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That guy named after fish

People often ask me to recommend new music. They ask, I presume, because radio sucks now, and because, as a musician, I must have my fingers on the pulse of the underground. Unfortunately, my few musical discoveries have been more or less serendipitous, or else the artists that I do like are not accessible to the average non-musician. (My mom once said of a frenetic Coltrane solo, “That sounds like a bunch of noise.” “Of course,” I replied.)

But here is a brand new band, whom I haven’t ever heard, yet who I know will destroy every other band in their path. Called The Dragonflys (yes, spelled thus), the band features Jimmy Herring on guitar and Rob Barraco on keys, both of The Dead and many other bands. I have waxed rhapsodic about Jimmy Herring before, so I’ll neglect to do so again. But this weekend’s show at The State Theater is going to be an amazing set, and I’ll stake a pile of cash on that without having listened to a single Dragonflys track.

Dragonflys. The State. Sunday. 8:30pm. I encourage both of my readers to attend.

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Philadelphia

Angeline and I spent yesterday afternoon in the home of Will Smith and Benjamin “DJ Bizzy” Franklin: Philadelphia, PA. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, so you don’t get any pictures. This being my first visit to Philly, we had to go see the large, bronze, cracked…hot steamy bread with gooey cheesy meat and onions … where was I? Oh yes, the Liberty Bell. So we looked at the bell, then headed off for lunch.

After much research we decided to try out Jim’s on 4th and South for an authentic bite. Much has been said by Philly natives about how there is something special about their sandwiches that can’t be duplicated in any other place, but I think this is mostly bunk. That said, Jim’s may well have taken the top spot on my list. The differentiating factor is mainly the rolls, and Jim doesn’t disappoint on that score.

After lunch, we hit the Rodin museum. Here you can see one of the casts of The Thinker, the Gates of Hell, and lots of hands and people in uncomfortable somersault embraces. Victor Hugo figures prominently. And there’s a walrus-looking thing by some lesser sculptor, too.

Anyway, Philadelphia is a nice city and worth the occasional three hour drive. I’m sure I’ll be back sometime this year.

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Salt

One other observation about Ohio: fully half of my meals on my trip were the saltiest meals I’d ever eaten. Now, I am a connoisseur of salt. I like it. I have three different types of salt in my pantry. But this… this is too much. I’m not sure if this is a regional thing, or whether I just got unlucky, but it’s surprising that I didn’t undergo wholesale plasmolysis and dry up to a tiny wrinkled husk.

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EJ

Last night I went to go see the guitarist Eric Johnson. This makes the fifth show of his that I’ve seen. It was a decent show, but I don’t think EJ brought anything new to this tour. He has a new CD out (I haven’t heard it) and most of the selections he played from it were less than stellar, except “12 to 12” which has been in his setlist for years. Anyway, he played lots of Ah Via stuff including “Cliffs of Dover” which I am happy to learn is hybrid picked. String skipping that intro is damn near impossible.

I’m also coming to the realization that EJ can’t improvise his way out of a paper bag. The protracted opening to “Cliffs” had no direction apart from “play a set of dispersed triads in a random key center and then play a fast descending pentatonic lick.” Melodic development in many of his solos was absent, which is a shame because the guy does possess the ability to write good lines (see Manhattan’s non-improvised jazz solo).

What did make the ticket price worthwhile was opener Josh Dion Band. Dion is a energetic singer/drummer with great chops on both sides of the slash. His band, a seven person crew with keys, bass, guitar, and three backup singers, delivered a high powered set of funk that never flagged. I’m looking forward to seeing these guys again.

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Ohio

I’ve been derelict in my duties to describe the magic of Ohio. So I’ll let you know when I figure it out. Just kidding. Canton is nice enough, the people are friendly except for the guy at Radio Shack, and where else can you visit the home of Goodyear, the birthplace of Hoover vacuum cleaners, and the Pro football hall of fame all in one day? I didn’t manage to visit any of these though.

On July 1st I hit the road about 3pm. The trip was supposed to take about seven hours; it ultimately took eight and a half. Congratulations to the highway designer who saved so many taxpayer dollars by making the only road out of town a single-laner. I arrived at 11:30, crashed. I spent most of the next morning just driving around the vast shopping mall that is North Canton.

Of course the real magic that drew me there was the official legal union between Scott and Jill. Their wedding was lovely and I know they will have a wonderful life together. Also it was good to see a number of people whom I haven’t seen in a while; I shall have to do a better job so that we don’t have to make a 14 hour round trip to catch up. I forgot my camera so no pictures this time.

I resisted the urge to make a side trip to Cleveland on Sunday to see plastinated corpses and the rock & roll hall of fame. Perhaps next time I am in town.

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k-rad

build.ejb.classes:
[javac] Compiling 1337 source files to /home/bob/projects/...

Heh. In other news, I am playing around with greasemonkey. Finally, a use for javascript! I’ve already fixed the brain-dead handling of attachments with MS Outlook’s web interface, where it tells you that PDFs are too dangerous to launch directly, whereas you can click on Word and Excel files with no problems.

And with that I’m off to Ohio this weekend. If anyone can recommend roadside attractions along the PA turnpike, let’s hear ’em. Ok, didn’t think so.

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Marchings

I dropped my car off at my Honda dealer this morning. Whenever they ask me which car is mine, I point and say, “the gold Honda.” I do this quite unintentionally, but I still think it’s funny to indicate the make in a lot full of identical cars.

