voices carry

One of the things I most look forward to in my post-Office Space renaissance this fall is leaving the cubicle-farm world behind.

My 'office' / 'cube' / whatever you'd like to call it is part of a 'quad', i.e. there are four people separated by a wall. Sure, it's better than having two people to a cube, but it still has it's annoyances. I get along well with my quad-neighbors in general. They're nice guys; we crack jokes and stay out of each others' business. But one guy- the one who is in the back half of the quad with me- sometimes pushes the limits of office relationships.

I noticed this one day when he started talking to me about personal matters that were happening between me and my girlfriend- I think he even referred to her by name. Strange, I thought... I don't remember ever telling him anything about her or about whatever it was he was talking about with me. A few more incidents like this and I realized that he had learned quite a bit about me from my end of whatever phone conversations I was having at work. When I decided to call him out on this, he just bragged about his 'super hearing' and reacted with one of his typical war-tales of having worked at the same company (here) for 3,000 years and how they used to have hahdwood floors and no cubicle walls so you could heah people from awl the way down the hawl (read this like you have lived in various suburbs of Boston for your entire life).

I'd say that I expressed my being uncomfortable and agitated about this, but anyone that knows me knows that I really don't know how to subtly get upset at someone (and when I do get upset, people think it's so funny that they provoke me until I throw bottles of mustard at them). But even if I got upset, what could I do about it? I knew that even if I told him to stop meddling into my personal life, a person can't just shut his ears and not hear what's going on around him ("earmuffs, kid!"). I don't own this office. I'm aware that every e-mail, instant messenger conversation, and blog entry I make from work can and probably is being read by some group of oompa loompas in some cave somewhere (hi, guys!), but for whatever reason I felt I could make at least some level of phone call to my girlfriend or other non-work friends with impunity. Yeah, maybe phone sex would be a bit inappropriate... but I had never felt self-conscious talking to my girlfriend about our weekend plans or paying a late telephone bill over the phone before this.

My neighbor seems like a bored old guy. Apparently he talks about us- his quad-mates- at home, and he'll tell us what his wife / daughter have to say about us at work the next day. Sometimes he'll just walk into my cube in a very deliberate manner and slowly sit down. It doesn't matter if I'm listening to my iPod or coding or actively trying to ignore him. And even if I have headphones on he'll start speaking to me. If he has nothing to say, he'll start digging up minutes from the last conversation we had. "So, did you tell Winnie what I told you yesterday?" "So, my daughtah is looking for an apahtment." "Got two milestones done today." He has learned that I don't do football conversations. Sometimes he'll try to bring the other quad-mates into our 'conversations'-- "you bettah not tell Jon, he's the big hawhncho around heah now!"

Winnie is looking for a new apartment since I am leaving Boston in the fall and she don't wanna make the move to NYC also (that's the Reader's Digest version, at least). She called me the other day about an apartment she wanted to check out and apparently mr. neighbor heard enough to realize she was moving. Cue the deliberate stroll, adjusting the pants, the lean on my cube-wall:
"So the lady's movin' out on ya?"

CRAP! Need a lie fast... of course since I don't listen to a word I say, I had forgotten what I had said to indicate that Winnie was leaving and moving to her own place, but I couldn't think of anything better than "oh, we're moving." There's a 73% chance that he saw right through that, but at least he knew better than to press the issue further. I haven't 'come out' to work yet about my plans for the fall (except to some friends, whoever may have found this blog, and the aforementioned oompa loompas) and I definitely don't want that knowledge to be leaked by some yenta like my neighbor before I'm ready to do so. The 'how many weeks notice?' issue will soon be the topic of another ranting blog entry.

He even once apparently overheard me on the phone telling my mom about a bonus I had received- I have no idea why I'd do this, but apparently I told her how much the bonus was- and mr. neighbor decided to mention it to another older employee who was talking to me in my cubicle. They struck up a conversation about how the old fogies around here (I think those were their words) never get recognized for nutthin'.

I suppose I should do something about this but you know what? I don't care. I'm outta here in a few months. And that keeps getting sweeter by the day.

chat transcript of plan for world domination

[17:54] redherring22: i'm going to write a 2-disc album about her
[17:54] redherring22: one will be love songs
[17:54] redherring22: and the other, commercially viable one will be about how crazy she is and how messed up our relationship is
[17:55] joey joe joe: wow

what i did this weekend, by bennett

when we left our protagonist, Bennett Everyman, he was a disheartened sleepless wreck with an inescapable ringing in his ears and some inexplicable burns on his arm.

well, i am proud to report that my faith in the universe has been restored.

