Crushing Krisis

Category Archives: day in the life

entries containing daily details

Blackouts

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Today I woke up at six.

Yesterday and the day before I woke up at six. On Saturday it was close to seven. Friday, six fifteen.

Do you sense a trend?

In our old house sleep was a black box.

I remember the conversation we had when we first moved in. Three bedrooms, and only the front and back ones were big enough to hold E’s queen-sized bed.

“Well, the front is bigger – more room around the bed, and for beaureaus and things. But it’s at the front of the house – streelights, cars passing, people talking, kids playing – it will all be in the bedroom with us.”

We wound up in the back. Smaller, cozier, and immune to all that street noise. Except, the backyard world of our home had its own noise – yapping dogs and yellow security lights, always on watch.

We adapted. I slept some nights with headphones, or earplugs. Our curtains were blackouts, thick and inpenetrable. Eventually E bought me a sunrise clock complete with chirping birds, so I could still wake up with some semblance of morning in my life – even in the black box.

People joked that I would be freaked out by the quiet at our new house. They weren’t wrong. Everything is silent at night (save for crickets), with everyone tucked into their discrete living rooms hundreds of feet from our door.

Sometimes I feel sheepish even playing guitar, before Elise reminds me that they could easily be doing that (or louder!) in their own homes. Such as is the silent expanse of our street.

Our bedroom is in the front of the house. No earplugs. Yes, blackout curtains, but not drawn carefully across every inch of every window from frame to frame. It’s just out of habit – to make sure no moonlight falls across my body as I drift to sleep.

The difference is the morning. Still quiet. Still no traffic. Yet in place of the sunrise clock I have … sunrise.

It turns out, I’m a morning person. For five years I had fooled myself, because my tiny electric sun was no replacement for an entire world of delicately spun light.

Tomorrow I will probably wake up at six.

Also filed in house, sleep | | Comments (0)

get elevated

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

I wrote that last post on the El.

For those of you not acquainted with Philadelphia, we have exactly two and a half brands of subway. One travels north to south. One travels east to west. One spends half its distance traveling from the center of the city to the west, and then emerges from the ground.

(I always laugh when people find the Philly subway system confusing. They’re named unambiguously and barely make a turn. Paris – now that’s confusing.)

The “El” is short for the Market Frankford Elevated Line, the east to west subway named thus because it runs along Market Street & Frankford Avenues and because after it exits the central part of its route in either direction it runs along elevated tracks. Creaky, red iron, elevated tracks that tower overhead, dripping rain that smacks as it hits your scalp.

Nothing in the world skeeves me out like the El. In fact, for several years at the old house I boycotted it entirely. However, it’s a reality of traveling to and from the new house.

The grime of it is paralyzing. The navy blue floor is encrusted with untold months of flotsam at every crack and corner. The blue seats are not plastic but a sponge-like blue fuzz that seems engineered to attract and retain dirt.

Then there are the people – the degenerate, tactless people. I have heard of and witnessed people doing things on the El that you would never witness elsewhere in public – let alone on public transit. Vandalism. Performance art. Investigations of personal hygiene. Sex acts.

The charming combination of environmental grossness and personal grossness is enhanced by the claustrophobic layout of each car. To a New Yorker – accustomed to their wide, hard-plastic benches and center-of-aisle poles – it probably seems like an amusement park ride.

A tiny, disgusting amusement park ride.

Whenever I ride a carefully tuck my limbs into my body like an Olympic diver, trying to avoid contact with something or something that will give me syphilis or leprosy.

Carefully tucked into myself, I pull out my laptop, and log in remotely to work for 29 blocks of elevation, before shutting down and doing my best to hold my breath and stay absolutely still for 10 blocks of subway.

The first thing I do every day in the office is wash my hands.

Also filed in thoughts | | Comments (0)

do start believin’

Friday, June 25, 2010

A week ago I had just finished commuting home for the first time to my new house. Presently I am the merch guy for Filmstar as they split a bill with The Shondes at Tritone.

That’s the life, at the moment.

That, a seemingly unlimited amount of cardboard boxes in various states of unpack, and a steely, unflinching resolve to spend money on things like towel hooks and toilet seats. Whatever it takes.

We moved with no issue whatsoever, aside from only sleeping two hours in a 36 hour span. After all of the wacky settlement hijinks it was a bit of a letdown, where “letdown” means “totally awesome gift from serendipity.”

Things have generally been serendipitous lately, in a broad Alanis-Ironic reading of the term. I like to think it’s universe-funded payback for all the not-being-nasty I’ve done in the last year.

It’s hard. I’m nasty by nature. Or, at least, by nurture.

My high school graduation was 1/10 this big.

On Tuesday we walked into Trenton Arena, late for E’s brother’s graduation, to discover his face displayed on a jumbotron singing “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Apparently he was the only tenor confident enough to bring an appropriate amount of NJ rock to that Journey classic (by way of Glee), and so wound up singing Steve Perry lead at his own high school graduation to a half-full arena’s worth of crowd.

And now I am in an increasingly packed rock club, selling merchandise and recording video for my wife’s band while she rocks out in a rather short skirt which I heartily endorse. Later we will go back to our house, and sleep on a mattress on the floor. Tomorrow I will finish setting up my new recording studio and start playing music again.

This is the life.

Also filed in Filmstar, elise, family, house, philly music, shopping, thoughts | | Comments (1)

I (mostly) #blamedrewscancer for my disappearing week.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

By rights and logic I really ought to be asleep right now, but if I don’t recount the past week it’s going to sleep out of the memory banks and completely disappear into the ether. At least this way I can prove that it actually happened.

So. If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been since that last post and why I am not writing you wonderfully detailed bulletins about my life, here is the download.

A week ago right now I was up late on the couch, laptop on my chest, firing out #blamedrewscancer emails. (Yes, I know I owe you the last chapter in the skydiving story. All in good time.) Around the time I planned to go to sleep National Mechanics emailed me and Mike(y) to ask if we were planning to bring some live acoustic cover music with us to the #bdc event next Thursday (i.e., TODAY).

Um, no. We had talked about it and thought music might be overwhelming. Given the open invitation, suddenly I was firing emails to all of my Philly artist friends who carry a bevy of covers, trying to find a bill for the night.

I fell asleep mid-email in that same position – lying on the couch with the laptop on my chest. When I awoke just shy of ten on Thursday morning (don’t worry; I had the day off) I literally opened my laptop before I opened my eyes. I had originally allotted the day half to #bdc and half to myself, but it wound up being double #bdc, and then some. Project managing, writing emails, talking to Drew, rinse, repeat.

It kept churning into the night (interrupted only to spend three hours researching my own well-documented credit history because – to the best that I can discern – CHASE is a bunch of predatory frauds. Without getting into my personal finances, they sent me a letter changing my terms that was blatantly untrue. Like, each “reason” they listed was immediately and factually refutable. The letter I wrote to them in response, it’s a beautiful thing. Elise speculates that they’ve never encountered such a document before in their lives. I can’t wait to fax it.)

Then, Friday. After work I found myself in a telecommuting menage a trois with Drew and Britt. What I couldn’t tell you then and can now reveal thanks to TechCrunch breaking the story earlier tonight is that I was working on a sponsorship proposal for 23andMe.

I started occasionally following 23andMe shortly before they were a Wired cover story in November of 2007, to the point that I knew just who they were when Cecily K. recapped her experiences with their commercial testing kit a few months ago. The reductionist version is that you spit in a test tube for them, and they report back to you about your predisposition for health and disease, and on your family history.

Point being, 23andMe is a real, tangible brand to me – a brand providing a valuable and potentially life-altering service. And I was proposing that #bdc (and, by extension, me) should be their business partner in a sponsorship.

So, yeah, just a little stress on Friday. Luckily, Drew is a wonderful human being who can make me laugh and cry remotely via instant message, and between the two of us everything was fine and from Britt’s abstract we all created a really wonderful proposal.

Saturday E and I headed to the burbs to assist in moving some friends into their first house (YAY!), and then I had a two hour intermission before heading with Gina to West Philly to play a house party fundraiser for her FringeFest play, Fefu and Her Friends. I’ve never played a house party before in a formal sense, where I was billed as a feature and was expected to play for some certain amount of time. It was awesome, but it kicked my ass – even when I wasn’t on I was still ON, from six at night to four in the morning.

