Maybe you can play for your chickens!

The snark in my reply was engendered by your high-handed absolutist approach to this scenario. You ascribe behavior and motivations of people you don’t know. I do. They are my family. You chastised the parenting skills of people you don’t know from Adam. That’s just rude.

“Bouncers are bad and they simply should not be used” is *not* a fact. It is a gross simplification of a contemporary view re: the potential hazards and pitfalls of improper (perhaps ill-advised) use of jumpers. #17 got the point across and encouraged the parents to do research. Your “shock” in piling on did not materially contribute to the child’s safety.

Your “great entertainment!” comment is just bizarre. My nephew is not being abused and if he were I certainly would not be entertained.

Oops! The video is loading at about a frame a minute through my connection, and it was only half way through when I posted that, not realizing Uzi is named in the video.

That was your exact joke. Doh! :)

I have the same banjo – but with a resonator (big wooden plate behind the drum) and a steel tone ring (steel rim that the drum head stretches across rather than wood).. it’s called the Goodtime Special.

The Goodtime is an excellent banjo for anyone wanting to learn. Very well made (in California) and sounds fantastic for the price (a few hundred bucks as opposed to a few thousand like the professional ones). The regular Goodtime with a resonator is probably the best place to start. The open back model is more limited in what it can do and the resonator can always be removed if you want to pursue the style of banjo music that favors it.

Folk of the Wood and Janet Davis Music are two good online places to look at to get an idea of what is out there.

Never to late begin. I love to pick up new instruments as much as possible. I wish I had a room with every instrument on the planet. And the time to explore more instruments increases one as an audio visionary. When touching different instruments, one may discover their totem instrument(s). Like a guitarist who never knew themselves to be more proficient on drums or piano. How would they know until they try?

Have ever picked up a banjo? They practically play themselves. User friendly. If you play guitar, the banjo will come more easily.

With respect and kindness.

Hey, good luck learning banjo, Mark. My dad played banjo for years, and even as a novice player, he could make it sound really good. I remember him playing “Cripple Creek” and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” pretty well. Actually, maybe he wasn’t so novice…

But anyway, good luck with it. It’s a fun instrument.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrlqQ1_vZVE&feature=related

I’m having a total time-warp/ deja-voodoo/ flashback moment here.

Between the white walls and hardwood floors, that woven basket by the fireplace, that *exact* wicker rocking chair (with folded quilt), a happy kid in a bouncer (Uzi playing the part of me in this live-action feature), and topping it off with Mom-wearing-a-head-scarf playing-bluegrassish-tones on a lap-sized-stringed-instrument… this may as well be a pic come-to-life from 32 years ago outta my family album! [*must put full stop somewhere*]

Freaky.

If I find out y’all are also in San Francisco, I’m gonna plotz.

Oh and: long before any incriminating studies, I reportedly spent countless joyful hours in one of those things. (I don’t quite recall now, perhaps a symptom?) Somehow I still managed to run jump and frolic, play kickball, huck a discus, go mountain biking, and backpacking, and climb Mt. Shasta. And I’m far from athletically exceptional. I was held back by asthma, but skeletomuscular development was a non-issue.

Besides, being the living dynamic organism that we are, the body will adjust and adapt to environmental pressures throughout ones whole lifetime. So chillax already.

[*raspberry in the general direction of the easily startled*]

Yep, that’s about what it looked like.

However he neglected to mention his blog — http://tangiersound.wordpress.com — where he puts up not only his own videos of banjo technique for beginners and advanced, but videos others have made showing off what they learned from Patrick. You can also get a bunch of archived banjo tutorial videos from YouTube by searching for “Dobro33H” (his YouTube account).

And finally — that video was awesome. Babies and banjos. What could be better?