The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
R.E.M. — “Oh My Heart”
Feelies — “Nobody Knows”
Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog — “Never Better”
Nana Grizol — “Cynicism”
Luke Rathborne — “Motor City”
The Lodger — “Back of My Mind”
Real Estate — “It’s Real”
Girls Names — “I Could Die”
Verlaines — “Death and the Maiden”
Tom Waits — “New Year’s Eve”
King Missile — “Sensitive Artist”
Carl Mann — “Mona Lisa”
Destroyer — “European Oils”

played on BLAST Live via the BLAST Gallery, Teaneck, NJ
Tuesday, 1/31/12, 10-11 a.m. eastern time

This has not been the case for me.

However, I found myself at the “Tear It Up” women’s/men’s Division III basketball doubleheader on Friday, January 27, 2012, at the Jerome S. Coles Sports Center. The home-team New York University Violets would face my alma mater, the Carnegie Mellon Tartans.

There were definitely sports played at my university; it just wasn’t a very big deal. The college teams that get national press are all Division I. Division III is so distant from that, I’m not entirely sure there even is a Division II. When I was a freshman, CMU football received national coverage only once; a short mocking piece in Sports Illustrated about “Diskette Day.” Yes, I was in attendance.

I knew a few guys on the football team: Craig Roeder from Phillipsburg, New Jersey, who lived on my freshman floor; Marvin Germany, still a buddy today; and Mike Hession. My buddy Todd and I would admiringly refer to him behind his back as “Big Mike,” but I guess in the grand scheme of things he wasn’t all that huge. And Craig and Marvin were, you know, regular-size people.

My freshman year (1987–88) also marked the formation of the University Athletic Association. This included such fearsome programs as Brandeis, New York University, and Diskette Day local rivals Case Western Reserve. I do remember going to see the Tartan basketball squad take on NYU—perhaps their first match-up since the 1930s.

When we wanted to see real college sports, we headed up Forbes Ave. to the University of Pittsburgh campus. There we could see future underwhelming NBA player Charles Smith. I’ll always remember some Pitt cheerleaders coercing me to purchase some sort of button. Todd and I joked that it could’ve read “A pretty girl just suckered me into buying this button.” Then there was Pitt Panther football: Big full stadium where we were handed masks-on-a-stick of future NFL All-Pro running back Craig “Ironhead” Heyward. For a game against Penn State, there were illicit T-shirts of Calvin (sans Hobbes) peeing on “Happy Valley.” Oh man we thought that was hi-larious.

Back on our campus, I was on a very “international” intramural team formed with pals who were mostly engineers. We were the Smodnocs. Just one game sticks out in my mind, but that’s because I scored my only goal in an organized soccer career that dated back to second grade.

What else? They built a new stadium while I was there, which people seemed to like I guess. The first year after I graduated, I would check the CMU football results in USA Today, which listed scores for every college in the country. And then… nothing. For two decades. Until an invite came from the New York chapter of the Alumni Association. I haven’t been a very active alum. I think I went to one prior Association event: A concert at a private residence by Sam Prekop of indie heroes The Sea and Cake. (Sam’s dad was then the dean of our College of Fine Arts.) That was pretty cool.

But now, I don’t know, something brought me back into the fold. Maybe it’s that I have a lot of free time. Perhaps it was the complimentary admission and promise of snacks. I’m not sure. But I reserved a spot, and when the day finally came, dug out my long-retired CMU sweatshirt. And headed into enemy territory.

Interestingly, most of the alums on line seemed older; I was expecting people in their early 20s. (Are recent college grads not moving to New York anymore? Fallout of the failed economy?) We signed in, received name tags, a ticket, and a cardinal-red towel. A reception would be held between the evening’s two games. OK, that’s when they’ll hit us up for money.

But there were probably too many of us for a one-on-one appeal: An email said that nearly 150 alums had pre-registered for the games. Entering the field-house level, we were instructed where CMU alumni would sit, directly behind our players’ bench.

According to the program, the outlook was not good for either of the Tartan squads. Our women’s team had lost 17 consecutive games to NYU, not winning in New York since 1990–91, my senior year. This season, the Tartans were 6–10 overall, with an 0–5 mark in the UAA. The Violets, 9–7 and 1–4 in the UAA, seemed to have the edge on their home floor.

