NYE 2009, Bellydance Mayhem

Christmas 2009 in Hampton, VA and Nags Head, NC

Transcription. . .

durt -y catskills

Here's some video of me playing with my teacher and a couple friends at a dumbek retreat this past weekend. iPhone recording so the audio is lacking but you get the idea.

Richard Serra in Greenpoint

Whilst riding up Newel St. on my way to work sometime last week I saw a pretty awesome something that stopped my in my tracks. A huge elephant door was rolled up at a warehouse between Messerole and Calyer and inside were quite a few gigantic Richard Serra sculptures. I snapped a pic or two, and then a few days later they were out in the street being placed onto flatbed trucks via some crazy crane-ish contraption. Rachel stopped by and chatted with the guys and apparently the pieces have been stored there for several years and they're being rolled out to head over to the West Side for an exhibit.

It's hard to describe how awesome it was to see this art in this particular setting: the scale is so enormous and it was just right there in front of me on a Greenpoint side street. In some weird, mostly irrational way, it made me feel proud of the neighborhood for housing this amazing art for the past several years.

I Coulda Been a Contender

Watched "On the Waterfront" a few nights ago. . .it deserves its reputation as a great fim.

In other news, two weeks ago I finally did the 2009 version of "My Own Private Century". I only did 112 miles though because I took a wrong turn that added a bunch of climbing and I got slightly turned around inside Harriman State Park. At the exact halfway point I hit some kind of large, sharp something (rock?) that tore a pretty nice gash in my front sidewall. Booted it with a tube patch and rode all the way home with 80 psi in my front tire to keep the bulge from looking threatening. Navigating my way home through Manhattan was almost more than my brain could handle, I took it super slow for that part.

Nyack and back today, felt short. River Road was covered in wet leaves and small branches which made descending a little hairy. Tried to attack the climbs, do more out of the saddle in an effort to incorporate my interval training into my outside riding. Felt good.

Good Vuelta stage today, Valverde is tough.

New Dumbek Tracks

Here's a couple more dumbek tracks. The first track, "Maiden Voyage" is a solo I wrote for dumbek. It's my first composition for the drum, hence the name. The second track, Warm Up Cycle, is pretty much that. It's a series of licks I learned from Raquy (except the second phrase which is my addition) that she in turn learned from Bunyamin in Istanbul.

These tracks are also my first real attempt at recording, mixing and mastering in Pro Tools. . .

Me, percussion, cats, MC Frontalot

I recently spent a fun afternoon recording some dumbek and cajon tracks for my friend MC Frontalot. The first mp3 has some of my cajon playing in it, it's a celebratory track for a friend's cat's twitter page crossing the 1 million followers mark. Whoa. The second mp3 is from the same session and is a short dumbek track. It's not exactly album ready but you get the idea.