I promised a rant, but quite frankly, I’m tired of ranting on this subject. I’m going to defer to professor Bob:
In short, people, learn the damn language or shut up. I don’t expect everyone to be an expert, but learn the basics.
So, I picked up a City Pages and flipped through it tonight. First time I’d done that in a while. This has really bugged me the last few years, but it has clearly reached an epidemic proportion:
STOP USING THE PAPYRUS FONT!
You’ve seen it, even if you don’t know it by name. It’s on every home-made ad and business card for every quasi-medical holistic massage, hot stone treatment, accupuncture, foot bath, herbal cleansing spiritual healing center out there. It doesn’t make your business look mystical, it makes it look amateur.
Please, just stop.
Next up: another rant about apostrophes. We’re going to run out of them if you people don’t back off.
Behind again… no writing for a while… man, these themes are getting tired.
Anyway, I’m back. I’m writing now, so deal with it.
I guess the first thing to catch up on would be the 2008 Ironman. I didn’t make it this year. Oh, I loaded my bike on the roof and drove down to Lakeville, but circumstances were such that I never even mounted my bike to start the ride. There are all sorts of targets for my finger-pointing, but it all really comes down to me: I got myself into a position that made it nearly impossible to ride. I’m still hoping to ride a century by the end of the year. I’m doing everything in my control to get there. We’ll see how well the things out of my control play along.
In other, related news, my back pain has gotten ridiculous. I honestly cannot remember the last time I was not in pain. It never goes away, it simply varies from a dull throb to a sharp, crippling pain. I’m back to regular chiropractic visits after six months of insurance nightmares, which help but do not fix the problem. I need to drop some weight, I need to get more exercise, I need to replace my desk chair. I also need to relax; I’m starting to suspect that stress is Spinal Enemy #1.
That’s all for now. More soon. I’m going to try to write a few minutes every day and get my brain back into shape. Like everything else, the brain needs regular exercise to stay healthy.
So, just a quick note, ’cause I should be working right now. It seems that my Google map of great restaurants in the Twin Cities is completely trashed. I’ve been noticing the last few weeks that Google started replacing the letter “u” in all my reviews with a blank space. It’s amazing what happens to your writing when you lose a vowel. Anyway, now it seems that even loading the page will cause Safari to crash. I’ll have to experiment and see if perhaps I can even get to the page with Firefox or something.
For now, though, my main recommendation is to avoid “Andy Recommends” for the time being.
Update: It appears this is a Safari issue. So, if you’re browsing the web with something other than Safari (which is most people), go nuts: www.andymcclure.com/ar
If you are using Safari, just be annoyed. Or download Firefox. Or take your chances… it seems this is not a consistent, reproducible effect.
My loyal readers must be getting awfully bored with this. I think I’m up to 2, maybe even 3 loyal readers. Guess I better get to work…
I also had better stop typing ellipses and just using three periods instead. They don’t seem to hold up well on the interwebs. Or I could stop relying on ellipses every time I’m not sure how to wrap up a thought. Yes, that would probably be a better way to go.
I should also see if I might be able to possibly consider getting around to the idea of coming to something resembling a point.
So, winter has finally caught up to my wife and I; we’re suffering from the first big cold of the season. I’ve felt this one creeping up on me for weeks, and I’ve been fighting valiantly with citrus, garlic, and sriracha. Although I won many battles, I still lost the war. On the up side, I have this great low, gravelly voice at the moment, which makes me sound like a total badass.
What else? I know I had things in mind to write about today over lunch. I think a slight fever and a truckload of cold medicine might be affecting my, uh… whatchacallit.
I think I’ll stop now. I’ll write more soon. There are a few good shows coming up that I should write about. I also have a new restaurant to add to my dining guide. I just can’t seem to focus at the moment.
So, here I sit in St. Cloud, 9:30 PM, with a minimum of 2 hours to kill. I’m doing a press check for work, which was originally scheduled for Monday and has been gradually bumped to Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Sure, that’s the nature of the business. It’s annoying, but that’s how it goes. I do this a couple times a year, in theory the only “extra” hours I work.
It’s not that. It’s the idea that I’m here to check on people who are far better at their jobs than I can ever be. They have a multi-jillion dollar, state-of-the-art press, probably made in Germany. It’s obscenely accurate, with little cameras that check the registration constantly (which probably translates to many times a second).
Maybe I’m just being grouchy. (OK, yes, I am being grouchy.) I’ve been devoting a lot of energy lately to thinking about what I want to be when I grow up. I was really excited to get this new job, and hopeful that this was something I could really get into. And it is. It’s just not playing out the way I imagined it.
