True Adventure: Training Day!

Sorry for the silence yesterday, but I was at Training Day all day. Wow, an entire day of "work" for which I was paid and all I had to do was go to classes where they explained that we can't help getting pissed off because of our brain chemistry, and we might as well improve what we are good at and to heck with the stuff we aren't good at. I'll take that kind of training any day! Plus they fed us well.

In one class they had us make a pie chart of our life outside of work and sleep (i.e., the supposedly 72 hours of free time we have every week) to see if it actually matched with our core values. Mine did, but to my surprise everyone else around me seemed shocked that there was no overlap. (One woman had one-fourth of her pie chart taken up with "Watching TV"!) My coworker who makes the beautiful cakes said she thought a venn diagram would represent my life better than a pie chart, since so many areas have overlap, so here is the venn diagram of my life:

Figure 1: Venn diagram of Famous Hat's Leisure Time

(HH=hedgehog)

Famous Hat

Hey, Waiter! There's a FLY in My Fishbowl!

As you may recall from a previous post, I have a couple of "office pets," Arphaxad and Amminadab. (See below.) They are goldfish I bought for maybe 50 cents apiece from the "feeder fish" tank, and so far they are at least a year old. Cecil Markovitch recently got some goldfish, and they keep dying, so he asked me the other night what he was doing wrong. "I only change their water once a week," he said, and I told him A&A get fresh water every Friday. "Maybe it's because they're in the window," he said, and I told him A&A are right on the window sill, enjoying the view of the lake. Then he said maybe it was because his goldfish were cheap, but I told him A&A were cheap goldfish too, so we have no idea what the difference is.

Figure 1: Arphaxad and Amminadab

(photo credit: Palm Tree Fan)

Today was a very good day for A&A, and not such a good day for a fly. A&A got a special treat today. Usually they get fish food flakes every morning (except weekends) and then they spend a lot of time attacking their plant and eating algae. They also beg every day for some of my broccoli and carrot, so sometimes I indulge them. Today, however, they got some MEAT. (Richard Bonomo must be so proud!) A ginormous fly was buzzing around my office, and my office mate swatted it so it fell on the window sill, mostly dead but still a little twitchy. We debated about what to do with it and finally decided to toss it into A&A's bowl. At first they studiously ignored it, but eventually Amminadab (that's the smaller orange one) grabbed the fly and swam around the bowl with it. Arphaxad (the larger white one) appeared to be a vegetarian, but later it got in on the act, and soon they were each pulling the fly in opposite directions in a fishy tug-of-war. My office mate had originally voiced some skepticism that A&A would want a fly in their fish bowl (after all, we wouldn't want a fly in our house!) but even as I write this Amminadab is chewing on the unfortunate insect. Why not? Wouldn't flies fall into the water in nature? And this way the fly did not die in vain. As my office mate's husband said, it's the ultimate in recycling!

Famous Hat

Nerds and Taoists and Belly Dancers, Oh My!

My office is on the top floor of a very high building, with a window that overlooks a lake. Why am I telling you this? Other than to gloat at my good fortune, it is to give you some idea of what my newest form of self-torture entails: climbing the stairs from the ground floor all the way to my office. This is my latest training idea for the triathlon. (Thought I'd forgotten about that, didn't you?) It never seems to get any easier, but I am less sore after every climb so there must be SOME improvement...

This weekend my Mideastern band played at a science fiction convention, and it was such a success that you couldn't get a nerd in edgewise! (I wish that were original, but I got it from some kid's joke book.) And what science fiction has to do with Mideastern music, gentle readers, I could not tell you, but presumably sci-fi geeks enjoy seeing a belly dancer as much as the next geek. The belly dancer we had this time was really good; my favorite part was when she did a dance with a scimitar (real or fake? I have no idea) that she balanced on her head and even on her hip! Our unreliable drummer didn't make it so we had a bunch of guest drummers, and the guitarist had a family emergency so we had a bass player instead, but despite the fact that many of us had never played together, it seemed to go very well. Anyway, the kids in the audience thoroughly enjoyed doing the Israeli folkdances, but for all I know we were the only kid-friendly thing going on at this convention. We were followed by a pirate act, but I just went home, weirded out by the guy wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Satan on it that said, "God is busy. Can I help you?"

