Developing Stage Chops

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For something that’s supposed to be so uniform and regimented, marching band always brings up memories of chaos for me.

Whether it was trying to get into uniform on a moving bus with 40 other people because we were late to a competition, getting dressed AND warming up because we were so late that as to miss our prep time, or just changing drill sets an hour or two before a performance. It always seemed that time was the enemy and we were always just on the cusp of being finished… but never quite getting there comfortably. Don’t get me wrong, it was a blast and I wouldn’t change anything – but it did teach me something about not fearing chaos.

One drill that we used in college that I’ve rehashed in my head over and over was doing the show off the line – in other words, take the entire band (which has just gotten to the field) and tell them get your horn out, warm up to a minute, and then do the show form the beginning without any long prep. You have to practice how you’ll perform and sometimes, performances don’t take place under ideal circumstances.

All of which leads me to something that Sam, the guitar player for my band, came across and shared on Facebook – Practicing vs. Playing Live (from Guitar Player). It’s a short read, so I won’t bother quoting anything – it’s worth the 3 minutes of your time, whether you apply it to music or not.

Don’t fear chaos – accept it, prepare for it, and use it to your advantage.

 

Is Danny Ainge Just That Dumb?

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Let’s get this confession out of the way – I’m not the world’s biggest basketball fan. I enjoy the occasional game on TV, will watch playoff games, and root for the Celtics because of lots of fond Larry Bird memories. However, I’m not the person to ask for a detailed breakdown of any particular team or scheme. Bob Ryan has forgotten more about basketball on a given Saturday afternoon than I’ll ever know about the game.

That being said, I’m completely convinced that not only is Danny Ainge a poor general manager, but he is a complete nincompoop as well.

Why else would be fully engaged in his third annual “Desperately Trying To Trade Rajon Rondo” Sweepstakes in 2011? Every year, Rondo seems to get better. Every year Danny Ainge tries harder to get him off the team. It’s like some sort of passive-aggressive vendetta. Did Rondo run over his dog during his rookie year or something? What gives?

For those willing to cite his lack of a consistent jumper and clutch scoring – save it. You’re describing the perfect point guard, which would be nice… if they existed. In every sport, every single player has faults – it’s the GM’s job to use strengths of one player to mask the weaknesses of another. Coach up what you can, hide what you can’t. Maybe he isn’t the top guy in the league – but he’s in the upper echelon, he’s young, he’s under contract for a reasonable amount of money, and mostly importantly, he’s had success in the pressure cooker that is Boston.

Why trade away a young player whom you can build around to support an aging cast of veterans who are for the most part over the hill and won’t be playing at all in another year or two? If Ainge was really that interested in winning a championship NOW, then he wouldn’t have traded Kendrick Perkins in what was really the last season of Boston’s current championship window. Perkins was playing for a new contract somewhere, the Celtics needed a big man, and they had no realistic alternative to replace him. Ah, but that would be asking for some type of consistency from Danny Dumbbell, which is a ridiculous expectation in itself.

Is it blasphemy to say these things about the GM who brought the Celtics to their 17th championship? No, because the man got lucky. Bringing Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett together was a Hail Mary to save his job and keep Paul Pierce happy enough to stay in Boston – and it worked out better than could’ve been realistically expected. No one could’ve imagined that Ray Allen had this much tread left on his tires and Danny was lucky enough that Kevin McHale was an even worse GM than himself to accept Al Jefferson and an expired Dunkin Donuts gift card for KG. Throw in drafting Rondo in the first place and you’re looking at the 3 really good moves that Ainge has made during his 8 years working for the Celtics. Not exactly the most impressive track record.

Luckily, it appears that Ainge will be saved from himself by the object of his desires, Chris Paul. Seems that even if the Celts could swing a deal for Paul that involved Rondo package deal, Paul wouldn’t sign an extension with the team – meaning that he’d be a very costly one year rental.

Maybe it’s all about motivating Rondo to get better. Maybe it’s Danny being a complete hammerhead. Both are possibilities, but I’d probably lay my money on option #2.

 

Sox Send The Wrong Guys To The Showers

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Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Over the past 10 years, the Boston Red Sox gave the impression of being somewhere between a well-run and model franchise. They were owned by people who cared about winning, tradition, the fans, and making a buck. Rather than wade into the “We need a new stadium… now!” waters, they looked at the situation, concluded that it wouldn’t get done and proceeded to renovate the living bejeezus out of Fenway Park to the delight of their fans and gobs of profit for themselves. See, I don’t mind team owners making a profit – even an obscene one – so long as they reinvest in the team, try to win, and don’t treat the fans like complete rubes. Keep that in mind because it’ll be important later.