After the unpleasantness on Wednesday night, I skipped out of work early on Thursday with some coworkers to catch Revenge Of The Sith. Over a lively discussion at the Outback after seeing the movie, someone posited the question- Was it a good movie, or a good Star Wars movie? I wasn't sure how to answer. I certainly enjoyed it, but I also enjoyed Episodes I and II. I won't rehash what everyone's said about Lucas' inability to write dialog, but there was some pretty neat Buddhist-talk in some discussions about The Force, and the political parallels between the movie and real life are pretty crazy. And pregnant or bald or whatever, I still want to have coffee with Natalie Portman.

Then on my way home, I swung by my favorite record store and picked up the new System of a Down and Nine Inch Nails albums. Both are awesome and you should pick them up immediately. I don't know why I'm liking things with a hefty injection of politics lately, but SoAD's schizophrenic delivery and clever plays on words and Rik Rubin's infallible production... delicious.

The Lucky Dog in Worcester is a great club. Unlike the more stuck-up clubs closer to Boston, there was a definitely more laid back vibe about The Lucky Dog. Even though my band was under a lot of pressure to sell 40 tickets to the show or lose money on the gig (and lose money, we did), the staff was a bunch of cool weirdos, the sound was great, we could unload our gear through the emergency exits (the middle east will shoot you if you do that), and- always the sign of a cool club in my book- they had an awesome and reasonably priced beer selection. Not only did they have Rogue Dead Guy Ale for $3.25 a bottle (I don't know about the going rate for that beer in Oregon, but that's a damn good price for a bar over here) but they had a beer I'd never tried before-- Lagunitas Censored-- for the same low, low, delicious price. And they had Flying Dog Tire Bite Ale on tap too. Damn.

We were told when we got there that the schedule for the evening had changed- apparently the first band pulled out at the last minute. Oh well, we still didn't have to start until 10. So we load our gear on stage and notice there's a stray amp and guitar (with a Spongebob sticker on the case-- whoever owned it must be cool) sitting around. It wasn't ours nor the headlining band's. Hmm.

After our soundcheck, Goss was out back smoking with the sound guys when a guy shows up and asks about his sound check. Someone asked "oh, you're in Mad Hatter?" to which the guy responded "Mad Hatter is no more." It turns out that the guy's band had broken up the night before, but he decided to press on anyway and play the gig. Biggie ups to him.

So Mr. Hatter (I have no idea what his name was) plays a set mostly of Bob Dylan and Jimi songs-- just him and his Strat. Gotta respect the guy, though. And he definitely won me over by covering "Breaking The Girl". We went on and played our set to the ever-increasing crowd... it was a pretty good set, even if the crowd didn't know how to handle original music and didn't respond to my puerile humor. The crowd was a strange mix-- some of the typical our-age-ish people you'd expect at a rock show, but a good handful of people well into their 40s. Some may have been parents of the Joshua Tree, but there were definitely some who were there for the music... some mullets, some scarf-belts and other soccer mom wear...

The Joshua Tree did a respectable U2. I've never seen the real thing aside from on DVD (as opposed to Glen, who is seeing ALL THREE of their shows @ the Fleet Center this week), but the musicians nailed all their parts, and even played a few songs with the correct sampled parts in the background (like "Beautiful Day", with the synth drums at the beginning and big choruses). Their singer came about as close as a mortal can come to Bono's voice. Good for him. I'll rant about tribute bands vs. original bands another time, I'm sure. Anyhow, all in all it was a grand night and somehow I made my way home by 3. I met Glen's new, cool, and hot girlfriend (luckyyy!) and found out that Mark the bassist has a little of the ol' Yellow Fever as well. Can I type that?

Saturday I saw the Snow Patrol at Avalon. Buy their album. Actually, buy the DualDisc version of their album so I can hear the 5.1 mixes of the songs. And buy tickets to see their show when they come to town. The opening act, Athlete, was pretty damn cool, too. It just reminded me of how far I really have to go if I am ever to become a rock star.

And Sunday around 1pm Winnie got a call from her cousin James... apparently his sister and parents had flown in from Hong Kong because his sister, a police investigator, was to attend an international symposium on Asian terrorism at Mohegan Sun. Not bad. So I dusted off my old Canto-skills and W and I headed down 395 to spend some quality time with her cousin's family. The parents didn't really speak any English aside from 'byebye' and 'thank you', and we spent a good deal of our time looking for the tables that cater to the Asian population. James tricked his mom into thinking she'd won a slot machine by putting a $10 bill in the machine and cashing out... giving the satisfying plunk of 39 quarters (she didn't win the one hand she played, but what did she know?) Baccarat, Pai Gow poker, and some other game whose name I forget but I think it translated to something like 'low / high' were found. Mediocre buffet was consumed-- we were hoping for a free trip to Michael Jordan's steakhouse or Summer Shack or that Todd English restaurant in the cave, but I certainly ain't complainin' about no free dinner.

