Friday, December 22, 2006

The Hierophant

So I have pneumonia. [Every time I type that word I hear my father's voice say "pee-new-monia," which is how I remember which way to spell it.] Turns out I was sicker than I thought. The doc, who I finally got to today, gave me a stern talking-to for waiting so long, and then prescribed some horse pills to kill off the bugs in my chest. They took x-rays, blood, the whole works - I actually find all those things fascinating, i.e. watching my own blood fill up a vial or taking in a deep breath for an x-ray. I am fascinated by my insides, the silent mechanisms that move my fingers and aerate my brain. Don't you agree that, whether God made them or not, they are equally miraculous either way?

A big hurrah to Jessie! She completely obliterated her Praxis test, scoring somewhere in between Wonder Woman and Marie Curie (including a perfect score on her essay... I love a girl who can write). And here she was worried she'd failed. I simply laughed, acknowledged her completely unfounded self-doubt, and proceeded to feel crazily proud of her. Her school district is lucky to have her, and any one she applies to should have to ask extra nice. I forgot to ask her what her essay was on. I'll need to remedy that tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, Jess and I are heading to the Hotel Hershey, a five-star hotel in Hershey, PA (yes, the candy bar place), for a "Holiday Spectacular" package that includes a couples' massage, fancy dinner, Christmas lights, a swanky hotel room, and breakfast. It is going to be insatiably romantic and I'm so glad it's going to work out that we get to go. There was some doubt around my Apple schedule, so to have it all work out is a treat. We need a night alone.

Apple is going well. The other thrust (mmm...thrust) of this entry is days 2 and 3, both of which brought new challenges as well as cool experiences. Day 2 was a 10-hour monster after which I was seriously considering knee surgery. They had me stationed on iPod Express, which is basically a setup Apple has in the middle of the store specifically designed to sell iPods. The trick is the payment method, a device called an "EasyPay," which is hand-held and allows you to painlessly pay with a credit card. Well, see "painless" is a relative term - I find it rather annoying and slow, personally, but people love it. What I really like about it is the conversations you have while waiting for things to process. I made it a habit of finding out the status of people's Christmas shopping. One person could tell I was sick and recommended I check out "Z-pack," which sounds like either a medicine or a quantity of beer. My other favorite place to be in the store is in the "Etc." section, where they keep all there peripherals and goodies. If you need an FM Transmitter for you iPod, I know what to recommend.

I'm liking it so far. Keeping my mental commitment to a minimum, by which I mean I don't think about it when I'm not there and as such feel like I still have a life outside of it. It's also curbed my late-night habit of wandering eBay and Mac websites obsessing over their computers. On Wednesday Mat and I got together for a spot of dinner and some Christmas shopping. I only have Dad left to shop for now. I wrapped all of my other presents tonight, and now have quite a pile under the tree. If I got a pile this size for Christmas, I would be screaming like that kid in that BMW commercial. It's cool to think I can create this kind of thing for other people now, and am not just the receiver of such things.

Speaking of receivers, I just made an amazing purchase at Jerry's Records of "The Empire Strikes Back" LP. It's in great shape, and I had a blast last night playing it, sitting in front of my record player and enjoying the music. Sure, I have the whole thing on my iPod, but there's something so cool about having the music made right there in front of you, all that magic and mystery of a needle and a groove. That and I love the cover art, how the size reminds you of when you were a kid and everything was big in your hands.

Anyways, I must anon to bed. If I could have a Christmas wish, it would be for some snow, something to get me into the season. It's been so hot outside that the frigging grass is still green. In December. Global warming, woo. And here I wanted to go skiing this winter (you in, Jess? haha!). Hope you are getting into a Christmas mood and have something special planned for Monday.

yours,
m

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

The First Day

So, I made it.

After finally wrenching myself to sleep at 4 AM (I went to bed at 1), I woke up at 8:44, exactly one minute before any of my four alarms went off. First the clock radio went off, and then the cell phone, and then the radio, and then the cell phone. I was awake for each, lying in bed waiting for each one and then turning it off moments before it could really go off, feeling myself pulled inexorably towards the day.

If you haven't guessed, I have some anxiety about "real" work. I don't know whether it's that I feel like I'm committing myself to an eternity as a such-and-such or I am really just that jealous of my free time, but it's a huge deal for me to get a job. I'm definitely cool when it comes to working on things that I like, i.e. film, video, and music-related-thingies, but whenever I'm working for The Man, I get stressed the hell out. Even if the Man, in this case, is the amazing Apple Computer, to whom I would probably will my firstborn for a MacBook Pro.

That said, I had a really great day. It was random in the way that only good days can be random. In the Tarot thing I did last night, I had three cards from the Major Arcana - and according to the hallowed spiritual tome known as "The Idiot's Guide to Tarot and Fortune-Telling," Major Arcana cards are indicative of forces that are out of your control, of destiny, of fate. All you can do is choose how to react to them.

Today was definitely a series of choices. I arrived in plenty of time, earlier than many of my co-workers, which for me is about as common as Halley's Comet, and proceeded to choose to be as positive as I could. Surprises came early and fast - Anna showed up at the *perfect* time, buying Derrick both a Blackbook and a Mac Mini (I am freaking thrilled for her - she is going to love these computers), and as soon as she finished my manager let me off for my hour lunch, so Anna and I got to have a lovely lunch together. It's so hard with Derrick and the kids - all need her so much. [For those who don't know, Derrick was in a tragic car accident nearly 7 years ago that was not *remotely* his fault, and he suffered near-death damage to his body and brain. He's made a miraculous recovery, but his short-term memory is nearly decimated and a lot of his cognitive functions are around a 3rd-grade level. He is a sweet, sensitive person who is also a great father. And talking about it more will make me cry, for him and mostly for my sister, who stayed with him and has given him everything she can, including a family and two amazing children who are going to change the world.] After lunch, who walks in but Kellie Robertson, or should I say Dr. Robertson, one of my favorite professors from Pitt! I had her for "Chaucer," and it was she who gave me my love of the Wife of Bath. It was great/awkward to see her, because on some level seeing your students everywhere must be akin to blunt-force trauma. She was very gracious, however.

And then, after that, who walks in but Bryan Wright, the piano wizard from Sedalia whom I mentioned in my "Scott Joplin Fest" post as a great guy from Pittsburgh I randomly met, and with whom I played an awesome duet on "Charleston Rag." We talked for a good twenty minutes, and he graciously invited me to be on the bill of a ragtime concert he's putting on in April. I need to shoot him an e-mail, but I think it sounds like a blast. I need to hurry up and get a repertoire! What fun that would be... it'd be nice to get to know him better. He seems like a nice kid.

So, all in all, it was a day of strange and welcome surprises. I seem to be strangely lacking my caustic wit tonight, the absence of which I can't explain, so if this post has taken forever to read it's most likely because I'm boring. I'm certainly tired enough. The day ended pleasantly with dinner with Mat, a spot of writing to be continued on Wednesday, and a warm, welcome conversation with Jessie. Scott is sick - I apologized profusely - and so I went out and bought him some cold medicine since he had kindly done the same for me back when Tylenol Cold had any chance of fighting back the sinus infection that now is slowly devouring my head. Yikes. Blood in my snot, phlegm in my throat, and now I have to wake up at 9AM to get to work on time. Woo!

Two more days, and then I'm free again to delight in the carnal pleasure of the late night. Saucy.

-m

Monday, December 18, 2006

Suddenly I See

Hi.

So, in 8 hours, I start my new job at Apple. I'm working seasonal at the Shadyside store, just like I did out at South Hills Village last year.

Honestly, my biggest fear is waking up on time. You'd think I'd be nervous about, you know, the actual job. Nope. You'd like a pink 4GB iPod nano for your daughter? That'll be $199. I'm up on my iPods - I spent an hour last night studying them, their specs, which ones come with docks and which comes with cables only, etc... I doubt they'll put me anywhere near someone looking for a computer (save my sister, who is coming in tomorrow to buy a gift for her husband... too bad I won't get credit for the sale, as I'm not in the system). It'll be really good to see Anna. I'm there from 10-6, and maybe she'll come late enough that we can catch dinner together. Anna is the kind of person who, after talking to her about anything, you feel more capable of actually dealing with whatever it was. She is great in the way stories are great - intangible, universal, magical. Be jealous that she is my sister.

I'm nervous. It's why I'm still up. I actually crawled into bed an hour ago, but I had the inclination to find out a little about tomorrow and had the good fortune of finding my Tarot cards on Saturday (I had lovingly lost them to a box in the closet in the solarium (with the candlestick?), and so I pulled them out along with my "Tarot for Dummies" book, shuffled, and dealt out destiny.

I cannot tell you the joy I get from these cards. If there was empirical evidence for Jung's idea of the collective unconscious, these would be it. I delight in just the imagery - the colors and the shapes, whimsical names like "The Fool" and "The Tower" - experiencing the magic and the fantasy of my insides. I don't believe the cards have any real power in and of themselves, any more than this keyboard has, anyways. Their power is in my reaction, the way they can stimulate my subconscious (do you ever wonder if people a hundred years from now are going to read about our belief in a "subconscious" and react to it the same way we do to people who pray to the moon?). At the very least they give me a little peace, which is more than anyone could ever ask of a superstition and, according to my gut, tomorrow is going to go okay.

Short entry tonight. I'm going to try and sleep and wake up on time. Let's get that far, and then I can worry about the Hanged Man reversed...

-m

Friday, December 15, 2006

Why The Hell Am I Awake

Usually this title would indicate a deeply philosophical post, but right now I am just wondering why the hell I am still awake. It's 7:24 AM on Friday morning. I've spent the past five hours in a daze - I think I was organizing my iTunes library at some point, which is the intellectual equivalent of asking yourself rhetorical questions. I clicked and dragged cover-art, typed in names of songs, deleted and rearranged. And it's not like I was having a problem figuring out which song was playing - having a picture of Harrison Ford come up when I hear the "Raider's March" does little to improve my life. If I can't figure it out by the 40th listen, I doubt an image is going to help anything.

What the hell? Such mundanity should have obliterated any will to keep eyes open and forward, let alone awake enough to type a blog entry. No, I know myself well enough to know that if I *really* wanted to put myself to sleep, I would have found something I had to do, and then I would have fallen right asleep. Fill out financial aid forms? Whoa, I'm feeling a bit groggy. Pick out classes for next semester? Already fluffing my pillow, sorry.

