Out Of Tune

The Occupy Movement

2011-11-23T11:52:00.001-06:00

I know it is probably a little late to be chiming in about the Occupy Wall Street movement at this point but, what the hell, everybody and their mother has voiced their opinion about them at this point so I'll offer my two bits.

Last month my wife, our daughter and I marched with Occupy Chicago. We found, as I expected, a group of people who care deeply about the future of the world and the glaring economic inequity and the damage it has caused. I was proud to have my three-year-old daughter alongside of them. It is not my future they fight for, it is my daughter's.

A big dig at the movement I've heard from the right-wing media is that it is just a bunch of disgruntled young people. This isn't really true, there is representation from all age groups in this movement, though the leadership does seem to be heavy on a younger generation. But even if this was just young people, so what?

Who the fuck do you think makes real change happen in this world? By and large it is young people. Who was marching against the Vietnam war in the 60s? Who fought the civil rights battles alongside Martin Luther King, Jr? The reason we have so many of the leaders and participants of the civil rights movement still with us today is that they were so young back then. Julian Bond helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee when he was 20-years-old, led protests against segregation all through his early 20s, was only 25 when the Voting Rights Act of 1965 became law and began serving as a member of the Georgia House of Representatives at the age of 27. Stokely Carmichael, Diane Nash and the great John Lewis, other co-founders of the SNCC, were all of similar age. MLK led the Montgomery bus boycott at the age of 26.

Of course this movement is young people. This is what young people do. Our world has done its best to keep them distracted with gadgets, TV, video games, etc to make them as apathetic as possible, but they care about the future a lot more than we want to give them credit. Instead of dismissing them we should be thanking them.

And how can anyone put down a movement for being a bunch of disgruntled young people and then turn around and support the crazy crowd of screaming, angry, middle-aged white people that calls itself the Tea Party?

To the Occupy movement I say this: Stay strong brothers and sisters and screw those people that dismiss you because you're young. Keep fighting for your future and my kid's future.

And, at the risk of sounding like a condescending middle-aged guy, I'm so proud of you. The next generation is not full of nothing but those who have buried their brains in the world of iPods, texting and angry birds. Like I sometimes think.

You are beautiful and I love you.

And thank you.

Gas Whores

2011-08-09T15:56:00.001-05:00

A while back, around the beginning of the summer, I started to see postings on Facebook from many people complaining about the price of gas. One of the things I saw posted by a few people was a copied and pasted call to action for a one-day gas boycott. This little tidbit started off by claiming that "This worked when we did it last year..."

Which is, of course, complete bullshit. These stupid gas price protests have been floating around the Internet since I've known there was such a thing called the Internet. Not only is there no evidence to suggest that any of them worked, there is not even any evidence of a significant drop in gas sales on the day of the supposed boycott. But that's not even the point.

I commented on one of these posts put up by a "friend" (one of those people I knew for ten minutes in college who I never even thought about again until she "friended" me on Facebook). What I basically said was that she was wrong if she thought that "worked" last year and that in reality we have the cheapest gasoline in the industrialized world due to our government heavily subsidizing it through direct payments and tax breaks to oil companies, spending trillions of dollars on wars to keep friendly-to-the-US regimes in power and paying off those regimes with "economic aid." All to keep the oil flowing. So the true cost of gas is a hell of a lot more than we're paying for it in this country. I also suggested that a way to save money would be to drive less.

The reaction my points was amazingly vitriolic, from the person whose status I was commenting on as well as a bunch of her friends. She went after me for being someone who "doesn't" understand what it's like to have to depend on a car since I live in the "big city" (seriously, she called me a big city folk) and have access to public transportation but she doesn't. And she needs her car to do things like shop for groceries, pick up the kids and go to church. Why she made a point of telling me what she does with her car I'll never know, but I would tell her that skipping church would save you money in many ways and maybe restore some brain cells lost to the ignorance of faith in the process.

She also made some sort of reference to me being married to a rich doctor as to allude to the idea that I don't understand the struggle of regular folk. Comical comment seeing as how I lived below the poverty level for the entirety of my 20s and a good portion of my 30s, my wife has been an attending physician making real "doctor money" for less than two years (and I think a lot of people who know I'm married to a doctor have an exaggerated number in their head about what my wife makes that does not match reality) and the person making this comment is herself married to a quack...er...chiropracter.

Then I was called the "most negative person" she knows - despite that she doesn't really "know" me. The oddest thing about this was I was being called negative for pointing out that we Americans have got it pretty good and our fuel is pretty cheap considering the human, environmental and political cost. We have cheap, subsidized fuel that she was whining about being too expensive, but I'm the negative one?

Thing is, everybody who participates in this little exercise of bitching about the price of gasoline always say they don't have a choice, they need their car for everything they do and they have no way to cut down their driving. This is usually bullshit. Everybody has a choice. Especially middle class white people, who are always the ones bitching the most about shit like this. Even if you live in a tiny town without any buses there are ways to drive less.

How many times do people in suburban and semi-rural areas take car trips that are one mile or just a few miles? The kind of distance that can be taken on a bike in a fairly short amount of time? It just takes a willingness on the part of these corn-fed lard asses do climb on one and do it. But no, wouldn't want to that, it might require some energy.

This isn't about gas being too expensive. This is about Americans being being the laziest fucking people in the world who also don't have any sense of cause and effect. Gas cost what it cost because we use so goddamn much of it. Pretty straightforward economics involving the rule of supply and demand. We use such an insane amount of the stuff that the price goes up. If we used less the price would go down and you'd be saving money in two ways. and there would be better air quality to boot.

It is amazing to me that gasoline is really the only thing that people seem to be so hypersensitive about the cost. Where is the outrage over all of the things that cost a lot more than fuel?

I did a little looking up of prices of items that most of us probably use and many should be more crucial to your life than gas. I then figured out the per gallon price of these things. No, this is not an extensively researched list, I just checked the general price of some things on Peapod and figured it out. But look how much we are paying for some things.

Milk - $3-$4/gallon
Soy milk (what we drink in our family) - $6-$8/gallon
Ketchup - $9-$15/gallon
Bottled water - $9-$10/gallon (I'm also a fierce opponent of individual plastic bottles of water, but look how much you see people walking around with it and you don't hear a peep that it cost too much)
6-pack of Stella beer - $16/gallon (You can half this amount if you drink shitty beer like Coors, Bud or Miller and add a little more if you like good craft beers. I went middle of the road with Stella)
Pint of Stella at a bar - $35/gallon
Salad dressing or baby food or pasta sauce - $20-$40/gallon
Cheap shampoo (like Suave) - $20/gallon

And my favorite one is printer ink. If you ink cartridges new for your printer you are paying over $11, 000/gallon for ink! Even if you go the cheapest route possible, buying a refill kit that gives you bottles of ink that you then painstakingly fill the empty cartridges yourself, you would still pay over $700/gallon. Talk about something that is way more expensive than it should be. Especially if you look in to how much it cost to produce.

Look at that list and tell me that any of those things should cost more than gasoline. Why do we hear no bitching about the price of all this other - I would say more important - stuff?

Fact is, we are a country of gas whores. That would make the oil companies our pimps. And when you are a whore you have choices to make when your pimp starts slapping you around and taking all your money.

Stop being a whore.

Netflix Bitching

2011-07-20T15:34:00.001-05:00

I'm sure by now - even if you don't have a Netflix account - you've heard about the change in price structuring by Netflix. Basically they started charging separately for the streaming service instead of including it in your DVD subscription for free. If you want to keep your DVD/streaming package you have to pay quite a bit more a month. Though one of the things I didn't see mentioned by anybody was that if you only keep one or the other you actually end up paying less. But who cares about those details?

So began all the bitching and moaning on Facebook (and I imagine Twitter too, but I'm not on Twitter). I really couldn't believe how mad people seemed to be. You could practically hear the foam around some people's mouths. Lots of mean and nasty words for whoever it is that runs Netflix. But who's to blame, really.

Let me spell out how this whole thing came to be.

Netflix hits the Internet, offering a respite for people sick of the arduous task of walking a few blocks or driving a car to the video store. And for those people who find it impossible to return movies on time there are no late fees. Many people sign up despite the fact that they have local video stores nearby that do things like pay taxes to support the schools, fire firefighters and police in the area. After not too long the local video stores stop making money. A vast majority of them close down, despite there being a dedicated group of us that stick with them. Even big corporate behemoths like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster go under.

Competition thoroughly vanquished, Netflix is now a virtual monopoly in the movie rental business. What do monopolies do? They charge whatever the hell price they want for their goods and services, because where the hell else are you going to get those goods and services?

So to all those people that jumped on the Netflix bandwagon early on and are now complaining about them raising the prices, I say fuck you. You're the reason that I had to finally give in and join to begin with. I was perfectly happy walking to my local video store but now I have none near me thanks to you.

I'm not sure if it is people in general or just Americans (this is what I suspect) that have such a disconnect from cause and effect. I hear some of my friends who drive to work everyday bitch about how bad the traffic is and how it frustrates them, without even considering that traffic is so bad because they drive to work everyday! Everybody else is the cause but not them. I hear many lament the loss of book stores and music stores, but press anybody on how much stuff they purchased from Amazon (yet another company that doesn't pay sales tax - and has an army of lobbyists fighting attempts to change the laws so local business owners stand a fighting chance and to salvage decimated local government budgets) compared to how much they bought from the bookstore or record store - before they closed - and I bet I know what the answer is for a majority of them.

And don't think Amazon won't inch their prices up once they don't have the competition from Borders or Barnes & Noble anymore.

Think about this the next time you're ordering online instead of going down to your local shop. What is the result of the choice you make? And not just on you, but on our economy and world as a whole.

Oh, and quit complaining about paying too much for something that cost a hell of a lot less than it did ten years ago.*

*Do the math - if you watch more than five movies a month on the 2 DVD + streaming plan you are paying less per rental than you did at the video store back in about 2000 or so.

Peace Through Redneck Music

2011-07-07T14:35:00.003-05:00

I'm a huge fan of the Playing For Change project that was started a few years ago by music producer Mark Johnson. He recorded street musicians all over the world playing various parts of the same song and then put it all together to create these fantastic tracks of beautiful music. (If you've never heard of this watch the video that started it all, Stand By Me. Then go buy the albums) On top of the wonderful music, Johnson also used this project as a chance to raise money to build music schools in impoverished areas around the world. So, you know, he's an awesome guy all the way around.

I've heard him talking a lot in interviews about the project. One of the lines he always seems to use is something about the power of music making us a part of something bigger than ourselves. Certainly a romantic and poetic thing to say, but I always kind of thought it had a decent amount of hyperbole. As much as I love music it is just music, right?

Maybe it's not hyperbole.

A few weeks ago I went to the Old Town School of Folk Music for a show by Southern Culture on the Skids, a band I've seen several times. SCOTS is always a fun show. The Old Town School was the most unlikely venue for them, a seated space that also has some tables directly in front of the stage where lots of wine sipping goes on. Not anything like any of the other venues I've seen this usually raucous band.

On paper it seems odd that I would go see a band like SCOTS. No band may be prouder than their redneck Southern heritage. I grew up in the South but have vowed to never live south of the Mason-Dixon ever again. They like to throw fried chicken at the crowd during shows. I'm a proud vegetarian. They seem to have a fascination with both Mexican wrestling and car racing. I have a hard time thinking of two things I may dislike more.

But I do love this band anyway. Probably because of just how genuine they are. It's not really hillbilly shtick as some people think. They are just hillbillies.

This particular night had the strangest combination of people in the crowd. I got there late and was sitting on a bench in the lobby while the opening act was playing. There was a guy sitting next to me who asked if I had been inside. When I told him no he told me that he had to leave because the band playing was getting too political. "Why can't they just play music," he said.

I know there are a lot of people who don't necessarily like political music, but I find that people who walk out of a show because the band is being "political" do it not because they don't like political music but because they don't agree with the politics being expressed at that moment. I didn't say anything to the guy, I wasn't about to get in to it with anybody.

Beyond that guy we had a mix of rockabilly hipsters (think the Brian Setzer look), the middle-aged hippies that are a constant presence at the Old Town School, the aforementioned wine-sipping upper-middle class crowd, t-shirt wearing music nerds like myself, hillbilly hipsters who wear John Deer hats to be ironic and also honest-to-goodness real hillbilly types wearing John Deer hats because they drive John Deers on their farm.

I sat there watching the show with this diverse mix of people (OK, diverse mix of white people, let's be honest) and I was even more in awe of this band. As usual, the band invited people to join them on stage and dance. Middle-aged hippies were dancing next to rednecks in from the farm, t-shirt-wearing music geek was dancing next to ironic hipster, the school's young and perky go-go class instructor (seriously) was showing moves to a pre-teen farmer's daughter who was wearing a John Deer hat to match her dad's. Downtown upper middle-class mingled with rural working-class. Those with a taste for micro brews were shaking it with those who guzzle PBR.

Even better, I'm sure that liberals danced with conservatives and Christians danced with atheists. The way that we should.

They all helped with the traditional throwing of the fried chicken from the stage.

All this because of a band that plays the oddest mix of country & western, bluegrass, 1950s pop, 1960s rock, a weird take on traditional Hawaiian, psychedelic, rockabilly, easy listening, rhythm & blues and somehow all blended together with surf guitar.

It was obvious that there were probably more people in the room that voted for George W. Bush than in any other concert I've ever been to. I have no idea what SCOTS political leanings are, mostly because I don't think they've ever done a political song. They are about fun and if you don't want to have fun they are going to make you anyway.

Before playing the song "For Lovers Only" lead singer Rick Miller started encouraging couples in the crowd to put their arms around each other. Down at a front table was a rockabilly hipster with his girlfriend. Miller went straight to him and told the guy he should put his arm around her. The hipster wouldn't do it. Miller even stepped in front of the mic stand and got really close to the guy, pleading with him to put his arms around his date, telling him how pretty she was and, "don't you want to put your arm around her?" The guy still wouldn't budge.

The crowd got really quiet trying to hear what he was saying to the guy - since Miller was in front of the mic now - when there was a single voice that yelled out from the balcony. "For god's sake, put your arm around her!"

The crowd exploded in laughter and cheering, and rockabilly hipster guy finally put his arm around his date. May have been the loudest applause of the night when he did it. And despite his best efforts, for the first time all night the guy looked like he was having fun.

Southern Culture on the Skids strikes again.

What's Become Of Me?

2011-05-27T13:42:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure why I've been reflecting on my middle-aged self lately. Maybe the mid-life crisis is starting (oh my wife will be so lucky!) or maybe it's just that I look back at my life so far and then look at my daughter, recognizing that she has all of that to go yet.

I look at her at the age of 2-1/2 and it boggles my mind that she will some day be in her 20s, out of the house and living on her own. Possibly in a different city than her parents or even a different country. Hopefully I'm the kind of parent who will encourage her to do all the things I should have done when I was younger. Like strap on a backpack and travel the world. The last thing I want to be is stifling to my kid the way my mother was to me. Her life should be about her, not me.

I suppose I have hopes that she'll be doing more with herself than I was in my 20s. Don't get me wrong, I had a ton of fun in those years and I think I really found myself. But I spent a lot of time chasing a career as a theatre artist that, let's face it, I was amazingly mediocre at and had no real business thinking that it was what I could do with my life. Despite some decent success in my college theatre days I really should have figured out a lot sooner that I was never going to succeed in it. Would have saved me a lot of disappointed feelings over the years.

So I do hope that my daughter doesn't end up chasing a dream all through her 20s that she's just going to give up a quit in her mid-30s. Hopefully she has a lot of her mother, the doctor, in her. Maybe just a touch of me so she's not only working hard all the time and is having some fun. 80% Mom, 20% Da would be a decent mix.

Of course, trying to guess how my daughter's life will turn out is about the same as trying to beat the house in Vegas. It ain't gonna happen. Hell, trying to figure out how my own life will turn out is impossible. So many stages of my life I never saw coming.

I ended up living in Seattle at the age of 23. When I was 22 I had no idea that would happen. Seriously, even a year earlier I didn't see that coming. Being married and having a kid is a complete shock to me. I never saw myself having a kid. Lots of parents are the types who have been dreaming about the day they'd have kids since they were kids themselves. I got excited about being a dad about, oh, maybe a week before my wife gave birth. (Honestly, I think this makes me a better parent, not having a lifetime of expectations about what raising kids would/should be like). Scared shitless is what I was feeling the rest of the time.

So many things I never saw coming, like giving lectures and workshops to medical school faculty in Taiwan. I never even imagined visiting Taiwan and it turned out to be one of my favorite places. Living in New York, being on a game show, talking to Peter Buck in a bar in NYC, meeting a random Buddhist guy from Australia in an Indian restaurant in Cambodia and having a full night of grand conversation, the same thing happening with a singer-songwriter from Manchester in a bar in NYC.......

Life really can be a series of unexpected curve balls. And that's a good thing. Better that then how much of my extended family has lived their lives - living in the same town where they were born, never seeing any other place in the world beyond the Midwestern United States.

I was trying to look at my life the other day through the eyes of the 25-year-old me. A weird exercise if ever there was one.

I was giddy when we found an apartment that was right across from the Whole Foods, which made it my favorite apartment ever. Sleeping late on Saturday means getting to stay in bed to all of 8:00 (at 25, 8:00am was fucking early). Having post-it notes all over a computer monitor at work to remind me of things to do. Actually having a job that involves a desk and a computer. I wear ties to work. Daycare. Diapers. Parent-teacher conferences (yes, we've already had one of these). Hanging around playgrounds.

It dawned on me that the 25-year-old me would think the 40-year-old me was a big old loser.

But what does that slacker hippy stoner know? That dumbshit thought that buying a $50 bong with his credit card (without having the money to pay the bill) was the coolest thing ever.

When Technology Is Awesome (Instead Of Sucks)

2011-04-22T00:45:00.005-05:00

I'm not a technophile by any stretch. I'm not, despite what some of my friends might tell you, a Luddite either.

I love things like BitTorrent for giving me the ability to get hundreds of live shows from my favorite musicians. I hate texting - with its inherent passive-aggressiveness - and fact that everyone seems to just disappear in to their hand held device in lieu of actually interacting with people or maybe even reading a book.

I love that I can burn mix CDs instead of spend hours making a mix tape. I hate that iPods are ruining music and the way we listen to it. (And they are, don't even try to argue that point with me.)

I love Facebook. I hate Facebook.

The point is, I do love a lot of the technological advances and how they make our lives - or at least mine - better. I don't love it just for technology's sake like so many people seem to.

But there are some moments that happen as a direct result of 21st Century technology that make me just think, "Wow, this is so awesome."

I had recently fallen in love with a song on YouTube that I found due to a link from a singer-songwriter from Manchester that I met in Harlem one night. (Full story about that meeting here.) The song is Train Driver by a band called Becca and The Broken Biscuits, who are also from Manchester (I think). I really haven't been able to get enough of this song it is just so brilliant and catchy.

I've also been taking guitar lessons at the Old Town School of Folk Music the last year or so. I really wanted to learn how to play Train Driver. And because Becca has a Facebook page I was able to drop her an email and ask her to give me instructions on how she plays it. She sent me an email with some chord shapes, her tuning for the song and where she puts the capo. Then I took it to my guitar teacher who was able to translate guitar-speak in to something a bunch of amateurs could figure out.

So I got to fall in love with a song because of YouTube, by a Manchester, England band that really never would have had a way to share it with the rest of the world without already being an established act with a record label. I was able to get the songwriter to help teach me how to play the song because I was able to contact her through the internet.

None of these things could have happened fifteen years ago. How would I have ever heard a song that doesn't get played on the radio where I live? How would I ever have kept in touch with a random singer-songwriter from overseas that I met in a club one night in New York, for him to tell me about another cool artist? How would someone get in touch with a performer to ask them how they play their song?

Even better, after turning my guitar teacher on to this piece of music - he fell in love with it himself and told me he saw why I sought out Becca to learn how to play such a special song - and getting the class to learn it, I put up the video camera to record us playing it. I then loaded it on to YouTube and sent the link to Becca so she could see it.

Her response was beautiful. She loved that a group of people thousands of miles away learned how to play her song and said she was moved.

And the internet age had a lot to do with making it happen.

But at the end of the day it was still about human connection. No, I hold no odd delusion that Becca and I are now really good friends or something. We've never met in person, but she has been very sweet to a random fan who emailed her. And that's pretty cool.

But even though technology helped to facilitate this chain of events, it was at the end of the day about people connecting with people. Al Baker played a set of music in a club in Harlem that blew me away, I went up to tell him how much I loved his music, he joined my friend Joe and I at our table, I bought him a bunch of beers (I had won a bunch of money earlier that day on a TV game show - yes, really - and was celebrating) and he gave me his CD.

Al and I stayed in touch on email and Facebook, he eventually posted a link to Becca's video and I listened to the song over and over and over. I emailed Becca to learn the song, took it to my guitar class, my guitar teacher loves the song too, we share it with other students in the class and many of them really get in to it. Becca's YouTube hits almost double. (Though, to show what a stupid place the world can be, Becca's got a couple thousand hits compared to, say, Rebecca Black's gazillion or whatever).

We as a class then get the opportunity to show an up-and-coming performer how much we love one of her songs by playing it for her. Several people start asking if it's possible to bring Becca to visit the Old Town School. The whole thing warmed my heart and made me feel great about my fellow humans.

It's all about how we use our modern devices. Do we disappear in to our iPhones, never looking up to even see others? Do we spend twelve hours a day in a dark room playing online video games or ranting on message boards - or worse, comment sections of articles?

Or do we do something else? Something that makes us feel more connected, in a much more real way.

Below is Becca and The Broken Biscuits' Train Driver video, then the video I filmed and sent her. (Better to click the link at the top of each screen and watch in YouTube's site, these videos never fit on my blog page)

Parenting Oblivion

2011-03-18T13:16:00.000-05:00

I'm riding the bus to work yesterday (one of the downsides of moving to Chicago from New York is that I actually have to be on the bus instead of the subway a lot) and a guy gets on the bus with his daughter, who appears to be about five or six. They sit across from me, the little girl with her backpack on looking cute as hell. She sits there in silence, I'm reading my book and not really paying attention to anything else.

Then I look up at some point and see that the dad is listening to his headphones.

After parents smacking their kids, this infuriates me more than just about anything I see parents do. I mean, come on! You're sitting there with your daughter and you escape in to your own little world and don't interact with her at all? I do not understand this type of parent at all. Why have kids if you don't want to talk to them?

Now this was a young father it seemed. And certainly looked to be someone who is probably a lot less well off than me. So there is a very good chance that this guy wasn't really planning on having kids at this point in his life, was just liking having sex with his girlfriend.

But still, it happened. You have a job to do now. A big job.

I'll bet if you ask this guy if he's doing the things he needs to be doing as a father he would probably say yes. The little girl was clean and well dressed. She didn't look hungry. He was getting her off to school. Her basic needs seem to be well taken care of.

But there is so much more to being a parent, and it drives me batty when I see parents that don't get that.

I never, ever put my headphones on when I'm out with my daughter. I can't believe that anybody even thinks that's OK. How could you not want to have conversations with your kid when you are riding on the bus or train?

I know that my kid already has an advantage over this guy's kid just based on the condition she was born in to. My wife makes great money and we're white in America. I know that it will be easier for us. But I think that's why it so much more important for this guy to take a bigger interest in his daughter. When parents are involved kids do better in school and in life. A lot of these parents will also be the ones bitching about the quality of the schools in their neighborhood, and that's a valid point. But what are they doing to help? Don't they think their involvement makes a difference in how their kid does in school, how well they learn? I have my doubts that the kind of parent who listens to music and ignores their own child on a bus is the kind of parent that shows up for parent-teacher conferences and PTA meetings.

Yes, we should all have equal advantages, it is not fair that my kid has a leg up on his from the moment she was born. But the answer is not to just say "fuck it" and put on the headphones.

And I think that's what these parents are doing when I see them. Just giving up. Instead of talking to this amazing little person that they created, helping them to engage in the world around them, they'd rather shut themselves off from that world.

And along with it, their own kid.

What I've Learned - Year 2

2011-02-11T13:29:00.003-06:00

I've now been a father for over two years now and, as I did after the first year, I have some reflections on what I've learned. I actually accepted a job a few months ago, so I'm now a working parent instead of a stay-at-home dad. I'm not really sure if this affected my outlook and opinion of parenting or not. We shall see...

I'm pretty sure my wife and I are the only parents of a toddler who don't refer to ourselves in the third person. You know, stuff like, "Bring that apple to Daddy." I really expected I would start doing this even though it annoys the hell out of me, just because every parent I've ever seen does it. Thankfully I've never even felt the urge. We all hate anybody who refers to themselves in the third person in every other situation, why do we find it OK when parents do it? I really don't get why parents do this anyway. A one-year-old is perfectly capable of understanding the concept of me, my, you, yours, he, his, etc. At least mine is. Treat them stupid and they will be stupid, I say.

I think we are also the only parents that don't use cutesy names like PJs, blankey, boo-boo and the like. Another thing I don't understand about other parents.

Reading your kid the books you remember from your own childhood can be a double-edged sword as they may not be as awesome as you remember. Sure, those Richard Scarry books are just as cool as you remember. But when I read Curious George I got sick to my stomach. The man with the yellow hat is not George's "friend" as the books refer to him, he is his captor. He captured George as a baby and took him out of the jungle to the city. George is his monkey-slave. And this supposedly makes George happy? Evil, evil book. I can't believe our parents read that to us.

The original two Corduroy books, by Don Freeman (which were not a part of my childhood), are so fantastic I can hardly stand it. All the rest, written by different authors after Freeman died, are such complete pieces of shit I can hardly stand it.

After having been a stay-at-home parent and now being a working parent and can now say with certainty that being a stay-at-home is a lot easier. I know this isn't necessarily the most PC thing to say, but I've been on both sides. Let me just say this, my new job doesn't have a nap time.

I'm soooooooooo ready for the diaper years to be over. It's another one of those things that make me wonder why people have more than one kid. You want to extend the diaper years?

I laugh even more now than when I hung around sketch comedy actors/writers. And I hung around great sketch comedy people. Two-year-olds are fucking hilarious.

I'm so happy my daughter has decided to call me "Da" instead of "Daddy" or "Dad." I don't know why, maybe just because it is less common (outside of Ireland at least) and when I'm around a bunch of other parents I'll know if it's my kid calling me. Unless those kids at daycare start influencing her with that pedestrian "Daddy" stuff.

I'm so impressed when my kid does something new, like the first time she counted to three or when she made it all the way to ten. I know she's not like a super genius, smartest kid in the world or anything. But when you are hanging around a little human who can suddenly do something she couldn't do the day before it sure seems genius.

I know people call it the "terrible twos" (really a degrading thing to call a kid) but I like having a two-year-old so much more than a six-month-old.

CDs of popular or classical music that are rerecorded to be "for kids" are so utterly stupid. Just play Vivaldi for your kid, not the horribly simplistic and shallow version that Baby Einstein puts out. If you want to introduce your kids to The Beatles, then play them a Beatles record. What's the point of a lullaby version of The Beatles? To annoy everyone? These things seem to be more likely to make your kid a music hater.

You can raise your kid in a green(er) way. There are better options for diapers out there, you don't have to use chlorine-filled disposables. You also don't need to surround yourself with a house full of plastic shit. You have to lay down the law with your family and friends and risk offending/upsetting some of them, but you can avoid having nothing but plastic toys. When you ban plastic you get better quality toys anyway. We have also proven wrong all those people that said after we had a kid we would have to buy a car.

After being offered my job - I wasn't actually looking for a job when this all came up - I had less than a month to find a decent daycare for my daughter. I'm pretty sure I've never experienced a higher level of stress in my life.

I hear lots of parents say that raising a child is the hardest thing you'll ever do. I think these people have never done anything in their lives that is actually hard. Raising a kid is a cakewalk compared to just about anything else this side of being born an heiress.

I think I may have one of the most laid-back two-year-olds ever. Whenever she's starting to get testy and having a hissy, acting at her absolute worst, most other parents will react with, "Wait, that's her worst? Hell, that's nothing." So maybe it is just raising my kid that is so easy.

The most important thing I've learned is that I'm really goddamn good at this, being a parent. I know that seems smug and egotistical but I can't help it, I just am. I totally thought I was going to suck at being a parent. I feared it. But it turns out I am so awesome at it that I'm amazed by myself. Seriously, I have never been the most confident person about anything. I always questioned that I was a very good theatre director even when I was having success at it, and feel similar about what I do for a living now. But parenting? I'll go toe-to-toe with anybody. I try not be this way, I really do, because I know how annoying it makes me. But when I see most other parents in action I just can't help but think to myself, "What fucking morons."

Terrible, I know. I shouldn't be so mean toward other parents. I'm sure most of the ones I see are doing a perfectly acceptable job. Just not as good as me.

I really have never been as good at anything as I am at being a dad. I guess that's also why I know this isn't that hard. Because if I can be good at this...

Park Little Doggy

2010-12-29T16:25:00.001-06:00

It was in the news today that parking meter prices in Chicago are going up again. I say "news" but it isn't actually a new piece of information, it has been known for a long time what the parking meter increases will be each year through 2013, after which they will go up based on inflation. So it is not like there was a surprise announcement yesterday, it's just that the Chicago media is now talking about it as part of their year-end coverage to go along with all of their top ten (whatever) lists.

But the drivers are bitching nonetheless.

I've seen posts from several of my Chicago Facebook friends complaining about the hike, acting as if it is some sort of human rights violation to be charged five bucks an hour to park in the Loop and a buck-fifty in the neighborhoods.

I'm going to leave aside the issue of selling the parking meter rights to a private company for an upfront lump payment to the city. It was (another) wrong-headed move by Daley that will cost the city billions of dollars over the life of the 75-year contract while lining the pockets of a corporation that probably lined Daley's pockets and those of his crony pals. I do hope it is overturned in court.

But what most drivers in Chicago complain about is the cost of parking to them personally, not the cost of this deal to the city. To them I say:

Get over yourselves. Stop your whining you ungrateful brat. Damn, this country is practically paved over from coast to coast to make life as easy as possible for your pollution machine and it is still not enough for you. Do you realize how good you've got it and how cheap your driving costs really are?

First let's look at why high parking rates are good public policy. Talk to any person who specializes in city planning or traffic and they will tell you that high on-street parking rates decrease traffic congestion (something else you hate, even though you are the cause) and improve air quality. It's true. When meter rates are low compared to garage rates in the same neighborhood, drivers will circle around many times, slowly, looking for a spot on the street. This ties up traffic and puts more carbon in the air. More drivers would just pull in to a garage if they didn't see a street spot right away.

If anything, Chicago meter rates - as well as those of every other city in the U.S. - are still way too low. They should be raised to be higher than the average garage spot in the neighborhood.

It is not only by market rate comparisons that parking is too cheap. It takes money, taxpayer money, to maintain and repair those spots where cars park on the street. Even at $5/hour you are getting a good deal, and that free spot by your apartment is a FANTASTIC deal. Not only should meter rates be extremely higher than they are now, there should be no such thing as a free street spot.

You drivers are some of the most subsidized people in America and you still can't stop complaining about everything. Nine out of every ten transportation dollars in this country goes to you and your wasteful mode of transport. Your parking is subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Your fuel is amazingly cheap compared to the real cost - most oil companies don't pay any taxes and are even given tax subsidies, along with the billions of dollars it cost in military, diplomatic and espionage spending to keep American oil interests protected overseas to keep it flowing without interruption. And almost none of that shows up on your fuel tax, which is a pittance. If you were paying the real cost of your gasoline you'd be paying more than ten bucks a gallon. Instead, people like me who don't even own a car have to chip in so your lazy ass doesn't have to walk to the grocery store.

All this money invested in an amazingly inefficient mode of transportation. Meanwhile, transit systems get what amounts to chump change to operate on and are the first budgets to get slashed when there are money problems. The Chicago "L" has basically no more track miles - and less stations - than it had 60 years ago, despite the addition of the southwest-serving Orange Line in 1993.

You get cheap parking, and you complain. You have cheap fuel, and you complain. You complain about the traffic, which you cause. You complain about getting a ticket for parking illegally. You complain about the red light cameras, I guess because you think you should be allowed to run red lights with impunity. You complain about getting speeding tickets when you are, you know, speeding. (But I was only going ten over!)

