Rock-tober 07, 2020

I once worked with a guy who often declared, "Duuude! Van Halen is the greatest! Rock band! E-ver!" There are plenty of my peers who would agree. While the band's first album dropped in 1978, they released 6 albums during the '80s when my cohort of Gen X was coming of age. All 6 albums breached the top 10 and all but 1 of them went platinum. The exception? The iconic and highly venerated 1984 went diamond.

Ironically, after the massive success of 1984, the band underwent a pivotal lineup change. Frontman David Lee Roth's bigger than life personality clashed with the more introspective Eddie Van Halen. Roth was well aware he was in a rock and roll band, and he wanted to have fun. Meanwhile, Eddie wanted to continue to hone his craft in more serious pursuits. Both paths were valid but incompatible.

Roth made his exit to pursue solo projects, succeeding in having a lot of fun on the way - consider "Yankee Rose" and "Just a Gigolo".

Meanwhile, after a chance introduction brokered by their shared auto mechanic, Sammy Hagar was slipstreamed into Van Halen. The debut album of the new collaboration, 5150, was the first one from Van Halen to hit number 1 on the Billboard 100, but it wasn't the last. For the rest of his tenure with the band, all 4 albums released with  Hagar as frontman made it to the number 1 spot.

The 50 singles released by Van Halen in the '80s were like mile marker signs as we navigated the pubescent landscape of junior high through to the formative world of high school. From the high energy "Jump" and "Panama" to ballads like "Love Walks In", the band's music were staples at parties, pep rallies, and couple skates at the local rink. The common thread through every one of those singles was Eddie Van Halen's unique sound. His virtuosity with a guitar was legendary. While the industry and trade rags bantered about phrases like "trendsetting" and "pioneer" to describe his artistry with a six-string, to us, he was simply "the guitar god". We all recognized an Eddie Van Halen riff when we heard one. He was likely responsible for launching the most garage bands and gave rise to a legion of closet air guitar wizards.

In the swath of chaos that is 2020, Eddie Van Halen's passing feels like a punitive and unnecessary insult. The world lost a truly gifted and innovative master of his craft. My generation lost a larger than life touchstone of our youth.

"Dreams" - Van Halen

Rock-tober 06, 2020

I became fast friends with a guy named Mike from one of my previous employers. Together, we struck fear into the hearts of local buffet owners at lunch, continuously gave our boss a hard time, and just hung out after hours away from the office.

Back when Netflix was strictly a DVD by mail service, we regularly compared DVD queues since we shared the same offbeat affinities for military and fantasy genres (think Band of Brothers and Lord of the Rings). While we tracked on most things Netflix, there was one major divergence. He was obsessed with the campy 1975 horror flick, Trilogy of Terror. It exasperated him that the movie popped up in a search of the Netflix database, but it was not a title that shipped. Every few weeks for the better part of a year, he'd grouse about this gross deficiency in Netflix's catalog.

One day I thought I'd have a little fun.

I logged in to Netflix and added Trilogy of Terror to my queue. Sure enough, it popped up as a non-shipping title. I rearranged my queue so that it would show up in the number 1 slot,  making it appear to be the next DVD to ship. After taking a screenshot of my queue, I started manipulating the image. I replaced the status of "Non-shipping Title" with "Shipped - Arriving Friday", took another screenshot of this, and sent it to Mike.

By mid-afternoon, I'd forgotten about it. Suddenly, Mike came storming into my office in a foul mood, unleashing a string of profanity that would impress the most hardened Navy chief.

"I can't believe that s&*%! Those f#!$*s!! I just f#$@ canceled my d^$# Netflix subscription!"

My memory was now sufficiently refreshed. "Huh. Really? Why'd you do that?" My poker face was on point.

"Those f#@!^$ won't ship me Trilogy of Terror! The d@*# service rep claimed they didn't carry it! I told him he was mistaken because I'm looking at another customer's queue, and it shows he's getting it Friday."

I knew I should have felt guilty at this point, but I was having too much fun. "You should have sent them my screenshot."

