endless, nameless

the great trans-borough race of aught six

2006-01-28T11:23:00.000-05:00

I'm going to an absurd shopping cart race today.

something to aspire to

2006-01-17T13:48:00.000-05:00

from the new york times via gawker... the best worst most important jewish producer in hip hop today... complete with 39 ct bling ring. he dated paris hilton *and* lil' kim. a class act.

maybe this is where my schooling will take me.

(words)*1000

2006-01-16T23:43:00.000-05:00

found in chinatown
Originally uploaded by redherring22.

now that i have a nifty cameraphone and i figured out how to get pictures off of it without paying the verizon butt-rape sucker tax, i think i'll be taking more pictures of my random adventures throughout ny. so check out my flickr photostream for the more interesting view of how my life is going with a particular emphasis on stuff i eat.

so much to say

2006-01-11T17:02:00.000-05:00

hi.

so it's been a little while, huh? for the 0.3 of you that may possibly still check this, here are a few things that have been happening in my world...

- the semester ended triumphantly! some pretty kick-ass grades (even if they were arbitrarily assigned by my teachers) and some kinda neat projects... for one class I used the computer's text-to-speech function combined with a vocoder effect driven by the pitch of some input to make a crude computer singing effect... in class i got my powerbook to sing 'i read the news today, oh boy... the english army had just won the war...' to much laughter. good stuff. maybe i'll make an mp3 of it so you can hear what the hell i'm talking about. and i think i wrote a sorta neat paper on upcoming wireless technologies in the computer world and how they'll impact the world of audio (i suppose i could send it to you if you ask politely or nakedly)
- i've been playing a lot of guitar in a couple of bands. i ended up leaving dead language because I realized that next semester is going to be ludicrously busy for me and Jon and I are working on another band that we've started from scratch... tentatively called Vice Stevens. Sounds something like Sublime mixed with The Police mixed with The Strokes mixed with the Chili Peppers and maybe a little Muse. i found out that i get free access to nyu's recording studios (a nice perk of giving them $30k / year to go there) so i might as well take advantage of that... so the band will probably be recording februaryish and will be gigging in the spring. i'll keep you posted. whaddya think of the name? any other suggestions?
- park slope still rocks

okay... i suppose i should finish this beer and get something to eat before band practice. and i suppose i'll be resurrecting this blog, unless you have any objections (GENITAL WARTS!). love,
bennett

don't you want to see what daddy does for a living?

2005-12-13T14:51:00.000-05:00

blow me

what was that?

uh... show me

ok i will. here are some weird projects i made for my java class. and to think, i could have been a doctor.

homework 4 (weird noisy composition that i generated mostly with programs that my teacher sorta likes)

final project (my attempt at making a program that can take a melody and convert it into a musical score. doesn't work well but sorta neat)

you'll need the jsyn plugin to be able to tinker with either.

signature

2005-12-09T17:14:00.000-05:00

one of our java teacher's buddies came up with the itunes signature maker, which goes through your itunes library and makes a 'signature' from your songs. here's mine.

if you've got yourself a nicely pimped out itunes music library, you should go to the itunes signature maker site and make your own. but beware, I judge people based on their music tastes.

actually, I kinda wished the itunes signature maker would have picked more a chili peppers song and had placed the beatles clip more prominently, but it's still pretty damn cool.

i found out that one of the coolest music venues around is only a few blocks from my apartment. last night daver and our neighbor jojo went to the southpaw lounge and saw apollo sunshine and sam champion play some goddamn incredible music. sam champion covered you can't do that, a great rockin' lennon tune off of a hard day's night to commemorate John Lennon. I went up to both bands after the sets and gushed like a teenage schoolgirl... they liked the praise and all, but I'm sure they would have been happier if i actually were a teenage schoolgirl. maybe one day i'll be in a cool successful hip local band too. then i can lose 50 lbs.

hoping to finish java tonight, DAP paper on wireless audio is done... all that's left is music theory and aural comp finals and my crazy MAX/MSP guitar jam tool and then a wonderfully nihilistic winter break.

the future is here...

2005-12-01T11:11:00.000-05:00

and it is USB-powered!
behold... the fundue pot!

where have all the bennetts gone?

2005-11-29T21:12:00.000-05:00

sorry, joey joe joe junior shabadoo, i've been scatterbrained and therefore have been unable to come up with a coherent post for a while. but then i must ask myself... are any of my posts coherent?

final projects are upon me. for one class (java) i'm writing an application that you can sing into and it'll transcribe your lovely melody into musical notation. maybe i'll even finish that up tonight. for another i'm writing a big paper on wireless audio. thrilling, eh?

i just got a new cell phone because i was the only person in ny who had t-mobile, so of course i had to get a ridiculous one that takes pictures, video, plays mp3s, and does bluetooth. it also gives great head. i may use the phone's picture ability to take pictures of all the places i eat around nyc- i do eat a lot- and write about them. yes, this blog is being taken over by my gut. and i also had a wonderful moment of absurdity in class today when our teacher was showing us java networking and music, which inevitably led to us all whipping out our powerbooks and 'jamming' on our teacher's friend's website, webdrum. unfortunately the ridiculous sounds didn't come though that well (check out the site though) but here's my bootleg video:

bennett's java class

(note: you might have to right-click / control-click it and download the file to disk then open it up with quicktime player for it to work)

and with that it's back to my final java project. i'll let you know when i'm done so you can all sing me some melodies. keep on takin'er easy.

...our teacher was so excited by our 'performance' yesterday that he videotaped it w/ his palm zire... here are the videos he shot, maybe with better sound than my cellyphone...

behold

2005-11-16T11:52:00.000-05:00

could this be the most brilliant absurdist hoax ever? i have no idea what it's for, but the great pointed archer people are counter-protesting the striking NYU grad students in washington square park. they have a large inflatable rat next a large inflatable person to protest rats being vilified in union strikes, and they want to change the name of the rat to the 'great pointed archer'. they give out free t-shirts and stuff too. so either there is some deep-pocketed absurdist philanthropist out there or there's going to be something coming from this soon.

great pointed archer website

homework 3

2005-11-14T15:12:00.000-05:00

i wrote a program that does this to sounds for one of my classes. i figured i'd let y'all in on the freaky shit that goes on around here. real freaky-like.

homework 3

i think i'm going to get tenured around here. especially when i write my flatulence simulator for my final thesis.

things you can do when you're a student

2005-11-10T11:06:00.000-05:00

daydrinking. if only i had the time...

mmmm.... new york

2005-10-29T16:15:00.000-04:00

yet another reason why new york is wonderful... the delicious, mysterious maple syrup smell that wofted across the city the other day. sure, we're all gonna die of mapleborne illness shortly... but it was worth it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/29/nyregion/29smell.html

5 minutes of iFame

2005-10-24T21:06:00.000-04:00

my brother (who also happens to be in the same program as I am at NYU) wrote an article that was posted on createdigitalmusic.com, one of those music nerd sites I so love to frequent. rock on.

link

3 things that rocked my world today in the span of 15 minutes

2005-10-24T19:46:00.000-04:00

1) the dosa man at washington square park south. apparently he's a very important fixture in the food scene of this area-- there is always a line at his little food stand for his fresh-made dosas. this (search for 'dosa') is an article about him. Delicious.

2) while eating my dosa in washington square park on this lovely frigid afternoon, some guy started playing the flute. normally I'm not so into that sort of thing, he did this sort of beatboxing thing as he was playing and i quickly realized he was playing an incredibly funked-up version of the super mario brothers song. as i polished off the dosa and complimentary lentil soup, he launched into the sesame street song. if only i had more sheckels on me.

3) i had a bit of time to kill before class, so i took a detour and noticed the John Lennon educational tour bus parked outside the NYU bookstore. I had wanted to see this bus before up in Boston, so I stopped by and met the nicest people ever (since the dosa man, at least) who basically drive this amazingly pimped-out recording studio packed into a tour bus around the country for 10 months out of the year. They go to schools, colleges, and festivals, and somehow get a group of people to come in- no matter whether they're seasoned guitarists or have never played a musical note in their lives-- and over the course of a day, write, record, and mix an original song and give everyone that participated a DVD. These guys seriously rock for turning on so many people to music and recording. If the bus ever makes it to your town, take a tour and shake these guys' hands.

okay, but really, I'm writing this because I'm trying to avoid doing my Java homework.

love
b

what have I gotten myself into?!

2005-10-24T11:13:00.000-04:00

mech2001

The woman in the video is the professor for one of my classes and she's using the software that we're learning in class to make those... interesting... cow-in-labor sounds. Enjoy!

you know what really grinds my gears?

2005-10-13T12:47:00.000-04:00

a) shitty weather + not having a car. I was (and still am) very happy not to have a car, but getting around on days like today
2) the MTA on the weekends. at least in brooklyn. at least in october on shitty rainy days. track construction, terrorist threats, and a pervasive urine smell all contribute to this.
d) time-warner and 'supervisors' there that take themselves too seriously but still don't call you back as promised (yeah, that's you, supervisor ms. shaniqua). long story short, we're finally going to get internet probably next tuesday after maybe 6 or so hours on the phone and a dozen or so phone calls to time warner. but we'll see.

but on to better news... I got (another) part-time job, this time programming for a startup company that's going to be making some high-end audio software stuff. i can say no more, but it's a pretty damn cool opportunity (somehow they were impressed that i worked on missiles... how little they know) so i went out and treated myself to a new powerbook yesterday. it's gonna suck when apple announces new powerbooks next week because i've waited maybe 6 months to buy one but... i'll shut up now.

okay time to hand in my java homework... more posts when i get internets at home next week. i'll be in boston this weekend if anyone wants to have a playdate.

b

guten morgen

2005-10-05T10:47:00.000-04:00

no internet nor cable tv at our apartment is rough, but hopefully that will be remedied soon. the move went well; we all may have sustained comical injuries while trying to move daver's brother's 300+lb tv up one flight of stairs (we ended up flipping it up the stairs end-over-end... somehow it still works) and i drank a lot of beer last weekend to celebrate the move. and now i'm mooching free internet from a very hip place that makes delicious coffee beverages in park slope called the tea lounge. some form of mega-housewarming will be happening soon. get your ass down here.

more love and pictures when i have more internet.

a whole lotta screwin!

