Singaling Dragon

Apropos of nothing, here is a list of song titles you will never hear:

• "I Love You So Much (I Shat Myself)"
• "Bacon Me All Over"
• "Once, Twice, Three Times a Single Bit Memory Error"
• "I Heart Urinal Cake"
• "The Eva Braun Blues"
• "I Want To Taste Your Kidneys"
• "You Broke My Heart (And Also My Penis)"
• "Roll That Fattie In Flour"
• "I Stapled Our Hands Together"
• "That Pain In Your Heart Is Probably An Infarction"
• "I'm Bleeding Everywhere"
• "Drinkin' Drano With Art Linkletter Again"
• "My Heart Belongs To Kissinger"
• "Our Love Is Like Fish Entrails"
• "Grease Me Up, Grandpa (That Dog Won't Milk Itself)"
• "Upperdeckin' The John For Jesus"

Sing me a song

I'm a little apprehensive about sharing this, because, to be frank, I basically poured my heart and soul into it for the better part of two weeks, and I'm still not sure if it's good. When I listen to it, I'm greatly disappointed, but I usually am when I listen to my own stuff. I'll stop fishing for compliments. Check check it:

Matt Hearn - Doubting Thomas.mp3

Original song by Nickel Creek; arrangement by Teh Hearn; all voices are Teh Hearn; produced by Teh Hearn.

As you can see, I'm pretty involved in the process.

The Art

Just a quick note: if you like photography at all, check out 2008 in Photographs at boston.com. Some of them are mildly graphic, but they make you click before they'll load the really nasty ones (a dude with a seriously gushing head wound, and a dead child). Some of them are simply awe-inspiring, but all of them are "make-you-thinkers."

Get on it.

Oh, and don't forget parts two and three, the links are on the site.

Baseless nostalgia

Over Thanksgiving, we watched "A Christmas Story," featuring Peter Billingsley, Scott Farkus, and Bumpus's Dogs. Great film, which even after watching it all the way through, my wife insists she's never seen the entirety of. I noted a few strange things (warning: lists within lists a-comin'):

• Miss Shields, Ralphie's schoolteacher, is kinda sneaky hot. Sure, she's overweight and dumpy and middle-aged, but she's got that stern schoolmarm thing going on. That doesn't turn anyone else on? Just me, huh? Okay, nevermind.
• I don't know what kind of insanely superpowered BB-gun Ralphie got, but I've had lead pellets bounce back at me directly from a wooden target placed roughly 15 feet away, and it was about as painful as getting flogged with a shoelace. Admittedly, lead is soft; BBs are steel (BB does not stand for "Brass Ball," in case you were wondering). Plus, idiot-boy put his target over a piece of metal, whereas my ammo was bouncing off impact-absorbing plywood. Still. I'm just sayin', maybe Ralphie could man up a bit and take a round to the face without flying backwards like he'd been hit by a bus. PART OF GROWING UP IS GETTING HIT IN THE FACE BY THE OCCASIONAL PIECE OF FAST-MOVING METAL.
• Did it never occur to the fire department that, instead of yanking or cutting Flick's tongue off the flagpole, they might simply have poured warm water over it? He showed up back in class looking like they'd freed him with a bandsaw.
• Why don't men wear hats anymore? I mean, I know the story about JFK giving his inauguration address, or some speech of similar gravitas, without a hat on, and after that hats sorta petered out. But c'mon, dress hats are FANTASTIC. I'd wear one with suits and nice clothes all the time if I could find one that fits my head for a reasonable price. This also got me thinking of a bunch of other things that you never see anymore (and in fact haven't really seen in my lifetime):
  • Men wearing suits all the time, including to sports events and while gardening. Now you can get a seat in a Michelin 3-star restaurant wearing cutoffs and a T-shirt featuring a picture of Calvin pissing on Che Guevara. THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING, people.
  • Drunken department store Santas. Time was, every Santy was soused to the gills and nobody thought anything of it; dealing with that many unruly children basically REQUIRED it. If St. Nick even has a beer at lunch these days he'd probably be stoned to death by a platoon of Soccer/Hockey/Polo moms while their nannies scurried the children over to the Build-A-Bear workshop so their little Christmas hearts don't get broken by watching Father Christmas die a messy death.
  • Nobody says "soused" anymore, either. And whatever happened to three-martini lunches? And surreptitious bottles of rye in big mahogany executive desks for a little on-the-job tippling? Nobody drinks rye, for that matter, with the possible exception of me and one other (and he knows who he is, the lush).
  • A few things we DON'T need to bring back from the forties/fifties: pointy brassieres (those'll REALLY put an eye out), polio, Joe McCarthy, and the various wars in Europe and Asia.
• Last thing: if my next-door neighbors had a pack of dogs that broke into my house and ruined my Christmas turkey, the dogs would be dead and the neighbor would be burying them in the backyard while I ate HIS turkey and drank all his rye.

Crikey

Wow, it's been like 3 weeks and a day. That is pretty sad, for someone who prides himself on...well...I'm not sure what I pride myself on. Food consumption, I guess, and I'm also remarkably good at growing zits.

