TwoBusy

La la la la la la la la la means I meme you

Thank you, Chag, for providing me with an excuse to talk about music. Again.

What's your ringtone?
I don't actually have one, per se. I generally keep my phone on vibrate, and I like to keep it in my front pocket. (You're jumping to some filthy conclusions right now, aren't you? Sick bastards.) My friend Demoncrat somehow got the theme from Hallowe'en as his ringtone, which is just about the coolest thing I've ever heard... I'm deeply jealous, but too lazy/cheap to actually try to do anything equally interesting for myself.

What's the most incongruous song on your MP3 player?
Easy -- Hey Ya! by Outkast. Let's just say I'm pretty comfortable in my status as a white suburban indie music kid, which makes this joyous burst of urban contemporary sunshine a real exception to my musical library.

What is the one genre of music you cannot stand?
Klezmer and club/dance music (tie). Both make me violently unhappy.

What's your desert island disc?
I only get one? That's not even close to fair. Damn you! (shaking fist)

Fine. So... at this point, given that I've basically listened to it nonstop for more than a year, I guess I'd have to go with The Brother Kite's Waiting For The Time To Be Right. But it's not an easy call by any stretch of the imagination.

What's your musical weakness?
A Flock of Seagulls. I can't help it. Their cleverly titled debut album - A Flock of Seagulls - was the third album I ever purchased, and I've never stopped loving their sense of melody. (No, not the haircuts. Even I can't justify that.) I'd say they're a guilty pleasure, but honestly... I feel no guilt. Close second: Blue Oyster Cult.

Do you play a music instrument?
Nope. For a few years in elementary and middle school, I waxed saxaphonic, but at a certain point the appeal of walking around school with a big brown case holding a skronky woodwind grew thin. And thus, the world was forevermore robbed of my musical genius.

Best makeout song ever
Back in the day, I was all about using movie soundtracks as makeout music -- so instead of a single song, I'd have to go with Peter Gabriel's Passion (because nothing makes a girl hotter than a 350lb Qawwali singer wailing about The Last Temptation of Christ) or The Mission.

Best driving song
Hmm. You wouldn't go wrong with The Brother Kite's "Get On, Me" or, if you're feeling a bit more old school, Swervedriver's "Duel/Blowin' Cool" combo would move you swiftly down the highway. Of course, nothing beats Bad Brains' "Pay To Cum," but unless you're driving some kind of 600hp supercar, you're not going to be able to do it proper justice on the road.

One song that you think everyone should read the lyrics of
Honestly, you could pick almost anything out of the Joe Pernice songbook and find an appropriate answer. If you're not paying attention, it's much too easy to miss the nuance, sarcasm and hearbreak that he weaves through his songs and instead focus only on the gorgeous melodies. Hell, Spinner.com went to the trouble of naming his "Chicken Wire" the #1 Most Exquisitely Sad Song in the Whole World. If that doesn't merit deeper review... I don't know what does.

Is downloading music for free a sin?
I don't know about it being a sin... but it certainly seems like stealing to me. Sorry.

Do you karaoke?
That would be a no, due to a mix of crippling self-consciousness and having-three-kids-means-I'm-never-in-a-karaoke-environment.

One musician you would happily whore yourself to
I'm far too deeply enamoured of TheWife (who may someday read this and eviscerate me if I answer differently) to ever consider whoring myself out to a musician. That being said... Janet Jackson back in the day... damn.

First album you ever bought
We went over this already.

Most recent album you bought
I actually bought 4 CDs recently with a single credit card swipe: Lisa Germano's In The Maybe World, which is predictably haunted and gorgeous; Silversun Pickup's Carnavas, which has some very cool post-shoegaze stuff going on; Straylight Run's The Needles The Space, which sucks monkey ass; and Early Day Miners' All Harm Ends Here, which is lovely, lovely, lovely.