In that ten hours, I played three or four hours of music. I also met, mingled, sang, and danced with some of the most beautiful and talented people in Philadelphia, namely the cast of Fefu and their amazing friend Ed, who is half lounge-singer and half space alien come to earth to reclaim Prince as one of his people.

Also, I played an on-command version of Cher’s “Believe” totally off of the top of my head, and at some very late point (possibly as late as present?) Gina, Wes, and I sang an epic three-part harmony version of “With or Without You” with Gina and I clustered around a single mic in a vague sketch of Springsteen and Van Zandt.

Then I slept. Until, like, seven at night on Sunday? All I know is that any time I was halfway roused during the day I would restart The Matrix and be asleep before the scene with the pills.

Um, where are we? Monday? Three or four hours of rehearsal with Gina directly after work (as we are providing some covers support TONIGHT while we await the arrival of the proper musician who will grace us, one Chris Huff), including playing an entire set live for TwitCam, followed by further rehearsal on my own.

Tuesday one of my other cover-songs leads came through in the form of my good friend and former TrebleMaker Kate, who showed up at my house with a setlist of 20 songs to bash through with me – out of which we were to craft 45 minutes of rockin’ cover music for TONIGHT (which is rapidly approaching as I continue to write this post).

Another four hours of rehearsal later and we had our set, packed with lots of stuff I had never played before, like Katy Perry, Aerosmith, and Evanescence … plus some familiar favorites.

Then, tonight, I baked. You see, somewhere in the midst of the days/paragraphs above, team #bdc decided that the best possible component to add to a benefit night at a local bar packed with acoustic music was a bake sale, and I – inexplicably and against my nature and better judgment – volunteered. (My altruism may have had something to do with wanting to play with the Kitchen Aid standing mixer my groom’s party bought us as a wedding gift.)

A dozen dozen cookies, half-a-dozen lead sheets, and half a half-dozen loads of laundry later, and it’s 4am. Music starts at our event in a mere 16 hours. I still have not had a proper rehearsal for myself, and I just hours ago realized I don’t have another set of my preferred strings (a particular issue since I just broke one).

Goodnight.

Also filed in Twitter, blamedrewscancer, gina, memories, parties, sleep, stories | | Comments (0)

breakfast of champions

Saturday, July 18, 2009

I’m awake at 8am, just like any other day of the week.

I briefly debated if I should eat some sort of special pre-jump meal, but given my general lack of stomach for breakfast it seemed like an unnecessary temptation of fate to eat anything unusual before skydiving. I settled on my favorite meal and number one comfort food, Special K Red Berries with Silk Soy Milk.

(ps: Why is it called “Red Berries” when it only has strawberries in it? Wouldn’t you say that strawberries are the red berry with the strongest draw? Like, “OMG, I’m going to get some red berries today, I hope there’s some strawberries in there!” Did some other cereal copyright “strawberries”? Anyhow…)

I’m also a bit torn about how to style my hair and what underwear to wear – two factors that are clearly not going to have a net effect on my jumping experience

A few months ago I was yelling at my mom for not having a living will. The most dangerous thing she does is perpetuate a three-decade long smoking habit. So, jumping out of a plane made me feel like a bit of a hypocrite for not putting any affairs in order.

(PS: No one, under any circumstances, should tell my mom I am skydiving. This is one of those occasions that justifies my blocking her on Twitter. If she finds out she will hit me with the Italian fear/guilt combo so fast and hard that I won’t even let the man strap himself to my back, let alone jump off of anything with him. Anyhow…)

On the off-chance I die today, here’s all that I could think of while I was brushing my teeth:

I don’t like coffins. I want to be disposed of in a green way where the earth can just reclaim me. If that’s not readily available in Pennsylvania I’d want to be donated to science – with the caveat that they can’t dissect or otherwise alter any of my boy parts, because that is just weird.

I don’t like funerals. We went to a beautiful wake for Wes’s father last year that was full of music and might not have mentioned the “G” man even once. I really liked that.

If I get killed doing this I blame Drew’s cancer.

I didn’t get to far past that, because (a) I don’t think I’m going to die (and would like to keep it that way so, please mom, no calls), and (b) I was really hungry for that bowl of Special K.

I’m going to go take a shower now, and mull more over the hair and underwear dilemma.

Also filed in blamedrewscancer, food, mom, religion, thoughts, vanity | | Comments (1)

holiday tsunami

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Funkin’ Donuts update: Elise has arrived to appreciate a beet donut, as have a charming pair of older women eating the Fourth of July lunch special.

And suddenly it is hurricane-crazy rain outside. The rain is all you can see in any direction – up the road or over the mountains.

Both of us walked here from the farm, but I have the upper hand, as I am wearing swim trunks.

Unfortunately, I don’t drive, so me walking back to the farm in my swim trunks really only helps me, and it doesn’t help me to get back here with my guitar to record a “Live @ Funkin’ Donuts” video-cast.

Meanwhile, I still have a lot more Vermont milkshakes to drink. I need to get started.

Also filed in elise, food, rain, vermont | | Comments (0)

run ragged and happy

Sunday, June 21, 2009

This is a meandering post about life and stuff. Content that’s all focused like a laser mounted on a deadly shark may or may not resume tomorrow.

This weekend E headed up the NNJ/NYC to play a show and help with some solstice cleaning along with the sibs at her mother’s house. I wanted to tag along to see her concert and reap the sib-time, but my life was in need of some cleaning up as well.

When I woke up on Saturday I felt like my to-do list was a litany of random drudgery. Organize this, scrub that, upload stuff to here. Even as I was crossing things off it didn’t feel very big picture. Typical: artist-, writer-, marketer-me trapped under a Sisyphisian list of uncreative to-dos. The only thing keeping me sane was my Twitter pipeline to the outside world.

As the day wore on I kept feeling like I was behind the boulder until I caught a social network update from my dear musical friend Vicky Spaeth, which read:

Simplify, simplify, simplify! I think we over-complicate our lives way too much.

I read that, then took another look at my list, and realized there was a big picture. It was all “simplify.” Organizing shelves and wires so my creative space is less cluttered, so I can create. Clean out the house so I don’t have a worry of other things to do nagging me when I want to create. Upload what I’ve created to as many places as will have it, so people can actually hear it.

I finally have the simplicity that provides one big picture. I have focus. Finally everything I’m doing points in the same direction.

I look back at the 2000 me. Within a two month span I started a blog, shot digital video of myself, and was the only songwriter on the whole internet uploading a concert every week. And it all came easy. But it was over-complicated. The technology was a tangle. The life was a tangle – pulling As and paying for my first apartment and squeezing in music beside theatre.

Maybe I was on the verge of conquering the world, but it wasn’t simple. There was no picture to focus on. Which was fine – I was in college! But that’s why we grow up. And hopefully get less complicated, instead of more.

It took the weekend and the twenty-seven years before it, but I am really almost there. Almost to the point that I can just flip a switch and empty my thoughts and songs directly onto the internet without a fussy mess of wires and files and wasted time.

And be worth watching.

It feels cool and satisfying, and I’m happy – happy sweating my ass off and mopping the floor, or putting away the umpteenth load of laundry, passing out on the couch while I wait for my wife to get home. Happy without any descriptors or mitigators, because there’s a point to it.

Just happy.

Also filed in adulthood, betterment, college, thoughts | | Comments (0)

don’t fail me now

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The last forty-eight hours of my life.

At six o’clock on Monday I am playing guitar. I have been playing for hours, drilling songs against a metronome. The bridge of “Unengaged” for twenty minutes straight. I’ve worn through a callous for the first time in ages.

Later I rehearse piano and vocals equally as hard. I fall asleep reading Outliers in bed, which just two chapters in already has caused one blowup with E because I said if I had me as a child I’d call me a failure.

I don’t want to be a failure.

Tuesday I have a fun, frantic day at work – the kind where you realize at the end of the day that you never stopped to hang your coat. I start writing the second my ass is on the bus, and emerge almost three hours later with that last post.