2005-09-29T16:32:00.000-04:00

i took my ibook apart the other night. i think i was working on it for maybe six or so hours. it was basically unusable because you had to keep the screen very still and only at a specific angle or else the backlight would flicker on and off as you use it. through some internet searching i found that this is a common problem with ibooks and i found the part you had to replace. unfortunately maybe 4 months ago when i decided to take the computer apart to get to the root of this problem, i completely stripped two screws that held the bottom casing on, making it very difficult to remove the case without cracking it.

enter the ez-out. my father brought me home this two-piece system for removing stripped screws- one is a drill but that you use to bore into the middle of the screw, and the other is like a reverse-threaded screw, that as you unscrew it, it grips the beheaded screw tighter and tighter until it comes out. pretty neat. so i managed to get the bottom of the ol' ibook's case off and set about searching for the part to be replaced.

i took out the keyboard. i took out my wireless card. i removed the bottom panel, the top panel, the screen's casing, a whole lot of very thin shielding, the screen's backlight and inverter, and i'd say 50 or so screws, all of which were well under an inch long-- there were quite a few that were maybe half a centimeter. finally the whole bugger came apart:

cut to two in the morning. after a couple of false starts of completely assembling it and realizing the trackpad didn't work (there was a second cable for it that i inadvertently knocked out), I booted up. The screen works! The backlight is fixed! Let's see... still get wireless internet... trackpad and keyboard back to normal... speakers making sound... CD drive ejects and.... crap. disks won't show up on my desktop. i have a feeling it's some metal bar that i couldn't put back (i think i used its screw for some other part) so to get that back in would take another complete dis-and-reassembly, and i'm really not ready for that. i can put up with using an external drive or my desktop computer when i need to read optical disks until i get my coveted powerbook.

there are a good twenty or so screws still sitting on my desktop, and there are a few bulges that weren't there before (isn't that the story of my life), but i have still been able to do my homework on the train and in the library with the bugger, so i'm fine with that.

if i haven't scared you away yet, you can see pictures of my ibook's vivisection on my flickr page. and if you're disappointed that this post was about me taking apart my computer and not about me having sex, well... so am i. so am i.

the art of grifting

2005-09-27T00:34:00.000-04:00

"good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen!"

there are apparently rules to follow to get your fellow subway riders' attention, and this is the opening phrase. as soon as this phrase is spoken, a palpable sense of uneasiness fills the subway car as you and your fellow riders are wondering- just what does this person want from me?

the ensuing speech usually follows a standard form. the speaker quickly identifies him or herself, explains his or her cause, and whether they are asking for your money or for you to consider accepting jebus, it always ends with a 'thank you, and God bless!'

I've heard quite a few of these speeches in my one month of daily subway riding in new york. Some of the stories are pretty rough- there was the AIDS patient who had lost control of his bowels and had to wear adult diapers (he wanted money for his medication) and there were two sisters, maybe ages 12 and 8 and with no parents in sight, selling candy bars to raise money for their cheerleading team. there are the singer / songwriters, whom i usually feel like i should give money to but rarely end up doing so. i saw one guy selling a book of poetry he had written- i actually thought that was pretty cool, but I wasn't feeling very social and didn't want to have to talk to him about his book, and he was perfectly fine selling his book to the cute-ish girls sitting next to me and explaining the poems to them.

i've seen some people trying to sell the rest of the train on the whole jebus* thing, too. my apologies to the evangelists among you (what the fuck are you doing reading my blog? i thought you didn't believe in the internet... and gravity) but... man, those people really get to me. maybe it's part of the whole Jewish ethos of non-evangelism-- correct me if i'm wrong, but from what I know, we don't ask you to become one of us (hell, I'm sure a Chasid would take issue with me even calling myself a Jew)-- in fact, if you want to convert, you have to ask a rabbi three times before he'll 'let you in'. (Sorry for giving out our Big Secret, fellas). well, this morning a fat white guy with a white-haired beard gave his rendition of the Great Subway Speech:

"Good Morning, ladies and gentlemen! I'm not here to panhandle you or try to sell you bagels or candy, I just want to tell you good morning from Jesus Christ, the real Jesus Christ- I'm not a Mormon or a Jehova's Witness!"

At that moment he looked around either to see if people were saying "PRAISE THE LAWD!!!!" and falling on the floor or to see if there were any Mormons or Jehova's Witnii who were ready to take up arms with him. I kinda feel like he threw the bagel thing in there to make a swipe at Jews, but that's just my standard-issue persecution complex taking over. I did make eye contact with a few people who were rolling their eyes at the guy. Keep your evangelism outta my morning commute, jerkass.

Anyhow, Maybe the Great Subway Speech is to grifters and streetside evangelists what The Aristocrats is to comedians. Anyone have any ideas for mine?

squawk

2005-09-22T15:01:00.000-04:00

i usually hate these quizzes, but this one's funny. i would have rather gotten 'monkey', but internet quizzes don't lie!

You Are A: Parakeet!

This popular bird is kept as a pet in homes all over the world. Originating from Australia, parakeets like warm weather and lots of seeds and fruit. They are also known for being messy and quite loud! But you cannot look at one without falling in love.

You were almost a: Monkey or a Duck
You are least like a: Turtle or a Groundhog Take the Cute Animal Test!

when i look back at all the crap i learned last week

2005-09-21T22:25:00.000-04:00

(it's a wonder i learned anything at all)

observations and things i've learned over the past week or so:

- you can't stop moving in NYC. at least whenever i'm in nyc and i'm not sitting down, i feel obliged to walk around- if i'm waiting to meet someone, i'll circle the block just so as not to be the clog in the artery on that street. compare this to four or so years of days in which my entire physical activity consisted of walks to and from my car and to the cafeteria within my building. i may have lost a bit of weight in the last couple of weeks on this basis alone.
- there are more restaurants per capita in nyc- and especially on university (between broadway and something)- than... who the hell knows, anywhere i've been though. and the prices really aren't bad, especially if you know where to look. there's a place called Dojo that's a block away from all of my classes (which are all in the same building) that i've probably been to 4 or so times since starting class... they have hippie-ish and quasi-japanese food, like tofu-hijiki burgers, and they serve breakfast until 5pm. you can get a soy burger there for like $3. Good stuff. also there's a place i'm fascinated by called beard papa, a japanese snackey treat joint that specializes in cream puffs. mmmmmm.
- if you add all of the odd partials of a signal (i may be saying this wrong), you get a square wave. i.e.... sin(x) + sin(3x)/3 + sin(5x)/5 + sin(7x)/7... repeated to infinity... will result in a 'square wave'. ray, wes... help explain this?
- corollary to the last one: i'm making a webpage for my nyu work, because that's what everyone does. i'll keep you posted when that happens so you can look at my nifty square-wave-generatin' java applets and research papers on such cool topics as cochlear implants and pitch recognition. eventually stuff will end up at http://home.nyu.edu/~bak282 .
- if i absorb 40% of what i'm supposed to learn over the next semester, i will rule the world.
- and finally and most importantly... freshmen girls are much, much hotter when you're a creepy grad student.

iko-oh, iko-oh, everybody, let's go!

2005-09-16T00:22:00.000-04:00

146 7th ave.

i'm moving to park slope, bitches.

well, probably. that is if our application goes through. apparently the place is nice... our realtor showed it to a group of girls who tried to pressure him into giving it to them by offering him a check on the spot, but all we have to do is cough up a massive amount of money for semi- and un-employed asses and it *should* be ours. i told you that my future apartment will be occupied by two students and an aspiring filmmaker? yeah, a landlord's dream.

so this is quite exciting. the place is awesome- the bedrooms might not be that large, but they're certainly not manhattan small, and the price is right, and the kitchen has a gas stove and lovely granite countertops, and we live above some hippie juice bar. which probably means we can buy some dank weed there. i haven't used the word 'dank' since... ever.

scratch those last two sentences. moving in to a place is quite a financial kick in the nuts though... the whole first month / last month / security / realtor's fee (in our case, we each have to lay out something like $4000) is not that fun. but the experience of getting this place was so much better than the experience we had earlier today, when we met with a broker in manhattan at city apartments. apparently all they do is mindfuck you-- you go in there with expectations, they tell you that whatever your expectations are, they won't be met, then they tell you that they deal with "95% of the apartments in manhattan" and that "you'll have to make some sacrifices." they'll interrupt their conversations with you by taking cell phone calls mid-sentence- obviously a girlfriend calling you to pick up half and half on the way home is more important than dealing with clients at hand- and they'll make ridiculous claims that if even one of you doesn't pass the credit check, you'll need one guarrantor who earns 80 TIMES the monthly rent of the apartment annually- i.e. for a $3,000 apartment, you need someone who makes 1/4 a million dollars a year- for the landlord to consider your lease. so basically they play this horrible game of intimidation that is probably designed to make the more weak-minded (usually me, except i had two other guys with me) cry and then cave in and take a 200sf studio apartment in a shitty location (anyone ever been to roosevelt island?) because the realtor convinced them that they really can't do any better. you ask any questions and they say 'that's just how it is... this is manhattan!' so if the place in park slope goes through, we will be done with this bullshit real estate game once and for all... at least until daver decides to break the lease a month into things when he realizes he really misses his e*trade job and that filmmaking ain't for him. (he could say the same about me and good ol' raytheon, i suppose. especially if he had the opposable thumbs necessary to operate a computer keyboard.)

classes are pretty damn cool. two are heavy on the programming, as i probably have mentioned-- one's in java, and one is basically (for those of you who know this kinda stuff) LabView for musical stuff. Two are my music-y classes, one in theory and one in aural (tee hee) comprehension... and those have already been kicking my ass in terms of how much work i have for them. but hopefully by the end of my years of musical remediation (oy) i'll be able to do neat tricks like be able to tell you what scale degree you farted in (if you give me the tonic of the fart-scale) and compose some nifty atonal pieces by simply disobeying everything they taught me. then there's the big survey class where we gloss over all there is in the world of digital audio and music. it has a pretty intimidating textbook that reads like stereo instructions, but it's going to be quite interesting. it is through this class that we are supposed to develop our own identities as grad students in this program by writing weekly papers and doing frequent oral (tee hee) reports on topics of our choosing. i'm debating whether to do my first report on cochlear implants (basically something you can implant into a Deaf person's brain to get them to hear again- pretty f'ing amazing, if you ask me) or something like wireless technology and how it can apply to music. there is also the big world of simulating the analog world in a computer- i.e. a company like line6 that makes guitars, amps, and recording interfaces that pretend they're other guitars, amps, and recording interfaces. that stuff's pretty damn amazing and i do have to keep the bottom line in mind as i dive into a topic that may very well lead to my master's thesis-- what will i want to do and what company (if any) will i want to work for when this whole grad school charade is over?

i also had commented on how diverse our program is, not just in ethnicity but in people's pursuits in life. we have old and young, male (mostly) and female (under 10 / 35 in our year). we have people who own their own indie labels and their own studios. and i found out last week that one girl in our program is a pop star from the united arab emirates. wicked.

i may have finally caught up on sleep, which means i could think about doing homework now (12:42 in the morning). this grad school thing is certainly no walk in a park. but you know what? my brain has really missed me. i've been neglecting it for quite some time.

someone say 'hi' sometime. but preferrably in electronic form. i'm running out of daytime minutes.

love,
b

bollywood thrill

2005-09-09T01:47:00.000-04:00

classes began. i was hoping i'd be posting more but this shuttling back and forth between westchester and the city sucks. i either have to fix my ibook* or buy a powerbook. anyhow... where to begin? so my first class- Java programming for music systems or something like that- the teacher didn't show. one of the graduate assistants improvised for maybe 20 minutes and showed us what he did for the class- basically a webpage that will make bleeps and squeaks randomly. very practical. so not having the professor show up to my 1st class and being led by some GAs was a bit disheartening at least.

so that ended and we then had the big survey class that every master's in music technology student has to take- Digital Audio Processing. This course basically covers as many concepts as possible in the digital audio realm (which is quite vast) and will eventually lead to a thesis-like project. One of the graduate assistants did his work on cochlear implants, which really interests me. All the first year master's students in my program are in the class- i think there are about 35 of us. Pretty small program. The professor's a very intelligent and well-spoken guy. We did introductions in the class and it really made me appreciate the diversity of people in our program. Many many music geeks of all ilk (ilk?)- some studio owners, some avant garde electronic music producers, some married old people, some guy who apparently made scores for Nickelodeon shows (i want to be his friend), and an Indian woman who was in the software industry but really liked Bollywood movies so she wants to get into scoring them.