Actually, the truth is I've been quite sick the past couple of days. I lost my voice, which people always seem to react to as if I'd just been hit by a car ("Oh my gosh, when did this happen?") I, myself, find it rather fun to lose my voice. Not the whole help-I'm-drowning-in-a-pool-of-my-own-mucous part, but the part where I go to speak and another person's voice comes out all rough and tumble, gruff and scratchy. I grew out my beard to match my voice, and now I'm rather disappointed to have gotten my old voice back. I was going to buy curtains and everything. Oh well.

Also, I might just have some residual energy from all the INCREDIBLE intellectual feats I accomplished this week. I knocked out 30 pages of papers and 2 finals in the span of three days. Yes. I may never be able to walk again, but the doctors are hopeful I'll still be able to fill out my financial aid forms. I'm really going to miss my classes from this semester. Maybe that's why I can't sleep - once I go to sleep, that means I'll have to wake up that much closer to graduating. I feel incredibly blessed - my Ancient Epic class was an orgasm a week. I took seven pages of typed, single-spaced notes almost every week, and I actually read over them for fun (I am a nerd). My other class, Arthurian Legend and Cultural Change, forever altered my view of Arthur and the Middle Ages. I now see him as a vessel into which we pour our own hopes and fears and ambitions - he is merely the frame through which we project our own colonialist image. I wrote the best essay in my life in this class - an examination how experience is a problematic rhetorical strategy for the Wife of Bath - and the professor was always positive and encouraging. I'm going to miss her. I worked harder on her account than on my own, I think - I wanted to achieve for her, to show her I had come a long way from the last class we'd had together.

small things. sometimes I have a maelstrom of self-consciousness where I wonder why I think anyone would remotely care to ingest my minutiae. and then, at 7:46 in the morning, I end up going "fuck it" and typing whatever is there, percolating. it's crazy time. how crazy? i am not going to capitalize anything in this paragraph. this is how hard shit has hit the fan. look at this. not. one. single. capital. Letter. dammit.

Alright, I'm going to lay down and see if anything interesting happens. Hope your pillows are always fluffy.

-m

Friday, December 08, 2006

Sucks or Swallows?

Oh shut up you're not really offended.

So the truth is I'm writing to you with two pairs of socks on and no shirt. My room is an easy 5 degrees warmer than the rest of my apartment, and apparently, even though it is like 0 outside, all I need are two pairs of socks and I'm good to go.

Is it wrong for a man to hum "I Feel Pretty"? [Ironically, these paragraphs are not related]. I know your instinctual answer is yes, and I know that because it is also my instinctual answer, even if I am perhaps the one doing the humming, but it's a good melody shut up. And it gets stuck in your head. And it is a good affirmation - she's not saying, "I feel pretty" in a hetero-normative, look-how-soft-my-breasts-are way; she is affirming that she feels comfortable and happy in her own skin, her heart and body aligned in love. What kind of person would speak out against that kind of inner harmony? I think we just learned a lot about you, didn't we.

I went to the football game tonight versus Cleveland with Scott, Brian, and their friend Dan. Aside from the amazing victory and the beer, the best part of the night was a shirt I saw a man wearing. On the front was written "Cleveland Sucks" but, not to be outdone, on the back was written, "Baltimore Swallows." Delicious. Though usually if someone swallows, doesn't it mean they like crazy love you? That is my interpretation but I, wisely I think, failed to mention this to said man, who was, after all, poking at a fire he had started on the asphalt of the parking lot. One must simply come to Pittsburgh and go to a game to really appreciate its subtleties.

For instance, if you are wearing a Steelers jersey on game night/day, you are instantly obligated to either bark, holler, or scream at any other group of people wearing jerseys (why do I keep wanting to spell it "jourseys?") and/or hats, no matter how sketchy or drunk or belligerent said group might be. Truth, I found this camaraderie to be strangely intimate, and I guess stuffing 55,000 people into a 44,000 person stadium requires a bit of love and patience on the part of the fans, so it's certainly not something I'm complaining about. Also, you are going to piss in a trough, so deal with it. I think what I'm really trying to say is I felt like a Pittsburgher tonight. It's a flannel city, a city of overalls and worn leather gloves, of hard hats and large beers and sandwiches with fries and coleslaw slathered all over them. We use words like "ayron city" and "dahntahn," and actually have a whole dialect dedicated to pronouncing words in a way that never requires us to actually close our mouths (did you know that Pittsburghese is referred to, in scholarly treatments, as a "west-midland dialect"?). Having grown up here, I find myself appreciating the city in a way I couldn't before - it's accessible without being overwhelming, clean, has a great skyline, good restaurants, some of the best sports names in history, it's safe, relatively affordable, not far from NYC or the east coast, etc... Some people can't wait to leave Pittsburgh, but I like it a lot. Definitely a good place to raise a family. I figure I'm going to go off, have a few adventures, see the world, and then come back when I'm ready and have kids.

Why do I feel like I just simultaneously described the plan for my life and "March of the Penguins"?

Anyways the game was great. Had a blast. I demanded that Bryan and Scott teach me how to talk man-speak so I wouldn't be an ass and say the wrong things (apparently asking for a fish sandwich at a football game is not kosher, unlike the foot-long "look how long my penis isn't" hot dog, which is kosher). I understand the basics of football. I know what the penalties mean, even have a bit of understanding in regards to strategy. But when it comes to how to act at said sport, or talk about said sport, I am a clueless babe naked in the woods with two pairs of socks on. Oh my titties it was cold out thar. I'm just now, five hours later, getting feeling back in my toes. We bundled, and we were still freezing our asses off.

I seriously need to get one of those Blackberries and keep a running blog of my life. Just, you know, take you with me and blog as things happen. I'll wait a couple days, and then be overwhelmed at the number of things I wanted to talk about that I didn't. For instance, Mat passed out at a movie theater and was in the hospital for four days (this could be, and should be, it's own post), my next-to-last semester is ending, etcetera. I hope you're all staying warm and getting ready for Christmas. I, for one, am glad to see some snow.

-m

Friday, December 01, 2006

Hang Michael Richards

So, thank God the media found the last white man in America to harbor any unspoken racist feelings. In Cosmo Kramer, no less. Is anyone else already sick of this story? They dragged the poor guy out on Letterman in the middle of an interview with (my all-time favorite comedian) Jerry Seinfeld and then proceeded to have the most awkward five minutes of television since Tasha Yar made it with Lieutenant Data.

Here is the bottom line: either we can all use the N-word, or nobody can. If it's an evil word, which I believe it is, let us not brandish it, nor define ourselves by it, nor laugh at it. Black comics use this word all the time, but if a white guy uses it, all of a sudden Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton must be appeased. The great 'racial divide' is exposed. I think the bigger problem Al Sharpton should be worried about are the black people who go on Maury Povich. This is about the worst possible representation of a minority you can have, every day affirming the stereotypes of blacks as promiscuous, out of control, dumb, hypersexual, etc... I slept with 10 men and I don't know who the daddy be! You done slept with ma daughter and wife at the same time! Maury should paint his face black and his lips red and sing "Swanee" as his opening monologue.

Yes, Michael Richards is an ass, and at least he has the benefit now of being forced to confront his own racism. I believe him when he said he didn't know he was a racist; this stuff is in the water we drink, no matter how many posters of Martin Luther King they put up. But come on, to roll him out and publicly lacerate him as the only racist white man in America is, frankly, retarded and distracts from the larger institutional racism that is really the enemy of equality.

Anyways. The Captain's Blog is sailing into uncharted territory with the whole race thing, but this particular instance made me mad as hell. It is a distraction from the real problem. We like to pretend by humiliating Cosmo Kramer we've somehow confronted our own racism and made it all better.

The one upside of this is a new phrase, which I did not coin but would like to continue, and that is to "go Cosmo Kramer on his ass." This is interchangeable with "Go all Mel Gibson on him," and both denote totally flipping your shit. Let the games begin.

Life. I wish I knew how to dance. I have a suspicion that most of the problems in my life would be solved if knew how to move my feet in a compelling way. Many things are going well, don't let my attention to negative details cloud that: Christmas is coming, I'm healthy if heavy, Jess and I are doing as well as we can, Mat and I meet often for hilarious and productive writer's meetings. It's just that I feel like I'm twirling in a circle, round and round, slowly draining into another universe, where dreams become the word "can't" and nobody knows how to sing. [I should put a sign up here that says "Caution: Metaphors."] I wish I wish I wish I had a clue, an inkling, about what I wanted to be when I grow up.

I had an interview at UPS on Tuesday morning. [How do people keep up with these blogs? I have like 100 things I want to write about.] I'll save it for another post, but I'll leave you with these images: cinder block, maroon, glacier, Robert Farence, raffle, lemon-scented, and 1989. If you know that of which I speak, leave now, for I am but the learner and you are the master. For the rest, I'll post tomorrow.

sweet dreams. may your tomorrows be brighter than your todays, and your forevers longer than your nevers,

martin

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Contact

Just got back from New York City last night. Mum and I had a great trip. The highlight, of course, was seeing my brother Mark in his first New York show, a College of New Rochelle production of "Contact," a very-deserving Tony award winner in 1999. This was Mark's meatiest role, and he just knocked the socks off of it. He danced! My little brother danced! Like, Broadway-choreographed dancing! It was awesome. And moving. And heart-wrenching, because at one point of the show my brother hangs himself.

Now, if you haven't ever seen a member of your family hanging from a noose, I do not recommend it. Mark played a character at the end of life's rope, and he gets one last chance to learn how to dance, love, and live... so this whole second act, you're rooting for him because my brother is an everyman - that will be his star quality - he's just like the rest of us. You feel like you're watching yourself up there. All these people around him are dancing with aplomb, and his character has to learn, has to find it in himself to dance. And then, he gets it, he finally gets it, and then he's back on the noose where he started. Children were crying in the theater as he hung there, lifeless. It was a horrible moment, one that haunted Mom and I for the rest of the weekend.

I was so proud of him. Because, one, I've directed him before, and I know how much he wants to reach the audience. And this was by far his best performance ever. I was in tears by the end of it. (It ends happily). And two, he did it all with such great talent and devotion. I mean, he wasn't even getting paid to be in this show, and here he was, his whole heart and soul on the floor, and it was really, truly beautiful. Bravo, broskie! You will go far.

Mark met us on Friday at Penn Station. As promised, I actually took pictures. Here's Mark and Mom on the subway:



And yours truly urban-ing it up:


Is anyone else reminded of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" when they ride the New York subway system? These things hurtle through time and space at some strange warp velocity and all I could hear is Gene Wilder saying,

"Is it raining? Is it snowing?
Is a hurricane a-blowing?
Not a speck of light is showing,
So the danger must be growing.
Are the fires of Hell a-glowing?
Is the grisly reaper mowing?
Yes, the danger must be growing,
For the rowers keep on rowing,
And they're certainly not showing,
Any signs that they are slowing!"

