Flu Shot

That's me getting my flu shot, but there was much more whining and moping afterwards. I was achy and cranky yesterday and today my arm still hurts, but hey, I'm vaccinated now. Nothing like being constantly surrounded by hoardes of college students that teaches you to get your flu shot when they offer them. I figure the 25 bucks I payed to get the shot (yes, I could have gone to my own hospital and gotten it for free--but I'm a sucker for convenience) would offset the cost of, say, aspirin and snot pills and cough syrup and kleenex. Not to mention the chicken soup and orange juice. I remember once I was so sick I couldn't cook for myself and was too wiped out to go to the store and I lived off of top ramen for days. Thank goodness for my Aunty who figured that college kids live off ramen and bought me a small case of the stuff. I threw it in the closet and forgot about it until I really needed it.

Oh, but once when I was a kid (just before kindergarden) I had to get some sort of vaccination and I SO did not want to get it, and I tried to fight off the nurse who was administering it. OH MY GOD was she strong! She was the strongest person I have ever met, and I don't know how she did it, but she stuck that needle in me and vaccinated the hell out of me. I just remember her grabbing my arm and me fighting. It was very obvious that she was going to win the fight, but I gave it my all--I tried to pull away, but she held firm, I pulled, she held. I think I even got some sort of lollipop afterward which I sucked on begrudgingly. Lose the battle, win the war (on germs, anyway).

So when I get vaccinated, as I do every year, I just turn my head and whimper.

New Responsibilities

We're gearing up for the upcoming shows next weekend--two shows in that many days. We were setting up logistics and I get to be equipment-girl! Hooray! That's something I always wanted to do. Tomorrow I'm going to set up an excel document with a complete inventory of our equipment and checklists to use for each show. If you know me, then you know I can be kind of anal, and being equipment-girl appeals to me in a way that warrants my overly prolific use of exclamation points and italicized words. I can't WAIT!!

Oh, and I also get a speaking role in the demo/audience participation part. I'm not as excited about that, but I know it's a good thing for me to do. Heck, I teach my own class, so this should be a piece of cake, relatively speaking. I have to lead a crowd of middle schoolers in a kiai demo. Kiai's are verbal expressions of energy--if you've ever seen taiko before, then a kiai is when you hear the players shout to one another. Kind of like in martial arts--hiya! We'll get those kids yelling--I know they like doing that. This is actually a nice step for me, seeing how I've been a recluse for most of my life, trying to be as quiet and small as I could be. But now look, I'm going to try to lead a whole crowd of people yelling back and forth to one another! Ha!

Headlining, yo! Part II

So I opened up the second page of our local paper, and, LOOK! Maze Daiko! Right there at the top of the bill! Headlining! Yeah--you read it right! Right there next to children's fashion and wrapping paper designing--Maze Daiko, yo! Overuse of exclamation points??! YES! Way too much caps lock and italicism?! YES!!

well I'm smitten.

Conflagaration

SoCal is on fire. Kind of hard to believe. Actually, everything that hasn't been paved over by strip malls, skyscrapers or concrete is on fire, which kind of rules out LA proper and, luckily, the lovely suburban town I grew up in. Every year the Santa Ana winds (or Santana winds, as my grandmother used to say) blow in from the deserts to east, out to the Pacific Ocean to the west, super-heating the air and drying out everything in its path. I'm actually fond of the Santa Ana winds (except when they cause mass destruction, of course). They're kind of like the last gasp of summer before the long dreary days of winter set in. Up here in the Bay Area we've been having our own weaker form of the Santa Ana's and I've been trying to soak them up. I feel bad for all those people who lost their homes though. It's just such a surreal thing that's happening down there.

All I Wanna Do . . .

. . . is practice. I just want to sit there with my metronome and practice pad (a real shime would be nicer) and practice all day. It doesn't even have to be a song. It would be nice to play hooky for a day or two and do that. Why oh why did I spend all those years thinking I could be a better player just by practicing the songs we were working on? There is so much more out there to practice! There's diddles and dokos and do-dons--oh my!

I know, I know--I'm a geek. But who cares!

HEADLINING, yo!!

Headlining! Yee-ha! Yeah, you heard me right! Headlining!

Ok, it's not as exciting as it sounds. But it does sound great, doesn't it? I don't think anyone has actually called us headliners before. We volunteered to play at a friend's daughter's school's annual benefit/festival/something or other. Plus I discovered one of my boss' kids goes there too. We play for about an hour, with tons of audience participation, so it's probably going to be something like school-show format. Better get off my paradiddling butt and brush up on our repertoire.

