news and blues

Mostly news, not much blues this time. Been listening to a lot of Zappa recently, pretty inspiring and daunting on the guitar front. I managed to get a chance to hang out with Pumpkin and was invited to guest with them at their last show. I was there for the ceremonial hand off of the rehearsal space to the new freshman (Holiday). It was pretty touching. They asked me to write something for the show so I wrote a cheesy but catchy little ska number. They were pretty delighted and had never really heard of ska before. Funny. I read the whole Series of Unfortunate Events set of books and really enjoyed them, although it got a little tedious. It is really interesting to get immersed in young adult/or children's fiction sometimes . The author did a great job of making sense of some pretty complicated themes for a fairly young audience. Most enjoyable. I have been struggling lately to fight my way through three different books, the Cobain journals (which I feel dirty and bad for reading since the cover specifically asks me not to), Blink by malcolm gladwell, and Inherent Vice, by THomas pynchon. The Pynchon book is surprisingly boring at the 25% mark, and I hope that it gets better soon. The children's books had more compelling descriptions than an occasionally pot smoking detective so far. The reviews on this book said it was like the Big Lebowski, but so far there has been a lack of humor. Blink is pretty interesting and full of fun facts, but I keep getting sidetracked by a desire to finish the Cobain book (but then guilt when I read it), forcing myself to read pynchon (and guilt when I don't read it), and just enjoying BLink. Oh well. As difficult decisions go it ain't so bad. Emily has been sick and finally gave it to me. I had hoped to end the second half of the great Chinese residency illness free, but it is not to be. I missed about a week (not being able to talk=not teaching) but managed to finagle it so that I only have to make up 2 classes (yay!). REally not giving a crap so much about quality as we head into the homestretch. Forgive the typos but I'm lazy. Emily says to tell you that she saw some girls sexy dancing at the local electronic store. I just read in my journal that we saw dogs being slaughtered at the local "mutton" grill two months ago. The end.