Every cloud has a silver blah blah blah.

The more eagle-eyed of you may have noticed that, on the right-hand side of this weblog, the number of handbell pieces I currently have in print has ominously dropped from four to two. (I've also updated the expected release date of the four pieces I've signed contracts on, added some more submissions, etc., but even the most eagle-eyed of you has not noticed that.) The thing about the thing is that the publisher of those two pieces has, for financial reasons, folded -- meaning, of course, that those two pieces are no longer in print.

It's depressing. But it's probably — in the long run — a positive. This publisher was small, but more importantly, they didn't have a distributor in the handbell world (meaning that none of the major handbell retailers, such as Jeffers Handbell Supply, carried the pieces. (I didn't bother to check things like that out — or much of anything — when I was originally submitting these pieces. Now my research time, both on what hymns to arrange and who to send them to, is probably equal to a third of the time I spend sitting in front of Finale, and I think it's worth it.) The rights of these two pieces revert back to me, thankfully, and I'm pretty confident I can find publishers for them both that have the connections to do a better job in the handbell world than the former publisher could. But. Still.

On a similar but unrelated topic, I'm trying to decide what two pieces to do this month. Pick two of the following so I don't have to. (Do I really think you're going to help? No. But it helps me to write it down.)

a) A handbell arrangement of Marty Haugen's "Return to God." (Rights are owned by GIA, so it gets difficult if they don't pick it up; on the other hand, I think there's a good chance they'll accept it.)

b) A handbell arrangement of Johann Cruger's "Lord, to Thee I Make Confession." (Public domain, no handbell arrangement done of the hymn, but relatively obscure.)

c) Do some work on my biggish handbell project that I've done virtually no work on, "15 Christmas Hymn Introductions for Handbells." (Hymn introduction books are done all the time for organ, but rarely for handbells; I think it's an underserved market.)

d) This church's Christmas composition contest.

e) Finish one of the dozen or so handbell and choral pieces I've started over the past two years and haven't finished.

f) Forget about handbells and play Kakuro with my free time.

A noisy supper.

Thanks to you-know-who.

My baby's growing up

More and more my baby is looking and acting like a little boy than like a little baby. When Megan was in town last weekend, we looked at cute baby outfits in the stores and I realized that the most adorable little baby stuff (such as booties) would now look ridiculous on Benjamin. It's a bit sad that he's past the sweet little baby phase but it's also exciting where he's going. Just this past week he's had a few milestones. He had meat (pureed of course). He gobbled up "Pears & Chicken" and seemed pleased with "Sweet Potatoes & Turkey." He also had string cheese in little pieces yesterday. I hear that Matthew was eating string cheese while feeding Benjamin and he seemed to be taking quite an interest. Turns out he liked it. And a few days ago we decided to see if Benjamin would sleep at night without being nursed to sleep (we figured that's a good skill to have) so I've begun nursing him slightly earlier in the evening, then doing bath and pajamas, and rocking him to sleep. Some nights he fell asleep in my arms; others he was still awake when Matthew took him to bed. All nights he fell asleep on his own (no crying at all) and stayed asleep all night. Go Benji!

Benjamin's trip home from the hospital.

Same outfit, about 6 months old.

One last wearing before I packed it away in a memory box.

Name that tune!

Hi. So with Benji taking an incredibly long (for him) afternoon nap, I was able to go from about 60-percent done to 90-percent done on my latest handbell arrangement, which combines three minor-key Christmas Carols -- "The Huron Carol ('Twas in the Moon of Wintertime)," "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," and "The Coventry Carol" -- before ending with "The First Noel." Unfortunately, I cannot come up with a more clever name for this piece than "Christmas Meditiation" or "Meditation on Christmas" or "Hi This Piece is Meditative and Christmasy." Please name my arrangement so I do not have to. Thank you.

Benji, the one-man band.

He will soon be signed to a record contract, I am sure.

North Carolinians and Chicagoians, please read.

No one I'm aware of reading this blog is from the Carolinas, but on the off-chance someone is, the East Coast Premiere of "Comrades, Haste! Faster the Steel Press!" will be taking place at 7:00p this Sunday at North Raleigh United Methodist. On the other hand, some people I am aware of reading this blog are from Chicago, so I would like to let them know that Chicago Bronze will be playing my original piece "Cumulonimbus" at 4:00p this Sunday at St. Mark's Lutheran in Aurora and at 4:00p on Sunday, June 4th at Grace United Methodist in Naperville. Yay me.

Also, the powers that be have apparently already chosen the winners of the two Area II AGEHR Composition Contests -- only two weeks after the deadline, surprisingly -- and neither of them is Matthew Prins. Boo me.

Batter up!

For his half birthday a while ago, Grandma and Grandpa decided Benjamin needed some more "boy toys" and gave him the baseball toy in the pictures below. When I opened the box, I saw that it was for 9 months and up and thought that maybe Benji would play with it in a few months. Benji, however, had different ideas. Sitting on my lap at the table, he tried to grab the toy in its box off of the table. So, we opened it up (no small feat, given how many twisty ties and pieces of tape there are on your average toy packaging) and he instantly took to it. He quickly figured out how to slap the ball and make it play music. Such joy and laughter! Of course, the bat was (and still is) more fun to put in one's mouth than to use to hit the baseball. But, hey, it's fun either way!

The Danielson Familie seems to confuse Benji.

"Sorry Marge. I'm afraid this gets my lowest rating ever: Seven thumbs up."

