Ex-Urban Exile In NYC

Another Dating Story

2010-02-18T15:58:00.003-05:00

Taking a break from my reminiscing for a brief dating story from a few months ago.

"Don't forget this," I said, holding one of those froufrou band things women put in their hair. I was smiling.

And why not? It was the morning after. A great date turned into a great night. We were mentally and - now verified - physically compatible(and verified again in the morning, just in case the previous evening was a fluke). In the chaos of getting ready for the day in a strange place she had almost forgotten her cellphone on my night table. We did a spot check around the bed, just in case, and I found the hair band.

"Don't forget this," I said.

She looked at it, then at me.

"...That's not mine."

I looked at her, then at it. And this is what I actually said:

"Well...it's not mine."

It's not mine, said as If I had no idea how it got there, no memory of the woman who must have forgotten it not two days earlier. In two seconds, the only story I could come up with hung on my date believing that some woman broke into my apartment, took off her hair band, and left. Some phantom bent on ruining my dating life, spreading lies - damned lies! - that I was a man-whore about town.

She looked at my embarrassed face.

"That's awesome," she said, laughing.

Still Pathetic

2010-02-09T00:19:00.001-05:00

Awkward. Twenty-fucking-three, and still awkward; physically, socially, and emotionally. One of my best friends was married - married, for Christ's sake - and the fact that I actually got along(at all) with a bridesmaid was cause for celebration. In the classic¹ film Little Giants, the titular team of misfits and outcasts manages to finally run a play that isn't a turnover or a huge loss, prompting one parent in the stand to yell "They gained a yard!". That was me, chatting up a tipsy bridesmaid; gaining only one yard, but maybe building some momentum. Fuck, I needed it.

While still working at HSA, I had a crush on a bookstore cashier. Every week I'd drive across the street to the Hunt Valley Mall, blunder around the store for a bit before finally buying ESPN the magazine, making sure at no point to actually make small talk or ask her out. After all, what good would come from that?

I actually went on a double-date with an old co-worker from the Loews Theater. The double-date was with my brother and his girlfriend - my younger brother was giving me dating advice while the girls were in the bathroom(writing this makes me cringe). Despite my horrible lack of dating experience, dinner went pretty well. However, due to my horrible lack of dating experience(combined with insecurity and an insatiable need for outside validation), I called her many times after(despite not getting calls back), before finally going over to Loews to ask her out again, in person. Instead, I was publicly(but sweetly) rejected.

So, there I was, twenty-three, convinced I'd be girlfriendless forever. I'd been working as the web master at a small government contractor for a few months. My father had gotten me the job; he worked there installing security and fire alarm systems. It was a shitty job, but these were shitty times - for me, the economy, the country. Enron, Robert Hanssen, the fresh memory of 9/11, the DC Sniper; if Peter Jennings had announced on the evening news that the apocalypse was officially starting in ten minutes, I think most of us would have thought 'Yeah, that sounds about right'.

But ANYWAY, while working at my shitty job(in addition to web master, I was in charge of shipping and receiving in the warehouse) I managed to get a date with a friend of a friend. Up to this point in my life, getting a date was like finding a goddamn Leprechaun. We met at a party, I got her number, and we agreed to go out the next Saturday. I could hear Al Micheal's voice screaming 'Do you believe in miracles?'.

The girl bore a slight resemblance, in a fuzzy-photo kind of way, to Julianna Marguiles. So let's call her Julianna(though I guess you can refer to her however you want, call her Susan if it makes you happy). She drove to my parents house, as I had moved back in during my time in-between working at HSA and my new job². I still remember the expression on my mother's face when she saw what I was going to be doing that afternoon: finally, praise the fucking lord, finally.

Julianna and I went to an Egyptian Art³ exhibit at the Smithsonian⁴. For the first time, my awkwardness faded to the background as our conversation came easily. She laughed at my jokes, we both said (seemingly)interesting things. Somehow my date was going really, really well.

The only snag came later, when we talked about music. After the museum, we'd gone to Arundel Mills Mall to wander around(a real high school thing to do, but I didn't know any better). In a music store, Julianna went through CD after CD and asked if I liked them. I'd never even heard of most of them. My HSA musical education had not included any of her bands: The Me First and The Gimme Gimmes, Ben Folds Five, the Dave Matthews Band, and Better Than Ezra. If it wasn't metal or hard rock, I didn't know it(with the Insane Clown Posse being one of the only exceptions, because my younger brothers had somehow become obsessed with them - but even I knew not to bring up ICP on a date). Her bands were college bands, the soundtrack to smoking in quads and drinking too much at Lit parties. My soundtrack was from a different generation, handed down by co-workers.

The only common ground we found were The White Stripes, and that was only because I had stumbled upon "Hotel Yorba" on MTV2 before.

Anyone who goes through a "metal" or "hard rock" phase will tell you that, in the midst of their power-chord obsession, they had convinced themselves that anything that wasn't sufficiently "hard" was pure, pussified crap(often these same people go through a phase of reading nothing but science fiction novels, only buying Marvel comics, and other nerd-elitisms that keep them virgins until college). Then they'll tell you about the song that broke them out of that muddled, constipated way of thinking. For me, that song was "Hotel Yorba."

The song was catchy, raw, and earnest(he sings about being "tired of acting tough/and I'm gonna do what I please"). It felt "real" in the same way Guns N Roses felt real, while sounding so completely different. Still, I don't know if I would have taken to the Stripes as much as I did if it wasn't for "Fell In Love With A Girl." That two-ton heavy riff and Meg White's attacking drums melted my face and flattened my eardrums. Going between the Stripes and my other CDs, a lot of my metal records started to sounded sluggish, old and tired. They were "heavier", but Jack White was out-rocking them with only one fucking guitar.

Still, I wasn't yet the kind of music consumer who bought lots of albums, even if I liked the singles - but I was the kind of pathetic, never-really-dated, virginal man-child who would gladly lay down a twenty at the Best Buy to get a CD he thought would make a girl like him. Christ, how pathetic.

I bought "White Blood Cells", listened to it, called Julianna to talk to her about it and ended up leaving a message saying I was listening to it. I paced my room wondering why she never called back. Chris, so pathetic.

Julianna disappeared. No return calls. Nothing. I hung out with our mutual friends(my best friend and his wife), and in the pretense of hanging out with them for a weekend tried to get the bottom of this sudden reversal of affection. They offered the usual niceties: she had a history of erratic behavior; she has just got out of a relationship; I may have come on too strong; universally, though, my neediness was not sexy. My friend's wife summed things up with the best advice about women I've ever received:

"Kris, sometimes, girls are just bitches."

So, I listened to "Cells" alone. Luckily for me songs like "Dead Leaves And The Dirty Ground", "Hotel Yorba", "I'm Finding It Harder To Be Gentleman", "The Union Forever" and "The Same Boy You've Always Known" are perfect listening for a broken heart. Well, in as much a heart can be broken after one date. I listened to that album all the way through every night, over and over again. A new love for music was born. I started to explore, a little, and discovered another garage-rock band, some new outfit from New York called The Strokes...

Around that same time, a couple months later, Julianna actually called me back. She wanted to apologize, explain herself.

But by then, I was dating my future first wife.

---

¹I'm using the word classic in the loosest sense.
²Explaining to potential dates why I lived at home while not going to school was a lot of fun.
³I impressed her with a bit of Egyptian history I had gleamed from a recent episode of Gargoyles.
⁴I'll always regret not using the Smithsonian for more dates while I lived in DC. A lost opportunity.

Start Me Up

2009-11-11T23:36:00.003-05:00

The drive was longer than I remembered from my interview¹, maybe because my head felt like a block of concrete threatening to topple off my shoulders. No sleep the night before my first day at my first real(meaning salaried) job had me hoping new-experience adrenaline would rocket me through the day. Counting down until five - one day and already a typical office drone.

High Speed Internet Access was a start-up partly funded by Paul Allen, one of the original Microsoft founders and lover of recreational submarines(a venture of his I wish I had worked on instead). Befitting a start-up, there were only six other people in the office. Steve, the lead web developer, Mike the copywriter, a visual designer whose name I don't recall(let's call him the guy who got caught looking at Blacks On Blondes), a manic and unstoppably moronic middle-manager whose name I also don't recall(let's call her Cathy), RJ the tech lead with the fantastically deep voice, and our boss, another woman whose name has been replaced in my memory by my gym locker combination(probably).

They were very friendly people. Steve, in addition to being a web developer, was a very talented visual designer as well². He was the only Mac guy in the office, in the time before the iPod and Justin Long would convince many Americans to join him. Blonde and balding, he was a cool, grown-up nerd - a glimpse, maybe, into a possible future. Steve was also a musician, recording his own songs, mainly heavy metal. He gave me shit(partly deserved) for liking Metallica's Black album after knowing me for all of two weeks.

Mike wore leather jackets, listened to Danzig and Iron Maiden, acted in plays, had a super-cute red-headed girlfriend and generally seemed like the coolest guy I had ever met. It's a little embarrassing how I became his sidekick; a kid brother trying to tag along and emulate his superior, older sibling. One day RJ left a repeating loop on my computer playing 'Hey Mike' because that phrase came out my mouth at least a dozen times a day.

Fuck RJ.

To my credit, Mike and I became friends pretty quickly. He was into a lot of the same nerdy things I was, like Mystery Science Theater 3000, comics, sci-fi and horror movies, and heavy metal. He gave me tips on working out(which I had just started doing), women, and most importantly, music.

I was ignorant. A nit, dweeb, poser, whatever you want to call it, my musical canon rarely went past the radio dial.

One morning, I came in and overheard Mike and Steve discussing a new record. I awkwardly came over and offered that the new Live album was pretty awesome(basing my opinion solely on the fact that the single on the radio, "The Dolphins Cry", sounded pretty bad-ass³ to me).

The Dolphin's Cry (Album Versi...

Mike offered a polite "Really? Cool..." while Steve ripped into Live and told me they sucked back when they were called Public Affection and played small clubs in New York City(coincidentally, while Steve's band also played those clubs).

I was shocked. How could this band - played heavily on WHFS, the station the cool kids in high school and college listened to - suck? My brain had trouble accepting that anyone into rock music could hold such an opinion. Of course to this day I'm still struggling with building the courage and self-identifying will to not care so much about other people's opinions(without carelessly discarding them, though), and I'm getting better at it. Getting divorced helps.

Later that day, Steve played Kid Rock's Devil Without A Cause, which was getting a lot of attention in 1999 after languishing around for almost a year. "Rap Metal", or whatever you want to call it, was still nu(sorry, I couldn't help myself). The novelty of what Kid Rock was doing was fascinating(and yes it was novel, even if you consider Faith No More's "Epic" or Anthrax's "Bring Tha Noize" the first "rap metal" songs, because neither meshed rock music and rap the way Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, Korn or Linkin Park did - Mike Patton's vocal stylings over a pretty great alternative rock song and Chuck D rapping over a metal song are basically a chocolate bar dipped in peanut butter, and while looking back at the origins of a Peanut Butter Cup may be more interesting than a Peanut Butter Cup, it still doesn't make it a Peanut Butter Cup⁴. Plus, no one but rock critics(and I guess Scott Ian) consider them rap metal in any conventional sense).

Even a decade later, the record holds up, certainly much better than most rap metal. I don't think it's a coincidence Kid Rock remains, at least commercially(and culturally, if you aren't a stick-in-the-ass snob) relevant, while Fred Durst⁵ and whoever the fuck was in Crazy Town have become musical footnotes.

The Kid's use of hard rock, country and blues is probably why Mike and Steve could listen to Devil but still mock Live. Kid Rock was an unserious theatrical hard rocker, much like a band both Mike and Steve loved, KISS.

I'd never really been exposed to KISS. Mike - appalled - played "Christine Sixteen"(a favorite because his girlfriend's name was Christine, though she was not sixteen). KISS had a constant presence in our office soundtrack after that.

Christine Sixteen - Kiss

I can't imagine an office as loud as ours was, and I'm surprised we got away with it as long as we did. Mike played Danzig⁶, Iron Maiden, and pre-Black-Album Metallica. Steve played Megadeth, Guns N Roses and even some Slayer. Cathy's office shared one wall with our space, as did RJ's. I think the breaking point was when I cranked Metallica's S&M one day, in attempt to prove to Mike and Steve that Metallica could still kick ass(not sure how I thought exhibiting Metallica's willingness to play with an orchestra would accomplish this goal). "Master Of Puppets", live with a string section, was apparently all the non-metal faction of the office could take. We were asked to use headphones from that point on(though Cathy still got to play the soundtrack from The Lion King - the only album she seemed to own - whenever and as loud as she wanted).

Dirty Black Summer - Danzig

The Wicker Man - Iron Maiden

Peace Sells - Megadeth

We (mostly) obeyed the headphones rule, until we go the idea to move all of our cubicles into the unused, far end of the office. HSA originally envisioned twenty plus developers working at the Hunt Valley location, so we had a lot of empty space. In a room meant for a dozen or more Ron Livingstons, the three of us took up residence and resumed playing our music.

After we ran through everyone's CDs, we discovered something that would make spending the summer of 1999 stuck behind a desk much more bearable: Napster.

In the (barely) pre-iPod days, Napster was a godsend. All of a sudden, Metal, Pop, Hip-Hop, R&B, Soul, Punk, Oldies, whatever the hell Wesley Willis was doing; all of it was bouncing off our cheap cubicle walls. Almost any song we wanted, instantly(and being 1999, the office was the only source of broadband for most of us, making it a privilege unique to work).

We put the "any song" aspect of Napster to the test, downloading obscure one-hit wonders, commercial jingles, themes from 70s sitcoms, and the demented spoken-word of William Shatner. One afternoon, we did all cartoons and I played the theme from Ducktales to trump Mike's Chip N Dale's Rescue Rangers. Steve followed with Alvin and the Chipmunks, and Mike countered with GI-Joe. I think it ended with me playing the opening song from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

On another afternoon(we must have been very productive in the morning) we had a contest to see who could download a song so bad, so offensive to the ears that the rest of the office would crack. It started off with annoying but bearable pop like "Pass the Dutiche" and "Ninja Rap", before Mike went to the nuclear option and played Color Me Badd's "I Wanna Sex You Up".

Steve bounded from his desk to behind Mike's and violently snatched the power cord of Mike's speakers out of the socket, almost pulling the twin units down off the desk. Mimicking an umpire calling a runner safe, Steve said "You win dude, you win! NEVER, EVER play that again!"

Looking back, I can see the RIAA's point of view - Napster made digital thievery incredibly easy. Within days, every one of us had a library of music on our hard drives that was at least as big as our CD collections at home. And, befitting the times, none of us really saw a problem with this. Record labels gouged us on CDs, TicketMaster held a monopoly on concerts(despite Eddie Vedder's best, mumbling efforts), and out of all this greed Shawn Fanning appeared and offered us a way to stick it back to the man. The faceless, damnable man.

Still, I think we all knew, deep down, that it was just like going into Tower Records and walking out the door with the A-L Rock section one day, then coming back for the box sets(and some Blues, why not?) the next. Which is why, when Metallica(and Dr. Dre) announced their lawsuit, I sided with the band. I was the only one in the office to do this.

Now, I hadn't downloaded any Metallica, so that made my cognitive dissonance a little easier to ignore. Mike and Steve had, however, and they mocked me endlessly for my (albeit, mostly hypocritical)position. They already considered Metallica a past-their-prime, lame mainstream version of the former glorious eighties incarnation. The lawsuit only gave them more ammunition⁷.

Ironically, I was the only person whose Napster account was banned after Metallica turned over a list of users they said had illegally downloaded their music. So, for the five minutes it took to set up a new Napster account, Metallica had prevented me from doing something I hadn't done anyway.

Being my first office job, adjusting to the nine to five world was a little awkward. The Commute didn't help. And it deserves proper noun status, as The Commute was epic. From my apartment in College Park, getting to HSA in Hunt Valley required going through not only the Capitol Beltway(the suicide circle around DC, also known as 495) but also the Baltimore Beltway before finally ending(sort of) north of Baltimore, just before the border with Pennsylvania(in fact, Steve lived in Pennsylvania, and had a shorter commute than me). My drive could be anywhere from 45 minutes to over two hours. As such, getting to work "on time" became very subjective, at least from my point of view. As long as my work got done, who really cared?

Unfortunately, that's not how the working world(even at a start-up, apparently) works⁸. One morning I overslept, and combined with a slower-than-usual Beltway made me very, very late. RJ lit into me when I got into the office. At first I didn't think he was serious(I'm not used to people being mad at me, so when someone is, I assume they're joking), but then he threatened to have security escort me out.

In peril of being escorted to my Saturn by the short, balding and elderly security guard, I left. That was Friday. I went straight to UMCP and re-enrolled, thinking that it was something I could now afford to do. My family seemed(relatively) better. Monday, I quit.

Looking back, I needed that. RJ's humiliation of me in front of my co-workers taught me that, no matter what, don't give the boss a reason to be mad at you. Learn what time you are expected to be somewhere, and be there. No excuses. The fact that I was getting all of my work done didn't matter in the work-world context; the fact that I wasn't at my desk at nine(consistently) did. I still had, largely, a school-work mentality that doesn't cut it in the real world. I see it a lot at work today in some of the recent graduates we hire - some are notoriously unreliable when it comes to deadlines(some are notorious ass-kissers, and I'm not sure which is worse). The experience helped turn me into a more mature worker(depending on who you ask).

My academic come-back attempt didn't last long, though. My rash decision proved ill-informed: working part-time wasn't going to cut it as my family still needed a full-time income. So, a few months later, I was back at HSA asking RJ for my job back. I didn't get it.

I actually did well most of that quarter, but when I realized I wouldn't be back, I stopped showing up to classes. My father begged me to keep going, to gut it out for the grades(that I didn't think would ever matter) - maybe he did it out of guilt. Young, angry, and stupid, I just didn't care. Like cutting yourself to show someone how much they are hurting you, failing all of my classes was an adolescent, fucked-up way to get back at my parents.

I don't totally regret it, but it definitely wasn't the smartest thing I ever did. Eventually, I found another job.

Working with my father.

¹My interview and the accompanying test I took to get the job was laughable by today's web standards: Table-based layout, Netscape was still a force, Internet Explorer was just beginning to take a foothold and FireFox didn't exist. We barely used CSS. JS took a backseat to Perl and other CGi-based scripting. People thought ColdFusion would be the next big thing. We were dancing without music.

²This is a rarity in the industry these days, as roles have become more specialized. At least outside of freelance work.

³"Bad-ass" usually means it has a crunching power-chord filled riff.

⁴I obviously wrote this while either a)hungry and/or b) stoned. I leave it up to the reader's imagination.

⁵For all the beatings Fred Durst has taken since Rap Metal imploded, at his peak, he was cool enough to have the Wu Tang Clan(an act with an abundance of credibility) guest on "Rolling (Urban Assault Vehicle)" on Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water. I listen to this track when I exercise, it's a real heart-pumper. DMX also makes an appearance. I wonder if Fred ever hears from any of them anymore.

⁶This was before the first X-Men movie, and Mike and I loved to speculate on a "dream cast". Patrick Stewart had already been mentioned as Professor Xavier, but no one had ever heard of Hugh Jackman. Mel Gibson was a popular fanboy Wolverine pick, but after seeing pictures of a ripped Danzig, I agreed with Mike that the runty, stocky and scary looking former Misfit was a perfect Logan.

⁷I've written about the Metallica/Napster debacle in my review of Death Magnetic, so I won't get into it here

⁸Except it does, at least in advertising, where I now work. When I first started, I showed up at 8:30 for a week before I realized hardly anyone came in before 10.

This One Isn't That Funny

2009-10-07T01:56:00.001-04:00

I was supposed to have finished this before my thirtieth birthday - I turn 31 in a little over two months. Despite that sad commentary on my ability to meet personal deadlines, I am determined to stick it out and finish this damn thing(even as it gets harder). Looking back should, you would think, help me in the present.

There are murky times in our lives. Confused, chaotic times that leave us shaking our heads trying to piece together what happened, and why. My 'college years' are among my murkiest. That said, here we go.

---

Something definitely true: I double-majored in Journalism and Computer Science at the University of Maryland at College Park.

Something maybe true: I was in Journalism because I helped layout the newspaper in high school and I liked to write. I was in Computer Science because...well I'm not exactly sure. I liked it enough, and I figured it was good to have a backup plan in case Journalism didn't work out.

Wait, what? Is that what you were really thinking back then? I know for a fact you weren't thinking that far ahead.

That's true. OK, the real reason I added Computer Science to Journalism was I foresaw the rise of online journalism, blogs, and what not and I wanted to be at the forefront of it all and...

You are full of shit.

...I was a nerd. Still, sadly, sulkily a nerd. College didn't change that. I didn't fit in at Journalism orientation¹. Sitting among the other new journalism majors, I listened to a red-headed guy dressed in khaki shorts and sandals go on about how he wanted to work at an ad agency² or newspaper where he could dress like he was that day and just kick around ideas while 'chilling'(journalism, as a major, also included advertising). He seemed friendly, the kind of person I wanted to be friends with; the entire place just felt like what I thought college would be like, free of my high school reputation and free of small-minded people - until he started making fun of me and telling his buddy how gay I looked. During the safe-sex part of the orientation they handed me the LGBTA pamphlets and asked me how much I liked golden showers. Typical, enlightened college students. I hadn't changed, life hadn't changed. People hadn't changed.

They never do. So Computer Science was an escape, wasn't it?

Computer Science was full of fellow nerds. Guys who didn't score at prom; girls who didn't cheerlead. In programming and math classes, I felt a little safer. Comfortable. The guy sitting next to me in Calculus II was unlikely to call me a four-eyed faggot or jokingly ask if I was still a virgin(no and yes).

Still, even in CS, I never was completely comfortable. I didn't love it the way some kids did.

And you weren't as good at it, either. Despite your outer nerd-trappings you didn't really give a shit about programming, and it showed.

I did well in the early classes in both majors(grade-wise, anyway). The first semester I got straight As, something that had never happened in high school. Still, the big change I had expected, the clean slate - it remained a dream. Everything felt like high school, but without direction or purpose. Why was I trying to be a journalist or a computer programmer? I had just aimlessly floated into them.

I didn't make any new college friends. And I mean that literally, to this day I have no friends from UMCP who were not also my friends before I attended UMCP. Pathetic. I couldn't fit in. In my journalism classes I was the nerd, in my CS classes I was an impostor waiting to be found out.

Commuting to campus instead of living there made things difficult. Driving to classes everyday, missing the "dorm" life experience, it felt like I was missing out on a big part of what college life was supposed to be. I drove, I went to class, I came back home.

Well, you could have made more of an effort - joined a campus club, talked to people at the Student Union, done more than go to class, get Roy Rogers for lunch by yourself, fending off the guy with the Jews For Jesus flyers before driving home.

And things at home were getting worse. As my father struggled more and more with depression, my family's money problems worsened. My Mom was angry and exasperated. Two of my brothers were too young to really understand what was happening, but the next eldest, in the middle of high school, took the brunt of seeing my father and mother change. He struggled with going to school, despite being popular and (being a Teehan) smart. Still, I thought things would get better(despite having no logical reason to believe so, a habit I still have).

I needed to make money, so I took a student job as a janitor on campus, but it only lasted a week before I quit because the schedule wasn't flexible.

You quit because you felt ashamed to be cleaning up your college-mate's trash on the weekend while they recovered from the parties you were never invited to.

I started working at a nearby movie theater. I only ran into a classmate once there, selling him a ticket to Godzilla(I think, plus the schedule was flexible). The people I worked with were also college-aged for the most part(there were some high school kids, of course). I was the only person who went to UMCP, though - everyone else was either just working, going to Prince George's Community College or another two-year school.

The thing was, a lot of them were smarter than my UMCP classmates. They worked harder, and made do with less. But their parents couldn't afford tuition, and they couldn't all get student loans, scholarships, or grants to go to a four-year school. It was enlightening and infuriating at the same time.

I worked there one summer, before landing another job at UMCP, this time managing the web site of one of the honor programs. It paid a little better than cleaning bathrooms at the Student Union. I had lucked into a web internship during the summer and had learned all the basics I needed to do the job. There wasn't that much to it, and while working I started learning Perl, JavaScript, ColdFusion and CSS. I didn't realize at the time how important it would be, later in life, that I fooled around with those things because I was bored.

Anyway, I did that job for a while, and continued doing respectably well in my classes. I knew I would eventually have to choose between Journalism and Computer Science, because I was struggling to do both, and work.

Failing a required math class probably didn't help.

I was doing fine until the final. The last couple months of that semester, though, I lost motivation. I didn't really care. Something terrible had happened at home(can't really say what), and after that, I was convinced I had to drop out of school and get a full-time job. My father was unemployed, my parents were having trouble with the mortgage, and I had three younger brothers still at home. I was the oldest, I could work, I could help get us out of the hole. Things at home would improve, my parents would be happier, no broken home, no brothers growing up in separate apartments or with Aunts or whoeverthefuck, they would do better in school and not have to worry about this shit when they were ready to go to college and I wouldn't have to ask anyone for a place to live. I could do it.

