xtcian

yes, my gourd

10/31/06

if you've never seen it before, scooping out a pumpkin and putting a face on it IS pretty bizarre

me, Mark Rizzo and David Petrarca bask in our pagan offerings

Lucy was mesmerized by the addition of a candle INSIDE a fruit - who thinks up these things?

Tessa was a witch, Lucy a rabbit, and I was a "demoted Secret Service guy stuck on Bunny Detail"

Cute Halloween Kid Gridlock on Nowita Place

First trick and/or treat accomplished! Now to bed, where she can dream of eating her candy (in six years)

vox populi, vox vaccae

10/30/06

Okay, so Time Warner is blanketing Southern California with their own unique brand of suckage, so none of us have internet - thus I'm just going to paste my first DailyKos diary entry on here and hope it's at least mildly - and I mean mildly - amusing enough to keep you from falling into a gape-mouthed stupor.

***
My wife and I live in Columbia County, NY - however, we also work in television, which means spending a lot of time here in Los Angeles. My wife met Kirsten Gillibrand back in 2002 at a Democratic Women's Conference, and was immediately impressed by what a smart, wonderful woman she was. When we heard she was going up against our embarrassing Republican congressman John Sweeney, we decided to spend September and October in Columbia County going door to door, and sponsoring a big donation party at our farm.

Work, however, had other plans. We were stuck in LA all through the election season. Inspired by exhortations for "D.I.Y." campaigning, we hatched an idea that would introduce Kirsten to thousands of people in our district without actually being there.

The lands surrounding our farm are used as pasture for eighty milk cows each spring/summer/fall, and right by the road is a giant billboard. Usually it features an ad put up by our local lumber company, but after hearing about Gillibrand's signs being stolen early in the campaign, I immediately thought of something impossible to steal: the billboard itself.

It took a little research to find out who owned the billboard, but it turned out to be Lamar Advertising, and once we pinpointed the actual spot (and which way it would face), it was easy enough to get in touch with Lamar and reserve it for the month of October. We asked the Gillibrand campaign if that was cool, and they were overjoyed.

Once Lamar takes your credit card info, they direct you to a site (Circle Graphics) where you can upload your own art. They do the printing for you on thirty sheets that equal 10.5' high and 22.8' across, and paste the whole thing to the billboard. In essence, you can accomplish the entire production without ever leaving your keyboard.

Then we contacted the Gillibrand campaign to see if they had a specific message - or existing art - they wanted to use. I suggested that it say something like "Columbia County: Home Of Kirsten Gillibrand" along with their usual art, since Sweeney had been implying she didn't live there (another sleazy move from a totally sleazy dude). It also provided the name recognition Kirsten sorely needed on the only major thoroughfare from our part of New York to Massachusetts.

Coordinating the Lamar people, the Circle Graphic folks, and Kirsten's campaign - with me as the go-between - was frustrating. I should have been on the phone every morning to ensure Gillibrand's art people connected with everyone else. Instead, I assumed everyone was already talking, and we ended up missing our target date; the billboard didn't go up until October 9. But we still hit the sweet spot before the election.

The picture above is a recreation of what is currently there (obviously, I can't take pictures from California) but according to the locals, it looks great. We have no illusions. It was always an uphill battle in Columbia County, despite the progressives in Hudson and the newly-hatched weekenders voting in Copake, Craryville, Claverack and points north. I suspect many of the older folks around us (we're in our thirties) have never pulled a Democratic lever in their lives. But at least now they have seen their alternative while driving to work.

Some things I'd do differently: I'd get the dimensions and art first, then reserve the billboard. I'd also start earlier, with a 2-month lag time (instead of three weeks) and expect a fair amount of missed connections. All in all, however, we're totally psyched. Kirsten is a great candidate for us and even remembered my wife after four years of campaigning, which is, to say the least, impressive.

It wasn't cheap, but it was cheaper than three round-trip tickets from LA to NY for us and our eighteen-month-old. And with it standing tall all day, we have the inexorable feeling that we're making a tiny difference, which is unbelievably rewarding when we're stuck so far away.

***

So there it is. I was going for zero snark and maximum info, so it's rather dull, but you can't always make fart jokes and let your balls hang out of your pants. Again, I have no wanton prognostications about this election, but doing what we did felt wonderful.

mòine mhòr

10/29/06

I'm a firm believer in diving straight into peculiar, specific hobbies and skill sets: one thing about practicing violin for twenty years is that it gives clarity to your obsessions. I've had many in my lifetime, and in fact, am still perfecting a few as we speak. Just this week, I worked for a few hours on my 3-point shot, my putting wedge game, odd syncopations on the drum kit, practiced about 35 songs on the bass (and still wrote a treatment for a new movie - thank you, Mother's Little Helper pills!)

Add to this, my curious love for valuable liquids. I've always been slightly turned on by the idea of a thimbleful of perfume costing upwards of a thousand dollars. During the dot-com days, the management chicks always had Crème de la Mer, a substance that costs thousands of dollars a tube. I'd read about immaculately virgin olive oils in Italy that fetch thousands per ounce. But there is one precious liquid that I actually enjoy: single-malt Scotch.

While we were in Scotland, Tessa and Lucy put up with my desire to see every distillery we came across, and I hunted through Edinburgh, Inverness and London for the most hallowed spirit stores in town. Invariably, there would be some bottle of whiskey that was so dear as to be beatified: a Macallan 1928, a 40-year-old Ardbeg, a Bunnahabhain 1963. Inside would be this liquid, made by men in a completely different age, almost able to bestow magical properties on those who'd dare drink it.

After decades of girl drinks, I finally grew into whiskey about six years ago. Probably the only honest road to a tiny dram of scotch are the untold cubic kiloliters of wine coolers, woo-woos, Sex on the Beaches, cement mixers, purple schoolbuses, White Russians and finally, Jim Beam and Cokes that I had to ingest in order to be ready. I would certainly not start anyone out on a neat single-malt. I would begin with Midori and Kahlua, and discuss whiskey at a future date.

My first Scotch love was a Lagavulin 16-year-old I tasted in San Francisco the day before I moved to New York City in 2000. Having randomly sampled an 18-year-old Macallan, I switched immediately - the peat, the smoke, the layers of flavor were so wonderful. It became my regular scotch, which wasn't easy, because that shit's expensive.

