I need a recommendation for a quick-and-easy video editing program for Windows.  I shot some video on my phone of a rehearsal, and I'd love to be able to slice the 33 minute video into individual songs... BUT I also want to be able to mess with the audio track if need be.

I will only use this once or twice, so cheaper is better, but whatevz.

Any recommendations?

(*cough* Matt Lichtenwalner ​​​​​​​*cough*)

Gracias!

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5/5 '17 1 Comment
My first thought is Camtasia, but now that I'm thinking about it, I seem to remember you saying that it wouldn't do audio editing?

Windows Movie Maker works on some later versions of Windows (you still have 7?) - if you can find it. Some (minor) audio editing (cutting / moving) is built in.

I love Premiere Elements - it's pricey (but still < $100) and it does most everything I want when I have a Windows Machine to use and/or don't have my Creative Suite (and thus Premiere). Check the PatchoJillo dropbox folder.

Which leads me to: do you not still have CS3? (or was it 6?). Premiere is in that and is the industry standard 800 lb gorilla. That said, the learning curve isn't tough for the basics. Cut, slide, paste etc.

Okay, you didn't want War an Peace. Let me know if you run into issues.

Also (and unrelated) I'm going to be in L.A. tomorrow. :)
 

I am grateful for union-mandated breaks that allow me time to use the toilet, drink water, stuff half a protein bar in my face, and go outside to fart. 

FART JOKE! WOO HOO!!!!!!!!

The Internet needs an "is this worth it?" calculator. Buzzfeed needs a quiz. 

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5/4 '17
 

On the way to breakfast, I found myself thinking about the concept of Loyalty. I've been called (more than once) 'loyal to a fault'. It's accurate. I stick with people, places, and things well past the point that it's healthy for me.

Then I found myself thinking about it from a logical standpoint. I feel that this is one of my greatest strengths in life - taking emotion out of a situation and reviewing it. Sadly, I don't always ACT on those reviews, but it helps.

So the logical perspective of the concept of loyalty: I get it. Once upon a time, we needed loyalty as a species. Tribalism allowed us to survive. But haven't we evolved past that need? I mean shouldn't I love everyone equally? (He asked, cringing at how hippy-dippy it sounds.) Or, perhaps more accurately, shouldn't I review people in a more unbiased by past interactions?

If I have a friend who has taken to burglary to support a crack addiction, shouldn't I look at him in the same light that I do a stranger with the same issues?

Or is there some value to past interactions that creates a benefit to taking the bad with the good in the present and/or future? It's not really occurring to me at the moment, but then I haven't had any coffee yet.

What do you think?

ETA: I should point out that I wasn't bitter or upset when I posted this. I was just trying to think things through without emotion tied to it. I also was not thinking specifically of people (though that is certainly an element) and even less any specific person or people. Again - just the concept and whether or not it has value in our modern society.

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4/26 '17 22 Comments
I used to have a friend who was a bit of a powder keg.

we had a lot of fun times together for several years and got to be very, very close, but he would frequently get monumentally pissed off at something I said or did (or failed to say or do).

being a bit more irascible myself in those days than I am now, I often gave as good as I got, but I think any objective comparison would have found that, on balance, my snits toward him were less frequent and a bit more reality-adjacent than his toward me.

in any case though, over time our friendship started becoming pretty asymmetrical - with me doing a lot of favors for him and frequently having to mollify his snits, and not getting a heck of a lot in return.
at a certain point, I noticed this and decided to stop trying to placate or otherwise go very far out of my way for him. this improved my life considerably and made me enjoy his company a lot more. I never announced this transition to him, however, because I didn't feel that I needed to - it was an adjustment in my own thinking and attitude, not something that required any action or input from him.

and I didn't want to fight about it.

I suspect most people have had at least one or two interpersonal relationships where one person changed their outlook on what type of relationship it was while the other person kept right on thinking it was the same as it always had been. this was surely such a case but since the two people involved in this one were real oddballs, it led to some (perhaps atypically) entertaining situations.

case in point - we took a trip to France together a year or two after my "not taking any more shit" decision. from my perspective, we had an awesome time - one of the best we ever had as friends, and one of the best travel experiences I'd ever had full stop. we saw some great cathedrals (he sketched each one, I wrote about each one), we ate some great stuff, we found a barely marked ruin of a roman amphitheater in the middle of a cow-pasture, we had an awesome 3 or 4 hour conversation about existentialism and nihilism (one that changed my overall approach to life and ethics in ways that have lasted to this day) in the car ending with a visit to the cathedral at Chartres at like 3 AM. and our next to last night there, I met a nice Catalan woman in a gay dance club, who decided to make out with me for a couple hours, despite my nearly unintelligible French, on a park bench in the rain. (ooo la la.)

so anyway - we get back to the states and I go on about my life. my friend goes on about his, but in a SEETHING RAGE over how insolent and insufferable I had been during our "argument" in the car on the way to Chartres. he doesn't tell me about this, though. he decides that the best way to communicate his displeasure is to refuse to speak to me until I ask him what's bothering him and (presumably) make amends.