I rehearse. Hard. Again. Trying not to fail. Despite my voice sounding brittle and inflexible due to the lack of a warm-up, I venture out to an open mic while E stays at home and works on freelance.

At the restaurant my first song is awesome; the room is quietly transfixed. (I’m not a failure?) Afterward I promptly break a string and become shy and faltering when I’m handed another guitar. I fuck up “Like a Virgin,” of all things, and promptly lose everyone’s attention.

Today I feel slightly beaten up (thank god I don’t drink at those things), on top of beating myself up. Still manage another frantic work day that barely includes a coat-hanging. On the way home I listen to my own voice on my iPod, which a lot of days is the only thing I can manage to do.

I’m listening to “Like a Virgin” from 2006 and thinking, This is awful. Why am i singing like that? (Of course, I wouldn’t make it ten seconds into “Like a Virgin” from 2001.)

Then I listen to a Trio from 2008 and realize, God, I really did get better.

I am not a failure.

I get home and am kissed goodbye as E heads out to front her band at the Khyber. Another hour of writing.

Also filed in Philly, betterment, bloggish, corporate, elise, guitar, philly music, self-critique, singing, thoughts | | Comments (0)

My Life Is a Joke

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Lindsay and I have an ongoing joke about my life.

Lindsay, being my primary secret squirrel, always finds a little nook of day to tuck a conversation into. Frequently we talk about all of the things that I do – work, blog, play music solo and with Arcati Crisis, Lyndzapalooza, freelance writing – &c, &c.

She, one of the more overachieving and time-conscious people I know, marvels at how I actually advance my goals in each of those areas all of the time.

The joke is that, in order to fit in all of those things, I must not do anything a normal person does. I don’t watch television, sit down for meals, or talk to people on the phone. I don’t sleep. I’m like some sort of T-1000 or Cylon. Or Madonna. I’m purely focused on achievements and achieving them, and nothing else.

That’s a slight misrepresentation. I am not a robot, and only aspire to be Madonna. I still do all of the things that human beings do.

Occasionally. And quickly.

When I graduated from college and started my career I resolved not to do any theatre or music for an entire year. No art, essentially. I would focus solely on being a good employee and a good boyfriend, because I wasn’t sure I’d be good at either. If I had free time I would sit and play video games until another opportunity to be a good employee or boyfriend presented itself.

After a year I allowed myself to get involved in a theatre project with Gina, and from there my natural inclinations for art and recklessly large personal projects took over.

I made a very elaborate chart. It included every possible thing that I could do in a given day. All of the regular human things, all of my time at work, all of my special goals, and everything else. Washing dishes. Walking from one place to another. Making out with Elise.

I tracked what I did for three months, every minute of every day.

At the end I had a beautiful graph of my life. A rainbow of lines interwove with each other to show me the relationship between work and sleep, guitar-playing and housework, or blogging and masturbation.

The area under some of the lines was the shape of my success; the area under others a dimension of dead space.

My priorities snapped me into focus. Before the chart I would have told you I was already busy enough with life. After I realized that I wasn’t writing songs because I was reading TMZ for 20 minutes a day.

The chart was almost three years ago.

Today Lindsay initiated the latest iteration of our joke, querying if I planned to sleep at all in the next few months while chipping away at my list of measurable goals for the year.

The chart was about sleep too. I tried to live on just five or six hours a night, and suddenly all the useless things expanded. The chart showed me that I need sleep to stay focused.

It was a disappointment, sure. I work and commute for almost ten hours a day, and if I have to sleep for seven that leaves just another seven hours in which I can live my life.

The punchline to our joke is that every minute counts, awake or asleep. 60 seconds to flip channels is a quick email reminder. Three minutes to set the table is rehearsing a song. A half an hour on the phone is this post.

Which would I rather look back on in December, or when I turn thirty, or when I die?

I always eat with the wrong fork, anyway.

Also filed in betterment, corporate, gina, lindsay, ocd, over-achievement, sleep, thoughts | | Comments (1)

Philly: Seen on the Scene

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

This past month I was out of musical commission for as long as I’ve ever been – longer than when I had my tonsils removed, though perhaps not quite as long as when I broke my collarbone (although I have many grimace-inducing memories of propping my back up against the cinder block walls of Calhoun hall so I could leverage my left hand up high enough to fret chords).

In any event, it was a long time without music – from when I came down with bronchitis on January 9th through when I started playing piano again on February 1st.

Three weeks might not sound like a long time to you, but in time without music it’s an eternity, so I’ve been happy to get back to my musical routine this past week.

Every Wednesday: LP Open Mic @ Intermezzo (3141 Walnut)
Last week was my first week back to our open mic after a three week recess, and also a week of my hosting duties.

It turned out to be an evening of great fun. I opened with a trio of tunes so new that I don’t even have lyric links for them yet, let alone recordings, plus a new Beatles cover I had dreamt up on an old guitar the night before.

The turnout for the night was much lighter than usual, which resulted in the open mic becoming an effective round robin of me, Arcati Crisis, Mike from Shackamaxon, and my most-adored band in all of Philadelphia, Blueberry Magee, plus two appearances by our friend and fellow LP Artist Ashley Brandt. All three of the artists on that list are some of my favorites in Philly, and it was wonderful to share an exclusive bill with them for the night.

This week Dante Bucci and his hang drums are the host, but Gina and I will still make an appearance. If you’re around University City between 8pm and 11pm you should drop by.

Thursday: Arcati Crisis Rehearsal!
Okay, not really much of a scene to be seen on, but from our insanity at the open mic it was clear Gina and I were craving a chance to catch up and work on some new material. We picked our next four AC songs (two of which are from my super-new trio from the prior evening), and got most of the way through a guitar arrangement of one of mine – “Better.”

Our arrangement decisions tend to take forever when we’re inside of them, but in retrospect seem like they occurred in a flash. On “Better” we started out moving Gina into different capo positions to find a good interplay against my open progression in E. She wound up on the fourth fret.

At one point in following my chords she fell one chord behind me, and I stopped her and said, “you’re on to something.” Twenty minutes later we had crafted a fanged hook for the song that sounds perfectly at home despite the fact that it is wickedly out of step for Gina compared to my part.

We were pretty satisfied with ourselves at that point, and just sketched in the idea of the bridge before calling it a night. We still have to break out harmony vocals, which tends to be where the bulk of our arrangement battles lie.

Friday: The Pretenders @ The Electric Factory
I have a short list of bands that I absolutely must see once at some point in my life, mostly because I have been lucky enough to see bands while they are at their peek – before they become a rarer commodity.

For a long time one of those bands has been The Pretenders.

Read more…The Pretenders were spectacular – muscular and mimeographic as they churned out faithful renditions of songs from the full range of their career. Chrissie Hynde not only sounded pitch perfect in comparison to her records, but also cut a svelte figure in her high boots and single-tail tux jacket – dancing an exaggerated sidestep in “Brass In Pocket.” It was plain as day the through line from her to PJ, Shirley, and Karen O.

It was also clear that she is one of the great, under-appreciated rhythm guitarists in classic rock – she’s effectively the backbone of every arrangement, even galloping time changes like “Tattooed Love Boys.”

The band played half of their newest disc, and nearly the entirety of their debut, plus all the notable singles between with the exception of “2000 Miles,” “Middle of the Road,” “Ohio,” and “Stand By You” (also, my manager saw them the prior night and got “Mystery Achievement,” which I had lamented not hearing).

One more band struck from the “once in a lifetime” list (the last prior cross-off was Cyndi Lauper, another stunning concert). I’m actually hard-pressed to think of who’s next at this point. I’m tempted by the Fleetwood Mac hits tour, but I don’t know if I could count it as the real thing without Christie McVie along for the ride.

Every Monday: Open Jam @ Connie’s Ric Rac (9th just under Washington)
Connie’s Ric Rac is my neighborhood open mic, as well as being the room that spawned my recent asphyxiation and the subsequent interstate love song that Gina is currently endeavoring to learn.

As the story goes, the Ric Rac (named thusly as a misnomer for bric-a-brac) used to be an Italian Market discount store owned by the titular Connie, and when the storefront closed down the shop stayed in the family. Later, her son(s?) proposed that they open the doors as a sort of counter-culture community center, complete with art classes, concerts, and open jams.

