Click images for desktop size: "Sandstone Iceberg" by Scot Chitwood Things have been quiet and still, percolating nicely.
I was thinking about music. A couple of the kids still want me to do something. I consider it but only because I need cash to pay for the treatments. Its a bad idea.
It does make me think about music and that's always pleasant.
For me music always starts with the beat. The pounding of the drums.
For me there is and will never be anything hotter cool than walking into a club and watching some crazy cat wailing on the skins. The first instrument I learned was the drums. Scott School of Music in Santa Monica. I spent hours learning to syncopate, to get the beat and hold it steady.
I always wanted to rush the beat and to compensate I always put in way too  many fills and trills and flourishes.
Then comes the thing that too many bands forget - the rhythm. The best bass player I ever played with was a Jamaican. I'd write simple rock tunes but he made sure they always had a dance rhythm, serious hip swaying twitching rhythm. Bang your head to the beat and sway your hips to the rhythm.
Its the rhythm that made me move to rhythm guitar. The drive that propelled Buddy Holly records propelled me now.
I didn't have much interest in playing 32nd notes at 200 bpm. I learned to drill and shred but it was the rhythm guitar that I loved.
Joe Perry shreds for Aerosmith, can anyone name the rhythm guitarist? Guns N Roses has Slash, but until Izzy Stradlin left the band no one was really even aware that they had a rhythm guitarist.
The best thing about rhythm guitar was that I didn't have to drag a drum kit all over town, I just needed my amp and my axe. I liked that.

Yesterday I went for walk in the woods with my puppy. She was ecstatic. She ran back and forth and far ahead and then back to hurry me up so she could run further ahead. Exploration at full speed.
I had fun. A lot of fun and laughs and smiles.
I paid for it by getting violently ill. Nothing serious but all that happiness left my guard down and the chemo sickness used the chance to sneak on in.
I woke up in the night and decided to watch a movie. It was a shock to discover a film that is easily one of the best films I've ever experienced.
“Tom Yum Goong” is a Thais film. Martial arts movie . . . It's by the guy who made Ong Bak but that's the extent of the similarity.
Tony Jaa is a little guy, diminutive, and like Alan Ladd he carries himself like a special effect. He is the best fighter I've seen in movies since Bruce Lee. He makes the things that impressed you with jackie Chan seem second rate. He's got more heart and more drive. Watch him run over a 12 foot chain link fence and you'll understand.
Like Bruce Lee he uses his sheer physical presence to establish and define his character. He does it wonderfully.

Click images for desktop size: "Bench In Snow" by EPA Designs The film manages to entertain at every moment. It also illuminates another culture. It highlights the sheer alienness of another world in order to show us that no matter how alien we are we have much in common, more than sheer humanity, we have emotions and concern and love that transcends all other concerns.
That this is so elegantly and poignantly stated in a film where a tiny man wins friends and influences people by beating the crap out of people show an understanding of the finest ways to preach a difficult message. The plot of “Tom Yum Goong” is so simple. Tony Jaa has an elephant. That elephant is kidnapped and taken to Sydney. Tony follows and cuts through humanity to recover his pet, an animal that another Thai describes as “A father, a mother, a sister and a brother. All of that and more.” Tony Jaa must say a few words in the film but all you'll remember is blinding speed and astonishment. You'll love him and the only thing he says is “Where's my elephant!”
When you can run up an 8 foot glass window while running from a car  and then back flip over that car as it crashes through that window, you really don't have to say much else.

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