Shit, it's 2:03am. I'll have to fill y'all in on my music theory and aural comprehension class soon but they seem like they'll be very interesting and I'm quite intimidated by them because i'm in that class with a bunch of music major underclassmen who seem to know it all already. The biggest shell shock of this whole experience so far is the feeling of having something excellent expected of me. I mean, I've spent the past 4 years being told exactly what's expected of me (not bloody much) and I seemed to do pretty damn well at that with minimum effort... but this grad school thing, the nature of the assignments is kind of a sliding scale. I could do my DAP homework in 5 minutes and do it decently and correctly... but in the first handout our teacher gave for that class, he said that 'fulfilling the requirements will result in a satisfactory grade of a C'. A *C*! I can't get that in my master's program that I so valiantly left my life behind to pursue! ...Have I become a grade-grubber? Because I feel like for the next two years there will always be the pressure of doing just a little more on everything to make things that much better. But ya know, maybe that isn't the worst thing that could happen to me.

The brooklyn apartment quest is also moving along nicely. More soon. Now sleep. Ug.

oh, before i sleep: this picture (yes, photoshopped) is brilliant and horrible. but mostly brilliant.

'night

*my 2-year old trusty ibook developed a bit of a problem- the backlight for the screen goes off if the screen is open to the wrong angle, which makes working on it very awkward. being the overzealous geek that i am, i figured out what the problem was- apparently it's very common- ordered the replacement part, and tried to open the ibook up. problem is that i stripped two of the screws on it and now it's mostly screwless and the screen still hasn't been fixed. i heard all i can really do now is use a dremel tool to remove the heads from the screws. i really really really covet a 15" powerbook but i also really really really don't have the money. but since when have i cared about that?

longview

2005-09-05T21:17:00.000-04:00

Classes start tomorrow. Giggidy. I've had surprisingly few dreams of walking into a final exam in my underwear and having not gone to any classes at all that semester- this used to happen at least once a semester to me, so maybe I've conquered my subconscious in my old age. Who knows.

I hung out w/ good ol' Daver Epstein the other night. We shared tales of just how giddy we are to have left our respective soul-sucking jobs* and crappety crap cities** (daver having quit a job at e*trade in DC to move to NYC to become a filmmaker, and me... aww, you know my story) and to have ended up in NYC pursuing what we think we want to do with our lives at this point in our lives until we realize that it's really pointless and we walk back to our old corporate jobs with tails between our legs... but it should be fun while it lasts. Anyhow, for some reason, Daver has always seemed to have a very vested (vested?) interest in my life and where i take it, so he offered me three pieces of advice that he thought I should follow. He listed them 'in order of increasing controversy' and I will repeat them here for your consideration / amusement:
1) I should only wear t-shirts. no more collars.
2) I should get a punk rock haircut. But not full-out punk rock. Maybe dignified punk-rock. Like that mohawk-like haircut that Maddox Jolie has. stupid lucky brad pitt.
3) I should get me some Ritalin / Adderall. I suspect the last one is equally for Daver, who would like to score some from me, as it is for me and my horrible textbook case of attention deficit disorder.

So contrary to my and many others' expectations, I am now most likely NOT going to be spending the next two years in my parents' house... Daver, Tom, and I will probably be getting a place in Brooklyn in October. Home has been treating me well, though... I think my father and I have developed a sort of mutualistic alcoholism... my mom can't drink, but my dad has a taste for expensive Chardonnay, so he will always ask me to join him in a very passive-aggressive way that I believe I've inherited from him... i.e. "I wouldn't mind it if you happened to open up another wine" or "were you thinking of having another glass?" But hey, who am I to complain about drinking wine that is a good $20 / bottle more expensive than what I usually treat myself to...

I have picked my classes. Thanks to the music theory course I took this summer (clue #214 to Raytheon that I was quitting, but nobody really seemed to catch on until I threw the shit directly into the fan) I placed out of basic musicianship in the horrible music theory and history exam I took last Monday, so I'm taking Music Theory I this semester. Maybe I'll get to re-meet the hot sophomore acting chick who I sat next to during the placement exam again. Hellooooo, rebound! (oh yeah, so I'm single now, too) (Winnie, you don't read this blog, right?) My other courses are pretty dorky- two are programming-related, one in Java and one in this music programming language / environment called MAX/MSP, which apparently is used very extensively by the performing community. So maybe I'll develop my electronica alter-ego this semester. I'm accepting all submissions for names. And I'm also taking the big survey course that all the students in the grad program (I think 35 each year maybe?) take that goes over all sorts of concepts of music, technology, and the intersection of the two. One of the grad students that has been advising me on course selection did his thesis on cochlear implants as a result of a paper he wrote for that class, so that sounds quite interesting. And my school week ends on Wednesday at 1:45 pm. Not too shabby.

And that's that. I still haven't put pictures of Matt & Vicki's beautiful wedding nor the afterparty ('shantytown 2005') with the jumping castle and dunk tank online, but I will soon. I also have some pictures and bootleg video clips from the awesomely outrageous Green Day / Jimmy Eat World concert that Sandy was so wonderfully kind enough to take me to last week. And did I mention I'm single for the first time in 4 years?

Take a number,
B

*sorry, my dear raytheon lovers
**sorry, my dear boston sympathizers

don't come 'round here no more

2005-08-28T22:45:00.000-04:00

a quick update to tell the one or two people who read this blog and haven't already verified that i've survived my move and who actually care if i survive my move or not to say that i have indeed survived my move. i had my last day at work, stayed up till 3am packing and drinking champagne w/ winnie, drove a suckety suck u-haul from malden, ma to westchester, ny, unloaded the truck, moved my brother in to williamsburg, dropped the uhaul off, slept a few hours, went to a beautiful wedding in long island, got drunk before 1pm, took the train back, and now i'm trying my darndest to cram for these two mega ass-rape exams that i have tomorrow in music theory and music history that i just found out about on thursday. then i go back out to long island (huntington, methinks) for a crazy sexy post wedding party in the woods.

then maybe i'll have something to say.

love,
bennett

oregonian pix

2005-08-23T10:36:00.000-04:00

click below for some pix from bennett's crazy oregon trip:

(that's the strip club that serves $4 steaks and $2.50 gyros and has strippers that have blacklight-sensitive tattoos)

back

2005-08-22T15:03:00.000-04:00

after a long week of little sleep, a jaunt to newport, canada, new york, and portland (the oregon one, not the maine one), I'm back in Massachusetts for my last... week... EVAR. well, i'm sure i'll be back for visits, but i have a u-haul scheduled for this thursday that will officially take me from the state in which i've resided for EIGHT years back to the state where i resided for 18 years before that. i have many pictures and hilights of my trip to portland to share, including going to a strip club that serves $4 steaks and a visit to the rogue brewery for a free yard of beer on my birthday. giggidy.

updates soon!

payment and shipping info......................

2005-08-12T09:25:00.000-04:00

Have you ever seen the Chapelle Show skit where Dave Chapelle goes on a walking tour of the internet? It's exactly what you'd expect-- actually, I think there are AOL commercials like this, too-- he gets bombarded by people offering him P3NIS ENL4G3MENT P1LLS and other sexual services (the difference between the Chapelle show skit and the AOL commercials is that Chapelle ends up pursuing some of the sexual advances...).

Anyhow, my point by making that very far-fetched allegory is that the internet is quite a sketchy place. Case in point- this blog exists. But also- so as you may know, I've been trying to sell my car for a little while now. I've put ads up on craigslist and cars.com, and both sites have a very blunt warning before you submit your info. You can see craigslist's description of common scams by following the big red link at the top of every page in their cars section:

[ cashier check & wire transfer scams ]

So anyhow, I received an e-mail from someone named 'frank autos' maybe last week saying his 'client' was interested in my car. I figured, hey, let's at least see where this goes. He made an offer that was pretty reasonable, so I wrote back and asked where he lived and if he and his 'client' would like to set up a test drive. I got this this morning (in this font and everything- for some reason I couldn't un-italicize the rest of the blog entry):
---------------------------------------------
I have discussed with my Client on the price of your car he finally accepted your price,he hopes the engine is serviced and oil changed too . However,He made out a certified cashiers check of($16,000) before he
travelled for a conference,for a previous car and its shipment charges etc,but it was unfortunately sold.The amount on the check he deposited for the car is bigger than what should be paid to you now, so the check is
now meant for the total expenses which includes the purchase of your car,the pick up of the car from its present location and the shipping charges/other necessary shipping arrangements. However he has instructed us to carry on with this transaction. So you're required to deduct the cost of your car ($8,300)and send the balance of($7,700) to my client shipping agent to enable him offsett shipping charges/arrangements. once the transaction is concluded,My client shipping agent will be coming for
the pick up of the car from its present location, on an open vehicle and then drive to a pre paid shipper for shipment,and also conclude other necessary shipping arrangements.so you dont have to bother yourself about the pick up and shipping arrangements,while title papers and other necessary documets will be sent by you via fedex courier to us. Please Confirm this and provide (1) Name (2) Contact address for check payment to be delivered to you via fedex courier . Attn,please remove the add of the car from the website,
Thanks and God bless,

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

ya gotta love the 'God bless' at the end. classy.

So I may have interest from an actual human for something to the tune of $6200. I'll see if I can talk him up, but I'm sick of this crap and I just wanna sell the car already. C'est la vie.

I am NOT buying a Scion

2005-08-11T11:30:00.000-04:00

...but I'd consider the Mini after I graduate:

Best cars for singles - Forbes.com

please do not offer my god a peanut

2005-08-10T13:30:00.000-04:00

(or another Jain bites the dust)

I've been to a few weddings in my time. Maybe if I had grown up a few generations ago or if I was from one of those Red states, I and all my friends would have been married years ago and I'd already be a grandpappy. But here I am, on the verge of turning 26, and only recently has talk of marriage started to run rampant amongst my friends.

The first few weddings I went to were Catholic... I think. At least two of them were, and one was maybe more of a non-denominational thing in a little gazebo on Cape Cod with just a handful of people in attendance and someone playing the harp. At one of the weddings a big scene was made about the fact that the groom was Catholic and the bride was Protestant... I might be getting that backwards, but really, the subtlety of the situation is entirely lost on me. But last weekend, I'm proud to say, I went to an Indian wedding for the first time.