Hope everyone enjoyed that decade of competency because all signs point to it being over. In the past week, the Sox have lost the manager and GM who helped the franchise get off an 86-year World Series schnide and then followed it up with another trophy three years later. Instead of shaking hands, smiling big for the camera and wishing them well, the organization has by all appearances shown them the door and then pushed them off the curb in front of a speeding cement truck. Allegations of painkiller abuse, airing the manager’s personal business, splitting hairs about whom was more responsible than whom when it came to certain personnel moves. It’s getting ugly enough around here that Yankees fans are placing calls to sports radio shows saying “Hey, maybe we collapsed in the playoffs, but at least we’re not the Red Sox”… and there’s no comeback for it. Continue reading →

Seven Years In Old Orchard Beach

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Sometimes, things just work out.

Seven years ago today, at about this time of the afternoon, I married the woman of my dreams. Kim and I met, of all places, in a Chevy dealership while I was doing my best to become the world’s worst car salesman. We dated for a little over two months before I proposed. I didn’t plan it out, didn’t have a ring (or the money to buy a ring), and no inclination other than this was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

We were married in Portland, Maine on a day sort of like this one – an 80-degree October day that seems to be all the proof a rational person would need to prove climate change. After telling our guests that it was only a short walk from the church to the reception, we realized that most everyone who followed our seemingly solid advice would be showing up sweating like Willie Nelson at a tax audit. Of course, one bit of planning had saved them an even warmer walk – we’d started the wedding at 5 pm, which was due to the Patriots-Dolphins game at 1 pm. Once I’d sprung that on Kim and she’d dealt with it in stride, I figured it was definitely meant to be. After all, it’s one thing to propose to a woman at 10 pm with no ring and in such an abrupt way that she has to ask a half dozen times whether it’s a joke – it’s quite another to ask a woman to schedule the day she’s been dreaming about since the age of 5 for a midseason football game.

Through it all, she’s put up with various forms of idiocy on my part and managed to stifle the urge to smother me in my sleep after some particularly lively discussions. What I appreciate most about Kim is the little things – her laugh, her smile, her sense of humor, and that she had the huevos to play guitar for me after our first date.

Sometimes, things just work out. And sometimes, they work out better than you could’ve ever imagined. Thank you for saying yes Kim, you’re everything I wanted and more importantly, everything I needed too. I love you deliriously.

Your Obligatory Yearly Facebook Rant

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It’s tough to start out this by saying “when Facebook made their latest changes” because by the time I’m finished typing, something else will have changed. Makes this whole thing a bit dodgy to begin with, but then again that sums up Facebook pretty well these days, doesn’t it? Dodgy. Which makes sense because after humble beginnings, widespread adoption, and a movie… the only thing left is either a slow, painful decline or for the entire thing to crumble. Either that, or the bass player is going to be discovered dead in a cheap motel bathtub shortly before the band hits big. Sometimes I get confused on these things… Continue reading →

The Art Of Undesigning

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When I was mourning the untimely demise of my old G5 Power Mac, it wasn’t just the inconvenience of the time lost and the cost to replace it – there was an emotional attachment. That may sound a bit funny considering it’s chunk of aluminum with lots of bits and pieces inside, but I did have some sort of connection with that machine. I remember opening the box when it first arrived, marveling at the little details in the packaging, the minimal amount of effort in hooking up cables, and the intuitiveness of its initial start up. After a few moments, I sat back and said to myself – “This is a beautiful machine.”

Design, in many ways, can be like the referee in your favorite sport – they only get noticed when something goes very wrong or very right. At the highest levels, they are a necessity of the game, keeping both teams honest and the game on track – but overall, we’d like them to be as invisible as possible. The only time you learn their names are when they’ve made a number of bad calls or one horrific call that dooms your team for the day. Even when they make a call in favor of your team, it’s not that likely their name will cross your mind later that day. In other words, good design shouldn’t be obvious.

I’ve found that over the years, little details are much more noticeable to me. With my last new car, I was constantly marveling at the small things built into the overall design which served a very specific purpose but were also unobtrusive to everyday use. It was good design – give me something I can use, and when I need a little something extra it’s been right there waiting for me without making itself obvious. That’s brilliant design.

