United Breaks Guitars

There is nothing more terrifying for a guitar player than knowing that you have to travel on an airplane with your guitar ... and check it with the other baggage.

Thanks Dave Carroll! This says it all with a great song and great video!

Creepy Doll Place

Interstate 30 East goes into Holden Beach, where our family has been going for years, my wife's family for years before that. And right before the scenery shifts from North Carolina rural to non-commercial beachy, there's a curve in the road. And right before the curve in the road, there is a weird, over-cluttered lot we've always called the Creepy Doll Place.

From the street, it looks like a setting from a cheap 80's horror movie, a place where the non-supervised vacationing teenagers go on a dare, where someone in a hockey mask teaches them the ultimate moral lesson about their debauchery the night before.

You miss Creepy Doll Place if you don't know it's coming, because you're either on your way to your vacation, on your way back home, or on your way to or from Wal Mart.

Creepy Doll Place became a punchline. And every year we'd say we'd stop to see it, and every year there was less time on vacation than we expected, and every year the mystery grew.

My brother joined us at the beach with his family this year, and he joked with us about the Creepy Doll Place. When his few days at the beach ran out without us having gone to see it, the dare was on. My brother's expectation was not just that I visit the Creepy Doll Place, but that I prove it.

Creepy Doll Place from Stefan Farrenkopf on Vimeo.

For less ironic but more professional information about Mary Paulsen, including a video about her latest project, click here.

My First Love

Before there was my lovely wife, before there was Tina Fey, before there was even Sandy Todd (in Mrs. Clapham's kindergarten class, 1970). . .

There was Jaime.

And somewhere in my heart, Jaime will always be.

There is true beauty in this world.




(Correction: Steve first reunited with Jaime in 1975. So technically, Sandy Todd was my first love. I mean no disrespect to Sandy. I will always cherish times she let me chase her around the story carpet, or the glimpse of her belly-button as she hung upside down on the swingset. But Sandy was not bionic. Nor was she Sainde. Bionics and exotic spelling loom large in the memory.)

Lark, Nightingale, Bangin'

So maybe I shouldn't have put my 9th grade students in this position.

On their test over Romeo and Juliet, they had to identify a series of quotations. One of them takes place the morning after their wedding night. So how do 9th graders refer to how the young lovers had spent the night? On a test?

Here's the quote:
"Wilt though be gone? It is not yet near day. / It was the nightingale and not the lark. / That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear."

Here are the first portions of their answers:

"Romeo and Juliet just were married and are celebrating in Juliet's bed."

"Juliet says this to Romeo the after their marriage when Romeo has to leave because it is morning."

"After Juliet and Romeo have their night together."

"This quote is said by Juliet when Romeo is leaving in the morning."

"Juliet says this when she and Romeo wake up in Juliet's bed after he spent the night and Juliet doesn't want it to be morning because if it is he has to leave."

"Spoken to Romeo in Juliet's room before he leaves for Mantua."

"Juliet is talking to Romeo and not wanting Romeo to leave after spending the night together."

"This is Juliet speaking to Romeo. They were laying in bed and they heard a bird."

and this kid:

"Juliet says this after Romeo snuck into her room and they had sex."

Wolf and Pig Animation

Seen this yet? Cuz it's awesome.

Practice, Practice, Practice

Ok, I know I know.  It's been months since I've posted on the blog and I'm not even sure if I'm still welcome.  I know I'm not a good blogger and most of the time I'm not even a willing blogger.  I'm still trying to figure out what all the fuss is about with this blogging / tweeting / facebooking / spacelooking / flogging / clogging stuff .  To that point though, I still visit the site fairly regularly as I look forward to hearing about Dead Lennie.  You've been pretty lax there my good friend Lennie (on the creative side), although my sense is it's been "one of those years" - to say the least.

I'm blogging today for a little accountability.  I started the Berklee online Masters Guitar program in the early fall and as of this week I'm about to finish my second class and move on to class #3.  I've had an in depth dive into guitar scales & chords, and am about to move to Blues.  It's a good time to take an assessment of what and how I've done, and see if I shouldn't steer myself a little bit in another direction.

Now that I have been through two classes I can honestly say that my concern about whether it would be worth it has been smashed to pieces.  I worried that it wouldn't be comprehensive and challenging enough.  If anything, it's been the opposite.  The only limitation on how much I get from the course is my willingness to put in the time and effort.  Both classes so far have enough material to keep me busy and challenged for years.  I've found that I have to focus on the aspects that are most relevant to me and hopefully revisit the additional material on my own in the future.  Great great stuff.  My effort has been very good and I've worked hard to get nothing but A's on all assignments.  All in all, I am energized by being able to really LEARN the instrument the way I should have years ago as I insisted that playing songs was all I really needed.  I am excited for future courses and excited to keep this learning wheel spinning.  Education is a wonderful thing!