I had a decent idea of what to expect. People had told me that the groom would ride in on a horse and there would be a lot of women in saris dancing and it would be a crazy and festive occasion. Just like a wedding should be. I was also looking forward to the open bar and all-vegetarian Indian menu that was to be offered.

So I show up somewhere in NJ- like Christianity, New Jersey is mostly a mystery to me- and meet Kristin and Nick at their hotel. I knew I was in the right place because I saw another car with Massachusetts plates and an Indian family getting out of it. I get into my spiffy suit and put some salve in my hair and we head to the lobby, where the guests were to meet to embark on the procession of cars. I thought you were only allowed to disobey traffic laws for a funeral procession, but the cavalcade of cars that left from the Marriott Courtyard to head to the Stone Museum seemed to think otherwise.

Now might be a good time to mention the pictures.

Pictures from the wedding

The Stone Museum was beautiful. As you can see from the pictures, they had set up a-- crap, all I know is the Jewish word, chuppa-- in the middle of the pond, and there was a lot of red and gold and Ganesh statues... giving the whole affair a sort of Giverny-meets-India feel. It was a sunny, hot, and humid day.

We waited in the parking lot of the Stone Museum in anticipation of Akshay's grand entrance on the horse. Even though Kristin and I are friends with Sarika through work, Sarika told us to be on the groom's side because they get to have all the fun. So at around 3pm, the horse is suited up and the drummer eunuch starts tapping away on his drum. However... the bridal party hasn't even left the hotel. I suspect that this is sort of a modern-day part of the Indian wedding where the bride is supposed to initially turn away the groom, but it turns out that Sarika's side really just felt like dragging their feet.

Maybe an hour and many calls from Akshay on his BlackBerry later (again, I thought it was part of the new mixing in with the old traditions), the crowd- now full of grumpy, tired kids- gathers around the horsey and the long procession to the museum's entrance begins. The drummer plays a beat and various women take turns dancing around and in front of the horse, as if they were temptresses trying to lure Akshay away (but then I realized that they were his cousins, so that's gross and my guess was wrong). Pretty fun. We eventually make it to the entrance, where a fully decked-out Sarika was there to greet her groom to be. It was kind of tough to discern what was going on because there were a lot of people in the area and I don't think much was spoken... all I know is that they threw rice and rose petals at each other and then we went into the main area where we had to fight for cups of water (it was hot) and then sit for the ceremony.

The ceremonies I've been to have all taken place in closed or small quarters- i.e. churches or gazebos. This was a bit different in that they were on basically an island in the middle of a pond and the guests sat facing the island. It was a bit like a movie in that respect. I sat as quietly as possible so I could hear what was going on and because I thought that was what you do during a wedding ceremony... but most of the crowd didn't seem to agree. Almost everyone was milling about and talking as the ceremony was going on. Some people were on cell phones. Kids were running around. Even drinks were being passed out! I don't know... a friend told me that she heard it's okay to talk in Indian events if you're talking about the subject matter at hand-- i.e. if the chatterboxes in the crowd were talking about the ceremony taking place, then that was okay. But Mrs. Patel says she had never heard of that 'rule' before and agreed that the people were being quite rude by blabbering on while the ceremony was taking place.

Again, it was kind of tough to follow what was going on as the priest-figure (not sure what the correct title would be) was chanting and various things were going on on the 'island' that I couldn't quite see. Every so often the priest would end a chant and say in a thick Indian accent something to the effect of 'and now is the time when the bride accepts the groom...'. They at least had the forethought to hand out some elegant booklets that explained the order of the ceremony and what was going on.

After a couple of hours of 'Ommm....'-- actually, the chants at times sounded like Hebrew, so there was a vague, visceral familiarity to the whole affair-- the ceremony ended and the crowd alit to the cocktail area for drinks and vegeterian appetizers served under a Ganesh carved out of ice. Pictures were taken, drinks were had, and eventually we made our way to the dinner room. Everything seemed to be behind schedule, but I was told that's how it is at Indian weddings. Dinner was delicious, and I wish I had more room for the desserts- there were various sorbets and I think a lot of stuff made out of paneer and sugar. Eventually I got pretty drunk and started jonesing for some coffee, but since the dessert was way behind schedule- apparently we were supposed to evacuate the museum by 10pm but dessert service didn't begin until maybe 10:05- I ended up dancing instead.

I think there's a factory that produces wedding and Bar Mitzvah and other special event DJs. Every such DJ I've seen has exactly the same voice- a kind of wacky, pitchy baritone- and uses the same mannerisms like 'At this time...' and '...so if you'll please take your seats...'. Sarika's brother and Akshay's brother made some nice speeches and then some Indian hip-hop was played and we danced. Well, they danced, and I kind of did my best Jacob Dylan* and just circled the dance floor and occasionally walked off to get more drinks.

Somehow Nick drove us safely home in spite of his car having a completely broken alternator (we needed about 3 jumps on the way back to the hotel) and him most likely being more than a little tipsy... and then we proceeded to drink more at the bar at the hotel and then in someone's room at the hotel. At around... I don't know, maybe 3am?... my narcolepsy circuit kicked in and I needed to be taken back to the room, where I found myself in my underwear and shirt sharing a bed with a very loudly snoring Muslim man four hours later. I hit the turnpike, drank the largest coffee I could afford from Starbucks, picked up my impeccably detailed Audi from home and tried to pawn it off on some sucker (no dice) and then took a train into NYC.

Next up in Bennett's Tales of his Wacky August Adventures- Bennett and Sako go to Peter Luger's and Bennett applies to the Apple Store!

rock on.

*lead singer of the Wallflowers... get it? ha!

the crazy experiment

2005-08-03T13:09:00.000-04:00

...has been terminated. I didn't try very hard to coax interesting AdWords out of the google black box, and after the pitiful few impressions from people that read my blog (both of you) and me not having earned a penny in the e-coffer and realizing that banner ads suck, even if they're from google, I took the code out (I think). Not that you care.

So Focusin had what may be our last practice on Tuesday. I don't think people wanted to talk about that fact... but it at least looks like we're not getting together again until after my move. The plan as it stands now is we'll try to get a weekend of gigs in October and December because, hey, we still have a lot of CDs and we still have a lot of fun playing gigs. What is left to be determined is my class schedule- it looks like I at least won't have Friday classes, judging by past semesters' schedules in the program... and I guess we can work around that.

I was about to wax poetic about Focusin and what we've done and where we came up short and our own Yokos and demons and muses and whatnot but I'll save the eulogy for another day. Glen did get a really sweet iPhoto book of pictures that spanned our whole career (have you ever used iPhoto to order a book? It's amazing. Not cheap, but amazing.)

August will be busy. Tomorrow is Mom's birthday, Saturday is Sarika's Big Fat Indian Wedding, which I'm very excited about because a) the groom (Akshay, who is the ubermensch of Indians) is riding in on a horse 2) it's open bar and I'm crashing in a friend's hotel room that night and d) it's all indian vegetarian food. Sarika is a Jain (which is, conviently, also her last name... like if my name was Bennett Jew or something) and I guess one caveat of that is that they don't eat meats... Winnie, on the other hand, is basically exclusively carnivorous-- she'll only eat vegetables if they're reconstituted from those metal ramen packets in MSG-saturated ramen broth, so getting away for a weekend to eat only veggie Indian food kind of excites me.

No, wait, I'm full of shit. Let me continue with my weekend... so I wake up from the mother of all hangovers (I assume I will be in a pile of beer bottles and samosa crumbs), wipe the chutney off my pants, and head to Brooklyn to go to the legendary Peter Luger steak house w/ Sako for a healthy Sunday brunch. I don't know if they have their full gamut of ridiculous legendary steaks available for lunch, but they at least have a legendary burger. Awesome.

Next weekend is my last weekend in Boston. Crazy. Next up... Bennett weighs in on the prospects of being an unemployed 26-year-old living at home versus taking out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans so he can be cool and move out of his parent's house (once again).

heeeere I come to save the day!

2005-08-02T09:12:00.000-04:00

okay, the end of days is near. first Apple says they're going Intel, and then they put out a multi-button mouse... sorta.

Check out the Mighty Mouse, which I'm sure I'll find an excuse to buy along with my Powerbook when I go to school and spend money I don't have to be more technologically equipped than I need to be.

you had me with 'hello'

2005-07-30T13:49:00.000-04:00

Jerry Maguire was made for girls who want to feel like they can relate to a movie about 'guy stuff' and for guys who really like chick flicks but don't want to admit they like Hugh Grant.

Sorry, this f'ing movie is guaranteed to be on at least one of the following channels- TNT, FX, USA- every Saturday morning, and winnie insists to watch it every time it's on. Tom Cruise sucks.

I'm super, thanks for asking!

vessels

2005-07-29T17:15:00.000-04:00

I realized today that the unbearable coffee from work today becomes much more bearable when consumed from a styrofoam cup.

I began developing this theory yesterday morning. I was a little early for work and too hungover to do a crossword, so I decided to take a quick detour to the Cracker Barrel that abuts my office. For some reason on Wednesday night I decided that a great way to get me to stop drinking so much was to drink up all the alcohol around the apartment so there's none left for me to drink the following night (it worked!). Anyhow, there's nothing like greasy eggs, a bowl of grits, and a bottomless cup of coffee to get you ready to face a day with greatly diminuished hepatic function. By the second or third cup of coffee, I realized that I never drink out of proper mugs anymore... the coffee at work is served in those waxed paper cups, a'la starbucks.

I don't really know where I'm going with this other than I hate drinking hot beverages out of those cups, just like I only like my beers in bottles or glasses or novelty chalices. There's some great insight on the matter of picking the right glassware for your beer on beeradvocate.com, but I don't know if all those rules apply to making mediocre work coffee more palatable. If anyone would care to help me explain why this is true, please chime in. I'm looking for chemists and thermodynamics experts.

Now... off to the Lowell Folk Festival for some pierogies, jamaican beef patties, and dieselbilly music. Smell ya later forever.

sell out with me, oh yeah

2005-07-29T16:45:00.000-04:00

you may have noticed a slight change. no, i haven't lost weight, but thank you (quite the contrary, actually). every time you log in to your blogger account there's a little box that says 'make money from your blog!' i figured, hey, lemme try it out... and a few mouse clicks and social security numbers later, i became one of the millions of members in google's AdSense network.

why the hell would I do such a thing as that? well, first off, i have nothing better to do. and yes, the very remote possibility of my earning a few sheckles from the experience exists. but most of all I think I have some sort of blind faith in Google and all they do. I now exclusively use google maps to get driving directions and figure out where I am in the grand scheme of things. I have Picasa on my work computer and liked it so much I installed it on my mom's back home. I've proudly flaunted Google Earth as if it were my own to friends and coworkers who are inevitably blown away by the ability to seamlessly 'fly' from lake titicaca to tehran to malden (and I'm really jealous that they don't have a mac version yet). Google apparently just bought a company called Zazzle, which got me to consider putting a Focusin store up there (stay tuned for that). Oh yeah, and this whole choosing Blogger over all those other free options... I think my decision ultimately boiled down to the fact that Blogger is the spawn of Google.

