‘Home’ never sounded so good
Here’s a news story of a single father who is working his way through college with 2 beautiful daughters. His name is Jorge Narvaez and his sidekick (in this video) is Alexa. He plays the guitar left-handed so the guitar is upside down. As if that’s not odd enough, he didn’t even change the order of the strings. So he had to learn all his chord progressions upside down. This video strikes a nerve because I believe we all wish that we could be this close to our parents, just once in our lives.
The way he tells the story is this; “It was 11:00pm. After 9 or 10 practice runs with a mic that was off the entire time, we were so tired and bummed out! On the last try, she yawns and couldn’t wait to go to sleep! and so did I.” Then they broke into the tune “Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.
And that’s when my heart melted.
Be sure to visit Jorge’s website and subscribe if you want to keep up with the family’s progress.
Rock on, Baby Einstein
Music is a part of us all. It’s part of the collective soul. Music is powerful enough to change our emotions on a dime. We use it work out, ride the train, drive to work, to sell shit and to get our groove on.
But it’s astounding to see the collective soul speak through some individuals so powerfully that it is years beyond their earthly experience to have gathered such knowledge. And yet they have a grasp of what most will never comprehend in their entire lives.
The youngest current conductor I was able to find was that of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at 17 years old. His name is Ilyich Rivas. The youngest director in Germany dates back to 1953 when 30-year old Wolfgang Savallich took the stage in Munchen, Deutcheland.
All I can say is, “Baby Einstein, you rock.”
Other links:
Bed bugs in New York City
On August 24th, it became official; NYC is the #1 capital for bed bugs. The problem is epidemic. No longer are the bed bugs limited to the slums and the low-income housing. These little suckers have made it to Upper Manhattan. To theatres, five-star hotels and posh restaraunts. Audience members have reported bites at Times Square’s AMC Empire 25 and in Harlem’s AMC Magic Johnson 9, according to news reports. Abercrombie and Fitch just temporarily closed their store because of these microscopic vagabonds.
Terminix released a list of the 10 US cities that are most affected. Thought you’d like to know;
1. New York
2. Detroit
3. Philly
4. Cincinnati
5. Chicago, Illinois
6. Denver, Colorado
7. Columbus, Ohio
8. Dayton, Ohio
9. Washington, D.C.
10. Los Angeles, CA
Scientists say that bed bugs are showing up at rates not seen since World War II. Why? Because we used to use DDT as an insecticide against these little buggers. But health regulators stepped in to save us all from the pesticides and this is the result. It should be noted that while bed bugs suck blood and leave welts, they’re not supposed to carry diseases.
Well, if bed bugs can make it here, they’ll make it anywhere. It’s up to you New York, New York.
Other links to this story;
Tribute to Steven Slater of JetBlue
On August 9, 2010, JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater slid into folklore when he quit his job over the loudspeaker of flight 1052 after a passenger ignored his request to sit down because the plane was still taxiing to the gate. Okay, well it was a bit more dramatic than that. After telling the female passenger to have a seat, she told him to f* off. Whereby he got out of his seat to regain command of the cabin. Her suitcase fell and hit him in the head where he demanded an apology. It was met with another ‘f’ bomb. This is where it appears Mr. Slater snapped. I mean, how much is one guy supposed to take, right? So he marches to the front of the plane, announces to all that after 28 years of helping passengers, he’s had it. Tells the plane to ‘f’ off, goes the galley and grabs two beers, reaches for the emergency exit door, pops it open, the slide deploys and he slides into hero status.
It appears he left behind a pretty sweet career. He was on the JetBlue ‘values’ committee. And he was on the committee to redesign the JetBlue uniforms. Here’s a guy with everything going for him. Except he wasn’t happy after 28 years. And this song is a tribute to a modern-day hero in a world where the working man is getting the brunt of all that is big and corporate.
Other links to this story;
The Washington Post: Story Breaks
The Business Insider: Slater Pics
It was approximately 2pm on June 14, in Jacksonville, Florida when Hanna Foster felt the teeth of an unknown shark clamp down on her foot and ankle while she was surfing in the Atlantic ocean. She said she had no doubt as to what was happening to her. She could feel every tooth as it penetrated her skin. She knew she was being attacked by a shark. She screamed to her boyfriend. She was petrified the shark would be revved up by the blood in the water and would return. She screamed, “It’s coming back!”
The shark didn’t come back and Ms. Foster got off with only 28 stitches but a new respect for the ocean and its residents. She says she doesn’t plan on surfing again anytime soon. She’s happy to just be alive.
In another incidence only two weeks later, in Cape Cod where Peter Benchley made famous his book, ‘Jaws’ back in 1974, a rare sighting of great white sharks sparked officials to close Chatham beaches for a week. Three great whites were swimming leisurely, one of them only 100 years from a beach party. The great white was reported to be 14 feet long!
In addition, Shark Week on the Discovery Channel was on and it was too tempting to write a song about all these events. I used, “Catch A Wave” by the Beach Boys because it was the happiest water song I could think of and I wanted to juxtapose it to this story. After many attempts at composing, I thought of the idea of making “Catch A Wave” sound like more like a death march than surf music. And against the pictures, it worked perfectly.
