Connecticut in Four

We peddle jerkily up paved backwoods roads that run alongside a bay studded with toothpick sails. The webbing between my thumbs hurts from squeezing my brakes hard as the up turns to down and the bike’s clunky frame gains momentum.

The guy leaves his kids with us at the picnic table. Well, not with us, but near us. Still, we are required to watch them, as no one else bothers to pay attention, preoccupied with picking soft meat from the inflamed exoskeletons of lobsters. Mine has already been removed and placed in a neat pile on a seeded bun. Between quick bites, I scold the brother for shoving his sister with the black curls. The though of her falling, grasping at the dock’s frayed rope divide, makes me sputter instead of her.

Claude the Innkeeper reminds us not to forget out bathing suits. He emphasizes that the hot tub is new, therapeutic. His eyes never settled in one place, his mouth twisted thin as he tells of bad reviews on Yelp. Spelled Y-E-L-P. Could we please write something nice? And do use the hot tub. There are at least six different types of spigots.

Mary is from Georgia, where there is always something happening. She rinses a mug in a kitchen enshrined with sea captain figurines and mounted harpoons. It is raining and we can’t leave yet. The train isn’t till four. She walks toward our room, cleaner in tow. I hear plastic rustle and am aware of our garbage being emptied. I wish I could replace her bucket with a slotted basket and set her in an orchard just as the sky starts to clear.

Queen Vick Mix

I went on vacation to NY State and Canada. The trip was nine hours long. In order to keep from having to revert to mind-numbing car games like "License Plate Alphabet" or "Highway I-Spy," I made a playlist. The method by which I complied the playlist was extremely scientific and based on a set of predetermined criteria:

1. Songs about being on the road

2. Songs about Canada/by Canadian artists

3. Songs about getting away from home

4. Songs about returning home

5. Songs that can be danced to using the upper half of your body only, without being strangled by a seatbelt

6. Songs that are introspective for long spurts of barren landscapes

7. Songs that are joyful and could signal the approach of a destination

Here are a few highlights:

- Keep the Car Running by Arcade Fire

- Good Times (Sick Pimpin') by Atmosphere

- When She Comes Home by Deer Tick

- A New Part Of Town by Matt Pond

- Hop a Plane by Tegan and Sara

- Miles Away by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs

- This Time Tomorrow by the Kinks

- You Turn Me On I'm A Radio by Joni Mitchell

- Sleepytime in the Western World by Blitzen Trapper

- Walkin' Up The Road by Betty Davis

- I Gotta Move by Ben Kweller

- More Adventurous by Rilo Kiley

- Passenger's Seat by Death Cab For Cutie

I am still trying to sort out my thoughts on the whole Canadian experience.

(Are there really moose here and if so, where are they hiding them? Why can't I wear my sunglasses while crossing the border? How is their maple syrup different from Aunt Jemima?) However, my memories of the trip will never be relived as a silent pan. Instead, they will flash in time with a killer soundtrack.

Go Phish

Recently, I was the target of a Phishing scam via Craig's List. I had applied to a general posting for a Personal Assistant. One day later, I received a reply. Despite the email's broken English, the Scammer managed to flesh out a fantastic-sounding character in my mind - so much so, that for half a second, I actually believed it.

The email was from an elderly gentleman named Gregory. Gregory was 65 years old. He had been in the shipping industry for over three decades. He got his start unloading cargo on the piers of New York City, eventually rising to the level of Vice President at a successful import/export company.

Gregory was looking for a new assistant. His former assistant had unexpectedly returned to his homeland. According to Gregory, he was a very efficient employee, a fellow that had started as a subordinate and later morphed into his right-hand man. While Gregory would miss his assistant, he was a busy man with many obligations. His schedule needed managing and, flatteringly enough, he believed that I was the right person for the job. My first task was a test to ensure my reliability. I needed to cash a check at a bank and then use the money to buy toys for children at a local orphanage. One of Gregory's primary joys in life was giving. He loved to see these poor children smile when they received his presents. He went on to claim that if I had any questions, I was to direct them to his email. Phone contact with him was impossible because he was partially deaf. Also, he was traveling abroad at the moment. Nevertheless, such complications were not to deter me from my duties. The kids needed me, afterall.

Gregory knew me well. I WAS feeling discouraged by all of the job's complex urgency. As if to reassure me further, he ended the note with a dose of further encouragement:

"I have inkling you will be great. If you give me your best efforts, I will promise to be a good boss and treat you with respect. Good compensation will be coming your way for sure. We will grow to be friends!"

