A month of thankfulness, Part Five

I want to share these posts with you, to help you consider what you are thankful for. Perhaps some are identical, perhaps some are analogous, perhaps some are completely foreign to you. But the thing that should stick with you is having an ATTITUDE of GRATITUDE, always. Just this one simple change in your life, on its own, can transform you.

Some of the details of these posts are rather personal; obviously, I'm not revealing anything i don't want to reveal. At this late stage, my life is an open book for reading and enhancement of others. But it also means there may be things which don't make sense because you don't know my background. Hopefully it will be clear enough in context, but leave a comment if there's something that's unclear, and I'll clarify. May God bless you in this season of thankfulness. 

A month of thanks. No different than any other month except that it’s on the internet. And my phone now automatically writes that text now for me.

Nov 20. I am thankful both for my innate and developed skill in writing and arranging music, marching shows, and the like, as well the software that makes them appear for my evaluation before needing to shove it at a band to discover my mistakes.

Some of my greatest joy has come from the hours and hours spent creating music and shows to entertain audiences and the ensembles which performed them (that was always a high priority for me). The introvert in me relished the twelve-hour non-stop day-into-nights when the creative came out of me. Wendy knew there was going to be stretches of time in the summer when it was best to just take the kids and go spend the day somewhere while I hunkered down over the computer and chipped away at the fall marching drill and flagwork; a similar solitude came in the winter while I created the music for the next year’s show. (And then to see and hear it all come together in October? Most of you will never know that thrill.)

In between, so many “smaller” pieces - I lost track a couple of decades back how many comps or arrangements I did, but well into the hundreds of each, at least. But then here’s the telling part: when Melissa and I formed GPS MUSIC and I started developing a catalog of music and marching shows to sell on line? I almost didn’t care if we ever sold one. (And I came close to getting that wish, unfortunately!) There was so much JOY in the creation!

Even now, just making recordings for South’s musical theatre competition piece is a thrill - when I have the strength to sit at the computer and DO it. I felt terrible I couldn’t muster Hope’s piece up for her - but I write checks with my mouth the rest of me can no longer cash. It’s sad to realize how the pipeline may be just about dry now. It was such a joyous part of my life. I hope some of my music lives on beyond me; if so, I won’t really be gone.

A month of thanks. Not so different from any other month in my life, except you, you lucky reader, get to listen in on my praises and prayers.

Nov 21. I am so thankful that despite my almost criminal lack of automotive prowess, I have had such great luck with my cars over the years.

My first car was the '64 Dodge Dart sedan with the push-button gear shift and an automatic clutch.. We also had a '64 Dodge Dart station wagon that Mom drove which had the H-column on the steering wheel shaft and the manual clutch, pedal on the floor. They looked and felt so similar that when either of us drove the other car, we'd forget it was/wasn't an automatic. Mom got to the point where she'd do the motions for BOTH cars - foot on the imaginary clutch, push the button on the dash whether it was there or not. She looked ridiculous doing it, but it worked. Those two cars had three engines that Uncle Earl would fix up and rotate through those two carcasses (CAR-casses, get it? No?). When I left Gilardi Road in 1992, I'd estimated those two cars had 750,000 miles on them; I think the wagon's still going and has 750K on it by itself now.

Then I had "Mr. Bubble". Dad found an ad that led me to buy my Impala station wagon that moved me to Idaho and ran me back and forth to Penryn and Kuna.

Wendy and I had the coolest green Neon, a couple of really useful vans, and I bought her the Karmann Ghia she still drives around occasionally. That was something I was so pleased to be able to buy for her - it's made her so happy for years, even long after the divorce.

And now, I'm driving the 2003 GMC Yukon that's running in the 240K range and still going strong with occasional oil changes and new tires every few years. Had to fix the dashboard this summer, but that's about the only "extra" money I've had to put into it. It's so dependable that I almost never even think about it. I love that car, as much as I loved that Taurus before it. Probably the last car I'll ever drive; it's a great vehicle.

