Images from the Island

Two quick shots to sate you for today.

First this one from outside the General Store in West Tisbury. In addition to the general composition, note that the advertised public telephone appears to be invisible.




And then there's this fearsome moment:

That menacing visage is a one-up from the scene a few years ago in Maine. I wasn't thinking much of the Red Sox factor when I was cooking those beasts last week, but I'd love to see some of that mojo wrap around the Sox this year. Not much time, guys...

Adventures in the Commonwealth

Yes, I've been away. But I'm back. For now...

Cory and I both have colds, but we're otherwise uninjured from our travels, except a slight burn on my arms, where I seem to have missed a spot or two with the sunscreen. But I am getting ahead of myself.

As you know, a few weekends ago we went to the Solid Sound Festival/aka Wilcofest at Mass MoCA. I've forborne posting on it here, partly because there's already SO MUCH out there on the internets about it. If I get truly inspired, maybe I'll jot down a few notes on the subject. Suffice to say, it was an exercise in awesomness.

The following weekend, we were back in the Bay State - saw the Sox get truly pummeled by the Blue Jays at Fenway. Ugh. Still, it was a beautiful night in a beautiful place, and we were with Molly, so that can't be a bad thing.

A relaxing couple of days later, we saw a couple of our Wilcofest comrades perform at the Church. My Own Worst Enemy, live and fully rocking, in spite of a cold that Sue brought back from the Berkshires. Hey... wait a minute... is that where we got this cold from? Suuuuuuue! (insert shaking fist here.)

The next day after breakfast it was off to Martha's Vineyard. That's right: it's not just for Presidents anymore. But you knew that, because you saw it here last year. This year's stay was different, in a number of ways. And we'll count those ways in posts to come, but for now I'll start you off with a couple images of what the first couple days looked like through the window.

Please do not confuse this with a complaint! We had a wonderful time the whole week, and I'll share some photographic evidence of that in the course of the next several installments of our adventures.

Countdown to Wilco

T minus 27 hours and counting.


Tomorrow, Cory and I are taking Lola (fresh with a brand-new battery, a little ahead of schedule in my opinion, but she did have that rough day last year, and it's good not to have to worry about it) to Mass MoCA for the Solid Sound Festival, featuring the musical stylings of Wilco, Mavis Staples, the Baseball Project, the Books, and bunches of others, in the company of Sue & Steve & Laura, and graciously hosted by Sue & Kevin (and Max & Jackson!)

Can I get a Woo Hoo?

But Mama Grizzly Says It's a Good Thing!

Paul Krugman on preserving the Bush tax cuts.

It’s a disastrous choice in both the short run and the long run.

In the short run, those state and local cutbacks are a major drag on the economy, perpetuating devastatingly high unemployment.

It’s crucial to keep state and local government in mind when you hear people ranting about runaway government spending under President Obama. Yes, the federal government is spending more, although not as much as you might think. But state and local governments are cutting back. And if you add them together, it turns out that the only big spending increases have been in safety-net programs like unemployment insurance, which have soared in cost thanks to the severity of the slump...

The antigovernment campaign has always been phrased in terms of opposition to waste and fraud — to checks sent to welfare queens driving Cadillacs, to vast armies of bureaucrats uselessly pushing paper around. But those were myths, of course; there was never remotely as much waste and fraud as the right claimed. And now that the campaign has reached fruition, we’re seeing what was actually in the firing line: services that everyone except the very rich need, services that government must provide or nobody will, like lighted streets, drivable roads and decent schooling for the public as a whole.

Ok, yes, I threw in some emphasis. I'm not sure how to put it any simpler other than to say it's a very, very bad idea.

In case you're keeping score, my opinion is that we need to roll back the cuts on more than just the top 2%.

Of course, I could be wrong.

8-9-10

A/K/A today's date.

Which is pretty cool.

Happy Birthday Andy

Today is Andy Warhol's birthday. Maybe you knew that; maybe you didn't. I don't know your life. And I don't know how you feel about Mssr. Andy, and I don't have anything particularly Warholian planned for today, but I did want to dash off a few words and tuck in an image or three.