Over the last two years, I searched around for different single-malts that might take that complex flavor even further. By the time I got to Scotland a few weeks ago, I was even beginning to understand the difference between a Speyside malt (in the middle of Scotland) and the Islay malts (from an island to the west).

Truly, delving into this subject is like falling in love with Dungeons & Dragons, and then seeing the four thousand different permutations of the game. My "a-ha" moment came at our hotel near Tessa's grade school, where a knowledgeable bartender listened to my description of the perfect scotch, and then poured me a Bruichladdich 1973.

Bruichladdich (pronounced "brook-laddie") is a gorgeous distillery on a far western bank of Islay, and I swear, you can taste sunsets, seagulls screaming, water bubbling over ancient rocks, the peat deep in the soil... about fifty different thoughts, smells and tastes run through your head when you have just the tiniest tongueful. It was at that moment I truly understood why certain people spend their lives in search of their own personal single-malt grail.

I got about eight different rare Scotches while overseas and mailed them all back (miraculously, they all arrived). I found the Bruichladdich 1973 in the back display case of an ancient whiskey shop in London, and wrapped it in my luggage.

And still, I'm no drinker. I have a half-dram of Scotch maybe once or twice a week. I like the act of it enough to keep it special, and mostly, I just like looking at the bottles and appreciating the vast amount of time that goes into whiskey itself. There's no faking forty years. It can't be approximated. Soon enough I'll know what that feels like.

It's a joy to find the world interesting, but sometimes you wish you had more people to share it with, lest you find yourself out of the conversation. And so I ask - do any of you drink Scotch, and which kind? And if not, what was your last exciting collection, singular hobby, or obsession?

one degree of separation

10/26/06

Tessa got to sneak into Queen Elizabeth's monarchial stall in the forbidden part of Westminster Abbey, and I was allowed an illegal picture, and why? Because of the amazing friends you make in bizarre places. The best thing about traveling, besides the sheer delight of being somewhere else on Earth, is seeing old friends again from new vantage points. So I'd like to do a little blog for the amazing folks we saw whilst perusing our ancestral homelands.

Me and Lasala, July 2002

First off, any Lodge dude reading this will know how cool a cat John Lasala is. John and I had several adventures around America, without even knowing the other was going to be there. We both had a hilarious obsession with the Pi Phi house at Carolina, and could always regale each other with near-misses and bashful conquests.

Little did I know he'd also gone to high school with my future wife, having helped her out at Choate more times than she could remember, feeding her family meals at the Lasala household and guiding her through some turbulent times. We got to have two dinners with John this trip, and I broke out a 12-year-old Ben Nevis sample from Inverness, 'cuz he has a sense of adventure and is always worth the most interesting stuff.

We also reconnected with an old friend of mine, Heike Berg. The gorgeous Heike had a trajectory similar to mine: surprising non-fiction book success right out of college, followed by a few years in the wilderness, landing in NYC in 2000, and then on her feet a few years later. Like so many old friends, we reconnected through this blog (thank you, Google).

She now lives with her husband in St. Albans, just north of London, a stunningly beautiful town with an ancient church, unending fields of flowers with duck ponds, and Roman ruins. Our mom took us there all the time when we were kids, and now I can take mine!

20s Party at the Pink House circa 1996: N'Gai, Zia, Jiffer, Chip, Jay, me

Zia and me in June

London is made ineffably cooler by the presence of Zia Zareem Slade, who provides the place a sassy dose of chavvy sarcasm, just like she did for the Pink House in the mid-to-late '90s. She and her fab husband Warren came over for pasties (which are meat pastries in Britain, not things you put on your nipples) and we spent the day talking shit.

I have had many housemates, indeed, many of you are reading this right now, but Zia may have been the most inspiring. She's a prominent character in a TV show we're pitching next year, and if we can translate 1/9th of her effervescence onto the screen, it'll be a job well done.

She also designs websites for Virgin Atlantic now, and got us upgraded to Premium Economy for our 12-hour flight home. Obviously, Lucy blows her a huge kiss across the ocean.

me, Adam Regis and Sean crankin' it Civil War style, Busch Gardens 1981

Adam with Molly, me with Lucy (and Janet with Annie) in Scarborough last week

The greatest reconnection of my later adulthood happened last week as well: we got to visit the home of Adam Regis, my best mate as a child in London. I had a few friends growing up by dint of next-door neighbors or family connections, but Adam was the first friend I ever made by myself. I've prattled on about Adam and his seatmate Heidi Downing, but the day he decided to be my friend at the age of ten, everything changed in my theretofore-hobbled heart.

We met his fantastic wife Janet, and their ravenously adorable kids Charlie, Annie and Molly - the latter two glommed directly onto Lucy, and she elevated them to the status of Rock Star Gods. Even now, a week later, Lucy will stop what she's doing and sing "Molly... Annie... and Cholly!"

Being in Scarborough with Adam, Tessa taking me to her grade school in Aberlour, Scotland, and seeing our other friends was an incredible salve to an oddly difficult summer. If this crazy, nonsuch wedding hadn't sent us packing 10,000 miles with our toddler, it's shameful what we would have missed.

Annie, Lucy and Molly

john o'groats says so

10/25/06

I don't know how many of you have driven on the left side of the road before, but it is totally exhilarating. The joy is ultimately followed by exhaustion, from the mental energy required for making a right turn in Scotland. I was fine with everything else, but making a right turn in the United Kingdom is an exercise in paranoia. Still, what a ride.

Once in Inverness, I laid my hands on another SD card, and the camera took its last few gasps of pictures. Lucky, really, because we went to Tessa's grade school, a now-abandoned mansion called Aberlour House, sitting silently on its hill overlooking the Spey, wondering what happened to the hundreds of kids that once burst from every misshapen door. Lucy had fun on the grounds, however:

And it seemed to rejuvenate Tessa:

What was truly miraculous is that my wife went to grade school about five hundred yards from my favorite everyday single-malt Scotch, The Macallan. We popped over to Craigellachie long enough to take in the awesome barley smell, and purchase some rare classics from the Macallan line. For those of you who find such things boring, be prepared: I have a whole blog dedicated to Scotch coming up.

at the Macallan distillery

I have gone on so many road trips that they all blend together in a treacly syrup of fond memory, but I have to say tooling around the back roads of Speyside with Tessa and Lucy is way, way up there. Up there with midnight treks to New Orleans and drug-fueled exhortations to Wilmington.

