Doctor Andy Speaks...

Big Boy Clothes

2012-01-29T11:44:00.003-06:00


Jacketed me (in my mind)

I got to go clothes shopping last weekend. Not just any kind of clothes, either! Fancy clothes. In preparation for my upcoming symphony work, I needed new fancy raiment. I browsed a bit online to find local tailors and clothiers, and settled on an establishment that is practically across the street. Because of the area I live in, I seldom go a-walking when shopping, because I'm not really "equipped" to purchase from my local merchants.

By which I mean that asiago-and-port-wine bedroom slippers aren't really in my price range.

My excursion was to the local Joseph A. Bank store. Yes, I know the sign says "JoS. A. Bank", but we are not Swedish. It is not pronounced as though the store was the progenitor of the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" screenwriter. And while I'm on the subject, pronouncing "shoppe" as "shoppy" makes me like you less, even when done in jest.

The store was having a nice sale which conveniently lined up with my needs to purchase. I bought a white tuxedo jacket which turned out to be "bone" or "cream" or "ecru" or "antique" rather than... white. I assume it's a "thing" to have a jacket which is a slightly different color than the tuxedo shirt, but the symphony doesn't approve of that "thing". Luckily, I was able to hide in all of the sci-fi colored lighting effects last night. It's extremely difficult to tell if my jacket is an off-shade of white when the orchestra is bathed in red light and there are green and blue lasers everywhere. I can only hope my performance with Big Bad Voodoo Daddy in a few weeks is similarly "laser Zepplin-esque".

I was also shopping for a black suit. The symphony has a two-page list of the various dress codes for performances. Last night was a "number seven": tuxedo shoes, tux "ribbon" pants, black cummerbund and bow tie, tux shirt, and white dinner jacket. The upcoming performances are "matinée stage" and require a black suit with "dark conservative long tie".

The suit looked nice when I first tried it on (I won't have it back from alterations until next week). It apparently retailed for $895, but I got it for $199 (plus alterations) so I felt like a savvy shopper. Or at least, I went there on the day when they trimmed back their profit margins from "yee gods" to "I guess I can still buy the BMW." It is a beautiful wool fabric and immediately made me want to be in a job where I could buy and wear six more.

I do like dressing "up" on some days. When I knew that I had to deal with the awful customer on Friday, I wore my gray pinstripe suit to work. It made me feel more professional, and certainly more armored against further verbal abuse. I also hoped for a psychological advantage to intimidate the guy. It worked, plus three other customers were complimentary, and my fellow shoppies (the plural of "shoppe") were appreciative. I would totally wear suits all the time because of their benefits, except that I do have a tendency to burn clothing on torches, get spattered with metal-turning oil, and generally get myself dirty moving dirty things. I'd be sick the first time that happened in a nice suit -- I'm not quite so attached to the "DePaul Blackout '98" t-shirt with the giant Vienna Beef logo on the back.

Addendum: It turns out that fine wool (what my purchased jacket is made from) is actually impossible to get to the "pure" white. So it turns out my jacket is TOO fancy. Who'd have thunk?

Fulfilling a Dream; Living a Nightmare

2012-01-29T01:34:00.002-06:00

I got yelled at yesterday. For the better part of an hour, a customer berated and finger-pointed. It was not -- as they say -- fun. I maintained my cool, in the sense that I did not punch the person between the eyes. I did, however, bristle and give increasingly curt and non-acquiescent responses. I failed Customer Service 201 while trying to preserve Customer Service 101.

And then, after having all of this piled upon me, I went somewhere and did something that took the pain away.

The customer was behaving like a petulant child. I have little patience for unruly and spoiled children. I have no patience for unruly and spoiled adults. There were frequent sentences that ended "and I want it NOW!" after being informed that it would be another hour.

And then there was the "professional" musician comments. If I heard them say it once, I heard it twenty-five times: I am a professional musician! Dr. Andy's Fun Tip: if you feel the need to repeatedly tell people you're a professional, you aren't.

I understand one thing about playing music, and that is that one is always one bad step away from no longer being a professional musician. I have been fortunate to have been called to assist the symphony several times this season thus far. I try my best to be early for everything. I comply with every directive. I try to give everyone all the reasons to keep me around, and prevent them from having any reason to make me leave. I'm not under any illusions: there are several people who can do what I do. If I make myself into a lesser candidate, I will not be called.

Thus, my "profession" of musician is a fragile thing, but I am well aware of how much I need to protect my reputation. I respond promptly when they ask for information or float possible gigs. I allow myself the opportunity of arriving two hours before show time so that I not only have a good parking spot, but also a slim chance of not being in my seat when the show starts. I am friendly to everyone and take everyone's advice. I have no need to conjure up anecdotes and comments about how lucky I am, because I feel it every second I'm on stage.

So it irks me when someone engaging in unprofessional behavior rails about how much of a professional they are. My level of respect turns inside out, leaving only contempt and disdain. Such it was with the rampaging customer. In the beginning, I was contrite for not having things ready. By the end, I was shaking with contained anger and explaining what a promise from me to "do my best" means.

Then I drove to the city, because after the end of my "work day", I was substituting for the symphony again. Our concert this week is Science Fiction movie themes. And I... am in heaven.

This is the music that first got me interested in music. Even though I'm not playing on every piece, just sitting there immersed in the sound of "Superman" or "E.T." is glorious. It is -- without exaggeration -- what I always wanted to do. And this week, I get to do it.

I don't know if there's an entity or person I owe specific thanks to for being able to play this series, but it sure is a transformational experience. I know the music isn't for everyone: some musicians are complaining about sight-lines, some are complaining about the fog (for the lasers!), and some just quietly move chairs before everyone else arrives. Like in grade school!

It doesn't matter. Yes, it's not a perfect experience. I see the wrinkles, I see the gray area, I see the show behind closed doors. I learned important things about people -- including George Takei! And as I said, the only thing that matters is I was having the time of my life. I would do it again in a second.

It's *the thing* I want to do. I have now had the chance to do it, and it's every bit as effortless and rewarding as I hoped. I may have stumbled blindly into a career in music, but it is definitely what I enjoy doing. After two nights of performance, I've left all of the negative feelings of the end of last week behind. As I write this, hunkered under my covers on the bed, I have no ill feelings. Now that could all change again with the start of a new work week, but for now everything is minimized.

Playing this music for a living is truly the greatest job in the world for me.

Un coeur en dehors de l'hiver

2012-01-22T22:36:00.002-06:00

I want some snow.

Various friends would have me whipped and placed in the stockade for saying so, but I think it's starting to wear on me. The weather projection for this week is highs about 50, lows about thirty. Every. Day.

We had rain tonight, which -- for a very short while and likely due to a computer error -- was listed as snow. I'm not going to say that I sat by the windows watching, but I did pull the blinds up and read at the nearest armchair.

I think I need the cold and the snow to balance me out. The official total for Kansas City this winter is 0.4" -- not even enough to declare a winner in the "when does KC get its first snow?" contest on the local weather.

My friend who grew up in Florida loves it. My friend who grew up in Alabama sings the praises. I think that it isn't the end of the world to be stuck in Eternal Autumn, but it sure is grating on my nerves.

I need the snow. I need it to freeze the world. A certain kind of beauty is only unmasked when the bright eyes wink in the wind, and while the hair framing those eyes is caught up in drafts bearing frozen crystals. The muted crunch of footsteps soothes the heated anguish in my mind. The silence that fresh-fallen snow enforces: it calls out to the frantic parts of my brain in softly tufted storms.

A Wide Peace Beyond the Pain

2012-01-15T01:18:00.000-06:00

The trouble with attempting to parse who among your friends is most like you is that you may not be able to stop. I'm on my third pick. What's worse is that the three aren't very much like each other, or indeed, me. Usually a particular event or conversation will lead to me identifying one or another as the prime of the moment, but further reflection tosses the fish back into the barrel.

The true answer is that none of them are me. No matter how familiar their choices, how sympathetic their circumstances, eventually there is a divergence. A moment that makes me say, "That's not how I would have done that!"

I think about this not because I'm measuring my friends to my own stick -- everyone knows I'm not so crashingly enamored of my life to thing it a good candidate for inflicting on others. Not to say I don't like my life, on balance: just that I'm not the sort of person to go shoving my gum into other people's faces and saying "Of course you like strawberry!"

With that established, let me tell you the tale of Jenna.

Jenna is about my age. She and I have known each other for a good long time, but we haven't been engaged friends for years. We do the modern thing: each of us probably stumbles across social media updates from the other every now and then and reads them. "Oh, he's in Europe." "Oh, she's bought a car." We were excellent conversational friends back there in the past, but time has a way of complicating even simple friendships.

She was one of the first girls I noticed as a "person I might like to hang out with somewhat more often than the other ones". She was intelligent and in good humor. She spoke freely of her opinions (invariably stated as the facts that all young people assert with little evidence or experience).

This never turned into anything, however, because she started dating Dan. Dan doesn't really figure in this story, except in the sense that he isn't me. We went separate directions and didn't stumble across each other until well after college.