...except the first I hear of this is 8 months later when I invite him to Thanksgiving dinner at my house...at which point he explains that he hasn't been speaking to me and is by then pretty much apoplectic because of my failure to notice.

it only made him angrier that I found the situation hilarious.

we made up, of course, but were never really close friends again and have gradually drifted further apart over the years. nowadays, we exchange an email or a text every few months when one of us spots something relevant to the other's interests, or we run into each other on the street and chat for a few minutes, or we meet up for an hour of pinball every year or so. I think that suits us both fine.

I guess where this comes together with your inquiry about loyalty is that I think there's often a lack of willingness to acknowledge that interpersonal relationships have life cycles. they're born, they live, and then they die. occasionally that death is a catastrophic heart attack, but much more often it's a long, slow, quiet fade to a golden-hued tail.

and that's all ok.
Beautifully well put sir. Arguably, my little analysis of loyalty could be said to be a "should I allow relationships to grow old and die?"

Then again, it _feels_ a little more like your description of the 'aha moment' that you had with your friend. That, in turn, I see as a kind of parallel to the way I described my thought that perhaps I should judge people, places, and thing more in the moment than based on our combined past.

Which, I guess, is basically just another way of saying: "I agree with you."

Unrelated: what's the inspiration behind your profile pic?
it's a Bobrick brand c fold paper towel dispenser!
comes in white or in silver!
Well, clearly.
[Has one industrially powderpainted blue, installs it, waits for Chris to visit and flip out when he can't find it on the website]
what's not to like?
it's 3 rows of 8!
Seriously, loyalty is not a purely binary thing. We are more loyal to those in whom we are more invested. Or should be, anyway.

Sometimes it's OK to be loyal to a memory, to treat a comrade who is no longer kind and no longer reciprocating with a certain decency in recognition of the love they showed you once. Then again, you can also be loyal to the person they used to be, and what they'd think of their present behavior.
Interesting. It sounds like you're coming from a similar place to Leela above. An almost altruism-like stance. Loyalty as a 'repayment' for the kindness of the other (or the business, or the... noun.)
I don't think we should ever evolve bayond loyalty, although I think in a lot of ways we already have. I am also very loyal and I also see it as a great strength. Look at the state of the world? Look at how people fuck each other left and right, look how folks treat marriages, and friends, and business partners as disposable? To me, our disposable culture is part of what is destroying humanity. (Yes there are good reasons to discontinue relationships too, but that's not what we're talking about here).

The older I get, the more I'm realizing that what I value most in my friends... is the fact that they show up. To take that a step further, the friends I value most are the ones who show up. I am beginning to prioritize those friends who show up consistently more than those who don't. Mind you, that has little do to with love, and everything to do with me having limited energy to expend as a human. Life is scary, and lonely. What makes it worthwhile, for me, has everything to do with human connection, and a great deal to do with those loyal folks who keep showing up, through everything. What good is human connection that is fleeting to the point where it only exists out of convenience?

If your loyalty is holding you back, then maybe it's a problem. (I know other people have told you your loyalty is getting in your way, but is that YOUR experience of it as well?) But if you don't think it is stopping you from living your life, I think it's an increasingly and wonderful quality that is to be honored.

As for regarding strangers the same way you'd regard friends... you're human. It's impossible to separate our past experiences with people from our assessments of them. That's just a human fact I think. And if our pst actions had no bearing on our friendships well, then there is almost no point? I mean... hats how I see it.

That's my two cents about the matter!
You make some interesting points, but (forgive me - this isn't any kind of 'attack' - I just want to know if I missed anything) you don't seem to make any arguement for the "why loyalty is good". I appreciate that you value it and I think most of us do to one extent or another, but that's different than being able to say "It has an innate value because it allows us to... X, Y, Z."
Loyal shows us we aren't alone. Loyalty shoes is we are worth more than our mistakes. My most loyal friends are the ones who fortify me when I am scared in life, especially when it comes to taking risks. When I know I have people behind me no matter what, it allows me to feel less small and alone, and it helps combat my paralyzingly fear of what will happen should I "misstep" in any way. Loyalty stands in stark opposition to our ever-increasingly disposable society. Maybe some of why this is so important for me is that I have indeed been treated as disposable by more people than I would like to admit, and it has damaged me a great deal. So, I find it incredibly important and good to BE LOYAL myself, because I like to think I am paying forward the same gift that others have given me. Does that make sense?
Now that's an interesting point. Being the narcissist that I am, I wasn't thinking of the loyalty of others and the way that it benefits me.