As we parted ways with the extended family, Uncle patted me on the back and said 'byebye, fei tsai'-- Winnie's little nickname for me that she decided to share w/ the family over dinner. Translation: fat boy.

sorry about the boring summary of my weekend. i'll shoot for some life-changing insights next time. gotta go, ice cream truck's here! ding ding ding!

we're all individuals!

(i'm not)

sometime's it's all too easy to forget that the people you work with are humans, too... so i find little things like seeing graffiti in the bathroom actually kind of... heartwarming.

there are all these really condescending signs all over the place around here. the bathroom doors instruct you to OPEN DOOR SLOWLY; the staircases tell you to HOLD THE HANDRAIL; and the bathroom walls have signs that instruct you how to wash your hands! (1. soap hands 2. rub hands vigorously under warm water for 10 seconds...)

my favorite defacement is on one of the toilet seat cover dispensers. step 1 of the instructions is as follows:

place onto seat, flap facing the front of the bowl

...i guess someone in his private time on the throne took a pen knife to the message to alter it to:

place onto seat, lap front of bowl

anyhow, it's nearly time for me to kill 15 minutes before lunch, and then i only have a couple of hours until I leave work early to see revenge of the sith! and then i await the blissful arms of sleep... that certain knot of peace... the baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe... the poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release... ha, bet your blog doesn't quote sir philip sidney!

faking it

well here i am. it's 2:13 in the morning on wednesday night / thursday morning and i am supposed to be at work in, oh, 6 hours or so. but i don't want to sleep. my ears are ringing from the mediocre show my band just played-- yes, it was a midnight, mid-week show, but it is still disheartening to have only two friends, the opening band, and the bartender remain at the end of your set. plus how the hell did our drummer drop his sticks at least once a song? the world may never know.

as our second drummer (we're on drummer #3, bassist #2) announced his resignation, he recounted the following about playing the second night of a two-night stint of three-hour sets at a converted church / hell's angels bar in salem, nh:

"you know it's a bad sign when you're playing and all you can think of doing is spackling your bathroom."

for a while after he said that, I thought 'damn, good thing he's leaving the band... what an old, crotchety jerk for having said something like that!' what could be more fun than having some beers and playing rock n' roll with your four best friends? i remember when i auditioned for a band before i ended up in focusin, i was literally bouncing around the room. i couldn't contain myself when i played music- it would come out of my in an unbridled burst of energy, causing me to jump all over the stage, knock down mic stands, and make the rest of my band look even more sedentary. as things went on, i learned to curtail my kinetic energy... but also the thrill of playing out started to wane. it just started to become mundane.

there is definitely something to be said about feeding off a crowd's energy. a month or so ago- at our CD release shows in Boston and NY- we played for two nights in a row to packed houses. it was FANTASTIC. the crowds were into it-- and the more people that get into it, well, the more unashamed people are of showing that they're really 'into it'. We all fed off this energy and made them possibly the two best shows we've played. then... two weeks ago was our knights of columbus baptism, and tonight we had this utter display of mediocrity to a small handful of people who seemed more interested in watching Fox (I mean, our set's time slot conflicted with Seinfeld, The Simpsons, The Drew Carrey Show, and Malcolm In The Middle- I would have been glued to the tube!). and as i was up there, going through the motions (lean a little back and put my left foot up on a monitor for a solo, do my hop during 'Bridge' and that part of 'New Drug'), I couldn't help but feel like a jaded porn star.

I'm a little worried. I've re-set the trajectory in my life towards a life that will professionally revolve (in some capacity, at least) around music. Will this kill the magic for me? Will I pop in the next American Idiot or By The Way for the first time and be nearly brought to tears by just how hard the music hits me? Or will those moments become just another chore for me?

damnit, it's 2:34 and I smell like crap. I really want to watch this Star Wars: Episode II DVD I just borrowed from glen and maybe drink some of that Chivas that Winnie bought the other week... but that would be irresponsible. just like me making a blog entry at 2:36 am. crap. i don't even have the energy to proofread this. oh well, here goes nothing.

