it's the story, of a lovely lady...

I’ve had a nasty cold since Sunday that I can’t seem to shake. Ever since I stopped working out as consistently, my immune system has been on the fritz. Also, much of my summer clothing no longer fits, since I was in considerably better shape last summer. We’ve been a little tight on cash lately (two cross-country flights and an emergency computer purchase drained us), so instead of getting new clothes I’ve had to be creative with what I’ve got. This has lead to a very tight rotation of shirts and pants.

In an effort to sleep as late as possible, I usually decide what I’m going to wear the night before, but at that point I’m usually half asleep already and in the morning it’s too dark to make sure the selection works. Most of the time I can pull this off, but there are occasional disasters, like today: I’m wearing a western/seventies-ish shirt I bought off a sale rack a few years ago, which, along with my untamed mop of hair and puffy face (head cold) has left me looking like a heftier Greg Brady after an all-night bender. There’s nowhere to hide under the fluorescent lights of Corporate America.

the whole job thing, parte deux

When I first started looking for a job I was somewhat discouraged. I can design but I’m not a designer; I’ve got a pretty solid grasp on HTML, but I’m not a programmer; I’ve published freelance articles, but have never written ad copy – would anyone want to hire me? I was pleasantly surprised.

It turns out there are a variety of jobs out there (web producer, content manager, project coordinator, etc.) for which I am qualified. Despite having spent an obscene amount of time obsessively checking craigslist postings and going on interviews this summer without actually getting a job, it was time well spent. What I’ve realized is that I need to hold out for the job that offers the best writing opportunity.

Instead of trying to convince potential employers (and myself) that my designing and coding skills are up to par, I’d be much better off using my writing portfolio to try to get some copywriting work or a job with a large copywriting component. I feel like I’ve spent too much of the last few years trying to be assorted things that I am not, and being frustrated with myself for that.

I do two things well: writing and making music. Why should I try to do anything else? Going on interviews helped my confidence, but it also altered my perspective. I felt like I kept trying to convince myself that I wanted certain jobs just because I had applied and was granted an interview. As hokey as it sounds, I feel like I’ve kind of come into myself throughout the process.

On a related note, I quit training jiu-jitsu, which seems a little crazy considering that at this exact time last year I was in the midst of losing ten pounds in a week to compete in a tournament. For a while in the end of the summer I was too busy to train, but my productivity skyrocketed. This helped me take a step back and realize that, despite the fact that I loved training and competing, jiu-jitsu was a huge time (not to mention financial) commitment. It’s O.K. if your job is all you do and aspire to do, but when you work AND have serious creative ambitions, three hours (warm up, class, cool down, travel) is just too much time.

I’ve always been a firm believer that if you want to add something to your life, you must make a conscious decision to take something away (and vice versa). There’s only so much time in the day. All that really matters here is that for the first time in years, I feel like I have my priorities in check – I’ve been steadily productive both on the writing and music making fronts. I’ve also made the decision to grow my ‘fro out, which feels like it should be mentioned here as well.

a girl's best friend

So I’m looking for a job. I’ve been reluctant to openly discuss this on here for several reasons (it’s why I stopped blogging for a while), but it’s time to come out. The whole job search process completely took over my life this summer, but I hadn’t let anyone at work know and was worried about potential future employers reading anything here. During one interview someone mentioned that they had read my blog, which completely caught me off guard, even though I often mention blogging in my cover letter.

I’ve had seven interviews and have turned down two potential offers. I was lead on for a while by Carnegie Hall, from whom I actually received a rejection letter yesterday (why?). I cut things off with a tech company that builds automated customer service instant messenger "bots" – the company had a weird, unpronounceable name and then suddenly changed to different, equally weird, unpronounceable name. I interviewed at a non-profit where the guy interviewing me looked me in the eye and said, "What do we sell? We sell awareness."

