Matisse/Picasso Exhibit

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(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

The Matisse/Picasso exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art was incredible! We have all seen so many copies and prints of paintings by these men, especially Picasso. To see the original paintings is out of this world. Some of them are very large. I was surprised at how large a few of them were. Seeing the texture of the paintings is one of the advantages of seeing them on exhibit.

I now have two prints framed and hanging above my bed. The large one on the left is Picasso’s “Girl Before a Mirror,” painted in 1932. The smaller print on the right is Matisse’s “Goldfish.” (I don’t know the date.) The Matisse is soft and soothing. The Picasso is something that may induce dreams of an erotic/horror film nature. Giant women with lopsided boobs and striped bellies will be chasing me through a psychadelic house of mirrors. As I frantically try to escape, I will probably end up knocking the thing off the wall, causing it to gash my head open at the left temple.

Or maybe not.

This exhibit was well worth the cost of tickets and the drive to Queens. It was inspiring.

Posted at 11:55 PM (EST)

THE DANNY GODINEZ BAND STRIKES AGAIN

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(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

THIS PAST TUESDAY, April 29, the Danny Godinez Band played the Pattenburg House. Danny, Todd, Farko and Joe Raven were back, filling that smoky little place with quality music much deserving of a larger venue. Since October, I had been anticipating their next East Coast tour. I was not disappointed by their show or by their friendship.

These boys are excellent musicians, top notch. Guitar work that is smooth, rich and versatile. Drumming that spares no talent and remains powerful and controlled from start to finish. Piano sounds that put their arms around you and lift you off your seat. Bass work that is astounding. It all blends together in their own unique sound. When you hear the Danny Godinez Band you know it is them.

Truly, they deserved a much larger crowd than the one that turned out on Tuesday. Tuesday night and rural Hunterdon County, New Jersey are not the proper combination to produce a thronging audience. A Friday or Saturday night would have been better. Even then, I think this band is worthy of greater exposure than the Pattenburg can offer. Here we were, a stone’s throw from New York City and all those people were missing the show. It was almost an insult to the band that there was only a four dollar cover charge that night. These guys drove across the country from Seattle in order to share their music with people. We need to provide more people to hear it next time.

ANOTHER quality about this band is their personalities. Each of them is friendly. They are eager to play their music and just as eager to mingle with the crowd. They have a way of turning spectators into participants, fans into friends.

I appreciate this aspect of the band’s interaction with the audience. I met them at the Pattenburg in October and drove to Connecticut to see them the following night. I’ve exchanged a few emails with some of the band members in the intervening months. When I arrived at the show an hour late on Tuesday, it was good to hear that they had been asking for me before I got there. During one of the breaks, one of the guys and I had a great conversation. It wasn’t just a bar conversation about the girls who dumped us or the cars that broke down that week. It was a talk that friends engage in, the kind that leaves you with an interest in the other person’s struggles and aspirations. It culminated in an open invite to hang out in Seattle. You can be sure that I will take up that offer.

I’m a fan. I’m a friend. I’m a promoter. Go see this band when they come around! They are worth it! Read more about them in one of my earlier entries HERE.

I AM NOT A SUPER HERO

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(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

I AM NOT a super hero.

I know that may come as a shock to some of you. Yet, I must confess that it is so. I am not Superman, nor Batman, nor even Spiderman. My deceitfulness in allowing you to believe that I was is hereby acknowledged. I am no super hero.

Could it be old age or a hopeful sign of maturity when a person realizes that they just cannot conquer the world as they had planned? The plans have gone awry. Castles stand unfinished. The paint for the masterpiece has hardened on the pallet. The bills are past due and the children are grown before we have finished raising them. All of it cannot be done. Our weakness meets us and we are too tired to return the grin.

OF LATE, I have experienced disappointment in accomplishing all that I had intended. In finances, education, family and spirituality, I am not where I had hoped to be at this point in my life.

Since separating from my second wife in 1997, finances have been tight. I am not complaining. There was a point in 1997 when I had lost everything, was out of work for a short time and had to start all over. I have come a considerable way since then. However, since the divorce was final in 1999 and I have had to pay significant child support, it often does not feel like a considerable improvement from those past years. Certainly I am doing my best, even working hard at supplementing my income with other business opportunities. But a person’s best is not always the same as their aspirations.

I cannot complain about the current state of my education. I have gone through computer programming school. Currently I am working towards my bachelors degree. Still I sense my weakness in these efforts, even as the super heroes in the cartoons often found themselves in worrisome situations and were often delayed in finding victory. Life happens. Children need you when you least expect it and at the times you had set aside for doing your homework. Migraines come to visit when you have fifty pages to read. Even your brakes go out on the way to take your algebra exam. “Could this be the end of our hero? Will he escape the kryptonite lined chamber? Stay tuned!”

Somehow, after the commercials, the good guys always win.