Note to friends: we all must do this together sometime. Golfing in St. Andrews, three choice distilleries on the way back, then a few nights at some Inverness pubs. Throw in some poker, and how can any of you say no? You heard it here first: Scotland is the new Vegas.

select single malts at The Whiskey Shop

aeternum superba ab alto

10/24/06

I don't know if trips themselves can have a horoscope, or if they can have their own Mercury in retrograde, but we have struggled mightily against basic equipment failure. It took me two days to figure out British internet, the London Underground didn't seem to like where we were going, and I'm pretty sure my PCMIA port zapped my SD card. In layman's terms, that means all the pictures I took of the wedding and the castle no longer exist.

Oh yeah, and my sweet wife dropped my camera in Yorkshire, sending nasty little metal bits thither and yon, thus ending its brutish, short life. So as I write this blog, I'm simply going to describe the picture you would have seen, and you have to pretend you see it.

The wedding itself was a culture clash for the ages; not only did the thought of a Texan doyenne marrying a Lord make the gossip pages of the Daily Mail, it spilled over Stateside as well. Loraine and Adrian had met 23 years ago this week, and found each other again in February - by last Saturday, they were standing together in the Crypt Chapel underneath the Houses of Parliament exchanging vows with a pew of Texans on one side, and a pew of Brits on the other.

Here you would see a picture of Tessa, her mother Sandy, and me dressed for the wedding under Big Ben. Tessa's wearing a fabulous midnight blue number with a red cloche hat, Sandy has on a sleek black/gray dress, and I am wearing a chocolate brown tux and have, as always, stupid hair. It is sunny.

About the hats. All the women wore them, which is how it is done in fancy daytime nuptials in Britain, and they were fabulous. Peacock feathers, two-foot brims, entire birds - it was awesome. The woman sitting in front of me hit me in the face every time she talked to her neighbor.

Imagine seven older ladies talking to each other at the reception, their various hats all touching.

Tessa gave the first reading at the ceremony, the "wither thou goest, I will go" line from Ruth. Of course, Ruth was talking to another woman, a fact that was not lost on Westminster Abbey's pastor, who admitted there was very little in the Bible about weddings. Almost zero, in fact. The only real mention is Christ's visit to the wedding feast at Cana, but even that is tangential to the plot.

Tessa in her hat, smiling, looking to the left. Above her is the ceiling of the Crypt Chapel, adorned with the martyrdom scenes of various saints: St. Catherine at the wheel, a woman being boiled alive (St. Martina?), and other greatest hits. Photography is not allowed in the ancient church, so I had to be very sneaky.

After the ceremony and reception, most of the Americans were herded onto the train at King's Cross for Manderston, a few miles past the Scottish border. Words fail the grandeur of this old, huge house - more like a castle - and we were shown our rooms by a butler who had worked there for forty years. As we plopped down our bags and looked around the exquisite, haunting hallways, I turned to Tessa and said, "We are a long way from Los Angeles."

Imagine this staircase, the only actual silver staircase in the world, with me and Tessa on it, trying to look like we belong.

The next day, some opted for tennis, some opted for the fox hunt, but I opted to sleep in. The energy required to keep me at my best behavior is exhausting, lemme tellya, and the formal dinners tested my abilities. According to my sister, I usually have rotten manners, so I sat up straight, used all the correct cutlery, and didn't say anything unless spoken to. I haven't done that in twenty years.

Lucy was staying in a little inn about four miles away with Sandy, and after two days of not seeing her, we were jonesing hard. Finally, she came to Manderston and spread her love to the bride and groom.

Imagine Lucy in a little red skirt and petticoat, delighting in the gravel of the immense driveway, with the estate sprawled out in the background.

F. Scott Fitzgerald was wrong - there are not only second acts in American lives, but third, fourth and fifth ones as well. Loraine, in perhaps her fourth act, is no longer Ms. McMurrey. She is The Lady Palmer, and will be addressed as such wherever she sets foot in the United Kingdom. As we drove off - on the wrong side of the road - we thought how her buoyancy, love of adventure, and unending thirst for the next horizon has taken her to every continent and now, as befitting her vast personality, the lady is now a Lady.

Imagine a picture of The Lord and Lady Palmer sharing a secret cigar as they plan the next few years.

pinchfarthing

10/23/06

Okay, I suck. But I'm operating on ten minutes of sleep over the last two days. Do we still have healthy commenters out there? How about the wonderful caveman to provide today's blog topic?

scarborough's fair

10/22/06

Ian will return to regular blogging tomorrow

The Golf Standard

I really like talking about theater, and I really love talking about art. All kinds of art. It's all good with me, if you know a lot about sculpture, I will sit in rapture, even though I barely notice sculpture. I also love disciplines that are treated as art by their practitioners. My friend Ehren, although not technically an artist, is a fellow "enthusiast" (which my wife calls me. Often. As a mild insult...) and I will talk to him about anything.

I should say that I also like talking about sports. When my friends Steve and Deb picked the Tampa Bay Bucs as their team (they live in Chicago, but when they picked teams, the Bucs had just won the Super Bowl) (man, they're *laughing* now, tell you what...) I started watching a little football, and then when Tampa Bay went in the shitter, I started calling them.

I've got some teams I like. Lakers, Nets, Teams With Funny Guys On Them In The NBA, Charlotte... these are teams I like. Boston, Indiana, Teams With Guys Who Used To Be On Sacramento, UTAH... not so much. I loved Andre, hated Pete Sampras. I love Martina, TOTALLY loved Capriati... Etc.

There is no love like the love I have for Carolina. That's a whole 'nother blog. I have felt feelings as strong during a play or a movie, but it is a different thing. It's just... It can't be explained. It would take me forever. Some of you know. It's a love unlike any other.

Now, in terms of playing sports, I like to have fun, but mostly at other people's expense. I have played five sets of tennis in an afternoon, and it wasn't best of five - I lost every set. My friend Mac (normally that would be a hot link, but he is, seriously, the worst blogger *ever*) and I would play basketball with our friends, which consisted of the two of us standing in the middle of the court talking about movies while eight guys would go back and forth past us.

