No "Stairway"!

The Post has an article today about local institution Chuck Levin's Washington Music Center.

You haven't seen the ads, you say? Yeah, Chuck's doesn't really do much advertising. Also, employees don't really have titles. The two guys running the place -- Levin's sons, who took over when Chuck died three years ago -- don't really have offices. Most instruments don't really have price tags. Until six months ago, the store didn't have a formal return policy. Buy something and your receipt's handwritten.

Yet somehow, out of its jampacked, run-down, bazaarlike buildings, Chuck's continues to sell more instruments than any other single music store in America.

I keep thinking perhaps I might try taking up the guitar as part of my trying to learn something new to keep my brain from atrophying any more than it has. Or maybe, if nminusone annoys me enough, the digital accordion. ;) I had an alto sax a very long time ago and was pretty good at it, but it wasn't ever really what I wanted to play. (My school music teacher basically assigned people to instruments based on how well they could get a sound out of a sample mouthpiece, so I didn't get to play flute like I'd hoped and they already had enough clarinet players. Saxophone it was.) I think it's one of those instruments that just works out better if you're good at improv, which I'm not.

What I'd really like to take up would be the cello, but I think serious consideration of that will wait until I'm not living in a townhouse right next to my neighbors who haven't yet pissed me off particularly.

(no subject)

Eeee!!! Look what I found while *cough* innocently wandering around Amazon, window shopping:



I have, of course, already ordered my copy. (The image is linked.)

And now I mean it, I'm on book-buying restriction until I get through a lot more of the unread stuff I already have. Think I can hold out on buying any more books until I somehow manage to finish Dhalgren? Heh. No, I don't either.