Time After Time

-Time After Time.mp3

 Renditions of "Time after Time" are sprinkled over much of Chet's discography.  More than likely though it shows up in listeners' record collections as one of the songs on "Chet Sings" or "The Best of Chet Baker Sings."  Ubiquitous as it is, this song is a perfect vehicle for his natural ability to translate feeling into sound.

I recently ran across a mellifluously stoned out version--1964 in Belgium-- replete with shots of his missing tooth..front no less.  Imagine a trumpet player missing a front tooth right where the mouthpiece nests.  Amazing that he played the way he did.


Anyway, here is my not-so-stoned out version of the 1947 tune with lyrics by Sammy Cahn and music by Jule Styne.  Baby steps.  Newborn steps.  Hell, in utero-steps.


Still can't seem to sing on pitch with any consistency.  And the range, my range, continues to be at large. Someday I will spend the time and attention it deserves.  I'll take lessons or stop drinking milk or get my deviated septum re-broken and mended straight.  Who knows.


The recording was spread out over a week or so, mostly owing to my new-found commitment to research, reading and study of literacy and reading and writing and whatnot.  Getting back in the game is what i'm calling it. Rather, responding to a perception of a need for a more proactive stance in relation to rejoining the great march toward accumulation of wealth, or as in my case, to stop the bleeding.

The Song is You

Thumbs up for victory!

- The Song Is You.mp3
You know how when you get a new toy and all you want to do is play with it?
Cool feeling isn't it?

Well this post has nothing to do with that. Sorry.
In fact, this post has more to do with old toys...the kind you've had for a long time, the ones that you clutched to your chest when first they were new.

Reaper. My beloved music editor. My wicked good taskmaster. my music technology mutha-fletcher.

I've been away. Reaper didn't come with me.

I was building things...with tools that i held in my hands, saws and drills, clamps and hammers, not virtual tools, no VSTI's. Although come to think of it, it might come in handy to have a virtual hammer; I'd much rather have clobbered my finger with a virtual hammer than the 22-ounce number i did do it with.

Anyway, i dove back in today, back into the glossy pages of computer music recording. it was no end of fun for me. and although i'm not sure if Reaper missed me as much as i, it, we did shake hands and come out fighting for the lion's share of this mid-january wednesday.

The tune that happened to be on the top of my music is the one i chose to break my fast: a Jerome Kern classic called "The Song is You." It's a good thing i chose this particular tune because it's level of complexity, while belying the amount of tweaking it took to round up and capture, was comparatively low. i still struggled.

patience and perseverance was the order of the day. the methodical plodding offered weird comfort. although not exactly enjoyable, it was at least familiar. Moving from roadblock to stupefying barriers, virtual rampart to real frustrations, i lumbered through these like a drunken giant returning from his nightly pillage. it was inexorable. i burned through an entire day.

but in the end, i got it down. Quality? Questionable.

but in the end, i got it down.

The Touch of Your Lips

The Touch of Your Lips.mp3

Today I sat down amidst a flurry of activity next door. 

A quick peek through the living room blinds delivered the bad news: another work crew was settling in for the day. 

Unusual?

Sadly no. That is, if it weren't for the jackhammers.  jesus...jackhammers.  wtf.

But, this sonic intrusion, brutal and hardcore as it was, served to harden my resolve; screw you guys.  i gotta do what i gotta do. The chet baker project continues.

Hence, this rendition of one of the most tender pieces of music i've ever heard...chet's version of course, not necessarily my own.  but as we all know, the purpose of this project is not to recreate chet's music.  no one can do that.

Someone or something in this someone decided to tackle another emotionally charged tune of chet's.
In the inimitable words of Firesign Theatre:  "another one....just like the other one."

This time it was a ballad by Rodgers and Hart called 'The Touch of Your Lips."

The touch of your lips
Upon
my brow
Your lips that are cool
and sweet
Such tenderness
Lies in their soft caress

My Heart
Forgets
To beat

Yeah, they're killer lyrics.
How about these guys, Rodgers and Hart.  So many beautiful songs, so squandered, laid as they were on the banal breast of that most ridiculous of musical genres, the Broadway Show.

This tune has a story to it.

About ten years ago when i was living and working in ithaca, , dancing as fast i could, raising a family, snatching a gig here and there, i started listening to chet intensively.  i had heard of him before of course, being a trumpet player myself and having grown up listening to all kinds of jazz.

