In a rare case of planning ahead, I had a stacked four-day weekend full of learning, entertainment, and adventure. Friday, I did the HQL course to get my license sorted out, as mentioned earlier. On Saturday I was in the car headed down to Southern Maryland to visit with my father-in-law, take him out for some Mission Barbecue, and go through his mail. We sat and talked for 2 to 3 hours, mainly me listening about his history in rural Pennsylvania, and then I drove back home through cold dark rain.
Sunday, we hosted Karean and Zachary to go to see the Lion King at the Hippodrome in Baltimore. This required a ton of housecleaning, which mainly fell on Jen, but I threw in that morning to finish up the last minute stuff for their arrival. We were also finishing up an overhaul of the guest bedroom, following a remodel we did last year where the new color turned out to be a bit too vibrant and a couple of values too dark. It was a nice color but made the room feel smaller. We bought a lighter shade of the original color and I rolled it on three walls, leaving one for an accent. Jen framed two pieces of art we bought in Portugal and bought a third for over the bed. After sewing up the new blackout curtains and building a roller shade for the bathroom door, the whole room really came together. Jen picked out fabrics and colors that accent each other and it really feels great in there now—much lighter, larger, and complete.
Sunday morning we got churched up and drove into Baltimore at noon for the 1 o’clock show. This marks the third show we’ve seen at the Hippodrome and it never fails to deliver. This show was amazing: it’s the traveling Broadway troupe and they do an incredible job. The costumes were breathtaking and the set design is incredible. I would bet it’s even more inspiring on a large Broadway sized stage (the Hippodrome is a smaller, Vaudeville-era venue) but we enjoyed every minute and a double Vodka Matata (vodka, ginger, beer, and lime) made everything even more pleasant. After the show, we drove to a fancy Ramen restaurant in the inner Harbor and loaded up on noodles, pork rolls, and gyoza. Properly stuffed, we headed back to the house, got in some warm PJs and caught up on the couch before getting to bed early for the next day.
Monday’s activity was driving up to Roundtop for a day of snowboarding. Finn declined to go so it was just Karean, Zachary and me. We got our rentals sorted out, accompanied Karean to the bunny slope, and gave her some pointers to practice on before her lesson. After watching over her for a run or two, Zachary and I broke off and hit the blue slope. After he got his confidence under him, we really started having fun. The mountain was pretty empty, which was fantastic: the lift lines were almost negligible and we didn’t have to avoid crowds of people on the way down. The snow was typical manmade Eastern stuff, but there was enough down that it wasn’t a sheet of ice and it was cold enough outside to not be slushy and wet. But after enough people went down the slope it started getting rough in patches as they dug in and started making grooves.
On my third or fourth run, I was switching directions, my board caught an ice ridge and I flipped downward on the mountain landing on my left side with my arm underneath me. It all happened very fast and I didn’t have time to cushion myself, and I got the wind knocked out of me. My ribs felt very sore and tender, but I got up and kept boarding. Zachary and I got about seven more runs in before lunch and the grin on his face got bigger and bigger with each ride down the mountain. We did about five more runs after lunch and wrapped things up at three, meeting Karean up in the bar above the lodge. Zachary is really into snowboarding, and I’m going to redouble my efforts to get him out at least twice a year.
My ribs are very tender this morning. It’s mainly the fifth and sixth, directly under my left arm on the side. Jen found me a Lidocaine patch and I put that on last night before bed; I’m going to keep applying them until the soreness goes away. If I had to guess, they’re either bruised, or possibly fractured, but there isn’t much any doctor could do other than tell me “don’t fall on them”.
I finally finished playing the library’s copy of Star Wars: Fallen Order and returned it after having renewed it twice; I liked it enough to find a cheap copy of its sequel, Jedi Survivor, on sale at Amazon, and bought it. These games are a fun challenge, and much different than the shooters like The Division and the shooter/loot grab titles like Fallout I’ve been playing. Truthfully, I’m pretty tired of the Bethesda engine. Nuclear apocalypse, sword-and-fantasy, or outer space: it’s all the same mechanics, and there’s very little that’s new to the formula. The Jedi games are 50% skill based puzzle-solving and 50% kool lightsaber fights, all set in a sprawling, richly detailed environment. They don’t go super dweeb-heavy on the lore, and there’s just enough of a music cue to let me know I’m in a galaxy far, far away without beating me over the head with it. (See: Battlefront, which was fun but forced me to shut off the music entirely).
Speaking of the library, I had to drive Finn out to a different branch to pick up a book for school, and found it to be much larger, and much better stocked, than our local. I walked out with a stack of 10 CDs, two new games to try, and an interesting history book. Their wall of multimedia is huge compared to the branch down the street—so I believe this will be my new go-to for the immediate future.
When I was 22, I went to see a GWAR show at Hammerjacks on Halloween evening. For the uninitiated, GWAR is more of a theatrical experience than just a concert: highlights include being hosed down with fake blood, mid-set skits featuring simulated sex and murder, and pounding thrash riffs played by men on platform heels in full-body foam costumes. I was no stranger to loud music by this time; I’d seen a hundred shows by this point, in venues large and small, through professional sound installations and thrift-store PA systems. But the sound guy at Hammerjacks that evening just said fuck it, maxed all the levels on the board, and went outside to smoke a joint. The sound was so loud it vibrated my testicles. I felt the high frequencies in my spleen. That said, the show was a lot of fun and I walked out into the crisp evening with fake blood steaming off my head and a ringing in my ears. That ringing stayed with me as I fell asleep and was gone by morning.
