So this is the New Year

And I don't feel any different.

I'm off to Maine with Nicole and my Wisconsin friend, T-Roz. We're spending New Year's in the North Country with my pops. I kinda hate this holiday, so I'm always trying new things to make it palatable. Last new year, Nicole and I ate raw buffalo kidney and smoked a peace pipe at a sweat lodge ceremony in Wisconsin. True story.
My dad has this tradition where he and a bunch of his friends climb a mountain at sunset on New Year's Eve, toast with champagne, then sled down and have a big feast and a Yankee Swap (THE CRUTCHES!)

I'll tell you a toy soldier story when I get back. Happy New Year!

Treachery Afoot

Remember how I got that broken MP3 player off EBay? Many readers got upset about the injustice of paying for a broken item with no recourse. Fists were shaken, tears were shed. But I have something to confess.

The night I found out the little bugger was broken, I decided to use Google for consolation. I typed in 'Creative Nomad Jukebox' and like, 'totally messed up'. My goal was to find some other poor suckers to commiserate with. Lo and behold, I found page after page of people saying they had spent hundreds of dollars on the Jukebox, only to have the hard drive crap out forever. (Would've been nice if I had performed this research before I made my Ebay bid. No one ever said I was bright.)

I read horror stories about how the Creative company is horrible about providing assistance with broken players and how new hard drives cost more than I spent on the whole shebang.

Some teen savant told a story about how him and his pops decided it would be a good idea to take the whole damn thing apart by hand and try to fix it. He had a little problem with his narrative style, though. He told the story in an increasingly hopeful way, like "It was then we realized the decompresser needed more torque" and whatnot. I was expecting a grand conclusion to this tutorial where I would tinker with my toy and end up a happy boy.

I watch too many movies. The kid couldn't fix shit. He ended up with a bunch of parts in his hand, then said, "Huh" and went to do something else. His daddy probably bought him a new one.

So as I continued to noodle around on the Web, I found one isolated comment on an MP3 player message board. One guy, after four months with a broken Jukebox, tried something on the advice of a friend and it worked. The guy's comment said, "Are you ready for this? It's kind of technical so pay attention. Turn on the player. As it's powering on, smack it hard on the left side. That's it."

Sounds like the "blow in your Nintendo" school of MP3 player repair. But you know what? It freakin' worked. I gave 'er a good whack on the side and she was good to go. Unbelievable. I bet the Creative company is just embarassed to give this advice to people who call in with broken players. "Ma'am, let me walk you through it..."

My biggest hassle became how to delete hundreds of godawful songs left by Samantha Townley, the previous owner. She had everything from Celine Dion to Kenny Chesney to the Titanic soundtrack. And the few marginally good artists she had (U2, the Eels, etc.) were their absolute worst songs. So I cleaned out the whole kit n kaboodle and started afresh. And I love my Creative Nomad Jukebox.

I'm sorry I deceived you all.

Scavenger Update, Holiday Edition

I suppose you're all wondering what happened to the crutches. Am I right?

I should first tell you that I inherited the two sets of crutches after a dinner soiree chez B. Jenny was about to give me a ride home when she opened up her trunk in a fit of rage and grabbed two sets of crutches, one short, one tall. Apparently she had been driving them around in her car for months. Her face was bright red and she was about to just toss them on the curb like so much trash. I made an appeal.

"But Jenny, think of all the crippled children..."

It was raining, just to add to the dramatic effect. After some persuasion (I hobbled around like Tiny Tim for a minute,) Jenny agreed not to throw them out, as long as I would take them away as soon as we got to my house. I was so happy to win the argument that I didn't realize what this meant- two sets of crutches in my already crowded room.

Then a couple weekends ago, my neighbor and sporadic blogfriend Amy Clark had a little "Family Values" Christmas party. And lo and behold, there would be a Yankee Swap.

My knowledge of Yankee Swap rules was limited, but I was pretty sure some unlucky soul could go home with a new/used pair of crutches if I played my cards right.