That night I had weird dreams about some woman wearing different shirts boasting about how Taoists are "lower" (presumably more humble) than members of other religions; one sweatshirt just said "Taoist" and then had a flat symbol after it. This is the Ultimate Famous Hat Dream: it combines music, religion, and jokes that aren't really funny! Most of the punchlines in my dreams are off-color, however. What that says about me on a Freudian level, I'd rather not know.

Famous Hat

The All-Purpose Tropical Song

Continuing the "I'm So Blonde" theme, when I first got into salsa music, I was amazed to hear how often they used the bassoon. When I told the OTHER choir director about this, he was skeptical so I fetched a CD and played "La Mitad" by Willie Rosario, a song prominently featuring the croaking of a low reed instrument. The choir director listened intently to it and said, "That's a bass saxophone!" Like I would know the difference?? After that he would always joke about the salsa bassoon, like when we were doing a Bach cantata at the Lutheran church and he was assembling an orchestra, I said, "What, no bassoon?" since there seemed to be every other instrument known to mankind, and he said, "It's not salsa, you know." The moral of the story: sometimes it's a good idea to hold off on that plan to sell everything, quit your job, and become a professional salsa bassoon player.

Interestingly, A-Joz and I have very similar "career-for-a-day" fantasies: we both would love to be nightclub singers and/or jazz musicians. If anyone would like to indulge us in this fantasy, we'd be happy to do it on a Tuesday night to minimize damage to your business and/or musical reputation. How about it, nightclub owners and jazz bands?

The episode with the "salsa bassoon" inspired me to write an all-purpose tropical song for my imaginary band. This band would, of course, either have to be ENORMOUS or have members with extraordinary talent and lots of instruments lying around, because in order to play any type of tropical music called for, I would need the following: a slack-key guitar player and ukulele player for Hawaiian music, all sorts of percussion and brass for salsa (not to mention a keyboard player!), steel drums for calypso, etc. You get the picture: this band would have about twenty-three members. On the plus side, we could play the Tropical Song in any tropical style, including Dance Hall. (But not reggaeton, please!)

And, of course, I had to include a stanza about my tropical cred and why I am the best person to write a tropical song, considering that I have spent my entire life in temperate zones. So here, without further ado, is the All-Purpose Tropical Song:

Tropical song, tropical song,
I want to sing it all night long,
Tropical song!

I love that scorching tropical heat (tropical song!)
I love that sensuous tropical beat (tropical song!)
I want to dance under a tropical moon (tropical song!)
I want to hear you play salsa bassoon (tropical song!)

Tropical chorus here

The blood of the islands flows through me (tropical song!)
England and Ireland surrounded by sea (tropical song!)
It was cold when I was born (tropical song!)
But my sign is tropical - Capricorn! (tropical song!)

Tropical chorus here

Twenty-three members in my band (tropical song!)
Tropicalest group in all the land (tropical song!)
So many members when we play (tropical song!)
We each get fifty cents in pay (tropical song!)

Tropical bridge here, followed by tropical chorus and tropical finale

Note: Nightclub owners, A-Joz and I will be available to perform this song most Tuesdays in May.

Famous Hat

Salsa Is Life (The Rest Is Just Details)

The ePlush Birthday Skit

Here is a true birthday story: one year my officemate and her husband got her mother a beautiful piece of jewelry for her birthday, while her father got her a pair of Birkenstock sandals. When he found out what they were giving her, he pleaded with his daughter and son-in-law to switch presents, and to this day the birthday girl thinks her romantic husband gave her a beautiful piece of jewelry and her daughter and son-in-law gave her nice, sensible footwear.