We sucked. And we quit. I've been bad at every single team sport, but individual sports are pretty good for me. I was a good wrestler, an okay bowler, a pretty good, y'know, checkers player, etc. However, about two years ago I took up golf, and I've been lost every since.

I'm not good, but the nice thing is that nobody is. Everyone is a crappy golfer, you will very seldom meet someone who will nod "yes" when you say "are you any good?" I don't hit it very straight, I don't hit it spectacularly far, but GOD...

I don't know what to say. It's white as hell, it's not great for the environment, and it has a horrible history in terms of exclusion, I know that. That's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about the tuning fork that goes off in your soul when you strike the ball. I'm talking about the dance you have to do, the choreographed moment of dance that you have to do right in order to do *anything*.

Again, I could go on and on. But here are some things I discovered about myself while swinging a club.

- You don't achieve more by trying harder. You achieve more by doing each simple step you need to do, and those steps will come together to make something great happen.

- Every day you will have to remain open to changing tiny things in your habits in order to stay productive.

- Every single moment is an opportunity to do something spectacular.

- Your good moments last only for that one moment. Your bad moments just keep adding up and adding up.

- One bad shot, then one horrible shot, then one bad shot, then one amazing shot is par. One great shot, then a second great shot, then one bad shot is, two shots later, a bogey.

- Every six months someone comes up with some new thing that is gonna make your life better. Sometimes it's based in science, sometimes it's a new faith, but they will always try to make you think this is the secret. It's a lie.

- If you want to go 140 yards, you can whack and top a 9 iron, hit an 8 iron perfectly, hit a 7 Iron nice, take a lot off your 6 Iron, take a half swing with your 5 Iron, tag your 5 wood or wack the crap out of your 9 wood.

(Why do I have a 9 wood? Better question, why do I have a pitching wood that looks like a pooper scooper? And why do I have a 560 cc head driver that sounds like a shotgun blast and hits the ball 285 yards even when I swing it? I have these things because my father in law and brother Ian are a) crazy, b) love me and c) obsessed with golf.)

- Every time I try to do something, it doesn't work. Every time I just do it, it works. I know, I heard Yoda say it, and I read it in the Tao Te Ching, but it didn't sink in until I picked up a club.

- The more golf I play, the better I write.

All this, and I've only played for a coupla years. I'm willing to bet that everyone out there either feels like golf is better than I do, or they totally hate it. It's worse than religion or politics, but I just totally adore it.

inverness

Make Money, Not Art

Steve, here, Ian's younger older brother, with nothing so meaningful to talk about as creating art, appreciating art, enabling artists, or reminding us to seek out live artists.

Well, OK, I did bicycle from work in San Francisco's Potrero Hill up to the Mission District last week to find my friend Marta at the preview of her show at San Francisco Open Studios at Art Explosion (organized by ArtSpan). I know nothing about painting, but I enjoy Marta's work, and I especially enjoy her relaxed but committed attitude to her work.

But other than that, I haven't taken much time lately for art. I admit it, I've been distracted by a far more crass phenomenon: Since the beginning of the year, I've been living 24/7 in the surreal echo chamber that we in the Bay Area call "Web 2.0," or "web twenny," when we're trying to be cute.

Only six years ago, the dot-bomb deflated the first internet bubble, with its pet-food sock puppets and $100K-a-day gains and losses (yes, even my IRA had a few of those days). We all swore we'd learned a lesson, but now it seems we're back at it, more self-aware, to be sure, but still getting caught up in the hype. We claim to be "enabling the masses" to "create a participatory culture," but when your peers are getting bought for 1.65 billion dollars (it's fun to say it like Dr. Evil!), it's hard to remember how shiny and pure Blogger seemed back in '99. We all work 80-100 hours a week building stuff that has, yes, some slim chance of actually being disruptive and revolutionary, but it's as much the roller-coaster-whupsie kind of excitement as real commitment to social change.

Despite my unease at the meta-ness of it all, I must say that since January I've worked at my dream job. I've been a working programmer for 30 years, never having wanted any more than to build an elegant boolean clockwork, wind it up, and watch it tick away at some interesting or useful task. Now I get to work on a little machine that must respond instantly and personally to a million people without breaking down. That's fun for someone like me.

So I've been coding (and, yes, doing some fun volunteer stuff) every waking minute, and enjoying it. For months, I was commuting by car up the peninsula every day, and finally couldn't stand those 90 minutes away from the computer, so I switched to the train. Now I can put the laptop to sleep, jump on the bike, and be back to work in ten minutes with the bike racked right next to my seat on the train. I've even got high-speed wireless internet access. Sweet.

Commuting by train only adds to the perception that life in the Bay Area web biz is a blur of young geeks furiously writing code, stealing ideas, mashing up each other's web sites through APIs and RSS feeds, and self-organizing into flash mobs of indecipherable purpose. The express train whizzes by start-ups and venture capitalists in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, San Mateo, Redwood City. The train stops, a bunch of geeks (and a few young marketing and finance sharks) get off, and others get on, and we blast off for "the city." Sometimes I ride BART over to Berkeley, where they have more whole-grain geeks, but still working on stuff that's meaningless to anyone outside of the Bay Area who isn't in college. Last week, when Caltrain shut down after an accident, I led a mob of geeks that descended on Samtrans, the only alternate available. The bus growled slowly down dark El Camino, festooned with bicycles, lit from within by the flourescent glow of a dozen laptops.

After only a few days on the train, the experience changed from surreal to alarming for me, as I somehow crashed my bike on the way from work to the 4th & King station. I have no memory of that day, except for flashes of the CT machine and my sister arriving at the hospital to drive me home. Over the next few days, I had to reverse-engineer the code I had no memory of writing that day. (At least I found and fixed a few bugs.) I feel a little bad that I can't remember what I did to precipitate the accident. I feel a lot bad that my computer, strapped to my back when I fell, now has a crack in the corner of its titanium shell. I like to think I'm careful enough to commute on the bike. I'd hate to think that it's not safe enough, because I don't want to go back to the car and lose those 90 minutes of uninterrupted work each day.

I'm trying to let the Web 2.0 craziness flow past me, enjoying the most fun job I've ever had, and not count any chickens. But 1.65 billion dollars, wow.

