I Just Read About That…

  SOUNDTRACK: GARY BURTON-Tiny Desk Concert #318 (November 9, 2013).

Gary Burton has been on a Tiny Desk Concert before with Chick Corea.  I really enjoyed Burton then, and I enjoyed him even more this time.

Burton is a vibes player and he and guitarist Julian Lage play a delightful jazzy set.

I love the sounds of vibes already, but I really love the playing method—two mallets in each hand, spread to play a chord in each hand.  Its mesmerizing.

The first song is called “Out Of The Woods.”  The guitar is pretty and a delicate accompaniment.  Half-way through the guitar gets a solo and it’s interesting that the vibes seems to fade a bit even though he’s still going strong.

The second song “Remembering Tano” is dedicated to Arthur Piazollo, the master, whose nickname was Tono.  It has a very different feel with a mellow guitar solo at the end.

When Bob asks him about his playing style, he agrees that “4 sticks doesn’t look possible.”  But he explains that the vibes look like a piano keyboard, but the  advantage of this instrument is the visual impact it has for listeners.   He says that early xylophone players in 19-teens an 1920s played with four mallets a fair amount and then it went out of style.  He started playing in 1949 when he was 20 yeas old.   He grew up ion a farm town in Indiana by himself and when he played, it sounded empty so he needed harmonies.  Hence, four mallets.

The final piece was written for the show and is called “The Tiny Desk Blues.”  And it is fun and bluesy 3 fun and bluesy with a great vibes solo in between some nice guitar solos.

Vibes are definitely my favorite jazz instrument.

[READ: July 5, 2016] Lunch Lady and the Mutant Mathletes

As forewarned in Book 6, the Breakfast Bunch is serving a punishment for bailing on a field trip (true, it was to solve a crime, but such is the life of a secret super hero).  Their punishment is to join the mathletes team.

Before that we get a short episode of Lunch Lady foiling the bad guys from stealing ice cream from a family.  It’s the first time I’ve had to wonder if it’s the same bad guys every time.  From their reactions, I they are.

Lunch Lady feels bad that the kids are forced to join the mathletes so she makes cookies for the team.

While things are going on with the mathletes we see that angry janitor Mr Kalowski is more angry than ever.

And then it’s on to the mathletes.  Now, while I don’t expect a children’s humor book to be a bastion of challenging math, this is the easiest mathletes team I’ve ever seen.  So unless the object is speed, there’s no real need for math smarts.  There’s a lot of multiplying by ten or two.  But whatever, it makes the story fly by.  Because for the first time, the mathletes of Thompson Brook school win.

Much of the book shows various mathlete competitions with Thompson Brook winning each round and moving on.

But there’s an upcoming showdown with the private school Willowby Academy.  They have never lost a math bowl.

But the Lunch Lady thinks it’s suspicious that the Willowby team has never lost, so she does some snooping.  And that leads to some pod bays and cryogenically frozen mathletes (I love the absurdity of that).

But as she is snooping she is attacked by the Willowby janitor.  She’s about to fight him off when Mr Kalowski shows up! “This is a janitor thing,” he says.

Interestingly, the result of the math bowl is revealed before the mutants are revealed And the way the mutants are defeated is hilarious and kinda gross.

Also gross is how this story ends.  Picture day is coming up and suddenly Hector has a huge zit on his nose!  Oh no!