Open Letter to The Sopranos

Dear (Producer/Director/Writer/Actor/Caterer) of the HBO show The Sopranos,

I used to be a big fan -- never missed an episode (unless I was in the midst of writing music), and I have every season on DVD. But I read the synopsis today and thought.... OK, this all sounds like an acceptable situation to set the action, but where's the real plot?!? And guaging from how generally poor the show has been this season, I figured it would most likely be pretty lame... besides, I needed to do laundry and whatnot, so I didn't tune in. Y'see, judging from the steady downhill slope since Season 2, I'm kinda figuring that the show has totally gone down the crapper. Maybe next season (if it is indeed the LAST season) will be a little more eventful -- in the meantime, here are a few suggestions of what I'd like to see happen, preferably all within the next episode:

* A.J. gets in a fight at school (his fault) and is beaten up so badly, that he ends up in the hospital for a loooooooooong time (for those who don't watch the show, he's had it coming). Since he's always such a pain in the butt, no one on the show ever visits him (so WE don't have to visit him), and maybe they just mention him once in a while:

Chris: "Shame about Tony's kid, huh?"
Paulie Walnuts: "Yeah, wadiya gonna do?"

Eventually, AJ runs off to join the foreign legion. In a gripping 8 seconds, it's revealed like so:

Carmela: (sorting mail) "Hey, whatever happened to AJ?"
Tony: (eating something) "He ran off to join the foreign legion." (doesn't stop eating)
Carmela: (stops sorting mail. Looks thoughtful for a moment) "Oh." (goes back to sorting mail)

* Meadow just stops appearing on the show altogether. No one ever mentions her again. Eventually her name is mysteriously removed from the credits, and in the digitally remastered edition, Jabba the Hut is inserted into every scene she's ever been in.

* Tony's sister Janice, that sad sack Bobby Bacala, and his two lame kids pack up and move to Seattle. No one ever talks about them either, as no one ever gave much of a crap about them to begin with.

* Carmela runs off to Italy to be with Furio -- the most absurd love-interest for a mob boss' wife that has ever been devised for television. Tony briefly considers going after her, then realizes that he doesn't really care about his marriage anymore since it's been pushed and pulled and stretched like bad taffy for the past four seasons, and he goes back to being a coflicted, neurotic mob boss.

* Uncle Junior gets up off his rubber donut and starts making trouble again. (I don't care what you do, just DO SOMETHING JUNIOR!!!)

* Dr. Melfi goes off on a wild blush-wine-spritzer bender one night, ends up at Tony's place, one thing leads to another... and Melfi becomes his new "co-consigliere" as well as his "goomah". This doesn't go over well with Silvio, which creates tension within the "family" that future episodes WILL IN FACT ADDRESS.

* The "family" finds out that Adrianna has been talking to the Feds and as punishment, they tell her to stop whining all the time.

* For the rest of the season, Tony, Silvio, Paulie, and Chris remember that they're not mini-van-driving soccer moms, and have some madcap mob adventure that lasts for more than one episode, and therefore limits their participation in the usual (of late) foofy, suburban b.s. Maybe the story starts at Satriale's Meat Market (whatever happened to that place?) or MAYBE THE STORY EVEN TIES OFF SOME OF THE DOZENS AND DOZENS OF LOOSE ENDS FROM PREVIOUS SEASONS!!!!!!!!!!

* The ducks come back.

Whaddiya think?

Sincerely,

(your name here)

R.I.P. Pregnant Turtle

I totalled my car last night. Driving down Clark, looked down for a moment, looked back up -- I'm closing in fast on a pair of tailights. I slam on the brakes, immediately begin to hydroplane (it was raining), and WHAMMO!!! I hit the car in front of me at full speed. Airbags deploy, windshield cracks and windows shatter, engine goes down, and I'm sitting in a cloud of corn starch (evidently, that's the secret ingredient in airbags... who knew?). Aside from a few scratches on my left forearm, I'm AOK -- but my car is a total loss.

Now here's the weirdest part: the car I slammed into just kept going! Judging my speed upon impact, I'd guess the driver's back seats were now shoved up into the glove compartment -- but they didn't seem to be too concerned about it and never even stopped! A case of hit-and-run-away? Another driver caught the runaway car's license plate number, and when the cops ran the plates, they didn't match up with the description of the car... hmmm....

G.A.S. - phase two

OK -- I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to fiddle around with the board some more. As great as it sounded, I couldn't live with the extra AC cable attached to my chorus pedal. So I dashed off to get MORE GEAR!!!!!

Tried a bunch of different pedals, and settled on a brand-spanking-new DigiTech X-series Multi-Voice Chorus (sounds impressive, don't it?). Brought it home, pulled it out of it's little cardboard coffin, and the one they gave me is used!!! And I do mean USED -- it's got dabs and smears of paint on it, it's scratched and banged up, and there's this leftover gooey crap all over the bottom of it... it's a dark, dark day when you can't trust your dealer to fix your addiction with quality merchandise!