In my estimation, the area where weakness is most apparent to me is in my family. True, I have made a gargantuan effort to care for, provide for, love and teach my kids. Yet, it is in this effort that my weakness is most glaring to me because I know that I can never make up for the lack of attention of a mother. I cannot fully negate the effects of divorce. I have not been able to show my children what a true, loving, solid relationship or marriage is like. It’s not that I don’t desire to do that with all of my being. It just has not been in the cards to do so. I have had to go it alone. I have had to do my best. But I sometimes feel like an untrained man in the surgery room, running about putting band aids on potentially fatal wounds.

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Then there is spirituality. I have been one who has professed to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, since I was 17. Who would know it today? Out here in the distant lands, does anyone recognize this wayward one as a child of the King? Is there any hint of royalty despite the ragged and tattered garb of a runaway? Does the homesickness show in my eyes? Here is weakness. If I had the strength I would have already set off for home.

I SUPPOSE it takes some amount of humility to admit weakness. With the right amount of adversity, a person will feel their own weakness and admit it. There comes a point when confessing weakness is no longer a shameful ordeal. Rather, it is a welcome liberation. There is relief. There is acceptance, not of defeat, but of reality. There is an understanding of the challenges and of the strength possessed to face them. Though at this point one could be tempted to despair, ultimately there is determination instead. It is better to limp or crawl the rest of the way than it is to merely lie on the side of the road defeated.

When a person comes to terms with weakness, they don’t have all the answers. They don’t have assurance of complete success. Instead, they have peace. They have an understanding that disappointment and death are two different things. They sit calmly and thoughtfully longer than others. They don’t rush to the scene of an accident with the rest of the crowd. They have been in enough wrecks in their lives to know what it’s like.

THIS is where I am right now. I have no super hero aspirations or illusions. I don’t have all the answers I need. Sometimes, at the end of the day, I wonder how I even had the strength to spell my name. Then I pray to awake in the morning and find that the last twenty years of my life were just a bad dream. Without fail, the announcer’s voice starts and I know I must rise to the occasion.

“Will our hero live to see another day? Tune in tomorrow, same time, same channel, to see your friendly neighborhood Snyderman in action!”

Weak or not, I can’t let my fans down!

Coffee Dude

(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

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Group participation time again…

What thoughts does this picture evoke? When you look at it, what comes to your mind? Where is this setting? What time is it? Who is it? Write me a little story based on this coffee dude. If you send me something good, I might post it here – without making fun of you. If you send me something not good, well, I’ll just make fun of you! No really. Send me something.

Posted at 3:30 PM (EST)

Dropping Fiorinal at the Laser Show

(Originally posted on the website Continuum…)

Dear Faithful Reader,

I regret to inform you that last night’s laser show absolutely SUCKED!

Hard to believe that the spoof on economics below holds more promise of reality than my former anticipation of the laser show does. But alas, it is so! At first, I speculated that my preference for economics over rock-n-roll and laser enduced psychedelia was a sure sign that I had indeed crossed that line and had become officially OLD. They say that the memory is the first thing to go. But no! It is the COOLNESS that one loses! Long before a man forgets where he placed his keys when they are still in his hand or loses control over his bowels, his control over his own coolness slips from his grip. He trades his Mad Magazines in for the Wall Street Journal. No longer does he find his heroes on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine. Instead, his icons and gurus cast their spell over his feeble mind from the cover of Fortune Magazine.

However, upon further inspection I was relieved of the notion of having achieved oldness. Even my fifteen-year-old son concurred with the suckiness of the show. And my cousin was almost out of control due to the laser assault. Yes! I think she was ready to vomit from the motion of the stars and laser designs flying across the ceiling, not to mention the corniness of the announcer during the show. She taunted me to get up front and do the moonwalk. She raised her arms and sang “coo-coo-ca-choo” along with the Beatles. She clapped out of rhythm with the Beach Boys, messing up the entire audience, all 14 of us.

Okay. In fairness, I admit that the moonwalk idea was my own. I had my arms up too. Yes, I did the out-of-synch “Little Deuce Coop” clap too. But I had an excuse. I was under the influence of fiorinal, my migraine medicine. Yes, I was “Comfortably Numb,” waiting for the Pink Floyd show. Even without the lasers the room was spinning for me.

In days long ago, people used to drop acid or smoke pot when they listened to Pink Floyd. And now… Perhaps the issue in all of this is that I have crossed that line and am now old. I dropped migraine medicine in order to listen to Floyd! Fiorinal. Truth be told, fiorinal is just a “turbo” caffiene pill. It’s loaded with caffiene and just wires me out when I have to use it. “Fiorinal.” Sounds quite poetically related to “urinal.” I think it is an intentional relation because when you have a migraine you really don’t feel well enough to care if you’re pissed on, pissed off or just plain pissed.

The only thing worse than a migraine is a migraine accompanied by a Raritan Valley laser show.

Now back to the psychodelia of finishing my economics paper…

Posted at 12:45 PM (EST)