Anyway, you might be curious about what's been going on, but probably not. The new job really has me hoppin', and I'm loathe to do anything but, you know, actually work, because I'd like to keep my job. (At CSC getting fired would have been almost a pleasure, so I did a significant portion of my blogging from the office.) The Brandywiners show ("Oklahoma!") has me at one rehearsal or another almost every night, and we haven't even gone out to Longwood (the location of the outdoor theater) yet. Things are gonna get mad hectic. MAD. HEC. TIC. TAC. TOE.

That went to a weird place.

Anyway, some quicky notes:

• I love my new MacBook. (You may have read about it in an earlier post.) There's all kinds of radness associated with it, and I finally managed to get all my favorite programs installed. Woo! Woo. If you've got the means (they're roughly twice as expensive as a comparable PC), I highly recommend picking one up.
• I finally got around to starting to use Shutterfly, bringing me into approximately 2004. I'm catching up, I swear! Anyway, you can hit up matthearn.shutterfly.com to look at some recent pictures, and even download or order quality prints of 'em if you've of a mind to.
• While I'm in the picture-editing mode, hopefully I'll have new pictures of Charles to put up in the next day or two. I mean, I have the pictures; hopefully they'll be up. If you're curious, he's the size of a prize calf. It's like feeding a full-grown St. Bernard, except blonder and louder.

Yeah, that's what I got. Hopefully I'll see you in less than 3 weeks. No promises, though.

Teh Tonyz!

So: my homey Shaun TC is in the cast of "In The Heights," which you may or may not know is up for something like 11,304 Tony awards. (Okay, it's just 13. Still.) You know what that means? Running diary. OH HECK YES. I should warn you; I was hard pressed to keep up with events, what with Whoopi being out of control and HearnWife constantly talking to me. So things are a little..."stream of consciousness." Also I may have been drinking.

