I Hate Literature. Literature Sucks. Only Idiots Like Literature.

I don't usually do these meme things, but in looking over this particular book meme, I realized it said a whole lot about my personality and world view, as well as my cultural - or non-cultural - upbringing. I've read almost nothing on it and most of those few things I have read I was forced to read in high school.

Just to make it more revealing, "NHO" means that I have never even heard of the book.

UPDATE: Bold does not work well with this template, so I've put a cross in front ot those I've read.

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1) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

I love Kira Knightley.


2) The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

Do the extended DVD's count?


3) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

I've seen two movies based on this book, and they were both mind numbingly boring.


4) Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

I'm not even much of a fan of the movies.


5) To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

I tried to watch the movie once, but I'm not much of a fan of courtroom lawyers (Since just about every problem in the world has dozens of those kinds of lawyers at the root of it), so I changed the channel.


6) †The Bible

I've read almost every English translation I'm aware of except for the Tyndale New Testament - most of which ended up in the King James anyway - from cover to cover. Some several times. My favorite is the Authorized Version (King James) but mostly because I love "Olde English." I have a Zondervan Layman's Parallel Bible with four different versions in parallel columns that I love, but it's missing what I think is the all around best English translation, and that is the NIV (New International Version). I've also read The Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (Which is about as long as the Bible itself) and a Protestant version of that entitled The Unfolding Drama of Redemption, which may actually be longer than the Bible. This probably says more about me than anything else in this particular meme.


7) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

Withering lows.


8) †Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

I was forced to read this in high school.


9) His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman *NHO*


10) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens


11) Little Women - Louisa M Alcott


12) Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *NHO*

I bet she was a dog, like that Baskervilles bitch.


13) Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

Saw the movie (I thought it sucked ass).


14) Complete Works of Shakespeare

Reading Shakespeare does nothing for me - I tried Henry V once, but gave up out of crushing boredom - but I love to see staged plays and movies of his work (If they don't suck, that is).


15) Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier *NHO*

Both my high school sweetheart and my ex-wife were named Rebecca: I wouldn't even see a movie with this title.


16) The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

Can't wait for the movie! But, only if Daniel Peter Jackson does it.


17) Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks *NHO*


18) Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger


19) The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger *NHO*


20) Middlemarch - George Eliot *NHO*


21) Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

Movie was good.


22) The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

Stupid movie.


23) Bleak House - Charles Dickens *NHO*


24) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

I did read The Gulag Archipellago by Solzenitzen when I was a junior in high school: I'm sure my time was better spent with that than any Tolstoy crap.


25) The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

Saw the movie, which was lame.


26) Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh *NHO*


27) Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

This one has always made me go "hmmmm..." I may eventually read this.


28) Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

I think I had this forced on me in high school, but I'm not sure. Was it a Dust Bowl novel of some kind?


29) Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

Only screen versions.


30) The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame *NHO*


31) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

Sexy name.


32) David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

I thought he was a tall, slender Jewish magician who changed his name for show biz.


33) Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

Only screen versions.


34) Emma - Jane Austen *NHO*

Good name... for a cow.


35) Persuasion - Jane Austen *NHO*


36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

Isn't this exactly the same as The Chronicles of Narnia? See, I don't even know that.


37) The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini *NHO*


38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres


39) Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden *NHO*

Loved the recent movie, since I lived in Japan and love Japanese culture (I used to go all over Japan to attend Sumo tournaments), but did not know it was a book.


40) Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

Screen versions only.


41) Animal Farm - George Orwell

The movie with John Balushi Tom Hulce was hilarious.


42) The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

Uh huh. Right. As if.


43) One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *NHO*


44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving *NHO*


45) The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins *NHO*


46) Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

That's a real book? I thought it was a joke about something I never understood. Sorta like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms.


47) Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy *NHO*


48) The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood


49) †Lord of the Flies - William Golding

Another book I was forced to read in high school. Barf.


50) Atonement - Ian McEwan *NHO*


51) Life of Pi - Yann Martel *NHO*

I did read Hawking's A Brief History of Time though.