Kid, You Are Going Places

I got my passport in the mail today! The process was bizarre - go to AAA to take stone-faced photo, write an expensive check, hand over my birth certificate to a post office clerk, wait, wait, wait, wait some more. Ta-da! Little navy book that lets you go places. The visa pages of my passport are intense and wrought with raw USA pride. Each has a quote from an American monument or influential person - Lynden B. Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Flavor Flave. No, actually, I am kidding. Abraham Lincoln is not one of the individuals cited. That would be a bit of a stretch.

Additionally, the pages have muted illustrations of our great nation. I recognized a couple - Mount Rushmore, the Statue of Liberty. However, there are some vague references that I am less familiar with. One page has cowboys herding steers through a craggy meadow. Another has a photo of a space shuttle orbiting the moon. Yet another has a picture of a bear eating a juicy-looking salmon. I can't help but think that these images might fall into two categories upon being viewed by foreign security personnel: dishonest and confusing. When you open up a US passport, you are getting a glimpse of America from a far-away land. If you've never been here and were using a passport as a point of reference, you might expect our rivers to be chock full o' obese bears and our valleys overrun by men in stirrup pants. Also, you might believe we own the moon...

Name That Tune

For music purists, sampling is weird. Usually it is experienced while mingling at a party or busting a move on the dance floor. A song fades out and is replaced by a fresh beat, one that is strikingly familiar yet purposefully distorted. No one else seems perturbed. Even if they were, they probably wouldn’t show it. The practice is as common now as it was fifty years ago, the sound already lying dormant in our ears.

By definition, sampling is when an artist takes a portion of a previously recorded song and reuses it within the context of a new track. The sample can be purely instrumental (like a guitar solo) or actual lyrics. Musicians such as Girl Talk have built their entire careers on the foundation of recycled tunes, transforming the act of sampling into a post-modern, ‘nothing is original, nothing is individually owned’ philosophy. Frequently, this mindset has lead to bouts over copywriting infringements. While the legal implications of sampling remain debatable, one thing is for sure: no song is immune. The fact was recently reaffirmed to me at a friend’s open house. While chatting with other guests, I heard strands of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” issuing from a nearby speaker. The line, “Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine” was on repeat, laid over a rap solo.

Later when I got home, I Googled and found out that the artist was Juelz Santana. The title of his mix was appropriately named, “Mixing Up The Medicine.” I loved the original Bob Dylan song and therefore felt a bit bothered by Juelz Santana’s take. However, my righteous indignation dried upon discovering another resource – Whosampled.com. Who Sampled seeks to “explore and discussing the DNA of music.” The site allows you to search a directory of over 80,000 sampled songs and 31,000 artists who have utilized sampling or covers during the duration of their careers. Even better, there is an audio feature that allows users to compare sampled songs with their originals.

I typed ‘Bob Dylan’ into the search engine. Dylan himself is cited as only using two song samples (“Seven Minutes of Funk” by Tyron Thomas and The Whole Darn Family and “Change The Beat” by Fab Five Freddy featuring Beeside). Nevertheless, his ‘Covers’ tab is significant, listing a variety of blues and folk references (my favorite being “House of the Rising Sun”).

Whosampled.com is music under a microscope with content that illustrates connecting points and heralds founding beat-makers. I’d highly recommend taking a look, if only to jog your memory. As for me, in the future I plan on being more forgiving. Afterall, imitation is the highest form of flattery.

MM Removed From Fall AMC Lineup? What the What?

I know this is old news (and the second time I've written about the topic) but the wound is still fresh...

“Mad Men” fans have been loosening their neckties, readjusting their cone-shaped Maiden Form braziers, patiently waiting for the return of Donald Draper and his Sterling Cooper crew. Season four wrapped up on October 16. Almost immediately following Mad Men’s finale, AMC premiered a new, surprisingly lively series – “The Walking Dead.”

“The Walking Dead” is a post-apocalyptic gore fest that follows a small group of citizens bent on evading a Zombie infestation. The survivors are led by Rick Grimes, a former small-town Georgian Sheriff. Shotgun in hand, Grimes splatters Undead brains with purpose, propelled forward by the idea of an obscure, corpse-free land that exists just over the ravaged horizon. “The Walking Dead” did more than keep eyes on AMC – it broke records. The show took on multiple rating titles, the most impressive being “Most-Watch Drama in Basic Cable” for the 18-49 year old age bracket. (The Futon Critic) No doubt the Executives at AMC were thrilled by the show’s success. With the addition of “The Walking Dead,” the network inadvertently secured the missing piece necessary to form an unstoppable entertainment triune - the other two components being “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad,” another popular drama centered on a High School science teacher-turned-drug dealer. But, as many know, three is often a crowd. Television series are no exception. AMC now faces a hard decision – how to fit each into their overcrowded lineup. According to Hitfix.com, “ AMC (will not air) ‘Breaking Bad’ season 4 until summer, and will likely try to launch ‘The Walking Dead’ season 2 around Halloween again. (‘Mad Men’) may not have a Sunday window in which to air a fifth season until perhaps early 2012.”

