We Are Ugly But We Have The Music

How I Spent My September 11th

2011-09-15T19:35:00.006-04:00

In Memoriam

I was drinking mead, sitting around a homemade fire pit with friends, all of us strumming guitars, mandolins and ukeleles. I don't need a reason to do this, but I was relaxing in celebration of completing my first week of teaching. It was the 10th of September, or the tenth anniversary of the last night of innocence for a nation, some might say.

I received a text message that was simultaneously a statement and a question. The statement was that a friend of mine had died that day, but it was followed by a question mark. I can't say I blame the sender for that question mark, because my immediate reaction was that it must be a mistake. I called, half-drunk, for clarification. She had gotten the information from facebook where, upon visiting the profile page for the deceased, she discovered that all day people had been writing R.I.P. messages. I sat by the fire and cried for a few minutes, the kind of tears that make one ashamed because they don't seem dramatic enough, they don't seem to express enough grief, they don't look like they do in the movies. I then went inside and, without thinking, proceeded to down three more glasses of scotch.

I woke the next morning with a punishing hangover. Stumbling out to the living room I saw that the September 11th memorial dedication ceremony was playing. I watched, my head pounding, as loved ones read off the names of the 3,000 people who perished in the World Trade Center ten years ago, and I couldn't tell if I was crying because of the news, the ache in my head, the news I had received the night before, or all three. I went for a walk after Paul Simon sang "The Sound of Silence", making me cry again.

Beth was a student at the school where my father taught, and for the better part of Middle and High School we saw each other at least once a week for Youth Orchestra. She was beautiful, though not for the reasons she probably thought. She made herself a bleach blond, and I made fun of her for that. When she streaked her hair with green I made fun of her for that, too. In High School she pierced her nipple and I and my friend Christian, after making fun of her, got her to show it to us, our teenaged senses reeling. We played these little games for years, and looking back I suppose that we had crushes on each other but ran in circles and led lives too different to make it a possibility. They were innocent, friendly feelings, and only in light of recent events do I look upon them as tragic. That's what I find so crushing, the finality of death and the veil it can cast upon memories, like black ink poured into a river that flows upstream against the current, as if the river had always been that way.

Beth played the violin, and she worked very hard at it. She eventually went to college where she continued to play, but by that time we had lost touch. The last time I saw her was about a year and a half ago, when we shared a drink together and caught up. These years we had spent apart had been difficult ones for her. Ever since I had known her she had been troubled, and sometime in her twenties it became an addiction. This was not the Beth I knew, however. The Beth I knew was a hard working girl who fought off her demons and found love in music. She was my stand partner, an occasional late night phone chatter, and my friend. We watched each other grow up. A few weeks ago she called me, interested in learning the violin again. I called back, but we never got back in touch. I wish that the end of this story was just violin duets.

I can't remember the world ever being so quiet and mournful; everyone must have been inside watching the news or just spending time with their families. It was as if the entire world was crying along with me.

Teenagers always think they're invincible, even the ones beset by troubles. Now, my hair beginning to gray, the lines in my face a little bit deeper each year, I know troubles too well. Beth is not the first friend I have lost, and she won't be the last. But I'll always remember the day that the world seemed to be crying just for her.

We've Got a Situation Here

2011-04-30T17:15:00.001-04:00

I was in Penn Station with an hour to kill for a train, so I decided to go upstairs to Borders Bookstore to browse some non-fiction. The front of the store was more crowded than usual, and I must not have noticed until I walked out that there were throngs of people trying to get a glimpse or photo of someone (or something) behind an opaque partition. From the people snaked through the aisles on the ground floor all clutching a copy of some thin book I did not recognize, I deduced that this must be a book signing. I wonder who it could be? I thought with a little excitement as I considered Malcolm Gladwell's latest offering. Very few authors inspire the kind of rock-star adulation that supports these kinds of numbers. The largest line I ever saw was when Rudy Giuliani did a signing of his "book" at the Prudential Center Barnes and Noble in Boston, but I think this one was larger. I made my way up to the counter and asked the clerk who was doing a signing.

"Oh, it's the Situation," he said, and from his inflection I couldn't tell if he was mildly annoyed or if he was having trouble disguising his delight. Delight, by the way, which was shared by probably a thousand women roughly aged 22-50 who were practically vibrating with the prospect of actually being in close proximity to a pseudo-celebrity whose greatest assets are abdominal muscles and the reasoning power of a cantaloupe.

I think I was mostly annoyed that the Situation had created this situation in my Borders. All right, it's not MY Borders but bookstores and record stores and things like that are my sanctuaries and I could really do without The Jersey Shore forcibly invading them. I don't hate The Situation or Snookie (although I did once tell a fifteen year old student of mine that I thought Snookie should be publicly executed). I think that they represent dangerous and unhealthy trends in American society but they themselves are not the cause of that, they are just symptoms. And if the American consumer is willing to pay their hard earned dollars for the products endorsed by these two half-brained monkeys then Snookie and The Situation deserve every penny of the $5-10 M they each got paid last year. We, as a country, have to say NO. Otherwise we've no right to complain.

But it's hard to avoid ranting because it really did get under my skin that there is now a BOOK available that was "written" by a human adult who I'm fairly certain is mentally retarded and who calls himself a noun whose primary definition is "the state of affairs; the combination of circumstances". And people were lined up to purchase his "writings". That the Jersey Shore exists in a world parallel to mine is not the problem. When I haplessly find myself standing in the world of the Jersey Shore I feel dirty. And stupid.

Shmonstitution

2011-03-29T01:27:00.001-04:00

I was sitting at a bar and overheard some older women discussing what seemed to them to be a recent moral atrocity. They were upset because apparently "someone" was trying to get the words "Under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. This was offensive to them because, from what I could glean from their conversation, this act was contrary to the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Well, the illogic that initially enraged me about this conversation actually led to me thinking about the way that information disseminates. I've written about it before, the way that we hear things, or rather we think we hear things, and depending on what mood we happen to be in at the moment we either forget or file it away as fact. I may write a series of essays about this phenomenon.

For the record, the words "Under God" have never been removed from the pledge, and what is far more important is that they were not even originally included. The pledge of allegiance was written by a Christian Socialist Minister in 1898. It took another thirty years for the pledge to fall into regular rotation (under some objection even then) and the words "Under God" were not added until 1948, officially in 1953, as a reference to something Lincoln said in the Gettysburg address. One of the most interesting objections to the addition of the phrase was from a linguist who felt that the contemporary use of the phrase outside of the context of Lincoln's original intention was actually something of a grammatical error as "Under God" back then really meant "God Willing". So, those ladies were idiots as well as annoying. But anyway.

What I find more interesting is the notion that to strike a God reference is unconstitutional. This is an example of something a little more troubling than plain ignorance. The passage from the Bill of Rights goes like this (it's very short):

Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Honestly, I have no idea how it is possible to conclude, from that sentence, that prior to the introduction of the words "Under God" into a patriotic prayer within these women's lifteimes, said patriotic prayer was not in the spirit of the Constitution. The worst part is that they are not alone.

The Road to Valhalla

2011-02-05T19:52:00.009-05:00

"The electric things have their life too. Paltry as those lives are."

-Philip K. Dick
"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

A year ago after conducting some hours of observation at a Brooklyn High School, I offered a ride to one of my classmates, also observing. We were on the road for a minute or two before she asked "So, what's with the soccer mom van?". I summarized my relationship with it, that it had been my brother's through High School and College and that I had inherited it as something of a gig-mobile. All of that is true, but legends are not well served by economical reduction of language. And the van is a legend.

The Van. A lot of people have a "The Van" in their memories. I am not a car person, i.e. I don't generally develop close attachments to them and am not terribly attuned to the hallmarks of quality nor the mechanical inner-workings. But, as often seems to be the case, it was precisely the van's lack of overall quality that led to my eventual affection (and sometimes loathing) for it. I even find myself in begrudging defense of my dubious relationship with it, as if the Van is a good friend who once saved my life but is a terrible racist. This is something my brother and I share, as I'm sure the van's previous owner must have too, whoever she or he was.

Most of the van's legend was formed under the stewardship of my brother. It was he who removed the middle seat, facilitating the terribly convenient side-loading method for musical gear (instead of six kids with cleats on and orange slices for half time). It was he who stacked thousands of miles on its odometer on the New York State Thruway between New York and Buffalo, braving ice and snow and Queens traffic. My contributions to the Legend of the Van are less heroic, far more destruction-oriented.

The Van is a Green '93 Plymouth Voyager, one of a line of Dodge Caravans that were popular and seem to enjoy long life (there doesn't pass a single day when I don't see another "The Van" on the road, sometimes even the exact same color). It has a hatchback, a heavy sliding door on the passenger side for access to the two bench seats, and moveable armrests (a luxury I seldom see nowadays). The first day I drove the van I discovered that the passenger door would not close, no matter how hard I tried (and try I did - it may well have been the repeated attempts that later rendered the passenger side window capable of rolling down but never up). This experience would set the tone for the remainder of my tenure as master of the van. While idling one night on a side street a distinctive clanging sound informed me that the rear left window had fallen out. A previously unnoticed hairline crack from some long ago collision once caused the rear window to shatter from the impact of a pothole, spectacularly raining broken glass into the seats. After I was rear-ended on the Belt Parkway (which directly led to being front-ended) I lost all use of the hatch back. The van would not have survived this ordeal if not for my girlfriend's father's McGuyver like ingenuity. Most recently, the brakes have become ineffective after about twenty minutes of continuous driving, ending any hope of long-distance trekking.

It is thus my list of grievances becomes a eulogy. A viking warrior must die with his sword to cross the rainbow bridge into Valhalla, and instead of letting the van age into further non-functionality I think it would be best to cover it with gas, set it on fire, and push it off of a boat launch into the Great South Bay.

In Which Humanity Triumphs Over The Insectoids

2010-11-22T12:06:00.003-05:00

I must have drifted into wakefulness just long enough for my conscious mind to piece it together: there is an annoying and incessant buzzing in my right ear. It was not a dream, it was the work of very persistent mosquito. I batted it away, only to have it return a minute later. This went on for at least an hour, perhaps more. It's hard to tell in a half-asleep state. Perhaps my alarm is about to go off, I thought. But as the battle continued I understood that it was still the middle of the night, and I was being unfairly robbed of sleep by this solitary insect, alive against all odds in this cold, late November. I became very angry. In a dream I snatched the bastard out of mid air like Mr. Miyagi and splattered the wall next to me with blood, but the dream ended before long, reawakening me to that incredibly close, a-melodic buzzing that seemed to be emanating from within my own inner ear. I became paranoid - that itch on my elbow - had I been bitten during the night? Wasn't I itching all over my body? Wasn't I covered in ugly, red welts? Isn't New York City currently experiencing a bed-bug epidemic? Was I just imagining this whole thing, mosquito and all?

No. The buzzing was back again. I shall erect a mosquito net tomorrow, I thought. I forced myself out of bed and inspected myself in the mirror. I looked five-in-the-morning-terrible but free from bites or lesions. I wanted those few, precious hours of sleep. I deserved them. Deliriously, I took a long sleeved shirt and tied it around my head like a turban, covering both ears. I fell asleep, only to be awakened yet again, impossibly, by that same buzzing. I boxed my own ears as my thoughts became increasingly murderous. I thought of horses batting away flies with their tails, primates grooming their neighbors and then devouring the invaders with impunity. Why was I losing this battle with a nearly invisible adversary? Has my over-sized human brain become too cluttered with the technological and metaphysical detritus of my culture to be able to stop this winged vampire from keeping me up?

The mosquito landed on my nose, the only exposed part of skin with the covers pulled up and my turban on. With sleepy reflexes I caught it between my fingers and ended its miserable life. Having rejoined the victorious mammalians I rolled over and went back to sleep, and when the alarm went off I hit the snooze button three times.

The Ugly Astronaut

2010-04-24T22:55:00.003-04:00

I was walking around Marine Park, Brooklyn, near where I teach when I spied a torn out piece of notebook paper on the sidewalk. I picked it up and read it. Actually I read it several times. It is a poem, a rap to be precise although the meter is uncertain. But I knew it had to be shared; it's tragic that it was lost or discarded so casually. I wish I could credit the author but alas, it must join the myriad works attributable only to that great writer, Anonymous. Perhaps in 3000 years it will be credited to Homer.

"The Ugly Astronaut"

There was once an astronaut so damn ugly
That the aliens would have to get all cuddly.
It was amazing, the way he looked so stupid
That his (undecipherable) cupid.
He was so ugly that his mother said
You sure that mine?
The mom hated the ugly astronaut so much
He lost his life.
Man had shot him for being so ugly.

I could analyze this for hours. For example, was the ugly astronaut born an astronaut? Did a particular man have him shot? Or did mankind as a whole shoot him. Not literally, of course, but rather the astronaut, with his unfortunate appearance deficit, was cast out so thoroughly (by his mother and everyone who knew him) that he may as well have been violently killed. Like I say, I could go on. But great art can transcend analysis, every one who reads "The Ugly Astronaut" must bring their own experiences to it. I cast it now into the world, I only wish I could give due credit to its creator.

The Suicide Diaries

2010-03-31T08:54:00.001-04:00

Prompted by a bizarre dream (yes, another) I was about to write a long diatribe about suicide and how weird it is that it is illegal. Guess what, though? It's NOT illegal. At least not anymore, and not in the United States. It is not illegal to attempt suicide anymore either, although it's still illegal to asssit suicide, even (or perhaps especially) medically. This at least has some logic to it, if a little shaky.

That suicide is illegal was something I had been assuming for years and I have no idea why. It falls under the category of a sort of general knowledge that is never truly learned but bandied about in cafeterias and playgrounds for so long that it became woven into the fabric of my intellect. Yes, it was once considered illegal and the roots of this go back to Ancient Greece. But the laws have not been on the books since the 70's and even then only three or four states were holding on.

For interested parties, Sodomy is no longer illegal in most (but not all) states as of 2003. And in my home state (New York), that law was struck down in 1980. Before anyone gets too hopeful, though, 70 countries still have laws on the books outlawing homosexuality. I don't know whether I'm comforted by the fact that although our legal system still has some say over how we live, it has mostly left us alone over how we die.

Dream Is Destiny

2010-02-26T21:55:00.004-05:00

"For in dreams, we enter a world that is entirely our own. Let him swim in the deepest ocean or glide over the highest cloud"

-Albus Dumbledore

He exited the Administrations Building on Taxidermy Square and walked briskly across the street, the quicker to be out of earshot of the Government Spy Network's carefully placed Listening Droids. Lost in thought, he was nearly run over by a hovercraft before walking headlong into a woman crossing the other way. "Excuse me," he said to the woman who was, of course, topless.

Although he had not gathered the necessary data from the President of the Future but had instead spent the afternoon chasing a precocious boy through the high stacks of chocolate chip cookie boxes, he was certain that the mission could still be carried out. So he called Agent 99, in America.

"Hi sweetie, it's me," he said into the receiver as he entered the magnificently appointed grassy park that lay just outside the Air Purification Dome. He walked past many topless women sunbathing and reading magazines.

"I miss you," said Agent 99. "When are you gonna be done?"

"I'm just heading home. Isn't it weird that I live in your old apartment?" Out of the corner of his eye he spied someone he knew. Her breasts were enormous. "Hold on," he said by way of putting Agent 99 on hold while he said hello to his buxom acquaintance whose breasts he did not notice. He resumed his conversation as he made his way through the immaculately kept urban green space, heading into the part of Berlin run by characters from the movie Goodfellas. And Casino too, kind of.

Luckily the Italians were not there today, which was all the better for the mission. Unfortunately, as he was rigging plastic explosives to destroy the warehouse where he lived and complete his mission, Mrs. Bagshot came in with more demands. She was topless.

"I'm going to travel to London earlier than I thought," she explained, breasts swinging. "You have to send Nagini in this satchel, but the box of small white mice must be shipped separately."

"This is not a good time for me, Mrs. Bagshot," he explained impatiently. The presence of the giant man-eating python made him uneasy. "And furthermore, Pythons need only be fed once per week, can't you simply wait until you are finished driving cross-country and then purchase more small white mice?" The box was beginning to open and mice had begun to overtake the bedroom, crawling behind all of the fine Renaissance Art and museum pieces so common to all mafia warehouses.

Using his enhanced mental abilities he began to will the little white mice back into the wooden crate from which they were spilling out, but they were too numerous. Before long the room was completely filled with a layer of white mice about 12 inches deep. Luckily the Cardassian Freighter on which he had arranged for transport home beamed him out just before the entire building exploded.

The preceding has been a short work of fiction inspired by two separate dreams I have had in the past few nights.

I Can Now See The Moon

2010-01-28T19:31:00.013-05:00

Whatever it was, it had not been an actual barn for a long, long time.

Betty, the woman who owned it, had once owned much of the land in Brookhaven, the town where I was born. It was her vision that the barn be a venue for neighborhood performances, kind of like the homemade stage and curtain productions put on by the Little Rascals. To this end, a makeshift stage with a curtain on a pulley and even a small illumination rig with faders was built. One day an actor named Deb Mayo moved to Brookhaven and knocked on the door of her new neighbor, Betty, to inquire as to whether there was a suitable venue to hold acting and improv classes for the young children in the neighborhood. As a matter of fact (I imagine Betty replying), there is.

Deb flung open the door for us to play and learn. We were called the Pumpkin Patch Players because of our proximity to just that (the barn was on an enormous piece of property divided into fields of various kinds and levels of functionality). She chose the material, but we were allowed and encouraged to bring our own blossoming personalities into whatever we were doing. Some highlights: Aesop's fables and Greek myths replete with modern jokes. An interactive production of The Cantebury Tales in which we transformed the barn into the Tavern, site of all of the stories told, and in which the audience as well as the actors were the weary travelers stopping in for the night. A production of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew in which our Petruccio came to the party late riding a mororized go-cart instead of a horse, wearing a Goofy Hat and sunglasses. We had no boundaries; we were allowed to turn legitimate theater on its arse when we were thirteen years old. The answer to any insane idea we came up with was always Yes.

A few words about the barn itself. It was an easy place in which to be creative. The walls were adorned with old French posters, those sort of old advertisements. There were costumes laying around everywhere, and percussion toys and a piano that was never and could never be in tune. There was a wood burning stove to warm the place, and when one kid rested his shoe against it the melted rubber smelled horrible and left a visible mark for over a decade.

Upstairs there were more rooms. They were furnished with chairs and couches as old as our parents. On bookshelves there were issues of National Geographic from the beginning of the 20th century, volumes of outdated Yearbooks and Encylopedia, records, a gigantic weaving loom and a loft-closet full of more costumes and wigs. The floor always seemed in danger of giving out. The place looked like no other place in the world; whenever I would bring an out-of-towner to see the town I was from I would always take them to the barn like you take a girl home to meet your parents.

When the chimney of that wood stove stopped up it probably ignited something in the walls long before anyone knew it. There had been a party that night, the last of many. I could say that we took the place for granted but no one ever did. The barn became a pickup and drop-off point for the Hamlet Organic Garden, an organic vegetable co-op, in her twilight years. Much of that wildly creative acting class (myself included) reunited during college to put on Improv shows for the neighborhood, even getting written up by a visiting New York Times writer. It was the subject and then site of at least one art show from a former Pumpkin Patch Player-turned-visual artist. We put on concerts there, including a complete performance of Radiohead's OK Computer album with guitars, cello and violin. It was a venue for whatever we wanted to do, whenever we needed one. It was a place to get stoned and listen to records, to play Scrabble and Ping Pong, and even the location of a Nine Inch Nails dance party.

I wasn't there to watch it burn but a lot of other people were. The flames, they tell me, leaped higher than any of the surrounding trees. The barn was a relatively small structure, physically. It's nice to know that it took four fire departments to fight it down as it burned almost all the way through the night. It was the last of the gathering places for a community, an unofficial center that seemed to carry the heartbeat. When I saw the rubble I got choked up. In that heap was the piano, the posters, the books, the percussion toys, the costumes, the homemade stage on which we all grew up. I looked up and I could see Orion perfectly. A day later there was nothing left, and in 100 years no one will ever know it was there.

I'm glad it burned so brightly.

It's better to burn out that to fade away
-Neil Young

My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon
-Old Chinese Proverb

The Listening Experiment, Day 5

2010-01-06T12:35:00.006-05:00

In which I remember why it sucks to put my iPod on Shuffle, am unsurprised by the solo outputs of two respective Beatles and am categorically impressed by Gene Ween

I decided that the best way to systematically listen down my entire music collection would be to go alphabetically by album. This would be easy to keep track of and would prevent overdosing on any particular artist*. After 5 days of self-enforced listening I was slightly behind on my 50 song per day goal but only slightly. Luckily I have plenty of breathing room to finish this by New Years Eve 2010.

My journey began with Abbey Road, as good a place as any to begin. The first few days were a big reminder of why having a broad listening palate makes it tough to listen on shuffle. I would be in a nice, chill indie rock mood and suddenly be hit by bluegrass and then, immediately after that, metal. Also, some artists really suffer as a result of their juxtapositions. For instance, in an excellent coincidental transition, Tool came right after the Deftones. Similar music. But Tool is just way way better than the Deftones. Sorry, fellas.

Similarly, A collection of Paul McCartney/Wings output was followed immediately by Geroge Harrison's All Things Must Pass with the result being that the younger, subordinate Beatle came out looking like the greatest genius of his generation. Harrison's contributions to the Beatle catalogue have always been my favorites but Lennon and McCartney had him beat in sheer numbers and, truth be told, almost all of their songs were at least very good and at best sublime. But listening to this string of McCartney's post-fab-four hits was kind of like eating a bowl of sugar upon which raw sugar has been sprinkled and washing it down with a gallon of Strawberry Quick. Oh, and also, you're eating the sugar with a spoon that is made out of sugar. I may have trouble listening to McCartney for a pretty long time after those 17 saccharine studies in gag-reflexology. Thankfully I don't think there are any Beatles on the menu any time soon. Harrison, on the other hand, delivered a double album set worth of some of his best songcraft with all of the humor and emotion he always displayed in his few and far between offerings on Beatle records. I have a feeling that when I get to Lennon's Plastic Ono Band period I'm going to "discover" what everyone knows but won't say: that Paul and John sucked without each other. Imagine how rough that was for both of them, because I'll bet they dimly suspected it.

I have never seen the band Ween live but I really want to now having listened to an album worth of live studio cuts. The way Gene and Dean disguise their voices and saunter with inane virtuosity from genre to genre is made more remarkable only by the fact that they use their copious talents to sing some of the least accessible (to a mass market) songs ever laid to tape. They wrote a folk song ("Cold Blows the Wind") that is better than most folk songs but then a weird nonsense-word song with growling vocals that are more like Tom Waits than Tom Waits.

Speaking of that, I also had a chance to fall in love with Alice again. So far I am enjoying the experience.

*unless a particular artist has a maximum allowable dosage of two songs...this has yet to occur but I imagine it might.

The Deutschland Diaries, Part III

2010-01-05T23:20:00.000-05:00

In every city in Germany there is a Rathaus, or city hall. It occurs to me that Rathaus was also the surname of a diminutive fifth grader I went to school with who made up for his size by being a bully and a smart-ass (oddly enough...). This literally occured to me just now; that is some real-time creativity for you.

Anyway, the Rathaus of Hannover boasts a 100 meter high dome with an observation deck that allows for a spectacular view of the city. Inside there is a big lobby of marble and stone with four tables set up. On each table is a miniature of the city of Hannover at various points in history. Here was where I thought about war and casualty and destruction and America and history, all because of these little models.

The first model depicts Hannover as a Medieval City-State on the River Leine. It was a tiny, crowded collection of houses contained within a moat and a city wall that had a few entrances in strategic locations (the names of these entrances are preserved now as names of neighborhoods close to the city center). The second model jumped ahead a few hundred years when there was no more moat or city wall. The city had begun expanding outward but you could still spot those original buildings. The fourth model was present day Hannover, easily recognizable as the one we were having such pleasant bike rides through. On that model the Little Red Haired Girl could point out her apartments she had lived in, the Hauptbanhoff from whence all trains leave and the Opera House where she would be performing in a production of Das Rheingold*. The third model was Hannover in 1945 and it was simply gone. All of the buildings were just foundations with rubble in the middle. Every church, every building and every home. Hannover was an important road junction and production center during the War and was therefore a strategic target for bombing (unlike, say, Dresden). Continental Tires (where the Little Red Haired Girl worked during her entire tenure in the Mother Land) was probably a primary target, in fact. As a descendant of European Jews I naturally had some powerful emotions looking down at the ruined city. Of the nearly 5000 Hannoverian Jews at the start of the war, less than 100 were alive when American forces arrived in 1945 to occupy the city. This city was one of those places you read about.

But what I was really thinking about was how America has never fought a war on its own turf since the War of Northern Aggression over 150 years ago. And that was before bombs. The closest thing we've ever had to being attacked was September 11th. And I'm certainly not going to be the guy who downplays the impact of that but I can't even imagine what it must have been like to see the decimation of your home city. Imagine New York and Boston with all of their histories, my homes, my schools, my favorite restaurants and record stores, burned to the ground leaving nothing but some bricks and dust and ash. Imagine the task of rebuilding the city of Los Angeles. We were not spared the death toll of World War II. But our cities were spared and that is very fortunate. It might explain why war is so often on our lips even when it is forsworn by our European allies. It is a kind of intelligence, but it is one I pray does not have to be gained by the demolition of our homes.