Favorite Beatles song
The Beatles have never really been a big part of my life. That being said, I'll go with "Eleanor Rigby" for reasons already explained (about halfway down).

One song that represents your teenage years
I'll go with Hammock's "You May Emerge From This More Dead Than Alive," which is pretty much how I found myself as I entered decade #3. Goooood times.

One song that represents your 20s
"Even The Odd" by the Trashcan Sinatras works just fine -- a cheerful song with a bittersweet undercurrent, which summarizes pretty neatly what turned out to be a pretty decent decade for me.

One song that represents where you are right now
Let's stick with "You'll Never Get To Me" by Killing Joke -- angry, defiant, curiously upbeat. "Survival is my victory" is as good a rallying cry as any I know.

One song that represents your blog
"Is There Anybody Out There" by Pink Floyd. Obvious answer, but there you go.

Tag. You're it.

A brief pause on my way to extinction

Over the past year or so, I've found myself hassling more and more of my friends over the slow rise of salt and pepper in their hair or beards. As just one of many examples, while touring the Washington Zoo last month with my friends the FamilyAngus, at one point I picked up BabyAngus, pointed him at his father (with whom I went to high school) and asked him, "Do you want to go hug your grandpa? The old guy with all that grey hair?" (At which point MrsAngus punched me. And rightfully so.)

But I've done all this with relative impunity, as my own hair has remained pure and dark (TheWife says it's black... I prefer to think of it as "filthy blonde") across the vast expanse of my skull and jaw, my grip on eternal youth as tight as the Red Sox' grip on first place in the AL East. (fingers crossed)

And then. This morning. I fucking found a fucking 2-inch long fucking white hair on my fucking chest.

SMACK!!!

Thank you, time, for that much-needed bitch slap. Time to go put together my will.

Suck or No Suck? (August '07/"I was on vacation so I saw a lot of movies" Edition)

SUCK: Letters from Iwo Jima -- seriously, how did this garner so much serious Oscar talk? I just don't get it. Yes, I was intrigued by the idea of Eastwood doing a large-scale WWII movie, and all the reviews I read said that this one blew Flags of Our Fathers out of the water. Plus, Ken Watanabe is a terrific actor, so I was excited to see how this whole thing would come together.

Excited was a bad anticipatory reaction. The movie, as it turns out, is dull. How do you combine one of the industry's best directors with a top actor in the creation of a WWII epic... and come out with something dull? Well, you start with a 1:3 ratio of action to boring back-story vignettes of characters who honestly aren't all that interesting (these vignettes serve as the "Letters" of the title). Then you make sure that your lead actor - who is by far the most compelling character in the film - is only on-screen for a relatively small proportion of your 16-hour running time. (Note: This estimated 16-hour running time is based on how long my body clock told me I was sitting on my couch being bored.) Then... well, by then, you've already blown it. What a disappointment.

NO SUCK: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix -- which we actually saw on an IMAX screen, with the added bonus of 20ish minutes of 3D action. I've never actually seen a feature film in the IMAX format before, and it was a pretty remarkable experience... things seem a lot more impressive when they appear on a screen three times the size of your house. An 12,000+ watt sound system doesn't hurt much, either.

The movie itself was definitely on the dark side, with a much heavier emphasis on Harry's growing anger/teen angst and the whole good vs. evil thing than on the subplots and character development stuff that fleshed out the original 1,400 page (est.) novel. Which means that while the film might not have necessarily had the emotional depth or breadth of tone you might've hoped for... it was a pretty action-packed and exciting 2+ hours.

SUCK: The Bourne Ultimatum -- not to repeat myself, but this was a big disappointment for me. I'm a huge fan of the first two Bourne movies, which successfully reworked the spy/thriller genre to the point that the Bond franchise felt compelled to reinvent itself (also successfully) in its image. But in Bourne 3.0, the now-obligatory jump-cuts and handheld camera filming style went careening over the edge of the cliff -- creating something that, in all honestly, I found visually incomprehensible. Combined with the fact that the movie is light on plot and heavy on coincidence, you end up with a couple of good fight scenes floating in the middle of a 2+ hour mess.

