Have I got a story for you

Greetings from Chicago. I just moved back here over the weekend with my cat Lapka and more stuff than I care to admit I own. Who needs two cupcake pans? I do.

I could have rented a U-Haul and paid $1,000 for the one-way 16-hour trip, but my terribly kind-hearted parents decided instead to drive here in their Astro van and haul me and my crap back home.  I spent five years in New York, but the entire last month was all about filling my belly with all the things I’d miss (Veneiro’s cannolis, Caracas‘ arepas, Taverna Kyclades‘ grilled octopus, Aubergine’s iced coffee, Nathan’s coney island dogs, Mamoun’s falafel sandwich and hot sauce, SriPraPhai’s basil beef, street-cart lamb over rice, Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pie, Hope & Anchor cheesesteak). That, and seeing every amazing person I could think of, and trying my best to not to cry all the time at the impending missing of them. And then two days before I moved for good, New York gifted me with a great story.

So my house is dark. My parents and I are in my bedroom packing. There’s a knock at my bedroom door. I open it and there are two men in t-shirts staring back at me with flashlights in their hands and the first one says “police.” And then I see they’re wearing badges and I’ve decided either my house is on fire or this is about to turn into an episode of Law & Order: SVU wherein I get falsely accused of a crime and go to prison only for renegade DNA to free me after a 20-year mix-up in the crime lab. This is where my mind goes.

Let’s back up. This is my experience of the night:

-Dad and I take the empty kegs and tubs from a party I had onto the porch to wash them out. We have two entrances to our apartment, and one is in Lorena’s bedroom. We use that one because it’s closer to the outside and means less heavy lifting
-After my parents are back in my bedroom, I walk around the house and turn all the lights off in Lorena’s room, the living room and kitchen
-I come out from my bedroom to look for packing tape and see the light in Loren’as bedroom is on. I call her name and there’s no reply. I think I’m just crazy and reach for the switch when I see her outside door is unlocked. Silly me, I forgot to lock it!  I lock it and turn the lights off
-I go back to my bedroom and close the door, and proceed to pack with the buzzeing air conditiner on and my phone on in my purse, on vibrate

Here’s Lorena’s experience of the night:

-She gets home and sees her bedroom’s outside door is wide open. The apartment is pitch dark. She turns on her bedroom light, calls my name and hears no reply. She takes a few tentative steps in, remembers there have been robberies in our neighborhood, and gets her ass out the door without locking it.
-She calls me and gets no answer. She leaves me a panicked message and a text
-Standing outside, she sees the lights in her bedroom turn off
-Our neighbor Jimmy, a retired police detective, tells her to call the cops
-The police arrive way faster than any New York City cops should, hear what she’s saying, and find the outside door is now locked. Our downstairs neighbor comes home, hears there might be an intruder, and tells Lorena, “Oh my God, my husband’s down there.” Our upstairs neighbor, the landlord’s sister, and her grade-school daughter come home, and the child is horrified. Lorena then unlocks the door for the cops (all six of them), and they enter the dark apartment. They see the light on under my door. I answer, and they are really disappointed.

So I’m just glad they knocked first.

Did I mention this all happened in a matter of 5 minutes? Then we had to explain to everyone how this all possibly happened. I didn’t get shot, no one robbed us, we all had heart attacks and my folks got to see NYC cops in action. Thank you New York, you’ve been great.

 

My web site. Oh, shit.

My web site is pretty much done, and I feel like I can finally show it to the world. Oh me, oh my.  sandrakofler.com

My pal Sally created the banner. I’m just really excited about it all. Thanks to Sally, Justin, Eden and everyone who helped me tweak it to a happy state with their suggestions.

Edit: It appears my banner works in Forefox but not IE or Chrome. I’m working on a fix.  Anyone out there on Safari, Opera or any smart phones who can tell me if it shows up in those?

All fixed! Let me know what you think!

 

How to force your music on your children

Some of my friends who are mighty proud of their musical taste have expressed concern at some point or another that their future children might end up listening to shitty big-label Top 40 and won’t be at all interested in the music we’ve considered great all our lives. Here’s my personal rebuttal.

We were a big road-tripping family. As a kid, I was around for nine trips from Chicago to Florida, at least seven to New Jersey, one to Northern Minnesota, one to Virginia, at least seven to Toronto and countless trips to all the corners of Wisconsin. I estimate I’ve spent months of my life staring at passing landscapes in the car with my family. And through all the butt-shifting I did from being forced to sit in the middle (thanks, sis!)  and laughing at how Dad would nod off at the wheel (I was little, I thought it was funny how Mom yelled him awake) there were the mixtapes.

