Plinky asked, “What was the last thing you got real­ly excit­ed about?”

Home­made Ukule­les

My ukulele! I wish I had a pho­to of her to post, but I don’t. She’s a trav­el tenor, which means that she’s a bit big­ger than the “stan­dard” (sopra­no) ukulele most peo­ple are used to see­ing, but also thin­ner than a nor­mal tenor. She has a love­ly voice, a lit­tle deep­er than a sopra­no uke. She isn’t a toy like the one on which I orig­i­nal­ly learned to play, either. And she’s mine all mine!

Plinky asked, “Do you ever lis­ten to the radio any­more?”

Car Radio

I only lis­ten to the radio in the car. In fact, I don’t think I’ve got a radio at home any­where. If I do lis­ten, I almost always choose the local NPR affil­i­ate to lis­ten to. If it isn’t time for the one of the NPR broad­casts, I might skip around the dial to find music I like, but I’m more like­ly to lis­ten to Spo­ti­fy on my phone.

I real­ly enjoy the radio fea­ture on Spo­ti­fy, though. You choose a song you like, then choose the radio fea­ture, and it choos­es more songs that are some­how sim­i­lar to that one (basi­cal­ly Pan­do­ra via Spo­ti­fy).

1) My Dad­dy, and his (ongo­ing) recov­ery from surgery.
2) Every­thing I learned about music from J.D. Mardis and all the oth­er teach­ers over the years.
3) Easy access to a pool.

Plinky said, “Name a movie that has a great sound­track.”

Sound­track Cov­er Print Out

There are so many! If I had access to my full music library right now, we could be here all day, because i do love movie sound­tracks. For sim­plic­i­ty’s sake, I decid­ed to leave musi­cals out of this dis­cus­sion.

My first pick is Choco­lat, a love­ly French movie from 2001 star­ring Juli­ette Binoche, Judi Dench and John­ny Depp. If you haven’t heard the score you’re miss­ing a trea­sure. It has been on my list of favorites since see­ing the film over a decade ago. It includes pieces by Djan­go Rein­hardt, Duke Elling­ton, Hoagy Carmichael and George Gersh­win. With a line-up like that, how could it go wrong?

My sec­ond choice is anoth­er an old favorite, Prac­ti­cal Mag­ic. Faith Hill’s “This Kiss,”, “Black-eyed Dog” by Nick Drake, and “A Case of You” by Joni Mitchell are just a few of the won­der­ful cuts from this CD. I can lis­ten to it over and over again and hear some­thing new in the songs each time.

Now it’s your turn — sug­gest some­thing I haven’t seen that will make me sing or dance!

Plinky asked, Which of your hob­bies have you been doing for the longest amount of time? When did you start?”

Music (232/365)

That would be music. I’ve been singing since I was a small child in church choir. The way my moth­er’s fam­i­ly makes music, I could hard­ly avoid it (not that I want­ed to). I learned to play the ukulele with the rest of my sec­ond grade class, but held on to my instru­ment and kept play­ing it for some time. I began piano lessons in the fifth grade, I think, and con­tin­ued for a cou­ple of years and through three teach­ers (we moved, one quit, and I out­grew the last). The flute came with sixth grade and mid­dle school band.

At some point my par­ents acquired an organ in addi­tion to the piano and I taught myself to play that, which was inter­est­ing. In high school I flirt­ed with the oboe and bas­soon, but did­n’t real­ly take to them very well. I gave them up alto­geth­er after read­ing some­thing that claimed that dou­ble reed play­ers suf­fered loss of brain cells due to oxy­gen depri­va­tion (I haven’t fact-checked that since, so it could be utter non­sense). I acquired a wood­en flute at a Renn Faire that has a much sweet­er tone than the met­al flute, but I’ve nev­er pushed myself to real­ly learn to play it.

Now I want to return to the ukulele, but I real­ly need a new instru­ment. That poor lit­tle stu­dent uke that has been used as a “gui­tar” by chil­dren isn’t in per­fect con­di­tion after all these years, and won’t stay in tune in addi­tion to hav­ing some bro­ken bits.

Lis­ten to it on Sam’s site, and/or read the result­ing arti­cle, The Facets of Jazz Through Gary Mot­ley.

We’ve been watch­ing Defy­ing Grav­i­ty on Hulu, and enjoy­ing it. The music is one of the appeal­ing fac­tors, but I can’t find any infor­ma­tion about what songs by which per­form­ers are used in most of the episodes. TV.com has infor­ma­tion for two of them, but not the rest. I don’t sup­pose any of you know where to find more infor­ma­tion?

Their text actu­al­ly says, “If you pay me enough, I’d sing these songs.” I would­n’t have to be paid, though. I’ve nev­er actu­al­ly been in a karaoke bar, but I love to sing, so there are plen­ty of songs that I would be will­ing to sing!

Katie got the Juno DVD last week, so we all watched it togeth­er Fri­day night. She’s been gush­ing about it since see­ing it in the the­ater, and adores the sound­track, so we were cer­tain­ly curi­ous.

It was an odd movie, fair­ly quiet–no car crash­es, big tragedies, etc. It was real­ly well-done, and I was pleased with how real­is­ti­cal­ly it depict­ed a teen preg­nan­cy.

I’m more than slight­ly annoyed with what feels like a lit­tle puri­tan­i­cal “gotcha,” with the girl get­ting preg­nant the first and only time she had sex. Yes, of course I know it can hap­pen, but it still feels a lit­tle like the hor­ror movies in which any female who has had sex dies.

The music was real­ly, real­ly cute, and very Katie-ish. She’s a quirky girl, my kid.

I was a lit­tle dis­tract­ed every time Jason Bate­man was on the screen, because he loooks so much like Nathan Fil­lion.¹ I won­der if they’re relat­ed at all? If they are, IMDB does­n’t men­tion it.

I took my project man­age­ment final tonight, so I’m done with the semes­ter! Now I’m try­ing to down­load the text­book files for next semes­ter, but the ebook serv­er is hav­ing Issues.

In the mean­time, I’m lis­ten­ing to some love­ly new music, free and legal, over at The­Six­ty­One. I don’t know how Sam found out about the place, but it’s neat.