2021?! A whole year is far too long to wait. Hopefully AMC will come to a better solution by Fall. If not, in order to maintain “The Walking Dead,” “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” ’s audiences, I proposed a splicing. My series would be titled “The Bad, Mad Dead.” Examples of episode summaries would be as follows:

Episode 13: “While developing a campaign for Lucky Strike, Don discovers that the company’s manufacturers have secretly been lacing their tobacco with Meth, thereby making their product more addictive. Don is unsure of whether to report his findings. Later, he arrives home to find Betty furiously scratching herself with a spatula from the kitchen. When he questions her behavior, she throws a meatloaf against the wall and shrieks, ‘I am out of cigarettes and the grocery store is closed, okay?’ ”

Episode 20: “Peggy is finally ready to date again. She is excited when David, a pale, slobbering man from Accounting, asks her to dinner. The evening progresses well until David takes a bite out of Peggy’s shoulder. Humiliated, Peggy flees from the restaurant. The next morning she wakes to find a cardigan soaked in blood and is disturbed by her sudden appetite for human flesh.”

Snotty Sleeve

Jeeze. It has been awhile since I've posted anything. Must be all of this snow. My blogger itch is buried beneath 6 inches of gravel-studded slush. Today I had some time to shovel. Thus, here is the latest thought:

"Blue Valentine." Saw it at the Angelika a week ago and fell in love with the dull ache it left inside my rib cage. The story is familiar territory - a plot that revolves around the dissolution of a relationship. However, the way "Blue Valentine" showcases love's gradual fade-out is not trite. There is a constant juxtaposition between then and now - leaving even the sweetest of moments tinged with an unbelievable sadness because we, unlike the characters, know what lies ahead. Often times I get irritated by movies that aim to depress but don't give adequate authenticity to the emotion. Plenty of cinema aims at make audiences weepy. The goal is not satisfied if there is not a source of identification. Without identification, the movie gravitates quickly into being labeled as 'bad.' The problem isn't that melancholy movies are poor. More like viewers don't appreciate cheap shots aimed at provoking their tear ducts. Nobody enjoys a let down without a reason. What I want from a sad movie is realness - a mood that stirs up what I already know well, a discomfort that makes me remember something I had wished to forget.

Ooo, Child

Tonight my parents had a couple over for dinner who have two young children. The kids were cute in a blonde, bumbling way but never once during the duration of their stay did I wish that my siblings were still babies. (My mother did though. I could see it in her eyes. Whenever she got too wistful, I'd pick up a milk carton, tap the side and mouth the word 'no,' helpfully reminding her of the legal implications of kidnapping.) I am so glad that my brother and sisters are at a civilized point in their maturation. The first fifteen years of my life were punctuated by grape juice mustaches, missing socks, fights over hair brushes, fights over the last piece of bologna, carpet wrestling matches, whining in the backseat because someones ankle had brushed against another passenger's pant leg, opening my journal, finding that someone had crayoned over half the pages, the most upsetting graffiti being a buck-toothed butterfly scrawled over an entry that meticulously recorded an interaction with Darrell (a fellow Spanish Club member who may/may not have liked you because he grazed your gloppy, paper mache encrusted hand while constructing pinatas for Cinco de Mayo), darting, giggling shadows on the other side of closed bedroom doors, screams of frustration over privacy because NO ONE LEAVES ME ALONE! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUTTT!

No experience is ever completely bad. Though I was frequently embarrassed by them more often than not, I loved my hyperactive family. I love the calm adults they have become too. Sometimes I forget how awesome their age is and for that reason, I am glad for dinner party reminders. As I write this, I am eating a cupcake squirreled away from the dessert plate downstairs. I hear Olivia, my youngest sister, attempting to play with the toddlers. They have discovered our old dress-up trunk. One wears a leather vest and carries a plastic rifle. She points the gun at Liv. "I am the Sheriff and I am going to drag you to jail." Liv, being the pragmatic one, replies, "Wouldn't it be easier if I came willingly?" After thinking a moment, Sheriff retorts, "Okay, fine. Lets walk to jail." Then, as if to reinstate her hardened, Clint Eastwood authority, concludes: "But in one year, I will take you from jail and shoot you until you are dead."

Ah, memories.