Author: lizlovelaugh

what i’ve been playing on the piano

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Nujabes’ music is so fun to play. I don’t care if he’s mainstream. Almost all of his music is brimming with these beautiful chords and his progressions are fantastic. My favorite pieces by him for the piano are Flowers, Lady Brown, Luv(sic), Battlecry, and Kumomi.

This is weird but I like playing what’s meant for the guitar in like rock songs, for example, Breakthru (Queen) and Big shot are a blast.

Another fun thing you could do is take classic jazzy pieces (misty, autumn, blue in green whatever stuff for old people from like Bill Evans, Chick Correa, Miles Davis, and J Coltrane) and just add like bossa-y chords think m7 or m9s, with a hint of blue scales here and there. Ok, someone who does this really well is this guy on TikTok who wistfully plays. I LOVE what he does.

Obviously, I’m a sucker for big pretty chords. R&B music is a good place to find these, think Bruno Mars, and ok this isn’t the same thing but bossa- Japanese songs (Masayoshi Takenaka) often use like the same chords. Somewhere you can find more eccentric and weird chords -which I also love- is surprisingly in rap. Some of these songs sample really unique piano tracks that are really fun to play. Seriously: Tyler, mf doom, nas, jid and like all the classic rap artists have some songs with super chords.

PC: https://www.gramophone.co.uk/media/206995/t958_artur-rubinstein-1.jpg?&width=780&quality=60

Tom Lehrer Is A Genius

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There is a very niche genre of songs my Dad loves.

They’re a blend of weird slapstick-parody comedy. Think Weird Al but more archaic.

Artists like Dr. Demento and Allan Sherman (Camp Granada guy) produce music in this genre. My Dad’s favorite, Tom Lehrer, however, stands out to me.

Like the rest of these creators, he is really smart. In fact, he graduated from Harvard. When I was a kid, I remember watching his song “New Math.” Besides being really catchy, it is overloaded with subtle jokes like the rest of his songs. Anyway, he’s a really clever guy and is one of my favorite satiric songwriters.

I feel like I need to write more so I’ll talk about Weird Al, I guess. I have first introduced to him a really long time ago one night while I was eating dinner. Someone thought I ate too slowly so she started playing “eat it.” I thought it was really funny. Anyway, he’s a cool guy too like Tom Lehrer, really smart. And guess what, he went to Calpoly. Like what’s the deal with all these comedian-songwriters and their impressive educational backgrounds.

PC: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Tom_Lehrer_-_Southern_Campus_1960.jpg

The Best Story

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The best reality documentary on youtube is a Vice series titled “North Korean Labor Camps” where they sent a Canadian Journalist, Shane Smith, to investigate the hermit kingdom and bring back cultural learnings with him.

It has everything: politics, humor, wit, fear, camaraderie with absolutely random people, realities of everyday life of common people, getting banned and kicked out, and going into the endless unknown (Siberian Tiga) like a spaceship.

It’s in a blog, video diary format with a pretty bad camera (it was 10 years ago), and it’s just so cool. All seven parts of the series are just insane. He gets in trouble with the FSB, there’s a car chase in the wilds of Siberia, and he befriends the local mob. My favorite part though is all the random people that just helped and tagged along: a cop, ex-chief of police, freelance journalist, and some crazy Russian guy who saved the journalist from angry authorities.

It all started in North Korea, with a video titled “We Tried Sneaking Journalists into North Korea.” In it, you see how unsettling and just off North Korea feels, at least 10 years ago. Anyway, soon he finds out that Koreans are being sent to logging camps for like several years at a time in Eastern Russia and so begins the aforementioned series. I want to do something like this one day.

Besides what he manages to uncover, what’s most shocking is how calm the journalist was despite the tense circumstances. From intimidating drunk guys on trains to North Korean camp leaders telling him no, he just kept his cool and kept asking questions. That’s a Journalist!

PC https://static01.nyt.com/images/2010/12/06/arts/SUBVICE/SUBVICE-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale

frog and scorpion

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famous fable I like:

One day, a scorpion wanted to cross a river, so it approached a frog for help. “I’d like to,” the frog said, “but if I let you get on my back, you’ll sting me.”

“Of course, I wouldn’t!” the scorpion said, “that would only kill us both.”

And so the frog let the scorpion onto its back. They swam out into the river, and once they reached the middle, the scorpion stung the frog. The frog called out “Why did you do that? Now we’ll both die!” The scorpion said, “it’s in my nature.” And so they sunk.

“But can’t you resist your own nature?” The frog pleaded, “you could have at least waited to sting me once we crossed the river and on land!”

“Ah,” the scorpion said, “but this is guaranteed to work. You can’t blame me for being a profiteer.”

“No” the frog retaliated, “now you haven’t just done something stupid, but you’re also too afraid of apologizing. You’ve convinced yourself that profiteering off greed is the way of the world- but you’re wrong because the world isn’t fundamentally unfair, the world is just full of creatures that make it so. You’re the problem, convincing yourself that everything is futile so you can give into your cynical impulses.”

“Just apologize and I’ll forgive you, even now, even at the end.” The frog said. “Oh, I never apologize” The scorpion replied, “it’s not in my nature.”

PC: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/70/30/3c/70303c3b108574fac7e07d0043ee20d2.jpg

obsolete tv shows

lizlovelaugh1 Comment

Besides Spongebob, I grew up on practically extinct shows my fossil of a Dad made me watch instead of like Disney Channel or something.

