Me: If you were the star of a TV sitcom, what would its name and premise be?

Phill: The show is about a flubbery magician with a schizophrenic but beautiful assistant and a ditzy props manager who has an anonymous mean critic.  It will be called Hoaxes Pocus.

M: What are your 5 favorite Beatles songs?

P: Come Together, Nowhere Man, Let It Be, Back in the USSR, Help!

M: You need help thinking of your other favorite Beatles song?

P: No!  That’s the songs, name!  Help!

M: What instrument would you play if I started a band with you?

P: I would play drumset, pathetically, because all I can do is hit things.

M: If you were kicked out of the United States, where would you move to?

P: I would move to Paris, where I would have a bowl of French Onion Soup very close to the opera house where the Phantom lived, at least three times a week.

M: What is your opinion of ukuleles?

P: A ukulele is hard to hold and hard to play but sounds beautiful.

M: If you lived in the Star Wars galaxy, what kind of character would you be?

P: I would be a human, because there’s too many species for me to consider, andI’m not Force-sensitive so I would be a pilot non-politically afiliated, and I would have grown up on Coruscant, the city-planet.

M: Give me your NFL Superbowl 2010 prediction.

P: In the NFC, it will probably be between the New York Giants and the New Orleans Saints, and the AFC will probably be the Pittsburgh Steelers and lucky New England Patriots. I think the Giants might upset the Steelers to win the trophy.

M: What is your favorite memory as a guest at Walt Disney World?

P: When I was an off-duty Cast Member, I was able to cut my line time for Soarin’ in half by walking through the backstage areas of Epcot.

M: Do you have any tips for babysitting young children?

P: For kids who are able to hold a conversation with you, if they’re being unruly, pull them aside and make sure you are giving them your undivided attention and talk to them calmly. If that doesn’t work, a time out might be in order.

M: Where are they hiding the Weapons of Mass Destruction?

P: In their heads!

M: Invent a long nonsense word with a similar meaning to supercalifragilisticexpialidocious please!

P: Jumborichesfangledanglebagelmangendoshen.

M: If you were a pirate captain, what would the name of your ship be and what flag would you fly?

P: I would fly an inverse Jolly Roger (black on white), the version with the swords, with an American flag watermark. My ship would be called the Ship So Great it Doesn’t Need a Name.

M: Who are you supporting for president in 2012?

P: It’s time to put some true leadership in the house, let’s call Mickey Mouse!

M: I challenge you to go to an Italian restaurant and eat a full plate of spaghetti with meat sauce, a whole pepperoni pizza, a footlong Italian sub, and a big piece of chicken Parmesan, along with as much garlic bread as you can.

P: Umm, I’m on a diet.

M: That’s all the time we have for today. Any last thoughts?

P: (dramatic pause)

M: Time’s up, you lost your chance. Here’s one of our favorite Youtube videos.

How Not to Use Powerpoint

I have two keyboards.  At my weekend house, I have a smaller Casio keyboard which I estimate is at least ten years old and has all sorts of dents and scratches.  It has been through all sorts of abuse, including being thrown out the window once!  I also opened it up at one point to disable the pitch wheel (glissando) as my brother would always walk in while I was playing and mess with the wheel to ruin my music.  At my full time house, I have a Yamaha DGX-205 Portable Grand, which even though I have had it for a few years, it is still very close to new condition.  It is a professional-grade instrument with all sorts of cool features including a large selection of instrument sounds, accompaniments in many styles for when you want to play solo but sound like a whole band, and the ability to interface with a computer!

I own two ukuleles.  I have a green student-model Mahalo at my full time house which has been played in two concerts.  I also have a black student Mahalo on which the strings finally just settled a couple weeks ago which I keep at the weekend house.  It is supposed to debut at a hoedown this weekend if there is no rain.  Ukuleles are currently my favorite stringed instrument.

My instrument collection has always included a harmonica.  I’ve always owned one since even before I had an instrument collection.  That’s because they are commonly sold as cheap toys.  I had to replace my harmonica every couple months as the reeds always warped!  Now I no longer use toy harmonicas, as I was able to find a boxed set with a nice carrying case containing seven professional-grade blues harmonicas in different keys.  The harmonica is the only aerophone I can play with my asthma, probably because of its small size.

I also have a kid-sized Leolani ukulele sent to me straight from Hawaii.  It is brown and painted with Hawaiian tiki symbols.  It is a bit smaller than standard size, so I generally don’t play it much.  Its purpose in my collection is for my two nephews to play it when we pretend to do band.  It sounds a bit better than my Mahalos but the fretboard is too small for me to do the chord progressions efficiently.

I have a nice collection of percussion instruments.  My first percussion instrument was a triangle, but it was useless most of this year as the beater had gone to Oblivion.  I recently got a new one though.  Triangles sound pretty when played in moderation, but can get annoying quickly.  I also have a tambourine, which I think is my most ironic instrument because it has a dove painted on the head.  Doves represent peace but the tambourine has to be hit and/or shaken to be played.  I recently got a bodhran, (traditional Celtic drum) and have only begun to learn the technique, though I’m getting solid at the basic double-tipped stick turn.  I have one conga (they usually come in pairs) but I don’t need the other because I figured out how to replicate both the “high” sound and the “low” sound from one unit based on where I hit it.  It is a pain to carry but the focus of my playing at the hoedowns.  I have a sleigh bell stick but keep it wrapped up in muffling cloth when not using it as it is too noisy.  I like making up parts to contemporary orchestral music with it, especially John Williams classics.  Finally, I have a cabasa, which is a Latin instrument that is pretty versatile as it can be played by hitting, shaking, rubbing, or spinning it!

