Weekends, Obies, Syracuse, Self-Analysis

So first things first: Mlle. H. F. Spencer, known in some circles for her early (if temporary) retirement and fabulous globetrotting lifestyle, recently graced the city of Buffalo, and myself in particular, with her presence. Some noteworthy anecdotes from this trip include:

- A trip to perhaps my favorite area bar, Allen St. Hardware. We hung out for a while, but it was crowded and we grew tired of waiting for a table. We left to find a spot with both beer AND chairs, but outside ran into a group of local teachers, two of which currently teach at my old high school (and one of whom was my actual English teacher for a while). They invited us back in, and bought us all drinks. See, in college it was not unusual to see professors out having a beer. But this was more than a beer... this was partying. And they’re my high school teachers, so they’re stuck in time. On the one hand I can’t quite believe that I’m old enough to be thought of as their peer, on the other hand, I’m young enough that seeing older people who are still single and hitting up bars freaks me out a bit. I think Dan summed this up best when he turned to Hannah, Ang, and myself and shouted above the din: “This could be us in ten years. Cheers.”

- A party. We played a rousing game of musical-charades until others arrived. Later, upstairs, the hookah was knocked over, lighting the carpet on fire. Dan threw a jug of spring water at the smoldering embers, though unfortunately the jug landed on its base and then tipped to one side, spilling only a little bit of water, all of it on my shoe. The fire was eventually extinguished. And as an aside, I would like to add that they just don’t make brown shag carpet like they used to. Or at all, for that matter. We will have to be cunning in our attempts to hide the damage.

- A trip to Rochester. We decided to visit Ryan, and also decided that we would not call him first (as he’s notoriously tough to get a hold of). On the way, Hannah introduced me to a delicious coffee beverage at a Thruway rest-area Starbucks. I must get this beverage again in the future, possibly tonight, on my drive. I found Ryan’s house—from memory, having been there briefly over a year ago—with a speed and efficiency that stunned even myself. We knocked on the door (insert R. Kelly joke here)--no answer. So, we proceeded to plan B, which was to walk down to the Eastman School of Music and start asking everyone if they know Ryan. Thankfully for us, and, I suppose, for him, we ran into him on the sidewalk en route. We had tea, listened to music, talked about future plans that may or may not involve Brooklyn and crappy hourly jobs in the catering industry. I suspect he had many other things to do, as his recital took place this past Saturday, but I was glad he made time to see us.

Indeed, good times were had by all. You, too, can have good times in Buffalo, if you visit me. I love having guests.

This past weekend I discussed the cost of rent in Brooklyn with a recent defector (it seems almost unimaginably high), and played a gig with Dan at a bar in Angola. Angola? I think that’s where it was. It was pretty far out there, anyway. Regardless, the money wasn’t great, but the people were nice and we had free food and drink for the duration of the evening. The whole band! For the whole night! Wings and beer for all!

Okay, now we’re all caught up.

Today I leave work a little early to drive the two-and-a-half hours to Syracuse for an interview. This is the last of my grad-school visits, and is likely to be the shortest, as I will leave promptly to drive home in time to get up for work tomorrow. I must confess: as much as I love a good drive, I’m not particularly looking forward to this one if only because of the sleep deprivation I imagine will be involved. I hope something comes of all this grad-school nonsense, and I hope that I hear about it soon, whatever it is.

And on a thoroughly unrelated note, I found out on Friday that someone who made fun of me back in my early Buffalo years committed suicide fairly recently by driving his vehicle into the Niagara River, noted locally for its swift current and whirlpools, and internationally for its waterfalls. My initial reaction, which was something along the lines of “can’t say I’m sorry he’s gone,” surprised me. My attitude has since tempered somewhat, but still, am I really that vengeful? I came to terms with certain aspects of my childhood long ago. My moving around a lot as a little kid brought me into a new school at a time when most kids had known each other for years, and it took me the better part of elementary and middle school to get over the social obstacles laid out for me in those first few weeks of third grade. This, I now know, had very little to do with me and much more to do with the social construct in which kids interact. I (my actual person) was not the target; rather, the target was The New Kid (who just happened to be me). But if I have such an understanding of this in my head, then why such callousness toward the guy? I don’t consider myself to be all that spiteful, but perhaps I have an overly optimistic view of my own personality. I guess the lesson to be learned here is that one’s emotional memory is a force to be reckoned with: it retains feelings longer than one might think, and is stronger than any ex post facto rationale one constructs. Unfortunate, that.

Over and out.

The SUNY-Nintendo Connection

I went to SUNY Purchase last weekend for an interview. It is located on a large tract of land nestled in the affluent suburbs of Westchester County; a small island of riot-proof architecture in a sea of overpriced real estate and German automobiles. The campus itself is, as it seems all SUNY schools are, surrounded by a large exterior roadway loop that serves as its main artery. In the middle is a bizarre concentration of large, windowless, rectangles of various heights composed of uniform maroon brick. These rectangles house the arts schools. It is the closest I can come to attending graduate school in World 1-1 of Super Mario Brothers. Only instead of spending my days jumping on Koopa Troopas and warping to different worlds, I would instead study music in virtual isolation while trying to repress nagging self-doubt about my life choices.