You complain about the condition of the streets. You complain about the construction zones when they are fixing those streets. (And if you think the streets are bad in Chicago, you really haven't spent enough time on the woefully under-maintained sidewalks or ridden a bike on what laughingly passes for bike lanes).

You complain about the lack of snow removal from the streets. (Again, compare the streets to the sidewalks after it snows and then tell me which one gets more attention) You complain about the snow plows in your way.

Everything is done to make your life as easy as possible and all you do is bitch, bitch, bitch.

All the while you are polluting the air I breath. So to you I say:

Shut the fuck up already.

And get off you damn cell phone and keep your eyes on the road.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

2010-10-21T13:25:00.000-05:00

"I decided talking to a conservative is like talking to your refrigerator. You know, the light goes on the light goes off; it's not going to do anything that isn't built in to it. And I'm not going to talk to a conservative anymore than I talk to my damn refrigerator." ---Utah Phillips (1935-2008)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Pick up my New York Times from the hallway outside our apartment door this morning and start perusing the headlines before my daughter would wake up. First one I notice is an article titled, Climate Change Doubt Is Tea Party Article of Faith. I start reading the article and it opens with a scene of an incumbent Indiana Democratic congressman defending his climate bill vote in front of a hostile crowd full of people self-identified as part of the "tea party" movement. He calls global warming real and indisputable, just like the vast majority of scientists who know anything about climate.

He is showered with boos. This is the next bit of the article:

...including a hearty growl from Norman Dennison, a 50-year-old electrician and founder of the Corydon Tea Party.
“It’s a flat-out lie,” Mr. Dennison said in an interview after the debate, adding that he had based his view on the preaching of Rush Limbaugh and the teaching of Scripture. “I read my Bible,” Mr. Dennison said. “He made this earth for us to utilize.”

Seriously.

And here we have the fundamental problem with trying to talk sense to conservative Christians. Put the facts in front of their face, shower them with reason, use real data to make your argument and you will be wasting your time.

The liars that are Glenn, Rush, Sean, Sarah, et al; a 2,000-year-old piece of poorly written fiction. This is who they will choose to believe, this is where they get their "truth." These sources give them the narrative as they want it to be and that's good enough for them, no matter that it flies in the face of all common sense or what the actual truth might be.

This is how it is possible for Obama to be simultaneously a Socialist and a Nazi. How he is trying to make you enroll is big, bad, government-run socialized health-care and also take away your Medicare. How he wants to redistribute the wealth and is also the puppet of Wall Street bankers. they believe every one of these things about him, never mind that they are all contradictory of each other. I suppose that makes it just like believing in their bible.

They are stupid and they are very proud of it.

This country is fucked.

Screw Tolerance

2010-10-20T16:37:00.003-05:00

Things are heating up for gay rights issues in this country. "Don't ask, don't tell" is gasping at its final breaths and the issue of gay marriage is winding its way through the court system on its way to an inevitable showdown at the U.S. Supreme Court, and even if it loses there the next generation of Americans - the ones who are now in their teens and twenties - will legalize same-sex marriage anyway.

This is all great news, as the bigots - though it has taken way too long - are losing again. That is always a good thing. It has been, and still is, a long hard-fought battle for equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in America. We're winning the argument, us progressives, because, well, the argument on the other side is stupid.

There is one aspect to the argument that comes from the liberal side that I do have an issue with. It seems that since the 90s we have been urging people to be "tolerant" of the queers.

I say, fuck tolerance.

Gay is not something to tolerate and it sends the wrong message to the bigots and hate-mongers of the world.

I tolerate the asshole walking down the street texting who bumps in to me, instead of elbowing him in the face like I really want to do. Because in a civil society I need to resist those urges, even if someone deserves it.

I tolerate the moron on the subway listening to his headphones so loud that everyone can hear his music, instead of ripping his iPod out of his hands and crushing it with my foot. See above reason.

I tolerate conservative bible-thumpers, instead of stabbing them in the throat. Because there are too many too kill them all and it would be very messy and tiring.

The point is, you don't tolerate something that's not bad because there is nothing to tolerate. By using this word you are giving credibility to the bigotry. You are saying it is OK to think of homosexuals as sinners who are going to hell, but just be hush-hush about it.

Look, if two people enter a committed relationship with the intention of spending their lives together, regardless of their gender, it is either a) something to be celebrated and honored, or b) something to not give a shit about at all. Period. There are no other options. And you can switch back and forth between the two. I have friends and family that are answer "a" and others that are answer "b."

I'm not sure who decided on this "tolerance" mantra many years ago, and I wish I could find out what they were thinking. I suspect that comes from the left's own faulty tolerance. Specifically tolerance of fucked-up religious beliefs. Too many people on the left try to cling to their own religion that they go too much out of their way to respect the religion of others. So we ended up tip-toeing around their religion and the result is asking them for their tolerance. But in that process we give credibility to their dumb religious beliefs and we head down the road of respecting all sorts of asinine things, from polygamy to female genital mutilation. Where will it stop?

What we are supposed to say to these people is, "fuck your religion."

And there are only two real reason we have to make in our argument of why their religion should be fucked:

One is, your religion has nothing to do with what should or shouldn't be against the law in a secular nation. If you want to live in a theocracy go ahead and move to Saudi Arabia or the Vatican.

Second, I call bullshit that this is really about your religion, anyway. There are tons of things in the bible that you choose to ignore (like slavery or selling your daughter being just fine and dandy with your god) so why are you so hung up on this one? I know why, and it has nothing to do with your religion. It's because the thought of two dudes doing it grosses you out. (And let's face it, if only women were queer they would have been allowed to get married years ago, because even your most conservative born-again guy thinks two chicks getting it on is hot.) OK, maybe not all of you are grossed out by it. As we've learned from several militant "anti-gay" preacher-crusaders, some of you are turned on by it and it scares you.

But you know what? Just because gay guys can get married doesn't mean you have to have sex with guys. Or watch those guys have sex.

Hey, truth be told - and I'm sorry my gay friends - a couple of guys going at it kind of grosses me out, too. I thought maybe I was hipster enough in college and my years in Seattle in the 90s that maybe I could go gay or bi, but I just don't dig the fellas.

One night out at a bar in Seattle one of my gay pals planted a big old kiss on me, wet and sloppy with a tongue in my mouth. I acted all cool about it, but in the back of my head I was thinking, "Yuck! Gross! Ewww!" Just wasn't my thing, you know? It certainly affirmed that I'm straight, no question. (I later told said friend that I didn't enjoy it and he never tried to do it again, and we stayed friends. Just like I would do with a girl I was friends with but not attracted to.)

But just because I didn't dig it why would I try to stop him from sticking his tongue (or dick for that matter) down the throat of some guy who does? Why would I care? I was never in to black girls either - just never had any attraction to any - but that doesn't mean I should want to stop other white guys from hooking up with black women.

People have incredibly varied sexual and relationship preferences - an infinite amount, really - gay, straight and bi. They don't have to be in to the same thing as me for me to be OK for them to exists, or even be friends with them.

People are attracted to who they are attracted to, for reasons they only have to explain to themselves, and that's a beautiful thing. To try to keep them apart is such an asshole thing to do. It's as stupid as hating people for being left handed.

So fuck tolerance. As the bumper sticker I saw years ago said, "I don't tolerate differences, I celebrate them."

I think we need less tolerance in the world. Specifically, we need to stop tolerating people who use an over 2,000-year-old piece of fiction as an excuse for a pass on their fucked up bigotry.

I will never, not ever, tolerate them.

Put That On My Tab

2010-10-06T15:05:00.002-05:00

I like a good bar.

Scratch that. I LOVE a good bar.

There are very few places I'm happier than a great bar. Give me a nice wood bar counter, a stool (preferably with a back), a hip and talkative bartender who knows how to pull a draft just right, decent and varied beer selection, tasty pub grub, a good jukebox, some friendly and interesting folks sitting at the bar and, for good measure, a small stage for music and I'm as happy as can be. The best bars have no TVs but that's not a deal breaker. So many bars have TVs these days that it can be hard to find one without them.

One of my favorite things about going to bars has always been striking up conversations with other people sitting at the bar. I just love being able to chat with other people sitting there drinking beer. A bartender that you can talk to is also essential. This is why I hated living in Boston so goddamn much. In three years not once was I able to chat up a bar patron or bartender. Hell, bartenders in Boston are such assholes (and apparently don't care about their tips) that I've sat at a bar in that town for up to ten minutes with an empty beer glass in front of me before I finally get asked if I want another. The TV show Cheers was such a fucking lie.

The best thing, though, is when you are talking to someone and when the bartender brings your next round somebody says, "I got this one."

Now, being bought a drink in a bar is never about getting a free drink. Unless you are a total dick you will end up picking up just as many of the rounds as the other guy. Or if the other person just really insist on picking them up. That happened to me on a train ride from New York to Chicago last year. I shared a table in the cafe car with a young lawyer going from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh who kept buying every round of the Sam Adams and wouldn't hear of me paying for any of them.

But for the most part it is not about getting some free drinks. No, what is nice about picking up rounds is that you are saying to the other person, "Hey, I'm enjoying hanging out and talking to you so I want you to stick around."

I know it may sound goober-istic and hokey, but there is something beautiful about that kind of basic human connection that often seems to only be able to happen over alcohol. I once heard the conservative columnist David Brooks theorize that the reason there was so much antagonistic animosity between the political parties in recent years was because people in Washington didn't drink together anymore. Not my favorite guy in the world, but I thought he made a great point.

While these kind of connections may not be good for the liver, they do seem exceptionally good for the (for lack of a better word) soul.

And they can happen without warning in the most unexpected places.

I was in Poughkeepsie, NY one night with a few friends for a Wilco show back in 2004. Four of us were walking around looking for a bar in downtown Poughkeepsie to go to before the show, not wanting to hang out in the line for several hours like the other Wilco geeks. My friend Noam was one of the four and he was going to school in Poughkeepsie at the time, but Vassar kids don't actually go to the bars in town so he knew nothing about any of them. Those Vassar kids are a confusing bunch.

The four of us walked up around the corner from The Chance Theater, where Wilco was going to be playing and came upon a nondescript bar with big windows in front. It was fairly well lit inside and we could see people shooting pool and a good amount of the crowd inside. It appeared that every person in the bar was black.

"We HAVE to go to this bar," said Ronen, a guy that I had met in Boston through the Wilco message board, ViaChicago.

Now remember, we're in town to see Wilco, a band that competes with OK Go, Radiohead and The Flaming Lips for title of World's Whitest Rock Group, with fans to match. And the four of us were no exception, despite my buddy Noam's love of hip-hop. He's still an Upper West Side Jew.

So we grab seats the bar. Oddly enough, with a bar full of black people, the bartender looks pretty rednecky, even sporting a mullet. We order four beers and the girl with us, a friend of Ronen whose name escapes me, says she'll get the first round. The bartender says, "That's six bucks."

She replies, "I've got all four."
"Yea, that's six bucks," he says.

I loved this bar immediately.

So we're sitting there chatting and most of us are getting close to the bottom of our first mug of beer when the bartender comes over and puts four shot glasses upside down in front of us. What the hell? We all kind of look confused at the bartender and he tells us that the next round is on the guy at the end of the bar (the upside down shot glasses were markers for the bartender to keep track). We look down to the end of the bar and there is a black man probably in his late 50s or early 60s sitting there, wearing a suit and hat combo that can only be pulled off by older black dudes. Made me think of Lightnin' Hopkins in his later years.

Guy raises his cocktail to us and we raise our beers back to him. He then came over to talk to us. Told us that he wanted to buy us a drink because out of "all those white kids going to that concert" we were the only ones who came in to that bar. "Kids" being a relative term I suppose, I was 33 at the time. He thought that was cool of us. And it was true, there was nobody from the Wilco crowd in this place and it was practically spitting distance from the club. I don't think there was a closer bar.

He stuck around our side of the bar and we had a grand time talking to him. Eventually we would have several of the bar's regulars hanging around with us, shooting the shit. Just about all of them asked us who we were seeing that night and responded with, "Who's Wilco?"

I'm pretty sure that at least three other guys in the bar that night bought our rounds and I know the bartender himself treated us to two. I don't think I spent any money before we left for the show.

(A humorous side story to this night - The only other white person in the bar besides us and the bartender was this middle-aged woman who totally fit the description of "barfly" and was all over Noam, who happened to be all of 19 at the time but had a fake ID. She was in to him in big way, to the point where I think she even tried to get him to go to her place.)

We were having such a great time there that we skipped the opening act and barely made it to the club for Wilco's opening song.

One of my favorite nights ever in a bar. We made just an amazing human connection with a really nice group of people. And yes, the result of that connection was being completely shitfaced by the end of the night. But I think you'd be hard pressed to think of another place besides a bar where such a thing would happen. I doubt the night would have been as fun or social if we were in a coffee house. Would anybody have bought us a latte?

There's something about a bar. It is a beautiful thing. Especially when somebody else is buying.

Awake And Sit

2010-09-29T16:26:00.002-05:00

I was talking to my sister last weekend about random things and, being parents, (my sister has two kids, both older than my daughter) we got to talking about child-raising.

I mentioned to her that my daughter still sits or stands in the bed, waiting for my wife or me to come get her, after she wakes up even though she's not in a crib anymore and can get out on her own anytime she wants. It has been several weeks since we switched to the toddler bed and I told my sister I couldn't figure out why she still waits for us instead of getting out of bed to come find us.

My sister said to me, "Don't question it. Just LOVE it."

A Death In The Family

2010-07-13T15:15:00.002-05:00

Last week I found out, through Facebook no less, that an old friend from college died. He was only 42-years-old, less than three years older than me. It was a shock to everyone who knew him. I had only just reconnected with Tim a couple of months ago, surprisingly it was not through Facebook but at a gathering of fellow theatre alums from our school at a bar in Chicago. I hadn't seen him in probably around 18 years and it was fantastic to be in touch with him again.

And then he was gone.

Even though I had just seen him for the first time in that long and we were only keeping up through Facebook, I was really thrown by the loss. Lots of thoughts went through my mind about it. I thought about my friends who were much closer to Tim than me and how devastated they must be. I remembered the noose that I wore around my neck for about two years during college - Tim tied it for me out of stage tie-line (he was a "techie") - that just seemed to fit perfectly with my personality and weird sense of humor. I thought about what a huge (Tim was one of the biggest, most imposing looking guys I've ever known) teddy bear and gentle soul he was. He really did seem to be the definition of "gentle giant" to me. I remembered how Tim would be the first person to talk to me when I entered a room full of fellow majors in my early days there and I always just kind of hung against the wall by myself (I tend to wait for others to talk to me first, a shyness that often comes across as aloof asshole). I also couldn't help but think this was further proof that belief in karma is such bullshit. That a kind soul like Tim would be taken away from this world while the likes of hate-mongers such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh walk among us and make millions and millions of dollars pushing their vile agendas.

I also thought about my family.

No, not my blood relatives. I thought about those who I in many ways consider my real family. My college theatre family.

I majored in theatre in college. I would guess that a theatre department is different than other departments when it comes to the amount of time you spend with your fellow majors. Between being in classes all day and then rehearsals all night there was not much other time for the usual social stuff that most college kids get involved with.

We had classes together, rehearsed shows together, partied together, played Frisbee together and lived together. Once we even had to mourn together as we lost one of our little sisters to a car accident in one of my later years there.

I arrived at school as a young man desperately wanting to escape family life. My childhood was not a good one. I didn't expect that I would find a family of my own at college. But for me that is what happened. My closest friends from school are like brothers and sisters to me. Others are like cousins. There were grad students in my early years who were like having cool aunts and uncles or older brothers and sisters around. The kind that got you high for the first time and bought you your beer. A role that I would eventually play for somebody else. We even had our occasional crazy uncle that sometimes made everybody feel uncomfortable at parties and could clear a room. But even that was OK and made our family more colorful.

Of course, for this family analogy to work you need to kind of overlook the fact that a lot of us were sleeping with each other. Or then it just seems creepy.

There are many in this family that I've reconnected with over the last couple of years because of Facebook (the main reason I joined) which has made me happy as hell. Some I hadn't seen or heard from since I graduated 16 years ago - before everyone had email and permanent cell numbers - others I had only lost touch with in the last few years as I kept moving around. Of course there are the several that I've never lost touch with, my brothers and sisters. But it didn't seem to mater how long it was, I feel as connected to them as I did when I was 20. Maybe even more so.

Yes, I've made some fantastic friends over the years since college ended, friends that I cherish.

But there is something about my college family. If I were called to help out any of them who needed it I wouldn't hesitate for a second to do what I could, even for the ones that I don't really even like all that much. I guess that's why it is like family to me. In fact, I can only really think of two off the top of my head I wouldn't be there for. There's the lying thief who stole from pretty much all of us at one point or another. Seriously, if he was ever in your house he probably took something of yours at some point. And the rapist who attacked two of our sisters. I still hope he bleeds to death, very slowly, after getting his penis chopped off.

But anybody else? No question I would do anything I could for them. I have real, blood-related cousins that I wouldn't cross the street to piss on if they were on fire. But for this family? Anything and everything.

I looked at Tim's Facebook page the last few days as people wrote him messages, his profile having been turned in to an odd modern-age memorial. All of the beautiful things people were saying about him, mostly remembering his kind heart. It made think hat might be said about me if I were to go suddenly and before my time. I had this fear my Facebook page would become this bizarre collection of quotes that went something like, "So long Deni, hope you are less angry wherever you are."

Or, "You were kind of an asshole but we loved you anyway."

Even worse of course would be, "Good riddance jackass."

These thoughts made me consider if I've done enough to convey all that wrote above to those who should know it. Just like a real family, we often forget to tell them how much they mean to us. I may be more guilty of that than most people.

If there can be a silver lining to Tim's untimely death - something I don't think can always be found in such tragedy - it will be making me be better at this. Not just for my college family, but for everyone in my life that I should show more appreciation.

Starting now.

Twits Of Fate

2010-06-29T15:22:00.002-05:00

I imagine most of you have heard about the couple who discovered right before their wedding that they happened to be at Disney World on the same day as young children and that he was caught in the background of a picture of her with a Disney character. It was covered by several media outlets on TV, in print and online. They met for real fifteen years later and then discovered the old picture. They then knew it was fate that they ended up together.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Damn people can be so retarded. I am, despite what some people think about me, one of the most hopeless romantics in the world. I still get all weepy and get goosebumps from watching the Before Sunrise/Sunset movies, I blubber when Anne and Gilbert end up together (finally) in Anne of Green Gables, I get a lump in my throat at the end of Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming when Grover has that great line about wishing he and Jane we're already that old couple. Hell, the reason I loved john Hughes' Some Kind of Wonderful so much more than Pretty in Pink is because the guy ends up with the cool drummer girl at the end - the one he's supposed to end up with. I love this stuff in my movies and books. I'm a big old softy, romantic dork. But I also know it is fiction.

There is no such thing as "fate," nothing "happens for a reason," things do not happen because of "destiny" and nothing is "meant to be." Life is a series of random events and people that come in and out of your life by complete happenstance.

I so often hear people say they don't believe in coincidences. What the hell? So you don't believe in coincidences, a more likely explanation for most situations, but you believe that it has something to do with the stars aligning or the universe is conspiring to influence the tiniest of events in your life? Seriously?

Coincidences happen. Sometimes they are bad, sometimes they are good (also known as happy coincidences). But fate? Not very bloody likely. Haven't these people ever heard of Occam's razor?

You know, my wife and I dated the first time when we were 17 and 18, respectively. I happened to have extra tickets for an REM show, she happened to find out through someone else and buy one from me, her friend Jessica happened to call me too late to get one for herself, I happened to offer her a ride to the show since she was going solo. Had her friend gotten a hold of me earlier I may have never been smitten with the cute girl with the wet hair who answered her door and may have never talked to her the whole night and then asked her out later.

Does that mean we were meant to be together? No. It means that a girl I found very attractive was in the same place at the same time as me and she liked me too. It also means nothing that we were teenage sweethearts who ended up together again. It just worked out that way.

I just don't buy in to the idea that she's "The One" for me. Had we not ended up together I may or may not have ended up married/together with someone else. Who knows? I have a hard time imagining that I could have ended up with someone else, but that doesn't mean my wife is the only person it could have possible happened with. Lots of people are now divorced from their "One." Hopefully we'll celebrate our 50th anniversary together some day and we'll chalk it up to love and respect, not some magical joojoo that brought us together.

I don't begrudge this couple their fun story. It is an interesting coincidence, one that probably made great fodder for the best man at the wedding to make an inappropriate joke about during the toast (I would have gone with something about their first three-way involving Smee).

But did it need to be a news story? That's the problem with the media and why people continue to buy in to stupid shit like this. ~~An air-headed bimbo~~ Jenny McCarthy is given free reign to promote her insane anti-scientific vaccine agenda, ~~con men~~ psychics are treated with legitimacy (or have their own shows like John Edwards) and ~~schizophrenics~~ the faithful who see Jesus in a block of Swiss cheese are taken seriously.

No wonder people will believe this stupid shit.

(And for those of you wondering, yes, I did do this whole post just because I wanted to use the title I made up when I first saw this story. It made me snicker.)

Newest Musical Obsession

2010-05-25T01:09:00.000-05:00

I went to a show Sunday night to see a band that I've been wanting to see for years now, Asylum Street Spankers. I am so glad I finally got to see them. I first heard them a few years ago, late to the game I was for a band that's been around since about 1994. I had heard that you couldn't truly appreciate them until you had seen them live. I've heard that said about a lot of bands over the years, but I don't think it as ever as true as it is for this band.

To see an Asylum Street Spankers show is an amazing experience. What an incredible collection of musicians who seem to truly love what they do to scrape out a living. It is an absolute treat to watch people that good at what they do ply their craft.

It's not just that they are great musician. The Spankers have wide ranging influences in the great busker tradition that is at the very roots of this band. To see them play is like seeing the history of American popular music unfold before your ears, running through, in no particular order, jazz, country, folk, Delta blues, pop, New Wave, rock and even a little hip hop. And the it all gets run through a vaudevillian blender. And washed down with PBR.

Brilliant band. If they are playing anywhere near you, do yourself a favor and don't miss the chance to see one of the best bands you've never heard.

Evan Kremin - A Gift That Keeps On Giving

2010-05-19T12:30:00.003-05:00

A few years ago, about 3-1/2 in fact, I wrote about a band I saw in New York shortly after I moved there. They were called the Evan Kremin Band. It was one of the most laughable things I've seen on a rock club stage in my life - and I lived in Seattle in the 90s with all the Nirvana-wannabe bands, so that's saying something.

So I went home and wrote a blog post ripping Evan Kremin, his horrible music and his inflated ego. Eventually I got a few comments on it from people that were googling him on the internet and came across my post. I responded to one, somebody who is one of his friends went off on me for bashing his buddy. Turns out that nobody else has ever written anything about the guy before so my pithy opinions about Mr. Kremin are pretty easy to come across on the web.

Since then I have gotten a few more comments on my original Evan Kremin post, due to the fact that my blog comes up third if you search for him on Google, with his Myspace page taking up the first two slots.

At the end of 2008 (more than two years after my post) I got this one (from "Anonymous"):

Mr.Tool "insert man-meat here"

Well, I've met a number of individuals like you in my life - quick to judge and make fun of somebody, but lack the BALLS or any TALENT what-so-ever to even attempt ANYTHING EVER, themselves.

You're a fucking idiot who probably has a 0.5" wonder (is that a pimple?) and cannot play any musical instrument and has had no real long-term relationships.

I'd LOVE to bump into you at an Evan Kremin show (who I've scene many times - he can play his ass off)....I'll stomp your little faggot ass!

This one has to be my favorite. Yes, Mr. Anonymous, the reason I don't like Evan's music is because I'm a "faggot" and have a small penis. You've "scene" right through me.

That was pretty much the last one (so I thought), and I hadn't even thought about Evan Kremin in forever. 'Cause, you know, why would I?

Then a couple of months ago I got three comments on it in two days, which seemed weird. Someone had been Googling his name and found my blog. And then either this someone, presumably a friend of his or even Evan himself, told a couple of his other friends about it or maybe even just posted separate comments and pretended to be other people. In any case, the comments came from (according to the IP addresses) the same area of New York that I basically just think of as North New Jersey. If you gotta take NJ Transit to get there, it's New Jersey.

Here they are. And keep in mind, I wrote this original post three-and-a-half years ago:

First of all, I do know that if those were his parents then I do truly believe in "miracles from above" (excuse the cliche) I guess your parents never taught you to think before you speak.

Now, for the real issue. You're abviously entitled to your opinion as far as his music. What I don't understand is how the heck you can judge a person's personality being you've never even said "hello" to him? I know you're obviously not a psychic based on the fact you thought his parents were there.

I know Evan for many years now. Besides the fact that I LOVE his music; he is a great, smart, and very funny guy. I'm a better person for knowing him, and did I mention that he's funny? He enjoys playing his music and probably couldn't care less about your critique, however I felt obliged to respond. Guess I had too much time on my hands.

As a matter of fact, he's playing on Saturday night (3/6/10) at the "Bar East" on 1st between 89th & 90th. If you have any bit of good in you, you should at least show up and introduce yourself. I bet after meeting him, you'd actually realize you were wrong about him...(I assume you could admit fault being you had the balls enough to write what you did in the first place.)

Go Saturday night, I dare you.
Or...are you just one of those people who's so insecure
about yourself you just hide behind a computer screen??

Ooooh, do you double dog dare me? OK, so if those weren't his parents, they were his wife's parents.

And no I'm not a psychic, due to the fact that psychics aren't real, but when you read his Myspace page (as I pointed out, and quoted) you can see very clearly where my observations about his ego come from. And seeing him perform on stage tels you a lot, too. He thinks he's a rock star. He's not.

And despite the fact that seeing Evan live had me cracking up for days about it, once is enough. I'd much rather be forced to listen to Poison's Every Rose Has It's Thorn a hundred times in a row than see an Evan Kremin concert again, which is saying a lot since I consider that song to be possibly the worst song in the history of American popular music. Though I do encourage everyone else to check him out at least once. It is fascinating to see a Christopher Guest movie in real life.

Later the same day, I got this one:

This blog was just brought to my attention.

Dude, I feel bad for your daughter. I hope your wife is teaching her a better value system and what life is supposed to be like. The last thing we need is another angry person like you in this world.

By the way, I met Evan a couple of years ago. That guy can sing!! He's also probably the most humble person I have ever met.

You've got him totally wrong. I hope you're not a music critic for a living. The industry would really suffer from people like you.

Dude, nobody feels as bad for my daughter having to have me as a dad than me. She'll be lucky to have therapy only once a week when she's an adult. But my crappy blog has nothing to do with that.

Seriously, you think I might be a music critic? I'm flattered, I guess? But really, if I was a music critic wouldn't my little rant have actually appeared in a publication? But it really is a sure sign of just how shitty his music is that my blog is the only thing that comes up on the internet where anybody has written anything about him. Obviously, no real music writer even thinks he's good enough to slam. That's pretty bad. I did it because I thought that night was hilarious and I couldn't believe I'd actually witnessed it. The comments I've gotten off it made me really glad I did. But you shouldn't expect a real music critic to write about him. For that, they would have to actually acknowledge it as "music."

Finally, a couple days after those last two:

I've known of Evan for years as a rocking Bleeker Street performer as well as a musician in other people's bands and even on Broadway. Your blog entry was a little weird to read, knowing Evan's talent. Sad how some people can't find anything positive to do with the amazing tool the internet has become. I do hope you will find a more important calling in life.

You hope that I find a more important calling in life than yammering away on my personal blog? Shit man, so do I. So do I.

Now I've pretty much figured it is even odds that Evan himself has left at least one of these comments. But I guess we'll never know. But I am pretty happy to have the excuse to make fun of him again.

Parenting 101

2010-04-20T11:09:00.001-05:00

I was talking on the phone with my mother yesterday, something I generally try to avoid as much as I can because it is just never a good idea. But sometimes it has to be done.

Ever since I became a father she likes to try to have conversations about raising kids or sharing some sort of story from my childhood as an example of her good parenting skills. My mother and I have very disparate opinions of these supposed skills. But she thinks that we can bond over shared stories of child-rearing now that I have my own little offspring to screw up.

Yesterday she asked me about my daughter's sleep habits. She asked if we put her down in her crib to fall asleep on her own (we do), what time (7:30), how long she naps (1-2 hours), etc, blah, blah, blah. She then proceeds to tell me how she just let my siblings and I go to bed whenever we decided we wanted to go to bed. So when I was less than two-years-old I would stay up until 10:00 or 11:00 in the evening. She said this with an amazing sense of pride, like she was the cool mom who didn't run her kids' lives with a bunch of stiff rules or rigid structure. Right on dude.

What the fuck? Look, I know that back when my mother became a parent that there was a lot of bad information out there and a lot less research than there is today. But she let me go to bed whenever the hell I wanted? You've got to be kidding me. It doesn't take a goddamn rocket scientist to figure out that having a consistent bed time helps your kid develop good sleep habits, not to mention some decent sanity for the parents. I didn't need one of today's baby books to tell me that.

And this makes so much sense. I have some of the absolute worst sleep habits of anybody I know. I stay up to late, I sleep as late as I can (which of course isn't very late now with the kid) and I generally don't sleep enough, which is pretty unhealthy. I have an incredibly hard time making myself go to sleep at a decent hour. Would I have turned out differently had my mother maybe done a little bit better job of giving me a decent sleep structure? Well, maybe not. But we'll never know.

And for the record, I don't believe for a minute that her doing this was some choice based on a particular philosophy of parenting. My mother was not the "cool" or "laid back" parent in any way shape or form. She ruled the house with an iron fist, a big yardstick and fear. It is much more likely that she was too lazy and stupid to deal with getting a reluctant kid to go to bed, so she let it go.

This is surely one of the least horrible things my mother did (or didn't do) as a parent. But still, she couldn't even establish a fucking bedtime? Shit, I got whacked on the head for singing at the dinner table, she couldn't get me to bed at an appropriate time?

After we found out my wife was pregnant I thought a lot about parenting styles and philosophies and I came to a basic conclusion on what would make me a good parent. Just think of everything my mother did and do the exact opposite.

Lots of people I tell that to think it's a joke. But that thinking has served me well thus far.

I guess I did learn how to be a good parent from my idiot mother.

Some Days Remind You Why You Bred

2010-03-23T20:47:00.002-05:00

Rushing to get to the Lake Street stop on the Red Line today, get through the gate and carry the stroller down the stairs only to see a northbound train pulling away.

SHIT!

The Chicago Transit Authority has had some major service cuts that went in to effect last month, so I know this is going to be a long wait. Off-peak hours were the worst hit, of course, and as a stay-at-home parent that's when I'm out and about. We had our kid's music class, the Wiggleworms, at the Old town School of Folk music today.

It's times like this I really, really, really, REALLY miss living in New York. I waited ten minutes for the next train, and when I transferred to the Brown Line after we emerged from the subway to the El I waited even longer than that. Seriously, a major city with a population of three million people, waiting that long for a metro in the middle of the day is (I really want to say inhumane but I know that's whiny and dramatic) really ridiculous.

After we got on the Brown Line train, which was crowded as hell, a couple gave up their seats in the handicapped area for my daughter and me. This was a first since I've been living here. For those of you not from Chicago, the wheelchair area is the only real spot in the tiny train cars they have here (another major reason to miss New York) whee you can have a stroller without blocking, well, everything. So it was really nice of them. And it was a young couple listening to an iPod together, so completely against stereotype.

Besides that one nice thing, I'm really frustrated and stressed. I'm worried we'll be late and the train is more crowded than it should be.

But since those nice people gave up their seat for me I can take my daughter out of her stroller and have her on my lap, in the seat next to me or standing on the seat looking out the window. Her choice, of course.

She stands and looks out the window. Every time another train goes by she points at it and squeals with delight. I don't know how to write it down other than she says, "Daaaeeeeeeeeeee" in a really high pitch. But that doesn't really do it justice.

Now, of course, this makes me happy on one level because I'm a big train geek. But I harbor no illusions that the fascination of a kid less than a year-and-a-half old will mature in to a shared hobby with Dad.

