Category: General

Mas N Steel: Fall 2005

It’s that time of year again ladies and gents. All of you Tallahassee bound people get the chance to come see me looking silly and also to hear some good music. Some of you know you have nothing better to do. 😀

Event Details

What: The Mas N’ Steel (carribean steelband) / Balinese Gamelan fall world music concert.
When: Tommorrow (yes I’m late) Sunday the 6th at 4pm.
Where: Opperman Music Hall located in the Kuersteiner Music Building on the campus of Florida State University.

Each ensemble will do a show of approximately 45 minutes with a 10 – 15 minute intermission in between. Admission is free and the dress is anyway you want it to be. Doors are usually locked once the show starts but if you’re late you can wait til a break between pieces to come in.

I’m not sure what Gamelan has planned but Mas N Steel will be playing a classical number, a happy happy peppy song, an adapted popular music piece and a bomb tune.

The Bomb

What is a bomb tune you ask? Well in Trinidad steelbands would take non-calypso music and arrange it in a calypso style. Each member of the band would then secretly learn his or her part, usually in such secrecy that not even other members playing the tune would know how the entire song sounded.

There are many different accounts of most steelband history but my favorite account of the Bomb goes like this. During carnival parades, steelbands would play their normal prepared music until they came across a rival steelband. At that point they would “drop the bomb” – play the tune they had been learning in secret. The idea was to glorify the skill of that band and scare the rivals into submission. Of course the opposing band couldn’t in good face just stand there and take it so they would drop their bomb as well. The two bands would play at each other faster and louder until one of them faltered or broke (yes… a bit like that scene in drumline). It’s good stuff.

Now this being Tallahassee we didn’t have any reason to keep it secret but we are playing part of an opera arranged as a calypso… and that’s worth seeing right?

Pan is something I love to do although and If you’re in the area I would love to see you there.

Disgusting

How do you justify being an officer of the law and punching a 60 something year old man in the head? What kind of person makes catcalls as he watches it happen? What kind of government puts humans in a situation that makes this sort of incident likely?

I appreciate good police officers and what they do and how incredibly under-appreciated they are. I can understand that disasters I’m glad no one is dead. But responsibility is a bitch and I don’t care how stressed you were… you are always accountable for your actions.

Confessions of a Daddy’s girl

When I was younger I heard that phrase a lot. It was delivered scathingly whenever I mentioned that we weren’t allowed to do whatever it was we were planning to do. It was the standard challenge whenever I refused to take sides in the frequent trivial arguments. It was the ultimate accusation of betrayal.

Perhaps because I was my Daddy’s girl, I eventually realized that I was only called a Daddy’s girl when I decided to be the voice of reason or common sense in our prepubescent band of misfits. It didn’t take long after that for me to accept the truth.

Me Biko and daddy

Yes, I am my Daddy’s girl, always have been always will be. And if that means that I’m not going to put up with your bullshit then that’s fine with me and I’m proud of it.

So even though he doesn’t even know I have a blog I have to say thank you Daddy. For that and the silliness and the work ethic and the nagging that drives me up the wall and so many other things I would be writing for weeks to get it all down. Because that is what you do on blogs. And because I mean it.

Happy Belated Birthday

Mmm, Canned Meat

Today I visited my wordpress dashboard (for the first time in many days) to discover that there were 74 comments in moderation. For the briefest of nano-seconds I thought that 74 real live human beings had actually commented on my site, perhaps on my thought provoking entry about… my niece. Then I enjoyed a rollicking laugh.

To my surprise, all of the comment spam was fairly high quality. Some of it even made contextual sense- given some value of context. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the WordPress people again as none of the spam ended up on my site, but how could I resist sharing this gem.

There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.

Spam bots… your logical prowess has dazzled me once again.

Video of the week

I’ve witnessed my share of workplace practical jokes but this one takes the cake, the ice cream and all the napkins. Click and enjoy.

A Superball Story

Brought to my attention by Shawn, the original iPimp, of kimchee & fried chicken fame who also happens to be the only person in the known world I can consistently tease about not updating. Consider yourself plugged.