I found this one connected to the DeVorzon Gallery, which is selling the Sunday B. Morning series of the Marilyn and Flowers prints, but I can't figure out whom to attribute the photo to (maybe Warhol himself?) Anyway, I really love the frame play here: says a lot about an artist who knew how important framing is, who understood the sufficiency of simply employing the notion of a frame, of simply using the conceptual frame of saying "this thing is art." And in this image (the notion of the image being another that Warhol explored beyond thoroughly), we've get mileage on a number of levels: the wooden frame within the photo frame; the artist holding the frame around himself, this singular artist who created his own public image on virtually a daily basis; the cockeyed angle of the frame, projecting a continual impulse to skew art or turn it inside out; the corner of the wooden frame extending just out of sight beyond the margin of the photo's frame. Kind of perfect.

I was not an instant fan of Andy when I was a kid; I loved a lot of the people and things he influenced (especially musicians) before I came around to loving him. But the appreciation did come on eventually, and took root pretty strongly.

So it's only right to give him a little attention on his birthday day. There was a good segment on WYNC this morning. Covered the celebrations that his friends still hold almost every year on this day (including seances, according to the report) at Serendipity 3, where Warhol drank coffee and ate ice cream (and that frozen hot chocolate!) and gathered with friends and sometimes worked in the early years. If you have 8 minutes, it's worth a listen.

When I got to Chome this afternoon (right around the corner from the Chelsea Hotel, another important location in the Warhol Universe) I had some food on Cory's Warhol/Marilyn plates. Andy would be pleased, I think, at the utilitarian application of his work, and also with its ubiquity.

And ubiquity is the right word, I think. Even this computer, with the touch of a few buttons, lets you - nay, encourages you; practically defies you not to - make a little birthday card of your own to Andy.

So now Cory and I are off to catch some Brazilian music and great companionship. Maybe afterward we'll listen to Songs for Drella. Or at least have some frozen hot chocolate...

Courage, Cowardice and the Great Western Butter Slide

I'm guessing most of you have seen some video version of Anthony Weiner's (D-NY) speech in the House of Representatives on the Health and Compensation Act intended for First Responders to the World Trade Center attacks and people who lived in the vicinity. But in case you haven't, here it is:



Just for kicks, the YouTube page I embedded this time is not sponsored by Huffington Post or some such; it purports to be more of a 'neutral' post, (which includes the usual range of subtle and thoughtful discussion in the comment section for your amusement should you wish to dive down that hole.)

Shockingly, the Right has been accusing Mr. Weiner of using the platform to get some limelight, and possibly jump-start his run for Mayor of New York. And they have been holding this up as evidence that we need to return to reasonable discourse, to restore dignity to the hallowed halls of Congress. Naturally. Because that's what they're all about.

[We'll take a brief pause while you digest that.]

More to the point for today's installment is this Op Ed by Representative Weiner himself, which describes the reasons why he felt compelled to go into Red-Faced Rant mode.

...what upset me most last week were comments voiced by Republicans who claimed to be supporters of the bill, yet who used their time on the House floor not to persuade skeptical Republican colleagues to vote yes but to excoriate Democrats for using the suspension calendar.

Emphasis mine.

And for what it's worth, if a little ranting from the Honorable Congressman shines some light on both parties' tendency to politicize suffering and exploit fear (some Republicans actually claimed they were holding this bill up because they want to make sure that it didn't benefit any illegal immigrants. Because they are the cause of all our problems. This week. Them and the gays.) then I'm, you know, pretty ok with it.

The Big Takeover

No, I'm not talking about the so-funny-I-forgot-to-laugh management transfer at BP. Nor the fact that Bernadette Peters is stepping into the role that Catherine Zeta-Jones started in the current production of A Little Night Music.

I'm talking about the punk/indie/lo-fi music magazine Jack Rabid started some 30 years ago. The anniversary got some press, and they had a concert/birthday party last weekend too.