Honestly, I was also depressed. Seeing my father reduced to a shell of who he used to be, hearing my mother scream at him and us every morning, looking at how my brothers were being robbed of a happy childhood - it got to me. Life wasn't fun, so college wasn't fun. Least I could do was get paid for not having much fun. Plus, it wasn't a recession, or an unexpected financial crisis that was sinking us. It was just...weakness, in my mind. My father's weakness; a genetic legacy that every male in the family shared(I remember my mom yelling that down the hall one morning, frustrated beyond belief with the men in her family). That weakness was why my family was facing losing their home, and maybe I could redeem my father, myself, and my family name.

So I dropped out, after a little under two years. It took less than a month for me to parlay my web internship skills into a job at an Internet start-up. I started working as a web developer, and I've been doing it ever since(except during a brief period right after the first Internet bubble burst). I was making money, not great money, but good money. I was 20 going on 21; the first time I went with my co-workers for after-work drinks I had to stick to Coke.

You know, some people work full-time and go to school. Maybe they aren't supporting their family, maybe they are, but they still do it. You could have worked harder.

I did my best; the best I could get out of myself at the time. I've thought about going back, but at this point, over a decade later, I don't see the point. I don't need a degree in what I do, and I don't really want a Journalism degree. Don't, don't, don't.

And part of you doesn't want to go back as a final fuck you to the circumstances that led you to drop out in the first place.

Still, it would have been nice to get a degree. I was supposed to be the first in my family to do it. Ironically, my father had dropped out of Georgetown two years in to join the Army(to piss his father off). My mother dropped out to be a mom. Guess I was following in their footsteps, in my own strange way.

Watching my friends graduate was hard. I was ashamed; ashamed to have failed, to have been too weak to get through everything and still have a diploma waiting for me at the end. I was paranoid their parents saw me as a bad influence. The kid from the bad, irresponsible family. And I still have shades of that, no matter how good my job is or what high-profile account I work on.

I would visit them, go to their parties, and pretend to be one of them. I remember the first time I had to leave something early because I had to get up to go to work the next day - is there a word for feeling grown-up and a failure that same time? Failturity? There should be.

When I think of music from this period of my life, a couple songs come to mind. Both remind me of my brother: "Keep Ya Head Up" by Tupac Shukar, and "Only God Knows Why" by Kid Rock. My brother was a huge Tupac fan(his two heroes are Tupac and Cal Ripken Jr., which to me, sums up growing up in PG Country), and he suggested I listen the Kid Rock tune because he knew I'd like it. When I hear them, I remember our hard times and trying to get through them, together.

"You can't complain you was dealt this
hell of a hand without a man, feelin helpless
Because there's too many things for you to deal with
Dying inside, but outside you're looking fearless
While tears, is rollin down your cheeks
Ya steady hopin things don't all down this week
Cause if it did, you couldn't take it, and don't blame me
I was given this world I didn't make it"

Anyway, that was the end of college, and it was on to being a working man. The next few years were nothing if not interesting: I worked at the start-up until the bubble burst sometime after Y2K, I started online dating(of course), working out, went from glasses to contacts, found myself painting pipes in a Civil-War era barn in the middle of Antietam, worked building a terminal at Ronald Reagan National Airport(wearing a hard-hat is kinda cool), installed security systems all over Baltimore and DC(and lived in some of the worst areas of both cities), got progressively better jobs in web development as the field recovered from the dot-com crash, met a girl who would one day write a song about how much of an asshole I was, and at some point, got married.

But I'll get to all that later.

---

¹One detail I'll never forget about freshmen orientation was hearing a girl gush about a new show called South Park that I'd never heard of. She loved the cursing little children and that a character named Kenny died every episode. God, I'm old..er.

²Strangely enough, I now work at an ad agency. So fuck that guy.

Another Blog

2009-10-01T23:35:00.000-04:00

I play in a pool league with some friends, and I started a blog about it: The League. You can read about the blog here, as well as about my team, plus I just posted my first match recap.

I'll be updating it as the fall season continues :) Tune in if you're interested.

A Date Story

2009-09-21T21:37:00.003-04:00

After every break-up, my single life starts with a bang(sometimes literally). That first week is a whirlwind of single-life pleasures, lifting my ego to altitudes so high the thin air robs enough oxygen from my brain that I actually start to think I am the most attractive man on earth, why the hell have I not been single this entire time? Finding women is so fucking easy! They're all over me! I'm going to love being single! I'm going to be single FOREVER!!! Then the week ends with a burning re-entry into reality, and I continue living my single life with much more modest expectations.

A year or so ago, while I was in the midst of that delusional first week, I was out by myself at Rudy's, a Hell's Kitchen bar. The sign outside clearly reads Rudy's Bar & Grill, so I sauntered up to the bar and asked to see a menu. The bartender flatly informed me they didn't have a kitchen, but they did have free hot dogs. Hot dogs, that I noticed, weren't even cooked on a grill. Still, they were free, so I ordered a Guinness(even though it was only available in bottle-form, because I have no taste), got a hot dog, and sat down to read Angela's Ashes.

Now I know that sounds horribly wallflowery, but it was three on a Saturday afternoon. I wasn't straining to read about a poor Irish upbringing while the place was packed and the lights were low; I was straining to read about a poor Irish upbringing while the afternoon regulars waited for the NBA playoffs to start. I had broken up with my girlfriend Wednesday, so this was my first single Saturday in three years. Why not start it with a good book and a pint?

Coming straight from the gym, I had my backpack with me, cradling it between my feet and the bottom of the bar. Next to me, a bald tattooed man in a wife-beater did shots with his equally tough looking wife/girlfriend. The vested-bartender was quick to feed them whiskey and dogs as they debated how hard a mutual acquaintance worked(the man referred the fellow as the "laziest sonabitch I know" while the woman wasn't ready to anoint the guy just yet). The rest of the regulars were a mix of middle-aged blue-collar and older professionals, as befitting a dive bar at that time of day. Sports fans, serious drinkers, and me. Reading about Frank McGourt's alcoholic father.

---

A couple hours and beers later, a group of three young girls and two guys came in. They bee-lined it for Rudy's backyard garden, and as they passed me one of the girls grabbed my shoulder and said "Are you really depressed?!? You can't read that! You'll hurt yourself!"

I laughed. "No no, I'm fine. I'll be sure to let you know, though, if I'm feeling down."

"You do that!"

And with that, she rejoined her group. She was cute. Curly brown hair, dark-blue eyes, and a curvy figure. Her friends were also pretty easy on the eye, I couldn't help but notice. One had a sexy-librarian look, dark rimmed glasses to go with long black hair and very, very red lips. I brushed it off as a nice encounter, and got back to my book.

After about forty-five minutes the group, fresh off tequila shots, was getting ready to leave. The girl who considered Ashes a prelude to suicide came up to me again, and introduced herself.

"It's my friend's birthday," she motioned to the librarian, "and we are going to a karaoke bar. You're welcome to join."

"Yeah, come to my party!" the librarian squealed, her hand shooting up into the air.

I glanced over the group. They seemed friendly and harmless enough. A few years younger than me, but they probably couldn't tell. What could it hurt?

"Sure."

Outside, the group took a picture with the gigantic pig statue that sits outside Rudy's. They insisted I join, and now they have a picture of all of them, and some guy, celebrating the librarian's birthday. Memories.

We grabbed a cab, one of those mini-van models so we could all fit.

"So Kris, do you usually get picked up by strangers like this? Do you think we are all weird?" asked one of the guys.

"Ha, no not usually. You guys are my first."

"YES!" he drunkenly screamed. I was pretty buzzed at that point as well, and we exchanged high fives.

During the cab ride I was a little worried it was going to be bar karaoke. I didn't think I had the courage to sing in front of a crowd of strangers(and by think I mean I knew I didn't). Luckily, we were headed towards Koreatown, which meant it was most likely a full-on karaoke bar. Sure enough, we pulled up to a place that looked like an office building from the outside, but had Korean BBQ on the third floor, a pool hall on the 12th floor, and a karaoke bar on the fifth¹. They had a room reserved, and we settled in with Bud Lights as the birthday girl lit into the first song of the night.

Soon, more birthday guests arrived. I grew to enjoy the initial little shock these newcomers displayed when I explained I had just met the birthday girl a couple hours prior. Made me feel a little...dangerous, reckless. Or at least a guy with nothing else to do on a Saturday night.

One guest really caught my eye. She was about five-six, slender with a short Meg Ryan-esque haircut, amazingly big dark eyes and great legs. A looker.

It was hard to hear each other over the screeching of the librarian stumbling through Madonna, but I learned that the looker was a friend of a friend and really didn't know anyone either. Her name was Laura. She worked at the New York Times(a couple of blocks from my office) in online advertising(I work for a digital ad agency). I was looking to move to Brooklyn, and she knew someone who was about to leave her apartment there. We had no shortage of things to talk about.

As the night of karaoke came to a close, I gave Laura my number. Smiling up at me, she asked if I was up for staying out.

"Sure."

"Great, some friends of mine from work are at a bar not too far from here."

By then I was drunk, but still in the good phase of being drunk. Happy, not pathetic;smiling, not vacantly staring. We met up with her friends, drank some more, talked, flirted, and then she had to leave. Outside on the corner, she kissed me on the cheek and ducked into her friend's car.

Moments later, laid out in the backseat of a cab grinning like an idiot, I got a text:

"Sorry I had to run so soon, wish I could have stayed later :) Let's get together sometime - L"

L. Laura. Sweet, sweet Laura. I would definitely be calling her.

---

Tuesday, we met for dinner. In blatant disregard for New York Guy Protocol, I had texted her the day after we met to ask her out. So there I was, at the Zipper Factory a couple of blocks from my office, waiting for Laura. I was a little nervous - this was my first date in three years and I was less than week removed from a break-up. She was running a little late and I was sitting alone, nursing a beer.

Finally, my phone lit up. Incoming Call, Laura. She was a little lost, but I got her to the restaurant with no problems.

She was even prettier then I remembered, sharply dressed in a blouse and skirt that showed plenty(but not too much) of those beautiful legs. The conversation came smoothly, sailing from the usual work, family, and friends. We laughed about how both of us didn't really know anyone at the birthday party.

"Yeah, I only knew my friend - you know, Laura."

"Ah, so your friend's name--", I stopped.

Her friend's name. Laura. Her friend's name is Laura. Hazy memories of the night we met came back. She was talking and...

This is Laura, I'm L...

I strained to push my memory farther back.

This is Laura, I'm Laurshhhhhh-a-something.

Oh. Fuck.

I smiled at the beautiful, charming woman across the table whose name I did not know.

I asked how she and Laura(Laura, fucking Laura) knew each other while I thought about how I was going to get out of this. OK, her name start's with an L, she signed her text with it. How many girls names starts with an L? I can Google girls names on my phone while she's in the bathroom and narrow it down and...I'm fucked. This is exactly like that Seinfeld episode except I don't even know if her name rhymes with a female body part, and even if I did how could I guess? It's too late to ask now I'll just look like a major asshole. Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck! How could you not know your date's na--

"Isn't it weird that we both spell our names in an unusual way?"

My eyebrows arched.

"Yes, yes it is - so how do you spell your name?"

"L O R I, most people spell it L A U R I E or L O R E E."

"Well, Lori, that's one of the many things that makes you unique." I smiled. She smiled.

Rescued and recovered, the rest of the date went wonderfully. I walked her to her subway stop. We madeout. She tasted of lip-gloss and cigarettes(which I actually like, even though I don't smoke). The exhilaration of almost getting caught made the kissing that much more exciting for me - I dont' know if Lori felt it, but she was all smiles as she descended down to her F train.

Sadly, before we could go out on a second date, Lori took a trip to Israel and came back convinced she had to marry a Jewish man. Her trip had inspired her to take her heritage much more seriously - and more power to her. I was surprised how little her news upset me. No bitterness or hard feelings at all. We both went to the same gym around the same time, so that made for a few awkward encounters, but the awkwardness dwindled as the months passed².

In the end, though, I was satisfied to come out of it with a funny story.

¹A little over a year later I ended up at that same karaoke bar for an engagement party and met a beautiful girl from Australia(in fact, one of three girls hailing from down under at that party). But that's another story.

²Especially as she got fatter. OK, so maybe I'm a little bitter.

I Won't Do That

2009-09-16T22:36:00.005-04:00

Part of the Turning 30 series.

"Look at all the tiny people!" exclaimed a puffy-faced girl who became, as soon her pimple-rimmed lips finished 'tiny', someone I would hate for the rest of my life(I never saw her again).

The 'tiny people' were filling the hallways after their first class of their first day at Laurel High School, and I - a pasty bug-eyed ghost of a kid - was among them. I scurried from class to class, my middle-school honed nerd-survival techniques urging me to lay low and keep quiet. Scan the classroom, look for signs of possible allies: Metallica sticker on a notebook, comic doodling(the Marvel kind, not the newspaper kind), a copy of Dungeons and Dragons hanging out of backpack; any marker that might lead me to another teenage misfit.

Eventually, I found a set of friends - two, actually. Set one were three friends from my neighborhood who were all a year ahead of me. Theoretically, having three established sophomores as friends should have been an advantage, but they were all geeks like me(well, to be fair Joel wasn't really that geeky, just all of his friends were - which is basically the same thing). It was like knowing the prison bitches before you get off the county van; it only helps in as much you know how badly you are going to get fucked.

My other set of friends were a couple of guys that I'll refer to as SuperFresh. One half of SuperFresh was like me(all nerd), but the other was an anomaly. He was in incredible shape from karate, wrestling, and gymnastics. He earned straight As, he was a member of TV Production, and was generally well liked by everyone. Yet, he doesn't remember being popular. I'm convinced this is because he was best friends with me and the other half of SuperFresh. Our geek-worldview rubbed off on him. If it wasn't for us, he'd probably have dated cheerleaders and scored at Prom(sorry dude).

Unlike Superfresh, my other set of friends were a little sinister. Hanging out with them, I'd have my first taste of alcohol, porn, satanic metal, drugs and LARPing¹(the worst of all). I'll call them the Axis of Evil.

The Axis of Evil had Joel, Larry and Robert. Joel I've already discussed.

Larry was a chubby devil's child. He was smart - too smart for high school. His parents were Wiccans. His older brother was banging the cashier at the local record store. We would have amazingly deep conversations about life, science, and philosophy on the bus ride home(at least I remember them being very deep, but my teenage perspective might have warped what I considered 'deep').

Robert was tall. Really tall. He was an only child, and routinely tried to break into his friend's houses, just for practice(I think he thought of himself as a fantasy-like thief).

Together, we would spend our high-school years playing video games, D&D, looking at porn-mags, watching Headbanger's Ball and Beavis & Butthead. A typical mid-nineties, white teenage existence. Often we'd do this in someones' basement(shit, I didn't realize how much of this was so fucking cliched), but almost never mine. My parent's were still pretty strict then, and would make us go to bed eventually. At certain friend's houses, this policy was very relaxed(eventually my house became the spot for friends to congregate thanks to 'chill' parents, but that wasn't until it was my younger brothers and their friends doing the chilling²).

Even with friends, though, high school was rough. Dating was out of the question. I tried to fit in by being a kind of class clown, channeling my beloved George Carlin albums. This worked with some people, but blatantly ripping Carlin off never gained me wide-spread acceptance. Despite being a nerd, my grades were never that great, at least during freshman and sophomore years. Depressed, I didn't see the point in some of the work. Not being one of the beautiful people can hurt.

I listened to a lot of Metallica. I didn't have a lot of money for CDs, so I taped songs off the radio. I preferred dark, brooding songs, so naturally I listened to the local alternative station, 99.1 WHFS³. Late at night, long after I was supposed to have gone to bed(just like I was supposed to have studied), I'd lie in bed with my headphones on and listen - it was a gateway to another world, though it only offered a fleeting glimpse of the rooms, basements and parking lots where the cool "alternative" kids listened to the same music. I was still too nerdy, even for them.

I remember one kid who sat in front of me in freshman English. He tormented me in middle school, and over the summer he had obviously become a huge fan of Grunge: flannel shirt, longer(and greasier) hair, and an anarchy symbol sketched in black marker on his backpack. This kid, the same kid who once tortured for me wearing high-watered pants one day(hey, it was fucking seventh grade for Christ's sake) and loved making fun of me on the bus ride home, this kid had written something else besides his pseudo-approval of an anarchist society on his backpack: 'Mean People Suck'.

Mean people suck? Well, kiss my nerdy-white ass.

When I wasn't listening to the radio, there was one album I was constantly listening to, and believe me I sometimes I wish it was something really cool like Let It Be by The Replacements(who I wouldn't discover for almost a decade), Jeff Buckley's Grace or even Stone Temple Pilot's Purple. No, instead I would stare bleary-eyed at the red digits of the alarm clock listening and re-listening to Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell by Meatloaf.

Just like you don't get to choose your family, sometimes you don't get to choose the music that ends up meaning something to you. An awkward teenager looking for something, anything, that helps you make sense of the world doesn't have the benefit of wondering if what they like will be "important" when they are exiting their twenties. And even though in some circles Bat II is considered a great rock-opera album, it's hard to find another Meatloaf fan when you play "I'll Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" on the bar jukebox. Especially if that bar is in Brooklyn.

But you fucking love that song, don't you? Don't deny it - it's "Bohemian Rhapsody" epic mixed with high-drama, gloriously long and overblown as only Jim Steinman can do it. Fierce electric guitars and beautiful piano licks crash , and not just Meatloaf wailing as only Meatloaf can, but after nine minutes we get another vocalist, the mysterious woman who is the object of Meatloaf's affection. It's a mini-movie⁴; Beauty and The Beast condensed into 12 minutes(six for the radio version).

To me, it was unrequited love; the only kind of love nerds get to know in high school. I'm a beast, I love you and I'll do anything for you - but none of it will matter. Plus, the beast is mysterious, gothic and reclusive, but in a cool way. When you're getting called a dork on a daily basis, you may have some aura of mystery about you, but it definitely isn't the cool kind of mystery. No, it's mysterious like a two-headed kitten or unidentified meat; you'd rather just not know.

I loved the angst of the album, and being so over-the-top in it's production and homage to rock-opera, it really stood out from my Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains records. I still listened to them plenty too, but Bat II will always have a special place in my heart.

Today, if I had to pick one song to perfectly sum up my high school experience, it would be this one(even if it was released almost a decade after I graduated).

---

¹LARPing, or 'Live-Action Role Playing', is highly advanced geekery - not for the faint of heart, or anyone wishing to engage in regular sex.

²Lotta fucking good that did me(I'm not bitter).

³Sadly, WHFS no longer exists. It's format was abruptly changed to Tropical Latin music in 2005.

⁴Although I've listened to the song plenty, I hadn't watched the video for it in years until I wrote this post. Looking at it now, some things are just bizarre: It starts with Meatloaf/the Beast inadvertently killing a cop with his motorcycle. Why the cops are chasing the LoafBeast is never explained(but as in most music videos, it's heavily implied it's because cops are inherently evil), but they are bringing everything, cars, helicopters, to get him. The LoafBeast flees in the woods(away from his safe haven mansion?) and discovers a beautiful woman washing by a fountain, the way nobody does. She follows him back to his mansion, through the previously mentioned woods, where there is in an incredibly hot, almost softcore scene between her and what I guess are the LoafBeast's sexy muses. How could have I forgotten that?

Middle School

2009-04-14T22:17:00.004-04:00

Part of Turning 30 Series.

I was not a cool kid. I knew it, and everyone else seemed to know it, but until middle school it didn't really seem to matter. One summer removed from sixth grade, and it was the only thing that mattered.

In elementary school, it was easy to fit in. You're still a kid, how different can you be from other kids? We all watched the same cartoons, the same movies, we all had to sit in the same rows of desks and listen to the same person talk about the same shit every day. Sure, there was a pecking order like any other social group, but I can't remember anyone being truly ostracized. This is why in high school you hear nerds and geeks constantly lamenting how, back in elementary school, they used to be friends with the cool kids(and maybe kissed the prom queen on the cheek behind the jungle-gym), and they were(and did), because no one had figured out(exactly) who the cool people were yet(or even knew what cool was, beyond Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Simpsons).

Once I got to middle school, though, distinctions were being made. I didn't understand(and still don't) what we budding teenagers were supposed to think was cool: there was a trend of guys wearing pacifiers around their necks(I guess this proved you were too tough and mature to suck your own thumb?), using styling gel to make what appeared to be a hair helmet, friendship bracelets, Pearl Jam, smoking and a mild disregard for authority(getting in trouble was now "rebellion"). I was definitely not a rubber-nipple sucking, shell-headed smoking twelve year-old, and now I understand why most adults thought we were all insane, retarded, or both.

My clothes, my glasses, and my braces were decidedly uncool. Toys were out, video games were still a neutral entity(but computers were for nerds only), and having the right pair of sneakers was pretty much the most important thing on Earth. Problem was, I kinda still liked toys, I loved video games AND computers, and as long as my sneakers didn't make my feet hurt, well, who cares what name was on the side? With this attitude, I was(clearly) doomed.

It didn't help matters that I didn't know anyone: I went to a different elementary school than everyone else. For reasons I never really understood, I spent kindergarten through sixth grade at Paint Branch Elementary in College Park(on the opposite side of US Route 1 from where I would go to college, the University of Maryland, weirdly enough), while everyone else at my middle school came from the two elementary schools in Laurel. The cover story for this was I was part of a "magnet" program, but now I suspect it was part of some sick sociological study to see what happens when you drop a kid - who is at the most awkward stage of life - into an entirely new school environment. If so, here is what they found out: it sucks. It sucks balls(to quote my seventh-grade self). Tough enough being the new kid, without being the new kid who resembles Anthony Michael Hall from The Breakfast club. Little did all those teasing kids know, though, that I would grow up to be Brad Pitt(Reader's Note: This has not been verified).

Nothing made my coolness(or lack thereof) more obvious than music. I loved oldies, and besides the Top 40 radio hits so pervasive they were impossible to ignore, nothing else. It was my parents' music, and liking it wouldn't make me cool until college(which is when everything reverts, rendering all previous school years irrelevant, thank god). I balked at the notion that a bunch of idiots named the "Beastie Boys"1 could be superior to The Beach Boys. Bon Jovi looked like an ultra-feminine version of The Rolling Stones(a real rock band). In seventh grade English, we were asked to bring in a tape of our favorite song. People brought in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Guns N Roses, the girl Rolling Stones, the aforementioned Pearl Jam, and my mind wants to say Sublime, but history says this was impossible(it was probably the Violent Femmes). I brought nothing; I was too embarrassed to admit I had no familiarity with anything my peers were listening to, and I certainly didn't want to put up the weeks of mocking that would have followed playing "Sugar Pie, Honeybunch" by The Four Tops.

For another class, we were assigned a project that entailed making your own radio show. You played a couple songs and read a few lines while the rest of the class stared at you(in prepubescent judgment). I canvased my house for any tape that would be borderline acceptable. I didn't own many tapes(maybe Thriller), because I spent most of my time with either my Nintendo Entertainment System, reading, or drawing. Searching my parent's tapes, I finally settled on two candidates: Stephhen Wolf's Greatest Hits, and the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing.

Now, there is a lot your school reputation can weather: a particularly bad week of acne, an stray fart in the middle of class, a lost fight, wearing highwater pants one day, or being extremely nonathletic. Nothing, however, puts a mark on you like playing "Hungry Eyes" and "I've Had The Time Of My Life" to your seventh grade music class.

Hungry Eyes (Dirty Dancing soundtrack) - Richard Marx

---

Luckily, popular music made after 1970 started to leak into my consciousness, mostly due to my friend Joel. Joel moved into the neighborhood when I was starting the sixth grade at Paint Branch. His family moved into the house of my former best friend, Liana. I was sad to see her go, due in no small part to the fact that she was the first girl I had kissed, and she was interested in continuing said kissing. I really had good reasons to hate Joel.

It was decided by his mother and mine that, because we were born only 3 days apart, we should be best friends. Inexplicably, this actually happened.

Joel had an older brother, Sean, four years our senior(making him a teenager, or as I recall, the coolest motherfucker I had met to that point in my life). When I hung out with Joel, after we got bored playing pretend wars with his expansive GI Joe collection(of which I was very jealous) or playing with his NES, we would hang out in his brother's room and listen to his cassettes. Sean's room was, to my naive and innocent eyes, the lair of Satan. There was a poster for something called 'Megadeth': the poster said it was a)the death of over one million people and b) the best metal band ever. He had posters of half-naked women, throwing stars, and his own TV.

One night Joel popped in "Dr. Feelgood" by Motley Crue. It sounded similar to Bon Jovi, but louder, fuller and much more sinister. It sounded like something that my parents wouldn't want me to listen to, and for the first time, that idea appealed to me. We listened to it again and again; I loved the chant 'Dr. Feelgood' and when Neil wails 'he's gonna be your Frankenstein'. I was such a dork, though, that Joel had to explain that Dr. Feelgood was a drug dealer.

Dr. Feelgood - Mötley Crüe

During the summer after seventh grade, spurned on by Joel, I started watching MTV after my parents went to bed. It was there that I was first exposed(nearly) to Anthony Kiedis's taint.

