Mojai: Funk Is Not Dead in D.C.

I never expect to find good things when I head back to my hometown. It is a perfunctory experience. At best, I spend most of the time in my bedroom or playing with my dog or the random friends I still keep in touch with since high school graduation. At worse, I run into particularly shady ex-friends.

But the pleasant surprise still comes my way. I met up with my friend Rachel in Adams Morgan to check out a funk band, Mojai , and I’m sure glad I did.

While the video is, I’ll admit, a bit poor, the music is transcendental, transparent and rhythmic in its sometimes lullaby-quality, sometimes jazz-jam quality, even with little notes of hard-rock. The keyboards, guitar, bass guitar and seemingly millions of saxophones mesh into brilliant notes. Great for dancing, great for the general vibe of the bar (The Space).

And, I love music sometimes that is just purely instrumental. Lyrics sometimes get in the way of, however cheesy this sounds, the “melody”. You can’t ignore dueling saxophones, but you can ignore (or try to) bad lyrics.

During a funky long keyboard sesh

A Thought: One of these is not like the other...

Something reminiscent of Frederick, though transplanted to South Carolina.

More line dancing in Greenville, SC

Something reminiscent of living in Syracuse, though transplanted to New York City.

Insomnia Cookies on W. 4th...not Marshall St.

Home?

I’m laying in my bed. “my” bed. the one i slept in for six years. And not even a bed, but an overpriced silver-frame futon.

I arrived in Baltimore’s Penn Station this morning at 9:50 am after a 2hr train ride from - you guessed it - New York’s Penn Station. original.

Another leg of the journey takes me to oft-traveled highway 695 W to Frederick. It’s a lazy drive with hardly any cars on the road for distraction. A brownish grey Maserati GranTurismo 4.2 passes us - and it seems my two lives have just crossed over.

No rest for the weary - by 11:40 I’m sitting outside my restaurant with some fresh mozzarella sticks and - my favorite - cherry italian soda. Downtown Frederick is sleepy and cheerful and I’m just doing my part to help customers feel at home. Strike up a conversation about coffee mugs. Get more pages read of “The Geography of Love”. Enjoy the sunshine. Today’s the busiest day of the weekend - the day I think I feel like I never left New York. Hustling to a meeting with a financial advisor (please, tell me how i can retire by 40), doctor’s meeting (bad news), eventually, a much - needed facial at The Strand. The sun (84 degrees) is making everything too hot; like summer surprised me when I was looking for more hot cocoa and warm soup.

The clocktower in Baker Park, Frederick, MD

Even though I’ve made the switch from Southern Belle to Uptown Girl, it still feels like a part of me is irrefutably linked to this place. History was made here, even if it was so inconsequential that it didn’t affect anyone outside a 5 mile radius. Life was much smaller when 21701 and (301) were my only history - before I moved to 13210 and (315) or 10031 and (212). My first boyfriend, proms, endless school trips and “please stand for the pledge” and Field Day.

I really miss Field Day.

How often do people end up in their hometown for the rest of their lives. Close by, maybe, but not “in it”. Have your kids go to your schools, become the Mayor? A line gets crossed from “I gotta get the hell outta this town” and finding that you never left. I never wanted to stay in Maryland and I trade jokes with a colleague (originally from Upper Marlboro) about the “Fredneck” pride I have even now. I love County Fairs, In The Streets, Velvet Lounge, Pit Crew, La Paz chips and salsa, Mudd Puddle, Denny’s, Frederick Coffee Company, C. Burr Artz PL, The Bridge, Wonder Book and Video, Wa Wa’s, Sheetz MTO sammies, The Mall, Barber’s Darkroom, My Darkroom, Bob Evan’s (Rt. 40), Belles’, Teal Lane, and all the rest of my haunts (21+ - Firestone’s & Old Towne…never fails).