Substitute some rhyming version of "wheels" in for "rowers" and subtract the beheaded chickens you have the equivalent of my NYT experience. We had to stand in the back of the E train, headed for Queens, and the door was open in the back of our car, and so each time the car would rock the door would slam open and shut like some possessed house. It felt like we were hitting things, driving over people and small mammals, hurtling through the time-space continuum with lights flashing by, and all the while there is this resigned serenity on people's faces as if this incredible cacophony of light and sound was somehow like buying white bread or picking up the paper in the morning. I was expecting people to be thrown into the windows, bags flying everywhere, the doors all sucked open in the vortex of these black labyrinths through which this death machine hurled itself.

Alas, no. But that was how it felt.

We arrived at Mark's apartment, which is in lower Queens. Here are some pictures of it. He lives with three other people and pays $2000+/mo. for it, and for NY, it is stunning:



His roommates are all great. Mat wasn't kidding when he said Mark's apt. was nicer than mine. The toughest part, I think, was that actually being there made me realize Mark was truly not around anymore. I have a capacity for ignorance, and I think I was avoiding the fact that Mark was gone. Join that with a tinge of jealousy over his artistic success, and it was an emotional weekend. It was great to see him, though. I'm glad he's coming home for Thanksgiving.

always,
m

Friday, November 17, 2006

Running Bohemian Intellectuals

No, this is not part 2.

I'm writing to you from Mom's house, typing on her shiny new Blackbook. My passion for Apple is slowly seeping into the lives of those around me. Jessie was the first. Now Mom. I'm going Monday with Anna to the Apple Store to find a laptop for Derrick for Christmas, and Dad has been talking about switching sometime soon. Dave is getting a Mac Pro for Christmas.

As Mat would say, "Mwahahahaha."

It is to Mat, actually, that this post owes its title. We were at Friday's Wednesday night, feeding the muse so to speak, and Mat commented that I looked, in my pseudo-red-track-jacket-thing, my Gap multicolored hat, and my new emo glasses, like a Running Bohemian Intellectual. Which I guess I then proved by inventing an "awkward silence" machine, with which I would delight myself at random moments - can you imagine if one of your roomates was having sex and you turned on your ASM?

"What's wrong, honey?" the girl asks.
"I don't know. I think we should stop."
"Why?"
"Can't you hear that?"
"Hear what? I don't hear anything."
"Exactly. This...silence. If only it wasn't so awkward I could finish."
"So is now a bad time to tell you I'm actually a man?"

Awkward!

The fact that Mat and I discussed, for more than 20 seconds, just exactly how that device would work attests to the grand creative spirit which makes the writer's meetings fun. I feel privileged to be one of the few, if not only, people who gets to be a part of his writing process for The Flames of Resistance. It's inspring. This is going to be a good year.

Mum and I are heading up to NY tomorrow to see Mark for the first time in months and also to see him in his show, "Contact." I'm looking forward to the trip. We're driving to Harrisburg and then taking the train to New York City. I haven't been on a train since I was eight years old. I got a trip to Altoona as a birthday present and it was *awesome*. Basically every nerdy thing you could be into I was into as a child. Thank God so much has changed and I killed every part of myself that wasn't normal!

So, I'll return with pictures, which I know I always say and rarely do. I promise to actually deliver part 2 of my trailer adventure, maybe even post a little clip of what I eventually worked on. I have some ridiculous pictures that Dad and I posed for once we realized that it was just not going to work. I see humor is genetic...

Travel safe, if your weekend takes you elsewhere. If you go to Vegas, look out for the four sexy Rutter women! Jess will be there hooching it up with Gran. Now THERE are some pictures I think the world needs to see!

always,
m

Monday, November 13, 2006

Things Fall Apart (Part I)

I should preface this by saying that whenever my father and I do anything together, it always ends up an adventure.

So, accordingly, my weekend in exile was a hilarious flop.

I packed up my car on Friday afternoon, no small task considering I had my computer, monitor, camera, tripod, microphone stand, backpack and suitcase. All told the stuff inside the car was worth more than the car itself, which I think is key in not getting anything stolen. First rule of being a filmmaker: apparent poverty can be your friend.

The adventure began when I headed over to Dad's only to learn that we couldn't get the key to the trailer until Saturday. No biggie - Dad has a posh pad south of Pittsburgh, and he put me up for the night in his basement. To celebrate, we had a great dinner at Bravo - Dad and Sue seemed highly entertained by me, and I was equally delighted by their stories from their recent trip to Ireland. You have to understand, my father is like Mr. Genius Scientist - I found out recently that he had a hand in inventing both solar panels and the rail guns used to launch satellites - and he has a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, the thesis from which I tried to read and my eyes fell out of my head. CUT TO: Unemployed writer/filmmaker/musician son who can barely do his own laundry let alone invent the next rail gun, and you get the kind of dynamic that is my father and I. I'm glad he finds me funny. I take an inordinate amount of comfort in his confidence that eventually I'll find my way.

After dinner I headed over to Lebo. Tooch called and invited me to go to Logan's Pub in North Oakland to hear the illustrious Double Shot acappella group perform, so I swung by, ate some of her Halloween candy, and we headed out. As soon as Double Shot gets a website I'll post a link because these guys are good. [I've been thinking of even offering to make it for them, but I'm pretty sure Luke has dibs.] I'm good friends with three of its main members, as is Tooch, so we had a great time listening to the guys perform, all the while pretending to be sucking each other's faces and sending dirty PIX messages to Jessie with Tooch's phone. Tooch is a hilarious lightweight and was toasted after two beers. We had balls-to-the-wall intellectual sex on the way home, and I headed back to Dad's basement for the night.

The next morning started early. I had unloaded all of the computer stuff seeing as how it was going below freezing overnight, so we had to repack everything before heading to breakfast at Drew's.

If my family ever had a "haunt," it would be Drew's. Almost half of my Sunday mornings for 10 years were spent chowing down on milkshakes and italian fritattas with my brother and Dad after church. All the waitresses knew him (and us) by name. I have great memories of this restaurant, a little mom and pop off of Ardmore Blvd, and whenever I go there I feel like I'm 16 and can order a vanilla milkshake for breakfast. Definitely a good start to the day.

After an hour-long car ride out east, Dad and I arrived at the trailer. We had to put it in four-wheel-drive to get up there - the gravel road that led up to it was impressively dimpled and grooved, so much so that I was glad I was wearing a seatbelt at 5 mph. Not really knowing what to expect, I pulled the truck into a leaf-covered clearing and see this:



Wow. Just... wow. I am simultaneously thrilled and terrified by this picture, as I was when I first saw the real thing. I didn't know what to expect inside, anything. Turns out it was very nice, furnished - the whole nine yards. It even had a fridge and central heating.

The only thing it didn't have was electricity.

None.

At all...

SFX - DRAMATIC MUSIC

(end part I)

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

Exile

So is it possible that John Kerry's comments were offensive because there is truth in them? I think what he said is stupid, and he's stupid for saying it regardless of the original intent, but the Army HAS lowered its standards, and is meeting goals with increasingly predatory behavior aimed at low-income groups. Anyone serving our country is a hero, bar none, but the issue of who is joining and why is important. I don't want it to be "I can't afford college so I guess I'll join the military." Ideally it'd be a choice on the part of patriotic young people made with other options available. Maybe it's naive to think that way, but people are pissed at John Kerry and there is an element of sad truth in what he said. Just what lengths is the military going to to meet their quotas?

Anyways. The title of this post refers to my trip this weekend into the Netherworld, aka the Laurel Mountains. I decided that I need an exodus, a trip into the wilderness, in order to really make progress on HFTH. I had a great time in Philadelphia the weekend before last - highlights included Whole Foods vegan cookie, watching Dave escape from a locked bag while handcuffed and feet-cuffed, sleeping next to Steph and calling each other hilariously awful things. But I also, with help, got an entire (and complicated) scene roughly cut together. With the exception of Dregr's scenes, the only thing that remains to be digitized and edited is the other major fight scene. Maybe I'll be able to find some vistas in the Laurel Mountains that can substitute for shots that will eventually be in the film...

The whole thought is terribly exciting, because here's where I'll be staying. This description was written by my, um, step-sister I guess, of the trailer where I'll be staying the weekend:

"The Trailer"

First let me apologize in advance if the trailer is lacking in anything. I haven't been up since Labor Day so don't know what condition you'll find it in. Hope this info helps.

The key is for the front door of the trailer. The door is hard to shut sometimes so you may have to slam it. You don't need the key to relock it, just turn the dial on the knob inside.

When you walk into the trailer you will be facing a small (very small) "island" between the living room and kitchen. Along the upper left side (by the table) there are a number of keys hanging. There should be a key ring marked "outhouse and shed" or "outhouse and grill". This key will open the outhouse and the shed which is in the same out building. The door for the shed was broke so it may not even be locked. The shed contains chairs, hotdog forks, propane lanterns, etc. (At least it should but since the door is broke who knows what may be gone by now!)

There is a television in the living room that gets one station. There is also a VCR that works and a bag of tapes somewhere in the trailer.

There are bedrooms to the left and right. There should be electric space heaters in each one. You can move them around as needed. There is also a furnace for the whole trailer if you need it. What you have to do is open the door to the closet in the hallway. The heater is inside. Leave the door open the whole time the heater is on to avoid fire. Then continue down the hallway to the bedroom that is near the road. The breaker box is on the wall on the left. You have to flip one of the switches to turn on the furnace. I believe it is the one marker "dryer" but usually I just start flipping switches until it comes on!! To turn off the heater just flip the switch back.

Occasionally a fuse may blow so you might need the breaker box for this too. Just flip the switches. It happens sometimes if there's a lot of stuff plugged in along the one wall.

Be sure to bring a flashlight because I don't know if there are any working ones up there. There is a strand of light bulbs across the driveway that can be plugged in on the outside of the trailer. There should be an extension cord already out there. There is also a light in the outhouse. If any of these don't work, start flipping switches in the breaker box!!

There are totes full of sheets, pillows, and blankets in the bedroom with the breaker box. There are towels on top of the fridge in the bathroom. There are paper products in the totes in the bathroom.

