Dirty Post!!!

I saw this article a couple of days ago and thought that it was pretty cool - digging in the dirt makes you healthier and creates happiness!! I'm so glad that I have two pots on the balcony that need dirt and plants, so I can get a good buzz pretty soon. However, I think that I'll wait until we get back from Oregon. It's so hot that those would be two more plants that might not be around by the time we get back! So it's something to look forward to : )

"You now have a new reason to make mud pies — and lick the spoon if you feel like it! A recent study has revealed that ingesting soil bacteria (or Mycobacterium vaccae) not only makes your immune system more capable of handling allergens like bee pollen and cat dander, but also increases the release of serotonin into your brain. This means that playing in the dirt induces a natural happiness high that could help to combat depression, bodily pains and other common ailments. So don’t give in to washing your hands multiple times an hour in fear of catching the next swine flu — go stick them in a pile of dirt instead!
Read more about this exciting news in the article “Is Dirt the new Prozac?” from Discover Magazine."

Speaking of serotonin, I stole this from the Gamble family blog, but I thought that it deserved to be seen by as wide an audience as possible! Finn & I have recreated the badger dance, and it's a pretty great way to get a quick high!! Hope everyone has a great Friday!!!

France, etc.!!!

One of the best things that ever happened to Em & I was that my dad took us to Europe in 1991. We went with him & my wonderful (if occasionally grouchy) sister Amy, and spent time in France & Italy. I will always be thankful that he was so generous as to take Em along as well, and also that we only went to three places. Thank heaven that it wasn’t one of those trips where you try to take in every country in two weeks!! We just spent a good chunk of time in Florence (never a bad idea), a short time in Venice (just enough to believe it), and a large amount of time in Paris. It was amazing!!

The Italian part of the trip was fantastic! Seeing the David, eating the best food ever, plus having a Room with a View at the age of 23 : ) But the part that really made an impression on me was being in Paris. It was all of the usual stuff – Luxembourg Gardens, Eiffel Tower, cheese, etc. – but it hit me at just the right time, and I’ll never forget the first trip up the escalator out of the Metro into St. Germain: the sky, and then the towers, and the street and the complete absence of 7-11’s! Anyway, the whole trip was pretty great and Em and I went back to France five years later for our honeymoon. I think that we partly wanted to see if we had just imagined how great it was, and we weren’t disappointed - we had a whole different adventure, and it was still incredible!! One of the best things about Europe is that it’s been there for a while, and chances are that if we are lucky enough to bring the guys there someday, I would guess that it’ll probably be about the same.

I was thinking about France lately because of the Hemingway thing, and as the laws of synchronicity would have it some more French things popped up. First of all, I read Paris to the Moon again. Not really a coincidence since I can read it any time, but it seemed propitious. It’s by a guy named Adam Gopnik about the time that his family moved from New York to Paris for a few years while their son was young, and during which they had a new baby. Gopnik writes a lot for the New Yorker magazine, and does kind of seem like an extended New Yorker article, but it’s really enjoyable! He gets a good combination of the amazingness of living in the world’s most beautiful city, and the day to day realities of trying to get copies made, or trying to join a gym. Here’s a taste of it:

(Antoine Jacobsohn) went up to the grower and said, in French, “Why is that no one any longer grows green asparagus? When was it that people went over to white asparagus?” The man gave him an incredulous look, and then said, in the beautiful clear French of the Ile-de-France, “You know, I would say that what you've just stated is the exact contrary of the truth.” It was a perfect Parisian tone of voice - not disputatious, just suggesting a love of the shared pursuit of the truth, which unfortunately, happens not to be in your possession right now.
Antoine made the right response. He raised his eyebrows in polite wonder while smiling only on the left side his face, an expression that means, How greatly I respect the vigor of your opinions, however much they may call to mind the ravings of a lunatic. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

It’s a great book, very much in the “comic-sentimental” New Yorker style.