Cities aside, war came home for me again as we hiked along the former border of East and West Germany in the Harz mountain range. Off the beaten trail there was a cemetary: this spot had been the site of many a skirmish between the Nazis and the Russians in those not-so-long-ago days of War. The graves were mostly of German soldiers with a few unmarked Russian graves. Running through these same beautiful woods with weapons trained, not one of them was older than 20. Even their ghosts are gone, so far from that world do I live.

*Das Rheingold may get it's own separate post.

Refrigerator

2010-01-03T00:20:00.000-05:00

A funny T-Shirt
Worn by my friend Briana
Made me laugh a lot

"Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator"

Personally, though
Expressing things in short bursts
Calms me down a bit

And, to be honest
I do find them amusing
I may be alone

Be that as it may
Here is another blog post
Expressed in haiku

On my next birthday
I'm turning twenty seven
I like that number

Wolverine movie:
Not as good as X-Men 2
Hugh Jackman is fierce

So many ideas
But I lack motivation
Not to mention time

Reflecting On The Changing Of The Guard

2009-12-31T15:15:00.004-05:00

I think that we celebrate the passing of a year in the middle of winter to give us something to hold on to. The "official" first day of the year does not have much to do with an actual ending or beginning; school years begin in the fall, life reawakens at the beginning of spring, even the fiscal year in the United States begins on October 1st (July 1st in other places). But because of the date the Romans picked I am sitting here contemplating new beginnings rather than looking forward to more cold weather that will more than likely overstay its welcome.

I went looking for a post I wrote about New Years Resolutions and made a very telling discovery; it was not written last year but the year before last. This says a lot about 2008, a year that I would prefer be erased from my memory and experience. Or, as a friend put it, "Out with Two-Thousand-Hate, in with Two-Thousand-Fine". Has '09 lived up to that? In a lot of ways it has. It was a year that marked a lot of beginnings (and therefore endings) but that still leaves 2008 as this very curious "nothing" year. When I look at those resolutions I wrote down two years ago I see a list of things I managed to accomplish, to a large degree, in 2009 but none of which I made much headway on in 2008.

Things I will remember about this year: Leonard Cohen at Radio City Music Hall, Thanksgiving in Germany, more than 300 letters sent across the ocean, collaborating with wonderful musicians and learning more from my students than I could possibly teach them.

I do have one resolution for this year. It's an unusual one, but it's also going to be a very difficult one to achieve. I am going to listen to my entire iTunes Library. It currently contains 10,265 songs and iTunes tells me that it would take more than 28 days to listen to the entire thing uninterrupted. Of course uninterrupted listening is not possible. So I plan to listen to an average of 50 songs per day (average because some songs are much longer than others), moving alphabetically by album (this should turn out to be something like four albums per day) I will have listened through the entire collection in just over 200 days. I can do this by 2011. I anticipate a satisfying experience.

Shid ald akwentans bee firgot,
an nivir brocht ti mynd?
Shid ald akwentans bee firgot,
an days o ald lang syn?

Source: wikipedia (Scots pronunciation guide)

V is for Vendetta

2009-12-28T21:13:00.002-05:00

(and Vendetta Starts with V)

I may be a little late to the party with this rant. I don't remember why but I was talking about the cookie monster with one of my students and she informed me that there is no more cookie monster, that now he is "Veggie Monster". I don't have much to say about this besides UNACCEPTABLE.

Cookie Monster represents something very real inside of all children. He is a ravenous, unreasonable beast who is completely ruled by his relentless sweet tooth. He shoves cookies into his mouth even though his mouth is made of fabric and unable to actually ingest them. The unquenchable desire for cookies lives inside of every child and Cookie Monster has always been the symbol for that which must be kept under control. Not eliminated, just kept to a moderate level. The idea that changing the appearance and name of this little beast will make kids crave vegetables instead of cookies is akin to replacing all internet pornography with still photographs of jars of mayonnaise and then proclaiming loudly that western culture tends to fetishize fatty white condiments. Cookie Monster was an important character because he taught children that their addictions could be controlled. After all, Cookie Monster is hardly a role model. He is something to be laughed at, because he is being silly. No kid will even think of emulating something called Veggie Monster because kids will never want to eat their vegetables, it's simply a part of growing up that we have to learn to eat things that are good for us and make us healthy and strong before we reach for the sugar to which we're hopelessly addicted.

And A Partridge In A Pear Tree

2009-12-24T01:46:00.001-05:00

The Deutschland Diaries, Part II

2009-12-03T22:41:00.004-05:00

A bag of walnuts comes cruising down the conveyor belt. To be fair, it's a BIG bag of walnuts, almost comical in size. It asks the question "What will you do with all of those walnuts!?" but I'm sure the shopper had her reasons. The mousy little woman who is the grocery store checkout clerk is dutifully scanning items. Her glasses are two decades out of style and have thick lenses that magnify her pupils, making her look ridiculous anyway, but when the walnuts slide into her visual field she jerks her head upwards to glare intently at the purchaser. She glared at her for a really unreasonable amount of time before continuing to scan her items.

That's all that happened. The Little Red Haired Girl, being a three year resident of Northern Germany, is used to these kind of interactions. When she first came to the country she was surprised by the apparent hostility of clerks (and the general public) but after some time she simply came to accept it as a cultural difference.

Now, here's what MY brain did.

The woman buying the walnuts and the woman behind the counter have lived 100 lifetimes before this one. In each lifetime the two of them always meet, and when they do one kills the other. In one life they were soldiers meeting on a battlefield. In another one was another man murdered by a jealous husband. A handmaiden poisoning the princess to be with her true love. Et cetera. They have met so many times that they have come to know the presence of the other by little signs, undetectable to everyone else but unmistakable to them. And the sign in this life? Walnuts. The clerk had no idea that destiny would bring her face to face with her nemesis on this particular night but when those nuts came cruising down the belt she knew in an instant, looked up and said (with her eyes) "...YOU..."

After that (I guess) the two of them pull out whatever weapons might be concealed in their pockets or purses and proceed to duel in front of the mystified late night shoppers shouting (in German, presumably) "THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE". I'm assuming the theme from Highlander is playing, too. I can only think of two explanations why this didn't happen. Either a) they mutually decided that, although the day would come when they would once again meet on the bloody fields of fate, today was not to be that day or b) the sign was actually pecans and the clerk realized her mistake in time to prevent the slaying of an innocent.

In fact the clerk piped up when she heard the Little Red Haired Girl and I talking. "Where are those accents from?" she asked us in clear-as-day American English. As it turns out the woman had lived for 21 years in Oklahoma (which, I suppose, tempered her natural disposition) and struck up far-and-away the friendliest conversation I had borne witness to during my 10 days in Germany thus far. Go figure. The truth is so boring it's a small wonder I spend so much time crafting absurd scenarios in my head.

The Deutschland Diaries, Part I

2009-11-30T19:49:00.004-05:00

It is difficult to overstate the repression of sexuality in American culture, particularly when it is juxtaposed with the comparative freedom observable in most European countries. As an adolescent, the idea of beaches where women could freely sunbathe topless was unspeakably appealing. These days, although I still love tits as much as the next guy, I look at the proliferation of nudity (in advertising and in the culture in general) as an advantage more from a sociological standpoint; making naked bodies taboo is implying that all nudity equals sex and also that sex is dirty and wrong in some way. As an American I myself was brought up to believe this, whether someone actually told me or not. But if I had grown up with nipples and bottoms in shampoo commercials I would probably be less ashamed of or by the human body. It's very telling that the MPAA bases its system of movie ratings far more on language and sexuality (things that are common to everyone and are likely to be encountered on a regular basis) than on horrific violence (something that is fortunately less common and unlikely to be encountered by most people). There is perhaps no better commentary on this than in the South Park Movie.

My experience with this more liberal take on nudity had been decidedly abstract until about a week ago. After hiking in the Harz Mountain range the Little Red Haired Girl and I spent a day in a spa. Massages, saunas, steam rooms, things like that. And, as is common in Germany, these activities (save for the massages) are all co-ed. And nude. I had been expecting this but, at the same time, didn't know what to expect. The Little Red Haired Girl thought there might be separate changing rooms but that suspicion evaporated when we entered the locker area together to be greeted by a naked fifty-something woman toweling off. "Hallo!" she said.

We started putting our stuff in the lockers. I, now in my superman skivvies, had a "here goes the cold water" moment as I stripped off that thin piece of cloth, that one item of clothing that somehow makes the difference between acceptably clothed (if you're on a beach) and completely nude. So there we were, an Adam and an Eve, ready to hit the showers.

I can honestly say this was the first time in my life that I ran into a naked woman on the way to a shower and she simply said "hi" (albeit in German). After we were clean we went in what looked like a hot tub but seemed to be filled with heated mineral water. Everywhere there were showers, easily visible from just about all vantage points. Some people wore robes or wrapped towels around them but these were nonchalantly stripped off when it was time to rinse off or enter a sauna or steam room, which we ourselves did over the course of the afternoon. There were plenty of couples there but also what appeared to be some mother-daughter teams or friends of the same gender. Honestly, it was only weird for five seconds. It was alarming how quickly I became accustomed not just to seeing naked bodies everywhere but being unconcerned by my own nakedness. Confronted at every turn by huge, sagging breasts and shriveled penises I felt a bit resentful of having to wear clothes all the time. Especially, say, on the beach. It seems like the ideal place for everyone to just be naked. There was even a pool for naked swimming. Sanctioned naked swimming. I loved it so much.

Nudity, of course, does not equal sex. Interestingly, though, I did not feel comfortable touching the Little Red Haired Girl while we were both nude and in sight of other people. Nudity may not equal sex but an everyday action such as a kiss or a hand on a shoulder can be easily dismissed when clothed but become highly sexual when naked. But other than that it felt completely natural. Granted, we didn't know anyone at the spa. I wondered aloud at one point how comfortable it still would have been had someone we were acquainted with walked into the steam room where we were chatting so amicably. Someone we'd been to school with, or worked with. Or our parents. I suppose if we lived in a world where nudity was more normal and accepted those hang-ups would dissolve. But in this world I can see the need for clothing, most of the time. Certain information is better kept under wraps. Or underwear.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere A Sign

2009-11-11T23:37:00.006-05:00

I was sitting on the Long Island Railroad (where I spend two thirds of my life) with my iPod on when I looked up and saw a sign. I think I've seen it before, it must be in every car. But I never really thought about it before: Assaulting a member of the train crew is a felony and it'll land you as many as 7 years in prison. 7 years! I started thinking about that and not because I find it unfair, but just because I find it fascinating that a 7 year prison sentence is one very simple decision away.

When I stand on a train or subway platform I always think about stepping in front of the oncoming train. I don't think this makes me morbid, I actually think it makes me the opposite. I feel, in those moments, not just the fragility of life but also the beauty and wonder of choice. We choose to stay alive every day. Every time we stand on the edge of the platform we have an incredibly easy opportunity to end it all with one little step forward. But as I thought about possibly making the choice to end up in prison for any number of years I thought about how there are actually many different shadings of that. For instance, let's say I want to spend, not seven years, but one night in prison (I have no idea why I would want this). I could run naked through the park, that would probably get me arrested, right? I suppose it would ultimately get me fined, but they'd have to hold me somewhere, right? Or I could shoplift at Circuit City. There are so many simple crimes out there to choose from.

So many things are one simple decision away, even things which are not necessarily negative (like prison or death). I suppose if you start looking at life as just a series of these every day decisions that's when you can break harmful patterns, like binging on junk food or avoiding responsibility. When viewed as a single instant all decisions, whether its to pay your cell phone bill, put down the cupcake or jump in front of a moving bus, become equal.

I saw another sign on the subway. It was Gatorade (or a plastic bottle with the label obscured of what was clearly supposed to be Gatorade) being poured into a glass, only before the Gatorade got there it became fat. Ugly, disgusting, biology-textbook-illustration fat. I took a picture of it with my phone but I don't think the grossness comes across fully.

I get it, I get it. Gatorade is bad for you. And yes, I think it's important to educate people about something as insidious as a sugary beverage that promotes itself as a health drink that athletes like (and it makes them sweat colors!) and I think shocking imagery, just like the famous anti-smoking pictures of black lungs in health textbooks, is an effective way to garner attention but I ALMOST THREW UP ON THE F-TRAIN. Jeepers.

Communication Is The Only Way

2009-11-03T13:55:00.001-05:00

With the rise of Instant Messaging as a primary means of communication for some people a new language has emerged. Not only a new language but almost a new paradigm of thought. Before facebook and friendster and myspace, when internet persona was still in its infancy, we all learned about a feature that came with AOL called Instant Messenger. It was almost exclusively the province of early and late teenagers with some spillover on either side of the age bracket. Around when I was a college student (2001-2005) it became much more widespread, an enormous part of college life. Now it's gchatting or ichatting or AIMchatting or just old fashioned IMing, and thanks to the iPhone it's become almost synonymous with text messaging*.

Internet chatting makes me understand that speech has much more purpose than simply to communicate words. Just as the loss of facial expressions over the phone is limiting, when simply typing words the loss of tonal inflection and the experience of conversing in real-time are irretrievably lost. This is why it is not like the phone; it is not a replacement for normal human conversation, it is a new kind of conversing that allows the participants to reveal as little of their true feelings as they want. Or as much. It's alarming what people will and can say to you when they don't have to look at your face. Words as cruel, salacious or frank have never been spoken to me until I discovered the boundary-less realm of the Instant Message.

In a way, though, all of this has allowed for many different shadings of friendship. I find that there are friends with who I communicate best through text message. I don't know why but we just seem to have a better rapport with snappy, no-nonsense one-or-two sentence blurbs without the usual pleasantries (these are frequently people with whom I'm doing some kind of business). Close friends, though, need to be in person. I have a good phone relationship with a lot of close friends but face to face is still preferred, and with some of them the phone just won't do. Unfortunately this means that, should a long period of absence occur, it's hard to reconnect, even with all of these options.

Facebook has really changed everything, though. I can now stay caught up on lives of people who I know/used to know without ever having to say a word to them again. This is the next phase, it's the anti-communicator. It has the power to keep us all connected, and connected we will be: Insulated and isolated and all alone with over five hundred "friends". No one will ever attend a High School Reunion in the future. What would be the point? All of the pedigree information is there for everyone to see, and no one will ever again have to use small talk as a transitory tactic to find out anyone's whereabouts. I don't think I can say whether this is good or bad. I think it might just be a fact. Friendship means different things now, or rather it can mean several things, some of which seem contrary to the others. And I do feel more connected to more people. But I can't deny that at the same time I feel pretty disconnected.

*I feel I must point out that in that sentence I used five completely made-up words, and this does not make them less valid. They are simply the only words available for what I'm describing, and that is linguistic evolution in a nutshell.

The Thermodynamic Miracle

2009-10-12T18:16:00.005-04:00

“Thermodynamic miracles… events with odds against so astronomical they’re effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.

And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter…

…Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you that emerged.

To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air into gold…

That is the crowning unlikelihood.

The thermodynamic miracle.

(Laurie: But… if me, my birth, if that’s a thermodynamic miracle …I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!”)

Yes.

Anybody in the world. But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget…

I forget.

We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from another vantage point, as if new, it may still take the breath away."

Star Trek Invents New Technology

2009-09-26T23:07:00.004-04:00

Will youtube's uses never stop emerging? Long before my (some might say unhealthy) obsession with all things Harry Potter I was a science fiction nerd. I grew up watching Star Trek and Star Wars, and by the time I was nine years old I was well versed in Isaac Asimov's ouvre which served as a gateway to a lot of classic sci-fi. I don't tend to wear it on my sleeve all the time but I'm still a massive fan of the genre, particularly Vonnegut's short stories and Philip K. Dick. I have to proclaim my love to the world now, though, since I've been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on youtube like it's my job. And never mind science fiction, it's just a great show. It is my belief that the greatest art always transcends its genre (West Side Story, for example, stands out for me because the quality of the music and lyrics is so high that it being a musical has nothing to do with my enjoyment of it any more). Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner lead, in my opinion, one of the strongest ensemble casts ever to grace television and the writing and characters have no dependence upon the usual devices of science fiction to make them work.

The thing with shows, books and movies about the future: they usually get it really wrong. A lot of the time technological development is grossly overestimated (in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey there is a shuttle that runs regularly back and forth from the earth to a well established moon colony. Fail. There is also, apparently, an unexplained obsession with Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz). Sometimes it's prescient yet strangely off (Bradbury's Farenheit 451 told of a world where books are banned and everyone watches wall-sized televisions all the time. Hardly Kindles and Flat Screens but you get the idea). Smart writing is setting your futuristic world in the distant, unverifiable past (Star Wars, Thundercats) so that you can't be wrong, but back in the 1960s the 23rd century seemed far enough off to make some wild predictions about technology. Don't get me wrong, a lot of liberties of taken, particularly where faster-than-light travel is concerned (although Prof. Stephen Hawking, during a tour of the engineering set, was heard to remark upon seeing the Warp Plasma Coils "I'm working on that."). But there are some little things that were more than a little accurate.

In the original series, for example, the crew all carried flip phones. Flip phones with voice recognition technology.

I was watching Next Generation, though, and noticed a lot of technological conveniences that were very familiar indeed. Captain Picard goes into his ready room and opens up a laptop. Really. And this was 1989, folks. It's a laptop, and he doesn't have to plug it into the wall (and perhaps Macintosh stops lying about the battery life of their Powerbooks in the 24th century). They don't carry communicators anymore, now they all have bluetooth devices. And the crew quarters are all equipped with an iPod touch. I've seen several crew members simply say "Let's hear some jazz" or "Play some Bach!". That's not very different than "Play songs by Jack Johnson".

It's nice to think that, if such technology could be so specifically predicted, some of the other advances described in the show might be true. Medical care, for example, seems to have developed to the point where doctors barely have to touch patients anymore and pain is removed by harmless little laser lights. Hunger and poverty are things of the past. Although baldness is not. But honestly, with Patrick Stewart at the helm, baldness is badass. So much the better.

Insults

2009-09-08T21:05:00.003-04:00

Tonight I was having a conversation with an older woman, in her seventies. Her grandchildren had just been out to visit from Omaha and she had spent the week observing the interactions of the younger set. She told me an interesting piece of information: apparently the worst insult that the kids were currently using on one another was 'racist'. I find this more than a little strange. Growing up, my brothers and I used the standard insults, one's that pretty much express universal negativity. Asshole, moron, jerk-face, etc. I never really thought of 'racist' as something that could be re-contextualized. But then again I guess an insult is usually a word that's not exactly being used in its intended way. A douche bag, in and of itself, is not derogatory. It is a hygienic product, but when I describe Scott Stapp, lead singer of the band Creed*, as a douche bag, no one misreads my intent.

More interesting than the apparently widespread (according to one Omaha, Nebraska household) use of the epithet 'racist' outside of its denoted meaning is a much older insult that this same granny informed me of. As school children during the 1950s in the American Midwest it was often required, as anyone who used to be a child knows, to ridicule someone anonymously. The methodology differed from anything we did in school though. Using a stick or shoe, the victim's name would be written in the sand and circled. And underneath would be drawn a swastika. This had to be done covertly, she said, lest someone catch them drawing the forbidden sign. This kind of behavior must sounds like the basis for an entire branch of semiotics.

* This video is...it's as if someone went inside my brain, listened to the way Creed sounds like to me and somehow translated it into the real world.

The Little Semantic Argument That Could

2009-09-03T21:19:00.003-04:00

"I'm telling you, I can't just pick up and move to Thailand."
"You could if you wanted."
"That's just not true. How would I pay my bills? And I have student loans to pay off, and those have cosigners."
"Those are consequences you won't accept. You don't want to accept them."
(sighs) "Fine. What's the difference?"
"There's a world of difference between can't and won't."

As infuriating as this logic is, it is a valid point. It's a defeatist attitude to say there are certain things I can't do. I can do anything, but all courses of action have consequences that I can either choose to accept or choose not to accept, and this logic can pretty much be applied to every decision that you make, regardless of the size. It may be semantics but I think it represents a significant shift in mode of thought. It forces me to identify the things I actually want and how much I want them based on my priorities, or even my values.

Thus, "I can't move to Thailand (for example)" can be restated as "I want to move to Thailand, but that desire is outweighed by my desire to continue living without the consequences of moving to Thailand." It becomes a question of which wants are outweighed by others, making me examine how much I want things in addition to what they are. Here's some example of juxtaposing two things and drawing a conclusion:

I want one hundred thousand dollars. I do not want to kill another human being. Therefore I would not kill a person in exchange for one hundred thousand dollars.

I want to eat an entire bag of Oreos. I do not want to feel sick to my stomach. Sometimes I want the Oreos more. And I accept the consequences. (And no, eating less than a full bag is not a viable option.)

So, as an exercise, here is a list of things I can't do, translated into things I, upon further examination, do not really want to do.

I can't fly ---> I want to fly, but I don't want to spend an exorbitant amount of money to construct an elaborate personal flying device or otherwise fund a project to invent the technology to do so.

I can't communicate with animals --->I want to communicate with animals but don't want to spend two years in the Sierra Leone amidst the Western Lowlands Gorillas learning their ways and being accepted as one of the tribe*.

I can't perform oral sex on myself ---> I want to perform oral sex on myself but I don't want to develop the flexibility and core strength necessary to assume that posture, nor do I want to remove one of my ribs. I also don't want to accidentally snap my neck during the act and be discovered in such a compromising position.

I can't breathe underwater ---> hmmm...

I invite all of you, dear readers, to engage in a similar shift in thinking. There is nothing you can't do (except for breathe underwater. And go to Hogwarts). Exist in a world where anything is possible if you're willing to give something else up and you'll find that there is nothing stopping you from achieving what you want. The true lesson is that the more outrageous your wish, the more you will have to give up for it.

*I am kind of describing the plot of the movie Instinct now.

Enough Guilt To Start My Own Religion

2009-08-25T01:54:00.006-04:00

Following the Great Crash of 2009 my iTunes library needs to be rebuilt. At present I have worked my way from Aerosmith to Iggy and the Stooges. So far, so good.

Going through this process, while incredibly tedious, has allowed me to sit in front of a computer at odd hours (I've generally been doing this between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m. so it doesn't disrupt the rest of my life) and rediscover some old favorites. And, apparently, I'm a teenage girl. To listen to my entire collection of Björk and Tori Amos albums would take approximately sixteen straight hours. Björk I discovered a little later in life when I got big into ambient sound and goofy dance music. But Tori is a postcard from my senior year of High School, from a newly contemplative but still moody late-teen who was in exactly the right frame of mind for songs with lyrics like "You're only popular with anorexia" and "Got enough guilt to start my own religion".

Her vocals are almost schizophrenic, changing character and emotion right along with her diary-accidentally-left-open lyrics. Lucidity is sometimes sacrificed for startling word pictures, but even at that age I think I was gravitating more towards her music. Years of classical training on piano left Ms. Amos an unencumbered maverick of melodic and harmonic structure, and she plays with a passion you can hear even through the digital imperfection of the MP3. The music is challenging yet accessible, much like the difficult themes she explores lyrically.

A Tori Sampler
LITTLE EARTHQUAKES Tori's debut album is an excellent place to start. "Crucify" sets the tone both lyrically and musically and features lush production that hilights rather than hides her idiosyncratic vocal and keyboard skills. The songcraft on this album is great from start to finish but the moment that you'll not soon forget is "Me and A Gun", a first-hand (and true) account of Amos being raped, delivered chillingly a capella.

UNDER THE PINK Tori seems to have escaped the usual curse of the sophmore effort which is particularly impressive considering the critical and commercial success her first album brought her. The production is a little more spare but only just, with warm strings accenting the light-as-a-feather piano accompaniment of "Cloud On My Tongue" and some excellent Irish touches on the single "Cornflake Girl". My favorite is the bleak and sober "Past the Mission" which dances between jumpy and melancholic as seamlessly as the shifts in meter and feel.

BOYS FOR PELE With it's curious artwork (She appears to be breastfeeding a piglet in the notes) and titles like "Mr. Zebra" and "Hey Jupiter", a lot of this record comes off like Tori is trying to send coded messages. Happily, even if I don't understand, I feel as if I speak this same language instead of feeling excluded. The songs are not conspicuously intellectual. The first eight bars of "Muhammed My Friend" are coated with a thin layer of Debussy. My favorite is "Caught A Light Sneeze" for its infectious groove and an extremely raw vocal performance in the second half.

FROM THE CHOIRGIRL HOTEL Like her friend and sometime collaborator Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), Amos often reinvents her sound with a new album. Choirgirl is my favorite reinvention. Track one, "Spark" weaves electric guitar and electronic drum loops into Tori's familiar vocal stylings. The subject matter is dark and sometimes full of anger on this album as Amos was coming to terms with a miscarriage at the time of writing. "Iieee" sounds like an eerie cinematic dream, but my very favorite is the heartfelt "Playboy Mommy", delivered over twin, muted saxophones.

