A Vital Creed for an An Alternative Universe (or, what happens when you replace "rifle" with "ukulele" in "The Marine Rifleman's Creed.")

I just got back from the Second Annual Beatles Complete on Ukulele Festival, which is still going on as I write (that's me in the top photograph, all the way on the left).

It rocked.

Anyway...

Okay, look, just try to imagine this. I admit it's not real. So just think with me for a few minutes.

Here's my Robert Evans question:

What if I could play my ukulele well enough to make a person's head explode, just like in Scanners?

And what if that became a lethal discipline that could be taught? Well, that would mean that a new discipline would replace the rifle: learning to play the ukulele well enough to boil a person's brain in a few seconds.

And so, the ukulele would replace the rifle, just as the rifle displaced the sword.

And of course, with the ukulele training, there would be military slang. Just as you never call any sort of hand held firearm "a gun" in the Marines (it's a rifle if you hold it with two hands, and a piece or pistol if it's a handgun), it would never be "my uke." It would be "my strings," the better to understate its lethal potential, so that you only play the deadly chords when necessary.

Yet at night, in the barracks, you would call it by its proper name, and you would have named it after your best guy or your best girl, and you would recite The Ukulele Player's Creed at the end of the day (first off, much gratitude for whomever thought up the "Find/Replace" function in Word. And also, uh, with sincere apologies to Major General William Henry Rupertus, who wrote The Marine Rifleman's Creed):

This is my ukulele. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My ukulele is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My ukulele, without me, is useless, unless I lend it someone. Without my ukulele, I am useless, unless someone lends me their ukulele. I must play my ukulele true. I must play better than any enemy, who is trying to put the moves on the person I'm hoping to impress with this ukulele thing. Really, it's an instrument, not a toy. Honest. Look, I'd like to keep talking, but I'm reciting a creed here.

I must outplay them before they outplay me. I will....

My ukulele and myself know that what counts in this peace we create is not the size of the ukes we play, the sound of our chords, nor the songs we sing. We know that it is the joy that counts. We will provide that joy, but we will not take ourselves too seriously.

My ukulele is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a sibling. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its strings and its fret board. I will keep my ukulele clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...

Before God or the utter lack of a God, I swear this creed. My ukulele and myself are the defenders of my country, but we do think there are an awful lot of places where we could have made a lot more friends by just giving them food and clean water instead of shooting them and blowing up their homes.

I'm sorry. I digress.

We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of life. So be it, until victory is everyone's and there is no enemy, but Peace.

Okay, Thank you. Thank you all. God, or the utter lack of one, bless everyone, or, if there is no God, let's bless each other and try to look out for each other. Let's even look out for people who don't live here, but live a long way away and need help.

Something like that.

Thank you.

Seven Words that Will Immediately Cause Those Who Read Them to Have Intense Positive or Negative Feelings:

Imagine if Michael Moore bought Fox News.

A Coincidence that Makes Me Go "Hmmmmm."

...so I've been playing the ukulele. You know that, if you're one among the half dozen people who read this blog.

So be it. We'll just make it a cozy little Last Supper with half the guests, and twice the food. And you know what? Judas didn't show up, and he's going to betray you. Trust me. I'm a librarian I know these things.

Anyway, you also know that in March I'll start downloading uke videos, and next summer, I'll be playing...places. I will be. This will happen.

Anyway, thing brings back in the past, whether I like it or not.

I had this friend named Henning.

Well, sort of friend.

Here's the thing: I never hung out with Henning, really. He played his guitar in the Butterfield Dorm at Umass, I occasionally played drums, and we'd talk about music.

There were Ultimate Frisbee games after dinner during the spring. I occasionally played, and wasn't very good. I don't remember Henning playing, but he might have. If he did, I never played Ultimate Frisbee with him.

I went to the movies all the time. I don't ever remember seeing a movie with Henning.

And Goodness, how I talked. Actually, Goodness, how much I still talk. But anyway, I barely remember a conversation with Henning. I don't think I had too many.

No, I played music with Henning, and wrote a couple of really twisted rock operetta things where I wrote these stories and lyrics, and sort of read the story part as a monologue.