Another thing that happened was that I found a blog that has to be about the most beautiful web site ever created! One thing that Em & I noticed about France is how incredibly rich everything is! Of course this is part of the greatness of it, but it can get a little overwhelming at times. We had some hot chocolate once that was amazing, but was really like drinking a triple chocolate cake!! This blog is totally like that – I have no idea what it’s about (it’s all in French, and mine’s pretty rusty), but it just seems like they just decided to make it about every beautiful thing ever:

http://florizel.canalblog.com/

I also found this; this guy lives in Provence, and if you need a gypsy caravan, he’s your man:

http://www.les-verdines.com/accueil_us.htm

Or you can stay in one as a bed and breakfast!

http://www.lesroulottes.com/

France is so great, but I don’t think that I’d want to live there forever. Miles Davis tried it, and he realized that America, with all it’s problems, was where the soul was. I just heard a great term: “headneck”. This is a word for that unique combination of hippie, country, stoner, and various other weirdo cultures that is about as American as it gets.

As an illustration, Arthur Magazine just put up a great show that is the Dead with Leon Russel and Doug Sahm at the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin, Texas, 1972. It’s all Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, and Bill Monroe, but with Phil Lesh on bass and Benny Thurman from the 13th Floor Elevators on fiddle!! God bless America!!

You can download it here:

http://www.adioslounge.com/2008/11/happy-thanksgiving-from-doug-sahm-and.html

One of the great headnecks, John “Marmaduke” Dawson passed away last week. He was a member of the New Riders of the Purple Sage that opened for the Dead so many times. I’ve never been the biggest NRPS fan, but Dawson’s got a reserved seat at the table because he also came up with the musical idea for "Friend of the Devil", which is maybe the greatest song ever!! Of course, it wouldn’t be the same without the lyrics by Robert Hunter, who was obsessed with Mallarme, Rimbaud, and those other crazy French guys. So I guess that it takes all kinds.

R.I.P. Marmaduke.

Beach!!!

Finn has been doing so well with his swimming this summer that I thought that it was time to take him to the big show - the ocean!!! We went to Zuma last week and had a great time getting thrown around by the waves.

I love Zuma beach (I still remember seeing dolphins swim underneath me while surfing), but it's not exactly a kiddy-pool, and I was so proud to see Finn holding his own against the waves. They weren't too big by the time they got to him, but still... Good job buddy!!!

I'm hoping that someday soon, the boys will continue the glorious family body-surfing tradition, and maybe they will even hold their legs up like their great-grandpa!!

Pretty good form!!

The eye of the tiger!!!

We had a pretty great day - and to make it even better, we saw these crazy people (there are two people on this thing!!!!) at the end of the day.

Happy Monday all!!!

Aleatoricism!!!

Here is the traditional Random Friday post:

I woke up this morning wondering why September, October, November, and December, which correspond to the Latin for seven, eight, nine, and ten are in fact the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th months. I thought that was so weird, and I'd never heard anyone talk about it! I just found out the answer, but I just thought that it was a weird thing to wake up thinking.

There has been a literary debate recently about a revised version of Hemingway's A Moveable Feast. This is a great book, and one of my favorite English books about France (along with Paris to the Moon). I was disturbed, as I'm sure you all were, about this revised version, which really made some big changes because of some offended relatives of people in the book. So I was glad to see this article this morning which seems to have the last word:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/opinion/20hotchner.html?_r=1&em

Here are some more songs that would be on the blog jukebox if the world were just:

"The Time Has Come" - Pentangle

"Bony On The Isle Of St. Helena" - Uncle Earl

"The Farmer's Daughter" - Fleetwood Mac

Finally, Etsy rules!

Happy Friday!!!

Birthday!!!

Happy 121st birthday to Raymond Chandler!!! He was one of the great stylists of all time, even if his plotting could be a little shaky. Although his work was mostly considered to be low class genre writing in his lifetime, many writers have subsequently acknowledged his influence on modern novels - not to mention that there would basically be no Coen Bros. without him! I love his detective novels, and would highly recommend any of them, but I think that The Long Goodbye is the all time best.

Someone (maybe Nick Hornby) once said something to the effect that a good pop song can make you feel like it's the greatest song ever written for 3 minutes. Chandler is the same way: you know in your head that he can't really be the greatest writer ever, but when he's on...

Here's from Farewell My Lovely:

I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.

What could be better?

Geek Out!!!