Finish Him

2009-08-14T00:31:00.005-04:00

or "Names Of Special Moves In Mortal Kombat That Could Also Be The Names Of Homosexual Sex Acts"

These are all real special moves for characters featured in the game Mortal Kombat: Armageddon for Sony Playstation. I did not make up any of these.

Poke Surprise
Flaming Fist
Judgement Fist
Stinky Fingers
Twisty Kick
Speedy Serpent
Tippy Toe Stab
Flame On!
Chest Missile
Meat Leg Slide
Fleshy Approach
Double Fist Strike
Thigh Slash
Burning Pulse
Ice Pop
Lasso Snatch
Stomach Smack
Flapping Attack
Dirty Bird
Pressure Fist
Extreme Fist
Pink Dragon
Event of Pain
Stomach Poke
Agony's Edge
Mount Stance
Does It Hurt?
Donkey Kick
Deep Chop
Throat Poke
Take It
Blows of Doom
Dirty Face

Interruptus

2009-07-12T01:47:00.010-04:00

I feel like this is a sequel to a piece I wrote last year about some odd things I saw walking the streets of Manhattan. But that had kind of a happy ending, with me declaring my love for the city and its weirdness. This will not end that way.

I was coming home from a gig with Pearl and the Beard. I love this band and everyone in it. They are wonderful, beautiful people who always manage to lift my spirits. Go and listen to them now. I'll wait. With my now sufficiently lifted spirits I was walking through the lower part of Midtown Manhattan. I volunteer the following details about setting in order to more fully contextualize the action I am about to describe: It was only 11:00 at night, I was on a well-lit, moderately trafficked street and I was not the only person in sight. Like in a play, the world must be fully imagined.

I crossed the street to walk along the north side of Madison Square Park. I was on my cell phone, on a mildly drunken diatribe about something or other, when I saw what appeared to be a man with his pants down standing in the bushes. In New York this is only mildly surprising. But my mild astonishment gave way to (morbid?) curiosity when I saw that the man was holding on to something large and as yet unidentifiable. Whatever it was it was either getting away from him and he was pulling it back or he was pushing it away and it was coming back towards him. Imagine my shock when it turned out to be both: it was actually two men engaged in a physical act which is illegal in 4 states. By the time I understood this I was literally seven inches away, with a fence and some air separating me from the two gentlemen who, as I passed by, paused (BUT DID NOT STOP). I pretended not to notice and, once I was a little ways down the sidewalk, recounted the incident to V.

I am a very liberal dude, an avid supporter of marriage equality (as a matter of fact there are very few other causes that get me as worked up) and generally just a gay-loving guy. But this was absolutely not cool, to put it mildly. And this would not have happened if it were a straight couple, do you know why? Because no woman would ever consent to having sex in public with NO COVER. Women's brains are obviously equipped with an enzyme that prevents libidinous desire from obliterating all observance of social morés. I recognize that most (if not nearly all) gay men would not get their rocks off less than a foot from the sidewalk in Madison Square Park. But only men would even consider it, let alone execute it. I should have said something. I should have thrown something. But the "giver" in this situation looked to be about 230 lbs of pure muscle, bald and tattooed. I shudder to think what he might have done to me, given the state of things.

I have never been a direct witness to a sex act of which I was not a participant*. It's a curious thing, to witness something that is not only natural but absolutely universal and yet relegated to the darkest corners of society. If the proliferation of pornography on the internet is an indicator then one could conclude that the stigmatization of sex in our culture has made us all voyeuristic. I did not think of any of that, though. I just wanted to throw up.

*with the exception of receiving a hand-job in my closet at age sixteen while two other people made out on my bed and a couple of lonely nights spent observing my neighbors across the street who were, apparently, exhibitionists.

Editor's Note: I was informed today (16th August) by a female friend that it is incorrect (possibly borderline sexist?) to assume that a woman would not consent to having sex in public. She knows who she is, and the story she related to disprove my assumption was extremely hot. So, apologies to all girls and guys out there who have enjoyed some spontaneous or meticulously planned public fun. It's not all disturbing, I guess.

Lessons

2009-07-06T15:28:00.006-04:00

(In Haiku)

It is easier
To give someone else advice
Than to follow it

A person can't change
Unless he really wants to
Even so, it's hard

Most people settle
For a life without passion
That's safe nonetheless

A relationship:
Nothing more than a form of
Communication

Knowledge is power
But it's not the only kind
Ignorance is too

Now, with inflation
A bird in the hand is worth
Like five in the bush

Time will always show
A person's true intentions
But time is finite

I know of nothing
That is of greater value
Than your closest friends

Three Sentences Or Less

2009-07-05T12:11:00.005-04:00

I went into a music store where I was employed when I was sixteen. When I encountered one of my coworkers from those many years ago she asked me the inevitable "So, what have you been doing with your life?" But she asked me to give her this answer in three sentences or less, perhaps because she was aware of how daunting this question can be when the answers can be so complicated but more likely because she was pressed for time. I thought about it for several minutes before answering,

"Learning a lot of lessons the hard way." I was pleased by my own perspicacity.
"That's why I miss having you around," she said, "I miss the intelligent conversations." I looked around to see whether she had said this within earshot of any of her coworkers.

This statement about my whereabouts for a decade is not untrue, but neither is it particularly revealing. It is unspecific enough to deter those with only a passing interest in my affairs but to guide those with genuine interest into asking more direct inquiries. Three sentences or less is going to become my new philosophy on answering difficult questions

Animal Crackers

2009-07-04T00:29:00.006-04:00

I. A Philosophical Problem

My mother has always been a pet person. She loves cats most of all but really she has an affinity for all living things, plant and animal. I tolerate cats, or at the very least we have an understanding, but I've never been a dog person (apart from an inexplicable obsession I have with the Dachsund). Still, I will occasionally accompany my mother when she works in her capacity as a dog-walker and general animal-sitter. One dog in particular, Dooley, loves my mother unequivocally but shows nothing but malice towards everyone else, including his rightful owners. Once he escaped during a walk by pulling the leash out of his walker's hands inspiring the owner to shout "And don't come back!" after him. If this seems unsympathetic it is only because you have not met this dog.

One day when we were walking Dooley was let off the leash. He doesn't usually take advantage of this when my mother is the one who is walking him but today he strayed from the course only to return a few minutes later carrying something in his mouth. From fifty yards away it looked like an old sock but once he got closer it revealed itself to be a fish. Not a fish that he'd plucked from the stream nor something long dead and rotten; a filet of fish. It was very fresh, it didn't even smell fishy. But it was unmistakably a filet of some sort of white fish, perhaps a flounder, on the large side. Dooley refused to reveal where he'd gotten this prize and seemed to be deciding how best to handle it when a bird startled him and he swallowed the filet whole.

As I see it there are three possibilities as to how Dooley obtained the fish:
1. He went into a nearby house, opened the refrigerator, stole the filet and then exited, shutting the back door behind him.

2. He went down to the stream, captured the fish in his jaws, wrestled it onto land, and cleaned it and gutted it himself.

3. He walked all the way down to the fish market, purchased the filet and then carried it all the way back to the woods where we were walking.

All three are impossible and yet one of them must have occurred. Discuss.

II. Communication

Another of my mother's jobs is to spend time with Michael, a fifty year-old parrot. In addition to feeding Michael and changing the newspaper that lines his cage, she must also tell Michael that he is the best bird, and inquire as to whether he would like a cracker. "Michael is very happy to see me," my mother will tell me. "See how he shows me his feathers?"

Carrying on a conversation with a parrot is not stimulating.

"Hi Michael! Hi Michael! Hi Michael!"
"Doesn't he say anything else?"
"Yeah!"
"Is he mocking me?"
"Hi Michael! Hi Michael! Hi Michael!"

Michael's wings are clipped so his mobility is limited to clawing his way to the top of his cage where there is a bar for him to stand on and then back inside the cage again. Based on the number of times I have seen him go through this cycle during the five minutes I have spent with him I estimate he performs these actions, if I may describe them as such, about seven hundred times per day. His existence strikes me as devastatingly boring, and I have come up with a hypothesis.

Michael's incessant exclamations of a greeting followed by his own name are his best efforts at imitating what human vocalization is. After all, it's nearly the only thing anyone ever says to him. I believe it is registering to him the way a dog's bark or a cat's meow registers to us. The way a child tries to communicate with a cat by meowing at it so is Michael trying to tell us something by imitating the sound he hears from us most often. Sure, he could just be saying "Hi Michael" but I think, given his circumstances, it's more likely that he is begging for death. Incessantly. "Please kill me! I wasn't meant to live like this! I dream of flight, but all I see is this living room! Kill me, kill me, kill me!"

"Hi Michael!"
"Hi Michael!"
"Hi Michael!"

On The Implausibility of Spock's Red Ball

2009-05-31T22:23:00.010-04:00

(or "I'm a Huge Nerd")

I saw the new Star Trek movie in a theater in Sayville, New York. It was a small theater, with slightly grungy but very comfortable seats. Only popcorn and candy were for sale in the lobby; no nachos, cheeseburgers or ribeye steaks. Tickets were only seven dollars. It was perfect. My father (also a big Star Trek fan) was with me and my brothers and he reminisced about double features for 50 cents which always included a cartoon. Thinking of the 13 dollars I spend for movies in Manhattan I could recognize this sentiment, for the first time ever, as something other than the older generation ranting against the obsolescence of its beloved systems and I wished I could travel through time.

Speaking of time travel (here be spoilers), the new Star Trek movie, not surprisingly, uses this device (mainly, I think, to facilitate a cameo for Leonard Nimoy). It was this aspect that came under heavy discussion just after Flagg, my fellow nerd, returned from seeing the movie with his girlfriend. She had to go do something else which left the two of us to discuss the finer points of the film. For starters we both thought it was a-MAZ-ing but more on that later. The aspect of the plot the he (and I, to an extent) found troubling was the establishment, through the act of time travel, of an alternate timeline which essentially nullifies the Star Trek universe that we've all come to know for the past 50 years. Many fans are likely to take issue with this. But I believe that there is sufficient evidence contained within the mythology of Star Trek to assume that the time travel in this particular film would not actually disrupt the spacetime continuum in the universe as we know it.

Ahem: Both Einstein and Hawking have supposed that an infinite number of universes exist parallel to one another. The idea, in a nutshell, is this: You come to a fork in the road and you must choose to go left or right. You choose left, but at that moment an identical universe is instantly created. Identical except for one detail: in that universe you chose to go right, and from then on the universes diverge from one another and the alternate universe in which you chose to go to the right plays out the consequences of that decision. This is a concept that is very well explored in the Star Trek Universe, first in the Original Series episode "Mirror, Mirror" in which Kirk, McCoy, Uhura and Scotty accidentally materialize in an alternate universe (in which the primary difference is that Spock wears a goatee) and later, to a much greater extent, in the Next Generation, particularly the episode "Parallels" in which Lt. Worf shifts at random from reality to reality.

In the new Star Trek movie an alternate timeline is created when an aging Ambassador Spock is accidentally transported from the late 24th century back to the early 23rd and is followed by a mad-as-hell Romulan named Nero (whose tattoos are outstanding). My theory is that, since we don't know the exact nature of the anomaly that resulted in the time travel, Spock was transported not just through time but also into a parallel existence, meaning that altering the timeline in this universe does not affect the universe of Spock's origin (and thus explain why Leonard Nimoy's Old Spock was not altered by the experiences of Zack Quinto's younger Spock, a paradoxical plot-hole which fucks with the logic of even the best time-travel flicks. I'm looking at you, Back to the Future Part 3.)

Abstract Physical Theories or no, this movie is so awesome I want to kick something. And part of what makes it so great is that it does indeed follow in a very grand Star Trek tradition: plot holes! Every trek movie has them, and perhaps at a later date I'll write about each one of them. But there's some really great stuff in this one. For example, Spock travels with a giant red ball of liquid of which apparently one drop will cause a planet to implode. This seems rather irresponsible. If his little ship is fired upon would it unmake the fabric of the bloody universe? Spock was going to use this "red matter" to prevent the Romulan homeworld from being destroyed by their star going supernova. But, according to Spock, "the unthinkable happened: the star went supernova." Unthinkable? C'mon, folks, stars don't just go supernova over a weekend, they must have known it was coming for at least oh, I dunno, a MILLION YEARS. They didn't think evacuating at least SOME of the planet might be a reasonable precaution? They put all their eggs in Spock's red matter basket? People wonder why Star Trek fans can go on like this...if your universe was full of stuff like this you'd want to get to the bottom of things too.
Oh, and Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy is freakin' amazing.

In The Year Of Our Lord 1998

2009-05-29T01:04:00.004-04:00

I Answer Questions About The Scarlet Letter

Recently I dug up more buried treasure. This time it is two marble notebooks, one of them chronicling a high school romance with a Little Red-Haired Girl, the other a combination of compositions, quizzes and journal entries that my 9th Grade English teacher, Ms. McEvoy, had us keep. The latter is truly fascinating. I am an avid reader and was generally a good student in English but I really loathed certain books that were part of the curriculum. Some of these were due to immaturity. For instance, we read A Separate Peace, John Knowles' seminal work about loss of innocence and the ending of eras, in 8th grade. I liked it all right, but when I reread it some time after I graduated from college it turned into one of my favorite books. Since much of the sentiment is evoked by the ending of High School there is simply no way I understood it completely the first time I read it. Nor did I understand The Great Gatsby the first time through, which makes sense considering my voice hadn't even changed yet.

One book that I truly hated (and was very vocal about) was The Scarlet Letter. Ms. McEvoy was good about letting us express our feelings, so I filled pages with anti-Hawthorne sentiment. On one page I found a quiz. I don't know what the questions were, but here were my answers:

1. That kind of disfigured ex-husband guy I think
2. One of those ladies who was criticizing her
3. I don't think this one should count, do you?
4. That guy who I was being, remember? When me and Gregg were up there?
5. Oh come now, how am I supposed to know that? Was it the priest?
6. Hester Prynne
7. Correct
8. Well my head may have been in my book, but not my mind.
9. It's probably her stupid husband again
10. Hester Prynne

Numbers 1,6,9 and 10 were correct. On the same page is a multiple choice quiz which I got 10/10 on, and the resulting grade is the two scores averaged together plus Ms. McEvoy's comment "Boy, you sure lucked out".

I Don't Even Think Of You That Often

2009-05-03T13:25:00.001-04:00

Chelsea Hotel Cover.

Pain Is Beauty

2009-04-13T15:14:00.003-04:00

"Hold still," she says.

This is difficult when someone is forcibly running a brush through your hair.

"Your hair is so long!"

This is true. For nearly two years I have let my hair grow out from nothing. For a while I was shaving my head, military-style. I found this liberating but not particularly attractive-looking (my head is too pointy for that). That may sound long but my hair is so curly that it almost looks contained. Take a brush to it, though, and the result is what, in some cultures, is called a 'fro. The Little Red-Haired Girl is attempting to tame this mess with a brush and some hair-ties. She will produce puffy little pigtails on either side of my head followed by something that resembles cornrows. I have no threshold for pain.

"This is what it's like for little girls growing up," she says, tearing hairs out with as much gentleness as possible for that action. "Pain is beauty, hold still, don't you want to look pretty?". For years her fire-red hair was made of untameable curls like mine; I almost get the feeling that this is revenge for her against all of the well-meaning aunts who attacked with various grooming supplies. Girls go through so much. Aggressive, pain-inducing hair styles are just one more setup in the cruel joke of girl-scout cookies, double-standard gender constraints and field hockey.

She is right, though. In the end I am beautiful. With two poofballs on either side of my scalp and the long hairs in back pulled tight I look as if a youthful Princess Leia has applied a burnt-cork beard for a Hobo Halloween costume. As for my cornrows...

Twilight Campaign

2009-03-30T00:54:00.007-04:00

D: I just spent the last 5 minutes watching youtube clips of babies farting. I had to share that with someone.

me: And I can't possibly thank you enough for choosing me. Link please?

D: Here. I'm laughing so hard I'm crying. I need to pull myself together so that, when Jo arrives home any minute, I won't have to explain this to her. "No, I'm fine. Really. I've just been watching babies fart for a while."

me: Dear God.

D: Aside from the past 20 minutes or so, it's been a really productive day. Honest.

me: I believe you. How on earth did you go off on this tangent?

D: It started from a clip of a French girl telling a story about hippos. Then I saw a link to a baby laughing. And then from there, babies farting.

me: I love how youtube works.

D: Don't you just? It took the tangent on its own so I didn't have to.

The most ingenious element of youtube's design is the "Related Videos" tab just to the right of the main viewing screen. It's how I've discovered some pretty amazing videos, including one from 1987 of Winnie the Pooh characters saying what to do about "Not-okay touching", the kind of touching that gives you a "funny feeling inside". Okay, here it is. I don't remember how I started watching Pinky and the Brain episodes last night instead of going to bed.

It had something to do with Maurice LaMarche, the voice actor whose Orson Welles impression gave The Brain his facial and vocal characteristics. Pinky and the Brain has undeniable appeal; it's literally the same story every week with a different twist. There's something to be said for that kind of storytelling. You already know the plot, you already know the outcome. The surprise and excitement comes in finding out how you get there each time. Kurt Vonnegut often used a format like this in his novels; he would give you all the information in the first two chapters, you'd go through the story knowing how it ended and wondering how the hell you got there. I've always found this to be logical. After all, the one certainty in life is its end.

My writing is kind of similar to youtube. I got from babies farting to death.

The Shadow Knows

2009-03-28T21:00:00.008-04:00

About a year ago, for fun, my friend Lindsay and I recorded a podcast commentary for some radio dramatizations of, among other things, The Shadow. The Shadow is a popular character originated in these serialized radio dramas. He's a crime stopper and an invisible avenger who has learned "the mysterious power to cloud men's minds, so they could not see him" while "traveling through East Asia". Each episode ends with something of a moral, and the one we were listening to ended with "Crime is a weed that bears...bitter fruit. Crime does not pay." The failure of crime to pay was often included in the Shadow's wrap-ups.

Tonight at dinner I was discussing a Princeton Economist who through statistics proved that, as far as criminals are concerned, illegal businesses are not, for the low-on-the-totem-pole majority, lucrative. As it turns out, most small time crooks reside in their parents' basements. In other words this Economist has actually proven that crime, in fact, does not pay. It's just as well that I don't remember the gentlemen's name as I am fairly certian that he is the Shadow.

The Shadow appeared in comic books and comic strips and television shows and video games and a handful of movies. It seems only natural that the evolution of his character would lead, in this day and age, to economics. His catch-phrase "The Shadow knows..." can now be expanded to "No, seriously, I know. I've run these numbers again and again." Perhaps this is how Bernie Madoff was caught.

"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...let me run these figures by our accounting department for verification..."

Secret History

2009-03-25T13:22:00.005-04:00

I think I dreamt a really good idea for a novel. I'm not going to write the idea here because I have to think about it and develop it more. Perhaps when I've written a sample chapter I'll publish it here first and get some feedback.

One of the interesting things about the long, vivid dreams that occur during those minutes just before I wake up is that often the alternate reality I'm dreaming in carries with it an alternate history. In other words, I simply enter into the existence of the dream world armed with certain knowledge, and memories to back them up. For example, I have had a dream where my friend Shayna was my sister. She had become my sister when my father married her mother when we were eight years old. Much about our lives was the same as in our real lives but we were siblings and in the context of the dream I simply understood that we had been siblings for years. I think that this can teach us something about how memory actually works. In a way, we just wake up with a lot of knowledge, and it's not as if we replay our entire lives to verify it. If there were a way to surgically implant an idea like "I'm adopted" into our heads while we slept I'll bet we wouldn't be shocked when we awoke...we'd just go with it.

In a way, memory gives us the same background data that any book or play would. Rarely, if ever, is there a birth-to-present moment explanatory paragraph before Scene I, it just jumps in and the audience gradually understands who these people are and what their histories are. We don't habitually replay our own histories every day, we just wake up with a set of understandings and whether those are invented in the moment by a dream or gleaned from years of memory I don't think we'd know the difference.

Hello, My Name Is

2009-03-22T00:35:00.004-04:00

I think these would make good band names, someone should use them.

The Experimental Films
Vic Morrow and the Good Intentions
The Say Somethings
Granny Smith and the Bad Apples
The Insecurities
Lame College A Capella Band
Music School Dropouts
The Inside Jokes
Made-Up Language
No Kissing On The Lips
The Creative Tensions
Invisible Suit
The Beautiful Losers
The Distracting Harmonies

Who Watches The Box Office?

2009-03-21T20:02:00.007-04:00

Film Review: The Watchmen
I would do well not to listen to National Public Radio or read the New Yorker before I see movies (or read books, hear concerts, buy albums or consume food). Before this movie even came out it was already being condemned*. More than that, reviewers and commentators seemed to take a special joy in making fun of the film's potential audience, as if the cult-status of the source material says ANYTHING important about the film itself. It also echoes a really unfortunate sentiment; that a movie which dares to be intelligent and entertaining at once doesn't deserve a bloated budget or big, fancy posters.

Having said all of this, after watching Zack Snyder's wonderful film I could completely understand how a film like this could under-perform at the box office. Part of what makes it so great is the two things it does simultaneously. First, it is a smart, clever, bleak and apocalyptic requiem for the better angels of human nature and the American Dream. Second, it is a fun, violent, action-packed silly comic book movie. It's too think-ey for your average action movie audience and it's too violent and silly for non-fans of the genre.

Watchmen manages to make the complex, multi-protagonist narrative easily digestible. The soundtrack is pulled from a Classic Rock station (including three from the Bob Dylan catalog and the never-used original version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah), creating an astonishingly emotional aural complement to the unique visuals. I may be the only late twenties/early thirties male in America who has not read the graphic novel but liked the movie, but so arresting were the images that I may become a devotee retroactively.

It makes me sad that a movie this beautiful, unpredictable and dynamically different is likely to be passed over by a lot of people. I suspect it will do good business on DVD but I suspect we've seen the last R-rated comic book adaptation from a major studio.

*I have actually heard several people who dislike the film entirely based upon the fact that Dr. Manhattan's iridescent blue penis is often visible. Seriously, people, grow up.

Liquid Courage

2009-03-20T08:27:00.006-04:00

Recently I flew from Raleigh-Durham to LaGuardia. Once, for an entire summer, I worked at a book store inside of security at Logan Airport's Terminal A, so every day I would have to walk through the security checkpoint to get to work. As such I became insanely fast at removing my shoes, taking items out of my pocket that would set off the metal detectors (and these are far, far fewer than most people would like to know), and arranging them in little plastic trays. But, for some reason, the thing I always forgot and have yet to become accustomed to is the no liquid rule.

I suppose the idea is that I might be bringing the raw materials required for construction of some sort of home-made, Tyler-Durden style bomb. Whatever, it's no more or less illogical than checking everyone's shoes for plastic explosive but not their clothes. I'm willing to put up with it because I have no choice if I want to partake of the mircale of flight. So the night before I departed I went into a 24-hour CVS and purchased 3 oz plastic bottles (the maximum size container allowed for the transportation of liquids and gels in a carry-on bag) and transferred my hair product, face wash and deep cleansers into them. These are then sealed in small, ziploc bags (I'm not sure how these help...is this just for the sake of protecting our items from accidental breakage?).

The illogic of it all became even more pronounced when I looked at the results of my work. Not surprisingly, tiny, unlabelled bottles of variously colored liquids looks a great deal more threatening than an unopened can of V8 or a tube of Crest. Perhaps they think that, if I cared enough, I would disguise my bomb-making stuff.

Still, when you can board a plane with this combination

it feels like there's something wrong with the system...

Back To Save The Universe

2009-03-20T00:59:00.005-04:00

After a long hiatus I am going to start writing in this blog again. I can hear all six of my readers clapping excitedly.

Part of the reason for my long absence is how busy I have been. I don't have as much to talk about when I'm stretched thin because I spend less time in my own head. But writing here makes me happy; it gives me an outlet for my weirdness, a reason to people-watch, and I've actually met a few wonderful people directly because of this.

Many other new things on the horizon. A trip to Germany to visit my sweetie in early April. The pain that comes from deducting taxes from my own paychecks as I attempt to legitimize my primary source of income. Leonard Cohen at Radio City Music Hall on May 17th. 2009 is still shaping up to be a good year.

Stay tuned, truebelievers.

Faggot

2009-02-21T14:36:00.002-05:00

It's one of the more offensive words for a gay man, probably because it can't really be recontextualized. The origin of the word is the old British Fagot which is a bundle of something, usually sticks but sometimes metal, like for smelting. It is also a verb, synonymous with bundling. So you might have seen someone fagoting a fagot now and again. But even in the 1500's fagot was a contemptuous derogatory for women. Even "fag" is innocuous, especially if you watch the BBC and can only think of a cigarette. There are a lot of words for gay people but this is not one I hear bandied about jokingly as often as "fairy" or "homo" or any of the horrendously dirty compound words which I myself employ (I have a horrible mouth and the more over the top things are the funnier they become to me). Faggot seems to communicate only malice.