This was courtesy of my father's interest in music and to his weekly sunday morning hi-fi concerts ranging from Victory at Sea to Barbara Streisand (before her head got bigger than her voice) to Stan Kenton to Puccini to Maynard Ferguson.  It was wonderful.  Looking back on it i think without a doubt that this was one, if not the most salient childhood experience that helped determine my musical destiny (for better or worse--for the pleasure and exultation of musical performance or for worse, the extreme frustration of trying to make a living through its pursuit).  All the same i owe him big time.

Anyway i was listening to chet A LOT back then.  This tune 'The Touch of Your Lips' was the first of his tunes over which i would obsess.

I would put this tune on the stereo (back in the day we all used to listen to music through these big rectangular boxes so everyone could hear it; they're called speakers.  you may have heard of them) and hit 'replay.'  Then i would sit back on the sofa, toke up maybe and just listen over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to chet breathe life into this tune one soft phrase after another.

I was so moved by this tune 'The Touch of Your Lips' that one night after putting the kids to bed, i put it on and listened to it.  The emotion of the song and the way it was orchestrated (just piano, upright bass and brushes) and the way chet exhaled the sentiment of the tune into the microphone overwhelmed me to the point that i called my best friend over to the house to share it.

it was late.  after 10 on a school night.  but i called him anyway.

"listen you gotta come over here right away."

"why?  what's up?"

"you gotta hear this tune."

All he said into the phone before showing up at my door  was " really?"  He was like that.  He'd honor anything anyone said just as long as there was some sort of authentically felt ideation behind it.

He came over and i put it on.  We listened together.  And after the last note died back into silence, we sat there quietly.

"That is the most beautiful tune i've ever heard in my life," i sighed.
And all he could say was "really?"

Again with the ' really.'

Oh well.  it was ok that it meant more to me than to him.  It was important to me then and it is still.
That's why i picked it yesterday i guess.  I wanted to experience its heavy sentimentality again.  i suppose i thought i needed it in order to draw out from my own heart/mind a sister state of emotion with which to resonate.

Turns out i did find a matching state within me sufficient to react to enough of the original feeling that chet's rendition stirred in me years before to make the effort worthwhile.

You Don't Know What Love Is

You Don't Know What Love Is.mp3


This is the only piece of music so far that I have shared with anyone on purpose.

My reaction seemed to belie the quasi-empirical vibe that has characterized much of my work on this project thus far. I cried.

Why?

Emotion. Pure and simple.

In fact if you listen closely in the second verse, my voice gets a little shaky and then trails off prematurely at the end of phrase. Human emotion meets Musical performance; a curious event.

It was the lyrics of the tune. They caught me with my pants down. hardly surprising given how little experience i've had with words in music. Most likely won't be the last time.

Lyrics like these aren't for the faint of heart.

You don't know how hearts burn
For love that cannot live
Yet never die
Until you've faced each dawn
With sleepless eyes
You don't know what love is.



Now, I've written about this phenomenon before, where the music takes on an entirely new meaning once i start singing the lyrics.

But this time....this time was different.

Because not only did my voice go limp from the emotions when i was recording, they were reconstituted when i played it for her...this time with much greater intensity.

Why?

Of course i don't know for sure but from where i sit now, some three days later, i think that the heart-wrenching sentimentality that i felt when i recorded the tune was augmented by something else as i listened to myself playing and singing an entire day later.

I think it was in fact a response to a universal human condition. Everyone with a heart has had it broken.

You Don't know how lips hurt
Until you've loved and had to pay the cost
Until you've flipped your heart and you have lost
You don't know what love is.

I think now that the tears that welled up in me were tears shed for all of us for whom love has touched. Compassion drove them to brim over my lower lids. Compassion for every man, woman and child whose heart bears the scars of living a full life.

This tune, while not being the only one that has illicited such a response, is especially suited for strong emotion.

It's the perfect cross-over tune between blues and jazz. that is, the harmony and the melody lend themselves to a rather seamless confluence of tension notes (blues melodies: flatted fifths and thirds) and harmonic complexity (unexpected cadences and major seventh tonic chords)


Do you know how a lost heart fears
The thoughts of reminiscing
And how lips that taste of tears
Lost their taste for kissing.

The lyrics of a song...

Being an instrumentalist all these years, i've not paid too much attention to the words assigned to the melody. (just the way i phrased that gives you a hint about my nonchalance heretofore; 'assigned to the melody?' Is that all lyrics are? just words tagged for a melody line?)