At least, that’s how I hope it will be, if I am admitted!

In the lobby, I asked someone that is currently an undergrad in the program to which I am applying what she thought. She told me that, were I to attend SUNY Purchase, I would meet a lot of interesting people. This, I know from experience, is something one says when one has nothing nice to say about the school, and did not instill confidence. When it was almost time for my interview, another student came to take me and another applicant (and his wife—they were my parents’ age) upstairs. We rode up in the elevator, walked down a couple corridors, and then paused in front of a door. “This is it,” the student said, and walked off. We stood for a moment, and were approached by another student, who gestured to a group of people at the end of the hall and asked if we would kindly remove ourselves from their shot. They were filming a movie that, from what I observed, would be based largely on footage of an eight-year-old running down a hallway. We stepped into a small practice room which housed a dilapidated electric organ and several panels of soundproofing. Then the awkwardness began, wherein the man and his wife started bickering, mostly about his mother, I believe. Then they would complain loudly about having to wait in this little room, and then the man would occasionally step out into the hall, ruin the shot, and get annoyed when the film crew would ask him to go back in again.

After his interview, this man warned me of the situation I would soon encounter. “The two guys are okay," he said, "but watch out for the woman, she’ll throw you some curveballs.” The woman, I must say, threw no curveballs at me. In fact, she offered me candy from a small jar as I got up to leave, which I imagine must be the polar opposite of hostile questioning. I, taken aback, picked the piece nearest the top, which was spearmint. It is a well-known fact that spearmint is the worst of all mints, with the possible exception of abandon-mint, though I suppose breath-freshening isolation sometimes has its merits. So spearmint it is: the grossest. This piece of candy is currently sitting on the counter in my house, with a milk-chocolate valentine’s-day candy someone from work gave me. I will give these away soon.

Possibly to Hannah, who is arriving tonight to hang out for the weekend. I am very much looking forward to this, as I love having guests and haven’t seen Hannah in quite some time. What she doesn’t know, however, is that I haven’t been able to come up with very much for us to do. She has already seen Niagara Falls, which is pretty much the main draw in Western New York, besides myself, of course. Thus, I suspect alcohol will figure prominently in our activities.

Also, today all the school districts in the greater Buffalo/Niagara area had off because of high winds. I still had to go to work. Ruuuuude.

Over and out.

My Travels

Guuugh. Okay. Fine. I’ll update my blog. Gaaaaawd. But I should tell you that it took two (2) personal invitations to get me to do so. Mr. Bisker, Ms. Spencer: this one’s for you.

The reason I haven’t updated for some time is that I’ve actually been doing things. This is not one of those “I have a life, so I don’t have time to update my blog like you losers” better-than-you comments, though of course I am better than you. No, this is simply an issue of not knowing what to blog about, having had three straight weekends of adventure, relatively speaking.

First, the weekend of January 21, 2006. I went to Chicago to visit Jill. Highlights of the trip include:

1) Going to Blue Man Group performance, which was excellent.

2) Going to the Museum of Science and Industry. Here, we saw the outside of a captured German WWII submarine, the promotional posters for which pictured a submariney-looking gauge marked, as expected, in German. To be more accurate in its current setting, it should have stated simply “we gonna rip you off.” I say this because they charge an extra five bucks to enter the submarine, on top of the 12 or 15 or however many dollars we had already paid to gain entry to the museum. Frustrating, but interesting when considered in the context of WWII: capture the submarine of your socialist enemy and then charge people twice to go inside. Capitalism, ho!

3) Going to The Green Mill, the features of which were many including an exceptionally good jazz organ player, relatively cheap strong drinks, an amazing mix of people (including many young people actually watching the music), and a pleasant blend of art-deco landmark and gritty 50’s cocktail lounge styling. This should not be confused with The Green Mile, which mainly features tom hanks and copious electrocution shots. Green Mill, thumbs up.

4) Going to the airport twice in rapid succession, having forgotten my wallet in a sleep-deprived haze. Oops.

5) Leaving with my face (and all other parts of me) intact, despite Freud’s best efforts to the contrary.

6) An extra afternoon in Chicago, spent entirely at the airport, waiting for my plane to arrive. It left over four hours late.

Weekend of January 28, 2006
Keegan, alternately residing in Cleveland and Rochester, came down to Buffalo for a day or two. We hung out on Saturday night, and by hung out I mean drank at a number of Buffalo’s finest spiritoriums. Sunday we slowly recovered while playing Nintendo, and attended a Maria Schneider concert in the evening, which was the true motive for him coming down on that particular weekend. Maria Schneider is a big-band composer, and an excellent one at that. She was charming, her band was really quite amazing, and she had good things to say both about the business of music and composition. I would recommend her music to anyone within earshot of one of her shows.

