The music on this take is flat, like weeks-old cola. It never even glimpses the energy that the original has. Now, the lyrics. This isn't one song, it's really three song snippets. Al couldn't come up with one idea that could cover the entire piece, so he settled for telling three stories, all of which have chorus lines that rhyme with "complicated" - constipated, related, decapitated. Yes, he really, REALLY had to reach for this one. I am no fan of potty humor, so the first verse of the song almost had me putting this track in my trash pile forever. Fortunately, I stayed around for the second verse, which had nothing to do with constipation. I really think he might have been able to stretch the concept in the second verse to fill the entire song, but maybe he didn't think he could. Anyway, this particular verse and chorus is enough to keep me listening to this track. The lyrical turns in the chorus are very clever, and still fit with the groove of the original. And has nothing to with Al liking potty humor. He definitely likes dismemberment, as the lead in the third verse get his head lopped off on a roller coaster. It's a nice turn on words, but it's really not funny. Marks for creativity, maybe. Humor, no. Favorite line - the second chorus: "How was I supposed to know we were both related; Believe me, if I knew she was my cousin we never would have dated; What to do now? Should I go ahead and propose and get hitched and have kids with eleven toes and move to Alabama where that kind of thing is tolerated?" I think Al knows this song was a lot of work that may not pay off. "A Complicated Song" indeed.

"Why Does This Always Happen To Me?" is what I was thinking about now in my first listen to the CD. This is another style parody, I'm guessing of Ben Folds, since he plays on this track, and the music is OK, but not great. I don't like the lyrics at all. It's a slam on ultra-self-centered people. In the first verse, the singer complains because "The Simpsons" was interrupted by a newsbreak about an earthquake in Peru. There are more dismembered bodies in the second verse, and a knife to the face of the boss in the third. I don't find this kind of violence humorous, and for me, it's in poor taste. I'm probably in the minority in that, granted, but this song now falls in the same category as "The Night Santa Went Crazy" - I'll make reasonable efforts to not listen to it again. It's not in my iTunes list, it won't make it on any mix CD I make, etc. But I'm not going to get up and walk out of a concert when it's played. (I would if he played "Wanna B Ur Lover" in a show - I think I'm glad I missed him this last time around.)

Billy Joel gets the treatment in "Ode to a Superhero" - a spin on "The Piano Man." I was about to give up on this disc when this track came on. Not only do I like Billy Joel, but I used to be able to play this song a long, LOOOOOOONG time ago. This track harkens to the Al tradition of taking an older, classic song and using it as a movie parody as well. His most famous songs in this vein were "Yoda" and "The Saga Begins," both about the Star Wars movies. This one is as well done as those, but suffers from the release date. If this album had been release a year earlier, to coincide with the release of the Spiderman movie last summer, this would have been the leading cut on the album. Instead, it's relegated to the last third of the disc. That's sad, because I think this may be the best track. Favorite line: "But to his great surprise it seems she prefers guys who can kiss upside down in the rain."

"Bob" is, duh, a Bob Dylan style parody. But how do you parody a guy who's best known for his inability to sing intelligibly? Why, by noticing that his name is a palindrome. So since you can't understand what Bob the Palindrome sings, why not make the lyrics nonsensical by just stringing together a bunch of palindromes? On paper, this must have looked like a great idea. And conceptually, it's genius. The realization of the idea, however, just doesn't live up to the potential. Granted, there are palindromes in here that I've never heard of (and I'm sort of a fan of odd word activities, such as palindromes). But I have to agree with my friend Billy on this one. Why would I want to listen to someone trying to sound like Bob Dylan and making about as much sense as Bob Dylan instead of listening to Bob Dylan? For me, the idea of using palindromes as the basis for a song could have been done some other way, and might have been more entertaining. Favorite palindrome, uh, line: "UFO tofu."

Following that is another short song title, "eBay" - a parody of the Backstreet Boys hit "I Want It That Way." This song gives the Spiderman song a run for the "best track on this disc" title. I enjoy this song, and it's probably going to make it into my permanent Al rotation in iTunes. It's another formulaic song, but like many of his other formulaic songs, it works. Everything included in the lyrics are items actually found available on eBay. Plus, the chorus of the song really lent itself to the new lyrics: "What I bought on eBay." Again, I don't care much for boybands, including the back street variety, but this is a good song, and both versions are really well done. Favorite line: "Wanna buy (a Kleenex used by Dr. Dre)?"

The collection concludes with "Genius in France" - another style parody, I'm guessing Dewwzil Zappa is the artist being targetted. Like Ben Folds on the earlier track, Dweezil plays the intro. The style, tempo, texture, and so on, change constantly throughout the track (all 8+ minutes of it). Being the longest track on the disc, and the last, don't make up for the fact that the song is incredibly insulting to the French. I guess that's the point. I don't know. Without knowing for certain who he's parodying on this track, I'm left to judge it on its own, and on its own, it stinks. There are some nice moments of vocal harmony scattered through the track, but they are few and far between compared to the endless comparisons of how the singer is dumb, stupid, ugly, dumb, idiotic, disgusting, dumb, slow, annoying, dumb, and how the French worship the ground he walks on, for absolutely no good reason whatsoever. I recall a track from the "In 3-D" album called "That Boy Could Dance" where he tells the story of a really ugly kid in school whose one redeeming quality was that he could dance well. In this treatment, however, we're told in no uncertain terms that the singer has no redeeming value whatsoever, except that the French love him. Whatever.