Oh, the mixtapes. Let me explain something to you. Every child of European immigrants of the ‘80 knows that their parents love — nay — LOVE any pop music with a catchy melody. If they can’t understand the words, it’s a plus. Russians, for one, love the stuff so much that they make mixtapes with names like “Classika” and “The Golden Collection” and stuff them with Boney M remixes, ’70s disco, over-sung ’80s ballads, music in any language but English, preferably Portuguese, Spanish or Italian, and anything that falls under the category of The Best Old-School Russian Pop.

As kids, we couldn’t handle this. And I realize that these days, kids have somehow achieved a monopoly over car entertainment. Do you have a minivan and at least one child? Chances are, it came with a DVD player for the back-seat crowd and as a result, you now have every song form “Thomas and Friends” burned into your brain. You even find yourself singing along reflexively, don’t you? If so, please find my parents so they can slap some sense into you.

My parents had the  death grip over all music knobs and buttons, and if we didn’t want to listen to “Lambada” or “Magic Symphony” we were welcome to continue sitting in the backseat with our coloring books and our tears. God forbid we’d try sticking a New Kids on the Block tape in while Dad was pumping gas and Mom was taking a smoke. Such a  Trojan horse in the tape deck would fly for maybe 10 seconds until the eject button was put to use and the best of Modern Talking would once again flood the car.

Are you aware that loud heavy metal music has been used as a form of torture on suspects hailing from countries where that music is savagely unfamiliar? If you’d asked us as children if we could relate, we could have said yes.

These days, I’m going to be honest, I own half the music my parents tortured me with. I now adore Joe Dassin and all his silly French ways. I sing along to Adriano Celentano’s music though me singing in Italian is maybe the funniest thing you’ve never heard. When we’re at Russian restaurants with live bands, I know to request Al Bano and Romina Power’s “Liberta” for my mom because it’s one of her favorite songs. I. Love. This. Shit. I love dancing to it. I love sneaking it onto mixes for my friends. I love singing it in the shower. And for all the times I blocked it out with “The Little Mermaid” soundtrack on my Walkman and wished to be anywhere else on those road trips, it sunk in. If I ever have kids, you bet your life they will listen to Of Montreal. And they will like it. Someday.

Here, a bit of the famed playlist, in video. I might actually make my own mix of these and more, come to think of it.

Laura Branigan – Self Control

Al Bano and Romina Power’s – Liberta

Modern Talking – Cheri Cheri Lady

Boney M – Daddy Cool

Adriano Celentano – Azzurro (total lip-sync job, but wow, that face! That shirt!)

Blue System – Magic Symphony

 

Last-minute L.A.

I’d been trying to get to L.A. for a while but there was always a problem with money or with time, and no time ever seemed like the right time. Until Priceline gave me a really good last-minute deal that I last-minute decided to take. I bought my ticket at 1am Thursday morning for a flight leaving that evening. Because I’m an insane person, yes. But something told me GO! GO! GO! So I went, went, went. And it was great.

My trip in photographs.

Lights, camera, zombies

I got to do some reporting on the set of “Woke Up Dead,” an upcoming Web series starring Jon Heder about a guy who wakes up essentially a zombie. You’ll probably be reading about it soon in my TVG column, but it’s not out until October. I had to rent a car to get to the set in downtown L.A, and here’s my advice to  L.A.-driving n00bz: However long you think it’ll take you to get somewhere, add an another half of that time and you’ll still probably be late. Traffic, even at 4pm, is brutal.

I don't think I need to say anything about this. Just soak it in.

Print this out and use it as a postcard on your next trip to L.A.! The kids will love it!

Even New York trees aren't this jaded

Your eyes do not deceive you

One of the first things I saw on my way into the city from LAX was a giant neon SCIENTOLOGY sign. And then there was another one in town. And then another. And then the Scientology celebrity guest mansion. And then the Psychiatry: An Industry of Death museum on Sunset Blvd. Oh, yes. Want to go on a video tour? You know you don’t. I’m not one to get down on somebody’s beliefs, it’s just hard to take things seriously when your place of worship has so much neon out front.

This terrible picture is not of a haunted mansion in mid July, but of Jane’s House, a new watering hole in an old Victorian house in a courtyard off the Sunset Strip. Hidden behind a gate, then a path, the courtyard opens up to this ridiculous old house planted next door to a Mexican restaurant, with a long-coated bouncer that let us in only after my cousin whispered something in his ear. Actually, that kept happening all weekend. Pretty exciting for a girl who’s used to drinking in establishments that don’t even use bouncers. Might I also add that though I was dressed all nice, I was still the only female  not in a dress? Classy, and yet disturbing.

