Help me choose a new auto registration plate

[aihfl]

I'm going to have to get a new auto registration plate this year. Since we don't have a plate for "Beautify Florida: Kill a Developer," "Florida: NOT God's Waiting Room," or "Florida Loves Space Aliens: Our Governor is One!" one of the nine below will have to suffice. Who better to help me pick one other than my Bluelight besties. Listed my reasons why I like each one below:

Cute de-feralled canine/fenine

Currently have the old version of this plate. Love animals, but maybe it's time for something new.

Discover Florida's Oceans

Avid scuba diver and sailor; love the ocean

The Everglades - River of Grass

There's nowhere else on earth like it and it's Florida's only National Park. It is an amazing, beautiful, fragile and extremely threatened place. A kayaker's paradise.

Protect Florida Springs

Used to have this one on a former vehicle. Our natural springs are not some trickle coming out of rocks. Well, some of them are, but many of them are big, extremely deep holes in the ground full of some of the clearest water imaginable. Or at least they will be until bottled water companies and overpopulation suck all the water out of the ground and/or agricultural and urban runoff turn them into something resembling New York City's Gowanus Canal. I like the scuba diver and have done my share of spring and sinkhole diving.

Protect Our Oceans

Another ocean plate

Protect Our Reefs

Self-explanatory; our reefs are threatened just like everyone else's; like the diver down flag in the lower left

Save Peabut!
.
.
.

I mean Our Seas!

Another ocean plate that has divers on it. The shark is pretty cool too.

Save Wild Florida

Should I just generalize all my environmental passions? And the butterfly is pretty.

NASA Cool Option

Whoops, almost forgot this one. I love Kennedy Space Center. It's the only "attraction" worth buying an annual pass for. Fuck theme parks, especially the evil Disney.

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

protect our reefs. solid call to action and the msdos looking graphic is the best of them.

bet a mod would be nice enough to add a poll if you wanted.

 

[Xorkoth]

I think the shark one, because it says to the guy behind you "back up motherfucker or I'll eat you". Just don't get the standard "myflorida.com" one with the oranges on it... I've learned to hate that thing, it's like a third of the cars on the street in my town and they're always driving like, uh... fucking Floridians!

 

[aihfl]

Yeah I'm partial to "Save our Seas" but I like the reef one too. The reef one goes to support the Reef Environmental Educational Foundation, an organization I used to volunteer for doing fish counts back when I was scuba diving a lot. They put me through a fish ID class plus gave me some swag including a UW slate and ID chart.

And people aren't just stupid on the roads. I saw a boat about to drop anchor on top of a reef off Islamorada because all the mooring buoys being were used, until he figured out after having three boatloads of divers yelling at him that he was about to commit a Federal crime. I don't have to worry too much about geezer driving in Orlando since we're not a retirement destination (tourons are another story) but in my itinerant musician days after Orlando's Florida Symphony kiboshed, I spent a lot of time in Southwest Florida playing in orchestras from Sarasota to Naples and teaching part time at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers and EVERYONE has a being rear-ended story, including myself in the parking lot of the Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples. Usually the people who did it have more money than the almighty him(her?)self and try to buy their way out of it because they're mortally afraid of having the state yank their driver license. I had a former mentor whose first university job was at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee and he was a hardcore cyclist and got hit by an RV with, you guessed it, a Florida plate. And they were too out of it to even notice the mangled bike and bloodied mess on the side of the road and kept going. Speaking of The Villages, I used to play for pocket change in this little rinky-dink community orchestra they have up there as a favor to the Italian windbag conductor who was a friend of mine. On a break I was about to step off a curb to cross the street and this golf cart comes zooming (yes, a zooming golf cart) around a corner and the guy yells, "IDIOT!" at me. I was about to give him the finger and my friend who was with me stopped me and said, "That guy's been waiting his entire life to say that to someone" and I let it go.

 

[Xorkoth]

Haha, sounds about right.

That's cool you're a musician, what do you play? I'm a musician too, though I haven't been involved in classical music since high school, but its influence is strong in my playing (piano/keys).

 

[aihfl]

Played oboe for my career as an orchestra musician but minored in piano in college. Still play piano recreationally. Great stress buster. Had to go see Guns 'n Roses on their "Not in this Lifetime" tour a few years ago (apparently Slash's response at some point when asked if he'd go on the road again with Axl) since Paradise City was the first song I learned during my very short lived career as a garage band keyboard player in high school.

 

[Xorkoth]

Nice. I started playing piano in third grade, and concert band percussion in fifth grade... went through the keyboard-like mallet instruments (marimba was my favorite), snare/etc, eventually mostly settled on timpani once I got to high school because all the other percussionists were tone-deaf and it was like nails on a chalkboard having any of the others do it. I was quite serious about classical piano but I had no idea how to improvise, only read other peoples' music and recite it (which was also really fun and rewarding). Then I narrowly made the decision to go into computer science in college instead of music (which I certainly don't regret at all), and ended up not touching the piano for 12 years until I was 30 (my ex-wife was a classical pianist who went all the way through professional artists' certificate). I felt increasingly alienated from the piano, occasionally I'd sit down to try to play and I felt like I just couldn't... over time I didn't even realize what it was I was missing. I did sing and whistle, a lot... I've been in choirs for large portions of my life.

