02.23.09
How To Understand Jazz Music
I wrote this article years ago for a website that is unfortunately now offline. Luckily, I had a back-up copy in my archives. It will probably seem a very simplistic explanation to a serious jazz lover, yet I think it might be a good start for a person who knows nothing about jazz and is interested in dipping his toe in the water. Hope to post a few other “lost essays” from that website in the future, as the fresh content seems to be decreasing lately here at the Spiddlement office while we work on a few unrelated projects.
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How To Understand Jazz Music
For much of my life, I was needlessly intimidated by jazz music. A lot of people who come from a pop music background are. I mean, I liked jazz music a lot, thought it sounded great, but I never understood it.
Whenever I would see a live jazz band playing in the park, it was easy to enjoy the groove and notice the proficiency of the musicians. But what kind of structure were they using? It certainly wasn’t the “verse-chorus-verse” structure of pop tunes like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Be My Baby”, or even the Tin Pan Alley structure of early pop and show tunes like “Come Fly With Me” and “‘Til There Was You”.
Sometimes I heard songs that I recognized played by jazz bands, songs like “Night and Day”, “Stella By Starlight”, “Georgia On My Mind”, or “Midnight At The Oasis”. I could relate to the great melodies, but was amazed at the way the players would totally deconstruct these songs and create new interpretations on the spot. How the heck did they do that? I finally decided that I would try to solve the mystery of jazz music.
01.18.09
Funniest George W. Bush Videos: A Look Back
Wow, can’t believe the Bush era is almost over, and we will soon have a president who can actually speak in complete sentences. What a happy ending to this story, huh?
01.07.09
What difference would lots of money make?
It's all about the Yukichis.
It’s an old question that most people have heard many times, but I still think it’s a useful one to ask from time to time: “If I suddenly became independently wealthy, what would I change about my life?”
The answer I’m always hoping for when I ask this question to myself is “Not much.”
But any other answer always reveals stuff I should probably be doing/working on anyway.
I recently bought my first Japanese lottery ticket. The drawing is tomorrow, January 8th. Statistically, the chances of me winning are so small that the money I spent on the ticket can only be rationally seen as “entertainment expense”. Kind of like renting a DVD or something.
But I like asking myself what I would do with a few extra million yen.
I would absolutely keep writing/blogging. I know that much.
12.31.08
Goodbye, Oh Ate!
Thanks for another great year!
At the Spiddlement office holiday party, someone recommended we start running a regular comic strip. I thought it was an interesting idea, but wasn’t sure if our readers would like it. It’s one of the projects we hope to explore when we reopen in 2009.
Until then, we wish you a Happy End Of 2008!
12.19.08
How To Make A Ninja Mask
Someone sent this to Spiddlement a long time ago, and we’ve been meaning to post it.
When cleaning out our bookmarks archive, we found it again and remembered how cool a tutorial video it was.
08.31.08
Tranzor Z Opening Sequence
When I was ten or eleven years old, one of my favorite afternoon cartoons on the local UHF channel was Tranzor Z.
I would find out years later that Tranzor Z was actually an English language version of a popular Japanese cartoon Mazinger Z.
08.21.08
Catching Up With Mary Worth
I’m ashamed to admit that I hadn’t been keeping up with Mary Worth lately.
I previously mentioned how I’d been a fan of this excellent comic strip for years. When I was in junior high school, my grandmother even used to clip and save Mary Worth for me because the daily strip ran only in the Atlanta Constitution (the morning paper then), and my family received the Atlanta Journal (the night paper).
I had been meaning to catch up for a while, but when I recently saw some new strips with a plot line revolving around Ian and Toby Cameron (Mary’s neighbors at the condominium complex, long time favorites of mine), I didn’t need a second invitation.
So I started reading from the mid July 2008 strips, one month back, to catch up. In the first ones, Mary and Jeff Cory were having dinner at The Bum Boat, their favorite restaurant, and obviously winding down some other storyline that I missed. Within a few days, the story nicely transitioned into the current Cameron-related plot.
Ian Cameron’s birthday is coming up soon, and Toby is hoping to buy him a documentary film DVD about Scotland, narrated by Sean Finnery, for a birthday gift. As she can’t find a copy at the local bookstore, she decides to go home and look for it online at a website called Enormoushop.com.
After locating and paying for the DVD, Toby then receives an email saying she needs to re-register her credit card info or her membership to Enormoushop will be canceled. Hmm… Read the rest of this entry »
08.02.08
How To Cool Down This Summer
The hottest days of summer are here. So I thought I’d share my favorite old Southern folk remedy for keeping cool when it’s HOT outside.
This was first mentioned on Spiddlement last September and a lot of people really seemed to like it.
I have no proof that it works. You’ll just have to try it yourself and see if you notice a difference.
What I’m about to share has always made me feel refreshed in the summer.
Here it is …
Are you ready? 
To keep cool in the summer, run some cold water over your wrists. This will make your whole body feel cooler.
I have been using this for years, and it always seems to work. Maybe it is just more fun than being hopelessly hot.
I combine this with washing my hands in the summer, allowing an extra few seconds of cool, cool water to run over my wrists.
If you feel bad about wasting the water, you can always reuse it to water your plants.