I say all this because it was hard to know how to react when one of my viola students referred to a friend of hers, a violinist who I've met, as a faggot. She's thirteen, it's possible that this is a new word she's learned and is now testing out simply to be derogatory. Maybe it gets said at home without any consequence. I don't know. I can't remember what words I used to insult people (in any way possible) at that age but it wouldn't surprise me if that were among them. All I could do was tell her that I didn't want to hear that kind of language in here, and that whatever this long-haired violinist may be it is NOT okay to call him a faggot. I was surprised at how quickly I slipped into that role.

I think it's important that kids are told this stuff by adult figures who are not quite as adult as their parents. Teachers, especially young ones, can be a really important influence in kids' lives and this responsibility should not be handled lightly. I have never had such a clear illustration of that as when I saw from the look in her eyes that she was truly sorry that she'd disappointed me. Maybe she'll keep using the word but at least, somewhere in the back of her mind, she'll know that in some circles it's not acceptable.

Or maybe now she just thinks I'm gay.

Welcome To The Machine

2009-02-05T15:50:00.005-05:00

I don't know a lot of things about computers, but I do know that if they ever make a noise like R2D2 it is probably a bad sign. For a few days my laptop (which is a Macintosh Powerbook G4 manufactured way back in 2002) flatly refused to turn on. This was disturbing enough, in fact I felt completely paralyzed by the prospect of losing whatever data was contained therein plus having to buy a new computer. After a few days of me begging the old girl to hop to it she started making a very specific sound-the sound R2 makes when shot by a storm trooper. For all I know the sound of a hard drive giving out was the basis for the cry of a wounded astromech droid. As far as I am concerned this is a harbinger of death.

I needed the computer to work, if only for a few more days, because I was to compose and record the music for a short film. It has been a long time since my High School days of a Fostex Four Track tape machine (and even if I managed to record something to tape I would need my damn computer to convert it to a digital file anyway) and without my sequencing and editing software I was doomed. So I allowed the computer to rest before coaxing it back to life and running Disk Utility like it was life support. I frequently would go in and talk to the computer (the doctors said she could still hear me) and I thought I could make out a series of dots and dashes in the sickening whir of the struggling hard drive which spelled out "I never wanted live this way, just kill me. Please."

Eventually my aincient friend resurrected herself enough for me to set up my midi-audio rig, something I hadn't done in at least a year. As I tweaked and troubleshooted my setup I felt suddenly thankful for the education I received.

At the moment I thought this a satellite monitoring my brain patterns sent an encypted message to a super computer and lit up a switchboard in an office in Boston. My cell phone rang and, against my better judgement, I entered into a conversation with a girl whose work-study job it is to collect donations from alumni. I had to make a donation (even if it only was ten dollars) because I had literally just solved a problem precisely because I received such a thorough education. The coincidence was unbelievable, plus she seemed like a nice enough kid.

She sent me this card.
It seems personal, cause I do play the violin. And she wished me luck with my band and our upcoming album release. Postage plus materials, it probably cost a third of my donation to send this little thankyou.

My computer has once again resumed singing the R2D2 song. Luckily I was able to pull any irreplacable data off of it just in time to watch the hard drive melt away forever. Seven years she has served me. We've made music. We've laughed at youtube videos and learned to use photoshop. We've written school papers, essays and blog entries. We've ordered things from the internet, looked up driving directions and watched a LOT of porn. We've communicated to far away places, stayed connected and made new friends. She will be missed.

Baby Ruth

2009-01-30T11:09:00.006-05:00

There are movies that truly bring people of a certain age together in shared delight. Indiana Jones, Star Wars, people who grew up in the 70's and 80's tend to have an almost fanatical devotion to much of our adventure cinema. I mentioned those two franchises because they both alientated their core audiences with their new, poochied-out failed sequelization experiments. Which is why I'll scream if Speilberg ever lays a finger on The Goonies.

The Goonies tells the story of seven kids (and one deformed idiot) who go in search of a treasure buried by a seventeenth century pirate in a hidden cave somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. The pirate, One-Eyed Willie, had McGuyver-like ingenuity which he used to construct a series of booby traps to lay in wait for anyone foolish enough to seek his treasure. The plot is certainly not incidental but it does take a backseat to the colorful array of characters that populate this film.

Mikey The story's protagonist, played by a decidedly non-hobbitlike Sean Astin, with braces. You were clearly supposed to identify with this guy most of all as it is his adventurous spirit sets the story in motion. He slowly loses his mind throughout the film, at the very end requesting "alone time" with one-eyed Willie's corpse.

Brand Mikey's older brother, played by Josh Brolin. Being older than the rest he tries to take on a leadership role but that's tough with his domineering brother around. The kids try to ditch him early on by simply letting the air out of his bike tires which, strangely, works. He eventually catches up with them and joins the adventure, though.

Mouth The guy everybody really wants to be because he's the smart-ass with all the best lines. Delivers a monologue in a wishing well about "taking them all back". Played by Corey Feldman (watch for a strangley prescient scene during which he describes various hard narcotics to an unwitting hispanic cleaning woman).

Chunk The fat kid, endowed with a a very strong fat kid sixth sense (he can smell ice cream from inside a container locked in a freezer). Probably the kid with the best sense of comedic timing, Jeff Cohen did not, strangely, continue acting after this. He shook off the "truffle shuffle" (cruel fat dance) image and became a lawyer.

Data Played by the kid from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Data has a batman-like utility belt of gadgets he's invented himself. Hopefully he doesn't have any important lines because a lot of them are unintelligible.

Andy Pretty redheaded cheerleader type, played by Kerri Green, love interest of Brand (although she kisses Mikey at one point and, somehow, doesn't realize it). She and Brand try to make out at really inappropriate moments in the film (i.e. when everyone is watching, when their lives are clearly in danger, etc.) and otherwise she spends a lot of the time complaining. When one of One Eyed Willie's little tests involves playing an organ made of skeletons she reluctantly agrees to give it a try even though she's "not Liberace, you know!"

Steph The "ugly friend", quite possibly a lesbian, played by Martha Plimpton. Towards the end of the film she rather inexplicably seems to have something going on with Corey Feldman but he seems to tacitly understand that he can only be a dress.

Sloth A hideously deformed simpleton with a heart of gold who has been held captive by his Italian criminal relatives (Robert Davi, Joe Pantoliano and Anne Ramsey). He helps the Goonies escape at the end and has by far the most memorable catch phrase of the movie, "Hey you guys!"

This movie is occasionally absurd but undeniably fun. It's a brilliant peice of pure entertainment and if Speilberg ever considers going back and replacing Sloth with a CGI creation or replacing Anne Ramsey's gun with a walkie-talkie I think it should be grounds to castrate him.

Blackberry Singing In The Dead of Night

2009-01-29T10:50:00.007-05:00

I was writing in a Starbucks in Sunnyside, Queens. Some may think it's sad that Starbucks has become something of a yardstick for civilization but there's something comforting about that ubiquitous logo that shines like a beacon, saying "For the price of a burnt coffee you can sit in this nice, warm place for as long as you can stand the stares of other people who want to sit."

A baby and I were exchanging the usual pleasantries. She toddled over to my table and stared at me with wide eyes and gaping mouth, I inflated my cheeks and crossed my eyes. She laughed gleefully and I feigned shyness. These nonverbal activities seem stupid until you realize that flirting follows a similar format.

A few minutes later I heard something plastic drop to the floor followed by a gasp from a dark haired student to my left.

"Oh, it's okay, it's just her toy blackberry" her mother assured the worried studier. She didn't mean little plastic fruit, either. The barely-able-to-walk child had a toy telephone/email/organizational device and it looked for all the world like the real thing. After reclaiming the item (I wouldn't have given it back to her after it had been on the floor...) the baby proceeded to discuss whatever business matters a 1 year old discusses and perhaps send a few emails. I found this a little disturbing. The etrade baby springs to mind.

I guess I had a toy phone as a kid. In fact I'm positive I did because recently my brother and I discovered it in the garage and found, happily, that it still functions. It teaches you how to count and how to recognize colors. It also invites you to push one of the 10 numbered buttons on the face to get various responses in an British woman's voice; "Hi, this is the Baker, how are the doughnuts?" or "Hi, this is the Video Store, how are the videos?" or "Hi, this is Mommy, how are you?". She would then ask you to call someone else, like the Pet Shop or the Music Store or the Clown.

It shouldn't surprise me that this girl would have the modern day equivalent of a telephone as a chew toy but there's something more insidious about pre-speech brand recognition. Our toy yellow phone barely even resembled a functioning phone, and it certainly didn't say "Sprint" on the side. The idea of there being not a toy cell phone but a toy Blackberry smells a bit too much like indoctrination. Are there toy iPhones too? There have to be. I can't help but be frightened we're careening towards a day when newborns will be assigned a facebook page at birth, and perhaps a call number. THX-1138.

An Open Letter to President Barack Obama

2009-01-28T09:32:00.003-05:00

Dear President Obama,

Hi! You don't know me, but I've been following your career and I want to join millions of Americans in wishing you the best of luck during the first hundred days of your history-making presidency.

You seem like a man who is open to fresh ideas and so, in keeping with your credo of Change, I'd like to tell you about an idea of mine, an idea for very big change. Or, as the case may be, very small change. Let me explain:

I think that scientists should start working on making us smaller. I don't mean shorter, like Peter-Dinklage size. I mean much, much smaller, like The Borrowers or how small the kids get in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. See, the idea is there. What we need is to start mass production on the machine Rick Moranis invented in that movie. This would solve a lot of the problems facing our country. If we were all pint sized we would take up far less space and use far fewer natural resources. It would also create a lot of new jobs as we would need to build teeny tiny little cities and very small mass-transit systems.

Now, some of us will need to remain big. These people will build the tiny cities (in like, five minutes!) and they can grow normal sized crops, too, but not even that many, really (imagine an apple feeding an entire town!) and also they could be the military (they would only have to threaten stepping on our enemies). Hm. Maybe we should stay big and just make our enemies small...no no no. Rick Moranis's shrinking device is NOT to be used as a weapon.

I hope that you will seriously consider funding a program for the propsed permanent miniturization of our entire civilization. I think you'll find it is a good solution to the problems facing our great nation. In my next letter I shall tell you my plans for the mass production of gillyweed so we can build underwater hideouts.

Bon Voyage 2008 (And Don't Come Back!)

2009-01-23T10:00:00.005-05:00

I have had a lot on my mind these past few weeks. As 2008 drew to a close I, for whatever reason, did not feel the need to consider all of the events and how they have affected my life. Instead I have been looking forward, keeping my eyes on the prize, so to speak. I am optimistic for 2009 for many reasons.

The Little Red Haired Girl is the oft-mentioned-but-never-seen unrequited love interest of Charlie Brown in the Peanuts comics.

Charlie Brown is something of a schlub (as am I) but he also, apparently, believes that in order to be happy one must win the affection of another person, or at least eat lunch with them. When I was a teenager my self esteem was certainly wrapped up in other people's affections for me but I like to think I've grown out of this now. I agree that it is certainly nice to have someone to eat lunch with.

I do not like to write about relationships on this blog unless I feel it is relevant to something else. So what I want to write about today is some insight I've gained into relationships and life in general with the help of my own little red haired girl. It's certainly what has been on my mind, hopefully it's relevant to someone else. What I want to write about today is maturity, risk, adventure and being true to yourself.

Recently I read an essay by George Saunders. It was only a small part of it but his point was that the conventional wisdom about talking and thinking is only partially true: we assume that we think about what we're going to say and then say it but, just as often, we simply start talking and through this figure out what we think. In this way my little red haired girl and I had a year of more self-discovery than therapy could have offered us. Logging hours of phone conversation we discussed every aspect of our lives and never ran out of things to say.

Have I mentioned yet that she lives in another country? After college she was offered a job as a mechanical engineer which afforded her the opportunity to live and work in Europe, an opportunity she eagerly accepted. One of the things that I love about her is her desire to aggressively experience life and, as it happened, we reconnected after a many-year silence just before she moved to a new place, giving her a lot of interesting things to talk to me about, albeit with a six hour time difference to get over. My little red haired girl is also a dancer, an artist trapped within the confines of an office job. Recently this has begun to shake her and thus did our discussions shift gears into the realm of being true to oneself, throwing out conventional wisdom and general existential crisis counselling (not one-sided).

Our months of prolonged phone contact were dotted by visits to the States during which we stole time together and simultaneously cultivated and denied the growing romance between us. Like most sensible people we had an aversion to the very idea of a long-distance relationship, particularly one which involved more than a five hundred dollar travel ticket. We never spoke this rule out loud but it was generally implied. So we'd have our short time together and then she would go back to her life, and me to mine. But as the autumn rolled around the conversations started to seem incomplete. Not incomplete in the body of the text, just lacking in an unspoken three-word punctuation. An incomplete cadence. Unresolved tensions.

It was on her most recent visit home, during the transfer of power from '08 to '09 that we lifted the ban on all remaining subjects and that, as they say, was that. We questioned why we had made these rules, we were brutally honest with one another about what all of this would mean, but most importantly we talked. And talked some more.

The decision to remain committed across the Atlantic Ocean is one that was bound to inspire raised eyebrows and a demand for some kind of defense. And it has. I can only say that all relationships have a difficulty built into them; this is ours. Every time you love someone you have to make a choice; this is mine. Whenever you get one thing you're giving something else up; she, this, is worth it. Love is worth fighting for, and it simply requires that we refuse to be taken down by the obstacles that inevitably reveal themselves at every turn. I want to do that, with her, together.

In the meantime, a letter for every day we're apart.

We still have not run out of things to say.

It Ain't Braggin' If It's True

2009-01-22T13:21:00.005-05:00

I couldn't watch Obama's Inauguration as one is meant to, surrounded by loved ones in a cozy living room with a nice winter's fire. I also couldn't watch it the way I wanted to, in a bar downtown with rowdy midday drinkers taking off from work. No, I was stuck at my desk in a cubicle at my temp job. Luckily my friend J. sent me a link to the huffington post where they had a pretty good streaming video to MSNBC. Apparently CNN, like you'd expect, was a little wonton in their cross-cutting to President Bush at appropriate moments (like when Obama quoted Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the "childish things" line), but I am really glad I was watching MSNBC and here is why:

Chris Matthews was pretty awful the whole time but it wasn't he who said the worst/best thing I heard during the entire pre-game show. I don't know the other commentator's name but he, when the camera cut to Muhammed Ali finding his way to his seat, began talking about how this was an historic occasion and how Ali had been a symbol of defiance and individuality and an icon of black resistance. Then he went on to say that Ali very rarely spoke now, debilitated as he is by Parkinson's disease. But, the not-Chris Matthews went on, he still can understand and communicate 100%, to the point where, "and I don't want to get to otherworldly here, but it's to the point where he's telepathic."

Telepathic. At that moment I was proud to be an American.

I don't know how this guy could tell that Muhammed Ali was telepathic, wouldn't he have to be telepathic himself? Is the life of a telepath a lonely one until they find another telepath? Or are all humans set to receive but only a choice few set to broadcast?

Putting these clowns in front of microphones and having them improvise is bound to lead to gaffs. They just have to talk and talk and at times it seemed for all the world that they were going into very surreal portions of their brains. At one point they started talking about how awesome their network is and I was immediately reminded of why News Networks that advertise themselves is a system that is inherently, and dangerously, flawed.

The Subway Monologues, Part IV

2009-01-21T14:09:00.004-05:00

or "Beauty School Dropout"

Ordinarily I write about riding the subway when I witness something bizarre and funny. New York City in general, but especially the subway system, represents a kind of freedom that's hard to quantify. It's the freedom to, if I so choose, scream insanities at the top of my lungs. Imagine shouting as loud as you could in a crowded space and having the people around ignore you, let alone stop you.

After dinner and a show I entered the F-train on the lower east side to be greeted , face to face, by what at first appeared to be an androgynous, short-haired figure covered in blood. This was more than a little disturbing. A soprano voice revealed my fellow passenger to be female and, thankfully, the "blood" that covered her hands, forehead and plain white T-shirt revealed itself to be very recently applied red hair-dye. She was not dressed warmly enough for the bitter cold outside and, from the looks of it, she'd recently chopped off most of her own hair. Perhaps she was unhappy with the color.

I watched her as she pontificated and pointed at the subway map, talking to no one. She spoke about being smart and capable and knowing exactly where she was, her tone defensive and impassioned. From the looks of it she was no older than 20, and stuffed in the waistline of her calf-length jeans like guns were hairbrushes of varying sizes and textures. A story began to form in my mind of a young hair stylist who, overcome by the unthinkable pressures of beauty school, lost herself in drugs or else just lost her mind. Trouble is, I'm not so sure this is such a far cry. Normally I regard the insane with sympathy but casual indifference. It's not something I'm proud of but it simply becomes part of that elegant New York tapestry. But on this night I exited the train feeling profoundly sad about this once-promising hairdresser. Perhaps it was her youth, perhaps it was that, were she not talking to herself, she didn't really look that crazy. Perhaps it is because there have been times in my life that, when faced with overwhelming pressure or an uncaring or indifferent environment, I have often thought that it would be easier to lose myself in drugs than continue to face the world. Something always pulls me out of it, usually people that I love and who love me. I have to wonder, though, what would happen to me without that support network, without the people who prop me up when I'm leaning, who catch me when I fall. And I have to wonder, too, how easily I may not have been so lucky to have such people.

Magnetic Poetry

2008-12-11T08:28:00.005-05:00

I am sitting in a parked car with one of my oldest friends. We have opened one of two six-packs of Blue Moon bottles and are each on our second. This is to prepare us for an adventure we are forcing ourselves into. Behind us is an apartment near the train station of Stony Brook University where a party is going on, one we've been eyeing from a distance in an attempt to judge the merits of. He has been invited but only via a casual acquaintance on facebook. Neither of us would normally do this but, as everyone knows, being coerced into an uncomfortable situation is the best way to grow as a human being. Finishing our second beers we carry the remainder up a flight of stairs and into a kitchen.

We are, quite conspicuously, the oldest people in the room (although neither of us have 30 in our sights). We are also the best dressed, if I do say so myself, and neither of us are exactly fashionistas. Looking for the one person he might know among the throngs of absurdly intoxicated co-eds we exchange glances that say, all at once, "Well, this is what we should have expected. My God, we didn't even enjoy this scene when we were in college. This is going to be amazing, it's like we're anthropologists. Do you find any of these girls even remotely desirable? Me neither. I think we should drink more."

With your oldest friends you tend to communicate telepathically. We meandered over to the refrigerator and arranged the magnetic words.

Investigate joy as a metaphor.

The monument is never an empty death.

We eventually ran across the person who had invited us (well, him. Me by proxy). I'm pretty sure she identified us easily; we were only talking to each other. She seemed apologetic about the party guests (the rugby team had just come in and were now chanting something). I got the distinct impression that she had thrown this party for exactly the same reason that we attended it: to see what on earth would happen. We talked a little about photography and a poster on her wall that read "Fuck for peace." We arranged magnetic words.

Art is the waste of that studio.

No sculpture would suffer more than junk.

There actually turned out to be several people at the party who were not amused by the rugby team. We struck up a conversation with an on-campus bartender who had once had his finger sliced off in a knife fight in Albany. I was accused of stealing the Blue Moon I was holding by a voluptuous, European-looking brunette and I immediately began to engineer scenarios in my head that would end with me kissing her. We arranged magnetic words.

Compose life.

In the bathroom my meditations were interrupted by persistent banging on the door. "Just a minute!" I shouted, mid-leak. As I exited a group of girls was pushing past and I apologized (I have no idea why).
Indicating her acne-faced friend, one of them answered "It's okay, she's just gonna throw up." I was reminded of one the only true "college" parties I'd ever attended, one in which the cops arrived (as often happened in Beantown) and one after which I held back my vomiting girlfriend's hair and mused on what love truly meant. And one after which I myself had trouble hearing, saying or thinking about the words "ice luge" for several days.

My friend and I ended up only able to watch our host and my new European acquaintance from a distance as the latter had been cornered by a too-young looking frat boy dressed like an extra from "Saved By The Bell: The New Class".

Imagine originial passion in dead fashion.

We narrated.
"What do you think he's talking to her about?"
"She looks kind of interested."
"She has really nice boobs."
"I know..."
"He's going for it, I don't believe it!"
"Look at him, that wasn't even subtle!"
"I can't believe she went for it, she must be really drunk."
"She'd better be."
...
"Now they're just talking again. What are they talking about??"
"How do you just go back to talking after that?"

We could not have possibly been more out of our elements on this night. It's important, though, to go outside of your comfort zone. I truly believe it is what makes us stronger people. It allows us to broaden our range of emotions, to excersize our adaptability muscles. At the very least we sent out some amusing drunken text messages and got some good magnetic poetry out of the deal.

After too bold a demand, always ask to break free of old symbols.

And Danny Zuko!

2008-12-05T11:16:00.008-05:00

I have discovered my dream job (again). While having drinks the other night I was informed of a phone texting service. I was already aware of google text (by which you send search terms, much the way you would on the internet, to a numeric code corresponding to the letters G,O,O,G,L) but that is only useful if you're trying to get somewhere. Cha cha is different; apparently you can ask it ANYTHING. To test it out I asked it something I've been racking my brains about. What is that ring you see around the moon on a clear night?

It was not long before Cha Cha DiGregorio (as I entered it into my cell phone) informed me not only of the cause of the ring around the moon but the name: a Moon Ring!

Not rocket science, I suppose, but impressive nonetheless that this information could reach me sitting in a bar on 49th Street. I decided to keep questioning Ms. DiGregorio but fought off the urge to ask her if she was, in fact, born to hand jive, baby.

"What is the liquid inside of a Magic 8 ball?" I asked, resuming conversation. It seems the concept of Cha cha had been introduced by a seventh grader who my friend was babysitting. Kids know everything. We discussed the possible process of the Cha cha worker and our conlcusion can be summed up as "wikipedia". I am excellent at searching wikipedia, I thought. I mused on how much the average Cha Cha worker might get paid and whether they would get benefits and resolved to internet-research the possibilities when I got home (job training). It was then I got a message from Ms. DiGregorio again.

"The liquid inside a Magic 8 Ball is known only as 'mysterious blue liquid'."

Hm. Apparently they don't want that recipe getting out to the public.

They Do Not Sing And Dance Like In Cinderella

2008-12-03T09:52:00.011-05:00

Part One: Inhumane

My very first apartment. The college I attended did not have sufficient dormitory facilities to house the influx of freshmen and so those of us who took our time in deciding where to matriculate were forced to find alternative living quarters. For me that was a three bedroom apartment in Brookline, Massachusetts. I would take many things for granted about that apartment. There was laundry in the basement, it was in a nice neighborhood, just steps from the T, affordable and with friendly lesbian neighbors upstairs I could buy marijuana from. It was a wonderful apartment, but for my eighteen year old self it was a rough transition. This transition to adulthood was not eased by the presence of Benny.

Benny was a little brown mouse with a white spot on his head, the ordinary kind. We first became aware of Benny when he devoured the back end of a loaf of white bread. His attacks would then become more frequent and after one of my housemates accused the rodent of watching her while she slept we finally purchased a trap. We certainly didn't want to go for the cruel snapping traps, though. So we the forward thinking college students purchased a humane "sticky" trap, one that promised to incapacitate the mouse rather than kill it. Incapacitate it did, but this could hardly be described as humane. Be warned: when a mouse is stuck to an adhesive surface it will attempt to chew off it's own limbs in order to escape. So ended Benny.

Part Two: Edward and Rupert's Excellent Adventure

My second two years of college my roommate Doug and I made the acquaintance of two furry friends, Edward and Rupert*. Edward met a rather tragic death as he never really bothered anyone. I accidentally stepped on him. It was the last day of classes before Christmas break and Doug had already gone home for the holiday. I was leaving the following morning and decided to clean the common areas of the apartment before leaving, but first thing's first: coming home that night I was desperate to pee and, in my haste, I must have surprised Edward. When later I came back into the bathroom, mop in hand, I saw his slightly flattened little body on the tile. What then followed was one of the times in my life when I most wish I was being filmed. I did not want to touch Edward's corpse. Nor did I want to touch anything that was touching Edward's corpse. From the vantage point of bathroom mirror there was a grown man wearing winter gloves holding a broom stick with which, while trying not to vomit, he was attempting to guide a dead mouse onto a dustpan to which he'd attached a pole with some duct tape.

Rupert was Edward's successor and he was much more disruptive. Doug and I were putting away the dishes one evening when we opened our silverware drawer and both screamed like little girls as Rupert jumped out from where the forks went. This was more than a little disturbing. Vigorous washing ensued. It was thus that I, for the first time in my mouse hunting career, bought a trap that was specifically designed to kill and maim. It did the trick and Rupert, unlike Edward who was reverently placed in the garbage can, was thrown out of the back window with his snappy trap coffin.

Part Three: What Do You Want To Do Tonight?

