Generic Peanuts

I just discovered that at some forgotten point in the past, I purchased the piano solo score for Linus and Lucy. You know, the Charlie Brown theme. Playing through it feels like Christmas . . . or Thanksgiving . . . or Halloween . . . or Valentine’s Day. In fact, there is a Peanuts special for just about any and every holiday, although few of them are seen anymore on TV.

So, can I buckle down, really learn Linus and Lucy, and have every holiday covered, as far as anybody over 40 who actually remembers specials like It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown is concerned?

Of course, one also has to know Misty, As Time Goes By, Für Elise, and Ashokan Farewell, for some reason, no matter the occasion.

Encore Une Fois

And once again serendipity strikes. David Cook will be the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, Nov. 1, 2008.

Well, my first piano lesson was Nov. 1, 1975, which fell on a Saturday. So, All Saints’ Day is also my Piano Anniversary, an auspicious occasion, indeed. The scene of the crime is still there, Park South Plaza (click HERE) in Vestavia on Hwy. 31 (near the locations of the former dinner theatre, drive-in, and PCA church), where I had lessons at Leo’s House of Music for a while before moving on to my piano teacher’s home studio (with the occasional lesson at Opus II in Eastwood Mall after Leo closed shop). Back then, there was a karate school next door to Leo. It was fun to watch those lessons while waiting for mine. I begin a new Piano Year cycle each Nov. 1st.

So, this David Cook guy just keeps douplegangerin’ around. (Isn’t it fun running all this totally into the ground.)

Random Rhetoricals

If this bear market doesn’t turn around soon, will stock brokers be able to bring themselves to buy Christmas presents of Teddy Bears for their children this year?

Since Roosevelt was “bully” about any and everything, why are there no stuffed Teddy Bulls?

Do brokers like Nestea? “Take the Nestea plunge!”

So, are sign makers happy? (Wachovia transmogrifying into Wells Fargo, alone, is business enough.) Don’t they need to use one of those removable plastic strips, like many church signs use for the preacher’s name, for the name of the bank?

Is it possible to run for any office in Alabama without shooting at something? Which is the greater crime, subverting “Amazing Grace” for political purposes, or syncopating it so to do?

And finally, does Auburn know what it’s doing? ROFL

Fast Away the Old Year Passes, Fa, La (Etc.)

Another “Piano Year,” which runs Nov. 1 to Oct. 31 (more on that in a future blog entry), is winding down. I’m trying to tie up some loose ends. I’ve been hashing new notes for Scarlatti’s Sonata in B Minor, K. 27, L. 449, as well as Bethena by Scott Joplin. I’m doing a second run of sorts for Inventions Nos. 13 and 14 by Bach. (I hadn’t done those in student daz–devilishly difficult, really.) Oh, and I’m going bonkers dealing with J. S.’s Gigue from the Fifth French Suite. All this after playing a bunch of other things during the summer. So, my plate of leftovers is full.

And I am musically tired. I’m always frustrated and frazzled at the end of Piano Year. Not so much from the actual (almost) daily playing, which has been very enjoyable (and I’ve earned some happiness there, I tell you what), as from the grinding “music director” duty of managing one’s playing . . . depending on the emminent teachers Yuron Yurown and his brother, Mitas-Welbyon Yurown . . . listening to the critic Yugottu B. Kydin.

I feel a sort of piano life shift happening towards cultivating a vast repertoire of already half-learned things more than hunting and gathering new literature: a melancholy relief as what is takes over from what could be.

Oh well, maybe I’m just blue because the days are getting shorter (but I do love fall). Hey, instead of a Pealism, here’s a Deep Thoughts (I can do those, too):

Don’t you hate it when life gives you squash instead of lemons, and all you know how to do is fix lemonade?

Mask of Zorro?

The Ultimate Halloween Catalog arrived in the newspaper today, resplendent with pictures of cheap-looking (yet expensive) costumes for all ages, which has me thinking: I have never been to a “proper” costume party.

And what is a proper costume party, you might ask? Well, it is one that is NOT associated with 1) Halloween, 2) the local Scottish societies, or 3) any pre-lenten, Carnival-like festivities. You know, one of those society parties in a stately home to which Henry Kissinger would go dressed as Little Bo Peep, Warren Buffet as Robin Hood, and Elton John as himself. Jessica Fletcher would be on the guest list, some crime would take place, and the police (plus that meddlesome Ms. Fletcher) would let everyone else leave after narrowing down the suspects to one of the seven Bo Peeps or five Robin Hoods in attendance.

Alas, I have only memories of the Halloween costumes I wore as a little tyke. Back then, a Halloween costume came in a box with a cellophane window showing its plastic mask with the rest of the costume (an imprinted, wrinkled rayon gown which tied up in the back like a hospital gown) folded up underneath. Not in order, I was a black cat once, Casper the Friendly Ghost twice, a skeleton twice, and Batman once (that costume was more sophisticated–it had a plastic cape). There were some homemade ones, too. I don’t want to write much about those (for heaven’s sake, an off-white 1970s plastic table cloth imprinted with a faux lattice pattern does not make for a good ghost, for starters). Halloween was as dead as a doornail for several years after the Tylenol poisonings in the early 1980s. I was jipped.

Adult Halloween parties amongst coworkers are big now, or so I’ve been told. Thank goodness I’ve never worked anywhere that does that! But what if . . . one must be prepared . . . what, if required, would I choose to be? Zorro? No, I’d have to shave down to a pencil thin mustache. Pirate? Well, where’s the costume there? King Richard? That’s just pompous.

Of course, there’s always guyliner, a fauxhawk, a left-handed guitar, and I’d be a Cher song away from . . . (You do know, do you not, that David Cook sort of resembles me and that Time of My Life sort of sounds like an old Cher song?)

Alabama’s Third Quarters

If in life’s third quarter you begin to fizzle . . .

HURRY UP, give your cup of enthusiasm a clockwise swizzle.

Maybe some Norman Vincent Peale books as halftime reading material would help!

Sturm und Drang

Beethoven, who knew money problems (how shocking), wrote Rondo a capriccio in G Major, Op. 129, “Rage Over a Lost Penny.”

Just think what sort of rage Ludwig could have unleashed over the necessity of a $900 billion “rescue.”