Ponderings and Musings

Courtesy of MichaelGiacchinoMusic.com

I’ve mentioned before that my first run at college was to become a music teacher. I attended SUNY Fredonia trying to accomplish this task. I didn’t get very far in the endeavor, as I discovered that I wasn’t really cut out to be a music teacher, but it did enhance my love for good music. Great music. Moving music. Music that inspires. When I worked in Top 40 radio I rarely heard music that was inspiring. While today’s pop music is uninspired, cookie-cutter dreck, the same could be said for music in the 1990s, just to a much lesser degree.

When I started at SUNY Fredonia in the autumn of 1986 they had just revamped one of the orchestra/band practicing rooms to an electronic music studio. Equipped with Macs, microphones, MIDI equipment and lots and lots of analog recording equipment, it was that very expensive room where a select few were allowed to play. Of course, the technology of 1986 comes nowhere close to even what we have in our iPhones or iPads today, but occasionally I would hear awesome sounds coming out of that studio. Sounds that inspired. And I always found that cool.

When we rode “Space Mountain” at Disneyland last week I was immediately moved by the soundtrack that accompanied the ride. Decidedly different than what is heard on “Space Mountain” in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, I fell in love with the movement and whimsy of the piece. It fit the theme of the ride perfectly and the timing seemed to be go hand and hand with what was happening as we experienced the ride. I looked for information on the piece and found that the composer was Michael Giacchino.

The other night we saw “Spider-Man: Homecoming” at the movies. Like a dutiful geek, we sat through all of the ending credits so we could see both post credits scenes. One of the pieces of music during the credits was from earlier in the movie and I found that I could instantly identify the composer. I looked it up and indeed, “Academic Decommitment” was also written by Michael Giacchino (pictured above).

I’ve since been seeking out his work on Apple Music and I’m in love with his style, his approach and his inspiration. He’s a soundtrack genius and after reading his bio I discovered it’s basically because he’s a soundtrack geek. That’s pretty awesome.

Embrace your inner geek and run with it. Your personal inspiration will inspire others.

I feel the need to play around with GarageBand again once we get settled in Chicago. There’s some soundtrack music from my youth that I want to reimagine, respin and see what noodling I can do with it to make it sound 21st century.

I’m looking forward to sharing my inspiration.

The flight attendant stands at the front of the airplane, centered in the aisle in front of the first row and stares down the aisle toward the back of the airplane. I have no idea what she is looking at. Her hands are behind her back, though she doesn’t seem relaxed. Her posture is slightly aggressive. I’m curious as to why she chooses this pose, this stance and this body language. It doesn’t make sense to me. Flight attendants should be friendly, warm and inviting until provoked. Once provoked then all bets are off, but there is absolutely nothing happening on this flight right now to warrant such a stance.

I can’t help but wonder why she seems cranky. Is she not enjoying her job? Has another flight attendant said something catty in the galley? Did someone not flush? Are we out of Coke Zero? Is someone being particularly particular in first class? Have we offended her in some way?

Then I started to wonder if she was late for an appointment. Perhaps she missed her kids. Her spouse. Her dog. Maybe she just felt more comfortable on the West Coast. Was her uniform too loose? Too tight?

We did leave Chicago three hours behind schedule but that was due to Mother Nature having some sort of repeated hissy fit. It wasn’t the fault of the airline. It wasn’t the fault of the airport. It was unsafe to fly until we flew and that’s the way air travel goes. Like it or leave it, if man was meant to fly 24/7 he wouldn’t be at risk of being ripped apart by updrafts or being struck by lightning when standing on the ground. He’d have feathers, not whiskers.

The flight attendant in question stood there for a solid 10 minutes in this stance, nearly unmoving until someone wanted to use the lavatory. Had she a tall hat she could have guarded Buckingham Palace, but that was not meant to be. She was standing on an Airbus and did not look like she was having a good time. I smiled. She did not smile back.

That is unfortunate because flying is awesome. Even when the lav stinks and the kids are screaming and a woman is complaining about the temperature of the cabin and the flight is behind schedule and ground is obscured from view. Flying is awesome and the feat deserves the respect one would expect when you’re several miles away from the planet under man made power.

Enjoy your flight. Always.

I’m sitting on Virgin America flight 231 from Chicago/O’Hare to Los Angeles. Seated in 6D, Earl is across the aisle to my left in 6C, Chris and Jamie are in 6E and 6F. Jamie always sits next to the window. We are on an Airbus 320. Like all Virgin aircraft, it’s appointed in a trendy fashion with purple lighting, a boutiquy color scheme and decent electronic gadgetry in the seatback in front of me. I have already ordered my food. Once the turbulence settles down it’ll be delivered.