But we were having such a great time. I was laughing and other people around us were smiling, people she was saying "hi" to between trains. I was, as well as some of the other people on the train, seeing the world through her beautiful and wonderful eyes.

There are certainly times when I am really frazzled and need a damn break, which I took a few weeks ago when I escaped down to my old college town (thanks Honey!) to hang out with one of my oldest friends and basically stay drunk an entire weekend.

But most days I get this kind of reminder of just how lucky I am to get to hang out with my kid every day.

And I think it makes me just a little bit less of the ass hole that I'm pretty sure I am.

Sling This

2010-03-16T22:50:00.002-05:00

There was a really annoying article in the New York Times last week. One of those articles that you can't fathom why it made it in to the New York Times. One of the real writers (as compared to me, a pretend one) over at the Dad Wagon blog touched on how annoying this was, too.

Basically, the NYT thought it a good way to use their time to write an article about the "new trend" of using baby carriers instead of strollers. There are a few quotes of hippy-dippy parents bashing strollers, calling them "isolation pods" and trumping up stats about "babywearing" making your kid "smarter, calmer, more attentive, less colicky and more likely to develop healthy sleep habits than their counterparts in strollers."

Bullshit.

No study is cited in that claim of course, because it is one of those claims that only has activist-based pseudo-science behind it, similar to the thoroughly debunked claim about breastfeeding leading to higher IQs.

Look, I get the hating stroller thing, I really do. I hate mine. I want to lose this thing so damn bad and can't wait for us to not have to use it anymore. When I was childless I wanted to kick the damn mothers and nannies in my neighborhood taking up the whole sidewalk, walking side-by-side and not giving any room for other people, totally willing to use their kid to run you off the sidewalk. I think I do a really good job not being that parent.

And really, it is a big pain in the ass to take everywhere. Now that the weather is getting warmer I'm excited about really trying out my new (well, used - found on Craigslist) backpack carrier as much as I can. I'm hoping it works out so we can leave the stroller at home when we go to Europe this summer.

But there was one question I thought needed to be asked of all these babywearing parents. A lot of these mothers live in places like Queens, Brooklyn and the Upper East Side (the store highlighted in the article is on Park Ave.). I noticed from my time living in New York that middle class and upper-middle class people from these neighborhoods, even though it is New York City, tend to also have cars that they use to do things like grocery shopping and buying their expensive piece-of-shit pressboard furniture at IKEA.

So what I wanted to hear from these parents is how much time their kids spend strapped to a car seat. I really want to know, because how is a stroller worse than that? I argue that a stroller is better than a car seat any day.

The thing is, we don't do the car thing. That's something I'm very proud of, and I haven't owned a car since 1992. So wearing my daughter to go grocery shopping is not really an option because I wouldn't be able to get our food home without having her in the stroller.

And I think I get to spend a lot of quality time with her because of this. Ever since she was really small I have always taken her out of her carrier (yes, for the first few months I used a front carrier) or stroller after we've gotten on the subway or bus. She spends her time on an outing looking out the window, waving at people, playing with me or maybe reading a book with me. She is usually in my lap, sitting in the seat next to me or standing on the seat pointing at stuff out the window. And boy does she make friends on the train or bus. She loves to interact with people.

What does a kid in a car seat do? How much quality time is a parent spending with their kid when there are not even sitting beside each other?

And my kid is a lot safer being in a stroller than in a car. Except for the occasional cab ride or short trip from the train station to Grandma's house, she is almost never in a car seat. I'd guess that she has spent less than a total of six hours in cars in her almost one-year-and-five-months being alive.

When I'm out with my daughter we are constantly interacting with each other and I'm always paying her a lot of attention. I see a lot of parents carrying their kids in a sling or wrap and they are talking on their cell phone or texting. I never get on my cell when I'm out with my daughter. I don't care how tightly wrapped you are to your kid, if you're jabbing to your friends you ain't bonding with baby.

I get why parents do some of the stuff we do. I've gone out of my way to keep the amount of plastic crap we have around to a minimum. We have a lot of natural wood toys; blocks, little toy cars, a baby pram, one of those push-mower looking things. We even have real Lincoln Logs, not those shitty plastic ones that came out in later years. We just spent a hell of a lot of money to order her a riding toy made of natural wood and using soy-based paints so we wouldn't have to have one made of plastic that also doubles as a cross-promotion for some movie or TV show.

So I get trying to do the best thing possible for your kid. Hell, I cook all the time now. And I really don't like to cook. But I know I need to make her as nutritious as meals as I can and also set a good example.

But to say I'm not bonding with my child as well as I could because she's in a stroller? Nonsense.

Why is it these people seem to think that this is the only time you can bond with your child, when you are out running errands or going to a play date? What the hell are you doing with your kid when you're not in transit? Plopping them down in front of the TV?

Fact is, if you are spending time with your kid there is a lot of bonding and contact time available. It doesn't always have to be about bonding when you are going from point A to point B.

All these claims about the benefits of 24/7 contact with your child are being pushed, without real good evidence, by the loony tune practitioners of "attachment parenting" - one of my favorite kinds of parents to hate, right up there with fundamentalist home schoolers.

And as for those claims, I'll say this: We didn't use a carrier for very long, we didn't do co-sleeping and my very accomplished physician/researcher wife with the hectic schedule did not do any direct breast feeding (GASP! The Horror!).

The result? Our daughter has had two colds, never once was she colicky, is a very calm kid who never screams or has tantrums, is incredibly observant (surprises me all the time how much so), very attentive, sleeps through the night, transitioned to going to sleep on her own with no problem and I think (and I am of course biased) is an amazingly smart kid.

And bonding? Well, match me up against any other parent, attachment or otherwise, to measure our level of bonding and I'll take that challenge anytime, anywhere, from anybody. I'd never claim to be the perfect parent whose always made the right decision, but the connection and love between my daughter and me I have no doubts about. I cannot even fathom it being any stronger. It's clear to me that she knows I'm there for her, will give her what she needs and will protect her. It's so obvious she knows that.

And I'll bet my kid will turn out a lot better in the head than the ones who are still breast feeding when they're six or seven, as some of those crazy attachment types think is a good idea. I'm very proud of myself so far and I've exceeded what I thought I was capable of as a parent about a million-fold, especially considering I went from being a guy who didn't want to have kids to a stay-at-home dad in a relatively short time. I figured by almost a year-and-a-half any kid of mine would already be in therapy.

Now I know one kid is not a scientific study, and I'm making no claims that this is any kind of proof my parenting style is the best. But everything that they say is better if you do it their way has gone perfect in my kid. Every. Single. One.

Those parents like to trump up the supposed benefits of that type of parenting, including the carriers and co-sleeping, but they are mostly crap with no basis in real scholarship. Studies about these things are poorly constructed and incredibly far from conclusive at best. At their worst they're nothing but junk science at the same level as the claims of autism being cause by vaccines.

And really, a lot of this stuff is just a silly middle-class WASP interpretation of how "tribal" cultures raise children.

The goal of these parents seems to be to make other parents feel bad or guilty about what they're doing. And I guess in the sick and demented mind of an attachment parent that makes them feel like better, superior parents.

They can kiss my stroller-pushing ass.

Two Fathers On A Bus

2010-03-03T11:04:00.001-06:00

I thought about a story from living in New York that I thought I'd share.

I was on the bus one day with my daughter in the front baby-carrier, she must have been about three months old or less at this point, I know my wife was back at work but we didn't yet have the stroller that we got when she was about three-and-a-half months old. I was just getting the hang of this stay-at-home dad (part time at this point) thing.

I was sitting near the back of the bus in the sideways facing seats and had taken the baby out of the carrier to sit on my lap because she liked being able to look at people. A guy got on the bus and made his way back to the open seat across from us. He was a really tall guy - at least 6'6" or 6'7" - probably in his mid-60s with a salt and pepper beard wearing all red. Really, everything he had on was red. His pants, shoes, shirt and socks were all red. He also had on a long red overcoat that went all the way down to below his knees. To top off the whole look he had a beautiful dark wood, hand-carved cane. Really a classic "only in New York" kind of character.

He sat directly across form my daughter and me and she started smiling at him like crazy. He smiled back and waved at her and was really cool to her. We started chatting and he asked me how old she was and I told him, "About three months."

He then said, "I've got two sons myself."
"How old are they?" I asked.
He answered, "Well, my oldest is 46."

Pause for a beat or two, then I said:

"Well, that's a fun age."

He tilted his back and just started laughing and laughing.

I miss New York.

My Decade (part 2 - Music)

2010-01-15T15:30:00.002-06:00

Now for my last decade in music. I think of myself as a total music geek, and as evidence...

I went to roughly 15 Robyn Hitchcock shows, which I was surprised the number was that low. I think I've been overestimating the number of times I tell people I've seen him total (starting in 1989). This includes the greatest two shows of Robyn's that I've ever experienced, consecutive nights at the tiny Turning Point Cafe in Piermont, NY. I also collected over 100 live bootleg Robyn Hitchcock shows. And something I realized while writing this post that kind of frightened me: When I see Robyn Hitchcock this March it will mark the fourth decade in which I've seen him play.

I saw Billy Bragg about six times the last decade, and collected over 50 of his live bootlegs. The man just doesn't tour enough.

Jeff Tweedy solo or his band Wilco, I was at more than twenty shows, and all but one of them (last year at Coney Island) happened between 2000 and 2005. They got kind of boring for a while, and guitarist Nels Cline can be so damn wonky when he plays, always trying to prove what a genius he is. But Wilco came back with a vengeance last year and their live shows are great again. I collected over 80 Jeff Tweedy/Wilco bootleg show recordings during the decade.

In all for the decade, I collected over 400 live bootleg recordings of various bands.

Other concerts of note include seeing Jill Sobule about eight times, The Dresden Dolls about the same number, including two New Year's Eve shows, two Pogues shows, a couple of Blanche shows, They Might Be Giants, Southern Culture on the Skids, Eels, Ditty Bops, The Swell Season, Smoosh a couple of times, a bunch of Robbie Fulks gigs and an incredible Rilo Kiley Show.

I am really happy that I got well into my thirties but I still like to hear new stuff. The bands that I got into that put out their first albums this last decade include Rilo Kiley, Smoosh, The Dresden Dolls, The White Stripes and The Decemberists. So that's cool.

I decided to go ahead and attempt a "best albums of the decade" list, because I know the entire world really wants to know my opinion of the decade's best music. Started off by trying to do ten, but that was just too hard, too many of my favorite albums wouldn't make the cut that way. So I decided on 25. Of course, this list will only have things I've heard by this point and there is a very good chance there is something out there I haven't been introduced to yet that I will love. Like if I had done this at the end of the 90s there would be no Keb' 'Mo on the list because I really hadn't heard his music at that point. But if I make a 90s album list today, there might be two or three of his records on there. So with a grain of salt, my attempt at a best of the 00s list, in order of year released, because no way do I want to attempt to rank them (and alphabetical by artist would make it too obvious what a Robyn Hitchcock geek I am):

Robyn Hitchcock - A Star For Bram (2000) Robyn started off his decade with a companion piece to his 1999 album, Jewels For Sophia, that is supposed to be outtakes from that session. But this is far better than just a simple outtake album.

Jill Sobule - Pink Pearl (2000) The woman famous for her one hit, I Kissed a Girl, from the mid-90s, has put out so much great work this decade. Songs that seem to be just humorous little ditties become so much more once you scratch the surface. "Mexican Wrestler" seems funny at first, but then you realize how sad it is.

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (bootleg 2001, official release 2002) Seems to be an absence of other records from 2001-2002, probably because there was very rarely anything else on my radar during this time. YHF almost never left my portable CD player for what seemed like forever.

The Dresden Dolls - Dresden Dolls (2003) The only good thing that came out of me living in the shittiest city on the planet, Boston, was that I got to discover this band early on. The sound is Brechtian Punk Cabaret and their concerts are wonderful, if sometimes overly-pretentious, happenings.

Robyn Hitchcock - Luxor (2003) Robyn's 50th birthday present to himself was this record and it is mostly just him with his guitar and harmonica. It may be his least popular album among his fans, but I think it is absolutely beautiful.

The White Stripes - Elephant (2003) Most would put White Blood Cells on the list instead, but I think this is a fantastic rock record.

Robyn Hitchcock - Spooked (2004) Living up to its title, an incredibly haunting-sounding record done with Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings.

Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose (2004) Brilliantly arranged and produced by Jack White, Lynn puts out her best ever record at the age of 70. We should all be lucky enough to be doing what we do at our best at that age.

Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005) Just about everything else put out by Connor Oberst has bored the shit out of me, but this album hits the mark so beautifully. It helps to have the legendary Emmylou Harris singing on three songs. And "First Day of My Life" is one of the prettiest love songs ever recorded. If you don't like that track you just don't believe in love.

Eels - Blinking Lights and Other Revelations (2005) Words can not describe ho much I love this double album. E's masterpiece, and his most personal work ever.

Robbie Fulks - Georgia Hard (2005) The best country album of the decade, in an era when the "mainstream" country artists don't actually make genuine country music. That Fulks isn't a country superstar is completely unbelievable.

Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous (2005) Love, loss, betrayal, sex, death.... This beautiful record has it all, and more. Jenny Lewis may have the prettiest voice in music today. I would call it angelic - if I believed in angels. If someone forced me to pick just one best album of the decade, this might be it.

Al Baker & The Dole Queue - On the Use of Jackboots (2006) My favorite find of the decade. Al Baker is a Phil Ochs for the current age, and someone who could be the voice of his generation. (I wrote much more about Al here.)

Belle And Sebastian - The Life Pursuit (2006) The best bouncy pop goodness I've heard in a long time.

The Decemberists - The Crane Wife (2006) In the age of downloading individual songs to iPods, Colin Meloy & company have the artistry and the balls to put out concept albums. 'Nuff said.

Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 - Ole! Tarantula (2006) Robyn gets a backing band that includes Peter Buck on guitar. Brilliance ensues. His best band album in years, maybe the best ever. It also spoke to me because of the song "Belltown Ramble," about a neighborhood I knew all-too-well when I was living in Seattle. Really took me back.

Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat (2006) Rilo Kiley lead singer puts out her first solo album with amazing harmonies with the sisters Watson.

The Minus 5 - The Minus 5, aka "The Gun Album" (2006) Scott McCaughey is the hardest working man in music, and the most under-appreciated. REM's best sideman makes supergroup records with just about anybody he asks, and this record has Peter Buck (as usual), John Wesley Harding and all members of The Decemberists and Wilco, joining on such McCaughey gems as "Aw Shit Man" and "Coffee, Cigarettes and Booze."

Tegan And Sarah - The Con (2007) Punk-inspired power pop at its finest.

The Swell Season - Music from the Motion Picture Once (2007) I always likes Glen Hansard's Frames, but this record is so much more than he's ever done before. A gorgeous record to go along with one of the best movies of the decade.

The Raconteurs - Consolers of the Lonely (2008) I do not understand the debate about Jack White. The man is a rock genius, and the only proof you need is The Raconteurs, where he's backed by an incredible band instead of just a mediocre drummer for a change. As good as I think The White Stripes have been, imagine what they could be if he kicked Meg to the curb.

REM - Accelerate (2008) I never imagined that REM, a band I worshipped in the 80s and early 90s, would end up on my "best of" anything again. But after well over ten years of putting out some truly horrible elevator music-type albums, a band that holds such a special place in my heart (as I've written about before) is back on top of their game. I couldn't be happier about it. Now if only the same thing would happen to U2...

She & Him - Volume One (2008) I'm still amazed when I listen to this record by actress Zooey Deschanel and indie rocker M. Ward. It sounds like something that could be straight out of the soundtrack of the 1960 movie Where the Boys Are, yet except for a couple of covers all of the songs were written by Zooey herself. The funnest album I've heard in a long time.

The Watson Twins - Fire Songs (2008) The Watson Twins singing is mesmerizing. This album is worth it even if only for their incredible cover of The Cure's "Just Like Heaven." And making such an iconic song your own is no small feat.

The Baseball Project - Vol. 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails (2008) It's amazing how much Scott McCaughy and Peter Buck appear on this list (both are in Venus 3, Minus 5 and REM). This record is the brainchild of Scott and ex-Dream Syndicate front man Steve Wynn, who got together and wrote a bunch of songs about a shared passion - baseball. Hard to believe that anyone could create enough great songs from that topic to fill a whole album, but these guys did that. And volume 2 is already in the works.

Various Artists - Playing For Change: Songs Around the World (2009) What a great way to end the aughts. Producer/engineer Mark Johnson found musicians around the world to record different parts of the same songs and then mix them together in the studio to create these amazing tracks made by people who for the most part never met one another. Mostly street musicians, a youth choir and the like, but with some help from the great Keb' 'Mo and Bono. An amazing record to go along with a beautifully positive and hopeful documentary.

OK, I cheated. That's 26. Just couldn't make the last cut.

My Decade (part 1)

2010-01-15T08:45:00.001-06:00

It hadn't really dawned on me, until people mentioned it on Facebook, that we just came to the end of another decade. I guess after we entered the "new millennium" and with all of the "Y2K" hysteria of the end of the last decade I just stopped thinking in terms of decades. I just kind of thought of us as in the 2000s now. And with it seeming that no one knew what to call the most recent decade - I like the "aughts" myself, I can say "my daughter was born in aught eight" - we didn't have the same kind of repetitive referencing of the decade by a title in the media and pop culture that we had in the past. There was always someone calling the eighties "the 80s" and the nineties "the 90s" on TV, radio and print when those decades were happening.

So I was really only thinking about this as another new year approaching until Facebook made me see the error of my ways. A lot of my "friends" started posting things about looking back at the last decade, and I thought, "Oh right, the decade's ending."

What I found odd was how many people were posting how shocking it as how much their life changed over the decade (wasn't married at the beginning of it, my little kid is now a teenager at the end, etc.). Really? Surprised that your life would change in significant ways in the decade? Come on, ten years is a pretty long time, if your life didn't change over that time you should be shocked and depressed. It would also make you my grandparents.

It is strange the way we humans choose these arbitrarily assigned numbers to define, categorize and reflect on our lives and the world. Hell, we use them to define the human experience.

I've never really thought about my life in terms of decades to define each era. I don't think anything can be so neatly packaged into a convenient little branding. I look at my life and it divides up by certain "eras" that are not defined at all by the calendar. My five years of college from 1989 to 1994 would be one, immediately followed by my "Seattle Period" until the end of 2000, then my life with my girlfriend/fiance/wife Lisa. And my current era started in October of 2008 when our daughter was born. So this last decade alone contains three separate phases of my life.

I guess I'm just pointing out the obvious, our lives divide up by our individual experiences and ages. For me the decades do work out pretty well in one aspect - I was born in a zero year, 1970 - so I'm in the same age group for pretty much the whole decade, in my 20s during the 90s, my 30s during the aughts, etc. Just dumb luck, but will probably come in handy when my memory starts to go hazy in my later years.

Besides, when someone refers to a decade, they aren't talking about the whole thing. When someone says "The Sixties" they are almost always talking about the late sixties counter-culture movement. It is very rare to hear someone refer to the sixties and they are thinking about something that happened in 1961. Go to any 80s night at a club and they are playing a ton of music from 1982 to 1985 or so and you are very unlikely to hear them play a track from the Stone Roses, REM's Green or even Joshua Tree.

All of that being said, I did decide to take a quick look back at the decade to see what kind of things I'll take away from it. It did require some reflection but I don't think I'm surprised by any of it (well, maybe a couple of my choices for favorite albums) and I promise not to feign any shock.

Well, I suppose the first thing that should be mentioned about important events to my decade would be that I'm now a family man. When the decade started I was a single guy living in Seattle, doing some theatre but with basically no direction and floating through life with no purpose. At the end of the decade I have been married for almost six years and been a father for over a year. I'm still basically directionless, but I now at least have something that focuses my energy.

If you went back in time to when the last decade was ending and told that version of me, that guy from the 90s, the one in his twenties, that he would be married and have a kid by the time the next decade ended, he would have been horrified. But what does that stupid, long-haired, grungy stoner know? I couldn't be happier.

It as also the decade in which I gave up any idea I still harbored about having a career in theatre. At the beginning I was still plugging away, taking directing gigs where I could. By the end I had not done a show in over three years and had switched over to a career in medical education that was so much more rewarding. After years of theatre I came to the realization that I just wasn't that interested in doing it. I also got sick of it getting in the way of my life (having to be at rehearsals when there was a band I wanted to see, etc.). And it seemed that my talent for it peaked in college anyway.

At the beginning of the aughts I had been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for eight-and-a-half years. At the end of the decade it has been almost eight years since my last cigarette, kicking an addiction that lasted more than ten years. So great to have that monkey off my back.

In the 00s I lived in six different houses/apartments in four cities in four states. Seattle-Chicago-Chicago-Boston-New York-Chicago. There is not a single section of I-90 I haven't driven in a rental truck in the last decade. While the number of cities I lived in during the last decade is my most ever, the number of actual homes still doesn't beat my 90s number.

I traveled overseas to five different countries (six if you count a layover in Seoul) on two continents. I'm really hoping that number is a lot higher in this decade, because that's just not good enough.

My favorite books of the last ten years were Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell, Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich, Freethinkers and The Age of American Unreason, both by Susan Jacoby. I'm sure I'm leaving some out but I'm not remembering them tight now. A lot of the books I ended up reading over the 00s were published in earlier decades.

It took a lot of time to go over my decade in music and make my "best of" list, as you'll see in the next post (and it is a completely separate post due to its length). But when it came to movies the answer became pretty obvious fairly quickly. In fact, instead of a list of my favorite movies of the 00s, I'm just going to name my favorite. I'm not saying there weren't other extremely strong contenders, like Once (which I came really close to picking) and Billy Elliot. But in the end it turns out my favorite movie of the 00s has a lot in common with my favorite one from the 90s.

Like, it has the same director and the same two actors playing the same characters. When I first heard that Richard Linklater was making a sequel to 1995's Before Sunrise I was horrified. The best romantic movie in a generation had ended so perfectly, leaving the question for the audience to ponder - do they ever see each other again? But it turns out that Before Sunset was even better than the first movie, and making it was a great idea. I love that Linklater could make two perfect films about two people walking around talking to each other. I never get sick of watching either of them.

Next - I'll look back on my decade in music.

What I've Learned

2009-12-10T12:00:00.002-06:00

So I've been a father for over a full year now and I've been thinking about what I've learned as a parent in that time. So here are a few random thoughts.

Nursery rhymes are a lot like action movies, about 95% of them suck horribly (like movies with Bruce Willis or Sly Stallone), but the 5% that are awesome (like the Bourne movies) you absolutely cherish that they exist.

Becoming a parent does not fundamentally "change" a person. I've heard so many people say this over the years and I found it to be a crock of shit. Breeding did not change my outlook on the world. This view that so many people have goes on the assumption that they wouldn't have become that person without having a kid and that is a specious one. I'm still the leftist, freethinking Humanist that I've always been and I'm sure my crazy brother would have still become an intolerable, right-wing, born-again, Jesus freak fundamentalist whether he had kids or not. Maybe it would have happened later, but I'm sure he'd still be that big of an asshole.

A new parent gets lots of unsolicited advice from "experienced" parents and almost all of it is completely worthless. Just because someone knows how to raise their kids does not mean they know how to raise my kid. Something to be sure to remind myself when I'm the older parent.

Most baby-care books are also full of shit and a complete waste of time. I have an especially strong hatred for the "What to Expect..." line of books. Sweeping generalizations (e.g., pacifiers are evil) not backed up by any real scientific study or any scholarship whatsoever. Basically some hippy mom thinking she knows how to teach everyone else to be a parent. Not worth the paper it's printed on, and to so many people it is their baby bible.

The stuff I worried about being hard before she was born (like changing diapers or bathing) turned out to be a piece of cake, and the things I didn't even think about (like nail clipping or planning meals once the nursing/formula/baby food days are over) turned out to be the real challenging things.

Going to the bathroom while holding a baby is a lot easier than one would think. Showering, not so much.

They say that having a kid will make you appreciate your own parents. This isn't really true if you were raised by a shitty parent. In fact, I think having a kid has made me realize even more how awful my mother was at raising kids. No matter how frazzled I've gotten, how frustrated or even angry, I have still been able to resist shaking or hitting my daughter. I step back, breathe, and remember she's just doing what kids do. My mother's inability to do the same as I was growing up, instead choosing to use the yardstick, broom, fly-swatter or bare hands to knock me silly looks even more insane to me with my new view.

Even though it is 2009, I've found that in many places a stay-at-home dad is still viewed with a fairly large amount of suspicion or weird curiosity. I'm treated great in many other situations, but I have to seek out the right groups.

I find that even though I have one now, I still don't generally like kids. Especially large groups of them. Play dates and birthday parties are going to be torture when my daughter is older, but I will have to endure for her sake. But when we start hosting sleepovers I'm going to make sure Mom gets put in charge.

I also don't really like hanging out with most other parents. I'd much rather hang out with friends of mine who have also become parents, and that was working out great in New York since my best friend became a dad the same time as me. But now that we're in Chicago none of my friends here have kids, at least yet. It's hard to know if a person was cool or not before they had kids if you don't meet them until they've already had them.

I will do anything, no matter how stupid I look, and in public, to make my kid laugh.

I think referring to raising children as the most important thing a person can do is utter nonsense. Hey, it might turn out to be the most important thing I will ever do (but I hope not). But, was raising children the most important thing Martin Luther Kink, Jr. ever did? Jonas Salk? I don't think so. There are many things a person can do in the world that are more important than raising your own kids.

You cannot describe your love for your kid to someone ho doesn't have one. You just can't. So I don't even try.

Having a kid has not made me want to have more, as so many people told me would happen. (Seems that people say the same thing about having kids that they say about tattoos, once you have one you want more). I'm loving every minute of every new experience I'm going through with my daughter, but I have no need to repeat it. Once is totally enough.

The baby supply business is such a racket it's ridiculous. There is so much shit they convince new, unwitting parents that they need to have when they really don't. The "safety" stuff is a really big one, preying on parents' fears. I'm convinced that baby monitors just cause parents to lose sleep and have never saved a kid's life. Now they even have these sensors that go under the baby's mattress and an alarm goes off if the they stop moving for several seconds. An extremely expensive way to get sleep deprivation.

If I hugged my daughter as I hard as I feel like I want to sometimes, it would kill her and her guts would be all over the floor. Maybe that's as close as I can come to explaining the level of love thing.

I can have my kid dressed in twelve layers on a moderately cold day and there will still be an old lady who tells I don't have her dressed warm enough.

I wish it wasn't against the law to punch old ladies in the face.

My kid is the cutest kid on the planet. If you think differently you are obviously a dumbass.

I Dreamed I Saw Phil Ochs... In Harlem

2009-10-30T11:45:00.002-05:00

I was back in New York City a couple of weeks ago to be a contestant on a game show (I can't say how I did until after the episode airs in December) just one month after I moved away. After I did the taping I took the opportunity to go visit my best friends Joe and Megan along with their cute-as-a-button son Spencer who is the same age as, and betrothed to, my daughter.

After hanging at their place for a little bit, Joe and I went around the corner to a club called Shrine to have a beer. A great neighborhood joint in Harlem on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd by 134th St, Shrine has music just about every night and has a wide variety, though the focus seems to be on jazz, reggae, funk and soul. It is Harlem after all.

Joe and I were sitting there drinking our beers while a guy with a guitar was doing his sound check. I was immediately drawn in by the chords he was playing for his sound check and figured he might be playing something I would like. And boy did he!

As soon as he started his set I was hooked. Right away I could hear the influences of Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie, Joe Strummer and Billy Bragg, but without being derivative. He certainly had his own style of guitar playing and singing.

Unfortunately there were few people outside Joe and me who seemed to really get how great this guy was. Most others in the bar were eating and gave only polite applause, at best. He was opening for a jazz band, so it wasn't really his crowd. And Joe and I were only there because of my last-minute call earlier that week to be on the game show.

At some point during his set he played a cover of Billy Bragg's Waiting For The Great Leap Forwards that was just fantastic. When he was done I went up to tell him how much I liked his set and his Billy Bragg cover. He came over to have a beer with us.

So this guy's name is Al Baker and he's from Manchester, UK. He was catching a flight to St. Louis the next morning because he had a gig at a college there, which is basically how he got himself over to the States and then he booked himself a bunch of other shows to do while he was over here. He had such a great attitude about it, saying he knew at a lot of the gigs he got he would be background music and maybe a couple of people would get into it (and on this night it was Joe and me).

We hung out with Al for a while longer on Joe's stoop before I went back to the hotel and Al went to catch his bus out to the Newark airport. We spent the night chatting about Billy Bragg and sketch comedy, among other things. Al and Joe also geeked out for a bit on comic books. I gushed a few more times over how much I liked Al's music (I had a few beers) and he slapped a couple of CD's on me. One was his album that came out about three years ago and the other was his newest collection of demos.

We said goodbye to Joe and then Al and I caught the subway to 42nd St, where I pointed Al in the direction of the Port Authority bus terminal and I went to crash at the hotel. Al was going to be playing a couple of shows in Chicago a few nights later and I told him I would try to make it to at least one of them.

I caught the train to Chicago the next morning. I started listening to Al's album shortly after the Pennsylvanian pulled out of Penn Station. About half way through the first track, a song called This Machine that expands on the motto written on Woody Guthrie's guitar, I had a gasping moment.

There are moments when I'm listening to a live show or an album when I have a gasping moment. It will be something so brilliant and beautiful that I literally gasp. I love a lot of different musicians, but these moments only happen for a few. I gasped the first time I ever saw Robyn Hitchcock play, the first time I listened to Billy Bragg as well as the the first time I ever saw Wilco and almost every time I see Jeff Tweedy play a solo show.

I think it is the realization that I'm not just seeing a great musician, of which there are many that I love, but listening to someone who has been touched with a gift that I can't even comprehend.

I listened to Al's CD pretty much anytime I wasn't chatting with someone on the trains (I was pretty much socializing between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh) during my trip home. I must have listened to it six or seven times. I couldn't believe I was listening to something made by a guy when he was 20.

I saw him again a few nights later at a club in Chicago. It was another gasping moment, watching him play an amazing set, again for a crowd of people mostly eating and talking before the main acts came on.

Al played a few of the songs I told him were my favorites from the disc, including All The News That's Fit To Sing, a tribute to Phil Ochs that takes its title from Ochs' first album and plays on lyrics from Billy Bragg's own Phil Ochs tribute song a generation earlier. It is a lovely tribute to a great singer-songwriter by a guy born about a decade after Ochs died, and he takes a little dig at Bob Dylan in the process.

Talking to Al after the set I really started to understand why he is such a good songwriter. It's because he is extremely smart and curious about the world. We were talking about music with a couple of girls ho ere also there for Al's set and one mentioned liking Cab Calloway. Al talked about how much better Paul Robeson was than Calloway, and even quoted some lines from Old Man River.

I am always amazed by how few Americans I talk to will know who Paul Robeson is, one of the most important figures in mid-twentieth century American history, and here is this 23-year-old kid from Manchester UK talking about him. And that's just one example of what I'm talking about.

Well-read, articulate, curious, outspoken, a knack for turning a phrase and great respect and knowledge of those great artists that came before him. A formula for great success as a singer-songwriter.

And I found my newest favorite artist. I'm really looking forward to following his career for years to come and seeing what great heights he climbs.

Because I happened to be in New York for a very short trip, for a game show of all things. Because Joe and I decided to go have a beer. Because Joe happens to live around the corner from a music club in Harlem. The randomness of it all makes it so much cooler that I came across this brilliant guy.

I would call it fate if I believed in such a thing.

This machine
is making folk a threat again
this machine
that I'm holding in my hands
this machine
is the best I've ever seen, because
this machine
kills silence
(kills madness)
(kills fascists)

Al's MySpace page

A Concert Life

2009-09-25T16:53:00.000-05:00

OK, the move has happened and we are just about settled, so maybe I can get back to doing this on a little bit more of a regular basis. We'll see, I'm still responsible for taking care of a kid that is right now just about 11 months old.