As I’ve mentioned a few times here, I’ve been going through the process of recording a CD lately with my band, Morning Glory. Since it now seems like there is a chance that we might actually finish it some day, I thought that I would write a little about how it’s been done. It might be a little nerdy, but some people might enjoy it, and, at least to me, the whole process is super-interesting! So feel free to skip it, but it you’re interested, here you go.

First of all, the recording process has taken a loooooong time! Since we’re recording all original music, I guess that you could say that it started when we wrote these songs. But the actual recording began last Thanksgiving!! We had already recorded some songs the previous year in order to get into festivals, but we had some new songs and felt like it would be nice to have a CD that represented us a little more currently. Of course, by the time we finish (knock on wood), it won’t even really be that current any more! But what can you do?

The first decision was a big one: we wanted to make sure that this was a really good recording, so we went into a studio called Uncle to do the initial recording. Essentially, we did the same thing that many professional bands would do, which is to record all of the instruments separately in a studio where we could play together pretty loud. Each instrument had its own microphone, but they were all separated as much as possible by foam walls mostly, although my amp was actually in a separate room. We really agonized about how to do this!!

There is another popular way to record, which is to have each person do their own part at different times, completely separately. The big advantage of this way is that each instrument sounds totally clean, and can be manipulated (made louder or softer, given some echo, etc.) very easily because they were all recorded like separate songs. This is how most music is recorded these days and is a very wise way to make a CD.

However, we did not do this. We decided to record all together instead, with everyone playing at the same time like a live show. Unfortunately, this makes it much harder to “fix” each instrument later, since it’s possible to hear the other instruments in the mix at least a little. So if you make a mistake, you either let it go (and squint every time you hear it), or make everyone else stop and start the whole song over again.

So why do this? Well, for one thing, recording this way is faster – you can record a lot of songs in one day, like we did, but you’ve go to make sure everyone is ready to play all of the way through, or else you start to think of ways to hurt each other. But the big reason to do this is because of the type of music we do. We are a “jam” band as they say, which describes many odious musical abominations, but does in fact illustrate the fact that much of what we do is to play off of each other in a kind of improvisational way.

What we’re always trying to achieve is a “live” kind of sound with the most energy and musical interplay that we can possibly get. Unfortunately, that leaves plenty of room for mistakes, rough spots, and self-indulgence (as opposed to the desirable self-expression – many people can’t tell the difference). There’s really no perfect way to do it, which is exactly the same problem that the Grateful Dead always had; one way is cleaner and more precise but lacks heart, and the other way is messy, and can actually result in completely useless recordings. The Dead tried everything!! But this the way that they ended up doing their most successful studio albums, and it seemed to make sense for us. Luckily, IMHO we have a great band!! We also had a good recording engineer named Scott to help us out with this.

I won’t go into too much detail here, but the outcome of one very intense day of recording was, fortunately, some very usable “tracks” – which are the recordings of each instrument (including each individual drum!) – that could be manipulated separately without too much extra noise. We were really lucky that they came out good, because another downside of recording this way is that it’s pretty expensive! In some ways, getting through that first day was the most important part of the process since everything else is built off of it, but it was also the fastest part. That was one day; everything else has taken 7 months!!!

Actually, it’s not like we’ve been working every day on the recording since November. There have been many other hurdles to overcome since that first recording day, including losing our other guitar player (he’s fortunately not on the initial recordings) and organizing all of this music – which is now a jumble of very confusingly labeled computer files. Thank God that our drummer Joel dealt with this crazy process!!

Poor Dan alone in his space.

The other thing that needed to be taken care of as well was to get the equipment that I needed to finish the recording at home. Joel has most of this stuff already, but there were some really crucial reasons to get my own. First of all, Joel & I do both live in Los Angeles, but if you know this city, you know that this is meaningless and it could take me literally thousands of hours to drive back and forth to his house as much as I would need to. Second, to do all of the necessary guitar stuff takes a ridiculous amount of playing the same things over and over, and I really didn’t want to drive Joel and Dorota insane.

