Polka Will Never Die!

Sigh.  There are so few of you who will understand why that is so funny.  And to you all I say thusly: 'What are you doing?  Go read The Dresden Files!  Now!!'

But this post is not about Jim Butcher's going-on-fourteen-books amazing series that you should immediately read .  (hint hint).

It is about Polka!

(just in case you didn't know what polka sounded like because everyone you've ever met has been a hater)

Polka is amazing!

But what surprises me most about polka is how many people dislike it.  Passionately.  They despise polka so much it's amazing there hasn't been a legendary polka-music-burning like what happened to all the books in Germany before WWII.  (I'm not trying to minimize the horror of what happened back then by comparing it to polka.  But in all seriousness, I've met more people who hate polka than I've met Anti-Semites.  Why are there no Polka Hate groups?  No scary tatoo clad men running around destroying clarinets and accordions?  I'm sure most people would be glad of their absence.  Not me!  But some people)

But I think I've discovered why there is no middle ground with polka.

I know--it's a big shocker that I discovered the secret after all this time, but it took a keen mind and countless hours of--oh, wait a minute, it only took listening to three polka songs in a row to understand.

People hate polka because they don't like being happy.

No really!

Polka is so ridiculously joyously fun-filled that it leaves no room for anything but having an amazingly ridiculous joy-packed fun-filled time.

So if you have any tendencies towards gloominess at all--no matter how small or slight--you don't like polka.  It will annoy you.  You'll wish that it never existed and that someone had killed the first person to invent it before they wrote a single note of it.

So you and all your grumpy-gill friends can go stand in a corner discussing how much you hate the rain.  I'll just be over here cavorting with everyone else who wants to have a good time.

Polka will never die!

Yep, me too

I'll give you ten dollars if you can recite to me the rest of this song:

'I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts--'

Any takers?  Any?  No?

Well that's all right then.  I don't have ten dollars.  :)

And besides, the only reason you know that song is from The Lion King.  Am I right?  Am I right?

Yep.  Me too.

Boo-yah strange man.  Boo-yah.

Music Monday: Moonlight Sonata

Beethoven's Piano Sonata #14 in C Sharp Major.  Commonly known as Moonlight Sonata.

Or in my parlance: a piece of music so beautiful and haunting it's like getting stabbed in the abdomen with a glass knife filled with a thousand unborn souls.  (don't be sad--they're just not born yet.  But they will be)

I've been listening to it on repeat for over an hour and I've yet to get bored of it or feel it's been overplayed.  You're the man Beethoven.  You are so the man.

(this is not Beethoven.  Ignore strange looking man and just click play)

Musical Interlude

One of those songs I could just keep playing over and over on repeat in my iTunes.  And I have.  Frequently. 

:)

It's a good thing I no longer have a roommate.  She had to put up with a lot.  Sorry.

I Saw Mommy Kissing Robin Hood

Our brains often try to make connections between disparate ideas and events.  I think it's our way of making order out of chaos: of establishing some sort of understanding of the strange and infinite world we live in.

We'll be walking down a street and swear that the person we just saw was an exact twin of someone we knew from High School.  Of course, they're the same exact age as when we last saw them:--but that only means they've miraculously discovered the font of youth, right?

(or its like the time I swear I saw Matt Damon's younger self/cousin at a concert in Boston.  Remember?)

Or it's the feeling of deja vu we get--this happened already, didn't it?

Or it's the feeling of deja vu we get--this happened already, didn't it?

:D

Or maybe sometimes it's two different pieces of music that we swear sound more alike than they should: like Love Goes On from Disney's Robin Hood (listen below) and the Christmas favorite 'I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.' (also below)

You don't believe me do you?  I'm hurt.  Really hurt.  :)

Humor me for just a moment. 

Did you listen?  Is that not uncanny?

Or perhaps my brain is just struggling to make the world make sense.

Although it's a bit strange it would try to make the world make sense in this way.

Eh.  That's my brain.  :)

The Sweaty Hand of Fame

The room was dark, and the only areas with any real light were the bars along each wall.  Even the bathrooms had a dimly lit grungy ambiance.  Because places like this are never dirty or disgusting or too cheap to pay the lighting bill: they have ambiance. 

I was a bit nervous approaching the man at the bar, but I needed something and I wasn't sure if he could get it for me. 

'Hi.  I was wondering if you knew where I could find some--' (let us pause a moment while I think of something to call what I was looking for.  Let us call it 'penguins')  'penguins.'

'Oh, that might be a bit tough,' the man at the bar says.  'I don't think we have penguins here, but do you have a male friend with you?  'Cause the guy in the men's bathroom might have what you need.'

I'm a little confused by this, and I wonder if he misheard me.  It's possible, even though the really loud music hasn't started yet.  'No, I need penguins.'

'Yeah,' he says, 'The guy in the men's bathroom might still have some.' He motions to another man standing near.  'He'll check for you to see if he's got any.'

