March 31 - Filmmaking (Day Four)

Okay, so we were supposed to do the other camera angle today for our 360 Film THERE IS A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND (so we could cut between the two 360 shots) but Lyric was acting like a total diva.

It started when I was trying to get him dressed in the same outfit he wore the previous day (as I tried teaching the kids the meaning of the word "continuity"). Lyric has his own idea of what he wants to wear, and to be honest, it's pretty different than what we usually try to dress him in. "I don't like dressing handsome", he'll say to me. Lyric wants to wear superhero clothes and very specific superhero clothes at that. Lately it has tended to just Robin shirts and green pants. If he could, he would wear his underwear on the outside ("superhero style") so we had to make a rule that he can't leave the house like that. I managed to get him in the same jacket and a hat somewhat like the hoodie he wore the first day, but I buckled on the same pants. So much for continuity.

It was a beautiful morning, so to my surprise there were other kids in the playground. We shoot super-early (starting at around 7a) so this was somewhat unusual. regardless, though, we went at it. We got one solid take in, but then Lyric started... freelancing.

Lyric stopping Zephyr from using his sword. "No no no! You can't use that!" he said.

At the crucial point in the scene where I chase the kids, Lyric just stood up to me and looked at me, smiling. I thought maybe he was trying to make friends with the monster at first (which comes in our "script" a bit later) but he didn't really approach me. Zephyr got the swords for our fight scene, but Lyric kept stopping him, saying "No no no! You can't use that!" He did this three times, every time Zephyr picked something up. I gave Lyric a moment to see what he was up to, but then I got it: He wanted to exercise his power. If he wanted to stop the film and ruin the take, he could. He was throwing a Lohan-esque diva tantrum to show the director who's boss.

I stopped the take and told Lyric that I wanted to see stronger listening from him (which has essentially been a recurring theme with him the past few months). I told him he had to follow the action we laid out to make the movie make sense, but he stood firm. Lyric has a lot of willpower, from one perspective. From another perspective, though, he is just SUPER STUBBORN. He'll smile when people chide him, and I can't quite tell if that's because he's trying to look cute so he doesn't get in as much trouble or if he enjoys seeing people get worked up over him.

I tried going over with him what I wanted him to do (again), but Lyric said he wasn't going to be in the film and walked off to play with the other kid in the playground. I was kind of stunned. I figured I'd try going ahead with filming anyway. He eventually came around and tried to get back in the film, but stayed more in the back with his new friend.

Regardless, just in the one good take we did get, I think we got what we needed. Some clips:

March 30 - Filmmaking (Day three)

More filming from our 360 film THERE'S A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND this morning. We came to a decision that the kids will play, then the monster comes out, then the monster chases the kids, then the kids defeat the monster, but then finally the kids make friends with the monster. That's a nice story arc, if you ask me. Some sneak peeks from today's action:

More coming tomorrow!

March 29 - Filmmaking (Day two)

Okay! Today we actually got started with the shoot for the 360 video THERE'S A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND. The plan worked out pretty great... we had the playground all to ourselves, the early light was fantastic, and the kids got to run around in a playground.

Zephyr and the 360 camera

Looking over the footage, I think I'm the biggest problem with the film so far. It looks too weird when I stand up as the monster. I gotta channel my inner Andy Sirkis and really get into being the creature if this is going to work right. I had a few good moments, though.

I have to stay in this squat position the whole time next time we shoot. You can see Zephyr running in the background.

I also have to work a bit with Lyric on taking direction. There was a lot of him going rogue on set today. But on the plus side, when I asked them to take 5 while I checked what we got, this happened:

Pretty nice green room this playground has!

More tomorrow!

March 28 - Filmmmaking (Day One)

I feel a little guilty as I thought I was going to blog on Friday but I didn't.  Rest assured we did decorate Easter eggs... PRO TIP: if you get "craft Easter eggs" you don't have to hard-boil them or anything and you can use sharpies to decorate them. Plus they don't smell sulfurous like eggs and won't go bad. Not sure if you can tell, but few things gross me out as much as a hard-boiled egg. Bleh.

Here's how they came out! Not too bad! Definitely not too smelly, which is a victory in and of itself.