There was one I'd rather forget (it did, however, contain the only protest song written in praise of moderate politics, so I'll give it that), but when I didn't take myself so goddamn seriously, and just sort of let Henning sing, they were pretty damn good. And I'm sorry I'm starting to write like Sara Palin Speaks. I'm a Rogue, goddamn it...

Anyway, some of the best memories I have of college were playing music, specifically, playing music with Henning. In fact, one of the reasons I never gave up just creating stuff was because I said "the only way you're ever going to do something with this is to just keep doing it."

The really unusual thing about it, though, is that still, even now, I think of him as this guy I played music with. It was like going to a job you loved. I had once read that the comedians Bob and Ray never really socialized; they'd work together, and that was it. In fact, I could swear I remember reading that they liked it that way; if they weren't friends, that meant they could be totally straight up about whether something wasn't working.

It was like that with Henning. If something wasn't working, he'd say so.

I just also remember that no one practiced guitar more than Henning. Hour after hour after hour. It was kind of intimidating.

As was the fact that Henning would know how to do anything he set his mind to really well. I pride myself at a bewildering number of archaic things that I do somewhat well: I speak Spanish at Foreign Service Institute Level One, which pretty much means that I can survive in a Spanish speaking country and pick up the language pretty well; I play drums; I play ukulele; I know some guitar chords; I know some card tricks; I can do a partial faro shuffle; I know how to do the illusion in which you appear to stick a paper clip through your arm; I write; I know how to take pieces of video from movies and make video mashups; I know how to make audio mashups, and how to slow down one piece of music so that it blends with another; I also know how to change the pitch of one piece of music so that it's in sync harmonically with another; I test for my black belt in Shotokan Karate in February of 2010; I know how to run a middle school library, and I happen to love my job.

So I can do some things.

But Henning does everything at FSI Level Five, Native Speaker.

This is not supposed to be possible. My website is still not built, and I still use this; go to the School For the Dead website. It's really good. I particularly like the rockumentary part.

He records music really, really well. His songs are really, really good.

I envy this.

So now we get to the point:

So I was positing the previous post, and I wanted to put a link on Facebook, and they ask you to type a security word or two, just as if you're buying tickets.

Now, keep in mind, I've been writing more, and part of the post is all about writing, and being creative and such. Good things, in other words, and good things I've been away from for way too long.

A few months ago, I wrote Henning an email saying that he's part of the reason I keep writing and stuff.

Anyway, you now understand the strange coincidence of this photo:

...spooky.

Just to Get this Out of the Way, Right Now....

....I am naming my next cat FEARFUL SYMMETRY.

This is, officially, the best cat name I've ever thought of in my life.

Thank you. Thank you.

(and thanks so much to the makers of MOUSER MECHA CAT BOT for letting me use this image, which also reminds me to tell you to listen to the music of Eban Schletter).

By the way, I sang my praises for Mouser Mecha CatBot in an earlier post, if you've been keeping up.

(Look, some day the five people who read this will say they remember this blog from way back when. )

(Those are the people who will be saved.)

(It's just the way it works. Eban Schletter is quite talented, and he read my blog. Therefore, he will be saved. Because I say so. Let me preach, man, let me preach.)

Say, here's an Awesome Schletter song. I love this like a brother:

And considering the very versatile, very talented Mr. Schletter (uh, this link to my left goes to a different place, his myspace page, I think) composed music for Mr. Show, here, just in time for the holidays. is Jeepers Creepers SemiStar:

I'm starting to refer to my own posts. I hate myself.

FIlms I Loathe (Number One in a Continuing Series): Mr. Holland's Opus

I, Derek Leif, loathe "Mr. Holland's Opus."

There it is.

Look, I just can't improve on that: I loathe this movie. I loathe everything it is.

This will require multiple essays.

The depth of my loathing of the film "Mr. Holland's Opus" may require a separate blog.

Let's just dive in, and get the gist:

Richard Dreyfuss plays a music teacher in which teaching drains the life blood out of him. God, how the process of teaching crushes this man. He slowly settles for teaching music, raising his deaf son in the process.

Yes, I said deaf son.

Get it? HE HAS A DEAF SON AND HE'S A COMPOSER.