-----------------------------------------------

I moved back to Chicago earlier this month after six years living on the East Coast, with the last three being in New York and it was really hard leaving Manhattan. We got really used to how great it is to live in The City. Great vegetarian restaurants, the best public transportation in the U.S. and a lot of really cool music venues to see some of my favorite acts who seemed to be coming through town all the time (I saw Robyn Hitchcock five times in 2008 alone). And

So being back in Chicago will take some getting used to. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of great memories living here. I saw the very last Replacements concert from the front row in Grant Park and walked away with a guitar pick. I met my wife here (well, in the 'burbs) and some of my favorite friends still live here. And of all the places I've seen live music, my favorite for a long time was The Hideout, though in NYC I really fell in love with Barbes and The Bell House, both in Brooklyn, and the Concert Hall on the Upper West Side. Of course, none of those compare to seeing a show at The Turning Point in Piermont, about an hour north of Manhattan. Seriously, if you like live music at all, do yourself a favor and see a show there before you die.

But Chicago is a really good town for live music, and I got to be reminded of that pretty quickly after I got here. I went to another of my favorite Chicago venues, Martyrs, for The Baseball Project/Minus 5/Steve Wynn show. If you haven't heard of The Baseball Project, here's a quick description: Scott McCaughey, leader of both the Young Fresh Fellows and Minus 5 and a permanent sideman of REM for more than a decade, and Steve Wynn, formerly of the Dream Syndicate, got together and wrote a bunch of songs about baseball. They were joined by Linda Pitmon, a drummer for lots of different bands, and Peter Buck from REM to record a great album.

These are some of my favorite musicians. I grew up an REM fanatic, and Scott and Peter also play in The Venus 3, Robyn Hitchcock's (my absolute favorite musician) current backing band. Scott McCaughey plays with so many of my favorite people - Wilco, REM, Decemberists, Robyn Hitchcock - and is such a great songwriter. He really should be a lot more famous than he is. There is really no more proof needed in how unjust the world is than the fact that Hannah Montana plays in packed stadiums and Scott McCaughey only gets to by hanging out with REM.

And The Baseball Project album is fantastic. Rather than write songs that just celebrate their love of the game, ala Centerfield (don't get me wrong, I LOVE that John Fogerty ditty), they made some tunes about specific players and incidents, some based on fact and others based more on folklore. There's Ted Fucking Williams, based what Teddy Ballgame supposedly used to scream out during batting practice ("I'm Ted Fucking Williams and I'm the greatest hitter in baseball!"), Gratitude, about Curt Flood, who fought on his own for players' right to free agency and who is largely forgotten by today's players who owe their million-dollar paychecks to him, Satchel Paige Said, a celebration of the man who may have been the best pitcher in the history of the game; among the songs about players from the game's history.

Two of my favorites are Steve Wynn's Harvey Haddix and Scott McCaughey's Broken Man. The first tells the story of the pitcher who may have pitched the best game in the history of Major League Baseball, 12 perfect innings, but is not in the record books because his Pirate teammates could not score and he lost the game in the 13th. The latter song is about Mark McGwire's fall from the man who helped "save baseball" after the strike to the disgraced steroid user. Scott McCaughey has an amazing talent for writing really catchy songs (listen to John Barleycorn Must Live, Town That Lost Its Groove Supply, Cigarettes, Coffee and Booze or With A Gun and you'll see what I mean) but Broken Man might be his catchiest yet. It has a hook that just pulls you in.

I walked in to Martys on the night of the show and it felt like I had been there yesterday, even though the last time I saw a show there was back in May of 2003 for a Jeff Tweedy solo gig. The place was as cool as I remembered it. It didn't seem like anything had changed, except I think there might be better beer choices now. And despite good beer on the menu most people there still seemed to be drinking Bud, Coors, PBR or some other swill. What is it with Chicagoans and their love of shitty beer?

I was at the show by myself, a common occurrence. I see a lot of shows on my own, not that many of my friends are in to the same music as me or are as interested in seeing shows as often as I like to. In the last couple of years in New York I had met some people at a couple of Robyn Hitchcock shows that became my concert-going posse. I did wish they were there, a fun group of music geeks that I really liked hitting shows with in NYC.

But no matter. I was in my element. Around my people. Indy-rock music dorks, oh how I love them so. This was the kind of crowd that, had I struck up a conversation with anyone, many of them might have been impressed with me saying, "So I saw Scott McCaughey and Ken Stringfellow opening for Robyn Hitchcock at the Backstage in Seattle back in 1994," or "I was at the Crocodile Cafe in 1995 when Peter Buck played with Kevn Kinney, that included the most amazing cover of Leaving On A Jet Plane." (I went to both shows with my favorite all-time concert-going buddy Trevor) I didn't need to have these conversations that night, it was just enough knowing I was around a crowd who might appreciate the experiences.

I as not really prepared this night on just how great this show was going to be. There was no division in the sets between each band, it was the four members of The Baseball Project playing for the whole night, doing songs from Baseball Project, Minus 5 (and one Young Fresh Fellows song), Steve Wynn's various incarnations (Dream Syndicate, Steve Wynn & The Miracle 3, etc.) and a few covers.

They absolutely brought the house down with an incredible high energy show that went for two full sets and an encore. By the time they were done it had been almost three hours since they took the stage. I've seen Peter Buck and Scott McCaughey play dozens of times, in many different projects, but I'd never been to a Steve Wynn show before so I didn't know what to expect. Well Steve Wynn is one hell of an impressive guitar player, but Linda Pitmon really stole the show for me. She plays her drums with an incredible energy of wild abandon yet completely focused at the same time. She is the funnest drummer I've seen play since Bill Berry from REM. I was mesmerized by her stick work and her flailing hair as she banged her kit.

A truly fantastic night, maybe my favorite concert of the year so far, going neck-and-neck with Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 at the Bell House in Brooklyn. And that show had half of the same people playing.

I really enjoy two things more than anything else in the world - traveling and live music. My dream is to combine the two some day and do some rock and roll tourism. I'd love to see one of my favorite musicians in a club somewhere like London or Spain or Germany or Tokyo. The one I want to do the most is see Robyn Hitchcock do one of his benefit shows at the Three Kings pub in the Clerkenwell neighborhood in London. That's how much of a music geek I am.

Why I like to travel seems pretty obvious. Seeing different cultures, sights and people is something a lot of people like to do.

But it has always been hard to explain why I am so in love with live music to the point I'll spend my last dollar on a band instead of food.

I was thinking about this when I was leaving Martyrs that night, why I feel such pure joy at a show. It kind of finally dawned on me.

I'm not the most "in the moment" kind of person. Ask anybody who knows me. I tend to over think just about everything and always be in my head. But not at shows by bands that I really love. I am so in the moment when I'm standing there taking in the music, I just let it flow over me and suck me in its world. No thinking, just feeling. No worries, just happiness.

Is my career where I want it to be? Am I a good husband? A good father? Am I doing enough to make a difference in the world? These thoughts go away for a time and are not a part of it.

But what is "it?" I don't know how to put it without sounding incredibly gooberistic and dweeby. At one with myself? With the universe? An out of body experience? Religious experience? See what I mean? Very stupid sounding, all of them.

I guess I'm just.....me.

And it seems that on those occasions I'm OK with being just that. And that is no small thing.

Monday Hate

2009-08-03T22:59:00.000-05:00

Time for another instalment of my Monday bitch session...

Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carry and every other one of the "vaccines cause autism" loons. Fuck these people are annoying. It actually pains me somewhat to put Jim Carry on this list. I've always respected his using his fame to speak out for freedom for Aung Sun Suu Kyi and the people of Burma. I could always overlook his rich-person new-agey mysticism because it seemed to at least make him try to do good. But apparently sticking your dick in Jenny McCarthy makes you stupid.

And what the fuck is with people listening to Jenny McCarthy? A fringe movement full of crazy people suddenly gets credibility because they are now represented by someone who used to give some guys boners about 15 years ago? What, every current media producer had a Playboy subscription in the 90s?

There has never, ever been a scientific study (and there have been tons done) that has shown a link between vaccines and autism. None. Ever. The people who are selling this idea, that the greatest gift modern medicine has ever given the human race is actually giving your children autism, are either snake-oil salesmen or amazingly paranoid fools who need psychiatric help. With McCarthy it can be hard to tell, since she seems so brain-dead. But I have to go with snake-oil salesman since she sells a lot of books promoting her nutso ideas. She now purports to have "cured" her son of autism with nutrition and vitamins. Right. I doubt her son ever had autism to begin with.

The believers in this movement are of the same anti-intellectual, anti-science and unreasonable thought as the 9/11 truth freaks, those who believe Obama was born in Kenya and the people ho believe the moon landing as faked. They need help, seriously.

And if they are parents they need to have their children taken away from them. Like now.

And...

The media, for giving these crazy people a platform that gives them credibility.

Especially Oprah, because Dr. Phil is also her fault.

Freethinker's Letter On Religion To His Born-Again Family

2009-07-24T10:03:00.000-05:00

Several months ago I wrote a letter to my family, attempting to clear the air and come to something of an understanding with my born-again family members, after some heated exchanges with my brother and other incidents over the years that showed a complete disregard for my right to my beliefs.

It is somewhat long, over 7 pages on Word, but I think it is a decent attempt to communicate with unreasonable and dogmatic about what I believe and don't believe.

This letter was met with either pretending that it never happened or a silence by some members of the family that includes not talking to me anymore.

I offer it up for others looking for ways to deal with religious family members.

I think it may be one of the best things I've ever written, probably because my wife acted as my editor and co-writer. Looking it over again months later I'm still very pleased with this, and the only thing I think I would have changed is my preference for what I consider myself. I should have added Freethinker to the list that included Naturalist and Humanist.

I've copied it here just as it was when I sent it.

I replaced all of the names in the letter with their relationship to me in parentheses.

----------------------------------------------

Dear family,

I feel that this letter has become necessary, after recent exchanges with my brother, among others, on the topic of religion. I believe it is time to address some issues and lay down some ground rules, for everyone's sake. Though, admittedly, I am more concerned about my sake.

I have sent this letter to Mom, (brother) & (sister-in-law), (step dad) & (step dad’s current wife), and (sister) & (brother-in-law). None of this is addressed to (sister) and (brother-in-law) but they will undoubtedly hear about it anyway, so I want them to see what I write here and not hear it secondhand, with someone else's interpretation of my meaning and intent.

This is to the followers of Christ in my family.

There seems to be some misunderstanding of my belief or at the very least a major disregard of it. In (brother)'s email to me he wrote that "At some point in life, most people begin to give mature consideration to some spiritual aspect of our earthly life (i.e. “is this all there is?”), meaning that he has done this and condescendingly implying that I have not. This preaching email also came at the end of a couple of exchanges after I explicitly told him to stop sending me proselytizing messages, though admittedly I told him in a less polite way than I should have handled it.

The only evidence he has of my lack of "mature consideration" of spiritual life is that I don't believe what he believes, and I get the impression from others of you by your words and actions that you think the same thing about me. (By the way (brother), your accusation that I am angry at you and your family is way off base. I was angry with you alone; this has nothing to do with your family.)

Let me please dispel this notion, as nothing could be further from the truth. While I do not have a "faith," my absence of such does not mean I am some wandering soul walking around waiting for someone to show me the answers. I went on my spiritual journey many years ago in my twenties. I've read the bible, cover to cover. I've read and pondered lots of other things as well, including many writings that support the idea of Christianity.

In the end my answer was, "no thanks." To all of it: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Scientology, etc. Even Buddhism, which I find to be a very beautiful, wonderful and fascinating religion in so many ways. But still, no.

But my belief is not an absence of belief as many of you assume. I believe in science. I believe in logic and reason. I believe in intellectual thought. I believe in the awesome wonders of the natural world and evolution. These things give me the answers I need - how we got here, how the world and universe around me works, what place I want to make for myself in it. I feel so lucky when I think about the time I live in, when there are so many things we know about biology, astronomy, physics, etc; compared to living in a time when the only place people could look for answers was their mythology. This gave them a lot of false answers, such as the earth being the center of the universe and the sun revolving around us rather than the other way around.

As for the BIG question my brother mentioned, "Is this all there is?" Well, probably. Maybe. I don't really know, but neither do any of you. The difference is that I'm not claiming to know the answer, and I certainly don't think a single book with suspect origins has the answers.

I suppose you wonder what this makes me or what I call myself. Well, I don't really think titles are that important, though I am very fond of referring to myself as a godless liberal like my red t-shirt exclaims. I'm not real fond of the title atheist. As Julia Sweeney mentioned in her one-woman show Letting Go of God, that term suggests that theism is normal so an atheist would be askew of what is normal. And I reject that notion. I'd say naturalist fits much better. Humanist is also something (Wife) and I consider ourselves, which also makes me happy because Bill O'Reilly hates us secular humanists more than just about anybody. And if Bill-O hates me, I know I'm doing something right.

The point is that I won't be swayed by any proselytizing, no matter how in my face or how subtle you think you are about it. I rejected the idea of Jesus a long time ago, when I realized how ridiculously fantastic the Christ story was and when I found out that the very same story exists in more ancient texts from well before the time Jesus was supposed to walk the earth. The name Jesus was applied to an old, already existing story and a religion was born.

And I certainly have rejected that book that condones slavery (read the passage right after Moses comes down with the commandments from god, he then immediately lists god's rules for buying and selling slaves and selling your children) and polygamy. There are lots of other things like that, and I just don't see how you can overlook those few but critical things but accept the rest of it as the "word of god."

So no matter how much praying you do for me or preaching you do towards me, I will never, ever accept Christ or any other deity as my saviour or become a religious person. I will be a non-believer to my death. I know this for a fact.

Besides, none of you would really be happy if I did become religious because I would end up becoming a Buddhist over anything else that's out there. And I'm sure in your belief that Buddhists are also going to hell.

So I'm asking you all to stop. In fact, I'm demanding it. The not-so-subtle ways that god gets thrown into conversations about topics as ordinary as a root canal is very frustrating for those of us who wish to have our lives free of religion.

And please don't try and tell me you don't do it. I'll give some examples of what I'm talking about.

Every Christmas, (Wife) and I receive cards from more than one of you that will have a long letter that begins and ends with the extolling of "his (with a capital h)" name and the glory of celebrating the birth of Christ as the son of god, and other non-stop preaching the glory of his name and what not. Even if there is no long letter, it is not uncommon for us to receive cards throughout the year with heavy religious/Christ messages. I do wonder if you all send these kinds of cards about Christ to any Jewish friends you might have? Wouldn't that be insensitive and rude? Why isn't it for us?

Mom, while I was talking on the phone with you prior to my daughter being born you laid into a big prediction about how you know I don't believe now, but when I look into my baby's eyes I was going to know that god touched my heart. Well, you were wrong. I looked into my amazing daughter’s eyes and I thought about the wonders of biology and the natural world. But it was also a really inappropriate thing to say to me. You have been the person I've asked the most to keep your religion out of my life. Yet you continue to sprinkle it in where you can, telling me on the phone that god is watching over me, or over you when something good happens. Or saying that you are praying for me.

I suspect, (step dad) and (step dad’s current wife), that you were encouraging your fellow church members to friend me on Facebook, to get more Christian influence on me or something. And when I still lived in Chicago you would invite me to see a show at your church that would be a hard-core religious song and dance show.

All of you have sent me emails with major religious messages or included religious-speak in normal emails, with tons of thanking him (with a capital h again) and praising him many times.

Why anyone thinks these tactics will work is beyond me. Would anyone be able to convince you to praise Allah if they bombarded you with Islamic propaganda?

And remember, while all of you think this is OK (preaching to me and my family, praying for us to turn your way), look what happened at (sister)'s when we were all there and I honestly answered a simple question from my niece. She noticed I wasn't praying and asked me why. I told her it was because I didn't believe in it and she followed up by asking if I didn't believe in god. Again I was honest, only answering very basically about myself and not trying to tell her I was right, only that I didn't believe in religion and that there are a lot of people who don't. Following the rules of your own religion I refused to lie to her about who I am.

Well, what happened? (Sister-in-law), (brother) and Mom all went ballistic, acting as if I had just thrown her a pack of smokes and a bottle of Scotch and said, "Have fun with those (niece)."

This blew up into a really frustrating conversation where (sister-in-law) confirmed to me that my nieces and nephew are being taught that I'm going to hell and my brother proclaiming that what he believes is "The Truth."

Well it's not The Truth. It's your truth, but it's not The Truth. It certainly is not my truth. It is not the truth to the billions of other decent people out there in the world who believe in Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or something else.

The saddest part about that whole episode, to me at least, is that (niece) now looks at me completely differently and appears almost fearful, either of me or for me. It could have been a teaching moment for a young girl to learn that there are lots of people in the world who are different from her and who believe different things. Instead, (brother) proclaimed that "we're working on him" in reference to getting me to come around to Jesus. So now my niece is uneasy around her "unsaved" uncle.

And I think reasonable people can agree that what you believe has a lot to do with when and where you were born. If we were all born in India I would be arguing with a few of the billion devout Hindus. But at least you would all be vegetarians like me.

(By the way, as an analogy, I have never preached my vegetarianism to any of you. I guarantee you that it is as important to me as your religion, but I ask only for a little accommodation when we are all together so I can have some options for food. (Brother) will refuse to accommodate me every chance he gets. When we were at Dad's a couple years ago, he insisted on going to a rib joint one night, where I had the wonderful choice of a baked potato for dinner. At (sister)'s he insisted on Chik-Fil-A. Not once has he ever given any thought to my dietary restrictions – it is always about what he wants. It's not uncommon for him to mock my vegetarian values. That's a good Christian?)

So where to go from here?

Well, it does all depend on what kind of a relationship you want with (Wife), (Daughter) and myself. If we are all going to move forward with any relationship at all, there have to be some ground rules. These will be non-negotiable, because I will no longer allow the intrusion of religion into my life, whether it is from the guy on the street trying to shove a pamphlet in my hands, the guy in Times Square trying to give me a Scientology "stress test" or my family.

First, the religious cards, letters and emails have to stop. Like the email (brother) sent out the other day about his leg, none of the religion was necessary in showing me pictures of his leg in a cast and telling the story of the accident. I am sorry about my short-tempered response to it that night, but hopefully this letter will give us a mechanism to make sure that no longer happens.

I realize that many of you are involved in churches that encourage you to be "bearing witness" or "testifying" all the time to your friends and family, so this could be a hard decision. But really, I'm never going to convert, so you wouldn't be risking losing me. I'm already lost to that world.

The same thing applies to talking on the phone. Please don't tell me that god is watching out for me or my wife or child. And don't tell me you're praying for me – that is pointless anyway.

Speaking of praying....

We need to come to an understanding about the rules of praying when we are together. I absolutely would never infringe on your right to pray, especially in your home. I have always respected that and kept quiet while you all prayed before a meal. I would ask that maybe I could be given a little warning so that I could do even better and leave the room for the praying. This actually becomes even more crucial with (Daughter) around. (Daughter) will learn about all the world’s religions, and she’ll hopefully even have the opportunity to observe different religious rituals and holidays around the world. However, she will never be taught, encouraged, or forced to pray, and I would prefer to not have her there when all the other kids are praying so that she doesn’t feel compelled to do this herself. I'm trying to keep her protected from indoctrination.

I would then also ask that in our home there be no out-loud praying. I think it is inappropriate that you do it at (sister)'s and (brother-in-law)'s without asking if it is OK, but obviously that's their call and not mine.

What about praying in public? You cannot expect to have those of us in the group who are non-believers stop what we are doing when you are praying in a public restaurant. In Waterloo back in May, we had that large table in the loud restaurant and (brother), (sister-in-law) and mom got all the kids to pray when the food started coming. We were at a very large table surrounded by tables full of talking patrons, and I was at the very end of the table. I continued to have my very pleasant conversation with (brother-in-law) while the praying was going on. I hadn't seen the guy in a while and I really like talking to (brother-in-law). Suddenly I was shushed by my mother (and my response was "don't shush me!") like I was a 14-year-old in church. I'm sorry, but you cannot expect the rest of us to stop what we are doing when you decide to pray in public.

Please stop praying for me. Stop praying for my wife. Stop praying for my daughter. Stop having your friends, congregations, pastors and whoever else pray for us. Our "souls" are none of your concern. Praying for us is insulting, rude and amazingly insensitive to our rights of religious freedom, ours being the freedom FROM religion. I know that I can't control what you are doing when I am not around. At the very least, though, stop telling me you are praying for me or us. But really, stop praying for us. I promise you it won't work.

And now there is the subject of Christmas. It is obvious that there are two different views of Christmas in America. There are those of us who celebrate it as a cultural event (which is its true origin, a winter solstice celebration that Pope Julius I stole from the Pagans and made a celebration of Jesus in the 4th century) and those of you for whom it is a solemn holy day in your faith. This is what makes you send out all those über-religious cards and letters praising Jesus.

Because we are literally celebrating two different things, a cultural event vs. a religious holiday, we shouldn't celebrate them with each other.

So I have decided that we will no longer celebrate Christmas with a good number of my side of the family. So we will no longer send or receive Christmas gifts or cards from Mom, (brother) & (sister-in-law)'s family and (step dad) & (step dad’s current wife).

We will still exchange gifts with (sister) and (brother-in-law) and their kids, because they view the holiday the same as we do (except we're not doing the Santa thing, we'll try to tell (Daughter) to keep her mouth shut about that Sis, until (nephew)'s older).

We'll also still celebrate with Dad and the religious members of (Wife)’s family since, as typical good American Catholics, they keep their religion to themselves.

I hope that this has clarified my side of things somewhat. I believe that the only way we'll be able to have a relationship going forward is by following these guidelines.

Let me be clear, though. I am not asking you, as seems to be expected of me, to deny who you are. If the topic arises, there is nothing wrong with telling (Daughter) that you are a Christian. I will not treat you with the same kind of anger I was treated with when I answered (niece)’s questions honestly. I don't want anyone to lie.

The line gets crossed when you tell her that Jesus is the son of god and died for her sins and that he loves her, or that god is everywhere, or telling her that sinners go to hell, good people go to heaven or any other such dogma. This would include giving her any gifts that promote such an agenda, from a "Jesus loves me" doll or shirt to a Veggie Tales DVD.

(Daughter) will learn what religion is, to be sure. She will learn about many of them, as we plan to take her around the world to see how others live, worship and socialize. But she will learn it in a context and a perspective of mine and (Wife)'s choosing. We will not allow her to be taught dogma.

I hope that this will help us come to an understanding. In this family we are not known for our respect of one another's differing views, it's not in our DNA. But hopefully we can at least respect each other’s space.

We will need to if we are going to have any relationship at all going forward. I think this could help reduce the amount of insults and yelling that gets tossed around during disagreements in this family, something that IS in our DNA without a doubt. I am as guilty of this as anyone and I'm trying to be a different person than that. Not having religion tossed in my face at every turn will help.

If you feel like you can't have a relationship with me based on what I laid out above, that your religion requires you to continue to try to convert me or testify to me, then that's your decision.

I will not respond with my usual ways of lashing out at your beliefs and criticizing the ridiculousness I see in them.

We just won't be able to have a relationship at all. And I certainly will not allow you to be around my daughter.

This is not meant as a threat or a punishment. It is just what would need to happen.

Hopefully I have made a sensible case for this, using the things I wholly believe in, reason and logic, and you understand where I am coming from.

If you are at all interested in why I believe what I believe, here are some suggested readings, all books I found to be more insightful than the book you live your life by:

The End of Faith by Sam Harris
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

...and my newest personal favorites are both by a fantastic author named Susan Jacoby:

The Age of American Unreason (Concerning the recent history of anti-intellectualism in America and the trend toward irrational thought.)

And

Freethinkers, A History of American Secularism (A wonderful book about the true story of the secular founding of this country and the great things secularism has done in our nation)

Another great thing to see is Julia Sweeney's new one-woman show, available on CD and DVD, called Letting Go of God, which is the story of her spiritual journey. It is not dissimilar to my journey to the same conclusion she comes to. Hers is funnier, though.

Thank you for taking the time to read this extremely long letter. I hope you can understand where I'm coming from and that it's not from a place of anger or hatred.

Love,

Deni, (Wife) and (Daughter)

Monday Hate

2009-07-20T22:59:00.000-05:00

Getting to the blog late tonight, but I'm sure I can quickly think of something that's annoying me right now. I think it is going to be a child-rearing related week. So let's get to the hate.

Here's one that's been happening a lot lately.

Mr. Mom. No, I don't mind the 80s movie with Michael Keaton. I seem to remember liking it OK, though I haven't seen it in over twenty years so it might be as bad as I discovered Pretty In Pink is on a more recent viewing. No, it is the reference to Mr. Mom that keeps coming up recently. As I've been talking about our upcoming move, mentioning that I probably won't be going back to work and will instead be home with the kid full time, so many people have said something like, "Cool, playing Mr. Mom for a while, huh?"

Ugh. People seriously, what century is this? Yes, I know that it is still way too often the mother that stays home with the kids, even in this day and age. But let's at least stop assuming that taking care of the kids is automatically the woman's job and that when the man does it he is the male mother and not just the dad staying home with the kid. No milk is coming out of these boobs no matter how hard I try, so I'm definitely not a mom.

I can't believe people don't see it as sexist as it seems to me. What you are really doing is calling my wife "Mrs. Dad" because she's got a successful career. And we all agree that that is an ass-hole thing to call a woman, right?

And the other phrase I hear really often these days....

"They grow up so fast." Uhmmm....no. I'm pretty sure kids age at the same rate as the rest of us, barring them having progeria. So my daughter is not growing up so fast, she is growing just right.

Making Up With Wilco

2009-07-14T13:55:00.000-05:00

I had been all week contemplating going on Craigslist to see if I could pick up a Wilco ticket for last night's show at the baseball park in Coney Island. I'd been digging the new album much more than the last two and it has been about four years since I last saw them. Anyone who knows me knows that they have been my favorite band for a long time and I've seen Wilco, or Jeff Tweedy solo, over 40 times. But the last show I saw, at the Agganis Arena in Boston in June 2005, was just a horrible piece of crap show. That was following a few mediocre shows toward the end of 2004 and a few months before they would put out a snooze-fest of a live album.

So I had been a little turned off by the current lineup a while back, and thus hadn't been to a show for a while.

I decided not to drop the 45 bucks on the show. But yesterday at about 4:40pm I got a phone call from my buddy Phil, who I met a few years ago at a Robyn Hitchcock show, asking me if I wanted to go to a show that night because he got a couple of free tickets. And it was Wilco. So a quick call to the wife to see if it was OK that I leave her alone with the baby for the night and I was good to go.

It felt weird to heading to my first Wilco show in a few years. They've picked up a lot of newer fans since the last time I saw them. It was like I was going to an ex-girlfriend's house for a party and she would be there with her new boyfriend who didn't know her nearly as well as I do.

My adoration of this band used to know no bounds. Their name is in the url for this blog and its name comes from a line from one of their songs. But they have been less magical for me since Tweedy kicked Jay Bennett out of the band and Leroy Bach quit. And after the last shows I saw and the last couple of albums, my expectations were somewhat low.

Well they needn't have been. Wilco was on fire last night. The band is so tight right now and they sound so damn good. Tweedy is the most relaxed and happy I've seen him on stage in a long time. They are a group of just really great musicians and the live versions of a lot of my favorite songs sound so good with this lineup. Not that they played a ton of my favorite songs, with the focus being on a lot of newer stuff. But songs from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot were well represented by sometimes brilliant interpretations.

Feist joined them for the first encore for You and I, hich she also sings on the new album. It was a nice moment, Tweedy and Feist both having their hair blowing in the breeze off the water in Coney Island, singing one of Tweedy's prettiest recent songs. Opening act Yo La Tengo, who we missed due to subway issues, came out and joined for a spectacular version of "Spiders (Kidsmoke)" that rocked the park for twelve minutes.

Highlights for me included a version of "Can't Stand It" that really blows the album version out of the water, being one of the weakest songs on Summerteeth. Also, the version of "Jesus, etc" with Nels Cline on a lap steel guitar (I think that's what it is) that, for my money, is the best thing he does. The subtle Nels Cline for me is so much better than the show-off guitar solo Nels Cline. He is an amazing guitarist, but the whole masturbating with the guitar on stage thing is why I can't stand Led Zeppelin. So that can get a little tiring.

I was disappointed that they only played one song from Being There and none from A.M., their second and first albums, respectively. I wasn't sure we were going to even get anything from Being There, because it as pretty late in the first encore before they finally played "Misunderstood," one of the most perfectly crafted songs ever. And it was a great version, with one exception. There is a part toward the end of the song where the band plays one riff over and over while Tweedy screams "nothing" over and over. Like a lot. According to the Via Chicago message board, because one of the über-nerds always counts it, last night he screamed it 44 times.

Problem is he's been doing this for a decade, and it is really old and tired. Not that it was ever that cool to begin with, pretty boring, really. Like, drum solo boring. He really should retire it.

And on a night when they were playing right around the corner from the actual Mermaid Avenue, you would have thought there would have been a few more songs from those two albums. All we got was "California Stars" and the show-ending "Hoodoo Voodoo," which were nice, but you would have thought on such a night in the place where a lot of those lyrics were written we could have gotten a little more love for the Woody Guthrie material. It would have been a perfect setting for "Remember The Mountain Bed" at the end of the night.

But it was a great concert nonetheless. It wasn't the 1996-2002 era of Wilco that gave me so many perfect nights of music, but this is a much better band than the 2003-2007 version, even though it is the same lineup.

I was pretty jazzed and flying high after the show, somewhat similar to what I felt like when I hooked back up with my old girlfriend back in 1998, who is now the awesome wife that let me bolt out on her and the baby at the last minute to hit this show. If you had asked me just the year before if we would have ever gotten back together I would have said no way. Just like that, I really didn't think I'd ever be this geeked-out about Wilco again, even though I really hoped I could.

I don't know if Wilco and me will ever be as serious as we once were. But at least we're dating again. And that makes me happy.

The Return Of Monday Hate

2009-07-13T14:12:00.000-05:00

Hello all. Well it has been a long time since my last post, a new baby can really get in the way of pointless blogging, so I'm really going to try to get back to blogging on a somewhat regular basis.

And what better way to try to get restarted than to bring back my formerly regular feature of Monday Hate? Those of you that were reading my blog before the kid as born will remember how this works, that every (hopefully) Monday I list off the things that are annoying me at that moment.

So here's what's bugging me this Monday:

Zipcar. I cannot even begin to convey how much I hate this fucking company. Yet another case of an environmentally unfriendly company calling themselves "green" to sell their products. (My favorite is British Petroleum re-branding themselves "Beyond Petroleum") I have so many supposedly liberal friends who use this service and seem to think that the only emission coming out a Zipcar is sunshine, happiness and flowers. Well, the same crap that comes out of a car you own is the same crap that comes out of a Zipcar. The air quality of our urban areas is at a crisis, not to mention the issue of global warming. And those aren't the only environmental problems with the American car culture (we will eventually pave over every single acre of this country). Yet somehow Zipcar makes a lot of people think they are doing something positive for the environment, and that is one of the ways the company sells itself. But I think it's a lie.

They claim that by car sharing, there are less cars owned by individual people, and that equals less driving. But I don't buy it. Less cars owned by a population does not mean less number of hours there are cars on the road. What Zipcar has done is make cars more available, and for a lower cost, where they wouldn't have been previously for a lot of urban dwellers. This makes people make bad choices for convenience, like run errands that could be done on public transportation.

Zipcar claims that they are lowering car ownership, but I really don't think they take in to account the number of people without cars already that are using their service who would have previously figured out a different way to do what they needed to do. The main reason I don't own a car or belong to Zipcar is because I know how easy it is to make the wrong decision with an air-pollution machine readily available.

And really, if you live in an urban area, especially Manhattan, and you can't run you normal errands like buy groceries, pick up supplies at the hardware store or bring home a set of shelves from Crate & Barrel by foot and subway with a cart, you are just being lazy. My wife and I even brought home an area rug for our living room from Macy's by way of the subway. And we live as far from the subway as you can get while living in Manhattan.

But people think they are doing something good for the environment by using Zipcar. These are probably the same people that think they are doing good by buying Poland Spring's "eco-bottle" when getting their bottled water. Dumbasses.

We all want our air quality and global warming problem fixed, but so many of us don't want to be the ones that have to give something up for it.

It's the new way to be "green" in the 21st century. Don't actually do anything positive, just make people think they are doing good. I think Zipcar's motto should be: "Alleviating liberal guilt about polluting the air since 2000."