As in all fields when companies take in many more submissions than they use, most rejection letters I have received in my handbell composing endeavors have been obvious fill-in-the-namers: "Dear Matthew: Matthew, we receive hundreds of works submitted to us each year, Matthew, and we're sorry to say that your submissions, Matthew, are not among those we've chosen to accept. Sincerely, Matthew Smith"

But. This rejection letter, sent from the handbell editor at one of the four or five largest handbell publishing companies, was anything but. Paragraph I will put on my business cards italicized:

"Afternoon, Matthew!

"Your recent handbell endeavors, 'Meditation on "Angels We Have Heard on High"' and 'Let Vibrate' were forwarded to me yesterday from our [head office]. Many thanks for sending these along to us. I enjoyed reading through both of them earlier today.

"You have a marvelous grasp of the idiom and a true sense of the instrument in your writing. It is indeed rare to encounter a writer as yourself in today’s market.

"That said, however, brings me to the most difficult part of being an editor. I’m afraid that for catalog and market reasons, I’m going to have to pass on both titles...."

[rationale elicited, but it had to do with, y'know, catalog and market reasons]

"Matthew, please don’t despair. If it gives you any comfort, even after publishing [many] titles myself, I still get these types of letters too. I do like what you do, and hope that you will continue to keep us in mind as your muse sends new ideas....

"With every good wish for your continued success..."

Carrot face

Our little Benjamin is an extremely civilized eater. He opens wide for the spoon, eats everything happily (except peas, which he has thrown on the floor), and generally isn't too messy. Lest you think Benji is perfectly neat in his eating, however, I submit the following photos.

Carrots are probably the messiest food and, unfortunately, also the only food that stains. We have been known to strip him down to his diaper for carrots or feed that veggie on bath night.

Green beans was Benji's first non-cereal food and I still think one of his favorites.

Overall Benji has been great with the spoon, as seen in this photo. Last week, however, he started grabbing for the spoon and trying to play with it. He also got his fingers in the cereal for the first time. I expected him to shove his cereal fingers in his mouth and maybe start feeding himself, but instead he looked at the cereal closely and felt this new texture between his fingers.

Reviews of things that should be reviewed.

"From the Earth to the Moon" (miniseries, 1998), C+

The most schizophrenic miniseries in television history. Other than the obvious similarity in topic among the twelve segments -- each but the first dealing with a particular Apollo launch -- and some crossover in actors, there's almost no tonal, thematic, or aesthetic thread connecting the dozen episodes. Some have intertitles, and some don't. Some use first person narration, some use third person narration, and some use no narration. Some are approximately 75 percent jokes, and some are exactly 0 percent jokes. Some follow the expected storyline very closely, and some almost completely ignore their ostensible subject (say, oh, Apollo 13) to instead focus on some old newscaster who's being pushed out of his job by some young whippersnapper. (Apollo 13 episode rating: D+.) Acting's fine, largely by a bunch of TV comedy actors from then and now (Stephen Root, the two leads in "Wings," the father in "Malcolm in the Middle," the wife in "That '70s Show," Perry White in "Lois & Clark," etc.), but jeepers, that inconsistency.

---
"Sports Night," season 1 (1998-99), C+

I've always been a defender of Aaron Sorkin's writing in "The West Wing," but I'm now wondering if the primary strength of the Sorkin years of "The West Wing" wasn't as much Sorkin as it was the acting. If you trade Felicity Huffman straight up for Dulé Hill, every primary actor on "The West Wing" would be better than every primary actor on "Sports Night," and man, it shows. Doesn't help that Sorkin doesn't realize that when you are writing 22-minute episodes rather than 44-minute episodes, you cannot just write a 44-minute episode, cut it in half, and call it two 22-minute episodes. (Most every episode is an explicit or implicit two-parter.) Certainly doesn't help that Sorkin doesn't seem to care about sports; there's so little sports-specific content that revamping any of these episodes to an episode of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" would probably take less than an hour. Mrs. William H. Macy is of course predictably wonderful, even if the love interest aspect is thrust upon her character rather than allowed to occur organically. But the rest? Eh.

---
"The West Wing," season 1 (1999-2000), B+

Really, I do like Aaron Sorkin.

---
Dr Pepper Berries & Cream (2006), B-

The problem with adding a fruity taste to Dr [sic] Pepper is that the original is already a mix of cola and an indescribable strong, fruitlike flavor. (There's reason why the rumor that Dr Pepper contains prune juice won't go away.) Adding a completely different taste to Dr Pepper, such as vanilla, wouldn't be a problem -- there's no competition -- but adding a secondary fruit taste to Dr Pepper confuses the taste buds terribly. Certainly very drinkable, but certainly inferior to the original.

Preppy baby

While Benjamin spends most of his time in sleepers and other easy-to-dress clothing, he does have several very cute "big boy" outfits. He's got a few polo shirts that he looks so adorable in next to daddy. And he's got this great sweater that looks so preppy. Since I can't dress Benji in frilly dresses, I shall enjoy dressing him in preppy boy outfits.







Don't you just love the expression on his face in this one?

What will be The Greatest Movie in the History of Cinema.

The plot for the next Michel Gondry film, due to start filming in September: "In [Be Kind, Rewind], [Jack] Black plays Jerry, a man whose headaches lead him to believe his brain is melting. His brain is magnetized, leading to the unintentional destruction of movies in his friend's store. In order to keep the store's one loyal customer, an elderly lady with signs of dementia, the pair re-creates a long line of films including The Lion King, Rush Hour, Back to the Future and Robocop."