Let's just see if maybe we've got the irony, Wait, let me get a bigger font, as this film subtly says:

Do you get it? Do you get it? HE IS A MUSIC TEACHER WHO SACRIFICED COMPOSING SO AS TO RAISE A DEAF CHILD. THIS CHILD (WHO IS DEAF) WILL, BEING DEAF, NEVER HEAR HIS MUSIC BECAUSE HE IS DEAF! CAN YOU HEAR ME ABOVE THIS CHANTING? CAN YOU HEAR ME? Hmmm..wait...we're segueing into an "Altered States" reference, in which William Hurt is in the isolation tank after...

...oy, middle school librarian rule. Must stop here. Let's get back to Mr. Holland, shall we?

Anyway, suffice to say that the film assumes that we are as deaf to noticing irony as Mr. Holland's son is to hearing his music.

(And by the way, wouldn't it be far more devastating if his son was actually far more talented than he was, and studied with Evelyn Glennie, and became a renowned composer? Wouldn't it be powerful if the son felt the sides of the piano as his father played his Opus, and then signed "Dad, I hate to say this, but it really isn't that good.")

(And by the way of By the Way, Evelyn Glennie is just so cool. I mean, just watch this TED speech she gave about hearing with her body to overcome her profound hearing loss.)

Anyway, the film. Yes. Forgive me. I have to take refuge in people such as Evelyn Glennie when writing about Mr. Holland. Sorry.

Resuming where we left off...

(Oh, wait, I didn't finish the digression about how great the film would be if Mr. Holland's son were a deaf musical genius. Wouldn't it be great if the deaf son, having been trained in music and percussion by Evelyn Glennie, now turned dad's awful Opus into something amazing, just like Mozart did with Salieri in Amadeus? And wouldn't it be great if Dad cursed God in front of the fireplace and vowed that he would drive his son to an early death by hiring his son to write a requiem that would cause the son to die young? Then Richard Dreyfus could say "I will destroy your creation, God, and your creation won't hear a thing. Because he's deaf. I'm a composer, and my son is deaf. I've always found that ironic, my son being deaf and all.")

(Then, in my version, Mr. Holland's Opus would be the requiem mass that the school orchestra would play at his son's funeral. Except Mr. Holland would say that he wrote it. Yeah. Yeah.)

(End of digression.)

Anyway, as he's trying to get his son, who is deaf, to appreciate his music through lights, he falls for the high-school-senior girl who gets the lead in a Gershwin review. Her name is Rowena Morgan. He composes music for her.

From there, it gets worse. As this subplot thickens, Dreyfus's Holland feels like he might be one of Matthew Brodericks's friends from the film Election.

Consequently, I cannot watch these scenes without thinking of Bill Hicks, and for the sake of my job, I will not provide the necessary links to Goat Boy monologues. I just won't.

But should you be a Bill Hicks fan, I ask that, now that I've put that thought in your head, feel free to do the Bill Hicks "Goat Boy" laugh whenever Jean Louisa Kelly, who plays Rowena Morgan, is on the screen.

After this sequence, we watch Dreyfus age at an alarming rate, as teaching grinds him down, and sucks out his soul. It is great age makeup, and it reminds me of Kevin McCarthy's transformation in the Twilight Zone episode "Long Live Walter Jamison."

Eventually, at age 60, Holland/Dreyfus gets canned, and shuffles around like a man twice that age, taking deep, wheezing gasps with each footstep.

"What will I do now," he says, having taught for hundreds of years by now.

Well, I thought, you could retire, travel, and maybe, who knows, compose music. Maybe he could do the Frank McCourt thing. Second Act, you know?

I mean, the guy who said there were no second acts was dead by the time he was 40, and his wife was crazy. So maybe F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong.

I should know. I live down the block from the house where he wrote The Great Gatsby. That means I'm right. It's a kind of Fox News logic that you just have to go along with. Please do so.

Anyway, no. Dreyfuss shuffles and wheezes off, presumably onto an ice floe, where he will float away like an elderly Inuit, fall into the water, and die.

But no. He goes into the auditorium, and all his students from years past play the music he's been composing for thirty years.

It is five minutes of music.

The End.

This is just...it is just horrible. I need a break. I'll write more about this, particularly when I have nothing else to write about. I promise.