Real life is failing to live up to my expectations, and it’s pissing me off.
I’m working late a little more than I’d like. Not a lot, but still, more than I’d like. The workload is heavy. I like it that way. But maybe not quite this heavy. The expectations are high. That’s good; it pushes me to do better, to be better. But they’re really high.
Of course, wherever the expectations are placed on me, I will always raise them a bit above that. It’s what I do. Psychologists probably have a name for that. I wonder if they have a pill for it?
In other news, since a new job with an extra-large workload wasn’t enough, I’ve picked up some fill-in work playing bass. I had a week to learn about 35 tunes, which I will play for the first time tomorrow night. OK, sure, we got together a couple times and actually ran through about half of them, but there are still a dozen or so that I will be playing for the first time on stage. Don’t take this as complaining… like I said above, wherever the expectations are placed on me, I will raise them a bit higher. I work best under pressure.
So, if you’re reading this and looking for something to do tomorrow night, come on out to Dibbo’s and catch Lewd Panache, with the woefully underrehearsed bass player. Or Saturday at O’Gara’s. Or next Thursday at Red Sea. Or the following Friday at, uh…. I forget where that next one is. You can look it up on my website.
On that note, does anyone read this? I’m always curious if someone does, or if this is purely for my own amusement. I do enjoy the writing; I just wish I had a bit more focus. And time to apply that focus.
And on that note, for those of you anxiously awaiting my book, it will not be done by Christmas as originally planned. I have not set a new deadline for myself, as I don’t know how much my time will be my own for the next few months. I may end up just posting chapters online as they’re completed. But, that’s a discussion for another day. There’s a TV in this room, and I haven’t watched TV in months.
OK, time to share a couple recipes. I have to give credit to Peace Coffee for inspiring the first one, but their recipe was a bit off. I’ve refined it, so here you go:
Espresso Pumpkin Pie
1 16-oz. can pumpkin
1 12-oz. can evaporated milk
2 eggs
1 shot (1–2 oz.) espresso, cooled
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp finely ground espresso beans
1/4 tsp black pepper (freshly ground if possible)
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Pour into uncooked pie crust and bake at 425° for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 325° and bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, approximately 40 minutes. Cool for at least 30 minutes before serving. Serve with whipped cream and a drizzle of chocolate syrup (the darker, the better). Makes 1 10″ pie (or a fairly deep 9″).
Ginger Pumpkin Pie
1 16-oz. can pumpkin
1 12-oz. can evaporated milk
2 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
Dash of cloves
Fresh ginger to taste (I use a piece a little bigger than my thumb. It’s possible to use too much, but you have to try really hard.)
Combine all ingredients except ginger in a large bowl and mix well. Peel ginger and run through a garlic press, into the pie batter. (Whatever makes it through the press goes in, but the stringy bits left inside the press should be discarded. Squeeze hard, you want all that juice.) Stir a little more to distribute the ginger. Pour into uncooked pie crust and bake at 425° for 15 minutes. Reduce temperature to 325° and bake until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean, approximately 40 minutes. Cool for at least 30 minutes before serving. Serve with whipped cream. Makes 1 10″ pie (or a fairly deep 9″).
Pumpkin pie tips: Use a bowl with a spout for easy pouring. Slide the oven rack out and place the empty pie crust on the rack before you fill it. That way, you can avoid trying to lower a really full pie into the oven. A vegetable peeler works great on fresh ginger. It’s really hard to overbake a pumpkin pie, so if you’re not sure, go a few minutes longer.
If you want to make both pies at the same time, I’d suggest making the ginger first, then the espresso. You can skip washing the bowl in between, the tiny bit of ginger won’t bother the epsresso pie at all.
