Well, Rory just tagged me, so I suppose it's about my time to do this whole "share five things about yourself your readers probably don't know and then encourage five others to do the same." The problem is that I'm such a loner and hermit that it's hard to come up with five things :P. Oh well, I guess I have to give it a go. Here goes! I just hope you all still respect me in the morning :).
#1 - I'm a published music composer/arranger
That's right, I actually have published songs out there. Not much mind you, but it's a start :). It's mostly (read: practically all) jazz choir arrangements. The publishing company is Sound Music Publications from the Northwest and was started by two of the "greats" in vocal jazz groups (especially in education) from this region: Frank DeMiero and Ken Kraintz (here is a link to my profile on their site as well as the tunes I've composed/arranged for them). I just feel great to be there next to some of the greats like Dave Barduhn.
Truth be told, I've kind of "fallen of the wagon" a bit in regard to this number. I started arranging for jazz choir back when I was in high school at McMinnville High School. When I graduated, I was dying to go to University of Oregon as a Jazz Studies major (and actually was accepted as part of the program (they only take a single piano player each year for this program (or did at the time)) but was unable to attend due to financial issues (read: not enough moolah). Luckily, I had been offered a free ride to Mt. Hood Community College which has a great jazz program.
After doing two years in the jazz band there, I started playing in their jazz choir. The jazz choir is directed by Dave Barduhn (anyone familiar with middle school / high school jazz charts probably know this name), and I was luckily enough to be taken under his wing. He definitely helped me stretch my legs as a composer/arranger from the start, including throwing a bunch of Stan Kenton charts at me and asking me to adapt them for jazz choir. All three years I was in the choir, I had anywhere from two to four of my charts on the CD that we produced. Pretty cool exposure, I must say.
It was through this exposure at Mt. Hood and with Dave Barduhn that Frank and Ken approached me about writing for SMP (they are both very close friends with Dave).
In my second year at Mt. Hood was when I got my first computer job (I hadn't even touched a computer seriously until my first year in college at Mt. Hood (thanks to Marc Litchfield, my roommate at the time and current best friend who got me hooked on computers)). Ever since then, music has taken a back seat to computers. It's something that I want to "correct" of sorts and the reason I've started getting back into music composition as of late.
#2 - I've performed with famous jazz musicians (I _still_ can't believe this one)
As part of my experience in #1, I had the pleasure of performing on stage with some GREAT jazz musicians: drummer Jeff Hamilton (of the Jeff Hamilton Trio, Clayton/Hamilton Jazz Orchestra, and the late, great Ray Brown Trio), Blue-Lou Marini (of the Blues Brothers), Mike Vax (a great trumpeter and band-leader, formerly with the Stan Kenton Orchestra), vocalist Kevin Mahogany, vocalist Nancy King, and the incomparable Louise Rose.
#3 - I am (was) a serious bowler
I'm not so much now (although I intended to return after I lose some weight), but I bowled my entire childhood (up until I was 19 or so). And I don't mean "well, it's Wednesday night, let's go hang out with some friends and throw gutterballs", I mean "Let's get up very early this weekend and drive across the state for yet another bowling tournament." Not only that, but I drove 45 miles every Saturday in high school in order to bowl in one of the state/region's most outstanding bowling programs, the Wilsonville "R Kids."
I come from a family of serious bowlers. When I stopped bowling at 19, I was _averaging_ around 204. The funny part, is that I was the lowest average in the family. My younger brother still bowls and is currently averaging around 221 in one of his leagues (and has bowled 5 perfect 300 games). I never bowled a perfect game, but my highest was 279 (twice). It can be pretty intimidating coming from a family of such bowlers, but I always found it fun. It was never "not" fun for me. I loved it. And I plan on coming back to it one day.
#4 - I almost didn't graduate high school
My senior year in high school, there was one course that I absolutely HAD to pass: Government (and it was because it was the last semester before graduation (so if I failed, no walking in the graduation ceremony for me)). My problem was that I was more interested in skipping class (it was first period, first class of the day) in order to hang out in the choir room than to go to class.
The sad part for me is how far I took that non-interest. First of all, I learned to forge my choir director's signature in order to forge my own excuse notes (sorry Mr. Libonati!). But when the teacher caught on to that after chatting with the choir director, I had to find a new stream to drink my wonderful skipping-class-Kool-Aid from. At the time I was living with my mom, so I decided to forge my Dad's signature. That got me out of a BUNCH of other classes. Unfortunately, my teacher was QUITE PISSED with me at this time (something about me "having potential", I think he said).