But I’m wondering, as I’m walking around the room I spent the past ten years living in, how do you know when your “room” isn’t yours anymore. When you can’t recognize anything. When it’s so stripped bare to create your new life that it’s rotten and empty…and you don’t even want to set foot inside it? I was 15 and had a vision. I was so over the pastel pink walls and tidy preppie furniture. I wasted no time signing up then-boyfriend (now married) to help me paint the room navy blue. It took a gallon of paint before I realized 1 gallon does not = one wall.

I let my friends write witty quotes in Sharpie all over my closet doors and I put up “Evil Dead” and “Trainspotting” posters on my walls to show off how cool I thought I was. I burned mixes of Dashboard Confessional, The Get Up Kids and Reel Big Fish for the boyfriend and chain-smoked cigarettes on the roof outside my window when my parents fell asleep in the room next door. I stayed up late chatting on the phone until said parents, weary from my contradictory combativeness and ambivalence, half-heartedly told me to shut up. And, let’s not forget my 15th birthday, where as my mom was singing me happy birthday with a homemade ladyfinger cake, a combustible mix of cliques were present - goth kids, druggies, photo nerds, skaters, Cool Juniors. I made home movies about interviewing famous, albeit, invisible, diplomats and Rwandan warlords (fancying myself a Eastern European Christiane Amanpour, I think). I set up a volleyball court in my backyard for my graduation party but ended up playing spades and drinking non-alcoholic beer. Spades was a theme that summer, but we quickly realized non-alcoholic beer was not.

Leaving my old room for a dorm wasn’t a change in scenery. There, I could always sneak out, sneak food, sneak boys and phone calls, and still keep a part of myself hidden and mysterious. My sophomore year in college, I came home to find the reliable silver futon had found new roommates: whitewashed desk/bureau set from the early 90s and a great big plasma TV. It all fit wonderfully, but now it’s empty. The shelves hold books I don’t want to bring to my apartment, scratched CDs I feel too nostalgic about to throw out, old yearbooks and high school photos, endless cables I have no use for, piles and piles of journals, VHS tapes (both commercial and homemade), discarded negatives and Mini-DV cassettes. The scrapyard of my life is in this room. Projects started but never completed-unopened acrylic paints from my “painter” phase. Gaelic and Russian language books and cassettes - though I did succeed in learning conversational Gaelic at one point…but the possibility of actually going to Ireland was depressing, and that was abandoned as well.

I’m in no hurry to clear it out. Where will it all go - all the things I simultaneous want to hoard and toss? My life, being packed into boxes, but also boxes I don’t want?

Until I went away to Syracuse, I hadn’t slept on a proper bed for four years. Bringing the Biologist (the going Boyfriend pseudonym) to F is met with groans and forgetting to pack ibuprofen (for backs made sore by aforementioned futon).

But we’re a lot more alike than he cares to think. Visiting Syracuse, we sleep, once more, on a futon.

Batter Up!

Since the baseball season started, I have been to two Yankee games (last thursday and yesterday) and I’m heading to Queens for a Mets v. Phillies game on Thursday. Baseball is the only (American) sport I follow with any conviction or passion so when a season comes around I can get cranky, moody, or delirious. Depends how the season goes.

Baseball is “America’s Pastime”–a great excuse to scream, drink beers, get tan and eat artery-clogging amounts of Hebrew Nationals. So, why do journalists and commentators and all these other yippity yaps in the peanut gallery going on and on about how boring the sport is. Nothing Ever Happens! Scoreless Innings! Et Al.

But I think there’s a secret reason people like baseball. However “boring” it may seem, I think it’s the speculation that makes the game worthwhile. Sitting in the stadium, sitting in front of the television, people are always discussing what’s the next play, what’s the next pitch going to be, who’s up, who’s on base…the questions are endless and the suspense is almost crippling.

A general hypothesis could be this: baseball is for readers, football is for TV watchers. I understand these massive generalizations, but football is quick animal. There’s a blitz, a passing game…even though a football game is roughly the same span of time as a baseball game, it seems like everything happens with no speculation. The game is happening to quickly to discuss strategy and options.