That green bit next to the squiggly river.

This is Kent, aka Ian's Eldest Sib, AKA Chaircrusher, AKA Le broyeur des chaises, aka Know-it-all Mannerism (an anagram for my full name). Unlike Ian, I didn't ever leave Iowa. I am a proud resident of flyover country. I love New York, Paris, Utrecht, Chicago, Detroit, etc, but for a variety of reasons, I moved 30 miles away from Cedar Rapids, where the infamous Williams' spent the most time, and stayed. The rest of the family is all over the damn place now.

Why am I telling you this? Because while it can be exciting to live at the center of things -- say, NYC, Berlin, London, etc -- it isn't how most people live in the United States. From my perspective, big cities are great to visit, but they're expensive, noisy and a hassle to get around. I can live here on a third of what it would cost to live in NYC. It's a good thing, too because salaries are much lower here.

We're no more rubes than people on the coast. We get CNN and HBO & whatnot. Where I live, Iowa City, is actually pretty happening, even for a University town. Allen Ginsberg said Iowa City was the only town between the coasts he liked. We're the gay capital of Iowa. At the same time, I can drive for a half hour, skirt a cornfield and go wading in the Iowa River someplace where no human mark is visible on the land around me. Most of Iowa is empty of people. It's corn fields and hardwood forests, criss crossed with dirt roads. The longer I live here, and really look at what is around me the more exotic it seems. There's pavement and video stores and streetlights and people all over the world. Only in the midwest can you drive around getting lost and end up at an abandoned farm house, surrounded by twelve foot high wild hemp plants. When you want to go home, you do it by dead reckoning -- drive kinda the right direction until you hit a main road.

People make their own fun here, especially music. Every town of more than a couple thousand people in these parts has serious musicians doing their own thing, in a variety of styles. There's a crew of hip hop MCs and DJs in Marshalltown, Iowa that can hold their own on any stage in the world.

Since I've got the microphone tonight, I'm going to tell you about the musicians I'm digging these days who you probably haven't heard of out there on the coasts.

1. Witch's Hat. These boys are from Columbia, Missouri, and they are on some other shit. Think Queen, Medievalist 70's Heavy Metal, Vampires, etc. Witch's Hat manages to make fun of that stuff, and at the same time, imbue their songs with all the ways that stuff ruled. If you listen to Witch's Hat, you're 14 again, complete with a wardrobe of black concert T shirts.

Huzzah. The best song ever about dragon-slaying and maiden-rescuing.

Supply And Demand. A great, driving pop song. I liked it so much I did a mashup of it with New Order's "Blue Monday".

2. Miracles of God. These guys are Iowa City's most dangerous band. Sloppy, drunken, goofy, stupid, brilliant punk rock. Imagine, say, the Pixies but with a sense of humor.

And because they really don't give a fuck Their entire back catalog is on their website. It's all good, but I recommend

Harm, which is about becoming a zombie.

You're Evil, a song about how you're evil.

Handimart, which is a lovely ballad about being at the convenience store at 2 AM.

3. The guys from Wax Cannon has been around Iowa City for years, playing in tons of different bands going back to the late 80s. Their new album "Someone in Madison Is Praying For You (and it isn't me" is 2 CDs chock full of minimalist midwestern guitar pop.
I believe frustration lenny is a ballad of sorts.
Twelve Spaceships On The River is a quiet songs about UFOs and being a kid.

All this music is much more alive to me than what's on major labels because it happens where I live. I understand the milieu in which it was born. I listen to music from all over -- from Bobbi Cespedes to Yasushi Miura. But music is like beer, is always fresher when you get it locally.

I'd also like to give a shout out to to my boys Shaffer The Dark Lord who used to live in Iowa City, but lately in good old Astoria Queens, and Coolzey who is living between tours here in Iowa City, and in Fairfield, IA, Trancendental Meditation world headquarters, and Will Whitmore who tours internationally but lives in a farmhouse overlooking the Mississippi in Lee County Iowa, who makes roots music like to freeze you to the bone, and Ed Gray, the best singer/songwriter in Iowa City -- a mad neglected genius.

I could go on and on... the thing about being in flyover country is that what you're told by the media is important all happens somewhere else. That shit is important, but things go on here too that are every bit as relevant and worthy of attention.

Truth Be Told

Ian’s little sister Michelle here. I could certainly continue the rant begun by my brother Sean & continued by my mom, particularly since my current life’s work is making the arts- the LIVE arts- more accessible to my community. But there is something else weighing on my brain this cloudy, grey Sunday afternoon here in northern California and I'm gonna write about it instead.

Walking back from yoga class this morning, I was thinking about a conversation that Sean, a mutual friend & I had about four years ago in a bar in Soho after a recording session. This mutual friend was a former lover of mine and the three of us were talking about the current pickle I’d gotten myself into. I was nuts about a man who was not available, and feeling guilty about my feelings. We were debating the whole thing: is it ever right, or at least, not wrong, to encourage someone who is in the wrong relationship to get out, by any means necessary? How bad does a situation need to be to merit half-truths? I can tell you that Sean and I were of the same opinion, on one side of the argument (regardless if it meant my own heartbreak), but our friend said, without a moment’s hesitation, “Well, it’s amazing how happiness can assuage any guilt.” This friend was just this short of proud that he’d been untrue to his first fiancée, and that his infidelity led to his now extremely happy marriage.

I don’t know that I can ever think like that. I also learned, early on, the powerful damage that a good solid lie will cause. I lied about something when I was fourteen years old and the ripple effect of that lie lasted for years. Never again did I lie- not in that particular realm, anyway- and my honesty when it comes to relationships, to lovers, to my intentions with any given man may be almost too brutal. But it’s the path I choose, and it lets me sleep at night. Or, rather, it’s not what keeps me up.

But here is what does keep me up: what is my capacity for change? What is other peoples’ capacity for change? I find myself thinking that maybe I don't have to beat myself up for the transgressions in my reasonably distant past, but sometimes I have a hard time giving that same leniency to others. And that’s not very fair, is it? I did so many stupid things in my twenties- largely harmful only to myself, but still- and, well, goodness knows that I’ve also done stupid things in my thirties, and in between forgiving myself and then beating myself up, I get lost. And I have to remind myself that if I can change, if I can do better, so can others.

