DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DANCE A WALTZ?!?!?!?!

Today is Sunday. Yesterday was Saturday. I didn't do a single thing with my Saturday...except practice piano. And guitar for a little bit, but mostly I just practiced piano. We're talking piano practicing to a degree that I've never done before. Here's a short list of what I accomplished;

1. I found a song online that I've wanted to learn for a long time
2. I learned the song
3. I memorized the entire song
4. I played scales
5. I worked through rough spots on the waltz and Fugue
6. I discovered that the third piece I haven't really started on yet is actually partially memorized
7. I put on Sunglasses and smiled and pretended to be Ray Charles

I have to perform for the head of the piano department on Wednesday at 4:30 PM (I hope it's PM), and I think I'm going to play the waltz rather than the fugue. I'm going to work on both, but I just feel like the waltz is already almost completely re-memorized so I might as well play that one. Hopefully by the end of January I'll have both pieces memorized anyways and I can spend February on the last piece.

One thing that's a bit exciting is that I'm feeling a huge difference in my hands development. My left hand has really come along in a short amount of time, and I can even type these blogs faster. Wouldn't it be something if I became left handed? lol.

...but seriously. Being ambidextrous would be far superior to being left or right handed. Bach is helping me to get there too, funny enough. I started playing one of my favorite piano pieces (that's actually for Clavichord, but whatever) called Invention #13 by Bach, and it was actually just a piano exercise written to help Bach's students develop their dexterity. He has some that have only two melodies playing at once, which is relatively easy to accomplish with two hands. The tough part is playing pieces that have three or more melodies playing at once with only two hands. Bach was a winner. A real "go-getter", if you will.

TWO DAYS IN AND I'M GONNA BLOW MY BRAINS OUT WITH A NERF GUN!!!

I haven't played piano as much as I'd like to this past week, but I'm finally getting back into it and I'm not suffering from it as much as I thought. I totally figured that my hands would need more time to get back into shape, but they seem to be doing all right. But I need them to be better. Fast. By next wednesday, to be exact.

I emailed the head piano professor at Texas State last night, and he asked me to come in and talked to him. So I did. I'm not really sure what it is that he wants to talk about, but we scheduled a meeting next week and he wants me to prepare a piece for him. Yeah, in six days. I'm freaking out like crazy right now about this. This is the first time he gets to hear me play before my audition and I really want to make a good impression. So my goal for this week is simple; completely prepare and memorize the fugue. I have have of it memorized in a months time and I'm pushing myself to memorize the other half in less than a week. Oh my goodness, I'm gonna die.

Why I hate toasters but love poptarts.

I've kept this a secret for years but I have never put my poptart in the toaster, but for on a very few occasions. Is this healthy? Probably. Is it still delicious. Yes!

You see, the toaster isn't necessarily bad in itself, but it just takes so much freaking time to cook the pastry! And why go through the toaster when I can go straight to the pastry!?!? But the toaster still has it's uses. Like making toast or the frozen waffles! Mhmm. Boy, do I love me some waffles.

And can we agree on one thing? Cherry poptarts, even if they aren't your FAVORITE poptarts, are definitely the universal poptart. If you don't know what kind of poptarts your roommate gets but it's your day to buy groceries, get the cherry. Even if you're wrong, the chances are they still can appreciate the cherry ones, too.

If you clicked on my link thinking I'm going to discuss the "Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus" video, you're wrong. I'm talking about poptarts and toasters. Seriously. Old Tyler would have made a post trying to be clever and use toasters and poptarts as some sort of obscure analogy to discuss the rediculousness of the video. But new Tyler will discuss toasters and poptarts because he likes them, and then straight up tell you the new video on Religion and Jesus is dumb. Most of my Christian friends are too polite and Christian to say it, but it is. I hear a lot of people sugar coat it with statements like, "He makes some valid points but I don't agree with everything he says", and "I can definitely see how he could come to that conclusion, but he is missing some major points." No. Just...no.

"What if I told you Christ came to abolish religion?" I'd say you were wrong! What if I told you Christ said the smores poptarts were the best? I'd be lying too!

I'm frustrated and not making sense. It's time to play piano and eat poptarts. Good day, all.

KNIVES CAN CUT FLESH?!?! SINCE WHEN?!

AH! KNIVES! MY ONLY WEAKNESS!

SO...