On the night of the party, I headed out with my roommate C-Smoove and Nicole, two hours late but full of the dickens. For the swap, Smoove had a life-size chocolate camcorder and Nicole had a basket made of pinecones. I had the big set of crutches, thinking that the more solid mass I could liquidate, the happier my future would be. Unfortunately most wrapping paper is shamefully lacking in the crutch department so I tied a little candy cane ribbon around the set and hit the streets.

First we went to the liquor store for little nips. There were two rednecks in the store, one of whom was wearing an aggressive reindeer hat. Reindeer man seemed to have a problem with authority figures because he kept boxing with the lifesize dancing Santa by the doorway. The clerk eventually had to tell him to cool it. "Hey man, it's Santa, what's the problem?"

A half block later as we toasted our nips and downed them on the sidewalk, I heard "Hey hey you!!!" I immediately flashed back to times in my youth when I got busted for doing stupid things (drinking on the street) and my first instinct was to run. Then I turned around and saw reindeer-hat holding my crutches over his head like a triumphant viking. Shit, I stuffed half a nip in my pocket and ran back to claim my merchandise.

10 minutes later, we passed by a large group of townies in their early twenties. They were walking down the bikepath but one of their members was clearly perturbed. As his friends walked on, he stopped in his tracks and yelled out angrily, "Hey dude, why you got crutches if you're not gonna use 'em?"

I quietly told him they were a gift and smugly pointed to the candy cane ribbon. He stood there seething for a minute before scampering off to catch up with his friends. I think I confounded his plans for a solid ass-kicking.

Flash forward to the party. As soon as we got there (with B-E-T-H M-U-L-L-I-N in tow) we realized A) most of the guests were strangers and B) they had been waiting for hours to start the Yankee Swap. Nothing like a good first impression. "Who the hell brought crutches?!"

In the swap, I won a sugar cookie stuck inside a keg cup which was wrapped in a brown paper bag. The cookie looked a lot like the cookies in Amy's kitchen and so did the keg cup. I surmised that someone forgot a gift (I used my Junior Detective skills to piece that one together.) Then I quickly lost my ability to trade my gift by eating the cookie.

Things got chaotic during the swap and I don't know what everyone won except C-Smoove, who snagged a Lutheran cookbook from Charlie the dearly departed, and B-E-T-H, who viciously yanked a pair of Spongebob pajama pants off Amy's neck. I somehow ended up with a handmade candle that said "Smile, Dickweed" next to a picture of a happy sun. I also had my cookie. Go figure.

And yet my crutches sat there, unclaimed by anyone in the game. Amy started stomping around and saying "Somebody better take these damn crutches out of my house!" I already knew I'd be shuffling back home, stupid crutches in tow, walking right into a trap set by the angry townie. "Where's your little candy cane ribbon now, pal?" Smack.

All of a sudden, in my darkest hour, a new voice emerged. Some dude I hadn't noticed sitting in the corner said (for the sake of the story. let's say he had a booming James Earl Jones baritone) "I'm a doctor at a low-income medical clinic in Roxbury. We could use those crutches quite a bit." Five minutes later, he had the crutches in hand, hopped into a taxi and left my life forever.

So then I started telling people I'm a hero who helps crippled children. Desiree said it's impolite to use the word crippled but she's just jealous that I help children. That's what I do.

If there's anyone who would like to make me feel like a big man and take the second pair of crutches away, please keep in mind that I need to have a noble story to show off. Thank you.

There's a Valley full, of Pioneers

On Christmas Eve at about midnight, I was stomping around in the cold outside my mom's condo in Westfield (MA.) I snuck off to get a little stoned, just like when I was 8.

My mom was upstairs reading, probably nodding off. My sister and her lovely girlfriend were also upstairs, sound asleep in the twin bed she's had since she was wee. I have a matching bed in the same room as my sister and all three of us would be hunkering down in this room together. I let her and her guest go to bed long before me, because well, it would be weird otherwise.

The night in question, I realized I wasn't thinking about Christmas at all. I was thinking about what it's like to come home and realize that everything has changed. And what it's like to come back and realize everything is the same.

I'm not being pseudo-deep, I'm talking about the different perspective you have when your hometown is filled with people you knew, versus the times when it's empty and seemingly hostile.