With Baseball, there’s imagination…trepidation at every turn, and with both the Mets and the Yankees playing their last seasons in their venerable institutions, this season will be a weeper.

Lecture: Sue Halpern Book Tour

Going to readings and lectures is something I’ve heavily avoided doing, even in college. But, after the plays and movie screenings et al. I thought it’d be nice to change it up a little. Sue Halpern, famous author & magazine contributor, was speaking at Columbia University Medical Center at 168th & Broadway last Wednesday, April 12.

The lecture mainly focused on excerpts from her new book, Can’t Remember What I Forgot, and discussed “normal memory loss”. Even I, at 22, cannot seem to figure out what my memory drifts in and out, some exaggerations, some mistakes–I cannot figure it out. On the opposite end, my grandmother is having horrible memory loss. Repeating simple questions, forgetting the ingredients to dishes she’s made millions of times — for someone who has a Ph D. in History and was a professor, I can’t imagine being in her shoes…unless I’m going in that direction myself.

The excerpts also detailed many personal experiences Halpern shared with the “memory loss” scientists she worked with, experimental memory procedures she went through, and her father’s experiences with memory loss. From a non-scientific perspective, seeing a human perspective on memory loss is better then the mumbo-jumbo scientists spill out. She espoused her desire for a “more open…collaborative” scientific community and a sort of “open source” scientific community. Doctors speaking with doctors about their findings? What a novel concept. Maybe this is a good start to the kind of change our medical professions (and our wallets) could really use.

All I Want is Beer for Breakfast

On Saturday, I did two things I try hard to avoid. 1) Drinking in the Daytime. 2) Hopping into a car, going on the BQE on a Saturday morning, and getting out of Manhattan.

I’m not a borough snob, I’m the opposite. Some of my closest friends live in Astoria and Brooklyn Heights, so I’m actually there a bit. Haven’t ever spent a great deal of time in Williamsburg and Greenpoint (hipster enclaves in immigrant/ethnic communities - I’m sure it’s to feel “connected”) so , partnering my love of breweries and all their byproducts, and my softness for advertisements in foreign languages ended up bringing me to the Brooklyn Brewery.

The Brewery is housed on N. 11st Street in Brooklyn, across the street from the delicious vintage clothing store Beacon’s Closet and overall awesome skate shop KCDC. Coming from a major alternative-sport-heavy town, I truly respect such a “see” then “do” shopping experience - like a board? Try it out on the ramp. So rad.

But, the true delight is the Brewery in this gritty little section of Wburg. Graffiti is everywhere, with my favorite example being a bubbly “Les Crabs” stamp on the back end of the Brewery wall. Les Crabs? A French gang in Brooklyn? I wonder if they even have sub-sects…some are soft shell, some blue, some King? Do the Blue crabs wear blue - and subsequently get expelled from their high school? Les Crabs popped up even during the ride back home, leading to these very suppositions.

So I’m not a big fan of drinking during the daytime, mainly because I’ve just been during the nighttime and I often don’t want to see another 12oz. But I sucked it up and enjoyed a delicious BB India Pale Ale (my favorite of the Ales). Arriving around 12:30pm, my boy/friends, the Boyfriend & I took a, well, abbreviated tour of the premises, which basically embodied a trip from one room, to another. But it’s ok, like many small(ish) micro brews, they contract out their recipes to larger, more established manufacturers, so they

only produce 1/3 of their total output in Brooklyn. Just like you readers, I was asleep as this was being told to me. Far more interesting was a huge plastic tub of tubes and a dark colored liquid, which, unfortunately, did not contain beer. Quite a Tease.

With a great dollar - beer ratio ($20 for 6), the ability to get delivery pizza and garlic knots and play endless rounds of Kings all afternoon without a hovering snarly waitress makes this a great bet for a Saturday afternoon…if you’re willing to get out of Manhattan.

Alex and I celebrated our one year anniversary on Monday. All I heard about the Big Day was “wear fancy clothes”…one thing he knows about me: I love Fancy Dates. Though I’m not particularly comfortable with wealth, I love stepping into it from time to time. Eating at 4* restaurants, mainly. And I love experiences vs. material items.