But anyway, today we start another week-long intensive on filmmaking, and for this month's film, I want to try something new and exciting: MAKING A 360 FILM WITH MY KIDS. We've already made one together for Chugga Chugga Tooth Tooth, and then if you count this other one we did during the making ofthe 2D version of Chugga Chugga Tooth Tooth, the kids already have two 360 videos under their belt. This is more than most fillmmakers have, and I'd like to get them way ahead of the curve by making a third, this time from their own imagination.

The way I see it, with 360 video, finding a space to do a shoot is half the battle. You need to design a set that lends itself to exploration and then let your actors run around the set. I chose a playground on our block that opens bright and early. I figure we can get there and open it up for a few days to shoot our film.

When I told Zephyr where we'd be shooting, I asked him if he could come up with a story we could shoot there. Zephyr came up with a film called "THERE IS A MONSTER IN THE PLAYGROUND", and I think that totally nailed it.

Here's what we're going to do:

1. I'm going to set the 360 camera up in the center of the playground for a few mornings.
2. While the kids run around the playground in circles, going over the playground equipment and such, I will hide wearing a monster mask at various places in the playground.
3. Eventually I will get out of my hiding spot and chase the kids around in a circle as the monster.
4. Then they will do something and end up chasing me and defeating me
5. I'll splice together a few days worth of video and turn it into a 1-2 minute film.

What I'm hoping the end effect will be like is something like one of those "when you see it" pictures, where close inspection of the shot can reveal something surprising. I made the mask up this weekend out of a box of ziti, some black construction paper, some red yarn, and two pink plastic easter eggs I turned into four spider-like eyes.

The mask.

Yaaaah!

So we were going to shoot the first one today, but it was rainy this morning, so Zephyr and Lyric came up with this Vine:

A translation is DEFINITELY needed here: Braniac (played by Lyric) laughs and says "HA HA HA! My Invention is gonna turn superheroes into super-spaghetti!" and then Braniac 5 (played by Zephyr) bursts in and says "Have that for lunch!" Not one of our strongest vines, but it was spontaneous and fairly rushed because the kids were all noodly and slow to start their day after a long weekend.

But tomorrow... shooting begins!

March 24 - Feats of Speed

Lyric wanted to switch around the morning activity this morning, and I'm going to try and faithfully get down what he asked for:

"I want it to be a game where you're a monster and you chase us around and you're holding my turtle Spikey but then you get chased by usand we run around after you and we get to hold Spikey."

Okay! We're going to try and do that.

I brought this game out into our hallway so I could give the kids space to run around. We were going to do it outside, but it's still a bit too cold in the mornings. I grabbed Lyric's turtle Spikey for whatever reason, and Lyric wore a mask and his backpack as a jetpack, because that's how he rolls. And then, yeah, essentially I just chased them around for about fifteen minutes.

There was maybe a little bit more to it than that... I would act like I was about to catch them and then they would just slip through my grasp, or they would declare something to be "base" and I would flick an imaginary switch to change the base to somewhere else, and then they would run to that base in a holy terror. Simple little rule changes to keep them moving and keep things in action. Pretty successful, all told.

One more thing to note: although I normally chant "Feats of Speed! Feats of Speed!" as they race during this morning activity, I did NOT do it this time because I was trying to keep a little quiet in deference to our neighbors. That's more of either an outside thing or an inside our own house thing.

March 23 - Sweet Ninja Moves

The kids have been taking Karate classes at this fantastic dojo recently, and today's Sweet Ninja Moves activity is essentially lifted whole-cloth from two things they do there which I kind of love. They're simple games that train for focus and let the kids have fun doing it.

First there's the listening game ofArrows / Rocks / Noodles / Chambers, which is just Simon Says with Karate hand positions. Arrows are open hands, rocks are fists, noodles are wiggly fingers (not used often in actual karate, I'm guessing), and chambers are fists pulled back to your chest.

Once the kids know the positions, you just bark out orders and they have to keep up. You can also throw in "crazy rocks" or "crazy noodles" to make them wave their hands around while in the correct position, that's fun. It's so simple but it's so good for them to get practice immediately processing information and acting on it. To play well requires focus, and that's SO IMPORTANT to instill in your kids. I don't do it nearly enough.

After that as a warm up, we moved on to a dodging challenge. In this, you take a tubular object and have kids jump over it as it comes towards them on the floor, or duck under it when it comes at them horizontally in the air, or dodge to the side as it comes at them vertically. In the dojo they use pool noodles to do this, which probably works better than what I used, an old toy lightsaber. But it did the trick alright.