52) †Dune - Frank Herbert

And here we have the exception that proves the rule: I read the entire series. It is the only written sci-fi series that ever hooked me. I loved it. All movies of it have sucked. Badly.


53) Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons *NHO*


54) Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen *NHO*


55) A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth *NHO*


56) The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon *NHO*


57) A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

I liked St. Augustine's "City of God," which I think this ripped off.


58) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

I thought the TV series version, "Roots" was quite good.


59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon *NHO*


60) Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *NHO*

Oh yeah, like that title is going to interest me. *rolleyes*


61) †Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

Another high school forced-read. Not bad though.


62) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Is that the book Sting was singing about?


63) The Secret History - Donna Tartt *NHO*


64) The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold *NHO*

Vagina Monologues sequel?


65) Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

He's the Count of a sandwich?


66) On The Road - Jack Kerouac


67) Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy *NHO*

Obscure indeed.


68) Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding *NHO*

Is this what those cute movies about the chubby chick are based on?


69) Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie *NHO*

Did he get a Fatwa for this one too?


70) Moby Dick - Herman Melville

I love the old movie of this.


71) Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

Ditto here: The old movie was great.


72) Dracula - Bram Stoker

I love vampire movies even when they are awful. Seriously.


73) The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett *NHO*


74) Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson *NHO*


75) Ulysses - James Joyce

I actually tried to read this. I read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I was touring Europe in the 80's and loved that, so I got a copy of Ulysses. I don't think I finished the first chapter. I remember thinking it was idiotic and made no sense and had no thread to it. Some people think it's a great book though. I think it's garbage.


76) The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath *NHO*

Bell Jar ruined the Star Wars prequels.


77) Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome *NHO*

I had an amazon of a girlfriend once, she... uh... nevermind.


78) Germinal - Emile Zola *NHO*


79) Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

I thought this was a woman's magazine.


80) Possession - AS Byatt *NHO*

Imagine going through life with the name AS.


81) A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

I believe I've seen several movies based upon this, if Ebenezer Scrooge is the protagonist, but I'm not positive about that (That says a lot, I'm sure). The Bill Murray version is my favorite.


82) Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell *NHO*

*shrug*


83) The Color Purple - Alice Walker

I couldn't even make it through the movie.


84) The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro *NHO*

Loved, loved, loved the movie. Didn't even know it was a book until right this instant.


85) Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

"There once was a Madam named Bovary,

and she had only one good ovary...

But it worked all too well,

when she said "What the hell!"...

despite all her work on the Rosary."

I hadn't broken out the old Clement Wood Complete Rhyming Dictionary in years. That was fun.


86) A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry *NHO*


87) Charlotte's Web - EB White

I distinctly remember all the little girls my age loving this when I was living in Panama - I was about eight - so I thought it was a chick thing. A little chick thing.


88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn *NHO*

I hope I meet more than five.


89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Screen versions only, some of which I love (Like Hound of the Baskervilles).


90) The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton *NHO*

They aren't really far away, they just look that way: Bansai!


91) Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

I did not authorize that biography.


92) The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

This is the bio I authorized.


93) The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks *NHO*

I found one of those in a deer blind at the beginning of the 1974 hunting season.


94) Watership Down - Richard Adams

If the ship is made of water, how can you tell?


95) A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole *NHO*

I thought this was a list of fictional stories: How - exactly - does the true story of the Candian Government fit in here? Eh?


96) A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute *NHO*

Fat and slow?


97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

Several screen versions, most of which I enjoyed.


98) Hamlet - William Shakespeare

Mel Gibson did this best IMO (Sorry Kenneth), though Rosenkrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead was a close second. LOL!


99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

Both screen versions.


100) Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

This is a book? I thought it was a play, but then, it and Cats were on Broadway for the entire time I worked in NYC (1984-1988).


I've read exactly 5% of these books: Nearly 50% of these books I've never even heard of.