Despite there being the very real possibility of actual mice, a roommate of mine brought home two pet ones in a plastic cage. She was one of two women who lived in the house at the time and the other, the one who didn't own the mice, informed me when I arrived home one summer day that Kerry, the mouse owner, was in the back yard releasing one of the animals into the wild. When I asked why she informed me that it was

"Because the fat one ate the skinny one!"

So Kerry was informing the surviving mouse that he was no longer welcome in our home. All I could do was wonder what the last conversation between the two of them had been like. I imagined it as being a bit like the opening of the Pinky And The Brain cartoon series.

"So, what do you want to do tonight, Brain?" Pinky would ask, but instead of the customary

"Same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world!" response from Brain there would only be a strange silence. And Brain would look at Pinky. Hungrily.

*I am not unaware of the fact that there may have been more than two and that our naming them does not mean we were seeing the same mouse.

Blindness

2008-12-01T16:58:00.005-05:00

Having been transformed into the Hunchback of Notre Dame about a month ago I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that other amusing ailments would begin to creep up. During a meeting with a a web designer I excused myself to examine what was now a very irritated right eye in the bathroom mirror. Unfortunately what I had previously put down to having my contact lenses in for too long was now beginning to resemble what, in some cultures, is known as "pink-eye". I removed the contact lenses and prayed that this would go away without a doctor visit.

Later I was lying on my bed asking my brother to pour a bottle of saline into the afflicted eye when it occurred to me that I really take my eyesight for granted. What if I was going blind? When asked the classic question "Would you rather lose your sight or your hearing?" I invariably answer sight because I'm a musician. But I'm terrified of losing my eyesight, I live in a very visual world. There are so many beautiful films I haven't seen, so many people I haven't met yet and would never be able to learn the subtleties of their facial expressions. Musician or not, I'm no longer sure if I can choose a dark world over a silent one. I'm sure I would panic similarly (or more) if something was suddenly wrong with my ears. But I couldn't get it out of my mind that, were I to wake up the next day to blackness, I've yet to see Ireland. Or the 8th Season of Scrubs.

It also occurred to me that some of those eye clamps from A Clockwork Orange would be useful to me.

This morning I went to the drugstore and purchased some of those eye drops that Ben Stein advocates on TV. They seem to have done the trick and my eye is slowly returning to white. Blindness averted for now. I'm beginning to wonder if sleeping would solve all of this.

Hetero-Flexible

2008-11-29T23:26:00.009-05:00

At a house in Jamaica Plain, way back in 2005, I was standing in my friend's kitchen sampling her delicious roasted potatoes. I and my then-girlfriend had been invited over for dinner and the girls were sitting at the table discussing the vegetarian dish our host had prepared. Half oblivious to their conversation I looked up, one hand on my hip, the other limply waving a question like women do when they act way too excited about someone's new sweater, and I asked

"Is this rosemary?"

The sing-songy, litlting voice, the overdramatic enthusiasm for a spice; I might as well have said it with a lisp. The girls burst out laughing. It wasn't cruel, it was because they knew me and my occasional lapses into girlish behavior were not unfamiliar.

After we moved to New York and had related that story, "Is this rosemary?" became a sort of catch-phrase for another mutual friend of ours. Every time I said something even remotely gay-sounding she would respond "Is this rosemary?" with an exaggerated lisp. This behavior, along with other light-hearted references to my imagined proclivities, eventually began to pall on my girlfriend. When she told me how it bothered her one of our worst fights ensued. This was the first of many clues that my more charming idiosyncrasies (ambiguous sexual orientation, for example) can be construed as something other than endearing. It wasn't so much my latent femininity that bothered her; she did find that endearing. What bothered her was my almost constantly referring to the fact that I am, in many ways (but not the main one), a homosexual. She being my exclusively heterosexual partner her discomfort, in retrospect, should have been easier for me to understand. Being comfortable in one's own skin is different from overcompensating for embarrassing behaviors at the expense of someone else's feelings. Life lessons.

All this is a precursor to the fact that I am now watching the Sex and the City movie by myself. As far as evenings go, it doesn't get much gayer than this. Actually I'm not positive that even a gay man would watch this movie alone. Do I have any gay readers (probably not anymore...)? If so, speak up.

Sex and the City, the movie, is a little melodramatic. There are also a lot more conspicuous fashion interludes than in the series. I have to be completely honest, though, about my reasons for watching this movie. Yes, I do enjoy the series but really I was hoping to see Kristin Davis (Charlotte) naked. Curiously, of the four female lead actors on the show, only two of them have appeared naked. Cynthia Nixon* (Miranda) and Kim Catrall (Samantha/Lt. Valeris from Star Trek VI) are in the nude very frequently on the series. Very frequently, actually, to the point where I begin to question exactly who the show's true target audience is. But Kristin, the prim and proper one, and the narrator Sarah Jessica Parker never appeared nude once in the show's entire six-year run. And unfortunately that tradition was kept up for the movie. Still, though, amidst this flood of masculine, nay, piggish attention I'm paying, I'm fighting back tears at Steve and Miranda's reunion and wondering why Smith is being such an insensitive bastard to Samantha. Maybe no one is really all one thing, or maybe it's just me who's a walking contradiction.

*Once, while working at the Barnes and Noble in Greenwich Village, I rang Cynthia Nixon up at the cash register. She is completely unlike the icy lawyer she portrays on Sex and the City. For one thing she's blond (her character is redheaded). But also her demeanor was very different. She was cheerful, dressed very casually and very approachable. It was difficult, though, as I put her selection of baby books into a plastic bag, not to think of how many times I had seen her breasts.

Charitable

2008-11-27T00:00:00.002-05:00

November has turned out to be a good month. Final preparation for releasing my first album coupled with an overwhelmingly positive response on the internet. The prospect of an Obama presidency. Watching a film in Esperanto. Bob Dylan in New York. An unexpected surge in creativity (a few new projects on the back burner). And, most importantly, rekindling of some old friendships and a wealth of good conversation. Like some modern theories of the evolutionary process I sometimes take great leaps forward as a person. The end of 2008 feels like a growing period, and one of those times when I’m reminded how truly lucky I have been, and am.

Thanksgiving, to a cynic such as myself, seems like kind of a non-holiday. The traditional gathering around the sacrificial bird is, for many people, an obligatory annoyance and an excuse to gorge on carbohydrates. It’s a commemoration of an historical event that almost certainly didn’t happen—another in a long line of crass insults to the original inhabitants of this place.

I’m going to try not to be so cynical, though. I do, in fact, have much to be thankful for. Everything that I have done I have done with much help and it only seems right that, as I enjoy the company of family and friends and an enormous meal prepared with care and attention, I think about how life is really a team effort. It’s important to remember those who have helped us along the way and, of course, to help others every time we can. And here’s the real kicker: don’t ask anything in return. If you only help because you expect something in return well, really, you’re not helping. That’s just commerce. On this, one of the most American of Holidays, let it be a celebration not of commerce but of charity instead. The real kind.

Happy Thanksgiving, truebelievers.

Fortress of Solitude

2008-11-25T19:37:00.005-05:00

One can only hope that when our own sun explodes we will have the technology to jettison at least one of our species into the far reaches of space in hopes of finding a planet with a comparable atmosphere, a couple of friendly farmers and perhaps a strength enhancing yellow sun. Superman II is so awesome and the best part of it is that it recaps the previous film during the opening credits. So you don’t ever need to watch the first one, really.

Having just finished Middlesex (which is great; nice long novel, consistent throughout, well-paced and gripping) I was looking for a new book to read. I went to Union Square to visit the Strand, a massive bargain book store, but first I wandered into the Virgin Megastore. This was stupid. Here’s why: Staring me in the face, amongst other absurdly well-priced movies, was a single DVD of all four Superman movies. For ten dollars. I’m a child of the ‘80’s and I’m a Jew. I didn’t stand a chance.*

I have never watched Smallville, never really read comics as a kid, was not into the animated Superman spin-offs and was quietly unimpressed with Brian Singer’s 2006 revival of the franchise. But these four movies (especially II and IV) hold such a dear place in my heart. And watching them now they’re even better. Christopher Reeve manages to be manly wearing blue pajamas and a red cape. The man is well put together, for sure. And the movies are that combination of camp and action that kids of all ages truly adore.

I have a much more interesting commentary on the Superman films, though. The superhero/alter-ego dichotomy is very well worn territory. Especially where their would-be girlfriends are concerned. In Batman Forever Bruce Wayne wants Nicole Kidman to love him as Bruce, not Batman. Peter Parker wants Mary Jane to like him even though she has the hots for Spiderman. It’s easy to understand and that’s one of the reasons Superheroes are so relatable; we all want to be loved for who we are and not for some special abilities we might have (or because we’ve recently been bitten by a radioactive spider). But Superman is different and here’s why; the mythology is flipped (for a full discussion of this watch the last half hour of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill Volume 2). Clark Kent is not the real Superman, Clark Kent is the disguise. When Superman is dressed in his suit with his oddly face-altering glasses he is doing a character. When he’s flying around saving busloads of children and runaway trains and reckless investigative reporters—that’s the real Superman. And yet in these films Clark Kent is still trying to get Lois Lane to like “him” instead of Superman. Unlike Spiderman and Batman, Superman is trying to get his lady to fall for the constructed image. Furthermore, Kent is a weak-willed, spineless, bumbling fool who is also, apparently, a rather mediocre journalist. He doesn’t have much going for him in any department. I suppose he’s nice enough but it’s obviously not genuine because he’s always acting. I think this sends a weird message.

Granted, Superman is an alien. So I should hardly expect him to understand everything about humanity. But he seems to be of the opinion that what people want from a partner is someone who has not distinguished themselves in any way. Someone who is the everyman, someone who blends in. Of course no one does want that and Lois Lane lusts after her red-caped hero.

In one scene in Superman II, Lois, positive that Clark Kent is actually Superman, throws herself into the rapids of Niagara Falls, daring Kent to shed his costume and save her. So immersed in his character is he that he manages to save her using his laser vision without revealing his true identity. He’ll never let Lois die, of course, but keeping up his subterfuge is equally important and you can tell he’d do it forever, all the while wanting to be close to her. Perhaps the real message is that the masks we wear and the faces we present to others are not only vitally important to us but, whether we know it or not, are inextricably linked to our perceived “inner” selves. Mary-Jane Watson will never love Peter Parker just for being Peter Parker because he isn’t just Peter Parker, it’d be like loving half of a person. The lesson, then, is that in order to be accepted for who we truly are we must first accept ourselves. We must accept that no one is just one person. We must accept that it is impossible to disconnect one element of our personalities from others. We all have the capacity to be superhero and supervillain, confident stud and stuttering fool, weak and strong. Duplicity is easy. Being true to yourself, with all of your inner contradictions, that’s hard.

*Okay, I apologize for that joke. I am not one for making fun of stereotypes usually and I don’t subscribe to the belief that “it’s okay to make anti-Semitic remarks because I myself am Jewish. What I am is an atheist with Jewish ancestry who does happen to be proud of his heritage. And really, I think the ability to bargain shop is one thing I’m most proud of.

I Am Jack's Vanity Plate

2008-11-20T23:54:00.004-05:00

EDNORTON

It has to be the strangest vanity plate I have ever seen. There it was, stopped at a red light. A big van with this unlikely license plate number. I insisted that my brother drive close enough behind for me to photograph it with my phone but unfortunately there just wasn't enough light. I don't know why this plate strikes me as stranger than other vanity plates. Perhaps it is because it is a person. And somehow Edward doesn't seem like a person who I'd expect to adorn the back of a car. Other people might make slightly more sense, like

MADONNA

perhaps. Personally I'm still waiting for one that says

JESUSFREAK

There's gotta be one out there. But Ed Norton? He's definitely a brilliant actor. One of my very favorites in fact. And the man is handsome, but he's not a sex symbol really. Even

BRADPITT

would be easier to understand. My brother came up with an interesting theory: perhaps the driver was Edward Norton himself. So the plate was not a form of tribute but instead more like a luggage tag. I guess it would be helpful in finding your car in a crowded lot, just look for the license plate reading

MATTSCAR

just like you keep a name tag on your suitcase. I badly wanted to follow the car and see Ed Norton get out, carrying a briefcase with EdNorton stitched to the side, getting a few bills out of his mailbox which, instead of a house number would just say EdNorton on it and then going into his house. Through his front door on which he's painted EdNorton.

As it happened, though, the driver whose face I could not see simply gave us the finger as we drove past. Maybe it was Ed Norton. That possessive jerk.

The Subway Monologues, Part III

2008-11-19T09:43:00.003-05:00

The Long Island Railroad, as it so often does, dropped me off in Pennsylvania Station 20 minutes late yesterday. There was no explanation for the tardiness; in these situations I just like to assume that a terrorist attack has been thwarted (now my blog is going to be flagged by the Secret Government...freakin' Patriot Act). I came up the stairs and spied a dude getting ready to perform. Penn Station is one of the prime spots for buskers. You need a permit to play there and so the acts are usually interesting.

Unfortunately I couldn't linger because I was already running late for an appointment. But I resolved to pass by the guy again after grabbing a Snickers to sustain myself. He was a middle aged black man, well dressed and setting up a djembe, which is an African drum that I happen to adore, along with some smaller bongo drums. After paying for the overpriced candy bar I followed the sound of the djembe and found our street performer now donning a goldilocks wig and chanting, in rhythm:

"I'm the baby Mama, I'm the baby Mama,
I'm the baby Mama, I'm the baby Mama"

I had to see where this was going. So did a homeless guy who seemed to be trying to make up his mind about whether or not this was quality entertainment. Now the djembe player pulled off the goldilocks wig with one hand, drumming with the other, and sang:

"I'm the baby Daddy, I'm the baby Daddy"

A lesson, perhaps? A way for children to distinguish men from women and their respective parenting roles? Rather antiquated, if so. Not all women have long flowing goldilocks hair, after all. He pressed on, wig once again atop his head.

"Baby Mama"
Wig off.
"Baby Daddy"
Wig on.
"Baby Mama"
Wig off.
"Baby Daddy"

And so on for eight bars before going back to what I'll liberally describe as the "verse" of his song. At this point the homeless man who had been watching with a humorless expression began to bob his head and move his hips. Yes, indeed this was good, he thought. And I, with the satisfaction that comes from having my expectations exceeded, ascended to the street.

The Pied Pipers of Greenwich Village

2008-11-11T00:11:00.003-05:00

Monday night is band rehearsal night, and on this particular night we decided to do something unorthodox. Having drilled our background vocals into the ground, barbershop style, we decided to simulate what a live gig might do to the vocals. Naturally we went to the subway, a place where there would be noise, distractions, and of course everyone would ignore us. This seemed like an excellent idea and for a while it was working quite nicely. We discovered, much to our delight, that the incessant repetition of our vocal parts had worked a charm; the fact that we couldn't hear a single note did not adversely affect the execution of our parts. Mission accomplished.

As far as people ignoring us, that worked too for the most part. We chose a location in the West 4th Street Subway station which, despite it's heavy traffic, didn't lend itself to passerby. A few people stopped to listen a bit but most people walked on. I've done a fair amount of busking myself in this city and, honestly, it's a crapshoot. Some days people pay attention to you and some days they just don't. Unless something really really interesting is going on. Like this, for instance.

The first thing I noticed as we launched into an a capella rendition of one of our original tunes was a camera flash out of the corner of my left eye. The assailant (I think it was a young lady) hid herself behind a pillar before I could get a good look at her. Odd. If she had really wanted to take our picture I wouldn't have objected. Maybe she was shy. To the right I noticed a couple of guys were staring at us as well, and they seemed to be keeping a safe distance.

Picture now, if you will, the five of us standing in a row and one by one reacting to something, like one of those waves you see at sporting events. In a split second the five harmonizing gentlemen, standing close together the better to hear the delicate innerworkings of the music, suddenly scream and scatter in all directions as it becomes obvious what everyone was freakin' staring at. Cruising down the western wall of the station is a brown subway rat. Normally rats move quickly and erratically but this particular rat is bogged down by a devastating physical ailment: a bloody growth has taken over half of his head. So it is this fucking monster that, one by one, inched past all of our toe-lines. Sniffing around, looking for god-knows-what, just basically chilling. Close to vomiting I proclaimed my resignation from this subway station, this rehearsal, nay, this band. Worst of all, this horrific abomination of nature stubbornly refused to pick up the pace and get away from our bags. He even allowed himself to be photographed with one of us.

Hello, Nick.

I am not okay with the existence of this creature. I do love animals and I have respect for all forms of life (except for Rupert the Mouse. He broke the rules. That's another story, though) but come ON. This rat was slinking along looking for a place to die. Why did he have to hang out with us? Rats and humans have a tacit agreement to avoid one another, an agreement that this rat was clearly in violation of. In my minds eye the beast has become the "rodent of unusual size" from The Princess Bride. I entered a Starbucks bathroom after the ordeal and jumped as the light clicked on, leery of a possible deformed rat infestation. I'm gonna have awful dreams about brain tumored animals moving really really slowly at me. Like zombies.

Speak, Stew Leonard

2008-11-10T14:15:00.006-05:00

One thing I enjoy doing (and have always done) is riding public transportation. I have a tendency, while staring out windows, to construct little worlds. I'll spy an apartment located over a general store in Vermont and try to imagine myself inside of it. My furniture, my friendly but business-like relationship with the staff beneath me, the snowy view out of my bedroom window. I pass by a spectacular home that seems to be snuggled into the green banks of the Hudson River (Jersey side) and picture myself as a successful man in my early forties with two young children and a dog, stepping outside with a cup of coffee to watch the Metro North slink it's way around the bend on the way to Poughkeepsie. Tiny duplex's in a Connecticut fishing town make me a man of the sea, a massive train station visible from the highway has me inventing journeys home to see my parents or a long-separated lover. It doesn't always take a lot, sometimes a light on in a distant and otherwise dark town is enough for me.

This weekend I went to the most glorious grocery store ever. I was visiting a friend in Yonkers, a town located half-an-hour north of Manhattan by train. After some very serious Nintendo-Wii competition we decided to go out for wine to have with dinner. She told me that Stew Leonard's was the best place, although we'd have to drive a bit farther to get there. I assured her that quality of wine meant almost nothing to me but she insisted that I would love Stew Leonard's. I am not typically a person who loves a grocery store. Yes, I was excited when they finally opened a Trader Joe's in Brooklyn. And I certainly don't dislike grocery stores (except for one when I was living with my girlfriend in Midwood which we nicknamed "the smelly one"). But few of them have ever left me, "tickled", shall we say?

A little back story: Stew Leonard is a farmer in Connecticut and is the sole provider for all of the produce, meat and dairy in his grocery stores (of which there are only a few and all of them except for the one I visited are located in Connecticut). I don't mean to sound snobbish or pretentious but you really can taste the difference in organic produce. At least I can. So in the spirit of Stew and his cow-farming ways, I am told, there are singing cows in there. This is more than enough to put a skip in my step as we walk into the mammoth structure, shaped like a barn, atop a big hill in Westchester County. The first thing you're likely to notice, should you enter a Stew Leonard's, is the aroma of freshly baked Cider Doughnuts. These they hand out to passerby. As a matter of fact the whole place smells spectacular. Instead of straight, parallel aisles you meander along a twisty path. It's like a more wholesome version of Candyland. Animatronic cows and roosters sing to you and little robotic puppets do front flips on a pull-up bar in each new section. Seeing all of this I applied my usual dissociative fiction powers and tried to imagine what it would be like to be a kid and do the weekly shopping at this place. I immediately concluded that my childhood would have been much happier.

I was impressed by large quantities as a kid so the Costcos and Price Clubs of America held a certain appeal. Stew's had quantity, for sure, but the selection (and incredibly fair prices) were way more enticing. Hundreds of different breads, just about any kind of cheese you could ever want, animals I'd never even thought to kill and eat, a bigger olive bar than the Fairway. I basically wanted to live there. Not Yonkers. In the store itself. When we were finished following the dairy-brick road around we entered the wine shop which makes Trader Joes' wine shop look like your Uncle Clay's Moonshine Cellar. After making our selection we drove home, I convinced that she'd brought me here to try to persuade me to move to Yonkers just so she'd have more friends in town.

This month is National Novel Writing month. I entered and am now attempting to pen a 50,000 word novel by the 30th, the idea being that you force yourself to output creatively and abundantly without switching on that pesky inner-editor. (To give you a reference point this blog entry is 846 words long). You'd think my manically shifting narratives would give me plenty of fodder but it's harder than it seems. Thus far the only thing I've been able to do is fictionalize my own life. It's surprising how much one can learn by doing that. For the first time I'm merely applying the same treatment to myself that I do to strangers and their homes as I pass them on the train, as if I've somehow been shown a window into my own existence but given limited information about the details.

Remember Remember The 5th of November

2008-11-06T22:11:00.006-05:00

There was a massive celebration in Brooklyn's Prospect Park after it was announced that Barack Obama had been elected the 44th president of the United States. I, however, was forty four miles to the east in a cozy living room in Brookhaven, the town I grew up in. It was nice to watch the unfolding of history from this vantage point. It was a beautiful night, in all ways. I even thought John McCain's concession speech was beautiful. More importantly, I thought it was productive.

In a conversation over lunch on November 5th a friend postulated that Sarah Palin may indeed return to the political scene because this country loves polarizing figures. Honestly, though, neither John McCain nor Barack Obama strike me as polarizing figures and I hope this will signify a sea change in the political climate. The press is already watching president-elect Obama like a hawk to see what kind of administration he is going to assemble. I am honestly not worried. The man seems very intelligent. At the very least I won't have to be embarrassed about the words he makes up during his speeches.

Jokes were definitely being made during the aftermath; the mood was just too jovial not to. But as I observed the one black person present at our little gathering excuse herself to make phone calls to her mother and grandmother in the other room and return with tears streaming down her face I was reminded of exactly what this election is going to mean for a lot of people. It would be dishonest (and even disrespectful) to ignore the massive race barrier that has just been torn down. Never mind that I, a young white male, never thought I'd see this in my lifetime. Imagine someone who was alive to watch policemen turn a fire hose on demonstrators in the Jim Crow south. Imagine people who lived through the Boston race riots. Honestly, I can't imagine how it must have felt.

More pressing matters, though: holograms. On CNN, about an hour before Anderson Cooper's inimitable face took over the airwaves, I observed Wolf Blitzer talking to a holographic Jessica Yellin who materialized with a bluish glow. It was not unlike the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi appearing to Luke just before he leaves Dagobah. When on earth did we get this technology and WHY is it being used for this? The whole "live via Satellite" think worked well enough for the purposes of the news, I never felt that something was lacking. Pretty soon we won't have to leave our houses, we'll just hang out holographically.

Democracy

2008-11-04T13:00:00.002-05:00

As much as I bitch about the fact that my vote doesn't count (the electoral college and the media have us all convinced that the only places that truly count are "swing" states) I felt a rush of excitement as I pulled the lever this morning. By this time tomorrow we will know who the next president to be sworn in this January will be. We will have either the first black president or the first female vice president. Either will be a cause for alarm for some and a cause for celebration for others, and either will be an important historical landmark. I know this, and it is indeed exciting.

Today I took a boat ride with my father. The two of us have not done this alone for quite some time. We didn't really talk about anything but it was a beautiful day and it's always good to check on the Atlantic Ocean. It reminds me of a lot of things. Standing before something that huge has always reminded me of how small we are, we as humanity, in relation to this planet. There was a George Carlin bit where he mused on the arrogance of humanity to think we could "destroy the planet" when in reality it was the planet that was going to outlive us, having been through far worse during it's four billion year life. This is not a call to apathy. I rather see it as more of a reason to care about the world as we live in it now, as the only thing we'll really destroy is ourselves.

It is comforting, though, to look upon the rhythmic crashing of the waves that always seem to be calling me home. I think we'll return there some day. Whatever happens in the next 24 hours the waves will still massage that sandy shoreline, dragging tiny pieces of our precious land back into it's great blue blanket; a constant give and take.

Deformity

2008-10-29T12:03:00.005-04:00

Although it had been going on for a day I didn't panic at first when I lost the ability to turn my head independently of my torso. I panicked when I looked at myself in the mirror and saw Igor staring back at me, head cocked at a 45° angle, one shoulder about three inches higher than the other. I suppose these things just happen.

I was told that this condition may have been caused by stress. "Stress", whatever it is, seems to be a word that is coming up a lot as an explanation for several problems in my life: erratic metabolism, mood swings, caffeine addiction, etc. Everyone should do themselves a favor and chill out.

Apparently what happens is your muscles literally get tied in a knot. This is easy to imagine if you've ever seen the drawings in children's textbooks where muscle tissue looks like tightly woven bundles of pink and red string. Permanently tensed, my bones tried to assume a position which would be sympathetic. The "knots" were "untied" by a physical therapist who didn't seem to mind that I cried like a little girl with a skinned knee. It still hurts to sit at a computer for a long time but at least I can swivel.

The Domino's Demographic

2008-10-20T14:55:00.007-04:00

Domino's Pizza, an international pizza restaurant chain, has created a service which, I'm convinced, is designed specifically for stoners.

