Dunno if you remember the 1980s sitcom Mr. Belvedere, but it was the fish-out-of-water tale of a classic, fusty British butler who used to work for the Queen, but for some reason, moved to Chicago (it might have been Baltimore) to work for a middle-class family. The dad loved the NFL and beer nuts, Belvedere loved Fabergé eggs and good Port, but damned if it didn't work. Anyway, at the end of each episode, the butler wrote about his day in his diary.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that right now, I feel like the Academy’s Mr. Belvedere. Am I in my 60s? No. Am I a butler who used to be in HRH Queen Elizabeth II's service? Not by a long shot. But damned if I'm not writing a diary about the events of my day. Which day? Wednesday. So heeerrrre we go.






Got to the building around 1:30 pm, in time to catch the majority of Ron Trent's lecture. Then I had a spot of lunch (or as we people who haven't eaten yet call it), breakfast, a delectable Chinese stir-fry.

It was then that Emma Jean, Celine and I – the Charlie's Angels of the Academy if you will (I guess that makes me Drew Barrymore) noticed the crowd that had gathered around our teammate Theo Parrish. Not that Theo doesn't always immediately form a crowd wherever he goes, but today he'd brought his family, including his adorable baby boy.

Because I was about to interview Mr. Parrish for a blog posting, I decided to get some background from his wife, who was also around. But all I really managed to gather was that he makes some mean waffles. Mean meaning good, of course.

#IMG1#




Then I was off to the second lecture, an informative joint on the science and engineering of acoustics and sound dynamics by George Stavropoulos of Integral Sound, hosted with characteristic grace by Gerd Janson.

After enjoying George's annotated explanation of why most DJs don't know anything about sound ("no offense if any of you guys are DJs"), the minutiae of cartridges, and why the shape of a studio is so important, I only had time to quickly meet with Celine and very tall photographer Matt Barnes to run about putting together another blog post of a sillier nature – coming soon to an innanet near you.

Then I was off to the graveyard shift of my night gig from 8pm – 3am, so sadly I wasn't able to do my new favourite thing, rock live on the radio with Emma Jean and the participants (hey E.J. – that'd be a pretty cool band name, no?). But I will tonight (Thursday)! Exciting stuff.

Around 3am, I headed home and got to relive the hearty Academy experiences (including Term 2's trip to Niagara Falls – or as I call it when I'm in a seriously silly mood, Viagra Falls, ha ha ha) vicariously through the Academy website's photo gallery, for which I wrote about 100 more captions.

Then I thought, well, it is 4:45 am, perhaps I should go to bed, you know, just for something new. Like Benji B says, gotta get your four hours. Meanwhile, at the Academy, Russ Elevado played the latest unreleased D'Angelo exclusives in a darkened lecture hall on those huge Genelec speakers to 15 awestruck people. Yes, we are a little jealous not to have been present at that listening session.

No sweat though! And in the words of Jigga, "we gon' do it again."

Chief Grand Royal Wizard Belvedere Barrymore, signing off.