Give It Away Now - The Red Hot Chili Peppers

Indeed, if not for some his sequined speedo(or whatever that was), we would all know Anthony a little better(enough to be on a first name basis). The video for "Give It Away" now was a revelation to me. There, in black and white, were four sexually-charged acrylic-silver painted musicsatyrs . Fueled by love, lust, joy and for some of them, heroin. Where had this world been my entire life? How could I ever join it?(would I need silver paint and horns?)

Watching late into the night(two in the morning was scandalous to my middle-school mind), I saw videos like Nirvana's "Lithium" and Pearl Jam's "Jeremy", giving my cast-off, loser self an outlet that told me I wasn't alone. I would grow up and still be bitching apparently(with power chords), but I wasn't alone. Watching at the house of a friend I met through Joel, I discovered the angry side of my angst: Metallica. If there is a perfect song for feeling alienated, alone and powerless to change anything(and all before 13), it's "The Unforgiven".

The Unforgiven - Metallica

That same friend of a friend introduced me to the awesomeness of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody", bringing some unbridled joy and silliness to my music(though it begins and ends with melancholia).

I wanted more, and I wanted my own music. I bought Nevermind, Ten, borrowed the Black album(hey, CDs were expensive back then), and then, on my birthday, my brother Scott was the first person to ever give me an album. And what an album, Automatic For The People, by REM. Contemplative and mournful, with classics like "Everybody Hurts" and "Man on The Moon", it was the perfect record to have right before high school.

Man On The Moon (Album Version) - BILL BERRY

---

¹During an actual argument I had with some kids about the Beastie Boys, an adult overheard us and said that I was right, no one would remember any of the crap the other kids listened to in thirty years. I guess we both underestimated Mike D, MCA and Ad-Rock, and sometimes sixth-graders are visionaries(Hannah Montana notwithstanding).

1984, Oldies On The Car Radio

2009-01-27T21:29:00.005-05:00

I'm 30...and I can't believe that's actually true. Thirty! Fuck, it still sounds intense spelled out. I can't say it's passed by quickly, because it feels like I've been alive a long time. All the requisite good times, bad times, strange times and the few even-keeled times add up. Over the next few days, I'll write about the times that stand out and the music that brings them rushing back. Some of them are just moments, flickers in my mind that last only a second(but bring a big smile). Others leave me shaking me head, wondering what I was thinking. Some are obvious. Others are the kind of quirky, funny little moments that appear inexplicably vivid against otherwise hazy times. Some of them weigh on me(and I've tried to shake them off, rattling them like Marley's chains), while others remind me why it's great to be alive. For better or for worse, this is how I've spent the last three decades.

---

1984, 5 Years Old

I don't want to go to school, I want to be in bed. In my pajamas. With my Voltron blanket. Warm.

Scott has it so easy, even if he is smaller than me and still has to use the car seat. He gets to stay with Grandma Estelle. All. Day.

I have to go to school and do worksheets. I like worksheets OK, except when Ms. Dunlap makes me do them her way. Yesterday, I liked the last problem best so I did that. The middle problems had triangles in them, so then I did those. I like filling in the insides of all the Os, Ps, Ds, 8s, 6s and Gs with my pencil - so I did that, then the first problem. She said it was like an ox way of doing things, and I should do it first to last.

Sigh...school is so boring.

Mom is rinsing out her coffee mug, almost time to go. Yes, I have my backpack. Yes, I have my lunch. Yes, I brushed my teeth. Yes, yes yes yes!

No, I didn't forget anything. No, I don't have to go the bathroom. No, I'm not all ready for school. I'm all ready for my GI Joes!!! I'm ready for - ouch! Yes this coat is zipped tight enough! - a pop tart and orange juice.

It's still dark. Why get up when it's still dark? Grownups make no sense. Scott goes in the car seat, but I can put my seat-belt on by myself now! Mom gets in, Dad starts the car. Doesn't take long for the car to warm us up, though I never can tell the exact moment when it's not cold anymore. I try and try to pay attention, to see if I can tell, and every morning BAM, it's just warm all of a sudden and I didn't even realize it.

I like our car, it's named after a rabbit. I also like that my Dad and Mom like to listen to music! Sarah and Steve told me their Dad only listens to people talking, the entire car ride to Grandma Estelle's! That sounds so boring. I get to listen to The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Four Tops, The Temptations, Simon and Garfunkel, The Monkees(the ones from the TV show!), The Supremes, The Rolling Stones, Aretha Franklin and a bunch of other people. Band names are so cool. Like superhero names, or sports teams.

---
House of The Rising Sun, The Animals

Oh! It's the song about the house in New Orleans. I really like the guys voice. He really sounds like he's sad, but not in a crying way. Guys aren't supposed to cry. And the music(Dad said it has an organ) sounds so spooky. I wonder what a gambler is? And how can a house ruin anyone?

House Of The Rising Sun - THE ANIMALS

---

Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys

I like the Beach Boys because they sing about cars. Fast cars. And surfing, like Dad used to do. Dad says this is about a guy liking a girl. I guess no band is perfect.

Good Vibrations - The Beach Boys

---

Hey Jude, The Beatles

This song is by the Beatles, and it's LONG. Dad said Jude is a guys name in England, where the Beatles are from. I wish I was from England, then I could sing like the Beatles. I like it when he screams JUDE JUDE JUDEYYY JUDEEY JUDDEYY HEYYY WAAAAHWOWOW! I want to sing like that! I like the tambourine and the drumming.

I also like their song about holding hands( the only acceptable thing you can do with a girl, if you ask me). And that song "Eight Days A Week"(I guess weeks are longer in England), and the song about feeling fine, the one about paperback writers, the one about a car(only one though, they must have more cars in California than in England), the one about sleeping, the one about standing and dancing. And that song about a Yellow Tambourine or something. They sure do have a lot of songs.

The Beatles - Hey Jude - The Beatles

---
The News

Uh-oh, they are talking about the Redskins. Dad is still mad they lost the Super Bowl. He doesn't seem too upset though...wow, I never noticed his hair touched the car's ceiling. All red and poofy. Why do we listen to the traffic report? We always drive the same way. I want to be the traffic guy, he gets to ride in a helicopter! Mom says I should pay attention because they are talking about Michael Jackson. That tape cousin Susan made me is so cool, it has 'Beat It' and 'Thriller'! I love the video, but the werewolf part is pretty scary. What? He burned his hair off? While drinking Pepsi? That doesn't make any sense. Life is confusing. And school doesn't help.

Oh, mom says it was because he was making a commercial. I wonder if I ask too many questions. Sometimes I ask my parents something I already know: I want to see if they are going to tell me the truth(or if I know something they don't).

---

Do You Love Me?(Now That I Can Dance), The Contours

Why would anyone not love someone because they couldn't dance? There sure were a lot of dances back then...the twist sounds like the most fun. I love it when the song disappears for a while then comes back. Boys sure do a lot of work for girls in these songs.

Do You Love Me - The Contours

---

Last Train To Clarksville, The Monkees

My favorite Monkee, Mickey, sings most of their songs. He's the funniest one(at least on TV, their songs aren't really funny). He doesn't know if he's ever coming home. I don't blame the Monkees, I'd get on a train to get away from coffee-flavored kisses too. Sounds horrible.

Last Train To Clarksville - The Monkees

---

Land of 1000 Dances, Wilson Pickett

Dad says the title of this song is 'Land of a 1000 Dances', but he never says it. Is that allowed?

Land Of A Thousand Dances - Wilson Pickett

---

Shop Around, Smokey Robison and The Miracles

I wonder...did Dad 'shop around'? Did he get a bargain? Or was he sold on the very first one? Even though they are icky, it is strangely comforting to know pretty girls come a dime a dozen.

Shop Around - Smokey Robinson And The Miracles

---
ABC, The Jackson Five

Mom and Dad say this is Michael Jackson when he was a kid. He and his brothers were The Jackson 5. That's crazy, a kid in a band! Could me and my friends form a band? I love this part: 'A B C...it's easy as 1 2 3', it sounds so happy. They must have been such a happy family.

ABC - Jackson Five

---
Kodachrome, Paul Simon

Oh my god. They let him say a swear word on the radio. If I said that, I'd be sitting in the corner for at least an hour. Did my parents hear him? Are they going to change the station? They aren't doing anything. It got by them. Good, this song feels like a race. A fast car ride. Especially at the end, when Paul Simon sings faster. And it has piano; not enough songs have piano.

Kodachrome (Album Version) - BARRY BECKETT

---
Satisfaction, The Rolling Stones

If I could play the guitar, I would play the beginning of "Satisfaction" over and over. It sounds dangerous. They sound dangerous. Dad says people thought they were thugs back when he was a kid, and that Mick Jagger was a punk. I can hear it. He's sneering. He can't get satisfaction, despite trying - a lot, apparently(he's on a losing streak). And there are lot of people he's mad at about it. Plus, he smokes! Yeah, they are definitely dangerous. They're....unbelievably cool.

(I cant get no) Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones

---

Heard It Through The Grapevine, Marvin Gaye

Now, I know raisins sing this song on TV, but this version is much better. And I know a woman sings another version, but I hate it when the radio plays that instead of this version. Marvin Gaye. I say his name every time the song plays; I need to remember who he is. My Dad told me he was shot by his own father! My Mom said "John! Don't tell them things like that!", but he said he was just being honest and I could understand. I'm not sure I do, but it's really sad. His voice is like honey, rich and sweet. And it's gone. Damn, disrespectful raisins.

I Heard It Through The Grapevine - Marvin Gaye

---

I love the final, roundy turn up the hill to Grandma Estelle's. I can feel my stomach dip. Estelle's house is on top of a great big hill; a hill that would be so much fun to play on, climb up and tumble down - but we can't! She says we'll tear it up. So it just sits there. Boring. Estelle is nice, but confusing. Sometimes, instead of cereal, she gives us cereal with "fruit cocktail" on it. I don't like fruit cocktail(it's slimy and weird), but Estelle says it's rude of me not to finish what she gives me. Isn't it also rude to feed someone something they don't like it? When I'm grown I won't do that.

Alright, time to go. Dad has to carry Scott, he's asleep! Baby gets to sleep all morning, all day, and then go home and play with his toys. I used to do that, now I have school. Hmm...seems like life only gets worse as you get older, you have to do more and more stuff you don't want to do, but you are "supposed" to do. I have to go to school, Mom and Dad have to go to work. There must be something good about getting older. Well, you get to tell kids what to do. And you can stay up late. You can buy anything you want(though Mom and Dad don't have a lot of toys).

Whatever good growing up is, I guess I'll find out.

30 - How I Got Here

2008-12-10T22:36:00.001-05:00

I turned 30 this year...and I can't believe that's actually true. Thirty! Fuck, it still sounds intense spelled out. I can't say it's passed by quickly, because it feels like I've been alive a long time. All the requisite good times, bad times, strange times and the few even-keeled times add up. Over the next few days, I'll write about the times that stand out and the music that brings them rushing back. Some of them are just moments, flickers in my mind that last only a second(but bring a big smile). Others leave me shaking me head, wondering what I was thinking. Some are obvious. Others are the kind of quirky, funny little moments that appear inexplicably vivid against otherwise hazy times. Some of them weigh on me(and I've tried to shake them off, rattling them like Marley's chains), while others remind me why it's great to be alive. For better or for worse, this is how I've spent the last three decades.

----

1978, 0 years old

"The Pilgrim - Chapter 33" Kris Kristofferson

I was alive for 25 days in 1978. Christmas shopping for a three-week old must have been incredibly easy; just buy more baby stuff. Later in life, I would appreciate being born just far enough from Christmas to not get screwed over for birthday presents..

My parents named me after Kris Kristofferson(I suspect weed was involved in this decision, since neither are huge fans), and their liberal swapping of "K" for "Ch" left a profound mark on how I see myself. You see, there are plenty of Christophers, and there are some people named Kris(most of them have vaginas), but I have yet to meet another Kristopher, in person. Thanks to Google, I at least know they exist; in fact I know there is another Kris Teehan - I've seen her MySpace page.

My shortened-name's neutral-sex status has led to some amusing moments: chatting online, I was called a cunt. Before a meeting, a co-worker I'd never met saw my name on the attendee list. Leaning over he whispered in a conspirator's tone, "...hey, what do you think this new Kris chick looks like?"

"Blond, blue eyes," I replied.

People often, after meeting me, revert to the boring "Ch" spelling. This is unaccpetable. To help people remember me, I say "Kris, Kris with a K." In my imagination I speak this with the same cadence as Sean Connery or Daniel Craig saying "The name's Bond...James Bond."

I like my name. It's unique, but recognizable. It almost fits in - kind of like me. All my life, I never fit in anywhere. I realize everyone, everywhere says this but I don't mean I was a loner(though I often was) or an outcast(only by choice). I fit in with the nerds, even though my grades weren't that great, I didn't read Tolkien, couldn't accurately answer Star Trek trivia questions and to this day never really enjoyed math. I fit in with the metal kids, but they were one year older and I was too chicken to drink, do drugs, or fuck(okay the fucking part was not voluntary). Not nerdy enough for the nerds, too nerdy for everyone else. In college I was the Journalism major who also did Computer Science. I explained the web to the writers, and wrote the copy for my CS classes' websites. Even at my current job, I know just enough to make shallow conversation, hoping I won't be dragged over to the deep end. I can only wade so long and still be respected.

Maybe its the strange(ly spelled) first name that causes so many people(especially teachers) to call me exclusively by my last name. From grade school to my current office, I've always had at least one person in my life who speaks my name like they're calling me off the bench. It's strangely flattering and a little annoying, especially since I can't imagine calling anyone exclusively by their last name. I tried it out once, and immediately stopped because I sounded like a prick.

Anyway, I never really listened to my namesake until a couple years ago, which is a shame - besides writing "Me And Bobbi McGee" and some country standards made famous by other singers, Kristofferson made some great albums, my favorite being The Silver Tongued Devil And I. It's a great country record, full of outcasts, love and regret. A line from "The Pilgrim - Chapter 33" stuck in my mind:

Hes a walkin contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,
Takin evry wrong direction on his lonely way back home.

The first time I heard this line I reflected on the last ten or so years, and thought: well that pretty much covers it. I've made a lot of mistakes, done things that made no sense, and made such a mess of my life at times that it's all become muddled in my own personal mythology. Even I can't sort out the truth from the exaggerations anymore. I'm no Dennis Hopper or Johnny Cash, but it wasn't all cookies and milk either. In the end, though, it's come out OK; I made it home(this requires stretching the meaning of the song a bit -- just a bit -- but hell, interpretation is for the consumers, not the artists, right?).

It all had to start somewhere, with something, and I started off named after that old guy from the Blade movies.

"Death Magnetic", Metallica

2008-11-21T18:30:00.001-05:00

Artist: Metallica
Album Title: Death Magnetic
Record Label: Warner Brothers
Release Date: 9/12/2008
Rating: 8.5
Bands Web Site: http://www.metallica.com/
Sound: Metal
Similar Artists: Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax

The old Metallica is back on Death Magnetic, their first album in five years. It's heavier and faster than anything from 90s(aka Hard Rock) Metallica. The complicated(or to the non-technical music fans among us, long) songs and Kirk Hammett face-melting guitar solos are back. It's everything fans and critics asked for; a cliche return to form. Which is fine, since we are a cliche loving culture. So much in fact, we'll lie to ourselves to make the cliche fit: the band's last album, 2003's St. Anger, was also(at least initially) hailed as a comeback album, with the band finally turning away from the bluesy-riffs and southern rock influences of the two semen albums, Load and Reload, to a rawer, realer sound. It took a few months to realize raw apparently meant a curious lack of guitar-fireworks(no solos!?!) and a curious abundance of cowbell(later revealed to be a very tinny-sounding snare drum). In short, it was Metallica's worst album. So of course, they won a Grammy for it1.

Anger sucking didn't matter though; all that mattered was nothing on Anger sounded like "Enter Sandman", "Fuel", or "Hero Of The Day". This was important because the consensus(at least among long-time fans and critics) was that Metallica needed to shun the "mainstream" metal sound of their nineties albums(the sound that made them the biggest band in the world).

Why was it so important(to some people) that Metallica make music the way they did when Ronald Reagan was President? Because, if James, Kirk, Lars, and the bass player from Suicidal Tendencies make thrash metal again, it will mean a)fans can find them "authentic" because their songs will be too long, loud and fast for the general public and b) they can be forgiven or Napster. Ever since the band famously sued Napster, they've had a huge image problem. Which I think is hilarious, since in retrospect, Metallica was completely right.

---

Some people will never forgive Metallica for suing Napster2, and by some people, I mean college students. I have no research or data to back this up, but this is undeniably true: no one is more self-entitled than white college students. In it's heyday, Napster took up 40% of the bandwidth of University of Southern California. That's almost half of a university's traffic, used to download "Enter Sandman" and the theme from Ducktales, and the student body saw no problem with that.

Metallica, however, saw people downloading their entire discography(at the time, about two decades worth of work) for free, and freaked. Now, I agree suing your fanbase is a public relations disaster, but Metallica didn't do that. They sued Napster. Sure, they got some Napster users banned3, but they didn't sue them.

The prevailing argument at the time was Metallica were ungrateful, spoiled, greedy rock stars after more money from the same fans that made them rich. Which is, of course, completely ridiculous. Not the spoiled part, and maybe not even the greedy part -- I'm not rich(yet), but I imagine money can be addicting -- but the "same fans" part. Anyone downloading Master Of Puppets from their dorm room in 2000 sure as hell didn't buy it 1986(unless you were a way more metal eight-year old than I was). I'll bet most of these people bought the Black album, Load and that's probably it(maybe a Godsmack record too, but you can hardly blame Lars Ulrich for that). Sorry quad-dwellers of the early twenty-first century, I can't buy into the notion that buying an album or two means you "deserve" the rest of the bands catalog for free.

Ulrich, seeking to get the band's point of view out, did a skit with Marlon Wayans(who else to better sway public opinion?) at the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. Wayans played a Napster-using college student, telling the un-hip Ulrich that he was just "sharing" Metallica's "I Disappear"4. Ulrich agrees to this definition of sharing, and has Metallica's road crew make off with all of Wayan's belongings, leaving him almost nude in an empty room. I thought it a crude, but effective, argument.

Later in the show, the creator of Napster, Shawn Fanning, appeared wearing a Metallica t-shirt and said, "I borrowed this shirt from a friend. Maybe, if I like it, I'll buy one of my own." Which would have been a perfect analogy for Napster, if Fanning had developed the ability to clone t-shirts.

The only real people who had a right to be pissed off were old-school, die-hard, and otherwise hyphenated Metallica fans. The Napster debacle showed them what they had long suspected, or already believed, since 1991: Metallica were no longer just like them. Metallica's appeal in the eighties was that they were "real" metal, not a bunch of posers like Ratt, Motely Crue, or Poison. They didn't parade around with strippers, sing about rock star indulgences, or wear make-up; they sang about dark, evil things and looked just like the fans(ugly)5.

"We're just four fans who got together and started playing," frontman James Hetfield famously said on Behind The Music. "This could be you!"

That sentiment was a lot more believable before the band cut their hair and tracks for Tom Cruise movies. Before, there was no real separation between the band and the fans;in the cold light of Napster, the seperation was all too apparent. But it wasn't Metallica's fault. All of them were rich now, and all of them(save Jason Newstead) had burgeoning families. Metallica committed the cardinal sin of "authentic" rock acts by not pretending they didn't care about their bank accounts. Money mattered, and that infuriated people.

Of course, Metallica wasn't putting out songs about chartered yachts, private jets and model wives(all of which they possess). St. Anger may have been the closest thing we'll ever see to an emo-tallica album, but it's not like there were rants about kids, broken hearts or celebrity-angst. Mostly it was about alcoholism, something any metal fan should be able to get behind.

The band was still rich, though, and popular. To the underground, "true" fans -- and the bandwagoners tagging along for the Napster backlash -- that was sin enough. To please these people, a band should struggle in eternal poverty, turning down any chance to get rich doing what they love. Which, to me, sounds like a pretty shitty deal. I understand, though; a band that was "theirs" was now the worlds. It's as if your best friend won the lottery: now you can't hang out with him without noticing all of his stuff is a lot nicer than yours, shallow people cling to him all the time, and lots of women aspire to fuck him. And then, while cruising in his sports car getting blown by a supermodel, he starts complaining about money. You probably won't relate to him as much anymore, and I get that.

College students, however, had no such excuse. They just wanted a lot of music for free. Which sounds a bit...what's the word?

Greedy.

---

There was a new album I was supposed to talk about, wasn't there? Funny how things turn out.

I'll admit, I was very hesitant to listen to Death Magnetic. All of my preceding apologizing aside, I haven't been captivated by a Metallica album since 1991(just because I think they were right, doesn't mean I loved the music). I only have singles off of Load, Unload, and St. Anger; every earlier album I own in full. I wanted Magnetic to remind me of the band I worshiped in high school, instead of making me realize I'm approaching 30 and the rock gods of my youth are mere mortals. That's some heavy shit to put on a record.

The early buzz got my hopes up, though, and then the early positive reviews persuaded me to finally give the album a spin, and while I can never love a band with the pure adulation I had for Metallica when I was fourteen, for ten fast, furious, glorious songs I was a head-banging, metal-head teenager again.

Metallica; nuff said.

---

1It would have been so easy to make a Jethro Tull joke there...or here. Restraint is what keeps me from being a complete hack.

2Why Dr. Dre, who also sued Napster, escapes criticism is beyond me.

3When this happened, I was working for an Internet start-up. All of us had Napster, which we mostly used to annoy one another by downloading excruciatingly bad songs(I think "I Wanna Sex You Up" by Color Me Badd won when it prompted Steve to tear out Mike's speaker cords). Everyone but me downloaded Metallica songs, and everyone but me condemned the band for suing Napster. I was the only one banned.

4One of the same co-workers who laughed at me for getting banned grudgingly admitted Metallica's performance at the 200 MVAs was really good(he was a fan up until the Black album). I considered this a small affirmation of my pro-Metallica stance.

5And yet each one has a gorgeous wife; that's the power of rock.

ACL Day Three

2008-10-31T00:08:00.002-04:00

By day three, we had heard many bands complain about the sun, the heat and the early(for rock stars) start times. Hearing this while holding a dollar can of Diet Coke, eating a six dollar chicken wrap, and having paid hundreds of dollars for a three-day festival pass, I didn't really give a shit. Hell, I wish my workday could start at one in the afternoon. I realize the time the band goes on isn't the literal start to their "work" day, but I don't have an entourage to help me get to the office, so I still don't give a shit. And believe me, I could use an entourage and some roadies, bringing me coffee to help with a hangover, telling me how awesome my code is, doing the boring coding¹ for me, and telling my boss I need at least a two hour lunch break and a vodka-cranberry or I'm not coming back.

Despite my general lack of rock star empathy, however, if there was one band I did feel sorry for, it was The Kills. The indie-duo, and their extremely danceable² blues/garage rock, are best after sundown. Part of the reason they were a must see for Leslie and I was morbid curiosity: we wondered if they would make it through their set or spontaneously combust like a pair of vampires.

During their set, in front of me danced a white girl with dreadlocks. Her hair reminded
me of the pancaked-squirrel roadkill I had seen in the hotel parking
lot. Initially, they seemed - relatively - fine. Guitarist Jamie Hince said, "We've never played in the sun before, this is a novelty."

Maybe they weren't as averse to daytime as we had thought. Things quickly devolved, however, as the sun and heat got to them:

"We are going to publish the number of our agent on our website, so you can call him from the hours of four AM to five AM to complain about this fucking heat."

I wondered, what did their agent tell them ACL was going to be like?

To their credit, Hince and the other half of The Kills, singer Allison Mosshart, didn't mail it in. Mosshart, withering like the Wicked Witch in her nightclub garb under the Austin sun, retreated to the back of the stage("Sorry guys, I'm not built for the sun, I'll be back here"), but wandered back to the front of the stage after a bottle of water and a failed attempt to take her burning boots off. Hince, in between tuning and adjusting the drum machine³, did his half-moonwalk, full-on-sexy shuffle while playing his catchy, abrasive guitar licks. Mosshart, seemingly moments away from dying of heat exhaustion, still delivered with her smoky-sweet vocals. It was my favorite show of the festival. Later, Leslie said she had trouble enjoying the show because the Kills were obviously not having fun. Considering Hince's last words, I can't blame her:

"Come see us when it's dark, this is fucking bullshit."

---

The day before Leslie and I thought we had found the infamous Barton Springs. Little more than a spot in the river were we could cool off our feet and - if we felt adventurous - maybe swim, we were not impressed. Certainly pleasant, but not what the festival guide had promised.

On the third day, thankfully, we had found the real Barton Springs. Essentially it's a swimming pool constructed in the middle of and fed by the river. A sign said "Bottom surface is natural and may be slippery." It should be shortened to "Bottom is slippery".