• The Lion King...meh. Meh? Yeah, meh. It was a great Disney Movie because James Earl Jones, Matthew Broderick, and Jeremy Irons were involved. As a musical with a bunch of no-names? Meh.
• Laurence Fishburne adds nothing but class. He's like Sidney Poitier 2.0. Except where Mr. Poitier played Detective Virgil Tibbs, Laurence played Cowboy Curtis.
• Crybaby: The Musical? Really? Wow. The only redeeming thing about the movie was Johnny Depp, and I remember being sadly disappointed that he didn't get shot. I have to say, the guy playing Crybaby would NOT enjoy prison. Because of all the RAPE. He would definitely be somebody's TOTALLY SWEET GIRLFRIEND.
• Nice to see that the guy that played Will's boyfriend on "Will and Grace" is still working as something other than an EMT or cop. I think he played a blue-collar public servant in 34 straight crappy TV dramas.
• The one guy that apparently missed a memo and showed up in white tie just made me think: why isn't anybody wearing a white jacket? It's after Memorial Day, right? I think everything that's wrong with American can be traced to folks not owning and wearing formal wear when warranted and men not wearing hats.
• HOLY CRAP BISHOP BRENNAN FROM FATHER TED WON A TONY! Seriously, being one of maybe 3 Americans that recognized him has made my life worthwhile.
• Boo Counting Crows guy. Holy over-rated. (Sorry, all my friends that are huge Crows fans.)
• Who, uh, is Stew? And what is this "Passing Strange?" Because it's, uh, not so great. The best I can say is that the one girl's "English" accent made me laugh a little. Amsterdam seems to be involved. Does this makes sense if you're high? Per...haps. HW: "This is stupid. Fast forward." Done, and done.
• Nice! John Lithgow! Crap, he started talking, that ruined it. Oh good, he's being ironic; that saved it. A little bit. Nice, the first Tony that In The Heights is up for! Boo, South Pacific's guy won it. (Best Director.) Why does this guy sound like the creepy guy from "Back To You?"
• Jack Klugman? I thought he was dead! Oh, he just SOUNDS dead. Does he even have lungs? I think I saw a gill.
• Diesel, here comes "Gypsy." I have heard incredible things, and plan to try and seduce a producer for tickets when I visit NYC later this week.
• Patti LuPone...uh...holy crap. Yeah, gonna try and see that, and soon, before she blows out a kidney singing that.
• Now that we're on commercial, I can note the following: everyone talks about Patti LuPone's acting and star power, but I gotta tell you, based on what she just sang, she is a simply fantastic musician. Diction, pitch, dynamics, all that. Spectacular.
• Hehehe Whoopi in "Phantom Of The Opera." C'mon, go for the high note! Wow, I can't believe they bothered to rebuild that set just for 15 seconds of gag.
• Hot. They're going through the stuff they gave out before the telecast started, and "In The Heights" won for Best Choreography and Best Orchestrations! I can say firsthand: both those things were phatty phats. I have seen them. And then I walked and danced on the stage. People were impressed.
• Good to see Nathan Lane getting work. He's so...shy.
• Wait, Duncan Sheik scored "Spring Awakening?" How about that. And here I thought he was a one-hit wonder. Here's what I can say: he's not even remotely funny. He just tossed a joke out that the audience wasn't sure what to do with, because he had all the comedic timing of MY SCROTUM. (Actually that's not true; my coin-purse is hilarious.)
• Nice!!! "In The Heights" just won for best lyrics, and the guy is rapping. Fantastic. He needs his hat, though. Nice! A shout-out for the hat AND Stephen Sondheim. The whole thing was actually kinda touching; normally you want a winner to act like I'd been there before, but his whole "holy crap this is unpossible" rap came across mad authentic. That's right: he's the Barack Obama of the Broadway Stage.
• South Pacific: Emile. Uh...that particular Emile wouldn't have looked at Nellie Forbush twice. Or even once, because he would have been trying to have vicious animal sex with Lieutenant Cable. There's nothing wrong with that, but next time let's try and find someone a little more manly? The guy has a hot voice, though, I'll give him that. (Update: later on he won best actor in a musical production, which is actually probably true because acting heterosexual was a SERIOUS stretch for him.)
• Did Nellie Forbush just smell a hat? I'm kinda thrown here. She sounds a little old. And the one girl in the flesh-colored bathing suit appears to be simply naked. Which is disappointing, compared to actual nudity.
• Whoopi just came onstage as Mary Poppins in the worst-disguised flying wires ever. Giggles all around.
• Kristen Chenoweth just made a "Defying Gravity" (a "Wicked" reference, if you were heretofore unware) joke that pained me. Then she stuck her hand in her armpit as if she thought that was a Polish Knee-Slapper. I'd assume she was high, but no, she's just stupid.
• Barry Bostwick! I could not be more excited! He once played George Washington. Did you know that? I did. I bet you did not. He's introducing "Grease," which means I hate him! Hate him. I hate "Grease." Have I mentioned that? Yeah. You know how you hate racism, or terrorism, or Hitler? I hate "Grease." Watching this may well give me a stroke. Even worse, they're doing a number that was NOT IN THE ORIGINAL SHOW. IT CAME FROM THE MOVIE. CAN YOU BE ANY MORE CRAPPY. I say no.
• I hate Grease so much.
• One of the Grease actors appears to have POLISHED THE ASS OF HIS JEANS. Hate.
• Dang! The "Gypsy" guy beat out the "In The Heights" guy for "Featured Actor." Now I have to see "Gypsy" 'cause the "In The Heights" dude SLAYED. Gotta love the Gypsy guy for bringing back the Hitler moustachio, though.
• Marisa Tomei came out to introduce something with what could best be described as a "natural" look, and said: "One of the wonders of theater is that it is a shared experience." HW: "Yeah...makeup can be a shared experience too."
• Oh good. Disney didn't irritate me enough with "The Lion King," they had to do a "Little Mermaid" show too. It's sad that there so many starving actors that they can staff these ABOMINATIONS. HW: "I thought [Ariel] was scary. And boring." Yeah, even the red hair couldn't save her.
• "A Catered Affair:" I don't know Kate Prince, but I can say that she hit a loud note of some kind and my left ear started bleeding. Bad times.
• Megan Mullaly! I've always been fond of her. Heheheh...she made a penis-related joke. "Deep Love." I like. HW is not as much a fan, 'cause she hasn't seen "Young Frankenstein" (the movie), which is sad for her.
• Whoopi's introducing a bunch of sets from plays I didn't see...makes it kinda hard to keep up. Luckily, as it turns out, she's funny! Has no eyebrows, though.
• David Morse! YES! I love him. Dunno why, just do. ACCEPT IT.
• There's a play of "The Thirty Nine Steps?" Somehow I missed that. Looks...freaky. Exciting. I'm excited.
• I feel similarly about Gabriel Byrne as I do about David Morse, except FAR more overtly sexually.
• Hee..the chick that won for best Director of a Play has a tattoo that she deeply regrets. I think it was something commemorating "Where Eagles Dare." Somewhere, Richard Burton is DRINKING HEAVILY.
• Mary Louise Parker is hot, but she's either stoned, or that glittery black thing on the side of her head is a REALLY BORING alien that has rooted into her brain and taken it over. Because she's about as lively as the chunks of hair and flesh stuck to my wife's leg-razor.
• Is it just me, or is it totally awesome refer to The Scottish Play as "The Scottish Play" even when they aren't involved in a production thereof? Fantastic.
• Mark Rylance of "Boeing-Boeing" SLAYED me. Sarah found him boring. This resulted in an argument. Yay marriage!
• Lin-Manuel is up ons! GO TC GO GO TC Yes. That show is ridiculous. Compared to all the other stuff, I don't see how it could miss on a big win, even up against Gypsy.
• Wow. "South Pacific" is tearing it up, which is kind of a pity, because that show is SO 1946. Right? I mean, what could it really bring to the table? Wow, racism against Indonesian natives! That really speaks to me! (No, it doesn't.)
• I like the guy presenting with Harry Potter. He's quick. ON THE BALL, if you would believe it.
• Whoa! Look at Mandy Patinkin's face! That beard is...nautical.
• I gotta say; Sondheim. Certainly interesting. But doesn't do much of anything for me, to be honest. It seems like he sacrificed melody for a feeling of "Hey! Listen to how weird this is! I would like another Tony!" People are willing to let this slide, for some reason. Me? Nay.
• HW on Glenn Close: "Severe." Uh...yeah. She looks like she's been sharpened.
• Lily Tomlin's not dead? Wow!
• Can't say I'm excited about "Xanadu," since the movie was, at best, homicidal. (Everybody that watched it died of suck.) Oh good, rollerskates. I...uh...am fast-forwarding past this horrific crap. Uh...why did that guy walk up from the audience? And now there's a pegasus dropping from the season? I need a grenade. Was that supposed to be ironic? That was bad.
• Oh, that's Anthony Rapp? I just remember him from "Road Trip." I don't hate Rent as much as I hate Grease, but it's reasonably close. Take it from me: if you want to see Rent, just go get tickets to La Boheme at the Met. Or even at a local regional opera company. It's just like Rent, except not stupid. Though, I gotta say; the 525,600 minutes song is catchy. Hellacatchy. Not "Quando m'en vo" catchy, but clearly good enough to hoodwink thousands of Musical Theater fans. Seriously, if you're willing to drop $60 to see Rent but won't drop the same amount to see opera att the Met, you're basically saying "I want to seem like I enjoy culture without actually having to expose myself to it." You probably also like Jack Johnson, who I'd like to see reenact the rock-crusher scene in "The Temple Of Doom."
• "Liza Minelli" and "Short Skirt" are not phrases that should EVER go together. She is definitely turning into her mother as she gets older; Judy had the good sense to die young, though. HW: "Is her bra supposed to be hanging out like that?" Yeah...I think that was intentional. In a related story, I just threw up on my socks.
• Wow, the chick from Xanadu is BEAT. She needs less teeth and more lips. I kept wondering if a second mouth was going to come out, all Alien-style.
• Go Patti LuPone! HW: "Yeah, like nobody knew that was coming. Certainly wasn't gonna be that Xanadu b****." Don't let anybody tell you HW isn't profound.
• Best Musical to "In The Heights!" Hell yeah! Fantastic. If "Xanadu" had won I might have torched something. I'd just like to poit out that I saw the show that wont the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical before it actually opened because of my connections.

