The Drug House

So if I look straight out my front door, I see what the neighbors used to call "the drug house." I guess it was really bad in the 90s; the boys of that house ruled our little neighborhood, and the neighborhood was the most dangerous in the city.

The drug family has since moved away, and they're building skinny townhouses on my street, filled with white people who drive up my property value.

So when the ice cream truck comes to the neighborhood, I only hear it for a minute, anymore.

Not like when the drug family was there. When the drug family was there, the ice cream truck would show up and PARK in front of the drug house, for hours at a time, with the damn Turkey In The Straw song playing CONTINUOUSLY.

Selling *ice cream?* No.

And to boot, it's that stupid version with the hand claps.

(one) TWO! THREE! (four, one) TWO! THREE! (four, one) TWO! (three) FOUR! (one) TWO! THREE!....

Does the hand clapping make us enjoy that damn song more?

Anyway, the drug family is gone, so the ice cream truck doesn't park in front of the drug house anymore.

I'm so glad they're gone.

1988 called. It wants its song back.

I had forgotten how much I loved this song.

Sneak Peek: SAM

Ride KC Metro buses for free today! Woo hoo! I wish I had somewhere to go!

Yesterday, for example, I went to an invitation-only preview of the reopening of the Seattle Art Museum's downtown site. H got an invitation. There were some light snackies, some give aways (buttons, WAMU-sponsored lunch bags), some short speeches from dignitaries.

Anyway, forget about all that. There was a jazz combo from Garfield High School that was largely ignored by the audience, but for my sister and I it was hard to look away. They were AWESOME. So cool, so mature, so talented, so YOUNG. There was a sax, a trumpet, a stand up bass, and a drummer. The level of maturity was absolutely sick. In fact, they were cooler than the museum coordinator who kept flitting over to talk to them during their set.

I guess I'm so used to high school drummers who let their attention drift off and then horn players whose solos go nowhere.

Anyway, afterward H and I went upstairs to see the museum's collection, which was AWESOME. The modern and contemporary exhibition, which had been crammed onto the 4th floor of the old building, was expanded into the new space. I kept finding myself being surprised by the collection.

So yah, it was fun. Now I want to take H and my mama to Paris, to do the museum pilgrimage.

Back to the source

Nine years ago, I attended Sunday Mass at St. T's, and sang in a Gospel choir. That's right, a Catholic Gospel Choir. The director, CJ, is musical giant, teaching 4 vocal parts and the piano part simultaneously. She left the next year, needing understandibly to go back to her own faith community (she's not Catholic). After all, she had only agreed to stay for six months while the found a permanent person; she ended up staying for five years, Catholic parishes don't pay their musicians a lot of money (which explains a lot about Catholic music....).

Anyway, the year I spent singing with CJ changed my life. Since then, I have let go of paper music, learned how to think in four part harmony, learned how to teach by rote and "in the loop." I got a job myself as a music minister, wrote several Masses, worked under one supervisor who tolerated my program and another who blew in and demanded "Catholic" music. By "Catholic" music, of course, he meant the contemporary/folk music that white folks like to lip-fake of those hymnals.

Whatever, it's a job. I can read that white music. I do, however, resent the ethnocentric implication that contemporary/folk music is more "Catholic" than the music that I write. I'm Catholic. I've read Music in Catholic Worship and Liturgical Music Today. I've been doing Catholic music ministry since 1991.

Doesn't matter anyway, I'm probably going to tell them that this is my last year being their music director. I've got outside gigs to think about. I'm putting on a big workshop next month of my original music at a local parish that is not hostile to me. Also, I'm considering taking on a choir over at a megaparish across the lake in Microsoftlandia. They call themselves a Gospel/Contemporary choir; I will offer to teach them to let go of the paper, to sing hard, to stop overpronouncing, to stop doing that knee-bend bounce to the beat that white people like to do when they're "getting into it."

Anyway, I got an email today that CJ is putting on a concert at the beginning of October, and that rehearsals are the next three Tuesdays, starting tonight.

So I went to rehearsal tonight. It was amazing, amazing, amazing to see CJ in action again, amazing to hear her new songs, amazing to hear Gospel music again. When I walked in late, she was already teaching music, so she kept the loop going--you don't break the loop until everybody's got it. But later, when she stopped the loop, she said, "hey I thought I recognized that filipino guy!" and asked if I had lumpia.

I dug around in my bag for a moment, which some of the altos actually fell for. Like I keep lumpia in my bag for emergencies.

I'm listening to my rehearsal tape right now. Compared to this, I simply can't believe the shit that I'm forced to sing at at work. It's been a while, but I've finally come back to the source.

Music Ministers are Judgemental.

Plenty of stories, don't feel like tellin' 'em. Here's the bullet.

1) Don't pick your wedding songs without hearing them first. If you don't have the luxury of hearing them first, ask the musician if the song is gross. Last weekend we sang a song that sounded like it was given as an exercise in composition class: create a hideous, frustrating melody with no resolution, not even at the end.

2) Don't add music to the Mass. Don't add a song for your unity candle or for after your vows. You will be standing up there for three minutes listening, wondering what you should do with your hands, wondering why you scheduled extra music.

3) Do you really have to rent tuxes and matchy matchy dresses and make everyone couple-parade down the aisle? Does the parade and the resulting photo echelon help you? Some of you will answer yes, we need the pagentry. So then my follow up question is this: I understand that the Catholics want the pagentry and the white dress and the sixty minute Mass... because that's us.

But what about you kids that want the 15 minute ceremony? You people that bitch about not wanting the "whole Catholic Mass" why do you even bother with the white dress and the tuxes? Seriously, you should just schedule a photo shoot, and an afterparty, then everyone wins. Then you don't have to hire me to sing "There is Love" or "In this Very Room." You don't want to hear it; I don't want to sing it!

I mean, really, I thought that one of the GOALS of being Protestant is specifically to get away from Catholic pagentry.

Oh well.
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So at Mass yesterday the priest asked us to sign a petition respecting the pharmacists' first amendment right to refuse to fill a prescription that s/he doesn't like. I almost lost it. You know where this is going.

First of all PLAN B IS NOT ABORTION, DUMBASS. Plan B is emergency contraception; it keeps the egg from making it's debut in a sperm-rich uterus. You know that's where this one was going.

Second, the doctor and I make my medical decisions, not the pharmacist, not the lawmakers, and CERTAINLY not the priest!

Third, quit pretending you give a shit about the poor pharmacists' first amendment rights. You don't care about them. All you care about is showing everyone how pious you are.

Keep your piety out of my health care.

day four of creamy goo. i don't know if my goo is alive. there are a few bubbles, but it hasn't really bulked up. went to the s.t.a.n.d. concert. it was fun; it felt like the 60s. didn't know there would be food!

tonight i have to write music, write a couple of reflections, and grade.

i am going to eat lobster in acapulco; split, seasoned, and laid flat on a grill. and i'll try to eat seafood in france, too. i'm told that in france they boil seafood and dump it out on a pile of ice. we have top-notch seafood in seattle, but lobster is not relevant here--cold water makes sweet crab meat. yah, baby.