The Idea...

"Why?"~My little nephew.  

All right, let's get to it.   Why are we here?  I tend to write tonnes of e-mails with absolutely no real direction.  This blog has gotta keep people interested, for you and me both.

A few months ago, I was hanging out with a friend. Let's call her Rebecca.  De Mornay.  Right.  We got to talking about movies we've watched recently.  I get in such a funk with watching the same movies all the time, that I forget there's new stuff out there.

So, Rebecca De Mornay asks me if I had ever seen the movie "Julie & Julia".  I had seen commercials about the flick and promptly replied, "No".   I'm all about chick flicks to be honest, but give me "Dude, Where's My Car?" any day of the week.

But, I tried to keep an open mind about it all. I actually found  a copy of the movie while overseas.  The movie must be so good that it immediately went to DVD. I had made one request when I gave it to her.  That we watch it together.  At least I could get dinner out of it.

To make a long movie (uh, I mean, story) short it's about two separate stories of people who take on extracurricular activities that eventually lead to success.  Julia Childs is stuck in France, starts cooking, writes a book about it.  Julie, some 50+ years later is an unhappy person living in Queens (boy, can I relate) who works at a call center for distressed World Trade Center mourners, decides to write a blog about cooking everything in Julia Child's book.  Voila, super Hollywood blockbuster hit.  Both happen to catch the interest of many followers, with fame and fortune coming their way.


After the movie was done, I was drilled with questions by Rebecca (De Mornay) of what I thought of the movie.  Secretly, I thought this might have been the edited version.  Perhaps they left out the part where Julia Child was kidnapped by the Nazis, and through cunning detective work, Julie uncovers the secret truth that she was in fact a spy.   But no, this was just a nice story where two people struggled to find their niche and found happiness though their struggles.  I told Rebecca DeMornay that "the movie...was...nice".  Surely I can't get in trouble for THAT, right?

Suddenly, the idea struck.  Rebecca DeMornay (did I mention I thought this code name is friggin' hilarious?) said:

"Why don't you write a blog?"

She suggested, along the same lines of the movie, that I write a blog about busking in every subway stop in New York City.  I looked it up, there are 468 stations in the 5 boroughs.  I actually tried to play in one of them once with a friend.  The subway traffic was so loud, I almost killed myself trying to be heard over screeching subway brakes.  I didn't think that was gonna fly.

 

However, the idea wasn't completely dead.  I did have in mind to possibly play somewhere.  I thought possibly changing the idea to playing in every outdoor park in New York City.  I looked that up too.  There are nearly SEVENTEEN HUNDRED parks in the city.  I don't have the attention span to pull that off.  

After brainstorming some more, the plan was narrowed down to Central Park.  It's pretty scenic in the summer time.  Beautiful sections of the park when it's maintained.  Built in acoustics.  I bounced the idea off some of my more hard to please friends and family.  They actually thought it was a good idea.  

I realized that this couldn't just be any regular busking job.  It's gotta have a shtick to it.  Something unique.  As the hours, the days, and months went by the idea kept forming and forming.  The fact that I had thought hours, days and months about meant I couldn't just give up easily.  I was too far into it.  After 10 years in New York City, I knew I had to do something finally on my own.  I think this idea is it.  Stay tuned, the ideas will about to be shared!

~Bone.

"Say My Name."

"We need a name. Give us a name."~The Delivery Man from the Seinfeld Episode-The Race asking Elaine who the order is for.

You know, I thought long and hard about this one. It's easy enough just to point out my real name and call it a day. But how boring is that?! I can't stand being me most of the time, and the thought of telling you what I do during the day might bore you to tears. It would most likely go something like this:

8:30:00am-Alarm goes off (forgot to turn off the alarm from the other day's important wake up call).

8:30:45am-Hit the snooze, have no clue where I am, or what's going on. Go back to sleep.

8:35:00am-Alarm goes off AGAIN (still realize I didn't have to get up, but forgot to turn off the alarm still).

8:35:05am-Lay there, can't sleep. Stare at the wall. Contemplate life's ill-decisions.

Yeah, like that.

So anyway. Like I was sayin'. It dawned on me that I need to liven things up. I need the "alter-ego". Just be SOMEBODY else (for this blog). But how to go about this without being completely pretentious? The self-declared nick name has a certain amount of "stupid" to it. It's gotta be something cool that you like to be called, and yet you want others to think you're cool with a cool nickname. I once worked with a guy who had the self-proclaimed "Bass man" , but he turned out to be a lame-o.  Without him knowing, we started calling him "Ass Man" (*actual nickname and pseudo nickname have been changed to protect the idiots).