Taking a dip in the cool, not freezing water was just the break we needed after baking in the festival fields for three days. The Springs was an oasis of sorts, full of hipsters and their ilk swimming, sunbathing and jumping off the lone diving board. It was a cartoonish version of paradise.

Close to dozing off in the grass, I saw a father wading with his baby. When lowered near the surface, the baby excitedly smacked the water with his tiny hands as if it was the most extraordinary thing he had ever touched. As his father lifted him up, his arms would slow to a stop, only to furiously start up again like hummingbird wings when close to the water.

---

Okkervil River started out a little weak. They seemed a little out of tune - and were there sound problems, or was Will Sheff smacking his head into the microphone? Maybe the band was as distracted as I was, wondering what the score of the Redskins/Cowboys game was.

Texas takes football seriously, so it was no surprise that there was a tent showing the game(the day before they showed the Longhorns game). I was tempted, but decided I was here for music, not football. When else would I have the chance to hear all of these great bands?

Still - and maybe I bit hypocritically - there I was, furiously reloading the box score on my iPhone. Below an orange stage banner that read 'AT&T - Blue Room' the EDGE network struggled to let me know if the Redskins were holding onto their slim lead. Frustrated, I finally put the phone down and hoped Okkervil River could keep my mind off all the various ways the Skins could still lose. They killed "John Allyn Smith Sails", and as they segued into the song's send-up of "Sloop John B", I did briefly escape the need to know what was happening in Texas Stadium. That's no small feat.

Walking towards the bathrooms after River finished their set with a rousing rendition of "Kicks", I called my family back in Maryland to see what had happened. Last update I got, the Skins were ahead 26-24 with under two minutes to play.

"We won! It's over!" my father answered.

"Awesome!" I replied. "Now I'm going to be surrounded by sad Cowboys fans! This is the best weekend ever!"

Right after hanging up with my Dad, I overheard one such fan on her cellphone:

"They LOST? How could they lose? But...oh well...we'll beat them in Washington."

No darling, no you won't.

---

A disc in Jack White's back is in the wrong place. His doctor told him that this morning, and now he is telling us this - for the third time in as many songs. If it bothered him, it didn't show in the least. He, Brendan Benson, Jack Lawrence, and Patrick Keeler⁴ were great as usual, from the opening song to the set-closing, transcendent extended take on "Blue Veins".

In the middle of the set, a slightly older man(late thirties, early forties) asked me something I will never forget:

"Hey, hey man - what does 4:20 mean to you? I mean, if I say 4:20, what do you think of?"

Blinking, I looked at him and his(very attractive) girlfriend, trying to determine if he was serious.

"He seriously doesn't know," she said. "I told him ask anyone - ANYONE - here and they would know."

"Oh...well, it's a marijuana reference. You know, pot?" I said.

"Really? Where does that come from?" he asked.

"I don't really know," I said.

"Well, I've been smoking pot for twenty years and I've never heard of it!" he said⁵. "Well - what's your name? - oh, well Kris, should we get you high for that?"

I declined.

As usual, after finishing their show all four Raconteurs huddled and bowed. I wondered, would they do this if they weren't a "super group"? The show of solidarity, is it a reminder that they are a "real" group and not just a collaboration?

I still wonder.

---

Leaving early, but fully satisfied with our ACL experience, Leslie and I walked to Lamberts, a restaurant Leslie had read about. The great thing about traveling with Leslie is she has great, extraordinary taste when it comes to food, and Lambert's was no exception. The chips and queso that started the meal off would have been enough; the chips were warm, crisp and the queso was rich and creamy. The Mexican Coke tasted extra, extra sweet after three days of festival Diet Cokes, and the southern-style mac and cheese was the definition of decadence, baked and served in a bowl. And then, the ribs came. Damn, I wish I was eating at Lamberts right now.

Anyway, while digging into our meals, Leslie and I talked about the festival highlights(in between praising the food). Somehow we got onto Jack White: which of his bands is better(I say it's a toss up), his relationship with Meg White, and her drumming ability. Then, the guy seated one table to my right leaned over to me and said:

"Hey, did I just hear you guys talking about The White Stripes?"

"Uh, yeah."

"I thought so. Did you notice Jack White is sitting right behind us?"

I looked over my shoulder. Fuck. Me.

It was Jack White, Meg White, and the back of some mysterious strangers head. Less than twenty feet away. I briefly wondered if Meg had overheard Leslie and I talking about whether or not she was a good drummer, and if she and Jack got along anymore. I hoped not(even though, for the record Meg, I came down on your side on both issues).

A little starstruck, we tried to continue eating. We played it pretty cool the rest of our meal, only glancing over fifty or so times. Leslie had it harder than I did; my back was to their table while Leslie had to act as if she didn't notice the table of rock stars in her field of vision. When Meg, Jack and company got up and left, Leslie and I stared directly at each other - the epitome of not-caring New Yorkers⁶. The second they were out the door, we laughed at our ridiculousness.

And with that, the festival was really over.

---

¹I know, I know - isn't all coding boring? Still a geek, folks.

²"Sour Cherry" almost - almost - made me forget I was sitting at work, get up and dance.

³Leslie and I have a continuing discussion/debate about whether the Kills should add a human drummer. I say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Not sure how this applies to a drum machine, but seems to make sense.

⁴Yes, I had to look up the two other members.

⁵Do you suppose he's just smoked so much, he forgot?

⁶Fine, I don't yet qualify as a New Yorker - how many years does it take?

"Wrecking Ball", Dead Confederate

2008-10-28T11:13:00.004-04:00

Artist: Dead Confederate
Album Title: Wrecking Ball
Record Label: Razor & Tie
Release Date: 9/16/2008
Rating: 8.5
Bands Web Site: http://www.deadconfederate.com/
Sound: Indie Rock(Grunge mixed with Psychedelia and Alt-Country)
Similar Artists: No one really at the moment.

Being a whiny, white North American male I can easily relate to Dead Confederate and whatever demons they are trying to exorcise on their debut album Wrecking Ball. Many, many shitty bands have aped the earnest anguish of early grunge¹, but no one has taken the "authentic" sound of the early nineties and mixed it so innovatively with something new; in this case the southern gothic of alt-country and the spacey indulgences of psychedelia.

Lead singer Handy Morris's wail waxes from restrained to completely, insanely unhinged - most effectively on "The Rat", the album's best song. Behind Morris's most even performance the band mixes a mesh of grunge minor chords with sparse spans of delicate guitar needling - all building into a psychedelic soundscape2 of pain and desperation. The best songs on Wrecking Ball mirror "The Rat", blending equal(or nearly equal) parts Seattle and Stoner rock. It's a dark, sinister, cutting, innovative and interesting sound. Take "Goner", with its spacey-sounding verse that drives into a pounding, crashing chorus. Or the haunting dirge "It Was A Rose": the band creates a void and then fills it with epic bursts of sound, ending in an ear-splitting guitar solo. To rob a line from another one of this year's best releases, there are many shades of black - of anger, despair, sadness - and Dead Confederate knows this. Instead of one-note scream fests, the band makes atmospheric songs that illuminate all the subtle shades of angst, and then knock you over. This is not a mopey, dumpy sound. You won't listen to this shoulders slumped, gazing dead-eyed into the world - you will feel alive, angry with passion and grit. No one better fuck with you while "Start Me Laughing" is playing.

Not all of the songs on Wrecking Ball have that level of intensity(though most do); the longer, more Pink Floyd style songs "The News Underneath" and "Flesh Colored Canvas"³ might grate on some. Let's face it, most of us want pop music and anything over five minutes - no matter how good - is asking to be skipped. Confederate slowly builds each song but keeps things interesting for almost twenty hypnotic minutes.

It will be interesting to see where Confederate goes from here. Will their next album expand on the grunge aspect, or will they dig deeper into their southern-rooted sound? Either way, I can't wait to find out.

¹Most people will think of Staind. I won't debate their shittiness, but come one, you know you have at least "Outside" and "Been A While" floating around somewhere.

²When I write "soundscape", I really feel like a pretentious jackass.

³Most likely biggest fan, Hannibal Lecter.

---

Buy from eMusic.

ACL Day Two

2008-10-22T22:09:00.002-04:00

The makers of Amstel Light should be both very delighted and disappointed. Delighted that I love their commercial with people partying in Amsterdam, dancing in the streets and enjoying a bar-band show, but disappointed that the reason I'm happy when the commercial comes on is because I love the addictive song that accompanies all the young beautiful people wherever they go. And now that I know it's The Fratelis' "Chelsea Dagger", I'm going to download that song, play the fuck out of it for the next month or so, and never be anymore likely to buy Amstel Light than I was before I saw the commercial¹.

The Fratelis, the first band we see on day two of ACL, really gets the crowd going with "Chelsea Dagger": people are actually kinda sorta dancing(or at least rhythmically bouncing). Some of them are drinking Heineken Light(at least it's a European beer). The Fratelis play some pretty good, hooky pop tunes. I'm constantly reminded these days, though, that just making catchy songs isn't enough - everyone has to be transcendent. Any band that seems like it will only be good for an album(or god forbid just a single) or two isn't worth anything. I'm not sure why to enjoy these songs 10 years from now The Fratelis will have to be considered - at the very least - a very good rock band, but I'll bet it has something to do with Radiohead. But I like JET, so what do I know.

---

The sun beat down like a death ray, with Leslie and I in the killzone. We watched Back Door Slam(a power-trio in the Cream tradition, according to the festival guide) finish up a pretty good version of "Outside Woman Blues". I wanted to be enthusiastic for Slam, with their old-school blues-rock approach that I usually eat up, but the heat was sapping what little energy I could muster for their mostly mundane performance. I felt bad Leslie was missing Band of Heathens for this, and felt worse when we could hear them from the BMI stage as we left the festival, heading for Barton Springs. They sounded much more interesting than Slam.

Interestingly, Leslie thought I had recommended both Band of Heathens and The Heartless Bastards to her. I'm not sure what this says about me, but it can't be good.

---

Leslie and I have no sense of direction; luckily Leslie has the sense to ask for directions.

We were headed in the exact opposite direction of Barton Springs(where there was a pool we wanted to use to cool off). It was hyped by the festival organizers and from what we'd heard, it was an actual swimming hole - it was right in the river. After some more helpful locals got us pointed in the right direction, we found it. We thought.

Walking along the river, we saw a few festival attendees taking a dip in the river. It didn't seem that special. The river itself was pretty narrow, the water clear but the bottom a dubious collection of rocks, pebbles and slime. Plus, neither of us had brought a bathing suit. We dipped our feet, remarked at the slight disappointment Barton Springs was, and made our way back to the festival.

The next day, we would find the real Barton Springs.

---

Erykah Badu loves to talk; about her many nicknames², the curious name of her last album(apparently World War III has already happened - I'm guessing we won?), and the possibility of a black President(which gets huge applause). My favorite part of her ramblings, though, was when she advocated overthrowing the United States government.

OK, that's the kind of gross simplification many public figures complain about, but tell me, how else would you interpret someone who told you we needed a whole new system? But that's not the best part of Badu's talk. The best part was when she likened the electing of the President to putting a new manager in a bowling alley, except you see we don't need a bowling alley, we need a skating rink. And what miracle-working manager is going to pull that kind of transformation off? Fucking bowling alleys.

Her music was great.

---

After Badu finishes her set, we stay put because ~~Bright Eyes~~ Conor Oberst will be playing at the same stage in a bit and we want to be fairly close for that. Well, Leslie stays put while I wander off to the food tents, because I have to eat every two hours, it seems. I did have a morning run, which in vacation rationality erases the following: two cokes, two beef-wursts with mustard, one tray of New York style potatoes, one beer, and the eggs, sausage and cheese Tex-Mex monstrosity I had for breakfast. Apparently, it takes four Vacation Calories to equal one normal calorie, and I ran a marathon on the Clarion Inn treadmill. True story.

I'd never seen Oberst, and if you haven't and don't care for him, you should stay away. Because his hipster good-looks and earnest vulnerability will crush whatever hatred you have of him. For the length of his set, you will become what you hate most - a doe-eyed ~~Bright Eyes~~ Conor Oberst fan, swaying to the beat, singing the choruses, and contemplating the vast, mysterious nature of life.

His set was mostly song-for-song from his last self-titled album(which is very good), but he and the Mystic Valley Band did a fantastic cover of "Kodachrome", a song I love because it was the first time I heard anything remotely resembling a bad word on the radio. Well that and "I'm Your Venus" by The Shocking Blue, because it sounded like she was singing 'I'm Your Penis'. And Penis, I don't have to tell you, is exactly the kind of word you want to hear when you're eleven years old and riding in a car with your parents.

---

We walked towards The Black Keys after Oberst's set; unfortunately they were on the other end of the festival grounds. It would be packed by the time we got there. Smoke drifted from the food court over ponds and pools of people; people mixed in a chaotic current flowing towards the stages, tents and bathrooms. These throngs with their poles and flags silhouetted against the evening sky resembled a post-apocalyptic army marching through the hot, flat wastelands of Texas. Should I be prepared to fend off cannibals?

Arriving at the outskirts of the Black Keys crowd, we could barely hear the band. I had heard the Keys were awesome live, so this situation was unacceptable. Leslie and I poked and prodded for openings in the crowd, slipping in between people to seize even the tiniest piece of show-gazing real estate. We kept our eyes open for anyone leaving, shuffling, or otherwise giving us an opportunity to move up. In no time at all, we were close enough to hear the band in full force. It was well worth it.

After the Keys, we stayed for a bit of Allison Krauss and Robert Plant. They did a slow, acoustic version of "Black Dog" that I only recognized by the lyrics at first, then the tune came into focus. It was pretty good. We considered Beck, but the crowd seemed to cover half of the festival grounds. We could barely see Beck on the stage screens we were so far away, but from what I could tell, he looked like a rock n' roll scarecrow(really fucking cool).

We left to find some food.

---

¹I have no real Amstel Light opinion, if I'm in the mood for a light beer and it's on tap, hell I might buy it.

²My favorite being "Analog Girl In A Digital World", because it's the most bullshit way of saying your "old-school" I've ever heard.

"The 59 Sound" - The Gaslight Anthem, Review

2008-10-18T12:51:00.008-04:00

Artist: The Gaslight Anthem
Album Title: The '59 Sound
Record Label: Side One Dummy
Release Date: 8/25/2008
Rating: 9.0
Bands Web Site: http://www.gaslightanthem.com/
Sound: Punk Rock, Garage Rock, Pop
Similar Artists: Against Me!, Dropkick Murphys, The Replacements, Bruce Springsteen

Drunkenly walking home across the Pulaski Bridge to Brooklyn one night last week, "Great Expectations" from the Gaslight Anthem's new album The '59 Sound came on my iPod and I was swept up in the band's wickedly sweet sound: a mix of punk energy with New Jersey, blue-jeans-and-bars classic rock. Perfect for an inebriated streetlamp lit walk back home. Along with lead singer Brian Fallon I belted out the chorus 'I saw daylights/Last night/and I dreamed about my first wife/Everybody leaves and I'd expect the same from you', no doubt startling a couple of my fellow late-night pedestrians, but I couldn't help it - I felt like the song was about me. Music is always better when it feels personal; with that in mind, I may be swept up in the honeymoon stage of love with The '59 Sound, so take my enthusiasm with a grain of salt(but just a grain, the band is really good).

The best songs from the tight, 12 song affair are energizing; full of head-bobbing riffs and dramatic melodies. It's a sweaty bar-basement show where you shout out the choruses2 as the band rips through their set. Fallon's soulful, often heartbreaking vocals sets the band apart from their peers(imagine the Hold Steady fronted by a 1980s Paul Westerberg). Fallon's lyrics drip with earnest('And Maria came from Nashville with a suitcase in her hand/I always kinda sorta wished I looked like Elvis/And in my head there's all these classic cars and outlaw cowboy bands/I always kinda sorta wished I was someone else' from "High Lonesome") and tell a unique story you can still relate to. I may have never been a Jersey boy wishing he was Johnny Cash or Elvis, but everyone has wished they were someone else at some point.

When a band has a winning formula, there is a danger of all the songs sounding the same. Luckily, Gaslight Anthem avoids that(like on a great AC/DC album) - you'll never find yourself thinking 'this song rocks, but which one is it?'(like on a good AC/DC album)3. In fact, there are so many good songs I had a hard time deciding which ones in particular to write about; '59 Sound could be a greatest hits album all by itself. Next Saturday night, download this album, grab a beer, a buddy, and enjoy.

---

1This is the sound I think Brandon Flowers was going for, and largely failed to get, on Sam's Town. Guess you need a band from Jersey to channel the Boss.

2You will be singing: 'Don't wait too long to come home/My have the years of our youth passed on/Don't wait too long to come home/I'll leave the front light on' from "Miles Davis & The Cool" and 'Can I get a witness pretty baby/I still love Tom Petty songs/And driving old men crazy' from "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues".

3Yes, these are the only two kinds of AC/DC albums.

---

Buy from eMusic, iTunes.

ACL Day One

2008-10-10T00:09:00.001-04:00

"Haven't you heard 'Keep Austin Weird'?" Veronica, of the Austin Clarion Inn, asked with an uneasy smile.

Honestly, I had not: this was my first time in Austin, for my first Austin City Limits festival. In fact, Leslie and I were so unfamiliar with the bohemian Austin spirit that we were shocked to find the small problem with our hotel room that had Veronica nervously pondering her computer: all the furniture had been piled on-top of the unmade beds.

After traveling all day it almost made sense in my disorientated, just-get-to-a-bed state. Yeah, it's one of these arrange the furniture and make up the bed rooms. Of course.

It was bad enough to be in a smoking room(another mysterious Clarion mistake), but this? At least Veronica was friendly. She quickly found us another room(still smoking). As she handed us the room "keys", I noticed the little plastic card had an ad for Domino's Pizza on it. Ha! I was in Austin; I was here to enjoy genuine Texas food! Why would I eat something I could get back in New York? She handed me a separate key for the hotel's "fitness center". The treadmill was also something I could do back in New York, but considering all the barbecue I expected to eat over the next few days, I thought it was best to at least have the option of keeping that habit up.

---

The next day Leslie and I almost took the bus in the opposite direction of downtown Austin. Thankfully before taking a ride to only God knows where, we realized we needed exact change for the bus. One dollar. So we went back to the Exxon station(I had just been there in a futile attempt to find sunblock, which I had to find soon or it would be short, red and painful festival for me), bought some bottled water, and upon our return were turned around by some helpful locals.

One dollar for the bus? I liked Austin already. Fellow festival-goers rode awkwardly with blankets, backpacks, and outstretched maps. Being totally unprepared, I had no such encumbrances. The locals sat looking bored and used to the annual invasions of their city(in addition to ACL, South By Southwest is held in Austin). Passing the state capitol building, we eavesdropped on a conversation between a local and couple with folding-chairs and wide-rimmed hats for any useful festival information. There wasn't any.

---

Before walking to the festival pickup point downtown, we had breakfast at a "funky" coffee house. Funky means the waitresses have tattoos and local art hangs on the walls. This seems to be the minimum requirement for any establishment to be "funky" or "quirky" regardless of where you are in the country. Conformity doesn't only come in Starbucks green and brown.

We had to pay at the register before sitting. I ordered some french toast, a side of bacon and the very inviting freshly-squeezed orange juice. Maybe the oranges are from just across the border, I thought, from the orange groves Conor Oberst sings about on "Cape Canaveral". The ones he saw in Mexico while recording his last album; a song he would probably perform when we saw him on day two. How fitting. Before handing us our table marker, the nice girl behind the counter poured my orange juice from a carton.

Sipping my freshly-poured orange juice, I talked with Leslie about who we were excited to see the first day. I was only hyper-familiar with one band on the docket, Vampire Weekend(who I like, though I find it interesting Peter Gabriel managed to somehow split himself into four Columbia students). I was really looking forward to The Mars Volta, because I'd only heard of them, but never actually heard them. I had a sound in my head; a heavy, terribly chaotic but beautiful sound that I imagined was theirs. I was a little uneasy, because the sound I end up hearing almost never matches what I imagine, but I was eager to see how closely reality matched what I had culled from reading about the band.

---

I still didn't feel like I was in Austin. We had redeemed our tickets for wristbands(which we would have to wear during the entire three-day festival, which I thought odd), and were on the bus to the festival grounds. I imagined it would feel strange to be in Austin, a place I'd never been, so far away from home. Outside, the city could have been a summer day in any American town. The only clue I had was the Texas license plates and the slightly higher proportion of cowboy boots to all other forms of footwear.

At the grounds, it finally hit me. The huge, sweeping fields were filled with people walking around with banners and flags flying from long poles sticking out of their backpacks, looking like hipster-samurais. The cheering mixed with thundering bass-lines from the nearby stages came from all sides. I was in Austin, finally. At the first stage, watching a Brooklyn band called Yeasayer, the joy and excitement culminated in the defining existential crisis of concert-goers: do we really just stand here?

In the dry, Texas heat listening to Yeasayer's unique brand of wandering, spacey indie rock, excited, anxious, sweating...do I really just stand here? Should I try to dance? This is a festival, shouldn't I be a little more festive? Freak-out at every good part, jump up and down flailing my arms like a maniac or something?

No. I'm white(like most here), so I'll just stand, swaying and bobbing slightly(like most here).

---

Watching Vampire Weekend, I was getting a little pissed off. Not at the band, but at their fans. They weren't belligerent, stuck-up, or graham-cracker boring and they weren't talking mindlessly through the set. No, they were throwing up the horns.

For. Vampire. Weekend.

The demonic sign of heavy fucking metal, for Vampire Weekend, makers of hyper-literate ivy-league dance pop. Look people, that's not fucking Slayer up there. I don't see Megadeth, Metallica, Anthrax or even Billy Fucking Idol. What the fuck is wrong with the world that people are calling on Satan during "Oxford Comma"?

A frequent offender was an attractive woman dancing on top of a security fence during most of VW's set. The guard nearest her didn't mind, in fact, he was obviously enjoying the view. She was dressed like a neo-hippie: a hippie's wardrobe but modern hygiene. Enticing, but then two other security guards came over and made her get down. Behind me, I heard another woman say 'Thank GAWD!'

The men were silent.

---

M. Ward was my favorite show of day one, and not just because he played away from the sun under the tent at the WaMu Memorial stage. In his arresting acoustic opener, Ward handled his guitar like a lover, holding it low, leaning over it attentively - almost drunkenly - as he played. Later in the set he switched to a black electric guitar with silver accents, and as he and his band thundered through some great country-rock songs, Ward and the guitar became an iconic image in my mind of what a rock musician should look and sound like.

---

It was dark by the time the Mars Volta came on, and they were everything I expected. Within five minutes I could see why their hardcore fans love them(super-technical virtuoso musicianship, extraordinary stage presence, and a mind-blowing hard, loud sound) and why so many other people hate them(musical indulgences that would make even Led Zeppelin say, hey, that's a little much. Seriously, I was there for thirty minutes and they got through maybe two and a half songs).

We left early because Leslie wasn't feeling too well. Back at the hotel, I ordered Domino's, and wondered what day two would bring.

Conor Oberst, Conor Oberst

2008-09-18T21:18:00.002-04:00

Artist: Conor Oberst
Album Title: Conor Oberst
Record Label: Ramseur
Release Date: 8/5/2008
Rating: 8.0
Bands Web Site: http://www.conoroberst.com/
Sound: Indie Rock, Country Rock, Singer-Songwriter
Similar Artists: Colin Meloy, Jenny Lews, Bob Dylan

"Hey, have you heard the new Conor Oberst?

"There's a new Bright Eyes?"

"No, it's just Conor Oberst."

"...Bright Eyes basically is just Conor Oberst; I don't understand."

"The album is 'Conor Oberst' by Conor Oberst; he didn't go by 'Bright Eyes' for this album."

"Is that some sort of statement?"

"I have no idea. I guess it would be like if Bono released an album called 'Paul Hewson' as Paul Hewson. And if he did that, I would take it as him trying to be less of a pretentious douchebag, though I'm not sure that's what Oberst is doing."

"It's frightening you know Bono's real name. So is Oberst being less of a douchebag?"

"Well, I'm not exactly sure he is a douchebag to begin with. He does some pretty fucking annoying things on his records, but maybe he's just too earnest. I mean, who puts an interview of themselves on their own record? Even if its fake."

"And has background voices."

"Yeah. And Cassedega? The fucking thing won a Grammy...for best record packaging, with all that hidden shit. I mean it was a decent enough record, but I didn't feel like I could relate to it. In fact, I haven't really liked a Bright Eyes album since I'm Wide Awake It's Morning."

"Because you live in New York City?"

"Because it wasn't just about fucking Conor Oberst! And that's what I like about this album, it has a bunch of songs that are him singing about shit that has nothing to do with him or anyone he knows. He went to Mexico and wrote some songs about all kinds of shit. It doesn't make me feel like I need to search for some deeper hipster-ironic meaning in every fucking song."

"Are any of the songs about Mexico?"

"I have no fucking idea, really, but they have some beautiful lyrics. Like on 'Cape Canaveral', he sings 'Like the citrus glow off the old orange grove/Or the red rocket blaze over Cape Canaveral/It’s been a nightmare to me'. It's beautiful, and stays close to his folk-rock center instead of drifting to the fringes of his sound. It's uncomfortable sounding by his fringe..."

