The Caves of Inwood

Cliffed Out...

2007-07-08T18:53:00.000-04:00

I have moved out of my Inwood Cave and am adjusting to a new altitude. If you would like to continue this blogging journey with me, I can be found at my new blog:

Cliffed Out

Hope to see you there,

John Deckard

the Last subway ride to Work

2007-06-08T09:30:00.000-04:00

Today is my last day of work in New York City. I have cleaned my desk, removed the cubicle flair and thrown out mountains of paperwork that I always suspected I wouldn't need and now know that I don't.

On June 14th, I will be leaving my Cave in Inwood and will set forth to the Mountainous Lands of Colorado. A new blog name will follow, and a new perspective. I will miss New York City. Over the next few days, between the hours of packing and cleaning, Kat and I will be rushing about the City doing all those things we thought of doing yet kept putting off. It's interesting how many of those things involve food...

Well, I'd better get down to the conference room and enjoy my Going Away breakfast. I hope there's some O.J..

5 Things You Don't Know About Me

2007-04-25T13:37:00.000-04:00

I have been tagged by both Muse and JeR so I shall arise from the cave for a post:

1) For 3 years, I was a genetic engineering major. I had done well in school, but despised the arrogance and indifference of the science department. During Finals week of my Junior year, I was sitting in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology class wherein I reached an epiphany. As a blanket of Utter calm descended upon me, I knew with utter certainty that I was going to tank every final that week... and I did. After my last final on Thursday afternoon, I called my parents to tell them that I didn't want to be a genetic engineer. There was a long pause on the line then my mother said, "So what do you want to do." I had not put a single thought into that question, but without a moment's hesitation I answered, "I want to be a filmmaker." The rest is history... or something.

2) For 3 years, I lived in Alaska. One of my fondest memories of childhood was ice skating up and down city streets. Rather than plow the mounting feet of snow, the military base would steamroll it flat, then send gravel trucks to throw rocks over it. I would skate on the snow after the steamrollers had made the pass, beneath the orange streetlights and three months of darkness.

3) I went to the State Finals for Pinewood Derby racing. My Cub Scouts troop made all the kids buy this kit that involved a piece of pinewood, 4 wheels and nails for axles. The kids then cut piece of wood to make it aerodynamic, then added some weight (there is a maximum weight the car could be). Then, they raced these cars against one another by rolling them down a big wooden ramp. It was pretty frigging fun, actually, and I won all the way to the state finals where I tied the overall winner twice until he beat me on the tiebreaker.

4) I hit my dog in the face with a baseball bat. I cringe writing those words, even though it's been 20 years since the incident. We had a black lab who was proficient at drooling and fetching tennis balls. After 3 throws, the tennis ball would morph into a heinous ball of drool. Normally, I would wear a gardening glove but one day I got the brilliant idea of hitting them with a baseball bat instead. So, I hit a couple dingers off and we're all having a great time until the last time. As I tossed the ball in the air and unloaded with my little-league baseball bat, my dog decided that he could save a lot of running time by just catching the ball NOW. I clobbered him in the face with such force, I left a tooth indentation on my bat. For 5 minutes, he howled in pain and writhed on the ground.

One of the top-five worst moments of my life.

After a few minutes of utter misery, he got up, slowly lumbered to his water dish, slopped a drink of water then retreated to his doghouse. Despite my child instinct to flee the scene of my crime, I went and told my dad. He came out, examined our dog and miraculously, could find no evidence of the blow. The next day, I was back to throwing the tennis ball with the gardening glove. Damn, dogs are forgiving!

5) I volunteered for Bible Camp. Who knows how it happened. The details are fuzzy although that my be my subconscious protecting me from trauma. One summer, I couldn't find a job the Texas town where my parents lived, so my mom thought it would look good on my resume if I did some volunteer work. Now, I am not religious. I'm not even religious-adjacent. My Bible knowledge is limited to half-waking moments in church pews and coloring books with David slaying the mighty Goliath.

O.K., I might know a little more than that. At some point, I think that I could even recite all the books of the Old and New Testament. Those days, however, are long gone. Even back in college those were receding memories. However, one day I found myself at a Baptist(?) Bible Camp in southeastern Texas, wrangling 12 year old boys. I even had to sleep in a single-room cabin with 10 boys (that sentence is just wrong on so many levels). Looking back on this, I don't know how I did this, particularly with no alcohol. I do remember a lot of evenings of bad pizza and games of Spades with fellow-counselors.

A Fifth of a Second

2007-03-12T14:05:00.000-04:00

As Wren and I enjoyed our lunch at the 56th Street atrium, an old gentleman approached us. He wore an impeccable suit beneath a long, fitted coat and clutched a copy of the New York Times in one arm.

"What is the best city in the world," he asked.

I fumbled to answer his question earnestly, but Wren knew the punchline.

"New York," she answered.

The man pressed himself against the table and leaned towards Wren.

"Do you know the difference between a New Yorker and a Midwesterner," he asked.

Both of us shrugged.

"A fifth of a second!"

The man leaned back, grinned, then strode away.

the Longest month of the year

2007-03-06T07:30:00.000-05:00

February is always a terrible month for me. The short days, the cold weather- I don't precisely know why but fortunately, it's the shortest month (calendar-wise) of the year and now it's finally over. Now, I can get back to work with the blogging. I have friends and family visiting over the next months so hopefully I'll have some good New York-themed posts and a few pics.

Feeeeling up the fruit

2007-01-10T21:47:00.000-05:00

I stood over a sea of plantains- eight, cardboard boxes of plantains in all stages of ripeness, from the earliest, jungle green through the death throes of yellow and black. I picked over the two boxes of brown-and-yellow ones. I couldn't call myself an expert, but I had cooked my fair share of sweet plantains as an accompaniment to black beans and rice. I had fallen in love with them a dozen years ago at a tiny, Cuban restaurant in Hollywood.

I had been recently burned by some unripened plantains. They left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth that still set my teeth on end whenever I thought of them. This time, I was determined to not make the same mistake twice. As I poked and pinched through the box in front of me, a diminutive, elderly woman stepped up to the second box of ripened fruit.

She looked over the plantains, but I could see that she was checking me out from the corner of her eye. Finally, she dropped the facade. She turned towards me and leaned back to get a good, long look at the towering, indecisive Anglo looming over her. She turned back to her box and picked up a bright-yellow fruit.

"I like to set these out in my home for a few days," she announces in a thick, Dominican accent. I glanced at her with an exaggerated 'Who Me?" look but she is paying no attention to my face. It was my plantains she was scrutinizing and, perhaps, talking to.

"Yeah," I offered in reply and dropped the plantain back into the pile. I picked up another brown fruit.

"That one is no good."

"Well, I was wanting to use them today," I explained, "I don't have time to wait for them to ripen at home."

She reached across and squeezed my plantain.

"Feel that," she ordered. I complied.

"No! Don't peench it," she cried. "You've got to feeeel it! Like this-" The old woman reached into my box, seized a yellow plantain and massaged it with her hand. Had she been 30 years younger, I would have sworn that she was hitting on me.

Kat stood beside the organic produce, laughing as I stuttered to explain myself.

"Well, maybe I have really strong fingers," I suggested.

The little, old woman thrusted her hand into my box, pulled out another plantain and slapped it into my open hand.

"That one is good for eating now," she said.

I opened my mouth to thank her.

"Feel it," she barked. I felt it.

"Oh, yeah," I marvel with a bit too much vigor. They did feel pretty good.

'Is that wrong,' I wondered.

"Those are good ones! Feeel it," she stabbed at the plantains with her finger as I attempted to pleasure her with my plantain-squeezing skills.

"Well... thanks," I said, but she had already turned away to continue her business of plantain shopping. The lesson was over.

drums... drums, in the deep

2007-01-05T16:14:00.000-05:00

So, I finally got hired full-time at my non-profit job. I have been looking for a job elsewhere for the last 6 months, but it never happened. Finally, one of my co-workers got a new job and I was offered her vacated position. It's 1 2/3 more pay and I'll have health benefits for the first time in nearly 2 1/2 years.

I fucking hate getting older. Suddenly things like health insurance have become a big deal as I've become more and more aware of exactly how fucked up the healthcare industry is in this country. Gives me a goddamn headache. So, I'm full-time now and that means that I can finally save a little money for the big move.

That's right. After 5 and a half years of living in NYC, Kat and I are planning to move. Colorado, most-likely. Fort Collins, quite possibly. Both Kat and I were born in Colorado (separated by 8 years). We both left at a young age and our memories are dim, but last summer rekindled things and now we're looking to move there. We have friends there and Nebraska, and it'll be an ideal place to recharge our batteries with some outdoor activities (I am particularly psyched about learning snowboarding).

I have no idea what the fuck we're going to do for a living. I've been looking for teaching work in the hope of gathering a little experience and teaching a community college after we move, but there's a glut of broke artists looking for work in NYC and all my resumes have either ignored me or offered a faceless, thank-you-for-submitting reply. I so badly want to get back into the arts, but I'm at a loss and have no idea what Colorado has to offer.

The reason we're thinking about Fort Collins is that it's a college town and is gaining a rep as a hip, cheap place. Boulder is too expensive and white for my tastes. Denver is a possibility, but we're not too thrilled with the idea. People keep telling me I should move there because I live in a city now, but why would I want to live in a smoggy city that isn't as dynamic and interesting as NYC and has no public transportation? If I wanted to live in another NYC, then I'd move to London or just stay put.

As a result of this big event, Kat and I have posted a list on our refrigerator of all the things we want to do before we leave. Despite the unaffordability and a growing cultural vacuum, I really LOVE this city and will have a very hard time leaving it. I'm starting to freak out even as I write this.

It's time for another chapter in this life, though. It'll be six years this summer and it's time to acknowledge that the Dream just isn't gonna happen in this City. I'm tired of being broke, living hand-to-mouth, and going nowhere with my career. I'm ready to go. Kat is ready to go. We need some new possibilities and a little more nature in our lives.

Happy 2007

2007-01-01T21:01:00.000-05:00

Big changes on the horizon for Deckard. Looks like I might be springing from the cave permanently before the autumn leaves fall. In the meantime, I look forward to taking as large a bite of the Big Apple as time, and my wallet, will allow.

Warm tidings to all those who have enjoyed my blog and I promise that the frequency of my posts will increase significantly in the next few days.

Honeymoon Road Trip Park 13: Grand Teton and beyond

2006-11-22T13:38:00.000-05:00

From behind the waters of Jenny Lake rose a cathedral of stone, including the highly-photogenic (if you have a working battery) trio of peaks- Middle Teton, Grand Teton and Mount Owen. Although Kat and I had just spent 3 days amongst the wonders of Yellowstone National Park, we were still in awe.

I'd love to show you some pictures of Grand Teton National Park. Yep. Sure would. I could show you the moose that stood shoulder deep in a pond, dipped it's massive head under water, then re-appeared with a mouthful of plants. I'd love to illustrate the dramatic shift in landscape as the mountainous regions of Yellowstone yielded to marshy plains that pressed a series of lakes against a breathtaking wall of mountains.

This, however, is the point in the journey when Kat and I discovered the bane of our outback roadtripping- electricity. See, when you camp in remote campgrounds, you can't recharge your video/phone/camera batteries. We had purchased a cigarette-lighter converter, but that only really works when you're driving. When you're hiking, instead of driving, that doesn't charge your batteries. So, as Kat and I oohed and ahhed, our camera battery charged.

Our road trip had turned south. Kat and I had been hoping to drive to the West Coast and dip our toes in the Pacific, but we impulsively decided that we didn't want to spend too much of our vacation on the road. I had been thumbing through our Rough Guide and found myself returning time and again to Utah.

Never, in the entire time we had planned our road trip, had we entertained the idea of visiting Utah. I had passed through Salt Lake City when I was 7. When I was 22, I sped down Highway 70 and 15 on the way to Los Angeles, but I never thought to stay. Kat had never visited the state at all. Still, I found myself turning again and again to the images of southern Utah and Bryce Canyon National Park.

By the time we reached Bryce Canyon, our batteries were charged, and it's a good thing they were.

Flexing at the Y

2006-11-16T12:26:00.000-05:00

Location: Men's Locker Room at the YMCA, Upper West Side

As I was getting dressed and ready to go home, four, black teenagers began to pose in front of a full-length mirror at one end of the room. They jockeyed for position as they flexed their thin, wiry frames for one another. Finally, the smallest one pushes his way to the front.

Kid 1: Yo! Lookit me, man! I do have a back, see? Lookit that! I got wings!
Kid 2: You got wings?! What are you now- a tampon?

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 12: Yellowstone's Hot Springs

2006-11-08T13:04:00.000-05:00

Dense clouds of steam swirled through the pine trees and about my head. For a moment, I was lost in a fog of grey. Sunlight dimmed from the sky until I could barely see the boardwalk under my booted soles. The wind shifted and Kat’s wide, toothy grin appeared before me. Below the raised, wooden path lay the white skeleton of the monster beneath us. The stench of sulfur threatened to overwhelm us so we shuffled along the man-made path until we emerged into a crystalline blue sky and a stunning vista of the Gardner Valley and a wall of mountains, standing gray and stoic beyond.

Mammoth Hot Springs is one of many spaces in Yellowstone National Park where a massive, festering volcano taps against the Earth’s skin to remind us of its presence. From a distance, Mammoth Hot Springs appears as a white-and-orange wound on the side of Terrace Mountain. Clouds of steam lazily rise from holes in the mineral orb. It is only when one gets closer that the stunning spectacle comes into view. Numerous, travertine formations have worked to build spectacular terraces. The Park has given the larger ones fanciful names like Minerva, Jupiter, and Cleopatra but it's hard to name parts of a thing that’s always becoming. Some named terraces lie dried up and crumbling while unnamed ones gush forth, twenty yards from the nearest path.

Signs are posted everywhere, begging tourons to not be stupid and step off the path. One false step could unexpectedly crack the fragile crust, open a new fissure and reward the lucky adventurer with a face full of blistering heat. Still, it's hard to convince the skeptics. Bison love to cluster around the springs. Hoof prints and dung patties attest to the fact that bison have walked on the mineral crust. Jealous of the blatant favoritism of the park services, one touron angrily barked, “Why do the buffalo get to walk on the springs but not us?!”

Kat and I wandered the looping boardwalk until the rising tide of tourists finally drove us back to our vehicle. We soon came to discover that the park, though dense with visitors, is pretty quiet before 10 in the morning. On this day, we had decided to brave the big loop of Yellowstone. We began at Mammoth Hot Springs, drove south to the Norris Geyser Basin, looped by the tourist Monolith that is Old Faithful Geyser, passed Lake Yellowstone and eased our way north, through Canyon Village and along the stunning, scenic drive that ended at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

The western edge of the park is a surreal overlapping of natural formations. Innocuous creeks were dotted with gurgling pockets of steam and waves of sulfur smells. Fly fishermen waded along mountain streams while, a short distance downstream stood ten-foot wide pockets of percolating mud. Bison grazed in the shadow of great, geyser formations with names like Paint Pot and Great Fountain. Mineral pools appeared as liquid jewels on the landscape. Boiling water ponds nursed dense blossoms of bacteria that produced a stunning variety of colors and shades.

The Old Faithful Geyser was about as far from nature as we could ever hope to find in this rugged landscape. Disneyworld-sized parking lots choked with cruise-ship-sized buses, SUVs, and motorcycles. A few minutes of trolling for a parking space quickly convinced Kat and me to pass on the spectacle.

Yellowstone Lake and the southeastern end of the park had a very different feel. Boating enthusiasts and part-time campers dominated this area. Canyon Village offered restaurants, cafeterias, and lodges for the nature-phobic. Still, the gift shop was the best in the park and almost convinced me to purchase a 70's-era T-shirt.

The final leg of the loop carried us along Grand Loop Road-- a stunning trip along the rims of numerous peaks including the 10,243-foot Mount Washburn. The views were spectacular, though not advisable for people who suffer from vertigo. The drop off was precipitous and elicited more than one gasp from Kat who was stuck in the passenger seat and at the mercy of my distractible nature. The northeast corner of Grand Loop Road saved its best views for last as it descended from Mount Washburn and skirted the upper edge of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 11: The Two Faces of Yellowstone

2006-10-31T11:10:00.000-05:00

A grey, misty drizzle hung over the Lamar Valley as we slowly drove towards Mammoth Hot Springs. The wet bushes and trees glowed in robust tints of green. Kat and I were scanning the landscape outside our windows for any sign of wildlife. We were only a few minutes into our journey and we had already seen elk, pronghorn sheep and bison from a distance. Now we were hip-deep in the Yellowstone Park ritual of trolling. Every few hundred yards we would find a row of four or five parked cars, a huddled mass of khaki pants and binoculars. I would slow the car, then nearly stop as we passed in the hope of catching a glimpse of whatever distant object they were following. Occasionally, our snooping would result in a find. We were anxious to get to the visitor's center and didn't stop, however, because we were eager to investigate the poop issue we had going back in camp.

The rain began to fall heavier and I notched up the windshield wipers. As we rounded a sloping curve, our headlights rested on a trio of bison. I slowed the SUV to a crawl and watched the bison lope across the road and down a narrow trail. Seeing large, wild animals is a surreal experience for the Urban/Suburban dweller. Abstract references are shoved aside by the reality of the living, breathing thing that stands before you. It is even more so with something as large as a bison. It is an intimidating and humbling moment to see a creature with such presence in its native environment.

A short distance down the road was a turnoff and I took it. There was a small, gravel clearing and a park map for one of the many nature trails. We both, immediately recognized that the bison had been following the hiking trail and were headed directly our way. I shut off the engine and we rolled down the windows so that we could watch and listen. The bison approached and I was struck with the thought that the bison might be tame. I'd heard stories of over-friendly bears and coyotes. I suddenly became worried that they would walk up to the car window and solicit us for a food handout. Instead, we watched as the bison passed in front of the SUV, inches from the front bumper, with complete indifference. I could hear their heavy breathing and the crunch of their footsteps on the gravel and got a chill.

As the bison passed, I noticed that a fourth member had joined the party. Wielding a $2,000 digital camcorder in his right hand and a keg-shaped can of Heineken in the other, a thirty-something touron closely followed the retreating animals. Behind him, a sporty car crept along with it's passenger-side door hanging open. A heavy-set man leaned over the steering wheel and videotaped his buddy walking behind the bison.

The buddy turned back to the car and shouted, "Isn't that great?!"

"Yeah," the driver laughed in reply.

The buddy pumped his fist then raised his video camera and mini-keg above his head in triumphant celebration of his bravery. He took a swig of beer, then scrambled back to the car and slammed the door shut. The car swerved back onto the road and sped away.

Nature buzz... killed.

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 10: Case of the Rogue Poo

2006-10-11T10:55:00.000-04:00

Dad didn't believe in hotels when I was growing up. Vacation = camping. The more remote the campsite, the better the vacation (according to Dad). His favorite fishing spot in Alaska rested along a remote stretch of the Gulkana River. It was 6 hours by highway, a right turn in the middle of nowhere, then twenty minutes in the lottery-ball machine as we churned our way through a tire-gouged, muddy path laughingly referred to as a road. The campsite stood near a bluff that looked down upon a horseshoe-shaped section of the river. There was no electricity, no running water (except for the river) and the rickety shacks that straddled holes (a.k.a. outhouses) were a five minute excursion to the fringe of the Wilds. Each time I left the camp to go pee, my dad would tell me no make a lot of noise and keep an eye out for bears. I became the swiftest, most-efficient whizzer in History.

So, it's obvious that I wasn't some goofball, city slicker trying to play outdoorsman for a few days. I have camped my entire, developing life. I pitched tents, fished and filleted them for dinner, foraged for wood and wiped my ass with leaves when toilet paper was unavailable. I earned my scout badges by sleeping under hand-fashioned lean-tos and lighting fires with sticks or scavenged flint stones. When Kat and I stared down upon the heaping pile of shit in our newly-claimed campsite in the distant corner of Yellowstone National Park, I was at a loss as to the owner of said defecation. Admittedly, the first, panicked thought that rifled through my citified brain was, 'Oh, shit! Did I just pitch a tent three feet from bear shit?!'

Not to point any fingers on the paranoia and fear that colored our first night in the park, but it is true that there was a culture of bear-phobia in our midst. For the last couple days, Kat had been grilling me for the Proper Procedure for surviving an encounter with a bear. The Black Hills had posted warnings about leaving food or unwashed dishes in the campsite. In our hotel room back in Cody (the night before our arrival in Yellowstone), I watched Michael Keaton tell David Letterman of his terrifying encounter with a grizzly bear in the backcountry of Yellowstone. Soon, I found myself glancing into the woods for signs of menacing, furry objects.

"Why don't you ask your parents," Kat asked. My dad had hunted bears in Alaska. He would have puddle-jumper planes drop him off in remote corners of the state and live off the land for two-week excursions. Let's not forget that my parents were savvy enough to prevent their two sons from being eaten in all those years of rustic camping. Why not?

Kat handed me the cell phone and I then proceeded to make one of the strangest calls in my adult life. Never had I felt like more of a lost Urbanite as that moment when I stood at our remote campsite in the middle of a beautiful, mountain valley and asked my mom what bear poop looked like.

"Well," she drawled in an effort to buy time, " I don't remember. It looked like bear poop, you know?"

I wasn't sure whether I was expected to answer this rhetorical questioned so I offered a, "Uh huh?"

"James," my mother cried, half into her bedroom and half into my ear. A long, weighty pause ensued, followed by the distant mumble of my father's acknowledgment. "John wants to know what bear poop looks like!"

The pause gave me time to watch Kat as she poked around the campsite and peered into the woods in search of the guilty party. I looked back at the poo. To an outsider, I no doubt looked like I was in the midst of reporting the defecation to the local police.

"I don't know," came my father's voice over the line. "Are there blueberries in it?"

"Are there blueberries in it," parroted my mother into the phone.

"I don't see any."

"Well. I don't know," she sighed, "Most of the bear droppings we saw were in Alaska and they had blueberries. If you see blueberries in it, you'll know that's bear poop."

"I don't see any blueberries, mom." Kat's eyebrow furrowed at my comment.

"So," my mom chirped over the phone, " how's the honeymoon going?"

I briefly entertained the notion of photo-documenting the poop, then showing it to a park ranger, but then I thought better of it. I felt that my coolness cover was already blown. No sense in provoking further ridicule. Kat and I noted the poo characteristics for future reference, then I opened up the camping shovel and chucked the evidence into the woods.

An hour later, we stood together in the Yellowstone Visitors Center, scanning the bookstore section for scatological reference books. We each found a book and, at virtually the same moment, came to a swift agreement on the perpetrator- bison. I'm not entirely sure why we felt so relieved that a half-ton animal with horns and an aggressive demeanor had shit in our campsite instead of a 400 lb. animal with teeth and claws. At least bison are herbivores.

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 9: The Race to Slough Creek

2006-09-28T11:00:00.000-04:00

Central Park is a bad replica of Nature. There are trees in the Park. Flowers. Rocks. Dirt. Squirrels. It is a beautiful, well-groomed park, but everywhere I go, I can't help but get the vibe that every square centimeter of what I see has fallen beneath the soles of hundreds, if not thousands, of shoes. The notion of finding any of separation from the Machina of Humanity is impossible- it muffles but does not silence the hum of the City. I am always aware that the City is towering above the treeline and awaiting my return. For the average New Yorker, this is a non-issue. Many revel in the Urban Experience and harbor a genuine fear of Nature. However, for someone in search of a natural respite, it's a let-down. This is how I have always imagined Yellowstone National Park.

I had never visited Yellowstone before, but I knew the highlights. I had seen 16mm films and National Geographic specials on Old Faithful, Lake Yellowstone, the re-introduction of the elk and wolves, the sprawling lodges and the hot springs. I had watched sobering specials on the unsettling tameness of the bears and watched black-and-white footage as black and brown bears rummaged through mountains of garbage to the delight of tourons. I had even watched tongue-in-cheek 'mocumentary' cartoons where Old Faithful spits into a spittoon every hour and the wildlife strike comely poses for big-nosed, nature photographers. It is depressing enough to bear witness to the devastation wrought by suburban sprawl in the cities where I lived. I didn't need to see it perpetrated by or for the amusement of tourons. I envisioned wave-upon-wave of Mega-RVs choking 2-lane highways for miles in either direction. When Kat insisted that she wanted to visit Yellowstone on our honeymoon, I tentatively agreed on the condition that we could bail at a moment's notice should the crowds prove to be too much.

From Cody, WY, the direct route to Yellowstone lay due West. From our maps and travel guides, it also appeared to be one of the central thoroughfares through the park for the seekers of Old Faithful and Lake Yellowstone. It was a Saturday morning in June and we had no campsite reservation, so we knew that we would be competing against a gaggle of fellow-tourists for the scant pickings of any campsites still available. I was sure that we were fucked, but there wasn't any other choice. I proposed that our best bet would be to enter the park through a different entrance and try to find the most remote corner of the park without venturing into the back country. On our map, there was a small campground on the northeast corner called Slough Creek. It was a first-come-first-serve campground with only 29 campsites and without electric/water/sewer hookups, so it was likely to repel nature-phobic competition. Unfortunately, if the campground turned out to be full, we'd be stuck in a corner of the park with no other options nearby.

Early Saturday, we set out. Fortunately, the route to the Northeast gate took us along the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway- a beautiful stretch of highway. Chief Joseph was a leader of the Nez Perce Indians. The Wikipedia article is a better read but, in short, he was a chief who advocated peace with Americans, signed a number of treaties that the Americans reneged on, then fled all over the Pacific Northwest with the American Cavalry in pursuit. The general who pursued him admired the Nez Perce's military prowess, but hunted them down anyway, killed 200 (of 800) natives, promised them some more lies, then schlepped them off to Kansas, then to Oklahoma. A couple years later, Chief Joseph went to Washington DC, met with President Hays and eventually was allowed to move his people back to the Pacific Northwest, although nowhere near where they lived before. I tell you, there's no getting away from sobering, American history out here.

The Chief Joseph Scenic Byway eventually spills into the Beartooth Highway which took us through the Shoshone National Forest, up through a corner of Montana, then back into Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park. The drive was stunning and, had I not been so anxious to snag a campsite, would have been a good place to take our time and explore. Kat and I slipped through the Northeast entrance and made a bee-line for Slough Creek. Slough Creek lies along the edge of the Lamar Valley- home to bison, black/grizzly bears, coyotes, moose, elk and (rumor had it) wolves. We spotted a small, wooden sign for Slough Creek and turned onto a gravel road that carried us alongside the wide, treeless valley. At the end of the road, we saw a cluster of trees and the familiar sight of the wooden, covered, posting-board with warnings about bears and food storage. Finally, we reached the campground. Tents and small campers dotted the area, but it was, mercifully, not full. A roaring, mountain creek provided a soothing backdrop, and border, for the camping area. Near the far edge of the campground, Kat spotted an empty site that offered shade, light, no standing water for mosquitoes, and high ground, in case the creek should have swelled out of its banks. It couldn't have been more peaceful.

Thrilled to have found a quiet campsite (along with the added bonus of costing $170 cheaper than our previous night's rest in Cody) I could finally exhale a sigh of relief. We set up our tent, unloaded our gear and set up our tarp canopy. Kat filled out the campsite registration envelope, slipped in the $12, and we walked back to the posting board to slip the envelope in the drop box. After we returned to our site, I stood beside the fire pit and surveyed our idyllic surroundings. With another long sigh, I let my eyes fall down to my feet. A foot away, completely unnoticed until that very moment, and square in the center of our campsite stood a huge pile of shit. Kat followed my gaze to the poo.

"What kind of poop is that," she asked.

I had no idea.

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 8: GPS- A Tech that Works!

2006-09-26T11:42:00.000-04:00

Two years ago, my dad bought a GPS for his truck. No one is really sure why. It's true that my dad is a sucker for new technology that promises a high rate of return in the Practical World. But a GPS? In the car? For my Dad? His eyesight, although at one time of Zeiss-lens quality, has slowly descended to trifocals. His grasp of tech devices is sketchy and he is highly susceptible to distraction while driving (There are numerous, documented reports of Dad driving the family off the road as he tried to figure out whether the tiny, white dots on a distant mountainside were, in fact, mountain goats or merely patches of snow). Only my dad's lack of computer skills has prevented him from learning the GPS sufficiently to get him killed on the first outing. Thus, the GPS languished in the original box until this road trip came along.

Damn, was it awesome! I had never used a GPS before. I didn't understand the GPS coordinates I saw on maps. I had no interest in having a GPS. I didn't need a GPS. When, I get a car and move away from New York, I'm getting a GPS. The data isn't complete, but it's a fantastic way to map directions to National Monuments, Parks, and tourist attractions. In many areas of the country, it provided great directions to gas stations and hotels. Whenever I was having a hard time finding a restaurant or hotel in one of our travel guides, I could type it into the GPS and, 80% of the time, find it. When we mapped in an address and followed the route, the GPS ticked off the time and distance to our destination- no more ambiguity about how much further it was. For a person who has spent his entire life traveling from one corner of this country to another, the GPS is a watershed.

Using a GPS is, however, a two-person job. On a GPS-enhanced road trip, it is no longer the passenger's job to navigate the vehicle via a road atlas.. it is to prevent the driver from killing everybody while staring at the GPS. It's hypnotic. You watch your little icon inch across a map in real-time as a stiff-yet-feminine voice issues orders, "In Two. Hundred. Feet. Turn Left." Early on, Kat had to issue a Decree to ban all programming or button-pushing from the driver's seat position. Programming directions usually involved Kat pulling the GPS to her side of the dashboard and angling it so I couldn't watch her rifling through menus. Over the course of the trip, I became especially obsessed with the altitude readouts. By the time we reached Rocky Mountain National Park, Kat had to drive whenever we were in the mountains because I kept announcing every time we climbed or fell another 1,000 feet while Kat kept her eye on the precipice that beckoned off the edge of the road.

As invaluable as the GPS was on this journey, be warned that the technology is not infallible. There were a few incidents where technology failed us, though we managed to get by. In Iowa, the GPS ordered us to use every ramp of a cloverleaf to merge onto another highway, instead of using the first ramp we came across. In New Mexico, the GPS Mistress ordered us "In One. Hundred. Feet. Turn Right" when there was, in fact no road to take. Not many of the smaller campgrounds are listed in the system's directory, either, so Kat and I were often reduced to hard-copy maps to find a place to stay for the night. There was also an incident in Utah where the device failed us completely and threatened to derail our Happy Honeymoon Road Trip... but that's a story for Part 13 of this journey.

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 7: Bighorn Mountains and Cody

2006-09-21T20:10:00.000-04:00

Between Devil’s Tower National Monument and Yellowstone National Park, Kat and I discovered a hidden treasure and a tourist trap. The next tent pole in our journey was Yellowstone National Park yet, along the way, we discovered a beautiful mountain range that deserved a vacation of its own- the Bighorn Mountains. Unfortunately, our lust for Yellowstone left us stranded, at the end of the day, in the wallet-gouging town of Cody.

As we left the beauty of Devil’s Tower behind us, we watched the green pasture quickly give way to the sparse, scrubby clichés of Cowboy Country. Yucca and sage carpeted the rolling hills, with the frequent diversion of small, rocky buttes. Occasionally, a huge strip mine would appear for a mile or so and wildly bum be out, but fortunately, the depressing reality would sap my Old West reverie for a few minutes before I was able to redouble my appreciation of the virginal, wild landscape.

With so much beauty and scale in the West, I could see how locals wouldn’t feel terrified by global warming and environmental destruction as us urbanites. "Hell, why NOT plunder the national forests and wildlife refuges? There’s plenty to go around! I mean, it’s not like it’s Finite or nothing." Out here, in the Plains and West, it felt limitless. I wouldn't know how to explain the scarcity of what they had or the storm clouds on the horizon, particularly when the horizon could be seen 10 miles away. Sometimes, I find it to be a miracle that this country holds itself together with so much space dividing us.

The pavement shifted from grey to red as we exited Highway 90 and eased onto state Highway 14. The Bighorn Mountains appeared as a great, pine wall against the red and yellow, valley floor. The highway anxiously twisted back and forth until finally mustering the courage to ascend the mountains. From the right side of the car we enjoyed a stunning view of northeastern Wyoming and to the left, rocky cliffs and pine trees. Half an hour later, we were immersed in another world. We traversed the first few waves of mountains until we found ourselves in a high valley of pine and birch trees. At nearly every turn, I expected to see a heard of elk or pack of wolves. Of course, we saw neither and I was struck by the eerie quiet. The highway was remarkably devoid of the usual cluster-fuck of RVs and family vans I’d come to expect around natural wonders. I suddenly felt bad that we hadn’t planned on staying in the Bighorns for the night. The space was so beautiful, it felt as if I was disrespecting the area by just driving through. Still, I desperately wanted to get to Yellowstone before the weekend wave of Tourons stole every decent campsite in the park.