Fresh Direct. See most of the reasons above. It's bad enough that it requires big trucks traveling long distances to get our groceries to the market, now we need them driving around the city to get them to our homes. Again, you really should be walking or taking the subway/bus to the grocery store in New York. Seeing these big Fresh Direct trucks sitting on the streets idling while the driver makes a delivery is so bothersome. Just about every grocery store in the city has delivery, except they have guys that do it on foot with carts. No carbon emissions required.

Texting and walking at the same time. I think this may actually be more annoying than people who text and drive. You think you can text and walk at the same time? Well, you're wrong. Nobody can, and yet so many people do. And they usually bump into the rest of us as they swerve down the sidewalk, block our way when we are trying to get around them in a narrow hallway and they are moving at a snail's pace or almost cause accidents by walking out in the street without looking where they are going. Seriously, stop and move to the side if you need to read or send a text.

I've got a new rule for the rest of us. When anyone texting walks by, not looking where they are going, give them a swift elbow to the face. That'll teach 'em.

Well, that felt great to get off my chest. Hopefully I'll have another instalment next week, and will be blogging more regularly again.

Remember, if it's Monday, I must be hating.

Religion Run Amuck....Again

2009-05-20T14:52:00.001-05:00

I was reading the New York Times a couple of weeks ago and I saw this story. It is about a mock trial team from an Orthodox Jewish school in Brookline, MA who won the state championship and went to the national tournament in Atlanta. OK, so good for them.

But there was a problem, at least from their point of view. The schedule for the national tournament has the finals scheduled for a Saturday and Orthodox students won't compete (or are forbidden to do so by their parents/elders) on the Sabbath. So they did what all religious people like to do - bitch, complain and claim "religious discrimination."

And threaten to file a lawsuit.

The parents of these kids actually filed a complaint with the Department of Justice. Great lesson they are teaching their kids - if you don't like the rules, sue to get them changed to something more to your liking.

Bullshit like this is when religion really burns my hide. The great thing about this country (and I don't start a sentence that way a lot when talking about our military-industrial complex controlled nation where I reside) is that it was founded on the secular principles of the Enlightenment. Hell, we were the first secular government in recorded history. That's something to be proud of as an American. You, I and everybody else have the right to believe whatever we want, it is right there in the First Amendment. Freedom of religion is a birthright, and that includes freedom from religion.

The kids from this school and their parents have every right to be as Orthodox as they want, and I would fully defend any attack on them or discrimination against them. But the rest of the world has no responsibility to accommodate your beliefs or weird rituals.

If you want to participate in the secular society we live in, then do. If you religion is more important than that, then don't. It is not religious discrimination to not change a schedule to your liking. If you don't like the rules as they are laid out, then don't participate. Go start your own mock trial group with other Orthodox schools and play in your own sandbox. The rest of us have an absolute right to not have your religion effect our lives. It is your choice, not ours. Nobody is forcing these kids to participate in mock trial.

In the end the mock trial group, under pressure from an Orthodox member of the Georgia Bar and the Fulton County judge, caved in and altered the schedule to accommodate the religious extremists. And it is possible that at least one other school was not able to compete in all the rounds due to the schedule change (they are listed as not having ranked due to a schedule deviation, but no searching has given me a definitive answer if it was because of this) so another school may have been penalized because of someone else's religious beliefs. That's religious discrimination.

Where does it end when you go down this slippery slope? Wouldn't almost any day be out of the picture once you start accommodating the extreme elements of any religion? Muslim kids will bitch about the Friday session, Jews (as we've already seen) about Saturdays and Christians about Sundays. So that takes care of three days right there. Then your more conservative Catholics will demand no Wednesdays so they can go to mass. I'm sure there are days of the week that Scientologists will have a problem with, like if the event falls on Tom Cruise's birthday or the anniversary L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics being published. You could probably pick out any day of the year on a calendar and some religious group will have something special about it, and the more extreme elements of those religions will have some sort of rule against doing anything that day.

We see this nonsense all the time here in New York. There are many public buildings in the city that turn their elevators to "all stop" after sundown on Friday through all of Saturday. This means that if you go to the hospital on a Saturday to visit a friend, say on the 14th floor, and accidentally get on this elevator, you will stop at EVERY! FUCKING! FLOOR! even if you are on it by yourself. Its like some ass-hole teenager got on and hit all the buttons. All because of a group of religious extremists and their odd interpretation of a passage in a several-thousand-years-old piece of fiction. So a public space alters the whole way it runs because one of these morons might show up that day.

I'm sick of the wackos of this world expecting the rest of us to acquiesce to their value system and then calling us bigots for refusing. I'm sure there are several Orthodox Jews who would read this and call me an anti-Semite. Well, fuck you.

It happens so many other places too. There are high schools all over the country where the vice-principal spends so much of his time busting kids for wearing caps in school, but if it is a yarmulke or a head scarf it is allowed. Like one reason for wearing something on your head is better than another.

Somebody tries to deny you a place to live, a job, the right to marry; or commit violence against you for what you believe, I'm the guy who will scream out about the injustice of that and demand that your rights be protected. I don't care if you are a believer in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Transcendental Meditation, snake-handling or Paganism; if you set your apartment up with sheng-fui, use crystals to tell your future, seek advice from a con man....er, I mean psychic, think astrology is true, buy into the existence of auras or any other silly mythology. Anybody wants to discriminate against you in any real way for what you believe, you'll have me in your corner.

But the secular world not working around your schedule is not discrimination. So piss off if you don't like it.

I'm a vegetarian, something that, by the way, has a lot more concrete reasons to practice than any religion. When someone invites me to dinner I always let them know my restrictions. If they can't serve anything I'll be able to eat then I don't go. I don't accept the invitation and then show up demanding that the menu be changed to accommodate my needs or I'll sue.

Nobody is trying to take your religion away from you if we don't allow you to push it on us. It does not make the rest of us "religiously insensitive" (which is a charge that's been lobbed at the mock trial people) to not bend to your extremism.

You can't push buttons or ride in vehicles on Saturdays? Then there are going to be things you are going to miss in life because you decide to believe in such silly nonsense.

What you choose to believe is just that, a choice. It is also a choice to participate in the culture of your community. If those two things clash, you have another choice to make. Having both is sometimes not possible, so get over yourself.

Still Searching For Roger

2009-04-26T19:11:00.000-05:00

In this age of email, Google, MySpace and Facebook it seems that you can find anyone you ever knew at any point in your life. This usually means that people can find you as well, and that may or may not be a bad thing, depending on if you want to be found and who might be looking for you.

But like I said, it only "seems" like you can find anyone you want. Sometimes it just doesn't happen.

Not everyone is on a social network site. Not everyone you know has done anything that got them mentioned on the Internet or has their own blog. Some people you used to know have really common names or match the name of somebody famous that makes a Google search impossible (my old friend from high school in Illinois is named Lee Baca, the same name as the sheriff of Los Angeles, so I will never have any luck Googling him).

I've been thinking about this mostly because there is someone I've been trying to get in touch with for over the past year. My wife and I went to SE Asia in November of 2007 for about three weeks, a trip that I blogged extensively about after we got back. (Here, scroll to the bottom and hit "older post" if you are interested in reading all 29 long-winded posts. Lots of pictures.) While there we met several great people, a really sweet gay dentist from San Francisco, a German guy traveling alone and a fun fifty-ish couple from Australia. But there was one person that we really, really loved meeting during our trip.

We were in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and we ate dinner at this great Indian restaurant. We ended up striking up a conversation with this really cool guy from Western Australia named Roger. The extensive post about that night is here, so I'll just do a quick rehash.

Roger was this large guy with a buzz cut on his head and a long gray beard that went down to his belly. Seriously. At the time we met him he was 56 years old, just divorced after 34 years of marriage, recently sold his organic farm that he had owned for years, a fairly recent convert to Buddhism and he was on his very first trip outside of Australia. And he's a vegan, which has a lot to do with why we met him in an Indian restaurant. We had a grand night talking to Roger for about four or five hours, a fascinating and charming man. We had such a great time talking to him that we never thought about pulling out the camera for a picture. He was on a two-and-a-half-month trip through a huge section of SE Asia, including Tibet and Nepal. A huge spiritual journey for him. And he was planning on returning in early 2008 for another six months or so, staying with a friend in Chang Mai, trekking through India and spending time in a monastery in Kathmandu.

We had given him my email address that night when we left and I heard from him shortly before Christmas. I responded to his email a couple of weeks later, waiting until I had time for a proper response. But it bounced back as not a valid email address. I'm not sure what happened, if he changed email addresses, decided to go off grid, lost his account or if something happened to him.
I have tried the email address (kevinswatch@bigpond.com) many times since then with the same result. I've googled him and searched for his blog, which also seems to have disappeared. I've checked to see if he is on Facebook. Nothing.

I'm dying to reconnect with Roger, and it seems that I never will. I'd love to hear about his travels and experiences in Asia.

All this technology and you can still lose touch that easily. Sigh.

So if anyone reading this ever comes across a bearded, sixty-ish, former organic farmer, vegan Buddhist from Western Australia named Roger Williams (also why the name is hard to Google) who has lots of stories about adventures in Asia; please let him know that Deni and Lisa would love to hear from him again.

Where Have All The Video Geeks Gone?

2009-03-30T14:49:00.001-05:00

The summer I turned 17 my family moved from Georgia to the suburb of Lake Zurich, far northwest of Chicago. This means I spent my senior year in a different school than the one I went to for the rest of high school. Not that I had some sort of love of high school before that, but still, what a crappy thing to have to deal with. Being 17 sucked in so many ways without having to deal with being a new kid in school.

And Lake Zurich sucks major ass. One of those horrible, white bread, middle class, pedestrian, homogenized suburbs that make me want to puke. When we first moved there I had to count down the number of houses on the street to find ours at night because they all looked alike.

(OK, so I did meet the girl that I would eventually marry in Lake Zurich, so one good thing came out of living there.)

Senior year was a rough thing to get through, and two things saved me that year. One, I've written about before, was music. Specifically, Document by REM kept me from going crazy and I listened to it at least once a day.

The second thing was my after school job. I worked at Jed's Video, the only video store in Lake Zurich in 1987-1988.

In Lake Zurich in the 80s there were very few options for part-time jobs for teenagers. They either worked at McDonalds, Burger King, Kmart or Jewel. Maybe a couple of guys worked at the car wash. There was really only one cool job for a high schooler in town and I had it.

I loved being a video store geek. I got to watch a ton of movies for free and I got to know pretty much every film buff in town. I knew the tastes of all our regulars and had many conversations about movies with them. Customers would turn me on to movies I never knew about before and I would do the same for them. I introduced many residents of Lake Zurich to Spike Lee and the film Fandango.

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't pushing She's Gotta Have It on the family who rented Top Gun or Dirty Dancing every weekend. You have to know who you're dealing with. I also remember steering customers away from things I knew they wouldn't like or would be inappropriate for their kids. One time, I remember this really well, a woman came up to the counter with the movie Watership Down. I asked her if it was for her or for a kid and she said her kid. I asked how old her kid was and she said something like six or seven. I explained to her what the movie was like and that there was a reason it was rated PG. I did tell her she should rent it and watch it because it is so damn good, but too violent for a young child, with all of the bloody bunny fights and whatnot. I like to think I saved some poor kid a really traumatic experience that night. There is a 28-year-old guy out there somewhere who is really well-adjusted and probably very successful because he didn't see cartoon bunnies getting killed in a horribly violent and bloody way when he was seven. Man, he really owes me.

Those kinds of things made video stores really cool, both for us geeks working there and for the clientele.

I was thinking about this lately because of our neighborhood video store here on the Upper East Side, York Video. A small place run by the owner and a few movie geeks, it is a lot like the store where I worked as a teenager. Except with DVDs instead of VHS and Beta tapes. (Yes, I worked there when Beta was still around. It would die soon after.)

The guys in there are typical movie geeks with varied taste, as proven by the "employee picks" section. And the owner is a great guy you can stand around the counter with and shoot the shit about movies.

Places like this are why I don't do Netflix. But Netflix probably has a lot to do with why York Video is closing.

We went in last weekend and the store was filled with people and really hectic. We couldn't figure out what was going on, there are never that many people in the store. Then we saw the sign that announced they were closing after 20 years and the entire inventory was for sale. We were so bummed. That, of course, didn't stop us from buying some cheap DVDs, taking advantage of the situation to get Iron Giant for four bucks, among others.

It felt like we were picking over a corpse.

I dread the death of the independent neighborhood video store. Where the hell are the movie geeks supposed to work? I don't think it is as fun stuffing DVDs in to envelopes over and over at Netflix is quite as cool of a job. In fact, I'm willing to bet working at Netflix is just as shitty as working at Wal-Mart.

And what about being turned on to a movie you might not have ever considered because the video store dude suggested it? And don't try to tell me that Netflix suggestions are the same thing. Internet programs that make suggestions based on past purchases or rentals are just generic, genre-based matrix programs that have no nuance whatsoever. It is why Amazon continues to suggest Radiohead albums to me even though I hate that fucking band.

And no web site will ever care about what movie you suggest to it. They're such smug ass-holes that way.

We're still lucky we live in New York right now, there are a couple more video stores we can rent from. But who knows for how long?

And will there be any cool gigs for suburban high school kids once the video and record stores are all gone? There's gotta be something better than bagging groceries or working the fryer for teenagers who are already cursed with growing up in the 'burbs.

I imagine when my kid is older and she's curious about things I did when I was younger, I'll tell her about the jobs I've had through the years.

How long will it take to explain to her what a video store was?

Cars Shmars

2009-03-07T22:59:00.001-06:00

I will never understand people who assume that their situation in life applies top all other people. My life is not yours, we have different circumstances, stop assuming my reactions and decisions will be the same as yours just because we have a similar vague demographic.

People seem to love to tell me what I'm going to thing, feel, believe, etc; because of them having gone through a similar thing even if nothing else about their lives is like mine. This has really become a lot more prevalent since I had a kid. I don't know what it is about breeders that make them think they know everything. I've been told by a lot of parents what I was going to feel and think after my baby was born and pretty much all of it was bullshit. The best one was my own mother telling me I was going to start believing in god.

The reason I'm thinking about this is because of a conversation I had the other day with a colleague, a physician on faculty at a New York medical school.

My wife, a physician herself, is in the process of interviewing for jobs. Her stint is up at her current employer, so come this summer she has to have a new job waiting for her. It is looking very likely that we will be leaving New York, our next destination as of now unknown. The current possibilities include Chicago, Baltimore, the D.C. area and Albany. Cleveland had been in the mix as well but now seems unlikely.

I was talking to this colleague about the issues of moving to any of these places, with the big one being that I'm an anti-car person. Now, we live in New York at the moment so anyplace else in America is going to be a step down in public transportation options. But I know from experience that you can live in many cities without being a car owner, especially if you are open to bike riding.

During this conversation I mentioned my not wanting to own a car and she seemed to have the attitude that you couldn't live outside of New York City without a car. I explained that I was only worried about Albany being the choice, as that one would be the hardest. When I mentioned each other city she would basically say the same thing, "Oh you can't do (Cleveland, Washington, Chicago, Baltimore) without a car."

I explained to her that I had either investigated or spent some time in each of the places and knew what I would need to do to live without a car, explaining that I had even lived in Seattle without a car for the bulk of the 90s.

And then came the big "I know better than you bullshit answer."

"You haven't done it with a kid."

This is, of course, a person with a few years on me in being a parent. This is not the first time I've heard that same thing from a veteran parent. And yes, it is true that I haven't done a city outside of New York yet with a kid.

But here's the thing. This doctor I was talking to grew up in the New York area, went to med school here and now works here. She's never actually lived outside of this region.

And she also had something in common with every other parent who has told me I can't go without owning a car in whichever place they've named. I asked her if she has ever tried to live without a car. The answer was no, just like all the others.

And there it is. Somehow they all think that their parenthood experience trumps my no-car philosophy and wide-ranging experience living without one. I've never met anyone who says you can't live with a kid in (blank) city without a car who has ever even attempted it. They really underestimate my dedication to a car-free life and my extreme dweeby knowledge of how to do so.

I have lived most of my adult life without a car, which included taking up residency in Chicago, Seattle, Boston, New York and the small Illinois town of Macomb for college. I have traveled extensively around the country and almost always use public transportation in cities I visit. I even tooled all over the Atlanta metro region as a kid from the age of 12 to 16 on the Marta almost every day. And that was while living in the suburbs.

I have discovered over the year through my own travel and research that there are so many more options out there than people think. I have even started charting out a way to travel across the country by taking only local public transit, by way of light rail, subways, buses and commuter rail, that I hope to take one day and write about. I have already figured out Boston to Chicago with only a couple of small gaps.

I think I know a little bit about how to do this. Having a kid does not change this equation in such a drastic way that I'm going to give up on something I so very much believe in.

The problem with so many Americans in today's world is that we see modern conveniences as needs for survival.

I'm not saying I don't ever have to use a car. Sure I do. But the number of times this last year that I've had to rent or borrow a car can probably be counted on one hand. And I'm sure that number will rise once we leave New York. But that doesn't mean I have to surrender to the car culture that has ruined the quality of life in this country and is the reason for the lack of good public transportation in America to begin with. Even if it is Albany I'm hoping we can do something like Zip Car and not full-on ownership.

Public transportation is better in America right now than it has been in my lifetime. The more we use it, the more we'll get built for us.

I keep being told that having a kid is a reason to have a car. I couldn't disagree more, that's exactly why I'm even more dedicated to not owning one - so she doesn't get indoctrinated into car culture.

There is more to life than our personal conveniences. That's something I want to teach my daughter.

Zack And Miri Mak....ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

2009-02-19T11:37:00.002-06:00

I'm not getting to go out to the movies a lot these days, and by not a lot I mean not at all. So anything I see is going to be on DVD.

I finally got to see the new Kevin Smith movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, this week.

After watching it, I couldn't help but wonder if Kevin Smith purposely made a movie even more fucking boring than Jersey Girl to try to make that one look better.

Holy crap was this movie boring and really unfunny. It was also proof that Jason Mewes should never play any character other than Jay. Someone also needs to tell Kevin Smith that his 37-year-old wife does not look like someone attending their 10-year high school reunion.

I just want to tell Kevin Smith that we've already got a guy that makes unfunny, boring "comedies" with simplistic, After School Special-type, gooberistic messages. We don't need another Judd Apetow, the most overrated filmmaker since Tarantino. Hell, we didn't need the first one as far as I'm concerned. Please just be Kevin Smith. The Chasing Amy, Clerks and Dogma version, not the Jersey Girl one.

It wasn't a total loss on the Kevin Smith rental front. I also picked up Sold Out - A Threevening with Kevin Smith, the latest of his live Q & A shows where he dishes on his life and his Hollywood experiences. Fun stuff as always. Though his unwavering defense of the Star Wars prequels is baffling, these shows are always a lot of fun. I laughed more in the first five minutes of that than I did the entire Zack and Miri film.

I've Seen The Future...

2009-02-05T16:33:00.003-06:00

The downside of my being home all day with the baby is that I've been watching way too much TV. The upside for being a stay-at-home spouse in 2009 versus the 70s or 80s is that daytime TV has more options than those horrendous soap operas. So I've ended up watching a lot of House, M.D.

I only bring this up because an episode the other day made me think about something. It was one about a young fat girl who was teased by her classmates and didn't have any friends (Don't worry, the genius Dr. House cured her by the end). It got me to thinking about when my daughter gets to be a pre-teen and a teenager. See, I was a brooding, geeky, New Wave boy who got bullied on a daily basis from basically 6th grade until high school graduation. And my wife was one of the really smart people in high school (something like 2nd highest GPA in her class) so our daughter being one of the cool popular kids in school is probably not in the cards. Which I am so OK with. The cool kids suck and are usually the ones that get arrested or pregnant on prom night.

But with non-coolness also comes the potential of being bullied. And I won't be able to handle that very well, my kid going through that.

When I was being bullied in school, every adult in my life let me down. From the principals to the teachers to my parents to the bullies parents, not a single one would step up to make it stop. There is some sort of sick attitude that bullying is some sort of natural order of things in adolescence. "Kids will be kids" or some other dumbshit way of looking at it without considering the emotional toll it takes on the victims. I imagine there is a good chance that this way of looking at it is still fairly pervasive.

If my daughter is bullied in school there is no way I will let it slide. I'll go through all the proper channels, of course - principal, teachers, cops, etc. - and if no one will do anything about it I'll have to take it to the bully's parents. Now one thing I know about bullies' parents is that they almost never have any interest in ending their kids' bullying. They are either the type that openly encourage it (see Emilio Estevez's character's father in The Breakfast Club) or are at least OK with since there little brat is giving it out instead of receiving.

So basically, this means that I'll probably have to take matters into my own hands if some little prissy bitch decides to give my daughter a hard time in school.

So it is not outside the realm of possibility that I could end up as a guy in his early- to mid-fifties going to jail for beating the snot out of some 16-year-old blond bimbo cheerleader and her mother and/or father.

And I guess I'm OK with that. Really, who's going to fuck with the convict's daughter after that?

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

2009-01-13T01:12:00.002-06:00

Man it has been a long time since I've written anything. Sorry about that, I've just been crazy busy lately, what with the kid and setting up my new Facebook page. Facebook is really frightening and exciting all at the same time. And overwhelming as hell when you start seeing all the friends rolling in. It really is like crack on a computer.

I also didn't get all of my holiday wish list posts done that I wanted, never getting around to letting you know what books you could buy me. I guess I'll have to let you know around my birthday (Hint - I still don't have the new Sarah Vowell)

But that's not why I'm here today. I'm here to finally write a blog in 2009.

I'm not a fan of New Year's resolutions. As silly as religion, astrology and fortune cookies if you ask me. Why do people wait until the turning of an arbitrary date on the calendar to decide to quit smoking, lose weight, watch less TV, yada, yada, yada...? Decide you want to change and fucking do it already. Thinking you'll be more successful because it is a fresh, spanking new year is just delusional.

That being said....

There are a few things I've been thinking about lately that I've been wanting to do or change. It doesn't have anything to do with the new year, but I suppose the extra feeling of resolve about them lately has a lot to do with having a daughter 2-1/2 months ago. So these are mostly things I've been wanting to do for a while but really need to get off my ass now and do them.

In no particular order.

Watch less TV. I know this is an obvious one, just about everyone I know watches too much TV. But now it is getting worse, I'm a stay-at-home-dad right now and it is hard to read a book while feeding the baby but really easy to watch the House marathons on USA.

Speaking of reading...

Read more fiction. I do love to read, I really do. But I am so drawn to nonfiction and I just don't spend enough time in the fiction section. I have so many friends that find such joy in reading the likes of John Updike. Most of my happy friends are the ones who read a lot of fiction. My last few books, on the other hand, have been the autobiography of the strange life of a man called E, Susan Jacoby's brilliant condemnation of anti intellectualism in America, Christopher Hitchen's bashing of Mother Teresa and Sam Harris' anti-religion book.

I just picked up another Susan Jacoby book, Freethinkers, and I'm forcing myself to not pick it up until I've finished reading my paperback copy of Graham Greene's The Quiet American that I bought from a guy with no hands in Vietnam over a year ago. (I'm about a quarter of the way through and I'm really enjoying it)

Learn to play guitar AND speak another language. These are my two biggest goals over the next couple of years. I really want to be able to impress upon my daughter the joy of music, communication and multiculturalism. And I don't want to be the dopey parent. I'm married to a woman who is an accomplished physician, plays the flute and speaks German. So I better step it up real quick.

I've already started on the guitar. My friend Chris, a genius guitar player, has given me a lesson and a practice instruction sheet to use. It's hard to find the time to practice. The other day I was planning to but I was taking care of the kid all day, then my wife came home and we had to go to the store. Then I had some beer I needed to drink. You can see the problem.

At some point I'm going to find a class or maybe check out that Rosetta Stone thing to start learning how to speak Italian.

I know that choosing to learn Italian when I live in America is probably about as practical as owning a bikini store in Siberia. But Spanish just seems so boring and I love Italy.

Travel more. I know, I know. What the hell right does a guy who's been lucky enough to go to Asia twice in the last year or so have to pine for more traveling? But man, there is nothing as good as traveling. And there is never enough of it.

Holiday Wish List Part 3 - Music

2008-12-24T10:13:00.003-06:00

Hey you! Buy me some stuff off of my Amazon wish list.

Alright, so I haven't really got all these postings where I plead for gifts my my adoring public done in time for anyone to have presents sent to me in time for Christmas. But since I'm not a Christian anyway, and loathe everything about Christmas except for the part where people buy me stuff, it doesn't really matter if you get it to me before or after the holiday. The spirit of giving to me can last all season long...

I love music. I love buying music. But there are only so many dollars I can commit to buying music that hard choices have to be made when at the record store.

The band most responsible for making me a music fan to begin with is U2. Prior to discovering their music on my own in my very early teens, I didn't think I liked music very much. Unlike a lot of kids in my generation, I didn't have parents who turned me on to Bob Dylan and The Beatles or an older sibling who opened my eyes to The Ramones or The Clash. No, my mom listened to shit like Air Supply and my brother had records from the likes of Kiss, Kansas and Foreigner.

My dad did give me my very first album. It was Bobby Vinton's Greatest Hits. I'm pretty sure that the first albums my mother ever bought for me were the two Disco Duck records.

So yea, I pretty much thought music wasn't my thing. But then I heard U2 and I turned into a lifelong music geek. Just finding that one great band made me realize there was great music out there and I went looking for it. They profoundly changed my life. And while I have been pretty disappointed with their output for the last decade or so, (hitting their most horrible low point with 1997's Pop) I will always feel grateful to them for their earlier work. It's those early albums that got the re-release treatment in the last year or so.

Last year was the 20th anniversary of The Joshua Tree, which made me feel really old since I can remember going to the Turtles Records and Tapes nearest my house in Stone Mountain to buy it on the day in came out like it was yesterday. So they put out a few different editions of a remastered version of the album. The best one is a 2-CD/DVD set that comes in at over 50 bucks.

Earlier this year they released new, remastered versions of their first three albums - Boy, October and War - each one with an extra disc full of bonus tracks. And then they also put out a new version of their live album Under A Blood Red Sky, packaging together the album and the DVD for the first time.

Together, they are like a box set of my high school years.

Like I said, I have a limited music-buying budget and hard decisions have to be made. It is really hard to justify throwing down more than 30 bucks (or more than 50 for Joshua Tree) for albums you already own, even if they do sound a whole lot better and are loaded with extras, when you can get two brand new albums that you don't already own for that same price.

But man, I really want these bad.

Holiday Wish List Part 2 - Movies

2008-12-17T19:36:00.000-06:00

Time once again to try to convince all of you out there to buy me stuff from my Amazon wish list for the Winter Solstice celebration. If anybody is interested in buying me some DVDs this holiday...

After Before Sunrise, the single best movie from the decade of my twenties, the other two movies from the 90s that I feel the most connected to are Kicking and Screaming and Beautiful Girls. I have probably spent enough money renting them both over the years that I could have owned them a dozen times over, but they are still not a part of my video library.

By the mid-90s, several movies were trying to encapsulate the whole "slacker"/"Gen X" thing. The most notable of these was the contrived, pedestrian, hipster piece of shit Reality Bites. Unlike that garbage, Kicking and Screaming is full of characters that seem like real people. The debut movie from Noah Baumbach, who would get well deserved notice a decade later for the excellent The Squid and the Whale, begins with a group of friends at their college graduation night party. Several months later and they are all still just hanging around their college town wondering what to do with themselves. Josh Hamilton is excellent as the hapless Grover, who is wandering aimlessly since breaking up with his girlfriend, played by Olivia d'Abo, because she went to do a program in Prague. Their courtship is played out in the film as a series of flashbacks, giving us the hopeful ending without the cheesy sentimentality. Chris Eigeman, a veteran of the Whit Stillman movies, is his usual dry self. Eric Stoltz plays that student who never leaves, we all know one of those guys, right? And then there is the young Parker Posey, who seemed to be in every movie I saw between 1993 and 1997.

This movie really has a special place in my heart. It came out about a year after I graduated college and what was going on in it looked a lot like my life at the time, minus the snappy jokes. I also visit my old college fairly often, and even though I graduated 14 years ago I can walk into the Jackson Street Pub in Macomb, IL and will see a guy that I went to school with who never left.

It is also a really funny movie.

And it has one of my favorite endings ever.

Available for years only on VHS, it finally got the Criterion (can we pass a Constitutional amendment that says only they get to make DVDs?) treatment a couple of years ago.

Released only a few months later than Kicking and Screaming, Beautiful Girls captures a different group of the same generation, a few years older and way less educated. Unfortunately not on a Criterion edition, and not even manufactured anymore it seems.

Timothy Hutton plays a guy who returns to the small town where he grew up to go to his high school graduation and try to figure his life out. Really, Ted Demme's best film (I don't care if you think it's Blow). Hutton is the only one of his group of friends that left, with the rest seemingly content with their empty jobs and nights at the bar.

There are many things to love abut this movie, but the thing that stands out for most people is the relationship between Hutton and a thirteen-year-old Natalie Portman. In the hands of anybody else, these scenes would have come across as only creepy. But with these actors and this director, they play out as a completely understandable crush by a 27-year-old man on a pubescent girl. For this film alone Portman is forgiven for Padmé Amidala and, well, pretty much her entire adult career.

The whole thing also works, of course, because in the end it is not really about the love between a creepy guy in his late twenties and a middle-schooler. It is really about a guy who is ten years out of high school not wanting to accept that he is a grown-up. Something I really related to when I saw the movie at the age of twenty-five, and why I fell in love with it so much.

It was in this movie that I realized for the first time that Matt Dillon is a pretty good actor. And it introduced me to the genius of unknown character actors Max Perlich and Noah Emmerich.

Beautiful Girls is also responsible for making Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline a cool song again (or for the first time depending on your point of view), and probably why it is played at so many sports stadiums now.

Remember, gift-wrapping is completely unnecessary.

Late Monday Hate - New Parent Edition

2008-12-10T01:36:00.002-06:00

So since I became a father it is impossible to get anything done on time. I'm thinking that my Monday hate postings will kind of come on whatever day I can get to it. And since we're in a parent mode, why don't we list the things I'm hating about child-rearing?

First off, parenting books. I've seen a bunch of these things now and I've come to the conclusion that they are all full of shit. Most of them seem to be selling one agenda or another and all they succeed in doing is making parents over think everything. None of the things you are told to do in these books are backed up by any real scientific study, they will just make broad claims as fact.

Like, there are some that make it sound like child abuse if you give your baby a pacifier. They tell you that you kid will never learn to suck her thumb and ruin any chance she has of getting in to Harvard. They don't actually back their claims up with any actual facts, you are just supposed to take it at face value because they are the "best selling" parenting book out there. What's really going on is the breast feeding hippy-Nazi's going all freaky about putting anything in a baby's mouth besides mom's nipple and maybe a twig off a hemp plant because there will be "nipple confusion." I've figured out that nipple confusion is as big of a myth as the lost city of Atlantis and compassionate conservatism. I've heard a lot about how it "can" happen, but no instances of it actually happening. And the people who have a problem with pacifiers are the same ones who think it's perfectly OK and normal to breast feed your kid until she's in junior high.

Baby cries, baby is given pacifier, baby stops crying. It's all good. And my kid knows how to suck her hand with no problem and can tell the difference between the nipple with the food and the one without in about a millisecond.

Throw the books away and just ask your pediatrician for advice. The kid will give you a pretty good idea what to do, too.

Speaking of pacifiers...

I hate the cutesy alternative language people make up for kids. Why the fuck can't we call things what they are just because a child is involved? What the hell is a binky? That doesn't mean anything. Pacifier is really appropriately named thing, why do parents insist on renaming it to something so meaningless? It's not a onesie, it's called a bodysuit.

There's also the putting of a Y on the end of words to make them sound more kid-cute. You know that it doesn't make a crap-filled diaper smell any better by calling it "poopy," don't you? What the hell is wrong with just poop? Personally, I prefer shit. But the wife has an opinion on my language around the daughter.

Another version of this is talking to the baby how you think she's going to say things. If my mother calls herself "Gamma" one more time I'm going to scream.

Don't even get me started on the stupid words parents make up for genitalia.

Seems to me it shouldn't be a radical idea to teach kids the right names for things and the correct way to pronounce them.