Thanks to this Chet Baker Project, i now know differently.

If you'll forgive a rather banal simile, they seem to me kind of like a cooking recipe's dry ingredients.
Nothing much happening; they don't reflect the intent of the dish, their appeal to the palate--at least at this stage-- is almost negligible.

But add the wet ingredients: water, milk, oil...and everything changes. the tastes come alive, the cook's original intention for the dish is reconstituted and voila! we eat. and hopefully we understand and enjoy the chef's idea of a good gastronomical experience, be it sweet or savory.

Likewise a song's lyrics. By themselves they don't have nearly the juice as does the entire song made complete by the composer's melody line, rhythm and harmony.

This one (as my mother would say) knocked me for a loop from start to finish.

It began when i was feeling pretty low this past friday morning.

It's not unusual really, for me to have some low spots these days. being out of work for months can be like that sometimes.

But this day, i actually had a lot on my plate. For one thing i had to continue preparing music (woodshedding) for a new group with which i was making my debut the following day. i was pretty wound up about it and had been working on the music all week; actually i had two gigs the next day, with two completely different groups, for both of which i was shedding big time.

About this process of preparing for a gig.

For me, it's kind of like a scene in that Robin William's film TOYS. the one where he is in a golf cart driving up and down the hills and valleys of a narrow astro-turfed hallway inside that awesomely phantasmagorical Toy factory. (Great movie btw especially if you happen to be a fan of L.L.Cool J. or Joan Cusak)

Yeah, so this up and down psychology of mine when i'm faced with a personal challenge i see as a rollercoaster of emotion and psychology.

'Man, I got this. I'm in great shape'

Oops.....

'What the hell was I thinking, i'm friggin screwed!'

that was the theme ... up to friday morning.

I was teetering on the lower of edge of that rollercoaster when a thought shouldered itself into my crowded head, muttering something about the Chet Project. i hadn't done anything on the project all week so it seemed to come from nowhere.

'Do another Chet tune. Now. Do this one right here.
"You Don't Know What Love Is." 'Do it now.'

So i did.

And as soon as I began, i knew it was exactly the right thing to do.

Yes i had all this shedding to do on these new tunes on which i was playing trumpet and flugelhorn, with lots of exposed parts, lots of solos and TONS of unfamiliar keys, but PAY ATTENTION to this little thought that had the courage and fortitude to insinuate itself into a--'we know what he should be doing right now'-- consciousness, I DID.

I think this tune picked me this day because it knew that within it lie the strong emotional content that mirrored what i was feeling inside. I needed to play this particular song because its content and original recipe had within it the requisite feelings that would allow me to process all the stuff going on inside me.

In other words, this tune, this "You Don't Know What Love Is" would give me the raw materials out of which i could deconstruct the heaviness in my breast.

You don't know what love is
Until you've learned the meaning of the blues
Until you've loved a love you've had to lose
You don't know what love is.


Right from the start it was different. different from all the other tunes i'd done in this Chet Baker Project. for one thing, i didn't record against a clic or a drum track. in fact there's no drum track at all on the finished mix.

What this means of course is that i relied on the melody and the harmony to frame the entire piece. and although it's not a new idea, I had attempted this in previous tunes, working without a net--without a time reference, aka, a rhythm track--was an entirely new experience.

What it ended up giving me was the flexibility of phrasing; i could stretch out or lay behind the lyrics as much as i wanted. i could let the emotion of the words and sentiments linger long enough to let it breathe...to give the meaning of the words time to resonate with my memories and thus affect my delivery.

and i guess that's why my voice kept breaking. the trouble is it came at unanticipated times. trouble because i'm no enough of singer to know what the hell to do when it happens.

i'd be singing along, trying to keep each note in tune, each word understandable, each line in rhythm, then a word would snag one of those memories and one by one, the wheels would come off. my voice would melt, the pitch would sag and the consonants crumble until i'd simply have to stop.

And although this has happened many times now, it still catches me by surprise because i never know what words are going to trigger a tender spot in my heart/mind.

I think this is why i decided to share it that night; because of this strong and somewhat startling sentiment.

And how does this relate to my experience with music in my life? Where do i put this information so i can find it and use it in the future?

This is the question that lies at the heart of this whole project.

