It appears that I'm still able to post here for the moment. Nice. Hopefully this statement won't fall into the "famous last words" category.

Just got done doing an impromptu set on radio free #mofirc. The theme: cover tunes. Apparently it's not kosher to publish a set list beforehand, so here's what you would have heard if I had gotten home in time to actually notify people that I was DJing tonight:

Bone, "#mofirc jingle"
The Postmarks, "Every Day Is Halloween" [Ministry]
Cibo Matta, "About A Girl" [Nirvana]
Self, "What A Fool Believes" [Doobie Brothers]
Frank Sinatra, "Mrs. Robinson" [Simon and Garfunkel]
The Bad Plus, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" [Nirvana]
Atom And His Package, "Open Your Heart" [Madonna]
"Weird" Al Yankovic, "Bohemian Polka" [Queen]
Ben Folds, "In Between Days" [The Cure]
The Postal Service, "Against All Odds" [Phil Collins]
Creedle, "The Illuminati Rainbows Unveiled (Rainbow Connection)" [Kermit the Frog]
Fiona Apple, "Across The Universe" [Beatles]
The Unwrapped Band, "Rapper's Delight" [Sugar Hill Gang]
Discount, "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" [REM]
Ben Folds, "Bitches Ain't Shit" [N.W.A.]
Frank Zappa, "Stairway To Heaven" [Led Zepplin]

There's a very good chance that, in the next day or so, technical issues on Blogger's end will cause me to be unable to update this blog.

Long story short, I've been uploading new entries using FTP (a holdover from the discontinued Blogspot Plus option). That will no longer be an option tomorrow... and regular old Blogger publishing doesn't recognize URLs with underscores as valid. I didn't figure this out until today when I tried to switch over from FTP publishing.

If the worst case scenario happens and I can't post to the bone anymore I'm going to be really bummed. It just occured to me that I've regularly updated this site for over 4 years, and in a weird way it's been the only constant in my life for all of that time.

I'll getting set to email folks at Blogger, but if you don't see posts from me by November 1 then check the-bone.blogspot.com (created the last time I had problems of this nature). You may need to update your links as well if you link to me, and I'll create LiveJournal syndication for the alternate addres as well. I'll leave more details in the comments to this post if necessary.

Update, 10/30: Still OK. Let's see what happens tomorrow.

Update, 10/31: Still fine.

Update, 11/1: Holding steady.

FYI: There's an entertaining post behind the velvet rope on bone@typepad.

An update on the typepad blog just went up.

So tired. I need a Red Bull I.V. drip.

I was going to up a link to Creek Running North with the text "Fuck internet trolls," in response to the fact that Chris Clarke took the site offline due to some lunatic making threats against his dog. No longer necessary: it's back up. CRN is my favorite blog, and I was horrified by the insanity over there recently. Chris, I'm glad you're sticking around.

In fifteen minutes, I'm DJing on radio free #mofirc (more info here). This afternoon's show is "Gunter Glieben Glauten Globen: Big-Haired Heavy Metal from the 80s," and future shows will feature works for prepared piano by John Cage, Steve Reich's choral/orchestral composition The Desert Music, deranged covers and Renaissance choral literature. I'll give more notice the next time I DJ.

"Don't Copy That Floppy": a c. 1992 educational film that explains the ethics of software piracy in hip-hop form.

I am now insane.

Random stuff

1. There are very few things more beautiful or poignant in this life than the voices of children singing "What A Wonderful World."

2. I ran the Brahms piece last week... and suuuuucked. I hadn't realized how rusty I am. This week it went better... I think I was intimidated because A) I've never conducted the work before; and B) the stakes are high since this is going on an audition tape. So I just had to get over that: chances are good that I won't have previously conducted the works I end up doing in on-campus auditions either, so this is excellent preparation. I was in much better form this week, but I'll still be spending a lot of time in front of a mirror in the coming weeks (to practice, not out of narcissism... for once).

3. My high school friend JB (he comments infrequently as "Cord Elam") sent me a MySpace message today to remind me that I am a horrible kite flyer.

