Music Taste

Sarah put on Bach's Brandenburg Concertos this morning. Asher looked up from his toy farm and nonchalantly said, "Bach."

Sarah (excited): Yes! It's Bach! Very good! Do you like Bach?

Asher: No. (Goes over to the CD's, picks out Raffi) I want this.

And now they're dancing to a song about eating apples and bananas.

Observations

Podcasts are tops for commute entertainment, particularly Bill Maher's weekly extravaganzas and Brian Lehrer's morning shows. Check 'em out through the iTunes Music Store.

British rock journalists are incapable of creating a "best of" list that does not contain the following: (a) at least one Oasis mention; (b) at least one terrible band that has no business anywhere outside the cutout bin (Arctic Monkeys?); (c) the wrong Massive Attack song/album.

Internet culture ages in dog years. Fellow student after reading an essay written in 1999: "Why is she talking about Excite? No one goes there."

Ex-suckster/wonkette Ana Marie Cox should give lessons to Amanda Congdon on how to not be really young when dealing with lots of older, white men in domineering corporate media positions.

The new Rhapsody interface drives me batshit.

Hey vendors, if I wanted a Cadillac, I would have asked for a Cadillac. Right now, all I need is a scooter. If you try to sell me a Cadillac, I will go somewhere else on general principle.

At Asher's insistence, we have just listened to "Row, Row, Row, Your Boat" 21 times. Thankfully (sorta), I figured out after the third time that I could program it to auto-repeat.

Aside from that little blip, our weekend has been spectacular. Today, we did the Kaufman family thing, and Asher got to mingle with Noam, Daniel, Jonathan, Yishai and Sammy – all boys under the age of five. Crayons were stuffed in noses, duals were fought – and lost – with rocking horses, and lots of (kosher) pizza was consumed.

Speaking of pizza, we finally found a restaurant where we could take Asher for dinner that didn’t leave Sarah and I the equivalent of ten years worse for wear after chasing, cajoling and cleaning continuously for the duration of the meal – Two Boots Pizza in Park Slope. Two Boots is a “family friendly” (non-kosher) pizza etc. establishment with crayons for kids, and a wide open window into the kitchen where everyone who so desires can climb up a few steps to watch the people make the food. On a whim, we went there last night with Amy, Dan, and their two-year-old son Oliver. It was the most relaxing meal I’ve had in weeks.

It's Friday afternoon, and my parents are on their third day in town.

They visit from Springfield about three times a year. Park Slope has an assortment of rent-by-the-weekend apartments, and they test out a different one each visit (For interested parties like Amy, my Dad keeps a running list of places, prices and reviews). This time, they're staying a block away on Berkeley Street in a cute garden level rental with DirecTV, broadband and what is allegedly the least comfortable bed in modern civilization.

But back to the narrative. It's Friday. The day after Thanksgiving. As in, the busiest shopping day of the year. My parents - who have an aversion to crowds - thought it would be a good idea to take the subway into Manhattan for a trip to B&H on 34th and 9th. For you out-of-towners, 34th street is the location of Penn Station and Macy's. When I pointed this out to my Dad, he said, "How bad could it be?"

I can't wait to hear about it all.

Meanwhile, Asher's napping. I'm (not really) doing work, and Sarah is (of course) at the office editing an uplifting piece on drug/gang violence in Mexico.

How is your Thanksgiving holiday going?

Snobbery Does Not Pay



I remember when WYSIWYG HTML editors first hit the market in the late Nineties.

After years of manually coding html, I refused to convert, inexplicably maintaining that they denied me my creative flexibility. Instead, I preferred to fiddle around in the code, wasting hours on table cell borders, font sizes, and image layouts. At most, I would use some of the BBEdit keystrokes to make life a bit easier.

Today, I used Dreamweaver for the first time. And in about four minutes, I created an entire html wireframe, complete with colors, sized images, and formatted text. It's an amazing program, and I'm an idiot for not leaning on it earlier.

Now, if I can just get that Gary Wright song "Dream Weaver" out of my head...

It's 10:22pm, and Asher is finally asleep. This is the worst case of coxsackie he's ever had.

Somehow, I managed to finish the reading notes for class (Each week, a different student leads discussion on a reading). This week was Mark Poster's Postmodern Virtualities (so very 1990s). Here's my "Elevator Pitch/Armchair Critique" section:


Mark Poster maps popular notions of postmodernity (see Dominant Themes section) to emerging technologies like the internet and virtual reality. By the essay’s publish date, this was a well-worn path (Gibson, Stephenson, two full years of Wired), and I’m not sure why he asserts otherwise. I was also surprised that he missed the lay-up of hypertext being the physical manifestation of the fragmented narrative – another favorite postmodern finding of the time.

Let's start with the bright spot in an otherwise dismal weekend: Sarah's parents came over to babysit on Saturday night, and we went out to see jazz trumpeter Jeremy Pelt whip up a sick, sick set with his quartet at the Brooklyn Conservatory.

The Conservatory is right around the corner from our apartment, and one of the many incredible music venues in the neighborhood. Lately, Park Slope has really come up in the music world. We've always had the rock club Southpaw. And Barbes, with its gypsy jazz and good beer has been the worst kept secret around town. But in the past year, Union Hall opened up, Puppet Jazz started booking music, and A-listers started to creep into the Conservatory's schedule.

Now the bad stuff: Asher is sick. Again. Coxsackie. Again. Sarah had to work on Saturday. Again. I had to work on Sunday. Again. We're having the lack-of-space freak out. Again. Good times.

Sarah and I spent four hours in the doctor's office today for her 20 week sonogram. Everything was fine with us and the baby. It was the people before us that bottlenecked the entire operation. On the bright side, they told us that if we ever needed emergency care, they'd stop the whole world for us, too. Fair point.