Finally, I looooove having all of this cool stuff which lets me get all of this music down forever!!! I’m not really a techie gadget guy, but putting this home-recording system together was really exciting!! I had tons of help from a lot of people (especially Joel), and I think that it came out really good. The technology today is so unbelievable that it puts even the major recording studios of past years to shame. Of course, just because you can record like the Beatles doesn’t mean it’s going to come out like Sgt. Pepper’s!! but it’s such a great challenge and an adventure!!

Anyway here’s my home setup:

As you can see, it’s not that extensive, which is really important in a small place where it can’t stay set up all of the time, so each piece is very important. The heart of the whole thing is Em’s little Mac, which has an incredible program called Cubase LE. The Mac comes with a similar recording program called Garage Band, but Cubase is much more sophisticated and powerful. Here’s what it looks like on the screen (there are actually many screens, but this is the most common one):

This program tries to visually and functionally mimic the mixing board of a real studio (like this):

The track of each instrument is shown separately and can be manipulated in thousands of ways, with the volume being the most important. The program has digital “faders” like on a mixer that can be programmed to go up & down as the song plays to bring instruments in and out of the “mix”, or the whole song. It’s very cool to see them all moving on their own!!

All of the music tracks go into this program, and are then converted into digital files, like mp3’s. You can then manipulate these in many, many ways, and finally burn it all onto a CD and hope that it all worked out. Sometimes I think how amazing it is to consider the amount of work and technological wizardry that goes into creating some really bad music!!

Although the computer is the heart of the operation, there are some other pieces of equipment that are vital as well. While a Mac has a built in microphone, it is unfortunately not possible to get a good recording using this tiny thing – believe me, I’ve tried!! What is needed is an interface from the music to the computer. That’s the small box to the left of the Mac. It’s called a Firebox by a company named PreSonus (there are other kinds as well, but this one is very good). It has some other functions that I haven’t really tried out yet, but its main job is to be the pre-amp between a microphone and the computer. In other words, it takes the musical signal from a microphone and converts it into something that the computer can hear and understand. You can make recordings without this kind of device, but they’re not going to sound very good.

The microphone is pretty self-explanatory, but I got a good one at a great price from a company called GLS that make really good mics for not too much $$. Mine is the ES-57 and you can order them here:

http://www.speakerrepair.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=genem&Category_Code=microphones

By the way, for vocals, the better mic would be the ES-58.

Finally, since I’m mainly recording guitars, here’s a quick word about that. I’m using my Fender Strat through a Fender Twin Reverb amp. The only kind of quirky thing here is that since I’m recording in a small apartment, I can’t really turn the Twin up to the full 100 watts where it sounds the best. In fact, if I turned the volume above 2 or so, we’d probably get thrown out! Since the amp doesn’t really sound its best at this volume, there are two ways to get around this. The first is to run a cord directly from the back of the amp into the Firebox, without having the speakers on at all. It’s easy to do this, and you can get a pretty good sound without hearing the amp at all. The Firebox has functions to make an instrument sound pretty good.

However, it still doesn’t sound that good to me. I really like hearing the real sound (hearing the air move as they say) of the guitar through the amp, so I had to work around this a little. This is mostly done with my effects pedals. Here’s my pedal board (sorry it's sideways - had a problem with this one for some reason - but the top is on the right):

Most of these aren’t even being used for the recording, but two of them are really important. The first is the little yellow box on the bottom. It’s called an AC Booster by a company called Xotic Effects. Basically what it does is to boost the amp signal a little bit without affecting the volume, so the amp sounds more like it’s turned up without blowing down the walls. It’s a great little box and I use it live a lot too. The older I get, the less I like that loud loud rock!!

The other important box is one I just got. It’s called a Holy Grail, and is just a reverb pedal, but it really helps since the amp reverb also doesn’t sound as good at low volume. It’s also about the warmest sounding reverb that I’ve heard and I can’t believe that I went so long without it!! Oh yeah, I almost forgot one last pedal. The white one on top is a digital guitar tuner. It’s not exactly crucial, but it sure makes life a lot easier when you’re constantly playing – it’s another one I wish I would have bought twenty years ago!!

So (if anyone is still reading), that’s about it for the recording studio. Of course there are about a millions other things that I wish I had, and that would make the whole process easier/better/much more expensive. But this set-up seems to be doing the job so far though. I’ll let you know when I’m done!!

Hemingway!!!