Highway 14 exits the Bighorn mountains in a very dramatic way to the west. Winding through Shell Canyon, the highway offers stunning views of orange, red, and brown cliff faces and a dozen waterfalls to the north of the canyon. About half way down, we stumbled upon Shell Falls, a beautiful, 120-foot falls and scenic view. A great, little visitor center offered us a bathroom break and a short path where we could learn about local flora and fauna. Only a half dozen people stopped at the visitor site. The clouds had cleared and the sun cast a fiery glow on the hillsides as we descended through the Canyon.

Still buzzing from the nature high of the Bighorns, Kat and I began to realize that our dream of reaching Yellowstone before nightfall was an ill-conceived fantasy. In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to turn around and find a campsite in the mountains, but after consulting our Rough Guide to the USA book, we decided that we should power on to the town of Cody where we could enjoy one last restaurant meal and enjoy a warm, hotel bed before setting into the camping life. There was also this nagging detail that our camera batteries had died and we had no way of re-charging them in the car (note the lack of photos in this post?). So, we raced the fading daylight to Cody.

The town of Cody, to be blunt, is a combination tourist trap and place-for-a-bored-teenager-to-cruise. It was a Friday night, so we were certain to encounter the latter. Kat drove from hotel to hotel while I did the unenviable duty of asking an indifferent parade of desk clerks for their one bedroom rates. This leads me to a general diatribe about guidebooks and a warning to others. If you should ever purchase a guidebook, NEVER buy one that attempts to cover more than 3 states in America or more than 1 foreign country. The Rough Guide to the USA, although interesting for some of the historical information it offered, was sorely lacking in providing any useful information for the money-impaired traveler. Unlike my highly useful guide to Thailand, and another guide on the Rocky Mountains that we purchased, the USA guide consistently failed to point us to affordable options.

Another interesting aspect of Cody was it's nightlife- a.k.a. nonexistent. At a little after 8 in the evening, on a Friday night remember, Kat and I set out for dinner. Only two places were still open- a steakhouse (Kat's a vegetarian) and a Mexican restaurant choking with college kids looking to get drunk on margaritas. Kat and I opted for Mexican and took a seat outside so we could watch pick-up trucks and 4-wheelers race from one stoplight to another along the main drag. Fortunately, our camera batteries were charging in the apartment, the margaritas had booze and we were a stone's throw from our big destination- Yellowstone National Park.

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 6: Devil's Tower

2006-09-12T10:55:00.000-04:00

Amidst the green, undulating grasslands of northeastern Wyoming rises an incongruous monolith of nature. Geologists are unsure of its formation, though one of the more-popular theories suggests that it is the hard, cooled core of an ancient volcano. Devil's Tower is America's first National Monument, as proclaimed by Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. Another way of looking at it is as America's first annexing of sacred, Native Indian lands for the purpose of camping and a Steven Spielberg movie. Indians referred to the mountain by many names such as Bear's House, Bear's Lodge, etc. but 'we' decided to call it Devil's Tower... so there. Check out Wikipedia's article for more info. In recent years, the federal government has been allowing Native Americans to perform their summer rituals along the base. When we visited, signs were posted begging the tourists to leave the Native Americans alone and refrain from rock climbing the sacred mountain during June, though the Parks department wouldn't go so far as to prohibiting anyone from doing so.

The park that envelops Devil's Tower National Monument is wonderfully-designed. It has easy-to-reach wildlife for kids in the form of prairie dogs, stunning views of the mountain that can be enjoyed at a distance for free, and, most importantly, the park provides a nice, short path for the waves of Evil tourists who unabashedly view Nature as a somewhat-boring theme park. A friend of mine provided the perfect name for them- "tourons".

Kat and I followed the snaking path up the hill to the monument's parking and visitor's center. Tour buses belched the contents of the homogeneous tourists who stretched and futzed with their digital cameras that cost more than my monthly, NYC rent. They shuffled along a short path that, despite it's short length, winded most of the herd. Still, the end of the path provided a suitably-stunning view where they could collect the Perfunctory Picture. The tourists retreated to the visitor center for T-shirts and postcards, followed by a pit stop at the john and a return to the Tupperware container on wheels.

Fortunately, there was a great path that wound all the way around the mountain and provided more than a few quiet moments where we could enjoy the sounds of the pine forest and watch the hawks as they leaped from cliff faces and lazily circled above. Along the path stood great columns of stone- great pieces of the mountain that had peeled off over the years. The mountain has a strange, mystical feeling about it as if it were built eons ago by giants or some Tolkien-like civilization. It had a commanding presence that demanded to be recognized. Devil's Tower is a terrible name for this mountain. Like the Badlands, this space instilled nothing short of reverence and awe within me. Word to the wise- don't let fur trappers or military officers name your national landmarks.

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 5: The Black Hills

2006-08-30T10:13:00.000-04:00

At first glance, the Black Hills don't seem particularly dramatic. There are no Über-Mountains to draw visitors, like McKinley, Pike's Peak or the Grand Tetons. There are no hot springs , monstrous valleys or sweeping canyons. The tourist, lightning rods are the socially-acceptable, monoliths of environmental vandalism known as Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse Mountain, plus the dubious history of Deadwood. The Black Hills need more than a first glance. They hold peaceful, dramatic treasures that most tour buses rumble by with nary a glance.

Mount Rushmore is where the exuberance of flag-waving nationalism is wrapped around a scarred mountain that has been carved into the likeness of four, United States presidents- Washington, Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Lincoln. My first sight of it came as a jolt, as all great icons do. It is an image I'd seen hundreds, if not thousands of times, over the years without ever having the context of the real thing. The national monument visitor center underwent a wholesale renovation and the new façade had a hushed, reverential quality about it. A very clean, grey-stoned processional led us to the lookout point. Below stood an auditorium space where I could almost hear the patriotic tunes being hammered out by the United States Army Field Band as fireworks explode in blue, crimson and shimmering white...

There was a great, boardwalk path that took only a few minutes to negotiate and carried us to the base of rubble that extended from Presidential collarbones to the base of the mountain. With my video camera in hand, I could zoom in to Lincoln's pupils and watch nesting birds dart from his eye, arc beneath Jefferson's nose, and come to rest on the rim of Teddy's glasses. It was impossible to not be impressed by the scale of the monument. It was huge- four heads of dead Americans towered hundreds of feet above me. Still, as we pulled out of the parking lot and turned back towards the bulk of the mountain range, I couldn't help but feel a little bad for the mountain. Sculptures of that size outstrip such phrases as 'vanity project' and 'defacing nature'. I was just left with the nagging question of 'why'? Really. Why?

As I gazed out over the Black Hills from a small picnic area, just west of Rushmore, I began to realize how beautiful and different the Black Hills were. A sea of evergreens undulated before me as huge, grey rocks jutted above the treetops and held up the sides of hills. It was a landscape I had never, quite seen in passing, and it was amazing. The legendary storms-from-nowhere I'd heard about came to us on our second night of camping. Although we had secured a campsite only a few yards from the tree line, we found ourselves, at 2 in the morning, feeling the roof of the tent pressed against our faces as the wind howled relentlessly. Miraculously, our tent held and our spirits were lifted, as we had achieved confirmation that our camping skills had not been completely eroded by years spent in the Big Apple.

When we reached the outskirts of the Crazy Horse monument, I couldn't care less about seeing it- my desire to see industrial-sized sculpture had already been satiated. Unlike Rushmore, the Crazy Horse monument is completely maintained privately. Korczak Ziolkowski, the sculptor who began the monument in 1948, refused to accept government donations as a protest against the atrocities perpetrated by the U.S. government against the American Indian. Exactly when the monument is supposed to be finished is anybody's guess but, when the Crazy Horse Monument is completed, it's supposed to become the largest sculpture in the world. Take THAT, world! However, it does beg the question of what the average, American Indian, in Crazy Horse's time, would have thought of taking a mountain in their sacred range and carving it into a enormous pile of rubble... and a tribute. Just a thought.

Deadwood, the last stop on our journey through the Black Hills, was barely a stop. The town was small, pretty touristy, and bared little-to-no resemblance to the illegal mining village that gutted the hills of gold at the expense of promises and peace treaties made with the American Indian. Now, if I ran the circus, I would restore Deadwood back to its heyday. Yank up the pavement, stick everybody in ramshackle shacks, make everybody ride horses and walk through muck, then bring back hookers and cheap booze. Now THAT would be a town worth touring. Alas, I wasn't running the circus and I suspect that the locals would rather reap the tourist dollars without the health code violations and VD.

Fucking wimps.

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 4: Wall Drug

2006-08-23T15:01:00.000-04:00

Nowhere is the American West fantasy slathered so thick as the homestead fantasy that is Wall Drug. Nestled near the Badlands National Park and in the town of Wall, it is a testament to every cliche and glossy stereotype propagated by the Silver Screen western. Hundreds of miles of billboard advertising beg and cajole the Highway 90 traveller. It is a vivid portrait of nostalgia, denial and an earnest effort to shill cheap memorabilia in the rural obscurity of South Dakota. In short, it is an absolute must-visit for anybody travelling through.

The building takes up a full square block of Wall. Although it is not large (any Wal-Mart will easily surpass it in square-feet of space), Wall Drug uses every inch. The density of gift shop accessories is so intense, the cartoon-style maps they provide are required in order to negotiate the walls of refrigerator magnets, glass buffalo paperweights, soda fountains, wood-carved eagles, "Black Hills" gold, and a heinous assortment of T-shirts in every style of Tacky known to man. If I had visited this place as a kid, I would have felt that I had been dropped into Heaven. Wooden carvings of Wild Bill Hickok, cotton candy stands and ice cream floats- an idyllic, pre-adolescent, land of adventure and guns. As an educated grownup whose scope of knowledge extends beyond the reruns of Gunsmoke and Gene Autry flicks I watched as a kid, the mystical legends being peddled felt just a little bit trite.

There was one, unbelievable treasure for an adult who wants to get a sense of what the American West was like back in the day. It was located at the back of the store, where few customers visited and fewer lingered more than 10 minutes. That was roughly the amount of time that separated each performance of the herky-jerky animatronic T-Rex consumed one end of an extended hallway, framed by clusters of kids and, a few yards away, the parents. Along the walls of this reverential space stood a stunning wall of photographs. Taken in the late 1800's and early 1900's, the photographs were a sober testament to the hardships of immigrant homesteaders and the horrors that befell the Native Americans. Tribesmen and women stood along muddy stretches of road as they awaited U.S. government rations. Tents dotted valley floors or along the ramshackle sketch of a small town. Young men, barely of high school age, leaned against chuck wagons and gave thousand-mile stares that only adorn the battle-scarred veterans and hurricane victims of today's America. Proud chiefs and warriors at the sunset of proud traditions stood stoic and still for the camera. A pair of side-hallways, barely wide enough for two people, continued the black and white tale. Beneath the pictures were typed captions.

As the alarm siren rose and T-Rex began to rumble behind his plastic prison, a cluster of blond boys raced between me and the wall of history and anguish with nary a glance at the pictures. Kat and I stared at the pictures for quite a few rounds of dinosaur rage and I, for once, couldn't have agreed more with old T-Rex.

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 3: the Badlands

2006-08-03T11:53:00.000-04:00

Since the early days of our relationship, Kat has spoken in reverential terms about South Dakota. As she showed me photo albums of sunflowers and wooden barns silhouetted against blues skies, she fantasized that she would one day take me there. I nodded and said, "Cool" because that's what you say to girlfriends and I've never been adverse to travelling anywhere. But South Dakota? Really? I would never name it among my big travel destinations. In fact, I don't think it would have ever entered my consciousness as a destination had I not met, flirted, had sex with, fell in love and married a woman whose family came from the state. Admittedly, after three days in the state, I was excited to be in a car, on the road, and exploring, but South Dakota had not impressed me beyond a "Wow! You can see for miles and miles and miles!" kind-of-way.

Until we reached the Badlands.

Fifteen minutes outside the entrance to Badlands National Park, I notice that the undulating hills had begun to give way to small faces of exposed earth.

"Ooo, look," I exclaim, "That's so cool!"

Kat grinned in a self-satisfied way but said nothing.

We pulled off the highway and snaked our way to the entrance. A cute, park ranger, wearing one of those tragic, Smokey-the-Bear hats, welcomed us to the park. I proudly handed over my National Parks Pass, allowing me free access to both the park and an inner circle of traveling Geekdom. Ominous thunderclouds drifted overhead and we were soon in the midst of a downpour that lasted all of 3 minutes. We pulled into the first scenic view lot just as the rain ended and I stepped from the car with my video camera in hand... and holy Jesus, what a sight.

Words don't do justice. Photographs don't either, but they do it a little better than words so...

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 2: The Corn Palace

2006-07-25T20:14:00.000-04:00

283 miles(455 km) lie between the town of Madison, SD and Badlands National Park- our destination. The hills buckle and writhe yet never give in to make a hill of any importance. The farmland of the East gradually gives way to sagebrush and graze land for beef and dairy farmers. Although South Dakota natives warned us of the looming boredom of our journey, Kat and I were anything but bored. After 5 years of public transportation and skyscrapers, the idea of a horizon and a vehicle was positively liberating. A steady procession of billboards worked hard to keep us entertained along that long stretch of interstate. For hundreds of miles, signs repeatedly touted the two, biggest man-made, tourist magnets in the state- Wall Drug and The Corn Palace. Kat insisted that both were mandatory stops on our trip. Wall Drug lay along the northern edge of the Badlands, but the Corn Palace was less than an hour and a half down the road, so I agreed to the pit stop.

Kat was hip-deep in enthusiasm as we eased through the town of Mitchell. The sun was beginning to dip low in the sky and I wondered whether the Corn Palace would even be open for business. We pulled into a vacant parking and Kat eagerly pointed to the bulbous, green spire that rose above the low-slung tourist shops. The soda stands and trinket stores were dark and locked up tight.

The palace, unfortunately, was little more than a vegetation-covered, cinder block. The theme was "Salute to Rodeo 2006". I had anticipated a massive, edifice of intricate corn patterns, but I was more than a little under whelmed by the rudimentary murals being offered. A few, simplistic murals lined the front and side of the building. The rest of the building was in corn husks and ears of corn that started 7 feet from the base and barely covered 2 floors of space. Kat stood next to the building and gazed up at the corn wall as she tried to reconcile her childhood memory with the discrepancy that loomed above her.

I stepped to the row of glass doors to see if, perhaps, a more-impressive display might lie within. As I reached for the bar, I noticed a familiar face staring back at me- Millie, Kat's mother. Kat and Millie broke into peals of laughter and embraced one another while Gerry (Millie's boyfriend) and I exchanged awkward grins. Despite the spectacle of surprise, it was clear that both of them had been secretly hoping to run into one another at this very spot. From Gerry's expression, I could tell that I wasn't the only person who had been uninformed of this "unintended" rendezvous. Hugs were exchanged, goodbyes were repeated and we, again, parted ways.

The inside of the Corn Palace held all the grandeur of a high school hallway. Against the wall, opposite to the entrance, stood a series of trophy cases wherein the history of the Corn Palace was offered, along with a museum-style sampling of the corn components used in the murals. Covering nearly every other wall were photographs of every Corn Palace built since the Palaces began in 1892. Looking at the endless array of corn palaces, I had to admit that, at one time, the buildings were impressive. I'd have to rank the current blanket of corn in the history's top 114, but only barely.

At the center of this abode of Hype stood a gymnasium/auditorium/convention center/trinket shop. The newly-remodeled space held a stage at one end, upholstered theater-style seating at the other, and a wide gulf at center. A basketball scoreboard and retracted backboards suggested a sports-oriented use, but when we visited, large partitions stood at either end of a bewildering array of bad cowboy and Indian clichés posing as sellable paraphernalia. Towering along the walls at stage right and left, stood some extra murals that didn't make the outdoor cut of corn art.

In a way, I probably would have enjoyed the experience more if it had been more... passionate. Unfortunately, The Corn Palace had hit that sweet spot of boring where everything is neat, and clean and very... routine. I was expecting a wondrous slice of eccentric, tacky, artistic kitsch that could only be conceived and executed in a land as remote as this. Unfortunately, the Corn Palace feels like the product of any town in America that's looking to pull a few extra bodies off the highway for a quick refill or a bite to eat.

So, Kat and I did our duty by topping off the gas tank and continuing on our way.

Honeymoon Road Trip Part 1: Eastern South Dakota

2006-07-11T13:27:00.000-04:00

With new rings on our fingers, Kat and I set out on our first road trip in over 6 years. We headed north, to a rare corner of the Midwest unfamiliar to me- South Dakota. I have relatives scattered throughout Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Indiana. I spent my undergraduate years at the University of Iowa and Southern Illinois. I had lived in Oklahoma and Kentucky, and visited Kansas, Nebraska and Minnesota. Thus, it was no surprise that South Dakota felt familiar to me. The longer we stayed, however, I more was struck by how hard and remote it felt. Across the state, the terrain looked as if it had been chiseled to its plain-state essentials. The southeastern edge still held much of the lush beauty of it's southern neighbors, yet the soft, green undulation of Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa had been calloused over by hot, relentless summers and piercing winters. And always the ceaseless, bracing wind. It was a step into the past where family farmers lived harder, simpler lives. Even though South Dakota has not escaped the advance of corporate farming and the migration of jobs out of the fields and onto the highways, it is nowhere near the level of other states.

Kat has family in the southeastern corner of the state- in and around the small town of Madison. The land is flat and fertile. Homesteads stand out like green keeps against wide, arching skies that wildly shift from shimmering blue to a black wall of roiling clouds. Great cottonwoods close ranks around two-story homes and tall, red barns. From a distance, one place looks identical to another and it it isn't until one's nearly upon a home that a difference can be discerned. The locals are rural, yet felt leaner in how they lived their lives- traditions are held tighter. The distractions of global networking felt like vague whispers that did little to change daily habits. Family meant everything to the people we met and families were quite large. Although neither Kat nor I are eager to live such a lifestyle, I admired and respected the dignity and focus of these people. I often become so fixated upon national politics and international crises, I often don't look down to check up on my own footing in life.

Kat's family were direct and welcoming and had that Scandinavian sort of intimacy where warmth came not from an embrace but from hospitality and giving. The currency for affection was predominately in the form of food. Despite our late-morning appearance and early-afternoon exit, we still received a steady offering of bacon, eggs, sunflower seeds, potato chips, hand-squeezed lemonade and cold beer (not all at once, thankfully). However, hospitality had the potential to reach unsettling levels of devotion. During our visit, family members spent a good while debating whether to pick up a pizza in town before visiting a particular aunt. They feared that she would hemorrhage with worry at trying to feed a pack of drop-in visitors.

There was one pleasant, surprising twist to our visit when Kat and I visited a cousin of hers who had left South Dakota for the the Big City of Minneapolis, but had recently returned with her high school sweetheart, to Madison. She, along with her husband, had bought a derelict high school and transformed it into an artists' haven. The husband subsidized the venture with a lucrative, stained-glass business wherein he designed and built large pieces for cruise ships and local churches. The high school was one of those great, all-in-one, secondary schools from the turn of the century that was built with brick. They had converted the top-floor classrooms into their living quarters, reserved the second floor for artsy shops and a yoga center. The gym and first floor became the stained glass studio and storage. Even the basement boiler room was put to good use as a rehearsal space for a local punk band. It was pretty frigging cool.

Kat's mother, Millie and her boyfriend happened to be in South Dakota at the same time. Since they had already trekked to Illinois for our wedding, they decided to do a mini road trip that happened to be going in the same direction as our plans. Though Millie had vowed to not spend any appreciable time in Madison and had managed a two-day head start on us, we found them still there when we arrived. Our paths were technically going in the same direction, towards the Badlands and the Black Hills, but Millie said that she was eager to give us our space and soon we were saying our goodbyes and choosing different routes to the freeway.

As Kat and I raced west on Highway 90, I began to feel that the honeymoon was finally underway.

the Wedding Day

2006-07-05T09:28:00.000-04:00

I wish that I could take credit for it. I guided a few decisions, bought the beer, hand-picked the music for the reception, and said "I do" at the right time. Kudos, however, must go to Kat. The cakes were awesome, the food was fantastic and the tent was gorgeous. Friends and family played no minor role, either. Kat's aunt made the amazing flower arrangements, using nothing but local flora. My friend, Eliot and his wife took great pictures. Kat's friends decorated the guest book, organized tables, printed programs and teased Kat's hair for the big moment. The weather cleared a day and a half before the ceremony. The bugs kept to the outer edges of the tent. I didn't suffer any panic attacks, shakiness or hesitation.

It's really quite disgusting how smoothly it went.

It makes for a really boring blog.

UPDATE: Pictures have been posted to Flickr!

around the world and Home again...

2006-06-28T21:20:00.000-04:00

Many thanks to Muse and Jerry for the warm words. The Deed has been done. 5,500 miles have been logged. Pictures and words are pending. It was real. It was wonderful. It was a fantastic time.

Much to do on the long (though better-lit) road ahead.

hip deep in Life

2006-05-16T15:54:00.000-04:00

It feels like it's been weeks since I've written anything on this blog... hold on a minute. That's because I haven't.

My evenings and weekends have been chock-full of Business as I prepare for my month-long hiatus from the Cave, and the City. June 3rd is the official wedding date and June 5th is the beginning of our month-long tour of America's national parks and gas stations. Most of the big stuff for the wedding has been taken care of, so now we are in Anxious Waiting stage. Meanwhile, I am trying to teach myself the intricacies of Adobe Premiere, After Effects and Encore as I scramble to complete a wedding DVD for my friend, Eliot (the fellow who got married in Sweden last summer). So there's that, and the short story I've been knocking around for the last 4 months, and the Japanese kanji characters I was trying to teach myself as a part of another ongoing project, and the book on Mutual Funds that I checked out of the library 3 weeks ago because I wanted to learn about investing, and the copy of "Everything is Illuminated" that I've been reading on the subway to and from work, and then there's that tiny little detail of the wedding that hasn't been completed called the VOWS...

...

So, when I realized that I'd been neglecting my blog on top of all the other stuff, I decided that I HAD to take 15 minutes out of my workday (I'm sure no one will mind) and touch base... Or, I could just ramble.

Ran - horny teenagers need not apply

2006-04-10T21:22:00.000-04:00

When I was in high school, my best friend, also named John, was a huge Akira Kurosawa enthusiast. The idea of sitting through 3-hour, black-and-white, samurai warrior epics could not have appealed to me less. John would tell me scenes from the movie and practically beg me to watch it, but there were Forces far greater than friendship working beneath the surface. I was in love/lust with Suzie, a cute Vietnamese-American chick whose obsession with sappy, 80's, teen movies was in direct contrast to my taste in movies. The sexual highlight of my high school years was when Suzie buried her face in my shoulder for 30 seconds as Glenn Close attacked Michael Douglas with a knife in Fatal Attraction. Sitting 3 hours in John's living room and watching anything without Suzie in the picture had no chance of happening. Of course, my passive-aggressive dating technique to become best friends with Suzie, then Hope for something to happen, wasn't terribly successful. In fact, it wasn't successful at all. She left me for a college kid who drove a Porsche, butthat'sanotherstoryandIdon'twanttotalkaboutitrightnow!

*gathering myself*

Still, I don't hold anything against her. She was cute as a button, it was high school and I was up to my eyeballs in self-deprecating longing. Good thing I got THAT out of my system... yep. Good thing. Now I operate from a place of Complete Confidence. Yep...

I CANNOT, however, forgive Suzie for her taste in movies. How I could willingly spend money to witness the vacuous train-wrecks called Johnny Be Good, Teen Wolf, and Short Circuit instead of bowing to John's enthusiastic rants and watched Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, or Throne of Blood is beyond me, to this day. Nothing speaks to the crippling power (and stupidity) of a hormonal teenager than this. Akira Kurosawa is now my favorite director of all time, but whenever I sit down to see one of his movies, I must give pause for the shame that my introduction to Kurosawa was delayed by over 6 years because of Suzie... and I didn't even any heavy petting.

Fortunately, video allows me to make up for my past mistakes. Last weekend, I sat down to re-visit one of the longer, and better, of Kurosawa's films- Ran. Ran is Kurosawa's fantastic, Nobu-theater inspired adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear. Instead of Lear having 3 daughters, Kurosawa presents us with three samurai sons. After 20 years of abysmal video transfers, Criterion has mercifully stepped in and restored Ran to all it's fantastic, colorific glory. Ran isn't my favorite of Kurosawa's films. I'm a big fan of his smaller stories, like Ikiru, Rashomon, Stray Dog and Dersu Uzala. Still, it's hard to not like watching a director at the top of his game and nobody can pull off a sweeping epic quite like Kurosawa. The film has an expressionistic sweep with bigger-than-life acting and fantastic composition. Like any great tragedy, it is a very long fall to the final comeuppance, but it's a hell of a ride along the way.

What I particularly love about this version is the audio commentary. Stephen Prince is a fantastic commentator and should be required viewing. I've heard his commentary on a couple other Criterion Collection releases and he does a fantastic job of flushing out some of the better details of Kurosawa's life, his philosophy and his technical style. Prince also does a tremendous job of flushing out the story and illuminating some of Kurosawa's brilliant details. You owe it to yourself to check this new copy out, even if you've seen it before. If you haven't... well, what were YOU doing in high school?

Neutral Milk Hotel gets a spin

2006-04-05T16:54:00.000-04:00

I don't know if you will care but I WILL tell you that I have been listening to Neutral Milk Hotel's phenomenal album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea every day now for the last 3 weeks and that you Have to listen to it and love it because it's that Fucking good. If you're an indie geek, you already know the album and have just made some derisive comment about how it's about frigging time I noticed it because You listened to it when it First Came Out and You went to the concert and got a T-shirt to show how oh-so special you are even though only your boyfriend/girlfriend will ever see it because it's buried with all your other concert shirts in the closet (What? Me?? Defensive?!). As for the rest of Civilization, my enthusiasm probably won't matter but I can't keep It to myself. The fact is that this album isn't First-Listen. First-Listen music is usually fun, always catchy and sells itself 15 seconds into the first track, assuming that the artist hasn't made the always-regretful mistake of placing a dialogue track on the first track. This is the method by which many people (and, unfortunately, record execs) evaluate their music. If a song doesn't grab them P.D.Q., then nothing is going to change their mind about the artist, no matter how hard I push 'em.

I have had this album sitting on my iPod since last October, but it wasn't until March that I finally Got It. Whenever I felt like listening to something new, I would throw it on. But then, I'd get a few songs into it and I'd started to get irritated, and finally pissed off with the wailing and the dissonance. I'd have to throw switch to a Death Cab for Cutie or Iron & Wine song just to chill myself out. I couldn't concentrate on anything when I listened to it, but I kept at it, though. I kinda liked "The King of Carrot Flowers Part 1" so the music never entirely dipped under the radar. Then, a few weeks ago,... I heard the frustration and anger and longing in the dissonance and felt the energetic, emotional arc and it carried me and with that kind of buzz of a long, epic movie or an all-nighter with good friends. Suddenly, I found myself at the end of the album, exhausted and thrilled.

It was a hard nut to crack, though. I kept that album in my iPod for months instead of deleting it out on the first listen. When I was in college, I barely gave a song a second chance. If I liked it- good. If I didn't- fuck it. Why the big change? Well, two reasons: 1) I started listening to the right people instead of the Top 40 rotation on commercial radio, and 2) I had experience. Even with the good word from bloggers and friends, I wouldn't have held onto that album (or a lot of my favorite music) if I hadn't endured the trial by fire that was the Move of 1994.

If I had moved to Los Angeles with any sense of preparation, I would not be the indie music enthusiast I am today. Prior to 1994, my taste in music was, to say the least, abysmal. My collection of audio tapes was highlighted by the likes of Bell Biv DeVoe, Poison and Paul Simon. The bravest musical choice I had made in the previous three years was when I purchased the cassette single of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". My old friend, Eliot, introduced me to the power of live, indie music by dragging me to see bands like Uncle Tupelo and Yo La Tengo, but I always scuttled back to my Top 40. I loved seeing bands, but I just wasn't engaged enough in the scene to know what was worth hearing. I was in the last year of film school and sleeping in my editing room. Eliot made me a couple tapes, but I'd barely get through a couple songs before I'd toss back into my case and whip out my single of "Mistadobbalina" for one more spin. It just felt like too much Work to explore college radio or buy something different. Music was largely background noise, or melodramatic theme tracks to express a mood or feeling. I know. I suck. I'm a bad, bad friend.

In May, I graduated and, two weeks later, was on the Road from Illinois to the Hills of Hollywood. It was a couple hours into the 4 day journey when the enthusiastic buzz in my head had abated enough for me to notice that the car was silent. I reached for my cassette tape case and immediately had one of those sci-fi movie memory flashbacks where some screaming engine noise accompanies a reverse-time collage of driving backwards down the road, into my parents' driveway as I turn off the car, walk backwards to the house and freeze-frame on the image of my cassette case, sitting innocently on my the kitchen counter. "Fucking hell," I proclaimed to my dashboard. Four frigging days on the road and I had forgotten all my music. I scrounged in the glove compartment in a desperate bid to find my copy of Rhythm of the Saints when I discovered one of Eliot's tapes. One side had Surfer Rosa from the Pixies and the other was Nothing's Shocking by Jane's Addiction. For four days, I had to choose between either this tape or the radio and if you've ever driven through the mountains of Colorado or western Kansas, you know that the radio is no kind of option.

I liked The Pixies from the beginning. There was no doubt about that. They were catchy and fun. True, they were a little Stop-Go, but the contrast had already been buffered by my introduction to the pop-catchier style of Nirvana that curiously seemed to emulate some of the Pixies stuff (hmmm). Jane's Addiction, however, was another story. I couldn't stand the lead singer with his high-pitched, off-key wailing. The only song on that side that I could stand was "Summertime Rolls". It was in the middle of the tape and if I fast forwarded the tape and counted to 30, I could listen to that one song before fast forwarding to the end and flipping back to The Pixies.

For 2 days, this was my routine. Then, somewhere in middle of nowhere, I got bored of the routine and just let the other side play. First, "Jane Says" started to sound a little better to me. Then, "Mountain Song" didn't turn out to be so bad. Then, "Ted, Just Admit It" was worth a listen. Maybe it was the heat of that 200 mile stretch of Utah desert. Perhaps it was the fact that I hadn't spoken 5 words to another human being in days. Somewhere, along that long road to Cali, my mental mania rose just high enough to peek over the fence and get a really good look at the Jane's Addiction mania on the other side, and it Liked what it Saw. By the time I reached the Santa Monica, I was wailing with Perry from "Ocean Size", all the way through "Pigs in Zen". Jane's Addiction wasn't a band any more. It was My Band. I had ownership of that frigging album because I had worked at it and finally Got It.

Sometimes, a little work will do you good (damned you Dad for being Right!).

friends (what We good for?)

2006-03-21T09:55:00.000-05:00

*This began as a response to Muse's insight on my previous post, but I just kept going on and on so...

For the first 18 years of my life, I never lived anywhere for more than 3 years. I never had the opportunity to make lasting friendships. By the age of 10, I could readily recognize the stages of loss where best friends first promised to visit, then vowed to write until, finally, they disappeared altogether. I don't begrudge them- they had lives and friends and... well, we were all just kids. Eventually, I came to accept that friendships were short-term and I found other things to motivate and entertain me. I loved to read comic books and play computer games- particularly roleplaying games. I created dynamic characters, then helped them to develop and grow as they undertook these great adventures. Movies were critical. They took me far away and, although our relationship was a bit one-sided, they filled some big, emotional holes in my life.

I don't think it's mushy or corny to want friends around you. After retiring from the military, my dad has spent years trying to find small town diners or church communities where he might find meaningful friendships. People were friendly, yet they already had their good friends and weren't interested (or needed) to call on him whenever they felt like having friends for dinner or see a movie. The only people that my parents can do things with are sisters and brothers so, after years of resisting, they're moving closer to family.

It's a fundamental need. I've deeply craved it all my life- in my work and personal life. I didn't want to repeat the same stories over and over and re-introduce myself to strangers with the fervent hope that I won't blow it and they'll like me and think to call me when they need to talk to somebody. I'm not afraid to meet new people. Kat and I have tried for years to make new friends in the City. It grows tiring to go to parties and re-explaining yourself to others. I can't tell you the number of times that poor Kat has had to endure my "Theory of Porn" speech or hear another defense of why I think Michael Bay is an assmonkey who should never be allowed to direct another film.

I love having friends who know me well enough that they know my passions so we can have a conversation that comes from the end of my last thought rather than an explanation from the start. I love being able to sit in a room and just enjoy being there with a person instead of filling the empty moment. I love it when a friend introduces me to something new and interesting because they are excited about seeing my excitement. I even love a good tweak to my ego when a friend pokes a hole in an attitude that I've got all figured out. I love my fiancé and there are tons of moments that we share, but it's ennobling to also have friends with different rhythms and ideas who want to hang you with you just because you're You.

It's the same thing in my professional life. When I discuss movies, I want to be able to talk about how Woody Allen's new movie "Match Point" is an interesting return to his directing style in "Crimes and Misdemeanors" instead of explaining to someone who Woody Allen is. I want to work with contemporaries who challenge me as much as I challenge them. I want competition that makes me want to be better rather than frustrate me. I want to hear about other people's choices and discoveries, and root for them to succeed.