So last night I went to see the Marines’ silent drill platoon and drum and bugle corps. As seen on hit CBS television series Major Dad. They perform every Tuesday night at the Iwo Jima memorial from now until August; if you go in for pomp and celebration of military discipline, this show is for you. The marines walk around, spin rifles, throw them to each other, right face, about face, left face, right flank, forward hut, all without verbal command. The drill platoon, as far as I could tell, was practically flawless. I watched the drum and bugle corps with a more critical eye, since I once pretended to know something about marching band. The band had nice drill, maybe not top tier of competitive D&B, but some complicated formations and none of that standing around business. Musically it was… insert Groucho Marx comment about military music here. The poor lead trumpet was having a rough night, missing a couple of notes (both, of course, off the charts of anything I ever played). But who cares, it was fun and it didn’t rain, much.

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Meat

I love to eat a nice big chunk of juicy animal. It makes me happy. So several months ago my dad and I cooked up, so to speak, the idea of having a nice big barbeque for my family reunion this year. A father-son bonding experience, if you will, doing what men do best: roasting the hell out of some pig.

First things first: I met up with Len on Thursday night and we hit the Mellow Mushroom near Emory. As a Tech student, I was more a fan of Fellini’s, but in recent years either my tastes have changed or it has really gone downhill. MM, begun in Atlanta by GT students but now a somewhat extensive chain, serves up some damn good pies, and that’s something I’ve missed around here — the only decent pizza I’ve found in this area is the highly yuppified California Pizza Kitchen that you can get anywhere. And MM’s atmosphere is, well, interesting, what with the murals of psilocybin mushrooms dancing with Jimi Hendrix, and that guy on the right.

On Friday my dad and I got up early and began the six hour grilling process. We planned to make four pork shoulders and two beef briskets, not realizing that this would probably be enough to feed a small state. We applied a rub to all of the cuts. For the pork, we used the store-bought KC Masterpiece rub, which I have used before and like pretty well. It is a little salty, a little sweet, with a good balance between the two. (A homemade rub that I tried out from a recipe a few weeks ago was way too salty, so we played it safe and went with what we knew.) For the brisket rub, we followed the recipe in Steven Raichlen’s How To Grill. We got the fire going and set these meats up on the grills: the pork shoulders on a smoker, one of the briskets on indirect low heat on a gas grill and the other in an electric roaster. We also prepared some vinegar-based mopping sauces to baste the meats with as they cooked.

Keeping the charcoal at an even heat is quite a skill, as I learned partway through. Trying to get the temp just right, I opened the flue up some and a flareup commenced almost immediately on the pork. I rescued them at great risk to limb (many arm hairs died that day). They were scorched but the meat was still good so we decided to steam them the rest of the way by encasing them in foil with some of the mopping sauce. A couple hours later they were ready to take off the heat, and fell apart beautifully.

The briskets came out looking really good too. Briskets are really fatty but they don’t have that much internal marbling, so of the two I would say the pork was the winner, just based on cut of meat. The outer edges of the brisket hardened to a nice crisp crust that was delectable with spices of the rub. I could’ve eaten that by itself.

In all, the experience left me with an urge to replicate the process at my house sometime soon. And just typing this has made me hungry for a farm animal.

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Letter

Here’s an awkward net.situation: someone mistakingly sends you a personal email to your address because your name is very close to the name of someone else in the organization. Normally this is merely amusing but sometimes it can be distressing. In this case, my alter ego’s sibling has cancer. The person who sent me an email offers condolences and reveals that his sibling also is afflicted. How does one reply to this without seeming callous? I can’t just forward it to the intended recipient, or worse, delete the email. I don’t know the guy. I can’t say, “Oh, sorry to hear about your sis. Tough break. Good luck!”

I lied in my response, saying that I had stopped reading quickly when realizing it was meant for someone else. I went with “Best regards.” What kind of a closing is that? We need a better palette when it comes to wrapping up letters or emails. There’s practically nothing between the stoic “Sincerely” and too emotionally overloaded “Love.” Something that succintly says, “I would be truly sorry and offer my heartfelt, sincere sympathy, if it would mean anything to you, given that I’m just a random human thousands of miles away that just happens to have the same name as someone else.” Well, we do what we can.

Love, Bob

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Money

My local post office still has one of the stamp machines that dispenses dollar coins as change. It has a sign bearing witness to this fact in big red letters. Naturally I couldn’t resist buying a book of stamps with a $20. I hate to see a good currency go underutilized.

The machine poured forth eleven dollars in coins. 8 Sacagaweas and 3 Susan B.s. In Canada, whole dollar coins (loonies and twonies) are used as a matter of course. My experience in Toronto was that I had a lot less useless change than here in the states. Things tended to be priced in round numbers so I wouldn’t wind up with 30 pennies in my pocket at the end of the day. Why can’t the U.S. adopt this practice? I blame the Coinstar lobby. Once our hyperinflation takes hold and the dollar is demoted to a quarter, perhaps the practice will become more widespread.

I went to buy a Gatorade-brand sports drink with a pair of coins, a Suze and a Sac. The cashier stared at the change for a while and I eventually had to help her out, telling her it was two dollars, like it says on the back of each coin. She short-changed me $.75 anyway. That damn Ms. Anthony! Next time I’ll pay more attention, and I think I’ll also be sure to use Susan B.s only in a context in which it cannot mathematically be confused with a quarter. But the honeymoon isn’t spoiled yet; I still have money to burn. Or melt, as it were.