Thus, Connie’s Ric Rac. I was a little nervous about attending, because it’s a totally new scene to me, but I was encouraged by the fact that February’s guest host is the darling Katie Barbato, and the night was themed with Beatles covers as a tribute to the band’s first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show 45(!) years prior.

I arrived much too early to a Ric Rac family scene replete with snake-feeding, wine-drinking, and banjo recitals – all with the easy laughter and chain smoking that I recall from a childhood spent in my grandmother’s South Philadelphia kitchen. I was happy to remain a wallflower through the family affair until the night kicked off.

In addition to Katie (playing a sad, Across the Universe style “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” and a new original with a killer chord change in the chorus) there was house band Discount Heroes (valiantly slaying “Revolution” and “Don’t Let Me Down” despite their singer’s flu), a freak-R&B act whose name I did not catch doing a remarkable version of “Savoy Truffle,” and Vince & Chuck.

Vince and Chuck were pure magic – performing note-perfect Beatles covers of a great selection of tunes – “Here Comes the Sun,” “If I Fell,” “Baby’s In Black,” and “Please Please Me,” plus another I can’t recall. I essentially pleaded with them to come to the LP Open Mic to share their Beatles tunes, and this was before discovering that Chuck AKA Charles Ramsey is a phenomenal songwriter in his own right.

Since the directive was early-Beatles I debated “Do You Want to Know a Secret” and “You Really Got a Hold On Me,” but settled on long-time favorite “All My Loving,” which I wailed like a fucking banshee. Katie assures me it was awesome. I also played the repeatedly aforementioned “Connie’s Ric Rac Love Song AKA Better,” “In My Life,” and later “Ob-la Di Ob-la Da,” plus a handful of other originals.

Katie will host out the month, and I’m going to make an effort to make it to the next two Monday’s to hang out with her and the Ric Rac family before shifting my attention to either Fergie’s or The Fire in March. She gave me a copy of the brand new full-length by her band The Sleepwells, and her voice is so freaking sexy on it. I might blush the next time I talk to her. Wow.

Every Tuesday: Open Mic @ Studio Luloo (916 White Horse Pike, Oaklyn NJ)
Yes, my friends, I got all the fuck around the scene this week.

Gina and I have had Studio Luloo on our to-do list for a while, and it was elevated by our missing an appearance from Year Long Day last week. We discovered that it is virtually around the corner from Gina’s abode, and tonight finally endeavored to make an appearance.

It was a completely worthwhile endeavor! Luloo is hosted and operated by the entirely charming Sara O’Brien, who shares songs, healing arts, and a tangible joie de vivre in this cozy shopfront slash recording studio with the best monitor mix we’ve ever heard.

No joke. We were first after Sara, so had no idea what to expect, and we started with “Bucket Seat,” which is not amongst the simplest of our songs, and the mix was just perfect. We could hear what we really sounded like, and not some faraway facsimile thereof. We also made a successfully epic run at “Apocalyptic Love Song” (click that link – Gina should win a freaking Grammy for that performance), and an entertaining jaunt through “Pocahontas.”

Playing first can be a curse if you want to get heard by the room at it’s fullest, but when you’re just out to chill it’s a wonderful pressure deflator. We had time to chat with some of the crowd, including super-sweet Dave from Never Trust, and Ryan Williams, who was the feature.

I’ve met Ryan before, but never heard him, and his songs are great. Like, actually great, not just hyperbolic great. He has a new one, “Audio,” that is pure aural dynamite. Scary-good.

I was sad to miss out on talking to a cool kid playing a Guild with a series of partial capos, his name maybe being Jeremy Hines? He had a really tuneful sensibility, and reminded me of Honorary Title – the sort of music I consistently fail at making when I write things like “Standing” or “Love Me Not.”

In other news…
I had designs on hitting the Tuesday open mic @ Time on the way home from Luloo, but Gina smartly deposited me back at my house so I can rest my voice a bit.

Not too much other news, other than I stopped by Cafe Grindstone over the weekend for a fabulous lunch of vegan kielbasa and a soy banana milkshake and spoke with Jerry at the counter a bit about how one gets selected to play there. It’s just about as close to me as Ric Rac, so I’d love to drop by to sing every so often.

Also, Battlestar Galactica. I could say a lot about this week’s episode, but right now I just have one thing on my mind: the return Ellen Motherfrakkin’ Tigh.

Coming up!
Hopefully some fucking sleep!

But, seriously, tomorrow night we’ll be at the LP Open Mic @ Intermezzo. If open micing is not your thing, get thyself to the Tin Angel to see Shackamaxon, awesome Mad Dragon recording artist Andrew Lipke, and a band called StereoFidelic which is likely awesome based on the company they keep.

Also, biggest news for last: Arcati Crisis will be splitting a bill with our friend and musical confidante Joshua Popejoy on February 28th at our much-beloved South Street venue Upstairs @ Zot! This will be a BIG SHOW – big sets from both of us, a big(ger) PA system, a big comfortable room for you to stretch out in, and hopefully A BIG CROWD.

$8, beer specials, awesome acoustic pop music. Mark your calendar. Tickets here.

What now? Oh, right, sleep.

Peter is a Philadelphia singer-songwriter, half of the band Arcati Crisis, and Director of Communications for Lyndzapalooza (LP).

Also filed in Philly, arcati crisis, concerts, elise, gina, lindsay, lyndzapalooza, philly music, reviews, weblinks | | Comments (1)

- – - - - - – . (the bathroom is very nice here)

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

okay. in short:

Packed up our charming Paris flat last night after one of our best days in the city, including a beautiful stroll through Montmartre at sunset and accompanying dessert courtesy of our dear friends Dante and Jennifer. I suddenly got really good at French and yammered to anyone available.

This morning made 2nd best eggs ever and called a cab while we slowly advanced our luggage into the courtyard of our flat. Cab never came. Manually hauled luggage (mine now weighing over half of my body weight) up the street and flagged a cab to take us to Gare du Nord.

Wandered back and forth, lost, in Gare du Nord just long enough that by the time we got through customs and UK border we had thoroughly missed our Eurostar. The gentleman at the gate kindly and wordlessly moved us on to the next train and waved us through.

(aside: they have tiny bottles of wine in the dining car.)

Arrived in St. Pancras and immediately found ourselves in a taxi queue with the first rude people we’ve met in Europe – they wouldn’t let a very nice non-English-speaking family by to get to the street. I mentioned it to the steward at the front of the queue and he chewed them out before putting us in an awesome cab with enough room in the back to play Twister.

Best introduction to a country, ever.

Arrived at our guest house. Neighborhood, charming, but the weird, unintelligible lady at the desk made us wary. In three words from my wife, the room was “clean, outrageously modest,” which is very kind. Apparently, British guest houses aren’t at all like American bed and breakfasts. They are more like private-room hostels with shared mess hall breakfast in the morning, which is to say that I didn’t like that using our shower WOULD HAVE GOT THE BED WET, especially because the bed may have been made of cardboard or something else especially biodegradable and might have just dissolved into the natty rug.

Also, no internet, where all of our notes, reservations, and information live. Are you feeling me on this one?

A plan was hatched. We walked down the block to a Starbucks, got properly weak American caffeinated beverages, and used the internet to find the four-star hotel closest to the middle of London that had a concierge and wireless internet.

We then were faced with the matter of getting out of our guest house reservations, and for those of you familiar with my spectrum of creative problem-solving I’m sure you can imagine the creative scenario and accompanying major fit that I invented for the situation.

Afterward, we netted a hired taxi driver who had seriously no idea where our hotel was, even when we told him it was effectively across from the British Museum, and then we met a nice lady at the front desk who upgraded us to a deluxe room with a bathroom twice as big as my cubical, and here we are.

Since we didn’t really mention once to anyone in Paris that we were on our honeymoon we are starting every sentence here with, “well, we’re on our honeymoon, and…,” which in about three minutes should net us some fantastic dinner reservations from the concierge.

More, later.