A month of thanks. No different than any other month except that I get to share my prayers and praises with my internet friends. (Sure, it cuts into my prayer time in the morning. But for one month, it’s definitely worth it.)

Nov 22. I am selfishly thankful that while my twin daughters have struggled with the effects of their “bilateral spastic cerebral palsy” their whole lives (meaning both legs have erratic nerve ending messages), they have been able to lead completely normal lives, mas o menos. Sure, they’re Shriner’s kids, and we’ve done the braces and casts and shots and physical therapies and dealt with the coordination problems and all of that. But I watch the beautiful children like the youngster in the article I was just reading, or the crew of buddies I get to greet in the afternoon when I get to the HS, and I am profoundly grateful that my daughters have such a mild version of the disease.

Similarly, even though he died, it was somehow reassuring to both my first wife and I that Emerson seemed to be a perfectly normal, healthy, presumably intelligent little boy when he arrived, rather than the problems which had caused his death (remember, we knew he was dead before he made it to the outside world) being some sort of systemic issue. He “just” had an accident. Tragic but not something that prevented us from trying again.

Unfortunately, our next son, Sutherland, suffers from The Arts, a condition for which no cure is known, although constant singing, dancing, and melodramatic movement works as therapy for such hapless individuals. We also see signs in our other children of this pervasive condition, though none so deep as South’s. His Uncle Stuart (my brother) has suffered for five decades now. Please, won’t you help support this tragic condition? Write your Congressman and tell him to support a budget that provides outlets for these victims. Thank you.

My summer math class....

Tomorrow's the last day of summer school in our district, and I think XKCD (one of my all-time favorite web-comics!) has done a great job of encapsulating the precise atmosphere in my math classroom:

The Spring Musical - bringing back memories!

The weekend’s posts are fairly sparse because my two youngest sons’ musical went up on stage May 4-7. My seventh grader was asked to work stage crew with the high school cast because of his fine work with the middle school musical earlier this year, and my sophomore was the male lead in the production of Mary Poppins (the Dick Van Dyke character, Bert).

As a proud father, I’ll gladly tell you that it was a very credible performance, and that my son was one of the highlights of the show. (But as a proud father, I’ll also tell you that my youngest son’s curtain work was exemplary, too!)

As a music teacher of thirty years’ experience, one who put on his share of these productions over the years (and let the pit in a few others), I’ll echo that sentiment. The young man who’s taken over the local high school’s drama program, himself a product of the previous director’s outstanding program, does a splendid job with his productions. More importantly, he does a superb job with his students. They – and their education – come first.

    

One of the most important lessons I learned teaching large groups of teenagers in producing a show, whether on the stage or with a marching band, was that it was more important how the show was created than that it was created. No matter how good the production – and I created some wonderful shows, and I created some that were not so wonderful – the details of it will be forgotten in at most a few years by everyone who saw it. But the growth that the performers experience in its creation will last the rest of their lives.

Whenever I wrote a field show, I shared that creative process with the students who were going to participate in it. We always went out of our way to put together different shows than other schools were doing – something that we thought would stand out. But the real reason they were different is that they weren’t canned productions that were sold as one size fits all. We wrote shows that meant something to the students who performed them.

Once we bought some music for a Cirque de Soleil show called La Nouba, and there was quite a bit of the music that we really liked. But it was clear that if we simply wrote a marching drill to the show as written, it would be just another show. So we took the parts we liked, and imagined what it sounded like to us. The group decision – rebirth after a nuclear war. On top of that, we had new uniforms coming in over the summer, and having a big “reveal” would be a fun thing to do for our home audience.

So I created the show AFTERMATH, where the students wore rain ponchos in the school’s orange over their new unis. The opening simulated an atomic explosion to the ending music from the Firebird Suite, ending in the soft and slow Barber’s Adagio for Strings with our solo violinist (I allowed any instrument I could reasonably use into the band – meet the students where they are). Next the students gathered around garbage cans like in the nuclear wreckage (we let them do a full band drum feature on garbage cans here – I don’t recall who thought of that, but it wasn’t me).