February 2-4, 2006
Went to Bloomington, Indiana for a grad school interview. While there, I stayed with fellow Obies Brea and Matt and their dog Pepper, the latter of whom is wholly dedicated to licking faces, with an enthusiasm normally reserved for things like escaping death. As you, with intense focused energy and adrenaline, would run from a knife-wielding murderer, so Pep licks faces.

Bloomington is a nice town though, about an hour and fifteen minutes south of Indianapolis. It is bigger than Oberlin by far, but not so big as to be considered a city by most standards. No, it is just a very large college town, with all the trappings thereof, including many bars, restaurants, and young people. I attended the Opera of the week, The Barber of Seville. Beforehand, in the lobby, I had a conversation with a nice older gentleman who asked if I might know when the summer carillon concert would take place. I explained to him that I was only an applicant, not a student, and thus had no idea, I’m sorry. He then explained me everything about himself, including the death of his wife 10 years ago, and how they used to drive down from their farm in northern Indiana every year and stay overnight in Bloomington to see the opera, and how he still does it without her. I found this touching. He also had the good social graces not to overdo it, and soon excused himself to find a good seat. Excellent.

The logistics of the trip worked out exceedingly well. My flights to Indianapolis were smooth, and I managed to escape my Pittsburgh layover without being terrible-toweled (toweled-terribly?) even once. Upon arrival, I rented a car from Enterprise because their per-day charge for drivers under 25 was lower than the other rental agencies ($10/day v. $25/day or more elsewhere). I had planned to rent a Neon, as it was small and cheap, but not so small and cheap as the Aveo (a small Korean-made Chevrolet) which from the brochure seemed to be only slightly better than renting a bicycle. The salesman (and what a salesman!) told me about the underage fee, I said fine. He spent literally 15 minutes telling me about insurance options despite my insistence that I would purchase none, rentals being covered under my normal automobile insurance. He then spent another five trying to convince me to upgrade to a Hyundai for “only $5 a day more!” I declined. He then: (1) checked the availability of Neons, found there were none, and upgraded me to the Hyundai for free; and (2) forgot to add the underage-driver surcharge to my bill. All said, I saved something on the order of $30, plus the associated taxes.

The Hyundai, I must say, would probably have been worth the money. It had a CD player (for which I, an admitted overpacker, had brought CDs), and a sunroof. The latter was the source of some confusion during my first several minutes on the highway, as I found it to be partway open. It was, therefore, significantly louder, colder, and wetter (it was raining) than the interior of modern cars tend to be. Closed it up, though, no problem, and from then on things went just fine, thank you very much. Hyundai and I became good pals.

We (Hyundai and I) drove Brea to the airport on Saturday morning, as she was coincidentally departing for Los Angeles within a half hour of my own flight out of Indiana. We discussed the wedding (we had discussed this previously, too; I did a good job not flipping out, I think), and the possibility that I might write the music. I have clearly hit upon a cottage industry.

We ate lunch in the airport food court, and went our separate ways. Then my bag, which I will from now on call Judas, sold me out by flunking the Explosive Residue test at the security checkpoint. I was pulled aside and frisked in a little plexiglas three-quarter room between two metal detectors. Post-frisk, the TSA screener asked “are those just keys in your pocket?” I answered keys and a pen. He asked to see the pen. I demonstrated that it was a pen by taking off the cap and pretending to write with it, Marcel Marceau-style, on an imaginary sheet of paper between us. He seemed satisfied, and allowed me to go back to the checkpoint to watch as my bag was searched. Note: for anyone who has ever chided me for packing my clothes in large plastic ziplock bags, I should point out that my doing so saved me on this occasion, as it made the whole process much faster and allowed me to get to my gate 10 minutes early instead of missing my flight.

Still I wonder what caused the incident to begin with. I slept on the floor of Matt’s study. What, Matt, were you doing in there, exactly, that may have involved fertilizer or volatile chemicals? Are you even a philosophy student at all? It is a well-known fact that philosophy students cannot be trusted farther than they can be thrown, and if Matt is a representative example of philosophy students in general, I would judge this distance to be not very far. Or was it Pepper? He had used the lid of my suitcase as a platform to better position his tiny little body for face-licking. Is it possible that all the face-licking, and perhaps even dog-being, was an elaborate ruse to conceal more nefarious purposes?

Oh and the interview went fine. We’ll see how things turn out. Also I saw Scott Glenn, twice actually, the second time he helped me find the Parsifal Room, which, like Brigadoon, seems to be one of those places that only appears every hundred years and is therefore totally impossible to find.

Weekend of February 11, 2006
This weekend, I will be driving to the ritzy suburbs just north of New York City to check out SUNY Purchase, which has a studio composition program. Purchase seems to be one of those schools that is not remarkable in any way except that its proximity to New York attracts excellent music faculty. This studio composition program is one that they seem very proud of in a kind of vague way; the website doesn’t tell you all that much about it except how unique and awesome it is. This makes me skeptical. Anyway, I had applied at the last minute just to keep my options open, and being unsure, I was thinking seriously about canceling my interview, but my parents convinced me that I should just go ahead and do it. That and they offered to pay for a hotel. So to White Plains I go, tomorrow.

Over and out.