06
Oct 23
Oct 23
Time for some weekend magic
I had one thing on my calendar today, write a letter. That turned into four things. Which isn’t that bad at all really. I managed to get two of them done, which is a shortcoming of some sort, somehow.
It all started with a trip to a pharmacy for flu shots and such. We arrived right on time. The woman that delivered the painful needle had done this before. Not that there is a mystery to the procedure, but amuses me that I can do this at a place where I can also buy Halloween props, passport photos and, right now, take part in “Big Hair Event,” getting $15 off when I spend $60 on select hair care products.
Apparently they also do allergy assessments, and the things you can buy off the shelf now is mind-boggling. Four different varieties of narcotics screening tests. Right there at eye level. Right where a pharmacist can see you reach for it.
“Harold, she took the cocaine test. Jot that down … ”
But you can go here to the side behind this we’re-kidding-ourselves-about privacy curtain and sit in two folding chairs and get your preventative shots. Pick your arm, take your bandage, now have a nice weekend.
I suspect in 10 or 15 years we’ll be doing some of the smaller organ transplants over in the beverage cooler section of the store. We may come to need to explore that model.
Anyway, the lady that stabbed me was fast and practiced and it stung. But she was quick. She was did-you-depress-the-plunger? quick. I’ve since spent the day rubbing my bicep and hoping I don’t get any mild side effects over the weekend.
(Update: No real side effects, except for the arm.)
This afternoon I had to write a letter of recommendation for a former student. I have a good success rate for recommendation letters, but this one was different. Big deal letter. Extra details requests. I’ve been humming the attention to detail mantra all week to students, and so I took my own advice. This is not a note to be dashed off, no. This took time. Multiple drafts. It took almost all afternoon, somehow, and I hope I put all of the sentences in the right order, but that was the biggest thing on today’s list.
A propane guy came out to test a propane tank for us this afternoon, so I had to show him that, and he was kind enough to give me an education. Super nice fellow, he explained everything, patiently sat through my series of simile questions, answering them all again. He ran his test. He said this takes three minutes, but the paperwork takes more than 20. And, sure enough, just under a half hour later he came back. No leaks. Empty tank. And we discussed all the many procedures and this was a productive hour or so, really.
And then I said to him, I said, “You’re in propane. Do you know anything about … grills?”
You see, ours has been on the fritz. I laid this out in just such a way that he couldn’t resist a quick check. We went to the backyard, I dramatically whipped the cover of the grill and he glanced down at the propane bottle we had. Big label from the company on it. Being in the industry, our guy of course knew that company. Different company, but he complemented them. And then he tested out some things on our grill.
Now, a five-burner propane grill isn’t the most sophisticated thing in the world. The problem was that this one worked, right up until the time we moved, and it hasn’t worked since. You can open the valve, but it isn’t making it to the burners. I guess the real problem is I haven’t tried to solve the problem. And, I learned today, you can also smell the propane escaping.
The hose that attaches to the propane bottle is crimped, I learn, so there’s no adjustment there. And it’s crimped on the other side, where it meets the grill. The problem is either the hose in between, or something downstream.
He fiddled with it a bit, taught me a term I’ve already half forgotten, if only because the conditions that bring about the problem were difficult for me to understand. He reached into his belt holster, pulled out the trusty Leatherman and made two small adjustments.
Then we test it. The grill fired right up. He figured it just got jostled too much in the move, but now we can cook with propane. I thanked him most sincerely. It was a small thing, took probably three minutes, but it was a big thing. I invited him back for steaks. We have a grill again. We don’t have to buy a grill again.
I feel well satisfied about the customer service, and i want to purchase propane and propane-related products from his company in the near future.
The other two things I didn’t get to today, well … they’ll be there this weekend.
How about a few more songs from Wednesday night’s Queen + Adam Lambert concert in Baltimore? I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but this was their tour opener in North America. And that is part of why the first videos I uploaded have been enjoying such big success in terms of page views. Queen fans are excited for this tour. And I think they’re going to have a good time.
This is “Killer Queen,” a cabaret-style power pop song that, in 1974, set the tone for everything that was to come for the band.
Let’s stop on that for a moment. This song was released 49 years ago, next week. It reached number two in the UK Singles Chart and number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Queen’s first US hit. It still rocks. Lambert gives it a little pep. And, though he’s been singing with the band for a decade now, this is the sort of thing that should win people over if they haven’t already come to appreciate what he can do.
“Killer Queen” was platinum in the U.K. and certified as a double-platinum single in the U.S.
“A Kind of Magic” was the title track of Queen’s 1986 album, and this song was the third single from the project. This is the quasi soundtrack from the first Highlander film, and this song was the closing theme of the movie.
The single reached number three in the UK Singles Chart, creased the top ten across much of Europe, and peaked at 42 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Here’s the Rolling Stone review of the record:
… Dominated by barren slabs of synthscape and guitarist Brian May’s orchestral fretwork, A Kind of Magic sounds like hard rock with a hollow core: it’s heavy plastic.