Then the rest of the show is the resurrection from the “aftermath” of war. (We used lots of quotes over a loudspeaker in breaks between songs – like Einstein’s, “I know not what weapons World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”.) The band turned away from the audience as the pit played, and removed their ponchos, then turned to reveal their new uniforms while playing one of the big pieces from the La Nouba show we liked. We used a requiem from Saving Private Ryan called “Hymn To The Fallen” to recognize the cost of war, and use a drill that I’d really liked and thought would be something the students would enjoy and learn lots of discipline and technique from.

We wanted to close with the other La Nouba tune we liked, crossed with the exuberant and celebratory part of the Firebird Suite we’d opened with, but we had to get there somehow. The idea of re-discovering the previous world’s music came to someone’s mind, and we brainstormed a collection of musical snippets that they could “dig up” – the saxes found “In The Mood”, the upper winds found “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”, the pit guitars found “Back In Black” (one of the school’s theme songs – playing to our home audience!), the low brass found “Amazing Grace”, “Beethoven’s 5^th”, and they even came up with the idea of “discovering” the Macarena, rejecting it, and putting it back into the ground!

To top it off, the pep band was heavily into using “Louie Louie” as their “theme” that season, so that was the piece that wrapped up the discovery section – all of the marchers came together to play that one when it was discovered, and then I wrote an easy segue into that closer.

This show was probably the most successful one we did while I was at Jerome: not because it was the most sophisticated or the best written or anything, but because it was a show that the entire ensemble had bought into during creation (which, by the way, continues all the way through rehearsals, and even during the last week of the season we still change things!). It also happened to be the first year that Jerome’s band surpassed the local bell-cow program to win the district championship, and that wasn’t by accident.

And I know that kind of thing happened with this production of Mary Poppins. The directors would often ask my son to simply create some choreography to fit a particular song or transition. And he wasn’t the only one – the directors trusted the students’ ideas, and knew they could veto anything that wasn’t appropriate, or perhaps didn’t fit with the rest of the show. This investment encouraged the students to buy into the production. My son, for example, spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the backstory of his character, so his created material fit the background of Bert. (He decided that Bert was a previous child of Mary’s nannying, which explained his affection for her.) The directors allowed each student to explore their character, to instill some of their own personality into those creations.

And they cast every play incredibly well – you cannot imagine anyone else playing those characters. (That goes along with choosing the right play! That’s a challenge for choosing the right music for a band as well – who are you going to want to feature, which are your strong sections and who will you need to hide or bolster, that sort of thing.)

More tomorrow – when I’ll tell you about the last field show I ever wrote and taught, and how appropriate it was!

Recap

"I expect a high-scoring game, and I expect Brady to Edelman to be the last and winning score of the game. New England will win its fifth title in the Brady/Belechick era by less than the final touchdown - less than seven points."

The good news for me as a prognosticator is that a Brady pass was the last and winning score of the game, New England did win its fifth title in the Brady/Belechick era by less than - well, less than seven, anyway - and it was a high scoring game (62 points beat the over/under line of 57, already one of the highest in history).

The bad news for me was that I didn't plan on them having to come back from 25 points behind in the third quarter to do it! Not exactly Balaam, am I? 

Pleasantly, it was much more a case of Patriot prowess than Falcon folding: as with all human activities, they made some physical errors, along with one or two mental ones, but nothing worse than their opponents did in the first half (the pick-six was a gift).As someone who was rooting for a good game, rather than a particular team, I found myself on the Atlanta side until that pick-six in the second quarter made it 21-3 Falcons. at which point I switched to hoping Brady and crew could make a game of it. When they did nothing with the opening possession of the second half, and then Atlanta went down and scored yet again to make it 28-3, I told my son we'd go shopping for his present for the next day's birthday party for his friend during the fourth quarter if it stayed like that. 

