Tomorrow I’m headed out to Ohio for work. I’ll be back in business on Wendsday.

Comic.

An Elephant paints a picture.

On Saturday night I headed into Boston with a wonderful group to see Alicia perform with the Firebird ensemble and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project.

The Cast:
Me.
Ryan Schenk
Ruth
Math Tim
Chef Sarah
Kelly
Chris

The Arrival

We all arrived in Boston at different times. Ryan, Ruth, and Math Tim met me in town around 6:40 for beverages . Chef Sarah, Kelly, and Chris came a bit later. As I walked these three up the stairs to our balcony seats Kelly asked…

“What type of music is this anyway?”
Mike D: “Modern.”
Kelly: “Modern?”
Mike D: “Very modern. It could be really strange.”

The show.
The event started with the world premier of a piece composed by Alejandro Rutty called “The Conscious Sleepwalker Loops.” It was fantastic. The music was sweeping and epic with some A+ percussion. Ruth spent much of the first song leaned forward looking over the balcony rail at the drum player who was rocking out.

The second piece was the world premier of a piece by Derek Hurst. The music is described on the bmop website as “a precarious balance between visceral solemnity and muscular jocularity.” The Firebird ensemble was featured and really? it was very strange. The beginning was really powerful and had the stringed instruments of the Firebird ensemble plucking their strings aggressively. I looked over towards Ryan Schenk who gave two thumbs up. After that the song became a bit more academic, and it was very tense and got me feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Intermission came and went and the second half started with the music Ken Ueno with yet another world premier. This one called “On a Sufficient Condition for the Existence of Most Specific Hypothesis”

DANG!

Ken is an overtone singer. and I was BLOWN away. He generated these powerful deep growls from within his throat that would occasionally be coupled with really high squeals. Behind his intense singing was some really wild string work which had the musicians sliding their hands up and down the strings creating a sensation of the music slowing and speeding. The other members of my group were not as thrilled with the vocals - they thought it seemed too painful or sounded too much like something you’d hear out of a horror movie. For me? I couldn’t be more awestruck. It was brilliant.

The final piece was a premier of a song composed by Lisa Bielawa called simply “Double Violin Concerto.” It was a very beautiful piece. The two violinists really worked well off one another. There were two things that were especially unique about this piece. The first was that there was an accordion player (yes!) The second was that the featured female violinist sang while playing. I don’t know how hard this is, but she did a pretty bang up job.

Overall, the event was really fun. It’s always a little weird going to these events, but definitely worth it to get a few new experiences.

Monkey rides a mini-dirt bike.

Video

This is weird.

Ben suggested that we all check this out. It’s a link that allows really easy sharing of mix tapes. If you make one, share it with the rest of us!

when you’re too nice to mug.

I’m on a short business trip today. But I have all sorts of exciting things to share.

Firstly, I went to a dermatologist yesterday. They did a biopsy on one of my funky birth marks. How did it go down? Pretty nasty. First a nurse injected me with some sort of local numbing agent. Then the doctor went in. I couldn’t feel a thing so all I got from the goings on was the conversations between the doctor and his helpers.

Doctor: “we’ll need some towels. he’s bleeding a bit”
Nurse: “I’ll grab some.”
mike d thinks: towels?
Doctor: “go grab Janet to do the stitches”
mike d thinks: stitches?
Janet: “well, I’ve seen worse.”
mike d thinks: awesome?

Actually, it all came out pretty good. I have to go back in ten days for stitch removal and biopsy results. But the whole thing was really very fast, and the dermatologist seemed to know what he was doing. I was in and out in an hour with a full review and minor surgery. For anyone looking for a dermatologist in the New Haven area, I recommend Savin.

The other exciting news is that last night I had my very last class for my mechanical engineering degree. Class… meaning… class. I still have an independent project that I must complete, but no more classroom time! Yes!! This is a huge life savor. From this day forth I will loose one less night a week to academia. Rock!

A user has asked for input form the MikeDiDonato.com readers.

Is this shirt awesome? or is it totally lame?

Here’s a close up of the fabric

We can’t discount the possibility of corruption. How else could the destruction of such a phenomenal machine be explained?

As mentioned last Friday, Team D has been slaving night and day over new header graphics for MikeDiDonato.com, and below are the fruits of our efforts. Thank you to those who responded with entries, the two we received are fantastic.

Simply click on the name of an image below, and using the power Internet Magic* the new header banner will appear** at the top of the page! Vote for your favorites below***!

Black and White
Broken Script
Canterbury
Dinosaurus
FAT!
Flames
Robot
Scratched
Script
Splatter

* Aforementioned Internet Magic is only guaranteed to work in Firefox and Safari, as Team D’s Internet Magician does not have access to Internet Explorer. But it’ll probably work****!
** Might take a second!
*** In the comments!
**** Update: Someone with a PC says it does. Yay!

There’s something about Michael Jackson’s early hits that make even the most shy and self conscious seal want to dance.

From Alicia

Little tiny people. on food.

Awesome T-shirts!

from Jennifer

Indian politician challenges a Tantra magician to kill him. the black magic fails.

A short while ago we had a chat about banners here at MikeDiDonato.com

Well, now I’m looking for some input. Ryan Schenk and I have put together a handful of different font options for the top of the page and on Monday we’re going to have a little voting to choose the newest and greatest for the website.

This weekend, if you’d like to make a banner to contribute. Just whip it up and e-mail it over to MikeDiDonato AT gmail D0T com.

Just make sure the banner is 950 pixels wide and 126 pixels tall. You can provide a fun new font, or a whole new banner. Anything you’d like. The more the merrier, and we won’t restrict it solely to MSPaint. Use whatever you’d like.

Today is the first full day of spring.
.uɯnʇnɐ ɟo ʎɐp llnɟ ʇsɹıɟ ǝɥʇ sı ʎɐpoʇ

Peeps Electrocution

I’d like to see this thing do a dyno.

Apparently the Stoneham Public Library is looking at a potential budget cut that would only see it open 3 days a week.

If you are a Stoneham voter go to the Town Meeting on May 5 to vote YES on article 6.

Amazon’s Kindle is pretty intense. Shamus/Andrew, is this related to e-ink at all?

What makes this one so interesting is that they’ve hooked it up to an online network so that buying becomes easy. It’s a shame the books aren’t free like with a library… if so I’d buy it in a second.

Thanks Kung Fu Roland!

Take the test here.

It’s a great test.