Author: halfcnote

Music? of the Night

Logo courtesy Grammys.org

Okay.  The Grammys are over.  The jesters for the masses have honored their own, broadcasted for our entertainment.

The show was a bit off kilter for me.  The elder demigods of rock and other genres seemed shadows of their iconic selves.  Sir Paul should just write for other people now. Admit it, even as a Beatle his voice was never really that strong and now age has strained it further.  The Boss, well, his voice and playing are just as dynamic, but – and please forgive me this – he seemed a bit dated.  It was sort of like listening to Lenny Kravitz’ version of “War”.  He tried, but the moment had passed.

The segment with Glenn Campbell was sweet but sad.

Some are criticizing the Taylor Swift’s Clampett version of her song “Mean”.  I thought the staging was just campy enough to pull off.  What do you want, she’s a kid. The banjo playing was cool.

Never like the Beach Boys to begin with. Their music rehashed through Maroon 5 and some other band didn’t help.  And Brian Wilson? Like I said, never cared for them to begin with.

The Foo Fighters just rankled my nerves. They couldn’t be done fast enough.  I guess its my age showing, but then again I never really cared for that type of music anyway.

Chris Brown did some interesting dancing while lip syncing, but isn’t he the guy who was accused of beating Rihanna?  I kind of tuned out when it was him and some other guys doing some sort of mix up toward the end.

Katy Perry’s anthem about the breakup with her own Neandertal was interesting.  It just seemed some segments in the show were overly long.

People slammed GaGa last year for her egg entrance and Madonna take off, but I’m guessing they missed her last night after that fiasco with Nicki Minaj.  Performances dealing in religious and/or sacrilegious themes don’t bother me (I loved Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”), but they at least have to be well put together.  Whatever Ms. Minaj put on last night was not put together and I can’t blame the camera angles on this one.

Warped versions of Catholic (or heck Anglican or Episcopalian) service participants cavorting around in some “Exorcist” meets “Rocky Horror” does not entertainment make.  Particularly since I couldn’t understand a single thing that came out of her mouth. If you say you understood one word sung(?) then I shall be bold enough to call you a liar!

There were shining moments last night.  Bruno Mars, with his cutie self gave everyone a smile and a reason to get up and move.  The Alicia Keyes part of the tribute to Etta James was lovely.  Jennifer Hudson’s tribute to Whitney Houston was quite beautiful and Adele’s return was triumphant, although I did miss some of the grit in her voice.  Amazing, nonetheless.  Her six awards were well deserved even without the sympathy vote.  I can hardly wait to hear what comes next for this witty, soulful young woman.

If you missed the Grammys take heart; there are no less than eight more award shows coming for the year.  There will be plenty of shining moments and I’m sure plenty of inexplicable as well. There’s no business like show business.

The Sapien in the Mirror

Those crazy geneticists have been at it again, mapping all sorts of things.  This time they have mapped the first whole genome of our relative Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a.k.a Neanderthal, a.k.a. Neandertal, in the new German spelling.

Good ol’ Neandertal was thought to be extinct, overrun and out thought long ago by Homo sapiens sapiens or anatomical modern man, but there seems to be a twist now revealed.  It seems modern man didn’t kill off Neandertal in the violent manner we thought. It looks like we may have killed them with kindness.

According to ongoing archaeological research, 1- 4% of our of nuclear DNA is composed of material donated to the gene pool by Neandertals.  Modern man apparently didn’t discriminate; more a lover than a fighter, perhaps?  Maybe Jean Auel wasn’t too off the mark.

What ever the case may be, this discovery sure explains a lot when you compare the forensic reconstructions of Kennis & Kennis to some of our more famous citizens. Kind of makes you want to check out your own brow ridge, huh?

Neandertal Elder by Kennis&Kennis

Wilma by Kennis&Kennis

Ernest Borgnine

David Boreanaz

(If you want to see more really cool archaeological reconstructions visit: http://www.kenniskennis.com. They do fantastic stuff.)

Adieu, Shit Dog.

Our Doobie, My Shit Dog

Here I sit a quivering mess and the day is not going to get any better.  Today is the day we say goodbye to Shit Dog.  The bladder cancer has finally gotten the better of him.  He was supposed to be gone before August, but in grand Shit Dog fashion he held on just to prove a point.

He’s gotten a bit chubby over the last couple of months or so because we have been saying what the heck let him eat it – he won’t be around much longer.  Leftover pancakes, roast trimmings, rice, french fries, pizza crust, chocolate cookies – about the only thing he turned his nose up to was veggies.  He would eat them with resentment when Elisheva was alive, but then that was a competition.