Also filed in Honeymoon, only childness, stories | | Comments (1)

how the Musee d’Orsay is like an unexpected vagina, and other adventures

Saturday, January 24, 2009

I know I’m still down about three Louvre posts as well as the Eiffel and Latin quarter, but if I don’t keep up with the new stuff none of it will ever get written.

So, today.

After our amazing day yesterday, which ended in giggles and me seeing how much crepe I could fit into my mouth at one time, Elise and I concur that today has been our one crappy day of the honeymoon thus far.

We woke up early and I made the best scrambled eggs ever made, with gouda, brie, chevre, and maybe manchego? It was really cheese with eggs as connective tissue. Best ever.

Afterwards, perhaps as a result of the 3000% increase in my dairy intake over the last few days, I fell back into a deep slumber from which I could not be roused. Even after I was finally dragged back out of bed at noon I was in a complete haze, and kept drifting off on the couch while Elise counted out our coins for the ticket machine. My grump had mostly lifted by the time we were off the Metro, but I was still sluggish.

Today’s big adventure was Musee d’Orsay, which is the modern art museum. With apologies to my sister-in-law and our dear friend Francesca, d’Orsay blew. In a word, Elise describes it as “ungratifying.”

Rather than a word, I choose to describe it in an illustrative allegory:

In the ground floor gallery I was looking from one room into the next, and I thought I spotted a Munch. It was pretty far away, but it was in the general shape of a Munch I recalled.

I approached the gallery, and as I neared the painting it became apparent it was not the Munch in question, but a massive, close study of a disembodied vagina.

That captures my feelings on Musee d’Orsay exactly: not the thing you thought it was, but actually some other thing, which in other settings is an awesome thing, but in this instance not awesome in the manner in which it is presented.

The main sculpture hall is magnificent to look at from afar, but the actual rooms were claustrophobic, especially on the fifth level. I realized as we jostled our way through (and on a Saturday – without any groups!) how much I really appreciated that Louvre had seating in every gallery.

Also, the collections were simply overwhelming – like, not in the sense of “the Louvre is so large; it’s overwhelming,” but in the sense of, “there is too much Degas in this room to focus on any one of them; it’s overwhelming.”

D’orsay features a lot of impressionism, including pre- and post-, and it’s not really my favorite period. There’s only so many times I can appreciate that something looks like its subject in a subjective way before it all just comes off like a torturous, never-ending labyrinth of Magic Eye (which is not meant as a dig on pointillism, which I actually do appreciate).

I was excited for Room 60, which included a Munch and a Klimt, who are two of my top artists in general, and especially from this period. All through the impressionists I was like, “it’s okay, I’m going to get to see a Munch, it will be so cool.” Lo, we arrived in 60 to find that neither painting was on display. (Thus, the vagina incident is revealed to be even more painful.)

Also, the major special exhibit at the moment is basically just about how Picasso was a twisted psychotic and spent two years copying Manet’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe over and over again in increasingly abstract ways until he was literally creating cardboard cutouts of the deconstructed characters.

There were a few high points.

Even though the volume of Degas was tiring, I enjoyed watching the evolution of his work. I was endlessly fascinated by The Pedicure, because it has a very specific, photographic depth of field. It’s quite fascinating – Elise and I had a lengthy discussion about how he might have conceived of the technique, as it’s not something easily observed with the naked eye.

I’m sure Jenny can explain it to us.

I also loved the dance class, which has a similar specific focus along the shoulders of the girls (plus, the tutus are incredible).

I also delighted in my discoveries of Gustave Caillebotte, and I say “discoveries” because three times I found paintings that I loved and subsequently realized they were by him.

I’ll definitely be buying a book as soon as we can find one (D’orsay puzzlingly, had nothing to speak of, even though they have two of his major works on display).

The upper restaurant was fantastic, and may merit its own post. There was also an appropriately-sized section of beautiful art nouveau furnishings that I would have killed to have Francesca guide me through.

Finally, there was one room of “symbolism,” a period/style that neither of us were especially familiar with. From what I could discern on a brief pass it’s an allegorical style that casts modern situations with clear historic or mythological analogues. I loved the entire room, but my favorite was a painting that claimed to be about some sort of pastoral school yard, but that I have retitled, (and all the apostles sang) Rock Me, Sexy Jesus, for obvious reasons. Behold:

(I implore you to click through for a closer look. The allegorical only begotten son homoeroticism is unparalleled.)

Okay, one last point of suckitude: d’Orsay claims to be open until six, but shortly before five thirty they rope off many of the individual exhibits and start shooing you towards the exits.

Like I said, it blew. I’m thankful for being introduced to Caillebotte and symbolism, but otherwise would have preferred a second day in Louvre.

Afterwards we walked along the river for a bit, terminating in my ideal shot of Eiffel (it’s on Elise’s camera, so you’ll have to wait), and then we detoured past Grand & Petit Palais (which will have Warhol from March to Bastille) to get to Champs-Élysées.

Champs-Élysées was a bit of a paradox. We were expecting faire du shopping to net some of the wonderful fashions we’ve been encountering on the Metro all week. However, despite a few browses in both French and international stores, we didn’t settle on anything. I felt like we kept seeing the designer versions of indie trends, which I suppose is entirely the point of Champs-Élysées? I’m certainly happy to have walked the street, especially since I finally got to see Arc de Triomphe up close, and it was definitely a sight to be seen. I just thought I’d buy more stuff.

By the end Elise was barely standing, and we rode an assortment of Metros to get back home.

Maybe we were just predisposed to grumpiness, but today just didn’t bring the awesome of yesterday, despite a similar slate of activities. I hold out hope that we’re heading back out for a late night jaunt to the Moulin Rouge, but Elise may be down for the count – and she has all of our money.

Also filed in Honeymoon, art, bitch, photos, shopping, sleep, walking | | Comments (2)

my wife, the spy

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

This post has had about two dozen ledes in the past twelve hours.

As I expertly predicted, the exchange rate was greatly improved just hours after inauguration. Unfortunately, we had to change our money while the speech hadn’t yet started so we’d have cash for the flat. We lost out on about a meal’s worth of Euros in the process.

Our flat is situated in a small complex of condo-like apartments – a long hall off the street and through a small concrete courtyard with potted trees and recycling bins. It’s almost as deep as the first floor of our house, and half as wide.

Actual French people live on every side of us, through walls about as thick as crepe paper. Par example, last night I was awoken not by jet lag, but by the snoring of a neighbor.

True story. Luckily, the packing list was very effective when followed, which means I do have two pairs of earplugs with me.

Post-plugs, the jet lag took over – we arose brightly and without an alarm at 7 a.m. Philadelphia time, or 1 p.m. local. Pity, as from the forecast it looks like this will be the only dry day of our time in Paris. We nipped out for a walk around our environs in the daylight, snapping the daylight version of our view over Parc de Belleville from last night.

We’re in the 19ème arondissment, just a hop over from 20ème. It seems like every street in our neighborhood curves around to intersect with another street in an unusual way. After some gawking at Google street-view it’s starting to make sense. It reminds me of the one block in New York that Rabi and I always walk past where you can sit in the courtyard of one Starbucks peering into another one.

We located a grocery store on rue de belleville – le marche Franprix. To our obese American eyes it looked to be the size of a convenience store. What we did not take into account is that nothing in France is packaged at the massive size of its American counterpart, so what to us looked like a super-sized Wawa in fact contained just about everything we’d expect from an Acme.

View Larger Map

If I passed last night’s first verbal exam by the skin of of my teeth, today’s written was much smoother – between the two of us Elise and I are pretty good at food vocab in French (and like lots of French food). We also had the benefit of illustrative packaging, though the print professional in me was fascinated by the subtle differences in photos and headlines.

For every lack of ridiculous flavor iterations (the cereals were only about six feet wide) there was half an aisle of things we consider to be prohibitively gourmet. My sans pulp orange juice was next to a litre of guava-pineapple juice. The condiments aisle had an entire block of hand-jarred preserves, only half of which were fruits I knew the translation for.

Being the fat Americans, of course we had three times as many groceries as everyone else in line. Between the petite bags of groceries everyone was toting, the multiple fruit stands (in the winter!), and our teeny fridge (smaller than the ones at the wedding hotel!) we’re figuring most people in this neighborhood buy for just a day or two at a time. But, hello, if you had seen the cheese aisle you would understand.