Tonight, we're going to a Shabbas dinner hosted by Asher's Orthodox pre-school. On one hand, it will be a lot of fun to see him in action with his peeps. On the other hand, I fear these may be some pretty frum (religious) peeps. I'm always a little nervous when I meet new people who are purportedly very religious. It's not that I expect them to levitate in on a deity-powered beam of righteous light, spouting condemnations and condescensions in my general secularist direction. Not really. I don't expect that at all. Nope.

In truth, religious people are just like everyone else. Get outa town! No, really. I learned that when I met Sarah's family, friends, and larger social circle. Some of them are losers (not Sarah's family, of course. They're all winners). Some of them are neutral. Some of them are snarky British ex-pats raising wicked cool families on the Coast and moonlighting as NPR commentators. Okay, one of them is. But there are, in fact, many religious people that don't have three heads - or one big one for that matter.

Got my midterm back in class tonight. I did pretty well, though I got dinged a bit essentially because I spent too much time on the last question indicting Marxism and not enough time sticking to what was supposed to be the primary topic. I knew that was going to happen, and the amusement was certainly worth the penalty.

We're on to postmodern theory now. So far, it's little more than a slightly distilled version of the themes that I covered in undergrad. Hopefully, it will become more intellectually rigorous by the close of the semester.

Asher's asleep. Sarah's asleep. I hope to be asleep shortly. Good night.

For the past few days, Asher has been contentious to say the least. To make matters worse, he’s going through a huge Daddy phase, which means Sarah’s getting a major cold shoulder. I’m not going to get into details, because they’re too tedious to reflect on here. Suffice to say, fellow parents and other sympathizers, it’s been “one of those days” since basically Thursday.

He’s calming down for a nap, now. Sarah’s at the beginning of another twelve hour weekend day (and night) shift at work. Their first show airs on Tuesday, so everyone’s a bit crazed.

I’m going to clean up, eat lunch, and read some feminist theory for Tuesday’s class.

Sarah vs. the Co-op (Where we shop, not where we live)

Sarah's on the warpath...

From: Sarah Josephson Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 10:21 AM To: Josephson, Isaac Subject: throw them out of office! Asher and I went to the co-op AGAIN only to find that there are STILL no kosher chickens on the shelf. So, I paged out to see what the story is. Apparently they were delivered 2 FUCKING DAYS AGO and are sitting in the basement waiting for the "kosher committee" to unpack them. I went down to the basement but was not allowed to touch the boxes (because I haven't been blessed by the "kosher committee"). Needless to say, I had a fit. Went around and talked to the powerful people in the co-op and I'm starting a campaign to end the "kosher committee." They need to be thrown out of office ('tis the season.) ------

Some background: Although we don't keep a strictly kosher household, we do only buy kosher meat. A few religious nuts that belong to the co-op have managed to convince the board that only Jews who have been approved by them are allowed to touch the kosher meat. Fine - except that they never show up to stock the stuff, and it often sits in the basement freezer for several days. What drives Sarah especially nuts is that - because of her background - she knows that there is no law that says only religious Jews can stock kosher chicken that's encased in plastic.

Why Investigations Matter - A Pragmatic Perspective

Nancy Pelosi says that impeachment is off the table. Other Democratic leaders have said that they don't have time to waste with investigations. Priority, we're told, will be given to things like the minimum wage, health care, anti-corruption legislation, direct negotiation with pharma companies for lower medicare drug prices, and no deficit spending.

Realistically though, the President will veto all of this. Or, it will get tied up in conference (should the Republicans retain the Senate).

The ONLY way to push any of this agenda through is to back it up with the threat of investigations.

Fire up that noise machine, Conyers and Waxman. We got work to do.

Sarah and Asher are both asleep. I’m taking a break from Frederick Jameson to rip the CD’s I bought at Amoeba, balance the checkbook, blog, and, well, generally procrastinate from reading Frederick Jameson.

Here’s a hodge-podge from my recent life:

Today was a typical Family Sunday. We went to the zoo with Sarah’s parents, sisters, brother and his family of four children. There, Asher fed pebbles to goats, pointed out every instance of the letter “B” on the signs, and was alternately babied and (inadvertently) bullied by his older cousins.

Yesterday, Chris, Dave, Therese and other folks played a children’s rock show at Southpaw in Park Slope. Showtime was supposed to be 11am, though they didn’t open the doors until 11:30. That may not seem like a big deal, but it was 40 degrees. And there were 50 parents with more than 50 toddlers waiting outside. When the guy at the door poked his head out for the third time to apologize, I quipped that we weren’t 26 anymore. We were 2 and thirtysomething, and this did not fly. Nonetheless, it ended up being a great show. Thanks to Chris, Dave and Therese for providing splendid, warm entertainment to us and to our kids.

Every time I go to San Francisco, I feel like I’m visiting an ex-girlfriend who may be hot, but had a fatal flaw that ultimately doomed our relationship. And now, every time I see her (or visit it), all I can see is that fatal flaw.

My Amoeba Haul

The Decemberists - Crane Wife (recommended by Gabe, Shawn, Anonymous)
Nels Cline - New Monastery (recommended by Aaron)
Charles Mingus - UCLA 1965 (recommended by Matt, Jason)
Juana Molina - Son (recommended by Matt)
Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid… (recommended by all sentient beings)


I also got some replacement CD's (lost, cassette conversion, etc.) on the cheap:

Paul Simon - Graceland
Lauren Hill - Miseducation
Jeff Buckley - Grace

Kid # 2

The results of the amnio are in, and baby Josephson #2 will be joining us in our cramped Park Slope apartment some time in early April!