At 17, getting into a band was as easy as dating the guitar player and learning to play a little tambourine.  At 27 it was as simple as posting a flyer with tear off tabs at Y&T with a list of my “influences” and previous bands.  At 37, I browse ads on Craigslist, and I wonder if the kids that post “no geezers” are referring to me.

Truthfully, it isn’t crazy difficult to find people to play with.  There are just some trade offs.  When everyone in the band has kids (like some guys I sang with for a few months at the start of the year) then the kill time for practice is pretty early.  There isn’t a lot of room for goofing off.  On the up side of that, no one gets so wasted they can’t play.  Playing with people in their 30’s means they have a job and will show for practice, but it also means canceling practice when their son has the flu.  Frankly, that’s only because none of us wants to catch that flu and pass it on to our own children.  I still meet slacker jobless musicians, even people in their 40’s, but now I refuse to play with them.

So, right now, the status of my band-life is that I have found someone with whom I am writing new songs.  He is probably in his late 30’s or early 40’s (hard to tell when someone is a smoker or a sun-worshiper), and is a nice guy.  We both listen to NPR every morning, we agree on subjects political and artistic (not difficult bonding points among musicians), and neither of us drinks to excess.  We also agree on the sound we’re going for, which is a huge part of the battle.  Now here we are, about to start auditioning other band mates.  Cue the scene in the doorway from “The Commitments.”  Seriously, Netflix it.

Tags: getting older, music by Van McO
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Paula: On the front page of the New York Times Week in Review yesterday (Sunday, Oct. 19), there’s an article about conservatives who are deserting McCain and endorsing or at least leaning toward Obama. 
The article mentions Charles Krauthammer, who criticized McCain for “frenetic improvisation” and praised Obama for his “first-class intellect and a first-class temperament.”

Also mentioned is George Will, who said in a column that McCain is acting like a “flustered rookie playing in a league too high.” And there is the endorsement of Obama by Christopher Buckley, son of the late uber-conservative William F. Buckley, he of the most intellectually effete and unruffleable manner. It seems to me that what these men are objecting to in McCain and responding to in Obama is style. [Read more →]

Tags: conversations with Paula and Robert, politics & government by Paula Marantz Cohen
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Being a Brief Review of the New George Bush Biopic

Josh Brolin portrays George W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s new biopic, W., as a bandy-legged welterweight who is, in his earlier years, frequently drunk and, as President, seemingly punch-drunk as he staggers his way to the end of public utterances he never should have started. 

It’s a brilliant portrayal that rarely gives in to the temptation to caricature the President by taking his public persona and blowing up its least attractive characteristics.  As foolish as Bush often looks in this film, he resembles the actual Bush that all of us know, rather than the cartoon version that most of his critics have endeavored to draw. 

Throughout the movie, Brolin doesn’t impersonate Bush as much as he embodies him.  And the embodiment is psychological as well as physical.  As few of his legion of critics have ever managed to do, Stone and his screenwriter Stanley Weiser attempt to actually get inside of Bush and understand what and who (principally his father) has motivated him throughout his very curious life.     [Read more →]

Tags: movies, politics & government by Michael Antman
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Dear Ruby Mac,
My best friend is selling jewelry. Before, it was Pampered Chef, and before that, lingerie. I go to everything, but I just don’t have the money to buy this expensive stuff and I’m beginning to resent being asked all the time. After all, I’ve never asked her to buy my company’s product or my husband’s company’s product, but for some reason, I’m expected to subsidize her career.

If I don’t go, I know I’ll be considered a bad friend by everybody who does show up. Any ideas to save my budget and my BFF?
Terese

Dear Terese,
Multilevel marketing is the scourge of humanity. And yet I say this with a pair of shiny silver candlesticks on order and a bottle of nasty pyramid scheme health juice in my fridge. My best friend and her sister have been doing the direct selling thing for years, and I get invited to every damn “party.”

There are pros and cons to this:
Pro: She makes the best hors d’oeurves ever. Her guacamole is the stuff of legends.
Con: It’s overpriced crap I feel obligated to buy.
Pro: I do enjoy an evening out with wine and no kids.
Con: It’s overpriced crap I feel obligated to buy.
Pro: If I go, I’ve done my BFF duty, just like the bridesmaid dress and the emergency babysitting.