And then there are the people who think they know who the baby looks like. I have heard just about every possible combination of who my daughter looks like. People have told me she looks like me, others say my wife. I've had some of my family say my daughter's various cousins or other relatives. You know what? She looks like a baby. Babies this young (weeks old) don't look like anybody. Any claim that she looks like anybody is just people projecting some preconceived idea on my kid. Babies are like Cylons in the new Battlestar Galactica, there are about seven basic models. That's why it is so easy to switch them in the hospital and there are identity bracelets on every limb to make sure that doesn't accidentally (or purposely) happen.

The most dangerous thing I can't stand is the "blame medicine for Autism" movement. I am so sick of seeing this anti-intellectual movement treated with legitimacy. I have heard so many claims of there being "studies" that show a connection between vaccinations, oxytocin or some other drug and Autism. None of it is true, and the studies they site as evidence of these connections are either real studies that are being misrepresented or just flat-out made up. Because of the misinformation spread by these wackos, more parents are choosing to not get their children immunized, and they put my kid at a higher risk.

But you want to know one thing I love about having a baby around? You really don't realize until you have one just how much babies fart, and ours really let's 'em rip with the best of them. And they stink like crazy.

So these days I can just cut loose with mine and blame it on the kid. That's the joy of fatherhood right there.

Holiday Wish List Part 1

2008-11-27T00:21:00.000-06:00

Since we had a kid there is not a lot of money to be blown on myself these days. So I'm going to use my blog to shill for the stuff I want this year, hoping for some kind souls out there in cyberspace to go to my Amazon wish list and send me the shit I want. Why not, some guy got a house by trading a paperclip, right?

I have been wanting to see this show ever since I heard Jill Sobule (she wrote the theme song) mention it at one of her shows last year or so. It has finally come out on DVD, though hard to find anywhere but Amazon, and I'm hoping someone (cough cough, wife, cough) might buy it for me for the ancient Pagan winter solstice holiday they now call Christmas.

Julia Sweeney tells the story of her journey trying to find her faith before finally Letting Go of God.

A journey similar to mine and many other non-believers.

Monday Hate

2008-11-24T22:27:00.000-06:00

Oh man, it has been two weeks since I last posted something. Time flies hen you are changing diapers every fifteen minutes.

So a quick hate post today, just to let everyone know I'm still alive:

D.L. Hughley. Good god, who thinks this guy is funny? I caught part of his new Daily Show-wannabe" show on CNN last week when he was talking to Dan Savage. Holy shit, I haven't seen such unfunny comedy since Saved By The Bell was on the air. And besides being unfunny, there is nothing worse than stupid people who pretend they're smart. I would say it's the comedy version of O'Reilly except that O'Reilly is probably funnier.

At one point Hughley basically told Dan Savage to his face that being gay was the wrong way to be. And he defended it with the whole "way I was raised" nonsense. This was how he was defending the African-American population in California for voting for Prop 8 in such high numbers, because of their religious upbringing. He then said that he had never met a black atheist.

Seriously? Fuck D.L., how many black people do you know then? How is it you are a black man who grew up around other black people and you don't know any black non-believers, yet I'm a white guy who grew up in the suburbs and I've met more than one?

I'm not sure if that was a sign of him being a huge liar or completely clueless.

This country has such a rich history of great black artists and entertainers. Why has that brilliant culture become represented by brainless hacks like Hughley and Tyler Perry?

Paul Robeson must be spinning in his grave.

Monday Hate

2008-11-10T22:56:00.000-06:00

Well it has been a few weeks since my last hate list. The whole having a kid thing has been really taking up a lot of my time. Did you know that you can't just leave out food for them and hit the bars for the night? I should have thought this through a little better.

But I'm coming down off my high, so it's time to do some hatin'.

I really only have one thing this week...

Back to basics, let me reiterate my hatred of religion. This isn't one of my usual ranting entries about what I'm hating right now. I'm not really seething about religion at the moment (for that we would be talking about my mother-in-law, who was here for three straight weeks making snide little digs at the guy who isn't good enough for her daughter).

No, I'm more just in the mood to celebrate how smart I am for not believing in religion. Besides all the usual crap that I use to point out why religion is complete bullshit, one that I like to bring up is the ridiculousness that the three main world religions (Islam, Judaism, Christianity) are always fighting with each other even though they worship the same imaginary deity. They bitch and moan with each other over who the prophet is, but still, same damn god.

The utter stupidity of religion got highlighted in the news in a delicious way this weekend. Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks came to blows with each other at the church in Jerusalem where these people believe Jesus was crucified.

Scratch that. Came to blows again. This happens pretty much on a regular basis.

And these guys don't just worship the same god. The groups at this church that are always fighting each other believe in the same exact messenger/saviour/prophet as well.

What's that whole god's love thing again?

More evidence to add to the pile of proof that religious belief is a mental disease.

This shit cracks me up. Keep in mind when watching the video that this is one of the holiest places in all of Christianity.

Promises To Keep

2008-10-29T12:50:00.002-05:00

Forgive me a little self-indulgence as I subject you all to an open letter to my newborn daughter.

Hi Sam,

This is your Dad. But feel free to call me Deni, we don't hang our hats on titles in this family. "This family," what an odd new thing to be saying. With you here I guess that's what we are now.

You'll have to let me know eventually how you like your nickname we created by giving you the initials S-A-M. You don't have to use it but it is there if you want it. Your mom's idea, to make sure you had options for what you want to call yourself. Between this, your real first name, the first name shortened and your middle name you can pick whichever you want.

I'm writing this and you are only a few hours old so you probably can't read it yet. I'm not sure when you'll read this, maybe when you are a teenager and wondering why your father is such a freak and can't be normal like everyone else's dad.

Sorry about that. Not really much I can do. Ask your mother, she's known me since I was 18 and can vouch for my inherent weirdness and that it is not a purposeful thing meant to embarrass you in front of the cool kids. Those kids aren't your real friends anyway. Trust me.

I wanted to talk to you now so that we can lay down some ground rules. Not for you, for me. See, I'm just as new at this fathering thing as you are at being a human. I'm going to make mistakes. Oh boy am I going to make mistakes. But hopefully I can keep them to enough of a minimum that you won't end up spending your 30s on a therapist's couch.

So to that end I thought maybe we should have a little social contract between us. Not to worry, there will be nothing demanded of you in this, these are promises I have to keep. You're too young at this point for your signature to be legally binding anyway. Except maybe in Mississippi, where I think you might already be of legal marrying age.

I guess I want you to be able to have expectations of your dad, not just have them demanded by him. That seems to be the one-way street of most parent-child relationships.

I guess I'll start with what most parents tell me is an easy one. I will love you unconditionally. As someone who just became a parent this is still not too easy to grasp. I suppose that it's true. Frankly, it is hard to imagine loving you unconditionally if you become a serial killer, (highly unlikely since you're a girl) Republican, Jesus freak, racist, Wal-Mart shopper or a gay-basher. Or show up in a Girls Gone Wild DVD. But I'm sure I will stick to this one.

I won't try to fake you out for my own entertainment. There is no such thing as Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy or Jesus. As a child you are perfectly capable of making up your own imaginary friends, you don't need me to do that for you. I'm sure yours will be a lot more interesting than the ones any adult can think of. You may need to keep this one to yourself or you'll be the most hated kid in your second grade class and I'll have a lot of angry parents calling me.

"Because" is never the answer to any question. Don't ever accept that from me if I ever dare to pull that on you.

"Because I said so" is not a reason for things to be done my way. Sure, there will be rules. But you are a person and you deserve to be treated with the same respect as everyone else. If you want to know why we have a certain rule for you I'll tell you. If I don't have a good reason then it's not a good rule to begin with. For instance, you'll probably want to know why we don't let you camp out in front of the TV like most of the other kids get to do. This one will be easy, as all I'll have to do is ask you who you'd rather be like. A smart, hard-working, successful physician like your mom? Or your father, who can tell you the difference between Cylons, Ferengi and Sleestaks?

No matter what disagreements we might have, the phrase, "While you're living under my roof..." will never pass my lips.

I'm kind of hoping you'll be a little bit of a tomboy. If you instead turn out to be one of those girls that wants her dad to wear a tiara and sit in a little chair to have a tea party with all your dolls, I'll do that. I'll probably hate it, but I'll do it.

The day I raise my hand in anger or punishment to you or say something I know will be hurtful to you is the day I pack my bags and remove myself from you and your mother's lives forever. One thing you should never have to experience is the same kind of violence and emotional abuse that was thrust upon me as a child and teenager. That family tradition stops here.

I absolutely will not abdicate my responsibility of talking to you about sex and defer to someone else. I will look you in the eye and give you honest information and answers to your questions. There will be no embarrassment or agonizing from me because you are my "little girl" and I'd rather not think about you having sex. That father is the kind that ends up with a pregnant 16-year-old. I'm not saying I think it will be easy. But it is your mother's and my responsibility and it is too important. We won't let you down.

I will try like crazy to get you to love music because it is one of my passions and I hope it will be something we can share together. I'll do my best to not force my favorite music down your throat, just expose you to it and let you decide. This might be difficult for me to accomplish, just ask you mother. If you decide to say to me one day, "Deni, I just can't stand Robyn Hitchcock or Billy Bragg," it won't kill me. I'll cry myself to sleep that night, but I'll grudgingly accept that you like what you like. This would probably be my biggest test of that unconditional promise listed previously.

To that same end, if you come to really love your generation's version of Debbie Gibson, Hannah Montana or *NSync (shudder) and want to go see them in concert, I will take you and sit there the whole time, dancing if you want me to. I'll probably spend the whole evening fighting off both my gag reflex and the urge to make snarky remarks about this future teen idol, but I will deal with it if it makes you happy.

I won't freak out about the haircuts you get or the clothes you wear. Well, within reason. I'll probably draw the line at skirts that show your butt and tank tops with "slut" or "juicy" declared across the front. But if you come home with a Mohawk one day, big deal. It's just hair. Lots of parents worry too much about their kids dressing weird or getting crazy haircuts. I'll be worried if you go through your teen years and don't try to do things like that. I'm not going to sweat the small things, and teens dressing weird is most assuredly one of the smallest.

I won't try to relive my childhood through you. There will be no pushing you to do the things I liked to do or wanted to do when I was younger. You don't have to be in drama club. That would make me happy if you want to do that, to be sure. But it will never be about me. You also don't have to go to prom or march in graduation if you don't want to. Those are the two most overrated things in high school anyway. Seriously, my first bit of advice to you is that prom is a stupid school dance that costs a lot of money to drink punch and listen to a bad cover band. It will not give you the memories of your life they say it will and you won't have some empty hole in your life for missing it.

I will not see it as my job to scare the boys, or girls, who come to pick you up for dates.

You might like boys. You might like girls. Both your mother and I are cool with either way you turn out. You'll be raised to know that both ways are normal and healthy. Though I must admit, that part about not scaring your dates will probably be easier for me to live up to if it's girls you're bringing home.

You will see more of the world by the time you are a teenager than I had seen by the age of 30. We want you to be exposed to different cultures, places and people to give you a wide view of the world. We don't want you having to play catch-up in your late twenties and thirties like me. We promise to take you to many, many different places around the world.

When you are old enough, after high school and during college, you will be given the opportunity, means and encouragement to strap on a backpack and see part of the world by yourself. I may even insist. This means a real international trip, like backpacking through Europe while staying in hostels or doing volunteer work in a village in Cambodia, not spring break in Cancun with thousands of frat boys and sorority sisters. That, I can assure you, your mother and I will not pay for.

These are my promises to you little one. I will probably think of more that I need to add to this list over the years as I figure out this whole fatherhood thing. But no promises can be renegotiated by me no matter how hard to keep they might turn out to be.

I hope I do not stray from these vows I make. I'll do my best.

Love,

Deni - aka "Dad," "Pops," "Daddy," "Papa" or whatever you want to call me.

Anything but "Father." Please.

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Monday Hate

2008-10-20T22:57:00.000-05:00

I'm really reaching this week, with nothing really itching at me to rant about. There is just this one thing I have to bitch about right now, but I was reluctant to write about it since it is a little too close to a post my buddy Joe wrote less than a week ago.

But fuck it, he's so loopy from being up for the last three days straight, because he's dancing on the cloud of new fatherhood, that he won't notice.

I have got this damn zit on my nose. Now it is not what you think. Unlike Joe's demonstration of girl-like vanity, I'm not worried about how it looks. In fact, no one can even see it. I guess it might not even technically be my nose since it is on the bridge between my eyes.

And that's the problem. It is a somewhat painful little zit that is situated perfectly for my eyeglass nose pads to sit right on top of it.

It is really irritating and there is not much I can do about it. I haven't owned a pair of contacts since I was about 20-years-old. So the two options are to deal with the annoying pain or have blurry vision.

Now I know what Sophie must have felt like with that no-win choice. It's tragic I tell ya.

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The Big O

2008-10-14T08:00:00.002-05:00

I was perusing the on-line edition of the Chicago Tribune last week, I tend to keep up with the newspapers from the places I've lived, and I came across this story. I wouldn't have even clicked the link to the story had I not recognized the name of the person it was about.

It is about a project by a woman, Robyn Okrant, I did a play with several years ago in Chicago, a long-form improv parody of the TV show ER. It was a big hit in Chicago for many years, running for I think almost ten years. We were involved in one of the later incarnations.

When I saw the article I thought, "Robyn Okrant? Hey, I used to know Robyn!"

Having done theatre in several cities over the years it is not uncommon for me to run across names of people I know in newspaper articles or see faces I recognize in commercials, TV shows and movies. It is usually fairly minor - a bit part in a commercial or movie, a mention in a review of a play - though sometimes there is some real meaty, high profile stuff.

Too often it seems to happen only with completely unlikable and untalented self-promoters, like that douche bag Mike Daisey (who I knew in my Seattle days) with his vacuous monologues that he's convinced so many hipster theatre-goers are deep and artistic.

But seeing the attention Robyn has been getting got me so psyched. Not only is she one of the nicest and most genuine people I ever did a show with, she is also one of the most talented and original. And funny as hell. Honestly one of my absolute favorite people from my former theatre career.

After reading the article in the Trib I found a bunch more media attention she has been getting for a while that flew under my radar. She has been interviewed for a bunch of radio shows, including All Things Considered (I don't always get a chance to listen) and many media outlets have written about it. I would have discovered this a while ago when the New York Times ran a story, since I read the Times every day, if not for the fact I was in Taiwan in the middle of August when the article appeared.

And the project? Well, she decided to live for an entire year as Oprah advises people to do in her various formats (show, magazine, website, etc) and write a blog about it. One of the articles I read mentioned that she already has a deal with a publisher to write a book about the experiment.

Like I said, I wouldn't have even read that article had I not seen Robyn's name. I'm bored by pretty much anything Oprah. I just don't get why people like her so much.

But with Robyn Okrant doing a take on it I know it will turn out fantastic. She has a brilliant mind for both analysis and comedy.

I'm truly happy for her and I'm posting this really just to let all of you know about it. Because, you know, with her coverage only coming from pipsqueak media outlets like NPR and the New York Times I need to do all I can to help out an old acquaintance with my myriad of readers.

I haven't had too much time since I heard about it to really read her blog, I'm just now starting to weed my way through it. I think I'd rather wait for the book to tell you the truth, to read the whole thing when she's done. Hard to create a story arc with daily blog postings.

You should check it out. Living Oprah.

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Monday Hate

2008-10-13T10:55:00.001-05:00

Time once again for a trip through what my brain is hatin' at the moment.

I woke up today with nothing to write about, but on my walk to work toward Rockefeller Center on 5th Avenue I was reminded of what today is. So I've got one item today:

People who still celebrate Columbus Day. I mean come on! Really? Even after all we have discovered about that monster, the stuff they didn't tell us in school, we still have a parade in his honor being set up this very morning on 5th Avenue.

I don't know if it still the same today, but if you are around my age or older, and went to public primary and high schools, you more than likely were told the usual heroic sounding story of Columbus "discovering" the "new world" and that's how the founding of America began. Period.

This is the moral equivalent of schools teaching that Adolph Hitler was this guy who designed the Volkswagen Beetle, bringing affordable transportation to the working class.

It wasn't until I got to college that I finally got to discover the truth about the barbarian that enslaved and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of human beings. It is estimated that his actions caused the death of over half the population of Haiti in just one two-year period. And the long term effect of enslavement and slaughter led to complete disappearance of the original population on Haiti by 1650.

Think about that. There are parades around America today in honor of a man who is responsible for the eradication of an entire race. Not even Hitler accomplished that, try as he did.

The parades are not as big as they were in years past, thankfully a lot more people are aware. But the Italian-American community in so many cities still stick to celebrating the man. This kind of ethnic pride is sickening.

They may as well have a parade for Mussolini.

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Monday Hate

2008-10-06T22:45:00.002-05:00

Not too long before my blogging will almost assuredly slow down for a while with the child soon to appear. I imagine at that point my weekly hate list will consist mostly of items like "poop" and "spit-up." I'll try to do more than just these Monday hate posts, but most of my on-line attention is being given to my other blog for the time being.

But until Out Of Tune becomes nothing more than bitching about lack of sleep and colic, enjoy these precious moments we have together, just you and I and the things I'd like to beat with a stick.

This week's things I can't stand:

Kirk Cameron. I know, why would I even waste the energy hating a bad, has-been actor? Well, I'm reading my New York Times this morning and I come across a story in the Arts section about some crappy religious propaganda movie about a firefighter who saves his marriage by "turning to god." It stars the former teen actor and current religious fanatic star of the bizarre Left Behind movies. There was this section included in the article:

Mr. Cameron, who has been married for 17 years and has six children, also said that his faith had helped him survive in Hollywood. “As a teen idol who makes it to 37 without being a crack-smoking transvestite stuck in a drug-rehab center over and over, I’d say, wow, those values have served me pretty well,” he said.

I'd say, wow, you're a dick Kirk. So what about the rest of the "teen idols" who made it to adulthood not being addicted to crack? You know, the majority of them? Just because a few from basically one show (Different Strokes) had some issues over the years, people forget that that doesn't represent the whole of people who were ever famous teen actors. Lots of actors can keep their wits about them without having to turn to ancient fairy tales you smug jerk.

And what the hell is wrong with transvestites? You god-loving types just can't make a comment without taking a dig at gay, transgendered or any other people who are different from you, can you? You homophobic, hate-mongering piece of shit.

Miley Cyrus. Disneyland was shut down for a private party, Miley Cyrus' 16th birthday celebration. Guests paid $250 to attend. Need I say anymore?

Boston Red Sox. As I'm typing this they just beat the Angels to win the series and go to the ALCS against the Rays. It reminds me how annoying I remember Red Sox fans being and what a god-awful place Boston is to live. The Red Sox were a lot more likable when they tragically lost in the postseason all the time.

Sarah Palin. I try to keep the political stuff over at the other blog, but I just can't help this one. I really thought it wasn't possible for my hatred of this woman to get any bigger, but the more and more I get to see her the more I cannot stomach this sorry excuse for a human being. Nothing would please me more than to see this woman get beaten with moose antlers by a group of gay environmental community activists from Planned Parenthood on their way to buy some arugula.

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Monday Hate - Sports Special

2008-09-29T22:08:00.000-05:00

Time once again for my Monday hate list. This week, in honor of the baseball playoffs about to begin (GO CUBS!), we're going with an all sports related list:

Public financed sports stadiums and the boobs who mindlessly cheer on the crooks who took their money. Watching the final game festivities at Yankee stadium, the way the announcers talked about the new stadium and the way the fans cheered the mention of it was mind-boggling. Most people around here are clueless about just how much the new Yankee Stadium is going to cost us. And how little it will end of costing the billionaires who own the team. But hey, we should all be helping the poor Yankees pay A-Rod $30 mil a year, right?

By the way, all you Yankee fans who were holding signs that said "The House That Ruth Built" that night, he didn't. The taxpayers built the first one, too.

Rally caps. To anyone who I've told that praying is the single biggest, stupidest waste of time and energy, I owe you an apology. I was wrong. It is definitely rally caps.

The idea of putting your hat on in as stupid of a way possible to give your team the good karma they need to make a comeback when they are losing late in the game...well, do I even have to finish that sentence?

Interleague play in Major League Baseball. OK, we've been doing this "experiment" for twelve seasons. Can we please stop now? Look, I know there is this argument that there is such big excitement with regional rivals being able to play each other, but once the novelty of the whole thing wore off it turns out it is just another series. And it gets in the way of how often a team plays the teams in the other divisions, which is a hell of a lot more important when it comes to deciding the best team in each league.

Besides, for every Mets-Yankees and Cubs-White Sox series, you also get handed Pirates-Royals and Reds-Mariners. And just how is that exciting?

And while we're at it...

The Wild Card and expanded playoffs in MLB. When this started in 1995 it took away one of my arguments of why baseball is such a better game than other American sports. After a 162-game season if you can't win your division, tough luck. No rewards for second place. Not only did this new system ruin any chance for any more of those great pennant races between two great teams and make the post-season way too long, but we also get some really weak-ass teams in the playoffs that shouldn't be there. It is only a matter of time we get a team with a losing record in the playoffs, as is so commonplace in basketball. (Why do they even have a regular season in the NBA when practically every team makes the playoffs?)

The Steinbrenner family. Just when you thought there couldn't possibly be a bigger prick in baseball than Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, along comes his son Hank. That whole family seems to have jackass in the genes.

Album Review: Who Killed Amanda Palmer?

2008-09-27T12:27:00.000-05:00

I've never made any secret of the fact that I think one of the two best bands to pop up on the scene this decade is The Dresden Dolls. (The other one is Rilo Kiley)

Certainly one of the most creative and unique bands to come around in a while, who else is doing "Brechtian punk cabaret" music?

With such a creative songwriting talent, I was looking forward to lead singer/piano player Amanda Palmer's solo album, the oddly titled Who Killed Amanda Palmer? Even more exciting, the album was to be produced by Ben Folds.

Unfortunately, as an album it is something of a disappointment despite some fantastic moments. At its best moments the record really flies with some great melodies, lyrics and imagery on tracks like Astronaut, Leeds United, the beautiful rocker Guitar Hero and my personal favorite, the wonderful teenage-viewpoint storytelling of Oasis.

But filled in between these tracks is the drudgery of songs like Ampersand and Blake Says, which were really surprising songs in the fact that I didn't think Amanda Palmer was capable of doing something so utterly boring.

These are not the worst moments on the album. Much worse than those is the really self indulgent cover of What's The Use Of Wond'rin from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel that makes one wonder what the hell the point is.

The album really bottoms out with the performance art-like opening of Strength Through Music, a song that is not half bad except for the fact that it begins with what must be the most ridiculously pretentious minute in the history of pop music.

Walking up to the line of self-indulgent pretentiousness without crossing over it is something The Dresden Dolls have been doing since their first record, but on this album Amanda takes the huge leap on more than one occasion on this record.

(To be sure, the Dolls cross that line on many occasions at their live shows, but they keep it in check on their albums)

The big question I have about this though is, why make this record? The sound is in no way a serious departure from that of her regular band. And when one half of that band is the best drummer in the business, why record tracks with Ben Folds at the kit?

In many ways, this album is a lot like The Dresden Dolls' most recent release, an album of outtakes called No, Virginia...

That one also suffers from a combination of great or really good tracks, including an awesome cover of Pretty In Pink, and a bunch of throwaways.

It's too bad. Take the best tracks of these two records and we would have had a really kick ass new Dresden Dolls album instead of a couple of mediocre CDs that require too much use of the skip button.

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Monday Newsman Hate

2008-09-22T16:45:00.001-05:00

I've got just one thing I'm hating today, besides my mother. (Don't even get me started. I found out she believed and forwarded that awful email going around lying about what was in Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis, basically accusing Mrs. Obama of being a "black power" racist. It is one of the most disgusting things I've seen in all of the awful slander being thrown at that family. It looks like something written by the KKK)

But bitching about my mother will do none of us any good at this point, so I'll just stick with one item for today's hate list, which I'll also post over at my political co-blog.

Here's who I'm really annoyed with today:

Scott Pelley. The hiring of Pelley as a correspondent for 60 Minutes marked a low point for the news magazine, at least until they tragically let the fluffy Katie Couric sit at the adults' table.

Pelley's interview last night with John McCain was infuriating. He doesn't lob softball questions, he gently arcs badminton shuttlecocks at perfect spiking level.

As to be expected, McCain made sure to take every opportunity, no matter what the question was, to: a) Bring up his five years in a prison camp in Hanoi and: b) make false accusations about Barack Obama's record and his own record.

And what does Pelley do, especially when McCain tells lies about Barack Obama? He moves on to the next topic.

It's not like McCain said anything new that Pelley wasn't able to check on right away. McCain came out with all the same stupid talking points he's been saying for weeks now, stuff that Pelley could have easily had follow-up questions to challenge McCain on his claims.

McCain claims that Obama has never reached across the aisle to to work with the other party, despite there being a mountain of evidence to the contrary for both his time in the Illinois Senate and the U.S. Senate. Pelley says nothing.

McCain says Obama is the most liberal Senator based on "his voting record." It should have been pointed out that Obama was called that by a right-wing magazine attack machine, the same one that called Kerry the most liberal in 2004 (gee, what a coincidence), and that their survey has been easily discredited due to the fact that they just pick and choose which votes to count in the survey.

Hell, you wouldn't even have to go through all of that. Just mention that the U.S. Senate still includes both Bernie Sanders, a self-described Socialist, and Ted Kennedy to make the point that it is kind of a silly accusation.

But did Pelley do either?

Even in his own record McCain tells really big lies and Pelley can't bring himself to challenge the Senator. He asked McCain how his administration would be different from Bush's and two of the things he mentioned were torture and the 9/11 Commission recommendations.

Did Pelley then ask him why, if that were true, he has either voted "no" or not even voted every time the 9/11 Commission recommendations came before the Senate and that he also voted against the bill banning torture?

Do I have to answer that question for you?

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Anatomically Correct Dad

2008-09-18T15:13:00.000-05:00

The wife and I were in the Poconos over the weekend, we got a free stay at an all-inclusive resort because she was invited to give a presentation. A bizarre experience this place, mostly because we felt like we were on the Love Boat in the middle of NE Pennsylvania, with all the activities, the assigned tables for meals and the REALLY HAPPY people that work there.

Maybe I'll expand on that some other time. This post is about something else I heard while I was there.

I used this trip as a chance to do some swimming and hot-tubbing since I don't often get to indulge in either.

I was in the men's locker room getting changed into my swimsuit for my second trip to the pool that day when a guy roughly my age walked in with his young son. They were just finishing their trip to the pool.

The kid was about 4 years-old, an age when parents are generally trying to guide their kids in doing things instead of doing everything for them. And his dad was really laid back and patient, asking his son if he wanted to take a shower or just change into his clothes without rinsing off.

After he asked the kid about three or four times, his son decided he just wanted to dry off and put his clothes on. So the father said OK and started instructing his son on what to do.

"Take off your trunks and dry yourself with the towel. Make sure you get all over."

I think the kid then started to put the towel down without being sufficiently dry.

"No, make sure you dry off everywhere son. Make sure you get your testicles."

Man, how awesome is that dad? A parent that actually uses the correct terminology for genitalia with his kid.

I have always been annoyed with parents that use silly terms for genitals when talking to their kids, like "privates" or "thingy." (The latter is an especially annoying way of doing it.)

It was so refreshing to hear a parent not treat the right word for his kid's genitals as if it were the same as the vulgar term for it. Too many parents are the type that are aghast if you say something like "vagina" in front of their child and act like you just said the dirtiest word in the world. This is why Eve Ensler had so many problems advertising her play The Vagina Monologues in smaller-town newspapers.

So kudos to this dad. I don't think I knew what a testicle was until I was in 8th grade. I learned all the other words (both childish and vulgar) for girls' and boys' equipment by that age. Just not the correct ones.

I seem to remember that by dad somehow thought that "nut sack" was a good term to use for my testicles. And I'm pretty sure that my penis was referred to as either my "thing" or a "wiener."

When we were kids, my sister had a "coochie."

I'm pretty sure that's the word my mother still uses for vagina.

This is what I learned to call genitalia growing up.

How dumb is that?

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Monday Hate - Word Special

2008-09-15T22:52:00.002-05:00

Today I was thinking of words I hate. Here are a few:

Arguably. This is one of the absolutely worst words around, and newspaper writers seem to love to use it. Look, either something is or isn't the best, most, top, strongest, whatever; or it isn't. Don't be such a wus and and just commit to an opinion.

Elitist. Absolutely the dumbest of all the insults being thrown around this political season. It is usually a way to malign someone for being too smart. This year it has taken on an extra special meaning: Uppity nigger.

Belittle. I gotta say, I don't really have a good argument for hating this word. It is just that my mother used this one waaaaaayyy too much when we were growing up. Anytime you said anything that she saw as a criticism, she would say you were "belittling" her. It was belittle this and belittle that all the time from that crazy loon. Would it have killed her to buy a dictionary and learn the word condescend (which is what she really meant much of the time) or maybe disparage, just to mix things up a little bit?

Folk or Folks. Don't get me wrong, when put in front of something like "music" or "art" folk is a perfectly good word. But as Susan Jacoby asks in her new book, The Age of American Unreason, when exactly did we all suddenly become folk instead of people? This has become the way to refer to the general populace, as "folks" rather than people or citizens. Listening to Barack Obama, former president of the Harvard Law Review, use the word folks all the time makes my ears hurt every time he does it. I know he's trying to appeal to the moron masses, but can't he stop dumbing down his speech and just refer to everyone as people? He's running for President of The United States, not the Sheriff of Mayberry.

(Jacoby makes a great point in her book by asking her reader to imagine Lincoln at Gettysburg saying "Government of the folk, by the folk, for the folk..." Just points out the idiocy of the whole thing, doesn't it?)

Numb-nuts. Of all the childish names my brother called me growing up, this one has never made any sense top me. Why is it an insult to have chilly testicles? I'm not sure he even knew what he was calling me. It had the word nuts in it so I guess that was good enough for the simpleton that is my older brother.

Antidisestablishmentarianism. Is this word actually used in any way other than as the answer to a fourth grade trivia question?

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Monday Hate With A Touch Of Love

2008-09-08T22:59:00.003-05:00

All right, time for my weekly hate list. But this week I'll wrap it up with something that I'm just lovin' right now

But first, the hate:

New York Parents. It pains me that I'm soon going to be a member of this group. There seems to be a narcissistic disease that kicks in when you have a small child in this city. They are one of the most annoying things about living in this city. If they are not running you down on the sidewalk with their over-sized strollers, they are pushing their kid out into oncoming traffic while talking on their cell phone. When their kid needs his hat straightened they'll park the stroller across the the entire sidewalk, because pulling it to the side is just too much fucking trouble, while they take their precious time tending to the little one. The rest of the world, namely the people trying to use the sidewalk, be damned.

They don't even need to have strollers to block the sidewalk. If you live in this city you have to try to make sure you don't walk by one of the schools when it's about to let out. I think every single parent and their nanny is camped outside on the sidewalk waiting for their rug rat. And by camped out I mean they are standing around drinking their Starbucks and blocking the sidewalk. And walking their kids home, oh boy. Just today I got stuck behind two mothers walking their broods home, about five kids stretched out across the entire sidewalk between the two moms, walking as slow as Tim Conway's old man character from the Carroll Burnett Show. I had shown up at the corner, from a different direction, at almost the same time as them. One of the mothers looked straight at me, saw me with my rolling grocery basket, and instead of letting me go first, made their kids jump ahead real quick to get in front of me.

So there I was stuck behind little kids and moms side by side like the Monkees, walking at a snail's pace, with me unable to get around. Both mothers each looked back and saw me, neither made an attempt to let me go around. Wouldn't want to do anything that might disturb their precious babies.

Getting back to my building, a place crawling with annoying parents, I have to put up with kids who get on the elevator and press several floors, as they are going through that fascination with buttons phase.

Their clueless parents find them so cute. I do not. I find stopping at four extra floors where no one gets on or off something different than cute.

These are just some of the examples of dealing with the most self-centered group of people in all of Manhattan on a daily basis.

I hope to god there is a vaccine for this plague.

Unsolicited Advice. Man I've been getting a lot of this lately. With my wife expecting a baby next month, I have had a steady stream of pointless pointers from so many people even though I never asked the question.