Overall, I'm disappointed in this offering from Al. There are some bright moments on the disc, but there aren't any real gems on here, either. Granted, Al hasn't had much to work with in terms of parodying popular music over the last few years. The radio landscape has been pretty dry. The general feeling I get is that this project was rushed out the door, and I can't find the reason why. There's not a track on here that just screamed to be released at any particular time. None of the parody tracks were overwhelming radio hits where he could capitalize on the popularity to increase sales of the disc. It really hadn't been that long since his last release, and I really wasn't aware of any earth-shattering cry for more "new" Al. I've come to expect more from Al than what was delivered on this collection, so I'm even more disappointed when I can't understand why an unnecessary collection was pushed out the door.

To date, "Polka Party" is Al's least commercially successful release. I'm afraid that "Poodle Hat" may well compete for that spot on the roster. At least "Polka Party" had its reasons for being put out when it was. It was the fourth in a string of yearly releases from Al, so there was momentum at the time to get the next album out the door and quickly. Three years passed before the next album, and the quality returned.

Do I regret getting "Poodle Hat?" No. Am I glad I got it on sale? Yes. And with a gift certificate? Absolutely. Hopefully, Al will return his focus to what made him successful in his more popular days. Having seen the guy perform live, I am in awe of his musical skill. Does he have the best singing voice on the planet? No, but he doesn't need it, either. That's the only component in his musical makeup that is less than stellar, and he is still able to pull off a two hour concert night after night after night. But his songwriting and arranging skills are where his true genius lies. On "Poodle Hat," unfortunately, it seems that genius was wasted, even in France.

OK, it's happened. I'm officially giddy. I'm beyond amazed at what's happening on Mars right now, and I'm not even associated with the missions. I can only imagine what's going on within the project team. Here I was thinking that the really exciting stuff has only happened in the last few weeks, but there's actually been very cool stuff going on since the probes left Earth less than a year ago. In fact, only a couple of months after launch, one probe took this amazing Earth and Jupiter picture. Wow!

Any open jobs at NASA? Sign me up!!!

We had a blast at the Magic Time Machine Sunday night for my birthday. As luck would have it, our server was none other than Captain Jack Sparrow. Anna and Sharon both have this "thing" for Captain Jack, so they may have had more fun than I!

The lucky ladies pose with Jack:


Everyone posing in front of the school bus, where we ate:

Yes, that's me in the balloon hat.

All the excitement about the varying successes of recent (the last 2 weeks) Mars probe activities has somewhat overshadowed yet another amazing mission, one that's been in the sky since 1999 - Stardust. On 1/2/04, Stardust flew through the tail of a comet and collected samples that will be returned to Earth for study. This is the first time any mission has collected samples from an off-world body and returned it to Earth since the lunar missions.

It's a very exciting time to be an American and take pride in the space program again. The last few years haven't reflected well on NASA and ancillary programs: the loss of the Pathfinder probes to Mars several years ago, the loss of the space shuttle Columbia in its return to Earth not even a year ago. But it appears that we learn from these mishaps and better the program as a result. In the last six months, Japan has lost a probe destined for Mars, and it appears that the European effort has lost the lander Beagle 2, despite the successful deployment of the orbiting Mars Express.

I for one am looking forward to the arrival of the Opportunity probe in just under 3 weeks. And I'm very anxious to see what was collected from the comet Wild-2 by Stardust. That's going to be a long 4 years to wait for the comet chaser to return!

What better birthday present could I get than a successful landing of a Mars probe? Thanks, NASA/JPL!

OK, so maybe they didn't plan the landing specifically to celebrate my birthday (but it was a nice thought). But the fact that Spirit is just the fifth probe to successfully land on Mars in nearly 30 years of trying is just amazing. The astronomer inside me is just giddy with excitement!

If you want to keep tabs on the Mars missions like I am, there are two great sites:
Space.com Mars Rover Coverage
NASA/JPL Mars Explorer

While the images coming back from Spirit and breathtaking, there's more excitement around the corner: the second of the Mars Explorer pair, Opportunity, is scheduled to land in a few weeks. The European probe Mars Express just entered into orbit around Mars, and it will be taking radar readings under the surface of the planet. More importantly, though, it will spend the next several days attempting to regain communication with the lander, Beagle 2, that should have deployed on the surface on Christmas Day, but hasn't been heard from since.

As much trouble as I've had navigating back and forth to work in the past, I cannot even imaging the effort that has gone into getting these probes even close to Mars, much less landing Spirit in a crater the size of Connecticut. Unbelievable!

