Baltimore Diary

More Like It

Jimmy Rabbitte: Elvis is not soul.
Jimmy Rabbitte, Sr.: [defensively] Elvis is God.
Jimmy Rabbitte: I never pictured God with a fat gut and corset singing "My Way" at Caesar's Palace.

—The Commitments (1991)

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This past weekend I went back up to Long Island to see the fruits of Daughter's labor on a play she'd been doing at her high school. Since Daughter is usually on Tech Crew, we're going up to see a play performed by a bunch of strange teenagers who are standing in front of my kid's artwork. Move outta the way, dammit!

The play that the high schoolers put on was All Shook Up, which is a jukebox musical that combines Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with the music of Elvis Presley. Now, since this is usually the part where I start bitching about how the kids were in over their heads, etc., let me say off the bat that this was definitely NOT the case.

This group did a fantastic job on the play. It was remarkably clear that these youngsters worked their hearts out, and all the hard work paid off. With only a few exceptions, the kids did everything on this play. Contrast that with the other youth theater group that Daughter works with during the summer, where nearly everything is done by the adults in a misguided effort to make everything look slick and professional, and the kids are just so much cattle moving about between the hi-def cameras (so you can buy the DVD, natch) and the rented scenery.

Now, ponder this: the summer group is a motivated bunch of kids. They're there during Summer Vacation. They want to be there; presumably they want to do a good job. But they're given either very little direction, or very poor direction, or I don't know what. But their enthusiasm and desire to succeed is so overshadowed by the lack of attention given to them that they look lackluster and the high-end production values (the program is printed by Playbill Magazine, for godsake) only makes the whole thing worse.

Back to the high school group. Not all of these kids are going to be theater/drama majors when they get out of school. Some of them will, certainly. Some of them are working on a play to get a sense of belonging to something. Some of them are there because a friend talked them into it. Some of them are there because their girl/boyfriend is participating. Whatever, it doesn't matter. The point is that you've got a pretty mixed bag of students here, and they all did a fabulous job. In fact, the first half of the play was absolutely plagued with sound problems (Daughter later told me that the mikes were brand new and the sound person was still getting used to the system), and nobody really cared. They overcame the troubled technical issue and gave us a good play anyway.

The summer play this year, incidentally, will be Once Upon a Mattress, which is a 1959 musical based on Hans Christian Andersen's "The Princess and the Pea". I'll say this: at least they finally learned not to overreach with the plays. Whether they'll take the kids into some consideration this time around? I'll let you know in August.

Paradigm Shift

Lieutenant Worf: Ever since you gave Alexander that music program, he's been playing it all night. Every night!
Commander William T. Riker: I just wanted to broaden his horizons. Besides, he likes it.
Worf: It is screeching, pounding dissonance. It is not music.
Riker: Worf, It's better than music... it's jazz.

—Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Phantasms" (10/23/93)

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Back in 1988-90 I worked in retail, in a now-defunct music chain you may remember called Record World. They had "sister" outlets called Square Circle and The Wall; those were all the same company. At any rate, at the time I worked there, the store was roughly 40% vinyl, 40% cassettes and the remaining 20% were these new Compact Disk jobbies.

It was actually a pretty exciting time to be in the business, because that was the period where everything turned around. By the time I left, the vinyl was relegated to cutout bins and 12" singles (dance mixes, etc.). It seemed like every couple of weeks I was taking space from the LPs and handing it over to the CDs.

Nowadays the trend is shifting again: the artists have gotten tired of the labels dictating to them and (in their eyes) keeping most of the money that they've earned, so they're turning to a different way of distributing their music: directly to the consumer, usually through the Internet. Some of them are making it all available via download only; other artists are giving us options.

Radiohead, for instance, made its most recent album, "In Rainbows", available only as a download a few months back, on a "pay what you wish" basis. You could pay nothing; you could pay a hundred bucks if you wanted to. They didn't really (appear to) care one way or the other. The notion was that there would be enough paying people to offset the freeloaders, and it seems there was. Estimates at the time of release suggest that the band made an average of $5 per download, which added up to six million dollars in the first twenty-four hours. Nearly all of that went directly to the band. I presume there were overhead costs such as bandwidth and administrative issues, but you get the idea. It wasn't until several weeks later that "In Rainbows" was available at the store level on a CD. Radiohead thus pretty effectively demonstrated that you don't necessarily need a big label to make some sales. Now, granted, Radiohead has a pretty big presence already despite not getting a ton of airplay, but the model can work at the grassroots level. Many artists are building the local following via MySpace. It may not lead to huge sales at this point, but from what I've read, it's ensuring better attendance wherever they play.