I read a story one time about how, back in the 1960's, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas talked about buying a big Victorian house outside of San Francisco. They wanted to start a production company, buy some 16mm cameras and create a communal space where artists could mingle and make movies. I don't know whether the story was true but I always loved that idea of having a space where artists could hang out, exchange ideas and work near each other. Painters could inspire filmmakers who inspire musicians and everyone would believe in creating great things.

All great movements got their start in places where various people from various disciplines ate, drank, and partied together. I still hold onto dreams like that and I don't believe they're sappy or unrealistic. It's a quick and slippery beast to catch, though. I've spent years chasing it- moving to one city, then another, hoping to find an open, vibrant community. People don't know their power and can easily get fixated on the idea that they should do it alone. I've found myself in spaces and times where I have glanced the tremendous power of a group of people believing in one another.

My friends are scattered all over the world, now. They all have such vibrant, creative fires but I worry that they are in danger of going out or drifting out of my life altogether. I often get this intense, Catcher-in-the-Rye feeling and I think of that quote-

Anyway, I keep picturing these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy.

I want to gather my friends before we all completely lose sight of our dreams- before we fall off the cliff.

getting my Fix (on tour)

2006-03-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

After 4 days of eating, spending and touring the city, one of my best friends and his wonderful wife have returned to the Land of Nebraska. Despite the fact that I have seen Eliot 3 times since graduating from college 12 years ago, he is my best friend and one of 3 people I would have to stuff in my suitcase if I was heading to a deserted island along with the books, movies and all those other "Top 3 Things" I'd have to take with me (I might be mixing my clichéd metaphors here). I could have easily spent the entire time hanging out in the cave, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and talking.

On the other hand, Kat and I were excited about showing Eliot and Anna our Wonderful City in what might have been a defensive attempt to justify why we continue to live here despite the exorbitant rent and neurosis-breeding loneliness we regularly endure. It's also True that walking friends around New York City has always been a Botox injection of the Soul- it all looks fresh and New! I get to return to places I love but no longer visit, like the Brooklyn Bridge, the West Village, the Lower East Side, etc.. I also get to see a Vibrant, energetic city through the eyes of a newbie- I see it in that wide-eyed way when I first arrived. Like Botox, however, the feeling eventually fades (which is good because our lips don't look that good when they're poofy).

This time, however, things didn't play out the way I had expected. I never found that renewed sense of Pride in my City. Neighborhoods that I loved had changed. Punk and goth kids no longer ringed the Cube statue at St. Mark's Place. Long, glass-encased facades, featuring overpriced food and chain-stores lined a street that once choked with second-hand record shops, funky T-shirts and underground gothwear and videos. Gleaming buildings of million-dollar apartments towered over tenement buildings. I was pointing along streets that bared no resemblance to the artistic havens they once held. I felt as if I were an old man who pointed at where things 'used to be' and reminisced about ghosts of the past that no one could possibly recognize among the people who frequented those streets today.

I realized that I was living in this city, waiting for times long-lost to return. The revolutions of Abstract Expressionism, folk rock, street poetry, punk, glam, vaudeville, the White Way are long, long gone. And here I am, standing at the bus stop, adamant that one of those buses would realize that it had forgotten a passenger and come back to get me. As I get older, I don't want to be a part of a Movement or find immortality through my art. I just want my best friend to be able to drop in, watch a movie, and hang out... and that'd probably be all the inspiration I'd need.

the rip-tides of Rural Matrimony

2006-03-08T15:07:00.000-05:00

Weddings are monumental affairs. I know this immediately qualifies me for cliche status, but Damn... Things get worse when you don't want to do it the "normal" way. You end up having to build the whole thing from the ground up. When you decide to have your wedding in rural Illinois, you exponentially increase the headaches. Kat has been a Woman Consumed on this wedding thing. For the most part, the successes have outnumbered the disappointments enough that Kat has enjoyed the process. That's a good thing because if she wasn't, then this whole thing would have been shot to hell two months ago.

The rampant exploitation of couples searching for the perfect day is enough to cripple anyone's hopes (and pocketbook). There is no way we could have afforded any sort of ceremony in NYC. That wouldn't have been a really big deal, but we did want a few of our friends to be there and there's no way they would have been able to afford the journey to the City. So, my parent's property it is! Kat, therefore, has had to do everything by phone, e-mail or my mother. Mercifully, Kat and my mom get along so I have been spared that level of Hell. I have been doing my best to administer hugs when moments become too frazzled, nod in ascension when asked to confirm the Craziness of Others, and make color copies of invitations at my workplace (when so instructed).

Kat is more than happy to take the reigns on this endeavor- it's her kind of thing. I could jump in and help a bit more, but the fact is that I don't really have a Vision for the ceremony. Kat insists that she has never fantasized about what kind of wedding she would want, despite the exhorbitant number of John Hughes films she consumed as a child. That may be so, but it's also true that Kat does possess a crystalline vision of what she does Not want. No bridesmaids, no gross overexpenditures to Those That Suck (A.K.A. wedding planners, wedding cake cutters, etc.), no churches and no formal wear. The only thing that she knew from the beginning that she wanted was for the ceremony to be outdoors. As for my needs, I am insisting on some exceptionally-good tunes and an open bar (meaning bottles of alcohol and beer kegs available).

It looks like we've got the caterers, cake (non-tiered), tent, chairs, tables and DJ locked in. The most difficult part of this dance, however, has been the officiant. Apparently, if you aren't a member of a church, don't want to get married in one, and want to get hitched on the weekend, then you aren't marriage material in the Downstate Illinois. Don't ask me why. There are some corners of the world wherein All Things are Not Necessarily Available. As for the few open-minded ministers we have found... there are many dollar-sign smiles that have sprung forth from the clergy when word reached them that a pair of New Yorkers were looking to get hitched in their neck of the woods. Also, there was no guarantee that Christian moralizing wouldn't be exercised during our event- another big No from Kat's list. Miraculously, my father (of all people) might have found someone willing to do the Deed on a Saturday. She's a nurse who happens to be ordained. She has said that she'll do it for an affordable price and, since her husband's a photographer, she'll be happy to throw in a 5"x7" glossy photo of the ceremony as a part of the deal. Rock on!

Let the games begin.

P.S. As for the ring- I did, in the end, manage to find a very nice, affordable, engagement ring- at Tiffany & Co., of all places. I got a sterling silver, peridot ring which she loves. The classiness of the people there and the Audrey-Hepburn-Geek-Factor didn't hurt either.

an optimistic walk through the Park

2006-02-22T14:08:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I was taking my usual walk across Central Park towards the 'A' subway line and, ultimately home, when I found myself overcome by a sensation so foreign, I had nearly forgotten what it felt like - optimism. I was seized with a mystical calm as I made my way around The Pond. The sunset was casting an orange tint on the side of the buildings that rose above the trees along Central Park West. The setting sun rendered the skyline into an Edward Hopper painting with fiery highlights and deep, blue shadows. It gave a vivid, magical quality to the air. My strides shortened and breeze against my face slackened as I looked around me.

It felt like the first time I visited New York City. I no longer felt the burden of experience that I had come to resent- the infestation of corporate culture, the moneyed gentrification of dynamic neighborhoods, the crippling cost of daily living. For a few minutes, New York was a land where Woody Allen's Manhattan might still live. I felt that I was at the center of a bustling humanity- 13 miles of innumerable possibilities. The weight of the Now fell from my shoulders and I was anytime I wanted to be. I could race along the great arm of history and imagine myself on a stroll through the City of Ziegfeld or Scorsese or Warhol or Dylan or LaGuardia or The Ramones or Duke Ellington or the myriad of people who found greatness and contributed to this great quilt of community. I loved that I was here and that I was participant who cared what this city Was and Is and I want to make something for it.

I crossed 6th Avenue, ahead of a horse-drawn carriage and the furrowed path carved into the pavement. Past toy dogs and double-wide baby carriages with ivory infants and Caribbean women at the helm, I held my soft buzz of optimism beneath my jacket and skirted the cliches and disappointments. My pace quickened until I discovered that I had taken the wrong path and now I was out of the park and on the corner of 59th and 7th Avenue. I frantically weaved between Japanese, punk tourists and a young, smug hipster as he fruitlessly tried to hail a taxi. It felt that if I could just get home or maybe even into the subway or Somewhere, then I might be able to preserve this feeling and not lose it.

I ducked down a shallow path that allowed me a few yards between me and Now but it was already too late. By the time I reached the bustle of Columbus Circle, the Optimism had bled through my jacket and evaporated into the cold, night air. The sunset was fading into the glow of marquees and streetlights. The sky would be black by the time I reached home. I descended the subways steps and trudged back to the cave.

Deckard's Windows of Good(and Bad!)

2006-02-16T15:08:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been solicited twice to fill one of these out for others and I saw UrbanMuse had one up and I haven't written a blog this week so...

http://kevan.org/johari?name=Deckard

Give it a shot, if you're interested. It'd help if you've read my blog or know me. I'll post the results as they come in.

Here's another one, but it's not as 'friendly'. I'd actually be more interested in seeing the results of this one...

http://kevan.org/nohari?name=Deckard

Arena

(known to self and others)

intelligent, kind, self-conscious

Blind Spot

(known only to others)

clever, complex, energetic, friendly, loving, observant, searching, trustworthy, witty

Façade

(known only to self)

accepting, reflective, tense

Unknown

(known to nobody)

able, adaptable, bold, brave, calm, caring, cheerful, confident, dependable, dignified, extroverted, giving, happy, helpful, idealistic, independent, ingenious, introverted, knowledgeable, logical, mature, modest, nervous, organised, patient, powerful, proud, quiet, relaxed, religious, responsive, self-assertive, sensible, sentimental, shy, silly, spontaneous, sympathetic, warm, wise

Dominant Traits

66% of people think that Deckard is complex
66% of people agree that Deckard is intelligent
66% of people think that Deckard is observant
66% of people think that Deckard is searching
66% of people think that Deckard is witty

All Percentages

able (0%) accepting (0%) adaptable (0%) bold (0%) brave (0%) calm (0%) caring (0%) cheerful (0%) clever (33%) complex (66%) confident (0%) dependable (0%) dignified (0%) energetic (33%) extroverted (0%) friendly (33%) giving (0%) happy (0%) helpful (0%) idealistic (0%) independent (0%) ingenious (0%) intelligent (66%) introverted (0%) kind (33%) knowledgeable (0%) logical (0%) loving (33%) mature (0%) modest (0%) nervous (0%) observant (66%) organised (0%) patient (0%) powerful (0%) proud (0%) quiet (0%) reflective (0%) relaxed (0%) religious (0%) responsive (0%) searching (66%) self-assertive (0%) self-conscious (33%) sensible (0%) sentimental (0%) shy (0%) silly (0%) spontaneous (0%) sympathetic (0%) tense (0%) trustworthy (33%) warm (0%) wise (0%) witty (66%)

Created by the Interactive Johari Window on 21.2.2006, using data from 3 respondents.
You can make your own Johari Window, or view Deckard's full data.

digging for my Bliss

2006-02-07T12:56:00.000-05:00

I've been running jangly for the last few weeks. I can't get a grip on anything. I destroyed my 4-month-old iPod Nano/birthday gift last week. What should have been a smooth, 'Pick up item/put item in pocket' maneuver turned into 'pick up item/try to get better grip on item/launch item across the room and under the dresser'. Last night, I lost all motor skills and got waxed in a game of Madden 2005. I became so irate, I had to stand on the fire escape in 30 degree (F) temperatures and 20 m.p.h. winds to calm myself. That took a good 15 minutes to get over a computer game.

Defeatism is in full bloom and the stench would fell a Pollyanna. I can stand outside myself and observe the irrational behavior, yet still be utterly unable to control it. My focus goes off in brilliant, red and blue fireworks as thoughts shimmer and crackle with insipiration then instantly dissolve into blackness. Mania is swinging the pendulum wide and for the first time ever, I've actually entertained the notion that, perhaps, I might need some form of medication... now, all I need is health insurance.

Of course, the City has done little to improve my mood, either. I've noticed that many of my friends have been feeling the same, anxious irritation. New York City is feeling unaffordable even for the full-timers. Many people have glanced up after a few years of earnest, nose-to-the-grindstone effort and can't figure out why they chose to move here in the first place... or why they should stay. Rents have continued to skyrocket, even in the few years I've lived here. Moving to New York has felt like drilling a well. As I start digging deeper and deeper, I fret about whether I chose the right spot and whether I should try another place. A little deeper, I start to think that if I did stop, then I'd be wasting all the time/money I've put into it. So, I throw myself into it all-the-harder, thinking that I'm just being a chicken-shit and losing my nerve. Nowadays, I'm starting to wonder whether I've just dug myself a really expensive hole to Nowhere.

For our honeymoon, Kat and I are going to roadtrip America. We've wanted to do it for years, just as an adventure. Now, it's starting to look like chance to find if there's somewhere in this country where an artist might find a way to both live and work on his art. My parents are so desperate to get us out of the City, they've eagerly offered to lend us a car and help pay for the trip. We're planning on visiting friends and relatives in Nebraska and South Dakota, then check out Colorado, Washington, California, the Southwest and who knows where else before returning the car. Kat and I were both born in Colorado so there's a part of us that thinks Colorado might be the place we'll end up, but who knows? Maybe we'll stay a bit longer and finally strike water in NYC so we can start building.

But the hole keeps getting deeper.

an Engagement with futility

2006-01-17T13:53:00.000-05:00

Shopping in New York City can be a trying existence. It's not difficult to find midtown's 5th Avenue boutiques or Macy's down along Herald Square. Even your mainstream tourist guide can point you downtown to the discount fare at Century 21. But what about a large, healthy houseplant? Or caulk? Or affordable storage bins? Or artsy jewelry? Without deep pockets or an ideal home base in the city, finding the necessities can be a struggle. My first 6 months in New York was spent on humiliating treks to the trashy K-Marts in Penn Station and St. Mark's. Big box stores and malls were all Kat and I knew. It took months before someone told us where the flower district was or that the hole-in-the-wall hardware store carried wood putty and a pretty solid selection of kitchen utensils, or that there was a free, shuttle bus from Penn Station that could take us to the Swedish Eden in New Jersey that is named Ikea. Without such valuable knowledge, a person might wander the city for hours, without finding the Thing he/she is searching for... much as I did on Friday.

The biggest news for the last few months of my life has been my engagement. Kat and I decided, over the weekend of Halloween, to get married. The second biggest drama (ongoing) in my life is the Search for the Engagement ring. Sauron had an easier time finding the One Ring. The first two months involved a phenomenally bad attempt to have a family friend make a ring. That story is too long and necessitates a fictionalizing of the names to preserve the dignity of those involved. Let me say that it is over and done with and now, I am balanced upon a fence where I could either get a ring for Kat or forgo the whole thing and just try to get the wedding ring right. Kat says she doesn't need an engagement ring, but her eyes beg otherwise. When in doubt, Citysearch and New York Metro becomes my guide. Soon, I found a few places in the City where I hoped I might find a simple or used ring that we could afford. With a list of addresses scrawled on a piece of paper, I cast myself into the City.

Along the way, I hoped to find a cafe where I could write away from home. I didn't have any solid leads but I knew of a couple places over near NYU and figured that there had to be a place where I could sit down. My first mistake was to attempt a Multitasking operation. This rarely goes well for me. My second mistake was thinking that Citysearch or NY Metro were going to give me the low-down on anything I might possibly afford. Most places were hideously-expensive. Some, were heinously-gaudy. Others... well let's just say that Kat probably isn't looking for a skull ring, even if the rubies in the eye sockets Are real.

My third mistake, was thinking that wandering would make up for my first two mistakes. I walked from one end of the Village to the other. From SoHo to the Lower East Side to the East Village to the West Village, back to the East Village... I'm aware that there are cross-town buses in the city but I rationalized that if I walked everywhere, then I would Surely find that Perfect side street where a quaint, quiet cafe would offer me sanctuary and happen to be right above that gem-of-a-store, nestled in the basement.

On a positive note, the journey ended at a Happy Hour where cheap beer, salty snacks, and a work-weary girlfriend helped to soften the sting in my legs and the soles of my shoes.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on New Year's Eve

2006-01-03T15:22:00.000-05:00

Ahh! Sweet mana from Heaven! The long drought has lifted. Let the righteous tunes flow as a river unto my puckered soul. For the Love of God, give me something that Rocks! Or, at least makes me tap my foot and nod my head in that enthusiastic, satiated way.

Kat and I spent the X-Mas holiday at my parents' rural home in the Heart of the American Midwest. The silence was deafening, the knick-knacks were charming and the parents were... doting. The second I slipped into the plane that would sweep me back to my concrete homeland, I knew that something had to happen. Either 1) I would be required to commit some filth act that would instantly outrage every human being West of the Hudson River/East of Pasadena and thus re-calibrate my cultural pH, or 2) I must do Something in the City to re-affirm my faith that there are pockets of world that have advanced beyond the 1980's. Since I had tickets to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on New Year's Eve, I opted for the latter. It was cheaper and allowed me to avoided possible jail time.

I'd been psyched about this concert from the beginning, despite the fact that it was taking place at Irving plaza (Clear Channel venue! Evil! Evil!). Back in November, I e-mailed friends, but nobody was willing to commit to any New Year's plans (lest something better come along). Oh, did they lose out on this one. It was pretty funny when I started getting e-mails about articles in various music publications and the New York Times. You snooze, you loose folks (insert derisive laughter, and insidious hand-wringing of a shameless, Indie music snob).

Irving Plaza is one of those joints that tries to manufature a quirky, intimate scene but instead comes across as some Indie Theme Park. The place is nice-enough. It has a medium-sized floorspace and a U-shaped balcony. A bar rests on each level where they dispense such delicacies as $5 cans of Rheingold beer and $6 cans of Heineken. Four and a half years in this city and I still can't get over the trapped-in-an-airport price scale that these bars charge. The whole theater area is painted black. To amuse the natives, they drop a projection screen in front of the stage and run 'kitschy' movies through a video effects machine (or their projector is broken). The New Year's Eve line up was a Pee Wee Herman movie with cutaways to Schoolhouse Rock bits sans sound. Wow.... gotta love that retro thing.... it's so clever... I get to relive my memories in front of others and take pride in the power of my brain to remember such esoteric classics as "Verb! That's What's Happenin'!", but without actually hearing it... it makes me feel so... un-mainstream... in that safe, pop culture kind of way... This scene was old in the mid 90's, folks.

For the New Year's Eve festivities, a pair of middle-aged men on stilts wandered the crowd. They juggled bowling pins/rings or blew soap bubbles upon the heads of unsuspecting patrons. The joint could have used a few more performers, but the effort was a nice surprise. A pregnant cocoon of balloons was attached to the ceiling in anticipation of the last gasp of the year. For the first time in years, I was actually excited about ringing in the New Year. I'm sure that Kat was relieved to be out of the cave too. The last few years have seen me cooking 'special' meals that take 4 hours and 10 rounds of dishes to complete and normally left 15 minutes of "enjoyment".

The opening band was Dr. Dogg. I'd never heard of Dr. Dogg. Their most memorable feature was that the majority of the group was sporting beards. It's the new hipster thing, those beards. It's nice to see adults trying to look like adults even when the hipsters are dressed like me when I was 8. One of the lead singers looked like a smaller version of Ric Ocasek from The Cars, except with a hat... and without the musical sensibility. He enjoyed swinging his oversized hollow-body guitar around and was having entirely too much fun for the stuff that was coming out of it. The band was tight but their songs were instantly forgettable. They had a lot of energy but it wasn't coming out in the music. They need a year in the UK to see what to do with it.

It wasn't until after the concert had sold out (early December) that they announced their "Very Special Guest". It was *drumroll* The National! I was so... actually, I didn't know anything about The National. I'd seen their 2005 release, Alligator, appear on the Top 10 lists of a number of Pitchfork-reading bloggers, but I'd never listened to their stuff. Indie blogs and hipster friends were psyched about this band! I was sure that I was going to get a fantastic two-for-one- Clap Your Hands and The National! Yeah!

Welllllll... no. I didn't get it. No. Check that. I Got it. It sounded exactly like Coldplay, except without the orchestration or the lilting, crooning voice or the songs... but it was just as sappy and soporific! The girls beside me rocked in ecstasy to the music, holding themselves and crooning every. single. word. that came out of the lead singer's mouth. Just when I thought that I could take it no longer, the stage lights turned blue, a single, white light rose at center stage, and the lead singer stepped into so that he could crooooon to the light and get a facial tan at the same time. $5 Beer break, coming right up!

Despite the disappointment of The National, Kat and I were having a pretty good time. The crowd around us was younger but mercifully-free of the aggressive, putzes who crowd into your personal space then angle past as if they are going to meet somebody then stop right in front of you. During Clap Your Hands Say Yeah's set, I actually had a guy ask Kat if she could see. Seriously. I saw it. He wasn't even hitting on her.

So, when people ask me what Clap Your Hands Say Yeah sound like, I tell them that they sound something in between Talking Heads and The Arcade Fire. As the projection screen rose and the band launched into their opening song, I was struck by how much the lead singer reminded me of a young Bob Dylan. Although the songs don't carry the raw, evangelical poetry of Dylan, they had a high-pitched wailing quality that danced along that fine line between challenging and bitter complaining. The current landscape of (smart) rock music has been carrying a frustrated tone. People are frustrated and furious with the state of living but it feels like we're all boxing against shadows. My favorite bands of the year have been hitting on this frustration again and again. The Kills, Deathcab for Cutie, Sufjan Stevens, Art Brut, Wilco, MIA and The Arcade Fire- all of them have at least one song that's about looking around and asking themselves "What the fuck?!" MIA has big, international injustices to point her finger at while Art Brut has the most entertaining bitch session on the pretenders who infest the music scene. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is the steady gaze of that friend who tells you that you're probably flat footing it through life and we could all be doing better, but let's have some fun while we're being frustrated.

Onstage, they were great. The sound mixer had the bass jacked up too high and bottomed out the speakers a few times, but the band still managed to sound strong and tight. The stilted jugglers stood along the left side of the stage and juggled their little hearts out. When the clock hit midnight, the balloon cocoon was released and 10 balloons descended into the audience. Kat grabbed my oggling face and turned me around so she could plant a New Year's kiss on me and there we were - 2006. Two songs later, an audience member convinced others to let him stand on their shoulders and the balloons were finally set free. Pandemonium (the good kind) ensued as fans popped, threw, and shook inflated pieces of colored rubber.

Good times.

Check out the pictures I posted on Flickr. I got a couple good ones. Click the Flicker graphic to the right.

a New paint job

2005-12-29T12:47:00.000-05:00

It's the end of the year and the habits are performing their familiar, high-arching return. Lately, the act of Living has felt like a perpetual battle to break free from the rip-tides of habit. As the road signs of my twenties slowly dissolve into the horizon of my rearview mirror, I am struggling to keep my eyes on the Road. Manic depression has begun to swing me further and further onto the gravely shoulders of the road. The Fear grows that one bad winter could send me into the ditch or wrapped around cement-anchored, telephone pole in the median. It's apparent that preemptive action Must be taken.

Last week, a new gym membership was secured with plastic promises to my debtors. The next step is the purchase of another Thing to add to my collection - a laptop. The dream of a quiet office space will have to be saved for the next Move, either from the Big City or to another tier of wealth alien to my existence. It is time to recognize that my cave is no kind of place to write and the only Hope lies in cafes and bars of Manhattan.

So, after scouring the pages of lenovo.com, toshiba.com, fujitsu.com, dell.com, mobilityguru.com, apple.com, notebookreview.com, laptoplogic.com and numerous forums, I've come the the conclusion that everything is Too Expensive and Utterly Baffling. Whoever is in charge of the numbering scheme for Intel laptop processors should be shot. Years ago, a laptop purchase was made from Dell by yours truly and from that Incident I have learned the two things that I MUST have in this new machine: 1) A decently-sized keyboard, 2) a weight that will NOT render the idea of Portability to a joking quip.

It appears that a Lenovo Thinkpad will be the way to go. A Z60T or T42, perhaps. It certainly isn't the cheapest model on the market today, but it looks like a workhorse. I'm praying that there are some New Year deals to be had in the next week so I don't have to make too many more promises I can't keep.

Then, let the Magic begin...

fixing a hole

2005-12-06T12:21:00.000-05:00

I feel that I have lost track of an old friend. I have gone nowhere, yet I've become lost in the sea of my Twitch. Such are the lands I travel when winter approaches and I feel the tightening grip of shorter days around my neck. I have a half-dozen projects at my fingertips- none of them close to completion.

Must get back into the thick of things... human contact so I can get it Out.

touching my Inner Pretzel

2005-11-15T13:36:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday, I showed up for my third yoga class... ever. In the distant wilds of Upper Manhattan, there is a yoga center nestled amongst the caves, old trees and baseball fields choked with Dominicans. I don't know how or why such a center came to be in the Land of Inwood, but I'm not gonna ask- it might disappear. Until a month ago, I'd never considered taking yoga. Sure, the pursuit is dominated by thin, flexible women and this is a Very Good incentive for a heterosexual male, but I'm Taken and besides, I'm serious about my fitness. The idea of stretching and chanting mantras to a religion I didn't practice has always felt like just the sort of New Age, hippie fad that I loved to hate. I am a rock n' roll/heavy weights kinda guy that prefers to See his accursed enemy - 300 pounds on an olympic, bench-press bar, for instance. You Mount the weight bench, growl at it menacingly, burst forth a few puffs of breath to pump myself up then 'Wham!'.

On the other hand, I can't afford $50-70 a month for the honor of standing on a treadmill or lifting weights. The center offers 6 classes (1 per week) for $65 bucks and I'd be setting myself up for an activity I can perform back in the cave. Plus, if I don't start doing some sort of regular exercise, my mental state is going to be veddy, veddy bad, veddy, veddy soon. I don't handle the winter months very well (or the other months, actually).

So... 3 weeks and, I think I like it. Really. No, really. Never have I sweated so much and moved so little. Who knew that shifting your hips an inch could immediately induce your thigh to say, "I don't think so."? The day after my first session, I'd soaked through my T-shirt, flannel pajamas (I don't have workout clothes) and was only capable of about a third of my normal movement. Last week was better and this week, I'm starting to feel better! Of course, I still tip over with any yoga move that requires balance. I also have this amazing ability to vibrate. Leave me in that 'Warrior 2' position for too long, and you'll soon have a Bouncing Deckard toy on your hands. Breathing can be a bit of a chore, also. That yoga instructor breathes a helluva lot slower than my body's willing to do. Apparently, I also have some tension in my shoulders- steel girder grade.

And hell, I'm starting to kinda dig the chanting too!

a night at the Art Dance

2005-10-27T22:21:00.000-04:00

"Which one," asked the fat, middle-aged man in the business suit. He leaned back in the plush office chair.

"That one down there," his wife aswered. She waved to the wall of boxy paintings, staggered along the wall. Each canvas had a clear sky but conveyed with various colors of daylight. Taken as a whole, they gave the wall an arching sense of a passing day. At the center of each sky floated an immaculate, painted feather. I was hovering along the deep purples of twilight as Kat lingered among the pinks and baby blues of dawn.

"I know what 'down there' means. You just said 'down there'-"

The blonde-streaked helmet head swiveled back to her husband.

"Then what are you askin' for," she asked with an arched, Long Island/Jersey drawl.

"Which one?" The suit tried to lean back further in the office chair to punctuate his statement, but he had reached the limits of the chair. Sandwiched between the couple was a 30-something, Japanese woman, perched upon a swiveling art stool. Her Smile of Humoring was in full plumage.

"The one on the end- any of 'em. They're all so gore-juss" she exclaimed with a flush enthusiasm fueled by red wine. She waved and gestured with a hand that appeared to have a junebug clasping for dear life upon her ring finger. Only when she paused for dramatic effect could I make out the cartoon-sized, wedding ring mounted on her hand.

I glanced about the worktables for any sign of the free wine we'd been sampling all evening, but resources were running slim at this late hour. It was time to call it a night anyway. The excitement of wielding plastic cups of free, red wine amongst an open house of art studios, choked with expensive art and their antsy creators had lost it's allure... and the threat of spillage had become a treacherous possibility.

It was time to go.

lesson in Thai cooking... wear gloves

2005-10-19T12:41:00.000-04:00

Less than a block from the infamous 5-Points section of Lower Manhattan lies a jewel of grocery store called Bangkok Center Grocery. It's a hole-in-the-wall place that's smaller than my living room, but packs enough Thai goodness to keep my mouth burning all year round. I go there whenever the travel bug hits and I need some nostalgic nourishment to placate the fact that I ain't going anywhere anytime soon. The days are shortening and with the 1-year anniversary of my Thailand trip looming on the horizon, I was jonesin' bad.

I had taken a few Thai cooking classes when I was in Chiang Mai and immediately fell in love with the food. New York is woefully lacking in quality, Thai restaurants. We're hip-deep in Chinese, Italian, Indian and sushi, but authentic Thai and Mexican are rare-if-ever sightings. If I wanted some Thai, then I was going to have to do it myself. The four hardest, quality ingredients to come by are fish sauce, shrimp paste, palm sugar and kaffir lime rind/leaves. The first two smell awful the first time you try them. Palm sugar is a great not-so-sweet sugar. Kaffir lime isn't nearly as tangy and sour as conventional limes. It has a great taste that instantly takes me back to Thailand whenever I smell it and it's the secret weapon of really good Thai cooking. If I lived somewhere warm and I had a yard, I would plant myself a kaffir lime tree. It's that frigging good.

Even with the ingredients and the know-how, it takes a lot of practice to get a food dish into the Rotation- eaten on a regular basis. The key is ease-of-preparation. Even in my neighborhood, delivery food is quick and ideal for a tired S.O.B. who's just returned home after a 45-minute commute. I'm not, generally, in the mood to heat up my kitchen and cook for an hour. It's gotta be simple. Pad thai is the first Thai food that I've gotten down pat. It's easy, tastes awesome, and soaking the rice noodles for 12 minutes is half the prep time. Still, it's not a particularly exciting meal. It's mild and frankly, my favorite Thai foods have a little kick. That's where the curry paste comes in.

The cornerstone of hot, Thai cooking is a good curry. Curry paste is the barbecue sauce or marinara of Thai food. If you can nail down a good curry paste, you can stick it in the freezer and pull it out whenever you need it. Cook it with chicken or pork or duck or tofu (all organic, of course) and you will be able to quickly assemble a couple dozen fantastic meals. I made a few curry pastes when I first got back from Thailand, but with middling success. I made a red paste, a paenang paste and a sweeter, milder curry paste called Chiang Mai paste (my favorite). I discovered two keys to a good paste- smoothness and heat. On my first attempt, I got impatient with the food processor and ended up with a bunch of paste that wasn't smooth enough. In addition, it had a good flavor, but didn't give the kind of nasal-clearing heat I'd come to expect from a good curry dish. This time around, I wasn't going to fuck around with the peppers. This time, we were going to have some Serious pepper action in the kitchen.

On Monday, I decided to make some yellow curry paste and a double-batch of red curry paste. I soaked 3-dozen dried, red peppers then added another 10 tiny, green peppers to the mix. I cut and I cleaned the seeds out and I soaked them and when I was done- Success! I busted out my wok, added some coconut milk, 4 tablespoons of red curry paste, palm sugar, tofu. Man! It was like I was back in Southeast Asia. Even Kat, who had been eyeing me nervously all through the prep had to give me props.

Pumped on adrenaline and intense enthusiasm all afternoon, I was finally starting to come down when I noticed my hands- what was that... that burning? My hands began to get warmer and warmer until suddenly they were in full-blown pain. The oils from all the peppers I'd been handling made me feel like I could light a candle with my fingertip. Ho-ly Je-sus. I scrubbed and I scrubbed. I held them in front of fans, I poured milk on them, I scrubbed them some more, but they kept burning and burning. This is what happens when coddled, office hands meet hot peppers. Yow. Five hours later, the burning subsided enough for me to fall asleep.

Last week, my glasses broke. One of those little nose bridges snapped off as I was putting my yogurt in the fridge at work. With no money to buy a new pair, I've started wearing my contact lenses again. They've taken some getting used to, but I was beginning to adjust. Mercifully, I was lazy on Monday and never bothered to put them in. The morning after my Flaming Hands performance, I woke up and stumbled to the bathroom- completely forgetting that my hands were burning just hours earlier. Now, they felt fine. I'd like to think that I'd have been a little smarter if I'd waited another 10 minutes to wake up but, alas, I will never know for sure, for it was with infinite stupidity that I ambled up to the bathroom sink and popped in my right contact. The next 15 minutes were spent trying to get it out. You know you're in a bad way when you start negotiating with yourself. Out Loud. Kat, one of the most squeamish human beings when it comes to eyes, actually offered to use Her fingers to get it out. Finally, the contact abandoned ship and I managed to lurch through my daily prep. Unfortunately, I was left to wear my broken glasses the rest of the day... and again today.

Good curry paste, though.