We're just about to head out to the Magic Time Machine. This has been a favorite destination of mine for, well, let's just say a very long time (like 18 years, perhaps). There are only two of them now, one in Dallas (Addison actually) and the other in San Antonio. I had been to the one that was open in Austin, but it closed down quite a while back.

One memorable moment was the night my mother and I went for dinner there. It was the night of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. We talked with a gentleman at the next table who was from San Fran, but was in Dallas on a business trip.

While in college, we had some friends that worked at the restaurant. We would make fairly regular trips out to have fun with them.

My favorite memory from the Time Machine was the night a good friend got into an ice fight with Luke Skywalker. There were about 12 of us sitting in the School Bus, and Luke was waiting tables in the adjacent area. He and one of my friends got into some good-natured verbal sparring, which culminated with my friend starting to toss ice cubes at Luke whenever he walked past. The game ended, however, when Luke brought a bucket of ice and dumped it on my friend. Once we got over the initial shock of "I can't believe that just happened," we couldn't stop laughing. There wasn't a dry eye at the table by the time we finally left.

Always a great place for fun. And when you visit, be sure to ask your server where the restrooms are...

Tomorrow is my birthday. Not that you need to know, but I'll be turning 29 again (yes, this has happened several times, but who's counting?) and I'm looking forward to it. There has been a lot of activity in and around our home the last few days, so when my wife finally broached the subject of birthday gatherings (I was hoping for some sort of surprise party), she mentioned that she didn't have time to get anything together, so if I wanted a birthday party, I was going to have to put it together myself. No problem. I've got nothing but time these days. Unfortunately, that discussion happened on New Year's Eve.

So I quickly got my e-mail program on-line and shot a hastily-written note to a few dozen of my associates who might be in town and available for dinner on Sunday night, gave them a basic idea, and let them know I'd follow up once more definite plans had been made. As expected, I received very few responses to the e-mail: some "maybes" and a few more "can't make its."

That got me thinking about the whole communication thing. I sent out the e-mail because it took less time to do that than to call everyone on the contact list and invite them individually. Does that make me a bad person? Would I have received more "yes" responses if I had made more personal invitations? I think not, but by then the brain cells were humming on their own beat.

As our society becomes more and more dependent on electronic means of communication, it almost seems that we're growing further and further apart. 10-15 years ago, I would call on my good friends almost weekly to keep caught up on life events. Now, I wait for mass e-mails to come out with updates, or I rummage through friends' blogs to see what's happening. This reminded me of a great line from the movie Contact. The character of Palmer Joss, played by Matthew McConaughey, is being interviewed about the impact of technology on society on Larry King Live. He responds, "We shop at home, we surf the net... and we feel emptier and lonelier and more cut off from each other than at any other time in human history... " At the time the movie was released (1997), I thought this was more of an alarmist statement. Reflecting on it now, I'm not so sure he wasn't dead on.

How many companies re developing services to "aid" in our electronic communications? I use www.blogger.com to update and post my blogs, and there are many other sites that provide the same services. My wife uses www.evite.com to send and track electronic invitations and RSVPs to gatherings she hosts. A good friend uses www.snapfish.com to post her child's photo album/scrapbook on-line. I'm sure there are other services that I'm not even aware of to help aid in our newly-embraced communication medium.

But are we better off?

I admit, when I get a mass mailing from someone with an update on their lives, I've thought "Wow, wouldn't it have been nice to get an individualized note?" And the next day, I turn around and send my own mass mailing. By posting family happenings on a blog, have I become someone to read about instead of associate with? By trying to be more informative with others about things that are going on in my life under the auspices of keeping in better communication with others, have I added yet another wall to the shell that surrounds me and keeps others at bay? That certainly hasn't been my intention, and I hope that's not really the end result.

I recall a novel by one of my favorite authors, Isaac Asimov. In the novel he portrays a subset of society who value their privacy so much that they are in constant communication by video phone, but are horrified by the thought of physical contact. Husbands and wives may actually see each other in person once or twice during their lifetimes. Egad, what a bleak prediction for our future. But is it an accurate one?

I guess we'll know more about the effects of this over the next few years. It will be interesting to see what new services come into being in our electronically-enhanced world. And if we become a truly global community, or if we retreat further into our own isolated lives...

Well, it's January 1, 2004. At least according to some calendars. I know there are at least two other major calendars out there that do not mark January 1 as the start of the new year. I even did some googling this morning to find a rough guess of what percentage of the world actually celebrates these other solar cycles. Hmmm. Even calling them 'solar cycles' is probably not correct.

I've found that about.com usually does a pretty good job of collecting information on topics of interest and presenting them in a useful format on the web, including the Chinese New Year and the Jewish New Year.

At any rate, whether it's Thursday, 1 January 2004, 8 Dhu al-Qada 1424, 7 Teveth 5764, 11 Dey 1382, 22 Kiyahk 1720, or Sweetmorn, Chaos 1, Year of Our Lady of Discord 3170, I hope you have some fun today!