I'm from Southampton, the boring step-sister of glamorous art village-cum-tourist trap Northampton. When I was in college in Boston, I would always tell people I was from Northampton-
A) because many people only know about the Southampton on Long Island (summering in the Hamptons)
B) it's cooler to be from NoHo/Hamp*.

Northampton- called Lesbianville U.S.A. by the National Enquirer, called a 'Little Manhattan' by some jerk, rated the top small art town in the country, subject of Tracy Kidder's Hometown, home of all-womyn Smith College (Nicole and Ved's alma mater) home to a thriving live music scene and scads of boutiques, bars and restaurants. Not to mention the entire 5-College system (Smith, Amherst, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke (my sister's almater) and UMass (my almater.) There's capitalists, and communists, and lots of things, you've heard about. Most of you probably know this already.

Where am I going with this? Well, I always have mixed feelings when I return to the Happy Valley. Part of me wants everything to remain the same, all my friends to look up when I walk into the WWII Club or Ye Olde Watering Hole and say "Hey hey we saved your seat." I don't want any new faces, new businesses or inclement weather.

At the same time, I felt sweaty and off-kilter on Saturday, after an incredible excess of "This is Your Life" re-introductions (buddies, crushes, high school classmates, drunken make-out partners, co-workers, bosses, and even the old hairy guy who's in love with my mom.) Even I have my limits.

Christmas Eve was crazy, but it wasn't a wild drunken adventure. It was more disconcerting and unexpected than that.

To be continued.

*Trivia: Who calls Northampton Hamp and who calls it NoHo? (townies vs. transplants)

Now It's On

It wasn't winter to me until I stood on my front porch last night, drinking wine and watching the rain turn to snow.

Kitty's Christmas Escapades

I promise to ease up on the "Look at me and my fabulous friends" pictures soon, but my new digital toy keeps bugging me for attention. Additionally, I want to show you all my nice friends not just the ones Beth Mullin introduced me to (that's B-E-T-H M-U-L-L-I-N.) So let's look at Tuesday night. Carina had a holiday cocktail party in her wee apartment, a living space that makes my cubicle feel spacious and airy by comparison. It was a fun party, despite a boodle of feline hijinx.

"May your Holidays be filled with Licks"This is the little card Carina made each of the guests to remind them they are forever in her debt. There are kitties on the card.


This is Carina's black cat Opal, trying to dig a tunnel to freedom. At some point, Carina pointed out that opals are actually white, then she raised one eyebrow mysteriously. She's nuts. Opal had a taste for freedom and kept sneaking out whenever people went to smoke. At one point she (I think Opal is a lady) made a monkey out of me and the milkman. After a stealthy escape, we went running downstairs, searched everywhere, then decided the cat was halfway to Philly. We considered painting a raccoon black to trick Carina when we realized Opal had gone upstairs, instead of down. Also we were drunk.


Here I eat Opal to prevent future escapes. Milkman tries to use song to convince me that all god's creatures deserve to live. Even little jerks.


I can't believe I ate the whole kitty.


Ved displays her new favorite trick. Carina and Jenny are smiling, but they are very angry.


Ved shows off that Ms. B likes her despite her naughty finger trick. No one likes a gloater Ved.


I hope those are your girlfriend's legs, Drummer Phil, because otherwise you're a dirty rotten pervert.


During an awkward moment, Scott considers asking Jenny what her major is.


Milkman is remembering the salad years, back before I ate Opal. He loved that little lady. Turns out, Jenny has a magical surprise. She knows an evil wizard who fixes dead kitties.


After a quick bit of black magic from Joe...


...Drummer Phil was turned into a Japanese fan. Sorry ladies. Wrong spell.


Silly Joe, you didn't need to summon the devil- Jenny brought Opal back with the power of love! Now they'll make out.


Hands off Ved, Jenny's savin' all her love for kitty.


Look at those sexy eyes. Almost makes you forget that Carina has another, much nicer cat that was content to stay in her apartment and get petted and not eaten.