Sons and Daughters at Northsix

2005-10-11T20:38:00.000-04:00

Seeing a musician at the top of his/her game is a fantastic experience. It reminds me why I see bands play live and why people pursue an artistic career. A mediocre band can show flashes of brilliance that make me want to embrace them and root for their development and future success. Bad bands instill a stronger belief in myself by illustrating that, despite their tremendous ability to suck, they're out there, putting it together, getting gigs, recording music and doing what they believe in. If the ongoing duties of computer repair/software installation hadn't absorbed my entire, 3-day weekend, I would have been a guitar-playing motherfucker come Sunday morning 'cause I was hip-deep in inspiration.

Kat and I crawled out of the cave on a rainy Saturday afternoon, propelled ourselves through the subway for an hour, all for a little music-lovin' in Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. For the non-native, Williamsburg is a perfect example of what might have been and what is so very Wrong with New York. Earlier last century, Williamsburg was an Italian-American neighborhood full of Brooklyn Dodgers fans and mafiosos. Later, Poles and orthodox Jews huddled together in tight-knit communities. Recently, it has been embalmed by overeager developers and deep-pocketed hipsters who were eager to gut a neighborhood and build a SoHo to call their own. When Kat and I moved to New York in 2001, Williamsburg was already in the process of transmogrifying from an artist-friendly neighborhood of lofts and cheap apartments into an over-priced community of perfo-kitsch and clubs outlined by Beemers and Benzes. Still, some cool venues have held on. Galapagos still has great, free burlesque shows on Monday nights and Northsix has managed to consistently book some great, up-and-coming indie bands. I'd been wanting to go for years and on this night, the stars finally aligned and suddenly, there we were.

In the typical plumage of urban-chic, Northsix didn't have a sign. Only a large black man on a barstool hinted that there was a bar behind those doors. We flashed our ID's and slipped into the high-ceiling foyer(?) that had a bar with the only beer on-tap (Heineken). We checked in through Will Call and entered the performance space where a flock of tittering Hispanic girls fluttered about the unmanned, sales table. They ogled $15 T-shirts and debated whether the buttons and stickers were free or not, despite the sign in the middle of the table that told them. I excused myself, plunged my hand into the mass of stunned ladies (completely non-sexually, of course) and snagged a Sons & Daughters sticker.

A long, light-wood bar undulated from the entrance, down toward the stage. No barstools, plastic cups stacked behind the bar for mixed drinks, yet $5 for a bottle of Red Stripe beer? What the hell kind of Cosmo-drinking, indie crowd was this? A narrow stairway and a few, bleacher-style seats stood facing the wide stage. The drink prices were disappointing but still, I live for these sorts of spaces where you can talk to the band as they're loading in/out their gear. The usual suspects of music geeks had already secured their seats. Cute, vaguely-nerdy female groupies were paired up and claiming nosebleed seats while the intense, Übermusik geeks carefully scoped out the Ideal seat that stood just above the heads of the standing crowd yet offered the perfect balance of comfort, acoustic fidelity, and eye-lines. I, on the other hand, am of the genre who has to be there nice and early so I don't miss Anything. I went to see Stars at the Mercury Lounge about a year ago and it still bugs me that I missed most of the opening set featuring I Am Kloot. Yep, I'm That Guy.

Kat spotted a row of wooden seats against a side wall so we snagged them. It gave us seats and a good vantage point to people-watch and ruthlessly judge others... that being the only alternative to drinking. Besides, my standing endurance was running low and even with my steel-tipped, Doc Martens with heel supports, I was gonna be struggling by the end of the night. It sucks getting older, sometimes. Kat and I baby-sipped our beers and entertained ourselves by making sweeping generalizations of everyone who passed. The flock of Hispanic senoritas swept from one end of the performance space to another, searching for a land where they could see the band, be seen by everyone in the club, and find butt accommodations for the entire group. It was hypnotic.

The first band of the night was a 5-piece group called Eiffel Tower. I vaguely recognized the name from my perusal of KEXP playlists (the no-streaming policy at my day job has effectively eliminated my morning dose of online radio). I was eager to check them out. Well, I am eager no more. It's always a bad sign when the opening band is really loud. It's like guys who drive jacked pickups - you just know the dick has gotta be small. Screeching loud generally means that they're making up for other insecurities. It's not like Eiffel Tower was lacking in the indie cred- they had the nerd-savant on rhythm guitar, the T-Rex backup wannabe on bass and a wry, blond keyboardist who was affable and humble. Had the band been tight, the singing been consistently in tune or the hooks solid, this might have been a solid band. Maybe it was an off night. Maybe the lead singer had been rooting for his alma mater during an afternoon football game, but this was not their night. It's a tough career they've chosen and tonight, they inspired me with their tenacity and ability to get gigs!

There is a chance that I was getting a bit jaded by this time. I'm not a newbie to the scene. I'm not floored simply by the ability of the band to vibrate the air around me with a great half-stack. With no beer buzz to propel me through the evening, I only had a pair of earplugs to separate me from suck and I was starting to feel bad for dragging Kat's beloved ass to some vacuous corner of New York. Just then, I noticed a willowy fellow take to the stage. He looked like a member of the 1930's worker party or a roadie for Woody Guthrie, if such a thing were possible. He was soon joined by a platinum blonde that Kat had earlier pegged as an A&R exec. A ripped jeans guy who I'd mockingly pronounced to be a spoiled-rich producer type turned out to be the drummer. I have no future as a detective. The band was 'The Rosebuds'.

There are two things I'm a sucker for when it comes to bands - solid drumming and a guitarist who can play an entire show with ONE guitar. Nothing can kill a show quicker than sloppy drumming or a guitarist who has to swipe out and re-tune his/her guitar between every. single. song. If you're playing power chords through a distortion pedal and your low 'E' is a half step off, I'm probably not going to be put out. Making me sit through a couple minutes of you staring at a BOSS tuning pedal, trying to get it just right, well just shoot me now. Either learn to play an entire set in drop D tuning or learn to fret it standard. The Rosebuds had a good drummer, a good guitarist and what resulted was a rousing set of unmemorable songs. The blonde beauty was, unfortunately, completely mixed out of the set. The brief flashes from her keyboard and mic gave me cause for hope, however. The band showed hints of The White Stripes and they had some fun hooks, but they never quite seemed to take a full bite from what they wanted. Of course, not every one would agree with me. The best entertainment of the night might have been a cute, young woman who knew all The Rosebuds's lyrics and had a natural, rhythmic dance going that was just fun to watch- and not in that creepy, sexual way. In New York, such dancing is a notable anomaly. NYC is mostly known for white-boy nodding or stilted, cooler-than-thou posing. Even Kat was taken aback by this lady's inappropriate display of enjoyment. If only other New Yorkers could learn to enjoy a night out...

The Rosebuds finished their set and our free-spirited dancer consummated the evening by proclaiming, to the lead guitarist, that he was awesome. I love small venues like this. Kat and I rose and shuffled towards center stage. A short, young man with a greaser's pompadour raced about the stage. He tuned his guitars, set up the mic stands and fitted windsocks on the microphones before whisking himself offstage. I would later discover that his name was (and probably still is) Scott Paterson and he is the best reason to go see the band Sons and Daughters. When the four-member band finally launched into their opening song, it took all of two seconds to see that Scott was the Real Deal. From the opening power chords through the final crescendo, he was On Task, cranking out with an intensity normally reserved for drummers on coke. He immediately reminded me of a Joe Strummer-type of player. Sons and Daughters are not, however, anything like The Clash. Adele Bethel was the vocal engine of the band, providing a solid performance and a hypnotic, to-and-fro rocking motion. Ailidh Lennon, the bass player, blew something on her amp stack on the second song and spent the rest of evening being the World's Poutiest Cute Irish Woman in a Red Dress.

The band had opened for The Decemberists at Webster Hall on Tuesday and although I wanted to go, my boycott of Webster Hall remains in effect. I didn't expect Sons and Daughters to play at a particularly high level on this night but I was pleasantly surprised. The band really shone when Scott was cut loose and allowed to run. Their rendition of "Johnny Cash" was particularly strong. There was a disturbing moment during song that required audience participation. The whole band suddenly swapped out from performing to hand clapping. Parts of the audience joined in. Kat, however chose to sit this clap-fest out. The drummer, seemingly put out by the fact that a cute, blonde woman in the audience was not dying to participate, attempted to Will her to clap through an extended, intense stare that elicited raised eyebrows and an uncomfortable laugh from Kat. Having never seen another man attempt to hypnotize my girlfriend in the midst of a concert, I was momentarily taken aback. Fortunately, Kat's laugh ended Rasputin's seduction as quickly as it had begun. The band did a one-song encore after promising us that they had to go. It was just as well. Kat and I were at least hour of subway riding away from home.

murder by BIOS

2005-10-03T20:13:00.000-04:00

My computer died yesterday, and I killed it. I've spent a lot of time in front of a computer monitor and I've read more than a fair number of hardware and software guides. I took BASIC and Pascal programming classes in high school, taught myself SQL 4 years ago, but I always feel like I don't know enough. Murder always feels a step outside my tunnel vision of knowledge- there's always something that I could miss. I killed partially out of ignorance. I was playing with a gun I didn't know I was loaded called a system BIOS. Unfortunately, the manufacturer of my motherboard neglected to tell me that they were handing me a loaded firearm.

I built my computer three years ago. I'm very proud of it. I had never built a computer before. I did the researh. I studied a number of techie websites, including the fantastic Tom's Hardware Guide and My Super PC. I picked out the components and, for less than a thousand bucks, built a smokin'-yet-affordable system:

Intel P4 - 2.4GHz Processor
ASUS P4PE motherboard
Corsair 512MB memory
Western Digital 120MB 7200RPM hard drive
Gainward GeForce4 Ti4200

Looks great and technical, doesn't it? I went from a crap-ass Dell 'laptop' with a failed battery and floppy drive to an unbelievably fast and stable system completely of my own creation. I could cruise through Battlefield 1942 or Medal of Honor smooth as silk... not counting the occassional dirty look from Kat.

The Achilles heel of the system, however, was the O.S.. Eight months ago, Windows 2000 started giving me error messages. It had developed a glitch wherein Explorer would crash after closing file folders. I lived with it for a while, tried Googling the problem, performed a few tweeks, then endured a little more. Finally, I decided that it was time to start anew. I had a new, 160 GB hard drive to hold my new media files and now was a good time to format the new drive and re-install my system software.

The last 2 weeks have been spent on backup. On Saturday, I unplugged the Beast, hauled it out from under my desk, wrangled the dust bunnies from its innards, then carefully installed the new drive. I'd been dreading the whole process of formatting and re-installing Windows, but by that evening, I had a renewed system with a new, formatted hard drive, and an internet connection. Life was good. It was the easiest installation I'd ever done... then I made the foolish mistake of speaking out loud and telling Kat.

Sunday morning, I was up early and eager to go. I was convinced that I could have my Adobe Creative Suite and iTunes fully installed before Kat even knew the bed was getting cold. I peformed the Dance with Windows Updater and re-booted the system a few times, without incident. I went to ASUS's website to find the newest drivers for my motherboard. As I clicked through, I noticed that there was this convenient, new utility that proudly told me that it could perform a BIOS update without the aid of flash disks.

'Fantastic,' I thought, ' I can update the BIOS, reboot then install Adobe. I ran the utility, chose the newest BIOS, then started the update. The meters filled, telling me that my old BIOS was removed, that the new BIOS was being entered then the install was confirmed- no, wait a sec.

Error.

Did I want to RETRY the installation or EXIT and cancel the installation?

I clicked RETRY, watched the meters do their thing then... another error.

'Ah well,' I thought, fuck it. Best not get too greedy. I'll do the BIOS update some other time.

I EXIT from the utility, then Restart Windows to... a blank screen.

Huh.

I hold down the RESET button on my PC case.

Blank screen. The machine is running, the fans are turning, but nothing is loading. Nothing. Blank.

RESTART.

Nothing.

Oh shit.

RESTART.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh-

Nothing.

I scrambled into the bedroom where my Flintstone-era laptop lies. It was slow, but I had a simple ethernet connection going and right then, it was all the technology I had in the world. I went to ASUS's website. Troubleshooting. I swore. Forums. More swearing. I'm Googling.

Kat peered over the rim of the covers at the tall, sweaty boyfriend who's swearing like a sailor under his breath.

"Are you all right, sweetie," she asked from somewhere between a dream and the adrenaline-fueled reality where I was living.

I dragged my computer out from under my desk. With the motherboard instructions in my hand, I'm threading my hand through the maze of wires, carefully extracting the pin jumper from one set of pegs, and sliding them onto another. Supposedly, I am clearing the CMOS from my drive, but I felt like I was about to turn into one of the apes from 2001: A Space Odyssey and start hopping around hysterically around the Monolith.

I plug the monitor and keyboard back in and turn on the power.

Nothing.

I take it apart. Try it again. I plug it in, turn it on.

Nothing.

I try removing the motherboard battery - the power supply that keeps the BIOS alive in the motherboard. I plug it back in.

Nothing.

I have a boot disk. I install a floppy drive, enter the boot disk. I plug it back in.

Nothing.

CD-ROM boot disk.

Nothing.

I'm pleading, negotiating, offering my first born for the return of functionality.

Nothing.

I'm telling Kat all about the CMOS. I show her the directions and explain what I'm doing and ask her to read the directions and tell me I'm doing it right. She even holds the flashlight as I try to reset the CMOS for the upteenth time.

Nothing.

Kat Googles. Can't find anything new.

Finally, I had to Admit that... I did it. I had killed my computer with a poisonous BIOS.

Well, what's a credit line if you can't use it, right? I haven't ordered from Newegg in so long... maybe it's time to catch up on old times.

rockin' our World

2005-09-27T12:59:00.000-04:00

"An object at rest will remain at rest until an unbalanced force acts on it.
An object in motion will remain in motion until an unbalanced force acts on it."
-Newton's First Law of Motion

One of the easiest selling points of Conservatism is comfort. Societies are always changing, whether we like it or not, and there is a fantasy held by many that things can (and should) remain 'As Is'. This often arises from an erroneous belief that there was a 'Good Old Days' where things were simpler (meaning better) and that Things are getting Worse because people (insert caption of 'Liberal') keep trying to change things. Not all conservatives are inert, but it is a core belief that lies beneath many conservative talking points.

Why am I rambling on about this? No reason.

A couple weeks ago, a friend e-mailed me an invite to a global warming lecture. It was with this guy named Andy Revkin, a noted (or so I've been Told) science journalist for the New York Times and was being hosted by the Rainforest Alliance. Kat and I showed up in our eco-friendly garb - denim, concert T-shirts, steel-tipped Doc Martens, and nice, vaguely-hippie clothes. Our first cue that we might be swimming in strange waters was when we stepped off the elevator and were greeted with a sea of nametags. Kat had been listed as my guest so she was relegated to pencilling in her name. I hadn't a suitable pocket to attach my tag so I clipped it to my belt buckle and headed inside.

The room was stuffed with khakis, business shirts and dress-pants. Kat and my nametags looked woefully inadequate beside the corporate names and titles that began with the words Vice President. Many looked as if they had just shared a taxi from the East Side where they had just attended a U.N. summit on deforestation. Fortunately, awkwardness can be overcome with an adequate dose of alcohol and/or pills and the Rainforest Alliance provided free wine and beer exclusively for that purpose... that's what I choose to believe, anyway. Kat and I huddled near one another for comfort. Our previous notion of an environmental meeting involved refreshments provided by a vending machine accessed "down the hall and to the right". If it wasn't for a diorama-style room of glossy testimonials to fighting deforestation and supporting self-sustaining businesses, I'd have thought I was standing outside a board meeting for an Upper East Side non-profit group (also known as the 'Thing To Do When You're Rich and Bored').

I stared at the shiny, bright handouts and my first thought was 'This doesn't look like recycled paper'. Fortunately, my friends arrived and bailed me out of further observation. I had more primal needs to attend. The lecture was going to start and the gravy train of foccachia snacks, chocolate-dipped strawberries and free wine would soon dry up. I had to make my move. I approached the dour woman who manned the bar. I smiled pleasantly and offered my wine glass and a nonchallant play for a refill. The woman offered a "eat hot death, deadbeat" glare, then begrudgingly offered me 1 inch of red wine... somebody was a little bitter about working overtime.

Kat and I scored a pair of fold-out chairs in the back and set our paper-plate booty on our laps. Despite our spoils, now was the moment I secretly dreaded. Although I am passionate about the environment and do my best to spend my money as eco-friendly as possible, I am gun-shy about environmental lectures. They tend to make me feel ineffectual and angry. Lecturers often talk about atrocities of such scale and in lands so far away, I feel like I've been trying to piss on a forest fire. When I go to an environmental discussion, I want it to be focused and, preferably, local. I want to be able to wrap my hands around it and affect it and mobilize myself against it. It's not that I don't want to affect international issues, but I believe that the best way to get others to change is to live as an example and do it first in your own back yard.

So... how was the lecturer?

Over the years, my tolerance for bullshit has dropped to zero. I have even less patience for politicians and corporate PR. They wield masks that present me well-crafted lies and dreamy appraisals of how they want me to think as they prey that I'm not intellectually curious enough to learn any more than they have fed me. Political/scientific journalists are, sadly, cut from much of the same cloth. In order to stay on the Inside and, hopefully, find an opportunity to break the Big Story, reporters must convince the Public, and the Insiders, that they're probably (wink wink) on the Right side while maintaining the facade that reporting is a non-partisan act. It's the same delusion that documentaries are non-fiction. We all hope that the responsible reporter will convey the 'truth' of a moment, but these things cannot always be found without pointing a few fingers and making a few enemies.

Mr. Revkin offered no finger-pointing on this evening. Before he began his lecture, he had to read a disclaimer that anything he said did not represent the opinion of The New York Times. Thank God for that, otherwise I'd think that he was speaking the opinions of an inanimate, corporation and not speaking as a regular human being. He told us about how busy and tired he was from following hurricane news over the last 3 weeks. He told us how journalism isn't good for environmental reporting because it happens slowly instead of in big, catastrophic bangs. He told us that we need to educate our children better if we are going to have any hope of properly addressing global, environmental issues. Basically, he showed us that he was burnt out, frustrated, world weary and needed some sleep. He was a notch off of completely cynical, but I'd give that a couple years. I didn't find myself pissed off at the end of the lecture, but I wasn't exactly raring to get out there and have babies so I could educate them, either.

The wine and snacks were good, though.

my 'seven things' answers

2005-09-14T18:17:00.000-04:00

My blogs are running thin, so I am happy to accommodate Muse's blogging questions...

Seven Things Quiz

SEVEN THINGS

Seven things you plan to do before you die

1. Travel around the world.
2. Publish a novel.
3. Live abroad.
4. See my abs again.
5. Sustain a living through my art.
6. Let 'it' go.
7. Have a kid. (those two thumps were Kat and my mother hitting the floor)

Seven things you can do

1. Write
2. Talk movies
3. draw
4. vent my frustration
5. worry
6. play guitar
7. cook

Seven things you can't do

1. Give myself a break
2. Work a 9-to-5 office job
3. Work on an oil rig
4. Dance to techno or rock music
(unless pogoing, tapping my foot, or moshing counts)
5. Conduct a non-emotional discussion on the environment
6. Keep it to myself
7. Sing

Seven things that attract you to the opposite sex

1. Challenging (punky) attitude
2. Intelligence
3. Wit
4. Adventurous nature
5. Gothy or Hippie style
6. Butt (not big, just perky)
7. Piercing eyes

Seven things you say most

1. "You know what I can't stand?!" (the answer is usually yes)
2. "What the fuck was that?!" (when I'm watching the news)
3. "What? What?! What do you want from me?!" (directed at Pippin (one of our cats) when he meows then flops down next to my computer desk for the umpteenth time, soliciting another petting session. Immediately followed by perfunctory petting.)
4. "I am Switzerland. I have no opinion." (when I refuse to answer a loaded question)
5. "Cool as the other side of the pillow." (when I'm stoned or have reached the sweet spot of drunkenness)
6. "God-dammit!" (When I have gotten my ass soundly kicked in a computer game. Usually requires a cooling off period of 5 minutes. With no context, this usually makes Kat and our two cats, jump.)
7. "I need a drink!" (Normally presented in an e-mail to Kat after I've emerged from another mind-numbing meeting with incompetent co-workers.)

Seven celebrity crushes

1. Cate Blanchett
2. Lauren Bacall
3. Audrey Hepburn
4. Allison Mosshart (singer for The Kills)
5. Helena Bonham Carter (in Fight Club)
6. Karen Allen (in Raiders of the Lost Ark)
7. Gwyneth Paltrow (in The Royal Tenenbaums)

the blue birthday

2005-09-13T11:47:00.000-04:00

Last Wednesday, I celebrated my 34th birthday. It was a mellow affair. We ate sushi and wine then, later in the evening, Kat presented me with a lemon-blueberry cake that was fantastic... and it got me to thinking about my blue, birthday cake. (cue hazy, flashback sequence)

It was an old war in my family.

"What color cake do you want," my mother would ask... but she knew what I wanted.

"Blue," came the swift reply.

"Ugh," she would groan in that cataclysmic way that drives a refuted child into madness. "I'm not making a blue cake."

"Why not?"

"It's unnatural," she answered. It was as if I'd asked a Southern Baptist minister what was wrong with being gay. "Nothing in nature is blue."

"The sky is blue."

"The sky isn't a thing," she would proclaim as if it made perfect sense.

Thus began The Exchange wherein I would offer evidence of all the blue things in the world and she would condemn them to some off-shade of purple or lavender. Inevitably, my single-digit experience would lose to Mom's debating skills and a chocolate or yellow box cake would arrive on the 7th, clad in yellow or green frosting. Sometimes, a blue candle or piece of rock-hard cake candy would be added to placate my wounded ego (or mock my frustration).

But then, my 11th birthday arrived and Mom decided that she'd had enough and it was time to Prove how hideous a blue cake would look. We were enjoying a front-yard birthday/barbecue bash with the neighbors. Mom emerged from the front door, cleared the bags of hot dog buns and potato chips from the picnic table and presented a brilliant, blue cake.

"There you are," she said as if she were absolving herself for having constructed a biological weapon.

I approached it like Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind as he cautiously ascended a hill at the side of the road and beheld Devil's Tower for the first time- wonder and awe. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. Mom was right. Nothing in nature could quite achieve the hue of blue that stood before me in the guise of a confectionary spread. It was a swirly monolith of anti-matter that defied the label of ''food' and Dared us to eat it.

It was perfect.

The mad gleam in my eye told my mother instantly that she had lost. Rather than greet this pulsating mass of radioactive buttercream, I had fallen in love. Mom refused to cut the cake or even eat a slice. In fact, none of the adults had apparently saved enough room for dessert that day. So much the more for me.

After running family and neighbors ragged from a already-manic kid now hopped up on 'blue cake', sugar shock, I slept well that night, with a brilliant, blue tongue.

I was never again asked what color cake I wanted, but I was cool with that... I'd got mine.

looking for the Cure

2005-09-06T10:56:00.000-04:00

The last few weeks have felt like a year. That happens when you're going through a growth spurt and things are really Happening. On Saturday, the Study Abroad on the Bowery program wrapped up our three week workshop with a final performance and 'graduation ceremony'. Names were called out while workshop students whistled a heinous rendition of "Pomp and Circumstance". I met some really cool people over the last few weeks and was sad to see them go, but I'm ready for a break. By a break, I mean that I have to start applying all the shit I've been absorbing over the last few weeks. It's like I've spent too much time in a good art museum. After a while, I overload on the visual stimulation and just start mindlessly looking at blotches of color mounted on walls.

I've been obsessed with Spalding Gray over the last few weeks. Actually, I have been a huge fan of Spalding Gray for years. I have always been a huge fan of The Killing Fields and when I heard that a performance artist had done a monologue of his experiences in making the film, I immediately went out and rented Swimming to Cambodia. The movie was incredible. Here was a guy who sat at a desk with a glass of water and a microphone and delivered a stunning, storytelling display that effortlessly blew away 90 percent of the acting I'd seen. I immediately went out and rented Monster in a Box and Gray's Anatomy which proved to be equally-fulfilling. When he committed suicide early last year, I was crushed. His style of performance was referred to as a 'talking cure' and his neuroses, insecurities, and discoveries often seemed to mirror my own. Spalding felt like a passive-aggressive member of my unspoken club where We all struggled to Keep It Together through our art. I had never met the man nor had an opportunity to see one of his live performances, but I felt a kinship. It's hard not to when the work you love is of such a personal nature.

After I'd graduated with my MFA in playwriting, one of my professors told me that my writing style was similar to Spalding's work. He suggested that I rent out a theater and put on a one-man show. Of course, I was flattered to have my writing compared to Spalding's, but the idea of memorizing and performing anything over 10 minutes was laughable and the suggestion that I do it solo was a double-decker sandwich of Laughable and Horrifying. After 3 weeks of performance poetry though... I've been watching my copy of Swimming to Cambodia and thinking that, maybe, the sandwich has become more of a Snort and Grimace affair... and not so ludicrous an idea.

NPR did a very good retrospective on Spalding and his work.

Volunteering at the Howl Festival

2005-08-29T10:02:00.000-04:00

The last weekend was the final Movement in the 3rd Annual Howl Festival. "Howl", for those of you non-poetics, is the poem that Allen Ginsberg wrote that happened to revolutionize the poetic world and embolden the a whole generation of writers who would later be known as The Beats (and a few generations beyond). Even today it is a powerful piece and very appropriately named. There is no underestimating the profound effect "Howl" had on so many artists.

Of course, none of this was on my mind as I dragged myself out of bed at 5:00 A.M. and staggered into the shower. By 7:00, I was standing in Tompkins Square Park with the task of zip-tying hand-painted banners to cheap plastic poles. I had volunteered for the Howl Festival because the Study on the Bowery program required an 'internship' under the auspices of learning the 'ins and outs' of a festival. Let me summarize the experience that is volunteering, coming from a person who has volunteered thousands of hours in the name of film festivals, theater festivals, and writing festivals:

1. Denial. For those doing a festival for the first time, mistaken for Enthusiasm. Lots of fantastic ideas and a desire to inspire and ennoble all to do Great Things. All of this, of course, without the recognition that there are No Funds to realize such lofty dreams. Organizers are often heard uttering phrases like "Of course the city/town of XXXXX will give us whatever money we need." and "Of course they'll let us close down all the major avenues for 4 days straight?"
2. Anger. 'Why won't people give us the money and credit we deserve? Can't they See what we are Doing for the community? This is XXXX's fault!'
3. Bargaining. This is where the throngs of newbie volunteers arrive. 'The Problems Shall Be Defeated with manpower!' immediately becomes the New mantra.
4. Depression. This is the stage where the Real Deals are separated from the Pretenders. Often signaled by the departure of volunteers or mid-level employees who realize that 16 hour workdays for months on end might not be worth that one, extra line on their resume. Volunteer coordinators are often the first staff culprits as they regularly bear witness to both the self-righteous entitlement of the freebie volunteers who expect loads of comps and the staff politics/mental games that have ripened amongst a group that shares too many traits with a mental ward.
5. Acceptance (a.k.a. Fuck It) The day has arrived. Armed with no money, tons of volunteer no-shows and a Plan that has been reduced to a vague Improv sketch of massive proportions. The weak have usually been weeded out by this time, so all that's left is to get it done.

The Miracle of festival volunteering, however, is that It Still Happens. Somehow, it all comes off. Although the initial vision has been whittled down to a nubbin and most of the staff has achieved a thousand-mile stare, the survivors gain that special bond, not unlike that found amongst hostage survivors and war veterans. Then there's that small extra of doing a tremendous service to the community and Art. We don't grow without a little pain, right? There are even a sick few who become addicted to the experience and make careers out of this chaos. They are also known as 'National Treasures'.

The festival, by the way, was fantastic. I had a great time volunteering, I ended up carrying the lead banner in a kick-ass parade, I met some wonderful people, and I feel better for having done something other than sleep in an extra 4 hours.

2005-08-23T14:25:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I sat through an extended lecture from Hettie Jones, one of the self-labelled 'beat chicks' from the Beat Era. I had read an autobiography by Diane DiPrima called Recollections of My Life as a Woman. It was an ingriguing piece and gave me an interesting perspective on the NYC art scene of the mid-50's to mid 60's. DiPrima hadn't painted a very flattering portrait of the times but, like anyone speaking of their childhood, she still managed to give it that nostalgic, sepia lighting.

Hettie's lecture was interesting, but it had a densive tone. I have often heard that the beats were mysoginistic and it's only been in the last 10-15 years that the women have even been mentioned. As I get older, I am fascinated by how my history is twisted, repeated until it is blindly accepted as fact. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a part of such a Tiny community as The Beats and have that small window in your life scrutinized by outsiders. Worse, what happens when the insiders say things that you completely disagree with? At the end of the first hour, we took a 5 minute break and I took the opportunity to approach this diminutive woman to ask her about the DiPrima book.

Let's just say that she wasn't receptive to a discussion on DiPrima or her book. A lot of scars were handed out during that movement. There's a reason why most of them are dead.

I have never particularly liked most of the work of the beats (with the exception of Kerouac's On the Road). I have yet to manage a full reading of Howl, despite repeated attempts. The Beat Era was Incredibly important to the evolution of writing and poetry, but

three-drink minimum Before performing

2005-08-19T08:27:00.000-04:00

I have had exactly One positive performance experience in my life. I was drunk and I had three hot, extroverted actresses who were eager to be my backup singers. I did a late-night karaoke performance of "Love Shack" (I didn't pick it). My success that night hinged upon a complete disintegration of restraint and an ability to channel blinding terror into one of the loudest, gayest Fred Schneider impersonations ever witnessed by humankind. It was a once-in-a-lifetime performance that I remember fondly. I am certain that such a feat couldn't be repeated for all the vodka in Russia.

This has been a week of perpetual anxiety as I acclimate myself to the reality of reading poems onstage. My presentation is lacking (nonexistent), but I'm feeling much better about the quality my poetry. For the last few years, the act of writing has been like watching a distant plane fly through a blue sky - impossible to to see how it's going without a backdrop to compare it. My poems have been sitting in notebooks and on computers for years and I never felt particularly good about them. My poetry is far more distilled that I'd previously thought. They have an uneasy relationship with performance because they aren't nimble on their feet (much like myself). It's an interesting challenge.

My first impression of performance poetry is that it's more theatrical than literary. That's not to say that poetry readings aren't poetic, but expressionistic theater productions of the mid-to-late 20th century are very similar in their structure and execution.

Why am I going on and on with this intellectual analysis? It's a good hiding place.

shakin' it at the Bowery Poetry Club

2005-08-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

The only shot I've got of getting blog entries out over the next three weeks is to do it fast-and-dirty, so hang with me.

In a moment of madness, I signed up for a three-week, Applied Poetics workshop with the Bowery Poetry Club. Aside from the fact that I can't afford the class and am working part-time, I am also terrified of performing onstage.

I am Terrified of Performing Onstage. You can cut-and-paste this title and put it at the head of my dossier.

On the other hand, I have 4 years of poetry under my belt and no one has read it except my girlfriend and a couple of literary journals that found it so compelling, they eagerly rushed the rejection letters back to me, as quickly as possible. If I am going to get the guts to get this stuff read (or heard), I know that I'm going to have to do it myself.

I have read my poems out-loud, but they've been hushed whispers to my notebook or the cats - never in front of others and Never with the aid of amplification. Until last night.

I firmly believe that it's important to do things out of your comfort zone. That's when you grow. Well, I was hell-and-gone out of my comfort zone last night... and I think it was a success. By success, I mean that I didn't trip on the steps or lose my place in the poem or vibrate off the stage.

One class down, 3-weeks-minus-one-day to go.

M.I.A. in Central Park - as viewed by an angry man

2005-08-09T09:53:00.000-04:00

I haven't willingly listened to a commercial radio station in years. I have been held captive in offices where bitter, heavy-set secretaries voice their Displeasure with the world by cranking up a scratchy, transistor radio to piercing levels so we can all enjoy "On the Dock of the Bay" for the eight billionth time (this song also finds heavy rotation among hobo crooners on the subway). Abrasive commercials, pseudo-DJs, the heavy rotation of 10 songs, Over and Over and Over- how could I NOT miss it? Nearly as punishing as their broadcasts, commercial radio stations love to promote/sponsor concerts while displaying a staggering lack of understanding of both entertaining or their core audience. On Sunday, Kat and I subjected ourselves to the laminated sheen of commercial concert bliss at a Central Park Summerstage show featuring M.I.A.

Kat's theme music for the last few months has been M.I.A. If you don't know what M.I.A. is, I forgive you. 'It' is a Sri Lankan/Brit woman who raps world issues over fantastic Indian/techno style beats. She completely rocks and is on the verge of being consumed by the American Hipster Hype Machine who loves to worship it's God, then dismantle It at the first sign of national attention. Kat has been using M.I.A.'s debut album, Arular, as her personal theme music for the last few months and had this date circled on her calendar for weeks. Getting me out of the cave was no easy task. I was in the midst of a Hate-The-World phases wherein mania strikes and I cannot write or focus on anything. Eventually, I become irritated by everyone and am reduced to performing cross-hatch, pen drawings for hours on end or picking off Nazis with a sniper rifle from the comfort of my computer chair. Kat has seen plenty of these episodes and quickly dismissed my protestations - she wouldn't be denied. So, at 1pm we boarded the subway and hauled our asses down to Central Park.