The best story, though, comes from an interview that never happened. A couple of weeks ago I got a message from a woman who wanted me to come in for an interview, but I couldn’t make out the name of the company. After going through my sent messages, I realized that she was calling me in response to a vague ad doing web production for an e-commerce company (which I figured could fall anywhere from really interesting to really illegal) that I had applied for the day before.

When I called her back, a man with a British accent answered by saying the last four digits of the phone number I had called. He was quite suspicious of me until he realized who I was and then transferred me to the woman who had left the message earlier. She asked about my availability and set up an interview for the following Monday, reminding me twice that I would need a government issued ID to enter the building, but offering no information about the company or the position. After she emailed me directions, I checked out the domain name from her email address and found out that I would be interviewing to work for an online diamond retailer. (Maybe it's because Julia and I have been watching a little too much of Spike TV's mediocre Blade series lately, but doesn't that guy look like he's a vampire going in for the kill?)

Already sensing some shadiness, I decided to Google her name. Here’s where things get really weird: the ONLY result was for some foreign-language site that appeared to be commemorating the victims of the tsunami disaster, and she appeared to be listed AS ONE OF THE VICTIMS. Had this woman stolen someone’s identity? Was she a ghost? After some research (can you tell I need a more challenging job?), I figured out that the site was in Swedish, and used an online Swedish text translator to translate the one line of text on the site, which yielded the following result:

"Here is all that has lit a light for the hit in the river balance disaster."

That clarified nothing. I spent the weekend trying to decide whether to call off the interview or not. Julia thought I was crazy for even considering going to the interview and helped me paint a mental picture of a huge international slavery/black market diamond ring. But my friend Jackie almost convinced me to follow through just to pitch the whole thing as a New Yorker "talk of the town" piece.

The following Monday at work, my friend Jenn called her Swedish husband to have him translate the text. It turns out that the woman merely lit a virtual, online candle for the tsunami victims (hence the "all that has lit a light" translation). I kind of wish I never found that out – it really kills the story. I still cancelled the interview, though. Something told me this was not the beginning of positive employment situation.

blog makeover

Comments? Complaints?

names

I find names fascinating. Growing up in Bethesda, Maryland, right next to NIH, I went to school with kids from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. My brother’s soccer coach was Sunder Subramanian. I still have nightmares about Lucy Edegipang-Koge’s devastating dodgeball throws – she seemed to be six feet tall by the age of eleven.

We always got a kick out of looking through the elementary school phonebook and finding the most fascinating names. Usually these were children my sister had already befriended, as she has made it her life’s pursuit to seek out the unique and different. When she was at Beth El nursery school, she made friends with the twin blonde Swedish girls who were the only non-jews. In Elementary school she became good friends with LaShawn Schmuck – an elementary school phone book all-star.

This is a trend that has continued into her adult life. She met a Bengali woman on a Greyhound bus and lived with her family in Queens for two years. For a while her best friend was the Syrian guy who ran the falafel stand around the corner from her East Village apartment. I don’t remember his name, but they called each other "cousin," and she would stop in at various times throughout the day and late into the night, playing tapes on his little stereo and entertaining the customers.

Now it is Rachel who is sought out for her own uniqueness – she talks in perfect fake accents to cab drivers without warning you first and can make almost anyone, anywhere laugh at any time. I’ve seen her reduce the most intimidating men to boyish giggles. She is obsessed with court TV and can discuss the latest celebrity trial using legal terms I’ve never heard but has to call me to ask where Wisconsin is. She still feels burdened by our last name, though, and has (much to my horror) taken to pronouncing it "Fein-steen" on occasion.

When I worked in the Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Department at The University of Iowa (which was even more boring than it sounds) I was in charge of the graduate admissions process. I would receive letters and email from prospective students from India and China on a daily basis:

"Professor Feinstein,

I am wishing you will find it right for to gain my acceptance and make the dream come true. My future it is now in your hands."