"This was the most accidental 30-year career I’ve ever seen."

Not that I went to it or anything. My weekend was spent (quite happily, thank you very much) with Cory and my sister and my father, who were resting up (sort of) from setting up her house on Long Island. In addition to the resting, Dad and I saw Winter's Tale at the Delacorte, we went shopping for air conditioners for Lori, and we all hit Citi Field for the D-Backs Debacle (Ugh. Argh. Yikes.) Plus, you know, good ol' family time.

I also missed the Bill Schimmel Accordionarama that Carl was playing in. Sigh. You can't do it all.

Pix

Ok, not really an expansion of the Hotlanta post, but I uploaded a bunch of shots (mostly from Atlanta, with a couple others thrown in just to confuse you) to a flickr page. Enjoy, if you're up for that sort of thing.

Oh, all right, here's one for the time being. For your trouble.

Hotlanta

I'm back from the conference in Orlando. (Dayjob stuff. Lots of work and no small amount of pressure this year for a variety of reasons. It went well enough, all things weighed.) Between there and here I stopped in Atlanta for a visit with Cory's family on the occasion of Cory's nephew Joe's 6th birthday. We stayed with her brother and his wife and kids. I'll see if I can muster a full-on entry about that mini-trip, but for now, here are a few shots documenting the festivities.

We'll start with a shot of the birthday boy:

There was a smaller family party on Saturday. Cory and I gave presents to her niece and nephew and a couple of their cousins. We gave harmonicas to the older kids, but baby Maya really took to the instrument...

Kind of amazing how thoughtfully she treated it - sounded great! I swear she was even bending notes a couple times - that open channel of breath in natural action.

On Sunday, a bigger group joined us at a minor league baseball game. We had a picnic, and the group all joined in on a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday.

Joe's sister Jules got into the game too. Here she is with her cousin Ryan and her uncle John.




I like this shot of Joe a lot.

And here are a couple of the family dogs. Nothing earth-shaking here, just a young dog Blondie with a LOT of energy...



...and an older dog, Joplin, who gets a lot of rest.

I know she looks a little, um, hungry there. She's an Italian Greyhound - they all sort of look like that. And Joplin, well, she's sort of losing interest in food. Cory thinks maybe she's trying to do that thing where you lower your calorie intake so you live longer. I don't know. Could be.

Each is extremely sweet in her own way. Glad I got to know them.

Independence Day

The All Star Game is in what look to be its final moments, and I really need to go to bed, but since I'm trying to keep at this a little better in spite of craziness in my life and dayjob (oh my, you have no idea) I'm going to throw in a few photos from the 4th of July a couple weekends ago.

We went to New Hope again this year, to hang with Carl and Kevin. But this year we were also joined by Carl and Eevin. Eevin rhymes with Kevin.

That's right folks, we were with Carl and Eevin and Carl and Kevin. Carl and Carl and Kevin and Eevin. No shortage of fun there!

We did have lots o' fun, including the Erwinna Fireworks (complete with local orchestra) and some fierce games of Killer Bunnies (have you heard of this?) We also went to some friends' pool, and got to hang out with some wicked awesome puppies.

Sam and Sadie love the pool.

Sadie prefers it from the outside, in general.


Carl and Eevin shared some of their weekly Sunday Times traditions.

And I like this shot of paws and prints by the pool.

Ok, there you have it. Plus the National League won the All Star Game for the first time since 1996. Holy Moly!

I'll try to be back sooner than that.

Fun with Legal Streaming

One little perk of the non-stop "hey, let's remaster and/or re-release our old records and sell them again!" trend in the world of rock and roll is that these little gems do tend to include some new and/or interesting material.

R.E.M.'s contribution to this pattern has so far involved digital remasters of their early albums and pairing them with a bonus disc of live material from the era. But the newest installment, the remastered version of Fables of the Reconstruction, gives us a bunch of demos on the bonus disc. And in a friendly gesture, you can listen to a stream of those demos here (and probably in a bunch of other places too, but that's the place I ran across first.