Duck!

The kids had to learn to stay on their feet, even while ducking. They kept on wanting to play this over and over again, and Zephyr REALLY wanted a turn swinging the lightsaber.

Lyric jumping over the lightsaber attack. Sweet ninja moves indeed.

This was a quick one... or at least it felt quick. Time really does fly when you're having fun.

And we were having fun.

March 22 - Superhero Adventure

Another Superhero Adventure today, and unlike last time, I wanted to be prepared this time around. So I prepped a scenario we could solve through cooperative play: A moon base had a critical leak of gamma energy, and to fix it, one of us would have to flick a (pretend) switch while the other two connected while touching buttons (placed far enough away that one person couldn't touch both on their own). Zephyr saw me making the buttons as he was having breakfast and wanted to get in on the act.

The kids got into their superhero outfits - Lyric as Stripe Boy, Zephyr as Dr. Ice - and prepared to shoot out into space.

I gave them their mission as Professor Plutonium, but almost immediately they started adding onto it by coming up with a villain named Red Volcano who was simultaneously threatening the earth as this moon base was having its gamma energy crisis. I think they may have wanted me to become Red Volcano and chase them around a bit, but I stayed as their ally and played along with the scenario. My goal was constantly to try and get them to problem solve: For example, If Red Volcano was pounding our spaceship with lava blasts, we could try and deflect the heat with Dr. Ice's ice shields. Whatever it took to get to the moon base before it exploded.

Their bunk bed was our spaceship. Lyric was loading it with supplies before we blasted off.

When we got to the moon base / living room, the kids immediately homed in on the three buttons I had put up on the wall. They couldn't quite each touch a button and reach each other, but they solved the problem by using a shoehorn to connect themselves together.

They actually wanted to do this scenario a bunch of times with different combinations of people (me and Lyric, me and Zephyr, Zephyr and Lyric). I was proud of them for coming up with the shoehorn workaround, I thought they might have to grab onto each other's legs or something.

With the Gamma Energy safely contained, we could battle Red Volcano. I had Red Volcano trap Lyric in a Fire cage (using a Hoberman sphere) so that Zephyr could work to free him.

Stripe Boy! Nooooooo!

After a pretend pounding of Red Volcano (Zephyr said "we're going to have to solve this problem... by punching!", which I wanted to try and correct so that I could tell them that violence doesn't solve anything, but which I found myself unable to do because I found it so funny) we had to wrap up our superhero adventure for the day.

I always feel like I could do more for this activity, but the kids always seem to have a good time even when I half-ass it. Any little thing you can do to prepare for it is appreciated by the kids, though.

March 21 - Detective Training

There's a note on my phone where I've been keeping track of the various birthdays my kids' stuffed animals have. They've tried to front sometimes like their birthdays are all the time, but I have to tell them, "Uh, no, I have it right here that your teddy bear's birthday isn't until August." I bring this up because last night they alerted me that two of their stuffed bears had birthdays on March 21st: Zephyr's bear Fluffington Q. Bear Esq. (or "Fluffy") and Lyric's bear Bat-Bear.

Maybe they remembered it was a day after Zephyr's half birthday? Whatever the case was, they were right, and we had to make those birthday bears feel special. So they'd hide and the kids would have to find them for Detective Training.

Fluffy got hidden first. I put him in our umbrella stand, underneath a red bike helmet. He was essentially invisible. This was going to be challenging.

They'd have to lift up the red helmet to see him.

The kids searched around for a while, and when they asked for a clue, I went to get a scrap of paper and wrote out the following for them:

So Zephyr started looking under his backpack and underneath the couch cushions and Lyric looked behind our curtains, but nothing was there.

I didn't want them to get too frustrated, so I made one more clue for them. I just drew this:

The non-red parts just came from some water Lyric had spilled on the table, but they got that I was drawing a red semicircle. Zephyr seemed stumped, but Lyric ran over to the red helmet and found Fluffy. He was pretty proud of it, too.

Then I had to hide Bat Bear, and the pressure was on because I could tell that Zephyr felt he needed to find this one to balance things out. I stuffed Bat Bear into the blue drawer in their room they keep any kind of balls in. As they looked, I told them it would be a lot easier to find something in their room if they made it a little cleaner, and together we picked up some of the stuffed animals they had cluttering the floor.