I wanted to accept all of them. Not only were they heartbreakingly earnest, they were brilliant – one woman from China got a perfect score on her English GRE. Unfortunately the department would only accept eight foreign students a year, even though they were infinitely more qualified than the eight domestic students that balanced out the quota.

There were some incredible names, though. A woman with the last name Yerrakondreddygari applied. I really wanted her to get in just so I could say it on a regular basis. There was already a man in the department with the first name Saravanababu (he went by Babu) and a woman with the last name Thongboonchoo. In my dreams they got married and he took her last name.

I was just reading an article about this suspect JonBenet Ramsey killer, and there was a quote from Gen. Suwat Thamrongsrisakul. That’s an awesome name. Rachel thinks the guy’s guilty, but I have my doubts.

rachel ray

A couple of weeks ago while looking for copywriting jobs on craigslist, I saw an ad that said something like “Nightmare Travel Stories Wanted.” Usually I ignore postings like that, but I was a little drunk after attending a semi-mandatory and fully awkward off-site work gathering. O.K., I was more than a little drunk.

Anyways, the ad said that a national TV show was looking for guests in the NY area with nightmare travel stories, and even though it looked like a scam, I couldn’t resist. I quickly wrote the story of my trip to Ecuador ten years ago (greyhound from DC to Miami, flight to Ecuador, realization that the girl I’m visiting is crazy AND has the impression that there will be some romance between us, two weeks of awkwardness, return flight, greyhound bus breaks down on the side of the road in Georgia for six hours) and emailed it to the address in the ad without editing or spell-checking it.

Five minutes later I got an email from a producer for the new Rachel Ray show, asking for my phone number. At the time I knew of Rachel Ray through my friend Caeli, who is a devoted fan and has several of her cookbooks. I also knew that she had some sort of daytime show coming to network TV. Laughing and skeptical, I replied with my phone number. Ten minutes later my phone rang – it was an assistant producer for the show.

"Congratulations. You made it through." he said, "I loved your story."

We talked for about twenty minutes, during which he had me tell the entire story (I had him in stitches) and asked me several demographical questions. He asked me to send him a couple of photos and told me that they’d be in touch later in the summer and would most likely bring me in to film sometime in September. I sent him a link to the blog and he emailed back to say he loved it.

I have since had the pleasure of watching one of Rachel Ray’s shows. She is somehow delightfully dorky and confident at the same time. She knows her stuff, too. I still haven’t heard from the assistant producer, but there is a good chance that I’ll be interviewed by Rachel Ray in September. I have no idea how I’ll hold up against her perkiness.

stoop sale

We had a stoop sale this weekend. For those not in the know, a stoop sale is just like a yard sale, except it takes place on your stoop, since you presumably have no yard. I’m fascinated by stoop/yard sale culture. When we lived in Iowa all the people that showed up an hour before our epic, pre-move yard sale knew each other by name. Now that we're in Brooklyn, Julia scours the neighborhood stoop sales for books every weekend and always comes back with a few gems. She’ll haggle if people dare charge too much - $1 for hardcovers and $.50 for paperbacks is standard. There are always a few dealers who show up early to snatch up all the best records and books, only to resell them on eBay or at their own, pricier stoop sales. It’s a perfect vehicle for a short story or film, the stoop sale – the interactions with strangers (always a few crazies), watching pieces of your life float away. It’s a great way to spend a lazy Sunday.

The most difficult (or at least annoying) part of having a stoop sale is the advertising. You have to put up signs around the neighborhood, which is actually illegal (a cop once caught me red-handed and gave me a stern warning), and writing in chalk on curbs takes a lot more energy than I’m usually ready to expend at 9AM on a weekend. Late last week, though, I noticed that there was a thoroughly advertised sale right on our block, so we took advantage of their advertising and set up shop.