Finally, we had our second near-arrest (the first being last night when the cabbie thought Elise was making a run for it). Once again, my international super-spy wife pulled an Alias getaway and left me holding the bag. Literally, in this instance.

The market has this giant wooden paddle at the end of the conveyor, and when you’re done buying they swoop all your stuff to the side and start checking the next person. Elise did not necessarily grasp this idiosyncrasy, and continued to bag from the right rather than from the left, and then took off like Roadrunner with her half of the bags while I was still performing my ritual pocket-check.

Suddenly I am being jabbed by an older French woman and regarded curiously by the checkout woman. This is not an instance where you want to be trying to recall decades-old French class. Apparently, Elise bagged the woman’s preserves in one of my bags. Thankfully, my expressive eyebrows transcend the barriers of language, and I got out with a muttered desolé.

(For the record, Elise is familiar with the wooden paddle concept, and… I don’t understand what comes after the and. And just felt like trying to get me arrested to see if the police would really call Gina’s number to have her meet me after my deportation? I’m not sure.)

Now safe, sound, and fed, we are going to take advantage of our one totally dry evening to venture down to the Eiffel. Also, just now we started planning a day trip to Brussels with Jem & Jan, which is going to be AWESOME.

(I didn’t get a chance to install Photoshop before we left, so these are all sans color retouch, for the moment.)

Also filed in Honeymoon, food, photos, shopping, stories | | Comments (1)

le premier nuit

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Google informs me that the titular phrase with “soir,” as I originally phrased it, frequently refers to the question of having sex on the first date.

Funny how they don’t teach you these things in high school.

Here’s gare du nord, where we disembarked.

I took special delight in the fact that Dexter is being advertised as heavily here as it was in the states last fall, but I’m not sure what season they’re on.

I insisted we snap a photo to commemorate the end of our 18 hours of traveling before we went out for dinner.

We turned the wrong way up our street at first and discovered that it terminates in an absolutely breathtaking overview of the entire city, with the Eiffel directly in the center. We were at a loss for words.

(That is, until I remarked that the roving light from the top of the tower is not unlike the eye of Sauron. Because we are huge, married nerds.)

Photo forthcoming; at the time dinner was a higher priority.

Elise made me speak French to our waiter three times. He was extremely patient, and seemed to take delight in the fact that we were struggling not to use English or ask him how to say things.

When we left he said “Thank you, byebye!”

Also filed in Honeymoon, food, photos, stories, thoughts | | Comments (3)

St. Pancras

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

We stepped off Picidilly line in King’s Cross and enjoyed actual London air for just a moment before stepping into St. Pancras, bound for our Eurostar.

My father graciously lent me his set of luggage so I wouldn’t have to spend yet more money on wedding-related expenses. During my packing apocalypse last night it seemed practically, reasonably large, but now that I’m tumbling on and off the tube with it seems like massive, obnoxious American luggage. None of the Europeans have luggage this big – right at the weight limit even half packed. It even says “American Tourister” on it, in case its fatness was not a direct giveaway of my nationality.

(To be fair, my father warned me that it was a bit bigger than I needed. )

Last night’s panic attack subsided once we were safely installed in PHL and found someone who could explain the difference between the current my laptop would need versus the current that my electric razor requires. Elise keeps zipping off in directions that may or may not be correct, and I have to keep reminding her that I travel in completely the opposite way that I commute – I constantly stop to collect myself and check all of my pockets; I never hurry or jaywalk.

My “I don’t speak enough French” panic attack also subsided slightly once I realized that I’d have just as much trouble understanding fast-talking Londoners, slightly returned when I bumbled saying thank you to the border guard, and was greatly beaten back by understanding the customs signage (even though I was sure I had a word wrong) and reading the entire Obama cover article in Le Monde.

We didn’t dally too long in King’s Cross, but as a nod to our geekdom we have situated ourselves roughly at track nine and three quarters as we await our chariot to France.

Also filed in Honeymoon, ocd | | Comments (1)

A Year In The Life

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Elise and I spent today in New Jersey for the same weekend and reason that caused me to quit NaBloPoMo last year – my brother-to-be’s fall play.

He’s come a long way in a year. Last year was his first time acting on stage; this year he had the final bow in a challenging, thought-provoking play, The Rimers of Eldritch.

Out in the audience Elise and had come a long way too. Last year when we were here it was most people’s first time seeing her engagement ring, and they were bristling with wedding questions that we hardly had answers to, let alone opinions. Today, our planning nearing completion, we traveled to New Hope to continue shopping for my wedding band.

I’m nervous about the band. I haven’t worn jewelry for a long time, not since I was younger when I bore a perfunctory cross from my grandparents. One day it fell off somewhere between home and school, never to be seen again. My mother bought me another for graduation, and I recoiled from the box. I didn’t want another cross; I had never worn it as a cross. I wore it as my grandparents.

Since then I haven’t worn anything.

I’m nervous about the band, and excited too, because I’ll be wearing Elise. We didn’t settle on a final ring today (in fact, I backslid on my prior decision), but while we were shopping I prevailed upon Elise to buy me a plain practice ring – just a small, comfortable, stainless steel band. I’ve had it on since one, on the ring finger on my right since Elise insisted I couldn’t wear my practice band on my actual finger.

I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m typically very conscious of my hands, of what I’m doing with them and if they are safe. Already I’m constantly fiddling – turning it, changing it from one finger to another, sliding it back and forth across my knuckle. My fingers don’t close the same way, and I rest my adjacent knuckles against it when I hold my guitar pick (it actually improves my form).

Two months from Monday I’ll put on the real thing.

Also filed in Engagement, family, memories, theatre | | Comments (1)

Preoccupational Hazards

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Tonight was my one night off for the week, except I wanted to spend it on – do some blogging, maybe start my next Trio.

That wasn’t meant to be. I had some more pressing concerns to attend to, such as washing dishes and laundry. And, I’m not just talking about from a normal “chore” perspective. No. This was a no drinking glasses left and completely out of pants situation.

You might laugh at my situation. Ha!, you might think, he seems to be so together with his podcasts and his Groom Team, but it’s an illusion! You might continue to gloat, Aside from his yuppy job he’s living the slovenly, disorganized life of a lazy bachelor.

Yet, that’s just not the case – and not just because I’m living merrily in sin with Elise. I’m certainly spending time being clean, orderly, and tenacious outside of my yuppy occupation – it’s just that the time is invested in all of my yuppy pre-occupations.

At this point I have so many non-occupational jobs that it’s not unusual for a week to go by without me even finding the time to do a single load of laundry. Take this week, for example.

I spent half the weekend recording and mixing the four songs in the last two posts, and the other half working on an arrangement for Drexel’s all-female acappella group. Monday I spent a few hours cleaning up the back-end CK, and then I went to a concert of someone who is playing at my wedding. Tomorrow night I’ll be co-hosting an open mic with the other half of Arcati Crisis, and on Thursday I’m the artist liaison at our Lyndzapalooza Fall Mixer.

Did you catch all of that? Recording engineer, transcriptionist, network administrator, event planner, rock star, and A&R rep. That’s six hobbies that I’ve turned into part-time jobs. Hobs? Jobbies?

At least with the latter half of wedding, AC, and LP I knew from the start that I was getting into something that was both time-consuming and rewarding. However, the former three – CK, arranging, and DIY recording – all started out as innocent distractions from the rest of my life. I never meant for them to become staying up until 3am, working until I nod off in my chair sorts of engagements. It just turned out that way.

Is this insane or just slightly abnormal? Do you have jobs aside from what you do for a living and taking care of your home and family? If you do, did you choose to make them a priority, or did they sneakily transform into one over time?

Also filed in adulthood, bloggish, cleaning, lyndzapalooza, mess, over-achievement, thoughts | | Comments (1)

Pink Envelopes, Cheerful Weeks, Dark Knights

Saturday, July 19, 2008

I’ve been really dodging my blogging lately. Which, per usual, is indicative of life being actually full-to-the-brim of interestingness that I am simply not diligent enough to record.