"I tried! Dude said it wouldn't matter because his system says it's not carried! Then I told him to check your account and gave him your name." I continued to present the most innocent expression I could muster. "But then he gave me a d@*% line about unauthorized access and customer privacy."

Mike eventually did a closer inspection of the JPEG I'd sent him and sussed out it was doctored, and I bought him lunch soon after to square it. I don't think he ever reinstated his Netflix account. Amusingly, as I write this, I see that Trilogy of Terror is currently available on Amazon Prime. I think it's time to send ol' Mike another screenshot.

"Momma's Fool" - Tesla

Rock-tober 05, 2020

Andrea has a close friend who's a counselor by profession. She recently told Andrea that by her observation, one's personality type determined how you were dealing with the social distancing and isolation brought on by the pandemic. Gregarious socialites were having a particularly rough go, while introverts were taking the respite from community in stride. She asked Andrea how I was doing, smiling the entire time, as she already knew the answer.

"Are you kidding? When Governor Hogan announced he was locking down the state of Maryland, Wayne jumped up into a goofy superhero pose and yelled, "THIS IS MY TIME!"

I'm a Gen-X latch key kid from the '70s. Starting in 3rd grade, I walked home from school every afternoon to an empty house, prepped my own after school snack, knocked out any homework, and happily entertained myself with Sesame Street and Speed Racer on TV until Mom and Dad got home. As an only child, there were no built-in playmates to relieve the isolation. But to me, it wasn't isolation; it was solitude. Apparently, I'm one of the rare souls that actually looks at Tom Hanks's Castaway scenario rather wistfully - but I'd let Andrea hang out on the island if she wanted.

Now I have the governor mandating I stay home and avoid people?  Pfft. Who do you think you're talking to? I've been in training for this my entire life.

It's a few months later, and restrictions in Maryland are easing. We're able to venture out provided we wear a mask. I was very surprised when a simple face covering threw a significant portion of the population into a tailspin. They presented a long list of arguments against masks.

They're uncomfortable. Yep. Even Mom doesn't like wearing the N-95s required at her clinic, but she does so to protect herself and her coworkers. She's in that critical age group and her medical history puts her more at risk. Andrea and I discussed this. We both have a fairly high risk tolerance and would be OK not wearing masks. However, our risk tolerance drops when we consider other people. We don't want to be the infection vector that puts a friend or family member in the hospital. We wear masks not out of fear for ourselves, but out of concern and respect for other people in our lives.

It's Unconstitutional. No. It's not. A Google search will turn up countless instances of individuals railing against and even assaulting employees of businesses that require face masks to enter the premises. This is puzzling since as a society we've already accepted the declaration of "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service". Why are some people suddenly stymied by a small face covering? As a private business, these companies can set ground rules to protect their employees as well as their clientele. If one disagrees, I firmly believe they have every right not to patronize them. However, they don't have the right to be a jackhole about it.

They don't work. Granted, the full efficacy of face masks is in flux. That's not necessarily bad. A few centuries ago, the basic medical understanding of the nature of pathogens was rife with errors. These flawed presumptions would stand for years, sometimes decades, until proper, systematic studies provided a course correction.

Today, all aspects of COVID-19 are being studied and peer-reviewed by scientists the world over. Because of technology's reach and modern hyper-connectivity, the data stream on this topic is enormous. The faster and more abundantly new improved data comes at you, the faster and more frequently you may have to revise your stance.

I personally have no problem with wearing a mask. Mom is a healthcare professional and I've seen her in masks my whole life. On multiple occasions, I've even seen dad sporting '70s era, military issue full-face gas masks, once scaring the hell out of me when he woke me up wearing full combat headgear. Maybe these experiences inured me to any awkwardness in wearing them on a daily basis.

I would also note wearing a mask in public gives you a certain amount of anonymity. I would think this would be a big plus to certain segments of mask detractors. Besides, when I'm out and about, I derive a sizable amount of personal satisfaction knowing I can stick out my tongue at jackholes I encounter without their knowledge.

