May 2, 2012 – A View From The Middle (Class)

Posted on May 2, 2012May 2, 2012 by A View From The Middle (Class) · 3 Comments

In the dictionary under the word “loser” …

I’ve used that instant tanning spray-on stuff a grand total of one time, I’m ashamed to say. It’s not that I’m afraid of any bad side-effects, like brain damage or anything like that. I just came to the conclusion that — on me at least — it looks bad, too unnatural.

John Boehner - Caricature (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

I do believe we have concrete scientific evidence that it can lead to brain damage, however. For proof, allow me to point you in the direction of Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio.

It was just last Sunday on CNN’s morning show “State of the Union” that host Candy Crowley asked Rep. Boehner if Mitt Romney’s wealth — much of it coming as a result of his job involving cutting people’s jobs with Bain Capital as one of its founders — would hurt him in voters’ minds as the GOP nominee for President.

“You know, he comes from a privileged background. You did not come from a privileged background. This is a time — an economic time when people are hurting and have been hurting for quite some time,” Crowley said. “Do you think that someone who is as wealthy as he is, who has had as much privilege as he is, has a hill to climb to overcome that?”

“No. The American people don’t want to vote for a loser,” Boehner said in his typically emphatic way. “They don’t want to vote for someone that hasn’t been successful. I think Mitt Romney has an opportunity to show the American people that they, too, can succeed.”

Just like Mitt Romney helped all those people he was involved in laying off while with Bain Capital to “succeed?” That was quite a “boost” Mitt gave to them … right out the door.

Here, for your dining and dancing pleasure, is the part of the CNN interview in which Rep. Boehner shows that too much instant tan spray can affect brain cells.

The sad thing is that in this case, Rep. Boehner equates being successful vs. being a “loser” with how much money one makes. So, effectively, in his mind a person who’s had to struggle to make ends meet their entire lives while supporting a family and making sure that their children turn out to be good, decent people and strong contributors to society is among the “losers.”

In Rep. Boehner’s mind, a person can apparently be giving of themselves in terms of their own time and resources to good causes, but if their bank account isn’t all that big they are a “loser.”

That’s very comforting.

For further proof, we’ll take a look at a couple of videos — the first with Rep. Boehner calling for openness and visibility in reviewing the health coverage bill with his famous “Hell no!” speech, followed by a case where Rep. Boehner seems to forget his call for openness and visibility in our nation’s lawmaking.

Now, the definition of a “loser” is … ?

John Boehner Calls Unsuccessful Americans ‘Losers’ (VIDEO) (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
John Boehner Defends Romney’s Wealthy Background: ‘People Don’t Want To Vote For A Loser’ (mediaite.com)
Boehner: Romney’s Wealth Won’t Hurt Him Because ‘The American People Don’t Want To Vote For A Loser’ (thinkprogress.org)
John Boehner Hints That Obama Is a Loser, Then Says He’s Just Trying to Help the President Out [Polidicks] (jezebel.com)
Speaker John Boehner Said ‘Americans Do Not Vote for a Loser’ (jdjournal.com)

Posted on May 2, 2012October 18, 2012 by A View From The Middle (Class)

My music playlist for today (May 2, 2012 edition)

“Borrowing” once again from a CD review I wrote back on April 23, 2003, over at www.progressiveears.com …

Music supergroups can go in one of two directions: good or bad. There is no “gray area” when it comes to supergroups.

OSI is a supergroup, made up of Jim Matheos (Fates Warning) on guitar, keyboards, and programming; Kevin Moore (ex-Dream Theater and Chroma Key) on vocals, keyboards, and programming; the ever-busy Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater, Transatlantic, Liquid Tension Experiment) on drums; with “also featuring” credits going to Sean Malone (Gordian Knot) on bass and Stick, and Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree) handling vocals and sharing songwriting credits on “shutDOWN.” This is a supergroup effort that falls more in the “good” category. In fact, it’s quite good.

Moore comes across more as the leader behind this effort, the one pushing the “vision” of this effort the most, with his songwriting, vocals, keyboard textures, and the sampling that has become a big part of his songcrafting style. It doesn’t take long into the opening track before CBS News anchor Dan Rather’s recorded voice is featured in a meltdown panic over some “communications problem” and you realize how much sampling will play a part in this CD, but the sampling isn’t overdone anywhere. Moore’s keys and the overall engineering give this kind of a Pink Floydish feel. Then Matheos’ metalish guitar chimes in, Portnoy starts pounding the snot out of the kit, and Malone provides an understated but eloquent bass underpinning. You quickly realize, “Hey, this could be pretty darn interesting.”

Kevin Moore at Balo Stage-Istanbul (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It does turn out to be very interesting for the most part. Moore and Matheos’ soundscapes are a nice test for any sound system and they force the listener to give it much more than an initial spin to detect everything that’s hidden inside this musical box. Portnoy’s abilities on the drums are actually kept fairly restrained at times on songs such as “When You’re Ready” in favor of Matheos’ nice acoustic touches, and the atmosphere that’s capped by Moore’s haunting vocals.