Fables was about to be released when I saw R.E.M. for the first time, at the University of Wisconsin Stock Pavilion (for all intents and purposes a literal barn, albeit a really really big one). It was a great experience at the time (though I heard somewhere that the band did not appreciate the particular form of "return to your country roots" provided by that venue) and a great music memory now. That album took a critical beating, and even R.E.M. sort of disavowed it at the time, but I was blown away from the get-go: from the ringing minor key hyper-electric guitar opening of "Feeling Gravity's Pull" through the amazing "Driver 8" (still has to be one of R.E.M.'s best songs) and the folky jangle of the whole record.

Love this picture from around that time. For those first few years (till around Green, I think) Michael Stipe would hardly ever look at a camera.

Anyway, sentiment may color my judgment, but enjoy listening to disc 2 if you feel like it, with demo versions of the whole album and a couple b-sides and extra treats as well. Thanks to the good people at KCRW in L.A. for the stream.

Behind

Way behind in blogging, on levels large and small, for a bunch of reasons, good and bad.

But also, and nigh unforgivably, I missed Gustav Mahler's 150th birthday yesterday. Oof. Oy. Yikes.

It was Chagall's birthday too, which is big. But missing Mahler's 150th? Sorry 'bout that.

Not to worry - I'll have a Mahlerthon tomorrow. Das Lied von der Erde coming up.

Oh yeah, and LeBron picked Miami. So be it.

Zooming By

Time is kind of whizzing along. Not necessarily a bad thing - it's just the way life is, especially when I'm in a show (Two more weeks! I am steadfast in my attempt to prove that there is no such thing as a small part...) and the dayjob is off-the-hook busy.

On the other hand, I get more than a little miffed at myself when I realize that I have missed pretty amazing things like the Undead Jazzfest without even registering that it was happening until it already happened. Many slaps on my wrist! Much mortification of my flesh with a barbed lash!

Sigh...

In other news, here's an article about Charlie Sheen's work release program. While I'm the first to assert that theater does in fact serve the community, it strikes me as rather odd that a celebrity can beat his wife and be sentenced to... regional theater. There is humor in this, of a bleak sort. It has been mentioned that this simply reflects his individual skill set; it certainly can be interpreted as adding value to the theater company and its education program (though by the same token there are those whose eyebrows are raised at the notion of being assigned to teach children as part of release for domestic abuse); and the case has been made that it's not all that different from, say, a lawyer doing pro-bono work as a condition of a plea agreement. Discuss.

Lines

It's possible that you're aware that Cory is not a fan of being photographed, in general. Quite the contrary. So the other day when she put up nary a fuss at all when I brought out the camera to shoot some pix, I was stunned and delighted.

See, we were working on my lines for the show I'm doing.

Cory started out pretty straightforward, but pretty soon she was getting into it. (As usual, you can click on the pix and get a larger view)

She said she didn't mind me shooting her because she thought it would be a good exercise for me - to see if my line-knowledge could stand up to the multi tasking. I know my lines pretty well at this point (we started performing last night, after all - at the pop-up space at 2 Great Jones, 7 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays all month. You should come see us!!) so I got through the exercise just fine.

I think her acceptance of the camera may also have had something to do with the fact that she was wearing a super cute dress and was looking all summer-a-go-go. Plus, just maaaaaybe she has a teensy weensy smidge of the performer gene in there somewhere...

I am ecstatic over these shots, and I hope you enjoy them too. Here's one last view of Cory flat out smiling for the camera.

Yay!

Lost and Found

I've been pretty busy with rehearsals and a bunch of other things lately, so my input here has been on the sketchy side. And I won't be able to catch you all up on everything now either, but in the spirit of putting something out there...

Cory and I hosted a party for the finale of Lost last weekend. We don't qualify for the most serious category of Lost fan (those would be the ones who have whole blogs devoted to dissecting the inner workings and mythologies of the show), but we took it seriously enough to do some cooking and put together some design elements.