NO SUCK: The Host -- a very strange movie that is also, apparently, the most domestically and internationally successful South Korean film ever produced. It's a monster movie with elements of comedy and elements of drama that sometimes successfully (and sometimes not) blend together to create something that ends up being much more memorable and effective than either The Bourne Ultimatum or Letters from Iwo Jima. Yes, I do have a well-documented love for movies where people get eaten by giant bloodthirsty creatures... but that observation notwithstanding, this is still a very good movie.

The plot, in a nutshell: Stupid Americans are responsible for the release of baaaaad chemicals into Seoul's Han River, where unnatural things happen and, some time later, a giant reptilian fish-thing shows up and starts grabbing (and sometimes eating) lots of people. Among these people is a bright and resourceful schoolgirl whose deeply (if somewhat amusingly) dysfunctional family decides to circumvent the clueless military in mounting a rescue effort. If it sounds like a fairly generic monster movie... well, you're only half-right. The trappings may be formulaic, but there is a real intelligence at work here, and when people get hurt (or eaten) it's not necessarily a fun thing. You feel sad.

Which is substantially more than you feel from Bourne or Iwo Jima. Which really isn't what I'd expected at all.

Greetings from Vacationland

I speak in the metaphorical sense, insofar as that I'm not actually in Vacationland right now -- although I was earlier today. Nevertheless, today marks the 60% completion point of my first full week off in... uh... three years. So I'd better start enjoying this, because I'm probably not getting another one until August/September, 2010.

So. How has your week been thus far? That's nice. Mine was just like that, only with less work. A brief recap:

MONDAY
8:15am: Kick kids out the car door at daycare. Go to dump. Do 3 weeks' worth of recycling. Cut finger on a can of soup I ate while TheWife was in Nevada. Mmm... blood.

Now that's what I call a vacation! Boo-ya!

8:45am: Swing back home, grab TheWife, and head off on daytrip #1 -- Destination: Woodstock, Vermont. One of the most idyllic (and heavily touristed) towns in New England, and a place where we'd spent several long weekends... you know, back before we had kids and died. We haven't been there in years. This is very exciting.

The sky is blue! The sun is shining! The stereo is blasting happy songs, and we're on the road... on a weekday! Without kids! Yeeeee-haw!

10:15am: I'm staring at the tail lights of about 200 cars in front of me, stretching as far as I can see up the hill. The right lane of I-89 in western New Hampshire is closed for construction, reducing this interstate to a single lane... and it's. Stopped. As. Dead. As. My. Capacity. For. Joy. These people, this construction... they are standing (or parking) between me and potential happiness. I am seething with rage. My teeth are grinding to nubs. I think my head is going to explode. Vacation fucking sucks.

11:40am: We have successfully arrived in our destination region. Before hitting Woodstock, we've stopped in nearby Queechee for lunch at Simon Pearce. We have no reservations at this very popular spot, and when we walk in we see a line of retirees all waiting to get in at the opening gun, claim all the sweet seats, and start talking about golf and finances. Whatever... we're here.

Miraculously, as we're led into the restaurant, I spy a single open table for two against the wall of windows. Even more miraculously, that's exactly where they lead us -- a perfect seat literally perched over the junction where the Ottauquechee River goes over the falls... probably the single most beautiful place I've ever sat in a restaurant.

Great food. A nice glass of pinot. A heart-stoppingly gorgeous view. Not bad.

1:00pm: We explore every artsy-craftsy shop in Woodstock. All of them. TheWife enjoys their wares, while I... uh... get really bored. Whatever -- it's still not work.

1:20pm: Hey, look -- this place has pottery. Why don't we check it out?

