(This blog was supposed to be up some 10 hours ago. Thanks, Comcast.)

Pictureless Sunday

Hello, end of weekenders, and welcome to a Picture Sunday blog. With no pictures.

I left it a little late to look for my camera software and can't put my hands on it at the moment. It's been a busy day. Cleaned my house for several hours, a shower, dressed, Mr M came down, and the family celebrated Granny's (my mom's) birthday tonight. The birthday was Friday, but we never celebrate on the day.

I thank you all for being patient while things return to normal here. I'm almost there. I even have my next movie idea, and since I'm not working this week, I'll try to get it going and online.

I did get Paint Shop Pro back up and working again, so never fear, recipe du jour lovers, there should be more recipes in your future.

In the meantime, let's play a round of "I Was Driven Crazy This Week In A Way You May Have Been At Some Time, Too."

It all started this past Monday. I sat down in the Comfy Chair to watch an episode of "Top Gear," the BBC show that's a car show but so much more. It started right off the bat with host Jeremy Clarkson reviewing a Ferrari. And the beginning went a little bit like this. And when I say it went a little bit like this, I of course meant it went exactly like this, because I got a sound clip of it.

Listen!

The second that segment began, I popped out of my chair. "What's that piece of music?" I asked myself. "I know that. I've played that. I think Community Band has played that." And as you'll know if you listened to the clip, it was just a few seconds of song, but it immediately burned itself into my memory. That night I mentioned it to Stennie in passing as we were recording the Hucklebug podcast. Well, it was passing in the conversation between us, but I couldn't get it out of my head.

After recording, I went straight to iTunes. I went to their music store and started searching for every suite of songs Community Band has ever played. "Aha!" I exclaimed. "Got it! The pavane from the William Byrd Suite!" Problem solved.

Until...

Until I realized I liked that tune so much I wanted to buy it, and so I bought the pavane from the William Byrd Suite, and that wasn't the song. That was Monday. I spent the entire week in agony.

Wednesday after band practice I stopped by Mr M's. I tried to hum the song for him and he looked at me like I was from outer space. That was my fault. It was a pretty random and tuneless hum.

Saturday, after finally getting my Polderbits sound recorder and editor all configured up, wait. Doing that was a wild time. I got my new access key, the Polderbits people make that extremely easy, and got everything reloaded only to have it not work. The help site kept telling me my sound card wasn't configured, or was configured but not capable of doing all the stuff it did before. I had a couple of martinis and sent a few frantic emails to Stennie, and somewhere in between my hinkiness and her trying to find alternate solutions, I did the strangest and most random thing and I still have no idea how it happened. I basically right-clicked and got a new icon that looked like a sound card, hit a button that said "enable," and voila, Bob's your uncle, easy as piss, I had a Polderbits that worked like a charm, just like the one on the old computer. And I was happy. A little buzzed, and very happy.

OK, so that all taken care of, my first order of business was to grab an instrument, the flute was the handiest, and make a recording of the melody line from the song. I sent it to Mr M. Again, he said he'd never heard that in his life. I was still frustrated.

Then I started to change my way of thinking. I'd looked through our band website's music library, I'd pulled out some old Band spring concert CDs and listened through them - and believe me, folks, that's a pretty scary proposition - and I kept coming up empty. So I decided that if it wasn't a band arrangement, maybe I knew it from a movie.

Ah, but then I got smart. I remembered that BBCAmerica shows repeats of "Top Gear" on Sunday mornings. I got out the Flip video camera and stood at the ready. That's how I got the above sound clip.

I sent it to Stennie (movie person that she is), and said that since maybe I could know this song from a movie, please give it a listen. She emailed back. Not familiar in the least. But she said she'd ask her friend Scotty Dude, who was generally very good about song recognition.

Not much later Mr M showed up online and I rushed to send him the file. And just so you'll all know what a bad flute player I am, he immediately recognized it this time. "It's a Polovetsian Dance," he said. "Hans Conried." (I thought he was either crazy or trying to be silly, and only found out tonight he meant "Hans Conried used to sell those albums on TV with the Polovetsian Dances on them.")

I went to the iTunes music store again and searched for the ol' Polovetsian Dances, and all I could find was that horrible "Stranger in Paradise" one, I detest that piece of crap, but that's beside the point. As I was getting ready to get all dejected again, Mr M chimed in and said, "No, wait, it's a pavane. It's 'Pavane for a Dead Infant.'" Again, I thought he was being silly, as I once translated the duet "Dunque Io Son" to "I Drowned Our Son." ("I drowned our son/he's only one/o look out yon/he's in the pond.")

Then all of a sudden he boinged me online. "Wait! It's Faure - it's a pavane by Faure." I went back to iTunes, found something called "Pavane, op. 50," and there it was. The song that had driven me absolutely batshit crazy for a week.

Community Band has never played anything by Faure, God knows the Sauerkraut Band hasn't, and so then I was thinking, "Ah, from a movie then." Mr M referred me to a wikipedia page on the piece, though, and as I read through the tidbits on this piece of music - including its being used while Jeremy Clarkson drives a Ferrari on "Top Gear" - there is no reason at all this song should be so familiar to me.

(By the way, later, Scotty Dude knew the song as well, right of the bat, but still, no movie it was from.)

So now I'm going crazy trying to figure out where I've heard it. If you know where I've heard it, please tell me. I'm crazy enough.

And just in case you're wondering, there actually is a song called "Pavane for a Dead Infant." Well, it's called "Pavane pour une Infante Defunte," which apparently means "Pavane for a Dead Princess," but sounds like it should be "Pavane for a Dead Infant."

It's our son. I drowned him. Look out yon. He's in the pond.

Stay tuned for pictures and acros and movies and all those things that used to be regulars at Betland. Thanks.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Ready for vacation, day one! Cleaned the house today, so on tap for tomorrow - nothing!