Not tonight, though. The Tartans dominated from beginning to end, led by 18 points from junior Emily Peel. In front of cheering alums, CMU came away with an impressive 65–48 victory.

Peel is second in the UAA in scoring and rebounding.

With a half hour before game #2, we headed to the alumni reception, held in a fencing room on the sweat-scented facility’s second floor. A line formed in front of stacks of pizza boxes (pies cut into sixteenths) and aluminum trays of salad and baked ziti. There seemed to be no escape as university officials called for attention. Oh no, here comes the hard sell. First the director of athletics, but she let us off the hook. Ah, but then it was the vice president of campus affairs, an eternally youthful fellow employed by CMU for 30 years who always reminded me of Hoover from Delta House. But still no pleas to donate. That was left to the new associate vice president for alumni relations and—dun-dun-dun-duuuh—annual giving. I have to say, though, he was pretty mellow about it, and we were back in the gym for the player introductions, NYU alma mater, and the national anthem.

The NYU pep band

It soon became clear that the men’s team would have more of a challenge versus NYU. The Violets were ranked 17th in Division III, with a overall 14–1 record and 4–1 in the UAA. CMU, on the other hand, were 6–10 and only 1–4 against UAA competition. This could be a long 40 minutes. And yet, after some initial struggles, the Tartans built up a solid lead, ahead by as many as 14 points early in the second half. CMU relied on excellent perimeter shooting.

Sophomore Asad Meghani sinks a second-half shot.

But the Violets wouldn’t say die in their packed arena. NYU kept chipping away at the lead, paced by 23 points from big bearded Jewish senior Andy Stein. If I was an NYU alum, he would absolutely be my favorite player.

I was starting to feel nervous, antsy, and not just because the annual-giving guy was now sitting next to me on the bleachers. The momentum had clearly shifted. NYU’s purple-clad home fans stomped and chanted. Our defense was porous and on the other end, our shots were not dropping. We were getting sloppy on the fundamentals. “If we’re so good from the perimeter, why do we keep missing from the line?” I asked the grey-mustachioed fellow behind me. “Too close?” he posited.

The Violets cut the deficit to 1 point, and then were down by 2 when a foul sent the Tartans to the charity stripe with 1.3 seconds remaining. I was literally on the edge of my seat. CMU 70, NYU 68: Sinking both free throws would seal the victory. And… he missed the first. Arrgh! CMU called a quick timeout and planned an intentional miss on the second shot, with hopes of running out the clock. But NYU immediately grabbed the rebound and tossed up an 85-foot prayer that… fell just short. We won! We won! All energy was drained from the arena except for our pack of alumni, clapping and cheering. It was a thrilling win and I was ecstatic. What was this strange feeling I was experiencing? Could it possibly be… school spirit?!? Huh! How about that.

It is really nice of you to visit. Please, make yourself at home and stay a while. If the technology allowed it, I would offer you a refreshing beverage. But I will happily reciprocate by going to your page if you tell me what it is.

If you want to join my half-hearted Facebook campaign to replace Regis Philbin, you could click here and then “Like” that page.

If you’re in the NYC area and are free next Tuesday night and you enjoy events that don’t cost money and you wouldn’t mind hearing me read an essay but really you’re there for the burlesque lady, click here for information.

If music is more your thing and Williamsburg is a place you’re prone to hang out and you like clicking “Join” on several-weeks-away Facebook events, here’s one at which I’ll be the emcee.

If you’d like to speak to an operator, please hold on; someone will be with you shortly.