After all these years of letting my curiosity drive my musical endeavors, learning new instruments, seeing what it means to be a bass player or a drummer, or a piano player or a trumpet player or a percussionist, i think that maybe now it has come to seeing what it means to sing.

Moreover, to put vocal musical expression in situ with instrumental musical expression.

What does it feel like to be the trumpet player in the band? the pianist? the percussionist? the bass player? the drummer? the singer?

What does it mean to be a musician?

That said, i have no ambition whatsoever to sing in public. i do however plan to let this strange emotional response to the lyrics of a song lead me to another experience of this connection between human emotions and the art of music.

we'll see.

Stupid-Easy Instructions for Adding Audio to Blog

I did it! Damn it. I did it!

This is how you can do it too. I have to think there is an easier way, a way with less steps, not written for the Department of Redundancy Department but i don't know of one. That's why i wrote this.

OK. Fasten your seatbelts. Here we go.

One way to add audio to specific posts on Google Blogger using zShare host site.

These directions presume an existing post to which you wish to add an audio file.

Go to http://www.zshare.net and sign up for a free account.

Go to http://www.Blogger.com

Dial up your blog.
Click 'Edit Posts' tab.

Choose post to which you wish to add audio file.

Open another window and navigate to your zShare account.
Follow directions to upload an audio file.

After file is successfully uploaded, click on the hyperlink associated with it on the page. This will play the file and (on the same page), give you an option to link the file to a blog site. Click on the Blogger logo to automatically send the audio file's Html code to the site.

On this page, (in the Html window), you will see the code string that corresponds to the audio file you just uploaded. Copy this code by selecting and copying it using the keystrokes appropriate for your specific computer (mine is a Mac so I press the command key and the letter c simultaneously to copy something on the screen. Ctrl C on PCs).

Go back to your blog and navigate to the post to which you want to add the audio file by clicking on 'Edit Post.'

In Blogger's Html Content window put your cursor at the beginning of the post (in front of all other text) and paste the information you just copied from zShare. (Command V on Macs, Ctrl V on PCs)

Click 'Preview' to see your new audio code. You should see a hyperlink.

Note: If you do not want the zShare logo to show on your blog, you can delete this in the first string of code. I wouldn't mess with much else unless you feel confident you can deal with whatever happens when you start messing with computer code language magic mumbo jumbo.

Ok. Good. Now you have time for dinner.

Close your computer and walk away. For now.

Modern Technology teaches Old Dog How to Play Dead

This post is a continuation of the previous hair-pulling extravaganza.

So there i was, at the end of a day that started out in quiet contemplation and peace and ended...well it hadn't ended yet.
This is what happened:

I was searching for a way to add the fruits of my labor--that is to say the tracks of the Chet Baker tunes I was working on to lay down to use to practice the various musical skills and sensibilities, to manifest the sounds and emotions i hear and feel when listening to and/or imagining Chet's music.

i needed to post audio to my blog.
so i set out to do just that. it turned out to be an exercise in computer technology.

if my knowledge and expertise about this sleek little white box on my lap was pudding, you'd be really pissed off if your momma gave you a bowl of it and called it dessert.

However.

I nonetheless plunged in head first. intrepid warrior that i am.

Embedding audio in a blog can go one of two ways apparently: you can stream it in or you can point the blog to another site that is hosting it. neither of these things i understand.

even if i did, it turns out that some of the sites that profess to get the job done, fall way short of delivering. this can be upsetting to the user with barely enough know-how to craft a query to use to find what they seek.

in fact, i have to say that this one thing, knowing what to ask, how and where to ask it (i guess that's three things) is a veritable trifecta in triumph. if it works. which it didn't.

So i looked on Blogger's site, Tumblr's site and Wordpress's site for answers to questions like:

'How to add audio to blogs' (seemed to me a pretty accurate statement for what i needed...turns out not)

'Add audio files' (another dud)

'Blogger audio post' (this one produced results in a nice array of rabbit holes that provided hours of amusement)

I tried many more of course but none knocked it out of the park.

Chasing down a search element is something like chasing your tail. Course i don't know for sure, not having one myself. And come to think of it, i can't really say that because of the fact that our dog used to chase his own tail; 'cept he would actually catch it. no one was more surprised then he was.

Unlike my puppy dog, i intended to catch my own tail. Trouble is, as i proceeded on my search i seem to be getting farther and farther from my original goal. this was a curious phenomenon. what was happening i think was that with each fruitless search, i'd widen the net more and more until the results would be just random bullshit.