"I'll have to buy the record, because you can't sing for shit dude."

"There's a reason I'm talking to you about this record instead of making my own. Anyway, he also rocks a lot more on this album than he usually does. Country-rock songs, some real rollicking numbers like 'Sauslito', 'I Don't Wanna Die(In The Hospital)', 'Moab' and 'Souled Out!!!'. Electric guitar solos, crashing drums, he goes all out. 'I Don't Wanna Die' is my favorite song, it has a furious pace, and it's just fun. He actually laughs on one track, it sounds like he's having fun. Not as much navel gazing. And I don't know exactly who is in The Mystic Valley Band, but they play the hell out of their instruments."

"The Mystic Valley Band?"

"Yeah, he dubbed his backing band the Mystic Valley Band."

"'Dubbed'? Did they have a say in this? Can you just go around dubbing things?"

"...that's not the point."

"Whatever, sounds a little douchey to me. I don't go around naming my friends."

"I have a theory that people who go around saying exactly what they think and doing exactly what they want get labeld douchebags by people who can't stand the fact that someone isn't polite enough to play along with all of society's bullshit."

"...that sounds like something a douchebag would say."

"Fuck you, just buy the record."

Download from eMusic, iTunes.

That's Not What I Meant

2008-09-09T11:17:00.001-04:00

I've been going home a lot lately. Travelling means bringing things; which in turn means forgetting said things. I've lost some weight this year, so my jeans ride a little too low without a belt. Unfortunately, I've left belts at a friend's house in Baltimore, my parents' place, and at friends' in the city. Which left me beltless the other day at the office, my jeans threatening to fall right off my Irish ass(which is an oxymoron), and led to the following exchange:

Lady Co-worker: You should buy some belts.

Me(without thinking): Yeah, I keep leaving my belts at other people's places.

Lady Co-worker: ...

So, now I'm the office man-whore.

Music Review: The Avett Brothers, Gleam II

2008-09-03T23:08:00.002-04:00

Artist: The Avett Brothers
Album Title: The Gleam II (EP)
Record Label: Ramseur
Release Date: 7.22.2008
Rating: 8.5
Bands Web Site: http://www.theavettbrothers.com/
Sound: Alternative Country, Progressive Folk (Warm acoustic sounding)
Similar Artists: Wilco, The Jayhawks

I would like to thank The Avett Brothers for providing the perfect antidote for the late summer blues. Listening to "The Gleam II"¹ is a cathartic experience; the warm acoustic songs about family, love, death and regret help you sort things out - or at least come to terms with them. Your head nods along with a beautiful melody and thoughts about letting the past go("Tear Down This House"), family loves and rivalry('there was nothing worth sharing/like the love that let us/share our name', from "Murder In The City") or just laments about how messed up love is ('and Cupids arrow is backwards and bent/when it flies for me', from "Black, Blue") form in your head. Or maybe that part is just me. Though, if you've managed to spend time on this planet and you can't relate to regret, loves lost and family drama you're either very blessed or the living damned.

Of course the Brother's 2006 breakthrough "Emotionalism" explored similar ground(in fact, so have all their records). Somehow, though, "Gleam II" still sounds fresh, with the open sound of the banjo, the plucking acoustic guitar and heartfelt worn vocals. It manages to be simple, but not monotonous and boring. Towards the end of the EP, the songs do seem to run into each other's sameness - and then an electric version of "The Greatest Sum" drops. At first, after seven songs sounding of hollowed wood and strings, the electric guitar and banging drum-fills are jarring - but the classic-rock skinning adds another layer of impact and drama to the song. I hope this is a sign of things to come on their upcoming Rick Rubin produced album(apparently the bearded guru was a fan of "Emotionalism", which I guess means it can't be regarded as overlooked anymore).

¹When I hear the word "Gleam", I can't help but think of Marty Schottenheimer's famous 'there's a gleam, gentlemen, there's a gleam' speech. This is why I'll never be a true romantic.

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A Decision

2008-09-01T21:13:00.001-04:00

I'm visiting my parents, taking a shower when I notice that there are two variations of the same brand of men's body wash sitting next to the shampoo: Revitalizing Cool, and Invigorating Clean. Apparently my brothers have minor but important differences in their choice of body washes, and now I'm left with a choice. A big choice. The consequences could reverberate the rest of the day.

Do I want to be revitalized or invigorated? I assume both products get you clean, so does that mean one gives a bonus aura of "cool"? What do I want to say later in the day when someone asks how I am? Will I be telling a beautiful woman at a bar that I'm invigorated, maybe wishing I could be saying that I was revitalized...and cool, baby.

And there's more. The invigorating brand says it's "50% more value", yet it's clearly only a third bigger than the other bottle at most. Can I dock points from a brand for lying? Will using it influence me to lie? Will they be invigorating lies?

The decision was impossible, so I did the only logical thing: I used both. So, I was invigoratingly revitalized clean and cool. That's four adjectives to start the day.

Another Late Arrival

2008-08-25T00:57:00.002-04:00

There is one thing I do enjoy about getting into New York late: catching a glimpse of the trains leaving the city. Not the MTA subway cars, but real trains. Trains with two stories of windows glowing blue across the side, making the machine look like a deep-sea creature swimming through the darkness just over and beneath the edge of the turnpike.

A Party

2008-08-20T00:02:00.000-04:00

A party, on Monday night. Interesting.

My roommate's former co-workers, from...two jobs ago? All involved with some billionaire. They are good looking, interesting, long-legged and broad-shouldered. They have accents, money, PhDs, knowledge and opinions on wine, European travel and soccer. A date in Paris is discussed with the same semi-enthused tone I use to talk about a good deli around the corner.

"Come on out, hang out!" they say.

And talk about what exactly? That I want to buy Madden 09? My trip back to my hometown in Maryland? The suburbs? Outside there is a professional chef(handling the grill while I cook plain chicken, rice and beans), an heiress, a doctor, another chef, and two diplomats. Diplomats! Asking if I'm an American! Is that bad? I'm almost embarrassed to put on pre-season Monday Night Football. Almost. Is there a better way to tell them I'm irrevocably American? Quickly, I switch to the Olympics...even though Family Guy is on TBS...no! Keep it at the Olympics(Giants/Browns was at halftime).

A guest wants to play Wii Sports. OK, that I can handle. What will she pick? Tennis? Golf? She picks...bowling! Impossibly tall, sophisticated French woman picks the game of beer guts and ash trays.

She is good, but tipsy. I'm sober, and a little better. She's drunkenly fake-angry at her loss. Maybe there's a little real anger. Now, she could be a friend back home. A fellow regular guy at the dive bar...

Until her attractive, Latin fiance comes to take her home. They are all so different from me. Yet, we'll always have Wii Bowling.

A Good Start

2008-08-19T11:05:00.003-04:00

This is how I would like to start every morning: trying to use the sink that's full of my roommate's dirty dishes(from a Monday night party) and accidentally splashing water so it looks like I pissed myself, followed by delayed trains, and then finally getting to work to find someone else has logged into your machine and locked it.

Fun.

Late Arrival

2008-08-19T00:24:00.001-04:00

Arriving in New York late last night, I noticed how long the tunnel from the Port Authority to the seven train is. Completely devoid of people, the lines of the floor tiles stretch out towards infinity, scaling the people at the far end into specks. The next morning, throngs of commuters will crowd around on all sides, making the tunnel just more walking on the way to work. Late at night, though, it can breathe.

The cackle of an annoyingly loud woman is more grating when you've been stuck in a Greyhound bus for four hours. Especially when you had to tell the guy next you, hey dude, I'm sure you've got a nice ass, but I still don't want half of it in my seat. The cavities that form in your head from lack of sleep fill up with her banal, stupid laughter. People shouldn't be this happy right before Monday.

Everything seems amplified, but in a bad way. An old woman singing for meal money on a mostly empty train is the most depressing thing in the world at two in the morning.

The one exception seems to be borderline women, who become more - not less - fuckable.

I need some sleep.

Ramblings, Death Cab, and Guilt

2008-08-12T22:01:00.003-04:00

Skip to thoughts on Death Cab.

I am lost.

No, I'm not lost. I'm directionless. Searching for meaning. Fulfillment. But where? From what?

Work? Why don't I feel fulfillment from work? Whenever I try to build my identity(yes, that's the word - knowing yourself is important, I've heard) through work I feel foolish. Isn't it common knowledge that most work is bullshit? Who will remember you for the extra time you put in the office? Is that what you want your family and friends to think of? Yes, I do remember hearing this message - mostly from Hollywood millionaires pretending to be middle-class men who should be content with their place in life. Lost family men who've betrayed their families by missing a Little League game or a piano recital(don't kids do anything interesting? fuck, no wonder pretend Dads and Moms don't want to show up to this shit). Men doing their dream jobs telling us to be content without our dream jobs.

Perhaps if your work is your dream(and therefore important to you), it's OK. From Children's Magician to CEO, I bet both know themselves pretty good through their work. It's part of who they are. Is my job part of who I am?

Maybe there is a problem with my assumptions(which are always dangerous); maybe when you go looking for work that is meaningful you actually rob it of any chance of giving you fulfillment. You can't get by on the "idea' of important work, because you've abstracted it too much. It should just come naturally; what you would be doing anyway.

And if that's true, then what would be important, fulfilling work to me would be reading, writing, watching movies, and doing whatever comes next...

...that's not a fucking job! That doesn't sound like doing anything, let alone an occupation. It's just hanging out.

So yeah, I won't find fulfillment -- at least not total, zen level fulfillment -- through work. At least not yet. That doesn't mean I can't find a certain kind of satisfaction. Hard work can be it's own reward, if you don't take it too seriously. That lesson only took twenty-nine years to learn...

...I'll bet women respond to men who don't do this kind of over-thinking; men who just get things done without wondering what does it all mean?

Is that what the red-head¹ was trying to tell me?

"I'm attracted to a guy who is in control..."

I could tell from the tone of her voice what she meant. I could take that tone and march it around New York and it would match frequencies with the vibes those men put out, buzzing in attraction. And even if one was a children's clown, they would be in control. More control than I'm in, that's for sure.

Like I said, I'm directionless. Each morning I start being tossed about by myself, wondering where I'll bounce myself to next. I have no control over myself - and what else should I be controlling? Maybe this lack of control is why I listened to that damn Death Cab for Cutie album more than once...

I'll admit, I don't particularly care for the last Death Cab album(or the band itself, for that matter). Sure, "I Will Possess Your Heart" is a decent song but I prefer the radio edit version, not the rambling, pointlessly long album cut. I tried, believe me I tried to like them but after a while the lead singer's whiny chirp of a voice grates on my nerves. See, I don't even know his name! Yet I feel compelled to have an opinion about his band, or face losing my music credibility. So I listened to that last album(something to do with stairs), and I listened, and I kept listening even though I strongly disliked what I was hearing. And then, for the last track, someone reads the fucking credits. That's the soundtrack to a hipster circle jerk. Who the fuck thought anyone would want to listen to the album credits? If I like your band, I'll read the fucking liner notes, OK? Christ people, have some faith.

ANYWAY, control, direction..how do I right a rudderless ship? Stop making obvious metaphorical writing choices? Couldn't hurt.

I'm reading more, listening to more music, trying to find out what I like, what I am like and in the end, trying to become someone I would like to meet, hang out with, shoot the shit, invite to a party, and possibly meet up for a late night fuck. Who knows?

And it feels a little wrong. Hasn't Judd Apatow and Zach Braff saturated the market with this crap? Isn't this whiny-white-male-disillusioned-and-lost bullshit been done to death? It's so out. And, unfortunately for me, manic pixie dream girls don't really exist. They're just manic.

Well, even if it's out of fashion, it's still where I am. And it's probably why I liked "Definitely, Maybe"², watch How I Met Your Mother, and listen to Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over"³ late at night like it's a profound act.

Still, I feel a little guilty that if I had a vagina I'd have much less shit in popular culture to identify with.

Could I identify with "Stay Positive", the latest from Hold Steady? Are Craig Finn's lyrics gender-crossing? He does sing about Boys and Girls in America, after all, not just boys. And it would be really easy to say "Here's One For The Cutters" should resonate with women(thought it feels dirty). Still, they are heavily classic-rock influenced, not the most popular genre of music among women(I actually had one girl tell me she wouldn't date a man who listened to Lynrd Skynrd). But that's all based on stupid stereotypes. I'm the only person I know who cut themselves and I didn't even listen to Bruce Springsteen until a girl got me into him.

You know what, to hell with feeling ashamed of what I like.

¹The red-head isn't actually red-headed, technically. But my mind plays tricks on my eyes.

²My man-crush on Ryan Reynolds is also a factor.

³In a true sign of being able to bullshit, I know that Crowded House is supposed to be an underrated 80s band with a worthy catalog that goes way beyond this one hit single. And I'll say that. But this is still the only song of theirs I've heard.

Shall We Play A Game?

2008-07-25T14:29:00.000-04:00

I saw WarGames last night on the big screen, and it was a treat. A solitary one, too, since I couldn't find anyone to go with. Hell, it was hard to find someone at work who had heard of the damn movie(which is celebrating it's 25th anniversary, making me old).

When I arrived at the theater, the audience was mostly mid-thirty-somethings with wedding rings, beer bellies, bald spots and - sigh - children. Though the kids were a little endearing; like watching a geek-torch passing.

There was a small technical hiccup in about three-quarters through(which prompted the expected Joshua jokes), but I didn't mind since that gave me an unexpected bathroom break.

Seeing the old-school computer hardware -- floppy disks, modems, green terminal text -- was interesting. I can only imagine how fantastic this all seemed in 1983.

In a behind-the-scenes feature that aired before the movie, Mathew Broderick revealed that for the two small scenes where he plays Galaga in a *gasp* arcade(a true relic of the times), the producers of the movie bought him a Galaga machine and put it in his trailer. He also had to learn how to type(no one had computers then). Galaga got a lot more of his attention then typing.

Hot Hot Heat

2008-07-22T11:53:00.001-04:00

I hate sweating. The sticky, slick slimy feeling of your shirt clinging wetly all over; like being pawed at by a moist-palmed pervert. And that little trickle down a leg or the small of your back, it's a sudden jolt of ickiness. A reminder of how disgustingly flesh and bone you are.

It's been remarkably hot lately. My room nearly reached 100 degrees Sunday and yesterday. My apartment has AC, it just doesn't reach my room. I have a large, towering ineffectual fan instead. If you want to move hot air around, I can't recommend it enough. At least today is a little cooler.

I've been good with the exercising, and up until a brotherly visit last week, good with the eating. I'm back on track now, though, so hopefully my goals can still be reached this summer.

Something Useful For A Change

2008-07-21T11:51:00.001-04:00

Music is personal. Tastes vary wildly from person to person. My Desert Island All Time Top Five Records probably includes some music you'd gladly use for a signal fire. Listening habits, however -- especially with the advent of the iPod -- seem to be very similar. Stop me if you have the usual playlists: by genre, by artist, maybe a work out or happy mix, and if you tire of those -- and who doesn't -- bam, you just hit Shuffle. And skip, skip, and skip. Why does that same Madonna/Radiohead/Kanye song always come up on shuffle? Is Apple fucking with you? Who knows.

There is a better way, at least if your goal is to get a fresher mix of your favorite songs, new songs, and stuff you haven't heard in a while. And it's (relatively) simple: iTunes Smart Playlists.

The main foundation for my playlists are taken from this fantastic article by Andy Budd, iTunes Smart Playlists. I highly recommend the article; it's useful and easy to implement. The basic idea is to create several "feeder" Smart Playlists: favorites, new songs, songs not played often, and a mix of songs that haven't been played in a couple weeks. All of these are combined into one "Master" playlist. The only real difference is that I try to rate all my music - leaving audiobooks, podcasts, and videos unrated so they won't show up - and as such my "feeder" playlists have a rating condition. Usually "rating greater than three" or "rating equals x", while in Budd's system, only the favorites playlist is rated. Budd's system will work fine, however, for anyone who is not as anal as me when it comes to rating their tracks.

My ":Master Mix" playlist is limited to eight hours of music, the maximum amount of music I imagine I would need for a workday.

Budd also uses his master playlist to make several genre centered playlists. I also do this, but I set up the same feeder system for each genre, instead of having it feed from the master list(since mine is "only" eight hours).

I name my genre playlists after radio stations around Laurel, Maryland, where I grew up.

My radio playlists are:

: Radio (Alternative 99.1 HFS)
: Radio (Classic Rock 94.7)
: Radio (Indie 102.7)
: Radio (Oldies 100.3)
: Radio (98 Rock)
: Radio (Hot 99.5)
: Radio (95.5 The People Station)

This adds a personal touch, rather than just the same old boring "Alternative", "Classic Rock" title playlists. I add the ": Radio" prefix to keep them near the top of the Playlists menu on my iPod or iPhone. Of course it should be noted that no "Indie 102.7" ever existed, but I needed to call the Indie radio playlist something.

All of these playlists use two feeder playlists: "Genre Feed" and "Genre New". "Genre Feed" looks for songs in the genre that have not been played in four weeks, have a rating over three, and selects two hours at random. "Genre New" looks for songs in the "New Music" playlist that match the genre, and limits the selection to one hour of music(the rating, and other considerations are already handled by the "New Music" playlist).

The ": Radio" playlists combine these two feeder lists, limited to one hour of music, selected at random. Since the "feeder" is twice as big as the "new" playlist, you should get a 2-1 ratio of "old favorites" to "new music". This can be tinkered with to your liking, providing you have enough "new" music to fill up the "Genre New" playlist.

This kind of set-up is perfect for a limited storage device like the iPhone. 8GB is not nearly enough for a sizable music library, so instead, my iPhone syncs the above Radio playlists and my Mix playlists. After listening to some music while I'm out and about, I re-sync it, and the playlists get re-populated with fresh content.

Still, I love having access to my entire library, because sometimes you just want to listen to The Replacement's entire catalog or you need to hear one of the more obscure selections in your collection. For that, I still use my video iPod with 160GB of storage.

A Reoccuring Dream

2008-07-18T00:17:00.002-04:00

A Reoccurring Dream: I'm a little boy, at the age when first memories begin to form...the youngest I ever was. Not yet fully aware of myself. I'm sitting in front of a television. A commercial comes on - for what, it doesn't matter - starring another little boy. He's blonde. He's handsome. I know because my babysitter says so.

A little boy thought: I'm blonde! So I am handsome!

I run to the bathroom to look at myself. I see the boy in the mirror.

A little boy thought: I don't look like the boy on TV...

...I must not be handsome.

My first memory; my first disappointment.

There is an element of this dream in every day that's happened since.

A Couple Of Random Thoughts

2008-07-14T19:42:00.001-04:00

I now we all love our iPods/Zens/whatevers to death, and we can't imagine daily commutes - or life - without them. I count myself among the countless hordes you can identify by spotting those white earbuds, or a pair of noise canceling headphones when I'm feeling really pretentious. But you will never, ever spot me wearing those while ordering my coffee, lunch, or anything else for that matter. You won't see me doing what the prick in front of me did today: taking one bud out, and then draping it over his ear. Hole-lee FUCK, people. Look, this is not an ATM or an online order; there is an actual human being behind the counter who deserves your attention when they are trying to take your order. Especially since you will be the first person to bitch if anything is wrong. Plus - and I know this may come as a shock - your music will wait for you. It will not gleefully ignore the pause command and go on playing while wishing a fuck you at you, robbing you of your favorite song. Come one people, we are trying to have a civilization here!
We have two elevators at work. Sitting in the lobby one day, I noticed the "5" above the second elevator door was burnt out. Watching the descent, the car goes to "6", disappears for a few seconds, then goes to "4". During those few seconds, I like to pretend the car is in the Twilight Zone.

July Update

2008-07-09T16:21:00.002-04:00

So far so good with the running. Getting up early, running, then heading to work knowing I don't have to hop on the treadmill before eating some lunch. Of course, getting up is still a bitch.

Eating is going pretty good too. I'm fixing a lot of meals at home, then saving half for lunch the next day. The extra tupperware cleaning is annoying, but it saves a lot of money.

Just have to keep it up.

NetFlix Has Me...

2008-07-07T17:16:00.001-04:00

In an official act of singlehood, I finally signed up for a NetFlix account. I know I'm very, very late to the party. Technically, I had one when I was married - but it was really my ex-wife's account. I had little input on the movies arriving in those neat red envelopes.

Now, though, I'm in total control. Already my queue has hit triple digits, filled with movies I've missed the last couple of years, classics I've neglected to see, and favorites I want to see again(but for some reason do not own).

My first arrivals came Saturday: 3:10 to Yuma, Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny, and Season One, Disc One of LOST. Yes, LOST. I never boarded the LOST train(or in this case, plane) when it first aired, but now I'm all aboard. Those first four episodes hooked me.

NetFlix should definitely help with my goal of staying single the entire summer, keeping me locked away in my apartment, basking in the glow of the TV while manipulating my queue and rating movies in hopes of getting some good suggestions from the NetFlix robots. I already can't wait for the rest of the first season of LOST(though I'm told after this, it gets really weird until picking up again in the fourth season).

I also watched American Psycho for the first time over the weekend, and I have to say, now I understand why some people just couldn't see Christian Bale as Batman. After all, Patrick Bateman is pure evil. Not exactly superhero material. Like Bruce Wayne, though, Bateman is a mentally disturbed member of the upper class, alienated from everything around him. Though he doesn't imagine demonic cat-eating ATMs or daydream about dismembering hookers with chainsaws, Wayne is still very unhinged. And for some reason, I can imagine Wayne going on at length about his favorite artists and albums(though I doubt Huey Lewis and the News is in big rotation in the Batmobile; more likely he rocks out to something dark and elegant - like Led Zeppelin¹).

¹He definitely does NOT listen to anything Goth.

July

2008-07-03T16:34:00.001-04:00

I've decided July will be dedicated to my fitness and health. I've been pretty good about the gym since February, going five to six times a week. I've lost almost 20 pounds(while being asked if I was remembering to eat...believe me, I would never forget that, I love food too much).

Going into July, though, I find myself plateauing. So, I'm going to start seeing a personal trainer on Sundays, and I'll be eating better(during the week...I still cave to some cravings during the weekend. Like pizza. Hmmm, pizza...). A food journal is in order.

My goal is to drop to 10 percent or below in body fat. Last time I checked, I was in the 11-13 percent range, but I'll get a definitive measurement Sunday at my first session. After that, I'll have a new weight program that I'll be doing three times a week.

In a sort of addendum to the fitness goals for the month, I'm going to try and get up at seven at least three days a week to go running outside, instead of doing the treadmill at lunch. For one thing, I'll feel like I'm using more of the day, and for another, I'll be freeing up my lunch time for other things. I've done this twice so far this week. Getting up at seven can be hard, but once I get running, I feel great.

I'll be posting about how all of this goes.

Never Heard That One Before

2008-06-30T16:39:00.001-04:00

I was going to begin this with "I've been dumped many ways..." but then I realized that isn't true, and even if it was, it didn't really apply to what happened to me last week.

In reality, I've been dumped once. And by dumped I mean divorced, which is the major-league level of dumping. No, what happened yesterday files itself in line behind the many times I've gone on one or two dates, then things just fizzled out for whatever reason. Inconvenient schedules, not-so-good chemistry, uncontrolled second date projectile vomiting, whatever. It's the beer-league softball of dumping.

Anyway, I've been softballed in many ways, but never for not being Jewish. I can't blame her, though, because the dictionary entry for "not even remotely Jewish" is a picture of me, smiling back and giving a thumbs up.

A Pattern Emerges

2008-06-27T16:55:00.000-04:00

So...

It's 2005, a month after a breakup. I meet a great girl, who lives in another city.

It's 2008, a month after a breakup. I meet a great girl...who lives in another city.

Well, at least this time I still have my job.

A Riveting Experience

2008-06-25T12:09:00.001-04:00

I recently attended a mandatory training/orientation meeting. The subject was security, and free snacks were provided for the hour and half ordeal. Here are my carefully written meeting notes:

That brownie was excellent.

A Theory

2008-06-12T17:24:00.001-04:00

Everyone is familiar with the "Fuck It" theory: during a night out there comes a point when - instead of exercising good judgment and going home - you say "Fuck it!" and order another shot of Jack for you and all your friends¹. We've all had those moments, when drunk logic trumps actual logic. Then you agree to go to Atlantic City, streak through Midtown, convert to Scientology or some other such nonsense. Last night I was in the middle of such a moment when a co-worker introduced me to an addendum to the "Fuck It" theory, the "Fuck It Fuck It" theory.

The thinking goes that as you get older, you start to realize you can say fuck it to your previous fuck it: Sure, I could keep drinking, bar-hop until four in the morning while making embarrassing drunk texts, singing at the top of my lungs to songs only I can hear, and come into work smelling of skunky beer mixed with bodily funk, sure I could do that...but maybe I should just finish this drink, go home, jerk off, go to sleep, and that's all I'll do². You know, fuck it, fuck it!

