Friday, August 25, 2006
Maynard Ferguson
In case you don't follow the jazz news, Maynard Ferguson passed away this week. He was 78 years old. I blogged about my first MF concert back in 2003. After that I attended two more Maynard concerts.
Besides his fabulous trumpet sounds, another of my favorite things about Maynard was that he filled his band with promising young musicians, with the mind to groom them for their own ongoing careers. He was truly a supporter of music education!
If you want to read a little bit more about the boss, here are some links:
Good bye, Maynard!
Saturday, August 19, 2006
EGGS!!!
My friend Kristi is really into Elvis. She has a room in her house where EVERYTHING is an Elvis trinket. Everything in the room! She could GIVE a tour at Graceland. Every year, Kristi has an "Elvis' Birthday Party" in January and an "Elvis' Death Day" party in August ("Death Day Party"???) She serves grilled peanut butter and bananas sandwiches and we watch Elvis videos and lament the passing of the king. It's rather surreal.
Anyway, the aniversary of Elvis' death (29 years) was Wednesday. So, I went over to Kristi's house for the usual celebrations. I got there about 7:00. It was a very pleasant evening, and Kristi lives in a gated community, and I was parked in the driveway, so I left the windows open on my car.
We hung out for awhile, and I left around 10:00. Kristi doesn't really have outdoor lights, so I found my way to my car, jumped in, and saw something white on the dashboard. I went to pick it up, and discovered that it was sticky. EGG!!!!!
Long story short ... the egg hit the edge of the doorframe on the passenger side and coated the dashboard, the inside of the windshield, and onto the floor of the passenger side. There was another whole egg that hit the outside of the back windshield and dripped onto parts of the side of the car. Apparently a third egg missed my car all together and hit the ground beyond the car. And another egg hit Kristi's sister's brand new car on the back.
Well, after calling the police and having him take all sorts of photos and waiting for him to talk on the phone to Kristi's sister so that he could go over there to make another report, I got to leave for home.
The next day it cost me about $40 plus about $10 in tips to have the car cleaned inside and out. I have to admit that the car really needed to be cleaned (inside and out), and the car wash place did a fabulous job ... and because it still smelled bad inside I bought an air freshener (I never use air fresheners in my car!!), and at least it smells better than the egg smelled.
So ... that is my story of my car getting egged. It has never happened to me before. I'm just glad that it wasn't a new car or a new paint job.
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
I flew this weekend
About a month ago or so, I made plans with some of my photographer friends from photo.net to get together with them in Boston, where three of them live. We all agreed on this past weekend, August 12-15. So, as perfect timing would have it, there was all of that scariness with the carry on baggage last week. I believe that all of the news came out on Thursday, and my BWI to Logan (Boston) flight was on Saturday morning, really early.
So, of course, I decided to be at the airport SUPER early on Saturday. The flight was for 6:45 a.m., and I decided to be in my car at 3:00 a.m., wanting to have parked the car, taken the shuttle and to be in the airport by 4:30. I made it by 4:15. I wished that I had gotten there even earlier than that. The line was already VERY long just to check my luggage. Of course you can't fly "carry-on only" any more unless you want to purchase ALL of your liquid toiletries at your destination and then throw them all out before you return home. Yeah.
It took well over an hour to get through that line ... and then I could barely FIND the end of the security line. But ... the security line at BWI (at about 5:30 a.m.) went faster than I expected based on how LOOOONGGGG it was.
The only things that I missed were my lip balm (I'll need to get a chapstick or something more solid the next time I fly) and my contact lens case (which I always carry with lens solution in it ... but I just wore my glasses instead and put on my contacts when I got there.
Anyway ... I had a GREAT time in Boston ... more on that some other time. Sarah, Linda and Roger are WONDERFUL people and FABULOUS photographers and I laughed a lot, enjoyed spending time with them, and learned quite a bit of photography by watching them.