The fridge in the kitchen should be empty. We had a power outage and had to throw away all the food inside it. There is a tote with snacks in the kitchen. The fridge in the back should have pop and water bottles. Help yourself to whatever you can find. The water in the jugs in the bathroom can be used for clean-up etc. but it is not drinking water!! You should probably pack whatever food and drinks you think you might need because I really don't think there's much of anything there. But like I said, help yourself to anything you can find. There is no running water at all, sorry! The toiler in the bathroom does not work, that's what the outhouse is for! You can dump water down the drain in the bathroom but I can't remember if we fixed the sink in the kitchen or not so that drain may be broke.

The restaurant at the bottom of the hill, the "Laurel Mountain Inn" has good, cheap food and drinks. Also, if you go down to the bottom of the hill and make a left you should eventually come to a little gas station/convenience store on your left. They have good coffee and some supplies if you need anything. If you continue down that road you'll eventually come to a Giant Eagle on your left if you need major supplies. There's also a Burger King, Italian Oven, Dollar General, and a beer distributor around Giant Eagle. If you happen to get lost trying to get back just ask anyone where the Laurel Mountain Inn or Kooser State Park is.

If you want to start a fire in the fire pit there may still be wood stacked under a tarp up there. If not, you'll have to search around for some. There's plenty of wood all around!! There should be newspaper in the closet behind the front door to help start the fire. Bring your own lighter or matches because I can't say if there's anything up there or not.

When you leave, just make sure the front door and the outhouse are locked (and the shed too if there's even a door!). Make sure all lights are off. Also make sure the furnace and all space heaters are turned off. If you have any garbage you'll have to take it with you. There is no pick-up for the trailer and we can't leave it up there.

I hope you enjoy your stay!!

p.s. Some of the neighbors are crazy but harmless. The ones that live up there year round keep an eye on the place for us. So, if someone comes by and asks who you are just tell them that Joe Butler is your uncle. They all know his name up there and then they'll know you're ok to be there. Oh yeah, and if Charlie offers you some homemade moonshine just say no!!! Trust me on that one!!

-=-=--=-=-=-

Isn't that awesome?!?! I'll be Michael Douglas from "Romancing the Stone," drinking out of found bottles of rum and running from Danny DeVito. I can't wait. What will I do without the internet? This will be the first time I really just head out... I've been fantasizing about picking up and "leaving" for a year now, just heading off somewhere, away, far away, and this is close to what I was looking for. Part of me wishes I had a gun just in case. I'll take my sword and sleep next to it in case any bears want to go medieval on me. My favorite part is the crazy neighbors who make moonshine.

Wish me luck. I'm taking a camera to document the experience, so hopefully I'll have something to report back. At the very least, I'll come back with a movie that is much closer to being done :)

martin

Thursday, October 26, 2006

There and Back Again

Hi!

Okay so two month hiatus - I'm back.

So much. So much has happened. I sold my car, my baby: a purple 1995 Ford Thunderbird. This was the car that carried me around in Florida, shuttled movie peeps back and forth to shoots, slid up and down hills in the winter. There was a dirt parking lot behind Full Sail and some of my best driving memories ever are from whirling my rear-wheel-drive V8 around in that sandy pit. I felt like the duke of Hazzard. All that was missing was the ability to jump in through the driver's side window.

What else. School started, a fresh new semester with some really neat classes. My favorite has to be 'Ancient Epic,' in which we're reading The Illiad and The Odyssey, as well as The Aeneid and Ovid's Metamorphoses. Interested as I am as a Virgo in deciphering the patterns of the universe, this class is the equivalent of crack. You can literally see the web being spun that it is western literature. It's all there, in elegant poetry. One of the coolest things I learned so far is that, when the Odyssey and Illiad were first set to paper, Homer (or whoever) deliberately chose an older style for the language. It would be the equivalent of me sitting down and, in an effort to tell an old story, write in the style of Shakespeare. These poems were old 2700 years ago! To think that one can pick up a book and instantly be connected with millenia... tonight in my other class, Arthurian Legend and Cultural Change, we spent an hour in the special collections room of Hillman Library putting our paws all over medieval manuscripts. There is something magical about those old texts, voluminous works that are all hand-written, all transcribed by hand. It's amazing how text, when composed by hand, becomes more than what it is, transcends the page into art. When you hold one of these books you feel like you're holding something important. Maybe it's because it is unique, even if the words are not - like a painting of a familiar image that is a unique piece of art unto itself. Put some vellum and some leather-wrapped wood between your hands and you get a sense of just how precious those words are.

I've also become, in the past two months, a huge fan of World of Warcraft. It's a massive multiplayer game that loosely follows the rules of Tolkienien fantasy, and it is addictive and amazing and the best game I've ever played. The coolest thing about it is the interaction with other real people, not just little computer-generated characters - my whole apartment shares my addiction and it's been a great way to get to know one another and spend time together. It always gives us something to talk about in case we can't think of anything, and it's built a sense of comraderie which I value.

Ah! An update on the living situation: I. Love. Squirrel. Hill. It feels like the center of a little world, complete with amazing pizza and a grocery store right up the street. Of all the possible ways the apartment situation could have worked out, it really has worked out for the best. Thanks amorphous deity who I can't bring myself to call God!

If all this seems too easy to be true, I do admit that there's been a lot of rumbling about not having steady work and not knowing what my plan is for next year. I've had a couple professors I respect encourage me to follow the route of the educator, even going so far as to suggest schools to go to and the like: Columbia, Berkeley, Northwestern. It'd be nice if they'd recommend a school that one need not be Doogie Howser to geet into, but oh well. I like to think that my particular brand of intelligence is just hard to quantify. Can I get an amen. So, that's been kind of stressful - the GREs and letters of recommendation - I need to get a move on lest I cut slices of pizza at Mineo's for a year until the next round of applications is due.

In other news, it looks like I'll be performing at a ragtime festival in New Alexandria Bay, New York, October 12-14, 2007! Tony Caramia, my piano mentor and good friend, recommended me to the festival director as a sort of replacement after his retirement from ragtime, so I feel like I have some HUGE shoes to fill.

I feel like that guy in Rent who wants to write one good song before he dies - I've been working on this "Riding the Wind" rag for a year now, and would like to finish it before I'm too old to play it. I think I'll be playing in Sedalia again next year as well. Bill has been urging me to go with him to the World Old Time Piano Playing Championship in Peoria, Illinois, under pretenses I consider hopelessly optimistic. "Come on, we'll dominate," he soothes, unaware that neither I nor he have any chance against what are, frankly, some of the best ragtime piano players in the world. Then again, I bet it'd be a lot of fun and a good chance to meet other players. So, basically what I'm saying is that I feel blessed to have people who want to hear me play the piano :)

It feels good to post in retrospect - the emotion of the moments has dimmed leaving only the facts, which are rather happy. Things are going well. How are you?

always,
martin

Thursday, August 24, 2006

24 on the 24th

Hi. It's my birthday :)

That's right: 24 revolutions around the sun ago, I was born. At 3:30 AM, no less, which perhaps explains why my blog entries are always posted in the wee hours of the night. I was a night owl from day 0.

Mum used to tell me that I was a "white-knuckled baby," having entered the world the most reluctantly out of her four children. I like to think that I was making a dramatic pause before my grand entrance. The more likely truth is that my big head had to triangulate the exact physics of just exactly how it was going to navigate those tempestuous moments through bone and sinew, that delicate dance all babies do on their way to the world. And man was my head big.

I am happy to say that I am glad I made it. Life, all of it, has been crazy and good.

There were a couple of awkward moments I could've done without. If you ever see my sophomore picture from high school (which you never will, and if you do I will interrogate you and find out who showed it to you so I can persuade them that their remaining fingers would be best kept out of their yearbook (this means you, Calland!)), you would know exactly which years I am referring to and why.

This is the first birthday where I am truly okay with the thought of getting older. I don't really feel any different than I did when I was 22. I feel a little stronger, a little more confident. I have fewer questions about myself and what I believe, which is something I used to fear but now realize is an act of mercy, a reward for surviving adolescence. The people in my life who I love are still here, and I've added a couple more to the list. I drive a better car, own nicer shirts, live in a new place, and have better sex. Things have changed, but largely for the better. So many new experiences and beautiful places seen...

I started a journal when I was a child. I think I was 8, and I had a tiny little notebook, no bigger than my palm, in which I scrawled my secrets and my stories. In it, I made a list of things I wanted to do in my lifetime. Mom had suggested the exercise, and her flowing script on the faded pages reminds me of the winter evening we sat on the couch and wrote down them down. Some of them are wonderfully dreamy: Fly an airplane. Have a big train-set. Own an old-fashioned car. It's so neat to hear old priorities read aloud, made alive again.

[I truly did desperately want an old-fashioned car. There was a 1926 Buick 8 parked outside a dusty mechanic's shop where I grew up, and I remember staring at it every time we drove by. I don't really remember what it represented to me. I only knew that it was old, and that it had been beautiful once.

One day, to my great delight, we stopped there and my parents asked if I could sit in it. I can still remember the hazy smell, the coarse fibers of the seat fabric, the big numbers inside round gauges, the cold metal of the steering wheel...]

Other dreams seem oddly precocious. One of the things I wanted to do was see Victor Borge in concert. Most people my age have never even heard of him, but when I was 8 I was already a fan. I remember my grandparents watching a special of his in our living room, and I thought he was some kind of magician. He died in December 2004, but not before I saw him in concert in September, my birthday present from Dad when I turned 22. What a night! I felt like a child in his presence, the way he held the audience, the way he mastered the piano.

So, I'm 24 today. Which is one year less than half of 50. Yes, I am old. I can feel it in my knees. I can see it on my scalp. But I also feel stronger in other places, physically and spiritually. Maybe that's what the game of life is, our weaknesses the furniture in a big living room that we move around as we get older, adjusting for the shifting sunlight. Maybe all my little questions have condensed like water on a glass of cold milk into one big question, THE big question: Why? Why am I here? What is it I was sent here to do? I want so much to be able to answer the question without selecting E)All of the above. Peace about that question would be an awesome birthday present. No fucking certificates, Universe. I want it wrapped with a bow. And a funny card.

The dodgeball championship is tonight. This is for all the marbles. Mark, Mat and I had a great warm-up session earlier. As silly as it sounds, my experience with Dodgeball in many ways reflects my life. When I started, I was reluctant and afraid. I didn't think I could do it. I would drop easy catches, I couldn't throw worth shit - I came into it with white knuckles.

Now, though... now I salivate for it, can't wait to sweat for it. Every time I go out onto that little court in that little building in the big world, I become less and less afraid. Call it one revolution around the sun. Putting the couch in the corner. Turning the wheel on the Buick 8...

Yours always,
Martin

Monday, August 21, 2006

Give Me an I, K, or 8!