"Who Are You?" - The Who

Rock-tober 04, 2020

In the "way before" time of the last century, before the advent of Siri, Google, or even the Internet itself, information was not nearly as accessible. If you were researching a given subject, you hauled yourself down to the local library, crawled through the card catalog system, and hoped the needed book was on the shelf. While this worked fine for most subject matters like earth sciences or history, it failed for current events or pop culture.

For instance, how could 6-year-old me find the lyrics to the latest song from Bob Seger's Night Moves album? I could actually buy the record and gain access to the liner notes, but that was pricey and not an option on my $0.25/week allowance. Another possibility was flipping through one of the music rags like Rolling Stones down at the local book store. If the owner didn't chase you off for loitering, and if you were lucky, you might find the lyrics for your song among its pages.

Barring these, you just had to make your best guess as to what your favorite artist was singing. Sometimes you'd get it right. Sometimes you'd get it wrong - so wrong - with great hilarity.

Misheard: "'Scuse, me, while I kiss this guy."

Correct: "'Scuse, me, while I kiss the sky" - Jimmy Hendrix 

Misheard: "There's a bathroom on the right."

Correct: "There's a bad moon on the rise." - CCR

Misheard: "It doesn't matter if we're naked or not."

Correct: "It doesn't matter if we make it or not." - Bon Jovi

Misheard: "Padded bra!"

Correct: "Panama!" - Van Halen

When I was 6, I heard "Take Me Home, Country Roads" by John Denver for the first time. I misheard the opening lyrics as "Almost 7, West Virginia". This resonated with me because at that time I was, indeed, almost 7 years old. I was fascinated and confused at the same time, unable to bridge the connection between the state of West Virginia and my pending birthday.

When Andrea and I were dating, she said for the longest time, she thought Steve Miller was singing about going to the White House.

Me: "Wait. What are you saying?"

Her: "What? Don't you know Steve Miller, Mr. Rock and Roll?"

Pfft. Of course I did, but I couldn't fathom what song in their repertoire she was referencing. At some point, the song came on the radio.

Her: "This is it! This is the song!" As the chorus lyrics played out, I just shook my head. "SEE?! I told you!"

Me: "You're absolutely correct. If I tilt my head, squint my eyes, and furrow my brow, I absolutely hear 'I think I'll go down to the White House.'"

"Jet Airliner" - Steve Miller Band

Rock-tober 03, 2020

Back in 4th and 5th grade, I was in little league. Organized sports were never my thing, but realizing I actually did have a lot of fun at pick up games with other kids on the CB base, I went to tryouts and made a team.

For the next two years, I spent summers on the Gulfport little league fields across from Marine Life. Unfortunately, true to my suspicions, it was actually kind of boring. While my teammates were pretty cool, none of them were part of the crew I played with on base, and neither were any of them classmates from school.

The fact that baseball is a pretty sedate sport didn't help the tedium. When my team was at bat, and I was in the dugout waiting my turn, it was easy for my mind to wander. When the wind was right, I'd catch a whiff off the burgers and hotdogs cooking on the grill behind the concession stand. "Man, a hot dog would hit the spot right about now." The game in front of me started to fade away, replaced by visions of a pair of ballpark hotdogs. "With ketchup." I smiled at the thought of loading up on the condiments. "And relish, too."

There were multiple ball fields and at any given time, a local radio station was playing from one of their loudspeakers. This one evening, Kenny Rogers's "The Gambler" was piped through. I loved that song. This was smack in the middle of my country music years and with the rhinestone suits, epic beard, and gravelly voice, I just thought Rogers was the absolute shiznit. Back then and to this day I still know the lyrics to his biggest hits: "Coward of the County", "Lucille", and of course, "The Gambler".

I slouched back on the bench, pulled my cap down low, and let the song set the scene. Riding a 19th-century steam locomotive in the middle of the night, destination unknown, sounded like a magnificent adventure. Unlike the plush velvet settees enjoyed by riders up in first class, I found myself in a simple pinewood booth, the bench seats polished mirror-smooth by the back ends of countless passengers. A table took the space between me and the opposing bench and there, opposite me, would be the Gambler himself. 

Cards were dealt, chips were tossed, and he spoke. "Well, we're waiting on you." I would not be rushed, because every card player knows survival depends on the cards you keep and what you toss. I took another slow, deliberate glance at my hand. "I SAID, 'WE'RE WAITING ON YOU!!'"

