Yo La Tengo and Kevin Shields - Two great tastes...

Just finished listening to the Kevin Shields remix of Yo La Tengo's "Autumn Sweater." So mellow. So sublime.

And now, it's being followed (thanks to Rhapsody's shuffle feature) by a melancholy, ethereal post-punk tune - "So Here We Are" by Bloc Party.

What a wonderful way to close out the work day.

Here's one of my many FAVORITE things about working in start-up mode:

You scream for more resources for two years, because all of this stuff is falling through the cracks.

You finally get some resources.

They're appalled at all of this stuff that fell through the cracks, and think it happened because you were too ignorant to notice.

Feh.

Happy birthday to me.

It's mildly unsettling to realize that you remember your parents being the same age that you are now.

Apparently, my company is also Germany's biggest neo-nazi party.

Go figure.

Sarah and Asher (5 weeks old), post bath.

Park Slope: Life is no longer elsewhere

When Sarah and I lived in Berkeley, social life was a huge problem. Most of our friends were elsewhere - New York, Chicago, Boston. Hell, with the Bay Area's anemic public transportation, even our cohorts in San Francisco (broke and bitter as they were) might as well have been across the continent for all of the companionship they lent us. Lazy bastards.

The move to New York City was a big step in the right direction, socially. Old friends were a short subway ride away. But friends drift apart - both physically (Come back R,Y and A - the water pressure's better here!) and emotionally. And priorities change to where the 2am subway ride back to Brooklyn makes the haul into Manhattan seem less and less appealing.

We needed interesting people nearby who we could meet for dinner, or hook up with at Barbes, or just coerce into joining us for impromptu walks around Prospect Park.

This weekend was a challenge in many ways - mostly baby-centric. But it was also a success. Sarah and I didn't leave the neighborhood once, but we met friends for dinner, for brunch and for walks - new friends, for the most part. Interesting folks with creative streaks, likeminded liberal bias, great musical tastes, and just enough disaffection to provide some bite.

Maybe, Park Slope was the right place for us.

I have this friend.

He's a bright guy, my friend. Articulate and open-minded. But lately, he's been leaning towards Bush, pushed, I think, by fear of terrorism and the dual distractions of family and work that cause him to be admittedly less informed then he should be.

Lately, I've been trying to talk to my friend, to send him easily digestable, relatively un-biased information on a variety of issues which I think show that the Bush Administration and the Republican Party are committing egregious and systematic offenses against the American people. When he has time to read these articles, he tends to see them as isolated incidents that have little direct reflection of Republican/Bush Administration policies, and are rather the work of "typical governement mishaps" or the noxious deeds of a few bad apples.

Below is one of a series of emails I've sent to my friend recently, to try to get him to see a bigger picture.

