Yesterday [have to get out of this one-day catchup cycle, tomorrow night i guess] was good. Got up too early (an hour before class? why? why?) and frittered the time in bed and back and forth. Murder was entertaining (about "pope's day" celebrations and others), I wrote a lengthy letter to "mes parents" in the hour between, and discussed le cinema in French. Bobby was about ready to get up when I returned at noon-thirty, and I suggested Sharples lunch (cottage fries, people). I didn't realize that Sharps shut down so early; it wasn't much later than 1:20 when we got there, and there was nothing except post-lunch scrapings. I had a decent meal of salad, vegan-bar sub and mini-bread products, and Bob declared the food better than Yale solely on the basis of a hamburger and some soup. Then a roundabout tour of the campus (lovely day for it): Parrish, Trotter, Nason (whose namesake just died), Beardsley 3rd, KohlPAC, the Langs, Armpit, a lengthy walk through the Crum, the Olde Club window, Paces (where Dan Shargel was baking something brown) and UTACS, then Worth courtyard, where Matt and Chris Conaway were talking about performing, and Lodge 4, to stammer approval. We got back, looked at photos, listened to the Beta Band, while he made some plans with friends I made scant headway on Ling.

Dinner was rushed at Sharples (not only was the line too long for the bar, it wasn't even Caribbean bar as advertised. Oh, Caribbean bar!), ran into Morgan and her father on the way out. He expressed a lot of paternal affection. I guess I can understand why someone would feel paternal affection for Morgan. Particularly if he's her father. The two of them drummed for a particulary intense African (combined) class, which included some great combinations atf and ended with a show-off circle that not many people were brave enough to try (certainly not me.) Stopped by Elena and Jessie's (Cat Power vs. ska) to talk about Ling. The assignment was frustrating in the way it presented the data, it was clearly going was a more complicated analysis than I felt was reasonable, but the way the assignment was constructed made it much easier to do it their way. I'm still not sure about a lot of our underlying assumptions. Like how to formally discuss movement triggers, and exactly how d-structures come to be - why do sentences with the same information in the same semantic roles need to have the same d-structure? Maybe more about that when I discuss class today. Basically, I didn't finish it until too late (2:00) and by that point I had figured out that my analysis was definitely "wrong." In the meantime, Bobby got back. (little in the middle, etc.)

We went to Lang a few minutes late to help the Simons move the drums I guess, because they showed up with them in Paces about five minutes after we got there. Bob sat down with his book, later made a friend or two. Carlos made an excellent raspberry-vanilla shake. The stage setup was a little questionable: I was all the way to SR, in the back next to Karl on bass; Sam, Morgan, and Aaron Goldman (guitar?) were the front tier, and showman Scott Simon was all the way to the other side. I could barely here his piano, which made things a little hairy, but his extensive banter and perfect corny blues lyrics ("I got two teenage daughters, and they're both old enough to drive") came through clearly. We did the usual (Song for my Father, Don't Get Around, Desafinado, Blue Monk) and at least a half-dozen shuffly blueses, which were really fun (more so if we got the hits together). I was having too much fun, doing things like dropping the tempo of "All of Me" mid-song to about a third, and then turning it into a quasi-waltz. Did a fun and well-recieved solo on Blue Monk, and a "chorus up-front" on Oleo (that was a trainwreck at such a slow tempo; I had to verbally call the out-chorus). Oh yeah, and "Mercy Mercy Mercy," started too soon like always, my attempt to make it triplet slow-funk aborted, then triplet fast-funk (marginally better), then I let them play it slow and laid some frenetic jungle underneath it (Karl: "I don't know what that was you were doing, that fast stuff, but it sounded pretty cool") If we do this more regularly (which we should, it was a blast) I'll have to behave myself. The best tune was probably "Tunisia," where we seemed to be more or less in agreement on the groove and hits. The (large) audience was quite receptive. I appreciated Corey sitting at my foot the whole time, along with drum masta Charles. Some people even tried to dance, to "Misty" and to even more ungainly choices, including Gaskell and Spiegel (okay, they're definitely together, right?) Gabe Rosenkoetter came to talk to me twice ("this is pretty cool. there should be live music in Paces more often") and of course Corey was supportive ("there should be a law that says that Ross has to play drums somewhere at least once a week and people will go and listen to him.) It was terrific. I got into a funny conversation with Scott afterwards about our complicitness in the conspiracy of students, teachers and administrators to overload us with work until we burn out. Bobby had a good time, even though we got back later than expected. Whiskeytown and all that.

it's been sixteen days,
fifteen of those were nights