So back to the AdSense nonsense. First off, if you don't even see it, good job. That means you're most likely using something along the lines of Firefox with ad-blocking extensions installed so your internet experience isn't sullied by the likes of fastclick, doubleclick (sorry, Kurt), and google cramming 'targeted' ads down your throat. If you want to know how to do this, a quick search with our best friend can point you in the right direction. I had to load up IE to get the google ad to appear, and when I first saw the relatively unobtrusive banner show up on the right side of my page, I still wasn't too happy. It sort of cheapens the whole experience (which google is providing to me completely for free, but still).

I'm thinking I'll keep the banner there for a little bit to see what happens. I believe it's google's policy to shoot me and anyone who is a member of the AdSense program who talks about the kind of revenue they're making from the ads like a Scientologist who blabs to the world the story of Xenu (here I am again with my Scientology-bashing!). I'm obviously not running this blog to make a profit- if I did, there would be a lot more pornography and pyramid schemes- but it would be kind of interesting to see if I make even like $0.50 off this thing. How about this... if I make any money off of the generosity of your beautiful eyes and oh-so-supple mouse finger, I will repay each and every one of you with an amount of beer equal to or greater than the amount of money I recieve from said payout. Get your eyedroppers ready!

Plus it's pretty fun to bait the targeted AdWords to see what kind of advertising links come up. So far, I have seen links for FREE CROSSWORDS and JOB SEARCH TIPS- both pretty relevant to what I've been talking about around here. So stay tuned! Let's see what ads google has for my step-by-step cleveland steamer instructions!

home shopping network

2005-07-28T10:55:00.000-04:00

Read "It's the Kids. Lock Up the China!" from today's NY Times' Styles section and realize that it's okay to take stuff from your parents' house because everyone else is doing it.

Is it creepy that I Friendstered the model they mentioned in the article? Maybe the mention of her Brazilian-cut cherry underwear drove me to do it. She is hot, though.

tears of a clown

2005-07-21T16:00:00.000-04:00

(rejected titles: "Cry, Cry Baby"; "Driven To Tears";"Big Girls Don't Cry")

As I mentioned earlier this week, I gave my notice to good ol' Ray-dog on Monday. (You knew I work here, right?) After much debate over whether to tell them really really early (like end of June) or really late (like standard two weeks' notice) I decided to take the middle ground and give 'em a little more than a month to recover from the shock and awe that will inevitably arise from my announcement. I'm not one for burning bridges- mostly because confrontation at any level gets me nauseous, but I also know that should I be in a bind after I finish my master's or for some crazy, Scientologist-induced* reasoning, I decide that the ever-exciting world of defense is the world for me, the option will be there for me. Or if I fail in whatever I may be pursuing over the next two years and the job market wants nothing to do with me, I at least know I could come crawling back to the ample teat of my former employer. Kind of like staying in touch with some horrible ex-girlfriend who will never get over you just in case your cup runneth so dry that you know... just maybe... man, that's nasty. Nevermind.

Some people were surprised by how well they took the news at work. Everyone knows to some extent that I pretend to be a rocker when I clock out of here, so when I told them that I'm getting a Master's in music technology, they seemed to think it was a really cool and appropriate life choice for me. Plus, since my announcement, I've had a handful of people come to my cube to reaffirm that I'm making the right choice in my life-- one guy said 'I wish I had something I really wanted to pursue thirty years ago and that I followed it.' Kinda sad, but in a twisted way it was good to hear.

Tonight is Focusin's last scheduled gig. I've left it with the guys that I would love to keep playing gigs here and there with 'em, so once I figure out my schedule in the fall we may set up a couple of long weekends where I come to town, we have a practice, and we play a gig or three. This should still give me time to do well in school, live my New York life (I think that involves dating Mary Kate and / or Ashley Olsen), and to pursue my own Joe Perry Project.

I don't cry much. Maybe it's a macho thing or maybe it's the fact that my hyper-rationalness is very good at making sense of any situation. However, the two things that have been known to wring out some tears from my steely gaze have been seeing people suffer and dealing with change... and there is also always an event that opens the floodgates. At my high school graduation, they had the graduating seniors march through a row of our teachers, from K-12, who applauded for us. That got me going. Then at my last collegiate squash match it came time to have our last meeting with the team and the reality of being done with college was triggered and I was reduced to a sobbing mess in front of my ever-so-macho teammates. And I've had at least one girlfriend move out on me and left me whimpering in a corner.

So my question is... what, if anything, will trigger the Next Big Cry? I've had three constants in my life since graduating from college that have defined who I have been for the past four years and that are all, in some regard, going to go away in the next month: Focusin, Raytheon, and Winnie. The move out from Malden will be rough, and we'll save talk of that for later. But what if one of the other Big Two triggers something? What if I realize at the end of Hypnotize tonight that there is the chance of me never playing that again and I become a sobbing baby right in the middle of Goss' basement? What about when they strip me of my security clearance that I worked so hard to obtain or on my going-away lunch at the 99s over a 22oz pour of Killian's Red and a side caesar salad and I hear Bill make his last awkward comment about that intern girl?

Maybe keeping myself in a constantly inebriated state until, say, I am safely locked in my old bedroom, the one in Dobbs Ferry, NY, that I moved out of in August 1997 and am returning to in August, 2005 as a plumper shadow of my old self... where nobody can hear me cry and I have all the porn I need to keep me company. I wonder if Owen found that Penthouse I stole in fifth grade...

Oh, I've found the perfect shirt to wear at my last day of work:

*I've decided to start blaming all the world's problems on the Scientologists. I'll save that rant for another day.

gods of rock

2005-07-21T15:58:00.000-04:00

Here's a brilliant video about what it's really like to be in a rock band. You probably shouldn't watch it at work, or at least use headphones...

http://www.channel101.com/shows/view.php?media_id=801

meow

2005-07-18T11:51:00.000-04:00

cat's out of the bag. just told section manager, project manager, and the woman i work with on that other project i may or may not have mentioned here about my pending school plans. my planned last day is august 26. kegger to follow.

16 across

2005-07-15T17:14:00.000-04:00

sorry about lack of posting. the realities of my impending life change are really starting to set in, and rather than face them head-on i've chosen to whittle my days away by honing my crossword skills. (I've got maybe 70% of today's NY Times xword done...)

Okay, that's not entirely true. I've been realizing that school ain't cheap and have been exploring what I can do beyond the scope of student loans to help fund my life and my $3,000 a day faberge egg habit. Obviously one answer is finding some part time work, and the obvious first place Bennett has been looking is the Apple Store. There is Apple's 'flagship' store in SoHo which would be quite nice to work at being that it's literally across the street from where I'll be at school. I've also found some craigslist and monster postings that point to the opening of at least one more Apple store in the Manhattan area. I concocted a witty Apple Store-specific resume and iMpassioned cover letter but have yet to hear anything interesting...

BTW, please forgive the lack of witty links in today's post. I bought a bag of peanuts the other day and have consumed maybe half of said bag in the past half an hour. Is it possible to have peanut poisoning?

Anyhow, the always wonderful Christine has put me in touch with a handful of recruiters and, more importantly, offered me two brilliant (and probably obvious, but let's be honest- I'm a little slow when it comes to the ol' job search. why do you think I've been here for four years?) suggestions: 1) If I want to work at an Apple Store, the best way to get their attention would probably be to go to one in person. I sometimes forget life exists outside of the internet. and 2) Maybe I could find a job at NYU, a prospect which could not only lead to some sort of income but maybe a significant chunk taken out of my tuition!

I'm working on both. Also, I had forgotten about what slimes recruiters are (sorry, Christine... wait, are you a recruiter?) until I got a call from one who really knew nothing about the content of my resume other than the fact that it wasn't chock-full of buzzwords. Fine. Fixed. Unfortunately my line of work hasn't given me exactly a top-notch list of contemporary computer programmer buzzwords that are applicable anywhere outside the realm of defense contracting. And the guy hadn't even heard of Tufts. What a prick. Anyhow, if he can get me work, more power to him... but I'm not holding my breath. I'm really intrigued by the prospect of NYU-bound work.

I've also finally posted my poor car on the internet. Hopefully I'll be rid of her by the end of the month.

It looks like my move will be somewhere between my birthday (8/20) and Matt & Vicki's wedding (8/28). And after a lot of talk of scheduling at work this week, I'm really really tempted to tell 'em on Monday. That's a month's notice. Eek.

My intensive music theory class has had some positive side effects... I was able to sit down the other night with my Beatles Bible (best... investment... ever) and actually sight read my way through Strawberry Fields Forever and The Night Before. Wicked!

...and now I'm off to show off my mad mixolydian skills to Tony and to gorge on sushi as a way of bidding Yuri adieu. Hopefully I'll have more insightful blog posts in the future.

Love,
Bennett

50 ways to leave your love employer

2005-07-08T17:23:00.000-04:00

Classes start the day after labor day- September 6. I'm flying Owen out to Oregon to start college from August 18-19. August 20 is my birthday, and Matt and Vicki are getting married on August 28 with a week of crazy partying in the woods to follow (greatest... couple... ever).

However, due to many factors that I do not yet feel comfortable discussing, I've realized that I should stay employed as long as possible to maximize my income before I head off to school.

For a while I considered Friday, August 19 to be an excellent candidate for Bennett's Last Day. Now that I'm scheduled to take that Oregon trip, though, I'm thinking about extending my employment here by another week. I could theoretically work until Friday, September 2, but that would involve an unpleasant amount of shuttling to and from NY and Boston, and hopefully I won't have a car of my own in the next few weeks, which could really complicate my shuttling schedule (but is a very very necessary step to be taken at this time- more on this later). I almost was going to tell work about my school plans this week, but many people talked me out of that and I'm glad they did-- I don't know if I could put up with 6 or 7 weeks of being publicly 'on the way out' and I don't even know if they'd let me do that.

I'm terrible. I've gotten really good at crossword puzzles- I almost completed today's NY Times puzzle with only a little help from my friends (at google). I really should tend to the work I have been assigned but I have one of those positions around here that people really don't care about. The interesting part of my work (the coding, which takes at least some level of thought) is basically done, now all I have to do is go through hundreds (thousands?) of text files and make sure they're correct. Arrgh.

So... do I tell 'em August 1 and leave on August 17? How about August 8 and leave August 26?

When will then be now?

Oh, about the car... so shortly after my car's whatchamacalit belt went all haywire, my car starts making squeaking sounds when turning. Actually there had been faint squeaks going on for a little while that I never got around to looking at. Well, it turns out my suspension's shot. At first the garage quoted me $1200 parts and labor, but I got a nervous call from the garage-master (?) yesterday that went something like this:

GM: Hi Bennett, how are you?
me: Doin' well... you?
GM: Good, thanks... but you won't be! ::nervous laughter::

It turns out that to replace my entire suspension would cost something to the tune of $2600 (this is an Audi, after all). The sad part is that maybe a couple of months ago news like this would have caused me to break down into a sobbing mess on the floor, but I've grown so desensitized to my car's maladies (I like to call them malaudis) that all I could do was laugh. So I'm gonna sell the fokker with a f'ed up suspension for well below the blue book value. Screw it.