I love my dress. Long, one-shouldered, with pretty velvet flowers gathering at the top and bottom. Sounds dreary to the average fashionista, but I assure you, it’s fabulous. I waited in my company’s lobby for my “equal half” (does that work, or could it be more like “fuzzy naked one”?)

I will say one thing, running around Times Square in formal wear trying to hail a cab, is an experience. In a second, I even felt like a rock star “all eyes on me”. Quite the change.

Quick step into a cab, uptown, 76th & Madison. Foreign territory. Posh boutiques and eateries surround us, but we head to 35 76th: The Carlyle Hotel.

A venerable UES institution. I mean, this is New York. not new york. I flash Cute, Thoughful Boyfriend a knowing grin - I had mentioned wanting to see this for a couple months now. I love surprises.

Cafe Carlyle is in the back of the building, a basement=type setting with a mural - a seeming ode to Greek Mythology. Arrival at 7: Show starts at 8:30.

Dinner, though slightly mediocre with steak & halibut in a bore of an arrangement, was satisfying upper crust (foie gras was a nice touch - though I’m sure it’s not too heart/healthy, organic or even acceptable). Woody came on at 8:30 - I was expecting a little jazzy numbers but it - another surprise - was a little more dixieland. Up-tempo.

Rain after a lovely chocolat gateau w/ raspberry coulis.

Interesting to dip a toe into a life so completely removed from my own. Again, something you can only experience in New York.

Reunited in Dixie - Asheville, NC

Last day before I leave for New York and the plan was to visit Asheville, NC. I've never been and seen countless advertisements (ha). Too bad it was possibly the most frigid place I've ever encountered...

My cold weather improvised outfit, standing in front of the Double Decker Cafe in Asheville

Jane playing with bonnets

And me, clutching my coffee for dear life, attempting this sheriff/fire captain hat.

We also went to the Asheville Museum of Art, where I picked up another postcard to add to my collection! When I got to the airport the next day, I found they over-booked my flight for 2pm and ended up booking me first class on the 10pm flight AND refunding my money! Um, yes, Continental, I sure love you.

Reunited in Dixie

On a whim (pretty much) I flew down to Greenville, SC to visit my best friend Jane...we always get into some sort of trouble when we're together. This time? Line dancing!

Oh line dancing you say? Yes, since I am a product of the Maryland school system, I know how to line dance from P.E. class. Since the early spring of my young, I know the two step! That, and how to hustle...with a pool cue.

Smoky smoky Blind Horse Saloon...

Using the looks and (questionable pool skills) I was given...

I think, if you're in a sorority...some dancing on the bar is to be expected

two steppin'

Jane with Kenneth...it's the end of the night, folks.

With my bestie Jane, look at that Southern glow!

With Concern for the Garment District...

With forethought and hope, I have been continuing my ban on Chinese products but now it looks like I’ll have to include the rest of Asia as well. It’s been tough…I really try hard not to purchase these products, but our economy is such a whore to Asia that nary an American (or European, or South American) product is in sight.

I, maybe somewhat naively, thought all Asian factories were the same. They all get the same orders from the people at Company X and the workers get paid in rice and so on and so forth. There’s not much I can do about that but ban my consumption. I don’t even eat Chinese food.

Continue reading for a list of sweatshop - free companies - because Asians are humans too. In case you were wondering.

Then I learned about Cambodia. I am falling in love with this country. I was listening to This American Life on the radio and heard that Cambodia has amazing labor laws which rival our own out here in the developed world. To quote from FashionIncubator.com :

“Imagine a nation where the sewing industry is characterized by:

Eight hour work days
Seamstresses earn two to three times as much as teachers and policemen.
Child labor is unheard of.
All overtime is paid.
Free medical care on site.
Three months paid maternity leave.
Employers must give breast feeding mothers unimpeded access to their infants
Forty three paid vacation days per year (no, we’re not talking about France, although it once was a French colony).