your daily debeaking

stupid work keeping me busy... in place of actual brain drippings, here are some reasons why i buy those eggs in those clear plastic containers that say 'free range' (and then buy the bulk stop and shop hormone-and-antibiotic-fed bulk wings... stupid hypocrisy)

http://www.storewars.org/flash/
http://www.themeatrix.com
http://n.ethz.ch/student/mkos/pinguin.swf

a study in blogging etiquette, part 1

I've been reading blogs for a while. At first it started out as a purely nerd thing- I'm a big Mac / general technology nerd, and a lot of the news sites I like to read have always delivered their content in blog-like formats. Then I noticed a band that we've played with a handful of times had a link on their homepage to their guitarist's diary. That was pretty neat... Joe's a witty writer and he would more often than not post band-related things, which is always interesting for me to read since I'm in another band that's struggling to break out of obscurity.

I soon found that a few friends of mine had weblogs of their own, too. Cool! Yeah, maybe their content would, for the most part, be only of interest to people who know them, but I don't care. More brain fodder for me to whittle away my work days with.

But as digesting one blog after another became more of a reflex- I could do my daily 'blogging rounds in mere minutes- I needed to think of more time fillers. I noticed a couple of my friends were in a Tufts 'blog ring' on xanga... so I started clicking around. Pretty soon I was reading the thoughts of people I really had no connection to... I knew what they ate for breakfast; I knew who just got a new car or puppy, who was having relationship trouble and even some people who apparently had some great sex the previous night.¹ And I started to think... do these people know that some random dude like me randomly stumbled across their blogs? By maintaining a public blog you are exposing your thoughts to the world... but some people post as if they only expect a close group of friends will read their mental drippings. What if I left a comment? Do you think Omenchild1 would appreciate it if I helped her figure out who to take to a wedding? Or maybe tell Kenneth Hwang of the New Haven Korean Church Youth Group that I have the same guitar amp as him?

I have left comments on Joe's blog before... even though we only implicitly know each other because we've played gigs together (hey, he has the same amp too! omg, 2 kewl!)... I'll sign my posts 'Bennett from Focusin' just so people know who I am, and I really don't get involved when he has a post is obviously only for his close friends. That might be about as random as I'll go, though. My friend / former squash teammate's girlfriend, who I hardly know (I may have met her once in passing at a Taiwanese Dim Sum restaurant), made an awesome comment about Joe Perry's singing vs. his guitar abilities the other day... but I had to bite my... er... keyboard and not reply, because I thought my posting to her blog could freak her out (maybe I could sign it as "#5 Tufts Squash, 1997-2001").

Any me-stalkers out there? Or do I just have too much time on my hands?

1. Okay, only one footnote in this post, I promise... but did anyone else notice that (at least in the Tufts ring) xanga is popular with Koreans who are in church groups? Yeah, I'm a jerk.

musical polygamy

A frequent topic of conversation between my friend jon (who's in NY) and myself (who salivates at the prospect of being in NY... and steak) is how difficult it can be to be in a band.

I've often compared being in a band to having 4 girlfriends (without the sex¹). Schedules have to be bent or completely reworked, sometimes eggshells have to be walked on, and at least once- no foolin'- there was an issue between two members of my band who were both planning on wearing paisley shirts at the same show. This can make maintaining a relationship with a proper girlfriend (the kind with the sex²) quite a balancing act.³

Bandmates can be enumerated in ways not dissimilar to some rejected dwarves from Snow White⁴... there's Moody, who on any given day could think the band is the greatest thing that's ever happened or the worst crime against humanity; there's Flaky, who will nail his parts one practice and completely forget everything he played (and his cymbals) at the next gig; there's Underage, the virtuoso who just so happens to be 12 years younger than two of the band members; there's the Frontman with Guitarist syndrome (he'd rather be playing guitar); and then there's me, your humble narrator, who could be looked at as The Great Deficit of Attention... or maybe the Guitarist with Frontman syndrome, who, just like the Frontman, sometimes forgets his role in the great scheme of things. I just realized I lost the Dwarves allegory after Flaky.⁵

Cut to last night. We have a gig coming up this Wednesday-- we just found out that, since the promoter for the gig failed to land a third band for the lineup, we have an abnormally long⁶ set to play. We can pull off 45 minutes and maybe even an hour no problem- we can play the material from the CD (have I convinced you to buy it yet?) backwards and forwards, throw in a cover or two and that song we so idiotically left off the CD, and that's a good set. But the promoter informed us that we have to fill 105 minutes this Wednesday. Eek. Add that with the fact that we really haven't been practicing all that much, and when we do practice, it's to brush up on our existing 45-to-60 minute set and maybe to write new material. So it would seem that we needed a practice last night, eh?⁷

Problem 1: Flaky calls a few days before and says he has to work Sunday night. He tells me he'll be there sometime between 8:30 and 9; tells Frontman 9:30; and tells Moody something like 8. He said he checked with Underage, who, since he's in college, went home after exams were over. Flaky says Underage will be there Sunday.