Here’s the rub: the comment our friend made at dinner that night was the exact same sort of comment that would have come out of his mouth ten years earlier. Unapologetic, simple, with a complete disregard of any pain or suffering that might have come out of his actions. Which leads me to wonder: are most people like that? Are most people uninterested in questioning their own behavior, in exploring their darker selves, in becoming, if not “better” people, people with a deeper self-awareness? Do most people really just come home from work, pet the dog, kiss the kids, or turn on the computer, and not give the last decade or so of their lives any thought? Or do most people cringe when they are randomly reminded of something stupid they did twelve years ago?

I suppose it’s somewhere in between. I don’t think we should walk around punishing ourselves for bad things we did, or for that matter, constantly congratulating ourselves for the good things we did. I do think we should always be striving to learn more, to do more, and to be more self-aware. But if we don’t take responsibility and at least attempt to do better “next time”, then what’s the point?

I’m thinking about all of this because I’m going through a re-negotiation with myself, trying to figure out what it might look like for me to actually let a life partner into my world someday. I’ve grown tired of distractions and placeholders and I’m taking a hard look as to why it is so difficult for me to give a man- any man- a real chance. I know it is a combination of things, but part of it is learning that I am trustworthy, and so must some others be as well.

But it frightens me not a little that there are many, many people in this world ready to justify any action- anything from punching their girlfriend to going to war- without caring about the outcome or the repercussions. And once you have suffered betrayal of any scope, it is extremely difficult to learn to trust again. Maybe it’s liberating to say what my friend said- maybe it’s so much nicer to stick one’s head in the sand and say, “It doesn’t matter what it took to get here, now that I’m here.” But I think that is dangerous, and it’s not the world I want to live in.

So I’m searching for that balance: taking responsibility for what I’ve done, good and bad, and trying to re-learn some lessons where I got the short stick the first time around. I know there’s not much I can do about folks who aren’t interested in self-awareness, but there’s got to be some point in all of our lives when it creeps in. I’m a lot less angry at myself than I used to be. And that sort of relief feels a lot better than desperately struggling to keep the skeletons in the closet.

no flood can drown nor fire blacken purest longing

10/12/06

I'll wrangle my other family members to do more blogs while I'm gone, but I just got the internet working here in London and wanted to send out a quick missive from your friends over here in Merrie Olde Englande! None of us slept more than 45 minutes on the red-eye over, including Lucy, which has been a serious drag, but it's so wonderful to be here that none of us care. Except Lucy, I guess, who keeps waking up every hour wanting to know where the hell she is.

The flat we Craigslisted came "with internet," but it's a curious sort of "British internet" that spouts via the end of a misshapen USB cord. USB is notoriously unstable, and besides, the Mac can't support it anyway, which meant a jaunt over to the Apple Store in Oxford Circus for a new modem. Hours (and hundreds of BT.com tech details you don't want to know) later, we are finally beaming wifi to the ancient Carmelite church next door.

We're staying just off High Street Kensington, in a neighborhood that corresponds roughly to Prince Street in New York, the Marais in Paris, and, I guess, the Ped Mall in Iowa City. If my childhood memory is correct, we lucked out on the weather: it's been low 70s and sunny. When I was a kid, there were so few sunny days in London that we treated them like manna from the Gods of Fun.

Tomorrow is the wedding at the Houses of Parliament and then we're on a train to the border of Scotland for the reception (all paid for by the lovely bride and groom!) And for those who were wondering, we've offset the entire trip via CarbonFund.org, because I know some of you take special interest in my carbon consumption.

Back next week with more pictures. Have a great weekend and be sure to comment on all the American gossip I'm missing.

The Real Mousse

It’s the Mom here, guest blogging whilst Ian and his ladies take a journey down memory lane in England. And I’d like to follow up on one aspect of Sean’s nifty rant of yesterday.

Not the fascination with vapid celebrities, or even the mediocrity of much of our culture, though those are worthy discussions. My rant concerns the phenomenon of live performance, and why it will, or should, never go away.

A few days ago I took a drive around the Sundance “loop” in Utah. The road winds from Provo to American Fork, a fairly slow, 2-lane route that hugs one mountain as it frames the changing view of peaks and valleys, glaciers and waterfalls, one breathtaking Kodak moment after another. Except that Kodak can never duplicate the actual experience. It’s a “ya hadda be there” thing. The photos may be great, but it’s an inadequate representation of the real thing.

So it is with live performance—theater, dance, music, whatever. When you hear music live, see theater live, walk in front of the actual painting, there is a physical response that doesn’t happen when it is experienced in its packaged, processed form. I once wrote that compared to a live concert, listening to recorded music is like making love in a wet suit. Or eating chocolate mousse over the telephone.

Live music just sounds, feels different. My whole body reacts with the kind of connection that I can’t get with the earbuds or a great set of speakers. It’s the same with theater. Breathing the same air as the actors, singers, or dancers, and hearing the speeches, the tunes, the taps of feet and rustles of costumes gives me something I can’t duplicate in reproduction mode, no matter how technically perfect. And the best reproduction in the world can’t compare with actually standing in front of that huge Pollock spatter painting upstairs at the Met.

Now, I adore film, and I relish all sorts of entertaining and artistic electronica. I make part of my living creating and manipulating sound in the recording studio. That’s another whole subject. The thing is, if you always get your art and entertainment canned, you forget how it tastes when it’s fresh.

Yesterday, Sean urged everyone to go see some live theater. I second that and urge you to add music, art, and, yes, even live basketball to your calendar. And not just to support artists, not just to keep the theater companies and music groups alive. Not as a public service. Do it for yourself.

Guest Blogger Crabbie

Ian's Brother Sean Here.

There are two factions in this business we call show, and those are "business" and "show". Or, more specifically, "art" and "commerce". Or, as we used to say after every show of "Hunchback Of Notre Dame" when we were congratulating each other, "way to move some units, baby!"

Now, there is a mythology about show business, that there is some guy sitting at a typewriter trying to come up with that Barton Fink feeling, while in the background there is some wealthy number cruncher sniping at him to write faster, funnier and better. There is an artist, his integrity tucked neatly into his pocket next to his empty wallet, his few remaining pills and a flask with a thimble's worth of pain-number, crouched over, one hand in his hair, the other scratching out brilliant ideas that only he understands, while some guy in a sharp expensive suit stands in the doorway chomping on a cigar with a blonde on his fat arm waiting for the pages that he can sell.