Does this sound like Shangri la? It’s not. It’s Cambodia; the only poor country in the world to guarantee fair labor practices in the needle trades. Comparatively, their successes far outweigh the standards used in more developed nations. Yes, Cambodia, where one third of the population was killed during the civil war in the 70’s. Today, the needle trade amounts to nearly 100% of the nation’s exports and one third of GDP, thanks to a program instituted under the Clinton Administration. Then, Cambodia agreed to become an unlikely experiment in quality manufacturing and workplace standards, agreeing to random and unsceduled factory monitoring. By all accounts, the experiment was a rousing success. That is until preferential trade practices expired in 2005. Then, it seemed that all could be undone.”

Outsourcing you can feel good about. Though still and underdeveloped country whose teachers and civil servants, etc. are underpaid (hey, not much different than here), their garment industry is leaps and bounds above China’s horror show.

And now, as promised, links to buying super cute, sweat-shop free clothes and other items:

Sweatshop Watch’s Shop With a Conscience

Behind the Label

It won’t keep you up at night to shop at:

American Apparel
Gap Inc. (with 45 factories in Cambodia)
Levi’s (also with large presence in Cambodia)

You’ll have nightmares about:

Nike
Wal-mart (of course)

I’m trying to find more…but these big companies are pretty sneaky.

Cold, Or Without My Usual Blanket

Warning: Post May Induce Seizures and the Need to Listen to Punk Rock for Sheer Anti-Romanticism

If you live in NYC and haven’t been outside yet, do not venture into the vast tundra. It’s disgustingly cold-to the point I was thinking “oh great, another ice age” and “oh my, i am certainly feeling the effects of global warming” (it also causes vast disparities in temperatures, come on people!). I’m wearing long underwear for the first time–can’t feel fashionable, can’t look good, I’m thinking very bad thoughts about numerous slow-walking people and there are still bay gulls (har har) outside my office window! Nothing will make those birds leave the city-though I know how they feel.

My thoughts today are somewhat vomit-inducing, if you’re not a fan of schmaltz-y romantic, lovey thoughts. But not to the point of fluffy kittens and clouds that look like bunnies, or even watching “Enchanted”. It’s more like when Juno tells Bleeker she thinks he’s the coolest bloke ever (sorry for all the Juno posts, without the Juno movie wrap up, check out NYTimes’ here).

Events happened the night of New Year’s that prevent my “roommate” (code: boyfriend) from taking over his side of the bed last night. No, he didn’t die or anything, but we were in Montreal and the night took an ugly turn…more on that later. I haven’t seen him since the 1st but he’ll be back tomorrow night (whew)…which brings up lots of weird feelings. Since we moved in together in July (though we’d be living together, just not in our own place since May) we haven’t spent a night apart.

i'm cold here too...snowboarding in Mont Tremblant

It’s the normal stuff, he locks the doors, turns the smoke detector back on, makes sure to remind me to refill the humidifier, set my alarms, take a shower…i’ve decided he’s the responsible one. He turns the power off when we leave the house, he does the dishes, closes the refrigerator when i leave it open (absentmindedly). He always knows where I put my keys and when’s trash day, recycling day, bulk trash day and when to have our parents park on the opposite side of the street. As I’m writing this, it’s pretty obvious I’m dependent on him for regular apartment happenings. I don’t know when I have to pay rent, the utility bills, cable or when to water the plants. He does though and is pretty willing to stay in his position.

I bet a lot of women are mad at me after reading this. How are you supposed to be independent with Boyfriend reminding you of stuff all the time? Aren’t you interested in figuring out when Tax Day is? (I seriously only know it because it’s my best friend’s birthday)

Fact is, this being dependent business, I feel, makes me more independent to think creatively–something I love to do and think I’m pretty good at. Who needs to think about what exactly can go in the garbage disposal when you can read Voltaire and/

Or maybe this is a worthless argument and I really should learn how to read Voltaire and figure out how the milk keeps replacing itself.

A Little Rant...