Happy 110th birthday to Ernest Hemingway!! He seems to get kind of a raw deal these days when people talk about modern authors - maybe because of the macho thing, or maybe his style has just become too cliche to take seriously. In any case, I love his books and I had the pleasure of teaching The Old Man and the Sea to my 11th grade class this last school year. Say what you will about Hemingway's simple writing style, but after going through nearly 200 years of people like Hawthorn and Melville, my students were so happy to get to something that they could understand!! At the end of the year, they nearly all listed that book as the best one that we read, and I still enjoyed it after having read it many times.

Speaking of "Papa", I also just finished a book called The Shack by William Young. I really enjoyed it - has anyone else read it? Any thoughts?

Moon!!!

Forty years ago today, mankind accomplished the amazing feat of landing on the moon, and the equally amazing feat of coming back!!! Of course I would be in total awe of this accomplishment no matter what, but I’ve always had a little extra feeling towards this event since I actually got to watch the whole thing, thanks to my strange father. Knowing that this was a once in history chance, he cleverly kept his sleepy 4 month old baby awake by putting ice in my diaper through the whole landing!! Although I would guess that I did not fully appreciate it at the time, I am really thankful that my dad was persistent enough to do this : ) Thanks Dad!!!

Update - see the comments for an update on this story : )

There have been many good pieces lately about the significance of the moon landing. Here’s a really good bittersweet one from Tom Wolfe:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/opinion/19wolfe.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1

It makes me want to see The Right Stuff again!!
I think the whole thing can definitely be seen as marvel or folly; as a great culmination, or as a sad end of an era, but I would just like to honor all of the amazing women and men (including my grandfather!!) who contributed to an unquestionably historic endeavor. Where to next?

Magic Mountain!!!

Whew - too tired to do much writing tonight. I’ve been trying to finish our band’s CD and have been submerged under wires in our dining room all day. Organizing the mass of electronics involved is a chore in itself, but the real burn-out with recording is my obsessive need to get everything perfect. Unfortunately, with the technology available these days, it is actually possible to get everything perfect, but it takes a loooong time. Home recording is super-amazing and rewarding, but I wouldn’t call it easy!

Anyway, before this all got started, I took Finn to Magic Mountain for his first time. We were so proud of him because he earned a ticket to go at his school by being such a good reader!! So it was a great time to go there. Like I said, not too much writing energy tonight, but here are some pictures from our trip. Suffice to say that we really liked the Roaring Rapids & Log Jammer rides, we had a great time, and we got soaking wet!! Good thing it was such a hot day : )

Ricks!!!

One of my favorite memories with Em is watching the movie below with her & both of us crying. Happy Bastille Day & happy birthday Mom!!!

Casablanca - French National Anthem

Parties!!!

We really broke in our new place this weekend with not one, but two big birthday parties!! We had Finn’s 6th and my mom’s 60th!! Her actual birthday is not until the 14th (Bastille Day), but she is flying out to Philadelphia to be with Petur on a movie set, and so we had to throw it a little early. It was a lot of fun, but boy were we tired out Sunday night!!

It was great to see so many of my mom’s old friends including Kelly, Sally and Emily, Theresa, Pita, Robby and Rebecca, plus all of us kids and grandkids. Amy and Em put together an amazing spread of food including a huge salmon (although we had to cut the head off as it was a little creepy). We ate and talked and looked at some fun old pictures of mom. Em reminded us that mom was Miss La Jolla one year, which always embarasses her a little, but I think she still looks amazing!!

So after cleaning up, we got ready for party #2. Finn’s party was mostly by the pool, and it was a great day for swimming – hot! The grownups kept to the shade, but the kids stayed in the pool for hours!!

They especially enjoyed their new noodles - thanks Panna & Bell!!

Felix seems to be a pool fan : )

By the end of the day everyone was pretty tired out. I think this picture of Kate speaks for all of us!

But of course,the party never stops when Aunt Bell is around, so we had one last pillow fight to end the weekend! We missed having all of the grandparents here, but Finn still had such a good time for his 6th : ) Thanks everybody!!

Guitars!!!

FOOL'S GOLD: SURPRISE HOTEL from FOOL'S GOLD on Vimeo.