So (if I understand correctly) you could almost argue that loyalty is a form of altruism. Your being loyal to a person is a form of altruism which you stand behind because someone else was loyal to you. A way to 'generate goodness' for lack of a better turn of phrase?

Does this change at all if we're not talking about a person that you're being loyal to? What if it's a business, or a favorite flavor of ice cream? (I know that sounds weird, but I'm really trying to get at all different angles.)
I don't think it changes, interestingly. Ben and Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk has always been there for me, in good times and bad, and it always tastes just as fucking good as the last time I had it. It shows up when I need it (for lack of a better way to say it), so, so do I. Same goes for businesss. If a business has been good to me, I'll be good to it.
Is it weird that I like the idea of an ice cream flavor 'being there' for you? :P
It's probably weird, but I like the idea of it too! In fact I've got some in the freezer right now...
I've been using the term "legacy friend". A person I would not likely be friends with if I met them now. I may even dislike a lot about them now. But at some point in the past we were friends, and now we have history.

I find it somehow easier to manage when I've categorized it as a legacy issue. And when current friends are like: sheez, why are you friends with that dude/dudette? I say "legacy friend" and everyone gets it.
Technical debt.
I may represent that remark!
but seriously - good concept.
That does seem like the perfect term / bucket. I think I'm going to steal that.
Evolving past loyalty? Please. We haven't evolved past tribalism or voting for Donald Trump.
I'm beyond sad that this is an accurate statement.
 

The learning curve continues. 

This is the first time I've knit anything that wasn't based on a square, rectangle, tube or triangle, so you can imagine how this is burning some new neural pathways. The other odd thing is that the pattern calls for a total of 12 petals or points, and then sewing the last row to the first. I have a hard time believing this will be a flat disc and not a cone. 

Today we went out for brunch at The Grey Lodge, my favorite local pub, but my patience for people was so thin I almost had to Force-choke someone. Remember when jukeboxes had actual records inside them? You put in your quarters and punched some buttons, with a satisfying KERCHUNK, KERCHUNK, KERCHUNK, and when your selection came up in turn, you'd get to hear it?  Now The Grey Lodge has one of them Intarweb connected Touch Tone machines. Takes up less space, provides a wider selection of music. Sounds good, right? I've never had a reason to complain. If I want to put on Dave Brubeck, me and my hard-earned dollar can make that happen. 

Now, Touch Tone machines have an app. So, if you have the app and this is your financial priority, you can control the jukebox from the comfort of your bar stool, shoveling your musical taste down the throats of everyone in the bar for as long as you like. 

These 30-year-olds were playing with their phones, talking about how "old" they were for liking Blink-182 and early-2000s "punk." When some girl started squawking about the band Poe, a guy admitted that he thought "poe" was the Spanish word for paella. They were controlling the jukebox, and you like what you like, whatever. But when the music stopped for a minute, I got up and shoved my $4 into the machine, so I could hear something different for a couple of minutes. 

I put on Thelonious Monk (I don't remember the name of the piece), and Nina Simone's "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." Monk played through, a bright, complex yet palatable piano instrumental that made my chilaquiles seem much less like soggy nachos. My mood improved. Unfortunately, it was immediately followed by, not Nina Simone, but more of the early 2000s punk and "OMG this is the best song EVAR." 

Which means some knucklehead paid extra to bump his selections ahead of mine in the queue. 

I said to the bartender, "if everyone in the bar has the app, and everyone can pay extra to bump their songs higher in the queue, what happens?"

He said, "The music selections get pretty crazy in here. Personally, I think you should have to walk up to the jukebox and punch it in, if you're gonna play "Barbie Girl." You have to own that shit." 

KERCHUNK. KERCHUNK. KERCHUNK. 

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4/24 '17 3 Comments
Your knitting looks really good. I love the colors too.

A lot of the songs on Rock Band 4 are a bunch of punk shit with a lot of yelling and seriously - so annoying. Some yelling can be fun, like Linkin Park or Deep Purple. A whole song of yelling or raspy vocals - I get that people wanna dance or mosh to it or whatever, but it's no fun on Rock Band. Also no fun as dinner music.
It's fantastic!
And no bad dreams last night!
 

I'm trying this knitting pattern for the first time: 


I've never knit anything with short rows before, so this is a good learning experience. 

So far, so good.

I'm having trouble staying asleep because I dream about work.  Not fun. So hopefully this will give me a new fixation pattern. 

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4/23 '17 2 Comments
Dreaming about work is never fun. Hell, I don't even like dreaming about video games; I'll stop playing when that starts happening.
When I was first learning to knit, I dreamt about knitting. I wonder if it's the brain learning a new pattern, or too much of a pattern in a day?
 

At the Philly Airport.   It is creepily empty. I keep waiting for Bronson Pinchot to show up with a blind chick. 