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My mom has a story she likes to tell to embarrass me when we're visiting friends (Well, several actually), and it goes something like this: "I tried to get George to read all the books I loved as a child but he wouldn't even crack the covers open. One day when he was about seven he tossed one asside that I had given him and said, 'I'm not interested in fiction mother, I'm interested in facts.' and that was the last novel I tried to get him to read."

My room was filled with Time LIFE books, Audubon Encyclopedias and stuff like that, which I fairly devoured.



I'd open the cover of this book, though.

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La Patrie CW Concert First Impressions

OK, second impressions sorta/kinda, as I borrowed a non-cutaway version from my pal Mark Pollock of Transpecos Guitars a couple of months back.

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One of the things I find interesting in life are the various evolutions of thought that I go through. Years ago I wasn't happy playing anything other than handmade one-off acoustic classicals. I'm talking about guitars in the $2,500.00 to $7.500.00 range. That range would have extended higher if I had the means. Problem is, I'm a mega-klutz "bull in a china closet" kind of galoot: Bad things happen to good guitars if I own them. For example, the very first electric guitar I ever bought - a Les Paul Recording (Don't ask) - I put a MAJOR gash in the top of before I even took it out of the case for the first time. How? Well, you see, I set it on my bed, opened the case, and then unwrapped the brand new cable I got for it. While doing that, one of the cable ends swung around and augered into the soft mahogany top.... I cried bitter tears. I was eighteen, OK?

Over the years I've had one-of-a-kind gutars get damaged in ways you'd only believe if you saw videographic proof. The last straw came a couple of months ago when I mashed a $2,500.00 handmade classical to bits when I... tripped and fell into a tripple stand with three of my guitars on it. See, I have this anti-stat plastic sheet on the floor so I don't fry my computers and so I can slide my desk chair around on it, and the edge caught my slipper, and, well.... yes, it was late, I was watching a DVD, and... beer was involved.

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Super fine guitars are just as seductive as super fine women are: Super fine guitars make you sound good, and super fine women make you appear like a god to competing males. However, if you are a real artist, you can make any decent guitar sound good, and if you are a real man you can find the unique charms within the girl next door as well. So, I effected a major change of attitude with respect to guitars (I'm working on the women part): They have to be duplicable and they have to be replaceable. In other words, I need to have two of everything: My guitar PA rigs (I actually have three now), my electric nylon strings, and my acoustic nylon strings. This means I'll have a backup for everything, and if anything is stolen (Or, broken... ahem) I'll be able to replace it at the drop of a hat.

This was facilitated by my old acquaintance John McLaughlin. Says John, "I am an electric guitarist who loves acoustic guitar." He is the wisest musician I have ever personally met! That's it exactly: If I was a Christopher Parkening or a Scott Tennant I might actually merit a gazillion dollar acoustic... but I'm not and I don't. So...

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A few months back my wrist was aching from over-practicing, so I decided to visit my friend Mark to take a break and chew the fat, and I couldn't help but noodle around on a La Patrie Concert while he was busy with a customer. It felt almost exactly like my Multiac! More to the point, it had a low Flamenco-like action and marker dots on the side of the fingerboard.

"Too bad they don't make this in a cutaway." I said.

"Well, actually..." came the reply.

Sure enough, Lasido had just announced the cutaway version, so I ordered one on the spot. Now, you can get this axe with or without a built-in pickup system, but I chose the non-electric version because I'm going to put a Carlos CP-1a in it, natch.

It is not nearly as loud as my two (Surviving *arg*) concert classicals, but the tone is dark and solid, and as I say, it has a low enough action that pieces like Eddie Van Halen's "Spanish Fly and Joe Satriani's A Day at the Beach are very natural to play on it. Most concert classical guitarists - who are accustomed to dragging strings in from about an inch off the fingerboard - would find the action too low. That means it's just right for those of us who actually enjoy playing the guitar versus those who make a job out of it.

Best thing? It feels almost the same as my Multiac Grand Concert SA playing-wise. I really like that.

