Crushing Krisis

Category Archives: stories

But I Regress, pt. 1

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

With the launch of my monster definitive guide to collecting X-Men comic books as graphic novels, I have officially become a fifteen year-old.

Allow me to explain. Or, to begin to, as I’m sure this is a multiple-post-spanning story (just as that website feature was a multiple-month spanning obsession to research).

A few months ago Philly-local social media mover/shaker/sandwich-connoisseur @MikeyIl threw a series of events for the Ford #FiestaMovement. One of them was an all-local art show, featuring work by my partner-in-fame Britt Miller, as well as Eddidit and others.

Being Britt’s unpaid intern / personal assistant / life coach and a faithful supporter of friends and local artists, I got my ass there – even though the event was smack in the middle of negotiating the price of our house with our Realtor over the phone.

(Literally. Drunk friends: “What are you doing?” Me, to phone: “Hold on a second.” Me, to friends: “Oh, I just got another few thousand dollars knocked off the price of our house.” Drunk friends: “Wowwww.”)

Where was that fateful art show held?

Brave New Worlds. A comic book shop.

Here at Crushing Krisis I haven’t ever fully explained my addiction to comic books, c. 11/1991 – 4/1996.

X-Men #24, one of my favorite comic covers.

It was a brief but tumultuous affair. Comic books combine my love of serial narrative with an OCD urge to make meticulous, alphabetical lists. They created a 10-year-old who would do anything to earn $40 a month to pick up every book bearing the image of Wonder Woman or an X-Man.

(Seriously, I’m surprised I wasn’t peddling coke for my neighbor. It’s a good thing my guitar habit didn’t get to drug-running levels of expense until after college, when I was salaried.)

For only collecting for four-and-a-half years, my comic collection is prodigious. Not only did I collect new issues weekly, but in the pre-spreadsheet days the adolescent OCD Godzilla in my soul – a mere tadpole, at the time – compiled lists of back issues by hand… lists twenty and thirty pages long, complete with estimated budgets and timelines for purchase. Every few months my father engaged my whim, and I checked off line after line.

I was hardcore. The guys at the comic store treated me like I was twice my age (now ironic) because I was so on top of my shit with my pull lists and my back issue pricing and my discussions of the Magneto’s morality and if the ends truly justified the means.

Then came the internet. AOL dial-up cost by the hour, and I was hooked on it within minutes of my first sign-in in January of 1996. Four months later my wallet issued an ultimatum: limit my internet usage, or jettison my comic addiction – now complicated by Marvel’s 90s’ decadence of holographic covers and limited series.

The real decider was probably a demo of Warcraft II, a living digital board of Risk I could play over and over again with my friends over my 14.4 baud modem.

I dropped the comics and never looked back.

Until last month.

(To be continued! In the meantime, if you’re a closet x-fan who wouldn’t know a pull list from their elbow, check out definitive guide to collecting X-Men comic books as graphic novels – the easiest (and cheapest) way to be an adult comic book fan.)

Also filed in Philly, Twitter, art, comics, ocd | | Comments (2)

Freak out! Le freak, c’est chic.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

It’s my first post as a home-owner!

The events leading up to our settlement at eleven this morning were unexpected and rather ridiculous.

Actually, I’ve discovered that any adventure I am allowed to take charge of that involves both cars and big-ticket-purchases becomes ridiculous, regardless of the relative simplicity of its intended result.

Honestly, I don’t know how I do it. I choose to believe it’s the fault of my inner OCD Godzilla. What for most people would be a simple point-to-point drive with a check in hand he transforms into a travelling circus of oddities to satisfy all of his many obsessive requirements. I have no choice but to comply so that he remains sated, lest he begin to devour portions of my soul and gall bladder.

I feel the need to document the whole madcap venture while it’s still fresh and ridiculous-seeming – and while E can confirm that it is the god’s honest truth and I have not exaggerated a single word even a little.

paint chips, forks, and vomitoriums

Thursday, June 3, 2010

The non-extreme portion of Memorial Day weekend found E and I in Home Depot, contemplating paint chips for a redress of our new dining room. Or, rather, E was contemplating paint chips while I idly examined the paper quality and die cuts of the paint brochures.

“What colors do you think the dining room should be?” E queried, fist full of colored slips of high-end paper.

“You know me – everything spartan.”

(I pronounced “spartan” as “spahttan,” a Buffy in-joke about Faith and her seedy apartment.)

While reductive (and an in-joke), as a statement it’s essentially true – the colors I like in a home are white, hardwood, and bricks. That’s it. When pressed for a choice I will always pick the bluest option, unless it’s navy. Oh, and I enjoy stainless steel, where applicable. That’s about the extent of my home decor color preferences.

(Not coincidentally, our wedding colors were sapphire and platinum.)

I continued my careful examination of the paper samples for a moment, at which point E perhaps shot me a look, so I reluctantly joined the color browsing and continued the conversation.

“Well, the wood in that room is pretty blond, so there’s that to keep in mind. Not everything goes with that. You don’t want to pick something that would turn it into a vomitorium.”

Pointedly ignoring my last statement, E produced a deep purple chip. “What about this?”

“No, that would make me vomit.” Here the older couple standing next to us at the paint display began to eye me with caution.

“Can you possibly describe the qualities a color could have that would make you vomit?”

“Well, really there’s two different facets of vomitous colors.”

Having long since grown familiar with my peculiar brand of insanity, E braced for impact.

“First, there’s context. Like, when I was a teenager my mom had our back bedroom refinished for me, and I picked this seafoam-ish green for the walls. It had context – it was part of a palette with the ceiling, the hardwoods, and my area rug. But when you live in a room you’re not always seeing the entire palette, or looking at the walls in the context of the rug. Sometimes you are just staring at the wall and you realize it’s not ‘seafoam’ so much as ‘mint,’ like mint chocolate chip ice cream and, while it made for a beautiful palette, it’s not necessarily the most pleasant-to-look-at color all on its own, but now you’re surrounded by mint chocolate chip ice cream for the next three years.

“Suddenly my room had become a vomitorium.”

At this point the older couple, who had skirted me widely to continue to browse the paint colors, put down their samples and moved to a different display.

I continued. “Then, there are colors that are pretty in the short term but will be vomitous over a longer period of time. Like, see this ‘eggplant’ chip? I love this color. But I can tell it’s like ‘fork.’”

E perhaps thought she had reached an absolute apex of exasperation during my first monologue. However, here she seemed to discover a heretofore unknown height.

“Like a fork?” She said this with a slight steeliness to her voice, like she might abandon me here in Home Depot if I wasn’t the one with the GPS phone. However, I was wound up and could not be stopped.