My cousin Steve! He’s the best! I guess he’s not technically my cousin, but we’re essentially blood brothers from way back. This was at another bar, Seven Grand, on another night. If you love mint juleps, theirs are the best. They specialize in whiskey, so if you like the brown stuff like I do, go treat yourself some time.

I <3 typos

The land of drivers becomes the land of cabs after-hours. And L.A. cabbies are awesome spellers. Like it says on the screen, it was 2:19 am when the cab dropped us back of at Steve’s, and I had to be at the airport by 4am for my 5:30 flight. Once I got on that plane, I assure you I slept very well.

Not pictured, but things I loved: Amoeba Records, In-N-Out Burger, Mulhollad Blvd., Loteria restaurant, Hotel Bar, and driving at night.

The best part? Taking a last-minute weekend trip for myelf and enjoying every unplanned minute of it. Highly recommended.

 

The dangers of being me

I took a last-minute trip to L.A. this weekend, capping it off with a 12-hour day of takeoffs and landings from LAX (got to the airport at 4 a.m.!) to Houston to La Guardia that left me a walking zombie by the time I crawled out of the yellow cab on my street corner. I walked in, put down my stuff, pet my cats, wondered at the glory of Home, and not 10 minutes later tripped over my suitcase, whacking my foot so hard that my left pinky toenail is now connected on just one side instead of three.

A much closer photo of my foot than you ever wanted to see

Have you ever stubbed a toe? You have? Great. I’ll have you know this was the baby-birthing of toe stubs. And if my toe had opened up to spawn a tinier, fully-intact baby pinky toe I could name Roger and cradle on lonely nights, I might not have minded the pain so much. But at least I turned out to be a regular Florence Nightingale, all elevating, icing, cleaning, gauzing and bandaging while my foot cried its river of blood. There was no one was around to first-aid me or hear me scream except the cats, and they’re unfortunately a species not historically known for brave actions in times of trauma.

Digression: Actually, if you think about it there aren’t even superhero cats like there are dogs (and Thundercats don’t count, they’re like from the jungle or something), much less ones who have enough self-control not to eat your face if you die in your apartment alone… Like the old man who recently passed away in his house across the street from me, leaving 40 hungry felines and 5 days worth of rotting body. And that’s a true story.

So my toe is really unhappy. This would all have been much more of an ordeal, probably resulting in a trip to the ER on the tab of my Freelancers Union insurance which I never use, if I had problems dealing with blood or if this wasn’t the fifth (“FIF!” – Dave Chappell) time in my life some trauma’s resulted in a finger or toenail eventually falling off. On the scale of my life’s worth of digital owwies, this one ranks less painful than when I slammed a car door shut on my own finger or the time it got stuck in a closing bathroom door hinge, but way worse than when I hit my feet on the board during diving practice. I don’t pussy-foot around injuries (wordplay!), I go right for them.

So the lesson here is, watch where you’re going because you can easily lose a toe, or a finger, or your life, in your own home if you’re clumsy like me. Another lesson is, don’t own 40 cats.

More on L.A. later.

 

The Story of Fred Jones

In between bouts of cleaning on Sunday, I fired up my digital piano and played some old Ben Folds Five favorites from Whatever and Ever, Amen. “Cigarette” is the song I can probably play the best, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s only 2 pages long and mostly just repeats itself over and over again. For I am a piano virtuoso. But “Cigarette” is a major happy-killer, one of Folds’ more tragic songs. And one that’s always had people scratching their heads.

Lyrics (as I think I know them):

Fred Jones was worn out
from caring for his often
screaming and crying wife
during the day
but he couldn’t sleep at night for fear that she
in a stupor from the drugs that didn’t ease the pain
would set the house ablaze
with a cigarette

No lyrics are printed in the songbook, nor are they in the record sleeve. And fans of Folds (if they haven’t named his fan club that, they are so missing the obvious) know that on his later album Rocking the Suburbs, the song “Fred Jones Pt. 2,” another gorgeous downer, calls back to “Cigarette,” though no one knows what the connection really is. I’m happy thinking it’s kind of cool to just resurrect this tragic character and illustrate a majorly sad life, one we all could be living. Maybe there is no “why” to it. But I wanted to see what Folds had to say about it, and I found some articles that at least explain “Cigarette” a tad.

From The Washington Times, 11/30/97

On “Whatever and Ever, Amen” is a song called “Cigarette,” about 45 seconds long, which Mr. Folds has called “a weird vibe song.” It came, he says, from a newspaper article he found in a trash can.

“The first sentence was ridiculous. It was so long. The entire lyrics are the first sentence. It just went on and on, ‘Fred Jones was worn out from caring for his often screaming and crying wife. . . .’ It was ridiculous but it had an effect on me.”