Debating telling the flight attendants that it's my birthday.  

Cons: They may sing Happy Birthday, which I really don't like.  

Pros: They might make me a crown made of toilet paper rolls and stirrers. 

We shall see. 

Off to Austin! 

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4/17 '17 15 Comments
Happy birthday and safe travels!
Thank you, m'dear!
Happy Jillbot Day!
Yaay! Thank you!
“You ought to write ‘A Happy Birthday’ on it.”
“That was what I wanted to ask you,” said Pooh. “Because my spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. Would you write ‘A Happy Birthday’ on it for me?”
…Owl licked the end of his pencil, and wondered how to spell “birthday.”
“Can you read, Pooh?” he asked, a little anxiously. “There’s a notice about knocking and ringing outside my door, which Christopher Robin wrote. Could you read it?”
“Christopher Robin told me what it said, and then I could.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what this says, and then you’ll be able to.”
So Owl wrote…and this is what he wrote:
HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA
BTHUTHDY.
Pooh looked on admiringly.
“I’m just saying ‘A Happy Birthday,'” said Owl carelessly.
“It’s a nice long one,” said Pooh, very much impressed by it.
“Well, actually, of course, I’m saying ‘A Very Happy Birthday with love from Pooh.’ Naturally it takes a good deal of pencil to say a long thing like that.”
“Oh, I see,” said Pooh.
I love this so much. And I love YOU so much!
I wanted to type just the HIPY PAPY greeting, but it needed context, so I had to copy and paste.
Happy Birdie to You!
I am also at the Philly airport, waiting for my shuttle to take me to my car.
I hope your travels were safe and rewarding! Was that the Epic conference? How did it go?
That was the "going to Atlanta to see my godson" trip. Epic conference is next week, and I am not quite ready for it, but I will pull my shit together at the last minute, as always. Ta-fucking-da.

My visit to my godson and his wonderful family was very rewarding. I miss his little face already, and I miss my Rabbit and Brandes and Miles, and all of their parents too. It was a great visit. I got to hang out with live chickens and live bees. I got closer to the chickens.
This sounds like the perfect thing. <3
Happy pie time
Thanky thanky!
Happy Pie Day Beautiful. :)
Awww! Thank you! :)
 

My dad always says that the Bad Idea Bears whisper pretty loudly to me.  He says too that you can practically see Bad Idea Bears in the ether over twelve year old boys, informing them of the possibilities.

I have a skate buddy.  It's good we don't drink together - because things would get out of hand.  Today I texted him.

"I wanna try skating behind a car and you're gonna drive."

"NO!!! I draw the line."

But there was something in that.  Only three exclaimation points.  I don't buy it.  I predict that within a month we are trying this and frankly, yes he's gonna drive as he's the only person I trust.

Right now we are in negotiations.  

*********************************************************************

Last night was straight up disco.  I wanted to skate like gangbusters but I have my little queen with me.  So I headed to Pattinson's West, our local rink, for family skate night.  She took one look at the lights, the floor, the awesomeness of the carpet glowing back at her and deployed her full primate cling.  Arms wrapped around my neck, legs around my body.  Chatting to the rink manager, she said even her kids were like that and they'd grown up at the rink.  HerMajesty slowly unpeeled when security offered her a plastic Easter Egg.  And when my skate buddy took off flying around the rink she sprang loose and yelped, "tate!"

I love this rink, it's where our school parties are held so there's a fondness associated. But it is also extremely clean and well kept.  There's a lot of staff on the floor on family skate nights to assist and also, remind people that this is a family time and slow down some of the wildings that want to speed around.  The layout is great too.  There's a concessions area, but also, just a candy counter, but it's all pretty unobtrusive to the main affair: which is skating.  There's tons of family seating, I've never had a sticky table, and you can actually get food and candy for the kids without compromising your mortgage.  And it's just pretty.  Skate rinks have their own asthetic... and if there were a coffee table book of skate rinks I'd be among the first to buy one.  I love the carpets here.

Her father sent her these amazing little Fisher Price Grow With Me snap on skates that work like a dream.  I can't recommend these enough for Skate Queens who want to raise baby monarchs.  They have three settings to adjust the mobility of the wheels.  My daughter is two and a half, so the sensory confinement of boot skates and resulting panic at not being able to get them off and on herself was too large a leap.  These ones she can put off and on herself.  They were the perfect color for her, she loves bright pinks and oranges.  They fit very well over her sparkly little Pumas.  They also have a decent heft without being too heavy and disconcerting. 

So I helped her strap in and we were off.  Naturally, the first thing she tried was a jump.  In skates.  It worked becuase the wheels were locked.  She was able to experiment with the difference between walking and skating.  A few laps around and she was getting the hang of pushing her skates on the floor, though we've been watching a lot of street skating videos so she was taking "little steps."  In rink skating you can take long strides with reasonable confidence that the floor is clean and unobstructed, but street skating, no.  You need smaller steps so you can leap to your other foot when you inevitably hit a rock.