A successful night! "In The Heights" pulled down Best Choreography, Best Orchestration, Best Original Score, and Best Musical. Mad shout-outs to Shaun and his castmates for being AWESOME.

My jam, it is flavafull

So I finally broke down and got myself a recording setup. It is PIMP. It is centered on a PreSonus Firebox, which connects via Firewire to my HP desktop. I also got microphones, mic cords, a pop filter, and 2 mic stands which of course have not yet arrived so I had to hold the mic and a pop filter like a putz to record my first jam. This is just an experiment, really, just the first 20 or so bars of William Byrd's "Nunc Dimittis," Gradualia I No. 4, whatever that means. We've been singing it in Cathedral Compline Choir for the last few performances, so I had a handy copy, and when transposed down a third it actually fits reasonably well into my voice. I'm still learning, but comments are ALWAYS welcome. I hope to heck this works:

Well, dang, it didn't. I was trying to embed it in a thing so you could totally just click and be all WHATUP. Darn. Oh well, here's a regular link to it.

Update: I got it working. Check it out! You can still download it from the link above if you wanna throw the awesomeness on your Ip Od.

In my never-ending quest to develop SOME kind of visual artistic skill (I draw about as well as my son, and he's mostly interested in eating the crayons), I have taken some new photographs. Feel free to ridicule them. I'm particularly fond of this one:

So: Heroes. HW and I are about halfway through the DVDs of season one, usually knocking out 2 or 3 episodes a night while cleaning, or working on our lappies, or whatnot. So far, here are my thoughts:

• I am on the freaking edge of my seat. Seriously, it's all we can do to get to bed by 11pm, and invariably when there's any doubt, we watch another episode. We're starting to reach the point, though, where keeping track of all the various plotlines is taking its toll on our sanity; about 10 episodes in, they introduced yet another new character, and Sarah paused the DVD, looked at me, and said, "Oh hells no."
• The show is deceptively gruesome. Early on we watched a few episodes with Charles in the room (not that he pays attention; the only things he likes on TV are "The New Yankee Workshop" (he likes to say "Morm!" when Norm Abram appears) and "Days Of Our Lives"), but after a few episodes I realized that the despite the fact that there's very little actual violence in a given episode, there's a heck of a lot of shots of the results of violence. For example, in an early episode (mild SPOILER ALERT), Niki rips a couple of mafia goons to shreds, quite literally. You don't get to see it happen, but you do get a couple of glimpses of corpses with significant limbs in alternate locations. Later on, some people get their heads sawn open; you don't see it happen, you just see the results. Pretty gritty stuff. IT'S AWESOME.
• HW extols the acting of Ali Larter, who plays (another SPOILER ALERT) a chick with multiple personality disorder, but I don't think it's that hard. There's no real subtlety between the two characters; one is timid and nice, and the other is insane and likes to tear people limb from limb. It's interesting to see her switch back and forth in the span of a few seconds, but I think any actor outside of Keanu Reeves could probably do that. None of the acting is really that exceptional, although that's mostly because the characters just aren't that deep. They all have funny abilities and are conflicted about them. The best of the lot is probably Adrian Pasdar, playing politician Nathan Petrelli, because he's the only one with more than 2 layers. (I don't count Ali Larter here because she's basically playing two separate characters who happen to look identical.) Nathan has his politician mask, his win-at-all-costs shark persona, his mild confusion and conflict about his abilities, and underneath all that, there's a foreboding menace that's hard to describe because we've only gotten to see glimpses of it yet.