Now for the negative.  I've spent so much time on these courses, theory and skills, that I've put off just playing.  I haven't gigged since Sept.  Haven't been practicing songs and repetoire almost at all.  Zero songwriting.  You get the idea.  I think therein lies the gut-check for the upcoming months.  I need to balance out my practice and get back to songs & playing gigs and the creative and fun side of guitar.  My worry is, the only way to do that is practice, practice, practice.  Not sure I can commit to much more and not sure if I should.  Although I sure would like to.  Hmm.  Do my best?  Suck it up?  Don't worry, be happy?  Wherever you go there you are?  Other thoughts?

Lennie.  I think about you often.  Hows the creative stuff?  You're not letting life get too much in the way are you?  Your audience wants more..........

Inauguration Day

This was a good day. As this blog is a bit of an electronic journal, more personal than public, I though it might be good place to record my experience of it.

Most of the school gathered in the gymnasium to watch the inauguration as projected on the walls. I arrived while Aretha Franklin was singing, and immediately found myself moved to tears by the images of the huge crowd on the mall. The images were so reminiscent of another crowd on the same real estate, facing the other direction, listening to the words of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Since the election, countless pundits and commentators have mentioned that no one on the Mall during King's most famous speech could have predicted that this day - a black president - would come so soon. Turns out, one person did:




We sat in a darkened gym, and the history of the moment did not seem lost on the kids - and the presence of the kids strengthened the sense of history for me.

I have always loved the melody of "Simple Gifts," and found John Williams arrangement to be powerful and moving, an appropriate mix of traditional and contemporary, comforting and challenging. Best moment: Yo Yo Ma's smile when he had the melody. Wish I could find a picture of that to put here.

The flub in the oath will go down in history. All I could think was that the right-wing zealots would have a field day with it. I didn't realize at the time that the flub was John Roberts' more than Obama's. Still, one Fox commentator has already speculated that the flub means that Obama isn't really president. I like to see that argument go to the Supreme Court, just to see how John Robert's would rule on it.

Fox News: We're unpresidented!

On Fox News, Chris Wallace just speculated that President Obama might still legally be regular ol' Barack Obama, because his botched oath doesn't count.

Wallace was referring to the one slip in today's otherwise flawless ceremonies, which came at the most important moment: Chief Justice John Roberts said and President Obama repeated back to him: "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will execute the office of President of the United States faithfully." The oath's actual line (which is in the Constitution) goes, "I [Barack Hussein Obama] do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States."

You can see the video of the oath here:

Over on Fox, Wallace predicted this will go to the courts. Though, presumably, if it makes it to the Supreme Court, John Roberts will rule that he administered a legitimate oath. (Besides, the mistake was Roberts' fault anyway, not that any of this is actually the least bit significant.)

Though I'd ordinarily guess that even this is too silly to take off on the paranoid far-right, these days, who can be sure? As a friend of mine joked, "Maybe the real reason he botched the oath is that he rehearsed it in Arabic."

― Gabriel Winant (salon.com)

Reviews seem mixed on Obama's speech. I thought is was tough at a time when toughness is appropriate. I loved that it called us all to task. It could have soared more, but the power was in the moment, the setting, the history, and perhaps expectations are too high. Was there a "nothing to fear" phrase, a "ask not what" moment? Maybe not. But there was a call to return and depend on our highest ideals, and for a "new era of responsibility."

The 1st grade didn't watch the inauguration in the gym, so after we were dismissed I went to look for my youngest son. I was excited and moved about the possibilities of this country, and I wanted to give him a big hug. And I was powerfully reminded of another time that I walked through the lower school halls desperate to give a young son a hug. Seven years ago, on 9/11, I sought out my family members to mark the moment. It was odd that such a different feeling would have such familiarity.

Later in the day, when a senior class came in, one student asked if we could discuss the inaugural poem. Teachable moment. Quick Google search, quick trip to the copier, and within three minutes each kid had a copy of the poem. The kids didn't like it, though they liked it better when it was sitting in front of them. Much was said about it, but the cool revelation, I thought, was that the poem seemed an attempt to echo Walt Whitman, who loved and admired his president, Abraham Lincoln. Like Obama swearing on Lincoln's Bible, this seemed another nice tribute to the progress this country has made, and where much of it started.