Barack Obama (yay!!) and Mike Huckabee (boo!) won at the Iowa caucuses today. To me, Iowa doesn’t mean squat because by November, no one’ll remember who won and who lost–just like the Oscar movies from early 2007. Iowa, to me, doesn’t seem to correctly identify with the rest of the country, so I don’t like to count them - before anyone gets in a tizzy - I’ve been to Iowa and wasn’t impressed. But I really can’t believe Huckabee won - it’s as if the Democrats have too many great candidates and the Republicans are up in the mountains doing a jig. Just look at their choices! A adulterer (most of us have been there, but conservative Repubs can’t like him), a capitalist Mormon (can’t decide which is worse) and (for now) a Baptist minister/rocker/ex-governor. All hacks. I can’t see anything genuine in any of them and I’m ready (been ready for about 8 years) for something genuine. Maybe I’m too far from the religious crazies but I just don’t see how Americans blindly believe in what people say if they are backed by religious fervor. Maybe I just can’t trust anyone too closely tied to religion…Bush is a born-again and all I see is a nation-building, poor-people killing, ignoramus. But you already knew that.

So my question about Huckabee is this…do we really want another 4+ years of idiocy and anti-intellectualism and a continued restriction on our human rights? That’s what this guy is clearly advocating…so I’ll gladly take the Mormon or the adulterer.

New Year's Eve 2007 - Montreal Baby, yeah!

After my birthday, we spent the days exploring the outer parts of Montreal, snowboarding in Mont Tremblant (overrated?) and going to the Biosphere before heading to the Old City for New Years...

On the "chairs" in the subway...so creative

In Laurier neighborhood...very French. Beautiful staircases, but maybe a little impractical for the snow?

Visited the "neighborhood-y" part of Montreal, off Laurier St. More classic, more beautiful than I ever gave Monty credit for! Went to Toaster with Alex and proceeded to gobble this entire tomato and broccoli crepe...

And for New Year's 2007? We went to a huge event space in the Old City - the Marche Bonsecours complex, and met up with our concierge, Clodie, who was exceedingly generous with the bottle service.

Proud brothers...?

With the body painted ladies...wa wa we wa wa

Until next year...

My Birthday & NYE 2007...Montreal!

I hope you get that I like to travel by now, yes? So I decided that now that I've graduated and officially have limited to nil responsibilities, I can use my salary to go on trips (and rent..., but that's no fun). I decided on Montreal for my birthday and New Year's! I'm going to rein in my 22nd birthday with the style and grace only a freezing cold capital city could provide me with. I made the trip with my mom and Alex, with Alex's two brothers (hopefully) meeting up with us later...

The view from our hotel room onto downtown Montreal's shopping district. Every looks pretty and snow-drenched...but it's not so nice if you want to walk around.

Birthday dinner at Bronte with my Mom...(and Alex, but he's taking the picture)

Getting caught in a freak (?) snowstorm in downtown Montreal after a comedy show...and wearing boots with heels? The boys would be giggly if they weren't so cold!

Don't Be A Scrooge

Instead, donate rice and learn at the same time. I’ve donated 280 grains of rice today through FreeRice, an online charity. The site challenges you with vocab words and for each definition you are are smart enough to know, they’ll donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations. No word on who’s actually counting my 280 grains yet…

Another way to be super-noncomformist and do something good for man…er, dog kind is through Tripods. Vet bills ain’t cheap, especially when dealing with serious ailments like cancer and glaucoma. The creator of Tripods Charity Wear is Sonia, the “mama” of Lulu. This little pup had bone cancer in his hind leg and after it was amputated, Sonia had credit card bills of over $10,000. Yikes! After settling her own debts, the clothes and tote bags kept selling and now Tripods wants to help other owners to save their animals by affording these and similar treatments. I’ll woof to that!

Don’t like rice or amputations? Try DonorsChoose.org. Here you can purchase gift certificates to fund educational projects at local public schools (mostly low-income). Those noisy neighborhood kids need an education too! Plus you get sweet thank you notes, and who doesn’t love those.