  Hayden Panettiere is a little disappointing, mostly because her half-hearted attempts at a Texas accent falls WAAAAY short. On the other hand, she's so hot that I have to put on loose pants to watch the show. So I can't be truly objective about her acting. And don't remind me that she was probably only 16 when season 1 was taped; I already have to counteract my shame and guilt with massive amounts of high quality English gin. Although I don't feel so bad, now that she's dating Milo Ventimiglia, who is 8 months older than I.

• The inside jokes and shoutouts to other films and TV shows, usually involving Hiro Nakamura, are SLAYING me. When he tries to travel backwards in time a few minutes, and accidentally goes backwards approximately 6 months, he says "Great Scott!", an obvious reference to "Back To The Future." Later, we noted that his father was played by George Takei (aka Mr. Sulu), who rolls up in a limo with the license plate "NCC1701." It's also worth noting that Hiro is the most amusing character in a prime-time drama since Thomas Magnum. And Hiro's cuter. All the nerdgirls I know crave his hott parts.

Right now our DVR is choked with episodes from Season 2; hopefully we can wrap up Season 1 in the next week or so and start to get caught up. If only to see what happens when Hayden Panettiere's character hits her slutty college years.

I dunno about you, but any time I go to the Arden Fair, I feel the need to document the goings-on. Unfortunately there's only about 5 pictures, because I am a rank amateur, still learning how to use my tools, and a significant number of the pictures were blurry beyond belief. Arrrrrrrrrgh.

The weather for the Fair was perfect, though. Just warm enough to wear shorts, not quite warm enough that the moisture in my groin was a bother. We ate kettle corn, and I wandered into the book sale and started making selections. After I had tucked 10 or so books under my arm, a nice gentleman volunteer came over and asked if I would like a box.

"I would LOVE a box," I replied, and he fetched me one. After 5 or so more minutes, I had completely filled the box and was balancing even more books on top.

"Sir, would you prefer a bigger box?"

I agreed, and he got me another one. I ended up taking away about 2 dozen books, including a host of fiction (Madeleine L'Engle's Time Trilogy, consisting of A Wrinkle In Time, A Wind In The Door, and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, all of which I'd been planning to order from Amazon soon anyway, along with the Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher), poetry, books on photography, and a few medical textbooks. Total cost: $16. I love used books. I don't understand how people can get rid of books; I have three 6' bookshelves at home completely stocked, and dozens of books laying around my basement with no shelves on which to reside. When we get our new house, I'm going to try and reserve one room as my library, assuming my wife permits such a thing.

Sarah and her mom looked over some crafts, most of which were a tad overpriced, and little was bought. But the food was decent, like it is most years, and the Diamond State Concert Band played marches and things in the "Beer Garden," and all was riotously fun.

Update: I did not get to kiss John Mayer on the mouth. All is sadness. Doubly frustrating, is that because the Tweeter Center sucks, I couldn't get any pictures. Argh.

Our tickets said something about "NO PROFESSIONAL CAMERAS," which kinda concerned me, but I thought, well, Canon's own website describes the Rebel XTi as a "consumer" camera (the 30D is prosumer; the 5D is professional; and the 1D Mark III is "Holy Crap This Is Way Too Expensive To Take Out Of The Box"), and if I just put on a relatively tame lens (no monstrous zooms with lens hoods), they can't really complain.

Incorrect.

Apparently when they say "No Professional Cameras," they mean no detachable lenses, so despite the fact that my camera entered the building with a 50mm prime lens that wouldn't allow me to get a shot of John any closer than "ant" view, it was confiscated (and returned later, worry not). This wouldn't have been so troubling if the tickets had specifically said "No cameras with detachable lenses," which would have been perfectly clear. It also would have been less annoying if they weren't allowing people to bring in $800 Sony zoom 8MP digitals that were capable of getting pictures of the bass player's ridiculous Village-People-Cop hat.

Anyway, we got in, and I immediately bought myself a large boring American beer, only to walk an extra 50 feet and discover they had a stand selling all kinds of quality microbrews. So my frustrations mounted. Then we got seated while James Morrison played his set, and I got even more pissed off, because the sound system at the Tweeter Center is so crappy it sounded like James was singing through a special filter designed to remove all consonants from every word. I couldn't understand a thing. Even now I have no idea if any of his songs are any good; it might as well have been all instrumentals. I've heard better sound systems in an elevator.

The same goes for Ben Folds, who from what I'm told is a phenomenal musician and performer; all I can say is he has some amusing gimmicks and his songs often have pretty melodies. I'll give him a B- because he kept throwing his piano seat at the keys, and at one point during a song he broke a piano string on a low note, immediately stopped the song, removed the string from the soundboard, handed it to a fan, and then restarted the song exactly where he'd left off.

Luckily, during his set I was able to run off and pee, and also buy a quality beer named something like "Circus Boy" or "Circus Penis," or something. It was FANDAMNTASTIC, and I got back to my seat to listen to Ben Folds play 2 more completely unintelligible songs and then wander off to put on his neck brace (I'm assuming, since his head is roughly the same size as the rest of his body).