The comeback has been well-documented elsewhere, but I'll just say that we didn't go shopping until AFTER the overtime Patriot victory, as it became clear that the excitement was NOT in fact, over.

I wondered aloud if being a Falcons fan felt like being a Hillary supporter on Election Night. Sure of the victory, until...until... you're not anymore.

Lady Gaga was remarkable! The stage dive from the top of the stadium gets credit for guts alone, and it was executed well, as well. And to finish the show, one more dive OFF the stage at the end to bring the show fully around to the top - brilliant. As much as some feared a political statement in the performance, given her predilection for the Democratic candidate last November, I never saw one, although there were probably five different companies whose advertisements reminded us that we are better when we are a nation of immigrants, never specifically calling the POTUS out on the topic. Those I found appropriate. The only one that aimed directly at Mr. Trump, even HE probably found funny - a hair company predicted four years of bad hair ahead of us, so buy their product to prevent that. 

Speaking of adverts, my personal favorites (and you can easily find these on line if you spend fifteen seconds looking) included the ghost of Spuds McKensie going all "It's a Wonderful Life" on the poor schlub who doesn't go drinking beer with his buddies anymore; Honda's inspirational ad with the celebrities speaking from their high school yearbook photos; the Mercedes "Easy Rider" homage that ended with Peter Fonda himself in a Mercedes topless; poor John Malkovich trying to obtain the domain "johnmalkovich.com"; Melissa McCarthy as an environmental activist with a penchant for disaster, Tom Brady in 360 for Intel; and even the Geico spots with Terry Bradshaw and Jimmy Johnson before the start of the game itself. I'm also curious about The Cure For Wellness and the Scarlett Johannson vehicle Ghost In The Shell, even though I'm not a movie aficionado. 

But my favorite (and I'd never thought I'd say this) was the T-Mobile ad with Justin Bieber. I won't spoil it for you; it's a ton of fun, and good for him for letting his guard down some to make this spot.

How many were "ART", as we discussed before? Several. You decide which ones, friends. 

Super Bowl 51, and Art

The Super Bowl is the most watched television show of the year in America every single year. It doesn't matter if it's Patriots/Falcons, or it was Jaguars/Buccaneers - the nation stops to watch the Super Bowl. 

Notice I didn't say stops to watch "the game", because that's not the major attraction for a large portion of society.

For football fans, even casual ones, we watch the game as the culmination of the NFL season, although it takes the edge off the game to me having the extra week in between the conference title games and the Big One. (I understand why you want to have the week in between; just whining about it from a fan's perspective.) To put the delay in perspective, the last meaningful game the NFL played was two days after the Inauguration - we had barely been introduced to the phrase "alternative facts" yet!

And when you have a polarizing or popular team in the game - and the Patriots are both - that's going to increase the fans' interest. Will Tom Brady become the only five-time champion QB? Will Belechick win another one? Will Roger Goodell have to present the MVP trophy to Deflategate-boy?When you add the excitement of a high-powered offense like Atlanta has, and the possible ascension of Matty Ice to the quarterback Parthenon with a title, then the hype for the game itself is palpable.

But for a large portion of the nation (and very slightly beyond - the NFL is truly 'national', still, unlike the other three major sports leagues which have teams in at least Toronto, Canada), the EVENT is more important than the GAME.

Luke Bryan singing the anthem (the over/under is two minutes fifteen seconds, if you're a betting person). Lady Gaga's halftime show (sometimes the halftime is bigger news than the game. We blame you, Janet.), all the amazing new camera tricks and gadgets the network of the year pulls out of its bag for its showcase (and with an indoor game, and being on Fox, expect more than normal on this front), and of course, don't forget that the POTUS always makes an interviewed appearance in the pre-game somewhere (somehow, I've a hunch that will be more newsmaking than normal).

