Rebooting

So the past few months I've been sadly ignoring my banjo in favor of class and internet and Gargoyle and sleeping. I figured the new year is as good a time as any to get playing again, so for the past few days I've been doing the Daily Frail on Tangier Sound, which is the home base of my banjo heroes, father/son duo Pat and Patrick Costello. They're really fantastic teachers and are great at utilizing the web's ability to create social spaces and propagate knowledge. Although the banjo is their primary focus, they also do workshops for the steel guitar and ukulele and have some interesting and enriching thoughts about the nature of music-making and life in general. They are also designing and selling a growing line of high-quality American-made banjos that seem excellent. I would really recommend checking them out.

Anyways, today was the first day of classes, including my much-anticipated class with Terry Lawson. Lawson used to be the primary film reviewer for the Detroit Free Press, and I grew up reading his reviews, so he's kind of a pseudo-celebrity to me. So far he seems extremely high-energy and a little prone to heading off on tangents. The title of the course is "The Screenplay as Literature," but he seems resistant to the concept inherent in the name, and has pitched it as moreso an introduction to the structure and history of screenplays and a precursor to the Screenwriting class. Anyway, he seems cool and knowledgeable and will tell us stories about interviewing Rob Schneider and other excellent adventures in journalism.

Okay, well I'm obviously out of practice blogging and the past two paragraphs have exhausted me, so I'll stop now.

[Cross-posted to my Xanga]