“No, like ‘fork.’ Like, ‘fork’ makes sense. It’s a tidy little word – four prongs, four letters. But ‘fork’ is one of those words that can get weird. Like, if you say it too many times? Fork. Fork. Fork. Fork. Fork. After a while it begins to sound made up. Fork. Fork. Fork. Fork. It doesn’t seem like it could possibly have any meaning. Fork. Fork. Fork. Eventually it starts getting uncomfortable in your mouth. Fork. Fork. Why does it have to sound so quacky? Fork. That ‘k,’ it’s so unwieldy, it kind of unsettles your stomach. It kind of (fork) makes you (fork) nauseous (fork) to even say (fork) the (fork) word (fork).

“After a while,” I intoned, gravely, “you feel like you will vomit if you even see one, let alone say the word.”

“The word for…”

“No,” I interrupted, “please, don’t say it. I’ve already said it too much.”

We stood in silence at the paint display, E staring at me in glassy disbelief.

“You see, ‘eggplant’ as a color is just like f… just like that word. As a paint chip it’s lovely. In a web palette I adore it. On a wall … every day? Eventually it’s just going to wear me down. It will turn that room into a vomitorium.”

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“I know exactly what it means, honey. It means a room that would make me vomit whenever I walked into it.”

That was pretty much the end of our browsing for paint chips.

(PS: This post is dedicated to my dear friend, SLska. Or, I should say, Master SLska.)

Also filed in Year 10, elise, house, ocd | | Comments (6)

Extreme Best Memorial Day Weekend Ever Extreme Recap

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

As it turns out, jumping out of a plane seems a lot more insane the second time.

That was the thought going through my head on Sunday morning around 9:30 a.m. as our tiny, 12-person plane ascended into a cloudless blue sky, prepared to dump Arcati Crisis and some of our core of friends out of its side.

The first time skydiving was a purely a concept – mysterious in its execution. This time the open door of the plane winked at me conspiratorially as I sat two inches from its maw. I was going to exit that door into nothing.

Why was I doing this again?

In fact, skydiving was not the most insane aspect of our extreme band weekend. That title is easily awarded to our tubing experience.

Or, really, the experience of trying to depart our tubing experience without being murdered, dragged to death behind a car, dying of exposure, or starting a forest fire.

Also filed in alchohol, arcati crisis, gina, hot, memories | | Comments (3)

a rewarding life

Monday, April 26, 2010

This is a story about rewards. Sort of. I’m not sure how to tell it, so I’ll just start at the beginning.

A little over a year ago I met Britt Miller – comm professional, digital native, and visual artist. Once Britt learned about my blogging she egged me into using Twitter. The rest, as we are accustomed to saying, is history.

It’s frigging crazy-ass history, actually. Playing streaming concerts, jumping out of planes, accepting awards, attending conferences in NYC – all of that borne out of Britt’s pestering me to get to know Twitter.

Skyline by Britt Miller (@brimil)

The two of us now share a “Fame 2010″ plan of promoting and improving our respective arts all year. Last April, before all of that happened, Britt mentioned she was showing her art at the first ever “Earth Saturday” block party on South Street – an eco-friendly festival thrown by Big Green Earth Store and Whole Foods.

I asked Britt if she wanted some music to go with her art and the end result was that I wound up playing a block party along with some of my local favorites like Christie Lenee and Dante Bucci.

It was my first solo appearance in a long while, and it surprised me – even in the limitless space of an outdoor gig my songs felt big and sure, with just a few stumbles. It wound up being a major force in getting me into shape for playing and recording more than ever in the rest of 2009.

This past Saturday was the second Earth Saturday block party, again at 9th and South, and again featuring art from both Britt and I. My set felt even bigger and surer this year, and Britt had a table of beautiful prints of her art – major Fame 2010 success!

Britt is always pulling hilarious quotes of mine out of thin air, and before my set she had a great one. We were chatting with some twitter friends about my songwriting, and I made my usual disclaimer that it’s taken me a long time and a lot of work to get to where I am now – from being forbidden to sing in my high school halls to playing sets at eco-festivals. And, Britt said:

Peter, you said this awesome thing once. I heard someone tell you that you were a great singer, and you said, “Thank you. I’ve worked for thirteen years to hear that compliment.”

I don’t even remember saying that, but it’s indelibly me. To hear someone compliment me on my voice or my songs strikes me with awe – awe at what I’m hearing, and awe that nearly half a life of effort means I’m able to play music that people enjoy.

I wish I could take that feeling and transport it back to 15-year-old me, plucking out the strains of “Dilate” on his first guitar almost this very day in 1997.

Failing that, I’m sharing it with you. I hope you have something in your life that makes you as happy as my music makes me, and Britt’s paintings make her – especially when someone else stops to appreciate them.

Also filed in Twitter, betterment, performance | | Comments (1)

Powerless in New Jersey

Sunday, March 14, 2010

I am supposed to be in New Jersey.

Yesterday was the closing night of bro-in-law’s final high school musical. Three years ago he had never acted, and last night we were supposed to see him sing an act full of solo songs and take a bow for the final time on his high school stage. And not just him. We’ve watched his castmates transform from shy Sophomores to powerful performers, most of whom we’ll probably never see again.

However, there was the problem of the rain.

In Philly it was just oppressively dreary, but as our car crept northward through NJ it became obvious that the effects of the storm were a little more tangible in our adjoining state.

First, a flooded road. Then, a route with power lines hanging over the road at a precarious 45-degree angle over the asphalt. Next, a traffic accident. Subsequently, downed trees.

When we finally arrived in E’s hometown we discovered the entire township or borough or whatever it is was without power! Even the high school, as her brother informed us sullenly via text.

There would be no closing night.

We drove carefully into E’s family’s cul de sac, black as pitch. After commiserating about the show we ate dinner by candlelight. When we were done, I excused myself to the adjoining room to bang on an out-of-tune piano I’ve been promising to have tuned for years.

As I bashed through cover songs, carefully avoiding the most dissonant keys, I contemplated.

We had ascribed so much value and meaning to the closing night. We came for the opening weekend too, but the last show was supposed to be extra special. Now, it didn’t exist. No final hurrah for the cast to sing even better or for us to clap even louder.

We didn’t get a closing night, but I’m still just as proud of our brother. And, in retrospect, I clapped just as hard as I could clap when we saw him last weekend.

The significant thing was really how many times I’ve seen him bow over the past three years – and how proud and loud I have been the entire time.

The significance isn’t in the next moment – it’s in the last ones. It’s in the moments of progress, not just the destination.

We loaded up the car to head home rather than brave the blackout for the night. Two minutes from E’s house we noticed a Target sign, lit up in red.

The power was back.

Bathed in the neon glow of stores powering up from their slumber, I wondered about my moments. Am I living my life now, or waiting for the next chance to live it? Am I waiting for the next show to play better? Waiting for the right moment to kiss E like I mean it?

Our route home was flooded, and E wanted to turn back. I rested my head on her shoulder as we paused in the jughandle, awaiting our turn.

“Do you want to go home to Philly?” I asked her?

She nodded yes.

“Then we’ll find a way to get there.”