Of course, the instruments in my collection that get the most play time are the ukuleles.  Every day, I open up one of my fake books and practice strumming chords.  I like to make up strums, and sometimes I do a Hawaiian-style improv using the traditional hula chords.

I do have one instrument currently in storage.  I bought a beautiful blue mandolin a few months ago, but I haven’t learned to play it yet.  I’m planning to save it for next spring.  Once I bring it out, I plan to play that a lot too.

It’s been fun talking about my instruments, but I am on a very tight schedule.  I have to go now, since it is time to practice ukulele.  I think I’ll do extra ukulele time today!

I think my favorite spammer is Disney Online.  Since I used to play their now-defunct Virtual Magic Kingdom, I had been getting random Disney advertisements about once a week.  I ordered a T-shirt featuring a picture of Stitch playing a ukulele for a ukulele event I attended back in May, and since then they have been sending advertisements every day, sometimes even twice a day.

I had advertisements from at least three hobby gaming stores, none of which I had ever ordered from, though the two I use the most never sends me advertisements.  Also of note are two online music stores that I ordered some instruments from over the summer, but have no current budget to continue buying from them right now.  There is also a magic trick supply store, and while I used to study magic, I don’t anymore, though I am pretty good with the Magic Coloring Book routine (kids love that one!)  Amazon and Ebay also regularly send me lists of stuff I might be interested in.

There is one store not online which sends me coupons.  They sell things like gemstones, Tarot and other fortune-telling stuff, and other mystical and spiritual stuff.  I’m only on their mailing list because of the Tarot class they offered once which we ended up missing because of a family member’s illness that day.  I actually haven’t been there in several years.  With the surprisingly fast rate at which they create new coupons, I’m beginning to think they’re desperate for attention!

There were at least two invitations to join new online games.  My online gaming history is extensive but I do not currently do much.  All the games begin to look the same after a while.

Of course, I also get all the normal spam stuff.  You know, the “have perfect health for life with this new pill” and stuff like that.  Even worse, the Russian mail-order bride service tried to invite me to sign up.  I’m not THAT desperate!  The Nigerian Finance Ministry seems to like me too, but I’m not that stupid.  I know for a fact that you can not earn $5,000 every month sitting behind your computer screen for 2 hours a day- I once tried a system like that and it was a spectacular waste of time.

At least Facebook doesn’t send me emails anymore, except on the rare occasion I add a new friend.

But the absolute worst spam is the kind that looks like this: “rig8fni05tj kgj34i5u rtfjm344u9 4jtr49r5j” with a link that either goes to porn, a virus download, a phishing form, or nowhere at all.

The spammers may have found my email, but I won’t let them catch me.  If you get any of these messages yourself, please just delete them.   Do you know the origin of this kind of spam?  Monty Python’s sketch involving a breakfast diner that serves the meat and a group of Vikings eating at that diner!  See this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ6N5m8FpVg

Well, I guess I’ve said enough for today.  Tune in next week!  I think I’m overdue for a post about ukuleles, but there are some things about Star Wars that really bug me- that might have to be a special “Extended Edition” issue!  Look for that in a couple weeks maybe.

This blog is new.  I had thought about starting a blog for a long time, but wasn’t sure if I wanted to.  But now that I have one, there is one question: what should I write about?  Should I write about my favorite music, or explain why my favorite movies, the Star Wars saga, are totally unrealistic?  Should I tell about the antics of my wonderful nephews, or share my fun memories of Disney World?  Maybe I should explain why relationships are overrated, or tell a story about a group of adventurers in the fantasy world I created many years ago.  I just don’t know!

Maybe you guys can give me ideas?

I guess for today, I’ll just start with an introduction.  My internet name is Mordigant, and in some cyberplaces that require last names, I am known as Mordigant Recreant.  How did I choose this name?  Well, when I was first introduced to Everquest back in 2002, I had to make a fantasy name for my character, but of course if I took an already established fantasy name such as “Elessar” I would have to add numbers after it, totally unrealistic in a visually detailed RPG.  I had recently seen the 1980s fantasy classic Willow, which included a mercenary swordsman by the name of Madmartigan.  I removed the first syllable and modified the remainder until I was satisfied that the new version of the name was original.  My original Everquest character only lasted about a month and a half before our computer died.  Later on I joined Second Life because participation was mandatory for a class at my university, and I needed a last name.  I looked at the drop down box containing a long list of last names, and chose Recreant, because it rhymed and went with the fantasy theme.

By the way, I think trains are noisy and dirty.  I know that’s irrelevant but I had to say it.

Have a happy and healthy Rosh Hashanah everybody!  (For those readers who don’t know, it is the Jewish New Year this weekend.)  I’ll try to post something more interesting next week.  I can’t tell you at this point when my regular weekly post will be, it will probably fluctuate for a while.  Anyways, don’t forget to relax when you can, and may the Force be with you!

PS:   Facebook friends, sorry I haven’t been on in a while.  Life gets in the way sometimes.