I was trying to eat a Freeze Pop the other day and in order to do that you have to open said package. Usually I just bite off the end, but for some reason I decided to use a knife. After cutting open said package I accidentally dropped the knife and my stupid reflex was to try and catch said knife. I caught it awkwardly and ended up putting a decent sized cut in my finger. This is both a win and a fail. Allow me to explain;

Win: It is a win because this is something hardcore guitarists used to do. They would slice open their finger tips and when it healed partially they would play on the cuts and suddenly the tips of your fingers have fantastic calluses. I'm going to be playing a lot of guitar this semester so yes, this is a win.

Fail: It is a fail because for a day or two I'm going to have to avoid playing piano because it hurts still. It's not excruciating pain, but it's just not comfortable. I'm better off letting it heal before I play.

Fail: It's also a fail because I cut my hand open, and in no way is that ever going to happen and not end up as a fail.

Bacon: There's no bacon involved in this story. I just think about it constantly.

I've named my keyboard Emma Watson. She responds to Hermione Granger.

SO...

I've decided that this summer I will keep an eye out and try to get a few weddings going for cash. And if I get into the school of music I will even start to give a few lessons, ideally. It all rests on my audition 55 days from now, though. I don't want to give lessons if I'm not a piano major, but I will still do a few weddings.

I may have found a Cellist to work with for gigs such as these, too! I don't know if it's for certain, but having cellists and singers on standby would be awesome for a few weddings or so, but I need to get the word out now to parishes that I'm available if I want to start getting ready for the summer.

As I sit in my living in the living room staring at a picture of a dog named Lassie (that my roommate from A&M swears is named Reveille), I begin to wonder how my life would have been different if I auditioned two years ago rather than now. And then I realize I'm hungry and the picture of Lassie starts to look like a cheese burger. How strange.


I want tacos.

In other news, I'm buying my first Chick Corea album today off of Itunes after practice. THIS...will be epic. Why do I even have this blog if I don't say anything in it?

I like bacon.

The History of the word "Pwned"...

I was going to title this blog, "Ever Get the Feeling You're Being Powned By A Fly?", but I feel like I should explain the change.

I was very unsure about the word "powned" and it's spelling, so I decided to Google it. Turns out, Powned is in fact properly spelled "Pwned". I've seen this spelling before, I just thought it was internet speak short-hand for another internet word. It's not, though.

From what I could gather from the Google machine, Pwnage came into existence on accident. A computer hacker was once trying to mod a map on World of Warcraft and one of the modifications he made was to flash the phrase "You Just Got Owned" on the screen whenever you died in the game. This failure of a nerd had misspelled Owned for Pwned and the phrase stuck with computer nerds everywhere. Eventually, it branched out into society where the CIA has been unable to contain the epic nerdage outbreak.

So what about the original title of this post? You see, I have a problem. My piano playing attracts flies. A multitude of flies, in fact, and they seem to like to land on my face while I practice. It happened a lot at home, and it's still happening at college. I only wish it were possible to drop-kick a fly...

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO PRACTICE PIANO WITHOUT MY DIET CHERRY DR. PEPPER!?!?!?!

Meh. Today is gonna be my break, I guess. My back hurts, I've played piano like crazy today already, and it's 10:45 and I haven't even started playing scales yet for today. I've practiced, don't get me wrong, but scales will be continued tomorrow.

I am working on memorizing some more and I'm getting myself ready to get back into the swing of the new semester, but the big thing on my plate is preparing for the funeral tomorrow. No, it's not anybody I know. Somebody's asked me to play, which is kind of new territory for me. I've done weddings before, and I've attended funerals, but never have I ever played piano AT a funeral before. Why I emphasized "at", I'll never know...

Here's my beef for the today. Say you have a hobby, like playing the piano (or juggling fiery chainsaws whilst covered in gasoline), and you decide you really want to get on Youtube and see what other people are doing with their passion for piano or juggling dangerous weapons covered in flaming hot dangerousness. So you type in "Piano" or "Fiery Chainsaw Accident" and the first few things that appear are kind of boring. You flip through some until you get to the results that say something like this;

"Three Year Old Whiz at Debussy's Revrie", or "You Pianist Better than You" or "Kid playing with sharp fiery objects and somehow getting away with it, and being good at it."...

Those children need to not be allowed on YouTube. Prodigies should just not happen. I realize we'd be losing a lot of wonderful musical talent in the world, but I'm sure we'll get along. Or at least we need to make all prodigies take a slice of humble pie and be required to work at a McDonald's one day before they graduate college so they can taste what it's like on this side of the fence. I hate working my behind off to learn a piece to discover that there's a child somewhere in the world who could play the same thing upon exiting the womb!

I'm working myself up, here. Maybe I should play scales tonight. I need Dr. Pepper, first. To Wal-Mart! AWAY!!!