Yesterday we sold clothes, books and knick-knacks (the most expensive item was $5) and made $100. Highlights included a woman who smoked while trying on clothes (pictured above), another woman who asked me if something she was trying on made her look fat, and a couple who confessed that they had never bought anything at a stoop sale before (the rookies are always so timid). At the end of the day it’s always fun to just give stuff away – people are so appreciative. I gave an old man a suit I’ve had for at least ten years (Julia says it makes me look like MC Hammer) and I thought he was going to cry.

Afterwards, we made a pile of the free leftovers and headed over to Prospect Park to take advantage of the rest of the near-perfect day. When we got home later that night, the only thing left was an American Heart Association cookbook. It was gone this morning.

frazetta's princess

The security guards here at work are a unique breed - they have to wear suits every day, but have even more downtime than me. There are two regulars for our building: the guy who knows everyone's name and the guy who doesn't check your ID. The guy who doesn't check your ID is my favorite. Having your ID scanned by a hand-held device every time you re-enter the building is really annoying, especially since all of the company's other buildings have electronic, ID-reading turnstiles. It's the forced interaction that's so bothersome, especially when it's with the guy who knows everyone's name (I should probably figure out his name one of these days). But the guy who doesn't check your ID just smiles and nods, like it's our little secret. Sometimes he extends his hand to show the way and steps to the side, as if I'm a celebrity at some posh club.

When we moved to the building I wondered why they didn't just install the turnstiles and save the money on the security guards. Now, a year and a half later, they finally figured it out - the installation is in progress in the lobby. I'll definitely enjoy entering the building anonymously, but man, I feel for those guys. They look a little nervous these days. It's got to suck, being replaced by a machine.

I think a good way to assess any job is by figuring out who or what could do it in your place. For instance, a sixteen year-old could probably do my job, which is one of the main reasons I'm seeking alternative employment options. I used to work as a bus boy, which you could train a dog to do. And once I stood by the road holding a sign for a jewelry store that was going out of business - you could position a corpse to do that.

On the opposite side of our floor there's a security desk that is manned for a few hours a day by one of the security guards, why I'm not sure. Yesterday morning as I was walking by, the guy who doesn't check your ID said, "Do you want to see my new toy?"

Mind you, I've never had a conversation with this man that lasted longer than three sentences and didn't involve the weather or the fact that it was Friday. Before I had the time to say "sure" I realized that I know absolutely nothing about this guy. Would the toy be a gun? A new ID-checking gadget?

"Check her out," he said, pulling out a small dusty box with a clear plastic front containing a scantily clad, muscled female action figure, "Frazetta's Princess. Isn't she great?"

"Yeah," I replied, still recovering from the absurdity of it all, "did you get her on eBay?" He nodded, smiling.
"Who's Frazetta?" I asked.
"You know, Frazetta, he does the Conan movies and stuff." He said, seemingly shocked that I didn't know.

So the guy who doesn't check your ID is now the guy who has an action figure/doll fetish. I'm fine with that. I'm going to miss him either way.

(Apparently Frank Frazetta is an important guy. And here’s the princess.)

portland

So we were in Portland last week, which was a whirlwind of a trip, even by our usual ridiculous standards. The night before we left, I came home from a reading, sat down at my computer and worked from 10PM to 7AM building a website. Then I packed, slept for three hours, worked a half-day, interviewed for a (dream) job and left for the airport.

Of course I was stupid enough to post earlier about my body “adapting” to neglect, thereby jinxing myself into getting a nastier version of the cold Julia brought to Portland. A white-water rafting bachelor party in fifty-five degree water didn’t help things either, despite being a lot of fun. Fortunately I held myself together long enough to get through the wedding (more on that later), before completely losing my voice the next day.

We stayed in Wilsonville, which is a quiet suburb, about half an hour south of Portland, when there isn’t random, unpredictable (3PM on a Wednesday?) traffic. I hadn’t seen my great aunt and uncle in fifteen years, and my parents timed a trip out there to coincide with ours, so there was a lot of storytelling and relaxing. Do I really have to wait until I’m in my seventies before I can use the phrase “my afternoon martini?” I’m so long overdue to be a freelancer it’s ridiculous.

