Pittsburgh skipped fall this year and went straight to winter. It's overcast, wet and chill so I did the only thing that can be done: I made myself some grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. And now I am convinced that I am onto something with my grilled cheese, tomato soup and hot chocolate party that I plan to have this fall or winter. Bring your ( Read more... )

Spent yesterday catching up with Mark DiBarry at the Smithfield Cafe in downtown Pittsburgh. I had the Reuben. He had the Philly Cheese Steak, which was a set up for disappointment as he currently resides in Philadelphia, the Cheese Steak capital of the world. He played me some of his jams on a stolen iPod Nano, and I highly recommend his music to ( Read more... )

Tonal Sketch # 2: “Rodney and Claire (Floating Opera Version 1)” is a riverboat theme arranged for bass, piano, muted trumpet and guitar. It is designed to be played by a drifting band to a stationary audience on the shore, to fade out as subtly as it had drifted in. There are many variations on this theme (almost as many as there are mistakes in ( Read more... )

Today I took my Dahon personal mobility unit (bike) over to the Buena Vista coffee house again for hot chocolate, soup and reading. Today I made it through a large chunk of Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom." I've been dragging it our forever, but it's such a large, sweeping story that putting it down for a week isn't enough to forget anything or lose ( Read more... )

Today was a really good day. Like, a REALLY, genuinely good day. The weather was fantastic and sunny. I took my bike out in the early afternoon and pedaled over to the Buena Vista Coffee House where I spent a few hours reading Paul Auster's "The New York Trilogy." I got a hot chocolate and a t-shirt that says "Bike Northside." It was one of the few ( Read more... )

I was hoping to be in bed by midnight tonight, but iTunes is taking an unusually long time to rip my George Crumb CD. From what I've heard so far, I'm not going to be a George Crumb fan, but you never know. Sometimes a good listen with good headphones makes all the difference. I've been sketching a lot in my music-line Moleskine notebook. Right now ( Read more... )

I need some simple yoga that I can do throughout the day without interrupting the flow of the day. Or is that contradictory? I guess the point of the yoga is that you disrupt the day for a few moments. But I need some sort of release that I can tap into at any time. Music and walking are cool, but not on the clock.

The video for Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" is on right now. I don't remember the last time I saw this video in rotation. It's being played on a channel called MTVH (I assume the "H" is for "Hits"). It's part of their Indie Music Month: Hits from the 90s segment. Back when the video was new, it ranked very well in an annual countdown MTV did where they ( Read more... )

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Really enjoying Mahler's Symphony No. 4 as recorded by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. If I knew more about music, I'd write a proper review, but I don't. I do find it a bit intrusive when the soprano comes in for the fourth movement as the rest of the piece is instrumental, but she does a good job (Elly Ameling, who it turns out is actually a ( Read more... )