Central Park really is an amazing place. It's easy to forget that when you have to cross it twice a day, 3-5 days a week. The park is Huge and on any given day, there are thousands of people from dozens of nationalities doing thousands of different things. Impromptu roller skating rinks shared spaces with jazz bands, frisbee games, pot smokers and crazy people - it is one of the best places in the world to people-watch. On Sunday, there also happened to be thousands of people standing in line to see M.I.A.. Kat and I immediately abandoned all hope of getting into the small, outdoor theater and staked out a spot on a woodchip-as-lawn area with the growing mass of eager fans. It was a people-watching smorgasbord. Hula-hoop dancers enjoyed the Indian-techno tunes while a bearded, dreadlocked soul danced solo for a good hour before an atractive pair of pretty, Indian women joined him. Soon, there were 15-20 people spinning and hip-swinging -hula-hoops and frisbees were flying everywhere.

Then the radio station DJs took the stage. They asked the crowd a half dozen times who they were there to see (M.I.A.) and were they ready to go crazy (yes). They turned over the DJing duties to DJ Rekha who did her best to destroy all momentum for dancing fun. Can someone explain to me how these people get their jobs? It's always a relief to have DJs play something different but I have two words for you - beat matching. If people are grooving out to a song, then you'd better have something that they can fold their rhythm into when it ends. Playing an energeitic groove then following it with a slow, disjointed beat Kills the Momentum. Could you Please quit turning the music down every 30 seconds to complain that the audience isn't as enthusiastic as you want them to be? Last note - quit explaining what kind of music you are going to play next. I don't care if you think that you're gonna 'get hardcore, now'. This DJ must've told us she was 'getting hardcore' three times as if she kept loosing her hardcore and was trying to re-start the engine.

Have I mentioned that I've been having some anger issues, lately?

All right... fine. I'm complaining about the opening act. The real reason Kat and I were bruising our asses on tree roots was to hear M.I.A., right? So, how was she?

Well, you'll have to find someone else to answer that. Two and a half hours after the concert started, we were still waiting for M.I.A. We had endured DJ Rekha, Mr. Vegas (a reggae DJ who equally sucked) and Diplo. This was interspersed with a cavalcade of radio jockeys who would not stop asking us who we wanted to see (M.I.A) and were we ready to go crazy (yes). Kat's ass was hurting, the cute, Indian women had abandoned the dancing an hour into the concert and our people-watching had morphed into a lot of people looking around at one another and wondering 'Can I go now?'.

I had a writing workshop back in Inwood at 7, Kat had lost her groupie zeal and we figured that we'd endured enough.

Alas, I believe that Kat and I will have to wait for the Hype to fade before we see the Experience that is M.I.A.

the Indignity of cat accessories

2005-08-02T10:32:00.000-04:00

Being broke in a city blows.

Let me start again. Being broke sucks. When you're spending a fortune to live in a place full of things to do, it becomes that much more Vivid because you can't do Any of It. This weekend, Kat and I were reduced to people watching and park wandering for thrills. When it became too hot and bothersome to stand outdoors any longer, we retreated to the apartment and undertook our other cheap thrill - cat harnessing.

Kat has a dream. It is a dream of one day taking our cats with us on camping and road trips instead of leaving them stuck at home. We agreed that the best, first step was to get them to use a leash. That way, we wouldn't have to keep them trapped in a cat carrier or tent all the time. Plus, there was no better time to introduce our cats to harnesses than when they're still kittens. I was not, however, prepared for the ordeal that lay upon the horizon.

My pet experience has been generally limited to dogs. With a dog, you put on a collar (or harness), they scratch at it, bite at it, rub it against the floor and furniture, then accept it. Sam and Pippin, however, look upon the harness as The Humiliation Too Great to Endure. The first time we wrapped these light, loose-fitting straps around their necks and bodies, it caused a complete rewiring of all cat motor control - kittens were flying everywhere. They were moonwalking across the floor, jumping 2 feet vertically in the air, and sprinting sideways down the hall until crashing into walls and my bike. No cats were physically injured, although Kat suffered some lingering abdominal pain from the laughter.

The second time we strapped them in, we got the Slithering and Abject Humiliation Show. Pippin crawled on his belly across the living room carpet and eventually found a corner where he could die peacefully. Sam's harness had the unique effect of rendering his rear legs completely useless. He was willing to play with his favorite balls of paper, but only if he could reach them by dragging himself across the floor with his front claws. I was ready to throw in the towel, but Kat had remembered a kitten book we'd purchased last December - Amy Shojai's Complete Kitten Care. The book is a bit cutsey and I find the author's association with Purina to be unsavory, but she did help a dog-centric being (me) understand the psychology of cats a little better. In the book, Amy assured us that we could readily-train our cats to wear harnesses, but it would require three, 5-minute sessions, for three straight days, with loads of play, petting and followed by treats (bribery) to seal the deal.

Well, we've done two days of harness therapy, and I am happy to report that the cats Love the salmon-flavored, organic treats... but not the harnesses. Sam likes to play, but only within a one foot radius and only if he can perform such actions from a stretched-out, prone position. Pippin lies on his side like a fallen martyr, waiting for his 5 minutes to expire.

I have no future as a cult brainwasher.

...but the dream lives on, much to their dismay.

vacation... or comeuppance?

2005-07-26T12:32:00.000-04:00

Every so often I'll catch myself doing it and groan. Kat looks at me and says, "What?" I confess that It has happened agan and she knowingly pats me on the shoulder and says, "I know." I'd like to think of myself as this dynamic, distinct individual whose voyage through life has made him a completely New sort of human being, but Then I cross my arms while I'm talking to somebody or tug at the little soul-patch under my chin and I see... my dad. I don't find my father's mannerisms to be offensive - it's the Recognition that they are now On Me. I haven't seen my father on a regular basis in nearly 8 years but they've been bubbling out of me, as naturally as breathing or growing my hair. I'm dealing with it, however. 'Things like this happen,' I tell myself, 'so you've just gotta accept it and move on.'

But, then there's this:

Everyone in my family knows that I am The City Kid. I am the family member who never liked camping or living in the country or hunting for deer or reaping the benefits of Mother Earth (gardening). I wanted to go to the movies or hang out with the neighborhood kids or see a basketball game while my parents planned week-long excursions to remote corners of Alaska for salmon fishing and hiking. From Denali National Park in Alaska to the remote campgrounds along the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, I've been a personal food reservoir for mosquitoes and deerflies all across this country and abroad. It wasn't enough to camp in the Great Outdoors. Oh no. It had to be done in the Remote Great Outdoors. K.O.A. campgrounds were for wimps. Hot water? Electrical hookups? Flushing toilets? Hell, you'd might as well stay in a Day's Inn and eat at the Waffle House. As I lay in my sleeping bag with rocks jabbing in my back and the persistent itch of mosquito bites on my ass from my last outhouse Debacle, I fantasized of the day when I would be the Master of my Own Destiny, when I would never again be forced to endure another second of Camping Torture. So, when Kat and I found a few days in July when we could relax from the daily grind of Work, what did we do?

We went camping... and it was... fun.

You can run, but you cannot hide, my friend.

Living in big cities has made me appreciate the beauty of silence. All those things I thought to be a tedious, cruel punishment from my parents for a hyperactive demeanor have since been twisted into perverse notion of idyllic bliss. My fantasies have flipped like a hippie-turned-neocon. I daydream of the wind through the trees instead of car alarms. I contemplate canoeing down a meandering brook in place of the choking cluster-fuck of a subway at 8 in the morning.

What have I become? Dear GOD, What Have I Become?!

...need... decadent night... on the town... now!

Freakin at the Siren Festival

2005-07-19T15:44:00.000-04:00

I want to join a freak show. I don't really know what my skill would be. I never honed my gross-out skills in middle school. My skill was paper football games and pencil snapping and although I might have ruled the school in those days, I don't see the general public ponying up the cash to make my dream a viable reality. I used to be a cutter, but I've weaned myself away from that lifestyle (much to Kat's relief) and the fact is that real, physical pain is a turn off in a live, theatrical setting. If there is ever a manic-depressive freakshow, sign me up, otherwise I'm destined to be a dreamer, not a practitioner. Fortunately, there were four practitioners at Coney Island this last weekend and for $8 on a hot afternoon, Kat and I partook of all that is Good and Joyous about a nice, wholesome Freak Show... particularly ones that serve Coronas.

The Real Reason that Kat and I subjected ourselves to one and a half hours of subway bliss was to attend the our third Coney Island Siren Festival. I had one of my 'Holy Shit' moments at my first Siren Festival when I watched a pissed-off Jamie Hince (a.k.a. Hotel) and Allison Mosshart (a.k.a. VV) perform an disjointed-yet-amazing set of music. The sound was terrible and they had a drum machine that couldn't work for-shit, but there was something there that made me hunt down one of the band lineups to find out their name - The Kills. A few months later, they returned to NYC and played at the Bowery Ballroom and confirmed themselves as my Favorite Band.

Frankly, the idea of the Siren Festival is a lot better than the reality. The bands play from 1pm-9pm and it's at the height of the summer with no relief from the heat except oversized cups of Rheingold beer. The crowds are fun and casual for the first couple bands, but as the day wears on, the crush to See gets unbearable. This year seemed exceptionally underwhelming. We arrived just as Ambulance LTD was taking the stage. They had some fun, catchy tunes for the first few songs, but their stuff fell a little too close to Nickelback by the end. The Dears took to the stage and after a short setup... kept setting up. Tell me, truthfully, does one band REALLY need 5 keyboards to get through a 45 minute set? Does everything REALLY have.to.be.just.so. for a steaming-hot afternoon where you're performing next to a rollercoaster?! Two songs into it, I knew that The Dears have been spending too much of their career working on setup and not enough time on songs. "Oh, I promise not to cry" as a climactic refrain? Somebody, shoot me.

By the time Q and Not U took the stage, I was ready for a break. Fortunately, Coney Island is a great place to visit once a year. In 2003, we sampled the Boardwalk hustlers and carney-style food. Last year it was the Wonder Wheel and Cyclone rollercoaster (though Kat wouldn't call that her high-point of entertainment). This year, it was The Coney Island Circus Sideshow. This was my first freak show since my Nine Inch Nails days when Trent was touring with the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow. This show wasn't on the same scale, but it was welcome respite from dull alt bands and a hot, rainy day that turned sweltering-sunny.

There must be a shortage of reliable freaks in New York City (or I swim in the same circles) because I've seen at least two, possibly three, of these freaks elsewhere in the City. It's hard to forget a dreadlocked woman with facial tattoos so I'm sure that Insectavoria is the same lovely lady I spotted handing out fliers in front of Andromeda's on St. Mark's Place. I wonder if she's related to Mikel Monkeymeat, the dreadlocked, facial-tattooed, body piercing specialist in said-establishment? I interviewed Mikel my first month in New York for a Playgirl article on genital piercings (that's another story), but I digress. Insectavoria put on an impressive display of fireball blowing and sword walking. If she'd been putting on that show when she was handing out fliers, I mighta strolled right in and got myself an apadravya... or not.

Eak the Geek was a frequent rider of the 'F' line when I lived in Brooklyn and, in hindsight, must have been headed home from work about the same time Kat and I set out for the City's evening entertainment. One evening, a friend of mine, smitten by his bodyfull of blue tattoos, spontaneously lept from her subway seat to talk to him. He's much angrier-looking when he's not talking. At the sideshow, he insulted hipsters for ignoring the 'No Photos' signs and had a hefty couple from Suburb,USA stand on his stomach as he was sandwiched between a pair of nail-filled boards. Not the most impressive feat I've seen, but he had some good carney-energy and kept the enthusiasm level up.

Heather Holiday looked very familiar to me. I don't know where I've seen her but... There's nothing that would suggest that she's a sword swallower and contortionist on the Outside, but that's just what she did for us this afternoon.Despite the fact that she was cute, dressed in a little sexpot number and had the obvious double-entendre skills, I kept getting the feeling that a date with her would be a lot of heavy petting, giggles, and coy grins, but little else. Alas, she had all the stage presence of a middle-school recital. Her bits desperately called for a burlesque touch, but this sideshow seemed a little desperate to keep everything 'G' rated.

Diamond Donny V was the host of this escapade. He sported a derby hat, pork chop sideburns and a placid demeanor. His bits were a little weak, but he had good comic timing and kept the show rolling along. He did succeed in grossing out Kat when he successfully threaded a long nail through his nose. A good emcee for the show, but I'd have preferred a little onstage contrast with him and Eek the Geek. Ahh... if I ran the circus...

The Sideshow was great, but I knew it was time to go when we finally emerged into the sweltering late afternoon. The crowds had begun to choke the streets and it was still a couple hours until home. Thank you Coney Island, it was Real.

Son Volt at South Street Seaport

2005-07-18T11:38:00.000-04:00

It was at Gabe's Oasis in Iowa City, Iowa where I had my first 'Holy Shit' moment. My best friend, Eliot, dragged me from the bowels of my cramped, one-bedroom apartment and introduced me to a band that wasn't quite country, wasn't quite punk, and featured a half dozen musicians who appeared to be touring with 30 instruments in tow. They had two lead singers-- one, a sad crooner with long, brown hair, the other, a droning, lilting singer with a bowl haircut nearly as bad as mine. The band was called Uncle Tupelo and they frigging rocked my world. I had no idea that country music could rock that hard or that a country-style band could do a kick-ass cover of "I Wanna Destroy You".

A couple years later, the band had split and the lead singers had built two, equally-strong bands with completely different sounds. The floppy-haired one, Jeff Tweedy, formed Wilco and Ascended to alt.pop heaven with the fantastic album Being There. The second singer with the dork haircut, Jay Farrar, embraced the country side of Uncle Tupelo's sound and formed Son Volt and put out a debut album, Trace. Three years ago, I finally caught Wilco live at NYC's Roseland Ballroom and had a blast. Last Thursday, I finally consummated my ongoing infatuation with that 'Holy Shit' moment by heading down to the South Street Seaport and catching a free concert featuring a much-hipper haircut singing lead for Son Volt.

Free concerts are always a mixed bag in a big city. They're outdoors, free and usually a fantastic opportunity to check out obscure bands. On the other hand, these venues provide a wonderful opportunity for every ass-clown with a few hours to kill to exchange office gossip with co-workers as if he's hanging out in his own living room, holding court with people who actually give a flying fuck. Nothing says Kill Me like listening to some shmuck on a cell phone during a concert, endlessly repeating "I Can't Hear You!" to the poor soul at the other end of the line...

South Street Seaport provides a stunning backdrop - the Brooklyn Bridge, downtown Brooklyn, the towering skyscrapers of Wall Street, and a small collection of early 20th Century sailing ships. The forecast had been threatening rain all day, but it was a picture-perfect evening. Kat and I were running late (having enjoyed a couple rounds of happy hour magic in the East Village) and missed the opening band, Dr. Dog, but Son Volt had just begun their set as we finally reached the end of Fulton Street. The show was solid, but a bit tepid. When you're playing for both fans and passers-by it's gotta be a bitch to engage an audience. Also, many of Son Volt's newer songs sounded much like one another and I frequently found myself staring off at a swingin' old guy in the audience who was laying into his air guitar harder than anyone onstage. It wasn't until Son Volt started laying into their older tracks that the show finally found a stride.

It wasn't anything close to a 'Holy Shit' moment but it was a respectable set and the price was right. I'm not terribly psyched of picking up Son Volt's newest album, Okemah and the Melody of Riot, but any fans of alt.country should still check out Son Volt's Trace, Wilco's sophomore effort Being There, and anything from Uncle Tupelo's first 4 albums. You won't be disappointed.

tap... tap... tap...

2005-07-11T10:52:00.000-04:00

Summer is hitting NYC hot-and-heavy today. I'm camped out in front of a fan with shades drawn, windows closed, and my air conditioner lying dormant. People bitch and moan about hot weather, but it's just a matter of getting used to it. When I was laboring in 100° F (37° Celsius) heat among the ruins of Ayutthaya, Thailand, I watched groundskeeping women go about their work wearing heavily-layered, dark clothing from head-to-toe while Kat looked like her head was about to spontaneously combust. Hell, even an anglo fella like me has gotten used to it. I spent a summer in the San Fernando Valley, enjoying 95° F (35° C) temps in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. Of course, I was unemployed for that summer so I had a LOT of time to get used to the weather along with far too many vodka and orange juice libations. Working in an office makes it hard, though. You spend the day in overly-cooled environments then try to go without when you get home. It's a vicious cycle. Vicious, I tell you. Fortunately, I have the advantage of only working three days a week.

Actually, it Would be fortunate if someone were willing to pay me to endure heat.

Can you tell that I'm trying to avoid work? It feels like people can tell. I've already done all the dishes in the apartment. I've scoured Craigslist for writing jobs in search of gigs that don't involve writing for somebody who has a 'great idea' and wants somebody to ghost-write it for him/her. I've read my bookmarked blogs, scanned the New York Times, checked the Fed Ex tracking site for the umpteenth time in search of minute-by-minute progress on the 160GB hard drive that I'm expecting Any Moment Now. I've even tapped out on my circuit of porn websites and when THAT happens, buster, you know that it is Time to get started. If I start playing Call of Duty, then I'll know that I've completely given up on the day.

Last night, I vowed to Kat that I would start sending out my poetry to contests and publications. Today was to be Poetry Day wherein I would cease the word-fucking of poems I wrote 3 years ago and finally get a few of the sons-o-bitches out the door.

Yep. Just about ready to get to work on that.

I wonder if the Bowery Ballroom has booked anybody new in the last 6 hours...

Good to be - COUGH

2005-07-07T09:37:00.000-04:00

My pilgrimage to the land of the midnight sun has been completed and I am glad to be

*cough*...

Excuse me... where was I? Ah yes, I am glad to be back in my beloved

*COUGH*

... maybe I need a glass of water. It's just that this frigging-

*COUGH-COUGH*

air in New York-

*HACK-HACK-COUGH-WHEEZE*

I arrived at JFK airport on Wednesday, flush with relief at my return home. The sliding doors swished and parted and I stepped into the great outdoors- then we wavered in our tracks. The air was thick with moisture and the stain of stale oil and exhaust. It was as if the air was hostile. After spending a couple of weeks abroad, I'd forgotten how Third-World the cities of America have become regarding air quality. Based on what I saw in Stockholm, if it takes a little socialism in a democracy to make corporations improve their water and air quality, I'd take it over this tepid mess any day.

I am happy to be home. Really.

Sweden was amazing, the wedding was cool and the breadth of egos on display was grossly-disappointing.

Is that obtuse enough? I got to visit with an old friend, befriend some amazing Swedes and revisit old friendships that helped me to find closure in ways I'd never expect.

Yep. Got the cryptic, scrambling device running full-bore here.

There will be much, much more to talk about. My paperwork is everywhere and I've gotta sort this shit out before I start applying digits-to-keyboards.

I need some sleep.

the Archipelagos of Sweden

2005-06-26T15:29:00.000-04:00

I have retreated into the wilds of Sweden. I hope to offer some blogging insights to my attendance at a Swedish wedding on July 2nd, but they might have to wait until my return on July 6th.

If you have any dire advice to offer in the days ahead, please feel free to offer a comment or two.

Take care,
Deckard

Answers for ~JeR~

2005-06-23T21:08:00.000-04:00

I'm normally not a big fan of these, but it's a good way to get to know some fellow-bloggers that I admire and vice-versa.

First, the rules:

Rules of the game:
1. Leave a comment saying "interview me"
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions.
3. You will update your blog with the questions and your answers.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview some else in same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed you ask them 5 questions.

All righty then. Let's get to it!

1. If you could choose one song as your personal theme song, which one would it be and why?
That's a hefty question to ask of a rock music fan. There are so many that represent who I was, but what represents me now?

Somehow, the first song that popped into my head was "Sunken Treasure" by Wilco. The words and chords have always rung true for me.

2. Who's your hero? (interpret this any way you want)
Hero... well, first it was Han Solo, then it was Indiana Jones, then I grew up. As inspiring as Obi Wan Kenobi was, negotiating the lava flows and kicking Anakin's ass, I'd have to say that it was my grandmother - my mom's mom. She was the wife of a farmer and survived the depression, took care of 7 children under hard conditions, lost 3 of them before she passed away, and never complained until the last couple years when she couldn't see (she loved to make quilts and knit). She had this unshakable view that beautiful and terrible things could and would happen in life and you dealt with it, then moved on. The amazing thing was that she wasn't callous or in-denial about it either. It was just that she didn't expect life to be fair or give her things simply because she wanted them and cared about them. She was the mold that made me coin the phrase 'a closet optimist'. She was rarely what I would call positive, but if she saw you started getting down on yourself, she'd sneak you a glimpse of hope that'd get you through.

And that frigging woman visited my family and me in every city the U.S. Army stuck us. In the late 70's she braved her first airplane ride to see us in Alaska and in her mid-80's, flew to Germany to visit us. She lived simply on Corn Flakes and green beans whenever she was at home then enjoyed the last laugh by leaving hundreds of thousands of dollars to her children that nobody knew she had.

3. What's your most embarrassing moment? (I know, cliche question, but the answers can be funny)
Oh, ~JeR~.... where should I begin?

Well, I don't know how funny it is, but the most embarrassed I've ever felt In The Moment would have to be the gala party that I attended a year and a half ago with my girlfriend.

Kat works at a not-for-profit organization that has a huge, fundraising gala at the Essex House along Central Park South. It was the first year that the organization was allowing significant-others to attend and Kat was excited because they had an open bar (always a great way to bribe me), a swanky, multi-course meal, and petit fours (tiny cakes and chocolates... Kat's into cute, little chocolatey things). I even performed the incredibly Un-Deckard act of purchasing a suit (my first) for this event. Kat was smitten by the sight of her stylin' boyfriend (I think it was the Cosmos talking) and we had a great evening... until the end.

I have always had a little problem with my feet. If I don't have good arch support, they can start to hurt. Back in 2003, we had a big blackout in NYC, Kat and I were in Queens, and it took 7 hours to walk home. My feet were hurting so bad, I couldn't walk for 2 days. A week before the big gala, I finally broke down and visited a podiatrist. The guy fitted me for a pair of arch supports and a prescription for anti-inflammatory medication.

When I popped my pills, between the open bar course and the dinner course, I had forgotten that one of the warnings that come with my medication was to not drink alcohol when I take the medication. After the dinner and speech-making, I stepped outside with Kat and her co-workers to enjoy my one-per-year cigarette habit.

Then, I woke up on the living room couch. I had NO idea how I got there. My suit was off and covered in puke. I smelled like puke. And Kat was furious - wait, I'm sorry, let me try that again. And Kat was FURIOUS. I had gotten sick on the subway, puked into the petit fours leftovers Kat had meticulously-saved from the gala. Through some miracle, Kat managed to guide me home (NOTE: I am 9 inches taller and 80 pounds heavier than her). She was sure that I had gotten drop-down drunk and was ready to kill me. I got sick at home. Sick in the tub. Then, after sitting up with me for a couple hours to make sure that I didn't pass out or perform some kind of Elvis Presley offing, she undressed me and dumped me on the couch. In retrospect, Kat said that if she'd known that I'd taken the medication, she would have immediately called an ambulance and had me taken to the hospital. I have never appreciated and loved anybody so much as the moment I realized how much Kat had withstood and done for me.

I had never felt so terrible in my life. I thought that I must have been guilty of drinking too much even though I didn't feel like I'd really drank very much. I have never been in a state where I couldn't remember things, much less 6 hours of my life. Midway through the day, I remembered the medication, looked up the warning on my medication sheet and realized exactly how stupid I was.

So, there it is.

4. If you had the opportunity to travel back in time to kill little baby Hitler, could / would / should you do it? (Hey, one weird question out of five ain't bad...)
No, I wouldn't. I've never ascribed to the idea that history could (or should) have gone another way. Even the most heinous acts in history are evolutionary steps for humanity. I don't believe in fate, but there is something about the momentum of a society. Hitler was terrible, but it was a symptom of something much larger. I wish that I point to a person or event and say "That is pure evil!" and remove the problem, but it's a game of Jenga - sometimes you can't know which piece will come out clean and which will bring the whole thing down.
5. What's your biggest guilty pleasure?
Tater tots and aspartame (Diet Crack - I mean, Coke). Time, space and logic warp whenever I get too close to these things. 'Enough' loses all meaning.

reaping just What we sow

2005-06-21T12:27:00.000-04:00

Why do people willingly suffer so much compromise in their lives, then Demand that their wedding day be Perfect? Can any soul recall a moment, planned months in advance, that went Just the Way they wanted it and was Perfect? If so, please e-mail me immediately. I went to a wedding last Friday that was Easily the most entertaining, free event that I've ever witnessed. For the bride and groom, it was considered a disaster. Human fallibility, once again, Conspired to bring the best-laid plans to ruin.

A year ago, poor Kat was roped into being a bridesmaid when a close friend and co-worker eagerly announced her engagement with her boyfriend. Kat hadn't been a bridesmaid and knew nothing of wedding culture so she eagerly accepted the invitation. Soon after, Kat's friend got another job and left, then came the familiar progression:

MONTH 1: 'We'll be best friends forever!'
MONTH 3: Oh, we need to do this-and-this-and-this together.'
MONTH 5: 'Ohhh... I'd love to but I've got this thing - but I'll call you!'
MONTH 8: 'Sorry I didn't get back to you in time, but I Miss You!'
MONTH 10: 'Things are crazy. Will send you an update SOON...'
MONTH 13: 'I never got that e-mail.'

Kat had a hard time watching the relationship dissolve away, as all such things do when only one person is available. As her friend became increasingly-invested in buying the Perfect Day, the process only exacerbated the situation. I am an Army brat and have endured these progressions all my life, but you never get used to it - you get clearer at spotting the stages. Kat's situation worsened as bridesmaid duties (expenses) began to mount - the dress she will never wear again, the dowdy shoes that go with nothing else she owns. Kat earnestly tried to keep positive, but when it was announced that the bachelorette party was taking place in Florida, she hesitated. When she was told that it was for only one night and the maid-of-honor tried to solicit her for group-gift money, she pulled out (working part-time and painting doesn't pay the big bucks like it used to).

On Friday afternoon, I left work early, took the 4 line down to Wall Street (the least holy site in Manhattan) and scrambled up and down side streets in search of a church. Only the wedding bells and the white silhouette of an anxious bride preparing for the big walk, pointed me in the right direction. I ducked into a side door, found an empty pew and planted myself at the end furthest from the center aisle.

The details of this wedding are incriminating-enough that I feel compelled to bury them in a piece of fiction far in the future. The previous night's festivities carried over to the wedding day festivities. Let's just say that the following events might have occurred:

groom (hung over from night before) puked During an extended, Catholic ceremony
bride swore blue fire for the next 5 hours
I enjoyed an open bar, salacious gossip, a beautiful view of Brooklyn, and a fantastic meal
bride got revenge by puking at reception
home by 11:30

Ahh... sounds perfect to me!

here's Metal in your Eye

2005-06-20T09:09:00.000-04:00

Last Wednesday, on the day of my Arlo Guthrie concert, I awoke with a nagging discomfort in my left eye. This wasn't a complete surprise to me as I had suffered a close encounter with a flying object at on Friday. My Saturday was spent on the beach, burning my skin to the consistency of bacon while performing an impersonation of Popeye with my contorted face. That night, I held my eye under the showerhead and Declared Victory when the large, black dot was replaced by a small, red dot and the pain toned down to a dull roar. The War Against Astronomical Medical Bills had been won by yours truly. By Monday, the pain subsided and I was soon telling war stories from my grey cubicle and basking in my homeopathic Genius.

Half-way through my Wednesday exercise in paid alphabetizing (my job), I noticed that the world around me was strobing. My left eye was fluttering in a frustrated attempt to alleviate my scratchy, dried-out eye. Irritation spiraled steadily upward into the second-tier of Oww and I was reduced to holding my eye shut with one hand. The return of Popeye was imminent. Even if I had successfully Conquered the flying debris, it was time to see a health professional. But where does a writer and part-time temp with no health insurance go to alleviate eye-pain? Well, if that writer is in New York City (and he is), then he heads on down to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary where, for $97.00, you too can have your eyes poked and prodded.

At 8:30 in the following morning, I emerged from the 'L' subway at 14th and 1st Ave. I was confident that this eye issue would be over in an hour and I'd be back to work, perfecting my ABC's and watching my computer clock slowly tick away my life at an hourly rate. From a block away, I spotted the red and blue banners of the infirmary. The architecture was in the style of public buildings thrown up circa 1968 where the first floor is all brick with small, blocky windows and interiors filled with wood panelling, pallid green and cornflower yellow. Inside, three security guards were debating over who-should-say-what during a fire emergency. A caption explained their conversation from a corner of the desk - a sign warning patients that a Fire Drill was being conducted that morning and requested that nobody Panic and accidentally leave whatever line he/or she was stuck in. One of them stepped into my path and, with his Best professional voice of Authority, asked, "Where are you goin'?"

I rambled something about looking for outpatient registration and pointed to my left eye, just in case he needed proof.

"Go straight back and turn to your left." Of course, these directions didn't come with any visual aids so I picked a direction that indicated 'straight back' to the security guard, then proceeded.

"No," he barked, "That way." Again, no visual aid. I picked another direction and was immediately ignored by the guard.

I entered a long hallway, choked with Hispanic and Chinese faces that stood along a snaking path, ending at a wall of 8 bank-teller-style, registration desks. Bullet-proof glass... hmm... okay, Why?

I joined the line and stood patiently. For the next hour. No posters. No intermingling among prospective patients. Not even a protruding wound to hypnotize the bored. What did I do for that hour? I watched the perfectly-coifed hair of FOX News anchors as they laughed and chatted and talked about things that I could not hear or understand. My Bliss was momentarily interrupted when a security guard got into a shouting match with a patient who claimed that he was an emergency case and couldn't stand in line. The security guard told him that he wasn't an emergency case and continued to hold that line even when the doctor appeared and explained to the security guard that the patient was, indeed, an emergency patient. The guard finally relented, though not without a few parting volleys to the patient for being such a 'jerk'. Good times.

I registered, received my red, medical card, and was pointed to a staircase wherein I discovered another room where I could wait for another hour and a half. Fortunately, I could sit and the air conditioning was set to 'Freezing' so I wouldn't have to worry about falling asleep and missing my appointment. Elderly, angry men paced in front of corridor doorways where nurses and ophthalmologists would emerge to call patients. Unlike the 60 other people sitting in this refrigerator, these gentlemen need to Get Somewhere and had Obviously been Forgotten. Finally, after a round of vision and glaucoma tests, a tall, willowy ophthalmologist called my name.

"You definitely have a piece of metal in your eye," he said the instant he peered into my left eye, "and I'll need to give you a dilation test." The ophthalmologist glided to a row of boxes and began snatching a bewildering array of bottles and began drop liquid into my eyes. Fifteen minutes (and many high-intensity squirms) later, he had pulled the metal out of my eye, applied a humming device to my eye ("to cover up the hole where the metal was") and written me a prescription for eye drops. I staggered downstairs to the pharmacy, picked up my prescription and headed for the subway.

But there was that little detail about my dilated eyes.

I stepped outside. A quick meeting was held between my eyes and the rest of my motor functions. A vote was held. It was unanimous. My body quickly retreated to the nearest shade and halted all forward progress. I covered my face with my hands and created a tiny slit with one of my fingers. With my hand over my face, I began the lurching steps towards home. I was heading in the opposite direction that I'd intended. Rather than swing around and retrace my steps (thus appearing even more crazed and demented than I was already displaying), I decided to make a break for the 3rd Avenue stop. Walking with dilated eyes on a sunny day is much like walking blind, with brief glimpses of a world that looks like a Monet painting. I finally reached 3rd Avenue, staggered across the street to the 8th Avenue line, and descended into the concrete hole like a 6 foot 3, Mister Hyde.

Then, somewhere between 42nd and 59th Street, my eye anesthesia wore off.

Good God - go tell it on the mountain - did that mutherfuckinsonofabitchin' eye begin to hurt. It might seem difficult to believe that an eye Without a piece of metal in it would hurt More than an eye With a piece of metal, but then again I hadn't been granted an opportunity to compare the two side-by-side as I was now. My walk from 207th Street to my cave was an experience that I will not soon forget. Nor, for that matter, will anyone who happened to watch a tall, ambling figure take a dozen steps with his eyes closed. Stop. Reach for something to brace himself. Cover his eyes with one hand. Make a slit between two fingers. Turn his head from one side to another to find his bearings. Then another dozen steps. Stop...

Four Tylenol, two Cosmopolitans and 3 beers later, I was better. I lay on the couch, listening to Woodstock (the movie) and daydreaming of better times.

this land is Our land?