I'm rereading Invisible Cities by Calvino right now. Oh my God. So good.

The last paragraph is one of the all-time great novel conclusions in all of literature. I'm going to share it, so don't read on if you're actually gonna pick up the book at some point:

The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.

The typepad site is now live. Email me if you want the password. This is not an abandonment of the bone; I'll continue to update this thing, and posts on the other site will be infrequent.

Speaking of abandoning sites... someone emailed me a couple of months ago when the posting was infrequent, and offered to buy my blogspot site for $100. Here's the email:

Hi. I'm [redacted] and I'm looking to buy an unused blog that's been indexed by the search engines. Your old blog at http://the_bone.blogspot.com/ fits the bill, so I'd like to give you a bit of money for old rope.

If you don't plan on going back to your blog any time soon I'll give you a quick $100 for it today. OK, it isn't exactly lottery winnings, but it'll pay for a few beers on the weekend. :)

I don't mean to cause offence if you plan to return to your blog in the future, but if you'd like to sell just email me your Paypal address and I'll whizz you over some cash. I'll also need you Blogger username and password, but you can wait for the money to arrive in your account if you want (can't trust anyone on the Internet, after all).

Let me know ASAP and I'll send your money. Cheers! :)

All the best, [name redacted]

I didn't consider selling for a moment, but after reading the comments in this post at CRN, I shudder to think about what would have happened had I done so... for all I know, the guy was going to use this as a gopher pr0n portal, which would have likely caused some consternation among people arriving here by googling my name.

A phoenix has risen out of the ashes of my deceased PowerBook in the form of a shiny new MacBook. It was a lot of cash, and obviously I hadn't budgeted for it... but this is why grownups have credit cards. The second half of this month is going to be tight, but I'm still on-deck to pay down all credit card debt early in 2007... it'll just happen in February instead of January.

Internet is up at my place, but only one computer at a time (the router's dead). So I'm back online, more or less. I promise that the next few updates won't be this vapid.

This Is An Ex-Parrot PowerBook

My trusty little PowerBook has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It may be salvagable, but since it's such an old computer (it's a 1st generation titanium PowerBook from 2001) it's probably not worth the money it will cost. I am fairly certain there's no critical data I need to pull off of there, so that's a relief.

What This Means For You: Internet is still not up and running at my new place, so I've been relying on coffeehouse WiFi for my online needs. Without a laptop this isn't an option. I've planned on buying a MacBook for a while now. However, I'm not sure I can afford it at the moment (although I guess I can always sell my old iMac on Craigslist to defray the cost) so it might have to wait until I get my November paycheck. Long story short, I will be able to check my gmail account at work, but MySpace, Blogger and this site all get netnannied there (although I can read this blog's comments, as I use a third-party commenting host which has escaped the school district's filter). If you need to be in touch, call or email.

and how fucking awesome is it that there's a "dead parrot" page on wikipedia?

The Long-Awaited, Move-Related Update

My friend mandyman's old blog was titled, "This is personal and boring." That's kind of how I feel about this entry. It's long, and if you don't know me personally you may or may not be interested (although I tried to write as engagingly as I could). A chronicle of my recent move follows.

september 30th, early afternoon:

The sinking feeling that North Hollywood wasn't going to work for me began as my brother and I were making the first trip to drop off my belongings at the new apartment.

I finished moving out of the old place on Saturday (I've been staying with a rad colleague in the Pico/Fairfax neighborhood). My awesome brother bassclefjohn and awesome friend mandyman first helped me box up a few hundred books, and then schlep those books and some other junk over the hill into the Valley. We turned off the 101 onto Vineland, and I realized that I had made a hasty decision: in my quest to not be homeless I took the first apartment that I could find, and I was completely depressed when I realized that I was relegated to suburbia due to circumstances beyond my control. Not that the suburbs are inherently bad; my hometown of Chula Vista (south of San Diego) has a lot of character.

But this part of the Valley... it's charmless. Decaying. Soulless. Inert.