This month, Nine Inch Nails (a/k/a Trent Reznor and whoever's backing him up these days; he's like a modern-day Steely Dan) did much the same thing. His newest collection of instrumental tracks is called "Ghosts I-IV" and it's currently available only through his website. People get a choice of downloads: You can get the first nine tracks (out of 36) for free; you can download the whole thing for $5, which includes a 40-page PDF and some other digital goodies; you can order a 2-CD set for $10, although the CD doesn't ship until next month (you're allowed to download it, though); or you can spend up to $300 on one of a few deluxe packages. I think for the 300 bucks, Trent himself better send a tall blonde out to give you some serious sexual favors. I'm a fan, but I'm not that big of a fan. (What, I can't be a fan of Nine Inch Nails? Indeed I am, although I think he looked much better with the longer hair.)

At any rate, it appears to be a successful marketing scheme, since I wanted to write this post last night after downloading the freebies. However, the website was apparently so slammed that I didn't stand a chance of even getting to the homepage. I tried for over an hour to connect and it just wasn't happening. Things went more smoothly this morning, and the download (82MB, and there are a few goodies in that as well) was pretty efficient. The music is very atmospheric. It's not the thrash-y stuff that TR puts out, but certain sounds and hooks make you recognize it immediately as Nine Inch Nails' music.

I'm still the sort who likes to have the tangible object in my hands, so I'll be ordering the CD set. But I'll also take the associated download and enjoy it in the interim.

UPDATE: I just looked back at the site and it appears that the $300 set is already sold out. So maybe there are sexual favors involved...

Disastrous Fun

Bleedin' Gums Murphy: Then there was the time I guest-starred on "The Cosby Show".
[Flashback to a Cosby Show episode]
Cliff Huxtable: Kids, this is your Grandpa Murphy.
Rudy Huxtable: But we've got three grandpas already.
Cliff Huxtable: This one's the famous jazz musician.
Rudy Huxtable: Ah, they all are.
Cliff Huxtable: Oh,oh-oh! You see, the kids these days, they listen to the rap music, which gives them the brain damage. With the hippin' and the hoppin' and the bippin' and the boppin', they don't know what the jazz is all about. Y'see, jazz is like Jello pudding... no, that's not it. Jazz is like Kodak film... no, that's not right neither. I've got it, jazz is like the new Coke - it'll be around forever.
[Back in the present]
Bleedin' Gums Murphy: Sigh.

—The Simpsons, "'Round Springfield" (4/30/95)

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This evening, GF and I were at our neighbors' house for dinner. The husband, B, seemed to be a little out of sorts, so his wife suggested that he and I go out for a little while to have a few drinks. Hey! You don't have to ask me twice. Him, either. So he changed his shirt, I changed my shoes, and we met back at my house to head out somewhere.

Except...I couldn't find my wallet. Which was odd, because I got home relatively late, so I hadn't been all over the house. There were only a few places it could have been, and it didn't appear to be in any of them. I went out to the car and looked through my bookbag, the trunk, under the front seat...nothing.

GF suggested I take her ATM card and just get cash from the joint account and be done with it. So I got her card and got in his car.

"Maybe I left it on my desk?" I mused. "Do you mind if we see if maybe a custodian is still floating around Lake Clifton?" He didn't mind, so we headed down Harford Road toward the Lake Clifton campus, where my office is located.

Before we got there, he spotted a drive-through ATM for the bank where he keeps his account, so he pulled in and got some money, then we were on our way. B likes to test the limits of his cars, so we were doing some fun maneuvers at interesting rates of speed. "I don't usually get to do this, because usually I've got the kids," he explained.

We got to the school and, it being very close to 9:00 and looking more or less deserted, it didn't look good. Just before we were about to give up on getting into the building, I spotted the silhouette of a custodian. Better still, it was one of the building's custodians whom I know. (This is a BIG school, so I don't know all of the maintenance people.) I explained the situation to her and she agreed to let me in and walked me up to the office. No dice.

There's a certain peace in knowing that it's not there, specifically. At least you've eliminated it. Especially with a three-day weekend ahead; you don't want that "maybe" hanging over your head. I threw in the towel at that point and we headed for another ATM to get money for me.