OK, I'm back from one of my two negotiated nights per week at the gym. Ran a quick 4 miles on the treadmill and did just enough abs to convince myself that I'm making an effort to chip away at this tire around my waist. Luckily, Asher and Sarah are both blissfully sleeping, which leaves me some free time to share a few hopefully lucid thoughts with you. I. I am not traditionally a left-winger. I consider myself to be a fiscal conservative. I believe more in capitalism and less in socialism than your average left-wing Democrat. I'm glad we kicked the shit out of the Taliban, and when my representative Barbara Lee was the only one to vote against action in Afghanistan, I was not happy. Living in Berkeley made me want to become a Republican. They're pretty extreme out there. II. Bush is under the complete control of factions of the Republican party that scare the shit out of me. Republicans these days basically fall into four broad categories: 1) Fiscal conservatives who may be strong on defense, but are likely more moderate in general. McCain, Specter, Hagel, Rep. Shays, Snowe, and so on. There are definitely differences (ie, McCain is much more socially conservative than Snowe), but I'm grouping them together for argument's sake. I can dig these folks. I could conceivably vote for these folks. Unfortunately, they're a dying breed. And they have very little power. 2) Social conservatives Santorum, Inholfe, Coburn, etc. This group seems more concerned with what's going on in your bedroom and in your doctor's office than what's on the radio/tv/big screen. They freak me out. Personally, I believe that the government has more right to regulate what's in the public space (radio/tv/big screen) than the private space, though I'm not a big fan of either, of course. Because of Bush's religious pretentions, these folks are a pretty powerful contingent, sharing control with group #3. 3) "Free marketers" Cheney, etc. These folks have explicitly stated that they would like to roll back government's social and economic programs to a pre-New Deal era - perhaps all the way back to before income tax was legalized in 1913, and before the Sherman Act was passed in 1890, which served as the basis for later anti-trust laws. They believe that education, social security, health care and the like are not fundamental rights and that the government shouldn't provide for them. This really troubles me for two reasons: First, I fundamentally disagree with them. Second, most are pretty large hypocrites and have been caught using their positions to manipulate the free market for their personal gain, which leaves their intentions suspect, to say the least. 4) Power for Power's sake Delay is the king of this group. Really bad dude who breaks tons of laws simply to shore up his hold on power. Talk about unethical. Even the Democrats in their 40 years as lords of the House never pulled half the shit he has. III. Zero oversight. No checks and balances. That's bad. When Clinton was in the White House, he was under investigation for something new every session of Congress. The biggest one - Whitewater - went on for 8 years. No investigation ever turned up any wrongdoing on Clinton's part, save lying about getting a blowjob from Lewinski. The media was crawling up Clinton's ass, too,with nothing to show in the end. But he was investigated. There was oversight. That's Congress and the media's job. Under Bush, literally dozens of things cry out for investigation. But since we have a Republican House and Senate, nothing is ever investigated. And the media has been manipulated/cowed into submission, which means no fourth estate oversight. With no investigation, stories like the ones I sent you in an earlier email, and statements from group #3 above, I really do think that the administration is cynically distracting us with terror talk and Christian issues while they systematically dismantle all the social progress this country has made in the past 100 years and pay off their friends/financers in the process. IV. The Republican financial stewardship sucks. Don't need to get into this. I think you and I agree. Okay. Enough for tonight. I'm going to go stare at my sleeping son. Best, isaac

Moonbeam Springer?

Did you know that Jerry Springer was elected mayor of Cincinnati in 1977 at age 33 - the same year that Dennis Kucinich was elected mayor of Cleveland at the age of 31?

Did you know that Jerry Springer got his law degree from Northwestern in 1968, and worked on Bobby Kennedy's campaign?

Did you know that Jerry Springer was the anchor on the Cincinnati NBC affiliate for 10 years, and garnered 7 emmy awards during that time?

I knew none of this. I just thought he was an obnoxious, crackpot tv show host that specialized in white trash, sex changes and mothers who slept with their daughters' husbands.

Apparently, the man really knows his shit politically. He will be joining the Air America radio roster in April.

Happy Purim!

We're going to the Montauk Minyan tonight for megillah. Sarah and I are in charge of refreshments, so we're bringing beer and rugalach.

Asher at the doctor today:
- 8lbs, 4 oz (1lb, 4oz growth in two weeks)
- 20 inches (2 inches growth in two weeks)
- Can flip over from stomach to back on his own

Isaac at work today:
- There's lots of money in popular music, but it's on the brand marketing end rather than the consumer cd sales end.
- Lots of people I talk to hate their jobs.
- There's still no soap in the men's bathroom.

I need recommendations for Netflix

Do you use Netflix? Let's do the friends page thing so that I can get some good recommendations.

Don't use Netflix? What movies should I be watching?

New Release Tuesday

I've just loaded new releases from Brendan Benson, Vic Chesnutt, The Decemberists, John Doe, Moby and Anders Parker into my Rhapsody new releases playlist. So far, the Brendan Benson is really damn catchy!

Went to exchange CDs at lunch today. Walked away with Joe Henry's Trampoline, the Pavement Crooked Rain re-issue and R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People (finally).

Last night was a tough one with Asher. He hit his fussy period right when I walked in the door. Sarah and I traded off until around midnight when he finally fell asleep for a series of 90 minute stretches.

The more I think about this, the more I'm utterly dumbfounded.

The Pentagon just confirmed to the Associated Press that 108 captives have died while in U.S. custody - "most of them violently."

To put this in context, 114 United States soliders died while in the custody of the North Vietnamese during the 13-year duration of the Vietnam war.

In two years, we have murdered nearly as many prisoners as the North Vietnamese did in thirteen. Remember that the North Vietnamese for a time were the poster regime for barbarism in America.