Departure was delayed nearly three hours due to thunderstorms passing through the Chicago area. One of the many things I’m excited about when it comes to moving to Chicago is the weather. The thunderstorms have a little more zing than what we have in our current home. I miss the days of storms with zing like we had growing up near Lake Ontario. Chicago will fit the bill nicely.

Since we are on a trendy airline going to a trendy location, I have been people watching like crazy. At the terminal Earl was seated next to someone who must have been famous in some way but we had no idea who he was. People were asking to have their photos taken with him, shaking his hand, etc. He wore sunglasses some of the time. We didn’t interact with him except when he walked away and forgot his water bottle. Earl followed and returned it to him. He was thankful. It’s the little things that make the world nicer.

In 5C is a young bearded fellow who opened his MacBook and started typing in Microsoft Word (boo) as soon as we got to 10,000 feet. A casual glance at his screen (because I’m rude like that) shows that he’s typing a script of some sort. My eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be but he’s writing a sitcom script described with the tone of “How I Met Your Mother”. There’s other stuff on there but I won’t share it here because I’m not overly rude, just a little rude. The title of the episode or potential sitcom (not sure of the scope of this little project he’s composing ferociously) is clever. I’d be intrigued. I could see his name and I looked him up on IMDB, he’s written a few things for television before and received appropriate credit.

The thing that I really enjoy about this guy is that he has a pad of paper and a MacBook and he had it set up so he could start typing immediately. He opened it up to a blank page in Word and just let his creativity flow. That’s kind of awesome. I find that inspiring.

I often get caught up in the minutiae of how I want to record my thoughts and then I end up losing the creative flow before actually doing anything about it. My OCD of having things “perfect” on my iPad or MacBook screen sometimes distracts me enough that my little ADHD tendencies kick in. I need to find a way to reel this in. A woman I used to work for offered my Adderall but I don’t want to resort to drugs for this sort of thing. I’d rather just tweak my willpower so that I’m able to do what I need to do.

See, now I’m typing my blog entry and I’m being distracted by a screaming kid somewhere in the back of the airplane. Oh look, there’s a dog on the floor three rows in front of me. 

I think I’ll go surf the Internet a bit.

With Earl and I getting ready to relocate to the Midwest later this summer we’ve been doing some odds and ends around the house getting it ready to be a market showplace. Every room (except the bathrooms) has a ceiling fan/light fixture on the ceiling. We both agreed that it would probably be best if we didn’t have to show prospective owners of our house how to beat on the kitchen ceiling fan with a broom to cool it down a little.

Enter a ceiling fan installation project.

The instructions on this Harbor Breeze ceiling fan were pretty straightforward and estimated that installation would take 120 minutes. We were able to get it installed in less than 90 minutes. When we fired everything up and confirmed that neither the wall nor ceiling were on fire, we discovered that the original electrician used non-standard color assignments for the wiring so the light switch was operating the fan and the fan switch was operating the light. I opted to just flip the wires at the combo switch and voila, light flicks light and fan spins fan.

We were so elated with our progress that we went crazy and reinstalled the toilet in the downstairs bathroom that had been removed for the floor tile replacement project of last week. Earl and I have seated and reseated toilets in this house so many times that we have it down to a science. The toilet was installed, flushed twice, peed in once and flushed again without a leak (except my power pee) in less than 10 minutes.

A great night of accomplishment.

I would really like to hear thoughts and comments from others on what Simon Sinek says about Donald Trump in this video. This interview is from June 2016. One of the quotes from the interview, “A narcissistic population gets narcissistic politicians”, led me into some self-reflection today.

What can we do to make our society less narcissistic?

All my life I’ve had two recurring dreams about my demise. One of these dreams involves being struck by lightning as I stand on the porch or patio of an as-of-yet unknown home. 

Yet I go and chase storms every chance I get, loving every minute of it. In fact, we are now back home, I’m standing on the porch while the sky is streaked with the Lightning of an incoming storm. 

Life is too short to live without risk. 

My dad and I flew together in this airplane in 2001. Our “old school” photos have already been moved to Chicago, or else I’d be sharing some snaps from that first flight together in his Acrosport II. I do have a couple of shots taken on an old flip phone in 2005.

A couple of days ago I complained on Facebook about the litany of Father’s Day ads being shoved in my direction via email, social media, etc. You’d think with all the information they glean from my online activities, companies would be smart enough to figure out that I have no reason to buy a Father’s Day gift in 2017.

My dad passed on in 2011, nearly six years ago, but Father’s Day can be a little bit of a bummer. This year I’m choosing to focus on the countless great memories I have of my dad.

But I still miss him.