What Have YOU Listened To Today?

For as long as I can remember, I have always really been into music. Being the son of a professional musician certainly makes exposure to music a little easier than being the son of someone who doesn’t know the Beatles from a beetle. I remember being a young little tyke wanting only to watch cartoons on any given weekend morning and having my dad play jazz music for me and I had to count out time for him before I could tune in to Scooby-Doo and the Superfriends.

Well, flash-forward thirty-plus years to today, and I ask you the question: What have YOU listened to today? I spent the entire balance of the day in my classroom (mainly working on my August/September calendar, amongst other things). Rather than toil away in silence, I decided to break out some tapes and cds from home to listen to that I haven’t ever or haven’t listened to lately. I don’t know what I was thinking around 630 am this morning when I made my decisions, but I have to say that I did enjoy the soundtrack to the day.

1. Dread Zeppelin, “Un-Led-Ed”. If you are in the mood for Led Zeppelin songs performed in a reggae style sung by an Elvis impersonator then you have found the perfect tape. I prefer the first side a lot more than the second side but there are classic moments on both. I used to work with a teacher who knew the band and had them perform at her wedding. Good for a laugh or two.
2. Lenny Kravitz, “Are You Gonna Go My Way”. Besides his first album, this is my favorite Lenny tape. I enjoy and sing along to almost every song on this tape, my favorites being “Believe”, “Come On and Love Me”, and “Just Be A Woman”. Mind you, this was before every Lenny Kravitz song sounded the same as the one that came out last time. A good, quality listen.
3. The Very Best of the Coasters. I’ll bet you didn’t see that one coming, huh? My dad used to have a jukbox in our house that was loaded with Coasters (and Platters and Drifters) songs, so I’ve been singing these songs my whole life. This being my first listen to this disc, I discovered the song “I’m a Hog For You” and I must’ve listened to that about five times in a row.
4. Circus of Power, “Vices”. I bought this tape when I was a college student at Davis and I was into hard rock. The singer sounds like Ian Astbury from the Cult and the band is a serious riff machine that churns out some seriously catchy and well-crafted songs. I remember having this tape in my Cutlass Ciera and, being in Davis in the summer, the plastic box started melting and ended up being a bit warped and lopsided. I still have the box (and it’s still warped). I am going to make it my mission to track down the band’s other studio releases when I go to Amoeba and Rasputins and Vinyl Solution in the near future.
5. Ricky Nelson’s Greatest Hits. Another out of left field selection, I really enjoyed this one too. It was so nice to listen to this disc as I colored my calendar; it was extremely soothing and relaxing and easy to listen to. My current, first-time-ever listened to faves were “Travelin’ Man” and “Fools Rush In”.
6. “Hopelessly Devoted To You Volume 6″. This is the second year that I’ve purchased this Sub City/Hopeless Records annual compilation and I couldn’t be happier. Last year I discovered Avenged Sevenfold thanks to Volume 5 and I could say the same about this year, in particular Amber Pacific. Unfortunately I am currently only on the third track of disc one as I am writing this so I can’t pontificate any more about any other bands included at this time. Perhaps next time around.

So, what have YOU listened to today?

You Can’t Relive The Past

Two years ago, I was assigned to be on the Renaissance committee at school. The main function of the comittee was to promote and nurture scholastic and community achievement amongst the students at our school. There are various rewards and perks available to the kids for being recognized by the committee (as a result of their own actions on campus, both scholastically and socially).

My particular function on this committee was to be the public broadcasting unit for the group. I was given the task each month (or so) to create a video that would then be shown to the entire school during the scheduled televised bulletin time.

I decided to use fandango-esque brown paper bag type puppets to tell the stories that tied directly into the character trait of that month. I suppose in future postings, if I figure it out even, I could try to upload the videos I did here, but for now, I am going to post a few pictures that I used in one of my movies.

The trait of the month was community service and I sent my fandango puppet out to the health fair that our school’s PE Department was hosting to get a sense of what was going down in our community and how so many people from a variety of different walks of life got involved.

The two-fold reason for this post today is to see whether I could figure out how to post pictures here and to revisit the memory of making these movies for the past two years. The first year I did this project everything was new and exciting and I knew nothing about anything and I learned what I needed to learn in order to get something decent in at the deadline. Something changed about the process during the second year, though. While the end product was technically superior, it wasn’t nearly as fun and exciting to create. I guess you can’t relive the past.

San Bruno Lions Baseball

When I was a kid, I had this friend named Sean. We were friends from the age of 6 until we were 15 when I refused to continue playing Dungeons & Dragons with him because we were about to enter high school. This proclamation of my emancipation from the realm of the dungeon master, hit points, 20-sided dice, and paladins and goblins caused an irrepairable rift in our relationship that lasted throughout the entirety of our time at Capuchino High School and well into the years beyond. The last I heard, he had moved to New Mexico with his family and I wish him well.

Way back when, when I was 7 years old, I was a year too young to play baseball but I signed up to be the batboy on Sean’s team, the San Bruno Lions. Our uniforms were navy blue jerseys with Lions written across the chest in yellow block letters. We wore white pants with blue stirrups. Because I was one to three years younger than everyone on the team (and subsequently the smallest), I got stuck with the number ONE on the back of my jersey.

I remember bugging my coach, Mr. Quigley, every game in a vain attempt to get in the game. He was always nice about it but he steadfastly refused each and every time I asked him. I did get to be the guy that catches the ball during infield practice for the coach and I did enjoy doing that.

As my time as 7 year old batboy passed, so did my years as an 8, 9, and 10 year old on the San Bruno Lions. My playing time went from 3 innings to 5 innings to the whole game at fielding pitcher, second base, left field, and center field. As my playing time increased, so did my offensive prowess. My last year, we finished the season with a 16 – 2 record and I batted around a .680 clip.

To this day, I can recall the smell of the eucaplytus trees at diamond 3, the look of the snack bar and the taste of fun dip candy near diamond 1, the prospect of the Samoan rugby players and their game spilling over on to diamond 2 and interupting our game for a few moments, and the feeling of running the bases after I hit the “snot out of the ball”, just like it was yesterday.

Those were the days, man. When all that mattered every day during the summer was getting home before it got dark and who you were playing the next time you suited up. The reason I am strolling down memory lane today is because I glimpsed a trophy at my cousin Tracy’s house yesterday that belonged to her son, Andey, and it was his San Bruno Pee Wee league all star trophy and it really brought me back.

Back when I was a Pee Wee all star.