We knew something was up last week.  He refused a piece of biscuit.  He also hasn’t touched the bag of dog food that’s been sitting out in the open for four days.  Bashert had to hold her hand in front of his nose on Sunday for him to know she had some chocolate.  And if Shit Dog is anything, he’s a pureblooded chocoholic.

Our cat Winnie came over to lie with him this weekend.  She doesn’t do that.  He hates having his space invaded, particularly by one of the cats and they know it.  Bashert thinks Winnie was saying goodbye.  She did that just before Elisheva died, too.

We have a checkered past, Shit Dog and I.  I alluded to some of it in an entry back in July.  So it’s kind of ironic that he and I should be spending the day alone together.

He’s lying in his corner, atop his mass of appropriated blankets and pillows – he started out with one assigned blanket and dog pillow, now he has three of our bed blankets and two of our sofa pillows added – snoring away, past caring that he’s leaking urine all over himself.

I sit staring at him futilely trying to remain stoic, watching his occasional labored breath and seeing that he can no longer curl up into his tight little ball because of discomfort.  I let him out a moment ago and he peed on my foot not being able to control himself (at least I’m going to believe that – one last challenge there, eh boy?).

I know that what we are doing is right for him, but it is tremendously difficult.

Damn you, Shit Dog.  Doobie…you’re breaking my heart.

Peace Out

I’ve been absent a while.  School has resumed, the holiday lull at work has given way to busy nights and I’m getting up in the mornings to take Yoda to school since Bashert is still working her long term sub job. Hectic reigns supreme.

That’s why I skipped last week’s photo challenge.  Peace is a fair ways from my threshold.

I must admit that peace is a difficult concept for me anyway.  To say I’ve been through a few rough spots in my fifty years would be about right.  And for the past fifteen years, I’ve learned what it is to live amongst the tribe of ADD.  Our last name is Bedlam.

In an effort to help out, others have made suggestions on how to gain more peace in my life.

Yoga just doesn’t do it for me, besides I look like a stuffed sausage in those outfits.  I’m Jewish; I don’t do pork.

Guided imagery was a hoot.  Once we got to the giant floating bubble, I lost it – I had a complete vision of Glenda the Good Witch gliding down into Munchkin Land singing to Dorothy in a quivering voice.  The leader did not appreciate my giggles.

Exercise?  See the above comment about stuffed sausage.  I’m lazy and I think I’m allergic.

The closest I have come to finding some sort of peace is when I’m involved in a jigsaw puzzle.

There’s just something zen about it to me – finding all the interlocking pieces.  But with aforementioned tribe clamoring about (okay, there’s only two of them, but you come stay a while and you’d swear there are more, too.), four cats, one ailing dog and only one table in the house large enough to work on, peaceful turns into a jaw clenching challenge to finish before it goes flying or that one last piece goes missing.

No, peaceful is not an adjective that lives in my mind, but if the theme ever comes up as “discombobulated”  I’m in the money!

When You Wish Upon A Star

Image courtesy of NASA via The Huffington Post

A good portion of my drive home from work is done in darkness; lit only by my headlights and the night sky.  Most of my time is spent on the look out for drunk drivers and random wildlife playing Russian Roulette with two ton vehicles.  But when the skies are like they were last week, I tend to sneak peeks upward.

Wednesday I looked up and saw it; a shooting star.  It happened in a blink of my eye.  Zip and it was gone. When I told Yoda about it, he asked if I had made a wish.  I told him it took me so much by surprise that I forgot.  He said that was okay just seeing the star could be my wish. He can be pretty smart, that Yoda.

Turns out I was seeing the meteors of the Quadrantids and if I had pulled over, I probably would have seen quite a fireworks show.

Seeing that star (or meteor dust, as it was explained to be by Yoda) put me in a thoughtful mood.  I remember sitting out in the cold night long ago watching one of the annual meteor showers overhead.

Going through a rather difficult stage in my life, I sought solace in the quiet and beauty of the night. Alone out there, I felt out of time, released from the stresses of the situation. Each little piece of dust that left its streak across the sky had me ooing and ahhing as if it was the 4th of July.  I went inside only when the sun began to lighten the backdrop.

I’d like to say that the time I spent under the shooting stars gave me some profound outlook and I became a wiser human being at one with the universe and all that jazz, but it was not to be.

I awoke the next day tired and with a stiff neck from looking up from my lawn chair for so many hours. The pressures had not lifted and life would remain quite difficult for some time to come.

But what those tiny bits of frying meteor dust did give me eighteen years ago, was a memory.  A memory of space without measured time; a glimpse into the vast expanse beyond my little wretched world.  They gave me a smile.

There’s supposed to be another major meteor shower coming in late April this year, the Lyrids.  The peak is supposed to be the 21st, a Saturday. It’s marked on my calendar.  Come out and join me; create a memory.

And don’t forget to make a wish.