One night I was trying to determine what to have for supper. To unwind I stepped out onto my deck to smoke a joint and consider the stars. As often happens in these situations I found, upon re-entering my domicile, that the desire to cook for myself had evaporated. Ordering food is something of a difficulty for me while intoxicated; I once ordered Chinese takeout (quite successfully I might add) and was confused when, at the end of the call, I mistook a dollar amount for a confirmation number. I was unaware that Chinese delivery places required confirmation numbers.

Being on Long Island and it being late my options were limited. I decided to let my fingers do the walking and consulted google and thus discovered that the popular-everywhere-except-New-York pizza chain now offers pizza delivery which can be ordered completely online. You can build your own pizza, add appetizers and drinks if you wish, and then monitor the progress on what looks like a horizontal thermometer on your computer screen which turns redder as the pizza comes closer to you.

Oh, my God.

I shared this information with a friend of mine one night and we again partook of the glorious no-talking delivery service, ordering what turned out to be something of a pizza-sandwich. While waiting for said sandwich to arrive we clicked on an informal survey that Domino's seemed to be conducting concerning the upcoming presidential election. After casting our votes we were taken to an animated screen showing which states were solidly Obama or McCain, leaning one way or tossups. It occurred to me that pizza, along with alcohol, drug addiction and pornography, pretty much slices right through the liberal/conservative national divide. And apparently a lot of people (some millions) had patronized this service and subsequently cast their vote in this mock election. Given the number of Domino's in the country (all 50 states were well represented) and the amount of people who order (stoned or not) I think that this prediction (favoring Obama on this day) is probably a more accurate projection of the election results than the Gallup pole. Think about it: could there possibly be a more random cross section of the population? Old, young, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight, we ALL love pizza.

Based on my conclusions I will no longer be reading the news; I will be carefully tracking the Domino's Pizza website and if the election results are at odds with that then I will confidently scream foul play.

Why Must I Be A Teenager In Love?

2008-10-06T10:34:00.012-04:00

Film Review: Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

I saw this movie on opening night. I was inordinately excited about it, mostly because of my affection for Michael Cera on Arrested Development. I ignored the little voice in my head (and larger voices outside of my head) telling me that this was a teen movie and likely to make me feel like a senior citizen (I have like four gray hairs at this point!) and allowed myself to be coerced by two friends (who are by now aware that I'll watch just about anything) into going on opening night. They honestly did not have to twist my arm.

The general consensus about this movie was that it could have been a lot better. But I felt the opposite was true; this movie could have been a whole lot worse. The title itself throws up red flags that the film could be important only as a soundtrack and the ages of the lead actors indicates the possible presence of occasionally embarrassing youth vernacular. Or it could have just plain tried too hard to be quirky and awkward.

I'm sure the soundtrack is going to sell insanely well but the musical aspect of the film was not overbearing (in fact a better title might have been Nick and Norah's Sexually-Charged Emotional-Coming-Of-Age New York Adevnture. Perhaps the filmmakers thought that was too long.) and it didn't leave me feeling as if I was missing something by not being a part of New York's underground music "scene". The story was mainly told through the brilliant performances of it's two lead actors. Michael Cera does a kind of awkwardness that truly no one else can touch. It's endlessly endearing and, somehow, simultaneously real and unbelievable. And Kat Dennings spars with him nicely. The scenes between the two of them feel unlike any other movie (at least to me) but they feel just right. Another standout is Ari Graynor whose portrayal of a lost, drunk teenager is so real I started having dangerous flashbacks in the theater. She manages to use a small amount of screen time very well and her over-the-top performance contrasts nicely with the uncomfortable Nick and Norah.

What really gets me, and this is true of most art and not just films, is that certain intangible something: the "feel" of the piece. And to me this film felt terrific. The use of real locations in New York (and a very careful and much appreciated attention to geographical accuracy) gave the movie a vibrancy and vitality. And other things that begin with the letter "v" as well. A scene late in the movie set in the real Electric Lady Studios felt just as if you'd come off the crowded streets of the city that doesn't sleep into a quiet three a.m. sanctuary (never mind the implausibility of Electric Lady being unoccupied at that particular hour...). My two companions and I wanted to go on an adventure in Manhattan after we got out of the flick but, alas, we had to get up the next day so it was back to the boroughs for us. Thus our window into the care-free world of teenagers was broken and we were back to being twentysomethings with jobs and no cars.

It made me remember, though. It made me remember what it feels like to be in love for the first time, and to have the whole world in front of you, begging you to take that initial step into your future.

And anyone who grew up in Jersey or Long Island knows that if you stay for the encore at concerts in Manhattan you're stuck around Penn Station until the wee hours of the morning, and you learn to love 24 hour diners and nocturnal friendships. That's what Nick and Norah felt like to me.

Strudel Economics

2008-10-05T14:18:00.000-04:00

Some time ago I was on a search for some Pop Tarts. Pop Tarts are a wonderfully versatile food--they can be consumed toasted or directly from the package and at pretty much any hour of the day. In lieu of Fig Newtons, my stoner self will often reach for Pop Tarts.

Convenience store shelves offer you an amazing number of choices. There are choices within choices; subtleties almost too slight to contemplate. There are so many Dorito varieties that I've taken some off the menu just to make it easier on myself (No more Jalapeño ones, they're too hot, no more Cool Ranch, they smell like feet...Guacamole is a possibility but they turn my fingers a hideous green...) and Reese's candy has expanded itself into so many varieties it's almost comical (I cannot for the life of me discern the difference between the honey roasted peanut butter cups and the traditional ones). There are Pringles with Loaded Baked Potato flavoring. Potato-flavored potato chips. That's either the downfall of civilization or the next step in human evolution. I honestly cannot decide.

I remembered a commercial I used to see for Pilsbury Toaster Strudels (for some reason I really wanted to find them...the idea of being able to control my icing distribution held an undeniable appeal to me). A boy is running out of the door for school when his mother stops him: he has forgotten his Pop Tarts.

"Oh" he says, obviously nonplussed. "Thanks!" And he goes off camera with an eyeroll.

He meets up with his friend on the sidewalk and asks him if he's brought the Toaster Strudel.

"Of course" says the friend in that way that lets all of the viewers of this commercial know for certain that this is a friend who is cool and should be emulated.

What follows is an explanation of why Toaster Strudel are awesome and better than Pop Tarts. I had never considered this commercial particularly nefarious until, while browsing the grocery shelves, I realized that Toaster Strudel are about three times more expensive than Pop Tarts. This entire commercial is an insult to middle-income families. The boy we're all supposed to emulate is obviously the richer kid; of course his mom can afford to feed him Toaster Strudels every day (hell, two!), his father probably has a bloated bank account cause of some early investments in IBM that his dead great-grandfather made. This kid lives in a world where icing comes in impossible little perforated packets and can be consumed in whatever manner he pleases. He'll never know the pain of hard, crusty sprinkled icing that is supposed to melt when you put it in the toaster oven but, c'mon, no it doesn't and just be happy with it.

Something else occurred to me just now. The commercial used the actual product name of it's competitor (Pop Tarts being a trademark of the Kelloggs corporation). That's weird, right? Perhaps Kelloggs, when Intelligence reported back that Pilsbury had bested them in the toaster pastry department, shook hands with the devil and allowed their enemies to use their product name to sell more Strudel in exchange for a healthy cut off the top, this way everybody wins. I knew that little Doughboy was corrupt.

Es Gibt Hundert

2008-10-03T13:39:00.006-04:00

Almost a year ago I had a funny anecdote about teaching and a half-baked philosophy about Scrabble. A friend had a blog and I liked hers so much that I thought I'd write one too. This is my hundredth post. I felt I should acknowledge this and do something special.

One thing I have become aware of in the "blogosphere" is people making lists of "100 Things About Me". I can only assume that this would be devastatingly boring for others to read (and probably equally boring for me to write) so I'm not going to do that. Instead I've elected to answer the ten questions that James Lipton asks each of his guests on Inside The Actor's Studio.

1. What is your favorite word?

Conspicuous. I like the way it rolls off the tongue. I've been told that in songwriting I overuse the word "Just". It is a fabulous word to sing...I enjoy hard consonant sounds in song. "Much" is good, too.

2. What is your least favorite word?

Blogosphere

3. What turns you on?

Intellect. And that can manifest itself in a lot of ways, not least of which is a clever sense of humor. Could I possibly be more clichéd? Yes I could: my girlfriend in college still fit into her old Catholic School uniform. Best day ever.

4. What turns you off?

Same answer, really. Ignorance makes people look ugly.

5. What is your favorite curse word?

"Fuck", but what I really like is to accentuate it by compounding it with other words. Fuck-wad, Fuck-stick, Fuck-head, etc.

6. What sound or noise do you love?

I really love the sound of the ocean. Also there's a moment at about 1'58" into Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair/The Canticle" where Garfunkel's voice cracks on a high note and it's wonderful.

7. What sound or noise do you hate?

Sirens. And let me tell you something: New York City is constantly on fire. Or people are dying or becoming injured all the time. Maybe all three.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

I want to be a writer! (Don't. Anyone. LAUGH at me.)

9. What profession would you not like to attempt?

Sales.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Show starts in ten minutes.

I stole my answer to #10 from Harry Shearer on the Simpsons Inside The Actor... (which may well be the only episode worth watching). I think what I'd really like to hear God say would be more along the lines of "Listen, can you go down and set a few things straight for me? I don't know how all these rumors started but I don't hate gay people or women and yes, Darwin was right. I've made him Head of the Biology Department up here in Heaven. And when you get back you can play fiddle tunes with Einstein, if you want."

Thanks, God.

The Best Of Times, Part II

2008-09-29T12:59:00.005-04:00

(continued...)

It really was the best of times and the worst of times simultaneously. In the books of letters I found a much unhappier but more purely creative person than the one now reminicsing. I've become a better writer, I suppose, but what I learned was that clearly what I'm best at is rewriting, in this case rewriting my own life.

I had always assumed that the me of yesteryear was just a slightly different version of the me from now (you know how they say people don't really change). I figured I was less mature but still the same generally easy-going, courteous, respectful, slightly-nueroitc-but-able-to-laugh-about-it kind of guy. I remembered myself as being smart but not studious, talented but humble, striving to be a better person and generally tolerant of people around me. So when I delved into the everyday record of my 15/16-year old thoughts and was greeted by a total stranger I was understandably shocked.

The boy that leapt out of the pages was absolutely miserable in his surroundings, disdainful of his classes and school in general but terribly competitive and totally grade-obsessed. He was talented but he obviously knew it and pretty much felt that others should praise him for it. He was funny but not nearly as funny as he thought he was (unchecked intellectual elitism seasoned with too much Monty Python oozed out of the pages). He was also obsessed with being anti-religion and pissed off about various social injustices but all in a very black-and-white way. He was a nerd and not in the socially acceptable I-know-alot-about-Indie-Rock way; history jokes, chemistry jokes and algebra jokes that I can't begin to understand now were woven througout. A big chunk of our correspondance had opening lines that started with chess moves--we were playing a game by mail.

It wasn't all bad, though. I was more honest with this girl than I think I've ever been with anyone, and because of that this tome is better than a journal. I wish now I had one of these books for every year of my life. Even though I spent a lot of time venting my frustration I also wrote to her more poetically and beautifully than I may be capable of now. I would read things that to my 25-year-old ear sound like lies designed to get her to sleep with me but which, I'm positive, I truly truly meant back then. And I write about my friends from that time (many of whom are still my friends now) with mountains of love and admiration. I reported our exploits as if they were really exciting adventures; I took my every day life and tried to illuminate it for her (and perhaps my) sake; I tried to make a novel out of a sternographer's record.

Memory, as we all know, is tricky. I think the thing that usually gets changed, blurred or just plain lost is the day to day stuff, the stuff which the things we tend to remember best interrupt. That's why I don't remember parts of my life as they really were, that's why the nature of mine and Nomi's relationship was so surprising to me: my memory highlights those few days when we were together and leaves the weeks and weeks (during which I was living the mundane life of a High School Sophmore) with soft edges. So in this book of treasure I found something wonderful. I rediscovered a troubled and naive but endlessly creative individual with a rather surprising emotional range. I also rediscovered two people who were able to connect from hundreds of miles away and grow something beautiful in a garden of misery and angst.

We never could find the outcome of the chess game we were playing in the early letters. Perhaps we finished it during one of our visits, but if we did there's no record of it. We decided that the next time we meet up we'd reconstruct it using a chart she drew me after my cat knocked my board over one day and try to finish the game now. One thing that hasn't changed: I haven't gotten any better at chess.

The Best Of Times, Part I

2008-09-28T03:11:00.009-04:00

As it turns out I don't know myself at all.

I spend an awful lot of time thinking/writing about the past. I've already observed that I tend to falsely romanticize things and, sometimes to a fault, mentally cling to important relationships long after they've ended.

And so it was that I found myself on the floor, somewhere in the fiction section of a Barnes and Noble in downtown Manhattan, paging through a binder full of nine year-old letters all written by me to a girl from Albany, NY. She was reading her responses which, like my letters, were immaculately preserved in plastic sleeves and chronologically arranged in a three ring binder. Obsessive compulsive tendencies were obviously part of the attraction. We laughed out loud at parts and cringed at others. Parts were plain embarrassing and parts were genuinely touching. We agreed to trade books with the intention of meeting again to switch back in the near future. So I rode the train home and started reading what has turned out to be the most accurate snapshot of my sixteen year old self that I ever could have hoped to unearth.

She, Nomi, and I met at my aforementioned sleep away music camp*, both sitting near the back of the viola section. Our romantic relationship began a few months later when we spent New Years Eve in New York City together. It remains the only long distance relationship I've ever maintained (I've just never had the occasion to attempt another) and as such, even in an age where email and AIM were already becoming widespread, we opted to write letters when we couldn't be physically together. And write we did, consistently, nearly every day, in between visits and the one stretch of four weeks over the following summer when the time for camp rolled around again. Reading my letters to her (and some of hers to mine) forced me to remember what it was like to be that age and be romantically involved--not knowing what to do with all of those mind-blowingly strong emotions, feeling that almost narcotic high and then withdrawl and having no faculties to contexualize and deal with those feelings, utter helplessness when you don't get exactly what you want, unbelievable urgency, especailly when it came to sex (we must have thought we'd never be touched or kissed again if not in that very moment).

Reading through our rejoined (possibly for the first time ever) writings we both noticed the darkness; another attraction was obviously a fondness for black humor and morbidity. There was also a notable streak of absurdity. Letters would, without warning, spiral off into surreal tangents and outlandish lies that would never announce their arrival nor departure to the unaccustomed reader. Both of us were obviously, on close examination, suffering bouts of depression and having some problems at home (both of which were exacerbated by the fact of being that wretched age) and the Python-esque detours now strike me as a poorly-masked defense-mechanism, at least on my end. It was a wonderful, terrible, exciting, frightening, intense time to be in love with someone and have them love you back.

(To be continued...)

*This is my blog where I backlink to a bunch of my other blogs.

Talkin' Insomnia Blues

2008-09-26T00:58:00.005-04:00

Even as a child I liked to have music playing while falling asleep. I believe my tapes of choice were titled "Wee Sing" (I've only just now realized that the "wee" refers to the size of the children doing the singing...) which featured small children singing Nursery Rhymes or Christmas Carols or Morovian Folk Dances or whatever. I don't think this was the reason I was doing it back then but the reason I need music (or some kind of white noise) to sleep is to keep my own brain from attempting to destroy me. The insomnia I've had since my early teenage years probably stems from anxiety and stress; since around that age I've felt like a better-functioning machine when I've had too many things to do as opposed to too few. So my mind tends to race and it makes it hard to sleep. In recent years the internet has facilitated this WAY too much. Social networks and the Internet Movie Database and Music Sharing Networks and Free Pornography and Wikipedia and Youtube and Instant Messenger and Online Scrabble and Flash Animation and Games...

My last apartment in Boston was right next to the Green Line (The Green Line is the branch of the "T" which is comprised of underground trains Downtown but Street-Level Trolleys everywhere else). Years of vibration from the passing trolley had slanted the floor of our apartment so that any round object placed on the hardwood floors would roll directly into my bedroom. My guess is that eventually the whole place will crumble. It's alarming how quickly noises simply fade into the background, so long as they're consistent. Growing up my house was down the street from a tressel and every night at about 2:30 a.m. the late train to Montauk would cross it. I think this simply wove itself into my sleep cycle.

I was reminded of this last night when I was kept awake because a Tori Amos song reminded me of something that it had nothing to do with. The 2:30 train came by as usual but I was stuck in a vivid and regretful memory of a St. Patrick's Day dinner in West Roxbury, MA. Or maybe it was Christmas. The fact that I could only remember vague images and emotions got me thinking about losing my mind as I get older; remembering feelings without being able to contexualize them or understand the point. And the worst part is all this was triggered by a song that had previously no connection to this particular memory. Now my brain is just making stuff up to keep me awake.

I woke up with the absurd idea that I might jump in the ocean. Although the weather is cold the sea in September is notoriously warm. I was concerned about the increased jelly fish population but I was in the mood to feel the cleansing salt water. I got on my bike to ride down to the beach only to discover that it was colder than I'd expected, and windy. Swimming alone in rough seas crosses my boundary of stupidity. Instead I opted for an hour long bike ride around my old neighborhoods. Without realizing I was doing it I biked past six separate houses that I used to play at as a child (isn't it a wonderful thing children do? Where are you going? To Elizabeth's house. What for? To play! Just to play). Again, just images and emotions, nothing solid. Again I feel compelled to keep a diary, if only to look back at it years later to see what I was doing and thinking each day. I'd probably write about nothing but the past.

No Food or Batteries

2008-09-25T00:00:00.007-04:00

I listened to a wonderful Podcast recently that was part of a series of Desert Island-type interviews. Various British celebrities get to play their "which 5 records would you take to a desert island" picks as well as answer general questions. I like these lists although it always makes me think logistically about the desert island scenario.

I'm gonna use the Tom Hanks movie Castaway as a jumping off point, since that will better allow me to extrapolate the particulars. When Tom Hanks' plane goes down and he ends up on a deserted island he actually does have some stuff with him (not least of which is a volleyball that he names "Wilson" and then later has a quasi-romantic relationship with). So in our world the things he happens to be stuck with are his five favorite peices of recorded music and some kind of music-playing device which runs on solar energy*. Would this have made him happy? I can only assume that the first few weeks would be taken up with learning to survive. Food, water, warmth and shelter would probably keep the ear-buds off. But eventually Tom Hanks found some spare time and seemed to develop some hobbies. I imagine at this point he would be happy to have his favorite tunes (and fancy solar powered iPod). I have to imagine any five songs would grate on you eventually, though. Also, do you want to be distracted? Shouldn't you be alert at all times in case of some sign of rescue? Or maybe you know you have a finite amount of time on this desert island. Maybe it was part of a deal; you get five songs and you have to be alone on this island for two years and survive on your own. It could be a bizarre science experiment.

The other items that the celebrity (I was listening to Ricky Gervais) are asked to choose is a book and one luxury item. The luxury item cannot assist in survival as such (it can't be medicine or something) and the book cannot be practical (How to Survive on a Desert Island with a Solar Powered Walkman and a Useless Luxury Item). I have a feeling a lot of people would choose the Bible, and I think that's a good choice if only based on it's length. You have to make what you have last.

For curious readers, my choices would be as follows:

MUSIC
Scarborough Fair/The Canticle (Simon and Garfunkel)
Vaughn Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (Don't Care What Recording)
Seek Up (Dave Matthews Band, the 14 minute version from the Live At Red Rocks Album)
In The Waiting Line (Zero 7)
Arlington (The Wailin' Jennys)

These aren't even necessarily my favorite songs, I just think they'd be good to have on a desert island and they happen to be peices of recorded music that I love. Also two of them are really long. See, this stuff matters when you only have five things to listen to.

BOOK
Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)

Mostly 'cause it's long, also 'cause it manages to be good pretty much all the way through.

LUXURY ITEM
A Guitar

Yes! Music loophole. I'll just play all the songs I want to hear. So there, desert island experimenting scientists. I win!

*Someone should invent this.

The Glitter Rubs Right Off

2008-09-24T13:45:00.006-04:00

They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway
They say there's always magic in the air
But when you're walkin' down the street
And you ain't had enough to eat
The glitter rubs right off and you're nowhere.

They say the girls are somethin' else on Broadway
But lookin' at them just gives me the blues
'Cause how you gonna make some time,
When all you got is one little dime,
And one little dime won't even shine your shoes?

They tell me I won't last too long on Broadway
I'll catch a Greyhound Bus for home, they all say
But they're dead wrong, I know they are
'Cause I can play this here guitar
And I won't quit 'til I'm a star on Broadway

-George Benson, "On Broadway"

Jesus. I never really paid close attention to the lyrics of this song. I can't add anything.

Notes from the Edge of Brooklyn

2008-09-22T17:25:00.005-04:00

The Red Hook IKEA dwarfs the statue of liberty from most angles. The moat around this spectacularly well-furnished castle is called the Gowanus Canal. Every year a group of NYU students run tests to see exactly what is in the Gowanus Canal. This year they found Chlamydia. Obviously the Gowanus Canal makes an ideal science project.

Did you know that it is not a good idea to mix pain killers and red wine? It's not.

An unlimited subway pass is freedom. Suddenly I have more choices: I can get off and then get back on if I want to. I can go other places besides where I've been and where I'm going. I took this for granted when I lived here full time.

I use the internet to torture myself. There should be a service where you hire someone to block your access to the online social networking profiles of all of your past relationships.

Nintendo Wii is revolutionary, if only for bringing back gun shaped controllers. Is there an updated version of Duck Hunt? Please tell me there is. I want to hold the gun right up against the screen and try to shoot the dog.

New Jersey is closer to Brooklyn than Brooklyn, depending on where you stand.

Pieces Of You

2008-09-20T17:42:00.008-04:00

It used to bother me that I felt as if I were a different version of myself around different people. I remember once making the comparison to wearing different masks and (in an extremely self-absorbed, what-Peter-Sellers'-friends-said-about-him kinda way) not really knowing who I actually was, just who I wanted to be perceived as depending on my company. Now I'm not so sure this is tragic or even that strange.

Recently a friend from the publishing industry took me to an event hosted by the gigantic Union Square Barnes and Noble. The event was one of a weekly series of authors who read their work interrupted by singer-songwriters. I got the impression they were trying to knit to the two bodies of work together. Anyway the author on this particular evening was David Carr, a well regarded New York Times reporter who took a decidedly original approach to writing his ascent-out-of-addiction-hitting-bottom-and-bouncing-back memoir: he was going to interview all of the key players and cobble the account together from what they recalled (which more often than not was quite different from what he recalled). The investigative journalism angle makes for a fascinating study of memory and how we use it.

Of course not everyone has massive amounts of drugs to help them alter their memories. But most of us seem to do it without help. More and more I find that my recollection of events is completely different from the other participants, and I haven't killed nearly enough brain cells yet to justify the gap. That gap can't just be limited to my perception of things outside of myself, either. What occurs to me is that the most accurate, honest and complete self-portrait you could hope to obtain would be drawn from a random cross-section of your friends and acquaintances, and preferably not the close ones either.

I shall use myself as a case study. As of this day I have 332 friends on facebook. I would consider about 25 of those close friends. 8 of them are people who I have kissed. The rest fall into a a lot of subtle sub-categories, each of which probably has a slightly different perception of who I am based solely on information I've given (or not given) to them. But I think now that these different perceptions are entirely appropriate and do not necessarily represent some insane disconnect within myself. For example, the faction of people who know that my favorite book is Einstein's Dreams is different than the people who know that my favorite stoner food is Fig Newtons. The subcategory that knows how many people I've had sex with is different than the one that knows that as a child I used to play with a tea set. I'm not saying that these groups can't intersect, of course, but probably not often. Imagine a series of interconnected Ven-diagrams and, somewhere in the middle, where the circles never quite meet, is the most precise portrayal of You. The larger circles would probably be your oldest or closest friends. The smaller circles would represent those friends who it seems have a huge amount of access to a very limited part of your life. Lovers would probably all be within the same circle, and I bet it would be surprising just how small their particular circles might get.

By showing different aspects of ourselves (and I reiterate, I think it's unreasonable to be able to comfortably display ALL aspects of your personality to any one person, no matter how close you are) we are actually figuring out who we are. I think most people would be scared to discover that they have, in fact, revealed their entire souls, skeletons and all, and that that depiction could be made available for inspection if only a hundred or so people started emailing each other.

[Editor's note: This is the most self absorbed thing I've ever written. It makes me cringe looking back at it, even after correcting the first round of spelling and grammar errors. I am NEVER posting while high again.]

Lies I Tell Myself

2008-09-17T09:53:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I sat
In the Hudson River Park
My feet touching grass

For some strange reason
I decided to list the
Lies I tell myself

I thought of many
And just as an exercise
I made them haikus

That I used to be
Happier and less anxious
Than I am right now

That I do not crave
Attention and approval
From other people

That I'm respectful
Of other people's beliefs
Which conflict with mine

That most of my acts
Are motivated by good
And not selfishness

That I persevere
And try as hard as I can
In all that I do

That I know what I
believe with some certainty
And that I'm not scared

That my relentless
Criticism of myself
Has helped me at all

That if I went back
And was given a chance to
Make different choices,

That I would not just
Screw up again and turn out
Exactly the same.