And, of course, the commercials.

There was a study this year that suggests that 80% of Super Bowl advertisements fail to increase sales for the advertising company. Compared to the conference title games, for example, there's a 12% increase in viewership for a 20% markup in price (on average during the last decade or so - wish I'd cited my source when I read this!). That doesn't sound cost-effective, and some companies have come to that conclusion over the years themselves.

But others always seem to take their place - there's never a lack of advertisers for the game, even at five mil a slot. If you watch television, this is the ONLY time all year you're going to specifically watch for the advertisements, barring a special "stay tuned for a sneak preview of Disney's upcoming movie, Aladdin and Jasmine Are Arrested Flying Their Carpet Over Mr. Trump's Wall". If you want to make your mark in the culture today with an ad, this is where you have to do it, ever since Apple's 1984 Macintosh ad.

And every year, there are two or three that stick with us, at least for a while. Many more try and fail to capture the public's imagination, and that's as it should be. Art is always a risk - if it isn't, then it's not really art. And, believe it or don't, commercials like many of the SB ads are most definitely art. They make a statement (beyond 'buy our product'), they appeal to the senses, they are designed to challenge the viewer. Those are three of the most critical elements to determining what ART IS, and what IS ART.

Art should say something. You may not always like the message, or occasionally even get the message. But if it's really art, then it has to make you think at some level. Along with that is the idea that art should challenge the observer as well. It's one thing to say something benign, like "Chocolate is good," or "I like trains". Art should make you think about the message being given, and leave some of the work to you. It's the exact opposite of what a good journalist would do: if you're reading a news article, you want ALL the facts (and opinions, if appropriate) laid out in easily digestible form for the reader. That's the appeal of the USA Today/ Mashable school of layout - the easy on the eyes, straight forward modality that draws in those who find the New York Times a tough read. But art? Art as a rule leaves out key elements of the puzzle, forcing the observer to solve it (which they need to be able to do, or the artwork is a failure) and thereby become part of the artistic process themselves. If your observer never invests himself into your art, you've failed as an artist.

Critically, the difference between art and any other statement-making form is that art should be aesthetically stimulating. Notice I didn't say pleasing, although that's by far the norm. But cacophony has its place. Tension has its place. Jarring the sensibilities of the observer has its place. If it turns the observer off to your work, you've overdone it, but unlike every other method of communication, art must have an affect, not just an effect. 

Do Super Bowl commercials accomplish these three tasks? Are they "art"? Well, to be fair, many if not most of them don't strive for that particular goal. They're paid in the end to sell a product; if they can do so by other means, more power to them. But if you're ever going to see the artistic side of the advertising business, Sunday's the day you'll see it. There are awards shows for commercial makers, but we might well consider the Super Bowl after-analysis to be the "people's choice" of commercial awards: which ads will have you talking around the water cooler the next day? 

Of my children, four of them will be home with me watching the Super Bowl on and off. (The two oldest will be off making and selling food for the other viewers at their diverse food establishments.) My youngest son, the twelve-year old, will watch for the football game for the most part; the fifteen year old son will be interested in the musical performances, but he and his sisters will be the ones running into the room when commercials come on, rather than the usual tide going the opposite direction for most shows. 

As for the game itself, FOLLOWING FOOTBALL gives the Patriots a two point edge (Vegas has been hovering around three all week). I personally think Atlanta's the best option to face New England this year, as Dallas was a year or two away despite their record this year, and Green Bay had too many injuries to hold up against the Pats. Belechick's M.O. is to take away your best weapon on offense (to me, that's Julio Jones), but Atlanta has too many to take just one away and be completely effective on defense. On the other hand, the Falcons' defense (though improved throughout the season) can definitely be exploited by a smart offense and a good QB, and New England has both.

I expect a high-scoring game, and I expect Brady to Edelman to be the last and winning score of the game. New England will win its fifth title in the Brady/Belechick era by less than the final touchdown - less than seven points.