My favorite one was MacGyver, (NOT the new one with Lucas Till) which is an action series about a guy who can ‘improvise’ his way out of any situation. Instead of combating danger with weapons like you’d expect, he uses his ability to make gadgets to save himself. To this day I still think the premise is really unique and overall it’s a creative show.

Another much more popular show I watched was the A-team. Again, not the newer movies but the 80’s tv series. It’s also an action about a group of ex-military guys who help people in need and try to clear their name from a crime they didn’t even commit. I remember loving one of the members of the group, Murdoc, who was just this really crazy, goofy guy.

Then there are all the detective shows: Columbo, Magnum PI, Monk, Psych -even Perry Mason- you name it, I’ve seen it. My Dad and I are detective show connoisseurs. He tried to get me to watch cop shows, but they were never my thing (Adam-12, CHiPS).

There was a lot of Sci-fi too, I think Star Trek was my first of these old shows (or Rocky and Bullwinkle). I’ve seen both the Kirk and Picard series, but the former is more memorable/nostalgic for me. There was also Time Tunnel, Twilight Zone, My Favorite Martian, The Munsters, etc.

There is more, this is just the tip of my ancient-shows iceberg. There are some really obscure shows I’ve seen. I bet I’m the only person under 50 who knows what the Petticoat Junction even is. Or the Beverly Hillbillies.

Anyway, I’m actually happy my Dad introduced me to these shows from a young age. They really were charming and shaped much of my early childhood.

pc: https://decider.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/macgyver.png?w=646&h=431&crop=1

NOW

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Honestly, I don’t know if I like Charles Bukowski but I love his work. I first discovered his poetry a year ago and I was just smitten with his spot-on/blunt observations of life. It’s funny though because he has this ‘don’t try too hard kind of attitude that I really don’t empathize with and he’s also kind of gross and offensive, yet I’m totally enamored with his humor and wit.

I can’t tell you what my ‘favorite’ poem by him is, because that changes all the time. They’re consistently clever and I could read his work all day. I thought of his poem “NOW” though, while I was thinking of what to even write today.

NOW

I sit here on the 2nd floor

hunched over in yellow

pajamas

still pretending to be

a writer.

some damned gall,

at 71,

my brain cells eaten

away by

life.

rows of books

behind me,

I scratch my thinning

hair

and search for the

word.

Obviously, this is about writer’s block, and yeah that just resonated with me while I was thinking of what to even write this afternoon.

If you want to laugh, I recommend his poem “Flophouse”, if you want to be inspired, I recommend “Roll the Dice” or “How is your Heart”, and if you want to think, I would read “The Genius of the Crowd” or “Dinosauria, We.” Also, all the poems he wrote about his cats are fantastic.

PC: https://www.thegreatcat.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Bukowski-and-Black-Cat.jpg

Customer Anecdotes

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I have worked part-time at a restaurant every week for over a year now, and I’ve met some pretty funny people that I’m about to expose.

Literally last night a lady came in holding a chicken. She told me she carried this chicken everywhere because her other chickens bullied this one. Also, she ordered a chicken dish.

That same night a really tall, old guy came in and ordered yelling across the room, he was so loud. He had some kind of thick accent, so it was hard to tell what he was saying. After I asked him to repeat himself just once, he got just got fed up and stormed out. To be honest, I was relieved he left.

There are way more stories, eccentric people aren’t uncommon encounters when you work at a restaurant. Realizing that so many kinds of people just exist that are so different from what you’re used to is strange. It made me realize how sheltered I am.

PC: https://cdn7.dissolve.com/p/D145_42_319/D145_42_319_1200.jpg

Henry Wadsworth Was Wrong

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Today, the first drops of rain after months of blistering heat graced Ojai for just one minute. It was the best minute of that day. I love rain. I could just watch and listen to it forever. I love when the sky clouds up and makes everything prettier. Today, the beautiful grey sky brought out the green in the mountains surrounding OVS. It all just looked so fresh and not regular old California. Everything looks better in the rain.

I love the feeling of raindrops on my head, I love watching them out the window, I love the sound of wind and thunder, and I even love the smell of wet asphalt. At night, everything is just incredible- city lights upside-down on shiny streets, and the comforting sound of heavy downpours making you sleepy. Henry Wadsworth was totally wrong about rainy days being “dark and dreary” if he loved sunny days so much he should’ve lived in California. Anyway the rain today, despite being accompanied by 95-degree temperatures and its briefness, is welcomed by me.

PC: https://i.pinimg.com/564x/8a/3d/b4/8a3db404aa48154cd8d1f70e2af41a6f.jpg

Journalism Movie

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I read and watched “All the President’s Men” this summer. The movie did away with a lot of the excess detail I felt the book was packed with, so I recommend it a little more. They’re about the infamous Watergate Scandal, and how these two reporters (Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein) induced the first Presidential Resignation in U.S. history. This all happened after they investigated and reported on this conspiracy that was heavily covered up. The scandal was essentially before Richard Nixon’s re-election, his administration broke into the opposing party’s headquarters trying to find dirt on them. This is very bad and illegal so the stakes/tensions were high.

I think investigative journalism, which is fading today, is pretty interesting. It shows how hard journalism can be: persistent phone calls, traveling, waiting hours for minute-long, sometimes fruitless, discussions. Everything the reporters chose to publish was risky too, their reputations and jobs at The Washington Post were at stake. I don’t know how the portrayal of Woodward’s and Bernstein’s journey compares to actual journalism but I still was really impressed.

PC: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074119/