Then I made some good friends and I'd go to their place when they were jamming/practicing and sing parts I made up... I didn't know they could hear me but one day they cornered me and were like dude, you need to start playing music with us. So I figured I'd do hand drums since I was insecure about piano. I got a djembe and it was pretty fun, but then one day this drummer they were trying out offered us his cheap old Casio keyboard. I played it on a jam they were doing, it was actually an organ tone the first time I played again. We get to record everything because my friend built a recording studio in his apartment, and it ended up being pretty amazing and it totally restored my faith in myself... the Casio broke the next time I tried to use it so I ran out and bought myself an decent entry-level Yamaha electric keyboard. I've way upgraded since then and my style is totally different, but it was cool because all the technical stuff got drilled into me so hard as a kid so I didn't need to re-learn it, and even the muscle memory returned pretty quickly.

Now what I'm struggling with is that at home, I have an electric piano made to emulate a concert grand as much as possible (Steinway grand samples, 95% the same weighting/feel to the keys), and I practice on it all the time and have re-learned to prefer full weighting, I can just play better with full weighting. But my main keyboard is only partially weighted. I'm trying to determine if I should get my main keyboard (Nord Electro 2) fully weighted.

 

[aihfl]

I was shopping for a piano (I wanted an upright or a spinet since my house is only about 1200 sq ft) but then my ex generously gave me her dad's old gig piano from back when he was jazz man, and it is fully weighted. With my interest in early western music, what I really wanted to play was the organ or harpsichord, but my Asian "Tiger mother" made me stick with piano, which is why I didn't touch a piano for years. I still have regrets not having learned how to get around on an organ pedalboard competently, plus the keys on both a harpsichord and organ are smaller and much much lighter to the touch, plus a harpsichord has that characteristic "pluck" to the keys since the strings are plucked and not hammered.

I too went through the bells/xylophone thing in high school band since I was too uncoordinated to march, so my HS band director put me on the sidelines in front of a xylophone. I fucking hated marching band, but without eating his shit, I wouldn't have been able to audition for All-State ensembles because he was a dick. But I guess it wasn't all bad because the first time I got a handjob was on a dark school bus coming back from either an away football game or marching band competition and I got my first handful of boob underneath a blanket while freezing my nuts off at a late-season marching band competition while in the stands watching other bands.

Our principal percussionist in the Florida Symphony was nicknamed "sneakers in the dryer" but I shouldn't speak ill of him since he died recently. Plus he was my loading dock smoking buddy. Another one, who has hired specifically for drumset on pops concerts was nicknamed "Bam Bam." Good times. My mother, who still can't resist taking a jab at me every now made some statement alluding to how my education was such a waste since I'm no longer working in music anymore, but I told her in retirement I plan on writing books about what a freakshow professional orchestras are, and a second book about all the interesting people I've met in psych hospitals and rehabs. Some remote corner of Eastern KY or WV sounds perfect for that. Plus, I'm still working in the education sector (luckily, based on how bad my addiction was) and I've just evolved, I suppose.

 

[Xorkoth]

Yeah my sister got her BA in french horn performance. She joined a couple of orchestras and wasn't making enough money and she sort of fell into being an executive assistant for someone on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. She ended up liking that world and has been promoted within several times and now she travels the world doing stuff for them and is an executive herself. She is in an orchestra for fun now, on the side. She's told me some pretty funny stories about how ridiculous that world can be. I mean, I saw it too. My ex was basically ruined by that world. She had an "ivory tower" sort of idea about music, like anything not classical (or jazz she was also okay with, but if people improvised in anything but jazz it was "not music") was not quite music. Apparently people were only capable of writing real music hundreds of years ago. Her piano teacher basically taught her that the world owes it to her to support her... I was supposed to provide all the money and pay off her student loans, because she was so talented and was destined for greatness in reciting other peoples' music. And it even kinda makes sense, that attitude, because the people generally winning piano competitions and getting famous in the concert circuit are the kids of rich families who are supported and can dedicate everything to becoming near-perfect at an instrument. If you can't do that, you have to teach to make money, and my ex also felt that teaching was beneath her until she retired from performing. She hit age 30, realized it wasn't gonna happen (there are age limits to these competitions), and had a nervous breakdown, stopped playing, and hasn't been the same since.

Don't get me wrong, I love classical music. But I also love music today, and world music, and really pretty much any kind of music as long as it's passionate and authentic. To me, the most amazing part of music is that you can just start playing and it feels like tapping into something that's always happening and you're just expressing it via music in this moment. Spontaneously creating something new that's never been done before... it's exhilarating.