B stopped his car at a gas station on Greenmount and 33rd Street. I told him that I was going to just walk up to the ATM at the Bank of Americawhile he filled up. "Be careful," he told me. Hey, it's Baltimore: what can happen? As it turned out, I could forget the PIN for GF's card, but a quick phone call solved that one. I got in the car and off we went.

We didn't have a destination in mind, and since I'm not really familiar with the drinking establishments at the north end of town, I wasn't much help. However, I did remember seeing a place called Holiday House which I'd heard positive things about. So we headed up there and went inside. The sign out front promised a band called "Rain Dogs". 

Holiday House, it turns out, is almost nice enough to be called a "dive bar". We each got a beer and we sat at a table, sipping beer and listening to the Rain Dogs. This band is a bunch of guys who have about ten years or so on me, and it wasn't clear to me why they were playing here, or anywhere. It's not as though they were bad—in fact they weren't bad at all—but their demeanor was such that they expected to be treated as just so much background noise. So they'd play, for instance, the old Delbert McClinton song, "Givin' it Up For Your Love" and barely react to the smattering of applause they received. Then they'd just launch into the next mid-1970s number. We finished our drinks and got out.

B then suggested that we go to a place called The Haven, which he described as a Jazz club. I agreed, and off we went. When we got there, I felt kind of dumb. The Haven (actually, it's called the New Haven Lounge but the sign out front just reads "The Haven") is located in the Northwood Shopping Center. Between the McDonald's and the pharmacy in there, I've been in that plaza a hundred times, and I never knew this place was there. Before we went in, though, B started checking himself: he couldn't find the money he'd gotten from the ATM earlier. Mentally he retraced his steps and deduced that it must have fallen out of his jacket pocket at the Holiday House. He took this with a gentle good humor, though: "Oh well. Let me just go to the ATM over there."

The first ATM wasn't working right; the touch screen wasn't reacting correctly. The one next to it took his card but then never gave him the "enter your PIN" screen. After an interminable period, it finally spit his card back out. "Never mind," I said. "I've got fifty bucks, and we both have credit cards on us. We'll be OK."

We went in and of course there's a cover charge tonight (they don't do one every night, as I understand it). We order drinks and hit a table.

It's clear that this place is way different from the last one. People are here specifically to enjoy the live music. They're watching the band, which is a combo of guitar, drums, sax and organ. And I'm not talking cheesy little Yamaha electronic keyboard; this is a full-size, wooden-case, no-fooling-around jobbie. There was very little chatter going on in the audience; they were all paying attention to the music. They applauded after each solo and when the songs were over. And where the other band, once upon a time, would have been desperate for attention and is now grateful for it, this band (whose name I didn't catch, dammit) couldn't give a goddamn if anyone else was in the room. They sounded, and looked, as though they'd been freed by the music. They were fun to watch and fun to listen to.

So in the end, B lost his money and I lost my wallet, but we both had us some fun and got out for awhile.

And, of course, despite the (at least) ten-minute search before we left, I found my wallet in the house no more than thirty seconds after I arrived back home, I kid you not.

A Little Grinchy

Rachel Phelps: [As "Wild Thing" starts to play and the crowd reacts] I hate this fucking song.

—Major League (1989)
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Now that Thanksgiving is over and we're moving into high gear on Christmas, of course it means that we're going to be hearing a lot of Christmas music.

What that means is that we'll hear about nineteen million permutations of about twenty different songs. The fact is, when you put on the "All Christmas All the Time" radio station (and there's at least one in every town; some of them started with that format weeks ago), the song catalogue just isn't that deep.

Many years ago, there was an AM station in New York City, WNEW-AM. They stood at 1130 on your dial and their format was old standards. It wasn't the "Music of Your Life", which was beamed by satellite to all the affiliates; they had DJs who programmed the shows and you got a lot of the Big Band sound, with Jazz vocalists and American standards, that sort of thing. (In fact, WNEW was the station that invented the DJ.) And every day at noon, the DJ, a fellow named William B. Williams, who had a show called "The Make-Believe Ballroom", would play the song Stardust.

Every day. Without repeating a recording unless he felt like it. For years.