There is something about so many parents that they seem to think just because they have a kid they know exactly what you are experiencing and exactly the "right" choices you should make. About everything. Geeze, I managed to knock up my wife without anyone else's help, I think between the two of us and some classes and books by actual professionals we can figure this out.

Oh, and I don't count those fucking hippie "doulas" among the list of professionals. The most fraudulent profession since palm reader and Cato Institute fellow.

OK, I got that off my chest, now for the thing that has just been making me giddy lately:

The Yankees Sucking. Opening the sports section today was such a pleasure. The dreaded New York Yankees are in fourth place after losing last night. Hehehehehehehe-hahahahahaha-hohohohohohohoh!

The only thing better than your own team winning is the Yankees losing. Knowing that Jeter and Rodriquez are going to miss the playoffs altogether this year is soooooooo satisfying. It more than makes up for the fact that my Atlanta (racist mascot)s are sucking hard this season.

There IS joy in Mudville.

My Yankee-fan brother-in-law will now boycott my blog for, oh, about the next week or so. Sorry man, had to be done. To awesome to ignore.

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The Moment Of Realization

2008-09-05T15:06:00.000-05:00

I spent almost the entire day yesterday looking up , researching and calling pediatricians. I thought finding a decent dentist for myself was hard, trying to find a doctor for your unborn child is mind-numbing experience.

Like most New Yorkers, we wanted to find a pediatrician within walking distance of home, just like the deli or the natural foods store. The problem with that for us is that we live on the Upper East Side/Lenox Hill. It is really hard to find a good peds doc in this neighborhood that is taking new patients. This area is just crawling with small children and the good pediatricians on our insurance plan are all booked. Or, even more frustrating when calling them, we find out that there are several listed on our plan that no longer accept new patients from our specific insurance plan, only taking it for continuing patients.

After hours of looking onto alternatives in our neighborhood and finding nothing but doctors who didn't take our insurance, had really bad reviews from parents or went to questionable foreign medical schools, I was left with one choice in the neighborhood. The local big university hospital peds clinic.

Those of you who have gone to these kind of places for your own doctor know how frustrating they can be. The staff at these institutions is usually made up of a bunch of fat women more interested in what kind of donuts are in the break room than actually helping patients. These are the kind of places that you call and tell them you are peeing blood and shooting fire out of your rectum and they tell you there is an opening in about three-and-a-half weeks. And then when you are there you have to wait for 2 hours until the doctor finally sees you. But if you are five minutes late yourself they tell you that you have to reschedule.

I hate dealing with these institutions. The only reason I see a doctor at one is because I don't need to go there very often. But do you know how often you have to take a kid to the pediatrician in the first couple of years of their life? I'm looking at eight damn doctor's visits minimum over the next year alone, I'm not spending them with grouchy women with powdered sugar on their face.

So we finally found a good place, we think, on the Upper West Side. Yes, that would be the other side of town, for you non-New York people.

This whole episode caused what would be considered my first parental headache. I didn't think that would come until she was a teenager.

Then my wife got home and had with her our first delivery of the eco-friendly G-Diapers, in a box almost as big as my wife. Which is about a week's worth of diapers. I just recently learned how much newborns poop, which by my calculations seems to be about their entire body weight every single day.

Looking at the cute little orange, reusable liner, chemical free, biodegradable insert diapers, it suddenly dawned on me, "HOLY CRAP! This is really happening."

This self-centered, lazy, overly-opinionated, and driftless ass-hole is going to be responsible for another life soon. A really small, helpless life. Really damn soon.

Gulp.

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Politics

2008-09-04T17:32:00.001-05:00

Hey everyone!

Since I never really wanted to let this blog become a totally political place on the web, I don't want to pigeonhole myself, yet I really want to rant a lot about politics lately with the election coming up, I now have another outlet. A couple of guys I know in Seattle and I have started a group blog to be the place where we put most of our political stuff during this election season.

We are calling it The Savvy, The Extreme & The Idealist. We'll leave it to you to figure out who is what in our trio.

Anyway, give us a visit and please leave comments. It should be a good way to vent about all the crap that will be happening over the next two months.

My first post is up now, as well as the Beigey's first one and the welcome message.

Game on!

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Monday Hate List

2008-09-01T22:59:00.000-05:00

Oh man, I forgot it was Monday today. Hopefully I'll get this in under the wire...

I have only one thing I'm hating today:

Hypocrisy. I know, I know, professing a distaste for hypocrisy does not exactly put me in a class by myself. But with the general election season officially underway we are going to be seeing a lot of it in the coming months, and it has already begun.

John McCain - a misogynistic pig who is against reproductive rights and equal pay for women, and is well known for telling mean-spirited jokes making fun of the looks of women he finds unattractive, including innocent teenage girls - chooses a woman as his running mate and suggest that women should vote for him because those dirty Democrats are sexist for not nominating Hillary. The woman he picked, someone who belongs to the oxymoronic organization Feminists For Life, paraded her family around the stage at the rally to announce her nomination. Like all politicians, she was using her family to advance her career. But then it is suddenly discovered that her 17-year-old is five months pregnant and now Governor Palin is requesting that we respect the privacy of her children.

Excuse me, but if you start off by not respecting the privacy of your own children, you don't get to then demand it from everyone else. (And don't even get me started on how the press has so far decided to ignore the irony that Palin is against comprehensive sex education - the usual crap about it encouraging underage sex - and praises the virtue of abstinence-only sex ed. That's a blog for another day)

Not that the other side doesn't pull the same silliness. Barack Obama let his daughters be interviewed by some fluffy magazine and he later decided he didn't like them being exposed like that, so he declared them off-limits from now on. That didn't stop him from using his cute-as-a-button little girls and their precious charms at the convention for his own political purpose.

Sorry, but you don't get it both ways. Use your family to sell yourself and your agenda, all bets are off. If the Bush girls get to do their little giggly introduction of Dad at a political event, then Dad doesn't get to bitch about the picture of them falling down drunk at a bar popping up in the paper.

(And again, it's a different issue, but Palin's daughter as an example of the fallacy of her sex education agenda wouldn't be off limits either way)

You either want to keep your family life private or you don't. Pick one and stick to it.

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Childhood Lessons

2008-08-28T11:58:00.002-05:00

I was watching my usual gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Democratic National Convention last night. I know it is nothing more than a precisely choreographed infomercial with fake drama and I shouldn't give credence to such things, especially being the anti-party, independent voter that I am. But I can't help it, I am an admitted political junkie. I'll even watch the Nazi....err, I mean Republican Convention next week. Only for that one I'll have to change the channel several times a night as my blood pressure rises and I can feel my neck veins about to pop out because of the stupid crap that will be flowing forth from the mouths of morons.

Anyway, that's not my point today.

I was watching Joe Biden's speech last night and he pointed out his mother in the audience, then went on to talk about the important things in life she taught him. One of those lessons was the usual thing about how nobody was better than him and he wasn't better than anyone else.

Now I understand why parents tell their kids this, and there is probably a good chance that I will try to impart the same lesson on my soon-to-be-born daughter. I want her to have the confidence in herself that I was lacking as a kid without the cockiness of a spoiled brat. The simplicity of the "good as anyone, not better than anyone" lesson is probably a really effective way of imparting this.

But isn't this a pretty dishonest thing we tell our children? And won't they realize that we were blowing smoke, eventually, after they get older and have more life experience?

Aren't lots of people better than other people? By the same token, aren't lots of people lesser humans than others?

Name anyone and I can name someone who is better than that person and someone who is worse than them. Except for maybe Hitler, I doubt I could think of anyone worse than Hitler.

Isn't accepting the fact that some people are better than you a part of being a grown-up? Knowing that you are a better person than some others is also just a fact of life, not always an uppity attitude.

I have no problem accepting that Martin Luther King, Paul Robeson, John Lewis, Sargent Shriver, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, my wife and the founding doctors of Médecins Sans Frontières are/were better people than myself.

I also know I'm a better human being than Stalin, John Gotti, Dick Cheney, Robert Mugabe, Mother Theresa, Cindy McCain, Vladimir Putin, Ralph Reed, the entire Bush family and all 265 guys that have been the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.

Each list is a lot longer, of course. These were the ones I thought of off the top of my head.

I don't believe that not thinking of myself as equal to the people on each list is a bad thing.

But I'm sure that won't stop me from feeding my daughter that other line of crap.

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Better Hate Than Never

2008-08-25T21:11:00.002-05:00

I almost forgot to restart my regular Monday Hate feature after getting home from my trip. Looks like I'll get it in just under the wire...

Well, I had a great time in the absolutely beautiful country that is Taiwan, so my list of things I'm hating this week won't be too long. But I've got a couple.

Coach seating on an international flight. Sure, sitting in coach is not great no matter where you fly. But on a flight lasting about 13 or 14 hours, it is absolutely inhumane. There should be a law that all flights lasting more than 6 hours should have a bar on them. A real bar, where you could hang out and mingle with people and listen to some nice jazz or something.

The fact that I don't know a foreign language. Traveling always reminds me that I'm a lazy American who never put in the time or effort to learn to speak something besides English.

Hillary supporters who say they will vote for McCain. Great idea! You are so pissed off about her not getting the nomination that you'll vote for a guy who has an anti-feminist agenda and will load the Supreme Court with guys who will for sure take away every single one of your reproductive rights. Just brilliant! If there was ever an argument for taking away some people's right to vote...

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Belgian Hypocrisy

2008-08-22T15:38:00.001-05:00

I love the Olympics. Or rather, I love the idea of the Olympics. The idea of the youth of all the countries of the world coming together in the spirit of friendly competition just warms my heart.

But I can't watch this year.

What has happened leading up to and during these Games is exactly what those of us who were against China being awarded them in the first place said would happen. Which is basically that China continues to act like China and they don't give a rat's ass what the rest of the world thinks about that.

The International Olympic Committee told us when they awarded China the Olympics that this would be a way to bring them into the mainstream of the world and that they would improve their human rights record, give more press freedom, fix their pollution problem, make the world a sunnier place for gumdrops and rainbows and sugarplums and blah blah blah...

They supposedly got a lot of promises from China about these issues, so the IOC told us. About how many of these promises did China keep do you think? I'll give you a hint, it is a number between 1 and -1.

China certainly pretended to keep promises, as they are wont to do. They did, in fact, set up three locations for public protests to take place during the games, albeit far from the venues where any athletes or fans would actually see them. And anyone wanting to use them would have to get a government permit. But hey, it's a step, right? Wrong.

Out of a reported 300+ permit applications, not a single one has been approved. And any Chinese citizen that has applied for one has been arrested and taken off to reeducation camps, including two very frail elderly women, or they have just simply disappeared.

And this doesn't even count the dissidents that were gathered up before the Olympics. Then there is the brutal crack down in Tibet, a country that China has illegally occupied and oppressed for over 50 years, as well as China's continued support for the regime that is conducting genocide on the people of Darfur and the military junta that continues to crush the people of Burma.

And Beijing still has the foulest air in the world.

So with all this going on, what has IOC President Jacques Rogge's panties in such a bunch that he feels the need to speak out? The way some kid from Jamaica celebrates after a race. Really. He has kept completely silent as the host country of his Games continues the wholesale oppression of its own citizens, as well as those of other countries. But some runner gets a little too exuberant after a race and suddenly the man who had a major hand in giving the Olympics to one of the worst human rights-violating nations in the world is offended.

What a morally empty human being.

Rogge said that sprinter Usian Bolt should "show more respect for his competitors."

Well Mr. Rogge, maybe you should show more respect for the suffering people of China, Tibet, Darfur and Burma; and to human decency.

Until then, you've got no right.

Formosa Bound

2008-08-05T16:00:00.001-05:00

I'm off to Taiwan for two weeks for a business trip. When this message posts, I'll be in Seoul for my layover between flights. No way in hell I'll be blogging while I'm gone. So expect nothing from me before August 21st, at the earliest.

Don't like to leave my wife right in the middle of pregnancy, but this was a great opportunity. Besides, she has been rockin' cool and supportive about the whole trip since the possibility first came up.

I married well.

I'll talk to you when I get back.

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Skip

2008-08-04T13:48:00.000-05:00

No Monday Hate post today. Just a moment of silence for long-time Atlanta Braves sportscaster Skip Carey, who died yesterday.

In my screwed up childhood I had music as an escape, something I've written about too much before. But I also had baseball in Atlanta. I basically grew up in Atlanta-Fulton County stadium during the summer. And when the Braves were on the road we listened to Skip Carey call the games. He started as the Braves broadcaster the same year my family moved to Atlanta when I turned six. Skip is a big part of the soundtrack of the good part of my childhood.

My mom and my (1st) step-dad had painted a huge fishing net red and made a banner that said Barry's Basket, for outfielder Barry Bonnell. Yes, we were that dorky family. Skip Carey nicknamed my parents Mr. and Mrs. Fishnet.

At least he did in my memory as an 8-year-old. I may have completely made that up.

I do know that, the Braves being a completely sucky team for so many years, in the middle of a particularly bad losing streak that he once said at the beginning of a game something along the lines of, "Like lambs to the slaughter, here come the Braves."

Thanks from the 8 year-old me, Skip.

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Accelerate - Or: You Can Go Back To Rockville

2008-08-02T11:29:00.000-05:00

I really love the newest REM album, Accelerate. I really do. I had pretty much expected to never say those words again. A happy surprise.

It took me a while to come around to the fact that I really like the new album, which is why I'm only mentioning this now. Why did it take me so long? Well, my relationship with REM over the last decade or so has been somewhat damaged. Buying a new REM record had become an exercise in disappointment and anger.

I know anger seems a bit strong, but let me explain why.

Anybody who knows me knows that I have had an absolute love of the boys from Athens since I was about 14 years old. They were my best friends in high school, for reasons I've written about before (here and here). But the things that have come out of them lately severely tested the bonds of friendship.

Let's come up with an analogy of what its been like buying REM albums over the last several years, shall we?

Imagine you are at home and your best friend is on the way over. You are excited as hell, as you haven't seen him for a while, and you can't wait until he arrives.

The doorbell rings and you leap to greet your very favorite person in the world. You open the door with great anticipation...

...And your best friend swiftly kicks you in the nuts.

"What the fuck was that? What the heck is wrong with him?"

On the next visit he kicks you in the nuts again. Harder.

After that you start to question if you should even answer the door. But he's your best friend, maybe he's just having some problems. You should stick with him through thick and thin, that's what best friends do.

You don't even tell people that he's been kicking you in the nuts, even though others have asked you if something is wrong with him lately. They point out that he doesn't seem himself. You claim to not have noticed and even go as far as telling everyone that he's as cool and awesome as he's ever been.

You feel so dirty for lying. Not so much for lying to others, but to yourself.

On the next visit from your best friend you have your hands over your nuts, ready for the kick. But you still answer the door in hopes he won't do it again and your friend will be back to normal.

This time he pokes you in the eyes, you move your hands to your head and he kicks you in the nuts again. Really freaking hard.

At that point you finally smarten up and stop answering the door. You can only keep your hands over your crotch for so long and you know he's going to kick when you let your guard down. It's best not to hang out with your best friend anymore. You've got pictures and memories, that should be enough.

In the ensuing years you hear how he's doing. It seems that he was pissing off a lot of people besides you, as a lot of his old friends have abandoned him. He's been seen hanging out with a different, and much smaller, crowd. A more pretentious one that likes to smoke cloves and listen to Philip Glass music. You don't even like knowing such things. It makes you sad.

You figure your best friend is lost to you forever.

But then other friends start telling you that he's come back from the wilderness. They claim he has stopped kicking his friends in the nuts. You want to believe, but can you? It's been over seven years since you stopped answering the knock on the door. Can you ever be friends again?

So you invite him over. You put on a cup and a face mask.

He comes to the door and there is no nut-kicking right away. You sit and have cocktails and conversation. He is saying lots of nice things, and it seems like old times in some ways. But you are having a hard time concentrating on what he's saying or trusting him because all you can think about is the times that he kicked you in the nuts.

So you don't let your guard down for a long time, keeping your hands over your nuts and not trusting completely that he isn't there to kick you again. Eventually you come around to the fact that he really is just there to hang out with you and be your friend again.

And that's why it took me so long to realize that the new REM album is fantastic.

Welcome back, friend.

*

Yaz Fans Are Stupid Poseurs

2008-07-30T12:41:00.000-05:00

The week before last was a great week of concert-going for me. The wife and I saw Robyn Hitchcock out in Ridgewood, NJ on Saturday and then I saw him again on Tuesday and Wednesday. Great shows, and I met some great people there, fellow music/Robyn geeks like me. I am trying to write something about those nights in a different format than my blog, that's why I haven't gushed over those shows here. I'll let you know if something comes of it.

The week was rounded out by my wife and I going to see Yaz on Thursday and then the Broadway show Passing Strange on Saturday night, which was pretty much like going to a rock concert.

We were really looking forward to the Yaz show. Alison Moyet and Vince Clarke only made two albums as Yaz before breaking up and going on to a solo career (Moyet) and forming Erasure (Clarke) so we never got to see them live back in the day. They are doing a short reunion tour so there was no chance we would miss it.

And it was a really good show. Alison Moyet's voice sounds as good as it ever did and since it is electro-pop Vince can't really fuck up playing the music. You don't really screw up a chord or anything when you are playing a pre-programed computer.

To be able to see a group that was such a huge part of the soundtrack of my youth was just so awesome in an 80s tubular kind of way. I which I could say the same about the crowd.

I really expected that the audience would just be a bunch of middle-aged ex-dance club kids from the 80s, and while they were certainly represented, it was not the bulk of the crowd. I couldn't believe how many scenesters were infesting the crappy space known as Terminal 5.

(If you haven't been to Terminal 5, it looks like a three-tiered prison block or something out of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. They also only open one exit when the concert is over and it can take 25 minutes just to get out even though they have doors on all sides of the space)

Normally when I'm in a place filled with gay boys I'm having a good time because I always have a good time hangin' with the gays. Unfortunately, Terminal 5 was full of a bunch of Chelsea poseurs and their fag hags who were more interested in being noticed at the show than actually listening to it. The first sign we were in trouble was the fact that so many people were screaming the lyrics as loud as they could, seemingly trying to prove they knew the words more than the next guy. If they weren't singing they were turning to their friend and talking really loud, right in the middle of the song.

At one point Yaz brought the mood down for one of their softer, lesser known songs. Winter Kills is a number that really lets Moyet show off her powerful voice and she was kicking ass singing it. Yet at least half the crowd was talking at that point. I mean really talking. If you had walked in to the show not knowing who they were, you would have sworn it was the opening band. You know what I'm talking about, an unknown - or not so good - opening band is on the stage and the place basically sounds like a bar with music playing in the background. That's what it was like. During the band that everyone there paid 65 bucks to see!

And then there were the pictures. Good fucking lord, people would not stop taking pictures. There was a girl right by us that took several pictures during every single song. I'm talking an average of at least ten shots during every number. Some people were even posing in front of the cameras, so it would be a picture of them at the Yaz show.

It seemed like so many people were there to be seen instead of listen to a great music group (I'm loathe to use the word "band" since it is just a guy with a computer, not that there is anything wrong with that). I wish they would have stayed at Polly Esther's Culture Club where they belong.

I'm willing to bet that these annoying ass holes can't name half of the songs played that night.

But hey, at least they have about a hundred pictures of a singer standing in front of a microphone. Whatever that's worth.

Damn hipsters sure know how to ruin a good time.

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Monday Hate - Fashion Edition

2008-07-28T12:54:00.003-05:00

For this week's hate list I decided to go with a fashion theme. Here are things that people wear that I find utterly annoying.

Baseball caps with the little gold sticker still attached. Have you seen this? Every hip-hopper-wannabe leaves this sticker, which is nothing more than the authentication tag, on the the bill of the hat. It has got to be the stupidest looking thing since wearing your waistband around your knees.

Hey hip-hop guys, you know this has been done before right, wearing a hat with the tag still attached? Her name was Minnie Pearl. So way to go, great fashion trend you're following there.

Izod-type shirts with the collars turned up. This is really common here on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where Yuppie culture has seemed to survive. I will see these guys wearing shorts, deck shoes without socks, Top Gun-style sunglasses on top of their heads and these shirts with upturned collars, often in the most ugly pink and/or green color.

I guess I didn't get the memo that we leaped back to 1986. Seriously, you Yuppies need to get a new look. The whole James Spader from Pretty In Pink thing is maybe a little outdated, don't ya think?

Shorts with a belt and a tucked-in t-shirt. Really? You think this is a good look for you? Look, either dress up or don't dress up. But don't think just because you tuck in your "Alpha Omega Rush Week '98" shirt that you are dressed nice. By the way, leaving the shirt un-tucked would go a lot farther in covering up your middle-aged gut.

Men with gold chains. I know you think it makes you look tough, but it really just makes you look like a dork.

A shirt proclaiming to be "The World's Best" or the "#1" Dad/Mom/Grandma/Grandpa or anything like that. How many of those do you think were given to anyone by an actual kid? I would bet zero.

This new trend of women wearing outfits that look like maternity clothes. How the hell is a guy supposed to know if he should offer his seat to a young lady on the subway if you can't tell the difference between the pregnant women and the fashionable ones? It's madness, I tell you! Madness!

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If It's Monday, I Must Be Hating

2008-07-21T16:41:00.001-05:00

I'm in a good mood this week, so I think this list will be kind of short. But I can always think of something that is bugging me....

Diplomat drivers. Walk around anywhere close to the U.N. building and you'll see that pretty much every fire hydrant has a car parked in front of it. Then look at the license plates to those cars and you'll see that they all have diplomatic plates. Then when they almost drive you down in a crosswalk and yell at you like it's your fault, you'll be blogging about it on Monday. Ass holes.

Broadway houses. Pay in excess of 100 bucks to be shoved into an old, run down theatre with no lobby space, an inadequate number of bathrooms, seats that are the perfect size for a person four feet tall and get treated like shit by the house manager. Let the good times roll!

Manhattan on a hot and muggy July afternoon. I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating.

Though this caused me to find something I love more than life itself - a mango slush in Chinatown. So it turned out to be not so bad of a day.

I know I'm breaking my own hate-blog rules with that last one. I told you I was in a good mood.

*

Bimbos On A Plane!

2008-07-18T14:43:00.001-05:00

A couple of Wednesday afternoons ago I was at the San Antonio airport waiting to catch my flight home from the conference I was attending. When I booked my ticket months earlier it I didn't even think about the fact that I would be traveling two day before the 4th of July weekend. Needless to say, the airport was a zoo.

As we got closer to boarding time they announced that the flight was overbooked and asked for volunteers to be bumped. I jumped at the chance for some free airfare. When they first announced it they said the credit would be $350, but by the time I got up there they had raised it to $500 to entice more people. They could not get me on another flight to New York that day, but could get me out the next morning and put me up in a hotel that night as well as buy me dinner. Oh, and the only seats available on those flights were in first class.

Pretty much a no-brainer.

So I spent my night at the airport Hilton and watched the Rays beat the Yankees on the big screen at the hotel bar. A good day all the way around.

Up early the next morning for my flight to Houston where I would change for the flight to Laguardia. First flight was uneventful and we were only in the air for 38 minutes. I was sitting on the aisle in the first row, so for the first time in my life I was actually the very first person off of a plane. It was kind of weird.

After about an hour-long wait in Houston I boarded my New York-bound plane. This time I was in the fourth row. I was sitting there reading my book when the person with the seat assignment next to me showed up. It was this woman wearing pink sweatpants and sweatshirt carrying two big purse-like bags and a tiger-pattern fur blanket. She was all a fluster when she squeezed into the window seat and plopped her stuff on the floor.

She had long straight dyed-blonde hair, skin that spent way too much time in the sun and too much makeup on her face. As she squeezed by me I could see that she had her pink sweatpants pulled up as tight as they would go to make sure the complete outline of her ass was there for everyone to see. One would presume, though I didn't not see, that she must have also had quite a cameltoe going. When she took off her sweatshirt, I noticed she had on a black t-shirt with large, graffiti-like letters on it. I was afraid to look, knowing that it was going to say something like "porn star," "bitch," "slut" or "juicy" on it.

It turned out to be "juicy."

She was talking over people's heads to another blond in the second row, it seemed there was a group of them travelling together who didn't get seats next to one another. The one in the second row had gotten on the plane before the one next to me and had actually walked down the plane looking for her seat before finally coming back and finding the right aisle. Seriously, I know that those signs with the row numbers can be small, but if you are in row #2 and get lost you are a major idiot.

So they close the door and make all the usual announcements about turning off electronic devices, stowing your crap, putting your seat up and fastening your belt tight across your lap. This is when the bimbo pulls out her iPod, turns it on, pops the headphones in her ear, puts her seat back and loosens her belt so she can turn to lay sideways. Neither of her bags were under the seat, just on the floor at her feet.

After we took off, and were told we could use our electronic devices, I put my headphones on and kept reading. Soon after, the girl decided to talk to me.

"Did they say we could get up yet."
"Well, the seat belt light is still on, so I don't think so," I answered.
"I really need to pee," she said.

Like I cared. What I wanted to say to her was, "You haven't actually followed any of the rules since you got on the plane, so why do you care now?"

But I resisted.

I thought that would be the end of it but she decided, for some unknown reason, to try to make small talk with me. She asked me if I was from Texas or New York, why I was in Texas, what I did for a living, blah, blah, blah...

I gave her the shortest answers I could and didn't ask her anything, assuming she was just a trust-fund baby from Texas. And I didn't care.

She asked me about the Hamptons, she and her friends had rented a house out there for the weekend. Specifically, she wanted to know if people were nice there or shitty New Yorkers, asking me to compare it to South Beach in Miami or L.A., her example of awesome places to hang out.

I said something like, "Well, people are just as shallow in the Hamptons as those other places, so you'll probably like it."

I was fully prepared for a slap to the face, but it would have been worth it.

She didn't even get what I said. She actually seemed relieved and said, "cool!"

One thing I should mention. This chick was not around 18 or 20 as the pulled tight pink pants, "juicy" shirt, bleached hair and general air-headedness would lead you to believe. No, this as somebody who looked to be about her late 30s. She could have possibly been in her early 30s and just aged badly due to the tanning and the cigarettes, but still.

I hated these kind of bimbos when I was in my 20s and they only get more and more annoying as I get older

I'm always happy to come home to my wife when I'm away, but I've never been more appreciative of the woman who puts up with living with me after that encounter.

But I'm also reminded how hard it is for women. For every step forward taken for womankind by professional, smart, educated and hardworking women like my wife, there are narcissistic boy-toy bimbos taking them two steps back.

And I know it's not even the bimbos' fault. It's the fault of the too many men who prefer the dumb slut over the smart, accomplished woman. If it wasn't for those jackasses there would be a lot less bimbos in the world.

And I wouldn't have to be so annoyed when I fly.

*

Another Day, Another Hate List

2008-07-14T15:10:00.001-05:00

What am I hating this week? I'm glad you asked...

Joe Torre. Have you seen this stupid commercial he made for an insurance company? Look, I get it, he moved from New York to L.A., from a city where a lot of people get around on foot and public transportation to one where everyone drives. So along with all of the other silly stereotypes (doing yoga, writing a screenplay, etc.) he portrays in the ad, he also refers to his new life of "driving."

OK, here's the thing. Joe Torre lived in Westchester when he managed the Yankees and he drove to the park every day in one of his expensive cars. This idea that Torre was taking the subway to the park, or anywhere else for that matter, is just dumb. Every photo or video clip in of him arriving or leaving anywhere is always him in his car. I'm willing to bet that he hasn't been on the New York public transportation system in over 30 years.

Jim Carrey. Most of the time I've been a big supporter of this guy. He has been the most outspoken American celebrity on an issue that is very important to me, freedom for Aung San Suu Kyi and the liberation of Burma from the stranglehold of the illegal military junta.

But now he's shacked up with that dumb bimbo, ex-Playboy model and god-awful "writer" Jenny McCarthy. So now he has jumped on her silly "I know vaccines cause Autism despite the total lack of any actual evidence" bandwagon.

Look Jim, I know those breast implants must be a real comfortable place to rest your head every night. But just because you're sticking your dick in that skanky snatch doesn't mean you have to drink the Kool-Aid and believe her bat-shit crazy nonsense.

TMZ. Do these guys have a life? How pathetic must your existence be if you make your living by showing video of Henry Winkler getting off of a plane, Tom Hanks eating in a restaurant and making fun of female celebrities for being 5 pounds heavier than they were last summer; and calling them fat when you have a bigger gut and ass than them.. The guy who started this brain-dead organization apparently used to be a lawyer, which I guess wasn't bottom-feeding enough for him. (Apologies to my friend Megan, who does good with her law degree)

I didn't think it was possible for there to be anything dumber than People Magazine. I was wrong.

Lou Dobbs. I don't even know where to begin with this xenophobic, racist, bloviating prick. I accidentally saw five minutes of his show yesterday and I almost had an aneurysm. He claimed that Obama was an "elitist" (every person who I've heard make this charge against Obama is a millionaire member of the bourgeois) for suggesting that it would be a good idea for American schoolkids to learn a foreign language. Dobbs would prefer that our population remain uneducated and unworldly hicks. Hey Lou, how's that worked out with our country being led by one of those types for the last 7-1/2 years?

I'd like to see that ass get beat to death with a garden hoe wielded by one of the immigrants who does his lawn.

*

Monday Hate

2008-07-07T16:37:00.001-05:00

Too much kindness was being heaped on me last week at a conference, but I'm back in a hateful mood once again. Here's what I'm hating this week:

People who say "They're in a better place" after someone dies. Really? Exactly how the fuck would you know, you've been? I can't imagine anything more rude and hateful to say to a loved one than telling them that their kid/parent/spouse/etc. is better off dead than being with them.

Wolf Blitzer. Of all the hack journalists out there he has got to be the hackiest. (Non-FOX News category)

Jury duty. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the democracy and civic responsibility of jury duty. But I had to spend my whole morning in the jury pool waiting area of the New York State Civic Courthouse. And their free wi-fi blocked me from writing my blog. I didn't get picked for a jury selection room, but I still have to go back tomorrow. Sucks.

Trying to find a dentist. I just have to pick out a name from the list my insurance company provides. Jeez, I don't even go to a restaurant based just on the name.

Girls who wear t-shirts with phrases like "Juicy," "Porn Star" or "Slut" written across the front. There are parents out there who need to be kicked in the face.

Also, pants with anything written across the ass. I don't care if it says "Valedictorian," you look like a moron with writing across your ass.

*

Gone To San Antone

2008-07-06T14:23:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the long break in posts, and missing my Monday hate list last week. I was in San Antonio for a conference. I was really looking forward to the conference itself but not necessarily spending about five days in the Texas summer heat. But I had a pretty good time in general.

I spent most of my time in conference stuff, of course. But here are the few things I learned while hanging out in San Antonio:

I had low expectations about it, but the River Walk is absolutely fantastic! Every city in the country should have something like this. Sure, there are sections that have the stupid chain restaurants like the Hard Rock Cafe and the utterly annoying Dick's Last Resort, but for the most part there are some great local bars and restaurants to be found. And best of all, you can walk around all day long and not have to even see a car or cross a street.

Alamo Amber Ale is a much better Texas brew than Lone Star Beer.

Texas Lemonade, though it looks like anti-freeze, is a very tasty cocktail.

Margaritas taste better in Texas.

The sun does cook you in the summertime down there. Finding shade is a constant objective.

As much as you may love it, and I do, Tex-Mex food can get really old when you have it for three meals a day, several days in a row.

There is one vegetarian restaurant in the whole city.

Seeing all the interesting things there are to see in San Antonio takes about a day. Maybe half a day.

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Snap Poll Question Of The Week

2008-06-25T14:58:00.004-05:00

OK, so Billy Bragg, one of my all-time favorite singer-songwriters, will be doing a quick East Coast tour in October. It looks like he will be playing New York a few days after my wife is due to give birth to our daughter.

The poll question for the week is this:

If I try to go to that show, by what percentage is it likely that I will come home to an apartment with the locks changed and all my stuff sitting in the hallway?

a) 0% - You are an ass for even thinking it, but for some unknown reason she loves you and puts up with all your silly faults.

b) 50% - She'll think about it hard.

c) 80% - You better bring her a pint of Chubby Hubby ice cream to have any chance of being let back in.

d) 100% - Her mother will be in town, who the heck do you think will be making the argument for giving you a second chance?

e) 0% - Why would she bother changing the locks when you are just going to end up as a floater in the East River?