Nicknames have never been able to stick with me, except for the bad ones.   Why bother keeping with a demoralizing alter ego?  

First off, I am a trombone player.  This is very key into the whole summer project thing I got goin' on.  So it's gotta be something along the lines of a trombone-reference.  I gotta tell ya, there aren't a lot of cool names with 'trombone' as an underlining reference.  We'll get into it more the better we know each other.

 We could go with "Bones", but that name is so iconic in our pop- culture.  You say "Bones" and you get William Shatner's voice uttering Dr. McCoy's nickname.  He's the cranky doctor on the starship Enterprise who doesn't get along with Vulcans.  Yeah, I'll be the kid who gets picked on for playing trombone AND being a Star Trek fan.  No good.

Also a big no no is the fact that one of the top trombone players around goes by the name "Bones".  Tom Bones Malone has been with Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra for many years now.  You see him usually with a purple or blue jacket with the horn section doing silly stuff on Late Night with David Letterman at 11:35E.  Still don't know who he is?

His biggest claim to fame was probably in the movie "Blues Brothers",  where he was introduced to the movie when Jake and Elwood  walked into a dingy night club to hear Murph and the Magic Tones and were playing this...   

This is suppose to portray once great musicians resorting to cheese music to stay afloat, wilts playing in the slums for less than enthused audiences.  I've been there...A LOT.  I might be the only one who thinks this recording is pretty awesome.

I actually met Bones a few times.  Each time, I say, "Your acting on Blues Brothers was Oscar worthy."  He gets a chuckle out of it.

How could anyone in my generation not forget Richard Milhous Stabone?  He was Mike Seaver's best friend in the show Growing Pains back in the late 80's.    Nickname.... BONER.  How that one ever got past the FCC is beyond me.  Every guy on a tv show back then had a dopey side-kick with no brains and always getting into trouble.  They tried to give him some street cred, as his character left the show to join the Marines.

In an interesting twist, the actor who played Boner (Andrew Koenig) is son of Chekhov, the guy on the ORIGINAL Star Trek (who worked with Bones, catch-22).  Sadly, Andrew took his own life this past February in a bout with depression.

OK. So we got Bones and Boner that are off the list.  Not a lot of choices left.  Then it dawned on me: the only nickname I've been given that's stuck for many years.  And so, I am hereby named:

  BONE. 

This is not a self-proclamation.  In fact, I was given this name as we sat around in the middle of nowhere at an Applebee's more than 7 years ago.  No prefix, no suffix.  My friend just gave me the name "Bone".  Bone really was only used on tour,  and when I chat online with my friend who we keep in touch to this day.  I was also given an element of coolness when my nephew said that he likes to use my avatar character when he plays on the Wii.  One day, I'll include real pictures of myself as we move along.

Well, that took entirely too much time to explain.  But that's it.  I like it.   We'll go with that.

~Bone.

So far

Hey everyone!


Before I go on, I must say it's pretty cool to have some followers.  If you look to the right of the blog, there's a cluster map showing where some of my readers are based.  I got me some Canadians, Americans, someone from Austria, I've not a clue who could be from Great Britain, and all the way to China.  Pretty neat.

If you want, please be sure to click the icon that says "FOLLOW" to the right so you I can keep you posted on what's up.  Check in while you can, I'm trying to write as fast as I can!

IT'S ALIVE!!! IT'S ALIVE!!!!

Oh, hello there cyber-world. It is finally launched: my blog! I won't get into it right now, but this will be the home-base of all things relevant about my summer project-2010 in the works. Stay tuned! I haven't got a clue if this is gonna work or not, but I've been urged by many to start writing again. So we'll give it a go into the summer, see what happens. Don't cost nothin', right?

It'd be fun to get a fan base world wide, maybe there's a map tracker on this thing? Maybe I should just aim for anybody outside of Dodge. I gotta decorate this bad boy too (maybe I should start unpacking and put curtains up in my apartment for starters).

I hope to meet some new people along the way. Will it be you?

Things will look pretty ragged right now, so bare with me. I mean BEAR with me. Awkward. We'll get along famously.

Anyway, thanks for joining me. I'll see ya soon. *THRUST!*

~Bone.