Maybe or more elegant name would be Suck it, Fuck it!, but I'm not sure. I'm also not sure what the average age of getting to the FIFI stage is, but I'm not there yet. I went through with the original fuck it, though the results were a little more mild than past incidents. No asking random bartenders and random passersby where the hell I was, just a little tired today.

¹"Friends" has a loose definition during a Fuck It moment, and often includes random strangers, sworn enemies, and inanimate objects.

²My apologies to Quentin Tarantino.

So Here We Are

2008-06-10T22:33:00.001-04:00

I must have been pretty tired today, because I tried to use my apartment keys on the electronic badge reader at work. I was momentarily baffled when it didn't work.

Why am I tired? I just moved to Brooklyn. I spent the first few nights on an air mattress, waiting for my new bed to arrive. Yes, I did nothing but sit on an air mattress for days, patiently awaiting the delivery men from 1-800-WE-DELIVER-MATTRESSES-LATE-TO-FUCK-WITH-YOU. It wasn't all bad...that's really just a saying, because it was all bad. It was hot, sticky, and my shoulder still hurts like hell.

My new apartment is nice. I know this because both the late mattress delivery people and the two movers said so. Why would they lie? It does them no good to suck up to me, because I don't tip movers¹(or late mattress delivery people).

I have a roommate, who is extremely nice. She cooked me some BBQ chicken Sunday night when I got home from DC. Positively saintly.

I'm also newly single...and that's all I'll say about that. Other than it's frightening.

On a side note, I need to learn how to talk in some kind of European accent(maybe British or Irish) so I'll stop disappointing people. Maybe it's a New York thing.

¹I actually did tip the movers.

Getting Over It, Part II

2008-04-27T21:47:00.000-04:00

Stray Thoughts

2008-04-14T01:13:00.002-04:00

Stray thoughts, from the past week:

When you feel ugly, every pretty girl is an insult.
Why is blue-eyed-soul the only part of black culture that - when co-opted - gets the "blue-eyed" moniker attached? Shouldn't pretty much every popular genre of music be "blue-eyed"?
Why do I always end up having at least one person at work refer to me exclusively by my last name?
Wow, I have really shitty handwriting(this loses something in translation).
I have the unfortunate affliction of caring what others think about me. Maybe you do too, it's quite common.
Boots. Long black heeled boots will be the death of me(whether this is because of women who wear them or that I'm a troubled transvestite is up to the reader to decide).
Hey a limo! Flex your muscles, maybe you'll be discovered!
The best part about working construction was the strip clubs.
My girlfriend is always mad at me for something.
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning is definitely Bright Eye's best album.
Why is every skeevy old man(who almost always has a bag of fresh porn mags) on the subway inevitably the most courteous man on the subway?

Destroyer

2008-04-09T12:29:00.002-04:00

You can find my review of Destroyer's Trouble In Dreams in the April 2nd issue of iProng magazine.

My Weekend Apart

2008-04-08T23:16:00.000-04:00

I think I grew up a little this weekend when, instead of ordering a second tall hot chocolate at Starbucks, I ordered a tall mocha instead. When I mentioned this change to my girlfriend she confirmed I was firmly into teenager-level maturity when it comes to caffeinated beverages.

--

Lately, it's become obvious that I've had a hard time adjusting to New York. When I first arrived, I was so consumed by work that I never settled in. Neveracclimated. Now I find myself, almost a year later, without much of a social circle outside of my girlfriend(without much means zero).

At work, I have mostly solo projects to work on, which combined with my natural introverted nature makes socializing there difficult. Plus, I haven't shaken the feeling that I don't fit in. To quote High Fidelity, I feel like one of those people who shaved their heads and said they'd always been punk: I'm a fraud, and I'll be discovered at any second. Everyone at the office is so...New York. They are all at least four of the following: young, hip, smart, worldly, and attractive. This isn't what I'm used to: for past five years I've worked for the government. I went from shirt, ties and blue blazers to a daily fashion show.

What to do, what to do.

So my girlfriend had an idea: spend a Saturday apart. The idea was to force me to explore the city on my own. To grow.

---

I'm not sure what growing in NYC entails, but I hope it involves a lot of drinking at coffee houses. That's where I've ended up early Saturday afternoon after my morning workout, sipping...mocha. I miss my hot chocolate, but the world wants me to grow. In honor of eMusic adding the Rolling Stones(64-70) to their catalog, the soundtrack to my Saturday apart will be the Stone's three best albums: Aftermath, Beggars Banquet, and Let It Bleed. So I sit back, and start Aftermath on my new iPod¹.

"Paint It Black"

The girls aren't in their summer clothes, but I do see something else that happens everyday: a Starbucks full of young go-getters. Every day a group of young men and women in suits takes over all the seating. They look like actors auditioning for a role in a commercial about a community college. They have PDAs, Blackberrys, cellphones, and they scribble things onto yellow legal pads with one apparent goal: recruiting. Other not-so-dressed-for-success young adults wander in, and they interview them. For what, I don't know. I'm guessing it's some sort of cult. Or real estate related.

I've kept the gym habit up, surprisingly, for the last couple of months. I think I've grown addicted to the post-workout feeling of renewed confidence, and on Saturday that feeling lasts until the end of the weekend. It's a penance to avoid feeling wretched. I live in Harlem, but I trek to the gym near my office in Times Square. It's an "office" gym, which means it's practically empty on the weekend. My "home" gym is always over crowded on the weekend, and I'm tired of making up excuses for the trainer there as to why I haven't started a program with him yet. For some reason, though, I want him to know I still workout. I'm no slacker, Chris. I just can't afford you, you big-smiling top-heavy bastard!

"Going Home"

Aftermath is a quick album; I'm already on the last track. Sorry Mick, I can't go home to see my girl. I need to make this city my new home. Get used to it.

I take a break from the Stones to listen to the new Raconteurs album, Consolers of The Lonely, only now realizing the coincidental title. It's brilliant. Hopefully my totally untrained thoughts on music will be published again. Regardless, it's fun to write about it. Pick it up if you like rock music.

I decide to read for a while. In my bag I have Angela's Ashes by Frank McGourt, The Gathering by Anne Enright, and How To Be A Man: Scenes from a Protracted Boyhood by Thomas beller. I pull out the Beller. It's a great read, immersing me in New York in a way I've so far been unable to duplicate in real life. I briefly imagine a pretty girl coming up to talk to me, but then realize I'm reading a book titled How To Be A Man. Women would probably prefer someone who doesn't need directions in masculinity. Besides, my attention-whoring doesn't need to be fanned today.

I take a break, and call my brother. I have to tell him I can't co-sign on his first apartment, because if for no other reason, my credit is horrible. Plus, isn't that what parents are for? After I get off the phone, I realize that the next time I visit home, none of my three younger brothers will be there. They'll have their own places. Weird.

I call my three best friends(they live back in Maryland). One is busy, so I leave a message. I talk to the other two for a couple hours. In a true display of guydom, during one conversation we manage to reenact an obscure scene from Lethal Weapon, following a loosely-related bit about giant eighties cellphones. The awesomeness of RoboCop 2(which he is watching) and the craptasticness of RoboCop 3 are discussed. I learn Peter Weller is a professor of ancient history, and very popular at Syracuse. And baseball, we talk a lot of baseball. I discover that the evils of Walmart can be forgiven, temporarily, if they deliver your Wii a day earlier than expected. I should call these guys more often.

I'm hungry. Next door is pretty decent pizza place, that - thanks to the reality of NYC rent - has to subsidize itself with a Subway Sandwiches shop. I get a nice, big slice of pepperoni and a - sigh - Diet Coke. Nothing says I've been forever changed by New York to my friends back home than the fact that I now drink Diet Coke. It's almost like handing over my penis.

I decide to go see a movie, the pinnacle of social activities. It's a great opportunity to ~~meet new people~~ see movies my girlfriend doesn't want to see. Clearly, this social thing will be a long process. I have some time to kill before Run Fatboy Run starts, so I wander Times Square. On comes Beggars Banquet...

"Sympathy For The Devil"

If I was going to meet the devil, the lights and chaos of Times Square would be an appropriate place to do so. This is a city, after all, where I'm pretty sure the most beautiful woman I've seen all night was a man. Or maybe I'm just bisexual. And hell can't be anymore crowded than the tourist-filled² streets are tonight.

I'm briefly surrounded by a group of three friends whose average height is - I swear - 7'6". Don't these guys know the traditional dynamics of North American males? One tall guy, one fat guy, one cute/girly guy and some assorted adorable average men(the kind who end up with Drew Berrymore at the end of the movie). No, these guys have bonded over being giants.

Walking by the theater where A Chorus Line is playing, I notice the headlining quote from Michelle Bennett: "Dedicated to anyone who has ever danced in a chorus...or marched in step - anywhere."

I briefly march in step, and retroactively have a Broadway musical dedicated to me. I feel like I'm having a productive weekend.

"Street Fighting Man"

The sound of marching feet, and there is nothing for a poor boy to do but...well I could see Shine A Light, the Rolling Stones concert movie, but that seems a little ridiculous. Instead, I decide to see The Bank Job. Afterwards, it's three in the morning. I've been out, I've seen a couple movies, read some books, listened to some great music, and had a lot of Starbucks. Not a bad weekend; not the one I was probably supposed to have, but a step in the right direction(this is probably not true, and is instead an example of cognitive dissonance).

"Gimme Shelter"

If ever there was a perfect song for walking the streets at night, this is it. Combined with neon lights and towering steel expanses of Manhattan, the haunting rhythm guitar and Merry Clayton's howl become even more foreboding. I should head home, but I walk some more. I decide to walk up to 72nd street, and catch the train home from there. It's a nice enough night for walking.

"Midnight Rambler"

It's not too cold. With the light breeze, the night just feels perfect. It adds a crispness to every moment, enhancing the sensation of being alive. Drunken revelers are on every corner. A homeless vet scares the shit out of me when he materializes out of nowhere when I pass a stoop. The city is alive, humming, and oblivious to my presence. I'm at 72nd.

By this time, Let It Bleed has run it's course and I'm ending my Saturday to "You Can't Always Get What You Want", a song both revered and reviled by rock and roll fans. I can only assume it's detractors hate The Big Chill and boys choirs(probably a fear of castration). I didn't get exactly what I wanted out of this, but then again, I haven't really tried the way I should have yet. But I will.

--

It just occurred to me that I've been walking around with my gym bag all day. I must have looked like an ax-murderer carrying around the heads of his victims.

¹This clearly illustrates my life priorities: I now own more iPods than long-sleeve shirts.

²I feel like an asshole complaining about tourists in a city I've lived in less than a year, but then again, maybe that helps me fit in better.

Getting Over It, Part One

2008-03-31T14:50:00.001-04:00

Some people never got over Vietnam, or the night their band opened for Nirvana. I'm still not over my first marriage(or ripping off Nick Hornby). In this series, I'll detail my attempts to get over a part of my life that lasted less than three years, but seemingly encompassed all of my soon to be over twenties. For some reason, moving to New York was one of these attempts.

Buying Damien Rice's Debut Album O

I've always had a peculiar relationship with Damien Rice. I usually feel a kinship with any Irish artist (I'm Irish-American - this largely involves treating my drinking like some kind of cultural imperative), but I have actively avoided Rice for the past three years. The peculiar thing, though, is that for those same three years I have absolutely adored two of the songs from his album O, despite never owning the record, hearing the songs in their entirety, or even knowing their names. This is because O was the album my ex-wife listened to repeatedly the week before she told me she wanted a divorce.

She loved singer-songwriters, particularly extremely fuckable ones with foreign accents. Nick Drake, Jeff Buckley, Duncan Shiek, David Gray, Van Morrison and John Lennon all found places on her CD rack. My memory wants to place Ryan Adams there, too -- right next to my copy of Kind Of Blue that she stole and never gave back -- to round out the American presence, but I'm pretty sure she didn't have anything by him(though I'm sure she loved the Elizabethtown soundtrack).

Rice was the soundtrack to my last memories of my ex-wife without the "ex" part, though I didn't know it at the time. That week I was just happy for her. She seemed to be coming out of a funk. She had long complained that she used to consume new music; that she sought it, loved it, lived it and that something had stifled that part of her. So this someone new in her life, this Damien Rice singing hauntingly beautiful songs seemed like a good thing. A corner had been turned.

Like most hurts, it's a fresh memory: I see her, hair up(weave thankfully gone), lips painted, eyes big and brown, typing away on my laptop while singing along. Our apartment would have been, finally, respectably furnished at this point. A sectional, a black coffee table, and the computer desk she sits at. The walls are the warm colors she had painted them one night while I was visiting my brother in the hospital. It's only a one bedroom in Foggy Bottom, but it's our home. Her voice, though beautiful, is just a few notes away from being a great singing voice. She sounds happy, but in a sad way. Hell, that's what the song sounds like - mournful, but hopeful.

She sings the chorus, over and over:

"I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you"

Hopefully, foolishly, I imagine she thinks of me when she sings this. Sadly, I was probably right. Now that -- three years later -- I own the album, I know the song is called "The Blower's Daughter". The lyrics continue:

"I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind...
My mind...my mind...
'Til I find somebody new "

Damien whispers that last part. I'll bet she did, too.

I'm not sure why I finally decided to buy O; I guess avoiding Damien(my ex-wife) had become too tiresome. I almost missed out on a wonderful collection of covers from Sounds Eclectic because Rice had covered Radiohead's "Creep". And one day, there was O staring at me from the rack. An eight-dollar "classic" buy at the Virgin Mega-Store. It seemed like a step; a tiny one, but a step nonetheless: confront your demons by buying and endlessly listening to the album and artist that represents the most painful part of your life. OK, somethings don't sound like such a hot idea once you write them down.

O is a good album. At least, the first half is. I can never get past "Old Chests", the fifth track. You see, track three is "Blower's Daughter", and track four is "Cannonball", the other song she sang repeatedly. Past that, the album fails to hold any significance to me. I'm sure there are some good songs there, but none of them connect me to that very personal moment, which was the hole point of buying the album in the first place.

"Cannonball", now that I have the benefit of a close examination, is rich with foreshadowing:

"there’s still a little bit of your taste in my mouth
there’s still a little bit of you laced with my doubt
it’s still a little hard to say what's going on"

and the one part I remember her singing:

"love taught me to lie"

Damien, you don't know the fucking half of it.

So why do I love these songs so much? I only knew small parts of both(for a while I thought they were just different parts of the same song). Yet in memory, they both seemed like perfect, beautiful songs. Songs that I would never listen to again, and for good reason: it hurt too much. Rice, unwittingly, captured the last happy memory I had of her, of us. All in songs that having nothing to do with love as a happy concept. "Can't take my eyes off of you" was all I could remember...it was how we used to feel about each other.

I'm at the point now where O, "The Blower's Daughter", and "Cannonball" still hold special meaning, but I can enjoy them without automatically thinking about "happier" times in a small apartment in DC. So I guess that's some sort of progress, right?

In a bizarre twist, for the past three years I have also refused to watch the movie Closer, because we watched that movie the Saturday before she told me she was leaving. Since then, I've hated that movie. It's a bunch of people cheating and leaving each other. I didn't know -- or blocked out the fact -- that the Closer soundtrack contains both "The Blower's Daughter" and "Cannonball". Both of these pieces of media I have avoided, one because it reminded me of being happy, and the other because it reminded me of being hurt. Why? Why not hate both; why does Damien get a free pass, while the movie that uses his songs to soundtrack infidelity, broken hearts, and the general fucked-up nature of love end up reviled?

For that matter, why do I not hate her favorite band, The Strokes? She adored them, hung out with Julian Casablancas when she lived in New York during her modeling days. Why then, when I see him in a video or listen to Room On Fire do I still think "hey, cool dude" instead of "hey, fuck you poser who probably banged my ex-wife"?

Yet MySpace, who made her the "feature" profile that week, I can't stand. I almost bought the infamous "MySpace Ruined My Life" t-shirt. Seriously, the sudden surge in popularity seemed to play a major part in her decision to pack her bags. At least to me it did, and I haven't been on the site since then.

Obviously, I have issues. This series should have many parts.

Feel Free To Ignore This...

2008-01-22T12:00:00.000-05:00

...since I haven't posted in forever, but I had to share my results from the band game:

I cheated a little, changing "Nuclear" to the popular phonetic version. Go try it!

A Small Fish

2007-10-04T12:51:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting at my desk, taking in some morning comics and scanning the headlines, when a realization hits: I don't fit in here.

This isn't all bad. It's good to experience new people, new things; you can't always be in a comfort zone. One part is bad, however. In fact, when I actually put words to why I was feeling a little out of place, it wasn't just bad, it was eye-openingly awful. A shiver ran down my body, my spine twisted and contorted when I thought: Everyone here is so young.

What. The. Fuck. I'm young. 28 is still young isn't it? Sure, I wasn't 10 when the Spice Girls first toured like the girl who sits two spots away. I didn't graduate college in 2006 like some members of my team(or in 1993, like some others...so there's still time). I mean, it's not like I'm wearing a Mission Of Burma or Ramones t-shirt that I actually bought at a Ramones or Burma concert. Now that guy is...older.

And there are plenty of other people older than me, too, but now I'm closer to the middle range than the younger range. I've always, always, been the youngest person at work, excluding my first job at a Loews Theater. Now for the first time, I'm not. And that's just really, really fucking weird.

The other part is how, well, rich everyone else is. Or at least their background is rich. I think the best word is "international". Globe trotters, they went to private or boarding schools, have friends in Australia, France, England, and California. They have "taste". They follow - but also start - "trends". In fact, everything about them should be in quotes, because it always seems so strange to me that it needs to be held up and examined at arms length. Like a strange artifact or a crying, crapping newborn.

Of course, not everyone is like this. Just enough to let me know I'm not the norm anymore. In DC/Maryland, no one was like this.

I'm not sure if the next part comes with the rich part, but everyone here is very, very used to success. High profile clients, huge projects, big names; all the norm. Apparently, I just lucked out getting this job - whereas I was just pulled out of a random resume pile from Monster, everyone else I've talked to had to get a recommendation. Was a mistake made? Do I really, seriously belong here? I wonder.

It'll all work out though. I keep this line close these days:

"This is New York City/If you can make it here you can make it anywhere" - NY Weather Report, Talib Kweli - Ear Drum

The End?

2007-10-01T18:23:00.000-04:00

The big, long project is over. We've had some positive press, a good reception from the client, and only some minor browser bugs(Safari and IE6, I'm looking at you...). Go check it out, and buy some books, for god's sake :)

So will I be returning to regular blogging? Maybe. Or, more accurately, yes and no. I'll be posting more regularly, that's for sure, but I'll also be taking time to work on the site that will eventually replace this one. It will be my own creation, and should go live in early 2008. It will be part blog, part music writing, part photos, part resume, etc.

In the mean time, though, it's good to be back.

White Devil White Devil

2007-09-24T12:37:00.000-04:00

Here are some choice quotes, heard while walking with my girlfriend, in our new neighborhood:

"Look at that! White boy hit the jackpot! You know what..we don't want you! We don't want you!"

and:

"Aww, look at this integration shit...she's thinking that all white boys ain't bad, some are good...but the Devil is the Devil!"

In all seriousness, this is not a real issue; there are always idiots. 99% of people in Harlem give less than a shit that I live here, or whom I'm dating. It's more amusing than anything else. Still...I can't helped but be bothered a little. After all, I am going to be living here for at least a year...of course, it's also understandable; it's not like white people have a great reputation to bank on when it comes to moving to new places.

Hey There...

2007-09-20T18:52:00.000-04:00

I promise I'll be back some day. Probably after 10/01, when the huge project I'm working on finally rolls out. Then, back to semi-regular posting and ranting...

Career Choices

2007-08-23T23:23:00.000-04:00

As a child I wanted to be many, many things. My first choice of career, that I can remember, was Jesus Christ. More accurately, I wanted to be the first guy to never sin since Jesus. Sadly, I realized I had ruined that, already, while still stuck in the single digits. I briefly considered being a missionary, but shortly after being told my best friend was going to hell for being Jewish, I stopped being Catholic. So that was out.

After my religious falling out, I wanted to be a video game counselor. It seemed reasonable: I loved video games, I was good at video games, and according to The Wizard¹, you could sit in a cubicle and assist autistic kids over the phone. What kid doesn't want to do that? Then, I wanted to be a comic book artist. Then a lawyer. Environmental Lawyer. Movie Critic. Journalist. Screenwriter. Sports Journalist. Then when I realized I would need money(and what was wrong with having lots of it), corporate lawyer.

As it turns out, I am none of those things; I am a web monkey. Which isn't a bad thing, really. Do video game counselors even exist anymore? Did they ever? Not that it wouldn't be cool to be a comic book artist, movie critic or ESPN talking head. Or a professional basketball player. But I strayed. What I should have done was get the lead in a romantic comedy or sitcom. I should have been an actor. Then I could be anything I wanted.

I keep seeing previews for The Bill Engvall Show, where Engvall gets to be a therapist. Alan Thicke played a psychiatrist, Bill Cosby an MD(he did serve at a Navy Hospital, though); in fact, doctor seems to be a very popular fake career. Lawyer is well represented, though it's hard to find too many that look like Calista Flockhart or Laura Flynn Boyle. Or Dylan McDermott, for that matter. Sarah Jessica Parker was a journalist. Cirroc Lofton(Jake Sisko) was a basketball player.

It must be awesome to pretend to be something really cool. In his movie career, Adam Sandler has been a singer, professional golfer, college football player, legal genius, a marine veterinarian, pizzeria owner, professional football player, architect, and a firefighter. What will he be next? What else did he want to be when he was a boy?

John Cusack has been an amateur kick boxer (he actively trains to this day), professional baseball player (a role he somehow managed to play before being a high school kid in Say Anything), a physicist working on the Manhattan Project, a professional hitman, a US Marshall, an air traffic controlle r(eh?), a record store owner, and even a freaking cowboy.

Why, why didn't I study drama?

Just Need Some Sleep

2007-08-23T00:28:00.000-04:00

Why do people peer down subway tunnels like they have fucking night vision goggles on? Back away from the platform, you perching little-shits. The train will get here when it gets here.

OK, I'm a little pissed. I had another late night at work. If it wasn't for the fact that I'm moving in with my girlfriend, I'd never see her. Or anyone, for that matter. My sole human interaction would be with my co-workers, fellow commuters, and my good friends at TBS and Adult Swim(basic cable only).

In some ways, working late feels like part of the NYC initiation. You walk faster, get a tiny apartment, eat a lot of Chinese take out, and you work until your fingers bleed.

In other ways, it makes me want to break my keyboard over my knee and shove the head of the annoying woman who sits behind me through my monitor. She has this voice, this annoying, spine-stiffening, gravelly white-bread voice and she speaks with almost no inflection, just a mild, rising tone throughout every asinine utterance.

Sigh, again, late night.

So, yeah, we have an apartment. That's good news. The bad news is I still get mail with my ex-wife's name on it. My girlfriend can be very understanding, but getting a routine reminder of my ex is not something that I think she will tolerate. Thing is, the ex-wife's name still appears on some mail that comes from my bank. Hopefully, after some paperwork I've filled out and mailed, it will end before the end of the month.

In less personal news, it's been a good year for music. I've been listening to the new Spoon, Ryan Adams, Silverchair (seriously), Battles, Common, Art Brut, Stars, and Paul McCartney albums. I'll be writing in more detail about some of these later, but I recommend all of them. The Live From The Paradiso EP from the Cold War Kids is also worth picking up and includes a great cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come".

Well, I'd better get to bed. Another long day(probably) awaits.

On My Way Up

2007-08-21T12:16:00.000-04:00

I've been doing a lot of work at a client downtown in a huge multi-story office building, working on the ninth floor. Every day on the elevator ride up, I pass heaven. Or at least the closest thing in the Internet world, Google.

Google has offices on the fourth floor, and they are hard to miss. The elevator doors open and you're bathed in a warm, soft light, a choir of beautiful blond angels sing the Hamster song, and you see the only page with info on your ex is some stupid college alumni page. Oh, and there's a huge Google logo over the desk. There's an abacus near the receptionist for some reason. One of those multi-colored expanding plastic balls sits on the floor, as if to say, hey bitches, we're Google and we have so much money nothing has to make sense.

Beyond that, I have no idea what it's like. Only the lucky people who work for Google do. They all look pretty happy. They all have iPhones. I'll bet they have unicorns, ambrosia, and free snacks, too. Must be nice.

Shallow and Pedantic

2007-08-13T22:32:00.000-04:00

There is something that I hate that I often do. I hate being the person who, when conversing or arguing, can only repeat what he's read. Whether it's from a book, a newspaper, or an online article, all of it is just a prop, filling in for true insight and understanding.

Worse, if you can fool people well enough, it's a crutch. Why bother digging deeper and learning if you can convince people you are a knowledgeable, well-informed person anyway? Besides, if your really good at faking it, you get to have sex¹. But, props only hold for so long; eventually, someone will know you're just reading the Times to them. Worst of all, they won't call you out for it -- rather, they'll just file you away in a folder marked "Uninteresting, Unoriginal, But Still Attractive Individuals".

