Grand Mental Station (2.0)

springtime

springtime, originally uploaded by Waffle Soles.

Andrew: "Just crouched down, pointed my camera under my board and got lucky, haha."

Escaped elephants and ski-jumping tires

I subscribe to a podcast from BestofYouTube.com that I'm quite enjoying. Here are two of the must-sees that I've been telling everybody about:

Police cameras and audio recorders capture the 911 call and police responses about escaped elephants in a residential neighborhood:

Japanese TV. Need I say more? Guys in lab coats rolling tires of varying sizes down a dry ski jump to see which ones go farthest. Starts a little slow, but has a big finish and some truly dramatic soundtrack and camera work.

What a great thing YouTube is. How else would I see all this, PLUS Filipino prison inmates remaking the Thriller video?

Sweetie

IMG_0313, originally uploaded by PhotoCub.

By Andy.

That damn stork commercial

Andy and I watched this commercial together on his HDTV yesterday during the baseball rain delay while we smoked cigarettes together in his room. We sat through it and for a few moments afterward in silence. Then, in a daze, we headed back into the living room to see what the rest of the group watching it on the living room couch thought of it. We found them in silence as well.

I'm sure that there's some Monster.com marketeer somewhere who would be jumping for joy at that. Whether a commercial offends you or pleases you, if it makes every twenty- and thirty-something in a Brookline apartment on a Saturday night stop what they're doing and take notice like that, it's been effective.

But I have to say, its conclusion reflects an attitude I've found at the heart of everything that's been sucky about being an adult so far, especially as an adult with many loved ones who are creative people. Namely, that 'your potential' and 'earnings potential' are interchangeable terms, that in reality it's actually the opposite of the famous line from Fight Club, that even in this time of cultural warfare and escalating national disasters and soaring food prices and real wages being eroded by inflation and no healthcare, you indeed are your job, and that its lack of glamour amounts to making the very efforts your parents made to birth you a waste of time.

Meanwhile, all I've been hearing on the news lately is about the shitty rabbit-hole our collective human civilization is heading down, from food riots in Haiti to disenfranchised young American men fighting in the war in Iraq (I wonder if they'd ever dare make a stork commercial about that), and the plain fact of the matter, I've come to realize, is that there are too many people in the world, too few of them have too much of the money, and there's not anything monster.com is going to do about that.

Maybe it's a bit of an overreaction for a commercial to send me into such a depressive reverie about our geopolitical situation, but it didn't appear, when our silence was broken, that I'd been the only one.

"Man," Andy finally said. "That commercial went deep."

YUSS

(Screencap)

If I play my cards right, maybe I can get to both of those New England dates.

Sometimes the clothes do not make the man

The Boston Gay Men's Chorus at Symphony Hall

Photo courtesy of BGMC.org

Saturday night found us at Symphony Hall to see the Boston Gay Men's Chorus (BGMC) perform their annual concert. Overall, it was a strong performance, and refreshingly different--most of us aren't exposed to much choral music, and when we are, it's a standard soprano-alto-tenor-bass mix or the decidedly treble sound of a school choir. The particular warm, brassy timbre of a tenor-tenor-baritone-bass choir is a rarity, and there's significance in a group formed around sexual orientation using both their bodies and the fact of their collective maleness to create a unique sound.

It was not as polished a concert as I've ever seen at Symphony Hall, but that's to be expected with a community group whose members have other careers. At times the ensemble seemed to have trouble staying together, especially behind soloists, and one of the two soloists on the group's George Michael medley in particular seemed totally lost. The lengthy piece the choir commissioned from Lowell Liebermann for the occasion, a Whitman Oratorio, was well-intentioned, but at times it dragged. The libretto might have done with a bit more careful selection, since some of the lyrics were clearly chosen for their significance rather than their sing-ability, giving the finished product a repetitive, psalm-like quality. That may have been intentional, but more than one audience member, probably regressing to childhood days in church, was witnessed dozing off before the piece was over.

Yet the BGMC brought a vitality I've never seen to the stuffy old hall. The audience, a younger and more casual crowd than the standard symphony throng, also dispensed with classical concert etiquette, showering the chorus with applause whenever it got the opportunity. Some people sitting in the orchestra section gave the conductor, who battled cancer this season, a standing ovation before the concert had even begun. To call them supportive and engaged (right up until about halfway through the Whitman piece, anyway) would be a vast understatement. This concert was about more than music.

And while I've done my best to give it an impartial review just now, I was there above all for one very good non-musical reason, and he was standing right in the front of the tenor section. Whenever his section had a solo, I swore I could pick out his voice, singing the highest part of the harmony.