And if you have any good karma / vibes / energy to spare especially after all the crap that went down in London, please send them to my grandmother, who could seriously use some now.

it's grrrr-8!

2005-07-06T14:36:00.000-04:00

Here are pix from my trip to Philly last weekend:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/focusin/sets/551296/

I really have wanted to write a lot lately but my brain's been overloaded. I have been taking an intensive music theory course at NEC, guitar lessons, trying to plan for a gig that may or may not happen this saturday at the skybar with my band, and I've been trying to figure out the whole logistics of my big move that is approaching ever so rapidly. I got home from my crazy weekend yesterday and wanted to practice for my guitar lesson tonight or do my music theory homework but I couldn't commit to either so I just vacillated between the two of them and got nothing done. Now I have to hang my head in shame when I see Tony tonight and am unable to play the aeolian mode. Anyhow, enjoy the pictures and if you're around this weekend, there's a 63% chance that I'll be playing guitar with Jon's band and doing something with Focusin at the Skybar this Saturday night. Rock!

killer app

2005-06-30T01:17:00.000-04:00

this podcasting thing has been on my mind. I have been thinking that it is only a matter of time before someone wears a microphone for 24 hours and creates a podcast of that day as some sort of modernist art statement. any volunteers?

crapcasting

2005-06-29T18:29:00.000-04:00

I've been pretty busy lately- mostly getting my ducks in a row for my pending move / complete life overhaul that will take place in mere weeks (7? less???)- but I've still found some time to do some really really dorky stuff with my iPod.

Apple has decided to make a big deal about podcasting, which they describe as both TiVo and Wayne's World for radio. It's basically blogging but in audio format, and the big appeal is that you can sync, say, your iPod (yes, hence the 'pod'-casting) every morning with your computer and have it download the latest broadcasts from whatever you subscribe to. And since I'm such an Apple fanboy / information junkie, I took the bait and downloaded iTunes 4.9 (now with Podcast support!) and, before I left for work this morning, decided to 'subscribe' to a few podcasts.

Of course I've known about podcasts for a while. What kind of dork do you think I am? Dave even showed me that you can make drunken phone calls to your blog for the world to hear. But I really haven't been very interested in hearing, say, some other dork reading to me what I've already read on his website. Call me old-fashioned. But once Apple decided to put their seal of approval on the whole phenomenon, I obviously had to try it out. I tried to subscribe to 5 or so podcasts, including the one that supposedly started it all that Adam Curry (remember him?) does daily, but only 3 made it to my iPod. So I drop Winnie off at the T, thinking she'd be too ashamed to participate in something so horribly dorky with me first thing in the morning, and head to the new 'podcasts' option on my iPod while merging onto 93 at 80mph.

First up: the Queer Eye for the Straight Guy podcast. It starts off with Carson (the flamingest of them all) telling me that if I have any holiday-themed clothing, I should roll it up in a ball and throw it out. Each of the Fab 5 has an equally insightful 10-to-15 second blurb over a background of that techno beat they use throughout the show. One of them told me to brush and floss my teeth. The food one (who's my favorite) said that you should cook for a date because even if you fail, it's cute. Okay, just what I expected... this is pretty dumb. If I want music, I'll turn to the other 39.9 gigs of space on my ipod for entertainment; if I want insight, I'll listen to NPR.

Anyhow, I kept at it. Next up was the iTunes New Music Tuesdays report. It's basically a run-down of the more important new releases of the week with a healthy dose of Apple propaganda thrown in. Ya know, now this could be interesting. While I wasn't really interested in the "Dance Hollaback Girl" remix, this sort of thing could be pretty cool on the local music scene scale of things. Maybe I'll send some mail to New England Product... or maybe that'll be my excuse to start podcasting. Or, most likely, I'll do neither.

The third 'cast that ended up on my iPod was KCRW's "Le Show", which is apparently a weekly show on KCRW Los Angeles hosted by Harry Shearer. Immediately upon hearing his distinctive baritone voice I remember that he's the guy that does Smithers' and Principal Skinner's voices. Okay, I'll give this show a shot. It turns out to be basically him killing 45 minutes of time by reading headlines... very...... slowly....... with the occasional improvised quip thrown in for good measure. Still, there's a reason this guy doesn't host The Daily Show.

So I don't know. I'm sure someone will find the killer market for the podcast. There are a few shows on the radio that maybe I'd like to time-shift and listen to at my own convenience, like New England Product mentioned above or One In Ten, which I usually listen to on my ride home from band practice on Sunday nights. Maybe if the Food Network did a podcast I'd be into it. Or maybe if they got Spongebob or Peter Griffin to read the news. Now that's quality radi... er... podcast!

And yes, I see the irony / recursiveness in blogging about podcasting, which is basically blogging. But I've done that before.

Ooh... come to think of it... I'll podcast Focusin's next show. Damn, I'm good. That'll get you to buy our CD!

but if you lose, philip morris gets your soul

2005-06-29T17:18:00.000-04:00

I did something the other week that I am not too proud of. In fact, I'm a little worried about it.

See, I was at Asian night at 180 for... I don't know why, it was Winnie's idea... and I was minding my business, drinking something foofy and expensive, when a semi-attractice blonde girl with a bare midriff approached me. She was carrying this neat tablet pc-looking-thing and asked me if I was a smoker. Now, I had seen this ruse before at other bars and politely declined, but there must have been something in the air (gin, tonic, and hot Asian chicks grinding on the bar will do that to me) because I decided that I would go for the free Zippo lighter and say that I was, indeed, a smoker.

Before I knew it, I handed the girl my Mass driver's license-- I think the logic that went through my head was that I would be severing all ties to Massachusetts in mere months, so this couldn't bite me in my shiny, metal ass forever-- and within seconds a scanned copy of the license appeared on her nifty identity sucking device. I may have had to sign something confirming that I was a smoker and then she handed me my free Zippo lighter in Marlboro promotional packaging.

I woke up the next morning with an Advil-curable hangover and in a bit of a panic about what would happen to my driver's license and, more importantly, my identity, now that Philip Morris had it in their tar-and-emphysema-covered hands. I thought that a Zippo (it was an honest to goodness Zippo, as far as I could tell) was a pretty big thing to be giving out for free- there must be some strings attached. My friend Beth didn't help when she was explaining her theory at a party the following night. She postulated that the tobacco companies were in cahoots with insurance companies, and from now on I will be known to Met Life as Adult Male, Smoker. That would suck.

Personally, I prefer the theory on this website:

http://www.unfilteredtv.com/learn/one_news_article.php?id=8

Since cigarette companies get in trouble for unabashedly marketing themselves to children and the like, they've had to seek out other venues in which they can convince the populace to buy their death sticks. And what better arena for promoting their wares than at bars, which are full of people who are guaranteed to be of-age (or to have really good fake IDs, so buying cigs wouldn't be a problem for them) and are drinking anyway?

So I don't know. It's been a week and I haven't heard a word from my new friends in Big Tobacco, and I haven't noticed any suspicious activity on my credit cards nor spikes in my insurance rates. If the link above is correct, maybe I'll start getting some tobacco promotion in the mail at some point... but since I'm moving in a month, that may just go away.

Damnit! Now I want a beer.

PSA

2005-06-29T15:55:00.000-04:00

Yuri sent me the best public service announcement ever:

http://www.rachelgetsfruity.com/flash.html

...sucka what?

2005-06-24T14:20:00.000-04:00

This is a story about how hard work pays off.

A while back, Focusin was offered a gig- I think it was at Harper's Ferry- and Glen got his coworker's newly formed band, Sucka Brown, on the lineup. Glen described it as a favor... it was a pretty decent club for a band that was just starting up, and their act wasn't really much to write home about. They were great guys, and their rhythm section was really tight- I think the guitarist, bassist, and drummer are/were Berklee kids. But their songs all sorta sounded the same and their singer had a tough time staying on-key. It all sorta sounded like an Incubus ripoff to me.

I forget if that was the only gig we played with them, but we kept in touch. They would come to our shows and we showed up at theirs. Glen would every so often tell us what he'd talk about with their lead singer at work... apparently they practice 4 times a week (we practice two if we're lucky, but that's another story entirely), they brought in some pros to help promote their music to radio stations and venues around the country, and they work their asses off promoting each of their shows. I think they even leased a van as a band for the heavy gigging they were doing.

The more you play, the better you get. There's no way around it. Through practicing and gigging together, you develop almost a sixth sense of communication with your bandmembers. All the parts of songs start to gel. Endings get tighter. Playing as a band becomes second nature and you can spend your time on stage having fun playing rather than worrying about the chord changes or if your drummer will remember the bridge. Well, Sucka Brown is getting their money's worth out of the van. While many 'local' bands will have maybe a couple of gigs in a month, the Suckas play maybe 3-4 a WEEK. And they're tapping into some very vital markets for aspiring bands- i.e. colleges and prep schools full of kids who are eager to part with their parents' money for an up-and-coming local band's t-shirt or CD. And it doesn't hurt that they're all tall and skinny.

At some point last winter I was talking with their guitarist, Todd. He told me they had been doing preproduction on their album at Q Division studios for a while, and the stuff was sounding great. Q Division is (as far as I know) one of the best and most important studios in the Boston area... I know Aimee Mann, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Pixies, and many others have been through there. I also hear it costs a pretty penny, too. So Sucka Brown somehow raised money to embark on a project that Glen and I have guessed costs in the realm of tens of thousands of dollars. I know their singer makes a decent living, and their guitarist works at Starbucks... but getting tens of thousands of dollars together between four guys is a serious investment. For reference, Focusin spent maaaaybe $2,000 on our album (maybe I'll tell you about the recording process in a later post), and 98% of that money came from me and Glen.

Last night Sucka Brown played the Middle East Downstairs. Yeah, Focusin's been there, but lately we've had more luck with the smaller and slightly less prestigious upstairs room simply because we never drew the numbers of people that they expect downstairs. I got a text message from Yuri as I was leaving my music theory class to head into Cambridge: "Looks like a promising show." I get in line (there was a line!) amidst a bunch of 17 / 18 year-old-looking kids fumbling for their fake IDs. Damn. Focusin has spent nearly four years playing for our friends, who in the most part are 25-30 year-olds. It takes quite a bit of cajoling to pull many of them away from their typical weeknights in suburbia, especially since more and more of them are 'growing up'- i.e. getting married, having kids, and other things that lead to not wanting to try to find parking in the middle of Cambridge on a weeknight to catch your buddy's 11-11:45pm set, especially when you have to be at work at 8 in the morning. But seeing those sweet sweet high schoolers lining up for the Suckas made me realize what idiots we were in promoting ourselves. High schoolers haven't got a care in the world! No wives, no kids, no lame desk jobs to get to in the morning-- all you worry about is looking cool and having a blast with your friends. And, as I mentioned before, what could be cooler than latching on to a band that you can bum a cigarette from after their set? We've been going about this all wrong.

