Chatting with Peja - Episode 1

Peja and I put together a little talk show this morning. The music is all Barn Flyz stuff from Peja or Paul, the album I wrote while Sienna was preggers with Peja (who, for all I knew, might have been Paul).

Transcript, for Adam -- "Welcome to Chatting with Peja. My guest today is Leo the Lion. Hello Leo welcome to the show. We'll be right back. Chalk looks good. No, you never eat it. Don't eat Chalk. We're all out of time. See you next week on Chatting with Peja. Bye!"

Cabin Fever. . .

I guess updating my face-book status doesn't really count as keeping the blog going. . . But it should, really.

Basketball is on hold for March Break (and for the ice storm last week). I went and shot last Thursday, and I'll probably get out at some point this week (maybe tomorrow morning? I'll check if Sienna's working. . .). I'm really glad I got a gym pass for Queens -- I've had so many great shooting sessions in completely empty gyms; just me and 6 perfect nets. My left hand can almost dribble, and for the first time in my life I made a few lefty-reverse lay-ups. I've been reading some basketball skills books, and I'm slowly converting my home-grown ways to the proper fundamentals.

I've been jamming with one of my students at work -- he's a good drummer, but super-lazy about practicing whatever I give him to work on, so we mostly just pick a drum beat, and try and write a song. It's almost like having a band, except that I'm getting paid. . . We've been laying down some tracks with Tim, which is a nice low-pressure way to record new stuff.

Downtown living (or near downtown) has been pretty crappy this winter. Peja is almost big enough to walk all the way, but not quite. And the snow has made it tough to push her tricycle or a stroller.

I can't wait until spring -- I know in shoes and without snow-pants the kid could walk 100 miles. Peja is in-between play group and kindergarten age -- she's older than almost all the kids at play group, so I don't take her as much; she likes the paintings and crafts, but we can do that stuff here, and she's not really getting socialized if it's all 1 and 2 year olds. The Library programs are awesome, and are the main reason we haven't murdered each other.

If you haven't been there, I keep another blog for Peja's drawings over at www.pejahanako.blogspot.com. I know this is total proud-papa syndrome, but she is much better at the whole drawing thing that I was at thrice her age.

Kudos to my awesome cousin Tom for getting into College. And kudos to his twin Kevin for buying a 1986 Trans-Am. Uh. . . It's okay folks, he's in mechanic school. It's the knight-rider car! You really can't beat that.

The Ebike is also suffering long-winter-itus, I think I've got some moisture issues in the control cable system (the motor controller keeps track of how fast the wheel is spinning -- I don't know why, but apparently, it's important), so the hub is taking a break over a heat register, which should purge the water and get everything running again. In good news, the battery I set fire to may have only blown it's heat-fuse. . . Cross your fingers!

The city took down the snowbanks last night -- I had heard the operation done a few times, but saw it for the first time this winter. They plow all the snow into the middle of the road and then a huge snow-blower type machine picks it all up and blows it into a series of dump trucks -- when one is full, it pulls ahead and the next in a long train of them gets filled. It's an insane production that must cost a fortune -- but it also means I have a side-walk and Peja and I will probably get out of the house!

Hope you are all surviving winter with good health and spirits.

More news from the country music sessions next time.

Jay.

Victory!

Alright, first off, two wins on Wednesday night, so congrats to the rest of the Blue Crush team. We, uh, you know. . . Crushed them. Our second game was against a short-handed version of my old team, so that was a good win, if only for trash-talking purposes. Bill Resler, the basketball coach from the great documentary The Heart of the Game has a saying, "the team that makes the most mistakes generally wins", and I could see that in our games. We threw a lot of leading passing that careened out of bounds, but for every one we missed, we'd get another one for an easy basket. It's how the best teams from last season would win. We played loose and relaxed, ran for most of the game (we have to be the oldest team in the league, but running seems to really work for us), and came away with two good wins.

Tim had that country band back out to the Dorian studio last night, so I got to meet and greet with them. Like all bands, their "between drummers", in that the drummers they like are unreliable and the drummers that are reliable they don't like. They're just a couple of brothers, but they've got great chops and a good business sense; their dad helps them out, and he seems to have a great sense of how to help while letting it be his kids' deal. So, for now, I think I'm going to go back and re-record their drum tracks for them (their lead-guitarist is laying down scratch drum tracks), and see how that goes. They play a lot of gigs, all over the place, and I'd be up for Kingston shows, but traveling isn't really my thing (unless I get rides, I guess, then it would be alright). I'm not sure they realize how good they have it -- they're pulling $200-$300 a gig, for just a three piece, that's great money.

Hope everything is cool with you,

Jay.

Drunken Hippies

I got to work today (thanks to the household for sponsoring a new ebike battery -- the new one is wicked awesome, and thanks to Sienna for making an equally awesome waterproof cover for it) and my boss Tim was asking me if I wanted to drums play in a country band.

For some background, Tim has asked me to form or join the following kinds of band:

Collective Soul Cover Band
Matchbox Twenty Cover Band
Maroon 5 Cover Band

I like my job, so I should probably stop there.

But the country band thing is strange. A few years ago, Matt Murphy from Halifax's The Super Friendz, starred in a mockumentary about a fictional Canadian Country singer named Guy Terrifico. The film is, oh, around 3 stars, but the music in it was really catchy, and so I bought the album from Zunior and it's all kind of fake old country stuff, with lyrics like, "if our love ain't worth a damn, at least it's worth a song". But it's really cool music, and the slide guitar along makes me want to get a pedal steel. So, anyway, I had my ipod playing through the stereo, and some of the Guy Terrifico stuff came on, and Sienna looked over at me, and we both knew what the other was thinking, and our conversation was something like:

"Man, I really dig this stuff."
"Yeah, it's got me worried."
"I know. Me too. Like, can I like country music?"
"Yeah. "
(We talk like drunken hippies.)

And we both enjoy the alt-country, but this stuff wasn't alt at all. It was old time. It's like turning on the radio and suddenly thinking, "You know what, this CBC program about gardening is fascinating!" What's a guy to do?

So, anyway, Tim asks me about this band, and I'm curious. Their going into the Dorian Studios to do some recording, so I'll get a chance to hear their stuff.

New Comic! (New Artist. . .)