Spin It On

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For Christmas, my son Danny gave me a Best Buy gift card, which I immediately cashed in for Paul McCartney’s latest DVD, The McCartney Years. This is a 3-DVD set consisting of most of Paul’s music videos (including early 70s tunes as well as MTV’s Unplugged and recent videos such as “Fine Line”), concert footage from several concerts (including the 1976 Wings Over America and the 2002 Driving Rain tours) and a few interviews and documentaries. For someone like me who’s been buying Paul’s albums since 1971, this is a very cool addition to my collection of Beatle and solo Beatle videos. For those not as connected to Paul or the Beatle years, some of the videos are not going to be very entertaining. For example, Emily was not at all impressed with the video for London Town, which I have to admit is unreasonably terrible. And if I were in Paul’s shoes, I sure wouldn’t have included Say, Say, Say, although it is nice to see Michael Jackson when he looked normal. On the other hand, I do like having the video for Coming Up, with Paul in different costumes and makeup acting out the parts for the whole band (Emily didn’t even notice that all of the band characters were Paul until I pointed it out to her). What I’m saying is, if you’ve always followed and enjoyed Paul’s music, or at least most of Paul’s music, you’ll like this DVD set, so go buy it right away. If you like some of Paul’s music but are not a big follower, you will be skipping over a lot of the videos, but you will probably enjoy the live performance videos and the extra features, so pick up this DVD when you have some extra spending money, or ask for it as a gift. If you are in neither group and you simply hate Paul McCartney, you probably shouldn’t buy this DVD. HTH. HAND.

Goodbye

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This morning, my friend Jane died of cancer. It was a shock to me, not because of the cancer - I knew she had it - but because I hadn’t talked with her or her husband Cy since August and I didn’t know that the cancer had advanced that far. Jane developed cancer several years ago, but went into remission. Then earlier this year she was told that the cancer was back, and she started treatment. But this summer the doctors discovered that the cancer had moved into her lymph nodes, which is very bad news.

Jane was an artist. She was very creative - it seemed like she always had some kind of project that she was working on. Several years ago she gave me a watercolor painting of a barn in a field, which is one of my favorite pieces of art and is still hanging on my living room wall. She was very kind, with a quiet wisdom that only made me feel encouraged when she offered her advice. She seemed to enjoy my sense of humor, and we could get together after long periods of absence and talk and laugh with ease. She was not a vegetarian, but she and Cy loved veggies and she made them a part of most of her meals, and she also who grew a lot of her own food. I don’t care for veggies, and that was the source of a little joke between us about vegetables. Once when I was visiting she gave me a small bag of sugar candies made to look like peas and carrots. I guess she thought that was the only way to get me to eat veggies.

Cy and Jane were married 29 years, and they genuinely loved each other. They struggled through the same things many couples struggle with - trying to buy their first house, seasons where the money was tight, raising Jane’s two boys from her first marriage, then having two more children, a boy and a girl… typical married-life issues. And they were good friends to me as I struggled through my life… tolerant of me as a young rowdy musician type, compassionate when my first marriage ended in divorce, encouraging as I spent several years living single, and supportive when I married Emily. In fact, Jane and Emily found they were kindred spirits, both of them being creative women who lived their lives following Jesus, and both being artists who came to appreciate each other’s work. I’m disappointed that they didn’t get to spend more time together.

As I spoke with Cy he wondered aloud why someone, a wife and mother as kind as Jane, should die from cancer while people like terrorists or brutal dictators live seemingly healthy lives. This is probably a question of faith that comes to many - why does God allow evil people to live while good people suffer painful deaths. I think the answer is faith itself - do we trust God, not just in good and pleasant times, but in light of terrible, painful events? If we believe in God, can we say that we trust Him in all things, even with the life - or death - of a loved one? Can we cry out in our grief that, even though we don’t see or understand the reason, we believe that God has a reason, and we trust Him?

For Cy, who misses his wife terribly, his response is simply:
“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him“.