You can sense a theme in this collection of songs on the original CD that might best be explained by Matheos in the biography page of OSI’s official site when he explains how they came up with the name of the group: “Basically OSI, or the Office Of Strategic Influence, was an ill-fated agency that was dreamt up by the Pentagon, I think, shortly after 9/11. Their purpose was basically to disseminate information mostly abroad, and if need be, false information, to put the U.S. war on terrorism in a more favorable light.”

The lyrics are spacey, mysterious, secretive, like some covert government agent working on your brain. It takes a little while to come to grips with Moore’s vocal style, but once you do then an enjoyable CD becomes even more enjoyable. This should go down as one of the best releases of 2003.

For those willing to plunk down a couple extra bucks for the limited edition CD, there are some nice extras on the bonus with a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Set The Controls For The Heart of The Sun” dating back to “A Saucerful of Secrets” (fitting, since there seem to be so many good Floydian influences throughout this CD — and check out the timely sampling of George W. Bush in this one) and Neil Young’s “New Mama” that receive decent treatment.

OSI goes well beyond being progressive metal. It’s one of those pieces of work that demands full attention from the listener, and it could end up getting heavy play once you make the investment. But it’s well worth that investment.

OSI: Crack the Billboard Charts With Fire Make Thunder (hangout.altsounds.com)
OSI Premiere New Video Exclusively on Ultimate-Guitar.com (theweldingroom.com)
The 10 Best Progressive Rock Albums of the 2000s (Sound Affects) (popmatters.com)
My music playlist for today (April 18, 2012 edition) (viewfrommiddleclass.wordpress.com)
My music playlist for today (August 29, 2012 edition) (viewfrommiddleclass.wordpress.com)

Posted on May 2, 2012 by A View From The Middle (Class) · 10 Comments

AMY’S ANGLE — Quit whinin’ and play the violin!

By Amy Kathleen Miller

I thought of rejoining the West Valley Symphony a while back, and I finally joined three weeks ago.

Playing with the West Valley Symphony is very enjoyable, entertaining, and above all it is free to join. It is a community symphony, which means anyone can join who wants that kind of an experience. We get together each Wednesday night and play for two solid hours.

The second week after I joined, the concertmaster — who is the first violin player of the first violin section — and the first chair of the second violin section got together and decided that there were too many people in the second violin section and not enough in the first. They decided to have a “play-off” and put the players in the chairs that they needed to be in and make the two sections more even.

I for one did not want to end up in last chair. So I took the music home and practiced it very hard every day for a whole week. Well, I did miss two days. But I practiced consecutively for five days for about an hour every day. That is a lot, considering that it was my violin. If I were practicing voice I could sing for about two to three hours easily.

I practiced my scales and the music that I had, even the proper hand positions. Violin is a very complicated instrument because there are no frets like there are on the guitar. We as violin players have to truly develop a good ear, because we have to put our fingers precisely in the correct position on the violin or we are either too high or too low on the note.

So, there I was, practicing for a solid week just because I didn’t want to be in last chair of the second violin section. I wanted to be somewhere in the middle of the second section, that was my goal.

The day of the tryouts finally came. I was okay, but nervous. I practiced my piece well and was more than ready. I was hoping they would not ask me to play a melodic minor scale because I haven’t practiced that for a while on the violin. But as for a a major scale, I could hold my own.

We were told at the beginning that the violin tryouts were taking place in another room, and I watched as each violinist went into the room one at a time. It was going in a particular order. First, all the first violin section was filing out one at a time and when one finished and returned the next one went out. I watched it go on until it was my turn.

Musical scale in A minor (melodic) Image file created with Sibelius software by Opus33. This music is in the public domain. The image is not copyrighted, and it is hereby released by Opus33 into the public domain. ---- The following is the official Wikipedia tag for this file: (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was very nervous by then because I was worried about how I was going to pull off a melodic minor scale. But to my surprise, they only asked me to play any major scale on the page. I breathed a sigh of relief and played a major scale. Then I was supposed to play nine bars of music. That means nine measures of the music, but I didn’t count it out, I played on and on. Finally, I stopped and asked if that was enough. The men smiled at me and said it was more than enough but they thought I was doing such a great job they didn’t want to stop me. That was a relief.

They shook my hand and welcomed me to the symphony and then I left.

Later, after all the players were done with the tryouts for their chairs, the two men came out and the moment we had all been waiting for arrived. They said there were two people they wanted to move up into the first violin section, and that was a lady named Carol and another lady named Amy. Amy?!? That was my name. They wanted ME to move UP into the first violin section. They had to have been mistaken. But they weren’t, so I moved over. The lady I had to sit next to was now below me and I thought she was a better player. She spoke softly to me, saying that she had done lousy on her performing the tryout piece. I replied that I must have played TOO WELL since I was moved up into first violins and I felt I was nowhere near ready for that.

After we were done practicing, I went up to the second violin section leader and told him that I was flattered to be in the first section but I was not really THAT good of a player. He just looked at me and told me that I would do fine and not to worry about it and that the first chair player would help me if I needed it. They were not going to put me back in my section, I guessed. After that, I figured I was going to have to actually PRACTICE my music from now on, and got music to practice.

The moral of this story: I got what I practiced for. I need to quit whinin’ and get to PRACTICING so I can get better. That’s right, I need to P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E!!! Just like I tell my students, over and over. And who knows, maybe I will actually get pretty good and learn to enjoy my violin more.

Just like I tell my students.