God, I hate this film.

P.S. The folks who moved into the Gatsby house completely renovated it, and took out the greenhouse where Fitzgerald is said to have written the book. Persians love turning houses into boxes. It's boxy now.

I Am a Middle School Librarian, and I just Don't Get Twilight

I just want to apologize to any and all students I may have at this time, or in the future.

I just...I just don't get it. I acknowledge this, and it's clear that every female student believes that I know nothing of love. I'm not kidding. Some kids get that Hickley like look when I tell them that "Twilight" didn't work for me. They sort of look at me as if I'm telling Leslie Van Houton or Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme that maybe Charlie isn't the healthiest influence for a high school kid. Ah, what do I know...

I shall elaborate on this a later post.

Bruises (or: on getting the bejesus kicked out of me, and liking it)

As my two or three loyal readers know, along with the legions of fans who follow me on Facebook (which probably brings my following up to about five people), I was in the ISKF/USA karate nationals over the weekend. For the curious, ISKF stands for International Shotokan Karate Federation. Shotokan is one of the most popular styles of karate, and I’ve been practicing it for about four years.

I competed in the 18-45 brown belt division, and, alas, did not get past the first round. I would like to offer, as just a bit of an explanation, that I fought someone who was not only half my age, but at least half a foot taller than me, probably more.

And man, it was frustrating. I moved in, and he just stuck out those long legs that seemed to take up, like three-quarters of his height. Just couldn’t get a solid shot in.

But still. I fought a guy half my age, and didn’t let up for a second.

More importantly, though, I got some seriously cool bruises, and now we come to the heart of the matter:

I really, really like my bruises. They’re cooler than a medal.

I don’t do a lot of “guy” things. I barely watch sports. There. I’ve said it. I grew up in a baseball house, where basketball and football were on when baseball wasn’t on. None of these things really did anything for me.

I still don’t know about hockey, because I’ve never really given it a try. Fifteen years ago, when the Rangers were on their way to winning the Stanley Cup, my friend Pete, who worked for the USA network at the time, got the network’s luxury box for the evening, and invited all his friends. That was pretty sweet; after a couple of free beers, I was screaming “Let’s Go Rangers” as if I was on a holy pilgrimage.

But still. With the exception of the Pro Bowler’s Tour back in the 70s (and I'm afraid my love of bowling warrants a whole other entry), I did not watch any sports whatsoever. I played pickup games of softball. I jogged.

And last Saturday, I got my clocks cleaned by a guy twice my size. And I just kept coming.

It was awesome.

There’s a great quote from the film “Drugstore Cowboy,” which I need to modify to fit middle school librarian standards: “There’s nothing more life affirming than getting the cheese kicked out of you.”

It’s just true. I didn’t understand this whole guy thing before but now, by God, I get it. It's fun to talk about fighting, even if you lost.

Also, it’s context. If I were, I don’t know, a military guy, a cop or a firefighter, it would just be another day at the office; those people are supposed to be tough. But I’m a librarian. Librarians aren’t supposed to get bruised; years ago, in a book about death I read, it said that librarianship is the safest line of work, tied with (get this) funeral director.

Oh, how I wish I’d fought a funeral director. Ah, the stories we’d tell, the two of us going back to our bubbles of safety and sharing war stories with our stunned colleagues.

People talk to you differently when you discuss your bruises, particularly when you’re smiling.

Some are a little scared of you, but then there are these other guys who treat you as you've been granted admission to some sort of society. These are the guys who tell you it’ll go away in a week, and tell you about their bruised ribs, and how their ribs made a popping sound when they moved around.

Sorry. It’s just cool to talk shop about bruised ribs. It makes me happy.

My students are totally into it too.

"Look," I tell them, "if any librarian from any other school messes with you, just come to me. I'll take care of it." And I will. No other school librarian will mess with my students. I saw Patrick Swayze in "Road House," and to mix metaphors a bit, nobody puts baby in a corner, not while I'm around.

If Bill O’Reilly messes with any of my progressive friends, I think I can take him. I learned a lot about fighting taller people. Now I know that you move in immediately to take away the height advantage.

You’re next, loofah boy.

I am Jack's long dormant resource of testosterone.