Then, today I came back from Boston Logan to BWI. My flight was a 6:35 p.m. flight. Because of the tunnel problems that they're having in Boston, Sarah decided that it would be easier for me to take an airport shuttle from the suburbs. We found one that had a VERY reasonable price. We figured that the ride would take an hour, and that the security lines would be long, so to get to the airport by about 3:00, I'd need to be on the 2:00 p.m. shuttle (the shuttles leave every half hour).
I made the 2:00 shuttle, was at the airport by 2:30. The line to check my suitcase took about 20 minutes (that, by the way, was the line for people who DID check in online ... the line for people who did NOT check in online was MUCH shorter ... go figure). Then I was confused ... there was NO ONE in line at security. NO ONE. Is it clear to you that I walked directly up to the security check point, placed my carry-on bags on the belt next to my shoes, and walked right through? It was amazing! I was at the GATE by 3:00.
Then happened the thing that made me decide that I wanted to blog this entire experience. I get SUPER frustrated when I can walk into an airport situation and visually pick out the people in the crowd who will have a problem with security, even when they're on their best behavior.
While I was waiting at the gate, a couple of TSA folks came through the area, looked around at the very many people sitting in my gate area, whispered to each other a bit, and walked away. A few minutes later, two more TSA folks came back with some other airport security folks and a Massachusetts State Trooper or two. They looked at the crowd, pointed to the guy next to me (a middle-eastern looking man in his early-to-mid-twenties) and another man (with very dark skin, who looked more like he was from India than from the Middle East) ... both of them very much dressed like any other American 20-something young men, both of them travelling alone.
They took each of their passports, called in names and ID information on their walkie talkies, talked with the men over in a corner, and all of this with the entire crowd (maybe 75 or 100 people) staring at the whole scene. Finally, after the security group leaving and coming back again for another whole conversation with the men, they left them alone to get on their airplanes.
I guess that I was appalled that they were the only international looking people in the gate area ... that they were dark-skinned, non-American-looking young men travelling alone. That was what they did wrong, I guess. I think that I overheard some that there had been a hassle with the two of them at the security check point and as the State Trooper left, he mentioned that they ought to expect an apology from the TSA folks.
It makes me sad that airline security has come to this ... I have noticed several times in the past years since 9/11 that it's easy to figure out who will be "randomly" chosen for extra measures of security checks. The dark-skinned young men. It's so sad......
Anyway ... back to the gate. I had lots of waiting time. And then my flight was a bit late ... we didn't get ON the plane until after 7:15 and then we were 20th in line for take-off. TWENTIETH!! Yeah - so, after the hour-long drive back from BWI, it was just about 10:30 before I got home. And so went my experience with flying in this newest age of airline security.....
Monday, August 07, 2006
Theme Music
I went to see Superman Returns on Friday. Why did I wait so long. It was a fabulous movie. In fact, that is an understatement! It was one of the best movies I've seen in a long time!
But the thing that has been on my mind since seeing it is the theme music. The composer, John Ottman, used the original John Williams themes (are you listening to it right now?) and did a wonderful job of incorporating the spirit of the Williams music. In fact, the opening credits were several minutes long, used the music that you are currently listening to, and were so good that I could only sit there and smile like a fool.
Then, the theme got stuck in my head. I came home and bought it on iTunes. I made it my cell phone ring tone. I played it in my car over and over and over again. I guess it's probably a mistake to listen to this music when heading out on I-95 when there's not much traffic in front of you (how often does THAT happen?) ... because one has a strange sense of being Superman ... and then one is tempted to push the upper limits of the car's speed capability.
How is it that music can create such intense emotions. I mean, I never had an emotional experience that was connected to the Superman movies? I merely grew up watching Christopher Reeve personify him on the screen. Typical child of the 70's & 80's. Yet that music is almost magical. And John Williams seems to be able to create such magic over and over and over again. He's a genius.
So, logically, I mainly have John Williams to thank for my positive movie-going experience on Friday, and will probably have John Williams to blame for future speeding tickets. Enjoy the listening!