If cities were hairstyles, North Hollywood would be a mullet. If it were a song, NoHo would be "In The Air Tonight" by Phil Collins.

Driving down Vineland I started imagining the lives of the people inside the various apartments and houses I saw. People snorting meth, people watching wrestling in their underwear. People smoking marijuana and talking about some band that they were going to start, but never actually did or would. People cheating on their spouses with the UPS deliveryman while an infant screamed in the next room.

I tried to talk up the place - more for myself than anything - while the three of us waited outside for the boyfriend of one of the roommates to show up with a key. "The outside of the building looks great! It's such a quiet street!" I said. "It looks like the street parking would suck, but we found spaces really easily!"

I don't know how it sounded to mandyman and bassclefjohn, but to my own ears the words sounded like the voice of desperation.

september 30th, mid-to-late afternoon:

When I first visited the apartment, it was twilight. My new rule for future househunting endeavors: Look at places in the brightest goddamned light possible. Bring a searchlight, if necessary.

A word about the roommates. They are both lovely, lovely people. Very cool, laid back, funny. Cool kids to hang out with. But a little flakey. For a couple of weeks I had been asking to come by and sign a lease, and there was always something up... they hadn't talked to the building manager, our schedules didn't line up, they still hadn't talked to the manager, one or the other of them was out of town. So I moved into the place leaseless, still kind of concerned about the official-ness of the whole thing.

The place was an utter mess.

Now, God knows I'm not a cleaning fascist. But this place reminded me so much of my shitty on-campus apartment in college that I was looking for fraternity paddles on the wall. These things might have been concealed in the low light of the evening when I first looked at the place, or maybe I overlooked the schmeck because I was so desperate to find something, anything that would even remotely work.

Not that there was a lot of light in the apartment even though it was afternoon. It was fairly dark and gray.

But, yeah. It was apparent that "cleaning the apartment" was a pretty low priority around these parts.

The person occupying what would become my room was moving out as I moved in. The room was cluttered, and I figured No problem. She'll clean it when she's done. Just to be on the safe side, I called [Female Roommate] to make sure that the room would be dealt with, and she assured me that she would talk to "move-out girl."

The three of us carried boxes up three flights of stairs (oh yeah... no elevator. Must have missed that when I first came by), and just stacked them in the living room because of the chaos in my room-to-be. mandyman left, bassclefjohn and I made a few trips back to get bookcases and such (note to self: next time I move, get more than two people to help so it doesn't take all day) and, despite a couple of distractions that increased the shittyness factor of the whole endeavor, managed to be done by seven. or so. BCJ and I adjourned to Astroburger for dinner, and I resolved to go over to the apartment the next day with a better attitude.

But when I returned to my friend's place to crash for the night, I just felt lost.

october 1st:

After my gig in the morning I went over to the apartment, in the gloom of the season's first mild rainfall. The same boyfriend (a totally nice guy) who was there at move-in was around, and he gave me the keys. I took a deep breath and walked up the cramped staircase to the bedroom.

Complete disaster zone. Dirty walls. Melted wax caked to the walls (wtf?). An entertainment center-like thing that had not just dust, but actual dirt on it. Some random nails in walls. A dirty carpet with feathers all over it, apparently from a down comforter.

I was pretty irate. Fortunately, I can keep a lid on it.

OK. Time to make the best of a bad situation, I thought. I asked [Boyfriend] for a vacuum, figuring that I could make a dent in the floor, wash walls later and, I dunno, scrape the wax with a razor or something. [Boyfriend] said, "Well, there's a vacuum... but I don't think it works."

Sure enough, the vacuum wheezed a little bit and conked out upon starting.

That was when I noticed that there wasn't any sort of DSL line.

"So, uh... where's the internet hookup?" I asked.

[Boyfriend] replied, "Well, um... I don't think there is one. I'm pretty sure that [Male Roommate] just uses the neighbor's wifi connection."