 

[aihfl]

Her piano teacher basically taught her that the world owes it to her to support her... I was supposed to provide all the money and pay off her student loans, because she was so talented and was destined for greatness in reciting other peoples' music. And it even kinda makes sense, that attitude, because the people generally winning piano competitions and getting famous in the concert circuit are the kids of rich families who are supported and can dedicate everything to becoming near-perfect at an instrument. If you can't do that, you have to teach to make money, and my ex also felt that teaching was beneath her until she retired from performing.

Yeah, I fucking hate that. The Florida Symphony was a nationally respected regional orchestra (and a real job that paid a weekly salary and benefits etc.) and I feel pretty good about having made it that far without the advantages you mentioned. I would say a vast majority of the people in the big league orchestras that I've met came from wealthy families who didn't think anything of forking over several hundred grand for a good instrument (strings), supported them financially so you could practice eight hours a day and pay through the nose to go to an expensive conservatory. As far as the thing about being owed a living, two things immediately came to mind. 1. When the Louisville Orchestra was struggling, one of my friends in that orchestra told me about a publicity stunt where orchestra members were going to go file for unemployment in their concert black. I told him I can't think of a worse thing they could do. They're not owed a living contrary to what many of them think and they're just going to look like entitled assholes when no one gives a shit about the guy who had 30 years at GM and got laid off. 2. Another friend in Sarasota was trying to get me to say that going on strike was a good idea (both the Florida Symphony and the Florida Philharmonic, the Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach orchestra) went on strike, and neither of them are around anymore. Miami built a new performing arts center and the Florida Philharmonic was supposed to be one of the anchor tenants, so when the orchestra shut down, the Arsht Center just got the Cleveland Orchestra to come down and do a residency. So I said sure, go on strike. Give your Board of Directors a reason to just shut down the whole show and get an orchestra of musicians who want a break from snow and ice for a few weeks.

After all my negative experience with orchestra and university faculty politics, I thought I had soured on music period, but over time, I came to realize I love music just as much as before all this life experience, I just don't like musicians. But then again, I'm not a people person in general, either. I have a weekly trivia game I go to with friends from AA that I go to because they count on me to be there, but I have to pop an Ativan beforehand and even then it really takes me a while to warm up to everyone (and I consider these people my friends) and start enjoying myself. I'm much happier alone, whether it's in a kayak, on a hike, just sitting at home with a book or DVD and a cappuccino, or sitting down at the piano and reading through some Bach or Mozart. It took a long time and a lot of therapy to get there, but I'm finally truly independent and comfortable with, and by myself. It'd be nice to get laid once in a while, but I'm even beyond that anymore.

 

[Jabberwocky]

protect our reefs. solid call to action and the msdos looking graphic is the best of them.

bet a mod would be nice enough to add a poll if you wanted.

I second this

 

[spacejunk]

yeah - get the rocketship, man!

v[video]`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWGNIM1rGWA[/video]

 

[aihfl]

Thank you for creating the poll SJ. Yes, I like the NASA plate too. It's near and dear to me because every time I leave the neighborhood, it's usually down John Young Parkway, named for Orlando native and astronaut John Watts Young, the only astronaut ever to have piloted four different types of NASA spacecraft, the old Gemini capsule, the Apollo command module, the Apollo lunar module (one of only three astronauts that went to the moon twice) and the space shuttle (he commanded the very first shuttle mission on Columbia in 1982). He died just this past January at age 87.

Young (left) and co-pilot Robert Crippen during training while the shuttle was still in the Vehicle Assembly Building

 

[Jabberwocky]

How is Florida treating you dude?

 

[aihfl]

How is Florida treating you dude?

It's been home for so long now (about 25 years, off and on) it's really "home." I've lived here way longer than anywhere else, by a long shot. It has its problems, but so does everywhere else.

 

[Xorkoth]

^True that...

After all my negative experience with orchestra and university faculty politics, I thought I had soured on music period, but over time, I came to realize I love music just as much as before all this life experience, I just don't like musicians. But then again, I'm not a people person in general, either. I have a weekly trivia game I go to with friends from AA that I go to because they count on me to be there, but I have to pop an Ativan beforehand and even then it really takes me a while to warm up to everyone (and I consider these people my friends) and start enjoying myself. I'm much happier alone, whether it's in a kayak, on a hike, just sitting at home with a book or DVD and a cappuccino, or sitting down at the piano and reading through some Bach or Mozart. It took a long time and a lot of therapy to get there, but I'm finally truly independent and comfortable with, and by myself. It'd be nice to get laid once in a while, but I'm even beyond that anymore.

I've known people who went through the whole music school/post music school thing, who got turned off to music as well. It's really a shame. Basically some musicians, and some people in higher education, get a serious ego trip going on and it becomes about ego for them. Combine the two, and watch out... However I know a lot of musicians, and only some are that way. Throughout my life, musicians have consistently been some of my favorite people, and to this day it holds true. Find some people who are doing it simply for the love of doing it, and you'll find some cool and inspiring people.