When we did again meet, she was much the way I remembered her. She was still outspoken, but now she was a confident woman. She was still funny, but her wit had sharpened into a fencing foil. She was just as intelligent, but now she had a whole host of experiences that were new and foreign to me. We rekindled the friendship one afternoon over coffee, and returned to our separate lives.

She lives in The Big City. She works for a larger company as a cog, but she fights the good fight. Our current friendship is what I'd call distant. She doesn't actively engage with me, and the reverse is true. Not by any conscious choice on my part: she just lives a great distance and her issues are not my issues. Her weather isn't even mine.

For a bit, I regretted the quirks of fate that had put the two of us in particular places that completely obstructed us from being in each others' lives. Sure, she was dating a long-term connection while I was moving through a thicket of dates, but I still got that "sorry for self" feeling that I get if I'm not keeping a sharp lookout and being presentable for company.

But the social distance between us only seemed to lengthen -- and not entirely because of the times and tides of fate. I felt there was a deep down stream of anger in her. Actually, it wasn't anger. It was entitlement. Society owed her for a reason that she kept wrapped around her heart. It didn't show itself openly; catching it was more like seeing the sparkle of a coin buried in a carpet. The first few times, I caught myself but didn't even devote a first thought.

*sparkle*
Me: Weird.
*sparkle*
Me: I wonder where all my quarters went.

Eventually, I frowned at it. Comments she made about people were... heavy. Opinions seemed unyielding. When she was in relationships, she baited fate and invited disaster. When she was out of relationships, she became moody and fatalistic. Outside of a relationship, her drinking increased. Her incisive comments molted into snide ones. The outlets of her idle moments brought no respite. She would burn with a righteous indignation... and complete the day as a sulking nihilist.

It was this stage that looked most familiar to me. I recoiled with distaste from her more boorish behavior, but I secretly knew that the same spark was beneath my ribs. When she felt the injustice of how the world had dealt with her, I came to and found my head nodding in agreement. I thought to myself more than once, "Man, she and I are totally best friends, though we know nothing about each others' lives."

I fantasized about us joining forces. We'd scarcasticate the existence of everything, drawing strength from each other. We each understood what it was to be just outside while the party rages inside the glass. We knew what it was to have the thoughts that nobody else seemed capable of thinking. We'd critique the things that everyone else loved, because open love is a false emotion! An emotion bred of insufficient knowledge of the world and its uncaring ways. We would become the linguistic, literary, and emotional carnivores in a plain of herbivores.

Kings at the soup line!

But I couldn't join her all the way. My basic personality is positive, so I clanked oddly against the negative pillars of her moods. The more she drifted towards the high end of the Haversham scale, the more I realized that though I identified with a lot of what she was thinking and feeling, I couldn't join her. Enough of the hardships she enumerated were beyond my ken to allow me space to say, "I...don't think so".

Had we lived in the same corner of the U.S., we most likely would have gone to dinner and talked about all these things at length in pointless but frank conversations lasting until 3am. From that, we'd have become lovers. Or we'd have become mortal enemies.

Or more likely, we'd each realize that the other didn't -- couldn't -- understand. For two people so similar, we'd come to the conclusion that the other was sadly mistaken about life and what it had to offer. We'd lament the inability to convert the other to our own point of view. Sure, they'll go on living, but what sort of life would that be?

We each would go forward with a mourning ritual for a friendship that wasn't heading in the proper direction.

Message Received

2012-01-02T21:27:00.001-06:00

This post was going to be about me watching a woman tie her hair up.

During the recent orchestra rehearsals I was involved in, I landed my eyes on the back of someone's head. When you are a brass person, you tend to sit in the rearward of the ensemble -- as such, I see lots of head backs. This particular woman took a moment during the space after tuning to spin her hair into a ... do they call them "buns" if it's just scrunched up like a gift-wrapped pony tail?

Whatever that "style" is called, she was engaged in producing it. Over and again, her dexterous fingers slid through and around her hair, causing it to rise and fall in a regular pattern. It was hypnotic, as the hair was so inky black as to be almost undifferentiated except for the sheen. It was also attractive, as the movement of the hair continually exposed and obscured a graceful neck. Also of note was the facility with which the actions occurred. She managed herself expertly, with the unaware grace of a ritual practiced to perfection. She ended by doing a bit of slight-of-hand to somehow get her wrist band around her hair.

And it came as a surprise to me that -- during the break -- I approached her and tried to flirt it up a bit. I must declare that such behavior is NOT in my usual bag of tricks. In the sum of my life, I've usually not been so bold as to be openly flirtatious with someone I don't know. In the depths of my soul, I just have an aversion to it, as though it were something that "just isn't done". That's patently false: lots of people do "just that" every weekend for hours on end.

We exchanged names and chatted about the state of the ensemble and the caliber of the music. Just as I was feeling that this was really going well, she interrupted and said, "I'm sorry. I'm not interested." Not really sure what happened but knowing a dismissal when I hear one, I apologized (for some reason) and extricated myself.

Sitting amongst my fellow trombones, I felt the flush of shame in my cheeks. I hope nobody saw that. I hope nobody can tell how strongly I'm blushing -- am I blushing? because I feel like I'm a tomato face. I tried to rehearse back what I'd said -- had I offended? Did I accidentally say that all women should be forced into gay marriages AND abortions? I don't *think* I did.

So I had the simultaneous reactions of "well, that went well" and "why did I ever touch the hot plate AGAIN". And all that other stuff that you expect to happen, happened. I beat myself up for thinking she'd be interested. I got self-righteous about how great I am. I got apologetic for asserting that it might be a Moses-tablet-level sin to turn me down.

And this evening, when I sat down to write it, I reflected on what's been going on with relationships. A friend who's been engaged for years broke things off. A friend who's been terribly unlucky in love got engaged to someone she calls "my best friend". A friend who had been completely unlucky in his "undergrad" state now has a wonderful girlfriend in his "graduate study" state. Another friend broke off a years-long relationship going into the holidays. Another friend is engaged and being pushed by the fiance into a more advanced timetable than preferred. Another friend is trying really hard to land a girl but is too anxiety-inducing to get women to consider him for very long.

That last one is what worries me. I have a core of acquaintances which are too misanthropic to find relationships. They're all guys and they're woeful. One is religious and sanctimonious, but simultaneously slightly cruel and cowardly. Another is abrasive and opinionated despite low knowledge. Another is a hard-worker, but has a knack for saying tremendously awkward and inappropriate things to people. Another is an egomaniac who auditions women for the coveted role.

They're a miserable crowd, and it's easy from my glass house to see exactly what the problem is. I don't know if some of them will ever find what they call happiness, but I can put my finger on the problem (or at any rate, *a* problem). What I can't figure out is why I'm not doing any better! I mean, I should SURELY be a much better catch than the emotional abuser.

The dark realization is that no doubt they say the same thing about me. "At least I'm doing better than Andy! What a sad-sack." They see me floundering at rehearsals and say, "Know what his problem is? He plain doesn't know how to talk to women. They're looking for someone to browbeat them and..."

Err, that's enough from the emotional abuser.

It is difficult to feel (unless you have unassailable self-esteem) that the normal people have already found partners. That, too, is untrue. As I stated earlier, people in relationships are just as "abnormal" as the people outside. Relationships fall through -- even long lasting ones. In the news recently, an Italian man divorced his wife over an affair. An affair that occurred 60 years ago -- the husband is 99! Now that's letting a grudge simmer.

But though good relationships take work and a fair helping of luck, it doesn't take the sting out of being dismissed before a first introduction is over. I'm sure my father would jump in at this point with a metaphor involving skinned knees and repeated attempts to ride a bicycle. And while he would be right, and while I will again attempt to be suave when I next find someone I fancy, none of that means I have to like it.

And it doesn't mean I can't buy back a bit of self-respect by working it through and writing it out on a cold night by myself.

Dear Dictionary

2011-12-23T23:24:00.000-06:00

The last few words I sought definitions for, in no particular order:

desultory
scurrility
abbrogate
risiblee
revelatory
walking-around money
glamazon
inly
privation
naff
Sir
obstreperous
abstemious
twee
opprobrious

The Christmas I Hate

2011-12-23T22:57:00.002-06:00

I know what you're thinking: I'm not a religious person, so when I start off an entry with "the part of Christmas I dislike", you may leap to the conclusion that I'm not going to be too keen on the whole "birth of baby Jesus" thing. As the sign on the way to work in rural Kansas says, "Jesus is the Peason for the Reason". I should mention that sign has seen lots of years and is not entirely legible.

I actually don't mind the Jesus portion of Christmas. It has his title in the name, for Christ's... sake. Yes, people get uppity. Yes, Jews put up trees. Yes, evangelicals attack anyone who mentions holidays. Yes, the White House puts out a Christmas card with a dog in it. But whatever - I can empathize really well.

When I visited the Scottish National War Memorial in Edinburgh, I was moved to tears. I'm not Scottish. Or a soldier. I don't even believe the chapel was a consecrated religious location. But I'd go again in a heartbeat and cry some more, because it's a beautiful place. And it is dedicated to a tradition that -- while not mine -- is still something I understand. I respect that and, as instructed, I made no speech upon entering. It is a social crime to disturb that solemnity.