On the birthday theme, Rockstar Tailor wrote the following skit with some help from Hardingfele and me, Famous Hat. (The "Hammer" character was my idea while all the bad puns are Hardingfele's fault.) She is presenting this for her school talent show, so I will modify some of the action to keep the ending a surprise.

ePlush Birthday Skit

The Yorkie, the Lioness, the Persian cat and the Hammer are going to a party.
Lioness and Yorkie: Yay we are going to an ePlush birthday!
The Lioness, the Yorkie, and the Hammer went to the Persian cat’s house for the party.
Lioness and Yorkie: Happy Birthday, Snowflake!
Persian cat: Thank you, Roarie and Snowball.
Hammer: Knock knock
All: Who’s there
Hammer: Happy birthday to
All: Happy Birthday to who
Hammer: Happy birthday to you!
Persian cat: Oh hi hammer. Hey, we’re going to the pool.
The four best friends go to the pool.
Hammer: I bet I can nail that dive!
Persian cat: Time for pizza and cake. We have cheese, pepperoni or sausage and chocolate cake.
Hammer: Pizza is always a hit!
Persian cat: Present time. (She opens her presents.)
Persian cat: Thank you thank you thank you. Cat toys and …..nails. This was the best birthday ever.
Hammer: You don’t have to pound it in!

And what happens next? Will Hammer save the day by breaking the ePlush Piñata and releasing all the ePlush Treats? Will Hammer save the day by crushing the evil Schnickel Fritz? Will Roarie turn out to have an undiagnosed pizza allergy? To find out the thrilling answer, you have to wait until Rockstar Tailor presents the play at her school talent show.

Famous Hat

Stumbling Blondely Through Life

First, some kvetching: so last night Rich, Anna Banana II, and I went to the final concert of KlezKamp, but oddly enough it was not a klezmer concert. Instead, a couple of people played cocktail lounge music on the piano, and then they had a Q&A session about what makes music "Jewish." I don't know what makes it Jewish, but I know what makes it klezmer, and this wasn't it. The pianists did not agree about what made music Jewish, in fact they seemed to purposely disagree just to make things interesting. Remembering the proverb "Two Jews, three opinions," I figured that this could go on all night, so we left.

Since Hardingfele was fascinated by my family discussion yesterday, and she is my most faithful reader, I am expounding some more on my background. There is some sort of blonde gene in our family that KO's all the darker genes. It comes from my father's side; his mother had dark hair (but pale skin and blue eyes) yet he is blond like his father. My mother has dark hair and eyes and she tans so well that in the summer she looks like a Native American, and yet my brother and I are pale with blond hair and greenish-bluish-grayish eyes. My sister-in-law has brown hair and eyes, and yet my nephews are blond, and one is very pale like our side of the family. According to the statistics of genetics, this is not impossible, just unlikely, but obviously the reality of genetics isn't the same as the expected probability of a given trait appearing, and this must be one mean blonde gene.

How blonde am I? I have previously related the story of hearing someone's voice coming out of the speakers and not realizing it was mine, but it bears repeating. It was at a bluegrass jam, and I made the mistake of suggesting a song ("Long Journey Home"), which I hadn't realized meant, in bluegrass etiquette, that I should then lead the singing. So as I was singing, "Nothin' in my pocket but a two-dollar bill, Lord, a two-dollar bill," I could hear a woman behind me with a lovely voice, and I let up a little to let her take it, but whenever I backed off, so did she! So then I'd take it up again, and so would she! FINALLY it dawned on me that I was hearing myself. When I told some band members about this, they said it was like not recognizing yourself in a mirror, and I said, "Yeah, there was the time I wondered why the woman in the next booth was staring at me... until I realized it was a mirror." The fiddler laughed so hard I thought she might asphyxiate.

However, the ultimate blonde moment in my life may have been the secret message in the driveway. I live in a condo complex, and one night while walking home from my second job I noticed someone had painted "M075" in the middle of the driveway. Since it was clearly a professional job, I knew it must have some purpose, but I could not deduce what it might be. Then the moth planes began flying around, spraying the anti-gypsy moth bacteria all over the neighborhood, and I wondered if M075 were a signal to them. When I mentioned it to T, she asked me to show her the mysterious label, and when I pointed it out to her, she said, "You mean where it says SLOW?" Yeah, OK, maybe that's what it says in the OTHER direction...

Famous Hat