*****

Now, there are compromises, but none you wouldn't expect with a guitar in this price range (Circa $700.00 list). The back and sides are mahogany and the fingerboard is rosewood. If I ever get famous enough that they'll make a "Hucbald" model for me, it will have Indian rosewood back and sides, and ebony for the fretboard (And it will cost more, of course). I'm not a fan of cedar tops, and this one is pretty rugged (Read thick and less-than-optimally responsive) but that's one of the things I LIKE about it: I live in a desert where the humidity gets as low as 4% from time to time, and thick tops resist cracking (Uh... one of my other "ruined" concert classicals has gaping cracks in it from low humidity exposure). The Hucbald model would also have Sitka spruce for the top (But not some paper thin "tuned" top: Rather, a robust one). The nut and bridge are not bone, of course, and that's the last bone I have to pick. OK, the level of finish on the saddle is sorta/kinda primitive, but as I say, for the money, this is the most playable acoustic classical I've ever encountered.

Bottom line: I like it, and it is what I think a guitar should be for me now: A tool for making music.

Likewise, I no longer hunt with fancy schmancy rifles with Monte Carlo thumbhole stocks and blued finishes: Give me stainless steel and synthetic stocks every time.

*****

The LaSiDo Triumvirate:



The Ruger .270 Percent Solution:



I'm still a fan of the fancy schmancy girls though: Especially if they can shoot.

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Fighter Pilots (UPDATED)

Both my father and my step-father were US Air Force officers - fighter pilots - as well as best friends. My father and my step-father's wife died the same year a few months apart, so my mom and step-dad got married. They had known each other since before I was born, and I had known him all of my life, of course, so it was a natural: He just went from being "Uncle Joe" to being "dad" (I called my father "pop" and reserved that honor for him).

Those Greatest Generation guys rocked: My father was flying a P47-D Thunderbolt in WW II before his twentieth birthday, then he was recalled for the Korean Conflict and made the USAF a career. Later, he flew combat missions for the CIA in Viet Nam (It's all still classified: I have only the vaguest idea what he did there), and he finished up his career as the Station Traffic Officer at Yakota AFB, Tokyo, Japan (Which was the busiest Air Force base in the world at the time).

Joe remained in the service after WW II and was one of their top test pilots - he called General Yager "Charlie" - and he went on to be an Air Commando (Along with my father) and later had a brilliant stint at the Pentagon as one of their movers and shakers.

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This is a different kind of piece than I usually post here, as it is something that I improvised and recorded in a single take: There is no sheet music for it. I'm basically exploring E Lydian, E Aeolean, and some secondary subdominant implications that they share. I'll probably explore it a bit more and flesh it out some, but I really like the feel I captured, though the timing is a bit rugged in places: I'll have to play it to a metronome some eventually.

The 5.1 MB MP3 is HERE

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UPDATE: If you don't want to download the piece, you can listen to it on the web directly with your browser here.

I liked it so much I made it the bumper music on MySpace.

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This will go on a CD I'm putting together entitled "Heavy Nylon" along with the title track and the "crowd pleaser" pieces I play in my set: Classical Gas, Desert Song, Spanish Fly, A Day at the Beach, Eu So Quero Um Xodo, Mood For a Day, Yankee Doodle Dixie, and Stairway to Heaven. I might put Sonata One on there as well.

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This piece is dedicated to the memory of Lt. Col. Hobart G. Pepper Jr. and Col. Joe C. Vaden, both of the United States Air Force. I loved those guys.



Not my pop, but some Republic P47-D Thunderbolts snuggling up for a pose.

*****



Indeed.

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This Never Ceases to Amaze Me

That some weird musician who is into arcane contrapuntal exotica can post from his livingroom in a teeny tiny town in the middle of BFE and get readers around the world... that's just... I don't know, but it's interesting.

The Iranian hit is not all that unusual, by the way. I'm not sure why they search Google for "lustful" or why MMM ranks so high in that search (ahem), but it's an ongoing theme with Sitemeter for this blog.

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Happy Valentine's Day

I spoke with my manager the other night, and it appears I'll be hitting the road for Tucson, AZ next month to do at least three dates. I'll let you know as the hour approaches and things are more firmly settled.