From The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 5/30/2002

“That was a run-on sentence from a local newspaper,” Folds says. “And it was such a weird sentence and painted such a weird picture, I just thought, ‘This deserves some music.’ ”

How many of his songs are true stories?

“All of them,” he says. “You can add some bizarre feature, like putting them in a space ship. But I think it is something you don’t tamper with, something that you have to be candid with.

“It’s like a photographer: You can look at it this way, look at it that way, but if you tamper with it, it destroys the whole reason you took the photograph. Or like a drawing, where you say., ‘Oh, man, I just smeared it.’ You drew it and erased it so many times, you don’t have a clear picture anymore.”

I know a lot people already know the song came from a newspaper article thanks to Wikipedia. I just really wanted to find it in Folds’ own words.

And he’s isn’t bullshitting when he talks about a photographer’s perspective. Follow him on Twitter to see his daily photo updates. Dude is a rather impressive photog.

Folds' kids

His kids at play. Can’t wait ’til the man gets himself a Flickr account.

 

Just part of the job

I’m working on the red carpet tonight for the 40th Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame ceremony. Is it hard to control myself knowing that Crosby, Stills & Nash, James Taylor and Holland-Dozier-Holland will be walking past in a few minutes? You bet. Here’s what the view is like from here.

 

Paste magazine has it so right

When I was double-checking the URL for that last post that mentioned Paste, I visited the site and the first thing I saw was an article called “Ten Songs About Print Journalism.” As if they knew I was going to stop by today.

Once upon a time, being a newspaperman (or woman) was something to stand up and shout about. Journalism was a noble occupation. Reporters and critics worked for peanuts but fought the good fight…

That was a long time ago…

Today, journalism is a skeleton of its once-authoritative self. Newspapers have laid off all but a few copy-pushers and overworked editors who want complex information reduced to concise (and don’t forget, entertaining!) capsules. And the “reading” public doesn’t ask for more than that…

Today, the newspaper is crumbling faster than week-old bread. Gone are print versions of the Christian Science Monitor, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and now, it appears, the Boston Globe. And music magazines aren’t faring much better; Blender is history, and even this magazine is struggling.

By the time the writer gets to his list of 10 songs, it’s almost as if the songs don’t even matter. The eulogy’s already been read, the music’s just for the funeral procession. But they’re still good songs, and well-chosen. I do agree with one commenter, and think Ben Folds’ “Fred Jones Part 2″ (video) was overlooked. It’s not about journalism’s glory days like most of these tunes, but about what happens to the typewriter heroes of the past now that today is what it is.

By the way — Paste is struggling. Check out that link, donate, and help keep an actually respectable music magzine alive. They’ve already raised over $100,000 in donations alone. See? You do make a damn difference.

 

I just remembered that I miss music

I didn’t think it was possible that with over 40 gigs of music on various hard drives that I’d ever get bored with music. But I did, and I just stopped listening. Stopped. Just, altogether. Quit looking for new stuff, got sick of Brooklyn Vegan’s annoying commenters, abandoned Soulseek, let my subscription to Paste lapse. I cut music off. And I am sorry.

Turns out, I forgot about Pandora too. Oh, lovely internet radio, how I’ve taken you for granted. I logged on tonight and my Eisley station started up and I just felt so at home.

Here’s what’s played so far:

Eisley – Come Clean

Rilo Kiley – Pictures of Success

Coldplay – Yellow

Death Cab For Cutie – Grapevine Fires

Eisley – Brightly Wound

The Cardigans – You’re the Storm

Cat Power – Speak for Me

Tori Amos – Bouncing off Clouds

Rhett Miller – Come Around

Eisley – The Winter Song

Stars – Elevator Love Letter

Katie Todd – The Polite

I couldn’t have asked for a better mixtape for working in on a rainy night.

 

Lovely words

I just read the New York Times review of the new Pixar movie “Up,” and found it the be the best-written thing I’ve read in a long time. Don’t forget too quickly that this is a review of a kid’s movie. It begins:

In its opening stretch the new Pixar movie “Up” flies high, borne aloft by a sense of creative flight and a flawlessly realized love story. Its on-screen and unlikely escape artist is Carl Fredricksen, a widower and former balloon salesman with a square head and a round nose that looks ready for honking. Voiced with appreciable impatience by Ed Asner, Carl isn’t your typical American animated hero. He’s 78, for starters, and the years have taken their toll on his lugubrious body and spirit, both of which seem solidly tethered to the ground. Even the two corners of his mouth point straight down. It’s as if he were sagging into the earth.

Dear Manohla Dargis,

You are so beautiful. To me.