So if I'm "down" with "the JCrizzle", what's the part I scorn? It's the music.

Well, not ALL of the music. That was just an over-declaration to get you to turn the page.

Some of the music I'm quite fond of. Like this tune from Nat King Cole.

I love that the brass section is trying to upend NKC's mellow delivery with increasingly bombastic trumpets, culminating in a massive exiting flourish.

To a certain extent, I didn't realize how much I hated some of the music of Christmas until this year. For the years I've lived here, Kansas City radio stations have started their non-stop Christmas music at various times (one time the morning after Halloween). And I usually turn those stations on and leave them on, because I'm a sucker for Christmas music and am starved when arriving from the rest of the non-Christmas year.

But I'd often roll my eyes at various songs. It never duplicated the pinacle of all Christmas music experiences: A Classic Christmas, put on by the now-defunct classical music radio station in St. Louis. Albert Pujols bought out the station and turned it into a contemporary Christian radio spot, which is a bigger cultural betrayal than leaving for the "Did we mention we're near Los Angeles?" Angels of Anaheim, near Los Angeles.

But I digest.

Some of the songs are bland, some of them are super cheesy, and at least one of them is not-so-secretly about date rape ("Say, what's *in* this drink?"). But none of them are as bad or scornworthy as "Christmas Shoes".

The song almost single-handedly ruins Christmas for me. It is SO manipulative that I feel like I need to pay someone called "Mistress Witchhazel" when it's over. It's about a fellow who is busy and not feeling super Christmas-fresh. He's waiting in line and not really caring, but there's a child in front of him, dressed in shabby clothing, who doesn't have enough money to buy shoes for his mother, who has cancer, and is dying THIS VERY NIGHT. Also, they use the euphimism "Momma meeting Jesus" to imply that the kid is too impishly sweet to understand death-by-cancer. Eventually GRUMPY-narrorator pays for the shoes, and as the child walks away, the guy realizes the kid has taught HIM the true lesson of Christmas: it's not a scam if you make people do it voluntarily. Or something.

Anyway, I think it's supposed to be a commentary on how people have lost the "true" meaning of Christmas. But if I as an atheist can comment on the true nature of Christmas, it isn't about giving gifts. It's about how faith is rewarded. In the darkness of the night, a savior is born. One who will act as the Mighty God to all nations. This is the time of the year to focus on the birth of hope from sadness and drawing near the manger to give thanks.

It is not at all about making sure cancer-mom has sufficient shoes to pass the muster of a Jesus who apparently has a sideline pursing his lips next to Tim Gunn on a fashion show and saying. "I died for your sins, but it's these old pumps that need to be crucified!"

Out-standing in the Fields

2011-12-23T22:02:00.000-06:00

I haven't written on politics for quite some time. It does just keep on going, doesn't it?

The truth is that it's very much "in for a penny, in for a pound". Where do I start? Or stop? It ends up being a daunting topic. It's also a potentially divisive one, given our current climate. I already feel like I edit what I post to social networks. While the vast number of my friends thinks some variety of what I do, I do also have some outliers. And I don't want to lay traps or have friends gang up on those in the minority. And I don't want the minority to put back against wall and spit venom at all and sundry.

And isn't it a disservice to say that it's very much "us" and "them"? Take this video from the campaign of Rick Perry, Republican presidential hopeful.

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Here's the text, for those of you at work or non-videoed.

I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian, but you don't need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. As President, I'll end Obama's war on religion. And I'll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.
I'm Rick Perry and I approve this message.

On one level, I'm kind of impressed that anyone stood up and said something that was red meat to their base and anathema to the not-base. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised considering there's a very contentious six-way primary battle. Hell, the Republicans have had like a dozen debates, and I think there are at least eight more. Have they always done that?

For all of its appearance of straightforward "plain" talk, the ad is short on specifics. Or verisimilitude. I don't share his opinion that open and "out" gays in the military is a bad thing. Last year (I think), Britain celebrated 10 years of having homosexuals in their armed forces. I don't think it's done them any harm. Still, not liking gays in the military is an opinion so as much as I disagree, Mr. Perry is entitled to it.

The second half of that first sentence talks about Christmas. The clause is a little bit strange, since structurally he seems to be saying that kids can't celebrate Christmas. My favorite comment on this video: "Honestly, if kids 'observed' Christmas any harder in schools than they already do, they would be elves." That comes from the description of this PARODY VIDEO.

When I listen to this, I hear a massive "Onward, Christian Voters" chorus. Stuff has gone wrong, and it's probably due to traditions! And that pesky first amendment. Faith may have "made America strong", but it was also founded and structured in such a way as to keep faith out. We have freedom of religion here: the state does not collect taxes to fund a particular faith. Our leaders do not compel the masses to follow a particular doctrine. The way you prevent other faiths from indoctrinating your children is to keep all of them at the door. Nobody gets in.

I really don't know why Mr. Perry is worried about Christmas. We get it as a federal holiday -- a process which (while convenient) skirts a bit close to the church/state wall. We don't get Hannukah off from work. We don't all get Eid al-Fitr as a chance to feast.

A Beautiful Noise

2011-12-07T21:21:00.001-06:00

This morning I was assisting a young saxophone player and her mother. They had just had some minor maintenance done and were preparing to settle accounts. I had said some sentences to them sparingly, as they had spent most of their time chatting with the saxophone technician. In a tip I learned from dating, if people are involved in a conversation it is often rude to infiltrate myself in a conversation just for the sake of being noticed.

So after saying "Let me see if I can find your account...", the mother said -- half to me and half to her daughter, "What a great voice! You should be on the radio or something."
To say I was not flattered would be a lie.

It's not the first time a passing customer at work has said something to this effect. One of our regular customers has her husband act as a go-between: he does all the pickup and drop offs. Accordingly, I speak to her often on the phone to let her know that it's time to give Bob the high sign. The first time she came out to the shop, she heard me speak and said I must be Andrew, as she'd recognized that melodious voice.

I don't know what I've done differently this year. To me, it's the same voice I've always had. Nobody praised it when I was working a the Panera. Nobody said anything when I was teaching university classes. Nobody's said anything on dates or at parties.

Have I suddenly "classed up the joint" inadvertently?

Just as with my trombone playing, I find it impossible to judge myself and my sounds against the utterances of others. Obviously my voice sounds like me in my head. It has never NOT sounded like me. I do occasionally take myself to task when I hear that I've accelerated my words beyond the limit of articulation, but only in the way people do when they catch themselves slouching and spend a second sitting up straight to compensate.

I have spent a great deal of time in the past two years talking on the telephone. And nothing annoys me like straining to decipher what someone has said in a message. There was a hilarious one left on the shop phone months ago -- the sort that gets played again and again trying to understand it. Meanwhile, it grows more and more humerous the more times you hear it. It was someone who was giving his name and following it with his wife's name. His name was something like Scott Michael Shelbywine, and his wife is Rena Aubrey Mater-Shelbywine. Listening to him say, "My name is Shottmishelshubynine, husband of Remanobrytomatosudsyfine" caused tears of frustration and laughter by the tenth attempt.

So it could be overcompensation. I may be inadvertently wishing other people would just speak more clearly. I often thought it would be fun to take an English diction course, similar to the courses that vocal performance majors take for German and Italian. But I don't think those courses are supposed to be for native-speakers. After all, I've been practicing English for 30 years, what's a 4-month course going to teach? And would it have any lasting effect?

Or maybe it's just another step in the progression of my life to being a father. I've reached the stage where I'm now modeling behaviors to the children I know to fill a latent need in my own subconscious.

Or maybe I'm doing an immersive audition process so that the local Shakespeare company will get their instruments fixed and shriek out, "We've found our next Shylock!"

Good thing I've got this last name of mine.

Best Buy things come to those who wait.

2011-12-01T12:42:00.000-06:00

Dear Best Buy:

If you take my money for an order, tell me it should process in "0 to 1 days", then can't provide me with a status update or a cancel button on your web page six days later, I need to contact you.

If your automated phone service takes my order number then echoes that the order is "in process", then has the digital gall to tell me to get updated information at the web page, I spend several minutes ranting the silliness at a couple of my coworkers.

When I attempt to use the "email service" to contact you -- being careful to fill in all the information boxes marked with the * as required -- only to be told that the phone number (which had no * and is not required) actually IS required, then I take to the blogs to show your silliness to my wider circle of friends.

Is this what comes after "Black Friday"? Is one of the giant retail distributors completely stymied when I "put things in the cart" then inexplicably "buy things in cart"? Worse still, I then expect to "receive things in cart" -- as though!

I'll be honest: I don't really need the thing I ordered. It's an e-ink reader... and I've got lots of unread books at home. If you updated my page to indicate that stuff is slow after Cybersgiving, I'd understand -- after all, I'm sure several metric stuffloads were sold last weekend.

But when you show (and I quote) "1 item(s) - Order in process of being fulfilled; Usually ships in 0 - 1 days", it makes me think that you don't have your act together as much as Amazon or the Ohio hobby store I also ordered from last week.