So the Middle East was packed. Easily double (and probably more) what we ever brought playing down there. Paranoid Social Club opened- they've been sharing a bunch of gigs with Sucka Brown. If you don't know, PSC was formed from the ashes of the Rustic Overtones, a band whose name I've seen bring tears to Mainers' eyes. PSC put on a phenomenal set and they're releasing a CD on August 23 which I am planning on picking up. Plus Sucka Brown's guitarist told me PSC recently signed a record deal. Rock on.

So anyhow, the Suckas have been playing their cards right. They've been playing the right gigs, and doing all they can to promote them to the right crowds. From what I saw last night, all that hard work paid off. All the production work they did at Q Division really helped hone their songs from somewhat boring white-boy funk into 3 minute catchy pop ditties. I definitely noticed the change even in their older material. It is so easy as a band to write songs that are fun to play or are technically challenging but to completely forget about making them interesting. This is why producers exist, and that's yet another skill I look forward to honing at school in the fall. This is why Bridge (song 1) on our album is one of my favorites... because we took the time to make it a tight pop song rather than a self-gratifying wankfest (not to say that our other songs are wankfests, but there is a definite distinction in production between that song and the others...). Plus recording your songs is guaranteed to make you tighter than ever when you perform them, and that definitely showed in the Suckas' performance. And Brendan has definitely been working on his singing... he is leagues more confident and capable with his vocals than he was even a few months ago.

Unfortunately since I'm leaving in mere weeks (eeek) I don't think Focusin can have our third or fourth renaissance and realign our goals and form proactive strategolutions to shift to a more effective paradigm of marketing. Plus... I'm not that tall. I suppose I could go to China for some black market leg lengthening surgery (um... owch?), and I suppose I could start hitting the gym to work on the skinnyfication part (um... maybe tomorrow), but I think I'd be perfectly happy becoming one of those guys behind the scenes- like, say, Rik Rueben- whose art is to help others hone their lumps of clay into beautiful sonic sculptures. Especially if the bands are willing to share their groupies.

BTW, Sucka Brown finished up mixing their CD last night after the show. It's supposed to be coming out in late July-- keep an eye out for it! And it sounds like my other favorite local band, Raymond, is almost done with theirs, too...

jobasaurus

2005-06-21T12:38:00.000-04:00

Yesterday a nice woman who sits near me announced she had to leave the company for family / personal reasons. It's too bad when someone nice / fun / bubbly / chipper / female like her leaves, because they're the kind of people that make office life slightly less unbearable. Everyone that she told-- from peons like myself to even upper level management-- reacted with the requisite sadness and, more importantly, everyone let her know that they were jealous in their own way. Some said 'take me with you' in a mock-joking fashion, while others blatantly said things to the effect of 'I wish I could do that.' Hearing others' reactions to her announcement made me even more confident in my decision to drop everything and try to realign my life into doing something that I could potentially wake up every morning and want to do.

I managed to keep my head from collapsing on the boardroom table during a completely mind-numbing two hour meeting yesterday by trying to pay attention to what everyone was talking about and thinking about just how ingrained corporate inefficiencies are in our minds around here. It seems that priority #1 for managers (at least around here) is to get their paperwork done correctly and to make sure their teams do all their paperwork correctly too so they don't get shat upon by the next rung up in the ladder. But the shit they were talking about in the meeting yesterday... man, was it dumb. Call me sexist, but I almost felt emasculated listening to grown men with degrees in engineering (and with higher-ranking engineering roles than me) making a big deal about 'concatenating files' (read: copying and pasting text) and 'SLOCing files' (running a tool that takes 10 seconds to count lines of code so our managers can be happy with our 'productivity rates' (how many lines of code we've written, which is really a complete bullshit measurement of productivity, but that's neither here nor there (if you want to read a good article about what a pile of crap SLOC productivity is, read this article about Bill Hertzfeld's work on the original Macintosh))). To all my friends that think a degree in computer science or a career in computer programming directly correlates to computer savviness, you would be surprised at how often that is an exception rather than the rule. I then amused myself by coming up with quick computer program ideas that would do all the work these girlie men were bitching about and the manager was perparing to allocate many 'man-months' to accomplish.

How would it feel to be replaced by a shell script?

Come talk to me sometime, sweetheart... I know what it takes to be cool

2005-06-15T14:28:00.000-04:00

One reason why The Family Guy is the greatest cartoon of the internet era is all those random references that they intentionally put in that maybe 5% of their viewers will 'get'. A good portion of the other 95% of the people that don't immediately 'get it' will at least recognize that the references are references and can turn to the internet and figure out where the reference came from.

Google "stewie william shatner" and you get a link to this page on milkandcookies.com that has Stewie's "Rocketman" performance... and the incredibly odd but awesomely parodiable William Shatner performance that it's based upon. Brilliant.

hari hari

2005-06-15T09:51:00.000-04:00

It's no secret that I'm a big Apple dork. Just look at the links at the side of this blog. Or come over and check out my collection of Macs and iPods in Malden. Or that "Think Different" poster in my cubicle with Lucille Ball and Ricky Ricardo (Ted, if you still have that Jim Henson poster I gave you, you bastard-- Mac-freaks will pay you good money for that!). In fact, I'm probably the biggest Apple dork I know- if you know someone like me (especially if she's hot and single), put 'er in touch; there are support groups for freaks like us. I was going to write a long post last Monday about how I nearly had a heart attack when Apple announced their pending switch to Intel... but after going through the 5 Stages of Acceptance, I've realized that there is simply too much to write about the whole issue and instead I'll direct any interested parties (you still there?) to the following few articles:

Cringley thinks Apple + Intel are trying to dethrone Microsoft
Great article #1 from Ars Technica (great nerdy speculation on what's to come)
Great article #2 from Ars Technica (explaining what a mindfuck this is to the general Machead psyche)

Apple plays a large role in why I got into computers / computer science in the first place, and I even have the thought in the not-so-deep recesses of my delicious brain that a great place to work after I get my master's in music technology would be... yep... Apple. You've heard of GarageBand? Or the iPod?

My friend Jon just asked me if Steve Jobs is my idol. I don't know. I have a tough time referring to anyone (human or otherwise) as an 'idol'-- maybe all the teachings in Hebrew school of not worshipping false idols really got to me-- and I don't want to exactly repeat what Steve's done because it's already been done... but to be the head of the greatest animation company in the world and the greatest computer company in the world and to be commonly referred to as a 'rock star' of CEOs... yeah, that'd be pretty sweet. He gave the commencement speech at Stanford last week and here's a transcript... it's a great read for insight into what an interesting and accomplished man he is (but my mom won't let me show this article to my youngest brother- he's going to Reed in the fall and she doesn't want him to get any ideas...)

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html

fried twinkies for my comrades

2005-06-14T16:35:00.000-04:00

I dreamt last night that my family was at a town-fair-like activity and my dad went into a tent and emerged a communist. My mom was really pissed off at him because she thought the government would ferret them out and search our house and find all our drugs.

Am I OK?

when i look back at all the crap i learned in high school

2005-06-14T13:03:00.000-04:00

since I've told a few of my high school chums (hi, chums!) about this site, I thought this might be of interest... and even if you didn't go to high school w/ me, check out what a great place it's becoming!

From the May 4 parents' association meeting:

In the aftermath of the Greece trip, students have been spoken to regarding Hackley’s policies. The objective is always one of deterrence. Walter’s hope is to create a safer environment for all students. He also discussed the conditions under which Hackley may require look into drug testing, as decribed in the Student Handbook. Random testing will not be employed, but if there are credible allegations of drug use, Hackley reserves the right to use non-invasive drug testing by hair sample. He noted that sometimes students may act as if they use drugs just to attract attention. The hair testing system, which requires only 1.5 inches of hair and tests drug use in the past three months, can be employed to test for a variety of substances, although not alcohol. Rules regarding severity of punishments and offenses are found on the website in order of their severity., although none are absolute. As a result of the Greece trip, there will be an increase in the rationumber of chaperones on school trips, and chaperones will be instructed on increasing their effectiveness. He intends to talk more to students, faculty and parents in the future to explain the protocols, possibly including a signedwritten agreement to signfor students participating in overnight trips and for their parents.

(yes, all the typos are from the website, too... i was too lazy to go in and enumerate the [sic]s...)

Does the word 'draconian' pop into any of your minds also?

Some background:

Yes, I went to a snooty private school in Westchester, NY. For what it's worth, I had a great time, made some lifelong friends, and learned a lot.
Walter = the headmaster.
"The Greece Trip" that is referred to in the above snippet happened last year. On the trip, a faculty member apparently let some kids drink booze. Somehow word got back to the mothership and all hell broke loose. The funny / ironic part is that neither I nor thousands of other alumnae would have heard about it if the head of the alumni and development office hadn't sent out an email explaining the whole situation and how Hackley 'did the right thing' by severely disciplining the faculty member and students in question. Jerks.

I've heard of schools in less-than-savory areas installing metal detectors, but as far as I know, public schools can't get away with randomly drug testing 'suspicious' kids. Come on, man. As if most of our high school years aren't spent being horribly awkward-- I'm sure I would have been on whatever 'watch list' the administration drafted up just because i had was a really skinny kid with a big ol' afro. Plus one of my best friends was kicked out of school for allegedly selling some pot to another kid in our school's candy store-- I honestly don't know whether it actually happened, but the kid that got caught with the weed's testimony against my friend was more than enough for the administration to kick out my good friend. A bunch of friends of the accused went to Walter and pleaded for our friend- who knows, if the policies mentioned above were in place then, we probably would all have walked out of walter's office with 1.5 inches of hair missing.

It's too bad. When I went there, it was a great place where you could meet some really interesting people, both kids and faculty, and be overprepared for college in the process. Now they're lucky to hold on to a teacher for more than two years. I have three words of advice for my Hackley brethren:

Shave your heads.

choose your barrels wisely

2005-06-09T17:21:00.000-04:00

I work on a project with a very nice middle aged single mother who makes up what she lacks in contemporary computing knowledge by posessing decent interpersonal skills, which is something most computer engineers (at least around here) don't have. Recently I was recruited for a project that she's working on with 'finance people' to help get their numbers in order. When I got the gist of the task we had, I realized it boiled down to simple algebra and getting data from computers. It comes down to, at least as far as I can tell, a bunch of people with a horribly disorganized computer infrastructure doing weeks of work by hand to accomplish something that would take mere seconds of a computer's time.

Their computer problems run deep- they have systems that have probably been in use since I was in diapers (you know, like, two years ago)- and I am only working with them part time so I really can't solve everything for them. However, being the most computer-savvy of the bunch, I have been able to do what I think of as very simple, even menial, things that have blown them away. They are so impressed with my 'computer wizardry' that I was told at my last meeting that my name comes up frequently in their meetings and that they want to erect a statue in my honor over there. They also alluded to trying to poach me from my current project and double my salary, which would certainly make me re-think this whole school thing (hey, man, everyone has a price).

My point? Sometimes it's good to keep some well-stocked barrels of fish and a fully loaded automatic weapon in your life. It's good for the ego and can even help out your wallet a bit.