Some vignettes:

I received a pink envelope in the mail yesterday, with no return address. Definitely raised some fiancee eyebrows until I opened it and realized it was from the bridal boutique where I just bought the dresses for my groomsladies.

Note to boutique: when dealing with the groom, do not send receipts to him in unmarked pink envelopes. It does not bode well for the eventual wedding.

For the last two weeks we have been slightly less yuppy / slightly more domestic with the addition to our household of Elise’s brother.

Despite my compilation of an exhaustive list of cool things to see and do in Philly, we haven’t done all that much of interest. Yet, I’ve been having a cheerful, excellent time – not just in hanging out with him but in life in general … waking up early, going to bed satisfied with my day.

I half attribute it to having a sibling around to take an interest in, and half to the novelty of having someone who I totally relate to that is not a girl.

(His best quote so far, I think, was “Dave & Busters? That’s like Chucky Cheese with beer, right?)

The downside, if there is one, is that my scant project-oriented time is bisected further than it usually is just with Elise-hanging, which has left less attention for blogging, songwriting, piano-playing, et cetera.

That, and that I finally am starting to understand what it is to have a sibling relationship with someone younger than me (as to opposed to with Lindsay or Erika), and I’m going to be really sad when he’s done with Philly for the summer, because this is definitely a one-time-only thing – next summer he’ll be looking at colleges and then he’ll be out in the world on his own and we won’t be the fun vacation from real life anymore, because real life will finally be interesting.

So, maybe I’ve learned to be a little more sympathetic towards my mother from the experience?

Last night I saw the Dark Knight with a ridiculous majority of my favorite people, the majority of whom are voracious movie consumers and critics. We left the theatre in dumbstruck silence. I’m hard-pressed to name another movie that literally left me speechless until I exited the theatre complex … maybe Seven?

I did a lot of tearing up along the way, mostly at Heath’s unbidden perfection, but really just because it was an amazing ensemble piece and sometimes great acting clicking together like a well-made watch makes me emotional.

Revising your auto_increment in MYSQL

Sunday, April 20, 2008

This is a post about manually altering your auto_increment value in a MYSQL table. The solution was just obscure enough drive me crazy for a few minutes, so I figured it’s worth blogging for other DIY MYSQL intermediates (including myself) to stumble onto in the future.

The MYSQL query is:
ALTER TABLE Name of Table AUTO_INCREMENT = Next Value

If you don’t understand the query, or why you might use it, keep reading.

This is why I don’t like to stay late at work.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Scene.

Thirty minutes past the proscribed quitting time I – in sharp gray suit, curly hair tucked under my stereo headphones, and bright red sneakers – sigh with resignation, shut down my computer, and walk out to wait for an elevator.

(I am most likely singing along to an Arcati Crisis song at the top of my lungs while walking in a circle, because that is what I do anytime I am alone and waiting for or riding in an elevator.)

The elevator opens.

In it is our CEO and all three of our SVPs. They grin like a school of sharks.

I sheepishly slide my headphones off of my ears, nod hello, and squeeze in next to the highest ranking woman in the company.

The doors close. The air hangs silent for a moment, and then they continue with the conversation they were having when I arrived.

I am sorely tempted to push a button. The floors pass ever so slowly. Any button. Each floor passes, doors shut and unrelenting.

After what seems like an eternity of biting my lip and pretending not to understand the fine details of their conversation, the elevator finally reaches our upper lobby.

The doors open, and we all hang for a second to see if anyone is going to give anyone else the right of way. “Oh, you first.” “Oh, no, I couldn’t.” “Well, you are the CEO.” “Yes, but…”

Nothing. Silence.

The wait continues. We are in danger of the elevator doors closing and sending us back up for another excruciating ride.

I am dead center – a straight shot out the door. And I am the lowest-ranking employee, so it made sense for me to exit first.

Were the doors beginning to inch shut? I would not survive a ride back up.

Flashpoint. I dart out of the elevator … at the exact same moment that the highest ranking woman in the company also makes a break for it.

She was, after all, the only woman in the elevator.

We collide.

In the continuing silence my world slips into impossibly slow motion – I feel my cushy hips rebound sideways off of her slight frame, feel as though I can hear my cellulite churning to reform itself.

It is not just a little bump, either. No. It is a straight on, full-contact body-check straight out of raucous-yet-executive game of deck hockey. I pray futilely that the the men will all pile on (or at least cheer) to make the moment less awkward.

If only.

Finally, my forward motion arrested mostly by utter mortification, I turn back to regard my partner. She is askew, as if I delivered said body check followed by a headlock/noogie combo.

Hers is the laugh of drops of water slicking off of an icicle.

“In a hurry?”

Scene.

(ps: Dear management: I redacted all of the names and sensitive information. And the mean parts. Particularly the word “bony,” which I had mistakenly used twice. So, please do not Dooce me. Thank you.)

Also filed in Year 08, corporate | | Comments (2)

A Long, Painful Weekend

Sunday, April 13, 2008

I woke up on Friday at 6:30 without my alarm.

On any other weekday I’ll be thrilled for this god-send of an early rise, likely to deliver me into my cube an hour early.

Except, I had off on Friday. And, I had awoken not because I was well-rested. No. No, not because of streaming sunlight interrupting my quiet repose, either.

I awoke because of the pain.

It was an unspecific, fuzzy ache even with the very bottom of my sternum. I generally have a high tolerance for specific pain and a low tolerance for general discomfort, and this split the two uncannily well.

Probably a stomach thing, I thought. I had overeaten to the maximum limit the day before … four donuts, three sections of tuna hoagie, two veggie burger pitas, and one delightfully large dose of peanut butter before bed. Probably all of the eating.

I walked around for a few minutes, checked WebMD but grew frustrated with its persistent braying about the possibility I was in cardiac arrest, and went back to bed.

I got up again at 7:28.

This time the pain was much more insistent, and it had no intentions of letting me sleep in. Or, really, of letting me sleep at all. Or do anything else for that matter, including walking outside or singing or going out to dinner – all things I might like to do on my day off.

Yes, insistent it was, and persistent too. I would up beached on the couch for the majority of the day, sitting alone and miserable while Elise headed out for the night rather than going to dinner at Striped Bass as we had plan. The pain was omni-present but far enough below my threshold that I would feel patently silly going to the ER to do anything about it. How could one day of overeating – three-fourths of which was entirely healthy and non-toxic – cause all this misery?

It wasn’t until the next morning that I finally put two and two together by stepping back further from my donut binge.

You see, prior to the donuts I had my typical fistful (600? 1200? really, who can say?) of ibuprofen on an empty stomach. Well, not entirely empty, because the evening before I had another typical fistful before bed.

That prior fistful wasn’t on an empty stomach, though. It was on a veggie burger and a number of beers.

I had an uncharacteristic mid-week night out to scout out Just Like Me at the Khyber on the behalf of Lyndzapalooza, and afterwards the already uncharacteristic night turned super-unusual when I wound up having a bit of a guys hour with two friends from my former a cappella life. Between the Khyber and our eventual visit to my official designated spring/summer bar, National Mechanics, I had a fair number of beers.

(This doesn’t really figure into the story, but I saw another terrific band – Parker House & Theory – who I have a major crush on at the moment. Their CD release is this Thursday in Boston. I’ll maybe remember to post about them separately, but we all know how those promises go, so best to mention them here.)

Now, mind you, this was still a work night, so I had been cautious – those beers were ingested over the course of several hours, and I did a bit of dancing and walking in that time, so by the time I got home I was only slightly inebriated, and with plenty of time to sleep prior to work. Still – mindful that I am typically a cocktail drinker and hoping to having a productive morning at work – I took that first typical fistful of ibuprofen as a preemptive strike on any possible morning fuzziness. When I awoke said fuzziness was nowhere to be found, but I took another fistful just to be sure (and, as it happens, had quite a upbeat day at the office).

Now, I’m not too much up on my general medical diagnoses – last time I was in the hospital I was convinced my appendix was exploding, but I in fact had an irritated bowel. However, even with my basic knowledge I know that alcohol, NSAIDs on empty stomachs, and sugary sweets can all contribute to an ulcer and, as it happens, I had ingested slightly higher than average quantities of all three in exactly that order .

