Hip Hop
Today was truly a wonderful day. The student organizers of the fourth annual
Hip Hop Festival at Trinity College (U.S.A., Hartford, Connecticut)
came to the restaurant for their after-party. Accompanying these fine ladies and
gentlemen were some very, very cool individuals who for one reason or another
are connected by the hip to Hip Hop. Okay, a bad pun but then when isn't a pun
fun?
I nearly missed this, but chose to be there for the delightful Trinity kids
and blew off another commitment. The usual culprits
could wait. I wanted to say goodbye to the soon-to-graduate kids and wish a good
summer to the underclasspersons.
A poet from Seattle was a guest of honor; I pimped E2 and she said
she'd heard of it. Who knows, someday the
controversy over poetry here will become non-controversial. This lady offered a
non-denominational prayer before dinner that, frankly, would blow Maya Angelou's feet outta her shoes. So spiritually "in tune" was this
woman I thought for a moment the table would levitate. Just kidding.
There were a few in attendance who are heavy players in the Hip Hop scene,
mostly from New York City. These people blew away my stereotypes of the Hip Hop
culture. I discovered that what I find distasteful about Hip Hop music, clothes,
and culture in general is perpetrated by Hip Hop wanna-be folks and posers.
Who knew?
Awesome Sound
Pinch me. I still think I'm dreaming. The sound renovation project at work is
going soooo well.
(This is the spot where I stop writing and say a little prayer of thanks to
whoever or whatever will listen, who I assume arranges everything that happens
to us in a pre-ordained fashion and then lets us wonder whether it's
coincidence.)
Ahem. Back to the sound. I played Beethoven's
9th Symphony during an empty period between lunch and dinner. It was, as
described in the node about it, pure bliss. It was so overwhelming that even our
dour sushi chef perked up and paid attention.
When those who thoroughly enjoyed it asked me why I don't play classical
music more often I replied that now I will, given the combination of fabulous power,
lack of distortion and signal-to-noise ratio, fidelity and control that's so
great it's downright, well, for lack of a better word, "stupid!" This is coming
at no small price (I'm not bitching about the money this time, I'm bitching
about having to climb ladders and have bits of plaster, fiberglass insulation,
and lots and lots of dust fall on top of me.) I also wonder why I wore a dark
blue shirt and black slacks today. Ahh, masochism.
There are wires everywhere (now tucked into the ceiling but they do terminate
in places and wherever more than one or two cords lie on the floor or droop from
the ceiling I cringe and think of them as Asps who'll reproduce and suddenly
choke the place. It all must be painted black, too. But that's part of the decor
renovation, which is the purview of Dennis, the jack-of-all-trades who is indeed
a maestro of most of them (but for electricity; for some reason he's not great
with that and defers to me to receive the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune).
Life is good.