Our notion of design for a party was not nearly enough for my sister Lori, however. Although she has never seen a single episode of Lost, she insisted that we 'theme it up' a notch or two, and put in more of an effort than would have occurred to us.

Cory ordered some custom M&Ms. BIG UPS to Cory for the notion, and seeing it through! If you know the show, these are pretty cool; if you don't, they're probably just baffling.




The inscribed candies got little bags to be handed out to the partiers. The skull image goes with the show at least a little bit ("Adam and Eve" in the cave; the general sense of foreboding and rampant death in the last few episodes)




And the simple Black and White candies went into coconut shells.



We also got a pineapple to fit with the Pacific Island theme, used the top as a centerpiece and skewered chunks with toothpicks decorated with banners Lori made, inscribed with character names.


Stole this photo from my sister, as I somehow managed not to get any shots of the pineapple spread.

Check out her work! She picked out the tropical paper, and we gave her a list of names (with the name crossed out for characters who were dead in one timeline or another.) She used special paper and ink for the names of the "Candidates." Pretty good for someone who has never seen the show, and doesn't care about it at all.



We made a fish stew. Lori helped a lot with this on the sous chef end, but she doesn't really like fish (as in - she runs screaming from the kitchen when seafood is cooking), so she didn't stick around for the completion of that.



It was a good stew - I used cod and mahi mahi in a garlic lime marinade; peppers, onions, tomatoes, scallions, cilantro; coconut milk made it extra-special island-y; and the secret ingredient was oil simmered with annatto seed. Yum.

Also a special blend of spices, including a hands-across-the-water conjunction of hot sauces.



Here's the food table before people arrived. The dips haven't been put into the bowls yet, and a lot of food was yet to come.

This shot gives a sense of the party in action.

Off to the left is the corner of the now-fully-loaded food table. You can see the platter with Lia's corn, black bean and quinoa salad, and the sesame-peanut sauce that went on Daniel and Susan's buckwheat noodles. Sadly, I did not get a shot of Sherin's broccoli-mango salad or Shannon's bread bowls, but trust me: all was extremely tasty!

Also, Sherin put together a game of Lost Bingo. She gathered a bunch of possible events of varying likelihood, and arranged them into a bingo board to check things off as they happened. They were really great!

Cory had the first winning card. She won a mango! Here's the Great and Glorious Card of Victory:

I love this shot - lots of joy in the faces of Shannon, Leslie and Cory.

'Twas a fun party. Maybe see you at the next one - in another life, brother.

Happy Birthday Pete

Pete Townshend's 65th birthday today.



This event more or less speaks for itself.

However, as a treat to those who care about such things, Pete released the last installment of his 6-part "fan interview" over the weekend. (I think they might make you set up a profile to get to read that copy.) Was the timing of that release intended to coincide with the birthday? How would I know?

Anyway, the interview is LONG, and I haven't had the time to make it all the way through yet. Here's one little tidbit, in response to a question about how his Lifehouse project foreshadowed the internet phenomenon.

Lifehouse was written in 1971. The smallest music computer at that time filled a huge shed. But anything we imagine will become reality sooner or later. I’m a sucker for the online world, but what I foresaw in Lifehouse has actually turned out to be far worse in real life. There is no way to truly lose yourself on the internet, you are not really safe there, you are not protected, you are merely overlooked and exploited as a resource for banks, businesses and of course moral or political dictatorships.

And that's the way it is...

Why is it that the people that make the most political sense these days are comedians?

Oh yeah, it's always been that way.

Happy birthday a little bit late, George. Hope you're watching over the primaries some.

All Together Now

Someone was asking about Glenn Gould. Here's a viddy (with the added bonus of relating to our earlier discussion of keyboard temperament). There is no shortage of material out there on Mr. Gould: recordings, photos, videos. But for now, I like this one - it's fun to follow along with the score.

Media Fail

You know about the disaster happening down South, right?