Moody and I get to the practice space and notice Flaky's drums aren't even set up (okay, guess the Dwarves gig is up). A call is placed to Flaky:
Me: "Hey, man, any ETA?"
Flaky: "Yeah, I should be there like I said, around 9:30"
Me: "9:30?!" (Moody groans)
Flaky: "Oh, I mean... 9. Or so."
Me: "O...k... and you spoke with Junior⁸ and he's cool?"
Flaky: "Yeah, I did... wait, crap, did I call Junior?"

Gle- er... Moody and I realize that practice wasn't gonna start until close to 10- our drummer has a million piece drum set that takes forever to set up (and he gets really pissed if you try to rush him). Moody & I have work Monday and we thought it would be incredibly rude to start practice at 10pm on a sunday night in the basement of a house that has zero acoustical isolation and maybe 8 people living in it. We make an executive decision to cancel practice.

Moody: "I can't wait for this band to be over."

Owch. But ya know... this is by far not the first time something like this has happened, and there's a very good chance that it won't be the last.

I guess my point of this incredibly long, disjointed⁹ tale is that when you're in a band, just like if you're in any semi-organized group of people (sports teams, missile engineers...), you've gotta worry about a handful of completely different lives from yours, and you start to fear the wrath of those whose schedules you disrupt when you decide to take matters into your own hands. And, just like a sports team-- if you don't practice, you're gonna suck. And, if the singer cancels band practice at 6pm on a Sunday night because he doesn't feel like going when your girlfriend's been hounding on you all day to cancel it because she wants to stay home and drink beer and get Boston Market and watch The Simpsons together but you know you can't because that would be inconsiderate to the other guys, then your singer's a jerk.


1. obviously there are exceptions... fleetwood mac, the mamas and the papas, the white stripes, the village people... but work with me here.
2. apologies to the catholic church... ha! just kidding, i'm not apologizing for nothin. tonight... at the pit... everyone gets laid!
3. i was inspired to include these annoying footnotes by that lobster article i linked to the other week... but just as a sidenote, a working title for our album was Friends With Benefits (two rejected covers here and here) until a coworker pointed out that such a title would imply a friends-with-benefits-style relationship existed between my bandmates, which isn't exactly the image we want to convey.
4. I debated for a while on whether I should include this part, especially since it's pretty damn obvious who is whom... and I don't think I've told my bandmates about this blog yet. But I'm sure they won't mind me having a little fun here. Hey, I paid for the 1,000 fucking CDs.
5. Over the course of the band's existence, there was also Rational, Married, and Cokehead-y, but I'll save their character defamation for a future entry.
6. like me
7. maybe now would be a good time to point out that we practice tuesdays and sundays... or at least try to. part of the difficulty of being in a band w/ 4 other dudes is that you have to coordinate schedules.
8. Yeah, we actually call Underage "Junior".
9. Thanks to my really annoying use of footnotes!

meta-blog

Current Mood: hungover
Currently Listening to: Green Day- Longview
Currently eating: 1/2 a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
Currently drinking: Screwdriver
Current Medication: 2 Advil
Currently digesting: a whole lotta sushi from ginza, some leftover ice cream cake, sake, and beer
Currently Watching: c:/documents and settings/bennett/my documents/my movies/secret/paris-hilton-sex-tape(finally)-full.mpg
Currently Reading: http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g
Currently Pondering: 1) should i make another 1/2 pb&j sandwich 2) how many loads of laundry do i have to do
Current Pervasive Smell that I can't get out of my nose: fraternity basement floor during hazing week
Currently Scratching: left shoulder blade
Currently Writing: my actual next blog post about how weird it is to be out on a Friday

why Chicago is suddenly cool

I'm a bit exhausted today on account of my seeing the Mars Volta show at Avalon last night (verdict: deafening, self-indulgent space jams mixed with some of the tightest and most proficient prog rockers evar) and then my going to test missiles at 8am. I wanted to have pictures of lobster molestation from last weekend but I have yet to upload 'em from my camera. There's also a video whose existence I can neither confirm nor deny of a bunch of my friends taking over the counter sleeping pills and then acting like idiots at 5am (i.e. inability to walk, falling out of canoes) but I would probably get sued for slander for even alleging that it exists. So I will leave you with two reasons why I really want to go to Chicago:

a) Lollapalooza. Perry Farrell (or whatever compuglobalhypermeganet is in charge of the festival) realized that a touring circus of music is just too hard to pull off, and that massive festivals with huge lineups of awesome bands are all the rage these days. This summer they've got the Pixies, Weezer, BILLY IDOL (my guitar teacher just taught me the intro to Rebel Yell... I had no idea how much that song rocked), The Killers, Cake, Louis XIV, and a million others. Road trip, anyone?