I look at this new player in the game.  He's youngish and has a drink in his hand and if there ever was someone to be on speaking terms with the 'guy in the men's bathroom,' this would be him.  He jerks his head in a signal for me to follow him.  The door to the bathroom isn't far.  He stops for a second and says,

'Wait here a minute,' then he goes in.  I try to nonchalantly lean against a nearby wall, as if a woman standing right outside the men's bathroom was normal.  I probably don't succeed.

Fortunately I'm only waiting a few seconds before the man from the bar comes out and says, 'Yeah, he's got some,' and then goes back to the bar, drink in hand.

'The guy in the men's bathroom' holds open the door a crack as I stand outside the portal.  'I need some penguins,' I say to him.  He nods and reaches around in a jar for a small plastic tied off bag, and then he names his price.  It's reasonable, so I pay him and walk away, relieved both to have found what I was looking for, and to have concluded my business with this shady underworld of nefarious characters.  Just in time: the place is starting to fill up.  I shove my penguins in my ears and--

Hold on, hold on, maybe now would be a good time to tell you what 'penguins' really are.  They're earplugs. 

No, I'm serious.  I went to a concert last night (Mutemath!  They rocked!) but when I got there, I found I'd left my earplugs in the car.  Major bummer, as I had a pretty good spot near the stage.  Unfortunately, that spot was also right under a huge speaker and as I stared up at its majestic towering-ness, all hopes of being able to hear future unborn grandchildren say 'I love you,' melted into a puddle of, 'What?  What was that?'

But I'm in a club/concert hall, right?  They have huge amounts of alcohol and lots of loud music: perhaps someone there sells earplugs?  I can only hope.  Because trying to walk all the way out to my car and back again is not very appealing.  So I go to the bar at the far wall (they're not busy) and then the above story happened just as I wrote it.  For real.  (Only instead of asking for penguins, I was asking for earplugs.  And everyone involved was much nicer than they sounded up there.)

Which leads us to some interesting questions: why is there a 'guy in the men's bathroom' who sells earplugs?  And if he sells earplugs, why is he doing so in such a strange fashion?  Is he not allowed to sell earplugs in the club proper?  Does it violate some club rule?  Then why is he allowed to sell them in the men's bathroom?

But I have this sneaking hunch, people--and you can tell me if I'm way off here--there's this strange idea floating through my head that earplugs weren't the only thing he was selling in small tied off plastic bags.  For a reasonable price.

Fortunately, this does not go down as the most interesting part of my night.  The concert absolutely rocked, and although Mutemath appeared a bit tired, they were still on top of their game and gave us a great show.  It's been fun to watch them develop as a band, because I was there at one of their earliest concerts, about six months after they (what do you call it as a verb when a band 'bands?' I'm trying to avoid the obvious pun, you understand) started.  It was at SoulFest in New Hampshire and we were only waiting for another band to come on later but these guys started playing and they were really good and entertaining and afterward my Dad and I walked the entire fair trying to find their tent and buy a cd or something, but they didn't have a tent.  They didn't even have a cd yet.  I think it took them another 6 months to a year to do an album, but it was worth the wait.  And ever since that day almost ten years ago, it's been worth the wait.  WHOO!!  MUTEMATH!!!!

Ahem.  So really, seeing them in concert was the best part of the night.  And not blowing out my eardrums was a good perk too.

But there's a funny thing that happens when you see a band on stage.  It doesn't really matter whether they're famous or just people you know vaguely who started a band: they're all so much cooler than you when they're up there playing music.  And while ordinarily you might not think much of them if you just saw them walking down the street, at a concert--given the chance, you'll fight for a chance to shake their hand.  Because fame (real or perceived) is like that.  It's as if the closer you are to a famous person the more real you become.  Silly, isn't it, but we all feel it.  It's why we try to stand at the front during a concert, or why we wait for hours afterward just to talk to them.  It's why we see celebrities everywhere we look because maybe just by recognizing them we're a bit more important than we were before.  (and btw, there was totally a Matt Damon look-alike hugging his girlfriend in front of me.  Could have been his kid or a cousin or something.  Had the nose and the facial structure and everything :) )

So at the end of the concert when I was only two people away from the railing and Paul Meany was coming over to our end, I pushed forward and shook the sweaty hand of fame. 

What did you expect?  He'd just been rockin' out for two hours straight! 

Have you heard awesome music today?

Topic of discussion: MuteMath.

What is that, you ask?  I tell you.  They are a band.  They are one of my favorite bands, and are in fact the only band I've seen more than twice in concert.  And I own all their music.  And I listen to it a lot. 

But what do they play, you ask?

Grumble grumble, this is hard to explain.  They are so eclectic and draw their music from so many different styles that you can't just point to one (or two or three) and say, 'that's it!'

So how many different styles can they have, you ask?  Let me 'splain.  No, there are too many, let me sum up:

Alternative rock, techno, blues, electronica, gospel, classic rock, reggae, pop, jazz.

And if that seems contradictory, listen to this:

(and yes, all their live shows are that explosively wonderful and fun)

Or this:

Or perhaps this:  (no words, just music)

So you might understand just how hard it is to describe this awesome band when the common musical descriptions don't come close enough. 

Perhaps you'd just have to be an odd sort of person to appreciate them, with odd eclectic musical tastes.

Who me?

Pretty.