After carefully weighing all my options, I have come to the conclusion that a certain amount of Tupperware or Silpada is kind of a BFF tax. It’s not fair, it’s probably not reciprocated, and I’m very glad I didn’t need to move during the 18 months she was a realtor, but still, overall, it’s worth it.

If you come to the same conclusion, here are a few tips I’ve learned:

• Only buy gifts. This should help keep you within a certain price range and alleviate buyer’s remorse. Ask — if none of the items for sale at a particular party are in your price range, just say ‘no, thanks.’
• If you’re trying on clothes or accessories, do not be encouraged by compliments from other women in the room. They’re only trying to justify their own budget-busting and, let’s admit it, they’re probably drunk.
• It’s okay to call home and get a reality check from your significant other (“Suddenly, I like turquoise. This can’t be right. Talk me out of this.”).
• Draw your line in the sand. For example, I will never, ever, consent to host a party. Never ever. Ever. Ever freaking ever. I know this, the BFF knows this, the sister knows this, as will any “hostesses” I come in contact with. This allows me to participate with good grace.

Good luck with your holiday shopping, Terese. And try the artichoke dip — it’s fabulous.

Questions for Ruby? Just ask . . .

Tags: advice by Ruby Mac
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August 2, 2008
I dream I go to a doctor because I have a blemish on my penis. The doctor is unimpressed by my condition, but to be safe (and partly to be devious) he requires that I put cough medicine on my blemish six times each day. I tell him “No problem. I will stop whatever I’m doing to apply my penis medicine.” Then, suddenly, he lances me with a syringe shaped like a ball point pen. Then, when I put the bottle of penis medicine into my brief case, the nurse is bewildered by the number of loose decks of cards inside. [Read more →]

Tags: Fred's dreams by Fred Siegel
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I was bicycling the painfully quaint streets of Wilmette this past weekend (painful in the sense that the cobblestone lanes, originally constructed to give horse hooves better traction, deliver juddering jolts to the drivers and bike riders of today) when I came across this recently expired creature:

I think I’ve seen a live skunk only once in my life, and I had skirted her by a wide margin, although, to be fair, she had avoided me every bit as assiduously.  But this fellow, who was thoroughly dead though not yet decomposed, gave me an opportunity to investigate up close what a skunk really looked like and smelled like.

Though not, I should add, felt like — I’m neither a scientist nor a taxidermist, and although I’m curious about wild creatures, I thought it best to leave the up close and personal stuff to the few early-arriving flies already busily doing whatever it is they do to flattened, car-killed carcasses.

[Read more →]

Tags: animals by Michael Antman
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I’m so far past hip that I’ve had a hipster replacement. That’s a middle age joke. And once you have to explain a joke the joke no longer exists. It becomes a duty. Hipsters never explain. Hipster replacements learn to share. Aging hipsters end up like Comic Book Guy in the Simpsons. Over inflated and over the top. A paradigm of ridiculousness. A narrow mind exposed for its failure to engage the rest of the world with an honest gaze.

Actually, I don’t run into that many tragically cool hipsters as I did a few years back. You know, back when guys with hair started shaving their heads. The pioneers of that bald chic hair style had a certain badass cachet about them, almost like they were banditos sneering at the well coiffed: “Follicles? We don’ need no steenking FOLLICLES!” Then there was the whole rockabilly thing going on with guys in Elvis pompadors wearing starched blue jeans with the cuffs turned up and chains on their wallets attached to their belt loops.

I suppose that’s one of the definitions of the hipster dress code. There’s got to be an implicit defiance manifested in what they choose to wear. It can be subtle, it can be outrageous, but it is instantly recognizable as hip. Whenever I wear anything self consciously hip I just end up looking dopey. [Read more →]

Tags: fashion & clothing, getting older by Clark DeLeon
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Paula: I just had a talk with a dear friend of mine who happens to be a Republican. She told me, in tears, that a number of her friends have dropped her because she supports McCain-Palin. They say this is incomprehensible. I seem to be able to accept that she may have another view, even though I don’t share it and can’t understand it particularly. Her gay friend said he saw it as a personal affront and I suppose others have accused her of being racist or plain stupid. Any thoughts on this? 