2005-06-17T09:33:00.000-04:00

"You don't understand, man. I am nowhere near the threat I'd hoped I'd be!"
-Arlo Guthrie

For most of my life, hippie culture was limited to clichéd Hollywood portrayals of stoned, slow-witted adults who rambled cryptically about wheat germ, pseudo-asian philosophy and some ass-backward idea about saving Mother Earth. I never smoked enough pot to understand The Grateful Dead and Joan Baez's warbled rendition of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was enough to put me off of hippie, folk music altogether. The best hippie-themed song I heard until my mid-twenties was Mucky Pup's "Hippies Hate Water". I occasionally spotted a hippie here and there, but for the most part I assumed that they all disappeared into rural communes or cleaned up their act and got a real job.

Did I mention that I grew up in a U.S. Army culture until I was 18?

I've grown up a little since those days and my view of hippies improved significantly when I met Kat. Although not a hardcore hippie by trade, Kat is a direct descendent of the lifestyle. I soon found myself hip deep in astrological charts, organic eggs and forwarded e-mails from PETA and Greenpeace. I've befriended quite a few hippies over the years and I discovered that many of my preconceptions of hippies were true (except that most hippies do, in fact, like water but detest aluminum-based deodorant). Like all cultural stereotyping, however, it was over-reductive, and simplified to the point of condescension. Joan Baez DOES suck and I was never able to get into Bob Dylan outside a few of his earlier hits, but there are tons of fantastic, psychedelic, hippie bands that kicked ass (in a peaceful, loving way, of course) and quickly became my favorites: Jefferson Airplane, the Great Society, Blue Cheer, 13th Floor Elevators, Country Joe and the Fish, Ritchie Havens, Canned Heat, Big Brother & the Holding Company, and Jimi Hendrix. In addition, I gained a great deal of respect and admiration for a lifestyle that engages everyone as individuals and actively questions the esoteric rules and institutions that govern (and regulate) most people's lives. I am, however, secure in the knowledge that I am FAR too high-strung and obsessive to ever maintain such a benevolent demeanor and there is not enough pot in all of Meigs County, Ohio that could get me there. So, when I saw that Arlo Guthrie was kicking off his 40th Anniversary tour since the release of "Alice's Restaurant", I knew where Kat and I had to be on Wednesday night.

Battery Park City is a jut of land on the west end of Lower Manhattan built from the landfill used to excavate for the building of the World Trade Center. It also happens to be the site of shady, real estate deals that were intended to build affordable housing for low income families. They did build the low income housing but they put in Queens. The apartment towers that live in Battery Park City today are high-end apartments with sweeping views of the Hudson Bay, including the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and New Jersey. The neighborhoods have that pre-fabbed, soulless feeling, though. At the northern tip of Battery Park City rests an actual park called Rockefeller Park (not enough things named after that family). It was a strange setting for a hippie, folk icon and son of a social-activist musician to stage a concert.

Kat and I have a hard time going out. The best way to trick ourselves into doing anything is to not go home. We took our time getting down there but still showed up over an hour before the start. There was already a crowd starting to gather and onstage there was a rousing folk jam/sound check with The Man Himself at center, manning an acoustic guitar. The whole area had a great, relaxed vibe that instantly took me back to the small-town festivals and bandshell concerts that dominated my Midwestern summers as a kid. It's easy to forget that the hippie/folk music revival of the 60's got it's start in New York City where Ritchie Havens and Bob Dylan plucked their guitars in Tompkins Square Park and small dives in Greenwich Village. Middle-aged women with long, braided hair and tie-dyed skirts danced beside hacky-sack circles and frisbee games. Arlo jammed for 15-20 minutes then retreated to a modest-sized bus.

At 7pm, a folksy group called The Mammals took the stage. Their music wasn't particularly trailblazing, but they set an old-timey, toe-tapping tone and held their own. I recognized a tune from my Buena Vista Social Club CD, a couple of old, folk numbers and some original tunes that echoed 60's folk pieces. For two people who have spent the last 4 years wading through hipsters and scenesters, the crowd was refreshing, and perhaps even more entertaining than the act. A white-hair-and-beard man with oversized sunglass danced a non-stop jig that left me gasping for air. Young and old women twirled and swayed to the rousing banjo-and-fiddle numbers. A short, bearded man in baseball hat and bandana performed a virtual MC act as he bounced to the music then clapped and turned to the audience with a look of 'Aren't they fucking great?! I told you they were fucking great!'

Between sets, a middle-aged guy (sounding like a stoned version of Kramer) gushed about a commune town in Ohio where he planned on living. His friends, long-haired and mellow, gently suggested that a 9 to 5 job might put some much-needed structure in his life. Kat and I glanced about and marveled at the volume of sack lunches that dominated the scene. Most of the audience actually preferred to sit on the grass versus snagging a fold-out chair... and there wasn't a Red Bull or clove cigarette in sight.

I was shocked when Arlo took to the stage, only minutes after the Mammals had left. Where was the diva-like lateness or 30-minute guitar tunings that I had grown grown to expect? Was this legal? Wasn't some form of passive-aggressive behavior Required within city limits? Then, Arlo nearly knocked me out of my seat when he began his set with "Alice's Restaurant". What kind of madness was going on here?! That's supposed to be the Rousing finale! We were supposed to Suffer and Pine for the opening chords so we could Roar and Cheer the release of anticipation! What kind of frigging Performer was this anyway?! Had he ever even Played in front of a live audience?! How could could he possibly go Up after playing his most famous song?!

Arlo didn't kick the tension up and he didn't knock it down, either. This was a loose, casual evening of Music and as the performance rolled from one rise to another, it became apparent that Arlo might know a thing or two about performing and maybe, a little more about what his audience needed than I. Arlo kicked through his better-known songs, played a couple ones from his dad and a Leadbelly classic "Goodnight Irene". He didn't play with coiled urgency that I love in so much of my music, but with a sense of timelessness and quiet observation. For a couple of hours, I was reminded of how important it was to get to know people and not look at the world with an 'Us vs. Them' mentality. I felt better about people and our potential for good and rising to meet challenges.

Then, on Thursday I stood in line for 2 and a half hours so that I could have a piece of metal pulled out of my eye.

I need a mosh pit.

Episode III - straight in the Eye

2005-06-14T15:55:00.000-04:00

On Friday, Kat and I were in no mood to go home after work and spend another evening in the Sweltering Cave. Instead, we opted for a $10.75-per-ticket trip to our local movie theater and witness our last Star Wars movie in the theater - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. The first trilogy had provided one of the most-significant events of my life - far more than I want to admit considering the theatrical debacles called Episode I and II. The Phantom Menace had been such a disappointment, I couldn't bring myself to see Episode II in the theater (a wise choice, in retrospect). My decision to attend Episode III was akin to attending the funeral of an estranged family member. I hadn't been on good terms, but I felt compelled to pay my respects in deference to better times. Little did I know that I would pay for my decision with eye-watering, teeth-gritting pain.

It has been years since I've really enjoyed an outing at the movies. The culture of movie-going that I enjoyed in my youth is long-gone. Movies are no longer a 'Night Out', where people dressed up, enjoyed dinner at a restaurant, then enthusiastically, and quietly, enjoyed the movie. I grew up in the Golden Age of Pre-Pubescent Film where the stories catered to a young child's excitement and adventure, yet was rarely condescending. That would come later with the introduction of Robert Zemeckis and an influx of cross-marketing and recycling. Also, it's difficult to thing of a movie in New York as a fun, cheap night out - it is an expensive venture with high ticket prices and outrageously-priced, stale and oversized food. And don't even get me started on those refillable beverage containers that could easily perform double-duty as a soda container/hot tub.

Even so, I remain a purist and expect a high level of quality from a first-run theater. I was going to see the visual fest of my final Star Wars movie so it would have to be in a high-end theater -Loews Lincoln Square. It's the best-looking theater in the City, particularly if one of the Spectacle Films is playing in their IMAX theater. Ahhh... stadium seating. On this night, we chose one of their Digital Projection theaters. The quality of digital projection is never as nice as film, but we favored the advantage of seeing an Event film, 3 weeks after the opening, that didn't look like it'd been dragged from the back end of a taxi cab. We had chosen an early show so that we wouldn't be inundated with the usual throng of late-viewers of Spectacle Films who like to spend the movie being unimpressed and pronouncing their findings to the rest of the audience.

We chose an off-center pair of seats about mid-way back. I'm usually That Guy who has to sit in the geometric center of the theater, but age and my disillusion with the Ritual of the Movies has mellowed me. As we settled down with our keg of Coke and bushel of popcorn, Kat turned to me with an earnest look on her face.

"Are you all right," she asked.

"What?"

"I won't be able to enjoy the movie if you've got something going on over there."

"Like what," I asked with as much self-righteousness as I could muster.

"I don't know. That's why I'm asking."

"I'm fine."

Kat scanned the people around us, searching for that person who would start talking during the movie and set me off. "You're going to be good?"

"I said I'm fine." Jesus, you'd think that I was some sort of jerkweed who just snaps at the drop of a hat.

I knew what this was all about. When we went to see The Return of the King, some nimrod, directly behind us, began making snorts of disgust that just became louder and louder until I finally turned around and said (perhaps a bit loudly) "If I wanted the Asshole Commentary, I'd fucking wait and buy the DVD." Perhaps, I was a little more aggressive-sounding than I meant to be, but soft-and-sweet doesn't work very well in this town.

On this night, however, I was in a relaxed, benevolent mood. I had resolved to not analyze the wooden dialogue or George Lucas's need to have every character say exactly what they're doing AS we're watching them do it ("It looks like we're entering the atmosphere", "I'm going to try to shoot those off"). On this night, I was going to be that earnest, wide-eyed, 7-year-old again, sitting in a movie theater in Fairbanks, Alaska, watching this science fiction spectacle for the first time. The lights dimmed, the movie trailers washed over me as Kat and I ate a third of the popcorn before throwing in the towel and reclining into our seats. The movie began and I was There. I watched the opening scene and wrapped myself in that thrilling sense of space and speed that epitomizes a solid, George Lucas film. The first 25 minutes of the film were great.

Then, something landed in my eye.

For the first few minutes, I was convinced that another one of my Evil eyelashes had landed in my eye. I have hay fever and the Only thing that's kinda good about hay fever is the Huge, Long Eyelashes. When I'm not wearing glasses, I get actually get compliments on my eyelashes. But, when an aged, Beloved lash decides when it cannot hang on any longer, it falls... and hurts like a bitch when it lands in my eye. Then, the next 20 minutes are spent in the pursuit of Getting It Out. The moment that I felt that familiar pinch, I knew that the first step was to not Panic, even though the movie theater air conditioning was turned to full-blast and blowing in my face, drying my eyes and making me blink like a strobe light wherein each blink felt like somebody was tormenting my pupil with a sewing needle.

I reached for the saline solution I had stored in my backpack for contact emergencies. I was wearing glasses this night, but I always kept one handy. Kat eyed me nervously as she tried to divide her attention between the projected eye-candy and the writhing mass of Deckard seated beside her.

"I've got something in my eye," I whispered in her ear between needle-jabs.

"Can I get you something," she asked.

I waved off the offer. I had to Get Out. I leapt from my seat, jogged up the aisle and into the restroom. I splashed water in my eye. I cupped water in my hand and dunked my eye in it. I poured a half pint of saline solution into my eye. I leaned over the water-splattered, bathroom sink and desperately scanned in every corner and beneath the lids. Nothing.

I trudged back to the theater and stood in back. I alternated between squirting saline and watching a massive, video game of Wookies and clone troopers as they fought off a droid army made of Legos. I considered sitting in an aisle seat in the back and leaving Kat in peace, but she would soon start worrying about my disappearance. I returned to my seat, casually sipped from the swimming pool of soda and told Kat that I was "Fine" with the most relaxed tone my grit teeth could muster.

One would think that a second eye wasn't necessary to the enjoyment of a 2D film, but the wrongness of that statement would turn out to be one of the many, wise Truths I would discover that night, such as:

1) George Lucas's love scenes, despite popular opinion, do NOT get any better when viewed under torture. It just compounds the torture - a pit AND a pendulum, if you will.
2) Although I was channeling the child-like optimism of a 7-year-old from the 1970's, I could still say 'fuck' and 'shit' on a streaming loop and not fear the Hand of Parental Authority.
3) There are Many exciting, unique, and utterly ineffective ways to try to keep one's eye inert while staring at a flashy, movie screen.
4) Watching a movie through nagging pain gives the movie-going experience a hazy, dream-like quality as everything recedes into the background, making room for my Full Attention to the nagging pain.

The Star Wars Machine finally ground to a halt after stepping through a series of endings meant to say 'This story thread leads to this part in the first Star Wars movie. And this leads to this, and this leads to this...' I might have even indulged in a sentimental tear, had my eye not been already gushing like a fountain in the attempt to Purge the thing in my eye.

All the way home, all that night and all day Saturday was spent in the grips of Blink Pain. It wasn't until Saturday, I stood in a public restroom, that I finally saw the object of my torment - a little, black dot lodged in the colored part of my eye. I spent the day lying on a beach, lobsterizing my body and envisioning an emergency room visit and a pair of jagged tweezers, slowly descending into my eye. That night, I rushed to the shower and stood under the showerhead, spraying my eye... and remarkably, it came out.

So, what did I observed from this experience, aside from the asinine choices an uninsured man will take to remove a lodged object from his eye to avoid emergency room fees? Did I learn something about the consequences of revisiting old relatives? Was there something to be understood in the baffling series of Meetings taken by every Jedi, council member, or military alliance in the Star Wars Universe? Or the value of wearing a pair of sports goggles in a darkened, air conditioned theater? Or the value of eating a tasty meal and buying a small bag of Reese's Pieces BEFORE going to the movies? Maybe Kat learned that one can never really allow for every contingency when dealing with a twitchy, movie-Nazi boyfriend with long eyelashes and no protective eyewear.

Who can ever truly know?

while Waiting for Macy's

2005-06-09T20:16:00.000-04:00

Fucking cats...

On Wednesday, our Holy Mattress and Box Spring of Lower-Back Redemption was scheduled to arrive. I had stood our old, tenderized mattress up against the dresser and cleared out the shoes, electronics, packing Styrofoam, assorted, storage bins and life-sized, dust bunnies. Pippin and Sam (our 9-month-old kittens) scrambled from one end of the cave to the other. Their hideout had been un-hid and they were now Exposed to any cat-crisis that might surface. Kat headed off to work while I settled in to a long day. I launched into the blogosphere and began blogging like I never blogged before. Actually, I performed the extended Prologue to blogging - a ritual of virtual-procrastination via re-organizing MP3 files, naming digital photographs that I took 8 months ago and checking out porn websites (But that's just between you and me. Shhhhhhhh!) .

An hour into the Blog-Zone, I noticed that Pippin had been running and pet-flopping solo for the last 5 minutes which, in Blog-Zone time, meant at least a half hour. Where was Sam? I served up breakfast for the cats, taking care to make nice, loud noises with the food dishes. Still... no Sam. I have learned that it's important to play it cool when dealing with cats. If you acted like you needed them, whe-he-hell... that sounds like a good reason to hide. So... I sauntered. Into the living room. Not there. Kitchen? Not there. Bathroom? Hallway? Bedroom?

"Sam?" No! Composure, Deckard! Composure!

I checked beneath the dresser. Under the desk. Behind the doors. In the closets. In the shower. Behind the toilet. Behind the refrigerator-

Suddenly, I struck on an idea - toys! Wondrous, loud, freakout-inducing toys! Now, the toys will no longer service the Boredom of others! They shall service me! (this extended Cat Expedition had deprived me of coffee Sustenance well beyond acceptable limits) I scrambled to every corner of the cave, retrieving every toilet-paper roll, wadded piece of paper, dowel rod, ribbon fragment and jangly, fuzz-ball I could find. I kicked them from one end of the apartment into the other. I was the frigging Dick Van Dyke/One-Man-Band of dowel rods, jingly balls (watch the comments, bub) and paper wads. Pippin had planted himself in the bathroom doorway, watch the parade go by and sit this Adventure out. I reached the bedroom with still no sign of Sam.

"Sam," I barked. "Sam!" Fuck it. He'll come. Oh yes, he will come.

I kicked the jingly balls and paper balls against the wall for a couple of minutes then finally ground to a halt. Hot and cold flashes of adrenaline flooded my caffeine-deficient system. What if Sam got out the front door? What if he was wandering through the Wilderness of New York or, worse, had been abducted and forced to sell bootleg DVDs on Canal Street? I pivoted towards the bedroom door, ready race to the front door and Save my Endangered cat!

Then, something caught my eye... high above me and to my left. Comfortably nestled at the top of the old mattresses. I had an Audience... a hideously-Cute and Innocent audience.

Bastard.

Five hours after their scheduled "Window for Delivery", my new mattress arrived...

two sun strokes to Go, please

2005-06-07T22:31:00.000-04:00

On Sunday, I woke up sticky-hot against the bed sheets to a commotion beside me. Kat had flung the covers off the bed and was purring with excitement. The clouds had lifted in her world, and summer was here! She had been working on her winter depression since the end of the previous summer where the first sign of Fall began a long mope of anticipation of what was to come. Our trip to Thailand in November only served to heighten her loathing of New York winters. My listless attempts to put a positive spin on cooler temperatures and white, fluffy snow had only earned me slit-eyed looks and the faint sound of a hiss. The promise of near-90 degree temperatures had whipped her into a disturbing bout of pep - too early in the morning from such a slow riser as this.

Kat tucked her knees up against her chest and hugged her legs in that 'gonna-get-up-now' stretch for her lower back and rolled into a sitting position. She snatched Sam, one of our white/tabby cats, and enthusiastically rubbed him in ways that no half-asleep cat would ever want to be rubbed. I had been performing my all-night, rotisserie chicken routine, rolling from one position to another whenever my aching back would jostle me awake. Our mattress had been in need of a replacement for the last 4 years and last weekend, in a fit of fiscal irresponsibility, we had trudged down to Macy's and bought ourselves a Stearns & Foster mattress in the hopes of abating the pain until we could reach a more-suitable age. Only 3 more days until our mattress arrives (thank Fucking christ).

Kat leapt out of the bed to begin her daily routine. Her first order of business was to make her list. Although she's no Nazi about it, Kat is the Benevolent Queen Sheba of Lists. She is a fantastic procrastinator (having learned from the Best), so she has developed innovative ways to actually get things Done. She makes extensive To Do lists and checks them off. Her tasks range from the extensive (clean and organize art desk) to the minute (check e-mail). The act of completing each item gives her a sense of accomplishment and pulls her through a productive day. I have tried to build these lists, but have a tendency to skip the simple tasks and go straight for the jugular (write play about childhood, edit and send out all of my poetry, organize desk). The first task on my list should be 'Lose List' because that is the one thing I will consistently accomplish, although I wouldn't get the personal satisfaction of checking it off. Fortunately, Kat's lists nearly always include tasks to remind me about past promises, like 'ask Deckard when he was planning on finishing that wood carving he started on the cat's climbing structure from 3 months ago' or 'remind Deckard that he promised he'd clean the mildew off the shower curtain a week and a half ago'. Today, I only had one task on the list - escort Kat to the park for an afternoon of sun.

Last summer, Kat had a freak out about her whiteness. I had been able to deflect scrutiny regarding the pallor of my skin with jokes about blending into snowdrifts, but Kat had been earnestly suffering from the realization that nothing in her closet went with 'pasty'. It became a Tug-O-War between a depressed Deckard who eschewed the light and a sun junkie who felt too vulnerable in a bikini to go lay out by herself in the Park. Towards the end of last summer, she succeeded in coaxing me into the open with a camping trip to the Catskills and a couple one-day getaways to the beach. Most beaches around NYC are choked with people and the refuse of too many beer barbecues, but we had discovered Fire Island - a Mecca of beach beauty preserved from Joe Six-Pack by the Fear of seeing naked, gay men frolicking in the surf. I was secure enough in my sexuality to have a few nice days in the sun while Kat tinted a couple of shades darker. Despite these outings, Kat felt that she didn't have enough tan-momentum to carry her through the winter months and was determined to not endure a repeat-performance.

My head-to-hammer depression has significantly abated since leaving my dead-end job at Lincoln Center. My recovery was arduous, but I have finally found the incentive to leave the cave for excursions that didn't involve PJ Liquor Warehouse or the 'Quest for Food Deliveryman Cash'. I wasn't terribly eager to tan, however. I didn't need that steroid-infested-Bodybuilder tan to accentuate my abs (one would need abs for that). Also, I never particularly enjoyed the punishment of baking under the sun. I had tried, once, to tan. I fell asleep in the sun and took 5 years to exfoliate away the line of demarcation where my chest burn ended and my back began. I agreed to Kat's sun-fest because New York has taught me (among other things) to appreciate any opportunity to 1) walk on something other than pavement and 2) sit in (relative) silence.

The whole morning was devoted to Kat's fulfillment of The List and my wanderings around the apartment. My obsessive, creative project hadn't hit me for a few months, so I have expended most of my calories by getting ready to start something, but really waiting for the one Event in my day that had been pre-set, like lunch or an Outing. Pens, notebooks, woodcarving tools, novels, and DVD's were scattered about the apartment, all Just About Ready to be put to use. Soon, my nervous energy had migrated to Kat until even the beckoning promise of a Checked list couldn't keep her on-task. Finally, Kat announced that we could go. I furiously loaded my backpack with all the Tools necessary to having a Productive afternoon in the park. Blog entry notebook. Poetry notebook. Journal. Ballpoint pen. Felt tipped pen. Pencils. Gum eraser. Drawing pad. Book to read. Fingernail clippers in case I get a hangnail. I scurried from one end of the apartment to the other in an attempt to cover every plausible need I might have for the next 4 to 6 hours. Kat tried to assemble the makings for a snacky lunch, which she did admirably, but insisted on bringing enough water to cross the Sahara.

To the Park!

Ft. Tryon Park is the kinder, mellower park of Upper Manhattan. It sits directly south of Inwood Hill Park and is home to the Cloisters, a flower-choked, volunteer garden, and some of the best views of the Hudson River (and West End Drive). Although not as untouched and pristine as the land around my cave in Inwood Hill Park, it's sunbathing-friendly with grassy spaces, a clientele of 20-to-50-something folks who generally keep the noise to a dull roar and a steady stream of European tourists looking to view medieval art in the Cloisters (all of which came, strangely-enough, from Europe). Inwood Hill Park, meanwhile, is predominantly a large, U-shaped hill blanketed by the remains of Manhattan's pre-colonial forest. The grassy spaces are almost solely-reserved for a summer-long fest of intense, league baseball/softball games, rimmed by a mass of disposable, beer coolers, and teenagers on mini, tricked-out bikes. It is an ideal environment for the 74% Dominican population who's not particularly interested in a culture of laid-back sunbathing.

Kat and I eagerly scoped out a beautiful spot that overlooked the river and planted our asses to grass (in our enthusiasm, we had forgotten our blanket). The ground was still damp from the previous night's rain, but we were on a mission and wet, butt marks and the threat of curious ants on our pale, sweaty legs would be endured. I donned my glasses so that I wouldn't be blinded by the white pages of my many reading/writing materials. The sunglasses also provided a crucial, secondary purpose by allowing me to... glance (ah, yes! Good choice, Deckard) upon fellow sunbathers without having Kat pepper me with devious, trick questions like, "What are you staring at?"

It is important to note that, although both Kat and myself have lived in far-warmer environments and do, in fact, enjoy a good, hot day, we might have been somewhat ill-prepared for Direct Exposure after living an indoor existence that only Goths could appreciate. I have always been self-conscious about my weight, but the shirt was off within five minutes. Kat quickly commandeered it as a mini-blanket for her upper body and sweated it through. Fifteen minutes in, the nearby plants were wilting from the tsunami wave of salt water. Forty minutes in, the food was snarfed, a cold pack was applied to Kat's neck to stave off heat stroke and we were packing it in.

Ahh, summer. I welcome ye.

MoMA... with the cute mouse ears

2005-06-01T22:50:00.000-04:00

Why do Americans suck so bad about contemporary art? I am making a sweeping generalization, but that's the nature of blogging so work with me here. I was an eager victim of the realistic=good mindset until I met Kat. She is a painter and, whenever you really fall in love with somebody you start doing a million little things you never thought that you'd do like shower everyday, wear a belt that matches your shoes, become a vegetarian, moderate your self-destructive behavior, and subject yourself to a whole world of social events you'd never considered in the past - like, oh say, contemporary art. I thumbed through Kat's collection of Taschen and Phaidon books and kept my opinions to myself because I loved my new girlfriend and I really liked the sex so I wasn't about to fuck anything up. Then, perhaps sensing my muted skepticism, she pulled a fast one on me. She took me on a tour of museums all over the Midwest. I followed her to exhibits at the Wexner Center, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, and Pittsburgh's bafflingly-cool collection of museums including my favorite, The Mattress Factory. Lo and behold, I slowly began to realize that art didn't fall off a cliff after Monet and Van Gogh. The boring squares of color that I'd scrutinized in a book of Rothko paintings had become shimmering contrasts of color as I stood in front of one and actually spent a couple minutes Looking at it instead of performing that moseying procession I had mastered over years. I learned that egg tempura-realism wasn't necessarily the epitome of painting and that artists like Tim Hawkinson, John Currin, Egon Schiele, Francis Bacon and Hieronymus Bosch could knock me on my ass without photo-realistic renditions.

I know, many of your are thinking (or perhaps saying out loud) - "Duh, Deckard! What are you, a fuckin' idiot? Where have you been living - under a rock?" First of all, nobody calls me a fuckin' idiot to my face. Second, I am living in a cave, which is in a rock, not under it. Third, my artistic medium of choice for the first 25 years of my life has been film. In addition to the photographic aspect, the bulk of filmmaking has been stuck in naturalistic representations of reality. Yeah yeah, I know about El Topo, Un Chien Andalou and tons of other obtuse art films, but please refer to sentence #2 in this blog. I have written my perspective on good vs. bad art, but it is important to note that I actually View contemporary art before I pass judgment. I have come a LONG way in the last 5 years and much of it has had to do with remaining open to the occassional thrashing of my assumptions. On Friday night, my girlfriend and I participated in the backpackers/broke NYer's Event of the City - Free Admission to The Museum of Modern Art. Kat and I have avoided this outing ever since the MoMA's grand opening in their re-designed building. Part of our avoidance was due to the horror stories we'd heard regarding the endless lines and over-stuffing of the museum. I, however, have also endured a dodgy relationship with MoMA. I'd visited the Manhattan museum back in 2000 when they had just begun to renovate their building but were still willing to charge nearly full price to see a pitiful, handful of paintings. 3 years later, I was similarly-bilked when I trudged out to their temporary 'warehouse' museum in Queens for another token showing of a few paintings. Admittedly, my mood wasn't helped when, mid-way through an Ansel Adams exhibit, the City decided to have their first blackout in 30 years, sending me, Kat and a friend of mine on an 11-mile, hiking trek back to Inwood... in flip-flops.

Well, we finally went and the verdict on the new building is in. I congratulate MoMA for building the most banal, non-contemporary piece of architecture they could muster and still keep a straight face when they call themselves 'Modern'. The building is a series of boxy levels with a high, central ceiling and wall windows that drastically shift the color temperature of the rooms from one wall to the next (kind of important from a consistent-lighting standpoint). There are small side hallways that go nowhere but are just long enough to make you have to walk clear over There to find out. From the outside, it looks like virtually any office building built after 1960. For weeks after it opened, the New York publications debated the boldness of the architecture. Let me tell you what's bold about it. Nothing. It's a space built to truck people through it's halls and along it's escalators as quickly and efficiently as possible.

But let's be honest here, bold architecture doesn't necessarily mean art-friendly. The Guggenheim looks fantastic when you walk in and climb the spiraling hall for the first time, but it's not the easiest place to view art with every person in the museum passing in front of you on the way up or down. The real reason I was at MoMA was to check out the paintings, so... If MoMA was my first time seeing a Van Gogh or Jackson Pollack in person, then I might have been somewhat impressed. Peeking between big hair and baseball caps to get a glimpse of "Starry Night" was not exactly an enlightening experience. I couldn't get over the fact that the vast majority of art in MoMA was limited to pieces created prior to 1970. Everything was really safe and had that 'corporate lobby' feel.

Then, it hit me - I was at Snob Disneyland. I was at a hand-carved, wooden 'rollercoaster-ride' of a movie. I was at a Coldplay concert performed with the New York Philharmonic in Lincoln Center. I was watching 'American Idol: Opera Edition'. I was in a museum where I had zero chance of catching 30 seconds in front of a painting without someone having to mosey right the fuck in front of me.

It was a museum for the person that I was 6 years ago, and once I realized this, I let it go.

ahh, spring! time for Rail Rage

2005-05-27T19:30:00.000-04:00

WARNING: Portions of this entry were obtained under extreme duress (rush hour on the 'A'). Comments heretofore written may not represent the author's feelings under other environmental conditions.

I hate cars, particularly in big cities. I loathe trolling block-upon-block, scanning for a parking space. I despise the high insurance rates. I abhor (c'mon thesaurus!) all the hours wasted in traffic jams where I've been reduced to the 8 millionth repeat of some pop song or the lay-thinking of nearly every talkshow host. And, I don't like to drive. This might be a High crime against the soul of Americana, not to mention the implications for familial betrayal. My brother is a huge, Ford man. He could spend all day/every day, driving around in his truck and he'd be in bliss (this boy was born to be a cop). In addition, he and my dad are performance motorcycle (a.k.a. Crotch Rocket) enthusiasts. While I download music videos and the occasional porn video, my brother streams vids of guys doing wheelies or peeling out for a quarter mile straight... and probably downloads the occasional porn video. My brother burns his motorcycle vids on a CD then rushes to my dad's house. With the focus of a Kennedy-assassination theorist, they examine the speedometer and odometer that the video has carefully included in daredevil performance. Then, he and my father debate the theoretically-credible limits of consumer-level crotch rockets as I strain to remember the last time I'd performed a proper oil change on my car.

I blame my dad for my un-American affliction. I do this because 1) it's fun and exceptionally easy to blame your parents and 2 ) he was an Army soldier that got the clan stationed in Germany for the bulk of my high school years. Sure, I got to see amazing works of art, exposed myself to the resonant rhythms of rich, ancient cultures and, as an adolescent perk, watched European women sunbathe naked. But what of my love of cars? What about being raised as a good enthusiast of chrome wheels and torque ratios? Huh? Huh?! Huh, motherfucker?!!! How could my father ruthlessly subject me to a world of easy, clean, public transportation when he knew that I would be returning to a country that lives and breathes cars? I mean, the whole frigging country is built to virtually require the ownership of a car (except for urban swatches of the Northeast). In Germany, if I wanted to meet a friend at the movies, I jumped on a train, bus or streetcar. I never learned that valuable sense of isolation that American kids in the suburbs felt or the burning shame of begging Mom for a ride or, later, the keys to the family car. When I moved to New York City, eagerly sold my car. After years of insurance payments, car repairs and the mind-numbing stream of endless hours along America's butt-ugly freeway system, I was ready to cut the cord. With that said, I wish I had a car. I don't want it to get around in the city. I want it to Escape. The crush of humanity is getting to me and I need Out. It's the beginning of summer and all of us New Yorkers are sick to death of one another. After huddling in our caves, our cave-like, work cubicles, and finally our hurling, subterranean, sardine cans, we strain at the first sign of warmth and sunlight. Nowhere does our derision for our fellow man issue forth with such a viscous burning as during rush 'hour'.

Rush 'hour' is an inherently hostile act. Nobody wants to do it. It isn't a picnic to do the morning commute, but we're all usually still a little too tired to make much of a stink about it. It's not like anybody's just burning up to get to work as Early as possible anyway. If you're on my train at 8:20 or later and you're heading anywhere below 59th Street, you know that you're probably not going to make to work by 9am anyway so you'd might as well stake out a seat and hit your snooze button until 59th Street.

Going Home, however, is when the need for Escape gains it's keen edge and the Commute becomes a physical imperative. Not only do you have to go where you're going, but you Have to be there Now. For all of you already living in the Unaffordable neighborhoods below 100th Street or the hip (and also unaffordable) neighborhoods just across the East River in Brooklyn and you would like to argue otherwise - go Fuck yourselves because you don't know what the Hell you are talking about (please review disclaimer above). This is Deathrace 2005 and Losing is only a missed subway train away. Human roadblocks choke the staircases in a passive-aggressive attempt to Foil everyone who really cares about getting home. The MTA has lazily, yet somehow purposefully, fucked up somewhere downtown again. Instead of getting the 'A' train that you so righteously deserve, you are dealt a steady stream of body blows in the form of 'B' and 'D' trains. Some undeserving, trashy smarm darts ahead as the arriving train has barely begun to regurgitate it's growling, SUV-babystroller-toting excuse for humanity. The smarm darts into a vacated seat even though you know that they'll be getting off two stops later where you will be out of position to snag it and you need that spot because it's gonna be another 45 minutes away from home and you're about ready to lose your shit and pummel the fuck out of that self-righteous, oblivious ass-monkey who Has to spread his legs That wide and take up 2 seats because his balls are Just That Damned Big!(again, please review disclaimer above)

I am so Totally over Her

2005-05-24T15:52:00.000-04:00

I know. I suck. Logically, it goes against my most-fundamental beliefs as an artist. But there I am, doing it virtually every Monday. ***Big Breath Here*** I read the Top 10 List of Box Office performers from the weekend.