And then I went to the customer service forums and see a bunch of complaints like mine. Oh dear.

EDIT: [1:53pm] I just received an email that my item has shipped. See, it pays to write about things on the internet. Even if no one has had a chance to read them yet.

Farewell to October!

2011-11-07T20:00:00.002-06:00


Arts Center at Dusk

And I'm back.

October was an inordinately busy month for me. It started off with a brief vacation to Florida, which I've already written about. It was followed by rehearsals and performances with the Kansas City Symphony (under the name of the Kansas City Ballet) in the wondrous new performing arts center. It completed last weekend with the traditional fall contest for the Fountain City brass band.

Performing with the symphony was a treat. Certainly among the more challenging of the musical opportunities I've had over the years. The music itself was a pleasure to play. It was very approachable and listenable, with hints towards movie scoring, homages to American composers like Copland and Gershwin, and beautiful melodies.

As is always the case with musical opportunities down in the orchestral pit, there was nothing to see. I never once saw a dancer in costume. In fact, the only time I saw dancers at all was if I squished up against the front of the pit to look back at the stage while the dancers were warming up (I could see their torsos, which isn't as interesting to watch as feet). I also met a dancer in the elevator one day, between our entrance at the fourth floor and his exit on the third. He played trombone in high school -- and that's as far as we got in conversation. I never ran across him again.

Luckily, I had opportunities for friends and relatives to come and attend. They explained how costumes looked, what was happening during the dramatic lighting changes, and what everyone was laughing about at the start of the second act. If only they had video footage available for us to watch later, but I suppose that has copyright and privacy issues, as well as performance rights and quality control. Ah well; sometimes high school productions have the better tools available.

The preparations for the brass band trip were as usual: preceeding our departure, we have approximately a week's worth of four-hour rehearsals every night. This year, it was complicated by the fact that our regular rehearsal location was hosting a play, so alternate locations were found across the city and even as far as Topeka one night. It's a long drive after a 10pm rehearsal, with work the next morning.

And yes, I did continue my "day job" during all of these. I cut back my hours, whether by design or simple oversleeping. I tried to focus on the essential problems while on the clock, but inevitably some things slip through the fingers, or demand time from rehearsal. There just weren't enough hours in the day.

But the rehearsal paid off: we were awarded first place in the 2011 U.S. Open. We also took best soloist and best percussion section. It was a satisfying process. We rehearsed well, keep the tempers more in check than at other times, and came together with a cohesive product. It was well received in the hall, too.

Now I'm relaxing into November. I need to schedule a time to give a masterclass at one of the local universities -- the professor asked me in September and I told him "I'll contact you in November." He laughed -- I didn't.

And I'm really looking forward to Thanksgiving, which will be a type of holiday that is a rarity in my family: several branches of family at the same gathering. My relatives from the west coast and Southwest will be coming in to join family from the Midwest and perennial friends from the local area. It should be a fantastic day -- I think more than 12 are expected, which is a lot from a not-so-big family.

I'll see what I can do to be a bit more regular in my contributions. I don't like leaving this unattended for long periods. I mean to be more active.

My Adult Vacation

2011-10-10T22:15:00.002-05:00


My offering

First of all, there was nothing inappropriate by my vacation. I use the descriptor "adult" to signify that it was my first vacation as an adult.

I paid for the plane tickets, I organized the dates, I got myself to the airport, I didn't take my trombone to perform somewhere, and I didn't rely on anyone but the friends I was visiting.

It was a good time.

I went to Florida. Specifically, a suburb of Orlando. I sang a bit for my supper -- the husband of the couple I went to visit teaches high school, so I worked with some students and played with their jazz band for a period.

I also planned ahead and bought a t-shirt and a college logo resin pumpkin as offerings to the great Saturday college game-day. I became an honorary fan of their alma mater; my four hour loyalty would ensure my friendly reception.

And what a reception.

I was treated with as much luxury as I could have hoped for, and far more than I expected. Fantastic meals cooked as the three of us laughed and listened. Such conversation! You would think that they were the ones who lived as a lonely bachelor! I certainly tried to soak up as much of it as I could.

As with all good times, it ended far too soon. I returned home to a dwelling not echoing with laughter and good cheer. Just the same pile of dirty clothes as when I left, the same plant quietly growing in the corner. I despaired over the abscence, having grown fond of the company in 96 hours or so.

Now I'm back to the standard routine of not needing to say a word unless I'm reading along with a movie I've seen fifty times. My first word of the day is usually after 9am, when I great someone at work. And often my voice doesn't work right away -- it miscarries and grumbles and fleeps as I press my vocal chords into reluctant service.

It's a detoxing shame that central Florida should be quite that far away.

Time to start planning adult vacation two!

Help, less. Helpless.

2011-09-21T21:47:00.000-05:00

Actress Olivia Wilde

You know it's going to be a awkward conversation when the conversation goes: "Hey, you know who you might like? Elisa. She's smart like you. And she likes scarves."

There were indignant protestations that surely I had said something like needing a partner who was smart. Eventually, it was determined that what I'd said was that I needed someone who behaved maturely. I'm not sure I'd trust my romantic aspirations to the hands of someone who thinks being smart and being mature is one and the same thing.

But I am a target. At work, I'm the only single guy -- the most recent ex-single has been going strong for a few months with a nice girl from the city. In my circle of friends, I'm one of the last of the unattached. And when people are busy with their own relationships, they like to see all their friends bundled off together, as a way of generally increasing the gestahlt-happiness of a particular social group.

Good friends of mine had their wedding this summer. Though it's the only one on my schedule so far, I don't long for the days of yester-year, when four weddings lay on the plate. This couple is somewhat amazing. I don't know any other pairing that's been living together for three years and still has people saying, "Are you sure they're a couple?"

In this day of Facebook and social oversharing, it's rather surprising to realize that I've never once seen them performing affection towards each other. Never seen them hold hands, never seen them kiss, never seen them even make innuendo. It's amazingly refreshing!

Their wedding is regarded as a fine thing by all who know them. People who have been their friends for years are allowed to say "Finally! That answers THAT question." Everyone takes it in great stride. Everyone also agrees that a metaphorical tumbler has finally clicked into place. Whew, that's all sorted!

So far, few people regarded me as an "un-clicked tumbler". If people think that it's odd that I don't keep obvious company with lady-friends, they generally keep it quiet. Aside of the occasional gesture towards dating material, most friends are content to stay out of (or are uncaring towards) my personal life. This allows me a modicum of "low-profileness" in my daily life. The one friend who talked out her virtual spin through the single rolodex said nobody she could think of was good enough for me. What a nice compliment!

And what a depressing statistic. I wonder what it is that people know about me (or think they do) that guides opinions on relationship suitability. Am I smart? Perhaps, in the sense that I know a few lines from books. But I'd tend more to saying I'm mentally quick, reacting as I do to what people are saying and thinking in the course of their meetings with me.

Still, it is sort of unpleasant to realize that the people who know someone perfect for me -- as well as the people who DON'T know ANYONE for me -- don't really know what I want. I wouldn't think that what I want is that much different than what everyone else wants, but it still seems to be elusive.

And somewhere in the back of my mind, I know that people talk. I constantly hear all sorts of things about all sorts of people. I can only assume that a little more or less is said about me. One of my saving graces is that I don't usually have awareness to be concerned about that. But every once and a while, it would be fun to go to the library and check out the book on me. Every time I've been given the opportunity to hear what has been said about me outside of my presence, it's been illuminating and not particularly damaging to my self-esteem.

As a final anecdote to people knowing me better than I do, I had dinner a woman who thought it could not be possible that I:

a) had not seen actress Olivia Wilde in anything I could recall. Didn't see "House" or "Tron".
b) did not find her attractive after being shown photos on an iPhone.

The fact that she's apparently appeared as Madonna in something called the "Weird Al Story" makes me more disposed to think she's probably great, as anybody who can take low-paying humorous roles for the fun of it is an actor I'd probably get along with. Still, I didn't find anything that made me instantly say "there's an attractive woman" when shown the pictures.

Have you ever tried to prove a negative? It's an uphill battle. No matter how much I explained that I didn't find the wide feline-esque eye style of Miss Wilde and others (like Taylor Swift) very attractive, it didn't seem to shake the bedrock of facts that said that she had apparently played a bisexual in something and that made her undeniable catnip to men.

Ingrained perceptions are hard to shake, it would seem.

Tractless Waste

2011-09-21T20:30:00.001-05:00

I recently had my birthday and in addition to the usual cards and presents, I received a handwritten letter. That in itself is noteworthy, but this letter came from someone in Kansas City. Addressed to Mr. Andrew Schwartz, it was from a name I didn't recognize. What could this person be writing to me about?

Below is the text of the letter, reproduced with alterations for the sake of mercy:

Topaz Johnson
Such-and-such Charlotte Street
Kansas City, MO ZIPZIP

Dear Neighbor,
     I have not been able to speak with you personally, but I have some important information that I want to share with you. A sample of it is contained in the enclosed tract.