In case you don’t read any of the links that accompany this article, I thought it was curious that “Catch A Wave” was written on July 14th in 1963 for the Surfer Girl album. According to Wikipedia, this song is notable for the use of a harp played by Mike Love’s sister, Maureen. The lead vocal was originally thought to be Dennis Wilson‘s, but in actuality, it is that of Mike Love with a heavy cold. since Maureen was not available to play harp on my version, I left out the harp altogether.
Other links to this story;
Teen survives grisly shark attack
Real Russian spies in Cambridge, MA
On Sunday, June 27, 11 people were taken into custody in the United States for alledgedly spying for the Russian government. 10 of the spies were arrested in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Virginia. The last suspect was being sought, and is being charged in criminal complaints filed in US District Court in Manhattan.
The Cambridge couple and the others are charged with conspiring from the 1990s to the present to serve as agents in the United States of a foreign government.
Living in Boston and having a wife that works in the perfect little professional community of Cambridge, I couldn’t help but wonder, “If it can happen there, it can happen anywhere.” After all, we lived on the exact street, (Trowbridge Street) that this couple lived on only three years ago! And that got me to looking around and wondering who else might be a spy that I knew. And that made me pull out the video camera and take it into the workplace and shoot the smallest details that may be a clue to who, if any, other spies may exist.
I obviously didn’t write this piece of music but it fit the bill so I used it instead of composing something new.
Other links to this story;
Cambridge couple linked to spy network
Mr. BP’s Neighborhood
Today’s May 31, and it’s been 6 weeks since the gulf oil rig explostion that killed 11 workers and sunk the rig itself. Oil slicks have begun to make their way into the marshlands that the Louisiana people call home. 1/4 of all fishing has been closed down. The oysters, turtles, fish, shrimp and pelicans are beginning to choke from the oil that’s smothering them. Welcome to BP’s neighborhood.
It was just earlier today that BP CEO Tony Hayward made the unfortunate comment to the world media, “I’d just like to have my life back’. It was shocking because some men had lost their lives on the rig, then fishermen had lost their livlihood of fishing. And Mr. Hayward was frustrated at having to answer questions everyday as his team of experts came up with silly ideas like filling the hole with golf balls and old tires to step the leak.
Prosanta Chakrabarty,, a Louisiana State University fish biologist made a sobering statement earlier, ”Every fish and invertebrate contacting the oil is probably dying. I have no doubt about that.” Many fellow marine biologist feel the same. No major fish kills have yet been reported, but it’s still early. Federal officials said the impacts could take years to unfold. “This is just a giant experiment going on and we’re trying to understand scientifically what this means,” said Roger Helm, a senior official with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
The White House says the BP oil spill is probably the greatest environmental disaster the US has faced, but the true impact on surrounding ecosystems could take months or even years to emerge.
I just think that the Gulf of Mexico has become Tony Hayward’s neighborhood and he has let the neighborhood down. It’s sad and frustrating and above all, criminal. This song was crafted and sharpened with a huge dose of irony.
Other links;
CEO Tony Hayward can say the dumbest things
#bpoildisaster
On March 21, 2010, a volcano erupted in a small town in Icleland. The name of the volcano is called Eyjafjallajokull and one look at that name and you can understand how difficult it was for news anchors to pronounce on air. And so the frustration and jokes began.
It’s important to note that no one was hurt or injured in the explosion. But plenty of journalists were embarrassed as they tried to say, Eyjafjallajokull.
The real danger didn’t arise in Iceland, it showed up in Europe as the ashcloud was transported by the winds when the volcano erupted again on April 21, 2010. Suddenly, over 4,000 flights were canceled across Northern Europe due to the volcanic ash cloud moving south. The danger was that the ash can clog up jet engines and stop them functioning properly. Airspace was closed in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, and the UK.
Twitter showed its usefulness when strandred travelers started tweeting for rides from all over Europe. And good samaritans were tweeting back with affirmative offers. I was watching all this from my tweetdeck in Boston, Massachusetts. I saw the first guy suggest a new hashtag called, ‘#ashtag’. And another person suggested, “#getmehome’. I began to follow these hashtags and suddenly discovered the true usefulness of Twitter.
Within a couple of days of watching this global conversation taking place, I was moved to write this song entitled, “Curse the volcano”.
I originally wrote an entry about the volcanic eruption on a site called blog.smallarmy.net and was giving the social media director of Eurocontrol (Aurelie Valtat) credit for doing such a great job regarding keeping everyone abreast of the commercial skies above Europe and I was very pleasantly surprised when she wrote me back personally, to thank me for my blog. 
Other links to this story;
How Eurocontrol battled the ash cloud
#ashtag
#getmehome
#iceland
My daddy taught me good
Here’s a news story of a woman who witnessed a robbery at her neighborhood grocer. It would be a wallpaper of a story had not the Gregory Brothers auto-tuned the interview and made a crazy woman’s story sing. I find myself singing this song on my way to work sometimes. Go figure.