To wrap this up in the most unoriginal way possible, here is a video that clearly state my point:

¹It should be noted, that after talking to my girlfriend and learning the actual reasons I and other men get to have sex, I feel like one of Pavlov's dogs.

Thank God It's Sunday. Oh Wait...

2007-08-12T20:47:00.000-04:00

What a week. As the entire world knows(because anything that happens in New York is very, very important), flooding brought the Subways in Manhattan to a standstill. Torrential rain the night before -- three inches in an hour, apparently -- caused the severe, unexpected flooding. I slept through that, and awoke to a sunny, albeit damp, morning. Finding my Subway stop ridiculously crowded, I was perplexed.

I tried buses. I tried other Subway lines. I considered taking a cab, then remembered that they would all be taken and it would take forever to get downtown. So I walked to work. About 30 city streets/blocks, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I had some good tunes from the iPod("Free Bird" is great walking music), and New York is always scenic. Sometimes the scenery smells, curses, elbows or runs you over, but it's scenic nonetheless.

The rest of the week wasn't nearly as entertaining. I did have to work Saturday, but at least it was quiet.

This week, however, should be very, very interesting. My girlfriend and I have to find an apartment. I have deadlines piling up. I'm already planning on buying some comfort booze for when I slip into my apartment, concluding each grueling, stressful day. This is the worst time of the year to look for an apartment.

An Adult Moment

2007-08-06T18:02:00.000-04:00

Recently, while at the grocery store, I thought:

You're an adult now. You can buy whatever you want. Remember how you always wanted some Chocolate Eclairs? Those delicious, chocolate ice cream treats that you could only buy from the Good Humor Man because your mother would never buy them when she went grocery shopping? As a child your freezer was empty and useless, and only the rapid chime of that blessed ice cream man's bell gave you hope during those hot summer months. That's the only time you saw an Eclair. Well, there they are Mr. Adult, behind the glass doors of the frozen food section. And your mother is not here to stop you. Go ahead, champ, ring that bell.

So I bought some.

Music & Movies

2007-08-02T22:35:00.000-04:00

I think "Ms. Robinson" is the best example, that I can think of right now, of a song so intimately connected to a movie that you can't hear it and not think of a certain scene. Or at least it was. We are generations past "The Graduate", and I'll bet a fair number of people -- all younger than me, thank you -- associate the song with Stifler's mom and "American Pie". Some probably just think "Simon and Garfunkel sure were great", or possibly "My high school algebra teacher sure taught me a lot about...the quadratic equation".

Anyway, here are some more songs that, to me(and that part is important, because I'm sure some of these will make you question my taste and memory), can never be separated from their celluloid companions.

"What A Wonderful World", Louis Armstrong, from Good Morning Vietnam. DJ Adrian Cronauer, played perfectly by Robin Williams(perfectly meaning absolutely nothing like the actual Cronauer), dedicates this song to a bunch of GIs that inspire him to get back on the air after a bureaucratic shit-storm. It plays over scenes of a chaotic, war-torn country -- rice fields being napalmed, suspected VCs being rounded up and executed -- and ends with Williams echoing Armstrong's wonderful "ohhhhhh yeahhhhhhh...". Other memorable songs from Vietnam in include "Sugar and Spice" by the Searchers and "I Got You (I Feel Good)" by James Brown(the first song Williams plays).

"Something In The Air", Thunderclap Newman - from Kingpin. This song plays during the bowling competition in Reno. Woody Harrelson, in possibly his best performance ever(and I'm being serious), plays Roy Munson, a down on his luck, one-handed bowler. He gradually gets his stride back to a song that most people as old as my parents probably remember from "Easy Rider". Before the final match, Urge Overkill does a great rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner". Other good songs from this movie include "A Beautiful Morning" by The Young Rascals and "The Sound Of Silence", played after Harrelson succumbs to a really indecent proposal from his landlady, played by Lin Shaye("What is it about great sex that always make me have to take a crap. You really jarred something loose there tiger!"). And of course, who could forget the final duel between Munson and Ernie 'Big Ern' McCracken (Bill Murray), set to ELO's "Showdown":

"You Can't Always Get What You Want", The Rolling stones, from The Big Chill. You knew this was coming. Even though it was immediately disqualified from the Top 5 Songs About Death in High Fidelity for it's association with this movie, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" is still great, in my opinion. Another song that the crew from Championship Vinyl may disregard in future discussions is "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" by The Temptations, for its use in the whitest dance scene in music history.

"One More Night", Phil Collins, from The Color Of Money. This can only be me. I was am a pool nut, so of course I watched The Hustler and it's sequel obsessively as a teenager. Paul Newman, in his thanks-for-everything-here's-an-Oscar reprisal as "Fast" Eddie Feslon, first notices Vincent(in, and I'm serious, Tom Cruise's finest performance) as Collins softly plays from the bar jukebox. The other winner is, of course, Warren Zevon's "Werewolves Of London", the soundtrack to Vincent's manic, cue-as-a-sword escapades, complete with Karate yells. Also memorable is "It's In The Way That You Use It", by Eric Clapton.

"Where Is My Mind", The Pixies, from Fight Club. The never-named narrator tells Marla "Trust me, everythings gonna be fine. You've met me at a very strange time in my life", the explosives go off, the buildings come down, and in comes the unforgettable screeching guitar notes that start this song. Perfect.

"Rebel-'Rouse", Duane Eddy, from Forrest Gump. There are lot of songs from this nugget of Americana -- "Everybody's Talking At Me", "Blowing In The Wind" (performed by the luscious Bobbi Dylan), "Fortunate Sun"(playing alongside the chop-chop-chop of an army helicopter), "All Along The Watchtower", "For What It's Worth (Stop, Hey What's That Sound)", "Break On Through (To The Other Side)", "Volunteers", "Love Her Madly", "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head", "Free Bird"(played during Jenny's almost-suicide) -- but it's the lonely twang that begins "Rebel-'Rouse" and the speedy, energetic instrumental that follows that gets us and Gump's football career started.

"New Slang", The Shins, from Garden State. Zach Braff really, really owes Natalie Portman for this one(and The Shins too, for that matter). Face it, even the most ironic hipster melted in his vintage t-shirt and Chuck all-stars when Portman flashes that incredible smile as this song comes in strong("Gold teeth and a curse for this town/ were all in my mouth/ Only, i don't know how they got out, dear.").

"Good Enough", Cyndi Lauper, The Goonies. This video for this song, as seen in the film, plays right before Sean Astin and company tie Astin's older brother to a chair with his own exercise band. In the real video, producer Steven Spielberg makes a cameo. God bless DVD extras. And God bless the Truffle Shuffle:

"Cruel Summer", Bananarama, from The Karate Kid. A perfect fit for Daniel LaRusso's first day of school in sunny California, exiled from his native New Jersey. And of course, who could forget the classic fighting montage song, "You're The Best (Around!)" by Joe Esposito. A true 80s piece of art.

"Mandy", by Barry Manilow, from Can't Hardly Wait. For most people Can't Hardly Wait is a very forgettable late 90s teen-comedy, but it met me at the perfect time: heartbroken and barely out of high school. My heart was broken by a girl named Amanda, the same name of Jennifer Love Hewitt's character, who pulls Ethan Embry's heart strings. It doesn't hurt that it's named after a Replacements song either(which of course appears on the soundtrack as well). But it's this Barry Manilow song, that convinces Embry that destiny is going to bring him and Amanda(Mandy) together, that stands out. His best friend dissuades him, telling him it's about Manilow's dog. Later, crestfallen about his failure to win Amanda, Embry wonders: "Wasn't that song Mandy a sign? What if it was about a dog...was I supposed to buy a dog? No, no, it had to be a sign! How often do you hear Mandy on the radio? I haven't heard that song in years!" before learning it's Manilow's birthday and the radio station is playing "Mandy" every hour on the hour. Another interesting thing about this movie, besides a pre-fame appearance by Seth Green, is how many people from it went on to star in the series "Six Feet Under": Lauren Ambrose, Peter Facinelli, Freddy Rodriguez, and Eric Balfour.

The best part, though, was the impromptu performance of "Paradise City" by Hook's Charlie Korsmo(an MIT alumni):

"Dry The Rain", The Beta Band, from High Fidelity. Rob Gordon(John Cusack) plays this song at his record store after boasting "I will now sell five copies of the The Three EPs by The Beta Band". Sure enough, it gets his weekend crowd hooked. A patron asks who it is, then tells Rob that the song is good. And Rob replies with every music snob's favorite line: "I know,".

"Bad Days", The Flaming Lips, from Batman Forever. Sure, there's "Kiss From A Rose" and the U2 song "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me", but this song became seared into my brain when I heard the lyrics "And you hate your boss at your job/Well in your dreams you can blow his head off/in your dreams/show no mercy". A perfect introduction to the just fired, about to become the Riddler Edward Nygma, played by Jim Carrey.

"Summer In The City", The Lovin' Spoonful, from Die Hard 3. As it stands, I think me, my brother, and my father are the only people who believe the third Die Hard movie is brilliant. Maybe this is because we first watched it at four in the morning. Either way, this song opens the movie, and "Die" and "Hard" come together right in sync with the opening drum line and keyboards, as does the subtitle "With A Vengeance". I just really like that, because I'm a dork.

SPECIAL QUENTIN TARANTINO SECTION

"Stuck In The Middle With You", by Stealer's Wheel, from Reservoir Dogs.

"Let's Stay Together", Al Green, "Son Of A Preacher Man", Dusty Springfield, "You Never Can Tell", Chuck Berry, "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon", Neil Diamond(performed by Urge Overkill), and of course "Misirlou" by Dick Dale and his Deftones(it's the surf-sounding title theme).

"I'm Shipping Up To Boston", the Dropkick Murphys, from The Departed. This is my new Irish Pride song. A great song to get pumped up for a night of drinking. Which is really what an Irish Pride song should be.

"It's The End Of The World A We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", by REM, from Tommy Boy. Face it, you can't sing along any better than David Spade and Chris Farely could.

Fanboys Unite

2007-07-25T14:05:00.000-04:00

So I'm reading this article about fanboys a friend twittered(typing that made me feel dirty) about fanboys, when I come to this quote from Matt Damon:

...[Fanboy's] tastes can be obscure. "You know the movie they quote me most often?" says Matt Damon. "Not the Bourne movies. Not Oceans. But Rounders. I can't figure it out."

I'll tell you why Matt: because Rounders is fucking awesome.

Mike McDermott: "I feel like Buckner walking back into Shea. "

Worm: "Hey! If you want to see this seventh card you're gonna stop speakin' fuckin' Sputnick. "

Worm: "I guess the sayings' true. In the poker game of life, women are the rake man. They are the fuckin' rake."
Mike McDermott: "What the fuck are you talkin' about. What saying?"
Worm: "I-I don't know. There ought to be one though. "

Mike McDermott: "I want him to think that I am pondering a call, but all I'm really thinkin about it Vegas and the fuckin' Mirage. "

Taki: "What did you think he had? Does he look like a man beaten by jacks?"

Teddy KGB: "In my club, I will splash the pot whenever the fuck I please. "

Teddy KGB: "Nyet! Nyet! No More! No! Not tonight! This son of bitch, all night he, 'Check. Check. Check.' He trap me! "

Worm: "Now, what did I ever do to that guy?"
Mike McDermott: "You fucked his mother."

and my personal favorite:

Mike McDermott: "You comin' up? "
Lester 'Worm' Murphy: "No, I've been standin' out here all this time just to say hi."
Mike McDermott: "All right, listen, things haven't been that smooth on the homefront so, you know, tone it down a little, all right?"
Lester 'Worm' Murphy: "Tone done what, motherfucker?"

I Have No Shame

2007-07-24T00:31:00.000-04:00

How y'all feel? I have a question. How many people like to buy digital music? You always need something to get you through the workday...there's gotta be some people out there who like to use BitTorrent? Oh yeah...I was talking to my little brother the other day, and he said the kids these days really enjoy that MySpace...but I tell you something, when you're down in the dumps, and you need something to bring you up, there's only one thing that's gonna do it the way you want it!

iTunes binge!

What's that?

ITUNES BINGE!!!

Oh yeah. Instant gratification.

My apologies to KISS.

Anyway, I've gone on a couple of iTunes binges lately. There's something about that instant gratification, coupled with the spell Steve Jobs has cast upon me via my iPod, that compels me to drop dolla bills at two in the morning on songs from my formative years, or at least songs I think were from my formative years. It gets fuzzy.

You see, there was a time when all I had was the radio. I didn't have much money for CDs, so I listened to rock and Top 40 radio. And hearing some radio last weekend in DC, I realized, I miss some of those songs. So I started downloading tracks from Sublime, System Of A Down, Weezer, Pearl Jam, Coolio, Sum 41, Jimmy Eat World, Mudhoney, Audioslave, Incubus, Bush, Rage Against The Machine and god help me, Hoobastank. Live, Foo Fighters, Korn, Nine Inch Nails, Staind, Linkin Park, Fuel, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Good fucking Charlotte. It's a little disturbing that half of these songs are available on the TV compilation "Buzz Ballads", but damn it, this is what I had to work with. Then I remembered what I would heard, at the age of twelve, booming from my best friend's older brother's stereo. So down comes some Quiet Riot, Motley Crue, Megadeth, Scorpions, Rush and Twisted Sister.

Yeah, Hoobastank. What of it?? "The Reason" is insanely catchy.

What was popular when I was a college freshmen? What did I hum in the car while I was running late to eight am journalism classes? Down comes some Fastball, Matchbox 20, Semisonic, New Radicals, Eve 6, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Three Doors Down, Shawn Mullins(he sings "Lullaby"...you know, it goes "Every-thing's gonna be alright..."...he speaks in a real gravely voice in between the chorus about some drunk crying chick at a dive bar he's performing at...I just assume he nailed her that night), and just for the hell of it, Alice Cooper. It makes no sense, but it's iTunes, alright? It doesn't have to. While I'm here, I'll subscribe to the "Flight Of The Concords" podcast. Why not? It's fucking funny. "Two Princes", almost forgot that. And since it takes about 24 hours for my bank to process an iTunes transaction, much like a drinking binge, I won't pay for this until tomorrow!

I may have to go some kind of addicts meeting. Or just go to seeqpod from now on.

----------------
Now playing: Matchbox Twenty - 3 AM
posted with FoxyTunes

I Weep For The Past

2007-07-23T12:43:00.000-04:00

So I'm sitting here, tweaking a design at work, while surfing the web at the same time(it's called multitasking) when I came across this story about the Beatles' part in the "first live trans-Atlantic satellite transmission". Apparently, it was widely panned in Britain at the time:

"Have we nothing better to offer? Surely this isn't the image of what we are like. What a dreadful impression they must have given the rest of the world," one comment read, the newspaper reported.

Another viewer, impressed by contributions from elsewhere, said "after all the culture ... shown by the other countries, the Beatles were the absolute dregs," the newspaper claimed.

"We did not do ourselves justice," another viewer commented.

I wonder, what would these British adults of the 1960s preferred? Shakespeare? I just wish Monty Python had existed, they could have beamed the entire world the Dead Parrot Sketch.

The best part of this is, as I was reading that the song "All You Need Is Love" was written for the performance, it starts playing on my iPod. Awesome.

You know I'll be seeing Across The Universe on opening night.

Friday Night Lights

2007-07-20T19:50:00.000-04:00

I'm trying something new today. I'm going to post a weekend re-cap on a Friday. Why? It's the kind of outside-the-box thinking that I've been doing lately. That, and I haven't made the time to write it until now.

Anyway, last weekend was great. It didn't get off to a great start. I had to work late Friday, and I barely made the ten o'clock bus to DC. The cut-off was about two people behind me. Those unfortunates had to wait until 12:30 am for the next DC bus. I was lucky. I had a psychic in front of me.

Of course it wasn't his amazing extra-ordinary mind powers that helped(after all, he didn't anticipate Port Authority, of all places, being crowded). No, what helped was he was going to Baltimore to "unhaunt" (I assume that was a technical tearm) an old motel. So when a separate bus to Baltimore became available, off he went, and up the DC line I went. Before he left, he did give me a nugget of paranormal knowledge I feel I should pass on: usually (but not always, mind you), if there is a ghost doing some haunting, it's because that person died possessed. Before you ridicule, keep in mind this man was financed by the Sci-Fi channel and wore a t-shirt from his TV show. That's credibility, folks.

So I got into DC around three in the morning. Luckily, my father and my youngest brother(who is 19, wow) were waiting for me. I was all prepared to get my geek on the next day. Considering the festivities started at noon, I went to bed right away.

Hahaha, I'm just kidding. I hardly ever do the reasonable thing when it comes to sleep. So, after getting lit up with two of my brothers, we went outside and I spent a good half hour watching them attempting to hit one their cars with a football. It's not as dumb as it sounds. The car was parked in the street, across the yard, underneath one huge tree with another standing between them and the car. So bullet passes were out; they had to launch the ball like an artillery shell so it would clear the first tree and arc through the branches of the second. In the dark.

OK, it is as stupid as it sounds, but after ten or twelve misses(we decided halfway in that 'off a bounce' didn't count) I was really invested. Someone had to hit it. Sadly, neither one did. Oh, and during this entire spectacle, a hot waitress from the restaurant all of my brothers work at watched the entire thing. That just made it more surreal.

Eventually, I made it to bed and somehow, I manage to get up in time.

The Magic festivities were fun. My father did the best in the tournament, finishing in the money, with the rest of us scrubbing out by round five. In fact, everything was going pretty smoothly until I unleashed the "six degrees" monster.

You see, Friday night, while I was working late, my co-workers and I started playing "six degrees" with various actors. For example:

Elvis Presley to Naomi Watts
Elvis > It Happened at the World's Fair < Kurt Russell > Bird on a Wire < Goldie Hawn > Everyone Say I Love You < Julia Roberts > Closer < Jude Law > I Heart Huckabees < Naomi Watts

So we start playing this game Saturday, and everything else took a back seat. All we did was name actors and movies while our bodies kept doing other activities like eating, driving, and playing other games. At one point, in attempting to like Robin Williams to Jack Black, we kept circling back to Robin Williams. The game can get confusing.

So Sunday, I'm on my way to my brothers' baseball game, when I bring the game up. Everything is going great until my youngest brother suggests Meg Ryan to Drew Barrymore, which we don't solve before arriving at the ball field. Long story short, I place all the blame for my brother's error on a fly ball to left field on "six degrees" and his mind wondering: so wait, Meg Ryan was in...with whats her name, who was in...oh fuck the ball! They won, despite Meg Ryan.

The game was like no other I've ever been to. This was my first time at a non-high school, non-college game that didn't involve being at Camden Yards or RFK. You see, my brothers are playing in a semi-semi-pro league that has existed since 1886. There are teams in cities throughout Maryland, and these people take their baseball seriously. Lining the chain-link fences along the base-paths were throngs of old men talking trash. Serious trash:

"What the hell is wrong with you boys? You're bunch of sissy girls, the bunch of you! I'll fuck you up if you don't play some god-damned ball! I'm fifty years old and I ain't afraid of any one of ya!"

Yikes. A far cry from the -- relatively -- quiet stands of a Little League game. These guys would grind on you, and they wouldn't let up. One error, and they'd be on you the entire game. And it wasn't limited to players; umpires, coaches, opposing fans, and even the damned PA guy.

"That guy says 'last-call for lottery tickets' one more time I'll go over there and stab him! It's fixed anyway - someone from Charles County always wins! I was born on a farm, you can't put that shit over on me!"

The other weird interesting part of the league was that it was all ages. I saw a 46 year old hit a home run off of a twenty-something, and it didn't involve Julio Franco.

I was sad when the weekend had to end, and I had to get on another damn bus back to NYC. I need to find another way to travel.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

2007-07-20T00:42:00.000-04:00

In the last two weeks, I've gone from this:

(the Nike 500 miles run club) to this:

I can't claim any real innocence; after all, I asked for this job, and I really want to do well. I've been staying late of my own volition.

Still, it's kind of striking. I haven't been to the gym in over a week; I haven't seen my girlfriend in almost two weeks; I've been putting in ten and twelve hour days(or more) - it gives pause, to say the least.

After dinner with a close friend -- who warned me of his similar experiences at his last job -- I've decided I need to set some better boundaries at work. There has to be a balance. If I learned anything from The Karate Kid, it's the need for balance. If you have no balance, you end up in a freezing lake. A very important lesson, second only to "if you do Karate 'I guess so', squish! - just like grape!".

I do love my new work. It's stimulating, creative, and for the most part, fun. I'm still getting used to this new, strange city - and it's success-driven work culture.

"If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere". That's what they say about New York. Maybe, just maybe, if I get the balance right, I will make it. Then this will be me:

All I Do Is Post Videos Now

2007-07-19T01:11:00.001-04:00

But this one is hilarious:

Don't Look Him In The Eye...

2007-07-11T22:07:00.000-04:00

...or he'll steal your soul:

I May Have Spoken Too Soon

2007-07-11T21:52:00.000-04:00

Ugh, I feel sick. I've been eating more fruits and vegetables, drinking water, and exercising in a vain effort to prevent any illness. Maybe I can still win, but today feels like it could be the tipping point towards failure. Sheesh.

I bought some cold medicine from a nearby Duane Reade, took some, and left the box at work. So, soon I'll rest and forget about all the work that still has to be done. At least, when it's finished, I'll have something great to show for it.

Hopefully.

I'm watching the World Series of Pop Culture, and I have to route for Westerberg High, in honor of The Replacements' lead singer Paul Westerbeg. Great name for a trivia team. Of course, Carlton Banks dance academy isn't too bad either. Appropriately, Westerberg High won the music category. Also, I find it not only hilarious that "sugartits" was an answer, but that VH1 had to bleep "tits".

This weekend I'll be visiting the family and taking part in Magic: The Gathering World Wide Game Day. Yep, I'll be waving my freak nerd flag high. Should be a relaxing, fun time.

Tomorrow is the photo shoot,; hopefully I'll feel better by then. Until then, here are...

The De-Stressing From Work Hits Of 7/11

1. "Stars and Sons", Broken Social Scene
2. "Life Of Pain", Black Flag
3. "Seen Your Video", The Replacements
4. "Strawberry Fields", Ben Harper
5. "Bartering Lines", Ryan Adams
6. "Fly That Know", Talib Kweli (feat. MF Doom)
7. "Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy", Queen
8. "Stay Positive", The Streets
9. "Little Cream Soda", The White Stripes
10. "The House That Guilt Built", The Wrens
11. "Rolling Back", My Morning Jacket
12. "What's Going On", Marvin Gaye
13. "Time Of The Season", The Zombies

I'm Not Dead Yet

2007-07-10T22:08:00.000-04:00

The subway stops in NYC aren't air conditioned. That's important to note, because I'm from DC, where they -- for the most part -- are. Or their at least cool. So, when I emerged from the Times Square station I was already pretty miserable, suffering from swamp crotch(thanks UB) and longing to get to the office water cooler as quickly as possible. Then, in the bright New York sunlight, there was nothing. But the stench.

I felt cliche thinking that it smelled like shit, until I saw a truck that read NYC Free Waste Control. So, it was literally shit, being pumped out of the street. Or into the street, who knows. Anyway, the smell made me think of my blog.

I've been gone for a few weeks, and like many things left unattended, this blog has started to reek. My apologies to all six readers. If you still remain.

Anyway, I know I promised pictures from my high school reunion. And I would have them, if not for the fact that I started drinking and socializing first, and completely forgot I had a camera.

The reunion was fun. I had people tell me I looked exactly the same, and others tell me I looked completely different. Most people looked the same to me, and hardly anyone looked like they had put on a few. Well, maybe a couple. I hung out, reminisced, and drank. Afterwards, I ended up at an after party with all the cool people who wouldn't have been caught dead with me ten years ago. And what was I missing out on all those years ago? Drinking, hanging out, and reminiscing, though ten years ago I'll bet there was more sex than reminiscing.

What else has happened since then? Oh, this Thursday I will have my first professional photo shoot. The ad agency I work for decided to go in-house for a sunglasses campaign, and against all odds, I was picked along with four other guys to take part in the photo shoot. Doesn't guarantee I'll be used in the campaign, but I get a free pair of sunglasses and some professional head shots. Not a bad deal.

I'll try not to go AWOL for this long ever again, though the way work has been going, I can't promise anything, My team is up against an arguably impossible deadline, and we've all been putting in extra hours.

Hopefully things will let up soon.

Temporarily Blind

2007-06-22T17:09:00.000-04:00

I'm hideously vain, it seems. Or maybe just a little. You decide:

My ten year high school reunion is this weekend, and for reasons I can't really explain, I'm very excited. Part of it is, after a month or so in New York, this will be my first trip home and I will get to see my family, friends, etc. And I'll get to drink with some of them. The other part is, like most nerds, I want to show everyone I went to high school with how much I've changes. There, I said it. I can explain it, it's just embarrassing.

One very noticeable change is I no longer wear glasses. In high school, I not only wore glasses, I wore huge, thick glasses. The kind that Buddy Holly would refuse to wear because they were too geeky(this was true of every year except my senior year, I think, when I adopted more sensible frames). So I'm excited to show up sans-two of my four eyes. Then, yesterday, disaster struck.