My friend Andy and I actually met in a chorus room. We sang together throughout middle school and high school, took voice lessons from the same voice teacher, and were in the high school musicals together. Which is when, during the course of putting on Camelot, Andy told me he was gay.  Looking back on it, the only proper response was really, "Duh." But I hadn't been totally sure. And I had questions, which he answered amiably. We discovered we both had a crush on one of the male leads. And that was that.

I actually thought I would probably lose touch with Andy after high school. He was headed to Plymouth State, a good ways away from our hometown and where I was going in Amherst. And...I don't know. It was just a feeling I had. Somehow I didn't picture him being into writing letters.

And that's not what happened. Letter-writing, anyway.

More often, it was emails and text messages and phone calls and updates passed through mutual friends. And then, as we gained independence, it was parties and plays and more musicals, updates on our latest exploits at our respective school newspapers. There were introductions to new friends and moves from one location to another. Ten years after we graduated high school, there have been untold changes and losses, but our friendship has, blessedly, not been one of them.

Andy now lives in an apartment in Brookline with my best friend K (whom I also met in a middle school music program) and her boyfriend Ryan, and the three of them and their cozy apartment are like a second family and another home to me. I'm with them every weekend.

When I think of Andy, I think of the innumerable memories, the stories we have to tell, the experiences we have together, the unique shared perspective we have on formative years. Seeing him at Symphony hall, my first feeling was of pride in him as an individual, my friend, who got to have this experience of a lifetime, performing on such a storied stage.

It wasn't until later on, reading over the words of Whitman that make up the oratorio, including the movement "For Matthew Shepard", that it even occurred to me to put Andy into the darker context invoked by this performance. As triumphant as the concert was, this group exists to counteract the discrimination its members face in the wider world, and that discrimination was omnipresent in the texts they chose to perform, like the poignant "Michael's Letter to Mama".   

I tried, but it just doesn't compute. It's impossible for me to reduce my friend and all he has meant and still means in my life to one demographic identifier; it's impossible for me to contemplate homophobic bigotry and this whole, multi-faceted, multi-talented person in the same thought. It's impossible for me to grok the hatred that's out there, galvanizing this group of 150 many-splendored men just like Andy, the deep and endemic ugliness inspiring what should just be some beautiful music.

How Hillary Clinton convinced me to support Barack Obama

Barack Obama, originally uploaded by Llima.

This is the kind of post I get the idea to write and then think better of, because I am not a political pundit, nor is this a political blog. But I am a voter, and ostensibly I should be thinking at least a little about this stuff. And I have been.

When the Presidential race started, I was a Hillary Clinton supporter for two somewhat foolish reasons: one, I just plain want the 90's back. Putting the Clinton family back in the White House, I somewhat magically thought, might point us back toward those good times instead of continuing the downward spiral of the Bush years. I also found Barack too green and a little too far to the left for my taste--I am a liberal, but something of a fiscal conservative, and I tend to find the middle-of-the-road approach appealing in most cases. And the Clintons have made careers out of being moderate Democrats.

The second reason was, yes, the gender thing. The demonization of Hillary Clinton by the right wingnuts was something that stuck out to me as stemming from more than just political disagreement. Said wingnuts have attacked Hillary with more venom, especially in recent years, than they even reserved for her husband. And yes, I want to see a woman in the White House. Recent research even suggests that societies that have achieved gender equality are better at avoiding violent conflict.

Along those lines, I was also swayed toward Clinton's side when I heard a pundit on NPR dismiss her experience as First Lady as "proximity to power, not actual experience in power," and I thought, that just about sums up most of women's history. Why not give a woman experience in power for once? After all, how could any woman have that experience in power when we've never had a woman President?

It's also been suggested that Clinton's attacks on Obama's "inexperience" come from a similar origin in identity politics--he's in the same experience / discrimination Catch-22.

Where I began to part ways with Clinton stemmed from another decision I made before the Democratic primaries started heating up; I decided that once the two-candidate race gets under way, I will judge the Republican candidate by how he chooses to handle the candidacy of a minority opponent. One single misogynist or racist comment from the GOP on either Clinton or Obama, I thought, and I'd excuse myself from even considering the conservative candidate.

But it turns out I came to that kind of impasse far earlier than I'd expected, and the Republicans weren't involved at all.

New Economy Depression Syndrome

I first read about this term last week. It was coined by a Yahoo! executive, and while I find his 'all you need is love' approach from a position of wealth and power a modern answer to 'Let them eat cake', I found the whole NEDS concept fascinating. One blogger summarizes it this way:

NEDS is best understood, in a workplace scenario, as carpel tunnel syndrome of the mind. Think about it: today’s business world is armed with technological tools designed to make communication effortless and enhance productivity, yet we all seem to be suffering from a downward spiral of information overload, no-nonsense rationality, and social shyness.