Matron of the House of Hirsch

This is a painting of my great gramma Charlotte Teller Hirsch. It was painted by poet Kahlil Gibran, who was (gasp) her lover for a spell. Man was she cool- suffragette, confirmed swinger, journalist, author of this book, labor agitator, friend of Gorky and Tchaikovsky and Mark Twain's confidante.

I just have a blog.

Goodbye Norma Jean

As part of the Midwestern Cynic Exchange Program, Charlie the mischievous whelp is leaving for Wisconsin this week, filling the gaping hole I left behind. I believe he'll be teaching people about the advent of the Super-computer or something.

Last night we brought Charlie Tuna out for some dinner and drinks, one of about 18 goodbye parties the guy has planned. Apparently he maintains 8 or 9 different friendship circles but never allows any of us to meet. I think he's afraid we'd beat up his friends from the Oprah Book Club and Bloggers for Bush.

I bought a cheap digital camera so we could document the send-off. That way when Sir Charles is huddled by the radiator with nothing but memories and dollar drafts of Schlitz to keep him warm (and yes of course there's his lovely girlfriend Anna,) he'll be able to reflect upon warmer times with his amigos. So without further ado-
click to enlarge

The first picture taken on my new camera finds Nicole and I looking 60 to 70 percent more interesting than we've ever been.

Perhaps this one captures our essence a bit better (we ain't no Jules and Jim.) Oh wait, this is about Charlie.

There's the guy. Ved was telling stories about Brokeback Mountain. From the misty, hopeful look on his face, I think Charles is confusing Wyoming and Wisconsin.

"Scott, um, I'm pretty sure they frown on rolling joints in the restaurant. Yes, I know it's Charlie's big night. Don't give me that look."

Charlie marvels at how sad everyone seems about his impending departure.

Everyone deals with loss in their own way.

Even though eating glow sticks gave Nicole and Desiree a certain radiance...

...there's a bloody price to pay for beauty.

Griff and Jess, looking like sullen Edward Gorey characters. I think they just had the startling realization that he's a day laborer at the same ivied place where she goes to grad school.

Ved displays some trademark Northeastern charm to remind Charlie what he'll soon be missing. In the background, his friend Chris gives a winning smile, suggesting he'll be more than happy to fill the void Charlie leaves us with.

Goodbye Charlie Bucket.

Fire in the Hole

I'm killing time until Nicole comes in on the Fung Wah bus. Don't worry, my easily-offended audience, we're going out for malted dairy beverages, then watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang before slumbering in separate twin beds. For now, let me tell you a story.

This morning I brought the goiter catscans to Dr. Rho (the EarNoseThroater) so he could interpret them with his special decoder ring. Dr. Rho was in a touchy-feely mood today, which was a bit odd. His demeanor is typically cold and antiseptic and he only seems to smile when I am wrong. That's why all the arm grabs and shoulder pats were so disconcerting. He was kind of treating me like a very sick child who is too young to know how serious his ailment is.

So Rho hooks up my scans to the special viewing machine and makes a bunch of hmmmms and ahhhhs. Then he comes to the sixth and final scan and, I kid you not, he says, "Okay, here's the money one."

After a quick analysis, he decides my goiter (I don't know what else to call it) has nothing to do with lymph nodes. It's a pesky little mass on my salivary gland, making a big to-do over nothing. Shut up, little dude.

To figure out whether the mass is cancerous, Doc Rho said he had to do a biopsy, aka jabbing a huge needle in my jaw and taking a sample. I told him to do it right away so I wouldn't have any time to think about how awful it could be.

Right before the doctor does the procedure, a piercing air-raid sound starts emanating from the hallway. Dr. Rho says absentmindedly, "Oh must be the fire alarm" and continues to prep me, tucking a napkin in my collar, dabbing alcohol on my jaw. I'm a little nervous about the wailing siren but hey, doctor knows best.

A receptionist then sticks her head in the door and says, "There's a fire alarm going off, doctor, everyone has to clear the building!" I can hear a bunch of rushing panicky people in the hallway. After she leaves, he continues to prep for the procedure. At this point I'm really starting to freak out. Not only is a huge-ass needle about to be rammed into my jawbone, but we're going to do it in the middle of a blazing inferno! What is this, 'Nam?