It was so damn disco when my kid pulled over and tried to adjust her own skate settings.  I snapped them to full mobility and off she went.  What's more, I forogt my own feet, which is what I've been working towards.  Foreward, backward, around in circles, as long as she didn't fall badly towards the back, I wanted was fine.  I skated spotting her for that scary backwards fall to the back of the head and my skate buddy blocked around us so no one crashed into her by accident.  

We skated up until 10PM.  My children have never needed a lot of sleep.  In the early days I was tortured by parenting books that insisted that children would and ought to sleep from 7PM to 7AM.  There are times that my children do need that sort of rest, during a growth spurt. But the best advice my pediatrician gave me was under the weight of a heavy sigh.  She told me that her children had never needed more than 8 or 9 hours a night and to restructure my parenting expectations to my child rather than the child to a book.  This has actually been how I discoverd my son had an innate athletic endurance.  He does not need "normal" amounts of sleep unless he's really taxed his body.  Which is why he's now in heavy training and on the road with his coaches and my father to compete at a very high level in his sport.  

I've wondered if my daughter had the same inheritance.  It seems it may be so, she skated pretty constantly (and this was after a day of strong play) from about 8PM to 10PM and did not fall sleep before we arrived home.  But as I tucked her into bed she rolled over and looked me deep in the eyes.

"Wroller tate," she said, and grinned and wiggled, "Baby wroller tate."

Which is about the best endorsement I can think of.

It's now the bright morning.  I'm having a private rock and roll dance party to Alexa's pick of 80's music while my daughter plays with her Easter Eggs in her small blue race car.

My own Easter gift to myself has not arrived yet.  

But I suspect today we will take advantage of this bright, clear day and head down to the water front to (what else?) skate.

Disco kisses, bishes.

Queen.


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4/16 '17 4 Comments
OH MY GOD I am past my adorableness limit, the book doesn't say what to do, you're writing the book right now
The best part is how chubby her little knees are but you can't see that in the picture. And how sweaty she got while skating and her little laugh.

We had such a good night. Yesterday we pushed all the furniture back against the walls and skated around the room. Good summer weather will be so much fun this year!

Oh God. I used to hoop in my bedroom. Red marks everywhere.
She has grown so much! Look at that glow on her face! Oh she is so adorable I am abusing punctuation left, right and centre!!!
xxxx
 

I realize I'm not on week three of increased skating sesssions. 

My feet are gaining strength.  I do ballet foot exercises as I'm decidedly uninterested in any injury I can prevent. or the amount of couch time or bench time that would come with injury.  I have gorgeously healthy knees, ankles and hips, my back is a happy back.  My adult body is the result of a coach father and a mother who felt that "you only have one chance to grow bones and teeth" and fed us very well and with a great deal of thought and consideration.  I'm extremely grateful.

So it's not time to undo the gift now.

When I started derby, we learned to skate and hit fairly quickly.  From that point we transitioned into team practices.  For myself, I'd have preferred a far more gradual increase, to build muscle memory and also, skating uses lateral muscles and ... I don't know quite how to describe it but if you've skated in a rink you know... rink skating uses them unevenly.  Your inside leg develops differently than your outside leg.  I was in another sport for years and performed at a high level that also created a difference in my body like this: cross training was very important to long term structural health.  I'm sure each league does it differently, but skating is such a different activity and everyone enters at such different ages, experience and fitness.  I do daydream of derby again but I'll give myself my own year of rebuilding my skating muscles before I risk injury with the sort of punctuated, quick skating that you need to do to jam or the heavy hits of blocking.

For squad skating (I really don't know what else to call it) I want to take it long and steady.  I've set a week by week fo things I want to learn and work on.  So far so good.

So I've been going to the gym a lot more, and on the days I don't know, stretching and doing some additional work outs on that side of my body have helped.   I've lost about eight pounds in three weeks, which sounds startling but that's not from skating alone.  I've been lifting weights and on a structured diet as a project to reduce my weight - separate from skating and more related to a desire to be able to safely run long distances again.  I'm "up fifteen" now from the weight I've been my entire life.  My youngest is two and a half, for me I usually seem to be able to relinquish the weight when they turn three.   I've been struggling against this weight for the last six months. 

But it's amazing to feel the transformation in my body going into week four from week one.  Each session is about three hours at least, and by the end, I've been in constant motion.  Muscle definition is emerging from my legs and calves,  it feels like my body sings when it aches.  