  Robert: This is indeed the conundrum of modern bourgeois life, it seems to me. We become close to people with whom we have political and religious differences and yet we’re supposed to get along [Read more →]

Tags: conversations with Paula and Robert, politics & government by Paula Marantz Cohen
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While the stock market has acted like a yo-yo, the last few days of weather in the Northeast have been fantastic. You’ve got to love summer-style weather in mid October, right? It’s especially good if you happen to be someone like me, who loves being behind the wheel and driving with the window down. Now granted, nobody likes sitting in traffic, but when there’s a clear road ahead and some time to kill, what’s better than cranking up the radio when good tunes come on?  Talk radio puts me to sleep, and I don’t have a tape\CD player in my ’97 Plymouth Breeze.
 
So I got to thinking while I was on the road one night… what are the best songs to drive to?  I’m talking about for highway driving, straight on through, no lights, etc. The answers are going to be subjective based on people’s preferences, as I can’t imagine a die hard fan of Three Dog Night would blast Miley Cyrus at peak volume. But here are five of this relatively young adult’s well-known favorites in no particular order.
 
               – Hypnotize, Notorious B.I.G…. great, steady, pounding bass beat. I don’t know a single hip hop fan that doesn’t like it.
 
               – Thunderstruck, AC\DC…fast beat, great vocals, even better if you hear a live version with the crowd in the background. If you’re on your way to a big event of some sort, it is impossible not to get pumped up when you hear it.
 
               – Where The Streets Have No Name, U2… slow build-up in the beginning, but the pace picks up quickly.
 
               – Run Like Hell, Pink Floyd…I’ve been told that the Disco Biscuits do a fantastic version of this song, but I’ll take the original here.
 
               – For Whom The Bell Tolls, Metallica…this used to be a song that I would strictly reserve for trips to the casino, but again, it’s really hard not to get pumped up by the bells and the group’s distinct guitar riffs.

Tags: music by Glenn Giangrande
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The pill didn’t make one taller. That wasn’t the issue. It wasn’t a case of medical science tampering with God’s design, or biological engineering in an effort to transform the human race into a different, better species — a taller one. No, all the oblong, indigo “Gargantuanx” did, miracle of miracles, was create the illusion in the mind of the consumer that he was taller. That’s all.

The pill didn’t take immediate effect. For about 10 minutes you felt nothing. Then you were taller. That is, you believed you were. [Read more →]

Tags: creative writing, drugs & alcohol by Scott Stein
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Among all of the other market meltdowns last week, the Japanese stock index Nikkei suffered its worst one-week loss in history, shedding nearly a quarter of its value — this, after a long and painful recession.  So, in the spirit of anachronistic contrarianism, here’s a souvenir in verse from late in 1991, when I was living in Japan and it appeared to be on the verge of conquering the world economically.

I remember being skeptical about the Japanese “threat” for a long time, but eventually, like everyone else, I succumbed to the “madness of crowds” and wrote this poem.  As it turns out, it was almost literally at the peak of Japan’s dominance — its economy started to sputter almost immediately thereafter. 

But it works in the other direction, too; often, at the very moment when the majority of the investing public is convinced that a given market or economy is in permanent decline, it begins to recover.  The sun also rises — in the U.S. and Japan alike.

Incidentally, one explanatory note:  The last stanza refers to the massive green nets that were draped around buildings under construction in Japanese cities, as well as to the controversy over the Japanese hunting of whales and the other forms of environmental despoilation they committed. I suspect Japan, like the United States, has since become more conscious of environmental stewardship, and hope that this attitude, as well as our industries’ investment in solar energy technologies, bio-fuels and other alternative energy sources, will survive both the hard times we’re experiencing now, and the next wave of prosperity as well.

Expatriate, Waking
(Japan, 1991)

The rising sun assembles itself in the East
With matches, scraps of silk and kerosene,
And, hot off the line, lacquers our door before
The pale plodders stateside even dream it.

Like all we consume, sunlight is made here,
And in its export West, warms only those who work.
Witness these pigeons, diligent at dawn:
Setting the tone from below, they’re selecting

From a soggy salad of string and twig
Sufficient bits from which to build a home
Across the yard from, and a comment upon,
In its sense, and compact cleverness, ours.