1:40pm: Wow, that was hand-weaved by a local artisan? You don't say. How fascinating.

1:55pm: I start to wonder what's going on at work.

2:25pm: We're sitting along the edge of the Ottauquechee River at the Long Trail Brewery, enjoying a fresh pint and the sensation of not sitting under artificial lights. And then suddenly, it occurs to us: we have children. And we have to pick them up. 160 miles away. Soon.

Fuck.

TUESDAY
7:00am: I'm on my hands and knees, disassembling a crib with an allen wrench. Today's the day the twins are getting their big girl beds delivered to our house, and we've been informed by the recorded voice of Barry from Jordan's Furniture that they'll be by "between 7 and 11 on Tuesday morning" with the goods. Given that the girls were sleeping in these cribs until about 5:45am, I'm just hoping I have time to get them disassembled and moved out before the new beds arrive. It's a logistical issue: it's a small bedroom with a small doorway. I can't roll the cribs out (they won't fit), and I'm not sure if they'll have enough room to put the new beds together if there's even a single crib left. Two cribs... forget it. Not an option.

7:25am: I finish disassembling the first crib, and move all the parts out of the room.

7:30am: As I help TheWife load the kids into the truck so she can take them to daycare... the Jordan's delivery truck arrives.

Fuck.

10:00am: The beds have been assembled, the cribs have been disassembled, I've made about 200 trips from the top floor to our basement and back (usually carrying furniture or heavy boxes... this is also, apparently, the perfect time for me to put some other heavy things into storage), and I'm now drenched in sweat. I beg TheWife for 10 minutes to shower and have some water, as I've had neither yet this morning. She fixes me with a steely gaze.

"Are we having fun yet?" I ask.

11:30am: Hey, whaddya know... it's beer'o'clock already. Imagine that.

12:30pm: Hey, whaddya know... we're seeing a movie! The Bourne Ultimatim. Turns out to be light on plot, and so overwhelming jump-cut-edited that it makes my skull throb. Still: it's not work, and it's not child care. Wheeeee!

3:30pm: Time to run home, furiously wash the new twin bedsheets we just bought, and have everything ready for the girls for the official "big girl bed unveiling" when they return home.

5:40pm: Rabbit: "I want my old bed! I want my old bed! AAAAAAAAAAAA..."

WEDNESDAY
8:40am: We're on the road, headed to Maine. Freeport. Mecca.

10:10am: We pass through Portland, and officially leave touristy "Down East" Maine behind. The traffic grows much thinner. It starts to feel like the real deal (if only for a day). TheWife and I look at each other and smile. "I just realized we're in Maine. I like Maine." TheWife says. I know exactly what she means.

10:40am: We arrive, and are immediately draped in acres of fleece and flannel. Good lord, I've come home.

11:30am: Wow, bedding is really expensive. Are you sure the girls really need this?

12:00pm: We leave Bean's, laden with goods. "Hey, look -- a J. Crew outlet! And then Banana Republic, and..." TheWife starts feeling giddy. "That's great," I say. "I'm glad we came all the way up here so we could go to the exact same stores we see every day."

"They're outlets," she explains. "They're different." Oh.

1:45pm: We're sitting outside on the deck at Gritty McDuff's. I'm midway through my first Hallowe'en Ale. TheWife is working her way through a beer sampler. The food is good. The sun in shining. The sky is blue. And I... relax.

Finally.

Ah. (That's what it's supposed to feel like.)

Lay down your burden

Did I mention that next week marks the first full-week-off-vacation that TheWife and I have had in 3 full years? True story. Where are we going? Nowhere, and we're getting there fast.

To clarify: we didn't have the cash back in Feb/March to rent a place up in Acadia (there were some other logistical issues that got in the way, as well), so instead we decided to do a week's worth of save-our-marriage days -- dumping the kids off at daycare each morning, and then speeding off to have as much R&R as we can squeeze into 9.5 hours. Maybe we'll head up to the Woodstock, VT area for a day, or maybe we'll go sea kayaking, or maybe we'll just fucking sleep. I don't know. All I know is that for 9.5 hours, Monday-Friday, I will not be a) providing child care or b) sitting under fluorescent lights being a productive citizen.