Keeping their room tidy demands eternal vigilance.

With the room a little bit more tidy, I ran to the other room and wrote them another cryptic clue:

I was trying to draw a bunch of balls, but Zephyr started getting all wrapped up in how many were blue and how many were red and how many were yellow. So I doubled down on cryptic clues and gave them this:

Always a tricky word for me, because if I look at it too long it seems like it should rhyme with "doing". Actually, more of a vice versa situation (where "doing" starts looking like it sounds like a spring activating), but still.

Again, trying to push the ball theme. Zephyr thought about it for a moment and then had a eureka moment: look in the drawer with the balls.

Found him!

In the spirit of #RadicalHonesty, I should admit: Zephyr misread "Boing" as "Bowling" and was checking that drawer because that's where we keep his plush bowling set. But y'know, whatever. It got us to the right point, the birthday bears were reunited with their respective bed mates, and we were able to have a fabulous Detective Training session with little to no prep. Everyone walked away happy.

March 18 - Superhero Drawing Studio

Today Lyric threw a tantrum about Superhero drawing studio, despite the fact that they had chosen to do extracurricular drawings previously during the week after other morning activities. Weird! Lyric got all upset that we were going to draw, and started ripping paper in front of me to show me how mad he was. I told him he could go into his room and be mad if he wanted, but that I was going to draw with Zephyr. I looked at the cool robot Mechsuit in his new Plants Vs. Zombies comic book and figured I could show him how we could draw something cool like that by just drawing some circles and squares and semicircles.

That's a pretty bad-ass mechsuit!

I did a quick sketch of the mech and then let Zephyr draw the imp piloting it. He threw on some details as well.

I then took Zephyr through all the main shapes in the mechsuit, paying special attention to note which shapes were in front of other shapes to have the figure layer correctly.

Mine in red (note the imp he drew), Zephyr's in green. Still drawing from the left side of the brain a bit, but getting there! The broccoli guy was also looking good.

Meanwhile, Lyric predictably saw me lavishing attention on Zephyr and decided he COULD do superhero drawing studio after all if he could use the time to put stickers on the underwater scene he had worked out last week.

You can switch morning activities if the kids say they don't want to do it (it's no fun forcing a kid to do something, that's for sure), but I find if you just stick to your guns and say that YOU'RE going to do the morning activity as it's listed, the kids will eventually play along. Most of the time.

March 17 - Hide and Seek Championship

Another go at hide and seek championship this morning, and another day where I find out taking pictures of this activity is absurdly difficult. Especially when I have only 20 seconds to hide.

Hiding behind the door. Works 65% of the time.

This time we tried "Sardines", where someone hides and then when they are found another person has to squeeze into the hiding space with them.

Lyric with me behind the door. Sorry, these pics are really crappy.

But with only three people it was pretty lame. I gotta work on making this better next month. I still like hide and seek in theory, especially since it requires no prep time, but there must be a way to freshen it up. Maybe add blindfolds? Check back on this one next month.

March 16 - Dinosaur Treasure Hunt

Today was Treasure Hunt day, traditionally the favorite Morning Activity. Lyric just started a unit on dinosaurs in his school, so I wanted to make this a dino-themed treasure hunt where he could take the lead and Zephyr could serve as his helper. Often times with Treasure Hunt, Zephyr takes the lead and Lyric just follows, so this was something of an experiment. I had written and printed out clues yesterday and hid them around the house, along with a chest I loaded with 4 action figures.

I usually leave the first note on the kitchen table to find when they wake up, but this time I hid it under the computer so I could try and get better pictures (trying to learn my lessons from yesterday).

Zephyr had to read the clues aloud to Lyric, of course. The burden of literacy.

So here was the first clue. Play along!

Zephyr was able to piece out the word "carnivorous" after a few attempts, and when he told Lyric to think of what carnivores eat, Lyric said "plants". Zephyr corrected him, and showed him the four letters were for the word "MEAT". Lyric immediately got excited and pointed to the kitchen. "The fridge," he yelled, "where we keep the pepperoni!" They ran there and Lyric threw open the door, making a bee line to the meat drawer.

Lyric was REAL excited to find the note there. He proudly passed it to Zephyr, who pulled off the masking tape holding it closed and ran to the couch to read it.