2) The New York Times has officially declared Chicago the center of the 'avant cuisine' movement. Basically this cuisine mixes science, classic cooking techniques, and absurdity to come up with some pretty crazy gastronomic experiences. An example of a dish is featured in today's dining and wine section:

[...]The dish might well be called Reefer Mammal. Or Stoned on the Range. Ribbons of bison meat filled egg-size indentations in the surface of a horizontal glass tube, the hollow interior of which contained burning sticks of cinnamon. Smoke seeped from the open ends of the tube, infusing the air and summoning associations well beyond the gustatory.

"This whole thing is like a bong," said a server.

...yeah. Check the whole article out here. And you really should be reading the Dining and Wine section every Wednesday. It's good for you.

destroying the evidence

this is what i did with the last remaining lobster of the weekend. everyone should know how to make risotto because it makes you more sexually appealing.

you need:

• 1 cooked lobster
• a glass of that leftover white wine from the weekend
• 1 small white onion, diced
• a lot of chicken broth
• arborio / risotto rice
• light cream
• grated parmiggiano reggiano (i think i have one too many 'g's in that)
  

take the lobster apart. reserve the tomalley for your girlfriend if she's into that sorta thing and she has her allergy medicine present. you can get the meat out of the tiny legs by squeezing them like long, chitinous zits (i know, it sounds gross... but do it and tell me what you think it looks like). cut the meat into bite size chunks. reserve the lobster shell.

take reserved lobster shell and put it into a pot with the chicken broth. warm that up.

put onion in pan with olive oil (oh, yeah, you need a little olive oil to make this work) and saute until translucent. add the rice and stir it around for a bit, then dump the glass of wine and watch it sizzle.

at this point you'll be doing what makes risotto into risotto... start ladling the broth into the rice. only put one or two ladle-fuls into the rice at a time, then stir it until it's absorbed. keep the pan over medium heat. you might want to be drinking the rest of the bottle of wine or some beer while doing this. ladle, stir, repeat. eventually your grains of rice will become all full and pouty like Angelina Jolie's lips-- taste it (again, like Angelina Jolie's lips) every so often. when you feel the rice is just about done (not too mushy, but not hard), add a bit o' cream and the lobster meat, and stir it in. the plumpifying of the rice should take, oh, i dunno, 20ish minutes... so if you start it at 8:40 on a monday night you'll be able to plate it up just in time to watch 24. take off heat, stir in cheese and serve.

feed rice to significant other. if no significant other is present, more risotto for you. pat self on back and consume remaining alcohol in house. pass out in your work clothes and wake up two hours late for work with couch marks on face. pick up a medium dunkees iced coffee with milk and a little sugar and hope nobody sees you coming in to work at 10:30. write a blog entry about what you did last night and then go to lunch.

why I'm going back to school

this sums up the current state of my career nicely:

(taken from www.cartoonbank.com)

canto-pop

Parties with my girlfriend are always quite unique. She is from Hong Kong but has lived in the States for... geez, at least 7 years... so any social gathering is bound to be an always-exciting mix of American and Cantonese customs.

Her birthday party last weekend was no exception. As I alluded to before, we massacred some lobsters (and that was delicious). Between all us gwai-tsais (white folk) eating the meat and the HK folk eating the tomalley, we polished off a good six of 'em in no time flat. Lobsters make a great (albeit costly) party attraction... there is some sort of combination of excitement and morbid curiosity by the partygoers as they watch their pending meals waving their claws and throwing up every defense they have against their fleshy executioners and the large pot of boiling water that will turn them from crustaceans into dinner. But the point of this post isn't about lobster-cide (or is it?)... I have thought long and hard about that topic and maybe I'll visit it some day (because it's not official unless it's on the internet), but until then, you can check out David Foster Wallace's take on the Maine Lobster Festival, as published in a recent issue of Gourmet magazine:

http://www.lobsterlib.com/feat/davidwallace/page/lobsterarticle.pdf

Anyhow, after a long evening of splattering tomalley all over the kitchen with a dull cleaver and drinking keg cans of Heineken and Johnnie Walker Black with green tea (it's all the rage in Hong Kong now), the conversation naturally made its way to strip clubs. For whatever reason I had mentioned that on a recent jaunt to a club with friends for a bachelor party, one of the partygoers managed to buy some... er... oral services from a stripper. The first question out of most peoples' mouths was 'how much did it cost?', to which I told them '$100'.