Honestly, the best part of the concert (up until John walked onstage) was making fun of other people with Liz. A quick rundown of the amusing people we saw:

• Between 8 and 27,000 skinny little high school/early college-aged skanks who seriously needed to go dig a sandwich out of the trash or something before their bodies collapsed in on themselves.
• An ENORMOUSLY fat woman in a wheelchair, attended by her fat husband and 2 fat daughters, getting wheeled around while sucking on what appeared to be a quart-sized glass of rum-soaked pixie-stix-sugar. There must have been 3,000 calories in that "drink," which sadly was probably maybe 1/5 of this woman's daily regular intake.
• A couple thousand guys who were clearly there because their girlfriends liked John Mayer. These were the guys who were probably annoyed because they kept wanting to sit down and dorks like me wouldn't stop standing up and screaming.

Yeah, I was screaming. John Mayer gives me happy feelings in my pants. DEAL WITH IT.

There's not much to really say about John's performance; he was ridiculously spectacular. It's difficult to grasp how good a guitarist he is by just listening to his CDs; you kinda have to watch him play on TV, or live, particularly if he's not constrained by late-night/early-morning network TV timetables. And the best part about it is that he can solo pretty extensively, but it never starts to feel like it's gone on too long. For example: if you go to see Phish in concert, which I have, they will play maybe 8 songs, each of which is roughly 25 minutes long on average. Only one of these songs will have an identifiable melody. Usually after about 7 minutes into each song, Trey Anastasio would slow things down, and you'd realize they were launching into another 10 minute build-up leading to some kind of climax that left you feeling unsatisfied. John, on the other hand, played something like 25 songs, some of which were 5 minutes long, some of which were 10, but each extended solo was melodic and interesting and WENT SOMEWHERE. Going to a Phish concert feels like a 3 hour free-form jazz symposium at Camden County Community College; going to a John Mayer concert feels like going to a rock concert.

On the other hand, going to a Phish concert usually guarantees you a pretty boss contact high.

John didn't quite play all my favorites, which I guess just means I'll have to go see him again. However: not at the Tweeter Center, which has incurred my almight wrath for all times to come due to their immense suckitude.

Here's a holla at ye. Let's start off with: new pictures (just the first 5 are technically "new," as in posted today). Yay! Yay.

As you are undoubtedly aware, I am what might be most kindly described as "husky," or, as one of my childhood teachers actually put it, "sturdy." I wasn't always this way; in fact, at the time that the childhood teacher knew me, my BMI was probably 2. I was skinny as a rail until college. That's when I discovered that, without parents around and few athletic opportunities available, I could cut all my classes and sit in my dorm room eating corn pops and taking advantage of The Internet, which was in its infancy (well, toddlerdom) at the time. I gained something like 35 pounds in 8 months, a feat which is normally only duplicated by the best sumo wrestlers.

Ever since, I've been in a see-saw battle against my enormous waistline; at the moment I appear to have reached some kind of sad equilibrium in which I get just enough exercise to compensate for my staggering food intake, because I just don't have it in me to diet anymore. (I can't even face the low-carb diet now, because the thought of running a mile (which cold sucks) and not getting to eat a donut and/or entire honey ham makes me want to cry.)

Enter the modern technology of holistic wellness, or philosophical weight loss, or hippie diets, or some such type fad. All I know is this guy says he can hypnotize me, via CD, into not stuffing my face with candy I steal from children whom I beat up for their candy. His name is Steven Gurgevich, PhD, and he has a website, so he's TOTALLY LEGITIMATE. Also he has a name that sounds like a dry heave, which has the obvious effect of throwing anybody off their feed.

It consists of three CDs. The first CD sort of explains everything about the process, which is complex and involves "spirit" and "emotions," neither of which I'm entirely sure I have, and warns against "hidden saboteurs." (I like to envision small Englishmen chopping up my fat-burning liver with axes.) The second CD has some tracks with pep talks about breaking down barriers and learning self-control, and the third CD, which apparently is the most important, has the parts I'm supposed to listen to when I wake up, or before meals, or if I accidentally find myself tearing away at the flesh of a squirrel I find on the road because I've hypnotized myself so well I didn't eat for four days.

So far I've just listened to the first CD, and here's what I can tell you: man, it was boring. That's not to say it wasn't interesting, but because Dr. Gurgevich is a professional hypnotist, he says everything in a very calm, even tone, and after a while you fall asleep. I can also report that so far it doesn't seem to be working, because I had to take a break in the first CD to go get Pepper Steak on Rice With Vegetables from the cafeteria. Anyway, I'll listen to some more of the CDs and let you know if I, for example, spontaneously lose 70 pounds.

If this doesn't work, I'm going to go with South Bronx Paradise.

omg no time to talk on vacation just go here look at new pictures ok thnx bai

Okay, I'm going to force myself to post, but only because I'm off the rest of the week and do not intend to put anything up, unless I find myself with a strong desire to drunk-write, which is always a possibility, or if I take a picture of something particularly compelling (particularly disgusting diapers, or maybe my wife drooling whilst a-napping) and need to get it on the internets for posterity. I'm also not taking any responsibility for anything that follows being funny, 'cause if you think I'm going to worry about making you laugh at 2:18pm before my day off, well, in the words of Sean Connery, your mother's a whore.