Sugar

2008-09-15T13:28:00.007-04:00

I was sitting in a cafe with Bella and her six month old baby the other day, all of us eating; I a turkey burger, she an omelete, and the child tiny bits of french fries. He does not have teeth. I asked his mother if there were any foods that he didn't like.

"Strained peas. But I don't like peas either."

I imagined a world in which only peas were available and I wondered if it might seem as if something were wrong with the baby because he would never want to eat. I was astounded that at only 6 months human beings can develop preferences for certain things. It led me to think about my own preferences and how they, like so many other things, fall under the category of maladaptive traits.

I do not crave foods that give me sustenance. I do like them. But I crave ice cream and cookies, things that, if consumed in excess, will eventually kill me. And I don't think I'm alone in craving poison.

When deer become too numerous they stop mating for a season and thin the herd. Perhaps Tasty-kakes are our own method of population control?

I realize I am overlooking the obvious-that sugar is an addictive substance and that heroin also kills and that doesn't stop people from craving it (to the point of death itself), but there's a reason we classify heroin and cocaine as dangerous narcotics. There are probably some people out there who want to put Corn Syrup and Bleached Flour into that category too, I just never thought I'd be among them.

All I Want Is To Have My Peace of Mind

2008-09-13T18:06:00.011-04:00

I was trying to write something personal and introspective on here since I had a rather bad day. I never intended this thing to be a diary so when I do write about things that are personal to me I try to make them relevant to other people or funny; anything to make them more than just a Dear Diary page "accidentally" left out on the table. Today I was having trouble doing that, though, so I've decided to take it out on lame college a capella bands. It had to be done.

I should state for the record that I do like a capella music, done well. And I adore music driven by vocal harmonies (Bluegrass, Madrigals, Moxy Fruvous, etc). But the College A Capella Band phenomenon is a whole different animal, an animal I did not discover until midway through my own college experience, actually. My school did not have an A Capella band and even the first few times I experienced them I was not aware that they were such a widespread phenomenon. But since graduating I've had many different people tell me how awesome the band at THEIR college was and as evidence show me CDs. None of these groups were the Yale-Goddamn-Wiffenpoofs, of course, but were seemingly across the board adored by all of the students they entertained. These are a bunch of guys who think they are a blessing to the world of vocalists because they played Danny Zuko in their High School's production of Grease (oh, and an idiot who beatboxes) who all think it's funny to sing "Tainted Love" and make the high organ sounds through their noses.

One person who I spoke to told me that the band from her school were thinking of taking their act on the road after they graduated (!) I tried hard to imagine the audience for it. Are there people who want to hear their favorite songs imitated by a bunch of dudes with effeminate musical-theater voices, singing guitar solos the way you do when you're alone in your car, dragging out every "s" they can, turning every song into an out-of-tune, over-enunciated, whiny little novelty? Well, audience, you can bloody well have it.

Yeah.

The New York Hippodrome from J.P. Sousa

2008-09-11T23:18:00.006-04:00

"Can I stand next to you?"

I had been fiddling with my phone (having stupidly forgotten to bring something to read or listen to on the subway), preoccupied and late for work when I looked up to see the source of this request. Standing before me was a skeleton of a woman nervously clutching a folded peice of paper.

"Okay," I said, but I said it in that way you say "okay" to things that will cease to be okay if the circumstances are changed even slightly. This woman was breaking the rules by refusing to respect my implied invisibility.

"My name’s Donna and I’m an introvert. The definition of introvert is I don’t like to be around people. Only music and art. Feel my heart." Donna grabbed my hand and placed it on her bony chest. Her heart was pounding rapidly.

"You don't like big crowds, huh?" Donna seemed about to cry as she unfolded what seemed to be rudimentary directions to 145th Street, explaining that she was on the way to see her parents there.

"I'm 40 years old," she said, "and I can't get my pants to stay up. This is terrible, what am I going to do?" Now she was beginning to cry, yanking the drawstring of her sweatpants tighter to keep them from slipping off of a waist that may as well have been a broomstick. "Isn't this an awful disease to have?" I assumed she was talking about being an introvert although it was seeming more and more like agoraphobia. But she wouldn't have been standing so close if she were agoraphobic, right? I made a mental note to look up the definition of both later. I've always considered myself an introvert; perhaps I should be certain of what that means. She repeated the question.

"Uh..."

"It is!" Donna said, wiping away tears. "It's a horrible disease. I'm in bad shape here." I put my hand on her shoulder and told her my name. Donna held out her hand in the way of a formal greeting even though she was still less than six inches away from me. "I'm Donna Elaine Sousa. Like..."

"John Philip Sousa?". Donna beamed at the mention of the great American composer of patriotic marching band music.

"I play cello and violin," she told me proudly.

"I play the violin too. I can't play the cello, though. It's always been my favorite."

"The cello is, like, my closeness." Donna cradled an imaginary cello and held it close to her body. I was pleased that our conversation seemed to be distracting her momentarily from the fact that she was an introvert. "Do you play with your fingers or the stick?"

"Both, I guess" I said as my train pulled up to the platform.

"I'm too old to use my fingers anymore, I think..."

"I have to get on this train, Donna. You wait for the 3 train right here, okay? Good luck!"

"Okay," Donna said and hugged me goodbye.

I spent the rest of my daily commute under my usual blanket of invisibility but I was suddenly not so sorry I had forgotten my usual distractions.

Office Space

2008-09-10T12:03:00.004-04:00

"Be always afraid to catch thyself idle."

-Benjamin Franklin

If idle hands are truly the Devil's playground then payroll in Hell is all done by the hour. I'm sitting in the upstairs office of the Research Branch of the New York Public Library, kitty-corner to the Empire State Building on E 34th. It's only noon and I have nothing left to do for the day. This is fine; technically I can leave whenever I please as long as I've completed my tasks but the problem is I'm getting paid $13 per hour to sit here and I'll be damned if I'll be shorted just because I happen to work efficiently.

Salaried positions reward efficiency-hourly ones punish it. It may be that other temporary employees who filled this position before me had slightly less manual dexterity than a trained monkey, but I find this unlikely. I think it's far more likely that all Temps everywhere have the unspoken understanding that if we ALL appear less competent then it will seem as if things simply take longer than they actually do and it will leave us time to sit in air conditioned offices, cyber-chat with our fellow cubicle slaves across town and update our stupid blogs.

A Gift of Somersaults

2008-09-09T02:50:00.006-04:00

I was in a spectacular church on Seventh Avenue and Carroll Street in Park Slope, Brookyln. Because I used to work in a bookstore three blocks to the south I had probably walked by the edifice about 100 times before ever setting foot inside. The sanctuary made it easy to understand how a person could feel like they were sitting in God's house. Outside there was a beautiful garden with white and blue lights in the trees. I sat in this garden waiting to play viola and guitar for a benefit to support Liberia and stared at the brownstones I covet.

While the other musicians were going (we were last) I walked around sipping free wine and checking out the items for sale in silent auction. It was then that I spied the artwork of Kristiana Pärn, specifically this one entitled "Somersaults on Egg Hill".

Needless to say I could not pass up the opportunity to bid on these adorable little guys. When after my set I found that I'd been outbid by a few dollars I was sad but the girl who'd outbid me was in such a charitable mood (and so moved by our melodious voices) that she made me a gift of "Somersaults". And I am now officially a Kristiana Pärn fan. Her beautiful illustrations are full of warmth and peace
and quiet, understated impressionism
and, best of all, cute bunnies.
Lots of them. So thanks, Kristiana, for lifting my spirits. For more of Kristiana's work visit the website. I promise my next post won't plug something.

Peaks and Valleys

2008-09-08T09:33:00.008-04:00

It should be noted when that when you end a story with "...and then I got hit by a car" people tend to express panicked concern before they appreciate your comedic timing.

It had been an extremely up and down weekend. I never thought I was the type of person to react in extremely emotional ways (I acknowledge the possibility that anyone who knows me might have outwardly guffawed at that sentence) but lately it seems like anything thrown my way makes me either exceptionally happy or alarmingly depressed. But Monday ended on a good note with some encouraging words from my (way more pragmatic and collected than me) drummer and a very good rehearsal (I recieved endless joy from a Led Zep's Kashmir based jam).

I should have known it would not last. I decided to bike a different route to the Brooklyn Bridge. Normally I like to ride on the Hudson River Greenway. At night it is one of the most breathtaking views in New York, in my opinion. The lights of Jersey City across the water and the harbor getting bigger in front of me gives me a wonderful feeling - the same feeling I used to get when the Red Line would cross the Longfellow Bridge over the Charles from Cambridge to Boston, the same feeling I would get as the Greyhound caught sight of New London, CT and my boat ride home for the holidays.

But on this night, for whatever reason, I braved the streets of the West Village and when I swerved to avoid a pothole without signaling (bad move) a shiny black car and I tried to occupy the same space at the same time. I was knocked off and hit the pavement first with both outstretched hands, next with my forearms, my chest, and lastly my jaw. The driver got out of his car and asked if I was all right and did I need a doctor. As a child I once saw a dog get hit by a car. It yelped and then ran, more rapidly than I would have thought possible, into the woods by the road. It was that kind of flight mode I entered into. I wanted to get out of the middle of the street and away from the scene. This is probably bad because I was so in shock that I may not have realized that I was hurt (in fact I didn't, because it took me a full fifteen minutes to discover my badly scraped elbow - the only harm done thankfully - at which point I floated into a Bodega requesting Hydrogen Peroxide and giant bandages). After dragging the bike into the nearest subway station and spending the ride home moping and checking for damage I got off in Brooklyn to re-mount my metal steed and very cautiously ride home with shattered nerves.

Apparently when you're hit by a car all of your muscles tense up rapidly. I know this because the next day I felt as if I'd been working out for four hours.

I have related the story of my emotional rollercoaster Monday several times and I always end by saying what a good mood I was in at days end, followed by "And then I got hit by a car". I did get some laughs (always the clown) but I also got some consternation, some reprimands for not prefacing the story with "I'm okay" and a lecture about my having no health insurance.

I have been grinding my teeth at night, most likely due to stress, and this has lead to a fairly irritating jaw alignment issue. But ever since my jaw broke my face's fall I haven't had any pain. Hmm.

Ace In The Hole

2008-08-31T14:00:00.006-04:00

When John McCain announced that his running mate was an almost completely unknown governer from Alaska I must admit I was shocked. I mean, it certainly seems like a mind-blowingly transparent maneuver to win the "Hillary Vote". But if all he wanted to do was pick a woman then there are far more qualified and experienced women in the Republican Party who were passed over in favor of the non-threateningly cute, anti-choice, semi-frightening Sarah Palin. Also, John McCain is likely to die in office (okay, more likely than Obama) and that would leave us with a massively inexperienced President. This would be only slightly less problematic if McCain hadn't spent his months before the Conventions accusing Barack Obama of being massively inexperienced. Not to mention the fact that this young dame makes McCain look even older. It seemed to me that the Republicans were shooting themselves in the foot, so I knew I had to be missing something. McCain, maverick that he is, MUST have an ace up his sleeve.

And of course he does. Sources inside Washington have confirmed that Sarah Palin is, in fact, the last surviving daughter of the dead ice planet Krypton. As such, her biological makeup is enhanced by earth's yellow sun. This gives her the power of flight and nearly unlimited strength which she will use to fight Terrorists and the Ku Klux Klan. She has also vowed to stop Global Warming using her ice breath and proposed a cheap alternative to drilling in the northwest corridor (laser vision). Senator McCain has also promised that Brainiac would be defeated by 2012.

Bow Down Before The One You Serve

2008-08-19T14:25:00.013-04:00

The collar was nearly choking me. It was there because it had silver spikes coming out of it. It also matched the thick bracelet fastened around my wrist...what is the point of those things? I had purchased a new T-shirt for the ocassion, very black as only brand-new T-shirts can be. I thought about getting some combat boots but my accessories had already cost a little bit more than I'd hoped. I discovered that I had lost the skill to paint the fingernails of my right hand using my left.

I was never really a goth kid, at least not on the outside. But alienation always felt more right to me than just about anything else and I had (and somewhat still have) the musical taste to go along with it. I was known to go to school with nail polish on occasionally (everyone just LOVED me in junior high!!) and once I went to school dressed as Daisy Berkowitz (minus the green hair). So when in early August some neighborhood hoodlums decided to throw a Nine Inch Nails dance party in a barn it didn't take me long to enthusiastically revert to the disturbed teen I always kind of wished I was.

I was somewhat concerned that I'd be the only one in embarrassing clothes. Luckily I could not have been more mistaken. Some of the attendees were dressed almost excatly as Reznor himself did on the '94-'95 Self Destruct Tour. Black fishnet was everywhere and someone even let me use their eyeliner (quite superfluous...my eyelashes have always made me look like I'm wearing eye makeup anyway).

The lights went dim and red and someone started the iTunes playlist (these have made dance parties a lot easier I think). All the songs came from nin's earlier period (1989-1995); predictable considering the age of most of us. I had some great conversations about Ghosts I-IV, the new, somewhat maligned instrumental double album the band put out when their contract with Interscope ended. It was pretty much a normal party besides the costumes. But then something happened. I started to dance. And I let go.

I have trouble letting music take me over like that in public. This is odd because I'm a musician. I'm endeavoring to make a decent living by doing just that. But dancing has never been my strong suit. Even as a tap-dancing five year old I showed no promise. Perhaps it is because I'm too self-conscious but I never seem to be moving the way everyone else is. But that somehow did not matter to me on this night. Perhaps it is that I had such love for the music. I sang along to every song by heart* and let the subtleties of Reznor's electronic polyrhythms possess my flailing limbs. But it was also the company. It was liberating to be in a mix of people who I'd known since I actually wore nail polish and people who I'd never seen before, everyone dancing with reckless abandon.

Early in the night, before red wine had had it's way with my linguistic skills, I had one of the most validating interactions of my life with an old High School acquaintance, James. Decked out in full goth regalia I earnestly told him that I felt weird about myself and the impression I leave on others. For starters I talk funny (the ridiculous words and flowery sentence structure I use in some of these blog posts? Yeah, that's not an act), I think I sound conspicuously intellectual in a way that can be alienating. Also, I'm girly. REALLY girly. James told me that he also felt like a weird person sometimes and that he'd always seen me as marching to the beat of a different drummer and that he deeply respected me for it. We hugged, and yes it was vaguely homo-erotic. But I was thankful and felt more comfortable in my weirdness; comfortable enough to dance until three o'clock in the morning when I had perspired so much that I looked not unlike a shipwreck victim who'd had time to apply mascara. The next morning I had my fingers in a shot glass full of polish remover, a fistful of ibuprofen and a mission to get sober in time to teach the viola at 10:00. Perhaps I inspired my teenaged students to be taken over, somewhat, by Franz Schubert's dulcet tones.

*It is interesting that to memorize a song is to know it "by heart". It makes sense, I suppose, that our hearts are where we identify music's true dwelling place.

The Soda Pop Wars

2008-08-18T13:50:00.014-04:00

Early this morning I was riding a train from Queens to Manhattan, pontificating about youthful summers spent at a sleep away orchestra camp.

It occurs to me that the above opening sentence could be considered grounds for banning Thesauri. But anyway.

The only thing I liked about dormitory cafeteria food, I said, was the fountain machine that provided unlimited soda which we would all load our trays with again and again.

"Oh, you're a soda person," my companion said. I thought she meant I drink a lot of soda and I started to tell her I'd been trying to cut down before I realized that what she meant was I call sugary carbonated beverages "Soda" while a good portion of the population refers to that same class of beverage as "Pop". She (being from Detroit and later Columbus, Ohio) asked if it was an East Coast thing and at first I said it was. I realized I was wrong, though, when I remembered those same care-free camp days.

The program was made up of over one hundred students, aged 14-18, from all over New York State. Immediately upon arriving we separated into two factions: Long Island (including myself) and Upstate. There were a lot of points of contention between us. Long Islanders, for example, refer to everything north of the Bronx as "upstate" but the Upstaters have lots of names for their various regions (Upstate, Downstate, Finger Lakes Area, North Country, Adirondacks). This is fair: In land area those regions are something like 2o times the size of the NYC Metropolitan Area in which Long Island is included. They, on the other hand, assumed that all of the kids from Long Island (roughly half the population of the camp) went to the same school and probably hung out on weekends. What really drove a wedge between us, though, was the way we spoke (tawked if you're from Long Island, tocked if you're from "Upstate").

Long Islanders (most of us) have at least a hint of the accent from Welcome Back Kotter, patterns of speech informed by our close associations with Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey. Because I was a theater kid it was trained out of me at an early age but if I'm tired, upset or drunk many of my You's become Ya's, I tawk instead of talk and my use of the word "fuckin'" increases threefold. Upstaters, on the other hand, have accents seemingly related more to the regions to which they're most proximal (sometimes Vermont or New Hampshire, sometimes eastern Massachusetts, sometimes Ohio). The upshot is almost ALL of them say Pop when they mean Soda. Endless arguments ensued around the cafeteria tables, ostensibly about Soda Pop but really, I think, about culture. It confuses me to no end how two different places that are so geographically close can end up with such different speech patterns. Speech patterns that persist. I would have assumed that, what with us all watching the same television shows (which, frankly, is a large part of how I learned to speak) we would all eventually end up with standard mid-atlantic accents. But the southern drawl is not limited to backwoods bayou; the Brooklyn lilt is not alive only in time-capsule pizza establishments; the Valley Girl Voice is not merely an ancient curiosity; real people talk like this.

It may be that because I can imitate voices and change my accent at will I take for granted how automatic our speech patterns become. Obviously we pick them up from our parents first and foremost, not from Sesame Street, and perhaps I was an abnormal child in that I was under the impression that EVERYTHING needed to be imitated and assimilated into my own speech. It's probably why I occasionally ask questions like an effeminate Brit; too much Monty Python.

Listen: You Have Heard of Danish Kings

2008-08-16T13:34:00.002-04:00

It's a wonderful thing to have access to people who regularly engage in the brewing of alcoholic beverages. As Sean, the principle farmer of the Hamlet Organic Garden (H.O.G. for short), rasied a jug to his lips and drank deeper than seemed proprietous I awaited the verdict thirstily.

"This is the best thing we've ever done here" he said after a very long moment of contemplation.

I laughed, because he and the young men and women who successfully operate an autonomous volunteer-basis farm dedicated to providing affordable organically grown produce to an entire community were far more impressed with their ability to produce Mead.

Ever since ninth grade English class I'd been under the impression that Mead was just something Hrothgar's men drank too much of right before Grendel came and ate some of them. Also, knowing only that it is made from honey, I imagined it as thick, viscous and kind of gross. It was nothing like that but I'm going to have trouble explaining exactly what it was like; each person who drank from the big jug had a completely different description. It definitely has a fizz to it and a kind of "zing" like some white wines do. But the flavor expands just after it hits your tongue and a medley of flavors starts spreading across your chest. It was sweet and, for lack of a better term, "bready", most likely due to the yeast that is used as a fermenting agent.

Perhaps it was the mead or perhaps it was my drinking buddy's amicable nature but I found myself, against all odds, happily enjoying a round of drinks and chatting with some girls I hadn't seen since we all graduated from the same High School seven years ago. Against all odds because I generally try to avoid the two drinking establishments in my home-town because I'm afraid that I'll have drifted far from the reaches of possible conversation when it comes to my old High School acquaintances. I was most gratified to learn that, if anything, we seemed to have drifted closer. On this night, though, I had specifically come to meet up with an old friend.

This friend was my first musical partner-in-crime. When I was pop-illiterate at age 12 it was he who helped me pick out my first cassettes. When it became clear to me that the violin wasn't going to take any girls' breath away it was he who taught me how to play powerchords. We eventually formed our first band and even played at some middle school dances. As we got older our collaborations became more refined; we would spend entire days writing a song and then recording our creation, first with a cassette deck and later with a four track tape machine. We didn't know enough to defer to conventional thinking when it came to arranging and performing so we made up our own rules. These were some of the purest and most satisfyingly creative hours I've ever spent.

I was sad to learn that he doesn't play much anymore but very happy to learn that the fondness I have for those days is absolutely shared. This was simply the last in what I felt was an evening of extremely successful interactions which all felt genuine, as if I were suddenly transformed into a meticulous collector of other people's details, and I came to appreciate how forunate I am to know so many people with so many details. Perhaps it was not the mead so much as those who will make mead.

On Love and Wanting

2008-08-15T13:01:00.007-04:00

What was it that always attracted Lucy to Schroeder? Was it his intensity? His dedication to his craft? His ambition to become the greatest performer of Beethoven (on teeny little grand pianos) that the world has ever known? Or was it that he constantly rejected her advances?

I've never understood what it is about musicians. I mean, I find them attractive too but I always thought it was because we share common interests. Schroeder is that archetypal guy with a guitar at parties (although he claims not to crave attention he must be either a) inviting Lucy into his house during his practice time or b) bringing his little piano to other people's houses when the rest of the Peanuts are hanging out) and Lucy is inexplicably drawn to him. She says she wants him to stop playing and love her but would she still want him if he stopped playing?

Romantics tend to alter their own realities and the fewer people involved (ideally that would be one) the more complete the fantasies can be. It's why we like the chase. We don't exactly like it better than the actual relationship but we're able to like it more thoroughly, if you can spot the distinction. Weaving an ideal scenario is only possible in the artificial environment of one's own imagination and, as one finds out, fulfilling romantic relationships can not stay there and expect to flourish. So we begrudgingly allow objective reality to replace our beautiful illusion which we've built while daydreaming or composing love letters to the people we're courting. Lucy is a Romantic, and since comic strips always give us the benefit of the perpetual year (in which people and relationships never change or age, in this case for several decades) we can always find her frozen in the time of wanting and fantasizing about Schroeder. Their relationship cannot come to fruition. It makes for a beautiful study of that wonderful moment, that indefinable state between being and becoming: the Chase.

There's a moment in one of the animated cartoons that still makes me laugh when I think about it. Lucy, in frustration at Schroeder's indifference towards her advances, kicks Schroeder's little grand piano and breaks it. Schroeder then calmly gets up and walks out of frame. Next we see him go to a hall closet and he opens the door to reveal a stack of identical baby pianos. He takes one out and resumes practicing. I love the idea that Schroeder has been buying in bulk all these years.

Continuum

2008-08-14T22:27:00.005-04:00

Me: I kind of wish I could go back and relive the last three years of my life.

Flagg: Very well. You're 22.

Me: Thanks. (Beat) Do I still know all the stuff I know now?

Flagg: Oh no. No, I can't allow that. You can relive all you want but you can't actually use your knowledge to benefit you.

Me: What else is new? Can I at least send a letter to myself?

Flagg: No, see if I let you do it then I'll have to let everyone do it, you know how it is.

Me: Yeah yeah, I get it, the spacetime continuum and everything, I might create a temporal causality loop and thus unmake the fabric of the universe.

Flagg: Yeah, you've watched Star Trek.

Me: ...well so've you.

Flagg: ...yeah. I know.

Being Michael Phelps

2008-08-14T14:06:00.008-04:00

Every time Michael Phelps gets into a swimming pool he breaks a world record, and after six in a row he barely even looks tired doing it anymore. He also has a perfect body. Better than perfect, actually; evidently he has freakishly long toes which manage to grip the sides of the pool along with his fingers and get an extra push off. He's also pretty much universally considered to be an Olympic Semi-God and he seems in no danger of wrecking that status. I don't really remember the last time I was very interested in the Olympics but Phelps is the kind of hero that can at least keep me attentive. And, because I managed to catch him in the pool a few times, I've watched a little gymnastics and beach volleyball (and when did that become an Olympic sport?) by extension.

Perhaps the world had just not been up to par as far as records go and Mikey shatters them all because no one's had the gumption to try really hard in a few years. I have another theory, though.

I think Michael Phelps is part of government program to boost morale during these difficult times. I've noticed that President Bush has been watching him awfully closely and I can no longer believe that this is a coincidence. I don't think he's responsible, necessarily, but those who are spearheading the program have obviously employed him in order to keep up appearances. The way I see it there are two possibilities. Either Phelps was created in a petri dish from the first successful melding of human and dolphin zygotes or he's simply been bionically enhanced to give him dolphin-like characteristics. Whatever the method I'm convinced it was the U.S. Government that created him.

But that doesn't mean they can control the raging spirit that dwells within him.

Why So Serious?

2008-07-25T16:17:00.008-04:00

"You see it's all a show, keep 'em laughing as you go..."

-Monty Python "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life"

It's fifteen minutes before the end of Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight. I'm in a packed movie theater, sipping the dregs of a 4 dollar, 10 oz. cup of Sierra Mist. Heath Ledger, in Joker makeup, is hanging upside down delivering what will likely be his final lines of dialogue to be spoken in a film, ever*. I am completely captivated by his performance, as I have been for the last two hours. And I suddenly come to the realization that even if Heath Ledger were not dead I would still think this was one of the best portrayals of a villain ever committed to film. That is saying a lot considering how obsessed I am not just with death but with how it alters people's perceptions of art and artists.

