the Wedding Day

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!

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on New Year's Eve

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.

Son Volt at South Street Seaport

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.

while Waiting for Macy's

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...

the collective experience of snow

Though it was touch-and-go for a while, I have miraculously survived the cataclysmic event known as BLIZZARD 2005. For hour upon hour, New Yorkers (as well as virtually everyone in the northeast) had the ability to watch the snow come down on no less than 6 network stations. It just feels so much more real when you can watch the white stuff coming down on network (and cable) television in addition to the event happening only feet away. Every channel had roving 'reporters' who pointed out the fact that it wasn't JUST snowing outside our window, but all over the New York/New Jersey area. I watched one reporter as he took a plastic ruler, walked over to a snow-plowed drift and announced that the snow was so deep he could lose his ruler trying to measure it... Then he stuck it in the snowbank and lost it.

A news report on the weather is the easiest slam-dunk-of-a-news-report on TV. Older people love to obsess over the weather both because the risk of falling is greatly heightened and... well, they just love it. My grandmother saved all of her calendars because she liked to record the high and low temperatures every day. For outdoors men, the weather is a big deal. My dad hunts and is constantly buzzing around his rural property so knowing the next day's weather can be a good idea. In addition, my parents live in the the middle of nowhere so a moderate snow storm can mean 24 (perhaps even 36) hours of inconvenience. People who might live on a remote mountaintop in Colorado can get stuck for weeks. Hey, I've seen The Shining - I know that extended snow storms can result in a dangerous bout of cabin fever. This, however, is NYC. Doing an investigate report in Chelsea to report on how 'disrupted' people feel is a management choice that, from a reporter's standpoint, should be reserved for public-access television (along with extended diatribes regarding Star Wars memorabilia and/or corporate police-states).

As the hours of live, satellite coverage began to pile upon one another, it became evident to me that something far different than the average news report was being conducted. I wanted to call it narcissism, but that felt simplistic. It isn't solely about being seen on the tube. If a neighborhood robbery, murder, or fire makes it to the local news, the entire neighborhood can feel validated. Events gain a reality. There's something about being near an event that gains attention outside the community. A person might show up for work the next day and when somebody mentions that they saw it on the news, an immediate street credibility goes to anybody who can claim relations. He can can say that he was there (or at least in the vicinity of 'there'), present during or around the time of the event. When a local event reaches the national news, you hit the Big Time on the Validity List. Friends and enemies from across the country learn of the event and relate it to you because you were THERE... or at least in the vicinity of 'there'.

What an inane report like the Chelsea incovenience report does is give a significance to life. That restaurant you went to 3 months ago is sitting in the background of the shot. That weird guy who works at the newspaper stand gets 2 sentences of fame as he talks about how pretty the snow looks. Your life experiences connect up with some larger, macro-experience that every schlump watching the local news might relate to and, thus, confirm.

I'm as guilty as any other American. When a student shooting happened in my college, science building, I raced home like every other soul and glued myself to the local and national news to see my moment in time get validated all across the country. I would sit in those dorm hall groups, talking about the incident and try to manufacture some story that might put myself somehow closer to the danger of the event. 'I just saw that student in the hall the week before.' 'I was supposed to have a discussion class on the second floor that night but our T.A. cancelled it at the last minute.' Never mind that I had never met the student in my life or that my discussion class was on Thursday and not Tuesday, when the incident occurred. The important thing was that I was CLOSE to it.

Why do we do it? Why do we watch ourselves? Is it because we just can't get enough of the things we've seen before or which never directly affect us? I keep thinking of a quote from Joseph Campbell on his PBS series The Power of Myth.

People say that what we are all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive... so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

With all the media I take in every day, I feel as if I am swimming through an manufactured reality. I have this constructed atmosphere of music I carry around with me. My computer games render abstracted realities of sports and first-person shooters. Film and television allow me to watch other people engage life in clearly-defined, tangible trails of narration. How can a person expect to process events of his/her life in any sort of present fashion? With jobs, debts, expectations, career tracks, and relationship commitments, how many rapturous moments of life do I experience? On the other hand, hundreds of times a year I vicariously experience it through rock n' roll, movies, games, and televised sporting events.

For those of us not listening to ourselves our fulfilling our needs, how unnatural is it to need our experiences to be confirmed and re-lived on T.V. - perhaps the primary place of our simulated raptures?

Pippin enjoys his First Snow