Not to get all Peter Gabriel, but here's some more world music type stuff for a Friday morning. I thought this song was pretty catchy & happy - and besides, some of the best music comes from the world! Thanks again to Spike Jonz's crazy "We Love You So" site. Happy Friday!!!

Fish, uh excuse me, Mammals!!!

Finn & I went out yesterday for a very nautical day! Julie & Thor invited us to go whale watching off of the Balboa Island Peninsula. Unfortunately Thor couldn’t go with us because he was working – he actually manages the whale watching tours! So it was Finn & I, plus Julie and Scarlet. I hadn’t gone since grade school, but I remember it as being pretty enjoyable. Finn was thrilled of course, since he is obsessed with sea creatures; if you want to know anything about giant squid, he’s your man! I figured that it would probably be fun, but it really turned out to be an amazing day!!!

The first crazy thing was that we were the only people on a boat that sometimes has over 100 whale watchers! Well, it was actually Julie, Scarlet, Finn, and I plus Captain Bob and his assistant Genevieve. But it was definitely not over-crowded – in fact we felt really privileged to have that kind of experience. Genevieve told us that Mick Jagger had recently chartered the boat for himself and his small family, and it did kind of feel like we were rock stars : )

Learning about whales!

The crew of the boat were sooooo cool!!! Captain Bob let Finn drive the boat, and Genevieve gave us more information about whales (some of which even Finn didn’t know!) She also got off a good joke: when Finn asked what kind of whales we might see, she said, “Fin.” He said “What?” and she repeated “Fin”, etc. Finally, she said “Fin whales!” and he got it. She said that she had been waiting to use that joke all day : )

Helping with the ropes.

A sailor lad.

The first really exciting sea animals we saw were dolphins. I always love to see these guys since they seem to be having so much fun. These pictures don’t really capture it, because I kept on missing the jumps by a micro-second, but it was so fun to see them being so graceful and joyous! They probably have a tough life, but they make it look pretty great!

Looking out for whales.

By the time the trip was coming to an end, we still hadn’t seen a whale and, unfortunately, I was starting to feel a little sea sick – I hate my weak stomach!! It had been really fun, but of course, the whales are the big pay-off, and it was a little disappointing. But Captain Bob & Genevieve were on the lookout even as we were heading back, and when we were about 2 miles out, they spotted a spout (you can just barely see it in the picture)!! We headed towards it, but the whale dived down about 1000 feet to get a bite to eat, so we waited for it to come back up. That was such an exciting time – we didn’t know for sure that he (or she) would come back up soon, and if it did, whether it would come up where we could see it!

It took about 9 minutes, but finally, the whale came back up really close to our boat, and we moved in a little closer, but not too much – they really don’t want to bother the whales! It was amazing though!!! It was a huge blue whale - the largest animal that has ever been on the planet (thanks Finn)!! Captain Bob said that it was probably about 70 feet long, and could have been 60 to 70 years old! We watched it’s tremendous bulk gliding smoothly through the ocean – again, the pictures are so insufficient – and it spouted five or six times and then dived down again. It was another exciting wait, and then the whale came back up, and we really got a good look at it. Finally, best of all, when it got ready to dive again , we got a great view of its enormous tail – this is called “fluking”, and we all cheered!!! We felt so lucky – apparently even Mick Jagger didn’t get a whale : )

Heading back to the Peninsula.

We figured on going home after lunch, but there was one more great surprise in store. Thor asked Finn if he wanted to fish a little off of the docks. I always remember fishing as fun, but also as a long patient process with a chance of getting nothing. But this was totally different! Thor helped Finn get the line together and then he cast it in the bay. Almost immediately they got a bite! They had a great struggle, and then Finn pulled up his first fish – a sea bass! It looked pretty tasty, but Thor told us that in the bay it’s best to catch and release – the water’s not so clean – so they let that guy go. Then they tried again, and after some stolen bait and false alarms, they got another…

Finn's first fish!!

And another...

And another!!!

Final tally - 4 of the 5 types of fish in the bay!

We had such a great day – Finn drew a bunch of pictures of it when we got back! Thanks so much to Julie & Thor for an amazing nautical day!!!