I wasn't sure how this would play out: the word "TYRANNOSAURUS" is so long, and the double N is tricky. But Zephyr got it almost immediately and yelled it out excitedly. Lyric knew at once who the cuddly orange dinosaur was: Boris the Tyrannosaurus, who we keep on a high shelf in their room. They immediately ran off to find him.

After I pulled him down from the shelf (along with his buddy Morris the Dilophasaurus) Zephyr read out the next note. Boris and Morris accompanied Zephyr and Lyric the rest of the way as well.

Zephyr got pretty excited about this one too, and blurted out "Swan!" I stepped in here before Zephyr could lead the charge because I wanted Lyric to figure out where to look, but by the time I started to say "where's the swan we made?" Lyric had already taken off running towards it. In fact, he got there so fast I didn't have a moment to get a picture of him finding it, he had already lifted it up and gotten the note underneath. Zephyr was thrilled. "It was behind us the whole time," he excitedly screamed. Lyric pushed the note into his hands and Zephyr read it aloud.

The boys ran into their room and dove under their beds looking for the chest, but didn't find it there.

They were clearly puzzled. Zephyr said "the clue said it was under the bed!" So I asked him, "Is that what it said?" Zephyr stopped suddenly and pulled Lyric out to the other room to re-read the clue. I'd like to think this subtly encouraged greater reading comprehension.

Cheating a little here on the picture placement (#RadicalHonesty) as this was them reading the second clue, but they DID run to here and re-read the final clue again as well.

After a bit of explanation on where the "foot of the bed" was, the kids ran back into the room and started searching again, and Zephyr uncovered it in the blue bin. But Lyric was the one who triumphantly pulled it out.

All in all, pretty successful! I think Lyric got to build up his confidence a little, and Zephyr got to act as a guide and a helper, which I really want them to do for each other as a lifelong thing. Afterwards they were so happy they hugged and Lyric jumped up into Zephyr's arms, wrapping his legs around his brother for a moment. It was pretty darn cute.

Not that Zephyr could really hold him up, but still.

March 15 - Mystery Elves Obstacle Course

I gotta tell you, this Daylight Savings switchover is messing with me. Waking up in the dark is no fun, and keeps me all sleepy-like. I'll get used to it eventually, but it sapped my enthusiasm this morning.

Today was Mystery Elves Obstacle Course, in which I try to get my kids to clean up the house under the guise of running an obstacle course. It worked a little better than it did last time, and I managed to get the kids to bring a bunch of stuff that didn't belong in the living room back into their room, but I didn't get any good pictures of it.

This terrible shot of Lyric's butt as he ducked under the table was the best I got. For real. Guys, I'm sorry, you should expect more from me.

Figuring out good shots for the blog is a relatively new concern for me, and I'm still learning. Next time I'll try and get a good before/after shot at least. 

But more importantly, tomorrow is the Treasure Hunt, and so today was my prep day. I just finished the notes, and it promises to be a pretty good one. I talked with Zephyr a bit about it yesterday, and we're going to try and have Lyric be the leader of the hunt this time. I want to see if Zephyr will enjoy being in a more supervisory role... it's an experiment. Stay tuned!

March 14 - Chess Puzzles

There's so many great reasons to teach your kids how to play chess, but the best reason in my book is HOLY CRAP I JUST WANT TO TRAIN SOMEONE I CAN PLAY CHESS AGAINST. I went through a period in college where I was playing chess every day, and man, I felt so sharp when I was doing it. I was at a point where the game started working its way into my dreams (similar to the way Tetris can get into your dreams) and I would see problems in my life as chess problems I only had to play out to solve. I want to give my kids that confidence and that ability to strategize. So teaching them chess was one of the original morning activities I ever developed.

I mean, I shouldn't quite say I developed it. I lean heavily on "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess" (1972 Bantam edition), which I got years ago and still think is far and away the greatest Chess instruction book ever written. Fischer might have his issues, but he was an indubitably great chess mind, his book is easily accessible, and it has just the right amount of cockiness and swagger to make it impossible to put down. It's filled with loads of little puzzles illustrating small pieces of chess strategy, cleverly organized into a detailed program of instruction. The puzzles show various situations the reader is asked to play out; sometimes these boards come from Fischer's own career. Like the above board, which Fischer tells us came from his match against Paul Keres in the 1959 Bled Tournament in Yugoslavia. Fischer was playing black. Can you see the move that gets Fischer a checkmate?

