Before we get to the silly content of the entry, I have to briefly send a shout-out to Richard Clary and the Florida State University wind ensemble for their performance of “Sasparilla” on Friday night. Holy crap, it kicked ass, as expected. Rick emailed the MP3 to me today, and it was just awesome. In a bit of bad luck, the accordion player’s accordion strap broke early in the performance, and he had to finish the piece with only one-way bellows, having to support the instrument with his other arm. If I hadn’t known that when I heard the recording, though, I wouldn’t have imagined that something had gone so wrong. I’m going to post the MP3 soon, as I’m pretty psyched to show this one off. If you’ve only heard the original recording of “Sasparilla” — played with crazy-exciting energy but without an accordion — you’re in for a surprise (or something)!

My new desk arrived today, just about 9 weeks after I ordered it. Wow, it was worth the wait. For years, I’ve used a large dining table as my workspace. I bought the table because it was huge, as I needed something that could hold my old 88-key digital piano. Here’s a picture of the old setup:

It looked fine, and it held the piano, but the desk is a type of Mexican knotty pine, so there are deep grooves throughout the surface. It gave it a cool rustic look, but it made it impossible to write on a piece of paper that was sitting on the desk, because my pen would end up poking through the paper into the grooves. The bigger problem, though, was that the desk wasn’t really a desk — it was a dining table — so it had no drawers. Nowhere to file anything, and maybe worse, nowhere to put things that I was working on or didn’t want to forget about — bills to pay, invoices to mail, CD’s to listen to. This meant that the desk was usually a mess of papers (that I couldn’t write on).

But today, that finally changed. I’d wanted a retro 50’s office desk ever since I saw this website, so placing the order for one was one of the first things AEJ and I did when we arrived in LA in September. (This all became an option when I decided that I didn’t require the 88-key digital piano anymore, and switched to a more space-efficient 49-key MIDI controller that I can put away when it’s not in use.)

Here’s what my studio looked like before the new desk arrived — before, in fact, we installed the rug or placed the other furniture. It’s a bit… wooden.

After laying the carpet and adding the other furniture, it was a lot nicer — but a little dark.

And here’s the studio with the new desk.

Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about! Soooo nice. And with drawer space!

And here’s one last photo, taken head-on.

The desk has been in production since the late 1940’s, but I think the custom enamels are a fairly recent addition. The light vanilla color — picked out by AEJ, of course — makes this massive amount of steel seem much less-weighty. (Well, unless you try to move it. Good lord, placing it was a bitch.)

And did I mention that it has drawers?