Tai Chi for Taiko

I've been taking tai chi for the past 5 weeks and am loving it. Tonight we finally got through the whole form, and now we can work on kata stuff. I wanted to take tai chi to help me with balance and centering myself for taiko. The other day in taiko we were doing a movement within a song and all of a sudden I realized, hey this feels a lot like one of the tai chi moves, and I started working that into my kata and I think I looked (and felt) a lot better. Plus I think going into tai chi from my taiko background really helps, though I think it would have been easier the other way around. I want to get to the point where I have memorized all the moves and I feel pretty and grounded doing them. That takes practice I guess. There are millions of old people in parks who look way better than I do. I always thought it looked cool, and I think that's one of the reasons why I'm taking it. Plus the teacher is great. He's mellow and unintimidating and patient. He also knows kung fu and once in a while he'll demonstrate how our seemingly innocent tai chi moves can break a wrist or or knock a person down. Sometimes when he does that I get the urge to take his kung fu class, but I'm worried that I may get injured taking a martial art and not be able to play taiko, which would just be really sad. But wouldn't it be cool if I could flip a 200 pound man to the ground? Little ol me?

On the flip side (flip, get it?), my students seem to be enjoying their taiko class. I worked some paradiddles into a fun movement drill and I think they liked that. Last night a few of us were talking about the class and they seemed to be interested in learning more basics. I remember when I first started taking taiko I really wanted to just stand there and work on drills for long periods of time, although the emphasis was on learning songs. Maybe I should be less worried about them being bored and go ahead and work on drills. We'll see. I think I need to have a heart-to-heart with myself and try to plot the future of what taiko might look like at RCW. It'll involve more commitment and writing a song for them, no doubt. We'll see, we'll see.

But life is good. I'm doing what I love. I'm challenging myself. I'm trying to share what I love and challenging others to do it too. That's the whole point of it all, isn't it?

How to Make a Beat

Wow! See how easy it is to throw together a song?

Rain, Rain . . .

I've never liked the rain much, but since it hardly rained at all last winter, I've actually been craving it a little. I mean, I really enjoyed those long weeks of crystal-clear, blue, blue skies even though it was freezing, but give me a good storm with rain falling on the roof in buckets so heavy you wonder how the roof stays up. I always hate coming in from the rain chilled by wet socks and heavied pantlegs and soggy shoulders, but there is something nice about changing out of those clothes into something soft and warm and fuzzy.

There's a storm out there, and I just came in from being outside, and you can smell its heavy, earthy fragrance. Tonight as I was closing class with a soft oroshi, I said, come on, let's try to call that rain out from the sky. Do you know what smell I'm talking about? As a kid I remember saying once: it smells like rain! But my Mom was quick to say, no, that's the smell of the pavement. I guess as someone who grew up in Hawaii, she knew what real rain smelled like. But as a child of the city, with its miles and miles of cement and asphalt and roofs painted with hardened black tar, the rain smells like that to me. Stony, and porous, and filled with the latent heat of hot days and dry winds and the sounds of lazy cars passing by and the shouts of children and of August lawnmowers and the scrape of a rake on the sidewalk, papyrus shards of newspaper caught in chainlink fences, of small, forgotten, flattened shoes, all saved up, all ready to be released again by the rain. I know all too soon I'll tire of the leaden grey skies, its depressing horizons, of winter's brief, monotonous days of softened shadows and numbed toes. But give me a nice, big storm. Give me rain measured by the inch and of sudden 3 pm blackouts. I'll take it--for now anyway.

Counting to 12--The Funky Way

I've had days where this song would pop into my head and just not get out. Like today. There must be generations of us kids who learned our counting from this song. And the video is a trip in itself. Were they intentionally trying to make us feel like we were on drugs? I'm surprised watching this doesn't give children seizures.

Anyhow. Enjoy. Rock on.

I need my fix

If I don't get me some tempura udon SOON I will surely perish. Yes. I will. Really.

SOME Kind of Wonderful

"All I care about in this freakin' world are my drums . . .and . . . YOU!"

Oh boy, they don't make movies like they used to in the 80's! And where the heck are Lick the Tins? I so want that song from the soundtrack but I guess itunes has turned its back on really great 80's soundtracks. Mary Stuart Masterson is my hero!