The irateness meter jumed up two notches then... I specifically said to everyone I spoke with while househunting that one of my make-or-break criteria was hi-speed internet access in the bedroom. A stolen wifi connection that could get walled off at any time hardly qualifies.

I stood there looking at the floor for a few seconds, said "I'm really upset right now. I'll have to come back tomorrow," and left.

The whole afternoon after I split was a pretty bad time. Just being in that place was such a draining experience. There was no place to put my piano. I couldn't imagine writing, composing or even filling out grad school applications there. I got back to my friend's apartment, said "I don't know how I'm going to be able to live there"... and burst into tears. (I do that a lot lately. That probably makes me a big wuss, but fuck it: I was despondent, pissed off and felt trapped)

I just lay in bed for the rest of the day, staring at the ceiling, hoping for some sort of answer.

Fortunately, one came.

My last thought before drifting off to sleep: Well, I never signed a lease...

october 2nd:

So I moved out.

My school district doesn't give students the day off for Bullshit Imperialist Day Columbus Day, because as a school district with a predominantly Jewish population they are already closed for the major Jewish holidays.

Yom Kippur was Monday, October 2. Score.

I rented a truck, got a couple of amazing colleagues to help and we cleaned all of my shit out of the apartment in forty-five minutes flat while the roommates were at work (it's a hell of a lot easier to get boxes downstairs than upstairs). I decided to pay the rent for October... I felt ethically obligated seeing as how they (probably) would have filled the place with someone else had I taken a pass on it, and didn't want to incur the karmic debt of leaving them in a tight spot, knowing from recent personal experience how much that sucks. One uncomfortable phone call later, and I was on my way back to Pico/Fairfax to start the home search anew.

today

I seem to settle for things pretty easily.

At no time in my life was this more evident than the whole NoHo fiasco.

So, when searching for places on Craigslist this time, I confined myself to places where I knew I'd want to live. I focused on the Hollywood Hills of all places once I realized (to my surprise) that I could afford it. I saw a ton of great places, met some amazing people, and promised myself that I wouldn't settle... that I would find a place that truly met all of my needs, instead of looking with the eyes of starvation and despair.

There are so many things to be thankful about in my life, even with all of the bullshit. I have a great job... strike that, a career, with wonderful colleagues and a knowledge that I'm making the world a little better by doing it. I have the smartest, funniest, most radiant friends possible, some of them for a couple of decades now. I'm seriously singing again - next Sunday I'm doing a Handel recitative/aria from Messiah, accompanied by a woman with a doctorate in organ performance who is an absolute beast on the instrument - and I'm diving head first into a beautiful work by Brahms to prepare for the recording of my grad school audition tape.

This life can be so fucking beautiful.

And now...

I'm writing this from a coffeehouse, as internet at my new home won't be set up until Wednesday. "Angel" by Sarah MacLachlan, one of my favorite songs, is playing on the radio. After I hit "publish," I'm going to pack up the PowerBook and head back to a lovely Craftsman house just north of Franklin in Hollywood... technically in the Hills, but on flat land and an easy commute to my school job, my singing gig and anyplace I'd ever want to go clubbing. An actress on a critically-acclaimed television show who is also known for her work in indie movies lives directly across the street. It's not the ideal in every sense (it could be cleaner, although it's pristine compared to the hellmouth that was the NoHo apartment), but it meets all of my needs, the roommates are all great, and I can totally be myself with no apologies. It's a little more than I'd like to pay, and even though I'm still on-track to paying down most of my credit card debt by the first of the year I'm not going to be able to save a ton of money. And that's all right. When I talked about this with Misty, she told me "There's a time for saving, and there's a time for living."

And now it's time to turn off the computer and go live.

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Blogging about politics, culture and other catastrophes will resume later this week.

Note for my peeps: My internet access will be sporadic for the next couple of days, so if you need to reach me you're more likely to do so if you call.

While you're waiting for a real update, why don't you go listen to some tunes from the upcoming album by The Postmarks? A few songs are posted at www.myspace.com/thepostmarks.

Radio silence

Expect the next update on Sunday. Until then, be excellent to each other.