Texas Hold'em Tournament

I was very excited to play in my first-ever poker tournament. 15 people, cash prizes, play until you drop.

I was the first one eliminated -- I lasted less than half an hour.

OUCH.

G.A.S. - phase one

G.A.S. stands for Guitar Addiction Syndrome. And I've got a whopping bad case of it.

Let me start at the beginning. I recently switched main electric guitars -- from a Blue Ibanez Sabre to a Music Man Steve Morse model. The MM is simply a better sounding guitar, and as much as I loved my old Ibanez, it has developed serious neck problems and now has a terminal case of fret buzz.

But this made me retweak my pedalboard -- the one I use for Chaos Theory. It used to run like this:

Morley "Bad Horsie" Wah --> Boss CS-2 Compression/Sustainer --> Boss MT-2 Metal Zone --> T.C. Electronics Chorus+ --> Sovtek/Electroharmonix Big Muff pedal...

and then out to the amp. I loved this setup with the Ibanez -- I'd searched for exactly the right stomp boxes for quite some time before I came up with this combination. But with the new guitar, the Big Muff sounds kinda saggy and lame compared to the Metal Zone, and it always lets out a loud POP when I switch it on and off... TIME FOR A NEW FUZZ PEDAL!!!

With delusions of chunkier power chords buzzing in my brain, I headed to the friendly neighborhood Guitar Center. The dude there immediately turned me onto this new Wasabi Distortion pedal. This sucker is as fierce as it is syrupy sweet. I'm in love... pay for it quickly and head straight for the door. These sorts of places are dangerous for people with my condition!

Came home, kissed the Big Muff goodbye, and dropped in the Wasabi. I'm lost for hours in foot-stomping, knob-twiddling bliss.

But now the Metal Zone sounds kinda hazy and poor next to the Wasabi, and I've got to rethink the order of the pedals, and then they don't fit on the board very nicely... suddenly, I'm looking online for new chorus pedals, one that fits on the pedalboard better, and doesn't need it's own AC... and I'm beginning to consider an alternative for the Metal Zone, maybe something with a tube in it... eventually, I'm so overwhelmed with options that I lose steam. Determined to stick with what I've got, I go back to rethinking and retweaking the pedals, and now I think I've got something I'm happy with:

"Bad Horsie" Wah --> Boss CS-2 --> T.C. chorus --> Metal Zone --> Wasabi

Bottom line: I wasted the entire day, BUT I didn't buy anything else new.

They say this is the first step to G.A.S. recovery...

Golden Gloves

Sometimes you've gotta break the usual routine. So after grabbing dinner with Vince Pontarelli at my favorite Mexican joint, Fernando's (many a blurry evening has started with one of their Hornitos Margaritas), we headed to St. Andrew's gymnasium, for the state finals of the Golden Gloves ameteur boxing competition. We hooked up with Tony, one of the security guards who works at WMS -- he's the one who'd told us about the fights in the first place. We buy our general admission tickets, pick up a couple of beer tickets, find a spot on the bleachers, and we are ready for some pugilistic mayhem!

Actually, the fights are all very well supervised -- as they keep reminding us, "safety first". The boxers wear protective headgear, and a bout only last 3 rounds or less, if the ref determines that a fighter has sustained even the most minor injury. There are two women in spandex "Bud Light" dresses and high heels, who take turns parading around the ring between rounds. Altogether, there were 10 fights -- 3 of them were between women. I lost 20 bucks to Vince in the second match, and he refused to let me try to win my money back after that. There are some good match-ups, and some not-so-good ones, but I had to admire the guts it took for any of those fighters to get in the ring in the first place!

Altered States

Needed to get myself re-centered today, so I headed to Time-Space Tanks for an hour in a sensory deprivation chamber. What is that, you ask?

It's a box about 10'x5'x5', with about 9 inches of water in it. The water is body temperature, and is mixed with about 800 pounds of epsom salts. This makes your body extremely buoyant, so you float with effortless ease. The box is light-proof and sound-proof, so you can't hear or see anything.

So you climb into this thing, lie back, and just float. You can meditate, you can "peel the onion of your mind", you can listen to the voices in your head, you can even sleep (one hour of sleep in a float tank is equal to FOUR hours of deep REM sleep). Ideally, you reach an alpha state, which, if I understand it correctly, is the same as lucid dreaming.

Great attitude adjustment. I don't do it often, but when I do, I'm amazed at how relaxed and non-judgmentally focused I am for HOURS afterwards.

Are you experienced?

"The Ohio Wesleyan Experience (1-3)" is now on da 'blog -- for the sake of continuity and humor, PLEASE scroll down and start reading on Friday March 26th (part one). before reading part 2, and part 3...

Enjoy!

Zero Hour

This is the official kickoff of my weblog -- I will be doing some retroactive posting, but I hope to keep this entertaining and illuminating... stay tuned!