One of the females present (let's call her... JJ... and she was one of the Canto-crowd) became appalled. I thought- actually, I think we all thought- she was about to launch into a tirade about why paying for sexual services is an abomination, but her problem with the story was thus:

"He paid $100 for that?! DIU, you can get the full thing in Chinatown for like $130!"

(your second Cantonese lesson of the day- "Diu" is the favorite phrase of most Cantonese speakers I know- they're quite a crass bunch. AFAIK it's somewhere between 'shit' and 'fuck' on the curse-o-meter.)

...nobody really knew how to react to JJ's seemingly insider knowledge... so she continued to talk about how my friend got ripped off and then the various services he could buy in and around the Boston area for much better prices. I couldn't tell how her boyfriend reacted to this but he lit up another cigarette and moved to a chair across the room. JJ proceeded to drink more until the combination of her allergies to lobster and beer caught up with her and her boyfriend had to carry her home.

Anyhow, so if any of you are looking to get the 'whole package' at some point in Chinatown, now you'll know what kind of ATM withdrawal you'll have to make beforehand. Good to know.

the passion of the dave

We had a pretty bizarre gig last night.

Glen is from Westboro and has known this guy Dave since he was a kid. My best description of Dave is that he applies the Red Sox fan mentality to every aspect of his life. Being a dyed-in-the-wool masshole, he is a New England sports nut. He has midnight opening day tix to see Revenge of the Sith (not that there's anything wrong with that). He has also been known to write entire novels about girls he dates after only dating them for a month or two (more on this later).

I forget when / how it happened, but at some point he became a fan of my band. And, in keeping with his approach to everything else in life, he became an obsessive fan of my band. I am not saying that's a bad thing at all-- if anything, a band wants all fans to be as vehemently band-crazy as possible. (At least my band does. So ronery...) So he started coming to our practices, learning how to play guitar and learning our songs on it, yadda yadda. He makes custom t-shirts with our logo on it that he wears to every gig. He even followed us to Pittsburgh.

At one point in Dave's life- his freshman year of college, I found out last night- he found alcohol. Again, not to be one to shy away from his personal inclinations, he went all the way with that dreaded yet delicious spirit. Over the next two years, he went through an epic battle with the stuff. His addiction was so intense that he had to force himself to quit when he was 21. This brings us to last night, which was a celebration of 10 years of Dave's not drinking.

Dave thought it would be a lark to have some bands play his party. Since Dave has earned the title of #1 Fan in the Great Book of Focusin, we couldn't turn down this gig. So Dave rents the Knights of Columbus Hall in Westboro for a night. My band and our drummer's other band- whose lead singer was apparently once romantically involved w/ Dave (and is now a pending protagonist in an upcoming Dave novel)- filled the bill for the night. Ha, knight.

The KofC, as far as I understand, is an organization dedicated to... basically supporting the Bush administration. Words that come to mind when I think of them are "Family Values", "Christian", "Conservative", "you don't get your Communion if you vote against our endorsed candidates"... you get it. (somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.) Being a fairly liberal Jew I was tempted to show up wearing a yarmulke and rainbow coalition shirt but the shirt's at the cleaners so no inflammatory quasi-political statements for me last night. Anyhow, I showed up around the same time as Dave and found our stage area- directly under a big ol' crucifix. (is 'crucifix' supposed to be capitalized?) This was gonna be fun.

Eventually my band mates trickled in and we unloaded our gear... at which point we realized our drummer had forgotten his cymbals and somebody had forgotten to bring mic stands. Band drama ensued; Glen and Meekus got all worked up and Goss, who had to arrange for someone to bring the gear out to us (Westboo is about 45 mins away from where we practice), got all defensive and angry. Dave wanted to play an acoustic set before us so we fashioned a makeshift mic stand out of a tripod and some hockey tape and root marm... and eventually the rest of our gear was delivered and the night went off without a hitch. I may have a hernia now from carting around all that heavy equipment, but that's the price you pay for coolness.

And now I'm off to buy a dozen lobsters to keep in my bath tub for my girlfriend's birthday party. Real kinky shit.

Party on, evil Wayne.