Also filed in elise, family | | Comments (2)

Daily Demo: Icy Cold

Monday, January 4, 2010

Here’s a brand new HD video of “Icy Cold” with beautiful hi-fi multi-track soundboard audio. It comes with a story.

(watch in HD on YouTube and download the mp3.)

Okay, story-time.

Ten years ago (less 24 days) I was a freshman in college, and I wrote a song called “Icy Cold.”

It was an odd one – very oblique lyrics in one of my more unusual alternate tunings (at the time) made it a challenge to sing and play. I left it off my 2000 demo CD Other Plans and, curiously, also did not consider it for my 2001 studio disc Relief. It remained bound to my apartment, where it factored in to a few of my favorite Trio recordings.

Around the same time I wrote “Icy Cold” – 86th in a rapidly-expanding list of songs – I decided that it was time for me to start playing shows.

Being rather ignorant as to what that entailed, I assumed that I would just phone up a local, mostly-acoustic venue where people I liked frequently played and explain that I wrote tons of awesome songs, and then they would invite me to play. (Later, after my initial flush of success, I could upgrade to playing the TLA or the Electric Factory).

The Tin Angel being the only local mostly-acoustic venue that I knew of at the time, I sussed out their booking information and rang them up.

That was the extent of my year-2000 booking experience at the Tin Angel. No follow-up. No booking. No flush of success.

To be fair, I would have been an utter disaster. I know some people so wonderful that their first ever show was at the Tin, but I was not that kind of wonderful in 2000. Sure, I had the awesome songs, but I could just barely sing, and I was playing a guitar that didn’t even especially stay in tune!

Over the course of the past ten years I’ve done a lot to rectify my singing and guitar-playing issues, and I’ve played in a lot of amazing Philly venues – including the Tin Angel, as part of a showcase with Arcati Crisis. Yet, I’ve never fulfilled that original goal of ten years ago – being featured solo on the bill at the Tin.

Well, that’s going to happen on Friday at 10:30 p.m., so when it came to choosing the first song to post in 2010 in this glorious new HD audio/video combo format it seemed natural to choose “Icy Cold” – especially given the slights it experienced in 2000 and 2001.

Plus, it’s really freaking cold out.

That’s my story.

PS: I owe the hugest possible shout-out to Tim Jahn for explaining Adobe Premiere Pro compression codecs to me via Twitter at the eleventh hour (literally) to make this beautiful video possible. Tim writes a blog of occasional, thought-provoking bulletins that I have been enjoying for months. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Also filed in betterment, cold, college, demos, memories, performance, self-critique, songwriting, video | | Comments (2)

It’s good enough for whales, dude.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

We just got through sitting in our parked car eating dumplings, a queer little Saturday night date in the midst of this insanity of rock shows and serious theatre and made up awards.

Based on two visits, I love nearly everything from Vanessa’s Dumpling House on Eldridge Street, but my shrimp dumplings were not what I expected. I’m not sure what that expectation was, but it wasn’t a dumpling with dozens of teeny shrimp all nestled inside with no seasoning to speak of.

Ever since I saw District 9 I’ve been a little leery of shrimp eating, and the dumpling of a thousand shrimps was not making the shrimp-eating experience any less ooky.

I turned to E for some comfort.

P: These dumplings have, like, thousands of tiny shrimp inside of them. It’s a little creepy.
E: Like sea monkeys!
P: You’re not helping.
E: Or krill!
P: Okay, now I’m done.
E: Hey, it’s good enough for whales, dude.

E and the band were pretty good, although I can already tell she’s not going to like the video because she wasn’t happy with her vocals (she’s been pretty sick since Thursday). Every time I mention a good spot she has a bad spot to match.

I’m always inconsolable after a performance, for better or for worse. Either I know in my heart it was awful, and no coaxing can convince me otherwise, or I’m sure I was excellent and need no further discussion on the topic (Monday being a prime example).

I won’t rattle her cage any further about it being good or not. We’re off to peek into bro’s cast party to catch up with various sibling units before bed.

Also filed in Filmstar, Year 10, elise, food, memories, nyc | | Comments (1)

Doppelgangers

Friday, December 11, 2009

Tonight we saw Elise’s brother depict Orsino in his high school’s performance of Twelfth Night.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to recap high school theatre at length for you. At least, not just yet. First, I have to tell you about my doppelganger.

Basically, there is a kid that is friends with E’s brother, and he looks and talks and moves just like me. He’s even inappropriately loud at all the wrong moments, just like I was (but am not as much anymore).

Every possible person has commented about it. E’s mom thinks we look alike. Someone else in the show saw me in the audience and thought he/I had snuck out from backstage.

It’s uncanny. I didn’t have the curly hair back then, he has a better nose, and I don’t think he is under the impression that he is David Bowie, but otherwise he is a relative spitting image of me.

It’s a little unsettling, if only because E’s brother reminds me of me enough to begin with (mostly intellectually, and in wishful thinking, because I wished I was him when I was in high school), but then to have another person remind me of me, and to have the two of them be buds and gallivanting around on-stage, is kind of mind-collapsing.

Also, Twelfth Night itself is a play of doppelgangers and doubles. It’s possibly my favorite Shakespeare comedy because it moves briskly and doesn’t require much suspension of belief. The troupe did it in the style of commedia dell’arte, which meant they all played as archetypal models, and nearly all wore elaborate masks. They also played a collection of found and real instruments, and did some offstage singing to score the scenes.

We did a commedia-style show my freshman year – the brilliant A Company of Wayward Saints – and it was also great. There’s something about the reductiveness of the archetypes that makes it easy to bring amazing scenes to life – like it’s easier to just sink into the character without thinking too much about it.

We also did the found-music thing in Bretch’s Good Woman of Setzuan, a process well-documented in the annals of the blog.

Basically, bro just did my two most technically challenging collegiate shows wrapped up along with Shakespeare AS A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT, and knocked it out of the park. As did my doppelganger, and all of their castmates.

They’re pretty cool.

Also filed in elise, high school, theatre | | Comments (0)

I #blamedrewscancer for being a Philebrity

Friday, December 11, 2009

I have a story to tell you.

I met half of the #blamedrewscancer crew at Fuzion at around seven for the Philadelphia Area New Media Association (PANMA) holiday party.

That is not the story.

We were at PANMA for some brief networking and catching up with friends, but our end destination was The Trocadero, where Philly blog fixture Philebrity was holding their non-denominational X-Mas party slash year end awards.

Blame Drew’s Cancer was up for the “Outstanding Do-Gooders of the Year” award. Polling had been open and transparent, so it was easy to see that we were getting creamed by Phillies’ Shane Victorino from day one. As such, we didn’t marshal much of a vote – eventually coming in fourth, behind even Mayor Nutter for his ballsy budget bluff.