So, the iBook and the girlfriend are now sleeping dreamily in West Virginia. I'm typing to you on the equivalent of a typewriter, a 600MHz Celeron Dell Inspiron 3800 that used to be my sister's. Technically it still is hers, but I've got it on long-term loan.

Aside from a tiny 12" screen and 10GB hard drive (snazzy!), the only thing that's really kept me from using it is that this past April, in what can only be explained by supernatural phenomena, the K, I, and 8 keys ceased to work. At all. It seemed like something related to the sperm-killing temperatures: the laptop would get hot, K, I, and 8 ceased to exist, and then I'd turn it off and the next day it would be fine again. Until, of course, it wasn't fine and those letters/number didn't return.

At first I thought I could get by without them. I mean, really, how often do you use the number 8? I figured I could get around 'K' by spelling things with a 'C' and people would think I was linguistically dangerous and, therefore, virile. What really killed me, though, was 'I.' Metaphysical blow-your-mind philosophizing aside, this little letter is a bitch to go without. There were eleven I's in that last sentence alone, so there went any chance of working on the novel. The main character's name is Nione, so everytime I would write "Nione said," I would have to copy-and-paste 2 I's from things I'd already written before the Breaking of the Keyboard.

So, I thought the little laptop was pretty much done. I had the iBook over the summer to keep my fingers warm, never considering that this night would come, when the two things that made me smile the most over the summer would be sleeping sweetly two hours away. Enter the Inspiron. I dug it out of storage, fired her up, and lo and behold there are 26 letters in my alphabet again. Rock it, bitches. K, I, 8. It sounds like a spy agency or something.

So, long story short, I can write to you again. Sure, I know the two-night break probably scared most of you, but I is back. Literally.

In other news, I smoked my first and last cigarette last night. My friend Bill is in town from Philadelphia, taking a break from his gallavanting while his wife attends the family reunion in Ukraine, and frankly he is a terrible influence. He's a classical pianist, a damn good one, and an old friend. He's back for the week, so I invited him out last night to see my new place. The night air was cool, the windows were open, he was smoking like a tool, so instead of yelling at him I just asked for one, he lit it, and I puffed and coughed my way down West Liberty Ave.

Now the scary part, the part I didn't expect, the part that I'll share here in the privacy of the internet, is that contrary to everything I ever thought I would feel, I actually *liked* smoking. Sure, it dried out my mouth and felt like breathing in car exhaust, but I was holding fire, BREATHING fire. I felt like a dragon. I *was* fire. Because there's smoke in your lungs instead of oxygen, your whole body mellows out, softens up, finds a comfy chair, and now the road is less bumpy and the air feels good on the hairs of your arm and you just want to sit and not think and feel the blood flow through to your fingers and back. I can see why smoking makes people pensive, reflective, calm. I can see why they do it in bed after sex. I still don't understand why they want to do it in restaurants, but to each his own air.

Tonight ended with a Soul Caliber III romp with Luke, Mat, Margaret, and Thomas. We then followed it up with what is quite possibly the funniest two hours of television I've ever seen: The Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner. We seriously laughed the entire time. If you don't believe me, perhaps this will change your mind: Betty White ('Rose' from the Golden Girls) was one of the roasters, and the things that came out of her mouth would make a dead nun blush. Find it. Watch it. Love it.

Also, Monday is half-price Margaret day, so if you have $5, a plow penis, and you like Jason Mraz, give her a call.

A beautiful night. The air is cool and clean on my skin. Lovely for sleeping.

-M

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Long Day

Today began at 6:45 AM, waking up next to Jess at the apartment in Squirrel Hill. I could get used to seeing her first thing in the morning - having a warm arm wrapped around you as you drift into consciousness is a lovely way to enter a day.

We had offered to babysit for my sister on Thursday night so she and her husband could have a few hours to themselves. I don't get to help her much, so when Jessie volunteered us, I was happy to have a chance to help. It turns out my little niece was really sick and couldn't go to daycare today, so Anna asked after babysitting on Thursday if Jess would come back at 7:30 AM and babysit this morning. Not wanting her to be there alone, I came along (okay, she threatened violence if I didn't), and we had another adventure with my 11-month-old niece, Mariah.



I know, she's painfully cute. Don't look too long or your eyes will start to go mushy. She makes the best facial expressions, too - she has eyes that really look at things. Sounds funny to say it that way, but you can almost watch the billions of synapses fire as she learns how to work the world. The only stressful thing was that, as a sick baby, she was nigh inconsolable all night and much of the morning, so her usually happy disposition was sadly missing. When you're sick, nobody but mom will do - it was traumatic trying to be the surrogates. I've gotten a lot better with kids in the past couple of years but babies still scare the shit out of me. I'm so afraid I'm going to do something wrong, miss some crucial signal. I wouldn't want to babysit alone. Thank goodness Jess was there - she's been babysitting since 6th-grade, so she had a measured calm about it that was reassuring. The cutest moment ever was when she sang Mariah to sleep. It was one of those perfect moments: soft, pink light through the windowblinds, the subtle wind from a fan, her beautiful, lilting voice. I found myself swaying back and forth, my eyelids heavy, my breathing slowed. If I had a blanket, I might just have zonked out, too. Lullaby's are serious magic.

The most fun, of course, was trying to give Mariah her medicine when she woke up. I'm about as clumsy as it gets with a syringe. I have ragtime thumbs, i.e. it either all squirts out or none of it. Poor Mariah - it took a couple of tries and a lot of tag-team holding to get her to swallow a tsp. of Motrin. I think the experience gave me a chance to taste parenthood, and I'm definitely a decade away from kids of my own. It's strange, though - I find myself thinking about things like, "I want my parents to be alive to know my kids," and "I don't want to be old when they're young." You really do change in your mid-20s. Weird.

I went with Jess' fam up to the West End Overlook, an incredible vantage of Pittsburgh. It was evening. A low, purple dusk set upon the skyscrapers, their distant lights twinkling in the waning summer air. We were there for some free concert, but we missed most of it, so instead I enjoyed the view. We then took a car tour of the southwest of Pittsburgh, through Crafton/Ingram where my Aunt Irene lives, down to the infamous Broadhead Manor apartments where lots of people got murdered in the 70s and 80s. I didn't know that Pittsburgh had Projects - that was an unwelcome revelation. So many dark corners of the world.

Sleep well, loves. Catch you soon.

-M

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Just My $.95

Yup. That's what I have in the world right now. $.95. Oh, little decimal, what a difference though doth maketh. I spent my last five dollars on Sunday at the Shadyside Arts Festival, where I bought what was in reality a gallon of frozen lemonade. Much like lighting off fireworks, there's nothing quite as intangible as consuming your own cash. It's like how death and mortality is what truly gives anything value - and when you spend the last of it, the moments should be savored.

The lemonade was terrible, of course. I don't know why I always buy lemonade at festivals expecting it to be good. I might as well buy some sugar cubes, spit on them, and then grind them up with ice. This would probably be my advice to high school seniors, if someone were ever to ask me someday, just three little words that would inalterably change the course of young lives: Make your own.

My dad remarked today how he'd never been golfing with someone who only had $.95, to which I replied that I was usually the child taking him places he never thought he'd go: a ragtime festival in Missouri, the ER in Winter Park, FL, the dance floor at Donna's wedding. I think it was a kind of watershed moment in our relationship; I realized that even when I had absolutely nothing, I had everything I would ever need.

Jess is leaving on Sunday, which is a sentence that is weighing down all the other ones on this page. To commemorate, we spent the evening chowing down on italian ice and reading old e-mails to each other. She read hers out loud, and I would read my reply. It was even more fun when we acted out old IM conversations - it read something like a taut screenplay for a successful romantic comedy. I was Billy, she was Meg. It was strange to hear our new voices giving bodies to the old ones. These are mostly e-mails from 2000 and 2001, so the whole evening had the air of a mad scientist's experiment, a wormhole bursting open on her parents' couch and cramming the entirety of the time-space continuum of our experience together into one thin moment.

Me love you long time, crazy girl. This one-line paragraph is for you.

I'm going through laptop withdrawal. I don't know what I'm going to do when it heads home for the Springs. How will I write to you from my bed? How will I surf eBay and Amazon and Apple forums from the comfort of the sheets? I don't believe in wireless keyboards or meeces because of the quarter-second delay between intention and the screen. You know what I mean, that little, tiny moment between thought and word. It's like watching a video where the voice is out of sync with the mouth - I was born to perceive the subtlety, hard-wired to know the discrepancy, and it is maddening and I just want to poke at the screen with sharp things until it goes away.

Ditto with the wireless keyboard. Maybe I can do some case-study, submit my body for the betterment of my computing situation. I wonder how much silicon I'm really worth. The new Core 2 Duo is salacious...

Speaking of sex, I've been bummed recently because my documentary filmmaking class has been cancelled for the fall. No word yet as to why, but I'm really disappointed. I've had the feeling for a couple of months now that something, something big, was coming in the Fall that was going to re-angle my life, change its trajectory (the scary thing is I just totally Freuded on "trajectory" and initially spelled it "tragectory," which is of course my fear that the change will be painful). I was hoping it was the documentary class - come on, Universe, your poker face is too good.

I have a deck of tarot cards. You probably think different of me now after knowing that, but that's okay. I haven't dealt them out in awhile - sometimes the blinders are comforting - but I'm thinking I should find them and ask a few quick questions. Just two or three steps ahead, that's all I really need. They've never been wrong. They can't be wrong because they reveal what's within you; what you see in the images is what you are, so to speak. Nothing magical about it, just art eliciting reality, windows and soul and all that jazz. I'll let you know what they say.

In the meantime, stay classy, and if you read, friggin' comment. I'm off to my computer-less bed, wishing you all were in my lap.

Lurve,
M

Saturday, August 05, 2006

Happy Birthday, Jessie!


Yay! August 5th, and Jess is 24 years old!!! Happy Birthday, baby :)

Festivities began tonight at the Monterey Bay Fish Grotto on Mount Washington, a beautiful restaurant with a grand view of the city (they actually call all the restaurants up there the "Grand View" restaurants, and truly, if you come to Pittsburgh, it shouldn't be missed). It was a deliciously-spent $99 and a lovely meal... I had the sockeye salmon and Jess had the Naigari Marlin - delish. They also have, to date, the world's best french onion soup. Highly recommended.

Later today we're heading out with her family for another dinner, and then Sunday it's a pool party with the peeps over at Tara and Ben's.