The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
Radar Bros. — “Rainbow”
Rolling Stones — “She’s a Rainbow”
Hooters — “She Comes in Colors”
dB’s — “Black and White”
Loudon Wainwright III — “Grey in L.A.”
Spinto Band — “Brown Boxes”
Split Enz — “I See Red”
Razorcuts — “Big Pink Cake”
Tullycraft — “Orange Cake Mix”
Yellow Balloon — “Yellow Balloon”
Jayhawks — “Blue”
Dolly Mixture — “Grass Is Greener”
Kimberley Rew — “Purple and Orange Stripes”
Mary Gauthier — “The Sun Fades the Color of Everything”

played on BLAST Live via the BLAST Gallery, Teaneck, NJ
Tuesday, 1/24/12, 10-11 a.m. eastern time

7/19/04

met a weird chick tonight. One of the Tunes dudes was playing at Maxwells, but then it was raining like a mother, so i thought i’d stay home. But then it let up a little, and i did feel compelled to go to Benny’s—the guy let me eat free last week; he appreciated my honesty when I said that their chicken parm was merely OK. so i proceeded on to Maxwells. No Sop, no Curb, no Simp, no nothing, so what the hell. “Elysian Cafe” has reopened and it’s not as bad as I feared, but i must go inside and see the damage firsthand. Looks like they left the mural and the ceiling, i think. I hope. More windows. Looks similar but modernized a bit. Fancy tv screens. Back room is totally different, bathed in grey-blue light.

The Maxwells men’s room was also renovated. Nice new tile. But here’s the thing. I hope nobody has to shit, because the toilet is out in the open, and there’s no lock on the door.

Back room was empty—rain i guess—so i got me a Yuengling and sat down on the little bleachers to read. A Tunes dude eventually entered and sat with me. An OK-looking woman sat behind me to my right. During the opening band she asked me, is this the opening band? So clearly she wasn’t with one of the musicians. This is what I’ve learned from the rock shows. The women by themselves, they’re usually waiting for one of the guys on-stage. So i thought, at some point i’ll talk to her. My opening volley failed miserably. This giant dude in a giant red polo shirt was standing right in front of us for some time. (The other Tunes dude had stood up by now, leaving us alone on the bleachers, and she had moved so we were on the same level.) So i was thinking of a joke. Was gonna say “They should show movies on that guy’s back.” But ended up with the lamer “I could’ve stared at that guy’s back all night.” And she said, “But at least we have seats.” And I said, “mmmm.” And that was all for a while. But eventually we did begin chatting. She’s this lawyer-for-hire. Apparently these days, if Merck or Enron or whoever is getting sued, their law firm will hire 200 temp lawyers to review all their paperwork. She says the money is good, she can work a couple of months, take off a month or two, and then there’s always another gig.

So, it was weird, and Sal had described my deal perfectly a few years back: too wild for the straight girls, too straight for the wild girls. And this one I’d say is a straight girl, but maybe open-minded enough. Like, what the hell was she doing at Maxwells? She lives in Manhattan, and hadn’t heard of the main band. But she read about it in TimeOut and decided to check it out. WHo the hell knows. I walked her back to the PATH and gave her my card. Something about her seemed a little whacked out. Who knows. They’re all crazy. Was trying to figure out her age. She’s been in NYC for four years, she went to law school before that. Maybe 30? More? Nice face but had those little age lines that depress the shit out of me. [Former coworker] (who did not take me back to the empty apartment where she was staying) was still highly attractive, but was a highly-attractive 40, which is different.

This is because I am against SOPA. I’ll be totally honest: I don’t really know what SOPA is. It has to do with the Internet and censorship and censorship is bad, so we want our Congresspeople to vote against SOPA so we’ll still have YouTube and Facebook and other sites that might contain objectionable content, and I certainly love objectionable content. It’s one of my favorite things about the Internet. We are against piracy (arrrr!) but SOPA goes too far! And… foreign governments have something to do with this? China, maybe? I know they don’t like Google, they censor the Google over there. I’d look this up to have a better sense of things, but, it’s Wednesday as I type this and I’m sort of trying to not use the Internet at all today. Was that a positive goal of mine? Was anybody else doing this? I spent a few minutes Googling it last night but it was getting close to midnight, so, you know, decision time. I wouldn’t be the first person to make a decision without all the facts in front of me.

So, midnight to midnight, that was my plan, and definitely no Facebook. Except I immediately broke that, because I had to wish a few people a happy birthday, it would be rude not to. So, between midnight and 12:30, I took care of that.