What made Heath Ledger's portayal of the Joker so wonderful and terrifying had nothing at all to do with his premature death. This sounds like a bizarre statement to make and a back-handed compliment at best but anyone who remotely pays attention to the sick symbiosis between news media and advertising knows that Ledger's death was worth more to the film's publicity than if Jesus Christ had appeared on Late Night and endorsed The Dark Knight as required watching for all true believers. But this movie, oddly, triumphed from a great script, unique visuals and stellar acting.

The Joker became more and more of a clown as the comic book series progressed (I should state for the record that I was never a comic book kid but I had a lot of friends who were and I'm something of a quick study, and as an adult I've come to appreciate them for their artistic merit). By the time the (excellent) '60's television show was brought along as a means to sell little model Batmobiles the Dark Knight had gone completely to camp. Tim Burton deserves some credit for giving the Bat some of his dark psychological persona back, and then a string of animated series' came on when I was a kid which harkened back to the early days of the comic. Heath Ledger based his performance on equal parts First Appearance of Joker in Books, Sid Vicious, and Alex from Clockwork Orange and this cocktail works tremendously. Ledger's Joker is of that rare class of villain who is unpredictable and terrifying but fun and quotable. Also, the movie explores the idea of the villain as a catalyst for other people's evil acts, like a match that starts an inferno, to absolutely riveting effect.

Oh, and the Two-Face makeup is fucking terrifying.

*Unless Terry Gilliam manages to do something with the small amount of footage he shot for The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Poncho Villa

2008-07-24T14:07:00.009-04:00

Several weeks ago a man came up to me as I was unchaining my bicycle from a signpost in Bergen Beach. I didn't say anything to him but he immediately informed me that life is hard. Hard and also, I think, bullshit. I felt I should agree with him, but this only led to more conversation. It baffles me how often people ignore the cardinal rule of being a New Yorker: everyone is invisible, always. He asked me what I did for a living and how much I made. In an effort to speed the conversation along I told him. His reaction to my chosen profession: That sounds easy. His reaction to my hourly rate: That much? I rode off thinking that perhaps my life was not so difficult, nor filled with as much bullshit, as the average Joe. And I felt grateful for that.

Cut to Tuesday evening.

I had tentative plans to see The Dark Knight but just about every movie theater in Manhattan was sold out for the evening. That has nothing to do with my story, I was just applying a little icing before baking the cake. I was leaving my penultimate student's house when 500 angels simultaneously threw out their bathwater. I explained to my student's mother that I had to ride to my next lesson and she, kindly, offered me a poncho to wear. A bright red one. I put it on over my violin which I wear backpack style and then fastened my helmet over that (safety first). I hadn't yet traveled 100 feet when the 500 angels with buckets became 900,000. So I as a helmeted, bearded and hunchbacked Little Red Riding Hood ended up at my next student's house with two inches of water in each shoe and clothes that might have been drier had I swam the two miles instead.

After teaching the lesson with chattering teeth I set out for home and got about half way before a Big Bad Wolf (I assume) caused my rear tire to pop. This, as they say, was the straw. I chained the bike to a nearby chinese restaurant, calmly walked into a Bodega to purchase rolling papers and fig newtons and walked to the nearest subway station, abandoning my bike for the night. Suddenly the circumstances of my job struck me as extremely depressing. Perhaps the strange, might-have-been-homeless guy outside of the pizza parlor in Bergen Beach was right. Life, indeed, is hard and kind of bullshit. Once home I got very stoned and watched the first season of "Scrubs" on DVD, concluding that, despite the show's Simpson's-like silliness, it is a very well thought out allegory on the nature of good and evil and mortality.

Pass Away

2008-06-23T09:34:00.006-04:00

I believe I was fourteen when I was gifted George Carlin's first book Brain Droppings. I had never heard of the man before, never seen his iconic "Seven Dirty Words" routine. But it was this book that changed my life. This may sound like a bit much but I regularly say (okay, maybe not regularly) that Alice in Chains' Jar of Flies EP changed my life, too. My life is obviously in flux.

But anyway, what Carlin's wonderful book truly did for me was give shape to all of the random amorphous ideas that were slowly coalescing and forming my personality. He increased my fascination with the nuances of the English language, all those words that mean everything but what they actually mean. He articulated my creeping suspicion that organized religion is bullshit. He was smart, witty, offensive and irreverent but, ultimately, compassionate. I've tried to embody those qualities in my own life as much as possible.

A favorite topic of Carlin's was euphemistic language. One piece has him exploring the gradual softening of the World War One term "Shell-Shock" {Battle Fatigue, Operational Exhaustion, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder}. In one of his shows from the beginning of this decade he observes the use of antonyms to cope with our fear of aging (Look at him, he's 90 years young!) and ultimately takes comfort in the fact that at least at the end of his own life he won't die, he'll "Pass away!".

At least my friends gave me comfort in my time of need.

me: George Carlin is dead :-(

c: i know i thought you'd be sad

you seem like someone who appreciated him

me: I am, I am

c: i'm sorry...

me: I'll be okay. He was pretty old, I guess

c: how about i rattle off all the dirty words i know?

me: George Carlin died, Jo

I'm sad

J: awww

you loved that foul-mouthed SOB!me: I did

George Carlin (1937-2008)

In My Life

2008-06-19T15:19:00.006-04:00

There were ten of us, me and my oldest friends, standing under a tarp somewhere in the Catskills. It had begun to rain earlier in the day, and then it had begun to pour. We had spent the morning floating down a river in large inner tubes, and then the afternoon jumping off of rocks into deep pools of icy mountain stream. When the lightning appeared we decided it would be best to drive back to the campsite and attempt to keep things dry. Once we'd reinforced the tarp and dispatched two of our group to procure some dry firewood we set our minds to a very serious camping activity: eliminate the fifty or so beers that we'd earlier purchased. This is a very necessary activity when the rain threatens to spoil your fun. This is the only weapon we have against nature, sometimes.

Your oldest friends are well acquainted with the skeletons in your closet. They've watched you grow up, so they are not fooled by your constructed coolness. The witty, sophisticated version of yourself you project when meeting new people is not meant for them. Instead you're bound by decades of innocence and innocence lost, so many shared experiences that they're woven into the fabric of your being, crushes that become relationships and marriages or drunken mistakes or just aincient curiosities. Your oldest friends are your family, and there's very little you can do that will change their opinion of you.

The chance to redefine yourself to a new group of people can often be a relief. It's not conscious, but I've presented a slightly different version of myself to everyone I've met since turning 18, when I left the phallic island of my youth. I easily wear the mask of Witty One Liner Guy, Musician with Mystique, Fun Co-Worker or Attentive Listener. But to the people who saw me through my grossly awkward preteen and teenage years all of my good and bad qualities are right out on the table with the plethora of empty beer cans, and they require exactly as much explanation for them. It can be a relief to be yourself, in the most basic sense, too.

With Nothing On My Tongue But Hallelujah

2008-06-14T05:52:00.002-04:00

I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
Well I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The Holy or the broken Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't speak so I tried to touch
I told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue by Hallelujah

-Leonard Cohen "Hallelujah"

I said to Hank Williams, "How lonely does it get?"
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
A hundred floors above me in the Tower of Song

I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty seven angels from the great beyond
They tied me to this table right here in the Tower of Song

-Leonard Cohen "Tower of Song"

After all the things I've given up; weekends, a social life, sleeping in a bed on a regular basis, my Brooklyn address, the woman I love, the chance to go back to school and get a stable job with benefits; all for the pursuit of a dream, a never-diminishing light at the end of the tunnel that only I can see, even after all of that I can still manage to feel nothing but grateful.

The Sacred and the Profane

2008-06-11T22:08:00.006-04:00

Concert Review: Robert Plant with Alison Krauss

As a twelve year old, discovering Led Zeppelin IV kind of felt like opening the Ark of the Covenant (only my face didn't melt off). Like all young boys, I suppose, I spent several months convinced that Zep was the greatest rock band in the history of the Universe. I never could have predicted that a decade and change later I would be watching the lead singer of the greatest rock band in the history of the Universe singing country songs with an icon of the American Folk revival.

This whole thing was masterminded by uber-producer T-Bone Burnett. He played guitar in the show and he is massive. The idea was to combine the two most unlikely collaborators and turn gold into platinum. Alison Krauss is a pretty seasoned Nashville girl at this point and a producer in her own right (she produced the stellar Nickel Creek debut album). She played excellent fiddle and looked amazing. Plant was the real surprise, though. Apparently (and as anyone who has seen the Song Remains The Same DVD will tell you) Zep was mediocre-to-bad as a live act. But Plant was dead on this night, and he harmonized with Krauss' silky soprano commendably. He is every bit the front man he ever was, prowling around the stage with complete ease but commanding presence. Their original tunes were solid, somewhere between dirty blues and grass roots folk. But my ears really perked up when the mandolin/banjo player grabbed his axe and launched into the intro to "Black Dog". They also played "Battle for Evermore" that night, as well as some of Alison's solo work, not least of which was "Down in the River to Pray" from the O Brother, Where Art Thou? Soundtrack (with Plant on harmonies!).

I can't help but wonder if anyone realized the irony of the lead singer in a band who was once accused of backwards masking Satanic messages is now touring the country singing about Jesus.

When the Rolling Stones entered their third decade of continuous existence they redefined (or obliterated) the paradigm of young, flash-in-the-pan rockers which up until then have been the standard. With Tom Petty, Aerosmith and Eric Clapton all still going strong I think it's safe to say that Staying Power is almost expected of upstart rockers from now on. Perhaps with Robert Plants unbelievably unpredictable (but stunningly successful) turn as a folkie will encourage even a new trend in Rock--evolution.

Gene Simmons in a bluegrass band? Bonnie Raitt doing Death Metal? Metallica backed by a horn section? Yes, please!

The Puking Terrorist

2008-06-09T10:11:00.004-04:00

When I was first of working age I had an imaginary list going in my head of dream jobs. Ice cream shop was on the list, as were Madison Square Garden usher and theme park roller-coaster attendant.

Long Island has a water park. This may seem silly because Long Island has four distinct seasons and three of them are absolutely not conducive to water park shennanigans. But for about three months, Splish Splash (I believe their official logo includes an exclamation point at the end) enjoys success. I learned years ago that the park attendants get to ride all of the slides and things after closing time and this fact put Splish Splash on my list of imaginary workplaces. Also they hand out that "ice cream of the future" crap, you know, the little tiny ice cream balls that taste like freezer burn? I can't wait for the future!

During college a friend who worked at a Ben & Jerry's scoop shop shattered my illusions of ice cream paradise by informing me that her clothes forever smelled like rotten milk. Similarly, Rachel, a former employee of Splish Splash, sent my waterslide fantasies crashing back to earth. But way, way more hilariously.

The first thing she said she would not miss was the fecal matter. Urine is anticipated, especially in the kiddie area, and the pools are so heavily chlorinated that urine doesn't stand a chance. In fact, the employees were told to pee right where they were during training. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. But while lifeguarding at the wave pool Rachel was forced one day to clear the deep end while sanitation came and got rid of the turd that one person had left and another person had unwittingly swam into.

Also, Rachel told me, the sight of the near-naked customers all day gave her a new understanding of what fat is. Aside from people getting stuck in the plastic donut tubes that are required vehicles for several of the slides, she witnessed a woman with a rather anomolous feature; her ass-crack went all the way up to her neck, apparently. Also, she said, it made her never want to get a tattoo, ever. Seeing the young, fit people with them and then seeing their old, flabby counterparts must have seemed like a strange time-warp effect.

But none of this prepared me for the Tale of the Puking Terrorist. Evidently there was a young lady who had some kind of vendetta against the place. She chose to act out in a decidedly original way; she would wait in line as if she was going to go down the slides (this most often requires climbing up many many flights of stairs) and, once at the top, would vomit on all of the waiting bathers below. And then she would run away!

"They tried to catch her for a while," Rachel told me. "But she puked on them."

She was eventually caught and thrown out of the park, but not before making her rounds and vomitting on at least four lines of people waiting to slide down wedgie-inducing plastic slides. What were this girl's motives? Did she stop to "refuel" in between vomits? Why did she choose this form of weaponry? Perhaps it's best not to know.

Maybe I can still usher at Madison Square Garden one day.

I Want To Ride My...

2008-06-07T21:00:00.004-04:00

Monday
I have never taken a logic course but I surely would fail it. My 30-day unlimited subway pass had just expired and I knew I would only need to be in Brooklyn for two days. So rather than buy a new metrocard I loaded my bike onto the Long Island Railroad and started plotting my course to find students. My travels would take my from the rail station in Bedford-Stuyvesant to the distant suburb of Mill Basin, then back up to Midwood where I used to live and on to Windsor Terrace before going back to Red Hook. Oddly I never came close to death during all of this but I did come to appreciate the heaviness of the violin that was strapped to me. The gear shifters on my father's bike (which I stole because I wouldn't have time to retrieve my own...keep in mind this is all to get out of perhaps eight dollars worth of bus fare) are in very poor shape so I was forced to make the entire journey in 4th gear. I learned to love bike lanes possibly more than I've ever loved another human being. Crossing the Gowanus Canal after coasting all the way down an enormous hill gave me a wonderful high, and I felt that I'd gotten some cardio in.

Total distance covered (estimated): 20.2 miles

Tuesday
I caved and took the bike on the subway, but only after riding to a more suitable one to my destination. On the way I was passed by a pretty girl who was not wearing a helmet. "You're carrying quite a load!" she said. I stammered and eventually managed "Yeah!" out of my mouth. Could biking be a way to meet women? After teaching my hour long violin lesson in East New York (and being warned by the kindly old Jamaican woman whose living room I'm weekly welcomed into that I was an unusual "ethnicity" to be riding around that particular neighborhood) I set off in what I believed to be the general direction of Park Slope because I had two hours to kill and wanted chinese food (and I particularly enjoy Ruby's on Park Place). These parts of Brooklyn are hardly meant for bikers but, miraculously, I was not almost killed. Later, finding that bicycles are not allowed on the Long Island Railroad during Peak times, I had three more hours to kill. Naturally I thought I should try to bridge the borough gap (here again is perhaps some kind of lapse in logic).

Manhattan is, shockingly, easy to bike in. Bike paths are prevalent (if you know where to find them) and really the only thing I was in danger of crashing into was pedestrians. I headed south and east without knowing precisely where I was heading and discovered that bicycling through Chinatown is spectacularly undesirable. Safe on Brooklyn soil I became, for a moment, a part of a little biking caravan. As we all blew threw the red lights of Downtown Brooklyn it was hard not to feel like we owned the place. After riding the Off Peak train all the way back home I tacked an extra five mile ride on to get back to my Dad's house and return his bicycle, still stuck in 4th gear, to it's resting place. It was eleven o'clock at night and I stripped and jumped into the pool. It was glorious.

Total distance covered (estimated): 19 miles

Confessions

2008-05-31T14:44:00.008-04:00

I like the show Dharma and Greg. I can no longer deny this.

It was my second year of college and I lived in an apartment with my then-girlfriend on Hemenway Street, just a block or two from most of the buildings in which we attended class. By happy coincidence we both had the same hour off from classes pretty much every weekday and we would typically go back to the apartment to eat lunch and spend some quality time. And it just so happened that two back-to-back episodes of Dharma and Greg played during that hour. And, for some reason, they became part of our "quality time".

We didn't get many channels so it was probably the only thing coming in clearly. Or something like that. The point is, I think if you watch something constantly, even for as little as a week, you can't help but become invested in it, at least in a small way. They say it takes 21 days to make a habit. I say that in an age where 15 minutes of fame has been further reduced to a streaming Realplayer file our attention spans have been reduced accordingly. Within a week we were having discussions about the hilarity of the inter-relationships between Dharma's and Greg's parents or the unfortunate plot turns in the 3rd season. I also developed a crush on Jenna Elfman which directly contributed to my love for the Edward Norton directed romantic comedy Keeping the Faith. It has not, however, inspired me to watch Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

For a long time I used my affection for Dharma and Greg as a punchline. "I've never seen an episode of Friends," I would say (this is true), "but I used to watch Dharma and Greg every day!" and everyone would laugh, and so would I. But today I was flipping through channels and came across a cold open where Dharma and Greg were pretending they were on a date and not yet married. And I chuckled, nay, laughed involuntarily. So naturally I continued watching and reran my own personal reruns. The girl and I don't speak anymore, but at least we'll always have Dharma. And I think I'm comfortable with that now. Appreciation of art is not linked to some bizarre objective standard of Quality, no matter what Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maitenance tells me. It is therefore that I, proudly, present a list of facts I should not and will not feel ashamed of. I encourage all nine of my readers to do the same!

I believe the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan vehicle You've Got Mail may be a flawless film.
I think Billy Joel is the second or third best songwriter ever.
The movie Baseketball makes me laugh harder than almost anything.
I have seen every episode of Sex and the City and I enjoy discussing the show's deeper ethos.
There is no way that I have watched this video less than 50 times and I don't plan on stopping.
I grew up watching Star Trek but if someone were to mention the Cardassian Occupation of Bajor as a metaphor for recent global political history in casual conversation I would pretend not to know exactly what they were talking about.
"Centerfold" by the J. Geils Band has been in my head, on and off, since the ninth grade.
Despite having read hundreds of them, there has probably never been a book I've enjoyed reading more than Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman.
KT Tunstal'ls first album makes me want to marry her, especially the relentlessly overplayed single.
If left to my own devices I would probably watch hundreds of hours of television (on DVD) and a large chunk of it would be cartoons.
By definition, I would have to be considered a Megadeth fan.

John Williams and the Temple of Doom

2008-05-23T15:03:00.004-04:00

Lower your expectations and enjoy the music. That was the recipe for enjoyment of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull I gave to V. Rather than attempt to write a non-spoiler review I'm going to wait until everyone has seen it before I comment further.

Instead I'm going to talk about how all of the summer movies I am excited about are completely derivative in some way. There must be significance to the fact that I'll be shelling out eleven bucks to see either TV-show spinoffs, sequels or both.

The Dark Knight has the distinction of being not only a direct sequel but also sixth in a line of modern Batman films and just the latest installment in what has now been more than half a century of Batman media. It also carries, for good or ill, the spectre of Mr. Ledger (who is already being considered for a posthumous Oscar, apparently). And despite ALL of that it still looks like it might be the best movie of the summer.

X-Files has been a long time coming for nerds like myself. All I can glean from the pictures they've released is that Duchovny's haristyle is not as flattering as Gillian Anderson's.

Get Smart seems like it was waiting for Steve Carrell. I loved this show as a kid, staying up late to watch it on Nick at Nite. And I've pretty much decided that anything containing Alan Arkin is Quality.

Sex and the City Look, I'm not gay, all right?

My point, though: is no one making original movies? Everything has to be a trilogy nowadays, it seems, and box office numbers are mainly plumped by Burger King toys. The most interesting things, by far, seem to be happening in television, a medium which DVD has thankfully rendered a lot more plausible as an outlet for artistic expression (DVD is one of the few technologies that seems to have done precisely what technology is meant to do for art; to create a new audience and therefore expand the boundaries of what the medium is capable). Thankfully the Cohen Brothers and Paul Thomas Anderson are still making smart arthouse flicks that flirt with mainstream exposure. I'll keep my fingers crossed for Kevin Smith's latest opus Zack and Miri Make a Porno, although the casting of Seth Rogen threatens to banish it to Knocked Up territory where it truly does not belong.

Vignettes

2008-05-14T16:47:00.009-04:00

"I need you to come to Joe's Pub with me tomorrow night at 11:30," I said.

"Why?"

"Cause I just met this viola player on the subway."

This is all because the bus stopped in a random place, forcing me to get on the Q-train at Prospect Park. The case strapped to my back holds a violin and a viola in the 69-position and most people aren't sure what to make of it. On this particular night it was mistaken for a horn but nevertheless earned me an invitation to a jam session. The girl who invited me led a funk band, the rhythm section of which was, weirdly, seated on the train we both boarded. Adding to the musician-party atmosphere was one Keith Lawrence, violist for Quartet San Francisco. He seemed like a nice guy, so I said I would try to stop by Joe's Pub the following night to catch him in performance. And naturally I brought my compatriot (and viola-playing band mate), Nick, with me.

The night started off normally enough. Dinner at a hole-in-the-wall on Bleecker Street that serves panini style sandwiches on Indian breads. A trip to a head shop/tattoo parlor where I discovered (and purchased) a vaporizer pipe which will allow me to enjoy the effects of my favorite drug without damaging my golden voice. A nice walk through Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side. It was then that the skateboarding couple appeared. The guy had an acoustic guitar strapped on his back and the girl had a longboard under her arm and a dog on a leash. They were visibly intoxicated and looking for dollar slices of pizza. As Nick and I watched from a safe distance, both of them tried to skate their way out of the park. The guy quite literally fell on his face, but he seemed all right. The girl had trouble going straight and, creatively I thought, said to passers-by "Can I have a dime for skateboarding lessons?" and, somewhat less logically, "I don't want your money but can you tell me if my face is okay?". There was nothing wrong with her face, and Nick and I passed her by just in time to hear her talking to a couple of people at a bus stop. "I'm sorry my friend is in the box with you. You like it though, right?"

"No fucking way" were the next words out of my mouth as we crossed over 2nd Avenue. I said this because we had just witnessed a man throwing away a television in a wastebasket on the corner. This is odd enough but then he turned it on. Not only did he turn it on but I believe he got CNN.

Fairly certain that we would never see anything quite like that again, Nick and I went off to enjoy some pretty phenomenal string quartet music. We went backstage to congratulate Keith and exchange information and all the while I marvelled at the chain of events that allowed me to see not only a string quartet playing jazz standards but a man watching CNN from a garbage can outside, all in the same night. On the way back to the subway we passed by one more stranger. My peripheral vision made me understand that there was something odd about his trousers and I turned back.

"Is he wearing ass-less pants? I...yep. Those are his balls. Mm hm."

My God, I love this city.

Tuxedo

2008-05-04T11:17:00.007-04:00

Although dress is never specifically discussed, tuxedoes are assumed. You don't own a tuxedo because you're poor, which is directly related to the fact that you are performing in the cold morning mist of Queens Botanical Gardens during a wedding ceremony. So many things can go wrong at a wedding, it seems that the absence of a black stripe on your pants should be the least of anyone's worries.

You play Bach. You play Corelli. You play Vivaldi. You're completely on autopilot; you've been doing this for years. You and your two partners spend your weekends trying to redefine your instruments. Trying to push them to the next level. Trying to change the face of popular music forever. You turn the page. You play Mozart, you play Haydn, you play Schumann.

Planes fly overhead because you're positioned between JFK and LaGuardia airports, but Pachelbel's Canon will make every bride's day perfect. The cold numbs your fingers, your instrument moans and wails in protest and refuses to respond to you. You play Handel. You play Fiocco. You play Purcell.

The reception is thankfully inside. The Groom's mother, bless her heart, tells you to take advantage of the open bar. You drink gin and tonics and hope there will be food left after you're done playing your obligatory hour of background music. Tiny children with black stripes on their pant legs and beautiful little gowns watch, mesmerized, and dance to the strains of the Brandenburg Concerto. You think of all this as a means to an end.

"So that's it! You guys all paint the way you do because you couldn't paint something real if you had to."

I didn't rebut her with words. I snatched a green crayon Dorothy had been using to make a list of all the things inside and outside the house that had to be repaired, and I drew portraits on the kitchen wall of our two boys, who were asleep in front of the fireplace in the living room. I just did their heads--life size. I didn't even go into the living room to look at them first. The wall was new Sheetrock which I had nailed over the cracked plaster. I hadn't got around to filing and taping the joints between the sheets yet, and covering the nailheads. I never would.

Dorothy was flabbergasted. She said to me: "Why don't you do that all the time?". And I said to her: "It's just too fucking easy."

-Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

Selfless Friend Promotion

2008-04-27T20:22:00.004-04:00

Theater Review: The Devil and Tom Walker

Yes, this is the third post in which I have shamelessly promoted something my friends have done. And yes, I totally just backlinked to the other two with that sentence. Sue me, I love my friends and at the moment I have nothing of my own to relentlessly plug.

If you do not live in New York City this post will be completely useless to you. Sorry! The Devil and Tom Walker is a fun little musical based upon the Washington Irving story of the same name. It includes two of my very favorite things: Satan and Folk Music. The friend I'm plugging for is this guy, who plays several roles as well as some pretty stellar banjo and mandolin. All of the actors do a superb job at bringing a light but interesting script to life (I'm not only saying that because I just had a beer with most of them). The Devil offers to trade a pirate's treasure chest for the soul of a simple New England man. What follows is a story of avarice which is supposed to (I think) parallel our current economic situation in some way. Whatever. The songs are great fun and if you've never seen this kind of theater (very small venue, extremely atmospheric and intimate setting) I'd say it's about time you started. There's something wonderful about live music and theater. The alchemy of audience and performer is impossible to replicate. That said, I'm gonna go listen to my iPod on the train and probably go home and watch a DVD.

http://www.metropolitanplayhouse.org/