Two things I don't like about the music industry, pt 1:

for those of you who don't know, I'm going to school in the fall for a master's in music technology at NYU... so in preparation for that, I'm studying all I can about music theory, the music industry, and music technology.

I recently picked up the new Mars Volta and Hot Hot Heat CDs (both rock) and noticed two things that really irk me that I'm sure is a result of record industry practices and NOT what the artists had in mind:

1) FBI ANTI-PIRACY WARNING! Both these CDs had a big obnoxious ring of text emblazoned on their faces warning anyone that contemplates copying the CD and pirating it not to or else the FBI will send them to Guantanamo Bay. The Mars Volta CD also had a presidential-seal looking FBI warning covering its artwork on the back.

Anyone who's gone through their 'rents record collections knows that, at least at one magical point in time (the 60s), album artwork is part of the whole package when it comes to music. I guess the importance of album art is diminishing as electronically delivered music gains in popularity, but I still think good album art- the cover, in particular- can really add to the whole package. Sure, Nevemind or Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band would still kick ass even without covers... but the covers just put those albums over the top.

So how do you think the Beatles would feel if the RIAA/FBI/whomever slapped a big ol' FBI ANTIPIRACY WARNING right across one of their brilliant album covers? I doubt that the Mars Volta nor Hot Hot Heat were very happy w/ those labels, either. Does that really discourage file sharing anyway?!

2) Have you ever wondered why your B-52s CD from the late 80s (gotta love Cosmic Thing) is so much quieter than Jay-Z / Linkin Park's Collision Course? Or any CD you've bought in the past few years? Read this article:

http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/articles/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C

yeah, a lot of it's wordy, but if anything, just look at the pictures. Basically, there has been a competition for a while now on making music as LOUD as possible so it stands out from the rest of the pack. The problem with that is you lose the delicious dynamics of the music in the process- sure, that might not be a problem for a Lil' Jon song, but if Dark Side Of The Moon was compressed to all hell, it would be really tough to listen to it all the way through and to experience the musical / emotional roller coaster that the album takes you along on.

When my band, Focusin, was going to master our album, our engineer asked us an interesting question: "Do you want Sheryl Crowe / Pearl Jam early 90s levels, or do you want Linkin Park / Michelle Branch 2003 levels?" When he brought up the waveforms of those songs, the difference was astonishing. We opted for levels that you would be likely to find on a late 90s recording. The other day I listened to good ol' Heavens To Murgatroid all the way through on a long car ride, and then Hot Hot Heat's Elevators (released this year) came on. It nearly blew my ears out. I actually jumped and almost swerved off the road!

Will the trend be reversed? Again, read the article above. Maybe at some point people will grow weary of their music CONSTANTLY YELLING AT THEM and wake up and smell the coffee... but then again, never underestimate the stupidity of people in large groups.

This rant is over.

I will cristen this blog like any good jew should christen
something... by talking about the strip club I went to last night.

So if you do a little math, you'll notice that yesterday was the cinco
de mayo. To celly-brate, some friends and I gathered at the Sunset Cantina on Comm Ave and ordered flights of tequila. We concluded that tequila is tequila... and that we were drunk.

After a very homoerotic dessert (chocolate fondue, three forks), we
proceeded to my neck of the woods- Malden- to go to a strip club that
I have been intrigued by for my two years of Malden residency but hadn't
found a reason to go to. Helloooo, the Squire. We were
goaded into going by a strip club connoisseur (am I allowed to use real
names on a blog?), who claimed that if it weren't already 11:45 there
were better options but the Squire would have to do. Anyhow...
I've never been to a strip club with a metal detector in the
entrance. In fact, the only times I have been through a metal
detector is at airports and maybe when I was visiting important
buildings in Washington, DC. I was pretty sure that our
waittress started out as a dancer there 30 years ago to fuel her high
school crack habit. Needless to say, this was a classy
establishment.

I agreed w/ mr. connoisseur- the Foxy Lady in Providence is a far
better club- but I'm glad I finally can check off The Squire on my
things-to-do-before-i-get-the-hell-out-of-malden-forever-and-never-admit-to-having-lived-there-ever-again
list. And now I can type no more. I'm wicked hungover.

the unwritten rules of bloggership

okay, I just started a 'blog on xanga and realized xanga ain't not very good (just like my grammar). i could use myspace but i don't want 13-year-olds posing as 16-year-olds to steal my ideas. and i think my toaster has a blogging function now. so anyhow... am i allowed to take my two posts from my xanga blog and put 'em here? do i have to delete my xanga content or can i have the same posts across two blogs?

oh dear, i've wasted my life.