So this was my third week.  I've slowly regained my feet and I spent most of last night skating backwards.  Not just skating backwards but working on weaving and remembering my comfort forwards or backwards.  I tried a few jumps - unsurprisingly to me I can jump and turn better than I can skate backwards effortlessly.  Next week I'm going to really focus on those turns and balancing on one foot to build my lateral muscles more.

That's the technical.  

But here's the rest.  Last night as I worked on things I said to a friend that I just wanted to feel what all the sensations of flying backwards felt like without the visuals.  Sometimes what I'm seeing, or the rink lights, seem to throw me off balance.  So my friend put out their hands and said, "Go ahead."  They are a steady, firm skater, and I doubt I could take them down.  

So I did.  with my eyes closed, I could feel the rink lights flashing across my eyes as I moved around.  The sound of the wheels underneath the music, and strangely and comforting, the speed, because for anyone who has ever been depressed, stuck artistically, or in a place in their life where things are less thank sink-your-teeth-into-it satisfying, momentum is important.  

It's not uncommon, I think, for adult athletes to feel very passionately about their sports. It's a chosen thing, for one, in lives that are largely dictated by smaller choices made against practical necessity.  

And in all of that, anything that brings that feeling of flying, that sensory experience that leads to an explosion of happiness in my chest, anything that brings that I will seize.







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4/15 '17 6 Comments
Adult athletes feeling passionate about their sports... oh, yes. I recently adjusted my filters so you can see a certain post titled "Dear Tomorrow Tom."
Have you considered compiling a book about your experiences with skating and your return to the sport?

I ask because I would not have picked up a book on the subject given my detachment from skating (I've enjoyed watching it and very seldomly skating in a rink when MUCH younger). BUT - having read along thus far? I would absolutely read the shit out of a book you wrote about it.

#justsayin
I consider it a great compliment that you read!

I haven't thought much about writing about skating beyond this blog. In terms of derby, I had a very small and quiet start and didn't do much beyond it, but I feel I've found my #disco if that makes sense. My jam. What I'm supposed to be doing in this odd cultural side eddy obsession regarding shoes with wheels on the soles.

Maybe if I keep reading and writing? A great deal of my posting here has to do with simply that I'm running out of resources to read up on and view for the type of skating I want to do so I am having to push out on my own and find it.
Sounds wonderful - for those of us who benefit from it, and for you as it seems somehow more your own that way.

Whatever the case - keep it up!

This comment has been deleted.

*fist bump of solidarity*
 

Ripping out your jeans is part of it, I guess.  

I am so rusty on backwards skating, but I can do it in a rink, including transitions.  This weekend I realized it's a whole different game outside, on sidewalks, but only after I went ass over teakettle shocking a little knot of tourists on the boardwalk.

I have to regain my skill at falling.

You simply can't learn to skate or do tricks without cuts, bruises and falls. That's why you learn to fall and fall well.  There's an art to falling and the old saying, "Fall ten times, get up eleven," only really is inspiring if you know how to fall without breaking your contract.  For me, I've taken years and years of judo and still do from time to time.  I've always had a strange sense of joy and power that I can be hit and actually sent flying and still land decently.  That said, it's nothing until you practice it.

Falling leads to cuts and bruises, even if you fall well.

I'm at the point where I remember why pants and skating have never quite felt like they are a good pairing.  It's somehow easier and more forgiving to wear tights, leggings, skirts, shorts, just about anything than pants - which bind up in the crotch and have rivets in the pockets that dig firmly into your ass like little teeth when you land leaving the oddest peppering of bruises on one's (in my case, ample) rear end.   I'm a minimalist, and so what I own  tends to be limited.. and expensive.  I don't fancy ruining any jeans that were carefully hand stitched in the USA that I've had for many years, but nor do I buy poorly traded goods new.  So I spent part of the weekend thrift store crawling with a specific slant to find good skating clothes with some success.  I know the traditional look, which is fantastic: short booty shorts, knee high socks, cute t shirt.  But where I live, even on a sunny day, it's chilly this time of year.  I do warm up skating but I need more coverage and yet I feel a pre-emptive slump of defeat when I think of wearing plain old work out clothing to skate as skating just ignites my joy in ways that the treadmill, despite it's... charms (I suppose?  It must be someone's bliss, somewhere) has never.   My work out clothes are pleasant, but they don't celebrate my joy. 

It's another meandering side step, as I wash dishes at night and watch skate videos, with some mild form of obssesion.  I'm in a new world, of Chicks in Bowls - it's entirely tempting - and I still must remind you that I was falling down skating backwards outside this weekend so my dreams are quite heavily laced with idealism and optimism at this point, probably from an outside perspective at least.  But I'm quite confident that with time, perhaps a lot of time, I'll get there. 