Portland seemed a quaint, very green, manageable city at first. There is an abundance of parks and a beautiful arboretum with a spectacular Rose Garden. We spent the first few days attending various pre-wedding events and spending time with my family while I intermittently worked on the website, edited a story to turn in for workshop and prepared for the wedding. It wasn’t exactly relaxing. I was also terrified about the wedding – my public speaking skills have been on a steady decline these last few years, in direct proportion to my alcohol consumption.

On the night before the wedding I realized that I had rotated my mental image of this city by 90 degrees, meaning that I thought East and West were North and South and only partially explaining the fact that I kept getting lost (ATTENTION PORTLAND BUREAU OF TRANSPORTATION: People like to see signs BEFORE entrance ramps. Just thought you should know.), but more importantly, we spent almost all of our time in the SW, downtown, generic quadrant of the city. Julia soured on Portland quickly, but I knew something wasn’t quite right. Where was this uber-hip, artsy Portland that so many of our friends told us we’d love?

The wedding was at the David Hill Winery, with views that reminded us of Tuscanny. Evrything went off great. As the ceremony got closer, my nervousness was eclipsed by the pride and honor of having been chosen by Matt and Aimee to officiate. Their vows were wonderful, the sun came out, the reception was great and (as is required at all weddings he attends) our friend Vu did the worm. Unfortunately I was too sick to drink any of the wine. Sigh.

At the wedding, I humiliated Julia by challenging a local Portland couple we just met to help salvage her warped image of Portland by recommending some things to do the next day. The guy spent the next half hour drawing an amazingly detailed map with recommendations of coffee shops, record stores and the like. Not only was it an incredible gesture, he turned out to be the famous (and immensely talented) graphic novelist, Craig Thompson.

His recommendations were great, but more importantly, lead us to the right areas, where we could wander around and find our own little treasures (tons of great record and kitsch shops, an arcade that took nickels). The city has an astounding amount of funky, well-designed boutiques and coffee houses. All the Portland hype finally made sense. It has now made the short list of “places other than New York we could live.” We capped the night off by eating (by Craig’s recommendation) at Pambiche, which was by far the best Cuban food I’ve ever had. In Portland of all places.

After a brutal red-eye, during which my ears popped from all my head-congestion (and stayed that way for two days), we stumbled back home and I slept for 25 of the next 28 hours.

my thoughts on music and race/culture

(WARNING: This is as serious of a tone as I will ever take on this blog. If you’re expecting the usual neuroses/attempted humor, proceed at your own risk.)

Last night we had the last class of what has been a fantastic workshop, taught by Caeli – a close friend and Julia’s protégé. A chapter of my Berklee memoir was being workshopped and, despite receiving a favorable workshop (which pleased me immensely), a few things in it didn’t sit well with a woman in the class. Basically, she took issue with the way I did and (more particularly) didn’t discuss race in regards to music. As far as my story was concerned, her gripes were legitimate – despite her intense, personal reaction, I was giving way too much room for interpretation in certain sections and not showing enough of my reactions. There’s no better learning experience as a writer than having someone misinterpret your work – it really reminds you of how important it is to guide the reader.

Anyways, what I want to discuss is a (larger) point she made in class and wrote specifically on my critique:

“I believe that when white people play music from other traditions that it always has to be acknowledged.”

Now, this is something I feel strongly about. I thought about emailing her to explain my thoughts on the topic, but without getting into specifics, the issue is quite personal for her and it might have been tough to engage in a level-headed discussion. Plus, as already discussed here, I avoid conflict in all shape and forms. Even email.

But I couldn’t just let this go – it was the last thing I thought about before I fell asleep and the first thing I thought about when I woke up. So I’ll just hash it out here:

I don’t believe in the racial or cultural ownership of music (or any art, for that matter). I believe that music transcends race and culture – that is part of its inherent beauty. Furthermore, I find such thinking to be counter-productive and in direct opposition to the growth and evolution of musical styles.