I distinctly recall a conversation with two people in my office when this whole thing first broke last year. They said, "It's not like anyone DIED or anything." And when I dug up reports in foreign press that seven prisoners had been beaten to death, they said, "That's only seven - out of how many? Plus, how can you believe foreign press?"

What about 108 dead? Is that enough? Get your heads out of the sand, HF and MM.

The N.A.A.C.P. is claiming that the Bush administration has sic'ed the I.R.S. on them because they have been openly critical of government policies.

The same article notes that "Roughly a dozen nonprofit organizations have publicly contended that government agencies and Congressional offices have used reviews, audits, investigations, law enforcement actions and the threat of a loss of federal money to discourage them from activities and advocacy that in any way challenge government policies, and nonprofit leaders say more are complaining quietly.
."

Two examples cited are the Advocates for Youth organization, which operates programs that educate teenagers about reproductive health (ie, birth control), understandibly attracting the ire of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials who were ordered by Senator Inholfe (R-OK, chairman of senate public works committee) to hand over tons of financial records just three days after they criticized the Bush administration's now-stalled Clean Skies act.

I want my country back.

This is really, really fucked up. According to a front page article in today's Washington Post, the U.S. tried to rally its Asian allies behind it's North Korea policies by flat out lying and saying that Kim Jong Il sold nuclear material to Libya. The result? North Korea abruptly pulled out of talks a few weeks back (remember that?). Our allies found out that we were lying, and are slightly pissed at us.

On an entirely unrelated note, Sarah's parents volunteered to watch Asher last minute on Saturday night. We went down the block to Freddy's and caught a random string band that turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. Two banjos, two fiddles, a steel guitar, an upright, a washboard, a kazoo, a harmonica and a lot of fun.

It's amazing how little capacity I have for extra-cirricular thought these days. Had lunch with Josh this afternoon, and when we drifted into our usual conversation about politics (away from our usual conversation about his film and my thoughts on music), I had little to add. For the first time in years, I'm simply not able to ingest, much less digest everything that's going on. Bush nominates another bad guy for something. Republicans pass another dumb law. Biden is angling for 2008. Lieberman's a neo-con. That's about as deep as I get.

My level of intelligent socio-political discourse is pretty much limited to not-so-wry cracks about Sarah's usage of our new Netflix account. She rented the first episode of Little House on the Prairie (in which Pa harvests a crop he didn't know he had - a crop of friends). Small town. Boostrapping. Faith-based initiatives and a lot of God. I'm waiting for this show to make a comeback.

This site always makes me laugh.

Are you supposed to work a 14-hour day three weeks after your baby is born? I saw Sarah for 37 minutes tonight before she went to bed. Asher is also asleep. Not sure whether to be happy or sad about that one.

Somehow, in the past seven years, I've migrated professionally from coaxing a very stoned Willie Nelson into a pre-show interview to long range strategic planning, short-term marketing collateral, and a fistful of HR-related paperwork that never seems to lessen.

What a long, strange trip it's been.

Listening to Laetitia Sadler's (Stereolab) side project Monade right now. It's got the same mod-ish avant pop sound as Stereolab, but is more song- instead of jam-based. Not much music out there that can be both soothing and utterly whacked-out/surreal. Great stuff.

As I listen, I'm reminded of a random night at the Fillmore when Sarah, Matt and I went to see Stereolab. All of us were in various states of intoxication, and Matt went on a long, rambling discourse about some idea he had for a sitcom. Sarah and I still aren't sure to this date whether his idea sucked or his explanation was circuitous due to lack of sobriety. We're willing to give him another chance, if he remembers what he was talking about.

I know it's cliche, but the Fillmore has to be one of the best venues I've ever experienced. Great vibes, great sound, great food. Never too stuffy and the patrons were never too pushy. Pit that against Chicago's drunken, disobedient crowds(sometimes friendly, sometimes not, always raucous) packed past the fire code into clubs where the sound was at best pocket-y, or New York's across-the-board undeserved attitude. No contest.

It's not what you think...

Went to the pharmacy to pick up four D batteries and a bottle of KY.
.
.
.
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The batteries were for a fisher price swing and the KY was for an infant thermometer that needs a water-based lubricant. I swear.

Baby Steps

We took Asher out in public for the first time last night - dinner with Jon and Jessica at the Italian restaurant across the street. The idea was for us to get some adult interaction, though I'm not sure hanging out with a grade school teacher who used to write for Nickelodean and a senior editor at Mad Magazine who used to dress up as Star Wars characters for a living qualified as such.