The four of us – Britt, Mikey, Libby, and I (plus Libby’s awesome husband, another Peter) rolled in to the Troc fashionably late, and occupied the “Reserved” table closest to the stage. Our innate rowdiness took over shortly, and we were hooting at the house band (shout out to BC Camplight) and yelling “Hut!”at any reference to Lady Gaga.

Okay, maybe that was just me.

Suddenly, it was time for our award category. Philebrity Captain and one of my personal Journalist heroes Joe Sweeney read down the list of nominees. When he hit #bdc we cheered, the crowd cheered for us, and he continued down the list.

End of story? Not quite.

Joey Sweeney: So, Shane isn’t here tonight, so we’re going to give this award to Blame Drew’s Cancer.

Team Blame Drew’s Cancer: ???

No, he was not joking. Suddenly we’re being gestured at and motioned towards to the stage and then we’re on the stage and then I’m hugging Joey Sweeney and then, inevitably, I am standing in front of a microphone gaping at a rather large crowd seated at round tables all Golden Globes style and I am like, omg I think now they want me to talk.

Luckily, there is video to document my surprising coherent trip through award show aphasia:

Philebrity Awards from Mark Magliocco on Vimeo.

(Take note of my neck-bobbing walk down the stairs, as it figures in to the next bit pretty heavily.) Continue reading ›

Also filed in Philly, Twitter, Year 10, blamedrewscancer, dancing, introversion, memories, parties | | Comments (1)

Daily Demo: Crashing

Monday, November 2, 2009

Song #77: Crashing (live demo) ["Save As" to download from that link]
Last recorded for Blogathon 2002.

10 years ago this weekend I went to my first college party, still very much a purposefully-naive, dewy-eyed teen.

I came home having had my first vodka cranberry and my first inklings of adult romance, drifting to sleep wrapped in the blissful denouement of each.

The following Monday morning was a decidedly dreary day, and I found myself locked out my dorm room in my pajamas. Instead of heading to French 103 I sat down in our common room – five stories from the ground with a two-story windowed wall staring out into Center City Philadelphia.

I pulled out a pad and wrote “Crashing.”

Later that day, having been let back into my room, I recorded its first rough demo and transferred the lyrics to the first page of the crisp new book I bought for my collegiate songs. Up until then I wasn’t sure how I would know it was time to start using it, but I suddenly did.

“Crashing” made frequent appearances at parties and late night hangouts throughout my Freshmen year, resulting in the first complements on my voice I had ever heard. They came as a great shock to me, as they still do. Later that autumn I recorded it for my first full length demo, Other Plans – shakily, in the middle of the night, trying not to wake up my mother in the process.

As a dreary fall turned to winter I moved on to add other songs to my slim gray book – many of which I still play to this day. Yet, it was “Crashing” I would play between classes as I sat at the dinged, old upright piano in the theatre green room. I would hypnotize myself with the rolling two chord verse, learning how to play piano in increments (and maybe a little bit about what the song really meant, as well).

It took the entire intervening decade to learn how to play piano well enough to demo it that way, and it seems apropos that it wound up recorded just as shakily and late as its original demos were, respectively.

Crashing (live demo): Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Also filed in Year 10, college, demos, identity, memories, rain, self-critique, theatre | | Comments (2)

Our Battlestar Galactica Halloween as Baltar & Head Six

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Last night E and I dressed up as Head Six and Dr. Gaius Baltar, respectively, from the cult Sci-Fi hit Battlestar Galactica.

E is not in Six’s standard spaghetti-strap dress, but Six can be spotted in this style at least once in the series.

Also, note the spot-on bracelet and ring, which E made herself.

My costume was much more subtle, as I was effectively E’s accessory for the night. I simply grew some scruff and slicked back my hair. For fun, I carried two corner-cut Vice-Presidential memos (as we were ostensibly circa seasons one and two – post appointment to VP, but pre swearing-in as president).

One memo was the results of tests with the Cylon Detector. The other was a draft of Gaius’s inaugural speech, complete with parenthetical asides to Head Six (presumably floating over his shoulder in devilish fashion as he wrote it). Writing in the Dr. Baltar voice was very fun.

Out of two parties four people knew who we were. The best comment we received was by far:

I’m not sure who you are, but you both look really sexy. You should introduce yourself as, “Hi, I’m sexy.”

Oh, and SyFy – né Sci-Fi – the purveyors of the show we paid homage to, thought we were “Awesome!”

‘Nuff said.

Also filed in elise, memories, parties, teevee | | Comments (4)

Why I #blamedrewscancer, pt. 4

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

(This is the last part of my story. You should read Parts 1, 2, and 3.)

It is a Saturday afternoon, and I am staring out into pure blue, 14,000 feet above the ground, through the open hatch in the side of our tiny plane.

On the ground my partner ran through it with me. Twice. Duckwalk to door. Head leaned back on shouder. One two three go. Or is it one two go-on-three? Tip back and forward, arch your body. Arms out. Keep your mouth closed if you feel like you can’t breathe.

Fly.

Staring out the open side of the plane, his instructions dissolve. Did it matter how I arched my back? Niceties, to placate a nervous jumper.

No matter what, we would fall – flying downward, into the embrace of gravity.

“One.”

“Two.”

…

Here is #blamedrewscancer, as it’s root: we are talking about cancer.

Yes, it is inane. Yes, it is about Drew – for now. The point is, Drew gave us that – he gave us his struggle to make as silly or as serious as we need it to be.

Drew doesn’t really care if we say his name or what we blame. He just cares that we are talking about cancer. He wants to harness that conversation to raise awareness, hope, and donations. He wants to bring cancer into our daily dialog so we can work together to erase it rather than willfully ignore it until it touches our lives.

His plan is working. People are talking to Drew about his chemo treatments. I am talking to my friends about my grandmother. My co-workers are talking to each other about someone we lost, and how we can honor the fight that she won.

Blaming Drew’s cancer is inspiring us to live stronger, to be frank and hopeful about fighting cancer, and to show the love and support we may be feeling but afraid to say.

Inspiring us to win our battles.

Inspiring us to leap out of planes.

I have dreamt for years that I can fly, so much that I halfway believe it. It’s not an occasional foray – I can fly in every one. The rush of air past my ears and my body, weightless and free. The feeling is familiar, tucked safely under my skin.

I’ve tried to capture it outside of my dreams on playground swings and amusement park rides. I’ve looked down from trade centers, massive arches, and wrought-iron towers. I’ve ridden on airplanes and have been towed behind a boat, limbs caught up in the wind.

The closest I’ve ever come was riding my bike. It was October 12, 1998, and I was three blocks north of here in Jefferson Square park. Biking home from Anastasia’s house, I sped up until the pedals offered no more resistance. Closed my eyes and held out my arms. It only lasted for a second, but that was my first waking flight – a feeling I already knew intimately.

On my list of five things to do before I die, “fly” was first. Fly for more than those fleeting seconds of eleven years ago. Fly like my dreams.

