February 22, 2007

• Taxed

  EDIT ADD:  My APU email address is down. It should be up sometime today hopefully, but if you want to contact me, do it @mac.com or hotmail.com
  Mike is right-30 Rock is so funny, but it’s still not as funny as The Office.
  

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  San Diego was fantastic. It is super fun to go back to the program I built up and be able to direct those great folks again. We are loving the weekly adventure!
  And Erica G, welcome to xangaland! Erica says she’s coming up one weekend for a Nertz night, so all you LA players better get practicing, ‘cause I’m going to whoop you again-and I can’t WAIT!!

  We watched American Idol from the last two nights. Ugh. Why am I so bored? We haven’t even watched 24 yet…and all I kept thinking to myself (as the hours and hours of meaningless drivel kept pumping out of my TV) is “I want to watch LOST!”. I mean, this show is weird, the judges are so contradictory sometimes. Seriously–”That was bland. You didn’t take a risk. It was too safe.” and then they say “That song was too big for you.” Like taking the risk they knew they were supposed to take was just a bad idea in the end. Geez. It just doesn’t make sense to me. Just freaking decide instead of being retarded about it. Dumb American Idol. I hate it. I can’t tell you why, I’m just bored of it. It’s constantly the same, (as is much of the reality TV). The same show over and over again, every season. I’m done with AI. Life it too short to fight your body’s desire to go to sleep in order to watch a show that bores you to tears. Christy, you can watch it without me and give me the 10-minute recap later. That’s all there is to that show anyways, about ten good minutes worth, stretched into two horrible, endless hours.
  That said, I’ll definitely tune in to see David Hasslehoff cry again…oh, and I DO love Chris Sligh.

  Another thought that makes what the judges say really off–the performance sounds COMPLETELY different in the studio live than it does coming across our TV sets. The judges hear a live mix in the studio and judge that, while we hear the fantastic mixed version coming through our controlled medium. This is why sometimes the judges will say things that are totally off from what we hear. Christy and Mike know first-hand since they attended a dress-rehearsal of the show last year. There’s got to be a way to remedy that problem.

  I finally did our taxes on Tuesday morning. Our return is going to be smaller than I anticipated, mostly due to the fact that I did a lot of freelance work that I had to report via those awful 1099 forms. Funny thing about the whole thing is that I’m pretty sure my preparer was about 85 years old–no exaggeration. The paradox of thought going through my head was “He can’t possibly be up on all the new tax laws since he’s so old” and “Well, at least I know he has plenty of experience since he’s been doing it so long” and other thoughts like that…ahhh, but I amuse myself…

  In other news, I turned in a portfolio of my arranging and orchestration work to a TV/Film composer this week for review. One of my professors emailed a bunch of commercial music students letting know of this opportunity. She said that the orchestrator that was working with this composer was getting too busy, so the composer was looking for a NEW orchestrator and was open to reviewing work from the Comm Music Masters students. Awesome. I’m there.
  We’ll see if anything comes of it, but I DID work pretty hard to select appropriate stuff and update/facelift my professional résumé.

  Another cool thing I found out this week is that APU has decided to bring back the School of Music traveling Summer Small Groups. They will be re-forming two groups to go out this summer, and one of my friends over here is going to be involved in the re-forming process and wants your input. So, if you’ve ever been on a small group–go give your feedback.  

  • 11:18 am
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