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Quadrant Rotation of Entire Musical Continuities

When I wrote the Fuga: Reductio ad Absurdum studies a while back - I've since changed the titles to Irreducible Fugues - I realized that one could use Schillinger's concept of quadrant rotation to get four versions of any musical continuity so long as the thematic material was set up rhythmically to allow for it. In the Invertible Canon for Wind Choir of a couple of posts back I demonstrated inverting an entire continuity, but the themes involved with that piece were not set up with the backwards versions in mind, so the other two possibilities - retrograde and inverted retrograde - do not work so well.

Like many musicians, I suppose, I had always considered retrogrades to be pretty much out of bounds except for parlor tricks - even Bach's crab canons sound forced to me - and themes played backwards usually sound goofy and are notoriously difficult to recognize. Well, those little irreducible fugue exercises made me realize why that is so: The rhythms are not properly set up to sound natural and be recognizable in the reverse direction.

I experimented with symmetrical rhythms - reversing them would obviously be no problem - but they lack a certain degree of interest. What I wanted was a head and tail fugue subject that made a canon and would work in all four positions. What I found the key to be (At least, one of the keys) is slowing down the rhythm at the end of the tail figure. Not as slow as the head, but at least slower than the fastest note values (Or, shortest note values).

The following example is just an experiment - I write stuff like this all the time (It's sort of like doing compositional workouts) - and I don't know if it will ever get beyond this stage, but I thought it interesting enough to share. As with all of the fugue subjects I write, this has a premise: The theme accelerates so that in the fourth measure there is simultaneous 2:1, 3:1, and 4:1 counterpoint happening. This rhythmic peculiarity also aids in recognizing the retrograde forms of the continuity.

Here is the canon in its original form:



As you can see, the subject starts out with a typical do, sol head figure in half notes which is then followed by an ascending chromatic tetrachord in quarters. The third measure then has quarter note triplets in an ascending diatonic tetrachord, followed by eighths descending chromatically to the final le, sol in quarters to end the subject.

Remember: I use the irreducible set of contrapuntal laws derived from implications of the overtone series:

1) Parallel Perfect Consonances are Not Allowed.

2) Parallel Imperfect Consonances are Allowed.

3) Parallel Dissonances are Not Allowed.

4) Unequal Parallels are Allowed.

5) Contrary Stepwise Motion Justifies Any Intervallic Succession (Simultaneous and non-simultaneous cross-relations are allowed).

This means the sound is quite dissonant and unusual, and the more I do this sort of thing, the more I like the language I'm developing here: I first used it in the Perpetual Canon for String Choir and it has continued to develop from there.

Here is the intervallically strict inversion of the canon:



Note that I have raised the third degree of the mode to maintain intervallic strictness. If I had not done that, there would have been parallel perfect fourths into the second half of the third measure of this version: The unequal parallel of the augmented fourth to the perfect fourth is perfectly acceptable though. This becomes unequal fifths in the fourth measure where the melodic fragments are inverted.

Now for the retrograde:



Notice how the quarter notes launch into the theme smoothly. Eighths right off the bat would not have worked so well, which is why most fugue subjects don't reverse well. The gradual slowing of the theme also leads nicely to the cadence at the end.

And, the inverted retrograde:



If you want to hear these, they are now on my Downloads Page in both PDF and MP3 formats.

I think I may link these together into a double crab canon for my next exercise.

It's in the 70's here today, so I think I'll go out and get some vitimin D in my system.

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A Moment Of Silence for Anna Nicole Smith

Larger than life... er... literally.

A cultural icon in the world at... ah... large... ahem... but a true heroine for those of us in the Texas Trailer Trash Clique.

Never before has so large a set of boobs been combined with such a... paucity of talent.

Leveraging cleavage into a multi-billion dollar business bust... er... "must"... bespeak some sort of talent though.



I, however, have always been and will always remain a "butt man": Anna Nicole had it ALL!

I will miss that particular fantasy.

A lot.

RIP babe: You went farther and faster than any of your detractors.

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