And no blogging. Salt in Wound was ON STRIKE! Look, see, it really was:

Not that anybody noticed. But I got HTML code from some website that would place a black bar across your site’s name and, you know, pasted that code into my “header” whatever the fuck that is (see, I can cuss, because this is a free country, don’t censor my interweb, man, and when I say man I am referring to you, The Man). And as you’re reading this—if you’re reading this—I do have some sort of “Google Analytics” thing installed in which I could see how many “hits” I got, you know, from different countries and stuff. None from China I hope, but if so I apologize for using the F-word, please don’t censor me. I wonder what ever happened to that guy who stood in front of the tank? Well, anyway, if you don’t see a black bar across the top then I successfully got rid of it, but, as I’m typing this I’m scared that I won’t be able to, and I’ll be the blogger guy with the big stupid black bar across his page. Actually, maybe that could become my “thing,” that will propel me into Huffington Post awesomeness.

Did you see that article the other day about Brian Williams e-mailing Gawker.com and giving them shit (note to self: learn how to say “I’m sorry” in Chinese) for not trashing Lana Del Rey’s performance on Saturday Night Live? Granted, she did seem pretty terrible, albeit very sexily terrible. And Brian Williams seems like a pretty cool dude. You know, good sense of humor and all when he’s on Letterman, and he played himself on 30 Rock, etc. But it made me feel all creepy that Brian Williams, just because he’s a super prominent guy, can e-mail the head of a prominent website and likely get them to change their content. (The overall gist was, he hoped they would beef up their weekend presence.) I mean, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, he’s probably not thinking like that, he’s just writing a note to his buddy. But if you got an e-mail from Brian Williams, giving you a friendly “suggestion” about your job, you’d do it, right? Even if he was a pal. Because he’s Brian F-ing Williams. (That was for you, China.) (If you like baseball and music, check out a song called “Ted Fucking Williams” by the Baseball Project, it’s a winner. (Sorry, China.) (Too many parentheses.) I don’t know if it’s on Spotify, I’d check for you but I’m trying to not use the Internet today.) And then I got really scared, because Brian Williams isn’t the only prominent person out there, and he isn’t the most prominent. (Who is? Jon Stewart? Harvey Weinstein? Jay-Z?) So I have to imagine that every minute of the day, prominent people are sending friendly little notes to websites, networks, newspapers, corporations, Congress, etc., and that’s how decisions are being made. And that’s not how decisions are supposed to be made! They are supposed to be made based on the personal whims of your intimidating supervisor! (That was sarcasm, if you didn’t notice.) Where’s the petition against this? That’s the one I want to sign. But no, the news story that gets picked up is “Brian Williams Thinks Lana Del Rey Sucks.” And life goes on.

I guess I digressed there a little bit. Although maybe still circled back to the subject somehow? I thought maybe I’d stick to just e-mail today. Except, my friend Matt sent a link and I didn’t even give it a second thought, I clicked on it, that’s what we do. Reminds me of a slice of pizza I had on Passover one year. Habits is hard to break. But I wasn’t going to Google anything. Except at some point I did, and saw they also had a black bar over their logo, which was cool, but actually, not cool, because they could’ve shut down the site for one freaking day and really proven a point. And I know that because it was in the first couple of sentences of the couple of SOPA articles I skimmed. In the Google results, their also had a black bar over it. But not in Google maps, you lazy sons-of-bitches.

But I wasn’t on Facebook at all. Except, I was. Because Facebook messages are e-mail-esque, often used instead of e-mail, and I used to get an e-mail notification every time someone sent me a Facebook message but now I only get those notifications sometimes, part of a master plan to wean me off e-mail for good, I suppose. So I went on there and replied to a couple of messages and then looked at a few status updates, but didn’t linger, didn’t scroll. And then I saw an awesome one from my friend Martha, with words blacked out, you know, “redacted,” and that reminded me that the site where I got the black-bar code had a feature like that, I could enter text that would come out redacted when I posted it to Facebook, that might be cool. So I went back to that site and typed up something and went to Facebook and pasted it and… then deleted before posting because, no, I wasn’t going to post anything on Facebook for 24 hours. Well, 24 hours minus the birthday-messages writing time.