Yes, time just marches onward, doesn’t it? I’ve been writing more and more posts, but unfortunately, they’ve all been in my head. I just haven’t been able to make the time to actually type them out. I’d like to correct some of that. Of course, at 6:00 in the morning, I’m not at my wittiest.I started a new job at the beginning of the month. I’ve left the glamorous world of advertising for the slightly less glamorous world of publishing. It’s a great little company with some really wonderful people. I work 8-hour days, I get actual vacation time, and I never get screamed at anymore. Good grammar and punctuation are not only welcomed but encouraged, and I’m not the only person in the building who says things like “em-dash” or “trailing comma.” In short, it’s awesome.Stellar Vector finally released the EP, “You’re Not Included.” This recording was in the can months before I even joined the band, which was a year ago. It started to seem this CD was cursed (or perhaps a curse), as problems and delays blocked the release over and over. We played a show on the 12th to celebrate the release, which technically happened on the 16th, although I don’t believe it’s actually available anywhere at this exact moment. It will be available as a free CD-quality download with the option to choose your own price very soon. Yes, more delays. Did you really expect otherwise?On the home front, we started work on the retaining wall. After several weeks of excavating, the first blocks went in last night. Best guess, I’d say we moved about 4 tons of dirt (by hand) to prep the site. We installed a little over 1 ton of stone (by hand) last night, with about 5 more to go. Did I mention we’re doing it by hand? I’m starting to develop Popeye arms… I’ve been joking that I’ll have to get an anchor tattoo when this is all done.That’s all for this installment of the continuous catch-up. Here’s a quick list of some of the things about which I didn’t write: Fat Tire, the Harry Potter Film Festival, more job interviews, the Rush show, bicycle brakes, bad health insurance, a Surly Cross Check, SurlyFest, the They Might Be Giants show (with a surly bass player), Surly Coffee Bender, the quest to eliminate my bass amp, respectable plumbers, Pie Fest 2007, and the Twin Cities Marathon. Upcoming events you might want to know about but that I may not write about: 10/20 SSIK @ the Breakaway Bar, 10/25 Captured By Robots @ Triple Rock, 11/1 Gogol Bordello @ First Ave, 11/19 Mazowsze @ St. Cate’s, and 11/30 Stellar Vector @ Station 4.And somehow, I can’t seem to give up coffee…
Sheesh, I need to write more. Lazy, lazy. Or perhaps busy, busy. Yes, that sounds better, and is much more consistent with my previous ramblings.
Anyway, I’m excited. My wife and I are going on a cruise in June, and I just booked the airfare. Actually, my whole family is going. It started as a graduation celebration for my nephew and grew into a full-blown family trip. My wife and I added a couple extra days on the end in San Juan just for us. That should be nice.
Here’s how long until we leave: countdown.
Really, that’s the only reason I wrote this post. I wanted somewhere to dump that link. I really should come back and write some more one of these days.
I love movies. I especially like the special effects bonanzas with dinosaurs and space ships. I like to watch them in my basement with a cold, delicious craft-brewed beer, preferably something wheaty of Belgian origin. But I’ve never convinced myself that I should make my own, movies or beers.
Our fair cities are overrun with godawful musicians who bring down the entire art form. Rail-thin hipsters with Casio keyboards, whiny chicks with acoustic guitars and rednecks who shall bring back the rawk are killing the local music scene.
There are, of course, exceptions. The world is full of great bands, some known, some not, and they all started somewhere. They should be encouraged, supported and nurtured. They should be appreciated, and they should be paid. I’m not discussing them right now, I’m trying to save them.
When I tell people I’m in a band, I get a wide array of responses. Some people imagine me strung out in a posh hotel doing lines off a model’s stomach. Some are excited and want to hear all about it. Most just shrug apathetically, because they already know loads of people in loads of bands. It’s not anything special.
Those people aren’t entirely wrong. Being in a band used to mean something. It used to mean hours spent rehearsing and more hours spent promoting. It used to mean saving money from a crappy part-time job to scrape up enough to record a demo. It used to mean that you believed in yourself and your band enough to actually devote some effort into making something out of it.
Now, any schmuck with a couple hundred bucks can slap together a demo, dump it on MySpace and book a show at some local club’s New Band Night. You know that deal: four bands nobody cares about playing for each other’s roommates and girlfriends, maybe even that guy from work who doesn’t get out much. The club makes just enough to justify unlocking the door, at least on average.
Meanwhile, those bands that are actually more interested in making music than scoring chicks have a whole new hurdle to overcome: you.
How can a band be expected to draw well when you’ve trained the city to believe that local music sucks? How can a club build up a scene when nine out of ten local bands actually drive customers out the door? How can you expect me to tell my friends and fans to stick around for your set when you can’t even tune your own instrument?
I don’t blame you, I really don’t. You love music, you probably always have. You grew up playing air guitar in your bedroom and dreamed of taking the stage. You wrote a song that got you laid Freshman year, so you must have talent. Why shouldn’t you be playing local clubs?
I’ll tell you why: you’re pissing on the scene.
A local music scene with a hundred great bands is something to be excited about. Shows become events, and people actually make plans for events. You can walk into any live music club and see something worthwhile. A local music scene with a hundred great bands and a thousand horrible ones is just a nuisance. Who wants to risk those kinds of odds? Pissing in your beer doesn’t make more beer, it just ruins what you already had.
So if you love music but have no talent for it, please, stop. A great local music scene needs an audience. Our local music scene needs an audience far more than it needs another band. Our local music scene needs you, just not on stage.