bars and board games

I am a board game geek. Outside of reading, music-ing, and collaging, board gaming is one of my favorite pastimes. Board games fit my social mood: I am quiet and intense, but with bursts of humor and creativity. I like knowing that everyone interested in the game can feel included, and that there is a pacing and flow to the events aided by the turns taken in the game. Even rambunctious games, like charades or spoons, involve some order. It's much easier to transition into free-flowing conversation after a game that makes everyone feel active in the group. Board games tend to bring out the best qualities in people too: you find out who likes logic, who is superstitious, who can just lay back and enjoy, and who has boundless enthusiasm - you see people's playful sides. You also see people's impatience, competitiveness (which can be good sometimes too), or disinterest. Board games are not for everyone.

Tonight I got to play board games at the Art Bar (Riverwest!) with two friends, and three other people we ran into at the bar who my friend knew. Alcohol and Pictionary - this is living the high-life, as the Miller ads might say. We also played "The aMAZEing Labyrinth Game," which, although it is supposed to be a kids game, was pretty interesting, even sober. It might have been even better if David Bowie appeared in silver spandex singing "Dance, magic dance!"

My favorite game lately has been Chronology, which is by far one of the geekiest games I've latched on to. The rules are basic: you are read an event in history and guess whether it comes before or after one event card you are dealt. As more cards accumulate, the time line narrows and the dates are harder to place. Who ever gets ten cards in chronological order first wins. I want to create a music history version to add to the game. It would be a deck of at least 100 events in western music that could be used to study with, or to add to the regular game.

I have found a way to combine my obsessions: academic musical study and trivia-based games.

Bowie cannot save you from my madness!!!

first day at hal leonard

Today was my first day working at Hal Leonard.

First, I sat in on a weekly-Monday meeting of new publications. I got to wake up and ease into training be watching a Chad Smith drumming DVD and learn about music books hitting the stands this week. Hot off the press, hot coffee, and a hot new job - this is my beginning.

I will be a part-time sales rep. which means I may talk to you if you order music over the phone. Well, maybe, I'm still learning about my position. Everyone at Hal Leonard has a musical background. Most people will enthusiastically tell you their music histories and share their passion. Others don't need to; they edit, research, design aspects of sheet music, books, audio and their excitement shows in their work.

Rather than a detestable office space of creative-less adults, this gig is interesting and musical. The experience was akin to something out of the Twilight Zone: I overheard names dropped like "Verdi," "Wagner," and "Hannah Montana" spoken by excited grown-ups who enjoyed their jobs. What I heard did not match the cubicle picture I saw.

Huzzah for having a job - a real grow-up, fun music job.

holst's "the planets" on a flip-flop day

Today sparkled. Wearing flip-flops for the first time this spring, along with my UWM Libraries cap, I arrived at the Marcus Center downtown for Holst's The Planets. Since the women's chorus is backstage for this piece, I kept my flip-flops on, but not my libraries hat.
Backstage, a monitor showed Edo conducting the orchestra so that later, in the "Neptune" movement we could follow the 5-4 pulse. I watched the monitor out of my left eye during "Jupiter" and listened to the music with my right ear, positioning myself between the phenomenon of sound and light waves.
Then I became part of the female synthesizer, singing a steady "g." Mechanically, we watched our director interpret the miniature conductor in the monitor and sang our six part score.
Shortly after beginning, we left the stage and I re-adorned my libraries hat. My car was parked only a block away and so I walked around downtown for a half hour. Happily, in my first-time flip-flops.