Yesterday I got to skip most of my workday to catch a bus to Baltimore with the Chancel Choir of First & Central Presbyterian (so named because they were both First, and the most Centrally Located, which makes the other Presbyterian churches like totally SO jealous) to sing at the American Guild of Organists Region III Convention. This may sound very similar to getting to go to, say, the Nebraska State Ophthalmalogy Opthamogoly Eye Doctor Convention, except that Eye Doctors are better dressed and usually less, well, girthy.

The ride down was largely uneventful, unless you were the driver, in which case apparently EVERYTHING is an event; he alerted us that when passing over the Susquehanna River, you could look to the right and see the Conowingo damn, which I guess is useful tourist information, but he also pointed out a Weigh Station, The Place Where You Drop Off Family Members Who Are Going On Cruises, and some $350K Condos. By the end, people were just yelling "SHUT THE #*$& UP" every time they heard the mic click on.

We were to sing in the Baltimore Basilica, which is notable for being the first Catholic cathedral built in the United States. The cornerstone was laid in 1806, and construction complete in 1821. In 1937, the cathedral was raised to the rank of "Minor Basilica" by Pope Pius XI, but by the mid50s the powers-that-be had decided that the building suffered from a condition they described as "being surrounded by FAR too many crackheads" and they scurried the See off to the suburbs. Now the Basilica is a "co-cathedral," which is kinda like being a cheerleading co-captain: half the respect, and twice the teenage drama.

But I joke. The building is actually BEAUTIFUL, and since it's mostly space and stone walls, the reverb in there is unbelievable. Since I mostly sing in carpeted rooms that suck sound right out of the air, listening to plainsong chant and Russian hymns bounce off the walls for 3-4 seconds after we stopped singing was fascinating.

We rehearsed there, and then had some time to kill before dinner, so some us went a-wondering around Baltimore. The Basilica is just a few blocks from Peabody Conservatory, which you may recall I went to for a few years before realizing how annoying other vocal performance majors usually are, so I wandered over there to see if things had changed, which of course they had. I got loads of pictures of the mid-town area, the best of which I'll get online at some point. We had dinner, consisting of sandwiches, chips, and other knick knacks, at a nearby Unitarian church, and then went back to get dressed for the service.

The service started with a 30 minute concert by Mary Beth Bennett, who is most notable because she looked REALLY REALLY familiar to me and I couldn't figure out why, and then about an hour of singing and praying and all that good timey religious stuff. Then we piled on the bus, drank some beers, and headed home.

Oh, also, I went to the Phils game on Sunday; they won, and I got a million pictures, which I'll post later. Other than that, the only thing that was notable was that I went with two Mets fans in full Mets regalia and didn't get peed on by anyone! It was stellar.

I added some new pictures, as well as some new functionality over at the photography page:

• The "random" button works now, in case you just want something pretty to look at and don't give a crap what it is.
• The "contact" button works as well, in case you want to yell at me for something.
• I added a "new" button that shows you the most recent 18 pictures I uploaded.
• There are 18 recent pictures.

Go ahead, check it out! It's only partially self-indulgent and lame.

Remember when I said a while ago (yesterday) that I needed to replace my online photography gallery? And I was tired of testing out different freeware/GPL ones because invariably they didn't do exactly what I wanted and did a ton of other things I didn't need? And remember the part where you DOUBTED ME? Okay, just Josh. Still.

Well, after hours (minutes) of careful work (mostly watching TV), I have duly encoded my own jam. Right now it's only got a few things in it, and worse, some of the menu options don't work. You can click "random," but instead of showing you a random photo, it, uh, won't do anything. Same for contact, because while I figure I could just simplify things and put my email address in there, I know better than to give you people my email address. When the internet has my email address, the internet emails me pictures of taints and ads for Cialis. So, um, hells no. Also there's no descriptions yet, just titles and EXIF information.

Anyway: Matt Hearn Photography. It's definitely the most pretentious thing I've ever created, and I have created some pretty pretentious stuff in my day.

In case you've visited here over the last few weeks and, instead of seeing my beautiful, beautiful words, saw a message saying that my website had been suspended for overambitious CPU utilization, rest assured that the problem has been isolated and we are in the process of resolving it.

Well, not we, it's just me. Because it's my fault, you see. When I arranged for my site to be hosted by my current service, hostmonster.com, I paid for a nearly unlimited amount of bandwidth and disk space, and proceeded to upload scripts and databases and images and hilarious posts about hairstyles for head-fatties and everything was super happy: me, because my website was still online despite my previous hosting service deciding to close up shop; hostmonster, 'cause they gets the dollaz dollaz; and the internet, because let's be frank, the loss of my website's content would send shockwaves that might well destroy the economy of Nigeria or perhaps the entire Indian subcontinent. (Which just wouldn't do. OBVIOUSLY.)

