Pure Imagination

Don’t miss the lunar eclipse tonight if you’re into orange October orbs. Perhaps you caught the other orange October orb on ABC yesterday. I didn’t, so hopefully I’ll step out of my apartment tonight at the right time.

My brother has been playing guitar (he’s very good) in a band of sorts out in California. They’re being flown to Philly for their first real gig on Halloween. He sent me a photo of him (on the far right) and the rest of the band. Click on the picture to see it full-size.

I wonder if they’ll wear the get-up on the flight.

Summer has always been my favorite season when it comes to the weather in the northeast. I would always prefer peeling layers of clothing off to cool down instead of covering up with more and heavier coats to warm up. People used to warn me that the hotter it gets, after a point there’s no clothing left to remove and you’re still hot. Whereas, if it gets colder there is no limit to the amount of clothing you can add to regulate your level of comfort.

I still would rather wear less clothing—or none, in some circumstances—but I think I have a new appreciation of the autumn. When it’s not cold, the weather is “nice.” And I like “nice.” I like the sound of the wind blowing leaves around, either on the trees or on the ground. You don’t hear that in the spring or summer (winter is right out). So maybe, just maybe, someone was right.

I guess I should appreciate the fall while I can; if I end up moving to a warmer location (still a shot in the dark), I’ll lose the change of seasons.

I don’t remember if it was sixth grade or seventh grade, but either way it was before or slightly after my bar mitzvah. I know this because I was in Hebrew School at the time, and the year after my bar mitzvah—known as eighth grade by all the goyim—I left Hebrew Junior High School for something more interesting: Hebrew High School. These Jewish studies, which supplemented my mainstream public school education, were both irrelevant and relevant to me at the same time.

The irrelevancy is evident from this story, since Judaism and what I am currently writing (and what you are now currently reading—both the same) have nothing in common except for the initial location.

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I found an audio cassette tape I made in 1981, at the tender age of five. My parents had a portable tape recorder and microphone and unfortunately for some, I got a hold of it.

I recorded a story that day about going to the Altamont Fair (link goes to the 2004 fair, not the 1981 fair) and winning a goldfish I promptly named after my mother. I also talked about an imaginary friend, made up words, tried to interview both my newborn brother and our cat, Meiko, and sang a little. It was funny to hear my voice with a Brooklyn accent; it’s hard to imagine that the child speaking was actually me. I also had a strange way of rolling my “r” sounds. I don’t know where I got that from.

Very few people have had the privilege of listening to this tape. The sound quality is surprisingly good, but I figured it might be safer to store the recording digitally. This brings us to the point.

For some reason, whenever I try to save anything in Sony Sound Forge 7.0, the program completely freezes. If it weren’t for the fact I downloaded the software for free from somewhere other than Sony, I would try to get some tech support for it. But alas, I guess this is what I get for downloading software without buying it. Note: it has worked every other time I’ve used it. It is very handy. Is it worth $400? To a professional, maybe.

This is just awesome. The British Library has published online 21 plays by Shakespeare. The versions they published were printed in quarto before the theaters where they were originally performed were closed. Not only are the texts very different from what is considered the modern standard, but there are versions with wide differences separated by only a few years. The library set up a nice interface where you can compare two texts of the same play side-by-side. I could spend hours perusing this, I just find it so interesting reading old texts. It’s great that technology allows so many more people to see and study these books without damaging the originals.

If you want to get me to like Disney (without taking me to Disney World or Disneyland), this is how. Good old Walt is getting sexy.

New York is a strange place.

Lewis Carroll’s Scrapbook. The Library of Congress has digitized this and published the collection online. I’ll return to this later to look through…

I love being spontaneous. Good things always come from spontaneous, fun choices. Saturday was a spontaneous day for me, and it certainly worked out well.

Inspontaneity can be good, too, when it comes to planning things. Here’s what I have to look forward to, not including today’s New York Philharmonic Brass concert (which was totally fantastic… I volunteered and got to see the show): New York Philharmonic (full ensemble) Monday in Central Park if it doesn’t rain, a drum and bugle corps show at Giants Stadium (where I am volunteering and will get to see the whole show from the field), Avenue Q, a Yankees game, and who knows what else. Before the summer is over, I’d like to have added at least one more concert and at least one weekend getaway.

Unrelated to spontaneity (of course), I put some pictures online from a drum corps show earlier this month.