The idea of making something looked “undesigned” is fascinating to me because it represents a tremendous amount of effort, thought, and tinkering to make a thing look as if that’s the way it’s supposed to look – as if to say “Well of course it looks that way, how else could it look?” It’s a challenge to be answered.

How Pixar Killed My Sports Blog

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Back in the day, I used to have a mildly successful sports blog. By “mildly successful” I mean that it had a few hundred regular readers, was fun to write, and made approximately 50 cents in Google AdSense funny money. For various reasons, it died several deaths before finally being retired last year for good. I love sports and I love writing, so what could’ve possibly gone wrong? I’m here to tell you it was one thing and one thing only… Pixar.

That cute little jumping desk lamp killed my sports blog.

Okay, so maybe that a bit of an overstatement… but since the internet is home to roughly a billion overstatements, exaggerations, and examples of out-and-out bullsh** at any given moment, it’s in good company. However, as overstated as the point may be, there is some truth to it. Continue reading →

Stealing Time

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Freelance Freedom #168 - Time Tracking - by N.C. Winters

After spending a few years being self-employed, I am convinced that there isn’t a freelancer out there who doesn’t struggle with managing their time, money, or both. In most cases, it just seems like there isn’t enough of either to go around – or that they’re being wasted with an efficiency that borders on the obscene. So when I go through a span like the last six weeks or so, it’s oddly comforting to know that I’m not alone in being completely messed up – I have some company.

I think the biggest issue facing any freelancer is balance. There’s a balance between work and social lives, between commitment to providing for your family and actually being present with your family, and overall, a balance between the usual feast-famine flux of the job itself. For me, I’ve found that a balance in the amount of work coming in helps to keep those other elements on track – too much or too little work, and the rest can become easily skewed. Continue reading →

Writing The Great American Novel… Or Something Slightly More Interesting Than A Subway Menu

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Writing is a bit like skinning a cat – there’s lots of ways to do it, just be sure to have a sharp tools and lots of plastic.

Okay, now that I’ve managed to garner all that previous PETA protest traffic, let’s be clear – writing is a personal thing. No matter how generalized a method, each writer will have their own quirks and unique “tricks” that will make that method their own. There are hundreds of books on the subject and a Google search on “writing methods” turns up just over a quarter billion returns. Lots of people have an opinion on this subject, most writers have some sort of a dog in the fight, and no one is completely right unless they’re talking about their own method as it pertains to their own results.

Now, what makes this interesting for me is that I’ve bounced in between lots of different methods for writing short form (poetry and very short stories), but have yet to find anything that would work for longer pieces (novels). If you want to get all analytical and accuse me of doing what’s easiest, go ahead – I’m guilty as charged. Part of the reason I love writing poetry (and love poetry in general) is that it’s a short burst of inspiration, an intense incubation of an idea, and the equivalent of a written sprint.

However, I do believe that everyone has at least one book in them – whether it’s good or bad. So I’m interested in how authors go about their work when it comes to writing a novel. This article delves into a rather basic overview of using an outline method, which I’d think is the most common way lots of novelists approach their work. It’s logical, provides a road map, and breaks the task up into bite-sized morsels that follows the old saying “How do you eat an elephant? … One bite at a time.”

The only problem I have with this tried-and-true-Mr.-Spock-logical-sensible-as-a-brown-pair-of-shoes is that does absolutely nothing for me emotionally. Maybe that’s the worst excuse you can possibly imagine when talking about writing a novel, but keep in mind that writing isn’t about money for me. Maybe that automatically puts me outside the target audience for most of these “How To Write A Novel” articles because they’re focused on getting from A to B logically at a brisk pace so the piece can be published and begat some kind of return for the author. A reasonable – and noble – enough goal, but not really my cup of tea.

For me, the Tom Robbins method is much more interesting, if somewhat less sensible and profitable. Go ahead and give that sucker a read and tell me whether or not his method of composing a novel doesn’t warm you heart while also scaring the living hell out of you at the same time. It’s completely insane to write that way – sentence by sentence with no outline or idea of how it ends until the story itself dictates when it’s over. It’d be like building the Empire State Building without blueprints – you’re pretty sure it’ll be a skyscraper, but no idea how many floors or even where the bathrooms go. However, it’s also whimsical and dammit if I’m not a sucker for some good old fashioned whimsy every now and again.

So, I guess the point here is that you can keep all your logical methods and I’ll go ahead and polish my sentences one at a time and see what happens. Guess the world doesn’t need another Stephen King or Tom Clancy anyways, right?