What I didn't realize was that, while hostmonster certainly was happy to have my business and store all of my crap for me, apparently they don't much care for me to actually SHOW it to people. Every time a person would look at my website (specifically the picture gallery, about which we'll hear more directly) it required a computer in Utah to do some processing, or "thinking," and respond to the user with pictures and words and all that good stuff. Well, supposedly my site, which receives all of maybe 25 hits a day, 5 of which are me checking for new comments (there never are any), and at least 8 of which are googlers trying to find pictures of Dave Chappelle's Hott AZN Wife, was overloading the CPU of the computer in Utah and causing smoke to come out of its ears, if it has ears, which it probably does not, but who knows what Mormons might do to computers when they get them alone in the Tabernacle.

Long story short: the online gallery had to go, because while the pictures contained therein weren't getting me anywhere close to my disk space/bandwidth limits, the processing power required to get them out of the database was angering the CPU gods. On the other hand, I was never terribly happy with that gallery software anyway; it seemed to do about 18,000 things, and I basically needed it to do one: display pictures in a pretty format, which it didn't do very well. So I'm working on my OWN, much tamer, online gallery program, which will basically give you a list of albums to view with pictures located there up ins, in a pretty format that doesn't distract from the image on the page. Totally boss! As soon as it is ready, I will be certain to alert the media. Until then: go to Charles's site, since roughly 97% of my photography is centered on him anyway.

To cap off a week of not posting any funny stuff at all (for reals, it's like I've turned into Thomas Pynchon, except that Thomas Pynchon probably never took a picture of his junk and put it on the interwebs), here are some shots I took whilst a-wandering aimlessly around The City Of New York with Teh J0sh. Enjoy ye them!

I know how you love that artsy shiznitzel.

Things with the high school show ("Thoroughly Modern Millie," Mar 15-17, 7pm, Brandywine High, come check it as it will be RAD) are ramping up rapidly, so we're heck of busy with that. Still, a few things worth sharing:

Our friends Brian and Karen got married over the weekend; check out a few choice photographz here. Everybody was HOT.

I also put up some new pictures over at CharlesHearn.com. They are so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend checking them out.

I love cars. Also, I hate cars. Or rather, I love cars that work or can be easily diagnosed and fixed, and hate cars that defy all attempts to repair them. At the moment, my Bomb@ZZ whip, the venerable Izzy B, has but one functioning brake light. The one in the rear-view window. I guess that's better than none, but try to tell that to the guys at the Motor Vehicle Inspection Lanes. I did. They weren't terribly amused. I'm assuming all the carbon monoxide has destroyed their senses of humor.

Anyway, I went to Pep Boys to get new bulbs for the brake lights. But Pep Boys had none. So I went to ANOTHER Pep Boys, which had them. I installed them. No change. So I bought some new fuses and tried those. No change. So I kicked the car and threatened to bring wrath upon it. No change.

I gave up after that, but the long and short of it is that I have a car with fewer then the recommended number of brake lights and my registration expires in three weeks. CAN MATT GET THE CAR REPAIRED IN THREE WEEKS, GIVEN HIS BUSY SCHEDULE? STAY TUNED!

Oh, and go here and check out a bunch of crappy pictures I took of Ye Olde Newe Castlee last month.

Okay, we're back to a more normal schedule, I think. There were much goings-on over the weekend, particularly a cold-weather golf tournament (our second year!) of which I have many pictures, some of Milo's backswing, some that Milo took of my butt. I'll get all that stuff posted probably tomorrowish, or Wednesday, or probably some time before 2008.

In the meanwhile, I started a gallery where I can upload my various efforts at photography, which so far contains just the one album of recent shots. I plan to get most of the New Castle shots up ins if I can figure out a way to batch process them (they start out as 3MB photos and I need to chop them down to 1MB or so before uploading, or the gallery prog won't be able to handle them, and also I'd wipe out my online webspace in a matter of days; the problem is that there are over 200 of them and I'd like to shrink them in one big process rather than loading each picture into photoshop, resizing and saving it, etc.).

I also uploaded some new stuff to Charles's site last week, make sure you don't miss that.

USELESS NOTE: I am aware that the general form of my page is still Christmasy. I shall endeavour to update it this evening.

It only took me, what, half a year? Anyway, the caption'd pictures from last summer's Brandywiners production (My Fair Lady) are UP! Go enjoy the glory. I'll be here, waiting for you to get back.

I got a new camera. Happy birthday to me!

ADDITIONAL UPDATE, YO!: Mondo pictures over at CharlesHearn.com. Fact: Charles is awesome.

Picture day!

Also the 65th anniversary of the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor. Japan isn't the military power it once was, but still, let's not be forgetting the other threats that face us:

Enough serious stuff! Pete likes to air out what's left of his junk occasionally:

Guess whose lips these are!

Look at my pole!

Guess whose junk this is!

I'm glad I got my hair cut this week. Otherwise my wife would stab me in the ear with her keys! Ha ha!

But seriously, she's violent.

Anyway, through the magic of my new phone, I've taken some snaps, son. Here is the pre-cut hair (taken right after I got home from an opera performance, hence the sexy curls):

And here's the sexy new do, having been cut and colored to the tune of a hundred smackeroos:

Whaddaya think? I'm totally gonna get ALL the chicks. By which I mean my wife. And really, I won't get her either. But at least I'll have intact eardrums.

Martha and George, pimpin' it ol' school. And whatnot.