These days that ringing doesn’t go away. Most of the time I’m not aware of it, actually. It’s been a slow progression over the last couple of years, not unlike my eyesight, where I started noticing that I had to hold stuff further away in order to see it and suddenly realized it was time for reading glasses. This sound isn’t even a ringing. it’s a high-frequency whine that sits somewhere behind my ears, blocking out other sounds in that range. Again, I don’t notice it for most of the day, but laying in bed in a quiet house, it’s hard to ignore.
With all the stuff I’ve been working on for the past couple of years, I’ve actually been very conscious of my hearing and my eyesight. My first set of progressives was actually a set of safety glasses, which were much cheaper than a pair of normal glasses. I used those to test out whether I could stand them, and found them smooth and helpful enough to pull the trigger on everyday frames. Where I used to run grinders and saws without any ear protection in my 20’s, I’ve had got three sets of earmuffs rotating in the garage since 2010. Anytime I’m sanding or cutting, I’m careful to wear them. And I wear iPods with noise cancellation on and the sound as low as I can make it almost constantly. But time is clearly catching up with me, as my hairline will testify.
I got together with my Scout buddies a couple of weeks ago. I usually bring donuts, and someone else will bring coffee, and we sit and chat for a little bit before we get started. It’s funny how we spend more and more time talking about getting older—our various aches and pains, complaining about the weather, commiserating about expensive home repairs, or how we don’t have time to get to fun truck stuff. I’d offhandedly mentioned the ringing in my ears and my friend Bennett immediately nodded his understanding. He told me he’s been battling the same thing, and has read about a promising method of treating it—electrical pulses on the back of the tongue to stimulate the trigeminal and auditory nerves. It doesn’t cure tinnitus, but apparently reprograms the brain to tune out the sound. The FDA has approved the first devices for this treatment, and I’m curious to see when it’ll be available—and if my insurance will cover it.
In the meantime, I’ll live with the whine in my ears and my lousier eyesight and thinning hair, and be thankful I’m still upright and healthy.
Here’s a review that left me scratching my head: The Verge ran an article asking if there’s a heavier album than Sleep’s Dopesmoker. This incongruity is not unlike a cooking website running a review of new luxury SUVs. To her credit, the author did her research, and the other artists she compared are legit: Electric Wizard, SunO))), and Bongripper, as well as several others I’ve not heard of before. Ultimately she decides on a live album from a band called Hell, who I’m not familiar with, but Dopesmoker will always be the high water mark in my opinion.
I’ve found that most modern metal has become super annoying, where the “singing” is nothing more than some guy gargling razor blades, the drums are cranked to 180BPM, and the compression has jacked the waveforms so close to the margins that it just becomes white noise. I prefer some sort of melody somewhere in my music, or at least a beat I can get behind. The last good metal album I really enjoyed was by a band called Windhand, which was slowed down, super heavy, and tuned super low—but had a great mixture of melody and riffage. Sadly, they have been on hiatus since 2018 and I don’t know if they’re going to release a new album. And I’m still waiting for True Widow to release some new music—their last album was great.
With the re-opening of our local library, I’m able to check out and sample video games without making expensive mistakes. I’ve been bored with Starfield, which I’ve played through completely, and casting about for a new challenge. One of the titles the library had available was Star Wars: Fallen Order, which was released five years ago to decent reviews. I loaded up all eleventy-billion gigs of files, had it run the updates, and started playing last weekend. It’s a fun game so far, and a lot different from the Bethesda-style games I’ve been playing lately: a third-person puzzle/action game leaning heavily on exploration and jumping, punctuated with lightsaber combat that I haven’t really gotten the hang of yet. I’m at the point where it’s still very challenging to get past the basic bosses without dying because I haven’t gotten the hang of the controls, but I’m enjoying the puzzles and exploration. I’ve got another couple of days to keep it and then I’ve got to decide if I’m going to purchase it, and I’m leaning towards yes.
An article on a completely different website brought me to this one, and I could not have been happier last night. This is a reconstruction of the history of the Millennium Falcon, from the earliest days of Lucas’ scripts through Ralph McQuarrie’s original sketches, a pivot in the “Space Pirate” design after Space: 1999 hit TV in 1975, and the birth of the now iconic shape. The author sources multiple books, articles, websites, and photos to piece together how it evolved. I remember seeing some of these paintings over the years in different books and magazines, and now I know why they were different than what we saw on screen.
By all accounts, the recent Jane’s Addiction tour has been canceled after Perry Farrell attacked Dave Navarro in the middle of a song, and had to be dragged off the stage. Reading some first-hand accounts from fans who posted video of that show, the consensus is that the band sounded fantastic but he sounded like shit, was drinking heavily through the whole show, and was dropping verses in the middle of songs. His wife immediately went on social media to attack the band, and today they announced the tour was dead.
Having read about him and his treatment of the rest of the band I can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m bummed out for them. I would love nothing more than (and would, frankly, be more interested in) the three musicians touring together with a guest vocalist, just to hear them play live together.
They sound awesome, but good goddamn, we’re getting old.
Wow, I didn’t see this one coming. Oasis are reuniting for a tour after splitting up and throwing chainsaws at each other for fifteen years. I think I’ve always been Team Noel but I haven’t followed all of the drama that closely. This would be a great show to see live, I think; I just can’t rationalize $200 in Ticketmaster surcharges and battling for a 5% chance to actually be able to buy a ticket.
I got sucked down a rabbit hole a couple of days ago by a YouTube interview with the Smashing Pumpkins about recording Siamese Dream, and that led me to other songs he’d recorded for Gish, and now I have Tristessa on repeat in my head. Gish is a fantastic album, one of my desert island discs, and one I need to source the remastered version of to re-rip to MP3. My copy is tinny and treble-heavy, and I’d like a version with more of the bottom end restored. Anyway, this tune has a great groove and I’ve always loved it.