A Night At The Opera

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Anyone using the Internet has had to learn about using a browser, which is a software application that allows the user to view web pages on the Internet. In fact, whether you know it or not, you are viewing this blog through a browser. As the Internet became popular in the 90s, the browser used by most people was Netscape Navigator. After a few years Microsoft took the lead by giving away their Internet Explorer browser, but more recently the Mozilla Firefox browser has been gaining in market share. As a computer tech I have been recommending, for security reasons as well as for functionality, that people use a browser other than Internet Explorer. Firefox is a good alternative and a good browser, but my personal preference is a browser called Opera. I have been using Opera for several years; when I started using it, Opera’s free version had a banner ad in the top right corner, and users could pay for a version that had no ads (which is what I did). Now, Opera is a free browser with no ads but lots of functionality. For example, Opera was the first browser to offer a tab view. Tabs are simply windows to view web pages, but you can open multiple tabs simultaneously meaning that you can have several web sites open and tab between them, which is extremely convenient (I’m probably not describing tabs very well, but if you have never used tabs you should try it. For most people, once they start using tabs for viewing web sites, they don’t want to give up that feature). Firefox also offers tabbed viewing, but Internet Explorer only offers tabs in their latest version, IE7. This is a nice feature, but only one of the reasons I prefer Opera for my main browser. Tests have shown that Opera loads web pages faster than IE, and the ability to configure Opera exceeds either IE or Firefox (although my understanding is that Firefox version 3 will have many of the same features that Opera has had). The one down side to using Opera is not really an Opera flaw - many web sites are still coded to look their best in Internet Explorer. This is a throwback to the days when IE was the browser used by the vast majority of folks, and although that is no longer the case, there are still a few web sites that look or function a bit differently in Opera than in IE. But this issue is getting better all the time, and for me the benefit I get from using Opera outweighs this issue, which I rarely experience. You don’t have to be a computer expert to try Opera - just go the the Opera site, download and install the Opera browser, and give it a try. If you don’t like it, it uninstalls cleanly - but I think you will like it.

That Thing You Do

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Here is another installment in the series “My Favorite Movies”, and the movie in focus today is That Thing You Do, which was written and directed by Tom Hanks. The story, set in the 60’s, is about a rock and roll band called “The Wonders” who “make the big time” with a hit song, but then fall apart. There are several references to The Beatles and other 60’s groups, and it’s a fun movie, but the thing I admire most about it is from a musician’s standpoint. With most movies that show music being performed, the music is not performed live. Usually the actors on screen have to act and lip-sync to a music track. Additionally, many times the actors are not musicians, so the actor has to pretend to play their instrument while lip-syncing to the music track. This is usually very obvious to real musicians - as a musician, I can tell if the actor in a movie/TV show can play their instrument or if he/she is just faking it while playing to the music track. And most of the time, the actors are just faking it. The movie may even have a scene with a band on a stage in the background, but they usually don’t hire real musicians - they just hire actors known as “extras” to stand in the background, hold the instruments, and pretend to be playing. Again, this is very obvious to actual musicians. In That Thing You Do, the starring actors were also lip-syncing to music tracks. But even though they weren’t musicians, they practiced with their character’s musical instrument for weeks before the filming started, and when it came time to film their music scenes, the actors played along with the music tracks just like they were actually playing the song. The end result is that the actors played the guitar notes and drum beats just as though they were really playing the song, which made the music scenes look very realistic. Throughout the movie it is obvious that attention was paid to the details of each music scene, for each of the scenes either has real musicians (like the trio in the bar) or actors who have practiced with instruments and are playing along with the music. After watching years of movies that pay little or no attention to the technical details of performing music, it is quite enjoyable to find a movie made by people who took the time to make it look real. And, as I wrote, it is a fun movie, with good characters and an interesting story (especially if you are a musician) so I definitely recommend That Thing You Do.

The Teacher

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His name was Mr. Siqueiros. I eventually discovered that his first name was Leo - Leo Siqueiros. And he walked fast - very fast. Being only in fifth grade, I would practically have to jog to keep up with his pace. But that’s not the only thing I remember about Mr. Siqueiros. I remember that he liked me. I don’t know why he liked me, or what he saw in me that caused him to show me favor. Perhaps he was someone who simply enjoyed working with kids. Perhaps my dark hair and brown eyes reminded him of himself as a young boy, or of a son that he wanted someday. Perhaps he could tell that I didn’t have anyone at home to encourage me. I don’t know which of these it was, if any. But he liked me, he encouraged me, he helped me. He went out of his way to help me, sometimes doing things like giving me rides to school events or having his wife make a sandwich for me (although one time she made me an “American-cheese-and-mayonnaise” sandwich, and since I don’t care for American cheese I couldn’t finish the sandwich, but I was too self-conscientious to admit I didn’t like the sandwich, so when Mr. Siqueiros and I were in his car I nibbled at the sandwich until a moment when he wasn’t looking and then I crammed the sandwich in the space between my seat and the passenger door, where I’m sure it was found at a later date. Sorry, Mr. Siqueiros). When I won a prize - $20 gift certificate at a craft store - for helping with a class project, he drove me to the store in his Dodge and waited while I picked my items. When my fifth grade year ended, I secretly hoped that Mr. Siqueiros would teach 6th grade the following school year. But he left our school, which disappointed me until I discovered that he had transferred to the local junior high as one of the Spanish teachers. So I had him again as my teacher in the 7th grade. But by that time I was a teenager preoccupied with teenaged things, and although I didn’t spend as much time with Mr. Siqueiros as I had in 5th grade, he always had a smile for me when I saw him the the school hallways. In 9th grade I moved on to high school and lost track of Mr. Siqueiros. Years later I heard that he might have moved to Arizona. Where ever he ended up, I have never forgotten him or his effect on me, which I think may be one of the best things anyone could say about a teacher.

And people have asked me why I walk so fast…..