When Drew and Chris asked if I wanted to skydive with the team, it seemed insane. I met these people online. On Twitter. Was I really going to live my dream with a bunch of strangers from the internet?

It was not insane. It was kismet. It was Drew’s whole point. Live Strong. You want to fly? What’s stopping you? Jump out of a damned plane. You want to be a singer? Don’t make an excuse. Use your voice with confidence.

You want to beat cancer? Blame it and battle it and beat the hell out of it every day with all of the power and positive energy you can muster from yourself and from everyone you’ve ever met until you defeat it.

You have cancer, but cancer does not have you.

…

“Three.”

We lean back and pitch forward, falling from plane. I arch. For a second it feels like nothing – the velocity of our bodies moving at the speed of the plane and the pull of gravity countermanding each other

Then, acceleration. Real flight, but towards the ground instead of up, up, and away like Superman or Neo.

In my mind I shrug off the man strapped to my back and the photographer waving in my face – unconsciously throwing him rock signs as he gestures towards his camera.

It is what I know beneath my skin, and more. There is no plane above or ground below. There is the rush of air past my ears and my body, weightless and free. There is limitless blue in every direction – I can’t see the ground. Gravity is for the weak-willed and falling is flying, hurtling, easy like love.

Wind blasts my limbs, buffeting my torso like a cascade of water. I feel strangely supported by the air, as if I could stand delicately on it, like snow.

That lasts for about a minute, or for the eternity of every dream I’ve ever had, depending on how I measure.

A whisper in my ear isn’t the wind, it’s my partner, long-since forgotten. I cross my arms, clenching my harness in my fists, and he pulls the cord. The parachute rides up above us, catching the wind. The harness bucks hard, and gravity is countermanded again. My stomach suspends itself.

This is a different kind of flying. Floating, perfectly controlled. Now I see the ground, and it is minuscule below us. Philadelphia rises in the distance, and i feel like we could just tip forward and head that way.

I break the silence.

“I should tell you something.”

“Hmm?”

We are having a conversation, circa 7,000 feet.

“I dream that I can fly. Not just some of the time. Like, every dream. It’s just something I can do.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And it’s just like this.”

We hang in the restored silence, falling slowly. As the ground becomes nearer I scream my trademark soprano wail and listen as it fades away with nothing to reflect against.

Eventually there is a field and a landing strip, and we have a shadow, and it grows larger and larger until our bodies meet it, wrapped once again in gravity’s close embrace and a puddle of mud.

Tonight at midnight Drew’s Blame-a-Thon begins – the reason I wound up sitting across the table from him at an Applebee’s two months ago.

In two months I have seen people and businesses do amazing things to encourage Drew and to support LiveStrong, all culminating in tomorrow’s event.

It’s about awareness and fundraising, but to me it feels halfway like faith-healing. Like, maybe if we all focus we can blame the cancer away.

Probably not. Not in one day, at least. But blaming cancer can change lives. It’s a chance to reassign the pain and bullshit in your life to something that really deserves it so you can stop making excuses and just live strong.

Blame cancer and change your life. Blame cancer and change someone else’s.

I blame Drew’s cancer for any second that I’m not living my ideal life as a stronger, faster, fiercer me.

And I am thankful for every moment that I am.

Also filed in Twitter, Year 10, betterment, blamedrewscancer, dreamt, flying, gina, high school, memories, red hair, weblinks | | Comments (2)

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.

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Why I #blamedrewscancer, pt. 3

Monday, July 27, 2009

(Read Part 2)

It is just past 2:30 on Saturday afternoon.

The bodies of Drew and his tandem partner are framed by stunning cerulean blue from the open hatch of the plane. Drew’s tiny, thickly-accented videographer has just tipped herself out of the plane.

Drew leans his head back against the shoulder of his partner.

“Three.”

“Two.”

I do not hear “one.” Their bodies arch out of the open side of the plane, dwindling quickly from view, as my tandem partner duck-waddles us closer to the hatch.

I jump next.

Drew accepted my pledge to get involved with Blame-a-Thon with zero hesitation, despite the fact that he didn’t know me from Adam. Actually, he had never met Britt in person before either, and hadn’t known Mikey for all that long. Only Chris, his co-host from Best Damn Tech Show, was a long-term friend.

His entire project team had been recruited via Twitter. A day later I found myself equipped with an official BlameDrewsCancer email address, pitching ideas and drafting documents.

So much for taking a break from event planning. That had lasted all of five weeks.

If the scope of Blame-a-Thon started big, then the ideas behind the scenes were gargantuan. We were reaching out to huge sponsors – businesses I’d never before dreamed of contacting as an individual. And, more and more events found their way onto the schedule – LiveStrong night at the Phillies, karaoke, bowling, sponsored evenings at National Mechanics and Buckhead Saloon, and maybe even a night at a local comedy club.

In any other organization I’d be wary of stretching too thin, but BlameDrewsCancer was the inverse. Every time we added another seemingly-insane item to our list, more resources and support emerged from the Twitter community. The pace of blaming and donations (all benefiting our partner LiveStrong) kept increasing.

Through our non-stop conversations I suddenly had a crew of best friends that I barely even knew. I even bought a new phone after a year of waffling just so I could stay in touch with all of their manic happenings.

My windfall of awesome new people is actually part of Drew’s end-game for the charity – he wants to use his experience with cancer to show people battling cancer (and their friends and families) that they can build their own dynamic systems of support through tools like Twitter, and then convert that system into the real world. In fact, Drew wants to help them do it.

Somewhere in there, we started to talk about skydiving. Chris and Mikey had done it before, and I mentioned wanting to tag along on their next trip. Britt said she was game. If Drew wanted to skydive, we could do it as a team, with our final member Amanda acting as ground control.

This is what impresses me the most about Drew, and about Blame Drews Cancer. Drew didn’t necessarily want to skydive. I at no point got the impression that it was something on his “bucket list” of things to do just in case cancer got the best of him. In fact, the idea of it occasionally seemed to send him into a panic attack.

Skydiving was an extreme, scary thing to do, and it seemed to me that Drew wanted to do it – fear and all – just to shove it in cancer’s face. He would pitch himself – cancer and all – out of a plane at an altitude of 15,000 feet to prove that Drew has cancer, but cancer doesn’t have Drew.

We picked a date. On Saturday, July 18 – a day after my six month wedding anniversary – I would leap out of a plane and hope to land all in one piece.

Also filed in Twitter, blamedrewscancer | | Comments (4)

Whuffaoke or Bust

Monday, July 27, 2009

I don’t have it in me to articulate today’s adventures quite yet, but:

Whuffaoke is a country-spanning karaoke tour based out of one amazing winnebago. They are also some of the sweetest people I have ever met. Over the course of seven hours I sang “Video Killed the Radio Star,” “Since U Been Gone,” “Semi-Charmed Life,” “Time Is Running Out,” “Don’t You Want Me,” and – amazingly, as I’ve never performed it before – “Here We Go Again” by Whitesnake.