Outmanned in every sphere is how we feel:
We’ve the better materials, not they!
But across from my office has materialized
A nineteen-story tower in the time it took me

To skim three magazines and eat a bun.
I swear, an hour ago, it wasn’t there:
Just a lot of rubble, flattened sacks of rice,
And a crumbling cistern choked with twiggy moss.

Now, nearly done, its bloody beams are dressed
With massive, block-wide, kelp-green drifting nets
That sift the swimming breeze and hide the doomed
Whales, spirits, haunting its empty halls.

Tags: creative writing by Michael Antman
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Dawn lives on a hill among 16 acres of farmy land 50 minutes away. In the fall, the view off her western-facing deck is the epitome of Midwestern autumnal glory — hills, turning trees, wheatfields, russet sunsets.

I live in a Victorian in the city. I don’t have a view. I do have a jacuzzi and a big screen TV in my basement.

On a weekend this month, I will bake bread in her old-fashioned kitchen, cook a farm supper, and let the kids run through the fields with the dogs.

Dawn and her family will go to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner and watch something suitably special-effectsy on the TV, and maybe soak in the tub.

We have led ourselves to believe we’ve had a weekend away. We have no problem perpetuating this myth year after year.

$ Cost: usual weekend entertainment expenses + gas

# Pain: if you can get over any neat freak or privacy issues, very little.

Variation: house-sit over their vacation or visit www.houseswap.com to try this with strangers (at your own risk)

Tags: advice by Ruby Mac
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Ahhh… Pah-ree.

Tags: photography by Andrew Turner
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I have long been involved with a non-profit group called the Susan G. Komen Foundation. This group raises money, and awareness, for research on breast cancer. My involvement in past years was primarily my strong back. A co-worker and long time Board of Directors member, Barbara Hoffman, would conscript me to move boxes of shirts, pamphlets, equipment and other, manual labor type tasks.

This year, I volunteered to lend my photography skills to the cause and the Board was delighted to accept me as a staff photographer for the local chapter.

Over the last several months, I have been involved in documenting the volunteer effort that goes in to an organization of this type, and I focused on the activities leading up to their largest yearly event, the ‘Race for the Cure.’ This 5K race draws huge crowds of supporters and gives a lot of good media exposure to the foundation.

The race, for many, is just a side show. This event is much, much more than just sweaty people paying to pound the pavement! The event gathers cancer survivors together to celebrate life, to acknowledge the struggle they face and to show the world that they are winning the battle.

As a self-proclaimed curmudgeon and a card-carrying cynic [Read more →]

Tags: health & medical, photography by David "Preacher" Slocum
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July 11, 2008
I dream I make a surprise visit to Uncle Moose and Aunt Yetta’s enormous house in Central New Jersey. I have with me an envelope that has to be mailed, and Aunt Yetta is very concerned about it. I tell her not to worry. After I settle into a chair, I am called to watch a psychic on television. The psychic, a French Jew dressed as a shepherd, demonstrates his ability to communicate with animals. A ferocious pregnant llama is protective of her territory, so the French Jewish psychic transforms himself into an emaciated lamb to gain entrance into the llama’s environment. The psychic communes with the llama. [Read more →]

Tags: Fred's dreams by Fred Siegel
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There’s a big empty lot a few blocks from my house in Wilmette, Illinois, and all summer long, Seamus (our dog) and I have been watching a couple of kildeer hatch their eggs.  

You’ve probably seen kildeer, even if you don’t recognize the name — they’re the diligent-looking, stilt-legged little birds that are usually found on the shoreline, playing matador with the incoming tide, darting in daringly to peck at some kind of minute crustaceans dumped on shore by the waves, then racing away frantically as the the next big wave bears down on them. 

What these kildeer were doing in Wilmette, a mile away from Lake Michigan, I didn’t at first understand, not, at least, until I learned on Wikipedia that they often nest far from water.  Thinking them lost or out of their natural range, I spent the summer rooting them on, because the empty lot wasn’t completely empty — there’s a big sign advertising a new condo development at the front, and a single backhoe parked ominously at the back, very close to where the unprotected kildeer’s nest lay on the flat ground. [Read more →]

Tags: animals by Michael Antman
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You’re trying to stay in a budget. You’ve blown all the money on fun-size Three Musketeers bars, but you still have a party to throw. Every year there’s more cool stuff for Halloween than ever — is it even possible to decorate for less than $100?