When I was in music school I was a white kid learning how to play Afro-Cuban percussion. Despite the fact that I was studying at an accredited institution of higher learning, my experience was peppered with prejudice. I had a Columbian percussion teacher laugh at me in front of a class, and say (in Spanish) that I played “like I had a stick up my ass.” A fellow student and Venezuelan percussionist friend recommended me for a gig that she couldn’t make, and the guy whose gig it was wouldn’t play with me because I was a gringo – he had never even heard me play.

In New York I have twice been denied gigs because of the color of my skin. Once I was even told flat out, “You’re obviously very talented, but we’re trying to market ourselves as a young, Latino band.”

One of the foremost experts in the world on traditional Afro-Cuban percussion is Michael Spiro, a jewish guy from California. He is a virtual encyclopedia of percussion knowledge, a fantastic teacher and a phenomenal musician. When I asked him why he didn’t have a full-time teaching gig at Berklee or UCLA he said, “I’ve got the wrong last name, man.”

The best percussion teacher I had at Berklee was a pale-white, long blond-haired Swedish guy named Miké. He taught Bata drumming – the sacred Afro-Cuban ceremonial drumming associated with Santeria. Despite receiving his due respect with the percussionists and fellow teachers, Miké had countless stories about people not taking him seriously due to his appearance.

I don’t think of any of this as tragic or anything. Getting ridiculed and yelled at is part of the Cuban percussion tradition. The same guy that humiliated me in front of a class taught me a ton of stuff and was very encouraging of me when I was just starting out. And I’m not stupid or naïve enough to think that my failure to support myself playing music has anything to do with the color of my skin. Also, Michael Spiro might not have a full-time teaching gig, but he is constantly traveling the world performing and teaching clinics. Miké does fine for himself, too.

What I’m trying to point out here is that, for cultural outsiders, there are plenty of hurdles already in place in any musical scene/style. Does anyone performing in such a situation really need to “acknowledge” anything before performing? And how? By saying, “Despite the fact that I’ve already faced presumptions and stereotypes in studying and performing this music, I would just like to acknowledge that this is the music of another culture, just in case anyone here thinks I might be trying to pass this off as MY music?”

Can you imagine expecting the same thing from a non-white classical or country musician? It’s disgusting.

As far as jazz is concerned, it’s a little different. I’ve read interviews with Wynton Marsalis where he talks of different world music traditions “watering down” jazz and that he worries about the future of the music, which is astoundingly ignorant. As far as I’m concerned, some of the most interesting and progressive jazz being played today is by young Cubans in New York. This theory also conveniently ignores Bossa Nova – a genre popularized in the sixties by American Jazz musicians recording and performing with Brazilian musicians – which was somehow unmentioned in Ken Burns’ selective documentary.

My point here is that music is bigger than (and beyond the attempted control of) any of us, and I don’t care how cheesy that sounds, it’s true. Anyone who believes that a particular culture owns a musical form is doing it a disservice. There’s nothing wrong with being protective of music or demanding that people respect and learn its traditions, but shouldn’t how good the music or the performer sounds be the end-all, say-all?

One summer at Berklee, the master Cuban drummer, Changuito, was teaching at the annual World Percussion Festival. He is legendary for reducing grown men, particularly Americans, to tears during lessons. I was terrified of him, but my friends talked me into taking a conga lesson. Barking instructions through an interpreter, he taught me groove after groove, nodding appreciatively while I figured them out. Other than a brief flare up when it took me a little longer than he wanted to learn a pattern, things went smoothly. When it was over, he offered me a drink of rum and complemented my playing. He didn’t care that I was a non-macho white kid, what he cared about was that I could play. Isn’t that all that should ever matter?

portland in cellphone camera photos