This is what it's like listening to an All-Christmas station. The same few songs by all kinds of different artists. But there are a few songs that just plain irritate me:

• The Chipmunks Christmas song is one of the worst offenders. This song just makes my teeth hurt, and its popularity, which goes back to before I was born, is inexplicable. It's basically a one-joke novelty song, and the same joke gets repeated later on, in case you didn't catch the hilarity the first time around. We get it, Dave: Alvin doesn't pay attention. Give the little rodent some Ritalin and be done with it, already. The only bright note to all this is that nobody bothers to cover it because A) nobody is going to do the Chipmunk schtick, and B) there's really only one verse to the song without the schtick. Although that didn't stop Eurythmics from cutting "Sweet Dreams", did it?

   

• "My Favorite Things", the song from The Sound of Music, somehow turned into a Christmas song when this 1965 album by The Supremes came out (this is the CD cover, hence the "bonus tracks"). It's not a bad rendition of the song; in fact many of the tracks on this album are pretty good. But then again, all of the other songs on the album are Christmas songs. Not so much this one. And it might not be so bad if they stuck to the Supremes' rendition, but no. Other artists are starting to creep into the Christmas pantheon of "My Favorite Things." Just step away from the Rodgers & Hammerstein, please. And remember where you heard it first.

     

Damn right.

 









 

• Speaking of music that's been shoehorned into Christmas, someone's taken Pachelbel's Canon in D and added a children's choir with some Christmas lyrics to it. So you get the Canon plus the kids, then the Canon by itself, then the Canon and the kids again. None of which gets around the fact that it wasn't a Christmas song in the first place, so just cut it out. If you want to do something new, then do something new. If you want to re-do an existing Christmas song, nobody's stopping you. But don't do bogus mashups like this. Not on my watch, boy.

• Before you jump too ugly on me about "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer", let me start by saying that I rather like this song. What I object to is the specific recording that we hear over and over again. When the song first started to break, in 1982, it was on a 45-rpm record, on a label called "Oink". By 1984 it was a nationwide novelty hit and CBS signed Elmo & Patsy Shropshire (that's their last name; don't say you don't learn stuff here) to a contract, and they re-recorded the song that year. The 1982 recording, to my ear, was MUCH funnier, because it was done in such a deadpan style. They basically trusted you to get the joke. The 1984 CBS recording, which is what we are now "treated" to, is a much "wackier" recording, where Elmo will punch up certain lines (note the heavy emphasis on the "You can say" part of the chorus and the overpronunciation of "incriminating Claus marks"), which is the verbal equivalent of an elbow to the ribs. The hell of it is, I had a copy of the Oink 45 and I can't find it.
• 

  I'm sure everyone and his brother has seen this video, which is a set of about 16,000 Christmas lights synchronized to "Wizards of Winter" by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I don't actually have much problem with this one either, although I'll mention that I heard it today on the radio and it's not as cool a tune without seeing the synchronized lights at the same time. They really complement each other well. 

And here's where I borrow a page from Yellojkt's playbook and get into some Blatant Comment Whoring^TM: Agree? Disagree? Anything you'd like to see banished?

Music Under the Stars

Ned Flanders: I'm going to a Christian rock concert.
[holds up two tickets reading "Chris Rock in Concert"]
Ned Flanders: It's gonna be one wholesome evening!

--The Simpsons, "Children of a Lesser Clod" (5/13/01)

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Last Sunday, GF and I traveled down to Wolf Trap to see Lucinda Williams' show. It was my first trip to that particular venue, although I've been to a couple like it: A few years back I got to see Radiohead at Merriweather Post Pavilion, and the summer before I moved down here I was at the Phish show at what was then the Garden State Arts Center, now the PNC Bank Arts Center.

(Looking at that list alone, I'm thinking that I've got some eclectic taste in my concerts. I've also been to the Allman Brothers at Jones Beach (twice), Foreigner at Jones Beach, Billy Joel and Rod Stewart at Nassau Coliseum, Paul McCartney at RFK Stadium, Tool at the Verizon Center, and I've also seen Taylor Dayne, Jane Wiedlin, the Subdudes, 24-7 Spyz and a few others at private events. Hm. This is rather boosting the argument rather than refuting it...)

The show was slated for 8:00, but we presumed that that time was reserved for the opening act, Charlie Louvin. Charlie is real old-school country music; in fact he and his brother toured as the Louvin Brothers until, career-wise, they parted ways the year I was born. Now, that's old-school.

Louvin just released an album a few months ago, with some pretty interesting guests on it, so I ordered a copy of the CD to see what it was about. It's not bad but it's not really my speed, either. At least I had some idea of what I'd be hearing.