My blind thoughts were leading my blind search. result? more blindness and less hours till dinner.

It wasn't all a vast wasteland of ignorant prodding about though. i stayed remarkably calm and tried to think of other ways to ask the question.

Some hits would offer a solution, and i'd follow it through, downloading what it said to download, type in what it said to type in, act like it said to act. only to find out at the end of it the sad truth:

It didn't work because:

it wasn't a program originally written for Mac OS
or
it was a program written for Macs but it just plain didn't fucking work
or
it works on Macs but not on the latest version of the OS
or
it works but you can only upload files in a certain oddball format
or
it works but only on Safari, not on Firefox. (this one was my personal favorite; it was the last and biggest time-invested failure of the day and of course it took place 6 hours into it)

That said, i'd have to say that aside from the platform problems and the browser sensitivity the thing that really toasted my tips was the log-in failures.

I can see how my ignorance would preclude any hopes for immediate success but when you find a site that hosts audio and the code works on your blog site and all the other ducks are in their proper rows, it should be game over: put the horses in the wagon, cuz it's all downhill from here.

but no.

I successfully posted an audio to the blog but when i went back to the host site to upload another, i couldn't log on. it didn't recognize me. even after asking for a different password (why the fuck do i need a password anyway, it's not like it's a banking site) i kept getting that irritating message:

PASSWORD DOES NOT MATCH OUR RECORDS; PLEASE TRY AGAIN


This message is second only to other, equally annoying ones. Messages like:

'File does not exist'
and
'No suitable plugins found to play this file'

I was still pretty calm.

I was introduced to the concept of CODE. Oh goodie.



First of all they don't call it 'code' for nothing. This stuff might as well be written in Cuniform characters. what is with all this mumbo jumbo <`~> vch/false/bullshit. I mean really. Like the sign says:

Speak American!

I love this code stuff though. once i got past the urge to kill, i found it sorta charming, the way if you just left off one of those curly cues, there wouldn't be a play button, or the file would all of a sudden be a photograph instead of an audio file for the interface would show up in size 50 font or the window would disappear altogether. Cool in a kind of sideways sadistic way.

Then i hooked up with a site called zShare. I don't remember how i got it. a random hit, a forum. who knows. i'm glad i did cuz it did the trick.

But i had to be resourceful to get the thing to do what i wanted it to do: post a specific audio file to a specific post. in other words i needed "I Remember You' a tune that Chet recorded and that i covered, to post alongside the written post about the recording "I Remember You.' Simple right?

I thought so.

But then again, i wasn't hip to all this computer language stuff. not that i am now mind you. i'm just celebrating the fact that i was able to design a protocol all by myself that got my audio files shoulder-to-shoulder with their post-partners. Hooray for me.

How did i do it?

In the next post you will find a step-by-step knuckleheaded procedure especially designed by and for all you backyard mechanics so you too can marry your posts with their betrothed.

I remember you

I Remember you.mp3



This is how it goes.

I need/want to do something. anything. could be adding a widget. could be saving a portion of a tune or deleting a code segment.

ok. i lied. i've no idea what a widget is let alone know how to even ask the right questions to learn how to add one. where would i add it? presumably to something that has hitherto gone widgetless? yeah, right.

anyhow, this is how it begins; i need to do something. in this case it was adding the mp3 file of this tune "I Remember You" to my blog.

easy sleazy right?
well shit, you'd think so. i mean you can add a video or a picture by clicking a freakin button on any blog site you wanna name. i should know. i've made the rounds.

yeah, blogs are omnipresent these days and you'd think that on account of us not being able to swing a dead car without hitting one (i'm so sorry to have just typed that; i love kitty kats. i really do) there really should be at least one that allows even the greenhorn-wet-behind-the-ears-over 30-first-time-rodeo clown type of dude to click a button and add an audio file.

not so much. not easy. almost not even possible. or so it was seeming.

i had my expert son in my corner. (expert at Information Technology)--notice how i pay my fealty to this quasi-religion by capitalizing--you who have read any of these posts know how begrudgingly i capitalize things--it's a time thing.

he recommended Tumblr. I tried it. but the quirk (and every single damn one of these blog sites have on) for Tumblr was this annoying limit they have on the number of audio files you can upload in a twenty-four period. i mean really. jeezus, you'd think they were giving away free bath water for us all to throw the baby away in.

i tried My Space. That was just too slick and sleazy. i'm still getting sloppy seconds sex biker chick emails from this one. c'mon folks is EVERYONE you know addicted to porn? i mean don't get me wrong...i...no, let's stop the madness right here. as it is the SEO police will start pairing Sexed Up Sex Kittens on Parade with my blog. YAY!

where was i?

yeah. the blog sites i was running between in search of one that would allow me post audio on my blog. i mean this is not just a hollowy vague sort of desire. this IS a music-related blog right? and i AM putting down some originally banal renditions of some spectacular songs right?

so i tried Tumblr, Blogger, My Space and Wordpress.