He spoke of a world of constant "info-ruption," where stuff is coming at us all day long. In fact, at the time of the US colonies were first settled, our forefathers read as much in their lifetimes what we scan in a single day (about 500,000 words)!

Now, I hate words like 'info-ruption', and I hate the psychobabble-sounding title given to this concept. I realize even talking about this suggests I should go back to listening to crappy New Age music and connecting with my inner child and stop bothering everyone. But if you peel back the layers of corporatized goo all over this idea, it is one I can identify with, and one I'm struggling to figure out how to change.

Thoughts on human nature: Traffic Edition

What is with the people who slow or fully stop in bumper-to-bumper traffic, letting huge gaps form between them and the other cars, letting people from other lanes pass in and out of the lane ahead of everyone else behind them and generally pissing everybody off? Why do people do that?

Blood test

The other day I went to get a blood test at the hospital, and when I walked in I was immediately drawn to a small commotion on the other side of the waiting room, where a tiny girl in pigtails was being "introduced" to a sleeping baby in a carrier at his mother's feet.

"This is Isabella," a woman holding the squirming little girl said.

"This is Kamal," the other woman smiled.

I registered and took a seat in the waiting area two chairs down from Kamal's mother. I peeked at him, bundled up and asleep in layers of fleece snowsuit and blankets. His deep bronze face seemed to have a healthy glow. He looked peaceful, contented. Beautiful.

Kamal's mother made conversation with the other woman, seemingly as long as she possibly could. When the other woman and Isabella left, she sat quietly nearby for a few minutes before venturing softly, almost under her breath, "So nerve wracking."

"You don't like needles?" I replied.

"Oh, no, I'm here for him," she said, pointing to her baby. She had topaz eyes, and faint, tiny freckles on her cheeks. "He has to have a chest X-ray."

"Oh, no!"

My sympathetic reaction seemed to open the floodgates. She told me about how her son had been sick, congested, the doctors said, how she was homeless and had lived with relatives while she was pregnant but was staying in a shelter with her son now.

Right in the middle of her confessions, I was called by the registration clerk. I didn't know what to do.

"I wish you luck," I said, looking her in the eye and trying to register as kind and sympathetic an expression as I could.

It surprised me when she stiffened. My expression must have come across as pitying. And if it did, I realize in retrospect, it might not have been entirely dishonest.

She drew herself up, looked me in the eye just as directly. "I wish you luck." I walked away feeling small.

I'm still thinking about her.

Daylight savings time

Daylight Savings Time struck for another year this past weekend, and luckily my crash-prone self managed to keep from wrecking yet another automobile on one of the most dangerous traffic days of the year.

While grabbing myself some much needed coffee yesterday morning in the office kitchen, a coworker and I discussed the suckitude of daylight savings time at length, before she finally summed things up in a way that struck me funny.

"Come on," she said, rolling her eyes and slamming cabinets as she prepared her own morning beverage. "Nobody's like...farming anymore, or anything."

Maybe you had to be there.

North Dakota in Winter

When my parents declared their insane intention to visit Grand Forks, North Dakota, for another February vacation week, I asked them to bring along their camera and get some pictures of what that frozen tundra looks like this time of year.

Below are some shots of that empty, alien landscape, a formative one in my life and the lives of my mother's side of the family. This used to be part of what every Christmas was like for me.

I used to look for big black letters spelling out N O R T H D A K O T A  when we'd fly in when I was a little kid--I thought these straight, grid-like highways were latitude and longitude lines.

A couple of the most compelling highway shots. Seeing these gave me the shivers, just remembering the stinging cold of the unencumbered wind.

View large on black

View large on black

And the bustling hub of international travel that is Grand Forks airport:

We'll be going back there again for Christmas this year. I'll be sure to bring my camera.

Snow Drive II: Owned again hard

Ever have one of those weeks where it's like you have the opposite of the Midas touch? This has been that kind of week for me. For some reason the apocalyptic horseman of plague has made Massachusetts his winter home this year, and so I find myself with my second bad cold / flu virus in three weeks. Hence this would of course be the week I have to go to two off-site events for work, one in New York and the other downtown in Boston. That's not even the half of it, but I'll spare you the rest of the gory details save one.

Untitled

originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

Jury Duty

Old & New Middlesex County Court Houses, originally uploaded by jimmywayne22.

Last Friday, I showed up at Cambridge Superior Court for what I thought would be a day of boredom in a little flourescent-lit waiting room. I've never gone to jury duty before, but everyone I knew who has done it told me that the typical experience is to show up, endure a day of extreme boredom and bureaucratic nonsense, and then get back to one's life.