So now he told me that I had to bring in a parent to have a conference with. I didn't want to upset my Mom, so I decided to ask my Dad to come in (forgetting that I had forged my Dad's signature on all those notes). My Dad came in, and the FIRST thing out of the teacher's mouth was "Does your son plan on going to college?" When my Dad informed him that I was going to college, the teacher said (and I'm not lying): "Well, if he does go to college, I can tell you with absolute certainty that he will do fine in music and flunk out of every single other class." OH BOY! My Dad was LIVID. I don't think I've ever seen him that mad before. To this day, my Dad swears how much he wanted to just stand up and smack that teacher across the face hard enough to knock his head off (which probably wouldn't have been a good move since I believe people look down on city councilmen for going around knocking people's heads off).
Then came a horrifying transition. He was taking my Dad to the attendance office to verify that every single one of the notes that he signed for me was _actually_ his signature. And if any of them weren't and happened to fall on the day of a test, an instant 0 for me (meaning I would fail the class and not graduate). Busted! Then when my Dad was going through the notes, he started verifying that all of them were his signature. At the time, I thought I had triumphed and that I was SOOO good at forging my Dad's signature that he didn't recognize my forgeries. In hindsight though, I'm pretty sure my Dad was smart enough to know that I wasn't living with him at the time and that he hadn't written a note for school for me since I was a kid. OH MAN! The teacher was PISSED. I could tell he wanted to just shout out how much my Dad was obviously lying.
I still wasn't out of the woods though.
The next week, I was called into the Vice Principal's office. When I entered the office, my mom was sitting right there. Uh oh, and she was crying. She had somehow heard of this incident (probably from my dad even though they were divorced) and went down to the school MAJORLY upset that she wasn't made aware of the situation. When I sat down, she look straight at the Vice Principal and demanded why she wasn't notified that I was "in danger" of not graduating. You see, every year, the school made a list of Seniors were "in danger" of not graduating, and my name had been on that list all second term.
Well, if my name was on the list all second term, why were my parents notified? At the time, it seemed like all the staff in the school knew me from my music abilities and had high regard for me. The reason my mom wasn't notified? Because the people doing the notifications thought for sure it was a typo that I was on the list. LOL. Well, I guess maybe there's nothing to laugh at. That day was still the worst day of my entire high school career. The reason? Because I knew then that I had caused my mom so much pain and sorry that day (cheesy, but true).
The thoughtful part? In the end, I have GREAT respect for that teacher. I believe it was exactly him doing what he did that helped me be successful while I was in college (I was on the Presidential Honor Roll and everything (shocking, I know!)). I even went back two years later and thanked him and showed him my report card with a 3.9 GPA and Presidential Honor Roll. To this day, I'm ever grateful for what he did for me and my career. Even with that, I did certainly get some scary and funny memories from it though.
#5 - I can solve a Rubik's Cube (or, I used to be able to solve a Rubik's Cube)
Okay, I had to throw one "non-serious", quirky one in there. When rooming with Marc Litchfield in college (a close friend to this day), I picked up his habit of solving Rubik's Cubes. At one time, my fastest time was 42 seconds. I went through five Cubes that I had worn out because of constantly solving them (it turned into a very relaxing hobby). I stopped for several years though and don't remember all the moves anymore. I can still solve two of the three layers, but solving the last layer has finally eluded my muscle memory.
After seeing Keith Brown's ability with a Yo-Yo on a recent training trip with Keith, I figured it was about time to relearn though. So now I'm re-training myself to solve a Rubik's Cube (the 3x3 variety (although I have the 4x4 variety that I would like to learn to solve eventually as well (and perhaps move on to the 5x5 as well)). This time though, I'm learning an entirely new algorithm that is more efficient, so hopefully I should be able to beat my best time of 42 seconds. Although I think it will take a good amount of time for me to get back to that proficiency level.
Now it's my turn with the laser
I suppose now it's my turn to tag five other people. Unfortunately, a good number of my friends have been tagged already so I will have to make do. Here's my five (YOU'VE BEEN TAGGED):
Andy Dunn, Chris Williams, Benjamin Nitschke, Jonathan Sampson (representin' the Channel 9 Peeps, yo!), and Volker Will.