I certainly didn’t do any blogging. I mean, I visited this site, did some “behind-the-scenes” maintenance, that was OK, wasn’t it? Or by merely visiting the site did I counteract my own boycott? I really should’ve read up on this stuff. And then I got panicky because a post I wrote Tuesday night had the date “January 18, 2012” on it. People will think I crossed my own picket line! But the website is on California time or something like that. So if you post late at night the date will be tomorrow’s. Ah but who’s going to read this far to see that very valid explanation? So I went in there and edited the date. You can do that. Don’t trust anything. I also monkeyed with some “Like This on Facebook” and “Tweet” buttons I’ve installed and re-installed. I like the idea of having those buttons, but don’t want them to be intrusive. Still, if I’m going to reach HuffPo-type numbers, these are the things I have to do, must do some Search Engine Optimization. So “Like” me, “Tweet” Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me.

Even typing this feels like I’m cheating somehow, since I would be posting this immediately if it wasn’t for the strike. Is this me just getting a quick fix? Well, I’m writing this in a Word document, not on the site itself, so I guess that’s something. I’ll cut and paste and italicize stuff after midnight.

Which is 3 hours and 19 minutes away. What to do, what to do. Eat food, sure. I’ll watch TV; I like TV. Wow, I hope they vote down this SOPA bill. At least during the hurricane, I could still screw around on my smartphone.

Oh, yeah, don’t forget those buttons down there.

The Who — “Happy Jack” [THEME]
The Dentists — “Strawberries Are Growing in My Garden (and It’s Wintertime)”
Dr. Teeth & the Electric Mayhem — “Can You Picture That?”
The Teeth — “The Trumpets Blared”
Fugazi — “Waiting Room”
Reverend Horton Heat — “Where in the Hell Did You Go With My Toothbrush?”
Olivia Tremor Control — “Today I Lost a Tooth”
Bobby Bare Jr. — “Bullet Through My Teeth”
Iron & Wine — “White Tooth Man”
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! — “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth”
Talking Heads — “Sugar on My Tongue”
The Go-Go’s — “Our Lips Are Sealed”
Allo Darlin’ — “Kiss Your Lips”
The Jesus Lizard — “Mouth Breather”
Mountain Goats — “Lion’s Teeth”
Tindersticks — “Milky Teeth”

played on BLAST Live via the BLAST Gallery, Teaneck, NJ
Tuesday, 1/17/12, 10-11 a.m. eastern time

And it comes with a real penny, right on the cover. (That came out of my payment.)

I think about Keira nightly. What? Oh, sorry, it’s spelled Knightley. I’ve been an admirer since the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, but I guess I’ve only seen her in that, Bend It Like Beckham, Pride & Prejudice, and now this. And maybe she’s not the greatest actress of her generation, but you know what, she’s pretty darn good.

As Sabina Spielrein, she has a bit of a moose-und-squirrel Russian accent, and the mentally-unbalanced tics and moans of an actor thinking “ooh this is the role that gets me nominated again.” But she doesn’t overdo it and thus is quite effective in the part, nicely balancing madness, intellect, and sexuality.

And sex comes up a lot here. I don’t know too much about Sigmund Freud (despite reading his Civilization and Its Discontents and Character and Culture in a great college course). And I know even less about Carl Jung. And I’d never even heard of Spielrein. So, first off, there was fascinating history in this for me. And amazing that the psychological analysis of sexual urges that we take for granted now was first seriously discussed not much more than a century ago. Freud is sexualizing everything, Jung is getting mystical, and in between them steps this kooky Russian Jew who has some compelling notions of her own. Talk about a beautiful mind!

Viggo is solid as Freud but it is Michael Fassbender-like-Beckham who really impresses. Whether he is standing up to Father Figure Freud or fighting a losing battle against temptation, Fassbender makes us feel for Jung. (“You make me feel so Jung….”) This is not the sort of film that gets a sequel, but apparently Jung’s life gets even more interesting later. I was hungry for more.

David Cronenberg frames things beautifully in what is a fairly talky movie. (Well, it is the “talking cure” after all.) I must say, a lingering shot on some polygraph-esque machinery did make me long for the twistedness of Dead Ringers, etc. Still, a very worthwhile entry in his canon. Which I would word-associate with cannon, which Freud would say is…

Walmart.
White pages.
Wheel of fortune.
Where is Chuck Norris?
Where do fruit flies come from?
Where do penguins live?
Where do people go when they die?