But what could I do? If Doc Hawkeye works best under potentially life-threatening pressure, I didn't feel like I had room to question his unorthodox methods. "I get results, Hirsch!"

So he did the very uncomfortable procedure, showed me the weird little yellow glob he extracted into a jar, then walked out of the building while dabbing at my bleeding jaw with gauze. Then we stood around in the rain, feeling awkward because it was hard to tell if the appointment was over yet. He asked about my family.

The fire alarm was a false alarm, as it always is. Unless there's a fire. Afterwards, I did go back inside, but not because me and Dr. Rho had any further business. I just had to poop.

Speaking of bleeding pores...

If you work with me and you stumble across this here page, let me say this- I don't want to get fired from my job. It's a well-paying, stress-free affair that affords me the opportunity to eat well and go to Venezuela. And I really care about the, um, law. So typically I don't spend much time talking about my job on my blog. Today is an exception.

Today was our holiday party. First I got a free 15-minute massage (thanks Steve, my main man masseuse, for giving a great massage and proving how secure I am in my masculinity,) then grabbed some gourmet sandwiches in the lobby. The lobby party, catered by a schmancy company and accompanied by a string quartet, was to celebrate people who bought toys for underprivileged kids. I commented to my sister that the ginormous self-congratulatory spread could've bought toys for all the poor waifs in, say, Indiana.

Anyways, then I headed upstairs, where our department had a special party planned just for us. Chinese food, Italian food, beer, wine, enough to feed a small revolutionary army in, say, the Sudan. It was delicious, I was appreciative, sure. Honestly this would probably be a post about my awesome day of sensory pleasure, were it not for the fact that I had no fun whatsoever. A combination of the contrived cheer of the occasion, the needless hedonistic excess and my total lack of connectivity with my co-workers left me feeling sour at the end of the day. Also too much beer, too early. Blech.

It's kind of too bad there wasn't a party finale where 8 people caught on fire and two lovestruck dwarves went on the lam.

Here's a few pics a co-worker took:

Big boss points at me and my sister (top right) and says, "Get over here you uppity snobs and mingle with the masses! What are you, French?"


Jesse surveys the crowd of chewing, swallowing people.


C.J. the Greek (center,) puzzles over how his Secret Santa could be such an ignorant ass-face. See, I kinda sorta addressed his gift card to C.J. Papadapolis (like the Greek family on Webster.) And it turns out he's not Greek after all, he's Indian and Italian. Oopsy daisy. Does my Greek girlfriend make it okay to be such a horrible racist?

Special Tag

I forgot to invite J to play the music tag game. C'mon in, the water's fine.

Whussa Meme?

First people have strange cartoon versions of themselves. Then they start throwing around weird web-speak like LMAO and IAWTC. Now I've been 'tagged' by Cupcake, an online game where I have to list seven songs I'm digging right now. I would be very angry except this means I am wildly popular...on the Internet!

It also affords me the chance to discuss the music I'm listening to, second only to lymph nodes on the list of uninteresting things I won't shut up about. Let's hit it.

1) Ode to Joy with banjos and yodelling, care of the Raising Arizona soundtrack. I never thought of this as a song to listen to sans movie. That is, until my friends at Tiki Bar TV made this brilliant video homage.

As a side note, this weekend I played Nicole the original "Ode to Joy" and asked her to name the tune. She said, "It's that Beethoven song, what's it called? Oh yeah...Brotherhood!" She gets confused.

2) Run by Snow Patrol. The Belligerent Intellectual recently told a funny tale about how he felt like an epic god when this song crescendoed while he was peeing. So I downloaded the tune and wasn't initially impressed. It sounded too much like a song from a hokey movie trailer or a teenager's life. But it's infectious and now I definitely have had moments where I've played it 3 or 4 times in a row. So don't sweat it, Mr. Kitten. A man is more than the sum of his crappy music taste.