     There are six most important questions that humans often ask about. This tract shows the clear satisfying answer that are found in the Bible.
     We engage in this activity because we are genuinely interested in our neighbors. Our work is not commercial. It is our hope that someday soon we will be able to talk to you personally. Please feel free to get in touch with us at the above address.

Sincerely,
Topaz Johnson

The most disappointing aspect is that there was no tract included. Perhaps she (or "we" as she refers to herself and whatever group she belongs to) ran out of funds. Or they were in a big rush to get the July quota out the door -- and cut unfortunate corners!

Do you suppose the people at this organization know me? Or are they doing the delightfully archaic practice of going through the telephone book and mailing everyone? In either case, someone put a 48-cent stamp on this letter in order to get it to my door. Was I part of the "most in need of redeeming" in Kansas City? I won't ever know.

All's War in Love and Fair

2011-09-11T23:59:00.001-05:00

Over the weekend, I worked the company booth at the local city fair. It's ostensibly to commemorate the fact that the Sante Fe and Oregon trails started in the vicinity, but nowadays it has carnival rides and friend Oreos -- not exactly the period cuisine.

Due to a scheduling *ahem* development, I worked every day of the fair. In addition to most of a regular work day. And on Saturday, I was there the entire time from 10am to 10pm.

It's the holy grail of people watching, I think.
Sitting in a booth and speaking to the vast minority that are interested enough to chat, while gazing at the people moving up and down the fairgrounds. No mullets, but seven rat-tail beards. No 70's garb, but the Madonna 80's garb is apparently back. Also facial piercings other than the nose (so common as to now attract barely a disinterested shrug from me). How can a nose compare to eyebrows, lips, chins, cheeks and the bridge of the nose. Ouch!

The pregnant woman who stopped by in the hot pink see-through nighty to ask about clarinets.

The kid who said that -- contrary to everything about brass performance -- he could articulate faster by pulsing his breath "like laughing". He also explained that the best trumpet player in the world was Antonio Banderas.

The kid who came bargaining for candy with two quarters and still somehow left poorer even after I explained that the candy was free.

The happy couples, God curse them.

The pregnant women. So. Many. Must have been a storm that knocked out all forms of entertainment about 6 months ago.

The man who was both a pastor and an independent financial counselor. He was wearing a button on his suit that said, "Ask me about life!" I didn't.

The fun the organizers must have had by putting the Republican, Democrat, and Liberterian booths right next to each other.

The fun of picking out the few familiar faces of customers and others out of the milling crowd.

My Very Eenteresting Monseigneur Just Said "Unigenitus Nunc Pater"

2011-09-02T23:39:00.000-05:00

Currently, I have a trombone student who is not like all the others I've taught.

For one thing, he's an adult. Adult students are rare for me, coming as I do from a youth educational background. It's far more likely to see a student of twelve than a student of sixty when they pick up the trombone for the first time.

Also, he's a man of the cloth.

[ahem]

I won't be naming him here, nor will I intentionally provide enough details to identify him. Just like with everyone I write about who isn't me, I'm not interested in commenting about them "behind their backs", but I am interested in talking about what happens to me.

I did briefly entertain the idea of creating a splinter blog covered in anonymity, with which I could create a set of linked anecdotes that would catch the digital world afire with embers of insight, all leading to a massive book publicity tour. Then I decided that sounded like a lot of work.

Just for the sake of avoiding endless pronouns, I'll refer to him as Padre Buccina. For your bit of culture, a buccina is a type of Roman brass instrument that curved away from the mouth, under the arm, behind the back, and ended in a bell over the head.

There are so many anecdotes about such a student / teacher pairing. Before our first lesson, I openly admit that I went to the internet to try and figure out how to address a person of his vocation properly. Unfortunately, there aren't a great deal of references available for how an agnostic addresses a priest. Do I call him "Father," even though I'm not Catholic? Does the fact that I have a degree from DePaul University mean I'm obligated, at least part of the time? Honestly, I don't even know if my diploma has any "churchy" bits -- I never framed it. In fact... do I even know where it is? Hmm...

Anyhow.

I call him Monsignor Buccina. I've had several people ask why I do this, as he's no "lord" of mine (the title being a modification of "monseigneur" from French). I do it for a couple of reasons:

1). I rather like the antiquity of it. Since the advent of the "Vatican II" reforms, everything is supposed to be more informal, even to the level of "Please call me Bob!" The title harkens back to a different era. And while I have no desire to return to said era, I do appreciate the nod towards it. It acknowledges that things change.

2). As someone who is within striking distance of a title of my own, I encourage it for selfish reasons. I'm going to want people to call me Doctor when it's appropriate, so I add my two bits to the karma tin by passing along the favor.

We make an eyebrow-raising pair. Should we have met under other circumstances, we have enough policy differences between us to firmly drive wedges. I bet he doesn't have my opinions on abortion, gay marriage, marriage in general, life, God, science, real estate, morals, art, knowledge, and the best kind of Halloween candy.

In spite of that, we laugh as friends in our lesson time. He pokes fun at the fact that I am forever using phrases like "it's no sin to practice with a mute", while I make occasional references to jazz and heliocentrism being beyond his scope. He makes fun of his own eyesight, while I make fun of my overuse of the word "embouchure". For the most part, religion never comes up.

Every once and a while, one of us will stray towards the heretical or the doctrinal -- no points for guessing which is who -- and we both carefully and without fuss steer the conversation back to phrasing and architecture. We do talk about a great many things which -- like architecture -- have little to do with trombone lessons. We discuss art history, language, Latin jokes, his iPhone and iPad, Paris, cooking, and television technology.

I think the priesthood is a lonely life in some ways. Even though he's constantly surrounded by people who want to talk to him, I'm not sure he ever has beers and chats about things. One of the things that absolutely everyone asks is "why would he want to play the trombone?" It could be to simply escape from the moment for a while. Unlike being a policeman or a lawyer, his job doesn't "stop". He doesn't take off the collar and hang out as a not-priest until Monday at 9am. He's always on the clock. And I should think that would be fatiguing in a way I can't really understand.

At least when he gives an excuse for missing lessons that begins, "I'm flying to Rome to meet the pope, then on to Turkey to investigate the beatification of a nun," I know he's not just trying to get out of lessons because he hasn't practiced.

Probably.

Privilege and Me

2011-08-27T00:19:00.001-05:00

I am a man.

By which I mean that I'm in possession of some of the "dangly bits" that act as proof I can compete in the ancient Olympic games. It also means I have a certain amount of testosterone that causes hair to grow from my jaw -- and slowly vanish from my head.

Those are all facts about me with regards to my gender and sexual manifestation. Here's one more fact:

As a man, I have an entire set of social points that are exclusive to me and men like me.

Behavioral psychologists have a fancy terminology for these points when they are positive. They call it "privilege." By the very definition, privilege is difficult to discuss in mixed company. Whomever possesses the privilege has a tendency to poo-poo the negative aspects -- not just because of "us/them" attitudes, but also because it's hard to comb your own hair without a mirror.

All my life, I've had privileges just by virtue of being a man. And for a great proportion of my life, I didn't spare a single thought about what I was being granted invisibly. Ever so gradually, I've had it opened up to me. It may be the most painstakingly slow set of revelations I've experienced. Unlike something like love, which tends to strike me down in an instant with the force of attraction (followed by a few months of unpacking what went right and wrong), my gradual understanding of privilege has taken years. Even decades!

One of the first routes to this issue came in Chicago. While I was there, there was a campus alert about people being attacked at the El stop, waiting for trains. I was concerned for my friends. Not so much worried about myself (though I was likely to be robbed as well). I took to walking friends back to dorms after late rehearsals or study sessions. Quick jaunts to off-campus housing or various dorms.

My *female* friends, mind you.

I don't know whether I ever consciously thought, "I have to do this because women get attacked," but that was the end conclusion. Women did get attacked. And while I wasn't granted immunity to physical confrontation, it usually happened in relation to women. I did not want the women I knew to get attacked, so I'd walk them home and then walk home by myself.

Some of that is the confidence of physicality. I'm six-foot-five in boots and at least a couple of feet broad at the shoulders. Between me and the five-two girl who weighs 90 pounds and is carrying a purse with money in it, she's more likely to be accosted on the street. Seldom do you hear stories of able-bodied men being dragged into dark corners and raped.

That was a privilege that I didn't understand at the time. The ability to walk down the street at night -- alone -- and not worry about the person approaching me on the sidewalk. To never have even a moments thought that I might need to grab tighter to my wallet or personal belongings.

*** *** ***

I was thinking about all these privilege points for two reasons. I hope to return to each in subsequent entries.

1.) I was out to dinner with a female friend and we were talking about dating, specifically being on the internet and having to make one's self public to unknown people.

2.) I've been following the blog of a woman (younger than me, that is) who writes often about gender issues. Her name is Jen McCreight and she writes at www.blaghag.com. She's a doctoral student in genomic studies, which is darn sexy because anything I don't understand even in a summary form is awesome. She's also a public speaker on a circuit of atheistic conferences and seems to get asked to talk about female issues a lot.