There! I said it. I finally admitted it. That's the first step towards recovery, you know. I'm practically cured. I don't need those numbers. I was able to kick smoking, movie collecting, and fast food. Surely I can... quit... if I wanted to...

In my defense - I don't, in any way, believe that these statistics reflect the quality of a particular film. I would never ascribe to the hideous belief of many Americans that a high-score at the box office means that a movie is any better or worse than any other. I do it because I am always waiting for Big Failure of the Enemy. When a crap-ass movie like XXX: State of the Union opens with a multi-million dollar campaign push, I'm just begging for it to fail. It's like watching NASCAR. You don't want the entire race to fail, but there's a part of you that can't wait for a really good wipeout.

This year has made for a very satisfying track of the box office. Ticket costs are up, advertisements in theaters are pissing people off, mainstream movies are flooding the multiplexes and revenue is DOWN. Even the obnoxious success of the Star Wars prequel has not succeeded in reviving the box office. And now, they're hoping that The Longest Yard and Madagasgar are going to save things over the Memorial Day weekend?! Oh yeah! This is gonna be good. This is the year that Hollywood goes down! I can't wait until -

...

I'm doing it again. I'm skidding off the road and into the realm of stupid. I have become one of those friends who keep saying, "I'm totally over her. God, it's such a relief to be free of her. Really! If she hadn't broke up with me, I'd have done it first. So what did you see her doing? Really? Well I don't care. Why the fuck should I care? I'm totally over her."

Bad breakups die hard and this one really has to die. Like, now.

the Envy of a nomad

2005-05-24T12:32:00.000-04:00

I watched Easy Riders Raging Bulls yesterday. It's a documentary vaguely based upon a book of the same title. I'd read the book 7 years ago and it was a watershed moment for me. It gave a context to the lives and careers of my favorite filmmakers. I'd never been able to reconcile how the same man who made The Conversation and Apocalypse Now could become the hired hand for such clichéd fare as Jack and The Rainmaker. With the exception of Martin Scorsese and Paul Schrader, all my heroes of American cinema had either died or apparently lost their minds. Although the book gets mired in all the fantastical gossip, it does an exceptional job of framing an era from the mid-1960's fall of old Hollywood through the rise of the Blockbuster in the late 1970's. The book is (shocker, here) far better than the film. The book was despised by Nicholson, Hopper and Spielberg as total fiction (which I'm sure is true for some of the tales). Yet, it's easy to dodge the truth when everything has to be gleaned from one or two steps away. When somebody casts such a wide net of dismissal at a book with a many corroborated truths, it's hard to know what's fiction and what might be hitting too close to home.

Still, the film is a good watch. John Milius's waves a cigar and tries to do his best emulation of General Patton. Richard Dreyfuss delivers the most entertaining recounts of Lucas and Spielberg's directorial style. There's a fleeting glance of Marcia Lucas in the editing room and a great moment where you can watch Cybill Shepherd negotiate a minefield of disclosure as she attempts to articulate her blossoming affair with Peter Bogdanovich while filming The Last Picture Show. The bonus material on the second DVD is, in many ways, more entertaining than the film. There's a great piece on George Lucas and how his lifetime of marketing meetings has resulted in prequels that contain far too many meetings. I loved the title of the Spielberg chapter - The Innocent Savant.

The material hit me very differently this time around. I used to idolize filmmakers of that era and felt betrayed when they seemingly gave up on their art. This time around, I realized what an awkward, privileged lot they were. Like The Ramones on the East Side of NY in the mid 1970's or Bill Gates buying up the first version of DOS for $50,000 at the beginning of the 1980's, these were people who found themselves standing in a giant blind spot of an industry and were smart enough to take advantage. That didn't make them bad people (well, maybe Gates). Their successes don't point to the inadeqacies of the rest of us. They are a fortunate few who happened to have their surfboards pointing in the right direction when a tsunami wave hit... and it didn't hurt that they knew how to surf.

Still, I find myself hopelessly in envy of the community in Hollywood of the late 60's/early 70's. They had found their community - their tribe, as my playwriting teacher called it. The surest path to success, my teacher argued, was to find people who responded to your experiences and fed your creativity. If you're Lucas, Spielberg and Milius standing in a beach house in Malibu, collaborating and competing to make the B-movies of your dreams, then you've found your tribe. If you're Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, sick of the Hollywood system you've known and ready to do something you want to see, like Easy Rider, then you've found it too. If you have a favorite bar, full of regulars that ask for your writings or can show you perspectives you'd never otherwise see, then you're probably drinking with your tribe.

This is my heroin. I am always trying to return to the euphoria of inspiration and self-discovery through the people around me. There haven't been many in my life and they've been spaced maddeningly-far apart, but I clutch to those memories with white knuckles. People whose faces lit at my appearance, then inspired, engaged and challenged me to give more than I imagined possible. These moments were not just about me, however. We all felt that we were working on something larger than ourselves. My last year of film school as 18 people worked on everyone else's films, sleeping in editing rooms, and never offering a 'no' - always a 'yes, and...'. A year as barfly to a Midwestern college bar filled with writers, actors, directors and two fantastic pinball machines. Two weeks at a screenwriting workshop in Croatia where flutists and violinists of a music school drank, sang and inspired a motley crew of aspiring filmmakers.

Communities can never last, though. By their very nature, they inspire people to action, then consequences and aftermath. Some ascend, others abandon or die. America thrives on the notion of individuality and I love that, but often it breeds a go-it-alone attitude. Portraits of artists often suggest that they exist in some Vacuum of Genius where they alone create. Time and again, I re-learn that the Piss-and-Shitters that I've placed on pedestals are the same sort of inconsistent, insecure flawed people as I.

Now, I just need to find My tribe of flawed people.

Hold the Fuckin' Phone - It's Kasabian Time!

2005-05-18T09:35:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, it's obvious. A band lays into their opening song and you can see 'IT' - stage presence, hooks and a tightness that only happens when the beat, the bass, the guitar and the voice are all On. The. Beat. If I'm still smiling by the third song, I know that I've found The Real Deal. They are a rare species but if you're really listening and engaged, you can hear it. Modest Mouse have it. The Kills have it. The Libertines had it. The Pixies have it. Uncle Tupelo had it. There are plenty of kick-ass American bands but it seems like the British bands have seemed especially-tight. They have a coiled energy that drives up and through the music. It makes your insides want to growl a primal response. I've been on a really hot streak with Brit bands and last night, I tried a little Kasabian action. I hadn't seen Kasabian or even remembered hearing their stuff on the KEXP surfing I'd enjoyed in my employed days, but I was getting good word-of-mouth -the same kind that'd pointed to me to The Libertines and The Kills. So, when I saw that they were playing at my Beloved Bowery Ballroom, I had to go. The evening featured two bands that were missing at least 1 or more of the 'IT' attributes and one band that deserved the title of The Real Deal.

Kat and I arrived at 8pm and met Steve - our drinking buddy from the infamous Whadoosay fiasco of Webster Hall. All three of us cringed at the pair of cartoon-shaped buses that loomed in front of the Bowery Ballroom. It looked like a giant colostomy bag for any Rock N' Roll Ego that couldn't fit into the hall this night. We flashed our I.D.'s, strapped on our neon-pink, drinking tags then shuffled down the stairs and into the bar. Kat and Steve were hot to secure a table in the Bowery's balcony. This generally goes against my fundamental beliefs in live music. The whole point is the presence of a band. Although Kat is normally with me on this philosophy, she had made the baffling decision to wear heels. Steve, as usual, was eager to remain outside any potential Sphere of Action... so, I relented. We planted ourselves in the balcony, just behind the velvet rope - the best part of the balcony for music execs.

The first band up was an impossibly-thin cluster of shaggy boys called The Rock N' Roll Soldiers. They're a throwback to the long-haired, anorexic groups of the 1970's that always look like they wanted to make everybody rawk yet tragically less-inspiring in their music. The bass player did his best tree impersonation from the right-hand corner of the stage while the lead singer and his RNR Soldier-in-arms guitarist worked a fashion show of various rock n' roll poses of the past. The guitarist chose a tai chi approach, slowly arching his back to accent his high-E-bending prowess or fanning his guitar next in sweeping arcs or rockdom. The lead singer decided upon a bolder, Drunken Master style as he kicked and spun his way against the microphone stand, his fellow guitarist and the drum kit. Every 3 minutes, a roadie would dash onstage to re-set the drum-mics then accept the appreciable nod from the offending rocker. A few songs had the singer crumbling to his knees as the Spirit of Rock N' Roll took hold. I have never seen a lead singer try so hard to rock and audience like this poor man did on this evening. Stage Presence? Check. Hooks? Did I mention that he really WANTED to rock out? Tightness? ... let's just move on then, shall we?

Mad Action had second dibs. I can't put my finger on why I didn't particularly care one way or another about whether I heard one song or another. They had a great Smashing Pumpkin style of crunchy guitar riffs, and they sounded tight, but every song sounded much like another. This is a band that has all the right elements, but they haven't quite 'found themselves' yet. Either that, or they just don't have what it takes to push them to the next level. The hooks are what make a band different from anybody else and what makes one song sound distinctively different from another. For example, let's take Aerosmith. Actually, you can have the modern version of Aerosmith as far as I am concerned, so let's stuck to the era that they were good. "Toys in the Attic", "Walk This Way" and "Sweet Emotion" - three fantastic songs from the same album by the same band. All three are VERY Aerosmith in their sound, but the opening riffs, the tone and the style are distinctly different. Mad Action's set? Well, by the third song, I knew that it was time for me to take a pee break and grab another beer. Stage Presence? I remember big hair and wide-legged stances... and I think they played music. Hooks? I like to drink Stella Artois Tightness? Check.

At the end of the last song from Mad Action, a 30-something woman from a neighboring table leapt from her seat, tore a Kasabian poster off the wall, then rushed to a tall, gangly fellow, standing at the back of the balcony. Steve leaned over to me and told me that gangly was one of the leads from Kasabian. The flush woman returned with her signed poster and, seeing that I had witnessed her rock-fan coup, leaned over to me and told me that it was her son who was a big Kasabian fan but couldn't get into the show because he was only 14. I quickly learned that she and her husband were from New Jersey, went to loads of concerts, especially Maxwell's in New Jersey, and were proficient in Indie-Music Speak. I can hold my own in music talks, but I don't have the singular focus to get into all the niggling details of obscure indie-band politics. Steve, however, was born for such work. Soon, he and the woman had bonded over concert war stories and an in-depth critique of New Order's hideous new album cover. The husband and wife were really cool and just the sort of people I always imagined running into at all these gigs, yet never found until now.

Finally, the lights dimmed and the Kasabian hit the stage. They have quite a lighting scheme set up for their show, a strange sight in a venue as intimate as the Bowery Ballroom. The Snow Patrol tried to set up a fancy set of lights behind themselves onstage and ended up blinding the whole audience in the process. On this night, the swirling and dancing spots were well-used. The lead singer, Tom Meighan, bounced around onstage and really laid into the songs. Sergio Pizzorno, the lead guitarist, was comfortable and energetic - the perfect contrast to Tom. In true Brit rock style, they were tight as a steel drum, ripping through their one-album catalog in rapid succession. They come off as a tougher version of Oasis when they're playing but I have never heard so many thank yous from a band since The Snow Patrol breezed through a few months ago. It's always nice to see a band that still acts a little humble even when they've gotta know that they rock. And the audience... this was NOT a typical Bowery audience on this night - it was mostly Fish N' Chips. Brit audiences are ten-times better than the standard NYC crowd. I went to a Kills concert a year ago and was one of only 3 people bouncing to the music. On this night, nearly the whole floor-level crowd was into it. That always makes for a better performance. By the end of the first song, I knew that I wasn't getting another beer. By the end of their encore climax "Club Foot", I knew - they were The Real Deal. Stage Presence? Great lighting, humble band, high energy... check. Hooks? Oh, yeah. Check. Tightness? In two weeks, you'd have a diamond.

Go see them.

P.S. As a follow-up note, I've been checking out their website and I've noticed that there's a little discussion going on as to whether there are pre-recorded backup vocals for 1 or two of their songs. I didn't notice anything at the show, but I wasn't front-and-center, either. It'd be disappointing to find out that it's true, but I have to admit that they do some pretty complicated electronics-based stuff on their tracks so they've probably got to run a little filler during the set. Tom and Serge were really tearing through their songs, though, so I can't imagine that there's anything going on that doesn't have to go on to re-create the studio album. A bit of a blemish, but they're definitely worth seeing.

Dusting off a few words

2005-05-06T21:12:00.000-04:00

Reading is tailor-made for the Manhattan lifestyle. I spend at least an hour and a half on the subway every day. Over the years, I’ve developed two ways to fill that time hole - poetry and reading. The last few years have found me reading at pace unlike any I've enjoyed. I am so voracious for reading material, I'm actually going back to my bookshelf and reading all those books I was supposed to have read in college. A couple weeks ago, I finished the third Rabbit book by John Updike - Rabbit is Rich. I always reach a point when I’m reading Updike, 50 pages or so, when I become convinced that I am going to be bored to death and should just stop reading. By the end, though, I’m begging for more. Updike has a completely unassuming way of writing. His text is so non-stylized, it feels bland, at first. But it’s So Fucking True. His gaze settles upon details with such a deadly accuracy, it’s unnerving. Rabbit is frustratingly non-heroic, even ineffectual, but when he comes through you want to throw a party for him. He reminds me way to much of myself (bastard).

Early last week, I finally sat my ass down and read a couple Robert Louis Stevenson short stories - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Merry Men. Although Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde has become a fixture in western vocabulary and has been emulated in numerous pieces of fiction, including the fantastic Fight Club, I still found myself pulled through the narrative. It reminds me of Dracula and Frankenstein, where a supernatural concept is used as a construct to examine the primal instincts of man. Stevenson keeps the action and discoveries so in-the-moment, it’s easy to forget that you already know the outcome.

The Merry Men started as a bored follow-up. I was stuck on the subway after finishing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and read it because it was in the only book I was holding and I was still stuck at the Canal Street Station on the way home from a TriBeCa volunteer gig. Holy shit, man. The Merry Men kicks ass. I wrote a stage adaptation of Stevenson's Kidnapped back when I was in college. I discovered that Stevenson is a fantastic writer and has some of the most powerful imagery I've ever known in a writer. When one tries to adapt the story to a visual medium, however, it becomes frustratingly-apparent that his images are not only deceptively complex, they would cost a fortune to render onstage or onscreen. There is a particularly fantastic moment towards the end of The Merry Men where the protagonist stands at a seaside precipice and witnesses the strobing instant of impact as a sailing ship is driven against the rocks by a seething tempest. Damn... good stuff.

Early this week, I pulled out a Kurt Vonnegut novel I’d bought 8 years ago for 50¢ and never bothered to read. It’s called Bluebeard and if I had read it within the first 3 years of purchase, I would have liked it but easily forgotten it. Living with a painter for the last 5 years, however, has granted me a little perspective on the Abstract Expressionist movement of the mid-20^th Century, not to mention the personal crises I’m undergoing with my craft. Vonnegut is one of those novelists that I’ve never actively sought out, but never fails to surprise me. Cat’s Eye was a serious mind-fuck for me the first time I read it and was, in fact, the impetus for my Bluebeard purchase. It’s strange - somehow it feels like I was waiting to grow up a little before I allowed myself to read Bluebeard… and I didn’t know what the hell it was about until I read it.

Right now, I’m half way through Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key. I’ve always been a sucker for hardboiled detective novels. I’ve read The Thin Man and number of Raymond Chandler books. I was initially piqued by this genre via my long, love affair with film noir classics like Detour, The Maltese Falcon, Kiss Me Deadly, and The Killers. Of course, I subsequently found the books to be far more fun. In fact, I used to keep a collection of quotations from these books. I’m pulling my quote pages out right now and I’m enjoying quite a few of them, including:

“Lead is his meat.”

“Grab a cloud.”

“Dangle, sister.”

“Go climb your thumb.”

(and my all-time favorite) “This ain’t my idea of a spot for a lead party. Drift!”

I’ve vowed to finish Updike’s Rabbit series, read Miller’s Tropic of Cancer/Tropic of Capricorn, climb the mountain of Joyce’s Ulysses, then try my hand at contemporary fiction. They’re still writing these days, right (joking – I’m joking!)? I’m anxious to try out some Irvine Welsh (The Beach, maybe) and Naomi Klein’s No Logo (not a fiction book, but hey…).

If anybody has any off-the-wall recommendations, I’m all ears.

The Bermuda Triangle of Manhattan (thru May 1st)

2005-05-02T09:00:00.000-04:00

I can't remember names for-shit. I recognize faces. I can usually remember where/when/how I met them, but not the name. I also have a terrible habit of swapping first and last names when I’m talking about art,sports, film or music with people. I’ll keep saying Reggie Jackson when I’m meaning Reggie White or, out loud I will be in the midst of a baffling (to others) diatribe about Buddy Guy while I can clearly see that I'm pontificating about Buddy Holly... in my mind’s eye. The thing that really pisses me off about my memory, however, is my habit of repeating stupid mistakes that I’ve already learned the hard way. Let’s take, for example, ohhhh I don’t know… how about the film industry? After receiving my film degree at Undergrad USA, I moved to Los Angeles with screenplays under my arm, a wealth of film knowledge in my brain and a dream in my heart that I'd be the next Martin Scorsese, David Lynch or (at least) Steven Spielberg. For the next 2½ years, I learned what sort of culturally-rich Synergy bubbles forth when you combine drug-heightened egos, millions of dollars of dispensable wealth and the façade that Studio Executives are conducting ‘business’. The subsequent depression induced by this lesson required a year of rural seclusion (involving far too much alcohol and pinball), $25,000 of grad school (shiny new degree, same result), years of girlfriend therapy and a move to New York City before I could feel a little better about human nature. So, now I’m 8 years removed from my South Cali Exodus... which is just about long enough for my selective memory to kick in. Having forgotten how much I loathe the big-studio industry, I obliviously sauntered down the darkened alley of the TriBeCa Film Festival and signed up as a volunteer.

It must have seemed a good idea at the time. Perhaps I thought that I’d meet a few film lovers like myself (always in my quest for community), see some artsy films that were too edgy or foreign to find distribution, and, maybe, slip into a cool, festival party with an open bar. The TriBeCa Film Festival started in 2002 and has quickly become a plausible mid-Spring excuse for distribution reps to visit New York in between their vacations to Park City, Colorado (Sundance) and Cannes, France. My introductory meeting for the eager volunteers involved a cute, frazzled coordinator who read a hand-out to us which threatened instant expulsion from The Cool Club if we were to shove our scripts in any celebrity’s face or stalk anybody. A week later, I received a re-worded Riot Act in a tiny hotel ‘suite’ (labeled VOLUNTEER PLANET in a typical display of hyperbole), which I had to sign. In addition to granting the staff to flog me and remove my badge for any violation of said Act, I also handed away all my rights to talk about any part of my life that might bear witness to the habits of Robert DeNiro/Corporate Sponsors/the Business while exercising the Privilege of volunteering at this Ostentatious Display of Fame. Of course, I had ZERO chance of learning anything juicy about anything while breaking down sponsor ads and standing outside shindigs with a cameraman's bag, but it must have been comforting to know that They could act the fool in front of the help and not worry that it'd come back to bite them.

Already, I could feel the familiar, unsavory taste in my mouth. I was handed my ‘uniform’- a black T-shirt with a shoe store advertisement larger than the festival logo. I also received a super-cheapie “backpack” that I could fill with Lower Manhattan shopping ads, LUNA Nutrition Bars for Women (only 1, please) and Sucralose-flavored, sugar-free Altoids®. I’m not saying that I was expecting a TriBeCa Film Festival Gucci bag or a bottle of Absolut, but considering the fact that 2,000 volunteers were putting thousands of man hours into a festival that generated $65,000,000 for Lower Manhattan last year (according to Access Hollywood), I’d think that they could offer a better deal than a free glass of wine at a restaurant so expensive, I couldn't afford a side salad.

For those of you who don't know Manhattan, TriBeCa stands for 'Triangle Below Canal" Street. At one time, it might have vaguely resembled a triangle, but real estate salesman have slowly expanded the neighborhood boundaries until now it's more of an inverted trapezoid. Roughly speaking, TriBeCa's borders are: North - Canal Street, East - Church Street (flexible), West - West End Highway and South - Vesey St (WTC area). It was warehouse district until fairly recently. TriBeCa is now a cloistered community of aged celebrities, galleries and middle-aged men in black leather jackets. There’s still a bit of old-city feel stuck between the cracks of the cobblestone streets and it's nice to walk down streets called 'Debrosses' instead of 'East 57th'. As I sat in one of the volunteer offices, I could still smell a faint odor of oiled machinery and textiles. I find myself getting really sad and nostalgic when I spend too much time in these spaces. It feels like there's some residue from all the life and kinetic energy that filled those spaces and now it's just bouncing against the drywall and computers that occupy them now.

I don’t want to linger too much on my experiences at the festival. My experiences were, for the most part, dull and far less interesting than any other kind of volunteering I would have found in the City. Of course, not everyone sucked. There were a number of really cool people who’d done short films and New York City-based films. They are, easily, the most important contributors to the festival, though they were considered to be along the periphery of the festival's focus. The only real community I got to know lived amongst the volunteers and staff. The bond was mostly of the sort you’d find in a hostage situation or amongst those who just love to talk about Who they Saw. I’d also forgotten that people who work events rarely get to enjoy them. I didn’t get to see a single movie. I did, however, meet 3 wonderful people at the festival, got into my open-bar party and met enough jackasses to provide me another 8-year reminder of why I despise the Hollywood Scene. At one point, I was witness to a red-carpet premiere that underscored what an Ostentatious Display of Nothing the whole machine really is. I have never been much for celebrity and the few people I’ve wanted to meet in my life have been under whelming experiences. One thing I have retained since my L.A. days is that if you want to kill your idols, just meet them. Trust me, they’re people – eating, sleeping and shitting like the rest of us.

Now, if I can just retain the other lessons...

Doing the Wadoosay

2005-04-12T11:34:00.000-04:00

SATURDAY

My girlfriend, Kat, were badly needing a night out - it'd been too long since we'd seen a good band, hung out at a bar and engaged in a really good bout of intellectual cattiness. On this night, we had a date with a gay friend of ours, Steve. I'd met Steve at a non-profit job I got when I first moved to the City. He and I discovered that we shared a mutual-obsession with indie rock music and basically kept each other's spirits up by endlessly talking about new bands that we'd 'discover'. On this night, Steve was celebrating his 35th birthday and in a fit of Midwestern generosity, had treated Kat and me to a night at the Bowery Ballroom where we'd toast to his birthday and see The Fiery Furnaces. We were flattered, greedy and immediately leapt at the offer. Even when the gig was transferred to the Evil Concert Venue of New York City (also known as Webster Hall), we were eager to enjoy a debauched evening of music and drinking-enablement. We were so psyched for a night out, we even succumbed to a 1 ½ hour subway commute to Brooklyn (Steve's home turf) to help him feel at-home in his favorite, local haunt.

I'd been trying to be good about my drinking. Fitness had become my new obsession and I was determined to make myself presentable for a summertime beach. Of course, there had been one or two lapses including one night last week that involved a mishap with too many extra-dry martini, but overall I'd found been successful and I was focused on staying that way. Steve was not laboring behind my self-deluding rules. It took exactly one round for his agenda to become my agenda and soon I was pounding back pints of Stella at Brooklyn prices (50% off). These were the salad days (hours) of my weekend. I remember them fondly- I was so much younger then. I recall it as if it had happened only a few days ago. We laughed, we raged and in true Zelig-like fashion I found my inner-swish. Kat politely sipped her beer, lounged into the faux-leather lounger, and enjoyed display of two, self-involved music snobs in their mid 30's. Soon, we were hip deep in Joy Division, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop references.

As time raged on beneath our drama-filled banter, Kat grew restless. The last hour ran about like this:

KAT: "Wow. I didn't know that Iggy Pop was that disgusting or what a careering bitch Patti Smith was, but weren't we going to a concert or something?"
STEVE: "What time is it now?"
DECKARD: "Do you want another?"
STEVE: "Ooo! Ooo! Are they playing The Cure? Whatever happened to good Goth music?"
KAT:"Weren't we going to a concert or something?"
DECKARD: "We have plenty of time. Do you want another pint?"
STEVE: "It's my turn- what are you drinking?"

Finally, Kat managed to focus us into the 'now' long enough to herd us into the street... sort of. Steve was spun into a feeding frenzy of Indie music euphoria and the birthday boy had forbade us from leaving Brooklyn until we had listening to the MOST FanTAStic Song In The EnTIRE World by The Kaiser Chiefs. Six cigarettes, four blocks to Steve's apartment, 3 pee-breaks, a long listening, and 4 more bocks to the subway later, we regained our course and headed into Manhattan.

Webster Hall sucks ass. The last time I'd visited this club was when I tried to watch Sonic Youth. This place is designed like the mines of Moria with doors and stairwells that move from one performance/bar/club space to another. All the spaces are pretty dumpy but hell, I can do dumpy if there's a cool staff, cheap drinks, etc. The Sonic Youth gig was over-booked to the point where the back of the theater felt like standing in the front row at a U2 concert. The bouncers were complete ass-clowns who had certainly trained at the Sopranos School of Fuck-You Bouncing. The Bowery Ballroom, my favorite venue in Manhattan must have signed some boneheaded deal a year ago with Webster Hall so that bigger bands could play in a larger venue. At this point, I simply cannot believe that the same people could be running my beloved Bowery Ballroom and the Frankenstein monster of concert venues called Webster Hall.

Steve went to will call to pick up his tickets and that's when we realized that the concert had started a full 2 hours earlier than any other concert in Manhattan. We rushed upstairs to the only remaining view in the hall. We were just in time for the last 2 songs of the encore, a "thank you for coming to such an early show", then the quick exit of The Fiery Furnaces, leaving us enjoy a 'what the fuck' moment. Dejected and even without the time to order another beer, we chain-gang shuffled our way to the bottlenecked stairwell and down into the lobby. Kat and Steve rushed downstairs to the restroom while I stood guard beside a trashcan and tried to spot any hint of a T-shirt salesman.

What happened next was a cluster-fuck at the hands of the emotionally-challenged. A squat, dour blond barked at me that it was time to leave. My hesitation prompted second, squat-assistant to join in and reiterate, for my convenience. A bouncer, wielding a metal barricade, trudged through the now-vacant lobby and offered his two bits of derisiveness. I turned to the blond goblin and tried to explain that I was waiting for my friends to get back from the restroom and that I was standing out of the way. Not satisfied with my lack of cowed behavior, both women moved into my personal space. Fed up with trying to hold my ground behind a garbage can, I retreated to the far corner of the lobby and barked that they didn't have to act like such assholes about it. Well, that tore it. What followed was a staccato waterfall of hoots and chest-beating from the barricade-toting bouncer who dropped his gate and scrambled after me, all the while screeching "What did you say?!". Again and again the words looped over and over as if I had any chance of getting a word in edgewise until it began to morph into a rambling conjunction of "Wadoosay?!". The call had been sent out... Wadoosay... wadoosay, in the deep. Bouncers clambered from every stairwell and doorway.Fool that I was, I had moved from my vantage behind the garbage and had allowed myself to be cornered with no Fellowship and not even a good buzz to numb the imminent flurry of self-righteous blows. Remarkably, I was able to able to maintain some semblance of composure. I tried to slow things down- bring down the energy level another notch. Speak slower, so every would understand my position. I was just. waiting. for. my. friends. who. are. in. the. restroom. I was certain that I could feel, in the heels of my feet, the distant rumble of a Balrog.

The bouncer was feverish from the success of his wadoosay chant and was ready to go in for the kill. Unfortunately, he overextended his repertoire when he tried to switch to put-down mode. "You wanna see an asshole," he demanded. This momentarily threw me off. I had expected to be lifted from the carpet and trown clear of the front doors like you see in Three Stooges or Marx Brothers films. A question? Was he serious? What sort of an answer should I offer? From the flinty twitch in his eye, I could tell that I was taking too long to answer. The zinger - he had to land the zinger. "Turn around and look in that mirror! You'll see an asshole, then!"

'There is a mirror behind me,' I asked myself. I suppressed the impulse to turn and see for I feared that the bouncer's sense of humor would cry out for more and he would take the opportunity to try out a physical joke involving my underwear. The bouncer army must have thought his joke to be a sufficient punishment for my belligerence for soon after he landed his zinger, the mob began to disperse. The squat woman and her assistant returned to their ticketing boxes at the entrance and the bouncers shuffled back to the hollows from which they had sprung. The Great, insult-joke bouncer strutted back to his lonely barricade, lifted it triumphantly upon his shoulder, then disappeared out the front door.

Kat was cheerful, relieved and utterly oblivious when she appeared at my side. I might have been able to cover up the entire incident, but when she asked me if I was ready to go, I began to fire off sentences like a rail gun from a Blackhawk. She glanced about the lobby and noted the scowls and snears that came from the darker corners. "What happened," she asked. I tried to explain but there was simply too much adrenaline in my system. The story burst from my mouth in a gigantic twitch of incoherence and fury. Kat nodded and placed a calming hand on my arm (she studies Buddhism). "Let's go," she said.

"Where's Steve," Kat asked. My mind immediately lept to only the most graphic scenarios. Was he, at this very moment, enduring gruesome wrongs at the hands of that hulking, cave troll I'd seen in the restroom when we first arrived? He was standing behind a ramshackle stand, selling overpriced candy in a black-light dim of urinals and booths. I had survived the verbal thrashing of Moria and I'd be damned if I was going to abandon my good, gay friend who wouldn't possibly harm a fly. I scrambled down the stairs and into the john. I was prepared to grab an errant mop or glass jar of peppermints to drive off the foul perpetrators, but the room was silent. An Hispanic janitor stood at the candy stand, poised at the apex of an evil, Spanish-laced conspiracy that he was about to unleash upon the candy troll. Suspicious eyes tracked my movements as eI stepped to the vacant stalls. No doubt, they had received word of the altercation upstaris and were waiting for me to unsuspectingly stroll into one of the stalls where I would be relentlessly violated by the business end of a switchblade or, at least, be administered a brutal swirly upon my head.

Where had he gone? Had he already been beaten senseless and thrown out of the Hall for being associated with the Great Troublemaker of 'Aught-Five'? I grabbed Kat's hand and sped for the Exit. outside, a fresh line of victims were eagerly awaiting the verbal de-pantsing and economic pick-pocketing they would soon find inside. I had escaped from my foolish escapade.. and, to my startlement, so had Steve. Standing on the shore, beyond the bouncers and barricades and eager naiveté, stood Steve. He had witnessed my incident in progress and like any good citizen, immediately dashed from the building and awaited the pitching of my gouged and spintered remains onto the pavement.

I was disheartened and far to sober to have witnessed such wildly-confirming displays of human nature. Clearly, the most consistent handicap of the evening had been my sobriety. I needed a drink- check that, I needed a concoction that would be crippling in its potency. I wanted the shortest path from A to Z. I had to be laid so low that I would actually learn from this debacle and sear into my brain this lesson so it would be never repeated. We wandering the unaffordable streets of the Village and my impatience grew to an imperative. Finally, at the bequest of Steve, we collapsed behind the neon-beckoning window of Dallas BBQ- an interesting choice for one gay man, one gangling, angry, degenerate looking to get loaded and one elfish, young woman who happens to be a vegetarian.

It was apparent what when we were in for when the menus arrived. Actually, they were already in front of us - paper place mats. I only lacked the mini-Mason jar of crayons to complete one of my childhood nightmares. The experience reached another tier of heinous when I discovered that only booze choices are pricy bottles of Bud Light or hyperneon-colored, frozen concoctions involving decorations of unripe pineapple. I chose the latter. That, along with the coleslaw and macaroni & cheese concoction I consumed, succeeded in laying me low for the next 2 days and teaching me, once again, lessons... about something.

Good times.

The Kills do the Bowery Ballroom

2005-04-11T12:04:00.000-04:00

I saw my favorite band for the last time. When The Kills come back to NYC, they will be an opener for some "Ubergroup" or the headliner at a big venue- Webster Hall, Roseland Ballroom, Hammerstein Ballroom or Irving Plaza will snatch them away, rub them all over with smarm, and that will be it. It's the Catch 22 of indie rock. You discover a new band, fall in love with them. You run around telling everybody about them and giving them burned songs and begging them to go to the shows. Then, your band breaks and just like that, you realize that they've grown up and left you. I'm too upset to point out the perfunctory metaphor involving butterflies or babies. Maybe they'll continue to linger along the edge of the Big Time like The Raveonettes or The Notwist, but I'm thinking that it's going to be more of a White Stripes career arc. Of course, this might all be the result of my cynicism following Saturday night's Wadoosay.