It's been nearly 6 months since I wrote anything for publication, but the drought is over... if you count this little ditty for an upcoming issue of Down Beat.

I have this running playlist on Rhapsody that contains all CDs of note that are released during the year. I try to give at least a cursory listen to each one, you know, to see what the kids are listening to (Ok, I doubt "the kids" are even aware of the new Dave Holland disc with that awesome suite he composed for the Monterey Festival a couple of years back. And they probably don't give a shit about Thrill Jockey's latest Pit Er Pat release, but allow me the expression.). Anyway, I got to work especially early today (thanks, Asher), so I had a few solid hours of listening time before people started coming at me. From 7-9am, I covered Jack Johnson, Amos Lee, Ben Lee, Josh Ritter and Josh Rouse, and now I'm ready to pound the crap out of the next pseudo-sentimental male singer-songwriter with an affected, world-weary tone, acoustic guitar and whispered-raspy phrasings that make Jetta-driving, unmarried, thirtysomething trixies swoon.

On a different note, I'm beginning to think I smell like a combination of soiled diapers, regurgitated breast milk and dreft. But maybe, I'm just paranoid.

You know things are getting out of control when the New York Times editorial starts to sound like a Maureen Dowd column:


..."We certainly look forward to Mr. Bolton's confirmation hearings, and, after that, his performance at the United Nations, where he will undoubtedly do a fine job continuing the Bush administration's charm offensive with the rest of the world.

Which leaves us wondering what Mr. Bush's next nomination will be. Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate a new set of Geneva Conventions? Martha Stewart to run the Securities and Exchange Commission? Kenneth Lay for energy secretary?"

What's this one called - the Healthy Babies Act?

The Washington Post reports today that the EPA lied in its cap-and-trade proposal to regulate mercury emissions.

Why do we care about this? Simply put, the current levels of mercury cause brain damage in children and fetuses.

Cap-and-trade is essentially the practice where (a) emissions limits are set; (b) By virtue of the particular industry they're in, some polluters naturally go way over that limit, and some polluters come in way under it; (c) The polluters that go way over the limit are allowed to purchase the unused pollution allowances from the polluters that are way under the limit.

The other proposal on the table is a simple cap on emissions that would be applied across the board.

The Bush Administration argues that providing these financial incentives will be a more efficient, and in the long term, more effective way to reduce Mercury emissions - avoiding costly lawsuits and immediate re-tooling, and allowing industries to gradually phase in new low-emission plants.

Now, it turns out their math was a bit... err... fuzzy. Go figure.

So, from where did the details of this fabulous cap-and-trade program spring, you ask? Why, they were taken verbatim from "suggestions" by lawyers representing the polluting companies. The linked article only mentions one of the companies by name - Cinergy Inc. According to OpenSecrets.org, Cinergy is (surprise, surprise) a HUGE Republican contributor, with the CEO personally ponying up $59,058 to Republican candidates.

File Under: Things I'm shockingly embarrassed to have the musical reference to recognize

The piano intro to "Sister Christian" appears to be nothing more than a slowed-down, slightly more simple version of the piano intro to "Tiny Dancer."

Hold me closer...

Weekend Parenting Inventory

Late night runs to pharmacy: 2
Glasses of scotch: 2
Movies rented: 1
Movies watched: 1/2
Diapers changed: 13
Loads of baby clothes laundered: 4
Most contiguous hours slept: 3
Number of distinct places baby positioned hoping that he falls asleep: 7
Number of partial Bob Dylan songs sung to screaming baby: 7
Number of Bob Dylan songs that were post-Blonde on Blonde: 1

We've started referring to the pacifier as the snooze button. It buys us 9 minutes of extra sleep.

Now, if we could just find the volume on this thing...

So... when do the rewards start to roll in from this parenting thing?

The truth is, it's not so bad, so far. I'm still in the honeymoon period, but I honestly think it's funny that he pees through about 9 outfits a day, necessitating a laundry every 24 hours.

The best was when the mohel took off Asher's diaper to perform the bris, he projectile pooped all over the poor man - as if that were his only weapon against the pending offense. I haven't seen Asher do that before or since, so I'm convinced there was some cosmic correlation.