How about $5.53?

With a can or two of black spray paint and a keen sense of irony, you can make oddly creepy decor. Start with weird crap in your storeroom — a vase with fake flowers, a doll crib with or without the accompanying Cabbage Patch, crocheted toilet roll doilies, any kind of tacky knick-knack — the cuter and dumber the better. Spray the hell out of it.

Step two: find more ugly-cute crap and make it . . . wrong. Rub ashes on the clown painting. Spatter blood/paint on the kitchen goose plaque. Break fifteen Flintstones jelly glasses, just slightly, and arrange them in a kind of shrine to killer kitsch. Put the banality in evil. The pièce de résistance — black Christmas wreathes. Hell, paint a damn pine tree and drag it in, draped with bloody butcher’s twine. Then arrange it like any ordinary demented, homicidal housewife.

You’ve got your funereal, your snark, your unholy wedding of Martha Stewart and Edward Gorey. It will look highly creative, a quality prized by true Halloweenies, and also deeply disturbing. And it’s five freaking bucks, plus everything you can sneak out of Grandma’s garage, which, honestly, needed cleaning out.

Send Ruby a picture of your nastiest (PG-13) decorative work and you may see it published on this blog on Halloween. Or send me your questions about life, love, work, or money.

Tags: advice, money by Ruby Mac
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My Tim Gunn bobblehead just arrived in the mail. I am counting on it to radically alter my life/destiny. So far he’s only sagely cautioned, “I can’t want you to succeed more than you do,” but on the upside he has yet to call me a “pterodactyl out of a gay Jurassic Park.” I take this as an affirmation of my personal potential. “Fab-u-los!” he now adds. Clearly, great things await us.

Tags: religion & philosophy by Shawn Macomber
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For those of us who see politics as something other than a game of capture the red/blue flag, presidential debates become fairly tedious affairs right about the time voters begin winnowing out marginal candidates — you know, the ones who bum focus groups out with things like “facts” and “the truth.” Whatever your politics, however, thanks to the creators of PALINdrome this year’s vice-presidential debate can be different. Tonight, have it your way. Whenever Gwen Ifill finally cuts off whatever delusion of grandeur Joe Biden is caught up in, hit the mute button and create your own response out of a series of phrases Sarah Palin culled from either the perfect RNC speech or the opposite-of-perfect Katie Couric interview. (My actual advice for Palin is up at Culture 11.) If you’re a Republican, you can help Palin bring the pain to Biden like he was some innocent furry Alaskan woodland creature. If you’re a Democrat…well, you could do worse than a verbatim transcript of the Couric interview, but feel free to get more creative if you like.     

I just finished my own practice run, torturing my wife as she readied herself for work with a hitherto undelivered Palin speech that included the lines “It is obvious I desire Henry Kissinger, he is my New York love Holocaust — I think that’s the word — I want to has him inside my backpack, because I think I am beyond bad” (Oh yeah, naughty girl!);  “I have a message for you: Styrofoam is evil, John McCain is the haberdasher of war”; and “The difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick. The difference between al-Qaeda and special needs children? Guns.” 

Any better ideas? Please share. 

Tags: politics & government, technology by Shawn Macomber
1 Comment »

August 31, 2008
I dream I stop at Hardee’s for lunch and the people behind the counter are aggressively trying to get rid of leftover breakfast items. They say, “We have to throw it out anyway.” So I say, “Ok, give me an egg sandwich.” Then when they tell me the price of my lunch, I say “Wait a minute-did you charge me for the egg sandwich?” They say, “Of course. We’re a restaurant. We charge for food here.” So I say, “You were hustling it on me. Take it off, please.” They are disgruntled and they take a long time to calculate my refund. When they give it to me it is forty dollars too much. I say, “You know, folks, I don’t want to take advantage of this, but you gave me way too much money.” They take it back, but seem angry at me for making them look bad in front of the manager. As I leave, workers from the Hardee’s corporation give me a hard time, so I take on my secret agent persona and transport from office to office using a TV remote control. [Read more →]

Tags: Fred's dreams by Fred Siegel
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