What's interesting is... I am an unusually determined person.  I have in the last year or so, felt I've lost my touch for it.  I've suffered some disappointments, no worse than others, I suppose, but sometimes it is hard to hold to my narrative that I tell myself of what I am doing as a creative person and why.  There valleys...and mountains...but what we are least equipped to deal with I think are the plateaus.  The long, steady pace that goes on and on for miles, days or even a year and you wonder... without those valleys or hills, how will I find the low or the high to use to push, to make something happen?  For anyone that sees the arts from the outside, this is almost always what it takes to get anything going, much less stustain it.  A few good pushes from inside, a strong donkey kick and you sit down, you write the damn thing, you sit down, you make the asking phone call, you take the chance, you show up.

I easily put more effort into my skating  last weekend than I have my own work this year.  I work hard for others, but for my own creative work, I haven't, not yet this year.   

Part of this writing is to trace that vein, that vein that connects what I love to what I create.  

So I stopped mid entry, and as late as it is, sent something I'd thought about doing but...hadn't...because... but now it's done.

And I'll keep skating and thiknin about these things. Maybe it will carry me somewhere.  Maybe it won't, and in another year I'll see be on this same plateau.

But the difference is, I have something I love to do now, helping me along.

   

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4/12 '17 5 Comments
The best exercise is the exercise you want to do.
I love hearing your enthusiasm about skating.
Thank you. I'm obsessed.

I can't wait to get my new skates. It was an utterly teenaged decision, lacking in pragmatism and purely fueled by, "I WANT AND WILL USE THESE." I contemplated the purchase for two days and finally went ahead.

Looking forward to the skates is like... hoping for the first time you kiss a cute boy. I keep imagining what it will be like.
I don't have much to add here, though I very much agree with Shelle's comments, and that title gave me a very visceral flashback to another time.

A sincere thank you for that. :)
This is my second thought on seeing rollergirls scoot by: "how does she fall in that?"
It's painful to pull the torn jeans out of the cut, to be honest. I'd rather have an honest road rash. When I first started skating I was a bit shy, and covered up and it was so annoying to have those other layers of clothing. I think that anti-pants might be the best way to describe it. If I could get away with it in my daily life, I probably would wear what I wear skating 24/7. :)

For fishnets etc, I generally wear another layer underneath. I feel more protected in that than in jeans.



 

I was going to write this as an email to Tom, but this message (seeing as this is a week's worth of hypergraphia exploding in a Saturday blast) is probably better living its life as a One Post Wonder post. So, if anything else amazing happens today, I'll add it at the end. 

Ever since the Dead Milkmen's album Beelzebubba came out, I have loved the (song?) piece of whimsy that is Stewart.  if you're not familiar with it, this is it.

I don't know why I love it. It's hilarious, contagious, and picturesque. Do I need another reason? It's a satirical exploration of narrowminded xenophobia, even more necessary today than it was when it was originally released in the era of George Bush I. 

When I went away to college, the Beelzebubba album made my homesickness for the Greater Philadelphia area easier to cope with. My friends and I used to sing "Punk Rock Girl" at the tops of our lungs, walking around the Frasier-Crane-esque Back Bay area, wrapping our lips and tongues around those South Street vowel roller coasters as a way of pushing off the stifling snobbery of cold, concrete Boston. 

Flash forward to a couple of years later when I worked at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. One of our dialect exercises was to take something we already knew by heart and "translate" it to Renfaire language and dialect (I say Renfaire because I'm 100% positive there are huge differences between 16th century English language and what gets used at faires, no matter how historically acurate they may try to be, I just can't cite those differences right now). One of the characters in the summer of 1991 was named Stuart, and my friend Gina and I used to rant a translated version of "Stewart" to him. he would look at us like we were completely insane. We asked him, "Have you e'er heard of those bards of the Shire of Brotherly Love, who name themselves after the ghosts of dairy farmers?" He said in that in sooth and faith, no tale of such bards had ever been introduced to him.

To this day, 25 years later, when I don't feel well, and especially if I'm nauseous, if I need to soothe my brain, I occupy myself by trying to remember the Renfaire translated version of "Stewart," that Gina and I would tell to this poor guy when we had gate duty together on hot summer afternoons.  We never made it much further than the burrow owl business. I seem to recall it was something like this:

Know ye, Stuart, well I love thee. Thou are unlike all others in this shire. 

Misunderstand me not, sir, they are fine people, good English stock, but they are content to recline, enjoy a Punch and Judy entertainment, quaff a mug of ale. But they do not know, Stuart, what the Spaniards will do to this shire! 

Know you young John of Wurster? He delivereth messages throughout the Shire and rings the town crier's bell. This youth hails from another land, and some say he inhaleth the smoke of the poppy, but this I believe not. When the day came that he had ten years passed, he begged old Wurster for the gift of a burrow owl. "Father," he said, "nothing more could my heart desire, for all the years I might live." 