Nope, not talking about the oil spill in the Gulf (horrendous though that is.) I refer to the "Nashville" Flood, which actually extends over a much wider swath of Tennessee and Kentucky. You could hardly be blamed if you haven't noticed the extent of the damage, since most media sources have been all-but-ignoring this event, in the wake of the spill and the Times Square bombing. Thanks to Sherin for sharing a very good piece that Bob Sellers put together on the subject. Thanks also to Vince Gill and Taylor Swift and a bunch of other country musicians for getting out there and lending a serious hand and raising some awareness.

Counting and Recounting

So much has been going on, I haven't had time to process it, much less blog about it. Last week was a frenzy of performances and rehearsals, thanks in large part to gifts and/or knowing people involved with the shows But here's some kind of stab at catching up.

Monday I was treated to a benefit for Elevator Repair Service, an amazing theater company that does really creative work. Looking forward to seeing Gatz, their production of The Great Gatsby which involves reading the entire novel live and on stage. The benefit was great - actors reading from Great American Books. Frankie Faison was fab reading from Moby Dick, and Frances McDormand was brilliant reading from The Age of Innocence. Rad sound design too.

Wednesday I went to Sondheim on Sondheim at Studio 54. Very much fun - I actually didn't know much about the show before I went. If you have an interest in Stephen Sondheim (and I'm guessing you do) it's worth paying a visit.

Thursday... well, Thursday was omigod omiGOD territory. That was the night of the Chris Knox Benefit at Le Poisson Rouge. Now it's true that not too many people know about Chris Knox, who had a stroke about a year ago, and I actually only know a little of his stuff myself (though I now am on a mission to dive much deeper into his work) but I know a good lineup when I see one: Yo La Tengo, Jeff Mangum, Kyp Malone, Claudia Gonson, Portastatic, The Clean (and various solo projects attendant thereto) Dimmer, and a bunch of others joined up to put together a marathon set of awesomeness, with the proceeds going straight to Chris in New Zealand.

"Wait a minute," some of you are saying. "Who was that between YLT and Kyp Malone? Jeff Mangum was playing that show???"

But then again, most of the people who would know to do that double take would also have known that he was there last week.

And while I'm tempted to wax rhapsodic about Neutral Milk Hotel and other earth-shaking events from the history of music, suffice it for now to say that Mangum's set was unlike anything I've ever seen or heard. (More heard than seen, since he sat down to perform, which meant that unless you were right up front, or very tall, you didn't get to see very much.) 700 people bursting into an earsplitting ovation followed by pindrop silence followed by reverential humming and sprinkled with tears born from some mixture of joy, awe and reverence.

Remember what you learned in high school? How music and theater began as part of religious ceremonies in ancient civilizations? This was a religious experience.

And then about half the audience left when Jeff finished his set. Whatever. More room for the rest of us.

Ira pre-emptively made fun of bloggers from the stage that night, and I guess I'm worthy of his scorn today (though it may bear mentioning that his band's website is a little bloggy itself, and they have a myspace page too.) The show as a whole was outstanding. Yo La Tengo lent itself (as a whole or in parts) to various projects, and their own set was brilliant, of course; the Clean was FANTASTIC; and we left spent but better for it.

More to come, but for now I'll leave you with one of my favorite photos of the beautiful Lena Horne, who is singing with angels.

Down Time

Tired and sick. A little bit.

Not sick and tired with life or anything! Just the contrary: things have been mostly very very good, I've just succumbed to a cold bug that I'd rather not have to deal with. And it's making me miss some friends' housewarming party, which makes me feel sad and no little bit guilty (since god knows I've done plenty of things this week.) But it's time for a little nap time at home in the wake of Mother's Day brunch with my sister (and the calls to mom and grandma.)

I'll try to write some more about what's going on in the coming days. For now - sweet dreams.

The Sea Turtle Metaphors

Ok, you can say what you want about posting other people's photos.

And yes, maybe this does belong in FU Penguin.

But seriously - in the middle of a hard week, who doesn't want to see this photo of a baby turtle breaking out of its shell?

Just don't go digging too deeply into Suddenly, Last Summer to extend the metaphor...