This last one was particularly interesting/annoying.
It was recommended by an IT guy. that is: Information Technology THE KIND AND POPE OF ALL THINGS SHINY AND NEW. Am i getting carried away with my sarcasm or what?

What made Wordpress annoying is that it out and out wasted my time. my precious, precious, not-getting-paid-a-dime and out-of-a-paying-job, time. sick bastards!

Later i was told that their webmaster was out. out? out of what? out of a job? no...that would be me. Maybe he SHOULD be out of a job though. The webmaster...the all-knowing master of all things web-like was..."out." wtf?

i didn't wait around to find out just what that meant. time you know. bad enough i'm not getting paid for this; to then waste the time that would ordinarily be counted in my wages, if i had any, and count against the mandatory daily hourly wagery jobbery, which doesn't exist, is just anathema to a hard-working out-of-work worker such as myself.

so i went back to good ole Blogger. the mothership. the site of my first blog. my no-more-virgin-social-networking-pop culture experience. Pop!

yep, i went back to see if i could make it work. i left it, whored myself out to other sites. slept around if you will. but seeing no other legs of sufficient interest, none so long and slender, none so...oh oh...more Sex.Sex and More Sex in Your Very Own Sexed-up Sex...Sex spam.

determined to make this work for me, to figure out how to add audio to this blog of mine, i hit the keys one morning around 10am, just after sitting for a while getting all centered and calm.

turns out it was good thing, that i spent a little time meditating that is. i mean don't get me wrong; i'm no monk. but i've been doing it long enough you'd think i'd be a tad farther along in the 'peaceful grasshopper' department.

at any rate, it was a good thing i started the day out as cool, calm and collected as i did given the SHIT storm that slowly, methodically stalked my sorry ass the moment it hit the chair.

i began searching (researching, we like to call it in the biz), happily punching buttons, Googling (notice the obsequious capitalization, now THAT's RESPECT), wading through hit after hit of unrelated homonym-driven bullshit that the OS seemed to think i needed.

i ran across all manner of 'expert advice' in forums, chat rooms, company websites, blog 'HELP' files. Now this last one the "HELP" files. this one really deserves to slapped up-side the head with a friggin two-by-four.

"HELP?" Really? i thought, in my silly, over-forty sensibility meant that this is where you go when you need assistance, like,

"Don't know what you're doing? Click here and we'll HELP."
or

"Hey pal, you poor sonofabitch.
Too old?

"What's the matter Bucky? Smart-ass computer game-playing kids left you behind? Feeling dumb as a box of hammers?

Out of your element?"
"Can't find your ass with both hands today or figure out which end of the shovel to grab on to?"

Click on this: HELP button.
We'll straighten your curmudgeony ass right the hell out!

Again and again i fell for this.
Click on the HELP button. Wince. Stand back and wait for the damn thing to explode into a million tiny nuggets of wisdom. All the right pieces right there for me pick through and find just the right one.

Never happened.

But what DID happen was it contributed greatly to the growing knot in my stomach. the one that had healed over from the last bout with Information Technology. (this capitalization lip service is losing its charm fast).

Not to be deterred, i calmly navigated from stop sign to stop sign, slowing down for the occasional bright promise. Every rabbit hole eventually lead nowhere. just deeper dirt.

Wouldn't have been too bad, if it had stayed linear like that; every tutorial, every 'newly hacked' code from yet another braniac youngster with nothing better to do then jerk us older codgers'around ending in a dead end right away. but no. some actually worked....but not...wait for it...
not on Firefox.
or
not on Safari.
or
not on your mama!

and that's when the shit hit the fan for me.

5 hours of doggedly following my nose from promise to frustration, after a while it gets to a fellow.

but it's all good.

hidden among the twisted wreckage lies the rich stuff, those twinkling gems of hard-won knowledge sacrificed on the altar of ignorance.

it's all good.