3) Five songs by Arcade Fire. One of my lame Friendsters told me this band is derivative of Modest Mouse and Pavement. I told her she is derivative of dirt. The songs are Headlights, Wake Up, Rebellion Lies, Neighborhood 1 and Neighborhood 3.

4) 54-46 (That's My Number) by Toots and the Maytals. Nicole never wants to hear me play reggae music. She's so uptight, always trying to interfere with my hang-loose lifestyle. She'd chill out if she'd just get a bit more irie.

5) Bring it on Home by Sam Cooke. I downloaded this one after I heard a subway musician belting it out. Then I played it very loudly in my living room about 12 or 13 times. I'm still afraid my roommate C-Smoove may have thought it was a mating call.

6) The Postman by american analog set. I'm still mad I skipped out on this dreamy space-pop band (kinda sounds like the Postal Service) when they came to T.T. the Bears last month. I was too grumpy to attend. This guy was too.

7) Breathe by Sia. This is the unhip song that finished Six Feet Under forever. Nicole and I bawled like babies throughout the whole closing montage and now I fall apart every time I hear this pop gem.

Today, for instance, I listened to it four times in a row on the T. Everything, from the discarded Metros on the ground to the swaggering bravado of two teenage thugs, seemed inordinately beautiful and bittersweet. And I tell ya, when the little old couple got off the train at Downtown Crossing, I almost started blubbering like a menopausal mom. Everyone dies someday.

Now I have to tag seven people. Jomilkman, Jack-o Grammy, Griff (eat music today,) Race, Kaysea, Praha, Erin and Amy. Now you have to list seven songs you're into. Get to work.

Catscan

This is actually me.

Laughing As Their Pores Bleed

"It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion,...that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence....[I]t was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were grotesque....There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments....madman fashions...much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust."
From The Masque of the Red Death

Happy Monday.

I just finished watching the French movie The Rules of the Game, a movie about a masquerade party in the country that goes sour, as all the members of the bourgeosie fall on their own swords. I liked it a lot. It made me realize that I quite enjoy the whole "dance, drink and lust until everything's broken" motif, like in The Masque of the Red Death, The Celebration, Labyrinth, Amadeus, and the movie about the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont. I never saw Dangerous Liasons. What other tainted party art is out there?

Bringing home the tree

"Someday Mr. Hirsch, all this will be yours!"

Eight is Enough

Again, an homage to swift short nuggets a la Jackie Graham. How you say, eightball?
1) Last night I fell asleep with a cranberry nut muffin in my mouth. When I woke up, as if by magic, my mouth tasted like oysters!

2) The stereo at my house turns on all by itself. It only plays one CD from the 3-CD changer. The CD is Bright Eyes. It gives me the willies.

3) I got my first CatScan yesterday. My favorite part was when the machine said "Please Do Not Swallow!" in a Sean Connery voice. Also when they gave me a voucher for a coffee and a muffin. Also not going to work.

4) Nicole and I are going to Venezuela in January. I'm going to grow a beard so I can display my boundless machismo.

5) I went to an ear/nose/throat doctor on Monday, a humorless man named Dr. Rho. In fact he smiled exactly twice- once when I called the thing on my jaw a goiter ("I assure you, it is not a goiter.") The second smile was when he pulled my tongue out as far as it could go and I screamed and said he ripped my tongue out.

6) My truck had a huge gas leak for the past couple of weeks which I just got fixed. It reminded me of my career choice as a young lad. My plan- if anyone needed a car blown up, they could pay me to do it. I would just leave a long trail of gasoline towards the offending vehicle and light it from a safe distance. Also, I would be Mr. T.

7) On sick days, I used to call in to the Home Shopping Network to hear my voice on TV. I would say, "That's some lovely cubic zirconia" or "Does that vaccuum get into hard-to-reach places?" Then when they'd try to complete my purchase, I'd hang up.

8) The office is closing right now due to snow. I shall now catch a LuckyStar to New York and sleep with my girlfriend for 3 days straight. Or ten minutes, whichever comes first.

I'll leave you with this quote from an MSNBC article on the storm:
"It actually will be quite a doozy of a snowstorm," said Thomas Spriggs, a National Weather Service forecaster. He said doozy. I think he's reporting from a Vermont general store.