In addition to not having it in me to articulate, I think I may have also lost the power of speech.

Whuffaoke continues on Monday at 13th and Sansom at 5pm sharp. Be there.

Also filed in Philly, Twitter, blamedrewscancer, kelly clarkson, linkylove, memories, performance, photos, singing, thoughts, weblinks | | Comments (0)

Why I #blamedrewscancer, pt. 2

Friday, July 24, 2009

(Read Part 1)

It is Saturday, at 2:30 in the afternoon. After a brief flight, our plane has reached its apex.

Now it is time to dive out of it.

The friendly chatter of the BlameDrewsCancer team falls away as the tiny cabin bustles with activity. Each of our tandem partners checks to make sure we’re completely winched together.

Then, before I realize it is happening, the plexiglass door over the hatch is slid entirely open, and Chris and his partner are duckwalking to the very edge of the floor. They tip out, into the blue, quickly disappearing from sight.

Drew is sitting next to me. I look him in the eyes, but I don’t think it registers. He will be the next to jump.

I find that, unexpectedly, I am completely calm.

On Monday, June 29, I met Britt outside of our office, and we took off for New Jersey to meet with Drew.

I had read up on the BlameDrewsCancer phenomenon, but I couldn’t say I completely understood the point of it. All I knew was that Britt was in charge of this mysterious Blame-a-Thon event, and that I had volunteered to take notes for her so she could stay focused on her dialog with Drew.

Otherwise, I was in the dark. Blame Drew’s Cancer was just a meme to me. I had never even sent an @-reply to Drew.

We converged on Applebees for our meeting. Me being me, I had never been inside of one before, and wasn’t entirely sure what sort of food they sold. I advertised the fact to Drew, a stocky, tattooed, slightly-imposing man in a baseball jersey.

Great, I thought. Way to endear yourself to the intimidating guy with cancer by advertising your never-ending weirdness.

Thirty minutes later the five of us – Drew, his friends Chris and Mikey, and Britt and I – were seated and eating. The following exchange kicked-off our meeting:

Britt: I brought charts!

Drew: I brought cancer!

This, I learned quickly, was par for the course with Drew – and a running theme of BlameDrewsCancer. Drew was sick of cancer being an unspoken “c-word.” He talked about his cancer loudly and without reservation, and welcomed questions.

Drew was fresh from chemotherapy, and Britt quizzed him on the details over salad. Yes, he had a permanent port in his body for the chemo, so the drugs wouldn’t burn his skin. No, it wasn’t too uncomfortable, but he wasn’t allowed to get any more tattoos while he was in treatment.

As we got into the thick of the meeting I took furious notes on the scope of the event. It would be huge. 24 hours of party, half of it at Philly’s venerable North Star Bar. We would need to coordinate live video streaming of the entire event. The band Stroke 9 was reportedly working on a Blame Drew’s Cancer theme song. Drew was now an official partner of LiveStrong, in a story set to break later that week on outlets like AOL and CNN – until then the news was embargoed.

In Drew’s words, we should “Think big.” When Mikey jokingly fired back, “Big like Tom Hanks,” Drew responded, “Sure, if you think you can get in touch with him.”

It was at that moment that I began to understand what Drew – and, by extension, BlameDrewsCancer – was actually about. It was about a no-holds-barred rebranding of cancer as something you could talk about, get support for, and live through. Really live.

Drew was only intimidating in that he had ideas with no boundaries, and he was looking for people to help realize them. By the time we headed back to our cars, I knew that I wanted to be one of those people; I had to be involved with Blame-a-Thon in a capacity more meaningful than just taking notes.

I did not suspect that “involved” would involve jumping out of a plane.

Also filed in Twitter, blamedrewscancer, charity, health, memories | | Comments (4)

Why I Blame Drew’s Cancer, pt. 1

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

It is just shy of 2:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, and I am sitting on the floor of an airplane small enough that – sans wings – could fit into my living room. There is a parachute-bearing man named Rob strapped to my back.

Around me sit four other twenty-somethings, each with a parachute-equipped man affixed to their person. Together, we watch through the open hatch on the side of the plane as first the airport slips away, then trees, then clouds.

Suddenly, we are in unmitigated blue.

I’ve known these people for less than three weeks, but in just a few minutes I’ll be jumping out of a plane with them to Blame Drew’s Cancer.

I momentarily debate my sanity.

This story starts in my cubicle at work, of all places.

I had just exited a meeting about social media with Britt, a colleague, but not a direct co-worker. Back in my cube, we had a rapid-fire conversation.

“So,” Britt interrogated, “You blog, but you aren’t on Twitter?”

“I grabbed my username, but I’m not using it for anything.”

“I think you would like it.”

“But it’s just a never-ending Facebook status.”

“Try it. Try it for a week.”

“Britt, I don’t do anything halfway. If I try Twitter I’m going to insist on being the best at Twitter. That’s how I am.”

“Good.” She left me with a wink. “Try it.”

I’ve already unfolded the story of my Twitter addiction, as well as my visit to a meeting of the Social Media Club of Philadelphia. However, neither could prepare me for my next plunge.

It started innocently enough – I received via a Twitter acquaintance an invite to an event charmingly titled “Blame-a-Thon.” 24-hours of live blaming and live music on 9/9/9, all for charity? I didn’t really understand what it was about, but I love charity events, and I love live music.

I shot off a quick message to the organizer to see if he needed any help connecting with bands, and I got a prompt reply – that I should connect with the director of the event: Britt at BlameDrewsCancer.

Britt? Like, my work Britt? The same Britt?

Yes, yes, and yes.

Another rapid-fire conversation with Britt ensued. (As it turns out, all of our conversations are rapid-fire). The Blame-a-Thon was being thrown by BlameDrewsCancer. Had I seen that hash tag on Twitter? I had, but hadn’t completely understood it … dozens of people blaming things, both serious and ironic, on someone’s cancer? Seemed a little cheeky.

Britt said I ought to read up on BlameDrewsCancer, and invited me to tag along to her first meeting with the eponymous Drew to discuss the event.

I read up. Drew is a true digital native – a plugged-in, gagdet-wielding dude who hosted The Best Damn Tech Show. Period, blogs, twitters, and works at a tech startup. Just a month prior, his doctor diagnosed him with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.

A lot of people would go to a negative, frightened place with this news – especially in the first month of their diagnosis. Not Drew. Drew decided that in order to beat cancer, he had to beat up on cancer. He had to make it the bad guy, the loser, the asshole. In his own words:

I’ve been blaming my cancer for everything. Lost keys, wallet, Phillies losing. Sixers picking a bad coach. Twitter going down and/or being slow.