Give me your votes.

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Random Thought Of The Day

2008-06-24T19:44:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure why I was thinking about this....

It occurred to me that since my wife and I now use cell phones as our only phones, with no land line, (something I would not have even imagined just three years ago) and my cell is my work phone, it has been I'm-not-even-sure-how-long since I've actually heard a dial tone.

Weird.

*

Monday Hate List

2008-06-23T16:47:00.001-05:00

Time once again to see what Out Of Tune is hating this week:

Sean Hannity. Have you ever wondered what would happen if that crazy, racist, sexist homophobic ass-hole uncle, who spouts off on what he thinks is wrong with the world after a few too many beers at family gatherings, got his own TV show? Now you know.

American football. It is baseball season dammit, I'm sick of NFL "mini-camp" news interrupting my baseball highlights on SportsCenter. At the end of the day, I want to catch up on what happened in the real American sport and not have to see any news on what is happening in that silly game of catchy-throwy.

Intelligent Design. The idea that someone can actually believe in this nonsense astounds me. As someone who will be the parent of a school-age child in about 7 years it frightens me that some crazy people are going to try to push this on her. I'm not going to your church and preaching science, so stop trying to teach religion in our science classes.

Former GE CEO Jack Welch. I was watching this jackass being interviewed the other day claiming that Bush has done nothing to hurt America's reputation around the world. He claims to know this because he travels around the world and the people he meets love America and Bush. This dumb ass fails to mention that all the people he talks to overseas are nothing but heads of state and multimillionaire businessmen like himself. He should climb out of his ivory tower and talk to the people who have to actually work for a living sometime. He might see a different point of view about the American government.

The silly accusation of "elitism".

Anyone who is against gay marriage. Seriously? You actually give a crap if two guys you don't even know marry each other? And don't even try that stupid argument of comparing it to polygamy, child molesting and bestiality you ignorant bigot.

That George Carlin will be be given a small fraction of the tributes afforded that journalistic hack Tim Russert. The death of a great social commentator will be reduced to a one-day story, mentioned in 30-second segments and mostly focusing on his "seven words" bit from over 30 years ago.

Whatever those hand-held video games are that people play on the subway. You ever heard of a book?

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. I hope this needs no explanation.

*

Feeling Love In The City

2008-06-19T14:02:00.001-05:00

Living in New York can be trying at times. The crowds, the noise, the stink on the subways and the insane amount of cars on the streets, among other things, can really wear you down sometimes. But just when you think you've about had it up to here with this city, and you are having one of those days where you've just dodged being hit by a cab for the fifth time that day, something comes along to remind you why it is such a great place.

I was out yesterday running errands before I went to meet up with my buddy Noam for a drink. I was wearing one of my anti-religion t-shirts that I was so afraid to wear in Waterloo, Iowa at my family gathering a few weeks ago, for fear of getting the shit kicked out of me by some dumb, bible-thumping hick.

It is a black shirt with white lettering and red strike marks. This is what it says:

~~Zeus~~
~~Mars~~
~~Thor~~
~~Jesus~~
Reason

Anyway, I dropped off some movies at the video store and then went to the bank. I walked up to the teller window and handed the guy my deposit slip and check. He looked at me for a second and then said, "Love your shirt."
I laughed and said, "Yea, people either love it or hate it."
He smiled and said, "I suppose that's true."

Walking along the street I had another guy say "great shirt" as we walked past each other. Later, in the subway with Noam, I noticed a middle-aged couple with nice clothes on (in a suit and a dress) looking at me. As we squeezed past them to get out of the thoroughly crowded car, the guy says to me, "Where did you get that awesome shirt?"

I told him I got it on-line from Cafe Press and he said something along the lines of, "I've got to get me one of those, I just love it!"
His wife was laughing and said, "Me too, that's just great."

Over the course of the few hours I was out running errands, having a few beers and heading down to the Jill Sobule show, I counted no fewer than five random people who complimented my atheist message t-shirt.

Man I love this town.

*

Hating On Monday

2008-06-16T12:22:00.002-05:00

Time for another instalment of "What is Deni hating this week?"

Will try to get to writing more posts soon, but it has been a busy month.

In the meantime, enjoy this week's hate list:

Jimmy Kimmel. Seriously, who the hell is entertained by this dipshit?

The sound of chewing gum being snapped and popped in a person's mouth.

All of the tributes calling Tim Russert a "tough interviewer" who "asked hard questions." Bullshit, he lobbed softballs and didn't challenge any politicians on their bald-faced lies. He was buddy-buddy with all of them and didn't do his damn job the way he was supposed to. The New York congressional delegation is going to push a bill to name a part of a freeway in Buffalo after him. Does that sound like a guy who asked them tough questions? If there is an afterlife, hopefully Russert is being bitch-slapped by Edward R. Murrow right now.

People Magazine.

New York City traffic control cops. Stand on the corner talking on your cell phone while cars block the intersection, run red lights, make illegal turns and wail on their horns. Is that really the job description?

Jenny McCarthy. Dumb blond bimbo has a baby and suddenly thinks she is an expert on pregnancy, children, life in general and Autism. Children in America will die from preventable diseases as a direct result of this woman convincing parents that immunizations are dangerous, despite the complete lack of any scientific evidence. She should be thrown in jail.

Every person who has ever made a prediction about my life. Since I was young I have had so many people tell me I was going to think/feel/believe/become something when I grew up/got a job/went to college/got married, etc. I've been told, usually by my bat-shit crazy mother or some other family member, that I would become more conservative or Republican when I got older, got a job and/or started paying taxes. Pretty much the opposite of what I really became. Since it became known that I'm going to become a father this year I've had a couple people, one being my Jesus freak mother, tell me that I'll suddenly start believing in god or Jesus when my daughter is born. Add that to the amazingly long list of wrong predictions about my life.

"Reality" television.

That fat Jewish kid from Judd Apatow's movies. He is just not funny.

Guys who wear their Bluetooth wireless headsets all the freaking time. It is not a piece of jewelry, and talking to somebody wearing one is so damn annoying.

Astrology.

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Monday Hate Machine

2008-06-09T17:30:00.002-05:00

Here's what I'm especially hating this week:

People who clip their nails on the subway.

Soft-serve ice cream. I want ice cream, not ice cream soup.

Dog fertility clinics. No, I'm not making that up.

Manhattan in 90 degree heat and high humidity.

Whole Foods Market on a Saturday.

New Yorkers who don't understand the concept of letting people off the subway before pushing on to the train. This is much more common among women, sorry to say ladies.

USA Today newspaper. It is where the dumbing down of the news began.

The mole on my neck.

Clean coal, hybrid cars, bio-fuels, "eco-shape" water bottles and carbon trading. These are all lies created to ease the conscience of middle-class, white liberals and do nothing to help the environment.

*

43 Hours In Waterloo Iowa

2008-06-08T17:34:00.003-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I had to go to Waterloo, in Northeast Iowa, home base of most of my family, for my grandmother's 90th birthday. I hadn't been there since my grandmother's 85th birthday because I absolutely loathe the place. A shitty industrial town that offers no real positive asset to society, it's also full of members of my uneducated, white-trash, close-minded, gun-loving, backward-ass family. That would all be forgivable if they hadn't also treated me like shit growing up; making fun of anything I believed in, any music I listened to and generally acting as if they were superior to me and "city folk" in general. Yes, people with (at most) high school educations and 8-dollar-an-hour jobs at places like the local cabinet factory, who have never really been anywhere else in the world except maybe fishing in Canada, think they are better than everyone else, and many believe they know the answers to fix the world's ills. Because if you want to know how to fix the economy or bring peace to the Middle East, you should skip the economists and international relations experts and ask my uncle who worked his whole life on the John Deere assembly line or my cousin who stains wood at Bertch cabinet factory.

So I try to avoid going as much as I can.

But that is not always possible, at least while Grandma is still alive. I will certainly be done with the place after she's gone.

I decided for this trip to try to find the other side of Waterloo, if one existed. I would try to check out the local museum and even try to hit a live music club to see a local band maybe. And then I figured I might have material to write a "travel" post in the style of The New York Times' 36 Hours feature in the Sunday travel section. Maybe I could discover a cultural side to Waterloo that I never got to see as a kid.

It didn't really happen the way I hoped, and my weekend there basically went like this:

Friday
2:00pm - Cross the Mississippi River from Illinois into Iowa at the drawbridge in Fort Madison in the pickup truck borrowed from my friend Ray in Macomb, where I went to college. A large knot develops in my throat.

4:48pm - Reach the city limits of Waterloo. Begin hyperventilating.

5:03pm - Check-in to Comfort Inn. Begin paranoia about the locals staring at the "long-haired hippy freak" (me).

5:27pm - Call my sister's cell phone to find out where they are at. She and her family, along with my brother's family and my mother were just leaving the nursing home, where my grandmother lives, after her birthday party there (the family party was the following day).

6:00pm - Walk over to meet my family at a restaurant called Carlos O'Kelly's. Seriously, that's the name of a mini-chain of Mexican restaurants. It is to Mexican food what the Cheesecake Factory is to, well, all types of food. That's to say watered down, homogenized and generally un-ethnicized to be more palpable to your average middle-American. But it is also the kind of restaurant that is good at dealing with a table of 14 people, which includes six kids under the age of nine and about three unreasonably demanding adults in my mother, aunt and brother. The waitresses were complete troopers and dealt very well with the whole situation and kept their smiles. Everyone was happy with their mediocre Mexican food.

Sad fact is that this probably is the best Mexican restaurant in Waterloo.

Before eating, my brother, his wife, their kids, my grandmother, aunt and mother prayed. I continued talking to my brother-in-law and was shushed by my mother. I explained to her that just because she wants to pray, that doesn't mean I have to stop what I'm doing.

7:34pm - Walk back to hotel to pick up the truck.

7:43pm - Change in to my red "Godless Liberal" t-shirt. The decision to wear this was cemented by the prayer shushing.

7:59pm - Make an attempt to go to the Target to buy a straightening iron for my hair, since I couldn't take the one from home as my wife needed it. I have a panic attack when I see all the rednecks going inside and knowing what shirt I'm wearing. I skip it.

8:08pm - Stop at corner gas station and pick up a six pack of Budweiser, the best offering in the cooler.

8:16pm - Go to the hotel where my brother and sister are staying. My nieces and nephews are bouncing off the wall. My shirt is looked at but never mentioned by my Jesus-freak brother, sister-in-law and mother. It seems to make my brother-in-law smirk a little bit as we drink the beer. I hang out with him the rest of the night while all the craziness goes on around us.

Saturday
9:30am - Roll out of bed.

9:35am - Start freaking out about having to go out into Waterloo again.

10:00am - Walk across the street to the IHOP for breakfast. Sit at a corner table looking at all the fat people eating their "three meat combo" breakfasts. You always know what you're getting at IHOP, so it is a safe choice for breakfast. This may very well be the best restaurant in Waterloo.

10:33am - Go to Target and buy the straightening iron. I am surrounded by trailer trash.

10:51am - Back to hotel to shower.

11:30am - Sit and watch TV, still considering whether to actually go and see something interesting in Waterloo or just hide in my room until my grandmother's party.

12:15pm - Finally get up the nerve to drive to "downtown" and look for the art museum.

12:33pm - At the Waterloo Art Museum. They claim to have the largest collection of Haitian art in the U.S. so I was interested. The parking lot was not very full on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I waited as a couple of mothers with their kids were at the counter.

When it was my turn I just said "one please" and she told me $5 and handed me a wristband. She then said that when I get inside I should make my presence known to an employee since I didn't have a kid and would need to be monitored.

What the fuck was she talking about?

I told her I just wanted to look at the art and asked where the Haitian collection was. After a little bit of trying to understand each other, she asked if I wanted to go in the Kids' Pavilion and I said I just wanted to see the museum. She gave me my five bucks back, because only the kids' thing cost money, and pointed me to the museum. I couldn't figure out why she was so confused over someone going to a museum to look at the art.

I walked around looking at really shitty art for a while, feeling like I was being watched. Not by an actual museum security person mind you. There weren't any guards there to protect the art. I'm guessing no one wants to steal the crap that's on the walls there and no one actually ever goes there anyway. I was the only person in the galleries the whole ten minutes or so I was there. At one point an employee even asked me if I needed any help, you know, in the way that people ask that when they really mean is "who the fuck are you and why are you here?"

I tried. I really tried to give "culture" in Waterloo a chance. And I was treated like a freak (and a pedophile) for wanting to actually go in the local museum on a Saturday.

2:00pm - Time for Grandma's party. I sat in the truck for about 15 minutes, breathing heavy and considering bolting. After working up the courage I make my way in, wearing my traditional Vietnamese shirt I bought when Lisa and I were there in November. The party was in the basement of my grandmother's church. Refreshments consisted of ham on store-bought dinner rolls, a pickle tray and soda. Sorry, I mean pop. We are in the Midwest after all.

Lots of uncomfortable conversations with the relatives that recognize my existence ensue. These conversations usually involve a good amount of disbelief about what I do with my life or where I'm living at that moment. Saying you live in New York City is about the same as saying you live on Mars to these people. I always feel like Kevin Bacon in Footloose when I go to family gatherings.

The ones who do not recognize my existence continued to ignore me as they always do at these gatherings. These are mostly my cousins who are my uncle Veryl's kids (yes that's his real name). I could be standing next to them on fire and they would not acknowledge me. In their heads they are better than me in every way, with their double-digit IQs and such jobs as assistant manager of of the Country Kitchen.

I do learn that maybe I am finally growing up a little, as I approach 38. My aunt's alcoholic dumbfuck husband tried to start a political discussion, stating with disbelief that anyone can be a Democrat. I just got up and walked away. I knew the conversation would just end with me saying, "Yes Jerry, the world would be such a better place if it were run by uneducated, white-trash, fat drunks like you."

I walked away instead. Anyone who knows me is shocked by this development.

4:26pm - I drive around looking at places I used to know in Waterloo. I'm checking to see what is still there and if I even remember where they are. It is not some sort of nostalgic trip down memory lane like a bad Meatloaf video. Just curiosity.

5:32pm - Head over to my family's hotel and see my brother-in-law coming through the parking lot. He had been at the Lone Star having a beer hoping I would show up. I parked and we headed back over. Yet another of those theme restaurants with no soul, Lone Star is pretty much what you think it might be, a Texas-styled steak house. But it is Texan about as much as George Bush is a Texan.

I sit with my bro-in-law drinking beer until my sister calls him to say we are going to dinner. They are really my saving grace at these family gatherings, my sister and her husband. They are the only other ones who aren't off-the-deep-end Jesus freaks.

6:30pm - Dinner at Pizza Hut. Is there really anything I can say about that? Pizza Hut is the same wherever you go. Shitty.

10:00pm - I had planned to go to check out a music club this night, but I would have had to go all the way over to Cedar Falls to get to one. And after my attempt at a museum trip, I'm not sure I wanted to be adventurous again. Instead I went with my mother, and my brother-in-law to the local casino that has opened in town since the last time I was there. Yet another attempt to prop up the hopeless economy in Waterloo, the last one being the ridiculous and cruel greyhound racetrack that went bust after the novelty wore off.

Sat with my bro-in-law at the bar playing video poker, enduring one of the most god-awful cover bands ever while doing so. After losing twenty bucks each we just sat at a table drinking beer until my mother was done losing her money.

Sunday
10:00am - Shocked to find a Starbucks in Waterloo, I stop and grab a cup of coffee with soy milk on my way to the family's hotel.

11:00am - Hanging out at my grandmother's nursing home. Not a bad place, but I'd still rather die suddenly in my own bed than waste away at a home.

11:45am - Leave Waterloo

1:00pm - I get to Iowa City and find a vegan organic restaurant that I read about on Happy Cow called Red Avocado. I sat at an outside table listening to a saxophonist preforming for the brunch crowd. I had a breakfast burrito with sides of sesame potatoes and vegan chorizo, washed down by an organic micro brew.

I felt normal again.

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Hatey Hate Hate

2008-06-02T17:21:00.001-05:00

Starting a new regular feature on my blog today. I've come realize a few things. First, I haven't really been living up to the under title of this blog (How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Hate Everything) as often as I should. Second, I need to make a real point of posting stuff on a regular basis so people know I haven't just stopped like so many other blogs before me. I also need to learn to write some short and to the point postings instead of the long treatises I seem to always do (not that that will stop).

Inspired by my buddy Joe, who has a regular feature on his blog every week, a comedic horoscope, I'm going to make an attempt at my own.

Once a week I'm going to name the things that I'm hating at the moment. Mondays seem like an appropriate day to feature this column.

So here we go with the first stab, and hopefully I'll stick to doing it every week. I have no real rules for this other than naming what I'm annoyed with right at the moment, based on my day or mood. Sometimes it might be one or two things (highly unlikely) or it could be a hundred.

Things I'm hating right now:

Subway preachers.

Every single car in Manhattan.

The sweat that pools in the small of my back when the temperature hits 80 or higher.

John McCain.

People that don't know how to stop their vehicles before the crosswalk.

Texting while I'm talking to you.

All the bitching about gas prices.

Animal cruelty disguised as "sport" like horse racing.

William Kristol having a column in The New York Times.

The existence of William Kristol.

Baby strollers.

The illegal and evil military rule over Burma.

Christianity.

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RIP No Depression

2008-05-28T22:32:00.000-05:00

I don't really do too much of the magazine thing. Newspapers I devour like mad, but the amount of magazine reading I do is fairly low. Except for the random Entertainment Weekly, Time Out New York or, more recently, Parenting in a doctor's office waiting room, I basically have three magazines I read. I have a subscription to Trains that I usually tear through the day it arrives once a month, the train-geek that I am. Our New Yorker comes every week and I usually have a stack of them that I still need to read laying around. It is a really hard one to keep on top of, with such long, in-depth articles and then the next issue is in your mailbox before you've even made a dent in the last one.

The last magazine I read is No Depression. I don't have a subscription to this one, it is only bimonthly and I just pick each issue up when I'm at the record store or Borders. The best music magazine out there, No Depression is usually my companion for several weeks on the subway as I read articles here and there. I will always start with the feature stories about the musicians I'm already into and then move on to the live reviews before checking out the articles about up and coming artists, then I read the other feature articles and finish with the record reviews. It really is my favorite subway/bus companion. Or at least it was.

I opened the March-April issue of No Depression and turned to the "Hello Stranger" department on page two, their name for the "from the editor" section that many magazines have at the front. I read the first sentence and my heart sank.

Dear Friends:
Barring the intersession of unknown angels, you hold in your hands the next-to-the-last edition of No Depression we will publish.

I read sadly as the three owners of the magazine explained in this letter to the readers that they could no longer sustain the magazine. The cause was a combination of many things, from the drop in advertising due to smaller budgets at the record labels (and less small labels) to the rising cost of paper to new postal regulations written to benefit big publishers and hurt smaller ones.

It also has a lot to do with the fact that there are tons less independent record stores and book stores where you would be more likely to find a magazine like No Depression which, like the disappearance of small labels, is partially the fault of the move to downloadable music. Which means my favorite music magazine folded because of you iPod assholes. So thanks.

But seriously, I'm really going to miss this magazine.

There is still a website with reviews, news and blogging by the publishers/founders, with plans to expand it to have more material. But it is doubtful there will be the same long features that the magazine contained. There are also plans to put out a semiannual "bookazine" that right now they are not really clear what it will be.

It won't be the same.

No Depression was my favorite music magazine not just because most other music magazines suck, though that has a little to do with it, but because it was started and run by a couple of true music geeks, Peter Blackstock and Grant Alden, along with Kyla Fairchild.

Grant and Peter were (and still are) a couple of freelance music writers living in Seattle in the early 90s who got together to create a magazine focusing on the fringe country scene, taking the name from a song made famous by the Carter Family in the 40s and introduced to a new generation by Uncle Tupelo on their 1990 debut album. The tag line for the magazine always included "Alt.Country (Whatever That Is) Bimonthly" even though it was never just about that anyway. They eventually changed it to "Surveying The Past, Present And Future Of American Music" a couple of years ago but even that wasn't a pigeonhole statement since they've done feature stories on Brits Nick Lowe and Billy Bragg, among many others from outside the U.S.

No Depression started as a quarterly in 1995 (going bimonthly a year later) and I had been living in Seattle, home of the magazine, for a little over a year. It came at pretty much the same time that I was really delving into the alt-country movement instead of just being a casual listener. The fact that it was centered around where I was living meant that I could easily check out a lot of the bands they were writing about. They really opened a lot of people's eyes to the fact that Seattle even had an alt-country scene. Turned out they had a better one than most cities.

No Depression was a place that I first heard about musicians that I would come to love, including Rilo Kiley, Old 97's, Nickel Creek and a bunch of others. I even discovered legendary artists I had never known before, but were major influences on many of my favorite musicians, like Ralph Stanley.

The reason I loved No Depression so much was not just because they focused on the kind of music that I love, though that certainly has a lot to do with it. Peter, Grant and the writers they hired really conveyed their love of music to the reader without the pretense and snobbery you get from so many other music journalists, who are more interested in letting you know how cool they are for knowing some obscure band than actually letting the music be the focus (I'm looking at you David Fricke ).

That is the great thing about these guys, they aren't trying to be the coolest kids in the room, (*cough* everyonewhowritesforSpin *cough*) they just love to write about music that moves them. And if they can turn other people on to it, well there really isn't another motive for what they do.

In this world of shitty corporate music magazines like Rolling Stone, Spin and their many clones it was nice to know that No Depression could even exist. That a small, niche music mag run by a few people out of their spare bedrooms and writing about artists that don't even show up on the radar of those other rags could find an audience was such a good thing for the music lovers like me.

When I picked up the May-June issue I hoped I would find out that one of those "unknown angels" actually had come to the rescue. But it was not to be.

I've been reading the last issue as slowly as I can, trying to make it last.

I'll keep following these guys to be sure, going to the website and buying this new book series. But it won't be the same. I can't read the website on the subway and the book won't come out every two months. I'm sad about what this could mean for the future of the music journalism.

So long No Depression.

Thank you Peter, Grant and Kyla for the last thirteen years of great writing about great music.

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Apt Punishment

2008-05-22T17:32:00.001-05:00

So the guy who created both The Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.

Unbelievably, he was jailed for fraud and money laundering, and not, as I had assumed, for Crimes Against Humanity.

(My favorite part of the Times story is that this genius tried to hide from the cops in Bali by registering at a hotel under the name A. Incognito Johnson. Yeah, no one will be suspicious of that name.)

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Vietnam Afterword - Communism? What Communism?

2008-05-14T15:00:00.001-05:00

Overall the trip to Southeast Asia is one I would suggest for anyone from the West. To see these cultures that are so vastly different in so many ways from ours is a valuable, and dare I say life-changing, experience.

To see the people in this part of the world make their way in some incredibly hard circumstances and keep so much of their kindness and grace is something I can't imagine from your average American. I've seen New Yorkers act like it is the end of the world when their subway train is rerouted for the weekend. They really need to go see the people in Cambodia who are missing limbs that were blown off by landmines (many of them from the U.S.) deal with their lot in life with a smile and without the anger that they would be completely justified in having towards Americans.

I hope we get to back someday, especially after our still gestating son or daughter is old enough to appreciate this kind of experience. Hopefully these places won't be completely overrun by McDonald's and Starbucks by then.

With Vietnam specifically, I was struck by one thing. This was my first time in a country that called itself "communist." I wasn't really sure what I expected but I certainly didn't expect to see what basically amounts to an unfettered free market everywhere we went. It seems like almost everyone has their own business in this country, from the fishermen to the rice noodle factory to the sidewalk bars and restaurants to the souvenir sellers and cyclo drivers. Everybody is free to make a buck however they can.

Yes there are high taxes, at least if the tour guide on our boat, Khoa, is to be believed. But according to him they don't really get anything for it, beyond a military. There is no unemployment insurance, no social security, no free health care and no free higher education.

So the working class pays an extremely high tax rate that goes straight to the country's war machine, none of it goes to a social safety net, capitalism runs amok with no regulation and the powerful elite reap all the benefits of this system.

Communism my ass. Looks a lot more like a Karl Rove and George Bush wet dream.

But through it all the people seem to persevere. And despite the crazy traffic, the crowds and the fact that all Vietnamese men in restaurants suck their teeth incessantly after a meal, we really loved being there.

For those of you that actually made it through all of these posts in my travelogue...um... congratulations? Thanks for indulging me and I hope you didn't get too bored. More than that, I hope I even encouraged someone to want to go to Southeast Asia. It was worth every minute and every cent of my wife's money.

The Long Way Home

2008-05-13T13:00:00.000-05:00

So this will probably be my shortest post of the SE Asia series (everyone together now, "YAY!"), because there was not much to remember in the drudgery of the long trip home.

We left our hotel at about 5:30pm local time in Hanoi. We had an 8:30pm flight from Hanoi to Bangkok that was about two hours or so and then a 3-ish hour layover in Bangkok before our 16-17 hour flight to JFK.

For some reason the flight from Bangkok to New York leaves at 1:05 in the morning and you get in at around 7:00am, and then you have to try to stay up the entire day to get back on your time schedule.

So it was getting to the airport, checking in, popping an Ativan, having a beer and flying to Bangkok to catch the non-stop to JFK.

The most annoying thing in the world about the new Bangkok airport is just so unbelievable that they even designed it this way. There are no services inside the security area. No gift shops, no bars, no restaurants. Not even any vending machines. A water fountain is the extent of amenities at Suvarnabhumi airport once you go through security. So we sat there for two hours with nothing to do and no alcohol to calm the nerves of this nervous flier.

A flight that long is really hard on the trip there, when your excitement has you going and is keeping your mood up, but is is excruciating for the trip back, when you are tired and road-weary.

This time it just seemed a lot longer, no matter how much Pong I played or Singha beers I drank.

After getting to JFK, where it was raining pretty bad, and catching a really long cab ride home (Lisa put her foot down and said no to the subway with all the bags we had) we walked into our apartment about 9:30am local time.

It was 28 hours after we had left the hotel in Hanoi. That was after having a whole day in Hanoi before we even left.

Needless to say I felt like warmed-over shit by the time we got home.

Next time we stop somewhere midway and spend the night.

One interesting thing about the flight, just like the trip there we flew east again. So we went over a completely different set of countries this time. Instead of Europe and the Middle East we went over China, Russia, Alaska and Canada before getting home. So we circled the globe on this trip.

That was kind of cool.

Day 17 - Goodbye Vietnam

2008-05-12T10:00:00.003-05:00

OK, the home stretch. I'm going to finally finish this long-winded travelogue a little less than six months after returning from the trip. I realized what I got myself into shortly after starting, but since I had already begun I had to finish it. I'll be honest, the rest of these will be from memory only because after Halong Bay I didn't write anymore in the journal. I was pretty wiped.

So this epic story will finally end this week. In the end I'm glad I wrote it. I've had some nice notes from people who found the blog while searching for info about traveling to SE Asia and they mentioned they found a couple of things I wrote useful. I should have my final SE Asia post up by Wednesday, when I leave town for a family gathering in Iowa. Another trip which may become blog fodder if anything interesting happens. So probably not.

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November 25th - We woke up a little late today. This was our last day in Asia but our flight wasn't until later this night. We knew that the next day-and-a-half was going to be arduous and exhausting so we wanted to make sure to take it easy before we left.

We had bought a bunch more souvenirs the night before, about 10 conical hats to give to various people, including my four nieces, and a few of the red star flag t-shirts. But I also wanted to get some coffee to take home and Lisa wanted to buy some candy.

The nice ladies at the desk told us where we could find the coffee and candy districts and we went to get that taken care of so we could come back to pack up and check out. We found the coffee and I loaded up. I ended up buying, going back a second time after deciding I needed more, four full kilos of coffee. That is almost nine pounds for you Americans. I bought enough for me to keep two kilos and to give a half-kilo to my buddy Joe, who loves his coffee, and a quarter or half-kilo to various family members of both Lisa and me.

The beans we bought were the most popular variety in Vietnam, called chon, or weasel. It is called this because it is made from beans fed to a type of weasel and then collected from the animal's excrement. I think the roasting is done after the shitting process, but I'm not sure.

Oh yea, hey Joe, I meant to tell you that but it slipped my mind when I gave you the beans.

Then we bought something like two kilos of candy.

We took our loot back to the hotel and packed up our bags, as it was getting to be check-out time.

We went to the desk to check out and leave our bags to be stored. The first thing the manager said to us when we walked up was, "You are leaving us today" and took the time to tell us how much they enjoyed having us and lots of other nice compliments. I swear everyone at this hotel has a PhD in hospitality.

They took our bags and we went out to do a little more sightseeing before our car picked us up at 5:30 for the trip to the airport.

Over the last few days we had asked a couple people what the announcements coming form the loudspeakers twice a day were and we got somewhat vague answers. Both our tour guide in Halong Bay and the manager at the Hanoi Elegance 2 kind of brushed it off as "new regulations" being announced for each district. We didn't want to pry too much so we didn't really ask anymore after that. But we did take a picture of one of the speaker poles.

I mentioned in an earlier post that there were fruit sellers who would try to put their basket poles on tourists to take a picture and we had turned them away ever time up to this point. Well, today Lisa decided she wanted to go ahead and do it. She and her mom have a collection of cheesy tourists photos of that type (wearing sombreros on a mule in Mexico, putting a hand in the mouth of a fake alligator in Florida, etc) so she wanted one with the fruit baskets to give to her mom.

It wasn't long before we were offered. The woman tried to put it on me at first, but we told her we wanted one with Lisa and I asked her how much. The answer was, "no pay picture, just buy some fruit."

So we got the picture and she bagged up some bananas and a couple of other things for us. I figured it would be more expensive than when Lisa bought fruit on the street a few nights before, since this was a tourist trap kind of situation. But I allowed myself to get hosed. She said what I thought was 50,000d and I pulled out my money and gave her a 50,000 bill. But she took that and kept telling me it was more and I was going to give her another twenty or so but she saw the 100,000d bill in my hand and she grabbed it and then went on her way before I knew what happened.

We just paid about nine bucks for a few bananas and a couple rambutans.

You could tell that we were at the end of a long trip because Lisa and I started arguing over who's fault it was that we just got ripped off (it was obviously mine but I didn't want to admit it) and ragging at each other.

In the grand scheme of things it wasn't really that much money, and the picture turned out pretty good with just about the precise cheese factor you want out of these things.

It did take about a month before I wasn't pissed over being taken by the fruit lady.

We cooled down at the Ngoc Son Temple on Hoan Kiem Lake, and ate some of our expensive bananas.

We also hadn't taken a cyclo ride in Vietnam so we decided since it was our last day we should. We went to where there were a few of them hanging out and started to ask one or two of them how much to go to the Women's Museum. First they wanted to take us in two different cyclos but we wanted to ride in just one. Guy first said $5 each and I said 50,000d (about $3) for both. He wanted to negotiate from there but this poor guy had the misfortune of dealing with me right after I had been taken like a common tourist, so I was sticking to my guns.

He was super nice and we ended up giving him double what we agreed to anyway, which was pretty close to his opening price.

After a quick look around the Women's Museum, which turned out to be under major renovations and most of the exhibits were closed, we walked towards the history museum. We ended up not going in and just sitting in the cafe in the courtyard.

We made our way back to the Old Quarter to have dinner. We finally went to eat at the vegetarian restaurant across from our hotel, a place for Western tourist which is why we had not gone there yet. Lisa got Pho and I got Pineapple fried rice. While we were waiting for our food a huge motorcade drove up and stopped right outside. A bunch of dignitaries and press people got out and went into a building right next to our hotel, something called Memorial House that we had completely missed checking out. The motorcade was from the U.N.

Everyone was outside looking at the motorcade, the staff from our hotel noticed us across the street and started waving.

The motorcade took off after about 20 minutes and we got our food. A van pulled up and we saw Pete and Shelagh, the Aussies we met in Halong, get off. We got to talk to them for a few more minutes before they had to go find a hotel room for the night.

We finished our last meal in Vietnam and then headed across the street to grab our bags and jump in our car to the airport.

Next - The long journey home and then some thoughts on Vietnam

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