Obviously, this isn't true. Wanna know why? Because that guy standing in the doorway figured out forty years ago that he doesn't need that jerk at the typewriter. He can write the damn thing himself and then kibosh anything else in the market and we will eat what we're fed.

Oh, and also, that guy? He figured out that the cigar chomping fat guy is a dead give away, so he doesn't let himself become that anymore. He stays athletic, he gets surgery, he pops pills, he does all those things that keep him youthful and hip. And he makes fun of himself in public, joking about his lack of talent, laughing at his own stranglehold on American culture, goofing on his persona. Self-aggrandizement has been replaced by self-deprecation.

George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Ashton Kutcher, Mel Gibson, Brad Pitt etc., these assholes have taken over America. Even worse, Angelina Jolie, Kate Hudson, Paris and Nicole, on and on. The obsession with modern celebrity is disgusting, of course, we all laugh at the guilty pleasure of reading those shit-rags about people with more money, more beauty and more fame than they have talent or intelligence, but what is shocking is the disregard for the fact that it's actually *destructive*. It's no wonder the South Park guys hate everyone in Hollywood, the debate has shifted to the most ridiculously simple ideas.

So, yeah, I jump on Ian when he mentions whatever famous person he's seen recently. In an age when fewer movies are being made every year, when fewer new ideas are even being attempted in Broadway houses, these people are making sure that they own as much of the world as they can. Every play and movie and TV show that doesn't have famous people in it is disregarded, and every celebrity demands a fiscal investment that makes it impossible to take artistic chances.

The people I work with, our artistic world will always remain outside the realm of success, because most of us are the guy sitting at the keyboard hunting and pecking for a new way to tell an old story. Nobody is even looking for us anymore, we don't have an audience. Now, a person's life outside the art he or she creates is the real story, and our lives aren't interesting.

But, if ever there is a tiny crack, one of us will slip through. At this point, the level of irrelevance of theater in modern culture is shocking, and that is, in a way, liberating. We can just do our thing without any worry about whether anyone gets it or likes it, at most only 5 or 6 hundred people will ever know the difference. We can just do our thing, telling our tiny hopeless stories and giving our $15 back and forth to one another as the years creep by.

We do it because we know, one day, someone is gonna stand up in the middle of the movie and say, "Wait a minute. Wait just a minute. Why am I here? This is the same thing they've been giving me for years, I didn't like it then, I don't like it now. My life is spinning past me, and I've spent time *WORRYING ABOUT NICOLE RICHIE'S WEIGHT!!!* I have to get out of here! Even if I just sat at home and listen to myself breath through my mouth that would be better than shelling out shitloads of money for the same old crap!"

And, when that happens, if you feel like coming out and seeing what the actual people in your actual town are doing, we'll be there waiting for you. Even if you just go see Fiddler at your local community theater, at least you'll be taking part in something that matters to the people you share a grocery store with. Kate Hudson doesn't care if you live or die, and her movies are crap, so do yourself a favor and throw her out of your life.

orville and wilbur

10/9/06

Someone has to figure out a new paradigm for air travel and make it better. The current system is not functionally different from the very first passenger flights in the 1920s, and like dentistry, it has got to start behaving like it belongs in the 21st century.

First off, Americans are too fat to sit in coach. These planes were designed for a nation of people 5'8" and 175 lbs tops, and the reality is much more grim. The airline placed Lucy, Tessa and me in separate rows each in the middle seat, and we were surrounded on all sides by love handles, thighs, hips, and fatty upper arms spilling into our personal spheres. The dude next to me slept with my leg supporting him from California to New Mexico, and the guy on the other side had serious Parkinson's Disease. I felt really, really sorry for him, but the experience was not unlike being inside the paint shaker at Home Depot.

Thank god one of them took pity on us and let Tessa sit next to her 17-month-old daughter. Even so, we were so cramped we couldn't look at each other. My butt fell asleep, and not - as Ice Cube said - because anyone's jimmy was so deep. It was because I had about seventeen inches to call home.

Please, can someone think about the interior of planes a different way? Put the same number of humans on board so you can make your fucking money, but can you put us in a circle, or a rhombus or something? Can you do two-layer pods, like the sleeping trains of Japan? Serve drinks through pneumatic tunnels, allow us to rise to the ceiling when we want to recline 180 degrees, and allow passengers to use Wifi and their cell phones, for chrissake?

I'm over turbulence, which was once my bête noire; today's flight was about as bumpy as they come, and I didn't care. I just want my 4-11 hours in the air to feel less like a yoga move I cannot possibly hold.

supersonic transistor blast

10/8/06

We're off to Houston today, then London tomorrow! First commenter, please provide today's topic, won't you?

moved a million hearts in mono

10/5/06

Adventures on Speed, Day One

First off, thank you for all the emails I got from concerned parties, and yes, my dosage of Dexy's Midnight Runners is so low that there is little chance of me hotwiring the neighbor's Mazda, driving to Carson City and killing a hooker. I was a bit concerned about Neva's comment that Dexy is a bit harsh for a first-timer, but hey, it is a classic.

I took one 5mg tablet in the morning, and another in the afternoon, which puts me at about one-third the regular dose. Still, the feeling of gettin'-it-done euphoria is hard to miss, especially when that inkling only used to visit every three months or so. Obviously, I draw no conclusions on one day of taking the drug, but it is like the best cup of coffee you've ever had, without that horrible crash 90 minutes later. Those of you at day jobs will know what 10:50am looks like during the denouement of a breakfast latté; it may be the worst feeling in modern business. I'm beginning to wish I had Dexy during my dot-com fin de siècle.

Even if this thing only works for a few days, a few weeks, a year, a decade, I'm taking advantage of it and scooping my life into some sort of manageable cone. We leave for Houston and then London on Monday, and the only way Tessa and I are going to get the Lucyboots to England and back is to be at the top of our game. Our flight home is ten hours from the UK to Los Angeles, and unless my wife and I come up with a new comedy routine with spot-on impersonations of your favorite stars, Lucy is going to be mashing Play-Doh into my duty-free Scotch and shouting in Spanish.