Surely cancer can’t withstand that type of beatdown. But why do it alone? I wanted to welcome ANYONE to blame ANYTHING on MY cancer. … I have cancer, but cancer doesn’t have me

Less than 60 days later, close to 10,000 unique Twitter users had blamed something on Drew’s Cancer. That evening, I watched the number creep up on BlameDrewsCancer.com.

I was amazed by Drew’s story, and intrigued to hear about his upcoming Blame-a-Thon. I called Britt back and told her I was in for the meeting.

Little did I know what I was truly “in” for.

Also filed in Philly, Twitter, blamedrewscancer, charity, corporate | | Comments (4)

tweeting and flying like birds

Saturday, July 18, 2009

I’m presently two miles away from the Pennridge airport, the site of today’s insanity. (see also: last night and this morning)

You can follow along live on twitter up ’til jump time with me or our ground controller amanda nan, or the #blamedrewscancer crew: drew, schmidtultra, mikeyil, & brimil.

I know I have yet to explain why I am jumping out of a plane with the #blamedrewscancer crew. That’s another story entirely. Monday. Seriously.

I’ll check back in after I’ve flown.

Also filed in Twitter, blamedrewscancer, thoughts | | Comments (0)

my unexpectedly rocking Vermont vacation

Monday, July 6, 2009

I played an unexpected concert on the 4th of July.

I bring my guitar with me just about everywhere I go. Parties. Barbeques. Vacations. My default social state is to be idly playing guitar, and I don’t like to subject other people’s instruments to my style of playing and non-stop litany of alternate tunings.

Not surprisingly, I was armed with my acoustic axe in Vermont this weekend. I didn’t expect I’d be performing anywhere, but figured our idle days would leave me plenty of time to rehearse my new AC covers and some newer originals.

Kat apparently took it as a challenge to find me a place to play over the weekend. And, of all nights to find an opportunity, the one she discovered was Saturday night – right on the 4th of July: a local open mic at the Ripton Community Coffeehouse, topped by a performance by local band Twist of the Wrist.

When I first hear about a venue I get a very tangible picture in my head; they are seldom accurate. In this instance I was picturing a small coffee shop – perhaps as a part of a larger general store or community center – with sparse seating and a small riser doubling as a stage. It would be a fun night out. I’d play some newer stuff, and maybe finally play my cover of “Independence Day” live!

Mindful of the tendency of Philly open mics to never start on time, we left the farm on the late side for our up-mountain trek up to Ripton. We arrived at the “community coffee house” to discover it was a converted church, its parking lot overflowing with vehicles. Inside there was a foyer with a box office staffing by a twinkling attendant. The main room had many rows of seats (all full!), a proper stage, a snack bar, and a balcony(!).

Once again, my mental picture was off by a country mile.

Also filed in elise, guitar, performance, vermont | | Comments (1)

whiling away the hours

Thursday, May 28, 2009

(1) A few years ago I saw Malcolm Gladwell deliver a speech at the New Yorker Festival that is largely recapitulated in the second chapter of Outliers, called “The 10,000 Hour Rule.”

In it, Gladwell draws our attention to a data point converged upon by countless studies of experts in a variety of fields. He says, “In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” He goes on to quote neurologist Daniel Levitin:

In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. … It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

Gladwell supports the rule using Mozart, Bill Gates, Bill Joy, and the Beatles as his examples. Not to say that their genius and success is purely a result of 10,000 hours of practice – the book as a whole explains other facets – just that it was an essential component of their expertise.

(2a) 10,000 hours is a long time.

If as a child starting at age five you had piano lessons two times a week (an hour each) and also practiced an hour a day, you would clock nine hours a week. 468 hours a year. 4,680 hours a decade.

If you kept that up until age 26 you’d finally have served your time.

(2b) 10,000 hours can go by before you know it.

Maybe you got into video games at age 11. You played them every night after homework and dinner, let’s say from 7:30 to 11:00 p.m. on most nights, plus extra on the weekend. That’s more than 25 hours a week. 1,300 plus a year.

You’d be a master by the time you started college. Most kids are.

(2c) Time is relative.

(3) In the car today Gina and I were singing in harmony to the amazing Hezekiah Jones album Hezekiah Says You’re A-OK, on the way to see his band split a bill with the equally fantastic Up the Chain.

“You know, Gina,” I said, breaking from my lead vocal, “I’ve been thinking about this 10,000 hour thing. Not everyone’s an expert at something. I mean, what do most people spend 10,000 hours doing by the time they’re 25? Watching teevee, I suppose.”

“More than likely,” she replied.

“But, think about me. I watched a lot of television, sure. Mostly, though, I read until I was old enough to write, and then I wrote and read. That’s what I spent my 10k on.”

(Perhaps she interjected, “Oh, I remember.”)

“And, you know, is it any surprise that I’m good at communications? I’m not an expert, but no wonder it’s my calling. I spent my whole life practicing for it.”

We sat and sang for a moment, contemplating that.

“What about you?”

Gina paused in her harmony. “Hmm, me?”

“Yeah. What did you spend 10,000 hours doing?”

“This. Listening to music. Singing harmony.”

“Really your whole life, right? Your mother singing, your father playing guitar…”

“Yeah, since I can remember.”

“Right. So, no matter how much I rehearse, you’ll always have the edge. It’ll always come easier to you, until I reach that threshold.”

“I suppose.”

We paused as the song wound down.

“What do you think Hezekiah spent 10,000 hours doing?”

We thought on that for a few moments, and then sang together to “Albert Hash.”

(4) We’re not all Mozart. I might not ever be Hezekiah Jones. But, we’ve all spent 10,000 hours doing something other than sleeping, and hopefully other than watching television. Maybe something incidental that we do out of necessity or habit. Driving? Social-networking? Cleaning? Taking care of children?

I’ve put in more than my share on communications – reading cereal boxes and trashy fantasy novels, writing stories at eight on my manual typewriter and almost nine years of blogs.

I got an early start on 10,000 hours of being Gina’s best friend, which I keep padding. I’m really good at that. More recently I’ve attained well-in-excess of 10,000 hours of being in love with Elise.

I hope eventually I’ll reach my 10,000th hour of serious focus on music. It’s a large piggy-bank of time to fill.

What about you? What have you spent your life mastering, intentionally or unintentionally?

Also filed in Philly, Year 09, betterment, elise, essays, gina, habits, philly music, teevee, thoughts | | Comments (5)

pipes and glass

Monday, March 9, 2009

A long time ago I had a neighbor, freebasing cocaine at his kitchen table.

That came later, though.

Curled around my first guitar on the front step, maybe? Must’ve been. I don’t remember how else he knew I could play. I remember our porch, and his hammers on Ziggy. That’s exactly what I wanted.

We became a pair in his basement from time to time, him showing me barre chords, my explaining why you might retune.

I didn’t have that in my life at the time. I had Gina, still several months of skepticism about my guitar playing before she’d be of much help. No one else to take an interest. Certainly not an adult example.

