Brian's quite remarkable blog of wonder.

Last night was Danny's 22nd birthday party. I'm pretty sure I didn't drink an unreasonable amount, yet I somehow got infamously sick. It was an extremely unpleasant experience, especially when I woke up this morning. I think I need to learn how to count or something.

However, this weekend I did get a few new stringed instruments, I got the front page of my web site fixed up, AND I put a lot of work into Christer's clarinet piece. I'm sure it'll go through at least one more revision before it's formally finished, but solid progress is being made! Despite how shitty I feel right now, I'm going to call this weekend a net positive.

I've been running a lot lately. It's great. It's true, being healthy makes you happy. I'm down to 158 pounds, and according to standard BMI definitions that's in the "ideal weight" range. Contrast this to a year ago: 174, "marginally overweight"; or that one SCARY year when I was up around 195, straight-up "overweight." I'm trying to lose that extra 15 pounds or so this year. Doesn't it warm your heart that a lazy slacker like me can lose a clean 37 pounds with a little good old exercise-and-eat-less?

Too bad I'll always be short.

My dad just came by and gave me two things: a balalaika (I don't know where he got it but it's been around a while) and his grandmother's mandolin. I'm really excited. I live with a ton of instruments. Here's the master list:

- ukulele ($35 at West Music, a year ago)
- mandolin (my father's grandmother's; I don't know much about it)
- violin (my mother's grandmother's; she studied at Oberlin, I believe)
- viola (I got it when I was in ninth grade)
- balalaika (my dad had this for unknown reasons)
- electric guitar (Epiphone SG Special I bought used in 2002)
- bass guitar (Epiphone Viola bass, belongs to Danny; I've been babysitting it for a while.)
- acoustic guitar (Fender dreadnought my grandma gave me for Christmas in 2003.)

I've just arranged this menagerie of string instruments on my bed by size and admired them. Damn, I'm becoming one of those people who has a lot of instruments but can't play for shit.

I need a mortal enemy. I think if I had a main antagonist, it would be Christopher O'Riley. I really, really hate that guy. Reasons: listen to his dumb radio show, for starters. Better reasons: last year, when I was in the UI Symphony, we did a concert with him. The first half was just us playing Beethoven's 7th. During the tenderest, quietest part of the first movement, O'Riley suddenly starts playing loudly, audibly on the piano backstage. Everybody could hear it. I might have forgiven this, but then: the second half of the program is him playing Prokofiev's 2nd piano concerto. He TOTALLY fucks up the first movement cadenza, fakes his way through it, and then at the end gets a standing ovation and does three, THREE, encores.

These encores were all his idiot Radiohead transcriptions.

His little faux pas during the Beethoven was unforgivable enough, but, well, with the Prokofiev it got personal. Would Sviatoslav Richter have bumped and stumbled his way through a serious piece of music, only to congratulate himself afterward with endless curtain calls and encores? Would Vladimir Horowitz have pounded out a mediocre performance of an insufficiently practiced piano concerto, only to ratify it by playing popular songs, all the while smirking like a newly-elected George Bush? No. O'Riley's victory, like Bush's, was unearned.

Christopher O'Riley, this means war.

I love history. Or if not history, then old-timey stuff. This makes me pretty picky when it comes to figuring out where to move. I'm personally of the opinion that, in the way of cheap housing, very few buildings and homes have been built since about 1960 that have any character whatsoever. Newer affordable places all seem to be dun boxes of aluminum siding with two to four equally-shaped windows, aesthetic nightmares all of them. I don't like that. Fortunately, Iowa City has several well-preserved historic neighborhoods, of which consist a multitude of beautiful old houses and buildings; narrow, svelte, efficient, often adorned with front porch, no two alike, organized under tall trees along formerly brick-laden streets. And each one contains at least half a dozen college students. On Thursday, I'm going to be shown just such a house, split into a duplex, that Danny, Dan and I are keen to rent for August 1. I can't wait.

I like it when legendary musicians make albums that reach out to other societies and traditions, collaborate with their musicians, break cultural boundaries. A prime example would be Paul Simon's Graceland. I've been listening to The Magic Box by John Williams (the guitarist, not the Star Wars composer), and East Meets East by Nigel Kennedy (isn't he just called Kennedy now? I don't know). All of these albums are pure and amazing, they have this sort of timeless, placeless, immortal feeling. I used to hate fusion music, but albums like this have taught me that all musics have possibilities that defy their genres and transcend their cultural egos.

The only channel I get is PBS. Yet, when I get videos from the library, they are almost always documentaries that were on PBS. See, that would be nerdy in itself, but here's the kicker: I TAKE NOTES ON THEM!

Valentine's Day for me is approximately what I imagine Christmas must be like for Western Jews and Muslims. I really shouldn't pay it any mind, but the fact that absolutely everybody else is wrapped up in it has the obvious effect. I mean, really, Valentine's Day is nothing more than the humiliating separation of the beautiful people from the losers. Well, every day is that; but V-Day especially.

Yes, I know, this is a huge terrible oversimplification. I should apologize. I'm depressed.