I've been drama lately. Had a bit of a crisis today in that I am totally adrift, steerless, rudderless, washing up against the shores of interest and wondering whether the sand is sturdy enough to set foot. Translation: What the fuck am I supposed to do here on this planet? We saw Superman Returns today, and I left the theater enthralled, entranced, and utterly depressed at reality. When I watch a movie, I give myself totally to the experience. I invite it in, hang its coat on my wall, and let it take me where it shall. That's why I can't watch scary movies - for those few moments, what is up there is real. I can't distinguish between the waking world and the screen, and when I leave my world is forever altered. It's a small price to pay for the truly transcendant moments, and it is why I love movies, but it is exhausting.

I'm still in the twin bed at mom's house. It's amazing the number of reasons one can find to put off moving. It would be easier if Jess were not here, if the apartment had internet access, but Saturday night is the night. THE night. I need to find the sheets for the bed, finish building the computer desk, and go.

I was in Cleveland on Thursday for a job. We were at Key Tower, the headquarters for Key Bank, a lavishly decorated temple to the dollar: gorgeous mahogany on every wall, windows so towering that one can see for miles and miles over Cleveland. While we were there, on the 56th floor, a thunderstorm raged through the city, and the clouds were passing by us at eye-level, curling around the building, dark and creeping. I felt like I could have opened the window and let in the storm. It's amazing the places you'll go with a video camera and a microphone.

I've been looking into the Writing for Stage and Screen masters program at Northwestern University. It seems like an amazing mix of education and opportunity. You write, among other things, a play, a screenplay, a thesis, and you get $5000 to produce your thesis. I'm sure it's very competitive, and they evaluate you based on a 10-page writing sample. Your words, naked in front of a stranger, in the context of thousands of others stories that are also 10 pages... the odds of navigating this asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to... yeah. It's a longshot. But it would be a new adventure in a new city, studying with professionals who've made something of themselves. So many of the people I interact with are in the same boat, all looking at each other for directions on how to row, and what I think I need is to consult people who've had their sea legs for a while longer, find out the strokes that best use the oar.

That's what I really want, I guess; to go to bed at night having meaningfully displaced a little water.

The night air outside my window has a taste of magic on it, like somewhere nearby, in the trees in front of my house, a few of the old songs are still being sung. I find myself wanting to sleep outside, curled up in the grass, blanketed by night. It's rare now to hear the old melodies, to get a chance to dance to the old rhythms. I desire very much to hear them more often. They are soft and quiet and very much alive.

Yours,
Martin

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Holy Wow

I am in love:



I am so learning it this way. That is all.

Martin

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Here's Squinting at You, Sweetheart

So, the day before I left for the family vacation to Virginia Beach, I broke my glasses. My titanium glasses; you know, the stuff the Batmobile is made of. You'd think the simple act of cleaning one's lenses wouldn't scratch, let alone break, titanium glasses, but it did.

Fortunately, I have a prescription pair of sunglasses that I've kept around for seven years in case of just such an emergency, so I spent the week eating family dinners with the reflective cop-shades on at the dinner table.

I went to America's Best with Jess upon my return and got some contacts, which is something that I've wanted to do for a long time because I liked contacts when I had them. The unfortunate thing is, either I'm defective as a person or the people at America's Best are incompetent, because I have to go back now a second time and tell them just how wrong the contact-lens prescription is. I am sitting on a twin bed in my mother's house, three feet away from the 14" computer screen, and I have to squint to see the words that I am typing. This is maddening. And it's not like I can crack out the sunglasses at 9:30 PM.

So, I'm going back tomorrow with an ultimatum. Either they fix my vision, or I'm going to accidentally drive into their store having mistaken it for a Sunoco.

In other news, Jess, Tooch, Scott and Mat were all a big help on Saturday with the whole moving out thing. Luke kindly agreed to let me keep my stuff at his place over the summer, not realizing that the room the stuff was in was wet and damp and therefore moldy. Eep. Jess and I still smell like Lysol wipes, having murdered countless mold colonies on my speakers, my TV stand, my coffee table, etc...

The place feels a lot more homey with my stuff in it. I have nice things, which I've enjoyed procuring, and they make it feel a little more mine. I'm going to force myself to start sleeping over there on Wednesday. I say 'force' because there's no internet there, yet - that's not until Monday - and also Jessie is on this side of town, so those are two pretty compelling reasons to stay put.

Jess is leaving for three days to go visit her Gran in Erie, so I'm going to use the spare time to finish moving and also to work on my movie. I've been putting it off, and there are a lot of things left to be done. For starters, I'm going to capture and edit the fight-scenes, so one can watch the whole film, from beginning to end, and evaluate it accordingly. Wish me luck!

Yours,
Martin

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Riddle Me This, Riddle Me That

So, everything has worked out with the new apartment. All of the worrying, all of the frantic phone calls and awkward conversations, and now it has finally come to this, and it is good.

As of this Sunday, I'm moving out of Mum's house and into an apartment in Squirrel Hill, a little urban suburb of the City of Pittsburgh. It's a three-bedroom, five houses up from the main drag, and it feels like it's in the center of the world. One block to the bowling alley. .5 blocks to the Starbucks. Two blocks to the art house movie theater. Lots of little restaurants, the best pizza in the city, etc.. Talk about a new adventure! My entire living away from home experience has been spent in what were technically fortresses of solitude, replete with fireplaces and cathedral ceilings, and now I will have roomates to whom I'm not related in a part of the city I've never lived in a bedroom the size of my one at Mom's.

Bring it.

I'm sorry I haven't been writing to you as often. I had a week or so there where I was overcome by the urge, nay, the need to write to you, and of course the first date is always the one where you trip over your own words and talk too much. I'd like to think we're mellowing out, getting to know one another, finding each other's comfy places and easing back into something sustainable and good.

I learned how to make an awesome rum drink on vacation, the recipe of which I will share because, frankly, my only job in life is to spread happiness:

In a blender, combine:

1 can of limeade
1 limeade-sized can of rum
Ice

Blend. Pour into cups about 3/4 full, and then fill the rest with club soda. Add a lime wedge. Holy yum.

You love it. Admit it.

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Bermuda Bound

Yay! Can't believe June 24th is already here... I'm leaving with Jessie's family today for Newark, NJ, headed towards Cape Liberty for a five-day cruise to Bermuda on the Explorer of the Seas.

I know, I know, I hate me too!

I'll be out of internet range, but I'll post pics when I get back on Friday. Stay well :)

Martin

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Pure Land

Hey.

Short post this morning. I think my muse is loose sexually - I've come to her the past couple of nights asking for a blog entry and she barely had the energy to pull the dried cigarette from her lips. I'm rubbing her feet now, sneaking a few words out while she isn't looking.

Jessie was rifling through boxes today and found literally hundreds of the e-mails we exchanged in the first year of our relationship. I was in Florida, she was in Meadville, PA, and so it was an exercise in IM, e-mail, and the occasional phone call. It's hard to remember what it felt like early on - we're very different now, of course - but I remember that we had perfected the art of e-combat. Somehow fighting over e-mail and IM would make us feel closer, give us something, even something sour, to keep the taste of each other's company in our mouth. We'd talk for an hour and a half over IM starting at 10 PM, and then by 11:30 we'd be getting tired so we'd fight about something stupid, she'd go to bed angry while I wrote a furious 2-page e-mail, she'd write back in the morning, and by noontime we'd made up and apologized.

Rinse. Repeat. It's a miracle we made it through that first year. I was a lost cause as a boyfriend for lots of reasons, most too interesting for a blog of such stunning mediocrity, but she stuck it out with me, and so far so good :)

As fun as it is to find old letters, it's dangerous to read old e-mails. A friend once warned me that old e-mails, like old spirits, were best left undisturbed. Unlike a handwritten letter, an e-mail is so casual, so intimate, like a bandage over a fresh wound or wet saliva sealing an envelope. They are little pieces of you splattered about, and the old ones, loving or hurtful, draw blood on their way into fresh air. Mourning for a lost friend, nostalgia for a young love, promises unkept... add as many melodramatic instances as you care to. Old e-mail is risky business. The little rivers that seemed like raging floods, the grand proclamations that were really semi-colons... It's a miracle anyone is afloat, no?

I wish my muse had a name. Mat's is named Caissa, which is lovely, and I've borrowed her many times, usually returning her naked but satisfied. My own muse hasn't told me her name yet. She usually crashes on the couch long after I'm asleep. I haven't minded not knowing until right now, watching her ease softly into sleep. Names are really the only things connecting us sometimes.

sweet dreams,

martin

Saturday, June 17, 2006

No Such Thing as an Ugly Blowjob

(just put a bag over her head, poke a hole for the mouth, and yell "did I tell you you could turn around?")

Other possible titles for this post were "Tennyson's Titties" and "Your Gun is Digging Into My Hip," but only this supreme quote of the night from Benjamin could truly capture my first titty bar experience at the Tennyson Lodge.

The Tennyson is set amidst the picturesque hills of Bethel Park, PA, a quiet little town nestled between a laundromat and a Dairy Queen just off Rt. 88. The Lodge's small, unassuming structure has the charm of an Elk Lodge and the cameraderie a Kiwanis Club, only all the elk are naked and everyone is staring at the flapping pairs of kiwanis. And they were small kiwanis at that, little flapjacks flitting back and forth like a hummingbird's wings to the singing warble of, you guessed it: karaoke.

Curious buttf*cking George I hate karaoke. I know this makes me an almost unbearably wet blanket in 19% of social situations, but the only things I hate more than karaoke are brussel sprouts and child molesters. Karaoke. Killmearaoke. Put-the-microphone-in-a-boat-and-implode-it-araoke. Not only are we going to make bad music, but we're going to make it LOUDLY, insert it directly in your brain past your shriveling cilia, and wedge it right between your will to live and your need to destroy.

Only at the titty bar they don't call it "karaoke," they call it "baraoke," and so for three hours every Wednesday and Friday night people gather to stand up on stage and get fondled by "Sage" and "Seven" and, God help you, "Kimmy."

Now, before you think me some heartless purist with a piano up my ass, I should note that I have nothing against people who enjoy karaoke. All of my friends love it, and I've been told there's others like them. It's a small, relatively harmless (unless you're an eardrum) way for people to be a star, for non-musicians to make music, for regular Janes and Joes to express themselves and have the spotlight on them after a hard day's work. For them I have nothing but quiet admiration, because they have the balls to get up and do it and I don't.

That said, I also applaud married people having great sex, childen recovering from surgery, and llamas having baby llamas, but that doesn't mean I want to watch them do it. Lots of life's little triumphs just don't translate onto the stage, especially not for three hours at a time.