This trip comes at the end of an intriguing summer in Los Angeles, and promises to be quite a spectacle. Tessa's Aunt Loraine is getting married to a Lord in the House of Lords, so we have to trade our LA SchlubWear™ for quite possibly the most formal duds we've ever worn. For those of you who have seen "Five Wives," Loraine is the gorgeous silver-haired woman holding a goblet of wine, quipping forth while her son Louie sits to one side. Just from those snippets alone, you might be able to gauge the crazy wonderfulness of this event.

Since the drama development season is basically over, we're extending our trip for a couple of weeks, so Tessa and I can see where the other grew up whilst in the United Kingdom. I was in Northern London while she was in Northern Scotland, so we're showing Lucy both. Not that she'll remember, but she'll look cute in her wellies.

I'll try to keep posting from abroad, but you know how those wily Brits can be. You may get nothing but pictures for a while. Speaking of which, I got my hair lengthened. Whaddya think?

before and after!

sanguine phlegm, choleric bile

10/4/06

There's a line in the "Pink House" script that was meant to describe Chapel Hill post-grads, but was actually about me: "suffering from A.D.D., but ironically, too distracted to go the doctor for a prescription." I wrote that in 1999, and finally got to the attention-deficit psychiatrist yesterday. Seven years... hey, that's no so bad!

Psychopharmacologists are weird lot; they have the black socks and demeanor of therapists, thus tempting you to talk about your problems, but they really just want the facts. I tried to tell my guy about Sept. 11 and being traumatized as a kid, but he was only really interested in how I felt now and take it from there. I was more than happy to oblige. I told him that I've always had incredible swings in concentration and that I haven't had any energy since I was about thirteen. He promptly put me on Speed.

Actually, he gave me several options - I could gradually switch from Celexa to Effexor (which is better for concentration issues) but there was no guarantee it would work, and to be honest, Celexa is truly doing its job in the anxiety and depression department.

He also mentioned Cymbalta and/or Strattera, but I could tell he meant those drugs as Plan B. The solution that appealed to me most was the direct targeting of energy and attention, which happens to be Dexedrine. When I got home and told Tessa, she was like, "oh, you mean Mother's Little Helper." When I told Sean, he said, "oh, like a housewife from 1959." To which I say "fuck yes!"

I don't know if any of you have tried Dexedrine, which is basically an early form of Ritalin and Adderall, but I'll be starting a small dose tomorrow to see if I can start having wide-awake days and less fitful sleep. I'm not a big fan of taking any more drugs, but I'm already taking an anti-depressant, so drawing an arbitrary line in the sand seems pretty stupid at this point. I could easily smash the two drugs together with a spoon and call it Celexadrine if I wanted to fool myself into thinking I was anywhere close to low-maintenance.

You just have to look at this stuff like dentistry. When your teeth get rotten, you have them filled or pulled. If you don't, your mouth hurts for fifty years. I once read that one of the leading causes of suicide in the 18th century was tooth pain. I look upon my psychopharmacology with the same phlegmatic acquiescence: there has always been a terrible cavity in my mood, and I'm going to use modern tools to fix it.

76 trombones

10/3/06

Today's CODE WORD is easy: given the last few weeks, and your knowledge of the way news cycles work, what is your prediction for the 2006 election?
- Who will get control of the House, and by how many votes?
- Who will control the Senate, and by how many votes?
Feel free to throw in another random political prediction in as well.

Remember, these prognostications are not what you'd like to happen, they are what you honestly believe will happen. Person closest to reality on Election Day gets a special present from Venice Beach!

not pictured: kid covered in peanut butter

10/2/06

Hey kids! It's Clichéd Toddler Picture Tuesday!

here's Toddler Gets Into Daddo's Closet™

how about Toddler Sure Loves Bubbles!®

Lucy and her babysitter Joshua star in Kid Puts On Adult Sunglasses©

last up today? Toddler Entranced By Nature!™

scratch my name on your arm with a fountain pen

10/1/06

I would like to thank the Creator - whomever she, he or it happens to be - for not making me a pedophile. Seriously. All men have some sort of fetish, things they won't tell even their wives of 40 years, and we should be very, very happy not to be stuck with a predilection for the underage. In fact, I can put it in writing: not only am I unattracted to women who ain't my wife, but I'm completely unaffected by women under about 25. No offense to the delightful under-25 crowd who haunts this blog, and I'm sure your contemporaries find you very sexy, but people younger than their early twenties all remind me of cake batter.

Why do I mention this? Well, for those of you reading from the year 2028, last week a member of the House of Representatives resigned in the midst of allegations that he sent 16-year-old pageboys lascivious emails and instant messages. Mark Foley's sexual orientation was an open secret, and apparently so were his peculiar tastes, meaning it was only a matter of time. But the revelations became a huge deal for two reasons: one, it has thrown the balance of the November election even more into the Democrats' favor, and two, several higher-ups in Congress knew about his predatory nature and chose to do nothing.

I feel for Foley, in that way that I feel for anyone who is clearly an addict. Perhaps that's the bleeding-heart liberal in me: pitying a conservative self-loathing Republican who voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, but I can't help it. Watching his life disintegrate offers no schadenfreude, and there's a hue to the proceedings that feel vaguely like gay-bashing.

But the ensuing cover-up is what should worry parents across the country. House leadership, including Dennis Hastert himself, knew about the sexual predatory nature of Mark Foley ten months ago, and did nothing about it. You have to hand it to these Republicans, they really know how to stick together. If I know my current history well enough, I predict absolutely nothing will come of this, but it's still so wrong that these guys put their partisanship over the protection of high school kids.

When I was 16, I was touched/fondled/seduced by someone who was thirty years old. I was a virgin at the time and had never even kissed a girl. It took me two months, a deep depression and a move to North Carolina to get over it. Certainly I was painfully late bloomer, but at my age, I had an inalienable right to be as late as I wanted.

Assuming the best of people, Foley likely had little control over his actions. Clearer heads, when informed, should have prevailed, but they didn't. They left these kids open to a sexual addict who was not only much older, but in an extremely high position of power. That should disgust all of you, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican. For me, it's bringing back a twinge of nausea from a summer I'd long let go.