I'm under a lot of stress these days, and it's really making a mess of my life. Firstly, there's this "girl," we'll call her "Girl X." To protect the innocent, I won't disclose any touchy details, but I'll just say that there is a slight bit of a situation going on, one in which there is a great deal of terrifying uncertainty for me. An uncertainty that has been going on for many weeks now, and it's playing hell with my nerves. It just keeps getting prolonged, and even though I've tried to solve it, I don't know if more direct attempts would be prudent. Vague enough for you?

Heart attack!

Secondly, I have no idea where I'm going to live next year. I was planning on getting a place with Danny and Jesse, but now Jesse tells me he wants to get a two-bedroom place with just me, and now I'm in the typical situation of having a choice between screwing somebody or screwing somebody else.

Ulcer!

Finally, I spent the entire day in Oskaloosa today, playing rehearsals. I have to go BACK to Oskaloosa tomorrow, to play the concert. I'm playing in an orchestra that's playing with a jazz band. I hate Oskaloosa. Yes, this is a more short term stressor, but a stressor nonetheless.

Mental breakdown!

Yesterday, I performed my ukulele song at No Shame. Incredibly, even though the lyrics were right there in front of me, I screwed it up twice. I am not good at performing. I don't have the necessary presence of mind to not screw things up. Oh well, the audience seemed to enjoy the song.

Help! My life is a whirlwind of caffeine and booze. I need a vacation.

The weeks have been blurring by. Honestly, I wish I could go into cryogenic hibernation until February is over.

I didn't get that job I applied for. But, on the other hand, I didn't lose my other job, so all is pretty much well.

I've been hacking away at my web site. A lot of it is there now, but a lot of it remains nonthere.

This week, I wrote a song. I intend to perform this song on my ukulele tonight at No Shame. It is called "Carpetbaggers."

It's mid-February, and just about time for the yearly rite of worrying about where I'm going to live next year. I think I'll be renting a house with Danny and Jesse. That's going to be cool.

I'd like tonight to go into the official registry of happy memories. It is a Frostian moment. 1 AM. Snow is falling. The world is silent. The sky is orange. I'm walking along College St., at the intersection of Summit. Behind me to the East is a hill going down into quiet residential neighborhoods, my high school, my childhood. Ahead of me to the West is a hill going down into sparkling downtown, where I work and where my life now mostly takes place. It was a bit like surveying my entire life (thus far) from a bizarre, ageless, 1 AM perspective. The metaphor, however, was too perfect; so I decided to turn and head South.

I can't imagine living somewhere that isn't hilly.

Today I ate at China Star. The first fortune cookie: "A golden egg of opportunity falls into your lap this month." Very nice. The second fortune cookie (I always get two, to increase the likelihood of one of them actually being a fortune instead of "the road to success is long and treacherous.") really spelled it out: "It's time you asked that special someone out on a date."

Why does everybody love Shostakovich? I mean, I can listen to and enjoy his music, but I just don't understand why everybody talks about him as if he is the only necessary Soviet composer, or as if the quality of his music even comes close to that of Stravinsky's or Prokofiev's. From what I've heard, the man understood and loved music deeply, but his compositions often seem to me half-assed and unfinished. In some of his symphonies, for instance, he seems to be concerned with melody and counterpoint and little else... the principle of a Bach partita elevated to a grand 65-minute symphonic extreme. He seems totally uninterested in orchestration; rarely are more than two groups of instruments playing at the same time.

The thing about Shostakovich, I guess, is that his music is indelibly wrapped up in the era of Soviet Stalinism. You can't find a CD of Shostakovich's music that doesn't have a 79-page liner booklet that explains the political meaning of his art. And that's fine, I don't want to sound insensitive to the victims of Stalin, but it puzzles me that Shosto's music has so vigorously outlived the Berlin Wall. Perhaps it is this abstract sense of angst that is appealing. Not to me especially, but to the grandfathers of today's emo kids, perhaps.

I think this is why I like Prokofiev. At the height of Stalin's purges on the arts, the apolitical Prokofiev was writing apolitical, dreamy music. Listen to his music for the ballet The Stone Flower: it's optimistic, rustic Russian folk music. Or the fifth and sixth symphonies. Both create pure, original, wonderfully abstract worlds... it's like a fantasy. Maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, I'm certainly not a music scholar. But to oversimplify, I conclude that Shostakovich used his music as a weapon against Stalin, while Prokofiev used his music as a refuge from him.

For some reason I can't pinpoint, Scott McCloud bugs the shit out of me. I could go into detail, but the only real reason I bring it up is that I found this excellent page today. I voted for the bear. You can vote as many times as you want.

I like web sites that do one very simple thing and have a domain name that says explicitly what that thing is.

Well. So, Iraq. Are we finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel? Egad, I hope so. A successful election does not a democracy make, however; and even if it did, a working democracy does not a ridiculous military invasion justify. In my opinion. And it's not like democracy is the antidote to violence, as the United States itself beautifully demonstrates.

That aside, though, I'm just so proud of Iraqis. Look at this country, where celebrities and rock musicians beg a scarce 50% of our qualified electorate to vote; then look at Iraq where 65% of citizens brave flying bullets for a chance to participate in their government. It's a great thing.