I've seen every NYC concert since 2003 and I've gotta say that The Kills were really fucking good on this night. They've settled into their stage personas, especially VV (Allison Mosshart) who always looked like the only thing keeping her from bolting off the stage was her curtain of raven hair and endless procession of cigarettes. It always worked because she'd use some of the songs to channel her nervous energy into a stage show of growling, grinding, sexual tension between her and Hotel (Jamie Hince). On this night, The sexual tension wasn't as overt (except for the gymnastics move involving her and Hotel's guitar), I didn't see her smoke a single cigarette and she's finally returned from the Land of the Painfully-Thin and looked really good. Hmmm... VV, Cat Power, PJ Harvey, Hope Sandoval... well, my aesthetic tastes have at least remained consistent. (Yeah, my girlfriend is going to love that observation). The presentation has a comfortable, slicker feel. They've always been stagey, but in the past it always had a fun and somewhat-campy feeling to it. I love groups that will throw themselves into a bit that they feel a little silly doing, but you know they're having fun. Now, The Kills feel more like an act. I'm not screaming "sellout!", though. I think such arguments are usually crap. People so easily get into the mindset that a band should always stay the same, but that gets old and, after a while, painful to watch, like with Kiss, Aerosmith, or AC/DC or... well, maybe I'll stop with the comparisons. The Kills are starting to move away from some of their earlier bits and coming more into their own. If you haven't seen them, go. You won't be disappointed.

As The Kills begin their ascent out of the world of Indie Rock, so do others rise to fill the vacuum. I was blown away when I listened to an opening band I'd never seen before - Scout Niblett. They may not be the Next Big Thing, but they grabbed my attention. After Googling the group, I've discovered that Scout Niblett is actually Emma Niblett and she's essentially a soloist with backup. Her stuff is a great synthesis of Cat Power and Nirvana. Scout offers high, lilting lyrics, then gives a wry grin before launching into a wave of by crunching, power chords. She had that great, coiled energy that I've seen from so many of the recent, English rock bands. Part way through the set, she set down her guitar, took the the drums and ripped out a couple solid drum-backed songs. After the show was over, I saw her sitting at the bar and had to go over and tell her how great her set was. Damn, I love the Bowery Ballroom.

not-for-profit Temping

2005-04-08T09:47:00.000-04:00

I promised myself that I wouldn't do it. It makes me crazy. It runs contrary to every fiber of my being. But I did it. I got another office, temp job. I'm working at this mega-huge non-profit organization that takes in millions of dollars from Upper East Siders and uses it to clean up vandalism in Central Park so that property values stay sufficiently high. Like all non-controversial, bigwig non-profits in this city, they love to throw a pretentious, yearly dinner and/or luncheon to provide an arena for ostentatious displays of wealth... and to raise money. This is the 3rd non-profit that I've worked since I moved here and it never ceases to amaze me how much disposable income lives on the Upper East Side. This event is so exclusive, you've gotta know somebody if you want the privilege of spending $500 per ticket or, up to $50,000 per table. They're based on the southeast corner of Central Park so I get to walk across the park every day. There isn't a square centimeter of the park that doesn't feel like it's untouched, but damn, it's beautiful. Daffodils, crocuses and forsythia are in full bloom.

This is the first job that I've hade on the Upper East Side. I am regularly seeing people that might as well be living on Mars for all that I share in common with them. It's a culture of toy dogs and plastic surgery that'd make sense to nobody outside their inner circle. The younger women are long, thin, blond, beautiful and virtually non-sexual. They look like laminated models that are still living in the pages of a fashion magazine. And such anger. It must be the backwash from all the reindeer games that society people play with one another.

Interestingly, I've had very few sightings of the millionaire husbands that mate with these specimens. I would never be so gauche to expect a dual-sighting. Occasionally, I get a glimpse of a potential sighting as some man in an Armani suit strategizes with another over a cell phone. The discussions normally involve somebody making a 'move' in a board meeting somewhere and what the potential fallout might be. It's all very arcane and utterly childish in it's tone. I suspect that most of these husbands work in the Financial District and eat their lunches in those restaurants with dark wood and tinted windows that I could never possibly enter, much less afford. They don't go out at night, unless it's to catch a taxi or elongated car. Much of the Upper East Side looks like an abandoned theme park at night. Entire blocks lie dormant until someone with a dog-ornament emerges with a cellphone surgically-attached to one ear.

I know... I'm being bad. But hey, when you're earning low wages at an organization raising tens of millions of dollars and handing out door prizes of equivalent value to your yearly rent, it can be a little demoralizing.

(almost) springing from the Cave

2005-04-04T09:33:00.000-04:00

Winter has finally begun to break in New York. I emerged from my cave a few days ago and discovered that the storage pounds that I packed on for the winter months had not melted away during my hibernation. Unlike my bear bretheren, I continued to eat General Tso's chicken and suck down vodka tonics in a frantic attempt to hold off the inevital depression that hits during a season of short days. Something had to be done.

On Saturday, with torch in hand, I rummaged through the mounds of dead leaves until I found the 15-speed bike my parents had given me for my birthday. I had ridden it every day for the first month, then I went to Thailand, then winter arrived then - the point is that I had a renewed energy and the determination to change my lifestyle and become FIT again! I ambled to the crack at the back of my cave and, with some difficulty, scouted out my biking uniform:

non-hip biking helmet- to allow me the illusion of personal safety despite the two-dozen gypsy cabs that regularly prowl my steet
padded biking gloves- to save my palms from personal irritation and look cool in that cut-off, punky-biking-gloves kinda way
7-year-old running shoes- to let my feet know that I once again intend on losing 20 pounds and getting those rock-hard abs (they have been known to snicker)
neon yellow windbreaker- so idiot drivers from 3 blocks away can get a bead on me from long-distanc
water bottle- to provide water in case I get stuck in the desert with a flat tire during my usual, 30-minute ride along the river
accessory bag- to hold hex wrenches (for repairs), a Metro card (when the repairs don't work) and a quarter (when I discover my Metrocard has expired and I have to call my girlfriend)

With this euphoric inspiration to Do Something, I set out for my first workout. I stepped into the early-morning air, secured my helmet, then stepped on the bike. The front tire was flat... and the tiny, new tire valve didn't fit my bike pump. Stupid new-fangled bikes.

Well, Spring has sprung. It's only a matter of time...

aging - American Style!

2005-04-01T08:52:00.000-05:00

Growing older is not going the way I'd imagined. It's difficult to see that I am, in fact, a man approaching his mid-30's. My dad didn't look this way when he was in his mid-30's, did he? It's strange to observe that movies, music and historical events that you experienced have become historical. It's horrifying to watch contemporary culture try to sell this history back to you as nostalgia (also known as 'comfort food'). Apparently, my generation is supposed to have more disposable income than I currently possess. Many of the heroes of my youth have fallen from the lofty perch I built for them. They have dismissed, mocked, parodied or simply forgotten the sacred cows they had given to me. Was Chevy Chase ever funny? Was Dustin Hoffman of Meet the Fockers fame the same actor who challenged and inspired me in his portrayals of Lenny Bruce, Rizzo the Rat and Benjamin Braddock? What in Christ happened to George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Robert DeNiro? I can barely recognize anything I once loved about them. Bob Dylan shills for Victoria's secret while John Lydon continues to methodically destroy any ounce of credibility he once commanded among the punk culture.

I am a part of one of the most visually-documented generations in the history of mankind and it's disturbing to watch what is being edited and forgotten. It is bizarre to live during the Cold Warm the 70's gas crunch, disco, grunge, and the advent of cable television only to have politicians and fundamentalists reshape history in their image. I was STANDING 3 blocks from the World Trade Center when the first tower fell, but I can't tell you the number of Europeans and Midwesterners who try to tell me what it was like. With so much live coverage of the news and filmic approximations of life, it's easy to mistake your emotional experience with the experience itself. Maybe that's why I'm taking the devaluing of my music and film so personally. I want to believe that I have some ownership of those things because I felt something when I experienced them.

The older I get, the more I realize that there is no such as a thing as 'the good old days'. I sure-as-shit wish there were. The future is unknown and the present is rife with unexpected twists and turns. The past, however, is comforting because I've done it. I've completed it. I can look back on it and understand it better with each passing year. Eventually, I find myself feeling like it must have been better because I can finally GET IT. I can see the consequences as they rippled out from those haggard, impulsive choices. I find myself comforted by that wisdom and I want to be able to use it in-the-now. I want to know whether it's a good or bad thing that Americans don't read as much anymore or that we appear to be re-learning things taught in my lifetime or that we've become visual-oriented society or how downloading will affect my future as an artist. So that feeling becomes a yearning - for the past to be the present where the rules and outcomes have already been laid out.

A few years ago, a friend of mine came to visit me in the City. She and I had always been great fans of indie music but in the 4 years since I'd last seen her, I had gone off to grad school in a rural town and found myself immersed in the world of theater. After moving to NYC, I tried listening to the local radio stations, but I couldn't stand the remixes and bubblegum pap that they were churning out. I was living in the biggest city in America and it felt like there was nothing worth hearing. So, I bemoaned the Death of Rock and Roll to my friend. She patiently listened until she couldn't stand it any longer. She told me to shut up and start looking harder. She told me that there was better stuff out there than ever before. She pointed me to Seattle's KEXP http://www.kexp.org/ and left me to find out for myself how stupid I was sounding.

The rules of finding new music had changed but I hadn't. Rather than push myself to explore a little more, I chose the easier route - blame the changing world and wish for the good old days. Getting older is REALLY easy. All you have to do is sit around. The hardest thing about growing older is keeping an open mind to new things.

that's right, Kermit, it's called cooperation

2005-03-25T12:28:00.000-05:00

I'm working on a collaborative painting project with Kat. We've been taking turns, building a painting. Despite my years of Sesame Street, I have never been able to wholly-grasp the notion of cooperation. I've always been fixed in the idea that I should be able to do everything on my own. That's true, as long as all I ever want to do is work that requires a singular perspective... and only two hands. Whenever you see pieces on artists, the tendency is to fixate upon solely the artist. Rarely is the stimulation, support and inspiration of fellow artists, lovers and friends shown, unless there's a sexual scandal involved. Although I logically understand that I need others, guilt drives me to think that I should be able to do It all alone. This project is good for me.

It's a bitch trying to collaborate on an artistic project - multiple ideas, multiple styles, and multiple people who have primarily learned to be artistic alone. It's a great test of compatibility, as well. I've had people that I thought would be perfect, only to find out that our personalities were toxic in a collaborative setting. You have to surrender a lot of ego but keep the fearless nerve to fail in front of others. Negativity is probably the quickest way to ruin it. I spent a couple of weeks trying to hammer out a screenplay with a good friend of mine and we couldn't even get past the basic outline of whatever-the-hell we were writing - it completely tanked. I would throw out ideas while he questioned everything I said.

The best book I've ever read on collaboration was Chuck Jones's book Chuck Amok!. Chuck Jones was one of the principal creators of the classic Looney Tunes cartoons. In his book, he outlined his process. Every new cartoon began with a "Yes Session" in which the director and writers would throw out ideas and everyone would build on them until a complete story was written. The key to making these sessions work, however, was that no one could say "no" to an idea - you could only build on it. With the hundreds of cartoons they were cranking out, there wasn't enough time to debate every facet of every story. The same thing is taught in actor improvisation. Nothing will kill an improv quicker than for an actor to say something and the other actor to simply answer, "no". It's a dead end that kills the momentum of a scene and forces the other actor to start over.

The thing about this collaboration is that I keep saying "no" to myself. After my girlfriend hands me a painting, I don't know what to do with it. I worry that I'm going to somehow ruin it or sabotage an idea that she had going. Of course, like every little drama that happens in my life, this effortlessly points to perhaps the greatest obstacle to my becoming an accomplished artist. I am very good at editing my work. I am ruthless with my stuff. Unfortunately, my editing voice likes to join in on the creative process. All the heart comes from that intuitive impulse that happens in that first moment as an idea becomes act. You cannot know whether something will work or not until you do it. One of the great thrills of creating is that you don't know where it's taking you. If we knew the outcome, then there would be no reason to take the journey. Hell, it's the reason for living. One of the beauties of youth is that ignorance of consequences. When you don't know any better, you can crash through invisible walls without a moment's thought. The challenge is to hold onto that impulse even as you grow older and have all that experience that's telling you that you should know better.

The key is to do things out of your comfort zone - pushing yourself to follow through on those things that you feel hesitant about doing. That's why this project is good for me. I have no control on at least half of this painting, so my editing voice is slowly being pushed into taking a rest. It has helped that my girlfriend is an ideal partner. She is creative, open to ideas and gently raises the bar each time we exchange. Her ability to discard and re-invent new ideas quietly presses me to push myself a little more - perhaps the very heart of why people collaborate. I'm getting better about letting go... stuttered and staggered as those baby steps may be.

Escape from New York

2005-03-21T14:23:00.000-05:00

I am amazed that I live in New York City. I sit in front of the television, watching the opening credits to Law & Order, then I realize that I can recognize all the buildings and streets. I can readily distinguish whether a homocide has taken place on the Upper West Side or the Chelsea before a word is uttered by the actors. Feature films that I've watched since I was a child suddenly spring forward with newfound familiarity. The funny thing is that this was never the place where I wanted to live. As an Army brat, I had lived in all over the country- from Alaska to Georgia to Western Europe. The one corner of the world that had always intimidated me was the New York. There was something elitist and rough about it. The movies have certainly had a lot to do with it. There ARE far more dodgy corners of the globe, but there was always something a little offputting to me about this city. I had NEVER perceived it as a place where to REALLY live. As far as I was concerned, New York was the land of Italian gangsters, transvestite street hustlers, and Wall Street. It was a concrete jungle where arrogant, self-centered giants of industry and entertainment waged war against one other to find out who was Top Dog. I grew up in the homogenized, safe life of a U.S. Army base or in the suburbs of America, as depicted in early Steven Spielberg movies, where the only threat to life-and-limb came from ancient burial grounds or government supression of alien visitors. My idea of a great adventure was a 1 mile bike ride to the 7-11 to buy a couple packs of Star Wars bubblegum cards or the newest issue of X-Men. Despite the fact that Army bases and suburban life were eye-tearingly dull (especially in the days before the video game revolution that swept roller-skating rinks and bowling alleys), I found them comforting. Sesame Street was as close to the Urban Experience as I thought I would ever know. Little did I suspect that the New York City of the 21st century would bear little resemblance to the portrait of Urban Decay that I'd had fed to me through the eyes of a camera lens. In the last 5 years, I have I discovered a city unlike any other, and (to paraphrase Lou Reed) where everybody is ALMOST ready to leave.

A couple years ago, I was watching Midnight Cowboy- widely-considered to be one of the quintessential films of New York City in the 1960s (I know, I know... Cassavetes rocks, but work with me here). I'd seen this movie at least 6 or 7 times and owned it on DVD, but not since I'd moved to the City. There was Jon Voight, sloughing down Broadway in Times Square when he passes a large, neon store marque that reads 'COLONY' in 6 foot, red-neon lettering. I'd just been to Colony Music the day before. I knew that area - I had BEEN right there, wher Jon Voight was standing 35 years earlier. Had it not been for those 6 foot letters though, I wouldn't have known that it was the same place. The hooker and titty bar that enveloped Voight through Times Square had completely disappeared. Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and a myriad of myopic, massive corporations have bought block-upon-block of the White Way and transformed it into a staggering display of pricey Advertising and pricier Broadway shows. For 10 to 30 stories in every direction, fluttering eyes of consumer foreplay compete for the errant eye. Jon Voight would have been priced out of a Manhattan hotel room the second he set foot-to-pavement at the Port Authority bus station. Nowadays, he'd be reduced to shacking up on a bunk bed in a hostel on the Upper West Side with a bunch of German, blond-dreadlocked teenagers.

It is strange to live in a place that has such Iconic status with the rest of the world. Like London, Paris, Bangkok, Istanbul, Shanghai, Tokyo and Rome, New York City has had so many images placed upon it, it's easy to build a mental image of what it's like. Even visiting the city for a few days can leave one with the wrong impression. You really have to live in a place for a number of years before you can even the most basic idea of what a city is all about. In a metropolis like New York, even after a lifetime here, I'll only ever know a small corner of it. I think that's one of the reasons that people are almost always thinking about leaving. The density of cultures, attitudes combines with this strange compulsion to always feel like you're running behind schedule. But then, where do you go from here?

scoping the Scene with Cat Power

2005-03-10T11:35:00.000-05:00

I had a great time. I want you to remember that as you read this. I know that my set up might have all the trappings of a great, overarching diatribe but really- no, really - I had a good time.

So... went to see Cat Power last night at Southpaw in Brooklyn. I'd never been to this venue before and after getting out at the wrong subway stop and walking from the dark side of Nowhere where an icy wind always awaits you around every corner, I was not in the best mindset. Once I got inside, had a vodka tonic clipped into my frozen clutches and got settled in a seat (!), I was happy. Southpaw is a good place. The Mercury Lounge (where I was the previous night) was a square box of the barest design. I don't knock venues like that. They keep the ticket prices down and normally attract only the more-devoted music fans, but even at 6-foot-3, I often find myself planted behind the shoulder blades of some huge guy who, innocent as he may be, has become my personal lunar eclipse. In Southpaw, they had a couple levels of risers with nice, heavy railings. Even the most elfin groupie can scope a decent spot out in the early hours and effectively avoid having a hard-earned spot ruined by a monolith in steel-toe boots.

I should have known I was going to be in trouble when I saw that 'The Village Voice' had listed the Cat Power concert as one of their picks-of-the-week, but I wasn't prepared for the Scenesters. I have mentioned the Hipsters before, but with the introduction of this new term, some clarification is necessary. Hipsters are NYC folks who show up in fasionable spots and order $10 drinks because they saw them on 'Sex and the City' or think that it makes them look good. If the drink has Grey Goose or Skyy Vodka, then bonus points can be scored. They wear bohemian, fashion-labelled clothes and pretend that they have anything resembling a handle on life because they are living in neighborhoods that once graced the heels of Bob Dylan and Lou Reed. These individuals are often annoying, but not evil. Their tragedy for the average Joe is that their deep wells of dispensible income will quickly drive rent and alcohol prices through the roof in an otherwise-cool area.

Scenesters are evil. They are the reason that I don't work in the film industry anymore (along with a couple of other things). They are also a good reason to not go to Irving Plaza or Roseland Ballroom or any other venue sponsored by Clear Channel. Once a band starts to break it big, their gigs become Events, and are immediately infected with the Scenester. They show up with no purpose other than to network with other people and, maybe, fuck the hot new thing that just started working at the agency/record label/publishing house/TV or movie studio. The vast majority of them work in the entertainment industry with the lowest rung being operated by agent mailroom interns and rising up through record executive. The concert-going Scenester M.O. is to show up mid-way through the opening act's set, buy a drink, find a conspicuous place to stand, then talk during the set about things like expensive vacations, restaurants, and other concerts he/her has ruined and 'insider' platitudes regarding their profession.

Well, the Scenesters were in full force on this night. Although probably not the best move for his career, the guy opening for Cat Power (I never got his name) made angry jokes regarding the clusters of indifferent Scenesters who were giving no love (except to themselves) that night. At one point he even tried to pick out a female scenester in the crowd who stood in his direct eyeline and never once turned to the stage. Despite the whooping of a sympathetic few, none of the Scenesters ever acknowledged him. The clatter of networking got loud enough to drown out his singing for the second half of the set. Finally, the guy tore through his last two songs with enough growling and shouting to make them pretty good.

I'd always heard that Cat Power's shows were a mixed bag. I didn't exactly know what that meant but I was intrigued. Half an hour after the opening act pressed his fedora over his eyes and stormed off stage, Chan Marshall made her appearance. The lights dimmed, the crowd went wild and a distracted, irritable, attractive woman took a seat in front of a huge piano. Now, I think that she was attractive. She was thin and dressed in appropriately-casual dress with gorgeous long, dark hair, but she hid behind it. Her bangs completely covered her eyes. Most of my mental image of the evening involves a microphone and a nose peeking out from behind a hair curtain. She pulled out an electric guitar and slowly strummed a few chords. Slowly, the sounds of a song came together. She leaned into the microphone and suddenly, there it was - the husky voice of Cat Power... and it sounded good. For anybody who've not been to a number concerts, it's hard to know what you're going to get when you see a band live for the first time. Some bands are record bands. Their songs are highly-produced or their voices have a layered, mixed sound, that just doesn't translate live. The vocals are weak and drown out beneath the guitar or the bass. Or worse, they sing so far out of tune that you wonder they even sang on their own record. Then, there are those bands who sound amazing live, but when you rush back home with their newly-purchased record, they don't have any of that coiled, nervous energy that made their music leap from the stage. Well, Cat Power turned out to be that very rare musician that sounds great both live and on a record AND she took the hat trick because her live show sounds just different-enough from her recordings to make it a unique experience .

So, I'm sure that you're thinking that it was the phenomenal performance of Chan that carried the night and left me feeling so good about the evening. She peformed all of her greatest hits from "You Are Free" and left the crowd rocking, right? Well, no. Chan did something that I've never seen before - she sabotaged Every Single Song she played. It was like reading a Beckett play where every joke is robbed of the payoff. Every time there was an opportunity to get a perfunctory round of applause, Chan would jump into another song and stifle it. She would play the first few bars of a song that the audience was pining to hear, then she would stop or fold it into something else. It felt like I was sitting in on that step in the creative audience when you try some new ideas out in front of your friends, just to see how they'll react to it... but she was doing it in front of a paying audience. She would play part of a musical phrase, then stop, set the guitar down, and try something different out on the piano. The Scenesters didn't know what to do with themselves. The event was actually becoming a real Event in which the perfunctory rules of engagement no longer applied. Shouting out requests, clapping encouragement for the beginning of a song they wanted to hear, cheering the self-deprecating mumblings of the artist - none of it worked. Chan just kept singing or strumming or plunking notes on the piano with a surrealistic thought process to guide it. The Scenesters began their retreat within the first 15 minutes. Prime positions in the room vacated and the temperature dropped 10 degrees from the draft of an exodus through the front door.

With all pretension abandoned, I settled into a beautiful set of music. It reminded me of my childhood when I would sit on the floor beside my mom's piano and listen to her play the highlights of songs that she could remember or fragments of sheet music she'd thumb through. If I offered to sing for a bit, she'd actually stick with it until I couldn't remember any more lyrics. At the end of her set, Chan stood up from her piano and mumbled "It'll be better next time. I promise," before slinking from the stage. Some fans tried to whistle and clap her into doing an encore, doggedly refusing to abandon the rules of engagement. But the rules were not being followed this night.

Thank God.

pop goes the Mercury Lounge

2005-03-09T14:33:00.001-05:00

I went to the Mercury Lounge last night with my girlfriend and one of her co-worker friends. Her friend was excited about seeing Stars. The Mercury Lounge is this tiny venue that has a bar at front, a glass door, then a square space that gives the audience the ability to stand mere inches away from the band. I'm always a sucker for places like this and I hadn't seen either of the opening bands, I Am Kloot and Apostle of Hustle, so ... I'm one of those dreadfully uncool people who wants to show up right when the doors open. Unfortunately, my wants were not being met on this frigid evening so we walked in at the end of what appeared to be a really good set by I Am Kloot. I hate it when I do that. I don't know what it is about the Mercury Lounge, but there seems to be an inherent fear of standing too close to the opening act. Maybe it's the New York culture of 'cool', in a 'cool' venture, with a performance space that is far too intimate for their sensibilities. Maybe they fear that, if the band sucks, 'uncoolness' will get stuck all over them and then they'll never find happiness and/or get laid. Like getting caught talking to a loser, it's hard to get away. If you stake a spot within 10 feet of the band, they will be obligated to stand there through the entire set. Unforunately, this leaves a swimming pool-sized space open where, inevitably, some jackass saunters front and center, pretends to listen for 1-to-2 minutes, sip from his beer, then wander off as if he were checking out a houseplant onstage.

The second band, Apostle of Hustle, was... well, I know that there are a lot of fans out there for bands like Broken Social Scene, Sonic Youth and other 'soundscape' bands for whom 10 minute ballads of feedback are sweet nectar of sonic bliss. There are also a number of men who love to get their balls stamped on by leggy women in high heels. I am not a member of either group. Interestingly, the hour of Apostle of Hustle seemed to be for fans of the former while I felt like the victim of the latter. If I was stoned on pot and had a couch to fold myself into, these bands would be perfect. No... that's not true. I still wouldn't listen to them. Bands like this feel more like intellectual exercises for the musicians than for the audience. Listening to these bands live only intensifies the feeling. Even one of my favorite bands, Wilco, falls victim to this when they're playing live. I like my extended songs, like Death in Vegas's recent album and Underworld's stuff, but, for the most part, my roots lie in blues, punk and Nirvana - I like a group that jumps into a song, gets to the point, hits it really frigging hard (not necessarily loudly), then gets the fuck out of there... and a great hook doesn't hurt.

The third band, Stars, was the reason that I had come out. Before the band could come onstage, however, it was the sound mixer's job to make the waiting period as gruesomely painful as possible. For 20 minutes, we were all treated to a deafening rendition of bad poetry and jazz-like musical pap. Just in case we didn't want to listen, the board operator made sure that he pumped the volume up until it was even louder than the 5-piece rock band that had graced the stage only minutes earlier. By the time Stars had made it onstage, the club had been beaten into submission. The lead singer nervously laughed and joked at the graveyard silence that hung over the room.

I was a little skeptical about Stars as a live band before I had arrived. They have a very alt-poppy sound and the big track that I knew was "Look Up"- one of those catchy, uplifting, light songs that seem instantly destined to be licensed for some family-drama on ABC. They really won me over, though. They had this fun, vaguely-sarcastic energy that kept the set moving along. They didn't get stuck staring at the floor or have that mood-sucking habit of re-tuning their guitars between every song. They actually interacted with the audience and one another and, believe it or not, 2 or 3 of them EVEN made eye-contact with the audience. At first, it was unnerving to see an indie band having fun AND recognizing that there was an audience present.

Tonight, my caffeine-propped girlfriend and I are hauling our asses to Brooklyn to check out Cat Power. Chan Marshall, like Alison Mosshart (The Kills), PJ Harvey and Courtney Love has become my most-recent female rocker fixation. It's been hard for me to love any female musician too much, however, after the loss of my first love, Liz Phair. Oh Liz, Liz, Liz... what happened to thee?

Wish me luck.

New York, New York what a ... town

2005-03-02T12:26:00.000-05:00

New York City is a strange, little village. People come here from all over the world in search of the 'American Dream' or at least a piece of the pie. I moved here because, if one wants to be a writer, painter, or any other sort of artist, this is the place to be... well, that's the theory. Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Miami - these places all have loads of artists but most of the publishing industry is based in New York City. The proximity between the bottom and top is never so close as here. It is also the most aggravating place I've ever lived.

Yesterday, I had a doctor's appointment in Chelsea. Unfortunately, I wasn't gay or insured enough to be seen at this subsidized clinic so, after schlepping myself clear down there to be told I can't be helped, I needed a walk. So, I spent the next couple hours winding my way back and forth across the width of Manhattan Island and from 16th to 59th Street before descending into the Columbus Circle subway and retreating to my cave in the barren northlands of Inwood. It never ceases to amaze me at how big this city is. The diversity of humanity and ascention of buildings leave me over-stimmulated, turning in every direction and finding something new. I am always left either inspired or frustrated at the end of these walks and this one left me with both.

The most inspiring stop was at the Chelsea Hotel http://www.hotelchelsea.com/. I had walked past this building a number of times and had even harbored the vague desire to stay a night or two just to absorb a little ambience, but it's always been out of my price range. Old New Yorkers tell me that the two things that always used to be cheap in this city were hotel rooms and food. Now, it couldn't be further from the truth. It's incredible to think of all the great writers and musicians who lived in the Chelsea Hotel- Bob Dylan, Dylan Thomas, Arthur Miller, William Burroughs, Sid Vicious, etc. It's frigging ridiculous. I skirted the edges of Times Square and passed magnificent stage theaters, including the stage-to-screen adaptation of the Ziegfield Theatre. Despite the indignity of hosting a Keanu Reeves movie at the time, it's still a pretty cool place.

At the other end of the inspiration perspective, I walked up 6th Avenue and couldn't believe the number of high-end, apartment skyscrapers going up. Every block has at least two or three of these beheamoths with floor-to-ceiling windows that take up more square feet than my entire apartment. Who are these people, paying thousands of dollars a month in rent, or 7-figures to buy. I've never felt much envy for ostentatious displays of wealth, but Manhattan vividly illustrates the disparity between the haves and have-nots like no other. At least in L.A. they hide up in the Hollywood Hills.

When I crossed 42nd Street, the changes in the last year were huge. Almost the entire block between 6th and 7th Avenue has been bought up and levelled. Now, there's this tremendous view of Town Hall, but that'll be short-lived. One year and hundred stories later, Bryant Park won't be getting any sunlight. Most New Yorkers I know avoid Times Square like the plague. Any mention of going down there illicits that sucking, grit-teeth display of pain and sympathy. The density of oggling tourists and scammers gives the air that copper-scented tinge of danger. Every shouting match or near-fight that I've had in this city has come in, or near, Times Square. Some hustler inevitably mistakes me for a tourist and tries to fuck with me. My midwestern accent and loping gait must give off the scent of a sucker.

There's something invigorating about walking the streets, though. All that visual stimulation is like washing your entire body with Lava soap. It's abrasive, but it'll wake up parts of you that you'd forgotten were there. This loathsome city has lost more than a little of its romance and she's not shy about giving a good fisting, but somehow you still end up wanting to cuddle with her and join the club that had her and lived to tell the tale.

a little Credit in the straight world

2005-02-24T12:01:00.000-05:00

This is the last week of my unemployment. I don't have a job but I have finally succumbed to the grey, listless world of Temping. The day that I left my old job, I vowed that I would never return to the cubicle-and-fluorescent habitat of Administrative Assisted Hell... well, at least not in a non-arts business. I've really had it with temping. I have done it far to long. That 8 A.M. phone call from the agency, followed by the shuffling search for the street then office then supervisor then lackey-who-needs-help which takes you to the dirty looks as you check your e-mail in between mind-numbing re-ordering of files or answering telephones and talking to angry people because you're not the one they wanted to talk you then the awkward begging for lunch then more of the same then the mousy knock on the supervisor's door to get your timesheet signed so you can dial '9', pound the agency's number in the keypad and send off an official notice of where you wasted your existence for the last 8 hours. The aching in my right hand has risen to a slow growl... Damned that numeric keypad!

New York City is a unique world for the job-searcher. It seems as if every interesting job suffers from one of three ailments - nepotism, unionization or favoritism. Businesses can, and often do, suffer from all three ailments but at least one is present. Multiple family members work ticketing offices in the City. Nobody, not even the snob-arts up at Lincoln Center can avoid it. I know the value of unions. They're critical when you are dealing with corrupt and/or impersonal corporate interests. There are some places and some positions that have been saved from unions. New York, however, has taken many unions and turned them into art forms. Look, when some art grad grabs a job at Pearl Paint, the largest art supply store in the city, he/she isn't expecting to earn a fortune, but when the pay is $8/hour AND you have to plug in union dues, then somebody's earning something and it sure-as-shit ain't the clerks. Favoritism is an old acquaintance of mine. We go way back. I've stood on the outside looking in and I've even gotten a few gigs in L.A. based on the same criteria. For the entertainment industry, it's a way for a film/TV crew to get help that isn't gonna bitch and moan when they're pulling 16 hour workdays or getting screamed at by a spoiled producer. In New York City, it is often a way for semi-competent people to rise through the ranks of various professions without ever really getting any better at what they do. When you get into upper management, this is one of the best way to move around, especially if you can piece together good severance packages along the way.

I find it interesting how American culture treats the arts in such a dismissive manner, yet there is no shortage of people desperate to work in it. Finding any job in the arts requires extensive experience In The Field, significant salary sacrifices (which are exponentially-worsened in NYC) and a time-immersive availability that only an twenty-something, trust-fund single could ever hope to meet. Otherwise, how could a person really be fluent in Mandarin and Spanish, have at least 7 years of gallery experience and afford a $12-15 an hour job in Manhattan (don't forget that you need to be available nights and weekends :)). I've seen people working gallery jobs in SOHO and the Meatpacking District. They're not THAT skilled. All you have to do is sit in front of an iMac, look pretty and ignore anybody who doesn't look money enough to afford anything in the shop. My three years of film production experience, combined with my summer theater management experience, along with my 3 years of marketing analysis, and my playwriting skills pretty much add up to Jack-over-Shit. I guess that being a Renaissance Man only worked during the Renaissance... and only when there was affordable housing.

Bitch bitch bitch

Moan moan moan

...have I covered everything?... oh yeah-

Whine whine whine

As my girlfriend said, so effortlessly destroying the extended rationale of my last post, "Maybe you'll feel better about others when you feel like you are accomplishing something in your life."