We got to the venue at almost exactly 8:00, parked the car and made our way in. Sure enough, Charlie Louvin had just started. There was something not quite right about the sound coming from him and his band but it didn't occur to me until later on that it was because I was hearing a lot of the sounds that the audience made coming through the amps, almost as though the crowd was miked. GF and I staked out a patch of grass on the slope above the walkway, where we had a decent view. Not having been there before, I decided to wander around and see if there were any fun souvenirs to be had.

There are two souvenir stands at Wolf Trap (that I saw). One was devoted entirely to Wolf Trap stuff. (It is a national park, after all; government needs their cut.) The other one held the artist-type materials. There wasn't any Louvin stuff except for the CD. For Lucinda Williams, there were CDs, assorted T-shirts and some keychains. At that point I didn't buy anything. I got some beverages and re-joined GF.

Louvin finished at almost 9:00 and I took another walk around. As I got closer to the artist souvenir stand I noticed that several of the T-shirt sizes were out of stock. I figured I'd better move. That's when I realized that there what were seemingly identical shirts (designated #1 and #4) were, in fact, different: each shirt represented a different leg from the tour. The #4 shirt was from the previous leg, which is why it was only $15. However, the shirts in my size from the current tour were gone. I confirmed this with the woman behind the counter, and she noted that I was correct. As I ordered a #4 in my size, she suddenly realized that she had a #1 that was just returned by a customer. It was the one draped over her shoulder. Kismet! So I got a shirt from the current tour.

Lucinda Williams is a fantastic performer. The arrangements change only a little bit from the CDs, but always for the better. She's truly a perfectionist: at one point she stopped a song about a minute in because there was something she didn't like about the mix. Then they simply started over again. There must have been a technical glitch we didn't know about because, early on, there were several between-song consultations with band members and with some of the crew, and she told us that "we had a set list, but set lists are made to be broken."

Lucinda (see how we're pals, now?) had a little story in between each song, which gave us a little of the backstory involved, and she seemed to be genuinely touched and impressed by the reception that the audience gave her. Maybe it's a put-on, but I kind of liked it.

In the end, I had a great time and would certainly return for another show. I'm thinking about going to see the live broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion" in the spring.

Daft Hands

Max Guevara: [Brain and Max are on her motorcycle and Brain puts his hands on her chest to hold on.] Brain?
Brain: Yeah.
Max: Watch the hands!
Brain: I'm just trying to hang on here.
Max Guevara: Hang on a little lower. [Brain moves his hands down too low.] Not that low!

--Dark Angel, "Brainiac" (1/11/02)

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Found this via B3ta.com. It's slow at first, so stay with it past the intro. Who knows, maybe it's viral already...

Are You Tone Deaf?

An online test that tests your musical ability. It's basically a quick way to determine whether you have good pitch perception.

I got a 72.2% on the first go-round, which isn't bad considering that I had the dogs play-fighting in the room for part of the test. It's also not bad considering that I don't play an instrument.

Good speakers or a headset are recommended, and you'll need Flash Player 8 or 9.

How did you do?

Spreading the Joy

Among the projects I've worked on with this house, one of the most frustrating has been wiring the back yard for sound.

I found a decent pair of speakers, then I bought a huge quantity of wire to get the job done. I had to run the wire from the speakers, into the house somehow, then under the floor (thank goodness for an unfinished basement) and up and into the audio source. At that point I had to decide: the stereo amplifier? Or my computer? I do enjoy listening to the radio a lot, but I want to have the computer option as well. Finally I figure that I can always connect the computer to the amp and have it both ways. The speaker wires get connected to the amplifier.

Now I have to figure out a way to get the audio from the computer to the amplifier. Fortunately this house is blessed with shabby construction, so there are plenty of gaps between floor and wall where I can run cables. So I buy another set of cables (this set with plugs on the ends) and thread them from the computer down under the floor, across the basement ceiling and up again on the other side of the room, and into the back of the amplifier. A few patch cords to give me the option of listening on the computer speakers if I want, and it's all good.

So at this point I have: my sound card, then a splitter, then cables going to the computer speakers and another set going to the amplifier. At the amplifier I have another split, with speakers in the house and another set outside. Everything works great, except for the part where the dog chewed up the outside speaker wires.

Twice.