That reminds me of Rita Rudner, who observed that while male stand-up comics often made jokes about all manner of subjects, women stand-ups usually had mostly jokes about being women. I don't mean that women should blog about women's issues exclusively, but that women tend to get asked questions like "what does it mean to be a woman in your field?" more than men get asked "how does it feel to be a man working in this field?" Implying that women should mostly have thoughts as women, not as... you know, people.

Said blogger recently wrote a post talking about "the reason why you're single". It was an editorial response to a man who had bemoaned that there weren't any attractive women interested in him while living in Seattle, but that all kinds of nice attractive women seemed to flirt with him when he was vacationing in Australia. His basic point seemed to be "why don't women just surrender and see how great I am".

It's easy for me to stand on this clear porch and toss heavy stones at him, but the truth I'm uncomfortable with is that I have also had thoughts like that. Hopefully I haven't been quite so assholish about it, but I can't be sure.

One such moment came just this evening as I was buying dinner for one from the grocery. I had one of those "poor me" moments when I realized I was just going home to my apartment alone and I'd cook dinner alone, and eat it in front of the computer or TV watching something so I'd have some speech in my apartment that didn't involve self-conversing.

Now, that's pretty pathetic. Luckily, most nights aren't like that. But there's a weird line I walk between being humble and having self-confidence. I do sort of think I'm a pretty great guy. But on the other hand, I can see the reasons why my dating goes horribly wrong.

My friend Erin and I compare dating notes every few weeks, for the general amusement and consolation of all present. I roll up my sleeve and say, "I got this scar at the Chinese buffet incident in March. She was heiress to the MSG fortune in Parkville". She points out a chipped tooth and says, "Oh yeah? I got this from being punched by my date's OTHER date at the opening of 'Frost/Nixon'." We laugh and then we grumble inside, because we each know that we really hope for better than our current dance cards.

One would think that this level of self-Schadenfreude (even possible?) would be unhealthy, but I don't dwell on it. My synapse chemicals align in such a way to allow me to say, "Ah well." But that's not to say I get jaded. Being of the scientific bent, you'd think I'd be good a predicting the flaws in relationships and tamping down the highs with bitter reality. In truth, it hurts and frustrates just as much.

Every time.

So while I think that there are pretty good reasons why I'm single, I also think the same points apply to those on the opposite side of the gender aisle. We both wonder why nobody pays attention to the "real" us. Why all the "good ones" are already taken. Why there are all these myriad reasons why we can't talk to that person over there -- they're probably dating someone, anyway. Why we half wish our friends would set us up, but also can't stomach not having been able to do it for one's self. We both think "what did I do to deserve *this*?" when things inevitably go seriously wrong.

We both think that "seriously wrong" is inevitable.

And yet, we still keep trying. Because the reward is appealing and the non-participation prize involves too many memorized episodes of TV shows and movies.

Soon to be Post

2011-08-07T10:41:00.002-05:00

HERE is the article for today, about the U.S. Post Office posting a $3.1 billion operating loss and warning of a default.

This news makes me sad, because I like the Post Office. I know many financial commentators love to bag on the PO as an outdated system in a virtual digital seismological age. It's the perfect example of a "government job" for its inefficiency, expense, and general wait. Every friend I have on Facebook who has even a slight libertarian streak is someone I've seen rant about the PO and how much it ruins America, hurts women, or punches babies.

But I for one approve of the post office. In the course of performing my job, I'm there three times a week or more, waiting in lines to ship packages to Gott knows where. The shop uses another carrier for most of our domestic shipments, but USPS is *always* my first go-to for international shipping. Every single time.

Part of that is the flat rate boxes. Nothing makes my job simpler than being able to put a mouthpiece or other small item in a box, seal it, and dash it out the door for an utterly predictable amount of money.

The other part is the cheap rates. We ship most trumpets and other like equipment in a box that's approximately 30 inches by 14 inches by 10 inches. I can ship that box practically anywhere in the world for $100 or less. Certain carriers who advertise a lot and have sports domes and race cars bedecked with logos can cost triple. At minimum. As someone who's trying to get things into people's hands for as cheap as is safely possible, if I give them the option of $97.50 or $362.61 they'll appreciate having the variety.

More to the point, I spent two and one half hours at the post office on Thursday and Friday alone. Trying to get an oversized package to Australia, which might as well be the end of the world. While there, the postal clerks were helping me find information, making friendly conversation, and laughing along with me as I struggled to get the International Commerce Terminology correct.

Here's a quick list of tips for trips to the post office, from my time in line.

1) Do research on your item ahead of time. You can't ship a coffee table to New Zealand. No way, no how.

2) If you want to work on your passport application, make a lot of time available. Passports are incredibly complicated, even more so with all of the security of the last ten years. It takes time, and if your picture is taken incorrectly, they will make you start again. It's just that simple.

3) Everyone else: Passports take a lot of time, so if a clerk ends up with a canditate, that window is now out of commission for at least 20 minutes. Which means the line will slow down. Tutting and exasperated exhaling about how long this is taking don't accomplish anything. It just means the clerks won't like you when you do reach the window.

4) Some children love waiting in line. Some children run riot in the waiting area, screaming and pulling things down from shelves. Only my long habit of pacifism stops me from kicking those kids at all opportunities. I have more horror stories about children from post office lines than I do kids on airplanes.

5) No one in line is on your side if you loudly say, "I'm too important to stand here!" and then leave.

6) You can't ship a loaded gun. I don't know why I have to make this a tip, but I do.

7) The post office doesn't know why you keep getting sent these catalogs (books, magazines, tea cozies, etc).

8) Having a smart phone makes waiting in line very easy.

9) Speaking Spanish to the Sikhs expecting them to understand betrays a comical lack of cultural experience.

10) Seizing the opportunity to talk about how much you hate Iran when three Buddhist monks walk in is REALLY awkward. For you.

Is Morality in the Eye of the Beholder?

2011-07-17T13:58:00.002-05:00

To give the quick answer to the question posed by the title: yes. My dictionary defines morality as "conformity to the rules of right conduct". Regardless of whether or not universal truth is something you ascribe to, our perception of the morality of a situation is mutable. Since everyone agrees that we humans make mistakes, our system of morality is also subject to mistakes -- and to a lesser extent, it is subject to personal perceptions.

The woman in the previous entry has every right to condemn my actions as amoral. From her perspective, condoning alternative sexuality is a very grave act. While it is true that my position is that she doesn't make the most reliable judge due to her own actions (also a grave act in her belief system), that doesn't directly preclude her from finding me reprehensible.

I would have hoped that several steps ago she would have noticed that she was heading towards a position that might undermine her argument. We all know how much easier it is to judge someone other than ourselves: actions seem quite plain when seen on the tableau of someone else's life and existence.

It's difficult to write about being judgmental. After all, I basically spent the last entry poking fun at their relationship, after setting it up in the context of an affront to my own morality. Does that mean there's room in my morality for mocking people behind their backs?

To that very incisive question, I have no good answer. The simple reading says that I too am guilty of hypocrisy. My only qualified answer is this: I do not make fun of people who leave room for doubt. Had the two people mentioned previously each come to the independent conclusion that they were not happy in their current lives, decided to make changes and break relations with previous partners, and then found a new life in each other, I would not make fun. In fact, I'd probably congratulate them on their desire to change and the force of will to make scary alterations to their lives. I'm certainly not striking for change that far from MY personal comfort zone.

Doubt is one of the most powerful senses we have. It's what help us to decide if we're about to do the right or wrong things. It's what makes it possible for us to change our minds. We even take doubt into account when deciding criminal sentences.

What offends me is the presumption that anyone can continue to make forceful declarations about other people's morality, even after showing themselves to have been untrustworthy in love (where we tend to be our most trustworthy -- or the opposite), love being as close as we're likely to get to a "universal morality".

Had my acquaintance shown a hint of contrition or care, you would have had no play from me today. The entry would have been about something more generic, such as whether or not treatment of homosexuality is an issue governed by "morality".

A terse play in five immoral acts.

2011-07-17T11:58:00.000-05:00

I consider myself to be a moral man. I conduct my life with a rigid sense of right and wrong, I try to be consistent in my application of principle to both people I like and ones I despise, and I always try to "do unto others" in a way that would engender honorable... er... "being done unto". I scrupulously analyze decisions to avoid the sense of talking from both sides of my mouth -- very careful I am to be fair.

What that means is that when people attack principles I posses, I tend to take the criticism to heart. For at least the short term, I act with an editor working through my thoughts. Do the accusers have any merit? Am I blinding myself to seeing what they're seeing? Likewise, I'm slow to bring the full brunt of my criticism to bear unless I have a very good reason.

Being told I'm immoral by someone I consider immoral is one of those good reasons.

Allow me to introduce the cast:

SABINE - She's at all the same parties, she's there every day at school, she's there often at lunch. Sabine is over-eager to see everyone smiling. She's slightly fussy, which often betrays that the smiling is quite near the surface -- her pool of calm is easy to cast stones into. She's engaged to a fellow who's completely non-essential to the story, so he doesn't get a name: he's just Sabine's fiance, who is long-distance. They've been dating for years and have become engaged in the last four or five months. A wedding is planned.