I blinked and Coach's face was mere inches from my own. "Grab your gear and hit the field, Capuyan!" My reverie broken, I looked quickly from Coach to the field where the rest of the team was taking their positions. "Were you daydreaming about burgers again?!"

"Hotdogs."

"WHAT!?!" I donned my glove and high tailed it to the outfield.

"Nothing, Coach. Sorry, Coach."

Kenny Rogers, a country music Hall of Famer with 60 years in the industry, passed away in late March. It was noted shortly afterward that his cashing out at the start of a global pandemic was the most badass play on "Know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run."

Ultimately, "The Gambler" wasn't about poker. The character that came to define Kenny Rogers himself was bestowing a life lesson, an "ace" that you could keep:

"You can't control the cards you're dealt, but you can damn play the hell out of the cards you've got."

"The Gambler" - Kenny Rogers

Rock-tober 02, 2020

Earlier this year, COVID granted me a lot of idle time so I decided to do a thorough cleaning in the home office. As I was going all Marie Kondo on the clutter, I came across this little button that said, "I Married an Immigrant". For the merest moment, I laughed at the idea of Andrea's home state of Alabama being considered a foreign country. Then the old situational awareness kicked in, "Oh, yeah, I'm the immigrant.

The traditional story of arriving immigrants usually involves sailing slowly past the Statue of Liberty, disembarking at Ellis Island, waiting in line to be processed into the country, and walking around, mouth agape at the hustle and bustle that is New York. Like most Asian-Americans, Mom and I came in through the back door at San Francisco. I was maybe two years old at the time. We didn't leave the airport to explore the sights of the city. In fact, once we got to our new departure gate, we never left the area. Mom was so worried about missing the east coast connecting flight, she wouldn't even take me to the bathroom despite my insistence that I really needed to go. She told me I wound up peeing into a potted plant nearby. Don't give me that look - I was 2.

After a transcontinental flight on the heels of a trans-Pacific flight, we eventually met up with Dad at his duty station in Annapolis. Those first few years were very idyllic, as I remember them. Dad continued his tour with the Navy, Mom settled in as a nurse at the local hospital, and I was acquainting myself with the best of American TV offerings: Ultraman, Speed Racer, and Bozo the Clown. As time passed, I was eventually old enough to start kindergarten.

As my first fall as a newly minted schoolboy unfolded, I thought I was doing fine. However, one of the first progress reports I brought home noted that I was having trouble communicating and was very non-verbal.

I think the word the teacher was looking for was "quiet". Ask anyone who knows me to give 5 adjectives describing me and "quiet" will be somewhere near the top of their list. This teacher's unfortunate evaluation had some far-reaching ramifications. It caused a lot of consternation for Mom and Dad, and from that moment, in order to promote rapid language and cultural assimilation, Mom and Dad only spoke to me in English.

The official languages of the Philippines are Tagalog (ta-GA-log) and English. Mom once told me both languages were subjects back when she was in school. In the highlands of Luzon, the largest and northernmost island where I'm from, there's another spoken language - Ilokano (ee-lo-KA-no), and to my ear, it's very dissimilar to Tagalog. Moreover, there are seemingly countless local dialects. My maternal grandmother would say as a young girl in the mountains, every time she crossed over a stream or through a forest, folks there were speaking a different dialect.

As a result, most 1st generation Filipinos are polyglots, being conversationally fluent in at least 3 languages. This is yet another cultural norm I've successfully broken. In high school during my Junior year, I attempted to fix this deficit and took Spanish.

I enjoyed the class and thankfully didn't find the material particularly taxing. One day that spring, the teacher's entire lesson plan was upended as the discussion was hijacked by the newly released Falco song, "Rock Me Amadeus". The class spewed a steady stream of questions: "Who was this guy?" "Where was he from?" "In what language was he singing?" "Hey, Miss Alexander, can you translate the lyrics for us?" Our beleaguered teacher, without the benefit of Google or even the Internet, succinctly replied, "Don't know. Don't know. Not Spanish. No."