I'm down to my last pair of lenses before I need to order new ones. I thought, for some reason, they would last until the reunion. Having just moved, I hadn't found a new optometrist and my vision insurance card hadn't -- and still hasn't -- arrived in the mail. A long-winded way to excuse myself for not having a back-up pair of lenses. So yesterday, my left lens develops a tear, and promptly disintegrates in my hands.

Oh-fucking-no...what am I going to do? I thought. I am NOT wearing glasses to this thing...think...think...eye exam? lenses? in two days??

The thought of going to that reunion wearing glasses flat-lined my excitement. I don't want people to see me as I was; I want them to see me as I am now!

Sure, my hair is a lot longer, scraggly, I'm not as helplessly skinny, and I'm not as socially inept as I was -- but goddammit -- I don't wear glasses anymore! That's the important thing that everyone should see.

Everyone being an entity that has yet to be defined. I have no idea who will come, who I will remember and who will remember me. It could all be an empty exercise, like doing squats while eating a Big Mac.

So, I had an eye exam this morning, and luckily -- despite astigmatism in my right eye -- they had a pair of lenses in stock I could wear while waiting for my prescription to come in. Disaster averted.

Someone better notice. I'll try and post some pictures of the hopefully splendid event.

The Secret At Subway

2007-06-21T18:43:00.000-04:00

I'm a big fan of Subway. That is, I eat there semi-regularly. That's right, I moved to New York only to grab lunch at a chain restaurant. Does it remind me of home? Is a six inch club comfort food, keeping me anchored in a strange new world? Or am I just lazy? Who knows.

During one of my recent jaunts to a Subway, I spied something peculiar behind the counter. Not a rat, a cockroach, rotting veggies or a snotty rag. Something much more vile: a copy of Rhonda Byrne's The Secret.

Much has been written already debunking this book, so I won't get into the ridiculousness of the "law of attraction" and the re-cycled, re-hashed version Byrne springs on the world. To me, though, this book is blatantly immoral. It preys on human insecurities, and it teaches people to blame themselves for things beyond their control. This book advocates the idea that thinking poor, makes you poor. Can I get a big, Steve Tyler bellowing sized WHAT THE FUCK?

It also says, at one point, that to lose weight, you should simply avoid looking at fat people. You read that correctly. Don't change your eating habits, don't exercise, just avert your eyes when Fatty Fatty Fat Fats walks by. That's fucking brilliant.

Send positive vibes out into the universe, and it will respond. Wish for things. Fine. I wish for the utter and complete failure of Rhonda Byrne. Give me that, you stupid fucking secret.

Oh wait, that's not a positive vibe. So it won't work. There are always loop holes; easy ways to explain why whatever new-age hooey won't work for you. For example, you can't just wish to be out of debt, you have to wish for it by just imagining yourself with lots of money. The Secret teaches that if you dwell on your debt, the universe will interpret this as negative feelings toward money, and won't send you any. Kind of like an emotional ATM.

This is easy to see in the real world, people with money are happy. Happy people get money. Hahahaahaha, why didn't I see that before? I must have been running in circles.

The Runner Who The Race Outran...

2007-06-19T16:18:00.000-04:00

AndHereComeThePretzels (an impossibly great name for a sports blog) has a great piece on Lavar Arrington, who was recently in a motorcycle accident on the Capital Beltway. Once the face of the franchise, it was unthinkable that his career would end the way Big Ben celebrates Super Bowls.

Lavar had it rough as a Skin. Every year, it seemed, he had a new coach and a new defensive scheme. The Skins had Marvin Lewis for one year, and everyone hoped -- as AHCTP points out -- that Lavar would turn into Ray Lewis + LT(honored by his number, 56). Never really happened. Spurrier, then Gibbs, then injuries, then Synder; it was all too much. He should have stayed here. Snyder and Lavar should have put their differences and egos aside and gotten a deal done.

Didn't happen. Still, we had some good times. Lavar ended Troy Aikman's career with one of the most vicious hits I've ever seen. He triggered the winning streak that saved Marty Schottenheimer's only season in Washington from being a losing one, with an interception return for a touchdown against Carolina. Those hilarious Eastern Motor commercials.

Did you know he was named in honor of Levar Burton? Neither did I; thanks Wikipedia. For some reason, that's comforting.

In other Redskin related news, our overlord Dan Snyder bought the American Bandstand franchise today. Which means he owns the New Year's Rockin' Eve broadcast, the Golden Globes, the American Music Awards, and the Academy of Country Music Awards. This means Tom Cruise should be a shoe-in for a Golden Globe next year(Snyder is invested in Cruise's production company), Mark Brunell will have a front row seat at the ACMAs, and Jason Campbell will be a presenter at the AMAs. Unless Campell gets injured, then Brunell will present.

I can't help but think Snyder is brutalizing the world of business to make up for the lack of on-field success the Skins are having; almost like he has to make up for one part of his empire's incompetence by conquering even more territory in the world of business. It's not enough that the Redskins are one of the most profitable sports franchises in the world, no, he has to own more, more, and more. I can't understand why everything he buys -- theme parks, Bandstand, Johnny Rockets, etc. -- has a 1950s feel to it, though. The Skins were horrible then. You would think he'd be buying 80s-era businesses: investing in arcades, producing the next Rambo and Rocky movies, or giving away vintage boom boxes at every home game.

Now I have no real basis for this, and I'm not saying he wouldn't have bought American Bandstand if the Redskins had won the Super Bowl, but...well no, that is what I'm saying.

Shooting Hoops

2007-06-19T00:43:00.000-04:00

I try to take in a lot of advice, on a variety of things, and then go Bruce Lee on it: discard what doesn't work(for me), and stick with what does. Sometimes, the source affects how well I listen. When a former artillery office of the Israeli Army gives me advice to up the arc on my jump shot, I listen.

Saturday evening I was shooting solo at the courts at Riverside Park, when an older Jewish man rode up on his bicycle and asked if he could shoot with me. I said of course, a little wary because -- this being New York -- I still believe anyone is capable of being a serial killer.

After warming up a bit, he was out shooting me. His shot motion was old school, the way you'll see jump shots taken in the WNBA or NBA archival footage: the jump and the shot are all one motion. Eventually, I started matching his consistency. Then he made about ten 17-18 footers in a row, from all around the court. The only thing I had on him at that point was my three-point range; still, it wasn't a competition or anything, just friendly shooting around.

Amazingly, basketball was not his game. When the group of four young kids behind us let their ball get away from them, my shooting companion cradled the errant ball with his foot than launched the ball 60ft with one swift kick, bending it right into the hands(ok, the gut) of the nearest kid. Damn.

He told about watching the then world champion Washington Bullets play the Israeli National team in 1978, and lose, by four points. He told me about being a sky marshal on Israeli airplanes, traveling to New York in the seventies and seeing the great Knick teams play.

It was a good afternoon.

Courtesy Of The Make A Wish Foundation

2007-06-14T16:02:00.000-04:00

I'm blatantly aping a great writer when I say, I am not qualified to live here.¹

Here not being the city of New York, but rather the Upper West Side, or UWS² for short. This is a place for blue-blooded WASPS, not a guy whose Prince George's County accent routinely comes up("I ain't got no cash, shiiit..."). The streets are lined with the upper-middle class, their stores, strollers and dogs. The nearest grocery store is more expensive than anywhere I shopped in DC, and I used to live near the Watergate Safeway. Sure, it carries frozen pizza, but only in personal size. It also carries brick oven frozen pizza, which defies explanation. The McDonald's downstairs delivers, and it has to, because no one who lives here goes in for anything other than a McFlurry, and those they eye with delight the way they might sample an exotic treat while on some far off safari sabbatical.

Finding myself here, I wonder; I ponder; I ask myself:...how did I get here?

Even at work, it seems, I find myself in another world. If I overheard a conversation at my old job, it was about babies, television, current events, and pop culture. Now, if I overhear a conversation, I don't know what it's about, because it's in French. Which is great, but still makes me feel like JoJo the idiot circus boy, who won a contest and gets to work at an ad agency and shack up in Miff and Buffy's neighborhood.

¹Chuck Kolsterman.

²I only know this because my GF pointed it out when Craigslist apartment ads began to confuse me.

Friday, Thank God

2007-06-08T16:53:00.000-04:00

What a long week it's been. Work has been draining, but ultimately rewarding. I've finally been moved away from all the floor-ripping and empty desks, and now I sit among actual human beings. The only bad part is I'm in the section of the building that is having it's bathrooms remodeled, so I have to go down a floor to use the facilities. That, and now I sit within a few arms lengths of the producer of my current project. My boss, basically, but it seems weird to call him that since I potentially have many, many bosses. Not that he is a bad guy or a slave-driver or anything, it's just...not my style.

I've discovered, much to my delight, that I live within a few blocks of both a Loews Theater and a Barnes & Noble. I'll be spending a lot of time at both this summer. I already paid the B&N a visit, buying a couple of books on New York, some titles for work as well as a new Nirvana biography. Summer reading at it's best(except for the work books).

Speaking of my neighborhood, it amazes me how relatively crowded the streets are after nine. It always looks like a party just let out somewhere. One more thing to get used to. Along with the fact that I somehow didn't realize that my new apartment does not have a microwave. Instead of instant oatmeal, I have three to five minute oatmeal. Which is just as good, except for the additional cleaning.

One thing I'm very glad my apartment has, is a working air conditioner. The New York sun isn't at Heat-Death-Ray readiness yet, but it's getting there. With only one room to serve, my AC unit will have no problem keeping me cool all summer. Hopefully.

One thing I thought about, late last night before I fell asleep, was the movie Big. I'm sure someone else has said this before, but don't you think it really weirded out the Josh's mother when her son grew up to look just like the guy she thought kidnapped him? Or did Josh go out of his way to grow a beard/mustache? Also, could you convict Elizabeth Perkins character of statutory rape? Or would the illusion of age be enough to dodge the charges?

I need to sleep more.

The View

2007-06-06T22:06:00.001-04:00

The view from my new apartment. I'll have to enjoy this, since it's only for the summer. I had to work late tonight, but at least it's rewarding work. Plus, the week is half over. Come on weekend!

I Wish Mr. Brooks Would Visit Mr. Happy Fun

2007-06-05T18:39:00.000-04:00

That was a two day weekend, right? It felt like three. Come Sunday, it felt like I had been away from work for a long time. I guess that means I had a good weekend. It didn't start out good, it started out with over-priced, over-cooked fillet mignon.

My girlfriend and I had dinner in Little Italy Friday night. We stopped at the first place that served bread and appeared air conditioned. After being seated, the waiter asked us if we needed to see the wine list. I said no, since I wasn't in the mood and my girlfriend doesn't drink...usually. Looking down at the menu, I didn't see his reaction, but my girlfriend said he seemed pissed. Great, it's going to be one of those nights, I thought.

Don't get me wrong, I mean, I get it. Wine, appetizers - they all add up, which to a waiter usually means a bigger tip. Don't be visibly pissed though. It's not my duty to order over-priced wine. Okay, mister waiter? No hard feelings, right?

So, naturally, we received no bread. Other tables, that were seated after us? Oh they got bread. I, however, had to ask for it. So that's how it is, mister waiter? Mister happy fun? Got it.

My fillet mignon -- which I had never actually had before, I just enjoyed saying fillet mignon -- was decent. I may be a complete philistine, but I prefer steaks at Outback to what this restaurant was serving. And whoever fixed my girlfriend's spaghettia alla carbonara went nuts with the garlic and salt, pushing the limits of edible. We will not be going back there, despite the ringing endorsement from Time Out, circa 1999, quoted on their website.

After having missed one showing of "Mr. Brooks" downtown, we opted for a late showing at the 86th street Loews. The show was at 12:15, and they let us in the theater at...12:15. We waited in a, albeit short, line for about a half hour. For the first twenty minutes of that wait, the line was three people deep: me, my girlfriend, and a baseball-cap wearing, sweaty loner. "Mr. Brooks" was surprisingly good; Costner and Hurt had moments together that were very creepy. They should patent that joint laughter act and go on the road, creeping people out. Dane Cook was serviceable, and Demi Moore can now say she owns the most realistic portrayal of a millionaire cop ever filmed. Wil Smith in Bad Boys has nothing on her. So, a good ending that salvaged an otherwise horrible Friday night.

Saturday, things were much better. We went to Ooki, a Sushi/Japanese restaurant on the Upper East Side. Easily the best Japanese place I've been to in New York. The service was friendly and quick. The atmosphere was chill; the open-air dining room felt fantastic on a warm summer night. The drinks, especially the plum wine, were delicious. Ooki earns special praise for pacing the salads, appetizers, and entrees so we never felt rushed or neglected. The duck spring rolls, the shrimp tempura, and the best chicken teriyaki I've ever had make Ooki my new favorite dining spot. My girlfriend, not one to hand out praise, said the sushi was the best she'd ever had.

We went to see "Knocked Up", which -- thought not has laugh out loud hilarious as "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" -- was still hilarious and heartfelt. If you haven't seen it yet, well, too bad. People applauded at the end of the film, though these days I find that happening a lot more than I remember it. I mean, people applauded at the end of the third Pirates movie as well. And while, yes, I can appreciate some of the non-blockbuster sequences Verbinski sneaked into the movie -- the sand crabs, multiple Jack Sparrows were very surreal and effective -- I don't think the overloaded, under-plotted film deserved applause. A thoughtful "hmmm"? Sure.

Sunday was spent moving the rest of my stuff over to my new apartment, shopping, and then finally, relaxing.

Which is good, because it looks to be a long week.

Music From The Motion Picture

2007-06-04T10:55:00.000-04:00

Romantic comedies, unless they are based on Nick Hornsby novels and star John Cusack, don't usually inspire me to buy music. Throw in Jennifer Aniston, and the chances go from slim to Ritchie.

So it's with some surprise that I sit here listening to Wreck Your Life by The Old 97's after watching The Break-Up. The movie was hilarious. I never tire of Vince Vaughn, and Aniston is always great as the girl who is just a little too hot for you(so maybe your hilarious personality can make up for it). Justin Long makes a disturbing cameo, however, that will make your stomach churn and your brow bunch up in revulsion. And I like Justin Long.

Wreck Your Life is a great mix of rock and country. "Victoria" is a great, sad story-telling opener. "W-I-F-E", an ode to leaving your better-half rather than just cheating, is as pure country as you can get. The fact that the song insists on spelling "wife", talking in code, is fantastic. "Dressing Room Walls" paints a vivid picture of dying on the road, and the album ends -- appropriately -- with "Goin', Goin', Gone" which is surprisingly not an ode to the long ball. Check this band out. None of the songs performed in the movie appear on Wreck Your Life; the album(from 1995 and their second album) just seemed to be a good starting point. There is a best of from Rhino that looks pretty good.

It's Really Big...No, Bigger Than That...It Was Big

2007-05-30T22:26:00.000-04:00

Time to get my geek on. Ever wonder how big the Starship Enterprise D was? Well, take a look how it stacks up to various Seattle landmarks(click through to RFjason.com):

Neat. Interestingly, "Starship" is not recognized by the Blogger spell checker. It wants to change it to the "Steamship" Enterprise D, and I have to admit, a steam-punk Enterprise would be kind of cool.

Above Ground, Where The Warlocks Really Are

2007-05-29T15:42:00.000-04:00

At my old gym, in the heart of DC's Chinatown, the facility was buried in the bowels of the complex of buildings that had sprung up around the Phone Booth(the erstwhile MCI Center, now going by Verizon). It was the official gym of the Washington Nationals, which is a lot like the Washington Generals sponsoring a basketball court(I kid, I kid...the boys in Federal Red are actually playing well lately, almost .500 ball since a 1-8 start). Being twenty feet underground brought one very appreciated blessing: cell phones were useless.

At my new gym, near Times Square in NYC, the gym floor and locker rooms are actually two stories above ground. Now no one is dumb enough (yet) to bring a cellphone onto the gym floor -- though I have seen some crackberries -- but the locker room is apparently a no-holds-barred zone. Conversations with colleagues, friends, and significant others abound.

The topic is usually mundane: business, errands, what to TiVo, etc. What's interesting, at least to me, is that no one is the least embarrassed to say where they are calling from, or what they are doing. I often hear:

"Yeah, I'm in the gym locker room...toweling off, putting on my pants...anyway..."

It's very nonchalant. Since modesty is not an issue, I think they should go a step further:

"Yeah, I'm in the gym locker room...toweling off my testicles, spread-eagle...putting on my pants, sans underwear, doing a nice tilt-a-whirl impression as I'm trying to balance the phone while getting dressed, mooning three or four people in the process..."

Why leave out any details?

Another Empty Room

2007-05-25T17:41:00.000-04:00

My new job in NYC has been great, for the most part. As with any new endeavor, there was -- or rather there still is -- a period of adjustment. For one thing, hardly anyone comes in before ten. Happily, jeans and a t-shirt are accepted as a web developer's standard uniform; just as it should be.

Of course there are the standard NYC/DC differences. Sometimes I still reach for my MetroCard when I'm about to exit a subway station, forgetting that it's not necessary here. Seeing promos for the Yankees and Mets, instead of my usual summer stalwarts the Orioles(and now the Nationals), is a little weird. Office-wide e-mails seek takers for extra Red Sox/Yankee tickets, not Redskins/Cowboys. PathMark replaces Giant. Overall, though, it's been a smooth transition, aided by my many visits over the last two ears.

Some things have remained the same. For one, I'm still in the middle of an office move. Apparently, my new employers are transitioning a lot of people to a new building(thankfully, it's just across the street). I was seated among the people slated to move, because apparently, no one had any idea what to do with me.

My first day, everything was normal. People seated all around, working, talking, etc. My desk-neighbor shared the same name as me, which led to some hilarious instances of me whipping my head up when people called for him. Well, it was funny to me.

By the end of the first week, four people, their computers, desks, and phones were gone. The following Monday, everyone but four people(of about twenty) had been moved. My doppelganger desk-neighbor was gone, as was his desk, and my chair. I borrowed an errant one from the empty expanse of the once populated room.

Now, there is no one here except me and a woman whose job it is to, as far as I can tell, sit behind me at a desk -- sans computer -- and periodically tell me about doughnuts and juice available in the kitchen.

New Songs I've Listened To Lately

2007-05-23T17:06:00.000-04:00

"Believe", The Bravery - If there is a Killers/The Bravery feud, this is a mightier weapon than "When You Were Young". Instead of xeroxing Springsteen into tonelessness¹, the NYC group kept the 80s new-wave pop sound, tightly wrapping it around this song. Every bit as catchy as "An Honest Mistake".

"The Next Untouchable", Cajun Dance Party - From the start, this song kicks. It has a dark, sinister sound anchored by fuzzy guitar riffs and barely-there keyboard/synth accompaniment. Garage dance music, if there is such a thing. I'll have to pick up their debut album when it comes out later in the year.

and finally, the best for last...

"Icky Thump", The White Stripes - I make it rule -- despite being a music nerd -- to avoid singles off of albums I know I'm going to buy anyway. The logic being I'd like to listen to the album in it's entirety, fresh, with no pre-conceptions. Actually, maybe this makes me a bigger music nerd. "Icky Thump", though, I couldn't resist. And I think it's ruined the upcoming Stripes album of the same name for me.

The White Stripes are proof rock will never die, at least not in my lifetime. Hard, crunchy guitars, pounding bass drums; this is what hard rock should sound like. It's epic without being bombastic. They've taken the best of 70s rock and made it their own.

How can the rest of the album live up to this? Why, why did I give in to temptation?

¹Who would The Bravery have to copy to truly mirror The Killers? Tom Petty? Waits? Hopefully, we'll never know.

The Things You See On The Subway

2007-05-21T21:34:00.000-04:00

Far be it from me to criticize the work of others -- especially work I haven't even read -- but I find this hilarious:

"Flip" Flippen? How can I take anything the man writes seriously? I find hard to believe that a man whose first name is "Flip" -- a sitcom wacky neighbor name if I've ever heard one -- has anything pertinent to say on what's holding me back. If I wanted advice on how to handle dating problems or my arch-nemesis down the hall, then I'll call Flip.

OK, I'm done being an asshole. Maybe his book makes some important points. Next time I'm at a Borders, I'll flip through it a bit.

I've Got Two Weeks In Me

2007-05-21T00:46:00.000-04:00

I should have my own place in a couple weeks; the first of June to be precise. Which is good, because my girlfriend's roommate is back. Over G-Mail chat, my girlfriend let me know she would be back Saturday, and "She Fucking Hates Me" comes on. Fitting.

Never mind why I have Puddle Of Mudd on my iPod(because that song kicks ass), let's just focus on the hellish existence I will be living for the next two weeks. I'm not exaggerating when I say I'd rather pop the puss-filled pimples on Satan's ass then spend more than five minutes in the same room with that woman. Negative energy surrounds and radiates from the woman.

I'll just have to lay low for a while. My stuff has been regulated to a corner of the apartment to be "out of the way" and I'm going to wait until she's done in the morning before I even emerge from the bedroom.

Not that it's easy to have a third, new person your place; but I've tried to make friends many times, and to dispense with modesty, I'm quiet, I wash, dry and clean all of my dishes -- and hers. Oh well...June 1st. Come quick.

My Desk Without Me In It

2007-05-18T22:59:00.000-04:00

Before I left for New York, I had a glimpse of what my life could have been.

On a whim, Brian and I visited DOT's new building. It was my last day, so I figured why not; I could see what I'd be missing.

The old building sat right atop the L'Enfant stop and was, in every way, a typical Federal building: rooms full of cubicles and offices saturated in boring tones of gray and taupe. The new building was only two more stops down the Green Line, at the Navy Yards stop. After a loud ride full of freshly released school kids, we climbed out onto New Jersey Avenue and found, much to our surprise, a very modern facility waiting for us. A circular bay of huge glass doors; a giant DOT seal on the lobby floor; actual Security turnstiles; two huge atriums(one of which houses much improved cafeteria and snack shop facilities); and huge, clean, talking elevators. Was I missing out?

Apparently not. Cubicles had made way for a honeycomb of workstations, clustered together with no thought given to privacy or headaches. People had been grumbling about this since the workstations had been revealed almost a year ago, and they've been vindicated. I don't know how good vindication feels when you

At that moment, though, we were hopefully optimistic. Or at least Brian was, since it was probably my first and final time there.

The web team had been prepping to move for the past two weeks. Crates were packed, computers, monitors, keyboards and mice labeled. Here, names were taped to every one's new assigned desk. Including, curiously, mine.

A strange site, considering I'd never work at this desk. I thought about everything I was leaving behind. This would have been security -- for the most part -- and stability. This could have been my life. I sat in it, just so I could say I did it once. It was comfortable...perhaps too much.

Summertime In The City

2007-05-16T18:02:00.000-04:00

The New City, New Job Hits of 5/16/07

"Fireball", The Slats
"New York, New York", Ryan Adams
"My Little Brother", Art Brut
"Juicebox", The Strokes
"Rotten Hell", Menomena ("all those opposed can rot in hell...")
"Ordinary People", John Legend
"On Broadway", The Drifters
"Out On The Weekend", Girls In Hawaii
"This House Is A Circus", The Arctic Monkeys
"Hang Me Up To Dry", Cold War Kids
"Fashion", Earl Greyhound
"Riding On The Subway", Jesse Malin
"New York Apartment", Bill Hicks
"Changes", David Bowie
"Over The Hills And Far Away", Led Zeppelin
"Train Under Water", Bright Eyes
"In Transit", Albert Hammond Jr.
"Every Single Line Means Something", Marnie Stern
"She Will Only Bring You Happiness", Mclusky
"New Slang", The Shins

So Far...

2007-05-13T20:06:00.000-04:00

Last week, I moved the rest of my stuff out of my old apartment and cleaned it top to bottom. I only lived in Columbia Heights a year(actually, a little less), and it showed. There wasn't much stuff to move. The only big furniture item was my bed; other than that there were just boxes of books, DVDs, bags of clothes, and my laptop. So it didn't take long to get from this:

To this:

Most of my stuff is still back in DC; I brought my clothes and my computer. The essentials.

It's so far, so good. I've seen two places, and I want them booth. I have a good vibe about one. We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Happy Mothers Day, and to everyone back in DC/Maryland, I miss you already.

Almost Time

2007-05-09T15:17:00.000-04:00

What appeared on Yahoo's front page this afternoon:

A thoughtful story on toxins found in the common American kitchen.

What straight men saw:

Er...what? Yeah, toxins. Gotta have your toxins.

Start Spreading The News...

2007-04-27T15:42:00.000-04:00

Today, I leave for my last visit to New York. In two weeks I will become a permanent resident. Yes, I'm leaving DC - the city of class presidents - for the city that never sleeps, to become an insomniac. I'm taking a job there with a great ad agency; I'll be a front-end web developer for them. So, excitement abounds in my small corner of the world.

I've had a good job with great people the last two years, and I will miss them and my friends and family here in the DC/Maryland area. There will be much visiting. But as a wise man once said, wherever you go, there you are.

Have a good weekend.