Yes, it was certainly an ulcer.

With a better-than-dubious home diagnosis in place Saturday and today proved to be much more pleasant than their predecessor. I loaded up on medical and homeopathic remedies, and my stomach has been converted from thunderdome to a plush, well-lined (though sparsely furnished) bachelor pad.

For the record, to achieve that you want to stick exclusively to my personal variation on the Bananas, Rice, Apples, Toast diet (BRAT) – which omits apples and fulfills the rice requirement with a combination of sushi and Rice Dream ice cream – all while ingesting some combination of OTC Prilosec, Evening Primrose Oil, and Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice (DGL), the latter of which has perhaps the highest foul-taste to efficaciousness ratio I’ve ever encountered in my life.

(Seriously, it tastes like black licorice blended with mashed up aspirin and garden soil. Its label cheerfully suggests “it’s chewable, because saliva enhances the effect of DGL’s natural compounds,” which is worth pointing out because chewing it up and swishing it around in your mouth goes strictly against your natural impulse, which is that it is poison and will surely kill you. But, truthfully, it knocks out any flare of symptoms in about ten minutes flat.)

In any event, I feel fine now, except for I feel like I was in a time warp for the last 72 hours, and that rather than heading to work in the morning I should just now be gearing up for my glorious Friday off from work.

On the plus side, I can now add “cultivating an ulcer” to the list of things I am really good at doing without even trying.

Also filed in health | | Comments (1)

Guitarness

Saturday, November 17, 2007

I’m often at a loss for what to do with myself when we visit Elise’s families in New Jersey. At home, or at any friend’s house, my default position is guitar playing – it gives me something to do with my hands in idle moments so that I don’t feel like I have to carry on a non-stop conversation at all times.

I don’t usually bring my guitar with me to NJ, which means the families haven’t witnessed this particular phenomenon too often, but Elise was planning to leave me marooned while she went on a wedding dress tour, and I needed a way to pass the time. I added a wonderful new “print-version” feature to my lyrics database, so for the trip I printed out sheaf of my fifty most incomplete songs to workshop while Elise was out on her wedding whirlwind.

Isn’t that a little crazy – fifty songs that are unfinished and still relatively new?

I really vacillate about this sort of thing. At this point Gina and I have a solid sixteen song set, and I have ten or twenty of my strongest songs that go in and out of solo rotation. It’s a comfortable point to be at, but then I look at my freaking database and I see all of these unfinished songs – some of which I really adore and like to play, such as they are in their unfinished state. And, since my current setlist is heavily influenced by my 2003-04 stuff, there are incomplete songs hanging around that are about to be four years old.

Four years old! Which is a problem when I have a whole new fleet of unfinished songs to be working through – I only have so much headspace to to to push these things forward. So, I sat down with my sheaf today and had a touch of a workshop. I re-notated a few things in a more complete fashion, and I think finished one from 2001 – “4th of July” – once and for all.

All that rehearsal meant I was plenty limber for my post-dinner conversational gambit. Except, these are people who aren’t used to my schtick – that I like sit and underscore a conversation without needing anyone to pay attention to me, and that if there’s a lull I might sing for a bit before tucking my voice back under the din.

It made for a few awkward moments … I don’t know that Elise’s father has ever heard me play my own songs before? Certainly not songs about his daughter, anyhow. But, they won’t be getting rid of me anytime soon so they might as well get used to the incessant underscoring of my life. Along the way I turned in possibly my best vocal of all time on the bridge of “Love Me Not,” and also a very respectable version of the recently on-hiatus “Little Love.”

All of which is why I need to go home tomorrow and record a Trio. And then I need to record another another one. And then another. And so on.

Right. But, first I need to drink this glass of wine. And maybe another one.

G’nite.

Also filed in NaBloPoMo, elise, family, guitar, songwriting | | Comments (0)

all the world’s a stage

Friday, November 16, 2007

Tonight we took in a bit of high school theatre, watching Elise’s (and, hey, soon my!) younger brother in his first ever play.

I’m self-aware enough of a blogger not to regale you with a blow by blow of his performance, but it did recall a certain memory of the last time I witnessed any pre-collegiate theatre.

It was in the same auditorium, seen with the same company, possible seated in the same row as tonight, again watching another of my soon-to-be-siblings on stage – this time Elise’s sister.

The main difference was that we were on the other end of our relationship; we had been dating three weeks at the time, and the show was a prelude to my first time meeting Elise’s family.

After the show I milled to and fro, self-conscious and worried about first impressions, while Elise ducked backstage to say hello to former costars. She was still connected to her school – certainly more than she was connected to me.

Tonight she picked those old cast members’ younger sibling out of the playbill, more mine than anyone else’s.

I like this life.

(Also, let it be said that Elise’s brother rocks incredibly; he’s like a better, more talented version of teenaged me. He’s made me – who from an early age had vowed to strangle any potential siblings in the cradle – really re-think my position this whole only-child thing.)

Also filed in NaBloPoMo, elise, family, only childness, stories, theatre | | Comments (6)

Up Jumped The Boogity Beat

Saturday, November 10, 2007

Lest you think my life is all work, wedding, and rock music, for the next seven hours I’ll be bartending and providing other general assistance at a fundraiser with live hip-hop music and DJs for IX ii V Records.

Never let it be said that I am not living an eclectic life.

Also filed in NaBloPoMo | | Comments (0)

Spinning Off (or, Welcome to NaBloPoMo)

Thursday, November 1, 2007

As I first draft this post I am on my lunch break, alternating my typing with wolfing down a salad and chugging a glass of Airborne, because I didn’t have any time to write a post last night after my band’s rehearsal, and after this it’s back to copy editing and drafting project schedules, and then directly off to have dinner with one of my co-best-ladies and her wife, and from there another brief rehearsal before meeting up with my fiancée at our favorite open mic, and then some brief iteration of sleep before more work, followed by an upscale bar crawl I’ve organized for my friends, and then bon voyage to fiancée as she heads to a conference in Florida.

That sentence says almost everything you need to know about my life, in a nutshell. If it sounds too yuppy or droll for you then you have arrived at the wrong droll, yuppy blog, because those are the sorts of crises that are crushing me lately.

Thus the title of this, the longest-running blog in Philadelphia.

Last year my adventures in National Blog Posting Month were bookended by a comic book analogy, which provided a frame for a complete reboot of Crushing Krisis.

First, I rebooted on a technical level, as I moved over six years of posts from Blogger to WordPress. More significantly, I rebooted from a content perspective, by reintroducing each character and plot strand from my life with no assumptions and no back-story required.

Also, since I am cultivating a second career as a singer-songwriter, I performed and uploaded nine Trio podcasts of original music ranging in topic from my identity to things left unsaid to my modern pop influences.

My wonderfully telling introductory run-on sentence shows off an interesting facet of the intervening year – many aspects of my tongue-in-cheek reboot analogy were more apt than I intended, because the majority of my 30-day accelerated reinvention actually stuck.

And, not just the minutia, like my attention to detail being recast as a inner OCD Godzilla spewing indigestion-causing hellfire whenever I don’t perform a task in the most anal way possible. We’re talking about major life changes… I even blogged every day for another entire month this past September – that certainly never happened before!

As a result, rather than subject you to yet another reinvention for 2007 (I’m not Madonna, I just cover her songs), for the rest of this month I’ll be blogging about the changes in my life, especially the songs and stories connected to the two best, biggest, and most exciting parts of my new identity – that I am now an actively rehearsing and gigging musician, and that I’ve recently become engaged to my amazing partner of the majority of the seven-year run of this page, Elise.

I don’t expect you to be familiar with the highly obscure, highly complex history-of-me to follow along with my NaBloPoMo content; after all I’m just one of over 3,000 blogs for you to traipse through over the next 30 days, which is no easy feat. I know … last year I read every single blog, linking to a full 10th of them.

So, to spare you any extra research on my behalf, and in keeping with the original intent of last year’s reboot, all of my NaBloPoMo content will be presented free of backlinks to anything other than previous NaBloPoMo content from this year and last.

Tune in tomorrow for the first chapter of my engagement story. And, welcome to National Blog Posting Month at Crushing Krisis.