Happy Birthday Coach Wooden

Former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden turns 95 years old today. Coach Wooden is a giant among men. He's a philosopher, a poet, and a legend. All of his former players will tell you that they use something he taught them about life every day. The UCLA basketball team's dominance under his direction and leadership will never be equaled.

Happy birthday, Coach.

Career Highlights

Here are a few highlights from my long, storied musical career:

I was the producer on a vocal recording session where we had Chaka Khan come in and sing a few parts. She arrived and immediately wanted to know where the food was. We ordered some food, and she ate all of the chicken before she would sing a note.

I worked with a producer who was chosen to record a couple of songs for a new Ringo Starr album, although the producer told me he never met Ringo and didn't know why Ringo chose him. Anyway, we got the charts for the songs Ringo wanted to do, and the producer had me do some simple MIDI sequences to sort of map out the songs, and then we'd record real instruments to replace the MIDI parts after Ringo sang some guide vocals. The producer told me to keep the MIDI drum parts simple because Ringo would eventually replace them anyway. Well, Ringo arrived, and the first thing he said when he heard our guide tracks was something to the effect of, "Who the hell did those drum parts?" My good friend the producer pointed at me and shook his head. Ringo pretty much said they sucked, and I slithered out of the studio never to work with Ringo again.

I worked with another producer who was recording a couple of songs for a Smokey Robinson album. Cool! Smokey! So Smokey had this song he had written, and once again I did some MIDI sequences for the song, only this time the sequences were supposed to be keeper parts. This was R&B, after all. Anyway, it was just Smokey and me working at the producer's home studio, and it was sounding good, but the song needed an intro. Smokey says to me, "Write an intro. I'm gonna take a nap." So Smokey lay down and fell asleep right there on the couch, and I started writing an intro. Smokey would wake up every 10 or 15 minutes and listen and say "Sounds good, " and go back to sleep. After about an hour or an hour-and-a-half, we had an intro. I didn't get any writer's credit for the song, though I did get some writer's credit on a Howard Hewitt song from around the same time period that I had absolutely nothing to do with.

Also around the same time, I was working with an up-and-coming hip-hop trio who wasn't too thrilled about a white dude doing their tracks. But then I played basketball with them and kicked ass, and it worked out fine after that. Hey, shnooky's got skills!

While working with the same producer, I once went to England to do some MIDI tracks for a band he was producing. The producer had flown over earlier, and I followed a couple of days later. The producer and his manager didn't leave me the proper info for my visa, and somehow I filled in something wrong on the paperwork. When I got to Customs in England, they confiscated my passport and allowed me to stay for only three days. When it came time for me to go back home, they still kept my passport, had two guards escort me onto the plane, gave my passport to the flight crew, had two guards meet me at LAX and escort me off the plane before everyone else, and finally gave me back my passport. I quit working with this producer not long after the Smokey session.

Speaking of Europe, I was once in a rock band that did a number of tours in Europe. My first time over, we did a sound check at the venue, and I made a visit to the restroom before we headed back to the hotel. The band and the manager didn't know I had gone to the restroom and left the venue without me and never even realized that I wasn't with them. The crew was scheduled to stay at the venue until the show, but they felt sorry for me, so one of the crew gave me a ride back to the hotel. The band and the manager still didn't know they had left me back at the venue. I guess it was because I was the new guy.

Later on that same tour, we were in Paris, and as a couple of my bandmates and I were walking around the city one fine spring day, I thought I noticed that people were sort of staring at me. I figured I must look like a cool American rock star or something. After a couple of hours, we returned to the hotel, and I looked in the elevator mirror and saw that I had black grease of unknown origin smeared on my face. Yep. Cool American rock star, all right.

Dem Guns

I have some friends whom I like and respect who are gun owners and will never vote for a Democrat. These friends of mine aren't criminals. They're not careless about their guns. They're not stupid. They are intelligent people who not only own guns, they are well-informed about guns and their history, they use their guns safely and responsibly, and they also belong to the NRA.

Whatever you may think about the second amendment and its interpretation, guns are an integral part of our history, and they're here to stay. Many gun-control laws have done nothing to prevent crime. Some gun-control laws are just plain stupid, like the now-elapsed federal ban on "assault weapons." This was basically a law that banned certain weapons because they look scary.

There are probably political issues that affect the lives and well-being and livelihoods of my gun-owner friends more directly than gun control, and my friends might be more inclined to agree with the Democrats on some of those other issues. But they honestly believe that liberals and the Democratic party are ultimately out to confiscate their guns. You could say this about religion and abortion too, in a way. There are probably many political issues that affect the lives and well-being and livelihoods of conservative religious people more directly than intelligent design or separation of church and state, and those people might be more inclined to agree with the Democrats on some of those other issues. And there are probably many political issues that affect the lives and well-being and livelihoods of some liberals more directly than abortion rights, and some of those liberals might be more inclined to agree with conservatives on some of those other issues. But we all choose what's important to us, and to my gun-owning friends, gun control is the deciding issue. In that regard, gun control is no more or less important an issue than any other. And you can't stereotype gun enthusiasts any more than you can stereotype other so-called conservatives or people who believe strongly in abortion rights or other so-called liberals.

But just because a politician tells you he doesn't believe in gun control doesn't mean he's on your side or will have your best interests at heart. Same for abortion rights and religion, too. I think that the Democratic party would be doing itself a big favor by publicly modifying its position on gun control. It's not a simple issue, and I think most gun enthusiasts are a lot more reasonable and intelligent than the Democratic party gives them credit for. And a lot of them would make fine voting members of the Democratic party.

Damn! Religion and politics. I thought I was going to stay away from those.

Fun with Babel Fish

Just for fun, I ran my last post through Babel Fish Translation on Alta Vista and translated it from English to Greek, Greek to French, French to German, and finally German back to English. This is the result:

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Makes much more sense this way.

Fair and Balanced

In the interests of fairness, the esteemed governor Schwarzenegger also signed into law bills that will: make it easier for celebreties to collect substantial damages from overly aggressive paparazzi, require insurers to pay up to two years' worth of temporary housing costs for fire victims in a disaster area while their homes are being rebuilt, require health clubs to keep automatic external defibrillators on hand and teach their staff how to use and maintain them, require pharmacists to fill prescriptions such as morning-after birth control pills even if they have moral objections to their use, extend low-cost insurance to low-income drivers with good driving records in various counties in California, and impose penalties of up to $2,500 per violation for using email to deceive consumers into divulging personal private information such as Social Security numbers or credit card numbers by posing as legitimate businesses. All of these bills were sponsored by Democrats, as were all of the ones he vetoed.