Andrea and I had a great date yesterday, while the kids had a sleepover at grammy’s new place: Mellow Mushroom, including Andrea’s favorite beer (Blue Moon) and me winning both Hera and Zeus AND Rosenkoenig (oops don’t mean to brag); home to watch Crash (study in racism) and Haunted Mansion (silly but colorblind); then SNL with Natalie Portman. The best part was our reminiscing about the anti-motivational talk from the droll leader of the bagpipes at a demonstration at the Exploris museum:
- q: Do you march in any parades? a: Ha you must be kidding – this is the learning band, we’re lucky if we can stand still and play.
- q: How many of you are from Scotland? a: Not me. I dunno, Frank? I think Frank is 5% Scottish.
- That’s called the drone pipe. For obvious reasons.
- Now let’s have the drums play by themselves. Nobody ever seems to care about the drums.
- The bagpipes have an extremely limited range. They can only play (8 or 9?) notes. So you’re not going to hear anything too fancy.
- q: How do you harmonize? a: We can’t harmonize at all, really. Next question?
- For our final number we’re going to play Amazing Grace, a song that people ask for a lot; I don’t know why, it has nothing to do with bagpipes.