Axis of Avalon

The Avalon in Boston isn't much of a live music venue. It's on the notoriously frat-daddy hootandholler strip of shit bars called Landsdowne Street (a road which Steven Tyler built with his bare hands on the site of an old Indian burial ground.) The club is Boston chic, aka New York trash. Most of the time they have booty-rockin' oomp-checka-oomp-checka music but every now and again a mid-level headliner will play a show, someone too small for the Fleet Center but too big for the hundreds of smaller venues in town.

I have seen three pretty righteous concerts at this particular spot, the most recent of which went down last night. The first was over ten years ago.

Lou Reed- Lou Reed was one of my biggest teen idols, right up there with Tom Waits, Jello Biafra and Pee-Wee Herman. He was also one of those rare cross-generational musicians that me and my dad could agree on. So when Big Lou decided to play an impromptu concert at the Avalon, just one week from my nineteenth birthday, my pops had a surprise for me.
"Hey good buddy, looks like your dad isn't so 'square' after all- I got us two tickets for Lou Reed at the Avalon!"

That was the best birthday present he could ever have given me. I wanted to go but all my expendable income from working as a toy soldier at FAO Schwarz (a story for another day)
was spent on my pack-a-day Export A habit. The only downside was that I, a selfish bratty drunken teenager, would have to go to a rock concert with my dad. It was difficult to subtly hint that I would've preferred to bring a buddy to the show, which would have enabled me to get hammered on whiskey in the bathroom and thrash all around in the crowd (as was the style at the time.)

Nope, it was me and my pops, both embarassingly dressed in black from head to toe. My dad graciously got me a beer, then watched like a hawk while I drank it, probably trying to determine whether this was my first beer ever or if I was an old pro.

Paternal relations aside, the three-and-a-half hour show was probably the best concert I have seen. Close seconds were Portishead with a live orchestra and Ween on Halloween, but to be brutally honest, I smoked drugs at those shows. The memories cloud.

Not with my pops, though. The only 'high'* I got was from the undeniable synergy of an adoring crowd and a rock legend. It was clear that Lou and his band were feeding off our energy as much as we were off theirs. The music got more and more intense as the night wore on, sweat pouring down the musicians' faces, the audience moving in a fevered frenzy, my stiff old man jerking around like a robot Steve Martin.

Finally, at the very end, the band stood there on the stage with their hands raised in the air like demi-gods, amidst deafening screams and thunderous applause. This literally went on for over five minutes. And all of a sudden, boom, an ice cube came hurtling out of the crowd and hit Lou Reed in the eye, clearly hurting him. Just like that, all that audience-musician goodwill was trash. Holding his eye with one hand, he said, "Thanks for ruining a really good thing," and stalked off the stage.

I can just imagine the whiz kid (it had to be a guy) who earned the right to brag to all his friends that he was the guy who fucked everything up. "It's true- I hurt Lou Reed!" Even now, ten years later, I can't disassociate the awesome concert from the dumb-ass finishing move. That fool actually interferes with my nostalgia. Incredible.

Why I oughta!

*say this with sanctimonious anti-drug commercial voice

In My Shoes

When I was in Wisconsin, time...moved...slowly. My job as a reporter was never dull, but my social life was largely made up of beer, fried fish, movies and nookie. Also, killing Asian beetles with a vacuum cleaner.

But now that I'm in B-town, it seems like there's always something going on, apple- picking or zombie marches or kickball tournaments or sleeping on a boat. For some reason, I rarely talk about these cool activities on this blog, opting instead to delight you with tales of my goiter and my broken MP3 player. Today is no exception.

The Clumsy Consumer, part 2

I'm sure you've all been waiting with baited breath for the thrilling conclusion of my MP3 player story.

