TubaOrNotTuba

“The show can’t always last for two hours”, I said to myself, as I settled in for another round of Idol auditions. It should, because how else can you get a feeling for the musical sense of a city. Tonight we saw the highlights of the visit to Louisville. Too much time showing us the grandstand from a racetrack. Too little music, considering that 11,000 potential (a word that covers a very wide range) musicians are distilled into a Kentucky barrel of 19 gold ticket holders.

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Many thanks to the team at Backwards Bush for keeping the rest of the world up to date. If we didn’t have an end of the tunnel, our level of collective depression could have allowed things to get really ugly. I’m going to do my part by sharing this screen capture with the rest of you.

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When I was a kid in a small town high school, the concept of career direction was vague, and the people who provided “guidance” had one answer to every question. Go to university, young man. So, I did. After all, our academic pyramid placed that at the apex; everything else was a shallow second choice. In retrospect, none of my close friends “made the top”, yet they’re all still out there, somewhere, doing something. Illusions of education. Don’t get me wrong; I came close to choosing “university student” as a career (in and of itself), but financial pressure finally pushed me out of the womb and into the real world.

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Since happiness is contagious, I’m really very happy right now. Our neighbours to the south are engaged in a huge party, with millions of  well-wishers lining the reflective pool and getting ready to watch “the man” put his “hand in the air” sometime later this week. Noon on Tuesday, for those who need to be exact, and that’s Eastern Time, for those who live in other clock zones.  I am happy, because no matter how much we like to show disdain for their system, they do throw a good parade. Did you see those eagles (on tethers) this afternoon?

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There’s a consensus that the economy has issues right now. We’ve been warned that there will be unpleasant decisions due to the downturn. Still, is there a rule of thumb that says “stupid people with management jobs are safe”? This evening, an article in the local newspaper mentioned that our national rail system is laying off a certain number of workers, and that the list targets the mechanics who do regular maintenance.

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Part of any mechanical assembly process is the famous “torture test” suite, where a device is subject to various extremes of environment to see if there will be imminent failure. Not large, unique structures, I suppose, but things that are apt to be duplicated in later installations. So, how can you test things as large as, say, a city? Up here in Canada, we have our own testbed, colloquially known as winter.

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The news that Patrick McGoohan died earlier this week left me nonplussed. I recognized his face, and I know that he was the star in a program that still receives critical acclaim, but after that… The Prisoner has taken on a larger than life significance among “important TV series of the past”, but to be fair I was barely into high school when he was sent to that mysterious Village, and there may have been other, more relevant things going on in my life.

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Busy times in the world. The territorial dispute in good old Palestine goes on and on, with no end in sight. The president-elect is preparing for day one on the job, and the party is ramping up. The US auto industry still doesn’t get it. And all I can think about is that it’s really, really cold outside.

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Let the season begin. Tonight marks the beginning of another winter interlude, where music will provide the excuse and a cast of thousands/hundreds/tens/one will work the audience. Week after week; and if schedules permit I will be there to do my part. American Idol Season Eight. Call it AI8 for short.

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I was fortunate; I attended a great small university, and my education prepared me for the next three-plus decades as a member of the workforce. Once in a while, people would ask me if I would have prepared attending “a more prestigious school”, something from the Ivy League. I can now answer such questions with one word. They must have misunderestimated the value.

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