(My mother’s boyfriend had played guitar, maybe, in the 70s? Some distantly removed time. He had sliced the tendon on his pointer, and could no longer play barres. Useless to me. He had a clumsy way of making a C chord, remembering it a half-fret at a time.

Inwardly I swore: no forgetting.)

So there I was, in the neighbor’s basement. We had known him forever, anyway. He was fifteen years older? Feels like he was much older than I am now. At least seventeen, if he remembered Bowie like that.

I noodled on his ancient synthesizer and he restrung his Yamaha 12-string. “Like Bowie’s.” And he told his story.

He was heavy into music, writing his own all of the time. He went on a cruise ship or some other inane vacation, to play. And someone said, one night, to him – very serious about his music. They said to him he sounded like something or some other thing. It was probably the 80s, so probably some other awful thing. Richard Marx, let’s say.

And he said, “Peter.” He said my name in this very convivial way, like, we’re just two Italian guys shooting the shit. It was not a way men usually said my name. Still not.

“Peter, I didn’t know if it was a compliment. I hadn’t heard anything new in a year. All I would listen to was myself.”

I was incredulous, still a fan more than a musician. How could he turn off everything else? It seemed likely a lie.

I got too familiar, I guess. The whole family lived there, and I got used to poking my head in if I got home late from rehearsal and the light was on.

I put my head in, and there they were, him and his best friend. Hardware on the table, but not the tool box like usual. Pipes and glass?

Pipes and glass, and he said, “do you want any” or maybe “you don’t want any,” and I, numb, just walked back across the porches to my door.

Figures, the one guy who could say my name like that and mean it and play those little hammers. But I knew what my goal was – I would have to learn my barre chords before there’d be any excess.

I forget him for a year or so, here and there. There are other stories – driving to the music store in South Philly, the time I almost cut my finger off and he came over because my mom was at work. That bass in pieces in my closet.

I’ve still never been that freebaser at the kitchen table. I must not be good enough at barres. But, now I know what it’s like to only listen to myself, to not want or need anything else.

I understand him that much.

Also filed in Year 09, bowie, guitar, high school, memories, neighbors, self image, thoughts | | Comments (2)

best [...] ever

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

[British Belgian restaurant]
We found an amazing Belgian restaurant where I had truly phenomenal mussels. The couple beside us told us they come from outside the city just to have dinner there, and then go home.

[American bragging rights]
Every conversation we’ve had so far in London includes, “What do you think about Obama?” to which we reply in chorus, “We love him!” We have a pretty set script we’re working from at this point. In France it was more polite questioning, but here people have been probing a bit more.

[away-from-home mattress streak]
The wedding hotel mattresses were absolutely heavenly. Like, even the night before with all the nervous energy and whatnot I slept like a rock. I would have tied one to the roof of our car if I could have. Then in Paris we had the sort of ultra-firm Ikea futon mattress that we have at home. And now we’re on a comfortably soft, well-appointed deluxe queen. Seriously, this is highly improbable success.

[water served below room temperature]
Finally, water with ice. I mean, Paris was definitely the best place ever, but I can only drink so much room temperature water in any given week.

[honeymoon timing]
France’s public transit workers and teachers went on strike about an hour ago. We were about four Metro stops from anything of interest; we would have been stranded if we had stayed an extra day.

[drunken plans to write a musical of a movie we watched on our first date seven years ago]
We got sortof drunk over dinner on Beglian beer and, much to the delight of our neighboring couple, debated at length how we would go about writing and staging a musical of The Princess Bride. We got as far as breaking out the songs and their titles and arguing over appropriate voice parts. We’re very into the idea at the moment, but let’s see what happens when we sober up in the morning.

Anything you’d like to add?

Also filed in Honeymoon, alchohol, flicks, food, thoughts | | Comments (3)

- – - - - - – . (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, day in the life, only childness | | Comments (1)

Louvre, pt. 1: Getting There

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Today brought our first proper excursion, and perhaps our most daunting: Le Louvre.

We managed to wake up prior to nine (local), although for me this involved a few hours of a.m. restlessness. We ate a brief breakfast from our assembled groceries (Elise, cereal. Me, fresh bread with strawberry preserves and six month gouda), and bundled heavily against the dreary weather that will be following us for the remainder of our trip.

The jaunt to Louvre involved our first interaction with the Paris Metro. We had already scoped out our three neighborhood stops, all on the 11 line, which we could take almost all the way to the Louvre. To give you a sense of the scope, the statistic goes that every building in the city is within 400 metres of a Metro stop.

The Paris underground feels roughly equivalent to New York, though I don’t find it nearly as overwhelming as NYC (or London, from our brief excursion). For Philly folks, in practice it felt like a triple-sized version of SEPTA’s Regional Rails, especially because each stop has its own name and specific identity. You can form your own opinion by playing with RAPT’s fascinating interactive map.

Despite studying the site in French and English prior to our departure we were absolutely stymied by their ticket machines – and they actually speak English! They wouldn’t take our American credit cards or any bills, which severely limited our purchase options. We settled for one-way tickets, as that was all we afford without hunting down a change machine (I though I had found one, but it was actually a condom dispenser, which are ubiquitous in the Metro stations).

Print nerd alert: Stations are plastered with huge advertisements in three primary sizes – the oversized European movie posters, long station cards that are effectively mini-billboards, and massive square sheets (4 metres square?) mounted on the curved walls of the platforms. Not only are all of them bigger than what I’m used to, but they conform to a much higher design standard – especially the super-sized ones. There was more pedestrian graphic design to be seen on the actual trains, but I think the larger pieces must go through an approve process on the RAPT side of things, because they were universally pretty impressive.

(I wasn’t keen on whipping out my camera at the local stop, but I’ll endeavor to snap some photos at some point before we depart.)

The trains themselves are petite compared to Philly or NYC subways – head on they give the appearance of being a sort of trolley. The interiors of the ones we rode were universally marked in graffiti, as is much of the north side of the city. Seats are relatively tiny compared to the El, maybe owing to the specific lack of obese people here (more on that later). Curiously, the seats adjacent to the doors snap down to be used when volume is lighter, but passengers are expected to abandon them when its crowded. Amazingly, people actually did this with regularity – even younger, punkish kids.

We passed a fascinating stop – Arts et Metiers – that was sans advertisements, and was dressed rather like a Jules Vern submarine. We’ll have to investigate that more at length on our next jaunt. Our line terminated at Chatelet, where we wandered through a maze of catacomb-like tunnels – passing a phenomenal classical guitarist and a full-scale acoustic band with an upright bass and accordion singing standards in four-part harmony.

The maze was well labeled (way better than the mess at Philly City Hall, which is shamed by comparison), and without much consternation we boarded another train, which deposited us just outside the outer walls of the Louvre.

With that I think I’ll break for a hunk of cheese, and maybe to swipe a few photos out of our 300+ to illustrate the next few posts.

Also filed in Honeymoon, art, walking | | Comments (0)