Zephyr sizes up the board.

The fundamental thing I've been trying to teach Zephyr is that when the king is in check, he has three options:

1. Flee
2. Capture the attacking piece, or
3. Interpose (put a piece between the king and his attacker)

So as Zephyr puzzled out what he could do, I just asked him over and over, "if you did that, what could the king do to get out of it?"

Moving his queen there... nope. King can flee to there.

It took a little time for Zephyr to get it (he's admittedly out of practice... we used to have weekly chess lessons for him, but they're on hiatus for the moment). But not getting it gives us more time to game out what would happen in that scenario, which reinforces the lesson. Eventually he got it.

Eureka!

For Lyric, it's still a little early for chess lessons. So what I do with Lyric on these days is quiz him on piece names (and then hopefully we'll move to how each piece moves once he gets that.)

Today he was 4 for 6 (he thought the Pawn was "the other word for Castle" and the Bishop was "the lighthouse", but he got Rook, Knight, King, and Queen). Not too shabby!

Afterwards Zephyr and I played a quick round of chess together using this old Russian chess clock I have. It has great action when you press the button to stop your clock and start your opponents, Zephyr loves using it.

I really dig this Pavilion Chess Teacher set because the way the pieces move are written below each piece. It's the ideal teaching set IMHO.

The joy of the morning didn't hit me until a few hours later when I realized that I had produced a being that could play chess against me. I beat him handily at the moment, but he's learning, and watching him learn is so AWESOME. One day (if I keep at it with the training) I know he's going to beat me at chess, and that's a moment of pride I can't wait to experience. That in my mind is what fatherhood is all about.

Bonus peek inside my obsessive compulsive behavior! This is how I insist on organizing the interior of my chess box. It's a very precise arrangement.

March 11 - Piano Lessons for Dad

The kids take piano lessons every Thursday. To be honest, they're probably a little too young for it (at least Lyric is, Zephyr is at least starting to noticeably improve), but their teacher Lauren is very kind and patient and I believe this might be one of those things that might go a little over their heads now but will serve as a nice foundation for deeper knowledge and familiarity later. I've mentioned before that I don't play a musical instrument, and I think that's been to my detriment. I'm fairly determined to make sure my kids have the chance to learn how to play an instrument when they're young, so that they'll have the ability to become good at an instrument when they're older.

Unfortunately, the fact that I don't play an instrument leaves me at a disadvantage for teaching my kids how to play an instrument. At some point, there's going to be a lot of practice time I'm going to have to mandate, but we're not at that point yet. Now I think we just have to get them to a point where they're enjoying playing around with the instrument (in my case, that instrument is a piano - a Yamaha Synthesizer - but I think this could be applicable to any musical instrument). So the challenge for me was to come up with a way to make them enjoy playing.

This challenge led to me coming up with the "Teach Dad Piano" morning activity. It's somewhat like Teddy Bear School in that it lets the kids act as teachers, but I think it's even more like the ancient Roman practice of Saturnalia, where role-reversals were encouraged and masters served their slaves at the family table. The kids are so used to being the ones learning something that the novelty and power of being in the position of teacher can be a thrill for them. If I can link this thrill to playing piano, I think I'll be closer to my goal of getting them into the instrument and reinforcing what they learn at their lessons.

Lyric showed me his song first this morning. It was pretty simple.

Lyric teaches me the song he learned in Piano lessons so far. You kind of don't realize how important fire is to birthday parties until it makes it into a song.

I got his song pretty quickly... it was just a simple scale, after all. But he did get an opportunity to correct my technique, however, saying my fingers needed to cross over each other as they went up the keyboard. I could see that made him feel good to know something I didn't.

Then it was Zephyr's turn, and he showed me a slightly more complicated song he's been working on:

Zephyr teaches me his piano song, "The Wishing Star". It's apparently some sort of German folk song? I don't know, I never heard it before.

Zephyr told me "Piano is a test for the brain and for the hand", and I could tell by the way he said it that it was something he's been told a bunch of times. Just by that I got a really nice glimpse into his lessons, what he's learning, and what he's working on. I didn't think I'd be able to film myself trying to play what Zephyr had taught me, but Zephyr said he'd do the filming while I played.

And now I try to play "The Wishing Star" with Zephyr's help. Camerawork by Zephyr!

Not bad for someone who doesn't know how to play, I guess.