ROCKY - A quintessential Midwesterner. No hot day gets more than a line or two of scorn; no good steak gets more than a few words of praise. He has a languid nature: those who admire it think him deep, and those who dislike him think him simple. Rocky is married to a woman who also doesn't really figure in to the story much. Rocky's wife is just a piece of window dressing -- if the window dressing were hard, unsociable, and not given to displays of love or affection. So, like a wall sconce. Or a serving trivet.

ME: I'm just this guy, you know?

*** *** ***

The Most Romantical Fripperies of Love Unmasked
by Andrew Schwartz

ACT I - Wherein the true lovers bemoan their fates

SABINE: Ay, me! Though I think I am happy, I am not. Yet I am dutiful and soldier on.

ROCKY: Woe! My wife understandeth me not, and junk. Who could have thought my taciturn disposition would see me married to someone whom I do not understand? It's a good thing she's a better person than I am.

ACT II - Wherein the lovers find a quantum of sympathy

ROCKY: Hi, we have similar interests and are usually thrown in together, where we have a good time being apart from our significant others who never have the opportunity to join us. I am devoted to my wife though, because she's a better person than I am. I am filled with base, undesirable, and totally hot desires which I know are very wrong.

SABINE: I agree, though the burgeoning specter of infidelity is anathema to my religious upbringing. Also, I'm totally not supposed to have sex before marriage, either. Although...

ACT III - Wherein the lovers set a tumultuous heading

Rocky and Sabine's hands meet by accident.

SABINE: But if we...?

ROCKY: Zounds, if...?

They proceed to have carnal relations while her finance lives in a different city and his wife is on a business trip.

ACT IV - Wherein the lovers mask their shame as best as their shattered psyches permit

ROCKY: A righteous sexing. I won't divorce my wife, but I will force her hand to divorce me by confessing adultery and then doing nothing. That way I can spare her the pain. She's still a better person than I am.

SABINE: Sex is divinely awesome. God obviously intended everything to turn out this way, even the part where I disobeyed a few commandments, so I won't worry my head. But alas! my fiance found out and called off the wedding. I am so distraught and am going through a super difficult time right now! Although...

ACT V - Wherein the lovers are now conjoined in matrimony

ROCKY: I'm keeping my head low. My new and old wives are better persons than I am.

SABINE: Hey Andy, your opinions on the basic humanity of homosexuals are immoral. My unborn child will be raised to hate a specific branch of humanity, as God intended. Also, I have a weird religious-level hatred of Nancy Pelosi, whom I once compared to the bride of the anti-Christ. I also said she was the "fakest person who ever faked", but even I confess I don't know what I meant by that.

ME: I don't think that word "immoral" means what you think it means.

FINE

Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental and not the intent of the author.

New look on the back end

2011-07-17T10:19:00.002-05:00

This is going to seem weird, because you won't be able to see any of the changes I'm talking about. But just like you have to trust the guy at the on-ramp who says that Marilyn Monroe and Deng Xiao Ping are whispering sweet nothings in his ears, there are large cosmetic changes afoot in the Blogger design side.

They're not reflected up front because I've always selected the design for the blog anyway. The composition screen for new entries is now of the spartan and white design that I associate with iPads. It looks very clean and "Apple-esque", but it's also devoid of most color and things are VERY far away from each other on my new computer monitor and its HD-tv resolution.

I'm typing on a comically small window for text entry in the upper center of the screen. There's at least 3-4 inches of gray space to the left, right, and below. Having finished the previous sentence, it suddenly expanded the column to the screen bottom, allowing me to write in the approximation of column. I can only hope that the width of this is exactly the same as the width of it on my actual published screen. For years, I've dealt with entries not quite looking like I intended. Most of the time, it requires an addition retreat to the design screen, some tweaking, another publish, more changes, etc. This all hopefully occurs invisibly for visitors, since I don't want people to get bogged down in update logs for each entry.

FYI, I've just looked at the preview screen and confirmed that it still isn't quite the same pagination. Oh well, baby steps.

In summary, everything looks white and sparse on this side. Most likely their reason was to fall in line with the new looks of Gmail and Google Calendar. And THEIR reason was most likely to facilitate bare-bones looks to simply tablet and phone editing. Whatever: I can still use it just as easily, though the large amount of white does tend to annoy my eyes if I use it full screen. I assume this is still a work in progress.

A Chased Wedding ... or is it "Chaste"?

2011-07-06T23:35:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, I attended a wedding. It was the first of this year (2011) for me, and it seems likely to be the only one. It's a slowdown from last year which saw me attending four weddings, including the marriage of one of my brothers. It took me as far afield as the Olympic forest in Washington and the vine fields of southeastern Missouri -- to the center of bohemian culture in Kansas City and the heady elegance of a manor home.

This wedding was domestic, by comparison. Having said that, the bride *was* imported...

The ceremony took place in a chapel not far from the river in the wilds north of town. In the town of Parkville, threatened by the rising river. The chapel seemed to double as a pie shop. A giant sign ten feet tall in the lower room announced dozens of types of pies. But it turned into a lesson in humility: nowhere was there pie to be found. It was a terrible tease and I almost went home without playing.

Yes, playing. It was the wedding of a fellow brass player, so there was music provided by the motley crew of his friends. Crammed into the upper loft of the chapel, 10 people did battle with little to no elbow room. I played with my slide down and just to the left of my knee -- the player next to me actually turned his chair to face me so he'd have room to move his slide just in front of my legs. We only collided once, which definitely counts as the wedding miracle.

The bride was beautiful, as to be expected. Not simply because all brides are, but also because she's gorgeous. It's a fun game to see how people react when they first meet or see her. Nearly everyone has some variation of "wow, is she attractive" no matter the gender. It must be like being friends with some model or celebrity famous for their looks. People come to me and ask if she's single, does she "remember meeting?" from some time before, or just plain react as the genders do: men moan in false ecstasy and women ask how her skin can be so beautiful.

The reception moved to a nearby eatery, closed for the occasion. Outside the steps, the mighty sandbag wall violently interrupted the main road, descending into the stagnant waters of the river that now surmounted the local athletic fields. "At least the reception can't last too long!" was the gallows humor of the evening, hinting to the fact that a further rise in the river would soak the picturesque village.

Marshaling all of my attention, I tried to be sure to witness the most important moment of the entire day: the kiss. From our seats in the back of the loft, seeing the couple or anything other than the dusty chandeliers was impossible. So with the exception of the few pieces we were called upon to play, I stood. Eager was I to watch them make kissy-face. A darkly prurient obsession from a single guy? One could argue. But the real reason was because I wasn't sure whether or not it would happen.

Let me qualify immediately: there was no doubt they'd marry. They love each other and will be happy moving forward together. At no point did anyone even jokingly suggest one or the other may run from the rings. Perfectly happy, they are.

But I've never seen them kiss. Ever! They've been dating for years, living together, appearing at all events social and official -- and never once have I seen them kiss. What's more, I've never even seen them consciously touch each other. Even in trying to pass by each other in a crowded hallway.

The realization was slowly building for all the years I've known them. From the first, one thinks "there's something I'm not quite understanding, but I can't even think what." After a few more years of congratulations and celebrations, the stray thoughts pass but don't land on fertile ground: "I thought they'd celebrate more when her team won that game..." or "he didn't seem to react like she'd been out of the country for a month when he picked her up from the airport..."

About a year ago, I had the "aha": "have they ever even held HANDS in my sight?" I couldn't remember a time that they had. So when the wedding day approached and I knew they would have to do so, I resolved to take the quick peek to make sure I could see the eclipse with my own eye.

And so I did. The solemnities at a close, the pastor bid them seal the bond. They leaned together for a brief moment.

And suddenly I felt like I was intruding on a private moment. How ridiculous, with tuxedos and white taffeta to the window-tops, with candles a-burning, with dozens of attentive onlookers, to suddenly feel the press of proxy privacy violated.

But somehow it did feel more of an intimate moment than at all other weddings. The culmination of their bond came not with cheers or exultation. It landed softly, as though they had pulled each other into a private corner during a museum tour. A moment for them alone, not requiring of any other observer to eke out the joy and love.

I felt profane: not because of any lascivious thoughts or lookie-loo impulses, but because the sanctity of the moment was profaned by my utter disconnection and worthlessness. What was I to them? They, the couple finally united against adversity in the eyes of law and sanctity. I, merely the parasitic viewer attempting to grasp at the coattails of a much more significant personage.

And I shrank into myself. Powered by the reflexive social currents, I passed the rest of the evening in outward cheer, wishing well on all and sundry as the skirts whirled and the flagons emptied. For every man a clasped hand and superficial greeting; to every woman a respectful incline of head and close-lipped smile. For man and woman alike, a graceful evasive turn out of the path of people on dedicated missions of delivery or relocation, a ceding of the open path by pirouetting to move my frame from traffic and place my back to the walls.

From there, better to see the thousand acts of infinitesimal love from many present. The courtesies, the solicitations, the concerns, the sharing, the surprise and laughter. Here and there, the tiny moments not meant for the public consumption -- only for the exchange between two that is love.

A great museum of affection, stocked with all manner of tableau and sketch. The public areas with carefully presented examples and the archives crammed full of exquisite works which rarely greet the public eye -- mashed so close as to be almost indiscriminate.