Some nights past, I ventured out at half ten, to find young John of Wurster staring into the moonlit branches of the birch. "What brings you hence? " I asked, "No youth should be out this late, hath some madness gripped you?" thinking of the tales of the poppy that dog this lad's heels. "My burrow owl," he cried, "I seek it in the night."  "God's hairy butt," I cried, "know you not that a burrow owl liveth in a hole in the ground? For what reason else, in heaven, on earth, or in the fires below, would it be so named?"

And so, good Stuart friend, do you think such a lad would know what the Spaniards wil do to this shire? 

And, yeah, that's about as far as we got. Mostly because the poor guy would find a reason to run away from us. 

A few years ago, during a particularly bad bout with a virus, I started trying to translate it into actual Shakespearean sonnet form.  Iambic pentameter is hard. I had gotten up early feeling lousy, showed up for work on time, tried to hang in there for an hour, and made it to the toilet just in time to vomit up my entire viscera. They sent me home, but I had to take the train. The gentle swaying of the car and blur of the outside did not help things, so concentrating on translating Stewart into iambic pentameter gave me something to hang onto so I wouldn't become another SEPTA vomit statistic. I don't think I made it past the first two lines.  

Since then, if I feel sick or crappy, this is my thing to concentrate on. That and translating this into Spanish:

This is really hard, because the word for "female dog" in spanish is perra, which has two syllables, and "mom" is mamá, also two syllables. 

HEY, I DON'T TELL YOU WHAT TO THINK ABOUT WHEN YOU'RE TRYING TO PASS OUT BECAUSE YOU FEEL LOUSY. 

When I'm tired and frustrated, Stewart pops up in my brain, as I'm sure Pavlov's dogs could hear phantom bells ringing when they were hungry.  It's not going away. When I have a long day of repeating the obvious to people who just don't get it, in the back of my mind, a voice is screaming, "THEY'RE GONNA BUILD LANDING STRIPS FOR GAY MARTIANS, I SWEAR TO GOD!!!" 

My point is, one of these days, I really want to sit down with Tom Boutell (for his experience with iambic pentameter), a copy of Charles' Onions' Shakespeare Glossary, 3rd Edition, and translate Stewart into the Shakespearean poetic saga that I've been craving since 1991. That is a bone my brain wants to chew on.

I wonder, if I wrote a really carefully-worded letter on letterhead in real ink to Rodney Anonymous, he'd read a proposal allowing me to adapt Stuart into a 45 minute Shakespearean play for Fringe production? 

Shit, he'd probably say yes if I tweeted it, but I don't tweet-propose.

(Why 45 minutes? Come on, there's no point in dragging that story out past 45 minutes.)

But it can't be Spaniards that the narrator is afraid of. It would have to be queers or whatever they would have been called in that time period. I think it has to be that the narrator is in love with Stewart, but can't deal with it because of his own internalized homophobia. 

OK, that's enough out of me for right now. 

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I strongly suspect he would be a friend unto you as he is unto the philadels.
He seems like a normal person disguised as a Philebrity.
Doooood, I can say with absolute absolute certainty he would be ALLLLLLL about this, and would probably let you perform it at a Milkmen gig, and would then give you his cell number and ask you to hang out and watch Chica Vampira and chug wine and eat Doritos. He's just a guy. And he loooooves all things goth, witchy, RenFaire-y, theater-y, creative, and irreverent. If you want me to make the introduction (or just send him a link to this post), I will gladly do that. He is absolutely the warmest, kindest, funniest, smartest, silliest guy around.

He was on an episode of Kevin Regan's Elvis And podcast because it was silly.

Really. He loves meeting good people. You are the epitome of good. He also likes 'em quirky. I think you embrace your quirkiness, like we all embrace our quirkiness.

Say the word and it's DONE.
I was SO HOPING you'd read this. The thought just burbled up like lava, but then afterwards I hoped you'd read it.

Don't say anything yet. Let me at least choke out a draft. If it feels like it has legs, then I'll speak up.

What holds me back is that the narrator of Stewart talks in the past tense, and so a play would have to tell the story he's telling. And you and I and everyone else know it's a mad man's tale, the connections are nonsensical. Burrow owl, mixer, decapitation, pamphlet from Pueblo, Colorado. There's a path between those events which is implicit in the song/rant but hard to make explicit onstage. AND THAT'S A CHALLENGE I WANT TO WRAP MY BRAIN AROUND.

The Tragedie of Stewart.
I'll wait for your signal. :-)
DUDE, OF COURSE AN ELIZABETHAN WOULD BE SCARED OF SPANIARDS!

between queen mary, the inquisition, and the armada, being scared of spaniards is one of the defining characteristics of elizabethan england.
Don't get them started on the French.

"Last night I shot a Hugenot in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know."

Works better with a French accent.
So, you see my point.
And I very much look forward to the iambic revelry.
So shall it be!