MTDs

2005-06-09T13:30:00.000-04:00

I saw De Sol and Ozomatli at the Paradise last night with my brother. Incredible show. It had the energy of all those ska shows I used to go to with an amazing undercurrent of musicianship and sabor that I haven't felt since my days as a roadie for Los Lobos. Awesome. Random observations:

At one point the singer and bassist from De Sol got together to share the same mic at one point in a song. You know, the ol' Steven Tyler / Joe Perry thing. Mark has done that a few times at Focusin shows and... I don't know, man, call me homophobic or whatever but I just feel awkward doing that. The toxic twins could pull it off well, but the De Sol guys looked like they were about to make out. But...
You can get away with a lot of stuff that would really be corny / dumb / cheesy... if you do it with international flair. Like De Sol- at one point they did this very cool a capella thing where they all sang some rousing Spanish chorus with one nylon string guitar as accompaniment, and then each one would take his turn rapping or singing alone. The ones that sang in Spanish sounded really cool... they sang things about Mexico and I think one of them said his grandparents liked to smoke big joints. And then the token gringo got up to the mic and rapped in English something to the effect of "I have ancestry from Mexico to Germany / I live a park called Asbury / ...". It was decidedly not as cool as what everyone else was doing. But I ain't complaining-- these guys were great.
De Sol closed with an old Tito Puente song, Oye Como Va... performed exactly as Carlos Santana did it. A spot-on rendition that got the crowd to go nuts, but my brother and I both turned to each other and said 'is this the equivalent of an English-speaking American band closing with Sweet Home Alabama?'
Ozomatli is one of the coolest live acts out there. 10 dudes (!), rotating instruments... guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, dj, a few rappers, lots of various latin percussion doohickeys, and a HORN SECTION. And at the end of their set they marched off the stage and formed a drum circle in the middle of the crowd. They're playing Brooklyn and NYC soon, among other places. Get thee to an Ozo show!
Ozo was, however, loud as all hell. It was so loud that they had a lot of feedback problems, which really doesn't help one's already ringing ears.

"Uh, hey, Bennett... there are these things called earplugs..."

Yeah.. uh... I'm aware of that. But... I dunno, man... earplugs are like condoms for your ears... man. Sure, they keep you safe and all and protect your extremeties from various maladies like chlamidya and hearing loss... but you just don't get the full experience wearing 'em, ya know? I guess they have some more tolerable varieties... the lighter ones that don't just filter out all sensation... I've worn 'em in my time, and after last night I probably should get back to wearing them. I woke up this morning (I know there's a morning after innuendo to be made here) and had a little bit of a panic attack when I got in the shower... my ears were still ringing from the night before (I know, I know... BAD!) and the running water just didn't sound the same... as if some of the higher pitches just weren't there. Eek. One thing I pride myself on and one of my major justifications for going to music-ish school in the fall is my hearing... I'm always the one that gets irritated by a monitor in the next room because I can hear the high pitch whine a CRT gives off from pretty far away. How can I become a sound engineer if I can't hear part of the audio spectrum? My mixes will sound like mud! Sure, maybe Monet could pull off painting even in his older years when his eyesight deteriorated... but a) I'm no Monet and 2) I don't have years of experience with mixing / recording so I probably can't fudge things like EQ quite yet. I conducted makeshift hearing tests in the shower- cup my ears and see how that affects the sound of the running water, snap my fingers in various places around my head to see if I still heard everything properly, but all I did was second-guess myself- that's not supposed to sound like that!- and get more worried.

I think I'm alright now. Will I learn? Will I remember the headache and ear ringing and panic attack that ensued, or will I ride the Valhalla Kittens tonight and Raymond tomorrow and band practice on Sunday bareback as always?

Good thing I took those two semesters of American Sign Language in college.

mr. reliable

2005-06-06T10:42:00.000-04:00

I've developed a reputation over the years as being a fairly unreliable person. That's not a very appealing trait, i know... but I've also realized that I haven't been doing much to dispel this image, either.

Case in point: last weekend.

Friday Night
Plan: Go into Cambridge and catch at least one of my guitar teacher's shows, one at TT's at 9pm and one at The Lizard Lounge at midnight.
What I really did: Went home to Malden and lost all will to do anything. Drank vodka tonic and watched The Empire Strikes Back.
Excuse: Malden will suck all the life out of anyone. It's a black hole for the soul.

Saturday
Morning Plan: Sneak in brunch w/ an ex while Winnie was off at her Korean lesson.
What I really did: Walked around Allston rock city. Got a haircut and a delicious egg sandwich at Herrell's.
Excuse: I was supposed to pick up my car while Winnie was heading to her Korean lesson but the garage couldn't find my keys, so I had to come back after Winnie's Korean lesson to get the car. BTW, it turns out the tensioner for my car's serpentine belt broke, causing the serpentine belt to come loose and wreak the havoc that it... uh... wreaked. $400.

Afternoon / Evening Plan: Go to Anna's housewarming, see Keane, catch Fooled By April's last show ever at the Paradise
What I really did: After picking up my car, I ended up playing some tennis. I wanted to head to Anna's (the housewarming, not the taqueria) but by that time I wouldn't have been able to make it to Keane at the FleetBoston Pavilion (an awesome venue, btw). Post-Keane I was very tempted to see fxa's last show (according to Joe and Brendan, it was an amazing time...) but I had nobody to go with me, so I ended up going to the Cactus Club and having people feed me margaritas. That wasn't too bad.
Excuse: Well, I did reply to Anna's evite with a 'maybe', and Glen justified missing the show by saying 'well have they ever come to one of our shows?'. I still would have liked to go to both (sorry, Anna!). Oh well.

Sunday
Plan: See Porsches On The Autobahn at night at the Enormous Room with Andrew.
What I really did: Got dim sum at some tasty place in Chinatown with some friends. Winnie then went off to hang w/ her Korean teacher, and Shayan and I walked from Chinatown to Newbury St and had a nice homoerotic shopping session. Got a call from Goss... barbeque? Sweet. So I walked from Newbury St to Brookline. Had beers, grilled stuff. Watched the Simpsons (new episode was awesome) and Family Guy (very awesome). Now it's 9:30pm and Porsches was supposed to start anywhere between 9 and 10. The T would take me maybe an hour to get from Brookline -> Central (yet another reason why I can't wait to be in NYC- a subway system that actually works). I forgot that when you don't have your car handy in Boston, it takes time to get places. Shit. Call Andrew to cancel, feel like complete dick. Walk to bubble tea place and kill time until I'm retrieved by girlfriend.
Excuse: No excuse. I screwed up. Andrew said Porsches were awesome (duh).

On one of my trips back to NYC, one of my best friends labeled me as 'The Overextender'... it was probably one of the many times I made plans with 30 people and thought I could somehow pull it off, a-la Mrs. Doubtfire. You'd think I would have learned to have the social planning skills of a 12-year-old by now. But then you'd be wrong.

cliched media rant #81726

2005-06-03T16:42:00.000-04:00

they have TVs in our cafeteria that lately have been tuned to CNN. today CNN kept showing clips of that 'slaughter of bosnian muslims' video that they found. they didn't show the actual killings, but the showed people on their death march and i think they then cut to them lying dead in a ditch. just like that time they were showing clips from one of those beheading videos and cut away just as zarqawi pulls the machete out of his pants.

i think i would have a much easier time explaining what a nipple is to kids than why the hooded man is carrying a gun or a machete and what's going to happen to the man in the orange suit. thank you, FCC, for making parents' lives so much easier!

Fuck! Shit! Cock! Ass! Shitty boner bitch! Muff! Pussy! Cock! Butthole! Barbara Streisand!

cup = 1/2 {full | empty} ?

2005-06-01T15:54:00.000-04:00

on one hand, my car died when i was in the safe environment of my company's parking lot and driving only 10 mph. if i was on the highway and the main belt in my car that is responsible for my power steering, alternator, water pump, and other semi-vital car-organs went out like it did an hour ago, i might be in much worse shape.

on the other hand, my car's super-important belt (as far as I can tell, it was like my car's aorta) just fell off its track and i have no idea what the hell it's gonna cost me to fix it. reason #24357 why i can't wait to get to NY- to not have to worry about cars anymore. i actually had money saved up before i decided to step up from my used volvo to my used audi. the car has been the bane of my existence ever since.

so I ask you, dear readers: what's the best way to dispose of my car in a manner that will pay off the remaining $3k I still owe on it as well as the handful of $k that I indirectly blame my car for wreaking on my credit cards? mind you I will be a broke-ass student in a few months.

discuss.

if I put it on the internet, it has to be true

2005-06-01T11:09:00.000-04:00

I had two minor epiphanies in the past 24 hours:

1) There is this greek yogurt that's available at Trader Joe's called "Fage"- I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and pronounce it as 'phage' and not 'fag-e'- and it's the greatest thing ever. Even the 0% one. Especially with apricot preserves stirred in.

2) I am really good at thinking of lots of ideas and even doing some of them... but completing them is another matter. In fact, you could go so far as to say I never really finish anything. I've sort of known this all along, but it took someone I work with telling it to me to sorta get me to, you know, really know it. Apparently I've developed a reputation around here as a whiz kid but I need to be 'sat upon' (her words-- eew) to get something done. And... yeah, it's pretty true with everything I do.

As I said, I have been aware of this for a while. A college roommate who I would often jam with would always get pissed about the fact that I know basically every song ever recorded... halfway through. So he'd be all psyched to pull out some random song that I could play along with, and then understandably get miffed when we got to the bridge and I couldn't fudge my way through it. This, again, is due to the fact that I never really finish things-- as far as guitar goes, I'll usually just learn the main riff and chorus for songs, and consider my job done.

With some things in life it may be a self-defense mechanism... I can get things almost done, prove to myself that I can do it, and then write off any of the flaws to the project's incompleteness. That way I never do anything that isn't perfect!

I'm trying to break this get-it-90%-done-then-leave-it habit by actually following through on things. I'm learning a bunch of cover songs w/ my friend Jon so we can be armed with some Police and Radiohead the next time an open mic night comes around and as a result I'm forcing myself to learn songs all the way through. I engineered and produced my band's album and as a reward, got 1,000 copies of it (900 or so of which are in my car now. Want to buy a CD? :) ) Even this blog is in some ways a test of my ability to come up with a coherent thought and regurgitate it.

So anyhow, I don't know if what this lady told me will affect my approach to work for my last couple of months here, but I should really try to get out of that habit before I go back to school. Because, like, this time counts, you know?

voices carry

2005-05-26T12:07:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-23T16:31:00.000-04:00

[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

2005-05-22T11:15:00.000-04:00

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!

2005-05-19T11:00:00.000-04:00

(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

2005-05-19T02:12:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-18T12:27:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-16T16:17:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-16T10:15:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-14T10:21:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-11T12:33:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-10T11:26:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-09T14:48:00.000-04:00

this sums up the current state of my career nicely:

(taken from www.cartoonbank.com)

canto-pop

2005-05-09T14:07:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-07T09:36:00.000-04:00

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.

2005-05-06T16:04:00.000-04:00

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.

2005-05-06T16:02:00.000-04:00

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

2005-05-06T15:55:00.000-04:00

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.