That Which Fires the Imagination

2011-06-20T23:25:00.000-05:00


Out of the frying pan and into... oh.

As nice as it is to have a platform like this blog to pontificate and excoriate, I always have to think at least twice about what I put up -- if not more than twice. Each day that passes brings additional people to the blog. It's been a long time since the days when I could identify the visitors ("Visit count up by one. Must've been mom.") I've made a conscious decision not to blog about work, just as I made a decision that I didn't want to blog about my trombone students. Blogging directly about acquaintances is on the same blacklist. This is what is known as a fortuitously prescient idea.

But now my issue is mainly that I've been in an incredibly irascible mood for quite some time. A significant portion of what people do and say around me really gets on my nerves. I haven't figured out if it's because the world has gotten just a little bit more annoying or if a problem in me. Generally, if you have to blame the world AND everyone else for being different, it's not actually them that are the problem. Occam's Razor: it's not just for breakfast anymore!

The gut response is "I'll just write about those annoying behaviors from other people in my blog, and I'll judge from the comments whether or not I'm justified." It IS my closest public opinion outlet: asking the spoiled yogurt in the fridge for its opinion just garners me a dismissive grumble.

But the issue becomes strange when what I'm complaining about is integral to a particular group of people. Let's say I had a problem with people doing gymnastics. Something about gymnastics is something that I find objectionable and comment-worthy. But even if I disguise names or genders, it's still going to be pretty obvious who is and is not a gymnast. Other people may not know which of my friends are gymnast-inclined, but those people reading my blog from the tumble bars certainly would.

So I'm sort of stymied. And it's made worse by the fact that I can't even have the unpacking conversations that I long to have about these things. The sorts of "let me tell you what happened with that jerk" conversations that everyone has with their spouses and their spouses have with them. The kind of stuff that makes all that "spousal privilege" talk on Law & Order not total bunk.

It's an unfortunate commentary that my most significant conversations in the past few months have been with a high school junior, a partially unintelligible Ecuadorean immigrant, ~~one two~~ three other men's wives, and a partially inebriated Dutchman.

On the plus side, I could get them all in a studio and have one hell of a roundtable talk show.

Dated Dating Accomidation

2011-06-17T22:51:00.001-05:00

"But what will YOU eat?"

It's become something of a sticking point at work that when any group of greater than one person is trying to decide where to go for lunch, much precious time is lost in the deciding. It's much the same with any group of friends: rarely is their anyone so confident in their preferences that they state that we "must" go somewhere. Nobody wants to give the first suggestion and then be shot down. Inevitably, we all stand around being overly accomidating, telling each other we'd happily go anywhere and that it "doesn't matter."

I had a similar experience with a woman I was joining for dinner recently. She is a vegetarian -- I know this from previous conversations where she makes plain that she doesn't eat meat. This isn't really a problem for me: I don't eat meat by "design", merely familiarity. It's not a food that I particularly need to have at each meal. My breakfasts usually never contain meat, and the other two meals depend largely on what I cooked or prepared.

In any case, I took this as an opportunity to try a restaurant in Kansas City called "FÜD", pronounced "food". You know it's got to be good if you have to tell people how to pronounce it! It's a restaurant that prides itself on being local and organic and vegan. What better place to take a vegetarian date?

As she sat down in my car, she asked, "So where should we go for dinner?"

I lead with my good card. "What about FÜD?", being careful to say it clipped like a Glaswegian because that amuses me: "foot".

"But what will you have?"

"I'll just have... err... what do you mean?"

She looks at the dashboard in thought. "Well, you aren't vegetarian."

"No, I'm not," still unsure where she's heading.

She tilts her head compassionately. "I don't want to force vegetarian dinner on you..."

I explain that I can eat lots of things and have no trouble eating a meal without animal products. "I'm not a strict carnivore, or anything. I'll eat practically anything that doesn't still have eyes attached!"

"But I feel bad that you have to 'bend to my weird eating'. We should go somewhere where you can get something you want."

I no longer know how to play this situation -- AT ALL. "I'm sure I can find lots of things to eat. Besides you're the one who has a specialized diet," I try to point out, being both logical and helpful.

Danger tone. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Me, driving slowly towards exasperation. "Imagine a big square that has all the things I eat inside. Your square is slightly smaller, since it doesn't have the meat in it."

She begins helping herself to umbrage. "This isn't some kind of contest that you can win by eating more things."

Me: "I'm not trying to win dinner. I just want a place where we can both order from the entire spectrum of the menu.

And so it goes.

We did eventually settle on dinner. At a steakhouse. She had a salad.

*** *** ***

I may not have wanted to "win" dinner, but I think both of us lost. One of my many faults is that there are some topics where I cannot conceal what I'm thinking. If I think someone doesn't understand what I'm saying, I tend to get all rational and professorial, breaking the problem down into simplified pieces. It's like trying to triumph in a Socratic method conversation.

It usually sounds patronizing. Which is not something I want to be, ever. I fully confess that I probably could have stopped about two sentences in during the above conversation and simply said, "Where would YOU like to go?" Then perhaps she'd say something, I'd say "sounds delicious", and we'd be off.

So who's the more obsequious diner? Me, for going to a restaurant I wouldn't normally go to so I could accommodate her dining preferences? Or her, for going to a restaurant she wouldn't normally go to, accommodating my dining preferences?

She didn't want to be a bother. I wanted to give her one meal free from the "tyranny of the omnivores".

And I still don't have any idea what happened.

WiFi? BecauseFi!

2011-06-09T04:48:00.000-05:00

The U.N. issued a report a few days ago that asserts that -- under the umbrella of free expression -- internet access is a basic human right. It's largely a commentary on the role that the internet has had in stirring up and organizing the populations involved in the so-called "Arab Spring" outbreak of democratic action in the Middle East.

When I traveled to Europe two weeks ago, I debated whether or not to bring some electronic gadgets. Should I bring my netbook? It's small and practically disposable, has good battery life, and allows the offloading of photos, checking of email, posting of blog entries, etc. Should I bring my phone? It won't work on the European cell systems, but it does have WIFI and could be pressed into service as a pocket portable internet gateway, should I find some Burger King that has free connections. Should I bring my tablet, which in between the two: too large to fit in a pocket, too small to do much typing?

In the end, I brought nothing. That allowed me to avoid bringing voltage adapters or sponging off someone else's adapters. It made it straightforward to move through airport security, allowing them to focus on other bizarre things I was bringing, such as the two extra trombone mouthpieces in my carry-on. This choice meant that, as with the previous FCBB tour in 2009, I had no internet connection to the world abroad. I could still watch TV every day, still see newspapers, still hear the radio, of course. But the personalized level of the internet (seeing MY news, seeing MY mail, seeing MY favorite sites) was impossible.

In the short term, that was fine. I didn't need to pay any bills: I'd taken care of scheduling in advance for the two weeks I'd be gone. I didn't need to be able to stream music: most of the time, there wasn't any opportunity. While I could have made use of GPS and maps (I still don't know how I didn't make it to Sacre Coeur in Paris!), most of the touristy places had paper maps or sidewalk kiosks to let you know how to get around. And while I was deprived of the connected stream of updates from various friends doing various things, it wasn't terrible to get away from that.

Not everyone was so ascetic with their electrons. Some came laden with laptops, iPads, phones, cameras, video cameras, MP3 players, Kindles, Nooks, tablets, and audio recorders. And the most common technology complaint was the general lack in Europe of cheap and easily-accessible internet.

For whatever regulatory and utility reasons, commercial WIFI is usually quite spendy by my American standards. The first hotel we stayed in was wonderful. Tucked off the motorway, it was surrounded by trees, had a hiking trail to the ruins of a 14th century abbey, had a large rolling field with lake just behind it, a wonderful dining experience, and comfortable rooms. Oh, and WIFI accessible for 5 GBP per hour -- that's about $8.20 in our Yankee money. For the more budget conscious, you could get 24 hours for 16 pounds, a nervous-cough-inducing $26.

I don't suspect this is *that* much more outrageous than American hotels may charge, when they charge. WHEN the charge, as most offer WIFI for free. The same with cafes and restaurants. Every Panera in the states has free WiFi, except during the lunch rush. Few cafes in Europe do, and those that did often had such a degraded signal as to be worthless.

Some members of the party were up in arms. You could practically hear them shouting in their heads about how "unAmerican" this is. One wondered aloud if Europe was still in the Dark Ages.

I won't debate that it would be very fun to video chat wirelessly with family in America while touring around. "Hi, mom. I'm at the Louvre and my friend Lisa says 'hi'. Or do you prefer to be called 'Mona'?" And having internet access at whatever cost allowed one of the members to cancel credit cards and order replacements after having his wallet thieved on the Paris underground.

I for one didn't think I was having my rights violated to be stuck without internet. The differences would be pronounced if I was trying to protest or make my voice heard and the government kept shutting off the internet and the cell phones to keep the people in the dark.

It places any sense of fussy entitlement at not being able to share a picture of the croque et frites I had in Honfluer a little further into perspective.