Category Archives: music

memories, music, parenthood Leave a comment

Contest Season

My son will be performing at his first OMEA marching band competition this evening. One of the judges is a friend of a friend, according to the contest info sheet. He wouldn’t know me from Adam, but I recognize his name, at least. (One of my college roommates, Mary, joked that I was taking so long to get my Bachelors that I must be on the Proczyk Plan.)

Thinking of contest reminded me of the lead-up to one of my own competitions in high school, back in the early 1990’s. I clearly remember Mr. Wardeska pacing the band room, repeating over and over, “I can’t believe I’m going to be judged by Michael Cesario!” It all turned out awesome, as Mr. Cesario was impressed with the uniform design and the cohesiveness of the show, if I recall correctly.

I’m super proud of my son’s band, and super impressed that they’ve put together a contest show without regular after-school rehearsals. Tonight will be their first of two competitions this season, with the second being next weekend. No matter what rating they come out with tonight, I hope they’re proud of themselves.

I just hope the second trombone from the left isn’t the biggest tick tonight…

memories, music, parenthood Leave a comment

U Can’t Touch Ur Mom’s Music

Earlier this month, my son Connor (age 10) was telling me about a funny commercial he’d seen, where someone had cheesy Cheeto fingers and they kept saying, “You can’t touch this.” Even though I hadn’t actually seen the commercial, I knew exactly what he had to be talking about.

So, because I’m that mom, I searched YouTube for the official music video for MC Hammer’s U Can’t Touch This and made Connor watch it with me. He was actually tapping his foot for most of the song, and didn’t really get bored of it until right before the last verse (“OK, Mom, I get the idea…”). I even showed him the very beginning of Superfreak by Rick James, just to give him a taste of how sampling works, but he was pretty much over the riff by then.

As the icing on the Cake U Can’t Touch, Aaron found an Old Skool Hip Hop karaoke CD at Goodwill this weekend. Looking forward to embarrassing my son with that at some point in the future.

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Ten-Dollar Trombone

Picked this up at a garage sale this afternoon. Couldn’t believe it was a trombone and not just an empty case for ten bucks! I’m not a low-brass player — never have been — but I couldn’t pass that up.

I scrubbed all the nasties out of the mouthpiece and determined that the horn plays just fine, despite having a jammed slide lock and a few crumples here and there.

It’s not like I need another hobby, but… even just the basic warmups I pulled out of my brain from 15+ years ago reminded me how much I enjoyed playing brass.

music, sewing Leave a comment

Birthday Plushie

Bowie Life On Mars Plushie

Connor suggested that I make a plushie for Dad’s birthday, and he initially said it should be of Dad’s favorite comic book character. Then I had the idea of making a David Bowie plushie with two faces — Reality Bowie on one side and Aladdin Sane on the other.

Somehow, I ended up deciding on Life On Mars instead of Reality, and after I started it, I realized that I wouldn’t have enough time to finish two full Bowies.

I learned a few things about sewing plushies that I’ll remember for next time. This was a lot of fun, and I could see me making a whole series of these!