Based on those accounts, I was planning on an isolated but productive day of work. I showed up with my laptop and notebooks, whipping both out as soon as I was settled in the Jury Pool Room and ready to make the most of my empty day.

Unfortunately, that's not what it turned out to be.

The 2007 Playlist

Direct from my iPod, the songs I most identify with 2007, and have probably listened to the most in 2007. Some were released this year, some weren't. They are in no particular order.

"In This Twilight" - Nine Inch Nails
"The Great Destroyer" - Nine Inch Nails
"Zero Sum" - Nine Inch Nails
"List of Demands" - Saul Williams
"Black Stacey" - Saul Williams
"Twice the First Time" - Saul Williams
"Antennas to Heaven" - Godspeed! You Black Emperor
"Sunshine and Gasoline" - Godspeed! You Black Emperor
"Last Train to Transcentral" - KLF
"Like a Stone" - Audioslave
"From Yesterday" - 30 Seconds to Mars
"Honky Tonk Women" - The Rolling Stones
"No Leaf Clover" (live) - Metallica
"Delirium Trigger" - Coheed and Cambria
"Neverender" - Coheed and Cambria
"Rehab" - Amy Winehouse
"That's the Way (My Love Is)" - The Smashing Pumpkins
"The State of Massachusetts" - Dropkick Murphy's
"You Know I'm No Good" - Amy Winehouse
"Back to Black" - Amy Winehouse
"Tears Dry on their Own" - Amy Winehouse
"Some Unholy War" - Amy Winehouse
"Radio Nowhere" - Bruce Springsteen
"Hard Sun" - Eddie Vedder
"Queen B" - Puscifer
"Indigo Children" - Puscifer
"Momma Sed" - Puscifer
"A Favor House Atlantic" - Coheed and Cambria
"So Far Away" - Staind
"Good Times Bad Times" - Led Zeppelin
"Be Without You" - Mary J. Blige
"Amen" - Kid Rock (Yes, a Kid Rock song. I know. I'm sorry. If it helps, it's the only Kid Rock song I've ever liked at all)

525,600 Minutes

Day 365: 525,600 Minutes, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

And so here we have it, a collection of days that make up an amazing year. I thought the above photo of my finished pile of paper cranes from my desk calendar would appropriately symbolize the avalanche of memories I have from 2007.

In one year, I've grown tremendously as a person and in my work. I've lost a dear friend. I've seen the best band in the universe release a long-anticipated concept album and their second live DVD. I've visited with my British friend from Paris and took in a miraculous baseball game with him. I've seen my baseball team win the World Series and seen them debut the $100 million phenom from Japan in person. I've seen my football team become the first team since 1972 to have a perfect regular season. I've seen Chicago, Las Vegas, New York, and San Francisco, the latter for the first time ever. Last but certainly not least, last year I married the love of my life.

I also undertook the 365 days photo project, and haven't regretted it for a single minute. It has made me worlds better as a photographer and has helped me notice what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the invariable mark of wisdom: the miraculous in the ordinary. Even better, it helped me document, day by day, what turned out to be one of the most significant years of my life.

My New Year's resolution is to learn how to cook. Or at least to make my own meals. I've wasted too much money and calories on bought lunches and dinners. Another reason I want to commit to making supper every day is that I hope it will help me more clearly separate myself from my work, teach me to do something for myself every day, and help both me and my husband eat healthier in 2008. You never know with resolutions, but I think it's a practical and obtainable goal tied to concrete daily action. Kind of like my resolution last year to take a photo every day.

And to all a good night

I'm pretty gangster myself, originally uploaded by ConfessionalPoet.

I can't believe it's Christmas already.

The above is Steve's gift from his brother Jim, which he opened at Steve's family Christmas on Saturday night.

What a year it's been. I do hope to get to writing about it all before 2009 is upon us.

A very happy holiday to you and yours out there in blogland.

Of Bridezilla and CVS

The scene of the crime.

So before I tell the story of the wedding, a preliminary story must be told: the Story of How I Flipped Out at CVS. It's my one true Bridezilla moment, the one time during the planning of my wedding that I truly lost my cool, and now look back on as, well, kind of hilarious.

Worst Commute Ever

I'm just throwing chronological order to the wind for the moment here, because I want to write about my experience yesterday ASAP, even though I haven't written about my wedding, honeymoon or trip to San Francisco yet.

Yesterday, in what I can only describe as a fit of temporary insanity, I decided I needed to go in to the office, despite the fact that snow was predicted in the afternoon. What would follow that single ill-advised decision was unwitting participation in one of the most significant Boston-area weather SNAFUs in recent memory.