Heck on Earth (guest entry by dan)

5/3/99

Another car accident last night. Isn't it about time for someone else to take a turn? Any volunteers? Once again, this one wasn't my fault. Not really, anyway. I was sitting at the light, playing with my right knee pit when the light apparently changed when I wasn't looking. Oh, like you've never done that? So why didn't the blue-haired woman bump you instead? Not sure what she was playing with that caused her to overlook the stopped car right in front of her but it's gonna cost her $235 in cosmetic surgery for my rear bumper. She's just lucky that the Kermit I keep in my back window didn't suffer whiplash.

Have I mentioned that I stumbled into an on-line discussion of the knee pit thing? Never realized what a nation of TV-sucking losers we really are. Who would have guessed that we've come to the point where we have to watch Fox to get in touch with our own body parts? The discussion was of an appropriately deep level: If Spock was playing with his knee pit and accidentally gave himself the Vulcan neck pinch thing, would his leg fall asleep? If he accidentally mind-melded with his knee pit, would that be any different than mind-melding with Ginger Spice? I got out of there *fast*. Only to end up in some Michigan room where this 17-year-old boy from Saginaw thought there was a mystical connection between us because I teach euph to college students and his father used to play the accordian. Got out of there only to end up God-knows-where being hit on by an MIT nerd whose goal in life just happens to be designing a computer program which would play music indistinguishable from a real person. Even said that the true test would be having a panel of music professionals in a room with a curtain between them and a chair. Real musicians and computers would be brought in at random. Could the pros tell which was which? Even coughs and fidgeting would be part of his program, he assured me. Something to look forward to: a world in which a machine can do my nervous little warm-up tics better than I can.

Maybe that's why I avoided the chat thing entirely last night and went out for a movie instead. Imagine my surprise when I was reading the end credits and the score was credited to someone with the same name as one of the kids who dropped out of my Beginning Euph class last fall. I might not have thought much of it but it's a rather unusual name and the kid was so musically uninclined that it seemed surreal/funny. Just happened to get a call later from an old friend who taught the class before I did, and I just happened to tell him about this experience. Haha. Turns out it WAS this kid. Sort of. Seems his father has been composing shit scores for shit movies for years under a pseudonym and he thought, what the hell, why not use his son's name for a change? Well, how about because thousands of really talented people work their asses off all their lives for that kind of credit, and then still never get it. The world is unfair enough as it is - why add to that? Well, I'm doing my part to fix that. I refuse to mention the name of the movie. Haha.

Still mourning the death of Al Hirt. During the commercials, anyway. No, strike that. During much of the actual shows, too. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I'm ashamed to admit that I actually admitted it to a few of my friends, though. I first blurted it out to Kevin, the kickass tuba player, in a weak moment in the temporary lounge the music department is having to share with the janitorial staff until next term. You know, the place where Broomman Jim comes up with such sidesplitting witticisms as "Funny how no one ever goes on a shooting spree on Bach's birthday." Kevin was not sympathetic to my Hirt hurt. Neither was Jason, the budding jazz pianist I sometimes have lunch with when no one from my concert band group is looking. Kevin's opinion: "But - he played *jazz*!" Jason's opinion: "But - he played *watered-down brain-dead jazz for the unwashed masses*!" Sigh. How could I tell them that my mother actually celebrated her 25th birthday at Hirt's club in New Orleans and that the fat man himself actually kissed her between sets? And that he gave good lip? You could guess as much if you listened to "Cotton Candy" one more time. The fact that my high school brass group played "Java" at the wake for one of our favorite teachers is beside the point. As is the fact that the teacher is still alive to this day.

Now the good stuff. Woke up this morning convinced I was leaving reality and entering a dream. And the reality I was leaving was that I'd just been a contestant on "Jeapardy!" I buzzed in every time and was right every time, but each and every time I gave my response in the form of an inappropriate question. Like, "Whom is New York?" and "How is Mahler?" and "Why not Gwyneth Paltrow?" At the end, Alex came over and said, "I've been waiting for someone with the balls to do that for years!" Can't wait for my second appearance.

Brief talk with J. today. Seems he's been killing time waiting for his supervisor to come out of his office by actually reading the magazines in a genuine official USAF waiting room. Today's Fun Fact which he learned and passed along: Some Chinese philosophers believe that you can discover the real you by examining the excrement of your cat. As I told J., if you're sitting around examining the excrement of your cat, I can tell you what kind of person you are, too: L-O-S-E-R.

this entry courtesy of dan.