Well, there was one other problem. When I ran the sound from the computer to the amp, there was a definite buzz/hum going on in the left speaker. It's the sound that you get when something isn't grounded correctly. I tried several options and still got the buzz. It didn't seem to bother anyone else but it drove me berserk. Maybe it's that Mosquito tone? So I gave up on the project for awhile.

So today I'm reading the Baltimore Sun and I read in Mike Himowitz' column about a device that may solve my problems. RCA makes a digital, wireless transmitter called the Lyra RD900DW. I looked around at some of the reviews and they seem pretty positive. So for about $25 with shipping, it's worth a shot. Especially since it runs on MusicMatch software, which is what I already use to organize my MP3 collection. Stay tuned. Heh.

This Bird Has Flown

The morning of December 9, 1980 was much like any other at first. I was a Senior in high school. I woke up early for some reason. The first thing I did every morning was turn on my radio, which was tuned to WABC. It was still a music station then. The morning DJ at the time was Dan Ingram. For those of you who remember New York radio in those days, this was a brief experiment on WABC's part, and it wasn't too much longer before he was back at the afternoon drive shift.

If you don't know him, Dan Ingram is probably one of the best disk jockeys ever. He's funny, he's clever, he's sincere. If Bruce Morrow was everyone's cousin, Dan Ingram was the uncle with the bizarre sense of humor. When Chairman Mao visited New York City, Dan suggested that the Chairman looked a little like the guy who did his laundry. Many time he'd talk back to the records or the commercials, usually taking them out of context: "No sir, I would NEVER 'void where prohibited'." Dan's shift usually flew by because you had so much fun listening to him.

This morning, however, he was rather somber. Something had happened and it took several minutes for me to piece it together because of the time that I came in. There were references to "he" and "him" and it was only very slowly that I realized that John Lennon was dead. Not only that he was dead, but that somebody who was known perhaps worldwide for his efforts at peace had died a violent death. A lone gunman, someone described by a local police officer as "a wack job", had ambushed Lennon late the night before, as he returned home from a recording session, the one that would ultimately become the Milk and Honey album.

In retrospect, even though police were there in a heartbeat, and even though they didn't bother waiting for an ambulance (they piled him into a cruiser and drove him to the hospital), he arrived at the hospital alive but it was too late; there was too much damage done. He had no pulse, no blood pressure. He wasn't breathing. They worked on him for maybe twenty minutes before they gave up.

I got to school early every day because I was the guy who did the morning announcements on the PA system. I remember taking notes on all of this because I wanted to share some of this information. When I got to school I realized that there were people who still didn't know everything that had happened. For many of the people in Kings Park High School that morning, I was the person who broke the news that Lennon had died.

Twenty-five years ago today, John Lennon was killed outside his apartment house. I still remember some parts of that day vividly.

We all shine on.

99 Luftballons

...which is vastly superior to the English dreck version of the song. I don't speak a word of German--not on purpose, anyway--but that entire album? Is great.

And the only reason I'm bringing it up is because this is my 99th post. A good average, not a great average. I should have crossed 100 a long time ago. But at least I'm more or less in the habit, which for me is the key.

Work stuff: Self-monitoring, which I've discussed before. Call it whatever you like but it usually adds up to "witch hunt." And I had to deal with it at both of my schools on consecutive days, right after Spring Break. That, all by itself, is enough to throw your head into tailspin. On top of that, they have me doing another training session at the end of the month. But it's not a training session where they give you the materials and the presentation notes and stuff. No, they're giving us the materials and Go Forth and Make Your Own Presentation Notes, Kid. So I've got that to deal with. Plus we have to deal with panicky parents who just figured out that their kid is going to flunk and maybe he needs special education so that he won't have to repeat. And when the parents refer their kids to me, I have no choice: I have to get the Child Study Team together at least the one time. PLUS we have to do yet another round of the self-monitoring in both schools, and get it done before June 1. (One of them was supposed to be off the hook this quarter.) I'm not sure what the hurry is, but okay. We're hammered with meetings to be scheduled but I'd love to clear an entire day and decicate it to your telling me how much my work sucks. That's the stuff, you bet. PLUS (why, yes, there is more, thanks for asking) we've been having server troubles at one school so we're way behind on the meeting data entry. PLUS we have another audit called Live Count, which has to be done in the after-school hours, and done by next Friday.

Yeah, good times.

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Still more searches that led here:

"shabbos goy" monkey [twice! a few minutes apart--BD came up #2 in a Yahoo search]
double t diner [also twice but about a day apart]
helen keller burt [sic] ear