Because of a kindergarten teacher's progress report, I became a lifelong English-only speaker who attempted to change this with a high school Spanish class, that, one day, broke down into a discussion over the Austrian singer, Falco, singing a song in German. For completeness, the English subtitled video can be found here, but honestly, it's nowhere near as fun as the flamboyantly 80's original.

"Rock Me Amadeus" - Falco

Rock-tober 01, 2020

As mentioned in previous missives, my favorite engineering instructor back at Auburn was Dr. Dyer. For us, his students, he was something of a Dumbledore figure - if Dumbledore was balding, clean-shaven, and spoke with a country accent. Along with the necessary theory, he interspersed his lectures with hard-won wisdom from a lifetime in the field. He didn't just educate engineers, he trained them, showing time and again with case studies from his own experience that book knowledge will only get you so far, and that the real world rarely obeyed the clean-cut theoretical constructs presented by our textbooks. 

He told us about a job he was called in to do in Moss Point, Mississippi. A company down there wanted him to validate a claim made by a third party contractor. The contractor in question was hired to update and modernize the company powerplant, and they would receive a hefty bonus for every percentage point over 90% efficiency the new system attained. At the end of the project, they presented a final report claiming 99% efficiency had been achieved.

Dr. Dyer arrived at the site and went straight to the exhaust stack for the plant. After crawling around the equipment for 30 minutes, he had his answer. The contractor had indeed delivered on their claim. However, he spent the rest of the day inspecting the boilers, tracing steam pipes around the plant, interviewing the engineers, reading their operational procedures, and taking a crap ton of extraneous measurements.

We had to ask, "Why'd you stick around all day if you knew the answer in 30 minutes?"

"Well, you see, this company hired me for the day. If I gave them the results after only 30 minutes, it would have left a bad taste in their mouth, and they might even try to cut my fee. You always need to consider your client's threshold of comfort." Everyone nodded, tucking that intel away for later in life.

The good professor always strived to prepare us for a world that thumbed its nose at seemingly well-planned projects.

He and his business partner once started a business evaluating the efficiencies of wood stoves. They cleared the land on some property and set up a highly insulated shed with a high capacity cooling system. When their first client brought in a stove for analysis, they placed it on their test platform, loaded it with fuel, and lit a fire. For a week, the cooling system and stove fought a thermal tug of war as temperatures and fuel consumption were recorded. At the end of the week, Dr. Dyer and partner delivered the results of their examination in exchange for a $1000 fee.

When the $300 power bill arrived, they still had a nice chunk of change to divide between them. But clouds loomed on the horizon. The two engineering gurus failed to take into account Alabama Power's "ratchet clause".

As you go about your daily activities at home, you set a threshold of electrical usage, and this becomes your household's baseline. If your usage spikes above this baseline, like running your AC excessively in a heatwave - or running an industrial chiller 24 hours a day for a week 20 feet from a wood stove roaring full tilt, you trigger the ratchet clause. 

In the power company's view, they had to bring extra capacity online in order to meet your unexpected electric demand. This extra capacity costs them, and they readily pass this cost along to you. They do this by charging you as much as 80% of your new peak for as long as the next 11 months - even if your actual usage is well below this new reset peak.

A few months later, someone asked Dr. Dyer in class how his latest venture was going. With a wry smirk, he replied, "You know, when that first ol' boy showed up with his stove, we should've just given him $1000 and told him to be on his way."

He was fairly nonchalant about it, reminding me of a passage from Rudyard Kipling's poem, If:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your loss

In his poem, Kipling described his defining character traits of manhood. Not placing an inordinate amount of your energy in the defining power of wealth was one of them.

Unlike Kipling's and Dyer's world views, AC/DC takes a different approach:

Tailored suits, chauffeured cars

Fine hotels and big cigars

Up for grabs, up for a price

Come on, come on, love me for the money

Come on, come on, listen to the money talk

In fact, it's more of a direct 180. I think they can be forgiven this foible, however. They're rock and rollers after all. They have an image to maintain.

Welcome to Rock-tober.

"Moneytalks" - AC/DC