So after I made my purchase, I got around to reading the fine print. Then I immediately forgot about it, putting my energies into tracking the shipping progress of the player. It was kind of unhealthy, how I kept visiting the UPS website every half hour, seeing my new buddy slowly crawl its way across the country:
5:32 P.M. CANTON, OH, US ORIGIN SCAN
8:31 P.M. CANTON, OH, US DEPARTURE SCAN
9:43 P.M.MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS, OH, US ARRIVAL SCAN

I could almost picture the little guy trucking along the Interstate, huddled amongst ladies underwear and herbal viagra supplements, just waiting to burst out of the package into my loving arms, wagging its little electronic tail and showering me with a caucophony of quality music. I hoped the UPS driver left the window open a crack when he had to stop for dinner. And would it kill him to leave out a dish of water?

Finally, after countless hours of patient stalking, I was greeted with this little online nugget:
Delivered on: Nov 15, 2005 11:52 A.M.
Location: FRONT DOOR
Delivered to: SOMERVILLE, MA, US

Yippppeeeeee!!! That night I was doing some boring thing like hanging out with my dumb friends or something, I honestly can't remember. All I do remember is taking my leave rapidly, mumbling words over my shoulder like, "Empeethree, happy birthday, get well soon, congratulations..."

I ran home, grabbed the box off the front stoop, burst into my room, tore into the package with my teeth (true) and shook the packing peanuts all over the floor. And there it was, in all its glory- 40 GB of...wait a minute.

All of a sudden key phrases in the fine print (RISK, chance, non-refundable) came back to me. In a wave of horror, I realized what was going to happen. I don't know why, maybe it was the fact that the previous owner, Samantha Townley, had etched her name and phone number in the back of the player. She also had purchased a custom leather protective cover, kind of like one of those "bras" you see on white trash cars at Hampton Beach. It struck me that no one who took that kind of loving precaution would ever get rid of their player willingly. They'd put it in a little lockbox at home with their diary and US Treasury savings bonds. That is, until the damn thing broke.

And sure enough, when I powered the little bugger on, it informed me it was in emergency recovery mode. It made a bunch of clicky, wheezy noises. It then said "Hard disk error" and shut down.

That's it. I'm cooked. I'll never buy anything off this "inter-net" again.

For a Friend Named Alli

Sorry it's been so long, folks. I feel like a lazy worm whose little wormbrain is filled up with things to write about. Tomorrow, I write like the wind! For now, please enjoy some Tiki Bar TV:

click here>>>My New Best Friends
This TV show has an enormous cult following of people who watch it on some new medium called a "pawd-cast." It's basically a group of brilliant fun young drunkards who have a mastery of bizarre and hilarious bartending. Much like, say, a zombie march downtown, this group of kids is doing it just for fun. And because it's free of any corporate control, you end up with a much more fresh and creative finished product.

Plus Lala is an uber-babe*. Give this five-minute episode a shot. If you guys like it, there's lots more.

*Just kidding, Nicole. Lala is morbidly obese.

My Dinner With A-ved

Not enough time right now to finish my appallingly first-world story about a wonky MP3 player. Instead I will give you a few images from last night. Ved and myself went to the Boston Common to see Jordan Knight (of the New Kids) and Jon Secada usher in the holiday season with a little concert. We forgot to watch Jon Secada because we forgot to know who he is. Jordan sang about children who can't have a good Christmas because they're poor. I refuse to make a snide comment about this.

Ved at Kennedy's Restaurant after the show, ruing the fact that she was too short to hurl her choneys onstage at Jordan.
(note maudlin sequined choneys in hand)

A detailed diagram Ved created about the differences in ladies undergarments. My curiousity was scientific in nature.

As penance for her sinful fascination with underwear, Ved re-enacted a scene from her favorite movie. She was trying to strike a Mother Mary pose but our casting director said she was 'a perfect fit' for Mary Magdalene.

(for more photos of this evening, go here)

how can it be wrong?

In my recent viewings of The Shield on DVD, I realize that the soundtrack sounds a lot like a combination of Kid Rock, Onyx and Limp Bizkit. And while I'm not liking the show because of the soundtrack, I'm also not liking it in spite of it. I find myself moving my head up and down to the heavy thumping drums and rockrap shouts.

Shit, I cannot turn into my old racquetball partner, Darrell. He loved that angry white boy music. He also used to throw his racquet at me when I beat him.