[…]
The rest of Queen is coasting as well on a high-tech glide. Brian May tosses off virtuoso clichés while drummer Roger Taylor and bassist John Deacon plow through the electronic woofs and tweets. “We Are the Champions,” from 1977, still sounds as insistent as a jackboot compared to this album’s boastful closer, “Princes of the Universe,” which veers into unintentional self-parody. The world-is-my-oyster lyrics seem more lazy than arrogant, and the music is a mechanical thud rather than a metalized threat. This band might as well put some pomp back in its rock. Its members are never going to make it as dignified elder statesmen.
It isn’t their best record, to be sure, but it’s a concept album paired up to a film school student’s script. I mean, a really weird and good movie needed music, so here’s Queen.
The author of that review, Mark Coleman, was in the fifth year of his writing career at that point. Happily, he’s still out there as a working freelance writer. The band is still out there commanding sold out venues. It’s nice to see everyone thriving, almost 40 years on.
I can only wish they’d played my favorite song from that record — not that there was any expectation of that. Even still, it was a great show from some of rock ‘n’ roll’s dignified elder statesmen.
05
Oct 23
Oct 23
The rock videos are at the end of the post
We drove to campus — problem getting to the car on time, no incidents getting out of the house — in good time today, and I’d like to take credit for all of that. I don’t deserve the credit, but I feel it should be mine, all the same. I usually volunteer to take the blame if we’re late (because it’s usually my fault when we’re late) so why not get the upside, right?
We were so on time there wasn’t even a person in the security guard shack to look for parking stickers. We overcame everyone’s expectations today.
The class before my class was not in the classroom, so I got in early and started setting up all of the things that we were going to talk about. Oh, the happy feeling of being organized.
Today we talked about the videos the students shot demonstrating different camera settings for aperture, white balance, ISO and so on. We set up external hard drives. We started organizing the workflow structure that the hard drives will use. And we started talking about the commercials they’ll be producing over the next three weeks. All of this took six hours.
Because, on Thurdays, I do it twice. Two classes, identical, back to back. This is fun in that it presents its own conceptual challenges. I thought the second class would be a better presentation — take two, and all that — but I am not sure which one comes across better. Sometimes the first class. But, then, the make up of the room in each class is a bit different, so class dynamics would have to fit into that, too.
Today though, finally, I stumbled into the thing I feared. There was a problem we discovered in the first class and, given the small 15 minute break in between, there wasn’t enough time to correct it for the second class. Fortunately it is a small thing. Where some settings are in differing versions of Premiere. No biggie. I can update that info in other ways. Just not in real time — which is the universe’s way of really understanding and appreciating my limitations, I think.
Darkness fell as we were driving back to the house, and that was the day. So let’s put some other stuff in this spot.
This plant that the sellers of our house left on the front porch for us — the one that we’ve been diligently watering every day because, despite what the little tag in the soil says about being drought resistant, it needs it — is now showing its gratitude.
No one wanted to go that direction anyway, Department of Transportation.
Here’s a strike you don’t read about much anymore. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, specifically, in this case, the Baltimore railroad strike of 1877. We saw this on our way to the concert last night, right in the heart of Baltimore, very near where the demonstrations began. This strike involved several days of work stoppage and violence.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was a nationwide series of events, the enough-is-enough point of a global depression and series of economic hits during that decade. Around those parts, in Baltimore, the strike came about because the B&O Railroad was going to cut employees pay by 10 percent.
Four days into the demonstration, violence broke out. Police. The National Guard. Thousands of demonstrators. President Rutherford B. Hayes sent in the army, the locals called up 500 additional police. And for the next two days they were attacked with rocks and bottles and returned fire with rifles, ultimately putting down the protests. Wikipedia tells me Between 10 and 22 were killed, more than 150 were injured, and many more were arrested. Several of those killed were soldiers or local militiamen.
The strike itself, though it seems to have motivated others far to the west, failed. Most quit rather than work for less. The company hired replacements. Under armed oversight, rail traffic began again a few days later. The company made a few changes over the course of the next year. And that’s a pro-argument for unions, I suppose. Indeed, this is considered the first national strike, and labor historians point to the 1877 strike and violence as something that energized labor movements for the next several decades.
It seems distant enough to be from another planet, but whenever you get to that dramatic moment in a book or movie where the one side says “Are we going to fire on Americans?” the answer has, historically, never been that surprising.
We were, of course, in Baltimore to see Queen + Adam Lambert. This is where they kicked off their North American tour. And you can see them, too, right here.
Bicycle Race! It climbed to number 11 on the UK Singles Chart, and somehow only peaked at 24 in the Billboard Hot 100 in the US.
Lambert really leans into the whole show. It’s hilarious, one supposes, given the various layers involved in that song.
Fat Bottomed Girls went platinum in the U.K. and double-platinum in the U.S.
They all look like they enjoy that song, as do we. And the good news, I have enough videos to make it through most of the next week or so.