Now, you may think that this being a titty bar and all, the aformentioned titties would be a welcome diversion from the karaoke onslaught. You, sir/madam, would be mistaken, because there were no breasts at this bar. The only real breasts there belonged to my girlfriend, and I could only see the top couple inches of them.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Why Martin, you are a strapping young man who is most likely outfitted with man parts of a considerable size and girth. How could you possibly not have enjoyed seeing boobs that belonged to *other* girls?

Well, for starters, the teeny tiny breasts were attached to teeny tiny women. I wanted to like the one girl, my sweet Seven, but felt nasty because she more closely resembled a 13-year-old hairless boy. Jesus, I have bigger tits than these people, and nobody has to pay to see mine.

Secondly, going to a titty bar is a lot like watching the Food Network: "Here is something absolutely delicious that I just whipped out and I'm going to now wave it in front of you, tell you how good it tastes, and then go to commercial." No touchie. No touch.

Thirdly, and more seriously, I couldn't help but feel really sad for all the girls dancing there. It's a strange sensation because they are all adults and have made adult decisions, but when even Howard Stern says, as he did on Sean Hannity's radio show, "If your daughter is dancing on a pole, you've failed as a parent," there's something unmistakably off about your profession. They are, after all, someone's baby girl.

I was listening to an interview on "Fresh Aire" today, and although it seemed extraneous at the time, Terri Gross was talking to an author about writing sex scenes. She was asking if it was hard to write a sex scene, and the author replied, "It is hard to write a sex scene, because what are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to titillate me, to arouse me? Everyone's had sex, good sex. Nothing you can write can titillate me more than the real thing. So every sex scene I wrote I asked myself, 'What is this doing? What is this telling us about the characters?' Sex has to reveal someone, has to educate the reader. Sex needs to be in the context of a soul."

Looking back on it, I think that's why the titty bar just wasn't all that exciting. The dancers just took off their clothes, shook their vaginas, traded smiles with men and their dollar bills, and then kept on dancing. Sure it was kind of exciting for the first few moments when you don't know where to put your eyes, when you're afraid to look away because you might offend her, but then it became this sort of mechanical thing, this pussy production line, and I found myself longing for the intimate mystery of a girl with her shirt on.

Like music, it is the space between the notes that truly moves you.

Next up is a gay bar, because I am ridiculously curious, and then a straight bar with male dancers. I want to see Jessie's reaction, to see if she feels the way I did about the Tennyson Ladies. Maybe the Lodge was just a sketchy enough place that the tinge of desperation was able to rise above the cigarette smoke and that a more upbeat establishment would have left me with a different taste.

Much like the Food Network, however, it doesn't make much sense to be hungry in the living room when there's a good cook in the kitchen...

ever as always,

martin

Friday, June 16, 2006

I Love Kermit the Frog

I do. I really do. Even when he poses nude for Ford commercials or smiles at Lily Tomlin, he's still the frog for me.

I think this is because my favorite book to page through is a coffee-table book that I got years ago as a birthday gift called "Jim Henson: The Works - the Art, the Magic, the Imagination." If you love your inner child you will go buy it here: Click Me

All my other books have the stain of years on them, but not this one. This one I always hold gently and fuss after like it was a little plant, careful not to dent its leaves or get it too wet. As a kid I took it with me on beach vacations, had it constantly by my bedside table to read before sleep. It's a great book about Jim Henson and the people he inspired, about the Muppets, about the movies. It still appeals to me because in a lot of ways I aspire to be Jim Henson. He was a mythic hero of my childhood, the man who worked with Lucas and Spielberg, the magician whose spells cast the Muppets. He was a master storyteller, and he is part of the reason I love telling stories so much. [TMI sidenote: I actually just bought the LP of "The Great Muppet Caper" soundtrack a few months ago so I could crank up "Happiness Hotel" and dance around my apartment to it. I realized, upon listening to it, that this was some serious formative shit - that tune is total ragtime, and I loved it then without knowing why.]

And always Kermit was Jim, Jim was Kermit. So pose away, Kermie. You're the frog for me.

In other amorous tidings, Jessie is the bomb. When we first started dating those many years ago, I used to worry that our interactions could never be "deep" enough. She seemed so surface-level, so situational, and I was the layered, troubled artiste who could never possibly be understood because I was so complicated.

Tonight, though, was a warm reminder of just how keen and "deep" she can actually see. She is my best friend, so I'm a little biased, but I can honestly say that Jessie is the only person I know who can interact with a person for five minutes and instantly know exactly what to say to make them cry.

Now, this doesn't sound like an admirable trait. I think it was one of those gifts developed as self-defense to survive being a tall girl in grade school. And, yes, it has been used for evil. Sometime you have to get Jess to tell you the story about the girl in band who picked on her, so to shut her up Jessie told her "At least my parents loved me and didn't put me up for adoption."

She was sent to the principal's office, which is hilarious on many, many levels.

The gift of the ability, though, at least for me, is her ability to put people into context. She keeps me from taking things the wrong way, from worrying about who feels what or who thinks such and such, from playing the same tapes over and over in my head. You see, the great illusion about me, and I assure you there is only one, is that I appear not to take seriously what is, in truth, for me life and death (all part-and-parcel of my own unique complicatedness that you could never possibly understand... Jesus Christ when does the teen angst ever die). Jess sees through it, both in me and others. Sure, the price is that she could yank out my soul, but it's a small risk to take for a sweet, savvy morsel of genuine interaction.

I love you. Each days yields a new reason why.

Giovanni DeChiaro is serenading me. I think its Joplin's "New Rag." The trio plays like a dream. I'm off to meet him somewhere in the middle.

sweet dreams,

martin

Thursday, June 15, 2006

I Came Inside Her Head

If you're confused and frightened by the title of this post, you should be. This is one of many deliciously sexual comments made tonight during "Total Geekout 2006," otherwise known as Margaret's-heading-back-to-New-York-on-Friday party. This particular gem was made by the inimitable Mat, whose idea it was to corral the Pittsburgh remnant into the same place for an evening of beer, pizza, and Soul Calibur III.

It was a blast. The fact that I'm typing this at 5 AM tells you the kind of fun it was.

This is an old ritual for this particular group, all of whom are part of the production company for "Hunt for the Holocron." We go all the way back to the first Soul Calibur, which tells you two things: 1) We've been working on the movie a long time, and 2) We'd rather play Soul Calibur than work on the movie.

Only because it's inevitable will I say that yes, indeed, the soul still burns. I got my butt summarily kicked, but I have always and will always hate Sophitia, so no news there.

It's always an adventure getting the movie crew together. I'm not really a "group of friends" kind of person, so the situation is always a little awkward for me. A guy I knew in Florida named Jeffrey talked constantly about his friends from back home in Texas. He talked about them so often that even though I only met them maybe once or twice, they became my friends too. They were all best friends, had known one another since birth, had dated each other, gone to high school together, etc... Jeffrey's entire life was spent in the company of a group, a pack, a tribe, and they were as much a part of him as he was of them.

I can honestly say my first friendship that wasn't pre-arranged or manufactured by my parents didn't come until I was in 8th grade. No joke, it took me that long to figure it out, and ever since I've found myself attracted to individuals and intimate interactions. I'd much rather conversation over dinner with a good friend than party night with a 'gang.' Not that I'm a stiff - it's just my wheels roll better in the company of one.

Regardless, tonight was great fun. I bought a six-pack of Miller Lite and enjoyed all six of them in rapid succession. Tipsy is always good, and nothing beats drunken Soul Calibur. Margaret, Luke and I hit Eat 'n Park after the responsible contingent had to go to bed. While waiting for our water with lemon to come, she pulled out the digital camera and we made funny faces and pretended to cut each other with the butter knives. Behind us sat three heavy-set truck drivers, tattered men who regarded us with a mix of suspicion and curiosity, and every time the flash went off I caught them looking at us with a sort of indescribable, melancholy look.

I felt bad for them. I think they'd forgotten how to be silly.

Birds are chirping. Soon the sun will come up (it rises ridiculously early this time of year). Best to shut the eyes before day breaks over the windowsill

Until next time,

martin

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

It's Moolicious!

Jess and I made it to Hershey Park on Saturday. This is the first time I've been there in like 15 years, so I kept having weird deja vu moments. Random things would cause it: the bavarian architecture of the chocolate hut, the yellow letters of the "French Fries" booth, the line for the "Comet" rollercoaster. It looked much smaller than I remember. I felt taller than most of the buildings.

The title of this post comes from the Chocolate Ride at "Chocolate World," Hershey's scarily similar version of the Wonka Factory. The whole building, millions upon millions of dollars worth of rides and displays, is basically one giant corporate masturbation. This place puts the "milk" in milk chocolate, but the best part is they give away free peanut butter cups. There's even an interactive ride with singing cows! Hence the title... never mind that the thousands upon thousands of dairy cows who provide all that tasty goodness, the cows who are the reason Hershey was built where it was, are routinely artifically inseminated, unable to turn around in their stalls, kept in a constant state of pregnancy, and plugged into painful milking devices so they can produce the millions of gallons of milk that go into making milk chocolate.

Go ahead, Timmy. It's a tasty treat!

For those of you who don't know, I am a huge rollercoaster buff. I don't wear funny t-shirts or annotate videos for the Travel Channel, but I consider myself a coaster junkie. I especially like wooden rollercoasters, and on every one I ride I always try to sit in the back. It's the only way to ride - the back seat is the roughest, the fastest, and the most likely to fly off the track at any moment.

My favorite so far is the Thunderbolt at Kennywood here in Pittsburgh. My record is riding it 13 times in a row, 26 times in a day. It is, how you say, coaster perfection. When I was a kid my mum had a bag full of popsicle sticks, and I spent a week gluing 200 of them together in an attempt to recreate the Thunderbolt. I had elaborate plans on how to make the trains, too, and had visions of watching my own coaster fly around the tracks. I made it to the first hill and ran out of sticks.

Hershey has some awesome wooden coasters (must... ride... Wildcat... again) and I'm going to make it a point over the next five years to do a tour of amusement parks and hit up all the wooden coasters. I'll make a travelogue and sell it to some TV station. People loves the rolling coasters.

So, Jess and I had a great time. We managed to spend less than $150 on the day, and didn't get sick from the corn dogs or the ultra-sweet lemonade. The hardest part of the day was actually driving home. We didn't leave the park until 11 PM, and it's a two-hour drive back to Berkeley Springs, so it became a game of "how closed can martin's eyes get while still able to see the road"? Yah, we nearly died like three times. I never understood how people fell asleep at the wheel until Saturday night. Holy balls, it felt like a dream.