The really sad part is that I'm so burned out right now that I'm not even excited... I know intellectually that the week off will be a good thing, but I just don't have the energy within me right now to feel that way that you're supposed to feel about a vacation. I guess that's what I'm hoping will come out of the week: a re-ignition of my pilot light.

Wish me luck.

The chicken has been drinking (not me)

This is so absurdly easy that I'm almost embarassed to post it. Then, I remember that I am a father of 3 and no longer capable of shame. Anyhow... courtesy of the Bible of Meat (1st Edition):

TIPSY CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS
1/3 cup bourbon (be generous)
2 TB maple syrup (the real stuff)
1 TB good dijon-style mustard
1 TB freshly-minced garlic

2 pairs'o'chicken breasts

2 TB extra virgin olive oil
2 Tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp fresh-ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS
1. Clean and dry chicken breasts with a paper towel. Get a 1-gallon plastic ziploc bag, throw the chicken inside, then add the bourbon, maple syrup, mustard and garlic. Press out all the air, then seal the bag. Mush the marinade all together until it's good and mixed. Put the bag in a bowl, and put in your fridge for 8-24 hours.

2. When ready to cook, remove the chicken from the bag and dry with paper towels. Brush with olive oil, then rub in salt & pepper.

3. Grill over medium/high heat.

4. Eat. Drink. Be merry.

Things I'm considering doing with my kids this weekend while TheWife is 3000 miles away

1. Locking them in the basement. (Hey, I would leave a light on. I'm not a monster, you know.)

2. Setting up a series of tests of physical strength and cunning to determine which one of them will be voted off the island my property.

3. Taking them down to the Cape for a little swim.

4. Bringing them into my office so I can catch up on everything I'm not going to have time to do this week, while they destroy everything in Sporty's cube. (No, I'm not bitter she's on vacation this week. Why do you ask?)

5. Teaching them how to "get daddy a beer," including proper usage of bottle openers.

6. Crushing their hopes and dreams.

7. Expanding their minds.

8. Playing dead, and waiting to see how long it takes before one of them decides to eat me.

9. Dressing in drag and explaining, "You have to call me Mommy now."

10. Counting the hours, minutes and seconds until TheWife gets home.

The Seige, August '07 Edition

I've just gotta say... if your wife goes out of town for 9 days, leaving you alone in the dead hot middle of summer with three vicious little parasites, no air conditioning and - really - no sense of hope whatsoever while she spends 5 days doing business in a place riddled with 4/5 star restaurants ("Oh, your filet at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant was a little disappointing last night? That's too bad, because mine was great. Except, you know, for the fact that it was a fucking Thomas' mini-bagel and not a filet.") and air conditioning and king-sized beds in rooms with three (3) plasma TVs (because you need one in the bathroom) and air conditioning before she rewards those 5 days of (I'll admit) hard labor with 4 days of impossibly beautiful R&R while she attends a wedding... and if, as it happens, that week coincides with A) your lesbian cohort Sporty going out of town for summer vacation, as well as B) a sudden and impossible crush of WORKWORKWORK with sudden and impossible deadlines and literally a dozen people breathing down your neck every second you're there because you - YES, YOU! - have become the bottleneck, my friend, and if about halfway through this hypothetical week (hypothetical, my ass), you are able to briefly escape from work and grab lunch with TheCEO and discover a place that actually serves Dogfish Head's 60-Minute IPA on tap...

...and you find yourself savoring a brief and fleeting moment of grace, a tantalizing, delicious glimpse of freedom and joy as captured in amber fluid...

Well, let me tell you... that's not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all.

Good vs. Evil