I'm back in the 'burgh now, along with Jess. The awesomest of awesome news is that I'm typing this on her iBook, which she's lending me over the summer. Sweet! I've been hankering for a laptop for some time now - oh the advantages of a computer in bed next to you - and now I get to enjoy a Mac for free. Good times. It's not one of those newfangled MacBooks. This is old school iBook, with a bona fide G4 processor. Sad but true, it's faster than my monster PC. Go figure. All it needs is another 512 of RAM... maybe I'll invest :)

We're heading to Idlewild tomorrow, which is a small amusement park in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania. It's the third-oldest amusement park in the country, and the 10th oldest in the world. It doesn't have lots of flashy coasters or anything
(it's only coaster, the "Rollo Coaster," is a simple out-and-back that's about as exciting as this blog) but it's got lots of good food, a decent water park, and a whole giant "Mister Roger's Neighborhood" recreation that I've never seen but heard is awesome. Should be a fun afternoon.

Stay classy. I'll catch you later.

Martin

Friday, June 09, 2006

Robin Williams Night

I'm in the Springs with Jessie tonight, sitting on her full bed with the slats that fall out. I'm on the bed, she's on the floor. We both have laptops in front of us, and we're not speaking. Comfortable silence. I'm staying at her place through the weekend, a chance to be together before a summer spent living with our parents, stealing kisses when they aren't looking.

It's going to be impossible. I don't know about other people, but I like to have sex with someone beside myself at least once a month. To stay in practice. To stay sane. It becomes increasingly difficult when parents are asleep nearby, more exciting, yes, but more difficult, and I know soon I'll be yearning for the days when I had my castle on the hill, my own queen bed, my own candles burning.

I arrived in Berkeley Springs late last night after a tragic dodgeball loss. The only bright spot of the evening was when Margaret showed up as a surprise at the end of the last few games. It was a good surprise. I haven't seen her in eight months. It looks like New York hasn't dimmed her one bit. Mark's getting ready to go there at the end of the summer, and I am looking for roommates to live with in Squirrel Hill until I'm done with school next May. Seems like everyone's heading somewhere.

We saw "RV" tonight. Not your typical fare, sure, but it was genuinely funny and didn't pretend to be something it was not. There is something eternal in watching a man struggle to make others happy, especially when it's his own family. If you're looking for something light and airy to dissolve on your film tongue, I'd recommend it. Like water with lime, it goes down just fine.

To bed, to bed. We'll share our warmth and laugh, dream of tomorrows to come and yesterdays long gone. I believe a picnic is the order of the day tomorrow. Maybe we'll hit Hershey Park. The last time I was there I was a little boy. I wanted to go on the roller coaster so bad, so I made my mom wait in line to go with me and when it finally came time to get on, I freaked out and started screaming and crying and flailing because I was so afraid.

Upwards!

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Railroad Rhythm

Click Here
Here's a little video clip from Sedalia. It's not exactly high production-value (note the lady's head in front of my fingers) and the sound isn't great, but it does show off my nice pink shirt from the Gap. The room looks empty, but there were about 30 or so people there. Thought you might get a kick out of seeing it.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival '06

So I just got back from Missouri and, as promised, here is the “full report” on Sedalia. It’s long – you may want to grab a cup of coffee. I’m writing to you from the airplane, basically curled up in the fetal position over Dad’s laptop because the guy in front of me insists on reclining into my lap. I wanted to write to you when Sedalia was fresh in my mind.

First things first: I had a blast. Dad did, too. We heard a lot of great music, and I got a lot of opportunities to perform. We arrived on Thursday afternoon after a highly entertaining drive down from Kansas City. The best part was the billboard for, I kid you not, the “Testicle Festival.” It had a picture of a bull on it, and all I could think about was what goes through a person’s mind at a testicle festival, what exact thought process made them go, “Hey, you know what I could go for right now?”

Missouri. Hmm.

We stopped at the ragtime store, picked up my performer’s packet, and to my great surprise I was scheduled to play not three times but six. I sort of freaked. I was only going to be there for two days – how was I going to stretch the two sets we worked out into six? In my surprise I almost knocked a $300 glass “Maple Leaf Rag” statue off the shelf, so Dad and I decided to find some dinner, check into the hotel, and head out to the “Easy Winners” concert to try and relax.

Back at the hotel Dad went to sleep and I went over to after hours, which was pretty tame compared to what I remember. After Hours is where the performers gather back at the hotel along with festival patrons to drink and play the piano. It's a huge room at the Best Western hotel that has a makeshift stage in the middle surrounded by big tables, and it's where you hear the best piano playing around. It’s really weird going to it alone, though, because when nobody you know is there you sort of just stand there, beer in hand, wishing you were at the piano so you could feel like you belong. I missed Jessie most in those moments. I was nervous about the next day, nervous about doing a good job, and I knew I had to get my hands on a piano before I could sleep.

I finally got up the courage to play, so I snuck up on stage and played “Loose Elbows” and “Kitchen Tom.” The response was pretty warm, nothing too crazy – I was in “I am an artist” mode, not “I am going to light this piano on fire and beat you all around the head with it” mode. Mimi Blais was there as I walked off, and she told me she liked my arrangement of “Kitchen Tom.” That was pretty cool. The best part of the festival for me this year though was the group of performers my age who were there: Michael Stalcup, Dalton Riden(h)our, Eytan Uslan, Bryan Wright, Adam Yarian, Adam Swanson, and me. Over the next few days we were to form a sort of ragtime “wolf pack,” and the most fun I had was hanging out with them talking music and playing duo-piano.

I wasn't a paid performer. There are only a couple of those out of the 138 musicians who were there (including 91 pianists. sweet mother of god that is so many... I didn't know there were that many in the country). I was there as a replacement for a pianist named Brett who broke his wrist. I found out later, however, that I wasn't the first replacement - they had a invited a German pianist named Hans, but he had died the weekend before the festival, so that's why I ended up with so many slots.

It's hard to talk about it in good taste because on the one hand it's kind of hilarious that someone would rather die than play at this festival. For what it's worth, I knew I was doing a good job when one of the performers came up to me and said, "I'm kind of glad he died. You're amazing."

I got the chance to meet Bryan Wright, who runs the "Elite Syncopations" radio station over at Live365.com. He’s 23 and a great player. Nick Taylor introduced me to him, and we found out that not only we were the same age, into the same music, but that we both go to the University of Pittsburgh. I asked him if he wanted to play something together, and we did a smoking version of “Charleston Rag” with Bill Edwards that brought the house down. We're going to put on a ragtime concert in Pittsburgh. You should come.

That sort of underscores something else that was kind of disappointing. At the festival they have a number of paid concerts named after pieces Joplin wrote. When I was there in 1999 they were a huge deal - it was scandalous that I was playing at one of them - and all the good performers would gather there and put on amazing shows. This year, thought, the level of playing just wasn’t that good (with the exception of the “Music Hall” concert which was awesome). The performers who were there didn’t seem to take it seriously – all the headliners were in the tents at the same time and playing better. There wasn’t any reason to go to the concerts. And, what kind of sucked for the younger players, they arranged it so that all the headliners played at different times, so a huge swath of people would just travel from one major performer to the other. I played after Sue at Gazebo Park, and she generously introduced me (and sang a song to my dad, haha) but when she finished her set 80% of the audience stood up with her and she said, “Don’t go! You have to hear Martin play! Don’t make me come down there!” When they left it was kind of a bummer, but what could I expect? My name wasn’t in the program. In the program it said “Open Piano: 2:00-2:20.” People couldn’t put a name to my face or read my bio, so why would they stay?

The flip-side of this is that contained within those 91 pianists were a large number of amateur players who really struggled to get through pieces. If I wasn’t following Sue Keller I was following some well-meaning amateur who would inevitably chase the audience away. It was a pattern that repeated itself for almost all of my venues and I found myself playing to really small audiences, but I played just as hard for 10 people as I would for 100 and it worked out great. The people are just so nice there, so appreciative. They’d stop me in the street to thank me, to say they enjoyed my playing, to ask me my name (again). It was easy to want to play well for them.

I met Dave “Mazak” (I’m not even going to try spelling it), and he was hilarious. I met Hal Isbitz and am learning his “Midnight” and “Miranda.” I had like a three hour conversation with John Gill where I got to know him a lot better. When I met him in 1999 I was really scared of him. I met pianist Virginia Tichenor for the first time and really enjoyed listening to her play. She's the daughter of a very famous ragtimer named Trebor Tichenor. She saw my last set at Maple Leaf Park and told me I had a “monster left hand.” I played “Swipesy Cakewalk” with John Gill at after hours late Friday night but I played it so fast that he said afterwards, “Christ, man, no need to stain the bed sheets.” Coming from him, wow – in the ragtime textbook this is under “How to know you’re playing too fast.” I was totally seduced by how good it felt, and I made a note to avoid that for the remainder of the weekend.

The only bummer was that I didn’t get to play for/with Brian Holland at all – he and Jeff didn’t stay at after hours more than a few minutes, so I barely got to say hi. They remembered me, though – lots of people did. My name, anyways.

Speaking of which, Dad was amazing. He helped me to gauge the audience, and was always encouraging when I got stressed. We expressed often to each other that we wished you were there, too. Performers like you really bring a lot of class with them, and I know I missed that. I played Euphonic Sounds in almost every set because I wanted people to hear some Joplin that wasn’t in a barrelhouse style. I carried the Billy Mayerl torch – I was the only person playing him there- and people absolutely loved “Railroad Rhythm.” When I asked Dad how I did after it was all over, he said a good job. I kept my mouth closed while playing, told stories, and smiled a lot. I may have even been too engaging – we filmed one set with my camera and I’m bouncing around like Jo Ann Castle.

I'll post a clip from the video. It's pretty funny.

I finished off last night with a set of four pieces to a packed after hours: Charleston Rag, Maple Leaf Rag, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, and Railroad Rhythm. People went crazy. One thing has always been sure about my life - I can play the piano really, really fast. They loved it and clamored for my name - it was most likely the first time many of them had heard me play (there were 6,000 people at the festival) and it was really exciting and a great way to end the weekend. People were clamoring to know who I was. They kept asking for my name and where I was from and shouted “more!” Other performers came up and shook my hand and asked me "How do you do that?"

I felt like I belonged there.

It was a unique, emotional experience. When I was there in 1999, I was the "prodigy," the kid who could play stride piano. It took some cahones to go back, to return as a balding 23-year-old who has other priorities now besides the piano. I'm grateful to have been invited, grateful to have gotten a chance to perform again, and I'm excited for next year.

They haven't heard anything yet.

Martin